Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tim wondered why he had even accepted to be part of this shit show as he watched Bart speeding around to set up the decor.

He could almost hear Bruce's Batman voice telling him it was a stupid, reckless idea. "You're risking all of our identities for a senseless moment of fun. All it takes is the wrong person making the right conclusions-"

Before Kon's very real voice (and thank the Gods for that, Tim wasn't religious, but he would pray on a thousand altars for this to continue) interrupted his thoughts. "Rob, I can hear you thinking from here. Stop overthinking and sit your pretty ass on this couch before I am forced to get the batstick stuck in it with my-"

"-Tactile telekinesis, we know Kon" Cassie groaned, lying on the couch with her arms covering her face tiredly. She wasn't too delighted with doing this during their weekly sleepover, either, as she was, apparently, the only other person capable to think long-term in this gods-forsaken team.

Tim knew why she was doing this despite her very real and valid reservations because he was doing this for the same reasons. He had always followed and supported his friends, whether it was by creating new aliases to support Cissie's Olympic career or breaking his friends from police or government facilities.

Hell, Tim wasn't the type of guy who waited to be clued in to jump from a cliff to save a friend, he was the type of guy to transform this into one of his endless contingencies and execute it before said-friend even voiced their need for help or knew they needed help, dragging his other friends in the mess as well. 

But, while Tim has always been a ride or die friend, while faced with the latter he knew, just as Cassie knew, that he would rather die before letting that happen again. Being left behind was the worst. You never knew what to do with yourself after outliving your friends.

Now, he was even more determined to assure the physical and mental well-being of his friends. And if it meant cracking under zero pressure, as Bart directed his puppy eyes at him, well ? Let it be. Shiva and her training to resist torture could be disappointed in him all they wanted.

Bart set the tripod and the camera Tim had bought him to send him homemade cards from his travels so it would face the couch and the coffee table. The coffee table held a ginormous bowl that was able and would shortly feed a speedster, a half-kryptonian, a demigoddess and a robin (all that crime fighting really worked up an appetite). 

The camera was now on. 

"Who's going to start ?" Superboy asked, taking his place on the couch next to Red Robin. 

"Not it!" Wonder Girl retorted immediately.

Impulse shrugged and looked pointedly at Red Robin. Superboy seemingly, was immediately clued in because a shit-eating grin appeared on his face, attracting attention to his numerous, very distracting silver piercings.

"Imp is right, let Rob do the honors." He continued to say with a small mock bow. 

Red Robin sighed. And wasn't this something, this was the first clear appearance of a Bat, especially one that was determined to be more urban legend than hero before his year-long rampage through Europe  had made him an international conversation topic for months and yet he remained just as much mysterious as before his debut if not more. 

Bat-truthers were going to go batshit crazy on Tumblr. 

Rob raised a gloved hand to ask a question that sounded sarcastic even to the untrained ear. He was compliant, but he could and would still choose to be an asshole while doing so, it came with the cape. Sue him. (Well, Red Robin the restaurant had tried, but Tim had shut that down quickly by buying the trademark from corporate. They had compromised by adding "not" in front of their former name because Tim was nothing if not a petty, vengeful asshole.)

"Am I supposed to tell what type of candy I bought before or after trauma dumping on the internet ?"

"And are we supposed to introduce ourselves beforehand every time ? I mean, it would be polite to do it before dumping all of our trauma on internet strangers, but I feel like it would be repetitive no ?" Cassie followed because she too was a little sarcastic shit.

Impulse whined and Kon sighed tiredly, while the other two were now sporting matching grins. 

"Okay, okay, I'll start because Batman didn't raise a bitch." Red Robin retorted, raising his voice pointedly at the end of his sentence. If he did, it was probably Jason.

"I'm Red Robin, formerly Robin III and Batman made me a middle child. I brought-

Impulse cut him off and whined. "C'mon thisisboringandyoupromiseditwouldn'tbeboring"

"Dunno Imp, his brothers seem to think trying to kill him is a rite of passage to join the family." Superboy added bitterly. 

"Okay." Red Robin said, elongating the last syllable. He looked utterly done and bored with this conversation, but those who knew him could spot his barely visible smirk. 

"All of my brothers, except Signal, have tried to kill me at least once, and my only sister tried to frame me for her murder to the GCPD in order to make me join the murderous cult she was trying to lead." 

Red Robin looked unbothered and not particularly traumatized, in fact he even cheered up in the latter part of his sentence. 

"Oh, and I brought Zesti gummies !" He shook out the packet of (one could argue was not) candy in the bowl-if you were referring to the geographical definition of the word-. 

“Shout out to my little bro Signal who broke the generational curse. Always the trendsetter." Red Robin made a heart with his hands at the camera.

"Me, Imp, and some of the Titans have agreed on minor maiming if Red Hood ever shows up again." Superboy exclaimed happily with a dark look in his eyes in the background. His glare showed that he had chosen to expand the definition of “minor”.

It didn't seem to be a surprise to Red Robin who turned to answer Wonder Girl's question. "Nightwing ? When was this ?"

"Alternate Universe."

She nodded as if this made perfect sense. 

"Oh, myturnnow! My name is Impulse, and I was raised in a VR game my whole childhood, and my handlers killed the only friend I had in there ! And I brought Nerds!" He blurted out and emptied a pocket full of candy that no one had seen until now. 

