Last Chapter of Little Lion Man by Mumford & Sons (Slowed)
Prominent Tags: Alfred Pennyworth is Not A Saint, explicit past csa (not between major chars), child abuse and neglect, suicide/self harm attempts, Batfamily feature, Bruce Wayne & Stephanie Brown relationship-centric
IT'S FINALLY DONE and I am admittedly sad. I think this fic in particular will always have a special place in my heart because of the themes it had, and also because the reception had been so kind. Thank you so much for sticking through with me!
Shout out to my beta readers @/jaspers-fireflys and @/superbatismyreligion for being great help in seeing this project through! Hugs and kisses, my dudes. You're amazing people.
Anyways, as I promised to literally just myself:
Author's Commentary below the cut:
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Hello. I literally love my fics and I love Batman comics.
I'm just gonna point out some of my favorite creative liberties and writing choices. Not all of them, probably, but the ones I hope terrify everyone the most.
I think there's like a few motifs I keep repeating. Here's some I had from the top of my head:
Hell, Heaven, and a "Better World": The Concept of an After
The most elaborate theme here is about the concept of an after
What do you do after being abuse/abusing someone? How do you live with the fact that grief changed you into something you never thought you'd become?
Hell is.... obviously abuse
Heaven is naturally the life before and between bouts of abuse because it's really important that there was a before in all of this; there's a lot of allusions to Alfred's once gentler approach with Bruce's upbringing
One thing that was deliberate for me is that these allusions are never written out in the story
Even if I wanted to write small tidbits of Alfred being a good guardian, I thought it was a disservice or might see like the rest of his abuse would appear excusable... because honestly, it tends to seem like that. You know the kind... "How can you say your parent is abusive, they seem so nice!" type shit
There's also this thing with abuse victims or very trauma-addled people wherein it's very hard for them to remember "good memories" due to built-up resentment
I FORGOT THE TERM FOR IT, I THINK IT'S CALLED RESENTMENT BIAS BUT I SWEAR THERE'S A TERM FOR IT
And this would also imply in the story that Bruce never really forgave Alfred until after he had his kids (Chp 2)
The "Better World" motif is strange because it's meant to refer to the world without or after abuse
I genuinely worried that this might be taken as "So we deserve to suffer for some gratuitour probable ending"
But it really isn't. Abuse is abuse.
The thing that this motif was meant to show was how abuse victims tend to rationalize what happened to them and how it affects their perception of their lives' value and their own self image
"Who would I be if this never happened?"
Jason put it best in saying that it really doesn't matter what the answer is because it still happened, it still changed you
This is ultimately an aftermath story
This is a story of people trying to outlive their suffering, and learning to survive with the consequences, and stomaching the fact that we can never return to what our lives once were before this suffering
Ergo: crawling out of hell, missing heaven, and trying to find a better world to live in (because it's all that we have)
They do it by either rationalizing their suffering (Bruce), stubbornly owning up to their suffering (Alfred), or reconciling with their suffering (Steph)
I especially love this motif in Chp 5 because it shows that Alfred never got that satisfaction
He's still suffering and haunted by the ghosts of the past (Thomas and Martha), and is living with the uncomfortable truth that Bruce had proven with his own kids — that he could've done better
I think this, in itself, is Bruce's own revenge, which is why he easily forgives Alfred, because he already knows that Alfred's failure was never an effect of being his guardian
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Prohibition of Failure VS Inevitability of Failure
Alfred has repeatedly said that Bruce cannot fail by virtue of what and who he is, prominently throughout the events of Chp 2, and Bruce echoes this sentiment clearly across all his POVs whether implicitly or explicitly
Meanwhile though, none of his kids are too critical of their failures in their role in the family
this is especially apparent in Chp 4, which was all about it didn't matter because all that was important was that they protected Bruce and did right by him on this specific occassion
Alfred doesn't tend to humanize Bruce a whole great deal in this fic, while the kids always emphasize the fact that Bruce is their father who did make mistakes
It's a foil... of Alfred stating tht Bruce, by virtue of his position, cannot fail... then the kids understanding that all of them, especially Bruce, by virtue of his position, will always make mistakes and fail them in one way or another
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And here's more details!
Why am I doing this? To ruin everyone's day, of course! Because when I say "I hope reading this fic does for you what writing it had done for me", I actually mean it as a threat <3
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In Chapter 1, the first line of dialogue ever said is Tim saying "Did someone die?" — then when the truth comes to light, it is revealed that Bruce technically almost did die... several times (Bruce's suicide attempt being revealed to the kids in Chp 3, and his brush with death in the gun closet is contextualized in Chp 4)
and in Chp 5, the last line of dialogue ever said in the whole fic is Alfred saying "How very right you are, sir" — and Alfred very much answered Tim in that regard, even long before Tim confronted him with death in Chp 5 as well
it is also worth noting that Alfred has never lied in this whole fic, even as the kids were forcing him to admit to the abuse he put Bruce through; abuse that Bruce had almost nearly died from
So if you bridge it: the kids asked if someone died, Alfred very much told them yes
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another small feature: the tea from Chp 1 was very much accurately for gut health, and I think that Bruce technically needs it because mans canonically eats so much to maintain his muscle mass, it's insane
I have to have it for health reasons, and it is decidedly disgusting for me unless you put honey in it because it's so fucking bitter
so yes, the tea sucking when made by Alfred was deliberate on his part
in Chp 5 when Bruce describes that the tea no longer smells bad but is still bitter, that can be taken by whatever ending one understands a Bittersweet Ending should be
but personally, I see it as Alfred still being bitter about the past but understanding that Bruce isn't the one that shouldn't be getting punished for it anymore (not totally)
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Tim's revenge plot basically combined every element of abuse (that the fic has shown, at least, in Chp 2) that Bruce had undergone
mind you, Tim didn't know about the food tampering Bruce experienced as a child, but he has seen it in action in the events of Chp 1
Poisoning = Alfred's deliberate mishandle of Bruce's diet sensory
The wine being from the manor = the gun closet in the manor
Pitting Alfred in an environment he will be discomforted/dissected in (fine dining restaurant midday) = sending Bruce to Arkham where he is discomforted and dissected
Emotional blackmail with Martha & Thomas' will = emotional blackmail with Martha and Thomas' legacy
It was almost supposed to be Dick in Tim's position in Chp 5 and Tim in Dick's during Chp 4
But upon rationalization with my beta readers, I figured two things:
Tim has less of a high-regard for the no-kill rule that would make it reasonable for him to commit to the bit
Dick will actually just kill Alfred, he's unfortunately that insane about his dad
No really, I bothered my beta readers about this...
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This dialogue parallel between Bruce and Alfred in Chp 2, then later Dick and Jason in Chp 4, happening in the same spot that the events of Chp 2 happen (in front of the hidden closet space)
This was basically meant to show how Bruce's positive influences on his children led them to react differently to the same lines he had shrunk from when he was a child
Also vaguely it was important to me too that it would be Dick and Jason who find the closet because they were the only one of the Batkids who saw Bruce between Alfred's Abuse and Jason's Death, which I believe is a very unique version of Bruce that's been lost to time and grief already
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This part where Bruce highlights two things differently: YOUR BURDEN
It was meant to express that Bruce wanted to mean something to Alfred specifically because he wants Alfred to just like him or be proud of him or something... he didn't want to be a burden to him
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Jason and Bruce's scene is also important to me, and specifically because it's Jason that Bruce is saying that he wouldn't change anything, even the horrible parts of his life, because it led him to his children
I think this is also me expression an anti-thesis to these people who say that "Jason is better off without Bruce in any universe"
Because I am of the firm belief that in stories like the ones in the Batman mythos, a "happy life" isn't for us readers to decide on, but for these characters to
So what if Jason is better off without Bruce? What does it matter that Bruce would've been better off if that night in that alleyway didn't happen.
