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#Danny is not the ghost king here
nelkcats · 1 year
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Siren's Judgment
Whenever someone died, Jason swore that he heard a song. Sometimes at the moment of death, other times during the funeral. But it was always present. He felt that it was calling him.
On one occasion, when Zatanna commented that the veil with the "dimension of the dead" was weak he heard the singing again. And he decided to follow it, perhaps on impulse.
He arrived at a cemetery, where a boy with white hair was singing softly to a grave. A small white sphere rose from the grave and the spirit of a girl formed around the sphere. She was laughing, and dancing around the boy. When the girl disappeared into thin air the boy stared his toxic green eyes at him.
"I was waiting for you Jason Todd" the boy said, not without kindness "I know you're not under my jurisdiction anymore but I'm worried, are you happy here?"
"What do you mean?" Jason muttered in confusion, he felt strangely calm but that only heightened his caution. "Who are you?"
"You can call me Danny" The halfa replied, giving up at keeping his name a secret, he knew that this particular soul was stubborn anyway "I'm the one in charge of taking the souls to the other side, but yours never wanted that, so I need to know, are you happy or no?"
"I don't know," Jason finally answered with a frown, "why do you want to know?"
"It's not important" Danny shrugged "I'll stick around until you figure it out, the veil will be weak for a couple of months anyway."
And with that said Danny stayed next to Jason, becoming visible only to him. The halfa needed to know that letting him revive was not a bad decision. And besides, he had to guide him in the path of the halfas later.
Jason just thought that the ghost of a mermaid was haunting him. He wondered if he should alert someone about that.
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quadrantadvisor · 20 days
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Imagine if the GIW started gunning for Jason without the Batfam ever meeting Phantom. Like, Bruce has to figure out on his own that the guys in white suits with Lazarus guns are 1. a legitimate government agency, and 2. are perfectly within their rights to hunt Jason like an animal, because 3. there's secret government legislation that says that since Jason's body processes ectaplasm, he's classified as non-sapient and has no legal protections.
Bruce calling up Clark like
Bruce: I am currently in the process of breaking into a government facility in order to dismantle their operations.
Clark: Okay? Do you need... help?
Bruce: Yes.
Clark: Sure, I'll be right there.
Bruce: Not that kind of help. Oracle is sending you the files now. I'd like you and Ms. Lane to make these people wish they were never born.
Clark: [speed-reading the documents] Oh yeah, can do. This is truly disgusting. If the public is half as outraged as I am, we'll get this sorted as fast as the courts can manage.
So Clark Kent acts as a whistle-blower, the Justice League publicly condems the Anti-Ecto Acts as inhumane, the GIW is disbanded, and Batman gets pardoned for all of those crimes that he technically did by assaulting federal agents. And after all that gets sorted, some white haired kid pops up in the Watchtower like "haha thanks for that I really didn't want a war between Earth and the Infinite Realms" and the League are like "wait what"
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paxopalotls · 2 months
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stressed about chem exams so I did a ghost king doodle to cope
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radiance1 · 16 days
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This au again lawl. Where Danny wears these special sunglasses to hide his eyes that also track down ghosts in his human form.
The Justice League tracks down a summoning for the ghost king, an eons old tyrant of the infinite realms and known to bring war and devastation whenever he is summoned.
The cultists do manage to summon the ghost king, except, not how they wanted. They did indeed summon the king, but Pariah Dark is still trapped in eternal sleep and somehow, just, somehow, they managed to draw the lottery and dragged the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep to the summoning circle.
So there the Justice League were, wondering what to do with the (currently) locked away and sleeping ghost king.
Until Constantine's coat flipped itself open and a boy with glowing white hair and a mist of blue blowing from his mouth.
"Old man." The boy greeted.
"Brat." Constantine said.
"Do you mind explaining why and how this," The boy gestured to the Sarcophagus. "Is here and not in Pariah's Keep?"
"Funny story, that one." Constantine said, only half-jokingly. He then went on to explain that the Justice League came to track down cultists, said cultists somehow managed to drag that here, and now they didn't quite know what to do with it.
The boy stood still for a moment, before taking off his sunglasses to pinch the bridge of his nose and sighed, a large amount of blue flame spilling from his mouth. "Ancients above, why is it every time something notable happens, it's always you?"
Constantine snorted, reaching into his coat for a pack of cigarettes and lighting himself one. "Hypocritical coming from you."
"I know, but still." The boy walked over to the Sarcophagus and sat on it, as if it wasn't the thing currently holding one of the most powerful ghosts in the infinite realms. "You know smoking is bad for you, right?"
"What, you learned that in class?" Constantine snarked, making no move to do anything and causing the boy to sigh again, toxic green eyes looked around the room, falling over each hero present before homing in on Flash. The boy pointed to him. "You. Come here."
"Whatcha want with red?" Constantine asked and the boy simply shrugged his shoulders. "Passing on a message."
The boy blinked once, and if he was surprised that the Flash was already in front of him, then he didn't show it. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a green sticky not, motioned for Flash to bent down and stuck it on his forehead.
Superman was... concerned. There was a heartbeat there, he could hear it, but it was so slow and seemed rather weak, like the boy was near death.
"Alright, now I gotta get old mean and green back to his keep before the Observants get on my case." The boy put back on his sunglasses and got up, waving Flash away and lifting up the Sarcophagus above his head he walked over to Constantine, whose face wrinkled.
"That ain't going to fit." The warlock pointed out and the boy scoffed, probably rolling his eyes behind his glasses. "And you've fit bigger things, just shut up and lift the coat old man."
Constantine did so, and somehow the boy just shoved the entire Sarcophagus inside. The boy was very obviously smug as the blue mist that was blowing from his mouth the entire time petered out. "I'll clean up the mess on my end," The boy said before waving his hand in the Justice League's general direction. "You deal with all that."
"Just get going already, I'm not about to get those sentient eyeballs on my ass."
"Yea, yea. You got enough to deal with as is." The boy then stepped inside Constantine's cloak and as soon as the man let it drop, he disappeared.
Constantine looked around the room, silently assessing the situation as he brought another cigarette to his lips.
He lamented the fact he would have to deal with this sober.
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yennao · 2 months
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This took me ten hours, the last 6.5 hours of being yesterday. Please enjoy, My treat
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ailithnight · 6 days
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DPxDC Prompt #8
Danny was practicing shapeshifting with Amorpho when he felt the tug of a summoning and heard the distant words drifting into his mind.
