As A Knitter, You Start To Notice How Rare It Is For Characters In Tv Shows And Movies To Knit Correctly.

as a knitter, you start to notice how rare it is for characters in tv shows and movies to knit correctly. from worst to best, it ranges from:

- laughably incorrect, just flinging yarn around

- knitting the most basic scarf incredibly slowly because the actor Learned How To Do It For The Role

- old lady actresses casually knitting an intricate lace pattern while doing a monologue

- gromit from wallace and gromit

I love how Markus and Connor perform basically the same window jump move but the MOST ADVANCED ANDROID is the one to end up on his ass.

See You Again

Chapter 3: Ten Years

Jason Todd x f!reader

Red Hood takes you to the Cave for treatment.

[A/N]: I'm so glad I gave this chapter a once-over before publishing it. I think I hammered out all 3,900-ish words of this chapter almost exclusively between the hours of 11 PM and 2 AM. I swear, this fic has me in a chokehold. Anyways, the plot thickens...and we uncover more of Jason and MC's shared history! Happy reading :)

Warnings: none

read here on ao3

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Somewhere over Missouri

1:21:44 AM CT

“Red Hood, do you wanna tell me why you requested access to a Wayne Enterprises hangar at an R&D facility outside of San Diego?”

“Oracle, I’m in a hurry to get back to the Batcave. I need Alfred or whoever’s in the Cave to prepare the medbay for a patient with a potentially infectious virus.” 

“Hood, what’s your status?” Batman’s voice replaced Oracle’s. His voice, stern as always, carried a twinge of worry.

“I have a civilian patient with me right now. They're a target; they need to be treated under the radar.”

“I’ll have Alfred prepare a bed.” 

“Tell him that Y/N L/N’s coming back.”

A pause.

“Will do, Hood.” This time it was Oracle’s voice. “And try not to crash the experimental supersonic shuttle you just commandeered.”

“No promises.”

Red Hood turned his seat to face where you lay unconscious, strapped to one of the benches in the hold meant for military personnel. The shuttle wasn’t built for transporting incapacitated patients like yourself, so he had to improvise—something that he wished he didn’t have to do. Hell, he wished more than anything that he could have reunited with you in a different situation, one where your life wasn’t on the line, one where he didn’t have to hide behind a mask. He simply wasn’t ready for you to see him like this, not after you had gone about your life thinking that Jason Todd had died in a warehouse in the snowy outskirts of Sarajevo.

After you had passed out, he had rushed you away from the scene of the break-in, which was swarming with LAPD and government personnel, and driven out of the city with you in the backseat of the car he’d borrowed from Roy for the operation, probably breaking a few traffic laws in the process. Once he’d driven out of city limits and reached the open road, he pulled over and all but flung the backseat door open, your Styrofoam case full of vaccines and samples in his hands. He opened the case and found a mess of ice, vials, and sterile packs of syringes inside, jumbled from all of the rooftop grappling and swinging the two of you had done. 

“Vaccines are pink, viruses are clear…” He muttered to himself, picking up one of the vials and examining them under the lone streetlamp he had parked under. The vial had been labeled with the total volume and the correct dosage of the vaccine. Your penmanship, he noticed, was unmistakable, even after all of the years that had passed. Unpackaging the syringe, he dispensed the correct volume of the vaccine, flicking the syringe to dispel any air bubbles, and gingerly parted the collar of your PPE. “Shit…” The blackened, distended veins had extended further across your clavicle, tendrils crawling up your neck and around your shoulders. Grimacing, he injected the vaccine into your shoulder, packed up, and kept driving, racking his brain for the fastest way to get to the one place where he knew you could be treated. 

Now, he watched you, caught in a fever dream. You were so close to slipping away from him just as your trajectories had crossed.

“I won’t let you die, Y/N.” He whispered. “Fight it. Please. ” I can’t lose you. Not when I just got you back.

