Watched Batman Ninja And What An Absolute Fucking Masterpiece Would Highly Recommend

When is a person not a person?

It’s a question that plagues Zatanna. Or, maybe not even that. When does a person become a different person? When does the helmet on your head twist and twist you into someone new and old and different who doesn’t have a daughter at all.

Zatanna wonders if the word orphan applies to her. She wonders if she’ll ever figure it out.

“I don’t know.” Robin says when she asks, because during one of their chats he let slip that he really is an orphan. Two whole parents buried in their graves, no waking up. The whole shebang.

“I want to know.” She answers. It feels like a big question, the kind you need someone to answer before you can move on and do anything with your life. “I want things to start making sense.”

The word orphan makes sense. She even looked it up in a dictionary, all very clear cut.

“Whatever the answer is, you have family.” He smiles and Zatanna thinks about how sweet he is.

“Wally’s a lucky guy.” she says, half because she wants the conversation to turn a little less serious, half because it’s the truth. Robin turns a bit red and Zatanna absent mindedly  starts thinking about what colour bridesmaid dress she would like.

“Shut up.” he groans, before turning serious again. “I don’t know what the right thing to say is, Z, but you’ve got to know that you’re one of us.”

Zatanna’s heart breaks a little even as she smiles. She does love the team, really she does. They’re bright and fast and beautiful and kind. They’re strong and clever and righteous and she does love them. It’s just that before she didn’t only belong with them. She had two places. She had a room in the mountain and a place by her father’s side.

It had made her feel whole, the duality of it all.

Maybe that’s why she packs a bag the next morning and conjures up a means of escape.

Every day with the team her soul shatters again. Every time she sees her father’s body, reduced to a vessel for a being that isn’t even kind, her heart breaks in two. Staying so close to reminders of all the things she’s lost isn’t doing her any good so she decides to leave.

Where’s the line between running away and escaping? she thinks, and finally there’s a question she doesn’t want the answer to.

of course he’s the kid you wanted, dick thinks, he says, he yells because he is eighteen and so full of hope for life that he forgot about the chains he put on himself that drag him back to bruce’s stupid fucking cave no matter how hard he tries to break free of them. and he’s tried to run away, he’s tried and tried and tried, from the very first fight he had with bruce when he was a burnt-out cluster of stars in the shape of a nine year old boy to two weeks ago, when he realized that there are papers that turn jason peter todd into jason peter todd-wayne. jason peter todd-wayne likes going to school and helps alfred cook and actually enjoys doing weapons inventory and reads books curled up in the big armchair next to the mahogeny desk in bruce’s chamber of an office. dick did backflips on the chair for all of ten minutes before bruce’s quiet scribbling and the walls full of books felt like they were closing in on him, and he had to tumble down the steps of the batcave and throw his body around the parallel bars just to keep his soul from ballooning out of his body with the need to move. jason made bruce smile the day his parents died in the alley his parents died in. jason is quiet enough to put bruce at ease but loud enough to fill the space and bruce loves him like a son. maybe bruce loved dick, but dick made him rub his forehead in exasperation and look over dick’s prescriptions every couple of months and slump with exhaustion after they spent a day together. dick made bruce tired, but jason made him smile, so dick bent his neck in submission and let the kid wear robin on his chest with pride. 

