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#dick and danny live in Bludhaven
phantom-0-writer · 12 days
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Nightwing's car guy
Dick was doing well to establish himself in Bludhaven. He had an apartment, it was shitty but it was his. He had a day job as police officer, half the people there were in the cartels Nightwing was trying to crack down on, and the other half were in the cartels Nightwing was still trying to trace. He had his suit, still bat-grade, blue instead of the red, yellow, and green Jason got to wear now.
He did't have a cave. Or maybe it should be a nest because the whole bird thing. Burrow? What was the thing owls lived in called? The point is he made due without it. He had his apartment, and he had his supplies stashed away. It wasn't as much as in the Cave, but he didn't have Cave-funding. He could make due.
He didn't have an Oracle in his ear. But that came with the added bonus of not having a Bat either. He could do his own research, find his own information. And it wasn't like he and Babs were totally cut off. It was just only a little weird, because she was technically his ex. Sure she would be in his corner, but she was still his ex. He needed to save some face. Especially since he knew that Bruce and Babs liked to... talk. He could make due.
The only thing Dick was maybe, sorta, just maybe having a little trouble was with his bike. Well it wasn't his bike, it was Nightwing's. Which was precisely the trouble. He'd found a place to stash it, but Dick had never been a car guy... or in this case a bike guy. He would chase his rouges, speeding through the streets, and sure the bike was made for the tight corners and quick turns and the high speeds, and sure it could take a hit or two. But what about three or four? Or five?
Point was Dick needed a car- a bike guy. One that was cheap (he was only a cop), and knew how to not ask questions and keep his mouth shut (again- Nightwing's bike). All that on top of knowing enough on how to fix his bike. (it wasn't exactly the type you could find in store).
But the solution seemed to find him. Which Dick was aware was not generally how it worked, but he would count his blessings. He had been out on patrol, the type that had involved his bike and high speeds. Unfortunately it did not involve the perp in handcuffs and on his way to jail. Dick had been on his tail, could've had him too, if the bike hadn't started sputtering. Dick had done as much as he could for it, but she really needed a pair of eyes that actually knew what they were looking at.
Mumbling curses to himself, Nightwing had been ready to head off to at least catch a dust trail of what operation he'd find himself in next. He could feel the eyes watching him. His hair stood in edge, and when Nightwing turned to look around he couldn't see anyone. Maybe he was being haunted. Trying to arrange his bearings, Nightwing turned back around to get on his bike. When there was suddenly a mop of choppy black hair couched down next to it.
Nightwing blinked at him. How had he managed to get there? "Uh, something you need, man?" Nightwing asked the boy, totally not freaked out.
The boy- teen, he was only a year or two younger than Dick- looked up, large blue eyes staring. As if it was odd for Nightwing to have addressed him. It took him a moment longer to realize that the bike was, in fact, Nightwing's. "You need to change your [important engine part]." He pointed lamely, standing up to his height of only a hair shorter than Dick.
"How do you know that?" Nightwing asked before he could think of the danger the unknown person might pose.
"That's why it was making that sound. It'll put too much pressure on the engine so it won't be able to go as fast it would be otherwise. Which, I take it, would cause you problems." he tipped his head in the direction the rouge had run off in.
Nightwing considered it for just a moment, not wanting the perfect opportunity to get away from him. "Do you know how to fix it?"
The guy looked almost offended, "Yeah."
"I'll pay you." Nightwing jumped at the opportunity, "If you fix it."
Any normal person would've said no to a guy dressed in bullet-proof spandex with a blue bird on his chest and a weird mask. "Sure." He shrugged easily, a glimmer of excitement in his eyes as he eyed the vehicle. After a moment, "Name's Danny, by the way. You'd probably need to know that." Danny eyes his suit, "Who are you, like, blue-jay?"
"Nightwing." He corrected easily, his name hadn't made the streets yet.
"The Robin reject?" Was Danny immediate response, eyebrow arched up in amusement.
"The what?"
Danny grimaced, the laugh never leaving his face, "Ooh, sorry. Touchy subject?"
"I am not a Robin reject." Dick couldn't tell this civilian that he was Robin. Had been.
Nightwing's bike ran better than it had since he had moved to Bludhaven after Danny had gotten his hands on it. And Danny's payment of ("i don't trust ur money, just buy me food") lunch had been a steal in return. Maybe next time they should go somewhere a little nicer.
Because the bike was doing so well, after Danny fixed it.
Not for any other reason.
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thevoidstaredback · 15 days
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How To Balance Your Daytime and Nighttime Activities So That You Don't Burn Yourself Out More Than You Already Have
It had been a long few minutes since he'd opened the door and there were a lot of questions running through Dick's head. Most pressing of which was how this kid seems to have information he should not have.
"How did you..?" he asked, but the words wouldn't leave completely. There's so much he wants to know, so much he wants to ask.
"How do I what?" Danny tilted his head like the child he seems to be is.
"How do you know?" Dick knows he sounds weak. There's no hiding that, but there are a lot of implications in what the kid has said so far and none of it is painting a very happy picture for him.
"Oh!" Danny had the audacity to smile, "You want to know how I know you moonlight as a vigilante!" And of course he knows. Dick knows he knows, but he'd held a little bit of hope that the child Danny was mistaken. Danny's smile softened a bit as he explained, "Your hair and voice match up in both jobs almost perfectly. Not to mention your build and how you hold yourself. There's also the matter of your overall vibes, but that's not something living beings can normally pick up on." Excuse him? "Well, not living humans, at least, so no worries on that end!"
"Excuse me?" Dick was fairly sure his heart just stopped beating for a moment there.
"Anyway, I was a hero back home for a while, too. I know what it's like to have to walk the tightrope between maintaining a civilian cover and a hero persona. I know how it feels to have to keep secrets from everyone because anyone who knows will be in danger." he rambled, Though, admittedly, our circumstances are quite different. I was working as a hero all hours of the day as well as going to school. You only have to worry about properly balancing between day and night jobs. Either way, me having more to bounce between just makes me al the more qualified to help you!"
Oh. Oh he did not like that. He didn't like a single thing that just came out of the kid's mouth. Because that's what he is, a kid. "Are you...Are you alright?"
"Not in the slightest," Danny admitted with an even smaller smile. Then, it brightened, not quite to a grin, but to something similar, "But I'm here to make sure you are."
He gets points for being honest, but Dick felt his heart shatter. He knew for a fact that he'd never worked with this kid before. He also knew that the Justice League didn't know about him. If they did, he would've been picked up and dropped with either the Young Justice team or the Titans.
Dick wasn't going to ask why he became a hero because that's not his place. It's more of a 'third mission with the team' kind of questions, anyway. Most of the heroes didn't have many options when they took up the mantle. Asking what Danny can do is a more appropriate question, but he wasn't going to ask that, either.
"Now that that's out of the way," Danny turned a few pages from the table of contents to another one that was topped with 'Why Sleep Scheduling Is Important' in the blue glitter pen that Dick was starting to suspect he favored. "You're not getting enough sleep. Following you around - no one's been able to find me for a while, so don't worry about that - for the last two weeks has given me some really worrisome information on you."
Dick was worrying. He was worrying a lot and even more questions were coming to the forefront of his mind.
"Your dayjob is as an officer on the Bludhaven Police Force, or BPD for short." He was looking over the page he'd turned to very aptly and Dick realized that the kid had notes written on him. "The average hours per week for police across the country is forty hours. Gotham and Bludhaven are the exceptions. As a member of the BPD, you work a solid two days and two hours. Six nights a week, you work as Nightwing from eight in the evening to three in the morning. The last day, you take off, which is good. No deserable pattern, so good on you for that. Regardless, that's seven hour nights and ten hour days, with one day off and one day on call as an officer. Seven hours are now left in your day for personal time, eating, and sleeping. That's not a healthy way to live."
Oh, god, the kid had honest to god notes on him! What the hell!
Danny didn't even skip a beat as he pulled Dick's attention back to him and his binder. "I've drawn up a schedule for you to follow." The back of the page had a meticulously drawn schedule, complete with blocks of time to eat, sleep, work both jobs, travel, personal time, and still have a bit extra left over. It was titled 'Ideal End Result' in green marker. "Drastic changes right away will only affect you negatively, so we're starting off smaller." The next page over had another schedule titled 'Where To Begin'. "I've only pulled one hour from your Nightwing hours because I know important that time is to you and the city. I am, however, going to be having you submit an appeal to your boss to cut back your hours from fifty a week to forty a week. That way, you'll only be working eight hours a day and not ten. You'll still be on call for one day, and you'll have that last day off. Altogether, you'll be going be going from working seventeen hours a day to fourteen hours a day. Nine in the morning to five in the afternoon, and eight in the evening to two in the morning. Not including breaks at work or travel time. It opens up a few more hours for you to sleep!"
"You really think the chief is going to pull back my hours?" Dick raised an eyebrow in question.
"He will if he knows what's good for him."
"You know I can arrest you for that threat, right?"
"Yeah, but you won't." And, damn it, he's right.
Although, there was now another thing he had to know. "How to you plan on enforcing this schedule of yours?"
Danny seemed to have been waiting for this. He got a gleam in his eye as he pulled a black folder from his bag, not breaking eye contact with Dick. He placed it on the table and pushed it across. "Congratulations, it's a boy."
Part 1 Part 3
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deadsetobsessions · 4 months
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AU of my Gotham/Tim Drake! Danny where Danny doesn’t know any knowledge beforehand about the DC universe.
Danny doesn’t know how he got here, but the fact that he now shares something in common with Vlad other than their technical halfa status disgusts him
His new name is Timothy Jackson Drake. It’s so far removed from Danny that his parents had him examined for deafness because he didn’t respond to it. He got better at it, at putting on the mask Janet and Jack Drake wanted to see. So they took him to the circus.
He meets Dick Grayson. Danny thinks the kid is adorable, even if Danny himself is technically younger. He sees the flying Graysons fall. The buzzing in his head doesn’t go away.
He’s five, when the fading spirit of Gotham reaches out and pleads her King to protect her city in her stead. She is fading. He says yes, because she’s one of his. The buzzing in his head settles and oh because that’s what’s been missing this entire time. Danny didn’t have a haunt and Gotham gave him one.
He grieves when she dies, the new title settling around small shoulders, and the city grieves with him. In the city proper, Batman and Robin are having the worst night of their lives in the sudden storm.
He’s nine. Robin is Dick Grayson. Dick Grayson, in turn, is an idiot. Batman… well, he’s at least mentoring and protecting the child vigilante, which is more than Danny ever had. He grows fond of them. How could he not, when they tried their hardest to help his city? To help him?
He shows himself, to the duo, in his Phantom form. It’s still him, still modeled after Danny Fenton’s face instead of Tim Drake’s. Ghosts are a reflection of the soul, after all.
“Who are you,” Batman demands, shielding Robin with half a step.
“Gotham.” He replies. Danny wills the city to affirm his claim and the city wraps its arms around the vigilantes. Batman and Robin understands, a deep well of pure knowledge being tapped into in ways they weren’t truly meant to understand.
“…How?”
“Magic,” Phantom says, dry. He tells them of city spirits, and that they can call him in times of dire need.
Dick calls him to help with Two Face. Two Face learns the pain of unmelting ice to the balls.
His core aches when the Bats fight, but Danny knows now that it is inevitable. They’re part of his haunt, his ‘fraid. He knows these things far before they come into fruition.
Dick moves to a sister city. Phantom expands his haunt to Bludhaven because he doesn’t, won’t, ever leave his Robins to themselves.
Nightwing is hopeful, is pleasantly surprised, and very suspicious when he shows up during patrol.
“Gotham…? What are you doing here…? This isn’t, well, Gotham?”
“Satellite City. It is an extension of myself. You were Robin, yes. You’re Nightwing, now. But that doesn’t mean I won’t protect you when I can.”
Phantom goes back, and finds a kid trying to steal tires to make a living. He guides his Knight to him. The starved features, the bones Danny could see, it tugs at his core. It feels like the Ancient of Fate themselves were pulling him along.
“How’d you know I was taking the wheels?”
“Gotham.”
“Are you… high on shrooms or something?”
Bruce sighs. Batman asks Gotham to meet the new Robin, and chuckles when Jason is surprised by the glowing green figure.
Phantom hides this Robin just as much as the last one. He curls shadows around his vigilantes, sometimes at the same time, and softens what little sounds they made while stalking through his city for crime.
He makes small jokes with Jason. Danny forgets, a little, the crushing loneliness of being Timothy Drake.
“I didn’t kill Garzona!”
“You-”
Batman stops as a chill he’s never had experienced directed at him weaves around his neck. An angry Gotham.
“He didn’t kill him.” Danny slides a cold hand on Jason’s shoulders.
But the damage had been done and the next day, Batman is begging Danny to tell him any clues of where Jason had gone.
“Ethiopia.”
He clears the way for Batman to get to Robin. He clears the way for Bruce to get to Jason.
He’d fallen into the trap of believing that Batman would handle everything when in the end, he’s just a man in a mantle that demands more than he ever thought he’d have to pay.
Robin is dead and Danny grieves. The skies crack open and pours a torrent of smogged rain water upon the streets of Gotham. Despite that, Crime Alley is untouched by flood. They say the second Robin was protecting his home.
In a way, it’s not wrong.
Gotham fishes Batman from the bay, carelessly tossing the broken Joker against a shipping container.
“You can’t keep doing this. You’ll die.”
Bruce, Batman, lays on his back, eyes glazed and empty. “Maybe I want to.” He admits. And Danny can’t lose someone else. It’s already bad enough he feels the death of everyone in his city, he can’t lose him too. But Dick won’t come back. He already denied Gotham when Phantom had asked him to come back. Granted, Dick was nervous about denying him the entire time, but Danny realized that he’d lost a brother in the colors his parents chose for Dick. Danny- Phantom had cradled Dick in a swaddle of shadows and comfort.
“Alright.”
“Is it? Alright? I- I don’t want to fail you, Gotham.”
“It is. You’ve always made me proud. You will always make me proud. Whether it be by different name, it matters to me not. Stay. Heal.”
Like Dick was given permission, like he received a hint of peace, Dick Grayson crumpled to the floor and sobbed into Gotham’s shoulder.
(Later, long after Dick Grayson realized his little brother was also his city personified, he cries again into Tim’s shoulders after the later dropped a flower pot perfectly on top of Catalina Flores’ head.)
Gotham, Phantom, Danny makes a choice.
“Tomorrow, a child will show up at your door. You will let him in.”
“No- I can’t. I won’t.” He knows what Danny will ask of him.
“You will.” Danny doesn’t ever do it with his people, with his city, but dire times call for dire actions. It is an order. And Batman is Gotham’s knight. “You will. You will train him. You need a Robin to leash your brutality. I need a Robin, for Robin is my hope. The city’s hope. Our people’s hope. Do not forget the goal you have set out to accomplish in my city.”
Batman rages at him, until he falls unconscious from the wounds he’s gathered. Danny brings him home. He tells Alfred what to expect tomorrow. Bruce wakes up, eyes fixated on the crack that appeared on Danny’s neon green face. “Did. Did I do that?”
Danny nods slowly.
Batman crumples into Bruce Wayne. “Okay.” He says. “Alright. Tomorrow.”
Gotham watches him, unreadable. “Tomorrow.” He says, before fading away.
Tim Drake shows up at the door. Nightwing shows up not long after. Tim Drake adapts to Bruce Wayne’s cold looks and brutal training. Slowly, but surely, he leashes in Batman’s grief fueled brutality and less criminals go to prison with half of their lives beaten out of them.
Batman doesn’t see Gotham as much anymore. He feared that he’s angered his city, that he is no longer welcome.
When Tim figures it out… he allows the roads and the shadows to help Batman once more.
Batman stared intently at the extra coverage. “Thank you,” Tim hears him whisper. “I’m sorry.”
And when Jason Todd comes back to life and attacks Tim in the tower, Tim lets Hood beat him. Gotham had failed him, as Jason’s city. He deserves it. (He doesn’t but Danny had gone past the point of being healthy about his own physical wellbeing. Perhaps being a city spirit this long had affected him, even with the King’s title mitigating the worst of the damages.
“HE REPLACED ME!”
“Because I ordered him to.” Tim whispers, past the pain of a broken leg.
“You? Order Batman around? If you’re going to lie, make it a better one, Replacement.”
Tim catches Jason’s wrist, the one holding the knife to Tim’s throat.