It still happened, and yet, their lives as it is are ones they're fine with living. Maybe the other alternative universes aren't any better than this, maybe it is. They don't care. This life is fine enough.
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Also more allusions to Bruce being referred to as a weapon, which is my favorite thing of his in pre-batman bruce wayne comics (Batman: The Knight, ily)
I honest to god thought to maybe challenge this particular piece of canon and make the argument that Bruce is more of a shield than a sword
But then I remember that swords can be used to parry (defensive sword skill)
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In Cass' POV in Chp 4, Steph is leaning on her back the whole time faced away from the family
Bruce looks twice at Cass' direction, but in the second time, he wasn't looking at Cass, but rather at Steph
It's why there's 5 "I love you"s in the first half (simply referring to his children) then 6 in the second (now including Steph)
The first half, Bruce was talking about how he had also hurt his family for the same "necessity"; but in the second half, Bruce is talking about being happy that they had all turned out much better despite his shortcomings
It's important because Stephanie specifically became the great vigilante that she is because of Bruce failing her; while the other became great vigilantes because Bruce didn't fail them
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In Chp 4, Bruce and Steph were singing "Favorite Crime" and that actually was deliberate. This fic's tone and direction was almost modelled after Favorite Crime by Olivia Rodrigo because this was always meant to be a Bruce-Steph relationship study
But I swapped it out when I realized the opportunity to tell it simultaneous with a Bruce-Alfred relationship study
But anyways: 8 spaces, 8 lines, wink wonk...
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I didn't know how to show this without being "corn-plate-y" but in Chp 3 when Damian and Cass were about to confront Alfred, they find him fixing flower arrangements in the kitchen
Yeah, there were white tulips in the arrangement
I was actually re-reading all of Chp 2 to make sure I was recalling the right things for Chp 3, then zero'd on the detail where Bruce remembers that the flowers in his parents' funeral weren't ugly and didn't have any scent
Apparently most commercial grade tulips or tulips bloomed outside of its preferred climate in Europe tend to have no smell
Tulips are, in fact, the flower of forgiveness; but they're also the flower of new beginnings
In Chp 5, Martha is also noted to prefer peonies, and they also reperesent new beginnings, but also honor and dignity that Alfred doesn't have
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The chapter titles themselves, I had fun with labelling, especially in the first promo post for the fic where I colored according to what lyric was reminiscent of whom
But it was NOT your fault but mine = Alfred/Bruce recognizing that the horrible events that haunt his relationship with Bruce/Steph is very much his own doing
And it was your heart on the line = Alfred/Bruce acknowledging that no matter their own feelings of the circumstances that befell them, there was someone (Bruce/Steph) who needed them
I really fucked it up this time = Bruce taking his guilt to heart while Alfred is soft stancing on how much guilt he really bears (out of "necessity")
Didn't I, my dear? = Chp 4; Bruce and Steph acknowledging the state of their relationship, for all that's good about it, and finding peace in the fact that they each know that they mutually care about each other
Didn't I, my... (?) = Chp 5; Alfred refusing to commit to being Bruce's father figure while treating him like a son figure that can take his expressions of love (allusions to that meaning treating him like a legacy, a weapon, etc.)
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I will be completely honest....... this whole fic and, naturally, whatever the plot of my Steph-Bruce fic would've been, was planned around this particular set of dialogue in my drafts:
I decided it was a good dialogue skeleton and stretch it into its own fic.
You'll find it in Chp 4 of Steph's POV
Though I will grant you this: my supposed Steph-Bruce and Alfred-Bruce relationship study fics were supposed to be separate projects
Steph and Bruce's fic would've been made after Olivia Rodrigo's song "Favorite Crime"; and Alfred and Bruce's was always "Little Lion Man"
But I elected to try hitting two birds with one stone because I thought it would be interesting to look at Bruce's reactions to his abuse from the POV of his guardian and also the POV of one of his kids
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I mentioned it before in an ask, but originally, I had thought to make Alfred-Bruce's relationship's foil to be against Duke-Bruce's relationship, in the context of Duke also being someone "greater" (a META in a city ran by a non-meta vigilante) being parented by people who weren't prepared for what that kind of childrearing demands, but unlike Bruce, Duke had grown up loved
But as I was tapping around my drafts, I realized Steph was actually a better character to have for this fic
because, like Bruce, she is also in the position wherein she is both child and parent who suffered some abuse under the guidance of a person who never asked to have her (Bruce)
And also because it was more interesting, I think, that whoever came against Bruce was also someone Bruce hurt in depth
I do not intend to shy away from the fact that Bruce also hurt his kids and I made that very clear in both LLM and Turning Pages
but I think there is some grace in understanding where he was coming from; that's what LLM is also largely about
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The plot was also largely conducted around one quote (as was Turning Pages actually, with its own quote)
I am of the belief that every story every written in human history was us immortalizing the way we feel feelings into mediums that outlive the flesh that felt it
For Little Lion Man, this is the immortalization of the burning bitterness of having to be patient and forgiving of someone you shouldn't have to forgive, only because you know you cannot and do not want to live in a better world without them
It is irrational, yes
and unfair
But, after all, isn't love just another constant act of forgiveness?
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Anyways I'm typing this with my laptops sideways and absolutely not paying attention to shit. If I forgot any details and you ask, I'll answer honestly on whether or not it was a planned technicality or a fluke.
This fic is so near and dear to my heart, and is honestly raking up to be my favorite fic that I've written.
It's so personal to me and so honest to many of my own lived experiences. The fact that the right audience is finding it honestly heals a lot in me.
I hope you enjoyed Little Lion Man! Thank you so much for reading it to the end. Much love to all of you.
Chapter 4 of Little Lion Man by Mumford & Sons (Cover) is out!
Prominent Tags: Alfred Pennyworth is Not A Saint, explicit past csa (not between major chars), child abuse and neglect, suicide/self harm attempts, Batfamily feature, Bruce Wayne & Stephanie Brown relationship-centric
The Stephanie-Bruce found familyisms that DC dares to deprive me of.
I have a whole thing with them not being "father-daughter", more specifically, I have a whole opinion and a half about found families to be more big-brained than the usual nuclear family dynamics. I hope to push this agenda with future works with Steph (and other non-Wayne kids who are still Batkids, wink wonk)
Anyways, once again, a huge thanks to @/jaspers-fireflys and @/superbatismyreligion for beta reading this chapter as well. They're absolutely amazing. Please send them all your love and check their works out for yourselves.
Chapter 3 of Little Lion Man by Mumford & Sons (Cover) is out!
Prominent Tags: Alfred Pennyworth is Not A Saint, explicit past csa (not between major chars), child abuse and neglect, suicide/self harm attempts, Batfamily feature, Bruce Wayne & Stephanie Brown relationship-centric
⚠️ CHP 3 content warnings: implied/referenced.... csa (not between major characters), self-harm, suicide, child abuse, body mutilation
Next update: Tomorrow, Sunday @ GMT+8
PROTECTIVE BATKIDS ARE HERE!!!!!!!
Emotional fall-outs are such a fascinating thing to have to write and gosh I sort-of loved this chapter. Second favorite of all of this fic, possibly. Largely because: PROTECTIVE BATFAMILY!!
Thank you again to @/jaspers-fireflys and @/superbatismyreligion for betaing this chp!!! This chapter was so all over the place.
shang qinghua often mutters things in a random language none of the other peak lords can understand but they eventually disregard it as one of his quirks.
it’s only when a heavenly artifact is found and starts saying a prophecy in said language that it starts clicking.
shang qinghua is called and translates the prophecy before nodding and muttering how he already knew that and now he’d have more paperwork when he got back to his peak.
all the peak lords and their disciples now think shang qinghua is a god from the heavens sent down to help them? was he able to predict the future? was that why he claimed to have already known about the prophecy?
there is now a shrine on every peak dedicated to him and once mobei jun sees one he also builds one in his palace. now he only has to research how to court a god.
