New Fic!!

Dan Powell is seven years old and if he’s certain of one thing it’s that he loves stories.

Not quite the same way as Mark. Mark prefers his words drenched in the mud and grit of the reality he thinks is true.

“Doesn’t it make the stories taste bad?” Dan asks, “Doesn’t it make them grind against your teeth and cut against your tongue?”

Mark just laughs. “I can stomach it. It’s way cooler than all that unreality fluff you like.”

Dan laughs but inside he’s frowning. The stories he likes are real. It’s just that what he counts as reality and what Mark does must be very different things.

Dan likes stories about odd things. He likes stories about monsters and cults and old, old gods. He likes weird. The stories don’t have to have a hero either, Dan is perfectly happy without a happy ending, just so long as there is an ending. When Dan starts a story leaving it unfinished has never been an option. When his parents read him bedtime stories, always a chapter at a time, he picks the book up once they leave and gets through as much as possible before passing out with the book falling wide open over his face.

Dan like stories and he likes endings and he likes weird. So when he overhears some people on the subway talking about the Visser Building and the odd happenings within, he can hardly not go searching for the endings of that tale.

The next day he walks down seedier streets than any seven year old should really be walking down to get to the Visser Building. He wonders if it’s odd that he didn’t need to look at any maps before coming here. It’s probably normal, he decides, I’m just good at finding odd things.

Dan is good at finding all the stories at the school library that probably shouldn’t be available to children as young as him and no one finds that strange. This is just more of the same.

As he walks into the Visser Building an overwhelming feeling of rightness comes over Dan. This is where you’re meant to be, it whispers, stay here forever and all will be right, right, right, it sings. Dan thinks the whispers make a very good point but he has to be home for dinner otherwise his parents will worry. So he won’t stay. This time.

He walks through the corridors. Some of them feel like mazes. Some of them tilt downwards so harshly that they feel like slides. All of them are new and interesting and definitely full of stories. Dan turns on the tape recorder he stole from his Dad. Mark is always going on about how a journalist needs a good record of everything that happens and this feels like the sort of story Dan is going to need to replay to fully understand.

“This is Dan Powell recording.” he says into it, trying to sound as serious and adult as he can. There isn’t really anything else for him to say after that since all the things he’s feeling are too new and unexplainable to put words to so he just lets the tape recorder go. The whirring of it is nice background noise and Dan likes the way the machine feels in his hand. Almost as if it’s a part of his hand.

Something about that thought may be significant, but before Dan can examine it too thoroughly he’s rounding a corner and face to face with a woman about to knock on a door and holding a tape recorder just like his own.

She looks surprised to see Dan. As if Dan isn’t meant to be there. Dan thinks this is a bit unfair as the woman’s presence doesn’t sing to him like the rest of the building does so she definitely isn’t meant to be there. She looks like she’s nice though and she hasn’t shouted at Dan for trespassing yet so Dan doesn’t say that. He just stands there, listening attentively to the twin whirring of two tape recorders.

“Hello,” the woman says after a moment, cautious. “I’m Melody Pendras, do you live here?”

“No. I’m Dan Powell.” Dan holds his hand out for Melody to shake since he’s sure that’s what he’s meant to do. Melody smiles as if this is a little funny but bends down and shakes Dan’s hand seriously enough that he forgives her.

“Then why are you here?”

Dan frowns. “The same reason as you.” He gestures towards her tape recorder. “I want to know the story.”

Melody starts frowning as well. “That’s a very dangerous thing to want.” she says.

“I know. It’s okay though. Getting to the end is worth it.”

Dan feels Melody re-evaluate her opinion of him. He feels the way her eyes land on him shift until it’s a lot more like how she looks at the rest of this strange, strange building. “I think you would fit in here very well.”

Dan nods in agreement. “Thanks. You wouldn’t.”

Melody laughs lightly. “I hope you’ll forgive me for finding that to be a good thing.” Dan shrugs. It’s not a good thing. It’s not a bad thing. It just is. “I need to get back to work but it was nice to meet you, Dan.”

“It was nice to meet you too, Melody. I hope your story doesn’t end badly.”

Melody looks at Dan very oddly but before she can say anything the door she had been stood in front of swings open and she becomes too caught up in greeting the occupant to notice Dan fading back into the shadows of the Visser Building.