“Robin,” he says simply, allowing Gotham to come out and peer at the child that is his.
Jason stares, disbelieving. Gotham had… Gotham had come by and approved of his plans to clean up Crime Alley. Gotham had extracted a promise not to damage the buildings.
“No.”
His city stares back and him and Jason stumbles away. Tim shifts into Danny, into Gotham.
“You…”
“I am Gotham. I- I did not want to wear these colors. They were yours and Dick’s. But Bruce was hurting the city, he was hurting me. So I made sure he stopped.”
Jason stares at the new cracks, the fresh ones he just caused and the old ones he does not remember being on Danny’s ghostly skin.
Jason swallows. “I’m sorry.”
“As am I. I am sorry I was not there to save you. I am sorry that you died.”
Jason stares at him. The Replacement is Gotham. Jason almost destroyed his city.
“I am glad that you’ve returned. That you’re alive, now.”
“…Really?”
“Always.”
Alternative Version of the above Tower Scene:
Jason slides the knife against the Replacement’s neck.
Danny sighs. “I can’t believe I’m dying again.”
Jason pauses. “What the fuck did you just say, Replacement?”
Danny rolls his eyes at him and Jason rethinks his decision of not offing the little fucker right away.
“You think you’re the first one to die in this household? Get a grip. I did it first, way before you did, jackass.”
Tim is 14. He’s a child. What the fuck is Jason doing?
“When…?”
“How do you think I became Gotham, little bird?”
Jason freezes. And then he’s scrambling backwards, the knife flung away in his horror.
Tim shifts into Gotham and Jason bites back a cut of regret and bitterness.
He… no, what? What even is happening?
“Why is the Joker not dead? You… you told me that you loved me. That Gotham… that-”
“I’m cruel, little bird. The Joker would not suffer as much if he were dead.”
“He’s killing people! He’s killing your own!”
“So everyone thinks.”
“What?”
“I am Gotham, little bird. Mass hallucinogenic gasses are so within my reach to the point it is concerning. Perhaps you should help Ivy with the city clean up?”
“Huh?!”
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disillusioneddanny · 4 months
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Danny felt like his stomach was tied in knots as he finished getting ready for the day. Dick had told him that they were going to Wayne Manor for Danny’s birthday dinner and Danny was feeling sick with nerves. Growing up, his parents had never really acknowledged Danny’s birthday, had never even really remembered it if he was being completely honest. Danny suspected that it had to do with the fact that they had never really even wanted Danny in the first place, but he had never been brave enough to actually voice those thoughts to anyone.
Living with his adoptive parents, Danny was quickly realizing that his relationship with his parents was more complicated than he had ever realized. With Dick, things were easy. The two had breakfast each morning, sugary cereals more often than not, they would have a pun off as they got ready for their day and then Dick would drop Danny off at Bludhaven High and he’d go off to work at the local community center. And without fail, each day he would pick Danny up from school, they would talk about their day and then have dinner together before Dick went off on patrols as Nightwing and Danny found himself manning the computer and keeping an ear open for any crime going on that needed Nightwing’s attention.
Their weekends were usually filled with different outings and adventures. Whether that be Dick dragging Danny to the movies, or going to different festivals that were being held in the city, or going off Gotham to hang out with Dick’s and well, now Danny’s, family to hang out. Or he would find himself going with Barbara to see a play or to a coffee shop to hang out and people-watch. It was weird and not something Danny was super used to. He had never had a parent that cared this much about him. Or even asked him what he wanted to do.
That was the thing with the Fentons, Danny realized. They did things to spend time with Danny, to act like they were putting in the effort to be a good parent to him. But it had always been on their terms, it was always things that they wanted to do. They never really cared all that much for Danny’s input or even really listened when he would try to say he didn’t want to do something.
Dick and Barbara respected him and he treated Danny like the now sixteen-year-old he was rather than just a pest. It never failed to make Danny’s heart feel warm with affection for the older man who had taken him in. He had been living with the Graysons for six months now and there were so many things he was learning about himself and realizing about the Fenton’s that he just couldn’t seem to wrap his head around a lot of it.
He had known that the Fenton’s weren’t great parents, it was a niggling thought that stayed with Danny the majority of his life. A thought that got a bit louder when he was around Tucker’s parents or Valerie’s dad, parents who truly loved their kids and were attentive and knew what was going on in their lives–well for the most part. But they were parents who made an effort and actively tried to be there for their kids, to get to know them and encourage their interests.
Jack and Maddie had never really done that for Danny, not really. They did it with Jazz to an extent, but even then it wasn’t the way Danny had seen other parents interact with their kids, it wasn’t the same way that Dick and Barbara seemed to interact with Danny.
But even though he had those niggling thoughts, he still strived for their approval, for their love and attention and he never really seemed to get it.
Then they had found out that Danny was a halfa and Danny found himself fighting for his life to get away from the Fenton’s. They had held him captive for a week before he had finally found a way to escape. And then he ran and ran and ran until he found himself in Bludhaven, New Jersey and living on the streets.
But living on the streets was by far better than being the Fenton’s prisoners. It was after three months of living on the streets that Nightwing had found him beating the shit out of a mugger who had been attacking a woman. Then two months of the two of them talking and learning more about each other. And then Nightwing had decided he wanted Danny to live with him, not only that but he wanted to help Danny get justice. And then Danny learned that Nightwing was Dick Grayson and Danny found himself getting adopted by the thirty-one-year-old and his wife, Barbara.
And then it had become the best six months of Danny’s life. The couple were amazing and he found himself seeing Dick and Barbara as his parents more and more. Part of him wondered if he should have felt bad about how easy it was to replace Jack Fenton and Maddie
But then Danny reminded himself that Jack Fenton and Maddie Fenton were now serving a life sentence in Belle Reve down in Louisiana for torturing and vivisecting his then fifteen-year-old son. Then Danny didn’t feel nearly as bad. Especially not when he was the one who was forced to look at the vivisection scars that marred his chest or the lightning-shaped scars that trailed from the palm of his hand to his heart. Then he remembered that not only had his parents experimented on and tortured him. But they had also created an unsafe environment that led to Danny’s half-death in the first place.
Dick had been the one to tell him that it was their fault he had died in the first place. Had clenched his jaw and shook in anger as he held back from flying to Amity Park to kill the Fentons himself. Jason, Dick’s brother, had been more than happy to help him finish the job when Dick had told him what happened.
That was another thing.
Dick’s family was insane.
But in a good way. Not Fenton’s level insane. But an insane where Danny knew that he could call any of them and they would come to fight for him, even Damian who had been a little prickly when he found out that Dick was adopting a kid the same age as him. Damian had shown him his sword collection once and then viciously announced that anyone who laid a single finger on his nephew’s head would see just how deadly the Robin could truly be.
Which, well, Danny appreciated. But he had also quietly decided that he would never let Damian know if something happened. He really didn’t want to be the reason his uncle went to juvie.
Jason was fun, the two bonded over their deaths and compared scars. Cass was a calm peace that Danny found himself appreciating when the others were a bit too much. Tim had to be Danny’s favorite out of his new uncles.
Tim was the one who took him train hopping, who he cried to about the fact that his parents had been so horrible to him. Tim was the one who understood what it was like to grow up with neglectful parents who loved their work more.
Duke was kind and funny and conniving and as the only other meta in the family the two had created a fun camaraderie between them and Danny felt comforted in knowing that they had that solidarity between them. Duke was also the one who Danny found himself going to when his shoulders felt a little too heavy with the weight of everything that had happened.
Danny’s new grandfather and great-grandfather had been wonderful too. They had accepted Danny with open arms and Danny was pretty sure he had heard Bruce argue with Dick about adoption papers a few times in regards to Danny and being put out that Dick had beat him to it. Whatever the heck that meant.
And then there was Danny’s new adoptive mother, Barbara and she had been a pillar when Danny needed one. She had welcomed Danny to their home with open arms and had been the one to spearhead the investigation into the Fentons. The one who had gotten a hold of Danny’s records and taken care of virtually everything. She scared the absolute shit out of Danny but also gave the most amazing advice, the most comforting hugs, and had been exactly what Danny needed. She was also the one to show Danny that he could still be a hero without going out onto the field and had decided to train Danny to be an Oracle in his own right.
He had kept the name Phantom. But now it was more so because he was a ghost who saw everything and heard everything. He went out onto the field with the bats when they absolutely needed his firepower, but his preferred spot was being the man behind the scenes. After everything he had gone through being a vigilante in Amity Park, he wasn’t sure if he would ever want to be out there fighting bad guys, not like he was.
Again, he didn’t mind it when the bats really needed help, or if a disaster happened and they needed Danny’s powers to help out. He had even let Bruce train him to be able to fight just as good as any of the bats, and let Barbara’s Birds of Prey teach him some tricks that Bruce would never approve of.
But he was happy. He was happy and loved and safe and he couldn’t get over the fact that he had such an amazing family all for himself.
Barbara and Dick were amazing and had folded Danny into their family so seamlessly and wonderfully that it had him feeling safer than he had ever felt in his life.
Which was why he was so damn nervous about what he was about to do, why his birthday felt so terrifying and anxiety-inducing. He had decided that he was going to officially call Dick and Barbara his mom and dad today and he was hoping it went well.
He didn’t think they’d be mad. In all honesty, he was pretty sure that they’d be pretty pumped about it. But that didn’t take the nerves and anxiety away either.
He shook his head and finally allowed himself to walk out of his bedroom. He made his way to the kitchen where Barbara was bringing food to the dining room table while Dick was flipping a pancake onto another plate.
“Good morning Danny!” Barbara said cheerfully when she spotted Danny coming in. The sixteen-year-old gave her a nervous smile, bent down and kissed her cheek lightly.
“Morning Mom,” he said before he could back out of it. He glanced over at Dick who was now staring at him starstruck. “Morning Dad,” he said cheerfully before he waltzed over and grabbed the plate in his father’s frozen hands.
“I get birthday pancakes? Sweet,” he said with a wide smile before he grabbed a fork and made it back to the table, his adoptive parents both seemingly frozen in place. He tilted his head to the side as he took in Barbara’s form as she sat frozen in her wheelchair and to Dick who hadn’t moved, even after Danny took the plate from his hands. Maybe it was too soon to call them his parents, maybe they didn’t want that. Regret started to nibble at the edges of his stomach as he looked at them.
“Are you guys okay?” He asked hesitantly before his dad let out a loud sob and came running towards him and hugged him tight.
“My baby!” Dick cried, his arms wrapped tight against Danny’s chest. It was like he was being held onto by an octopus. Dick pulled the plate of pancakes away from Danny and set it on the table. Danny let out a groan as he struggled against his dad’s grip as Dick started to pepper his head and his cheeks with kisses. “Danny Grayson I love you so much,” he cried out.
“Dick,” Barbara said with a laugh as she rolled over, hitting Dick’s leg lightly with her wheelchair. “You’re going to smother our son,” she said and Danny felt the butterflies in his stomach start doing somersaults at that. Their son.
He was their son.
“I’m just so happy,” he cried out. “Fuck, is this how Bruce feels when we call him Dad?” he asked, letting out a sniff as he finally pulled away from Danny and started to fix the teenager’s hair.
“Yes, it is,” Danny’s mom said, giving him an amused smile. The redhead held her arms open for Danny and the sixteen-year-old happily bent down to give his mom a hug. “I love you, sweetie,” she said softly.
“Love you too,” he said with a chuckle. “Now, what’s all this?” He asked, motioning to the table that was full of different breakfast foods.
Barbara beamed. “We wanted to have a fun little breakfast before we started all of our birthday festivities. Dick and I have a few surprises for you, and we’re going to go and get lunch with my dad, then we’ve got a few more activities before we go over to Bruce’s tonight for your birthday party.”
Danny couldn’t help but smile widely at his parents. “We’re doing stuff all day?” He asked, feeling breathless and a little dizzy at the thought.
“Of course,” Dick said, slinging his arm over Danny’s shoulder. “Today’s all about you and we’ve got a lot to celebrate.”
Danny gave his parents a small, excited smile. “Yeah, we do,” he said softly. He had so much to celebrate, his new life, his new parents, his newfound happiness. He couldn’t wait to see where they were going to go from here. But he knew that it was going to be amazing. How could it not when he had such an amazing family taking care of him?
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Danny leaned over the guy who summoned him. The blue eyed man in a hoodie and boxers, was quite fit but compared to Danny he had nothing.
“So let me see if I got the story straight. You, Richard Grayson, son of one of the most wealthy men in the known cosmos, summoned me, the high king of the infinite realms,to Bludhaven.”
Dick shifted one foot to the other as and refused eye contact.
“Yeah..”
“And you summoned me here at 3 am. Because you fucked up and told your family that you had a partner for the gala your dad holds every New Year’s Eve.”
“Correct.”
Danny sighed and brought a hand to his temple,
“So how am I supposed to help you man? Like I can’t exactly order one of my people for this kind of thing.”
Somehow the guy seemed to get more sheepish as he ran a hand through his hair.
“Well about that-“
“No fucking- Did you really summon to me-“
“Listen, I’m desperate ok!?”
“Desperate!? My god that’s when you ask a friend or pay a hooker or something like that! Not try to seal a deal with the king of the infinite realms!”
Richard Grayson for his part started to pace, Danny didn’t know rather to laugh or cry over the absurdity of the situation.
“Any friend I could bring and pull a lie like this is already going to be there. I specifically said a plus one! My family works close with all of Gotham they would figure out a hooker before we would enter the venue.”
Dick turned and went to his knees,
“Please your majesty, I have like seven younger siblings, I will never live this down, all I ask is one night, please.”
Danny sighed,
“Be lucky that I am not Pariah Dark. He would’ve killed you where you kneel. Alright dumbass get up. I will help you but you will owe me one IOU for me to redeem whenever I wish.”
Danny knelt and offered his hand,
“Do we have a deal?”
“Deal.”
With a shake of a hand Danny brought them both off the ground and he changed back to human.
Danny felt himself smirk as he plopped himself onto the couch.
“Alright, then let’s begin to get ready, we want to be believable yeah? So let’s get to know each other. I’ll go first my human name is Danny Fenton nice to meet you.”
Richard Grayson seemed to gape for a moment before joining him.
“I go by Dick, do you like acrobatics?”
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starry-bi-sky · 4 months
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sO i got to part two of the daniel jason todd fenton au :)
>:) word count 8k+
So, first, taglist for folks who asked for it: @blep-23 @mikyapixie @isnt-that-grape @randomenglishmajor @illryiannightmare @the-navistar-carol
SECOND: this part needs a trigger/content warning list: - CW Mild Swearing - CW Slight Psychological Horror - ^ CW mild depictions of being haunted by your own ghost/death flag and not realizing it (other people do though) - CW Brief Emetophobia (Danny throws up during a second nightmare) - CW Danny has nightmares of dying - except its of Jason Todd's warehouse death. It's not explicit but it's implied - TW Mild mentions of perceived Blood - TW Depictions of Corpses (first is non-descript, and then second one is slightly more descript but its not anything uh, super descriptive) - TW Mild description of burns (the descriptive part above) - TW Depictions of Panic Attacks (Danny's nightmares)
I mentioned that this au was inspired by a song lyric from Jann's 'Gladiator' here is that line:
I know your addiction's attention, Let's start a show Is it everything and more than you were hoping for? Show us something we ain't never seen before
The day after Danny meets himself, he's downstairs having breakfast in the dining room with the rest of the family, listening idly in on their conversations. Tim Drake is talking about something about Wayne Industries with Mr. Wayne - and wasn't that a startling surprise to learn the first time? - and Damian was slyly trying to feed Ace under the table. Duke Thomas was mid conversation with Cass, much of it audibly one-sided as Cass swaps between ASL and verbal speech.
(Danny comes across her a fair few amount of times in Wayne Manor. The first time was in the library. She hands him a book about planets, smiles, and walks away.)
(He hasn't talked much to Duke Thomas yet, but he plans to - he seems cool. They just haven't had the time to run into each other yet. Danny might just have to corner him, he thinks.)
And finally Dick Grayson on his left, his Dick Grayson, was talking away with the other Dick Grayson - who had stopped by from Bludhaven for the morning for his day off. He was a cop, ew. They were comparing lives, specifically college lives. There wasn’t much to talk about in their childhood, it seems. Danny was quietly listening in. 
