#1. She is exactly the kind of girl that would rob a museum because Bruce wasn’t answering her texts and she wanted to get his attention…
At this point he doesn’t even try to lecture her, he just shows up with, “Sorry, I was stuck in a pocket dimension for the last week” or “Sorry, Nigma’s been on a spree the last two days”.
Listen, y’all, one time there was a rash of break-ins at jewelry stores in Metropolis that completely puzzled Clark, because while the jewelry displays were often rearranged, nothing ever came up missing. Mostly, the burglar just seemed annoying.
And then, one of the stores winds up with footage of Catwoman smiling and waving at the security camera while parading around the store wearing various necklaces. (There were a couple of pieces she thought about walking away with, but Superman wouldn’t turn a blind eye like Bruce does, so she left them be.)
Clark tracks Bruce down halfway across the world to yell at him. “Answer your DAMN PHONE!”
you can’t say “i know batman” and get away with it in gotham. “i saw batman last night”? plausible. he uses roofs and balconies more than actual solid ground so yeah, you probably did see him. “he was only five feet away from me at the central plaza when the bomb got defused”? so was half of the city because the joker decided christmas eve was the best time for an explosion. but, “i know batman”? are you sure? are you sure you know batman? does anyone really know batman? maybe batman doesn’t know batman, the layers of secrecy on that guy are thicker than that time the gotham river got filled with dense tart sauce but the authorities thought it was blood
meanwhile in metropolis, “i ate a burrito with superman” is probably met with “you didn’t bring him to your grandma’s for that sunday roast i know she rocks? what is wrong with you? i baked him cookies while he was telling me about his mom’s cooking. how could you treat him like that, jennifer, the guy saves us from brainiac every two weeks”
(L O O K i know this is not even remotely a response to the prompt of ‘bruce wayne gets railed by huge demon dicks’ but also you are all terrible sinners and this is quite frankly a best-case scenario)
It was easy to follow the path of the ratty brown trenchcoat traveling through tuxedos and gowns.
“Wayne! What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Bruce had been watching him stomp his way up the stairs, and had made no effort to meet him, standing and sipping at his champagne. “John!” he greeted, too cheerful to ever be genuine. “Glad to see you got your invitation.”
“Yes, I know I wasn’t — what?” Constantine stopped in his tracks with a frown. “What invitation?”
“Your invitation,” Bruce said, gesturing to all assembled. “To the party. Which I assume you accepted, since you’re here. I knew you’d have to show up to one of them, eventually.”
“I don’t…”
The facts were these:
Bruce Wayne had apparently invited John Constantine to a party despite having no reason to believe it was necessary or desired.
‘One of them, eventually’ suggested that he had invited John to many such parties.
A party was often the easiest time to find and corner Bruce Wayne, when he couldn’t go handcuffing anyone to anything with ridiculous bat-shaped handcuffs.
John never expected or waited for invitations to parties.
Bruce could not possibly have been monitoring John’s activities closely enough to know when he ought to invite him to a party.
Therefore:
Bruce Wayne had been sending John Constantine invitations to every party he had thrown in the last six years, for the express purpose of ensuring that John could never have the satisfaction of crashing a posh party uninvited.
The pull at the corner of Bruce’s mouth suggested that he knew that John knew what Bruce had done, and this knowledge of his knowledge pleased him inordinately. He sipped at his champagne.
“Do you know who it is that you were just flirting with?” Constantine asked, returning to his original reason for talking to the man at all.
Bruce’s eyebrow only barely moved higher than the other. “I don’t know that I would say that I was flirting, necessarily,” Bruce said.
“Oh, I know what you look like when you’re flirting,” John reminded him, and Bruce’s eyes flitted away back over the crowd. “You were flirting.” Bruce shrugged. “Did you even catch his name?”
The corners of Bruce’s mouth turned ever-so-slightly downward, a twitch in his brow that wasn’t a furrow. His champagne flute drifted away from his mouth. “I don’t think I did,” he said, and this admission of his oversight was said with the awestruck manner that most people reserved for a glimpse of the divine.
Appropriately enough.
“You’ve been flirting with the Devil,” Constantine informed him, in as blunt of terms as he could manage.
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” Bruce said. “I haven’t seen Talia in months.”
