Balancing Act

variations on a theme

Neon Bruce Wayne by Dan Mora

Just started mr robot and what the absolute sHIT is Tyrell

friends to enemies to lovers is actually something that can be so intimate. i know you i know everything about you i have told you all my deepest secrets and you have told me yours and now i am trying to kill you literally or metaphorically because hate and love are separated by a very thin line and i don't know which side i am on

Nezuko wakes up shaking.

Is it really waking up if you were already conscious, just out of control? As she looks at her brother's bloody form it certainly feels like the first time she’s opened her eyes since arriving in the forest. But who can really be sure?

His throat has been torn out. His clothes have been ripped to shreds. Underneath the ragged strips of cloth there’s barely anything left of him. Just some bone, some gristle. The inedible parts. His face is almost entirely whole though. As tears fill her eyes Nezuko wonders if this is because something deep down stopped her from being able to destroy her brothers face, but she knows that the only reason that part of him was left untouched is that there isn’t that much flesh there.

His eyes are glassy and unseeing.

Dead.

“No,” she whispers, the magnitude of this atrocity finally settling on her shoulders. “No, no, no, no-“

Her refrain only stops once she jams her hand in her mouth. Her jaw keeps moving as if trying to continue the refusal to accept reality and soon her hand is bleeding from the places where her teeth sink into it. The taste of her own blood sends a disjointed euphoria shooting through Nezuko’s brain and she jerks her hand back in horror. Desperate to somehow scrub away what she just did she shovels snow into her mouth to wash away the taste. She keeps chewing on it, pain zapping through her teeth from the cold, until she can spit it out without a trace of pink in the puddle of drool and bile she creates.

She scrubs the blood from her face so desperately that the snow makes small cuts in her skin. Better to be covered in her own blood rather than her brother’s though.

The thought makes her look back towards Tanjiro’s body. Her tears finally begin to fall.

“I did that,” she admits, the salt of her tears stinging as it floods her cuts and scrapes. She kneels down next to Tanjiro’s body. He looks peaceful and Nezuko hates it. Hates the way it reminds her how kind he was. How he would have forgiven her for doing this without question. “I did this. And I won’t ever let it happen again. Not to anyone.”

The forest grows silent for a moment in acknowledgement of her vow. Or maybe in shock that a demon would commit to such a thing.

After she’s said her prayers over his body she carefully takes out Tanjiro’s earrings. Nezuko doesn’t have her ears pierced yet so she just forces the metal through her ear lobes and is surprised by the lack of pain.

All that’s left is to bury him.

~

Almost as soon as she’s finished heaving snow back on top of the grave dawn begins to break. Before the first rays of light can inch above the horizon a primal fear takes hold of Nezuko and she sprints for the nearest cover. A cave that she digs herself into, deep enough that the sunlight will never touch her with its poison. It’s before she even realises it’s what she’s doing that she falls unconscious and begins to dream of brothers and blood and hell.

Nezuko sleeps for a very long time.

living in gotham is like. you are going to be consumed. you are going to see your worst fears in horrific visions. these visions will be provided by someone who doesn’t even know your name. someone is going to shoot you. you are going to laugh and you will not want to. you are going to kill someone. whether or not your house gets blown up will be decided by a coin flip. someone put acid in the water. you are going to be in a hostage situation. a fucking furry is going to be the only reason you survive any of this

Batman by Sanford Greene

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.

Watching young justice and nothing is funnier than the justice league telling off the kids and captain marvel standing in the background trying not to act sus

had this sketch of fancy core four laying around <3