^^^ The Good Shit

variations on a theme

Au where Billy doesn’t get his demigod form but just a shit ton of magic instead.

(can kinda be read as a continuation of this)

~

Zatanna has been hopping around Europe for months now. She’s been finding her father’s old teachers and new ones that are all her own and getting them to tell her everything they can. Since she left the mountain she’s been wringing every drop of knowledge she can from the world and practising it until she falls asleep with all her magic spent.

It feels a little like healing.

Sometimes it feels like something else though. When Zatanna thinks about how the only real connections she’s made on this journey have been with her teachers. Those connections aren’t like the one she shared with her father. Not like the connections she still shares with the Team. She makes the effort to go and visit the mountain on occasion but it’s not enough. The feeling of other people being close and loving her doesn’t fill her up like it used to.

She decides that this probably is healing. This whole thing she’s doing. But it’s a lonely breed of it.

Then a boy with black hair and blue eyes and far too much power, just like her, comes tumbling into her room one day.

“Uh. Hi. I’m Billy.” he says, uncertain. His aura crackles with lightning and Zatanna doesn’t think she’s ever seen someone with so much raw magic running through their veins.”You’re Zatanna right? I was hoping that you could help me? I want- I need to learn magic.” He pauses. “It’s important. A wizard told me so.”

Zatanna hasn’t thought about helping anyone in a long time. She’s been too focused on saving herself to have room for other worries. She realises that she misses it.

She must hesitate for too long because Billy looks far more worried than a kid that age should have any right to. “Please?” he says.

Zatanna smiles, because healing takes many forms and she thinks that this might be one she prefers. “Okay.” she says.

Billy smiles and it lights the room up so much that Zatanna thinks he might actually be doing magic on accident.

They’ll work on it.

SPOILER ! ! ! >:)

Selina & Talia

1 2 3 wrote a bunch more for this and it’s on ao3 now lol

Talia is making dinner with Selina when the Sirens burst in.

Selina had said that something like this would happen one day but this is the first time Talia has met them during her and Selina’s relationship.

“Guess what we-” Harley Quinn crows before stopping abruptly at the sight of Talia in the kitchen and Damian at the table. “Who’re you?”

Pamela Isley rolls her eyes before stepping forwards and holding out a hand. “Selina’s been telling us all about her new paramour, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” she says. Talia raises an eyebrow but shakes the hand. She supposes that if Selina likes these people so much she can stomach being polite.

Harley, who had been looking Talia up and down from behind Pamela, steps forward and thrusts her hand out for Talia to shake as well. “Harley Quinn, pleasure to meet ya. And I’ve got to say you are a real improvement on the last guy Cat dated. Like really. Wowza.” Pamela elbows Harley in the ribs but she just responds by kissing her on the cheek. Talia raises an eyebrow at Selina who nods that yes, they’re always like this. Harley turns towards the kitchen table where Damian has turned away from his laptop and is looking at the group of them with undisguised judgement. “And is this your little one?”

“Yes.” Talia answers. She shoots a look at Damian since she can sense that he’s about three seconds from starting a fight. “He is.”

Harley leans down so that her face is level with Damian’s. “Isn’t he a cutie?”

“Continue to disrespect me and I shall remove your head from your shoulders, Quinn”

“And he’s got spunk!” she praises, her lack of fear just making Damian scowl harder. “Who’s the Daddy?” she asks, turning back to Talia.

“My ex.” Talia and Selina answer in unison.

Pamela looks up at the two of them sharply from where she had been inspecting the food and there’s a hint of confusion on Harley’s face for the first time in the whole conversation.

Talia knows it’s undignified, but she can’t help herself from a moment of sharp laughter. She might have been embarrassed over it if not for the way Selina giggles into her shoulder afterwards.

I don’t even blame Luther for the apocalypse but I do have two hands so I can’t deny that the option is there

You’re right and you should say it.

shit man if i had what Ren and Nora have I’d be straight too

Queer Barbara Gordon mayhaps?????

Head Archivist Sasha AU:

- You’ve heard of Sasha’s head archivist with Tim Martin and Jon as her assistants, but have you heard of Sasha’s head archivist, replacing Jon, with Tim and Martin as her assistants?

- Gertrude got killed ~4 years earlier than in canon. Elias gave Jon the job of head archivist almost as soon as he started working at the institute in a move which everyone, including Jon, found Very Weird.

