[DC] REPOST Bc I Did Not Like How It Desaturated The Colors Of The Last One….😭😭😭 Anyways Wonder

@ everyone who’s New Years resolution is to go to a professional abt their mental health: ur very sexy and deserve a lil round of applause

Ren has been in love with Nora for as long as he can remember.

He’s aware that there must be a point when he wasn’t in love with her. Some point before the streets and the orphanages and their first school. A point when he was small with two living parents and not at all sure of himself like he is now.

It’s just that that time seems hazy. More like a dream than something that he lived through. Then he thinks back to being in love with Nora and suddenly his memories are in sharp focus, always with her at their center.

Ren has been in love with Nora for as long as he can remember and he’s been trying to figure out how to tell her for just as long. Nothing’s come to mind yet but, hey, it’s not like either of them are going anywhere.

there's an elite type of character and it can be described as 'this person is powerful and competent in their area of expertise' meets 'too bad they're an idiot'

guess who finally finished the first draft of an original story!!!!

Excalibur, the legendary sword of King Arthur, was the mightiest weapon of that era. However, as time passed and mankind evolved, so did the sword. You work at a local antique shop when one day you discover something you don’t remember being there before: a rather peculiar looking pen.

other actors: I sent live rats to my costars and drank sewage water bc I’m a method actor

rpatz: I played sonic everyday —but only the dark version— to really get in the headspace

margaret atwood // doom days - bastille // azra t. // carry on - rainbow rowell // romeo and juliet - william shakespeare // cruel summer - taylor swift // gregory orr // red, white, and royal blue - casey mcquiston // romeo and juliet - william shakespeare // cruel summer - taylor swift // erica jong // sober ii (melodrama) - lorde // romeo and juliet - william shakespeare // the raven king - maggie stiefvater // ghosts - florence + the machine // tamerlane - edgar allan poe // the raven king - maggie stiefvater // cruel summer - taylor swift

hii!! are u going to continue the tim/bernard thing u wrote? because i love it n i think u did so well with it n i would be really happy about a new part🤍

i'm not planning to, that was just meant to be a lil oneshot type thing but i'm glad you liked it!! <3

“You’re gonna do it, aren’t you?” the Joker says, quiet. When Bruce doesn’t answer he starts to laugh. He laughs so hard and so long that it becomes the only sound that Bruce can hear. He laughs so hard that he has to spit out blood before he speaks next. “You’re actually going to kill me. Aren’t you Batsy?” he grins.

They both know the answer but Bruce says it anyway. For the finality of it.

“Yes.”

It’s an ending.

~

Jason’s death is where it starts.

Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe it starts in a circus where two dead bodies lie broken on the floor and their son breaks in a very different way above them. Maybe it starts when a man decides that to take justice into his own hands is the only means by which his city will survive. Maybe it starts with a different set of dead bodies in an alleyway a lifetime ago.

Maybe it started when the first brick of the city that would become Gotham was laid.

But Jason’s death was certainly a beginning. Not of anything good, of course, but a beginning none the less.

~

Dick doesn’t talk to him anymore.

It hurts Bruce. Touches him in a way that few things since his parents death have. It opens him up to a loneliness he had thought was in his past.

He might have done something about it if everytime he looked at Dick he didn’t see a waking corpse. If Bruce hadn’t watched from the sidelines as his son morphed into a reminder of all the ways the universe is yet to use to make him suffer.

Dick doesn’t talk to him anymore and Bruce lets him.

~

Tim keeps popping up. Trying to convince him that he’s going to cross a line. It seems like he can’t quite comprehend the fact that Bruce doesn’t care anymore.

“Go home.” He says. Tim’s energetic and untrained and very much neither of Bruce’s sons. Bruce is grateful for the way his eyes shine with enthusiasm since it helps him remember that the boy he’s talking to is alive.

Tim smiles as he says no.

“Go home.” Bruce insists and Tim continues to refuse.

The way he sees Tim all the time, the way the boy makes it his business to keep Batman company, feels like the middle of a story. Bruce knows it in his bones. That something was the beginning (Jason’s death or two bodies on the ground or the grate of bricks on bricks on bricks) and this is the middle. He also knows that there’s going to be an ending far too soon.

“People don’t finish growing up and stay near me.” He tells Tim, trying to get him to go away with different words this time. “Your endings are leave me alone or die.”

Tim rolls his eyes. “Says who? You and your grand sample size of two?”

“Go home.” He repeats, returning to his default response.

“No”. Tim repeats. He sounds like he’s enjoying this.

Bruce despises the fact that it only makes him like the boy more.

~

There’s an Arkham escape. The Joker gets out. He’s currently killing people.

None of these facts are surprising.

Bruce fights him and takes him down after he’s only ruined a couple of lives. It’s still far too many but it’s also far fewer people than he would have destroyed without Bruce there to stop him.