"My name is Superboy and I didn't have a name until I was superhero-ing for about two years AND my name means abomination in Kryptonian." Superboy smiled, seemingly zen and unaffected by the things he had just shared.

"I have contingencies for Superman btw." Red Robin added in passing as Impulse was nodding next to him, mouth already full from candy.

"I know."

"I would kill him for you."

"I know Wondy."

"Rob would too."

"I know." Superboy looked fond and not impatient at all as he was repeating himself.

"Anyways, my name is Wonder Girl and my incompetence as a leader killed my childhood idol and destroyed our team for a while." 

There was an explosion of sounds and protests that Wonder Girl silenced by raising her hand but she was now notably smiling.

“We agreed we wouldn’t be defending anyone’s honor tonight.”

 Red Robin started to speak again.

“My father and grandfather figures decided to give me a mental breakdown for my sweet 16 by creating a futuristic puzzle in which a hologram of the latter was shot in the head by an unknown member of the family that went evil because they thought I was too trusting. And my first thought was to create specific situations that would mentally torture each member of my family to discern which one was guilty. Snickers !" He raised the package, so the camera would have a clearer image. 

Wonder Girl opened her mouth as if to say something and shut it brutally, but was now glaring at the ground. She was perhaps a dirty hypocrite but then everybody in this team was when it came to their friends' wellbeing and the care they gave the latter as opposed to their disregard for their own wellbeing.

 "Sweet ! I love those !" Impulse was still munching happily, the candy present in the bowl was still untouched so he must have had other mysterious candy caches.

"I time-traveled from the future and when I arrived the only person I knew, my grandfather, was presumed dead so I had nowhere I could call home, until my mentor took me in."

"You know you have an open invite for any past, current or future safehouses I own." Red Robin assured him.  Impulse was apparently well aware of this fact, as he responded by nodding distractedly. 

"Everybody forgot about my existence when the timeline restarted without me and I brought Reese Cups"

"I didn't."

"I know you didn't, you probably prepared for this years ago with your freaky bat mind powers and paranoia." Superboy laughed.

"I never fit in with the rest of the Wonder Woman legacy heroines because I'm not an amazonian and I didn't know Zeus the Greek God was my father until I was a teenager. I brought Haribo crocodile candy." Wonder Girl waved the candy around. 

"My now ex-girlfriend sold me out to a guy that was obsessed with being my nemesis and blew me up in a warehouse so I would become the "best Robin I could be" and then took on the mantle herself when I quit and died/faked her death in it to actually physically haunt me months later while I was still grieving her. And I brought those Cola gummies." 

Impulse nodded. 

"Uh uh, that's why we have to veto your partners now."

Superboy added. "We leave you unattended for an hour and you try to shack up with a gang leader or a cult leader."

Wonder Girl grimaced. "I wouldn't say that about the Demon's Head."

Impulse clarified helpfully for the panicking hero and villain community alike, anyone who was in the know, really. "No, he's talking about the Cobra Cult leader." It wasn’t much more reassuring but it was still Impulse talking.

Superboy smirked evilly, a facial expression that reminded people who was his second genitor. "Man, d'ya think this is going to piss off Red Hood ? "Copying him again." Maybe It'll get him to go after Spoiler or Batman. I'm not picky either way."

"Backtothegameguys... heh dramatic irony, I get to remind you to focus now!" His speech slowed down to say. "My mentor died, and I didn't have time to mourn him because I had to play space baseball to save a planet from colonization and also Earth. Then I had to watch our bike/car reproduce with another one because I always click on the big red button, and it was the first time I saw porn."

"This explains so much about you." Wonder Girl breathed out. 

"Also, I brought Jolly Ranchers !"

Superboy and Red Robin were wheezing, spread on the sofa, making up a large, indiscernible mountain of limbs as they wore the same colors. 

When Superboy finally stopped laughing, he continued. 

"When everybody forgot about me, I had a wife and child in another dimension that I lost. And I brought Twizzler gummies !"

Wonder Girl had lost her smile and looked more neutral.

"My boys either died or went on an international rampage and almost died during that too and I joined a cult to try to bring them back. Werther's Original." She poured the caramels into the bowl. 

“Did you know that this was the worst case scenario ? It was literally my worst nightmare when Granny Goodness tortured us ? I never told you but I watched SB get decapitated and you burn to death.” He said laughing. 

Wonder Girl started laughing too, a genuine laugh. When you were the only survivors of your hero team, you quickly found coping mechanisms that made you even more codependent. But Tim liked to call it elite bonding, it sounded better and it also made Bart and Kon jealous rather than annoyingly concerned.

"I guess it's my turn again. And I'll be opening that can of worms !" Red smirked, wiggling a packet of worm gummies. (Somewhere else, Nightwing shed a manly tear of pride and Batman felt the impending sense of doom that signaled that his children's chaos was afoot.)

Everybody groaned though nobody watching this Tik Tok other than Young Just Us members (former and current) could tell if it was due to the miserable pun or the mysterious can of worms itself. 

"Every future or alternate version of me I've ever met has been evil and one of them shot down my baby brother and best friend like dogs. Two centenarian evil assassins megalomaniacs have tried to groom me into being the heir of their cult and it keeps me up at night, what they see in me." Red Robin was still smiling but his right eyelid was twitching. 

This time it was Superboy that visibly tried to keep his mouth shut. He had a lot of opinions about Tim's goodness and none where he agreed with him.

"Because of time travel laws that I'm not gonna explain right now because Rob said it would take too much time, I can never see my mom or my dad again ! And I brought Swedish fish ? Swedish fishes ?"

