Batman Unburied Is Fucking Sensational Let No One Tell You Otherwise

You scream. Obviously. Then you run into the bathroom because you’re an idiot and that was the closest door to your bed.

You stop screaming. The coarse-rough voice of that horrible thing lets out a quiet “Shit.” through the wood of the door. Then heavy breathing and the drip, drip, drip of the tap maintenance never fixed is all you can hear.

Why is it here? What did you do? Some part of you had always thought that monster to be some demon. An agent of the devil that came after you for breaking your little brothers nose just because you could. Or for not calling an ambulance that time your grandma fell down the stairs. Or for tearing out Becky Pritchard’s earrings through her flesh for saying that yours looked ugly.

You may have been a slightly sadistic child.

That monster, that demon, had been the only thing that left you scared. The moment it shifted beneath your bed you would feel all the bubbling anger that flowed through your veins turn to ice. The moment it started whispering, promising you all the awful things it was going to do to you, that constant hunger to make others hurt would be drowned out by the tidal wave of fear that gripped you.

Well, old habits die hard, you think as you try to get your breathing under control. But now you’re twenty-five with six years in private security under your belt, so maybe they can be killed a little faster.

You remove the head from the toilet brush to turn it into a baton. The shape of it, the weight, is familiar to you. You’d always been good baseball. At least until you’d used the bat to take out a player's knee caps. You don’t think the coach would have minded so much if the kid had been on the opposing team.

You’ve never actually seen the monster and so find yourself hoping it has knee caps. It would be satisfying, you think, to feel the solid thunk of the strike and the sickly crack that would follow it.

Already lining up the shot in your head, you open the door.

Coming back to your apartment you prepare for a good night’s sleep. Upon laying on your bed you suddenly hear noises coming from underneath it. Carefully looking under you’re surprised to see the monster that lurked under your bed as a kid staring back at you. “Look man, I need a favor.”

new she-ra fic: Time To Go

word count: 7,733

summary: After Adora disappears and Catra has to gather a whole army to find her again, there’s a moment on the battlefield where Catra actually thinks that Adora’s about to leave her.

She doesn’t. Of course. All they have is eachother and both of them belong to the Horde. To defect to the Rebellion is unthinkable. Impossible.

In the months that follow, Catra decides that leaving might not be as awful an idea as she first thought.

[DC] REPOST bc I did not like how it desaturated the colors of the last one….😭😭😭 anyways wonder girl is wlw

WonderTrash96

Cassie is explaining to Kon and Bart some of the reasons why Wonder Woman is, without doubt, the greatest hero of this age. They’re both too tired from the mission they just went on to leave so Cassie’s had a captive audience to lecture about her favourite topic for the past half hour.

She’s having, quite frankly, a fantastic time.

As she’s moving on to her next point and Bart and Kon are letting out identical groans Tim comes in and starts making a coffee. For a moment Cassie wonders if she might be able to drag Tim into the audience of her presentation, he’s probably just as tired from work as Kon and Bart are from their mission, but then she realises Tim’s already listening.

This wouldn’t shock her, for all his flaws Tim can be an excellent listener at times, but Tim isn’t wearing a listening sort of expression. He’s looking at Cassie with the sort of complete shock that only belongs on the faces of burglars caught in the act, mouth hanging slightly open and eyes rounder than can be natural. She’s about to ask him what’s up. She’s about to check to see if he just had some world shattering revelation that’s going to save them all a world of hurt in the near future, but then Tim says under his breath, so quiet Cassie almost doesn’t hear, “WonderTrash96” and Cassie is suddenly worried about very different things.

She takes a moment to curse her twelve year old self, well thought out arguments as to why as a hero Wonder Woman really is beyond reproach and all, for being idiotic enough to run a fan blog and not anticipate that it would come back to haunt her later on.

Then, before Cassie can curse her twelve year old self too thoroughly, she has the thought that Tim would have to know her childhood fan blog very well to recognise an argument she made there years ago. Then she remembers the semi-regular discourse she used to get in with a batman fan blog and how Tim has said a lot of the exact same things as that blog used to.

