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Chapter Text

Pain flared in his side as the ecto blast made contact. The next thing Danny felt was the impact as his body slammed against the rocky side of the cliff he had been flying along. The force of the impacts left him dazed for a moment as he tumbled down against the rough cliff wall before catching himself. He could feel darkness trying to close in at the edges of his vision as he gritted his teeth forcing back the pain. He pressed a hand to his side as he kept flying.

He could feel the ectoplasm and blood coating his gloved hand as he flew on. He jerked out of the way of another ectoblast causing another wave of pain to shoot through his body like lightning. The burn on his side continued to send unrelenting shocks of pain. That new ecto blaster his mom had been developing certainly packed one hell of a punch.

“Fuck” Danny breathed to himself as he focussed his cold energy on the wound in his side. A thick bandage of ice grew over the bleeding expanse.

This was definitely not how he thought today would go.

He dodged as yet another ectoblast rocketed toward him from where his parents were trailing him in the Fenton RV. Higher, he had to fly higher. It was cloudy, if he could get high enough he could lose his parents in the cloud cover. It was the best plan he had right now and with that thought, Danny shot up through the sky as fast as he could.

____________

18 Hours Earlier

It had been two years since that night; since the accident that had half killed him. The accident that made Danny Fenton into Danny Phantom. He’d never really been able to shake the effects of what happened in that portal. He died, like six feet under the ground died that night, he had felt it. It had taken him almost as long as he’d been Phantom to come to grips with that fact. Accepting that you were a walking corpse possessed by your own ghost didn’t necessarily make living with that knowledge any easier. Most of the time Danny could push those thoughts away and live, well sort of live, his life. It was just how he was now.

Some days were better than others. He had many truly good days. His friends helped pull him from the darkness and bring him back into the light, ironic in Sam’s case really. But there were also nights like this one, nights where the dark seemed to almost consume him. Nights when that pain was fresh in his dreams and he still woke up screaming from a nightmare of the portal ripping him apart on the molecular level.

He would feel it pulling him apart, the energy cutting through him like thousands of electric knives, every nerve on fire, and something searing and cold being forced into the cracks. Then just as it had pulled his 14 year old self apart, the swirling energy smashed his pieces back together, and for a split second he was free of the pain, he was floating free of his body. But, even that didn’t last. He was suddenly back in his newly changed body screaming in pain. He struggled to his feet as the pain seemed to dull and he blindly staggered back into his parents' lab, the open air causing a fresh wave of pain to course through his form. His whole body felt like an exposed nerve. His knees gave out under him and he collapsed to the ground. With his pain clouded eyes, he could see the look of horror plastered across Sam and Tucker’s faces as they sat frozen on the lab floor.

Then he’d be awake, sweaty, and panicked. There were nights like tonight when he was so very aware of just what happened to him that night. The hell in his head took hold as he sat in the dark of his room, knees hugged tightly to his chest as he struggled to calm his breathing. He wouldn’t be getting any more sleep tonight.

His core felt heavy in his chest as he noticed the air around him had cooled to match his icy half dead existence. He shivered as he started to come out of his spiral. Danny took a couple of deep breaths to recenter himself then looked around his room. His clock read 3:00 am, its glowing blue digits casting a faint light onto the top of his nightstand where his first aid kit lay open. There was a mess of bandages and gauze still leftover from when he patched himself up the night before after yet another ghost fight. He stared at the mess of gauze and bandages still coated in his toxic green ectoplasm and specked through with the red of his human blood. He scrubbed his face with his hands. “Might as well deal with this if I’m up” he mumbled groggily to himself. He definitely didn’t need his parents finding his bloody ecto covered bandages. Those were not questions he wanted to answer, not tonight and maybe not ever.

Danny moved to the edge of the bed and swung his legs over. His feet hit the cool wood floor with a muffled thud. He sat forward, elbows on his knees as he sat alone in the dark of his room, his face in his hands as flashes of his nightmare replayed themselves in his head. He breathed deeply once, twice, three times before he exhaled a huff of air as he pulled himself to his feet. Eyes still closed he tilted his head back looking up blindly to the heavens. When he opened his eyes he was met with the glow-in-the-dark stars he had hung on his ceiling with his parents and Jazz when he was maybe 7 or 8 years old. Back when his only concern was becoming an astronaut. His parents had abandoned the effort early on but Jazz; Jazz had stayed with him that whole day helping him hang the constellations just right across the walls and ceiling of his room so that he could have his own private corner of outer space in his bedroom. She was a good sister like that, she always wanted to help others, not that Danny would ever admit that to her. They were still siblings after all, and he’d never live it down if he did. His eyes found the mess on the table once again and he sighed.

He swept the bandages off the nightstand into the small lidded trashcan that sat next to it. He turned to close the first aid kit but he stopped with a wince as he felt the bandages on his ribs pull against the scabs underneath at the motion. He sucked in a quick breath stifling the small cry that tried to escape his lips as the pain prickled in his side, his hand coming up to put pressure on last night's injury. Once he recollected himself he moved again to take care of the first aid kit. He closed the box looking at the design on the front in the dim blue light of his clock. Jazz had given it to him not long after Clockwork and his battle with Dan. On the surface, it just looked like an ordinary Fenton Firstaid Kit, or as normal as a first aid kit could look with your dad’s face plastered across it, with the words “For All Your Boo-boos” and a little ghost printed on the front. They had laughed at those words when she first gave it to him. Inside Jazz had stocked it with all kinds of ecto-infused first aid supplies. It came in handy more often than Danny would have liked to admit. He put the box back on the bookshelf where he kept it and sighed again as he leaned forward resting his head on the hardwood frame. It was going to be a long night.

____________

14 Hours Earlier

The next morning Danny pulled himself from his existential spiral as he got ready for school. He’d see Sam and Tucker at school and he’d feel better, they always made him feel less alone. His parents were nowhere to be seen as he left for school but he did hear his father let out a triumphant cry that was almost immediately followed by a small explosion. Danny laughed a bit to himself. He had no idea what new invention had just blown up but it certainly seemed like business as usual. Danny stepped outside into the cold morning air. A deep refreshing breath filled his lungs and he looked up at the cool blue sky of the January morning. He looked around seeing that the coast was clear and he transformed floating up into the open sky. There was a sense of calm that came over Danny when he flew. The air surrounded him on all sides and the sky was an open expanse of freedom. When Danny was flying, he was free. Today was going to be just fine. He was going to be just fine.

Danny landed behind one of the trees near Casper High with a yawn as he dropped his ghost form. His spirits had lifted from last night but he was still tired from the lack of sleep. Danny yawned again as he walked toward Sam and Tucker.

“Dang man you look like you had a long night,” Tucker said as Danny approached.

“That feels like the understatement of the century.” Danny shot back with a small groan.

“Dang Danny, you look like shit,” Ah yes, Sam’s tender words as she walked up to the two of them never ceased to brighten his day.

“Let's just say being half ghost has its drawbacks.” Danny slouched a bit as he leaned on the stair rail at the front of the school.

A flash of concern played across Sam’s face for a fraction of a second, clearly debating whether or not to ask.

“We still on for that Terminatra movie marathon tonight?” Tucker asked changing the subject.

Danny almost sighed with relief. He didn’t feel like he’d be able to have that conversation right then, not after the night he’d had. He had pulled himself back together but it was a very fragile composure that felt like it could crumble away at any moment.

“Oh yes,” Sam said with more excitement than she usually had. “My parents have this stupid gala thing this weekend so we’ll have the house to ourselves.”

“That’ll be good since I’m pretty sure they still don’t like me after the whole thing with the Circus Gothica thing.” Danny laughed awkwardly to himself as they started making their way into school.

“That was almost two years ago, I’m sure they’ve gotten over it at this point,” Tucker looked at him with a small smile.

“Yeah but I still don’t think they like me,” Danny as he said it. They all knew that Sam’s parents would never be overly fond of Tucker and Danny.

At that moment the bell rang.

School was uneventful. Danny fought to keep his eyes open as Mr. Lancer bored his socks off but, finally the bell rang and Danny grabbed his backpack and raced through the halls to meet Sam and Tucker.

They talked about school and the day and their movie plans as they walked to Nasty Burger. As they walked Danny felt more of the weight from the night before lift off of his chest. His friends were always able to make him feel better even without trying. That creeping doubt wasn't gone but for right now it was pushed to the back of Danny’s mind.

____________

6 Hours Earlier

It had been a nice day as they walked to the Nasty Burger after school. The sky was clear and the warm light of the sun helped take some of the cold out of the January afternoon. Danny Turned his face to the sun, feeling its warmth sink into his cool skin. The heat felt good after the chill of the nightmares he had dealt with the night before. He pushed that thought from his head, he didn’t want to think about that right now. His friends were here and he was happy.

The three of them sat at their usual table as they got their food. They talked and laughed and it felt nice. It felt normal. The normalcy of so many things had been stolen from Danny when he went into that portal, it was nice to have some of the little things. Gotta enjoy things while they last after all.

Suddenly, Danny felt his core go ice cold and a small puff of frost escaped his mouth, his ghost sense. They all sat up straight in their seats and looked around the Nasty Burger. A crash came from behind the counter as a ghost came flying through the wall into the dining room.

“I am the Box Ghost!” he yelled into the restaurant. “Fear me and the wrath of my corrugated cardboard polyhedrons!”

Danny ducked under the table of their booth and transformed. The crowd in the Nasty Burger started to panic and run for the doors as The Box Ghost started throwing frozen french fries and burgers at them.

