Lord Of Cookies

summer rain. redrew parts of an old drawing

BONUS:

he did that on purpose. bonus bonus:

One of those soulmate aus where you have the last words your soulmate says to you written on you.

Each time Danny goes to his Phantom form, he technically dies.

Someone is very confused about why their soulmate would decide to say "I'm going ghost" on their deathbed.

"Whoops"

"Watch this!"

"Guess that's the end for me"

"Guess I'll die"

"What's that?"

Whoever has Danny as their soulmate just has this ever increasing list winding around their body in a rainbow of colors

Either that or they have a single phrase just randomly contorts and changes colors and words but stays in the same spot

"How far do you think i can kick this bucket"

"Technically the radiation is only at the bottom of the pool so"

"The femur's tough to break, good job!"

"I may have gotten too silly this time"

"Happy birthday grimace!"

"Is that a brick?"

"Mum this tastes different, did you put anything different in it?"

"Who's Joe?"

"When you say 'predatory', how predatory do you mean?"

"AAH BOXY WHAT THE FUCK"

"Hey Vlad, ever tried 'updog'?"

"YOLO"

"YEET"

"Dude, seriously, I have a test tomorrow"

Tim had always hated the idea of soul marks, he thought they where cruel, you would never know if someone was truly your soulmate until you lost them forever. Some people spent their entire lives convinced they where soulmates only to find out they weren’t when their partner died.

Frankly if his soul mark didn’t mention a portal Tim would have probably just ignored it. But no Tim’s natural curiosity got the better of him which caused Tim to research portals at length, trying to find out what could kill his soulmate.

Everything changed one day when Tim felt the sharp pain coming from his soul mark. A pain he knew meant his soul mate had just died. Tim tried not to let it bother him, he continued patrol as usual, and went to bed that night refusing to even look at his mark and it’s fading color.

What Tim was not expecting when he finally gained the courage to look at his fading soul mark was a new set of words “anyone know how I did that cause I don’t”. Tim had heard of this phenomenon happening, it was becoming more and more common as medical technology advanced. The appearing of a new soul mark was believed to mean there soulmate had been brought back to life. Those that had a soul mate resuscitated where believed to be lucky, now they knew at what time their soulmate died which made them much easier to track. Some countries even had laws that required people who came back to life to be put on a registry with their time of death and final words so there soulmates could find them.

Tim was one of the lucky ones and despite not living in one of those countries he had access to the bat computer and death wish coffee, time to find his soul mate.

….

Tim had looked through the reports of everyone who had been died when he felt his mark burn. None of the last words matched. Maybe his soul mate was revived outside of a hospital, maybe he was in an area without hospitals. Tim even contemplated his soul mate not being on this planet. Tim was about to see if there was some kind of galactic registry of soul marks when he felt his mark burning again.

Tim’s soulmate had just died, twice in the same week. Tim scrambled to look at his mark. “Okay so if I do this I shou-“ was now branded on his skin. Before Tim had a chance to let the words sink in the burning returned and the words ripples green before his eyes. “So you really think a catch phrase will help me not -“.

…

Tim hasn’t known it at the time but this was just the beginning. Somehow his soul mate was dying and coming back to life multiple times a day. Most often his soul mates dying words where “Going Ghost” but other times, well they just got weird.

Tim has taken to photographing his soul mark ever time it changes, hoping to find some kind of pattern. He even made a scrapbook out of his favorites and the ones he considered most bizarre.

Some where mundane

“Whoops”

“Watch this!”

“Bet you I can”

Some where humorous

“Look a distraction”

“Who you gonna call”

“Happy Birthday Grimace”

Some where confusing

“All right Wes if you really want to know”

“Damn it Boxy I have a test tomorrow”

“Because of the three of us I am the only one who speaks Purple Backed Gorilla”

And some where just concerning

“That should not bend that way!”

“Did you just fucking SHOOT me?!”

“Oh shit, not this guy again”

…

Needless to say Tim was concerned about his soulmate. Whomever they where they died and revived more times than a comic book character. If it wasn’t for how short the time between deaths there were (current record was 6.2 seconds), Tim would think the Lazarus Pits were involved (he checked during his world tour of League of Assassins bases).

