Hi!!! I love your writing its awesome! Have you got any thoughts on how the dynamic between Slade and Dick would change if they were already in an established relationship when Bruce "dies" and Dick is Batman?
Aww, thank you so much, love!! That makes me so happy! 🥰🥰
Oh, their relationship would change a lot with Dick being the Batman. Dick would be running himself ragged every night and every day, trying to keep Gotham safe and doing what he can to stop his family from tearing each other's throats out because suddenly everything is going to shit and everyone is fighting.
Now Dick doesn't have time to eat, doesn't have time to sleep. When he finally sees Slade, he just kisses him and leaves to deal with another rogue.
"Oh. Slade." Dick stopped half-step and blinked up at him.
It spoke a lot of his state, if he didn't hear Slade getting in.
Slade looked him over without a word. His little bird was wearing Batman's suit and he seemed to almost drown in its huge form. There were bags under his eyes, as if he didn't sleep for at least a week and Slade wouldn't even be surprised if he really didn't. Slade wondered when was the last time he ate a solid meal and not just some protein bars or dry cereal.
There was also a wound dressing on Dick's cheek, a stitched cut on the other one.
"Little bird-"
Dick smiled at him, a tired little thing and walked closer, to press a kiss against Slade's cheek.
"I have to go now, baby, I'll see you later." He said, and before Slade was able to say anything else, Dick slipped the cowl over his head and walked out through the window.
Slade watched him go with hands curled into fists, forcing himself not to punch out a hole into the wall.
Slade lets it happen the first time but he spends the next few days in Gotham, patrolling where no one would see him. Helping Dick however he can because his little bird has enough on his plate, especially with trying to raise Bruce's assassin kid.
But then, instead of it getting better, it's just getting worse and worse. Slade would deny it til the day he dies but he's a big softie and especially for Dick, and he stops taking contracts so he can focus on helping Dick and making sure his little bird stays alive.
Slade makes sure Dick eats. He prepares the meals for him himself and sits with him to make sure that Dick will actually eat it. He forces Dick to sleep, even for a short nap - and when Dick is too stressed to pass out, Slade fucks him and help him relax. He patrols Gotham by his side.
And Dick feels so bad with all of this because yes, they're dating but Slade didn't sign up for something like this. He will try to break up with Slade and Slade won't let him.
"I want to break up."
Slade slowly looked up from the files he was reading over. If he was surprised, he didn't show it in any way and Dick hated how good he always was with hiding his emotions.
Dick wondered if maybe Slade already knew that Dick would say that. Maybe he wanted to bring it up himself but didn't know how to, without being too big of a dick about it.
Dick really couldn't blame him for it.
But then Slade just looked back down at the documents in his hands.
"No." He simply said.
Then they will fuck nasty about it :3 and afterwards, when they're laying together in bed they will have a serious talk about everything. Dick for sure will have an "Oh" moment when he realizes that Slade wants to do all that for him and that he really really loves him 🥰 After that, keeping Gotham safe will be easier for everyone and not long after that Bruce will come back.
The first thing Slade does after Bruce's return, is taking Dick away on vacation somewhere warm <3
This wasn't meant to be so long lmao but I couldn't stop myself from adding those little writings haha, yeah so basically before Batman Dick their relationship would be more casual, with them having dates and Dick spending a lot of time in Slade's safehouse in Blud and then after Dick becomes Batman, it will become more, they will both live in Manor and Slade would be taking care of his birdie in every possible way he's allowed 🥰
Had the thought “How would the Dynamic Duo of Batman!Dick and Robin!Stephanie have gone?” and immediately started tearing Preboot canon apart and rebuilding it like a LEGO set.
~
Firstly, we gotta make sure Damian isn’t getting sidelined, and for that I propose he and Tim are a team for BruceQuest. Have Damian’s yearning to get to know his dad outweigh his dislike/jealousy/etc of Tim, and highlight Tim’s canonical compassion and forgiving nature.
Either they both make new mantles for this, or they’re both color-coded Robins. Red Robin for Tim, since he’s using Kon’s colors, Green or Blue Robin for Damian (I like Green for he ties to his mom, but him trying to make his own version of the Nightwing suit in some attempt to outrank Tim and everyone calling him Blue Robin would be very funny).
Things start out tense, Damian is only listening to Tim because a) Tim will just have a Titan pick Damian up and drop him back off in Gotham if he’s too much trouble like he was during Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul, and b) Tim is the only person who believes Bruce is alive and is cautiously keeping some of the methodology of proving it to himself at first.
In the original 2009 Red Robin comic, Tim repeatedly got sidetracked with hero work during his quest. Have that keep happening, and actually spend more time in that period than RR did, because it’s part of Damian’s growth. He starts out pissed at the delays and confused by Tim’s insistence on helping strangers. Tim gives some talks about the Bat philosophy and about why he keeps coming back to the hero life despite everything it’s taken from him.
Damian gets thanked by some of the people they rescue, and slowly shifts from pride in his fighting skills to pride in helping people. Eventually starts actively looking for people to help while they’re searching for artifacts. Tim is so flipping proud of him.
