Author of Fiction

I've kinda mentioned this before but my first pitch for a DC Bats cartoon would be a series set during Jasons robins years when Bruce and Dick weren't on speaking terms but Dick would show up in every episode anyway because he just so happened to get a job at a place vital for that weeks investigation

Since he knows that he could get mugged, he just becomes intangible and invisible while listening to some loud music on his phone.

Unfortunately for him, his control on his Invisibility keeps slipping when he gets lost in his music, and the people of Gotham keep seeing a semi-translucent ghost man walking around at night aimlessly.

Some thugs think it’s just a meta with invisibility and try to mug him, but pass right through and he disappears completely. This convinces them that he is a ghost, since having both invisibility, and intangibility would be too big a coincidence. Not to mention he never reacts to them whatsoever.

The Bat’s get word that a Ghost has been stalking the streets of Gotham, and he looks scarily like Bruce Wayne from the little they have been able to see from him. Now Batman thinks his dad may have come back as a ghost.

This kind of outfit, of course, lends further credence to the theory that this is Thomas Wayne’s ghost, cursed to wander the crime ridden streets in which he died.

One night Danny had a little accident as he was leaving the embalming lab to get home. He was actually pretty annoyed about it. He swore the new guy had it out for him, with how he just happened to be carrying old Mrs Smith’s drainage when Danny popped in to say good night and just happened to spill some of it all down the front of Danny’s second best dress shirt and just happened to not get a single drop on himself.

Danny is thrilled his little starlight is learning new powers. To celebrate, both of them dress up real nice and hit the town, taking full advantage of their ghost abilities to make the most of it. They get some ice cream, see a movie, freak out some tourists, scare the shit out of the Joker, mess around near the clock tower, and eventually calm down enough to enjoy the night air through a long walk.

Ellie is giggling and skipping ahead of him, taking advantage of the empty streets to freely shift her form every other block. With one step, her hair is twice as long and sparkles with an unnatural gleam. The next, her dress has turned bright green and the flowers stitched onto the hem wriggle and dance in tune with their blasting music. Danny calls her back when she gets too far, and when Ellie turns around, all of a sudden she looks like a boy with a suit similar to his and an adorable pixie cut.

Danny just sighs and takes his daughter’s hand. He knows that one day, when her powers are more developed, Ellie will truly cause him a royal headache with all the trouble she’ll get up to using her powers. But right now, right here, he’s just glad to have proof that Ellie is becoming her own person. She’s thriving in ways he never will, and that fact alone comforts both of them. Ellie isn’t just a clone anymore. She’s his daughter, and he’ll humor her till the end.

It brings to mind the old tales of changeling. Fae children left where human children were taken from. Or perhaps, like cuckoo birds, fae children who steal a human child’s place. It was… It was seeing himself replaced. His father laughing, playing, unknowing in his adoration of what he believed was his son. The child in Bruce had screamed in horror.

The man in Bruce knows his Father is not unknowing.

At least… he desperately hopes so. It is impossible to tell yet what the ghost of Thomas Wayne is actually SEEING. The world as it is? As it was? Something else, beyond Bruce’s human sight? He’ll need Constantine’s help. Everything in him is trying to fight calling him.

It takes all his strength just to say the words out loud. To ask Clark for help, all the way over in Metropolis City, but Bruce… he can’t. He can’t. He searches the city for signs of his Mother. Like everyone else looking finds nothing. Was she not worthy of a return? Did she not earn some impossible goodbye?

What God would separate his parents? Would cruelly tear them from each other’s arms? Is his Father looking for her? For him? He found him. Is it now his wife he searches the streets for? Imagining her around the next street corner, some function or charity, a dear friends house for a chat?

Or was he pulled back by the Fae Child. Yanked from his rightful sleep, to play house, by the willful demands of a magically powerful child? Did he stand above his grave and wonder where he was? One moment trying desperately to protect his family, the next a graveyard? The world changed. The endless questions haunt Bruce.