(They both gave their Bruces headaches as children, apparently. Climbing the chandeliers and sliding down the staircase banisters. Flips and tricks only a child raised by the circus could do.) 
All-in-all, a very quiet morning, Danny thinks. That is, until the other Dick Grayson turns to him and goes; "I'm sure you've been asked already, but what do your parents do, Mini Jay?"
Danny squints at him, and releases his grip on his spoon to raise a pointed finger. "First off: only my Dick Grayson can call me Jay, you have your own." He says, slightly playful and nodding to Dick - oh that was going to get confusing, fast. He should come up with a nickname for one of them, probably - "And second: you're the second person to ask me that, actually. Jason - er, myself? - asked me yesterday. My parents are ectologists."
Apparently, mentioning that he met himself is a set of magic words, because the whole table stops what they're doing, and Danny's half-sinking back into his chair when all eyes turn to him in varying degrees of surprise. Dick - Richard, he’s going to call him Richard - looks at him with wide eyes and furrowed, confused brows. "You saw Jason?"
(Danny sends Bruce a confused look, but he's not paying attention - looking at everyone else with threaded eyebrows and a faint frown. Well, at least Danny isn't the only one confused by the reaction.)
(What a comfort.) 
"I guess that nickname is a dimensional constant." He mutters under his breath, and straightens up, eyeing the room warily. It... doesn't bode well to him that the Waynes were surprised by his other self's appearance -- was hisself estranged from the family?
...He hopes that doesn't happen in his world. Dick and Bruce may not be his adoptive family, but he likes them quite a lot. He wants to stay in contact with them when they get home.
"Yeah, he was in the library." He says, frowning at Richard Grayson. "He was sitting in my armchair." He supposes it was Jason's armchair first -- god, that was so weird to refer to himself in third person. "We talked for a little bit, and he asked me what my parents did. They're ectologists, by the way."
He turns to Mister Wayne and tilts his head, "Did you really not know that he was here?" He asks, narrowing his eyes. He wouldn't expect Richard to know, he doesn't live here. But Mister Wayne looks just as surprised, perhaps even a little remorseful.
(There’s a pit in his stomach that’s growing bigger.)
(His neck burns with a new pair of eyes, ones that he can’t see.) 
Mr. Wayne looks thoughtful for a moment, and then carefully, he goes; "Jason is rather... independent. He comes and goes from the manor when he feels like it." And the way he speaks sounds like he was choosing his words carefully. Danny suppresses the shiver of unease.
Something was not well in this house. Something unspoken was haunting the air. 
(Jason would know about hauntings, wouldn’t he?) 
He hopes history won't repeat itself, he likes Bruce quite a lot.
"...Alright," he says after a moment of silence, not hiding his wariness as he slowly turns back to Richard. His eyes flick towards Bruce, and then to Ricard. "Anyway, my parents are ectologists, as I've said for the third time now."
Richard, for his effort, takes the topic change easily, and his surprise shifts into one of curiosity - as does everyone else. (Did Danny really not mention what his parents did? Even Dick and Bruce look intrigued.) "That's... new." Richard says lightly, Danny commends him for the way he sounds non-judgmental. "What are ectologists?"
Danny quirks a dry half-smile, and deadpans; "Studiers of all things dead and afterlife."
...And there is that reaction again. A ripple of surprise and intrigue that spreads throughout the room as everyone looks at him, like a bunch of cats perking up their ears. 
On the other side of the table, Damian scoffs quietly, a sound much like the one Jason - the other one - did when Danny told him. Danny's eyes snap over to him in an instant, he stares at him, trying to study him. Why that reaction - again? 
He lets himself frown, briefly, before addressing Richard again. "Everyone just calls them ghost hunters, but the 'official' term is ectologists." He drawls, air-quoting the word 'official' with his fingers as he rolls his eyes. "They've been obsessed with ghosts since college. We even have a lab in the basement, and they keep liquid ectoplasm samples in the fridge."
Danny's been in the lab a handful of times, he and Jazz both have, either to clean it as part of their chores, or to listen to a lecture from their parents for their newest invention. The lab is cool, kinda, but Danny thinks it wouldn't look out of place in any evil lair of a Rogue with a doctorate. 
…He’s glad that the Fentons weren’t stationed in Gotham. They would have blown up a street. He’s surprised they haven’t already. 
"Ectoplasm?" Dick asks, leaning over to catch Danny's eye. Almost by instinct now Danny smiles at him, and then nods.
"Mom and dad say it's the stuff that makes ghosts." He explains, leaning back against his seat, his arms crossing. "It's invisible in its natural state, and it makes up everything. Kinda like the Force from Star Wars, or just, matter in general."
That cracks a few quiet, laugh-like sounds through the dining room. Danny halves a smile again, a swelling of pride in his chest that lingers for a moment. "My parents say that when ectoplasm condenses enough in one area, it can start taking on visible properties," he continues, "they say that ghosts are just the memories and emotions of a dying person or animal being imprinted on a concentration of ectoplasm, and that the ghost itself isn't actually the person or animal, just matter trying to mimic it."
Which Danny guesses makes sense, even if the way they talk about ghosts made him really uncomfortable. His parents insisted that ghosts weren't actually people, but he just couldn't shake the idea that they were. How close to ‘human’ does something get before they actually are? 
Well, no, that wasn’t fair. Superman wasn’t human, and yet everyone treated him like he was. Let him rephrase himself:
How human-like must something get before they are considered as such? Before they’re considered sapient and sentient, and real?  
"That's... quite interesting." Someone says, and Danny turns to see Bruce leaning his elbows against the table and putting his chin on threaded fingers. He looks genuinely engrossed in what Danny's said, and pride once again leaks into his heart. "You mentioned they kept ectoplasm in a liquified state in their... fridge?"
"Oh yeah," Danny says, putting his full attention to Bruce, "it's crazy. They keep little test tube racks in the freezer full of liquid ectoplasm, and it's this - uh - glowing, bright green stuff. It used to be the weirdest thing in the house."
(From his peripherals, Danny notices the room tense up again at his description — and he bites back the urge to slow his talking down and narrow his eyes. Suspicious. Suspicious. The Waynes weren’t scientists - why do they react to something like they are?)
(Nobody knows what ectoplasm is. To the scientific world, it's an unconfirmed theory of a state of matter. Why do the Waynes act like they know what it is?)
(Danny is not stupid. Even if his scientific family makes him feel like it, sometimes.) 
Bruce gives him this half-tilted, confused smile, the corners of his eyes crinkling up. "Used to be?"
Danny opens his mouth, the answer already on the tip of his tongue -- and then he freezes. His jaw clicks shut as he frowns. Should he say what his parents' latest pet project was? Surely, surely, it would be fine? Their inventions never work - and a life-sized portal is just another thing on his parents' crazy ideas list.
His teeth sink into his bottom lip, chewing on the skin as he rolls the answer over in his head. ...Surely, it would be fine. His face turns in hesitance, and his shoulders scrunch and twist to his ears, like he's about to admit something that could get him grounded by his parents.
"They... may, or may not, be building an inter-dimensional portal in the basement?" His voice steadily pitches upward nervously the longer he speaks. By the time he finishes, his voice is close to a squeaky pitch.
There is a horrified silence that follows him, sitting in the air so still-like that Danny could hear the whoosh of a pin drop. He should have expected that, nervously surveying the ranging horrified expressions on the Wayne family's faces. "...I promise they're harmless... to the living." He hesitates, "Mostly."
Bruce stares at him for a long moment. "Mostly?" He repeats, his brows arched high and pinched together. Danny cringes back a little.
"Dad's a little clumsy, that's all." He says, shrugging with a helpless smile. It doesn't help, he thinks, and the silence is strangling. Sitting up, he's a little frantic to add; "I really, really, doubt it's going to work, Bruce. Their inventions never do. Mom and dad built a mini portal in college and it didn't work either!" There's a moment of silence following him, before he quietly adds, wincing, "It- it did hospitalize the guy who was helping them, though."
He only heard about that when he asked his parents about the portal - it was still in production when they picked him up. Jack Fenton claimed it was safe as safe could be - they’d make sure that the ‘college’ instance never happened again.
Bruce - both Bruces actually - looked vaguely ill at the thought. Mister Wayne’s face was blank, his face sunk into his folded hands, and Bruce’s stare burned into Danny, intense like concentrated fire. 
Danny for some reason - either through his panicked urge to make things better, or through temporary insanity - laughs forcibly. "The worst thing that could happen is that the portal could explode, but that never happens."
Next to him, Dick makes a stressed sound. "That's not better, Jay." He forces out. He looks even more horrified.
Danny sucks on his bottom lip for a long beat. Then lets out a breath.
"Yeah, I know." Danny sighs, deep and long while his shoulders slump. He watches the room for a moment, with their various stony-like expressions, and looks back at the very concerned-looking Bruce. "But Bruce, I swear it's fine. Nothing's gonna happen, please don't call the Justice League on my parents. They really are harmless."
Bruce looks conflicted.
"I was being dramatic when I said the portal could explode, it won't." He continues, giving Bruce what Jazz has called his 'cheating puppy eyes'. "My parents are eccentric about their line of work, but they understand lab safety. They'd never do anything to put me and Jazz in danger."
...Actively or on purpose, that is.
He and Bruce stare each other down. One second, two seconds; what feels like thirty seconds pass in silence before Bruce relents, sighing deeply and uncannily dad-like. He drags a hand down his face, and rubs his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. "When we get back to our universe, you are giving me your phone number so you can contact me if anything happens."
Danny beams, nodding hurriedly. "Thank you, Buzz."
Bruce isn't able to hide his smile - small as it was - quickly enough. "You're welcome, Danny."
—-----
Danny has a nightmare that night. He doesn't remember most of it. There's a ticking sound, and high laughter, and there is a thumping heartbeat in his ears. Everything is dark and he is in agonizing pain.
He wakes up in paralyzing terror, a scream lodged in the back of his throat. His head pounds like a concussion and there is a shallowing ache in his ribs, like someone's kicked him, and kicked him, and kicked him until all air has been knocked from his lungs. He can't breathe.
Danny's hands scrabble for his throat, and even though he can hear himself gasping for air, it doesn't feel like he's taking any of it in. There is no relief in the action, no reassurance, and everything is so hot. He kicks at his blankets, his panic growing higher as they tangle around his legs.
He needs-
He needs--
He needs to move. He needs to get up. He needs to free himself. He needs to prove that he's not dying. He feels like he's dying. He feels like he's burning. There are tears swelling in his eyes as he finally gets the blankets off his feet, and he rolls - quite literally - out of bed.
He tries to catch himself, he does. But he doesn't. He hits the floor with a heavy thud and can hardly bring himself to care -- he catches himself on his elbows, and the sting it causes makes him feel worse. The air is knocked out of his chest again. 
The ground is cold though, blessedly cold. And before Danny can realize this, he lifts his head and, disoriented, looks for the door. It's too dark, it's too dark. His head swivels blindly in search of it. He needs to get out, he needs to escape. 
"Bruce." He croaks, still trying to force air down into his lungs. His call comes out raspy, weak, and hot tears blur his vision.
"Dick." He tries instead when a minute passes and no one comes, and he thinks he can finally start breathing. No one comes to find him - his voice is too quiet to wake anyone up. The tears in his eyes bubble and pop, and stream down his face.
He makes a distressed noise. "Jazz?" He whispers, his voice shaky and uneven with an encompassing want for his sister. It's nearly been a month since they got here. He wants Jazz.
No one hears him. He's alone.
God, he doesn't want to be alone. Please don't make him be alone.
Danny eventually gets himself calmed down. But he is curled up on the floor, trembling with the lingering traces of fear from whatever dream had woken up. His fingers dig painfully into his arms, leaving crescent-moon indents by his nails. The contents of the nightmare are already fading further into his mind, slipping out of his hands like water. Like ash.
He feels no need to chase after it.
The back of his shirt is damp with sweat, and in between the trembling he is also shivering, goosebumps lacing up his arms. His eyes have adjusted to the dark, and he stares with wide, crying eyes at the side of his bed. His breath comes out in short, shaky pants.
He doesn't know how long he lays there, trying to comprehend what happened as his mind still hangs onto the edge of the dreamworld. It feels like there is something in the room with him, crawling along the walls.
Danny forces himself to get up, and the sudden standing makes his vision blacken and swim as blood rushes to his head. He stumbles, slightly, and lurches halfway across the room for the light switch.
He squints as the room is drenched in light, chasing away the lingering paranoia in the back of his brain. He is still shaking. His head still hurts. He still looks, wide eyed, around the room for anything out of place.
There is none.
But he still feels unsafe. He needs- he needs to find someone, or go somewhere else. He grabs a firm pillow off the bed, and leaves.
(He ends up in the library alone. He turns on the lights and grabs a book Dick recommended to him, and he curls up tight in his armchair. He ends up falling asleep just as the sun is rising.)
(He doesn't tell anyone about the nightmare.)
-
Progress in getting the three of them back to their home dimension is slow. Dimension Hopping is a rare experience, and what update Bruce gets he relays back to Danny and Dick: they're trying to figure out a way to send them back safely, from the exact time they disappeared, and to find what dimension they're from. It's complicated magic.
It's been three weeks. 
Danny, for one, is getting homesick. He misses Jazz, Sam, and Tucker terribly, and his parents. Bruce and Dick are great, really, and Danny kinda wants to keep in touch with them after they return to their own world, but they aren't replacements of his sister and friends.
His nightmare from a few days ago still haunt his steps. He closes eyes, and that high-pitched laughter and blood-rushed pounding burns itself his ears and fills a level of unseen terror into his heart. Danny thinks that if he was hit with Scarecrow's fear gas, this is what it would feel like.
He tries to avoid falling asleep by reading in his room, by stargazing, but the place sets him on edge; an unsettling reminder of that nightmare. So he goes to the library when it gets too much, he's run into Bruce twice now doing it, and they both do reading.
Danny thinks Bruce can suspect something is up with him, but he doesn't want to tell him about that nightmare. Dick either, for that matter. He just wants to forget it.
They spend afternoons in the gym, they have it mostly to themselves - Tim Drake is at Wayne Industries, Damian Wayne is at school, so is Duke Thompson, and Cassandra Cain is... doing whatever she does during the day. Danny's not totally sure.
Dick in that time, tries showing Danny how to be more flexible. He says he's a fast learner, but Danny knows he's been slacking lately with his lack of sleep.
There isn't much they can do outside of the manor - Bruce and Dick can't go outside because they'll catch the attention of the paparazzi, and they are both significantly younger than their counterparts, and Danny isn't allowed out without a chaperone.
Which has its own unique set of problems because rumors could rapidly start if he's seen with any of the Waynes multiple times. The paparazzi aren’t dumb enough… okay, most — some — of them aren’t dumb enough to make a tabloid claiming there’s a new Wayne kid just because they see the Waynes interacting with one kid, one time. Multiple times however? That’s another story. And, he has the same issue as Bruce and Dick - he's a baby-faced Jason Todd. Who is Bruce Wayne's adoptive son in this world. He could be recognized. 
And how do you explain a tiny Jason Todd to a world where Jason Todd is a full grown man?
So all three of them are... stuck inside, so to speak. And making do with what they can. Danny spends most of his morning and early noon with Dick, and then they both separate after to have time to themselves before dinner.
Bruce is in one of the studies, doing... something. Danny's not sure and he keeps forgetting to ask.
--
Dick likes Danny - Jason? - Jay. Danny said that he can call him Jason, and he doesn't protest to being called Jay. 
Point is: he likes Jay. He's a delightful kid to be around; he's funny, and clever, even if he doesn't realize it himself. And Dick's a little upset that Jay isn't his brother in his world, he would've loved to have him around the manor. He probably would have visited more if he was around.
Something that he and Bruce were still slowly trying to fix...
He likes spending time with him - getting to teach him his acrobatic tricks was not something he expected, but he loves showing Jay how to do them. He thinks this is probably how Bruce felt when he was training Dick how to be Robin, all those years ago.
Speaking of which, Dick was still not over the Robin jacket that Jay wore. The origins of it weren't the best - Jay started wearing it to take back the insult the other kids at his school were throwing at him - but isn't that what part of what being Robin was about? 
Cheesy, he knows. But his point still stands.
He thinks that if he had to pass the Robin title down to anyone, it would be Daniel Jason Todd-Fenton. Or perhaps just Jason Fenton-Todd? Jay doesn’t seem all that attached to the name Danny. 
