Blue Beetle | Gabriel Picolo

your art is so beautiful i’m gonna cry just looking at it i stg

Yeah, yeah, you can have one too @the-thunderhead067

“Did you hear that?” whispers Callum to the more hardened criminals around him. They snort in derision at his caution, just the new guy being on edge about the job, but he keeps his gun held tight in his hand.

“I heard it too.” says Tony, the other new guy. He doesn’t look as worried as Callum because fine maybe Callum is a bit nervous about this whole ‘becoming a criminal’ thing but he can see that Tony holds his gun with just as tight a grip. “Sounded a bit like laughing, yeah?”

The rest of the gang goes very still and Callum feels like he might be missing something.

“Yeah,” Callum agrees cautiously, “like a little kid.”

Someone swears. Everyone turns so that someone else is defending their back.

“What’s the problem?.” Callum asks, also turning to keep someone at his back.

The laughter sounds again, clearer this time and that’s definitely a little kid. It makes even some of the more hardened men in the room flinch.

“Anyone here got a problem shooting a kid?” asks the member of their group that Callum thinks might be in charge.

What he really wants to say is yes I do have a problem shooting a kid that really isn’t what I thought I was signing up to here but Callum thinks that saying any of that would be a very good way to have the guys shoot him instead of the kid. He doesn’t want that either so he stays silent and pretends that he’s cool with everything that’s happening here.

Turns out that he doesn’t need to worry about shooting any kids.

Turns out that kids are more likely to shoot you.

They don’t even see the boy before there are sharp things knocking the guns out of their hands and, just as Callum tries to pick his up, tiny fingers are around his neck and he’s blacking out before managing to put up even the imitation of a fight.

~

Callum wakes up he doesn’t know how long later. He’s in the ally behind the warehouse he’d been in when he got knocked out. A kid in a domino mask is perched on the street light across from him.

“You should get a different job,” the kid says to him, “you’re too scared for this one.”

Callum would have loved to have said something cutting back, the kind of one liner the real bosses can come up with in an instant, but his throat is sore from being squeezed shut and his head is swimming so all he comes up with is a raspy, “am not” as he tries not to puke.

“Your hands are shaking.”

Shit, they are. Callum sends as scathing a look as he can at his traitorous hands. The effort of that actually does make him puke and he’s forced to ignore the somewhat pitying look the kid is sending his way.

“Yikes, you really aren’t suited to this kind of thing, are you? Maybe you should try and get one of those construction jobs going at that place round the corner. Oh! Or you could be a chef! I think you’d make a great chef.” The kid looks behind himself at something Callum’s vision is too blurry to see. “I’ve gotta go, but it was nice meeting you. Hopefully see you never, yeah?”

The kid backflips off the street light for no discernible reason.

Callum lies on his back and stares at his hands for twenty minutes until they stop shaking. For the whole time he thinks about how the construction place round the corner already rejected him and there aren’t any jobs for chefs in this part of town.

Ren has been in love with Nora for as long as he can remember.

He’s aware that there must be a point when he wasn’t in love with her. Some point before the streets and the orphanages and their first school. A point when he was small with two living parents and not at all sure of himself like he is now.

It’s just that that time seems hazy. More like a dream than something that he lived through. Then he thinks back to being in love with Nora and suddenly his memories are in sharp focus, always with her at their center.

Ren has been in love with Nora for as long as he can remember and he’s been trying to figure out how to tell her for just as long. Nothing’s come to mind yet but, hey, it’s not like either of them are going anywhere.

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'

Cassandra Cain

Since joining rebellion there’s been a certain amount of adjustment for Adora. A lot of it is weirdly easy. She finds out that something she’s been taught since birth is factually incorrect, she rearranges her world view to incorporate this new information, she finds herself in agreement with her new people and everyone ends up happy.

Sometimes it’s not as easy.

“What do you mean you don’t see the problem?” Glimmer asks, waves of alarm rolling off her.