When Tim finally tracked down his soulmate he wound wrap the idiot in the strongest bubble wrap he could find and lock them in his secret Red Robin Cave (no Bart, it was not his secret lair for when he finally joined the dark side) where nothing could ever harm them so they would stop dying already.

Damn, Tim did not have time for this, he had to interviews for the new WE position, luckily Tam agrees to let him have them at his favorite coffee shop. Then he had to meet some relative of Jason’s lover, check out Duke’s new classmate who he thinks is a meta, help Damian track down a weird animal he saw, go to this goth circus with Dick, and all the other things his family tricked him into doing while he was sleep deprived.

My contributions so far are:

I wonder what this big red button does

If I had a nickel for every time a girl I had a crush on turned into a dragon and I had to fight her id have two nickels

Im sure he was bluffing, see!

Now I just have to keep Vlad from killing Dad!

Not now Sam, My hellhound needs a walk

Cujo I will play with you if you agree not to eat my homework

Im borrowing mom and dads shrink ray!

Wolf accidentally tore a semi-permanent hole into out dimension again and I gotta go help him fix it

Oh, nuclear launch codes

You're the one who's been making all those children disappear?!

Thats a lot of snakes

Thats a really big spider

Im sure its perfectly safe

Fairies aren't real, its just a ring of mushrooms

Dont make me get the garlic count chocula

Is that a ninja?

"What is with people and mind control?"

"DAMN IT JAZZ! PUT THE GUN DOWN!"

"So when you say 'death ray' is that literal or-"

"Once again Vlad, I won't be your son!"

"I'm not interested in being adopted."

"What part of 'mum's not interested' do you not understand?"

"So you put the wire here?"

"Why is it always clowns?"

"You can keep you're creepy basement to yourself."

"I know Judo!"

"I am armed and dangerous."

"When you say poisoned..."

"Vivisection? Been there done that."

"I rate this experience a 0 out of 10."

"Eh maybe a 5, you're getting there."

"Now that's a 2 gotta put more 'bleh' into it."

"You want me to jump into that? Okay."

"...You know the saying, 'who died and made you king'?"

"Is this the 'Year of the Cults' or something?"

Jason gets his hands on it.

He thought it would be a wonderful source of blackmail, but now he has concerns.

The book is full of annotated quotes accompanied by dates, times, and handwriting analysis. It doesn't have any notes about the writer’s vernacular other than tallying how many memes get used.

Baby bird always struggled with literary analysis. Time for Jason to offer his assistance.

"Hey Tim, did you ever think of consulting the Linguist in the family "

"Bet you i can fly around the whole world in 20 seconds flat"

"Oh.. ive been impaled"

"Did you know i can just take my head off. Whenever?"

"Dude can a guy just enjoy a milkshake! Just once please!"

"FRUITLOOP!"

"Jazz! The hotdogs are revolting! .. again!"

"I live and die for chaos"

"Boo"

" you really need to get a cat vlad"

" im gonna go watch the meteor shower From space"

“Oh why the fuck is the sky green again”

“If you eyeballs don’t stop popping up in my closet and trying to make me ghost king-”

“Wait, no, DaNI nOt ThE FaCE”

“i swear to aragon’s smelly dragon toenails if someone tries to use the nasty burger sauce as an explosive again i will LOSE IT”

“SORRY JAZZ CAN’T STAGE AN INTERVENTION IF I’M DEAD LMAO”

“i can’t believe hiding things in the walls backfired on me.”

“everybody do the flop-”

“FOR THE LAST TIME SKULKER I’M NOT GONNA LET YOU SKIN ME”

“hey remember when my evil future self tried to kill us all?”

“Oh, buddy, if you’re not scared of me, you should be.”

“oop, ‘scuse me, gotta go eldritch terror for a mo’“

“ah fuck i knew i should have made it more difficult to summon me”

“alright who the fuck is john constantine and why does he owe me his soul like twenty times over?”

“ooh, a gecko- shit, fUCK NOT A GECKO NOT A GECKO”

“i need to start charging for rescuing people from liminal spaces.”

