New Fic Babyyyyyy

New fic: Creation Is A Curse

Word count: 1,315

Summary: “I could stop.” Bruce whispers, voice cracking. “I could stop making soldiers and turn them back into children.”

Alfred sighs, the frown lines on his face deepening with grief. “They would never survive it.”

Bruce knows it’s true. First himself, then the Joker and now his children. An aptitude for creating monsters has always been Batman’s greatest curse.

~

Fic under the cut

“You know I still love you, right?” Dick says. It’s not what Bruce had been expecting. At Bruce’s apparent surprise Dick rushes to correct himself. “Don’t get me wrong, I hate you. Sometimes I hate you so much that I don’t understand how I can still love you at all. But I do still love you.”

Bruce looks at him. He’s never been an emotional man and he doubts he’ll ever understand how Dick manages to stay one in their line of work. “I don’t know how you can fit so many feelings about me inside you.” he says.

Dick lets out a sharp bark of laughter. “You created me. How could I not?”

He says it like it’s obvious.

The fact that Bruce understands him completely makes it too painful to look at Dick for a moment so he turns to Tim, utterly focused on his training in the centre of the cave. It makes him think of other, potentially more painful things. “You don’t think I should make another Robin. Do you?”

Dick joins Bruce in looking over to where Tim’s training. The set of his jaw is determined and there are still specks of blood on his face from patrol. “You already have.” he says, the bite of grief colouring his tone.

Bruce wishes that Dick had given a different answer. His disappointment must show on his face because Dick turns to him and smirks, something mean in his expression.

“Don’t look so glum. I might even forgive you one day.”

He says it jokingly. Bruce prays for a moment that it’s the truth.

~

Jason is back. Jason is back.

Jason is back and he’s the Red Hood and his new favourite hobby is trying to convince Bruce just how much he hates him. As if Bruce doesn’t already know.

Jason is holding a gun to a man’s head. It’s a bad man, a man who has caused grief and suffering and hurt people in ways beyond what Bruce finds acceptable. But Jason has a gun to the man’s head and for some twisted reason that means that Bruce thinks the man is deserving of his protection.

The moment Bruce has processed all that, the moment that Jason can see that he’s processed all that, the trigger is pulled and the man drops dead.

“You did that.” Jason says with utter conviction. “You killed that man. I pulled the trigger but I’m only a monster because it’s what you made me.”

Jason is either far more or far less the man he was shaping up to be before he died. Bruce can’t quite tell which.

“I know.” he says, instead of any of that, “I know.”

~

An assassin has a knife at Bruce’s throat and for a moment he thinks that he’s going to die. Then he feels the spray of blood that isn’t his and the body behind him drops to the floor.

He turns to see Cassandra plucking the knife from the hands of the corpse she just made.

“I thought you didn’t kill any more.” he says, voice hoarse.

She shrugs. “Sometimes it’s necessary.”

“Did the League teach you that?” Bruce asks, hating the way disapproval colours his tone.

Cass looks up from the corpse and Bruce sees the frown of confusion between her eyes. “No. You.”

She disappears into the night before Bruce can say anything else.

~

Dick is a more dangerous man than anyone comprehends. Jason’s body count is rising by the day. Cassandra is training in Hong Kong to turn herself into an even better weapon than the League could. Stephanie grows more driven every moment, more set on becoming every bit as dangerous as she has the potential to be. The people Tim loves keep dying and it’s put a darkness in his eyes.

“How do you love creatures so vicious?” Talia asks.

“I doubt I could love anything else these days.” Bruce replies.

Talia hums. The clever part of Bruce’s mind thinks that he might have given her the answer she was looking for.

It worries him more deeply than he would like to admit.

~

“Sometimes I wonder if I would be a better person now if I had never been Robin.”

“I imagine that you would have spent that time with Barbara. So probably.”

Steph looks at him like she’s waiting for him to get angry. She should know better by now. For Bruce to get angry at his kids is an exercise in futility these days, it’s like getting angry at a concept.

She turns away and huffs. “I can’t believe I let you get your feelers in me. I saw how you changed Tim and I still didn’t realise that you can’t talk to a kid without twisting it into a weapon.” Bruce shoots a look at her and she shrugs, like her musings aren’t a dagger in his heart. “Welp. Guess that one’s on me.”

“Yeah.” Bruce lies. What else is he meant to say?

~

Bruce can’t stop looking at the scar on Tim’s neck. The one he got when a person Bruce created and still loves as fervently as ever decided that a grave would be a better home for him than the manor.

