Bruce; Duke And Cass Are My Angel Children. They Tell Me Everything.

I think Oliver Queen would find out Batman's secret identity mostly through vibes...

When he was ten, his parents tried to get him to strike up a friendship with Bruce Wayne because it can’t ever hurt to know the richest man in the country but Bruce is just so fucking weird and morbid. He drags Ollie into his room and starts showing him his anatomy books and taxidermy and has he seen Taxi Driver? Because Travis Bickle inspired a real attempted assassination. But also maybe he had a point? And then Bruce is taking down his books on the Zodiac Killer and explaining how he thinks he’s cracked the cipher. And Ollie is just scared out of his mind. He thinks Bruce is going to vivisect him or something.

At the end of the night, he tells his parents that he spent the whole time with Bruce but he was actually hiding under a table somewhere for like two hours.

Then after that he tries to avoid Bruce at all times. Which isn’t hard because they’re ten and they live on opposite sides of the country. Until Oliver gets an invitation to Bruce Wayne’s 18th birthday party which is supposed to be a very big, very expensive bash. He doesn’t want to go because it might turn out to be weird but all his friends are going so he goes anyway.

… And it turns about to be pretty cool. (It’s a very big, expensive party with a lot of really drunk, really rich teenagers but it’s cool by Oliver’s standards) But no one actually seems to see Bruce there. He doesn’t make a speech, they don’t get him a cake or sing happy birthday, he doesn’t take over for the DJ, nothing. There are no pictures of him anywhere. Nobody gets any pictures of him. No one says they saw him. It’s like he wasn’t even there. 

But everyone insists that Oliver must be wrong. Who would throw a party and then never show up? Creepy Bruce Wayne, that’s who.

For the next several years, Bruce is supposedly out of the country doing an indulgent world tour. Hotels get booked out for him but they can’t say if he actually check in. People claim to have seen him but they don’t have any proof. It’s always so-and-so told so-and-so that they saw him here. He’s kind of like this fun cryptid. The richest man in the world is somewhere in the world. The late night shows do a spoof of Carmen Sandiego about it.

But every year, Bruce supposedly shows up to his birthday bash except Oliver goes every year and never sees him. There’s photos that circulate around but Oliver’s met Bruce and these are just some random other dark haired guys. He puts together that every year the crowd unknowingly selects some random dude to be that year’s Bruce Wayne, sometimes there’s two or three or four.

One year Oliver even dyes his hair and he gets to be Bruce Wayne for the day. 

It’s fun. But the real Bruce? He’s up to something. 

When Oliver comes back from his sojourn on an island and is deciding to clean up his act and maybe start dressing up in green and shooting people with arrows, he finds out that Bruce is back in Gotham. He’s gone from a guy who nobody knew what he looked like to one of the most recognizable faces.

Every week the gossip rags have a new crazy Bruce Wayne headline. 

“Bruce Wayne accidentally schedules two dates with two models at the same time, at the same restaurant. Models proceed to fight over him and wreck the restaurant, forcing Wayne to buy it.” There’s a viral video and everything. Except it’s not hard for Oliver to find out that the “models” are actually amateaur professional wrestlers.

“Bruce Wayne trips and knocks ice sculpture onto newly elected Gotham mayor.” Nobody bothers to mention that getting absolutely clobbered by an ice sculpture is what saved the mayor from being shot by a political rival.

“Bruce Wayne lets child ward drive his car. Kid accidentally puts car in reverse instead of drive and backs into and wrecks Lex Luthor’s custom McLaren.” That one just seems intentional. The kid even looks behind him as he’s backing up.

Sure people change over the course of 18 years, Oliver has certainly changed but he just can’t square this absolute buffoon with the kid who bragged about how he was already studying calculus. And it’s just so calculated. Just like the parties, it’s like a facade of being a rich playboy, not the real thing. Oliver knows the real thing. He’s been the real thing.

Then he walks into a meeting of the new, as yet unnamed, coalition of heroes and meets Batman for the first time. The familiar wave of hibbie-jibbies runs up his spine but he’s not a kid anymore so he just smirks.