"Since I'm a rape baby/clone, I didn't know if I had a soul for a good while. And I brought Mars chocolate bars." Superboy poured the chocolate bars into the bowl with a bit too much aggression. Tim had lots to say about that and none of what he wanted to say agreed with Kon.

"I walked in on Rob trying to clone Superboy for the 99th time in the Titans Tower's basement and he kissed me to distract me. It worked. I brought Sour Patch Kids." Wonder Girl looked done and tired with everything. 

"Classic Rob" Superboy chuckled, surprising heroes and civilians alike who knew Wonder Girl was his girlfriend back then and also who had just heard about the clone thing. "Manwhore if you can't Mansplain or Manslaughter, right ? I bet it's an actual contingency with every fancy word you can use to make it sound better in your head."

"Shut up." Red Robin's blush under his mask, very visible on his pale skin, attenuated his already weak retort.

Impulse snorted in his hand. "Really, Rob looks so angelic, responsible and virginal compared to SB but we all know who is the real manwhore. It's so funny when everyone falls for the act."

Wonder Girl tried to stifle her laughter. "He gets it from his Daddy. For sure. Wonder Woman has stories."

"Shut uppp. I should add this to the trauma candy salad." The so-called manwhore muttered, ears still red.

"Whose turn is it now anyways ?"

"I know you're trying to change the subject but I'll allow it this time." Wonder Girl declared with a regal bearing that was only half acted. 

"And I know you're calling me out every chance you get since you fell for it that one time." Red Robin smirked.

"He got you there." Impulse shrugged.

"Shut up." Wonder Girl gritted, ears red, her regal bearing long gone. 

"Everybody knows you can't silence the ref. It's against “freedom of the press” or something. Tell her Rob." Superboy added with a shit-eating grin. 

"Ugh, too much testosterone in this room. Imp. Time for the girls." She snapped her fingers. Before she even began her sentence, Impulse got up from his designated spot on the couch on which he never sat still for longer than a second to run grab what looked like a list. He came back before she finished uttering the rest of the sentence out loud.

He handed her the list.

"Since not everyone could or wanted to come film this. We still had to include them- because you can't quit this team after joining, that's in the rules Impulse added in the background- by reading some of their trauma out loud and sending them the corresponding candy via Impulse." Wonder Girl declared. "Impulse will also be the one to read this list."

"A government agency that takes care of meta kids and has several ads playing on national TV channels, kidnapped me and tortured me for days because they didn't believe I had rights and my team had to bomb Mount Rushmore to save me."

The team was glaring at the camera. Tim noted to send them the new virus, GayFemboys, who had gotten his namesake courtesy of Steph. It had been too long since he had done that and he doubted their systems were at full capacity or even running smoothly yet but who cared ?

"My presumed dead grandfather killed my mom and my dad (on two separate occasions) then made me a teenage parent statistic." 

Tim could almost hear Anita's bored voice narrating this for him. Also, ew. It sounded even worse formulated like this, Tim knew Anita had done it on purpose, dirtying her grandfather's reputation postmortem was a thing she loved to do. That’s why they got along so well.

"I caused a huge legislative campaign against teen heroes because I was angry nobody took seriously the police reports made by a future femicide victim, even though they had documented threats her would-be murderer made before he acted on said threats in their records."

"Nightwing suggested I could go to therapy in Metropolis after I told him our dad wasn't actually dead. I was right too by the way." Red Robin had never shown such a negative reaction for arguably worse offenses. Fellow Gothamites would understand though and it assured that Nightwing would be canceled (again) for at least two months. 

Served him right. Tim thought, hiding a smirk. That would teach him to borrow Redbird without permission. Not like he would have given him permission but still one had to ask. Even Damian agreed with him ! And yes he had apologised but had this ever helped someone when escaping their siblings’ wrath?

"Seriously, that Gotham pride is somehow the least concerning thing about you guys." Wonder Girl sighed.

"We can agree that it stinks though right ?" Superboy repeated.

"Who could ever go willingly to Gotham ?" Impulse asked, taking a handful of candy.

"I think, there was a time, before I was born, where Metropolis had to evacuate to Gotham because the city was split into two because my bio parents were fighting. Never happened again, I can tell you." Superboy assured.  

"There's a Russian businessman who bought the local Hockey Team. He followed me there willingly to do crime." Red Robin argued, getting defensive and offended the way any Gothamite did when an outsider would shit-talk their city.

He crossed his arms as Superboy burst a gut laughing. Impulse was taking notes and Wonder Girl was holding the bridge of her nose, bracing for the upcoming headache. 

"It's not the same Rob. You release something that makes them do even crazier things like going regularly to Gotham to join your growing weirdly possessive villainous harem." 

Impulse was now wearing glasses, on top of his bulky goggles. He always deemed them necessary for his "teaching moments".

“I still don’t release pheromones, Imp.” Red Robin repeated tiredly, dragging a hand on his face. It was obviously not the first time they had this talk.

"No, it's because he's so annoying." Wonder Girl argued. 

Superboy was now lying on the ground, unable to speak since he was still wheezing and seemingly out of breath. Could a Kryptonian even get out of breath and energy this quickly? Tim made a mental note to get more testing done and maybe ask Kon when he wasn't on the ground anymore. 

"I'm a little brother, it's in my veins. You know that."

