The Number You Have Called Cannot Be Reached 6
Part 1|Part 2|Part 3|Part 4|Part 5
Ship: Dead on Main (Danny/Jason)
Warnings: angst/depression and canon typical violence
Bruce sighed, absently feeling the air on his hands folded in front of his face. He stared unseeingly ahead. His frowned deeply, at a loss of what to do. Worry picked at his self control.
Something was up with Jason. Ever since the other night, something had happened between the thief and Jason. It had left him unsettled and off balance, that much was obvious. They’d all been able to see it.
Now, today, Jason had lost control. He’d been agitated of course, but Bruce hadn’t expected the outburst. Jason was usually good at managing his anger these days, at least in the family. He didn’t get physical with them anymore in anger. Except today Jason had suddenly pulled him up by the shirt, and Bruce had honestly expected him to punch him. Jason had shaken it off, but then he’d fled.
The urge to move, to do something, itched at him. He wanted to get answers, but confronting Jason was out of the question. Their truce was fragile, and it seemed every time he spoke to Jason he said the wrong thing. He didn’t know what to do except control the urge to go after his son. He couldn’t fight his demons for him. He could only try not to make it worse.
And so he sat there, staring, unseeing.
Dick’s footsteps, came down the stairs, easily recognizable: light and almost dancing to a rhythm only he could hear, skipping a step every now and then.
“Hey B, thought you were going golfing with the mayor, keeping up the old appearances and all that” he greeted brightly, as ever immune to Bruce’s mood. Or maybe Alfred sent him down to deal with him, that was also an option.
“Oh I love these,” Dick reached forward over Bruce’s shoulder to grab a protein bar from the backpack. He opened it and started to eat it without hesitation.
“Dick,” Bruce sighed, “this is evidence.”
Dick snorted and leaned on the console so he could look at Bruce. “You’re serious.”
Bruce raised an eyebrow.
Dick snorted again, of course Bruce was serious, then he pulled the backpack over and started rooting through it. Much to Bruce’s exasperation he opened another protein bar.
“Dick, they could be drugged.”
“As if you’d have let me take the first one if that was the case,” Dick mumbled around the mouthful of granola. Bruce mentally conceded the point.
“Anyways,” Dick swallowed and continued, reading the name tag on the inside of the backpack, “Danny Fenton, who’s that?”
Bruce sighed.
“The thief.”
“The Ghost!?” Dick looked up in excitement, “so we have a name now?”
“Presumably, it may not originally have been his backpack.”
“True, doesn’t help much either does it? Danny is very common and Fenton may not be Johnson, but it’s not exactly unique.”
“I haven’t looked it up yet.”
Dick narrowed his eyes.
“This has anything to do with why you’re brooding?”
Silence stretched between them, but Dick could be surprisingly patient when he wanted to. There was no point in dragging things out, it wasn’t a secret, Dick could easily find out through the surveillance if he wanted, Bruce would rather he didn’t.
“Jason was the one who delivered the backpack.”
“Ah.” There was the worried frown Bruce would have liked to avoid. He leaned down a bit to better face Bruce.
“You had a fight?” The question was posed carefully, softly, not betraying any inkling what he thought of that, in a way to gently pry the answer from Bruce, but Bruce knew his eldest son well enough to know he was already mentally running damage control options. That was Dick, always trying to keep their family together tooth and nail. There was a soft pang of appreciation in his chest he couldn’t articulate, instead he focused on the problem at hand.
“He’s convinced the thief needs help, I don’t actually disagree.”
Dick sat back in realization, his eyes flickered to the backpack and its sorry spoils.
“But he could still be working for someone,” Dick recited with a sigh, it was an old lesson. One he knew Jason wouldn’t have appreciated, not if he felt Bruce was dismissing his concerns. “B.”
“I know.”
Do you? Dick’s eyebrows asked, but he had the grace not to actually say it. He clapped Bruce on the shoulder instead, squeezing slightly.
“He’ll warm back up.”
“You think so?” He asked unable to look up at Dick.