Sets us up for some big choices when the League of Assassins finally gets involved.
~
Okay, back to Stephanie, rewinding the comics even further:
1: Don’t kill off Arthur ‘Cluemaster’ Brown, we need him for later.
2: Tim & Steph never date because this is my LEGO set and I want more platonic boy-girl friend pairs in fiction, dang it. Bruce never tells Steph Tim’s identity and Tim is still keeping it secret. Rather than stalking Tim at school and seeing another girl kiss him, Stephanie and Tim are in the middle of an ongoing argument about secret identities when Jack discovers Tim is Robin and makes him step down.
Tim contacts Steph over the phone to let her know why Spoiler won’t be seeing him around, and that’s when she pulls what she did in canon of making her own Robin suit and volunteering with Batman.
Keep most of War Games, but nix the prolonged torture (because fuck that shit) in favor of quickly-gained but extensive injuries (she was tossed off a building? A building fell on her while she was saving someone?) so she really does need a long recovery period, complete with Dr. Thompkins taking her out of the country.
Honestly not sure if they should still fake her death. If yes, I think it should be Bruce’s idea.
This keeps Steph out of the way so we don’t need to rearrange the in-between canon too much, and potentially adds more fuel to the Keeping Secrets vs Not Keeping Secrets arguments.
The start of our big change for Stephanie’s arc is Violent Tendencies. Instead of agreeing to Bruce’s messed up plan, Stephanie is raring to atone for the lives destroyed back in War Games, and what do you know, some motherfucker just started another city wide gang war!
Spoiler works with Robin to stop Ulysses Armstrong. They never worked their shit out before she first left town, so it’s tense, and they fight, but they prioritize stopping the bad guys and bringing what peace is possible in Gotham.
Have repeated moments where Stephanie’s temper and instinct to argue almost messes things up, but she reins herself in to focus on butt-kicking and detective work. Have Tim notice this newer self-control, and have Steph notice changes in Tim, too.
At least one instance, preferably more, of Stephanie meeting someone who was hurt or lost a loved one in War Games, and wrestling with the fresh reminder of her guilt.
If we want to have a two-steps-forward, one-step-back situation, Tim gets caught in the blast of Armstrong’s bomb because after one of their fights, Stephanie stormed off in a temper, leaving Tim to deal with a two-person job on his own.
This sets up Stephanie second-guessing her decision to keep being a hero. If her own temper keeps getting in the way, should she really be doing this?
If we don’t want that, have it be that Tim takes the brunt of the blast because he threw Stephanie to safety or threw himself on top of her. Because that’s the kind of hero Tim is, because at this point in her arc Steph needs reassurance that her friend still cares about her despite her mistakes, and because it’s an example of heroism Stephanie needs to decide if she wants to copy or not.
Stephanie wants to be a hero.
Does she want to be the kind of hero who throws herself between another person and a bomb?
So either scenario, we set up for Stephanie to be doing some introspection when Bruce gets tossed into the timestream.
~
/points at the fried clone-corpse nearly everyone thinks is Bruce/ “Well he ain't gettin’ any deader!”
Tim calls up Cassandra during the whole Battle For The Cowl incident. She needs to wrap up an investigation, but comes back as soon as she can, which is when the dust has settled. Welcome back to Gotham, Batgirl!
(Cass is the Batgirl to both Tim & Steph’s Robin. She gets her own solo book back and has lots of interactions with Babs during this era.)
Not sure whose idea it is for Stephanie to be Robin again; Tim resigning himself to Dick not helping with BruceQuest? Dick acknowledging Batman needs a Robin and seeing Spoiler is struggling? Stephanie herself, volunteering for the second time?
Regardless, very early on, Arthur Brown gets out of jail or comes back to town and is being a Problem. Stephanie’s got a lot of anger, and Dick helps her deal with that. This is both an echo of Stephanie’s introduction, when she tried to kill her dad, and a way of bringing up Dick’s roots as Robin. He wanted to kill Tony Zucco, remember?
One former hot-headed Robin who’s learned how to find balance and prioritize justice over revenge helping the next generation do the same!
Meanwhile, Jason is also around being a Problem, providing straight up antagonism, but also a different opinion on how vigilantism in Gotham should work, so that Stephanie has multiple views to wrestle with.
Stephanie is a middle-class kid from the suburbs, who, as Jason put it to Tim when breaking into Titans Tower, “slept in a real bed”. But she’s also got a (recovering) drug-addict mother and a criminal father, providing points of commonality for Jason to work with. Remember his speech to Mia Dearden during the Green Arrow crossover?
Jason also plays on Stephanie’s guilt, talking about the fallout of the gang war she started, all of the ripple effects that kept going after the initial burst of violence was over. Describes some of his Under the Red Hood crime lord takeover work as “cleaning up your mess.”
Stephanie regrets everything about War Games, Dick is helping her do better going forward, whereas Jason’s argument is that she should have been more decisively violent at the start. It’s hard for all the mafia bosses to fight each other and get the little people caught up in it if the mafia bosses are dead.