"Yes, I do know that. Please do not show me any more powerpoints with Sword Robin as the only case study. Please." Her voice sounded drained and imploring, yet her tone was firm.

"Yipee. Powerpoint night next !"

An unknown person turned off the camera as Impulse was pulled into Wonder Girl and Red Robin's bickering. Superboy would surely be dragged in too as soon as he recovered from his laughing fit.  

Chapter Text

Anita turns off the camera, making sure to be sneaky so the camera wouldn’t catch sight of her. 

She didn’t want Uncle Ishido to think that Empress was back in the game yet. 

It was in her life plans for sure.

In that near, beautiful future where she could leave home as she pleased without her parents screaming the house down because they would be too busy with Kindergarten. 

She knew that Tim, that neurotic mess, had plenty to say (and none good) about her decision to keep the same hours as a housewife who only got “downtime" when her kids were in school but Tim hadn’t spent months changing dirty diapers. 

Sure he had helped plenty with babysitting and was basically the godfather (as had the rest of her best friends) but it wasn’t the same. 

Stubborn as they were, Young Justice would never have let her deal with that mess alone like she feared in her darkest hours.

Plus, Tim still felt guilty about that year he cut contact with everyone to chase the ghost of his presumed dead father and take on all the assassins in the world in a murdering competition where he was the target (and Lord hadn’t that given her a heart attack when a contact had tipped her off!)

It’s not like Anita didn’t intimately understand doing crazy stupid shit instead of mourning her father like a normal person or anything. 

It wasn’t like Tim was the last of the boys in their ragtag team, the only one who hadn’t died (Slobo, Conner and Bart) or left the team (Ray and Snapper though she wouldn’t call him a boy per se).

So Anita didn’t feel the slightest guilt when she used his guilt to her advantage. 

Never to force him into something he truly didn’t want (not like he’d let her if she tried) but more as a form of encouragement. 

It was how she had managed to assure his presence tonight after all.

Anita was always surprised by the grip Gotham had on her citizens. 

She clinged to her vigilantes the hardest, like a jealous mistress who hated to see her man leave her to sleep next to his lawfully wedded wife.

Anita knew that Cassie had thought that Batman was the reason Tim wasn't spending more time breathing in fresh air outside of that grim city but she had always known that Gotham was the biggest obstacle to their Tim time. 

Anita knew because she had lived through it. Her Nana hadn't left the bayou her whole life even if it meant that her crazy ex-husband knew where she was the whole time. 

Younger Anita hadn't understood. She had even resented her for it when she had learned about everything after her father's death. Then she had hated herself even more for thinking that of the woman who had raised her and raised her up.

Anita knew that not even death had kept some vigilantes in his team out of the streets of Gotham. They kept going back every time like moths to a flame no matter how badly they got burned. 

Anita knew that the others were thinking the same so they did their best to drag Tim out of Gotham often before she consumed him too much. 

It worked for his need to compartmentalize every single thing in his life so he didn’t complain much. 

Not like they would have let Tim put them in small separate cases but Anita thought that this was more like a subconscious reflex to Tim now. 

Greta’s first love had been Tim.

He had just been so kind. He had nice hair and an even nicer laugh and gentle hands.

He was the prince she used to dream about after her nice foster mom had read her Cinderella as a bedtime story. 

The one who would ride his white horse to take her away from her next foster home (who was less nice) like an avenging angel and then they would live happily ever after. 

They would have a nice house with three children who would be best friends and a pet. (She didn’t know yet if she wanted a dog or a cat.)

And she got her wish. She had a home and parents that loved her a lot before Billy ruined everything. 

Greta had learned that love wasn’t supposed to hurt.

Tim had saved her and believed her over the adults who were hurting her. He had lied to their faces with no hesitation for her and she fell in love immediately.

She would always be in love with him a little.  

She was happy to be alive and a normal girl again but she had never felt so impotent, so weak as she did when her best friends had died or left her behind.

She had spent countless sleepless nights, plagued by nightmares and what ifs. If she had kept her powers would they still be alive? Would she see them again anyway?

Then they came back and didn't leave her behind like she was afraid they would since she had left the team and had no powers anymore.

They kept texting her on their groupchat and dropping by her dorm to see her at least once a week and organizing those slumber parties where you couldn't be the first one to fall asleep if you didn't want to wake up with a moustache and a monocle.

Greta couldn't stop herself from smiling the whole night even if she wanted to.

Cissie started reading aloud, not looking up from her phone. "Young Justice is trending first internationally. Red Robin is number 2. A LOT of people outside of the US apparently thought Gotham didn't exist."

"What?"

"They thought that it was a Florida man thing except it was fake so now everybody's looking at the #OnlyInGotham hashtag differently. Oh! And they liked the clone thing. I think." She continues, less sure of herself. 

"Rule Number 1 : don't tell Rob about a problem if you don't want him to fix it like right now." Bart says, running to pull out his notebook and blackboard from their hiding spot in case his friends needed a visual example. Of course, he was sporting his "Goggles of Knowledge" and a lab coat that Cissie was pretty sure was the lab coat she had used in her freshman science class in highschool. 

He started drawing surprisingly accurate cartoonish despictions of her and Tim and she knew she had to stop him before Tim steepled his fingers and got into his mind palace to investigate what was going on on the internet right now. 

"Does your family even know about the clones?" 

Tim opens his mouth to speak.

"Other than us." Cissie says because she knows her friend like the back of her hand. 

His mouth closes with a click.

