why are you here?

Eve, the mother of sin, who held the world in her hands and was cursed for not knowing.

Eva, director of the task force, who now holds the world, and still must curse man to save it.

"Cheryl, I just locked Joker in the deep freezer, what do I do?" The words came out in a rush as he leaned against the hallway, nervously looking at the door as if the clown demon would somehow punch through six inches of metal and survive subzero temperatures.

"Are you fucking with me, Fenton? You know I'm in the middle of a shitshow right now."

He breathed out a little hysterically. "No, I'm not fucking with you. There's a bunch of Joker goons in the base on 7th street. I lured them into the deep freezer—"

"The one without exits?"

"Yeah, uh-huh, the one with no exits. And then I barricaded the door."

There was an audible muffle of words and a few shouts and what sounded like gunshots. Danny was worried his closest coworker got shot until she came back on the line, out of breath.

"Let me get this straight— your first thought when the Joker invaded our headquarters was to lock him in a freezer?"

"No, I had time to think about it." Danny answered absently as he wandered down to the utility room after he turned on the fans to full blast. He wasn't the designated handyman, but a Fenton with a screwdriver could do anything, really.

Just because he was the janitor didn't mean he somehow lost the ability to fix a washer, oil a door, or wire a ghost electric chair. (Yes, that was a real thing, and yes, he did destroy it when he moved out of Amity Park.)

Speaking of moving, he supposes it's important on A. why he was in a Red Hood base (and more broadly, Gotham), B. Why he was a janitor in a Red Hood base, C. why he knew a lieutenant of Red Hood and D. why he had just committed what most would call felony murder.

(Danny would call it self defense, but potato pahtato when you're working for a gang.)

It all came down to one thing. He was good at cleaning. How, Danny "The Slob" Fenton, do such a thing when his room was sometimes more of a bio risk than the literal lab?

It's that Jazz was constantly stressed with school and taking care of him, so a lot of chores often fell to him.

Which meant cleaning up the lab.

Sure, he was no where near happy about this arrangement, but it wasn't like he could tell his sister "Hey! Stop giving me non-contaminated food and clean, woman!"

He was a lazy, deeply sarcastic, a borderline delinquent and a vigilante, but he drew the line at misogyny And, you know, his hotdogs trying to murk him in his stomach.

Ergo, Danny the bitter cleaner of all things radioactive and probably illegal.

The thing with the Fenton lab? There was always something staining the floor. Whether it be blood, ectoplasm, oil, lubrication for bolts, coffee, or an ungodly mix of all of it.

He had to get creative and fast.

Ectoplasm is a bit corrosive and stains like you wouldn't believe, even on metal floor. So he learned to put a bit of his own ectoplasm and mini ice particles so it would actually be able to be scrubbed out of the floor.

Coffee? Oil? Yeah. Cleaning supplies were mixed together like a potion master, toeing the line between dangerous and genius. He was always careful enough not to make chlorine gas or chloroform.

It became an uncanny skill, along with other things. He knew how to get spots out of clothing, how to make homemade detergent and how to get any stain or blemish out of almost any material.

So, when he moved to Gotham to complete his bachelors in chemical engineering at G.C.U., he knew he had to get a job somewhere.

And there was a lot of benefits for custodial staff in his position. Good hours, mostly at night or afternoons when he'd be free. And he knew a lot about cleaning, so why not?

...He hadn't really planned to be scouted as a crime cleaner, though.

Especially for a gang.

But hey! They even gave dental. Red Hood didn't even seem all that bad, drug peddling and murder aside. (Unsurprisingly, he could put a lot of things aside. His parents and well, Phantom, etc.)

If he kept his mouth shut, head down and hands working, he could get a good wage and even better benefits.

Danny, much to his dismay and minor shock, became known as 'the guy who can get stains out of literally everything.' Goons would literally stop and watch him like he was preforming black magic on a crime scenes walls. Even more surprisingly, he got clients and friends from this arrangement.

(Ignoring that one time of the jackets he was randomly given looks like Red Hood's.

No pressure. Just a crime lord who (allegedly) put heads into a duffel bag and mailed it to another crime boss.

He does it anyway, because he has a reputation (and monetary gain) to keep.)

So! Back to the present.