Normally Danny would just ignore it. Or if it seems like this was a group that needed some sense scared into them, he'd shift into his Horror form and terrify them into never pulling this shit again. But then he heard them mention live sacrifices, and Danny just had to step in before that happened. So he let the summoning pull him on through, briefly forgetting he was shapeshifted into a... less than ideal form.
Danny lands in the circle right on top of one of the intended sacrifices, a group of people in weird outfits and, is that guy green? Irrelevant. Immediately Danny on knows something is very wrong. His powers feel muted and far away. His form suddenly feels, locked somehow.
He casts his gaze across the summoning circle and, to his horror, recognizes the binding ritual. These cultists wanted to bind and seal him in one of these mortal's bodies after they were sacrificed. But they fucked up the spell. Or maybe Danny fucked it up by coming in too soon? Irrelevant again.
What matters is the spell went sideways. Instead of locking Danny into one of the sacrifice's bodies, it locked him into his own form while pulling most of his abilities just out of reach. Now he's here. In the shape of- He's stuck as-
"Dude, is that a pigeon? Did the Ghost King, like, send you to voicemail?"
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starry-bi-sky · 2 months
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Danielle and Danyal's meeting... very, very quickly goes very sour from, basically, the moment Danny steps into his room and finds Ellie sitting on his bed (strike one) and reading the comic books Tucker introduced him to (strike two). By the time she's looked up to address him, Danny has the door locked, and a hand hovering near the knife hidden under his shirt.
She gets her third strike when Danny, in a voice that could make the mountains tremble, demands to know how she got into his room, and she lies (with uncertainty of her decision growing in her chest) that Jazz let her in. Danny's hand shifts closer to his weapon, and he turns towards her fully, and says that Jazz would never let someone he didn’t know into his room, and who was she.
(Vlad Masters had underprepared Danielle for her meeting with Danny -- not out of any completely direct malicious intent, but he failed to mention just how... 'touchy' Daniel could be -- he failed to mention the scars littering up his arms, unhidden by the hoodie tee he meets Ellie in. He failed to mention that along with those scars, that Danny was visibly lean, capable of doing very real damage without the use of his powers.)
(He tells Ellie that he’s adopted, and that he is observant and clever, but ungrateful and has a bad attitude.)
Her final strike occurs when Ellie, trying to keep her facade of cheeriness, tells him that she’s his third cousin once removed. Immediately, Danny has his dagger pulled out, and Ellie finds herself with the cold metal of a blade pressing against her throat.
Danyal 'A.G' Fenton hasn’t killed since he arrived in Amity Park. At first it was because mother told him to keep a low profile, and killing would do the opposite of that. But, he's been slowly learning from his sister and friends over the years the value of human life. So it's become a combination of keeping his head down, and also that life has value to it.
But. That doesn’t mean he can’t kill, nor is he opposed to doing it if the situation calls for it. It just means that he doesn't do it. And ‘Danielle’ is an unknown in his room, claiming to be family to him, and appearing uncannily similar to him and his family. Either someone hired her and she was trying to pass herself off as a relative to him because that someone realized Danny was the biggest threat, or, his false death has been compromised, his mother was unable to tell him, and the league was aware he was alive.
No matter how he looks at it, this Danielle was a threat to him, his sister, his friends, to Damian, and to the Drs. Fenton. Danyal Fenton doesn't kill, but he has no problems doing so.
(Ellie, pinned under Danny’s knee and the blade to her neck, is too terrified to think of phasing out of his hold. Not that it would help, he would just chase after her.)
“You have broken into my home, dared to lie to my face, and when I demanded to know the truth, you dared lie to me again." Danny's scowl could cower even Skulker, his glacier blue eyes burning. "Your continual breath has been a favor from me, that I have graciously allowed, from the moment you entered my room, dahkil."
"So I will ask one more time," he hisses, "who. are. you."
Danielle, only a few months old, unprepared for the ice storm that is "Daniel" Fenton, and his clone in only flesh and blood, and not memories, immediately breaks. And tells him that she was his clone, that Vlad sent her to come capture him, and to please not kill her.
Danny's face twists with anger, Ellie thinks he's going to kill her anyways. Instead, he withdraws his knife and gets off her, stringing out curses in Arabic as he sheathes his weapon back into its hiding place faster than Ellie can blink.
He switches to English as she is collecting her bearings (and contemplating fleeing), and Danny paces the room like a tiger in a cage. "--of course that wretched, arrogant, peacocking little ingrate would do something so infuriating. I should have driven my sword into the shrivel of his heart when I had the chance--"
Ellie, for a moment, thinks of leaving while he is distracted. And starts to slowly creep away. But Danny notices instantly, and whirls on her. His too-bright eyes bore into her head: "Where do you think you're going."
"...I'm leaving."
And Danny scoffs at her, "Why? So you can fly back to Masters and tell him that you failed to capture me, and that I know that he cloned me?" He says, and Ellie remains silent -- that's exactly what she was going to do. "He will destroy you within seconds."
Of course, Ellie rears back in offense, and she finds the footing to glare at him. "He would not! He's my dad, he loves me!"
Danny gets in her face, glowering back with an equal intensity. "He does not." He snaps, "Vlad Masters has not a soul in his body nor a heart in his chest. He would sooner cut off the hand that helps him stand, than to take it along with him."
"If you're really made of my blood, then I will teach you only this: we bow not our heads nor our hearts to anyone." Danny's too-blue eyes narrow, and his voice dips into a hiss, "Especially not to a conniving snake like Masters. Your heart: cut it off, or cut it out. He will sooner leave you to bleed."
Then, he unlocks the door and drags her out before she has much time to act. And as he drags her down the hall he shoots Sam and Tucker a text, and they meet up at Nasty Burger. Ellie is a spitfire, but Danny has her too intimidated to leave.
"This is Danielle," he tells them bluntly as he corners her into the booth, "she's my clone. Masters created her."
Ellie is with them for a week, and somehow throughout that time, Danny manages to actually get her to like him throughout that time. He's callous, blunt, and full of sharp edges that you can cut yourself on. But when he's not spitting venom, he's fretting.
When he drags her back to the house after being with Sam and Tucker, he pulls her to Jazz's room and opens the door to tell her the same thing. "This is Danielle." He says upon abruptly opening the door, interrupting Jazz's studying as he pulls Ellie inside. "She is my clone, Masters created her. She needs clothes."
Then he turns and leaves, shutting the door behind him. Ellie, in that moment, thinks that now's her chance to flee. But Jazz then squeals, and she is trapped in new arms, shaken around by Jazz Fenton, excited for a sister.
