#series:WWW

[sophiethewitch1]

What We Want - Chpt. 1 - Not Quite An Isekai

In Which A Romantic Breaks The Universe

(Yandere!batboys x f!reader) 18+ MDNI!

SUMMARY

Another lonely birthday, another empty year. You miss your family. You're late for your bills and rent, and even then, you got robbed last Tuesday.

Still, you buy yourself a cupcake, because you need it. I mean, hey. What's dessert for if not to get over cheating boyfriends and dead relatives?

As you blow out the candle, watching the clock switch from 11:59 pm to midnight of the next day, you make a wish.

And because the world doesn't like to make much sense, it comes true. Your life is suddenly flipped on a dime, and you're stuck trying to catch up with it. Fantasy becomes reality. You're a Wayne now, apparently. Or you used to be. You're loved, you're rich, you're talented and powerful.

Well, sort of. Careful what you wish for, right?

(TRIGGER WARNINGS AND MASTERLIST HERE)

PREV - NEXT

You awake to the sound of your phone ringing. You slap to the edge of your couch, aiming for the rickety side table. Your wrist smacks against the corner, and you hiss in pain. It’s a few inches too high, and wood, not metal. Seems you somehow got to your bed during the night, but you didn’t remember it. Still, you get your phone. Through squinted eyes, you find the screen, its 3:15, far too early for your drunken suffering- Wait no, it’s mid-afternoon. Still, you feel tired, and you want to sleep.

You answer the phone anyway, putting it on speaker and resting your head back against the pillow. Your head doesn’t hurt that bad anyway. God was smiling down on you today.

“Miss, are you awake?” a man’s voice rings through your apartment.

Who was that? Who called you Miss of all things? Your boss didn’t remember your name sure, but he just called you ‘intern’ instead. You’d been an official employee for six months now. Right, conversation, paying attention, replying like a normal person.

“Hm, yeah, I’m awake,” you say, fighting back the urge to yawn.

“You don’t sound very awake, Miss,” the man replies, his tone familiar.

“Who is this?”

He sighs, “Miss, are you being sarcastic?”

“What? No, I’m serious,” you confusedly answer.

“…This is Alfred, Miss. Now, Master Wayne has asked me to-”

“Master who now?” you cut this Alfred off, doubly confused now. Wayne? Like, the Wayne family? The rich, philanthropist one?

He sighs again, “I understand the relationship between the two of you is quite strained, and this is a personally difficult day for you, but he insists on seeing you. Your birthday gala starts at 7, as I’ve told you, and your assistant will be over at 4. I ask that you unblock both their accounts, as I would much rather I didn’t have to talk to you when you’re like this.”

“What?” you repeat, like the idiot you are.

“Good day, Miss. And happy birthday.”

He hangs up. You blink down at your phone. And then you roll your eyes, because oh my god are Molly’s pranks getting ridiculous. You never should have told her about your weird fascination with the Waynes, she was getting back at you hard for your drunken mistake.

You make a lot of those. Well, life goes on. You’ll put glitter in Molly’s car’s vanity mirror or something.

You turn off your phone, and let your face slam right back into your pillow. For a while, you try to go back to sleep.

…Something about this isn’t right. You, like the freak you are, take a deep inhale of your pillow. It smells like you, like the laundry soap you use, but it also smells like… Well, you don’t know. All you can think about is your new boss’s wife and her awful perfume that swallows the office space like noxious gas.

Your pillow… kind of smells like that. Your first ungodly thought is that, somehow, you spent a torrid night with your boss’s wife. The second is that Molly needs to die for her crimes.

You let your crusty, bleary, stinging eyes blink open.

Hm. Why is there a chandelier in your bedroom? You shoot upright in the bed, silk sheets falling to your lap. Silk sheets you can’t afford. You look around the room, eyes widening at the space. The bed is king-sized, while you had barely been able to afford your twin-sized mattress. The living room isn’t in the same space as the bedroom. You can’t see the kitchen and the bathroom to your right has shining marble tiles. And even then, the decoration’s are luxurious and clean, compared to your livable chaos.

You look to your left, and your mouth drops open.

A floor-to-ceiling window, showing the Gotham horizon with the morning sun. Fog and clouds twist around spiralling gothic towers, reaching down to the people down below. You’re looking out over the bay, and you can see the Narrows barely peaking through the mist, desperately clawing for any sunlight.

The sun rises on the right of your building, not the left. You don’t have a view, you’re on the fourth floor and there’s a brick building directly across from your window. You live in the Narrows.

You live in the Narrows. You press your face to the cool glass and look down. Oh my god, you can’t see the streetside. You’re too high up. You’re somehow on the opposite side of Gotham City.

Stumbling away from the window, you do your best not to touch anything, because you know it’s all too expensive for your peasant hand. Let’s start thinking… whatever was happening to you, through. Molly might kidnap you for a joke, sure, but she was barely any richer than you, and that was just because her boyfriend lived with her. She could not afford this level of fuckery.

So… so… is this, what? A big joke from the universe? Did someone else kidnap you? You have to have been kidnapped, right? Why the fuck would someone kidnap you?

Did the Joker kidnap you? Was he coming to finish you off? End your family line?

You reach down and pinch yourself hard enough you yelp. When the dazzlingly perfect apartment doesn’t disappear, it’s much harder to force yourself not to panic. Okay, okay, okay. It’s fine. This’ll be fine, and it could still be a dream. That whole pinching thing was a myth, right? Argh, maybe you should’ve listened to Molly when she was trying to get you into astral projection.

Wait, Molly!

You go back to your bed and pick up your phone.

It’s… it’s not your phone. What was this? The iPhone 27? You didn’t keep up with those sorts of things, but it looked expensive. Everything here looked expensive.

You think you’re going to go into anaphylactic shock. Wait, no, it’s hyper-something. What was it? Argh, you can’t do this right now!

You press your thumb to the ‘on’ button, and luckily whoever this phone belongs to is not worried about their privacy because there's no password. Stupidly, you look for Molly’s name in your list of contacts.

BLOCKED - ‘Bruce Wayne’

BLOCKED - ‘Damian Wayne’

BLOCKED - ‘Dick Grayson’

BLOCKED - ‘Tim Drake’

‘Alfred :)’

BLOCKED - ‘The Wicked Witch of the West’

You drop the phone. Because the floors, even in the bedroom, are marble, it shatters like glass. You make a sound like a dying chicken as you watch the piece of technology make a bouncing break for the bathroom. It slides to a stop against the giant hot tub, and you pick it up and cradle it between your palms like a newborn.

The screen still works. Even if it’s cracked to high heaven and takes multiple attempts to turn it on, it still eventually does. Thanks God, won’t forget this. You hiss as you open the contacts again, pricking your fingers against the sharp edges.

As fate commands, you click on the ‘Bruce Wayne’ contact. The description is very simple.

‘Massive dickhead. Hope you jump off a building and fall like a rock.’

You go back. Click on ‘Dick Grayson’.

‘Massive dickhead’s beloved firstborn. Most annoying man on earth congrats.’

Again. ‘Damian Wayne’ this time.

‘Massive dickhead’s massive dickhead. Demon? Grinch? Somebody kill it with fire please.’

And finally, ‘Tim Drake’.

‘The only acceptable one.’

…Well, at least your kidnapper liked one of the Waynes. Maybe they kidnapped you because you were their opposite or something? You definitely wouldn’t call Bruce motherfucking Wayne a massive dickhead. Or maybe they wanted to kill you.

The Molly prank idea was becoming more sound. Maybe she won the lottery and didn’t tell you.

You click on ‘Alfred :)’. He’s the one that called you earlier and also called you ‘Miss’, for some reason.

It’s just a bunch of heart emojis. Coherent, sure.

You go back, and click on the final of the list, ‘The Wicked Witch of the West’.

‘Don’t listen to Alfred. She wants to eat you.’

She wants to what?

A knock at the door has you jumping a foot in the air and nearly banging your head on the bathtub’s lip. You hear someone call your name through the door, and you freeze. Who… how? They call your name again, this time their voice louder. They bang on the door.

You creep over to the door.

“Ma’am, if you don’t open this right now, I’m quitting! We both know Alfred contacted you this morning, and he’s going to be very upset if I do so. There’s only so many assistants in this city!” from this close, you can recognise the voice belongs to a woman. She rattles the doorknob.

You lean down, peering through the peephole. The woman has a harsh face, a perfect pencil suit and her blonde hair in a pretty updo. Her makeup is impeccable. You get the feeling this woman is also more expensive than you can afford, despite her calling your name.

Bewildered, you open the door. She slams through like a battering ram, strutting 6-inch stilettos into the space.

She huffs, and then turns around. You can see very clearly she’s trying to keep her calm, but you did leave her at the door for like five minutes. It wasn’t your fault, you thought you were hallucinating or something.

“Ma’am,” she stresses the word, “Please unblock me.”

You blink at her, “Uh, sure.”

She waits, her hands clasped together in front of her.

“Oh- oh, right now?” you stutter, pulling the phone out from your noticeably lavish pyjamas.

Wait had someone changed you in your sleep? What the hell was going on? Maybe you should be more concerned about that, honestly. Still, you do as she commands.

She watches you like a hawk as you stare at the cracked phone. Your eyes flick up at her, and then back down at the screen. Slowly, watching for her reaction, you unblock ‘The Wicked Witch of the West.’ She nods, not even commenting on what was apparently her name in ‘your’ phone.

You were still slightly concerned about the ‘She wants to eat you’ thing, but she seemed… alright. Kind of scary. But not cannibalistic.

Still, this was Gotham after all. A healthy dose of fear was what kept people like you alive.

“Ma’am, did you just wake up? It’s already 4 o’clock,” she gives you a subtly disapproving look, and your shoulders sink like you’re being scolded.

“Yeah- yeah, sorry about that,” you stammer, embarrassed for some unknowable reason. This really was just like a dream. You could tell something was very obviously wrong, but you were still going along with everything like it wasn’t. Everyday life.

You were going to focus on that, this had to be just a dream. Just go along with… this, and then you’d wake up. And if you could manage to get over the uncanny valley-ness of the very obvious wealth surrounding you, maybe you could enjoy it.

You had always wanted to be rich. This was just your brain spewing out random information. Better than the nightmares you usually get.

You’re abruptly pulled back into focus when the woman clears her throat loudly. Ah, shoot. Had she been talking? You definitely hadn’t been listening.

“We need to get you ready, Miss,” she says like she’s repeating herself. You nod, because yes, of course, getting ready.

Ready for what? You think if you ask her she’ll yell at you. So when she grabs your arm and tugs you along, you follow. She pulls you into the bathroom, sitting you down in front of the mirror on a stool. Because this bathroom has stools in it. You stare at your reflection warily, before glancing up at her behind you.

“The stylists will be here in about forty minutes, and the makeup artists in two hours,” she pauses, giving you a strange look, “I appreciate you being so cooperative today. I understand this is all a delicate matter, but I am under Mr. Wayne’s orders first and foremost.”

“Wayne… like Bruce? Bruce Wayne?” you ask, even though there’s really no one else it could be. Still, you have to check.

Because it’s impossible. Even if it’s a dream, it still feels completely impossible. There was just something inside you that said ‘that can’t be right’, even if you knew none of this was real.

You realise, quite late, that you don’t even know this lady's name. ‘Wicked witch’

“Yes, Ma’am. Bruce Wayne of Wayne Enterprises,” she answers you, pulling out her phone and flicking through it. She doesn’t even respond to what you have to assume is an inane question. Maybe ‘dream you’ often asks stupid questions.

‘Normal you’ certainly does.

“Oh… okay…” the conversation drifts off, and she makes no attempt to fill it. Aren’t P.A.s supposed to… you don’t know, fix that? Or maybe she’s not your personal assistant, just an assistant. Silly you, making assumptions.

This bathroom deserves assumptions. You wonder if the gold frame of the mirror is, y’know, real.

The blonde woman walks out of the room without speaking another word to you. You think maybe you should follow her, but instead you just sit there with your hands on top of your knees. Your leg bounces up and down, and you glare it into submission, ignoring the way your muscles jump.

You look at yourself. You look… different. The bags under your eyes are worse than usual, and your gaze sunken into your face. Your hair is sad and oily, knotted in places. Your skin is almost waxy.

You look sick. You look like… you remember, you look like…

In the light of the day, you refuse to think about it. You’re not allowed to, you’ll break if you do.

You just don’t. Even if your reflection just confirms that you have to be dreaming.

Instead, you turn your gaze to the tub. You raise your hand to your hair again. Back in your apartment, you’d had a shower. It was a surprisingly good shower because you’d invested in a showerhead with better pressure. Still, it wasn’t a bath.

You missed bathes. You get up, close the door, lock it, and sink inside the tub. You take off your silky pyjamas inside the bath, and then you toss them on the floor beside you. Sitting there, you watch through the giant window at the world down below. At the ravens and pigeons that fly through the fog, at the few people you can see through the windows and balconies.

You press your cheek against the glass. It’s cold. You’re cold.

You’re sitting in an empty bathtub naked. What are you doing?

Rubbing at your eyes, you reach over to what you think are the controls. They all look very complicated, but there’s a switch that goes from blue to red, so you turn that. It takes another button press for the water to start flowing out. Steam fills the room, and you let out a sigh of contentment.

“Ma’am! Ma’am, the stylists will be here in ten minutes, and you need to get out. Ma’am? Ma’am!”

You shoot up in the bath, splashing water over the overflowing sides. Blinking, you turn your head back and forth and then sink back down. Oh. You’re still here. You went to sleep, but you’re still here. Maybe it’s one of those dreams where you think you wake up, but you haven’t. Or, ah, something similar.

You feel so tired. You really, really didn’t miss this feeling.

Quickly, you wash your hair and body, scrubbing furiously at the oily sweat on your skin. You stumble out of the bath on shaky legs, dry yourself off, and almost trip in your haste to get out the door. Showing off your negligible intelligence, you only realise you’re still wearing just a towel till she manhandles you towards the closet.

A walk-in closet, because of course it is. You think it’s bigger than your apartment. It has a flat bench in the centre because evidently all the walking around you’ll be doing will require a fainting couch.

The woman gives you, horrifyingly, a set of lacy, racy underwear. When all you do is just gape at her, she sighs, takes them from your hands and gives you a simple black set with no frills. You look down at them clasped in your wet hands. They’re clean, and they seem to be your size.

Still, this is a bit…

“Are these… new?” you ask, because there’s no tag or anything.

“Yes, Ma’am. But if you want, we do have some sets still unpacked at the back of the closet,” she says, going along with your weirdness. Even if she was a bit scary, you were grateful for that, at least. You guess celebrities were usually quite eccentric, so maybe this wasn’t out of the ordinary for her.

“Yes, please.”

She gives you a pair of Victoria’s Secret bra and underwear, plain beige and still in their plastic packaging.

“Cool, sweet, thanks,” you say, and she shakes her head just slightly.

She puts a white bathrobe down, and leaves the room, closing the door behind her. You lock it, and then you put on the underwear that you did not buy. The whole experience is strange, but still, you just go along with it. You’re a go-along-with-it kind of person.

You were… you were starting to not like that all of a sudden. Still, out of your depth in an odd dream is no place to start doubting your entire personality. You put on the bathrobe too. And the fluffy slippers that are tucked under them, with great pleasure.

You hear the many voices before you open the door. When you step through it, you feel like you’ve stepped onto the set of a movie. Or well, the backstage at least. Women and men are flittering about the chic apartment in the sort of rush you’d only seen working at BatBurger.

The woman from before spots you and you feel like a rabbit under a hawk's gaze when her brown eyes narrow on you. She strides over to you and then, once again, clamps her grip around your wrist and drags you over. You wonder as you stumble after her if she’s got some meta-human in her because no slim, perfectly put-together lady should be this damn strong.

She pulls you towards a set of three people. You can immediately tell they’re the heads of the operation, with an aura that squashes you like a pancake. Two women, one man. They’re all dressed to the nines, in their own unique ways.

They all look at you with assessing glances. You fear you do not measure.

“I’m surprised, Jeanine. You actually got her this time,” a woman with a black bob and a rocker look comments, her red lips twisting into a grin. You realise, with a start, that the blonde woman who was not incorrectly nicknamed ‘The Wicked Witch of The West’ was actually called Jeanine.

Lovely, you were getting the hang of things.

“Yes, she was very agreeable this afternoon. I’d like to apologise once again for any past issues,” Jeanine says, all business. You still have no idea what’s going on, and definitely no idea what they’re talking about. But what you assumed was the jist of it… was that ‘dream you’ wasn’t a very harmonious person.

Lovely, lovely, lovely. This was a bit of a personal nightmare for a people pleaser like you. Actually, it was a literal personal nightmare. Lovely.

“The disrespect I’ve faced is immeasurable. But, Monsoir Wayne pays exceedingly well. Still, it’s nice to actually have our dear client before us,” the other woman says, appraising her french tip nails. Which, considering she said ‘monsoir’ and the whole accent, would make a lot of sense. She’s closer to a classic beauty than her punk rock friend, with brown hair coiled and beautiful pearls across her neck.

“I don’t know, I thought I’d be getting paid for doing no work tonight. Ruins my plans,” the man teases, and you’re relieved at the kindness in his gaze. He’s wearing a suit with a dazzling but trendy red tie. His tie has an odd metallic sheen to it, a fabric your peasant mind couldn’t place.

If Molly were here, she’d jab you in the stomach with an elbow and whisper “One of those homosexuals, me thinks” even if she was bi herself.

You wish Molly were here.

“Yes, well, I’d like it if we could all work together tonight. And get to it quickly, the drive to the Wayne Tower isn’t a quick one with the evening traffic, so, if you’d please.”

And that was that. No introductions, no extra pleasantries. You were swept away in a whirl of fabric and hair products.

They stuff you into a gorgeous evening gown, its colour reminding you of a sparkling midnight sky. Rhinestones dot down the sides, coalescing at the bottom. You hope they’re not real diamonds. Gloves, a bracelet, a necklace, and dripping pearl earrings. It was all impeccably put together, and you felt uncomfortable with such items on you. You didn’t dare ask how much it all cost, despite being desperately curious.

They slip towering 6-inch stilettos on you despite your protests, cake your face in enough powder to make you sneeze. Dramatic liner and eyelashes that felt heavy on your face, a lipstick that had to be coated twice because you chewed on your lip with nerves.

And then you’re done, dizzy and confused but thoroughly made up.

You get one quick look at your reflection before Jeanine is pulling you up and out of the seat.

They’d gotten rid of the signs.

You ignore the part of you that desperately wants them back and follow Jeanine out into the elevator.

Despite the fact that it is, in fact, a very long drive to the Wayne Tower, she does not seem inclined to say a single word to you. The ride is awkward and quiet, broken only by the sound of you pressing buttons in the back of limousine, and even that stops when you get an unimpressed look from her.

So you just sit there, vibrating at frequencies unseen by man.

When you finally arrive at Wayne Tower, the crowd shocks you. There are so many paparazzi, nearly overflowing the flimsy barricades and onto the carpeted marble entryway. The tower itself is a display of outrageous wealth, towering over the rest of Gotham City easily. You think for a while it’d been the tallest building in the world, but you couldn’t remember your elementary school education all that well.

It wasn’t like this information would’ve been useful at any point in your life. You still don’t think it will be, as this is all a very vivid dream.

The door opens, and immediately you’re overwhelmed by the camera flashing. You hunch away from the lights like a vampire, but Jeanine pushes you forward.

“We’re already very late, Ma’am. No time for faffing around,” she says from behind you, hand placed squarely against your back.

What? But all you’d done was rush around all afternoon! You know, if you’d just taken one of the trains or even the Skyrail you’d have been able to avoid this. Still, you’re out the door, up the steps, not given a moment to react to the questions thrown at you.

“Miss! Miss, are you here to celebrate your birthday? Don’t you think it’s a bit callous to ignore the tragedies of today?”

“Miss! Is it true you’ve been disowned?”

“Miss, miss, about your family…!”

Oh, well, even if what they’re saying is awful, it’s a relief. It’s your birthday again. You think the guy who had called you said happy birthday. That meant none of this could possibly be real. See? It had to be a dream. Had to, had to… You decide to ignore literally everything else they say, letting the words float through your very hollow brain.

Life’s a lot easier when you play it a little stupider.

The heels and the stairs are an awful combination, and if it wasn’t for Jeanine’s herculean strength you’re certain you’d be tumbling down them right now. Your assistant… secretary… lady is careful not to let that happen, however.

Maybe you judged her too quickly. You appreciated anyone who made sure you didn’t fall flat on your ass. It was a good quality for a person to have.

You don’t get to appreciate the Wayne Tower all done up. You don’t get to stare at the lights and flowers strung into the art deco rafters. You don’t get to stare and gape and look like an idiot, because Jeanine wants you to look like an idiot elsewhere.

In the middle of all these fucking random rich people you don’t know. Hurray!

You’re shoved into a group of people, with Jeanine at your back. She starts rattling off names and titles and relations, and you can’t make heads or tails of any of it. You turn to look at her with what must be a genuine deer-in-headlights fear, and she stops and then starts speaking slower.

Thank God for that. Well, since she’s making an effort, you do too.

“This is Lianne Jenkins, wife of Senator Jenkins,” Jeanine whispers into your ear, and you nod. You knew him, you’d voted for him, in fact. How the fuck were you here talking to his wife? She’s not looking at you, instead talking to someone beside her. She turns, and you put on the best smile you can.

The socialite physically startles when she sees your face. Great.

“Oh- oh my!” her voice stutters over your name like she can barely even remember it, “I didn’t know you’d be here tonight, it’s a pleasure to see you!”

It… it was your birthday party, right? Your name was on a giant banner at the back of the room, so you had to assume it was. Dream logic. Just- just blame it on dream logic.

“Oh, look it’s Gerald! I’m sorry my dear I really have to-”

And she just ditched you. At your birthday party. You blink at the space she just evacuated and then turn around to Jeanine. You probably give her some sort of weird Kubrick stare, and she winces. She then looks around for someone else for you to talk to. From the growing despair on her face, you can assume she doesn’t find anyone.

“I don’t want to be here,” you say.

“I said I’d quit, remember?” she replies. You think she’s lying to you. She looks about as desperate as you feel, which is a lot. You were seeing a lot of sides of ‘The Wicked Witch of the West’ today. She seemed less wicked and more generally insane. Hey, at least the two of you had something in common.

You turn away from her, eyes roving over the party. You recognise some people, because you know, they’re all rich and famous. That guy over there was in a movie you pirated recently. The one on your right seems to be someone important in online tech spaces. You think he did NFTs or something, which made you sad because you did not want that sort of person at your birthday party. Oh, the woman on the other side of the room eating canapes is an Instagram influencer, you think. The fantasy of a Wayne party gala is fading fast, falling out of the sky like a comet of fire to bring doom and death to mankind.

You are so out of your depth.

You turn back around to Jeanine.

“I really, really don’t want to be here,” you repeat, and Jeanine, shocking you, grabs your hands in hers.

“Please stay. Just for thirty minutes, please,” she begs you, her dark eyes pleading. And because you are the living personification of a doormat, you sigh.

“Alright. But only for thirty. And I’m getting very, very drunk.”

“Thank you, thank you. I’ll be right beside you the entire time-”

You decide, oh so kindly, that you are totally ditching Jeanine, too. Spinning in your dress, you make a grand effort to get away from her, but she dogs you loyally. The goliath-like heels you’re wearing don’t make it any damn well easier. Still, you don’t stop trying to outrun the tiny, control freak of a woman. Because while she definitely seems to desperate to stay near you, you are also very desperate to not be near her.

Your hand itches. Randomly, it itches quite a lot. You don’t know why you only notice what must be a bug bite inside the gala, but you do. Awkwardly, you scratch your palm with your other hand, staring down at the skin. It doesn’t look red yet, but it honestly it’s getting kind of annoying.

You sigh again, and turn to ask Jeanine if she had any lotion or something, because you assume that’s what stalking personal assistants are for and… she’s not there. Somehow you lost her, without even noticing.

