꩜ blood on tomorrow's hands
request anon batfam are the ones prophesied to destroy reader's life? like it could be the same situation with the parents as in the other request or it could not be. up to you.
content platonic! bruce wayne x reader, dick grayson x reader, jason todd x reader, tim drake x reader, aged up!damian wayne x reader, inspired by epic: the musical, odysseus/astynax-inspired, prophecies of death, implied child death, threatened family death, parental death, sibling death, grief, survivor’s guilt, accidental killing, canon-typical violence, guns / weapons, attempted attacks, criminal activity, child endangerment, kidnapping threats, explosions, building collapse, blood / injury, moral dilemmas
author's note inspired by this request :) a tad off kilter i will be honest, i kinda just wrote instead of like getting direcrly inspired by the musical so apologies
masterlist
a prophecy declares that one day, they will kill your family. it does not explain why. it does not tell them whether the deaths will be murder, necessity or terrible accident. it only promises that when the moment arrives, the blood will be on their hands.
bruce wayne
Bruce rejects the prophecy before the seer has even finished speaking. “No.” It is not disbelief. Bruce has encountered enough magic to know that prophecy is real, occasionally precise and almost always cruel. He simply refuses to accept it.
The vision shows Bruce standing in the ruins of your home. Your parents are dead. Your siblings are dead. There is blood across the symbol on his chest, and you are staring at him from beneath a collapsed doorway with an expression Bruce recognises immediately. It is the same expression he wore in Crime Alley.
You are only a child when he finds you. Eight years old, bright-eyed and painfully trusting, completely unaware that the man kneeling in front of you has seen himself destroy everything you love.
Bruce’s first instinct is distance. He believes he can protect your family by never entering their lives. He increases surveillance around your home, quietly investigates your parents and ensures that no criminal organisation has marked them as targets. He never speaks to you directly.
Then you begin leaving drawings for Batman on the roof of your apartment building. They are terrible drawings. Batman has ears longer than his legs. Robin appears to be green from head to toe. The Batmobile is labelled because otherwise Bruce would have assumed it was a badly wounded insect. Bruce keeps every single one.
He tells himself that watching over you does not make the prophecy more likely. He tells himself that intervention is not attachment. Then one evening, you are nearly caught in the crossfire of a gang dispute, and Bruce carries you out himself. You wrap both arms around his neck and whisper, “I knew you’d come.”
Bruce’s terror is not that he will suddenly decide to murder innocent people. He has a no-kill rule. It is the centre of everything he has built. What frightens him is the possibility that the prophecy does not require intent.
An accident could fulfil it. A collapsing building. A failed rescue. A weapon redirected at the wrong moment. One of his enemies targeting your family because Bruce became too involved. Bruce slowly begins to understand that his presence may be the danger.
He tries to disappear from your life. Your family notices Batman stops appearing near your neighbourhood. You notice too. You wait on the roof for several nights before leaving one final drawing beneath a brick. This one shows Batman walking away while a small figure stands behind him. Bruce returns before sunrise.
He eventually tells the rest of the family about the prophecy. Dick argues that leaving you unprotected could be the very act that causes it. Tim begins investigating every possible interpretation. Jason asks whether Bruce intends to spend the next decade haunting a child from three rooftops away. Damian studies the prophecy and says quietly, “Then Father must simply refuse destiny.”
Bruce begins spending time with your family as himself rather than Batman. Wayne Foundation grants appear at your school. Your parents are offered assistance with housing and employment. Bruce becomes the slightly awkward family friend who never knows what to do when you climb into his lap during meetings.
You adore him. That makes everything worse.
Bruce checks every room twice before entering. He removes anything remotely dangerous from your reach. He memorises your family’s routines and creates evacuation plans for disasters that have not happened. Your parents think he is anxious. They do not know he has already watched them die.
Eventually, Bruce’s behaviour becomes impossible to ignore. You overhear him arguing with Zatanna and learn the truth. Bruce finds you hiding beneath a table, crying so quietly that nobody else has noticed.
