New Fic Oop-

Amity joins the Emperor’s Coven

Amity Blight is perfect.

She has perfect grades and a perfect family and is exactly the kind of person that’s going to grow up and fit in perfectly at the Emperor’s Coven. When Lilith isn’t busy being proud of her she can’t help but feel a little jealous of the child for never having to be second best to anyone.

That’s all until the human arrives.

Before Lilith can even begin to process the situation Amity is deviating from the careful path of perfection Lilith has so painstakingly laid out for her. She still has perfect grades and she’s still the youngest daughter of the Blight family, all that prestige and none of it tying her down, but suddenly her allegiances are questionable.

She’s spending too much time with the human. Too much time with Eda. Too much time with people who could steer her away from the path she must take.

So before things can go too awfully, before Eda can ruin this perfect little girl like she ruins everything else, Lilith makes a proposal.

“How would you like to become the youngest member of the Emperor’s Coven?” She says, all warmth and approval in the way she knows the girl’s parents never are.

Amity’s face lights up and Lilith tries not to think too much about how the guilt churning in her stomach makes her feel a little like when she cursed her sister.

After Conner finds out about where the other half of his DNA came from, once he knows that Superman might actually find a valid way to hate him one day, it would have been easy for Lex to slip into the shadows and leave the secrets Conner learned to torment him.

He doesn’t.

Instead he starts to visit. He texts Conner and asks if he would like to go to a diner after school. He calls Conner to ask how his day’s going. He smiles when Conner tells him that he taught Wolf a new trick.

If Conner didn’t know better, he might think that Lex was trying to parent him.

He assumes that Cadmus must have gotten something wrong. He guesses that he misunderstood what it meant when they put the thought that ‘parents look out for you and give you advice and forgive you when you yell at them’ because if he didn’t then-

Then Lex Luthor would be a significantly better dad than Superman. Which wouldn’t make sense. At all.

~

After about a month of visits and kind words and pats on the shoulder that make Conner feel embarrassed but so full of happiness he might burst, he decides to confess to the team. Partly because he hates lying to them more than anything in the world. Partly because he knows this is wrong and he knows that he has to stop before he says something he shouldn’t and screws everything up but if he’s ever going to stop he needs someone to tell him he has to.

So he confesses. And very pointedly doesn’t look at anyone as he waits for them to start yelling.

“But-” starts Artemis, soft in a way Conner’s never associated with her before, “but you’ve been happier.”

He finally looks up and instead of angry they just look sad and understanding and Conner loves all of them so much.

“Conner,” Kaldur says, calm and measured, “If Lex Luthor is your blood, and you want to get to know him, I don’t think that any of us would feel comfortable taking that away from you.”

Wally steps forward like he wants to reach out. “We all have adults we can talk to about all of this, it’s not fair that you don’t. We won’t tell on you man.”

Conner squeezes his eyes shut because if he keeps looking at all their earnest faces he might start crying.

“I’d never-” he struggles to get the words out, “I’d never choose him over any of you. I like him and sometimes he feels important to me in a weird way. But he’s nothing compared to you guys.”

“We know.” M’gann says.

‘We know’, they all say with their trust and their kindness and all the ways they’ve tried to make him feel at home since they came together.

Before he can leave to calm down somewhere with fewer people and more things to break he’s swamped by a tangle of limbs and reassurance and forgets why he wanted to leave anyway.

He really does have the best family.

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.

margaret atwood // doom days - bastille // azra t. // carry on - rainbow rowell // romeo and juliet - william shakespeare // cruel summer - taylor swift // gregory orr // red, white, and royal blue - casey mcquiston // romeo and juliet - william shakespeare // cruel summer - taylor swift // erica jong // sober ii (melodrama) - lorde // romeo and juliet - william shakespeare // the raven king - maggie stiefvater // ghosts - florence + the machine // tamerlane - edgar allan poe // the raven king - maggie stiefvater // cruel summer - taylor swift

his swagless looks and cringe fail personality have captivated me

“Sooo is that a yes??”

Never witnessed a more aro ace man than Bruce Wayne in the Batman movie in my life

Excalibur, the legendary sword of King Arthur, was the mightiest weapon of that era. However, as time passed and mankind evolved, so did the sword. You work at a local antique shop when one day you discover something you don’t remember being there before: a rather peculiar looking pen.

Robert Pattinson in interviews: Bruce Wayne is a slimy worm man. A stinky dirty bat. A mess. Emo. Greasy and gross. Seconds away from going feral and biting someone’s ear off.

Me, a Bruce Wayne fan: Yes, yes, this man gets it

I saw The Batman last night and all you need to know about it is that Robert Pattinson plays Batman like a total badass but he plays Bruce Wayne as a sad wet cat and it is perfect

Balancing Act

Talia al Ghul has always lived a precarious life.

You would think it would have been the training that had pulled at her in those early years. That tore at her. As soon as she was capable of critical thought it had been made clear to Talia that anything less than perfection was not an option.

This had suited her well enough though. Perfection had always come naturally to Talia.

No. It was the deference that had turned survival into a balancing act.

‘Yes, Father’ ‘No, Father’ ‘Of course, Father’. Talia is loyal to her bones, but did it have to be so performative? Did they really have to pretend this hard that her father’s better than her?

Even as a teenager she scoffs at the thought. It’s hardly like anyone could be foolish enough to believe such a lie.

~

Later she meets Bruce. Then the balancing act begins to concern loyalty rather than pride.

Talia has always been perfect and loyal and gifted at living on a knife edge; her father’s blade on one side and some different oblivion on the other. But knowing Bruce brings challenges she hadn’t foreseen.

He’s good. She thinks.

Talia isn’t sure if she’s ever thought that about anyone before.

The pull she feels towards him is something she can’t ignore. It causes the bonds she holds with her father to fray, to weaken. She won’t cut anything yet but Talia is beginning to think that the current situation is untenable.

She has always despised weak things. She will not hesitate to rid herself of such ties.

~

There’s a baby growing in Talia’s stomach.

It’s Bruce’s. She knows it’s Bruce’s. This fact makes her feel a warmth she hadn’t thought herself capable of but it brings with it danger.

She can feel the weight of the child’s legacy pulling at her. It’s a heavy thing, to join the bloodline of an al Ghul with the monster that lurks in Gotham City’s shadows. It’s something Talia thinks might hold greater weight than even her own legacy, if that’s possible.

As her stomach grows and the life inside with it, Talia starts to feel that weight. The heaviness of the body inside her own.

She thinks that this wonderful burden might be what stops the balancing act. What pulls her down from the sharp place where she’s managed to survive for so long.

Talia decides that it’s a change she’s going to embrace.