You throw your arms into the air. Yippee! Now, it’s time for alcoholism, as is the answer to all problems in life. It’s what the loving and maternal arms of Gotham had taught you, after all.

You stumble your way to a wall where there’s a set of food, and a server with a silver platter carrying a bunch of champagne glasses. You stop the guy before he moves again, your hands in the air like you’re trying to soothe a scared animal.

You point at the tray, “I want that.”

He looks at you with mild horror. You thought rich people were weird, like he’d be used to something like this. It wasn’t like you were asking for the shirt off his back or cocaine or something. If it wasn’t obvious, you really didn’t know anything about what rich people did.

“It’s my birthday. It’s totally cool. I asked Bruce myself,” You bald-faced lie, like you’d ever even met the man. Like a predator, you watch the man carefully put the tray down next to the rest of the food, and then he slowly backs away from you. Well, okay, you could admit that was kind of weird. This night is getting to you. God knows this loud-as-fuck party was more overstimulating than anything you could usually stand. And so bright. What a shitty fairytale ball.

You grab one of the flutes of champagne and swirl it, sniff it, and then once you’ve gone through the polite checklist of drinking you throw it back like it’s a shot of vodka. There were people watching after all. Wait, they’d probably seen you corner that poor server boy.

Hmm, this requires cake. You choose a random slice that looks like it might be strawberry something, and dig in eagerly. It tastes fucking fantastic. The cream is sweet and soft, and the jam has a pop of flavour you totally weren’t expecting. And the cake itself was a lovely, spongy texture.

Grand. Maybe if you just sat here like a wallflower and ate food and drank liquor you could handle this. It wasn’t any different from how you behaved at Molly’s college parties.

So, you decide to work your way up and down the buffet table. Most of it’s delicious, but when you try things you can’t quite recognise, there’s a twenty-percent chance it’ll be disgusting and you’ll have to spit it out to avoid poisoning. You’re careful not to try the caviar, despite your own curiosity. You’d heard that it just tasted like salty water, and that didn’t mix well with whatever you were currently putting in your stomach.

You look down at your hand. It’s another piece of the sponge cake, wedged between a napkin so your dirty fingers didn’t touch it and you didn’t have to bother with another plate. You giggle, because it really is that good.

Ah, this is great. You could do this forever, screw thirty minutes. You eye the entrance the servers keep coming in and out of, and wonder if Jeanine would get mad if you tried to follow them into the kitchens. Probably, probably…

The question was, was it worth it? You’re debating the merits when the sound of someone's shoes stops next to you. You think it’s a man, and you consider barking at him to get away from the buffet, but decide you’ve tried everything and can probably share again. It takes great strength, though. You decide you deserve some more champagne for the kindness.

It’s after a moment that you realise he’s not taking anything.

“Oh, so you actually showed up? Colour me surprised,” a familiar, calm, masculine voice speaks from behind you. Your mouth drops open, and you spin on your heel. If you hadn’t been clinging to the table cloth you’d have fallen over, but still, you drop the champagne flute, and it bursts in a spray of liquid and glass against your dress.

It also splatters on the dress shoes of one Tim Drake.

First the phone, now the delicious drink. You really wished you’d stop dropping things.

MASTERLIST - NEXT

#Series:WWW #yandere batfam #yandere dc #yandere batfamily #yandere batfam x reader #yandere x reader #dick grayson x reader #nightwing x reader #jason todd x reader #red hood x reader #tim drake x reader #red robin x reader #damian wayne x reader #robin x reader

[catwhispers0]

i thought the text was kinda out of place so i made a ver without it,,,,

fanart for @sophiethewitch1 's what we want series ❤️❤️ happy valentines day pookie ❤️❤️

i dont wanna promise anything but im kinda sorta thinking abt... making a fanart of each bro's first appearance... DONT HOLD ME TO THAT COLLEGE SUCKS IM TOO BUSY FOR PROMISES!!!!

#whisperart #series:www #whatwewant #fanart #batfam #batfam x reader #dc batfam #yandere batfam #yandere red hood #yandere robin #red hood #robin #sophie pls dont die i beg 🙏 #istillcantdobackgrounds #orhaveaconsistantstyle

[sophiethewitch1]

What We Want - Prologue

In Which A Romantic Breaks The Universe

(Yandere!batboys x f!reader) 18+ MDNI!

SUMMARY

Another lonely birthday, another empty year. You miss your family. You're late for your bills and rent, and even then, you got robbed last Tuesday.

Still, you buy yourself a cupcake, because you need it. I mean, hey. What's dessert for if not to get over cheating boyfriends and dead relatives?

As you blow out the candle, watching the clock switch from 11:59 pm to midnight of the next day, you make a wish.

And because the world doesn't like to make much sense, it comes true. Your life is suddenly flipped on a dime, and you're stuck trying to catch up with it. Fantasy becomes reality. You're a Wayne now, apparently. Or you used to be. You're loved, you're rich, you're talented and powerful.

Well, sort of. Careful what you wish for, right?

(TRIGGER WARNINGS AND MASTERLIST HERE)

PREV - NEXT

The cupcake is smashed. Pink icing and gaudy star-shaped sprinkles coat the interior of the box, and the pastry itself has devolved into crumbs. You just stare at it. It had cost you seventeen dollars. It was expensive, yeah. But you’d spent the last three months walking past it every morning and afternoon in the bougie cafe’s windows. You’d waited. You’d wanted.

And it was destroyed. Completely. The perfect swirl of the buttercream was no more. The single, delicate flower made of frosting had lost half it’s petals. You weren’t sure how you could eat it. The wrapping had been warped, but maybe a tea spoon would work?

You let your head fall into your hands, a sob wracking your shoulders. And then less than a second later you swallow down the feeling, and stride over to your shitty apartment’s tiny kitchen. You grab a lighter, a plastic wine glass and the bottle of white wine Molly had given you earlier today. You hadn’t told her what happened yet, but she could tell something had. She’d gave you the wine, a hug, and the promise to always be by your side.

Despite today’s circumstances, despite this week’s circumstances, despite this decade’s circumstances, you were going to have a good birthday getting black-out drunk.

You weren’t going to let yourself sink into one of your funks. Even if it was the worst day of the year by far. Even if it was the second worst birthday of your life.

You just don’t. It’s not allowed.

Your phone rings. Sliding it out of your pocket, you stare blankly at the name on the screen. Speak of the devil, and he shall appear.

Malcom. One of George’s friends. You reject the call, block the number, and slide your phone back in your pocket. See? Dealing with things like an adult. Not throwing a temper tantrum, not crying, not… well, destroying your life in an epic meltdown. You’d had a few of those. Still, despite your obvious erraticness, you hadn’t been fired this year. Yay!

You told yourself you were getting better, even as the universe seemingly conspired against your happiness. You were kind of convinced it was.

Turning, you play with the cap on the wine, walking over to your old ratty couch and falling into it. The beast groans at the contact, but you pay it no mind. The thing was probably older than you, and you were celebrating your twenty-first today.

You were an orphan in Gotham, it was not your first time drinking. Molly had dragged you to so many awful parties over the years. But this wine was probably the fanciest you’d ever been given. Scratch that, definitely was. You pour yourself a glass, stick the birthday candle half-hazardly into the largest chunk of cupcake, and grab the remote.

The only true comfort you can get on this day. A woman, a reporter. She speaks, but you can’t really hear what she’s saying. You chug down a glass of the wine, apologising in your head to Molly, and then pour yourself another.

It takes a few minutes, but your muscles relax, and her words tune into focus.

“Today’s memorial, is once again sponsored by the Wayne foundation.”

Yeah, because they’re the only charity organisation in the city. The family of billionaires were debatably the only good ones in existance. Debtable because you weren’t sure if they were good enough themselves. As an orphan who’d known the cruelty of the system yourself, you were a mix of bitter and grateful towards them. Sure, they’d been the only thing that kept you out of true poverty. You were still an awful bitch about it.

You always had been the jealous type. The other kids who got better backpacks or toys or whatever had you seething with fury. The multitude of orphans Bruce Wayne risen out of poverty were not safe from your envy. It didn’t matter if you were… Well, a little bit, just a teeny-tiny-tiddly-little bit… obsessed. Obsessed with them. Kind of manic about it, actually.

You were working on it. Today was a bad day, and you were a little too raw. So, like every little dumb animal on the planet, you went straight to your creature comforts. You pretended you were a roman eating and drinking on their chaise lounge, watching their magnificent entertainment.

Delusional. Your sofa was falling apart at the seems, your cupcake was debris and your entertainment was a memorial service. Wine was good, though.

Gotta focus on the good parts.

You watch the TV screen, the reporter’s voice drifting in and out of focus. There was a family photo of the Waynes and their family friends, all in perfect suits and dresses and pearls and fancy watches. You’d bet that those little accessories were worth more than a year of your rent.

And you lived in fucking Gotham, both the most expensive city to live in, and the worst at the same time. A miracle, truly.

Anyway, they were all stunningly beautiful, even some of the guys. God knows how much the internet went on about Richard Grayson’s long eyelashes. You’d always been enamored with Dick’s good looks. Even Damian Wayne who had only turned nineteen a few months ago and was three years younger than you was already being fawned over by the tabloids.

Gotham’s newest young rich bachelor. Bitterly envious, that was you. You didn’t like that emotion, though, so you turned your attention to others. Namely, delusion.

You let yourself get swept up in daydreams. Of having a rich family, of one so close knit as the Wayne’s. Of having a handsome, loving, kind partner. You don’t let yourself dream about your real family, of a George that was faithful.

You just don’t.

Maybe someone like Tim Drake. Loyal, everyone who knew him described him as loyal. His romances with Bernard Dowd and Stephanie Brown were famous. There were hundreds of papparazzi photos of him with big bundles of roses and a sweet look on his face. You thought someone like Tim Drake would probably be like one of the heroes in your romance novels. Something silly like a meet cute in an airport, or maybe a bookstore or a cafe. He was pretty famous in Gotham’s niche hipster coffee scene, right?

Yeah, you could see it now. Some dumb but cute scene where you get confused and accidentally take his order. You get the same drink, and bond over your shared love of caramel syrup. Like he didn’t live on the opposite side of the city from you, and you probably couldn’t afford whatever fancy shit he drunk. Italian coffee beans versus… well, you didn’t actually know what you bought. You knew it didn’t taste very good, but it was dirt cheap.

What were you doing? Ah, yes, silly daydreams about romance.

But even as you think of Tim, Dick Grayson was so pretty, and he’d had his fair share of partners too. Someone with such an angelic face had to have a personality to match, and the media agreed. Of course you didn’t really know what he was like, this was all just fantasy. Other than numerous tabloid interviews and television, which suggested he had a kind heart and a love for bad jokes you truly knew nothing about the guy. Still, he’d be the golden retriever trope, you think. Or the knight in shining armor, saving his heroine from one of the many disaster’s plaguing Gotham and confessing his love in one big final act. His meet cute would be the airplane one. The blue of his eyes, it makes you think of the sky. You’d take his seat, but he’d be super sweet about it. Like he didn’t have a private jet, and would never be caught on economy.

You think Damian Wayne could play a good romance lead as well. From what you’d seen, he seemed to have a terrible personality, which was perfect for any modern romance. A classic enemies to lovers, with some bickering. Maybe he’d have secretly loved her the entire time, and maybe there’d be a good grovel at the end. So, appreciating his character, he’d have to have a meet ugly. Probably get stuck in an elevator with him or something, and he’d get to display his keen intellect and argumentative nature.

You swirl your wine, nodding your head. Brilliant ideas today, you should talk to Molly more. She’d definitely appreciate your wisdom. She wanted to be a screen writer one day, and all this would be very helpful. She was going to college for it. You couldn’t afford college.

Maybe you were drunk. Maybe you were a genius. It was hard to tell, so you take another sip. That’ll help you figure things out.

“As always, the Wayne families’ faces are morose as they celebrate the late Jason Todd.”

And as always, you felt an odd connection with the dead man. Your lives had both technically ended the same day, in the same grand calamity. Sure, you were still technically alive. Kicking about. But everyone you loved dying in one fell swoop, right in front of your eyes? You felt more like a ghost these days.

Weren’t you supposed to be fighting those sorts of thoughts off? Whatever, it was too much effort anyway.

Your slight obsession with the Wayne family had been initially started by Jason Todd. You hadn’t been thinking about him as much recently with George in your life, but he swung right back into place as soon as George left your life. Like a magnet, or more likely, a compulsion.

But now you were brought right back to the morning after. Seeing the entire city grieving the day after you’d lost your family, your first thought had been ‘Good, I’m not the only one,’ and then you’d stopped being an idiot and realised the city was mourning Jason Todd, heir to the Wayne name. Sure, there’d been hundreds of others who’d died, but that was Gotham. Your family had gotten a plaque filled with tens of other forgotten names, Jason had gotten framed photos hung around the city.

Today, his photo was once again surrounded by thousands of bouquets. Peonies, roses, daffodils, lillies, a rainbow of petals that almost covered his memorial stone. It reminded you of your sad-ass cupcake. When the camera zoomed out, you could see your smaller set of poseys against one of the thirty towering monuments, the tiny names crammed into the rock. Your families name was on line fifty-two, near the bottom. You could only afford the flowers once a year, but you visited once a week at least.

There were other flowers. Other offerings. Other candles. Jason’s dwarfed them all.

You sometimes couldn’t tell if you hated the dead man or were hopelessly in love with him. Obviously it didn’t matter. Even when he was alive he was out of both your league and your tax bracket.

Still, you were absolutely certain of it, Jason Todd would beat up George Lancaster. So fucking bad. To a bloody pulp. He’d be eager to do it, as well. You could hum and haw about how you thought violence was bad but he’d see right to the core of you.

The part of you that wanted George Lancaster to suffer. And he’d do it with a kiss and a promise that he’d make it slow. He’d save you from all your monsters, and he’d do it eagerly. And that was the fantasy of it all, wasn’t it?

You lift your glass, in celebration of your dead parasocial imaginary boyfriend. You hoped he wouldn’t be jealous of your new living parasocial imaginary boyfriends. Hiccuping out a laugh, you swallow down another gulp.

And even then, of course you wanted Bruce Wayne as a father. As someone who has seen the worst of the world, and would protect you from it. As someone who would wipe away the tears, who would save you from your own self. And you wanted Cassandra as a sister, someone to groan over guys with and steal clothes off. You wanted the close relationships they shared with Barbara Gordon and Stephanie Brown, with Duke who’d only recently come into their fold. You even wanted their dog you’d seen in photos, the cat that Damian posted on his instagram, the fucking cow they kept for god knows reason inside the estate. You wanted everything, every part of their lives. You were a jealous person, but more than that, you were a greedy person.

You glance at the clock.

11:57.

You shakily open the candle packet, picking a green one out. That had been Sam’s last favourite colour, but he switched them so often it was hard to remember. You stab it into the pink frosting. Julie always chose pink for her cake. Chasey loved flowers, particularly poseys. The flowers had looked like posesys before they’d been crushed.

You light the candle. It’s tiny flame flickers in the dark room, the warm light overpowered by the cool from the television. You peek back over to the clock.

11:58.

And Mum always made her wish at midnight, because she believed that was when it was most likely to come true.

What would you wish for? You never did, because you never knew what you wanted to wish for. Everything you wanted, everything you could’ve wanted, was gone. It couldn’t come back, it was impossible.

11:59.

You look at the TV, at the blinding forms of the Wayne family. Of their graveyard, with the manor in the background. It’s as impossible as everything else. But that’s what they represent for you, isn’t it?

Something hopeful. Something impossible.

You wanted impossible.

12:00.

You lean over the messy cupcake, and blow the candle out. It disappears in one blow, and you sink back into the couch. You take a few crumbs from the cupcake and sneak them past your lips. In your drunkenness, you probably get more on the couch than in your mouth.

You let your eyes flutter shut, and because only you can, you give yourself the comfort of lies. You imagine loving embraces, whispered platitudes. You imagine that today was a good day, that you’d find yourself tomorrow happy. That you wouldn’t wake up with a hangover, that you wouldn’t have a shitty job, an evil ex, and mountains of debt.

That you’d have people who loved you, who could ease the pain.

And you don’t even care who they are.

MASTERLIST - NEXT

#Series:WWW #yandere batfam #yandere dc #yandere batfamily #yandere batfam x reader #yandere x reader #dick grayson x reader #nightwing x reader #jason todd x reader #red hood x reader #tim drake x reader #red robin x reader #damian wayne x reader #robin x reader

[sophiethewitch1]

What We Want - Chpt. 6 - Round Two. Fight!

In Which A Romantic Breaks The Universe

(Yandere!batboys x f!reader) 18+ MDNI!

SUMMARY

Another lonely birthday, another empty year. You miss your family. You're late for your bills and rent, and even then, you got robbed last Tuesday.

Still, you buy yourself a cupcake, because you need it. I mean, hey. What's dessert for if not to get over cheating boyfriends and dead relatives?

As you blow out the candle, watching the clock switch from 11:59 pm to midnight of the next day, you make a wish.

And because the world doesn't like to make much sense, it comes true. Your life is suddenly flipped on a dime, and you're stuck trying to catch up with it. Fantasy becomes reality. You're a Wayne now, apparently. Or you used to be. You're loved, you're rich, you're talented and powerful.

Well, sort of. Careful what you wish for, right?

(TRIGGER WARNINGS AND MASTERLIST HERE)

PREV - NEXT

Damn. Your indulgent TV stalking of the Wayne’s really doesn’t hit the same once you technically knew them. And you were hiding inside one of their bedrooms, inside one of their clothes, using their TV subscription. It just didn’t feel right. Morally, of course, but that wasn’t what you were talking about. No, you were just pissy your favourite pastime was basically ruined. You shovel another spoonful of cookie dough ice cream into your mouth, glaring through tired eyes at the screen.

There’s an up-close shot of Dick Grayson’s abs. The presenter ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ over his physical form, and you have to agree. You wish you had abs like that. Unfortunately, you did respond to most unwanted experiences with stress eating. As always with these celebrity figures, you can’t really tell if you want to be Dick or be with Dick. Your butt is nowhere near the level his is at.

While you hadn’t really set out today looking for shirtless pictures of the Waynes, it wasn’t like you were going to say no to them. So, when the gossip channel had switched from the reactions of the Waynes to last night’s fiasco to… this… you’d just kept watching.

You wonder if you should stop doing this. It’s definitely kind of creepy, and now you’d technically once been his… step-sister. What a mind fuck. You’ve been crushing on these dudes for a while, and now they were your ex-step siblings. This was like the start of a bad porno, but you knew you were not that lucky. And it wasn’t like you were going to start thinking of him as a brother any time soon. You hadn’t even met the guy. No, he was still firmly in the ‘celebrity crush’ section of your mind. Pretty and untouchable. The way things are supposed to be.

Which was also bad because you would probably have to meet and interact with him at some point. Probably in the near future. God knows you’d absolutely humiliated yourself in front of the fucking Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne,. Twice, in fact. You didn’t even want to think about the display you’d shown for Bruce Wayne or Damian Wayne.

You didn’t really know what to do with your slightly obsessive crushes. And you could see it definitely being a problem in the near future.

…You decide that what you do in your private time is absolutely nobody but your business, and keep watching. It’s a mix of bitter spite and genuine mental breakdown levels of desperation that leads you to that decision. You feel like you’re a child with their toy being taken away, and it’s making you mad. And sad too. Even if you shouldn’t do this anymore, you still want to keep the habit. You’d mentioned before your creature comforts were one of the few things that kept you going. And while you were mostly very good at not being the jealous, heinous creature you really are, you knew you wouldn’t be giving this up.

They’d have to tear your gossip channels from your cold dead palms. You weren’t giving them up, not without a fight at least. Unfortunately for you, the universe seemed determined to wrestle away literally everything you loved.

Guilt’s for tomorrow. Today is for ice cream and purposefully ignoring everything. Speaking of which, you can not remember the last time you had a good Ben & Jerry’s. They were so expensive these days, as all groceries were. You simply couldn’t afford it. The Waynes, of course, had multiple tubs in multiple different options. Alfred had seemed delighted that you’d taken the ice cream, for which reasons you could not perceive.

Oh, yeah! His name was Alfred. Very butler-y. You’d remember it this time, he was a very nice man. And he called you ‘young miss’ which earned him points. He also didn’t seem to hate you on sight or treat you like a two-headed freak, like some of the other people in this household. Not naming names. Yeah, fuck that noise, Damian Wayne obviously has issues and it’s much less attractive in real life.

The woman drones on, and your eyes flick to your phone. Yup, she’s still yapping. It’s not like you don’t appreciate Dick’s abs or anything, it’s just that you think she might’ve been talking about this one specific photo for over half an hour now. Lady should get a hobby. Wait, wait, this is her job. Maybe you should start a podcast where you rant about the Wayne’s exercise regimes. It seems to be quite a lucrative field.

You shriek when the door slams open, nearly tumbling backwards off the bed. Hands manage to grip the bedcovers before you tip over, not making a complete fool of yourself. As it goes, you lose your spoon to the carpet. Bits of cookie dough spread over the floor in a divine sacrifice. And you lose your sanity to the man standing in the doorway. To be fair, he looks just as confused as you feel.

You blink at the physically perfect form of Dick Grayson and then turn your head to the TV to look at the other physically perfect form of Dick Grayson.

…You really wish you had a good explanation for this.

He mutters out your name, lips parted. Dick Grayson seems absolutely shocked to find you here. His eyes flick around the room and eventually land on the TV. Said baby blues widen to the size of saucers when the reporter makes a really, really unnecessary comment.

“And in news that broke the hearts of both ladies and gentlemen everywhere in Bludhaven, Dick Grayson has announced he will be returning to Gotham to assist his family in this difficult time. My cousin in the Blud is probably crying right now. There’s no ass out there quite like his, and there’s no replacement for Bludhaven’s favourite young rich bachelor,” she winks at the camera, and then the shot of his toned stomach phases forward to take up the entire screen.

Well, there’s a lot to say about that. First of all, fuck. Second of all, shit. Third of all, she really couldn’t have said that part about Dick coming back to Gotham sooner? Perchance, before you’d found yourself in this situation?

You said you weren’t that lucky, you meant it.

“But still, ain’t that lucky for us Gothamites? I myself have spent a lot of time on Dick’s Tiktok and Instagram, and his acrobatic videos have been used in a lot of my personal-”

You snatch the remote from the sheets and pause it right there. The silence is tense. You wait for him to say something, but he just stares at you. Completely stunned, mouth-catching flies. You want to pull the covers up and hide under them, but you don’t think that’d make him leave.

“I couldn’t find my room,” you finally manage to say. It’s the worst excuse you’ve ever heard, sounds like a complete lie. And yet, unfortunately, it is the truth.

Dick’s eyes drift to the TV, which you still haven’t unpaused. You can’t tell if it would be worth it, just to get rid of his golden brown abs staring at you judgementally, even if you’d have to deal with the extra embarrassment of the dialogue over them. Maybe if you muted the TV? It wouldn’t make up for the insult of his paparazzi photos on a widescreen.

It takes you even longer to come up with an excuse for… that.

“I was checking the news about last night,” you continue, the panic in you rising like a tea kettle left on the stove for too long. You might start shrieking like one too.

You don’t think he believes you. He looks down at the Beatles shirt you’re wearing. You know what he’s going to say before he does, but you still dread it.

“You’re wearing my clothes,” he mutters, his voice awed.

You want to say, ‘Nooo! No, no, no! Don’t do this to me, damn it! Not anymore! No more, please! It’s enough, enough suffering! This is genuinely ridiculous, damn you!’ but instead you reply with a shaky, “…Didn’t have any of mine.”

Also, you’ve been huffing Eau de Dick Grayson? That’s definitely in character for you. You want to beat your own head in with a stick.

“And I couldn’t find my room, and uh, thought this one wasn’t being used,” you continue, daring a glance back at him. He still looks completely stumped.

“It wasn’t,” he answers, but it sounds like he’s a thousand miles away.

