Enemies-to-lovers, But Instead Of Featuring A Villain Redemption Arc, The Heroic One Is Getting Progressively

my astro prof just told us that the stars are dying and wtf??? how am i supposed to worry about the impermenence of my existence when one day the lights will all go out???

New fic: There's a fine line between a custody battle and a bar fight

Part 4 in Stay series

Word Count: 3,261

Summary: There’s a new assassin in Gotham. She’s clever, well trained and utterly ruthless.

She’s also a child.

Batman is, of course, chomping at the bit to adopt her. Too bad for him that Selina’s gotten a taste for motherhood through Tim and Damian.

A little friendly competition never hurt anyone though. Right?

Anyway, happy birthday, Timmers

I just finished writing a 20k fic and anyone who says drugs are a better high than this is a liar and a fool

I wrote a fic based on this!

The link

Amity joins the Emperor’s Coven

Amity Blight is perfect.

She has perfect grades and a perfect family and is exactly the kind of person that’s going to grow up and fit in perfectly at the Emperor’s Coven. When Lilith isn’t busy being proud of her she can’t help but feel a little jealous of the child for never having to be second best to anyone.

That’s all until the human arrives.

Before Lilith can even begin to process the situation Amity is deviating from the careful path of perfection Lilith has so painstakingly laid out for her. She still has perfect grades and she’s still the youngest daughter of the Blight family, all that prestige and none of it tying her down, but suddenly her allegiances are questionable.

She’s spending too much time with the human. Too much time with Eda. Too much time with people who could steer her away from the path she must take.

So before things can go too awfully, before Eda can ruin this perfect little girl like she ruins everything else, Lilith makes a proposal.

“How would you like to become the youngest member of the Emperor’s Coven?” She says, all warmth and approval in the way she knows the girl’s parents never are.

Amity’s face lights up and Lilith tries not to think too much about how the guilt churning in her stomach makes her feel a little like when she cursed her sister.

“What do you want?” Barbara asks, voice crackling with static.

It’s a silly question. Tim wants crime rates to go down. Tim wants Gotham to be a safer city. Tim wants to be a part of making that happen.

“A code name that isn’t stupid.” he says instead.

Barbara sighs. It doesn’t sound like a sigh though. It just sounds like the static’s getting louder.

~

“Bernard Dowd, scholar of the ages.” Tim laughs, arm slung round Bernard's shoulder. “I thought you were meant to be the fun one?”

“I am.” Bernard groans, “as soon as these exams are done I’ll be back to the usual student life. Getting drunk, going on dates, Gotham won’t know what’s hit it.”

“Going on dates?” Tim asks jokingly, even as a well hidden part of him turns slightly panicked. “Any successes an old friend should be hearing about?”

“Not really.” Bernard shrugs, jostling Tim’s arm. “Just a couple of girls I was better off friends with.” He pauses, thinking, before continuing with his voice involuntarily going a little higher. “Couple of guys too.”

“Huh.” Tim suddenly becomes very aware of all the places where his arm is touching Bernard. He doesn’t move it. “Better luck next time.”

Huh.

~

Tim’s been avoiding Dick. He’s been awkward around him lately, Tim thinks that Barbara must have said something. He’s not stupid enough to have done something to send Dick spiralling without noticing it.

“What do you want?” Dick asks, curious, without warning.

Tim wants to ask if Barbara put him up to this but he knows it’s a genuine question. Dick isn’t manipulative like that, not with family.

What does Tim want? Isn’t it a little late for Dick go be asking that question? All the things that happened after Bruce’s death put a canyon of distance between them. It’s slowly been growing smaller but it hasn’t disappeared. Neither of them have had time enough to spend together for that to happen.

An awful, bitter part of Tim that hasn’t stopped screaming since Robin wasn’t his any more wonders if Dick would even be asking if Damian wasn’t out of town right now.

“For us to go train surfing.” Tim says. Petty. Just so Dick will say no and his anger can feel righteous instead of ill-deserved.

“Okay.” Dick says instead. Easy and confident. Himself.

“Oh.” Tim’s anger fizzles into non-existence. “Okay.”

The canyon grows a little smaller.

~

“We should go to a skatepark.” Bernard says, a little giggly from the beer in his hand.

There’s a matching beer in Tim’s hand although it’s still practically full. If there’s an emergency he’ll be of no use drunk. “What? Why?”