Okay even better, Huan Hua doses Shen Yuan with a truth potion for the trial but the truth potion forces the victim to tell the actual objective truths of the universe, no matter what the personally believe to be true. They ask him who perpetrated Shen Qingqiu’s various crimes, and every time Shen Yuan just points to Shang Qinghua as the perpetrator.
Alfred’s first reaction on finding out Bruce was exposed to fear gas is that he needs medical treatment, even though the event in question was months ago.
Snorting this like cocaine. What good whump fodder. The implication that fear gas causes issues chronically. The possibility that all the bats might need to be medicated long term because they’ve been exposed.
Even the idea that part of the reason Gotham’s issues are so insurmountable is because a significant portion of the population has intense untreated anxiety. Even the bats can’t force people to be treated. And when people in Gotham think of the mentally ill (and / or therapists) they probably think of the various supervillains. There’s probably an even bigger stigma against mental healthcare in Gotham.
Just imagining a preteen Jon Kent who has only ever encountered the civilian batbros in relation to Damian one day hear his dad, who has never said worse than “shucks darn” in his presence, call Dick by his name:
Jon: Dad! That’s so mean, why would you call him that?!
Clark: because that’s his name?
Jon: his name is Grayson!
Clark: uh
Dick: that’s my last name, kiddo
Jon:
Jon:
Jon: What about Todd—
Dick: Jason
Jon: and drake—
Dick: Tim
Jon: where does the wayne fit in to all of this?
Dick: Bruce adopted us
Jon: you’re ADOPTED!? But you all look exactly the same
Dick: umm
Jon: your parents are dead?
Dick: yes
Jon: *visibly tearing up* that’s so sad
Dick: it’s okay! Don’t cry. Honestly, when I was little, finding out your dad was adopted really helped me—
Jon: MY DAD IS ADOPTED?!
Clark: *facepalms* honey, I’m an alien. You know this.
Jon: *lays on floor and sings the wizards of waverly place theme song to himself* everything is not what it seems
Hal and Bruce getting together after Hal comes back from being Parallax and then Spectre. It's slow, it's difficult, Bruce's trust isn't easily earned back, but it happens, because if there is one thing Bruce knows how to do, it's how to give endless chances. He realearns how to not tense in Hal's presence, how to relax in his arms, how into deep, peaceful sleep in the same bed as him. Hal watches Bruce's chest rise and fall with calm breaths and feels giddy at being one of the few people who's rustling about doesn't wake Bruce anymore. He feels joy at being allowed to see all the vulnerable sides of Bruce, all the old wounds, all the secret worries. He feels grateful at getting to see Bruce do silly faces at his kids and to hear him laugh gracelessly at a dumb joke.
He feels dread - doom, even - at the certainty that Bruce will soon learn, will soon remember... that Parallax wasn't the first time Hal betrayed him.
The Justice League has been fighting for years to repeal the Federal Anti-Ecto Control Act.
At the same time as Danny Fenton's escape from the GIW, the Supreme Court reaffirms the Act, siding with the GIW. If you know what to look for, you could see the corruption which lead to this decision. The private jet flights, the "gifts". The wealthy "friends" of the Justices who made the decision.
With further anti-meta and anti-alien laws in the works, it is only a matter of time before the persecution is expanded, and death camps are built
There are already active pogroms.
After an emergency meeting in the watchtower, it is decided that the JL should launch a coup against the US government
The story takes place shortly after the coup, opening with the big three in a press conference, explaining why they did what they did, likely with Superman as the main speaker.
Trials will likely be held for those responsible for the genocidal laws. Those responsible including billionaires, judges, members of congress, the former president, and so on, and so on.
A really well done costume that he spent weeks making, the one that is so intricate in detail because he spent months stalking the vigilante at night to get it done right.
Now, the Mayor of Gotham is shaking his hand, and cops claping him on the back for a job well done.
He just accidentally saved the Wayne Family from their promised demise.
It started as an extra credit assignment from Mr. Lancer. Help out with setting up at some sort of hero memorial gala thing, make up for—well. Danny isn’t even sure WHICH assignment or grade at this point, if he was being honest. He needed the help regardless.
The bonus was that after he helped set up in this garden venue, he was free to go home or attend himself. Upon finding out that there would be hero cosplays, Tucker not only volunteered himself and Sam to join, but also had INSISTED they all dress in costume. Sam only agreed if she got to be ‘stabby Robin’, which led to Danny also being a Robin when her first cosplay sets came in as the wrong Robin.
Waste not want not, and Danny found himself as either Robin one or Robin two, he isn’t sure and—frankly, there wasn’t much difference in the costumes as far as he could tell. Tucker still laughed at the pixie boots as he donned his own Signal costume.
There’d been some double takes at Danny throughout the evening, which really only encouraged him to mess with people a little. He can’t sneak in and out like one of the Gotham heroes, but he can turn invisible, which was much easier to pull off. He even got Brucie Wayne looking like he’d seen a ghost! Highlight of the evening, really.
Which led to the lowlight of the evening.
They weren’t in Gotham, rather a neighboring town, in an attempt to avoid the usual Gotham Rogues. Considering this was still a Wayne Enterprises affair, it was maybe unavoidable. The Joker had decided to show his ugly face.
And also about fifty freaking ghosts, invisible to everyone else but making a giant racket in Danny’s ears. Not to mention a handful of armed goons.
Danny had been trying to carefully sneak back to his friends and bail them out, or at least get them to cover before showing up as Phantom. Human enemies weren’t his specialty, but like he’d really let anyone else get hurt by a guy that had a haunting that intense going on. Amity Park was special in that regard—haunting a person as a ghost on the living side was actually quite difficult, so to have dozens of people successfully do so? It meant his actual kill count was exponentially higher.
Unfortunately, Danny is a Fenton, which meant Fenton Luck.
Joker spotted him.
“Oh?” Joker grinned. “Didn’t I kill you before? Quite a place to show up in a dead man’s clothes. Or are you just a fanboy?”
Danny scowled. He did not want to fight Joker while wearing honest to goodness tights, but he’d done far dumber for far less good reasons than keeping a madman’s attention on him. Time to distract until he either got a plan or got bailed out by-hopefully-another hero. “I got better. Your unwaking dead send their regards, by the way. Quite loudly, too.”
Joker cackled, and Danny was honestly unimpressed. Sure, it wasn’t a pleasant laugh, quite spine-chilling. But Danny was also a horror movie fanatic, a horror movie creature himself, and had met Freakshow. Did this guy even have any powers? Not to underestimate him, but—actually.
Hm.
Weird.
Danny could see a bit of what he can best describe as murky ectoplasm. Basically, ectoplasm that had fermented while on the Living Side. Everyone had at least a little by the time they grew into adults, since ectoplasm was some kind of biological messenger or… something? It was something in the environment that all living beings used, but it was also somewhat produced internally…. He thinks. He hadn’t paid as much attention as he should have to that lecture.
He did know this though. Ectoplasm kind of was like a nutrient, cycling through the body and the ecosystem with several different sources of getting it. ‘Living’ ectoplasm got cycled out naturally, but ‘dead’ ectoplasm had a much harder time leaving, and can build up, causing nasty side effects. The body didn’t know the difference, so when around the dead—cemeteries, funerals, cadavers, and so on—it all gets picked up regardless. Humans stored a lot of it naturally, more so than any other species, but that meant that it took that much longer for the murkier ‘dead’ ectoplasm to be able to DO anything to someone before it DID get filtered out.