John huffed, grabbing Bruce by the arm and pulling him toward the railing overlooking the ballroom. “Not the metaphorical devil,” he said. “I mean Lucifer, the Fallen, Prince of Lies, the Dark Lord Satan. You have been flirting with the King of Hell.” He gestured with both arms toward the circle of besotted partygoers surrounding the man to whom Bruce had been speaking.
Bruce scoffed. The man in question looked up from the dance floor. His eyes were all the colors of a sunset, and cherubic golden curls formed a halo around his head. He saw Bruce, and he smiled.
Bruce almost smiled back. It was the beginnings of a smile, a beginning that spoke of an ignoble end, asymmetrical and soft and small.
He stopped. He turned his head away, and his face went a familiar blank shape. He glanced back toward the angelic figure out of the corner of his eye, as if to confirm the effect, before looking away again. He set his empty champagne flute down on the rail.
“That is the Devil,” he repeated for confirmation.
“Yes.”
“King of Hell.”
“Technically retired.”
“What?”
“He just sort of putters around these days,” Constantine admitted.
“He seemed nice,” said Bruce, who now seemed wary of looking toward the party.
“He does tend to.”
Bruce’s gaze drifted back toward Lucifer.
“Wayne. No.”
“Hm?”
“You’re thinking about it. I can tell you’re thinking about it. Theology or philosophy or Stones lyrics. Stop it.”
“I just wish I’d known sooner,” Bruce said. He was watching those blonde curls intently. “I might have had some questions.”
“No. No.” John took Bruce by the shoulders. “That’s how it starts, just an innocent conversation, and then what? Look. I know we’ve had this little rivalry, you and me, over who can stick their dick in the least advisable place, but that is literally, actually Satan. You cannot fuck him. I don’t just mean you shouldn’t, I mean physically, it’s not possible. And even if you could — God knows, if anyone could find a way — it’s still literal, actual Satan we’re talking about here. There are very few things in this world I’m willing to state are absolutely and categorically bad, and one of them is fucking literal, actual Satan.”
Bruce grabbed a champagne flute off the tray of a passing waiter. “Despite what you seem to think, Mr. Constantine,” he said, “I have not yet sunk so far as to need lectures on ethics from you of all people.”
“So that’s the literal, actual, Biblical Devil,” Flash asked.
“You know, I didn’t have you pegged for the slow one,” Constantine said, “but way to buck stereotypes.” He took another drag on his cigarette.
“I just mean, shouldn’t we… be fighting him?”
“You want to try fighting the Devil, you be my guest,” John said, “but I’ve met people who make that their full-time job, and I can’t say I usually get along with them.” He exhaled smoke out his nose. “‘Course, they usually aren’t real good at their jobs, either.”
“We fight bad guys,” Flash said, looking to Wonder Woman for support. “He’s the ultimate, baddest guy, right?”
“Within the Christian faith,” Wonder Woman said, “Satan is considered a personified shorthand for the philosophical concept of evil, yes?” She had a thoughtful hand on her chin.
“Yes,” Flash said.
“If you’re simple, sure,” Constantine said. Wonder Woman looked down at him. “Not that I’m saying you are,” he added. She looked pointedly at his cigarette. He put it out on the sole of his shoe.
“He seems… masculine,” Wonder Woman said.
“I’ve seen worse,” Constantine said.
“And pale.”
“Don’t tell me you’re surprised, love.”
She smiled. John smiled back. She didn’t rebuke him for the term of endearment. “I’m not,” she said. “I just wanted to be sure that everyone noticed.”
Lucifer Morningstar descended from the sky on wings of light. His suit wasn’t even rumpled. It was difficult to look directly at him; he smelled not of smoke but of heat, of lightning, of ozone.
“Consider the matter settled,” he said, his voice soft because he did not need to raise it. It was addressed to everyone, but his eyes were on Batman.
Even the Lightbringer couldn’t touch the impossible black of his cape. He was a figure of void in the light of a sun.
“Do not be so foolish as to think that you can depend on me in the future,” Lucifer added, stepping closer to the Dark Knight with feet that never touched the ground. “Your affairs are your own, and I prefer not to meddle — whatever else you may have been told.” His wings folded, dissipated. They remained as echoes, burnt into mortal vision. “This,” he said, standing too close to an unmoving and silent Batman, “was a rare exception.”
The Flash was by Superman’s side, where he had not been a half-second earlier. “Supes,” he said, speaking faster than ordinary ears could hear, “I need you to be totally honest with me right now.”
Superman had a very good poker face.
“Has Batman been a demon this whole time?”