“Are you going to kill them?” Bruce lowers himself to the floor several feet away. “No.” “But the prophecy said—” “The prophecy does not get to decide who I am.”
You ask whether he is sure. Bruce thinks about Crime Alley. About Jason’s body. About every person he failed because he was a second too late. He cannot promise that he will never make another mistake. He can promise this. “I would die before willingly harming your family.”
The word willingly does not escape your notice.
From then on, Bruce stops hiding the precautions from you. He teaches you emergency procedures. He gives your family a direct signal to the Batcave. He explains that knowing about danger does not mean causing it. You become part of preventing the future rather than an object he must protect from it.
Bruce never destroys the written prophecy. He keeps it locked in the Cave as a reminder. Not that he is destined to become a killer. That destiny is only another opponent trying to frighten him into surrender.
dick grayson
You are sixteen when the prophecy reaches you. Nightwing will kill your family. No distant future. No symbolic language. Within a year, your parents and younger brother will die by his hand.
You do not wait to see whether it comes true. You begin hunting him first.
The first attack takes Dick completely by surprise. Not because you nearly defeat him—you do not—but because you are visibly terrified while attempting to break his ribs. Your hands shake. Your breathing is ragged. Every strike carries desperation rather than confidence.
Dick assumes someone has threatened your family. Technically, he is right.
He refuses to fight you properly. He dodges, redirects and tries to talk between blows. “You know, normally people introduce themselves before the attempted murder.” “Shut up.” “Fair. Tough crowd.”
You attack him repeatedly over several weeks. Each time, you arrive with a better plan. Modified weapons. Stolen patrol information. Traps designed specifically around his acrobatics. Dick is disturbed by how quickly you are improving. He is more disturbed by the fact that you always hesitate when you have an opportunity to seriously injure him.
One night, he catches both your wrists and asks, “Why are you doing this?” You scream at him to let go. Dick does immediately.
That tiny act of trust is what breaks you. You collapse on the rooftop and tell him everything. The prophecy. The deadline. The repeated visions of your home soaked in blood. You explain that you thought killing him first was the only way to save them. Then you admit you could not do it.
Dick is devastated. You are a teenager who has spent weeks trying to force yourself to murder a stranger because every adult you consulted told you it was necessary. You believed becoming a killer was the price of keeping your little brother alive.
Dick takes you home. Not to your family—the prophecy may be connected to his proximity—but to one of his safe houses. He makes you hot chocolate because he has no idea what else to do. You refuse to drink it until he takes the first sip.
Dick goes to everyone for answers. Zatanna confirms that the magic surrounding the prophecy is genuine. Raven cannot detect possession. Constantine examines the wording and, for once, has nothing sarcastic to say. Tim calculates the probability of forgery as negligible. The prophecy is real.
Dick throws up in the Cave bathroom. He cannot reconcile the future with himself. Dick has hurt people. He knows that. He has lost control before, made mistakes before, come frighteningly close to crossing lines he once believed were immovable. But your family are innocent. Your little brother is ten.
You watch Dick more closely after the prophecy is confirmed. Every movement looks like evidence. Every hidden weapon feels like a promise. Dick notices. He begins announcing what he is doing before reaching into pockets or moving towards you. “Phone.” “First-aid kit.” “Snack bar. It’s coconut, so honestly, the prophecy may be kinder.”
He meets your family despite knowing it may be dangerous. He needs to understand what the prophecy is threatening. Your mother welcomes him warmly. Your father talks too much when nervous. Your brother immediately asks Nightwing whether Batman can really breathe through his mask. Dick leaves their home and cries in his car.
He starts protecting them obsessively. Their house receives upgraded security. Their routes are monitored. Dick tracks every criminal who might connect them to Nightwing. Yet he is careful not to become so controlling that your family stop living. He knows fear can kill a life long before a person dies.
You continue training to fight him. Dick allows it. More than that, he helps. He teaches you how to disable his equipment, escape his holds and signal the other Bats if he ever behaves strangely. You accuse him of helping you kill him. Dick shakes his head. “I’m helping you stop me.” The difference matters to him.