- Elias thought it might be funky fresh to make Jon very isolated to make sure it would be easy for the lonely to get him in the future and hence gave him zero (0) assistants.

- Jon spends the next 4 years getting up to hijinks, becoming more and more isolated, gaining more trauma, and just Not having a good time.

- Jon stops being head archivist/disappears for reasons I am yet to decide on and Sasha gets promoted.

- Elias doesn’t have any particular plans to make Sasha The Archivist since he still reckons Jon is going to fulfill that roll and decides to give her some assistants when she starts running the archives. As a Treat™.

- Sasha is an excellent head archivist and her Martin and Tim are all Besties.

- One of them discovers a tape Jon made when he was Archivist. It implies some very spooky things about the institute as well as some of Jon’s fears about what Elias and the dread powers have planned for him.

- The gang collectively goes ‘oh shit’

- Shenanigans ensue.

there's an elite type of character and it can be described as 'this person is powerful and competent in their area of expertise' meets 'too bad they're an idiot'

John Constantine is seventeen, angry and entirely ready to lose himself in the occult.

The open book in front of him details a particularly nasty ritual, but not one he’s unwilling to pay the price for. He bought the book from the shop on Eaton street, ‘Occult Exposition’. It’s not a nice shop. The clientele tend to be even dodgier than John and the owner always goes out of his way to make him as uncomfortable as possible.

John supposes that that’s just the price of authenticity.

The book is authentic. He knows that. One of the first things John learned was that the fakes always do well when it comes to flair but never quite catch the essence of a true ritual.

Fully set up in the back garden, John begins his ritual.

He chants and moves and shifts his thoughts in all the right directions. He slits the throat of a rabbit and cuts out the eye of the hawk that caught it. He spins a web of spider silk around the remains and watches it turn into a spun glass cage that contains something entirely different.

John lifts the same knife he used to cut out the hawks eyes and slit the rabbits throat, ready to plunge it into the beating heart the glass now contains.

“Are you sure you want to do that?” a voice calls out from behind him.

John spins around with his knife at the ready to defend himself. Instead if someone attacking him all John sees is a beautiful girl leaning against the dirty wall of his garden shed.

“Are you sure you want to stick around until the police come arrest you for trespassing?” he snarls, caught off guard.

The girl has the gall to roll her eyes. “As if you would call the police.” Considering the garden stinks of weed John supposes that the girl may have a point. “And anyway, I’m just giving you some sound advice. Nothing malicious about me at all.”

John narrows his eyes. “There aren’t many people who offer advice for free.”

“Well maybe I’m just feeling generous today.” the girl says with a grin. The smile drops promptly. “The blood rune won’t work, so you’re just going to be compelled to rip your heart out and eat it. Do you want to rip your heart out and eat it?”

John scoffs even as he sends the blood rune an uncertain look. “The rune is fine.”

The girl shoots him a withering look. “It has to be virgin's blood.”

“It is vir-“ John pauses. Resets. “Oh shit.”

“What? Are you still feeling lucky?”

“Fuck off.” John says on reflex. Then, “Thanks for telling me though. That could’ve been nasty.”

The girl finally smiles properly. Broad and shining and even John is forced to admit to himself that it’s a beautiful smile. “You’re very welcome. My name's Zatanna.” she says, sticking her hand out for him to shake.

“John.”

“I know,” she says with a wink as they clasp hands. “If you ever want a little more sound advice then just give me a call. Promise I’m a better option than you ever you got that book from.”

John raises an eyebrow. “Not that I don’t appreciate the offer, but what’s put you in such a sharing mood?”

“I said I was feeling generous.” Her expression softens. “I think you’re going to be powerful. The kind of powerful that’s going to get people killed if you don’t know how to handle it. Call me when you’re in trouble.”

When she finishes speaking a wind summons itself up around her. Twisting and twirling until she’s stood in the centre of a spinning tornado. The speed of the wind reaches a climax and dissipates all of a sudden, leaving behind no sign of Zatanna.

John takes a step towards the space she used to occupy and spots something on the ground. It’s a business card. Pristine white with edges sharp enough to cut through flesh. On the card is a name, ‘Zatanna Zatara’, and a phone number.

There are two ‘x’s handwritten below the number and they make John feel oddly warm.

“Fuck.” he says to empty air. “Fuck.”

He turns back to his aborted ritual and starts cleaning up the blood.