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mutable-manifestation · 1 year

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The Ghost King (of Miscommunication) Ch. 23

Part 1-12,Part 13,Part 14,Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21, Part 22

Part 23!

***

Jason knows he should probably still be wary, not knowing much about ghosts - let alone ghost royalty, whatever that means - but he can’t help but feel safe.

He’s felt an overwhelming sense of safe ever since Danny tackled him, but he’d been fighting it the whole time, worrying about falling for some kind of trap.

And okay, maybe it should have taken more than two feet of personal space with a portal and a conversation that painted Danny as more air-headed than malicious but could have been faked. But…Jason wants to extend his trust.

And for the first time in years he can. No Pit lingering in the background to ruin everything at the most inconvenient possible time.

He wants to put his trust in Danny, and he wants that to be the right choice.

He thinks it will.

Danny isn’t a fae; there are no ‘rules of hospitality’ binding him, to Jason’s knowledge, meaning the room and the food - sketchy as it was - and the introductions and explanations were just…him being polite.

Because he wanted to be.

The snowball fights and flight lessons and tours weren’t just part of some malicious plot to get him to let his guard down; they were genuine attempts to help him feel more comfortable or to cheer him up.

So yeah, Jason could give him a chance to explain.

Starting with-

“So what was with the syringe?” he asks as they sit, skeletons floating up dutifully to serve their food.

“Syringe?” Danny blinks owlishly as he settles into his chair after a moment’s pause to stare at the scorch marks - Sam and Tucker taking their place where Jazz and Spike had sat before.

“Back at the Far Frozen, when I was hesitant about the food…” he offers.

“Oh!” Danny smiles,“You mean the ecto-dejecto? It’s basically just fast food for ghosts - and halfas!” He hurries to add, as if Jason knows what that means.

They’ll come back to that.

“Ah, so it wasn’t a threat to eat the food or else,” Jason hms.

Danny’s shoulders droop.

“No, it wasn’t. It was just…another option. You could have chosen neither - relying on ambient ectoplasm would have slowed your recovery but I would have respected your choice. I’m sorry for not being more clear.” He laughs and runs a hand through his hair. “Ancients, I’m surprised you didn’t just blast me with the bazooka.”

“I still didn’t - and don’t - know how to leave on my own yet,” Jason shrugs.

“That’s… fair,” Danny concludes, wincing.

“Give me another day and I’ll have your portal gun ready,” Tucker says, holding out his wrist to show a sleek black and gold watch. “It’ll be just like mine - works based on coordinates, with separate systems for the Zone and the Living World plus the option to save frequent locations under a quick-click menu.”

Jason watches attentively as he presses a button as he speaks, causing what looks like a smaller, better-painted-job-having version of the Wrist Rays’ barrel with a small holoscreen over top of it to pop out of the unassuming watch.

When he tilts his wrist, Jason can see the bar to enter coordinates at the top and his top two frequent locations - ‘The Phantom Palace’ and ‘Technoland’ - just beneath it.

Swiping left leaves the coordinate bar, but replaces the locations list with ‘Grave’ and ‘Monument.’

He clicks one and it shoots open a portal just behind Danny. When he clicks it again the beam zips it closed.

“I can give you a different paint-job or display style,” he offers, showing him how to open the keyboard and scroll before closing it all down and slipping it off of his wrist. “Until then, you can use mine.”

He smiles, holding the portal ‘gun’ watch out to him.

He looks at the watch, then from Tucker to Sam to Danny.

They all smile and nod encouragingly.

He takes it and carefully slips it over his left wrist - opposite the ‘Ray - and it shrinks to fit him just as the Ray had.

He smiles, nerves far more settled now that he can leave whenever he wants.

Realizes he really isn’t trapped here.

They were telling the truth.

(He’s safe)

He still has a million questions he needs answered, but he should probably let his family - and the JL - know he’s okay sooner rather than later.

Bruce - everyone, really - will demand a full debrief if he goes in person. He doesn’t have enough answers for that just yet.

Luckily, they have codes for just such a situation.

“Anyone have paper and pen?”

Sam whips a void-black A4 sheet of paper out of nowhere, and Danny does the same with a snow-white pen.

He snorts a laugh at the swapped colors and scribbles out a quick explanation followed by the codes to verify that he’s not under duress, being controlled, etc.