One way to get more of that ‘murk’ quickly was to consume another living thing. Eating meat or eating plants wouldn’t cut it—both were the usual bulk sources of ‘living’ ectoplasm—unless it was rotten. Option two was cannibalism.
Danny didn’t think the Joker was a cannibal, but looking at his levels of dead ectoplasm… that had to be affecting the Clown Prince Of Long Monologues That Danny Was Not Listening To. Something something Waynes something something terror something something deranged laughter.
What if he just… took it out? That much had to be affecting Joker’s mind. Heck, not even just Joker—Danny could see a couple of others with concerning levels of their own in the room, and that could end badly. If the ectoplasm in Joker could, say, cause a subconscious hive mind, or otherwise interact with the other higher leveled people, it’d go from bad to worse for everyone.
One way to find out. And hey, he was already wearing a mask, so…
Danny, ignoring whatever ultimatum Joker was spewing as he gestured wildly at one of the statues, reached into Joker’s neck, into his spinal column, and pulled out stringy, almost-seaweed-like strands of corrupted ectoplasm.
Joker looked at him. Danny looked at the Joker. They both looked at the whatever the hell Danny had in his hands.
“Are those my blood vessels?”
“… No?”
The ectoplasm twitches.
Joker leapt back, completely and uncharacteristically surprised, and toppled over his own feet. His head smacked against a marble table, covered in velvet and finger foods but no less solid for it.
Danny waited for him to get back up, to start screaming or going back to that monologue.
He doesn’t.
One of the goons, wearing a full face mask and eyeing Danny warily all the while, stepped over to the Joker.
“Boss?” she poked him lightly in the shoulder.
Nothing.
Very hesitant in her movements, she pulled one of her gloves off and held it against his mouth, then against his pulse.
She stood, pulled her glove back on, and said in a very clear tone, “Uh oh.”
“What do you mean ‘uh oh’?” A different goon in a hat asked.
“Can’t get paid if the man is dead, which means the Goonion is going to have to bail—cause we’re totally getting arrested.”
“The Joker is DEAD?!”
Danny didn’t know who shouted, but he can hear the thunderous roar of Joker’s ghosts cheering. He winces, and accidentally clamps too hard on the gross ectoplasm in his hands.
The damn stuff splattered, and in an attempt to purify it before it can get into anyone else’s system, Danny tried to both burn it with an ecto blast and freeze it with ice at the same time.
It became a sort of mist, floating in the air and taking up far more volume as a gas than as a—was ectoplasm a solid or a liquid? He had no idea, but he did notice the effect it had immediately.
The ghosts were visible to the other gala guests.
Danny was still the only one to hear them, but the crying and cheers from the dead were plainly visible to the living.
Someone was trying to talk to him, but the ghosts were just too loud.
With a snap, because Danny had accidentally helped kill a man just now and was rather frayed from it, he turned to the ghosts. “I get it, I did the thing you wanted, now would you go?! I only have limited time here myself you know! Go party in the afterlife, please!”
For the first time in Danny’s lif-er, existence, the ghosts listened, shimmering away slowly with happy tears running down their faces.
It’s just as well, since the doors now burst open, the police coming just in time to see actual spirits wave goodbye and a far few shouting complaints about competency as they leave.
There’s only so much nonsense Danny can take for the evening, so he let invisibility fade over him as the guests look over to the police squad now standing dumbfounded in the doorway. It takes mere seconds to grab Sam and Tucker and get out, running through the halls with intangibility until he can see the night sky, and then running further after until he’s satisfied.
“Dude,” Tucker said as he panted. “You couldn’t have just flown us home?”
Danny glared. “Ah, yes, I’ll just go ghost in the middle of a ballroom. Excellent choice. My powers are weaker as human, you know.”
Sam started to laugh in a rather incredulous manner, which is something Danny actually IS wary of when hearing. “No lost love here, but I can’t believe a “Robin” just killed the Joker.”
Danny glances back down again.
…. Well. It’s a good thing this Robin was already retired, right?
Surely this won’t have any long reaching consequences.
I mean “clone” Jason is 1000% going looking for regular Jason
He’s not sure why, there’s been some jokes about “the traditional clone/original standoff”
The other bats are pretty quickly roped in to help, because obviously they’ve already been looking
(If this snaps Jason right out of his ominous plotting because he’s not even the real Jason so why bother and leads to quicker reconciliation, all good)
And of course, all three Amity Parkers’ names are on the lists of people who helped set up the event
And pictures of Danny from before he costumed up can be used to extrapolate build
And some selfies of Danny, Sam, and Tucker before the party in those costumes are posted online
(Bonus points if Danny’s blurry like Bigfoot in the photos but just about distinguishable, Bruce saw him in person)
It’s really not all that long before Danny’s dodging Waynes at home, but what really brings things to a head is when an absolute brick shithouse of a man stalks up to him, stares down at him for a while, and bursts into tears
Jason’s wondering who the hell else they mixed his dna with to make him, Jason Todd was a tiny little guy and he’s so huge, and Danny’s about the same size as baby Jason
They’ve been joking about it being Bruce or Clark, but he takes a look at Danny’s actual face and hair and eye colour aside… they look nothing alike
Jason’s not even sure how much Todd dna he has in him and finally agrees to a test, which confuses everything so much more
Danny has so many questions he has no idea where to begin. Who made that clone (believable thanks to a certain evil alternative version)? What possible motivation do they have? Why did they clone him? What do they want? And so on and so on.
Jason was really confused when the guy is so chill about being cloned... I mean... Look at how superman reacted.
Danny just accepting he has a clone he doesn’t know about because so much stuff happens without him knowing (including a host of ghosts who are now petitioning for his royal status to be formally acknowledged after he avenged their untimely death-by-joker)
Danny *le~awkwardly patting the semi inconsolable Jason Todd (he’s a bat so he’s keeping it together pretty well for falling apart)*: There there? Umm so a clone? Well you’re in good company, not the first time it happened.
Jason *bluescreening*: not the first?
Danny *glad to have something to talk about other than the crying*: oh yeah, I wonder if they over shot on the dad side of the DNA in you because you’re such a tank… and so stable… (thinking:maybe they only used the human DNA?? But I can sense ectoplasm in him…) or maybe the cloning of me just mucks things up… yeah whoever made you made you very stable…you’ll see when Dani comes over. *grabs his phone and starts texting* she might respond in a few weeks because she never looks at her phone but *phone chirps* wait… oh so I caught her at a good time, she’ll be over in a couple of days time to come see her new brother!
Jason: …I’ve got a sister?
Danny: yeah, her cloning pod produced a lot about there were some severe mutations to the clones and many dissolved - she was the only survivor just a heads up to maybe steer clear of that as a topic
#dpxdc#dc x dp#dp x dc#dcxdp#danny & jason#prev tags ->#jason thinks he’s danny clone#danny killed the joker#everyone thought he was the ghost of robin (2)#even jason
With all the current vitriol and mudslinging and strawmanning and rage floating around the fandom I got to thinking (again) about whose fault it really is. And I realised - we've been duped!! For the last three months we thought that the Night King was a colossal disappointment. We couldn't have been more wrong. His villainy knows no bounds!!
We've been told that the only thing needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. That's true - and what NK counted on for his reign of terror beyond the Wall. Good men (and women) on the other side did nothing, thus contributing to the greatest army the living world has ever seen, an undead dragon and the fall of the Wall.
But that's not all!! See NK is also a savvy strategic genius who would fit right into today's business environment. He knows what got him to the Wall won't get him to Westeros 2.0 (aka DISASTER).