“Feel the sting of my frozen fries of France!” The Box Ghost continued to yell.

“Come on man, French fries” Danny exclaimed as he flew up from out of the floor, “you never disrespect the french fries.”

“Fear me!!” He yelled again throwing a cloud of plastic cutlery at Phantom.

Danny dodged as plastic forks tried to turn him into a ghostly pincushion. “I think you’ve had enough fun for one day” he shouted back pulling the thermos from his back.

“This is only the beginning of my cardboard kingdo—” The Box Ghost was cut off as Danny sucked him into the thermos.

“Seriously, what is with that guy sometimes?” Danny said shaking his head with a small laugh.

Tucker and Sam were waiting for him behind the restaurant. The two of them had followed the rest of the patrons out of the Nasty Burger to protect them in case things got out of hand. “Come on, let's get this movie marathon started before anything else tries to get in the way,” Danny said as he emerged from behind the dumpster.

“Oh yeah, it's gonna be great,” Tucker said as they made their way to Sam’s house.

____________

Danny had been flying for what felt like hours. He had managed to lose his parents some time back at this point. The clouds had done precisely what he needed them to. His side throbbed. The ice bandage seemed to help dull some of the pain but a sinking feeling was twisting in his gut that something was very wrong with him.

Danny had been flying long enough that he risked dropping back below the clouds to see if there was a decent place to land so he could plan out his next move as he patched himself up. It was still snowing as he reemerged from the clouds. In the distance, he could see the lights of a town. Danny let out a sigh of relief as he continued forward.

The adrenalin from his escape was wearing off as he approached the outskirts of the town and it began to get harder and harder to keep himself in the air. His vision swam as the exhaustion of the day started catching up with him. Danny couldn’t keep his altitude and he began a slow pained descent. Then he saw it. The frozen exterior of a bus station. The grimy ice-covered windows refracted the dull light from inside the station in a pattern of waves on the snow outside. It took everything Danny had left to make it to the roof where his strength finally gave out and he tumbled unceremoniously onto the snowy gravel covered roof.

Chapter Text

Snow continued to fall around him as Danny lay weakly on the roof of the bus station. His lungs burned from the effort of the flight. The dark cloudy sky swirled overhead as he tried to calm his breathing. Everything hurt as his body trembled from the cold and the strain. His side burned under the ice he had placed to hold himself together. He brought his hand over and pressed it against the frozen wound.

Dried green ectoplasm crusted the edges of the tear in his jumpsuit. It was holding him together, but the ice on his side acted as a vivid window into the inside of Danny's ghostly form. The pulsing swirls of ectoplasm glowed a faint toxic green on the fresh snow covering the roof. His chest heaved as he sucked in the cold night air and stared up at the cold grey Illinois sky.

Danny's life was crashing to the ground around him, he was cut off from his friends, and hunted by his parents. He was alone. Alone and scared. He was alone and scared, and now he was hurt. Fantastic, once again he was going to be sitting alone trying to stitch himself back together with the world's weirdest med kit.

Fuck this was getting old.

Tendrils of pain began burning their way through his side as the adrenalin from the chase began to wear off. He could feel the energy being leached out of his body into the night air. He needed to get off this roof and patch himself up, but he was so so tired. He tried to move but his whole body felt like it had turned to lead. Darkness began closing in around the edges of his vision as he finally collapsed, slipping into unconsciousness.

____________

When Danny opened his eyes he wasn't met with the cloudy sky above an Illinois bus station but was instead greeted with the swirling green skies of the Ghost Zone. He could feel a soft bed of grass beneath him as he floated through the twisted expanse of the Zone. He blinked in confusion as he slowly propped himself up on his elbows.

He was floating on an island of grassy stone in a field of earthen rubble. Something was off but he couldn't quite place what it was. Effortlessly Danny began floating himself into the ectoplasmic ether and began to look around.

As he floated through the rubble he was overcome by a sense of eerie familiarity with the area. The masses of floating stones passed on and on as Danny continued to weave his way through the debris field.

It seemed to go on forever. No matter how fast he flew his surroundings never seemed to change. Danny could feel a ball of apprehension coil tightly in his chest. Something was very wrong here. The Ghost Zone was never this quiet. He had been flying for what felt like hours and he was yet to see a soul. At this point, he would be happy to run into Skulker.

Danny froze as a shiver ran down his spine and a cloud of cold air floated out of his mouth. Ghost sense. But that didn't make any sense, he was in the Ghost Zone, everything in this place was made of ectoplasm. How could he be detecting an ecto-entity in a world made entirely of ectoplasm?

An ear splitting crack shot through Danny's head like a baseball bat through jello and he tumbled over himself into a large chunk of floating stone. When his vision stopped swimming and the world came back into focus what Danny saw suspended in the middle of this debris field stopped him dead in his tracks. A massive crack lay before him, splitting through space like a tear in the universe. The edges of the thing seemed to pulse with Some kind of dark energy.

Danny was frozen. It felt like electricity was dancing across his skin and down every line of the Lichtenburg Scaring that littered half of his body after his accident with the ghost portal. Lightning for lightning, death for death. A tug began in his chest. It was like someone had tied a rope around his core and something beyond was using it to pull him toward the rift.

Fear gripped his mind as he fought the strange force pulling him towards this crack in the sky scrambling for purchase on anything that he could use to pull himself free. No matter what he did the energy kept its hold. He was being dragged closer and closer to something that looked all in the world to Danny like a hole in the universe and the closer he got the more it felt like it was trying to take something from him. His pulse pounded in his ears as the energy began to feel as though it was trying to rip him apart from within.

It was an all too familiar feeling.

He was closing in on the edge of the rift as the pain and the panic came to a crescendo. Desperate, Danny scrambled against anything he could get his hands on. He clambered mercilessly against the floating rubble, fingers digging painfully into the stone as his legs passed through the edge of the rift and he watched in terror as they began to fade from existence.

It was like nothing he had ever experienced, the feeling of fading. His fingers clawed at the floating stones around him as the void pulled him deeper within. As his head passed into the lightless fissure, everything went perfectly silent. His voice cut out abruptly, silencing a scream he hadn't realized was coming from him.

Engulfed by the silence, Danny clawed at the edge of the rift like a trapped animal as he tried with all of his being to pull himself back from the brink. But as his gloved hands made contact with the rift edge, a wave of dark energy shot through his ghostly form paralyzing him as he drifted further and further into the dark void.

Fear and panic gripped his soul like a vice. He could feel every nerve of his body alight with pain as he slowly dissolved into nothing in the oppressive silence of the void. The last thing he saw before he disappeared completely was a fading gimps of the green swirls of the Ghost Zone through the warped fissure he had just been pulled through.

Then he was nothing. All that was left was an echo of pain and fear in a lightless void.

____________

Danny shot up from where he had passed out on the roof of the bus station as he was jolted from his dream only to double over in pain as the frantic movement pulled at the tear in his side. Panic seized at his chest as he fell to his knees clutching at the green tinted ice holding his side together. The terror and the pain coalesced into a knot in his stomach so intense that Danny vomited onto the snow covered roof before him.

He sat there on the roof for some time. His body shook with the panic and the cold as he tried to force the icy air into his lungs in slow even breaths. The frozen tendrils of air burrowed deep with every forced lung full. The chill from each desperate shaking breath began to pull his mind away from the panic of the dream and the night before grounding him in the here and now. After a few minutes, his breaths started to come easier.

The first glimpses of orange light began peaking over the horizon as Danny was finally able to look up and take in his surroundings. He hadn't exactly gotten a good look around before he crash landed on the roof of the station.

The snow glittered like diamond dust in the rising dawn as Danny's tired eyes scanned his new horizon. This would be the start of his new life. Is it a new life if you are already half-dead? He chuckled quietly to himself at the terrible joke of a question and winced slightly as the motion pulled on his makeshift ice bandage. As he looked back down at his knees he noticed that his hands were gripping the worn denim of his jeans instead of the smooth paneling of his jumpsuit. Apparently, he had transformed at some point between crash landing on the roof and now.

Damn.

It had been a long time since he pushed himself far enough to have unintentionally transformed. That probably wasn't a good sign.

The pain in his side started to pull his attention once again. Time to find a decent place to patch himself up. Well, the bus station bathroom would have to do; now it was just a matter of getting to the privacy of the bathroom without anyone seeing how messed up he was. Ordinary people probably wouldn’t react well to seeing a banged up teenager with a hole in his side strolling around. Plus, the ice on his side wasn’t going to last forever, especially now that he was back in his human form. The edges of the ice were already starting to melt away.

Cold snow crunched under Danny's palms as he planted them carefully onto the icy gravel on the roof of the station. Taking a deep breath he pushed himself up onto shaky legs. He was still shivering, whether it was the exertion, the blood loss, the cold, or all of the above, he was shaking like a leaf. His vision swam as he made it upright and he stumbled, barely catching himself on an air vent before he could fall back to the ground. He took a steadying breath, placing his free hand over the now slowly depleting ice bandage.

Once his head cleared and a little steadiness returned to his legs, he slowly walked to his backpack that lay strewn on the roof from the crash and picked it up. Slinging the bag over his shoulder with a muffled hiss, he made his way to the shitty iced-over access hatch and concentrated. Using his ghost abilities in his human form was always harder than when he was a ghost but he could do it. A cool wave of energy pulsed out from his core and tingled through his limbs as Danny made himself invisible and then again as he floated through the roof and into the quiet of the nearly empty bus station.

