Prompt 128
Everything was gone. But it had been gone for a long time. Cities crumbling to dust under the march of time and under the battering of the weakening sun. Everyone had long since passed into the realm of the dead, and he had long since retreated from the land of the living as he aged, growing larger amidst Time’s coils.
He’d long since stopped being known as Danny to most, his true Name cradled in his core as it grew in power and importance with his own primordial ascendence. Others called him by just as many names as Clockwork, if not more as his planets grew life, his galaxies cultivating their own beings into existence.
To some he was a creator, the bringer of life itself. To others he was destruction, the end of all. So many names, so many even coming close to his Name, each cradled gently by his core.
He was Space, he was stardust, he was a blackhole, the far off galaxies, newborn stars forming in his hands and dying with a blink. Galaxies dancing in his hair, what was, what will be, splintering into planes amidst his strands of hair.
He was Balance, chaos and order dancing together on a tightrope twisting through existence. He was Phantom, a name whispered amidst the Realms as a guardian, a protector, and yet a hunter, a destroyer at once.
He was a Brother, a Father, an Uncle, a Son. He was many things, and that was fine with him, but even if hypothetically he should be impartial, he would freely admit he had favorites. Danielle, his little Moon, his first Daughter and her children of Krypton. Dan, his raging Sun, his Son and his little Laughing Magicians. Clockwork, his Father of Time, and his Speedsters who raced through timelines like giggling toddlers, not really understanding but loved all the same.
His dear Sister’s children, her Ma'aleca'andrans and Atlanteans she tenderly cradled and protected as long as she could before sleep overtook her. His dear Tucker’s Champions, the children of Magic lost and alone. His dear Sam’s children of Lazarus, dancing with blades and between life and death.
Their dear children that came from all of their blood. The Lords of Chaos, of Order, entire Cities brought to life by their magic, entire planets whose heartbeats pulsed with their own.
Everything of what they had once been was gone. And it had been gone for a long time. But they were all still here. For Death was just as much a beginning, as it was the end.
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tales of the passerine - danny fenton being bruce wayne's first kid
okay okay. so this is like a continuation/elaboration of my oneshot/prompt i wrote about the idea that Danny was the first batkid. We have a lot of aus where he joins the family after the rest of the bats do, right? So hey! Lets shake things up a bit. Danny is the first to be adopted by Bruce Wayne.
Danny's parents and unfortunately Jazz die shortly after the events of TUE -- how so? I was gonna say an ecto-filter explosion, that would call back to the TUE explosion and trauma behind that. But lets do something new! Carbon-monoxide poisoning.
It's not too unexpected for something to break in the Fenton house, especially with the Fenton parents' questionable understanding of proper weapon handling and lab safety. The water heater broke from a stray shot by one of the weapons, and was promptly MacGyver'd incorrectly. Danny went to stay with Tucker for a guys' night, and came back to a dead silent house.
(Danny's neighbors got a very unfortunate shock when he ran to the next house over in hysterics.)
There was a lot of shuffling around with CPS, the police. People had to be called in to handle the equipment in the lab, and the GIW was rumoring to show up in aid to clearing the scene. When Danny heard of that, he immediately went and dismantled the ghost portal to the best of his abilities. He burned the physical blueprints of all his parents' inventions, their blueprints on the ghost portal, and their most dangerous weapons were destroyed beyond recognition. Anything to prevent the GIW from getting their hands on his parents' tech.
It opened up another investigation, but he was not under the list of suspects. He was placed in the care of Vlad Masters, where they then went back to the rebuilt castle mansion in Wisconsin. Danny, terrified of the future that has once passed and may do so again, shuts down in his grief. Inadvertently, he ends up somewhat repressing his ghost half. Something Vlad, who is grieving Madeline but relishing in Jack's demise and his custody of Daniel, is not very happy with.
