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#Danny is Jason Todd au
starry-bi-sky · 4 months
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i've mentioned in a few past posts about an au where Danny is a variant of Jason Todd. I haven't made a post about it yet because I need a good rhythm flowing however i've been listening to Gladiator by Jann and I have been having thoughts.
but first, let me set the au:
Danny Fenton is Jason Todd, or at least, a variant of him. A him from a universe separate to the major Batman timeline - but still Jason Todd, down to the structure of his face and his name itself. The only thing that changes, is who picks him up - and, that he follows old Batman canon, and was an orphan. Jason Todd steals the tires off the batmobile and wallops Batman with his tirejack, and then runs off. Shortly after, he gets picked up by the Fentons.
(Customary line break,,,, word count check: 5k)
And his name changes from Jason Todd to Danny Fenton. He doesn't care much for the new name change, it stems from his mute refusal to share his name to the people that picked him up; an attempt to make him untraceable should he get away from them, and to keep something of his to himself. So they name him something new. He grows to like it enough as he acclimates to his new family.
(He hangs onto the name Jason Todd like a secret - he may be 'Danny Fenton' now, but he'll never forget his time on Gotham's streets. He'll always be Jason Todd.)
(Jazz is the only one who he tells his name to in the family - she affectionately calls him Jay whenever she wants.)
He becomes friends with Sam and Tucker and deals with Dash and his bullying. And when Danny steps in during a fight between Dash and another student, Dash gives him a bleeding nose and mockingly says, "Do you think you're Robin just because you're from Gotham, Fenton?"
Jason looks him in the eyes and he bares his teeth, "Why not?" he asks, spitting blood, "being Robin gives me magic."
The nickname sticks. It's supposed to be an insult; Daniel Fenton is not Robin, he'll never be Robin. Not now, not in a million years. Jason Todd has always wanted to be Robin, so he takes the insult and wears it proudly. He buys a school varsity jacket and painstakingly undos the stitching of all the school's motif on it. On the breast of it, he embroiders in a black circle with the Boy Wonder "R" on it instead. It's not good stitching, but the next day Danny wears it down to breakfast and into school.
In normal au canon, Daniel Jason Todd-Fenton (its a mouthful, just call him Danny) only meets the Waynes after he becomes Phantom - an event that leans more towards Daniel Fenton's accident than Jason Todd's death, but traumatizes him all the same. (Is it too much to want to be mourned? His best friends like to deny that he died - and Danny - Jason? - wishes they wouldn't, even if he did come back.)
(The accident embitters him, even more when his parents don't seem to pick up on it. He stops calling himself Danny Fenton - he's always been Jason Todd. It shows itself in his ghostly form. He doesn't want to wear the thing he died in, not in something that belongs to the Fentons, and his suit reflects that.)
In this timeline, Daniel Jason Todd-Fenton, aged 13, meets Dick Grayson and Bruce Wayne after a mishap with magic on the other end of the reality sends the three of them careening through time and space, and spat back out on the other end, in a world not their own. And together.
Danny is paired with a very confused Bruce Wayne and Richard Grayson. Luckily, there's a few heroes there to help them. Danny can hardly comprehend the idea that he's in another universe - he doesn't know why Dick Grayson and Bruce Wayne are seemingly handling it well.
On their way to a secondary base with the heroes, Danny turns to Bruce Wayne and asks, "So, is it part of rich-person training that you're just totally chill with being sent into another universe, or are you just weird?"
Bruce Wayne huffs at him, rather than get offended, and he smiles that dumb lopsided billionaire smile that Danny's seen on every vogue magazine he's been in. "I'm not so worried with these skilled heroes here to help us get home."
Danny silently concludes that he's just weird. At least Dick Grayson is biting back a smile behind him. "Riiiight..." He says, dragging the vowel out dryly.
When they get to that secondary location -- a safehouse that one of the heroes had set up -- the three of them are sat in a living room-like room while one hero, Zatanna, goes and calls someone from the Justice League. The other two heroes stay with the three of them.
Within a few hours, Danny is face to face with Batman - someone who he hasn't seen since he whacked him in the stomach with a tire iron - and Nightwing. For a moment, Danny swears that the both of them look almost spooked by him.
Batman stares at him for a moment when he enters, and then he goes to speak with Bruce Wayne. Danny doesn't care enough to hear what they're talking about, he pulls out his phone as Nightwing goes to speak with Dick Grayson.
"Are you a fan of Robin, little man?" Someone says, and when Danny looks up he locks eyes with Dick Grayson -- who is leaning around Nightwing to talk to him, the both of them are smiling. And considering who Nightwing was, Danny finds himself turning pink to the ears.
But he will not hide his jacket. He forces a grin through his embarrassment, "Hell yeah, man, Robin's cool." He says, and pushes his arms down to pull out the hem of his letterman, showing off the emblem. "I made it m'self out of a school varsity after the A-Listers started callin' me Robin."
"A-Listers?"
"Popular kids," Danny corrects, loosing his hold on the hem and brushing invisible wrinkles out of the embroidery. "They didn't like that I kept stepping in when they were bullying. Dash asked me if i thought I was Robin because I was from Gotham."
Dick Grayson looks intrigued -- and concerned, and he leans forward onto his knees and raises an eyebrow. "What did you say?"
And Danny grins a shark-like thing, straightening back his shoulders with a burning sort of smug pride and all the sharpness of broken glass left in Crime Alley. "I told him being Robin gave me magic, and then I punched him."
Dick Grayson's smile widens, splitting into showing teeth as he leans back into his seat. Danny isn't sure why he's so delighted - but Nightwing looks incredibly amused, and he suddenly remembers that the Robin himself was there in front of him.
Danny's face burns anew and his arms fold themselves in front of him once again.
"I don't think I ever caught your name, Robin." Dick Grayson goes, his voice thick with laughter, and Nightwing steps off to the side as Batman and Bruce Wayne walk over to join them both. They're just close enough that Danny can see Bruce Wayne raise an eyebrow at them both.
"It's Jason." Danny says before he can think about it, and barely stops himself from frowning at himself for the slip. He amends himself, glancing over at Batman and Bruce as they get closer. "But everyone calls me Danny."
Dick Grayson's head recoils slightly, and he looks a little surprised. "Why Danny?" He asks.
"Why Dick?" He shoots back, and Bruce and Dick both smile at him, with Dick Grayson shrugging with an expression that looks like 'you've got a point.'
In the end, the three of them - yes, three - get sent to this world's Wayne Manor, and Danny is bewildered by that decision to include himself -- he's not a Wayne. Why not just send him to the Fentons?
Batman tells him that the Fentons don't exist in this world, and Danny falls silent. "Oh." He says quietly, a pit growing in his stomach with an ill-kind of dread. He can't keep Batman's gaze, looking away with unease.
No Fentons in this world. No Fentons. Where was he then, in the grand scheme of things? Where was he in this world? What happened to Jason Todd? Was he even alive? He can't keep the worry off his face, and he jumps when a hand lands on his shoulder. When he looks up, Dick Grayson squeezes him gently.
Dick Grayson is steadily beginning to remind him of his sister.
-
They end up driving back in the Batmobile. It's such a shock to Danny that he momentarily forgets the lack of Fentons. He makes a laugh sound, actually, and immediately he covers his hand with his mouth and stares at the car -- tank? with his teeth sunk into his lower lip.
"Jason?" Dick says, and hearing his name being spoken feels like someone touched him with a livewire. It's weird, it's foreign - he hates, in some way, that it's foreign - and it's so nice. Yes, that's me.
He drops his hand immediately. "Sorry." He says, realizing he'd stopped in his tracks, "I -uh, was just surprised."
"It's not every day someone sees the Batmobile." Dick agrees. Nightwing has his back to them but Danny swears he sees his shoulders shaking a little.
"Yeah," Danny nods slowly, dragging his eyes over the batmobile as Batman opens the driver's side and gets in. He thinks for a moment, of what he should say next - whether to admit that he's seen it before, or to pretend that he's seeing it for the first time. Snd as Nightwing opens the door for him, Bruce, and Dick, he chooses the funnier option; "The last time I saw it, I was stealing its tires."
To his surprise and unsurprise, Danny only gets two pairs of eyes on him. Nightwing gets into the passenger seat as both Bruce and Dick turn their gaze onto him; Dick's eyes big like they were going to bulge out of his head.
