HELLO!!!! dad is back from getting milk :] i've returned with a new nova character study-centric clancybearer fic.... i hope you enjoy. sniffles.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
"Clancy was a supernova. The death of his star was messy and painful and bright, scattering his stardust across a darkened canvas. There was a moment of explosive beauty as the person he once was fractured into obscurity, with the night sky remaining blindingly bright for what may have been seconds or minutes or years until his atoms were recycled into something brand new. Something foreign, but ultimately cut from the same cloth. It sat heavy upon his shoulders, the red offering an undeniable distinction between him and the fledgling star that would one day take his place.
The Batmobile’s doors shut in a deceptively light manner.
Dick ripped the Batman cowl off, tilted his head back against the seat, and released a deep breath. The fresh air was a godsend after breathing nothing but stale meat freezer for the last hour.
Robin slunk into the car next to him, stubbornly hiding the pain he had to be feeling from the hits he had taken to his ribs. His gloves were long gone, as were his boots, and Dick silently turned up the heat to help warm the kid up — Damian wouldn’t ask, and Dick figured that if he said something it would only launch Damian into one of his ‘training with the League of Assassins as a six-year-old’ stories. Frankly, he didn’t have the patience tonight.
Damian crossed his arms, tucking his hands into fists. His lips were set in a tight line, and he looked resolutely out the front window. “Well?” he asked, gaze unchanging.
Read on Ao3
“Well, what?” Dick kept his voice carefully neutral. He was an adult now; he could control his temper. He had to. “Pass me a water?” He ran his tongue over his dry lips and grimaced. “I can still taste that serum.”
Damian’s fists tightened a little more before he twisted – and winced – to reach for the bottled water in the door compartment. He passed it to Dick without saying anything.
“Thanks.” Dick swished the first few sips around his mouth before spitting them out the open window, then proceeded to chug the rest of the bottle. It only barely helped lift the bitter flavor coating his tongue, but even that small amount of relief was better than nothing. It was a good excuse to ask Alfred for hot cocoa when they got back.
Speaking of, Dick pressed the comm link on the dashboard. “Penny-One?”
The loyal butler answered almost immediately. “Master Batman. Is Master Robin with you?”
Damian tucked his chin. If Dick didn’t know any better, he would say the kid were pouting.
“Yes.”
“What is his status?”
Damian scoffed. “I do not require any medical assistance.”
“I think he should be checked for bruised or broken ribs,” Dick answered, ignoring Damian’s glower. “Otherwise, he’s in one piece.”
Damian’s bruised fingers tightened against his arms, like he had thought he would get away with keeping his injuries a secret. Maybe he didn’t realize how much Batman had seen through the freezer window before he had taken the chance to strike, or maybe he thought he was just that good at hiding his injuries.
“Very well, sir. And what is your status?”
Dick’s mouth began to move before he could stop it. “I drank something that is compelling me to answer direct questions truthfully. I was hit twelve times, three times on the shoulder, five times in the ribs, twice in the stomach, and twice in the head.”
He tried to stop himself there, at the relevant information. But his mouth began to buzz.
“Sir?”
Dick grit his teeth. The rest of his answer was forcing itself out anyway. “My hands are numb from the cold, I have a papercut from the letter I sent this morning at work, and my shoes are pinching my toes. The cape is too heavy and the drag it creates when I do flips is making my back sore. And my mouth is dry and tastes terrible.”
There was a long pause. Damian’s lips pulled into a tight frown.
“Is that all?” Alfred’s dry sarcasm rang through the speakers.
“Yes,” Dick answered.
“Very well. I assume the perpetrators were not able to get any viable information out of you.”
It wasn’t a question, and Dick silently thanked Alfred’s cleverness even as he only answered, “Correct. It was easier to resist earlier, but the compulsion is getting stronger.”
Alfred hummed. “I will prepare the med bay as necessary. We will have to take some blood samples first thing when you arrive.”
Dick’s fingers relaxed slightly on the steering wheel. Alfred knew what to do in situations like this. They would synthesize the antitoxin and Dick would be free to lie his face off if he wanted to.
