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pluckyredhead · 6 months

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What the heck is going on in Batman/Gotham War?

I know a lot of people in fandom are confused and/or upset about what's been going on in Gotham War - why is Bruce acting like this, what is Selina doing, why are the Batkids taking sides. So I figured I would fill you all in on what's been happening in Batman and Catwoman since Chip Zdarsky took over with Batman #125, because it has been BONKERS and I have been enjoying the hell out of it.

Below, the quickest summary I can manage while still being comprehensive:

[Content warning: mental illness, abuse, suicide (...ish), LOTS of violence.]

The first arc, "Failsafe," starts with Batman and Robin (Tim, in this case) in pursuit of the Penguin, who is on a killing spree. In the very first issue, Tim gets shot in the neck. Bruce has to take him to the hospital, but first he has to strip him out of his costume and put him in civilian clothes to preserve their secret identities, triggering memories of when he had to do the same to Jason's dead body. There is LITERALLY NO PURPOSE TO ANY OF THIS EXCEPT WHUMP (Tim is back in action with a fucking BAND-AID on his neck very quickly), which is how I knew this was going to be good. Beat Tim up! Make Bruce cry about Jason! I want these men to suffer! (There is also SO much to be said about Tim's own Poor Mental Health Decisions throughout the entirety of Zdarsky's run so far, but that's for a separate meta post.)

Anyway. Bruce leaves Tim in the hospital and goes to confront Penguin, who turns out to be dying of mercury poisoning. He kills himself and makes it look like Batman did it, forcing Bruce to flee. (Penguin actually faked his death and is alive elsewhere under an alias, but that's not important right now.)

In the Batcave, a massive robot called Failsafe emerges. Failsafe attacks Bruce, who usually eats killer robots for breakfast, but he can't seem to get the upper hand on this one. Duke, Cass, Steph, and Dick show up to help, but Failsafe beats them all too, while Tim gets an injured Bruce away and to the Batcave.

In the Batcave, Bruce puts on a weird purple and red Batman costume and a new personality takes over: the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh. Now, Zur has a very complicated history going back to 1958, but for the purposes of this story, all you need to know is that when he was younger, Bruce decided it would be good to hang out in a sensory deprivation chamber until his mind created a secondary personality, Zur, who is essentially Batman without Bruce. Zur is pure efficiency who does not care about anything but the mission. He created Failsafe, for one purpose: to kill Bruce if Bruce ever crossed the line and killed someone. And right now, Failsafe believes that Bruce killed Penguin.

Failsafe nearly kills Tim, which Zur is okay with writing off as an expendable soldier's death, but this causes Bruce to take control of the body back because "Tim isn't my soldier...HE'S MY SON!" (Tim Nation, why are you not ALL OVER this story? It's catnip.)

Babs calls in the JLA (SuperBat fans, you will also want to read Bruce's adoring description of Clark when he shows up), but of course Failsafe has kryptonite, which it stabs Clark with. The League dumps Clark and Bruce into the JLA jet and distracts Failsafe while Tim flies Clark and Bruce to the Fortress of Solitude. Bruce tells Tim he's a good boy and jumps out of the jet and into the ocean so that Tim and Clark will be safe from Failsafe. He's rescued by Arthur, who takes him to Atlantis to heal. THIS HAS ALL ONLY BEEN FOUR ISSUES SO FAR.

Two weeks later, Bruce wakes up to discover that Failsafe has taken over Gotham. He teleports up to the JLA Watchtower on the moon to lure Failsafe there, then blows the Watchtower up, hoping to catch a ride on one of the Javelins. But Failsafe has already destroyed them, so Bruce RIDES A BOOSTER ROCKET BACK TO EARTH, OXYGEN MASK CLAPPED OVER HIS FACE. The whole thing has some powerful Scooty-Puff Jr energy.

The only tricky part is reentry, when Bruce starts to burn up - his costume is fireproof, of course, but his chin is exposed. SO HE TAKES OFF HIS LITTLE BAT-PANTIES AND PUTS THEM OVER HIS HEAD. I swear to god this happened in a real comic book and the entire "Bruce falls off the moon and survives" sequence is utterly delectable goofy nonsense and I truly cannot recall a time I've had more fun reading a comic book.

Anyway, Bruce lands directly outside of the Fortress, BECAUSE OF COURSE HE DOES, and runs inside to find Clark and Tim. While Clark keeps Failsafe distracted, Bruce and Tim program nanobots to inject compassion into Failsafe. I SWEAR TO GOD. They zap him with the nanobots, but Failsafe pulls a high tech space gun out of the Fortress and shoots Bruce with it anyway, apparently disintegrating him. Tim falls to his knees in the snow, weeping. TIM NATION, WAKE UP, THIS RUN IS CANDY FOR YOU.

But of course Bruce isn't dead! That wasn't a killing gun, it was a "zap you into another dimension" gun!!! THAT was the compassion!

So Bruce finds himself in a dystopian alternate Gotham, and I'll be honest, I didn't love this arc ("The Bat-Man of Gotham") as much as I loved "Failsafe," but it has its moments. In this Gotham, Bruce Wayne is dead, so Regular Bruce is like "Oh boy, time to Batman this place up." Also he's plagued by hallucinations of a skeleton version of Jim Gordon who is still wearing a trench coat AND A MUSTACHE. Like I said, it has its moments.

This Gotham is controlled by Arkham, and anyone who is diagnosed as "crazy" is locked up. A new villain, Red Mask, is in charge, and Selina and a Venomed-up Harvey Dent work for him. Bruce teams up with an orphan kid (of course) named Jewel and goes after Red Mask, who turns out to be some guy named Darwin Halliday and ALSO...the Joker. Well, he's the Joker who hasn't been Jokerized yet. But one time he breathed in some chemicals that let him see into the main reality of the DCU (???) and glimpsed Regular Joker and now he wants to build an interdimensional machine to mentally connect with Regular Joker across universes which he assumes will make him insane, NATURALLY.

Bruce attacks Red Mask, who sics a Venomed-up Ghost Maker on him. Ghost Maker cuts off Bruce's right hand. Bruce cauterizes it with an electroshock machine and ties some spikes on it (SERIOUSLY) and goes after Red Mask again. Meanwhile Red Mask mentally connects with an alternate dimensional Joker...but instead of it driving Red Mask insane, he's what drives the Joker insane. Desperate to become the Joker somehow, anyhow, he jumps into the interdimensional portal, and Morally Dubious Alternate Universe Selina kicks Bruce in after him.

Meanwhile, Tim is in full "I KNOW I SAW HIM DIE BUT HE'S NOT DEAD" mode, which: bless. So he teams up with Jon Kent, which...gosh, what an astonishingly boring duo. I love Jon, I love Tim, they're perfectly nice and normal around each other, I'm falling asleep. Anyway Tim fights Toyman for a while and then makes a VERY stupid costume where the entire torso is a giant light-up R, because "I want him to see that Robin is coming to save him." GET A THERAPY, TIM.

Bruce finds himself first in the Michael Keaton Batman universe, then the Red Rain universe, BTAS, Batman Beyond (yes I know they're the same universe but I guess he goes there twice), Silver Age, Kingdom Come, Gotham by Gaslight, and more. Adam West gives him a utility belt. The Dark Knight Returns Bruce builds him a robot hand.

Finally Bruce and Red Mask reach the end of the multiverse, which is a Gotham asteroid floating in space, surrounded by giant Jokerized sharks. LUCKILY BRUCE HAS BAT-SHARK REPELLANT IN HIS ADAM WEST UTILITY BELT!!! Honestly this whole arc was worth it for that moment.

Bruce knocks Red Mask out, but now he's stuck. He has a device from Batman Beyond Bruce to get home, but it's only good for one person, and he can't leave Red Mask there to die. Of course, that's when Tim shows up in his stupid giant glowing R costume and they hug it out, thereby fulfilling but also compounding all of Tim's issues since 1989.

Anyway things are fine now, right? Sure, Bruce is hallucinating that his family is on fire, and the Zur personality is not going neatly back into the box where it's been all these years, and he still has a robot hand (Damian, hilariously, immediately announces that he wants one too), but he's FINE. He is a little bit mad at Selina, because she broke out of jail (she was in jail because she killed her fuckbuddy because he was trying to kill Bruce), and also because she didn't tell him Penguin was alive and that would have stopped Failsafe, and also because Other Selina kicked into another universe. Selina, very fairly, is like "Well I'm not responsible for Other Selinas and also maybe don't build robots to kill yourself with and not tell anyone about them???"

THEN we got Knight Terrors, the summer event in which a villain called Nightmare caused everyone to fall asleep and, uh, have nightmares. Bruce, specifically, had a nightmare that he met an eight-year-old version of himself that vomited up a man-sized bat with a gun for a head. I laughed SO HARD. Bruce also had his body borrowed by Deadman for the duration of the event, so while he endured the psychological toll of nightmares like everyone else, he also endured the physical toll of everything Deadman was doing PLUS the mental toll of being aware of what was happening in the waking world even though he couldn't control his body. As soon as the event was over, he lapsed into a coma so that his body could get some damn rest.

Okay. Now we're up to Gotham War.

(I know, I know. But for all of you who are like "How could Bruce do this???" about Gotham War...*points up* THAT'S HOW. HE IS NOT WELL.)

Bruce awakens from his coma and IMMEDIATELY decides to Fight A Crime even though Babs is like "Maybe don't?" But he can't find any crime, which is...weird. His kids confirm that Gotham's been super quiet since he's been out.

Selina hears that Bruce is awake and is like okay, time to pay the piper. She calls all of the Bats to a meeting and explains that she's the reason crime has been down. See, villains like Joker and Two-Face always have goons, right? But what if the goon supply dried up because the goons have better jobs? So Selina has trained All The Goons In Gotham to be...cat burglars. No violence, no stealing from anyone who can't afford it. More importantly, no helping Scarecrow or whoever commit mass murder.

All of the Batkids are like "Hmm...I feel uncertain about this, but it's working...I don't know what to think..." except for Jason, who thinks it's hilarious and is instantly Team Selina, and Damian, who is staunchly Team Bruce. Bruce, meanwhile, is like "No! NO! THIS IS CRIMES, AND CRIMES IS BAD!" and Selina's like "I mean, robbing from the rich is basically a victimless crime" and Bruce screams, I swear to god, "MY PARENTS WERE 'RICH'!" Inexplicable scare quotes and all. I laughed so hard.

Anyway this is the basis for Gotham War and it is endlessly hilarious to me because everyone in the Batfamily is supposed to be a genius and yet not one single character has pointed out that:

There are jobs the goons could be doing that AREN'T illegal. It's not just violent crime vs. nonviolent crime. There are in fact many other jobs! I am POSITIVE Gotham needs construction workers and hospital orderlies. (Yes, I know it's hard for people with records to get jobs. That isn't addressed.)

Being Batman is SUPER ILLEGAL.

They are all so stupid.

Selina's plan doesn't even work, because one of her thieves gets killed by a rich person defending their home, and Bruce is like "See? This is why crime is bad!" and like...pretty much snaps. He's particularly fixated on Jason, even (rhetorically) threatening to kill him, which is when the other kids jump into the fray on Jason's side, all except for Damian, who like I said is firmly Team Bruce. (This makes complete sense to me, Damian has been dealing with severe trauma and isolation pretty much nonstop since 2018 and he and Bruce have finally made a tenuous peace, so I can understand why he wouldn't want to lose that.)

Also, Vandal Savage buys Wayne Manor. It's so random and SO funny.

OKAY BATMAN #138. Bruce has kidnapped Jason and injected him with a variation on fear toxin which will be triggered whenever Jason's adrenaline spikes, the idea being that Jason is no longer capable of killing - but in practice, Jason is no longer capable of even getting up off the floor, he's so terrified. I want to be really, really clear here: Bruce is like 90% Zur here, and the only reason he goes this route and doesn't kill Jason is because the remaining 10% that's still Bruce loves Jason and is trying to help him. He's just incapable of good or humane help because Zur literally can't do feelings.

Dick knows something is up and is sneaking around Bruce's Secret Other House We've Never Heard Of to figure out what it is. Damian attacks him to protect Bruce. Tim attacks Damian so that Dick can do what he needs to do, and handcuffs Damian to a parking meter:

THERE IS SO MUCH TO UNPACK HERE!!! TIM GO TO THERAPY! DAMIAN GO TO THERAPY! EVERYONE GO TO THERAPY!!!!!

Dick figures out what Bruce did to Jason (it's on the computer, for...some reason?) and absolutely loses his shit on Bruce, beating the crap out of him, which tbh is the only thing that felt off to me in this run because frankly I don't think Dick likes Jason that much. BUT WHATEVER.

Tim pulls Dick off of Bruce. Bruce leaves them both tangled in a net and flees as the cops approach. Zur's like "Good, fuck 'em" in Bruce's head, because the cops will expose Dick, Tim, and Damian's secret identities and Bruce will be free of the dead weight of a family, but the little bit of Bruce still in there throws Dick a batarang so he can free them all in time.

Then Bruce leaves. Damian is devastated.

I WILL NEVER RECOVER FROM THIS PAGE. Damian really thought he could have Bruce's love and loyalty if he turned on everyone else! Tim is going to be a therapy dog to a Wayne even if he has to settle for the one he doesn't like! That unresisting, blank hug made me SCREAM when I turned the page. Incredible. (Also the art fucking S L A P S, god bless you Jorge Jimenez.)

ALSO it turns out that Selina's second in command has been Vandal Savage's daughter Scandal Savage the whole time and they are turning Selina's cat burglar army into their own personal army WHOOPS. (This also feels very OOC for Scandal but at this point I trust Zdarsky with my life so let's see where things go.)

SO THAT'S WHAT'S GOING ON IN GOTHAM WAR. TL;DR:

Bruce is unhinged because he nearly died like 19 times in a week and it unlocked the smaller, meaner purple Batman that lives inside him.

Selina is unaware that you can get money legally.

Tim is going to have a nervous breakdown if he can't fix someone, ANYONE.

Damian needs a hug but ideally from someone he actually likes this time.

Jason is so scared.

THE END.

#batman #bruce wayne #gotham war #meta #i can't believe how long this is

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starry-bi-sky · 4 months

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for clone Danny, Clone Damian

I give you

Edit Clone Talia as somehow Girlfriend of Danny, just think of the comedy

nah brO BECAUSE LITERALLY I HAVE THOUGHT BOUT THAT. Literally since the conception of Clone Danny, I have thought about it. If only for, as you said, the COMEDY of it all. Plus I love writing romance.

Literally my motto for my aus is: A) is it plausible, B) is it FUNNY (and a secret third option C) is it ANGSTY)

Clone Talia would be an offshoot au of Clone^2 because idk how she'd fit into the original timeline, bUT, she'd exist. And to avoid confusion I'll call her Nasra - I thought about Tameka (which means twin) but I like Nasra better. "Talia and Nasra" just flows so nicely doesn't it?

Idk WHY there's a clone of Talia running around -- maybe the LoA made her, maybe n unknown organization who hates Batman and knows he has romantic ties to Talia, and started making a clone of her to fuck with him and then she got nabbed by a portal when she was still Danny's age and in the middle of training. She might be like Connor (??) and have memories and thus her training is more proficient than baby Dames.

Either way, regardless of how she was made, I think it's hilarious if she, much like baby Dames, immediately attacks Danny on sight. She falls into his city and Danny only has a moment to go "goddammit not agaIN" before he's fending off a very confused, very violent Nasra. Fortunately he's able to actually try and talk to her and be at least somewhat successful -- Nasra knows english. although even if she didn't, Danny would still be somewhat successful since he knows Arabic.

Also Bruce and Danny are the battinson bat because i think that is also hilarious and 'wet rat' is STILL the perfect energy for Danny as Phantom - especially in the early days when he's running around in all but jeans and a hoodie. (and god watch me go on a rant in a separate post about his outfit and reasonings for being Phantom when he has no powers later on because it makes me go FERAL. and his active choice to look as inhuman and ghost-like through his behavior as phantom and the decision to wear such a creepy mask as possible)

(like seriously, imagine walking home late at night while danny was still in his early vigilante days (and even now when he's got damian and a better suit) and seeing a skinny figure in the shadows with sunken in black-and-glowing-green eyes, and a bone white, skull-like face, crouched on all fours like a wild animal about to pounce. THAT is the level of creepiness I was going for for clone danny)

In my head, Sam offers to house Nasra and Nasra stays with her. SAm is able to convince her parents to let her stay, or she pulls a Danny and just straight up smuggles her in and her parents are none the wiser. I also think it's funny if they have unspoken BEEF with each other. Only to later become like sisters. Nasra teaches Sam the martial arts she knows, and also Danny joins in too with Damian because goddamn he needs it even IF he's learning stuff from his mom (as per the most recent snippet post I made).

OH AND DAMIAN AND NASRA. I think it's equally as funny if they ALSO have beef with each other. Nasra is a clone of his mother (of whom he might have complicated views on due to being a clone but still is his mother) and Damian is a clone of Nasra's "son". This beef largely starts from Damian's own refusal to want to share his Danny with another clone, especially with a clone of his MOTHER.

Danny and Nasra don't become lovers for a good, long while I think. They're besties first before they even consider the idea of dating -- not only just because of the whole "uhhh our counterparts dated so it'd feel kinda weird and forced if we dated" and also because Nasra, with her newfound freedom, is busy trying to figure out herself.

A big theme here in clone^2: discovering your identity and who you are as a person when the only thing you own that's unique is your name (which isn't even the case for Damian), and figuring out if your choices are your own or because you're a clone and its something your original would have done. Nature vs Nurture and the illusion of choice and whether it really is one or not.

Also Nasra also becomes a vigilante. Danny appreciates the help but is also tearing out his hair because what the fuck is up with these assassins and becoming vigilantes?! Nasra goes by "Nesha". She's similar to Red Huntress at first where she kinda does her own thing, but is lowkey forced to team up with Danny about it because she doesn't have any proper ghost hunting equipment with her.

And then a duo becomes a trio, and Danny is spending more time with her. And they steadily become friends. Very snarky friends who are very bratty to each other, but friends. Damian still doesn't like her so Danny spends extra time during patrol keeping the two of them from making insults at each other.

"Nesha please stop fighting with a nine year old. Wraith, quit insulting Nesha."

Nasra also uses like, weaponry as Nesha which exasperates Danny a little because why are you using swords??? They're already dead its not gonna kill them,,,, If you cut off their heads its just gonna piss em off, its re-attachable. Let him ghost-proof it first too. But well, its still gonna HURT he supposes. He's still a little exasperated.

And MMM i'm sorry lmao im so focused on Nasra becoming her own person than the actual romance aspect of it all. Nasra cuts her hair short for the same/similar reasons that Danny keeps his long - to try and gain a semblance of autonomy and identity that's away from their original. Danny has his alternative rock-kinda geeky look and Nasra's got, from influence from Sam, a more alternative fashion style. Although she still leans into being feminine, which is a good challenge to Sam's belief that feminity = bad, and gets her to unlearn those bad habits since her new adoptive sister is feminine while still being an unapologetic badass.

And ykw I think Nasra gets into rollerblading and loves it. She rollerblades constantly. Damian is furious because skating is his thing (even if what he gets later on is a skateboard - skater boy damian ftw. i can see him wearing flannels and graphic tees as a teenager. very grungy/skater aesthetic. He also has a much more relaxed and teen-y speech pattern compared to DW's more formal way of talking. He also spray paints as his form of artistic medium.) and he refuses to have Nasra be a copy of him.

They will sort out their differences eventually. LMao.

Anyways they eventually do get together, but not before Danny finally has his run in with Mister Wayne. Which, they only meet because Danny starts destabilizing, and thus needs Bruce Wayne's DNA to help stabilize himself. Which that meeting in and of itself is pretty chaotic on its own, but then add clone Damian and Nasra? Bruce needs coffee.. or alcohol.

Because picture this: its late at night, you're on patrol with the rest of your family. It's like, two in the morning. You suddenly get a call in from your butler, Alfred, informing you that not one, not two, but THREE children -- two of them in their late teens and the other one not even ten yet -- showed up on your doorstep. One of them is unconscious. They are all clones.

The girl and the boy are twins - and are clones of YOU - and the girl isn't even technically YOUR clone she's a clone of your clone - and also this clone of you is your college friends' kid. And then the youngest boy is a clone of your youngest SON. Bruce is running across rooftops when he gets this call and does a literal 180 degree turn and touches the ground because he basically did a figure skating turn, and sprints back towards the manor because what the fuck? He needs to check this out.

And then half a day later a clone of your fucking ex shows up on your doorstep demanding to see the clone of you - the boy that is, not the girl - and then immediately gets into a verbal lashing with the clone of your son. Like what a fucking DAY. Your kids are equally as baffled but also laughing their asses off -- except your bio son, who is very unhappy about this turn of events and keeps getting the stink eye from his clone.

Like??? I'd quit right then and there.

While Danny recovers he's staying in Wayne manor and Damian is very reportedly not leaving his side. Ellie has to leave to help take care of Amity Park with RH, and then Nasra is also very determinedly not leaving his side either. This is her friend dammit. The first thing she does when he becomes lucid is insult him, and he insults her back - they're bantering. It's how they flirt later on. None of the Bats know how to deal with this situation.

