#writingness

tim is their getaway driver who gets far too much enjoyment from souping up the cars they steal.

steph and cass adore each other and half the reason they’ve started up this life of crime is steph was tired of watching cass work herself to exhaustion in her dead end waitress job.

one day, steph bursts in cass’s bedroom, hair in curlers and her eyes wild, full of equally wild ideas of robbing cass’ penny pinching boss.

cass starts laughing, shaking her head; but stephanie bounces onto cassandra’s bed, her eyes earnest and her smile a bewitching slash of red across her face.

and cass knows that she’d follow stephanie anywhere. 

they bend their heads together and start making plans.

tim’s the piano player where cass works and worms his way into their heist plans; he refuses to stick around if cass is leaving. she’s the only decent person at the place.

thus begins their crime spree; they hit up gas stations, small stores, and the occasional country bank.

bruce and jason doggedly trail them from St. Louis and through the Midwest

jason jokes that they’re following the path of Lewis and Clark, only they’re discovering robberies instead of territories.

their partnership is new but they grow closer as they jump from motel to motel; bruce is surprised how easy it is between them, how much jason’s irreverent comments make him grin.

tim notices the FBI-shaped tail they’ve picked up and he throws out a few red herrings. but he’s too caught up in their successful operations to be too terribly paranoid.

this turns out to be a mistake.

bruce is obsessed and he catalogues everything, from the tricked out cars that tim leaves behind, to the designer lipsticks that steph wears, to the guns that cass prefers to carry during stick ups, for all that she rarely uses them.

no, cassandra cain is more likely to execute a high kick to the face with her sensible mary janes than fire a shot. nevertheless, she’s robbed 25 stores and banks so far, and it’s only a matter of time.

and so bruce doubles down and builds up a profile and corners them mid-robbery at a bank in seattle.

the bank’s strategically surrounded, a barrier of police cars out front, and a bunch of plain clothes officers stationed behind the bank, covertly placed in case the three robbers find a way to escape out the back.

it’s tense, with the robbers rapidly realizing they have nowhere to go and the local police overly excited at having caught such high profile criminals.

a shot rings through the air and stephanie goes down, blond curls bouncing. cassandra doesn’t hesitate.

she immediately abandons the bank teller and runs to Stephanie’s downed form. she places stephanie’s head in her lap and fruitlessly begs for stephanie to keep her eyes open.

she’s too late and she knows it.

steph weakly smiles up at her, cups cass’ cheek in her hand, and her eyes flutter as blood spreads red and undeniable across her fashionable blouse.

meanwhile, bruce has wheeled around, looking for the culprit. yelling at the sniper that he hadn’t given the order to shoot, taking the whole squad to task.

bruce is busy terrifying the local police into some semblance of order and so it’s jason that sees cassandra cain start walking toward them, briefcase in hand.

oh sure, bruce notices that she’s started towards them, and he warns the crew of men that there better not be any pot shots taken at her.

but it’s jason that is really looking at her, that sees her eyes, dark and dead and determined above her running mascara.

jason knows he’s got seconds on the clock and so he does the only thing he can.

he sprints toward her as she starts running towards the police cars, tackling her to the ground and setting off the bomb she has in her hands.

bruce whips around, the flames of the blast reflected in his horrified gaze.

“Jason,” he shouts, anguished, starting towards the blast. and an officer holds him back. and a second. and a third.

eventually, there are four full grown men holding him back as he tries to run into the wreckage.

bruce never forgives them. and he never forgets any of their names.

neither does he forget that it’s him who failed to notice the danger in time, that it’s him that failed to prevent his young partner from sacrificing himself.

a promising FBI agent only months into the job. his responsibility.

“i’m fine.” He said with a smile.

But then.

“I’m fine.” He said with a vacant smile.

and i love thinking about it with my favorite two doofuses.

like, mr freeze has set off a localized ice storm and it just so happens to have buried dick’s apartment in several feet of snow and he is so not dealing with that on two hours of sleep.

so he winds up in jason’s humble abode (well, one of his many safehouses. same thing) and jason’s like jfc dick maybe you shouldn’t have left your window open but dick’s brought food from his favorite thai place so he may as well wait until tomorrow to kick him out.

fast forward to a few weeks later and somehow there’s closet space for both nightwing’s uniforms and his dazzlingly multi-print shirts and three types of crocky crunch cereal boxes in the cupboard.

or the other elephant in the room that is that is robin!jason’s crush on his predecessor.

so what do they talk about?

well, there is much ado about dick’s atrocious eating habits that coincides quite nicely with jason’s tendency to stress bake and jason makes a habit of co-opting dick’s unused kitchen for his baking needs when he’s mad at bruce. 

obviously he can’t use the manor’s kitchen. that’s alfred’s domain. 

and so jason does wind up in dick’s kitchen on the odd weekend and at odd hours of the day some weekdays and jason makes disparaging sounds about the contents of dick’s fridge and spice rack and so always has to bring his own collection in order to make anything halfway decent. 

and maybe dick lets jason use the kitchen and listens to him vent.