____________

Danny winced as the fresh ecto burn on his abdomen pulled against the bandages as he straightened his clothes in the bus station bathroom. He had made it out of Amity alive, well as alive as he got nowadays, after everything had gone to shit that night. He had made it out, but not before his mom had landed a shot on him with her new ecto blaster. They managed to find out that he was Phantom but of course, they had jumped to the entirely wrong conclusion that Phantom was possessing his body, not that he was Phantom. Great. They had cornered him at Sam’s house with the GIW while he and his friends were having a movie night. He tried to explain, he really had. But in the end, it was pointless. His parents believed that Phantom was possessing their son and they were determined to get him out… by any means necessary.

He took a deep breath staring at himself in the mirror. When he lifted his tired gaze to the grimy bathroom mirror he was greeted with a mess of disheveled hair and a tattered t-shirt. His skin was littered with scrapes and bruises from his collision with the side of that cliff. Great, he looked like he had just been through hell. When the ecto blast hit him in the side, the force of it knocked Danny square into the wall of the cliff he had been skirting as he made his escape. He had fallen hard down the rock face after the collision caused him to lose his bearings for a moment. At the time, Danny simply gritted his teeth and continued flying. The pain that had burned through his side was blinding, but his life had very much depended on it. He had to keep moving.

Now here he was, standing in a grimy bus station bathroom covered in scrapes and bruises. Ancients! He could not let some well-meaning adult call social services on him. That was the last thing he needed right now. Danny cleaned himself up as best he could with the small sink then pulled his NASA hoody over his head and silently thanked Sam for grabbing it for him. The sleeves covered the majority of the scrapes and bruises that were still visible, the rest, Danny decided, would be fine. They’d be gone soon enough, super ghost healing was at least helpful for that.

Danny sighed as he leaned forward bracing his hands on the sides of the sink. He was so tired. He closed his eyes and tried to breathe deeply as he thought about just how much had happened in the last several hours.

____________

? Hours Earlier

He had barely escaped the Mansons’ basement. The echo of his parents’ shouts as he made his escape still rang in his ears. It had been too close. That new ecto blaster his mother had been working on was terrifying. One of the shots he managed to dodge had left a crater in the wall behind him. He knew he couldn’t go home, his mom and dad had probably activated the house’s ghost defenses before they came to confront him so that was out. Danny’s mind was racing, he couldn’t bring himself to risk anyone else being caught in the crossfire if his parents and the GIW caught up with him. The realization of his new circumstances made his chest ache, he would have to run. He was going to have to get out of Amity but he didn’t have a plan and he didn’t have any supplies, so he flew to the only place he could think to go. The old observatory overlooking Amity Park.

Danny was breathless by the time he landed on the observatory’s domed roof. Panic was clawing at his throat and squeezing his chest. His mind began to spiral. They were going to keep coming after him, his parents and the GIW. They thought that he was an evil ghost possessing their son. The realization hit him like a truck, he couldn’t go back. He may never be able to go back. He was going to have to run. Run away from his parents, from Amity, from his home. Worst of all he was going to have to leave his friends.

His phone buzzed in his pocket startling Danny from his spiral. Shit. He hadn’t turned off his phone. His parents could track that, couldn’t they? He looked at the message on the glowing screen with a desperate focus. It was Tucker.

T: Dude your parents have lost it!

T: It's bad this time, we’ve gotta get you out of here.

Danny stared at the screen for too long. It was getting harder to breathe.

He felt the phone buzz again. Sam this time.

S: They don’t know where you are but they’re looking for you Danny.

T: Hold tight where ever you landed, Sam and I have a plan.

S: We’ll see you soon.

Danny felt like he was being suffocated. His chest tightened and ached with the sadness and fear he tried to force down. It wasn’t working. The words blurred on the screen as Danny’s hands began to shake. He felt the tremor in his hands move up his arms until his whole body trembled violently, the emotion of everything that was happening crashing over him in waves. This was it. This was the day he prayed would never come. But it was happening and there was nothing Danny could do to stop it. He curled into himself gripping his arms with a bruising force as he hugged his chest. This was it, wasn’t it? He could never go home, not with his parents hunting him.

Danny sat alone on the roof of the observatory shaking and watching the snow fall around him. The salty tracks of tears ran down his cheeks as they flowed silently from his unnaturally green eyes. He didn’t feel the chill of the night air, he didn’t really feel anything anymore. He was just numb. A dull pressure sat in the center of his chest like a hand was squeezing his core as his snow white hair floated into his face. There was a distance in his stare as Danny’s mind wandered to all the ways that things had gone horribly wrong and to what his parents might be planning if they managed to catch him.

After some time, Danny’s phone buzzed again. Sam.

S: Tucker and I managed to pull together some supplies for you.

T: It’s not a lot but it should be enough to get you out of here.

Danny wiped the tears from his eyes as he typed out his response.

D: I’ll meet you guys at the old observatory.

S: We’ll see you soon Danny.

Tears blurred his vision once again as he sat alone on the roof of that observatory overlooking the town he had grown up in. Danny had spent his whole life here and now he would have to leave all of it behind. The wind blew a little harder as Danny waited for his friends to make their way toward him. He loved them so much. Tucker and Sam had been there for him through everything. Ancients, he was going to miss them.

____________

A knock sounded on the door to the bathroom jarring him from his memories.

“Hey man,” a voice called from the other side of the well graffitied door. “Hurry it up in there.”

Danny breathed deeply one more time, holding it just long enough to feel his chest start to burn. Then he stepped back from the sink, took one last look at himself in the mirror, picked up his backpack, and made his way out of the bathroom. He bought a ticket for the first bus headed away from Amity Park.

Chapter Text

The night that he ran Danny had ended up in some small town near the Illinois-Indiana border. The bus he hopped in the morning had been bound for Little Rock Arkansas, a ploy he hoped would lead anyone chasing him in the wrong direction. That was the plan at least. Buy a bus ticket to Arkansas, sneak off the bus near the Missouri border, and take the next bus up to Chicago. Hopefully sending anyone chasing him, his parents, the GIW, rogue ghost hunters, anyone really, running in the wrong direction. It was a hastily made plan but it was better than nothing.

A pothole jostled Danny awake from the fragile sleep he found himself slipping into on the long drive. He checked his watch. Only 20 minutes until he needed to be making his exit. All of his muscles ached in protest as he stretched carefully in his seat. He could still feel that bone-deep exhaustion pulling at him but the bus nap definitely helped take the edge off.

The time ticked by at an agonizingly slow rate. He could see the city skyline approaching, illuminated by the midmorning sun. It was beautiful all things considered. Under different circumstances, he probably would have enjoyed the view.

The bus approached the outskirts of St. Lewis. It was time. Standing from his seat, Danny carefully made his way to the bathroom trying to draw as little attention to himself as possible. It was easy really. No one really pays attention to each other in spaces like this. He waited for a minute, maybe two before he slipped into the small room. He didn't bother to lock the door. It wouldn't matter, he wouldn't be here long enough for anyone to come in.

His fingers closed around the cold metal of the lip of the tiny sink. He felt like shit, and looking up into the small shitty mirror, he could see why. His face was almost deathly pale and he had some intense dark circles under his eyes. He huffed out a dark chuckle to himself at the observation. Yeah, he looked about as good as he felt. It had been taking a lot more effort to use any of his ghost powers after that night. He took a breath and concentrated.

He phased himself out of the bus and floated behind a barrier of foliage beside the road before touching down and reappearing. The moment he reappeared his stomach clenched painfully and he doubled over, vomiting into the poorly kept grass. Dry heaves continued wracking his body even after he had emptied his stomach. The pain in his side flared once more from the motion. His breaths came heavy from the effort. Okay, this might be a problem. No ghost powers would definitely make things harder. It took him longer than he would have liked to pull himself back to his feet, the strain of the last day making his muscles feel like they were full of cement. After a minute, Danny dusted himself off and started walking.

It took him most of the day to make it into the city. The bone-deep exhaustion that clung to him slowed his progress considerably as he had to stop and rest far more than he expected. After a fair amount of wandering the streets of St. Louis, he eventually found his way to a train station where he bought himself a ticket to Chicago.

As he made his way to the self-service terminal, Danny silently thanked the ancients for the cash Sam had stashed in the bag she and Tuck brought him and modern technology for allowing him to not have to deal with other people. He looked like death and wanted to go as long as possible before he had to deal with those consequences. Besides, the fewer people he interacted with, the less likely it was for anyone to be able to point the people looking for him in his direction.

____________

Hours passed as Danny sat against one of the pillars on the train station platform. He kept his hood pulled up trying to hide his face from both the station’s cameras and from any possibly too well meaning adult.

As he sat, staring off into space, a dark shrouded figure caught his attention as it passed through his periphery. Danny snapped his head up startled trying to spot the shadow that passed through his vision but as he looked around the platform all he could see was the crowd of other passengers waiting for the train. Something about the figure sparked something cold and bright in his core. A strange feeling of eerie familiarity settled in his gut as he sat back against the pillar.

It was almost… comforting. Was that the right word? The faint strange energy acted like a sort of balm to his ragged soul. But just as quickly as it arrived, the feeling started to fade and that ache in his chest deepened once again.

A rumble started down the tunnel. The train was coming.

___________

"Thank You for choosing Super Track for your travel needs," the voice chimed over the train's PA system. “This locomotive will be providing non-stop service to Chicago, Illinois. Please take your seats, the train will depart in 15 minutes."

