No one in the Justice League/Wayne Industries seems to know much about their colleague Danny Fenton. Every time he opens his mouth, he tends to leave everyone in the vicinity with more questions than answers. That is, until they were put on lockdown.
Daniel J. “Call Me Danny” Fenton was. Odd. An excellent employee. Incredibly bright. But Odd.
That he stood out as Odd in a place like Gotham was notable.
When Tim Drake ran into Killer Croc while infiltrating Arkham, he didn’t survive.
To those not familiar with Batman Lore; there was an incident where the Joker was using Joker gas on a bunch of other villains, and Tim went to investigate. Croc snagged his cape, but he got away.
Unfortunately, the cape landed on a chewed-up skeleton, and the batfamily was misinformed of his untimely demise, and Dick Lost His Shit.
This is what led to the infamous incident of Dick beating the Joker to death.
So, slight change.
Tim genuinely did not survive that Croc encounter. He got away, to be sure, but he succumbed to his injuries deep, deep in the sewers.
Very deep into them.
So deep they probably weren’t actually sewers anymore and were just an underground cave system filled with gross water.
After managing to pull himself up from the water and onto a stone outcropping, with strange sigils carved into the floor, Timothy Jackson Drake falls into the arms of Death.
Danny, meanwhile, was minding his own business when he became aware of the tugging sensation of a summoning.
…And the distinct disgusting aftertaste that came with a human sacrifice.
By the time he arrived, the baby core was already humming discontentedly above a fresh corpse. A corpse that belonged to a kid that was far, far too young.
There was still a connection, albeit faint, from the baby core to the body.
So Danny, all of thirty and panicking something fierce, tries to force the baby core back into the body in front of him.
Nothing doing.
The body is willing to accept the core, to feed off of the ectoplasm Danny was willing to feed it and convert that energy into the life-saving healing that the kid needed, but the core was weak.
So Danny…improvised.
He reached into himself, and managed to painfully peel off a splinter of his own core, and fed it to the baby one. He’d be the equivalent of a swooning victorian maiden for a few years, but if the kid was able to survive it’d be worth it.
The baby core accepted it, ate the sliver of power it was given, and melted seamlessly back into the body.
Danny waited. And waited. And waited.
And waited.
And with a bright flash of light that seemingly changed absolutely nothing, the kid started breathing; his wounds started closing up.
Job done, Danny grabbed the kid and phased him through the earth and to the city above. He could already feel himself getting faint, so he just dumped the kid somewhere the kid’s core recognized as a good spot and dipped back to the summoning circle, and back to the Infinite Realms.
Danny did not realize what he had just done.
Tim’s body had, in that flash of light, had it’s DNA changed much the same way Danny’s had, if not more so.
Same in regards to Tim being a baby halfa, who has had no reason to believe he has any form other than his human one.
Different in that Tim’s DNA now no longer reflects Jack as his biological father.
It reflects one Daniel Fenton.
The “good spot” was the batfam’s primary agreed-upon rendezvous spot for if/when they got separated.
While Batman is busy resuscitating Joker to “save Nightwing from having killed someone” or w/e his reasoning was, Nightwing himself is moving swiftly from the anger stage of grief back to denial.
He heads for the rendezvous spot.
Some tiny spark of hope deep down thinks that maybe he’ll arrive and find Tim waiting, alive. Okay.
He knows it won’t happen.
Tim won’t be there.
Tim is…
Tim is sitting wild-eyed on the ground at the rendezvous point, holding two fingers to his wrist and looking on the verge of hysteria.
Dick closes the distance in no time, taking in the devastating gouges in the suit, all bloody edges sticking to seemingly smooth, undamaged flesh.
“Tim!” he calls once he’s within arms reach and the boy still doesn’t seem to have noticed him.
Tim’s head whips up to track him as he slides to a crouch in front of him.
“Tim, thank God! Talk to me, what hurts, what’s bleeding?” he demands, gently moving his chin to check for neck injuries. He notes the possible concussion, given he fails to respond immediately.
Then he startles when Tim grabs his wrist with both arms, tight enough that it would probably bruise but looking so desperate and panicked that Dick hesitated.
“Night-wing? I’m- I was- I’m alive? I-” he shook himself. “No, I-I’m… fine. Nothing… nothing hurts. I don’t think anything is bleeding? …Dick, where-”
He cuts off his speech, loosening his grip but shoving Dick’s hand at is throat no less forcefully.
“Woah!”
“I’m real right!?” Tim cries, voice shaking as Dick carefully curls his fingers to feel his pulse once he realizes what he’s trying to do. “I still have a pulse right? You can feel it? You’re real? This isn’t some weird variation on life-flashing-before-my-eyes before I bleed to death in s-some sewer!?”
“You’re real, Tim,” Dick assures, looping his free arm around him and pulling him in for a hug. “You’re alive. You’re gonna be okay. You’re gonna be okay.”