“jesus fuck those are big teeth”

"Oh hey Fruitloop I thought you were-"

"No Cujo I can't play right now"

"Oh look. The vultures are back."

"Shit shit shit I thought I fixed that"

I feel that Tim is crazy enough to purposely stop his heart and have it restarted just to chew out his soul mate for all the shit he put him through.

Danny has had the words "please stop dying" since he was a kid. Before the accident it seemed very concerning. But at one point at his start of his Phantom career, he realizes with his friends that his soulmate's probably seen a bunch of phrases in their wrist by now. That's what pushes him to start using puns. To try to calm his soulmate.

During a live interview, Tim winces, and the interviewer immediately realizes what it means and offers condolences. Tim shakes his head.

"Nah, it's fine. They die all the time."

"...Excuse me?"

"They die. Over and over again. Their record is 6.2 seconds between deaths."

"How?"

"I wish I knew."

"What does it say now?"

Tim shows them. The camera zooms in on Tim's soulmark, which says "Testing testing, 1 2 3."

The interview continues, but then Tim winces again and he checks the soulmark. It changes on camera to "Holy shit, that worked. My soulmate is Tim Drake."

Tim's jaw drops, and he quickly covers it. He refuses to let anyone see it until the interview is over and he can look at it again in private.

At the next Rich Person Event™ Lex tries to question Tim about his soulmark because what does it mean if Lex's soulmark changes too?

Lex had never given much thought to his soul mate. Lionel had drilled into Lex from an early age that soul mates where a weakness men of business should not have, that Lex could not have. It was easy to convince himself that Lionel was right whenever he saw his soul mark “Aaah! Bogus!” Whomever uttered that as their final words was obviously not worth Lex’s time.

Lex felt almost relieved when he felt his soul mark burn, at least now he wouldn’t have the weakness of a soul mate for his competitors to try and use against him. Unfortunately for Lex is appeared his soul mate was resuscitated shortly after and his mark changed. Lex found “I refuse to die in a place like this” much more preferable to his previous mark, though he did find it odd that his mark seemed to slowly fade over time, perhaps his soul mate was dying, how tragic, anyway-

Little over two years elapsed before Lex thought of his soul mate again. Once more his mark burned,once more Lex breathed a sigh of relief and once more the mark changed. “I refuse to be weak” was now engraved on Lex’s skin, now much more vibrant than it had been since it first changed.

Lex thought little of it, people where revived from the dead everyday, perhaps his sickly soulmate died during life saving surgery and was brought back, not that Lex cared about his soulmate. But the mark kept burning, kept changing, the words etched on his skin changed nearly everyday, this was not normal.

Lex did his best to ignore his soul marks peculiarities just as he planned on ignoring its existence when he was a child but he couldn’t help but note some of the phrases that decorated his skin.

“Cheese and Crackers!”

“Oh I think you’ll soon find I get everything I want”

“Do we have a deal”

Lex finally got some answers to what was going on with his soulmate the day his mark changed to “Imagine my surprise when I find you, the second ghost hybrid his foolishness created”

Ghost hybrid? What did that mean? And how exactly did you create one? Lex tried to shake these questions out of his head, soulmates always brought trouble and they could betray you in the end. He knew the second he heard his mothers final words and found them written on his father her killer’s skin.

So Lex did what he did best when it came to his soul mate, he ignored them, he knew it would hurt less to never meet his soulmate than to be inevitably betrayed by them.

Lex through all his attention into strengthening LexCrop and convincing the public that Superman could not be trusted. An alien with no connection to earth should not have that kind of power, perhaps if Superman was a human things would be different but if Lex couldn’t count on the loyalty of a soulmate, he was not going to trust the loyalty of a random alien to a planet not his own.

Lex would have kept on ignoring his soulmate until that blasted Drake had to reveal his own soulmate was dying and reviving regularly, that Drake’s soulmates ability to die on command meant they could communicate with each other, that they could find each other.

Lex blamed Drake because his own soulmate had apparently gotten inspired or at least was annoyed into doing this because when Lex looked at his mark the next morning.