"You what!?"
So Danny tells an amazed Dick Grayson that he hit Batman with a tire iron after he stole his tires - something he is very proud about and also incredibly embarrassed about when he retells what happened in the backseat of the batmobile, with Batman and Nightwing listening in from the front seat.
(Bruce Wayne doesn't ever tell Dick shit, he's going to lord this over Bruce's head the moment they are alone.)
"Please tell me this didn't happen in this world." Danny groans behind his palms as he sinks into his seat. Dick Grayson is killing himself laughing on his left, and he saw Bruce Wayne stifling a smile before he obscured his vision with his hands.
Much to his luck, its Batman himself who speaks next, (Danny was being mostly rhetorical). "It did." He says, and his voice sounds like the rumble of the earth before a stampede. It will never not throw Danny off every time he hears it. "It takes quite a lot of spunk to steal the tires off the batmobile."
He can't believe it. Batman is making fun of him. Fucking, Batman.
He wants to die with embarrassment. He groans even louder as Dick Grayson's laughter crescendoes. Danny risks a peak through his fingers, he doesn't know whether to regret it or not because he can just barely see Batman smirk very faintly from his position in the middle.
(His world axis tilts five degree leftways seeing it; like someone dunked a bucket of ice water on him.)
"He ended up being adopted by the Bruce Wayne of this world."
Danny's hands drop with his jaw into his lap. Dick Grayson on his left chokes on his laughter and careens into a coughing fit. Bruce Wayne on his right chokes on air, and quickly recovers himself with a cough behind a closed fist.
"What?" Danny croaks.
-
Apparently, Bruce Wayne's family is much larger in this world than it is in his. Danny can barely wrap his head around the idea that he ends up adopted by the man, but now he has to learn that Wayne had several children in this world?
He's still not wrapped his head around it when the three of them wind up at Wayne Manor, finally, or even when he's standing in front of him himself. For his effort, Bruce Wayne does a good job at looking unruffled by it.
God, he's weird. Danny's starting to quite like it, actually. How human of him.
He still can't wrap his head around it when he meets the rest of Bruce Wayne's children, all of whom are already aware of the three of them. Danny thinks that someone from the Justice League might've alerted them before they got here.
It makes sense, he supposes.
It helps that they are just as weirded out as he is. A boy named Tim Drake sees him for the first time and blurts out; "Oh wow, you're tiny." In a tone like he's just seen a two-headed snake burst out of the ground.
Danny is still offended. He's still growing. It's not his fault he spent twelve years of his life malnourished. "I'm gonna be taller than you," he tells him seriously, "and when I do I'm gonna kick your ass."
Tim snorts at him.
The other Bruce Wayne -- Mr. Wayne's -- youngest looks at him up and down with a face of carefully controlled judgement. His name is Damian, he's Bruce Wayne's only biological son. Danny can't believe that there's only one.
If anything, Bruce Wayne himself looks surprised too.
"Todd, yes?" Damian says, his green eyes narrowed at him.
Danny feels like the specimen under his parents' microscope, he feels like he's standing on a platform that's being slowly spun by scientists. He looks over at Bruce Wayne in confusion, and then back at Damian. "I- yes?"
Damian Wayne nods, and then leaves.
Danny does not once see himself. That is unsettling in and of itself - surely Jason Todd would have been told about another version of himself in this world, wouldn't he? How old is he here? An adult, probably. Danny doesn't know if he wants to see him. What does he look like when he's grown up? He pulls his Robin jacket around him a little tighter, like a cocoon, like a shield.
"It's weird to hear them call me Jason Todd." He says aloud to himself, and it leaves a weight behind in his chest that shouldn't hurt the way it does. It shouldn't be weird to be called your name. It shouldn't cobweb up your throat to hear your name being said. It was his name. It was his.
-
Danny acclimates to the manor slowly. The house is big, massive. He's never been in a house so large before, he feels like a stray cat being taken in for the first time, again. He and Bruce and Dick Grayson are all given their own separate rooms - one of many inside this mansion - and the sheer size of his bedroom is bigger than his living room and kitchen combined.
it's daunting. Danny sits outside on the balcony and stares at the stars he can see - Wayne Manor is far enough away from Gotham that its light pollution doesn't obscure the sky here like it did in the heart of it.
Danny finds the constellations he can find and wishes he had his books with him. He finds the library the next day and buries himself in the back, curling up into a comfy armchair next and inhaling each book he can get his hands on.
Tim Drake wanders past him at some point, Danny would have missed him if it weren't for the fact that Drake stared at him strangely when he saw him. He walks away when he realizes Danny was staring back.
It's a rinse and repeat for the next few days. Danny doesn't go to meals, he sneaks food from the kitchen afterwards, and then buries himself in hundreds of books in the library.
Dick Grayson, the one from his world, goes and finds him three days later. Danny's eyes hurt with strain by then, but he is furiously halfway through a Jane Austen novel when Dick sits down across from him.
"Have you been here all day?" Dick asks, he drapes himself across the side of his chair, contorting himself into a position that Danny doesn't think is comfortable when he looks up at him.
Not that he looks up at him long - he hums absently and goes back to reading. Frowning when he realizes he lost his place on the page.
Dick Grayson raises an eyebrow, "Have you at least eaten anything?"
Danny hums. No, he hasn't, and he hadn't thought about eating all day. Until now that is, his frown ever deepening as his stomach pangs with a deep hunger.
"That's not healthy."
"Mhm."
"Are you going to eat something?"
"Mhhh."
And this gets Dick to frown. He straightens himself up, propping onto his elbows to stare at Danny. "Jason." He says strongly. And it's that that gets Danny to finally look up from his page, jumping like he'd again been poked with a live wire as he stares at Dick with wide eyes.
"Yes?"
"Put the book down." Dick orders, gesturing towards the side table next to Danny with a nod. "And come eat something." There's very little room for argument in his voice, he sounds like Jazz when she's trying to parent him, but instead he actually sounds authoritative. Not bossy.
Danny still frowns at him. "You're not the boss of me." He says, sinking back into his chair with a thumb bookmarking his page.
Dick gives him a look and makes a decisive noise, swaggling his head side to side while he does. "I'm pretty sure that for as long as we're here, me and B actually are the boss of you."
He's never really liked authority figures, not ones that tried to boss him around, that is. Danny doubles down, his lips curling into a shadow of a scowl. "Just because you're my brother in another world doesn't mean you can act like it."
"That's not what I mean and you know it."
"I don't want to go eat."
"It's not good for you to skip meals."
"Quit talking like Jazz."
"Danny."
Danny sinks his teeth into his lip and scowls darkly at him, shrinking into the back of his armchair in hopes that it'll swallow him whole. The idea of going into that large fucking dining room fills him with a dread that makes him completely forget his appetite.
"Your fucking- dining room is- it's too big." He grits out, finally closing his book and hugging it tightly to his chest.
Dick blinks at him. "What?"
"You heard me! It's too big. This whole place is too big. It's- what do you even do with this much space? I don't know how this- other me ever lived here."
Dick Grayson surprises him, and his expression softens. "Oh," he says, "I get it."
"You do?" The tension bleeds slowly out of Danny's shoulders
"Yeah, I felt the same way when I first moved in with Bruce. I lived with the circus for most of my life, but I slept in a trailer." He says. And he talks more.
The end result of their conversation ends with Dick Grayson offering to let Danny sit across or next to him during mealtimes, and that he can talk to him if he starts getting uneasy. But he can't keep skipping meals - it was making them all worried.
Danny agrees, and Dick takes him down to the kitchens for food.
"They look at me weirdly too." He grumbles as they leave the library, Danny's book returned to the shelf where it belonged. When Dick looks at him curiously, he scrunches his nose up. "The - your other siblings. They look at me like I'm- I'm someone else. S'weird."
"Isn't that a good thing?" Dick asks, "You are someone else."
Dany shrugs, staring at the ground with a heavy frown. "I don't know."
-
Danny seeks out Dick more after that. And vice versa. Dick reminds Danny of Jazz, and he latches onto the familiarity like a leech. If Dick is bothered by it, he doesn't show it, whether he's talking to his other world's self, to the Bruce's, or to one of the other Wayne kids.
Damian Wayne seems particularly keen to seek him out, Danny finds. He thinks it means that they're close in this world, and that Damian wants to see more of what a young Dick is like. That's what he would do, at least.