(Ellie finds herself complaining to Jazz that night, shoved into old pajamas. She's in utter disbelief that Jazz could care about a jerk like Danny.)
("He's rough around the edges, but Danny does care." Jazz tells her, combing through her hair with her fingers. "We've been working on it ever since he joined the family, but Danny warms up slowly. He's usually less stoney; I think your arrival spooked him.")
("Spooked him?" Ellie repeats, she doesn't believe it at all. "He has a funny way of showing it, he threatened to kill me!" And she turns around just in time to see Jazz's press her lips into a line.)
("He's... very protective. He'll deny if you ask him, but he worries a lot." Jazz's fingers find her hair again. "What I do know for certain though, is that he wouldn't have kept you here if he wasn't worried about you at least a little bit.")
(Ellie doubts it.)
But Ellie is indeed there for a week, and the day after her initially rocky introduction with Danny, he is a little bit kinder to her. Still kinda a bitch, but he's less harsh to her, if... almost uncomfortable around her. Flighty, kinda.
Whenever she gets mouthy at him though, he looks oddly smug about it and, infuriatingly enough, praises her attitude. He is very, very annoying. And still kinda terrifying. But hearing him shout insults via puns at someone during a ghost fight that happens that week lessens the intimidating factor,,, a little bit.
Things go about,,,, relatively,,,, similar to canon. In the sense that it ends with Ellie defecting from Vlad because she finds out that Danny was right and that Vlad didn't actually care about her. (And that Jazz had been right too; Danny, in his weird, mean way, had been worried about her as well)
Danny looks out of his depth as she talks about how he was right, and he cuts her off with a vaguely uncomfortable clearing of his throat. And gives her the most awkward, but genuine apology he can muster.
"I should've used more tact when telling you about Masters, and I... apologize for threatening you when we met. I was..." he makes a face like he's sucked on a particularly sour lemon, "worried. First about my family, and then later about you."
(Ellie will be damned: Jazz was right)
Before Ellie leaves, Danny puts a hand on her shoulder and tells her: "I wasn't kidding about what I said to you when we first met: you are of my blood, and as such, you do not bow your head nor your heart to anyone."
Ellie looks at him, thinks about the last week, and smiles like she's caught him in a trap. "What about Sam and Tucker then? And Jazz?"
Danny smiles, it's awkward and tilted, like his face isn't used to the gesture. "We bow not our hearts, but that doesn't mean we can't share."
#danny speaks in formal english when he's pissed. he goes full on 'i shall eat his heart in the marketplace' levels of formal#not quite a ficlet not quite a post talking about the idea but a secret third option: its both of these at the same time#dp x dc#dpxdc#danny fenton is not the ghost king#dp x dc crossover#dpxdc crossover#dpdc#danyal al ghul au#dc x dp crossover#dc x dp au#dpxdc au#dcdp#dpdc au#dp dc crossover#older brother danny#danny is an asshole with a heart of gold#the writing feels all over the place but since its not a fic i dont feel that self conscious about it lol. very much spitballing here#morally gray danny fenton#poc danny fenton#look ellie MIGHt - and thats a big if - have gotten away with the cousin lie if it weren't for the fact that she's danny's clone#danny who is not white nor remotely white-passing in this au. she might have gotten away if he had been and she claimed she was#from jack's side of the family. but alas. danny is adopted. the fentons are whiter than sunscreen. and danny is not.#dani and danny's meeting in danyal al ghul aus have the potenial of being IMMEDIATE dumpster fires which is very funny to me#on the basis of if danny knows he's adopted or not and if dani claims to be related directly to him or to jack.#dani: im your third cousin once removed :)#danny. is adopted: i kNOW YOU LYING. CUZ YO LIPS ARE MOVING#i got fanart for this au on haunting heroes discord and it kickstarted my thoughts about danyal again. they gave him the BATWING EYEBROWS#ellie has the batwing eyebrows too that was the mind killer thats what fucked her over /j. those are UNIQUELY BRUCE WAYNE BROWS FOLKS#fuck i wish tumblr told us on laptop when we run out of tags because i just lost like 4 of them. good thing i got screenies those were FUNN
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little-pondhead · 9 months
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DP x DC Prompt
There are no more heroes.
Well, okay. Rewind a bit.
Danny has been doing the hero thing for a while now. He’s had a big reveal; everyone has accepted him (including his parents), the GIW disbanded, the Anti-Ecto acts repealed, and generally, everything is going great. Some of the A-Listers are even training as junior ghost hunters to help give him a break from his rogues! (Being Ghost King makes things hectic sometimes, and he just needs the extra help. Sue him!)
The point is, literally nothing is wrong with Danny Phantom’s afterlife.
And then Valerie Gray, the Red Huntress, disappears in front of his eyes.
Danny is baffled! She’s just…gone! Valerie just popped out of existence, like she was never there. But no matter how hard he searches in the Ghost Zone, he can’t find her soul anywhere. His core isn't broken in grief. So she’s not dead. Which is good. So then, where is she?
Some of the others come forward with ideas on how to find her. A few ghosts volunteer to go out into the mortal realm, an area Danny had declared off-limits, to see if she was out there. Danny approves it. He rounds up some of the friendlier (i.e., discreet) ghosts and Amity Parkers and demolishes the outside travel ban.
So everyone spreads out, looking for their dear frenemy and teammate. But it becomes apparent very quickly that something is wrong with the rest of the world.
There are no more heroes.
Every single living superhero on the face of the Earth has just…vanished. Villains are running amok; the countries are in chaos! Some aliens are invading Earth, mythical deities are trying to take over, and society is crumbling to the ground. Everything is on the brink of collapse.
Well, Danny was still there. And so were his people. They were pretty spread out, so could they just…take up the mantles? He also knew where to find the souls of dead heroes in the Zone; surely they wouldn't mind coming out of retirement for a little bit, especially if they couldn't die again. Oh! And that skeleton army leftover from Pariah Dark's reign might be useful in repelling those invading forces.
Honestly, there were more than enough hands to go around! And with the heroes gone, Danny didn't mind letting everyone out for a little break, as long as they followed his rules. They wouldn't stop the search for the other heroes, but hopefully, when they found them, the heroes wouldn't mind Danny's intervention too much. :)
In other words:
Someone fucks up, and all of Earth's living heroes are either wished out of existence or are whisked away to some far-off realm where Danny hasn't checked yet. In the attempt to figure out what's going on, Danny lets the dead run amok over the Earth as they search for clues. The skeleton army repels the invading armies, the souls of dead heroes deal with the world leaders, and his rogues and other Amity Parkers set up shop in place of famous heroes, trying to get the cities under control again.
