#ranty drabbles

“Oh, she’s gonna fit in great.”

Blue eyes find dark grey, a spark of mischief snapping between gazes, lips twisting in amusement. Zatanna feels a sense of pride at successfully inserting herself into this tight-knit group of teens that have silent conspiring conversations and instantly rebel against orders.

And maybe a smidge of that pride is from catching dark eyes and husky voice aimed at her with approval.

Title: Birds of a Feather, G-Rated

Word Count: 2,263

Summary: Hunter learns something about gryphons, Puddles, and himself while waiting for a gryphon Beast Track lesson to start with Viney.

Characters: Hunter, Viney, Puddles the gryphon, Willow

No Pairings

(This is the first thing I’ve written in ages, so please bear with me. I’m just happy for the inspiration and that I managed to finish a story without losing steam or interest, even if the flow might not be perfect. Enjoy!)

@sergeantsporks​

~~

Hunter felt like he was navigating a field full of traps. Long, wiggling traps that shifted dangerously around his feet as he tried to make his way over to a familiar face amongst all the feathers and shrieking. Viney waved him down as soon as she saw him, and Hunter offered a meek wave in return, nervously pointing down at the veritable sea of gryphon tails between the two of them.

Viney seemed to take a moment to realize his dilemma, then chuckled and patted Puddles’ shoulder, pointing over at the nervous boy. Puddles caught sight of Hunter and shrieked, bounding over like a predator for prey. Hunter yelled in alarm and tried to turn to run; how foolish had he been to think Puddles had finally forgiven him for stepping on her tail!

Fully prepared to teleport away to save himself, Hunter was surprised when Puddles rammed her head under his legs so that he slid down onto her back, nestled right between her large, fluffy wings. Puddles hissed and swiped the air threateningly at the other gryphons, whose tails she had trampled and disturbed as she went to rescue Hunter and whom were cawing and roaring in protest. Hunter grinned apologetically at the Beast Track students who were now having to calm their beasts down as Puddles took slightly to the air and glided them both over to Viney.

“Hi, Hunter. Thought you could use a little rescuing!” Viney chirped, patting Puddles’ flank. The large avian made a sound like a hacking cough and sat down, causing Hunter to spill onto the grass unceremoniously. He picked himself up and dusted off his pants.

So I watched all the Artemis and Jade flashbacks from season 4, and oh my god, they truly showed how horrible Lawrence was, I was terrified for little baby Artemis being left alone with him. Seeing that really adds new weight to her insecurities and things back in season one.

