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lover-of-mine · 1 month

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https://www.tumblr.com/lover-of-mine/745334896398073856/i-know-i-completely-changed-my-original-spec-on-s7 please I want to hear this! I love hearing your metas and spec lol

Alexa, darling, I love that the original spec was also written on an ask from you, thank you for always supporting my ramblings 💜💜💜💜also @steadfastsaturnsrings, Saturn, darling, I do have more thoughts lol

Okay first, this one needs context, so other metas/speculations whose elements got me to think this one makes sense, I don't think you need to read them for this to make sense, but just in case you want to read something more in-depth about it, I do strongly recommend you read them thought, I think it makes this one more impactful: link to the original spec where all I had to go on was the voices in my head, like legit, we didn't even have a date for season 7 yet, this one is just in case you wanna see the original version of this, buddie is mirroring the couples in Buck, actually and the only situation they are missing is the couple that crashed into the tree aka both of them in danger/hurt at the same time, Buck needs to deal with death/figure out how to live as someone who wants to live, buddie is tied by death.

Okay, so, when I first started thinking about this I was mostly thinking about Buck's relationship with water/breathing and that leading to a breakdown or leading to buddie. Because Buck drowning could trigger him enough for him to have a full-blown breakdown, but a Buck who's already been through the process of realizing he wants to be alive almost dying again might give him an oh moment that would lead him to act on his feelings for Eddie. My hope was also for that to mirror elements of the shooting since I am a firm believer that the shooting was Eddie's oh moment. But I was writing that with no clue about what they would do with the season, so now that we have more information, I need to tweak things a bit.

Buck has a very intricate relationship with breathing which also gives him an intricate relationship with water. The first call we see on the pilot is the 118 responding to a kid who drowned, who Buck is doing cpr on, then we have the baby on the wall who's also not breathing, we have the girl getting strangled by her snake, and we have him saving Athena with water. On a less this is probably just a coincidence note, Buck's first real brush with death is on the date with Abby, where he chokes and Abby needs to perform an emergency tracheotomy on him, the surgery on his leg leads to blood clots in his lung, he gets caught on a tsunami, during the warehouse fire in Buck Begins he gives his mask to the victim and openly states he will hold his breath and the sprinklers also give it the water elements, and after the lightning, the thing that stops working is his lungs. This all led me to the belief that they will drown Buck at some point. Mostly because I wanted to mirror elements of the shooting and one of the elements of the shooting is that it brings up a previous trauma for Eddie. The easiest way to bring up previous trauma for Buck is to drown him, you hit breathing and water elements. Having him crash his car, be driven off the road, drive off a bridge, or something like that, into water is a situation that would be urgent enough that he can't wait for help. At first, I just put Eddie in the car because I wanted Eddie to be forced to save Buck, but now I have a reasoning for Eddie to be in the car.

Let me back up and explain how getting there makes sense though. The promotion of the season has had a lot of talk about vulnerability, and Buck and Eddie leaning on each other, and they need to deal with death as a concept. Eddie needs to stop chasing Shannon, along with dealing with the grief over having to save Buck and Buck needs to deal with his passively suicidal behavior and with the way that following the coma dream, Buck actually does care if he dies, so he needs to get to a point where he acts as someone who wants to be alive and asks for the things he wants. Personally, I think the only way buddie will truly work as a couple is if they get to that point, because a Buck who asks for what he wants is not a Buck who will let Eddie get away with thinking he's always right, and Eddie needs to stop trying to fix what went wrong with Shannon and just do what he actually means.

Eddie welcoming Buck to the world of the living in the locker room gave me hope on that front because Buck finding out he wants to be alive and also calling Eddie on his bullshit while they navigate a place where Buck can face death as something not scary can be good for both of them, especially with the way they keep talking about both Buck and Eddie just “wanting to be happy” because they could walk through the trauma, and Buck talking about death as boring and the focus the show put on Shannon on the past few episodes, showing Eddie and Chris visiting her grave, more detail on hers and Eddie's relationship, Chris’ conflict with her memory, you can have them learning the move forward together. Oliver also saying there will be a chance of things coming up in a not so great light but the friendship persevering can also mean that they will deal with other aspects of their relationship that could create problems in their relationship, like the way they assume they understand each other so they won't actually talk about things that matter and just assume the other will understand what they mean since they are very much in sync a lot of the time, like for instance the way Buck definitely misunderstood what Eddie actually meant with his will or the way Eddie reacted to Natalia and the whole I feel like she sees me. They also need to deal with the way they don't talk to each other about big changes in their lives, Eddie didn't talk to Buck about changing his will or leaving the 118, Buck didn't talk to Eddie about the sperm donation, and they need to.