That my friends, is a true Mastermind. A visionary of no uncertain ability!! See, he figured out that he could get incredible results by a remarkable twist on the age-old wisdom.
You can also make evil win by ensuring the bad men do nothing!
See that's why he threw the game. It was all his master plan! Let's consider one by one, shall we?
He brought his entire strength against Winterfell but ensured that only a couple of secondary characters and some tertiary characters died. Grief unites people you see - if everyone surviving lost someone truly important to them then they would form an unbreakable bond which nasty, conniving wannabe queens couldn't manipulate.
He brought all his firepower against one measly crippled boy (or parasitic tree wizard, I honestly don't know at this point). Now that might seem an overconfident strategy to mere mortals but you see he knew what he was doing. If the majority of the army doesn't see them but only hordes of ice zombies, they won't even believe that the Walkers exist. And if they don't believe Walkers ever existed then they will continue to think that only the Iron Throne matters.
He lets himself be fake taken out by a scrappy little kid with a tiny blade. But before that he ensures that atleast Jon and Dany see that he's impervious to dragonfire. This will make them think later - that's it? That's all that took to take out the greatest threat to humanity? You need the only two people capable of leading others to think they're incapable of truly judging the magnitude of a threat.
He lets himself be taken out by someone who's never had anything to do with him in an inexplicable manner which has no explanation. This results in taking away Jon's entire reason for existence. This is ghosting in the worst possible way. For years you've haunted this guy's waking dreams. The poor boy made you his primary reason for existing. He's made sure that you're at the center of his every thought and action. And at the end you let yourself be taken out by a stranger, after spreading your arms and giving him hope that his moment with you has come. Only to leave him cornered and yelling at the last moment.
See his genius? With his life's purpose made meaningless in such an abrupt manner Jon is rudderless. Combined with the knowledge that his father was never his daddy, Jon will never trust his own decisions again. In fact he will be so overwhelmed at being so wrong about the severity of NK's threat that he's going to be incapable of thinking or speaking much after this.
And Dany? She won't know what to think of a threat which is impervious to dragonfire but not little girls with little knives. She will wonder if this threat was even worth it. She will start seeing conspiracies in everything and believe that people who have never seen her accomplish what she has will suddenly love her. She will start thinking that the Throne was all that mattered in the first place and she should never have swerved.
Since Varys, Tyrion and Sansa never saw the Walkers and only the zombies, they won't take much time to get back to their regularly scheduled programming of scheming. I mean the apocalyptic threat they thought would destroy everything turned out to be less destructive than Ramsay so why not get straight back into the game of thrones? Only this time with higher stakes?
And that's why the Night King is such a genius. By becoming an annoying non-entity when least expected he started the process of destroying Jon's ability to think for himself, Dany's ability to rise above her impulses and Sansa's capability of not being a self-serving (redacted).
Oh he's waiting somewhere in the Lands of Always Winter. He'll wait till the continent has crumbled through utter idiocy and mismanagement and greedy grabbing. And then he'll make his move.
After an enlightening solo trip to the ghost zone, Dr. Maddie Fenton decides to do research on the most fascinating thing she found.
The plausibility of the myths and legends surrounding a seemingly extinct type of ecto entity. It’s known as a Halfa, and it’s supposed to be a ghost human hybrid.
Parchment crinkled under the fingers of Maddie’s gloves, the sound echoing weirdly off the vaulted ceiling of the ruin she had discovered floating only thirty minutes from the Fenton Portal. She wore a Fenton Ecto-Exploration suit, designed to protect a human being from all the dangers of the Ghost Zone, a tether and hose tying her back to the Specter Speeder.
Already, this first foray into the Ghost Zone had yielded more data than she and Jack had gotten in all the time before opening the portal, and more data than they recorded in a week back in Amity Park, waiting for the ghosts to show up on their own terms. Minutes after entering, they had encountered whole swarms of lesser ghosts, little creatures that barely showed up on their scanners, and to their surprise, a vast variety of ghostly architecture.
True, most of the buildings were ruins, and there were far too many stairs and free-floating doors to be at all logical for entities that could fly, but their presence had been entirely unexpected and brought up whole new lines of inquiry.
Who built these structures? Why? How? Had humans once lived here? Because ghosts didn’t have the focus, the organization, or the intelligence to do something like this. Perhaps they were stolen. She and Jack had researched occurrences of people and vehicles being spirited away, most notably in places like Bermuda. But for all these buildings to suffer a similar state…
Maddie had to investigate. That meant leaving the relatively safe confines of the Speeder. Jack had objected, of course, not to the concept of entering one of the buildings, but to Maddie being the one to go. But she had talked him over to her point of view. She was the better fighter, after all, and less likely to set off any traps the ghosts had left in the buildings.
She had lucked out, too, in their choice of buildings. This appeared to be an abandoned library, or some kind of record repository, full of scrolls and bound books.
There were too many for her to take all of them, sadly. The ecto-preservation box she had brought for samples would only fit a few of the thick, dusty tomes- and she had to put them in the box. There was no telling how quickly they would decay if exposed to normal, real-world air.
She picked the five books that looked best preserved, with leathery covers and silver-edged pages. The scrolls appeared to be more fragile, even if she could probably fit more of them in the box.
Giving the room one last glance and snapping one last picture with her Fenton Ecto-Imager, she turned, and followed her tether back to the Speeder.
.
They kept the books in a sealed glass containment unit, using attached gloves to reach in and manipulate the pages, as if they were handling lethal chemicals or disease-carrying vials. For all they knew, the books could be just as dangerous. Even something as innocuous as a musical instrument could become a weapon in a ghost’s hands.
Still, the main reason for their precautions was to preserve the books. The pages were fragile enough, and scans showed that the paper and parchment they were made of had a high ectoplasm content; a high enough content that, were the ectoplasm in them to disperse, the pages might crumble entirely.
Maddie and Jack painstakingly took pictures of every page. They were written, and beautifully illuminated, in a language neither of them were familiar with, forcing them to send the work of translating them to a linguist friend.
Jack literally held his breath, waiting for the linguist to call them back. Maddie was less optimistic about the response time. Jocelyn was a friend, yes, had been a friend since college, but Maddie was well aware of the reputation she and Jack had built up over the years. They would be lucky if Jocelyn looked over the images this month, let alone within five minutes of-
The phone rang.
Maddie hit the speaker button. “Hello, this is Fentonworks, Dr. Fenton speaking.”
“Maddie, this is Jocelyn. Where did you get these books?”
“The Ghost Zone!” said Jack, excitedly.
Jocelyn laughed. “Right, right, don’t tell me, that’s fine. Anyway, four of them look like they’re in Voynich script-”
“So you can translate them?” asked Maddie, excitedly.
“Afraid not! Before you showed me these, I thought there was only one example of that in the world, and no one has been able to translate it. You should get these all tested for authenticity, by the way. If any of them are legit, you have a fortune on your hands. Anyway. The fifth one seems to be mostly in Gaelic script, with some notes in Latin and Ogham. Very interesting. Subject matter seems to be ghosts from what I can tell, which, well, I’m not surprised, exactly.”
“So you can translate that one?” Maddie asked, eagerly. She didn’t want the trip to come to nothing.
“Well, some of it. I’m not super familiar with Irish languages. I’ll have to ask my colleagues, and they’ll really want some kind of confirmation about the books before they spend too much time on it. You know?”
“That’s reasonable,” said Maddie, even as she winced. She’d have to follow up with Jocelyn on what kind of ‘confirmation’ translators would want.
“Anyway, from what I can tell just by looking, this is a treatise of some kind on the ‘half-dead,’ compiled by a couple different authors over a long period of time. The Latin notes read like clarifications, or personal anecdotes, but there are also a lot of references to the god Janus. There’s a bit much to go over on the phone.”