Gotham Academy

Ten Years Ago

You tapped your pencil against the thick textbook as you contemplated your last practice problem. The clock beside your dorm room bed read half past eleven, and the only light in your room came from your desk lamp, which bathed everything in a warm glow.

You were about to reach for your calculator when you heard a knock against the windowpane. You turned your head towards the sound and nearly fell out of your chair at the sight of Jason Todd waving at you through the glass. 

“What—Jason?” You hissed, rushing to open the window. “Do you know what time it is?!” Outside your window, Jason was perched atop the slanted roof, lounging as if he were sitting on a sofa rather than aging shingles. “How the hell did you get up here? You know this is the top floor, right?”

“I know. Whatcha studying for?” He replied coolly, unfazed by your scolding.

“Physics,” You answered begrudgingly, keeping your voice low. “I have a test tomorrow.”

“Physics?” Jason echoed. “So, all you gotta know is F equals MA and that’s it, right?”

“Yeah, right.” You replied jokingly. “Seriously, how did you slip away from Mr. Wayne this time?”

“He’s out of state on some business trip. Right now, it’s just me and Alfred.” 

“And does Alfred know what you’re up to?”

“...maybe.” Jason chuckled quietly. “Man, if he knows I ran off, I’m a dead man.”

“Chances are, he already knows. Guess this is the last time I’ll see you, Jailbird. Better start planning your funeral.” Jason’s grin grew wider at the nickname.

“Jailbird?”

“Yeah, ‘cause you’ll be grounded the instant you get back to Wayne Manor.” You made a show of turning away from the window, only looking back to whisper, “Farewell, Jason. I fear I may never see you again.” A beat of silence passed, and then you both collapsed into laughter, which you quickly muffled lest you both be caught by a nosy roommate or RA. After your fit had abated, Jason grasped your wrist through the open window with a warm smile.

“Seriously, though. I just wanted to see you again.” You couldn’t see the pink tint that crept onto his cheeks in the low light. You laughed softly, placing your other hand on his.

“You are one weird kid, Jason Todd.”

“Says the person who’s taking college-level physics as a sophomore.” He fired back.

“Says the person who climbed onto the roof of the girls’ dorm just to see me. You’re lucky I didn’t holler the second I saw you.” You looked past him to peer down at the scenery below. “How are you gonna get down?”

“Dunno. Same way I came up.” He answered with a shrug. “If I fall and die, I want white roses at my funeral.”

“Don’t you dare, Jason.”

Eight months. 

Eight months later, you were standing before a freshly turned plot in the Wayne family cemetery, tears streaming down your face.

“I’m very sorry, Miss L/N.” Soothed Alfred, placing a reassuring hand on your shoulder as you collapsed upon the grass before Jason’s headstone.

“You meant the world to him, Y/N. I’m sorry.” From your blurred periphery, you saw Mr. Wayne, who was always so tall, so imposing, so confident , kneeling beside you. With his drawn expression and hunched posture, he looked defeated. He looked like the weight of Jason’s death had crushed his soul into the ground.

“White roses,” was all you could choke out in between hiccups. “He said he wanted white roses.” 

You were only fourteen when he died, already a sophomore at Gotham Academy. It was the peak of exam season. Finals, projects, and presentations crept nearer and you were constantly bombarded with the pressure to perform—the ‘gifted kid’, the star student, Gotham Academy’s promising STEM scholarship recipient—but you couldn’t ignore the hole that Jason Todd left. The feeling seemed to burrow into you, eat away at you, until there was nothing left but you and your thoughts and the shoebox of a dorm room that Jason used to sneak out of Wayne Manor to visit. Staring up at the ceiling from where you lay in your bed, you wished more than anything to hear the sound of Jason gently rapping his bruised knuckles against your windowpane and to see his grinning face again. 

