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?!?!?’
Carpenter walks up to a near complete mark of the wither tide, Faulkner muttering incoherently at its centre, and scuffs it with her boot.
Faulkner looks up with crazed eyes the moment she alters his masterpiece. Carpenter grips her shard of glass tighter and feels it cut into her hand. Blood drips to the ground and Carpenter suppresses a bitter laugh.
One last offering to the Trawlerman.
“You should run, Carpenter,” Faulkner warns, his voice quavers but not with anything so mundane as nerves. His body can barely contain his excitement, the fervency of his devotion. His gaze sharpens and Carpenter balks as she feels the water surrounding the pier pulse in rhythm with his heartbeat. “I’ve told you before that it would be unwise for you to test which of us our god loves more.”
Carpenter's pace as she walks through the wither mark, bad leg dragging against the floor and destroying all Faulkner’s hard work, does not change. She remains steady and is rewarded with a voice that does not quaver as Faulkner’s does. “You know as well as anyone that I have never proclaimed myself to be wise.”
Faulkner huffs out a laugh and Carpenter smiles a familiar smile. It drops as she remembers what she’s about to do. Faulkner must see it and mirrors her expression before his eyes go distant.
“I suppose we’re soon to part ways then?”
Carpenter pauses for a moment. “That would not be an unreasonable assumption,” she allows.
Faulkner nods as if this is the only answer he had been expecting. “Well then, I suppose if we are to end this as enemies, we’d best do it as the sort who love each other.” As he speaks Faulkner daubs himself in the marking of the Trawlerman once again. The mud from the last time he did so still stains his skin but the marks he paints now lose no clarity because of that. Once he appears to be finished he turns away from the prayer marks that have been gradually consuming his body to meet Carpenter's eyes. “May your peace find you on a lonely road."
Carpenter swallows dryly, suddenly very glad of the reminder Paige’s parting words had given her. “May your peace walk on with you for a while.”
She and Faulkner exchange sad smiles. Then Carpenter is raising her glass and running towards Faulkner as fast as her broken and bleeding legs will carry her. Then Faulkner is readying his stance and screaming his prayers to the river with more conviction than Carpenter knew a human voice could contain. Then Faulkner is raising his hands skywards and then-
~
The river rises
The river rises and it is not a flood as was written. As Nana Glass told stories of. As Carpenter dreamed would seep upwards to drench and drown her doubts in silt.
The river rises and it is a tsunami.
~
Carpenter, limping and shattered and shaking, is faster than her river.
She reaches the centre of the wither mark, reaches Faulkner. His eyes widen a bit as she does so, as if he can’t quite believe that his river would fail him in his moment of triumph.
Carpenter has known her god far to long to think it reliable.
She plunges the shard of glass into Faulkner’s left eye. He screams in pain and Carpenter mutters a quick prayer that his death will be quick, there is little else she can do for him at this point.
Then Faulkner manages to stop screaming, keeps his cries of pain trapped in his throat and lets something different flood out.
“You should have aimed for the prayer marks,” he hisses, teeth bared as blood drips down his cheeks in a crimson tide.
Shit.
There isn't much she can do after that.
~
-crashing waves full of weeds and bracken and crawling angels of the river. Water filling her lungs and mud wriggling into her eyes.
Something twists her leg. A thing with claws that are too huge to be any crab or lobster that Carpenter can't see through the filth of her god.
The pain is huge and impossible but even as tears fill her eyes Carpenter finds it in herself to be grateful. Of all the ways her river knows how to do harm this is perhaps one of its least awful.
She wonders if it’s a boon. A final thank you after her years of faithful service. Considering what she’s done for her river Carpenter finds this to be a rather weak acknowledgement of her efforts and stops feeling grateful.
Then she’s crashing tumbling through dodgem cars and her river is a whirlpool with her at its centre and if she could just breathe then-
~
When Carpenter wakes up, it’s to her shock that she’s still alive.
This is better thanks of my service, she thinks in the direction of her river. She sits up with a grunt of pain and begins to inspect the damage.
Her leg is fucked. It’s no longer bleeding but in a cruel twist of fate it’s been sanctified. The flesh is hard and rough. Calcified. Carpenter can feel layers upon layers and limpets, with other squamous things sandwiched in between, clinging directly to her bone.