of course he’s the kid you wanted, jason spits out bitterly, the winds whipping past him and bruce on a rooftop like riptides carrying people to their deaths. he can pinpoint the minute his rage turned to hopelessness, because this new robin ran to the edge of a cliff and jumped off without a hint of fear, flying higher and higher until he reached the moon, until he reached the stars, until he reached the outstretched hands dick motherfucking grayson held out for him. dick held his hands out for jason too, but jason’s wings melted with the heat of dick’s stupid stupid stupid perfectness, and no matter what he did, icarus always fell. jason wasn’t an idealistic little annie with stars in his eyes; he braced himself for the burn the minute bruce took him into wayne manor, because rich white men always want things and jason spent months waiting to find out what bruce wayne wanted. the answer was companionship, the answer was someone to protect and care for, the answer was a child to love as his own, which was so hopelessly pure that jason’s skin felt bleached by it. tim’s skin didn’t have to be bleached by it. tim had skin as white as porcelain and eyes like shattered diamonds and an aristocratic little accent that jason could practically see jewels and precious metals dripping off of, his wealth and privilege locking jason in place like the midas touch. jason was a kid bruce picked up off the streets, and even though he’d spent his life knowing that he was smart and strong and clever enough to earn robin, to survive the league, to be red hood, there would always be someone better, someone worth more, someone who fit the robin mold like they were melted and poured into it. so jason snarled and screamed and broke down as loud as he could, because he thought he meant the world to bruce, thought he was his son, but tim was a much better son than jason could ever be, and jason didn’t just outgrow those pixie boots, his feet grew so big they tore them to pieces, and he’d never be able to wear them again.

of course he’s the kid you wanted, tim says to himself, on the precipice of turning his entire body into an ice-cold sculpture near unbreakable with the fire of emotion and letting the tears that had bubbled up into his throat burst out with all the fury of a supernova. tim had chip, chip, chipped away at himself until he’d become the perfect partner, the perfect robin, because that’s all he ever wanted to do. he wanted to be useful, he wanted to work for something with his own two hands and have earned his victory, he wanted someone to tell him they were proud of the work he had done. but tim had fucked it up, he’d fucked it all up, because he hadn’t been able to accept nearly everyone he loved being ripped from his greedy fingers, and all of the satisfaction he got from crowing about how he was right and how bruce was alive and they brought him back because of him turned to acid in his mouth because of the things he’d done to get there. damian was broken too, damian was shattered into so many little pieces that the shards pricked dick all over and made him bleed until damian was seeped into his skin so deep that dick didn’t have any other choice but to love him. tim was just fractured. he had bold lines running across his skin, a map of his strengths and things he overcame and survived turning into a map of his failure, and splinters running across his soul. a streak for trying to clone conner, a streak for mutilating the robin costume with his own grief, a streak for letting ra’s come as close as he did to compromising tim, a streak for not being able to convince cass to stay, a streak for getting kicked out the window and letting himself fall, letting dick believe he’d known he was there and quietly wishing that dick hadn’t gotten to him in time. damian, for all his faults, had only ever tried to claw his way up with bloodstained hands to morality and kindness and good, somehow ignoring the siren call that was the league at his back. so, with a silent and motionless tantrum as violent as someone locked inside arkham, tim screamed at the unfairness of it all, at the audacity of it all, but let himself become accustomed to the r sitting on damian’s chest.

Keep reading

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.

Shazam, a supposedly magic immortal being of unknown origin: kinda pops off ngl

Batman, a father of 6: (narrows eyes in suspicion) yes…indeed it does..

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.

cass doodle for fun

variations on a theme

“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.

This on ao3

There is someone in Duke’s room.

He’s in bed and had the bad luck of waking up facing the wall. He’s sure there’s someone in the space by his window but he doesn’t think he can turn over to try and get a glimpse of them without making it obvious that he’s awake.

“It’s obvious that you’re awake.” a voice calls from the space by Duke’s window.

Well never mind, Duke thinks, then, wait.

Duke knows that voice. He knows that voice significantly better than he wishes he did.

“Dad?” Fuck, he hadn’t meant to say that. That is not his Dad stood by the window.

Duke sits up and turns sees to Gnomon looking annoyingly pleased at the term of address. “Who else would it be?”

“What do you want?” he snarls, the effect likely ruined by the blanket still pulled up to his chest.

Gnomon tilts his head. “The question is more what do you want.” Duke is about to cut in with the fact that the answer is absolutely nothing before Gnomon continues. “There’s something you want to ask me.”

Oh. Duke hadn’t been expecting that. The problem is that he’s right, and Duke is possibly more annoyed about that than the man breaking into his room in the first place.