“Thank you,” Batman said. “We appreciate it.”
“Hmm.” Lucifer cocked his head to the side, looked Batman over, as if there was anything to see through the impenetrable cape draped over the whole of him. “You know how to reach me,” he said finally, before turning on his heel. He didn’t fly away, or disappear; just walked away, hands in his pockets, whistling.
“Supes,” Flash said, “you’re not saying he’s not a demon.”
“I told you not to ask me about his secret identity,” Superman said.
“I feel like you could tell me he wasn’t a demon without it narrowing things down that much,” Flash said.
Zatanna sidled up to Batman. “Spoops.”
“Don’t call me that.”
She rested her elbow on his arm, leaning on him. “I have to ask.”
“No you don’t.”
“I need you to be completely honest with me.”
“No you don’t.”
“Did you lay down such high-quality pipe that the Devil himself felt like he owed you one?”
“I’m not dignifying that with a response.” At the edge of where his mask ended, he was turning faintly pink.
“Did he call you daddy? Did he say ‘oh my god’? Are those like the same thing for him?”
“Why would I answer that.”
“I get that a gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell, so if you’ve had infernal dick in your mouth in the last twenty-four hours, just stand there and look stoic.”
“I’m leaving now.”
“That’s not a no!” she called after him.
“Superman,” Flash said, trying to shake him by the shoulder. “Kal. Please. If Batman has been Zee’s demonic familiar this whole time, you have to tell me.”
“Batman,” Superman said, addressing the man in question, “Flash wants to know if you’re a demon.”
Flash squeaked as Batman glowered at him, stopping in the process of storming by to lean closer. “What do you think?”
Constantine shook his head. “And that works?” he asked Wonder Woman, gesturing to the scene.
“Usually,” she said.
“What a bunch of morons. Present company excluded.”
Washington State (not DC) is the only state in the union where you can legally have a fistfight with somebody (with police as referees) to settle your differences
This is tied to an archaic law that isn’t enforced anymore.
So if you beat the shit out of someone they won’t do anything?
Oh no this is still enforced, and in fact we actually Have a few vigilante superheroes
Like Phoenix Jones who actually patrol the streets and challenge criminals, the police usually get called, and they watch as Phoenix Jones pummels them because Phoenix Jones is actually an MMA fighter.
I gasped and my eyes got so wide after reading this
That man is AWESOME
Apparently for about three years he had an actual superhero team of people with military, medical and martial artist backgrounds he personally trained and equipped, but eventually disbanded. He didn’t give specifics, but said that some of them were “the wrong kind of people” and were too dangerous. There are really for real things that happened.
Also someone tried to be an “arch nemesis” to him named Rex Velvet, some nerd wearing an eyepatch and a fake mustache who didn’t hurt anybody but made surprisingly polished, melodramatic and goofy callout videos from an abandoned warehouse and presumably pulled some annoying pranks.
Did some research about Phoenix Jones: guy is legit. Ex-MMA fighter like the post says, but what the post FAILED to mention is this guy has legit superhero-grade equipment. His suit’s actually made of armor-plated and bulletproof materials, and it has a functional utility belt with lined with stuff like handcuffs, a stun gun, pepper spray, and the like for performing citizens arrests and non-lethally detaining actually armed and violent criminals.
Let’s talk about
Themyscira and just how different their society would be when it comes to sex and love
First of all as we saw there is no taboo on nudity. The naked body is not considered a big thing. Things like scars and skills in battle are quite considered a far sexier thing then nudity could ever be
Second it’s very likely that due to their immortality and isolation from the rest of the world long term romantic relationships live side with with polyamourous ones as well as casual sex
Which brings me to Diana….the only child on the entire island. Literally every single Amazon on the island would have known her since she was a tiny baby,.
Her fighting skills would be decades if not centuries behind the other Amazons, her skin would be flawless and barely have any scars on it and her muscles while adequate were nothing to really write home about. By the standards of Amazonian society she would probably be the least sexually attractive Amazon on the island. So imagine teenage Diana with her hormones raging, reading all night about the pleasure of the flesh and trying cringe worthy attempts to flirt with the other Amazonian warriors. And nothing works so frustrated she puts all her energy into her training until one day years later…she beats Antiope in a training match. The very same night she gets asked out by three Amazonians and suddenly Diana is finally the new hot thing in town and she is loving it
TL;DR: To the outside world Diana is the most attractive woman in the universe in Themyscira she was an awkward skinny nerd who couldn’t get laid for decades
Where is the lie
Or what if, because everyone saw her as the baby for the longest time, that she struggled to make everyone think and look at her as an adult.