Ha. “Haunt”. He’s begun to hate that word. Trapped. His Father isn’t “haunting” anything. His Father has been TRAPPED by this city and a child that Shape-shifts like water flows. Has Gotham not asked enough from his parents? Did they not already pay, for the crime of caring, in blood? Behind him Damian is less practicing his stances, as he is wrathfully hacking away at a training dummy.

Bruce continues to type at the bat-computer, gives him his privacy as he works through his emotions. The disrespect to his grandfather’s spirit. The lose and hurt he is feeling. Damian has never gotten to even meet Thomas Wayne. Known him only as stories and other people’s memories. Paintings upon walls. Old journals.

Beautiful but empty things.

The spaces outlining where a man once stood. A great man. A kind one. One who would have loved him fiercely and been endlessly proud to call him his grandson. One he now sees played a puppet along the filthy streets he died on. Sees at the mercy of forces unknown, to ends unknowable.

Who sees it hurting his family.

Alfred is nearly a ghost himself these days. He has caught him staring at his parent’s portrait so many times. A truly lost expression on the man’s face. When he had thought it a hoax he had been offended but now that it… it is likely REAL? There were so many things left unsaid. Things they wished they could share with his parents.

It is grief ripped anew.

His Father… He had told him he had done a good job. The look on his face excited and melancholy like he was remembering the escapades of Bruce’s youth. When mastering something meant then turning around to show off to his parent’s. Was he proud? Is he?

Bruce is afraid to ask. Afraid to know.

But he will not let his Father be trapped in the city that killed him. Cursed to wander the city of curses. For all he loved this city, Thomas Wayne earned a peaceful rest. Deserved to sleep along side the wife who he loves and loves him more than anything but their son. To dream of dancing and stars and peaceful afternoons, in whatever comes after. Not this. His Father does not deserve this. And Bruce?

He is going to make this right.

Batman wakes up to a woman who looks like his mother applying first aid with steady hands while complaining about “self-sacrificing idiots not knowing their limits.  How much good do they think they’re gonna do after pushing themselves to a point where they can’t do anything.  At least Ellie didn’t inherit that.”

Bruce is still a little out of it from blood-loss or whatever, but he manages to absorb an important detail: her name is Ellie.  The little sister he never got to meet is named Ellie.

After Sam realizes Batman is conscious, she starts talking to him.  She says a lot of things like “don’t you dare die!” And “I know your work is important, but you can’t just run yourself into the ground like that” and even “as much as the realms would love to have you, you will not be showing up until you’re old and gray.“  She might be redirected some of her frustrations with Danny over the years.

Bruce makes a small choked noise before managing to say “understood,” in a relatively even voice.  

It wasn’t much but Sam caught it, and Now she’s alarmed because Batman doesn’t do shit like that; what happened to him?  Was if fear gas?  No, he’d have an antidote for that.  Did he get hit with some new kind of chemical weapon?  Shit, now she feels bad for yelling at him.  

There could be so many interactions where Danny, Sam, and Ellie are totally oblivious.

You could have all three seeming to be ghosts because Sam is heavily liminal, and just popping up at random intervals.

Sam and Damian bust the same dogfighting ring and work together. Damian rescues a box of puppies from the breeder that was supplying the ring. Sam calms some of the dogs that didn’t make it enough to lead them to the ghost zone.

Jason gets pulled in off the street for a quick lecture on the aspects of self care and health that work differently for the undead. Danny asks him to come to him with any questions or concerns he has going forward.

You could have the Bats learn (correctly or incorrectly) that the Waynes reincarnated, and alternating between wanting to know them and not wanting to drag them into things when they seem to be living peacefully.

Danny’s apartment ends up becoming a safe Haven for the Bats after the first couple of times he finds one injured and can’t just do nothing. They can come to him for patch jobs with no judgement, or just for company that doesn’t ask much of them on bad days. Being able to provide the kind of safe place he would have liked to have when he was a hero gives him a sense of contentment and peace.