“So do you still think Travis Bickle was kind of right?”

Who the bat kids moms are;

Diana/Wonder Woman: everyone

Selina/Catwoman; everyone

Talia Head/Al Ghul; Damian, Jason, Cass, and maybe Tim

One of my favorite sub genres is Asian assassins with questionable morals

4 year old nephew leaned over to look at my phone screen, pointed at Cass Cain, and said "that's Batban"

Was doing something unrelated but

Can you imagine a world where nobody knows the batkids are actually Batman's children and hence, when they hear them yelling at each other "I'll report this to Batman!" They think it's actually serious team discussion

And they don't know that for them it literally translates into "I'm telling dad!"

Like, You see Nightwing arguing with Red Hood and going "Oh, i'm SO reporting this to Batman"

"OH NO, YOURE NOT"

"YES I AM"

And everyone else thinks this is serious? And it could affect Hood's status as an ally?

But really is just Dick telling his little brother he's snitching about his broken arm to their dad-

Or you see Red Robin trying to bribe Robin and Spoiler "I'm reporting your actions to Batman"

"Yeah, gotta start the report about it, and he's going to be so-"

"... How much?"

And they smile maliciously, and anyone else thinks RR did something REALLY bad but it's just that he exceeded his weekly allowed coffee and his sibblings found out

Because they also do it to other people, like Tim does it to Supes when he's arguing with Kon-

Cass: Can I have your burger.

Dick:??? No I'm eating it. You have your own right there.

Cass: Remember when you abandoned me to Slade when I was drugged and mind controlled and then after I got free the first thing you did was punch me in the face.

Dick, sliding his burger over: You KNOW it's more complicated than that. You know it.

Tim, watching this all go down: Hey Jason remember when you broke into Titans tower just to beat me up?

Jason, taking a large bite of his own burger: Keep annoying me and this time I'll do more than just leave you unconscious.

Tim: :/

Cass, whispering to him: You gotta go for the ones with guilt complexes. It doesn't work otherwise.

Tim: Gotcha, good to know.

Cass:... Soo remember when I was drugged and brainwashed and you did nothing but accept it for months?

Tim, grumbling and sliding his own burger over to her: I never accepted it! That's just not true!

Cass, now eating three burgers at once: :)

In my mind Oliver Queen and Bruce Wayne are best friends. They are uncles to each other’s kids and know the other’s secret identities. When the kids are mad at them they go to their uncle.

Bruce trained for 7 years, in my canon/fiction I made up Oliver has always known how to use a bow but was on the island for 7 years too. So he got all his experiences from both the tv show and comics Green Arrow Year One.

I think Bruce comes back year 4 of Oliver on the island and thinks he’s dead like everyone else but can’t focus on it. Oliver comes back and they reunite. He doesn’t kill because he stopped year 6, he realized the hood doesn’t separate man from monster.

And I personally think Oliver would be Cassandra’s favorite because she respects him. She respects Bruce too, but Oliver didn’t have a choice to train or not, it was train or by killed. He also was trained to kill and forced to use those skills but stopped because he knew it was wrong even though people told him it was okay. He could’ve come back and hated the world but instead protected it, not only fighting crime but also with his position in the community.

He learned to become a part of society again, how to become human. He doesn’t see himself as a hero but instead a hunter. I think she relates to that because she sees herself as a weapon at first but learns to become a human like he did.

She sees the pain in him body, he also can read body language so they have silent conversations, her family can a little bit but not like she and Oliver can. Bruce chose to train so he didn’t need to watch his back as much, he chose to get hurt and put his body through that. Oliver didn’t, he was trying to survive and in doing so he got caught up with dangerous things, to survive he learned how to speak many languages, including the body. So as Bruce and the family can do it fairly well, Oliver is better and can hold conversations with her.

I need more fics of them like this.