#dpxdc #dp x dc #dp x dc crossover #dpxdc crossover #dpdc #dpdc crossover #dpdc au #dp dc #dp dc crossover #clone^2 #danny fenton is a clone #danny fenton is not the ghost king #sorry this got so long and i barely even got into them falling in love with one another #satoshy you should totally reblog this so we can talk about this more i'd love to bounce ideas with you or anyone else about it 👀#this is so funny to me personally because like. im imagining nasra doesnt show up unti danny's like at least 18-19 #which is a wild set of 3 years for danny because he finds out he's a clone when he's 15 #acquires Damian at 16 and then meets nasra at 18 #like he got one grace period where it was just him and his new little brother and then BAm another clone #damian showed up by accident but i promise you nasra was specifically clockwork's doing because its hilarious to me personally #CW loves danny but also he's a little shit. i was originally gonna call Nasra's vigilante name 'revenant' but thought it was too basic #also danny not meeting bruce until he's almost 20 is very funny to me. especially since baby dames was with the league for 6 years #beforehand #like what do you mean my clone has been living unnoticed for 18 years. he's had damian for HOW LONG? THREE YEARS?#morally gray danny has my heart ever since my post where he murdered three guys for nearly killing his brother.#nasra attacks danny and yay! he doesn't hurt his hands this time around! he's grown since he met damian. that was also a large part why dee #didn't like nasra right off the bat. she could've hurt him and made his hands even worse.

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bougiebutchbinch · 2 months

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playing with my new John Doe & Joker pre/post acid transformation... :3

character notes under cut!

he's an (almost) total amnesiac, remembering nothing pre-acid (besides Batman standing above him as he sank into the vat at ACE chemicals.... his creator, his god, his ultimate love~)

he doesn't want to know

he's terrified to know

at this point, he's practically walled off that part of his brain and even if he COULD remember, he refuses to

he will destroy anyone who tries to tell him

Metahuman, but not exactly showy about it. No obvious powers, but he heals RIDICULOUSLY quickly and is very, very difficult to kill. Immune to (almost) any toxin or poison.

with that being said... the acid fucked up his collagen <3 he's got ehlers-danlos now. (one of us!!! one of us!!!!!!)

Unfortunately, it also COMPLETELY crossed over the wires in his brain between pleasure and pain. Half the time he doesn't notice himself dislocating, and when he does, if Batman caused the dislocation, he just gets really horny about it

similarly, soft touches are fucking AGONY to him.

Lots of sensory issues. Man is constantly overstimulated by the whole WORLD and takes that extremely personally. He feeds that overstimulation and the resultant violent manic energy because he doesn't know who he is without it. He's an empty shell who filled himself with unpredictable violence just to craft a sense of identity, and now he viciously clings to that identity and refuses to even contemplate changing <3

Memory like Swiss cheese for everything (unless it pertains to his crime schemes or Batman). Doesn't always look after himself - forgets to eat, sleep, etc., for long periods; forgets what drugs he's taken and would OD if his body wasn't basically impervious to poison.

But he is incredibly intelligent, excellent at manipulating people, and able to build bombs from the contents of the cupboard under any old kitchen sink

BECAUSE THIS IS MY JOKER AND I CAN DO WHAT I WANT, I'm hereby declaring that he and Harley have a relationship far more like the LEGO movies, where they're very wlw & mlm solidarity.

They tried to date; it didn't work. They got seriously toxic and nasty, and Joker hurt Harley by manipulating her and treating her like a mook when she wanted romance and he only wanted Batman. He was only 'romancing' her because he was fucking terrified of her leaving him (even if he refused to admit it). Anywaaaaay, she did leave him and got together with Ivy (good for her!!! good for her)

Yes Joker had a full breakdown over this

No he won't admit to that either. shut the fuck up.

But she and Joker do still care about each other. Harley's very aware, as Joker's once-psychiatrist, that he genuinely struggles to look after himself. She often swings by to make sure he's not stuck in a manic mood and can't recall that food and water are things bodies need.

After the break-up, they discovered that they work WAY better as girl-besties who do crime together <3

And paint each other's toenails <33

With that being said, Ivy fucking HATES Joker and thinks he's a Bad Influence. And she's right skldfghlkdfhgs

Even if Jarley is way softer in this universe, Joker is still an absolute monster who killed Jason Todd, paralysed Barbara, etc. etc. etc. <3

Batman wants to fuck him so bad it makes him look stupid

But he feels really sad about it :c

Joker finds this HILARIOUS

#joker #the joker #batman #batjokes #dc comics #dc joker #my art #bbb creates

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sohotthateveryonedied · 3 years

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Gender? In THIS Economy?

Read here on AO3!

Summary:

Duke is questioning stuff and goes to Tim for advice. (feat. trans!Tim and nonbinary!Duke)

“Here you go. One Batburger with extra pickles, extra onions, and extra extra mayonnaise.” Duke drops the paper takeout bag unceremoniously into Tim’s lap. “Your taste buds need a tune-up, bro.”

Tim unwraps his burger and takes a bite. Batburger may be questionable when it comes to copyright laws, but damn if they don’t pile on the condiments better than any fast food restaurant in Gotham. “Sounds to me like you simply haven’t reached the sky-scraping level of enlightenment that I have, grasshopper.”

“Enlightenment would have been going to Red Robin and using your uniform to get a discount,” Duke says. He sits beside Tim on the rooftop’s edge, their legs dangling side by side a hundred feet above Gotham’s plunging gray streets. He digs into his own burger and makes a face. “Enlightenment would also be getting the Robin Nuggets next time. This tastes like dried leather.”

“I like it,” Tim says with a shrug. “It has personality.”

“So does raw sewage, but you don’t see me eating that.”

Tim concedes the point. His communicator buzzes in his belt. He checks the screen and discovers an alert from Cass composed entirely of clown emojis and red harlequin diamonds.

Duke notices. “Should we get that?”

Tim pockets the communicator. “Nah, Spoiler’s got it. We have time to relax.” And he’s not about to pass up quality time with the one little brother who doesn’t hate him. It’s hard enough as it is for Tim and Duke to find the time, what with them being on opposite sleeping schedules and work snatching their attention away with grabby, toddler-sized hands.

“Don’t get a lot of that during the day shift,” Duke says. “Every time an alarm goes off, it’s my business.”

Tim knocks him in the side with his elbow. “That’s what you get for turning to the light side instead of kicking it in the shadows with us. More employees to go around.” He sips his soda for a moment. “Why did you come out tonight, anyway? I thought you stayed in on weeknights.”

“Right. I actually wanted to talk to you about something.” Duke says it carefully, like he’s testing the waters. “I need advice.”

Tim has to admit that his chest puffs out a little at that. It’s not often people come to him for advice when Dick and Barbara are right there, all full of adult wisdom that Tim is too pitifully shrimpy to possess. “What’s up?”

“It’s kind of...personal.”

“Yes, Bruce does have special powder for suit-chafing. It’s in the cabinet under the first-aid supplies.”

“It’s not that,” Duke says, though he snorts in half-hearted laughter. He looks down at his hands like he’s dreading the words lodged in his throat. “What was it like, realizing you were a dude?”

One of Tim’s eyebrows shoots up. “Oh.”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. It’s an invasive question.”

“No, no, it’s fine. You just caught me off guard, is all.” It’s not like this is the first time someone has asked. Tim used to be uncomfortable talking about it, but he’s grown up since then. Talking about his trans journey is as normal as talking about what he did yesterday. He eats a fry. “What do you want to know?”

Duke searches Tim’s face for a sign that he’s lying, that he should back off. When he doesn’t find one, he asks, “How old were you when you figured it out?”

Tim thinks back. “Nine, I think? But even before that, it’s not like I ever really felt like a girl. I knew there was something wrong, but I didn’t know what. When I first heard about what being transgender meant, everything I’d been feeling until then clicked into place.”

“What was it like?” Duke asks, “growing up the way you did? Presenting as a girl when you knew you weren’t?”

Tim shrugs. “I don’t know. It was life at the time. I dealt with it.”

“Was it hard? Pretending to be something you weren’t?”

Tim doesn’t know what answer Duke is looking for, or why he’s so interested, but he won’t ask. “My parents always had this idea of me being the perfect daughter, all obedient and graceful and crap. I’m pretty sure their hope was to eventually marry me off to the highest bidder so they could reap the business benefits.”

“That sounds awful.”

Tim shrugs again. “I didn’t start feeling any different than I should have until around six or seven. I was always a tomboy. I liked doing boy stuff and playing sports, but my parents thought it was a phase I would grow out of. They’d make me wear dresses and go to fancy parties with them, all the while I just wanted to claw my skin off and go home.”

He remembers the nights he would lie awake in bed, imagining what it must be like to have been born someone else. Anyone else. To grow up as a little boy who was allowed to run around, to get dirty, to be himself instead of following some arbitrary guidelines someone else drew up the day he was born. He imagined what it would feel like to answer to a different name than the one he’d been given, which grated on his ears the longer time went on, like an itchy sweater he couldn’t shed. It was hell.

He gives Duke a sly grin. “But the upside of having absent parents is that there aren’t as many people watching you. No one cared if I went to school in the boy’s uniform instead of the girl’s. No one was there to stop me from cutting my hair short the way I wanted it.”

Duke's eyes widen. “You cut your own hair?”

“It went exactly the way you’re thinking. I had to go to the barber the next day and have them fix it because it was so uneven. But by the end of the day, it was the way I always imagined it. I was finally starting to look like the person I wanted to be.”

Duke stares intently at the remains of his burger as if the universe’s answers to an unspoken question were written in sesame seeds. “Did it get better after that? Did you feel...at peace?”

“‘Course not. The world wasn’t magically fixed just because I took a step in the right direction. My problems didn’t go away.” When he says that, Duke looks almost...disappointed? “But,” Tim adds, “it was better than it was before. I still had to act for my parents and the rest of the world, but I didn’t have to hide from myself anymore.”

“How did your parents react when they found out?”

Tim grimaces. “They...didn’t take it well.” He can still hear his father’s voice in his memories, bringing up therapy and camps and whatever places he could think of that would “fix” his little girl.

“But, after a while,” Tim continues, “it was clear that I wasn’t going to change my mind anytime soon. I guess they figured it would be easier to go along with it than fight me every step of the way. They still didn’t like it, but they tolerated it.”

Duke is quiet.

“Why do you ask?” Tim prods.

Duke’s expression doesn’t give anything away. It’s nights like this when Tim can see how perfectly Duke fits into this mental institution they call a family. For all that Duke thrives in the light, he keeps his cards just as close to his chest as the rest of them. He gives Tim a half-smile. “Just wondering.”

“Okay.”

They fall into weighted silence, the scales tipping on either side of their post, but never settling. Tim waits. He finishes his burger and busies himself with reorganizing the pouches in his belt, giving Duke the privacy to think.

“I don’t know,” Duke starts after several minutes, “if I’m a boy.” He looks at Tim. “I think I might be something else.”

“Okay,” Tim says calmly. “What do you feel like?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve always felt different, y’know? When I was a kid, it was because I was smarter than everyone in my class. And it was fine, because I knew what it was and how it worked and why it was a good thing, being the smart one. It made sense. Time went on, the other kids started catching up, but that mismatched feeling never went away. I never felt right in my skin.”

Duke’s face rises to the dark clouds, the Batsignal shining from the top of the police station like a holy beacon. “Then I met Batman. My powers started to come in and everything clicked into place, all at once. That was why I never felt like I fit in with everyone else, because I was different. I had powers. That must have been it.”

“But it wasn’t,” Tim guesses.

Duke shakes his head. “I thought it would be. I mean, what else could it have been, you know? It should have explained why I never felt at home in my identity. But time goes on, I learn how to use my powers, and it fixes some of it, but not everything. There’s still part of me that looks in the mirror and sees something off. Some detail out of place.”

“Do you feel like a girl?” Tim ventures to ask.

Duke folds over the corner of his straw wrapper again and again in tiny triangles. “Nah, I doubt it. I like some feminine things, but I don’t think I’m a girl. Or a guy. I think...I might be nonbinary?”

Tim does his best to channel Bruce’s “supportive dad” energy and smiles. “Okay. What pronouns do you want to use?”

“They/them, maybe? For a while?”

“Duly noted.” He puts a hand on Duke’s shoulder. “I really do appreciate you telling me.”

Duke rubs the back of their neck, their cheeks flushing. “It feels good to say out loud. Not just in my head.”

“Do you think you’re going to tell anyone else? You don’t have to if you’re not ready, but our whole family will support you.”

“Yeah.” Duke picks at their nails, nodding absently. “I know they will. I’m not worried about that.”

“Then what are you worried about?”

Duke takes a deep breath in, and Tim is reminded of a balloon close to bursting. “My parents aren’t dead. I’m going to get them back. And when I do...what are they going to think when they wake up after half a decade and find out that their son isn’t their son anymore? What if they don’t like the person they see?”

Tim can’t say that he hadn’t swum with the same thoughts years ago, back when the person who is Tim Drake was still on the drawing board. But there’s a difference between his situation and Duke’s. “Your parents love you, Duke. They’re not going to stop loving you just because you’ve grown up since they last saw you.”

“What if it’s too much? The superpowers and the crime-fighting and the new gender...it’s a lot to take in.”

“Well, sure,” Tim says. “It might take some time for them to get used to it, but this is who you are. They’re going to love it just as much as they love the rest of you.”

Duke smiles, and if their eyes are a little misty, Tim pretends not to notice.

“Besides,” he says. “If I were you, I’d just lead with the superpowers thing. Anything after that sounds perfectly acceptable.”

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me1ancho1y-b1iss · 3 years

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Her Robin and His Little Ladybug Ch. 6

As soon as Jason’s exclamation was let out. Tikki zipped out of Marinette’s bag and flew up to Damian. “Hello Tikki” Damian nodded

“Hello little Cat!” Tikki said “what’s your name this time around?”

“Damian.”

“Ok, ok, ok. We get it. Big ‘ol happy family reunion. Big whoop. Can someone tell us what just happened!” Jason yelled exasperated

“Jason!” Dick exclaimed hitting Jason on the back of the head

Tikki floated up in front of the Batfamily saying, “Hi! I’m Tikki, kwamii of Creation.” Tikki turned back around to face Marinette and Damian. “I’m going to go get Plagg, he should be able to help explain what's happening.” Tikki soon left with Kalkii through a portal

“Ok. what the fuck. Demon spawn you got some explaining to do.” Jason said

“Tt. Just wait until Plagg and Tikki get back.” Damian said leveling his family with a glare that silenced all of them.

After a few minutes a baby blue portal opened and Tikki, Plagg and Kalkii all popped out.

When Damian saw Plagg he got tears in his eyes for the second time that day.

“Plagg!” He yelled

“KIT!” Plagg yelled back and rushed to Damians cheek to hug him. Damian responded positively and hugged the little Kwamii back.

After the happy reunion all the people present in the back batcave were ushered to the table. Everyone was seated with the three Kwamiis hovering above it.

Bruce, still dressed as Batman spoke first addressing the Kwamii and the two youngest, “Let’s start at the beginning.”

“Well father, this is Tikki and Plagg, the God and Goddess of creation and destruction, essentially” Damian stated

Bruce hummed, he’d seen wieder things but his youngest hugging a stranger was definitely among weirdest and he needed to know the reason behind it.

“In the very beginning just me and Plagg were created, out of what we don't know,” Tikki started. “We created the heavens and eventually other kwamis were created, at the time the kwamis didn’t have a physical shape. All the kwamis represent a concept, for example me and Plagg represent Creation, order and good luck and destruction, chaos and bad luck, respectively. There are other Kwamis that represent other concepts such as protection and transformation, to name a few. Over time my creation powers overflowed and created a multitude of universes, to counteract this Plagg’s power created what you humans have named as black holes, they are just essentially just small pockets of Plagg’s power. Plagg also destroyed planets and stars and whole galaxies. All of this was done for balance, everything requires balance, without creation you have destruction and without destruction, creation runs rampant.”

“When Earth was created, along with the humans, all the Kwamis were interested. It wasn't till a human mage reached us that we were able to interact with humans. The original 19 kwami decided to go down to earth and interact with more humans thus the miraculous were born.” Tikki continued. “Plagg and I created two souls that are 100% in tune with us. While any person could wield the ladybug and cat miraculous, Damian’s and Marinette’s souls will be more in tune. Some people who have wielded my miraculous and was still a good fit are a few people you might recognize such as Fa Mulan, Hippolyta and Joan of Arc.”

“Each soul is reborn when the universe is in a great time of need and they are never reborn without each other.” Tikki said

The room was quiet for a moment then absolute chaos.

When the brothers finally realized that their questions, ahem demands, weren’t being answered they started to quiet down, though they were still somewhat tense. Hey, it wasn’t everyday that one discovered that their hellspawn of a little brother had a magical girlfriend that he apparently had throughout time. Yeah, maybe that was still processing a little.

“Quiet, you imbeciles. If you want your questions answered I suggest that you be silent.” Damian said a little exasperated. “I apologise for my idotic brothers, priya. They are still learning their manners and have yet to know how to behave in front of a guest.” Damian continued, glaring at the annoyances of his life that he sometimes considers his brothers to drive his point home. They just shrugged in response.

Marinette beckoned Tikki over while Damian was staring down his siblings into silence. “Hey Tikki,” she whispered. “Is there any way to get rid of the Lazarus Pits effects? I noticed hood had some remnants on him? And I want to help, Damian has definitely been dipped into the pit, but we both know that the pits don’t affect him much.” Marinette finished. She really hoped that they could red hood could be helped in some way.

“Oh Marinette,” Tikki sighed sadly. Her bug was always trying to help people. “I think I might be able to cut back on some of the effects, but we both know that he will never be truly healed.” Marinette only nodded sadly.

At that point Damian looked back over at Marinette and decided to broach the topic of what was bothering her, none of the conversation topics had been too heavy, so Damian had no clue on what could've been bothering her. “What is it?” he asked

“I think I might be able to help your brother out.” Marinette responded

Damian raised an eyebrow at this, his brothers needed a lot of help. “With what exactly?” Damian questioned.

Marinette took a deep breath before looking up straight at Red Hood saying,

“The Lazarus Pits”

At her words Damians eyes went comically wide as he was hit with a load of repressed memories. Jason promptly started choking while the rest of the family was looking at Marinette with a new found wariness.

“W-what?” Jason choked out.

Marinette sighed looking at Damian for a confirmation. Once he nodded she continued. “The reason Hawkmoth is even active is because when you combine the miraculous of the ladybug and the miraculous of the black cat the wielder is able to make a wish. The wish is able to bend reality, it’s life altering. Hawkmoth wants the miraculi to fulfill his wish, however no matter the wish, it would cause severe unbalance. As Tikki stated earlier everything requires balance, for example if he wished to bring someone back to life, someone else would have to die in their place.”

All the bats took this in becoming very aware of what could possibly happen if Hawkmoth were to win.

Damian sighed heavily before continuing where Marinette left off. “During one of our former lives, we were in an intense battle. At the end I noticed E- well now Marinette lying unconscious. I ran to her hoping she would heal herself, but I was there too late.” Damian let out a shuddering breath. “She was gone and I was desperate to get her back. I knew I would eventually see her again, but the fact that she was gone was still fresh in my mind. So I combined the ladybug miraculous and the black cat miraculous. I knew the consequences, but at the moment I just needed her back in my arms. Alive. So I made a wish. The wish formed what are now known as The Lazarus Pits. However, as life requires balance, the pit would cause madness for anyone who descends into its waters while still giving a person new life. There were no such consequences on Marinette due to the fact that she wielded the ladybug miraculous, but I know it was still the wrong decision to make.” As Damian finished speaking, Marinette gently squeezed his hand offering her silent support, while Damian’s father and brothers stared at him; they’ve never seen him express so much emotion before.

“I was asking Tikki if there was a way to somewhat reverse the effects of the pits.” Marinette spoke staring directly at Red Hood for a second time that day. “It won't reverse everything but it will hopefully take the edge off so to speak, if it does work.”

“So what do you say, Red Hood?” Marinette smirked

A/N: I finally posted chapter 6. we also finally get more background. Hopefully my explanations make sense, every fic I’ve read where they explain the miraculous origin is different so I hope mine is understandable. There will definitely be more past life stories in later chapters but the lazarus story leads us into the next chapter and I couldn’t get the idea that damian saved marinette by combining the miraculous out of my head so... you have this

Taglist: @bumblebeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee @toodaloo-kangaroo @aespades @mochegato @daminette5074 @yannowhatigiveup @sekhmet5 @alyssadeliv @kking13 @callmewhatyouwant00 @henie04 @buginetye (if you to want be added, ask and I’ll add you)

#maribat #maridami #daminette #damian x marinette #mlb x dc #mlb crossover #dc crossover #soulmate au #but not really

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hauntedbythefanficsofmypast · 4 years

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Involves following Fandoms

1. Miraculous Ladybug

2. Percy Jackson

3. Harry Potter

4. Batman/Justice/DC

• Percy, Harry, and Marinette have been internet friends since Mari first received her miraculous.

• The boys are one year older than Mari. So they were 14 and she was 13. So start of Titans Curse, and the Goblet of Fire. This is set during the summer. Before Percy heads for camp, he convinced one of the Hephaestus kids to make him a phone to keep in contact. When Harry returns to school he finds the room of requirements amd finds out his laptop works in there.

• They meet on Mari's vlog where she is complaining about how the adults in her life always let her down.

• Harry agrees whole heartedly Percy says the only person that doesnt let him down is his mom.

• Soon they are best friends and always in contact with they others, Sally and Paul meet them after summer is over and gain two more kids.

• They all tell each other their secrets and try to help each other the best they can.

• They become Instagram famous together and are seen as a trio always posting screen shots of them video chatting.

• Percy and Mari are helping and supporting Harry through everything that happens while he is at Hogwarts.