There are moments when you begin trusting him. You laugh at one of his jokes before remembering you are supposed to hate him. You fall asleep in the passenger seat after surveillance. You text him when your brother is sick because you do not know who else to tell. Each moment feels like betrayal. Dick never demands more.
When the predicted date approaches, Dick distances himself from everyone. He locks his weapons away. He submits to magical restraints. Bruce offers to place him under observation in the Cave. You are the one who refuses. “You said fear doesn’t get to choose for us.” “That was before it became this close.” “It was always close to me.”
The prophecy’s day arrives during an attack on Blüdhaven. Your family are trapped inside a building wired to explode. Dick is given a choice: pursue the villain responsible or attempt a rescue that every calculation says will fail. The vision shows him entering the building. The prophecy did not show why.
Dick goes in anyway. He saves your family seconds before the explosion. For one awful moment, falling debris pins him beside your father. Dick must choose between freeing himself or shielding your family from the collapse. He chooses them.
When the dust settles, everyone is alive. Dick is badly injured, but alive. The prophecy was true in one sense: the lives of your family were placed in his hands. It was wrong about what he would do with them.
You sit beside his hospital bed and ask how he knew. Dick gives you a weak smile. “Prophecies have terrible character judgement.”
jason todd
By the time you receive the prophecy, Jason has already killed your father.
Your father was not innocent. He was a powerful crime lord responsible for trafficking, extortion and the deaths of dozens of people in Crime Alley. Jason had given him warnings. Opportunities to surrender. Chances to release the people he was hurting. Your father refused. Jason pulled the trigger.
Jason does not regret killing him. That is the first thing you learn about Red Hood. The second thing you learn is the prophecy. The same masked man who killed your father will eventually kill the rest of your family: your mother and younger sister.
You do not care whether your father deserved what happened. Your mother does not deserve it. Your sister is twelve. You vow to protect them. You move them between apartments. You steal money from accounts your father’s organisation abandoned. You sleep near the front door with a gun in your lap. You are seventeen and slowly destroying yourself in the name of keeping them alive.
Jason finds you while investigating the remnants of your father’s operation. You shoot at him on sight. The bullet strikes his armour. Jason looks down at it and then back at you. “Kid.” “Don’t call me that.” “You just fired a handgun with the safety half-engaged.” “I’ll do better next time.” “That is deeply not what I meant.”
He refuses to fight you. You attack him with everything you have, but Jason only blocks and disarms. Even when you slash his arm, he does not strike back. He simply pins the knife beneath his boot and says, “You’re done.”
You scream that he will have to kill you first. Jason freezes.
Once you explain the prophecy, he understands immediately why you believe it. He already killed one member of your family. From your perspective, the future has begun.
Jason does not apologise for your father’s death. He refuses to lie to comfort you. “Your dad hurt people.” “So you murdered him.” “Yeah.” “And you’ll murder them too.” “No.” “You expect me to believe there’s a line?” Jason’s expression goes hard. “There is.”
You hate him for sounding sincere.
Jason begins protecting your mother and sister from a distance. Your father’s former associates see you as either leverage or competition. Jason dismantles every attempt to reach your family. Men disappear from outside your sister’s school. Weapons shipments aimed at your neighbourhood are intercepted. Anonymous money appears to cover your mother’s legal fees.
You know Jason is responsible. You assume it is guilt. He tells you it is not. “Then why are you helping us?” “Because they’re innocent.” “And my father wasn’t.” “No.” The answer hurts because he says it without cruelty.
Jason understands your anger. He understands wanting to tear apart the person responsible for destroying your family. He understands building your life around revenge because grief feels too helpless on its own. He also knows how easily that anger can be manipulated.
He never tells you to forgive him. He never asks you to stop hating him. He only asks that you stop putting yourself between trained criminals and your little sister.
You refuse. Jason sighs. “Cool. Love being ignored by someone who still has homework.”
