Tim Drake had a lot of free time.
In between the time little Timmy was deemed old enough to not need a nanny and his ninth birthday when he got his first film camera, Tim Drake had so much time after school to explore his big, empty house. And so he did, hours upon hours were spent exploring his house.
Mansion, Tim corrects himself. His house isn’t a house. It’s an abandoned mausoleum disguised as a mansion. He intimately knows every creak of the floorboards in the out of the way galleries, every heavy weight curtain shut closed so what little sun that makes it way through Gotham’s gloom is reflected in order to protect the artifacts stored within the walls. Tim probably knows the exact amount of fleur-de-lys on the fourth sitting room’s wall paper- by extrapolation from preexisting data and personal data collection. Basically, he laid on the floor and counted.
Tim had a lot of time. He also had a lot of artifacts to pore over, making stories as he goes and double checking the actual history of the object.
Tim thinks he’s an artifact, almost. To his parents, at least. A child, a thing, they collected at one point in their lives and put on display at the galas they deem worthy to return to Gotham for. Perhaps he’s worth even less, had his parents bothered to look at him more than the lesser art pieces in their storage-mansion. The story everyone knows about him is prerecorded by people who weren’t really there.
Regardless, Tim Drake knows every single corner of his prison mansion. He’s catalogued everything, after all, on a nice spreadsheet. 
And that’s why, as he entered the fifth- and least used- guest bedroom, Tim’s attention immediately cut to the wrong bit of detail. Eyes flickering between the indent on the bed, the mussed- but not terribly dirty- state of the sheets, Tim slowly backed towards the door. His eyes fixed on the spot on the bed, he called out a soft “hello?”
He immediately cringed. He’s not an amateur, and that little “hello” was a mistake that might get him killed.
Tim trembled as the panic set in, tears pooling at his eyes. He wished Batman and Robin were here, they’d know how to-
There’s something appearing on the bed. Tim Drake stares as a glowing figure with white, wispy hair and a black hazmat suit appeared sitting cross crossed on the guest bed. His gloved hands were held out in the universal I-mean-no-harm gesture.
“Don’t- don’t panic!” The thing said, looking rather panicked itself. “I’m, uh, Phantom.”
Tim Drake’s curiosity and mystery-solving mindset slammed down on the toddler’s mind, quickly banishing the fear and panick in favor of interrogating this new, exciting thing.
“I’m Tim. Are you…” Tim frowns, wishing he had Batman’s intimidating growl. “A ghost?”
“Got it in one, kiddo. I’m, uh, not here to harm you. Or steal anything! I just wanted to rest.”
Tim blinked. He decided right then and there that he likes this person. This… Phantom. If his trust was based on the fact that the loneliness was worse than a dead person, no, it wasn’t.
“I thought you sleep when you’re dead..?”
——
Danny stared at the child in front of him, watching the kid- Tim- pout at something. Danny is distracted from the staples holding his ghostly guts from falling out of his non-consensual vivisection when the kid asks him if he’s a ghost.
“Got it in one, kiddo!” Oo, he should tone down the energy. Danny’s too tired right now to maintain that level when speaking to Tim. Now, gotta reassure the kid he means no harm before he reports Danny’s presence to whatever authorities around.
His parents, at best. The cops, at worst.
“I’m, uh, not here to harm you. Or steal anything!” He could tell he landed in some richie rich mansion by the opulent decorations in a seemingly impersonal room alone. “I just wanted to rest.”
Ancients, that had been more honest than he’d wanted. He really was out of it.
“I thought you sleep when you’re dead?”
Danny snorted.
“Yeah, but you can almost never have enough sleep, you know?”
The toddler looks unsure but nods anyways.
“Listen, would you… not tell anyone that I’m here? I’ll be out of your hair soon, promise.
Tim looks like a smart kid. There’s no way he’d fall for-
“Okay.” He fell for it. Danny blinked, stupefied. “My parents won’t be home for a while.”
“What.”
Tim shrugged. “You can stay. The housekeeper is only around a couple of days.”
“You… are you supposed to tell me that?”
Tim sent him a derisive look, clearly bolder now that Danny made no moves to hurt him.
On his cherubic but skinny face, the effect is both adorable and absolutely devastating.
“You’re hurt.” Tim fidgeted with his hands. “I can… I can get you water…?”
His core purred.
“Please. Thanks… Tim?”
