18 year old fresh faced, doe eyed Smallville High graduate, moves to Gotham to attend Gotham U. They were warned not to go. And when they got there, everyone was telling them to get out while they could. One year later, the now 19 year old is just as dower faced as everyone else. A year after that, while on a finals cramming taco run, they come to a stop a few yards away from where their favorite taco truck usually parked. And found only a smoking, burning, melted ruin of the truck. They can see the logo through the flames. After a quick call to the fire department, and now sprinting to the second favorite taco place, they've had it. Had it, up to HERE!
It takes them almost three weeks of digging, but they finally found them. Dialing the number given, and waiting with baited breath for the other person to pick up. Finally, on the last ring, the line is picked up. Then a gruff, "Hello?"
"Hello, is this Bobby Singer?" They ask.
"Who's askin'?"
"Someone who lives in the most cursed place on Earth."
Bobby listens to them as they give Bobby a brief summary of their plight. Finally, they stop talking as they wait for Bobby.
"Let me make a call, and I'll get back to you." Bobby's gruff voice comes through the phone.
It would only be later, after they had nearly worried themselves sick over if they had done the right thing, when Booby called back giving them the affirmative. That they calmed down. Only to start freaking out once more. What have they done. What if Batman finds them? What if Batman TALKS to them?! What if Batman finds out it was they who brought them here? What if their MOM finds out?!
Robin is a curse. The joy and magic that it brings the person under the mask always fades. Nothing will ever be as precious as putting on the cape and mask for the first time. No feeling can describe that first patrol with Batman. It's like a drug and once you're hooked a part of you, no matter how small, will forever be chasing after that high. And when you inevitably lose the high, because you always will, the monster comes out. That mask brought out the best parts of the person under the it but once the mask is torn away those parts stay stuck to it, leaving behind only the ugly and uncertain. When Dick comes home to a younger him carrying his name, his colors, he can only feel betrayal. It was never meant to be a legacy, something to pass along when the wearer grew weary. Robin was his. When Jason is alone, reading article after article all about the newest in a short line child soldiers, he can only feel rage. He had died in that suit, for that cause, and still another stepped into his shoes. Robin was his. When Tim watches as Damian gloats in the suit that had all but been ripped from his hands, he can only feel afraid. Who was he without that suit, without the family that came with it? He had fought tooth and nail to carve out a place amongst the bats and birds. Robin was his. And it goes on. That was part of the curse, to give so much of yourself to the cape that you forget that most important thing. It is a mask, a mantel, meant to be passed on. Robin is no one's. If the bats had it their way, there would be no Robin but Gotham needs Batman and Batman needs his Robin. So, like all the good things in Gotham, Robin is cursed.
A cryptid Batfamily AU in which Gotham is the main character and follows its journey to consciousness as it possesses its Bat and Birds. Chapters are short and a bit gloomy.
Main Characters: Gotham, Bruce Wayne, Alfred Pennyworth, Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Damian Wayne
Honorable Mentions: Joker, Talia Al Ghul, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, Mr. Freeze, Riddler, Cobblepot (Penguin), Two Face (Harvey Dent), Superman (Clark Kent), Superboy (Jon Kent), Barbara Gordon, Cassandra Cain
No romantic relationships
Stuff to know: Cryptid Batfamily, grim, Melancholic mood, Angst, Gotham LOVES Batman, the last chapter has mentions of; drug use, murder and unsolicited touching (at the very end and very briefly)
Chapter 1 - Gotham Wept
Chapter 2 - Gotham Trembled
Chapter 3 - Gotham Loved
Chapter 4 - Gotham Drank
Chapter 5 - Gotham Slept
Chapter 6 - Gotham Hoped
Chapter 7 - Gotham Transcends
Chapter 8 - Gotham Mends
Chapter 9 - Gotham Bewitched
Chapter 10 - Gotham Watches
OMG, chapter 9 was linked to chapter 8. Sorry about that, it should be fixed now.
I hope you have enjoyed Gotham Possesses. I will be posting it on Ao3, maybe tomorrow. I'm a bit sad about it ending, but, also proud of myself. This is the second thing I wrote that I posted and was super nervous to do so. Thank you to everyone who has stuck with reading this and endured my lack of editing.