You know, Dick Grayson was supposed to be a lot more charming than this. You’re almost proud you managed to stun the man into near speechlessness. Almost, almost. Almost not going to kill yourself once he leaves.

If he leaves. He doesn’t look like he’s getting up. You eye the gap between you and the door. Your animal brain is telling you to just run for it. But Dick has Olympic level athletics, and you don’t doubt he could catch you if you ran. Would he try though? That’s the deciding factor here.

He doesn’t seem like he’s actually going to fucking do anything though. He just keeps staring, like if he looks for long enough, it’ll all start to make sense. Which, you wish.

“Do you know where my room is? I couldn’t… remember…”

He nods, instead staring at his own abs on the TV.

“Can you take me to my room?”

He nods again. Still doesn’t look back at you.

“…Mr. Grayson?” you say, and almost immediately regret it. ‘You’ wouldn’t have used his last name, even though you might’ve. ‘You’ had been a casual person, as far as you could tell. That was the kindest way you could say it, at least.

His head snaps to you. He somehow looks more confused. You wonder if you should pinch him or something, god knows you’ve done your fair share of pinching yourself recently.

“Yes, right, sorry. Let’s… go,” he gives you a cheery smile, shaking his head, but it seems quite strained. You’re probably matching. This is the most humiliating moment of your life, and of course, it’s with the most beautiful man on earth right beside you.

A break. You want a break.

The two of you quietly shuffle out of the room, and when he guides you forward, you follow him obediently. Your head naturally bows, shame making it hard to look at him. You stare at the wooden floors as you walk. Watching it shine in the morning light that filters through the windows.

Eventually, he comes to a stop in front of a door that has obviously been avoided. Though it’s as clean as every other inch of this house, there are no marks in the rug from the door opening and closing. And even then, it seems… well, it sounds silly, but the door seems sad to you. Too many things seem sad to you these days.

Your thoughts must show on your face because Dick clears his throat and gives you a worried look. Is it rude to say you’re sick of those sorts of looks? That they just make you feel sick and burdened these days? It’s not like you could bring your family back from the dead, or convince your cheating boyfriend to not be a piece of shit. It was out of your hands.

“…Are you alright?” he asks you, blue eyes sincere. You tilt your head to the side.

“No?” you say, but it sounds more like a question. No, you are not alright. Yes, you will be okay. It’s the only option. It’s one of your rules. You have to be okay. You just have to.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

You almost laugh.

“No,” this time your voice is firm, confident. Dick seems like he’s going to push it, but something in your eyes makes him stop. You give him a forced smile and say goodbye, closing the door gently in his face. Once you do, you crouch down and once again, press your face to your knees. Then you press your hands to your mouth and let out a scream that had been bubbling up for a while. After that, you feel you can live with the humiliation that is your existence without jumping out the three-story-height window.

You stand up, turning to the room. The first thing you notice about it is that there’s dust in here. Same as Dick’s old room. Now that you think about it, Alfred doesn’t seem the type who’d randomly leave certain rooms uncleaned, so it must be something he does out of respect for the tenants of Wayne Manor. Or maybe the old you requested it? God knows.

Sitting down on the old bed, your eyes rove around the room. It’s well decorated, as the rest of the manor is, but you can’t see anything that would make it your room. There’s none of the novels you’d collected from the used books store, no dorky little items you impulse bought, no pictures of your family. The apartment hadn’t had those either.

‘You’- she- seemed like a ghost to you. While you’d often felt like you’d barely been alive, simply going through the motions, this girl seemed like she hadn’t even been conscious half the time she was doing it. It made your stomach swim, your face pulls taught.

While you’d had few things holding you afloat, it’d been enough to keep you alive. Molly, your co-workers, the need to work so as to not starve to death. She hadn’t had anything like that. No liferaft. You’d been sputtering and gasping your way through life, and she’d been drowning. Maybe already dead, at the bottom of the sea, hair tangling with the seaweed.

This room feels like a coffin, and this manor like a cemetery. It makes you physically sick.

Showing off your fickle-mindedness, you realise that despite this being the Wayne manor filled with all your idols, you actually don’t want to fucking be here. You need space to clear your head, and the creaking floorboards that echo down the creepy hallways just don’t offer that. The atmosphere at your too-modern, too-minimalist apartment is leagues better than the atmosphere at this gorgeous old house which you’d usually love spending hours getting lost in.

Usually. Unfortunately, this place was more suffocating than the workplace when you knew you were about to get fired again. And you weren’t getting paid to stay here, so why the fuck would you?

Once you realise you’ve decided to run, you’re quick to pack up your shit. There’s not much in the room you need. A pair of sneakers, because you would rather die than put those heels on again. And you’ll grab some shirts because they’re comfy and remind you of home. Hopefully, it’ll make everything… grate… a little less. All of this is thrown in an old ratty backpack, which is then tossed over your shoulder. Shoes slipped on, and tapped against the floor so they’re on comfortably. And then you’re ready. Ready as you’ll ever be. With one hand on your phone, you take a peek outside the door. Coast is clear.

You press call for ‘The Wicked Witch of the West’. Jeanine picks up on the third ring.

“Hello, Jeanine Ryans here,” she says, her voice all business.

“Jeanine, I need an evac, stat,” you whisper to her, creeping down the hallway of the manor. The floor is unbelievably creeky, so it’s pretty fucking difficult to be stealthy about it.

“…What?”

“Get me out of this fucking manor, please,” you beg, now going down the stairs. Almost out, almost out.

“Right, on it. I’ll have a car outside in ten minutes if that’s alright?” Jeanine replies, immediately on the case. It almost makes you cry. You know she’s being paid for this, and very desperate for the job for some reason, but it’s still a hail mary that you are so grateful for.

“Thank you, thank you so much,” you say, turning a corner and-

Oh, fuck. Damian Wayne glares down at you, green eyes cataloguing every single guilty piece of you in existence. He sees your hand tighten around your backpack, hears Jeanine telling you not to worry through your phone, and probably notices the way your eyes desperately flicker behind him to the door. To your goal, to the exit to this labyrinth.

You can practically hear the wind blowing, see the tumbleweed drift by.

And then, he moves past you, twisting his body so no part of it touches you. There’s a moment where your brain freezes, something spicy smelling (cinnamon, maybe?) flowing past you, and by the time you turn around, he’s gone. Your deer-in-headlights tensed-shoulders look falls, leaving you confused in the foyer. He didn’t even say a word to you. You felt like you just got passed over by a boss from a Dark Souls game.

…Well, you’ll take the wins where you can find them! Quickly, you hurry out the front door, skittering down the steps like some sort of rat. It’s a long walk to the gates, and you don’t really know how to open them to let the car in, so you decide to take your time and enjoy the walk. The early morning dew apon the clean-cut blades of grass glint and sparkle, the gravel on the road crunches under your technically-not-stolen sneakers, and even if it’s a miserable life, it’s a pretty day. From the hill the manor lives upon, you can see Gotham’s tall skyline, cloaked in its characteristic fog.

Eventually, you find yourself in front of the gate, where you can see Jeanine waiting with a black car on the otherside. There’s a big green button next to the side gate, which you press, and it clicks open. There’s a moment where your neck tingles, and you glance up at the camera pointed down at you. The red flickering light beside it holds your attention. You can see your bedraggled reflection in its lense.

Shaking your head, you move on, greeting Jeanine. She gives you a quick bow of the head and opens the door for you. You hike the bag over your shoulder, give the Wayne manor one final, lingering look and then you step into the car. Jeanine starts speaking to you about some future appointments you have, and you’re too tired to understand a word of what she says. She realises you’re not processing anything she says, and hands you a pair of headphones with a wire adapter.

You could kiss her right then and there. You don’t because that’d be weird, but you definitely think about it. Headphones on, you watch the rolling hills and luxurious manors turn into highways and honking traffic, to finally the upside part of town which was now apparently where you lived.

Eventually you find yourself being delivered in front of your swanky new apartment. With a passing goodbye, Jeanine tells you that she’ll be busy for the rest fo the day so if you need anything to call the number on the card she hands you. You tuck it in your pocket, certain you’ll lose it like every other business card you’ve ever been handed.

The elevator ride up to your room is contemplative. The music is boring, your reflection is bedraggled and tired, and the gentle feeling of gravity under your feet tugs at you. You rock slightly when you finally reach your floor. The doors open, but you don’t make any move to leave. They shut again, and you’re left staring daggers at your mirrored self.

You’d woken up, still here. It wasn’t a dream. It was reality. And more than that, it seemed more and more like you’d be staying in this reality. You didn’t think you could go home. Sure you were rich but… but your home. Your few things you’d managed to save. Your meagre group of friends and your hard-sought job. It made you nauseous. Where had you lost it all? Why were you here now? Why did you keep having to lose everything?

You manage to snap yourself out of it before someone else calls the elevator. Striding out of the space, you look to the right where you remember your apartment coming from. It’s not hard to find the unit, as there are only three on the entire floor. Rich people.

The door closes with a satisfying thud behind you, and you nearly melt with exhaustion.

This apartment is the ninth circle of hell for you. Scrambling around on your knees, you’re desperate to find the damn phone that won’t stop ringing. You can’t understand where the sound is coming from.

Under your bed? You shine your other’s phone’s light under it. Nope. Behind the dresser? Nada. You search inside the drawers and then peek inside the fancy lamp. Absolutely nothing. You’re ready to tear your hair out when you spot something… odd.

There’s… You think there’s something stuck in your floorboards. You dig at the space with your fingernails and the piece of wood pops open. Inside is… a cardboard box. An awfully familiar cardboard box, actually. The sight of your Mum’s old keepsake box makes you cry out with joy, lifting it from its little enclave. You’d lost a lot in the past few days but at least the old you knew how to keep your family’s stuff safe.

This apartment looks brand new. And apparently the past you dug into it to hide her stuff. You can’t really judge, you have a hidey-hole back at your apartment. It was a brick that had already been loose in the wall, so it didn’t feel quite as criminal as this.

The ringing is coming from inside the box. When you pull the lid up, you find a keepsake box a little different from yours. While yours only ever had your family’s old passports and photo albums, this one had a sleek phone sitting on top of all the mementos. It’s an exact copy of the phone on your bed- or well, it would be, if you hadn’t dropped it.

Two phones? This bitch was greedy. And so are you, eagerly sweeping the expensive item into your gremlin hands. Your thieving high is instantly quashed when you see who’s calling.

Of all fucking… George.

You roll your eyes before hanging up, tossing the phone to the side as you start rifling through the old keepsake box. You flip through family photo albums and lovingly cradle old stuffies. The phone buzzes. You ignore it. You find one of your mother’s old necklaces, and because you’re desperate for anything that can ground you, slip it over your head. The cool heart locket rests just under your collarbone, and you clutch it with one hand as you keep exploring. The phone keeps buzzing. It’s only almost half an hour later when you realise something about this is strange.

Why is George… not blocked? You glance down at the vibrating object like it’s radioactive, a despairing frown pulling at your face. Cautiously, you pick it up, making sure not to open the notifications lest it tell George you read any of his messages.

He’s… apologising for not being there for your birthday. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. And it’s not even a proper apology, it’s one of those ‘I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings’ bullcrap. He keeps spamming you, and eventually, you realise that he’s not going to just stop.

You decide to nip this in the bud quickly because even remembering his cheating face makes you feel like throwing up.

‘You’: Why are you contacting me?

‘George <3’: Seriously? Look, I’m sorry I wasn’t there yesterday. I was busy, you know that.

Stupidly, you reply:

‘You’: ‘No, seriously, why are you contacting me? I’m done with you.’

You wonder how you ever loved this jackass. Even if he was obviously more of a jackass here, than where you’d come from. He was just better at pretending there. You keep scrolling, ignoring the new texts that pop up. Your stomach sours at the number of texts he himself had ignored, of the amount of ‘sorry baby, can’t come tonight’, the begging, the pleading.

No, he wasn’t worse at pretending. He just didn’t care.

You wonder if this could have been you, further along down the line. Abuse happens slowly, right? Like a frog in a pot. You’d have forgiven and forgotten, written away his worse behaviours till you couldn’t anymore. Till you couldn’t leave, till you were trapped.

You think George Lancaster would’ve tried to. He would’ve isolated you from everyone you had left if he hadn’t screwed up and got caught.

You realise now there were a lot of red flags in your relationship with George. Molly always hated him and he hated her. He’d constantly complain about how much time you spent with her, spamming you with texts when you went out.

You were only… only two days since you’d actually broken up with him. Which was sort of crazy to think about. You feel like you’ve lived eons since then. Like that one traumatic incident aged you thirty years. Anyway, you still hadn’t processed the whole George thing. You’d been sort of busy fighting for your life.

‘George’: I’m here, can you at least open the door so we can talk face to face?

Freeze. A knock sounds, and your head snaps up to the front door. You don’t move. You just wish it away. The knocking only gets louder and louder.

You feel like a dumb girl in a horror movie as you walk towards the door, unlocking it and creaking the knob open. George Lancaster stands on the other side, and before you can slam it in his face, he grabs you by the arm and yanks you out of the door. And then he’s pulling you to the elevator, even as you try and get your bearings, get yourself away from him.

“You can’t just ignore me like this,” George says, pissed off to high hell, “We’re going to miss the reservation I booked specifically for you. I told you it was happening today and-”

There’s white noise between your ears, you can’t hear what he’s saying. Told you? It wasn’t in any of the texts. He’s still talking even as the elevator dings, even as he shoves you in a white sports car that’s half parked on the curb. Even as he drives his way through Gotham’s streets, he won’t fucking shut up.

Why are you letting this happen to you? Why aren't you fighting back, wrenching yourself from his grasp? He takes you into a restaurant, one so upscale that normally you wouldn’t be able to get in for months, and your head snaps from staring socialites to watching politicians to gawking celebrities. You have the eyes of the world on you right now, and they’re all watching George yell at you.

And you can’t find your voice.

It's like a scab you can't stop picking at. Like you think this is what you deserve or something. And it's not. You know it's not. And yet you follow obediently, chastised and embarrassed, as he pulls you through the restaurant. When he picks a table in the centre of the room, you don’t protest. When he chooses your meal for you, even though it’s not to your taste, you don’t protest.

Looking at George, scrolling lazily on his phone, your hands clench against the table. They’re sweating, shaking, nails digging into your palms.

You… you didn’t have to break up with him again, did you? You realised it earlier, but you didn’t- it didn’t really sink in. Your first breakup with George Lancaster was a miserable traumatic experience, and it had been in the solitary streets of Gotham’s Narrows. This one, this one would be seen by literally everyone.

Nauseous. You feel so damn nauseous, your mouth dry as you swallow down bile. This was ridiculous. You couldn’t stand seeing his face. Was he texting her right now? God, did she even know? You’d just stormed out that night, running from what you’d seen.

George had chased after you. Had he left her there? Your stomach churned at the idea. You had to hate her on principle but, well, you also had to sympathise with her. Contradictions, that was the average you. You didn’t want to help this random girl. Didn’t want to have to ever think of her again.

…Staring at George, a definitively awful person, you can’t do it. Can’t just leave her to it.

“I’m breaking up with you,” you say.

“What?” George replies, not even looking up from his phone.

“I’m breaking up with you!” you shout. It’s not even intentional, just a result of being pushed too far, of breaking too easily.

The restaurant goes quiet. Guess you’re up for another scandal then. Whatever, it wasn’t like you would’ve lasted much longer anyway. This was all too complicated for your recently traumatised mind to handle. And it was just too damn stupid to bother with anyway. All of this was fucking stupid.

You included.

Just pull the bandaid off, right? You could already see how this version of you had so many scandals to her name. You probably should start giving a shit. Or at least trying to. You don’t think you want to, though.

George puts his phone down face down on the tablecloth, giving you a calm look. That slightly pitying stare activates something in your brain you didn’t really know was there. It’s a type of rage you haven’t known since you were a kindergartner and one of the other girls said you couldn’t play princesses. Since your first service job where your manager felt you up. Just pure, petty, anger. The type of anger ready to burn the world down as long as it burns whoever pissed you off as well. He opens his mouth, probably to say something condescending, and your hand whips out and snatches his phone.

“Hey!” George says instead, his eyes widening.

You turn the phone back on. Hm, passcode. You flip it around and use facial recognition to open it. Despite the fact that George wears the most comically shocked expression, with saucer-wide eyes and a mouth open to catch flies, it unlocks. Nice.

“Hey! What are you doing?” George demands, reaching over the table for his phone.

You twist away from his reach. Password. You flip the phone, and despite George’s comically shocked expression, it still unlocks. He shouts again when it does, probably realising that you might be taking this seriously. That he might actually be in trouble. That his sugar mummy might not take too kindly to the numerous texts to other women on his phone.

…You really can’t believe you’re a sugar mummy. And for George of all people. What a horrendous waste of money, it’s fucking tragic.

He’s got the texts with someone known as ‘Pizza Hut’ pulled up, with some very flirtatious messages. You scroll up furiously, ducking under George as he gets up from the table and tries to get the phone. Still, backing up, the sight of a very poorly shot dick pic of George’s has you grimacing. Your focus on the picture, trying to decide whether his penis looked so unappealing before you’d learnt of his betrayal, has you distracted when one of the servers come around.

And, well, shirt, meet soup. Very, very hot soup. Everyone? Meet a screeching, klutzy moron.

George takes the chance to advance on you, snatching his phone from you. He doesn’t even seem to care you’re currently getting third-degree burns. The sting scorches through the thin fabric of your dress shirt, burning your skin. George grabs you again, his grip harsh enough this time you know it will bruise, and you can’t really say why you do what you do at that moment.

Your aunt used to have a chihuahua. It was an ugly, grumpy thing. She’d rescued it late into its life, and it had been treated poorly beforehand. It didn’t like to be touched at all and used to run from anyone who tried. And if you tried to touch it? Cornered it?

Well, of course, it started biting.

George’s howl is the most satisfying thing you’ve ever heard. His squeal of “bitch!” might be even more so. He slaps you away from him, and the sound echoes in the restaurant. Your face stings. When you land ass first in the puddle of still-too-hot soup, you wonder if you might try and bite him again. You don’t think you even broke the skin, considering you can’t taste blood. The other patrons stare on in genuine horror, like they’ve never seen a messy breakup before. One woman raises a hand to her mouth, and gasps-

You find yourself staring up at a furious George, one with a menace in his eyes you’ve never seen before. You wonder, idly, if he’s ever hit you before. Well, not you, but ‘you’. You realise now that he has the capacity for it, that he probably always did.

“What the fuck!?” he hisses, angry eyes darting from side to side, “Biting me?! In fucking public?! Have you lost it, you crazy bitch?! And you got my phone fucking soaked in soup!”

“Did you buy it?” you ask, wiping your mouth with your sleeve to get George’s dirty taste out of your mouth.

He blinks, confused, thrown off by your question, “Huh?”

“Did you buy that phone?” you repeat, your staring starting to turn into a furious glare.

You don’t think he did. Your George had never been able to afford those sorts of things, he’d been as broke as you were. Of course, you’d seen him lust over those items, but you’d always managed to convince him not to go into debt over silly things like sports cars and fancy phones. And even then, you’d been the one to buy him a PS5.

He looks down at the phone and back at you, and you can see his jaw tick.

“I bought it. That’s mine.”

“It was a gift. You’re going to be such a bitter bitch to take back everything you gave me? Gonna leave me out on the fucking street?” he says, spittle flying with angry words.

This was escalating fast. Maybe before you’d have been cowed by his words, but you were genuinely off your rocker by now and were very much willing to tango with this bastard. Like yes, he did terrify you, but so did everything else. You could handle this much at least. You weren’t ready to back down.

“And if I did? What then George? What could you even fucking do?” you throw back, voice rising to match his.

“It’s not your money either, it’s theirs, you little leech!” says the pot.

“Does it matter?” replies the kettle.

Pushing to your feet, you find George without another answer. He stands between you and the exit. With the plain murderous rage on his face, you think he’ll try to grab you again if you run past. He wouldn’t bite you back, but he might slap you or something. So instead, like any good coward does, you run straight to the girl’s bathroom. It hasn’t failed you yet, and you doubt it will today.

You shove into the bathroom, past a woman doing her makeup. Her head bobs up and down as she takes in your seemingly infamous face, and your stained shirt. You stride as far away from her as possible, darting into the last bathroom stall and sitting on the closed toilet lid. You pull your knees to your chest and hiss out a sound of frustration when that presses the sticky liquid against your chest and pants. Not your brightest idea, but you were sort of running on fumes right now.

The bathroom stall is extremely clean. One thing you were quickly realising about rich people is they didn’t have to suffer shitty public bathrooms. You didn’t think they deserved it. Like customer service jobs, and traffic, they built character.

What were you doing? Right, trying not to cry. You’re doing much better than yesterday. Still, sitting on top of the toilet’s closed lid, your phone pressed to your face, you wouldn’t say you’re doing ‘good’.

But because you knew George was too much of a pussy to ever enter the woman’s bathrooms, you refuse to move a single inch. You don’t want to go out there. At all. At all, at all. You’d tried to call Jeanine, but she hadn’t answered. Some P.A. she was. You still weren’t going to fire her. Then you remember that she told you she was going out later, and that she’d left a card with you. Digging through your pocket, you decide it’s finally time to die when you realise you lost the card somewhere along the line.

So, she wasn’t going to come save you as your knight in shining armour.

You can’t remember Molly’s number. Who did these days? That was your phone’s job. So you were left with… this. You were left with this. Four blocked numbers and a third had sent an automatic reply because he was driving. Alfred was probably busy. Weren’t butlers always very busy?

…Rich people weren’t often very busy. They had butlers and assistants to do all their chores. You unblock all four of the Waynes that you have on your phone.

The first thing you notice is the amount of texts between ‘you’ and Dick. Scrolling and scrolling, you find most of them are him checking up on you and one-word replies from the old you. He’s friendly and accepting, even when you respond in cruel and aggressive tones. The further back you scroll, the kinder your replies are. At one point it seems like the two of you had a good relationship.

You check the other chats. Tim’s message log is filled with coffee requests sent back and forth between you, Damian’s is completely empty, and Bruce’s has had no response from your phone in years. But eventually, you scroll back far enough that you find an actual conversation instead of just ‘Call Alfred’ repeated every few days.

‘You’: I miss them.

‘Bruce Wayne’: I know. I miss them too.

You press the back button, sighing. That felt like you’d seen something you shouldn’t have, like you’d peeked into someone’s diary. Which was unbelievably stupid. All of this is unbelievably stupid. You should just leave, you should just be brave. Two days ago you faced off against one of your worst fears, but today you couldn’t even handle George Lancaster.

You want someone to rescue you. You know no one will unless you ask. It makes you choke on your own self-disgust. This is the second time in one day. God, maybe you should just do it yourself. It’s not like you couldn’t pay for your own Uber.

And still, you find yourself clicking on a name and begging. Skin crawling, you type and retype the text probably a hundred times. You go from long apologies to begging to rants you never intended to send in the first place. Tap, tap, tap, and then you delete, delete, delete.

What you settle on is simple.

‘You’: hey. can you come pick me up? thx

Maybe a bit too simple. You cross your arms and tuck yourself in the good ol’ fetal position. You feel like you’ve spent half your time holding yourself like this the past three days.

‘Dick Grayson’: I’ll be there in five.

MASTERLIST - NEXT

#Series:WWW #yandere batfam #batfam x reader #yandere dc #yandere batfamily #yandere x reader #dick grayson x reader #nightwing x reader #jason todd x reader #red hood x reader #tim drake x reader #red robin x reader #damian wayne x reader #robin x reader

[sophiethewitch1]

What We Want - Chpt. 5 - Meet The Adams Family

In Which A Romantic Breaks The Universe

(Yandere!batboys x f!reader) 18+ MDNI!

SUMMARY

Another lonely birthday, another empty year. You miss your family. You're late for your bills and rent, and even then, you got robbed last Tuesday.

Still, you buy yourself a cupcake, because you need it. I mean, hey. What's dessert for if not to get over cheating boyfriends and dead relatives?