Vlad's... gone into a bit of a mental health spiral. He's becoming increasingly possessive over Daniel, the final remnants of his friends and a liminal being like him. He doesn't like that Danny's repressing his ghost half -- both out of genuine concern as a ghost, but also because of his desire to control Danny and groom him into the perfect son. If you ever had a phase where you read Dark SBI found family fics, first off; me too bro, and second off; those are the vibes I'm thinking of.
Danny's mentally shut down from grief! And fear. He's dropped into a bad depressive state -- paralyzed with grief and the terror of the inevitable. Clockwork saved his parents because he believes in second chances, but what's the point of that when his family ended up dead anyways? Danny doesn't wanna believe that he's destined to become evil, and he's holding out onto that hope, but it's a thin line, and he feels utterly hopeless and trapped. He hasn't used his powers or ghost form since he trashed the lab, and Vlad has alarms set up to prevent him from trying to escape.
He's also unintentionally cut off Sam and Tucker -- both of whom are so scared and concerned for Danny too, and are trying their damndest to reach out to him. He keeps ignoring their texts. Danny basically haunts Vlad's manor. He goes out to eat if he has to, attends parties Vlad drags him to, and stays in his room all day if he can.
At parties, Vlad doesn't allow Danny to leave his side, or really talk to anyone -- not that Danny wants to. A product of Vlad's increasing possessiveness. Well, he almost doesn't let Danny leave his side. Danny has a habit of slipping off to hide somewhere for the parties whenever he can, and Vlad reluctantly allows it so long as he stays alone.
This becomes an advantage when eventually, Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham after missing for years, and holds a bright charity ball to celebrate the return. Vlad has been chomping at the bits to get his hands on Wayne Industries, and with the return of its owner there is no better opportunity to wipe out his rival. He goes, and he as normal, brings Daniel with him.
Vlad thinks Wayne will bleed his little heart out for Daniel's poor orphan sob story -- he's a fellow orphan himself, after all. He's not wrong; Wayne's little heart will bleed, just not in the way that benefits him.
Bruce sees Vlad and Danny approaching before they're even close enough to introduce themselves - and like with many of the children he will soon come to care for, it's like someone set a mirror into the past right in front of him.
Danny Fenton's suit is tailor-made for him, and despite the fact that it's his perfect size, the sag in his shoulders, the ducked down head, and the way he hunches into himself all pictures the image of a child in shoes too big for him. There's a far away, glazed over look in his eyes and grief marble-cut into the lines of his face. There's not enough makeup in the world that will hide the dark circles under his eyes.
("My nephew, Daniel Fenton." Vlad's hands are possessive on Danny's shoulders. Bruce immediately notices the way the boy tenses under his touch. "His parents passed recently, and as his godfather I was designated his guardian.")
("I'm so sorry, the loss must've been terrible.")
("Yes, carbon-monoxide poisoning caused it. Daniel was out with friends, when he came home... they had already passed.")
(Bruce immediately dislikes that Vlad shared the details of their death unprompted -- he likes it even less when Danny flinches at the reminder and hunches into himself.)
Danny runs off at some point earlier into the charity. At this point, parties are still being held at Wayne Manor (because iirc google search mentioned that was a thing at first before it was changed), so he disappears and hides in one of the empty rooms nearby. It just so happens to be the same room Bruce Wayne hides in when he needs a break from all of the socialization.
Thus begins a long, long process of trust. Bruce can't reveal his hand as being smarter than he looks, but he can be compassionate. Kindness needs no measure of intelligence. He keeps Danny company for as long as he can before he runs the risk of being found.
Rinse and repeat. Vlad insistently wants Wayne Industries, and he'll go to as many Wayne parties as he can to get his hooks into the man. The problem is that Bruce Wayne is never alone, and getting him alone is impossible. Finding him too. It's like the man never stops moving. Always talking to someone, always circling somewhere. He orbits around the room as if he isn't the sun of the Gotham Elite's solar system.