He takes up on Dick's offer of seating near him during dinner, and finds an open spot across from him. Unless he has something to show him, then he sits next to him.
("You can call me Jason." He tells him one day when they're in the Wayne's massive, fuck-off gym and they're both climbing over the jungle gym. Dick's showing him how to be more flexible. It's the most Danny's worked out ever, he likes the burn it gives him.
Dick looks at him in surprise, "Really?" he's doing a handstand on the bars and Danny's more than a little jealous at his balance.
"Yeah, dipshit," he says, rolling his eyes, "I'll even let you call me Jay, it's my nickname."
Dick happily takes him up on that offer, and much to Danny's embarrassment, starts calling him Jaybird. All because of his stupid Robin jacket.)
Danny has yet to meet his other self still, it's scaring him a little. Where was he? And matter of fact, how long until he could go back to his home dimension? The three of them hadn't gotten any updates since they arrived.
Speaking of, he was starting to talk to Bruce more, it was just... strange. Even stranger than talking to Dick. Bruce Wayne in another life would have been his adoptive father, Danny can't wrap his head around it for the life of him.
Whatever did Bruce Wayne see in Jason Todd that made him worth adopting? He's too afraid of the answer to ask. They start talking more after they run into each other late at night. Danny had been hit with a bout of insomnia and was going to the library.
He ran into Bruce on the way. He was just.. staring, out the window, with a faraway look in his eye. He didn't even look startled to see Danny standing there.
Danny asks him if he wants to go to the library with him. It was out of panic. He isn't expecting Bruce Wayne to agree, and they walk there in suffocating silence. Danny keeps looking at him from the corner of his eye.
("You're staring?" Bruce doesn't sound upset, Danny jumps anyway.
"Yeah, sorry." his voice sounds stilted, "it's just..." his jaw wires itself shut for a spell, "...you looked like you were about to disappear."
"Ah.")
When they reach the library, Danny leads Bruce Wayne into the science section and takes out books upon books about stars. He leads him over to the armchair and fire and they both sit down on the ground.
"When I lived in Gotham I would stargaze." Danny says, it's the first thing he can think of. Bruce Wayne looks at him quizzically. "Well, I would try to. The sky's too polluted for that. Mostly I would just watch the skyline and try and spot Batman and Robin, was the same thing."
That cracks a smile out of Bruce. It's a small one, barely there. "I hardly think the two are comparable."
Danny is still serious. "Not to me."
He goes on, talking about how after he was adopted he got his hands on every star book he could find. He loves english and he loves to read, but something about the stars drew him in like a song. He rambles about every star fact he knows with Bruce Wayne.
Bruce Wayne surprises him by telling him facts he didn't know. Danny soaks it up like a sponge, listening intently to him speak. And when they run out of star books to talk about, Danny tells Bruce that it was his turn to find something for them to talk about.
Bruce Wayne smiles again at him, a sly little thing like Danny's challenged him, and gets up. He comes back with a stack of film books, and they spend the next few hours going through them. Bruce Wayne rattles off every single movie fun fact he knows, and there is so much that he knows.
Danny is in awe, and moves to press against Bruce's side to see the stuff he points at in his books.
"You're smarter than people give you credit for." He says at some point, when his eyes hurt from being open for too long and his head leans against Bruce's arm for support. It follows with a jaw-cracking yawn that he tries and fails to stifle.
"Thank you, Danny." Bruce says, his voice soft and soothing and not helping with Danny's weighing exhaustion. His eyes drift, and then jerk open. "Do you want to go back to your room? You look tired, chum."
He bites back a smile at the nickname, and fails to keep it bitten. "No, no, I'm awake." He mumbles, shaking his head slowly. "I wanna hear-" he yawns again, "-hear you talking."
Danny swears he can hear the smile in Bruce's voice as he speaks; "Alright. Now, where was I?"
In the end, Danny falls asleep on the floor of the library next to Bruce Wayne. He doesn't even realize it until he wakes up the next morning. But it's not to worry, Bruce Wayne fell asleep too, an arm thrown around Danny protectively like he was his own kid.
This becomes a thing for them soon enough. When neither of them can sleep, they go to the library and talk and talk about whatever comes to mind.
There comes the dreaded night after they've finished whatever book they were looking at when Bruce, the little shit, turns to Danny and goes; "You never mentioned what happened after you hit Batman with a tire iron."
Danny groans, big and dramatic, burying his head in his arms, and ignores the low chuckle. "I thought he was gonna chase me down for sure." He complains, his voice muffled by his arms.
"Why did you hit him with a tire iron?"
The look Bruce gets is one of pure disbelief. "If Mothman suddenly showed up behind you while you were taking the wheels off his ride, you'd hit him too!"
"Last time I checked, Mothman isn't real." Bruce told him amusedly, and Danny flops over onto his back to stare him down. His arms sprawl out like a starfish, intentionally hitting Bruce in the shoulder.
"You don't know that, Batman's a cryptid and he's real."
Bruce roars with laughter, and Danny preens like a bird.
That next morning when Bruce passes by him for breakfast, he reaches over and ruffles his hair. It's the same thing he does for Dick every morning. It's the first of many, and it gets many stares from the surrounding family.
Bruce has a newspaper tucked under his arm, and when he sits down Danny stands up and skedaddles over to him, leaning over the side of his chair to peer at the paper.
"Any cryptids spotted, Buzz?" He asks, getting a startled laugh out of Bruce, who looks up at him.
"Buzz?"
"Well, yeah," and Danny states it as matter-of-fact. He gestures his head at Dick Grayson. "Dick calls you 'B', and B is for bees, and I can't just call you Bees, that's dumb. So; Buzz."
He grins triumphantly when Bruce laughs quietly, his shoulders shaking imperceptibly. "I know," he tilts his head up proudly, "I'm a genius."
Now he's actually laughing, dropping his head into one of his hands and trying to quiet himself as much as possible. Danny is positively beaming, ignoring the stares of the other Waynes as he flounces back to his seat just as the other Mister Wayne enters the room.
-
When Jason Daniel Fenton Todd meets Jason Todd for the first time, they both just stare at each other.
Danny recognizes himself immediately in the library, and he freezes up. His tongue ties to the roof of his mouth, and he's unsure of what to say.
He doesn't need to say anything at all, because when Jason Todd looks up and they lock eyes, they both just stare. And stare. Jason Todd is a large, hulk of a man, built like a brick shithouse, with a tired, traumatized look in his eyes and a white streak in his black curls. The same black curls that Danny himself has.
He has no idea what to say. Or if he should turn back around and leave.
Jason Todd sighs at him, "I know they told me you and another world's Bruce and Dickie were here," he says, but it sounds like he's talking to himself. Even moreso when he mutters half-heartedly, "-but I was hoping I wouldn't run into you."
Danny feels small next to him. He doesn't know why. "Sorry." He says lamely, his one foot skips back, "I can leave if you want." It's unlike him to be meek, he thinks. Not after years of Gotham living and dealing with the likes of Dash and his Jerk Jocks.
But this also isn't the streets, and this isn't other kids being dicks. Jason Todd shakes his head, and gestures with one large arm for Danny to come over. "You don't need to do that, you were coming to read, right?"
He nods, and tentatively makes his way over. When Jason looks at him, he sees him cast his eyes over his Robin jacket - he wears it everyday. Danny sees him narrow his eyes, just slightly. But he says nothing.
It's... a strange conversation. Interaction. Jason Todd doesn't talk to him much, and if he does it's stilted and awkward, like he doesn't know how to treat him. Like he's holding him at arm's length.
Jason's getting tired of being treated like a ghost.
They talk about their books. They compare lives. Jason Todd was picked up a few days after he stole the wheels of the batmobile. He wasn't an orphan, he lived with his mom and his stepdad before he lived with Bruce. They both like to read, only Danny has an interest in the stars.
("What do your adoptive parents do?" Jason Todd asks him, one arm slung over the back of the armchair, he looks relaxed. He looks tense. Danny feels like he's back in Crime Alley again.
"They're 'ectologists'." He says, making air quotes over the word. He rolls his eyes, "Ghost hunters. They study the dead and all things afterlife."
Jason Todd makes a dry laugh huff, a sarcastic half-smile on his face. He doesn't explain why he does, Danny doesn't ask why. It doesn't seem like his business.)
