This is the fourth time damian brought the college student over.
Damian, despite being 14, has been accepted to a gifted school as he had already been taught in the most subjects one usually learns at a slower pace.
(He still gets a headache over the fact his son won't get a normal childhood.)
Which is how he befriended the 17 year old Daniel, an overworked and sleepdeprived college student, getting dragged along and following with no complaint.
Bruce is, even if he wanted damian to befriend someone more around his own age, very welcoming of the student.
Alfred made sure the boy took enough food with him home, always leaving the mansion at point 4 pm.
It really shouldn't have been surprising when Bruce Wayne, yes, THE Brucie Wayne, summoned him to his office.
Danny entered the room fidgeting, giving a nervous smile to the man behind the desk and questioning what he did wrong to offend the patriarch of the family.
(Lies and slander, we, the readers, are fully aware that Alfred is the patriarch.)
"Uh— hi, Mr. Wayne." He sat when gestured to the chair, shitting bricks with how nervous he's.
The man nods in greeting, smiling. "Hello Danny–"
"Please don't kill me!" The teen in question blurts out, flushing in embarrassment once registered.
Taken aback and startled, Bruce snorts, stifling laughter by putting a hand against his mouth.
Shit.
"I don't know what I did! Very sorry if I offended someone!" He rambles, panicking and waving his hands around.
"Danny—"
"I must have done something! Why else would you call me? Oh god– I'm gonna be murdered by THE Brucie Wayne!"
At this point, the rich guy in front of him is barely restraining himself from laughing, trying his best to stay professional.
"Danny–! I- I won't murder you." He reassured, eyes crinkling from smiling.
"But–" he sniffs, both embarrassed and teary.
"I'm not gonna— danny." Bruce sighs, which sounds a lot like a choke, really. "Look, I just wanted a 1-on-1 talk with you about your friendship with damian and some concerns."
"Oh."
"Yes, oh."
Danny sighs in relief at this. "I can do some good old interrogation–" "it's not an interrogation–" "totally interrogation."
He huffs lightly, getting comfortable in his chair and preparing himself mentally.
"Alright Mr. Wayne! Shoot me!"
(Was that a pun? A joke to murder? Really?)
The man clears his throat, straightens his back and looks serious as he was before the accusations of murder.
"What are your intentions with damian and why become friends in the first place?"
Blinking, the teen brightens. "Oh, that's easy! Damian needs a friend. We just kinda clicked after I scared away a few pesky bullies."
Then he shrugs. "Besides, it's great training."
"Training?" Bruce asks, curious, tone light in the way that shows he's very interested.
"Yes. Despite his badly hidden murderous tendencies, love for knives, and slight lack of slang language and knowledge, he's still a kid." He nods.
"A young teen that goes through teen stuff that I barely remember going through and now get to relearn will be handy once Ellie becomes a teenager herself."
Batman was filing the information away, but Bruce kept going.
"Ellie?" He questions.
"My daughter– has damian not mentioned her? We always leave around 4 to get her from my sister. Sometimes, dami stays over for a few hours!"
Ah. Well. Seems like Alfred will have to make more food for the teen now.
"Would you like to stay for dinner today?" He asks, "Bring your daughter too. We won't mind you joining us." smiling and already planning for the new adjustments to make.
"On another note, what are your and your daughters preferences? Any allergies?"
Danny didn't even agree yet, not that he was gonna— mind you.
"No allergies, soft foods only, easy to eat." He answers, listing the stuff from the top of his head.
In a whirlwind of– of planning dinner?? Danny is out of the door and wide eyed.
"What just happened?"
(On the other side, Bruce face-palms, having forgotten to ask what age Ellie is. Damn in Bruce.)
—
On the fifth visit, Danny stayed for dinner.
Damian must know the age, for there are bowls with freshly cut fruits, yoghurt, and rice mixed with veggies and chicken.
On that note, where is damian?
Dick meets his eyes, asking the same quetsion with a look.
Just as Bruce was gonna ask, the door opened, and the cutest picture to ever exist was created.
(Dick RIPPED his phone out of his pocket, swiping a picture of the scene as fast as possible.)