"Dick might know? I don't remember if i told him specifically about the cloning attempts but he was here for the Lazarus pit experiments." He shrugs.  

She looks at him silently.

"Do you know how crazy you sound sometimes?"

“Do we think Old Justice is gonna come out of retirement for this?” Greta asks anxiously. 

“Don’t worry Greta, my tactile telekinesis and these sweet muscles are going to take care of the problem before it even becomes a problem. ” Kon brags, flexing his muscles ostentatiously. 

“You’d fight a grandma?” Anita asks, bemused. 

“And lose.” Bart adds happily. Tim, the traitor, gives him a high five. 

Kon protests loudly but no one listens to his very valid arguments. 

"Yeah I thought you were done with your macho toxic masculinity phase." Cassie observes.  

"It's not my fault they were on steroids !" He yells.

“They beat your ass last time. I know because I was there next to you, filming everything." Tim announces like he is already anticipating what Kon's going to say to defend his honor.

Cassie turns around to look at him, confused. 

Tim taps his temple. "My mask automatically begins recording when there's movement. That beatdown's probably stored somewhere on the Batcomputer."

Kon pouts as all of his friends rudely laugh at him. Even Greta is hiding a smile behind her hand. 

"Danny just sent me a "winky face" emoji."  Tim says, confused. 

Bart immediately snatches his phone under the girls' orders. Tim doesn't fight back. He's used to it at this point and his friends had made the excellent point that it would be unfair and dangerous if the lack of privacy was only one-sided.

They technically weren't supposed to check their phones tonight but Tim was convinced that the world would explode (which is kind of valid, when you thought about the weekly Arkham breakouts even if Cissie's never going to tell him that out loud) if he relaxed for a second so they allowed him to check his phone periodically.

Though this is obviously an exception because her favorite show is now on : Tim's messy love life.

Anita had made a bingo card and Cissie was going to win.

She already had crossed cases she didn't think she would get (Love square where a villain's in love with the civilian identity of the hero they hate and keep trying to kill) so she was pretty confident about her odds. 

Maybe this could finally help her cross the "Consort of a powerful (most likely evil) organisation/group" case. 

“Someone made a two hours video essay on why you would be an omega.” Anita says dryly. 

“It has 1M views on Youtube already.” Greta adds, almost shyly. 

“Bart just tweeted about it on his official account.” Cissie continues, not bothering to lift her eyes from her phone to look at Tim’s face, who was definitely sporting the throbbing vein and the twitching in his left eye that he got when he was so mad he couldn’t speak by now. 

Still, she snaps a quick picture. Tim’s diverse and broad spectrum of facial expressions make for very good reaction images. Cissie knows she’s not the only one in their merry band to collect them like pokemon cards. 

Twisting Bart’s neck had never looked and felt (Tim was an overachiever and he lived in Gotham) so good as it did in the five seconds he had closed his eyes to let himself imagine doing just that in an effort to calm himself down and prevent himself from actually acting on his very pressing urges. 

Tim could understand why Bart had cartoonish visual thoughts now. It was very satisfying. 

He was so tempted by Lobo’s whole “frag first-ask questions later” (which of course meant never with him) ideology right now. 

Tim had always advocated for negotiating before resorting to violence with villains like Ivy who were capable of redemption and introspection but leave it to Bart to ruin his whole life philosophy. 

Future Tim (or Gun Batman like they called him) had probably been pushed to the brink of insanity by the clone version of his Bart. 

His version of snapping simply involved more subjugation and Orwellian surveillance than the usual burnout. 

After all of this, Bart still had the audacity to keep being the only one out of them on the good side! 

Tim bet he regretted going out of his way to clone him now! 

“Bart and Kon will never come back if you…”. Miss him with the bullshit. Tim hadn’t been born yesterday. 

Hell, Tim had two decades less of living as Bart’s best friend than Gun Batman and he already regretted looking too closely at suspiciously big feet on that fateful school trip. 

Tim should have focused on skiing and minded his own business for once instead of immediately registering that ginger kid with hair that was too big to be normal and suspiciously big feet as Impulse. 

His friends say that he's "immune to plot armor". Tim says that his brain keeps making deviant connections that nobody else even thinks of making and he wants to be rid of both right now. 

(He wondered if having abnormally large feet was a speedster thing. 

Counterargument :  Mr. Allen and Wally had normal sized feet for their age and gender. 

But they also hadn’t been born with speedster powers like Bart had. Maybe it was an extremely rapid case of evolution ? 

Tim felt that if anyone would and could violate the rules of evolution by physically adapting to their environment millennia in advance, it would be the speedsters who constantly played with the timestream like a fiddle. 

He would ask Bart to participate in an experiment later, when he wasn’t so mad that he wanted to suffocate him with his stupid fluffy hair.)

Excerpt from “The Boys” Podcast : 

“If you want my opinion, it’s obvious that Batman is the alpha of the pack and to train his successors and get rid of the weak links, he makes them all battle for dominance.

It determines their rank in the hierarchy and the respect and trust he chooses to give them. Something we should ALL be doing. People, let’s look at the results and cold hard facts and stop being so gullible and emotional. With this method, you get jacked, healthy alpha men who can crush metahumans like the bugs they are and pretty much survive anything. I would even go as far to say that not giving your kids every chance to survive in fucking Gotham is abusive and you snowflakes can quote me on that.”