So let's say season 7 is the buddie utopia of my dreams where they address these base issues, something they need to talk about is how it felt to save each other's lives. But they haven't talked about it yet, and it's been long enough they would need another trigger. But this conversation is the conversation you pretty much can't write without ending it with a love confession of some form, but I'll come back to this.

We need a trigger. I said up there about how they are mirroring the calls in Buck, Actually. There we have a crush injury involving a vehicle with Thomas and Mitchell, we have someone injured more worried about the other's safety who got injured by someone while at work with Ruth and Earl, we have Lola and See Me Norman talking her out of the ledge. Crush injury and focus with hand holding happens both ways, with the truck bombing and the bridge, one of the injured by more worried about the other we also have both ways, granted one is a lot more intense than the other, but during the shooting Eddie asks if Buck is hurt and when they get kidnapped, Buck gets pistol whipped but he spends the whole time more worried about Eddie than himself. And we watched Buck talk Eddie off a metaphorical ledge in dumb luck, if we're lucky, we can get a mirror of that going the other way this season.

Most of my hopes of this particular thing come with the way Buck and Eddie's individual storylines are parallel but slightly misaligned, you have the first love who left and came back without giving them real closure, you have Eddie having too much responsibility being put on him by his parents when Buck is invisible over the fact that he “failed” on the thing his parents' wanted from him, the lightning mirrors the well quite literally, they are in opposite sides of the frame, Buck is in the sky, Eddie is underground, Buck is the middle of a street, Eddie is the middle of nowhere, (here’s a set if you need help visualizing that), among other smaller things, like the way Buck’s first death on the job was someone falling to their death and for Eddie too.

That leaves us with the newlyweds who crashed on their way back from the wedding, aka a situation where both of them get hurt, but one of them gets pinned, one of them gets the worst of it.

So car crash.

I go back and forth as to why they are in the car. I played with the idea of Taylor activating her emergency beacon and them actually going into that situation willingly, but considering everything about the show, you can do pretty much anything, they could witness a crash and then things go to hell, they could be driven off the road, they could fight in the car and lose control, I don't know, but the thing is, utopia buddie who are in a spot where the change from friends to more could work, maybe toeing the line more heavily (I mean, we are mirroring newlyweds lol), getting into a crash while off duty. It's very important that they are off duty because now we're mirroring elements of the shooting.

Why we mirroring the shooting? Well, because the shooting is a banger. I'm kidding lol. There's something inherently romantic about the shooting, Buck wearing Eddie’s blood, the shared looks across the pavement, the focus on hands, Eddie literally bleeding out and asking if Buck’s hurt, Buck escalating from we got you to I got you, from just hang on to I need you to hang on. And there’s also my personal belief that Eddie is aware of his feelings and realized what they meant during the shooting, so I want to put Buck in a situation where he can’t escape what his feelings about Eddie mean, because I think Buck never stopped to truly look at what Eddie is to him. And with where they are, to be put in a situation like that would force them both to confront these feelings, even if they don't feel like saying Eddie has been pining since season 4.

The shooting has quite a few elements that make it as intense as it is: they are not supposed to be there, it’s not their call and the 136 is the house responsible, it brings up a previous trauma for both of them, Eddie gets shot, bringing up things from his days in the army and Buck is forced to roll under the truck after being crushed by one, Buck does the saving alone because there’s no one else they trust around, it happens by chance because Eddie gets targeted just because, they are also done with what they went to do by the time Eddie gets shot. All of these can be achieved in many ways, the only thing I’m sure of is that they need to be in the car together and they need to be off-duty because if they are not off-duty you take away from the urgency of the situation, having tools and immediate rescue available waters the situation down. I don’t know why but I keep going back to them driving off a cliff into water, sometimes I shift to a bridge, but they used that with Judd and Grace in Lone Star so I don’t know if we would get a repeat, but basically I see them stopping to help someone, getting back to the car, and maybe the side of the road gives under them, or there’s another crash, that now is into them throwing them over, or they get driven off the road. There’s also the chance of them just losing control of car, a tire pops, it's raining, something runs across the road, and they get underwater.

