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noisilyscreechingsong · 9 months

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Without the levels of ectoplasm Amity Park has, the rest of the world was filled with other, weaker forms of ‘ghosts’ called shades. Danny finds his purpose of protecting comes in all kinds of forms. This is useful when he finds a challenge in Gotham.

Warning: violence, murder, probably something else. Proceed with caution.

Danny has noticed when he left Amity Park and went to places that didn’t have ambient ectoplasm, he saw lots of shades. They were outlines of the people they once were, mere shadows of themselves. It wasn’t a soul per se. He was close to believing his parents when they said ghosts were just impressions of emotions in ectoplasm.

These shades couldn’t really hold a conversation with him, if they even noticed he was speaking to them. Some mumbled things under their breath, some moaned or screamed randomly, and others didn’t utter a sound. What he figured out over time was that they were actually attached to things or people. Not like a child is attached to their favorite toy, but physically couldn’t go far from whatever it was.

He’s seen shades attached to the places they died in, or perhaps a favorite object that was important to them, but the most interesting were the shades attached to people.

It was a small game of his to figure out who that person was to the shade. A child, a caretaker, a friend. He once saw a nurse who had some shades following her with smiles. It became less fun when he found his first serial killer. It was an older man carrying an oxygen tank behind him and surrounded by at least half a dozen young women shades. They wore expressions of sadness and anger and fear. He could recognize trauma when he sees it. Danny just stood frozen for a while, just watching this man pull out his oxygen to smoke a cigarette. He didn’t really know how to feel other than a cold fury that made his mind worryingly quiet.

“Whatchu lookin at, boy?” The old man snapped.

Danny just stared back into the dark and arrogant eyes. Then he looked up to the women who blinked back.

“You will have him soon. Then you can rest.”

They seem to understand, turning again to stare at the back of the man’s head with such expressions any other person seeing them would have screamed and run away as fast as they could. Danny did neither.

“Who you talking to?”

Danny stares back at the man who shifted in his seat uncomfortably.

“You’ll see soon enough,” he answers coldly before turning and walking away.

That was the first of more than he cared to find. Some he approached. Some he just stared at knowingly, watching the killers squirm under his intense gaze. Some he had to restrain himself from killing to avenge the victims hovering over their shoulder. One or two he didn’t hold himself back. His first was a woman actually, with children and toddlers clinging to her back like they didn’t understand how else to process what she did to them other than by staying close.

Danny followed her home. She ran a daycare from it. He couldn’t let it happen again. She wasn’t as old as the man with the oxygen tank, she had several more years before she died naturally. He needed to end it then. And he did.

He didn’t say one word to her or answer any of her angry questions as he plunged his hand into her chest and squeezed. Her heart burst like a water balloon and he cringed at the feeling. She died quickly and he waited for her shade to form.

When it did, the children didn’t know what to do. They were innocents, they weren’t like the young women waiting for their killer to die so they could rip him to shreds viciously. They hovered and flicked around excitedly. And when her shade finally formed and predictably turned on the children, snapping and reaching out with clawed hands to quiet them permanently, Danny stepped in to protect, like he always did. He bit and tore until there was nothing left.

He had seen shades and ghosts ‘move on’ before. Where they finally felt like they didn’t have to stay and they just faded contently, going where Danny couldn’t follow. Seeing all of the children disappear with laughs and smiles was the most bittersweet experience he could remember.

He cried himself to sleep that night.

So after traveling for a while and stumbling upon a glum city with far too many shades, he was a little overwhelmed. Never before had he seen so many in one place, other than the Zone of course. He couldn’t just leave, he needed to help as many as he could. For the first time in a rough while, Danny settled into one place, Gotham.

Over a couple weeks he helped as many as he could while working at some fast food place during the day and a weird bar at night.

Things were busy but manageable until one evening he was kidnapped and held hostage along with a dozen other people in some mad man’s scheme. He wasn’t particularly invested, knowing the Bats were going to come save them, that is until he actually saw the man, or more specifically the number of shades surrounding the man. This was Joker. It had to be. He never had a face to the name until today, but the shades that he spoke to the gave half answers to exactly three questions before becoming disinterested about half the time brought up Joker. Even the ones that weren’t in the building, must have been killed by this man. He wasn’t just a serial killer, he was a mass murderer.

Danny knew what he had to do.

With the Joker’s goons distracted with his presentation, the clown laughing into a camera that was apparently live, it wasn’t hard to escape his bonds and then borrow a gun he ‘found’.

He took aim.

“Boss, behind you!” One of the men shouted from behind the camera.

Joker turns with a wide grin and Danny doesn’t hesitate to pull the trigger.

Three shots ring out in the open space, the other hostages scream, and the goons shout urgently. Three holes are now in the Joker’s chest, the purple suit slowly staining an ugly brown. The Joker falls, allowing the camera (and everyone watching) to show the face of the teenage murderer.

Danny doesn’t even notice, his wide eyes on the body, gun pointed to the floor. He watches the beginnings of a shade form and he can feel more shades gather around with anticipation.

A window shatters before the goons can figure out what to do now that their employer is dead. They run as the Bats descend upon them, one freeing the hostages and another directing them outside where it’s safe.

The shade is almost formed and Danny catches himself from leaning in with the rest of the shades. They weren’t victims right now, they were hungry wolves prepared to bite and rip and tear apart.