Also, I will be making this a series and posting one shots of the birds and their new life bound to Gotham. They wont be in any particular order, but I have already written Dick's POV before he becomes Nightwing :)
I write something! I did it! The muse didn't even suddenly abandon me partway through!
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Against the Smoke of the City (I Marched)
There is a city called Gotham that doesn't exist, but by god the Daily Planet is going to find it.
Or
Gotham is so cursed the outside world doesn't even know it's there, but that's nothing in the face of a reporter's curiosity.
Just off I-nine in New Jersey, there is a city that doesn't exist.
Clark knows this because for weeks the Daily Planet has been researching every piece of evidence they could find to prove the city that doesn't exist, did exist.
It started with a piece on the richest companies in the world where the numbers just wouldn't add up. It was Marlene Samson's first big piece, and she was crying when she came to Dean Jones, the Daily Planet's best eye for tax returns and accounting, certain she had to have done something wrong. The rest of the Planet assumed that would be the end of it, extending Marlene their sympathies for running into so many problems on her first big job, but certain it would be solved soon with Dean looking at it.
It was not.
Three weeks later, Dean came in with raccoon eyes, greasy hair, and a four foot pile of files that he had to make Clark help him carry.
Apparently, Marlene didn't do anything wrong, it was just that there was a whole multi-billion dollar company somewhere on the East Coast that existed in government tax data, agreements with other companies, and nowhere else.
It should be noted that even as a company that regularly reported on alien invasions, Superman's love life, and Lex Luthor's newest schemes, this was not the conspiracy the Daily Planet expected to find on an average day.
The crown jewel of Dean's coffee-fueled hallucinogenic research binge was a series of photos of an unfamiliar logo for one Wayne Industries on a variety of products from luxury cars, to prosthetic limbs, to the coffee maker in the office, often covered by a sticker from whatever company didn't want to admit they were reselling the products of a nonexistent corporation. Under each logo was a minuscule maker's mark that said, "Made in New Jersey."
This was about when the whole thing stopped being a personal project and became a company-wide mystery that the Daily Planet was determined to solve.
Diane and Thea were the next to come up with something. They were the history buffs of the group, the ones who wrote about the historical value of such-and-such building or how this event a century ago affected the city today. Real interesting stuff, if a little niche for some of their readers.
"The New Jersey Mystery" it was called.
It was a whole thing for anyone interested in the historical urban development of the New England area. Clark didn't claim to understand it, but Diane said that a large number of historians, amateur and professional, believed that there was something off about the socio-economic development of New Jersey, particularly in the lack of big cities. According to the historical and modern shipping routes, there should have been a harbor city as big as Metropolis in the area, but there just… wasn't. It was, frankly, baffling and mildly concerning to most historians, according to Thea.
It wasn't hard to guess that a missing city and a missing company were more likely than not connected.
Catt Grant was the next to dig something up, finding an old piece from the gossip section about some kind of scandal, written by one Vicki Vale. Dale, the IT guy, managed to find some emails from her time in Metropolis that identified the mystery city as sitting on the Mullica River, next to the Great Bay. Mrs. Vale complained extensively about the swamp land around the city, apparently caused by a dam being built where it shouldn't some fifty years ago, now spread to the entire area. The waters were known to be toxic enough to kill a swimmer, but not dangerous enough for the municipal government to do something.
That was just the beginning of it. Jack found police reports about a mafioso that was to be sent back to New Jersey to be tried with the rest of his group. Stella traced charity funds back to a foundation in the city. Sawyer and Thea managed to make a model of the supposed dam, putting an exact location to the place.
So.
Just off I-nine in New Jersey, there is a city that doesn't exist. They don't know its name, size, or population, just that money comes flowing out, legally and illegally, but people stay in.
And it is Clark and Lois's responsibility to prove that it does exist, and, hopefully, to figure out why it's on no map, spoken by no human tongue, and invisible to satellites and Superman's gaze.