Why is them being underwater important? If they are just hanging on the side of the cliff, they can wait for help. Also, we are bringing up past trauma for both of them, if you put them in a car filling with water, you hit the water/breathing elements for Buck, but you also hit well elements for Eddie, and Shannon was also hit by a car. So their car gets thrown into water, going back to the Buck, Actually comparison, the crash, one of them gets pinned. The one who’s pinned needs to be Buck. Why? Eddie is the widower, Buck is the savior. Eddie has to live with the fact that he didn’t actually save the people he thought he did, and he has to live with the fact he was helpless watching Shannon die, and Buck exists to do the saving. So we are letting Buck be saved and Eddie know he actually did save him. It could be cathartic for both of them.

And I want Eddie performing desperate CPR. Sue me. Can you imagine everything Ryan can give us there? Mouth to mouth, “you’re not doing this to me again”, being all wet and you can’t tell if the water on his face is from the water or his tears, begging Buck to wake up, Buck finally coughing wake and dropping back against Eddie, Eddie breathing as heavily as Buck as he hubs his back and encourages him to breathe while refusing to let go of him. If we’re lucky Eddie hiding his face in Buck’s hair or something like that. It could be so good. Because you can also have Buck looking at Eddie like he’s seeing him for the first time in a very clear revelation moment. You can have them looking at each other in a clear revelation moment. It could be THE oh moment.

And then they can talk. I said I would come back to this. Them having a conversation about saving each other, forces them to talk about what they mean to each other. You literally can’t have them talk about what it was like to save the other without forcing them to talk about how they love each other, and if they do the groundwork I mentioned, they can have one HELL of a getting-together scene. Imagine one them yelling “because I don’t want to live without you!” and the way it would be literally I don’t wanna be alive without you and I don’t want to continue living my life without you. And like, having Buck say something like this with the way he reacted to Thomas and Mitchell dying together and how he focused on them dying together, not the life they had, and the way Buck interpreted Eddie’s will as Eddie asking him to be okay with Eddie dying, Eddie asking him to outlive him, and have him look Eddie in the eye “I don’t ever want to do this without you” come oooooooooon, it would be such a beautiful conclusion to the buildup we have right now.

But yeah, this is the madness. The ultimate wishful thinking. I could be so good.

Anyway, if you read this I love you 💜

#this is long lol #imagine not being delusional #couldn't be me lol #911 #911 meta #911 spoilers #911 speculation #buddie thoughts #buddie #i really need a tag for asks #alexa 💜#🪐#drown Buck 2024

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ofekma · 1 month

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"how can you be an animorphs fan and support Israel?"

I don't know, how CAN I be the fan of a book series talking about kids being forced to grow up too fast due to being a part of a war that has been going on for longer than they're alive, trying to defend their home against an invading force?

Seeing how this situation affects their mental state, world view and relationships with each other? Not being able to fully trust anyone else because they can turn out to secretly wish for your demise?

How can I be the fan of a series that mirrors the way I grew up, of feeling scared and lost and small but knowing that you have to keep going because there's no other way?

Knowing that the other side has people who are like you, who never really wanted to hurt anyone but are being forced to fight too, who were brainwashed from birth to not see people like you as people?

Knowing that innocents die in war, that cruel, messed up, unjust things happen in wars but not seeing another way forward?

Wanting to save your loved ones who are now being kept hostages?

YEAH I HAVE NO IDEA WHY IN THE WORLD WOULD I, AN ISRAELI PERSON, BE AN ANIMORPHS FAN?

#animorphs: there's no black and white but sometimes you have to fight to protect the people you love #people on tumblr: ISRAEL BAD PALESTINE GOOD #Hey remember how every time the animorphs kill a hork bajir controller #they kill both an innocent hork bajir hostage and a yeerk that is threatened with starvation by their superiors if they won't fight?#remember how most taxxons only agreed to collaborate with the yeerks because they feel like being puppets is better than constant hunger?#remember how Serrow only wanted to do something good but ended up causing an intergalactic war?#remember how as early as book 6 Jake didn't blink before boiling alive dozens of helpless yeerks?#remember how the Howelrs who exterminated countless species were merely toddlers playing controlled by a higher being?#REMEMBER HOW ANIMORPHS IS A FUCKING COMPLICATED BOOK SERIES AND EVEN OUR HEROES COMMITED ATROCITIES THAT HAUNTED THEM EVERY DAY?#AND HOW WE STILL ROOTED FOR THEM BECAUSE WE KNEW WHY THEY DID THIS AND WHERE THEY'RE COMING FROM?#HOW MOST OF THEIR ATROCITIES WEREN'T JUST KILLING FOR THE SAKE OF KILLING?#Unlike you know #what Hamas is doing #killing for the sake of killing #sacrificing their own people in the process #brainwashing and treathening their population #Remember how the war is actually a chess game between two larger entities that use everyone else as a peon for the war between themselves?#Hm now that surely sounds familiar #Imagine thinking that a fictional war in a book series for kids is more complicated and morally grey than one in real life #And that you can know everything about it from Twitter and tik tock #Couldn't be me lol