“Why not? You were so good in high school! And you had fun doing it.” Bernard’s tone turns a little less giggly. “You should do more things you find fun.”

Tim is surprised enough that the “Okay.” slips out of his lips unbidden.

So maybe the beer bottle is a little less full than he’d like to admit.

They borrow a board from one of Bernard's flatmates and catch a bus to a skate park Tim remembers using when he was younger. As they go Tim tries to remember why he stopped. He tries to remember when he stopped. He can’t recall the answer to either question and annoyance rises in his chest over it.

Then Bernard is saying something and it has Tim snorting with laughter and he forgets his irritation.

Once they arrive Bernard settles himself at the top of one of the ramps like it’s a throne. “Entertain me!” he calls, “Impress me with your wheel-board magic.

Tim manages a kick-flip on his first attempt and Bernard makes a loud noise of approval.

A lot of stuff comes back to Tim fairly quickly. Most of skateboarding had been muscle memory for him and that’s something that being a vigilante hadn’t exactly hindered. As things return to him he regains some faint memories of why he’d stopped. Nothing specific, just that feeling of not having enough time. Of thinking that going to the skatepark wasn’t a particularly useful way to spend his hours while there was still real work to be done.

Tim’s always been a vigilante first, but he thinks there must have been a point when that wasn’t the only thing he was. Well, when it wasn’t the only thing he was that mattered.

“Come on!” Bernard shouts, teeth flashing white against Gotham’s grey-black sky. “I was promised entertainment!”

Tim laughs. He seems to do that a lot around Bernard these days.

He starts moving on the skateboard, deciding to leave the existentialism for another day.

~

First Dick and now Bruce. Tim’s family has really been making a habit of being weird around him lately.

He would normally think that the Bruce was worried about him, that Dick had passed along some bullshit about his mental health and Bruce was practicing some silent vigil. The problem with that theory is that Tim’s been getting better recently, so there wouldn’t be much point. At least he thinks he’s been getting better. It’s difficult to tell sometimes.

Bruce has definitely been acting weird around him though, so maybe he isn’t getting better. Maybe Bruce spotted something Tim didn’t and he’s on the road to insanity.

“What do you want?” Bruce asks one day as they’re both working in the cave. Not Batman. Bruce.

It’s a far stupider question than it was when Barbara or Dick asked it. Bruce is the person who made Tim’s desires what they are. He’s the one who took Tim’s obsession and carved it into a goal.

“What?” Tim asks, loud and confused and maybe a little angry. “What do you mean ‘what do I want’? I want the mission! What else am I supposed to want?”

Bruce stays silent for a moment and Tim imagines him turning the words over in his head. “Nothing else?” Bruce asks. He sounds sad and it makes the anger drain from Tim’s body. “Just the mission?”

“I don’t need anything else.” Tim says hollowly.

Bruce just nods, thinking. It makes Tim want to scream even as satisfaction rises in his chest.

It’s always been a point of pride that he can to lie to Batman. He’s hardly going to change his mind about that now.

~

“People keep asking me what I want.” Tim says, sat on Bernard's bed. “I don’t like it.”

Bernard's turns away from the laptop on his desk so he can look at Tim. “You ever tell them the truth?”

Tim shrugs. He isn’t sure what else to do. “Ish?”

Bernard smiles. “Anyone ever tell you you’re impossible, Tim Drake?”

“Only everyone I’ve ever met.”

Bernard barks out a laugh before sobering up and looking at Tim with ill-disguised curiosity. “Do you want to tell me the truth about it? Or did you just want to say the thing out loud?”

“I’m not sure.” Tim admits, and he has to stop himself from acting taken aback by the fact he actually said that. Tim never says when he’s uncertain. There isn’t room for it. Bernard must know that too because he looks at Tim in surprise, then scoots his chair closer to the bed so that he and Tim are almost touching.

Bernard looks very cautious. “You know that’s okay, right?”

“I-“ Tim starts, because is it? Is uncertainty the kind of luxury he can afford? “I want to want things. But it feels like I’ve forgotten how.”

“You’ve had a rough couple of years.”

“How do you-“

Bernard smiles knowingly. “You’re not as hard to read as you think, Tim. Well you are. But it’s not difficult to tell that some bad things must have happened since I last saw you.”