Then he folds it up, opens a portal just over the batcomputer’s keyboard - sticking his face through briefly to verify he got the right place - and drops it through.

The usual gnawing curiosity can replace their panic and Jason can take his time getting answers.

“So. ‘Ecto-dejecto’ and the air in here are the same as the food? Which is all made of ‘ectoplasm’ which is…what?”

“It's probably most accurate to compare it to carbon,” Sam answers. “Most Living, organic matter - plants and animals both - is carbon-based - at least on Earth - whereas most entities in the Zone are ecto-based. Except it’s more ‘ecto-everything.’”

“Yeah,” Danny continues, “The, ah, ‘air’ is just a lot less concentrated than food - while Ecto-dejecto is more concentrated and is generally only used when we’re in a hurry or heavily injured. We don’t really ‘eat’ ectoplasm in the same way a human eats food, it’s more like, ah, batteries?”

“Batteries.” he deadpans, Sam and Tucker poorly smothering their grins in their drinks.

“Like if batteries had mouths,” Danny tries. “They don’t really need the electricity anywhere specific as long as they, y’know, charge? Kind of.”

“So I’m half a battery.”

Tucker loses the fight against his laughter at that.

Danny smiles briefly, but his face quickly sobers.

“No,” he takes a breath. “What I said earlier is true; you are no more dead now than you were when I found you. But when I found you, you were already what is known as halfa - half a human, and half a ghost.”

Jason’s face steels, anger rising.

“So I am dead.”

“Only half,” Danny smiles grimly.

“You can't be half dead! And if I’m so unchanged then why do I look like this!” He snaps, standing from his chair to gesture at himself. “Because I sure as shit didn’t look like a walking reminder of the worst day of my life before!”

“You can be half dead, I'm half-dead. And you were already a halfa when I found you,” Danny starts, voice empathetic as he floats out of his chair to lay a tentative hand on Jason’s shoulder, “But you were unwell. Your core was barely formed, and it’s a miracle you were still alive at all. It’s a miracle you made it to Frostbite.”

Jason sits and crosses his arms, hearing him out but hating every second of it.

(I can’t be dead)

“You must have an incredible amount of will to have kept yourself in one piece for as long as you did,” Danny commends, following Jason’s lead and sitting back down, “but if you’d remained as you were for much longer your still-forming core would have eventually cannibalized itself in an effort to finish forming, causing a collapse that would have not only killed you all the way, but would have erased you from existence entirely, nothing left but memories.”

“Entering the Ghost Zone gave your core the resources it needed, but all of the tainted ectoplasm you’d managed to absorb slowed things down. Thus all the mornings spent in the tube to filter it out. Like blood transfusions. Except it's more like food instead of blood….”

Danny trails off squinting into the distance.

“Great,” Jason says, regaining his attention. “That still doesn’t explain why I look like this - or what a core even is other than ‘dangerous if poorly formed.’”

“Oh, boy. Okay. A core is the only organ a ghost has,” Danny explains. “Like a brain and heart and liver all in one. Even if you were reduced to nothing but your core, you’d still be perfectly fine - more vulnerable, sure, but that doesn’t matter as long as you’re with any ghost that doesn’t actively want to end you permanently. As a halfa, you have both a human and a ghost form.”

Danny shifts into his own human form at this.

“But ghosts don’t form until after their cores do, so until you were healed enough you couldn’t access your ghost form. Staying in ghost form allows you to absorb ambient ectoplasm and ectoenergy more efficiently…wait.”

His eyes widen as he looks into Jason’s own shocked face.

“Did- do you- Ancients you don’t know how to transform back into a human do you?”

“I do not and would very much like to,” Jason stresses, unbelieving at the whole half-dead thing but just barely willing to hope.

“Okay. Okay. As a halfa you have both a ghost form and a human form - like two sides of a coin. Both are you, but when you’re in one, the other is in a sort of personal pocket dimension. You can swap between them by sort of…reaching for what you want. For example, I have an ice core,” His eyes glow a brighter blue.

“And my core - as most cores are - is located in roughly the same area as my heart. So when I’m in human form, I reach for the spot of cold just metaphorically ‘behind’ my heart-” he transforms back into Phantom “-and pull it to the surface.”

