Both Ways at Once Part 1
wc 868, Masterpost
“You’ve read the dossier?”
The clipped words were in time with their quick steps down the pristine white hall.
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
Danny resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Unlike you, Hellblazer, I read my contracts before I sign them.”
“You wound me, Pomp,” John said, twirling an unlit cigarette between his fingers. “I’m just trying to protect you from the Big Bad Bat. He’s had a bit of a mare over this case. Hell, as a consultant, you shouldn’t even be seeing this with the access level things are at, but…”
“But you’re stuck and need my pretty baby blues on things to help you out,” Danny said, batting his lashes obnoxiously at John.
“Fuck off,” John said without any heat and shoved Danny away. “But the Bat is anxious about it. All the Bats are. If you can help us solve it sooner, then the better, because when the Bats are on edge, everyone is on edge. And it’s a fucking nightmare around here already with all the bloody do-gooders let alone when they’re all worked up about something…”
“Everyone’s on edge, got it.”
“Nightingale,” John said, voice unusually serious— serious enough to make Danny stop even without the hand on his arm. “I’m not saying this lightly. I like you, like you well enough for a psychopomp and whatever the fuck else you are at least. Tread lightly.”
“Got it, Constantine. I’ll work extra hard not to piss anyone off,” Danny said, patting John’s hand with his own tattooed one. Danny picked back up his same quick pace, but his mind now spun trying to figure out what exactly he was walking into. The dossier hadn’t gone into details, just conditions. Supposedly the risk— some side effect created by a villainous magical spell gone wrong— was presently and thoroughly contained. Danny would be able to observe the risk, the individual originally affected, and the items present at the time. He was not to interact directly with the risk, answer it’s questions, or under any circumstance touch it.
It read as a pretty standard contract magical unknown.
John wouldn’t be this concerned by a standard magical unknown. So what was he about to walk into? It seemed like he might actually want to listen to John this time, even if that was always a fifty-fifty chance of being an absurdly stupid idea.
Danny shifted his grip anxiously on the handle of his kit: an old traveling salesman’s briefcase fitted out with a careful collection of haphazard items. Most of the other occult practitioners mocked Danny’s tendency for used items. Half burned candles, old books wiped and rewritten, estate sale candy dishes— odd choices for most people, but for Danny they sang. They spilled the secrets of the world known and unknown to him. He had to trust that between his tools and his skills (let them believe he was a mere psychopomp), he would come out of this at least safe, if not with answers.
Didn’t mean that a few of his tattoos didn’t crawl in warning.
(Who knew what spot of skin that damn ink moth would wander to now.)
“Justice Leaguers,” Danny greeted with a nod as they finally finished winding through repetitive hallways and stopped outside a room.
“Nightingale, thank you for being able to attend to this so promptly,” Wonder Woman greeted him. Of the Justice League members (outside of the Darks) that Danny had interacted with on other consulting gigs she might be Danny’s favorite, so he offered her a smile.
“Of course, it sounded like things were possibly on a time table from the contract, so I’m glad I was between pressing matters,” Danny said. Right then his most pressing matter was a need to find a laundry mat, but the Justice League certainly didn’t need to know that.
“Right, well,” John jumped in when no one else said anything, not that Danny had expected much from Batman with how he was lurking like a shadow. “Er, this way.”
Danny glanced at the room label of ‘containment cells’ as the door unlocked with a clank and hissed open. After John’s warning, he wasn’t surprised that they were taking whatever this was seriously.
There was more white and gleaming metal behind the door. A neat row of spartan cells were set behind thick acrylic glass and metal. Danny’s eyes locked on the figure in the third cell. He stumbled.
He might be sick.
“What the fuck are you all doing?!” The words ripped from Danny in a snarl.
That was a protector spirit.
He brushed past Wonder Woman and through John’s reaching arm.
They had a protector spirit in a cell.
Intangibility washed over Danny, cold as always, as he stepped through the glass wall of the cell.
The spirit stopped in their pacing, the opaque red helmet tilting.
John screamed something at him.
The flashing red of alarms glinted off gleaming surfaces.
Danny reached out and rested his hand over the spirit’s sternum, and they practically crumpled around the touch. Gloved hands clung desperately to Danny’s arm.
A low growl rumbled in Danny’s chest. “They’re hurting you.”
They had a protector spirit in a cell.
How dare they.
----
AN: So, um, yeah. Still sick. Not a cold or allergies at all and not easy to clear up and prob a new life long thing. Which is great. Super cool. I needed more ways to be sick.
But have the start of this thing that I used to take my mind off things! My, what could be going on?? (Also why do I apparently have a tattooed Danny agenda?)