“Fine if it will get you to stop bugging me I’ll do it, Hello my name is Vlad Masters and I am your soulmate, happy now?”

Tim's soul mark was bright pink,

"You have to find me, too, wink emoji."

Dick had always tried to imagine what led up to his soul mate's last words when he was younger until Jason died and left him filled with a sense of shame.

"Over my dead body, that's my baby brother."

The script of the letters were jagged shifting between black, dried blood, and a firey, blazing red at certain points. The letters looked as snarled out on his skin as he was sure they would sound coming from his soul mate's mouth.

Even when Jason came back, Dick refused to dwell on his words again. At his age Dick had resigned himself to the fact that he would probably never meet his soul mate before he lost them and as he sat with his family in the manor watching a live government broadcast of a pursuit he was horrified that he was right.

A young woman stood blocking the path of the white SUVs with long red hair pulled into a tight ponytail, a teal headband holding back bangs. Her sharp teal eyes narrowed with rage and her fingers curled around a pair of batons almost reminiscent of Dick's own escrima sticks. She stood straight backed and tall in her black flats, dress slacks, and teal blouse as the agents ordered her to stand aside. The woman's face twisted into a sneering and before she even began to speak he knew.

"Over my dead body," She snarled taking a step forward towards the agents and the guns they leveled at her. A twitch of her fingers and the batons she held crackled with green lighting. "That's my baby brother."

Dick let out a wounded cry as they shot her down as he watched it happen live on the TV.

~*~*~

Jason used to fantasize that his soul mate's last words were about him when he was young and stupid and thought that kind of thing would be romantic. Then he'd died. Then he came back. Now he prayed they they had nothing to do with him because there was nothing romantic about it.

Wish granted. He thought staring numbly at the screen with a burning arm, breathe stuttering and stuck in his chest.

"You'll have to go through me." The scrawny, tiny black boy had said in a firm, measured tone on live TV with a grim look on his face as he'd rapidly tapped away at the PDA in his hands without looking at it. A fleet of drones had assaulted the government SUVs and damaged them but the kid -man- had challenged them to run him down with their vehicles and they had.

~*~*~

Steph and Cass loved each other but they'd always known they weren't really soul mates. Steph had already died, even if she'd been resuscitated afterwards, and her last words didn't match Cass's mark. They'd decided they didn't care.

It looked like their soul mates might have felt the same.

On the screen there was a young female vigilante dressed in red riding a hoverboard with a gun wielding goth girl balanced behind her.

"How dare you attack my fellow hero?!" The red dressed vigilante had shouted at the agents on screen before taking a shot directly to the face.

Those had been Cass's words.

Cass had gone utterly still and silent beside her and Steph sobbed as she watched the goth girl -they both loved purple- roll out of the line of fire screaming at the agents for shooting her girlfriend. She hadn't said Steph's words yet but it felt almost inevitable now.

Steph's heart was cracking in her chest.

The goth girl's fun was shot out of her hands.

"Stand down." The agents commanded the young woman on screen. She glared back at them in disdain like they were less than the asphalt beneath her boots.

"Fucking shoot me. I won't stay dead."

They did and Stephanie screamed.

~*~*~

Bruce had been right outside the door to the living room when Dick made that first ungodly sound. His arms laden down with popcorn and snacks for the movie marathon they were supposed to be starting. His eyes had snapped to his oldest at that cry to see his child clutching his arm to his chest, shoulders curled inwards as if to shield it as he stared with teary eyes at the screen.

Bruce dropped the snacks and Batman snatched open his JLA communicator. He wanted answers NOW.

Damien reached to comfort his older brother as their father contacted his team, the pursuit continued on screen heedless of the devastation it had caused his eldest sibling.

Todd's tea cup slipped from his fingers and shattered on the floor as another person was gunned down on screen. Damien turned to look and stiffened at the glowing eyes and pale, distant expression on his face. Drake moved to lean against Todd's armchair offering closeness to ground him without touching.

The next two were killed on screen in quick succession and Damien and Tim were both horrified to see Steph and Cass reacting to the deaths of their soul mates as well.