• Around this time Lila comes into the picture, at first the boys encourage her to fight back. However after she sends them screenshots from her 'friends' they encourage her to drop them all together.

• Mari distances herself from the class and focuses on learning more from Master Fu, while also growing her clientele. She goes from Jagged and Clara, to multiple celebrities from all over. She even designs for some youtubers. She meets the Wayne's when they commission her for one of their galas. She hits it off with Tim when she chugs a pot of coffee infront of him before doing his final fitting.

• Percy takes a quick trip to Gotham once the Wayne's return and interrogates/threatens Tim about Mari.

• Mari and Tim's friendship continues to grow as they text and call all the time.

• Harry and Percy support Marinette when she becomes the Grand Guardian. Percy asks Chiron about the Miraculous and discovers multiple books on them. He convinces Annabeth to copy them and has Hermes send them to Mari. While Harry finds a former Guardian in Knockturn Alley and informs her of the new Grand Guardian he gets Mari the potions she needs for the Kwami.

• Percy and Mari in courage Harry to discover more about his family and to start at Gringotts. Harry discovers his families position in the wizarding word, and how much has been kept from him.

• Harry and Mari encourage Percy to learn even more about his powers. Soon he has control of small storms and has learned how to travel in an instant through mist.

• Harry becomes emancipated at 15 and takes over Lordship of Potter and Ravenclaw. He was surprised to find out his mother was actually adopted into the Evan's family after her parents were killed. Petunia didnt know she was adopted.

• After Kronos is defeated they make plans to finally meet up, boys are 16, Mari 15, they agree on Paris because Mari doesn't feel comfortable leaving her city in case of attack. They meet up a few weeks before school is set to start for Percy and Mari.

• Harry floos to his family home in Paris and opens the wards before messaging Percy saying it safe. Percy mist travels in to his house and immediately drops his bags hugging Harry tightly. Before they both hurry off to the Bakery.

• Mari's parents are very nice and loving but they expect their daughter to be an adult and handle things without them.

• They are surprised when two boys rush into the bakery and their daughter squeals throwing herself at them in a hug. Completely ignoring Alya, Adrien, and Nino.

• Mari completely ignores her old friends refusing to even let go of her boys. She quickly introduces them to her parents before dragging them up to her room.

• For a short while they just pile on to her bed cuddling together happy to be with each other in person than through a video call. After half an hour they finally get up and let Mari pack a small bag.

• She says goodbye to her parents telling them shes going to be spending the night at a friends before they all hurry to Harry's house. Once Mari puts her bag in the living room they change into fancy clothes and head off for dinner reservations at Le Grand Paris.

• They enjoy a quiet dinner together and while they're eating dessert Chloe comes to their table to say hello to Mari. She warns Mari that their class plans on ambushing her at her parents bakery to guilt her into catering their end of summer party, because Lila's baker fell through.

• All four of them laugh at it and Mari pulls out her phone sending her mother a quick message. Telling her to not give her class a thing unless they pay.

• After Harry pays much to Mari and Percy's annoyance they say goodbye to Chloe and leave the restaurant. While walking back to Harry's they are all hugging each other. Mari is in the middle and Percy and Harry's arms are around her wasit and she has hers around them. Lila sees them passing and is quick to take multiple pictures.

• The next day she has the entire class convinced that the three are in a relationship. Lila also convinces them that Mari pushed her down and the boys threatened her.

• Alya is akumatized through her anger, Paris is surprised when two new heros join Ladybug.

• The two new heros are Anaklusmos, Percy using Kaalki because once Kaalki saw Percy he knew that he was the son of his favorite God, and Chimaera. Harry using Ziggy.

• Percy's hero outfit consisted of tight black pants and a long sleeve black shirt. Underneath a dark brown breastplate and greaves. His hair was slightly longer and even wilder than usual and sunglasses hid his eyes from the world. His weapon is a sword.

• Harry's hero outfit was black and white. He wore a white sweater with black assents, black jeans, and the outer coat to battle robes that was black on the outside and white on the inside. He has a mask in which one side is black and the other white. His miraculous transform into small goat horns when in use. His weapon is a staff, because he is a wizard he is able to use the staff as a wand, and it is untraceable.

• Ziggys transformation phrase Ziggy lets climb. Ziggy lets rest.

• Kaalkis transformation phrase Kaalki lets gallop. Kaalki halt.

• Ziggy will be the miraculous of terrian. Harry will be able to use unbreakable vines to either hold akuma or stop larging things from falling.

• They are quick to defeat Alya taking her down before Chat even finds a place to transform.

• Once defeated the trio returns to where they were relaxing along the Seine. Both Mari and Percy giggle at Harry who readjusts his new hair clips blushing slightly. While Percy simply pushes the glasses up to rest on the top of his head.

• They get lunch before Percy mist travels all three of them to Disneyland, where Mari pays for them all to get in.

• There first picture together at Disney is post on each of their Instagrams and their fans go wild after realizing the trio finally met in person. Soon their Instas are filled with different pictures of all of them.

• Meanwhile Alya is blowing up Mari's Insta demanding answers as the class is on the way to the bakery. They try to convince Tom and Sabine to cater but are brushed off by them. The class is upset and demands answers and are not happy to be told that they wont cater because Marinette isn't going to the party and asked them not to.

• The trio finish the night with a picture of them hugging with fireworks in the back. Percy is wearing little mermaid ears, Mari is wearing Ladybug ears, and Harry is wearing sorcerer mickey ears.

• They spend the entire week together and Mari introduces them to her friends in Paris with a promise of coming to their home countries to meet their friends and family next time.

• When Percy and Harry are set to leave they have a long conversation with Kaalki and Ziggy and decide to allow the two Kwamis to stay with their holders. Kaalki is very attached to his new foal and wishes to remain with his chosen. Ziggy is also attached to her kid and wishes to help Harry in anyway possible. Percy and Harry not just swear to protect their Kwamis, they agree to start a new Order of the Guardians. Mari agrees and soon they are planning lessons so she can teach them the language of the Guardians.

• When Harry returns to England he seeks out the former Guardian and infroms her they are starting a new order. The former Guardian takes Harry under her wing and teaches him things, which he teqches Percy and Mari inturn.

• The trio is happy until one day when instead of Percy answering the call its a crying Sally. Sally explains that Percy went missing and no one was able to find him. On top of that Olympus is on lock down.

• Mari and Harry go months without a word from Percy and everyone around them notices their drop. Tim flies out to Paris more often just to keep Mari company when he can. While Harry closes himself off from everyone but Mari.

• A full year passes and in that time Mari has stripped Chat of his miraculous and found a temporary holder in her friend Marc. Harry watched Dumbledore die and is getting ready to fall into hiding, when they finally hear from Percy who had just won his second war.

• The entire time Percy is asleep Kaalki is protecting him and when he wakes up Kaalki informs him of his name and tells him some of his past. Kaalki doesnt have to stay hidden around the demigods because Kaalki is a god himself and the demigods know this. Many Romans are surprised to see Kaalki never leaves Percy's side.

• At first Percy wants to immediately alert his friends but he can barelt find the time and o ly managers to tell his mother that he is alright.

• When the war is over he wastes no time traveling to England and tackling Harry in a hug before taking both of them to Paris. He leaves so fast her doesnt even return to Olympus for the rewards. So in the middle of their hugs and tears Zues/Jupiter transports them to Olympus. Right after he has to deal with a very pissed of Kwami of creation. Everyone watches Tikki tear into Zues while Mari Harry and Percy simply sit in front of Posiden's throne hugging each other tightly.

• For Percy's wish he once again turns down godhood and requests that the roman and greek camps to work together, and makes a personal request to Hecate for both he and Mari to be given Magic. Hecate agrees under the condition that Percy helps Harry take down Tom Riddle and that Mari helps once she is done with Hawkmoth. Posiden pulls them aside and informs Mari that Gabriel is Hawkmoth Nathalie is Mayrua. Once they are done Percy introduces Mari and Harry to the 7 and his cousins before they head off to meet Sally and Paul in person.

• After meeting Sally all three head to Gotham and meet with the Waynes and Mari and the boys find it funny that the only people that knew of Mari and Tim were Bruce and Alfred.

• Mari tells Tim the complete truth and how within the next few months she may die. Tim takes it and in turn tells her about him being Red Robin, then asks her to marry him. She agrees and they have a wedding at Wayne manor the next day.

• Harry meets Kara and his attention is stolen by the blonde. They gets along amazingly and exchange phone numbers. Harry even introduces her to Ziggy who also likes Kara. What really causes Harry to fall for her is when she wraps her arms around his waist and flies up into the air. Both of them bonding over their love of flying while Harry tries to stop out his blush over he lifting him like it was nothing.

• Percy returns to England with Harry and they go in the hunt together while Mari takes a final stance against Hawkmoth.

• Mari defeats Hawkmoth and Mayura unmasking them on national tv right before the battle of hogwarts happens. Once she is done she infroms her parents that she finished her last year of Lycée online and was traveling to England.

• Mari arrives in England after Percy and Harry sneak into Hogwarts. With the help of Tikki she finds her way to Hogwarts and finds her boys.

• Mari is heartbroken when Harry says goodbye to Ziggy and places one hair clip in Maris hair and the other in Percys. He tells them how much he loved them and asked them to say goodbye to Kara for him.

• Percy forces himself to stay strong but breaks when he sees Hagrid carrying Harry's body. While Harry jumps up both Mari and Percy are crying as they fight harder.

• The next day on the front page of the Prophet theres a picture of the three of them in the great hall after the battle curled together and hugging each other.

• After the war the trio goes to Gringotts and Harry has Percy and Mari officially adopted into the potter family before they return to Gotham. Mari and Tim had a bigger wedding for the public announcing to Gotham that they were married. It became known as the wedding of the century because both of them wanted to keep the Wayne families persona. Marinette drops Dupain-Cheng and becomes Marinette Potter-Drake-Wayne.

• Percy walks her down the aisle before sitting down and Harry is standing as her 'maid of honor' Percy takes Annabeth as his date and Harry takes Kara.

• After their honeymoon traveling the world Percy and Harry reveal that they both moved to Gotham. Both are going to catch up on their school work and then go to college. Meanwhile Percy begins campaigning for a cleaner Gotham. He uses a Sanddollar to clean the waters and instructed the Water nymphs to immediately alert him if someone attempts to dump. That when Gotham gains a new hero Anaklusmos. A few months later Chimaera and Ladybird join the scene as well. They focus more on the petty crimes and keeping the city cleaner while the Bat fam focus on the really bad guys.

• Mari joins with Wayne Enterprises and grows her own Fashion empire, while Percy gets his degree in marine biology and Harry in teaching.

• A few years later Mari has all but forgotten about her old class until she takes a trip to Pairs with time to visit her parents and Chloe and they find a class reunion at Le Grand Paris. Lila and Alya try and put Mari down, and are surprised when she laughs. She kisses Tim cheek softly before turning to them, and introduces herself and Tim. Leaving the entire class in shock. They watch Mari walking away with Tim as Chloe walks through the doors to them a bounce in her step.

#ml salt fic #ml x dc #lila salt #alya+salt #batfam #percy jackson #percy jackon and the olympians #harry potter #marinette dupen chang #miraculous marinette #miraculous ladybug #batman #maribat #timmari #the lightning thief

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grigori77 · 3 years

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2020 in Movies - My Top 30 Fave Movies (Part 3)

10. WOLFWALKERS – eleven years ago, Irish director Tomm Moore exploded onto the animated cinema scene with The Secret of Kells, a spellbinding feature debut which captivated audiences the world over and even garnered an Oscar nomination. Admittedly I didn’t actually even know about it until I discovered his work through his astonishing follow-up, Song of the Sea (another Academy Award nominee), in 2015, so when I finally caught it I was already a fan of Moore’s work. It’s been a similarly long wait for his third feature, but he’s genuinely pulled off a hat-trick, delivering a third flawless film in a row which OF COURSE means that his latest feature is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, my top animated feature of 2020. I could even be tempted to say it’s his best work to date … this is an ASTONISHING film, a work of such breath-taking, spell-binding beauty that I spent its entire hour and three-quarters glued to the screen, simple mesmerised by the wonder and majesty of this latest iteration of the characteristically stylised “Cartoon Saloon” look. It’s also liberally steeped in Moore’s trademark Celtic vibe and atmosphere, once again delving deep into his homeland’s rich and evocative cultural history and mythology while also bringing us something far more original and personal – this time the titular supernatural beings are magical near-human beings whose own subconscious can assume the form of very real wolves. Set in a particularly dark time in Irish history – namely 1650, when Oliver Cromwell was Lord Protector – the story follows Robyn (Honor Kneafsey, probably best known for the Christmas Prince films), the impetuous and spirited young daughter of English hunter Bill Goodfellowe (Sean Bean), brought in by the Protectorate to rid the city of Kilkenny of the wolves plaguing the area. One day fate intervenes and Robyn meets Mebh Og MacTire (The Girl at the End of the Garden‘s Eve Whittaker), a wild girl living in the woods, whose accidental bite gives her strange dreams in which she becomes a wolf – turns out Mebh is a wolfwalker, and now so is Robyn … every aspect of this film is an utter triumph for Moore and co, who have crafted a work of living, breathing cinematic art that’s easily the equal to (if not even better than) the best that Disney, Dreamworks or any of the other animation studios could create. Then there’s the excellent voice cast – Bean brings fatherly warmth and compassion to the role that belies his character’s intimidating size, while Kneafsey and Whittaker make for a sweet and sassy pair as they bond in spite of powerful cultural differences, and the masterful Simon McBurney (Harry Potter, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) brings cool, understated menace to the role of Cromwell himself. This is a film with plenty of emotional heft to go with its marvels, and once again displays the welcome dark side which added particular spice to Moore’s previous films, but ultimately this is still a gentle and heartfelt work of wonder that makes for equally suitable viewing for children as for those who are still kids at heart – ultimately, then, this is another triumph for one of the most singularly original filmmakers working in animation today, and if Wolfwalkers doesn’t make it third time lucky come Oscars-time then there’s no justice in the world …

9. WONDER WOMAN 1984 – probably the biggest change for 2020 compared to pretty much all of the past decade is how different the fortunes of superhero cinema turned out to be. A year earlier the Marvel Cinematic Universe had dominated all, but the DC Extended Universe still got a good hit in with big surprise hit Shazam! Fast-forward to now and things are VERY different – DC suddenly came out in the lead, but only because Marvel’s intended heavy-hitters (two MCU movies, the first Venom sequel and potential hot-shit new franchise starter Morbius: the Living Vampire) found themselves continuously pushed back thanks to (back then) unforeseen circumstances which continue to shit all over our theatre-going slate for the immediate future. In the end DC’s only SERIOUS competition turned out to be NETFLIX … never mind, at least we got ONE big established superhero blockbuster into the cinemas before the end of the year that the whole family could enjoy, and who better to headline it than DC’s “newest” big screen megastar, Diana Prince? Back in 2017 Monster’s Ball director Patty Jenkins’ monumental DCEU standalone spectacularly realigned the trajectory of a cinematic franchise that was visibly flagging, redesigning the template for the series’ future which has since led to some (mostly) consistently impressive subsequent offerings. Needless to say it was a damn tough act to follow, but Jenkins and co-writers Geoff Johns (Arrow and The Flash) and David Callaham (The Expendables, Zombieland: Double Tap, future MCU entry Shang-Chi & the Legend of the Ten Rings) have risen to the challenge in fine style, delivering something which pretty much equals that spectacular franchise debut … as has Gal Gadot, who’s now OFFICIALLY made the role her own thanks to yet another showstopping and definitive performance as the unstoppable Amazonian goddess living amongst us. She’s older and wiser than in the first film, but still hasn’t lost that forthright honesty and wonderfully pure heart we’ve come to love ever since her introduction in Zack Snyder’s troublesome but ultimately underrated Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (yes, that’s right, I said it!), and Gadot’s clear, overwhelming commitment to the role continues to pay off magnificently as she once again proves that Diana is THE VERY BEST superhero in the DCEU cinematic pantheon. Although it takes place several decades after its predecessor, WW84 is, obviously, still very much a period piece, Jenkins and co this time perfectly capturing the sheer opulent and over-the-top tastelessness of the 1980s in all its big-haired, bad-suited, oversized shoulder-padded glory while telling a story that encapsulates the greedy excessiveness of the Reagan era, perfectly embodied in the film’s nominal villain, Max Lord (The Mandalorian himself, Pedro Pascal), a wishy-washy wannabe oil tycoon conman who chances upon a supercharged wish-rock and unleashes a devastating supernatural “monkey’s paw” upon the world. To say any more would give away a whole raft of spectacular twists and turns that deserve to be enjoyed good and cold, although they did spoil one major surprise in the trailer when they teased the return of Diana’s first love, Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) … needless to say this is another big blockbuster bursting with big characters, big action and BIG IDEAS, just what we’ve come to expect after Wonder Woman’s first triumphant big screen adventure. Interestingly, the film starts out feeling like it’s going to be a bubbly, light, frothy affair – after a particularly stunning all-action opening flashback to Diana’s childhood on Themyscira, the film proper kicks off with a bright and breezy atmosphere that feels a bit like the kind of Saturday morning cartoon action the consistently impressive set-pieces take such unfettered joy in parodying, but as the stakes are raised the tone grows darker and more emotionally potent, the storm clouds gathering for a spectacularly epic climax that, for once, doesn’t feel too overblown or weighed down by its visual effects, while the intelligent script has unfathomable hidden depths to it, making us think far more than these kinds of blockbusters usually do. It’s really great to see Chris Pine return since he was one of the best things about the first movie, and his lovably childlike wide-eyed wonder at this brave new world perfectly echoes Diana’s own last time round; Kristen Wiig, meanwhile, is pretty phenomenal throughout as Dr Barbara Minerva, the initially geeky and timid nerd who discovers an impressive inner strength but ultimately turns into a superpowered apex predator as she becomes one of Wonder Woman’s most infamous foes, the Cheetah; Pascal, of course, is clearly having the time of his life hamming it up to the hilt as Lord, playing gloriously against his effortlessly cool, charismatic action hero image to deliver a compellingly troubling examination of the monstrous corrupting influence of absolute power. Once again, though, the film truly belongs to Gadot – she looks amazing, acts her socks off magnificently, and totally rules the movie. After this, a second sequel is a no-brainer, because Wonder Woman remains the one DC superhero who’s truly capable of bearing the weight of this particular cinematic franchise on her powerful shoulders – needless to say, it’s already been greenlit, and with both Jenkins and Gadot onboard, I’m happy to sign up for more too …

8. LOVE & MONSTERS – with the cinemas continuing their frustrating habit of opening for a little while and then closing while the pandemic ebbed and flowed in the months after the summer season, it was starting to look like there might not have been ANY big budget blockbusters to enjoy before year’s end as heavyweights like Black Widow, No Time To Die and Dune pulled back to potentially more certain release slots into 2021 (with only WW84 remaining stubbornly in place for Christmas). Then Paramount decided to throw us a bone, opting to release this post-apocalyptic horror comedy on-demand in October instead, thus giving me the perfect little present to tie me over during the darkening days of autumn. The end result was a stone-cold gem that came out of nowhere to completely blow critics away, a spectacular sleeper hit that ultimately proved one of the year’s biggest and most brilliant surprises. Director Michael Matthews may only have had South African indie thriller Five Fingers for Marseilles under his belt prior to this, but he proves he’s definitely a solid talent to watch in the future, crafting a fun and effective thrill-ride that, like all the best horror comedies, is consistently as funny as it is scary, sharing much of the same DNA as this particular mash-up genre’s classics like Tremors and Zombieland and standing up impressively well to such comparisons. The story, penned by rising star Brian Duffield (who has TWO other entries on this list, Underwater and Spontaneous) and Matthew Robinson (The Invention of Lying, Dora & the Lost City of Gold), is also pretty ingenious and surprisingly original – a meteorite strike has unleashed weird mutagenic pathogens that warp various creepy crawly critters into gigantic monstrosities that have slaughter most of the world’s human population, leaving only a beleaguered, dwindling few to eke out a precarious living in underground colonies. Living in one such makeshift community is Joel Dawson (The Maze Runner’s Dylan O’Brien), a smart and likeable geek who really isn’t very adventurous, is extremely awkward and uncoordinated, and has a problem with freezing if threatened … which makes it all the more inexplicable when he decides, entirely against the advice of everyone he knows, to venture onto the surface so he can make the incredibly dangerous week-long trek to the neighbouring colony where his girlfriend Aimee (Iron Fist’s Jessica Henwick) has ended up. Joel is, without a doubt, the best role that O’Brien has EVER had, a total dork who’s completely unsuited to this kind of adventure and, in the real world, sure to be eaten alive in the first five minutes, but he’s also such a fantastically believable, fallible everyman that every one of us desperate, pathetic omega-males and females can instantly put ourselves in his place, making it elementarily easy to root for him. He’s also hilariously funny, his winningly self-deprecating sass and pitch perfect talent for physical comedy making it all the more rewarding watching each gloriously anarchic life-and-death encounter mould him into the year’s most unlikely action hero. Henwick, meanwhile, once again impresses in a well-written role where she’s able to make a big impression despite her decidedly short screen time, as do the legendary Michael Rooker and brilliant newcomer Ariana Greenblatt as Clyde and Minnow, the adorably jaded, seen-it-all-before pair of “professional survivors” Joel meets en-route, who teach him to survive on the surface. The action is fast, frenetic and potently visceral, the impressively realistic digital creature effects bringing a motley crew of bloodthirsty beasties to suitably blood-curdling life for the film’s consistently terrifying set-pieces, while the world-building is intricately thought-out and skilfully executed. Altogether, this was an absolute joy from start to finish, and a film I enthusiastically endorsed to everyone I knew was looking for something fun to enjoy during the frustrating lockdown nights-in. One of the cinematic year’s best kept secrets then, and a compelling sign of things to come for its up-and-coming director.