Now, you were ensnared in the memory of that September night when he first appeared outside of your dorm window. You were staring at the same physics problems again, eyes swimming. The clock still read half past eleven. But this body was yours, ten years older than you were that night. 

You heard tapping on the windowpane. 

“Jason…?” You whispered, inching closer to the window. Your heart skipped a beat. He hadn’t aged a day. Your fingers quickly found the latch, but when you hoisted up the windowpane, you didn’t see fifteen-year-old Jason reaching for your hand. 

“Y/N.” Jason’s voice had become deeper and rougher, and the sound sent shocks down your spine. He was taller and stronger now; his teenage body had filled out to create a solid, muscular physique. His facial features, now decorated with scars, were more angular and weathered, and his jet-black hair bore a shock of white. And yet, he was still Jason; you could not deny it. You saw it in his smile, in the crease of his eyes. “Time to wake up.”

The Batcave

3:08:16 AM ET

The beep of the bedside monitor pierced the tense silence of the Batcave medbay. 

“How long does she have left, Alfred?”

“We’re not sure, Master Jason. The vaccine seems to have stopped the progression of the disease, but there may be some unforeseen side effects.” Jason sucked in a breath. 

“We’re looking into the documents from the Polestar program,” Bruce supplied. “Oracle was able to access CDC and STAR Labs databases to extract any relevant knowledge they might have.”

“If it helps, Y/N and her team were very thorough with their documentation of the behavior of the virus in their test subjects,” Oracle remarked through the comms. “From what I can tell, they believe the virus to have extraterrestrial origins. The most recent version of the vaccine to go through animal trials seems to function primarily by genetically modifying the vaccine to stop attacking host tissue and coexist in the body without causing further harm.” Upon hearing Oracle’s analysis, Bruce hummed.

“Is she gonna be okay?”

“Trials have shown that a side effect of the vaccine is that test subjects maintain some kind of ferromagnetic property. The animals they were testing were fairly small, so the magnetism wasn’t strong, but the researchers at STAR Labs believe that the strength of magnetism is proportional to the bodily volume of the subject.”

“Magnetic, huh?” Bruce and Alfred left for the Batcomputer while Jason remained by your bedside. Your breathing was unhurried and uninterrupted, and your expression was peaceful. Your respirator was forgotten somewhere in Jason’s borrowed car, and he had helped Alfred peel you out of your coveralls and secure you in one of the beds in the Batcave’s medbay. Watching over you, he noticed how much you had changed in the ten years that you were apart—you had changed your hairstyle, which had become disheveled from your escape in LA, and it made you look more mature. The circles under your eyes had darkened over the years, no doubt from all of the late nights you had studied until exhaustion. He felt a pang of something deep and sentimental—was it nostalgia?—when he caught sight of your beauty marks, right where he remembered them.

Knowing that you were stable reassured him slightly. Still, he couldn’t imagine the battle your body was fighting against the Polestar virus.

Then, you stirred. The tempo of the bedside monitor’s beeps started to climb.

“No, wait—” Bruce and Alfred rushed through the sliding doors of the medbay. Your heart rate continued to climb. Jason stared in shock as he saw the blackened veins underneath your skin begin to recede. “What’s going on?”

“We’ll run a diagnostic. Oracle—” Bruce was tapping away at a terminal in the medbay, attempting to analyze your vitals. 

“Cave, there seems to be an unusual reading coming from your location.” Bewildered, Jason glanced around. His gaze settled on some medical instrument—a handheld scanner of some kind—quivering atop the medbay counter. 

“Could it be…magnetism?” He picked up the scanner and examined it. The body of the tool seemed to be made primarily of steel. He stepped closer to your bedside and felt the tug of magnetism in his hand as he held the scanner closer to you. 