Steph can't hold back the coos at the sight of Damian walking with a toddler into the dining room, her tiny feet propped up on his and in hand together.
She's wearing a Robin onesie and he is wearing his (stolen) Nightwing hoodie.
"Sorry, hope we aren't late!" Danny waves with a grin from behind the pair.
"You aren't, just perfect, in fact." Bruce reassures, waving the teens over to the free seats.
Damian leads the two to his seat, making sure they're next to him.
The conversation during dinner is one spoken fondly, Cass likes to make Ellie laugh with silly faces, Duke and Steph "secretly" feed her tiny pieces of strawberry and Dick is in a rather passionate discussion with both Tim and Danny.
Damian, once he makes sure no one is watching him, wipes the mess from Ellies face.
(Bruce was watching, looking away once damians face snapped to him. He wasn't aware his youngest had such a soft spot for toddlers.)
(It takes a while, but Danny and Ellie become family like every other person, while having not slept over yet, Alfred already has prepared a room for the two in the Family wing.)
(It's barely a week after that everyone bought and gifted him onesie's of their hero personas, with the excuse of them being the gotham vigilantes when questioned. After all, the Robin can't be a one man team.)
—
The Nightwing and his Robin.
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Had a dc x dp brain worm, feel free to use as a prompt <3
Sidenote, I decided to get fancy with the Ancients titles because of course I did lol
Shifting Where = Space (Danny)
Eternal When = Time (Clockwork)
Ever Onward = Speedforce (Ellie)
---
Bruce watched the footage again.
And again.
Again.
It didn’t make sense.
A week ago every television, radio, computer, phone - even the LED billboards - had been taken over to deliver a message. Across the United States. In every territory it held. Every military base. Down in the depths of the oceans where American submarines tried to creep past Atlantian patrols. In the endless cold white of Antarctica. Even far above in the International Space Station. Any place the United States Government had control over, any place one of its citizens found themselves. There was the message.
The face of an entity, human in shape but not in form. Hair as gleaming white as starlight, eyes bright as the twisting dance of the Aurora Borealis, skin as cold and blue as the tail of a comet. The entity wore armor as black as the depths of space with a crown to match, the later glinting and shifting with the twisting birth and death of galaxies. A cloak of nebulae danced down his shoulders, eclipsing the world beyond the entity entirely.
He named himself, jaw tight, expression serious.
High King Phantom of the Infinite Realms.
The Shifting Where. Son of the Eternal When. Father of the Ever Onward. His Epitaphs many and ever growing. The True Balance. The Bridge Between. The Devourer of Dark. The Last Child of Between. The Great One.
King of the Dead. King of the Infinite Worlds. King of so much more than Bruce had ever even known was possible.
King who had declared war. Who marshaled his endless armies. Who spoke of warnings, of efforts to reach a peace, of trying again and again and again to find a way to not plunge into violence and bloodshed. All things living come to call him King in time, he had no want or need to go out and hurry that along. But there were no options left to him now. He had tried for peace. He had been denied.
He would not see his people suffer any longer. Would not see those he’d sworn to lead and protect imprisoned by fools who had sworn themselves enemies to all the afterlives. Would no longer permit the vicious cruelty to continue.
The message was a final warning.
A final offer.
Three days, Phantom said. The United States government would have three days to release their prisoners, to begin the process of dismantling the laws that made death itself an illegal act.
If they refused, he would lead his endless armies personally in the war to come.
It had not been an idle threat.
Three days after the message, after Bruce and the rest of the Justice League scrambled to try and figure out just what it was it was all about, after Justice League Dark’s members shakily took turns explaining just how powerful the being that had gave that message was and how much danger the world was in should he and his armies march upon their world, war came.
Of all places, it began in a town in Illinois.
The sky shattered like broken glass above, Lazarus Green beyond, and the Dead poured out.
It started in Illinois.
It did not end there.
Bruce watched the footage of it all, eyes burning as he watched every second of CCTV footage, every shaky phone camera video, every news broadcast.