“When I want to swap back into human form, I reach for the warmth of my heart just ‘behind’ my core.”

Jason tries to focus on his chest, but he’s mostly just confused.

He looks up to find a hand offered to him.

“Here, I can trigger your transformation the first few times.”

Jason takes his hand eagerly.

“We’ll do three swaps - human, ghost, human - then you can try it for yourself. For now, just focus on how it feels.”

Rings of light appear around both of their waists this time, Jason is grateful for the large chairs as he suddenly takes up a lot more space than he had.

(He’s alive)

He only has a moment to take in how much smaller everything looks and how cold Danny’s once luke-warm hands feel before the lights are sweeping over them again.

The rings sweep up and down like the light of a photocopier, but he can’t help but notice it doesn’t feel that way.

It feels like a cool gust of wind blooming from a single point in his chest, swirling out until it permeates to the very last layer of his skin.

(He’s dead)

He’d expected discomfort from the cold of the description, but it’s all soothing breeze on a warm, sunny day instead of the arctic winds in winter he’d worried it might be.

Small again. It’s almost comfortable, if not for the sour memories every time he sees his reflection in this form.

And then they’re switching again - he pays even more attention this time, less distracted by the unfamiliar lightshow and determined to learn how to be human on his own.

It’s the feeling of lying in a sunbeam in spring, all warmth and comfort.

(His heart still beats)

It was comfortable, going from ghost to human and going from human to ghost.

(His heart hasn’t beaten in over a week)

It didn’t hurt.

(He’s… both?)

Everything had hurt so much the first time he died. The first time he came back.

It didn’t hurt.

(It doesn’t hurt)

His mask hides the few tears that escape.

He shakes his head and takes stock of his body; he feels different.

He doesn’t feel bad - his body is the same overall - fingers and toes all still move, no missing legs or eyes, etc etc.

No glowing.

Except his arm - which had had another 2 weeks to finish recovering from a break - didn’t hurt at all. He couldn’t feel any of the lesser scuffs and bruises one generally got from tumbling around Gotham as a vigilante/crime lord at night.

He barely registers Sam and Tuckers staring until Sam turns to Danny and says “You thought he was shy.”

Danny throws his hands into the air. “Just because he’s tall doesn’t mean he’s not shy! And he’s from Gotham! You’ve heard what it’s like! I don’t know what happened to him! I try not to judge!”

“Dude,” Tucker starts, “Danny. My moon and stars. My battery babe.”

“B-battery-”

He points to Jason, ignoring Danny’s sputtering protest.

“He is literally Red Hood. The Crime Lord.”

“Moving back towards vigilante, actually,” Jason says absently, checking his weapons - guns blessedly all there and in one piece. And comms are completely non-functional.

“Of course our son would be a vigilante,” Sam snorts, shaking her head with a smile.

“Only if he wants to be,” Danny adds.

“A vigilante?” Tucker asks.

“Our son.”

“Well, both are optional honestly,” Sam adds.

Jason realizes what’s missing: the portal watch.

He reaches for the cold spot in his chest - so much easier to find now that he knows what to look for - and pulls.

It takes a few tries, but eventually the rings - white, he notices, with a tinge of green around the edges where Danny’s had been blue - are sweeping over him again.

He’s left tiny, with only the wrist ray and the grappling hook and brace of batarangs he’d nabbed from the cave, but none of the guns. He enjoys being armed in both forms, so he leaves the weapons and tugs the watch off to set on the table, then spends twice as long scrabbling for his human form, nerves getting in the way of his focus.

The portal watch is still on the table when he’s back to big, beating heart, and fully armed.

He gently pulls the device onto his now much larger wrist, smiling as it flexes once again to a perfect fit.

As a ghost he can fly, and as a human he can portal.

Weapons and escape options for both forms.

He frowns when he realizes he can’t eat with his mask on.

Just because they know his name is Jason doesn’t mean they know which Jason - he shifts back into his ghost form just as he’s thinking about it.

It’s a bit startling, given he hadn’t done it on purpose - even if he’d been just about to - but he ignores that in favor of hastily taking a bite of his glowing salad before addressing the…adoption thing.