Basically, they just do their best to keep everything from imploding until the Justice League and others are back.
(And why is it that Danny hasn't disappeared? Well, whatever caused everyone to go poof! only affected living heroes. Anyone heroes that were dead in the first place, or even just half-dead, stayed behind.)
#pondhead blurbs#danny phantom#dpxdc#reveal gone right au#ghost king au#for plot reasons#it doesn't count if the hero had died and then came back to life#lots of heroes would still be around then#but this is me pushing the halfa!jason todd narrative work with me here he deserves the fun#deadman is there too#and he's just thriving honestly. it's so nice to be around his own kind even if the world is ending#maybe ellie is whooshed away too cause she never technically died but she took up danny's moniker when he was crowned#vlad is ecstatic cause danny put him in charge of several states while they looked for clues including Wisconsin#skulker is replacing superman and just has a shitty S painted on his chest and just eats kryptonite like candy the first time he meets Lex#Kitty and Johnny take over in gotham and sam is now the new wonder woman#idk man just stupid stuff like this#the press is flabbergasted cause the fucking KING OF GHOSTS just showed up and he's 14 and just looking for some friends#Danny: hey guys sorry about the zombies and fire i'm just here to find my coworker and lil sister and maybe the other heroes#Danny: in the meantime i'll just let my army into the mortal realm to defend it while we figure out what's going on pls don't yell at us :)#the press: how do we explain this to the justice league when they come back. how do we explain that earth was saved by a 14 year old boy-#also idk which heroes are technically dead but are still kicking so if you feel like someone deserves liminal status slap it on them idc#some villains are trying for world dominance and some are just trying to find their buddies. their fight buds. where'd they go? :(#joker gets bitch slapped by a skeleton two days in and waylon becomes bffs with wulf#danny uses the watchtower as a base of operations and it's the only thing he doesn't want to give up when the heroes are back#i have no plot ideas beyond this#i just want everyone to be baffled that an army of the dead showed up while they were gone and just made sure everything stayed cool#later danny realizes he was technically the ruler of the world for a bit since his people were everywhere keeping the villains in check
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so, a while ago, there was a dcxdp prompt that was like "Danny Fenton gets hired by the Justice League and slowly realizes that he was hired to hunt down Danny Phantom with Justice League Dark, so he has to gaslight gatekeep girlboss his way out of it" (link in the replies if you find it bc i can't)
but what if this prompt was more chaotic?
like, dani learns whats happening and instead of trying to get her template out of this, she decides to make it worse.
the team discovers the daughter of Ghost King Phantom (and Dani should probably have a different name in ghost form, maybe a star name? Maybe she can shapeshift into her original age, so she looks five) is sabotaging their work. when they finally capture her, she immediately latches onto Danny.
Dani: Papa! Danny, immediately: I'm not your dad! Dani, eyes tearing up with devious glee: I don't care if you and Daddy got divorced. You're still my Papa and I still love you! Danny: what. Constantine: YOU WERE MARRIED TO THE BLOODY GHOST KING!?
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tanglepelt · 1 year
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Dc x dp idea 28
Danny is ghost king and he is not vibing with it. In this whenever he transforms the crown is visible to everyone. When he is human he’s the only one who can see it. The glowing green annoys him.
It doesn’t help all his rouges give him a hard time and would rather laugh at him then help. So Danny does his own research. He is not good at it.
He does stumble across a certain soul seller. Maybe he just overheard the name maybe from someone who got a sliver of the soul.
Danny hasn’t been able to sleep from the bright green glow from the crown and is quite desperate. The most logical solution is obviously collecting all the soul parts and making this John guy help him. Dude must know a thing or to about the occult.
John was in the middle of a forced justice league meeting when a green portal from the afterlife opened up and the new king appeared in front of him. The new king was a literal child.
Danny just goes i own your soul now. Want it back tell me how to turn the crown off. He grabs the crown chucks it just for it to appear over his head again. Danny is oblivious to the table of superhero’s hearing him complaining about the lack of sleep he’s gotten.
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muffin--queen · 1 year
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When you summon the Ghost King for help, but he ends up being a little shit. 
Was trying to sleep, but this drawing idea was keeping me up so here we are. Pretend the rest of the league is there, only drew Batman cause he was the easiest lmao. Btw I ripped that jpg off a random corner of google images. 
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somedecrepitcryptid · 5 months
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After my last post I kinda dove into ghost king Danny and i wanted to actually design my ghostking!Danny :)
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Based off a whole lot of art I saw scrolling thru the tag. Ice and space man 👌👌
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puppetmaster13u · 2 months
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Another Prompt in Memes?! Yes.
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radiance1 · 4 months
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Okay so, Danny is a streamer. A rather small one, actually, but his viewer count is limited to Amity park due to them operating on a different server than the rest of the world.
Now, Danny has been exposed as Phantom, and the reveal went well and by extension, Vlad has been exposed as Plasmius too and they're on somewhat friendly terms.
Most of Danny's streams involves him fighting with ghosts, or exploring the zone (with a device thankfully able to survive in it with both Tucker and his parent's amazing help). Heck, some of it is even just either wandering around Amity Park or involving ghost animals of some kind.
Funny thing is, even though the reveal went good, he's doing all this as a human.
Somehow, his streams get leaked out to the wider world and some havoc is caused for a few individuals.
The Batfamily is so concerned and confused, because there was this kid? Fighting villains??? Then this same kid was also going into some place filled with what looked like some weird strain of Lazarus Water (it isn't Lazarus Water at all, actually, but they don't know that).
Meanwhile, Constantine needs the strongest alcohol available, because he's very, very certain that this kid is fighting with ghosts from the Infinite Realms and stepping into said Realms with no fear for his own life.
"And this here is where the Ghost King sleeps guys! 0/10 would not recommend waking him up, he gets cranky and I barely put him back to sleep last time!"
THIS KID HAS DONE WHAT!?