With a click, the communicator line shut down. Now he just had to get through the car ride without saying anything, and he would be fine.
“You didn’t have to drink it.”
Dick glanced over at Damian, who glowered out the windshield like it had personally affronted him. The color was beginning to return to his tan ears and fingers, and the blood that had wept from the small cut on his temple had dried into an ugly matted streak in his hair. He held his torso in that odd way that told Dick his adrenaline had finally burned off, leaving him feeling the full effect of his injuries.
And that was with him coming out of this lucky.
“I didn’t,” Dick answered, simply.
“Then don’t say it was my fault.”
Dick steeled himself for the looming argument. Every Robin got The Lecture, but Damian was a repeat offender. If he didn’t know any better, Dick would think he liked it.
“If you had listened to me—”
Damian finally looked at him, face twisted into an angry frown. “They were going to get away.”
Dick continued like he hadn’t been interrupted. “You wanted more input on the missions, so we planned this one together. And you didn’t follow that plan, either.”
“A good tactician is flexible. I was—”
“You were reckless.” Dick was losing his tight grip on his tone, his frustration bubbling through. “Getting captured wasn’t part of the plan.”
“I was handling it.”
“That’s what you call that?” An image flashed through his mind: Damian, strung up by his wrists, hung between two hog carcasses twice his size. His warm breath had fogged the flat of the blade held against his neck.
Drink, or else.
Dick drew in a deep breath through his nose, released it. “I had to intervene before you became too injured to escape with me. It was a logical decision.” Damian understood logic. He respected it. Dick hoped that would end the conversation.
It didn’t.
“If you’re so sure it was my fault, then you should have left me,” Damian hissed. “My fault, my consequences.”
An ugly feeling rose in Dick’s stomach, directed not at Damian but the people who had formed him. He took the next turn a little too sharply, making Damian stabilize himself with a wince. “That was never an option.”
“Why not?”
“You’re my obligation now.” The answer rushed out, unbidden. Dick froze. He hadn’t even had a moment to think of his answer before he said it.
Damian was still, next to him.
“I didn’t mean that,” Dick said. “Not like that. I can’t. . . .” he hesitated, unsure of whether he was willing to admit his losing battle with his will.
Damian huffed out a breath. “So I’m just an obligation to you.”
“No.”
The boy licked dry blood from his lips, gaze returning to the road ahead of them. “Am I an obligation to you? Yes or no.”
“Yes — no, Damian. That’s not fair. Stop.” Dick considered pulling over, forcing Damian to sit in the back seat, and rolling the divider up so he couldn’t hear. But he wasn’t fast enough.
“Did Father ask you to take care of me when he died?”
“No.”
“Did my mother?”
“No. Damian, this isn’t—”
“Then why did you claim custody?”
“You were young, and reckless, and misled. Spoiled.” He was driving over the speed limit, zipping past the few vehicles out and about at this time of night. “I wanted to fix that.”
“So that’s what this is? You just want to fix me?”
“Yes.” Dick took a deep breath. The more agitated he got, the less control he had over what he said. “Not ‘just,’ Damian.”
Damian’s stream of questions paused, and Dick hoped that it was because he was reconsidering interrogating him. But instead, he pressed forward, asking in a deceptively even tone, “Do you think I’m broken?”
Dick bit down on his tongue, hard enough to draw blood. But he couldn’t hold back the “Maybe.”
Damian shifted, grabbing his own water bottle. He opened it, took a single sip, and studied the label as though he were trying to memorize it. “And if you can’t ‘fix’ me. Would you ever send me back to the League?”
“Yes.” Dick’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, preventing him from adding any nuance to his horrible answer, and that had everything to do with the serum.
But Damian’s expression only hardened, and he dipped his chin in a quick nod. “Father sent me back, once.” His tone would sound as though he were remarking on the weather, were it not for the tiniest catch in his voice. It was gone when he spoke again. “I wasn’t good enough.”
Dick had known of Damian then, of course, but he’d never actually met the kid. He’d only heard about him through Tim’s stories, which were overwhelmingly unflattering. He recalled, guiltily, that he’d been happy to have missed the whole fiasco. And according to Bruce, Damian had chosen to return, to stay with his mother. It hadn’t been as black-and-white as Damian made it seem.