We’re talking two centuries (according to Patty Jenkins Diana is 800 years old by the time Wonder Woman starts). It is one of the more frustrating things in her life.
Two centuries.
And even before she leaves the island the Senators still call Diana, ‘Child’. Imagine the things she did so the other Amazons would stop thinking she was the ‘baby’. We all know Diana can get pretty intense: she’d probably out extra even Antiope’s shooting an arrow on horseback while going through a ring of fire.
It got to a point that even Antiope was concerned.
So the first time an Amazon finally showed interest in Diana, after defeating Antiope and performing a (stupidly risky her mother would say) stunt that involved multiple fires, and then kissed her, Diana cried. It was embarrassing.
So wait, let me just say: if Diana’s used to having to put all her effort into making someone actually take her overtures seriously, the first time she tries to flirt with a mere mortal that person probably reacts like they’ve been struck by lightning.
We start with a slow pan down to Gotham as Oracle narrates
“Ask your average person who Gotham’s most famous citizen is, and you’ll get the same response every time: Bruce Wayne. Everybody’s heard of Bruce Wayne. You’ve probably heard his name a million times before. But there are some things that the average citizen doesn’t know about him. See, to the people of Gotham, Bruce Wayne is a rich kid who never grew up. They think he’s a buffoon, an airhead, a moron. But the truth is…”
*Batman bursts out of a window, screaming, on fire*
*record scratch, freeze frame*
“…they aren’t entirely wrong about that.”
EHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE
This is then followed by a series of clips from interviews with various Gotham citizens, all of whom give humorously ironic descriptions of Bruce Wayne’s idiocy:
“Bruce Wayne? I hear the guy gets through a super-car every month! Replaces every one, just like that!”
*Cut to shot of the Batmobile flipping end-over-end after slamming into one of Bane’s APCs*
“Wayne? Please! The guy would probably have accidentally killed himself years ago if he didn’t have that butler to babysit him!”
*Cut to Alfred physically restraining Bruce from going out to fight Scarecrow while having a broken arm, a concussion, and the flu,*
“I bet he throws away cash like it grows on trees!”
*Cut to Batman shouting “Hey, Lucius! Ask R&D to make some kryptonite/Nth metal alloy baterangs! Y’know, just in case!”
“I’m almost jealous. Super rich and he gets to hang out with gorgeous women across the world? Sign me up!”
*Cut to Bruce being slammed face first into a wall repeatedly by Lady Shiva.*
skymurdock asked: look I am sleepy and tired and I've got some school shit to attend to pre-enrollment tomorrow so HEY MORAN how would you write an AU where Steve Trevor ends up as the Winter Soldier figure. bc we need more of that trope always.
Okay so I’m real into Winter Soldier AUs where their identity is discovered in the WORST AVAILABLE WAY (well, all WS AUs tbh but like come on I like to see people break down), and also this morning @littlestartopaz suggested that the Waynes are basically the Starks but more humanitarian and less weapon designer (also please note that I generally adhere to Unpretty’s Batman personality because I like it).
So basically what I’m saying here is that Bruce, after the League has formed up and suffered a nasty battle that dredged up a lot of people’s old issues, returns to the unsolved case of his parents’ murder and mulls over the information . He has done this for most of his life when things go awry, not so much because he expects to solve the crime anymore or even because he’s still as emotionally locked in that moment as he once was, but just…it’s his parents and he doesn’t know and if there’s one thing the Batman hates, it’s not knowing.
This time he has actual people, though, and while Clark mostly goes home to Metropolis and his day job, Diana is formally speaking on leave from her day job and she knows who he is and he lets her stay in his mansion because she really loves his gardens. (This is what clinches it for Diana–the Batman is a marshmallow under that layer of body armor.) So she comes across this research and the two of them start poking around and they find a loose end that Bruce hasn’t seen before. They start pulling on it and at first they think that it goes nowhere, that it dead ends in a conglomerate of the wealthy and ethically deficient that dissolved decades ago and took all their records with it.