and maybe jason starts leaving dick little nutritious snacks or meals with random notes, saying things like:

“Who the hell is Clark, and why do the creepy laser-eyed robot penguins that Penguin sicced on us make B think of him?!”

and maybe dick buries his head in his head, his shoulders shaking with laughter as he tries not to choke on the israeli couscous he’s just stuffed into his mouth as roy slaps him on the back, trying to peer over his shoulder to read the note.

and maybe the next weekend they take a trip over to metropolis and make a stop by the daily planet to greet a clark who’s happy to see them. 

and maybe their relationship grows from there.

and they’re not brothers, not yet. but they’re something. they share a legacy, and they share a bruce and a batgirl and a love for ridiculous puns. 

and then maybe jason dies.

as robin it was especially obvious and frustrating. red hood’s got that big ol’ hood so in general nobody can see when he gets all teary eyed.

but even with the robin mask his lil round cheeked face would get all screwed up and his voice would wobble so it was OBVIOUS. sure yeah, sometimes gangsters and thugs would snicker but then they’d get kicked in the nads by a teary eyed boy wonder so let’s see who’s crying in the end hmmm.

the rogues were quicker to catch on that jay bawling his eyes out was a sign that you should be backing AWAY rather than heckling him for a few sniffles.

ivy stopped impugning his manliness for the crying when he lit up practically the whole of robinson park with some kerosene, a lighter, and a roll of old film. 

then she started impugning his manliness for being a ignorant man-sized blight upon mother earth with little talent but for destroying HER natural resources.

ivy’s grudge turning personal and self-righteous rather than casually antagonistic and dismissive was actually something of a point of pride for jason.

but yeah it was embarassing for lil robin jay and so terrible for his street cred to be turning on the waterworks every time he took exception to the filth coming out of some asshole’s mouth. how are these asswipes on the street supposed to take him seriously if his whole face is turning red and he’s crying his eyes out.

it won’t MATTER how many times he causes explosions or knocks heads together or even takes down big bads if his lips are wobbling and his eyes streaming as he does it. 

NOBODY’s going to take him seriously. 

i mean just imagine a 4 foot nothing little ragamuffin putting his fists up boxer fashion, his face beet-red and his nose all scrunched up as he sniffles.

it’s NOT intimidating. 

and bruce just hovers around in the background like a goober. he has zero clue how to handle the crying. dick didn’t cry like THIS.

he tries awkward shoulder pats and jason just rolls his eyes at him and casually wipes his runny nose on his arm. 

“i’m okay, old man.” he says. “no need to get all mushy on me.”

jay’ll sometimes take advantage and badger the boss for chili dogs bc with his eyelashes all clumped together and tear tracks down his cheeks bruce will be a panicked mess and will give him ANYTHiNG.

you want chili dogs, chum? here, i bought you a whole franchise of restaurants that sell them.

and jason he just. sighs. 

leads bruce over to his favorite stand in the city. pays a dollar for that sweet bit of nitrate filled heaven. extolls the virtues of a well cooked decently priced chili dogs from a long-standing food cart that’s a staple of the city at this point. straddles a gargoyle and gently chides bruce, telling him not to be such a tourist.

he has bandages of every shape and size for a myriad of purposes: butterfly bandages, adhesive and elastic bandages, sterile gauze, eye pads, israeli bandages, etc.

you know what bruce finds himself to be short on?

your every day bandaid found in every medicine cabinet from Wayne Manor through the Diamond District and down to the ramshackle apartments in the Narrows.

after a shaving cut he ends up grumpily digging through his elite, fully stocked first aid kit to no avail; splints and calamine lotion and multi-color pain killer pills  end up strewn every which way.

robin!dick comes bouncing up and wipes that cut down with a quick swab then slaps a bandaid onto bruce’s profusely bleeding chin, surveys bruce seriously for a moment and gravely pronounces him “all better.”

bruce glances at himself in the mirror across the room, the bright red and blue colors of a superman bandaid visible even from a distance.

“thank you, dick” bruce says, equally grave, and only the tiniest bit pained.

dick gives bruce a mega-watt grin and bounces off.

thoughts about superman bandaids and overenthusiastic wards fly out of his head as his league communicator chirps and in a blur of movement he’s into the batsuit and ready for transport in the cave in an impressive sub-10 minute timeframe.

batman throws over his shoulder a reminder to dick to complete his algebra homework as he’s beamed up to the watchtower.

“finally...you’re here, bats,” the flash says upon his arrival. “whoa, what’sthatonyourface.” flash exclaims in a barely incomprehensible string of words.

bruce resists the urge for his hand to fly up to his face and the superman bandaid he knows is prominently displayed on his chin. 

instead, he holds the flash’s gaze and tells him, matter-of-fact “it’s a bandaid,” in a voice that’s dry as dust, with just the tiniest hint of “obviously-it’s-a bandaid-you-unobservant-jabbering-speedball-with-an-unfortunate-motor-mouth” in his voice.

“oooookay then.” flash says, holding his hands up.