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call-me-maggie13 · 1 year

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My late 40s to early 50s boss just asked what’s wrong with 18-25 year olds these days

And as a 21 year old all I could think was

The world has been on fire since we were born and we’ve been told the adults are putting it out and now we’re old enough to realize they’ve been pouring kerosene on the flames instead of water.

Before my first birthday, 9/11 happened and the world wouldn’t let us forget it. When I was 6 years old, on September 11th, my teacher sat us down in front of a tv and showed us footage of 9/11 and then told us we weren’t allowed to cry. She said that it was real and those were real people jumping from the building because jumping was a faster death than burning.

When I was 7 years old, the economy collapsed and my family went from lower middle class to poverty, we went from healthy home cooked meals every night to mac and cheese and beans for weeks in a row. We started skipping holidays because mom and dad couldn’t keep the lights on and buy us new toys. We started wearing clothes and shoes until they fell apart.

When I was 11 years old, Sandy Hook was attacked by a grown man with a gun and 26 children and teachers were brutally murdered. My teachers never looked at us the same and I haven’t felt safe in a school since. After that, once a month we would have active shooter drills and we were taught to fight and cause as much damage as possible if an armed man entered our classroom because it gave other classes a few extra seconds to escape, it gave our siblings a few extra breaths of safety. We were taught to cover ourselves in other students blood and play dead if we weren’t hit, we were taught that we weren’t safe and we wouldn’t be safe as long as we were in school.

When I was 15 years old, my high school art teacher locked us in the classroom and told us if we heard gunshots we should line the desks up lengthwise so that they reached the other wall because that would be harder to break through than a barricade. She told us that she knew about the threats and she wouldn’t judge any of us that wanted to leave. She told us to get our siblings and stay in the buildings as long as possible, to duck in between the cars so we couldn’t be seen until we got to ours. She told us about the trail behind the auto shop that was lined with trees and led off campus. I got my brother and his friends and we left, we spent the day sitting on the floor in my living room waiting for a phone call that the people we left behind were dying.

Two weeks later, one of my friends dragged me out of a football game and forced me to go home with him. He grabbed my brothers and my best friend and forced the six of us into a two seater car before he would tell us anything. His mom worked for the school board and had told him the police found an active bomb under the bleachers in the student section, and they weren’t informing anyone because they didn’t want to incite panic.

When I was 16 years old, ISIS set off a bomb at a pop concert in Britain and killed 22 people, injuring at least 100 more. The next day at school, our teachers went over how to stay safe if we ever experienced something like that. They told us the most important thing to remember was to not remove any shrapnel because it could be keeping us from bleeding out, they said it was more important to get yourself out safely before you worried about anyone else.

When I was 18 years old, my teachers stopped teaching and put the news up on the projector and we watched as the Notre-Dame burned. The boy I had sat next to since second grade spent the entire day trying to call his sister who was studying abroad in Paris, I watched this kid I had never even seen frown fall apart in English because she wouldn’t pick up the phone. We didn’t know it at the time, but she was okay.

Six months later, my history teacher put the news on the projector again for another fire. This time, we watched as an entire continent burned for three months. We watched their sky turned orange from the smoke and their wildlife drowned in pools because they were trying to escape the heat.

When I was 19 years old, the whole world shut down because of a global pandemic. I didn’t meet a single new person for eight months, despite the fact that I had just moved across the country. I watched as people didn’t wear masks and spread it to everyone around them, I was so scared when I went back to my room every night because my roommate was immunocompromised and I was terrified I would give her Covid and kill her.

Just two months later, I watched a video of a black man being murdered by police officers. I watched the world around me explode after George Floyd’s death, people destroying businesses and police stations. I watched some of my friends realize police officers didn’t exist to keep them safe, they existed to keep the people in power in power. I learned that some of the people I had grown up with would rather watch a black man die than admit that maybe, maybe, the system was broken.

When I was 20 years old, I went to the mall with a friend to buy a birthday present and I was pulled to the ground by a twelve-year-old girl after gunshots went off in the mall. I held this child’s hands as she cried for two hours until we were evacuated by police, and then I waited with her outside and helped her look for her mom. I gave her my phone to call her mom and I watched as she called the number over and over and never got a reply. I waited with her until a police officer took her to the station to try to find out more information about the girl’s mom, I hugged this girl I had never seen before and I wished her the best. I never found out what happened to her or her mom, it keeps me up at night sometimes worrying that this little girl was orphaned.