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lya-dustin · 13 days

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The whole teams bullshit has lasted longer than the dance and that's fucking funny, random people in the internet held out longer than they actual fictional war in the series

#couldn't be me lol #like it was fun when s1 aired but now its like being team edward/jacob in 2020s

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ghost-of-you · 1 year

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Im always looking disrespectful at Ashton lmao

I support you anon. In this household we look respectfully and disrespectfully. I'm all for both romanticizing and thirsting for Ashton Irwin.

#i mean that man bangs those drums like that with his arms out and the shirt unbottoned and I'm supposed to not drool???#couldn't be me lol #anon 😌#i was asked

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emberglowfox · 11 months

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birds of a feather

#totk #loz #link #tulin #totk spoilers #my comics #my art #it is almost 8 in the goddamn morning and my hand is cramping SO bad but if i didnt make this i was going to die #anyways link's signs: page 2 panel 1 he's signing “danger” and page 2 panel 4 he's signing “important/significant”#also idr where i got the “hair braiding is significant to the rito” probably from the reva/ink i used to read back in the day #(censored so it doesnt show up in the tags just in case lol)#theyre everything to me. if you couldn't tell #they have a brother dynamic 2 me but its open to interpretation #idk wtf happened tonight. two long comics from me back to back is absurd #broke this one up also so its more viewable too #sparks art

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batbabydamian · 3 months

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*you opening the love letter* what does your damijon look like, pls pls pls pls pls pls pls, i know it would be so cute, i just know it 🙏🙏🙏

here you go! thank you for the ask, this was a lot of fun to do! they're working on a case together ^^

#ask #super sons #jondami #damian wayne #jon kent #batbabyart #after getting this ask i couldn't stop thinking about older Damian outfits 😭#just based on comic artists throughout the years Damian's got a fairly decent range of style it was hard to choose but v fun!!#Jon's wearing a bunch of layers to cover up bulk while Damian's layering to give off more bulk LOL #i decided to lean a bit into Cizmesija's recent look for him and contrast Jon's more colorful casual wear #didn't want tooo much Batman 666 vibes so i tried giving Damian another color option thru A but i still liked B more lol #also every time i draw older Damian his hair keeps changing sdfgh that one poll apparently did not help me decide haha

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albonium · 6 months

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for some reason the instagram algorithm suggested a video to me and i must admit at first i didn't understand what the guy meant by "bottom friendly nachos" 💀💀💀💀

#how do they do this it seems like such a hassle #being careful what they eat douche etc etc #couldn't be me lol

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edwinas · 10 months

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exo gifmakers are so strong, taking videos with horrendous lighting and making gifs like that

#my/rambling #the kbs stage is so BRIGHT AND WHITE #yet all the gifs i've seen of that stage make the boys look human #their skintones???? look so good???#couldn't be me lol

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nyancrimew · 6 months

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shein switzerland has been sending me monthly emails titled "not just the may flowers are blooming" and im slowly starting to doubt they know how seasons work

#i don't buy from shein anymore btw #i just did so like twice because i was poor as shit and needed new clothes and couldn't find anything at the thrift store #but hey the few things i have from there i Still wear like two years later (if it still fits me lol)

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caffichai · 8 months

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Mudrock torso warning! Do not look below if you don't wanna see torso again!!

Thanks everyone who participated in the poll!