His family learn about the prophecy and react with varying levels of concern. Bruce wants to establish safeguards. Tim begins searching for the event that might trigger the deaths. Damian suggests temporarily relocating your family. Jason rejects any plan that involves imprisoning or controlling you. “They already think I’m coming for them. We’re not proving them right.”
Jason eventually allows you to accompany him during investigations. Not because he trusts you in the field, but because leaving you alone guarantees you will follow him anyway. He teaches you how to recognise ambushes and handle weapons safely. You accuse him of preparing to turn you into him. Jason answers, “Trust me, one of me is plenty.”
Slowly, you realise Jason is not watching your family like targets. He knows your sister’s school schedule because he checks that she arrives safely. He knows your mother’s medication because he arranged emergency supplies. He knows which window in your apartment does not lock because he repaired it at three in the morning.
The prophecy is eventually traced to one of your father’s surviving lieutenants. He intends to force Jason to kill your family by placing explosives inside their home and attaching the detonator to Jason’s weapons system. If Jason attacks, your family die. If he does nothing, the lieutenant kills them manually.
The prophecy never said Jason would want them dead. Only that his hand would cause it.
Jason removes every weapon from his body before entering. He walks in unarmed. It is the most vulnerable you have ever seen him.
Your father’s lieutenant attempts to force you to shoot Jason instead. You hesitate. Jason looks at you and says, “Your anger belongs to you. Not him.”
You turn the weapon on the detonator.
Jason gets your family out alive. The prophecy remains technically unresolved, but its hold over you weakens. You begin to understand that knowing what Jason has done is not the same as knowing everything he will ever do.
You never fully forgive him for your father. Jason never expects you to. But when your sister begins referring to him as your “weird helmet friend,” you stop correcting her.
tim drake
Tim believes in contingency plans more than prophecy. Every prediction has variables. Every future can be disrupted if you identify the correct pressure point. At least, that is what he tells himself when he learns he is destined to kill your family.
The prophecy is painfully specific. Tim will make a decision that results in the deaths of your parents and older sister. It will not be mind control. It will not be an accident. He will understand the consequences and choose anyway. That detail ruins him.
Tim knows that under extreme circumstances, he is capable of killing someone. He does not want to be. He has built systems, rules and relationships to prevent it. But Tim is honest enough with himself to know that if one death were genuinely the only way to save millions, he might make that choice. The prophecy says your family will become that calculation.
You learn about it shortly after he does. Unlike Bruce’s younger reader or Dick’s frightened teenager, you do not try to kill Tim immediately. You decide to make yourself impossible to sacrifice.
You research him. You learn his identity. His patrol routes. His weaknesses. The location of his safe houses. You gather evidence on Wayne Enterprises, the Titans and every mission Red Robin has ever led. Tim finds your investigation and is, despite everything, impressed.
You confront him in the Cave. “Tell me why.” Tim cannot. The prophecy does not reveal the circumstances. “Then promise you won’t do it.” Tim opens his mouth. Nothing comes out. That silence destroys any chance of immediate trust. Tim could have lied. He could have promised that he would never hurt your family and dealt with the consequences later. Instead, he tells you the truth. “I don’t know what situation it puts us in.” “So there is a situation where you’d do it.” “I’m saying I need to prevent that situation from existing.” “That isn’t an answer.” “It’s the only honest one I have.”
You fight against every attempt he makes to protect your family. You destroy trackers. Refuse Wayne security. Feed Tim false information about your movements. You believe every safeguard he creates could become the mechanism that traps your family later.
Tim cannot blame you. He would do the same thing.
Your relationship becomes a strange chess match. Tim monitors threats around your family. You monitor Tim. He hides emergency equipment in your home. You find and dismantle it. You change your family’s travel plans. Tim discovers the changes within hours. Neither of you sleeps enough.
Eventually, Tim begins leaving his surveillance obvious on purpose. A tracker beneath the wrong chair. A camera angled where you can see it. Files protected by passwords he knows you are capable of breaking. You accuse him of getting sloppy. “I’m giving you control over what information I have.” “Why?” “Because otherwise you’ll assume I have everything.”
It is the first step towards trust.