It takes a few minutes for Tim to let go of his wrist fully, and Dick wastes no time scooping him up and grappling to the batmobile. It isn’t a long swing, and Tim’s skill at imitating a koala makes the trip faster. He has them both buckled into the batmobile and headed for the manner in no time.
“Bruce?” Tim manages to ask, breaking his silence once he realizes they’re leaving city limits alone.
“He’s fine. He can make his own way back to the cave, we’re getting you to the medbay now, just in case.”
Tim remains silent for the rest of the ride, despite Dick’s attempts to engage him by bringing up some of his own Robin stories - which (previously) never failed to elicit starry-eyed excitement and a litany of questions.
Tim sat alive and breathing beside him - he knows, he checked, this isn’t like with Jason, this isn’t a hallucination he’s real andaliveandokay - but his eyes are deaddeaddead.
He doesn’t know what happened to make him look like that, but he’s going to find out.
And depending on the answers? If Bruce really revived that stupid clown, Nightwing might be going for round 2.
The concussion theory, as it happens, is incorrect.
Despite the missing cape and the numerous bloody rips with blood they were able to verify was, in facts, Tim’s, the only thing wrong with him when they get home is that he’s running a bit hot.
It’s just 2 degrees over his usually, barely even a fever, but Dick stills wheedles him into staying the night and pushes water bottles on him until he finally falls asleep.
Bruce returned at some point, but Alfred - bless him - had explained the situation and set him on testing some blood sample to see what could’ve caused what appeared to be Tim’s miraculous healing.
It doesn’t take long to rule out a meta-gene, leaving him with a bit of a mystery.
The attempt to talk with Dick about how murder is bad goes poorly. The tests the batcomputer ran overnight turn up nothing.
The morning is already going poorly when Bruce hears a frantic “Tim!?” coming from the kitchen.
Actually, Tim has been having a bad time since before the morning.
Let’s review, shall we?
During the Arkham breakout he got maimed by Killer Croc. He knows this happened, despite the lack of injuries, because the damage to his Robin suit is all perfectly consistent both with attacks from Killer Croc and with the exact attacks he remembers - a tatter here from an errant claw, a seeming fringe from where he nearly lost a leg to the jaws there, etc. He got maimed.
After getting maimed by Killer Croc, he managed to escape into the sewers.
He doesn’t remember where, in the sewers, he ended up. But he remembers collapsing. He remembers…it stopped. Everything stopped. Every little ache and pain gone numb as he fell asleep, bleeding too much too fast with help too far away.
And then he wakes up at the rendezvous point and - no. No there was more to it before that. Clearly he got to the rendezvous point somehow but he doesn’t remember, he knows he doesn’t remember that. But he remembers- he remembers- he remembers how he felt. He remembers, just barely, all of the grief and disappointment he felt over his failure just before he fell asleep. And then still feeling it. Feeling grief and disappointment and self loathing and a crushing, aching loneliness that refuses to continue going unacknowledged no matter how he wanted to shove it away and then-
And then, for just a moment, a spark of peace and hope and the loneliness eases just a bit even as there is an undercurrent of terror and confusion that refuses to go away and then-
And then he is no longer asleep-but-not really. Because that’s where the emotion-memory ends, and he is truly asleep.
And then he wakes up at the rendezvous point, wholly uninjured despite his costume telling a different tale and the absence of pain makes him think - and Tim’s never been one to believe in ghosts but in this world of madmen and aliens and clones and zombie assassins - just for a moment, that he might be dead. And he scrambles at the tears in his suit double-checking only to find the wounds he can’t feel aren’t visible either and he’s scrambling for his pulse and it’s there but if he’s a ghost maybe he’s just faking a pulse that only he can feel and-
And then Dick is there, and he’s solid and real and he can see him and he tells him he’s alive.
After the checkup found nothing but a fever, he was relieved. Sure there was still the whole “why is he not currently maimed and also probably dead” thing, but he was pretty happy about being not-maimed. And honestly, he didn’t even feel feverish. He felt fine - better than ever, even, once the shock wore off.
But of course, Tim can’t have nice things.
Which is why when Dick sneaks up on him and he startles, he can suddenly no longer see himself in the edges of his vision.
And the look on Dick’s face is awful - devastated and haunted, and he takes a step back, head whipping around the kitchen and yelling “Tim!?” just as he’s opening his own mouth to say something.
“I’m right here” he says, calmer than he feels about being invisible after the night before.
Dick’s head whips to look...around him even as Bruce bursts into the kitchen, and Tim reaches out to tap Dick’s arm so he’ll have some proof that he’s still alive know where he is.
Except his hand passes through with no resistance.
He tries to again.
“Guys,” he says, voice edging on hysteria carefully neutral.
“We hear you, Tim,” Bruce attempts to soothe.
“I can’t see you, little bird,” Dick says, voice a little hollow. “But I hear you. We hear you.”
“Can you tell us what’s happening?”