Adora looks to Bow in search of moral support but he looks just as scandalized as Glimmer. “I just don’t see what the big deal is! We’re in the middle of a war, you can’t just not kill people.” She looks at the two of them. “It’s not like I enjoy it.” she adds, and if she’s trying to convince herself more than Bow and Glimmer then it’s not like they need to know that.

“We don’t kill people.” Bow says haltingly. “That’s not how the rebellion works.”

“Then no wonder you guys are losing!” And finally Adora feels like she’s figured out something useful. “We can just tell everyone that lethal force is acceptable. We’ll be pushing the Horde back in no time.”

Adora says it all with a smile on her face which slowly drops when she realises that no one’s returning it. That fact alone is enough to stun her, Bow and Glimmer always return her smiles, but what makes it worse is that if she didn’t know better she might think it was pity on their faces.

“You wouldn’t think that if you hadn’t been raised in the Horde.” Glimmer says.

“Well duh. That doesn’t make it a bad thing though.”

Bow and Glimmer exchange a look before Bow steps forward and puts a supportive hand on Adora’s shoulder. “We’ll work on it.” he says and Adora thinks he might be talking about her mentality rather than the obvious flaws in the Rebellion’s strategy.

He says it kindly, like he’s being nice, and Glimmer is looking at Adora in clear agreement with him. It’s like they think she wasn’t capable of independent thought before she met them. That every belief she held while in the Horde must be bad because of where it came from. The feeling of their presence turns suffocating and Adora starts looking for an escape route.

For a moment she misses Catra with burning intensity. Now there’s someone who understands that when you fight you don’t hold anything back.

^^^ the good shit

Once back on Earth, Doug starts his radio shows with “Hello, humans,” or maybe “Hello, humanity,” but he can’t bring himself to address the audience as “Dear Listeners,” anymore

Stiles Stilinski is just like Lydia in all the wrong ways.

His thoughts move as fast as hers, sometimes faster, and it’s the first time someone else’s brain has measured up to hers. It makes her hate him. It makes her despise him. His existence upsets Lydia’s painstakingly constructed social hierarchy where she’s always meant to be the smartest person in the room.

She is the smartest person in the room. Most of the time. There are just rare occasions, few and far between, where Stiles will do better on a test than her. Or he’ll give a presentation and clearly understand the material better than she does, even if he does do a shit job at presenting it.

Sometimes she’ll look around the room and wonder how everyone can be so stupid. How she can be surrounded by people who think so slowly that they’re actually having trouble comprehending things that are so obvious.

Whenever she does that she always finds Stiles looking straight at her, like he’s thinking the exact same thing.

It only makes her hate him more.

~

Jackson Whittemore is just like Lydia in all the right ways.

He wants to be better than everyone. He wants it like it’s everything. Like to be lesser is death. Like to be lesser is hell.

Lydia has always felt the exact same way.

It’s refreshing, at first. For someone to ache for power like she does. The fact that the two of them are the only people who need control like they need air is probably the reason they actually achieve it in the first place.

She supposes that the fact they’re both beautiful and smart and mean doesn’t hurt.

It takes a long time for Lydia to love Jackson. It’s something that happens in an instant. Even when they started dating it was more an arrangement of mutual convenience, something they did because they both wanted to be the best and becoming a team was simply the next step in achieving that. But after they’ve been dating for a while Jackson looks at Lydia and she feels utterly understood in a way she had always thought might be impossible from the perspective of a mind that doesn’t move as fast as hers.

It puts fire in her bones and Lydia decides that she never wants to stop burning.

~

Far later, Lydia supposes that it isn’t so surprising that she ends up having loved them both.

She always has adored her reflection.

Selina & Talia

1 2 3

The first time Talia meets Bruce’s new lover, they stab each other.

Talia tries to ignore the fact that she’s a little impressed. It had been her understanding that the woman had no formal training and Talia hadn’t really expected her to get a hit in, let alone a stab wound. “You should leave my beloved alone. This will not end well for you otherwise.” she informs the woman.

