get these mfs a therapist

[papayafromtv]

conversations overhead through the batkid com lines pt. 26 (masterpost here)

Tim: i actually cannot believe you're making us patrol right now. on christmas eve. we will unionize.

Bruce: crime does not stop for any holiday, Red Robin.

Damian, grumpy: speak for yourself, father. Red Hood just messaged me that he's on his seventh beer and just started season three of Lost in Space.

Dick: really, that's his christmas show?

Damian: he says the robot reminds him of Bizarro.

Tim: why does Hood get to take christmas off?!?

Dick, tired: because apparently Jay's chill enough with the criminal underground of crime alley that Black Mask sent out a community notice that they'd all 'agreed to be cool until the end of christmas week' so that everybody could get a break from being shot at.

Tim: ...you're joking.

Damian: last i heard there was a block party being co-run by Hood's goons and the DeCavalcante mafia family. they're giving out free cookies and mulled wine.

Tim: HOW COME HOOD GETS NICE VILLAINS?!

Dick: ...i mean, Deathstroke sent me a christmas card. the Bludhaven guys also switch to paintball guns for the christmas week so i can join in without risking my no kill rule. it's kinda fun. if i survive the week without getting hit they give themselves in to the police and promise not to break out for two whole weeks.

*a beat of silence*

Tim: oh so EVERYBODY gets fun christmas villains apart from the central Gotham gang, huh? the fuck did we do Robin?!

Damian: five minutes ago father sucker-punched a thief in the throat and when they said 'but it's christmas and i need to buy my kids presents!' father said, *gruff voice* 'Batman will not stand for seasonal excuses for crime'.

*six seconds of silence*

Bruce: i do not sound like that.

Dick: and there's your answer, RR. it's because Batman's a bitch.

Tim: i cannot believe i forced my way into this job.

[jasontodddidnothingwrong]

Jason Todd returns to Gotham and things get... better?

Sure, Red Hood stops the supply of drugs to kids, and the working girls are safer than ever, and those who are desperate enough to resort to goonery are finally able to actually put food on their respective tables, but there's something else. Something strange and more than a little intangible.

It's the weather that Gothamites notice first. It doesn't rain as much; the year following Hood's rise to power has record-low rainfall, almost on par with Metropolis for once. The air quality index goes down a hundred points, and if you ask the average resident, they might swear that the sun is somehow brighter these days.

Then, the crime rates start to plummet. A 40% reduction of domestic violence. 30% less murders. 60% less sexual assaults. And not just in Crime Alley, where the Hood is on the prowl: crime is down all over Gotham.

Public health is next. The rate of birth defects goes down 70%. Cancer diagnoses are halved. Cases of Sudden Infant Death Syndrom dwindle. Vaccines finally manage to flush out the last stubborn vestiges of preventable disease.

And then there's the weird stuff. A Gothamite wins the lottery for the first time in history. A woman gives birth to healthy octuplets. The number of accidental deaths reaches an all-time low. There are sightings of a strange man slicing glowing blades through the air, leaving light and lightness in his wake.

And, one day, years after Jason's return, the Justice League Dark visit. John Constantine turns to the Batman and says, "Love what you've done with the place, mate. Who'd you get to remove all the curses?"

[lightningstrikes-art]

[papayafromtv]

Batman gets home after a long day of patrol to find one of his newest enemies, the murderous crime lord Red Hood, in his personal civilian office. he prepares to fight despite having taken off all of his gear back down in the cave, only for Red Hood to see him in the doorway and without hesitation, he takes off his helmet.

Jason Todd stares at him from across the desk, tears and snot streaming down his face, and Bruce freezes.

“I don’t know how to hook up the new dryer i bought for my apartment and now my landlord is asking for bank statements to prove i can pay rent and my wifi keeps fucking up and I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT WATER PRESSURE IS,” Jason wails, distraught and sobbing harder than Bruce has ever seen before. he fumbles, jaw dropping, as Jason swipes at his eyes, sniffing. “THIS ISN’T FAIR,” he cries wetly. “I DIED BEFORE I LEARNT ABOUT TAXES, WHAT THE FUCK IS A STOCKS ISA??!”