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minty364 · 5 months
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DPXDC Prompt #94
Danny falls through a portal to the DC world from a natural portal that opened up while he was in mid fight with Skulker a fight that began at Vlads where the creep put a collar on Danny that kept him in ghost form, Vlad thought he’d force Danny to reveal his secret to his parents by taking away his human form. Looking around he’s in a dark city with dark smog colored skies. Unfortunately he’s stuck here as the portal closed leaving him trapped. He tried to find help but no one can see him in his ghost form. He starts tailing the vigilantes of this world and eventually follows one onto this space station through this tube (possessing inanimate objects sure comes in handy). He wasn’t expecting for the random British guy in a trench coat to see him.
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starry-bi-sky · 5 months
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i've mentioned in a few past posts about an au where Danny is a variant of Jason Todd. I haven't made a post about it yet because I need a good rhythm flowing however i've been listening to Gladiator by Jann and I have been having thoughts.
but first, let me set the au:
Danny Fenton is Jason Todd, or at least, a variant of him. A him from a universe separate to the major Batman timeline - but still Jason Todd, down to the structure of his face and his name itself. The only thing that changes, is who picks him up - and, that he follows old Batman canon, and was an orphan. Jason Todd steals the tires off the batmobile and wallops Batman with his tirejack, and then runs off. Shortly after, he gets picked up by the Fentons.
(Customary line break,,,, word count check: 5k)
And his name changes from Jason Todd to Danny Fenton. He doesn't care much for the new name change, it stems from his mute refusal to share his name to the people that picked him up; an attempt to make him untraceable should he get away from them, and to keep something of his to himself. So they name him something new. He grows to like it enough as he acclimates to his new family.
(He hangs onto the name Jason Todd like a secret - he may be 'Danny Fenton' now, but he'll never forget his time on Gotham's streets. He'll always be Jason Todd.)
(Jazz is the only one who he tells his name to in the family - she affectionately calls him Jay whenever she wants.)
He becomes friends with Sam and Tucker and deals with Dash and his bullying. And when Danny steps in during a fight between Dash and another student, Dash gives him a bleeding nose and mockingly says, "Do you think you're Robin just because you're from Gotham, Fenton?"
Jason looks him in the eyes and he bares his teeth, "Why not?" he asks, spitting blood, "being Robin gives me magic."
The nickname sticks. It's supposed to be an insult; Daniel Fenton is not Robin, he'll never be Robin. Not now, not in a million years. Jason Todd has always wanted to be Robin, so he takes the insult and wears it proudly. He buys a school varsity jacket and painstakingly undos the stitching of all the school's motif on it. On the breast of it, he embroiders in a black circle with the Boy Wonder "R" on it instead. It's not good stitching, but the next day Danny wears it down to breakfast and into school.
In normal au canon, Daniel Jason Todd-Fenton (its a mouthful, just call him Danny) only meets the Waynes after he becomes Phantom - an event that leans more towards Daniel Fenton's accident than Jason Todd's death, but traumatizes him all the same. (Is it too much to want to be mourned? His best friends like to deny that he died - and Danny - Jason? - wishes they wouldn't, even if he did come back.)
(The accident embitters him, even more when his parents don't seem to pick up on it. He stops calling himself Danny Fenton - he's always been Jason Todd. It shows itself in his ghostly form. He doesn't want to wear the thing he died in, not in something that belongs to the Fentons, and his suit reflects that.)
In this timeline, Daniel Jason Todd-Fenton, aged 13, meets Dick Grayson and Bruce Wayne after a mishap with magic on the other end of the reality sends the three of them careening through time and space, and spat back out on the other end, in a world not their own. And together.
Danny is paired with a very confused Bruce Wayne and Richard Grayson. Luckily, there's a few heroes there to help them. Danny can hardly comprehend the idea that he's in another universe - he doesn't know why Dick Grayson and Bruce Wayne are seemingly handling it well.
On their way to a secondary base with the heroes, Danny turns to Bruce Wayne and asks, "So, is it part of rich-person training that you're just totally chill with being sent into another universe, or are you just weird?"
Bruce Wayne huffs at him, rather than get offended, and he smiles that dumb lopsided billionaire smile that Danny's seen on every vogue magazine he's been in. "I'm not so worried with these skilled heroes here to help us get home."
Danny silently concludes that he's just weird. At least Dick Grayson is biting back a smile behind him. "Riiiight..." He says, dragging the vowel out dryly.
When they get to that secondary location -- a safehouse that one of the heroes had set up -- the three of them are sat in a living room-like room while one hero, Zatanna, goes and calls someone from the Justice League. The other two heroes stay with the three of them.
Within a few hours, Danny is face to face with Batman - someone who he hasn't seen since he whacked him in the stomach with a tire iron - and Nightwing. For a moment, Danny swears that the both of them look almost spooked by him.
Batman stares at him for a moment when he enters, and then he goes to speak with Bruce Wayne. Danny doesn't care enough to hear what they're talking about, he pulls out his phone as Nightwing goes to speak with Dick Grayson.
"Are you a fan of Robin, little man?" Someone says, and when Danny looks up he locks eyes with Dick Grayson -- who is leaning around Nightwing to talk to him, the both of them are smiling. And considering who Nightwing was, Danny finds himself turning pink to the ears.
But he will not hide his jacket. He forces a grin through his embarrassment, "Hell yeah, man, Robin's cool." He says, and pushes his arms down to pull out the hem of his letterman, showing off the emblem. "I made it m'self out of a school varsity after the A-Listers started callin' me Robin."
"A-Listers?"
"Popular kids," Danny corrects, loosing his hold on the hem and brushing invisible wrinkles out of the embroidery. "They didn't like that I kept stepping in when they were bullying. Dash asked me if i thought I was Robin because I was from Gotham."
Dick Grayson looks intrigued -- and concerned, and he leans forward onto his knees and raises an eyebrow. "What did you say?"
And Danny grins a shark-like thing, straightening back his shoulders with a burning sort of smug pride and all the sharpness of broken glass left in Crime Alley. "I told him being Robin gave me magic, and then I punched him."
Dick Grayson's smile widens, splitting into showing teeth as he leans back into his seat. Danny isn't sure why he's so delighted - but Nightwing looks incredibly amused, and he suddenly remembers that the Robin himself was there in front of him.
Danny's face burns anew and his arms fold themselves in front of him once again.
"I don't think I ever caught your name, Robin." Dick Grayson goes, his voice thick with laughter, and Nightwing steps off to the side as Batman and Bruce Wayne walk over to join them both. They're just close enough that Danny can see Bruce Wayne raise an eyebrow at them both.
"It's Jason." Danny says before he can think about it, and barely stops himself from frowning at himself for the slip. He amends himself, glancing over at Batman and Bruce as they get closer. "But everyone calls me Danny."
