I'm in A Mood™ (stressed) so im going back to my roots of melting two character together into one person. So bruce wayne!danny fenton. Danny Fenton who, for eight years, grew up in a beautiful gothic manor with his mom and dad under the name "Bruce Wayne". Playing piano with his mother, running around the manor with his father.
Then when he's eight it's ripped away from him. There's blood on his hands and pearls pooling at his feet, and both his parents are dead in front of him.
And he gets shipped off to distant relatives "the Fentons" shortly after, Alfred close on his heels because someone needs to take care of him, someone that knows him. Bruce goes to the Fentons for the safety of anonymity. Gotham's press wants to sink its teeth into him.
Danny misses his city even if it took everything from him. There are shadows in his eyes and he's pale as a sheet even beside his distant cousins, and they change his name to "Danny Fenton' because nobody should know that their newest child was illustrious orphan Bruce Wayne.
They call him Bruce behind closed doors. Danny prefers it that way, he clings onto the name -- the one his parents gave him -- like a lifeline. He makes friends with Sam and Tucker. Tucker takes one look at the willowy, morbid little boy standing in the corner like a shade, ghosts in his eyes, and drags him out into the sunlight, and takes him over to Sam.
When Danny is twelve, he's still not over it -- and he's a little obsessed with the Fentons' research, with the morbid. He has books upon books on death, murder, detective work. Anything he can get his hands on. And stars. He loves stars.
Alfred owns the apartment next to them and comes over regularly. Danny clings to him.
When Danny is twelve, he's still quiet, meek, a shy little thing prone to being bullied. Freaky little Fenton with the night in his eyes and too-cold skin even before he put one foot in the grave. in a sleepover in his room with Sam and Tucker, he tells them the truth. They're his friends, he trusts them.
"My name is Bruce." he murmurs, voice quiet as the breeze, always quiet. he's staring at his star-covered sheets.
"Like Bruce Wayne?" Tucker asks, a joking tone in his voice.
Danny smiles a little, lamb-like with insecurity. "I am Bruce Wayne." And he takes them down to the lab, disrupting Maddie and Jack, to prove it. Sam tells them of her own wealth then shortly after. They start calling Danny "Bruce" in private too -- its trust. Thats what it is. It's trust.
Sam goes to media functions and comes back with aching feet and complaints on her tongue -- and Danny soaks it up all like a sponge, splayed across a beanbag chair with Tucker in her room. He's not envious of her, he used to go to events with his parents and they kept him safe from the ugly of Gotham's Elite. For the most part. He's had comments made at him, he doesn't miss them.
Alfred returns to the manor semi-regularly, Danny goes with him. he wanders the hallways and helps Alfred clean, the last thing either of them want is for their home to fall into disrepair. He brings Jazz with him next time, then Tucker, then Sam. They all help him clean, and he shows them his room. The one across from his parents', it feels strange.
When Danny dies when he's fourteen, the first adult he tells is Alfred. He and Jazz go over to his house more often than they stay in the Fentonworks building. At least at Alfred's, the food doesn't come to life. Alfred sits at the kitchen table and weeps when Danny tells him, Jazz is upstairs, and its just the two of them.
Danny's ghost form wears pearls around his wrist and the gloves look stained with some kind of black substance. He looks like a child who died in a lab accident, but he also looks like a child who has shadows dripping off his shoulders, curling at his feet, hanging from his eyes.
because amorphous blob batman has my heart always and danny/bruce will not escape it even in death even if that IS the only reason im giving him Mild BatBlob Vibes...so far
when they go to the manor, alfred helps danny make a pile of stones between Martha and Thomas' graves, nobody but the two of them (and sam and tucker) will know what it means. (not even bruce's children later down the line, not for a long, long time)
danny dives into ghost fighting on shaky feet and not half as witty as he once was in one world. he's skittish, skittering between blasts from shadow to shadow and clumsily making his way through each battle. but helping people lights a fire in him. he still has shadows dripping off his feet but there's a purpose in his eyes.
and god help him, he's going to help people.
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It still amazes me the number of people who see the juxtaposition between Nami and Usopp during Wano and their fight against Ulti as "Nami's devotion to Luffy is unmatched, unlike Usopp's" when she isn't able to say he won't be the king of the pirates but Usopp is telling her to lie.
I think most people don't have in mind, either, that Usopp isn't the one being directly asked. He is looking out for Nami and begging her to lie to keep her alive because he is scared to death they might lose her for something as insignificant as lying. For him, lying is a form of survival and it is not that big of a deal because he trusts Luffy enough to tell Nami to lie about her feelings. It is something that will only stay between them because he knows it is better to lie than to die and Luffy would want it that way too.
And that doesn't mean he isn't loyal to Luffy or his dream. He is just looking out for Nami's safety. And as I said-- He isn't being asked directly, either. It is easier to tell others to lie about something of the sort than to do it yourself, and if the roles were reversed I personally think he'd have the most awful of times with it too.
Nami refuses to say Luffy won't become the king of the pirates because for her, even if lying has gotten her out of messes, she puts her trust and loyalty in Luffy before her own instincts of survival because lying is what got her to push them away when they first met and this is the one thing she can't lie about because it would hurt more than death.
Then again, I think she would do the same exact thing Usopp did if she wasn't being the one asked. It is the whole point of the scene, actually. They both know the most rational thing is to lie so the one witnessing the scene will always be cold-headed about it, but the one having to lie is the one suffering the bitter realization of how lying about this and saying it out loud is way harder than it seems from an outsider's perspective.
So I am tired of seeing people criticizing Usopp for his decision during the fight against Ulti as if it were that easy for him to see Nami being about to get killed if she doesn't lie. Sorry for the guy to actually want to protect the people he loves instead of letting her be reckless and basically kill herself freely for telling a truth even Luffy would tell her to lie about if it meant living.
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