“Hey,” Dick said brightly in a way that naturally drew attention to him, “we’ve come back from worse.” And there was that bright smile and that pang of appreciation was back, along with another warm feeling in his chest: hope.
“Well, I gotta get going, I’ve got work tomorrow. Just gotta grab a few more of these.”
And the feeling was gone.
“Dick.”
“We shouldn’t waste perfectly good food, B, also they’re W-Mark exclusives, they don’t have them in Blüdhaven.” He grinned, pockets stuffed with contraband. Invariably reminding Bruce of a younger version with pockets full of candy he’d been denied. Brat already knew he had won. Bruce waved him off with a sigh.
Dick practically skipped towards the stairs. Then he paused.
“Oh and B, if I was you, I’d check the phone at the bottom of the bag. It’s not a brand I recognize.”
With that he was off.
Bruce stared after him. Pride warred with annoyance. He’d been so absorbed in his thoughts he hadn’t even noticed Dick checking out the bag more thoroughly than the cursory look he himself had done when Jason had handed it to him.
He grabbed the bag and rooted around a bit, and just as Dick had said, there was a phone.
He pulled it out, and turned it over in his hands. It was made from dark blue plastic. The logo on the back, a stylized V in front of a globe, wasn’t one he recognized. It looked old and scuffed, had actual buttons and a jarringly small screen when you were used to modern smartphones.
It was also out of power.
With how old it looked, it was unlikely cordless charging was an option. He looked at the bottom edge where there was an actual mini headphone jack, along with what he assumed was the charging port - it wasn’t a type he recognized.
He frowned and got up. He wouldn’t be too late for his meeting with the mayor if he left now, not something he couldn’t brush off as eccentric forgetfulness at least.
He could drop the phone off at Tim’s on the way. Tim would get the phone working one way or another.
Oo o oO
Danny stayed underneath the pavement long after the not-ghost had left. The feeling of almost giving in was a crawling like ants underneath his skin. The threat of almost capture was like a noose around his neck - if they captured him, if they managed to contain him, he would never get home.
Eventually the bone deep tiredness of using his powers too much hit him, and he dragged himself back to his haunt, invisibly and intangibly, because he’d had much too much excitement today. He was raw and empty inside when he dropped onto his blanket pile and rolled up. He would get food some other day. Never mind that he was completely out. It wouldn’t end his existence, just weaken him. Ghosts at the core ran on willpower, and Danny wanted to go home.
A small squeak and rustle, had him opening his eyes a crack and turning his head to look to the far side of the room. There the rat was going his trash, the packaging probably still smelled like food.
He huffed and closed his eyes again. If he got truly desperate he could always eat the rat - It wouldn’t be the worst thing he’d eaten.
next
Masterpost for subscription
Sorry, it's not the longest part this time, but we got to appreciate a few other characters, yay! Hope you enjoyed, cause Danny sure isn't enjoying himself.
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Normally, traitors aren’t frog-marched to the Emperors themselves, regardless of what rank of information they had. These aren’t normal circumstances, though, Techno bemoans to himself. For one, the man is refusing to speak anything but French and a tiny amount of broken Bayesh. For another, on being made, he immediately handed over about three folders of classified information then loudly waited for handcuffs to be put on him.
Phil is lounging in his throne; he’d never been one for propriety. This leaves Techno to be, uh, the actually serious one. The one adorned in uniform, sitting and glowering down. It’s lucky that the traitor isn’t a pigman, because Techno isn’t actually great at glowering, but humans are weird about pigman facial expressions so he should be fine?
The traitor stands before them and grins. In perfect Bayesh, he says: “Finally. It took way too long for you to catch me, bitch.”
Techno pauses. He stares. In Piglish, he barks to his guards: “Everyone out. It’s Leader business.”
They file out. They’ll be waiting outside. Phil straightens in his seat and reaches for his own sword.
Techno, laboriously, drags his hand across his face. He switches back to Bayesh. God, does he regret being fluent in multiple languages sometimes. “What are you doing here, Tommy.”