(“Mom and dad just started calling me it when they picked me up.” Danny — Jay shrugged when Dick asked him about it, the two of them swinging from bar to bar. “I wasn’t tellin’ ‘em my name at the time, so they gave me a new one.”) 
If he had met Jason before the Fentons had, Dick thinks maybe he would have adopted him instead. And what would that future look like? Would he have been able to, when he had to go to college and classes? Would he have been able to keep going out at night, and keep that secret to himself? 
He’ll never know, he supposes. 
“I think that’s it for today.” Dick says, swinging off the jungle gym and landing on the mats with a cat-like thump. Behind him, Jay groans, and drops with a less graceful thud as Dick stretches out his spine. There’s a satisfying pop-pop-pop of his back as he leans back. 
He turns, and sees Jay going for his water bottle. He looks tired — from what, Dick doesn’t know. But there are dark bags under his eyes and a sleep-distracted look on his face. He’s been distracted, and their lessons have been suffering from it. 
Dick wants to know what’s bothering him, but Jay hasn’t said anything, and Dick doesn’t know what he could say to make it better. 
“I can still keep going.” Jason insists, but he tiredly slumps over to grab his water, and straightens up sluggishly. It’s probably not a lie, but anything Dick shows him he doubts that Jay will retain it. “You don’t have to stop.”
“Oh but I want to.” Dick says, walking over to grab his own water. “I’m human too you know—” and Jay snorts at him with a grumbled ‘doubt it’. “—so I also need my breaks.” 
“With the way you can bend I really don’t think so.” Jason mutters, eyeing him up and down. Dick laughs quietly and takes a long sip of his water. “Seriously, circus boy, what do they feed you? Actually - what did they feed myself?”
Dick’s laughter doubles as Jay’s eyes grow wide and wild, his head shaking with spasming arms. “No, seriously! I don’t know if you’ve seen the other me yet, Dick, but he- he’s fucking huge!” He exclaims, and jumps as high as he can as his arms try to make a silhouette above his head. “I- I’m almost as big as Jack Fenton, and we’re not even biologically related! I don’t know where he got that much height to him, ‘cause- ‘cause Willis, that drunk bastard, was never that big!” 
Dick hasn’t seen the elusive other Jason Todd, and he’s been so curious about him. Both he and Bruce have — especially considering that everyone else doesn’t seem to want to tell them about him. He tried stopping his other self to ask about Jason Todd of his world, and his other self just said that he was his little brother and the second robin, and that he did a lot of his own stuff. 
It was a whole bunch of fucking nothing. And he and Bruce were growing suspicious about it. They hadn’t thought of it before because, well, they were busy adjusting to being in a new world and trying to figure out a way back. And then Jason was never really brought up, but neither was Dick Grayson unless Dick asked about it, and he didn’t think to ask about Jason Todd before.
It was all just strange.
But Jay’s exclamation over the size of himself distracts Dick long enough that he forces himself to put the mystery of Jason Todd on the backburner for now. “I’ll- I’ll have to see him for myself, Jaybird.” He says when his laughter subsides, and he straightens up. 
“Seriously,” Jay stresses, and he starts to make his way towards the gym door. “He’s fucking massive, Dick. Built like a brick shithouse.” 
Dick almost starts laughing again, “Where did you even learn that phrase?” 
Jay rolls his shoulders back and grins at him slyly, “I read.” He says, and it’s so clearly not how he learned that word that Dick barks out a laugh. 
They reach the door, and Jay holds the door open as Dick reaches for the light switch. He looks behind him, surveying the room quickly to make sure that there’s nothing they could have left on the floor, before turning off the lights.
Bright green eyes stare at him from the mirror. Right where Jay is standing. 
In an instant, the lights are back on. Dick’s heart has been kickstarted into fifth gear, suddenly and loudly racing in his chest as he darts his head around the room. It was only two seconds, perhaps only even one, but fear has been shot like an adrenaline needle into Dick’s veins. An inhuman, skyrocketing fear alike to Scarecrow’s fear gas. 
What was that?
What was that?
WHAT WAS THAT?  
But there’s nothing there. There’s nothing there. There’s nothing there. There is only Jason where the eyes were. 
From the mirror’s reflection, Jason turns his head — he hadn’t been looking at Dick, he hadn’t been looking at Dick — and stares up at him. There is confusion written on his face as he glances up at Dick, and then at the mirror. He meets his eyes - Jason’s blue, blue, not green, eyes — and Dick forces himself to look away from the mirror and down at Jay.
“What was that for?” Jay asks him, perfectly normal and perfectly confused. 
Dick feels like he just ran a marathon. He’s panting, he doesn’t know why, and he forces himself to sound like he wasn’t as he wets his lips and furrows his brows. “I thought I saw something.” He says, frowning. 
He didn’t think. He did. He did. 
What did he see? 
It was standing where Jay was. Those eyes. Those green-green eyes. It was where Jay was. He forces himself to shake his head, his frown deepening, unsettled. Jason peers around him as if to see what he had, and Dick puts a hand on his chest, stopping him. “It was nothing, let's go.” 
He turns Jay around, and ignores his bewildered look. That lighthearted mood he had earlier has plummeted, replaced with an eerie paranoia as he takes the door from Jason’s hand and flicks the lights back off. 
When he looks over his shoulder at the mirror, there’s nothing there. 
—------------
Danny has another nightmare. It’s the same one. It’s dark again. That high pitched laughter fills his ears. The ticking is louder, louder, louder. It’s counting down, but to what - he can’t see — he can’t see what it’s counting down to. 
There is still so much pain. His head hurts, his body hurts. He has a body now, he can remember he has a body. He’s in so much pain. He looks down at his hands and pooling around his knees is a bloody yellow cape, it’s torn and bloody and his hands are bloody and torn and he’s wearing green gloves. 
He wakes up just before the ticking stops. He doesn’t know how he knows that the ticking stops. 
Danny rolls over and hangs himself sideways off the bed, gasping for air that doesn’t come. He wants to scream again, to shriek with such terror that it sends everyone in the manor running into his room. He doesn’t, he can’t, he has no mouth and he must scream. 
Danny gasps for air instead, and then dry heaves until he throws up onto the floor. His head is spinning with the fadings of a dream-made concussion, again. His chest hurts deeper, more, it’s no longer shallow and as if someone was sitting on his chest, like someone had beat him in the stomach and chest and head.  
He feels like he’s choking. He is, he’s choking on what bile he can’t get out of his throat, and he forces himself to swallow it back down. He’s crying, he realizes, and dragging in air down into his lungs to the point it hurts. 
What is going on? He thinks through the haze in his mind. With what lucidity he has he brings a hand to his head to make sure he’s not bleeding. His palm swipes against sticky skin, and all that comes back is sweat. He’s not bleeding. He feels like he is. 
Make it stop. His inner mind wails as he finally, finally, starts to calm down again. He’s still crying. The tears burn down his cheeks, and he absently sticks out his tongue and licks the ones that gather at his lips away. He wipes at his face again, and when he looks at his hands, all he sees is skin.
He’s not wearing gloves. 
His hands reach for his back, and grasp his sweat-soaked shirt instead. He’s not wearing a cape. It soothes him, just a little bit. But not enough to keep him feeling safe. 
Danny peers over the side of the bed, and through his dark-adjusted eyes he sees the sitting puddle of throw-up on the floor. He cringes, sniffling. He can’t keep that there. He needs to — he needs to clean that up. 
Alfred must be sleeping by now — what time is it? He doesn’t know. He can’t wake him up. Where does Alfred keep the cleaning supplies? 
Danny throws his legs over the side — they’re not broken, he thinks dazedly — why would he think they’re broken? — and he stumbles to the door. He avoids, somehow, the sick.
(He passes by a mirrored vanity on his way to the door. He doesn’t see his reflection staring at him with green-green eyes. He doesn’t see those eyes following him.) 
He runs into Bruce in the hallway. He should have guessed it so. Danny freezes in his tracks, fear shooting up into his throat as Bruce turns towards him, already a smile pulling on the older man’s face. 
It drops immediately when he sees him. It twists down, and his face burrows into concern. “What’s wrong?” He asks, and Bruce is kneeling before him before Danny can blink. He looks worried. Danny must look awful then.
(He does. He looks pale as a ghost, and his face is splotchy red and shiny with tears.) 
Danny blinks at him numbly, trying to get his thoughts in order. Bruce’s hands are on his shoulders, Danny throws his hands over them, squeezing the knuckles and blinking widely. “I had-” he licks his lips, “a- uh, nightmare. And then I threw up.”
Fuck, he feels like a toddler. His eyes burn with embarrassed tears. He’s fucking thirteen. He’s not a baby. But he feels like a little kid going to their parent’s room. Bruce isn’t even his dad. He shouldn’t feel this way. 
But Bruce doesn’t make fun of him, or scold him, and Danny didn’t really expect him to, but the concern that melts over his face as his eyes soften makes him feel all warm and fuzzy anyways. “Okay,” Bruce says, expression softened but no less worried, and stands up. “Okay, we can go find Alfred then.” 
Danny’s lips press together, uneven and wobbling. “Please don’t.” He says before he can stop himself, and his voice cracks. He feels like such a baby. “I can clean it myself. We don’t have to wake him up.” 
“Do you even know where the cleaning supplies are, chum?” Bruce asks, and in the dark hallway he can see him raise an eyebrow. Danny’s lips press tighter together. He doesn’t. But he can find it. 
They wake up Alfred. Dany feels like shit the entire time. 
“I’m sorry.” He croaks as he follows Alfred and Bruce down the hallway with a mop and a bucket. He’s so embarrassed. He’s going to cry again, and he hates it. “I can do it, Mister Pennyworth. Please.” 
“You sound,” Mister Pennyworth starts, his voice soft, “just like young Master Jason when he started living here.” He turns to throw Danny an endeared smile, and Danny thinks it’s supposed to make him feel better. It does, a little bit, and it also makes him feel worse. 
“I am Jason.” He says, and tears spill down his face again. He is Jason. That’s his name. It’s not Danny, it never has been. The time he’s been here has slowly been pointing that out to him. He may be Fenton, but he’s not Danny. 
Alfred gets it all cleaned up, and Bruce sticks with him after he leaves. Danny’s grateful and resentful of it — hasn’t he embarrassed himself enough tonight? 
Bruce leads him to the library, a funny parallel to the first time. “We can ask Mister Wayne —” Bruce’s face scrunches up slightly, and Danny laughs under his breath. At least he’s not the only one still weirded out by it. “— about getting you a new room tomorrow.” 
Danny sniffs dryly, “How’d you know?” He didn’t think it was obvious that he didn’t want to go to sleep in his room. Bruce smiles knowingly at him, sadly, and they both sit down in the lounge chair next to the fireplace. It sits across from Danny’s armchair.
“I know a thing or two about nightmares.” He says softly.
Oh. 
Yeah.
That’s right. His parents. 
He probably had nightmares about that. 
Danny looks away from him, his eyes drop to his hands. His bare, non-bloody hands. He leans into Bruce’s side. “I don’t wanna talk about it.” He mumbles. He doesn’t want to talk about dying. Or what he thought was dying.  
“And you don’t have to.” Bruce says, slinging one arm around him and slumping against the curve of the chair. Danny reluctantly follows his falling, and finds himself trapped between the back of the chair and Bruce’s side. His ear is pressed to Bruce’s heartbeat. “We can just sit here, and talk about something else.” 
Danny blinks at the empty fireplace. “Okay. Tell me about films again.” 
Bruce’s fingers dig gently into his hair, and scratch slowly against his scalp. “Okay, Danny.” 
Danny frowns. “And don’t call me Danny. It’s Jason.” 
He doesn’t look up to see Bruce’s smile, but he can hear it as the man thumbs over the shell of his ear. “Okay, Jason.” 
(Danny falls asleep halfway through Bruce’s telling of the history of the Grey Ghost. Bruce knows by the way his breathing slows into a steady rhythm and his eyes don’t open.) 
(He smiles for mite a moment, before it drops and his eyes turn to the bookshelf in the corner. Standing there is a small black figure, with two burning green eyes.) 
(They stare at each other for a long, long minute, Bruce’s heart rising slowly. The figure tilts its head, and disappears. Bruce doesn’t sleep for the rest of the night.) 
—-------
Danny stares down Bruce. Bruce stares him down back. It’s morning. It’s breakfast. Everyone is at the table eating, and he and Bruce are having a silent staring contest. Danny has to ask Mister Wayne about moving to a new room, he thought he would be able to do so after breakfast. 
(Who was he kidding? He wasn’t going to ask at all - why bother Mister Wayne about something he can get over?) 
(Bruce, apparently, wasn’t having it. With that stupid knowing look on his face.) 
But Bruce wants it to be now. Danny narrows his eyes at him, and Bruce raises an eyebrow back. Dick Grayson, his world, was going to notice soon. He was sitting next to Bruce this morning. That traitor. 
If you don’t do it, I will. Bruce’s face says. Bastard. Danny was going to take away his Jason rights.
Danny’s the first to relent, pressing his lips together into an annoyed, thin line, before he lets out a silent sigh and turns to Mister Wayne. “Mister Wayne?” He says, cringing slightly when Mister Wayne looks up at him - as with most of the room. 
“Yes, Danny?” 
He spares one last look at Bruce, who nods curtly at him, and Danny throws him one last annoyed look before turning back to Mister Wayne. “Would it, uh, be fine if I changed rooms?” He asks. 
Mister Wayne tilts his head, slightly, to the side with a look of interest. “You can, but what brought this up? Is everything okay?”
Fuck. Shit. Fuck. Danny was expecting that question. He glares at Bruce from the corner of his eye. And then smiles shakily at Mister Wayne. “Um, uh, yeah. Everything’s fine— it’s just, it’s stupid. Some, some stupid nightmares keeping me up.” 
Mister Wayne’s brows furrow, and Dick looks concerned from Danny’s peripherals. “It’s not stupid, you can change your room. I’m sorry you’ve been having nightmares.”
He doesn’t even ask what they’re about. Bruce didn’t either — he thinks he would’ve, maybe — but fuck, jeez. Danny laughs uncomfortably, scratching his jaw. “Yeah- um, thanks. It sucks.” He just barely stops himself from blurting out that he was dreaming that he was dying.
That was not a can he wanted to open. They would have questions, he knows they would, and he doesn’t want to think about it. The image of his bloody, torn hands are already seared into his mind. 
Everyone goes back to eating.
(Dick keeps looking up at him with a shadow of a frown on his face, like he’s keeping an eye on him. Quick enough that Danny doesn’t notice it. Bruce does, and watches his son from the corner of his eye.)
(Danny doesn’t see it, but his reflection turns its head. And peers around the back of its chair. Its eye burns green and it stares at Dick. The next time Dick looks up, it catches his eye.)
(He doesn’t straighten up, he forces himself not to react. He just keeps staring at it, his breath locked in his lungs, his limbs filling with a low, buzzing static. He doesn’t know what it is. It’s terrifying him.)
(The reflection doesn’t react to him, but its eyes seem to… glitch. And an eye appears next to it, and another one appears in a line. The pupils slowly turn to look… at Danny.)
(The window begins to crack.)
“JaSON!” Dick suddenly yells, standing up so abruptly that his chair falls back and slams against the ground with an echoing bang. Danny jerks back in surprise, and stares at Dick, who looks at him with equally wide eyes. 
Dick looks like he’s seen a ghost, his face pale as a sheet. He looks ill. He’s panting, there’s a sheen going over his forehead, like he’s just run a mile. But he’s gripping the table like he may just vault over it.
And everyone is looking at them both once again. Bruce looks incredibly concerned. 
“I— what?” Danny says, pushing his back into the chair as far as he could go. 
Dick blinks, and heaves a breath. Like whatever trance he was in was just… snapped out of. His brows furrow, and he moves, suddenly, peering over Danny like he’s trying to look around him. Left, right, and over, and then back again. 
“You—” he pauses, breathing in, “you looked like you were about to disappear.” 
Danny stares at him in disbelief. And he looks behind him, laughing nervously. There’s nothing there but his own reflection in the smooth glass window. “What- what kind of fucking—” he turns back around to look at Dick. “Why would you say that?” 
“There was something in the window.” Dick says immediately, and Danny is immediately rising to his feet and rushing around the table. Nope - nope, nope, fuck that. He’s by him and Bruce in an instant, as the other Waynes stand up and turn to the window as well.