During one altercation between Batman & Robin and the Red Hood, Jason punts Black Mask’s head to them and sarcastically says “You’re welcome.”
Arthur’s current criminal enterprise should directly affect Stephanie’s life in some negative way, so that all of this is fresh, not a It’s In The Past situation, and also be endangering civilians’ lives.
This arc has a big climatic scene of Dick being restrained while Jason gives Stephanie the chance to kill her dad.
(We know she’s not gonna, because she’s the Robin in Batman & Robin, but it should be as suspenseful as we can make it.)
~
Meanwhile over in BruceQuest, Tim & Damian are bonding over being raised with high expectations, and confusing relationships with one’s parents. Tim finally allowing himself to think & say negative things about Jack in order to help Damian grapple with his own upbringing? Heck yes.
Damian & Tim & the crushing weight of family legacies & parental expectations!
Tim being allowed by the narrative to be a big brother to Damian like Dick was to Tim!
Damian coming to see Tim as his brother despite his upbringing focusing on blood, and expressing remorse for the introductory murder attempt!
Ra’s trying to pit them against each other and getting his ass kicked!
Tim standing up to Bruce about his toxic habits once they rescue him because Tim refuses to let Damian go through the same crap he did!
~
Since dads are a big thing for both of the above arcs, we could go for three and bring back David Cain for Cass to deal with. Or keep him away, but bring him up in Cass & Steph’s shared scenes. They bonded over having terrible dads in Batgirl 2000, we can have callbacks.
Tim was sending progress reports back to Gotham during BruceQuest (because whether he left on good or bad terms, he wants the Bats to know what’s going on in case something happens to him and the ten year old he’s in charge of needs a rescue).
Once a week Cass makes popcorn and Babs reads the reports aloud. They make bingo cards for What Crazy Shit The Boys Got Up To This Week. When Tim gets home he makes bingo cards about Batgirl & Oracle’s shenanigans (while stealing some of theirs for his scrapbook). Stephanie demands Batman & Robin bingo cards too, and we discover Babs actually made some years ago when Dick was still Robin.
~
There are a lot of different ways who has what mantle could shake out once these arcs are over (in the very short time before the universe reset) but instead of getting into that I’m just going to imagine everyone reunited & hugging.
The first time Corruption!Damian is exposed to fear toxin, he thinks he’s been doused in pesticide. He becomes frantic, clawing at his own clothes and skin, trying to get it off before his swarm dies again, made even worse by the fact Damian’s panic brings them all to the surface, right where he doesn’t want them to be.
Dick has to restrain Damian before Damian manages to strip the suit off or jumps in the river (toxic enough to please the Corruption, sure, but pollution is not Damian’s aspect and Damian’s just as vulnerable to it as anyone else; more so with all the tiny wounds on his skin.) Damian demands to know what Dick is doing, says they don’t have time to wait, they’re dying as we speak. Dick tries to reassure Damian, to guide the hallucination until they can get the antidote into Damian, by saying that the poison isn’t that fast acting, that if Damian comes back to the Batcave then they can wash it off.
This has the opposite effect of what Dick wanted, as Damian now becomes convinced they’re going to put him in another Lazarus pit. The confusion turns to screaming (incoherent protests about this being ridiculous, unreasonable, unnecessary,) to accusations (they’re trying to get rid of him, they never wanted a Corruption Avatar, they want Damian gone but he won’t!) to pleas (Damian can’t go back in the pits, they don’t work the same for him, if they put him back in the pits he’ll never come out again—it will kill him, kill all of them, kill his entire swarm, and haven’t they done everything that’s ever been asked of them? His babies are innocent, they don’t deserve this, please, I thought you cared about innocence—)
Dick is very thankful for the magical protections on the batsuit and the autopilot on the batmobile, as Damian’s moths beat about his head in a frenzy and Damian’s caterpillars chew on the batsuit hard enough it’s actually audible. Instead, Dick can focus on remembering all the reasons he’s not going to Hunt down Ra’s al Ghul to rip him open like a cheap sleeping bag, while holding onto his baby brother (who is now begging for a mother who isn’t here to save him again.)
(Dick wishes Bruce never taught him League Dialect. This isn’t something Dick should be hearing, isn’t something Damian wants him to know. This is something Damian should’ve chosen to share because he trusted them not to hurt him like that, not because Damian’s brain was scrambled by Gotham’s local toxins.)
Killer Croc: *fighting Batman, while Robin lays on the floor having been previously incapacitated by a bite to his leg* Just give up already, Batman. Your Robin is down, you can’t-
Damian: *launching himself at Killer Croc suddenly, growling* You will pay for that!
Killer Croc: *screams* Get your fucking partner!
Dick: They don’t bite.
Killer Croc: Yes he do! Get your-
Damian: *bites Killer Croc*
Dick: Oh shit. Robin no!
Damian: *as Dick pulls them off* That’s what you get for biting me