7. PARASITE – I’ve been a fan of master Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho ever since I stumbled across his deeply weird but also thoroughly brilliant breakthrough feature The Host, and it’s a love that’s deepened since thanks to truly magnificent sci-fi actioner Snowpiercer, so I was looking forward to his latest feature as much as any movie geek, but even I wasn’t prepared for just what a runaway juggernaut of a hit this one turned out to be, from the insane box office to all that award-season glory (especially that undeniable clean-sweep at the Oscars). I’ll just come out and say it, this film deserves it all. It’s EASILY Bong’s best film to date (which is really saying something), a masterful social satire and jet black comedy that raises some genuinely intriguing questions before delivering deeply troubling answers. Straddling the ever-widening gulf between a disaffected idle rich upper class and impoverished, struggling lower class in modern-day Seoul, it tells the story of the Kim family – father Ki-taek (Bong’s good luck charm, Song Kang-ho), mother Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin), son Ki-woo (Train to Busan’s Choi Woo-shik) and daughter Ki-jung (The Silenced’s Park So-dam) – a poor family living in a run-down basement apartment who live hand-to-mouth in minimum wage jobs and can barely rub two pennies together, until they’re presented with an intriguing opportunity. Through happy chance, Ki-woon is hired as an English tutor for Park Da-hye (Jung Ji-so), the daughter of a wealthy family, which offers him the chance to recommend Ki-jung as an art tutor to the Parks’ troubled young son, Da-song (Jung Hyeon-jun). Soon the rest of the Kims are getting in on the act, the kids contriving opportunities for their father to replace Mr Park’s chauffeur and their mother to oust the family’s long-serving housekeeper, Gook Moon-gwang (Lee Jung-eun), and before long their situation has improved dramatically. But as they two families become more deeply entwined, cracks begin to show in their supposed blissful harmony as the natural prejudices of their respective classes start to take hold, and as events spiral out of control a terrible confrontation looms on the horizon. This is social commentary at its most scathing, Bong drawing on personal experiences from his youth to inform the razor-sharp script (co-written by his production assistant Han Jin-won), while he weaves a palpable atmosphere of knife-edged tension throughout to add spice to the perfectly observed dark humour of the situation, all the while throwing intriguing twists and turns at us before suddenly dropping such a massive jaw-dropper of a gear-change that the film completely turns on its head to stunning effect. The cast are all thoroughly astounding, Song once again dominating the film with a turn at once sloppy and dishevelled but also poignant and heartfelt, while there are particularly noteworthy turns from Lee Sun-kyun as the Parks’ self-absorbed patriarch Dong-ik and Choi Yeo-jeong (The Concubine) as his flighty, easily-led wife Choi Yeon-gyo, as well as a fantastically weird appearance in the latter half from Park Myung-hoon. This is heady stuff, dangerously seductive even as it becomes increasingly uncomfortable viewing, so that even as the screws tighten and everything goes to hell it’s simply impossible to look away. Bong Joon-ho really has surpassed himself this time, delivering an existential mind-scrambler that lingers long after the credits have rolled and might even have you questioning your place in society once you’ve thought about it some. It deserves every single award and every ounce of praise it’s been lavished with, and looks set to go down as one of the true cinematic greats of this new decade. Trust me, if this was a purely critical best-of list it’d be RIGHT AT THE TOP …

6. THE OLD GUARD – Netflix’ undisputable TOP OFFERING of the summer came damn close to bagging the whole season, and I can’t help thinking that even if some of the stiffer competition had still been present it may well have still finished this high. Gina Prince-Blythewood (Love & Basketball, the Secret Life of Bees) directs comics legend Greg Rucka’s adaptation of his own popular series with uncanny skill and laser-focused visual flair considering there’s nothing on her previous CV to suggest she’d be THIS good at mounting a stomping great ultraviolent action thriller, ushering in a thoroughly engrossing tale of four ancient, invulnerable immortal warriors – Andy AKA Andromache of Scythia (Charlize Theron), Booker AKA Sebastian de Livre (Matthias Schoenaerts), Joe AKA Yusuf Al-Kaysani (Wolf’s Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky AKA Niccolo di Ginova (Trust’s Luca Marinelli) – who’ve been around forever, hiring out their services as mercenaries for righteous causes while jealously guarding their identities for fear of horrific experimentation and exploitation should their true natures ever be discovered. Their anonymity is threatened, however, when they’re uncovered by former CIA operative James Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who’s working for the decidedly dodgy pharmaceutical conglomerate run by sociopathic billionaire Steven Merrick (Harry Melling, formerly Dudley in the Harry Potter movies), who want to capture these immortals so they can patent whatever it is that makes them keep on ticking … just as a fifth immortal, US Marine Nile Freeman (If Beale Street Could Talk’s KiKi Layne), awakens after being “killed” on deployment in Afghanistan. The supporting players are excellent, particularly Ejiofor, smart and driven but ultimately principled and deeply conflicted about what he’s doing, even if he does have the best of intentions, and Melling, the kind of loathsome, reptilian scumbag you just love to hate, but the film REALLY DOES belong to the Old Guard themselves – Schoenaerts is a master brooder, spot-on casting as the group’s relative newcomer, only immortal since the Napoleonic Wars but clearly one seriously old soul who’s already VERY tired of the lifestyle, while Joe and Nicky (who met on opposing sides of the Crusades) are simply ADORABLE, an unapologetically matter-of-fact gay couple who are sweet, sassy and incredibly kind, the absolute emotional heart of the film; it’s the ladies, however, that are most memorable here. Layne is exceptional, investing Nile with a steely intensity that puts her in good stead as her new existence threatens to overwhelm her and MORE THAN qualified to bust heads alongside her elders … but it’s ancient Greek warrior Andy who steals the film, Theron building on the astounding work she did in Atomic Blonde to prove, once and for all, that there’s no woman on Earth who looks better kicking arse than her (as Booker puts it, “that woman has forgotten more ways to kill than entire armies will ever learn”); in her hands, Andy truly is a goddess of death, tough as tungsten alloy and unflappable even in the face of hell itself, but underneath it all she hides a heart as big as any of her friends’. They’re an impossibly lovable bunch and you feel you could follow them on another TEN adventures like this one, which is just as well, because Prince-Blythewood and Rucka certainly put them through their paces here – the drama is high (but frequently laced with a gentle, knowing sense of humour, particularly whenever Joe and Nicky are onscreen), as are the stakes, and the frequent action sequences are top-notch, executed with rare skill and bone-crunching zest, but also ALWAYS in service to the story. Altogether this is an astounding film, a genuine victory for its makers and, it seems, for Netflix themselves – it’s become one of the platform’s biggest hits to date, earning well-deserved critical acclaim and great respect and genuine geek love from the fanbase at large. After this, a sequel is not only inevitable, it’s ESSENTIAL …

5. MANK – it’s always nice when David Fincher, one of my TOP FIVE ALL TIME FAVOURITE DIRECTORS, drops a new movie, because it can be GUARANTEED to place good and high in my rundown for that year. The man is a frickin’ GENIUS, a true master of the craft, genuinely one of the auteur’s auteurs. I’ve NEVER seen him deliver a bad film – even a misfiring Fincher (see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button or Alien 3) is still capable of creating GREAT CINEMA. How? Why? It’s because he genuinely LOVES the art form, it’s been his obsession all his life, and he’s spent every day of it becoming the best possible filmmaker he can be. Who better to tell the story of the creation of one of the ULTIMATE cinematic masterpieces, then? Benjamin Ross’ acclaimed biopic RKO 281 covered similar ground, presenting a compelling look into the making Citizen Kane, the timeless masterpiece of Hollywood’s ULTIMATE auteur, Orson Welles, but Fincher’s film is more interested in the original inspiration for the story, how it was written and, most importantly, the man who wrote it – Herman J. Mankiewicz, known to his friends as Mank. One of my favourite actors of all time, Gary Oldman, delivers yet another of his career best performances in the lead role, once a man of vision and incredible storytelling skill whose talents have largely been squandered through professional difficulties and personal vices, a burned out one-time great fallen on hard times whom Welles picks up out of the trash, dusts off and offers a chance to create something truly great again. The only catch? The subject of their film (albeit dressed up in the guise of fictional newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane) is to be real-life publisher, politico and tycoon William Randolph Hurst (Charles Dance), once Mank’s friend and patron before they had a very public and messy falling out which partly led to his current circumstances. As he toils away in seclusion on what is destined to become his true masterwork, flashbacks reveal to us the fascinating, moving and ultimately tragic tale of his rise and fall from grace in the movie business, set against the backdrop of one of the most tumultuous periods in American history. Shooting a script that his own journalist and screenwriter father, Jack, crafted and then failed to bring to the screen himself before his death in 2003, Fincher has been working for almost a quarter century to make this film, and all that passion and drive is writ large on the screen – this is a glorious film ABOUT film, the art of it, the creation of it, and all the dirty little secrets of what the industry itself has always really been like, especially in that most glamorous and illusory of times. The fact that Fincher shot in black and white and intentionally made it look like it was made in the early 1940s (the “golden age of the Silver Screen”, if you will) may seem like a gimmick, but instead it’s a very shrewd choice that expertly captures the gloss and moodiness of the age, almost looking like a contemporary companion piece to Kane itself, and it’s the perfect way to frame all the sharp-witted observation, subtly subversive character development and murky behind-the-scenes machinations that tell the story. Oldman is in every way the star here, holding the screen with all the consummate skill and flair we’ve come to expect from him, but there’s no denying the uniformly excellent supporting cast are equal to the task here – Dance is at his regal, charismatic best as Hearst, while Amanda Seyfried is icily classy on the surface but mischievous and lovably grounded underneath as Hearst’s mistress, Marion Davies, who formed the basis for Kane’s most controversial character, Arliss Howard (Full Metal Jacket, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Moneyball) brings nuance and complexity to the role of MGM founder Louis B. Mayer, Tom Pelphrey (Banshee, Ozark) is understated but compelling as Mank’s younger screenwriter brother Joseph, and Lily Collins and Tuppence Middleton exude class and long-suffering stubbornness as the two main women in Mank’s life (his secretary and platonic muse, Rita Alexander, and his wife, Sara), while The Musketeers’ Tom Burke’s periodic but potent appearances as Orson Welles help to drive the story in the “present”. Another Netflix release which I was (thankfully) able to catch on the big screen during one of the brief lulls between British lockdowns, this was a decidedly meta cinematic experience that perfectly encapsulated not only what is truly required for the creation of a screen epic, but also the latest pinnacle in the career of one of the greatest filmmakers working in the business today, powerful, stirring, intriguing and surprising in equal measure. Certainly it’s one of the most important films ABOUT so far film this century, but is it as good as Citizen Kane? Boy, that’s a tough one …

4. ENOLA HOLMES – ultimately, my top film for the autumn/winter movie season was also the film which finally topped my Netflix Original features list, as well as beating all other streaming offerings for the entire year (which is saying something, as you should know by now). Had things been different, this would have been one of Warner Bros’ BIGGEST releases for the year in the cinema, of that I have no doubt, a surprise sleeper hit which would have taken the world by storm – as it is it’s STILL become a sensation, albeit in a much more mid-pandemic, lockdown home-viewing kind of way. Before you start crying oh God no, not another Sherlock Holmes adaptation, this is a very different beast from either the Guy Ritchie take or the modernized BBC show, instead side-lining the great literary sleuth in favour of a delicious new AU version, based on The Case of the Missing Marquess, the first novel in the Enola Holmes Mysteries literary series from American YA author Nancy Springer. Positing that Sherlock Holmes (Henry Cavill) and his elder brother Mycroft (Sam Claflin) had an equally ingenious and precocious baby sister, the film introduces us to Enola (Stranger Things’ Millie Bobby Brown), who’s been raised at home by their strong-willed mother Eudoria (Helena Bonham Carter) to be just as intelligent, well-read and intellectually skilled as her far more advantageously masculine elder siblings. Then, on the morning of her sixteenth birthday, Enola awakens to find her mother has vanished, putting her in a pretty pickle since this leaves her a ward of Mycroft, a self-absorbed social peacock who finds her to be wilfully free-spirited and completely ill equipped to face the world, concluding that the only solution is sending her to boarding school where she’ll learn to become a proper lady. Needless to say she’s horrified by the prospect, deciding to run away and search for her mother instead … this is about as perfect a family adventure film as you could wish for, following a vital, capable and compelling teen detective-in-the-making as she embarks on her very first investigation, as well as winding up tangled in a second to boot involving a young runaway noble, Viscount Tewkesbury, the Marquess of Basilwether (Medici’s Louis Partridge), and the film is a breezy, swift-paced and rewardingly entertaining romp that feels like a welcome breath of fresh air for a literary property which, beloved as it may be, has been adapted to death over the years. Enola Holmes a brilliant young hero who’s perfectly crafted to carry the franchise forward in fresh new directions, and Brown brings her to life with effervescent charm, boisterous energy and mischievous irreverence that are entirely irresistible; Cavill and Claflin, meanwhile, are perfectly cast as the two very different brothers – this Sherlock is much less louche and world-weary than most previous versions, still razor sharp and intellectually restless but with a comfortable ease and a youthful spring in his step that perfectly suits the actor, while Mycroft is as superior and arrogant as ever, a preening arse we derive huge enjoyment watching Enola consistently get the best of; Bonham Carter doesn’t get a lot of screen-time but as we’d expect she does a lot with what she has to make the practical, eccentric and unapologetically modern Eudoria thoroughly memorable, while Partridge is carefree and likeable as the naïve but irresistible Tewkesbury, and there are strong supporting turns from Frances de la Tour as his stately grandmother, the Dowager, Susie Wokoma (Crazyhead, Truth Seekers) as Emily, a feisty suffragette who runs a jujitsu studio, Burn Gorman as dastardly thug-for-hire Linthorn, and Four Lions’ Adeel Akhtar as a particularly scuzzy Inspector Lestrade. Seasoned TV director Harry Bradbeer (Fleabag, Killing Eve) makes his feature debut with an impressive splash, unfolding the action at a brisk pace while keeping the narrative firmly focused on an intricate mystery plot that throws in plenty of ingenious twists and turns before a suitably atmospheric climax and pleasing denouement which nonetheless artfully sets up more to come in the future, while screenwriter Jack Thorne (His Dark Materials, The Scouting Book for Boys, Wonder) delivers strong character work and liberally peppers the dialogue with a veritable cavalcade of witty zingers. Boisterous, compelling, amusing, affecting and exciting in equal measure, this is a spirited and appealing slice of cinematic escapism that flatters its viewers and never talks down to them, a perfect little period adventure for a cosy Sunday afternoon. Obviously there’s plenty of potential for more, and with further books to adapt there’s more than enough material for a pile of sequels – Neflix would be barmy indeed to turn their nose up at this opportunity …

3. 1917 – it’s a rare thing for a film to leave me truly shell-shocked by its sheer awesomeness, for me to walk out of a cinema in a genuine daze, unable to talk or even really think about much of anything for a few hours because I’m simply marvelling at what I’ve just witnessed. Needless to say, when I do find a film like that (Fight Club, Inception, Mad Max: Fury Road) it usually earns a place very close to my heart indeed. The latest tour-de-force from Sam Mendes is one of those films – an epic World War I thriller that plays out ENTIRELY in one shot, which doesn’t simply feel like a glorified gimmick or stunt but instead is a genuine MASTERPIECE of film, a mesmerising journey of emotion and imagination in a shockingly real environment that’s impossible to tear your eyes away from. Sure, Mendes has impressed us before – his first film, American Beauty, is a GREAT movie, one of the most impressive feature debuts of the 2000s, while Skyfall is, in my opinion, quite simply THE BEST BOND FILM EVER MADE – but this is in a whole other league. It’s an astounding achievement, made all the more impressive when you realise that there’s very little trickery at play here, no clever digital magic (just some augmentation here and there), it’s all real locations and sets, filmed in long, elaborately choreographed takes blended together with clever edits to make it as seamless as possible – it’s not the first film to try to do this (remember Birdman? Bushwick?), but I’ve never seen it done better, or with greater skill. But it’s not just a clever cinematic exercise, there’s a genuine story here, told with guts and urgency, and populated by real flesh and blood characters – the heart of the film is True History of the Kelly Gang’s George MacKay and Dean Chapman (probably best known as Tommen Baratheon in Game of Thrones) as Lance Corporals Will Schofield and Tom Blake, the two young tommies sent out across enemy territory on a desperate mission to stop a British regiment from rushing headlong into a German trap (Tom himself has a personal stake in this because his brother is an officer in the attack). They’re a likeable pair, very human and relatable throughout, brave and true but never so overtly heroic that they stretch credibility, so when tragedy strikes along the way it’s particularly devastating; both deliver exceptional performances that effortlessly carry us through the film, and they’re given sterling support from a selection of top-drawer British talent, from Sherlock stars Andrew Scott and Benedict Cumberbatch to Mark Strong and Colin Firth, each delivering magnificently in small but potent cameos. That said, the cinematography and art department are the BIGGEST stars here, masterful veteran DOP Roger Deakins (The Shawshank Redemption, Blade Runner 2049 and pretty much the Coen Brothers’ entire back catalogue among MANY others) making every frame sing with beauty, horror, tension or tragedy as the need arises, and the environments are SO REAL it feels less like production design than that someone simply sent the cast and crew back in time to film in the real Northern France circa 1917 – from a nightmarish trek across No Man’s Land to a desperate chase through a ruined French village lit only by dancing flare-light in the darkness before dawn, every scene is utterly immersive and simply STUNNING. I don’t think it’s possible for Mendes to make a film better than this, but I sure hope he gives it a go all the same. Either way, this was the most incredible, exhausting, truly AWESOME experience I had at the cinema all year – it’s a film that DESERVES to be seen on the big screen, and I feel truly sorry for those who missed the chance …

2. BIRDS OF PREY & THE FANTABULOUS EMANCIPATION OF ONE HARLEY QUINN – the only reason 1917 isn’t at number two is because Warner Bros.’ cinematic DC Extended Universe project FINALLY got round to bringing my favourite DC Comics title to the big screen. It was been the biggest pleasure of my cinematic year getting to see my top DC superheroines brought to life on the big screen, and it was done in high style, in my opinion THE BEST of the DCEU films to date (yup, I loved it EVEN MORE than the Wonder Woman movies). It was also great seeing Harley Quinn return after her show-stealing turn in David Ayer’s clunky but ultimately still hugely enjoyable Suicide Squad, better still that they got her SPOT ON this time – this is the Harley I’ve always loved in the comics, unpredictable, irreverent and entirely without regard for what anyone else thinks of her, as well as one talented psychiatrist. Margot Robbie once more excels in the role she was basically BORN to play, clearly relishing the chance to finally do Harley TRUE justice, and she’s a total riot from start to finish, infectiously lovable no matter what crazy, sometimes downright REPRIHENSIBLE antics she gets up to. Needless to say she’s the nominal star here, her latest ill-advised adventure driving the story – finally done with the Joker and itching to make her emancipation official, Harley publicly announces their breakup by blowing up Ace Chemicals (their love spot, basically), inadvertently painting a target on her back in the process since she’s no longer under the assumed protection of Gotham’s feared Clown Prince of Crime – but that doesn’t mean she eclipses the other main players the movie’s REALLY supposed to be about. Each member of the Birds of Prey is beautifully written and brought to vivid, arse-kicking life by what had to be 2020’s most exciting cast – Helena Bertinelli, the Huntress, is the perfect character for Mary Elizabeth Winstead to finally pay off on that action hero potential she showed in Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World, but this is a MUCH more enjoyable role outside of the fight choreography because while Helena may be a world-class dark avenger, socially she’s a total dork, which just makes her thoroughly adorable; Rosie Perez is similarly perfect casting as Renee Montoya, the uncompromising pint-sized Gotham PD detective who kicks against the corrupt system no matter what kind of trouble it gets her into, and just gets angrier all the time, paradoxically making us like her even more; and then there’s the film’s major controversy, at least as far as the fans are concerned, namely one Cassandra Cain. Sure, this take is VERY different from the comics’ version (a nearly mute master assassin who went on to become the second woman to wear the mask of Batgirl before assuming her own crime-fighting mantle as Black Bat and now Orphan), but personally I like to think this is simply Cass at THE VERY START of her origin story, leaving plenty of time for her to discover her warrior origins when the DCEU finally gets around to introducing her mum, Lady Shiva (personally I want Michelle Yeoh to play her, but that’s just me) – anyways, here she’s a skilled child pickpocket whose latest theft inadvertently sets off the larger central plot, and newcomer Ella Jay Basco brings a fantastic pre-teen irreverence and spiky charm to the role, beautifully playing against Robbie’s mercurial energy. My favourite here BY FAR, however, is Dinah Lance, aka the Black Canary (not only my favourite Bird of Prey but my very favourite DC superheroine PERIOD), the choice of up-and-comer Jurnee Smollet-Bell (Friday Night Lights, Underground) proving to be the film’s most inspired casting – a club singer with the metahuman ability to emit piercing supersonic screams, she’s also a ferocious martial artist (in the comics she’s one of the very best fighters IN THE WORLD), as well as a wonderfully pure soul you just can’t help loving, and it made me SO UNBELIEVABLY HAPPY that they got my Canary EXACTLY RIGHT. Altogether they’re a fantastic bunch of badass ladies, basically my perfect superhero team, and the way they’re all brought together (along with Harley, of course) is beautifully thought out and perfectly executed … they’ve also got one hell of a threat to overcome, namely Gotham crime boss Roman Sionis, the Black Mask, one of the Joker’s chief rivals – Ewan McGregor brings his A-game in a frustratingly rare villainous turn (my number one bad guy for the movie year), a monstrously narcissistic, woman-hating control freak with a penchant for peeling off the faces of those who displease him, sharing some exquisitely creepy chemistry with Chris Messina (The Mindy Project) as Sionis’ nihilistic lieutenant Victor Zsasz. This is about as good as superhero cinema gets, a perfect example of the sheer brilliance you get when you switch up the formula to create something new, an ultra-violent, unapologetically R-rated middle finger to the classic tropes, a fantastic black comedy thrill ride that’s got to be the most full-on feminist blockbuster ever made – it’s helmed by a woman (Dead Pigs director Cathy Yan), written by a woman (Bumblebee’s Christina Hodson), produced by more women and ABOUT a bunch of badass women magnificently triumphing over toxic masculinity in all its forms. It’s also simply BRILLIANT – the cast are all clearly having a blast, the action sequences are first rate (the spectacular GCPD evidence room fight in which Harley gets to REALLY cut loose is the undisputable highlight), it has a gleefully anarchic sense of humour and is simply BURSTING with phenomenal homages, references and in-jokes for the fans (Bruce the hyena! Stuffed beaver! Roller derby!). It’s also got a killer soundtrack, populated almost exclusively by numbers from female artists. Altogether, then, this is the VERY BEST the DCEU has to offer to date, and VERY NEARLY my absolute FAVOURITE film of 2020. Give it all the love you can, it sure as hell deserves it.