As you blow out the candle, watching the clock switch from 11:59 pm to midnight of the next day, you make a wish.

And because the world doesn't like to make much sense, it comes true. Your life is suddenly flipped on a dime, and you're stuck trying to catch up with it. Fantasy becomes reality. You're a Wayne now, apparently. Or you used to be. You're loved, you're rich, you're talented and powerful.

Well, sort of. Careful what you wish for, right?

(TRIGGER WARNINGS AND MASTERLIST HERE)

PREV - NEXT

The first thing you’d done when you woke up, still somehow in the Wayne manor, was pull out not-your phone and check the date. When it tells you that you are not, in fact, in some weird version of a time loop, you feel some measure of relief. The second thing you do is look your own damn name up on Google. There were over 3 million results. You have a Wikipedia page. If that hadn’t made you want to gag, the press from last night had you bumbling your way into the ensuite bathroom and puking into the toilet.

It’s still sitting on the bathroom floor, nauseous and achy and sweaty, your mouth washed out but still tasting foul, that you continue your research.

It’s just as you had suspected, your family was dead. Still dead. Well, shit. In the light of day, you supposed that made more sense. That there was no real reason to assume otherwise. You hadn’t for most of yesterday, but as soon as you’d thought that maybe there was a chance, your hopes had been dashed. Which was good, rip the bandaid off and all.

It was good. Things were good. They were fine, you were fine. You really wish you were a better liar.

Again you wash your mouth out. Root around the cabinets for some medical-grade mouthwash, do it again, and then you throw yourself into the shower. Again. You notice the soap smells like whoever’s clothes you stole. Refreshing and awakening, that mint and earth again. You think you can detect something floral in it too. It’s still masculine, but…

Wow, you are such a freak! You put down the fucking soap and manage to resist the urge to slam your head into the tiles. Your headache was bad enough already.

When you leave the bathroom, you glance at the door, and then down at your towel. Guess you’re stealing some more apparel. You find a Superman shirt, give it a judging glance, and then pick out a black T-shirt with ‘The Beatles’ across the front, and some sweatpants. You have to roll up the pant legs so you don’t trip and fall flat on your face.

One hand scrolling through Twitter and TikTok and Reddit and every single piece of social media you could find, getting the people’s source of news and you get the high overlords’ one when you turn on the huge TV attached to the wall. The remote kind of confuses you at first, but you manage to find the good ol’ Gotham news channel.

Immediately, you’re greeted by your miserable mascara-streaked face. You turn the TV off. You take a deep breath. Turn it back on. Luckily it’s not just you getting your private moment of trauma blasted open in the media. Your party had been filled with Gotham’s elite, after all. You weren’t the only rich idiot left crying by the side of the road.

You weren’t the only one who had to suffer. There had been twenty-eight casualties, in total. A small amount, considering the man behind the deaths. The Joker wasn’t known for his cleanliness. You tell yourself that, and yet still, you can’t make them just numbers. They’d been standing right next to you, after all. All in the same boat, all waiting for the axe to swing, secretly hoping you’re the one who lives to the next day. Only one of the party guests had been shot, and that’s because you think they’d personally pissed off the Joker. That’s what Twitter says, anyway. There were multiple video recordings of the altercation, and it didn’t look like he’d been the smartest banana in the bunch. The TV is a lot sweeter on the dead soul.

You feel sorry for all the dead. You still don’t think this rich heir should be the face you see, though. When you check his name, you find several forgotten assault cases. Assault, rape, just like that disappearing bastard had tried to do to you. That female janitor you’d seen shot had done more for this city than that guy ever had.

Did her family know? Did she have a family? Someone to mourn her? You’d never thought about that before. How many people out there wouldn’t have anyone to even remember them?

It’s none of your business, in the end.

After a whiles more research, you switch the TV off and tuck your cracked phone into the sweatpants. You know where your mother’s grave is, on the west side of the estate. Wikipedia knew all, which was now kind of creepy to you as it knew all about you as well. Really, you couldn’t believe it. Your mother, buried with the Waynes? You’d always thought she should find someone new, someone who’d appreciate her, unlike your father who had dipped as soon as Sam was born.

You couldn’t even remember the guy. Still, you remembered that he’d smelled bad and made your Mum do everything, and was just generally all around the worst choice for a husband.

But, Jesus Christ, Bruce Wayne? Absolute insanity. You had no idea how the two of them would’ve even met. Let alone fall in love and get married. Your mother was one of the loveliest women on earth but… they had absolutely nothing in common, other than having troublesome kids. And you hadn’t seen her getting lovey-dovey with the other PTA mums.

You walk out of the room you’ve borrowed and into the hallway. In the light of day, the Wayne manor is much less creepy, and you can find it in yourself to appreciate the antique space. Warm sunlight falls over dark oak furniture, illuminating your bare feet as you walk along the Persian rug. Your fingers trail along all the tiny little decorations, some annoying part of you demanding you leave traces of yourself behind. Your fingerprints dirty an old clock, a golden candelabra, a lamp and a tiny spinning globe.

You might’ve gotten lost in a place this huge if you couldn’t hear people’s voices floating down the halls. They were too far away for you to be able to tell what they were saying, but you could still hear them. They’re to the west, so you’re definitely going to have to go past them.

You follow the voices and eventually come to a stop in a hallway. You can smell food. Good, real food. The type that makes your instant-ramen-powered body salivate. The people are in the kitchen, right around the corner. You duck your head and quickly sneak past the mostly closed doorway. On the other side, you pause, your curious self unable to leave just yet.

“She needs help,” Bruce says, and you mentally curse. Balls. You didn’t want to hear this. You guess this was instant karma for snooping. Maybe they weren’t talking about you?

Why did that sound very unlikely…

“She went through a lot last night,” he continues, which, well, yes, you did go through a lot, “And he said that she saw a woman get shot right in front of her. It makes sense if she doesn’t want to talk yet.”

He? Who’s he? Who ratted you out? Wait, dumb question, the four other witnesses who saw the janitor get shot. You were still pretty sure the Waynes weren’t supposed to know that, but everybody knew those GCPD pigs were always just a dollar away from whatever you wanted them to do. It’s not surprising that the Waynes know details only the police should know at the moment.

…It is a bit disappointing, though. You chose to have hope in them, that they’d gotten that information legally. Your fatal obsession with the Waynes wasn’t going to disappear after one miserable party. You wished it would.

“She was acting strange before that,” Timothy Jackson Drake’s smooth voice drifts from the kitchen. You were still a little starry-eyed over him, which was… bad, you think. It’d definitely make whatever relationship the two of you had been forced into a whole lot more difficult. It did not need to be any more difficult.

“Are you accusing her of something?” Bruce Thomas Wayne’s voice is gravelly in comparison, angry, maybe. Also, ‘accusing’? What could he even be accusing you of? It was pretty obvious you weren’t capable of anything nefarious, you were far too stupid for that. You were a plastic bag drifting along the Gotham river, barely able to affect which direction you flowed in.

“God no. And I definitely wouldn’t do it with her listening, that’d be rude.”

Your breath hitches, and you push off from the wall. Busted, damn. Your face feels unbelievably hot. As you leave, you can hear Mr Wayne scolding his adopted son. You walk until you can’t hear their voices anymore, and then a little further, finding an exit door.

You stumble out onto a stone staircase, probably a servants’ one in the olden days. You move down it, hand gripping the railing. You’re barely conscious of where you’re going. There’s a path that leads away from the stone manor and further into the estate, and you follow it. When you spot a small gated area, with stone obelisks and angel statues, you veer off the path and onto the grass.

Hissing out a breath, it’s only now you realise you went outside without any shoes on. Your toes curl in the cold, wet grass. It’s a miserable feeling, and you want to walk right back inside. And then you think about the awkward conversation waiting for you, take a breath and keep going. The gates swing open easily under your hand, the golden embossed ‘W’ glinting in the light.

A guardian angel stands before you. Its stone face is disapproving, glaring down at you from above. ‘Interloper,’ it calls you, but you move past it without pausing. It’s pretty obvious which graves are the new ones and which are the old ones. They’re all clean and well-kept, but the ones to the left have dates going back hundreds of years, and the ones to the right only decades. Your eyes follow the rows of graves. Thomas Wayne, Martha Wayne…

Your breath whistles out of you, nearly muffled by the grey morning wind.

And your mother. She has a different last name, now another Wayne. Your siblings don’t, which makes sense. You’re surprised to find many of your extended family also in this graveyard. Your grandmother. Your uncle and aunt. A few of your cousins.

It’s cold this morning, and you’re out here with only a thin T-shirt on. Shivering, you rub your palms against your bare arms. It doesn’t do much. Still, you don’t want to go inside yet. Instead, you crouch in front of Sam’s grave, eyes reading the tiny epitaph. It’s not the one you wrote.

‘Beloved Son and Brother.’

Simple, clean-cut, formal… unfamiliar, you suppose. Yours had been much more flowery, ‘All the colour in the world is gone without you’. It was a bit silly, but you’d never said you were a poet. You’d just known you’d wanted something that represented them, if poorly.

Sam was a beloved son and brother. But that wasn’t who he chose to be. He liked colours. He’d change his favourite every other day, so he liked everything rainbow. It made it easier to choose which one he’d like next, he said. You were always buying him more and more coloured pencils because he’d wear them all down to the tips, he dyed the cat a bright red headache, much to your mother’s horror, and considered it his personal job to make every single birthday, christmas, and easter card. He’d paint on the walls in washable markers, and you’d often been the one to volunteer to help him get it all down. In school, he always had the best art project out of the entire class, even if you were slightly biased.

He was a colourful kid. He wasn’t… a plain grey tombstone. Nothing to help remember him, because you were always losing more and more of their precious memories.

The others had similarly impersonal graves. Just what they were, not who. Mother, sister. Nothing that spoke of how they’d lived their lives, what the world had lost when they’d died. It was… you didn’t think it was right. It was a disaster, really. Even when you’d had to rely on the Wanye Foundation donations, you’d managed a better resting place than this.

You suppose you’d never gotten them into the Wayne family’s personal graveyard, though. That was a bit of an upgrade, you guess.

“You need to come back inside. You’re worrying my father.”

“Jesus Christ!” you shriek, leaping backward. Your foot catches on one of the cobblestones, and you end up tipping back farther than you mean to, your ass bruising against the ground. You bump another gravestone, and there’s a horrible moment where it gives a little and you think it’s going to knock over.

It doesn’t. A shining miracle on your day.

From your slightly wet seat on the ground, you look up, finding one such Damian Al Ghul-Wayne. His towering height is the first thing you notice, second his stunning emerald green eyes. Both were incredibly shocking in their own ways, but his height really was almost dizzying. Perfect brown skin and a stylish 'long on the top, short on the sides’ black haircut, paired with the sort of face some European model might have, all come together to make sure you feel as pathetic as possible. His posh-looking outfit doesn’t help.

Neither does the fact he just watches you. He doesn’t even pretend to bend over to help you up. Which you’re sort of grateful for, honestly. It’d just make you more embarrassed. You didn’t know if you could hold the hand of your celebrity crush and… well, be normal. Pretend to be normal. You weren’t doing a very good job of it anyway.

You have to wonder, which was the worst introduction? The drunk, the bloody, or the one where you fell on your ass? God, you really are screwing this all the way up. You wonder how you’re inevitably going to make it even worse. There’s a part of you that desperately doesn’t want to meet any of the other Waynes, even as another part of you is screaming that it needs to.

If they knew they had a fangirl in their graveyard, you’re sure they’d kick you out. That was why you were lying about everything, not because you had intimacy issues.

Stop thinking, you idiot! You’re only making things more difficult for yourself with all your worrying and fretting. And maybe you should get off the ground, you looked stupid. You push to your feet, wiping your dirtied hands on the sweats.

He still doesn’t say anything when you stand, still just staring at you. His open staring is far too intimidating, so you scrounge for something to say.

“Your father? You- Is he alright?” you stammer over your words, giving Damian Wayne an awkward smile. He doesn’t return it, instead canting his head towards one of the windows.

You look toward where Damian Wayne gestured to, find nothing but an empty window frame, and then back to the ridiculously tall man. You swear, the guy had grown like a bean pole. He had to be something ridiculous, like 6’5, or maybe more. You were fairly certain you’d been taller than him at twelve, or thirteen, whenever it was he was first introduced to the world as Damian Wayne. Now, now… not so much.

“There’s nobody in there?” you ask, like you’re questioning your sanity. You are.

“My father’s shy,” He says, coolly shrugging one shoulder.

What. Bruce Wayne? Shy? Was he joking or something?

Damian Wayne stares down at you with narrowed green eyes, and dark brows in a harsh frown. His arms are crossed over his rich kid sweater, shiny black shoes tapping against the cobbles. That’s not the face of someone who makes jokes, you think.

You swallow, mind whirring as you try desperately to fix this conversation, “Right. Okay. I’ll… I’ll come back inside, then. Sorry for bothering you guys.”

He keeps staring at you. He doesn’t seem bothered.

“Sorry for bothering him?” you correct.

Damian gives one slow, cat-like blink of his eyes, and then turns with a tsk and walks away. It takes you a moment to realise you’re meant to follow him. It takes you even longer to actually catch up with him because he’s so fucking tall.

On TV he didn’t look this tall. You feel kind of betrayed, which is weird.

As you’re walking along, getting closer back to the manor, a stick or something pokes you in the foot. You curse, grabbing your foot. Thankfully you don’t start bleeding or something. You’d already be tracking dirt all over the inside of the impeccable space, you didn’t want to bring blood in as well. It takes a moment for you to realise the sound of Damian’s footsteps crunching in the grass has stopped, and you glance up.

He’s staring right at you again. He looks even less impressed with you, raising an eyebrow and mouth ticking downward. You put your foot down and tuck your hands behind your back in a very obvious anxious display.

“You went outside not wearing any shoes?” Damian Wayne asks, incredulous.

“I was… yeah, I forgot to,” you say, shrugging your shoulders. Not your best moment, but you weren’t really having any of those today. Or yesterday. Or the day before. Maybe you should stop thinking about that, actually.

“That’s disgusting,” The young Wayne sneers, and then turns and gives you his shoulder.

You think your heart maybe cracks a little. Well, they do say to never meet your idols. Maybe whoever wrote that quote had you in mind specifically, because now you were in… this situation. Ex-step-sister. If that was a thing. Your Wikipedia page said that you said that a lot, very insistent that you had absolutely nothing to do with the Waynes.

…It didn’t really look like you had nothing to do with the Waynes, from an outsider's perspective. Which obviously didn’t make any sense, since you were… you. You were not an outsider, not anymore.

This was too complicated. You needed a coffee. With like, so much sugar it’ll make you bounce from the walls.

Damian strides up the side entrance’s staircase and through the door, leaving it open for you to follow through. You hesitate at the doorway, looking over your shoulder to the graveyard. The statue calls you names in the distance, and although you feel like a stranger who doesn’t belong here, you manage to step back into the house.

You force yourself to walk through the hallway and into the kitchen, fists clenched tight at your side and your shoulders bunched up to your ears. Bruce Thomas Wayne, Timothy Jackson Drake, and the butler from earlier. Damian Al Ghul Wayne steps around the trio, picking some drink from the counter and moving to sit at the dining table at the edge of the room. There’s an open book on the table that he starts flicking through, and well, apparently that’s the end of your first conversation with the youngest Wayne.

You did… well, alright might be pushing it. You're still going to say you did alright.

Tim Drake gives you a sweet smile, catching your attention. The silky raven hair of his heart-shaped fringe falls over his beautiful, pale face, and for a moment there you totally forget that he’d called you out earlier like that. Which was just, such an odd thing to do. His hand lifts to scratch at the buzz cut under the floppy strands of hair. The movement mesmerises you. You look away from his sky blue eyes, very quickly realising they’re robbing you of the few remaining brain cells you have. And you need those, damn it. Especially because you’d already made the decision to hide from all your problems like a baby. Negative, negative…

“How’re you doing today?” Tim asks you, giving you a friendly greeting. It’s a welcome olive branch.

“I’m good,” you lie like you breathe, eyes glancing around the space. Bruce Wayne has his phone out and a mug of coffee in his hands. He sips from the cup, his focus swallowed by the tiny screen. You glance back over to Damian Wayne. Huh, it really does run in the family.

Your neck prickles, and you glance back at Tim again. You get a brief vision of his tired, unsmiling expression, and then it’s back to the angelic and gentle smile. You smile back at him, a wretched, awful twisting of the lips that you hope doesn’t look like a grimace.

Tim’s smile turns into a grin. It’s really too pretty and makes you shift in your seat uncomfortably. Damn it all, look away!

“Would you like some breakfast, young miss? I’m afraid we’ve run out of pancakes, but I’d be happy to make some more for you,” the butler says in an awfully familiar British accent. You think you know this person, but you can not remember from where. Shit. Your memory was bad on the best of days, much less after… after an event like last night.

Anyway, the food from earlier had been pancakes. Despite the delicious scent, you really didn’t want to make him make any more food for you. You felt like you were intruding as it was.

“Do you have any toast, or… cereal?” you suggest instead, wondering if rich people even bother with cereal. The butler chuckles, and you think, ‘Oh, yeah, probably not’.

“We have both, miss. Master Grayson has a particular fondness for cereal, in fact,” he informs you, which, oh, cool. You did in fact know that, you stalker you. You’d totally forgotten about that weird fact or the weird fact that you knew that weird fact. Dick Grayson has an Instagram where he posts reviews of different cereals, which of course you have notifications on for.

“It’s more of an obsession,” Tim says, resting his palm in his hand as he… continues to stare at you. Nobody else thinks his ogling is strange, so you try to ignore it as well. Try is the choice word.

“I like cereal too. It’s normal,” you say in defence of Dick, a natural and instinctual urge.

And apparently, the fact that you like cereal is fucking shocking, judging from the open-mouth looks the group gives you. Oh no, you’re supposed to hate him, right? You’re supposed to hate them all, actually. What had you called him on your phone? Something about being annoying and a dickhead?

Swallowing your inner scream, you move around the counter and towards the cupboards. Whatever, they’ll have to deal with this new and improved version of you, which didn’t despise everyone in the room. Along with being a terrible liar, you were also pretty bad at keeping secrets.

You don’t want to think about that, so instead you turn to Alfred.

“So,” you start, “Can I see your cereal collection?” you ask, like a totally normal person. Man, this cupboard’s looking pretty head-smashable right now.

This family has more tact than yours did, because they all manage to put their eyes back to what they were doing and pretend you weren’t acting really, really out of character. Rich people. They’re good at overlooking the crazy.

“Of course,” the butler clears his throat, “In here, you’ll find Master Dick’s collection-” score! Not another fan can claim this right, “-and in the fridge a carton of milk. Are you sure I couldn’t serve it for you, miss? I understand you might still be a little…”

His voice trails off. Little what?

He glances at the others and then leans in close like he’s going to tell you a secret. Behind a hand, he whispers, “Hungover.”

Ah. Well, yes, but you were a big girl who could make her cereal, even on hangover days. Kind of embarrassing it was that obvious, though. You were usually better at hiding how much of a mess you were.

“I’ll be fine, thank you,” you say, and the butler nods and backs off. You’re pretty sure at this point that he was the one who called you yesterday morning, but you still couldn’t quite recall his name. When you were out of sight, you’d check your phone for his contact information.

See? You could do this. Stealthy.

As you start perusing through the cereal options, Tim gets up from his spot by the counter and comes to stand next to you at the breakfast bar. He heads straight to the coffee machine, and you glance at it longingly.

It’s one of those cafe-quality fancy espresso makers, with an Italian name embossed in silver on the top. Tim manipulates the machine like a master, which you’re very jealous of because it might as well be alien technology to you. You miss your shitty drip coffee, at least that dingy little machine was loyal to you. Better than George.

“Coffee?” Tim Drake offers, glancing at you. Ah, the starry eyes are back. While Damian Wayne had been a mildly disappointing introduction, Mr. Drake was just reinforcing your celebrity worship. And of course, because your brain works against you, his offer reminds you of the daydreams you’d had on your first twenty-first birthday. Coffee shop au real person fiction- a new low, even for you.

Flustered, you look up at the ceiling. The old mansion is decorated in every single available corner, the plaster above spreading across the entire surface with delicate filigree and pretty curling patterns. It’s gorgeous, absolutely entrancing. That’s what you tell yourself at least.

“Please,” you say, your voice just the slightest bit too quiet. He hears you anyway.

It’s surprisingly domestic. Of course, you don’t know any of these people past face value and Wired YouTube interviews, but… it’s quite indulgent. This is sort of your dream, isn’t it? A full house of people enjoying their morning together. Peaceful bird song drifting in through open windows. The comfort of being around people you trust, not having to perform or put on a show. Well, you are very much putting on a show right now. It’s the thought that counts, or whatever.

“What would you like in it? We have sugar, milk, oat milk, and I like having a few syrups on hand,” Tim chatters excitedly, listing off the different ingredients he has on offer. Your poor ass stares at his rich one, and you are very rudely reminded these people live in different tax brackets than you.

Who the fuck had coffee syrups in their house? You could barely afford the little treats of caramel syrup you get every couple of months. The disappearance of the middle class was one you had witnessed personally.

You rattle off a very basic, bland order. Tim looks sort of disappointed in you which… well, you could be a coffee snob. You just didn’t have the time, usually. A flat white kept you going through the day, you didn’t need anything else. And so, Tim hands you a very bland coffee, and it is god sent. You can’t imagine how good it would be if you had mustered up your courage and asked for some caramel syrup.

Huh, you could be a coffee snob. You could be anything you wanted, really. And your first thought is being a coffee snob. Good God.

“Are you going to be staying?“ Bruce Wayne asks, immediately putting you on the spot. You weren’t ready for this, you were thinking about the coffees you could buy. Oh no, you really aren’t ready for this.

“At least for now, right?” Tim Drake says, just making it all the more stressful. You let out an awkward chuckle, fingers tight around your drink.

“Oh, I don’t want to be an inconvenience-”

Damian Wayne slams his mug down on the table, so hard a crack splinters up its side. He picks the cup up, strides across the kitchen, narrowed green eyes meeting yours for a second, and then he dumps the cup in a secret rubbish can. He murmurs an apology to the butler and then is out of the room.

Okay, well, you certainly feel like an inconvenience.

The butler clears his throat, and says, “Please forgive young master Damian. He’s been having a difficult time recently, I hope you can understand.”

And you think, ‘bitch, a difficult time?! He’s not the one who almost died last night!’ but what you say is, “Of course, I completely understand. I don’t want to bother him anymore so I’d really like to leave today.”

Mr. Wayne laces his fingers together, blue eyes giving you an assessing look.

“Stay for the day, and you can leave tonight. I want to make sure you’re truly alright,” he eventually says, and the mere presence of the man has you yielding to his commands. Didn’t really matter you were an adult who’d managed to survive this long on your own, you were listening to the big scary guy when he told you what to do.

Well, that’s that! You make your cereal and have a very quiet breakfast. You can’t tell if they’re being quiet because you’re here, or if mornings are usually like this. You hope they’re usually like this. Once you’ve finished your very nice cereal (one of the highest rated on Dick’s Instagram) you place the bowl by the sink. You want to wash it, but when you ask Alfred he gives you a look like you kicked his dog. Okay, you’ll just go then.

You’re about to sneak away, when you realise Tim’s staring at you… again…? But this time he seems quite focused on your clothing. His eyes follow the double lines on the side of your sweatpants, before settling on the Beatles logo on your shirt. He hums at it. Raises his brows.

“I’m sorry, I borrowed this because I didn’t have any other clothes. Is there something wrong with me wearing this?” you ask, and then experience a moment of horror, “This doesn’t belong to you, does it?”

“Hmm?” Tim chirps, “Oh, no, don’t worry. It’s not mine.”