Danny wants to ask him where he got that white streak in his hair. It doesn't feel right. It feels like his parents' lab, and that isn't right. Nothing ever feels like his parents' lab.
Jason Todd leaves first after giving him a few book recommendations. Danny isn't sure how to rate the experience. Being in Jason Todd's presence was like standing in a liminal space. An empty parking lot at night. When he leaves it feels like much the same thing.
He struggles to read his books afterwards, unable to shake the feeling of being haunted.
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ikiprian · 27 days
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Ghost Kitchen (brought to you by criminal entrepreneur, Red Hood)
Danny’s got the easiest job in Gotham.
He works as a fry cook at a shoddily-run, independent burger joint. Hardly anyone comes in, despite prices being criminally low, and portions insanely large, and while the manager looks like the average tough-as-nails ex-con, he lets Danny mess around in the kitchen whenever the place is empty. (Which is often. This place has to be the city’s hidden gem or something!)
Mr. Manager’s the only one ever there with Danny, except for sometimes when his buddies come over to smoke and play cards. Danny would find it shady, except part of his job is not to ask questions. Literally, he was told during the interview.
(It was a weird interview. Why would they need to hire someone who’s been in a gunfight before? Like, he has, but Gotham’s idea of “hirable qualities” is so bizarre.)
So instead he whips up some killer burgers with the frozen ingredients, and basks in the praise as the guys tell him he shouldn’t have, he does too much for this joint, ain’t that friendly!
Now, Danny’s a chef on the newer side. As a teen he’d preferred the look of Nasty Burger over anything with Michelin stars, and he only really took up cooking after Jazz moved out for college. But just like ecto-exposure used to turn the groceries sentient, Danny’s low-level ecto signature imbues all his food with something historically haunted Gothamites just love! And Danny’s never been one to half-ass a job when it makes people happy.
With fresher produce, real meat, Danny’s sure he can take his dishes to the next level. It takes a couple months of badgering, but his manager finally agrees to contact the mysterious store owner, who keeps the place going, despite profits Danny knows have to be in the red.
Danny spends the morning prepping. He pours his heart into his food, eager to impress. The big boss will be here soon, and he wants to prove that despite the dangerous location, this place has real potential!
It isn’t until the Red Hood shows up that Danny realizes he’s been working for a money laundering scheme.
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the-autistic-spider · 2 months
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dp x dc prompt
Danny was on a date with his boyfriend
they where visiting a space meusem
while they where at a space exhibit they asked why
"why do you love space so much?"
and Danny being an idiot said
"oh its technically a genetic need to see the stars but i do like them"
and naturally this made his boyfriend confused
"like superman and the sun?"
" i guess?"
and somehow a week later his boyfriend was sneaking him onto the watchtower to see the stars
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deadsetobsessions · 3 months
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Alley Drunk! Danny AU- Part 1
[Pt.2] [Pt.3] [Pt.4]
To not turn into a giant raging asshole hell bent on murdering people and destroying the world after everyone he loved died, Danny had ran from Amity with his chosen vice.
A bottle. That’s right. Even after Jazz’s talks about alcoholism as a poor coping mechanism as a form of self harm, he still chose alcohol. Or maybe that’s why he picked it, because it reminded him of her, right before the booze took the sting of grief off of her memory. He was never really all that good at listening to Jazz.
And now she’s gone, so it’s moot point. Danny really hated Nasty Burger.
Danny made it all the way to Gotham, bottle constantly glued to his hand. It’s better than Vlad’s creep-o-self looming over him all of the time. He bummed out on the streets, fitting into crime alley like a native. Danny learned to pickpocket. Not much, just enough for a bottle when his ran out. He stayed human. At first he tried to convince himself that it was because he didn’t want to be perceived as a meta in a city where Batman notoriously disliked metas. Then, as he sunk deeper, he admitted to himself in a shameful curl of a whisper that it was really because alcohol affected his human side much easier.
Ghosts need an ungodly amount of alcohol to even get slightly buzzed. Danny’s human side? Only one full bottle the shittiest tequila he could find could even hope to be more than buzzed. It sucked.
He’s spent two years being an alcoholic that didn’t actually get that drunk. Technically, underage drinking was a crime. But then again, so was being a vigilante ghost. So, whatever. He does what he can to dull the grief. Mostly, he slept on covered and hidden nooks on top of Crime Alley’s roofs. Gotham city had taken pity on him and cleared her smog clouds when he was awake at night. Stargazing helped, at least. It gave him a little hope. It gave him a little wish to change and better and live like he wants. But then the night ends and when the day comes, Jazz isn’t there. Sam isn’t there. Tucker isn’t there. His mom and dad are not there.
Danny always went back to the bottle, in the end. Not that it did much.
Which was why, when he saw three looming figures over a tiny child, Danny’s saving people thing flared with a vengeance and his surprised ectoplasm burned what little buzz he had achieved by downing most of the bottle away, leaving him stone cold sober and pissed.
Danny sighed, dumping the rest of the nasty tasting liquid out. There’s no point drinking that little.
He approached the trio, who were beating up an actual child. Ancients, he hated Crime Alley sometimes.
“Give me your shit, you little punk!” Asshole 1 decided to say like a typical mugger, raising his leg to kick the curled up kid below. Danny doesn’t let him land the kick, smashing the bottle on the asshole’s head before any of them clocked his presence. He pivots, pushing a bit of that extra strength he normally keeps on a tight leash into his hands, and punched the other two in a quick fashion, knocking them out.
With that taken care of, Danny turned back to the kid who was still curled up. Danny sighed again, the trembles in small shoulders plucking on his heartstrings.
“You okay, kid?”
The kid uncurls, and Danny stared. Holy shit, is he looking into a mirror? Blue eyes, black hair, and tanned skin. Holy shit, he’s even got similar jaws to Danny.
“Huh.”
The kid flinched.
“Y-y’er the drunk,” the kid flinched again, eyes darting to the broken bottle still clenched in Danny’s hand. “I- I ain’t got money, honest. Please-”
Danny blinked down at the kid, brain connecting the dots after so long without actual interaction. He’s panicking and staring at the bottle in Danny’s hand like it’ll kill him. Danny raised the bottle and the kid closed his mouth with a click, terror worming its way into the kid’s eyes.
“I wasn’t going to mug you myself, kid.”
“But- y’er the- the Alley drunk.”
Danny blinked. Did he get a reputation without knowing again? Goddammit.
“I guess. Am I famous or somethin’?”
“Nobody- nobody fucks wit’ ya.”
“I also don’t hurt kids.”
“…”
The kid stared at him dubiously and with a sinking feeling, Danny realized that maybe the kid already had some terrible experiences with a heavy drunken hand. He promptly chucks the bottle further into the alley.
“I drink, yes. But I’m also not the kind of scum that would lay hands on a kid, let alone anyone that didn’t provoke it first.”
“Oh.” The kid uncurled more, looking at Danny warily, more at ease now that the bottle has left the chat.
“Yeah. I’m Danny. Stone cold sober, right now.”
“…”
Danny waited.
“Peters.”
“Okay. Peters, do you wanna take their shit?” Danny pointed a thumb at the knocked out would-be-muggers behind him.
“Y… yeah, sure. What’s my cut?”
“All of it.”
Peters stared.
Danny shrugged and started looting.
"Y'er so fuckin' weird."
----
See, the thing is, Danny hadn't anticipated saving Peters- "'s actually Jason"- would result in having a duckling following him around. The kid, Jason, glared at everyone who even looked at them wrong. But that's not the problem, because Danny could take anyone who took issue with Jason's looks, it's more like there's a child following him around now and Danny doesn't want to be the reason Jason turns into an alcoholic. It's- well, it made him cut down on the drinking. He even got jobs- legitimate jobs that sucks out his his poor ectoplasmic soul.
Why? Because Jason's apparently homeless. While that's something Danny's okay with for himself, he can't ever condone that for an actual child. Jason's walking around in threadbare clothes and thin soled shoes in the middle of Fall, for Ancient's sake.
Danny grumbles as he piled a bunch of clothes into the shopping bag as he checked out. Gotham's Walmart is a different kind of hell, but Danny feels right at home.
Sure, the work might suck out his soul and he might hate being sober, but Jason's face every time he comes home to an actual place to live, warm clothes, and food was worth everything.
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help-itrappedmyself · 2 months
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Dead on Main AU
Masterpost
Guys, I'm so sorry. But here's this!
