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havendance · 2 days

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Sasha Bordeaux Tim Drake Roleswap AU

Because it turns out I have a lot more thoughts on this.

Following Jason’s tragic death in Ethiopia, Bruce Wayne is coping extremely poorly. After a rather public reminder of his grief spiral—I don’t know a car accident or something—the Wayne Enterprises board of directors gets nervous and saddles Bruce with a bodyguard.

Bruce does not like this any more than he does when they pull this move on him in canon post-NML. However, he is also depressed and puts up less of a fight.

Sasha Bordeaux finds herself saddled with keeping alive a very slippery, very depressed man who will disappear on her and return with injuries he doesn’t hide particularly well or bother to explain.

Sasha is a professional. She uncovers Bruce’s secret identity fairly quickly (Bruce is very much not doing well and his secret keeping skills are at an all time low probably) and proceeds to force herself onto his team.

She was hired to keep Bruce alive and if that means she also has to keep Batman alive, then so be it.

After about a week of her following Batman around and involving herself in his business, Bruce relents and begins training Sasha in an attempt to scare her off. It doesn’t work.

Sasha Bordeaux does not become Robin. She is initially a nameless vigilante fighting at Batman’s side. Eventually, she picks up the moniker of Shadow for the way she follows him around.

She also does not have that same bone-deep commitment to the code that Batman and his other allies do. You know the jokes about how Tim only doesn’t kill because Batman says so? That’s more accurate for Sasha here.

That is not to say she’d kill people like crazy if it weren’t for Batman, but she is an adult professional and in a field where sometimes lethal force is necessary. If the decision comes down between her client’s life and the life of their attacker, she will protect her client. She respects and understands Bruce’s reason for his code, and as long as she is acting as a vigilante, she will abide by it, but her refusal to completely believe in it is a source of tension between her and Bruce.

Her attitude towards vigilantism is also different. She is learning from Batman and she fights alongside him, but she is not his sidekick. She is his employee. Her first and foremost priority is him. As time goes on, she does come to value and become more invested in the other parts of vigilantism, but her first priority always remains Bruce.

Having Sasha around does help pull Bruce out of his rut because he now has to think about having another person around him. Sasha’s lack of complete buy-in with his code also forces him to be more aware of it in his own actions.

Tim’s superpower is networking. Sasha’s is not. As a result of this, Bruce remains more isolated in his crime fighting. Without Tim there to drag Dick back, their relationship is much more distant and strained. While they eventually reconcile from the aftermath of Jason’s death, I don’t think they get to the point where Bruce formally adopts him. Likewise, he’ll work with Oracle, but they’re both far more likely to just do their own thing.

Without Tim, Helena doesn’t really make it to the point of ‘in and out’ of Batman’s circle. She stays solidly on the outside. She remains on the Justice League reserves, but she doesn’t have her JLA membership in this AU. Eventually though, she still does join up with the Birds of Prey.

Similarly, Stephanie doesn’t really have any of the teaming up with Tim that she does. All she’s got is her own gumption and Batman telling her to stop.

Let’s take a moment to talk about Knightfall. Jean-Paul Valley happens. Bruce tells Sasha to get him trained up and she does. Bruce still makes him Batman.

When he goes off to rescue Dr Kinsolving though, she refuses to stay behind and keep an eye on Jean-Paul and instead accompanies him. She’s his bodyguard after all, not Jean-Paul Valley’s.

This results in things going downhill even quicker for poor JPV.

To me, this results in Helena having a precursor to her No Man’s Land arc where she realizes that someone needs to step up, but I feel like it’s more likely that she just thinks that Batman’s rally gone off the rails, steers clear of him, and judges him for being so high and mighty for her crossing the line when he’s like this now.

Anyway, Bruce gets magicured and comes back to Gotham. He does call in Dick for help (Dick is still annoyed about the Azbats thing but he comes when called). Prodigal doesn’t happen.

Sasha eventually joins Bruce’s cast of love interests. Since they’re on the same side, there isn’t the inherent drama of Selina or Talia, but I’m sure Bruce can find a way to make it tragic.