“Hey, kid, I’m gonna need you to hand that over okay? You’re safe now, no one’s gonna hurt you,” Danny hears one of the vigilantes tell him, slowly moving closer.

Danny doesn’t pay the man any mind, not even twitching in his direction. The shade was formed. It was whole and disgusting and ugly. The rest of what made up the Joker started to laugh. Just that awful noise triggered the other shades into action, flying so fast at the grinning face the shade chokes and that ear-piercing laugh turned into a scream.

Danny feels the cold metal be removed from his loose grip at his side. That’s okay, he didn’t need it anymore. The monster was being slain right in front of him. He was glad he didn’t have to intervene like he had to with the children, Danny didn’t want to touch that thing.

“He’s in shock,” the vigilante says to someone else.

“Let Gordon take care of it. Zip tie his hands, he might be a danger to himself or others when he snaps out of it,” came a different voice, younger.

“Red,” the man hisses. “He’s a kid. He’s just scared.”

“Scared people do dumb things, N.”

Danny hears a sigh before his numb hands are gently tugged behind his back and he hears the shick of plastic tighten around his wrists. He doesn’t bother struggling as he’s more preoccupied watching the scene end as there is nothing left of the clown shade to tear apart anymore. The shades all around seem to settle and accept what just happened. Their murderer was gone. They were finally free.

One by one they started disappearing into the Aftermore until the effect was exponential. More and more until he couldn’t see any anymore, but he could feel shades fading throughout the whole city.

Danny doesn’t really remember what happened after that, too focused on the change in atmosphere all throughout Gotham. He could feel it, feel them.

Maybe he was in shock like the guy said. One minute he’s staring at the body of the man he killed on shaky knees and then the next time he blinks he’s in a chair in the police station, metal handcuffs keeping him to the table and an older gentleman with a grey mustache in the seat opposite him.

The man looks at him from over his glasses.

“You with me, kid?”

Danny nods.

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

Danny stares back.

“I shot the Joker,” he answers simply.

The man nods.

“Do you understand that he is dead?”

Danny blinks.

“I’d be concerned if he wasn’t.”

The man pauses and then shrugs a nod.

“That’s fair.” He looks at the teenager and sighs heavily. “My name is Commissioner Jim Gordon. I am in charge of this case and I need your statement of what happened. We already did this but I don’t think you were all there, so I’m going to read your Miranda rights again, okay?”

Danny nods and then listens to the man recite words that he says he understands. He tells Mr. Gordon what he knew and what happened (withholding the pieces of information that were ghostly) and then signs a piece of paper that reiterates what he just explained as well as a confession that he shot and killed the man known as Joker in the act of being a Good Samaritan as well as self defense.

All of this was just legality. Mr. Gordon assured him no one was actually going to prosecute him, not even the state to be honest, for the Joker’s murder. In the eyes of pretty much the rest of the city and the world, it was a public service.

It was unfortunate he couldn’t just go home after that. No, of course Mr. Gordon found out Danny didn’t have parents (that he knew of) and legally couldn’t just release him back to the abandoned hotel where he lives alone. Danny works, he has money for food and the laundry mat, he doesn’t really need anything else.

It would have been as simple as handing him over to one of the boy’s homes if, you know, Danny wasn’t the one to kill the most hated man in Gotham.

So Mr. Gordon calls someone and Danny sits tight, drinking a soda and eating some chips, both from the vending machine. He was just glad his handcuffs were off.

Danny has been at the station for hours by the time Mr. Gordon comes back with a well dressed man who was tall and big. Honestly the guy kinda reminds him of his dad. Danny represents a shiver.

“Son, this is Bruce Wayne. He’s taken in a couple other boys in their time of need. I think you’ll find you’ll fit in well with his many children,” the Commissioner explains with a tight smile.

Danny tilts his head, looking behind the man to the man and woman duo who hold hands while staring at the man lovingly. He parents probably from the rumors. Maybe he’ll try talking to them later.

“Wayne as in like The Bruce Wayne? Like Wayne Enterprises?”

The man smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Yes, that Bruce Wayne. Nice to meet you, Daniel.”

“It’s Danny. Just Danny.”

“My butler, Alfred, just made some cookies. If we’re lucky, there will still be some left over.”

Danny perks up. Sweet! Cookies!

“You have a butler? Wack. But cookies are a yes. Let’s go! Are we done, Mr. Gordon?”

Mr. Wayne seems to blink at his easy behavior, like he was surprised Danny was so okay after just killing a man. Mr. Gordon just smiles at him, but Danny can see the concern in his eyes.

“You can go, but remember you have mandatory therapy that Mr. Wayne will make sure you get to. It’s only for three months but more sessions will be added on if you don’t cooperate so keep that in mind,” the man warns.

Danny gives the man a two finger salute.

“Roger roger!” He turns to Mr. Wayne. “Can we go now?”

“Sure.”

Turns out Alfred the butler left aside two delicious chocolate chip cookies for him. He munches on them as he observes the others in the house, but mostly the shades attached to them and the feeling of death-touched from a few of them. The one the feeling was coming from the most is the first to hug him tightly and thank him for killing the Joker.

Oh.

“Was he the one that killed you?” Danny asks without thinking it through.

The arms tighten around him and there is a collective silence as the words register. Then lots and lots of questions and suspicious looks.

It was a very long night.

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