+++
They take a bus first. They'd both prefer to drive themselves, but James Pierceson managed to get an interview that suggested that only people who'd been before could find the city they were looking for. A train was out too, as even if the conductor was a native of the place, it still only had a small chance of passing through the city. That was all James had gotten out of his interview, though. Nothing about the city itself, the company that drew Daily Planet's eyes, nothing. Just how to get in, and a warning to make sure they could still get out afterward.
The bus is their only real option. It's a creaky old thing, grimy in all the wrong ways, but it had the only driver they found that knew where they were going.
Clark stares out the window as they ride, eyes on the road so he knows how to come back if he needs to. He watches as the woods slowly change into swamp land, filled with strange, nasty , brackish water that smells too much like corpses for comfort.
Lois is beside him, typing on her laptop, putting together everything they've found so far, ready for whatever they find in the city. She looks up when she feels him tense against her shoulder, just in time to see the sign as the bus passes.
Turn Back All, nailed to a half-dead tree, rusted red and falling apart.
"Just a little joke folks, the locals aren't fond of tourists so they like to scare 'em off if they can. Just means we're getting close."
The rest of the bus is seemingly mollified by the bus driver's words, chattering about the fun local custom, but Clark's eyes are on the next sign, peeking out of the foliage on the other side of the bus.
Beware.
The bus goes silent.
Danger.
Leave This Place.
Warning: Death.
They just keep showing up, one after the other even as the sky gets darker with clouds and the rot in the air gets thicker. Some are clearly set up by the city, with neat lines and bright colors. Some are probably made by the citizens, big pieces of wood or metal covered in messy paint. A few are just paint on the trees, dripping like blood.
Go Away.
This Place is Not Safe.
Get Out.
"They might as well have said 'Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here,'" Lois mutters.
Clark snorts, but his eyes stay up. The bus is turning a corner, and a city is finally visible through the thick foliage.
It was tall, is Clark's first thought. There aren't any suburbs of short little houses for the bourgeoisie, no industrial outskirts, just crumbling brutalist architecture and gothic decor right from the entrance.
He can finally hear the city too. He doesn't know why he couldn't before, how it hid from Kryptonian ears, but it echoes in his ears now, gunshots and sirens and screams and whispers. He can't hear anything else on top of the noise, like the rest of the world no longer exists even to Superman's ears. He would have been afraid if his mind had room for it.
The bus is being swallowed, Clark was suddenly sure. The signs were the teeth of the great and terrible city he sees before him and soon they would pass through the maw and enter the place of no return. Soon they would be in the throat and it would convulse and throw them downward and then the city would digest them alive. Whatever was left would not be the same as what entered.
The bus stops at a rickety station just inside the city. The bus driver turns to them as the doors open and his smile is friendly but his eyes are distant and tired.
"Welcome to Gotham," he said. "The most cursed city in America."
Hey Jason, isn't it weird that kids can buy ouija board and summon dangerous ghost and demons at early ages?
Kid. Kid. I live. In Gotham. We have, on any given day:
-at least three crime bosses who all hate each other, have themes, and will start shit in a bank. You ever seen exploding robot penguins waddling towards grown men in skull masks while your city's former DA argues with himself over getting involved? Because I have. It was ridiculous.
-a psychologist-gone-rogue who uses a chemical weapon he, half the time, makes in a bathtub.
-a cannibal with what he says is a bad skin condition and what I say is a mutation. He lives in the sewers, by the way, for irony or whatever.
-Riddler, who I absolutely bully but who did make some pretty impressive death traps, so.
-whatever the fuck Man-Bat even is.
-several assassins, ranging from ninjas to cannibals.
-homicidal clowns.
Trust me, anything stupid enough to show up here is going to turn right back around and go home.
I know this has probably been done before but What if the reason Gotham is so terrible is because it's Cursed. But not normal cursed, like you have to suffer *insert suffering* but Gotham was supposed to be completely wiped off the face of the map. And the only reason it hasn't is because of the Wayne family. Not Batman and the Batfam, but Bruce's parents and grandparents and so on. They've been keeping Gotham in check for the entire time they've been IN Gotham.