~~~~
Danny blinks and he is somewhere else. He’s sitting at a dining room table, surrounded. There are so many people here. They’re all talking over each other, some yelling, some laughing. This scene comes as a great surprise to him, who -one blink ago- was trying and failing to do his homework at home in his room. Danny shoots up, his chair making a horrible noise as he pushes it away so fast it tumbles over. Everyone in the room turns to look over at him like he’s insane. 
“Oh my god, who are you people?” Danny did not mean to say this out loud, but at the sound of his voice he startles. Danny takes a moment to assess, and then, “Oh my god who am I?”  He is tall, and big, and this is certainly not his body, what is he wearing.
The boy sitting to the right of Danny, a little shorter than he is, with black hair and blue eyes (though now that he’s paying attention that does describe most people in the room),  starts chuckling lightly. “Uh, Jason? Are you good?” 
Danny turns to stare him right in the eyes. “What day is it?”
And he can tell the concern around the table is just ratcheting up every time he opens his stupid mouth.
“Did you hit your head on patrol?” The voice comes from the only blond and one of the only girls in the room, who's to the left of the person across from him. The person across from him is another boy with black hair and blue eyes who is studying Danny in a way that makes him uncomfortable, that under-a-microscope look that makes you feel like you’re failing at something.
“I have no idea if Jason hit his head.” Danny says. “I was just trying to remember if it was my birthday.”
And if he thought the room was busy when he first arrived here it is absolute pandemonium now. Everyone starts shouting and asking questions that he can’t even hear over the shouting. Someone with white hair in a suit just came through a door he didn’t even see earlier to stand by the only person not shouting, who -Danny would guess- is the only other adult in this room, witting at the head of the table. He also has black hair and blue eyes, and where almost everyone else’s reaction was panic, he froze instead. The person across from Danny also isn’t shouting, but the person next to Danny on his right has now fully stood up and looks like he might actually jump across the table to win the argument he ended up in. 
“Are you Jason’s soulmate?” is the main gist of the shouting that Danny can interpret but he’s more concerned with actual Jason at the moment. If they switched bodies... Then Jason might be in trouble…
“Hey, I forget, how long is this body swap supposed to last again?” Danny asks.
“Until you and Jason have physical contact. You have to actually meet.” The boy sitting across from him explains. He seems like one of the only ones that heard Danny talk, everyone else was still shouting. 
“Oh, that just seems terrible. What if we’re in different countries or something?” Danny complained. “Everyone in the world is just supposed to be able to drop everything and afford to fly across the world. The universe is really trying to screw people over now. Honestly, am I in a different country? Where even are we right now?”
“You’re in Gotham.” This voice was new, coming from the head of the table to Danny’s right. 
“Oh no. Nope.” Danny started backing away from the table, almost tripping on his overturned chair. “Absolutely not, no, how do I get out of here?” He starts earnestly looking for a door to get out of this place, but there are three doors he can see and he has no idea where any of them go, and doesn’t this room have any windows? What kind of a room doesn’t have any windows? Do they like to eat in a basement?
“Jason- not Jason. Uh, you need to calm down, everything will be fine alright, We’ll get you and Jason introduced no problem.” Danny swivels to track the voice and it’s the one who was sitting next to him, he’s walking towards him with his hands up and out in front of him. 
“I have to get home.” Danny breathes. 
“We can get you there, promise. Now, I’m Dick, can you tell me your name?”
“Your name is Dick? Who named you Dick?” Danny is so confused he’s stopped panicking. “How old are you for you to go by the name Dick?”
“Okay, rude.” Dick sounds like a petulant child so Danny’s estimations for his age are continuously dropping. “I’m 24.”
Danny snorts. “Okay.” The blond girl starts laughing over at the table. “I’m uh, I’m Danny.”
“Nice to meet you. Sort of. I’m Tim.” The guy from across from him had made it over to stand next to Dick. “There’s a lot of us here today so the one laughing like a hyena is Steph. That one there is Duke.” African-American, still with black hair but he has brown eyes and waves once introduced. “Damian is the short one next to him, and Cass was sitting across from Dick earlier. Our dad, Jason’s dad-” 
“Not my dad!” Steph interrupted. Tim waves her off.
“Everyone but Steph's dad, is over there, Bruce. Alfred, our butler is the one next to him.” Alfred gives a slight nod to his head. Bruce is just staring at him.
“So, names out of the way. You said you wanted to go home, where do you live?”
“Amity Park.”
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zylev-blog · 2 months
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“Drop it!” Jason yells, chasing after a glowing green puppy.
A glowing green puppy that stole his gun and was currently running from him. Why was a dog green and glowing? He had no idea but he really didn’t want the gun to start firing inside it’s mouth. That would be bad. He can practically hear Alfred scolding him already.
Unfortunately, him having a gun on him would be a strange occurrence since he was not currently Red Hood, but Jason Todd, rich socialite son of Bruce Wayne.
He was also in Gotham Park, a very public place.
He groaned in frustration as the puppy continued to run from him, excitedly yipping as the gun wiggled in its mouth.
“I said, drop it!” He yelled, cupping his hands over his mouth.
The puppy didn’t listen and continued to run through the park. He put on a burst of speed, trying to catch the dog. His hands wrapped around its stomach as he tried to tackle it to the ground. He found himself face planting into the ground, his mouth filling full of dirt.
What the fuck?
He spit out the dirt and leapt to his feet, chasing after the puppy who now had a very big lead on him.
“Cujo!” A male voice called.
The puppy excitedly barked and sat at the feet of a man, dropping the gun onto his feet while wagging its tail.
“Where did you—is this a gun?!” The man asked. “Cujo, who did you—“
Jason broke around the corner a second later, covered head to toe in dirt, cursing under his breath. He didn’t care about the sight of the man in front of him, he just wanted to grab his gun back and hide for the next ten years. He was never going to hear the end of this from his family!
“Where did you get a gun?” The man questioned.
“It’s not a gun.” He said gruffly, taking the gun from the man and putting it into the back of his pants.
“It looks like a gun to me.” The man crossed his arms, black hair falling into his blue eyes.
“It’s a taser.” He lied, “Shaped like a gun.”
“Uhuh.” The man didn’t sound convinced.
He went to walk away from the man, annoyed at the entire encounter.
“The only people who carry guns on them are cops or criminals. You a cop?” The man asked.
“Even if I was a cop, I don’t narc.” He scowled, spitting out dirt that was stuck to his tongue.
“Criminal it is, then.” The man smirked.
The next second, he was dodging a blow that would’ve hit him in the head. So this was how it was going to be, then.
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DPXDC Prompt. Dead on main with priest Jason: Father Todd brings the Ghost King’s cult into the World of the Living.
So, when Jason dies and returns, the League of Assassins fails to hold him for long because spirits from Far Frozen pick him up after seeing teen through the Lazarus pit.
Jason quickly realizes that, well, they’re kinda obsessed with their cult of the Great One. And yeah the cult of the ruling Ghost King was very popular during the reign of the Pariah Dark but back then the rituals were carried out more out of fear. Now things are different. The population of the Ghost Zone has become interested in the activities of Frostbite and his loyal spirits because of an attempt to understand what kind of ghost the new ruler is and how best to thank and appease him. So Jason had no shortage of stories about the teenager's deeds.
~~~~
Jason to Frostbite: Well, you guys and your lil hobby are nice but I don't understand at all what's so cool about this guy, even if he defeated Pariah Dark and gets along with most of the Ancients…
Danny: *comes to visit Frostbite*, *slips and falls three times, sets the kitchen on fire in an attempt to make coffee then sheepishly smiles at Jason*.
Jason to Frostbite: ... Okay, Understandable, I Hope Danny Has a Nice Day and Some Sleep.
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Tucker: Congratulations, you've acquired another Paulina. Great job. Danny: I'd rather he just asked me out instead of worshipping me. What the hell? I'm just a semi-ghost.
Tucker: Maybe things would be easier if you just gave him your phone number, you know? Danny: But he didn't ask. Tucker: Why didn't you ask? Danny: I couldn't! He's Robin himself, you know? Tucker: Well, good luck to you idiots to grow old alone near the altars of each other's name. Danny: Actually lil altar in his honor is not such a bad idea. Maybe this way he'll understand that I like him too.. Tucker: Danny, no!