Dick Grayson's head recoils slightly, and he looks a little surprised. "Why Danny?" He asks.
"Why Dick?" He shoots back, and Bruce and Dick both smile at him, with Dick Grayson shrugging with an expression that looks like 'you've got a point.'
In the end, the three of them - yes, three - get sent to this world's Wayne Manor, and Danny is bewildered by that decision to include himself -- he's not a Wayne. Why not just send him to the Fentons?
Batman tells him that the Fentons don't exist in this world, and Danny falls silent. "Oh." He says quietly, a pit growing in his stomach with an ill-kind of dread. He can't keep Batman's gaze, looking away with unease.
No Fentons in this world. No Fentons. Where was he then, in the grand scheme of things? Where was he in this world? What happened to Jason Todd? Was he even alive? He can't keep the worry off his face, and he jumps when a hand lands on his shoulder. When he looks up, Dick Grayson squeezes him gently.
Dick Grayson is steadily beginning to remind him of his sister.
-
They end up driving back in the Batmobile. It's such a shock to Danny that he momentarily forgets the lack of Fentons. He makes a laugh sound, actually, and immediately he covers his hand with his mouth and stares at the car -- tank? with his teeth sunk into his lower lip.
"Jason?" Dick says, and hearing his name being spoken feels like someone touched him with a livewire. It's weird, it's foreign - he hates, in some way, that it's foreign - and it's so nice. Yes, that's me.
He drops his hand immediately. "Sorry." He says, realizing he'd stopped in his tracks, "I -uh, was just surprised."
"It's not every day someone sees the Batmobile." Dick agrees. Nightwing has his back to them but Danny swears he sees his shoulders shaking a little.
"Yeah," Danny nods slowly, dragging his eyes over the batmobile as Batman opens the driver's side and gets in. He thinks for a moment, of what he should say next - whether to admit that he's seen it before, or to pretend that he's seeing it for the first time. Snd as Nightwing opens the door for him, Bruce, and Dick, he chooses the funnier option; "The last time I saw it, I was stealing its tires."
To his surprise and unsurprise, Danny only gets two pairs of eyes on him. Nightwing gets into the passenger seat as both Bruce and Dick turn their gaze onto him; Dick's eyes big like they were going to bulge out of his head.
"You what!?"
So Danny tells an amazed Dick Grayson that he hit Batman with a tire iron after he stole his tires - something he is very proud about and also incredibly embarrassed about when he retells what happened in the backseat of the batmobile, with Batman and Nightwing listening in from the front seat.
(Bruce Wayne doesn't ever tell Dick shit, he's going to lord this over Bruce's head the moment they are alone.)
"Please tell me this didn't happen in this world." Danny groans behind his palms as he sinks into his seat. Dick Grayson is killing himself laughing on his left, and he saw Bruce Wayne stifling a smile before he obscured his vision with his hands.
Much to his luck, its Batman himself who speaks next, (Danny was being mostly rhetorical). "It did." He says, and his voice sounds like the rumble of the earth before a stampede. It will never not throw Danny off every time he hears it. "It takes quite a lot of spunk to steal the tires off the batmobile."
He can't believe it. Batman is making fun of him. Fucking, Batman.
He wants to die with embarrassment. He groans even louder as Dick Grayson's laughter crescendoes. Danny risks a peak through his fingers, he doesn't know whether to regret it or not because he can just barely see Batman smirk very faintly from his position in the middle.
(His world axis tilts five degree leftways seeing it; like someone dunked a bucket of ice water on him.)
"He ended up being adopted by the Bruce Wayne of this world."
Danny's hands drop with his jaw into his lap. Dick Grayson on his left chokes on his laughter and careens into a coughing fit. Bruce Wayne on his right chokes on air, and quickly recovers himself with a cough behind a closed fist.
"What?" Danny croaks.
-
Apparently, Bruce Wayne's family is much larger in this world than it is in his. Danny can barely wrap his head around the idea that he ends up adopted by the man, but now he has to learn that Wayne had several children in this world?
He's still not wrapped his head around it when the three of them wind up at Wayne Manor, finally, or even when he's standing in front of him himself. For his effort, Bruce Wayne does a good job at looking unruffled by it.
God, he's weird. Danny's starting to quite like it, actually. How human of him.
He still can't wrap his head around it when he meets the rest of Bruce Wayne's children, all of whom are already aware of the three of them. Danny thinks that someone from the Justice League might've alerted them before they got here.
It makes sense, he supposes.
It helps that they are just as weirded out as he is. A boy named Tim Drake sees him for the first time and blurts out; "Oh wow, you're tiny." In a tone like he's just seen a two-headed snake burst out of the ground.
Danny is still offended. He's still growing. It's not his fault he spent twelve years of his life malnourished. "I'm gonna be taller than you," he tells him seriously, "and when I do I'm gonna kick your ass."
Tim snorts at him.
The other Bruce Wayne -- Mr. Wayne's -- youngest looks at him up and down with a face of carefully controlled judgement. His name is Damian, he's Bruce Wayne's only biological son. Danny can't believe that there's only one.
If anything, Bruce Wayne himself looks surprised too.
"Todd, yes?" Damian says, his green eyes narrowed at him.
Danny feels like the specimen under his parents' microscope, he feels like he's standing on a platform that's being slowly spun by scientists. He looks over at Bruce Wayne in confusion, and then back at Damian. "I- yes?"
Damian Wayne nods, and then leaves.
Danny does not once see himself. That is unsettling in and of itself - surely Jason Todd would have been told about another version of himself in this world, wouldn't he? How old is he here? An adult, probably. Danny doesn't know if he wants to see him. What does he look like when he's grown up? He pulls his Robin jacket around him a little tighter, like a cocoon, like a shield.
"It's weird to hear them call me Jason Todd." He says aloud to himself, and it leaves a weight behind in his chest that shouldn't hurt the way it does. It shouldn't be weird to be called your name. It shouldn't cobweb up your throat to hear your name being said. It was his name. It was his.
-
Danny acclimates to the manor slowly. The house is big, massive. He's never been in a house so large before, he feels like a stray cat being taken in for the first time, again. He and Bruce and Dick Grayson are all given their own separate rooms - one of many inside this mansion - and the sheer size of his bedroom is bigger than his living room and kitchen combined.
it's daunting. Danny sits outside on the balcony and stares at the stars he can see - Wayne Manor is far enough away from Gotham that its light pollution doesn't obscure the sky here like it did in the heart of it.
