Exploring marvel comics at the moment.
This is also my bottom of the bottle era.
I know jack shit about usa teen culture to begin with, don't expect anything nice.
Batman and the Joker were already gone when Dick made it to the scene.
So was the Red Hood, it seemed.
Dick stood there for a moment, just watching the still smoldering rubble. He wasn't even sure why he was here in the first place. Batman was already out, and the Joker was with him.
The Red Hood was nowhere to be seen.
He should just go home. Go home, and not say anything about coming here. It wouldn't have done any good for anyone, anyway, after all. He could hear it in Bruce's voice, then in Alfred's.
A moment passed. Dick was still there.
There had been something. Something so familiar about the Red Hood. Something that made Dick feel strangely hopeful the more he thought about it, and he didn't know why.
There was just something.
He made his way down. He stepped around the bigger flames and into the scorching rubble. He didn't know what he was looking for. The Red Hood was gone already. He would be, if both Batman and the Joker were. That much Dick had understood about what he had been able to hear.
Still, it was like something was calling for him. Something, somewhere.
Dick wandered through the rubble and the smoke rising from it. He had been trained to listen to his instincts, after all, and this was him listening to them, he told himself, over and over again. He was doing what he knew the best.
It was the only way he could explain the feeling.
There was something in the rubble.
His eyes took a moment to recognise that what he was seeing was different from all the surrounding stone and metal. It was decidedly not made from either of those, and once his brain caught onto that fact, he zeroed in on it completely.
It was a leg, sticking out from beneath the rubble.
Dick had ran over and started to lift the rubble off of the leg before his brain caught up with him again. It was a leg dressed in torn, dark fabric, with a heavy boot on the feet. Another one became visible as Dick got some of the rubble off.
Then became visible part of the torso, dressed in torn and burnt combat shirt, and it was then Dick knew who exactly he was diggin out.
Or at least he thought he knew.
He would remain oblivious to the real truth for a moment longer.
Dick grabbed the next piece of debris, his fingers digging to what had once been either a part of a wall or a floor, with shattered tile still somehow clinging to it, and he dragged it off of the Red Hood, uncovering more of his body.
That was when he noticed the blood.
There was a lot of it. It didn't come as a surprise, exactly, with the amount of heavy wreckage that was on top of the guy. It would've been a miracle if nothing had hit him hard enough to cause some real damage.
It was a little surprising that Dick couldn't see the source of the blood yet. Was there really only one, single wound, despite all of the chances to get them all over instead?
He would worry about it in just a moment. First, he needed to see what was actually going on.
He pushed and pulled the pieces of the building away from the Red Hood, uncovering him bit by bit, discovering more of his blood in the process.
Then the last piece was pulled away.
With it, Dick found himself staring down at the face of Jason Todd.
Dick's world stopped for a one, single, long second.
Then it started all over again.
"Jason", Dick gasped, because he needed to breathe and speak at the same time to get his voice to work. "Jason."
Jason laid there, in the middle of smoke and rubble, his eyes closed and blood all over him.
He was taller than Dick remembered. He was bigger, too. Of course he was. Dick had seen the Red Hood. He knew who he was dealing with.
Jason was taller, bigger, older.
Jason was the Red Hood.
Jason was Dick's little brother.
Dick's little brother laid there, in the middle of smoke and rubble, his eyes closed and blood all over him.
There was so much blood.
"Jason." Dick wanted to scream. He didn't. If he did, then he would break the dream he was in. "Jason."
His fingers latched around Jason's wrist. Even through his suit, he could feel the warmth of his skin. He could've been warm because of all the fire that had been burning around him. Dick chose to believe otherwise.
He had been given a miracle. A miracle that was slightly twisted, but a miracle nevertheless.
He didn't want to believe that the world would be so cruel to give it to him and then take it away before he got to even have it.
He held onto Jason tight.
"Jason." His other hand craddled the side of Jason's face. The side with less blood on it. He still looked so much like he had before, despite all of the changes Dick could see. It had only been a few years, after all. Three? Four? Not too many. Entirely too many.
It was still Jason.
"Jason."
Jason opened his eyes.
He didn't look like he really saw Dick there, even though he was right in front of him. At first, he just stared somewhere past Dick, his eyes clouded over.
"Jason", Dick called.
At his voice, Jason's eyes moved ever so slightly more to Dick's direction. He still didn't look like he was really seeing him, but he was awake and moving at least somewhat. It was more than enough for Dick.
"Hold on", Dick told him. "You're going to be just fine."
There was blood on Jason's neck. It had spread from there and splattered onto his face and hair as crimson speckles. He had been bleeding quite some time.
Dick had no idea how he was still alive.
He wasn't complaining.
He needed to see a bit better, so he would know what he was dealing with, exactly. Reluctantly he let go off Jason's hand to wipe away some of the blood on his neck, to expose the wound more clearly to his eyes.
