#the returnverse

[lurkinglurkerwholurks]

a Returnverse primer

The Returnverse is an interconnected tapestry of mostly one-off BatFam fics set in the same loose universe. Unlike most of my other fics, which tend to be broadly consistent with each other, these do all reference each other in various ways, but subtly enough that they can mostly be read as standalones except for the series within the series.

There are at least four different ways to read the fics:

In-Universe Chronological Order

As-Written Chronological Order

Coherency Order

Series Groupings

And if you're seeing this post, you're seeing the

In-Universe Chronological Order Explainer

In-Universe Chronological Order is the order the series is currently arranged in, mostly.

1. Carried, 2. Shoulder to Shoulder, and 3. Listening

are Tim's, Dick's, and Bruce's POV of the day of (and after) Janet Drake's funeral, the earliest point in the series so far.

4. Choco Bombs and 5. Fix This

are both set during Bruce's "death" when he's lost in the time stream, with the former focused on Dick and Tim and the latter about Tim's isolation and how that looks with Jason. Fix This also kicks off the Mutual Aid series, which we'll talk about more in the fourth order in a bit.

6. Resonant Frequency

begins just after Jack Drake's death and concludes in the minutes after Bruce returns from the time stream. It leads directly into

7. The Return,

the center of the series pinwheel, as it were, dealing with the direct aftermath once Bruce returns from his trip through time.

8. (S)kittish, 9. Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Hood, and 10. And After the Storm

all happen at roughly the same time and follow some of the fallout from The Return, though explicitly And After the Storm does occur after Big Bad Hood. (S)kittish could be happening just before, all during, or after those other two, though, I just don't know and it doesn't really matter.

11. Hey, Sister

happens after 8-10 and pretty directly references some of the stuff that happens in them but still passingly enough that you won't be lost if you pop in and out without the others.

12. Hounded

is still building of the Tim&Jason stuff in Mutual Aid, so it comes firmly after 5., 9., and 10. and therefore after The Return but also nods to 11.

13. Boys' Night

is again returning to some of the fallout from The Return and dealing with it from Dick's POV.

14. If the Sky Comes Falling Down (For You)

is technically spread across the entire series thus far, which is very fun, imo. It begins when Hood is still very newly returned to Gotham, probably after 3. but before 4., explicitly depicts on events that are referenced in multiple other fics in this series, and ends with (spoiler) Jason on good terms with his siblings again.

15. Chicken Bones

is set a good chunk of time after The Return, when a tradition freshly mentioned at the end of that fic is not only established but happened for long enough that it's become commonplace.

16. There's an Endless Road to Rediscover

is set at least four years after The Return, possibly more, since Tim is explicitly of legal drinking age. It is also the endcap piece of the Mutual Aid series.

I've made primers of the other three orders and queued them. If they haven't hit my feed yet, they will soon, so watch the tags.

Accurate as of October 2025

[lurkinglurkerwholurks]

a Returnverse primer

The Returnverse is an interconnected tapestry of mostly one-off BatFam fics set in the same loose universe. Unlike most of my other fics, which tend to be broadly consistent with each other, these do all reference each other in various ways, but subtly enough that they can mostly be read as standalones except for the series within the series.

There are at least four different ways to read the fics:

In-Universe Chronological Order

As-Written Chronological Order

Coherency Order

Series Groupings

And if you're seeing this post, you're seeing the

Coherency Order Explainer

Coherency Order might also be called ✨Author's Choice✨ or, if you know the Star Wars thing, Machete Order.

Instead of chronology, it's about ✨vibes✨, it's about ✨narrative focus✨, it's about ✨priorities✨.

This is The Returnverse, right? The Return is the core. It's the trunk the branches all spring from. So here's what you do, start with:

1. Resonant Frequency

as the immediate setup leading into The Return. Take a little nibble of that boy-and-dad setup, get comfy in the angst, and zoom right on over to

2. The Return

We in it now, boy! 16 chapters of rotating POV unpacking alllllll the drama and trauma from Bruce's "death" and time away. (Selectively. There are comic-canon events that are stupid and I refuse to acknowledge.)