"What the fuck. What the fuck!" Cheryl hissed, whether at him or what he assumed was a gunfight in the background, "Jesus effin' Christ Danny, get out of there."

The halfa swung open the maintenance/janitorial supply room, trying to be nonchalant as his brain spirals and calculates. "I don't think Jesus can fuck Christ. They seem almost identical, y'know?"

Hydrogen sulfide would be the quickest killer, but chloroform could also do it if they didn't have enough acids and sulfur cleaning products.

Decisions, decisions.

Eh. Fuck it.

Danny grabbed some plywood, a box full of tools, his handy dandy cleaning supplies and a big plastic bucket. He would call his shaky hands adrenaline instead of being absolutely terrified that the most notorious mass-murderer in America was a few rooms down.

"Danny, I'm not fuckin' joking. You need to get the hell out of there. That's an order, you brilliant, stupid piece of shit."

He began trotting back to the deep freezer, inhaling through his teeth and scrubbing his face. "Kinky," he said, with levity he sure as hell didn't feel, "Hey, so, I'm gonna have to call you back. Tell me once you get out of your Nerf gun battle."

"Dann—!"

Danny snapped on a respirator, tucked his phone away, and quickly dumped a mixture of chemicals he knew would kill, well, a lot of things.

He'd heard the screaming and gunshots even through the thickest 1950s subzero room known to man. Kind of hard to muffle even that.

But alas. He went partially intangible, hauling his bucket of unicorn love and sparkles, floating up towards the air ducts. With no pizzaz, he dumped the entire thing in the vent system for the room.

The screams immediately rose in volume, and so did the ping of gunshots. Not wasting the time to poke his intangible head in and see how they were doing, he reappeared back in the hallway.

To be a safeguard even for an empty base, he quickly hammered in some plywood to any vents, duct taping the edges.

And for the coup de grâce, he sealed the door with his ectoplasm ice, cranked up the fan and turned the temperature to the lowest it could reasonably go.

"Have fun in there kiddos," he rapped the door, and then got the fuck out of the base. So really, he was following Cheryl's order. So it wasn't insubordination, no siree. Just insurance.

— — —

Danny found himself grabbing a cup of coffee. It wouldn't help his nerves, absolutely not, but at least it gave him something to do with his hands as he called up Cheryl.

"Danny!" She immediately snapped, and he winced.

"Hi, Cheryl," He demurred, hoping to project the most charming air that she could definitely see through. "How're you doing?"

"Don't change the subject, pretty boy."

He held his tongue at a sarcastic comment to that. "Mmmm yeah, so. About that. Would you mind like, not telling the Big Guy about what I did? Keep it like, anonymous act of charity?"

"Why." The word was sharp, almost unquestioning. Danny kept from squeezing his plastic ice coffee cup so hard that it would explode.

Okay. Okay. He had to do this. "I'm a Meta." He explained. "I really— Like, I left something definitely a Meta could do to keep the Joker in the deep freezer room." He really didn't want to become some super soldier or enforcer. He would quite literally rather kill someone before he did that.

It wasn't like there wasn't Metas in Gotham or, hell, some gangs. But he wasn't just Danny the Throw Him At Any Problem Because He Has Powers guy, and he never wanted to be. He just wanted to get his degree, get paid, and get out.

"Too late. I'd already told him that you'd locked Joker in there."

Danny smacked his head against the cafe table, wishing he inhaled more of the chemical weapon in the plastic Home Depot bucket.

"Cheryl," He said, with thinly veiled horror and dread.

Her voice audibly softened. "Danny. It's fine. You know he wouldn't throw you off the Harbor or anything. Hell, he's probably going to be grateful, however uncharacteristic. Everyone 's gonna be. It's the Joker."

Danny gave a truly pathetic groan as the now murderer of the Joker, and wondered if being fed to the fishes was truly a worse fate.

— — —

Jason was smoking on one of the balcony of his many safe houses, holding a picture of the man in front of him.

It'd been a long night and a long morning. Once he had gotten the intel that the Joker was locked in a deep freezer, in one of his goddamn bases, you bet your lucky fucking stars he had gotten there faster than Bruce had gotten to him.

It had taken hours to get into the room from whatever the hell was coated over the door, and dear fuck was it worth the effort.