On the other hand he wouldn’t even exist if Bruce hadn’t made him. So people are dead and it’s still the Batman’s fault.

Afterwards Bruce watches as the Joker is taken in from a rooftop. He doesn’t even notice Tim sidle up beside him. He takes a moment to be annoyed at how proud he is of the boy for being so good.

“Are you okay?” Tim asks, because he knows how seeing the Jokers smile cuts into Bruce like few other things can.

“I’m fine.” Bruce says. It’s sort of the truth. Pain like this has become routine for him since Jason died. It’s just a byproduct of his existence. It’s just the price of his failure.

He looks over the crime scene, taking in the blood and the bodies and the relatives crying just like he did over his boy. He takes in the Joker as he’s tied back into his straight jacket. As he’s looking, the Joker tilts his head up. Bruce knows that the man is searching him out.

Instead of leaving or moving or doing anything useful, he freezes.

The Joker’s gaze alights on him. Pausing in its scan of the roofline. Then his eyes move a little down and to the left and Bruce feels Tim take a step back as he meets the Joker’s eyes.

Bruce is no longer fine.

He unfreezes and takes Tim in his arms, swinging them as far away from the scene of the crime as he can. He hears the Joker’s laughter behind them, starting out quiet but growing loud enough that Bruce doubts he’ll ever be able to outrun it.

“It’s fine.” Tim says from where he’s held tight in Bruce’s arms. “Bruce, I’ll be fine. He doesn’t even know who I am. I’ll be fine.”

He sounds scared and hopeful and absolutely certain that nothing will be able to hurt him while he’s under the Batman’s protection.

Bruce doesn’t have the heart to tell him that he’s wrong.

~

The body of Tim Drake is buried two weeks later.

Bruce spends the whole funeral thinking about how this is going to keep happening. About how children are going to keep finding him and squirming their way into his heart until he can’t bear to push them away any longer.

He realises that he can’t take a third tragedy of this magnitude. And if he can’t take it then Gotham certainly can’t. Batman is the only thing propping the city up as it attempts to crush itself under the weight of its cruelty.

Bruce makes a decision. As he does so he realises that they’re almost at the finish line.

~

There’s an Arkham escape. The Joker gets out. He’s currently killing people.

The relief Bruce feels when he hears what’s happening is extraordinary.

“You’re gonna do it, aren’t you?” The Joker says once Bruce arrives and they look each other in the eye. He laughs hard enough to gently choke on his own blood. The wheezing sounds like victory. “You’re actually gonna kill me. Aren’t you Batsy?”

Bruce shoots his grapple gun through the Joker’s chest. It punches right through him, filling the room with an awful cracking squelching noise, and lodges in the wall. The sound the Joker makes as his throat fills with blood is more of a gurgle than a wheeze now.

“Yes.” Bruce replies.

It’s the ending.

New Fic!!

Word count: 1,338

Summary: Luz feels guilty all the time.

It wouldn't be so bad if she didn't know that she deserved it.

~

“But you can do magic here, isn’t that all you’ve ever wanted?” Willow asks.

“How can you miss being there when you fit in so much better here?” Gus says.

“They didn’t deserve you.” Amity snorts, like it’s obvious.

~

Fic under the cut!

Luz feels guilty all the time now.

Not guilty enough that she’s consumed by it. Not guilty enough that it stops her from doing anything. It’s just something in the background, something that pulls at her a little as she runs and fights and generally enjoys life more than she ever has before.

She mentions it to her friends. They don’t quite understand it.

“But you can do magic here, isn’t that all you’ve ever wanted?” Willow asks.

“How can you miss being there when you fit in so much better here?” Gus says.

“They didn’t deserve you.” Amity snorts, like it’s obvious.

The last one makes Luz feel something different. She hopes she’ll figure out what sometime soon, once the guilt has ebbed away and there’s enough room for her to step back and look at her thoughts from a distance. Once there’s enough room that she might be able to examine the shape they take.

The problem is that Luz isn’t even guilty for what she’s done. If all she had done to her mom was leave her all alone in a different dimension then Luz wouldn’t even be feeling bad. It’s what Luz is going to do that keeps the low buzzing of guilt close.

Because Luz is never going back.

How could she? How could she return to a world where she can’t do magic, where she never fit in?

(where they didn’t deserve her)

Luz would do anything to stay in the Boiling Isles forever and considering the fact that all she has to do is not leave? Luz would have to have some twisted sort of mind to want to go back.

Her mom was going to send her to send her somewhere to get her imagination stamped out of her for three months. What if Luz returned and she tried to do that again? Then she might never get an opportunity to return to the Boiling Isles and then-

Then Luz would be feeling significantly worse things than a little guilt buzzing at the edge of her consciousness.