Anyway, seeing those also made me feel pretty validated with this drabble I wrote way back before we even got season 3. I may have posted it somewhere on my blog before but fuck if I’m digging for it.

~~~~~

Threat (word prompt)

The blade clattered to the floor. Artemis cried out in fear, her tiny voice echoing off the walls.

“Quiet, baby girl,” Lawrence commanded in an even tone, satisfied when the small blonde brought both hands to her mouth; her head nodded imperceptibly in understanding, eyes glassy with tears unshed. He turned his attention back on his eldest daughter, whose hand he had snatched up and twisted roughly until the pain forced the knife from her thin fingers.

“Let me go!” Jade hissed out, her free hand trying without success to pry his meaty fingers off her aching wrist. Her dark eyes stared into his own, filled with a defiance that was overshadowed only by the discomfort. 

To the surprise of both daughters, Lawrence promptly released Jade. She stumbled back a few paces with a hard scowl on her features, free hand rubbing at her smarting joint. Artemis watched in terrified silence.

“That was an impressive move, little girl,” he said in a gruff voice, bending down to pick up Jade’s knife by the bloody blade. He tossed it up casually, the weapon twirling once in a glinting arch before he caught it neatly by the handle. Artemis’s features, in her naivety, relaxed slightly at the seeming words of praise; Jade’s expression, however, hardened into an even deeper scowl. “It was ruthless. Good.” 

Jade’s brows knitted in confusion. Lawrence took two deliberate strides toward her, wiping the blade clean on his pants leg and feeling the shallow cut in the flesh of his arm already beginning to crust over. He gazed down at her with neither pride nor anger, merely offering the knife back to her. She looked at the weapon for a long moment, as if she expected it to explode, before tentatively reaching for it.

Lawrence drew the object back slightly, reaching out to grab her wrist again before it came in contact with it. Jade startled and Artemis gasped loudly, though this time it was stifled by her hands. 

Once more, Lawrence’s expression betrayed neither pride nor anger, but his cold tone was laced with the promise of harsh consequences.

So much had happened in the last twenty-four hours that she felt as if she’d been awake for a century. The adrenaline that had been fueling her movements for so long had all but drained out of her system, replaced by a heavy weariness that had her eyes itching with the desire to sleep. And that was all she wanted to do, really, just go home and crawl into bed with Wally and sleep for the rest of the day, a week, maybe a year.

But so much had happened, and there was still so much that needed to be done.

In just a mere handful of hours they had screwed over the Light, they’d stopped a Reach invasion with the help of Lex Luthor, and they’d barely avoided a tragedy in the icy depths of the Arctic. She still remembered the despair that had washed over her in those few, terrifying minutes when Wally had been nowhere at all, gone, evaporated right in front of Barry and Bart’s eyes. She remembered the sting of hot tears trailing down her frozen cheeks, remembered her knees growing numb where they rest in the snow, remembered the way M’gann had been there before she’d even hit the ground, pulling her into her arms and trying to comfort her.

And when it had all seemed lost, when everything had seemed to come crashing down around her, when she’d realized she had only just got Wally back and then he was gone, it’d happened. That strange, loud pop, the bizarre shift in the air that had made all the hair on her body stand on end, the way M’gann had shifted and gasped for Artemis to look. And the archer had turned, face streaked with frosty tear tracks, and her heart had leaped in a wild, thumping rhythm at the sight of Kid Flash standing in a pile of steaming snow, the skid marks in the powder indicating that he’d come to a halt in the middle of running. She’d never forget the look on his face, wild and scared and confused as it landed on their friends, and then, on her. Just her.

And she’d torn herself from the martian’s grasp, his name rasping thickly from her throat as she ran to him, and he ran to her, and they’d met in the middle in a crash that nearly sent him backward into the snow. He’d smelled like ozone and Wally, and she’d buried her face in his chest and punched him and told him she’d fucking kill him if he ever, ever did that to her again. He’d pulled her close and promised.

Wally had seemed a little bit different since then; the same, yet strange. He hadn’t divulged anything about what had happened to him yet, and Artemis was just so glad to have him back around that she hadn’t tried to pry it from him, but he kept looking at her a lot, sometimes with a thoughtful expression on his face, or a sad one, or a loving one. They’d been holding hands so much since his return that she was sure they’d fuse together at the point of contact before long.

Not that she minded.

[...]

“Babe?”

The archer blinked, looking up at her boyfriend. She had totally spaced out right there in front of her mother’s apartment door, every awful scenario running through her mind. She could feel the bags under her eyes, and she squeezed Wally’s hand in a reassurance that she didn’t even feel.

