Chapter Text
It’s a dark stormy and gloomy night in Gotham once more. For some reason it’s always raining like crazy when Jason is getting ready to do some crazy fucking shit.
It’s probably a sign. A sign telling him to stop doing whatever the fuck he’s doing .
Well, too damn bad Jason has always been a shit listener.
Not that it really matters. Everyone is out on patrol right now.. And Alfred should be in the cave on camera and coms. Oracle certainly has his location and might find the fact that he’s at the Wayne Manor a little suspicious or at least weird but she isn’t going to comment on it unless it’s an emergency.
Small mercies, he supposes.
Still. Hiking the heavy duffle bag further up on his shoulder and letting the shovel drag behind him, he walks to the small section of the huge land where there’s a few cemeteries. Jason already feels uneasy as he gets closer but then he remembers why he’s here and could only roll his eyes so hard his blood vessels almost pop.
If he has to listen to Danny bitch and moan about a damn grave again, he’s going to put a bullet in his own head. Apparently, Danny had been for real about having a grave in Gotham aw.nd that little bastard always gets what he wants.
Fucking spoiled ass brat.
Jason approaches the graves, and it’s too dark for him to properly see any names but he knows who lies here.
Thomas and Martha Wayne
A couple of Dick’s pet fishes.
..and Jason.
Not his actual grave. Bruce, for whatever reason that Jason didn’t ask because he didn’t care , had moved it to the Manor. It doesn’t bother him. Not at all.
But now the cemetery was about to get a new occupant.
With a sigh, he could only look at the space right next to his grave…
“This is really happening..” he muttered to himself, resigned to the fact he’s going to be out in the freezing rain digging a grave for an already dead kid that didn’t have a grave to rest in.
( It’s literally four in the morning, prime Crime Lord sleeping hours yet there’s a persistent ghost that follows him around worse than Dick does. Jason muffles a groan into the pillows.
“Why,” he lifts his head up to glare at Danny perched on the headrest of the bed like an owl. Knees tucked to his chest and an uncanny tilt to his head, eyes green like acidic, glowing faintly in the dark. “Why do you want a grave so bad?”
There’s nothing exciting about graves.. Or whatever. Danny says it’s to visit him but visiting graves isn’t Jason’s type of thing in anycase.
“‘Cause I don’t have one,” Danny replies, still staring at him with those unblinking eyes.
And. Huh?
Jason blinks. “What?”
Danny’s blue tinted lips stretch into a small smile- and Jason knows that smile. Danny is going to be on his cryptic shit, which means Jason has to ask a hundred and ten different questions just to get the main one answered.
“What.. what do you mean that you don’t have a grave? You're the Ghost King.” Jason says as being Ghost King automatically means Danny has a grave. He doesn't know- he's not even firing on all cylinders.
Danny nods before bobbing his head, jerking a shoulder upwards. “Don’t got a grave..”
“Explain.”
Danny sighs as if Jason is being the difficult one. The bitch. “No one knew I died,” which sounds awful.. “And when they did figure out that I died it was already too late, y’know?”
Jason takes a breath. No. He doesn’t know.
“What do you mean by too late?”
Danny’s eyes finally blink. Blinks away from Jason’s face, to the corner, and then back to Jason, staring over his head. He doesn’t say anything, wrapping his arms around his knees, shrugging once more.
Okay then.
“I’ll let it slide this time,” he grunts. “But we’re gonna revisit that topic..”
Danny has the audacity to snort at him.
“Yeah, okay-”)
“Jason?”
Jason stops digging, his heart slingshotting to his throat.
Shit.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
His clothes are thoroughly drenched. He’s soaked to the bone and everything knee down is caked in mud thanks to the heavy rain softening the dirt and making the digging marginally much easier.
“Go and fuck off already,” he grunts. Jason doesn’t turn around to see how much of an audience he’s conjured up but he’s assuming at least three or four, based on the fact that it’s Dick’s voice that spoke out first.
Just going off the knowledge of his family he knows that if Dick is out here, so is Damien. And if Jason somehow managed to trip or activate an alarm, then Bruce is also out in this pouring rain watching his son dig a hole next to his grave.
They ought to think he’s crazy. He feels crazy.
“Why in damnations are you.. digging a hole? ” The demon brat says, and Jason can already imagine that permanent look of disgust on his face with his arms crossed.
Jason gets around five feet and wonders if Danny would be miffed if he didn’t go all the way. He would like to leave. Immediately.
There’s the squelch of mud that sounds awfully close and Jason instinctually glances up to see Batman pick up the duffel bag Jason had been carrying. Oh God.
“No-!” Jason makes an abrupt movement to lurch for the duffle bag, because if Bruce sees it, he’s going to draw the rightfully wrong conclusion and it really depends on if he’s in a listen to Red Hood mood.
He still scrabbles for the bag, but he can’t exactly get out right now. Mud is a fucking bitch and it doesn’t support heavy asses like Jason.