#I have heard the peoples' cries. The people want muscles #I've found that the sexy firefighter calendars are full of great references lol #Please don't tag this as unsafe for work it's just torso! The evangelical Tumblr censors better not block this one again lmao #Arknights #Mudrock #Pixel Art #Artists on Tumblr #Digital Art #She has a super cool outfit but for the life of me I couldn't figure out what was supposed to be what lol #AK

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inkskinned · 3 months

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crows use tools and like to slide down snowy hills. today we saw a goose with a hurt foot who was kept safe by his flock - before taking off, they waited for him to catch up. there are colors only butterflies see. reindeer are matriarchical. cows have best friends and 4 stomachs and like jazz music. i watched a video recently of an octopus making himself a door out of a coconut shell.

i am a little soft, okay. but sometimes i can't talk either. the world is like fractal light to me, and passes through my skin in tendrils. i feel certain small things like a catapult; i skirt around the big things and somehow arrive in crisis without ever realizing i'm in pain.

in 5th grade we read The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night-time, which is about a young autistic boy. it is how they introduced us to empathy about neurotypes, which was well-timed: around 10 years old was when i started having my life fully ruined by symptoms. people started noticing.

i wonder if birds can tell if another bird is odd. like the phrase odd duck. i have to believe that all odd ducks are still very much loved by the other normal ducks. i have to believe that, or i will cry.

i remember my 5th grade teacher holding the curious incident up, dazzled by the language written by someone who is neurotypical. my teacher said: "sometimes i want to cut open their mind to know exactly how autistics are thinking. it's just so different! they must see the world so strangely!" later, at 22, in my education classes, we were taught to say a person with autism or a person on the spectrum or neurodivergent. i actually personally kind of like person-first language - it implies the other person is trying to protect me from myself. i know they had to teach themselves that pattern of speech, is all, and it shows they're at least trying. and i was a person first, even if i wasn't good at it.

plants learn information. they must encode data somehow, but where would they store it? when you cut open a sapling, you cannot find the how they think - if they "think" at all. they learn, but do not think. i want to paint that process - i think it would be mostly purple and blue.

the book was not about me, it was about a young boy. his life was patterned into a different set of categories. he did not cry about the tag on his shirt. i remember reading it and saying to myself: i am wrong, and broken, but it isn't in this way. something else is wrong with me instead. later, in that same person-first education class, my teacher would bring up the curious incident and mention that it is now widely panned as being inaccurate and stereotypical. she frowned and said we might not know how a person with autism thinks, but it is unlikely to be expressed in that way. this book was written with the best intentions by a special-ed teacher, but there's some debate as to if somebody who was on the spectrum would be even able to write something like this.

we might not understand it, but crows and ravens have developed their own language. this is also true of whales, dolphins, and many other species. i do not know how a crow thinks, but we do know they can problem solve. (is "thinking" equal to "problem solving"? or is "thinking" data processing? data management?) i do not know how my dog thinks, either, but we "talk" all the same - i know what he is asking for, even if he only asks once.

i am not a dolphin or reindeer or a dog in the nighttime, but i am an odd duck. in the ugly duckling, she grows up and comes home and is beautiful and finds her soulmate. all that ugliness she experienced lives in downy feathers inside of her, staining everything a muted grey. she is beautiful eventually, though, so she is loved. they do not want to cut her open to see how she thinks.

a while ago i got into an argument with a classmate about that weird sia music video about autism. my classmate said she thought it was good to raise awareness. i told her they should have just hired someone else to do it. she said it's not fair to an autistic person to expect them to be able to handle that kind of a thing.

today i saw a goose, and he was limping. i want to be loved like a flock loves a wounded creature: the phrase taken under a wing. which is to say i have always known i am not normal. desperate, mewling - i want to be loved beyond words.

loved beyond thinking.

#spilled ink #writeblr #personal #please don't ask me to talk on my experience on the spectrum lol. i hate how ppl talk to me about it #i really try not to write so specifically about it #bc inevitably someone talks to me like im a child #i think this is the first time i've ever openly identified with it but i've been hinting for years #i might delete this. feels big.#the thing is that being on the spectrum actually IS a spectrum #and if u say ur autistic #inevitably someone makes an assumption about ur needs/symptoms #please do not treat me differently than u usually would. like.... we can tell when you do #and like i mention. i do appreciate the effort. i do truly appreciate the effort.#but it still feels like...#when i was blind. sometimes people kind of did the same-ish thing.#they'd find out i was blind and start talking really loudly?#and while i KNOW they're just trying to help. it would be like. i'd be trying to find #the right way into a building (sometimes only 1 door is unlocked and i couldn't see the signs posted about where to go)#and ppl would be like ''OH UR BLIND? YES SO THIS IS A DOOR. IT OPENS INTO THE BUILDING. IT IS LOCKED NOW."#''A DOOR CAN BE FOUND IN MANY LOCATIONS.''#and it feels like. when i admit to being autistic #someone comes screeching into my life being like THIS IS A DOOR.

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numbuh424 · 2 months

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The unstoppable, mighty hurricane and the immovable, cold, hard truth.