Stay delightful (and well), darlings!
I no longer tag people for various reasons. You can instead be notified by subscribing to the masterpost!
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Both Ways at Once Part 5
WC: 1766, Masterpost
CW: discussions of death, vague mentions of child trafficking and rape
Danny leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He breathed in slowly through his nose, counting. He couldn’t let loose. They didn’t know. John said they didn’t know and Danny trusted John. Not with everything, he knew too much to trust John with everything, but he trusted John with this. The other wouldn’t have done this if he had known.
The gloved hand on his shoulder shifted, sliding to wrap around the back of Danny’s neck and give a little squeeze. It should have felt suffocating. It was grounding. Danny could already feel himself settling and responding to resonate back with Red Hood.
That was dangerous to have that resonance.
“Pomp,” John said. His shoes squeaked as he leaned forward. “Talk to me, Pomp, what did I miss?”
That right there was one of the reasons Danny trusted John, he would step up when he fucked up.
Danny sighed and opened his eyes. “He’s— he was a halfa, John.”
John paled. The color drained out of his face and left him a splotchy grey. His voice was strangled as he insisted, “Halfas are just a myth.”
“Rare, very rare, but not a myth. Think about it John. You said that the Red Hood from before was alive, but you know I’m right, the one here is a protector spirit. He died, John.”
“Red Hood is still alive, he has a heart beat,” Superman insisted.
“I’m still not talking to you,” Danny hissed, not taking his eyes off John. “Constantine. He was a halfa. I don’t know what they are anymore. This one is more ghost than human. I assume that the other one is more human than ghost. But put them back together and they would be perfectly balanced and you’ve been keeping them apart.”
John slumped back, rubbing at his face. “Bloody fucking hell…”
“The other half has been unwell, hasn’t he? Maybe just fatigued, but I bet he’s in pain too. His focus keeps wandering maybe. He’s listless.” Danny finally glanced away from John and over to the trio. Batman was, as always, almost impossible to read, but Danny felt sure Batman was tense. He might even be worried.
He wasn’t even looking at Danny but instead at Red Hood, who Danny was sure was avoiding Batman’s gaze. Even still, Red Hood’s fingers were trembling against the back Danny’s neck.
Danny reached up and took the gloved hand, hooking their fingers together.
“Constantine,” Batman growled, but the word sounded broken, under the bite.
John glanced from Batman to Danny and back again. “If Nightingale says that Red Hood is, was, a halfa, then he was. Nightingale’s the psychopomp, the dead is his realm more than any living I’ve ever met and, hell, more than most people who are dead.”
“And what is a halfa?” Wonder Woman asked, still the calm voice of reason.
“Rare,” Danny bit back, showing his teeth. He made himself take a breath and regulate his tone. “Someone who is half living, half ghost. They are a balance between life and death. If no one knew that Red Hood was part ghost, there’s a chance he wasn’t fully formed before, but I can assure you he’s a protector spirit now, no matter if he’s still alive. It’s also likely why the spell did this. There were already two halves to split. The human who was the living and the ghost who was the death.”
Wonder leaned forward in her seat. “You seem certain that the other half is sick.”
“They have to be— it’s a part of themselves that was ripped out and that leaves a wound. I suspect that because the other one must have more of the human side, he’s suffering more of the human affects of the separation while Red Hood is suffering more of the ghostly affects.”
“And your recommendation?” Wonder Woman asked.
“They need to be together. They need to be together and the place where they’re together needs to be Red Hood’s haunt.”
“His haunt?”
“Likely where he resided before. Or it would be where he patrolled if those are different areas. It would be somewhere emotionally important to him no mater what. As I’ve said, he’s a protector spirit so it should be obvious where his haunt is considering his role as a vigilante.”
“Crime Alley,” Red Hood rasped from behind Danny. his fingers squeezed tighter around Danny’s for a moment.
Danny’s arm was getting sore holding itself up like that, but he wasn’t going to take the comfort away from Red Hood or even deprive himself of that grounding point. It would be too easy for him to lose his temper here and really give the Justice League something to be afraid of.
“Crime Alley then,” he said. He had no reason to doubt what Red Hood was said. A ghost knew their own haunt. “We have to get him back to Crime Alley and they need to be together. I assume you have a place there?”
“No,” Batman said, though he didn’t shift. Wonder Woman placed her hand on his arm again.
“We’re concerned about there being a reaction of some sort should they meet,” she explained. “Constantine said that it might be possible.”
Constantine grumbled under his breath and ducked his head with a little shrug.
