Waylon was used to people seeing him as a monster. He had been called a freak or a monster since childhood, with people sneering at him and looking down on him for what he looked like.
Waylon could count on one hand the number of people who treated him like a normal person. Grundy was one. Roy was another. Harley treated him fine.
Danny was the first time someone had seen him and not even reacted. Danny just shared his food with him, smiling at him and chatting about random things. He didn’t mind Waylon’s scales or the sharp teeth. He just accepted it.
Danny saw him for him.
So when Danny, with bright green eyes and his hood finally down and showcasing the pale pointed ears and green blush, admitted why he was down in the sewers? When the small boy traced a hand over surgical scars Waylon had never seen before as he whispered about the group calling him a freak?
Well, Waylon had been seen as a monster for a long time.
Everyone in the Justice League knew that Captain Marvel was private about his civilian life. He never revealed himself, even after the past ten years of him being a part of the League even with everyone else already coming clean.
Still, they knew his personality. He was kind, forgiving and generous. He always protected people, was always willing to cover their shifts, and had the best relationship advice. (Even though Solomon was usually guiding him.)
They were used to certain things from their teammate, but finding their teammate tearing apart a government facility, lightning crackling around him and frying people alive.
They followed him in to find him cradling a boy with white hair and pointy ears who was covered in medical scars. They watched helplessly as the boy’s eyes fluttered open.
“Who did this to you?”
They had never heard Captain Marvel’s voice sound so cold. For the first time in their lives, they understood why people were scared of the champion of magic.
Danny had made peace with the fact he did not have a soulmate. He had! After several years of no response to the countless drawings and writing notes on his skin, he had grown resigned to the fact that he was part of the 5% who did not have soulmates. He was fine with that.
(Dash would tease him about how no one would ever love him, adding salt to an already irritated wound. His parents were soulmates, and he remembered when he was drawing on his father’s arms and watching as it appeared on his mother’s. Jazz had been drawing and writing to her soulmate for years. Her soulmates name was Jason, and she always talked about how he was with her. She was one of the few people who comforted him when he stopped drawing or writing to soulmate. )
Damien taught at an early age that there was no use for soulmates. They were only distractions. He knew grandfather had no soulmate, and his mother had never responded to her own. He never responded to the drawings on his arms notes the notes in English on his (and he didn’t try harder just because he wanted to read his soulmate writing that would be ridiculous.)
Damien never told his family about having a soulmate. Even as he slowly got used to the differences between them and slowly learned how his grandfather was he could never bring himself to respond to the slowly lessening drawings and messages.(He couldn’t bring himself to respond because deep down he knew he didn’t deserve a soulmate. He was a monster, a demon. He didn’t deserve it.)
Danny stopped trying so desperately to contact his soulmate at age 11(the age he held his sister as she cried, her soulmate’s last message scribbled in desperate frantic writing on her arm. He never resented his parents so much when they didn’t even leave the lab for two days, not paying any mind to their sobbing child on the floor above them.)(it was the first time he didn’t envy having a soulmate.)
He was fourteen when he started drawing on his arms again.(it was shaky, much more than the older drawings, but even if he didn’t have a soulmate, he wanted to leave them a mark, just in case, the same way Jazz wrote quotes from different books on her arms.)
(When he found out Vlad didn’t have a soulmate, he refused to acknowledge another similarity they shared. He refused to think about how Vlad’s desperation made Danny think of his own desperate writing for his soulmate. Soulmates were a topic he never spoke of, and Vlad must have known, must have found out about how Danny didn’t have one, but he never commented on it. (It was the only boundary that was never crossed.))
(Damian wasn’t disappointed when his soulmate stopped writing to him. he didn’t trace over his arms, wishing that he had the confidence to write back. He didn’t spend hours wondering if his soulmate was gone without knowing Damian had seen him. He didn’t trace over the drawings his soulmate made with awe after four years of silence.)
Damian always covered up, so he was the only one who noticed when his soulmate started writing to him again. Never sentences never notes like they were before, but shaky drawings appeared on his skin. They were less detailed than before, almost shaky, as if the person drawing them couldn’t hold a pencil, steady, but they were real. Damian never said a word.
It was October 15 when Damien saw something on his arms that made his blood go cold. A message that he read over and over while commandeering the plane and ignoring the rest of his family yelling for him to explain himself. He desperately calibrated the jet while staring at the words, praying to a God he did not believe in that he would not be too late.(Unaware that Todd was following going in the same direction with the similar message written on his arm from a girl that Jason had deemed too good for him.)