“So,” he starts, “Ellie mentioned…being my ‘sister.’ And this is the third time I’m hearing adoption-adjacent stuff…. I feel the need to remind you that despite my small ghost form, I’m 23. And a crime lord.”

Jason wasn’t a fan of the look they shared.

“You might be 23 in human years, but you’re barely a week old as a ghost,” Sam says, pointing at him with her fork. “For which, only the time from core formation actually counts.”

“The basis of ghost culture is combat,” Danny continues. “Ghosts are pretty much as dead as they get - it takes real, significant effort to destroy a mature core - so throwing hands kind of became a way to say hello.”

“But a formed core and a mature core are two different things,” Tucker picks up. “A core might fully form in as little as a few seconds, but it will take anywhere from years to decades to mature. Until then your core will be less durable than a mature one - not much, but enough to be worrying. It’s a bad combo with ‘still acquiring basic powers’ - especially considering mature ghosts tend to have a lot of powers at their disposal.”

“Ghosts with immature cores are called ‘baby ghosts.’ Which is what you are.” Danny adds, damningly. “Picking adult ghosts to stick close to will help your core mature faster and keep you safe from the less-kind ghosts in the meantime. Even the most independent baby ghosts tend to stick with an adult ghost until they’ve at least mastered flight, invisibility, intangibility, and ecto-blasts. As more emotional beings, ghosts also tend to get attached to each other quickly and jump into the ‘we’re family now’ thing.”

“Plus even if you weren’t a baby ghost you could still be dibsed as family,” Sam concludes.

“‘Dibsed’” Jason repeats blankly, choosing to reply to the least embarrassing part of all that.

“That’s the best way I can think of to describe it,” Sam shrugs. “Sometimes ghosts just go ‘welp that’s my kid/parent/cousin/sibling/whatever now’ and roll with it. Danny has, like, 10 ghost-parents - and only two of them are his actual parents.”

“But,” Danny adds, “There’s no pressure to feel the same. You don’t have to see us as your parents or even your friends. If you want to find different ghost parents, we can help you with that. Or if you just want to return to Gotham and be left alone, we can figure something out - send you ecto-dejecto to help with growth or mark safe parts of the Zone for you to portal to in your free time. Plus there’s an emergency button built into the phone - just click the back button five times - if any other ghosts try to bother you-”

“We can also trick you out with all the weapons you could ever need - or want - to make up the difference in powers-growth,” Sam interjects, speaking Jason’s language.

“-Whatever your choice,” Danny continues, “just know that you can always return here - whether you have questions about being a halfa, need help controlling your powers, you need somewhere safe to crash, or just because you want to be here.”

And that’s…a lot.

A lot of emotions.

A lot of answers.

Another dozen questions he wants to ask (such as ‘what other powers am I supposed to expect?’ and ‘Will they show up as randomly - and worryingly - as flight had?’ and ‘hey, I just turned back into ghost mode suddenly, how do I not do that when I’m out in civvies.’ And also ‘what the fresh ~fuck~ was pit rage, then?)

The day is nearly over, his family knows he’s safe by now - there’s almost always someone using the batcomputer (albeit mostly Tim and Barb) - and Jason no longer has any major qualms about crashing here for an extra night.

He doesn’t know how to feel about the whole…adoption thing.

(And it’s harder, now, to ignore the feeling of warmth)

(The feeling of home and welcome in this place he now knows is a set of open arms rather than a gilded cage)

(Now that he knows he is welcome to come and go as he pleases, that there was never any true possessiveness to it despite it starting out as a kidnapping)

(And his core aches to say “Yes. Family. Mine.”)

(Home. Safety.)

(But he has a family)

(He wants his human family too)

But he could always do with more allies.

He looks at Danny, grins, and asks “So about that Bazooka…”

***

🎉Happy New Year!🎉

@mayoota-blog1 @kyrianclawraith, @do3y, @someonebored0100 @omegasmileyface @a-star-with-a-human-name @akikoyuii @newgraywolf @tytythehistoryguy

#dpxdc #danny phantom #jason todd #sam manson #tucker foley #angst #the whole being dead thing #but only half #tfw ur son is a vigilante-turned-crime-boss-turning-vigilante-again #ghost lore #ghost families #ghost cores #jason loves guns #bribing jason with weapons (accidentally #phantoms - like fentons - just really love weapons)

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