knightfight layson au ..... dash is deadish i think. there is a yap utc. this is your warning.
tldr summary of knightfight + jason's part in it ;; basically bruce gets put through different hallucinations ?? essentially that show him 'alternative universes' / different potential futures where each of his sons becomes batman, and each potential future he's shown targets what bruce fears the most about what being batman may do to his sons. in the future he's put in where jason is batman, the joker released a poison gas all over gotham, and the city evacuated all of its residents, and gotham was sealed under this massive red dome so the gas couldn't spread. bruce and everyone jason loves died, but the joker is also dead so that's kinda a plus ?? anyways with nobody else left, jason inherits the cowl and stays in gotham to guard the city completely alone. and by the time 'past bruce' gets to this future jason has been doing it for 20 years. except there are no civilians for him to protect, and no criminals to fight, the whole city is abandoned, and jason's purpose is to keep everyone out of gotham because it's contaminated. jason is in his 40s in this time line, which is important ( to me hehehehehehe )
but now the actual layson au stuff ... knightfight layson is completely separate thing from main layson. in main dc.layla grew up alongside jason in the batfamily, they were in love without knowing what love really was before his death, and then she recognized him when he returned, all that good stuff. knightfight dc.layla has an entirely different childhood, history, and relationship with jason. she shares the essential personality, identity and emotional dna / makeup because she is still layla, i just had to change some things around and jump through some hoops to build it around the knightfight version.
the au stays aligned with the central knightfight set up, gotham was contaminated and evacuated 20 years before bruce arrives in it, the city is sealed and empty except for jason, bruce and the rest of the batfamily are dead. jason stayed behind and became batman, and has spent 20 years alone guarding gotham. the major change here is that layla arrive in gotham about 2 years before bruce enters this future, when she's 18, which makes her 20 when bruce arrives. so really in this au jason technically only spent 18 years alone.
knightfight layla's new origin is that bruce had taken layla in as an infant less than a year before it was contaminated ( because just like in main dc layson she's my age, 20 almost 21, in knightfight the evacuation would have had to happen when she was a baby, like less than a year old ) so she was still a baby when it happened, and somehow was evacuated and did not die with the rest of the batfamily. the how, when, where, and with who does not matter. the mechanics of how she survived and where she was taken are not important.
she grows up knowing :: she was originally from gotham, bruce wayne adopted her, bruce wayne was her father, he died when gotham was lost. she only knows bruce wayne as bruce wayne. nobody who survived and raised her knew bruce wayne as batman. anybody who could have told her about that also died. so her understanding of him comes from pictures, records, articles, stories from people who knew his public face. she has absolutely no reason to suspect that her father was batman, and sees batman as a completely separate person associated with gotham.
she does not spend 18 years as only 'bruce wayne's lost baby' she grows up and becomes a full person before jason ever meets her. she has no family connection to jason. maybe jason heard that bruce adopted another kid, but never learned its name, never met it, he was estranged at the time. so they have 0 familial connection.
but layla goes through life. she's just like me ( she is literally me ) she's a little awkward, and socially anxious, and has never had many friends. by the time she gets to gotham at 18 she doesn't have anyone she considers a friend, and nobody outside would consider her to be one either. but she has had friends before, just so few that she can remember each one of them by name, when the friendship began, when it ended and even why. she's also had prior romantic relationships, two max, but always with people around her age, two years older at most. never older the way jason is older.
so she has some experience, reference points, and jason isn't the first person in the world to show her affection ( she is a virgin though soooooo .... that's just for me to have fun with )
so that's layla for this au ...
the timeline for this au is basically ::
as an infant :: bruce takes her in, few months later gotham is contaminated ( i dont know exactly how much time between the two events, but it's less than a year ), layla is evacuated, bruce dies, jason stays in gotham and becomes batman
ages 1 - 18 :: she lives her own life, knowing only that bruce wayne was her father and gotham used to be her home. jason is also living his own life with no human company, no casual conversations, or contact with the outside and protecting gotham by keeping people out of it.