#death note #death note art #death note the musical #Light Yagami #L Lawliet #death note fanart #death note musical #lawlight #dn musical #digital art #elle draws #more musical art! I love u forever death note musical #been trying out new things with my rendering again lately sorry if I'm all over the place #kinda wanna talk abt the decisions that went into the movement of the text because #originally it was just supposed to be simple serif type in the empty space beside them but listening to their solos on repeat while working #really influenced it and I couldn't shake how much I wanted them to match the movement lol #esp with light like I just wanted it to be small text but hearing jeremy j belt 'HURICAAAAANE' made me go fuck it it's the mighty hurricane #*increases font size significantly*

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faeriekit · 1 month

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The Foster Mother

Now on ao3 and VHS release

There was, supposedly, someone waiting for him in the green sitting room.

“…Why?” Tim asked. Most of the usual suspects had already come by to give their “condolences”—former Drakes Industries investors, curious about the newly orphaned heir; fellow socialites, once again flocking in to give and receive sympathies for their “close friends, the Drakes”; gawkers come to see what they could scavenge off of a dead family’s home, never mind that their child was alive.

“She claims to know you, Master Tim,” Alfred offered, kettle in his hand. He spent a moment deciding between different two canisters of tea; a sign of possibly difficult future conversation. “Her interest in your father's estate seemed quite…minimal.”

…Alright.

Tim was still in his formalwear. Dissolving Drake Industries would take at least another year, and plenty of future hours cementing the future home of certain resources in their dissolution, but the outfit probably was more appropriate for whatever oncoming conversation that was about to ensue than his planned change into Dick’s old hoodie and board shorts.

Okay. Tim steeled himself. The self-determination…mostly worked. Whatever. He trudged up into the green sitting room from the kitchen with his usual introduction ready on his tongue.

And then Tim walked into the room.

And then Jazzy was there.

Tim had been three, and Miss Jasmine had been his had been his third nanny. He’d outgrown the wetnurse early on, and his second nanny had been dismissed, so although Miss Jasmine was the third nanny, she was first nanny Tim could consciously remember.

She’d had red hair. She’d been very gentle with him.

She got him up in the morning and put him to bed at night; for the first time, there had been someone who sat with him until he was asleep, reading all sorts of books his parents had left to engage him with as an early genius. Then, when those were over and done as promised to his parents, they got unauthorized books from the library: silly books with made-up words, dinosaur books, books about teddy bears and adventures around the world.

Tim hadn’t been allowed to travel the world. Tim hadn’t been allowed a teddy bear. His parents had thought it would encourage undue attachment.

(It had been the same reason he’d never been given a pacifier.)

Miss Jazz had given him a knitted bunny. She’d said her dad had made it especially for him.

The toy’s name was Bunny and Tim remembered him being very soft.

She didn’t smile all the time, but smiles were rewards that were easy to earn. He finished his meal and she smiled. He finished an educational puzzle and she smiled. He was quiet all through her phone call and she smiled, and answered all his questions once she was done.

Jazzy had been the first person in his life who was there all the time. She’d kissed his forehead after the bath and kissed his scraped knees; she’d carried him in his arms when he was tired and sometimes even when he wasn’t. His parents had wanted him to be independent, proactive, and not clingy, but Jazzy had been someone who he could run to from his bed when he’d had nightmares and someone he could cuddle on her lap with when he’d cried.

She was gone when he was seven. He didn’t remember why. His parents had probably never told him, but still; he'd assumed he'd have found out why eventually.

Jazzy looked the same right now as she looked in Tim’s memories, although she was likely no longer a college student at a nannying gig. Her red hair was pulled into a high bun, her dress modest and conservative from her neck to her ankles. There was a backpack beside her foot. She was sitting, one leg crossed over the other, on the high-backed loveseat in the green sitting room.

She looked up when he came in.

Tim. Stopped in his tracks.

It didn’t matter. Jazzy—Miss Jasmine stood up as soon as she saw him, eyes alight with worry. Foggy memories were swimming to the forefront of Tim’s brain. He couldn’t move.

“Tim?” Ja—Miss Jasmine asked, teal eyes raking over his frame. Tim froze where he was. He didn’t move, wide-eyed and terrified for no reason at all when Miss Jasmine got closer to him, at a distance that was more appropriate for a conversation.

She stood there. Watching him. It felt like his mother had just come home from her trips with Dad, and a ghost of old terror wafted through him as he waited for her to decide he’d done something wrong. Her voice got softer. Her eyes got softer. Why was Tim feeling so wrong-footed?? It was only a former staff person!