And then he turns away from you in a very clear dismissal. Nice, you really wanted to go hide for an hour or two. With one last awkward wave to Bruce Thomas Wayne, you scurry out of the kitchen and back to the bedroom you’d started thinking of as yours. You need to figure out how you're going to handle all this, and you're going to do it alone. Maybe with some dessert, if you can find it. You wouldn't say you think better with sugar running in your veins, but it definitely makes you more willing to deal with the bullshit that is your life. Hopefully it'd work in your new one, too.

-

Tim listens to your retreating footsteps, waiting till you’re far enough away to begin talking to Bruce. Humans were creatures of habit, so you’d probably be going back to the same room you slept in last night. He thinks Damian and him were the only ones who noticed whose shirt you were wearing, B’s off his game today. You’ve really managed to mess him up, to Tim’s delight.

“See? Dames was totally fine with her being here,” Tim says, cheerily enjoying his youngest sibling’s suffering. Bruce sighs, witheringly, lifting his hand to rub against the headache he always has. He’s probably noticed the excited, slightly fanatic gleam that’s entered into Tim’s eyes.

It was sort of obvious. This was all so exciting! You’d come back, sporting absolutely none of the defensive vitriol you usually have, and ate breakfast together. You took a coffee out of Tim’s hands. You’d willingly spoken to the devil, who everybody in the family knew hated you as much as you hated him, and even more than that-

You’d spoken to Bruce. Tim was sporting the idea that you’d gotten head trauma, at this point in time.

“Okay, fine. You get the mission, but-” Tim has to resist the urge to clap his hands together like a gleeful child “-but no extra cameras. I’m serious, Tim, if I find out you’ve invaded her privacy just after she’s starting to warm up to us again-”

“She wouldn’t know,” Tim complains, cutting the Bat off with a roll of his eyes.

“She’s smarter than you’d think,” Bruce shakes his head. Tim has to disagree, after the catastrophe that was last night. Unless of course, you were just playing with them all. So many options, it’s dizzying.

“We’ll shelve that argument for later. So, I want full control of the case, and in turn, I’ll do another two weeks as CEO,” Tim waves off Bruce’s complaints, going straight into haggling. The CEO position was tossed between the two of them like a hot potato, and it was one of Tim’s favourite bargaining tools.

“I am absolutely not agreeing to that, a month and nothing less.”

“This is why half your children don’t talk to you, but sure, whatever. Chase away your last, loyal loving son-”

“My God, Tim. Three fucking weeks, and if I hear another word I will hand this matter over to Grayson,” Bruce sighs, sounding a bit defeated.

Tim gives an offended gasp, placing his hand against his chest. And then he realises Bruce might actually be serious, and freaks out a bit.

“He’d be bad for it. Far too personally involved. You definitely don’t want to do that,” he says, leg bouncing under the table. Of course, the Bat notices, but he doesn’t mention it. He wouldn’t take this from Tim, they both knew he was getting too frazzled around the edges. He needed something to focus on, to ground him.

You were the perfect project. He loved his projects.

“I am aware. But the girls are out of town, and uncontactable. And I think if I gave Damian this assignment the two of them would kill each other.”

“No Jason option, sir?” Tim says because he’s a shit-stirrer and wants to get to work.

Tim succeeds in chasing Bruce away. He’s left to have his coffee in peace as the old man quickly flees the room at the mention of the son he's on the worst terms with. For the next few hours, Tim taps away on his computer, enjoying his time.

And when the front doors open, his ears prick, and a decidedly evil grin spreads on his face.

“I’m home!” Dick calls out, words travelling through the grand manor.

Tim gets up from his seat and wanders leisurely to the main hall, where Dick stands. He’s got a suitcase by his side, filled with all the things he’s brought up from the Blud. When he spots Tim, Dick’s face spreads in a familiar sunny smile. He quickly rushes to Tim’s side, swallowing the younger brother in a hug. Tim groans at the tight squeezing.

Despite his clinginess, it was good to see him. His tanned skin glowed healthily, and his curly black hair was messy over his brow. Sapphire blue eyes sparkled. He was happy to be home, despite everything that was going on. Dick always looked like he’d just gotten back from a run because he usually had. It was hard to get the guy to sit still for even a minute, much less stop parkouring over every imaginable surface.

“Tim! How’s it been? Ah, it’s so good to be home,” Dick starts, and again, Tim groans. When Dick starts yammering he never stops.

“I’m good, man. We can talk later, you should go put your things away before Alfred does,” Tim reminds Dick, and Dick pouts. It was a general rule that unless it was cooking, the family wasn’t supposed to rely on Alfred for everything.

“Alright, alright. I’ll be down in a minute! I have so much to tell you,” Dick relents, hand lifting to mess with his hair. Tim pushes him off, glaring at the man, and Dick laughs.

Tim gives Dick a tired wave as the gymnast bounds up the stairs to his bedroom. Tim watches him disappear down the hallways, and thinks, ‘I wish I could see this happen.’ He sighs, guess he’ll just have to hear Dick retell the story later. The distant sound of your shrieking voice has him chuckling. Yeah, he’ll hear about it later, he’s sure.

MASTERLIST - NEXT

#Series:WWW #yandere batfam #batfam x reader #yandere dc #yandere batfamily #yandere x reader #dick grayson x reader #nightwing x reader #jason todd x reader #red hood x reader #tim drake x reader #red robin x reader #damian wayne x reader #robin x reader

[sophiethewitch1]

What We Want Masterlist

In Which A Romantic Breaks The Universe.

(Yandere!batboys x f!reader)

SUMMARY

Another lonely birthday, another empty year. You miss your family. You're late for your bills and rent, and even then, you got robbed last Tuesday.

Still, you buy yourself a cupcake, because you need it. I mean, hey. What's dessert for if not to get over cheating boyfriends and dead relatives?

As you blow out the candle, watching the clock switch from 11:59 pm to midnight of the next day, you make a wish.

And because the world doesn't like to make much sense, it comes true. Your life is suddenly flipped on a dime, and you're stuck trying to catch up with it. Fantasy becomes reality. You're a Wayne now, apparently. Or you used to be. You're loved, you're rich, you're talented and powerful.

Well, sort of. Careful what you wish for, right?

GENERAL TRIGGER WARNINGS/THINGS YOU CAN EXPECT

18+ MDNI, SLOW BURN yandere, romantic yandere with the 4 robin boys, rest of the batfam aren't yandere but still care about you, reader is a girlfailure, ex-step siblings (the dead mother trope), reverse harem, healthy dosing of enemies to lovers, my stupid romance novel tropes, fem!reader and afab!reader, all romantic leads 18+, the graphic violence, death and other such triggers of the original series, attempted sexual assault (chpt. 3), themes of depression/suicide, family death, themes of poverty, alcohol, mentions of alcoholism, my own mix of canon because honestly the canon right now is embarrassing, atypical/soft yandere behaviour, fluff and angst, suggestive and eventual smut, an eventual shared darling/polyandry, SLOW/INCONSISTENT UPDATES (aiming for once a month)

0. - The Second Worst Birthday Ever 1. - Not Quite An Isekai 2. - First (Second) Introductions 3. - Dreams And... 4. - Nightmares Too 5. - Meet The Adams Family 6. - Round Two. Fight!

Word Count as of the Chapter 5: 30k

Series tag (anon asks, snippets, updates and actual chapters all included): #series:WWW

More important asks/FAQ

Question about the boys being romantic or platonic Another question about the boys being hesitant or not Question about Damian being platonic or yandere Questions about Bruce being platonic or yandere Important note about the ex-stepsis thing Future sneak peek ft. Dames being stupid Question about happy/sad ending Future sneak peek ft. Dick being stupid

Fanart! Please give everyone here lots of love, their work is amazing!

Tim's Introduction Jason's Introduction Reader Under The Table SceneTM Reader Before And After The Worst Birthday Ever

#sophie tries to be organised #masterlist #navigation #series:WWW #i still hate tumblr formatting #people who change their themes constantly how do you do it

[sophiethewitch1]

What We Want - Chpt. 4 - Nightmares Too

In Which A Romantic Breaks The Universe

(Yandere!batboys x f!reader) 18+ MDNI!

SUMMARY

Another lonely birthday, another empty year. You miss your family. You're late for your bills and rent, and even then, you got robbed last Tuesday.

Still, you buy yourself a cupcake, because you need it. I mean, hey. What's dessert for if not to get over cheating boyfriends and dead relatives?

As you blow out the candle, watching the clock switch from 11:59 pm to midnight of the next day, you make a wish.

And because the world doesn't like to make much sense, it comes true. Your life is suddenly flipped on a dime, and you're stuck trying to catch up with it. Fantasy becomes reality. You're a Wayne now, apparently. Or you used to be. You're loved, you're rich, you're talented and powerful.

Well, sort of. Careful what you wish for, right?

(TRIGGER WARNINGS AND MASTERLIST HERE)

PREV - NEXT

“You wanna get out from under there?”

What sort of question is that? Of course, you don’t. You’re going to live here now. You’re never leaving this tiny, cramped space till you rot away and die. The stained underside of some IKEA desk was your new home.

Well, since your actual home was seeming less and less like an option. Which kinda sucks, because you’re feeling surprisingly possessive of your stuff. You don’t want fancy dresses or bubbly champagne, you want your ratty couch and the neighbour’s cat that liked to visit in the middle of the night. Your mother was right, you were the type of person to never be happy no matter what. You could appreciate the food, though.

Shaking, trembling, knees clutched to your chest, you look up. Slowly, because you’ll probably piss yourself if you don’t.

Now that you weren’t holding his hand, the vigilante known as Red Hood was much, much scarier. He was sitting on the carpeted floor with you, but he still somehow looked incredibly menacing. You preferred his old look, honestly. The helmet had less ‘grim reaper’ vibes. The hood and metal face mask made him seem like a cyborg assassin, or something equally terrifying. He was terrifying.

Still, you could appreciate the insane sort of hilarity of this situation. The notorious crime fighter and crime committer was sitting here with you, crossed legs, twiddling his thumbs away. You press your face into your hands, laugh, and then scream. The sound is muffled, but he probably still hears the exciting new phase of your breakdown.

“Don’t…” your voice cuts off, you have to think before you can manage to speak again, “Don’t you have something better to be doing?”

His giant shoulders shrug.

“I’ve got time.”

Did he? You don’t know how long you’d been up here, how long you’d been sitting here either. You’d fallen asleep, despite your desperate fight not to, so it could be anywhere between 10 to the next day. Had you missed midnight? God, you hoped not.

That stupid little ritual is what convinces you to leave. Not common sense, not the Hood, not your desperate desire to get home and sleep. No, it’s the image of your mother’s tired smile, the city in the background as you wish her another happy birthday after a long day of work. It’s a memory you’re not willing to give up, even if you technically already made your wish.

You’d lived this awful day twice. You got to blow out your candles twice, too.

Slowly, surely, you climb out from under the desk. Red Hood is quiet, careful. He doesn’t move apart from a subtle shift in his hood, suggesting he’s watching you. He’s acting like you’re a wild animal or something, like he might scare you off, or might prompt you to attack.

If he tries anything, you will. It doesn’t matter that he could snap your neck like a twig. Maybe he’s right to act that way, you’re feeling pretty feral right now. Half giving him your back, you turn the monitor for the computer on. It’s Wayne property, so you think you technically have some right to it. It’s not like you’re going to hack it or anything, you just need it to-

11:48.

“Thank god,” you sigh, relieved. Still, you’re not out of the woods yet. You needed at least a lighter, hopefully, a candle and a desert of some kind too. There were lots of cakes downstairs, if you felt you could do it. Big ‘if’ there. The mental breakdown was still well underway. And not everyone could dodge a punch like Red Hood could. Knowing you, you’d probably get sued for millions if you accidentally snapped at some poor rando.

Let’s start small. You wrench open the office’s drawer and start rooting around. You find lots of things, a Wayne Enterprises-themed stress toy, a kid’s drawing of them and their parent holding hands, and a surprising amount of hand cream, but no lighter. You slam the drawer closed and move to the next one.

“Hey, what are you doing?” his voice rumbles out, and your head snaps around.

You look down. Right. This is probably illegal. You were rooting through someone else’s private property. Of course, it wasn’t the first time you’d done something like this, but it was definitely the first time you’d done it in plain view of a vigilante.

Crap. You hadn’t thought. That was your entire night, summarised.

“Uh, this is… Do you have a lighter?” you ask, wincing. You don’t really like the mask he’s wearing. Apart from being so intimidating, you’re shaking like a wet chihuahua, it’s also impossible to tell what he’s thinking through it. The domino mask, the metal face mask and the voice changer completely hid any emotion. Full coverage and all.

The helmet probably would’ve made that even harder. You’d still prefer it. This guy's creepy.

“You smoke?” he responds, slowly but surely getting to his feet. You back up quickly, pressing yourself to the wall of the cubicle. Red Hood pauses and then moves even slower. He’s careful not to frighten you any more than already.

This was all really strange. One of the strangest things that had ever happened to you. And you might’ve woken up this morning in an alternate dimension. Or something, you had zero clue what was going on. God, you really wished you’d paid more attention in science class. You’d thought Mr Gregory was crazy, but he’d gotten the last laugh.

“I don’t,” you clench your sweaty fists tight, “Maybe I should.”

“Don’t get started, it’s impossible to stop,” Red Hood says, digging into his pocket for something. You freeze, but relax again when he hands you a scuffed metal lighter.

Holding it close to your chest, you whisper a thank you to him. He nods his head in acknowledgement.

This was really weird. You couldn’t say it enough.

“I hate you,” you state because you sort of have to. Even when he’s being nice to you, helping you. It’s an obligation. You have to make sure that despite the show of good faith he was offering, you were certainly feeling no such thing.

“I figured,” he replies, which like- What the fuck? Does this make absolutely zero sense to anybody else? You’re not sure what about your panic-stricken tears and desperate hand-holding made you seem hateful, but you could work with it.

Maybe all the feelings you push down are starting to show. You ignore how worried that makes you because you’ve had enough for today. Today was more than e-fucking-nough.

You were going to find a cake and a candle, and you were going to make your wish. Again, because life sucks. You were going to finish this horrible day again because life sucks. And hopefully, you’d wake up tomorrow… tomorrow, not today.

You weren’t sure if you would. Life sucks, right?

You look the Red Hood in his creepy glowing red eyes and say, “I think I’m losing my fucking mind.”

“That’s not good.”

“No, I don’t think it is.”

There’s quiet between you two for a moment. You think he’s staring at you, trying to figure you out. He knows you hate him, but you’re… well, you’re too tired to be angry right now. You just want to go to sleep. You just want this damn day to end. Tomorrow you’d go back to hating all the vigilantes of Gotham with a fiery passion, but today…

Well, you wouldn’t call it peaceful, whatever this situation is. Maybe it’s understanding. He seems understanding, for some reason. You don’t really want to think about that.

You just wanted to hate him. It was easier that way. Then you didn’t have to hate yourself so much.

“I’m going to go find some cake and a candle. It’s my birthday and I haven’t made a wish.”

Red Hood nods, “I could eat.”

That wasn’t an invitation, but whatever. Guess you’re blowing out your candles for your twenty-first with… this guy. Better than yesterday, which was with nobody but yourself and your trashy TV. Or, well, the first today.

You really think you are losing your mind. Whatever, whatever, let’s worry about it later.

After one of the most awkward and uncomfortable elevator rides of your life, squished into a corner as Red Hood took up the lion’s share of space, you find yourself back on the first floor. It’s chaos. The gorgeously decorated gala is now in rubble, and people are rushing around with the sort of fear you’d expect after the fucking Joker showed up.

He wasn’t here, which was good. It was important to focus on the good.

First responders flit around the space, checking the people who seem worse for wear and the rich bastards who think they’re more important than the service workers who are cut or bruised. All the food tables have been knocked over, the waste of it making you upset. Of course the Joker wastes food, he’s gotta be the evilest man on earth or something. It’s not just the interior that’s been destroyed, either. The giant gothic windows have been shattered inward, and broken glass covers the entire floor space. Red and blue lights flash through the gaping holes, bits of glass still attached to the stone sending it cascading across the walls.

You look down. You’re missing your shoes.

“You can’t walk on that,” Big Red says, which like, duh.

“I know that,” you mutter, looking around for another way. Ah, good, there’s a staff entrance over there, which you think probably leads to the kitchen-

“I could carry you.”

You give him a disturbed look and he shrugs. Pointing to the ‘staff only’ door, you wish you had the strength to tell the guy to fuck off. He feels like a babysitter or something.

“I’m going in there.” ‘Please don’t follow me.’

He follows you, because of course, he does.

Lucky for you, the staff entrance leads straight to the kitchen. Even luckier, there’s absolutely nobody here to witness you lose your mind. There are also lots of dishes waiting to be served, already plated and perfect. This is a professional kitchen, but it was your birthday so you have to assume they’d have had candles or a cake prepared.

You walk through the giant kitchen, and Red Hood hangs back. He leans against the doorway, crossing his tree-tunk-esque arms and glowering. Nowhere can do a scary hero like Gotham can. He was really messing with your vibe, which wasn’t all that great in the first place.

Your eyes rove over the platters, head snapping back when you spot a tiny set of confectionaries at the back. Cupcakes, three in total. They don’t match the rest of the other high-quality foods, but you know they’re the ones you want anyway. You hope this didn’t belong to someone else, and promise to pay them back… somehow. You’d write a note or something, leave your number behind.

You were rich now. You’d have preferred the lottery instead of all this. What’s the saying, ‘beggars can’t be choosers?’ You’d certainly been begging.

It’s a struggle to reach the back of the counter without knocking any of the other food. You grab the plate, lift it up and over, and then set it back down on an empty stretch of countertop.

You look over the three cupcakes, trying to pick one. There’s one that’s a dark raspberry pink. A pink that’s a little too dark, actually. Almost… reddish. You glance over your shoulder at the devil lurking behind you, wince, and decide you’re going for the blue cupcake. You think this might’ve also been one of Sam’s favourite colours. It would’ve been at some point, at least.

Now, candles. This might be the hard part, but it’s the most important one. Again you start rooting through some stranger’s property, and Red Hood just watches silently. It’s weird. This whole situation is weird. You’re tired and confused and you’re half convinced you’re dreaming it all, but… but you’re definitely starting to think this might be real.

And that’s fucking scary. So, back to candle hunting. They had to have some, it was your birthday. Maybe, you were pretty sure. Somehow the worst day of the year had happened twice because God knows you had some shit luck. You’d really like some solid answers, instead of just ‘maybe!’. And for some reason, you really didn’t think you’d be getting them anytime soon.

Ah, shoot. You found your candle. It’s one of those giant ‘Happy Birthday’ cake toppers, all loopy and connected words. Your cupcake is way too small, and your candle is way too big. Well, you’re nothing if not resourceful. When you bend the candle, the wax snaps easily under your grip. You’re left with a capital ‘H’ and under that the ‘B’ and little ‘i’ and ‘r’ from the beginning of birthday. Good enough, you suppose.

You stick the crumbly, glittery monstrosity on top of the stolen cupcake, and swipe the lighter again. The letters sag to the side, and you nudge them back into balance.

You glance down at the ovens, reading the bright neon numbers. 11:57.

You wait, flicking the lighter open and closed. The metallic click, the rhythm of the movement, it settles you a bit.

“Why are you waiting?” Red Hood pipes up, breaking that comfortable silence. At least he doesn’t come any closer, still lingering half in the room, half not.

“It has to be midnight,” you answer, wishing him away. This is your thing. You didn’t want anybody here for it, didn’t want anybody else’s presence tainting this piece of your mother’s memory. You were greedy for it, not eager to share.

You were sharing today. There’s a part of you that wants to scream and rant at the man who for some unknown reason simply will not leave, but you imagine your mother’s frowning face, and you can’t do it. She’s the angel on your shoulder (nagging, nagging, nagging) compared to your usual devil-inclined self. She was always insisting you needed to be a better host, be nicer to people. Maybe make more friends. And after she’d gone, you’d tried, you really, really had.

But Red Hood was an altogether different matter. Everything they were, everything they represented, was an altogether different matter.

You were obsessed with the Waynes. And in a different, more bitter, spiteful, malicious way, you were obsessed with the Bats, too.

You weren’t going to be friends with Red Hood. You hated him, despised him. Mum always said you needed to get better at forgiving people. You disagreed, but just… maybe just for today, you wouldn’t make him leave.

You could glare at him, though. You felt that was fair enough. He ignores your narrowed eyes like a seasoned professional. Bet he’s had a lot of people hate him. Bet he deserves it.

“It’s 11:59,” he tells you, and you stop glaring at him to light the candle.

The light is weak, barely able to touch you. Still, it’s strong enough to get rid of those tiny glimpses of red and blue police lights, to keep away the darkness for just long enough. You sigh into the light, absorbing it into yourself. You’d always thought the world was too dark, and you hated winter when you’d lose the sun. So like you had to hate the dark, you had to love this light. This tiny little candle, burning away.

“What’re you gonna wish for?”

You stare at the flickering flame. It twitches back and forth. Casts light into the kitchen. Mesmerises you. It’s barely alive, and you’re about to put it out before it can even start. It could’ve been some great fire, some city-destroying blaze. And you’re going to kill it. Kill it before it can kill you, can kill everyone here. Kill it before it could have ever hoped to live, to thrive.

Just a baby. Just a little, little baby.

It doesn’t deserve it. That never seems to matter. It never mattered before.

“The Joker to die.”

You exhale, blowing the light out and sending the kitchen into darkness. When you manage to find the light switch and turn it on, the room is empty. It’s just you, your cake, and your tears. Your hands clench, and then you realise you’re still holding it.

You still have the Red Hood’s lighter. He left without it.

Well, finder’s keepers, right?

-

You’re shaking in the back of the ambulance, the blanket wrapped around your shoulders not enough to keep out the Gotham night’s chill. You don’t really remember how you got here, to be honest. Everything’s pretty goddamn blurry. You were talking to a vigilante, a red one. Not down here, staring up at the Wayne Tower. You remember his face in the shifting candlelight. Did you blow out your candles with him? That was a fucking crazy thought.

And now the Bruce Wayne has a hand on your shoulder. You don’t remember when he arrived. He’s talking with the paramedic, chatting over the top of your head. There words are going in one ear and out the other, it’s alien for as much as you can understand. You want to shake his hand off, you don’t want anyone touching you right now. Especially not a stranger.

Even if it was a guy you had owned a fan Twitter for. Those were the darkest days of your past. Even more so than the time you’d totally thought about jumping in front of the Gotham subway. You’d only not done it because you’d have felt bad for wasting other commuters' time. What were you doing? Ah, right.

In the end, you don’t shove him off, because you don’t know if you can move other than blink. Even that���s against your will. Your eyelashes are fluttering randomly, eyes flicking around the interior of the ambulance. You’re barely conscious. And you doubt you’ll remember any of this later, either. You can feel the memories slipping away, the drain at the back of your mind sucking up the fear and bad thoughts and leaving you blank and empty. Numb, safe, but numb.

The paramedic’s mouth moves. You don’t think she’s talking to you, which is good. You can’t hear her over the ringing in your ears. She does some final checks, and then she’s off to the next person.

The two of you are left to silence, to watch the rest of the world in its chaos. You feel like there’s a barrier, a pane of glass, between you and the other people here. Like your TV screen, really. The paramedic goes to a woman and her son. The woman seems fine, but the son has a long gash on his arm. She’s screaming, he’s crying, and the paramedic is handling it all with calm professionalism. You wanted to start screaming too.

You glance at a man in a suit yelling at another first responder, spittle flying into the air with his rage. You think he’s one of the ones you saw earlier in the ballroom. His suit is still perfect, and he doesn’t have a speck of blood on him. Even his hair is still perfectly brushed and coiled.

You looked like a drowned rat in comparison.

“…Are you alright?” The question breaks the silence, and you slowly turn to look up at Bruce.

Well, that’s the dumbest question you’ve ever heard. You thought Bruce Wayne was supposed to be brilliant. Maybe he’s just feeling bad because of the new trauma he’s gifted you tonight? It wasn’t his fault. As most of your mental health issues stemmed from, it was the Joker’s fault.

“No,” you answer, and he nods stiffly. Great chat.