age 18 :: she somehow enters gotham. how she gets through the barrier, why the contamination does not kill her, the science of her exposure is deliberately ignored. this is a dollhouse. it's my dollhouse. these are my dolls. i get to decide. she survives because she is special, and the story needs her alive. thank you, i need to give no other reason. she can also come and go ( the science and canon logic of this is also being waved away because again. dollhouse. mine. my dolls ) her leaving is difficult and dangerous and gets complicated after her exposure, but it remains possible. she isn't trapped with jason and does not have to stay. i did this cause her being able to leaving establishes that the eventual relationship is choice, and not a product of essentially being captive. i like dark fiction and stuff sometimes, but i didn't want that with this.
they meet as total strangers. he does not know that she's bruce's adopted daughter, again he might have heard about bruce taking in a baby, but never met it and does not connect it to the adult layla. layla initially probably tells him that she was born gotham and her father died there. jason would have no reason to assume that her unnamed father among thousands of fathers in gotham was bruce. so they have zero familial relationship. he did not know her as a baby, he did not watch her grow up, he did not raise her, he never occupied an older brother or guardian role in her life. LISTEN !!!! i love dad-daughter, i love big brother stuff, but that's not what this is. it's also important that it's like this in this au cause in main layson jason and dc.layla do sorta kinda technically ???? maybe ?????? sorta ??????? have familial thing, in a loose 'kinda, technically but not really ??' way. but i want this to be totally separate from that.
the first year of layla being in gotham is completely non-romantic. jason is unsettled and honestly kinda a little irritated by her being there. not because he dislikes her, he has just been alone and in silence for 18 years, and suddenly sharing a space with a living, breathing, real person is a lot. so for 18 years he hasn't had to maintain a conversation, or share routines or resources, or explain himself, of tolerate noise that isn't from himself or the city, or take into account another person's feelings, emotions and personality.
layla is also awkward, and not entirely emotionally adjusted ... ( she's me ) so him being blunt or quiet makes her think he hates her at first. so there's a lot of misunderstandings in the beginning. layla talks a lot because she's nervous and apologizes for talking too much, and jason answers and responds to things a little too rough without realizing it, layla thinks she's annoyed him and stops talking, jason notices she's quiet and cant explain why he dislikes it. so they're boh replaying conversations and reach completely incorrect conclusions about them ( awwww ... losers. they're lovely )
they figure it out though. layla starts talking to him about everything that's happened over the past 18 years outside of gotham. new tech, and movies, and music, and trends and politics, and then about her personal life over the past 18 years too. so he also gets her former friends, and exes, and interests and opinions about media and all that stuff.
he starts enjoying the company, and they start getting used to each other. layla learns that him being quiet or rough doesn't mean he's angry. and he learns that when she asks if he's mad at her she genuinely can't tell and needs a direct answer.
when she's around 19 after they've had a full year of getting to know each other, and seeing more of each other as an individual person their relationship gradually shifts into something more romantic.
it's super slow burn part cause i like slow burn, part cause it makes sense for the environment they're in, and part because jason is very aware of the age gap and power imbalance. but it's okay !!!!!!
the relationship slowly becomes more intimate and domestic ( as it can be ) and secure. they build a genuine shared life together, the way that they can given the circumstances. by the time 'past bruce' would be dropped into this future layla would be 20 almost 21 and her and jason are fully together. his arrival doesn't expose the relationship as something that isolation induced, it just interrupts an already established and solid partnership.
less important, i thought of this after i figured out the main stuff, but the bruce who enters this world that they exist in wouldn't actually know layla, because the bruce that adopted her was the future bruce who died when gotham fell, not the 'past bruce' who was sent to this alternative reality. so really her being bruce's child is because 1. i needed her to have a reason to want to go back to gotham, and 2. i wanted to give her something that kept her tied to main dc.layla.