Damien felt both shamefully relieved and bitterly angry as Superman slammed into the ground between in front of the agents on screen just as the goth woman fell. Too slow. Always too slow.

But at least his own soul mate wouldn't be next in their path.

Damien paid no mind to the vitriol the supposed government agents spewed at Superman on screen. He remained focused on his task comforting Grayson as Drake handled Todd and the girls cared for each other. Their Father could handle that for now and they could exact justice for their lost halves after the initial grief had passed.

A bright green glow drew his attention back.

Damian choked out a startled sound that had all of his siblings looking back up at the screen as well. Brown letting out a hiccuping laugh as the purple goth girl rose up again before their eyes on unsteady feet. Her eyes glowed a swirling green as purple vine-like markings slithered across her exposed skin. She grinned at Superman and the agents with sharp teeth as the red dressed vigilante began to rise behind her with a groan.

By the time most of the Justice League, both sides, arrive, the GIW is hanging from lampposts with signs saying “I shoot kids for fun”, “I love back assward thinking”, and “I shot the ghost king and all I got was being strung up like a piñata”. Superman is trying to corral the teens from hurting the agents too badly but wishes Captain Marvel wasn’t helping the teens make and hang the signs. It was equally disturbing Captain Marvel was being inducted into their group as a fellow “liminal” whatever that was. However the seriously happy expression on Captain Marvel’s face halted any major actions from Superman.

Batman arriving on scene immediately gets all the teens in order. Big dad energy.

Stay with me.

We do not know how the hell the Gay Pirate Plate was first acquired. This being a point of contention is actually pretty plot-relevant; the saga of the Gay Pirate Plate began with my grandmother and her sister, who, for some ungodly reason, both BADLY wanted the Gay Pirate Plate and believed it to be rightfully theirs.

I should back up, firstly, to establish: The Gay Pirate Plate is the cheapest, tackiest, ugliest plate in existence.

It is in no way a collector’s item. It is physically impossible for it to complement anyone’s decor, because the colors in it are garish. It’s just a ceramic plate with a gay pirate painted on it, and the painting is, this cannot be emphasized enough, extremely bad.

(How do we know the pirate is gay if he’s just posing on a plate? Listen. Fully 100% to stereotype, but he is. He is gay. There’s an energy. That pirate is a flaming homosexual. That pirate has sex with men and does it frequently. That pirate is fucking gay, all right, he just is.)

Anyway. The point is that this is an extremely cheap and ugly plate with a poorly-executed painting of pirate on it who is like a nine on the Kinsey scale.

My grandmother and her sister fought a blood feud over this plate for their entire lives. It would be on the wall in my grandma’s house, and then her sister would visit, and then it would be gone. She’d visit her sister and the plate would be on the wall and her sister would pretend it had always been there. She would steal it back, hang it up, and, when her sister visited, pretend it had always been there. This continued for DECADES.

When the sister died, the Gay Pirate Plate lived triumphantly in my grandmother’s house. And then my grandmother died. And my aunt, who had lived with her and been her carer throughout her life, rightfully inherited their house.

We visit my aunt after the funeral and stay with her for a week or two.

Me, my sister, and our dad. Her brother.

The three of us look at each other. We don’t say anything. We studiously avoid making eye contact with the Gay Pirate Plate mounted proud and ugly on the wall. We notice one another studiously avoiding looking at it. We notice one another noticing. We say nothing. We come to a silent consensus. We pack up to leave. We get in the van. Our aunt comes out to say goodbye. I loudly announce I need to use the restroom before we leave. She obviously stays outside to continue talking to my dad.

I take down the Gay Pirate Plate, stuff it under my oversized sweatshirt, go outside, and get in the van. She happily waves goodbye as we drive off.

Two days later my dad gets a phone call that opens with hysterical laughter and “You FUCKING ASSHOLE did you seriously STEAL THE PLATE–”

Anyway. The gay pirate plate lives in my dad’s house currently.

The plate must be clearly and openly displayed in a place of great prominence whenever it is in your possession. When it is not in your possession, the display piece must remain in place. This is where you would put your gay pirate plate, IF YOU HAD ONE.