He huffs out a sound of frustration, lifting the hand on your shoulder. Immediately, some of the tension in you seeps out. You hope he doesn’t notice. You think he probably does.

Someone calls out your name. Your head turns to the crowd. They call out your name again, this time closer, and you call back. You’re sort of surprised when a crying Jeanine pushes out of the throng of people. She’s a mess, her hair out of her pristine bun, her suit missing its jacket, and her glasses cracked. Seems she didn’t have a very nice time either.

You look down. She’s also missing her shoes. It’d be kind of gross, walking around on Gotham’s streets barefoot, if you could manage to give a shit. You’re still restarting, however, and all energy is going towards not crying again. You’re failing. Awfully bad, at that.

Whatever. Gotta try.

Panting, Jeanine places her hands on her knees, “I’m so, so sorry.”

It takes a moment for you to load the words through your Windows XP brain, but when you do, you’re more confused than you were a second ago.

“What? Why are you sorry?” you say, for a second imagining Jeanine as one of the people that attacked you.

“Because you wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t… hadn’t forced you to come…” Jeanine’s voice trails off, a look of horror on her face. Ah, she’s noticed Bruce. Apparently, she’s quite afraid of the man. You feel a sense of camaraderie towards the woman. God knows how many times you’d worn the exact same expression talking to one of your own bosses.

And then, well, then you usually got fired. It’s not looking good for her.

“Mister Wayne! I didn’t see you there, apologies!” she says, straightening her shoulders.

“Jeanine, it’s good to see you. Are you well, have you checked with the paramedics yet?”

“I have, Sir. Thank you for worrying about me,” Jeanine answers, with a healthy dose of hero-worship in her voice. You can’t judge, you’d be staring all starry-eyed at Bruce if you weren’t falling asleep where you sat. Apparently, traumatic experiences make you sleep. Who would’ve thought?

Like you hadn’t experienced this scenario a thousand times before. First time with fucking Bruce Wayne standing right next to you, though.

“Of course, I would. You’re one of my people,” he says, giving her a warm smile. Jeanine physically sags with relief at his words, because it sounds like she’s probably not getting fired tonight.

Bruce gets a notification on his phone, hums, and then slides it back into his pant pocket.

“Jeanine, we’re going back together to the manor tonight,” Bruce continues. Also, you were? Nobody mentioned that to you, and certainly nobody asked you about it. Well, fuck what you want, right? Who cares if you desperately want your cramped apartment in the Narrows, you’re getting shipped off to the fucking Wayne Manor of all places.

You just go along with it. Just go along with it. Wayne Manor probably has lots of nice, plush beds, and you’d kill for a pillow and some ambient rain sounds right now.

Bruce looks off to the side, where Tim is on the phone. They make eye contact, Bruce nods, and then turns back to the two of you.

“I’ll be right back. You two stay here, do not go anywhere,” he commands, king of the castle.

There’s quiet between the two of you. Jeanine squirms under your gaze, obviously guilty. You think back over her words, and then you groan.

“Jeanine. Jeanine, did I not have to go to this fucking party?”

Jeanine is quiet. She’s too fucking quiet.

“Jeanine?” your voice is shaky, and you have to bite the inside of your lip to force yourself not to tear up again. It was getting kind of embarrassing, honestly. You did not cry this much. Usually. This was not a usual day, of course. You’d been Ground Hog Day-ed into another reality… you think.

“No, Ma’am, you didn’t need to go. You’re… you used to be a Wayne, and even if you’ve parted from the name, you still have the power that comes with that. You did not have to come tonight,” she says, sounding remorseful and afraid. And maybe she should be.

If you had as much power as she said, you could probably fire her. You press your hands into your face.

“I thought you said you’d quit if I didn’t go,” you grind out, digging your fingers into your eyes, clawing into your already ruined makeup.

“I was lying, Ma’am. As I always do. I’m sorry,” she apologises. None of this makes any sense, and neither does she. Why would she lie? Why is this normal? What is the new normal, and how are you supposed to hide if you don’t know how to blend in?

You realise that you’re falling into old habits instinctively. That maybe you should say something about all this, or at least that you have some weird form of amnesia. You don’t, though. You’re scared, you’re far too scared.

“Well how- I thought you were serious this time!” you cry out, stuttering over your own lies, flinging your hands from your face. Jeanine winces at you. It’s probably the dried mascara running down your face in black rivulets, making you look like an odd mix between a raccoon and a banshee.

You’d seen your reflection in the ambulance’s side mirror. It had almost been as scary as the Joker’s goons. Almost.

“…Please, please don’t fire me,” she begs, her hands clasped tight in front of her.

You realise you probably should for an admittance like that. This was too complicated, this woman and her non-existent relationship with you was far too complicated. You also realise that whoever ran this stupid body before was very used to Jeanine’s baseless threats, and it wouldn’t be at all fair to her. And she seems quite desperate for this job. Which really doesn’t make much sense, because she seems quite important, and she’s working for you, someone else who seems quite important.

God if you fucking knew. You were quickly discovering you didn’t know shit.

“I won’t, just… just don’t say anything about this to anyone, okay? I’m…” you sigh, uncertain what to do, what to say, “I’m having a hard time.”

“Thank you, thank you so, so, so much. I’ll pay you back, I won’t do it again, I’ll do whatever you ask me to-”

“That’s enough, please. I just… I’d like some quiet,” you cut her off, closing your eyes and shuffling back in the ambulance. You cut yourself off from the rest of the world, hide your head behind your knees, and try to ignore the flashing lights and yelling voices. The ambulance shifts weight slightly as Jeanine sits beside you. She’s not too close to feel uncomfortable, just toeing the line.

Bruce comes back, looking over the two of you. He seems sombre, but you’re not sure why. Is it the entire night? Did something bad happen again? Is it just how miserable the two of you look? You don’t care enough to ask.

You just don’t care.

You tune out of their conversation again, even knowing it might be important. When Jeanine leaves, and Bruce invites you to a black car, you follow silently. He opens the door, and after a moment’s hesitation, you follow him in.

He knocks on the panel separating the two of you from whoever’s driving the car, and like a well-oiled machine, the car pulls out of the traffic and the paparazzi and out onto the street. Must be nice. You bet Jeanine is going to have to walk home.

Ah, wait, you’re one of them now. You’re one of those ‘must be nice’ types. Weird. You kept forgetting, somehow. Even with Gotham’s prince sitting next to you. Weird.

“I want you to stay at the manor for the night,” Bruce says, and you nod, barely listening. You’re barely conscious, far too tired to understand the implications of the words he was saying. If there were any, like you said, you couldn’t tell.

You’re watching the city go by, the light streaming past in a blur of colours. You rest your head in your hand, your elbow on the armrest. Even with you pressing your face to the glass, you can’t see the sky. The buildings stretch too high. And even if you could, it wasn’t like you’d see anything aside from some late-night flights. The Gotham light pollution and the smoke-filled sky would see to that.

Bruce doesn’t say anything else after that. You’re grateful for the quiet.

You squeeze your eyes shut, and maybe in some act of self-harm, try to remember what happened tonight. Try to pick through your thoughts, and understand whatever happened. That man… that horrible man. He disappeared into thin air. Gone, just gone.

And your world had changed. You’d gotten richer, more powerful. And yet, and yet… you knew this feeling. You knew this weakness. You knew what it meant when you looked in the mirror and you saw something barely alive.

You knew what grief looked like.

You want to rip out your own hair and chew off your own skin. It didn’t make any sense, and you felt crazier and crazier by the second. And none of it made sense, and yet, you had the worst feeling. An omen, a dark cloud. Something worse than the Joker, something that made even less sense.

Even in this life, were you alone? That wasn’t fair. That didn’t make any sense. That didn’t make any sense at all.

Your voice is quiet in the car. Her voice is quiet in the car.

“Do you know where my Mum is?” a little girl asks the big, strong man, her tiny body dwarfed by the black leather of the car. She’s out of place, out of time. She doesn’t fit here.

She doesn’t think she ever has.

The big, strong man, the hero, stays silent, his face hidden by the darkness. The little girl sobs, cries, wails. She wants her mum back. She wants her family back. And now, she wants her life back.

All have been stolen from her.

Maybe she was dreaming. Maybe she was dead. Maybe you were dreaming. Maybe you were dead. Maybe this was another world, and both you and her now have to navigate another lonely place. At least you’d do it together, hand in hand.

It didn’t matter. You knew where you needed to be.

“I want to see it.”

You need to see it. You grasp desperately at Bruce’s arm, nails digging into his expensive and ruined suit. Begging him, pleading him.

He says something. You think it’s a ‘what?’

“I want to see their graves. I want to see my mother’s grave.”

Bruce’s face darkens, and you’re too tired, too exhausted to tell what emotion flits across it. You wonder if it’s the same desperation you feel. But it confirms it. They’re dead. They’re still dead. Despite everything, despite the entire world changing for you, the most important part had been forgotten.

They were still dead. And you were still here. Alone.

“Tomorrow. Tomorrow, but for tonight, you need to rest,” he promises you, and your hand releases. You watch your palm hang limply in your lap, and for a second, it doesn’t seem like your hand. Bruce starts speaking again, this apologetic, pitying tone. You can’t stand it. You can’t stand it one bit.

And in the rudest, most cowardly thing you’ve ever done, you cover your ears like a child.

The rest of the car ride passes in a blur of colour and sound. You’re in Gotham, driving away from the Tower, you’re at the edges of town, passing over one of the bridges, you’re driving through New Jersey’s countryside, passing green fields and old buildings. You go by the iron-wrought gates of Wayne Manor, up the alley’s winding entryway, and finally, the car rolls to a stop in front of the stairs.

To Mr. Wayne’s credit, he doesn’t open the fucking door for you again. You get to stumble your way out on your own two stubborn legs, swaying drunkenly, sickly. He waits for you at the stairs, and you ignore the arm he offers you. He’s just as blindingly irritating as his son.

Didn’t you like these people? You would again in the morning, you just needed your hate. It was the only thing keeping you going at this point. Pure rage was fueling you as you climbed those steps. You’re panting, but you don’t really know why. They’re not that tall.

You feel weak. You feel so, so weak. And you hate it. You’d worked so hard to be free of it, even when you longed for it like a toxic ex-lover, you’d pushed it away. And now it had it’s fangs wrapped around you again, and again, you’d have to climb out of hell.

Today, it was more literal. Tomorrow? God fucking knows. People were literally vanishing from thin air, Pete’s sake. You’ll try, of course. But god fucking knows.

A butler opens the door, and Bruce enters. Once you follow in, the butler closes the door behind him. This time, you really do try to hear what they say. It’s impossible. You concentrate, but all you get for your hard work is a headache. Tomorrow, you’ll try again tomorrow.

The butler rushes off, something important and butler-y to be done. You really didn’t know what butlers did. You couldn’t imagine what their jobs were other than cleaning and cooking. Accounting? Did butlers do accounting?

“I need to handle some things. Will you be able to find your old room alright?” Bruce asks, interrupting your increasingly inane thoughts.

You blink, at him stupidly. Because you were stupid. You had a brand to keep.

“Yes,” you lie. You don’t really know why you do. Some odd mix of self-protective instincts, exhaustion-induced delirium, and also a deep desire to be alone. You really, really wanted to be fucking alone.

“Goodnight then,” Bruce says, he pauses like he’s going to say something else, but he doesn’t. He’s done that twice now, you think. Maybe he just doesn’t think you’re worth the effort. He’d be right.

You watch his back as he strides off into the darkness of the manor, leaving you shivering in the empty foyer. Your expensive ballgown is tattered, grimy, and worst of all, bloody. You want to get out of it. And then you want to sleep.

The click of his dress shoes fades, and you’re left wondering what the fuck you’re going to do next. Could you just start storming into random empty rooms? Where would you find any clothes? You were not going to sleep in this dress, no way.

So, you start up the grand staircase and start storming into random empty rooms. You find studies, bathrooms, and bedrooms. None that seem like anyone lives in them, of course. They feel like fancy hotel stays, the type you see online and sigh about.

The house, no, the manor, is quiet. Empty. It feels haunted, honestly. It probably was, a building this old and important. And it wasn’t like you didn’t know about Martha and Thomas Wayne. You didn’t think any Gotham native didn’t know about them, about the tragedy that had struck them.

It made Bruce seem like someone real, someone like you. Because if even the billionaires could get shot in alleys in Gotham City, it made more sense when the poor folks died. Like you were all human like God didn’t play favourites.

But, let’s be honest, you’d prefer to be an orphan in a mansion than the Narrows. Bruce Wayne had time to heal after what happened to him, for you it was from the frying pan to the fire.

The orphanage you’d been in for two years before you’d turned eighteen and been kicked out had had a very strict hierarchy. Probably still did, you never went back to check. It was technically a foster home, but the ancient sign beside the front door spoke differently. ‘Gotham Orphanage - Founded by Alan Wayne 1878’, the mark of the Waynes even found there. You used to touch the sign every time you went past it like it was some odd good luck charm. You still owe that sign your first successful job interview. Like you didn’t touch the copper plate every damn day, including every day you’d failed another interview.

And, well, it was Gotham. It wasn’t a good place. It had long been cemented in your mind that those theories that Gotham was cursed were true. That there wasn’t any other explanation.

You pause in your musings when you find a room that actually looks like it might be lived in. A long time ago, you think, from the dust covering the shelves. When you check the closet, you find men’s clothes, also untouched. You hope whoever lives here doesn’t care if you steal their shit, because you certainly don’t. Oh wow, this bathroom is gorgeous. The tub is gigantic, easily able to fit a group of at least six, maybe more. Still, you want to go to sleep more than you want a nice soak, so you go for a quick shower where you get rid of all… all the blood.

You watch the red run down the drain and are brought back to much simpler times.

Even as one of the older kids, you were still new blood. You hadn’t made any friends when you tried to defend the younger, weaker kids, either. The foster ‘parents’ who didn’t let you call them anything other than Mrs and Mr Hemming didn’t care about any abuse that happened under the house, as long as it wasn’t visible. You’d done this ritual before, but it actually had been your blood. It hadn’t hurt as much as this did, for some unknowable reason.

You weren’t a fighter. The very few punches you did take, you never hit back. Not like you had tonight. You’d been terrified the Hemmings would kick you out, stop feeding you. Still, you never moved, either. Never let the others take their anger out on the younger kids. You couldn’t do it. And now, looking back on it, your fear of the Hemmings retaliating was stupid. They’d needed the funds the foster caring gave them, and they were always trying to take in more and more kids.

They were empty threats. You were a terrified child. The what-ifs didn’t really matter anymore.

And maybe you were a bleeding heart type, like the other kids had said. Maybe you were gullible, naive, and a pushover. Like you hadn’t been through all the bullshit everyone else had. Like you being nice and hopeful and all those things that got you picked on weren’t all deliberate choices. One day, all the anger and rage you had would bubble over. It would destroy you and your life in a catastrophe, not unlike the one that took your family.

You’d already pushed it down so many times. Waking up today, in a different, unfamiliar world, had probably just made it worse. As always, you ignore it. It’s not worth worrying about.

Getting out of the shower, you do a very lazy towel off and then grab that mystery man’s clothes. They’re mostly dress suits, but you find a few old T-shirts. It hangs off you like a curtain, but it’s warm and it smells nice. Minty and earthy and… oddly free. Bouncy, alive, but still calming and relaxing. It’s a nice counter to the corpse vibes you’re rocking right now, which is decidedly un-alive and un-calm.

You wonder what it would’ve been like to mourn in safety. Where you didn’t have to worry if someone would steal your portion of food or the few funds you could hide in the garden. Where the glares of others didn’t constantly dig into your skin, reminding you that you weren’t wanted there. That you never would be.

That was alright. The place had stunk of mould and rat shit anyway. And maybe you had in this life. It didn't look like you were doing much better, anyway. No, this version of you somehow looked worse. You didn't know how it was possible, and then you remind yourself that none of this is possible, and you really ought to let go of that word.

Still, you lived in Gotham. You would always live in Gotham. You couldn’t leave, it was your home. It was a part of you, like every other sorry idiot who still lived here. School shootings, bomb threats, the city’s regular ol’ disasters. Even if you had been put in a good foster home, even if you had lived... here, you doubted your life would’ve been that much better. Of course, you were still bitter about it. Couldn’t the world just take a little bit off your plate? Maybe it was now, maybe this was the universe's way of saying sorry. A fancy, but empty house, with a still dead family. Maybe you were a little too greedy, a little too jealous.

You slide the duvet covers to the side, untucking them just like you do whenever you do stay in a crappy motel. When all the sides are thoroughly untucked, you slide underneath the covers. When your face lands on the pillow, you sigh in relief. Despite all the bullshit you’d suffered tonight, you had silk pillows, and this phone had youtube premium, so you could listen to rain sounds on it.

Safe. Sort of. Happy. Sort of. Alive. Sort of.

You told yourself it could be worse. And it could’ve been, so you kept on. Today, even after the night you’d had, you tell yourself it could be worse, again. At least the goon didn’t capture you, at least you didn’t actually see the Joker, at least you had a safe bed for the night, at least…

At least the Batman didn’t rescue you. You know it’s silly, but you can’t help but think it.

You hated him almost as much as the Joker, which was saying something since you regularly daydreamed about ripping that man limb from limb. Because the Bat refused to do anything about the supervillain, to finally put the mad dog down, you would always hate him. There wasn’t any other option. You sort of hated his entire entourage. Even Red Hood a bit, since even if they constantly fought, it was obvious both of them held back when dealing with each other. Still, you hated Red Hood and Robin a little less, after tonight. You kind of owed it to them.

You didn’t want to. You wanted to hate them and keep hating them till you died. It was one of your little things, the little things you couldn’t let go of. The little things that hinted at your less-than-perfect sanity. You felt that if you ever forgot what they’d done, what they kept doing every day, that you’d be disrespecting your family, forgetting some part of them. Some part of their memory, which you greedily hoarded away. Not a single precious recollection was to be lost, not ever.

You weren’t allowed to move on. Weren’t supposed to. Sometimes the many little rules you’d made for yourself felt like they were going to eat you alive. A swarm devouring its master. Swallowing you down bit by bit. Up and up, eating all the parts of you pushed down.

You wrap the blanket tighter around you, closing your eyes tight. Like if you tuck your feet inside the duvet, the monsters can’t get you. Your monsters can’t get you. Sometimes it felt like they were already feasting, and you just refused to feel it.

But only sometimes, right?

MASTERLIST - NEXT

#Series:WWW #yandere batfam #yandere dc #yandere batfamily #yandere x reader #dick grayson x reader #nightwing x reader #jason todd x reader #red hood x reader #tim drake x reader #red robin x reader #damian wayne x reader #robin x reader

[sophiethewitch1]

What We Want - Chpt. 3 - Dreams And...

In Which A Romantic Breaks The Universe

(Yandere!batboys x f!reader) 18+ MDNI!

SUMMARY

Another lonely birthday, another empty year. You miss your family. You're late for your bills and rent, and even then, you got robbed last Tuesday.

Still, you buy yourself a cupcake, because you need it. I mean, hey. What's dessert for if not to get over cheating boyfriends and dead relatives?

As you blow out the candle, watching the clock switch from 11:59 pm to midnight of the next day, you make a wish.

And because the world doesn't like to make much sense, it comes true. Your life is suddenly flipped on a dime, and you're stuck trying to catch up with it. Fantasy becomes reality. You're a Wayne now, apparently. Or you used to be. You're loved, you're rich, you're talented and powerful.

Well, sort of. Careful what you wish for, right?

(TRIGGER WARNINGS AND MASTERLIST HERE) - PLEASE REMEMBER TO CHECK, THIS CHAPTER IS DARKER IN TONE!

PREV - NEXT

Your hands are pruned. It’s quiet in the extravagant bathroom, other than the sound of the tap’s running water and your own shaky breathing. This was all a bit much. Your hands are more than clean now, but you absolutely do not want to go back out there.

You kind of just want to go back into one of the stalls and cry. A core girlhood experience, except you were an adult with a job and taxes. Or, you were. You think you’re some rich scion or something in this dream. Which like, cool, who wants to slave under capitalism anyways?

…You wonder if anyone would notice if you slipped out the window. You’d been gone for a while and nobody had come looking for you, since you’d totally gotten lost trying to find the bathroom. Sure, you were on the third floor, but at this point you were willing to risk it. Even if you couldn’t walk in a straight line right now, much less climb the trellises. For some reason, you could not handle your liquor today like you usually could. But once again, this was all just a very vivid dream, so it wasn’t like you could die.

To punctuate that thought, you hear someone scream.

It cuts off instantly, and then there’s quiet again. You pause, then turn off the tap, listening for any more sound. Drip, drip, drip… you press the tap down again and properly turn it off. Still no noise. Immediately, you realise you are standing directly in a horror film. You live in Gotham for fuck’s sake. It wasn’t an unlikely occurrence. You’d gotten mugged just a few days ago.

And you were alone in the bathrooms. So unbelievably drunk, and alone in the bathrooms. You were actually so dead, it was crazy. A dream, a dream…!

Your head bows, staring into the white porcelain of the sink as you focus hard on your hearing. You don’t think you could hear the party before, but you’re not sure. It’s definitely not there now. You swallow the dry pain in your throat, trying to summon a modicum of courage. Your vision spins.

You slap your wet hands to your face and then blink through your fingers. God. Okay, okay, okay. You can do this. You survived a mugging just last week with only minimal bruising. To convince yourself of your badassery, you dig your fingers into the blemishes, hoping to wake yourself up with the pain. It’s a bad habit but you have lots of those.

…Where’s the pain? Oh god, where’s the pain? Wait, don’t panic, it’s a dream! Of course, you wouldn’t have your bruises in a dream. That made total sense. And you definitely weren’t panicking.

You splash more water on your face. Time to face the music, you drunken moron. If you were going to be in a horror movie, you’d be the final girl of all final girls.

One hand on the sink, you take your heels off. They’re going to get in the way, and the sound of them clicking against the marble will give away your location. Massaging your sore ankles, you try and come up with a game plan. You don’t know what’s going on, and it really could all just be a false alarm, but better safe than sorry and all that. It’s a gala full of some of the richest people on earth, and you’re pretty sure you saw a swat team of security guards at the entrance.

So this was probably a hostage situation or a villain attack. You’d hear more noise if it was a supervillain fighting a superhero downstairs. Then you’ll bet on a hostage situation for now. Depending on who had taken you all hostage, that could be a totally fine situation where you all just end up leaving with lighter purses, or it could be the Scarecrow’s shown up and he’s about to mentally traumatise you. Like you needed any more of that.

Of course, this was all probably still a dream. Maybe if you say it enough times you’ll actually believe it. You’ll just plan ahead in case this is real (which it definitely isn’t). Plus you’d proven you could feel pain in this dream anyway, with all the times you’d slapped yourself. You hoped the fucking Tim Drake didn’t think you were too weird. Because he definitely thought you were weird.

It’s cool. You’re cool. You could handle this. You were a Gotham native after all. Totally cool. You have to force yourself not to gag on your own fear. Totally, absolutely, terrifically cool.

A few deep, calming breaths later, and you’re cracking the door of the lavatory open just an inch. You peer through the crevice, taking another deep breath when you don’t see anyone in the hallway. You push the door open a bit wider, peek your head around it to look the other way. Still empty. Another deep breath, you feel your chest rise and fall, and then you take the first step out onto the wooden floors. You wince at the slight noise the bare sole of your foot makes and hurry over to the long Persian rug to snuffle any more sounds.

And then you’re standing in the middle of the hallway in your ballgown, head swivelling back and forth as you try and catch any minuscule sounds, shoulders bunched up to your ears.

The first thing you need to check is the exits. Since you are on the third floor, and the banquet was on the first, you can assume that they’re well-guarded, but probably far away from you. Still, this is the Wayne Enterprises Tower, and there wasn’t just the party happening tonight. It was mostly empty as you’d seen but there’d been a few people you’d wandered past. They’d all seemed like late-night office workers, and the female janitor you’d bumped into was the one who had told you where the toilet was.