“You can email us,” said Maddie.
“How about I drive down to Amity? I’ll bring my notes, and I really want to hear where you got these.”
“We told you! The Ghost Zone!”
“You always were a joker, Jack. Good to see life hasn’t changed you. So, do you guys mind if I come?”
“Not at all,” said Maddie.
.
Jocelyn regarded the portal with guarded disbelief. “I can’t believe it. I really can’t. No one is going to believe this.” She paused. “Were those books written by ghosts?”
“Unlikely,” said Maddie. “Ghosts lack the mental capacity. It’s more likely that these were stolen from people who were researching ghosts.”
“Right, right, that makes sense, I suppose. Anyway, I think I’ve put together a good summary of what’s in that book. I had to call in some favors, by the way, so you owe me. Also, you’ll have to pay to get the whole thing done, sorry.” She put her bags on a clean counter top, and gazed longingly at the books under the glass. “Man, I hope you can get more of those. Wouldn’t it be wild to translate the Voyinch manuscript?”
“Well, lets work on the one we have now,” said Maddie.
.
By the time Jocelyn left, Maddie was obsessed.
The book was about half-ghosts, a species of ghost that had to be either entirely mythical or, at least, extinct in the modern day. Humans simply couldn’t have ghost powers. The science didn’t work.
But the stories were fascinating. The descriptions of how ‘half-ghosts’ developed and acted were detailed. The logic of the ancient authors compelling.
As far as the translated portions went, in any case.
It left Maddie wondering: What if half-ghosts were possible?
How would one be made?
She and Jack spent hours pouring over the notes Jocelyn had left, staying up all night. Her visit hadn’t been nearly long enough to go over everything.
Maddie felt a little guilty. She knew her children, Jazz and Danny, worried over them when they got so invested in a project like this, especially a project so likely to come to nothing. Danny, in particular, had come down several times to bring them snacks or peek over their shoulders.
Maddie and Jack, feeling guilty, and also tired, had relented towards dinnertime, and ordered pizza for the family. Then, they had gathered on the couch to watch a movie. Jack fell asleep right away, but Maddie was too wired.
“So,” said Danny, his eyes fixed blankly on a dialogue-free action sequence. “What are you guys working on, down there? You’ve been busy since yesterday.”
“Well,” said Maddie, “you remember that we took our first trip into the Ghost Zone a few days ago?”
“Yeah,” said Danny.
“We found those books there, and Jocelyn translated some parts of one of them for us. We think they’re field observations made by medieval ghost hunters.”
Skepticism and exasperation flitted across Danny’s features, but quickly vanished. Maddie pushed away her disappointment. Danny and Jazz had never been very enthusiastic about their work, and she despaired of what would happen to Fentonworks when she and Jack got too old to keep it up.
Still. He was showing interest now, even if it was only to be polite.
“Okay,” said Danny. “What are you guys going to do with them?” He rubbed his hands back and forth on the couch upholstery.
“We were planning on running a few tests to see if the claims made in them are feasible.”
Danny winced.
“Don’t worry, we’ll make sure everything we do is perfectly safe,” said Maddie, patting his knee.
“You’re going to be playing Mythbusters with ghosts,” said Danny, dryly. “I really doubt that’s going to be safe.”
The characters in the movie started talking again.
.
Danny had a point, Maddie had to admit. On the other hand, it wasn’t as if she were testing these things on herself, and Jack was around to double-check all her calculations.
“… manuscript retrieved from the Ghost Zone,” said Maddie, clearly, into her recorder, “suggests that natural portals formed an important role in the formation of the first generation of so-called ‘half-ghosts’ or ‘doorway spirits.’ The exact role is unclear at this point in our translation efforts, however, based on our own interaction with the Fenton Portal, and the fact that we do not exhibit the abilities of ‘half-ghosts,’ we believe the most likely cause is being ‘caught’ in a forming portal. If, of course, there’s any validity to the manuscript’s claims in the first place.”
Maddie paused, adjusting some of the controls in front of her, making sure everything was in place. Jack was taking care of the mice.
“We are going to test this theory with mice. Based on our current understanding of portal physics, our current expectation is that the mice will simply die. However, we ignore the wisdom of the past at our own risk. Are you ready, Jack?”
“Just about!” said Jack, fitting the last mouse into a harness to keep it from escaping the opening portal. He jogged over to stand with Maddie behind the blast shield.
Maddie nodded, checked the cameras, and then pulled the lever to bring the portal gun into alignment. They both pulled on their tinted goggles.
“Will you do the honors, dear?” she asked Jack, nodding at the firing button.
“You betcha! Geronimo!”
The lab was filled with a flash of light, making both of them wince, and then everything went dark.
“I think we tripped a circuit breaker, Mads,” said Jack, sheepishly.
“It happens,” said Maddie. “I hope the kids weren’t in the shower…” She tapped the night-vision switch on her goggles and walked over to the breaker box. She flipped the culprit switch. “There we go. Now, let’s take a look at the mi-” She blinked at the wreck of the mice cages. “They’re gone!”
They would have to revise their theories. None of them had predicted the mice being vaporized.
.
“I think I know why our experiment with the mice didn’t work,” said Jack.
“Oh?” said Maddie. She was working on preparing the Speeder for another expedition.
“No Obsession. To get a halfa, we need something that would have become a ghost on death anyway.”
Maddie frowned. “Halfa?”
“Easier than saying ‘half-ghost,’“ explained Jack.
“You may have a point,” said Maddie. “But that just means we’ll never be able to create a halfa in the lab. We can’t predict what will make a ghost.”
“That’s true,” said Jack. “But, we agreed before, halfas would be able to blend in with the living pretty well, right? Their human brains would override most of their ghostly impulses?”
“Except for a slight tendency towards violent and possessive behavior, yes,” said Maddie. “What are you getting at?”
“Well, natural portals still form all the time! And there are more humans than there have ever been. Halfas could be all around us and we’d never even know it! What we need is a way to detect them.”
“You’re right,” said Maddie. “But how?”
“Well, in theory they’d have ectosignatures, like ghosts, right? So, we could use our regular scanners, and if a human showed up as a ghost on them, then they’d be a halfa!”
“But, Jack, our scanners never work properly. They keep latching on to Danny, remember? Ever since…” Maddie’s brow furrowed. “Ever since… his accident with the portal.”
Jack had gone an odd, pasty color. “You don’t think-?”
“No,” said Maddie, firmly. “It isn’t possible.”
“But if it was?”
Maddie looked up, as if she could see through metal, concrete, wood, laminate, carpet, and drywall, all the way to Danny’s room on the second floor. “If it was… We’d just have to ask him, wouldn’t we?”
This fic is connected to my untitled whumpy omega!bruce au, which will now be called my wob au, for the lack of a better term.
I'm going to be posting my chapters here first, and then I will post the fic on ao3 when it's complete. Chapters will be posted at random, mostly whenever I finish them, so be on the lookout!
Author’s Note: This is a fic of a fic of a fic. The original is Batman is a WHAT?! by Cringe_Fella and the fic that heavily inspired me to write this is Oh we fucked up… by The_Corvid_Ruler. @occasionalauthoring’s #no pack au is also a heavy inspiration for my omega!Bruce, so be sure to check them out!
Description: Bruce has never disclosed the truth about his secondary gender to the Justice League. They believe him to be an alpha, just like the rest of the world, and Bruce isn’t much of an omega anyway. But now he’s over a month into his two-week trip into space, his suppressants ran out a fortnight ago, and the close proximity to so many alphas has triggered his abnormal heat cycle.
Unfortunately for Bruce, his heats have never played nice, and it certainly isn’t about to start now.