“Oracle, you were right. I think this virus is turning Y/N magnetic.” Bruce muttered. More and more of the steel equipment in the medbay seemed to be experiencing your magnetic pull. Meanwhile, your heart rate kept rising; one hundred and twenty, one hundred and thirty, one hundred and forty—

“We have to wake her up somehow!” Jason exclaimed. The metal machinery and structures around you groaned, straining under the pull of your magnetic field. Jason himself, covered in armor and weaponry made with magnetic alloys, felt himself being dragged towards you until the railings of the bed dug into his stomach. “She’s gonna die if this doesn’t stop!” 

“I’m searching for a way, Hood, stand by.” One hundred and fifty, one hundred and sixty beats per minute—

“Jason…” The very room seemed to shake. Then, as if an invisible fist had just released its crushing grip on the room, everything shuddered to a stop. The magnetic pull on Jason was released and he stumbled away from the hospital bed, stunned. The beep of the bedside heart monitor began to slow. “Jason, is that you?” Jason’s helmet clattered to the ground.

“It’s me, Y/N. It’s really me.” Your eyes fluttered open, and they were wet with tears. Jason tore off his domino mask and reached out to caress your face, wiping the tears that rolled down your cheeks. “I’ve got you.”

“Jason!” You cried out, shooting up to throw your arms around his neck. “Jason, I thought you were dead!” 

“Y/N…” 

“I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!” You shouted, pushing him back suddenly. “Jason Peter Todd, where the FUCK have you been? I spent YEARS mourning you, grieving for a part of me that I would never get back, and—” Your words dissolved into sobs, and you let Jason take you into his arms. “A-and now you’re back…”

“I’m sorry, Y/N. I have a lot to explain.” 

“No, we have a lot to explain.” Bruce chimed in. “Y/N, I think you should know the truth about how Jason died.”

Wayne Manor

3:33:24 AM ET

Before he let Bruce and Jason explain everything to you, Alfred insisted on taking you up to the Manor to help you decompress and process events of the past few hours. When Alfred first pushed you out of the medbay in a wheelchair, you were astonished by the majestic sight of the Batcave—a place you thought to have existed only in urban myth. The very air seemed to hum with activity; you heard the distant chatter of various radio feeds; your skin was bathed in the cold glow of dozens of screens and electronics. The Bats’ job, it seemed, was never done. Twenty-four seven, there was always a threat to be addressed or a case to be investigated, and the Batcave was the beating heart, the nerve center, from which the Bats’ network emanated. You watched on with amazement, pride even, for the protectors of Gotham City—then, your blood ran cold as you considered what your presence in the Batcave implied about Jason and Bruce.

Sitting on the bed in a guest room on one of the upper floors of Wayne Manor, you rubbed your thumb along the rim of the glass of water in your hand. Your hands had become blackened by the virus, giving them a metallic sheen and feel. Thankfully, the vaccine seemed to have neutralized the virus; you no longer felt as if the virus was leaching out your vigor and the distended veins it had once pulsed through had just about returned to normal. The only thing that was out of the ordinary was the nature of your extremities—your hands and legs were utterly transformed up until your elbows and knees. You flexed your fingers experimentally and rubbed the pads of your fingers together. Your skin wasn’t quite like quicksilver—rather, it was a mysterious fabric, maintaining the flexibility, elasticity, and grippiness of normal human skin while glittering with the strength and resilience of metal. You clapped your hands; they sounded normal. You set your glass on the bedside table and swiftly knocked your knuckles on your glass, and it sang as if you had struck it with the handle of a spoon. 

The sound of someone knocking on the bedroom door drew you away from your experiments. You sat up, gathering the covers over yourself. Alfred had kindly offered you a change of comfortable sleepwear in exchange for the clothes you had been wearing under your PPE. 

“Come in,” You called out. Bruce entered, Jason trailing him. He had showered and changed out of his Red Hood armor. To you, he looked more youthful, dressed in a t-shirt and basketball shorts. He was beginning to remind you more and more of his teenage self. 

“Y/N. Are you comfortable?” Bruce asked.

“Yes,” You replied calmly.