So he can watch in pain as the duffel bag.. Is unzipped.
And now, Jason can see it’s only the four of them- Jason, Dick, Damian, and Bruce- out here, and everyone hisses a breath through their teeth. Dick makes a noise like he got hit in the sternum, while Damian hands ball up that kevlar of his gloves creak.
Bruce says nothing but Jason thinks he can hear the grinding of his teeth from here. He’s proven further right when Bruce’s jaw tenses so much that his cowl jumps and shifts around his facial structure.
Fury.
Because.. In that duffel bag is the body of a teenage boy. Or if you can really call it a body, considering it’s entirely of ice. An ice sculpture of a boy, all dressed in a suit, hands clasped on his stomach, and his eyes closed.
(“You want a grave so bad but what the fuck am I suppose to bury?”
Danny had grinned at him like he was the devil. “Oh, you’ll see, my friend.”)
See he fucking did. Danny had basically given Jason an ice version of himself to bury. Which is so twisted , Jason hasn’t had the chance to un-compartmentalize it.
He knows what this looks like. Jason knows that this looks like an unfortunate victim who caught full force of Mr. Freeze stupid ice ray gun, turned into a human icicle and Jason had decided to dump the body in the backyard of the manor. Jason knows he looks like an alcoholic who turned his life around yet just got caught red handed with a flask in his hand.
Batman, not Bruce, lurches forward and there’s nowhere for Jason to even attempt to run away as he’s dragged out the hole by the front of his shirt. He just barely avoids eating dirt and worms for a late night snack, rolling on his shoulder and somewhat crouched on his feet, shovel still in hand.
“ Jason.”
“What is the meaning of this, Todd?”
In the darkness he can see Damien reaching for that damned sword of his.
Okay, damage control. Tell the perfect amount of truths and lies. Channel that inner Tim inside of him.
Jason stabs the shovel into the wet ground, blade sinking in quite easily. “Before you get your pantyhoses in a damn twist. It’s not real. It’s a literal,” magic, “Ice sculpture.” Of a boy.
He keeps going before anyone else could say anything, lest this whole thing blows into an argument and Jason absolutely does not want to get into a screaming match over a fake body in the damn rain. Not when he’s all muddy, and every single one of them is looking like a drowned cat.
“Dick.” He turns to his brother, knowing that his brother has a bleeding heart and the smallest thread of hope that Dick hasn’t thought the absolute worst of him like he knows Bruce is doing. “Remember that whole getting kidnapped by the cultists shit? And how you summoned the Ghost King-”
“ Ghost King?” Damien says, eyes flickering between Dick and Jason. Right, because that whole situation stayed between; Jason, Dick, and Tim- they had told Bruce what he only needed to know.
Dick’s eyebrows furrow, and the whites of his domino’s mask narrow, lips parting. “You..” His face hardens as he looks back at the duffle bag. The ice has yet to melt. And it won’t ever. “Oh no, Jason..” He places a hand on his forehead.
Good. Good.. that means Dick is most likely catching on considering the male had nonstopped ask about Danny and Jason had reluctantly gave Dick some details if it meant he would stop blowing up his damn phone. Or coming to one of his many safehouses like he owns the damn place.
Jason shrugs. “He wanted a grave.. I needed something to bury. Which is why there’s a fake ice body in that bag. No one’s been harmed and anyone that could have been harmed is already dead.”
Boom. Perfectly explained. Now, if he could just get back to digging, dump the body, do a small little ritual, and he’s going to be out of the batsy’s hair.
If only it was so simple.
“The very same Ghost Kind who has openly tried to take Grandfather's life?” Damian asks, the frown on his face deepens.
Dick, who did not know that tidbit, balks. “Wait what ?”
Hm. Well.. now that Jason thinks about it, he vaguely remembers Danny ranting to him about a man who thinks he's all powerful and immortal and Danny is just waiting for the day he fucks around and finds out.
But then again, Jason was bleeding out on the floor in his safehouse like he always does, so forgive him if Danny's words went in one ear like usual.
"That's the one.." Jason confirms as his lips curl as if he just had one of Alfred's zesty lemon drop cakes.
At the very least…Jason didn't want to reveal Danny to the family. Too many questions he didn't want to answer, their history.. and Danny in general.
If Bruce truly knew the full extent then he would somehow find a way to adopt a sort of dead-alive kid before the damn sun comes up.
Speaking of which..
" Cave. Now." His voice might as well have been the thunder to the rain. The deep gravel of it.. the type to make you wonder if it's actually God talking to you and not a man in a fursuit.
(And if Jason keeps thinking like this he can tamper down the fear and panic that's currently turning his stomach into knots.)
Jason doesn't bother to fight it. He knows when he's losing a battle, there's no getting out of this.
..just let it be known that Jason is never doing Danny a favor ever again.