Oldest Daughter Dick™ is probably one of my favourite things ever. And it always will be and here's why:
Of course Dick loves his siblings and of course he loves that they know Bruce as the father he is. But it won't stop the jealousy he feels. And no one gets it, not even Jason. They were all raised by Bruce Wayne, he was raised by Batman.
When Dick came to live with him, Bruce had no idea how to he a father. How to handle normal kid stuff like sicknesses and school events let alone the fact he was an acrobat. He was Batman and Dick was raised to be not just his successor but the only contingency plan he had against himself.
Bruce never held his punches ("That was a good block but I still got you, didn't I?" Bruce had said, rubbing cream into the blossoming bruise on Dick's side. "I'll get you next time," Dick had promised, young eyes challenging. "You better." Bruce had grinned back.) All attacks were to remind him that he was at a disadvantage strength wise and thus needed to re-evaluate his lines of defense and offense.
Dick was raised by the paranoid-in-his-late-twenties-probably-shouldn't-be-a-dad-despite-what-Marisol-said Bat. A fun game of catch? He was dodging Batarangs. Learning to drive? It was the Batmobile and he was age 14 (and a half). School events? He was fumbling, awkward and did not want to be there (but still was because he'll be damned if his boy didn't have his support.)
And you know that's fine, Dick was fine. It wasn't Bruce's fault he didn't know how to be a proper dad, despite Alfred's parenting books and videos. And he did try, he was always there. But it just really hits a sore spot everytime he sees Bruce hold a punch before he knocks Tim out cold or when he's behind the wheel with Steph telling her what not to do. Or even when he's at school with Damian and Duke making Marjory and her cupcakes look ridiculous compared to him and his coconut crumble cakes.
It also irritates Dick beyond senseless whenever the topic of sparring with Bruce is mentioned. ("We can all beat the old man Goldie, he's ancient." Jason shrugs off and Dick wanted to scream.) The only one who even tries to sympathize with him was Cass. More than likely because she'd seen him fight as Batman The Dark Knight before seeing him fight as Bruce The Father of Six-Almost-Eight.
And it just really stings because he can't relate to being raised by Bruce the way the others can't. Bruce changed for them, not him. And maybe that kind of hurts. But maybe he's overreacting.
What he doesn't realize is he's the reason why Bruce changed. Bruce saw the hurt and anger in Dick's eyes when he fired him from Robin (Think Shifu denying Tai Lung the Dragon Warrior scroll). He knew the second he saw the betrayal in Dick's eyes after seeing Jason as Robin, that he'd have to change. (The same way Shifu should've changed for Tigress but I digress, not that fandom).
Bruce pulls his punches because he hated seeing Dick limp away from their sparring matches—despite the fire and promise of a rematch in his eyes. He teaches them how to drive regular cars before the Batmobile because the one time Dick crashed (while trying to avoid some of Poison Ivy's vines) his heart rate skyrocketed so high Clark had called him up demanding to know if he was okay. He shows up for Duke and Damian and Cass and Tim because Dick's smile whenever he saw Bruce in the parent's lounge never failed to make him melt.
Bruce stands firm on the fact that while he may have made a hero out of Dick, Dick Grayson made a father out of Bruce Wayne.
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Vlad has been asleep for a few centuries now, in a goddamn coffin that he specifically made just for that like the weird rich person he is. He was also, the phoenix king.
Or at the very least, one of them.
Honestly, Danny couldn't give less of a flying cheerio how long Vlad would sleep for if it wasn't an inconvenience to it.
But it was.
You see, he's the ghost prince, prince of the infinity realms, dragon of infinity, son of war and ward of time, etc, etc.
And somehow, he has bloody paperwork.
Even though the Infinite Realms fell into Anarchy eons ago.
So he honestly doesn't know why he has paperwork, and it's so much that Danny has been spending centuries doing it and he's so tired of it and then he remembered, hey? Who likes can do mountains of paperwork without breaking a sweat and could finish this way better than Danny could?
Vlad Masters.
Hasn't seen the guy after his mother died, don't know where exactly he is, but he isn't in his lair (yes Danny managed to get in, don't ask how) and Danny is going to find this man by the Ancients because he cannot deal with those anymore.
He barely even made a dent!
Anyways, so Danny goes over to Earth because he hasn't been there for a hot minute, and that's probably where Vlad is and uh, woah there is this really Earth cause it's lookin mighty different to how he saw it last time-
Why was the Earth currently covered in flames? Black flames that look mighty familiar to someone else's that he knows actually. You know, someone who should have been sleeping the centuries away instead of, oh he doesn't know.
Taking over the mortal world?
It even seems that Vlad got himself a goddamn cult too! How neat! How much time did it take you to assemble all these people Vlad? You even gave out pieces of your power when you could've been, oh, he doesn't know.
Helping him with paperwork?
So, he's kinda mad about this, pissed, actually. So, he goes to find where exactly Vlad is in this reign of madness, finds a literal crack in reality and just heads on through because he couldn't care less about that actually.
What he finds is not what he expected.
Cause you know Vlad? Phoenix king who is probably trying to take over the mortal world instead of helping him with paperwork and was supposed to be sleeping inside a coffin?
Yea scratch that. Because that isn't a coffin.
When the hell was Vlad sleeping inside a magical barrier-
And who the heck was that spamming Vlad's signature black flames while laughing manically, and who in the infinite realms were those guys who were currently fighting said spammer.
"What exactly, in the Infinite Realms, happened while I was doing paperwork?"
===
So, the Justice League is now combating a new world ending threat. Some cult who wants to cleanse the world in the name of their deity so they could hand it to him once he reawakens.
Which, apparently, might've been around for centuries, slowly preparing for this day which, dedicated, but not the good kind of dedication really.
So, back to the fight, they're fighting this possible immortal who's been taking over the bodies of each new head of the cult for centuries and, well, he genuinely had power to back him and his cult up.
Not really a shock there, to be fair, since he claimed his powers to originate from the sleeping deity who blessed him with a portion of his power.
Vlad didn't, bro just stole a portion of his power and claimed it as a blessing lawl. Not that the cult knew that-
So the Justice League managed to break their way into the place holding said sleeping deity that also acted as the base for the cult leader and, well. Yea he truly does have the power to back himself up and, if the magic users had anything to say about, a very magically powerful deity he follows too.
So they're kinda screwed if said Deity wakes up, they don't even know when he will actually, neither did the cult leader. He just will 'eventually' which isn't as descriptive as some (read: Batman) would like.
First things first, beat up and disband the cult, figure out a way to prevent the sleeping deity's awakening later.
So they were fighting a battle (shocker I know) with their forces spread between their world and the pocket dimension and things weren't looking quite as good as they hoped. Lots of causalities, both civilians, heroes and even villains alike, a whole lot of magic and powers being thrown about and the monologuing of the cult leader who was floating above said sleeping god.
You could even think it to be symbolic in some way, that he thinks himself above a god.
So, safe to say, in all of this chaos they weren't exactly expecting a new voice to join the fray.
"What exactly, in the Infinite Realms, happened while I was doing paperwork?"
And the owner of said voice, to be a goddamn dragon.
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