Content/Trigger Warnings: As you can probably gather, this is going to be a whumpy/angsty fic, so please heed the warnings! There will be mentions of self-hatred, self-esteem issues, unintentional self-harm, mentions of miscarriage, and implied/referenced rape/sexual assault.
Warnings for Chapter One: mentions of miscarriage, self-esteem issues, and unintentional self-harm
Bruce is mentally and emotionally exhausted. Their round-trip journey to a neighboring planet had been slated to take two weeks—it was now going on five. Five weeks stuck in the Javelin with the Justice League. Five weeks dealing with Hal’s smart mouth. Five weeks listening to Oliver bemoan the time away from Dinah. Five weeks sitting in an enclosed metal tin with dwindling rations, their pheromones circling the stale air, and sharing a room with Clark.
The Javelin has only four bunk rooms. Barry had been allotted his own room on the account of being the perceived lone omega in the group. Diana, too, had been given her own room as she was the only woman aboard. That had left Hal and Oliver sharing a room, and him and Clark.
Clark, an alpha.
With him.
An omega.
It is improper for many reasons. Bruce should have spoken up beforehand; should have revealed that he is an omega; he should have begged Diana to swap rooms; he should have done something.
The protocol to separate by sex and dynamic is not inherently discriminatory despite how it may appear. There is a reason for it. One of these reasons is why Bruce has absconded to the sole bathroom, gripping the stainless steel sink with enough force to dent it.
If an omega spends a significant amount of time around an alpha in a confined space, their body will take it as a sign of mating and force them into a heat. Bruce had anticipated this. He had brought on a supply of suppressants to combat his fickle, dysfunctional biology, but the suppressants had run their course two weeks ago. He’d been hoping that his body, for once, stayed true to its abnormal estrous cycle.
He should have known better.
Bruce shudders as another shiver wracks through him, the preheat crawling beneath his skin. He grits his teeth, bracing his forehead against the cool steel of the sink. It will be too suspicious if he retrieves antipyretics like Tylenol or Aspirin from the med-kit. He’s never had the need to take mild pain medication before, not when he’s powered through broken bones on the battlefield without so much as a whimper.
Damn Clark. Damn his strong, alpha scent. Damn Bruce’s own broken biology that doesn’t know what a normal heat cycle is anymore. Too much trauma and stress, Leslie had said. First, the miscarriage what he’d thought had been a miscarriage and then the grief of losing Jason. It’s been years since Jason returned, but his body has never truly recovered from the losses. He isn’t even sure his body is his anymore. Some days, his skin doesn't feel like it belongs to him.
Someone knocks on the door. Bruce doesn’t move.
“Bruce?” calls Diana. “Are you well?”
He swallows back the ridiculous urge to whine, to roll over for the alpha and invite her to aid him in his coming heat. Instead, he bites out, “I’m fine.”
It comes out weaker than intended.
There’s a pause, where he clenches his eyes shut and wills Diana to leave it alone, then she says, “Alright. You’ve been in there a while, is all.”
“I’ll be out in a moment,” he says.
Bruce doesn’t shift until he hears her move away from the door. He stares at his reflection in the mirror, taking in the pink hue to his skin, the slight reddening of his eyes. He spares a bit of their water supply to wet his hands and wipe the feverish sweat from his temples and nape. The cool water does little to soothe him.
Damn Clark, he thinks again.
Bruce double-checks the pheromone blocking patches on his scent glands. The skin around each is pink with irritation and starting to itch fiercely, but he forces himself to leave them alone. He’s been wearing them for too long—much longer than the twenty-four hours advised—but he only brought a limited supply. If he ignores the build-up of oil that’s causing the irritation, he should be able to last the remaining few days needed to get back to the Watchtower. Then, he can hole up in his room at the manor and succumb to his heat.
Just three more days, he thinks.
The only person missing from the lounge is Barry. Bruce feels guilty for the relief that runs through him, but if anyone was going to recognize the symptoms of a preheat, it would be him. He’s the only omega on board. The rest—Clark, Diana, Oliver, and Hal—are alphas. Oliver is another worry as the only one mated to an omega, but Bruce privately thinks that he won’t notice; he believes Bruce is an alpha like the rest of the world.
It’s not like Bruce can blame Oliver. When he’d returned from abroad, tall, broad-shouldered, and wielding a vapid yet rogueish grin, no one had needed to catch his scent to guess what he’d presented as.
He’s never corrected their assumptions.
Diana catches his eyes as he slinks towards a lone corner. Bruce offers her a nod so she doesn’t think anything is amiss. The vinyl fabric of the chair is cool against his skin and smells faintly of the League, of the closest thing to the pack he has up here. He resists the urge to close his eyes and burrow into it. That’s too much like nesting behavior than is comfortable, and he can’t just start up a nest in the middle of the lounge. He can’t start up a nest at all. The dopamine and other happy chemicals will only expedite the onset of his heat, something he doesn’t want this far out in space while surrounded by a bunch of alphas.
Let alone while he’s sharing a room with Clark.
Bruce shuts down that thought before his body can react and try to pump out pheromones to entice the alpha, to get him to spend his heat with him. Bruce hasn’t shared a heat with someone since Talia, he isn’t about to start with his coworker.
And that’s all he is: a coworker. That’s all he’ll ever be. Who will want to be with a poor excuse of an omega like him anywa—
Bruce forces his thoughts away, refocusing on what the others are doing.
They’re playing a card game. He vaguely recognizes it to be an alien game that Hal learned in the Lantern Corps. Bruce isn't familiar with the rules, although Barry had once described it to be a mixture of mahjong and rummy with a betting aspect like poker.
Clark is winning, given the size of his betting pile. Bruce squints at it. Are those M&M’s? He swore candy wasn't on their rations list, so someone must've snuck them aboard as contraband. He'll have to figure out who it is and reprimand them. The Javelin can only hold so much weight once gravity has taken hold, and every gram must be accounted for.
His thoughts stray from the future lecture when Oliver says something snarky to Clark, and in response, he takes a red M&M and pops it in his mouth.
Clark’s pink lips curl politely over his teeth as he chews. A dimple marks one cheek from the grin he's sporting. Oliver scoffs something else, but Bruce can't hear past the thumping in his ears. Sweat slicks down his back as a pink tongue darts out, dragging over plump lips, leaving them with a slight sheen.
Bruce swallows, his mouth dry.
The game ends then, with Diana placing her last three cards, a pleased little smile curling her mouth. Hal groans and Olliver curses. Bruce's eyes are drawn back to Clark. His brows are furrowed as he stares down at his own cards, five of them. Then, one-by-one, he places them down, the sequence creating a crown.
Diana’s pleased smile drops.
“Cheater,” Olliver accuses even as he dutifully pushes his collection of M&M’s towards Clark. Clark takes the pile with a little grin. Bruce can't stop looking at his mouth.
“I’m going to join Barry in the cockpit,” Diana announces, valiantly ignoring Hal’s mutter of “Sore loser.” She whacks the back of his head as he passes, indifferent to his “Ow!” of complaint.
Bruce tears his eyes away from Clark as Diana passes close by, her earthy and laurel scent clearing some of the fog from his mind. He blinks slowly at her, inhaling slowly as he resists the urge to lean into the perfume she emits. The scent of her is calming and makes something warm settle in his gut. It’s his body’s way of telling him an alpha’s presence will help during his heat.
He ignores it.
“Hey, Spooky!” Hal calls out, expertly shuffling the cards. “Want to join us? Someone needs to keep Clark in line.”
“I’m not a cheater,” Clark protests. The large pile of candy in front of him suggests otherwise.