1. TENET – granted, the streaming platforms (particularly Netflix and Amazon) certainly saved our cinematic summer, but I’m still IMMEASURABLY glad that my ultimate top-spot winner FOR THE WHOLE YEAR was one I got to experience on THE BIG SCREEN. You gotta hand it to Christopher Nolan, he sure hung in there, stubbornly determined that his latest cinematic masterpiece WOULD be released in cinemas in the summer (albeit ultimately landing JUST inside the line in the final week of August and ultimately taking the bite at the box office because of the still shaky atmosphere), and it was worth all the fuss because, for me, this was THE PERFECT MOVIE for me to get return to cinemas with. I mean, okay, in the end it WASN’T the FIRST new movie I saw after the first reopening, that honour went to Unhinged, but THIS was my first real Saturday night-out big screen EXPERIENCE since March. Needless to say, Nolan didn’t disappoint this time any more than he has on any of his consistently spectacular previous releases, delivering another twisted, mind-boggling headfuck of a full-blooded experiential sensory overload that comes perilously close to toppling his long-standing auteur-peak, Inception (itself second only by fractions to The Dark Knight as far as I’m concerned). To say much at all about the plot would give away major spoilers – personally I’d recommend just going in as cold as possible, indeed you really should just stop reading this right now and just GO SEE IT. Still with us? Okay … the VERY abridged version is that it’s about a secret war being waged between the present and the future by people capable of “inverting” time in substances, objects, people, whatever, into which the Protagonist (BlacKkKlansman’s John David Washington), an unnamed CIA agent, has been dispatched in order to prevent a potential coming apocalypse. Washington is once again on top form, crafting a robust and compelling morally complex heroic lead who’s just as comfortable negotiating the minefields of black market intrigue as he is breaking into places or dispatching heavies, Kenneth Branagh delivers one of his most interesting and memorable performances in years as brutal Russian oligarch Andrei Sator, a genuinely nasty piece of work who was ALMOST the year’s very best screen villain, Elizabeth Debicki (The Night Manager, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Widows) brings strength, poise and wounded integrity to the role of Sator’s estranged wife, Kat, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson gets to use his own accent for once as tough-as-nails British Intelligence officer Ives, while there are brief but consistently notable supporting turns and cameos from Martin Donovan, Yesterday’s Himesh Patel, Dirk Gently’s Fiona Dourif and, of course, Nolan’s good luck charm, Michael Caine. The cast’s biggest surprise, however, is Robert Pattinson, truly a revelation in what has to be, HANDS DOWN, his best role to date, Neil, the Protagonist’s mysterious handler – he’s by turns cheeky, slick, duplicitous and thoroughly badass, delivering an enjoyably multi-layered, chameleonic performance which proves what I’ve long maintained, that the former Twilight star is actually a fucking amazing actor, and on the basis of this, even if that amazing new teaser trailer wasn’t making the rounds, I think the debate about whether or not he’s the right choice for the new Batman is now academic. As we’ve come to expect from Nolan, this is a TRUE tour-de-force experience, a visual triumph and an endlessly engrossing head-scratcher, Nolan’s screenplay bringing in seriously big ideas and throwing us some major narrative knots and loopholes, constantly wrong-footing the viewer while also setting up truly revelatory payoffs from seemingly low-key, unimportant beginnings – this is a film you need to be awake and attentive for or you could miss something pretty vital. The action sequences are, as ever, second to none, some of the year’s very best set-pieces coming thick and fast and executed with some of the most accomplished skill in the business, while Nolan-regular cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema (Interstellar and Dunkirk, as well as the heady likes of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, SPECTRE and Ad Astra) once again shows he’s one of the best camera-wizards in the business today by delivering some absolutely mesmerising visuals. Notably, Nolan’s other regular collaborator, composer Hans Zimmer, is absent here (although he had good reason, since he was working on his dream project at the time, the fast-approaching screen adaptation of Dune), but Ludwig Göransson (best known for his collaborations with Ryan Coogler Fruitvale Station, Creed and Black Panther, as well as career-best work on The Mandalorian) is a fine replacement, crafting an intriguingly internalised, post-modern musical landscape that thrums and pulses in time with the story and emotions of the characters rather than the action itself. Interestingly it’s on the subject of sound that some of the film’s rare detractions have been levelled, and I can see some of the points – the soundtrack mix is an all-encompassing thing, and there are times when the dialogue can be overwhelmed, but in Nolan’s defence this film is a heady, immersive experience, something you really need to concentrate on, so these potential flaws are easily forgiven. As a work of filmmaking art, this is another flawless wonder from one of the true masters of the craft working in cinema today, but it’s art with palpable substance, a rewarding whole that proved truly unbeatable in 2020 …

#wolfwalkers #wonder woman 1984 #ww84 #love and monsters #parasite #parasite movie #the old guard #mank #enola holmes #1917 #1917 movie #Birds of Prey #birds of prey the fantabulous emancipation of one harley quinn #tenet #tenet movie #2020 in movies

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shinhatigf · 3 years

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okay so I do have an anakin fix it au floating around in my brain in which revenge of the sith goes as well as it possibly could BUT that's not the important part of this post the IMPORTANT part is what happens to maul in this au. (disclaimer: all I know about maul's backstory is from watching the clone wars and reading his wookiepedia page so some of this might be inaccurate. bear with me)

okay so because order 66 didn't happen, maul is brought before the council. he was sith so the council would want to deal with him personally

I think with palpatine dead (fully and completely 100% dead no take backs) the influence of the dark side everywhere would be lessened. everyone would feel a lot clearer, happier, brighter, like a dark cloud had been lifted from their mind. this would include maul.

however, for maul, diving deep into the dark side has been something of a coping mechanism. amassing as much power as possible and giving yourself over to this dark higher power means you don't have the contemplate the fact that you were stolen from your family and home world and fed incredibly damaging rhetoric from the man who 1) let you die 2) immediately upon finding out you were still alive electrocuted the fuck out of you and killed the last part of your family and (imo) the only person you ever truly loved

so maul upon arriving to the jedi council, while slightly less affected by the dark side, is still full of pure rage, hate, and a clusterfuck of other emotions brought about by thinking about the jedi. he's a whole disaster

okay this is going to get very very long I'm going to put a read more here

I imagine some in the council would like to kill or exile him and be done with it, but after the inherent trauma of the clone wars and seeing how far separated from their ideals the jedi order has become, they'd show him mercy. this part may not necessarily make 100% sense but shut up this is the good things for maul au maul gets good things

therefore, the council would vote in favor of rehabilitation. what I imagine this would look like is maul would be heavily guarded and watched, and whenever possible he would be visited by jedi masters (and masters ONLY. they're not dumb)

maul gets his own quarters, which are big enough not to be stifling or tiny but small enough to still fit in a jedi temple where they value austerity and forsaking possessions. they would want to give maul as much freedom as possible while making sure he couldn't be a threat to anyone around him, which would mean he doesn't have much freedom at all. he's fed and watered and visited by at least one jedi master a day. these visits are usually someone meditating and trying to rehabilitate maul's mind while not being openly invading, rather guiding maul's broken mind into its natural state and removing palpatine's influence. these visits are also good old fashioned therapy (maul desperately needs to talk some shit out)

it would take a very very very long time but with guided meditation and constant consistent kindness and understanding shown to him by the jedi maul would start to heal. one of the major things that palpatine forcibly shoved into his brain is a distrust and particular hatred for the jedi, but after spending so many years in their care and with constant (almost annoying) understanding that belief system would start to break down.

it would start small. like one day maybe instead of feeling rage and anger around savage's death he feels sadness because for the first time he's in an environment where he has the space to breathe and remember his brother

I think once maul has actually started to improve a little bit and moved past his rage and murder phase that's when obi-wan would visit him. which would definitely bring back some rage and murder but also it would bring maul some closure. I'd imagine they'd both need some sort of closure, considering maul killed qui gon and obi-wan essentially killed him. but obi-wan saying something like "I forgive you. I'm not your enemy." that might throw a wrench into maul's thinking

so over time, maul is becoming less and less emotionally tumultuous. he's in a stable environment in which a set group of people visit him daily solely for the purpose of rehabilitating him, both through the force and just regular conversation as equals. eventually, after enough time in this environment, whoever maul is beneath the rage and pain and the dark side would emerge

this is the side of maul that I wrote this for. this is why he's one of my favorites.

maul is deeply intelligent, and rather calculating. while he usually forgoes rational thought to scream "kenOBIIIIIII" into the night he's very good at assessing a situation and how to get the best possible outcome. he feels things very deeply but he's incredibly bad at naming exactly what his feelings are and he's not very good at reading the emotions of others. I think a flaw of his is that he really forgets to take emotions into account, while for the jedi that's kind of their whole thing. (yeah the jedi are stereotyped as unfeeling warriors but that's not true at all, they acknowledge and release their feelings into the force. for them their feelings are the force.)

I think one day when maul is beyond resisting his existence at the jedi temple, when he slowly realizes "hey my life sucks a whole lot less than before" he manages to actually solve a problem for one of the masters who visits him regularly and has become the closest thing he can really have to a friend. said master (maybe kit fisto just because I like kit fisto) rants about a problem or a mission that they're having and maul just goes "well it's obvious, really." and manages to solve the problem like that by nature of his unique perspective.

and after a looong amount of time has passed, maul's role shifts from enemy, victim, and a patient to being a voice of rationality, a problem-solver, and someone to rant to when the whole jedi master thing gets to be A Lot™

seriously though I cannot stress how long it would take for maul to heal and get to this point. MINIMUM five years.

eventually maul and some people he's forged friendships with petition the council to allow him to have some more freedom. while extremely hesitant, without palps clouding their vision they could much more clearly see maul's mental state and what sort of danger he would pose to the jedi, and they would let him move freely about the temple

okay here's my favorite part of this whole thing. maul is a fucking nerd. he discovers the jedi library and goes insane. maul would read so many books about so many different things because he's interested in everything and he'd want to build his knowledge in a myriad of subjects. he would spend hours upon hours in the jedi library just reading every single thing in there. he'd beg one of the masters to let him access the "forbidden knowledge" just because it's knowledge and he wants it. and if that didn't work he'd find a way to break in (the forbidden knowledge did not disappoint).

I also think maul would love to spar with lightsabers and stuff. he'd know techniques the jedi wouldn't, and so in friendly spars with people he'd managed to befriend, he'd actually give them a fight and teach them something, while also learning new techniques from the jedi

I think maul would consider becoming a jedi for a brief second. he's happier here than he's probably ever been, finally free from palpatine's influence and in a healthy environment. but he knows it's not his path.

after spending a long time living at the jedi temple, having carved out something of a life for himself, made friends for the first time in his life, having finally achieved emotional stability, he approaches the order on his own. they expect, after having been long used to his presence, for him to ask to be a jedi. but he comes with an unexpected proposal.

maul asks to leave the jedi temple to go home to dathomir, to see what had become of his family and of the nightbrothers. he's much much more stable than he was, but he still has burning questions that palpatine would never have let him find the answers to. and he genuinely does want to get there, eventually. but he also wants to learn more about the force that the jedi wouldn't teach him, to learn more about the sith.

his departure is surprisingly more emotional than he was expecting. the jedi temple was the first place he'd ever actually felt safe, that he'd been allowed to just exist. he would miss it.

armed with all the knowledge in the jedi temple, he searches for knowledge the jedi wouldn't have access to. he finds the remains of mortis, and researches the mortis gods. he spends a period of time wandering around like batman crushing the people he doesn't particularly like (usually people objectively morally horrible. he spent years with the jedi he has ✨morals✨ now). he even made his way to ilum, and found two crystals to forge a new double-bladed lightsaber. (the blades are yellow.)

maul would also study ancient sith texts, and spend a lot of time investigating old sith temples (like the one on malachor). however, he doesn't have the same burning desire to seize the power for himself anymore. it's an odd feeling.

eventually he does return home to dathomir to find the genocide of the nightsisters (with only one nightsister, merrin, remaining) and the nightbrothers in disarray after the loss of the dictatorial government they'd lived under for generations. maul ends up taking over a la mandalore (but with a lot less murder and awfulness. ✨morals✨)

what I'd love to see is maul founding an opposite sort of order to the jedi. not necessarily the sith, since the sith treated him horribly and destroyed his entire life, but i think maul would believe that for the force to truly be in balance, you couldn't try to eradicate an entire half of it from the galaxy. I would love to see maul found an order of dark side force users that teaches about how to use the dark side, how to avoid total corruption, and the correct channels for the power you control.

maul would be a very effective teacher in the dark side because of how much experience he has with it. he experienced the absolute worst of the dark side, the total corruption and loss of self, but he also used the dark side to save the nightbrothers from destroying themselves after the loss of the nightsisters and used his power to keep them together and safe (not to mention the period of time with Batman Maul where he used the dark side to help people).

also I would love to see the new generation of jedi and the new generation of dark side users not to be in opposition for once. by nature of maul being rehabilitated by the jedi, he would teach about them and their teachings with a modicum of respect, and the two orders would be seen as two sides of the same coin. twins, almost.

maul would not be a child snatcher, he was child snatched. the dark side is different from the light in that its always there. it comes much more naturally to force users, and unlike the jedi, it wouldn't require you to join from a ridiculously young age. his order is always known and always open to any force user who wishes to learn about the force.

maul's life comes to an end peacefully, at his home on dathomir, having built a new society for the nightbrothers and a new order for users of the dark side.

#word count: 1.9k #holy wow i did not know i had that many words in me about maul #here's my good things for maul au #in which order 66 did not happen #maul #revenge of the sith #the prequels #the clone wars #star wars #darth maul #jedi #sith #meta #ryn dot text #good things for maul au #ryn dot fic

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writingblock101 · 4 years

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White Flag (Jason Todd x Reader)

I’ve never written for DC before, but I’m a big fan of the Robins, especially Red Hood and Nightwing. This is long, so I broke it into two parts. The title comes from White Flag by Bishop Briggs. Rough sex is cool and all but you know what else is cool? Laughing during sex. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

Summary: One night, while staking out the Joker who’s making moves in Gotham, you get captured.

Word count: 5,000

Warnings: Unprotected sex, violence

There are defining moments in one’s life: falling in love, getting married, graduating from college, having a child, but unfortunately, they aren’t always happy memories. You experienced your first defining moment when your brother was murdered.

Gotham was an infamously dangerous city, crawling with thugs, thieves, and criminals. Murders, rapes, and bombings were a common staple on the news, but despite the well-known danger, no one ever expects them or a loved one to be the next victim.

As you stood over the grave of your beloved older brother, your parents made plans to leave this forsaken, wretched city, but you knew you couldn’t leave. This city owned a piece of your soul and buried it six feet underground in a coffin. You stared at your brother's headstone and made a silent promise: You would do everything in your power to prevent this tragedy from happening to anyone else.

Your parents left years ago, but you stayed and finished your college degree. In the wake of your brother’s death and your parents' departure, you withdrew from everyone. Your world paused, stuck in one spot while the rest of the world, the real world, continued to move. Your friends graduated, your parents left Gotham, and your brother’s body decomposed in a pine box six feet under, leaving you as an empty husk of a person.

Then you discovered your powers.

Ironically, in one of your lowest moments, you discovered your ability to emit a blinding light from your whole body. The initial discovery was an accident that left you temporarily blind for two days, but then you learned control and slowly began to crawl your way out of the six-foot hole you dug yourself into.

You took fighting classes, graduated from college, and bought a gun. You had watched your life pass by for two years where you played an inactive role and passively watched murders, robberies, and rapes continue to plague the news, but now, you had a promise to keep.

The Lightning Strike was born.

Although the Lightning Strike filled your life with new purpose, it didn’t chase away your demons, but things got better after you met Jason.

You’d just finished loading your car with groceries and was going to return your cart when a thug snuck up behind you and held a knife to your throat.

“Give me your money, lady!” The man demanded.

You sighed with an eye roll but raised your hands in surrender. I should’ve just waited to go grocery shopping until the morning.

You grabbed his wrist, yanking the knife down and away from your throat, then stepped backwards and flung the thug over your shoulder. He slammed against the ground with a grunt then you pulled out your handgun, pointing it in the man’s face. His eyes widened at the sight of the gun and he froze in place.

“Fuck off,” You growled.

The thug nodded frantically and stumbled to his feet then sprinted away in the opposite direction.

“Well,” A voice interrupted. “I was going to offer to help, but you don’t seem like the damsel in distress type.”

You turned to see a handsome man smirking at you with dark hair, deep blue eyes, and tall broad shoulders wearing a worn leather jacket. You chuckled, clicking the safety on your gun.

“I always hated those stories as a kid, besides, there’s no such thing as damsels in distress in Gotham, only dead bodies.”

The man raised his eyebrows.

“You’re not wrong. It’s always nice to see when someone fights back.”

“I can’t let Batman have all the fun.”

He chuckled.

“That would certainly be a crime. I would hate for that Glock to get dusty.”

You raised your eyebrows, impressed.

“You a gun guy?”

He shrugs.

“I know my way around. What’s a pretty girl like you doing out late in Gotham?”

You glanced over at the grocery store with a smirk.

“Oh you know, doing what anybody else would be doing at a grocery store… Hunting for elephants.”

The man laughed with a shake of his head.

“I guess I set myself up for that one, didn’t I?”

You shrugged with a smile.

“A little bit, but you’re cute enough that I can let it slide.”

His eyebrows shot up at the compliment and another confident smirk crosses his face.

“Yeah? Well, I am cute enough to get your number?”

“I don’t know, I don’t usually give my number to random strangers in grocery store parking lots,” You trailed off with a coy smile.

“Stranger danger,” He agreed then held out his hand. “My name is Jason.”

“I’m Y/N,” You introduced, shaking his hand.

“Well, Y/N, now that we aren’t strangers, how about that number?”

You tossed your head back laughing, a blush crossing your face.

“Sure, Jason.”

Giving Jason your number was one of the best decisions you ever made. While your relationship isn’t perfect, you make it work. Jason helped you reform who you once were and you taught Jason he is worthy of love. It seemed almost like fate when you two discovered both of your shared “hobby”.

For a long time, you did the vigilante thing by yourself, then a close friend, Mia offered to join the operation as a second set of eyes from behind a computer screen. While the addition of Mia was nice, having Red Hood as an extra layer of protection set your mind at ease. Despite handling crime in Gotham with different methods, the other is always there to help in a pinch.

. . .

You wake up on Jason’s chest, morning light filtering through your curtains. You lift your head to check the time (9:45 am), then sighed and lay back on Jason’s chest. He shifts, his arm curling tighter around your back. Your thoughts drift to your mental list of errands to complete before either of you patrol tonight.

We definitely need more groceries, I’ve got to drop my mom’s birthday present off at the post office, and I need to pick up my dress and Jason’s suit from the dry cleaners… Maybe Jason can do that and drop the package off for me then I’ll get groceries. Ugh, our apartment is a wreck, we need to clean.

Jason’s arm flexes, pulling you closer to him as he takes a deep breath then opens his eyes with a groan. He looks down to see you lying awake on his chest and presses a kiss to your forehead.

“Good morning,” You smile, tracing your fingers across Jason’s autopsy scar.

“Good morning,” He whispers back in his hoarse morning voice.

Jason catches your hand tracing across his scar and presses a kiss to the back of it.

“How long have you been up?” He asks, linking your fingers together and running his other hand up your spine.

“Not long, I was just thinking about what we need to do before going on patrol tonight.”

He hums in acknowledgment, trailing his hand under your shirt and kissing the top of your head. He tilts your chin up and kisses you softly.

“Is that my shirt?” Jason asks.

“Maybe,” You tease.

“Hm, looks good on you,” He whispers, and leans in for a long kiss.

You kiss back then Jason releases your hand to run his calloused hands up your thighs, pulling your body flush against his. You run your hands down his chest, your thumbs pressing into his pecks then one hand slides down his body and begins rubbing his morning wood, trapped in his boxers.

