Been Watching Young Justice

I just think that atsushi and david ward would find they have a lot in common

“I trained someone once.” Shadow Weaver says, in a rare moment where they aren’t actively fighting each other. “Before you. Before Adora.”

“What were they like?” Catra asks, unsure.

“Powerful.” Of course she says that first, it’s the only thing that really matters to her. She thinks on it a moment longer. “He was a decent student, but sometimes lacked motivation.”

It’s possibly the most personal information Catra has ever learned about about Shadow Weaver and she feels herself grow tense. It must be building to something, Catra has never known Shadow Weaver to do something without purpose.

“You are all the things in him that I hated.” she spits like the words are acid in her mouth and the sudden sharing mood makes more sense now. Hurting Catra is the one thing Shadow Weaver actually does do without purpose.”It’s important to me that you know that.”

Catra nods and keeps thinking about all the ways she can make everyone who’s ever hurt her feel like she does.

Not me starting my third original story of this summer

Selina & Talia

1 2 3

Selina quite likes this thing she’s had going on with Talia, it’s far better than whatever was happening with Bruce at least.

‘Stop stealing things’, ‘Move in with me’, ‘Don’t team up against me with the Sirens’ nag, nag, nag. That’s all it had been with Bruce. Talia actually understands the things Selina does and she couldn’t give less of a shit about them. Well, she sort of does. Selina imagines that if Talia saw her pull something as boring as your standard bank robbery she’d break up with her. That’s understandable though, Selina would break up with someone who would pull a job that unfashionable.

“Why do you keep leaving?” Selina asks, stretching as she looks over to Talia packing her bag. It’s an honest question.

“Some of us have jobs.” Talia replies, no heat behind it. She leans over and kisses Selina before shouldering the bag. She walks to the door but hesitates before turning the handle.

Selina freezes from where she was still stretching. Talia never hesitates.

“What if I work was not the reason I was leaving?”

“Then I’d be ashamed of myself for not having you caught you in a lie sooner.” Selina replies, keeping her tone casual despite the fact that this is probably the most serious conversation they’ve had to date. “I don’t suppose you’re cheating on me? Because I thought you had better taste than to do something so class-less.”

“I would never.” she declares. The severity of the statement doesn’t match the conversation’s previous tone and Selina realises quite suddenly that they aren’t trying to be light-hearted about this any more. “I’m going to bring someone next time we see each other.”

“Oh?”

Talia opens the door and for a moment Selina thinks she isn’t getting a reply. Then Talia turns back, looking at Selina with an expression that could mean absolutely anything. “I hope that the two of you will mean something to each other.” she says, before walking out and closing the door softly behind her.

Selina doesn’t move for a while after that, thinking about what might be coming. She hopes it won’t change things too much, her and Talia really do have something special.

~

A couple of weeks later Selina gets back to her apartment to find Talia inspecting the blueprint she had set out on the table and a boy, perhaps eight years old, playing quietly with a couple of Selina’s cats.

Talia looks up from the blueprints. She doesn’t smile like she usually does when Selina enters a room. “This is my son. Damian.” she declares.

The boy looks up and cocks his head to one side. A part of Selina’s brain that she isn’t paying much attention to right now decides that how similar the boy looks to Bruce probably isn’t a coincidence.

In an instant Selina’s hopes that her and Talia’s relationship could continue unchanged are dashed. But as she looks at the boy being oh so careful with her kittens, she thinks she might not mind such a change after all.

Behold: Cass, Jason, and a reference to a quote from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

(Explanation: Cass’s book references the quote “I incline to Cain’s heresy. I let my brother go to the devil in his own way,” but since she’s the personification of “that sign won’t stop me because I can’t read!” I don’t think the book made much of an impression.)

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asdfnrjrft just thought about Duke and Tim both thinking of each other as the family’s impulse control and then one day both of them realise that the other’s an insane adrenaline junkie just like everyone else and then they’re both like ‘you’re telling me that no one’s been holding the brain cell this entire time?!?!?’

This on ao3

There is someone in Duke’s room.

He’s in bed and had the bad luck of waking up facing the wall. He’s sure there’s someone in the space by his window but he doesn’t think he can turn over to try and get a glimpse of them without making it obvious that he’s awake.

“It’s obvious that you’re awake.” a voice calls from the space by Duke’s window.

Well never mind, Duke thinks, then, wait.

Duke knows that voice. He knows that voice significantly better than he wishes he did.

“Dad?” Fuck, he hadn’t meant to say that. That is not his Dad stood by the window.

Duke sits up and turns sees to Gnomon looking annoyingly pleased at the term of address. “Who else would it be?”

“What do you want?” he snarls, the effect likely ruined by the blanket still pulled up to his chest.

Gnomon tilts his head. “The question is more what do you want.” Duke is about to cut in with the fact that the answer is absolutely nothing before Gnomon continues. “There’s something you want to ask me.”

Oh. Duke hadn’t been expecting that. The problem is that he’s right, and Duke is possibly more annoyed about that than the man breaking into his room in the first place.

Duke sighs and comes to the conclusion that there’s really very little he can do about Gnomon being here. He may as well ask the question if the man is in a sharing mood today. “Am I going to die?” he asks.