The Joker was dead. So were many of his closest lieutenants and underlings. Some had died from GSWs, other from chemical burns or inhalation, and the Joker? The best of all.

He'd died slowly and painfully from hypothermia and the chemicals.

It had been a mixture of vindictive, vengeful glee and deep exhaustion as he carefully monitored the cremation process of all of the bodies.

It was over. It was fucking over. His syndicate would be in pieces that Jason would euphorically grind his heel into.

Now all that remained of the infamous, homicidal Joker was a plastic bag of grey ashes.

Jason wasn't sure what he was going to do with it now. Maybe he could flush it down his toilet. It'd clog, but he wouldn't give two shits.

Maybe he could even sent it to Bruce. The thought brought a huff from his lips as he blew out the smoke from his cig, eyes examining the picture from the file.

Cheryl had referred to this Danny as 'pretty boy' on many occasions, and Jason was inclined to agree. A mischievous, almost boyish face of a 22-year-old. The famed Red Hood Janitor, jack-of-trades.

The killer of the most prominent killer of all time.

He couldn't summon as much jealousy of it should have been me, twisting the knife in his gut rather than the feeling of relief. Red Hood had struggled even getting close, whether it was his obscene amount of gang members or it was fucking Batman or one of his little soldiers preventing him from putting a bullet in his head.

No, it wasn't as much anger but interest that he twisted around in is mind, thumb hovering over the face of Danny Fenton.

He'd like to meet this man. Jason was sure that it would be a conversation he wouldn't want to miss.

babysitting yourself or something

hm on close review the frog promise draft is a now redundant drabble from this au. Here it is in its entirety:

“I will never join you,” Luke said with a sneer of disgust.

Palpatine, as well as the nearby politicians, Jedi masters, and reporters were taken aback. 

“I’m afraid I don’t understand your meaning, Master Jedi,” the Senator said incredulously. “Do you mean to tell me that you consider yourself separate from the Republic? I know the Jedi Council had disavowed recognizing you but I never could have imagined...” he trailed off, leaving the crowd to murmur in alarm.

“I mean I will never join the Sith,” the rogue master replied calmly. “I imagine you’re responsible for the traces of the dark side I felt amongst the trade federation leaders.”

“The Sith...I see.” Palpatine took a step back, deliberately reassuring tone and alarmed expression clearly indicated that he suspected the man before him of insanity. “It’s been a very long day and you clearly intended to do good by my humble home world. Perhaps your fellow Jedi can take you to the healers so you can-”

“Why are you working alongside a Sith Lord?” Luke cut off the Senator and addressed Grandmaster Yoda directly. 

“A Sith Lord, you say?” Master Yoda replied. “A most serious allegation, this is.”

Basically, Luke derails the Naboo Crisis by absolutely annihilating the trade federation army, only realizing after the fact when and where he is. This means that Padme turns right around from Tatooine and never voices her vote of no-confidence. Now, Palpatine probably had contingency plans in place, but the public accusation by a Jedi of being responsible for the crisis in the first place, despite absolutely no evidence, hurts his image enough that he’s not going to win a vote, because people will think it’s a power grab. 

And it’s funny cause it’s true but Luke only barely knows that! He’s just accusing Palpatine of being behind the first evil thing he sees and he fuckin happens to be right!!!

Anyway Luke doesn’t focus on Palpatine; there are like 10,000 other Jedi around. He commits himself first and foremost to completing his training with Master Yoda because sometime Yoda just dies and fades into thin air so, you know! He’s not going to procrastinate on that again!

He goes before the council and humbly asks to be taken on Yoda’s student (this is right before Qui-Gon can ask about Anakin- literally, Anakin and Qui-Gon are in the waiting room). He gives several extremely vague banthashit explanations of who he is ‘I’m a follower of the Force,’ where he comes from ‘the Force sent me,’ and why they should train him when he’s way too old ‘the Force willed it.’ Yoda is somewhat impressed because those are some real unhelpfully wise answers and- here’s the kicker- Luke actually believes them! 

He is really committed to being a Jedi! Is 110% all about being a luminous being! This is several years after return of the Jedi and Luke has pretty much just been hanging out in force temples meditating with ghosts so he has quintessential Jedi vibes, he just knows jackshit about anything!