“Tim?” her voice was so gentle. “I don’t know if you remember me. I’m—“

“M’s Jazz,” Tim croaked. Which. Wasn’t the level of formality he’d been going for, but better than Jazzy. He wasn’t a toddler anymore.

Miss Jasmine was so tall—honestly, was she taller than Bruce? She’d seemed insurmountable as a child; he hadn’t expected her height to truly be so statuesque as an adult.

(Or. Well. Almost an adult.)

She didn’t quite kneel down, but she did stoop lower, as if Tim was small and he needed to be on equal footing in order to have a serious conversation.

He could see all her freckles. Tim swallowed. It was too familiar. Everything about her was too familiar.

“You’re so big now,” Jazzy whispered, looking at his hair, his suit, his polished shoes. He didn’t feel it. “Oh, you’ve grown up so well.”

Thanks, Tim almost said. Something stopped him—something thick in his throat, to impassable to break through.

“I—“ he tried. He coughed. “Why…you… You’re here?”

Jazzy threw him an incredulous look, and then an incredibly wry one. “Well,” she drawled a little too primly, in the way that Alfred occasionally made obvious statements, “I’d think it obvious that when one’s parents have passed away, that those who care about you might come to check and see if you’re alright.”

Which. That didn’t make sense. Jazzy hadn’t come back for any other reason; she hadn’t come back for his mother’s funeral, nor when his father was injured publicly by a villain. Why start now?

“And,” Jazz added, seeing his visual confusion and distrust, “Your parents can’t exactly threaten me with a kidnapping charge for visiting you when they’re dead.” Pause. “Which I am sorry about. My condolences.”

Which. Whiplash. What a statement.

“Uh,” said Tim, who was rapidly losing control over the situation.

Jazzy stood again, and went back to her seat; she didn’t set herself down, though, as she only stooped to grab her backpack. “I am sorry for being unable to visit, although I really wanted to; you were at a very vulnerable age and had already moved into a class a year above you, and your parents should have been less hasty about replacing your main caretaker. The assassination attempts were unwarranted, but they did drive the point home that attempting contact was perhaps discouraged.”

“What,” said Tim. “Assassin what.”

“They were ninjas,” Jazzy offered, as if that was an answer. “Except the last one, which was a former marine. The point is that I do care about you, and wanted to ask if you had any idea where you’re going now that your parents are no longer…available guardians.”

Tim’s mouth opened. It closed.

Jazzy waited patiently.

“…How have you been?” Tim tried, resorting to a part of the script they hadn’t gone through yet.

Jazzy’s laugh was tired, but no less real. It was nothing like listening to his parents titter politely; he didn’t think Jazzy would even know how to fake a laugh. “Well, my brother told me that my former bosses had died, which was somewhat stressful. Otherwise, I’m pretty happy: I live with my brother and worked with him for the last few years. I was going to pursue medicine, but…well. The assassination attempts made it hard to interview for scholarships. I suppose that I could return to that now,” Jazzy mused, attention now elsewhere. She pulled the backpack off the floor and up into her grip. She opened it, and flipped through its contents. “How are you doing? I know that Wayne Manor fosters, but your parents were always rather…hands off. I thought the difference in levels of attention might be overwhelming.”

It was. Tim should be surprised how clearly she sees through him—

—But Jazzy used to watch him stim for almost a full hour after school, twisting Bunny’s arms back and forth until he could calm down. Seeing other people all day had been too much for him. Coming home from his parents’ parties had been similarly stressful.

She’d never been mad at him for it. She held him while he talked and stimmed and talked and talked and talked, and brushed his hair sometimes, or if it was very late and he was very young, helped him brush his teeth through all the medieval execution facts he could name.

“It is a lot to get used to,” Tim agreed quietly. He didn’t want to be ungrateful. He didn’t want to let on anyone about his plan to leave.

He had an out. The papers had already been filed; there was an actor waiting to play his uncle for a custody battle, ready for the fight.

Tim was ready to up and go. It was no hardship to leave all the good things here; anything beat making Bruce stick his fingers into Tim any deeper than they already were, compromising the dynamic they’d already established.

It was for the best.

“I can imagine,” Jazzy sympathized easily. “And I wanted to offer—well. I know there’s probably a lot of choices available to you, but my brother and I recently moved back to Gotham proper for the time being. He’s teaching astronomy courses at the university and I’m filing paperwork for Arkham patients. It’s not so privileged a home, but it’s quieter, and more central in town.”