“Are your…hands bothering you at all?”

“Not at all, actually. I was trying some things out, and—” You repeated your tests for the two, clapping your hands and then rapping your knuckles on your glass. “—I’ve had some interesting results.”

“Fascinating,” Bruce replied. “We’ll have to examine those further in the morning.” He took a seat in the armchair next to your bed, while Jason sat down on the bed, his weight sinking into the mattress and pulling the sheets with him. 

“I understand if it’s difficult for you to accept that after all of these years, Jason is alive,” Bruce began. “But there are some things we didn’t tell you.” 

“Like what?”

“Like the fact that I was Robin,” Jason answered. 

“It’s true,” Bruce affirmed. “I was—I am Batman. And he was Robin, my protégé. It’s one of the reasons why I adopted him.” He and Jason watched your expression as it turned from surprise to quiet acceptance.

“I see,” You murmured. “And Jason was in Sarajevo that night because…”

“The Joker captured my birth mother. He coerced her into baiting me into this warehouse, and—” Seeing Jason tense up, you reached out tentatively to run your fingers over his clenched fist. His shoulders relaxed, and he covered your hand with his.

“I’m sorry, Jason. You didn’t deserve to be deceived like that.”

“The Joker beat Jason to death and detonated the warehouse with him in it,” Bruce continued, his voice taut. His expression shadowed the one you saw on him the first day you visited Jason’s grave. “Jason died that night; that much is true. But something happened. Somebody stole Jason’s body and replaced it with a double when I went to recover his remains from Bosnia. They resurrected him, and he found his way back to Gotham.”

“Who was it?” You inquired.

“Ra’s Al Ghul, the Demon’s Head. I spent a few years training under his daughter, Talia Al Ghul, before returning to Gotham.” Jason’s expression darkened. “I was a different person then. I did despicable things…I hurt people.” Your metallic skin felt cool under his hands as his grasp tightened. “Back at Gotham Academy, we used to talk about the ways we could help people when we grew up. I…I feel like I broke that promise, Y/N. I’m a criminal and a vigilante. There’s so much blood on my hands.” You opened your mouth but made no motion to speak as you processed Jason’s words.

“I don’t know what Ra’s and Talia did to you. But the fact that you’re still here, still you , still healing after everything that has happened…I know I’m still struggling to come to terms with you coming back and everything you did after the fact. But I want to make up for all of the time we’ve lost. I want to be here with you, now.” Your voice quivered a little as you fought back tears. Impulsively, you slipped your hands from his and put your arms around him. You felt him tense up for a moment before relaxing into your touch—you figured he wasn’t used to your arms around him after all this time.

“I’m going to give you two some space,” Bruce announced. “You both should get some sleep.” After Bruce had shut the door behind him, you met Jason’s gaze. 

“After you came back…did you ever look for me?” You asked him, wiping stray tears from your face with the back of your hand. The texture of your skin felt odd against your cheek.

“It wasn’t hard to find your name in the scientific journals.” Jason responded with a sigh. “After Bruce took me back, he told me what you’d done after I died.”

“He funded my education. I attended Yale on his foundation’s scholarship. He supported me through grad school, too.” 

“I guess I never got to say how proud of you I am.” A small smile made its way onto Jason’s face. “I’ve met so many so-called geniuses, heroes and villains and otherwise, but the truly brilliant ones didn’t settle for their perceived intelligence. I’ll always respect you for working so hard to prove that you were more than just your intellect.”

“You know, we never got to graduate high school together,” You murmured. “I wish we could’ve. I would’ve settled for the Yale commencement, or even UCLA. Graduating from Gotham Academy felt so different without you there with me.” You shook your head. “Well, I know it would’ve been a long shot, anyways.”

“I wanted to be there for all of your achievements, but…”

“But you were an internationally wanted criminal,” You finished.

“Y’know, I tried.” Jason chuckled. “I don’t think you noticed me, though.”