Danny finds the constellations he can find and wishes he had his books with him. He finds the library the next day and buries himself in the back, curling up into a comfy armchair next and inhaling each book he can get his hands on.
Tim Drake wanders past him at some point, Danny would have missed him if it weren't for the fact that Drake stared at him strangely when he saw him. He walks away when he realizes Danny was staring back.
It's a rinse and repeat for the next few days. Danny doesn't go to meals, he sneaks food from the kitchen afterwards, and then buries himself in hundreds of books in the library.
Dick Grayson, the one from his world, goes and finds him three days later. Danny's eyes hurt with strain by then, but he is furiously halfway through a Jane Austen novel when Dick sits down across from him.
"Have you been here all day?" Dick asks, he drapes himself across the side of his chair, contorting himself into a position that Danny doesn't think is comfortable when he looks up at him.
Not that he looks up at him long - he hums absently and goes back to reading. Frowning when he realizes he lost his place on the page.
Dick Grayson raises an eyebrow, "Have you at least eaten anything?"
Danny hums. No, he hasn't, and he hadn't thought about eating all day. Until now that is, his frown ever deepening as his stomach pangs with a deep hunger.
"That's not healthy."
"Mhm."
"Are you going to eat something?"
"Mhhh."
And this gets Dick to frown. He straightens himself up, propping onto his elbows to stare at Danny. "Jason." He says strongly. And it's that that gets Danny to finally look up from his page, jumping like he'd again been poked with a live wire as he stares at Dick with wide eyes.
"Yes?"
"Put the book down." Dick orders, gesturing towards the side table next to Danny with a nod. "And come eat something." There's very little room for argument in his voice, he sounds like Jazz when she's trying to parent him, but instead he actually sounds authoritative. Not bossy.
Danny still frowns at him. "You're not the boss of me." He says, sinking back into his chair with a thumb bookmarking his page.
Dick gives him a look and makes a decisive noise, swaggling his head side to side while he does. "I'm pretty sure that for as long as we're here, me and B actually are the boss of you."
He's never really liked authority figures, not ones that tried to boss him around, that is. Danny doubles down, his lips curling into a shadow of a scowl. "Just because you're my brother in another world doesn't mean you can act like it."
"That's not what I mean and you know it."
"I don't want to go eat."
"It's not good for you to skip meals."
"Quit talking like Jazz."
"Danny."
Danny sinks his teeth into his lip and scowls darkly at him, shrinking into the back of his armchair in hopes that it'll swallow him whole. The idea of going into that large fucking dining room fills him with a dread that makes him completely forget his appetite.
"Your fucking- dining room is- it's too big." He grits out, finally closing his book and hugging it tightly to his chest.
Dick blinks at him. "What?"
"You heard me! It's too big. This whole place is too big. It's- what do you even do with this much space? I don't know how this- other me ever lived here."
Dick Grayson surprises him, and his expression softens. "Oh," he says, "I get it."
"You do?" The tension bleeds slowly out of Danny's shoulders
"Yeah, I felt the same way when I first moved in with Bruce. I lived with the circus for most of my life, but I slept in a trailer." He says. And he talks more.
The end result of their conversation ends with Dick Grayson offering to let Danny sit across or next to him during mealtimes, and that he can talk to him if he starts getting uneasy. But he can't keep skipping meals - it was making them all worried.
Danny agrees, and Dick takes him down to the kitchens for food.
"They look at me weirdly too." He grumbles as they leave the library, Danny's book returned to the shelf where it belonged. When Dick looks at him curiously, he scrunches his nose up. "The - your other siblings. They look at me like I'm- I'm someone else. S'weird."
"Isn't that a good thing?" Dick asks, "You are someone else."
Dany shrugs, staring at the ground with a heavy frown. "I don't know."
-
Danny seeks out Dick more after that. And vice versa. Dick reminds Danny of Jazz, and he latches onto the familiarity like a leech. If Dick is bothered by it, he doesn't show it, whether he's talking to his other world's self, to the Bruce's, or to one of the other Wayne kids.
Damian Wayne seems particularly keen to seek him out, Danny finds. He thinks it means that they're close in this world, and that Damian wants to see more of what a young Dick is like. That's what he would do, at least.
He takes up on Dick's offer of seating near him during dinner, and finds an open spot across from him. Unless he has something to show him, then he sits next to him.
("You can call me Jason." He tells him one day when they're in the Wayne's massive, fuck-off gym and they're both climbing over the jungle gym. Dick's showing him how to be more flexible. It's the most Danny's worked out ever, he likes the burn it gives him.
Dick looks at him in surprise, "Really?" he's doing a handstand on the bars and Danny's more than a little jealous at his balance.
"Yeah, dipshit," he says, rolling his eyes, "I'll even let you call me Jay, it's my nickname."
Dick happily takes him up on that offer, and much to Danny's embarrassment, starts calling him Jaybird. All because of his stupid Robin jacket.)
Danny has yet to meet his other self still, it's scaring him a little. Where was he? And matter of fact, how long until he could go back to his home dimension? The three of them hadn't gotten any updates since they arrived.
Speaking of, he was starting to talk to Bruce more, it was just... strange. Even stranger than talking to Dick. Bruce Wayne in another life would have been his adoptive father, Danny can't wrap his head around it for the life of him.
Whatever did Bruce Wayne see in Jason Todd that made him worth adopting? He's too afraid of the answer to ask. They start talking more after they run into each other late at night. Danny had been hit with a bout of insomnia and was going to the library.
He ran into Bruce on the way. He was just.. staring, out the window, with a faraway look in his eye. He didn't even look startled to see Danny standing there.
Danny asks him if he wants to go to the library with him. It was out of panic. He isn't expecting Bruce Wayne to agree, and they walk there in suffocating silence. Danny keeps looking at him from the corner of his eye.
("You're staring?" Bruce doesn't sound upset, Danny jumps anyway.
"Yeah, sorry." his voice sounds stilted, "it's just..." his jaw wires itself shut for a spell, "...you looked like you were about to disappear."
"Ah.")
When they reach the library, Danny leads Bruce Wayne into the science section and takes out books upon books about stars. He leads him over to the armchair and fire and they both sit down on the ground.
"When I lived in Gotham I would stargaze." Danny says, it's the first thing he can think of. Bruce Wayne looks at him quizzically. "Well, I would try to. The sky's too polluted for that. Mostly I would just watch the skyline and try and spot Batman and Robin, was the same thing."
That cracks a smile out of Bruce. It's a small one, barely there. "I hardly think the two are comparable."