Still.
“I’m sorry.”
“But you don’t really believe that.” It wasn’t a question. Dick had just said as much, himself. “It is nice,” Damian mused, “to finally know where I stand.”
“Damian, that’s—”
“You have to tell the truth, do you not?”
“Yes.” Dick pressed on the accelerator, not liking where this conversation seemed to be going. The sooner they got back, the better. “Stop.”
“Have you ever. . . .” Damian trailed off, and that was the surest sign of his emotional state that Dick had seen yet.
“Don’t ask me any more questions,” Dick ordered.
It only seemed to harden Damian’s resolve. “Have you ever—”
“Shut. Up.”
“— regretted taking me in?”
“Yes.”
Several seconds passed in near silence, even the sounds of the road and engine negligible with the Batmobile’s engineering. The quiet pressed in from all sides, building, like the moment before a storm struck. Dick’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel. Ten more minutes until they reached the Cave, then they could figure out an antidote and Alfred would distract Damian until it was out of Dick’s system.
“Why did you come back for me,” Damian asked, voice noticeably smaller, “if I’m an obligation you wish to be rid of?”
Without the ability to explain that he didn’t feel that way anymore, Dick was forced to simply answer, “Because I care about you.”
Damian scoffed. Dick couldn’t blame him. He wasn’t sure Damian even knew what it meant to be cared for.
“I wouldn’t send you back to the League unless circumstances drastically changed. Or if you asked.”
Damian didn’t respond, but there was no way he hadn’t heard.
“And even if I did,” Dick continued, “I wouldn’t leave you there alone. I don’t think that I could.”
“I’m not alone at the League.”
Dick huffed through his nose, a habit he had picked up from Bruce. “Aren’t you?”
“I have tutors,” Damian argued. “And servants.”
“They’re just doing their jobs.”
Maybe that was too harsh.
“And my grandfather—”
“Ra’s can hardly be counted as company.”
Something was off.
“My mother,” Damian said, firmly.
These weren’t questions, but Dick couldn’t just stop talking. “And what kind of mother is she? She —”
“Don’t speak about my mother that way,” Damian growled. “Apparently, she’s the only person who never regretted my existence.”
“You sure about that?”
Dick’s fingers spasmed around the steering wheel, and an icy sensation flooded his body, like sinking into Gotham Harbor. He hadn’t meant to say that.
Damian’s expression finally cracked and fell completely, revealing a vulnerability deeper than anything Dick had ever seen from him. Without a word, he threw open the car door.
Dick slammed on the brakes and grabbed a handful of the Robin cape. “Damian, wait—”
He jumped.
Dick dropped the released cape with a curse. He slammed on the brakes, already spinning the Batmobile to turn back.
Scott doesn't realize who the other vampire is in the town of Oakhurst. He finds out at the worst possible time, and accidentally makes things worse(?) for himself in the end.
It wasn’t incredibly unusual, but Scar could tell that something was… not necessarily wrong, but just… different. Something was up, and he couldn't figure it out.
MCYTober Day 2: Void
Watcher!Grian/Scar
Tags: The Void, Boatem Hole, Fluff, Worldbuilding, Established Relationship
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
remember what i said about being stressed about finals? yeah well about that... wrote this instead of doing all that. sigh. ah well.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
'“Mm.. ‘Clance..?”
Torch’s voice was soft and gravelly as it cut through the silence of the tent. Clancy whimpered, pressing his forehead against Torch’s shoulder, torn between his shame for having disturbed the man’s sleep and his all-consuming desire for comfort. “Hey my love, what’s wrong?” Torch cooed, moving his arm to cradle Clancy closer against his side. Clancy just shook his head, eyes wide as the words died in his throat.
Everything. Everything, and absolutely nothing at all.'
hello clancybearer nation i come bearing gifts!!!! here is my lore thesis but they kiss and stuff of course of course. i hope y'all enjoyy :3
"Before his confrontation with the Bishops, discordant vignettes of Clancy’s life pass before his eyes. Memories of the past meld together and splinter off, reminding us of why we fight just before we do."