~~~~
New in Gotham robbers break into Jason's place: Hey, father, God ordered you to share with your neighbors, so bring us some money or we.. Jason, who is talking on the phone with Danny: In fact, he just said that if you don't get out of here now, he will turn a blind eye to the fact that I will use my guns.
Danny*screams internally*: Oh Ancients, he's sooo cool!
Pandora: Honey, we're happy for you but stop flooding us with spam. You have already told 5 times during prayer how good his abs and chest look and how perfect Todd is when he reads aloud. We get it, okay? Clockwork: Well, I actually enjoy it. It's so much more interesting to watch while listening to the internal dialogue. Show must go on~ Danny: ...Get out of my mind! Nocturn: Thou shalt not take the name of the Lords in vain if you don't want to share with us, lil blob. So rude.
~~~Team Song: You Are My Religion · Firehouse~~~~
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dyinggirldied · 3 months
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Valerie's strain of sanity was this, this close to SNAP it. She was at the end of her rope here and it showed. Well, it would show if she took off her mask, letting lose her limp hair and revealing her dark eyebags but she couldn't because she was fighting what-was-his-name, oh right, Skulker.
Skulker, who was demanding to know what had the ghost hunters done with Phantom.
After Phantom's sudden disappearance, it had felt like a blessing. One less ghost scum, the better right? Wrong. She would rather die than admit it but she had underestimated the amount of ghosts Phantom took care of on the daily basic.
The Fenton parents and GIW were no match to those of greater powers, such as Vortex and Undergrowth and she was certain by now they looked no different from her.
Wary. Exhausted. Defeated.
Amity Parkers or at least, the adult ones, hypocritic as they were, had gone from disparaging and objecting to pleading for Phantom's return. Even the ghosts were wondering where was their mysterious ghost boy.
Mayor Masters was also under dark clouds after receiving the citizen's complaints and having to deal with the damages that ranged up to millions of dollars.
At this point, everyone was begging for Phantom to come back from wherever he was.
"Guys!" a voice shouted and she turned, only to see Sidney Poindexter, floating besides them and waving a glowing paper, "It's from Phantom's!"
Just like that, seemingly every human and ghost came out of the bush to know what was the latest news. It didn't get better:
Dear ghosts and Amity Park I guess,
This is from Phantom. I regret, well, not really, to say that having been married into another ghost belongs to another city, I won't be returning to Amity Park anytime soon.
Thankfully never have to deal with you guys anymore,
YOLO,
Phantom
What the fuck.
Or: when a ghost (or half-ghost) marries to a ghost in another city, they basically forfeit their rights to their old home and any businesses going on in their old home is none of their businesses.
In another news, Danny Fenton had been going on romantic rendezvous with a Jason Todd in Gotham City.
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extratiredofyourcrap · 2 months
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Dead on Main being soulmates.
Dead on Main being destined to be each other's Fright Knight and Ghost King.
Dead on Main being childhood best friends until Danny moves to Amity with his parents.
Them dying at the same time.
Danny having a ice/snow core because Jason died in a snowy area, and Jason having a lightning core due to Danny dying in the portal
The reason why Jason mysteriously woke up in his coffin being because Danny was about to die against Pariah Dark and his soul reacting to try and get to him.
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yonokomizuka · 4 months
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Fanfic concept(Dead on main):
The ghost king finds himself lonely after so many years of ruling, so he intrudes a nearby gala hosted by a rather infamous man named Bruce Wayne. There he masquerades as Danny Fenton, whom he usually refers to as "a relic of my past", and finds a connection with the second eldest son of the family, Jason.
He senses the same experiences of death and rebirth between the two of them so he wastes no time chatting. At first Jason is wary of Danny, thinking that he must be the son of a business man trying to butter him up .
But it doesn't take long for Danny to sway him through charm and shared interests(They're both nerds is what I'm saying)
Soon the final dance comes along and of course they partner up. As they dance though, the lights start to dim rapidly. Bruce gets news that the tech in the building was starting to lag/fail on them.
Then the room turns dark except for a single spotlight on the couple in the center. As they spin, the ghost king's true form is revealed, snow white hair and glowing green eyes. He leans in and whispers a vow to Jason, asking him to accept it.
Despite Bruce's best efforts he's unable to reach his son before Jason agrees and they dissappear together. The lights finally turn back on. Jason Todd was gone again.
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aziraphale-is-a-cat · 7 months
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DPXDC Scandal Family
We all know about Brucie Wayne and his endless supply of poorly adjusted children, but a new billionaire family is taking the tabloids by storm- The Masters Brood.
Entrepreneurial billionaire and super fan of the Green Bay Packers, Vlad Masters recently adopted the children of his late college classmates, Madelyn and Jack Fenton in the wake of their tragic deaths. Two daughters and two sons, the oldest named Jasmine and the other three oddly named Dan, Danny and Danielle- the children have caused multiple scenes in public, from brawling with each other to harassing their adoptive father in public.
Masters himself only seems all too amused with the antics and often participates in the more harmless acts of tomfoolery like sneaking stickers onto the back of guests' heads and making light work of refreshment tables.
In the face of this new found family, will Brucie Wayne and his children be able to maintain their title as America's weirdest billionaires, or will that status be swept out from beneath them?
-
Looking grimly at the screen of his laptop, Dick Grayson considers his options. "Looks like we're really going to have to step up our game- hey Jason! How do you feel about coming back to legal life?"
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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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confessedlyfannish · 3 months
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Writing Prompt #11
It's an innocent ("please," Jason sneers, "there's nothing innocent about a plagiaristic propaganda machine encouraging minors to dance for sick ol' pervs while it spews misogynistic hate speech.'"
"okay, boomer,"
"the fuck did you just call me, replacement?") TikTok, one of those ones that kind of simmers in the background for a few weeks until someone with a decent enough following posts it on the Platform Formerly Known as Twitter and from there it seriously catches traction, blowing up until Tim knocks on Bruce's office door, phone in hand. Damian stands behind him, arms crossed and clearly simmering.
Bruce, fresh off a series of zoom conferences, raises an eyebrow.
"Okay, so you haven't seen it," Tim decides, striding forward.
Bruce's eyebrow jumps a smidge higher, on the edge of concern, as Tim thrusts his phone into his grasp.
"So," he begins, reaching over to refresh the mobile page "there's a video that's been making the rounds on Twitter and—well you should probably see it," He sighs over Damian's scoff as he clicks through the pop-up asking him to sign in or join TikTok, and presses "Watch Again", unmuting the video.
🎶 "Doo, badoo-badoo-badoo Badoo-badoo-badoo-badoo,"🎶 an upbeat background song hums as someone, presumably a student, films a school hallway with their phone. They walk past students talking near their lockers, some of whom flash peace signs and silly grins as the camera swings their way before continuing on.
But the main point Bruce gets stuck on is the all lowercase white text at the center of the screen that an automated woman's voice awkwardly narrates:
"when you go to school with bruce wayne's other long lost lovechild"
The student filming comes up behind a much taller student who faces away from him, in conversation with a black haired pale teenaged girl. She spots the cameraman and shoots him a confused, disgruntled look, saying something to the boy who then turns around.
Bruce quietly observes as the camera zooms in on a boy around Tim's page, possibly older. Tall and broad-shouldered, with a strong jaw, he raises an eyebrow at the one filming, looking beyond the camera, pitch black hair with blue undertones falling into his blue eyes. The camera momentarily zooms too far into those eyes then abruptly pulls back as he quirks a puzzled smile at the viewer, mouthing out an easily understandable "hi?".
The TikTok ends and seamlessly transitions to a person balancing their cat on an exercise ball with minimal success and this time Bruce presses the Watch Again button. The heart on the right side claims 750k likes.
Damian scoffs, louder, as it ends. "Clearly it is a hoax, but it has been popular among my classmates."
"The board hasn't made much noise about it—" Tim starts.
"And they won't," Bruce says, lifting his eyes from his phone. "Wayne Industries doesn't give statements on videos like these, no matter how viral they become. I've been getting lovechild claims since before I adopted Dick."
Which Tim knows, which is why his insistence on showing Bruce this one raises his hackles. He pins Tim down with a stare and despite Tim's perfected PR mask, he can see Tim is unsettled.
"B...he really, really looks like you." Tim admits. Damian scoffs for a third time and Tim shoots him a glare, "I get it, you don't see it, but you haven't seen the pictures of Bruce when he was younger."