Gnomon smiles, sharp and cruel and pleased, “No.” he says, and disappears into the shadows until Duke is alone.

Shit. That was the answer he had been hoping against.

~

Gotham is a city that shifts. It’s a city so heavy with cruelty that it crushes itself constantly, never able to settle into one shape or the other before something crumbles and it has to rearrange itself all over again.

It is not a city built with immortality in mind.

Duke wonders if he should leave one day. If forcing a level of change onto his life might make the rest of his existence endurable.

Jason laughs when he mentions these thoughts, loud and brash and maybe a little angry. The noise grates on Duke’s nerves and it makes him glad that he didn’t mention that the rest of his existence might be forever. “This city has had its claws in you all your life kid. You think it’s going to let go now?”

“Now?” Duke asks, hoping his calm might balance out Jason’s agitation. “What’s different about now.”

“You’re one of us now.” Jason cackles. He slaps his arm around Duke’s shoulders and the overfamiliarity of the gesture makes him tense up. He wonders if Jason is drunk right now. “You ever hear about a bat leaving Gotham for long and surviving?”

“You ever hear about a bat surviving Gotham for long?” Duke snaps. He had kind of hoped that it would make Jason back off with his crazed eyes and too loud laugh but it just sets him off again.

Jason wipes some dampness from the corner of his eyes. “You’re a riot, kid.” he says before leaving, despite the fact that Duke has said literally nothing funny this whole conversation.

Definitely drunk, he concludes, before deciding never to talk to any of the bats about leaving ever again.

~

After his talk with Jason, Duke starts having nightmares about how tangled he is in this city.

He’ll be running over rooftops just like every bat before him has and every bat after him will. He’ll be running and the rooftops will start shifting beneath his feet. It makes sense, at least within the dream. Duke will last forever and it’s clear that Gotham won’t so it’s only to be expected that at some point the ground that’s held him up all his life will be forced to crumble beneath his feet.

Duke is running over rooftops and things start shifting. At some point he trips as the ground sags beneath the weight he carries on his shoulders. The floor twists around him then, parts of it melting away like quicksand while the rest takes on a life of its own and wraps around Duke’s waist, trapping him so that he can’t get up and keep running.

Then what he was running from arrives.

They’re the same gargoyles that he was taught to sit among by the other bats. The same gargoyles he’ll nod hello to if he’s in a good mood and listening to the right music, feeling far more at home than he should in a place that haunts him so deeply. Only now the faces of the gargoyles are twisted into something even angrier than what they were carved to be. They screech and wail as they fly up to Duke’s trapped body and sink their talons into him, all for the sake of burying Gotham as deep into his flesh as possible.

Those dreams never end with Duke dying. He understands why.

~

Duke looks at Bruce differently now.

He knows Bruce can tell. Bruce can see that Duke doesn’t see something that verges on the otherworldly when he looks at Batman anymore. He just sees a man.

Duke thinks it might break Bruce’s heart a bit, but he understands that it isn’t for the wrong reasons. With all his other children things only started to go wrong when they stopped looking at him like the only thing between Gotham and oblivion. When they started to care more that he was a mediocre father and less that he was a perfect superhero.

“I’m not going to start hating you.” Duke tells him one night on patrol, because he thinks it might be something that needs to be said.

Bruce gives a sad half-smile. “I know. I just worry sometimes.” He pauses. “You haven’t been sleeping well.” he states.

“No.” Duke thinks for a moment about how Bruce has lived in Gotham for longer than anyone else he can talk to who knows enough about death that he might care about their answer. “You ever think about how you’ll be here forever?” he asks.

That sad half-smile stays glued to Bruce’s face. “All the time.” he answers, looking out across Gotham’s skyline with an expression that could only be described as grief.

Duke nods in understanding, it’s the same answer he would give.

“Y’know, sometimes I get jealous of you.”

Bruce hopes that the look on his face communicates what a ridiculous notion that is. From the way Clark snorts a little he’s sure he manages it.

“I know, I know, it’s silly. It’s just.” He licks his lips. “Your secret identity is just so not you. I feel like Superman and Clark Kent get further away from each other every day, but they’re both still me. Is that dumb?”

“No.”

“Okay. That’s good. It’s just that it’s getting harder, y’know? But it’s also getting easier. Well I guess you don’t know. You’ve probably never had an issue with separating Batman and Brucie Wayne.”

Bruce looks at Clark, “I have trouble separating my identities. Just not those two.”

He frowns before catching himself. “Oh right. Sorry, sometimes I forget you have three. I’m pretty sure you’re the only one.” He pauses, looking at Bruce as if asking permission to continue. Bruce doesn’t give it but Clark goes on anyway. “You have problems splitting up Batman and Bruce then? They’re both you?”

“Of course.” He says, answering the second question. That’s a fact he’s always been sure of. Then, in reference to the first, “I know what you mean about being able to feel the two people you are drift further and further apart.”

“Really?”

Bruce smiles and it’s full of self loathing. “Bruce is a father, Batman’s a partner, a mentor. There was a time when those things all meant the same to me.” He pauses, thinking. “It’s strange, I can barely see the overlaps any more.”

Silt verses s2 off to an incredible start

I can fix him [drill sound] [screaming] [chainsaw revving]