“I’m just tired. Let’s get this over with,” Artemis murmured, moving to open the door, but Wally reached out and grabbed her chin, gently guiding her to look at him. There were bags under his eyes too, but they somehow seemed deeper, weighed down with something more, and she felt a pang of curiosity burst to life inside of her, a need to know what the hell had happened to him out there in the Arctic. But she had something important she needed to do right now, and that would have to wait.

(I’m trying to write stuff, much less grasp this new otp, please forgive me I’m rusty at fanfic. This is my first attempt at Jake and Sherry, technically so...)

Warning for language and blood 

This fic has no context it’s just an experimental drabble.

He took her healing powers for granted until she was lifeless in his arms, with blood running in rivulets between closed eyes and matting rapidly on the back of her blonde head. He’d seen cuts mesh back together seamlessly in seconds, he’d seen her blood-slicked fingers frantically squeeze a bullet out so the skin could close over the wound, and he’d had to use his large hands to set her broken arm bones into place while she hissed in discomfort as they melded back together.

There was always so much goddamn blood with her. If he’d let himself worry about it, he’d have gone insane long ago, before this godforsaken and ill-fated mission.

“Sherry,” Jake said, the smell of blood stinging his nostrils. Panic was steadily mounting inside his chest unbidden; the fact that the flow of blood had not started to stem itself was not a good sign. He swallowed and shifted his position, moving Sherry’s body with him quietly, icy eyes flicking constantly from her to the door he’d barred as best he could in the scramble to get her to safety. Satisfied that no B.O.Ws appeared to be trying to break the door down yet, he let his gaze wander back to her face, scared of the ghostly palor she seemed to be taking on. “Come on, super girl,” he growled, patting her cheek with a blood soaked glove. “We’re both supposed to get out of here, it was my turn to escort your ass, remember?”

His voice cracked the slightest on the last word and he quickly cleared his throat.

“Goddamnit Sherry,” he rasped, words taking on a desperation. He took his hands from her shoulders long enough to pull his gloves off and start dabbing at the crimson splotches. It wasn’t hard for him to locate the gash that was the source of the oozing; it was wide and dark and lethal looking. “Fuck. Why the fuck isn’t it closing!”

He was shaking now, his fingers held uncertainly above her still frame, unsure of what to do for her. Sherry always just healed, that was just how things went. A slip up, a wound; Jake’s stifled but present panic, his worry, his instincts to take care of her would surface and he’d quash them down, detain them inside of his chest where the boiled and frothed with the helplessness he felt. All he could do was protect her from further hostiles while her virus did it’s work, and he hated it, hated having to listen to her moan and writhe in pain while he did nothing.

It was maddening, and now Jake realized just how fragile it all really was.

Sherry was not immortal; her blood couldn’t protect her forever, and it may have finally let her down.

He may have finally let her down.

“Goddamnit!” Jake yelled, one of his fists colliding with the solid concrete wall behind him. He looked down at her where she rested on his lap, and it struck him how small she was, how bright her blood was. He felt a sting in his eyes.

She stirred. A fluttering of soft blonde lashes, and a pitiful groan that sounded like music to his ears. Tired gray-blue eyes opened, though they were cloudy with confusion and pain, and did not immediately focus on him.

“Sherry,” Jake breathed in unadulterated relief. Her gaze met his for little more than a second before her face contorted in pain, lids closing once more. He gritted his teeth as he helplessly watched the gaping wound on her forehead slowly begin to close itself, blood gushing from it while she writhed against his knees. He grabbed her hand and felt her fingers curl tightly around his palm. “That’s it, super girl, you got this.”

The pain must have been excruciating, if the tears that welled up and escaped down one of her cheeks was of any indication. He wiped it away with a single swipe of his large thumb just as the virus finished it’s work, the cut disappearing without the slightest trace beneath her red-stained hair.

Sherry let out a sound close to a whimper when it was done, then slowly opened her eyes and looked up at him properly. A swell of affection ballooned in Jake’s stomach as he looked down at who was, without any doubt in his mind, the strongest, most badass woman he had ever met.

“Jake…?” she managed, one of her hands coming up to press against her aching skull, and the sound of her voice had him impulsively bending to press his lips against her temple, heedless of the dried up blood. Then he retreated and pushed some of her bloody hair out of her eyes, a forced, crooked smirk creeping onto his features despite the lingering fear inside him.

“Team,” Kaldur sighed. “What did we learn today?”