Where her new flesh meets her old she itches.
There’s also the fact that she has no idea where she is.
Or, maybe she does. That patch of bulrushes looks sort of familiar and she’s sure she heard this same bird song she's hearing now at some point during her and Faulkner’s pilgrimage.
She drags herself upright and finds that she can put weight in her new leg even if it makes her somewhat unsteady. She hobbles about the bank, moving inland.
Then she sees the body.
It’s not much of a body. More like a skeleton, picked clean by birds and angels of the river alike. Despite the fact that it’s lacking most of its distinguishing features, Carpenter knows in her soul that this is the body she and Faulkner saw near the beginning of their pilgrimage. Right before everything started to go to shit.
Carpenter let’s out a harsh laugh as she realises this, the sound of her torment echoing across her still and silent river.
“You’re telling me that was all the god damn exposition?” she screams at her god, angry tears blurring her vision.
Her river doesn’t answer her.
Carpenter sighs, it’s not as if she expected anything different. She picks herself up and starts trying to figure out what to do now.
She laughs again, gentler this time. She bets that Faulkner is doing the exact same thing.
NEW FIC IS UP
Word Count: 21,432
Title: The Path to Being Known
Summary: When Tim and Cassie are still normal kids and Bart and Kon don’t even exist, the Justice League is defeated. The world that’s left has no alternative but to become something dark and twisted enough to defend itself.
Somewhere within the veritable hellscape that remains: Tim Drake finds Batman; Conner is informed that he has been created to kill Superman; Cassie Sandsmark is just trying to survive; Bart Allen opens the doors of his time machine to find himself somewhere a little later than he had been expecting.
Never witnessed a more aro ace man than Bruce Wayne in the Batman movie in my life
New fic oop-
If you like the young justice one shots I have on here it’s just more of them but compiled better. Also I’m trying to keep them all in the same continuity so you might get some followups to previous ones.
gotham never really understands the waynes. the waynes are, by far, the most interesting people in gotham, the elite who spent more time in crime alley than any of gotham’s rich ever dared.
the waynes are supposed to be fumbling, clumsy rich people who got kidnapped a lot and bought ridiculous stuff.
the waynes are supposed to be the star darlings of gotham city, and they are - but not for the reason you’d think.
well, they’re all pretty as hell, but none of them have truly tried the influencer angle and the media is so, so enamored with the way they act. you can watch old video recordings of public appearances, and the same thing happens and each.
dick grayson. age 9. his first press conference. suit is too broad for his shoulders and he trips over the stairs, but he looks at home standing taller, above the crowd on a pedestal that should’ve been out of reach. truly, an acrobat’s son.
dick grayson. age 11. fourth unwanted conversation at a gala. his eyes skim along the room looking for ever exit and you can never hear his footsteps. he appears at your side and smiles and talks so easily you almost forget the way he gathers information with no discomfort.
he disappears from the public eye for years. no one ever asks why. growing pains and growing up, wayne says.
_
jason todd. age 11. first public appearance, looking at everything in wonder and scowling when the other public figures treated him more than an object than a child. a petutulant child, stubborn, but just another of bruce wayne’s orphans club.
Keep reading
John Constantine is seventeen, angry and entirely ready to lose himself in the occult.
The open book in front of him details a particularly nasty ritual, but not one he’s unwilling to pay the price for. He bought the book from the shop on Eaton street, ‘Occult Exposition’. It’s not a nice shop. The clientele tend to be even dodgier than John and the owner always goes out of his way to make him as uncomfortable as possible.
John supposes that that’s just the price of authenticity.
The book is authentic. He knows that. One of the first things John learned was that the fakes always do well when it comes to flair but never quite catch the essence of a true ritual.
Fully set up in the back garden, John begins his ritual.
He chants and moves and shifts his thoughts in all the right directions. He slits the throat of a rabbit and cuts out the eye of the hawk that caught it. He spins a web of spider silk around the remains and watches it turn into a spun glass cage that contains something entirely different.
John lifts the same knife he used to cut out the hawks eyes and slit the rabbits throat, ready to plunge it into the beating heart the glass now contains.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” a voice calls out from behind him.