~

Dan ends up having to leave to get home for dinner before finding anything else important. Then he has a playdate with Mark the next day. Then he goes to his school’s very small creative writing club the day after that. Then there’s a disciplinary meeting between his parents and his teacher about the somewhat disturbing story he wrote and Dan gets grounded for the rest of the week.

When Dan finally gets a chance to return to the Visser Building all that’s left is rubble and the odd blood splatter and something else.

The something else is calling to him. The whirring, crackling, spinning of a tape recorder with nothing left to record is loud in his ears despite the fact he know no one else can hear it. His hands are too small and his body too weak to lift the rubble but he aches to do so.

“You lost, kid?” a voice asks from behind Dan. He turns to see a woman who definitely doesn’t care if Dan is lost or not.

“No.” Dan pauses so that he doesn’t sound too demanding or rude. Then, “Can I have the tapes?”

The woman’s eyes narrow and Dan is struck by how unlike Melody she looks. Melody had a kind face, all arranged in the most welcoming shape. The whole time this woman has been looking at Dan she’s kept her face twisted into something mildly disgusted.

“What tapes are these?”

Dan points to the rubble. “The ones in there. They have a story on them, I need to know how it ends.”

“Huh.” the woman says, looking at Dan like an artefact in a museum. “If you were a little older I would know a lot of people who would be interested in employing you.” She tilts her head to the side as if considering Dan. “Do you like cities?”

Dan hasn’t thought on it much before but the concept of living anywhere less full of stories than New York kind of makes him want to tear his skin off. “Yes.”

The woman’s eyes gleam with interest. “Do you have friends?”

Dan thinks to how Mark can make him laugh hard enough to snort milk out his nose and yesterday he fixed the plaster on Mark’s knee just right when the school nurse did it wrong. “Yes.”

The interest in the woman’s eyes dulls a little. “A pity. Still, far more useful than most people will ever be.” She reaches into a pocket and pulls out a card with the letters LMG on it and a phone number. “My name is Iris Vos. Once you’re old enough to be useful, maybe get a degree or something, call this number and tell them that I sent you.” She turns away from Dan a little. “That should give me some credit with the bastards.” she mutters to herself.

Dan looks down at the card. It’s in pristine condition, just like he supposes everything of Miss Vos’s must be. The numbers have an odd shine to them though and Dan finds himself wondering if there might be something interesting there. “Thank you for the opportunity.” he says, because he’s certain that someone said that after receiving a job offer in one of the TV shows his dad watches. Miss Vos nods so Dan guesses he probably said the right words and she walks off towards people in suits holding official looking clipboards.

Dan wants to know how this story ends. He needs to know how this story ends. The curiosity burns in his stomach like acid and fire and hatred and wonder and Dan isn’t sure how many years he can last before it finds a way to destroy him. He’s always loved endings after all, perhaps a little too much.

So Dan tucks the card very carefully into his pocket and spends a moment hoping fervently that one day he’ll be old enough to be useful.

been watching young justice

rough sketch - lineart - color

small doodle

sensing a little bit of a pattern with you

“You’re gonna do it, aren’t you?” the Joker says, quiet. When Bruce doesn’t answer he starts to laugh. He laughs so hard and so long that it becomes the only sound that Bruce can hear. He laughs so hard that he has to spit out blood before he speaks next. “You’re actually going to kill me. Aren’t you Batsy?” he grins.

They both know the answer but Bruce says it anyway. For the finality of it.

“Yes.”

It’s an ending.

~

Jason’s death is where it starts.

Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe it starts in a circus where two dead bodies lie broken on the floor and their son breaks in a very different way above them. Maybe it starts when a man decides that to take justice into his own hands is the only means by which his city will survive. Maybe it starts with a different set of dead bodies in an alleyway a lifetime ago.

Maybe it started when the first brick of the city that would become Gotham was laid.

But Jason’s death was certainly a beginning. Not of anything good, of course, but a beginning none the less.

~

Dick doesn’t talk to him anymore.

It hurts Bruce. Touches him in a way that few things since his parents death have. It opens him up to a loneliness he had thought was in his past.

He might have done something about it if everytime he looked at Dick he didn’t see a waking corpse. If Bruce hadn’t watched from the sidelines as his son morphed into a reminder of all the ways the universe is yet to use to make him suffer.

Dick doesn’t talk to him anymore and Bruce lets him.

~

Tim keeps popping up. Trying to convince him that he’s going to cross a line. It seems like he can’t quite comprehend the fact that Bruce doesn’t care anymore.

