• So We Wander •

Hey so actually I might be a little obsessed with how Tim is Dick’s only real brother.

Like hear me out. HEAR ME OUT!

Dick’s relationship with Jason is full of regret and guilt. They might be building something now but their past is full of inflicting rotting wounds (metaphorical and often literal) on each other. Dick started the pattern first when he rejected Jason as Robin. And later Jason raging against Dick after his return. Jason’s semi-valid villain crash out ending with Dick putting him in Arkham because Jason was a straight villain pre-rebirth. And even then it takes rebirth remixed canon to allow Jason some family bonding time. I say they have a handful of months — and even then how often did Dick visit! He didn’t start reconnecting with the BatFam until after the Killing Joke and Death in the Family — they got along before shit got worse.

Damian is Dick’s BABY! That is his firstborn! Dick might have had some adoption tendencies pre-crisis with Jason but they realized that shit with Dick’s (Second? Third?) time in the cowl. Dick saw this small murderous child and was like “I can do it better than Bruce” and did. And yes they might be settling into a brotherly role with Bruce stepping the fuck up.* But I promise you having witnessed siblings with a 10 year age gap — even when the parents are perfect and emotionally available — that older sibling quickly becomes a third parent. With Dick, he was the first second and third parent. No way Damian and Dick could ever just be brothers and I love that for them.

So that leaves Tim! The little baby brother he started calling little brother YEARS before Bruce ever adopted Tim.** Timmy, the freak who broke into his apartment to track him down and drag him back to Gotham. Timmy who Dick follows back to Gotham and — through his growing relationship with Tim — reconnects with his second family.

He spent his early 20s with Tim! He comes into his own as Nightwing with Tim as Robin. He literally grows into his adult self with Tim as his witness.

How many lows has Tim helped him pick up after? How many falls has Dick caught Tim after (metaphorically and literally)?

But that’s the sweet sappy shit.

Tim is the one brother Dick doesn’t have to be responsible with. He eats shitty pizza with Tim. He has movie nights and hang outs and poor-tasting inside jokes with Tim. They race each other across rooftops! They play fight in the streets. Dick booby traps his apartment so Tim can have fun breaking in.*** Dick complains about his messy love life to Tim while Tim mocks him!

THEY ARE BROTHERS YOUR HONOR!

With Jason there is too much pain. With Damian there is too much responsibility. With Tim, Dick gets to be his age and just hangout with his brother!

There is a reason Dick calls Tim his equal. Dick loves his brothers, he’ll always be there for them. But Tim is the one Dick doesn’t have to watch or monitor or hover over. Tim is his brother, not his regret or his child.

20 years in real time and 4 years of comic time put Tim and Dick through the ringer. No Man’s Land. Knightfall. The nuking of Bloodhaven. Contagion. Try to name a tragedy Tim and Dick haven’t witnessed and weathers side by side! But no matter how they fight or have to disappear for the mission, they always find each other and trust each other and believe in each other. Because they are truly brothers!

(So context… I’m very much reading the 90s and 2000s run. I’m like chronologically in 98. I’ve heard modern comics have dropped this FOR SOME FUCKING REASON (they forget Tim exists, I guess). But I refuse to believe that rebirth got rid of their brotherly bond. Just as Tim’s “friendship” with Kon-El transcends timelines so does Dick and Tim’s brotherly bond! They are family bonded through the fires of time and comic book bullshit!)

* How much this is true take with a grain of salt. I’m not reading modern yet. I’ve read some cause Damian just slaps and I love him. But there’s so much!

** Tim was adopted for like a year before being emancipated. WILD! What fatherless behavior!

*** What feral menaces! I love them!!! I just need to scream. Not important. Carry on. ^>^

A little Spoiler of something I’m working on:

Title: Will of Fire

Summary: Madara knows his sins and his faults. He knows, no matter what Hashirama thinks, there is no positive afterlife waiting for him. Maybe that’s why he’s returned to the past after bleeding out on that battlefield.

Still, there is nothing to do but get up and try again.

For Izuna.

For Hashirama.

For Obito and all those, he’s wronged.

He will take this chance and try again.

Ship: Hashirama/Madara

Tags: Politics, Slow Burn, Uchiha Family Dynamics

…

Madara wakes up to Izuna beside him.

