strap in for this week's fic flavor: the failsafe episode of season one of the young justice cartoon except the simulation just won't. fuckin. end.
(fics that inspired this at the end)
If I ever did sit down to make my own fic, I'd split it in 3 parts:
The Simulation: bits and pieces of the 40 years Dick lives after most everyone he knows has died
The Return: the immediate aftermath and healing from the trauma of having not-quite-actually lived a whole life only to wake up and find out it was all fake. nothing traumatizing about that whatsoever.
The Unintended Consequence: aka the twist I'd love to add and would hint to in the second part - finding out the simulation, through martian mind fuckery, pulled from the real world (and in many cases, from real minds). Dick meets a bunch of people he didn't think were real outside the confines of his simulated life. A bunch of rowdy, heroism-inclined teens across the years get to meet the sibling/friend/mentor figure they all dreamed up one night.
(actual idea snippets under the cut)
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Dick Grayson is 14 and most of the world's heroes have died. He planned a suicide mission that left him the sole survivor of a doomed team he helped found. The invasion may have been stopped, but is this really the price he wanted to pay?
The first face he sees in the infirmary is Roy's, and he has to close his eyes and just breathe for a few minutes because for one painful moment he'd thought it was Wally. But this isn't the world where his best friend miraculously survived alongside him. This is the one where he got his best friend killed and didn't even give him the courtesy of following behind him. Behind them.
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Dick Grayson is 27 and has lived longer without Bruce than with him. The invasion's anniversary is always a tough day for him, but that morning seems especially harrowing. He'll get shit for it later, but can't resist stepping out onto the balcony of the manor's master bedroom (Bruce's old bedroom) for a smoke -- his first since he'd promised to quit if Jason, just 15 then, did too.
"Bad habits tend to pile up," he'd said, a rueful quirk to his tired grin. He'd tapped the cigarette twice on the railing and added, lower, "and this one's especially nasty, huh."
He inhales, watches the sun creep across the horizon, and lets acrid smoke burn through his lungs for a long moment before blowing it out in a small cloud. His eyes water, but he doesn't cough. It tastes just as bad as it did the first time he smoked one, not even a year after the invasion and treading water as Robin proved insufficient.
There hadn't been enough heroes to go around then, and Dick had been trained by one of the best. It hadn't been fair, but it had been his plan that had ultimately stopped the invasion. His shoulders everyone's expectations fell on.
He takes another drag, then smudges the lit end against the rail he's leaned on when he hears a boot scuff purposefully against the roofing above him.
"Todd and Pennyworth will be upset with you."
He doesn't turn around. Damian doesn't jump down to join him.
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Dick Grayson is 54 and wakes up in a room full of ghosts. He hears his long-dead father-figure tell his long-dead team about a simulation they weren't meant to win. A training exercise gone wrong and only half a day spent under their mentors' careful, if slightly panicked, supervision.
He looks at his hands, watching the way his gloves crease when he flexes them in and out of tight fists. He looks at his team, their eyes a little haunted but shoulders slumped with relief even as they grumble. Batman's heavy, gloved hand settles on his shoulder and the weight of it is a nauseating mix of foreign-familiar.
He opens his mouth. Closes it.
Tears prick his eyes behind his domino mask, and he tells himself the suffocating, acidic void building in his chest is just some leftover side effect of the ordeal and not the grief-guilt of outliving yet another family (no matter that they hadn't been real in the end).
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Dick Grayson is 16-going-on-56 and well used to the coincidences piling up between his simulated life and the real thing. Some of it -- missions and villains he remembers cropping up -- he's marked for Bruce to review and sort as he pleases. Some -- security for the cave, team building anecdotes, and training regimens -- he's shared with the team. And some he keeps only for himself.
Tim is one of those. He knows it's not fair to the kid (so much smaller now than he ever was when Dick lived his simulated life), but he can't help being selfish just for this. Tim is the one kid he's sure he didn't make up, and if Dick's taken to babysitting the kid just to be near at least one member of the family he built for himself in the wake of the worst days of his life .... Well, anyone who says shit about it can happily stand in line to have their teeth kicked in.