The skin beneath the blood was scorching through the fabric of Dick's suit.
Dick didn't pull his hand away. He continued to wipe away the blood, drenching his own hand in the process.
Beneath the red, there was a golden glow.
He got the edge of the wound visible. The flesh was still cut open on the surface there, but everything beneath it, the blood and the muscle were basking in golden light coming from the inside, slowly but surely knitting the flesh whole again, like thousands of needless with heavenly string in them were stitching Jason back together.
Dick had seen stranger things before.
One of them being his little brother back from the dead right in front of him.
He could take a little golden glow and the body healing on its own if the meant that his little brother stayed back from the dead.
"It's okay", Dick told Jason. "You're going to be okay."
He wiped away the blood from the edge upwards, all the way to the other side of Jason's neck. The cut was long and still deep in the middle, where the flesh had not yet healed itself as well, and Dick had the odd sense of familiarity come over him the longer he looked at it.
This time, though, there was no hopefulness accompanying the feeling.
This time, there was only the growing sense of despair.
Dick had seen a batarang being thrown enough times to know what a cut left behind by the edge of ones blade looked like.
Jason was not wearing his helmet. He was laying there, in the middle of smoke and rubble, blood all around him.
Batman and the Joker were both gone.
Dick's suit was covered in Jason's blood. He tore his eyes away from the wound, that damning wound, and looked back into Jason's eyes. They were still open, still looking at Dick, even if the slightly faraway look was still present in them.
It was enough.
"You're going to be okay", Dick told him.
Jason didn't say anything. Only one, singular tear gathered into the corner of his eye, dropping down to his cheek, washing away the drops of blood on its way.
He didn't resist when Dick gathered him into his arms.
"You're going to be okay", Dick told him. He pressed his face onto Jason's shoulder. He could feel the blood sticking to his skin, warm and damning. "You're going to be okay. I'll make sure of it."
Dick had been given a miracle, and he held onto it tight.
in one of the funniest Dick Grayson bits ever written, he has to hold still for a few hours (injury) and immediately gets obsessed with America's Most Wanted
When advocating against doomscrolling behaviour on the basis that looking at atrocities, by itself, does not do anything, and in fact burning yourself out by doing so will negatively impact your capacity for actually doing something, a common objection is that the people affected don't get the choice to just look away
And here's the thing
The people directly affected by any given atrocity don't get to sit there and stare.
They have to react. They have to actually DO SOMETHING, whether that's to run away, help the injured or try to directly deal with the atrocity.
The doomscroller does nothing useful, out of a sense of obligation that benefits no one, from a position of privilege where they're enabled to sit there and passively take in the horrors without acting.
Criticising the culture that creates this behaviour is necessary to redirect all that wasted cognitive load so it can actually go somewhere useful.
throwing a hand grenade into a hornets' nest here but all other criticisms aside, its just plain weird that so many people insist that half-century old usamerican bar culture (butchfemme, drag, etc.) is a Universally Understood and Accepted Queer Experience. like the overwhelming majority of present day queer people have zero connection to this concept, let alone the millions that have existed across history.
Hiya! So I loved your idea of Bruce having all these kids evil crime lords as his uncles, rejecting them as he grows older, but they still love him etc. But what if one day, a bunch of the crime lords (or maybe just The Penguin) team up and finally capture The Batman. They’re all celebrating, watching him get tortured for fun, until finally, they unmask him, preparing to kill him after.
I can’t imagine it would go well for either parties.
∧,,,∧
( ̳• · • ̳)
/ づ♡
Do you know how much I love when you bring this little cat back to me
Anyway
They've been at it for hours. Blood and sweat are dripping off him, he's half conscious and dredging up training to make it through, when a goon tries to pull his head up, but the suit is too damaged and the cowl slips back.
The room falls quiet with suspense, and Oswald steps forward, grabbing him by the hair to lift his head. Everyone else's view is blocked by him, so when he orders for everyone to get out, no one's sure why. The goons leave, but the other dons don't take orders so easily and stay behind.
"Oh chick," Oswald whispers, kneeling.
Bruce lifts his head, giving him a sly, bloody grin. "Uncle."
Shock ripples through the room, and everyone's staring in horrified silence. The boy they swore to protect, even after he renounced them, bleeding at their hand like he has been for years.
The boy they swore to protect, passing out from blood loss and slumping in his binds.
When he wakes up, he's in Gotham General, and his room is filled with his uncles, fast asleep at the foot of his bed, or in uncomfortable chairs around the room. It reminds him of the years of his youth, and he wonders if he can pretend. If, for once, he doesn't have to be Batman.
If he can pretend, for once, that he's just Bruce Wayne. That he's just Chick.
4 all who never made it home. @matikura - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
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