alfred gave them the sheets
POV: you’re Jon and Damian is about to kidnap you from your window
"Don't you get it?" Jason spat, teetering on the verge of a howl. "I'm not him! Jason Todd is DEAD. He's gone! I'm just what crawled out of his grave."
He panted into the silence that followed, eyes stinging heat.
Bruce said nothing. Jason worried he might stand there, unspeaking, unmoving, til the end of time. Or just turn and walk away. That was what he wanted, wasn't it? For Bruce to stop chasing the ghost of a dead boy? To accept that he was someone different, someone new?
Instead, when Bruce finally spoke, he was quiet, thoughtful. "Did you know that I loved you the moment I met you?"
He wasn't looking at Jason, but down at his hands, as if his gloves were a scrying pool that he could peer into to see that old Jason, twelve years old and desperate but so full of life. Jason thought he could taste dirt.
Then Bruce chuckled, still to himself, still to his hands. "You were so cocky, so unwilling to give up without a fight, even to me. Some things never change."
His smile fade and he looked up, straight into Jason's face. "You were also scared. Traumatized. You had nightmares for months. You lied constantly. Hoarded food. Stole. I was so worried we'd never be able to make you feel safe, the way you deserved to feel."
"I'm not—" Jason began, voice tight.
"You're not him," Bruce agreed, and hearing it spoken out loud, so easily, cut off Jason's air.
"You haven't been him for years." Bruce stepped forward, pushing into Jason's space. "Part of him is in you, but you're not him. You changed." He shrugged, shoulder somehow expressive even beneath the weight of the armor, the cape, the night. "You weren't the boy I took in off the street even before you died. You grew. That's life, Jay."
Jason was the one unable to speak now, stuck in place like a gods-struck fool.
"You change. You grow. And I'll keep loving whoever you turn out to be next."
Having the time of my life with Batman and Robin: Year One.
Its so beauuuutiful
Patrol breaks are for gossiping with your brother (and for soup!)
The joke that the bats see their contingency plans as a form of love is super fucking funny, don't get me wrong but honestly they probably do see it as that cause they just forget to say the second part out loud.
"after I've taken you down, obviously I'd find whatever made you like this and then find the cure."
They come from gotham where mind altering substances are basically everywhere. One of the most profound ways a gothamite could say 'i care about you' is admitting to having a plan to disarm/capture you in the case you go off the deep end, so that they could then get you a cure.
Unfortunately for the bats, no one else thinks like that cause what the actual fucks guys
I love Tim and Dick bonding over their weird love life and Jason, I love them so much they are so cure… ALSO WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT BELITTLING DICK’AS AND KORI’S RELATIONSHIP LIKE THAT???!!!
Are YOU keeping your chicks warm through the winter? Why we should take notes from Bats on childcare
Oh the ideas
I read somewhere that its common in Arab culture to refer to someone close to you as your organs, implying you can’t live without them. Like how in english someone would say “my heart” (qalbi), in Arabic someone would also use “my liver” (kabidi) “my lungs” (riati). Notably, “my blood” is “Dami” which is funny bc it’s Damian’s shortened nickname.
Damian’s brothers have been using the nickname for years with or without knowing. I propose that as Damian gets closer to them, and Tim in particular, he responds in kind.
He starts to refer to Tim as “tuhali.”
…it means “my spleen.”
(Edit: this has now been confirmed by several Arabic speakers! Except the pronunciation of Dami (as in my blood) and Dami (shortened) are different which is sad. But my spleen idea works! So I’m happy!)
this is the baby they insisted was a threat :(
This is it, this is how the fam should be
Bruce, visibly overwhelmed by Emotions as he watches a ten-year-old Dick goofing around in the batcave: Alfred. Alfred I think I'd die if something happened to him
Alfred: *carefully doesn't say that he thought the same thing when Martha and Thomas placed a newborn Bruce in his arms for the first time because he knows that'll completely destroy the little emotional bandwidth Bruce has*