"I don't need to!" Damian says angrily. "You're all being ridiculous!"
"All?" Bruce asks. Tim shifts awkwardly. "The family group chat has been talking," he says.
"I see," Bruce says. Because he does. Many claim Damian to be his doppelganger, but the boy actually favors Talia not just in skin tone but in the shape and color of his eyes, as well as the soft slope of her mouth and ears. Whether those features will sharpen once he goes through puberty is anyone's guess.
But this young man has Bruce's eyes. Martha's eyes.
That night they have a suspiciously full house for dinner, with even Jason dropping in, but no one says anything until Barbara wheels in for dessert, carrying a manila folder on her lap.
"What?" she says, when everyone stares. "Dick told me it was crème brûlée today!"
Bruce extends a hand wordlessly, and Barbara sheepishly hands the folder over.
"Bruce," she says, before he can open it, "I wouldn't have looked into this normally, but,"
"Just say it," Jason says, leaning back in his chair. "Take away the gray hairs, the receding hairline, and the wrinkles and the kid's a dead match."
"Take it back, Todd," Damian growls, "Father has a very full head of hair!"
"Not to mention a failed track record at keeping it in his pants, Exhibit A," Jason continues, pointing a fork at Damian, "oh wait," he says gleefully, "kid is definitely 18, so I guess that would make you Exhibit B!"
The table erupts, cutlery tinkling as Damian gets a knee up on the table to hurl himself at a cackling Todd, Dick jumping up to grab him as the others lean out of the way—
"Ahem!" Everyone stops cold as Alfred stands in the doorway, porcelain ramekins of crème brûlée stacked perfectly on a silver tray. Under his gaze, everyone sits back down, Damian and Jason both quietly uttering a "Sorry Alfie/Alfred," as they straighten up.
Bruce is oblivious to the chaos, Barbara biting her lip beside him as he stares blankly inside the folder at the printed copy of an adoption certificate.
Two days and several million likes later, another TikTok goes viral from the same user. Caught in the moment as whoever is filming runs up to the group, the same young man is chatting with a blonde in a red letterman jacket, a partially formed crowd around them. Even with one leg still in the cafeteria table, he towers over everyone.
"—sh. Look, we're all possibly Bruce Wayne's son!" the boy snarks. He has his hands out, palms up as if he's making a great point, and as he looks around he catches sight of the cameraman and his smirk drops.
"Ah Mac, c'mon dude not again—" and the TikTok ends.
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echosbento · 3 months
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Normally when the bats had to work with the Justice League, Jason was left out of it. He was violent in a way they didn't approve of, and didn't exactly like mincing his words. But this time, apparently they were working with someone from a more violent culture, and they thought Jason could bridge the gap.
The Ghost King they called him, or just the Phantom. Apparently he was the resident hero of the afterlife itself and the ghosts currently terrorizing New Jersey, New York, and Ohio were his jurisdiction. But they were clearly targeting Justice League affiliated locations, so the idiots in spandex wanted to work together. And in ghost culture, physical violence is a show of respect or even a form of affection, so Jason had been called in. A few years ago they probably would have called in Damian, but the kid was currently having a morality crisis as he realized he wasn't as okay with murder as he thought. Fair, Jason guessed. He'd done pretty much the exact opposite after all.
"So did you guys actually establish contact with this Phantom guy, or did you just leave a note and expect him to follow it?" Jason gave the idiots a Look, because it really wouldn't be the first time it was the latter.
"We established contact Hood, gods just wait like thirty seconds." Fuck these moral high-ground types were the fucking worst.
"We've been waiting here for two hours, I have a right to be a bit snippy." Of course, as though to mock Jason specifically, a glowing green portal opened up as soon as he'd spoken. And out walked, wait-
"Danny?!"
"Jason?!"
Jason's twin brother.
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deadsetobsessions · 8 days
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Sea Cryptic! Danny AU- Pt. 7
[Pt.1] [Pt.2] [Pt.3] [Pt.4] [Pt.5] [Pt.6]
“I’m having a child.”
Danny stared at Batman.
“…Uh, congrats?”
Batman whips out a stack of paper and a pen. “It’s you. Sign here and initial the highlighted spots.”
Danny instinctively, from years of dealing with Vlad, whacked the stack right out of Batman’s hands and into the bay. He doesn’t even feel bad about littering this time because, “Begone, fruitloop!”
Wait, no, that’s not what he meant.
“I mean- I have parents!”
“Not for long.” Batman muttered and then did a double take. “You have parents? How?”
Danny gasped, placing a hand on his chest to clutch his metaphorical pearls. He ignored Batman’s mutters. Everyone knows the vigilante has an adoption problem. At least, everyone who lived in Gotham did, as everyone who didn’t was somehow convinced that he “worked alone” or some bullshit like that. “Are you naturally this insensitive or were you dropped on your head as a baby? Obviously I had to come from somewhere.”
“They’re still… alive?”
“And kicking,” Danny said, inching away from yet another rich weird guy trying to adopt him. “Mostly the kicking part, though.” He said, remembering the sparring sessions. His mom could kick his as six ways to Sunday with nothing but jiu-jitsu and still have time to work in the lab.
“I see.”
“I’m charging you extra for the emotional upheaval. I have trauma regarding rich people trying to adopt me.”
Batman sullenly handed over a thousand.
“Sweet. There’s a group of shades down here asking if you could find their murderer. Apparently the serial killer is still at large.” Danny pointed.
“Of course. Tell me everything.”
The adoption papers disappeared as Batman went into detective mode.
Danny shoved the cash into his glowing chest and breathed a sigh of relief. He needed to make rent this month so it was a windfall running into Batman.
——
“Hey, Tim?”
Tim woke up from his Power Nap. “Huh?”
“Phantom’s complaining that Batman kept trying to adopt him.”
Tim blinked. “Uh.. what does that have to do with me?”
Danny stared at him, a patiently amused smile on his face. “Just in case the rumor about the Wayne’s sugar-daddy-into the Bats was a thing. Other than that, we might have to confront Batman to get him off of Phantom’s back. ”
“You… want to confront Batman.”
“Hey, man, Phantom’s a friend and it’s ride or die.” Danny snickered. It was literally die, with his Phantom side of things. He held two fists up, and wound them, like Popeye right after eating spinach or something. “And if Batman bothers Phantom, we ride at dawn.”
“Batman doesn’t come out unless it’s dark, though? Or for the Justice League.” Tim grinned. He mentally classified Danny under his “to go to” list. That’s where Bart, Bernard, Cassie, Kon, and Garfield were. If he starts shit, he could count on them to have his back and cause even more shit. Danny, wanting to fistfight Bruce over the man making Phantom uncomfortable? He absolutely is making that list.
“Then we ride at, like, dusk. Or uh, like 10PM. I gotta get my beauty sleep.”
“You’ll definitely need it,” Tim inconspicuously texted the group chat, which quickly blew up.
“Shut up,” Danny playfully shoved Tim. “Wait, can Batman even legally adopt? Isn’t being a vigilante illegal? And how can he adopt someone dead?”
Tim dramatically flailed and splayed over Danny’s carpeted living room. “Dunno about his identity,” he lied to Danny, like a liar. “But Gotham has a bunch of laws for the undead/restored to life people so there’s probably enough gray space there.”
Danny spluttered. “You guys have undead friendly laws?”
“Yeah, geht do you think Grundy just chills out? Plus, we have like a minor resurrection event every few years. It usually doesn’t stick but sometimes it does. Bruce pushed for those laws when Jason came back to life, except he doesn’t actually want people to know he’s like, alive.”
“Jason died?” Danny blinked. Well, that would explain the vibes. “Huh. So what’s up with his rank vibes then?”
“Rank vibes?” Tim pressed record on his phone.
Danny nodded. “Yeah, you know how Phantom’s got like a really chill green vibe?” Inwardly, Danny snickered at his pun. Chill. Yeah, he meant that very literally. “Jason’s got kind of a rank green vibe. He’s kind of stinky? Definitely never introduce him to Phantom.” Danny’s senses got worse in his ghost form.
“Jason regularly showers, though?!”
“Not smell! Like, a spiritual smell?”
“You can smell souls?!” Tim sat up. “Bro, you’re a meta?!”
“Uh.” Danny hesitated. “Yeah. I can smell souls. It’s a thing. Everyone from my town can do it.”