What really clinches it for Yoda is the fact that his robe pocket starts squirming and he pulls out a live Nabooian Salt Frog. And hands it to Yoda like, “These are one of your favorites right? :) I saw it and I thought of you :)”

Now Yoda- let’s step back a second. Yoda is old. Yoda, in his youth, was a bit more feral. He’s a top level predator and the order has always celebrated diversity and being true to your origins! He’s hunted with Tortugans on Shili! He’s unhinged his jaw with Besalisks on Ojom! 

But as the Republic’s boundaries caved in on themselves, he was more and more put into contact with Core senators who tend to be unnerved by more, ah, carnivorous tendencies. And the more he was put into high level positions by virtue of being really frickin old, the more restrained he became in his public behavior. 

Decades passed and younglings who only ever knew his more ‘harmless-prank’ feral tendencies were increasingly shocked and scared to see him occasionally unhinge his jaw to eat a scrocodile whole. Some of the prey-origin younglings from that field trip actually avoided him for the rest of the their lives.

So. Yoda is still a carnivore- but- in private. With his padawans and his closest peers. But his closest peers age and die and his padawans get younger and smaller as the decades pass. He took on two herbivorous padawans in a row and as a result restrained himself from openly hunting with another soul for around for 50 years.

And then there’s Dooku. ‘Ah a human,’ he thinks. ‘They hunt sometimes. Well. They’re omnivores at least.’

And Dooku is- and I’m not saying this to shame Dooku- but he’s prissy. He likes...neatness. He’s not afraid of violence but force forbid it’s untidy. So when Yoda, excited to get his ambush predation on, takes 14 year old Dooku who’s barely ever left the sterile confines of Coruscant on a trip to a swamp world- yeaaahh it doesn’t go well. Dooku- he doesn’t mean to, honestly. How would he even know that Yoda might be sensitive about things? He’s Yoda. 

But Dooku sobbing openly and puking a little in a bush and running away from Yoda because his Master is terrifying and gross. It... kind of puts the nail in the coffin for Yoda being open about that side of himself. He doesn’t really have it in him to try again. People’s view of him is too fixed, they can’t handle him also being a flesh creature so he focuses on the luminous side of him which is and always was, genuinely, more important than him.

And that’s been the last 100 years or so. The thrill of a live kill is just a little piece of himself that he meditates away and that’s ok. He has the force. He has the order. He’s old anyway, a real hunt would probably hurt his joints. 

And then in comes Luke, radiating Light and earnestness and Jedi serenity while also holding out a very tasty looking live frog. And Yoda realizes Dooku’s not around, he’s surrounded by a council he trusts and respects and likes, none of whom are 14 year olds, all of whom have seen the galaxy and seen worse. He is almost seizing the moment but there’s a little part of him that shriveled up when Dooku cried that’s having a hard time accepting this.

“Want it for yourself, you do not?” Yoda cackles, playing off the offer.

Luke smiles sheepishly and pulls out another live frog. “I was saving it for later. Forgive me Master, your senses are keen as ever I see.”

And Yoda...it’s not about the bribe, really, so much as the symbolism, and it’s not about the flattery either, but darn is the kid really pulling out the stops to make himself likable. And he is a kid, to Yoda anyway. Everyone is these days. What does he care about numbers when there’s a boy smiling like his third padawan, an adorable Rodian who took great delight in their more amphibious and wild missions?

Yoda snatches one of the frogs and slowly raises it in a parody of a toast. Luke does the same. The rest of the council quietly watches in various shades of bewilderment and bemusement.

They’re not actually going to eat that right? Mace thinks. Ugh I hate frogs the skin is so slimy. Shaak Ti thinks. I cannot believe they’re not even offering me one. Yaddle thinks.

And Yoda bites the head off the frog in a quick snap of his jaws, the rest following rapidly. Luke does the same- a slight assist from the force helping his less specialized mandible tear through skin and bone in a well practiced move. He chews slower, but finishes the frog soon enough, the rest of the council looking on with deep uncertainty and a tiny bit of hunger, but no actual fear. They’re Jedi Masters; they’ve eaten everywhere, it’s just a little weird for a human to be eating a live animal and Yoda as far as anyone knew only ate stew and also they were in the middle of a council meeting.

Yoda belches and Luke smiles genially.

“Take you on as my padawan learner, I will. Much to learn you have, much to teach you, I do.”