Dick’s arms are around him the moment he’s within reach, tugging him into his side as one hand presses down against his chest, keeping him close. Dick hasn’t taken his eyes off the window, brows furrowed and serious. 
Everyone looks so serious. It’s freaking him out a little bit. 
“What was your nightmare about, Jay?” Dick asks when he finally tears his eyes away from the window and looks down at him. He’s got a protective hold on him, something so similar to Jazz whenever their parents set something on fire upstairs. 
Danny swallows dryly — does he have to say it? Saying it might bring him back to it, and he doesn’t want to go back to it. Twice was enough for him. “I was dying.” He admits anyways, and regrets it immediately when half a dozen heads all snap to look at him. 
In a panic, his mouth runs. “I was- I don’t remember anything- I just, it was dark and I was in pain and-” He presses his lips together, “I— I was in so much pain. There was this laughter—” Laughter. Familiar laughter now that he thinks about it. From the news. Danny’s lips curl downwards, and he whispers to himself, “Joker?”
“Joker?” Dick repeats, his voice hard. When Danny looks up, his face is unrecognizably stern. “You had a dream that the Joker was killing you?” 
“I— no— yes?” Frustration bleeds into his chest, fear pooling up his throat as the nightmare pulls on the edge of his memory. “I don’t fucking know. I didn’t see anything, all I heard was ticking and that stupid laughter. And I was bleeding, and I was wearing this yellow fucking cape, and- and I was dying.” 
He pulls himself away from Dick, his breathing picking up. “I just- I was— there was this ticking sound and I woke up before it stopped, and I- I don’t know why I knew it was about to stop — but I know that when the ticking stops something bad was going to happen— and it was just a nightmare.” 
Danny grits his teeth, and looks back up at Dick, forcing himself to calm down before he works himself into a panic. “It was just a fucking nightmare, Dick.” He says forcibly, and then he marches out of the room to the library. 
His appetite’s been ruined. 
—---------
Danny’s — Jason’s — asleep next to him. Bruce would think it was sweet if it weren’t for the fact that Jason’s been having nightmares about dying of all things. Nightmares that weren’t, he suspects, completely unfounded. 
His other self looked ill in the face as Jason marched out of the room that morning after Dick’s outburst. Outburst. That’s all he can think to call it even if it sounds juvenile. Like it was unfounded as Jason’s nightmare. 
His other self has been hiding something from him. Something about Jason Todd of this world, who he hasn’t seen at all since they arrived, but Danny — Jason — has. He would’ve thought the other Todd was a ghost if his other world’s… children… hadn’t confirmed seeing and knowing him recently. 
(That was something he still hasn’t fully comprehended. Children, plural? He adopts more after Dick? He has a biological son?) 
He’d be interrogating his other self on this if Jason wasn’t asleep next to him. It would be remarkably easy, as they were all sitting in the living room for the afternoon. All his other children were vigilantes, he wouldn’t need to keep pretenses.
But Jason is asleep next to him, and he doesn’t know. So he resolves to staring holes into his other self’s head, who was going through documents. A case, he bets. His other self doesn’t pay him any mind, but Bruce knows he knows that he’s staring at him. 
(“What have you been keeping from me?” He growls the moment Jason is out of the dining room, rising to his feet. The look on his other self meant that he knew something about those nightmares that Bruce didn’t. 
His other self looks at him, “Nothing that concerns your world.” He says, all of the kids looked tense as well, but now they were staring between the both of them like a fight would break out. 
“Bullshit.” Dick snaps before Bruce can speak, he walks around him and points an accusing finger at his other self. “You looked like you saw a ghost when Jaybird said he was dreaming of the Joker killing him. You know something.”
He did not tell them anything.) 
Whatever it was that his other self was hiding, Bruce would find out before they went back to their world. This concerned him, and it concerned Jason’s safety. If he wasn’t safe and his other self knew something about it, Bruce would be furious. 
Jason’s ragged gasp cut through the air like a knife, and Bruce’s gaze snapped down to his face as the boy’s eyes flew open and he jerked sharply. Jason’s hands were latched onto his shirt before Bruce could react, his nails dragging into his skin like he was trying to claw himself up.
It was another nightmare. Jason was clawing at him, trying to sit himself up while jagged, awful sounding gasps filled the air. He wasn’t looking at Bruce, he wasn’t looking at anything, his eyes glazed over like he was still trapped in the nightmare. 
Bruce wrapped his arms around the small boy and pulled them both down onto the ground, ignoring his other children standing up and looking at them until he had Jay in a cradle. 
The boy was still gasping for air, hyperventilating. His hands drop from Bruce’s shirt and scratch at his throat, his arms forming an ‘x’ while he tilts his head back and desperately tries to draw in oxygen. Bruce tilts his head back up with his hand, and leans him against his shoulder. 
“Breathe.” He murmurs, pushing damp black curls out of Jay’s face. It was a poor command - Jason’s eyes were squeezed shut and his face scrunched in pain, Bruce doesn’t think he can even hear him. “You’re safe.” 
“Bruce.” Dick hisses into his ear, and Bruce doesn’t look at him. He grunts to let his son know he heard him. “The mirror.” 
Bruce’s eyes fly up.
There was a floor length mirror sitting in front of the couch. A mirror that Bruce was conveniently, coincidentally, sitting in front of. A mirror that should have been working as all mirrors do. 
A mirror that, instead of showing Bruce his reflection back as he was, showed him in his Batman suit. Jason was in his arms, but in a torn, bloody uniform. A uniform that looked like a Robin suit. Jason - his Jason - wasn’t a Robin. But here he was, dressed as one, his black-yellow cape pooling beneath him and covered in blood. 
The Jason in the mirror, the Robin, wasn’t breathing. His head lolled over Bruce’s arm lifelessly. 
Bruce’s heart skids to a stop, and he looks back down. Jason was still breathing, his hyperventilating was beginning to slow, but he was breathing. The pained crease of his face was softening, even as his brows were still furrowed. 
When Bruce looks back up at the mirror, the reflection has changed. It wasn’t back to normal, Jason was just in a different suit. He was wearing a white hazmat suit now, and he was burned, horribly. The suit was melted to his skin in patches around his body in black, charred splotches, what wasn’t burned was torn, and the skin he could see was cauterized. The only part of him that was bleeding was his head, and it soaked his black hair red. What of his face he could see, there were bright green lightning figures going up his neck, burning the skin around where it glows. 
The mirror cracks down the middle, severing Jason from Bruce. 
He forces himself to look down, terrified to see the reflection a reality right in front of him. But Jason was alive, uninjured, and breathing quietly. Bruce presses two fingers to his throat, and feels a steady pulsepoint thumping against the pads of his fingers.
Jason’s eyes open and blue stares up at him.  
When Bruce looks up at the mirror, the reflection is back to normal.  
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Project R AU where Danny is a clone created from the DNA of all the Robins past and present by the drs Fenton when they were teenagers.
Upon realizing the child they had made was going to be used as a weapon for evil they quickly and quietly packed up thier family and belongings and jumped ship to a new dimention with the kid after putting him in stasis so he was essentially frozen in time.
Later on little Jazz finds the baby in the tank and assumes the stork had made a delivery and flips the switch to release him from stasis so he can finish growing. A week later the pod beeps and she brings him out of the storage room as a chubby healthy baby and her parents loose thier minds for a bit.
Danny grows up normally...well not really but you get what I mean. Maddie makes sure Danny knows how to fight and wouldn't take no for an answer. No matter how much Danny complained that he wanted to play video games, go to the park with his friends or that Jazz didn't have to fight, she would never relent. Maddie knows she's nowhere near the level of a fully trained assasin but she wanted to give Danny every leg up she could.
She knew he would need it. Call it a mothers intuition.
Well, crap happens. Vlad outs Danny as Phantom and it ends very poorly for the wannabe vampire. Danny escapes into the GZ but just barely and is forced to leave his old life behind but not before Jazz tells him about what she had recently learned about Project: R.
The portals are destroyed and Danny flees to his home dimension in search of his fathers. Unfortunately when he gets there he learns most of his fathers are dead, only Damian Al Ghul and Jason Todd remaining, both having very strained relationships with thier own father Bruce Wayne and everything has gone to crap.
Theres an evil dictator in red and blue ruling the world and they're the reason two of his dads are dead. So he decides to rip the symbol off his chest, put on a mask and make his big debut as Phantom.
How you may ask?
By killing the evil Superman and his cronies on live television and announcing that he's the child of Project: R and what that means.
Damian finds Phantom in Bludhaven looking for him and asking him to take him in only to get refused. Damian fears that Bruce might try to turn Danny against him so is hesitant to get close emotionally.
Jason has no such concerns and scoops him up before Bruce can dress him like a traffic light. They then have the superhero talk and Phantom says he wants to be a anti-hero not a superhero. He already tried that one and it sucked so much. Jason definitely didn't like the fact his kid had been a superhero at any point but finding out pretty much all the adults in Dannys life had failed him so hard made Jay fly into a rage.
Bruce tries to go for custody but fails. Dannys doesn't like how the Titans treat Damian so he steals all the ABBA cds from the tower and makes off like a thief in the night. When they discover this they flip out because those were Dicks and they became practically sacred after he died.
Danny decided to cause problems on purpose. Such acts include:
1. Turning all the furniture in the common rooms of the Titans Tower into hyper realistic cake so when they sat on it/tried to turn on the TV, ect they'd be in for a suprise.
2. Stealing all the tires off of every vehicle Bruce owned and giving them to Jason/whoever was down on thier luck and couldn't afford to change thier tires. Danny says he has "a legacy to uphold" while balancing on the top of on of the tires as he runs it across Gotham
3. Torments Black Mask and Slade. Somehow all thier homes and safe houses are filled with beans. Yes, beans. Whenever they are in Gotham they get beaned in the face with a pickle. (This is worse for BM cause ya'know)
They have no idea whos doing this or why.
Ras Al Ghul is not amused by the pickleing but does not get beanified cause Danny doesn't know where most of his places are so he gets A LOT of pickles thrown at him every chance Danny gets.
4. Danny decides Damian requires lots of snuggles and just turns intangible whenever Damian tries to pry him off. Multiple people keep comparing him to Dick and its starting to get on Dannys nerves. He has three other dads to compare him to and Dick isn't even the only dead one! What about Tim??? He wants to learn about Tim! He demands his fathers tell him about themselves and Tim
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sp00pygal · 1 year
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Hot take: dc x dp, but with good parents Jack and Maddie fenton.
Yes, Danny is part of the batfam. Yes, Bruce has legally adopted Danny and would have adopted jazz (if she didn't insist she was too old to be adopted). Jack is still their loving father. Maddie is still their devoted mother. Both parents recognize that their children love the batkids and the batparents (Yes, this includes Alfred and Maybe Selena) as family, and as the family doesn't seem abnormal (by amity park standards) they let their kids develop healthy relationships with whoever they want.
Madie fenton is Bruce Wayne's science nemesis. She doesn't buy "Brucie" for a second. Millionaire playboy who? Every time she picks up her kids from his house as per the shared custody agreement, she finds him tinkering with some strange device and casually points out "yknow, you have something, but it could be better if you....". She's so used to correcting her husband's math errors and design flaws that the first time she catches Bruce with an unsafe device, reflexes kick in.
Jack, on the other hand, pulls an uno reverse on Bruce. Bruce thought he was adopting a black haired and blue eyed teen with angst issues. Nope! Jack now has a new reclusive rich best friend! They're family, practically brothers! You want to run for gotham mayor and end city crime? Anything you say B-man!
Jack and Maddie start showing up to batkids's civilian events for moral support. Cassandra has a ballet recital? They're in the front seat; cheering her on! Tim has a big presentation in front of the company board of directors? Yet again, Jack and Maddie somehow got past building security; and holy heck, why do they have a "support Tim Wayne" t-shirt cannon?!!? After the 5th cookie care basket with sugar snaps that tried to eat his stapler at the bludhaven police station, Dick now has to politely ask them to stop sending food. He appreciates the effort, but the gingerbread men caused a queen of fables scare and tried to eat a convict.
Jack and Maddie know Danny is phantom. The "threats" to shoot him? He's their son! They'd never! But they can't let him know that they know, so they keep up the act half heartedly. They realize their invention killed him. They realize everything they thought they knew about ghosts was wrong. But how do you say sorry to your kid if he isn't ready to forgive you? Especially if you've wronged him infathomably. You don't. You love him unconditionally; and you live each day with him as the gift it is. And you keep his secret, even from him. You fight infathomable and terrifying monsters each night, over and over, praying that once they're gone he can sleep safely. If he ever wants to forgive you, he'll tell you; when he's ready. And if he can't? You live with what you've done, regret and greif forever seered into your soul. You know he is loved and cared for. He is protected. To you, that's all that matters.
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space-dreams-world · 5 months
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DP x DC prompt: 101 feelings about your dog's best friend's owner.
You know, in the beginning scene of 101 Dalmatians where the Pongo drags his owner to the park after spotting Perdita with her owner and the owners end up getting tangled in the pond Well, it's that except Danny recently moved to Bludhaven with Cujo.
And Cujo wants to be friends with this three legged dog he saw, and he thinks their owner would be great with Danny.
Just Dick taking Haley for a walk before there is a shout and a green puppy is rushing towards Haley. Haley, being brave like her owner, sniffs and is wary of the newcomer as their owners end up crashing into one another in the nearby fountain.
Haley gets a new playmate and possibly a big brother, while Danny and Dick end up getting more familiar with one another as they offer each other to get coffee sometime or to schedule dog dates.
[In this au, I see Danny retiring from the superhero life but will come out of it for major disasters. He is a Morgue assistant or a resident handyman. This au would feature Tall and maybe tank! Danny, which we know Dick has a thing for strength and height. If, at some point, Dick and Danny live together, Danny is Dick's support network/nurse/extra help and can give thoughts on cases if he speaks to ghosts. Or extra, make this a poly with Barbara, as the brains, Danny as brawns, and Dick, while he has both, decide to stick with beauty.]
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nicoleispurple · 2 years
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Ayo to anyone who makes dpXdc fics here is an idea:
Danny and Dick are twins and they both know who and where they are.
One day when both Danny and Dick are (let's say 25 cuz why not) adults Danny gets a job in Gotham.
Whatever that job is ends up being high-profile enough that people start to talk.
They say things like:
Why is Dick doing ___?
Isn't he supposed to be__?
Wait a minute I thought he lived somewhere else?
And one of the most problematic statements
Such a member of his status should not be doing such a thing!
I just really love the idea of D and D just messing with everyone the family included. Imagine the batfam goes to bludhaven and dick goes "what are you guys talking about I was at work"
Yes all I want is a fic where Danny and Dick just have fun messing with people and even switching places from time to time.
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confusedandghostly · 1 year
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Entirely self indulgent dp x dc x mlb prompt
-Danny & Adrien know each other, maybe via Magic Stuff, maybe it’s the classic “event in a convenient spot”, doesn’t really matter. Point is they’re hero friends who both know each other’s secret identities and keep in touch.
-At some point, Danny is forced to relocate from Amity park because of a reveal gone horribly wrong. He bolts and keeps going until he can’t anymore. He’s picked up by a stranger.
-(Generally he doesn’t drop his transformations by accident anymore but thank the ancients he did this time because he would’ve had one hell of a time explaining to this stranger why his blood was bright neon green. As it stands, the biggest question is what the hell happened to him.)
-Nightwing is just vibing, doing his nightly patrols in Bludhaven, when he finds this kid half unconscious in an alleyway, bleeding out. They more or less beg not to be taken to a hospital when Dick suggests it, so instead he takes them to one of his safe houses and patches him up there (This kid is 16? Maybe? Why’s there an open autopsy incision-)
-Danny is not in any shape to be going anywhere and on top of that, his accelerated healing is working at a third of the speed it should be because of the materials that were used to hurt him being anti ghost, so Dick manages to convince him to stay in his misc safehouses - he doesn’t need to stay in just one, he’s allowed to move between them, just please don’t leave entirely.
-Danny explicitly requests that as few people as possible get involved in this, and yes that means the rest of the bats. If he can leave once he’s healed without anyone but Nightwing ever knowing he was there then that’s for the best.
-Except, as it often goes, Danny gets attached to Dick and Dick gets attached to Danny and the Reveal happens, etc.
