#Danny needs his ghost powers to live AU

[ailithnight]

Aheem... prompt from @regonold

16 Hours

Danny remembers the first time something shorted out his powers. Vlad with his stupid Plasmius Maximus thing. Well, 'remembers'. Mostly he remembers the aftermath.

Apparently Vlad hadn't known at the time exactly how Danny ended up half ghost. He thought it had been a slower progression like his own development. It hadn't occurred to him that Danny's original death had been much quicker.

Danny remembers a short, light shock. Really, the spector deflector was worse. But this shock... suddenly his muscles were seizing, his heart stuttering, his Lichtenbergs burning. And then, nothing. A blank space in Danny's head that apparently spanned 3 hours.

Next thing he knows, they're in some kind of vehicle. There are sirens outside (a police escort, Danny would later learn). His mom is driving like her life depends on it. And Vlad is giving him chest compressions, looking grieved and panic striken. He's crying. They both are.

"Please tell me you didn't have to kiss me." His voice comes out pained and raspy. Mom almost crashes the vehicle.

"No, Little Badger. Thankfully, you kept breathing. Just your heart that was struggling." Vlad chuckled, guilty yet relieved.

It was another hour before they made it to the nearest hospital from the stupid hunting cabin. 6 more for all the stupid medical tests. "An accident," Vlad told them. "Small shock, but with an already weak heart..."

Any other time, Danny might have argued. Tried to make Vlad admit more guilt. But the whole ordeal had exhausted him to much to care then.

The second time was marginally better. At least with the Fenton Crammer, it was a steady loss. And Danny managed to fix it before his healing factor fully failed. It still hadn't been pleasant, fighting Skulker and dealing with Dash while phantom echoes of his death arced across his body. But he'd managed.

This. This is so much worse. Danny thought it would be like the Crammer again. A steady decline. But it isn't.

And it isn't like the Maximus either, a one then done, pain then nothing, dying then dead, moment.

No. This is more like the blood blossoms. This is torture. This is hell.

The suppression cuffs let just enough of his power bleed through, just enough healing factor, to keep him alive. Alive and in agony for... hours? Days? Weeks? Minutes? Danny couldn't really tell. His thoughts had long since turned to nothing but static and pain. All he knew was that time was passing around him while he was here, suffering on the absolute brink of death yet unable to embrace it.

Oh god he wanted to die. Please just let him die already! It's too much. A death that should only last a few seconds drug out into an eternity. His muscles ached with the strain of being locked up. His insides were broiling from the electric heat. His heart stuttered and stopped and started and stuttered. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts!

He might have been screaming. He might have been Wailing. Or he might he been choking on weak uneven breaths. Danny didn't know. Didn't care to know. Didn't care if he ever found out the details of his time in chains. He just wanted, no needed, it to end. But it just dragged on and on and on. And Danny was lost in it.

Too far gone to even realize when it ended.

.

Batman hadn't been there when the new meta appeared, quite literally materializing from nowhere in the conference room mid-meeting. He had been dealing with a mass Arkham breakout at the time. So he wasn't there. An unfortunate fact which will haunt him for the rest of his life and possibly beyond.

He should have been there. If he had only been there...

He didn't blame his team mates. They didn't know. Who would have guessed that simple power suppression cuffs could ever be an instrument of torture. He'd never considered it possible.

He didn't blame his team mates. How could he blame them? Batman wasn't even the one to connect the dots. Red Robin figured it out. He always was good at stringing together thoughts know one else would think to connect.

Red Robin asked the right questions. He figured out in 5 minutes what the rest of the league and the best doctors -not technically- on earth had been agonizing over for 16 hours.

16 hours too long.

He should have been here. Should have come sooner.

"Don't know, B!" Flash had met him at the Zetas, already rambling at top speed before he could reorient himself after teleportation. Everyone else had gone home, unable to help and needing to tend to their own cities and responsibilities.

"He just- He appeared out of nowhere while we were in meeting. Didn't trip any alarms or nothing. Just popped up. We figured it had to be teleportation, but he'd have to know where the Watchtower was to do that.