Thinking about Cass Cain, the world's biggest proponent of "nobody dies tonight" still taking the time to desperately search for Steph even as she's working overtime to save the rest of Gotham. Wondering what she saw in Steph's body language in those last moments together, when she feared Steph was lying to her but couldn't chase after her. Wondering if she saw the fear, the hurt, the regret, the overwhelming despair and desperation, all in the anxious and exhausted tremble of her body. Wondering if the reason she couldn't tell for sure if Steph was lying was because there was just too much there, too many feelings, the weight of them too great, for Steph's body language to make any sense at all. Wondering if she knew, somehow, that if left on her own that the panicked-rabbit thrum under Steph's skin would lead her directly into something horrible. Thinking about Cass Cain, the girl who killed a man and saw him die in a way no one else could, in a way that changed her forever; who saw the shock and fear and pain and then the nothing, hearing that Stephanie was dead. Wondering if she imagined Steph's last moments as something other than what they were, because she wasn't there and she wouldn't ask and Bruce certainly wouldn't tell. Wondering if she thought about Faizul and imagined Steph terrified in the instant of realization, Steph knowing she was dying, Steph knowing that she would never run rooftops or play tag or feel her mother's arms again and that everything she could have been would remain unwritten forever; Steph alive and afraid and then nothing, nothing, nothing. Just thinking about Cass Cain and her way of perceiving things that no one else could understand, and a grief so deep that she didn't have the words for it and probably never will.

Helena Bertinelli, orphan and CSA survivor, protecting the kids of Gotham city in her work as a teacher, in her home an adoptive parent and in her vigilante life as huntress, I need a minute-

(TRIGGER WARNING FOR SA, KIDNAPPING, AND UNALIVING YOURSELF)

Okay I loved Circe but HATED how they made Odysseus out as some kind of villain and not a victim.

Sure, he did terrible things, but it was all to get back to his family. He technically ‘cheated’ but if he didn’t then he would have probably been killed.

I’ve only read Circe and watched Epic so far, I’m reading the Greek Odyssey tomorrow when it comes, but in Epic he doesn’t cheat.

I haven’t read that part of Circe in a while because I took a break, but I’m pretty sure she made him sleep with her, not outright forcefully but it was heavily implied he and his men would die if he didn’t (if I remember correctly). She was way more powerful than him and the roots could only hold up against her for so long, he barely had a choice, so it was technically consensual, but it was still barely his choice.

Calypso trapped him on her island for seven years, I heard he cried for his family every night, and in Epic (maybe also the Odyssey) he wanted to unalive himself. It was also very similar to Circe, where she was much more powerful than him, and this time he had no help or defense, even if for a limited time, it came only when he escaped. He had no where to go, a goddess who was in love with him and had never seen another living person before, he was defenseless. I don’t know if that was technically consensual or if she forced him but he still had little to no choice if he did say yes.

Many forget he is a victim because he is a man or haven’t read the Odyssey, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, he may have done horrible things but for a reason, for many people who do those things don’t have.

I agree he probably changed and was more guarded/on edge, but from what I’ve seen and read, I don’t think he would call his son a traitor. He loves his wife, and talks about her more in Epic, but he still longs to know him. I don’t think what Telemachus did would make him not want to form a relationship and try to know him. Because that is his son who he’s longed to know for 20 years, I think only strong evidence that he was a traitor would make him act that way at all.

I also didn’t like how Penelope told Circe the act to try and get out of war was fake. Sure, he is a genius, a master manipulator, even left his bow behind when he is a great archer to become the Best of the Greeks. He cares about his title and legacy. But he spent 10 years trying to get back to his wife and son.

In Epic he sacrificed his friend’s lives, he turned into the monster he feared he would become, he even made Poseidon call him a monster.

He could have spent the rest of his life with Calypso in ‘paradise’ but he was miserable there, wanting to see his family, wanting to be with his people.

Anyways, I thought most parts of the book were great, I may be a little bit biased because I love Odysseus and can’t wait for my Greek Odyssey to come, but I think I made some strong arguments.

Thanks if you made it this far. Also, is the Song of Achilles worth it if I like Odysseus this much but people say he’s not a good person in it? Please comment your thoughts!