Danny's had such repetitive behavior that Vlad never thinks to believe that Bruce Wayne is disappearing to go talk to him. That "Vlad's" son is even interacting with him at all. Danny never gives him a reason to think so, and neither does Bruce.
Danny doesn't actually acknowledge Bruce until a handful of parties in, where he hands Bruce a small slip of paper he smuggled in that says; "don't trust Vlad". Danny's face stays carefully blank, but he's so tense that his hands are trembling, and he's purposely looking away from him. Bruce plasters a smile onto his face, slips the paper into his pocket, and tells him "okay".
(he's been busy with his own goals with the mafia, but he sets aside time to investigate Vlad Masters. He was holding off. Until now.)
Danny does eventually start speaking to Bruce, he's starting to really like the guy. He's starting to see a little hope, even as Vlad is starting to get more and more agitated with him the more he refuses to use his powers.
He reaches out to Sam and Tucker again, and starts trying to reconnect with them. Vlad has spyware on his phone, and he limits the amount of times he can talk to them. A weird parental control lock of some sort that leaves a time limit on how long he can talk to them for. 30 minutes. Danny doesn't tell them anything about Mr. Wayne.
Danny, slowly, wants out of here, and he's slowly gathering the motivation to do it. Vlad is genuinely scaring him -- and Danny wonders just how truthful the past-future Vlad was when he told him that Danny wanted his ghost half separate. He starts trying to come up with an escape plan.
Vlad has anti-ghost wards everywhere around the mansion, and while they're always on, they boost to full power at sunset. The doors and windows are always locked, all main exits have alarms set on them. The only reason it's not super extensive is because Danny hasn't tried leaving at all yet, so Vlad hasn't had to tighten anything.
At night, Vlad locks the door to his room and puts up an anti-ghost ward around the room. The mansion is on the outside westward side of Madison, more entrenched in rural Wisconsin. The closest town is a four-way stop sign with one house on three corners, and an open bar on the fourth. Not much to go.
He refuses to go to Sam and Tucker; Vlad would look there first. It's too dangerous. Vlad would sound alarm bells and have a manhunt looking for him, Danny can't risk going just anywhere. Too much risk of being found, sold out, or caught. There's really nowhere for him to hide.
Until there is. Bruce is telling Danny about the history of Wayne Manor, and says, as casually as saying the weather; "The manor has dozens of empty rooms, I'm sure Alfred wouldn't mind filling another one if he could." And quietly, hesitantly, Bruce places a careful hand on Danny's shoulder, unrestrictive and gentle; "He wouldn't mind getting one ready for you if you need one."
And there it is. There's his out.
Danny, just as quietly, replies; "I'll keep that in mind."
The ball starts rolling.
Now I've been trying to summarize this au as much as possible for length convenience, but Vlad has been steadily growing more and more controlling. More emotionally manipulative. More agitated at Danny for not using his powers.
He wants Wayne Industries under his thumb but he's been steadily growing more and more concerned with Danny. He's started grabbing him, yanking him around, shaking him; trying to goad him into using his powers. He gets angry when Danny doesn't react, or tells him he doesn't want to use his powers. He hasn't outright attacked him, but he's getting there. This has been happening over the time it takes for Bruce to indirectly offer Danny sanctuary at his home.
It all comes to a head when Vlad stops going to parties at all -- something Danny has to pretend he isn't upset about -- because Vlad doesn't want him around other people anymore. Vlad rarely goes now without him, and only leaves to go to a Wayne function or to handle something at VladCo.
Danny can't wait for Vlad to leave long enough to escape. So he leaves during the night of a big storm. Vlad's locked him in his room, but Danny doesn't bother trying to go for it; he goes to the alarmed window instead. Danny's been repressing his ghost half so long that he can't access his powers immediately anymore -- he can feel it, he knows its there, but he can't quite reach it.
He breaks the lock by hand.