Hmm, I’m not interested in retelling canon except Tim’s not there so we’re going to skip ahead some.

Sasha follows Bruce on his No Man’s Land guilt-bender which probably has more guilt since she’s standing there all the time judging him. She also breaks up with him. Because he’s in his guilt-bender era.

We’ve got to build isolation mode Bruce, so let’s say, somewhere during the climax of No Man’s Land, Sasha needs to kill someone, which sparks conflict—

No wait, better idea. Bruce and Dick are at a disagreement over Dick’s decision to join the police force. Officer Down drives them further apart and also results in Alfred deciding to pack up and move in with Dick instead. Barbara is also mad at Bruce because of Officer Down.

When Hugo Strange does attack Wayne Enterprises, Sasha is put in the position where the only option she can see is to shoot to kill.

This leads to a huge argument between her and Bruce where they probably have one of those “you’re fired” “well, I quit” exchanges and she storms out.

They are still, of course, tragically in love though. (I am not the hugest fan of Sasha/Bruce but it has grown on me.)

What happens to Sasha after this? Hmm, let’s say Barbara recruits her for the Birds of Prey because she knows all their secrets and is still a part of this now..

This one of the few times that Sasha is ever a team player. She mainly sticks with Bruce. The only exception is the Outsiders when it’s Bruce’s team. She probably takes over them instead of Alfred (I still think that was the silly sort of comics stupid) which Bruce is in his ‘dead’ era.

But now, it’s time to talk about Tim. For that, we go all the way back to the beginning: Haly’s Circus, the night the Graysons fell.

Tim needs to be an adult in this AU for plot reasons, so we’ll say he was the same age as Dick. Acrobatics was just the latest in a long string of interests his parents had encouraged, so when he met Dick, that was one of the coolest things ever.

And then the Graysons fall to their deaths.

This leaves Tim with recurring nightmares and a new obsession with death and the Batman, something that his parents are uncomfortable with.

One night when Tim’s in high school, while he’s out late with his friends, in places they shouldn’t be, they get into more trouble than they can handle and Robin saves them.

Robin uses a quadruple somersault.

Tim keeps the knowledge close and never talks about it.

Towards the end of his freshman year of college, his parents are killed in a car accident while abroad. He ends up taking his inheritance, dropping out of school and doing his own mini Batman training tour, going here and there, doing odd jobs, learning from whoever will teach him, and doing a class here or there.

He does manage to scrape enough credits and motivation together to get a degree, right around the time No Man’s Land is ending. He’s still pretty aimless, so when he hears that the board is hiring a personal assistant for Bruce Wayne, he applies.

Bruce is in self-isolation mode and absolutely does not want yet another person foisted upon him by the board. Unfortunately, Tim is just as tenacious as Sasha was, he kind of reminds Bruce of Dick (who he misses because he’s sabotaged that relationship so hard), and so, when Tim inadvertently lets on that he knows Bruce’s secret, he starts teaching Tim vigilantism as well. Because he’s also pretty lonely.

Tim is enthusiastic about all of this and is also trying to encourage Bruce to reconnect to people with mixed results. I think he does succeed at getting Bruce and Dick to talk for once in their lives, but most of the time Bruce is not particularly inclined to listen to him and also he had some pretty bad arguments with people.

So Bruce is still on his own when he is framed for murder. Tim, as his live-in personal assistant, is also there and arrested.

Blah blah blah Bruce Wayne: Murderer/Fugitive happens. Dick, who has recently reconnected with Bruce a little more, is like ‘that’s my emotionally distant father figure who I refuse to believe could commit murder’. Sasha also does not believe it due to their previous conflicts and ends up coming back to help the investigation.

They clear his name, but before they can get Tim out, he gets his death faked in prison and recruited by Checkmate.

Bruce still gets very upset by this because, while Tim was kind of annoying, he also reminded him of Dick and the fact that he is dead is hitting some really sore spots for him so he terrorizes Checkmate until they cough Tim up to tell him that he wants to stay.