Bruce bites his lip, deciding to not show his slight amusement. “Oh, chum,” he empathises.

“THIS IS SO FUCKED UP.”

“I know, I know,” he soothes, holding his hands up in submission and carefully moving forward so he could place them comfortingly on Jason’s shoulder. did he know what was going on? absolutely the fuck not. was he going to question it and scare away his apparently-not-dead-son? absolutely the fuck not. “How about some warm milk and cookies, and then you can show me the files that confuse you?”

Jason sniffs. “…and then the dryer?”

“I can hook up your dryer, chum.”

“…I’m not gonna stop being a crime lord,” his son warns, shamelessly using Bruce’s sleeve to wipe away the snot dribbling down his lip. Bruce bits his lip again.

“Let’s not worry about that right now. One problem at a time.”

“I also own zero spoons.”

“There’s some in the kitchen you can steal.”

“…Thanks, B.”

[superboyprimed]

Jason light study

[possumtion]

Jason todd angst hours

[darkknight-hero]

Imagine the kids only realize Ace is a service dog when he starts alerting for Jason, and Bruce is just like, “I…are you okay?”

Jason, “Tf? I’m fine.”

Bruce, “Ace is alerting.”

Jason, “…what?”

Bruce, “Is it a panic attack? Jay, come sit down, please.”

And Jason gets tugged onto the couch before he even knows what’s happening. Ace lays across his lap, keeping his eyes on Jason the whole time, and the weirdest thing is that, yeah, he was about to have a panic attack. Damian was scuffling w Tim and the sound of Damian’s sword dragging against the ground had made him freeze. But…what the fuck?

Jason, after he’s calmed down, “So…since when?”

Bruce, w Jason’s legs across his lap, “Hmm?”

Jason, “Ace. Since when did he know how to do that?”

Bruce, “Oh, well…he’s my service dog.”

Jason, “…what?”

Bruce, “Funny enough, Harley recommended I get one, and when Ace showed up, it just…made things easy.”

Jason, “You’ve had Ace for years. How…how did we never know?”

Bruce, shrugs, “I never said anything about it. Didn’t seem important.”

Jason, “‘Didn’t seem important’, my ass! Oh my god, it makes so much sense now.”

Bruce, “I wasn’t hiding it…”

Jason, “B, hiding things is like second nature to you. You do it even when you don’t mean to. It’s why Dickie stresses open communication so much, and that includes things you ‘don’t think are important’.”

Bruce, “I…see. I’ll try harder.”

[brucedefender4eva]

When Dick was a teenager and at odds with Bruce, he tried to get a piercing as a form of rebellion. He heard from his friends that their parents totally flipped, so he got himself an earring.

Blue, gaudy, and bedazzled.

When he showed up to the manor with it, he made sure to strut in front of Jason and pretend he didn’t care that his little brother was practically fawning over how cool he looked.

The moment Bruce came into the room, Dick was expecting a huge confrontation and a yelling match, like his friends had all said would happen.

Instead, Bruce lit up and smiled at Dick before leaving the room in a hurry.

Jason and Dick exchanged confused glances before Bruce came back holding a picture and beaming proudly.

The picture is of teen Bruce with a whole bunch of piercings, looking like an ethereal vampire. Snake bites that made it look like he had fangs, industrial, lobe, septum, bridge, etc. Just a lot.

The boys are slack-jawed at their Dad looking like that while Bruce is fondly telling him about all the piercings he had and how he wished he had more, but Alfred wouldn’t let him

“I also had a belly piercing. Ollie convinced me to get that one back at boarding school.” Bruce said wistfully, reminiscing about his intense goth era when he didn’t have to worry too much about public perception.

Dick is mortified because for more than half a second he actually thought his Dad was super cool again. Jason is ooh-ing and awe-ing at the picture.

When Dick does back his apartment, he considers taking the piercing out and letting the hole close up, but he feels slightly bad since Bruce was trying to connect with him.

