It builds and destroys civilizations.

Finds new paths and sets fire to the bridge behind.

Not only did he make her into the ultimate monster by forcing her to get him into that space ship…

…he gets/got to be a hero unburdened by the weight of her actions.

Another plot bunny that I’m never going to write but do have some stuff written. TBD if I actually post any of it.

This is another toxic!Clark but this time Bruce is lowkey (very highkey) into itm he just gotta...warm up to it.

Omega Bruce Wayne is suffering from empty nest syndrome. His kids are either all grown up, have teams of their own, or are just plain not talking to him. Despite his best intentions, he gets severe baby fever.

His omegan biology is also failing due to the lack of pack around him, and so he decides that the best way to solve his loneliness and newfound baby fever is to bite the bullet and get pregnant with a donor-conceived baby.

Donor-conceived because he wants to skip out on an alpha trying to baby trap him.

Again he’s not in good contact with his children and instead just tells them that he’ll be taking a break from active patrolling for a while but will be available for guy-in-the-chair work. He also reaches out to the Justice League, informing them about his impending leave.

The kids don’t really react, the JL momentarily panics but overall everyone is good with what they perceive to be just a sabbatical.

Well, Clark is forced to be good with it because the last time he got involved in Bruce’s private business, Bruce reminded Clark why he’s called a Vigilante and not a Hero. (Clark might have been beat up but he had been exactly where he wanted to be)

The first round fails. Bruce is okay with it. Things happen.

Second round fails. A disappointment but again, things happen.

Third and fourth Bruce is losing hope.

The fifth time causes him to trash his room and cry. He knows he's old and almost out of fertile years but for a man to whom nearly everything came with ease, this was killing him. (Also this man just really wants a baby.)

Then comes lucky number six. Everything is looking good, though Bruce hasn’t made it to the end of the first trimester. As he goes in for a checkup, the news are finally leaked.

Now here’s where the story takes a few ends

Route 1

Clark finds out in the daily planet. He crushes a cup beneath his hand and barely restrains himself from flying to Bruce and demanding answers right then and there. He excuses himself then flies directly to Bruce barely holding onto his secret identity.

Route 2

Clark finds out in the watchtower, and the league members on duty have to de-escalate the situation before Superman goes ballistic with jealousy. In this “route” though, the Justice League (Aquaman) adds fuel to the fire by telling Clark to man up and claim Bruce. They are unofficially sacrificing Bruce to the wolves so said wolf doesn’t go on a planet-destroying rampage.

Either way Clark ends up flying to Wayne Manor and confronts Bruce. Clark has dropped every hint of human mannerisms and is floating in from of Bruce with laser eyes, one wrong word from going off. Clark is questioning who's the father, since when did Bruce even have a baby, why didn't he come to Clark? He's full on ranting about how Bruce should be carrying his baby, about how it's a betrayal, how close Clark is to just raizing every fertility clinic in the country for their compliance in this plot.

Meanwhile Bruce is confused (he had no idea Clark was even in love with him) and slowly being filled with dread as he essentially watches a demigod throw a superpowered tantrum. It gets to the point that Bruce is genuinely worried that Clark will do something to the baby or himself, but Clark notices and “calms” down (he does not). 

Clark kneels at Bruce’s feet and says he doesn’t have to worry about anything. Clark already loves the baby because it’s part of Bruce’s and he can’t wait to meet them and give them a sibling.

Bruce is seeing the red flags everywhere but it’s not like he’s a position to physically do anything. Bruce will pretend to be tired and Clark will light up carrying Bruce to the master bedroom. The bedroom has been somewhat transformed to include a nursery but Clark comments that they need to downsize their closets to make the walk-in into a proper nursery since Clark knows Bruce would never give up Dick's childhood bedroom.

Bruce finally snaps out of it to ask who the fuck is "they", he’s going to be a single parent. Clark accidentally-on purpose breaks something of Bruce the goes back to his Nice Guy act, cradles Bruce/his belly and says Bruce is not a single parent; Clark willl be there every single step of the way as the baby’s Sire, and Clark will give them a sibling, multiple siblings, until Clark forgets that someone other than Clark gave Bruce children.