Most of them looked human enough. Changed in death, but recognizably human once. A pair of glowing teenagers on a motorcycle, a writhing shadow twisting about at their command sweeping chaos upon the battlefield. A young woman dressed to perform with hair a literal flame, burning bright blue and snapping furiously as she played devastation upon her enemies with her guitar. A child with corpse gray skin and luminescent green hair, flickering in and out of Bruce’s ability to see as if fighting against a law of existence to be visible, screaming orders to a skeleton crew from his place on deck of a 1700s ship that sailed through the sky, disappearing into clouds before raining down attacks from above.
There was more. Glowing skeletons dressed in the fashions of war spanning every culture going back millennia. Robots with weapons far beyond the technology they had even in the League. Creatures of myth and legend. Things of nightmares.
Leading them all, as he had promised, was Phantom.
He looked younger, smaller. Just a boy, really, a gangly teenager that hadn’t quite finished growing into himself. One holding power beyond anything Bruce could ever imagine, but still just a child as far as he could see, no older than Tim who’d just graduated high school. Frantic research found Phantom appearing as far back as human history, but those sightings had to have been after his death. Bruce can’t help but wonder how young the boy had been when he died, how much of that youth still clung to him through all these eons.
It wasn’t something he’d let him self consider normally, not with something like this.
A dangerous unknown appearing without warning and attacking with unimaginable power and seemingly endless forces. It was something that would normally eclipse everything else. Something that would make Bruce put aside the ache at seeing a face so young twisted in rage.
But.
He watched all the footage.
Civilians were put in the crossfire. Were shot at and endangered. Were left terrified and scrambling for safety in buildings that were rapidly being torn away by stray artillery.
But never by Phantom or his armies.
The dead, in fact, went very far out of their way to ensure civilians weren’t harmed. Sweeping people up out of the way of falling debris. Shielding them from attacks that would have most certainly killed a normal human. Some dead even helped evacuate, ushering a frightened and panicked populous to safety as gently as they were capable of. Some of the less human creatures - giant bear-like beings with horns and fangs and ice edging their burly frames - even rushed forward to offer medical aid.
When the sky shattered open and the armies of the dead swept in, they ignored the town below. They focused instead on what was discovered later to be the base of a secretive government agency. The dead’s fight focused on those individuals in sharp white suits, bearing weapons capable of actually injuring King Phantom’s people.
It was these agents that brought the fight to the streets to Amity Park. That fired recklessly and without thought or care to the casualties they could inflict. That didn’t seem to care if they killed a hundred civilians if it meant hurting just one of Phantom’s soldiers.
Bruce watched all the footage.
And again.
Again.
Phantom had declared war.
Phantom spoke in his message of being out of options, of attempting peace. Phantom gave three days time for the release of captives. Phantom lead armies who fought viciously but never once willingly harmed civilians.
Phantom declared war, but he didn’t want it.
“Amanda Waller has reached out.”
Bruce didn’t turn his attention from the screens before him, eyes burning as he followed Phantom as the King dove away from the middle of locked combat to shield a child from a pulse of green energy from something like a grenade another agent in white had carelessly thrown. The child was crying but unharmed. The left pauldron of Phantom’s armor cracked and shattered from a direct shot from the enemy he’d just been fighting that he’d turned his back on, a glowing green liquid uncomfortably like Lazarus Water dripped down from a smoldering wound.
Clark stepped up to stand beside him as he watched, face worn and tired. The League had missed the first battle, but they’d been quick to appear at the rest. Phantom and his army ignored them unless they put themselves purposefully in the way of the fight. They were, as Justice League Dark had warned, vastly out powered by the entities fighting. A hulking giant knight made of shadow riding a nightmarish steed had driven Clark six feet down into the dirt when he’d attempted to make his way to Phantom directly to try and talk to the king.
The depth Clark had ended up felt like a warning of what would happen if he tried to get close to the king again.
It probably was.
“She said they have intel for us.” A faint twitch of fingers, jaw clenching, voice flat in that way that told Bruce his old friend was fighting back anger with everything he had. “That she has options for how to deal with the insurgence.”
Bruce shut off the monitors.
He’d seen enough.
Now was time to get answers to just what, exactly, Amanda Waller and the US government had done to cause the Dead to rise and rage.
---
Part Two Part Three Part Four
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