Two days later, Dick Grayson (probably around seventeen now) hears a quiet beep when he opens his car door and it’s only the years of practice that let him throw himself back fast enough to escape most of the shrapnel. Bruce shows up to the hospital where Dick is getting bandaged up (burns to his left forearm and lower leg, two cracked ribs, and a nasty bit of road rash on his right cheek and shoulder) like the wrath of God, and Diana is already on site, sifting through the debris for a clue. This is a warning, plain and simple, targeting the eldest son–death of the firstborn, Dick says like it’s at all funny, aren’t there supposed to be some other plagues before that?–but a critical mistake has been made. Bruce Wayne is rich and powerful and people know it, and feel threatened even by ‘eccentric playboy Brucie’ because, well, one time he found out someone was paying off a surveyor to build one of his buildings on a burial site, and he came down like the fist of an angry god.
Batman, defending his partner and adopted son, is going to rip these people to shreds.
“Huh,” Diana says with interest, tapping her comm so that Bruce can hear her. She’s picking over what’s left of the bomb itself, armored and disinterested in the police nervously milling about. “I haven’t seen a weight trigger like this since I was in the trenches.”
The manhunt that gets underway is subtle, at first, Diana and Bruce operating from the shadows or with the mild interest of superheros who happen to be in the area, while Clark calls in a few favors to look into the names that Bruce and Diana were pulling at. The rest of the League isn’t told, not yet, because Bruce is protective of his identity and even more so of his secrets and he’s still adjusting even just to Diana and Clark.
Diana does a lot of the legwork. Clark has a secret identity to keep up and Bruce has an injured kid to duct tape to a bed (the entire Wayne household redefines ‘bad patient’ to levels that frankly amaze Diana even now) so Diana is mostly the one quietly talking to people, pushing for information, searching, seeking, hunting.
It draws attention to her, because it looks like Bruce took the warning seriously while she did not.
It takes less than a month for someone to be sent to…deal with her.
Diana is just leaving the house of a woman whose dead husband’s brother’s boss might have had something to do with the whole mess–all of her leads have been like this, but Diana doesn’t mind because Bruce should see that people don’t always have darkness in their souls. She’s willing to work with his kids and Clark on proving the point. Also, she finds the concept of attacking children as horrific as she did a century ago at Veld, and Hades have mercy on anyone who did, because Diana certainly wouldn’t. (Dick had protested that he’s almost an adult and besides he’s been fighting crime since he was nine, and Tim sat on him. Carefully. With affection.) So yeah, she’s fine with digging through people who are at two or three removes from the situation on the off chance that they might have information. Also this particular woman makes lovely home-mixed tea with rosehips and lemon and honey, so there’s also that.
She’s not certain that she’s being followed until she turns into an alley and the figure drifts after her, and…he’s good, she almost missed him. Diana admits it at once–never underestimate your opponent, Antiope’s voice whispers through the years–and twists on her heel to face him. She believes he’s male, but he’s masked, hard plastic too pearly to be skin that covers his face from just below his eyes all the way down, hiding mouth and keeping his jaw closed like a muzzle. His hair was buzzed short at some point, but it’s growing out, as if no one tends to it, and his eyes are as cold and empty as the clear sky at midwinter.
Diana feels a little sick. She was ready to take him down, hard and fast, but the man following her looks more like a tormented hunting hound than anything else. Like he’s forgotten what it’s like to be treated as human.
“Why are you following me?” she asks, holding a hand out, palm down, as if gentling a nervous horse. “Can you tell me who sent you?”
He raises a gun and shoots twice without so much as batting an eye. Diana barely gets her bracers up in time, and then the alley is a melee battle, gun and blind determination against lasso and lifelong training.
Obviously, Diana wins, and the gun clatters away, followed by not one but three knives and a second small gun. Her opponent carries more weapons on him than Bruce does, which is no small feat, and finally she tackles him outright, bracing one knee on his left wrist and catching his right in her hand as she uses all her strength to deny his attempts to throw her off, already demanding answers.
“I said,” she snarls, hooking her nails under the mask and ripping it away, “who sent–” Her words strangle on her tongue as the mask drops from nerveless fingers. “Oh Hades,” she breathes, and reaches out, hand trembling. “Steve?”
He takes the moment of weakness to slam his head into her nose, and she rocks back as he rolls away. She lashes out on instinct with her lasso, catches his ankle and yanks him back down onto the asphalt.
“Steve,” she says again, getting a better look at his face this time.
He bares his teeth at her, as if threatening to tear her throat out if that’s what it takes. “Who the hell is Steve?”