He shouldn’t have. He should have died, should have walked forward into the pure lands all Shinobi knew awaited them: an eternal feast of friends and foes alike finally setting down their swords and kunai to eat and drink and laugh.

Hashirama had promised me a drink, Madara thinks mournfully as he takes in the rising sun creeping its way into the room, growing in strength. Hashirama promised him peace.

He lets himself mourn his death during the time it takes the late winter sun to drench the room in light. Fifteen whole minutes to regret and contemplate to consider what-ifs and almost. Fifteen minutes before Izuna wakes next to him, eyes narrowing at the sunlight and with such an amusing scrunched face that Madara cannot help but be reminded of the ornery cat he’d kept secretly within the cave.

(Obito had brought the cat because for all Madara and Zetsu had tried to break him, he’d still clung stubbornly to a love of life.

And god Obito… Madara has many regrets. More than any man should bear. Too many sins to atone for. But for Obito…. He will need more than fifteen minutes to mourn Obito.

He will need a lifetime.)

And then Izuna wakes up.

“Aniki ,” Izuna yawns, morning breath stinking up the space between them. With drool running down his chin and crust in his eyes, he looks a far cry from the Uchiha Beauty he is renowned for. “Why are you awake?”

Madara had lost count of the years between Izuna’s death and his own. Time makes things hazy, alters memories… alters reality. It isn’t until that moment that Madara realizes he’d forgotten the sound of Izuna’s voice. In his memories it is scratchy, broken by pain and suffering as he lay on his death bed while healers and medic-nin alike did their best to give him another day, hour, minute. Until there had been nothing left to save but a pair of eyes.

In his nightmares, Izuna’s voice is rough and booming, full of hatred, as he calls Madara for what he is: a failure, a betrayer, a liar, and--in his worst dreams--a murderer.

In reality, Izuna’s voice is soft and sweet, content to wake up next to his older brother and pitched at a low volume to avoid waking the household. Clinging to childhood, there is an almost squeaky quality to it. (As young as Obito had been)

A long-forgotten protective instinct flowers within Madara’s chest.

Madar looks away, tears burning in the corner of his eyes. But he cannot cry. The dead cannot do anything with his tears. He has no right to self-pity. Zetsu had led him to his grave but Madara had been eager to climb in and lie down.

He cannot be forgiven for his sins. There is no peaceful afterlife waiting for him. No drink. No Hashirama. He does not deserve it.

This is my penance, Madara thinks as he watches Izuna wipe the sleep from his eyes with the back of his hand, already scarred from a lifetime of struggle. I must make things right.

Madara stands up.

For Obito, for Hashirama, for the Uchiha he’d sworn himself to and then killed, for the village and Naruto and Itachi (and that strange, powerful boy who’d reminded him of himself and Izuna and all the best and worst of the Uchiha).

It’s time to get to work.

He will cry when it is all done.

.

COMING SOON TO AN AO3 NEAR YOU!

Sexy HC that kryptonians get stupid horny during the full moon (lots of good sunlight @ night, something something moon dust idk) and go into ruts/heats where they’re extra fertile.

The rest of society is not ABO. Just Kryptonians during the full moon.

You know that feeling when you're writing a fanfic idea for a tumblr post but then that fanfic idea becomes 4k long and you start wondering if it might be easier to just write the damn fic.

But hey! Get ready for some Dark!Bruce Wayne, Time Travel, Fix-it fic with some glorious Manipulate, Mansplane, Malewife vibes.

Here is a teaser:

While he was waiting for Haly's Ciricus to come to town, Bruce wasted no time checking on Jason. Batman spent several weeks sweeping through Crime Alley until he'd managed to peer through the right apartment window. Jason is a precious three year old. He toddles around the apartment with a confidence that suited him at every age. His step mother, Catherine Todd, is quick to follow him around, laying out strategic pillows to keep Jason from bruising his knees when he toddles too fast and falls. She's sober -- for now. In fact, according to the records Bruce found, she had yet to become an addict.  This is unacceptable.  Even if Bruce jumps the gun and puts Willis in jail -- it'll be so easy, too easy really -- Catherine is still a suitable, if poor, mother. So Bruce makes plans and then contingency plans, all on paper, all to be burnt at the minute of completion.