“Showing you your intelligence weak points, fucker. Do you know how easy it is to slip Bayesh spies in here? I was smooth. A smooth customer. I was hearing classified milkitary secrets—”
“You were caught within two hours,” Techno says.
“That’s—that’s just what you think, innit?” Tommy says. Phil laughs. He’s the real traitor here.
“Tommy. I don’t wanna have to cause an international incident, but I’ve had a really long day, so if you just tell me who hired you to run a spy op, and why you decided it was a good idea to run it yourself, instead of sending one of your experts…”
“No one,” Tommy says.
“Hey, don’t lie you little shit. Techno might not want to start an incident but I don’t care,” Phil says. He grins and holds up his sword. “You wanna wake up in a jail cell and reveal some secrets? We may all be Leaders but it won’t stop torture from hurting.”
“What the fuck, Phil,” Tommy says.
“No one’s torturing anyone. We’ll just bomb them later if we must,” Techno says.
“And I wasn’t lying. It’s—can I take the wig off by the way? It fucking itches.”
“I despise you.”
Tommy takes off the black wig, revealing his blonde hair. “Anyway, I don’t want to work with you guys either, so I figured I’d get your attention by like, acting like we’re enemies and stuff. Got hired for espionage enough back in the day to pick up that much.”
“Who the fuck wanted you as a spy?” Phil asks.
“Fuck you,” Tommy says and doesn’t elaborate.
“Please just tell us what you want,” Techno says. “Please. I can’t handle this much you at any given time.”
“This needs to be Leader to Leader,” Tommy says, and something heavy laces his words. The hairs on Techno’s arms stand up.
“You coulda asked,” he says, in one final desperate bid for normality.
“No, I couldn’t have,” Tommy says. “I think Chip’s dead.”
Techno doesn’t notice that he’s standing until he is.
“What?”
“Yeah,” Tommy says. “Yeah. And, uh, I fucking. Need your help to figure out what happened. Before we get blamed. And I know, politically, you’ve got no reason, but if we don’t figure out—”
Techno sits back down, heavy.
“I know you understand Piglish. Let me talk in my native language. Phil.”
“Yeah, mate?”
“Go get the stuff.”
Phil’s eyes darken. “Right. That. Well, I’ll be back.”
Tommy’s voice, for the first time since Techno met him as a newly-minted Leader, standing on a wooden bench and yelling about executions, is small.
“You believe me?” he says.
“Why else would you come here?” Techno asks. “Not like we like you.”
“Good, because I’m shit at infiltrations. Would have been embarrassing if you, like, didn’t know your enemy well enough to know that,” Tommy says. He’s saying something else underneath it. Techno is neither good enough at Bayesh or at Tommy to guess what.
“Let’s work out an excuse to make a treaty. And you tell me everything.”
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Please vote for the best combination of the GF series
• D'jok & Micro-ice
They're like brothers. They are best friends to each other. These two people can tell each other secrets and worries that they can't tell others.
• Thran & Ahito
Born as twins, they have never been apart. As goalkeepers and defenders of snowkids, they check each other during the game. They are the best combination when they make fun of others.
• Sonny blackbones & D'jok
Father and son. The pirate leader and the pirate's young master.They are trying to fill the gap that has been separated for 15 years. How fortunate it is that the family is alive. Because of Sonny, D'jok and snowkids are always involved the problem. But, That's okay. Because they always solve the problem.
• Mei & Tia
Two beautiful female members of Snowkids! (except yuki because she's gone) Mei had a hard time making friends because of her mother. Tia also did not make friends because of her natural temperament. They weren't interested in each other in the beginning, but now they're best friends.
• Rocket & Sinedd
They had no point of contact except that they were on the same team in S1. But in S2, Sinedd suggests netherball to Rocket. These two people have the same personality. If they have a problem, choose to run away rather than solve it. These two have a deep desire to be recognized. They want to vent and destroy their inner desires. But when they show it to others, they're afraid of reactions that people are scared of. Rocket and Sinedd will be the ones who understand each other best.
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