[frejamart]

bruce storming into the manor because with WE in the news there’s been an influx of rumors and scandals and it’s fine if you make up lies about him that’s what he does for a living. but coming after his kids?

they’re all used to sly remarks being made about their backgrounds, things alluding to stereotypes and the such. but to outright claim that dick isn’t even an american citizen? too far.

he confronts dick, tells him he’s sorry about all this and he’ll have this rumor taken care of asap. he’s halfway done dialing the daily planet when dick is just nonchalantly like.

“rumor? b in their defense, i’m not a us citizen. i mean at least i don’t think i am?? i mean i never took the test.”

and bruce pauses and is like. what are you talking about of course you are you were born her- ohhhhhh. ohhhh yeah. oh yeah so actually i did in fact take you in on a whim cause the night your parents died the world traveling circus just so happened to be in gotham. and now he’s spiraling about how he could’ve let something like that slip.

he thinks to himself - did i just. never do that paper work? was there even paper work? how did he graduate high school- (it’s cuz ur rich bruce) and then he’s deleting clark’s number and starts dialing harvey’s instead.

jason listening in the back is like dude you voted this year and dick is like i think i’ve run for office ???

[bat-therapy]

one of us, but i'm not going to tell you who (it's me), just watched the 2010 "under the red hood" for the first time.

and barring the amount of time i spent, jaw agape at the screen at the angst unfolding in front of me, the thing that's fucking with me is that. he was just a kid.

and when he comes back, lazarus-touched—ra's even describes him as "damaged"—he's still just a kid.

and i imagine that "damaged" is somewhat of a surface-level description to the way that the pit actually feels. i imagine it's a hunger, the kind that claws at your insides, that eats away at your chest until you feel hollow and brittle, and when—not if, when—you break, the pieces will be jagged and razor-sharp.

and it's really gut-wrenching because like. bruce was the person that he thought, hoped—i imagine pre-bruce jason might have even prayed to a god that didn't care enough to reside in crime alley that someone like bruce might find him one day—would do anything for him. and instead, it's a child being shown in real time that the one person he thought loved him unconditionally did, in fact, have conditions. bruce's condition was that he wouldn't break his own code for jason—when for jason, there was nothing that could have stood in the way of unconditional protection, even after death.

it's why he can forgive bruce for not saving him, but letting the joker live means that bruce doesn't fully love him, not the way jason loves bruce.

it's a boy who, in his last moments, wished for his father. it's a boy-now-man who is starving for the warmth he once had, who wants to look his dad in the eyes and see that they still share some part of themselves. (sure, they've always had a marginal resemblance physically, but jason looked to bruce and wished that maybe, maybe he wasn't so alone in his jagged bones and simmering skin.)

it's a child for whom love now bears conditions, who now carries deep in his chest that he isn't worth it.

[batsandbirdsandothers]

Prequel to this post aka one of the scenes I remember

I remember it being an incomplete work…

Jason bullying dick as a hallucination(?), later revealing that he IS in fact real and tells Dick to dig up his grave.

Update: we got the answer!!

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[ideas-ideasideasideas]

Batman gives each of his Robins a different code to use when they’re in trouble and need immediate extraction. He promises that when they call, he’ll drop everything just to get to them, come hell or high water.

Jason, during his time with the League, shares his code with Damian, to be used “only in the direst of circumstances, when you have exhausted all other options.” He doesn’t know if Bruce will answer, given how fractured their relationship was before he died, but it is better than nothing. Every tool counts when they live such dangerous lives.

Damian uses it exactly once, and Bruce, who still feels the loss of his son like a yawning chasm in his chest, responds to it even though he knows it can’t be Jason because Jason’s dead. What he finds, instead of Jason, is a boy in League garbs, drenched in blood from the tips of his midnight-black hair to his too-small feet, with a face that Bruce sees himself and Talia in, requesting asylum from a grandfather who wishes to possess his body. Bruce doesn’t question how this boy who is so clearly his son knew the code. Talia al Ghul is resourceful and places family above all; the code is not beyond her abilities to discover, and she is not above using Bruce’s desperate love for his dead son to ensure that hers does not meet the same fate.