Was the janitor okay? Was that her scream you’d heard? Concentrate, dumbass. On airplanes, they tell you to put your mask on first before you do it for anyone else. The idea was the same here. Save yourself before you can hope to save anyone else.

That was… that was if you even needed saving. This could all still just be your own paranoia. Someone hit their knee on a ridiculously fancy side table or something. Like that scream wasn’t of pure terror. Like it didn’t sound like someone on death’s door.

Concentrate! Okay, check the stairs first. Don’t take the elevator, because you’re not an idiot. Maybe. Hopefully. Slowly but surely you creep your way back towards the entrance to the third level, where both the elevator and the stairs were. There was a map, too. You hadn’t been able to figure it out earlier, but you had a bit more incentive this time.

You make sure to place your feet carefully, aiming for the carpets and rugs. Even if your drunken steps miss half the time, you’re still mostly quiet. Every time you have to walk across a crossing you spend a minute listening, and then peer around every corner too. You’re not sure if you should be running, or if you really should try one of the windows.

Deep breaths. Keep moving. That’s the best course of action. Don’t get caught, but don’t just hide either.

It’s when you’re almost at the third-floor foyer when you hear something. There’s a crash, the sound of something breaking. No voices, though. Still, you can’t convince your body to move for a full minute. There’s a part of you that wants to go hide in an abandoned cubicle and wait, but there’s another part of you that is very aware of the rates of fires in this city. You keep going, taking a longer route to avoid the source of the crashing.

Another noise. A scream. Laughter. Spine-chilling laughter.

Shit, motherfucker. Why the hell did you get smashed at a fucking Wayne gala? Everybody knew the rogues of this city were totally obsessively in love with Bruce Wayne. Especially your own personal worst nightmare. You don’t dare even think his name, lest you summon the bastard.

Was he in Arkham right now? He should be. Like you should be at home in the Narrows getting a good night’s rest. Like you should be wearing dorky Flash pyjamas, not a dress more expensive than your rent.

He should be. It’s not nearly enough.

You realise, suddenly, that you have to make a choice here. You can walk away, pretend you didn’t hear anything, that you can’t hear anything. A woman’s cries, you think. You could leave her, save yourself. Hideaway and let whatever fate she’s facing befall her. Could you do that? Could you even stomach the idea?

In the end, the universe makes the decision for you.

“And who do we have here? What’s a pretty little thing like you doing wandering around?”

You hear your doom in his slimy voice, even though you didn’t hear him sneak up on you. Shaking, you raise your hands into the air, and slowly turn around. You see your doom in the twisted clown mask’s grin. For a second you think it’s really him, but then you notice his dark brown hair and the tanned skin under the mask. God, god, god. It’s a Joker goon. Your literal worst nightmare, given flesh. Is he here? No, no, no- You swallow down the urge to scream, to run, and do your best to keep thinking like a person and not a prey animal.

You feel like one. You think he knows that. You hope he doesn’t.

“Hey Travis, I found another one!” the man calls out, raising his gun to point at you. He jerks it, moving forward, and you turn back around obediently. The gun presses against the back of your head, and you move forward, obediently.

“Shithead, don’t say my name out loud!” another voice replies. You get to see its owner when you come around the corner and find the foyer.

There are five other people here, all tied up. Four seem to be exhausted office worker bees, who just stayed too late on the wrong day, and the last is the janitor who helped you. The kind lady gives you terrified eyes, but she’s the only one not crying among the hostages.

“Man, you worry too much. Like there aren’t hundreds of Travis’s in the city.”

“Just shut up, my god! If we leak info and it gets traced back to us, he’s docking our pay.”

Who’s he? Who’s fucking he?! He can’t be here, right? He fucking can’t be. You can’t, you can’t. God, you're going to vomit right here and now.

“Whatever. Anyway, this is the last person on this floor.”

“Check the feed again, dickhead,” the second one commands, obviously the leader between the two.

The one who caught you groans, and then you hear the sound of fabric shuffling. Is he looking at his phone? You wish you could turn around and look. You don’t dare with the barrel against you.

Your teeth dig into the side of your mouth. So did they have the security feeds? That meant you were doomed from the start. The only other option would’ve been to actually jump out one of the windows. They would’ve probably found you anyway. Hunted you down to meet their quota.

Shit. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. This is looking like a big deal. And everybody knew Joker never left out on his big deal jobs, he enjoyed them too much. He’s probably downstairs demanding the Batman come meet him and have tea or something. Shit.

All of a sudden these goons seem like the much better end of the deal.

“Checked, checked, double-checked, triple-checked… There’s nobody else here,” the man behind you grumbles, and the one in front of you sighs.

“Alright, alright. Bring her over, I’ll tie her up, and then we can blow this joint,” the man says, and you really, really hope he’s not being serious about blowing this place. You’d had enough of explosions, thank you very much. Especially ones organised by the Joker.

The gun digs harshly into your skull, “Well, go on.”

Swallow, swallow down your fear. Don’t let it stop you. You walk forward to the other man, arms in the air shaking. When you’re in reaching distance, the second goon roughly grabs you and shoves you to your knees. He pushes your hands in front of you, not bothering to tie them behind you. You don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.

The rope cuts into your skin. It’s going to leave marks, and bruises. The man finishes tying the knot and then pulls you back to your feet. Then he shoves you towards the elevator and turns to start picking up the other hostages. You turn so your back is toward the wall, not willing to have your eyes off the monsters for even a second.

It’s when he’s pushing one of the office workers towards you, that the second man speaks again.

“Hey, the boss said we had to kill one of ‘em.”

What? What did he say?

“Oh yeah, oops.”

The gunshot goes off before you can process the words. Before you can process the gunshot, the janitor’s body is crumpling to the floor. Before you can process her fall, blood is starting to seep from the wound in her chest. Before you can process any of that, the man behind you laughs.

He laughs. He laughs and laughs and laughs.

The janitor lies on the floor, blood seeping into her hair and uniform. You squeeze your eyes tight, tears slipping over the lids. You refuse to look at the wound. At the gaping hole in her chest. And despite yourself, you know why they shot her, not you. Not any of the workers either.

Because she wasn’t worth the cash.

Yesterday, that would’ve been you on the floor. You were a fake wearing a fancy dress, who didn’t belong here at all. Still, they didn’t know that. You didn’t think anybody knew that. Not anyone but you, who had woken up in a world a little to the left.

“I’ll be down in a minute, Trav. I wanna play with this one for a bit,” the shooter says, and all of a sudden you’re thrown back into your body, into your frail mortality. You’re cold, your spine gives a shiver, and your horrified eyes find the wretched clown mask.

Like you said, your doom. You wish you weren’t right all the time.

“No way. She’s one of the high-profilers, we need her,” his leader replies, and you’re desperate to stick by his side. You didn’t think a Joker goon would be your saviour, but here you were.

“I’ll give you five K of my split,” he offers, not willing to let go of it. Of you.

The other one pauses, glances at you assessingly. There’s a glint of something in his eyes, something that tells you you’re not making it out of here unscathed. It’s something you recognise, something you even recognise inside yourself.

It’s greed. And it’s going to kill you. You always knew it would, you just didn’t think it’d be like this.

“Make it seven,” he finally announces, the deal for your soul made without any fuss or fanfare.

“You’re such a hardass. Fine, fine, seven it is.”

“Alright, and only thirty minutes, tops. Not a hair on her head, you understand me?” he says over his shoulder, waggling a finger at his coworker.

The group leaves through the elevator. It dings, and you watch in mute, stunned horror as the other hostages refuse to meet your gaze. As they abandon you to save their own asses. You couldn’t really blame them, as much as you wanted to. You were ready to do the same earlier.

“I think not even a hair is pushing it, right?” the creep says, finger reaching out for said hair. You jerk back out of his reach, an instinctual flinch. He grins, and lets his hand fall back to his side. You take a shaky step backward.

You’re trembling with fear. With the need to get away from this terror, this situation.

He gestures with his gun, pointing back in the direction of the branching hallways.

“Well, go on. Run.”

And God help you, you do.

Spinning on your heel, you flee to the echoing sound of his laughter. Your feet fall rhythmically against the marble floors, the sound of your bare soles far too loud. You can’t even do anything about it. There’s no option for stealth here, only the sort of hunt you’d expect to find in the woods.

Not here in civilised mankind’s territory. But this was Gotham, and the monsters often looked human.

You dart into a large room filled with tiny square cubicles. A call centre or something, a maze of low walls that are too small to hide behind. You keep going, teeth-gritting when his laughter cuts off. He’s taking this seriously, hunting you down. You think he’s done this before. ‘Played’ with people.

You can’t worry about those other poor victims, lest you become his next one.

Another crash, this time to your left. Your head snaps to the side, eyes wide, but when you look there’s only a broken lamp on the floor. You have to swallow down the urge to cry. He is. He’s playing with you. He’s having fun with it.

You keep running, passing by halls and offices and don’t stop running till you can’t. Out of breath. You’re out of breath. You bend over, the stitch in your side too much for you to stand. Why are you out of breath? You can run more than this. You often run more than this when you’re late for your morning train.

What’s going on? What’s happening to you?

A bang, behind you. You spin around. Don’t see anything.

He’s nearby. Right under your nose. You need to keep running, you have to. Through your panting you hear his laughter again, and that’s enough fear to get you moving again. Maybe you were in Arkham, arms strapped to your side and screams wailing down the halls.

You didn’t believe it. No, not in this moment. Not right now, as you run for your life. If you lived through this, you’d probably go back to thinking it was all a dream or a delusion.

But with that monster nearby, there’s nothing this could be but real. With sweat dripping down your neck, smearing your makeup. With the feeling of your heart beating out of your chest, in your ears. With the blind, all-consuming panic you’re in.

He’s real. And he’s coming for you.

You lift your tied hands and press them to your lips, muffling the sound of your harsh breathing and soft sobs. Heart beating out of your ribcage, you push your body even as it screams for you to stop. You’re flagging. Vision’s swimming, and you can feel bile creeping up your throat. You can’t keep doing this. You need to keep doing this.

For a moment, you stop to catch your breath. And he catches you too.

You scream, tugging at the rough grip on him. He swings you around into a wall, and again, you cry out. Side throbbing with pain, singing with it. Still, you don’t stop. Can’t stop. Not safe, not safe, not safe. You push back against him, and he pushes back against you. Your drunken state is no match, and you tumble down onto the carpet. When he laughs, you look up at him, and he down at you.

The goon’s plastic mask merges with the Joker’s mutilated face, until you can’t tell the difference.

You aren’t the type to fight back. It’s just not instinctual to you. But when you hear his belt buckle clack, your foot kicks out before you can even think. You hit him squarely in the stomach, knocking him backward, and then you scramble away from underneath him.

“You bitch!”

He grabs you by the nape of your neck, yanking you backwards. You choke, hands grasping desperately at the grip around your throat, but he offers no relent. You’ve pissed him off. That doesn’t mean you can stop, can give up. You can’t stop fighting. Can’t stop struggling. Can’t stop, can’t stop, can’t stop-

The gun clicks. You freeze.

“Yeah, figured you’d be more obedient if I did that. Now, get up,” his voice is breathy, from the high of the chase or the hit you delivered, you’re not sure.

You hope it’s the latter. You hope this fucker drops and dies, right on the spot. You’re not that lucky, though.

Ah, your hands are hurting again. Not just the one, but both. Maybe you touched something. An allergic reaction of some sort. It shouldn’t be distracting you, it shouldn’t even be noticeable in the situation you’re in but god. The itchy heat is nearly as unbearable as the evil cretin in front of you.

“You think you’re gonna get away with that? I’m so fucking sick and tired of you whores who think you matter anything. You don’t, and I’m going to help you realise that,” he rants. His eyes are red through the tiny slits in the mask. Angry, dangerous, on the edge.

“Please, look I’m sorry,” you stutter out, stinging hands in the air. You want to run, but you think he’ll shoot if you do.

“You’re lucky I don’t fuck corpses.”

No, that doesn’t sound very lucky at all, actually. No, this seems like maybe it might turn out to be the new worst moment of your life. You don’t think it can get much worse than this, than the next moments that will pass. And it’s too much. It’s too, too much. Your palms are itchy and there’s a gun pointed between your eyes and the goon’s licking his lips and oh my god you’re going to die from an allergy before the bullet and-

And you just want it all to stop. You want it so desperately. You want the man in front of you to disappear, to never exist again, to go right down to hell where he belongs. You just want him gone.

Your hands stop hurting. The burning heat disappears. It’s quiet again. You can’t hear him laughing, the awful slick sound of him licking his lips. You can’t feel the cool iron on your forehead, the heat from his body so close. You can’t smell his sweaty stench. Your eyes open.

…There’s no gun. There’s no man.

You crumple to the ground with a relieved sob. Fisted hands lift to your eyes, as big blubbery tears stream down your face. Your shoulders shake with your cries. Your heart is screaming in your chest, trying to beat out of it. He’s gone, somehow. You’re alive, somehow. You’re not dead with a bullet in your brain, somehow. Somehow, somehow, somehow.

An impossibility. It’s an impossibility, and you’re so goddamn grateful for it.

As always, you don’t give yourself long to cry. Even as your tears still fall, even as you lick them off your mouth, tasting salt and lipstick and fear, you push to your feet shakily. You almost fall over with your hands still tied, shouldering the wall next to you for balance. You don’t have time to cry. No time to process what just happened. You need to get to safety.

You creep back into the main area, heart pounding in your ears, breath hiccuping. You don’t know how long it takes for you to get there. Ten minutes, thirty, maybe even an hour. When you try the staircase door, it doesn’t open. You yank on the handle, grab a chair and try and smash it in, but it stands strong. Fuck. You try the elevator as a last-ditch effort, but the buttons don’t respond.

You press your overheated forehead to the cool metal. Okay. Okay. Okay, okay, okay.

You turn around and storm back into the cubicle space, find one at the edge of the room with a clear view of all the doors, and tuck yourself under the desk. Pulling your knees to your chest, you resist the urge to rock yourself like a baby.

And you sit there, and you watch, and you wait. It doesn’t matter how many hours pass, you are not moving from this spot. It doesn’t matter how heavy your lids feel, how the adrenaline leaving your body has you sagging.

You’re not going to sleep. It’s not safe, and you’re not dying today. You’re simply not.\

You’re not allowed to.

-

A hand touches your shoulder, and you snap awake. Your fist slings out at the would-be attacker, but they dodge it smoothly. When you rear up for another, they move back, hands in the air in a show of surrender. Panting, you don’t lower the fist, your vision swimming.

It’s the Joker. But the Joker wouldn’t back up, right? And the Joker isn’t red, he’s green and purple.

It takes a while for the Joker’s pale, laughing face to disappear. But when you blink and he’s gone, you find someone else underneath. A red mask, a man you think you recognise from TV. A vigilante. God, you hated the vigilantes in Gotham.

Not more than the Joker. Not more than him.

The man stays a safe distance away, gloved hands firmly in the air. He’s tall, really tall. Broad-shouldered, scary. But he’s a vigilante, right?

Is he here to save you? Someone should've by now. The bastard's late then.

He says your name, you think. You can’t hear him properly. Wait no, it’s a nickname, one you haven’t heard in years. You could barely remember your mother calling you that as she tucked you in, as she told you she loved you over the phone, as she disappeared from the world entirely.

You hadn’t let anyone call you that since.

How does he know that name? How does this bastard know your name?

“-hurt? Hey, hey. Listen to me, are you hurt anywhere?” his voice is deep and warbled through the red metal mask, his eyes peering down at you through his domino. You just stare at him, eyes wide, barely breathing.

You need to know how he knows. Unconsciously, your hand reaches up to him, and after a moment, he takes it in his own firm grip. It’s awkward, as you’re still sitting half under the desk and he’s trying to stay as far away from you as possible. Still, his hand is warm through the leather, grounding, keeping you from drifting off into panic and fear. Into your worst nightmares come to life.

Because this was real. It didn’t matter that it was impossible, it was real. You simply couldn’t deny it any longer, this was all real.

You stare at this stranger’s gloved hand like it holds the answers to the universe. It might, in the end. It really just might. It wasn’t like the universe was making much sense at the moment.

“She seems fine. Uninjured, if a bit shocked. Doesn’t seem to have a concussion. Hardly responding anyway,” Red Hood speaks, but not to you. An earbud, you think. Superheroes used wiretaps and things like that all the time, right?

If you could even consider Red Hood a superhero. Everybody knew he had his own gang. Of course, even as your very life is being saved, it’s by a morally grey hero who runs around with crowbars and guns. Ah, you’re crying again.

You told yourself a long time ago that you wouldn’t let yourself cry anymore. And you’d managed it, mostly. You think you’ll give yourself a pass for today, just a little one. You hold this stranger’s hand, and you cry.

You just cry. You cry, and you hold the hand of some stranger you hate, because you have to.

MASTERLIST - NEXT

#Series:WWW #yandere batfam #yandere dc #yandere batfamily #yandere x reader #dick grayson x reader #nightwing x reader #jason todd x reader #red hood x reader #tim drake x reader #red robin x reader #damian wayne x reader #robin x reader

[sophiethewitch1]

What We Want - Chpt. 2 - First (Second) Introductions

In Which A Romantic Breaks The Universe

(Yandere!batboys x f!reader) 18+ MDNI!

SUMMARY

Another lonely birthday, another empty year. You miss your family. You're late for your bills and rent, and even then, you got robbed last Tuesday.

Still, you buy yourself a cupcake, because you need it. I mean, hey. What's dessert for if not to get over cheating boyfriends and dead relatives?

As you blow out the candle, watching the clock switch from 11:59 pm to midnight of the next day, you make a wish.

And because the world doesn't like to make much sense, it comes true. Your life is suddenly flipped on a dime, and you're stuck trying to catch up with it. Fantasy becomes reality. You're a Wayne now, apparently. Or you used to be. You're loved, you're rich, you're talented and powerful.

Well, sort of. Careful what you wish for, right?

(TRIGGER WARNINGS AND MASTERLIST HERE)

PREV - NEXT

Tim Drake was an obsessive creature by nature. Ever since he was little, he’d always been easily swallowed by his obsessions. His wants and desires, the little things that fascinated him. And, more than that, he never fought it. He gave himself into it, wholly. It was how he’d gotten this far in life.

He’d taught himself how to code, how to hack. He discovered Batman and Nightwing’s true identities. He’d learnt how to fight, how to keep the city safe, how to fling oneself off a building without fainting. He’s taped the family back together again and again after every splinter. He was one of only two Robins left, and that would soon be the only once Bruce retired and Damian graduated.

And this was all done through obsession. And it was obsession. He was self-aware enough to know that. While the rest of the family often indulged in delusions, he never had the time for them. He’d spent countless nights pushing his lagging body along with caffeine and sheer willpower. He’d often forget to sleep or eat even on the calmer days. All that was to say, Tim Drake was obsessive.

But, his obsessions never lasted. Sure, he’d keep the skills and the relationships he’d make, but when the dust settled, he’d find himself feeling empty. Tim Drake was obsessive yes, but his true obsession was the conquest. The rush he’d get when he finally claimed a new skill, a new person, a new piece of knowledge or wisdom.

And then, too quickly, far too quickly, the rush would disappear. The tingle in his spine would leave, the energy would disappear, and that feverish nature of his would flatten. Cool down. The others in the family knew it as one of his ‘moods’, but Tim thought it was probably more than that. Still, he was definitely in one of them right now.

It didn’t matter. None of it really mattered. The point was, right now, he was quite simply depressed. Bummed out, if you would. He’d finished a mission from Bruce, one that had taken him months of desperate, undying effort, and it was now done. And he didn’t have anything to do.

It sucked.

Boredom was a sinister demon. While Tim was by far the most emotionally stable of the family, he was still, well- not. Not by a long shot, honestly. The League’s mandatory therapy sessions had confirmed that. He just needed something to entertain himself, and quick. Usually, on a day like this, he’d be at home working on any random degree.

Unfortunately, he had responsibilities. He could not alleviate his boredom, because he was in the most boring place on earth.

A party. Not a party by any normal person’s standards, but one of his adoptive father’s galas. Even more horrifying, Bruce Wayne was in attendance. He was doing his billionaire playboy persona, and Tim couldn’t stomach it. It was no shock no one else had shown up. Even Dick was busy in Bludhaven, and he sometimes enjoyed these. Sometimes.

And once again, as every year, the birthday girl was nowhere to be seen.

Tim’s eyes rove over the very boring gala. Your gala, for your birthday. You weren’t here, because you never were. He couldn’t blame you. These balls sucked, even the better ones. This one was miserable, and the atmosphere was sombre. While it was your birthday, it was more than that, a day of death.

Your family had died, Bruce’s new wife had died, and all the siblings he never really got the opportunity to meet, gone in a brilliant flash.

And Jason. Jason, who now walked the earth again, flesh and blood. Jason, who tore himself through a wooden coffin and grave dirt. Jason, who even Dick couldn’t seem to bring back into the family. Jason, alive and well and probably spending the night at Roy’s house. It was still the anniversary of his death, and while Jason did his best to put on a front, anyone with half a brain could tell he found today… upsetting.

But, he was alive. That was more than Tim could say for your family.

None of these people knew that. They saw one of the great Wayne’s dead, and they mourned. They saw the new wife and step-children of Bruce Wayne dead, and they lamented. Tim was sure most of it was faked, at least in this gala. The rest of the city truly grieved the Wayne family's tragedy. Especially Jason, one of the princes of the city. But here? No, they just wanted to rub shoulders with Bruce.

The man you very clearly insisted had never been your father, and never would be, was… probably a little sad. Tim was probably a little sadistically pleased about that. He was bored, alright? Anyway, Bruce did not know how to deal with you, and you with him. Both of you were stubborn people, unable to communicate or reach a place of cooperation. You never showed up to the galas or the manor, you did everything in your power to never have to interact with anyone from the family. The only reason you even still lived in Gotham was to be close to your dead family. And above all, you made sure that everyone knew how much you hated Bruce. That the sight of his aging face made you nauseous. Everyone else found that hilarious, of course.

And Bruce, because he was stubborn, kept trying to reach you, despite your angry protests. Even if he had absolutely zero legal ties to you, he still kept trying. And so, another birthday party passes without its leading star. The memorial tomorrow would be missing you too. Christmas, easter, hanukkah, new years, Rosh Hashanah, you refused to show up to any of them.

Still, he had to agree with Bruce. They couldn’t just leave you. Not with the way you were.

You’d once quietly admitted to him that you hoped you’d one day go to sleep and not wake up. That you’d rot away in your room, disappear from the world entirely. That was one of the last few times he talked to you face-to-face. And then a few months after that, you’d blocked him on all social media.

He’d read hundreds of books on therapy, and he knew what suicidal idealisation looked like. Luckily for his sanity, he was not your therapist, nor was he your keeper.

That was poor old Dick’s job, and he was, hilariously, failing at it. Badly. Technically, you were the second massive failure Dick had taken on, and it was starting to show in his mental state. Old Dickie was spending more and more time in Bludhaven, preferring to patrol there instead of Gotham. Still, he insisted he could get through to you. Tim was doubtful. Dick had better luck with Jason, of all people.

Jason actually wanted to be a part of this family. You hated them all, viciously. And so, you’d obviously never show up at-

Wait. Wait, no. He definitely recognised that face. Why the hell were you here? Well, that was irritating. Tim prided himself on being prepared for any situation, for any unlikelihood. He was the son who would be taking over Wayne Enterprises, after all.

You being in the same room as Bruce Wayne was impossible. Completely impossible. At least willingly. You should be kicking and screaming, scratching like a hellcat at anyone who tried to make you stay. Instead, you’re standing in the middle of a crowd, chugging back champagne like your life depends on it. He could already imagine the chaos the media would be starting, to his misery. ‘Estranged ex-Wayne shows up at birthday gala and drinks like a fish’. Well, he had been complaining about being bored. Careful what you wish for, and all.

Shit. He was not prepared for this.