“Does it bother you,” he asks, “That I might be making you into him?”

Tim thinks for a moment. “Only when I’m mourning him.”

“And when’s that?”

He smiles, sad. “All the time, of course. Isn’t it the same for you?”

“Of course.” They grow silent for a moment before Bruce plucks up the courage to ask the question he really wants the answer to. “Does it scare you? That one day you might be someone’s monster.”

Bruce didn’t expect Tim to start laughing, but he does. Deep and whole and uncommon from him these days. Like Bruce just told a joke and hasn’t realised it yet. “Don’t you get it Bruce?” he asks once the laughter’s died down and become a little more manageable. Something about Tim’s expression is inherently wrong and Bruce feels his guard go up but Tim is too amused to notice. “I already am. I’m your monster. We’re all your monsters. You’re Doctor Frankenstein and, instead of sewing together bits of corpses, you’ve found children full of holes and stitched pieces of yourself to them rather than letting them grow.”

“What-” Bruce croaks. Something in his expression must look utterly horrified because Tim’s eyes widen and the good humour drains from his face.

“I didn’t mean it in a bad way!” he says, as if Bruce could possibly have taken that any other way. “I just- Don’t we scare you?”

“No! Of course not.”

“Wait, really?” Tim looks shocked, like Bruce just upended one of his most basic understandings in life.

Bruce worries that he has.

They don’t talk much for the rest of patrol. Both of them have too much to think about.

~

Bruce has a son.

There’s a boy who Bruce has never touched but is made from his flesh and bone and apparently that’s enough because he’s already as deadly as any of Bruce’s other children. It makes him feel sick so he leaps onto the idea that this is the League’s fault, that for once it isn’t on Bruce that a child has been broken and the remains have too many sharp edges.

“I didn’t make you. The League made you.” he says, clinging to a fantasy.

Damian huffs out a breath of annoyance. “Unmake me then.” he scoffs, “Tear me apart and shape me into something more like them.”

Make me into another of your monsters, he doesn’t say.

The ‘no’ is in Bruce’s mouth. He can taste the word, feel his tongue curling around the shape of it. But Bruce has done this far too many times to stop now and making monsters is all he knows.

“Okay.” he says instead.

The cycle continues.

Caitlin hates the inaction inherent in being an enforcer. She hates the red tape, the way her every move feels sluggish and predictable and entirely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. The feelings are made all the worse by the way she watches Jayce, a man she’s know near her whole life, turn Piltover upside down with only his mind.

The whole thing leads to her hanging around Zaun perhaps a little too much.

Everytime she goes she tries to justify herself by saying it’s for work. Tells herself that she’s only hanging around the dodgiest areas she can find to make herself a better and more knowledgeable enforcer.

It’s at least partly true. She’s been beginning to put together a picture of the lanes, artwork drenched in greens and purples with the name Silco at its centre.

She uses that knowledge to bury the fact that she’s been going to Zaun just because at least when you have to spend every other moment looking over your shoulder you can’t be as utterly bored as Caitlin is in Piltover.

On one of her trips she finds a hideout. It seems abandoned but neon paint still makes the walls glow odd colours and there are still power lines connected to the place. She follows one of the cables and finds it disconnected from whatever machine it used to be used to run. Purely out of curiosity she picks up the cable and screws it back into the connector.

Targets painted the same neon as the designs on the walls spring to life and start moving around.

Oh.

Oh Caitlin likes this.

A smile playing at her lips, she vaults over the counter to take a stance a reasonable distance from the targets before cocking her gun. She readies herself, taking a breath before she begins.

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

Her every shot hits exactly where it’s meant to. Once she runs out of ammo Caitlin lets herself bask in the satisfaction for a moment and allows the smile to fully take hold of her face.

“Not bad. For a topsider I guess.”

Caitlin whips around, aiming her gun before processing the fact that it’s out of ammo. She adjusts her grip slightly so that even if she can’t shoot it she can still swing it into someone’s face with enough force to knock them out. From the shadows slides a girl. Younger than Caitlin, probably still a child. Blue hair in plaits that drag along the floor as she bends her head to look at Caitlin enquiringly.

“Thank you,” Caitlin says, her tone not hiding the fact that she doesn’t particularly want to be thanking this random girl who’s been spying on her.

The girl seems to catch it.

“You don’t sound very thankful” she huffs.

“I’m not.”

“Then why say it?”

“So you go away faster.”