Jason groans into your mouth, his grip on your thighs tightening and his hips pressing into your hand. You smirk through the kiss then feels Jason’s tongue running along your lower lip. You open your mouth, deepening the kiss then Jason pulls you on top of him, your legs straddling his waist. His hands slip under your shirt, following the curves of your sides before finding your breasts and gently kneading them.

You pull your head back, your eyes closing with bliss and a soft sigh falls from your lips as Jason continues to rub your breasts, his fingers playing with your nipples. He uses one hand to guide your neck to his mouth and begins sucking a hickey on your soft skin. You sigh again, tangling your fingers into Jason’s thick hair and grinding your hips down on Jason.

He smirks against your neck, and slides his hands down to your hips, guiding your thrusts, breathy sighs falling from both your lips. You push back against him hard, the head of Jason’s dick brushing against your clit through the fabric of his boxers.

You sit up, bracing your hands on his chest and press against Jason harder. He groans, running his hands up your muscular thighs.

“You’re beautiful, you know that?” He asks.

You smile with a light blush, continuing to push down on Jason. Jason drags your hips against him, adding his own thrusts. One particularly hard thrust causes your body to jolt and you let out a breathy moan.

“Oh, Jay,” You breathe out.

He grins in satisfaction, pulling you down for a kiss.

“Absolutely gorgeous,” He mutters against your lips.

You giggle, kissing him deeply.

“Thank you, handsome.”

Jason’s eyebrows rise as a cocky smirk graces his features and you sit up again, continuing to roll your hips.

“Handsome, huh?” He asks, driving another hard thrust against you that causes both of your breaths to catch in your throats.

“You-you heard me,” You sigh, your voice stuttering.

“I don’t know about all that,” Jason trails off.

“Well, I do” You hum, laying on top of him and pressing kisses down Jason’s jawline. “I think you’re gorgeous,” You press a kiss to a scar on his eyebrow, staring into his pretty dark blue eyes.

“Thank you,” He whispers back, kissing you on the nose. “Let me up.”

You roll off him for a moment, allowing Jason to sit up with his back against the headboard and push the covers down to his knees, revealing his boxers before pulling you back onto his lap. You cradle his face then presses a long kiss against his lips. Jason’s hands slip under your shirt again, stroking your sides and breasts then drags a hand down your body, his fingers finding your clit.

You gasp into his mouth, bracing your hands on his shoulders and grinding against his hand as he rubbed small circles against the sensitive nub. Your hips twitch, pressing down hard against Jason who presses against you equally as hard.

“Fuck, Jay,” You moan, tossing your head back.

Jason takes the opportunity to suck another hickey onto your neck continuing to rub your clit then his hand slides down to your entrance, pushing a finger into you. He strokes your walls, just barely swirling his finger around.

“Mm, so wet, who got you like that, baby?” Jason asks into your neck.

“Some guy,” You smirk, sitting back to look Jason in the eye. “Really sexy.”

“Really?” Jason hums then leans in and drags his teeth down your earlobe. “Tell me about him,” He whispers then sits back with a cocky smirk.

“He’s got a jaw that could cut glass,” You run your finger down Jason’s sharp jaw. “And the body of a Greek god,” You press your hands against Jason’s chest. “The dark, brooding type, you know?”

Jason chuckles kissing you.

“You’re a dork,” He grins.

“And you’re my angsty teenager,” You boop him on the nose. “Did I mention he’s got a stubborn streak a mile--” Jason crooks his finger inside you, rubbing your G-Spot causing you to choke on your words and gasp loudly.

“What was that, princess?” Jason asks, kissing your jaw and adding another finger.

You moan, digging your nails into his shoulders.

“You seem to have choked on your words there,” He murmurs, speeding up his fingers.

You moan again, your eyes squeezing shut before Jason slows his fingers and pulls out.

“You’re an ass,” You breath, resting your forehead against his.

“And your ass,” Jason slides his hands to the back of your thighs to squeeze your ass. “Is spectacular.”

You grin.

“Must be all the jumping off buildings,” Your hands find Jason’s muscular thighs. “It’s probably where you got these bad boys.”

Jason chuckles.

“You know, I never expected you to have a thing for my thighs,” He admits.

“With thighs like these,” You squeeze his legs. “It’s hard not too.”

Jason grins then kisses you again.

“Sit up, baby,” He murmurs against your lips, helping pull you to your knees.

You comply, sitting up on your knees long enough for Jason to pull his boxers off, freeing his erection. He squeezes your thighs again and gives you a long kiss as he guides you down. You slowly sink down him, both of you gasping once you reach the base.

“Shit, baby,” He moans. “You feel amazing.”

You pant for a moment then Jason pushes up into you, causing your eyes to fly open and dig your nails into Jason’s shoulders. Your mouth falls open as Jason does it again, staring you in the eye, the eye contact turning you on more.

You push down on him, smirking when Jason’s mouth falls open, cursing quietly. He presses a searing kiss to your lips as he thrust into you again, you pushing down equally as hard.

“Fuck, Y/N,” He groans, bitting your shoulder.

You let out your own moan, bracing your hands on Jason’s shoulders and slowly bouncing. He pushes into you, the two of you working in slow tandem. One of Jason’s hands trails down your stomach, finding your clit again and rubbing slow circles on it. You curse, grinding down harder against Jason. Your hips jolt with each circle and your forehead rests against his shoulder as you continue grinding down against Jason.

“God, baby, you feel so fucking good, so tight.”

You lean back again, your movements getting shorter. Jason speeds up his fingers and thrust into you harder, knowing you’re getting close.

“Ah, fuck, Jason,” You moan, your hips moving in their own accord.

Then you pause, your nose itching. You stop, sinking all the way down on Jason again and pushes his hand away from your clit. Jason frowns.

“You okay?” He asks, running his hands up your sides.

You frown, your nose twitching and eyebrows furrowing.

“This is going to be an interesting sensation,” You comment, feeling your face scrunching up.

“What?” Jason asks then you sneeze into your elbow, causing your whole body to clench around Jason. “Holy shit!” He curses, digging his fingers into your sides.

He pants for a moment, leaning his forehead to rest against your shoulder, his fingers still digging into your skin.

“Sorry,” You giggle, running your fingers through Jason’s hair.

He takes another breath, loosening his grip on you then chuckles and leans against the headboard.

“Bless you, I guess.”

You giggle.

“Gotta say, that was a first,” You chuckle.

“Me too,” Jason agrees. “Holy shit. I almost busted my load. How lame would that have been?”

You grin, biting your lip.

“You’re sexy enough that I think I could let it slide.”

“Good to know my looks are good for something,” He rolls his eyes with a smile.

You grin.

“How’s that for keeping things interesting in the bedroom?”

Jason throws his head back laughing, smacking a hand against his forehead. He straightens up, still grinning.

“I don’t think there is anyone I could enjoy sex with more.”

You lean in and kiss him, long and sensually. Jason slides his tongue into your mouth again, pulling your hips forward. You moan into his mouth, rolling your hips again. His fingers found your clit, rubbing it again and the two of you found your rhythm one more.

Your kisses morphed into bumping teeth as you both grinned through your kisses then Jason catches your bottom lip, tugging on it playfully. He pulls your thighs up and thrusts into you at a new angle, brushing against you G-Spot causing your breath to hitch.

“Fuck, right there,” You breath, digging your nails into the back of his neck.

Jason complies, moving his lips to your neck, and thrusting at the same angle. You push down, feeling Jason’s fingers move faster on your clit as your organsm rapidly builds.

“I’m close,” You say, gasping again.

“Me too,” Jason groans against your neck.

He pulls back from your neck and pulls you in for a long kiss. Your hips stutter and your back arches, pressing your chest to chest with Jason as his thrusts become sloppier. You gasp into Jason’s mouth then moan as you cum, your forehead against his.

“Ah fuck, Jason,” You curl your fingers into Jason’s hair.

He bites down on your shoulder and thrusts hard into you before cumming as well. He presses a weak kiss to your lips to which you reciprocate with an equally blissed-out kiss. Jason pulls away from you, leaning his head back against the headboard as he pants, coming down from his organsm. You, also breathing heavily, lean forward and rest your head against Jason’s chest. He wraps his arms around you and presses a kiss to your forehead before barely lifting you to let his rapidly softening dick slip out of you.

You two lay against each other, Jason running his fingers through your hair while you trace Jason’s autopsy scar. He leans down and kisses you, then reaches for the covers, and pulls it over the two of you. You shift your legs to drape over one side of Jason’s legs, one of his hands resting on your thigh, the other wrapped around your back. He rests his chin on your head, occasionally pressing kisses to the top of your head.

“I need to go grocery shopping,” You say. “Can you pick up our dry cleaning?”

“Yeah,” Jason’s chest vibrates as he talks. “What about that present for your mom?”

“Do you mind dropping that off at the post office for me?”

“Does it have the address on it?”

“Yeah, it’s good to go.”

“Then consider it done,” He turns to his cheek on top of your head. “You patrolling tonight?”

“Mhm,” You hum.

“You still watching the Joker?”

“Mhm,” You say again and feel Jason’s jaw tighten.

You turn so your straddling Jason again and look him in the eye as his hands find your hips.

“I’m not going after him tonight, just gathering intel,” You clarify.

“Why bother? Let’s just take him down.”

“I’m waiting to see if he’s working with anyone else.”

“He doesn’t usually play well with others.”

“Yeah, but since getting out, he hasn’t been making any noise which is weird because he always wants to make sure we’re the first to know he’s running around again. I’m making sure I’m not about to go in unprepared.”

“Why don’t I go with you? Just in case.”

“There’s no need,” You reassure him, running your fingers through his hair. “You’d just be wasting your time.”

“I wouldn’t be wasting my time if it meant I knew you were safe,” He tightens his grip on your hips.

“I’m not going after Joker tonight,” You slide your hands down to settle on Jason’s waist.

“Not until I’m there with you,” Jason stares you down. “I’m serious, Y/N.”

“I won’t,” You promise, brushing his hair out of his face.

“Good, because I don’t know what I would do if something happened to you,” He pulls you into a tight hug, kissing the top of your head.

“I’m going to be okay, Jay,” You tell him, kissing his ear. “I’m going to be careful, just like I always am,” You sit back, cradling his face. “Okay?”

His hands come up, holding your wrists, and staring at you for a long moment. He finally sighs, giving in.

“Okay. But if anything starts to go even slightly off-plan, you call me.”

“I promise I will call you.”

Despite your promise, Jason still looks unsure, but you know he will never be fully on board with your plan. It’s the Joker, he’s always extra cautious when it comes to that deranged clown. You lean in and kiss him sweetly.

“I love you,” You smile.

“I love you too,” Jason smiles back, giving you another kiss.

“Come on, let’s go take a shower,” You say, swinging off Jason’s lap.

He tosses his legs over the bed as you stand up then smacks your ass as you walk by. You jump then roll your eyes.

“Come on horndog, we got shit to do,” You call over your shoulder.

. . .

After stopping a few muggings, car robberies, and preventing the rape of an extremely grateful teenage boy, you make your way to Joker’s warehouse. Once arriving at the warehouse, you scale the building to reach the long row of windows that run along the perimeter of the warehouse.

“M, you copy?” You double-check your comms.

“Loud and clear,” Mia responds. “Any movement?”

“Nothing I can see yet.”

Despite the lights being on, there appears to be no one inside, then the west side doors burst open and the Joker skips in, followed by two armed men dragging someone between them.

“Shit,” You curse. “He’s got a hostage.”

They drag the rather small hostage further into the room, but your breath catches in your throat once catching sight of the hostage’s face.

“Fuck! It’s a kid!”

“What?!”

The little girl the two men are dragging can’t be any older than five. They toss her on a chair positioned in the middle of the room and tie off her hands and ankles, her head slumping forward. One of the men says something to the Joker that you don’t catch, but it causes the Joker to clap his hands together with delight and leave the room.

“M, find me a way in,” You order, climbing to the roof.

“Don’t you think you should call Red—”

“I’m not going after Joker, I’m just grabbing the kid.”

“But the Joker is in there! You know what he’ll do to you!”

“Yeah, and I know what he’ll do to that kid the longer we argue!”

“I don’t want you to get killed!”

“I can handle myself!” You argue. “Geeze, you’re worse than Jason!”

Mia sighs but you hear her typing in the background.

“On the right corner of the roof, there’s a row of grates. The third one is the ventilation shaft that’ll take you directly to the room she’s in.”

“Got it,” You confirm.

“Be careful.”

You jog over to the grates then lift the covering off the ventilation shaft before carefully lowering yourself down.

At first, it’s a tight squeeze and awkward angle, but you manage to maneuver yourself into a crawling position and follow Mia’s directions to the main space of the warehouse. A few turns later and you are staring down at the top of the little girl’s head through another grate. The two armed men that brought the little girl in stand nearby on guard.

You lift the grate off the opening as quietly as possible then set it aside and reach for your gun in your thigh holster. You dig into one of your jacket pockets and pull out a silencer. The silencer won’t completely quiet the gun, but it’ll hopefully quiet it down enough to not alert the Joker.

Once screwing the silencer on, you quickly shoot both men then gracefully swing down so you are dangling from the edge of the vent. You swing your legs then release and catch one of the iron support beams along the ceiling. You then fire your grappling hook and swing to the floor.

You rush to the little girl, squatting in front of her and cradling her face.

“Are you hurt?” You ask, but the little girl doesn’t lookup.

You frown, figuring she may be in shock, then use your other hand to lift the little girl’s head to check for injuries but your eyes widen at the maniacal grin on her face.

“Joker Toxin!” Mia yells in your ear.

“Shit!” You curse, as the little girl starts giggling and slowly stands up, seeming to have never been tied to the chair.

You jump to your feet and yanked your Joker Toxin antidote out of your jacket. Once you started staking out the Joker, you were sure to stock up on the antidote, knowing it’s one of his deadliest weapons, but any plans to injected the little girl go flying out the door when she pulls her hands out from behind her back to reveal a large revolver and pulls the trigger.

“Oh fuck!” You curse, diving out of the way of the shot.

The little girl shoots again, but you dodge it again, your mind racing about how to disarm the little girl without hurting her. She tries to shoot again, but luckily for you, the little girl isn’t a good shot and misses, probably because she’s five.

“This is so fucked up,” You mutter to yourself as you dodge another shot then rush forward and yanked the girl’s arm holding the gun into the air.

She fires another shot at the ceiling, but you snatch the gun from her before she can shoot again. Now unarmed, the little girl giggles wildly then bites your arm.

“Ow!” You yell, not used to your opponents trying to bite you.

You nearly smack the girl but remember she’s five and instead yank your arm out from the little girl’s mouth and inject her with the antidote. The girl stumbles away for a moment, becoming disoriented from the antidote then a shot rings out, hitting the girl in the stomach.

“No!” You yell, grabbing your own gun from its holster and shooting the armed man who just entered the room, but another man appears behind him and shoots, this time hitting the little girl in the head.

The little girl hits the ground, blood leaking from her head as more men wearing tactical helmets flooding the room. You shoot one of them with your gun then try to fire the revolver, but it seems to be out of bullets, so you instead pistol whips the next closest man and toss the gun to the ground. You take a running jump and kick two men simultaneously in midair then emit a blinding light, attempting to blind the men, but their helmets seem to protect their eyes.

You growl to yourself, shooting two men. One tries to tackle you, but you flip him over your shoulder and shoot him in the arm. Another tries running toward you but you jump up and drive a powerful kick to his collarbone, sending the man to the ground.

“M!” You yell. “Find me a way out!”

You throw four explosives that stick to four of the men then it blows up, taking out a few surrounding men with them. One man throws a strange gadget at you. You raise an arm to shield your face, but the gadget buzzes and pops then falls to the ground before hitting you. You lower your arm, confused by the gadget but then the comm in your ear starts to sizzle and pop. You yank it out of your ear and throw it to the ground, watching as it self destructs.

“Son of a bitch,” You curse, searching for an exit yourself.

You spot a door that none of the men seem to be entering through on the opposite side of the room, of course. You roundhouse kick a man in the face then pull out your grappling hook, but before you can fire it, someone shoots your hand.

You drop the hook in pain and use your other hand to shoot the man that shot you. You holster your handgun then fire your grappling hook with your opposite hand and swing to the other side of the room. Before you can open the door, it flies open, revealing two gigantic men.

You grit your teeth and spring up to jump over the men but one of the men moves faster and catches you midair, holding you up by your neck then slams you into the wall. You claw his hand with your nails and kick your feet out, attempting to kick the man, but he’s too big. He tightens his grip on your neck, cutting off your airway. You cough but manage to get both your legs around his arm. Before you can finish the move, the other man slammed his elbow down on your knee.

You cry out, hearing a loud snap then the man slams you into the floor and pins your arms down under his heavy boots before you can grab your gun and begins repeatedly punching you in the face. Your head slammed against the floor repeatedly with more force each time then you hear a loud crack along with an explosion of pain along your nose after a particularly hard hit. You struggle under the man, attempting to free your arms, but he presses down harder, grinding your elbows into the floor.

You emit another light, blinding the man, then bring your legs up to your chest and kick the man as hard as you can. He goes flying backward and you stumble to your feet, your head now ringing, your version blurry, and your knee throbbing. The other huge man dives at you but you easily duck under him, but you don’t duck in time for another person to tackle you to the ground.

You try to free yourself again then your eyes widen when you look up to see the Joker had you pinned to the ground, holding a crowbar and grinning maniacally. He lifts the bar and you try to duck out of the way, but you’re pinned and the bar comes slamming down on your face. Your vision blurs again, your face burning, but the Joker swings again. You feel skin tear off your cheekbone, everything getting darker. It only takes one more hit for your world to go black.

We love a good cliff hanger, hope you enjoyed! I apologize for any grammtical errors, I originally wrote this with an OC but I think I changed everything.

Part 2 will be posted tomorrow! Let me know if you would like to be tagged!

Part 2

#Jason Todd #Red Hood #Jason Todd x Reader #Red Hood x Reader #Jason Todd imagine #Red Hood imagine #jason todd headcanon #red hood headcanons #DC #DC comics #Batman #Batfam #Joker #Smut #fluffy smut #nightwing #don't worry he'll be here soon #dick grayson

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tired-college-student-writing · 5 years

Text

Tim’s Secret Weapon Pt. 4

I’ve been slightly obsessed with @ozmav ‘s Damian Wayne/Marinette Dupain-Cheng pairing as of late, and just saw a post that has inspired me more than anything else has in months, so I felt the need to write it

Summary- Tim has always seen the numbers floating above people’s heads, been able to perceive their threat levels with a single glance. After being a hero for so long he thought he was desensitized to seeing high numbers above people’s heads until Damian brings a new friend home.

Part 1

Part 3

Part 4 (HERE)

Part 5

_______________________________________________________________________

“Yup!” Jason popped the ‘p’ before holding up the book Tim had given him, “Who’s ready for storytime?”

“What do you mean Tim is afraid I would throw him out?” Bruce pushed even as Jason led them towards one of the desks, “I want to help him with-”

“Yeah I’m gonna stop you there,” Jason cut him off, eyes hard as he set the book down with an uncharacteristic amount of care,“Tim was very offended by what we thought was going on with him and it just made him more sure that all of us were going to leave him behind as his shitty parents did. So let’s just cut to the chase and cool off before he seriously decides to run off before we can go talk to him because I’m pretty sure even after talking to him for twenty minutes, he’s still around seventy-five percent sure that’s going to be a better option than waiting around.”

Jason had never seen the energy of a room shift so fast, the anger and bloodlust that had been suffocating since Dick uncovered the file on Marinette vanished into a deep rippling uncertainty. If there was one unspoken rule of the household, it was that no previous trauma will knowingly be replicated. It’s why Jason always makes a point of leaving his guns in the cave and never points them passed Bruce unless it’s life or death. Why no one touched the trapeze unless Dick was going up with them and they always used a net, no matter how good their aerial skills were. Why no one spoke to Jason in angry or stern Arabic. No one told Damian he was overreacting, especially when it was about illness or injuries.

No one was allowed to make Tim think they were abandoning him.

Dick looked stricken at the very idea, “Jay, why is Tim so scared?”

“Short answer? Tim’s Meta.”

The whole room froze, eyes flying wide, making Jason chuckle, “Yeah that was my response to.”

“How long?” Bruce asked, hand gripping the back of his chair so hard, Jason wondered if he was going to break it.

“From what he said, he was born with his power, it’s always on and pretty impossible for him to block out.”

Damian’s face scrunched, “And father always made it clear that he doesn’t like Metas in Gotham.”

“Fuck,” Dick swore, turning to punch the cave wall, “How the actual shit did we miss this? We’re fucking detectives goddamn it!”

Seeing Dick lose it like that made Jason pause. It was rare to see the carefree brother truly get mad about anything, let alone for him to cuss up a storm, he always did prefer those filler cusses that make the rest of them groan.

But then again Damian looked pained and Bruce was sinking into the Bat-computer chair looking lost as he ran a hand through his hair.

“I never meant it like this,” Bruce whispered, “I just didn’t want anyone else coming to Gotham expecting to be able to fix it overnight. Did I really come off anti-meta?”

“I…” Jason winced, stopping to think, “I never thought so, but I can see how Tim thought you might be. We all need to talk to him, but I promised I’d explain some of this shit like Tim did to me, and look through his book so that we don’t all bombard him with questions.”

The four shared a look before they all surrounded the table as Jason began. He told them of the numbers, the skill Tim had that he never shared. After they opened the book they found that it was more complex than just that.