Luke beams. The council looks on in shock. 

“Master Yoda,” Mace Windu says hesitantly, “He’s clearly in his late 20s, at the earliest. If this is about the... frog thing-”

“Was a pleasant surprise, the frog. The reason for my decision, it is not. Had some training already, he has. Know each other before this day, we do. Taking over for a Master passed into the force, I am merely. Our custom, this is.”

Luke bows lowly and an initiate is summoned to escort him to the quartermasters and then the long-empty padawan suite next to Yoda’s chambers. 

Qui-Gon and Anakin are brought in and. Well. It’s a little hard for them to simply reject the boy after Yoda just pulled that stunt. He’s sent to the initiates dorm, eventually. Mace Windu has a headache from the shatterpoints blinking in and out of existence. Shaak Ti is delighted to discuss a hunting trip with Master Yoda and his new padawan learner Luke Svader. 

that is one of my FAVORITE things to imagine yes. To me this is less about ‘Skywalker bullshit’ (though there is some of that) and more about the training they (didn’t) receive.

The high-Midi-chlorians-actual-descendents-of-the-force thing makes it easier to tap into the force, makes it more possible to do so without accidentally exhausting yourself. But, in universe, under the right circumstances and with the properly channeled belief anyone can do anything. That’s why Palpatine had to make the galaxy want an empire, why his first strategy was misdirection and his top priority was crushing hope. Chirrut was supposedly force-null and he walked through an army. Han navigated that astroid field because he had to. The force is everywhere. 

In an amusing but possibly unintended turn of events, 6-12 weeks of training in a swamp with an elderly frog who only talks in riddles without ever being exposed to Jedi culture except as a myth is actually IDEAL if you’re looking to maximize a Jedi’s raw strength. Most Jedi training that we see in the prequels is explicitly designed to put the breaks on a force-users raw power (for honestly very valid reasons). Channeling all violence through a single weapon that will start screaming if you get too violent, training to use it defensively, is definitely the soft-ball alternative to just squashing people like meatballs. 

Meditating, wearing beige, the code, shunning attachments, all that stuff is built around making sure force users never run above first or second gear even in stressful situations (again valid, when you run your jedi in the red sometimes they become murder monsters). The downside of this is that when they’re forced to maintain that placid pace for years at a time (i.e: prolonged war), they’re much more likely to burn out.

When Yoda told Luke do or do not, told him a luminous being was he, told him size matters not, the amazing thing isn’t that Luke believed him. That was karking objectively provable. Yoda lifted a spaceship, so now Luke knows he can too if he just thinks he can. So he does. Vader and Palpatine conquered a galaxy. Luke believes he can stop worlds, crush armies, conquer planets and so he can. 

The incredible thing about Luke is what he doesn’t do despite being tapped into the Force utterly free of mental restraint. Luke’s op character trait is his compassion, not his strength.

I assume at some point Luke puts Leia through a similar 2 month meditation class where he convinces her that her only limitations are the ones she imposes on herself. She has a complete meltdown when she realizes that she actually could have boiled Tarkin alive with her mind and saved Alderann. This causes a volcano to go off, devastating the ecology of a small moon. On the flight home, both of them slightly charred, she tells Luke that she wanted to focus on politics and didn’t really want to be a Jedi anyway. Luke nods quickly, supporting her decision, and resolves to seek out some Jedi texts about how to teach people they can do anything but also...maybe...not...anything.

And thus the Jedi order is reborn.

- - -

In the time travel version of this, it means that Luke is assuming that all of the Jedi are restraining themselves like he is. And they are, but they also aren’t, because their breaks are subconscious, built in since childhood, and have a lot of failsafes so even if they turn darkside they still restrain themselves pretty good (a la Dooku). 

Leia is, again, less interested with the Jedi-specific aspects of the war (especially now that she doesn’t have to feel guilty about being one of the only people who can pick up that mantle) and more interested in the diplomatic side. Again, Palpatine can only succeed if the galaxy at large accepts this, and from where she’s standing they’re fucking moving in that direction. If being a Jedi is tapping into the mystical energy field that binds all living things together to channel it through one specific person in one specific place, then politics is manipulating that same power for a diffuse impact on as many people as possible. 