Bruce takes Damian in, because of course he does, and since Jason is dead he allows Damian to keep using the code. After all, it’s not like Jason is alive to use it, right? If someone uses the code, there’s no one it could be but Damian, right?

The next time the code is used, Bruce traces the location to Gotham even though Damian was supposed to be in Bludhaven visiting Dick. But whatever happened that resulted in Damian being in Gotham can wait, because he has already failed one son and he will not fail another, his son is in trouble and he needs to get to him, he needs to—

What he finds, instead of Damian, is a boy (just eighteen, too young, but also too old, but also he will always be a boy to him) in League garbs, drenched in blood from the tips of his midnight-black hair to his too-large feet (when had he gotten so big), wearing the face of his dead son.

(Who, maybe, just maybe, may no longer be so dead.)

[papayafromtv]

Seventeen year old crime lord Jason Todd realising that the actual adulting part of being an adult is fucking hard, and when he forgets to go grocery shopping and is hungry on patrol he catches sight of the batmobile and just decides fuck it. He remembers when he was Robin. He knows for a fucking fact there are fruit snacks in the glove compartment of the batmobile. He’s hungry. Fuck this whole thing.

Batman and Robin finish dealing with a rogue and Bruce gets notified that the batmobile’s been compromised. Red Hood has already tried to blow up him and Robin multiple times this point, so without being sure who it is he’s already cautious. They get back to the car ready to fight only to find their city’s latest crime lord half-hanging out of the passenger window, legs flailing in the air, banging loudly about on the inside of the car with his fists.

“WHY THE FUCK ARE THERE NO CHERRY OPTIONS?! B I KNOW YOUR BITCH ASS KNOWS NEVER TO RUN OUT OF CHERRY.” He screams when he notices them standing around nearby.

Bruce is fucking flabbergasted. Tim’s the only one with the (albeit baffled) sense of mind to stick his hand up in the air like he’s at school before confusedly letting Hood know “…Uhm. I think- I think there’s some cherry flavour in the- in a box under the back seat…?”

Red Hood’s legs flail about slightly as he twists around into an even weirder angle to reach the back. A few more clanks and bangs later and he starts shuffling back out of the window, body language smug. Whe he’s out, he turns to reveal a handful of cherry flavour fruit snacks in his hands. He cocks a hip as he starts unwrapping them.

“So. How was Riddler tonight?”

Bruce makes an aborted movement towards him, suddenly panicked. “You can’t- don’t you dare eat those! Those are Jason’s!” He blurts unthinkingly, memories flashing in his mind of little Jason, the son he mourned, constantly hungry and stubborn about the types of snacks he’d eat. After he’d died and Bruce cleared out the car for the first time, he’d found one of Jason’s old stashes. He hadn’t been strong enough to get rid of them. Still kept a second secret stock of the second Robin’s favourite mid-patrol munchies on hand, as if his ghost would come back to complain about being forgotten. Seeing Red Hood desecrate his sacred offerings made his blood pressure spike, but it was nothing compared to the way he bluescreened when Hood didn’t react at all, instead continuing to unwrap the plastic and undoing the clasp of his helmet with one hand.

“Yeah, bitch-ass.” He sniped, taking off the helmet and shoving the snack in his mouth. “‘ason’s ‘uckin snacks. Mine.” He muffled around a mouthful of food.

Bruce goes very, very still. “What.”

Tim cocks his head. “…Did you really just identity-reveal yourself for a fruit snack?”

“Mind your fuckin’ business, Replacement.”

“Yeah ok.”