“If we didn’t know what was going on, sure, that’s a fair enough worry, but we do and I’m telling you that they need to be together until either they’re back together as one or until they fully settle into two separate people.”
“No.” It was Superman who protested this time.
“You don’t have a choice if you don’t want to torture and kill one or both of them,” Danny said, resisting the urge to bare his fangs at the boy scout again. “They need to go to Crime Alley.”
“He’s dangerous. If he is just the Red Hood half of the personality, which you’ve basically confirmed—“
“I have not. I’ve explained how they were physically split. It has affected how their split in motivation only because motivation is what a ghost is, but I would have to speak with both of them to learn how they are mentally and emotionally split.”
Superman just frowned in a disappointed uncle sort of way, as Danny talked and then continued on like Danny hadn’t even said anything. “Then he’s even more dangerous. We cannot simply let someone like Red Hood go. We have to think about everyone’s safety in this matter, especially civilians.”
“I thought you weren’t killers?” Danny threw back at them, saccharine sweet in his delivery.
It made Superman’s frown deepen, though Wonder Woman actually looked a bit amused.
“We aren’t,” the Big Blue said.
“If you try and keep him here you are. I’m telling you right here and right now that if you do not let him go back to Crime Alley then you are signing his death warrant. You might try to claim that he died in jail, but you’ll still be the cause of it. But that’s how you kill, isn’t it?”
“Nightingale,” John warned under his breath, twitching like he wanted to reach out and touch Danny, maybe to hold him back.
“No, really, it is, isn’t it? You want to to pretend that you don’t kill, that you’re better than whatever Red Hood has done, but are you really? At least he’s Honest about it. Red,” Danny said, tugging at the other’s hand so that he had to move up to stand more beside him. Danny looked up at the mask, looked through it. “You’ve killed.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because they wouldn’t stop. They never stopped. Now that they’re dead, they’ve stopped.”
“Who?”
“Poisoning drug dealers. Rapists. Abusers. Child traffickers. People who threatened my….” Red Hood reared back slightly as if surprised by what his cut off words were going to be.
“Your haunt. Your people. Those under your watch and protection,” Danny said. “See, he’s honest about it. Were all of those deaths in the right? I don’t know. But I’m not sad a rapist is dead. I’m not sad children didn’t get trafficked. Those are the sort of people we’re supposed to be against, isn’t it? Well, us small heroes. You fight bigger names these days, don’t you, Superman?”
“Alright then,” John said, standing suddenly. Red Hood twisted to put himself further between the occult detective and Danny.
Danny patted Red Hood’s arm gently. “It’s okay, John’s trying to protect me. He thinks I’m putting my foot in my mouth and making enemies. And maybe I am. But I’m not going to sit by and watch this hypocrisy. You don’t kill. That’s a damn lie.”
“We don’t.”
“You’ve checked up on ever criminal then?”
“What?” Superman asked, thrown by the sudden question.
“Every criminal you’ve fought, every mugger and back robber and goon, you’ve followed up to see how they’re doing the next day, month, year?”
Superman had that lemon sucking twist to his face again. “No?”
“So you don’t really know, do you, how many criminals walked away from you only to die of brain hemorrhaging later because you punched them into a wall. Or how many died from a complication to their lungs or spine or heart because Black Canary ruptured something with her wail or Flash fucked from contact with the Speedforce. It’s not that you haven’t killed, it’s just that you don’t know how many you’ve killed. It’s impossible to act on the scale that you do and not have killed,” Danny said with certainty.
“Nightingale, I believe you’ve made your point,” Wonder Woman said, still calm, still patient. She was different from the others. She has killed, Danny knew that; she was an Amazon. He remembered his stories from Pandora.
“Have I?” Danny asked. He let go of Red Hood as he stood to lean over onto the table. Danny could feel that snarl building up in his throat again now. The other reached out to touch him again right away. The snarl calmed a little, only a little. “Because what about when Superman has used a building as a barrier to smack an enemy into? No one was ever hurt there? No grannie ever slipped and fell as the building shook and never got up again? At least that would be an accident then, unlike punching someone to death, but don’t pretend your hands aren’t red. Don’t pretend—”
The hiss of the door opening cut Danny off.
The room feel silent.
Danny could see all the heroes tense.
From behind him a voice spoke up, “Well, aren’t you all dramatic.”
---
AN: The mysterious stranger is right! They are all dramatic. Danny was about ready to go for Superman's throat-- literally and just not figuratively. Hope you enjoyed how this all played out! I know people were waiting for Danny to let loose some. Fatigue is hitting me hard right now, so glad to have gotten this out!
Stay delightful, darlings!
I no longer tag, you can instead subscribe to the masterpost!
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