This status-quo lasts until a major clone wars battle where Luke’s like ‘wait- the entire other side is sub-sentient droids? No living beings, and no droids with complex personality matrices? And they’re currently, actively killing living, sentient humans? Well kriff, come on! This is a no-brainer!’

Luke takes a deep breath. The air- it doesn’t disappear or anything- but it- it stops moving. It’s hard to explain...but breathing has an odd...resistance. The hair on the back of every clone’s neck stands up. Several get vaguely sea sick. One pukes a little. Plo Koon stumbles back, head ringing and afraid.

Luke Skywalker stands up and clenches his fists. 10,000 droids crumple like flimsi in the hands of a child. The battlefield is eerily quiet for a moment, then that imperceptible hum (which no one noticed until it stopped) fades and the air returns to its normal density. A few of the shinies start whooping, then the whole battalion is cheering.

Luke massages his temples, smiling wryly at Master Koon. “I guess I can see how that would get exhausting if you were doing it everyday.”

Imagine the events of utrh being planned for AFTER Damian reveal. But Talia and Jason are too wary to send Damian alone while the clown is alive so Jason bodyguard arc.

Jason keeps trying to keep his identity a secret by staying in League regalia the entire time but eventually his face gets revealed and he’s panicking-his revenge plan has to be thrown out-

Only for no one to realize he’s older Jason back to life (that’d be a crazy jump- you know what’s less crazy?) Damian calls him Akhi. He looks like Bruce. They all just assume Talia had TWO kids with Bruce. Confused on the math but no one puts Talia above artificially making child age faster- that plus CLEAR influence of the pit so they can’t throw out the possibility that he just looks older than he may have been born. That plus the fact that once in a taunt Damian scoffed and noted how his Akhi isn’t even the same mental age as his body (he’s referring to the catatonia) which means… the math is mathing…

Clearly, Bruce has two bio children.

Jaybin being a Willis Clone in appearance when he grows up

So when Red Hood costume fail happens, the older goons are recognizing him

But instead of the expected "you're the dead Wayne kid"

It's guys crying in joy and relief, because anytime someone from their neck of the woods makes it big, it's a cause for celebration

Oh you're twice the man your daddy was. And that's only counting your body width.

No wonder you're berserk about drug pushers, sorry about your Mom. I'm sure she deserved better.

Jason learning that even if his Dad wasn't mean enough of a bastard to stay alive, people still considered Willis Todd amongst the decent few worth remembering, now and then.

Jason for the first time in a long, long time being seen as nothing but a good kid who survived the odds.

Dad isn't here to see, but Willis would be so astounded that something of his came back big enough to make a difference.

People of the Alley finally accepting Red Hood, not because he's doing good, or what material help he can bring to the desperate.

But because he's proof that they aren't all damned to die in obscurity.

considering the fact that Jason could be the only person 'in the family' with adverse and lingering affects from being in the Lazarus Pit, and Jason is an incredibly good asset for the League of Assassins to have on-side with his All-Blades and bat-training and new Lazarus strength/size, i think it's fair to say that regardless of how annoying and bitchy Jason is as a person, Ra's could still be smart enough to want Jason to stick around.

I really like the concept of Jason being a singularity within the league. the rest of Ra's family respects him as their leader and treats him professionally, because although he is their father/grandfather, he is still, to them, the Demon's Head. same with everybody else at the league—he's feared and worshipped, or he’s abhorred and viewed as an enemy. there’s no in-between.

apart from Jason.

Jason is a special case. i think it's important to keep in mind that the only other person that Ra's has ever really respected as an equal of some kind is literally Bruce Wayne. the Batman. as his father's son, there's no way Jason didn't pick up on that Wayne stubbornness, and there’s no way he didn’t give Ra’s a run for his money when he showed up at the league. Ra’s sees that genius and sense of strategy in Jason; the only difference is that Jason actually embraces and accepts the concept of being an Al Ghul, doesn’t give a fuck about murder, and manages to expertly carry out all his work/missions while being a complete and utter little shit. with all of that, and the prospect of them bonding over the mental effects of being pit-dipped, i think it’s very easy to imagine the two of them having a weirdly decent grandfather-adopted grandson relationship.

i want them to argue constantly, but also Jason is the only person who Ra’s wouldn’t actually stab for climbing on his throne. or for mocking the fact that he even has a throne. Talia is endlessly frustrated and baffled as to why the fuck those two actually seem to get along sometimes—Jason’s allowed to burst into any confidential meeting he wants, ranting about whatever’s pissed him off lately, and Ra’s will just sneer and tell him to fuck off. anybody else would be shot on sight.

