I Was So Certain About Buddie Endgame In The Finale…

The Batfam definitely has a group chat called "Official Mission Communications ONLY" that Bruce created with the strictest instructions about its purpose.

It lasted exactly 12 hours before Dick sent a meme.

Now it's just chaos, but Bruce never leaves because secretly it's how he keeps tabs on everyone.

Every few weeks he'll respond to 74 messages of nonsense with a single "Focus." and everyone behaves for approximately 5 minutes.

The real mission communications happen in individual texts directly to Bruce, who feels a tiny spark of relief each time his phone pings with "OFFICIAL MISSION CHAT (217 unread messages)" because it means they're all still alive enough to be annoying.

Occasionally in the middle of arguments about cereal rankings and who stole whose equipment, Bruce will just type "Status?" and everyone immediately responds with their location and condition. No one ever comments on this ritual, but everyone participates without fail.

Even Jason, who once replied "bleeding out in an alley but the cereal argument is worth it" which resulted in five vigilantes converging on his location in under three minutes.

The most treasured screenshot in Tim's blackmail folder is from the one time Bruce accidentally sent "proud of you all" at 3:42 AM after a particularly rough night. No one has ever mentioned it directly, but Damian has it printed and hidden in his sketchbook.

no you know what you guys are right. reverse league son reveal. Jason comes back to Gotham and does his crime lord thing before tentatively starting a truce and returning to the batfam and one day Dick asks who Bruce’s favourite child is.

Bruce: i love all three of my sons equally.

Jason, without thinking: three? what about Damian?

Bruce:

Tim: who the fuck is Damian

Jason, freezing:

Jason:

Jason:

Bruce: *carefully* Jay, who is Damian?

Jason: I have to leave.

-

Jason, on the phone with Damian: so i ALMOST blew it-

Damian: ?! BUT I AM NOT READY FOR FATHER TO KNOW ABOUT ME YET-

Jason: shut the fuck up i’m older than you- and i said ALMOST. i told them that Damian was the name of my imaginary twin back when i was a kid and that i’d just gotten muddled up after the resurrection.

Jason: so you’re in the clear but when we finally do introduce you, we’re gonna have to say that Talia let me name you and i named you after my imaginary twin.

Damian:

Damian: Ahki please do not tell them that.

Jason: no im gonna. you called me a twat last week. so im gonna.

Damian: god forbid a boy try to expand his vocabulary

when jason died, they buried him with the possessions that he carried on him all the time. there was a pocket knife tucked into his sock, the bracelet on his wrist from catherine that he never took off, a tangled pair of earbuds in his back pocket, and, in the top pocket of his jacket, the cellphone that bruce bought for him after he was adopted.

that cellphone stayed with jason in his grave. went with him when he dug his way out. somehow stayed on his person when he was taken by the league, and he managed to convince talia to let him keep it throughout all his training.

he doesn’t know why, maybe as a grief thing or maybe just because bruce forgot and it’s not like the bill effected him in any way, but he never stopped paying jason’s phone bill. his number’s still active, still working after all this time. even weirder, but dick started adopting the tradition of adding his dead brother’s phone number to each and every family group chat any of them created after ethiopia. again, jason doesn’t know why. maybe it was dick’s way of carrying his memory with them; including him in family conversations even if they all thought the number was connected to a long buried phone in the pocket of a long dead boy.

the point is that jason wasn’t dead any more. and all throughout his time at the league, he gets to watch the family chats. the mission statuses, the arguments, the rapid spiral every chat went through where they started off using it as a serious bat communication centre only for dick or tim to send a meme and instantly spiral into nothing but chaos that bruce would neither take part in or attempt to stop. jason spectates it all, always fingering the keypad but never actually typing out a message. he came close when there was a heated debate between steph and dick about the best donut types and he knew they were both absolutely fucking wrong, but luckily tim came in to educate them on the right choice last second and jason was saved from having to reveal himself.

the closest call was when little damian got a hold of his phone, attracted to the bright colours of the block game jason had been absently playing out of boredom while ra’s droned on about whatever had pissed him off that day. he’d let the kid play, sat on his lap and eagerly jabbing at the screen, and jason had only looked away for at most a minute before he’d turned back to find the screen open on the family chat, damian having accidentally clicked on the camera button and taken a selfie of the two that he’d been about to send through. luckily, jason deleted it in time, but he became much more careful about letting the kid play with his shit after that.

this is all just a long winded explanation and backstory for and au i think would be funny where jason’s reveal is literally just him deciding to fuck with his family by randomly dropping in through text like:

-in the chat-

bruce: status report.

dick: hungry :( but good!

steph: seconded, im fine

tim: drug bust went to plan, on way back to cave uninjured

cass: ^ same answer

babs: everything seems calm from what i can tell

jason: a little claustrophobic but the coffin’s kinda homely so ig no complaints from me

.

.

.

several people are typing…

this was so not worth crawling out of my grave for

Damian spending more time with his brothers and other kids his age so he slowly starts learning how to act like a normal kid

Damian: get FUCKED on

Dick: Okay so you've just combined two phrases into one that doesn't make sense. You're getting better though

Jason: Okay but "get fucked on" goes pretty hard though, I may use that

Bruce: I need everyone to be quiet for five minutes. Just five minutes of silence.

30 seconds later

Dick: whispers Do you think he's mad?

Tim: whispers back Probably.

Jason: loudly I'm not afraid of him.

Damian: scoffs You should be.

Bruce: That wasn't even ONE MINUTE.

You can't stop being dramatic if you weren't dramatic in the first place

are you a oliver stark ‘yeah that was super gay’ son or a ryan guzman ‘they’re brothers’ daughter

The YouTube channel anti-chef always adds an extra bay leaf to recipes that call for it and he says “and add another one. I’m not driving” and this has permanently altered my vocabulary.

Every time I add something extra to a recipe I say that now. Add another clove of garlic, I’m not driving. Let’s have two eggs, I’m not driving. Let’s double the chili flakes, I’m not driving.