When I was 21 years old, I started working at a daycare and exactly a week later, Uvalde happened and I found myself crying because my students are the same age those kids were. When they came in after school the next day, one of them had asked me if I had heard about Uvalde and I told her I had, I asked her if she was scared of going to school because of it. Her reply broke my heart. “We practice for it every week so that when it happens to us, we know what to do. I’m just worried that the shooter is going to start in my baby sister’s classroom and not mine.” I listened as other students with younger siblings agreed with her, one of them saying “I would take fifty bullets, if I had to to keep my little brother safe.”

Early this year, I watched Russia launched bombs into Ukraine, blowing up churches and schools and hospitals and apartment buildings. I watched as the estimated death count rose from the hundreds to the thousands to the tens of thousands. I watched men send their wives and children to bordering countries for refuge while they stayed behind to fight, knowing they would probably never see each other again.

Just four months ago, I watched as my right to medical privacy got taken away. I watched my old roommate fall apart because she was denied the right to have her dead fetus removed from her body for almost two days, I worried every time I looked away from her that the next time I saw her would be in a casket. I watched as the women around me realized the military-grade weapons that had torn children in classrooms apart were protected by the government but our bodies weren’t.

There is nothing “wrong” with my generation, we’ve experienced all these things as children and were expected to respond with patriotism for a country that continuously sacrificed their children for the “right” to military-grade weapons, that took away my freedom of choice. We are tired, we were told the world was a wonderful place then shown, at every step, how the world was a place of destruction and pain. And we are angry. We are angry because no one but us seems to be trying to fix anything. And we are scared. We are scared because our children, our nieces and nephews, our cousins and our friends children are growing up in a world that won’t protect them.

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charlieeenby · 28 days

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let me show you how to kill a man

the bat won't kill, it's a line he won't cross. his birds, however, are a different story

warnings and tags: murder, violence, injury

title from how to kill a man by bloody civilian

What everyone knows, is that Batman doesn’t kill. He can’t, or won’t, cross that line, and he doesn’t think that killing is the answer.

But he knows that it’s necessary sometimes, and while he’ll never kill, he knows that his children don’t share the same sentiment.

So when it comes down to it, he lets them, and over the years, he’s gotten a little more lax with that rule, trusting his children’s judgement of a situation, and when they need to, he turns his back, doesn’t acknowledge it, and let’s them do what they have to.

But he’s managed to keep it a secret from most, only a select few surviving his the feral sides every one of his children hid from most of the world.

A group of four men stood with their backs facing each other, knives and fists up, ready, for a fight.

But they wouldn’t get one. Batman dropped down from the rafters, but he seemed focused on the kids the men had placed in cages.

Before any of them could react, Nightwing dropped on top of one of them, snapping his neck in one fluid motion. Then he lunged for a second. The other two tried to attack him, but he was able to fend them off, on taking a blow to the face from an escrima stick, the other, a kick to the knee.

Nightwing snapped the neck of the man under him, then stepped to the one who’s knee he’s kicked in. He reached down and snapped his neck. Then he moved over to the fourth man, who swung his knife at him. Nightwing grabbed it, twisting it out of his hand, then stabbed him in the throat, no screams able to escape.

He stood, made sure there was no blood on his suit, then made his way over to Batman and the kids, helping his father get all of them home safe.

Afterwards, Batman asked him if the goons had been handled.

“Of course. Quick and quiet. Hood’s gonna take care of the rest.”

“Good. Let’s go home.”

“Batman doesn’t kill, which means you can’t stop me!”

Gordon growled under his breath, wishing at that moment that Batman did kill, because if someone didn’t kill this weeks psycho, he’d end up leveling the city a few months down the line.

When he looked over to Batman, he was surprised to see that the man had straightened up, hands relaxed at his sides. He had an odd expression on his face, on Gordon couldn’t quite read.

Then he said, very calmly, “You’re right. I don’t kill. I can’t stop you.” Gordon watched him put a hand on his belt for a brief second before dropping it to his side.

The rouge started cackling, ranting and raving about how he was going to be the first to beat Batman, but when he looked down at Batman, and saw the smirk on his face, he stopped.

“Why are you smiling like that?” he yelled, panic clear in his voice.

“I don’t kill, but he does.” Batman said.

“Who -” he was cut off by a gunshot and a bullet piercing his skull. Gordon looked up and found the Red Hood with a rifle.

“He killed almost an entire army, Batman!” Ra’s screamed. “He blew them up because I upset him.”