So she stays.

~

Luz is staring at the door that would take her back home.

Eda looks at her from over the cover of her magazine. “You planning to set that on fire, kid?”

“Yeah.” Luz answers without remembering that she probably shouldn’t be saying that sort of thing. Oh well, she thinks. It’s not like Eda’s going to judge her.

Eda puts down her magazine and raises a judging eyebrow in Luz’s direction.

Luz looks back at her and narrows her eyes. They’ve never talked about Luz going home and she had really been enjoying that status quo. “Your eyebrows are judging me.” she informs Eda. Just in case she wasn’t aware yet.

She nods slowly. “Yeah, they tend to do that kid.” She pauses. Like she needs some time to come to terms with the unprecedented fact that Luz would do anything not to stay here forever. “Bet it’s ‘cause they were wondering why you were going to set your only way back home on fire.”

“I guess that would make sense.” Luz answers, “It would kind of be an odd thing for me to do, from the perspective of your eyebrows.” She tries her best to look serious since this is a serious conversation despite how they’re both pretending that it isn’t.

They stare each other down for a while.

King comes and interrupts before either of them can break the stalemate. Eda looks particularly affronted when this happens, like whenever she’s avoiding telling Luz something she doesn’t use this exact same trick.

It’s odd. Luz thought Eda would have realised she’s a fast learner by now.

~

In a particularly unexpected turn of events it’s Lilith that ends of being the one to confront Luz about the whole thing.

She just had a fight with Eda. Obviously. Because the only time Luz ever runs into Lilith is when she’s just about to fight Eda or when they’ve just finished. It ends in a draw, like it always does, and Luz wonders why Lilith keeps coming back to fight Eda when she must know that it’s going to end the same way it always does.

Luz voices these opinions and Lilith squints at her with an expression that reminds her of Eda and her judge-y eyebrows. “Do humans not have families?” she asks, her tone full of honest confusion.

Luz isn’t quite sure how to answer that. She stays silent, waiting for King to interrupt like last time but remembers that King isn’t actually here right now and decides not to answer anyway. Maybe she’ll get lucky and someone else will interrupt.

“Well?” Lilith prompts, impatient now. “Do you have a family, human?”

Luz opens and closes her mouth a couple of times, “Why do you care?” she asks, which isn’t her best comeback but does the job of allowing her to avoid the question.

Lilith has the gall to roll her eyes. “I care about precisely two people in the Boiling Isles.” She holds up two fingers to illustrate her point. “My awful sister,” She puts a finger down, “and my wonderful protege.” She puts the other finger down so that her hand is in the shape of a fist. An irrational part of Luz’s brain wonders if she’s about to get punched. “So I think it’s understandable enough that I might like to know if the human that has the full adoration of my two favourite people might be leaving them someday soon.”

“Nope,” Luz starts backing away cause Lilith looks kind of angry and hence very scary, “No one’s leaving here. I am a-okay staying right here. Forever.”

“Oh.” Lilith says, expression turning surprised. Her eyes aren’t narrowed anymore and it makes them look far larger than normal. “I thought you were leaving.”

Luz looks at Lilith and feels something full of far too familiar guilt stirring in her chest. “That’s weird. I’ve never thought that before.” she says, because it’s true.

“But you have a family?” Lilith says because even if her and Luz don’t talk much she’s still one of the smartest people Luz knows, which is saying something since Luz is surrounded by geniuses these days.

“Yep. I’m staying though.”

Lilith frowns. “You should visit them. Family’s important.” Luz can feel herself starting to back away, the buzz of guilt rising again, but Lilith interrupts before she can get very far. “I’m sure that either Amity or Eda would drag you back before you could be gone for too long anyway.”

The words cause Luz to freeze. She hadn’t thought of that before.

Lilith had clearly been aiming for the comment to sound offhand, an afterthought, but from the way she’s a little tenser than normal Luz can tell that she really was trying to reassure her. It makes Luz wonder it Lilith might have enough room in her heart to care about three people one day.

“I’ll think about it.” she promises.

Luz keeps her eyes fixed firmly on the floor as she says it but she can tell that the words make Lilith smile a little anyway.

~

Luz really does think about it. She thinks about it constantly, replaces the buzz of guilt with wonderings over whether she trusts that her loved ones have their claws dug into her deep enough that they could never let her go.

One night, lying in bed and wondering the same things as always, she comes to the conclusion that she does. After the certainty has settled itself in her bones she has the best nights sleep she’s had in weeks.

In the morning she decides that she’ll wait a little. Let the certainty sink in a bit deeper. Let the amount she loves the people she’s surrounded herself with grow until the idea she won’t be able to return becomes ridiculous.

But then the Emperor comes and the portal burns and none of it really matters.

Luz starts feeling guilty again. She doubts she’ll ever stop.