Despite this, it still catches him off-guard when he sees a familiar face pop up in one of Bruce's reports.
Jason Todd, caught boosting tires off the batmobile, is nearly the same age now as he was when Dick met him. He stares at the words, but none of them really sink in beyond the kid's name and address. He's moving before he's even made the decision.
He's used to the world kicking him when he's down - lived it for 40 frustrating years. But he has Bruce again. And things with Tim have been so good. And he's always been selfish when it comes to family. If he could just see Jason. If he could just meet him. If he could talk to him.
If if if if if--
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Inspirations:
Circles in Shattered Mirrors by InfinityIllusion
Fine (But Not Okay) by CharlotteDaBookworm
Verisimilitude by mutemelody
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i'm going to be seeing a new therapist later this month & i want to bring up possibly/probably having osdd, but i know that since more people have been kinda learning about what DID and osdd actually *are* there's been an influx of ppl claiming to have it (ftr it is NOT my place to tell people they're faking lmao, i don't care if someone claims to have a disorder and then later it turns out they don't & i don't think most ppl are "faking." it's between them & their therapist if they have it or not and it harms no one to self dx, people taking it less seriously isn't the fault of self dxed people either)
but anyway i'm worried that if i go into a therapist's office and immediately tell them i think i have Today's Trendy Disorder i won't be taken seriously. but at the same time there is really obviously *something* going on with me that isn't just normal depression & anxiety and treatment methods for bpd (like dbt, mood stabilizers, etc) haven't helped even a little bit over the several years i've been seeking treatment for it so i'm starting to suspect there's something else going on i haven't been seeing & honestly after talking with my last therapist abt stuff (who i was seeing for bpd/trauma stuff but looking back they were pretty obviously trying to get me to figure out i had a dissociative disorder, whether or not i do they certainly thought so) i'm realizing that some of the things i experience are a lot less normal than i thought and may be consistent w/ an osdd diagnosis (probably not DID because i don't really experience significant memory stuff though lol. i do a little but it's less "can't remember at all" and a little more like waking up from a dream where i can recall the gist of stuff but it feels far away)
i don't even know what id do with a diagnosis though. honestly i just want answers and a place to start in regards to treatment more than anything else
(advice welcome but not expected)
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𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑾𝑨𝑻𝑪𝑯𝑬𝑹𝑺 𝑻𝑨𝑮.
michael.
prince of angels from the abrahamic pantheon. michael is a no-nonsense, duty-driven patron saint of soldiers, officers, judges, and more. he often partners with the global defense ministry's operatives and contractors to exchange knowledge on cosmological threats. e.g. eldritch abominations are often siblings of father yahweh, and while michael is personally responsible for destroying them, he believes in humanity's ability to defend themselves, lending his strength whenever possible. while his main nemesis will always be lucifer, vorren is his rival and they are constantly seeking to destroy one another.
samael.
the watcher. samael is the left hand of father, death embodiment, and destroyer angel. he is michael's counterpart, and serves as an observer of the known and unknown universes. as a good and evil entity, at times, he tests human hearts to see if they will cross over to the darkness, but he ultimately serves the kingdom. samael is one vorren can not touch.
alphard.
alphard (not their real name) is the sibling of yahweh, the anti-god of dark matter, corruption, madness, and once sought to destroy their brother's creations. presenting as a woman, they have actually grown incredibly attached to toshiro as their vessel, and now seek to protect humanity for their own self-interests. they lend their power to millions of operatives across the globe and will often push those deemed unworthy to madness, resulting in their deaths.
josef.
josef is what toshiro aspires to be. he is a full-fledged eldritch host who has retained his sanity after fusing with an abomination named khaos (not their real name). he is known as the keeper of eldritch knowledge and tends to test if seekers can handle the madness they seek. josef is a neutral party and only works with the global defense ministry, so they may leave him be.
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