Once you've finished those two, you really can follow whatever "branch" you want, but I'd maybe next jump back to

3. Carried, 4. Shoulder to Shoulder, 5. Listening, and 6. Choco Bombs

to get that sad Tim "oh no he and Dick and Bruce really were a team" backstory, then ride that emotion with the absence of Tim's faith in Dick into

7. If the Sky Comes Falling Down (For You)

to plug in the Jason background for everything that's about to come, then dive straight into

8. Fix This, 9. Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Hood, and 10. And After the Storm

to contrast Dick & Tim with Jason & Tim, then throw in some

11. (S)kittish and 12. Hey, Sister

to get Cass up in the mix, then tie up the loop with

13. Hounded, 14. Boys' Night, and 15. There's an Endless Road to Rediscover

to weave Dick back in before capping off with

16. Chicken Bones

to cap off the overall emotional arc of fractured family to restored family.

This may all be a lie, though, because I do really love chronology.

I've made primers of the other three orders and queued them. If they haven't hit my feed yet, they will soon, so watch the tags.

Accurate as of October 2025

[lurkinglurkerwholurks]

a Returnverse primer

The Returnverse is an interconnected tapestry of mostly one-off BatFam fics set in the same loose universe. Unlike most of my other fics, which tend to be broadly consistent with each other, these do all reference each other in various ways, but subtly enough that they can mostly be read as standalones except for the series within the series.

There are at least four different ways to read the fics:

In-Universe Chronological Order

As-Written Chronological Order

Coherency Order

Series Groupings

And if you're seeing this post, you're seeing the

As-Written Chronological Order Explainer

As-Written Chronological Order is, as you might guess, the order in which the fics were written, out here in reality. Unlike In-Universe Chronology, this involves a little more weaving back and forth, because in real-time sometimes I would reference an event and then go back and fill in the details in another fic later. I think this order is fun, though, because you start our with my oldest fics and get to watch me improve. 😅 It only goes up, folks!

1. Choco Bombs

was my first fic in what became this overarching series, a BatFam hurt/comfort fic looking at how alone Dick must have felt during Bruce's "death"... but from Tim's point of view.

2. Carried

was also a prompt fic, this time for the BatFam Christmas Stocking exchange. @hollyhock13 submitted a prompt noting that Janet Drake's funeral, canonically, was on Christmas Eve, so I took it and ran with it. (And now we're friends! The power of fandom!)

3. If the Sky Comes Falling Down (For You)

published one chapter per week for six weeks because I had a bunch of loose ideas for Jason-as-Red-Hood pretending he didn't care about his family and then being roped into oops-actually-caring-a-lot and the concept worked well for a 5+1. I friggin' love this fic and it helped me nail down some crucial bits that, unbeknownst to me, would come in handy later.

4. Shoulder to Shoulder and 5. Listening

appeared together, two days apart, because to celebrate my one-year ficaversary I let people request sequels to fics I had written and two separate people wanted more from Carried. It's details from Listening, really, that help nail down that this little series is part of the larger Returnverse series.

6. Chicken Bones

is friggin' wild to me. WILD, I say. Because this Whumptober 2019 fic was written six months before The Return started and almost TWO YEARS before it ENDED, but it was only while writing the very last chapter for The Return that I realized that it teed up the dinner in Chicken Bones! Writing is so so weird sometimes.

7. Resonant Frequency

appears next, born from a ranting discussion between me and @bowditch, about what SHOULD HAVE happened on-page between Tim and Bruce immediately after Bruce was rescued from time. And that stuck with me, because a few months after posting this fic, I started

8. The Return

about allllllllllll the other stuff that should have happened on-page after Bruce's return. It just took me a literal year and a half to finish—which normally I would blame my speed on that year being 2020, but I must gesture at my other long fic (not in this series) that took just as long. I wrote other fics in that year and a half, but none connected to this universe.

9. Fix This

was me still gnawing on the bone of Jason & Tim's weird little not-enemies-but-not-even-allies-really relationship established wayyyy back in If the Sky, which then kicked off Mutual Aid, one of the series within the series that continued with

10. Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Hood and 11. After the Storm

where I kept gnawing at their dynamics, but put a pin in that, because I then pivoted over to

12. (S)kittish

to figure out what's going on with our girl Cass, because I wanted to unpack her stuff from If the Sky but then partway through writing figured out the trigger for the whole fic actually came from The Return (cue exploding head), and as soon as this Whumptober fic was up, I took a handful of Cass and smashed that hand together with my handful of Jason and Tim to write

13. Hey, Sister

... And then promptly got stuck for two years. Yes, two. Chapter one posted in 2022 and chapter two didn't follow until 2024, also for Whumptober. Writing. It's so fun. So while I paced in circles over the second half of this fic, I went back to Jason-and-Tim's weirdness in Mutual Aid with

14. Hounded and 15. There's an Endless Road to Rediscover

Did those, finally figured out the second half of Hey, Sister, then did nothing more in this universe until here we are in 2025 with

16. Boys' Night

when I finally got to circle back to Dick and stuff I set up wayyyyy back in Choco Bombs (remember that one?) and then again in The Return and unpack some of that mess.