Tim meets your family gradually. Your father finds him polite but slightly unsettling. Your mother keeps feeding him because he looks exhausted. Your older sister recognises him as Timothy Drake-Wayne and immediately suspects he wants something. She is not wrong. Tim wants them alive so desperately it becomes another form of obsession.
He creates hundreds of simulations. In some, your family are exposed to a toxin that will spread across Gotham unless they are contained. In others, they are possessed, duplicated or used as unwilling hosts for an alien organism. Every scenario ends with Tim making the fatal choice.
He begins avoiding you after the worst simulations. You assume it is because he is growing less attached and therefore preparing to kill them. In reality, Tim is terrified that caring about you will impair his judgement.
You corner him and demand to know what he is planning. Tim, exhausted beyond self-preservation, shows you the files. Seeing your family reduced to numbers and projected casualties makes you furious. You punch him. Tim lets you. Then you notice every simulation includes alternative plans. Thousands of them. Escape routes. Antidotes. Dimensional containment. Cryogenic preservation. Magical intervention. Tim has modelled entire impossible technologies simply to create one future where he does not have to choose.
“You really think you might do it.” Tim looks at the floor. “Yes.” “And you’re still trying to save them.” “That’s why I know I might do it.”
Tim’s fear is not that he will stop caring. It is that he will care about the greater number more.
You begin working with him. You argue over assumptions, find flaws in his simulations and suggest solutions he dismissed. Your sister is brought into the planning once it becomes clear she is connected to the prophecy’s trigger. Tim stops treating your family as pieces he must preserve. They become collaborators.
The predicted crisis eventually arrives. Your family are infected with a weapon designed to spread through Gotham’s water supply. Tim has only minutes to choose between sealing them inside the contaminated facility or allowing them to escape and risking millions of lives. The prophecy’s moment.
Your parents beg Tim to close the doors. You beg him not to.
Tim’s hand hovers over the control. For one terrible second, you see that he is going to do it. Then your sister activates one of the alternative systems you and Tim designed together. The infection is contained without killing them. The future is broken because Tim stopped trying to solve it alone.
Afterwards, you ask whether he truly would have sealed the doors. Tim does not insult you with a lie. “Yes.”
You struggle to forgive that answer. Tim understands.
But you also know he spent months giving your family every tool necessary to stop him. His trust was never the promise that he could not make the terrible choice. It was ensuring you had the power to create another one.
damian wayne
You are barely three years old when Damian first meets you. By then, the prophecy has already come true. Your family were connected to a League operation Damian dismantled during his early years as Robin. They were not the intended targets. Damian did not enter their home planning to kill them. Yet his actions triggered the chain of events that led to their deaths. A redirected explosive. A structural collapse. One catastrophic miscalculation. Your parents and siblings died. You survived because Damian pulled you from the wreckage.
The prophecy had warned him months earlier. You will spill the blood of this child’s house and become the only family they have left.
Damian dismissed it. He believed foreknowledge would allow him to prevent it. Instead, his attempt to change the future helped create it.
You do not understand any of this. You only know Robin saved you.
From the moment you wake in hospital, you refuse to let anyone else hold you. Dick tries first. You stare at him as though he has personally offended every ancestor you possess. Jason reaches for you and receives the same expression—nose wrinkled, mouth twisted, eyes narrowed like you have just bitten directly into a lemon.
Damian enters the room. You immediately reach for him.
Everyone turns to look at Damian. Damian looks vaguely betrayed by the universe. “Why is it doing that?” “They like you,” Dick says. “That is not an explanation.”
You become Damian’s shadow. You tug on his cape whenever he attempts to leave. You pull his gloves off finger by finger. You grab fistfuls of his hair and laugh at the expression he makes. Once, you stretch the material of his Robin suit and release it like a rubber band. The snap echoes through the Cave. Jason nearly falls over laughing. Damian stares at you in utter outrage. You clap.
He is helpless against you. Damian insists that he is only providing temporary care until a suitable guardian is located. Every proposed guardian receives your lemon expression. When they attempt to take you from Damian’s arms, you scream.