Danny is still serious. "Not to me."
He goes on, talking about how after he was adopted he got his hands on every star book he could find. He loves english and he loves to read, but something about the stars drew him in like a song. He rambles about every star fact he knows with Bruce Wayne.
Bruce Wayne surprises him by telling him facts he didn't know. Danny soaks it up like a sponge, listening intently to him speak. And when they run out of star books to talk about, Danny tells Bruce that it was his turn to find something for them to talk about.
Bruce Wayne smiles again at him, a sly little thing like Danny's challenged him, and gets up. He comes back with a stack of film books, and they spend the next few hours going through them. Bruce Wayne rattles off every single movie fun fact he knows, and there is so much that he knows.
Danny is in awe, and moves to press against Bruce's side to see the stuff he points at in his books.
"You're smarter than people give you credit for." He says at some point, when his eyes hurt from being open for too long and his head leans against Bruce's arm for support. It follows with a jaw-cracking yawn that he tries and fails to stifle.
"Thank you, Danny." Bruce says, his voice soft and soothing and not helping with Danny's weighing exhaustion. His eyes drift, and then jerk open. "Do you want to go back to your room? You look tired, chum."
He bites back a smile at the nickname, and fails to keep it bitten. "No, no, I'm awake." He mumbles, shaking his head slowly. "I wanna hear-" he yawns again, "-hear you talking."
Danny swears he can hear the smile in Bruce's voice as he speaks; "Alright. Now, where was I?"
In the end, Danny falls asleep on the floor of the library next to Bruce Wayne. He doesn't even realize it until he wakes up the next morning. But it's not to worry, Bruce Wayne fell asleep too, an arm thrown around Danny protectively like he was his own kid.
This becomes a thing for them soon enough. When neither of them can sleep, they go to the library and talk and talk about whatever comes to mind.
There comes the dreaded night after they've finished whatever book they were looking at when Bruce, the little shit, turns to Danny and goes; "You never mentioned what happened after you hit Batman with a tire iron."
Danny groans, big and dramatic, burying his head in his arms, and ignores the low chuckle. "I thought he was gonna chase me down for sure." He complains, his voice muffled by his arms.
"Why did you hit him with a tire iron?"
The look Bruce gets is one of pure disbelief. "If Mothman suddenly showed up behind you while you were taking the wheels off his ride, you'd hit him too!"
"Last time I checked, Mothman isn't real." Bruce told him amusedly, and Danny flops over onto his back to stare him down. His arms sprawl out like a starfish, intentionally hitting Bruce in the shoulder.
"You don't know that, Batman's a cryptid and he's real."
Bruce roars with laughter, and Danny preens like a bird.
That next morning when Bruce passes by him for breakfast, he reaches over and ruffles his hair. It's the same thing he does for Dick every morning. It's the first of many, and it gets many stares from the surrounding family.
Bruce has a newspaper tucked under his arm, and when he sits down Danny stands up and skedaddles over to him, leaning over the side of his chair to peer at the paper.
"Any cryptids spotted, Buzz?" He asks, getting a startled laugh out of Bruce, who looks up at him.
"Buzz?"
"Well, yeah," and Danny states it as matter-of-fact. He gestures his head at Dick Grayson. "Dick calls you 'B', and B is for bees, and I can't just call you Bees, that's dumb. So; Buzz."
He grins triumphantly when Bruce laughs quietly, his shoulders shaking imperceptibly. "I know," he tilts his head up proudly, "I'm a genius."
Now he's actually laughing, dropping his head into one of his hands and trying to quiet himself as much as possible. Danny is positively beaming, ignoring the stares of the other Waynes as he flounces back to his seat just as the other Mister Wayne enters the room.
-
When Jason Daniel Fenton Todd meets Jason Todd for the first time, they both just stare at each other.
Danny recognizes himself immediately in the library, and he freezes up. His tongue ties to the roof of his mouth, and he's unsure of what to say.
He doesn't need to say anything at all, because when Jason Todd looks up and they lock eyes, they both just stare. And stare. Jason Todd is a large, hulk of a man, built like a brick shithouse, with a tired, traumatized look in his eyes and a white streak in his black curls. The same black curls that Danny himself has.
He has no idea what to say. Or if he should turn back around and leave.
Jason Todd sighs at him, "I know they told me you and another world's Bruce and Dickie were here," he says, but it sounds like he's talking to himself. Even moreso when he mutters half-heartedly, "-but I was hoping I wouldn't run into you."
Danny feels small next to him. He doesn't know why. "Sorry." He says lamely, his one foot skips back, "I can leave if you want." It's unlike him to be meek, he thinks. Not after years of Gotham living and dealing with the likes of Dash and his Jerk Jocks.
But this also isn't the streets, and this isn't other kids being dicks. Jason Todd shakes his head, and gestures with one large arm for Danny to come over. "You don't need to do that, you were coming to read, right?"
He nods, and tentatively makes his way over. When Jason looks at him, he sees him cast his eyes over his Robin jacket - he wears it everyday. Danny sees him narrow his eyes, just slightly. But he says nothing.
It's... a strange conversation. Interaction. Jason Todd doesn't talk to him much, and if he does it's stilted and awkward, like he doesn't know how to treat him. Like he's holding him at arm's length.
Jason's getting tired of being treated like a ghost.
They talk about their books. They compare lives. Jason Todd was picked up a few days after he stole the wheels of the batmobile. He wasn't an orphan, he lived with his mom and his stepdad before he lived with Bruce. They both like to read, only Danny has an interest in the stars.
("What do your adoptive parents do?" Jason Todd asks him, one arm slung over the back of the armchair, he looks relaxed. He looks tense. Danny feels like he's back in Crime Alley again.
"They're 'ectologists'." He says, making air quotes over the word. He rolls his eyes, "Ghost hunters. They study the dead and all things afterlife."
Jason Todd makes a dry laugh huff, a sarcastic half-smile on his face. He doesn't explain why he does, Danny doesn't ask why. It doesn't seem like his business.)
Danny wants to ask him where he got that white streak in his hair. It doesn't feel right. It feels like his parents' lab, and that isn't right. Nothing ever feels like his parents' lab.
Jason Todd leaves first after giving him a few book recommendations. Danny isn't sure how to rate the experience. Being in Jason Todd's presence was like standing in a liminal space. An empty parking lot at night. When he leaves it feels like much the same thing.
He struggles to read his books afterwards, unable to shake the feeling of being haunted.
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