“What’s happening is I’m invisible!” he snaps. “I- I can’t touch you! My hand just- it just passed through!” He turns to pull out a chair and gets the same effect, relaying the attempt verbally.
It takes a good 20 minutes of coaching Tim through different grounding exercises to somewhat settled the panic that keeps bubbling up - especially given how Dick is so noticeably off (and if he clings to the hem of Bruce’s blazer Bruce won’t say a word but he worries) - and then, miraculously, Tim pops back into visibility all on his own. As if all he’d needed to do was take a moment to breath.
His still tense shoulders only relax once they make successful eye-contact with him, and when Dick reaches out for a tentative hair-ruffle Tim lunges to pull them both into a hug instead.
Tim spends a decent portion of his morning thinking he’s a ghost, and Dick spends a decent portion of his morning wondering if he’s really just hallucinating another dead brother: plus Bruce who is also hallucinating and/or a hallucination himself edition.
Babysitter Vlad AU! (Jack and Maddie went through the babysitting services of every eligible mom and teenage girl in town. Ironically, their house is extremely haunted whenever they’re not there, so literally everyone is too scared to babysit. This means there’s only one person in the entire world who they would trust to watch their kids who also wouldn’t be bothered by the rampant paranormal activity. And they’re sure he’ll be DELIGHTED to receive a random desperate phone call from his old college friends!)
A Bitter Reunions type episode would be funny in a different way via the fact that, even if Vlad never babysitted for them again. Danny would eventually go like “wait… I don’t think Vlad was actually a magical vampire prince like I made up on my head all those years ago. But my newly acquired ghost sense has been going off randomly all day. What is he hiding???”
That or there isn’t a bitter reunions episode (or the baby sitting one IS that episode) and vlad cremains a fixture in their lives. Then Danny having his portal accident when no one’s home would 1 (probably make Vlad feel like shit) and 2 (be really fucking funny in a comedy of errors way).
Like,,, Jack & Maddie boasting that Danny got the portal to work and Vlad kinda looks at him and Danny desperately avoids all eye-contact.
“In all seriousness, this discovery is humbling. It’s a reminder that there’s still so much to learn about our wild world — and that humans are one small part of an impossibly vast biosphere. On this planet, all fates are intertwined, and right now, one million species are teetering on the edge of oblivion. We have an existential mandate to mend our broken relationship with nature and protect the places that sustain life.”
i will ALWAYS clap my hands excitedly and lean forward in my seat when someone tells a character to “keep your dog on a leash” only for it to turn out they’re referring to another person
the way it reframes the entire relationship dynamic between the two people being addressed. the way wilful loyalty becomes hopeless devotion. the way aggression and violence goes from honorable and rational to bestial and instinctual. the ways faith and trust intersect with codependency and reliance. the questions about power and who wields it in the relationship it opens up. the way it functions as both an insult and an expression of intimidation, of fearful submission.
I love seeing list memes where someone makes a “le cool people vs le cringe” and they obviously skew it so they barely scrape by into the cool kids club
You just KNOW this dudes 5'11"
I’m 5'11, but in most casual conversations I’ll say I’m 5'9. I do this purely for the chaos that it creates. Because everyone assumes that men only exaggerate their height up, it makes me look like the only person honestly describing their height and thus knocks at least 2 inches off everyone else’s description. The panic that the 6'1 guys feel at the thought of being described as 5'11 is hard to understate. I have had people run back to their cars to grab tape measures.
If I could get away with describing myself as 4'6 I would.
you are the diametrical opposite of the aforementioned guy. you are a demigod walking among mortals
damian would be characterised much better if people understood that he’s simply a 40 year old brown uncle in the body of a teenage boy
Damian looking at the plants in the Wayne Manor garden every morning
Things Damian and middle aged Arab uncles have in common:
1- They want to know where their family is going to at all time, but they get offended when their family wants to know where they are going
2- They always exaggerate their academic achievements when they were little kids.
3- They pridefully announce whose son they are like it’s a badge of honor.
4- Always complain about the prices of things they don’t even want to buy
5- They will get mad angry if someone in their family dared to bring a cat to their house, but then you will find them playing with that cat 5 minutes later
6- They started (illegally) driving at a really young age
fucked up how colors look different depending on what screen you’re looking at them on. that should be illegal I think
this fucking shit, you know
I spend so much time carefully picking and adjusting the colors in every single drawing I make that I’d probably lose my mind if I didn’t just repeatedly push this out of my memory and pretend it’s not a thing. Why am I reblogging a blank empty post that doesn’t say anything??? Weird
good news! you can’t make sure that everyone will see the correct colors on their own device, but you can make sure your monitor is as accurate as possible for printing and sharing by calibrating it!
there are a bunch of free monitor tests, but here’s an easy one you can use. the passmark and eizo tests are also pretty good, though passmark doesn’t work in your browser. be warned that some tests may cause eye strain.
you can either use the settings built into your monitor itself or use the display color calibration settings in your operating system to adjust the settings until everything looks correct, and then enjoy your accurate colors.