Danny shifted in his seat pulling his backpack into his lap as the rest of the passengers boarded the train. A group of kids, all in what looked like a private school uniform board the train and begin filing into the empty seats. The last of the open seats in the car fill up as the kids settle in for the ride. A dark-haired boy stood in the walkway looking around the car. His face seemed to harden as he noticed the only open seat left was the one next to Danny. Great, an irritated travel buddy.

“Hello. It appears that we will be sitting next to each other for the duration of this trip.” The boy in the aisle said before hauling his travel bag into the overhead compartment. When his arms came down Danny spotted a crest on the breast of the kid’s blazer. It looked like a fancy ‘G’ and a knight’s helmet.

“Yeah, I guess it does.” Danny finally responded. “If it’s alright with you, I don’t really feel like talking all that much.”

“Then we are in agreement.”

This kid was definitely different.

Danny’s reluctant travel buddy pulled his phone and a set of wireless earbuds from his pocket and tuned out the world.

It all looked expensive. The phone was the latest model of Wayne Tech and so were the earbuds. The kid was loaded. He almost laughed at the dichotomy of the two of them, him a homeless runaway superhero and a rich private school kid forced to sit next to him on a train.

A scream wrenched him from his musings head snapping up looking for the source. The kid next to him doing the same. It was a young woman on the platform. She was standing over an older man that lay crumpled at the bottom of the stairs to get from the main floor to the platform a horrified expression painted across her features. She stumbled back and someone from the crowd made to lead her away as two others rushed to kneel down beside the man, trying to give first aid it seemed. That flicker started in Danny’s chest again as the pool of blood around the fallen man seemed to grow, and suddenly, that black shadowy figure was back. A breath of frost escaped Danny’s mouth temporarily fogging the widow, but he quickly wiped it away with his sleeve. The figure hovered over the man for a moment before reaching an emaciated hand into his chest and pulling an almost ethereal version of the man from within the body on the ground. But, no one else seemed to notice. The man’s spirit seemed to struggle futilely against the grip of the shadowy figure, then, in a faint orange flash, they were gone. All that was left were the people on the platform desperately attempting to give CPR as a crowd gathered, obscuring the view from the train.

The doors closed on the train and it began to pull out of the station, leaving the crowd and the dead man behind. Danny pulled his gaze back forward as the feeling of cold comfort in his core dissipated once again.

The two boys sat in silence as the train entered the tunnel. An ominous quiet lingered over the rest of the passengers. Quiet sniffles could be heard a few rows back. A girl with thick glasses and a curly mane of red hair sat quietly crying in her seat.

“I’m sure he’ll be alright.” A chaperone was quietly saying to her. Those words made his head spin.

That man wouldn’t be alright.

Danny had watched that bony, cloaked figure pull his soul from his body, and instead of fear, all he felt was… relief.

No one else knew the man was dead. And how could they? He was the one with the intimate connection with death. A connection that, for whatever reason, seemed strained ever since he crash landed on the roof of that bus station. It felt like there was some kind of barrier between him and his powers. A barrier that seemed to weaken whenever that cloaked figure was around. Whatever it was…

“Hmf” A frustrated grunt brought Danny out of his thoughts. He looked up just in time to see the boy next to him all but rip the earbuds out and slam them into his lap. “Of course the batteries are dead.” He mumbled under his breath head falling back ever so slightly in exasperation. “I told Drake these new batteries wouldn’t last.”

“There’s a power outlet under the seat.”

The boy looked up seemingly not expecting him to have responded.

“If your earbuds are dead, there’s outlets under the seats.” Danny repeated.

“Oh.” He responded somewhat stiffly. “Thank you.”

They went back to sitting in silence. Danny’s gaze drifted back to the window and the other kid’s drifted back to his phone. They stayed like that for a while. The tunnel eventually opened back up as the train passed the city limit. The famous Saint Louis arch glinted in the evening sun as they pulled further and further away from the city. Danny watched the sun set over the changing landscape for a long while. When he looked back from the window a news article was pulled up on the boy’s phone. The screen read ‘Illinois Congressman Jefferson Barns Dead at Saint Louis Train Station’.

Chapter Text

It had been a long night. Constantine felt the cold of the Chicago winter bite at the exposed skin of his hands and face. This was certainly not how he had planned on spending his evening. The Justice League just had to send him to America at the ass crack of bloody dawn to deal with a threat that they knew next to nothing about. The whole mission had been a total shit show from the beginning. Some poor sod had gotten a hold of an old relic of Anubis and of course, he tried to bring someone back from the dead.

It went bad, as that kind of ritual always does, and suddenly the guy found himself in a graveyard surrounded by corpses rising from the dead. John had gotten there just in time to watch the poor bastard get ripped apart. He had handled the situation but not before almost getting ripped apart himself. So now he was here, trudging through the snow, in the middle of the night, in a city he didn’t know. His phone had been smashed in the fight and now he was stuck here in the dark outside some shitty bus station in Chicago.

“Station doesn’t open for another half hour,” a young voice called out dryly behind him.

John froze for half a second. Had he been so lost in his own thoughts that he hadn’t noticed anyone else around?

“Well that’s just bloody brilliant isn’t it,” John answered scrubbing a hand down his face as he stared into the dark station.

He turned and stepped to the opposite side of the door from where he had heard the voice. The bag thudded to the ground unceremoniously where he dropped it onto the cold sidewalk. John rifled through his pocket as he subtly looked to see the source of the voice. It was a kid. He looked maybe in his mid teens. He pulled a pack of cigarettes and his lighter out of the pocket of his trench coat. John took a long drag as he thought about the night he’d had and the kid he was now sitting with. With his head resting on the cold brick of the bus station John took another sidelong glance at the kid. There was something about him that struck Constantine as strange. An odd sort of energy that made his hair stand on end.

The kid looked homeless if the state of his clothes and his bag were any indications. His face was almost unnaturally pale and though the shadows obscured a proper view of his features they seemed gaunt and dark. It unsettled him and John Constantine was not easily unsettled.

John closed his eyes as snow began to fall around them and they waited there in silence until the lights flickered on in the dingy building.

As the light streamed through the dirty windows, John dropped his cigarette butt onto the icy ground and snuffed it out with his shoe. As he did he heard the kid let out a muffled wince. Picking up his bag off the ground John saw the kid press a hand into his side as he pulled himself off the ground pain coating his face.

Pulling open the door, John stood back and gestured to the kid that he could go in first.

“Thanks,” nodded the kid as he passed through the door.

In the new light, Constantine could tell that something was definitely off with this kid. He was pale, almost deathly so, and as the kid passed in front of him he felt a strange kind of power radiating off of him. It sent a shiver down his spine.

This kid was something interesting indeed.

____________

The January wind cut through the sweatshirt and jeans that Danny wore as he limped through the streets of yet another city. The pamphlet map he had snagged from the station information desk clutched tightly in his pale shaky fingers. He hadn’t been this cold in years. Since the accident with the portal, his icy core had meant that cold just wasn’t a problem for him even in his human form. Unfortunately, whatever was keeping him from using his powers also seemed to be affecting his body temperature. So, now Danny got to be freezing cold with everyone else stuck outside in the Chicago winter. Great.

The rest of the train ride had been uneventful. They had arrived in Chicago late that evening. Everyone started filing out of the train onto the brightly lit platform. The heaters hanging from the platform cover helped lessen the bite of the cold as he exited the train. He kept his head low, still avoiding the security cameras, as he looked for a transit map. His phone was dead, had been since before he left Amity Park, and he wasn’t willing to try and charge it since his parents might still be able to track it, so a paper map was his best chance. He needed to find a bus station.

As much as he wanted to try and soak up the heat of the station for the night, and Ancients did he want to, he was not willing to risk dealing with security or risk his face being caught on any cameras. Back in Amity cameras weren’t as much of a problem, the ambient ectoplasm infused itself into everything and meant that his ghostly aura didn’t do anything too crazy to the images. Outside technology was an entirely different story. He glowed like a cryptid in normal cameras, all glowing eyes and unfocused features. So no, he would sleep later. He hoped the bus to Arkansas would buy him enough time to disappear properly but he still needed to get out of Illinois.

It took longer than Danny would have liked to find his way to the bus station. It was closed when he finally stumbled up to the dingy building. The sign on the door indicated that it wouldn’t open for another few hours.

“Great” Danny mumbled to himself as he let his forehead fall onto the icy door. At least the building helped block some of the wind.

____________

So here he was sitting outside a Chicago bus station in the bitter cold of January in nothing but a sweatshirt and jeans.

His backpack pulled uncomfortably at the bandages holding his side together as he shivered. The blast he had taken to the side as he fled from his parents had done more of a number on him than he had initially thought. When he checked the bandages in the bathroom of a sketchy 24-hour diner earlier that night the wound seemed to be healing, albeit slower than Danny would have preferred, but it wasn’t infected. Small blessings. He had tried to ration the ecto bandages when he had initially patched himself up since he didn’t know when he was going to be able to make more. That meant that the wound would heal slower, without the help of the extra ecto, but he would be able to patch himself up again if anything else happened.