Batman leveled him with a blank look, but said nothing.

“You don’t kill. Are you going to just let your son kill of thousands of people?”

For a beat, Batman stayed quiet. Then he said. “I don’t let Red Robin do anything. He does what he wants, and you tried to blackmail and kill him. You threatened him, his friends and his family. What he did to keep them safe is not in my control.

“I don’t kill, but if he found it necessary, then I trust his judgement. I’m sure you’ll recover, Ra’s.”

Ra’s stared at him, and Batman turned and guided Red Robin and his team out of Ra’s’ palace.

“Batman, control your hell spawn!” Black Mask screamed, though it was cut off with a gurgle. Robin drove his sword through the crime lord’s throat, and Batman turned away, working through the files on the computer.

Robin came over to his side, blood on his face and sword.

Batman glanced at him, then said, “You have blood on your face. Please clean it off before we talk to the Commissioner.”

“Yes, Father.” Robin did as asked, making sure his face was clear of blood, then followed his father out of the hotel and onto the street where Gordon and his men were waiting.

“Batman. Are we clear to enter?”

“Yes. Black Mask is dead.” Batman said, handing over a flash drive to Gordon. “I have a copy as well.”

Gordon nodded slowly. “Dead?”

“He attacked Robin. Robin defended himself.” Batman said simply. Then he used his grapple gun to launch himself to a roof, Robin following closely behind.

“Okay, then.” Gordon said to himself, not sure how to react to that, especially after he'd seen Red Hood shoot a man after it seemed like Batman had given him the go ahead.

While Barbra was Batgirl, she was safety and a warm light for the victims they all saved together. She was inspiration for little girls. She was violence, sure, but she was comfort, too.

Tonight, she was all violence. She and Batman had arrived a moment too late, and she was angry. She wanted vengeance and she would have it. Not even Batman would stop her.

No one could stop her when she rose from that little girls body and stepped forward, pulling out the knife her father had given her for her birthday. No one could stop her when she lunged, blade plunging into the killer’s throat, tearing it open. Blood spirted, spraying across her face.

And no one stopped her.

When the man was dead, and she was the killer, she stepped back, and looked to Batman.

He had bundled up the dead girl, wrapped her in his cape and covered her face. And then he had waited for Batgirl to finish. He looked at her for a moment, then nodded once.

“Go back to the cave and clean up. I’ll handle this.” he spoke softly, and there was no anger in his tone.

“Okay,” she said, and that was that.

Cass, Steph, and Jason were thick as thieves, and these days, Bruce rarely sees one without the other, especially on patrol.

So it didn’t come as much of a surprise when Spoiler called in saying that she, Orphan, and Hood needed backup.

Batman responded to the call, Nightwing a minute behind. When he arrived, he could hear fighting in the alleyway, but no gunshots, which worried him. Hood was quick to fire his guns when his siblings were in danger, and of all the times for him to use them.

But the air didn’t echo, it was still, quiet.

Batman dropped into the alleyway in time to watch Spoiler yank a knife from Orphan’s shaking hand, spin on her heel, and plunge the blade into a man’s eye, grinning under her mask as he screamed.

Hood came up behind the man and pulled a batarang across his throat, blood spilling down his chest. Even though he couldn’t see Hood’s face, Batman had the distinct impression that he had a grin that matched Spoiler’s.

Not pausing to hesitate, Batman moved to Orphan’s side, making sure she saw him before pulling her into a firm embrace. It was then that he saw the half dozen other bodies in the alley, all dead.

He looked to Spoiler and Hood.

Spoiler spoke up. “They attacked Orphan. She couldn’t kill them, so we did.” there was no room for argument, not that he had one.

“Thank you.”

Looking down at Orphan, he realized she was still shaking. “Sweetheart, it’s over. You’re safe.” he tried to soothe, though he wasn’t entirely sure what was wrong.

A hand rose and signed, “I thought I’d have to kill them.”

The shaking made sense now. “No, sweetheart, you will never have to kill again. I swear. And even if you did, I would still love you. You’d still be my daughter. Nothing will change that.”

Orphan laid her head on his shoulder. “Thank, you, Dad.”

“Love you, kiddo.”

Batman stood on the rooftop, watching Spoiler go after her father, a flash of purple here and there the only sign of her.

Cluemaster was no match for the girl he claimed to be the father to. He’d only hurt her, sharpened the blade.

But Spoiler was who she was in spite of her father, not because of him.