The kid beamed at him and left.
Crap. New fraid member it is.
——
Danny, naive: “Surely him trusting strangers is just a one time thing, he’s so well behaved”
Tim, staring Danny in the eyes as he jumps out of the window to go stalk his vigilantes: “I’m gonna go take a walk in Crime Alley”
——
Tim gets Danny water, but it’s tap water from Gotham and is infected with both an ungodly amount of toxins (that doesn’t affect either of them bc one’s dead and the other had been chugging it since they were a baby- Gothamites get bottled water or from Wayne Foundation’s Clean Water Stations) and also like trace amounts of ectoplasm.
Danny: woah this is so healthy water!
Tim, pleased because Danny ruffled his hair: yes, I’m perfect
The rest of Gotham, if they knew: making warding sigils against these two eldritch gods
——
Basically, Danny gets attached and stays mostly because of said attachment but also Danny could see Tim’s budding world dictator tendencies and went yeah gotta curb that
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One thing I've noticed as I've gotten further into the DPxDC fandom is that people don't believe me anymore when I tell them I don't consume DC media.
Like, I'll be like, "Oh I don't really know much about the DC universe" which is true! Most of my knowledge is from fandom osmosis and various wiki dives I've done for the sake of my own fanfic. Even then, my knowledge tends to be very batman specific because that's the niche that I've found myself just cozying on up into.
But then I'll be talking with one of my irl friends and they'll mention something about batman or one of the robins and I go off about the things I've learned (like according to the batman wiki APPARENTLY Duke might be immortal????? Like what the fuck????) and they'll go, "Wow you know a lot about Batman, huh?"
and I have to sit there being like, none of this knowledge is knowledge I gained legitimately. I was just trying to enjoy some fanfic of my comfort media from when I was a child and suddenly I found a Danny Phantom/Batman crossover fic and now I've written over 100K words for a fandom in which I've never consumed content and whose other half I have not watched since I was a literal child.
My friends are out here being like, "Wow, Eli, you must be a fan of DC!" and like, I can't just TELL them that I only can bring myself to enjoy DC media in this very specific context because the fandom itches a particular area of my brain that has not been scratched in a long time. Like, I'm not MAD that I've ended up in these predicaments, I'm just constantly living in a state of wondering when do I stop denying that I know a lot about Batman and accept that I've become a fan of Batman media in the least legitimate possible way.
IDK if this makes any sense, it's just a thought I had while I was working on my one shot for day 6 of DP/DC Week. Also like, it feels very weird to just throw my thoughts out into the void like this when I've only really interacted with other DP/DC crossover fans via my own fanfics and other ao3 comment sections so like please excuse my general awkwardness as I shout into the void that is tumblr.
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Jason when he returned to Gotham...
Does anyone ever stop to think about the shitty situation Jason found himself in when he returned to Gotham as the Red Hood?
Do the math with me: 6 months dead + 1 year in a coma and catatonic wandering Gotham before getting caught by the Al Ghus, plus the time it took to get thrown into the Lazarus Pit. That should be almost what, 2 years?
Now remember, the dead don't age. Soon Jason was physically 6 months younger than his actual age. And if you add up all the time between dying and waking up in the pit, Jason was essentially nearly two years mentally and emotionally younger than his actual age. In other words, he died brutally at the age of 15, small (4'6) and thin from years of malnutrition before he was adopted. And then he awakened in the unnatural green waters, known to affect the minds of those who used them, two years later, old and with a much bigger body than he had before (6'0). Add to all the trauma, discovering that not only was his killer alive and well, but his place in the family was taken shortly after his death.
Putting it all together, what Bruce found was not a crazed killer in the Red Hood, but a teenager in mind, trapped in an adult body, afraid, confused, angry, who just wanted to feel safe and know that those he loved cared about him.
And what did Batman do? Everything but acting like a father who got his lost son back. Whether hitting a batarang in his throat (or not, canon changes so much it hurts my head), or leaving him behind in the subsequent explosion.
(We won't get into what came next because it only gets worse, and worse, DC likes to use Jason as the Batfamily's punching bag. And a lunatic when they're looking for a change. Yeah, I'm salty.)
So that's why I think Jason was really in shit when he became the Red Hood and came back to Gotham. He was a son who needed Bruce, his father, instead he got Batman, the vigilant who saw him as a criminal and a danger to be stopped.
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