He was, despite it being your birthday, not at all expecting you to be here. He didn’t even have a present. Shit. He pulls out his phone and shoots off an order to his assistant, who would probably go to Dick’s for help.

He sees you over there, obviously uncomfortable, and realises he should probably rescue you. He tells himself he should, that he’s gonna get up and go do it.

Instead, he crosses his legs at the ankle, leans back in his chair, and watches. You won’t catch him off guard twice. He has his pride, after all.

You throw another glass of champagne back. Tim winces. Okay, maybe you might. This was all a bit of a shock. And the rest of the gala seemed just as surprised at your appearance as he was. They obviously didn’t know what to do about you, creating a wide ring of people who refused to step closer to you. And you seem oblivious to the social pariah you have suddenly become. Or maybe uncaring, as you’ve already claimed an entire buffet table and champagne tray for yourself.

Just… just drinking. You seem to only care about ingesting more alcohol and confectionaries. It’s your twenty-first, but uh… this definitely doesn’t look like the first time you’ve been drinking. Not that he cared if this was your first time drinking. He’d done his fair share of illegal activities. Sure, they were mostly superhero stuff, but still illegal. Frankly, it’s kind of impressive. You might even be able to drink Jason or Alfred under the table.

…Good for you, he guesses. A talent’s a talent.

He realises, after a few minutes, that you have absolutely zero plans of socialising. You’d showed up here of your own free will, and then just scared off anyone who’d talk to you. Not that there’d be many who’d be interested in talking to the swaying woman who looked like a threat to herself and everyone around her. No, you were still just drinking. You’d gotten halfway down the buffet table, trying every single cake and a few of the savoury items as well.

You kept circling back to have more champagne and Victorian sponge, and then you’d go back to wherever you were in the buffet and try something from there. Your choices seemed sporadic, and more than once you spat something back out into a napkin. You look at some of the dishes like you think they might be poisonous, taking wide circles around them.

He rests his elbows on the table, leaning forward to press his face to his intertwined fingers. He’s definitely past the point where he should go help you. You’re making a mess, both physically and socially, and yet, he still just sits there. He can’t help himself, it’s interesting.

“Tim.”

Uh oh, your knight in shining armor is here. Or well, dark. Bruce had never been known for pastels. Tim turns his head to the giant man blocking out the light, giving his father and leader a smile.

“Hey Dad,” he greets, in an open attempt at manipulation.

Bruce shakes his head, not caving begrudgingly like he usually did. Shit, that usually worked. Guess he must be actually mad. He glances from Tim to the object of Tim’s apt fascination. You. He turns back, looking down at Tim with his ‘I’m trying to be a good dad’ look. It’s not very convincing.

“How long has she been doing this?” Bruce asks, straight to the point as always.

“Twenty-seven minutes. You’re ruining my process,” Tim replies, telling B to screw off in the kindest way possible. He doesn’t take the hint, because he’s a bit of an ass. Even Batman fanboy Tim could recognise that.

“You can’t just count when someone is getting drunk in front of the public. You need to actually do something.” Bruce shakes his head, hand lifting to massage his brow. It was just that easy to give the old man a migraine. Poor baby probably needed some Ibruprofen. Tim had some in his pocket, but he wasn’t going to offer.

“I was going to eventually. And aren’t you curious? She refuses to show her face for months, and then pops out of the blue to… what? Steal from your liquor cabinet? She knows she doesn’t have to come to get whatever she wants,” Tim ignores B’s nagging, turning his gaze back to you. You’re having a love affair with that cake, honestly. Oh, you’re going for another shot… You do realise the stuff you’re chugging goes for millions, right?

You probably don’t care. You never had about money.

“It doesn’t matter. She’s here, and we should be taking care of her. This is obviously her reaching out for help, and she obviously needs it,” B insists, splaying his worn and scarred hands over the table. Tim has the same hands, everyone in the family does. Vigilante work left scars and callouses.

“Then why hasn’t she come over here, yet? My theory is she’s just trying to smear your good image. Which doesn’t need smearing in the first place, but who understands the minds of young, drunk and miserable women?” Certainly not Tim, as he had proven in his relationship with Stephanie.

“Tim, enough with the sass. Go and help her.”

“She’s not your responsibility anymore, B.”

“Her mother would disagree. Now go,” Bruce orders, his words final. Because they always are, in the end.

Tim groans, letting his head fall back. He glares at the ceiling and all the sparkling diamonds strewn about, and then he pulls himself to his feet. Cracks his shoulders, and parts the Red Sea with a glance. The crowd in the gala splits so the young heir can easily find his way through, and he gives everyone he passes a kind smile.

He strides up to your side, calmly waiting for you to notice him. You’re still imbibing, completely oblivious to his presence. It’s funny. And fascinating. Usually, you were so paranoid that he wondered how you weren’t always a single breath away from a panic attack. Like a feral animal, ready at a moment’s notice to fight or flight.

He sees that you’re dealing with those social anxieties in a way befitting the Wayne name. Which is to say, absolutely shit. His head tilts eyes flickering over you. You don’t look too good, which is no real surprise. Even with your people’s perfect styling, they can’t cover up the shaking and sweating in your form. It might just be anxiety, but knowing you, it’s probably not. He wonders if you even notice how sick you are.

You don’t look like you notice much of anything. Maybe the cake, but that seemed to be pushing it.

“Oh, so you actually showed up? Colour me surprised,” Tim starts but is unable to continue when you spin on your heel and drop your flute of champagne. It crashes to the ground, and he finds his socks becoming uncomfortably wet.

The two of you look up from the mess and meet gazes. Your mouth is open in horror, eyes comically wide. Tim has to bite the inside of his lip so as not to immediately burst into laughter.

“I’m so sorry,” you say, you do a weird crouch-pop-up movement, and then your eyes swivel around frantically, “I’m- am I supposed to clean this up? I can totally clean this up.”

You look just about ready to kneel into a pile of thin glass shards, so Tim stops you. Because God knows Bruce would hang him from the rafters if he didn’t.

“It’s fine, it’s fine. Somebody else will handle this. It’s your birthday after all, right?” he says, giving you a charming smile. It’s sort of a shock when you don’t scoff at him, and instead just stand there with a deer-in-headlights sort of look.

“Hey, are you alright?” Tim asks when you don’t say anything else.

You startle, and then blink at him rapidly. Distracted and inebriated. Lovely. He doesn’t think you know what you’re doing here either, which was a bad sign for your mental health. Have you been refusing to go to your therapist again?

It wasn’t like he went either, so he couldn’t judge.

“I’m good,” you say, your words only slightly slurred. You blink again, your head cants towards the floor, and then you glance back up at him. You look like he’s caught you committing a crime. “Do you- uh, want some of the cake? Sorry for stealing it all, it’s really good.”

You were acting… really strange. Tim found himself with the undeniable urge to follow along with your strangeness.

“You know what? Yes, yes I would,” he says, taking one of the little plates of strawberry cake and a delicate three-tonged fork. He scoops up some of the cake, the cream and jam, and eats. Chewing he keeps staring at you, as you fidget awkwardly. It’s good, but all the food here’s good.

“Did you like it?” you try to smile at him, but it looks more like a grimace.

“I did. Javier did really well with these desserts,” Tim says, before waving over one of the staff to clean up the mess the two of you are ignoring. You look surprised when he offers an arm to guide you away, and he wonders if you’ll accept it. He can’t imagine a world where you would, but today seems to be full of surprises. In the end, you do, but it takes you a good five seconds of awkward staring before you take it.

He takes you over to one of the tables, careful to make sure you don’t slip and fall face-first into the spreading champagne puddle.

“Oh. Is he the chef?”

“He’s the pâtissier.”

You give him a blank stare. Right, you probably don't speak French.

“The pastry chef,” Tim clarifies, as he helps you find your chair. You slump down with zero grace, and for a second Tim thinks you’ll fall right off. You manage not to with a desperate grasp at the table. Good for you.

“Oh, cool. That’s super cool. I think I love this Javier guy, honestly.”

Tim snorts, taking his own seat, “He has that effect on people.”

You’re not looking at him, instead grimacing at the mess you made that two of the staff are cleaning up. Tim’s sort of surprised. It wasn’t that you had been particularly mean to the employees before, but you rarely acknowledged them. You had barely acknowledged anyone, completely unaware of your effect on the greater world. You didn’t care. To be fair, it didn’t seem like you cared about anything but your family’s gravestones and memorials.

Still, there was definitely something different about you, today. And he couldn’t blame it all on the alcohol. Today, you looked a little green about the whole accident. Like you actually gave a shit. Maybe you’d had a change of heart. He hoped you had, for Dick’s sake. You looked more alive, even if it was a confused, embarrassed, uncomfortable sort of alive. It was still an improvement. Usually, your expression was dead, a blank stare. It reminded him of Jason’s as he’d been lowered into the ground.

The two of you wouldn’t like that comparison. And it’s hypocritical too, Tim knows he sometimes resembles a zombie after one of his little sessions.

He can’t help himself. He’s curious, so damn curious. What had prompted this miraculous shift? And plus, you could still be planning something, even if it was seeming more and more like you’d stumbled in here drunk and confused, not able to remember you hated them all. Maybe you had a concussion or something. A head wound sounded like a good explanation for all this.

“Why’d you show up here today?” he finally asks, caving quickly to his need to understand.

You give him a weird look like he’s the one being strange.

“It’s my birthday.”

Tim tilts his head. “That it is.”

“Was that- that the wrong answer?”

“I don’t know, was it?” Tim knows he should stop playing with you. You’re making it far too easy, though. And he's bored, damn it.

“I don’t know either. That’s… that’s why I’m asking you.”

Before he can react to the strangeness of that comment some (awfully rudely, might he add) intrude on your conversation. One of the board members of W.E., someone he had to pay the proper respect to. When his hand slaps down on Tim’s shoulder, he has to suppress a withering sigh. There were less fun parts to his job, and this was one of them

“Drake! It’s so good to see you,” the old man greets, and it takes even Tim a second to remember his name.

“Lancaster! You as well,” Tim replies, noticing your barely there flinch.

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you tonight. My project’s funds are running a little low, and everyone knows you’re the one to go to for an easier time. Bruce is a great leader but…” the man chuckles, and Tim grins at him. It’s fake, of course. When in Rome, they say.

“A bit strict, yes. I have struggled with his attitude before, too.” Understatement of the century.

Tim glances at your quiet form, eyes set on the tablecloth in front of you. Even still it’s obvious you’re listening to their conversation, head cocked just slightly to the right. The board member doesn’t even seem to notice you. Tim’s curious if he recognises you.

You’d been out of the public eye for so long he wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t. That’s the way you’d wanted it to be, after all.

“But let’s talk about this later, I’m entertaining a very tipsy birthday girl at the moment,” Tim says, hoping you don’t mind him using you as an excuse.

“Oh wow!” Lancaster cries, at your mere presence. Subtlety is not this man’s strength, “I didn’t see you there. Wow, jeez. Didn’t think you’d be here today. What made you change your mind?”

You give him a long, assessing look. Whatever you find makes you pull an expression like you sucked on a sour lemon.

“My assistant forced me to,” you answer honestly. Seems you’ve realised that ‘it’s your birthday’ isn’t an adequate reason. Not that you’ve never failed to reject any and all pressure to attend these events before. Like Tim had said, kicking and screaming.

“Ha! I know the feeling. Well, I’ll leave you two kids to it. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” the old man chortles, gives you a wink, and leaves. Your gaze follows him into the crowd, and stays there, even when he disappears behind it.

It’s quiet for a moment. Tim waits for you to speak first.

“Who was that man?” you finally ask.

“Charles Lancaster, one of the newest board members of Wayne Enterprises,” Tim says, surprised you’re curious. You’d never been interested in W.E. or anything involving the family. Surprised, surprised, surprised. He should just accept any odd behaviour from you at this point, start expecting it.

You slump in your chair, pressing your forehead against the table. Then, you let out a long, unhappy, groan. Tim gets it, he really does. He does not get what you do next.

Your hands slap against your cheeks, and Tim jerks in his seat. Okay, maybe Bruce was right, you probably do need help. He couldn’t imagine the big guy sending you to Arkham, though. It was obvious you were only a threat to yourself. You take a deep breath, completely ignore his confused stare and get to your feet.

And you immediately fall sideways.

Tim’s arm shoots out, grabbing yours before you crash into the shining marble floors. You look down at him, mirroring his shocked expression. You look down further down, and Tim follows your gaze.

Your stilettoed heel looks the same as it always does. Still, you stare at it like it’s a shark biting at your toes. Tim thinks this is one of the first real emotions you’ve shown in months, and it’s desperate fear of your shoes.

“I told her I can’t wear heels,” you say, more to yourself than him.

“What? Yes, you can. You wear heels to all these events,” he replies anyway.

“What- Well, I meant… heels this tall. They’re really tall.”

He just blinks at you, at the inanity of your statement. They were really tall, but Tim had seen you wear taller. Why were you lying about something like this? Had you drunk too much and were too embarrassed to mention it? Or maybe you’d hurt yourself?

He looks down at your ankle again. No, the flesh seems unharmed. And you hadn’t been walking with a limp earlier, you were just stumbling around now. Must really just be too much champagne. You’d already dropped a glass earlier and had been obviously embarrassed by it. Even if Jeanine had swept in just like she was supposed to, fixing the situation. You’d apologised profusely.

He’d never heard you apologise before. It’s… well, it’s strange. That’s the only way he can describe this encounter.

“You can let go of me now. Please?”

Tim lets you go, and you rub your arm. Shit, he grabbed you too hard. He knew you were on the delicate side, wasting away both mentally and physically. You didn’t take care of yourself and rarely even left your apartment. Even now you looked oddly sickly.

“I’m going to uh- I have to go pee,” you say, and immediately wince at your words.

Tim, without thinking, replies, “Go piss girl.”

You make a shocked choke of laughter, nod at him, and then run off as fast as you can while grasping every piece of furniture in your reach. You look genuinely ridiculous. Well, it’s not the first time a Wayne gala has turned into a clown show. Compared to Dick’s younger years, this was completely unnoticeable.

Bruce still loved to complain about the chandelier he’d broken in an impromptu trapeze show. It’d been diamond, and over a hundred years old. The ones above him now were just as expensive, but not vintage. Jason thought it was hilariously funny, and was always trying to get Dick to do it again. Luckily, Dick had matured, if only a little bit.

Speaking of which, this is a perfect opportunity to mess with Dick. He pulls out his phone and the secure channel they use to communicate. Dick was in Bludhaven right now, probably on patrol. Doing something fun. Sure, tonight had gotten more interesting, but you’d just run off and with you his only entertainment. Tim was bitterly envious of Dick’s fun, and because of that, he had to make Dick just a little more miserable. Just to make things even, of course.

‘Smartest_Robin’: guess who just showed up to her own birthday party?

‘Underwear_guy’: you’ve got to be fucking kidding me. why?

‘Smartest_Robin’: hell if I know. she’s drunk as hell lmao

‘Underwear_guy’: please don’t let her do anything stupid.

‘Smartest_Robin’: yeah, yeah. i’m the idiot who has to deal with the fallout anyway

‘Underwear_guy’: how’s it feel being the ‘favourite son’?

Tim snorts. The media often called him that, purely because it was well known he was the one inheriting W.E. It was hot gossip that it was Tim and not Damian, the proudly stated ‘blood son’. They didn’t know Damian was inheriting an even greater responsibility. And it wasn’t like he particularly wanted it, he just knew he was best for the job and it helped the time pass in between missions. It was fun sometimes, too. He enjoyed giving Luthor Corp a good thrashing every now and then.

‘Smartest_Robin’: same as always. im bored, anything interesting going on over there?

‘Underwear_guy’: bludhaven’s my city, dickhead. go do taxes or something

Tim sighs, and puts the phone back down. He had to try, at least. When it becomes obvious you are absolutely not returning from the bathrooms anytime soon, he gets up, adjusts his cuffs, and walks back off into the fray.

He greets and shakes hands, he takes photos and makes deals. It’s all a blur, really. He does it with half his attention, the other focused entirely on you. Amidst all this pomp and splendour an intriguing new mystery has been born. A puzzle to hold his attention, just for long enough till he gets to the next one. And your sudden shift in personality is more than enough. And if he focused on that, he could get through all this politics.

He’s talking up a chairman of a rival company when the lights go out. When the windows shatter inwards, his heart starts to race. And when familiar masked thugs break in through the wide open doors, guns up and ready, he’s already prepared for the fight. People start screaming, scrambling, and even more gunmen follow through the side exits. While guards raise their own firearms, everybody knows they’re completely outnumbered.

The Joker’s here, and he’s brought his army. Well, shit, all this excitement, and Tim left his suit upstairs. Guess he’ll have to improvise.

MASTERLIST - NEXT

#Series:WWW #yandere batfam #yandere x reader #yandere dc #yandere batfamily #dick grayson x reader #nightwing x reader #jason todd x reader #red hood x reader #tim drake x reader #red robin x reader #damian wayne x reader #robin x reader

[sophiethewitch1]

How would you rate them? From decent to most pathetic.(crying, sobbing, whimpering, completely delusional--),❤️

Oddly enough, Jason's the most normal. That is, with you around. We all know how he normally acts (blatant self destructive behaviour, prone to outbursts) but with you nearby he has the patience of a Tibetan monk.

Probably next would be Damian as he has 100% confidence in himself that he will capture your heart (delusional). You'd think he'd be a bit more pathetic but he plays it with such a straight face all you end up feeling is confused.

Tim is the second to last, as he feels the same way about you as his caffeine addiction. Absolutely needs to have access to you or some way of watching you constantly or he loses his silly little mind. Scratching at the walls desperate if you manage to get outside his purview.

And finally we have Dick, who will cry at the first sign you're upset with him. Like, sobbing whimpering on the floor begging you to forgive him. I'm only joking a little, he seriously needs to get a grip.

#sophie speaks #series:WWW #yandere batfam x reader #yandere batfam #is this technically a blurb/drabble #who knows #who cares

[sophiethewitch1]

Can we have some spoilers for Mr. Richard Grayson, please?🙏🙏🙏✨

Realising I don't have as many scenes actually written out for Dick, even though I have the most outlined for him. At least the non big spoiler ones. Here's a smaller spoiler one, under the cut as usual. The strange courting of one such Dick Grayson and You is very stupid.

-

“Well, since you’ve met all of them, I have to ask…” Molly’s words drawl off, and you sigh at the impish expression on her face, “Whose your favourite?”

You purse your lips together, glancing over at Dick on the couch. He’s just scrolling on his phone. Still, something about all this just… you don’t know. It pings something in you. You can’t tell what, but it definitely does. Ah, whatever, the paranoid schizophrenia’s settling in. Moving on.

“Ah, probably Nightwing.”

Dick’s breath hitches. He scrolls on his phone furiously. You wonder what he saw, and hope it’s not another Gotham-Tuesday-Disaster. You had notifications on for the twitter account that had announcements for villain attacks, but there’s every chance that something might happen to whoever runs it, and then you’d be kind of screwed.

“It’s the ass, isn’t it?”

Dick breaks out into a coughing fit. You feel your neck heat, and you lean over the table to swat at Molly’s hand. She desolves into laughter. The mix of Dick’s chest-rattling choking noises and your evil friend’s cackling is mortifying.

“Molly! You can’t just say stuff like that,” you sigh as you relax back into your seat, “Besides that’s not it. He was nice to me, and I like the way he moves.”

“I bet you do!” Molly barks out another loud sound of laughter. Dick gets up from the couch and heads into the kitchen. You hear the sound of the tap running, and then gulping. Oops.

“You make it too easy for me,” Molly sighs back into her chair, obviously pleased with herself.

#sophie speaks #series:www #i need to have a sneak peeks tag #urgh... later... later... #man i love dick 'great ass' grayson so much #hes such a character #sophie answers

[sophiethewitch1]

How would Jason react to the reader calling him, her soulmate? And slightly different, how would he react to her while DRUNK(the reader), saying like "Dude, you're like my soulmate".

I have to say, reader of WWW would absolutely never say that sober, for so many reasons. But if you did do it, probably drunk off your ass, Jason would fall even more for you. Fall harder than he thought was possible. Dizzy with happiness, about to fall over from the shock of it. If you're saying it, then it has to be true, right? You would however be giving him basically a go-ahead for all his less savoury tendencies. He's kissing you and drawing you closer and he's probably also planning to kill your exes. I mean, he's your dog though. Tell him to stop and he will, but he'll probably be grumpy about it.

#sophie speaks #series:www #jason todd x reader #red hood x reader #thinking about Him #i want to write this in the fic now #you and jason on a rooftop somewhere drinking cheap beer #and you say that and he spits out his drink and then goes #'yeah we probably are' #and kisses you on the top of the head #fuck it im gonna go do that right now

[sophiethewitch1]

gang i really just want to get to the part where the boys are hopelessly in love with reader to the point its genuinely pathetic

#sophie speaks #series:www #damian might write u poetry but nobody can beat dicks internal monologue #he is so geniunely in love with you #like yes the yans there but hes like. so self sacrificing hed swallow it all down just so you can be happy #he wants you to be happy more than anything #i kinda want to write a bit where reader can hear their thoughts for some reason or another and be like #super flustered by how much of dicks thought process is 'i love you. id die for you. you are the most beautiful thing on this earth. #i am so lucky i get to spend even the briefest moment of my life with you. i hope it will be forever but i know even this is more than i- #deserve.' and readers just gaping #and this shit is just on loop in his head man #is the worship kink coming out again it might be #i just think devotion in love is the sexiest thing ever okay???

[catwhispers0]

@sophiethewitch1 's what we want series fanart, i dont wanna sound crazy and obsessed but i LOVE making fanart for fanfiction and writers on obscure sites like tumblr. it just brings me sm joy to not have to worry about perfection and keeping true to cannon characters, bc, yk, its not??

#whisperart #i love yanderes sm #the eyes look wonky bc the way i wanted them to look down a bit #since hes tall n stuff #but i put subdle hearts in the eyes #and his hair looks too brown but thats what u get w warm lighting 😭 #i hate backgrounds 😭 #www #series:www

[sophiethewitch1]

The lovely @amandachrystinallc very kindly asked me for some more spoilers, also Damian-themed because those are their favourite of the boys. I'm starting to feel bad for Jason and Dick (especially Dick, since I've written for Jason before) so I'll probably post some spoilers of them too before chapter 3 (especially if people ask me too!!)

Under the cut for general WWW spoilers, and also sort of important plot stuff. I mean I feel like it should be obvious, but it's not super hinted at till chapter 3 so like,,,, you've been warned or whatever,,,,

===

He crowds you back against the wall, and you raise your hands. Unfortunately, Damian Wayne does not know what the word ‘chill’ means and continues forward. You end up with your hands against his stomach, fingers pinned between the two of you.

He looks down at you with green eyes that are way too intense. Gulp. How the hell do you get out of this situation?

“I’m too old for you,” you finally say, after much awkward staring.

“Richard’s eight years older than you. I'm three,” Damian’s teeth grind out.

“That’s different. Also, I’m definitely not with Dick,” you don’t let yourself continue the sentence. ‘I’m definitely not with Dick… or Jason, or Tim, or you.’ No, you just think it.

His eye twitches. Yours dart to the side.

Honest truth? You were going to do this stupid dance till you died. Conflict was your middle name. You didn’t want to let them go, but you felt too guilty to give them what they wanted. What you wanted. Your powers blurred the lines too much, made it all too confusing.

Also, they’d totally locked you up in this house. Not cool, man.

#sophie speaks #series:www #damian wayne x reader #lmfao everyone loves this asshole #i mean i do too i just thought I was alone in it #damian 'why am i not the batman by now. why wont the woman who I love and maybe bullied a bit return my feelings.' wayne #still the problem child after jason

[sophiethewitch1]

Would the batboys be hesitant about their feelings? Since they are family(even though, they're not-related.) Or would they gives no fucks, lol.

Some give some fucks, some do not. They're all ex step siblings right? It doesn't even count right? It's no big deal right? (Dick trying desperately to be a normal person for once and failing so bad)

#sophie speaks #series:WWW