“Are you talking about omegaverse or actual wolves? Either way you’re wrong, the wildlife researcher that coined that term debunked it long ago and canonically in the A/B/O universe…

They’re dyeing their hair (well only Cissie and Tim are dyeing their hair and maybe Greta if she manages to talk herself into getting some pink highlights) and chatting. Bart is running around, bringing the temperature down (dyeing her hair makes her all hot and sweaty for some reason) but he mostly does it to help with Kon’s sensitive nose. 

Kon hated the smell, too harsh for his Kryptonian senses but he never left the room when they were dyeing their hair. 

Cassie understood perfectly.  It was nothing short of a miracle to have them back again in one room. 

She had prayed and fought and hoped for this miracle but sometimes it was hard to take it all in. 

They were there. Then they weren’t anymore. 

She has lost a part of her that she would never get back. It would never be the same. 

She’d never get back that Cassie with star-studded eyes who had demanded that Zeus give her powers and fought like nothing could bring her to her knees. 

Cassie had kneeled in prayer a lot that year. She had screamed and raged and cried to the skies, to her father, to bring them back home. 

Her grief had torn her apart then it had built her back again, piece by piece, like a puzzle with mismatched pieces. 

Though Kon had acted like everything was cool (his last word had literally been “cool”, she was still mad just thinking about it) she could see that he thought the same. 

It was hard to take her eyes off them again, not with that nagging, constant fear that everyone would disappear again if she blinked. 

She wouldn’t survive that again. 

“I’m so glad you’re back and that we’re doing this again. It was so hard to survive with Tim hogging the aux with his emo music.” She couldn’t resist poking fun at Tim.

“Hey!”

Bart was already pulling a chart and statistics he had made about Tim’s Spotify account. 

Only Greta was still listening to the spiel they had literally heard hundreds of times before (Bart liked to stage interventions when he noticed the slightest change in their musical taste) but Greta was also always happy to talk to somebody. 

Cassie clenched her fists at the thought. She wondered what would convince Tim to vandalize a DEO property again. With bombs maybe. 

Scratch that, Tim was easily convinced when it came to revenge stuff. It was with Cissie that she would struggle. 

“You literally don’t have room to talk. You listen to country music unironically.” Tim says, crossing his arms. 

“Hey! It’s catchy. And I don’t “only listen to country music”. I was literally in a band !” Kon defends himself weakly. 

They’ve had this argument countless times before and he had never won. 

Usually, it was because the rest of his friends got dragged in and ganged up on him, divided in everything but apparently united in their hate for country music. 

Cissie was snacking on the candy while Anita was braiding her hair so she would sleep with braids in? 

Bart had already asked why (and a million other questions) and Tim had said it was to wake up with wavy to curly hair and that it was also a “protective hairstyle”? 

Kon didn’t know why hair had to be protected but he also (thankfully) had never lost a hair in his life unless he took heat vision or kryptonite and scissors to it. 

“Aren’t you on a diet?” Anita asks, raising an eyebrow. 

“I know I told you to keep me in check but we can’t do a candy challenge and NOT eat the candy that comes with it.” Cissie groans. 

“And your mom wouldn’t approve.” Cassie adds.

“That too. But mostly Timothy here bought my favorite treat.” Cissie glares at Tim who shrugs and sends her a wave and an guileless smile. 

“Damian just sent me a message.” Tim squints. “Smiley face but I know where you live and I’m going to slit your throat. Oh, it’s a death treat actually, makes more sense.”

“No Rob, he’s quoting a meme at you.” Bart says. “You almost got the whole meme too, it was so satisfying.”

“It actually makes more sense because he literally wrote “smiley face”.”

“And you were going to let that slide.” Kon asks judgmentally, outraged on his behalf and also the behalf of cool elder brothers everywhere.

“I thought it was an assassin thing.” Tim says defensively. 

“Oh so now you’re outraged ?” Cissie throws up her arms in the air and screams in frustration. 

It was so isolating to be the only therapy-going, medicated friend in her friend group sometimes. 

“Did you know that-” Bart says, barely holding back his excitement. 

Cassie holds back a groan. It never ended well when Bart began his sentences with that dreaded ‘did you know’ no matter how cute his enthusiasm to share new information looked. 

She should never have let him set foot in that library but hindsight is 20/20. 

The responsible thing would be to shut that down but she was his friend before she was his leader so she'd deal with the problems this caused later. 

Too many people Bart loved had tried to stifle his excitement because they found him too much, too overwhelming for their tastes.

And Cassie would never want to be part of that list even if it made her a leader Donna and Diana and Artemis would be proud of. 

“Did you know that humans actually can't tell if water is wet?”

They stare at him, some more befuddled than others. Bart loves to share things and get that reaction (a reaction at all to be honest). 

“Yeah, they don't actually have hygroreceptors like fruit flies or Kon do. Humans can only tell that it's cold and feel the pressure and sensations water makes them feel. And really it's only thanks to previous experiences that we know that it's water!”

Here’s the trap. The mine field. The TNT warning sign you didn't see until it was too late unless you had plenty of experience wrangling Bart.

His dubious experiments that Tim was just as likely to support as he was likely to shut down. It was a coin’s toss really. 

The others would be of no help. 

They either found it too funny to do anything or didn’t want to get involved for one reason or another. 

“I wonder if hypothetically… Waterboarding somebody who has no previous experience with water, is different from regular water boarding.” Bart ends up blurting out.  