The girl pauses. Looks at Caitlin a little like she thinks Caitlin is stupid and she bristles with irritation. “That didn’t work very well for you, did it?”

“I suppose not.” Caitlin manages through gritted teeth.

The girl jerks slightly, as if some revalation has just come to her. It makes her look at Caitlin with significantly more interest.

“You should try and shoot me.”

What the fuck?

“No one’s ever shot me before, and some people have tried really hard, but I bet that you could take a decent stab at it.”

“I-“, Caitlin is sure the confusion must be showing on her face but she’s too caught off guard to bother hiding it. “No?”

The girl looks like a kicked puppy. “Please?”

“No,” Caitlin repeats, more firmly.

“Darn, guess I’ll have to find some way to persuade you.”

As soon as the girl finishes speaking she disappears back into the shadows as quickly as she emerged.

Caitlin huffs. She isn’t looking forwards to being persuaded.

living in gotham is like. you are going to be consumed. you are going to see your worst fears in horrific visions. these visions will be provided by someone who doesn’t even know your name. someone is going to shoot you. you are going to laugh and you will not want to. you are going to kill someone. whether or not your house gets blown up will be decided by a coin flip. someone put acid in the water. you are going to be in a hostage situation. a fucking furry is going to be the only reason you survive any of this

“I would like to suggest a temporary truce.”

Luz has no idea how Hunter got in.

From the looks of bewilderment on Eda and Kings faces Luz is pretty sure that they’re in the same boat. The same very confused, very concerned boat that’s being tossed by the whims of the boiling sea.

Luz turns back to Hunter who’s looking at the three of them expectantly, waiting on a response.

“Hootyyyyyy,” Eda calls into the house. Hunter keeps just standing there and Luz pinches herself to make sure she isn’t dreaming.

Then there’s an owl coming out of the floor. At least some things are normal.

“Hello!”

“How is he here?” Eda demands, “Why is he here?”

“To offer a truce? It’s a very good truce, and I said that I would recommend it, and what better way to recommend it than letting him tell you all about it himself!” Hooty pauses to check if anyone’s nodding in agreement of his clearly very sound decision making process. He’s met by a stony silence and expressions of particularly strong disapproval.

For once he seems to read the room.

“Okay, you guys have lots to talk about, bye!” His face shoves itself through the floorboards back the way it came and a hole is left in the floor between Eda, King and Luz and Hunter. Luz imagines the hole widening into a chasm, it feels more appropriate.

“As I said,” Hunter continues slowly, “I’m here to propose a truce.”

Eda scoffs. King growls. Luz glares.

“And what common ground could we possibly find to build a truce over?” Eda asks icily.

Hunter takes a breath. “I was hoping we might work together to kill Kikimora.”

Huh.

“Okay then,” Eda starts, voice full in equal measure of interest and surprise. “I’m listening.”

of course he’s the kid you wanted, dick thinks, he says, he yells because he is eighteen and so full of hope for life that he forgot about the chains he put on himself that drag him back to bruce’s stupid fucking cave no matter how hard he tries to break free of them. and he’s tried to run away, he’s tried and tried and tried, from the very first fight he had with bruce when he was a burnt-out cluster of stars in the shape of a nine year old boy to two weeks ago, when he realized that there are papers that turn jason peter todd into jason peter todd-wayne. jason peter todd-wayne likes going to school and helps alfred cook and actually enjoys doing weapons inventory and reads books curled up in the big armchair next to the mahogeny desk in bruce’s chamber of an office. dick did backflips on the chair for all of ten minutes before bruce’s quiet scribbling and the walls full of books felt like they were closing in on him, and he had to tumble down the steps of the batcave and throw his body around the parallel bars just to keep his soul from ballooning out of his body with the need to move. jason made bruce smile the day his parents died in the alley his parents died in. jason is quiet enough to put bruce at ease but loud enough to fill the space and bruce loves him like a son. maybe bruce loved dick, but dick made him rub his forehead in exasperation and look over dick’s prescriptions every couple of months and slump with exhaustion after they spent a day together. dick made bruce tired, but jason made him smile, so dick bent his neck in submission and let the kid wear robin on his chest with pride. 