Just devoured The Boy Wonder Comics. So good. I love Damian. I love him so much.

I have modified my Reverse Robin AU because of this fic. The art is gorgeous. How can you read that comic and not adore Damian?!

The art! Gosh the art. And Talia! So wonderful and complex! Even Ra’s is so pitiful in the end. I loved all of it and how it’s all told through a series of stories. Such a fun framing device!

The conversation Damian has with Bruce about how you can’t save people from their choices. It’s such an interesting critique of Bruce’s unfailing optimism that his Rogues can be saved without it really being about that. From the mouths of babies and all that.

No critique! Just gushing. It’s one of the few comic series I’ve walked away from with nothing to be mad about.

On another note the character designs were all immaculate. I loved Tim’s bird costume. And Jason’s white eyes. I love how Dick looks so much like Bruce even though they don’t share a drop of blood. Of course this is all warped via Damian’s perspective via Merle’s perspective. So who knows how they really look? But also who cares! It’s just such a fun way to tell a story!

A Batman fanfic idea:

A “Tim gets adopted early” AU but Jason still goes to Ethiopia, still gets betrayed and captured and tortured and dies.

So Batman is losing it. It takes all of Superman’s strength and cunning to keep Batman from killing the joker. And it’s only his youngest son’s voice through the comms who calms him down long enough to be restrained.

But even then, Batman can’t control himself completely. He’s not drinking. He has a child to take care of and he’d die before he turns into the worst kind of father’s Gotham has to offer.

But Dick still hates him and Alfred’s quiet presence isn’t the balm it usually is — instead just reminding him how much he missed Jason’s noise and joy. Of course, little Tim isn’t handling the lose of his brother very well either, the quiet child turning inwards in his grief.

So Batman goes out and with each sunset becomes darker, more violent, more desperate. Sloppy. One night he takes two shots to the back after already tearing his suit. He has no backup. He can’t think of a back up plan.

Once again it’s Tim’s voice, warm and alive, over the comms that gives him the strength to get up and limp into the Batmobile. It’s Tim’s presence that gives him enough strength to come home.

Tim is waiting in the cave for him, refusing to leave as Alfred and Dr. Thompson dig the bullets out of his back and sew his skin closed. Tim holds his hand through it all, never turning those ice blue eyes, even when the tears come.

It’s the last night he’s Batman. He can’t do it anymore, can’t do it to Tim. He can’t make his last son an orphan. Not again.

He tells Alfred first. Then Superman who tells the league. Finally, he calls Dick and tells him the truth, not the lie he told Superman about injuries and rest or the story he spun Alfred about being tired, he tells Dick, “I’m not strong enough.”

Dick understands and Dick hates him for it.

Nightwing moves to Gotham. Dick Grayson-Wayne moves back to the manor.

Tim never becomes Robin. There isn’t a Batman to save anymore.

Bruce Wayne calms down after the death of his son, people say. He rarely leaves the manor these days and only when he’s accompanied by his sons. What a doting father!

Nightwing gets a sidekick called Black Bat. Batgirl returns with blonde hair. The underground speak of an all seeing eye coined Oracle.

Bruce Wayne never adopts another child after Tim Drake-Wayne.

Eventually, because of time and family therapy, Dick forgives Bruce. Nightwing never forgives Batman.

And three years after the retirement of Batman, Red Hood returns to the city that failed him.

twenty years across the sea

~ Detective Comics (1937)

Once again, we get Bruce's parenting technique of letting his kids get their anger out on him. He is even encouraging Tim to let it out, even if he is being yelled at. He is not even fighting Tim or arguing with him, he explains why he acted like he did and he is accepting Tim's anger and emotions.

And sad batblob is back at the end. Sad that one of his babies is in pain, and he cannot just take it away

Doomed Siblings Core

I want Damien and Tim to be friends so bad. I want chaotic younger sibling energy team up to make everyone else’s life hell! They both have big gremlin energy and 0 chill and poor understanding of other peoples limits.

Stop being cowards @DC, let Tim and Damien wreak havoc!

If you have fics, pls rec and my life is yours!