WHY HELLO THERE. I've been absent for... er, what, two whole years now? I guess fandom crumbling around itself and moving to a new city and going to university will do that to a person.

For those of you still paying attention, it should be fairly obvious that Collision Course isn't... going anywhere. I feel so badly for stringing you all along, but it was fun while it was fun, and I don't want it to be a chore. Trust me, it wasn't even going anywhere in my head. D: But you all made it so worthwhile -- I didn't expect it to get the sort of widespread recognition that it did!! But if I don't have fun writing something, it's not going to be any good anyway. So I hope none of you want to lynch me, and that I might move on to post the sparse bits of writing I do now.

I've become deeply immersed in Batman fandom, so here's a little snippet of a livejournal prompt that I did a while ago. :) As always, never mine.

LITTLE ROBIN:

He'd decided, at the beginning, that for this to work, his public persona would have to distract people from ever connecting that 'Brucie' and Batman were one and the same. It hadn't been a great sacrifice; he'd always felt that that part of himself was bland and lifeless, rather like a paralyzed limb, so it had been simple to modify the role into a shell to protect the life that mattered. It was a brilliant strategic move to play himself off as an idiot that would lend years of operability to Batman.

Then Dick had appeared, and had needed something more to hang onto than shadow and obsession. Just until he got his footing again. That period between sequins and capes where everything was dark, and Batman would have just slipped through his fingers.

He was a quick, bright little shard of spirit, though, and he had broken out of the confines of the nest, so to speak. The need had transformed into surefooted inspiration, which, without his noticing, fuelled him in a way he hadn't realized he'd needed.

He'd gained a partner in more ways than one, the laughter coming more easily as women cooed over Dick at social gatherings. There was less thought when he regarded the merits of stumbling around in a mock-drunken stupor, since Dick positively beamed when Brucie spilled champagne all the way down the Mayor's wife's front and then got away with it.

Just a smile and a handful of words and he was off the hook. You could get away with so much with a smile. He wasn't sure if he was being a bad influence, or if it was the other way around, but as he watched Dick clap a hand to his mouth and turn away to save himself from breaking down laughing (Brucie was doing a horribly uncoordinated job of mopping up the Mayor's wife), he realized, with a start, that he'd found something that Batman couldn't do.

Batman couldn't earn that brightness in a hundred years, even if given the chance. The light that touched Dick like this; it made the monochromatic lines of his tuxedo seem brilliant. Batman had to cheat and swath him in colour because he couldn't reflect and amplify like he could here, with a stumble and a slurred string of chuckled apologies.

For the first time since the man and the gun and the pearls and the nothing, he felt this particular part of himself, the idiot, the fool, the man, tingle with potential and warmth.

It was worth it every time he pretended to mistake the women's washrooms for the men's.