For all that Batman is good at putting on a strong front when he’s out and about, the poor guy seems so lost and uncertain when he gets somewhere safe enough to drop the act, so Danny tries to be extra kind and gentle with him because he knows what it’s like to have to put on a brave face. (Danny doesn’t realize that Batman is different around him)

Batman may project stoicism, but at his core, he’s someone who cares a lot.

I’m still imagining Danny being gentle and supportive with all of the Bats. He tells them things he would’ve liked to hear as Phantom. (You are so strong and so brave and so good. You are doing enough. It’s okay to rest sometimes.)

Sam is not the touchy feely type, but she’s getting attached, too. No mushy stuff, but anyone who actually manages to seriously hurt one of the Bats will briefly disappear under mysterious circumstances and turn back up severely traumatized.

Ellie doesn’t take long to decide all of the Bats are family, now. She pesters Jason for shoulder-rides (He’s so tall). She is thrilled when Nightwing enables her need to climb and/or swing from everything (she could fly, but that’s not the same).

She made Tim promise that if he ever becomes a supervillain She can be his right hand man because fuck the gender binary (he was to busy laughing at a kid saying “fuck the gender binary” to figure out a tactful way to change the subject).

Ellie occasionally interrupts patrol to show Robin where she saw a family of opossums (almost always in places a normal child couldn’t reach/shouldn’t go).

Black Bat is invited to play ballerinas (even if they’re really playing warrior princesses undercover as ballerinas).

Ellie teams up with Steph to sneak some ice cream (they didn’t really need to sneak, but it was fun).

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Bruce Wayne isn’t sentient in the mornings, he’s a walking zombie in an Armani suit, being manoeuvred by Alfred into a car for his meetings. Bruce will pat Duke’s hair or kiss his forehead or hand him cash on the way out because as Duke learns, Bruce is literally asleep on his feet and has no clue which kid is there. He just directs affection and cash toward the son-shaped or daughter-shaped being to his left.

Jason Todd, that dead guy Crime Lord, will breeze in and out of the Manor, usually to raid the cupboards or fridge, argue with whoever is in earshot, pet Ace the Bat Hound and tell Alfred about what’s new. Jason thinks Duke is “pretty alright” and will occasionally offer to make him one of those big gormet sandwiches he breaks into the Manor to make.

The little Bat, Damian, is usually very cordial but Duke is always one thread of restraint away laughing when he meets the kid in a corridor in the mornings and he’s wrapped up in an indentical smaller version of Bruce’s bathrobe, clutching the same coffee cup and nodding in greeting like a 50 year old hedge fund guy with a very polite, “Thomas”.

Tim Drake is known to stumble in of a night and fall asleep on any available surface. Duke is getting used to it but he still offers to drag Tim upstairs if Duke passes him collapsed there, only to just get a little shake of Tim’s head.

Duke has to get used to walking in on Steph doing the most questionable things. He has walked into the kitchen to find her eating the weirdest combos like tuna and Nutella or trying to get Titus to talk when nobody is there.

Duke learns that if you open a wardrobe or a cupboard or a trunk, chances are slim that you won’t find Cass curled up in there getting some peace from the rest of the family.

Barbara Gordon can often be found at the Manor just after Bruce has left and the kids are at school. She’s there to download new viruses on the Bat Computer that prevent Bruce from seeing the thirst traps Gothamites make of him or Dick.

Dick Grayson comes to visit from time to time and Duke always walks in on Dick discussing the most out of pocket shit to whatever sibling he has captive “Jason, if you were a shark, but had no teeth but had chainsaws instead“ or “Damian, I’m just saying if we could access the Lazurus Pit for like 5 mins, we could have an army of zombie goldfish”

Alfred is maybe the most normal but from time to time, Duke just walks into the kitchen to see him pulling bullets out of wounds or sewing up wounds or completely locked in to watch The Great British Bakeoff or Countdown or sometimes even talking on the phone to someone Duke is 90% sure is Brian May from Queen.