The entries started off very rudimentary, clearly written by a small child, the dates claiming that Tim began this journal when he was merely six years old. They detailed the color, font, and number of the person he had met. A few of the higher ranks having little ideas next to them on the cause, but as the list grew and the handwriting even outed, there were itemized lists on the reason for each number above a 5.

By the time they reached Bruce’s they were pretty dumbfounded as they read through Tim’s confusion and fear at the number that broke the code he’d knew through his whole life, his reason section was filled with sentences of ideas, instead of the short bullet points, trying to ration it out.

The most confusing part of it was he ruled things out that he couldn’t have known, insider trading and corruption would have been a logical conclusion for him to draw of the Billionaire he knew nothing about but he ruled them out instantly, not even bothering to consider they might be part of the reason.

Not to mention when he actually put it together.

“His power works on broadcasts as well?” Bruce mused, “I know I never saw he was never on the streets when I was out during this time period,”

“Adding it to the list of questions,” Dick said as he typed it out into the sheet he had made when they started asking too many questions only Tim could answer.

“Never mind that,” Damian brushed off, “Look at the traits he listed, all listed at the same time from the looks of the ink but if the date is to be believed, this is from before Todd was debuted as Robin, how did he know you had a mastery in hacking, spoke multiple languages and stunt flight?”

All of them froze at those words, hunching over it to look at the words.

There was no logical way Tim could know any of those things. Most of Batman’s skill set could be guessed through out the rumors and gossip that flew since the caped crusader started his reign of the city, but those skill sets still weren’t widely known to the public.

“I…” Bruce shook his head, “Add it to the list, we have a lot more of the book to get through to worry about this now. We should try and finish the book.

But the issue popped up again and again as the pages went on, each hero he met he knew their skills down to the littlest detail, things he shouldn’t be able to know, especially before he became the third Robin.

He knew Clark was Superman when he met the reporter first.

He knew Diane was made of clay before the woman had ever given away that little tidbit.

He knew that Barry was a wiz when it came to criminology before the speedster had ever given up his identity.

He knew Arthur had low-level empathic abilities that went beyond sea life before Arthur was even considered a hero.

They were only two-third of the way through the book, arguing over how The Commissioner could possibly know their identities, let alone why it would make his number rise so quickly when not even Bruce’s number had done so when he learned the other League member’s identities, when a stern voice cut through their thought.

“Gentlemen, There’s a bit of a situation that Master Tim and I discovered that could use your attention.” Alfred cut in, making them turn, stopping when they saw Tim practically sprint to the Bat computer, pointily looking at the wall to avoid looking at them, his shoulders so tight they shock.

“Tim?” Dick asked, concern dripping from his words as he started towards the younger man only to freeze as Tim visually flinched away from the word, curling inward as he frantically typed away on the keyboard.

Before any of them tried to break the silence again the giant screen lit up to show a battle play out. A young girl dressed in a red and polka-dotted outfit flipping and twisting out of the way of the pages thrown like ninja stars at her, a yoyo used to propel her, eyes filled with laughter behind her mask. Her moves were agile and practiced, as another figure, a boy her same age dressed in skin-tight black leather entered the frame.

“I figured out why Marinette is a 15,” He finally managed out, making the bats’, minus Jason, heads snap to him.

A 15?

The brat couldn’t just have a normal girlfriend, could he?

No, he had to have someone that shattered Tim’s power completely.

And he had no idea why, until now.

They really couldn’t blame him for being obsessive.

“I couldn’t find out why Mari was so powerful,” Tim rambled on, “But Alfred helped me realize that she’s a hero too. A hero with the power of the god of creation on her side, which makes sense for why she completely broke my, uh, my power. She’s been-”

“Tim,”

“-fighting a supervillain,” Tim just continued as if he hadn’t heard Bruce, his voice skipping up a few pitches, “ who also uses the power of a god to help him make others into villains to do his bidding. They’ve been locked in battle for years now. Years! We really should have noticed before now, but better late then never right? Heh, she has some allies though so it’s not like she was fighting on her own or anything, and-”

“Drake,” Damian cut in, ducking past Dick to grab Tim by the shoulder to spin him, staring into his eyes with the type of harsh determination only the demon spawn seemed to be able to, ignoring the quacking fear in Tim’s own eyes, “I am the byproduct of the daughter of one of Father’s greatest enemies drugging him. I was raised will one goal in mind, to be the ultimate weapon to take down all that stood in the way of the League of Assassins, and yet Father, Grayson, Todd, Pennyworth and you gave me safety and taught me why my grandfather was wrong. Todd was murdered by a clown with psychopathic tendencies, was brought back by the magic that my grandfather has a monopoly on, went crazy with Lazarth sickness and thought the best course of action was to become a crimelord in the very city he vowed to protect, going as far as trying to shoot Father, the man he saw as an older brother and you, the boy he was convinced Father had only brought into the circle to die as he had, and yet once the sickness faded Father welcomed back in with open arms, shedding tears for the child he thought he had lost. Father may have made it clear that he’s not a fan of metas operating in the city, but you’re a moron if you believe for a second that means he’s going to disown you or take Red Robin away from you. You’re also lost all my respect if you think this means I or any of the others that dawn the bat moniker are going to feel any different about you for having these powers.”

Tim’s mouth opened and closed several times after Damian’s speech had come to a close as the others waited for him to break the silence of the cave. All he could feel was his hands trembling as his eyes welled up.

Damian was still looking at him before sighing, “You really are an idiot,”

He wanted to retort, wanted to bite out a response as he blinked back the tears but he suddenly found Damian’s arms wrapped around his waist, a tight grounding embrace, the younger boy’s chin resting on his shoulder.

Tim wasn’t sure he was breathing, his whole body shaking like it was trying to shatter into a million pieces. The brat, Damian, the one person he thought would gladly cast him aside given the slightest of reason to was…

“You’re family, Tim,” Damian stern voice cut through his mental frenzy, “If I’ve learned one thing since moving to Gotham, it’s that you don’t give up on family, not for anything, and certainly not for something like this.”

Tim felt something inside him break and the next thing he knew he was sobbing into Damian’s shoulder the pair on their knees in the middle of the cave, gripping Damian back like he thought if he let go the boy would vanish. Slowly as he felt his breathing calm down and his sobs fade he could feel more arms surrounding him. The entire bat family was surrounding him, silently holding him through his breakdown.

He pulled back, scrubbing his eyes as his family slowly untangled from around him.

“I’m sorry,” He whispered, voice scratchy from the tears, “I guess I should have known none of you would hate me but… I’ve been so scared that I’d lose you guys too. I didn’t want to risk it, I couldn’t risk it.”

He flinched slightly when a large hand squeezed his shoulder looking up into Bruce’s eyes, softened by a love that could destroy the world if his child was hurt. A love that none of the Waynes needed to put words to because of looks like this.

Glancing back to his brothers he saw the love in Bruce’s eyes reflected in theirs, all of them accepting him and loving him still.

The weight Tim had carried for as long as he knew to grow lighter as a small smile worked its way onto his face.

His eyes burning with the same intense love for his family back at them.

For the first time in a long time, Tim knew without a doubt

It would be okay.

_______________________________________________________________________

Tim couldn’t stop the whimper from falling from his lips as Marinette’s class came pouring out of the doors of the school.

All of the Wayne boys had decided to surprise Marinette by showing up at her class when it let out, in addition to not wanting to wait to reveal they knew her secret. It wasn’t hard to get all of them to Paris merely days after Tim’s secret came to light, especially since Bruce was planning on checking up on the Paris branch of Wayne Enterprises the following week before everything happened. Expanding the trip last minute to include all of them had taken little effort, and all of their suits were tucked away in their hotel suites, waiting to be dawned once they got Marinette alone.

Tim was ready to turn back now though and for a very good reason.

In the normal sea of threes and fours, normally Marinette stood out with her overwhelmingly soft pink 15, but now...

The tanned girl that had hoards of kids surrounding her had an obnoxious copper 9 floating above her, the font looking like a tiger had scratched it into the very fabric of space.

A trio of students, a bulky boy, a small pink-haired girl, and a dark-skinned nerdy-looking boy, were messing around as pale numbers circled their heads, a pair of stark white 12s over the boys and an icy blue 13 over the girl.

A pair of girls, one blonde and one of Asian descent, were bickering as they made their way down the steps, a canary yellow daintily drawn 14 for the blonde and deep burgundy calligraphed 13 for the more stoic girl.

And the blonde boy Marinette was happily conversing with, looking even more softspoken and sweet than the baker girl.

He had a venomous green 15 swirling over him in it’s rounded bubble-like font.

His brothers glanced at him warily.

“Everything okay Timmy?” Jason asked, eyes flitting over the crowed on instinct, looking for the threat that spooked him.

“I’ll tell you later,” He groaned back, “... but keep an eye on the girl in the orange jacket, she feels slimy from all the way over here,”

His brothers nodded, but even so, Tim felt a migraine coming on.

For once Tim wished for an alien invasion so he didn’t have to deal with this bullshit.

_______________________________________________________________________

Taglist: @vixen-uchiha @iggy-of-fans @mewwitch @roseinbloom02 @worlds-tiniest-spook-pastry @mochinek0 @royalchaoticfangirl @09shell-sea09 @mystery-5-5 @derpingrainbow @aloha-posts-stuff @hauntedfreakdeputyhero @maribat-archive @blue-peach14 @kae690 @zazzlejazzle @vincentvangoose @be-happy-every-day-please @xxmadamjinxx @celestiacq @peculiarlylostdreamer @dani-ari @melicmusicmagic @themcclan @nyctamaximoff @nataladriana9 @drama-queen-supreme @miraculousbelladonna @urbanpineapplefarmer @graduatedmelon @lexysama @hecate-hallow @ki117h3dr4g0n @vinerlover @interobanginyourmom @bluefiredemon @imanerddealwith @tinybrie @clumsy-owl-4178 @shizukiryuu @whogavemeaninternet @schrodingers25 @lunar-wolf-warrior @urbanpineapplefarmer @xxmadamjinxx @crazylittlemunchkin @littleredrobinhoodlum

#miraculous ladybug #batman #maribat #marinette dupain cheng #Tim Drake #meta!tim #BatFam #Damian Wayne #dick grayson #Jason Todd #bruce wayne #Alfred Pennyworth #miraculous class #numbers AU #Tim is so tired

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danyka-fendyr · 4 years

Text

Still Falling (For You)

This is my first Jason Todd oneshot for Titans, and I’m really excited about it! I made a post asking if you guys would be interested in this, and it got a much bigger response than I anticipated. Luckily for everyone who said yes, I had a really good idea tonight and now I’m super inspired to write it, so here it goes. This takes place in season 2 episode 7, and I guess you can imagine it as something of a replacement for the scene between Jason and Rose. I hope you guys like it!

Taglist: @dreamwritesimagines @rhabakoli

Wordcount: 1500

Warnings: Mentions of death. Some PTSD.

He was just standing there. Staring out of the window, eyes flicking up and down, up and down, like he was watching something. Seeing something you couldn’t see. You, for your part, were also just standing there, leaning against the doorframe.

You weren’t sure if it would be better to say something or not. Was that what one did in these kinds of situations? Say something deep and insightful that made everything better? You weren’t sure you had something like that. So instead you went with what you did know.

“You’re not, you know,” you said quietly.

“What?” Jason startled, turning to look at you with wide green eyes.

“Dead and gone. The name of this song. You’re not dead and gone. I’m not sure this song is appropriate for the moment.” Your tone was light, forcing a small smile onto your face.

“You’re turned on,” he said.

You laughed a little bit. Trust Jason Todd to make a joke in his darkest moments.

“Yeah. I am feeling the full spectrum of human emotion right now.”

“Dick told me. About earlier.”

“He asked me to.”

You had originally thought of your power as something totally and completely useless. You couldn’t fly or turn into a tiger or even summon weird dark goop things to do your bidding. All you could do was turn off your emotions. Your ability to feel? Completely gone if you willed it to be. You were the opposite of an empath, able to turn it off at a moment’s notice. Dick had recognized it for it’s potential though. Being raised by the Batman had shown him what advantages apathy had, and he realized that you could be a prime strategist with your ability to turn off your feelings and be purely logical. A truly objective opinion.

“And you still decided it would be best to save me. Are you sure you turned them off?” Jason scoffed lightly.

You stepped forward, closer to where he still stood by the window. “Of course I’m sure. It’s not something you can just kind of do, Jason. Why would you ask that?”

“Is that would really be best for the team, Y/N? To save me? Because I’m not sure that’s what I think. I’m...I’m not...I’m worthless.”

You could see the tears welling up in his eyes and you wanted to reach out, take his hand, touch him. Ever since you had discovered the ability to turn off your emotions it seemed as though they meant more when they were turned on.

“You’re not, Jason. Not to me. Not to anyone on this team. We may do a crappy job of showing it, but we care about you. Every one of us.”

“Tell me that with your feelings turned off and maybe then I’ll believe you,” he spat, turning harshly away from you, eyes turning back towards the window.

You paused, the record spinning to its end. “Is that what you really want? To know what I think about you when my emotions are turned off?”

He didn’t answer, so you made your decision.

It was immediately obvious to anyone who knew you when your emotions were turned off. The cold, calculating look in your eyes. The empty tone of your voice. Your brusque, precise body language and word choice. You were a whole different person without feelings. A person who stepped in front of him now, demanding attention.

“Jason Todd. Batman’s protege. A little bit overenthusiastic sometimes. Brings light to the team. Reminds everyone to look on the bright side and to see the good in their situation. Kind. Intelligent. Excellent fighter. Valuable asset. Rose Wilson. Unknown factor. Could be a double agent. Could be genuinely in need of help and also a valuable bargaining chip. Too high of a risk factor. Too many unknowns. Do whatever it takes to bring Jason Todd home. This team needs him.”

Jason was staring at you, breathing hard, eyes wide with something you might have recognized if you could feel anything.

“Turn it back on,” he ordered.

It took a moment of concentration, an effort, but then the switch was flipped and you were back and you could see what was in his eyes now. Tears, slipping out of them, and a sort of helplessness.

“Tell me what you think. I want to know what you think of me, really.”

“No,” you said, daring a step closer. “You want to know how I feel about you. I’ll tell you. I’m happy when I’m around you, Jason Todd. You’re funny. And I was right, you really do always see the bright side of things. I swear you could turn a rainy day in Gotham into a picnic. And you’re really, really smart. Sometimes I think you’re the only person who understands what I’m saying around here, because Rachel is too young to get most of it, Gar’s lived a lot of life but not like we have, and Dick is too old and too emotionally distant himself to get it. You’re the only person who gets me in this whole place, Jason Todd. You understand me, and I like to think that I understand you too in some kind of weird way. Now can we please listen to something a little more appropriate for the fact that you are alive, and here, and I am so so so happy about that?”

He smiled at you, and if you didn’t know any better you’d say he looked a bit in awe of you.

“Yeah, whatever you want. Just don’t scratch my vinyl.”

“The day I scratch a vinyl is the day you can feed me to Slade.”

You set the vinyl playing, letting the music roll out.

Oh yeah, I’ll tell you somethin’

I think you’ll understand

When I say that somethin’

You chimed in softly, swaying to the music. “I want to hold your hand, I want to hold your hand.”

“You dance?” Jason asked.

“Yeah. Don’t you?” You smiled lightly at him.

He held out his hand, an offer for you, and you took it. You two swayed together, his head sinking down onto your shoulder and a heavy sigh rushing out of him.

“I keep seeing it,” he whispered.

You raised a hand to play with the hair at the nape of his neck, the other intertwined with his.

“I keep falling, in my head,” he choked out. “Every time I look out the window I just see it all flashing by me, and I keep thinking, ‘This is it. I’m going to die. I wonder if anyone will even miss me.’ Isn’t that messed up?”

“It’s not your fault, Jay. What happened to you is not your fault. And I would care. I would care a lot if anything happened to you. When you...when Deathstroke...well, part of the reason Dick asked me to use my powers was because I was no good to anyone like that. I was so afraid that we were going to lose you. That I was going to lose you. Maybe it’s selfish of me, but I would have traded Rose in a heartbeat if it meant seeing you again.”

Jason pulled back so he could look at you, one hand raising to your cheek to caress your face lightly.

“Really? You mean that?”

“Yeah.”

It happened very slowly, very gradually, so that you almost didn’t notice it happening. He leaned towards you, and you towards him, just like it was gravity. Like there was something pulling you towards him that you couldn’t fight, and that you didn’t want to because it felt so natural. Then his lips were on yours, moving softly against your own, and you two had stopped dancing, frozen in time.

Eventually, he pulled away so you two could breathe, but then he was back again, kissing you like he couldn’t imagine doing anything else, like this was all there was in the world. You wished it was. You could do this forever.

Except you couldn’t do this forever, and he stopped kissing you.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that, I should have asked or-”

“Don’t be sorry. I...I liked it. Maybe we could do it again some time?”

Jason smiled at you. “I’d like that.”

“I have to go train with Rachel but...see you soon?”

Gosh, you sounded like such an idiot. ‘See you soon’? Seriously?

“Yeah. See you soon.”

You turned to head out the door, but he stopped you.

“Hey Y/N, you forgot something!”

You turned half towards him again, confused, and he grabbed your hand, pulling you back for just a second so he could kiss your cheek.

“Have fun training. Tell Rachel if she pulls any of her freaky Friday stuff on you I’ll kill her.”

“I’ll let her know.”

You were beaming as you walked out the door. If this was what things were going to be like you, you would be spending so much time training even Dick would be impressed. The score? Deathstroke:0, You:1.

#titans #jason todd #curran walters #jason todd x reader #jason todd oneshot #jason todd fic #jason todd imagine #jason todd dcu #dcu #dc

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wrongwiredmind · 3 years

Text

Before I start saying anything I'd like to warn that the content of this post is both gore and contains suicidal thoughts, if any of that triggers you, please do not read, I care about whoever is reading but I can't hold any responsibility for anything that might follow, stay safe, and remember that no matter what, what comes next in your life will be better, one way or another.

This post is rather long, but that's kinda the point of this page, here we go, then.

So, I had almost my weirdest dream to date, right now, and then I thought, to heck with it!! Let's share something!

So first of all, I need to set some points straight before writing so it might explain a few things, hopefully, without giving a lot away about my personality:

(I have no idea how to put them on order, so they're pretty much a mumbo jumbo. Ah~ My favourite type of writing~. Kidding, of course, I actually prefer reading well written stories and articles)

Anyhow:. 1- I have a really deep unexplainable fear of the vast beast called an ocean (or a sea, or really anytype of deep water), I still go to the beach and pools and whatever, but there's always some sort of an icy grip tightening around my non-existent heart.

2- I love IronMan! So so much, and I kinda adopted Tony Stark!! (no one tell him, please!).

3- my adoration of a certain supernatural series made me love batman! (well, not entirely true, I always loved him, but kinda from afar, you get me?)

4- want me to get hooked on something? Give me a fanfic of it!! (of course like a series or a book, not a substance, you bad bad people!!), that's how I loved Bilbo!! (imagine me saying it in my adorable voice, the one I use when I try to sound cute 😉)

5- I binge read a certain fanfic about those two amazing superheroes saving the world, and themselves!! (I refuse to give up the name since if you think this is me oversharing? You've got another thing coming, honey!) that had a cruise and another prototype of the IronMan suit (don't ask which mark it is but it's so fast it broke the sound barrier!!)

6- I'm a little bit under the weather, (not corona, folks!) and my throat is kinda itchy, to the point that I lost all my vocal prowess for a little more than 24 hours a few days ago, still kinda annoying, and my stomach rebelled so much yesterday (before and during sleeping) that I thought she should take the rebellion symbol from Mr. Che Jivara!! (with all due respect to him, I'm only joking, so please no one takes it seriously).

7- I'm a little bit of a spacetoon (and all that's good and beautiful in our childhood) encyclopedia, want a name of a cartoon or a song you can't remember? I'm usually your best bet, after the second mother, google, of course!!

8- this week is so dead that if you want to see zombies come to our lectures any time in it, seriously we're so under a lot of exams, thank God and the doctors for postponing our tasks and assignments' due-date.

9- if I was a little more of an extrovert I might not have had to write most of these strange snippets about me in a freaking post!!!

And finally, on with the dream! (another thing you probably know by now, that I kinda take you around and under and left and right before I say what I want to say).

So, it was an assignment to some sort of subject (don't ask me which, since as far as I know, not a single thing in our curriculum will make me do what I'm about to do here, or at least, I hope so!!!), we made some type of fall-body suit that needed analysing (who am I kidding, it was the IronMan suit!!), and guess who was picked as a pilot? That's right! Yours truly!!

Anyway, good thing to bad, we had to make the prototype test in the middle of the (as I said above) the vast beast! Mr. Oceanus (I know that that is a Mr. Titan, but who am I, the lowly mortal, to deny his decision to appear in my paragraphs? And no, he didn't show up in the dream, thank God! [ours, not any of the others]),

So, I was put in the cruise, in the middle of the ocean, with the IronMan suit, and a seriously sick stomach, can you guess where we're going with this? (I'm actually kinda enjoying writing this since it reminds me of a certain mad superhero/not superhero who finally joined the XMen!, of course he joined a few years ago but I only watch the second movie circa a month ago) no? let me tell you, a bit of dizziness, seasickness, and an already rebellious stomach? Not a good combination, and remember that I really, really fear the ocean (just remembering the dream and the images in my head is traumatising, let alone living it vividly for a few hours), so, I fell, and strangely enough, I was a good swimmer (ah~ I really count my blessings here since no matter who or when someone taught me to swim, I still can't manage), I was able to stay close to the ship, but couldn't really pull myself up, so all I could do was keep a good hold on a rope tied around the ship and keep my legs in a calculated, slow what feels like a walking-in-place exercise,, (I can still feel the water around me, and the gentle waves of the ocean, it was both a calming feeling and a horrible one) and then...