-While he’s still healing and can’t do much of anything, a story runs on the news. Dick doesn’t think too much of it at first, but Danny gets really concerned when he sees it.
-“-Paris’ supervillain Hawkmoth has finally been taken down. Secretly the popular fashion designer Gabriel Agreste, many people who have heard the news are devastated. His home is currently being searched….”
-Danny goes “oh shit!!! I know that guy!!!” and immediately calls up Adrien and asks if he’s alright, what he’s doing, etc and the resounding answer is no, Adrien’s having an existential crisis, and he’s staying with friends while he figures out what to do with himself.
-Danny explains his own situation, specifically that he was displaced but found a safe (and at this point he really doesn’t want to leave anymore) home with another hero, and Dick, who’s only heard half of the conversation but understands that someone Danny knows and trusts with his own identity needs a place to stay, and offers Adrien a place here.
-Adrien decides to take him up on that offer. He’s being harassed, moreso than he ever was simply for being Adrien the model, because now he’s Adrien, the supervillain’s son, and since Hawkmoth was pretty localized he’s hoping that it won’t be near as bad in a different country.
-Now Dick has two kids in his care and he’s feeling more and more like Bruce by the day because he’s just gone from living alone save for whatever times he visits the manor to having two kids in his house, relying on him for safety and emotional support in the span of like. Two weeks.
-Reveal x2 with Adrien, all that Bonding Stuff™️
-Adrien and Danny get to talking and they’re both experiencing some cabin fever and so they decide “yk what?? We could help Nightwing with his hero work!! The area already has a metric fuckton of heroes, what’s two more?”
-It’s actually rather easy for Adrien to convince Nightwing because he gets why Adrien wants to be back out on the field. Danny, on the other hand, is finding it way harder, because Dick is already worried about Danny’s injuries.
-They both manage it though, under two conditions.
-1. They can’t be Phantom and Cat Noir. Not only is it going to be incredibly obvious if/when they make any public appearances as civilians, but also it’s going to raise questions and unwanted attention.
-2. Minimal magic and ghostly powers. This ties back to the previous stipulation, technically. Cataclysm is too recognizable as a miraculous thing, and it could be detrimental in a fight where Adrien can’t get away to recharge. If Danny used too many of his ghostly powers, he could give himself away as a ghost and become a target for hunters.
-Cue a montage of Dick hiding his two new protégés from the rest of the bats because he wants it to be a surprise and also he wants their debut to be on their terms for safety and damage control reasons while trying to set them up with the appropriate training and gear (moreso Danny who needs a whole new suit than Adrien who can just redesign his magic suit)
-The other bats are absolutely certain something is up with Nightwing and they’re proven right when two new players make their debut.
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minnesota-fats · 1 year
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ANOTHER FIC CONCEPT I THOUGHT OF BUT WONT WRITE SO FEEL FREE TO WRITE IT IF YALL WANNA!!!
So like its kinda angsty but you know, what dc x dp fic isnt!?
So Danny is dating Dick Grayson (or any other bat of your choice—I picked Dick cuz this is the least shipped character with Danny and I want to be the change I want to see in the world!)
They are both 25 or something, living in Bludhaven
Danny knows Dick is Nightwing but doesn’t do the hero thing anymore so it doesn’t really bother him (much)
But every Tuesday Danny goes out for the day and comes back looking absolutely crushed.
Dick will ask him whats wrong only for Danny to brush him off.
Dick decides to tail Danny one Tuesday cuz he’s worried
He follows Danny all the way to Gotham and then to Arkham Asylum
Dick manages to get Barbra to hack into the cam system so he can spy on his BF without being caught
Turns out Danny is meeting his parents who are inmates at Arkham and the reason they are there is because they tried to kill Danny (thats what their file says according to Barbra and after doing research the Fenton’s are your classic mad scientists)
In the camera feed Dick can hear how Danny’s parents swear up and down that the man in front of them isn’t their son but rather a monster that took his place.
Danny will tell them about what is happening in his life before eventually he gives up and walks out of the room when they don’t listen to him.
Danny walks out of the building and is face to face with Dick who only looks at him with a sad expression.
Danny tries to brush it off only for dick to hug him and tell him its alright
Danny breaks down and tells Dick about his parents
How they hurt him to the point he nearly died
How he comes back every week in hope that they will finally see that he isn’t some monster but their son who still loves them despite what they did to him
Dick just holds him and listens
When Danny calms down he decides that the best corse of action is to take him to Wayne manor where Alfred the god of making people feel better is and maybe stay for dinner if Danny was up to it
Now an alternative/additional plot divice
Arkham break out
Jack and Maddie whip up ghost hunting equipment from anything and everything they find
They track down Danny just for the chance to PROVE he is a monster that took the place of their baby boy
Danny gets taken
Dick and the Batfam have to save him
And maybe Jazz is there and ready to kick ass for her baby brother!
The rest is up to you, just link me the fic if you write it!
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porcelana-r0ta · 11 months
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The Curse of Sight, Part 4
[Part 1] [Part 3]
[Ao3 Link] (Available only to Ao3 users)
Summary: When Wes Weston meets Tim Drake-Wayne, the dots start connecting. And those dots form a Bat.
Ever since Wayne Enterprises’s TikTik went live, Wes has been upgraded from go-fer to Rebecca’s unofficial assistant. He mostly helps pin microphones or scribes for her as she dictates scripts. Sometimes he’s a runner to other departments when she’s too impatient to wait for emailed replies. She also gives him “homework” in the form of scrolling through his TikTok FYP and reporting to her on popular trends and audios so she can keep an eye on teenagers’ interests.
The only real thing he’s still doing with his original internship is his morning coffee runs, which Tim Drake will only occasionally join him on. Not always—he is the co-CEO of WE—but enough that Wes starts to relax on his “Red Robin and Batman are going to rip out my spinal cord” anxieties. His two main concerns are now just “What if Jade tries to make me go back to being a go-fer” and “What if Rebecca wants me to be in another TikTok?”
He’s still running interference with the other teenagers from Amity Park over that one. Especially with Tucker, who had only become more insufferable when he got the letter containing Tim’s signature.
“Wes,” he said into the phone when Wes had finally answered the call instead of pressing decline like he’d done six consecutive times beforehand. “Wes, buddy. I—I need to meet with Tim Drake-Wayne. This is a matter of life and death. WayneTech is only releasing one more PDA and then they’re shutting the PDA line down completely in favor of regular tablets. I can’t let that happen. Wes, please!”
“I think it’s too late for that,” Wes had replied. “Like, this is already in motion. Also, Mr. Drake-Wayne and I aren’t really friends.” He conveniently left out the part where they had known each other long enough to probably be considered friends, at least by normal civilian standards. Wes certainly considers Tim one, at least, but he’s not sure how mutual it is. “I’m just an intern who ran into him on a coffee run, and I got his signature. There’s not much more I can do for you.”
Tucker made the sound of a dying lamb, “Wes, please. I’ll do anything.”
Wes paused, tempted to say, Then admit what Danny is.
He bit his tongue and cleared his throat, “Anything?”
“Anything, man. Please!”
“Then perish.” Wes ended the call and ignored Tucker’s resulting onslaught of texts.
But that was a few days ago, and now Tucker only intermittently asks for Wes to convince Tim to save his beloved line of WayneTech PDAs. Wes wants to send a mean text about outdated technology, but he manages to hold back and continue to leave the other on unread.
Maybe it’s still mean to ghost (ha) him like that, but it’s also mean to harass Wes about the PDAs when he’s just a lowly intern. He just gets the fucking coffee.
(Nevermind the whole, you know, the friendship is real thing.)
Soon, getting coffee for the 73rd floor with Tim turns into hanging out with Tim for a few hours after their shifts. It starts slowly, with Wes mentioning off-hand that he’s going to the library, and Tim mentioning that he hasn’t been to the library in a while, so Wes invites him out. And they go to the library, check out some books, and then realize, Oh, hey, it’s a little late. Wanna head to Batburger for some food? And then they go out to eat and take turns reading the first chapter of the books they’ve chosen to each other.
And then Wes is inviting him over to his house, or Tim is inviting him out to eat, or to the movies, or whatever. No invitation to Wayne Manor, not that Wes expects one or even really wants one—a house full of Bats? No, thanks.
And Wes wasn’t kidding about the kidnapping/hostage bait, either: just last week, Dick Grayson had been held hostage in Bludhaven, not as a police officer, but as Brucie Wayne’s beloved first child. Interestingly enough, it wasn’t even Bludhaven’s own hero Nightwing who saved the day, but rather Gotham City’s Batman and Robin.
So, yeah. Not being spotted at the Manor? Tim wearing sunglasses and hoodies whenever they hang out in public? Totally fine by Wes, thank you very much.
Plus, it keeps Tucker from really blowing his phone up.  
“Hey,” starts Tim one day after being invited over to Wes’s house after work. “Do you think you and Rebecca would be willing to work at a Wayne Gala?”
They’re lazing about on the couch in the living room with Criminal Minds playing on the TV before them. They’re both under separate fuzzy throw blankets with a bowl of popcorn taking up residence on the middle cushion between them.
Wes tilts his head, considering, “What gala? And when?” And more importantly, “Will we be getting overtime for it?”
Tim snorts and shoves a fist full of popcorn into his mouth, chews, swallows, then says, “The Pride Gala toward the end of the month. The 26th. And yes, you’ll get time and a half.”
“Ah,” says Wes. He remembers how much more openly supportive of LGBTQ+ rights Bruce Wayne had become when Tim began dating some guy named Bernard Dowd from his school last year. (Not that he hadn't been supportive beforehand.) They’ve been broken up for a while, but he knows the two are still on friendly terms because the tabloids publish photos of them hanging out every once in a while and hypothesize that the flame is rekindling. “I mean, I have literally no other friends in Gotham, so I’m game. I don’t know about Rebecca, though. She probably has a life.”
“Probably?” Tim asks.
He shrugs, “I mean. She makes a lot of memes. I don’t know what your social life is like if you make as many memes as she does.” He shakes his head to himself, then asks, “I’m guessing you want something on TikTok about the Gala?”
“Yeah.” Tim shifts on the couch so he can face Wes more, and Wes turns as well. “Bruce says that some of Gotham’s elite need a reminder that he’s not a fan of their bigotry and that he doesn’t like doing business with idiots.”
Well. That sounds like the Brucie Wayne who loves his children and made a whole public spectacle of babying Dick Grayson after his rescue in Bludhaven last week.
“I’m down if Rebecca is down,” Wes says. “I don’t know about going if she can’t make it, though. I don’t think I’d do well around rich people without a poor person by my side. Eat the rich and all that—no offense.”
Tim snorts at that, “None taken. We can be kinda snobby. I hope I don’t come off too snobby?”
“Well, you haven’t asked me about my favorite place to go skiing yet, so you’re doing pretty good.”
“I haven’t even been skiing,” Tim says.
Wes thinks about how during his cyberstalking of Tim, he’d found several pictures of the Drake parents on their own skiing vacations, all suspiciously missing Tim, even though he’d have been old enough to attend according to the time stamp. His heart clenches and his body goes cold.
He wraps the blanket around him tighter, “What, no way! That’s criminal. That’s, like, the basic necessity of proving wealth. You need to have Mr. Wayne take you some time.”
Tim’s nose wrinkles in disgust, “Just call him Bruce. Hearing ‘Mr. Wayne’ from someone who isn’t a journalist or an employee is weird.”
“Tim. I am an employee.”
His friend’s ears go a smidge red, probably embarrassed to have forgotten so easily, if Wes had to guess, “You hardly count. Besides, I don’t wanna go skiing. I’d probably break all my limbs.”
Ah, right. The classic “I’m too clumsy to be a superhero” defense. The only Waynes who couldn’t use that excuse were Dick Grayson (a literal Flying Grayson) and Damian Wayne, who would probably pop a blood vessel if he was anything less than the perfect heir.
Danny was genuinely clumsy, at least. Even before he dropped all those beakers in science, he was always tripping over literal air.
“Well, you can do some other rich person activity. Like, I dunno, having a pet tiger, or something.”
“Damian would love that. He has a pet cow in a barn on the Wayne property.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I would never lie.”
“What’s its name?”
“Her name is Bat-Cow.”
….You’re fucking kidding me.
“Like… after Batman?” These people aren’t subtle. Why the fuck is Wes the only person capable of figuring anything out? Why was he cursed like this?
Or is it the other way around? Is everyone else just cursed with obliviousness, and Wes has some kind of immunity?
“Yeah, like Batman. It’s because she has a spot on her forehead that looks like a bat.”
“Of course she does.” Because why not? It’s not like anyone but Wes has eyes and brain cells, after all. Hell, the Waynes might as well dress up as their alter egos for Halloween. It’s not like anyone will fucking notice. Gotham society would probably have a grand ol' laugh about the ridiculousness of Brucie Wayne dressing up as the Bat. Ha, impossible!
“She’s the reason Damian is a vegetarian.”
“Okay, that’s adorable.”
“It’s really not. He’s a Demon Spawn.”
“That’s a rude thing to call your little brother.” Never mind that he’s called his cousin, Kyle, much worse.
“Ew, spoken like an only child.”
“Shut it. Do you guys have any other pets?”
Tim nods, “Yeah. They’re all Damian’s, though. He has a cat named Alfred the Cat, who isn’t to be confused with Alfred Pennyworth, the butler who’s honestly more like our grandpa and Bruce’s dad. Then there’s Titus, a dog. And Dick has a dog named Haley who he sometimes brings to the Manor for ‘playdates’ with Titus, but it’s really so Damian can fawn over her without feeling embarrassed over it.”
“Gross, that’s sickeningly sweet.” Wes chews some popcorn consideringly, “You know… that might be a good TikTok, too.”
“What? Meeting the pets?”
“No. Well, yes.” He thinks back to some of his mother’s rants, and then Rebecca’s own rants. “Not to make it sound like my mom just tells me everything, but she says that the public views Damian as kinda snobby. Or at least stiff. Letting him do some kind of ‘introducing the Wayne Family Pets’ TikTok might help with that. People love pets."
“Yeah, well, Damian hates cameras.” Tim’s voice is more than a little tense, and Wes doesn’t need to be told in words that he’s walking into more dangerous territory.
He shrugs, “Just an idea. If Damian is uninterested, he doesn’t have to. I just figure that using the pets—animals he loves enough to go vegetarian over—to humanize him to the press would be easier than, like, traumatizing him on Good Morning, Gotham or something.”
Wes doesn’t mention how a lot of the press and public’s view of Damian stems from racism thanks to his obviously Middle Eastern blood. He doesn’t think he needs to—Tim and the rest of the Waynes are already well aware.
“He’d traumatize them, really. But I see your point.”
Wes snorts, if only to keep up his façade, “He’s a twelve-year-old boy. What can he do?”
Tim gives an amused smile, an inside joke that he doesn’t know Wes is in on, and says, “Yeah, you're right.”
xxXxx
At work the next day, Rebecca squeals with delight when Wes asks her about going to the Pride Gala for work, and immediately starts drawing up script ideas. Halfway through Script #5, she freezes, and says, “Oh my god, I have nothing to wear to the Gala!”
Wes looks at her in confusion, “What do you mean? We’re basically going as the help. Can’t we just wear something professional?”
She sends him a withering glare, “Ugh, you’re such a teenage boy. This is a Wayne Gala! And even better, it’s the Pride Gala! All the donations go to the Trevor Project. We– we can’t just show up in sweats and a hoodie!”
“That’s… that’s not at all what I was suggesting? I said professional? Does professional mean something different in Gotham?”
Rebecca’s brow is pinched, “Listen. This is a Wayne Gala. That’s a big fuckin’ deal, you non-Gothamite. Even the press dresses up for the Galas.”
“Oh, okay.” Uncertain, Wes pulls out his phone and texts Tim about her concerns.
W: Hey Tim Rebecca says that we can’t wear prof clothes to the gala bc we’ll look too homeless. Is there, like, an actual dress code to follow?
The reply is swift for someone who is a CEO of a whole entire Fortune 500 company.
T: Don’t worry about clothes. WE will provide a fitting and the formal wear for you both to keep. I assume this means Rebecca is down?
W: Yeah. And I’ll let her know.
“Tim says that WE is gonna provide the formal wear,” he tells her while she’s in the middle of a panic attack.
“Are you texting him right now?” Rebecca asks. “Ask him when we need to be fitted. And make sure he knows we won’t be fitted outside of work hours unless we’re getting time and a half.”
