Spacesparrow Stories

Minato sealed Nyx away, dying peacefully. Full of acceptance. Except... He wakes up a few weeks later in the hospital with a lawyer saying they located relatives. A distant cousin in America. So he leaves, accepting his new destiny as well. As it turns out, Janet Drake had a sister once. One who was disowned after she married a foreigner. Some guy in Japan with the last name of Arisato. And now, decades later, their sons finally reconnect.

Jonathan Crane gets bored and, as one does in Gotham, becomes a psych professor. Somehow, no one stops him. The students love him. The staff avoid him. And no one quite remembers rehiring him in the first place. Tim Drake is stationed at Gotham University under the guise of "monitoring" him. He's expecting horror. He finds... a surprisingly good syllabus, a strange sense of calm, and a friend group that doesn't know what a vigilante is. Crane, for his part, knows exactly who Tim is. He doesn't care, he just wants to teach. And maybe terrify a few freshmen along the way. Or: No one knows who rehired Professor Crane, but panic attacks come with bonus points and Tim's never been happier.

Nightwing shows up at the scene of a fight to help. Why was he in Gotham? Well... He had a little birdy to visit. [contains: slight angst]

Minato knew about the Dark Hour, he always had. And his persona? He'd known them, always had. He couldn't quite wrap his head around why these people were so in awe by his personas. He had the feeling that it had to do with how he collected them in his sea, but he didn't care. He cared only about his friend. His friend from the beginning to the end. His friend who he could depend on, no matter what. [contains: loose violence descriptions]

The grave dirt still clung beneath his fingernails. He stumbled barefoot across the Gotham cemetery, shirt stiff, skin gray from the earth. His lungs rattled, his ribs ached, and the moon above looked too white, too sharp, like a blade. Every step was agony; every breath, a fight against the coffin that still seemed to close in around him. He didn't know his name. Not yet. He didn't know who he'd been or why the taste of blood felt so familiar on his tongue. All he knew was that he had been dead, and now he wasn't. The boy wandered through cracked headstones and rusted iron fences, until the city's glow swallowed the night. He moved on instinct: alleys, shadows, avoiding headlights, avoiding people. Gotham was a monster, and something inside him whispered that it had already eaten him once. Or: Recently revived Jason Todd is found not by Talia al Ghul, but by Jonathan Crane. And, by coincidence, Jonathan decides that it's about time to go face home.

Minato always hid himself away from everyone. He couldn't feel scared of them dying if he didn't care for them. He wouldn't. Yet he had, he'd let them in and was stuck fearing them dying. Yet... He was the one dying now. They'd left him alone. Maybe on purpose, maybe not. He was already exhausted from battling to survive when more of the Shadows neared, far too many for him to survive this. He had meant to summon Orpheus, yet another heeded his call. Thanatos. [contains: loose violence descriptions]