Danny shivered in the night air as he leaned his head back against the rough brick of the bus station’s outer wall and looked up into the dark night sky. He was exhausted. Letting out a cloud of a sigh into the cold night Danny closed his eyes. He tried to let the cold air calm his fractured mind but his thoughts drifted back to the anger and hatred that had burned in his mother’s eyes as she shot him in the side with that new ecto-blaster. The pain had almost forced him to the ground that night. It had taken everything he had to keep running and not fall to the ground then and there. The thought of what his parents might have been planning for him if they had managed to catch him that night haunted Danny’s mind.

A sudden crunch of ice startled him back to reality with a jerk that sent a new wave of pain through his side. He hissed quietly as the motion pulled at his bandages.

A large figure in a dark hood was walking towards the bus station with a hefty looking pack slung over their shoulder. Danny braced to run. The figure didn’t seem to notice him as it slowly walked up to the front of the bus station and stared at the door.

“Station doesn’t open for another half hour,” Danny said dryly.

With the light from above the door, Danny could make out more about the figure that had approached. He caught a glimpse of a rough stubbled face that seemed like it hadn’t born a real smile in at least a decade. The man wore a long tan trench coat on top of a well worn black sweatshirt, the collar of a white dress shirt just barely peeking out and the hood pulled up against the cold.

“Well that’s just bloody brilliant isn’t it,” the figure said back, still facing the door. He was English and by the way he scrubbed his hand across his face, Danny could tell that he’d had a long night.

Danny didn’t speak as the figure dropped his pack on the ground and settled himself leaning up against the wall on the opposite side of the door from Danny. The man rifled through the pocket of his coat for a moment and then pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He shoved the box back in his coat pocket and pulled out a beat up lighter. Cupping his hand around the bottom of his cigarette as he lit up and took a long drag. Eyes closed he leaned his head back against the rough brick and blew out a billowing cloud of smoke.

Snow began to fall as Danny stared at the ground in front of him. They sat in silence for what felt like hours. Neither of the two spoke until the lights inside the station flickered to life.

____________

Pretending to be preoccupied with something in his bag John watched the boy as he entered the station. The kid looked around for a second then sighed, evidently not finding whatever it was he was looking for. When the boy disappeared into the bathroom John made his own way to the ticket counter.

“First available bus to Gotham,” Constantine said pulling his wallet from his pocket. He would much rather be making this trip on a plane but there was no way he was getting his bag through airport security.

The attendant pointedly did not make eye contact with him as she handed over his ticket and he made his way to the bench along the wall. The kid came back out of the bathroom a couple of minutes later and walked up to the attendant, reluctance clear on his face as he took a deep breath before making his way to the counter. The kid looked like he had been through hell, and John would know, he’d been.

“What’s the first bus headed as far from Illinois as possible.” The kid asked, pointedly not making eye contact with the woman behind the counter.

“Honey,” the attendant begins “are you alright? If something’s going on at home there are resources that can help.”

The kid pulls a handful of crumpled bills from his pocket and drops his hand onto the counter. “I’m fine, please, I just need a ticket.”

The attendant’s face crumples in what might almost be concern. “I have a bus to Gotham City leaving in an hour.” And that could have been the end of it as the kid nodded and handed over the cash, but she spoke again, holding the ticket just out of reach on the other side of the counter. “I really think you should try to get some help. There’s a crisis center not far from here. They can help, I even have the number. I can call-”

“Pease just give me the damn ticket.” The kid said lowly reaching over the counter and pulling the ticket out of the woman’s hand with a rough jerk.

Distaste colored the woman’s face as the boy walked over to the wall of seats and she scoffed. “Ugh, this is why people don’t like you disgusting vagrants. ” The woman sneered quietly, just loud enough to be heard by the handful of people who had made their way into the quiet station. “Probably just another junky anyway.”

John took a breath, the way she said ‘vagrants’ made his skin crawl. He looked back at the kid sitting quietly a few seats away from him, curled in on himself trying to be as small as possible.

“Leave the poor kid alone,” John spoke up, still looking to the kid.

“Well, he should learn to take what’s given.” The woman behind the counter sneered at him. “He’s obviously not going to do it himself.”

“Not everyone’s looking for your kind of help lady,” Constantine said more forcefully looking her in the eye this time. The kid had started shaking as the woman ranted.

Was it getting colder in here?

“Figures,” She scoffs at him. “The tramps would stick together.”

The kid just ducked his head further and walked out the door to the loading terminals.

“You're a right cunt, you know that?” John glares at the attendant before following the kid out the door.

Chapter Text

Danny’s whole body felt like it had been filled with sand, heavy and cold despite the heat of the station’s interior. The disgust and contempt in the woman’s eyes as she looked at him sent his brain spinning. His mind spiraled back to Sam’s basement, the cold determination in his mother’s gaze as she took aim, the barely contained rage burning in his father’s eyes behind the barrel of that gun, and then the screaming. There was so much screaming.

He couldn’t breathe.

It was too much, everything was too much. The room was spinning around him now. Every sound felt far away like his head was underwater, yet somehow it was also suffocating in its intensity. He barely registered the words being said as the cacophony of it all overtook his senses.

____________

“I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to how big your house is,” Danny said as he made his way back into the screening room. They had made it through the first Terminatra movie before they paused for a bathroom break. Danny wasn’t paying attention as he walked back into the room, but he found himself frozen in place as he took in the scene before him.

“Freeze Phantom!” His mother shouted.

“One more step and we shoot ghost.” His father added.

They were both standing with their ecto-blasters raised. Behind them, stood a team of GIW agents, two of which held Sam and Tucker where they stood.

‘Fuck’ Danny thought to himself. This was bad. This was really bad.

“Mr. and Mrs. Fenton, please you don’t understand!” Sam tried to plead.

“Quiet girl,” the GIW agent holding Sam said roughly “This is for your safety.”

“But we’re not in danger!” Tucker tried. “Danny’s not danger…ous,” Tucker’s voice trailed off on the last word. He was silenced by the GIW agent sending a menacing glare his way and tightening the hold he had on Tucker’s shoulders painfully.

Maddie Fenton was still looking straight at Danny. “Let our son go Ghost Boy.” The words pulled Danny’s focus back to his parents.

“What?” Danny choked out through his shock and surprise at everything that was happening.

“She said,” Jack started, anger clear in his voice “Give us back our son.”

“Mom, Dad, I’m right here in front of you,” Danny said cautiously. “It's me.”

“You’ve been parading around as our son for too long ghost,” It was his mom again. “Get out of my boy or we’ll rip you out by force.”

They thought Phantom was possessing him. Danny could hear the barely contained rage in her voice. He had to think of some way out of this. His brain was racing for something to say.

“It’s me,” he started “It’s Danny. I’m not possessed.” The hard expressions on their faces didn’t budge. Danny felt like there was a fist clenched around his heart.

“Stop lying to us specter,” Maddie said and Danny could almost feel the anger radiating off of her. “Your ecto signature is unmistakable.”

“You bought me stars for my bedroom when I was 7 when I told you I wanted to be an astronaut. You said I was your little scientist. It’s me. Please, I’m not a ghost I’m your son.” He tried again, voice cracking with desperation as fear began creeping up his spine.

“Stolen memories prove nothing ghost.” His dad almost shouted as he readjusted the gun he held trained on Danny.

“I’ll give you to the count of three to release my son before I shoot Phantom.” His mother’s voice shook at the edges like she was trying to hide it. A tear slid down her cheek from behind her goggles.

Terror gripped his chest and the temperature in the room began to fall. He was running out of options. They weren’t going to believe him.

Shit.

____________

Constantine rounded the corner just in time to watch the kid stumble, barely catching himself on the painted cinderblock wall. He ripped his hood off as he slid down the wall, arms wrapped around himself as his knees hit the cold tile. He was still shaking.

Something he couldn’t quite place thrummed in the air as John pushed forward, slowing as he approached the boy. He could almost see the kid’s shallow ragged breath in the air around him. The hallway was freezing.

“Hey kid,” John tried for a comforting tone as he moved so the boy could see him as he knelt down an arm’s length away.

The boy’s head shot up as the movement registered. He tensed. John only caught the kid’s eyes for a moment behind his shaggy black hair but the terror on his face was unmistakeable. His eyes darted to the door behind John’s shoulder wildly. He could practically feel the thoughts racing through the boy’s mind, trying to think of a way to escape. He looked like a cornered animal.

John sat back on his heel as he put his hands up, trying to make himself as nonthreatening as possible. “I’m not trying to hurt you,” He tried again as gently as he could manage. “I just want you to breathe with me.”

Slowly, John placed one of his hands over his chest and took a deep exaggerated breath through his nose. He held the breath for a moment as the kid watched warily before releasing it slowly through his mouth. “C’mon kid, you can do it.”

He inhaled again, held it for a moment, then exhaled slowly. On the third inhale the kid tried to match his breathing. It took a few tries to get an entire lungful but he began to breathe easier. The abject terror slowly melting off his face as he continued to breathe.

Good, the kid was starting to relax.

____________

The fog slowly started to clear from Danny’s mind as he breathed in deep. The crippling fear that wound its tendrils through his chest began to recede with each slow exhale. He wasn’t in the Mansons’ basement, there were no guns trained on him. He made it out. He escaped.

A man was kneeling in front of him. The same man from outside. His face was significantly softer than before, concern now painted his rough features more than the frustration from earlier that evening.

“There you go kid,” The man in front of him said quietly, his voice rough. “Keep breathe’n, you’re alright.”

Danny slowly unwound, hands dropping to the ground in front of him to brace as he leaned forward. His side stung from the rough movements and his fingers ached from how hard he had been gripping his arms.