Maybe they were former curse breakers or just some sort of supernatural hunters. This would make how even Batman and Wayne Enterprises together can't fix Gotham make sense, they Are making a difference. It's just not as noticeable with the curse working against them.
Also on why Alfred was allowed to be Bruce's guardian. Bruce should have been placed with the nearest relative (the Kane's I think? Sorry, all of my knowledge of DC is from the fandom). But Bruce's parents wanted Alfred to be Bruce's guardian if they died because he would be less likely to die!
Also, think about how many times the Batkids have died, I mean they get back up again but they also died in the first place.
A cryptid Batfamily AU in which Gotham is the main character and follows its journey to consciousness as it follows its Bat and Birds. Chapters are short and a bit gloomy.
Main Characters: Gotham, Bruce Wayne, Alfred Pennyworth, Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, The Joker (more characters pop up later, will add them then.)
No romantic relationships
Stuff to know: Cryptid Batfamily, grim, Melancholic mood, Angst, (let me know if I should add more tags)
Word Count: 584
[Here's my table of contents]
Chapter 7 - Gotham Transcends
She watched them swarm, at the behest of their white skinned jester whose hair was the same toxic color that painted her sewers. Born in a vat created by the corrupt, from the same poisonous liquid she tasted regularly. Whenever he appeared he stained her soil in the warmth of the living. Her Bat right behind him, protecting her, called him Joker.
And the jester would laugh.
A sound so chaotic, alluring, her attention captivated, ripped away from her Bat. Something in him resonated with the souls that walked her streets, that lived in her buildings, that wished for change. They would gather, hold him up and then recoil. He danced with her Bat unlike any other, fluid and unpredictable. His whispered thoughts, his actions, always directed towards her Bat. The jester needed him, loved him, loved her, wanted her changed. Her shadows played with the soundless song he wove. Enjoying their game.
Nightwing, her oldest bird went too far, in protection of the youngest, in reaction to the second. Her Bat had been gripped by something indescribable. Fear was at the forefront, determination followed closely. Her eldest bird sat hopeless, her youngest shocked. With rhythmic movements her Bat pounded his chest trying to bring him back. Her Bat could not, would not, let the jester die. Like with the others, she gave her Bat what he wanted, a helping hand. She plucked a bit of shadow and when her Bat cracked the Jester’s chest, she slipped in. Disoriented and confused he shot up, clutching at his chest, his laughter echoing, filling her with new sensation.
She had not known. She had been unaware.
She? …I?
I had not known?
The excuse fell flat. Ignorance did not justify the consequences of that night. What would transpire would be devastating. How would I have known that it was not love, what the jester felt.
No.
It was love, but it was twisted. It was obsession but more consuming. It was jealousy, but it was sinister. He wanted my Bat. His full attention and our birds would, have, paid the price.
Later, bound and imprisoned, he spoke to the shadows. He spoke to me in sweet hushed tones. Disappointed that his plan had failed, regretful. I could feel the thrill run through me, from him, when I would inadvertently respond. A flicker here, a subtle movement there. He saw me, followed me with his mismatched eyes and when he could, he would grasp the tether, trying to pull me in. The jester was dangerous and now he was aware, his connection to me, to my Bat.
It was hard resisting, but I would not be swayed. He was not brought back because I wanted him, his life is held within the hands of my Bat. All he had to do was let me know and I would cut the string, let the jester collapse like a marionette. Though he did not know the power he held, though he did not speak to me directly, though I brought him nothing but torment. My Bat still had faith in me. Cared for me.
I settled on him, dark tendrils wrapping around his neck, adoringly watching him work. I watched him fight, watched him run ragged for me. I curled in tighter, burying myself in his back. I smiled at the feeling, a laugh escaping, unheard.
Gotham is me. I am Gotham and the Bat is mine, the jester an after thought.
I had finally, fully, awakened.
This one was difficult to write. I like the Joker as a villain but now he has a bit of Gotham in him, like the robins, and that cannot bode well. Also, why does the last bit sound menacing? This is where the story led me T_T
I'm afraid to follow the path, but I must march on.
