Ups and Downs

Like I get it, they’re eating people, that’s bad, but they have to to survive!

And while I try and sympathize with the Demon Slayers I just can’t? The amount of casual cruelty towards demons and OTHER PEOPLE is SO IRRITATING!

Demons have sentience, thoughts and feelings and emotions. It is so hard to see them as the Bad Guys with a Sad Backstory because they are victims too!

I’ve been scouring the internet trying to find anything about like the complexities of being demon?

AND THEORIES!!!! I HAVE THEORIES ABOUT THIS!!!

LIKE, in the first moments of being a newly turned demon, they seem pretty feral and wild, like animals. probably from having their memories and human identity blocked.

Zuko, who still wants for a family, spends days reminiscing and brooding and gets desperate enough to try and rekindle the old relationship he had with Azula. Before she started bending and Ozai got his grumby little hands on her.

Azula is.. entertained by his attempts to bond. And that’s it, his pathetic desperation is only amusing to her, it definitely doesn’t fill her chest with the uncomfortable warmth that she only remembers feeling when she was young and weak. She is so deep in denial it’s insane, cause she keeps using that excuse as they do, slowly, get closer and closer to how they were, and keeps justifying her indulgence with the same old excuse.

Of course, Azula is not one to trust so easily. Years of unofficially being the Crown Princess and being educated on the ruthlessness of the political landscape that makes up the nobles has perhaps made her the littlest bit paranoid. And a part of her can’t help but see Mother in Zuko, can’t help the instinctive bitterness that swells up in her throat each time they exist in the same space.

So she sets up a test. Zuko seems so very devoted to being a better brother, has the same look of something she doesn’t want to emotionally touch that Mother had when she looked at Zuko. Traitorously, she wonders if his devotion to her extends to the same extent Mothers did.

Now, obviously, she can’t tell a ridiculous lie like ‘Father’s found out I lied and he’s angry enough to kill me and I’m just sooo scared zuzu~.’ Because they both know she’s still the favorite and, even if his mind seems to get more delusional by the day, Ozai would never kill his prodigy daughter over a little lie.

But she can fabricate one that seems like something he’d do had she actually been found out.

She times it perfectly. Zuko enters her room, mouth open and no doubt about to go on another rant about some stupid play, but stops dead on the sight of her.

There is no greater liar than Azula, so as she carefully checks the burns marks in the mirror she put on her own arms, high enough to hide, she makes sure to tense and freeze up slightly as she makes eye contact with Zuko before, very obviously, forcing herself to relax.

She stays silent as she puts on salves and creams to help it heal and prevent scarring, pointedly not making eye contact with him again and keeping her back to him. Projecting shame and vulnerability that she’s never let him see before.

Zuko unfreezes right as she finishes and storms up to her, hastily grabs her arm with a gentleness that contradicts his urgency, and asks, no, demands to know who did this. His expression is so.. sincere and genuine, so open. It makes her sick. But she’s never given up on a plan just because of her own pitiful emotions, modify them maybe, but never abandon.

She keeps her eyes low and to the side, glues them to her burn, and purposefully crafts her face to something resigned and resentful, inflects her voice with just enough bitterness as she snaps at him, defensive. “Who do you think, dumb-dumb?”

He pulls her into an unwelcome and skin burning and itching and crawling ants under her skin— a hug, he pulls he into a ridiculous hug before she can sneak a glance at his expression but the tense, resigned set to his shoulders gives her enough of an answer.

He loves her enough to care and comfort but his loyalties still lay with Father. She understands better now, on how close she can allow him, puts him just a bit higher than Ty Lee and Mai. It might be foolish but a small part of her was hoping for more, was hoping for the same love Mother had for him, the one she tries so hard for from Father.

She lets the hug drag on few a more seconds and then shoves him off, orders him out and away. Turns her back to him, again, and tugs her sleeves down, dismissive and guarded. She’s only made eye contact once and is staunchly ignoring him now so she doesn’t catch the hard, protective glint in his eye, doesn’t see the way his expression is blank of everything but determination.

She goes to bed and tries to ignore the traitorous thoughts that keep her up, make her question her loyalty and wonder if anything about her is true and real, that whisper in her ears and sound suspiciously like Mother as they condemn her to her fate as a puppet for her Father.

She wakes and gets ready with her attendants like normal and acts perfectly fine because she is her Father’s daughter and she is nothing less than perfect. The attendants shift and glance at her and each other with uneasy eyes, as though daring someone else be the first to speak.