“Go home.” He says. Tim’s energetic and untrained and very much neither of Bruce’s sons. Bruce is grateful for the way his eyes shine with enthusiasm since it helps him remember that the boy he’s talking to is alive.

Tim smiles as he says no.

“Go home.” Bruce insists and Tim continues to refuse.

The way he sees Tim all the time, the way the boy makes it his business to keep Batman company, feels like the middle of a story. Bruce knows it in his bones. That something was the beginning (Jason’s death or two bodies on the ground or the grate of bricks on bricks on bricks) and this is the middle. He also knows that there’s going to be an ending far too soon.

“People don’t finish growing up and stay near me.” He tells Tim, trying to get him to go away with different words this time. “Your endings are leave me alone or die.”

Tim rolls his eyes. “Says who? You and your grand sample size of two?”

“Go home.” He repeats, returning to his default response.

“No”. Tim repeats. He sounds like he’s enjoying this.

Bruce despises the fact that it only makes him like the boy more.

~

There’s an Arkham escape. The Joker gets out. He’s currently killing people.

None of these facts are surprising.

Bruce fights him and takes him down after he’s only ruined a couple of lives. It’s still far too many but it’s also far fewer people than he would have destroyed without Bruce there to stop him.

On the other hand he wouldn’t even exist if Bruce hadn’t made him. So people are dead and it’s still the Batman’s fault.

Afterwards Bruce watches as the Joker is taken in from a rooftop. He doesn’t even notice Tim sidle up beside him. He takes a moment to be annoyed at how proud he is of the boy for being so good.

“Are you okay?” Tim asks, because he knows how seeing the Jokers smile cuts into Bruce like few other things can.

“I’m fine.” Bruce says. It’s sort of the truth. Pain like this has become routine for him since Jason died. It’s just a byproduct of his existence. It’s just the price of his failure.

He looks over the crime scene, taking in the blood and the bodies and the relatives crying just like he did over his boy. He takes in the Joker as he’s tied back into his straight jacket. As he’s looking, the Joker tilts his head up. Bruce knows that the man is searching him out.

Instead of leaving or moving or doing anything useful, he freezes.

The Joker’s gaze alights on him. Pausing in its scan of the roofline. Then his eyes move a little down and to the left and Bruce feels Tim take a step back as he meets the Joker’s eyes.

Bruce is no longer fine.

He unfreezes and takes Tim in his arms, swinging them as far away from the scene of the crime as he can. He hears the Joker’s laughter behind them, starting out quiet but growing loud enough that Bruce doubts he’ll ever be able to outrun it.

“It’s fine.” Tim says from where he’s held tight in Bruce’s arms. “Bruce, I’ll be fine. He doesn’t even know who I am. I’ll be fine.”

He sounds scared and hopeful and absolutely certain that nothing will be able to hurt him while he’s under the Batman’s protection.

Bruce doesn’t have the heart to tell him that he’s wrong.

~

The body of Tim Drake is buried two weeks later.

Bruce spends the whole funeral thinking about how this is going to keep happening. About how children are going to keep finding him and squirming their way into his heart until he can’t bear to push them away any longer.

He realises that he can’t take a third tragedy of this magnitude. And if he can’t take it then Gotham certainly can’t. Batman is the only thing propping the city up as it attempts to crush itself under the weight of its cruelty.

Bruce makes a decision. As he does so he realises that they’re almost at the finish line.

~

There’s an Arkham escape. The Joker gets out. He’s currently killing people.

The relief Bruce feels when he hears what’s happening is extraordinary.

“You’re gonna do it, aren’t you?” The Joker says once Bruce arrives and they look each other in the eye. He laughs hard enough to gently choke on his own blood. The wheezing sounds like victory. “You’re actually gonna kill me. Aren’t you Batsy?”

Bruce shoots his grapple gun through the Joker’s chest. It punches right through him, filling the room with an awful cracking squelching noise, and lodges in the wall. The sound the Joker makes as his throat fills with blood is more of a gurgle than a wheeze now.

“Yes.” Bruce replies.

It’s the ending.

Someone draw talia wearing this I beg

MILF

man i love friday

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?!?!?’

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. 

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wait if i dont post this now im just gonna forget to do it later. its not finished but LOOK its talia <3

thinking about how we could have had cassie and tim meeting as kids because of their parents being in archeology... life is so unfair