At some point I'll have to get to Damian, probably. And, uh, figure out how to rectify the fact that If the Sky confirms that Steph is for sure a part of this universe as Spoiler but hasn't been present otherwise. A mess a mess a mess I make for myself.

I've made primers of the other three orders and queued them. If they haven't hit my feed yet, they will soon, so watch the tags.

Accurate as of October 2025

[lurkinglurkerwholurks]

Boys' Night

for Whumptober Alt. Jealousy

Rating: General Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Category: Gen

Fandom: Batman - All Media Types

Relationships: Tim Drake & Jason Todd; Tim Drake & Dick Grayson

Characters: Tim Drake (DCU); Dick Grayson; Jason Todd

Additional Tags: Whumptober 2025; Jealousy; Headaches & Migraines; Dick Grayson Needs a Hug; Dick Grayson Has Eldest Daughter Syndrome; Awkward Conversations

——

Dick's reconciliatory stakeout with Tim doesn't go as planned.

Read now on AO3

[lurkinglurkerwholurks]

a Returnverse primer

The Returnverse is an interconnected tapestry of mostly one-off BatFam fics set in the same loose universe. Unlike most of my other fics, which tend to be broadly consistent with each other, these do all reference each other in various ways, but subtly enough that they can mostly be read as standalones except for the series within the series.

There are at least four different ways to read the fics:

In-Universe Chronological Order

As-Written Chronological Order

Coherency Order

Series Groupings

And if you're seeing this post, you're seeing the

Series Grouping Order Explainer

Series Grouping Order is all about dealing with the little eddies within the overall ocean of the fic—that is, in a Discworldian type of way, there are series within this overall macro-series, so a way to tackle them is just to check off one self-contained series at a time.

There series themselves can be read in no specific order, really, but here is an order:

The Return series: If the Sky Comes Falling Down (For You), Resonant Frequency, The Return, Chicken Bones

I am already causing problems because technically none of these are within a series together except the overarching Returnverse series, but also they're good, like, background information for each other. There's some real meaty stuff!

Carried series: Carried, Shoulder to Shoulder, Listening

This is specifically a series that is set during and after Janet Drake's Christmas Eve funeral service. Sad Tim + Angry Dick + Worried Bruce.

Mutual Aid: Fix This, Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Hood, And After the Storm, Hounded, There's an Endless Road to Rediscover

Tim & Jason enemies > allies > friends > brothers arc

Cass-centric fics: (S)kittish, Hey, Sister

Dick-centric fics: Choco Bombs, Boys' Night

I've made primers of the other three orders and queued them. If they haven't hit my feed yet, they will soon, so watch the tags.

Accurate as of October 2025

[lurkinglurkerwholurks]

I was re-reading The Return and omg how I love that fic. But I have a question, did Dick and Damian ever talk about the fight Bruce and Dick had that Dames heard? 🫣

Thank you very much!

Maybe an unsatisfying answer, but the true answer is: beats me, man. Logically speaking, probably? I could see Dick pushing until he found out why Damian ran away, which would involve Damian disclosing what he overheard, right? But since I haven't written that scene, it's Schroedinger's Cat-esque. It did and didn't happen until I decide—or, more broadly, until you as the reader decide what your personal version looks like in the absence of any definitive resolurion.

[lurkinglurkerwholurks]

That noise of intense frustration in the far-off distance was me discovering that one of my fics is also actually in the returnverse and I didn’t know it

[lurkinglurkerwholurks]

*Raises hand to ask question* Does Titus exist in the Returnverse?

Nope! At least not yet. I don't know if he'll show up in the future, but if he existed in Damian's life in this universe, he would have been used in Bruce's discussion about the kitten in The Return and Damian would have been upset to leave him. They had so much going on, adding a dog on top of all that maybe would have made my head explode.

Maybe someday!