No active steps may be taken to prevent the theft of the Gay Pirate Plate. That goes against the spirit of the game, as does attempting to hide it.

The plate MUST be stolen and cannot be gifted or removed with permission. Should you witness attempted theft of the Gay Pirate Plate you are required to intervene and return it to its place.

Bruce : Damian, what do you have on your neck? Is it a bruise?

Tim choking on his food : Pfftt-

Damian : My neck? OH- Hum, yes, it's a bruise. I took a bad hit yesterday from a criminal...

Dick : What but- OH!

Bruce : Well be careful.

Steph : *Laugh in her plate*

Damian : I will, father.

Duke : Oh, I'm sure you will...

Bruce : Why are you all acting weird?

Cassandra : *Smirk knowingly*

Alfred : Master Damian, your phone is ringing. It's Jonathan Kent.

Jason : Oh! The criminal!

*Everyone at the table bursts out laughing. Steph falls off her chair. Tim can barely breathe. Duke spits out his water. Dick lets out a sound somewhere between a laugh and a desperate whimper. Cass’s shoulders shake. Jason is very proud. And Damian has just slammed his head against the table with a groan of despair.*

Bruce :

Bruce : Kent is no longer allowed in Gotham. And Damian is benched for the weeks.

*A lot more of Cackling.*

Imagine this, the justice league meet at the manor, as friends, everything is sitting at the table and they start to hear yelling in he other room. Tim and Damian barge in, fully fighting.

Kick, screams, insults a broken vase, something is thrown around. And then Tim chases Damian out of the room.

Everyone looks at Bruce, expecting him to go intervene or something. Bruce is unfazed, still sipping on his coffee. "They're just playing." He murmurs.

Then Jason walks in, completely chill, takes some food, and sits in one of the couches. Then Cass walks in, with a bruise in her face.

"Bad night at patrol?" Jason asks.

And Cass stares at him.

Bruce is automatically up and between them, Cass walks away with a huff and Bruce starts scolding Jason for "instigating" her.

Jason: are you wearing bath and body works warm vanilla sugar?

Dick:

Dick: how?

Dick: yes?

Dick: I heard spiders hate vanilla.

Tim: spiders hate basic bitches because basic bitches wear vanilla.

Bonus:

Bruce passing Jason’s room. Is assaulted by the smell of vanilla. Opens the door seeing ten scent diffusers, a bunch of wax melters and he’s spraying vanilla room spray as he stands on his bed.

Bruce: why.

Jason: spiders.

Bruce:

Bruce, quickly shutting the door: oh my god ones hanging from the ceiling above you!

Jason screams and falls with a clatter and thud.

Bruce, chuckling turns into Alfred.

Alfred:

I want to become a thing where, once Tim is like 6 they decide to get back on the archeology thing and physically push Tim onto Bruce like "this is your kid and we need to get back to OUR OWN hyper fixation." I think it'd be so funny if Janet and Bruce were in school together and so Janet is completely aware of Bruce's BS. I want iron dragon lady, Janet Drake, and all her "probably owns the Russian mob" fanan energy

I don't want canon touching this, this is a whole other universe of possibilities. I kinda want them to live too. I want them to be genuinely great parents and just vibe with co-parenting Tim. I want them to be out of the country a lot but have the best tech to talk to Tim and help him out.

She is not that.

She is Elon Musk. She is Trump. She is a powerful monster with the money to end lives.

Giving her money and creating a demand for her books by engaging in fandom should be seen the same way owning a cybertruck is seen. Harry Potter gear is in the same category as MAGA gear.

I need to see the same disgust and outright hatred of her that I see about all the evil men in her category. I don't know if people see her as less dangerous because she's a woman or if people are worried that hating on a woman will get their feminist card revoked, but she needs to be taken more seriously by a lot of people. She's a big name heavy hitter with more money than anyone should be allowed to have.

Tim: oh don't worry we will use guilt cards.

Duke: guilt card?

Tim: yeah, minority pass. If anyone blames us, they are either ableist, homophobic, or racist. I am bisexual, duke is black, and Jason is mentally ill.