Cassie bolts upright, her eyes narrowing. “You” she hisses.

The two of them look at each other for a second, reliving years of vitriol in a moment.

Tim shakes himself and in an instant he looks normal again. “I would like to propose we never mention this ever again for the sake of both our reputations.”

Cassie nods slowly, relaxing back into the couch. “I have always loved a good state of mutually assured destruction.”

Tim gives a short, sharp nod in return and leaves with his coffee. Kon and Bart both look a little like they might want to ask what that was about but are too tired to do so. There’s a moment of silence before Cassie comes back to herself.

“Along with her contributions to the 1983 United Nations summit-” she starts, talking over Kon and Bart’s groans and absolutely not thinking about the level of dirt she and Tim have on each other now.

~

That night, Cassie gets messaged on an account she hasn’t touched since she was fourteen.

(22:34) I can’t believe you haven’t come up with better arguments since you were twelve.

(22:36) fuck off She types back.

She’s grinning before she even hits send.

New Fic!!

Word count: 1,338

Summary: Luz feels guilty all the time.

It wouldn't be so bad if she didn't know that she deserved it.

~

“But you can do magic here, isn’t that all you’ve ever wanted?” Willow asks.

“How can you miss being there when you fit in so much better here?” Gus says.

“They didn’t deserve you.” Amity snorts, like it’s obvious.

~

Fic under the cut!

Luz feels guilty all the time now.

Not guilty enough that she’s consumed by it. Not guilty enough that it stops her from doing anything. It’s just something in the background, something that pulls at her a little as she runs and fights and generally enjoys life more than she ever has before.

She mentions it to her friends. They don’t quite understand it.

“But you can do magic here, isn’t that all you’ve ever wanted?” Willow asks.

“How can you miss being there when you fit in so much better here?” Gus says.

“They didn’t deserve you.” Amity snorts, like it’s obvious.

The last one makes Luz feel something different. She hopes she’ll figure out what sometime soon, once the guilt has ebbed away and there’s enough room for her to step back and look at her thoughts from a distance. Once there’s enough room that she might be able to examine the shape they take.

The problem is that Luz isn’t even guilty for what she’s done. If all she had done to her mom was leave her all alone in a different dimension then Luz wouldn’t even be feeling bad. It’s what Luz is going to do that keeps the low buzzing of guilt close.

Because Luz is never going back.

How could she? How could she return to a world where she can’t do magic, where she never fit in?

(where they didn’t deserve her)

Luz would do anything to stay in the Boiling Isles forever and considering the fact that all she has to do is not leave? Luz would have to have some twisted sort of mind to want to go back.

Her mom was going to send her to send her somewhere to get her imagination stamped out of her for three months. What if Luz returned and she tried to do that again? Then she might never get an opportunity to return to the Boiling Isles and then-

Then Luz would be feeling significantly worse things than a little guilt buzzing at the edge of her consciousness.

So she stays.

~

Luz is staring at the door that would take her back home.

Eda looks at her from over the cover of her magazine. “You planning to set that on fire, kid?”

“Yeah.” Luz answers without remembering that she probably shouldn’t be saying that sort of thing. Oh well, she thinks. It’s not like Eda’s going to judge her.

Eda puts down her magazine and raises a judging eyebrow in Luz’s direction.

Luz looks back at her and narrows her eyes. They’ve never talked about Luz going home and she had really been enjoying that status quo. “Your eyebrows are judging me.” she informs Eda. Just in case she wasn’t aware yet.

She nods slowly. “Yeah, they tend to do that kid.” She pauses. Like she needs some time to come to terms with the unprecedented fact that Luz would do anything not to stay here forever. “Bet it’s ‘cause they were wondering why you were going to set your only way back home on fire.”

“I guess that would make sense.” Luz answers, “It would kind of be an odd thing for me to do, from the perspective of your eyebrows.” She tries her best to look serious since this is a serious conversation despite how they’re both pretending that it isn’t.

They stare each other down for a while.