Artemis’s hand shot into the air. One of her eyes was swollen shut but the other darted over to a certain redhead with noticeable malice. He rolled his eyes at her, his split lip jutting out in a pout as her stormy eye flicked to Kaldur. “That Wally should never, ever be allowed within 100 meters of anything priceless and magical?”

As expected, an audible tut burst past Wally’s lips.

Here we go… Conner sighed through the mental link, but the blonde and redhead seemed oblivious as they focused their attention on one another.

“For the last time, it wasn’t magical!”

“Well, we won’t know if it was now or not, will we Kid Klutz?”

“Excuse me, but who’s arrow shattered the urn with some dead guy’s apparently enchanted corpse dust in it?” Wally shot back, his eyes rolling so hard that Kaldur thought they stood a reasonable chance of getting stuck inside his skull; the speedster’s derision was overt.

“Uh, yeah, because someone decided to choose the worst nanosecond possible to run between me and my target!”

“I can’t believe you’re trying to pin this on me!”

Artemis opened her mouth to retort, but Kaldur had had enough. One stern look from him immediately quelled their bickering, but they continued to shoot murderous glances at each other.

“Did anyone else learn anything tonight?” Kaldur prompted impatiently.

Dick’s hand shot into the air.

“We should have left Wally and Artemis in Japan so they’d be forced to get a room?”

“Dude!”

“Like I would even!”

"Are you drunk, Red?”

Roy blinks. Slowly, deliberately, he flicks his blue eyes up to her face. It takes a moment for her outline to swim into blurry focus. She’s in civvies, her massive mane of ebony hair pulled into a low ponytail and crushed under a blue baseball cap.

"So what if I am?" he slurs, brows knitting together. He’s a little bit more than smashed and it’s still not enough. 

"You look pathetic," Jade muses bluntly. She’s always been blunt. Blunt and harsh and stubborn. "I feel a strange moral obligation to tell you it’s time to stop."

Roy snorts, reaching out for the bottle of liquor resting on the table. Jade beats him to it though, and he sends her a nasty look.

"What, are you Green Arrow now?"

"No," Jade says evenly, tossing the near empty bottle into the trash. "I’m just a woman that can’t stand to see a man moping. It’s pathetic. Especially  from you.”

"Go to hell," Roy bites out, bringing the glass to his lips and draining the last bit of the hard liquid. It burns going down his throat and he wishes he’d catch fire. 

"Someday," she replies in agreement. Then she grabs both of his slumped shoulders and forces him to look at her dead in the eyes. Those dark, dangerous eyes hold something inside of them, but he’s too far gone to make any sense of it. He has a feeling whatever it is is important. "This won’t find Roy,” Jade breathes out, her breath wafting over his face. 

He swallows. 

"I know."

"Drinking yourself into a stupor solves nothing," Jade carries on, grabbing his jaw steadily in her hand and tilting his face up. "Only action will. If there’s one ideal the Shadows share with you goody two-shoes, it’s that.”

Roy closes his eyes, exhaling harshly. He squeezes his lids together, trying to will away the alcohol burning through his system. His throat burns and it’s not from the liquor this time.

"I don’t even know where to start," he confesses, fist clenching on the table. 

Wally West had never been in a more compromising position. 

He was wet, and irritated, and his head hurt. His nose hurt, his teeth hurt, his knee caps hurt. And he was pretty sure he would give his left leg to be able to vibrate himself out of this mess.

At least it would make Rob stop snickering behind his hand.

"I fail to see the hilarity," the redhead hissed, subconscious of how his lips nearly brushed hers when he spoke; damn those things for being so plump and... yeah, plump. Totally getting in the way. Everything about her was actually in his way right then.

"Stop. Squirming," Artemis gritted out, her eyelashes brushing along the upper part of his cheeks; feathery, soft. "God, I feel like my head's split right down the middle. What's your skull made out of, Kid Clumsy, fucking titanium?"

"I could ask the same of you!" he groused, squirming just to annoy her. A very bad idea, considering their groins were pressed together. It would so not due for him to get a freaking hard on while glued to her with some kind of mutant puke-sap from one of Poison Ivy's plants.

It was like they were trapped in steel cables.

"Ladies, ladies," Robin said coolly, making a placating gesture with his gloved hands. "Not to worry, Superboy is on his way. In the meantime, you two stay nice and cozy while I go help Kaldur with our mistress of hibiscus."

"Rob, get back here!" Wally shouted as the boy leaped away, cackling. "Ugh!"

"This would never have happened if you hadn't run towards me like that!" Artemis yelled at him. She bumped against him harshly. He bumped right back. She threw her body into him harder, then next thing either of them knew, Wally was on his back in the wet, wet mud, with Artemis resting heavily atop him and their foreheads clacking together for the second time that mission.

They both groaned, stunned from the lesser impact that was amplified from the injuries already sustained.

"I had everything under control," the archer murmured, her heavy breaths puffing across his mouth. How was it possible to be covered in muddy swamp water and still have amazing smelling breath?