Damian’s torn between relieved and pissed off, because on the one hand Jason constantly fucking with Ra’s and actually getting away with it at least takes the heat off Damian; but on the other hand what the fuck did Jason do to deserve this favouritism? how comes Ra’s lets Jason braid his hair when he can’t sit still during a meeting? how come when Jason breaks into Ra’s bed chambers to demand a larger expense account so he can take the outlaws to vegas for his 18th birthday Ra’s doesn’t toss him in the cells for a weekend—just throws a cushion and lets him take whatever money he wants? it’s clear favouritism, and it’s bullshit.

i don’t just want it to be Ra’s letting Jason get away with stuff though. i think it would be interesting to see the more equal parts of their relationship. I would like to see a Ra’s Al Ghul who actually accepts Jason as one of his heirs, and as somebody who recognises the negative effects of the pit will give half-decent advice on how Jason can deal with it. i want them sharing ways to deal with pit-influenced episodes and hanging out on their off days. Ra’s teaching Jason how to play chess and Jason forcing Ra’s to read with him. Talia walks in on them together in the league library, Ra’s with slices of cucumber over his eyes, head laid back, and Jason with his legs thrown into Ra’s lap while he reads out loud, and she has to just. stop. take a deep breath, and slowly walk out while counting to ten.

there’s something just so endlessly fascinating about the concept of weird morally-grey murder-grandpa Ra’s and his odd, feral, lazarus-dipped grandson Jason.

i want it to be like fucking. Forrest Gump levels of insane connections. there's an old news report about some kind of incident like an attempted attack during a winter Olympics game held in Beijing years ago, and Damian will casually walk by like 'oh yes, i remember that game. Todd made me take a photo holding the torch after he stopped the attackers.' and then everybody has to just stare while he walks off. he's spotted briefly in the background of a nature documentary when a specialist visits a tribe in the amazon rainforest, and Tim watching it genuinely thinks he's seeing things until he shows Damian and the kid casually goes 'yeah Todd trained with the leader of their tribe, so we were there for about nine weeks. i have a box of old polaroid's taken during the stay if you wish to see them?'. Tim is losing his mind. Bruce finds an old photo of toddler-Damian in the Fortress of Solitude playing with Krypto and he's about to go into cardiac arrest about Clark lying to him until Damian tells him 'yes, Jason worked alongside Kara as the Red Hood on multiple occasions, and she always had us meet her in the Fortress of Solitude when Superman was out.'

Which I think would lead to moments like

Roy: The second robin? I thought you died, what-

*Damian enters*

Roy:

Roy, empathetically: Must’ve been hard

Jason: NO

Or,

Reporter: And Jason and Damian, do they share the same mother?

Bruce: what

A cloaked figure in the stands: *loudly* YES THEY DO

Bruce: Talia???

Not to forget,

Jon, waking up after getting knocked out from a battle with Damian, watching Jason enter the room

Jon:

Jon, more panicked by the second: ...Damian? Is that you?

Jason:

Jason, reading Damian's handsigns from out the window

Like,

Thug: Get back here, brat!

Just then, from behind them a voice goes

“You wanna repeat that?”

And it’s the Red Hood’s mechanical pitch, so the thugs scatter, and it’s just some alley kid using the voice mod.

So, you know how kids pick up their parents phones sometimes when it's ringing and it turns out to be some family member on facetime?

Bruce is urgently trying to call Talia on the number she gave him, but she isn't responding, so Oracle gives him Talia's home number and

-line connects-

Bruce: Talia, I need-

Bruce: ...

Bruce, squinting at a toddler who looks strikingly similar to him:

Damian, 5, picked up his mom's phone: what

Jason: Hey- who is that- give it here-

The camera's blurry as the phone is wrestled out of Damian's hands, and Jason comes into frame a few seconds later.

Jason: Who is this?

Bruce, on the verge of a heart attack: ...Jason?

Jason: Oh, fuck-

-call gets cut-