“Thanks,” Danny said slowly. “For back there.”

“Don’t mention it,” The man said as he dropped back to sit with his back against the stone wall. “You didn’t deserve that shite.”

With his mind no longer spiraling Danny pulled his hood back over his head before he shuffled off his knees, matching the man next to him against the wall. He didn’t know what the last few minutes looked like on the station’s cameras but if he could avoid any more possible cryptid footage he would. “You know, this is really not how I thought my week would be going.” Danny laughed mirthlessly.

“You and me both kid.” The man huffed a small laugh. “You and me both.”

____________

They sat quietly for a while, the temperature improving as they did. The station’s heating apparently taking its sweet time to kick on. The kid began to fidget nervously, his eyes glancing at John for only a second before looking away again.

“Why did you help me?” The boy asked staring at the floor.

“Like I said,” Constantine replied looking sidelong at the boy. “You didn’t deserve the shit that cunt was spewing.”

The boy looked up, a quizzical expression painted across his pale features. “I just-” The boy paused glancing back to the floor. “You don’t know me. You didn’t have to help me.”

John sighed heavily before looking back at the boy. “You’re not the first kid to be running from a shitty home life.”

“How do you-“ The kid trailed off almost tensing up again.

“I may not know what you’re running from but I know the look. Wore it myself when I was around your age.”

The boy was quiet for a moment before he spoke again, softly, eyes cast to the floor. “How’d it work out for you?”

“Well,” John began, memories of his not so glorious life coming to the forefront of his mind. Gods he hoped this kid didn’t turn out like him. “I made a fair few mistakes and there’s arse load of shit ‘m not proud of.”

The kid looked back at him now

“But,” he kept going before the boy could get the wrong idea. “It got me out of the shite situation I was in before I ran. And eventually, after I pulled my head outta my ass, I found some people that helped me get back up.”

“They sound like good people.”

“Yeah, they are.”

____________

“I’ll be fine now,” Danny began looking at the man again. “You don’t have to stay here with me. The hallway’s not exactly the most comfortable place to wait for a bus.”

“F’its all the same to you, I don’t want to go back to the room with that cunt either. Plus, want to make sure you make it onto that bus alright. Panic attacks can really throw you for one.”

They sat in that hallway until the bus arrived. Trenchcoat guy pulled himself off the ground before offering a hand back down to Danny.

“Name’s John, by the way.”

“Danny.” He replied, letting John help him off the floor while he held his side.

“Well then Danny, let’s get you on that bus.”

Chapter Text

Snow was falling again when Danny stepped off the bus into Gotham City. He hadn’t been paying much attention when he bought the ticket. He had just wanted to get as far away from Amity Park as fast as he could. Thinking about it now, after sitting on a bus for almost 24 straight hours, Gotham was probably one of the best and worst places he could have landed himself. The city wasn’t exactly known for its kind and welcoming nature, but its streets were crowded, and its reputation for strange occurrences might give him just the right amount of cover to hide his inhuman nature. After all, in a city of supervillains and vigilantes, who's going to notice one more weird kid?

Learning that John was on the same bus had been a comfort of sorts. He didn’t know the man, not really, but even the small amount of general familiarity was nice after the week he’d had. Danny had been more than a little embarrassed when he woke up on the man’s shoulder part way through the ride. To his relief, John didn’t comment on it, simply offering a granola bar Danny recognised from the bus station’s vending machine.

He hadn’t intended to fall asleep but, in the days since he fled Amity Park, sleep hadn’t exactly been a priority. However, it seemed his body had other ideas. The blaster wound still marring his side and the anxiety attack he had suffered at the bus station had left him far more drained than he’d expected.

Normally his ghostly biology allowed him to heal at an incredibly fast rate, though for some reason Danny was yet to figure out, his super healing wasn’t feeling so super. The blaster shot his mother landed had healed enough that first night that he no longer had a gaping hole in his side threatening to make his internal organs spill onto the sidewalk but it hadn’t healed much beyond that in the days since. The newly regenerated muscle and skin still fragile and inflamed under the depleted ecto-bandages he had applied.

He filed into the station with the rest of the passengers with his hood up and head down. John was only a few steps behind as the mass of people filtered towards the station’s doors. A backpack shoved heavy past Danny’s shoulder where he had collide with the clif face and he hissed in pain stumbling as his vision swam. A hand wrapped around his opposite bicep steadying him. The room was still moving too much for Danny’s liking and there was a haze around the edges of his vision as he let himself be led gently to the edge of the crowd.

“You sure you’re gonna be alright here, Danny? Your not look’n too good.” Constantine asked, his voice tinged heavily with concern.

____________

“I’m so glad you’re ok,” Sam hugged Danny tighter than she ever had before. He wrapped his arms around her as best he could with the black backpack she wore.

“Ancients, am I glad to see you guys,” Danny buried his face in Sam’s hair as Tucker joined the hug.

After a quiet moment, they all let go. Sam and Tucker looked at each other for a moment, a small nod, a silent agreement across their reluctant faces.

“We have to get you out of here,” Tucker began.

“They’ve really lost it this time Danny,” Sam continued with deep lines of worry creasing her brow.

“Like certifiably fruitloop lost it,” Tuck added, a matching expression playing on his face.

“What about you guys?” Danny asked, releasing his hold on Sam and taking a half step back.

Sirens blared in the distance.

“We’ll be fine.” The forced confidence in her words had the heavy weight of dread settling in his core.

“Sam and I threw together what we could.”

“Its not much… some clothes, some cash, a little bit of food.”

“Thank you,” Danny replied. “But seriously, you guys should get out too.” The thought of leaving them behind felt like a knot pulling tighter and tighter in his chest.

“Worry about getting yourself safe, we’ll be fine,” Tucker insisted. “They’re after you, we’ll probably just be brought in for some questions, and then they’ll let us go.”

“But-” Danny

“Danny you have to get out of here man,” Tucker cut him off. “Sam and I were able to find you; odds are your parents and the GIW won’t be far behind.”

Sam shoved the backpack into his chest.

“Go Danny,” He could see the tears welling in her eyes as she stepped back.

“Sam,” The pain in her expression was a knife in his gut.

“Please.” The word fell softly from her lips as the tears began to run silently down her cheeks.

Tucker wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulder, and Danny felt tears pricking the backs of his eyes. He made to step forward, but the sirens were getting closer and their lights were now flashing through the tree line.

Danny steeled himself as he slung the bag onto his back. With a final nod to his friends, he turned and started running.

____________

The buildings in Gotham seemed to stretch infinitely into the sky as Danny made his way through the city’s darkened streets. No one paid him much attention as he wandered through this new city. To them, he was just another homeless kid roaming the streets. Something tugged in Danny’s gut as he went along. An unnatural pull at his core. It felt like there was a presence following him, not physically, no, it felt like he was being watched by the million eyes of a single entity. If he was being honest, the feeling was more than a little unsettling. The magnitude of the power behind that gaze was like being an ant under a microscope, but he continued walking. Whatever was watching him didn’t feel hostile, just… curious. Like it was studying him. The feeling persisted as Danny wandered on. The sensation like a beckoning hand drawing him through the city. Whatever was on the other side wanted him to follow.

As Danny was passing through one of the more residential areas that he had seen that evening, he felt the prickle as the small hairs on the back of his neck stood on end at the same time a shiver ran down his spine. His breath fogged in front of him and he froze. Across the street, Danny could see a cluster of ghostly figures outside the front door of an apartment complex. The figures were covered completely in black cloaks and floated effortlessly above the ground. Their bony hands sat loosely in front of them and their faces were nothing but a dark void of swirling shadow. They were the same as things he had seen in the train station back in St. Louis. They appeared more translucent than the ghosts back in Amity; as if they weren’t fully there. No one else on the street seemed to notice them. The few passers-by that were around simply walked past like nothing was amiss. It seemed Danny was the only one that could tell they were there.

The same balmy cool enveloped his core as he stood on the sidewalk staring at the strange spirits. Just being near them felt like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. The energy of these spirits felt strange mixing with his own. They were like finality and flame against his balance and ice.

He was still staring across the street when two long, emaciated arms shot out from the darkness of the alley behind him. Their broken, jerking motions a twisted mockery of living movement as they wrapped around him. The first bony hand warped around his face, the fingers too long as they encircled his head. The dry, weathered skin of too many joints pressed into his face and hair as it clamped onto him with a vise grip. His hands flew up to the unnatural appendage, fingers scrabbling at the hand covering his mouth as the sharp, jagged nails dug into the back of his head and neck. Breath came hard and fast through his nose as the palm covering his mouth made it impossible to make a sound.

Danny was frozen in place as he felt the fingers of the second arm alight almost gently just above his opposite hip. The seconds ticked by at an agonizing crawl as the crooked and shriveled hand inched its way up the length of his torso. It was like time stopped around them as the palm found his heart.

With every heartbeat, a pulse of dark and ancient energy radiated through his core. A tension grew in the air around them with every pulse. A coil of energy compressing further and further until–

In a flash, the fingertips of the second hand dug sharply into his collarbone as the arms ripped backwards, dragging Danny into the waiting darkness.

Chapter Text

Days passed, and John couldn’t get that kid from the bus station out of his head. Something about him just felt wrong, like he didn’t fit in the space he occupied. As if he were both on this plane and not all at once. Danny was obviously a kid, but there was something off about him that didn’t fit. A piece of the puzzle that was just out of reach.