Damian takes you home. He raises you with almost frightening devotion. Your bedroom is beside his. He learns how to prepare your favourite food exactly the right way. He memorises your sleeping patterns and can identify the difference between your hungry cry, frightened cry and I dropped my toy but refuse to retrieve it myself cry.
Titus sleeps beside your cot. Alfred the Cat tolerates your attempts to dress him in tiny capes. Damian secretly keeps every drawing you make of Robin, even the ones where his head is inexplicably triangular.
Bruce worries Damian is trying to use parenthood as penance. Damian denies it fiercely. You are not a punishment. You are not an obligation. You are his child.
Yet guilt follows him through every year. Your first word is some toddler approximation of his name. Damian leaves the room and cries where you cannot see him.
He tells himself he will explain the truth when you are old enough. Then you turn five. Seven. Ten. There is never an age at which telling you feels anything other than cruel.
You grow up idolising Robin. Damian remains your favourite person despite developing the emotional range of a locked filing cabinet whenever anyone points this out. You wait for him after patrol. Sit beside him while he paints. Fall asleep against his shoulder during long evenings in the Cave.
You proudly tell people that Damian rescued you. Each time, something inside him twists.
The truth comes out when you are fifteen. You access an old mission file while researching your biological family. The report contains security footage, tactical analysis and Damian’s own account of the operation. You watch him make the decision that destroys your home.
Damian finds you in the Cave. The footage is frozen on the screen behind you. Neither of you speaks for a long time.
“You killed them.” Damian’s face empties. “Yes.”
He does not claim it was solely an accident. He explains the circumstances, the enemy’s role and the information he lacked, but he never uses those facts to escape responsibility. His decision caused the explosion. You ask whether he took you in because he felt guilty. This question breaks him more completely than the accusation of murder. “Initially, guilt influenced my refusal to abandon you.” You flinch. Damian continues before fear can stop him. “But guilt did not raise you.”
His voice begins to shake. “Guilt did not sit beside your bed when you were ill. It did not learn your favourite stories or remain awake during your first night away from home. Guilt did not love you.”
You cannot look at him. Damian does not approach. He remembers how eagerly you once reached for him while rejecting everyone else. He knows he has no right to expect you to choose him again.
You leave the Manor. Damian allows it, though every instinct screams at him to follow. He ensures Dick knows where you are. He leaves messages that contain no demand for forgiveness. Most simply say that he hopes you have eaten.
The family are furious with him for waiting so long. Damian accepts every word. Jason understands why he was afraid but tells him fear does not make secrecy harmless. Dick reminds him that you deserved ownership of your own history. Bruce sees too much of his own mistakes in Damian’s silence.
You remain gone for weeks. Damian keeps your room untouched.
When you finally return, it is not because you have forgiven him. You return because you need answers. Damian gives you everything. Every file. Every recording. The full prophecy. His private reports from the years following the accident. You discover that he attempted to surrender custody of you repeatedly because he believed someone better should raise you.
Every report ends with the same handwritten note: They cried when removed from my care. Later entries change. They are safest with me. Then: They are happy here. Finally: They are my family.
You ask Damian whether he would change what happened. “Without hesitation.” “Even if it meant never meeting me?” Damian closes his eyes. “Your family should be alive.”
It is the correct answer. It still hurts.
Rebuilding your relationship takes years rather than one dramatic conversation. You stop calling him when you are upset. Then begin again. You refuse physical affection for months. The first time you fall asleep beside him after learning the truth, Damian does not move for hours.
Eventually, you understand two truths can exist together. Damian caused the worst thing that ever happened to you. Damian also spent every day afterward loving you with everything he had. Forgiveness does not erase the blood. Anger does not erase the family you became.
Years later, someone asks how Damian became your father. You glance at him. Damian visibly braces himself. “It’s complicated,” you say. Then you tug sharply on the back of his shirt and release it with a snap, exactly as you used to do with his Robin suit. Damian’s expression is murderous. You grin. Some things survive every revelation.