So we figured, you know, random kid teleporting into the Watchtower during a Justice League meeting. Not good. Big threat. Bats would tell us to detain. So we did.

But before we could get him to a holding cell, there was this flash of light and he changed or something. He had white hair and green eyes and some sort of jumpsuit on when he appeared.

But after the light he had black hair and a t-shirt and jeans and I actually didn't see his eyes cause he just collapsed on the spot.

Started convulsing or seizing or something. And screaming. God, B, the screaming... So we took him to medbay and...

He's dying B. He has to be. He's got a fever that keeps spiking and dropping, his muscles keep spasming, and his heart keeps giving out...

He looks 14. He looks like..."

Flash had trailed off there, as they reached medbay. Bruce understood his reluctance to complete that sentence as soon as he saw the boy.

He looks like a Robin.

Like all 4 of his sons combined.

Like someone mixed Dick's and Jason's faces and put it on Tim's body at Damian's age.

It can't even be a trick. The suppression cuffs are nullifying his abilities. This is what he truly looks like.

His sons.

In pain.

In agony for 16 hours because Batman prioritized Gotham over an emergency on the Watchtower.

"When exactly did you say he collapsed."

"When we were moving him to a holding cell after we caught him. He was a trick to catch too. He-"

Red Robin cut him off. "Yeah, sure. But when exactly did this start. What happened immediately before?"

Flash was less then pleased about being interrupted, but acquiesced after a look from Batman. Tim had an idea. Tim was on to something. "Like I said, just after we caught him and got the cuffs on so he'd stop slipping away again."

Bruce couldn't keep the growl out of his voice one he realized what Tim was suggesting. Of course he knows it wasn't their fault. He's told all of them as much since. But in the moment...

"Take them off!"

"What?"

"It's the cuffs! Take the damn cuffs off! They're killing him!"

Flash wasted no more time, bolting out of the room to fetch the disabler. Tim didn't bother waiting for the fastest man alive. He had the cuffs disabled before Flash would have been able to swipe his access card into the detainment center storage room. Bruce practically threw the cuffs out of the room in his haste to get them away.

The change had been... not nearly as quick as Bruce would have liked. The heartrate settled out almost instantly, although into something a bit too slow for comfort. But it was steady and Bruce knew nothing about this kid's normal physiology so he counted it a win.

The screaming, of course, had long since choked off. According to Flash's report, his vocal cords failed after about an hour. But his facial expressions still indicated consciousness, though not awareness.

The muscles stopped spasming and unlocked slowly over the course of several minutes. Flash was back by then, looking a bit put out to have lost a race against Red Robin. Batman could not give a single flying fuck about Flash's ego right then.

Shortly after his muscles unlocking was when he finally passed out. Once more, Batman thought about 16 hours. 16 hours and he hadn't even been able to slip into unconsciousness for relief. He should have been here.

The fever was the slowest to break. In that it still hadn't broken almost 2 hours later. Batman had sent Tim and Flash home after Red Robin finished squeezing all the details he could out of Barry. Tim had given him a look before leaving, some mixture of worry and mischief. "Should I tell Agent A to prepare a room?" Bruce just rolled his eyes and shooed him off. Hopefully to bed. Knowing his son, probably not. Tim was most likely still up doing research. Bruce wanted to call Alfred to wrangle Tim to sleep.

But calling Alfred would mean leaving the room so the still potentially a threat meta couldn't hear if he woke up. And Bruce couldn't leave him. Not until the fever broke. Not until he woke up. Not until he knew the boy that looked like his sons would be okay.

Not until he could apologize for being late.

16 hours.

16 hours too late.

#DP x DC #my writing #Danny needs his ghost powers to live AU #Lookit #Everyone commenting on that post like it would take days to figure it out #No #Just no #Bat comes in #Or Red Robin here #Cause Batman takes one look at the kid and starts shutting down #Danny looks too much like his sons #But the detective family #You cant convince me not at least one of the Bats would jump to the right answer nigh instantaneously #Them are some smart Birds #Ya feel?