Something touched the soles of my feet, and it kinda hurt, and it continued to move under me till something hit my toes, it was a shark fin, that's right, a shark choose me as his next meal, how honoured I was!!! Kidding i was kinda terrified, but all that YouTube survival videos came to mind, I left the rope of the ship and kinda dipped under water (triple scare, here, yikes!) and I... pushed.. his muzzle?

Yeah, so not really what they taught you in the videos, my polite nature rears its ugly head again (politeness is not as good as it seems, people! actually once a stray dog entered our home and jumped on the couch, and I was asking nicely and politely if "Mr. Dog would pretty please leave us be", and no, I wasn't scared but mom told me not to touch it, and it kinda was a cute, if a mangy mutt)

I didn't really want to punch the shark, even if my life kinda depended on it here, for a few reasons and actually at least one of them was pretty reasonable, which is, my punch is pretty weak, guys!!

Anyway, of course since its skin kinda scratched my feet there was blood, so it didn't leave me alone, two things I concluded here, first, Mr. Shark was either a lazy guy since he was coming to me slowly as if he either was a giant cat coming for pets no matter how many times you push her, or he was playing with his food, aka, me.

The second thing I discovered was that I was really sick in real life since my imagination couldn't conjure another family member of my guest here (again with the small mercies, can you imagine being alone around all these carnivores? And I bet not all of them will be moving so leisurely!!)

So, I finally decided to be the champ of my cruise and punch the thing in the face, so I pulled up all the power I can in my fist and punched him in his snout!!!

And let me tell you, it's not as easy is they make it sound, first, his nose is actually pretty hard, not the sensitive area they led us to believe, second, my hand really hurt and his skin scratched my knuckles, and I believe it kinda broke a bone in my hand, third, and worse, it actually enraged the mister so much that it left me, J-squared again and this time, flew! in my direction and I swear I still feel his teeth sinking in the shin of my right leg, but before he tore it apart, I actually did the right thing to defend myself, I (and I apologise, Mr. Dream shark, but you really hurt both my leg and my feelings!!) poked his eyes, which made for a very awkward stretch to my body, but finally, I was left alone!! With a mangled leg, of course, but hey!! It's not real life, so let's be glad.

The saltwater stinging my feet, still sick, and more dizzy from blood loss, you have no idea how glad was I that I was still near the ship, a little bit more than a meter but still floating, and then, the bad became worse, I actually goT SWALLOWED WHOLE BY A WHALE!!!!!!!!, YUP!! THE WHALE IN THE PICTURE!!!

And then god with his mercies again, it swallowed the ship but opened his mouth for me to leave, neat, ain't it?

But let me tell you what happened in a little more details, I felt a ripple in the water beneath and around me, and the ship started to sway, and a faint sound of something between a roar and strange song-like-sound, feeling the rumble under me was what made me look, and lo and behold!! The mighty animal wanted the meal that the shark didn't get, bye bye world!! Bye bye the suit that I still didn't to get to wear! And bye bye the report I needed to write for this freaking assignment that because of it I might fail and my friends will rail me when they see me!!

The ship and I couldn't help but enter the mouth of the humongous fish, the sounds of the wood, metal, glass and whatever is the cruise was made of was deafening, so loud and cruel, and I got a more than a few bruises and abrasions, and the feel of his teeth behind my back, sharp and huge and bigger than my own size, was something I don't know how to describe, and suddenly between all the breaking and suffocating water and absolute darkness, something caught my eyes, the slits in the helmet of the suit were lit, I'm sure it was a malfunction because of all the destruction on Mark, but it took all my fear, as if sucking it from my own eyes, and as sudden as it glowed, it vanished, but the calm remained, I closed my eyes, since it didn't matter, and just stopped everything, even trying to hold my breath, but not breathing as well, as if all body functions just... Stopped.

And then my eyes flew open again, not because I woke up, but because of an almost crushing change in the water pressure, it just pushed me forward more inside the huge mouth, and when I thought that this is it, I found the whale mouth moving further away from me, taking the ship and Mark with it, and leaving me alone, in the middle of the ocean that I wanted to say "c'mon!! If you ate me it'll be a win-win situation!!!!" but the second I opened my mouth water rushed inside that I tried swimming up to breath (even though not knowing which way is up was problematic, since something similar happened in real life before I wasn't worried, but that's a story for another time), breaking the surface was a godsend, I tell you! But my misery wasn't in any way over, I was so thirsty I actually wanted to drink salt water a again (and then death, oh wow, how smart?), and once the adrenaline deserted me, my leg returned to trying to kill me, and I don't know if it was a real thing if it happened in real life but it actually stopped bleeding, which was both fantastic, since it means that I won't die of bloodloss, and horrifying since I'm not going to die because of bloodloss, at least then I would have been able to calculate an approximate time for my death, but no, I have to wait and see what kills me next, I almost wished that I just had my previous stomachache and be done with.

Anyway, moving was not really an option, and staying was not either, and the breeze was making me so cold my teeth almost broke from all the shattering they were doing, I wasn't really sure when the others might decide to check on me, and I'm not really sure if I was still in the place they left me at, and I really didn't know what to do, I was so helpless, and cold, and thirsty, in so much pain and so so tired.

I cursed the whale again for not ending my misery, and cursed the shark for being a coward and not finishing what he started and cursing the assignment for being so impossible yet important, and most of all cursing myself, though I don't know why, but my self-loathing decided that now is the time to remember how horrible I am.

As physics does, the water raised me till I was floating on my back, which made me feel even more cold but I didn't have any energy to do anything about it, and strangely, I fell into some sort of doze, not asleep yet not really awake and aware, my whole body half above half into the water, though my right, injured leg, was bend in the knee into the water, which made my pained scream when something took hold of it in its mouth the more agonizing since it made my upper body enter the water, and the thing holding my leg left it alone, and I was able to right myself and look around me for the next threat, the fear was immense that I thought I might get a heartattack, which, admittedly would be better than the pain going to be inflicted upon me any second now, looking around finally led me to what attacked me, and for a moment, with my blurry, and fear filled eyes looked like Mr. Shark has indeed returned to finish what he started, he even returned to his play-with-my-food attitude, but when my eyes finally focused they detected differences, from the lighter shade of colors, to the more smooth curves of the fin and snout, and the gentle, warm (even if it looked sleepy) strange brown tone of the mammels eyes,

The dolphin was about two meters away, and looking at me with intense, twinkling eyes (if they were blue and he wore glasses, or at least marking that looks like it, I would have thought that the dolphin was Dumbledore' animagus and I really wouldn't have hesitated this time to punch his already crocked nose.. err.. snout [which it isn't, the dolphin's snout was perfect] with my broken hand!!) and moved slowly towards me, he pushed me gently with his nose in my abdomen, swam back a few inches, then entered the water and moved towards my leg, not touching it, but he was close enough to feel with my already almost destroyed sensitive nerves, he did all of that while I'm standing/floating, stupefied, hardly even breathing, and then he left, and pushed me again with his snout on my back, this time with more pressure that my body couldn't help but move to the dolphin's right side to let him pass, with my hand just above his back, when my hand touched his prominent back fin, he pushed my hip gently, as if telling me something, and pushed his fin into my hand again, it felt like rubber, and I couldn't help but ask "you want me to hold you?" he made a strange clicking noise then kinda slapped the water with his side fin in the other side of me, and bizarrely, his actions made me feel as if he was saying "are you stupid? Why else would I offer you my magnificent dorsal?!!" I stared, flummoxed, at the creature and couldn't help but throw my head back and laugh, I'm certain that it was the tension, fear and hysteria that made me do it, but for me, the whole situation was so hilarious that it seemed like it made Mr. Dolphin look at me and think "alright, the pathetic, hurt, star-shaped blemish is, indeed, stupid and needs help from my majesty" and then, using his right fin, slapped me non-too-gently on the side of my left hip, squeaking something as well and pushed his dorsal in my left hand again, but when he noticed my wince, he actually kinda rubbed his slippery appendage on my thigh while honest-to-god cooed at me that I couldn't help but smile at him, "it's okay, big guy, and thanks; you know, you kinda remind me of flipper!" and then I petted him a couple of times (which he purred at, I think I need a cat! 🤔🤔) then grabbed his fin in a tight but non constricting grip, my right hand was swollen by now so my only hope was to keep holding using my left hand, after shaking his body a little as if to check my hold, he dove with me into the water!! I almost screamed in fright but then he broke the surface and jumped about three meters high into the air!!!

Hello, there, adrenaline, didn't see you since a few!!

He dove again into the water and this time gradually moved towards the surface, with the water flowing into my hair and pushing me from my saviour, my left leg moved on its own violation and moved around the body as if I was riding a horse,

"WOOHOO!!", I shouted once we were in the air again, it was exhilarating; cold, but thrilling, though the warm body beneath me was perfect, he took me in a straight if slightly curvy line, and when I noticed that, I also noticed that his right fin was not moving as his left, I even thought he was injured for a second, but then a sharp sting in my leg and a slight jerk from him made me understand, my injured leg was beneath his wing-like appendage, and he was being considerate, as a solution, I flattened myself on his back, kept my left leg dangling as if in the horse saddle, my right one, as gently as possible, bend on the knee above the dolphin's back, my left hand gripping the top fin with it touching my shoulder, and my broken right hand above Mr. Flipper's cousin head, and then I came into a a sudden realization!! "does that mean I'm Lopaka????" I asked Flipper the second, and he made a sound suspiciously almost like a snort, but my change of position made him move in a much more pronounced straight line; the speed decreased as I started to doze again, as if he was worried about dislodging me, though the annoying feeling of the salt crusting on my skin woke me up, no idea how much time had past, except that the sun was on either the verge of descending or rising, and finally, finally, I saw land and buildings and what not from afar, and I certainly moved to another continent all together, let alone another country, after reaching the area where I could stand comfortably on the ground beneath the water, people started to come to see what was happening, I ignored them for the sake of my silent companion, suddenly he actually stood on his tail fin, and kinda sort of awkwardly leaned on me without trying to put too much pressure, I didn't understand what was happening though it seemed sorta like a hug?

Anyway, I pat his back again, (and again with the weird purring noise), when he released me I felt buzzing in the back pocket of my jeans, I actually still have my phone!!!

Pulling it out and snorting that after everything that happened my phone was still working!! all I could say is "well, it seems like the time of a picture, Mr. Flipper, sir!" and after an awkward kneeling so I could put my injured arm around him and trying to stretch my bloody leg (both meanings are accurate here, tbh) so it wouldn't interfere with the selfie, I positioned my left hand.

And the last thing I remember is the picture of my (Lopaka the second 😂) wide mouth grin and an equally wonderful grin from Mr. Flipper the second!!!

The End.

It really was a dream I had, with all these details, the only thing that's not entirely true about this post, is saying that this is the weirdest dream I had.

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dented-nado · 4 years

Note

You asked for fluff so maybe 39 with Bruce and Harv(ey) uwu

[[BLESS!! I hope you’ll like some fluff with a sprinkling of hurt/comfort in a post redemption!Harv(ey) AU !]]39: “I love your smile”

Both of them always thought, deep down, the day they were reunited, it would finally be easy. They wouldn’t have to keep fighting so damn hard. But after years of fighting on the streets, fighting each other, fighting Batman who had been the one person he would have done anything and everything for this whole damn time…

Relaxing, ‘finding himself… themselves…’, being around Bruce again, being ‘taken care of’… they didn’t know how to handle it.

Harv wanted to live it up, felt he deserved about 10 years of partying and drinking after going though the effort of trying not to lash out and gain power over a world that at its core had done absolutely nothing for him and only hurt him.

Harvey just wanted to feel normal again, blend into the background, reconcile with all the guilt that Harv didn’t want to think about because it was too much, and ‘haven’t you let me get hurt enough?’.

“It’s not my fault, stop telling me what you did was my fault!” Harvey would snap back.

Well… they may be released from Arkham, but that didn’t mean they didn’t still have work to do.

But being around Bruce, knowing he was Batman, discovering a whole other side to his best friend that both made sense and made him feel like he didn’t really know Bruce as well as he thought at the same time.

There were some things that were real.

Bruce still had a sweet tooth, would still get excited in his own way over Gotham’s history (and history in general). He didn’t like to drink… Harvey had always known that and found it hilarious when Bruce would pretend to be drunk at a gala and ham it up, he had always felt special for being the only one who knew Brucie Wayne didn’t down a champagne bottle before every event.

Bruce would still go quiet sometimes. He remembered, back when they were kids, in kindergarten even - where Harvey would do most of the talking, deciding he liked Bruce quite a lot, and Bruce would always hang around and listen.

But even if Bruce didn’t always say a lot, he had always been there. He’d been there when he was sick, beaten up, happy, sad, up, down, everywhere and everything in between

That being said… well…

Now neither Harvey or Harv knew what to say at least half the time, or they couldn’t come to a conclusion on what to say or how to say or how to begin to say it. That was something around the topic of Bruce they could agree on. They didn’t know how to begin to talk to him anymore. So when they had previously been the one talking the most…

It was awkward.

Not to mention, partially because of his scarring and partially because he had been… you know… a criminal - even attempting to blend in with people and live a completely, “normal” life again was going to be impossible. That time spent in law school was looking more and more pointless by the day.

Sure, he had been told plastic surgery was an option, but being under the knife was too much for *both* of them to handle. The loss of control? What if they woke up in the middle of it? What if it just botched everything up even more?

At most he considered maybe he’d get just barely enough done so that he could close his eye again, maybe not have to worry about half of his mouth and teeth exposed to the elements all the time, make it a little easier to talk… to be able to even try to fully smile again.

But they weren’t there yet, the idea of trusting anyone to knock him out and fuck with his face was just too much. Not to mention he hated when the option was brought up as some sort of a magical solution that would just make everything better. There was an underlying attitude of “if you just looked better, people will just forget what you’ve done, any mental illness? Poof! Gone!”. Harvey hated it, and Harv resented all the times he had been treated like a disease that had to be wiped away because he happened to have all the anger, the sadness, pain, all dumped on him so Harvey could go on pretending he was perfect, that everything was fine. That was why he lost it and lashed out in the first place. All the repressed rage flowing out in the most explosive and destructive way possible.

Except now they realized they had both been in pain, and split from dealing with it in vastly different ways.

So both of them fronted more often. Occasionally getting along and occasionally trying to shove each other aside.

… They still had no idea how to reconnect with their former best friend, who clearly, had not dealt with his own pain as well as they thought.

“Harv, I have your eye-drops.” Bruce’s voice came from behind them, and they slowly turned to look at him. “I don’t think you’ve used them in a while.”

“Oh… right, almost forgot.” Harv grumbled.

“Thank you, Bruce.” Harvey replied as he took the bottle from Bruce’s hand, going a bit out of his way not to accidentally graze Bruce’s hand.

“I was getting to thanking him…”

“Then thank him too! What do you want from me??”

They bickered before Harv finally cleared his throat. “Thanks.”

Bruce cocked his head to the side, it reminded Harvey of the old stray cat he used to feed when he was just a boy.

“Your welcome, Harvey… Harv… I appreciate you trying to be polite. I’m sure Alfred would be proud.”

Harv snorted as he tilted their head back to moisturize their exposed eye. It was a pain in the ass even after having to do it and having doctors do it to him constantly.

“I’m trying to be good… whatever that means.”

Bruce put a reassuring hand on their shoulder. “You are doing good. And for what its worth I’ve gotten called out a fair number of times for not saying please and thank you.”

“Sure, but you're a rich pretty boy and Batman, two people I’d probably least expect to say please and thank you.” Harv teased.

“Your kind of one of a kind when it comes to billionaires actually trying to be polite… or have a soul.” Harvey added on.

“Well, I’m trying to be good.” Bruce replied with a wink.

He started to walk away and leave Harv and Harvey to keep disagreeing on what to watch while they curled up on the couch, but stopped mid-stride. He paused and bounced on his heels for a second as if contemplating whether or not he should speak his mind.

“Harv?”

“Yeah, Pretty Boy?” He replied only half paying attention, and half refocused on the screen in front of him.

“That’s just it, why do you still call me that?” Bruce asked with furrowed brows.

“What do you mean still… ?” Harv paused, mind buzzing with a slight panic. “Does… Does it bother you?”

“No… Not really. I just… we’re not enemies anymore, right?” Bruce said, unconsciously cracking his knuckles as he stood with his legs locked together stiffly.

“Yeah? Duh, of course not. What kind of question is that? What does it have to do with me calling you a pretty boy? That’s what you are.”

Bruce’s eyes suddenly widened as he got an uncharacteristically dumbfounded look on his face.

“You mean… it's not an insult? Or a taunt?” Bruce asked quietly.

“You…”

“Bruce, you're a dumbass.” Harvey interjected.

“You thought… I was insulting you?”

Bruce shuffled his feet and picked at his nails. “Why else would you…?”

Harv(ey) put their head in their hands for a moment and made a frustrated wheezing noise somewhere between a sigh and a quiet scream.

They got up off the couch and walked over to meet Bruce in the middle of the room.

“I know I can’t really wink, or… smile at you but…” Harv looked down at his scared hand, chest aching. “How did you not realize I was flirting with you?!”

Bruce looked positively taken aback. “You were flirting with me? All that time?? Every time we’d happen to meet, when I was me and not Batman...and you’d call me that? You were... trying to..?”

Harv hung his head in defeat. “Of course I was you dense bat-hole.”

“I see…” Bruce replied with an awkward gulp as he gripped at his own arm. For being such a well-built man that was good at making even those taller than him feel miles below him, he was also good at making himself look a lot smaller than he really was as he clenched all his limbs together tightly.

Harv took a deep breath, and with one trembling hand reached out towards Bruce’s cheek to… what? Comfort him? He wasn’t really sure, but he hesitated… looking at his hand and then Bruce staring back at him.

He didn’t really want to touch Bruce with what he thought was a disgusting hand that no one would want near them.So he retracted his hand.

“I just thought… you were rubbing in the fact that me and Harvey had… you know, broken up.” Bruce admitted quietly.

Harv looked taken aback for a second, and tried to ignore the heaviness and old mourning from Harvey, before pressing forward with newfound confidence… or maybe it was just cockiness.

“Unlike Harvey, I’m not stupid enough to give up on the best thing in my life.”

He swelled with pride when Bruce looked away with a sharp inhale through his nose that was turning a bit pink along with his cheeks.

“Excuse you.” Harvey thought.

Bruce almost chuckled at the immediate glare at nowhere in particular he knew was coming from Harvey resenting that comment.

“It was a different time, you know that Harv. We both chickened out on being in a relationship at the time.”

“Still… if it had been up to me…” Harv trailed off, he knew at this point berating Harvey for their life choices did neither of them any good.

Bruce seemed to notice their momentary distracted gaze, and took the initiative with a hum and lightly touched both sides of their face to turn them back towards his eyes as he looked over their features.

“You know Harv. You actually can smile more than you think you can.” Bruce corrected very calmly.

It was Harv’s turn to look dumbfounded. “Even so, it can’t be a very good looking smile.”

Bruce furrowed his brows critically. “I love your smile.”

“You’re nuts.” Harv grumbled. “Come on, this face is disgusting.”

Bruce rolled his eyes. “I’ve seen lots of disgusting things as Batman. You’re not one of them. Trust me.”

He let go of their face and put his hands in his pockets. “You’re still “handsome harv” to me.” He said with a small little smile at referencing the nickname Harvey had gotten back in high-school and been continually referred to when he made his first run as a DA.

Harv kicked at the ground and crossed his arms. “Alright. Now you're just trying to stroke my ego.”

“If you keep being nasty to yourself and calling yourself disgusting, I’ll have no choice but to keep stroking it.”

Harv got a sudden wickedly fiendish look on his face. “That’s not the only thing you could str-”

“Hey! How about we finally pick a movie, huh?” Harvey declared suddenly.

Bruce raised his eyebrows almost cartoonishly high in amusement. “Oh, if you want a movie, I have one in mind that Superman and Flash have been badgering me to watch.”

He crossed over to curl up on the couch and patted the seat beside him to encourage Harv(ey) to join him. Now Bruce was the one with the slightly impish look on his face.

“YOU INTERRUPTED!” Harv hissed to Harvey inside their mind.

They sat down on the couch next to Bruce. “Now you’ve got me curious as to what kind of movie a speed demon and a burly alien would recommend.” Harvey chirped in response acting as if nothing happened.

“You were about to embarrass us!” Harvey thought in response trying to look perfectly fine and like they weren’t arguing.

“APOLOGIZE.”

“No.”

“And I’m supposed to be the one who’s the bad guy??”

Then, as the movie began, they both stiffened as Bruce was suddenly calmly leaning on their shoulder. They looked down at Bruce only to get another raised eyebrow in response. This time a raised eyebrow that they both decided to take as “you just going to stare or are you going to relax and put an arm around me?”.

So now here they were leaning back, an arm around Bruce, who had his head calmly on his shoulder. Bruce himself looked incredibly pleased with himself.

Both sat together happy to have each other back in their lives.

Maybe… just maybe… it didn’t have to be so hard anymore after all.

#causeimamerican #twobats #bruharvey #harvey dent #bruce wayne #two face #harv dent #post redemption AU #prompt fill #twobats for the price of one #dkajsklfjsalkfj #thank you again for the ask!! <3 <3

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