Dear soulmate, even if you aren’t there. Everyone in Casper high is writing on their arms and I might as well try to warn someone. I am from Amity Park, Illinois, and we are under attack. The GIW have cut all outside communication. We are currently hiding in Casper high school, barricading the entrances, but it will not last long.
According to the government, we are not legally sentient or human. The agents outside want to dissect us, citing that we are scum. I don’t want to see my classmates die at the hands of my parents. I don’t want to see my friends and my sister die.
I don’t know if you are there, or if I really don’t have a soulmate, but I don’t want to die (fully) without leaving some sort of note.
Wes always loved his Aunt Lois, and wrote to her every week. Of course she noticed when the letters slowed down, coming in with weird stains Clark couldn’t identify. She could tell things were missing, and being redacted. She could tell he was trying to tell her something.
She noticed when the letters stopped. She contacted Clark and the league, but they couldn’t find anything, until she received a call from an unknown number. She picked it up.
“Aunt Lois, I need to be picked up, and I’m not alone. Also, can you tell your husband that the government is doing evil things, and the buildings on fire are not my fault? Also, did you know I was cursed? Because I found out just a few hours before I almost got cut open. Sidenote, apparently the whole family is slightly cursed and that’s the only reason you’re gonna be able to believe me.”
Maddie didn’t speak to her father, as did her sister. Unfortunately, that made it hard for them to contact their favorite uncle, but when they left at eighteen, they both agreed it was for the best. Even after they found out the old man was dead, they didn’t reach out, unsure of what they would say.
That was then.
Now, with shaking hands covered in ectoplasm,(god her baby was hurt, she had been hurting her baby, THOSE BASTARDS IN WHITE HURT HER BABIES) she dialed the number that she had never managed to forget.
“Hello, who is this and how did you get this number?” The British accent soothed a part of her she hadn’t noticed was tense.
“Uncle Alfred.” Maddie could barely choke out his name, hands still shaking. “I need help.”
Dick was on a rampage. A group that claimed to be part of the government took his brother, kidnapped Jason under the premise of him being an “ectoplasmic entity”.
Dick tore through the agents, not caring if any of them survived. Bruce’s no kill rule could fuck itself. His baby wing needed him.
Dan was on a controlled rampage. Ellie, little cheeky and kind Ellie, had been taken by the idiots in white, and the fuckers had also injured both his younger self and Jazz. Jazz had a broken arm and burns, and his younger self was in a medical coma being watched over by Frostbite.
Dan tore through the agents, a small part of him taking pleasure in watching them die. His rehabilitation could go fuck itself. His baby sister needed him.
Inside, Jason’s cell was next to Ellie’s and both of them could hear the chaos outside.
J’onn fondly remembered the Fenton couple who he had a lovely time with almost 15 years ago. They were helpful in his grief, and they accepted when he decided he couldn’t continue with the relationship due to his grief over his wife.
But after Batman pulled him aside with a file, telling him about a son he didn’t know he had, J’onn was barely able to handle the tidal wave of grief.
A son.
He and M'yri'ah had always wanted both a daughter and a son.
However, when he reached Amity Park, it was to find his former lovers gearing up for war. Madeline’s eyes were red when she sat him down.
“The government took our son.” She didn’t even flinch as J’onn accidentally shattered a glass. “There are some laws that claim he isn’t sentient, and it’s legal to experiment on him.” She clenched her fist.
“I haven’t been the best mother to him. I… I didn’t know what happened. I should’ve been better.” Her eyes met his, steely and hard. “But I’m going to save our son, and try and make up for everything I’ve done. Are you going to help?”
His son was at the hand of scientists, people who didn’t see him as worthy to live just because he wasn’t human
J’onn should’ve said they needed to wait. J’onn should’ve insisted they contact the Watchtower first, that he called for backup.
Danny hadn’t been homeless very long, and it already sucked. He was on the run from the GIW, with his parents not far behind. He had already stolen a few cars, including a police car at one point. A police car that had a homeless kid in the back.
Billy has been arrested a fair few times, usually for things like loitering or stealing food, sometimes just for being homeless. This, however, was the first time someone stole a car with him still handcuffed in the back.
Now Danny had to be extra sure not to crash this one.