King comes and interrupts before either of them can break the stalemate. Eda looks particularly affronted when this happens, like whenever she’s avoiding telling Luz something she doesn’t use this exact same trick.

It’s odd. Luz thought Eda would have realised she’s a fast learner by now.

~

In a particularly unexpected turn of events it’s Lilith that ends of being the one to confront Luz about the whole thing.

She just had a fight with Eda. Obviously. Because the only time Luz ever runs into Lilith is when she’s just about to fight Eda or when they’ve just finished. It ends in a draw, like it always does, and Luz wonders why Lilith keeps coming back to fight Eda when she must know that it’s going to end the same way it always does.

Luz voices these opinions and Lilith squints at her with an expression that reminds her of Eda and her judge-y eyebrows. “Do humans not have families?” she asks, her tone full of honest confusion.

Luz isn’t quite sure how to answer that. She stays silent, waiting for King to interrupt like last time but remembers that King isn’t actually here right now and decides not to answer anyway. Maybe she’ll get lucky and someone else will interrupt.

“Well?” Lilith prompts, impatient now. “Do you have a family, human?”

Luz opens and closes her mouth a couple of times, “Why do you care?” she asks, which isn’t her best comeback but does the job of allowing her to avoid the question.

Lilith has the gall to roll her eyes. “I care about precisely two people in the Boiling Isles.” She holds up two fingers to illustrate her point. “My awful sister,” She puts a finger down, “and my wonderful protege.” She puts the other finger down so that her hand is in the shape of a fist. An irrational part of Luz’s brain wonders if she’s about to get punched. “So I think it’s understandable enough that I might like to know if the human that has the full adoration of my two favourite people might be leaving them someday soon.”

“Nope,” Luz starts backing away cause Lilith looks kind of angry and hence very scary, “No one’s leaving here. I am a-okay staying right here. Forever.”

“Oh.” Lilith says, expression turning surprised. Her eyes aren’t narrowed anymore and it makes them look far larger than normal. “I thought you were leaving.”

Luz looks at Lilith and feels something full of far too familiar guilt stirring in her chest. “That’s weird. I’ve never thought that before.” she says, because it’s true.

“But you have a family?” Lilith says because even if her and Luz don’t talk much she’s still one of the smartest people Luz knows, which is saying something since Luz is surrounded by geniuses these days.

“Yep. I’m staying though.”

Lilith frowns. “You should visit them. Family’s important.” Luz can feel herself starting to back away, the buzz of guilt rising again, but Lilith interrupts before she can get very far. “I’m sure that either Amity or Eda would drag you back before you could be gone for too long anyway.”

The words cause Luz to freeze. She hadn’t thought of that before.

Lilith had clearly been aiming for the comment to sound offhand, an afterthought, but from the way she’s a little tenser than normal Luz can tell that she really was trying to reassure her. It makes Luz wonder it Lilith might have enough room in her heart to care about three people one day.

“I’ll think about it.” she promises.

Luz keeps her eyes fixed firmly on the floor as she says it but she can tell that the words make Lilith smile a little anyway.

~

Luz really does think about it. She thinks about it constantly, replaces the buzz of guilt with wonderings over whether she trusts that her loved ones have their claws dug into her deep enough that they could never let her go.

One night, lying in bed and wondering the same things as always, she comes to the conclusion that she does. After the certainty has settled itself in her bones she has the best nights sleep she’s had in weeks.

In the morning she decides that she’ll wait a little. Let the certainty sink in a bit deeper. Let the amount she loves the people she’s surrounded herself with grow until the idea she won’t be able to return becomes ridiculous.

But then the Emperor comes and the portal burns and none of it really matters.

Luz starts feeling guilty again. She doubts she’ll ever stop.

I got batgirls #1 and the art is BEAUTIFUL

The Path to Being Known by elowen_p

3 Chapters - 21432 words

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 finds Batman; Conner is created to kill Superman; Cassie just tries to survive; Bart opens the doors of his time machine to somewhere a little later than he had been expecting.

(@elowenp)

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.

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.

“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.”