Bruce hesitates, glancing over at the clock on the wall, displaying the time back at the Watchtower to be 21:00. He should turn in soon, to at least attempt to keep to a sleep schedule. But when he thinks of returning to that small, confining room cloaked in Clark’s scent, of how it’ll make the heat rear up when he's already feverish because of his lips, he stands and settles in Diana’s abandoned chair. Bruce holds his breath for a moment, stunned by the proximity of alpha pheromones. Maybe he should get back up, he thinks. An excuse is on the tip of his tongue, but then Oliver offers a grin—the same boyish one he’d wear when they were at school and Bruce deigned to participate in a round of poker—and, well, he can’t change his mind now.
His fever settles as the hours pass, temporarily sated by Oliver’s woodsy scent, Hal’s musky leather, and the intoxicating mix of sun-warmed earth, toasted wheat, and something spicy, something other, that makes up Clark’s scent. The pheromones of familiar alphas soothe some of the aches from his preheat.
But it won’t last.
His body is comfortable with the alphas for now, but as he continues to sink into his biology, he’ll start itching all over. The scents of un-marked alphas will confuse him. His instincts will convince him they'll all fight for him, that he’ll be a mere prize to the winner. Or maybe his heat brain will think they’d take turns as an alpha coalition—they share each other's scents, so the air wouldn't stink of rival alpha. Hal’s leather will stick in his throat; Oliver’s pine will sting his nose. Clark’s. . . his scent will. . .
Bruce exhales, using the excuse of grabbing another card to lean away from Clark. When had he started leaning towards him? He checks the clock. It’s past midnight back at the Watchtower.
Clark catches where his eyes have gone. “It’s getting late,” he comments, setting down two cards that form a tower-like symbol, making Oliver scowl as the other two lie in front of him.
“Lights out when this game is over?” Hal suggests, hiding a yawn behind his hand.
Bruce feels the exhaustion stinging at his eyes. All he wants to do is curl up on his bunk with an inordinate number of pillows and blankets, to cover himself in Clark’s scent and let his heat overcome him. He wants to ask Clark to share his heat, to protect him from the other alphas; he wants to let the alpha rub the aches out of the small of his back, to put those big hands on him, rub them over his scent glands, all of them; he wants him to soothe the ache between his thighs—
Fuck, Bruce thinks, clenching his thighs together under the table. It’d been a mistake to sit so close to a group of alphas who weren’t wearing scent-blockers. He’s been sitting in a cloud of happy-alpha-pack pheromones for hours.
Perhaps his fever has addled him. He is clearly delusional if he thought sitting near alphas while in preheat was a good idea.
“Bruce, your turn,” says Oliver, nudging his foot.
Bruce glances down at his cards, pretending that he hadn’t lost focus of the game. Then, like Clark had done earlier, sets down his last five cards: the crown. Hal swears under his breath and tosses his cards into the center of the table. As the others do the same and start pushing their betting piles towards Bruce’s—his pile has quickly grown over the past few games, Clark’s having shrunk—Bruce stands.
“I’m going to relieve Diana,” he says, heading towards the cockpit. Barry had retreated to his bunk not long after Diana had joined him.
“What about your candy?” Hal asks.
“Give it to Barry,” he says over his shoulder. They had started rationing a week ago, not having expected the trip to run three times the planned length. While the cut isn’t drastic, it is hitting Barry hard due to his heightened metabolism. He will appreciate the sugar.
Diana is calmly watching the distant stars once he enters the cockpit. The small space is perfumed with her pheromones, and Bruce takes a moment to shove down the part of him that wants to bare his scent glands to it in a mimicry of scent-marking.
“Everyone’s heading to bed,” he says, settling in the other chair. Barry’s scent still clings to it. He wants to bury his nose in the fabric and inhale it. Dick once told him that sharing his heat with another omega had soothed all the sexual aches in his heat, had made it more bearable. Bruce wonders if that is true, wonders if Barry will be willing to share his nest—
No, Bruce doesn’t need to share his heat with anyone, let alone invade another’s nest. Dick had been cuddly during his puppy heats, but he’d always sought Bruce out instead of inviting him to his room. No one wants him in their nest. He’ll probably mess it up.
No, it is better if he stays alone. That’s why he’d gone to the cockpit in the first place. A few hours here away from anyone else is what he needs. He won’t have to keep on guard against their scents, won’t be expected to spend the night with Clark, whose close proximity and pheromones unguarded in sleep won’t help his heating body remotely.
Diana glances at the clock. “I haven’t been on watch for long,” she says. “I don’t mind if you wish to rest for the night.”
“I’d like some time alone,” Bruce admits, as close to the truth he’s willing to go. He doesn’t like lying to his friends, Diana less so. He respects her, how she values being transparent with her teammates, but his secondary sex isn’t something he’s willing to share. Some part of him wants to outright admit that he’s an omega, to tell her that he’s in preheat—but that’s not him thinking, not really. Diana has this pull to her, encouraging one to speak the truth. It’s not nearly as strong a compulsion as her Lasso, but he has to shake himself before he lets it all spill.
“I’ll retire for the night, then.”
She stands but doesn’t leave just yet. Bruce breathes through his mouth as she hovers close, her pheromones threatening to make his head swim. Diana watches him, her nostrils flaring as she attempts to take in his pheromones.
He purses his lips at her, unappreciative at the blatant attempt to scent him. Even then, when she takes a polite step back, part of him wants her to close the distance once more. He takes that thought, the desperate wanting, and shoves it deep within so only his annoyance at Diana’s impropriety remains.
Ever the blunt one, Diana says, “I know you prefer your privacy, but our pheromones might not bother you as much if your own mingles with them.”
Bruce slowly exhales. Sometimes, he wishes she would look the other way. He doesn't want to get into this now.
“It’s fine,” is all he says, turning away.
Diana watches him for one last moment, nods to herself, and then leaves.
The door quietly whooshes shut behind her, leaving Bruce alone with the dim blinking lights of the controls and the vast expanse of space in front of him. He has the unsettling feeling that he’s severely disappointed Diana, and he doesn’t know what to do with that.
r/Advice How can I show my daughter I support her while also making it clear that I think her boyfriend's obsessive-compulsive disorder makes him a genetically superior heir to my evil empire, but also that she needs to kill him anyway because he keeps refusing to join me in wiping the human race from the face of the earth?
Basically what the title says. I (M892) started a small business when I was younger that grew over the years, and now I run an evil mercenary ecoterrorist organization with locations in multiple countries. Although my favourite daughter (F25) -- let's call her T -- is incredibly smart and has a business degree, I can't pass it down to her because she's a girl (and before anyone starts, I'm NOT sexist, my wife was a woman). My useless son (M??) won't be inheriting.
All this to say, I was happy to meet T's boyfriend B (M29), who I think would be the perfect heir. He's a genius, business-minded, and has a unique blend of complex PTSD and obsessive-compulsive disorder that would make him a fantastic cult leader. Even if my daughter wasn't female, T only has PTSD from being raised in a cult and watching her mother die as a child, not both parents, unlike B. He's American but I don't hold that against him.
Unfortunately, when I raised this offer to B, he got angry and refused, claiming that he "would never help me wipe out the human race" and "doesn't kill people" and that I "deserve to pay for my crimes against humanity." I know all young people say these sorts of things, but it was really hurtful to hear them from a young man I care more about than my own (admittedly ugly) son.
Obviously, B needs to die for this, but he's very good at avoiding my assassins and death squads. My best bet is having T get close enough to kill him, but she doesn't seem to want to. I understand she loves B, but he still needs to be killed off and maybe resurrected in such a way that his broken mind is more amenable to taking on the job.
How do I show T that I love and support her, and empathize with her feelings, but that her boyfriend needs to be assassinated and she's going to have to help me, unless she wants to be tortured in a magical hot spring like the one that killed her mother (again)?
janainaart
romaincrisis
origamiaround
titsay
jbbartram-illu