This is when Bruce realizes he’s dealing with a more dangerous situation than he realized.

Slowly Clark starts isolating Bruce, icing out the kids, going with him on every appointment. Bruce basically can't breathe without Clark there, and has to tip toe around the fact that the baies aren't Clark's or Clark will get intense.

Overtime though, Bruce finds out that he likes Clark like this. Finally, he's being made the center of someone's attention. And he's not weird about Bruce's obsessive need to control everything. If anything, Clark likes it. He'll gladly welcome all sorts of surveillance so long as Bruce is only focused on him.

Suddenly camera's start appearing anywhere Clark spends any significant amount of time in. There are check-in texts from Bruce at all hours of the day. A tracker is implanted using kryptonite-laced tools.

The worst part of Project Hail Mary (the task force) succeeding is that generations from now, millions of children will grow up learning all about the flora, fauna, and places that their predecessors grew up with but that they’ll never get to experience.

They’ll grow up hearing their parents talk about plants that no longer grow outside of plant nurseries or watch documentaries about animals they’ll never get to see/touch/study.

Many cities their parents or grandparents knew and lived in will no longer exist due to the combination of human made climate change pre- and post- Astrophage crisis.

They’ll be inheriting a world that’s incredibly diminished in its footprint, its history, and its people. They’ll grow up to resent the husk of a world they inherited.

Then they’ll enter college or even high school and suddenly all the statistics they heard growing up will become real.

PHM will be used as an example in so many classes: environmental sciences, mathematics, sociology, and worse of all ethics.

And millions of students will come face to face with the realization of how much their predecessors sacrificed for them. In ethics specifically as professors force them to debate the ethicality of sending a crew of astronauts on a known suicide mission no one even knew if it would succeed. They’ll debate bombing Antarctica, the paving of the Sahara, etc, and make them question the weight of three lives vs all the life in the planet.

And with every lesson the students will learn the very painful lesson that their predecessors didn’t purposefully screw them over or didn’t look for other ways to save the planet.

There just was no other way.

There was no plan B or C or D. There was only billions dead in the best case scenario.

And that’s what their current existence is: the second-best case scenario.

Because the best case scenario assumed total collaboration but human greed didn’t allow us even that.

So now future generations will have to make peace with the fact that their home has been destroyed but they’re not allowed to be truly angry because there was no other way. Because the alternative is to not have been alive at all.

Generations of humans will curse out the PHM team for leaving them with a diminished Earth. Their home planet will never be like it used to be forever scarred by the Astrophage Crisis and the very human reaction to it.

Offerings will be made at their alters. Prayers made to them/in their name. They’ll be on every ancestral table and mass as the ones who made today possible. And when humanity embarks on its first trips to the stars without the shadow of human extinction hanging off them, it’s to the PHM crew that they’ll ask to look after them.

Eva Stratt will be vilified. Her name will become as infamous as some of the greatest monsters humanity has seen. They’ll curse her name and she’ll be remembered as the architect for the destruction of earth as humanity knew it.

And yet she’ll also be deified for every single life, human and otherwise, that she managed to saved and made it possible for them to be born. They’ll be no prayers, no offerings at her alter (not that she had one) but in the darkest moments humanity has, humanity will remember their patron of last resorts and only chances. They’ll ask for Her guidance, Her intelligence, and Her determination.

I think it’s that situation where kids bring a pet home, the parents tell you they’ll hate them then lo and behold the pet is now the favorite family member.

In this case the parents are the task force who’ll realize that the new pet (Grace) is a fantastic deterrent to Stratt’s tyranny.

They probably even break down time into before!Grace and after!Grace lol.

BRG

Stratt terrorizes everyone, personally

ARG

Part 2 of this headcannon

How the kids react to SuperBat cheating

Dick

It was an absolute betrayal. He grew up thinking that Clark was the second greatest man in the world who moved earth and sky for him and Bruce.

After his parents died he lost his passion for live and while Bruce gave him someone who understood him, Clark was the one who made life fun for him again. Here was the awkward giant who tried so hard to be liked, who did everything to make him laugh, who all but prostrated himself to his guardian just to make Dick happy.