[deansnoodle]

his prince of gotham era was so so good

[papayafromtv]

people don't talk enough about how fucking funny it is that bruce can sub in his kids as batman when he's too busy. like can you imagine it from the league's perspective? imagine you have this really mysterious, geniusly scary guy that you know next to nothing about, never cracks a smile and yet always comes out on top, and one day he shows up to a league meeting and there's just something... off. about him.

you can't pin it down because he's literally acting exactly the same as usual and there's no reason to think there's anything wrong, but maybe he shifted in his seat one to many times, or he looked just a tad bit too bored during green lantern's case review, but something's just... odd. so you quietly ask superman after the meeting if anything's up with the bat bcs you know those two are closer and also clark can hear heartbeats so if something's wrong surely he'll pick it up? and without hesitation he leans over to you and mumbles 'yeah batman was busy, that's his 17 yr old son. he's a crime lord and kills people sometimes though so we're not allowed to let him into the weapons department.' and then walks away like it's normal.

like the whiplash the league must go through every time they realise that no, this is not their fearless dark and brooding leader, this is in fact one of his dipshit kids being forced to sub in bcs the real batman broke an ankle, is incredible.

wonder woman: so that's my proposed plan, what are your thoughts batman?

batman: hn. i think that- *voice raising two octaves* oh shit hold on my phones buzzing

the league:

batman, answering the phone and immediately dropping the Bat Posture™: what do you mean- aw come on little wing that's not fair! but- no, NO DON'T YOU DARE TELL ALFRED I'LL BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF YOU- IM SORRY OK I'LL BUY YOU MORE- *catches sight of the league watching him, baffled* *stiffens* ok listen i promise to replace them but i gotta go, please show me mercy iloveyoubye *hangs up*

the league:

batman:

batman: *coughs awkwardly*

superman: *sighs*

batman, to superman: ...red hood found out i ate his chocolate pretzels-

superman, shaking his head: just... just stop.

the flash: so this isn't batman either, is it?

wonder woman: if this one's also a criminal im losing my mind.

superman, tiredly: no no, this one isn't a criminal. this one's actually a cop.

batman: *sinks down in his seat* b's gonna kill me

green lantern, mystified: where does he keep GETTING you all from!?

'batman' dick, who made a pact with jason to Always Fuck With Bruce Whenever The Opportunity Arises: batman is a whore.

they think they've finally sussed out all 2 of batman's kids and then one day during a meeting 'batman' ends up on a 30 minute rant about different hacking methods this tech villain could be using that results in him half way through a sentence breaking off to say '-oh uncle clark could you pass me that pen- thanks, anyway so-' and then five minutes after that when the league have all been exchanging incredulous looks he finally freezes and is like. SHIT.

wonder woman: you're different from the other two, aren't you?

batman: maybe i am maybe i'm not, you can't prove it.

wonder woman:

green lantern: so like, are you new or have you just managed to avoid sub duty up until now?

superman, coughing: actually, this is this ones ninth occasion of replacing batman. you've just never realised before.

the league:

batman: yeah actually the other two are kinda mad i lasted longer than them...

the flash: how the fuck does he keep getting kids with the exact same build as him!??!?

'batman' tim, spent 20 minutes padding the suit out so he would look the part, still mad that bruce keeps palming WE work off on him: oh he forces us to take steroids for it.

the league, concerned:

superman, pinching the bridge of his nose: now come on red robin-

batman, fully tearing up and looking distraught: PLEASE uncle clark, it HURTS, you can't keep COVERING FOR HIM!

superman, frantically to the league: this one lies.

bonus

the league, squinting at batman:

the league: ...

superman: *head in his hands, too disappointed to do anything*

the league: *silently exchanging looks, wondering if anybody's brave enough to say anything*

duke as batman, fully aware this is fucking stupid but jason and tim fell on the floor laughing when dick came up with the idea and frankly, he wanted to see if anybody would have to guts to call him out: so, are we all ready to start the meeting?

[renviary]

(Plat/fam)

rich is in fact the 'scary brother' and I will die on this hill

[frownyalfred]

Batman moves freakishly fast. it’s not that he moves faster than you can see, or faster than a speeding bullet like Superman — it’s that he’s 6’2, 220 lbs full of muscle and he can move so quickly, so soundlessly, that it sets every human’s instincts on edge. Batman is terrifying because any reminder that the man underneath the mask is human somehow doesn’t make it better, it makes it worse, because what the fuck—

[guildofscribes]

Literally one of my favorite things about Batman.

The tank-man also moves like a competition gymnast. Deal with it.