Cassie maintains prolonged eye contact like Bart is a weeping angel that’s about to massacre them all where they stand (It’s a great simile! He does tend to vanish the moment you take your eyes off him.) and says firmly, emulating Diana as best as she can. 

“Bart. Look at me. Don't look at Tim. He's not going to save you. We are not water boarding a baby.” 

Bart opens his mouth to protest. He wasn't suggesting that and everything was hypothetical anyway. 

Everybody knew you didn't punish or argue with someone when they said it was hypothetical first! 

“Or someone with amnesia.” 

Bart opens his mouth again. She shushes him by physically placing a finger on his mouth. 

“We aren't giving you cranial damage so you can test that theory either. I don't care how fast your healing process is.” 

Bart shuts his mouth. 

Tim is so glad he isn’t the leader anymore. 

He found his calling in throwing stupidly dangerous ideas to plans of attack so brilliant they’re a strategist's wet dream at Cassie who has to sort them out before they get too antsy and with their go-to option : no plan at all. 

Cassie glares at him like she knows what he’s thinking. 

"The children aren't answering their phones." Diana shakes her head.

The whole Justice League had been called to handle the incoming PR crisis that could quickly get the US governement on their back.

Clark thought that Lex had probably prayed and salivated over an opportunity like this. 

Shamefully, if he hadn't gotten to know Conner better and consider him a son (a son-like figure?), he would have thought that this was another typical Lex scheme. 

"I found it quite funny." Arthur declares. 

"It is sometimes better to make light of a grim situation." J'onn nods in agreement. 

"Easy to say that when you're not personally concerned by this." Barry snaps, messing with his hair -more like pulling out his hair out of stress really.

Iris had alerted him about this, this morning, and he had gained at least three gray hairs more since then.

He was only thirty and already getting grey hair because of children he didn't even have yet! When Bart had arrived in this century and called him "grandpa" he didn't expect that he would work his hardest to make him look the part. 

Hal was guffawing at them (he was lucky that his mentee had retired) so Barry would certainly not be the one to tell him that Batman was clenching and unclenching his fists repeatedly at the sound. He was a hero but he wasn't that charitable.

Kyle had never imagined that he would receive a lecture about omegaverse from BATMAN out of the trillion of people this galaxy housed. He couldn't tell if this was the best or worst day of his life.

In any case, he was extremely grateful to Young Justice for their service to humanity, even if, now he didn't want to have children even more than before. 

Red Tornado looked perfectly normal and at ease and Cyborg didn't know if it was the lack of facial expressions that came with being a robot or if he was just that used to dealing with the teenagers he had mentored. 

He was still mad and stunned that his first crisis as a member of the Justice League had been a Young Justice special.

He wondered if they had done this on purpose (Their "parting words" during the farewell party they had thrown for him at the Tower had been quite ominous now that he was thinking about it.) or if the Titans and their bullshit were just destined to haunt him for the rest of his natural life. 

Green Arrow was still stunned, stuck to his seat, when Batman and Superman had left (something about Gotham and Superman's boss calling him away for an opportunity to do damage control).

When he snaps out of it, he feels vindicated. He had always known that the "Batkids" had been the bad influence on his kids no matter how much Bruce insisted the contrary.

Still, he knew it wouldn't help him at all in convincing Roy and Connor to break off their friendships with Jason and Tim. His kids barely listened to him as is. 

Stephanie hadn’t watched the full video. She had been distracted by Batman’s health crisis (the drama queen) then Damian had put a sword through the wall because he was the target of his older siblings's "care" in the absence of the younger sibling who had actually caused this debacle.

She pitied him. Dick and Cass had been insufferable with their hovering and particularly chatty mood. Thankfully she wasn't their main victim. That "honor" went to Damian who was currently glaring at Dick's arms on his shoulder like they were metal chains he'd rather chew off to free himself from their diatribes.

Duke was mainly staying out of this shitshow. When he wasn't, it was to rub in Dick's face how he was his favorite little brother's favorite brother with a smug smile. Stephanie had seen Dick walk off a bullet in the head with less pain and devastation in his eyes. 

When Batman wasn't brooding on a gargoyle he was harassing Barbara so she would agree to track Tim for him.

Barbara refused everytime. She said it was because he was acting entitled and impolite but she had told Steph in secret that she was too entertained to stop him.

"It changes from the scandals I have to scrub off the web. Cleaning after Batman after a birdwatcher catches him and Catwoman on a rooftop is frankly getting tiring. If you lot have to start a controversy it better be like this one." She had looked very amused and pleased with Tim like she thought he had done this as a gift of goodwill to her. 

Even the Red Hood had showed up at the cave in the middle of the day to literally point fingers at Batman and laugh at him "now that his Golden boy had gone rogue". 

"Be wary to end up a fuckup middle child like Timmy and I." He had smirked at Damian. His version of a lecture she imagined. 

She sympathized with the youngest bat's predicament but it was also very entertaining to watch him be smothered with lectures and "life lessons" when he had literally done nothing to deserve it for once and try his hardest not to snap in return. 

His rant had been so entertaining that she couldn’t hold back her laugh anymore.

Thus he had turned his ire on her and chased her down until Nightwing intervened.

From what she had last seen, Nightwing had managed to calm him down and he was now sitting on the game room couch and scrolling on his phone with a scowl, occasionally muttering insults to himself. 

She was still catching her breath when she realized she hadn’t watched the whole video, too distracted by other people's reactions to it. She took out her phone to remediate the issue immediately.