The woman looks surprised. It makes Talia pleased until she speaks. “We literally just broke up.” she says and it’s Talia’s turn to look shocked now.

“Oh.” Talia wants to shift her weight but there’s still a dagger in her side. She supposes she can’t exactly complain since there’s a sword in the woman’s. “I apologise. It seems my intel is out of date.”

The woman, Selina she supposes now, looks at Talia like she’s never seen another person before. “You think?”

A far away corner of Talia’s mind notes that the splatter of blood on Selina’s face and the arch of her eyebrow make her look the exact kind of pretty Talia likes best.

She wishes she could shake herself. This encounter isn’t going how Talia had planned it. “I suppose we should both seek medical attention now.” she says, half to change the subject and half because it’s a valid point.

“I know a place.” Selina gets up, impressively steady considering how she has to keep one hand fixed on the sword in her to stop it moving around too much. Ones she’s on her feet she looks at Talia like she’s assessing her. Talia glares right back at her, back straight and eyes narrowed. Selina must like what she sees because she cocks the corner of her mouth into something a little like a smirk. “And afterwards you could come back to mine.”  she says slyly, “Just to rest, of course.”

Talia hadn’t quite expected that. She can’t say that she’s unhappy about it though. “Of course.” she echoes, “Not to dissuade you, but it is my understanding that you just broke up with someone?”

“Psh,” Selina waves the hand that isn’t holding Talia’s sword steady inside of her, “I’m not one to dwell on the past.”

Talia allows herself a smile. “Well then, how could I object?”

Selina & Talia

1 2 3

Selina quite likes this thing she’s had going on with Talia, it’s far better than whatever was happening with Bruce at least.

‘Stop stealing things’, ‘Move in with me’, ‘Don’t team up against me with the Sirens’ nag, nag, nag. That’s all it had been with Bruce. Talia actually understands the things Selina does and she couldn’t give less of a shit about them. Well, she sort of does. Selina imagines that if Talia saw her pull something as boring as your standard bank robbery she’d break up with her. That’s understandable though, Selina would break up with someone who would pull a job that unfashionable.

“Why do you keep leaving?” Selina asks, stretching as she looks over to Talia packing her bag. It’s an honest question.

“Some of us have jobs.” Talia replies, no heat behind it. She leans over and kisses Selina before shouldering the bag. She walks to the door but hesitates before turning the handle.

Selina freezes from where she was still stretching. Talia never hesitates.

“What if I work was not the reason I was leaving?”

“Then I’d be ashamed of myself for not having you caught you in a lie sooner.” Selina replies, keeping her tone casual despite the fact that this is probably the most serious conversation they’ve had to date. “I don’t suppose you’re cheating on me? Because I thought you had better taste than to do something so class-less.”

“I would never.” she declares. The severity of the statement doesn’t match the conversation’s previous tone and Selina realises quite suddenly that they aren’t trying to be light-hearted about this any more. “I’m going to bring someone next time we see each other.”

“Oh?”

Talia opens the door and for a moment Selina thinks she isn’t getting a reply. Then Talia turns back, looking at Selina with an expression that could mean absolutely anything. “I hope that the two of you will mean something to each other.” she says, before walking out and closing the door softly behind her.

Selina doesn’t move for a while after that, thinking about what might be coming. She hopes it won’t change things too much, her and Talia really do have something special.

~

A couple of weeks later Selina gets back to her apartment to find Talia inspecting the blueprint she had set out on the table and a boy, perhaps eight years old, playing quietly with a couple of Selina’s cats.

Talia looks up from the blueprints. She doesn’t smile like she usually does when Selina enters a room. “This is my son. Damian.” she declares.

The boy looks up and cocks his head to one side. A part of Selina’s brain that she isn’t paying much attention to right now decides that how similar the boy looks to Bruce probably isn’t a coincidence.

In an instant Selina’s hopes that her and Talia’s relationship could continue unchanged are dashed. But as she looks at the boy being oh so careful with her kittens, she thinks she might not mind such a change after all.