John spins around with his knife at the ready to defend himself. Instead if someone attacking him all John sees is a beautiful girl leaning against the dirty wall of his garden shed.
“Are you sure you want to stick around until the police come arrest you for trespassing?” he snarls, caught off guard.
The girl has the gall to roll her eyes. “As if you would call the police.” Considering the garden stinks of weed John supposes that the girl may have a point. “And anyway, I’m just giving you some sound advice. Nothing malicious about me at all.”
John narrows his eyes. “There aren’t many people who offer advice for free.”
“Well maybe I’m just feeling generous today.” the girl says with a grin. The smile drops promptly. “The blood rune won’t work, so you’re just going to be compelled to rip your heart out and eat it. Do you want to rip your heart out and eat it?”
John scoffs even as he sends the blood rune an uncertain look. “The rune is fine.”
The girl shoots him a withering look. “It has to be virgin's blood.”
“It is vir-“ John pauses. Resets. “Oh shit.”
“What? Are you still feeling lucky?”
“Fuck off.” John says on reflex. Then, “Thanks for telling me though. That could’ve been nasty.”
The girl finally smiles properly. Broad and shining and even John is forced to admit to himself that it’s a beautiful smile. “You’re very welcome. My name's Zatanna.” she says, sticking her hand out for him to shake.
“John.”
“I know,” she says with a wink as they clasp hands. “If you ever want a little more sound advice then just give me a call. Promise I’m a better option than you ever you got that book from.”
John raises an eyebrow. “Not that I don’t appreciate the offer, but what’s put you in such a sharing mood?”
“I said I was feeling generous.” Her expression softens. “I think you’re going to be powerful. The kind of powerful that’s going to get people killed if you don’t know how to handle it. Call me when you’re in trouble.”
When she finishes speaking a wind summons itself up around her. Twisting and twirling until she’s stood in the centre of a spinning tornado. The speed of the wind reaches a climax and dissipates all of a sudden, leaving behind no sign of Zatanna.
John takes a step towards the space she used to occupy and spots something on the ground. It’s a business card. Pristine white with edges sharp enough to cut through flesh. On the card is a name, ‘Zatanna Zatara’, and a phone number.
There are two ‘x’s handwritten below the number and they make John feel oddly warm.
“Fuck.” he says to empty air. “Fuck.”
He turns back to his aborted ritual and starts cleaning up the blood.
Au where Billy doesn’t get his demigod form but just a shit ton of magic instead.
(can kinda be read as a continuation of this)
~
Zatanna has been hopping around Europe for months now. She’s been finding her father’s old teachers and new ones that are all her own and getting them to tell her everything they can. Since she left the mountain she’s been wringing every drop of knowledge she can from the world and practising it until she falls asleep with all her magic spent.
It feels a little like healing.
Sometimes it feels like something else though. When Zatanna thinks about how the only real connections she’s made on this journey have been with her teachers. Those connections aren’t like the one she shared with her father. Not like the connections she still shares with the Team. She makes the effort to go and visit the mountain on occasion but it’s not enough. The feeling of other people being close and loving her doesn’t fill her up like it used to.
She decides that this probably is healing. This whole thing she’s doing. But it’s a lonely breed of it.
Then a boy with black hair and blue eyes and far too much power, just like her, comes tumbling into her room one day.
“Uh. Hi. I’m Billy.” he says, uncertain. His aura crackles with lightning and Zatanna doesn’t think she’s ever seen someone with so much raw magic running through their veins.”You’re Zatanna right? I was hoping that you could help me? I want- I need to learn magic.” He pauses. “It’s important. A wizard told me so.”
Zatanna hasn’t thought about helping anyone in a long time. She’s been too focused on saving herself to have room for other worries. She realises that she misses it.
She must hesitate for too long because Billy looks far more worried than a kid that age should have any right to. “Please?” he says.
Zatanna smiles, because healing takes many forms and she thinks that this might be one she prefers. “Okay.” she says.
Billy smiles and it lights the room up so much that Zatanna thinks he might actually be doing magic on accident.
They’ll work on it.
@ everyone who’s New Years resolution is to go to a professional abt their mental health: ur very sexy and deserve a lil round of applause