of course he’s the kid you wanted, jason spits out bitterly, the winds whipping past him and bruce on a rooftop like riptides carrying people to their deaths. he can pinpoint the minute his rage turned to hopelessness, because this new robin ran to the edge of a cliff and jumped off without a hint of fear, flying higher and higher until he reached the moon, until he reached the stars, until he reached the outstretched hands dick motherfucking grayson held out for him. dick held his hands out for jason too, but jason’s wings melted with the heat of dick’s stupid stupid stupid perfectness, and no matter what he did, icarus always fell. jason wasn’t an idealistic little annie with stars in his eyes; he braced himself for the burn the minute bruce took him into wayne manor, because rich white men always want things and jason spent months waiting to find out what bruce wayne wanted. the answer was companionship, the answer was someone to protect and care for, the answer was a child to love as his own, which was so hopelessly pure that jason’s skin felt bleached by it. tim’s skin didn’t have to be bleached by it. tim had skin as white as porcelain and eyes like shattered diamonds and an aristocratic little accent that jason could practically see jewels and precious metals dripping off of, his wealth and privilege locking jason in place like the midas touch. jason was a kid bruce picked up off the streets, and even though he’d spent his life knowing that he was smart and strong and clever enough to earn robin, to survive the league, to be red hood, there would always be someone better, someone worth more, someone who fit the robin mold like they were melted and poured into it. so jason snarled and screamed and broke down as loud as he could, because he thought he meant the world to bruce, thought he was his son, but tim was a much better son than jason could ever be, and jason didn’t just outgrow those pixie boots, his feet grew so big they tore them to pieces, and he’d never be able to wear them again.

of course he’s the kid you wanted, tim says to himself, on the precipice of turning his entire body into an ice-cold sculpture near unbreakable with the fire of emotion and letting the tears that had bubbled up into his throat burst out with all the fury of a supernova. tim had chip, chip, chipped away at himself until he’d become the perfect partner, the perfect robin, because that’s all he ever wanted to do. he wanted to be useful, he wanted to work for something with his own two hands and have earned his victory, he wanted someone to tell him they were proud of the work he had done. but tim had fucked it up, he’d fucked it all up, because he hadn’t been able to accept nearly everyone he loved being ripped from his greedy fingers, and all of the satisfaction he got from crowing about how he was right and how bruce was alive and they brought him back because of him turned to acid in his mouth because of the things he’d done to get there. damian was broken too, damian was shattered into so many little pieces that the shards pricked dick all over and made him bleed until damian was seeped into his skin so deep that dick didn’t have any other choice but to love him. tim was just fractured. he had bold lines running across his skin, a map of his strengths and things he overcame and survived turning into a map of his failure, and splinters running across his soul. a streak for trying to clone conner, a streak for mutilating the robin costume with his own grief, a streak for letting ra’s come as close as he did to compromising tim, a streak for not being able to convince cass to stay, a streak for getting kicked out the window and letting himself fall, letting dick believe he’d known he was there and quietly wishing that dick hadn’t gotten to him in time. damian, for all his faults, had only ever tried to claw his way up with bloodstained hands to morality and kindness and good, somehow ignoring the siren call that was the league at his back. so, with a silent and motionless tantrum as violent as someone locked inside arkham, tim screamed at the unfairness of it all, at the audacity of it all, but let himself become accustomed to the r sitting on damian’s chest.

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The parallel in the umbrella academy where in ‘I think we’re alone now’ it says ‘the beating of our hearts is the only sound’ and Vanya using the beating of her heart to bust out of the cage thing is god tier foreshadowing and you can’t convince me otherwise.

Blue Beetle | Gabriel Picolo

#i said i’m a bisexual having a panic attack

selina kyle digatti and kate kane in bombshells united #13

“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.

“So, how long have you been on Earth?” asks M’gann and Kaldur doesn’t have time to think of a response before she carries on, “I only got here a couple of weeks ago but my Uncle’s been talking about how cool this planet is for ages and I’ve always wanted to come here.”

“I-” Kaldur starts, “Uh-”

“Ooh! Have you tried ice cream? I’ve heard it’s the best.”

“I’m from Earth.” Kaldur says before M’gann can bond with him any more over their non-existent shared status as extraterrestrials. Her eyes widen and she takes a step back.

“Oh my God I’m so sorry! I didn’t know humans could have gills!”

“No they- I’m not-” M’gann blinks at him in curiosity and Kaldur feels off guard in a way that’s foreign to him. “I’m not human. I’m Atlantean.”

M’gann’s curiosity turns to worry.

“Sorry! Sorry I didn’t mean to assume anything” she stutters, “everything’s just so new here and, well, I’m still learning I guess.” She smiles nervously and Kaldur can’t help but smile back.

“Well, I haven’t been living on the surface for very long either, so if you want we could learn things together?”

M’gann looks relieved and Kaldur is certain that he’s just made a new friend.