…Tim’s heart skipped.

He. He couldn’t stop staring. Jazzy stared back at him, quiet and sure. Sure of what, Tim had no idea, but…

Why? Why would she want Tim? There was no way she would be able to get to his trust fund without his help, and he for sure knew better than to enable her ability to leech from him. The last time she’d known him, Tim had been a snot-nosed kid who cried all the time and couldn’t be normal for twenty consecutive minutes. His parents couldn’t even stand to be on the same hemisphere as him as a child. What appeal did this have for her?? What could having a teenager with severe baggage living in her house do for her?

And it’s not like there was any chance she knew he was Robin!

“Oh,” Jazzy suddenly interrupted. “I brought these for you, by the way. Your parents had tossed them out at various points; I’ve washed them since, of course.”

She handed him the backpack by the handle.

…Tim peeked inside.

On top was Bunny, still a washed-out faded sort of pink. He looked as fresh as he had the day when Tim’s parents had ”cleaned out” Tim’s nursery—in other words, a faded, a little gray, and slightly discolored from an old spaghetti stain. His button eyes were big and blue.

And beneath him were books that hadn’t passed his father’s muster as appropriately masculine reading material: The Velveteen Rabbit, with the cover a little scarred from a fierce attack of wet wipes. There’s A Monster at the End of This Book, with a goofy-looking Muppet on the cover, gold spine beat up beyond belief. Art Tim’s teacher at the time must have laminated and sent home; Tim’s dorky, crayon cat proved he would never make it as an artist, but attached to it was a photograph of a grinning boy with a bowl cut and a missing tooth.

Tim stared. There’d been purple marker on his hands and face. His grin looked…really bad, actually, like as if he was baring his teeth because he didn’t know how to smile. There was no formal grace there. Nothing to show the neighbors, nothing worth framing to put into the line of sight of the investors in the office.

Jazzy had kept it and brought it home with her. Jazzy had fished it out of the trash, and brought it with her to give back to him in Gotham.

It was crinkled like it’d been folded, over and over again. Further down in the bag was a crumpled certificate dedicated to “Timmy Drake, for: knowing a lot about octopi”, and a baby blanket Tim didn’t even remember. It had rocket ships on it. It looked as if someone had cut into it with scissors, although it had been obviously and brightly mended with red embroidery floss later on.

Jazzy had only been his nanny until Tim was seven. She had simply been gone one night, and Mom and Dad had been home for ten nights after without help before giving in and hiring Mrs. McIlvane and Mrs. Edith. Ms. Edith had never been so…permissive…with Tim as Jazzy had been.

Tim swallowed. He carefully put everything back into the backpack, unsure if he even wanted to keep it or not. It wasn’t like he could leave it here; he’d be gone, ideally, before the week was out. There was no point in taking it with him if he only planned to live with a stranger until he was eighteen.

“J…” Tim tried. He cut himself off before he could get too informal without prompting. “Miss Jasmine—“

“Just Jazz,” Jazzy corrected politely.

“—Why are you here?” Tim asked, ignoring how she’d technically already answered. He didn’t believe her. “What made my parents fire you?”

Jazzy’s expression turned…soft. Tim couldn’t look at her. Something horrible was welling with it, and he didn’t know how to cope.

“I’m here because I care about you,” Jazz repeated, and knelt beside him. She looked up into his face, and took his hand. Tim didn’t know why. He was practically an adult—he didn’t need this!

“And I was fired because your Mother overheard you calling me ‘Mommy’ on accident when you were tired. I suppose she was insulted, although I’d never know why; it’s not like she was ever home to bond with you in the first place.”

Tim’s throat closed. He missed his mom. He missed waiting up for his parents’ flight home, seeing their headlights outside the window, and knowing they’d bring home gifts from overseas. He missed using Mom’s perfume, and knowing he’d used more of the bottle sitting on her dressed than she ever had, but that it still smelled like her. He missed hearing his Dad telling all sorts of adventure stories and promises through the phone to be home for the holidays, even if Tim knew there was every chance he’d find some other way to spend the time back in Gotham.

And there was some small child in him who missed Jazzy, who hugged him and walked him to the library and made him soup from a can instead of fancy dinners and, who’d never needed to be waited for in the first place.

Tim looked at Jazzy’s round, freckled face.

He swallowed.

Tim moved out before the end of the week, as expected.