He really did think that Clark and Bruce could have been amazing together. It’s why he tried so hard as a kid to run off Bruce’s partners because he preferred Bruce with Clark over a rando.

Looking back now with the context he has, he realizes just how fucked up Clark was. Clark would purposely walk behind Dick, carry him around, or in someway, shape, or form hold onto Dick, always always putting Dick between himself and Bruce.

Dick grew up thinking he had an ally in Clark now he just feels used and betrayed. How many times head Clark pushed himself into Bruce’s lives under the guise of keeping an eye on Dick? How many ruined dates had Clark and Dick orchestrated? How many times had Dick yelled at Bruce that Clark was the better man?

And all Bruce had done was take it. He never talked badly about Clark. Never let it be known that there was more than simple discomfort in seeing Clark roughhousing with Dick first thing in the morning. Nothing to indicate that Clark was not the paragon of goodness that he and the rest of the world ascribed to him.

Dick had trusted Clark to look out for his father and himself. Now he realized Clark had only trusted Dick to bring him into his target’s circle again.

Jason

It was no secret that out of all of Bruce’s caped colleagues, WonderWoman was his favorite. Oh Clark had tried. He’d tried so fucking hard to be one of the bat’s favorite again and while he hadn’t succeeded he did gain the title of Uncle Clark from pre-teen Jason.

That said, he never imagined Clark would be just as much of a deadbeat as so many men in Crime Alley.

Jason had broken many bones getting asshats to stop harassing their former partners now he realizes maybe he should have looked closer at home.

After Dick left the house, Clark had been on Bruce’s ass every second of it. He’d ask what happened, what Bruce had done, how he could let it happen? Clark checked in on Dick but then refused to pass along any information to Bruce. Dick was trained by the bat, unless he wanted to be found Bruce would never find him so he had begged Clark for any sort of details about his son. Back then Jason had thought it was Clark’s way of punishing Bruce for running off Dick but now he wonders if it wasn’t another tactic by Clark to hold the moral high ground, to make Bruce submit to him.

Clark had dangled pieces of information over Bruce’s head for weeks, letting him have morsels at a time all the while playing the concerned uncle but supportive best friend oh so well.

When Dick returned back to the fold, even if marginally, Clark didn’t…abandon…Bruce per se but he began taking their side more. Dick was an adult, he could make his own decisions, he’d say. Jason had more street smarts than Clark and Bruce combined, he’d say. Then Clark would turn around and try to mend broken bridges he’d himself had filled with landmines because if Clark said it was okay, why would Dick or Jason care if Bruce opposed it? Clark was there. Alive or undead Clark was always there.

And Bruce.

Maybe he just wanted peace. Maybe he wanted to keep access to his children without Clark taking them away, emotionally, mentally, physically. Maybe he didn’t want to be right and have all his faults thrown in his face.

And maybe Jason should have remembered that the greatest monsters are always at home.

Tim

Time doesn’t remember a time where Superman wasn’t the biggest and best superhero. He’d just always been there. And when Jason died, he’d been there for Batman as well.

Night after night, Tim would capture pictures of Superman consoling or stopping a grieving Batman. Robin!Tim had done a lot to stop Batman’s self-destructive behavior but in those first few weeks it was Superman Batman had clung to. Batman never broke down crying, he was too professional for that, he also never fought Superman when the red clad hero would wrap him in his cape to get him out of fights.

When Tim had entered the Wayne family it was clear that Superman was the only thing holding the family together. Dick blamed Bruce for Jason’s death, Alfred pushed it all away and focused on keeping the manor standing, and Bruce? Bruce just waited for night to fall so he could grieve with his fists.

Superman—Clark—had kept the trio company until Tim arrived and demanded to be brought into the fold.

Clark took to Tim like a fish to water. He’d always known what to say or do and embraced Tim’s independence. It wasn’t until Young Justice was formed that he began to see cracks in the facade. Clark loathed Kon in those early days and weeks and months. Tim had attributed it to Kon’s conception/parentage and the human (sentient?) need to find someone to blame. Now, he wonders if it wasn’t jealousy playing a part too.