“Wait.” Your eyes widened. “Brussels. You were there?” Jason’s expression turned sheepish.

“Yeah. I dyed the white streak out of my hair and got a fake ID and everything. I wasn’t expecting you to recognize me.”

“I had no idea…” You breathed. “That was my first ever biotech conference. You went to see my presentation?”

“Yeah,” Jason grinned. “You were amazing.” 

“And to think I didn’t even realize it was you…” And to think I went back to my hotel room and cried myself to sleep, thinking that your image had never stopped haunting me. You yawned, feeling your energy waning after your eventful night. “It’s late…I’m tired.” You reclined back on the bed. Your exhausted body seemed to melt into the expensive mattress.

“Get some rest, Y/N. You’ve had a long night.” Jason stood, but in a flash of panic and desperation, you caught his wrist and held on as if he was about to disappear into smoke.

“How about…could you just stay with me? Please?” Jason flushed an unexpected hue of pink. You quickly let go of him, feeling your face heat up to an equivalent shade. “I–I mean…you don’t have to if you don’t want to.” 

“No, I, uh—” Jason fumbled with his words. “It’s okay. I’ll stay.” He flicked off the overhead light and returned to your bedside. Sighing contentedly, you sunk further into the mattress, which dipped under Jason’s weight as he climbed onto the bed beside you.

“The last time we did this we were in tenth grade,” You whispered. “We went ice skating in downtown Gotham and then I slept over at the Manor.”

“Y’know, Bruce let me skip patrol that night so I could go ice skating with you.”

“Oh, yeah? We were out until the skating rink closed. And we were in separate rooms in the Manor, but I came over to yours because I said mine was cold,” You added. “I lied about it being drafty.”

“I knew it. You were just bored.”

“I knew you knew, Jason. If you hadn’t wanted me there, you would have called for Alfred.”

“Okay, you got me. Just go to sleep.”

“Right away, sir.” You giggled into your pillow. “Goodnight, Jason Todd.” He chuckled softly, a low rumble that struck you right in your aching, mending heart.

“Goodnight.”

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[A/N]: aaaa hope you guys enjoyed this new chapter! I'm a little worried that it's too OC-ish for a reader insert - I had a lot of fun designing the MC's backstory since it's such a big part of her relationship with Jason. Yes, MC is a sort of STEM prodigy (which can mean a lot in the DC sense, but in this case, she's just really good at science trust me bro). I fussed a lot over continuity and age gaps (eek!) and ended up settling with Jason having skipped a grade and MC having skipped two so that they were 15 and 14 respectively and in their sophomore year when Jason died. That way, MC would graduate high school at 16 and college at 20 (I originally wrote her going to Gotham U but then switched it to Yale, which in certain comic continuities, is Bruce's alma mater, and also because I worried that Gotham U or another Gotham university would have too much of a reputation for producing PhDs who became deranged Batman rogues) and earn her UCLA doctorate (bc STAR Labs' infectious diseases lab is in LA for some reason, thanks fandom wiki) at the astonishing age of 24 (or 25). That leaves time for a few months of work on the Polestar program straight out of grad school and for Jason to train/be brainwashed by the League of Shadows, become Red Hood, and do a bunch of other stuff first (like form the Outlaws). I worried that Jason and MC being 27-28 or older just wouldn't jive with the story or the relative ages of other characters, like Bruce or Dick. It doesn't help that Jason is apparently canonically 19 in the Wayne Family Adventures webcomic (have you even seen him in that comic?! That man is 21 at least. No way he's under twenty years of age...or maybe I'm just a terrible judge of biological age). Thanks for putting up with my deranged rambling! This was a pretty dialogue heavy chapter, which I'm not really used to writing. That being said, I hope you enjoyed reading, until next time! x

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See You Again taglist:

@witchymomfrien

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hmm

More foliage-themed portraits 🍂🍃