He tipped back the glass in his hand, downing the remaining scotch in one go. He stared deeply into the fireplace in front of him as the familiar warmth burned down his throat and into his chest. He’d had half a thought to try to see if he could help the kid once they got to Gotham. His curiosity wanting to keep the boy close so he could figure out what exactly he was warring with the empathy that had been gnawing at the back of his mind to protect the strange boy.

Danny had fallen asleep on his shoulder a few hours into the trip, and he had managed to get a better look at him as he slept. He looked an almost sickly pale in the sunlight that streamed through the bus windows, the bags under his eyes speaking to more than just exhaustion. His sleeves had been pushed up in the heat of the bus’s interior, and John could see what looked like scabbed over road rash along the kid’s right forearm disappearing into his sleeve, where he suspected it went much further. Not the biggest worry if not for the unhealthily greenish tint at the edges of the scabs. His left arm seemed unmarred. Well, that is, outside of some small bruises and the thin lines of what looked like Lichtenberg scarring arching across his skin. The neck of the NASA hoodie the kid wore had shifted enough that he could see a particularly nasty looking bruise curling over the boy’s right shoulder and crawling up the back of his neck. Thoughts of what might have caused those cuts and bruises swirled through John’s mind and turned his stomach. For as much as he had seen his fair share of fucked up shit, it was always different when it was kids.

That thought alone made it all the worse when the kid disappeared on him before they even made it out of the bus station.

Footsteps creaked on the wooden floor behind him.

“Constantine,” A familiar gravel sounded from the shadows. “Thank you for coming.”

“Always a pleasure to see you, Batsy.” Sarcasm and exhaustion dripped from his tone as he stood, rounding the chair. The big Bat himself stepped from the shadows of the dingy apartment.

“What did you find?”

John sighed, straight to business then. “Relic of Anubis. A grieving fiancé tried to bring his dead lover back to life. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t work out so well for him.”

“Boston mentioned some kind of metaphysical disturbance that seems to be of some concern to his patron. Could this have been related?”

“Doubtful,” Constantine began, mulling over the new information. “One man raising a handful of corpses from the grave doesn’t have the type of impact you’d usually need to draw the attention of a deity like Rama Kushna.”

“Then whatever it is is still out there.”

“And the Justice League wants my help figuring it out.” John turned back to the fire. It wasn’t a question.

“There will be a meeting at the Watchtower on Monday. We’ll need your report by then.”

John turned back to the fireplace, watching the flames dance across the wood in the otherwise dark apartment. When he looked back, he was alone. Spooky bastard.

____________

Danny awoke in a haze. His head aching, and his body feeling stiff and heavy. The ground was slick and damp beneath him as he lay motionless for several minutes. When he finally blinked his eyes open, Danny realised he was lying on an old wooden dock, dark water stretching out before him. A small groan of pain escaped his lips as he made the effort to sit up. The pain in his head beginning to recede as he looked out over what he assumed to be Gotham Harbor. The sky was dark with clouds, and the water stretched out like an endless void.

A tendril of cold fog floated up from Danny’s mouth as the presence from before returned. It felt far more focused this time as he felt its gaze boring into his back. He should have been scared, the power he could feel radiating from the entity behind him dwarfing his own by orders of magnitude. But he was so, so tired. Whatever it was seemed to be waiting for him to face it, so, with a heavy sigh, Danny pulled himself to his feet. The pain that had been burning through his side had dulled to a low ache as he stood. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath of the damp air before finally turning to face whatever it was that waited in the dark behind him.

The figure that met his gaze when he turned was draped in robes of dark, tattered cloth and the ragged strands of old fishing nets. Long, dark hair fell in dirty, matted strands around a gaunt, pale face that may have once been beautiful. Sickly yellow eyes glowed as the towering figure studied him.

“You are not one of mine.” A voice of metal on stone rasped.

Danny felt his eyes flash to a toxic green as she stared at him.

“Why have you come here, ghostling?”

____________

John was lying on a couch in one of the many observation lounges on the Watchtower, trying very hard not to be awake. He had delivered his report to Batman when he’d arrived earlier that morning and was stuck waiting for the league meeting he’d been roped into.

He’d landed in Gotham barely two days after being dropped in the US to track down a rogue artifact and had managed precious little sleep in that time. Exhaustion tugged at his body, and his head ached in the artificial lighting of the station’s daylight cycle. The hangover he was nursing was not helping matters.

Being shunted across the planet a few days prior and subsequently almost getting ripped apart by a graveyard full of the risen dead was not his idea of a good time. Some of the scotch had been for that, but the rest– the rest had been for the kid. He’d lost the kid at the bus station, and now he was somewhere on the Gotham streets alone. The guilt clawed at him. Danny had looked like hell the last time he’d seen him. John pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes, trying to relieve some of the pressure in his head. Scared kids. Why did it always have to be scared kids? His mind had drifted back to Astra, and he was pulling straight from the bottle.

“Rough night?” A familiar voice pulled him from his brooding.

“Good to see you too Z.” He opened his eyes, and Zatanna was standing over him.

“C’mon, meeting’s about to start.” She reached a hand out, and he let her pull him to his feet. Her hands came up to cup his face as they stood in silence. She pulled him close until their foreheads pressed together. “It’s good to see you, John.” Her voice softer now, just for him.

Zatanna led them through the halls until they reached one of the league meeting rooms. Their interlaced fingers grounding him to the here and now. A faint blue light glowed from the center of the holo-projection table. Batman was speaking quietly with one of the League’s Green Lanterns near the head of the table. Hal Jordan, if John remembered correctly. As everyone filed in, they found their seats around the large meeting table. Z claimed the seat to his right, not letting go of his hand, her thumb stroking gently over his own.

The room quieted as Batman turned to address the assembly. “Thank you all for coming in.”

John took a steadying breath, bringing his focus back to the meeting at hand. Zatanna gave his hand a reassuring squeeze before turning to face Batman herself.

“Six days ago, an anomaly appeared in deep space.” Batman pressed a button on the control panel in front of him, and a holo projection blinked to life in the center of the table. It looked like a fissure with some form of dark energy flowing out of it like tendrils of space dust. “The Green Lanterns have been referring to it as the rift.”

“The rift appeared near the border of the Palavain nebula and has begun pulling space-born matter into itself like a black hole.” Lantern began, standing from his chair. “Its current location is several light years from any inhabited systems, though it has been slowly devouring the nebula in which it currently resides.” The map zoomed out to show the full image of a nebula and the rift along its outskirts. “Readings indicate that the rift is expanding as it consumes matter from the nebula. The expansion is slow at this time, but there is a concern that its rate of expansion may increase as more matter is consumed.”

“Do we know what this rift is?” Martian Manhunter asked, gesturing to the hologram.

“At this time, its exact nature is still unknown. A team of lanterns is currently monitoring the event, and research teams have been dispatched from multiple planets to study and determine its nature and origin.”

“Not that it’s not great to be included,” Constantine cut in, his head still pounding. “But what had you bring in me and Z?”

Batman pulled up a set of readings alongside the projection of the rift. “Reports over the last several days have indicated the rift to be resistant to most conventional methods of analysis. The incongruencies in the readings have indicated the possibility of this being a metaphysical event. The league is calling in members with specialized expertise to identify the anomaly and figure out how to stop it.”

John felt his hands tighten around his mug of coffee.

“The data and reports from the teams in the field will be provided to you as they come in.”

____________

Gotham, this was the Lady of Gotham that he was before.

Frostbite had told him that certain cities could develop a presence if the conditions were right, but Lady Gotham was the first one he’d ever encountered. Entities that manifest from the consciousness of a city were old. Old and powerful. Their domains feeding them like a battery. Danny was a stranger, an outsider, in her lands, and she did not seem pleased at his presence.

Her gaze bored through him as he stood in silence. His thoughts racing as the air began to press down around him, an oppressive force tightening around his core with every breath.

“My Lady Gotham,” Danny shifted nervously on his feet. “I come to you for sanctuary.”

“Sanctuary?” Her grating voice reverberating through his bones.

“My parents,” He trailed off. The words lodged in his throat like a tumor. “They’re hunting me. Please, I’m only here to hide.”

“You herald danger to mine, Trespasser!”

Danny’s eyes flared as the pressure around his core turned to burning pain. He stumbled, collapsing to the ground; knees hitting the slick wood of the dock as pain racked his body. It felt like the iron in his blood had been turned molten as it burned through his veins.

“The–they want to kill me. Please…” His voice breaking in a barely audible rasp of desperation, like breathing around broken glass.

Darkness began closing in around him as hot tears streamed down his face.

Suddenly, the pain was gone. A wave of cool energy passed through Danny’s battered body as he gasped for air. When he finally raised his head, Lady Gotham hovered over him, her expression seemed softer now.

“Your words ring with truth. I sense no malice in your intentions.”

Danny pulled himself unsteadily back to his feet.

“You are granted amnesty, child of the zone. Amity’s hero may find shelter in my domain.”

Her words echoed through his mind. That one word. Hero.

“I’m not a hero,” his gaze fell to the slick boards at his feet as he caught his breath. “Not anymore.”

Gotham’s head tilted ever so slightly. A thoughtful sadness dimmed her eyes as an expression of mournful compassion crossed her veiled features.

“Retreat is not surrender, ghostling.” Her voice seeming almost tender.

A humorless laugh passed Danny’s lips. He met her eyes with a weariness that permeated deep into his core.

“To deny your purpose is to accept oblivion.”