She became the one to beat him so she could save people. And when Batman had found her, he’d helped her hone the skills she already had, helped her improve. And while he’d done that, he’d given her a home, a family, and most importantly, he’d given her love.

Now she was gutting her father, preventing him from causing anymore suffering.

And when she swung up to the roof Batman was on and saw him, she ran to him, ran into his arms, and clung to him.

“He’s gone, sweetheart. He can’t hurt you or anyone ever again. You’re safe.” he whispered, holding her gently. “I’ve got you.”

While the other’s killing had never surprised Batman, Signal came as a slight surprise. But only slight. He was a bright, warm light, often reminding his family of the sun.

But the sun was fire, and fire burns. So when Signal came face to face with the Joker only a few months after losing his parents, Batman wasn’t sure what to expect.

When Signal caught sight of Joker, he snarled, and tensed up, ready to fight. The Joker had cackled and started taunting Signal.

Red Hood was about to step in when Signal grabbed Hood’s gun and fired every round into the Joker’s head, until his face was obliterated and unidentifiable. Then he’d dropped the gun and fell to his knees.

Batman stepped up next to him and set a hand on the teen’s shoulder. “He’s dead, Signal. It’s over.” he said, voice as gruff as ever.

“I know.”

For a moment, they were all quiet, not sure what to do. Then Batman offered a hand to Signal and helped him up. “You good?” he asked, looking his son over.

Signal didn’t answer right away, but then he said, “I will be… thank you.”

Batman smiled. “Of course.”

Of all the times for his children to start killing people, now was the worst time. He couldn’t just ignore it because the Justice League was here. So Batman was not having a good time.

“Batman,” Flash started, voice shrill. “Nightwing just tore a man’s head off.”

To his left, Orphan snickered, not that anyone would know aside from him, but she did. Batman sighed.

“I saw that, Flash, thank you.” What was he supposed to do?

“Batman, almost all of your… children are actively killing people. Signal and Orphan are the only one’s who aren’t.” Superman said. “Why aren’t you reacting?”

Batman looked at him. He hesitated.

“Oh my god, are you okay?” Superman was an inch away, worry clear on his face.

On his right, Signal cleared his throat. “I feel like it’s a good time to point out that one, the people they’re killing are all of the rapists that have ever existed on earth, come back to life, and two, no one else is doing anything about it.”

Batman grinned. Well, the corner of his mouth ticked up, but it may as well have been a grin with the way Superman stared at him.

“Batman?” he asked incredulously.

“Hn?”

“Do something!”

Batman tilted his head, grunted, then walked over to the ledge they were all on. “Hey!” he yelled and the fighting stopped, all of his children stopping and staring at him. “Superman wants you to stop killing.”

For a good thirty seconds, no one moved or said anything. Then on the comms, Batman heard Hood snort.

“B, will you please tell Superman to, respectfully, get fucked?” Nightwing said in a sickeningly sweet voice.

Batman grunted, then turned to the League. “Superman, Nightwing told me to tell you to get fucked. Respectfully.” he said, deadpan. Then he walked back to where he was standing.

Bonus:

It had been twenty years since the Wayne’s brutal murder in that alley way, ten since Batman had started, and one since Dick had joined the family. Today, someone was breaking into the manor.

Alfred sighed as he loaded his shot gun. This would be messy to clean up, but he never missed and he didn’t share the same sentiment as his son.

So he after he finished loading it, he stepped into the hallway, moving silently towards the living room. Must be idiot intruders, thinking there’d be anything to take there.

When he stood in the doorway of the room, he raised his riffle, counted the men – there were three – then spoke.

“Hello.”

They all spun around staring wide eyed at the shot gun.

Alfred grinned. “Goodbye.” he fired three shots in quick succession, all three of them dead. Footsteps pounded down the stairs and Bruce flew around the corner, panic on his face.

“Nothing to fret over, Master Bruce.” Alfred said calmly. “I’ve handled it. The mess will be cleaned up before breakfast. Now go back to bed, dear boy.”

Bruce gave him an odd look, eyeing the shot gun, then nodded and went back to bed.

In the morning, when Bruce looked into the living room, it was spotless, nothing out of place. No one said anything about it.

#batfam #dick grayson #jason todd #tim drake #damian wayne #barbra gordon #cassandra cain #stephanie brown #duke thomas #alfred pennyworth #tw murder #tw gun violence #tw stabbing #tw blood #tw violence #alfred pennyworth #justice league #my work

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