“Yeah.” Tim says hoarsely, thinking back to the burn of his muscles as he dug up Kon’s grave, the stinging of desert sand in his eyes, the moment of confusion when he woke up in a league of assassins base unsure if he’d had to die to get there. “Yeah. Bad things happened.” He shakes himself a little, because those aren’t the thoughts he wants lingering. He focuses back on Bernard who’s closer than Tim had realised, worry creased between his eyes. “What about you?” Tim asks, trying to exert some measure of control over the conversation. “What do you want?”

“Thought we were talking about you?” Tim might have let it go with that if not for the note of nervousness in Bernard's voice and the red creeping up the back of his neck.

“We can talk about both of us.”

“It’s not important right now.”

Tim reaches out then. He takes Bernard's hand in his because Bernard makes him laugh and he looks so nervous and Tim wants to. Bernard looks down at their hands in surprise and Tim doesn’t actually feel worried. Just expectant that Bernard is going to squeeze their fingers together more securely. He does. “You sure?” Tim asks.

Bernard just looks at him. Mouth parted with shock. He seems to come back to himself though and his expression of surprise turns into something more confident. More familiar. “What if I wanted you?” he asks, hesitancy and confidence rolled into one voice.

“Give me some time to remember how to want things, and I think I’ll want that too.” Tim replies, just as unsure and utterly certain.

Bernard tangles their fingers together a little more firmly in response and Tim feels more hopeful than he has in a long time.

“Sometimes I think Batman is the only thing I made right.” Bruce says to no one in particular. The words cause Alfred to freeze for a moment before going back to work. “You disagree?” Bruce asks, not wanting to leave secrets between them.

Alfred looks up at him. “I have always thought of Batman as your worst creation, Sir.”

His tone is serious but Bruce can’t help but laugh. “I made the Red Hood, I made the Joker Alfred. You really think Batman is worse than them?”

“Yes I do, Master Bruce.” Alfred says, refusing to look at him.

The exchange is disjointed enough that Bruce stops laughing immediately. A tense silence is left hanging in the air.

Neither of them say anything else for the rest of the night.

I love this entire sequence so much, WFA Bruce is everything to me. His children are always his number one priority in this series no matter what. He immediately forgot about Scarecrow to go make sure Tim was okay and give his breather to him.

Bournemouth feels like it’s closing in on Jon.

Not in any special sense, merely in the way that anywhere you live becomes a little smaller for every year you spend there. The feeling makes him paranoid, it makes him feel too easy to find.

It’s an odd thought considering that there’s no one looking for him. That there’s no one to look for him. He doesn’t really have any friends and any relatives beside his grandmother are long gone. The only person concerned with Jon’s life is himself.

That isn’t quite right though.

There are people, sometimes. A woman with her hair pulled back into a severe bun who looks at Jon like she’s considering the best way to dump his body. Another woman, similar age, who’s covered in tattoos and smiles at him with too-sharp teeth. A portly man with blond hair and glasses just like Jon’s who stares at him like he’s a laboratory experiment rather than a person.

Jon finds the man particularly distasteful. The feeling his gaze elicits is primal and angry and vengeful in a way Jon doesn’t particularly understand the origins of but grips tight nonetheless.

“You should stop looking at me,” he tells the first woman one day when she has a book in her hands and keeps looking up from it as if to see what effect the thing is having on Jon.

“Why?” she asks incredulously, the word sounding like it’s said more as a reaction to his statement than a true question.

Jon turns his gaze upon her.

“I might start looking back.”

He says it like a threat even if he isn’t entirely sure why. The woman must take it as such because she arches an eyebrow and looks at him less like she’s planning how to kill him and more like she’s wondering if she actually can.

Jon leaves quickly. The words hadn’t felt like his own and he’s left suddenly unsure and self conscious. He tries to focus on the knowledge that’s been keeping him going through the last few months of Bournemouth suffocating him to drown out the unease. The offer is printed on a sheet of paper bluetacked to his wall and Jon feels his feet steering him home just so that he can stare at it until he feels like he can breathe.

It’s odd. He had never doubted that he would go to university, academia had always been where Jon pictured himself most comfortable. That had been until he received the email and was forced to spend a week in crisis over whether this might finally be his opportunity to actually know what happened that day with Mister Spider.

Jon takes a deep breath. Two months until he starts as a research assistant at the Magnus Institute, London.

Maybe then he’ll be able to get away from all these eyes.

A murder mystery where there wasn’t actually a murder. The detective is just crazy and is harassing people.