An anger Danny hadn’t realised he possessed boiled up within him. “Oblivian came for me when I was fourteen!” He was shouting, the rage and pain he normally kept tamped down and locked away spilling out like venom off his tongue.

“I have played hero for almost three years, and they still call me a monster!” He ran a hand through his hair, grasping at the dirty strands and pulling until it burned. “Ancients, some of them still hunt me like I’m a fucking animal! Why the fuck would I want to keep being a hero!?” His breath came heavy as the anger burned through his chest.

“You can’t escape your nature, ghostling. No matter how hard you try.”

Danny seethed through gritted teeth. Mist seeping from the corners of his glowing eyes in tendrils as he glared up at where Gotham floated in front of him.

Her gaze hardened once more. “Purpose will find you again. Do not waste my gift when it does.”

Danny turned back towards the water as he scoffed. The feeling of being watched faded away, and when he turned back, Lady Gotham was gone.

Chapter Text

Snow was falling again as Danny stood on the dock. Exhaustion still clung to his bones, yet, physically, he felt better than he had since leaving Amity Park. A feeling tugged at the back of his mind, however, that the Lady of Gotham had done something to him when she grabbed him from that alley. Like the echo of a memory. The feeling of a pulse of energy surrounding his core as her palm pressed into his chest above his heart.

Do not waste my gift.

Her words rang in his head.

What gift?

The wind was starting to pick up as the snow began falling in earnest, breaking him from his thoughts. A storm was blowing in, and he needed to find a place to wait it out for the night.

The warehouses along the dockyard seemed deserted at this hour. That seemed as good a place as any. Danny approached one of the large buildings and tried the handle of the thick metal door. Unsurprisingly, it was locked. Thunder rumbled in the distance as the wind picked up once more. It cut through his unfortunately limited layers of clothing and had the hood of his jacket whipping out behind him. The storm was rolling in fast and he was running out of time before it hit in earnest. Trembling slightly, Danny placed a cautious hand on the cold metal before pressing his palm firmly atop the weathered paint. Anxiety gripped his chest as he concentrated and stepped intangibly through the door.

When he rematerialised on the other side, he stumbled. Stomach roiling as a dull ache radiated from his core. He caught himself on the back of a chair, taking deep, slow breaths as he regained his balance. The feeling passed. The effort had sapped his already depleted energy, but hadn’t sent him collapsing to the floor like it had outside Saint Louis.

After collecting himself, Danny looked around the interior of the warehouse. Massive shelves of pallets sprawled through the interior of the cavernous building. The winter chill permeated the space, but without the wind, it would be manageable. Danny set off through the building. There was a sparsely furnished lounge area at the far side that was probably a breakroom for the dockworkers. There wasn’t much beyond a kitchenette with some tables and a ratty looking couch sat along one of the walls.

Exhaustion pulled at his senses as Danny curled up on the threadbare cushions, hugging his backpack. Thunder rumbled outside as he drifted to sleep.

____________

Sounds of movement pulled Danny from slumber. His eyes opened slowly, squinting groggily in the fluorescent light. A tall bearded man in sturdy looking workwear leaned against the counter of the kitchenette, sipping coffee from a travel mug.

“Morning,” The man’s voice was a deep gravel. “I don’t know how you got in here, but the boss won’t be too happy if he catches you.”

Danny sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Am I gonna be in any kind of trouble for this?”

“Nah, not from me. With the storm last night, I don’t blame you for ducking in. Just make yourself scarce before the rest of the crew comes in.”

Danny pulled himself to his feet. There was a protein bar and a bottle of water sitting on the table closest to the couch.

“For you,” the man said, gesturing to the table with his mug.

Danny paused for just a moment at the man’s words, a moment of surprise crossing his features. “Thanks,” Danny responded, his tone laced with an undercurrent of surprise as he picked up the offered items before making his way to the door.

“Stay warm out there kid.”

Danny raised the bottle in his hand in acknowledgement as he stepped out of the room.

____________

Danny knew that his parents loved him. They did. He knew that they weren't the best at showing it all the time, but they had cared, in their own way. They were loud and obnoxious at times, but they were a family. When he and Jazz were young, their parents saw them to school every morning and made sure they made it to all of Jazz’s Spelling Bees and Danny’s peewee football games. They were present… in the beginning. He and Jazz learned how to take care of themselves fairly quickly as their parents’ obsession with ghosts began to outweigh their desire for a happy family. That life had slipped away fast as everything became about ghosts or ectoplasm or that fucking portal that they were so hell-bent on getting to work, never mind the possible consequences of ripping a hole through the fabric of space to reach another dimension. The family that had been so important in those early years seemed to be put on the back burner as ghosts took center stage.

Danny flinched as a frisbee passed within a couple of inches of his nose, jolting him back to the present. Maybe a popular public park wasn’t the best place to get so fully lost in his thoughts. He heard a kid yell out an apology as he ran to retrieve the frisbee. Danny put on a smile he didn’t feel and told the kid that it was alright. He kept walking.

The wound on his side was doing markedly better after his meeting with Lady Gotham. He’d found a twenty tucked into the label of the water bottle when he left the warehouse and stopped into a coffee shop for some breakfast. He’d stepped into the bathroom while he waited for the barista to warm up his premade sandwich, and when he checked the bandage on his side, he’d been surprised to see that the once raw and jagged blaster wound was almost fully closed. His side was still tender and sore, the skin still fragile, but he was, more or less, whole.

He could feel his body healing again, albeit to a limited degree, and his core no longer felt like a cold weight in his chest, one wrong move away from collapsing in on itself. Even the cold of a Gotham winter hadn’t been biting so hard against his skin. He was still weak. The energy finite. But, for the moment, it was like he’d been dunked in ectoplasm.

Ancients, he needed to let Jazz know that he was ok. It had been almost a week since he had left Amity, and even though she’d moved to California the year before for school, she’d probably have learned what happened. Sam and Tuck would have called her as soon as they could. She’d be worried sick by now.

____________

5 Days Earlier

The trees loomed overhead as they stood together for a moment, watching Danny disappear through the foliage. The approaching sirens, a screaming cacophony in the quiet that stretched between them. Sam let herself be held for only a few moments more before shifting out of Tucker’s grip. She steeled herself, wiping the tears from her eyes as his worried gaze met hers. This wasn’t over yet.

When she spoke again, her voice was strong. They still had a job to do.

“You ready?” The question hung in the air between them with the not so distant sound of tires grinding across gravel.

The hand on her shoulder gave one final squeeze, and an impish grin split across Tucker’s face. “Let’s play some hide and seek.”

It was the last thing they could give Danny to help him escape. It had to be enough.

The shouts of the GIW agents crashing through the undergrowth were like a starter's pistol. They started running.

____________

Sam could feel the burn in her muscles as she ran. The roar of blood filled her ears in time with her thundering heart. The sting of thornbushes cut thinly across the skin of her legs as she fled deeper into the waiting arms of the forest. Heavy footfalls echoed behind her in the retreating light. Good. If the GIW wants Danny, they’ll have to work for it.

The plan had been made fast as she and Tuck through that go-bag together. Split up and run, force the GIW to split their forces. Force them to chase three targets instead of one. They couldn’t go with Danny, but they could give him this.

A tumbling crash sounded behind her as one of the agents tripped over the tangled undergrowth.

A laugh tore from her throat as she dashed freely over the treacherous terrain. The rough bark of a tree scraping cooly across her palm as she turned sharply, ducking under a fallen branch. She didn’t slow.

The thick canopy overhead drowned the area with shifting shadowy darkness as Sam’s feet pounded across the fresh earth. The forest sang to her as she barreled through the cold night air. Each breath tangling with the life that pressed in from every direction.

Frustrated shouts rang out behind her as unwelcoming branches tore through clean white suits. They were closer than before, but that was fine. She would keep running.

The icy wind of the December night stung against her face as she forced the chase deeper into the labyrinth of twisting trees. The echo of a power that had once suffused her very being tingling gently across her skin as her senses dissolved into the waiting green.

Manic laughter bubbled from her lips as she was tackled into the frozen ground. It didn’t stop when her arms were wrenched behind her, nor when the cold metal of the handcuffs bit into her wrists. They wouldn’t have him. They’d never have him.

“Crazy bitch,” One of the agents grumbled as they hauled her to her feet.

A smug smile crept across her face as she took in the muddied and torn suits of her captors. Her breath slowed, and the energy buzzing under her skin faded. The adrenaline of the chase was seeping away, but Sam knew, with a certainty deep in her gut, that Danny had gotten away.

____________

Tucker’s wrists ached as he sat on the hard plastic floor of the van, the cuffs digging uncomfortably into his skin. It hadn’t taken the agents chasing him long to run him down, but he had fought every step of the way as they dragged him back to the vehicles. He’d managed to slip the cuffs at one point, sprinting off again and forcing them to chase. They’d slammed him into a tree while wrestling the pick out of his hands once they’d caught him again. The bruise forming on his cheekbone a testament to the frustration he’d provoked out of supposedly stoic agents.

It took a long time for the doors to open again and have a dirty and bedragged Sam thrown in with him. She was grinning like a maniac as she pulled herself into a sitting position across from him.

“Did we-” He cut off the question when two GIW agents slid into the front seats and started the van. He could see their dirty and torn suits through the metal grate separating the driving cabin from their cell.

He looked back at Sam, and she nodded silently, that grin still splitting her face. A smile slowly pulled at his lips as relief flooded through him. They had done it. Danny was out.