Wes rolls his eyes but obligingly relays the message.
T: I am going to talk to Damian about your idea today. If he is receptive, I am thinking that you and Rebecca would clock in like normal on Friday but would accompany me to be fitted, and then go to Wayne Manor to film that “introduction to the Wayne Family Pets” TikTok.
W: Let me run that by Rebecca
He explains the idea they’d discussed yesterday about the pets, and then Tim’s proposal for Friday. Instead of verbally saying anything, Rebecca snatches his phone from him and ignores his indignant yelp, and plays an impressive game of keep-away as she types something with one hand and uses her other hand to bat away his angry attempts to reclaim his property. After a few moments of this struggle in her tiny cubicle, Rebecca lets out an “ah-ha” and hands the phone back to Wes.
He quickly takes in the damage:
W: Hi Mr. Drake-Wayne it’s Rebecca!!! I stole Wes’s phone :) I’m totally down with using company time for this and so is Wes 🙂 you’re way better than my old boss at Taco Hell btw. Also does WE buying our formal wear include buying shoes and accessories?
“This feels exploitative,” Wes says with an uncomfortable twist in his stomach.
“That’s why I took your phone instead of asking you to ask,” she says. “I get to be the bad guy, and you get to be friends with your friend without feeling like a gold-digger. Everyone wins.”
“No. I feel like trash.”
“Sorry.” And to her credit, she does look apologetic. “But I have student loans to pay off, rent, and other bills, and no heels that would go with anything WE will provide. I can’t afford this and I won’t feel bad for asking my rich boss to pay for it all as a work expense.”
On the surface, Wes understands that. He knows that he’s not poor-poor in the way that lots of people are. His mom has a job at Wayne Enterprises, for fuck’s sake, and he likely won’t have to worry about college as long as he chooses someplace sensible. But asking for so much from Tim, from his friend, leaves him feeling hollowed out and filled back up with swamp mud.
His phone lights up with a notification.
T: Hi, Rebecca. And of course! You’ll have to do your own hair and makeup, though. And I’m glad to be better than your old boss :)
Wordlessly, he shows the text to Rebecca, who nods, “Acceptable terms.”
“I’m gonna go to the bathroom,” he says.
He walks away and hides in his mom’s office for the rest of the day.
xxXxx
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disillusioneddanny · 5 months
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A Place in this world
Danny took a breath and let it out slowly as he started to get ready for the day. It had been six months since his parents lost custody of him since he had been welcomed into the folds of the Wayne Family. Since Batman himself had saved him from his parents’ experimentation table. His parents were now safely locked up in Arkham Asylum where they would spend the next ten years serving their punishment and Danny was safely living within the confines of Wayne Manor.
Things had been going rather well so far. The Bats had been insanely understanding about Danny wanting to live a normal life now that the portals had all been shut down. The most they requested from Danny was the occasional help on their gadgets and Danny was more than happy to help with that. He had more fun working on the Batmobile and Batplane than he ever did being a vigilante.
And they had encouraged his special interests! They even indulged him in it, letting him have his own little study dedicated to just his experiments and inventions. It had been amazing when Bruce had first shown him all of the spaces that were just for him. He had a bedroom that was as big as his parents' old living room and had an entire space dedicated to his inventions. And on top of that, Bruce had encouraged him to build his own portal so that if he wanted to go to the ghost zone he could. He had even made a space in the Batcave that was just for him if he ever decided to build it.
Six months in and he hadn’t decided yet if that was something he wanted to do. He hadn’t gone ghost a single time since he had moved to Gotham. He was starting to miss it if he was going to be honest. There was something about his ghost form that was just truly comforting. It just felt wrong, though, almost like it was taboo to do such a thing. Which he had no real reason to feel that way. Batman or well, Bruce, had assured him multiple times now that he was more than welcome to change into his ghost form whenever he wanted. Had just requested that Danny let him know if he was going out when he was Phantom so that they wouldn’t think he was a new rogue or anything of the such.
He was missing it, though. The longer he went without shifting into his ghost form, the tighter his skin felt. It was starting to feel like he couldn’t fit in his human form anymore. He could feel himself growing more restless as the days went by, and could feel himself fraying at the edges.
Which was why he was letting himself spend the day in his Phantom form even if it was kinda terrifying the more he thought about it. It was the first time since Batman had saved him and none of his new family had ever really seen him in this form before. It was nerve-wracking but he was going to do it.
He let the bright rings wrap around his body and breathed out as he felt himself change into Phantom, it felt like taking a deep breath on a cold winter’s day. He let himself phase through the door, using his powers a little more than he used to dispel some of the pent-up energy.
The Fenton’s had hypothesized that ecto entities relied on ectoplasm to live, that they needed it like humans needed oxygen. But that wasn’t quite right. Ghosts were ectoplasm. Despite the fact that they were sentient and sapient-looking beings, they were more closely aligned with plants. They created their own energy to survive. And Danny had been letting the ecto that his ghost form created build up inside of him and now he was just about ready to burst from all of it.
“It’s fine,” he breathed out before floating out of the room. His feet were mere inches from the ground as he made his way down the stairs and into the breakfast room where he could already hear the rest of his family sitting around talking and preparing for their mornings. The only people who lived in the manor were Alfred, Bruce, Damian, and Duke. So it wasn’t like everyone in the Wayne family was going to be there to see him. Jason lived in Crime Alley, Dick was in Bludhaven, Steph lived on campus, Cass was in Hong Kong and well, no one actually knew where Tim lived now that Danny was thinking about it.
Why did no one know where Tim lived? He shook his head, he was distracting himself from the matter at hand. And that was having breakfast with his new brothers and adoptive father.
Things quieted as he floated through the wall and gave them an awkward smile. “G’morning,” he mumbled, dipping his head down as he took his usual seat beside Damian.
Bruce gave him a small, proud smile. “Good morning, Danny. Or should we call you Phantom when you’re in this form?” He asked and Danny felt his cheeks blush, a bright green color when he was in this form.
“Danny’s fine. Phantom’s just what I went by when I was out as a hero,” he said, stabbing at the pancakes placed in front of him. “Sorry, I just–”
“No need to apologize, Daniel,” Damian said, a small smile on his face. “We are happy that you feel comfortable enough to show us this side of you.”
Danny gave him a small smile. “Yeah, I uh, I realized I’m needing to take better care of my ghost self. And you guys are safe, I don’t have to worry like I did with the Fentons,” he said quietly.
“Is there anything we can do to help?” Bruce asked him, arching a brow in curiosity.
Danny let out a quiet hum as he cut up his pancakes, frowning at the slightly strange texture. Dick had warned him that Alfred’s pancakes weren’t the best but he wasn’t expecting them to be like straight-up rubber. Jason had said that no one had the guts to tell him that they were gross and well, Danny had eaten much worse than rubbery pancakes.
“My ghost side has a tendency to create bonds with people I consider family, so it’s wanting to create those bonds with all of you,” he said carefully, staring at his rubbery pancakes rather than at his new family.
“I think that’s completely okay,” Bruce said with a small smile. “Can you explain a bit more about the social aspects of being a ghost? I think that we would all appreciate a quick lesson so that we can better support you.”
Danny blushed again and nodded. “So ghosts are protective creatures,” he said with a snort as he rested his chin on his hand. “It’s like your own personal protector but on top of that, we’re very social creatures who rely on one another, we get power from it actually. A lot of ghosts bond through fighting with one another, it’s a way to bond. But also indulging in activities together is another one. So, going out to hang out, spending time together, that all helps build the fraid bonds. A ghost’s family is its fraid. So the closer I get to you, then you’ll become my fraid which comes with a few perks? I guess you could call them perks.”
The halfa wrinkled his nose as he wracked his brain to figure out how to explain the perks. “Since you’re humans you’ll get access to a few of my powers,” he said slowly. “Sam, Jazz, and Tucker all turned kinda liminal because of our fraid bonds. It gave them some enhanced strength, they were able to see in the dark, and the shadows pulled to them a little more so it was almost like they could turn invisible at night. So you guys would get some of those same benefits.”
“That sounds awesome!” Duke said excitedly, a wide smile on his face.
“What benefits do you receive?” Damian asked with a frown, tilting his head to the side.
“I get the benefit of having stronger bonds which will make me stronger as well. I’ll also know when you’re in danger or not–something that I think will be a bitch considering your night jobs,” he said with a soft laugh. “But family bonds mean I’m healthy. If I have a lack of fraid bonds I’ll get sick and weak and grumpy. It’s why I finally gave in and changed to this form because I could feel it start to happen.”
Bruce frowned as he mulled over the information that Danny had just thrown at him. “What do we need to do to create these bonds with you?”
Danny blushed a bright green. “Spend time with me.”
“Tomorrow we shall go to the park together and take Titus on a walk,” Damian announced. “I shall have the strongest bonds with you, Daniel. Just you wait.”
Duke snickered. “It’s not a competition, Dami. We’re doing this for Danny’s health and to be closer to our brother.”
“And I will be the best at it, I will become Daniel’s favorite brother,” Damian exclaimed.
“You just want super strength so you can fight Jon,” Bruce said with a laugh and Danny giggled into his hand.
“I don’t know if you’ll be as strong as a Kryptonian, Dami. But I did see Jazz pick up the fridge like it weighed nothing one time,” Danny said thoughtfully, tilting his head to the side as he tried to think more about how strong his friends and sister were by the time he had left Amity. “So maybe don’t pick a fight with Superboy, it might just end with you covered in a lot of bruises.”
Damian huffed out a sigh. “I will still be the best brother, regardless,” he said, pushing his lower lip out in a pout. Danny snickered and took another bite of his rubbery pancakes, chewing far longer than he had ever had to chew a pancake before.
Danny just mustered up a small smile for his new family. Hopefully, this would go well.
Did you enjoy? Read the rest on ao3 here
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little-dreams-of-life · 9 months
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Hi. It's been a bit I guess. Well I've been busy with several IRL things. But. I've been also busy partaking in the @patrol-partners-batphandom-2023 event with my wonderfuly co-author Zia (@theredshirtsarecoming) and this is the result.
Summary:
Danny Fenton is just your average big city paramedic living in one of the most dangerous cities there is: Gotham. Or is he? What most people don't know is he is a retired superhero from the small town of Amity Park known as Phantom. After the burn out that comes from being a lone teenage hero and a difficult reveal to his parents he decides he needs to get away. And what better city than Gotham for a man who loves to help in medical crises. Dick Grayson: detective by day, superhero by night. Well that's what he was until the reality of working for the Bludhaven police department set in and his depression took over. Now he's quit his day job and works for his adoptive father's charitable organization. But that doesn't stop him from continuing his superhero work as the one and only Nightwing. But when these two soulmates meet on a rooftop at night and their timers run out, happily ever after isn’t as easily achieved as one might think.
Chapter 1 and 2 are out already, and it will get updated every 2 days until we run out of chapters and then as they finish.
Mind the Tags!
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ayamari-no-goshi · 2 years
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And Think of Him as Living - Dick’s chapter
AO3 — > Companion to this fic, To Join the Whispers
Fandoms: Danny Phantom (DP) / DC universe
Summary: THIS IS A CROSSOVER. What was supposed to have been a normal mission to stop members of the League of Assassins became something so much more when their family accidentally tangled with a ghost. And sometimes, the details leading to the resolution were obvious to some while completely missed by others. Companion chapters to ‘To Join the Whispers’ written from the POVs of some of the others
Warnings: rated T for violence, mentions of death, and questionable mental health
Parings: none
Notes: originally uploaded to AO3. Cross-posted to tumblr
Dick walked alongside Jason as they traveled to the Fenton home. It had been a while since he had a chance to spend time with his younger brother where they weren’t fighting some criminal. As much as he wanted to talk to him, he figured Jason needed some space.
Although Jay hadn’t said anything was bothering him, Dick could tell. There was that moment the previous day where he had a momentary slip with the Pit, and just before they left, part of his arm had passed through something solid! While weird things were part of their lives, when it came to things related to the Pit, it was more of a concern.
Was it possible the effects of the Pit were wearing off? Or maybe they were getting worse. Would he turn into a ghost? Or be in that weird in between state Danny Fenton seemed to be in? He already lost Jason once, and it nearly broke him. He… he couldn’t let that happen again.
During Jason’s time as Robin, Dick made mistakes that he couldn’t take back. He was young and angry, and his issues with Bruce kept him away from the Manor a great deal of the time. Even if he remembered his relationship with Jason in a good light, there was no telling how his brother felt about the physical distance between them. If… if he’d been around more or made more of an attempt to bond with his brother, maybe Jason would have come to him first or at least reached out to him when he made his fateful decision to meet with his biological mother.
What stung more was that Bruce never even told him Jason died! He found out because of one of the other Titans over a week after it happened. Yes, he’d been off world at the time, but why did he have to find out that way? But time passed, and the hurt lessened, even if it never completely went away.
Then, against all odds, Jason came back. Not as the troubled but talented teenager Dick remembered, but as a brutal and dangerous adult. Nightwing had a brief encounter with him as the Red Hood before his identity had been revealed, but never in a million years would he have connected him with his deceased brother. And that was one of the first things he was told after waking from a coma caused by the destruction of Bludhaven.
It was hard trying to understand what happened when he woke up and got the report from Bruce. Not only was Jason alive, but he’d done so much damage in Gotham. How could his brother have done those things? Hell, he’d even attacked Tim and badly injured him. All the tests showed it was him, but whomever this man was couldn’t have been his younger brother. As troubled as he could be, Jason had been a sweet and empathetic kid. Sure, that empathy sometimes manifested as a desire to do more damage than necessary, something he’d personally seen in Jason’s early days, but that had been something he’d been working on. His brother couldn’t have been that same person.
His first real interaction with this resurrected Jason was when he decided to impersonate him. That was a mess in and of itself, but it helped give him a glimpse into how such a drastic change could happen. Jason’s logic made sense to him, but it was difficult for anyone else to rationalize it. That was most likely due to the influence of the Lazarus Pit. However, there were a few moments when flashes where he could see glimpses of his brother, and he wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse.
But things slowly got better, for all of them. At least, that’s what he thought.
Dick sighed as he remembered Jay’s words from the previous day: “I didn’t ask to be thrown in that Pit. I didn’t ask to be brought back to life!” Those words stung. Most people would have been overjoyed to get a second chance, but it felt like Jason didn’t share those sentiments.
Had his brother been at peace with his death? Was that possible for someone who had died in the way he had? Or, was there more to it? There was a lot they didn’t know about what happened to him when he died and in the years after his resurrection to his reappearance. Jason rarely talked about it, and even if he did, he’d only give the bare minimum. One of these days, he should watch the video from when Jason first reappeared. Dick had been putting it off. Other things had taken priority, but maybe it would help him understand why Jay had gone down the path he had.
Those were things to worry about later. Jay was here now, and as much as he didn’t want to admit it, he needed help.
And right now, that help would come from a bit of a heart to heart. It also filled the silence that Dick didn’t particularly like. “You know he’s worried about you.” It was true. Bruce was worried even if he wasn’t great at showing it.
Jay rolled his eyes even though his shoulders stiffened. “He certainly likes to pick and choose when he cares. Dick, you know how he is. Right now, he’s only worried about whether or not I’ll compromise the mission.” It sounded like he was gritting his teeth. “Maybe if we were on our way home, I’d buy it, but not now.”
It was easy to think like that. Bruce did have a habit of sometimes prioritizing missions over health, but that wasn’t the case here. When Jay had escaped for a smoke, Bruce had asked them to help keep an eye on him. Sure, it wasn’t obvious to anyone outside the family, but he was worried.
And, Dick wanted to make sure his brother understood that. So, he moved in front of Jay and looked up at him. Seriously, how did little Jason get so big? “Little wing… Jay…” He tried to keep his voice soft. “What happened to you affected him, badly. You didn’t get to see it. On top of that, you’re the only one we know of who seems to be permanently affected by the Pit.”
“Yeah? Well, it sucks.” Jay huffed as he pushed past him. For a moment, it almost seemed like there was a flash of green in his eyes. Great. “I had heard Cass was resurrected in it too. But she’s clearly not crazy.” For a moment, it almost seemed as if he wanted to continue.
Dick could tell what was left unsaid. “The only thing I think makes you crazy is your dislike of grappling hooks.” One of the things that baffled Dick about the adult Jason was how rarely he seemed to use them. The chase he’d led him and Bruce on through Gotham was amazing in its own right. Jay had made jumps without assistance that he and the others would never risk.