Duke sighs and comes to the conclusion that there’s really very little he can do about Gnomon being here. He may as well ask the question if the man is in a sharing mood today. “Am I going to die?” he asks.

Gnomon smiles, sharp and cruel and pleased, “No.” he says, and disappears into the shadows until Duke is alone.

Shit. That was the answer he had been hoping against.

~

Gotham is a city that shifts. It’s a city so heavy with cruelty that it crushes itself constantly, never able to settle into one shape or the other before something crumbles and it has to rearrange itself all over again.

It is not a city built with immortality in mind.

Duke wonders if he should leave one day. If forcing a level of change onto his life might make the rest of his existence endurable.

Jason laughs when he mentions these thoughts, loud and brash and maybe a little angry. The noise grates on Duke’s nerves and it makes him glad that he didn’t mention that the rest of his existence might be forever. “This city has had its claws in you all your life kid. You think it’s going to let go now?”

“Now?” Duke asks, hoping his calm might balance out Jason’s agitation. “What’s different about now.”

“You’re one of us now.” Jason cackles. He slaps his arm around Duke’s shoulders and the overfamiliarity of the gesture makes him tense up. He wonders if Jason is drunk right now. “You ever hear about a bat leaving Gotham for long and surviving?”

“You ever hear about a bat surviving Gotham for long?” Duke snaps. He had kind of hoped that it would make Jason back off with his crazed eyes and too loud laugh but it just sets him off again.

Jason wipes some dampness from the corner of his eyes. “You’re a riot, kid.” he says before leaving, despite the fact that Duke has said literally nothing funny this whole conversation.

Definitely drunk, he concludes, before deciding never to talk to any of the bats about leaving ever again.

~

After his talk with Jason, Duke starts having nightmares about how tangled he is in this city.

He’ll be running over rooftops just like every bat before him has and every bat after him will. He’ll be running and the rooftops will start shifting beneath his feet. It makes sense, at least within the dream. Duke will last forever and it’s clear that Gotham won’t so it’s only to be expected that at some point the ground that’s held him up all his life will be forced to crumble beneath his feet.

Duke is running over rooftops and things start shifting. At some point he trips as the ground sags beneath the weight he carries on his shoulders. The floor twists around him then, parts of it melting away like quicksand while the rest takes on a life of its own and wraps around Duke’s waist, trapping him so that he can’t get up and keep running.

Then what he was running from arrives.

They’re the same gargoyles that he was taught to sit among by the other bats. The same gargoyles he’ll nod hello to if he’s in a good mood and listening to the right music, feeling far more at home than he should in a place that haunts him so deeply. Only now the faces of the gargoyles are twisted into something even angrier than what they were carved to be. They screech and wail as they fly up to Duke’s trapped body and sink their talons into him, all for the sake of burying Gotham as deep into his flesh as possible.

Those dreams never end with Duke dying. He understands why.

~

Duke looks at Bruce differently now.

He knows Bruce can tell. Bruce can see that Duke doesn’t see something that verges on the otherworldly when he looks at Batman anymore. He just sees a man.

Duke thinks it might break Bruce’s heart a bit, but he understands that it isn’t for the wrong reasons. With all his other children things only started to go wrong when they stopped looking at him like the only thing between Gotham and oblivion. When they started to care more that he was a mediocre father and less that he was a perfect superhero.

“I’m not going to start hating you.” Duke tells him one night on patrol, because he thinks it might be something that needs to be said.

Bruce gives a sad half-smile. “I know. I just worry sometimes.” He pauses. “You haven’t been sleeping well.” he states.

“No.” Duke thinks for a moment about how Bruce has lived in Gotham for longer than anyone else he can talk to who knows enough about death that he might care about their answer. “You ever think about how you’ll be here forever?” he asks.

That sad half-smile stays glued to Bruce’s face. “All the time.” he answers, looking out across Gotham’s skyline with an expression that could only be described as grief.

Duke nods in understanding, it’s the same answer he would give.

You’re right and you should say it.

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