Her oldest attendant informs her of the news. Firelord Ozai is dead, throat slit in his sleep with his arms charred, hands practically gone. His vocal cord was cut, they say, that’s why no one heard him scream. They sound muddled and distant as they speak and she gets tired of the droning that worsens the tight feeling in her chest, sharply raises her hand for silence and tries to ground herself. The looming dread won’t leave her no matter how hard she tries, someone snuck in to the palace and her father is dead and oh fuck, she’s the Firelord now.

Zuko meets her for breakfast, an incredibly early breakfast and shoots her a strained smile but his posture is all wrong, not enough grief and anger and too much pride. The realization hits her quick and hard and she just barely stops herself from dropping her bite of food. He he’d barely reacted and had left so quick because was planning on killing their fucking dad, planning on assassinating their Father in his sleep, a death without the honor of combat, the opportunity to fight for your life. He had to watch their Father bleed out, had to sit and wait before incinerating his arms, all because he allegedly hurt her.

His lips downturned and pressed together tightly, trembling. His furrowed brows and scrunched nose. It’s an unfamiliar face, one that he only remembers through cracked doors. No tears fall— they don’t even form, they can’t— but his older brother still looks like he’s holding them back.

“I’m proud of you.”

The air is heavy between them. It feels weighed down by emotions too complicated to name— grief, it’s grief— and he doesn’t know how to respond so he doesn’t.

But it’s fine because his older brother— Touya-nii— keeps talking, voice choked.

On the days he isn’t stalking the bats he’s out familiarizing himself with crime alley because it’s where Jason is from.

He badly tries to hide his wealth but it’s kinda hard to change mannerisms you didn’t even know belonged to a certain class and eventually just stops trying.

He doesn’t get a friendly reception at first. A rich kid in crime alley is either obvious bait or a pretentious asshole flaunting his higher status. But Tim starts bringing supply bags of good shit they can’t afford and keeps “losing” small bills and eventually the community thaws. They know who he actually is (public appearances suck) and still tentatively accept his presence.

The working girls hold conversations with him and the scattered gangs comprised of homeless teens/kids teach him all kinds of vulgarities because his reactions never get old. He gets familiar and comfortable and close and then Jason dies.

Jason dies and Tim has to stop visiting all together to try and keep a grieving man alive. He can’t find the time between school and training and patrolling to visit and it’s already been half a year before he can finally take a break and grieve.

His return is met with equal parts scorn and concern and he admits that the whole reason he got to know crime alley was because of Jason Todd, who he went to school with and who he might’ve had a crush on. He grieves with them over a boy he barely knew.

He visits more and creates fully funded programs with a separate identity and unsubtly vouches that they aren’t a scam. And maybe Robin visits sometimes too, when the Bat isn’t looking, and also vouchers for the programs and they all mistakenly assume Tim somehow knows Robin.

With the bandages covering both his eyes he’s blind, forced to be humiliatingly vulnerable. It’s bad enough he needs to assistance to get the bathroom and startles when someone forgets to announce their presence, he will feed his damn self, ignoring the times he misses his mouth and smears whatever it is across his face.

He gets his bandages off the very next week. His sight and hearing on his left side is all but gone and the fire, the heat, had injured his right too. It’s not that bad, everything is sorta blurry and he wouldn’t recognize someone if they were 80 feet away but it’s enough to read. He can still lead.

and like, maybe that something is self preservation or maybe that something is hope.

younger Tim being exposed to the worst the internet has to offer because he has no one to stop him from looking. he’s already too old for his age, too observant and manipulative and fake and perfect because that’s the standard for a Drake. Going to galas and picking up on all the little innuendos and slimy comments that passed over his head previously and being disgusted but leaning into it a little if he knows it’ll help the company. Being cynical from a young age and finding out Batman and Robins identity and the world feels brighter for a brief moment in his life. It’s amazing for a while but like always he digs too deep, gets too curious, and the filter shatters when the second robin comes along and he’s too attached and his robin is dead.

He holds a grudge against Batman, watches a father self sabotage out of grief with something too dark to be good but steps in after the third victim he has to resuscitate. He plays the role of a starstruck but determined fanboy and adjusts as he goes along, minor adjustments here and there to keep the illusion alive and real.

But here, we come back to what he lacks. Because the previous Robins, despite what they saw and experienced and had to do to survive, were still young in way he isn’t, hasn’t been since ever.

He’s the smart one, the one that can lie to Batman and get away with it. He weighs the pros and cons, calculates the dangers and decides to go through with it anyway because he needs inside information to solve this case and it’s not like he hasn’t done something similar to close a deal for his company, this will just be further than what he’s previously done.