“I don’t dislike them. I just don’t need them as much as you do.”
Pleased that managed to get a smile out of his brother, Dick playfully nudged him. “Now you’re smiling.” But his own smile slipped. “None of us are still really sure what happened to you once you came back, but we’ve started seeing glimpses of the old you.” Jay’s posture tightened again. “That’s probably thanks to Kori and Roy more than anything we’ve done to help.”
His brother didn’t respond. Crap. Had he phrased that badly? Probably. Deciding not to acknowledge it until he had a better grip on how to better put what he meant, he continued. “We’re in new territory when it comes to ghosts and the like, so we’re all a bit on edge.”
“Meaning you’re worried I’m going to go on a killing spree.”
“What? No!” Dick was almost offended by that statement. Almost, but he couldn’t deny it was something he and the others had discussed when Tim when to go get him from the roof.
“You don’t have to hide it.” Jay lit a cigarette. Seriously, how many did he have hidden on him? Dick had been trying to throw away all the ones he could find. “The need… desire… obsession? I don’t know how to explain it… for taking them out, permanently, hasn’t been as bad for a while now.”
That was a good thing. They’d noticed that too. While there were still criminals Jason would dispatch without a second thought, he was much more likely to disable than kill. “Except the Joker.”
“Can you blame me on that one?”
“No, not really.” All of them wanted the Joker dead. Heck, Dick had even killed him once even though Bruce had performed CPR and saved the bastard. While the action was traumatic at the time, he wasn’t sure how he felt about it now. And it was something he hoped Jason never found out about as it was unlikely he’d ever forgive Bruce for it.
After a few moments of comfortable silence, Dick decided a little bit of teasing was in order. So, he grabbed Jay’s cigarette and put it out, causing his brother to curse at him. “You know these will kill you.”
“Been there. Done that.” The nonchalant way Jason brushed off his own death bothered him. “I think I’ll take my chances, especially if it helps me deal with nosey assholes like you.”
But, if his brother wanted to joke, he’d play along. “You wound me, brother.” Not bothering to hide his grin, he decided to change the topic. “So, what’s the Fenton Portal like?”
An almost diabolical grin flickered across Jason’s face before he adopted a more neutral one. “You know, if you ask them, I have a strong feeling they’ll show you.” He then gestured to a large building with a hulking metal contraption on it. It almost looked like an old broadcasting tower. Almost.
“How on earth is that even allowed?”
Like Jason said, Maddie and Jack Fenton were more than happy to show Dick their portal. Didn’t these people have any qualms about showing their inventions to strangers? If they had lived in Gotham, they would have been robbed twenty times over.
Well, maybe not. The security system Jack and Maddie demonstrated to them was something else. He shared a long look with his brother. They really needed to reevaluate how they viewed the Fentons. These two were brilliant and unintentionally dangerous.
Then the Fentons off-handily mentioned a weapons vault. Who just mentioned that?
The demonstration of the security system had the unintentional benefit of bringing the Fenton children to the kitchen. The daughter, Jazz, reprimanded her parents before introducing herself. Something about her reminded him a bit of Barbara.
Her dad then asked her to show Jason the metal monstrosity that they called the Ops Center while he and Maddie showed Dick the portal. That didn’t sit well with Jazz, but her parents just brushed it off. The shared look between her and Danny told him that Maddie and Jack weren’t nearly as competent as they projected.
Without much warning, Jack wrapped his arm around Dick’s shoulders as he led him towards the basement lab. Something about the situation didn’t sit right with him, and he glanced back at his brother. Jason smirked as he waved. That didn’t make him feel any better.
Trying to tune out Jack’s ramblings about ghosts, Dick busied himself by glancing around the lab. Some of the technology just lying around could put some of what he’d seen at Star Labs to shame. Maddie eventually drew his attention to a large set of doors in the wall.
Jack bounded over to his wife and pressed a button on a control panel next to it. The doors opened with a hiss, revealing a swirling green wall of something. No wonder why Jason seemed unsettled by it. The coloration looked way too much like the waters of the Lazarus Pit, but there was also something else.
There was a change in the air once it was opened that Dick didn’t like. If he wasn’t imagining it, it almost felt as if the stillness of death was spreading from it.
Maddie quickly closed the door as she launched into an explanation of it. Jack quickly joined, though he ended up steering the conversation to the weapons in the room. The glee the two had as they explained the damage each one could do to a ghost sickened him as he realized they were talking about dissecting their own son. Trying to keep the grimace off his face, he suggested they’d left his brother waiting for them.
It thankfully worked as the two lead him up to the Ops Center. Jason’s lips twitched as he tried to hide a smile when he caught sight of him. Oh, retaliation would be given when they got home.
But both of their attentions were drawn to Jazz as she announced, in one of the fakest voices he’d ever had the pleasure of hearing, that they’d gotten a reading about a ghost in one of the parks across town. How in the world could anyone believe that?
But, somehow her parents did? Both pulled weapons out of thin air, which was an impressive feat, before announcing they’d take care of the ghost and rushing off. Moments later the roar of an engine and screeching tires could be heard.
“How… how did that work?” Jason muttered as he moved towards one of the windows. “That shouldn’t have worked.”
Danny gave him a tired smile. “It works every single time with them.”
“Guns blazing and all?”
“Yep.”
Knowing he was missing something, Dick hesitantly asked, “What exactly did I just watch?”
Jay patted his shoulder. “That was a distraction, Dickie-bird. Anyways, are you up for a trip?” He quickly explained that Danny wanted to take him to one of his ghostly allies in the Ghost Zone. This ally, Frostbite, knew much more about how ghosts worked that Danny did, and would be the one who most likely could help explain why Jay was having the trouble he was.
It was a good idea, even if it meant going into unknown territory. And there was no way he was going to allow his brother to go in alone. And if he was honest, the idea was exciting.
As he and Jay excused themselves for a moment to suit up, he caught his brother mouthing the word ‘neglect’ to him as his eyes moved towards the Fenton siblings. Oh, that explained a few things like how their parents could just leave the house like that. It was sad really. The two did seem to care about their kids, but it seemed their priorities weren’t quite where they needed to be. Maybe that was another reason why Jason and Danny seemed to be bonding so easily.
A couple minutes later, he met his brother down in the basement where Danny and Jazz were prepping a device they called the Spector Speeder. But what caught Dick off-guard was the change in Jay’s costume. He didn’t have his traditional helmet. Instead, it was a pair of goggles and a half-mask that covered his mouth.
“Changing up the look?” he teased.
Although the goggles hid it, Dick could tell his brother was rolling his eyes. “Would you rather me carry the helmet, which I should remind you contains explosives, everywhere I go?”
“Point taken.” That was something Dick never exactly understood. Sure, Bruce had wired a taser into is cowl, but Jason had actually put something that could kill him in his helmet. It was something they’d all been concerned about when they found out about it. And it wasn’t like they’d be able to disarm it either. Jay knew what he was doing with explosives, and none of them had any ideas where he might have learned those skills. They had some suspicions he might have been involved in an incident in Britain a few months before he returned to Gotham, but that was about all they could get.
Danny stopped what he was doing at the control panel to stare at them. The idea that someone could wear explosives so close to them openly concerned the teen. Though Dick couldn’t blame him, he decided to tease him about his parents materializing weapons out of somewhere unseen. That was enough to stop Danny from judging their family, so he turned his attention back towards the controls.
After checking to make sure his sister could hear him, he turned towards them with a mischievous grin. “Ready to see the land of the dead?”
Both Dick and Jason moved forward to better see out of the windows when Danny moved the vehicle. As they entered the portal, he felt Jay stiffen. And for a brief moment, it didn’t seem like he was in the present.
Before Dick had a chance to check on his brother, Danny turned back to look at him. “Are you okay? I forgot that sometimes you can get an echo of what happened. I’m not sure if I just got used to it, or if it stopped happening after a while.”
“Hood?” he asked when Jason didn’t immediately respond. Was it his death he was remembering? Or was it coming back to life?
A shake of the head told him Jay had snapped out of it. “Bad memories. It’ll pass.”
Uneasy silence fell between them for a while as they moved through the Ghost Zone. The eerie green swirls and floating islands were almost surreal. Floating doors could sometimes be seen along with some of the movement of things he wasn’t entirely certain were sentient or not made it worse. According to Danny, each one of those doors led to either pocket dimensions that could be thought of as homes for various ghosts or just doors to entirely different dimensions. The thought people could just wander into different dimensions that easily might have been the most unsettling thing about the entire trip.
Soon, the temperature started to drop, and Danny momentarily asked him to take the controls while he fetched heavy jackets for them. Jason barely fit into his. And even though Dick was able to keep himself from laughing outright, he couldn’t stop the grin which caused Jay to flip him off.
Once they were ready, Danny gave a quick explanation of where they were going. Apparently, the Realm of the Far Frozen, a permanently icy island, was where this Frostbite lived. His people had one of the only known medical centers in the Ghost Zone, and, from the hesitant hint Danny gave them, seemed to hero worship him.
Frostbite ended up being a yeti-like entity who was surprisingly friendly. After Danny gave a quick explanation as to why they were there, he ushered them inside what originally appeared to be just a mountain of ice. Instead, it was a rather modern looking medical facility.
Things were going well as Frostbite explained what he and his people were going to do until Jason was asked to remove his shirt. Dick hadn’t expected him to get so defensive about it. All of them had scars, and it wasn’t uncommon for them to show them off and compare stories. Was there something else about it?
After come coaxing, Dick could have sworn Jay grumbled, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” before he removed his shirt.
For a moment, it felt like the air was sucked out of the room. Sure, there were the normal scars Dick was expecting, but on Jay’s chest was one that had no business being there. That… that was from his autopsy. Why hadn’t the Pit fixed that? And then with a jolt, he realized that wasn’t something he’d received while he was still alive.
“What… what happened?” Danny’s horrified whisper broke the silence.
“Told ya, kid, I was dead before I came back.” Jason gestured to the scar. “This is my permanent souvenir.”
“Little Wing…” He had to say something. “None of us knew…”
“And I wanted it that way.” Jason’s eyes narrowed as he watched him.
“I should have been there.” He moved forward to try to give his brother a hug, to let him know that it was something he would always regret.
“Don’t pull this fucking shit!” Jason snapped as he pushed him away. His goggles had been removed for the examination, and hints of green were starting to become noticeable in his eyes. “What happened was my fault. I got duped and went in alone. Don’t you dare blame yourself for my stupidity.” He must have been able to tell the Pit was started to affect him as he began using a breathing technique to ground himself. When he spoke again, the anger from before had been replaced with what Dick could only describe as wariness. “Don’t go telling anyone else. I don’t need anyone else blaming themselves.”
Dick wanted to say something to reassure his brother, which was hard because this was being recorded on his gear. Apparently, Jay forgot about that in the moment. He wasn’t going to be the one to remind him about it.
Frostbite politely coughed, reminding them of his presence. That started the line of questioning of what led to Jason being thrown in the Pit. And true to fashion, Jason only provided the bare minimum.
But, when it came time to discuss the Pit, Jason faltered and glanced at him. Interesting. That seemed to be the one thing he couldn’t seem to bring himself to talk about. Was it possible that was more traumatic for him than dying? Dick wasn’t sure he’d considered that possibility before. Deciding it was something to shelf for later, he gave Frostbite a quick explanation of the Pit.  
Horror openly flashed across Frostbite’s face when he learned that was what brought Jason back to life. “I’ve heard of such places,” he eventually stated before explaining they were areas where the Ghost Zone leaked into their world. According to him, they could be easily corrupted, which matched up with some of their own reports.
After he checked the scans his people ran on Jason, Frostbite provided them information they’d been wondering for years. Apparently, Jason’s body had bonded with the ectoplasm in the Pit, but because of the corruption it had affected his mind, causing what the ghost called an ‘obsessive madness.’ And, that made a lot of sense.
Jason’s ideas of justice were never really the issue. His belief that some criminals were irredeemable could be found in other folks around the country. If you asked Dick, it was Jason’s obsessive need to prove Bruce’s teachings wrong in the wake of his reemergence is what tipped his actions into madness. How many elaborate plans had he created as a result? Combine that with how the Pit seemed to magnify negative emotions, and it just became a recipe for disaster.
Jason seemed to agree with Frostbite’s statement. And if Dick wasn’t imaging it, some of the tension in his brother’s shoulders had lessened.
Then came the explanations as to what was currently happening. Frostbite believed that due to the high levels of ambient ectoplasm in Amity Park, it was causing the temporarily bouts of ghostly abilities while having the added effect of removing some of the corrupted ectoplasm from his system. That, Dick decided, was ultimately a good thing as it meant the negative effects of the Pit would lessen.
The biggest question though was whether or not those abilities would be permanent. The answer ended up being that it was possible if Jay developed something Frosbite called a core which could give him the same status Danny had, and unfortunately, Frostbite didn’t have a good answer on how that could possibly happen. Apparently, halfas like Danny were so rare that they just didn’t have the needed knowledge.
If ghost’s answer unsettled Dick, it had to have bothered Jason judging by how he responded. For a moment, he could tell Jay was considering what having powers would be like and just what he’d be able to do with him. There was a way his hands sometimes twitched when he was thinking about what he could do to the Joker, but whatever thoughts he had, he seemed to pull out of as he sighed and ran his hands through his hair.
He gently touched his brother’s shoulder. “Hood?”
“I’m good.” Surprisingly, Jason didn’t brush away his hand as he stood and pulled on his borrowed coat. Glancing at Frostbite, he gave a slight nod. “Thanks for all your help, but I don’t think you want someone like me joining those ranks. Let’s head back.”
Although he wasn’t going to openly admit it, namely because Jason didn’t tend to respond well to compliments, Dick was proud of his brother’s response. It further proved he was trying to better himself.
But as they boarded the Specter Speeder, Danny seemed unusually reserved. Knowing that he and Jason seemed to be bonding, he gestured for his brother to say something. Jay titled his head in puzzlement as he trying to step into a brother-like role which brought a grin to his face. Danny’s presence was proving to be a positive factor in Jay’s life.
“Are you mad that I don’t want to share your situation?” Jay eventually questioned. When Danny didn’t answer him, he sighed and leaned against the wall. “Danny, I’m not a good person. Giving me that type of power would only end badly, for everyone. You don’t need someone like me ruining your reputation by proxy.”
Oh, that made sense. Danny was a weird combination of being a ghost and human. That had to be hard on him. Maybe they should introduce him to Superboy? While it wasn’t exactly the same, he was also half human and could understand Danny to some extent.
Though, it seemed to be Jason’s connection to death that seemed to be the cornerstone to their growing friendship. While it was true many heroes had died and come back, their experiences seemed to be similar enough that they understood each other in a way that made Dick a little jealous. Jason was also around Danny’s age when he died.
Deciding not to dwell on it too much longer, he turned his attention back to Jason’s statement. “You should give yourself more credit.” The fact that he was openly trying to avoid getting permanent superpowers spoke a lot to Jason’s current self-control.
But that apparently wasn’t the right thing to say as he could sense Jason raise an eyebrow at him. “Did you hit your head or something?” His voice was incredulous. “You and Arsenal are the ones who like to remind me about the eight heads I had in a duffle bag when I began strong arming Black Mask. I also tried, repeatedly, to main you and the others. You kicked me off a train because of that.”
“I tried to help you,” that was true. For a moment, he thought he was going to lose Jason again as he fell into the river below the tracks, “and I said I was sorry!”
Jason snorted as his form seemed to flicker for a moment. Was that a momentary slip into invisibility? “Why? I was trying to kill you.”
“I’m sorry, what?” Danny finally spoke as his bright green eyes darted between them before pointing at Dick. “You kicked your brother off a train, and you,” he turned towards Jason, “had heads in a duffel bag? What the hell?”
Jay shrugged. “I needed to get the attention of some crime lords, and it made sense at the time.”
“How does putting heads in a duffel bag ever make sense?”
“Go on, Hood. I’m sure Danny would love to hear some of your adventures. I know I would.” He had to stifle a laugh as Jason flipped him off before begrudgingly launching into the beginnings of his original plans for Black Mask. In the past, he would never have been able to get that information out of him, but it seemed like Danny’s presence made him open up more. Yeah, it was a good thing that he and Danny met.
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