Immediately the alarm goes off through the entire castle, filling the room with red, and he scrambles for the rope the Wisconsin Ghost left for him a few months back. Danny's already out and climbing down the side of the castle before Vlad even reaches his door -- the only good thing about the entire room being ghost-proof is that Vlad can't get in that way.
The rope ends before it reaches the bottom, and he's still twenty feet in the air. It won't kill him if he lands it right. Danny takes his chances, and drops. He breaks his ankle, but he survives.
And he fucking books it to the back garden. He hears Vlad shrieking over the thunder and rain.
I'll save the full experience for a future oneshot, but Danny makes it out into the nearby woods and forcibly experiences what it's like to be in a horror game, trying to hide from the thing that's hunting you. There's only one thing going through his mind; "i'm going to die"
I have this mental image for this scene. Very stereotypical horror imo. Where Danny is hiding behind a tree, with a hand over his mouth, and Vlad is a few feet away from him, glowing ominously red through the trees, trying to search for him.
Danny doesn't get away from this unscathed, but he does get away alive. That's all he could ask for. He gets away by getting his ghost half awakened long enough to transform into Phantom and fly to Gotham.
But he gets to Wayne Manor, he gets to Bruce. Or, at least, Alfred answers the door from his insistent pounding. Danny's just in tears and Alfred gets him in the living room, wrapped in a towel, with ice on his swollen leg before he has to step out and alert Bruce.
Bruce already breaks multiple traffic laws on a nightly basis. And that's just with the sheer existence of the batmobile itself, not including the speeding and military artillery attached. He breaks double the amount trying to speed back to the cave and get out of the suit.
Right off the bat: Bruce will know, at least before Dick enters the picture, about danny's powers. He'll figure out something considering the fact that Danny traveled from Wisconsin to New York in a single night. That'll be a bit of complicated affair, but I've already got something in mind.
Actually it'll probably be very soon after Danny joins the family, because Bruce tries to offer to fight for custody for Danny - the state Danny was in at arrival is clear enough evidence for a trial. But Danny immediately shuts it down, says it's not going to work and then Vlad will know Danny's with him and he won't be safe. He tells him that Vlad cannot know Danny was with Bruce.
Danny's biggest regret was not telling his parents he was a halfa, and while he doesn't want to tell mister wayne (yet), he does tell him about Vlad being one. He needs to know why Danny can't be seen with Bruce. So he tells him, and Danny's current plan is to just hide out from Vlad until he turns 18. That way, he has no more legal jurisdiction over him. After that? He's not sure.
And to wrap this up, since this has already gotten very long and I can make more posts about this au later; I've thought about it, and I'm going to say that Danny does become a vigilante before Dick enters the scene. He goes by, as you probably guessed; Nightingale. "Gale" for short.
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Eddie’s doing some dumb trick with a couple of wooden spoons, clever hands making them move through the air in improbable ways, and Steve’s about to bite his whisk in half.
He’d thought for sure that Eddie would be going home the first week; Edward Munson, 29, bartender/musician from Brighton with mismatched tattoos and wild hair, seemed like exactly the kind of pretentious asshole who would flame out early with some ill-advised hipster experimentation. If Steve (28, social worker from Indiana, USA) had been a complete asshole, he’d have said that Eddie didn’t have the fundamentals. That he was all sizzle, no steak.
It’s a good thing Steve’s not a complete asshole, because Eddie’s been blowing the technicals out of the water so consistently it’s actually pretty fucking embarrassing. His signatures and showstoppers are making a very respectable showing too, except for the time he tried to incorporate some fresh pandan extract and fucked up the liquid ratio, leaving him with a dripping mess that Mary’d declined to even try.
Afterwards, Steve had seen him leaning against a tree and struggling to light a cigarette. Steve went over for no particular reason, flicking on his lighter and holding it out like a peace offering. Eddie looked at him warily, but bent over the offered flame.
“Can’t believe I made it through this one,” Eddie said after a moment, white smoke curling out of his mouth.