Tim has been looking for purpose and Checkmate gives him that. It was cool, fighting with Batman, but he was also very much aware that he was coming from outside and Bruce has people supporting him now, so he doesn’t need Tim.

We’re going to skip ahead again to CheckOut because THIS is the big Dick & Tim teamup in this AU.

Tim has done all the OMAC project stuff, he tried to organize a coup against Maxwell Lord to mixed results, he got OMAC-ifified, and he got promoted to Black King afterward despite his youth because he has an A-tier networking game.

And now Checkmate wants to take on Oolong Island, but they can’t because politics, so Tim suggests they Shanghai the Outsiders for a number of practical reasons, but mainly because he is still a major Nightwing fan.

He’s over here like ‘we’ll kidnap everyone except Nightwing because clearly Nightwing is too amazing and awesome for us to kidnap so instead we’ll lure him to us.’

And they like fight and Nightwing recognizes him as that guy who was working with Batman before because of his fighting style and they banter their way across this teamup. I don’t think Tim ever tells him about watching his parents die because Tim does in fact have tact in that regard, but he has a great time getting to team up with Nightwing. Except for all the torture of course.

But back to Sasha, when Bruce dies, Nightwing takes over as Batman and makes Damian the first new Robin since Jason.

I know I said Sasha probably ended up in charge of the Outsiders, but also I think she should do the Bruce-quest as being one of the most attached to Bruce.

Sasha and Alfred team up maybe?

Anyway, I think I’m going to call it here because this is still plenty long.

#batman #dc #bats + birds + affiliated #tim drake #sasha bordeaux #tim tag #tim sasha roleswap au #my au ideas #havendance writes #checkmate #carthago delenda est

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wilsonsmcgillsweatshirt · 7 months

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One of my favourite examples when talking about how well Wilson and House know each other, is the episode where Wilson becomes convinced that House has a gun. The fact that Wilson even knows House has a gun in the first place shows how much they know each other. But in the episode, they both trick each other and Wilson breaks into House's apartment and House tries to stop Wilson, but eventually Wilson outsmarts him and ends up going through House's apartment and everything he owns, all while House is insistent that he does not own a gun.

And then, at the end, Wilson pulls up to House's office, brandishing the gun, going, "Ah ha! I knew it." And House rolls his eyes and tells Wilson it's fake and Wilson doesn't believe him, and House eventually hands him back the gun and tells him to shoot him. So Wilson is standing there holding a gun with House encouraging and trying to goad him into shooting him to prove that it's fake. Eventually, Wilson gives up and gives House back the gun and concedes. And then, at the end, it's revealed that the gun was real, and House's bluff was to try to get Wilson to shoot him with a loaded gun as a way to earn his trust.

This is such a good example because I feel like it wouldn't have worked the way it did with anyone else. House was betting his life on how well he knows Wilson, he was so sure that Wilson wouldn't risk shooting him even with a fake gun, that he handed him a loaded weapon and tried to convince Wilson to shoot him. He only did that because he knew Wilson wouldn't. Wilson, on the other hand, knows House well enough to know that he definitely had a gun, and there was always a chance that it was real even if House said it wasn't. He took the gun with that knowledge and refused to do what House was encouraging him to do. He knew House well enough to know that House knew him well enough that there's a chance he'd pull a bluff like this. And so Wilson didn't risk it. They know each other so well that House can hand a loaded gun to Wilson, convince him it's fake, tell Wilson to shoot him, and then be secure in the knowledge that he's not in danger because Wilson wouldnt do it.

I feel like 90% of the characters would've just shot him because they fell for it and wouldn't have believed House would pull something like that. And I don't think House would've pulled that with anyone but Wilson.

#Theyre soulmates your honour #And before someones like “well House doesnt care if he dies”#Yes he does but even if he didnt he would never risk Wilson being the one to accidentally kill him and have to live with it #hed never put wilson through that #checkmate #house md #house #greg house #james wilson #gregory house #hilson #wilson #hate crimes md #hatecrimes md #housemd #house/wilson

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