Nobody had defended her. She thought she was cool with Cassie, Conner and Bart. That they could become friends too. She wasn't drowing in invitations to become friends with other teenagers after all.

She scoffs. She’d forgotten how a furious Superboy had dangled her over the void, holding by her grapple line because she had the audacity to become Robin after Saint Tim. 

He had only freed her when Batman had grappled by. 

“A girl playing pretend in the Robin suit.” He had said, looking at her like she was the dirty used gum on the sole of his shoe. 

After patrol had been cut short, she ran to her room and tore her Superboy poster down, ripping it into tiny, therapeutic pieces. Never meet your heroes.   

Oh. Well it explained the nasty look and shoulder check Jason had given her down in the Batcave. 

She thought he was pissy because Tim’s little guard dogs were threatening him. 

It also explained why Duke kept glancing at her like he had never seen her before and turning around and playing dead when she looked back at him. 

When he came to get the brat off her, Dick had been less friendly than usual, talking to her in clipped, snappy words and a look she didn’t understand (he had acted like taking off the gremlin from her hands was a chore.).

Of course, they wouldn’t take her side. She wasn’t family like Tim was.

It was normal for a family to protect of one of their members against outsiders. 

It didn’t make it hurt less. She had wiped off any sting with a smile when Damian had told her to stop being a leech and go home because she wasn’t wanted there. Or when Batman had fired and refused to train her because he didn’t think she was good enough, as good as Tim fucking Drake.

It wasn’t healthy to resent your boyfriend because his dad thought he was better than you in every aspect and it was even worse to drag him into a competition that she would never win. 

She knew that. She just thought that Tim had forgiven her.

She was angry at him. It was just like Tim to make you think he had forgotten/forgiven you before blowing up on you when you least expected it. 

She pulls out her phone, ready to tell him what she really thought of him and his repressed bitchy emotions. 

As she’s looking for his number in her contacts app, a notification appears.

It’s one of those automatic notifications Barbara had created. It pings you when a large number of people talk about your alter ego.

It’s a Reddit notification. She’s curious to know what people think. Surely, they would see how crazily anal Tim was acting and take her side?

r/ao3

[DISCUSSION] SUPERBOY x RED ROBIN ship name suggestions (LINK)
submitted 15 minutes ago by acitrusylemon
2M Comments share report

r/NoStupidQuestions

[VIDEO] What could be the consequences of this tiktok by young hero team Young Justice ? (legal or otherwise) (LINK)
submitted 9 minutes ago by aconcernedcitizen
115M Comments share report

r/WorldProblems

[VENT] I don’t even know what to say. It’s so scary how child endangerment is normalized and glorified because they have powers. We already have the first testimonies coming in. (LINK)
submitted 15 minutes ago by Dr.Albert
7.2M Comments share report

r/AmItheVillain

[Discussion] Does your girlfriend blowing you up count as DV and if yes, should we trust Spoiler to protect us if she’s willing to do that to her loved ones? (LINK)
submitted 15 minutes ago by RustyAcorn103
 28.6M Comments share report

Nightwing’s apparently been canceled on the Gotham subreddit. She snickers at that. Karma's a bitch.

The comments roll in. She feels nauseous. How could they think of her like that. She wasn’t like her father, she was good. She had worked herself to the bone to be good. 

She can’t take her eyes off her phone, scrolling through every comment and reply to “RustyAcorn103”’s post. 

Nobody’s on her side. In fact, the rare people who are, are trolls who get downvoted and insulted to oblivion. 

She bolts home. Alfred doesn’t say goodbye when she passes him. 

“How much do you wanna bet that Spoiler's going to call Tim to scream at him?” Kon asks with a smirk. 

“Why would Steph do that? Also she goes by Batgirl now. Be careful because she will bite your head off if you call her anything other than that.” Tim replies, confused.

“I don’t know, I always liked your sister better as Batgirl.” Kon shrugs. 

Tim watches in shock as his friends start to bet immediately. 

He knew there was no love lost between Steph and Greta. 

It was hard not to notice when Greta had tried to kill Steph twice but he had no idea that the rest of his best friends hated her that much.

“Cassie?” Tim asks faintly. 

Tim was shocked to see her be one of the first to participate. Cassie was usually the only other reasonable person in the room he could commiserate with. 

She shrugs with a sheepish smile.

“I don’t hate her. I just don’t think she’s good for you.” Good enough for you. She wanted to say instead but she also didn’t want to have this fight with Tim now.

Tim squints at her with suspicion, almost like he also knows what she wanted to really say. 

“It rubbed her the wrong way when she called herself your “girl best friend” when she called us to recruit us for that intervention she wanted to give you.” Cissie snitches straight away, in between mouthfuls of a Twizzler. 

“Cassie’s jealous!” Bart sing-songs, running laps around Cassie who looks increasingly annoyed but also bashful?

It’s been so long that Tim hadn’t seen Cassie exude anything other than total confidence.

And it happens in such a harmless, benign situation that nostalgia hits him like a truck. 

He lets it go. It’s clearly not that important. 

People don’t get along all the time and it’s not like it’s going to be a problem with his best friends scattered in every American city but Gotham, the one that Steph basically never leaves.

Greta opens her mouth to tell Tim that they all lied to him and had actually started veto-ing his partners because of Spoiler. 

She feels guilty that he’s the only one out of the loop but Anita manages to talk her down. 

Tim doesn’t notice, too busy teasing Cassie good-naturedly.  

This totally won’t have any repercussions.