“Yeah, I feel like that every week.” Steve leaned against the tree next to Eddie. It was a big tree, the kind that’s probably been growing in this field since before England was even England.
“Nah, but—c’mon, you know what I mean.”
“You had some bad luck with your showstopper. Happens to the best of us, man. Your signature hand pies looked sick as hell.” Steve’s own hand pies had turned out pretty well, so he was feeling generous. It had only been the third week; plenty of time for Steve to snag Star Baker, though even by that point, Steve had been getting the creeping feeling that he was being a little too American about the whole thing. Everyone else seemed to think competitiveness was some kind of deadly sin. It was—actually kind of nice, to get the same kind of nerves he’d always gotten before high school basketball games, but know that he wasn’t really fighting against anyone except himself in the tent.
Anyway, the very next week, Eddie had done some kind of kickass gothic castle with a shiny chocolate dragon and gotten Star Baker for the second time. Steve had clapped him on the back, appropriately manly. Eddie had pulled Steve into a real hug, arms tight around Steve’s shoulders and his whole lean body pressed up close and warm. It had only lasted a moment, and then Eddie had bounded over to Mel and Sue, both of whom he’s been thoroughly charming since the get-go.
Steve thinks that when this season—or, uh, series—airs, no matter where Eddie places, the entire country is going to be just as charmed. Eddie’s going to get whatever kind of cookbook deal or streaming show he wants. Sponsors will take one look at that handsome face and charismatic grin, and a whole world of possibilities is going to open up for Eddie.
Steve’s not in it for any of that, of course. He’s here kind of by accident, because Robin pushed him to apply, and it’s a goddamn miracle he’s been holding his own. Hell, it’s a miracle he’s in this country at all. When Robin had started looking at the Cambridge MPhil program in linguistics, she’d said wouldn’t it be great if and he’d snorted, yeah right, like I could ever get whatever job I’d need to move to another freaking country, but then—well. Things had happened the way they’d happened, and now Robin’s almost finished with her degree and Steve is taking time off from the London charity he works at in order to be on Bake Off.
He’s told all this to the cameras, plus the stuff about how baking started as a way for him to connect with the kids he used to babysit in Indiana, blah blah blah. He thinks it’s probably too boring for them to air, but he gets that they have to try to get a story anyway.
Eddie Munson, on the other hand, is probably going to be featured in all the series promos. Steve is rabidly curious about what Eddie’s story is, but he hasn’t worked up the nerve to just ask. It should be the easiest thing in the world. They’ve got kind of a camaraderie going, the two of them; a bit of a bromance, as Mel’s put it more than once.
It’s true they get along pretty well, and the cameras have been picking up on it: on the way Eddie’ll wander over to Steve’s bench like a stray cat whenever they get some downtime, how they wind up horsing around sometimes, working off leftover adrenaline from the frantic rush of caramelization or whatever. There’s the time Eddie had hopped up on a stool to deliver some kind of speech from Macbeth, of all things, and overbalanced right onto Steve, who had barely managed to keep them both from careening into a stand mixer. Sue had patted Eddie on the shoulder and said, “Well, boys, that’ll be going in the episode for sure.”
They both get along with the other contestants just fine, of course, but they’re two guys of about the same age with no wife and kids waiting at home. It’s only natural that they’re gravitating together, becoming something like friends, Steve figures. It’s pretty great that he’s getting at least one real friend out of this whole thing.
It would be even greater if Steve could stop thinking about Eddie’s hands in decidedly non-friendly ways. With all the paperwork he’s signed, he can’t even complain to Robin about how Eddie looks with his sleeves pushed up to show off the tattoos on his forearms, kneading dough and grunting a little under his breath with effort. Steve had almost forgotten to pre-heat his oven that day.
Two benches away, Eddie fumbles the spoons he’s been juggling with a clatter, and he bursts out laughing, glancing over at Steve like Steve’s in on the joke. Steve grins back, heart twanging painfully in his chest, and thinks: well, fuck. Guess this is happening.
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