“What?!” Tim paused. “Wait, can Phantom smell souls?”
“Yeah. We’re, uh, from the same town.”
“Danny, what the fuck?”
“Hey, don’t look at me like that, you’re the one with a soul-sick brother! Not to mention, you’re kinda stinky too!”
“Hey!”
“Soul-stinky nerd man!”
——
“I stink?!” Jason spluttered out, extremely offended.
“The Lazarus pits. He’s most likely smelling traces of Lazarus pit on you, you imbecile.”
“We need to speak to Phantom. This instant.”
“I dunno, B. Danny sounded like he was gonna break your face if you bothered Phantom anymore.” Dick snickered.
“Yeah,” Tim chimed in, from his seat in front of the Bat-computer. “He was pretty serious.”
“Are we just gonna glaze over the fact that they’re from the same town?!” Stephanie exclaimed, practicing her moves on a training dummy.
“How does that even work? What does that mean? I thought Phantom was an immortal?” Duke asked.
“We also can’t rule out time-travel.” Barbara slammed her baton into a training dummy, twisting her wheelchair in an agile maneuver that left the dummy on the floor.
“No bothering Phantom.” Cass proclaimed.
“That’s quite right. You all have a warm dinner sitting above your cave and should it remain uneaten, I assure you that sherbet Sunday and crêpe Tuesday shall be canceled.” Alfred stepped in. The Bats, threatened, scrambled to ditch their gear and go upstairs.
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help-itrappedmyself · 2 months
Text
Dead on Main AU 3
Masterpost
So this one is a bit longer, but that's because part of it is the same phone conversation from the other side.
~~~~~
“Road trip!” Dick calls out. All of the- siblings(?)-younger people start to scramble before Bruce calls out for them to stop.
“This is going to be a 12 hour drive one-way, which means we won't be back until dinner tomorrow at the earliest. Not all of you can go.” This causes a lot of frowns and Danny holds in a chuckle. They start arguing over why they should be able to go and Bruce pinches his nose, right between his eyes as they shout at him.
“First and Foremost, I do believe that Masters Duke, Damian, and Stephanie have school tomorrow.” Alfred inserts. Everyone quiets to listen to him, Danny notes. Everyone else they’ll talk over, he must be important, be extra nice to him.
The three must sigh and sit back down at the table. 
“Cass, if you wouldn’t mind staying to keep them out of trouble overnight. I’m sure Alfred will see them out to school.”
Cass shrugs, then signs at Dick who responds “Of course!” Danny hadn’t realized that she was speaking sign language this whole time.
Bruce then turns to face Dick and Tim. “You have absolutely no way to keep us from coming.” Dick sing-songs.
“You both have work tomorrow.”
“Actually, Dick and I called out ten minutes ago, family emergency.” Tim shrugs. “We won’t be in for a few days unless things change.”
“Alright, go grab your things.” They both whoop and you can just tell they were both about to start running when they catch eyes with Alfred and just start walking really fast. “Pack light, and grab some changes of clothes for Jason!”
Before they can leave a phone starts ringing. They all look around before all eyes settle back on Danny. He feels around his pockets for where the phone is, before pulling it out and seeing his own number on the caller ID.
“Oh, it’s me!” Danny hurries to pick up as he hears someone mutter “Why didn’t we think of that?” from the table. Dick and Tim are almost immediately right next to him as he mumble out a hello.
“Um, hello, Jason?”
“Yeah, this is Jason. You with my family?” His heart thumps when he hears his own voice coming out the other side of the phone. It somehow makes the whole situation seem a bit more real then it did before.
“If the people that were in the room with you before are your family. I really only have confirmation that one of them is your dad.”
“Hey, we’re his family”
“We’re all his brothers and Cass is his sister.”
“Have those motherfuckers not even introduced themselves?” 
So much talking at once, Danny tries to focus on his own voice coming through the phone. It’s a little deeper than it usually is, gruffer and lilted like it’s trying to talk in an accent the mouth isn’t familiar with shaping. Danny supposes the voice he’s speaking with now must be doing the same.
“Sort of. Eventually.” Jason sighs loud enough to hear over the phone and Danny chuckles at the response. 
“Right, well your name is Danny right?”
“Yeah! Have you talked to my family yet?” They were all home the last he checked, and Jazz usually tells him before she heads out. 
“No, haven’t left your room. Your name was on your homework though.”
“Oh, please do not judge the homework.” Danny rubs a hand down his face just thinking of that - his homework- being his soulmate's first real impression of him. 
“Didn’t even look at that part. So, I’m assuming that you guys are coming to me?”
Danny shakes off the embarrassment “I think so?” 
“Of course we are!”,  “Was he not paying any attention as we decided who should go?”, “We were just planning.” There are so many people talking at once again.
 Danny pulls his face away from the phone and turns to the room at large “Stop it, buzz off!”. He turns to face a wall and takes a few steps away.  “They said yes.”
“Please tell me they’re not all planning on coming.”
Danny hums, focused on something else. “Look, I do need to warn you…” what if he goes ghost, can he go ghost with Jason in his body? What are his parents working on today? “ about a few things actually. Jazz, my sister, her room is across the hall and she’ll be able to help you if you. I sort of have… like a medical condition. I would rather explain that to you in person, but she’ll watch out for you if you go meet her.”
“I can do that. Anything I should look out for?” Weird ice mist coming out of your mouth would be pretty unexplainable at the moment, but random things shooting at him can be avoided!
“My parents leave all kinds of weapons around the house, and sometimes they’ll target me-you- at random, so try not to touch anything, and either stay upstairs or have my sister take you somewhere in town. Whatever you do, don’t go in the basement, the lab is down there.” Almost everything in that lab is to be avoided, although since he is already in Danny’s body he shouldn’t be bothered by the potential radiation.
“Kid, what?” 
“This is really an in-person talk.”
Danny does not know how he would explain this over the phone, with a room of eavesdroppers behind him. Although they’ve become respectfully quiet, more whispers than anything now. 
“Sure, okay. Find Jazz, preferably leave the house.”
“Yep!” That would be best, Jazz will definitely help him. “Is there anything I should know?”
“Shit, if I had time I would give you a warning about everyone in my family individually, but for now… I don’t know if this will translate over…” It will, but there’s really no way to explain that. “I have… I guess it’s sort of a health condition as well. My family knows what triggers it, and they should be on their best behavior right now anyways, but if you wouldn’t mind putting someone on the phone I can threaten them properly.”
Danny laughs and puts the phone on speaker before calling out to the room, “You’re on speaker!” so everyone in the room knows as well as Jason. 
“I swear to god if any of you scare him, hurt him, or anything I’m going to kill you. I know everything you love and if you don’t act normal, just know, it will be destroyed.”
“Yeah, yeah. Jay, this is your soulmate!” Dick has bounded back over to Danny, right up in the personal space. 
“Also, most of us love you so that threat doesn’t work as well as you think it does.” Steph yells from the table, where she continued eating at some point.
“Bitch, I died once, I’ll do it again. Don’t test me on this right now.”
Danny starts laughing so hard he doesn’t register everyone else in the room having frozen at the outburst.
“Oh, wow, same.” Danny gets out once he can breathe again.
The room is staring at him again, but they seem to do that a lot.
“You must be Jazz.” They hear coming through the phone. “I’m Jason.”
“Jazz!” Danny calls out. 
“Danny would like to talk to you.” There’s a small shuffle. 
“Danny?”
“Hey, Jazz! So, apparently I’m the younger, so today’s the day. I’m with his family right now.”
“You have a plan? Are you coming home?”
“Yeah, just. Would you mind keeping an eye on Jason until I get there? It’s going to be a long drive so could you make sure nothing shoots him and that he gets edible food?”
“I’ll take him to Nasty for dinner, don’t worry.” Danny sighs in relief, he knew Jazz would help, but he did not need his soulmate food fighting with dinner.
“Sounds good, he’s in my body so he shouldn’t really be poisoned but Mom and Dad still can’t really cook. Speaking of which! He is in my body so if anything happens with the, um, medical condition, help him through that as well.”
“Of course, Danny.”
“Thanks Jazz! We were just deciding who was coming along, but apparently, it's about a 12-hour drive? So, you guys won’t see us until tomorrow.”  There’s a lot unspoken in this conversation, but Danny knows she’ll do her best. “Try not to interrogate him, and no psychoanalyzing!”
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