Tim and Kon got along like a house on fire. The two had connected so well that it surprised everyone that Kon and Megan dated before Tim and Kon ever did but when they finally came together the two just fit.

Dick and Bruce shared custody of Superman as their “designated” Kryptonian but it was Tim and Kon who cemented the idea that every Bat needed a Super. Even before they started dating it was always Tim and Kon. Just like it later became Damien and Jon.

Because it had always been Bruce and Clark.

Except it wasn’t Bruce and Clark was it? It had stopped being Bruce and Clark years ago. And Clark? Clark never let it go.

Not when every time he saw his clone he must have seen Bruce’s clone and wanted.

Those early days of the YJ team had been the time Clark had all but hung off Bruce every second he was in Mount Justice. He said it was for protection then it was for caution then it became a need to teach Kon but always, always, always touching Bruce as he watched Tim and Kon.

When did Clark decide to use his trauma to leech off Bruce?

When did Clark decide that clinging to Bruce was the only way to stay close?

When did Clark decide that suffocating Bruce was better than letting him live?

Damian

The alien had been devastated when Father disappeared into the time stream. He mourned the man, the father, the son, and the hero father was. The alien had all but built an alter for Father and grieved him like a lost lover.

First he’d clung to Drake before Drake left on his journey. Then he stuck to Todd until Todd became too violent for his tastes. Lastly he clung to Grayson who clung back just as tightly.

When Father came back there was no word of the alien’s grief or his need to replace him. There was no word of how the alien refused to breathe when Father’s heartbeat disappeared. There wasn’t as much as a whisper of the alien’s soul being dead while still being alive.

The alien came back to life when Father did.

Suddenly it was all sunshine and rainbows. Suddenly the world had the second half of the World’s Finest defending it once more.

Suddenly the Bats and the Supers were thrust into infamy.

Jon tried to connect with the alien. He tried to fit into shoes to big for himself and Damien as Jon tried to be the next iteration of a Bat and a Super. They failed, obviously Jon was nowhere ready to be the next Superman, but it was all the alien had needed to launch both families into his spotlight.

One pair was a coincidence.

Two pairs was a pattern.

A third pair was a declaration.

A bat and a super.

A human and a kryptonian.

A Bruce and a Clark.

The alien wasted no time ensuring the world knew the Batfamily and the Superfamily were allied to the last. The League may crack, heroes may falter, but the two families were intertwined, belonged to one another.

Metropolis was an extension of Gotham. Gotham was an extension of Metropolis. A Bat and a Super were an extension of one another. An attack on one could easily become an attack on all.

Damian had seen the benefits of the arrangement. Unsurprisingly the other family was each other’s rogue gallery’s foil. The Luthor intelligence had nothing on the Bat’s ingenuity, the Joker’s wide scale “pranks” were a mere nuisance to superhuman senses.

No longer were they fighting a war on one front. It was now a war on all fronts.

Because a Bat planned but a Super attacked.

The alien delighted in pulling Father into the spotlight. Delighted in having the cameras follow the duo. Delighted in seeing the words call Father his teammate. His best friend. Just his.

Was that why Superman encouraged the friendship between Jon and Damien? Had he been looking for a friend of a similar age and background for his son, or was he looking for an excuse to show to the world that the Bat belonged to him in word, in thought, and in action.

They were too many differences for journalists to call them one big happy family.

That didn’t stop the public from claiming that two men raising children on their own were in want of a partner.

That didn’t stop the world from calling them soulmates.

All Grace will have are memories of betrayal and the bitter understanding that there was no other way.

Stratt planted the seeds from a man she forcibly took them from, will tend to the saplings, and give them every chance to succeed, while watering it with the blood of the innocent she decided (had to) sacrifice.

1) It would mean they’d get new crazies with superpowers cause you know power hates a vacuum

2) have you seen them prices these days??? The penguin is bad but damn at least you can afford to put a roof over your head. And maybe kids gotta learn street smarts before school smarts but they’re not going into generational debt because of university.