Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The thing that most people fail to realize about Danny Fenton, is that for all his normalcy, all his dislike of his parent's work, and his sister's obtuseness, Danny's not much better.

This is never more apparent than when they'd moved to Gotham.

Danny had been invited to work on a school project at his group partner's house. House was a bad word for it, mansion was more apt. They can call it the manor all they wanted but Danny couldn't help but compare it to Vlad's first castle and find it somehow in the lead in grandness.

Back on track, group project, partner's house;

Damian had been extremely begrudging about it, but all the same, when his fancy people butler had pulled up in the car, Danny had been invited back to work on the school project.

And now here he was, feeling the blood drain from his face as he read the texts coming in through his phone screen.

"Nightingale, focus." Damian's voice makes his head snap up, "If we endeavor to complete this task within the week-"

"Yeah..., sorry, I got to go!" Danny's already swiping papers off the table and stuffing them into his bag.

"Tch, Nightingale! We are not finished!"

Danny stuffs the last of Alfred the Butler's sandwich in his mouth and zips his backpack,

"Uhh we can do this again tomorrow or something.."

Damian's brother Dick is suddenly in the doorway, "What's got you in such a rush, Danny?" There's a pinch of concern in his voice that Danny really doesn't have time to think over before he answers.

"I missed a text from my parents, and now they’re on their way cuz l'm late for family dinner, so yeah, got to go," Danny points a thumb over his shoulder. Ugh if he's not outside soon, they're gonna totally blow past!

Dick shares a something-kinda look with Tim, who's also suddenly in the doorway.

"You're this worried about your parents picking you up? Are they going to be angry?"

Just as Danny's about to respond that 'no, they're probably more worried he's been kidnapped or something' his phone dings again, this time it's Jazz telling him they're close to his location.

Danny turns about face and jogs to where he thinks he remembers the front door being, nearly sighing in relief at the sight of the massive wooden doors.

Dick is behind him again, "Wait, do your parents need our address?" If Danny didn't know better, he'd think Dick is trying to stall him, but why would he feel the need to do that?

"Nah, they've had me tagged since my sophomore year," Danny says with a smile at the inside joke of why they had to tag him.

He turns and swings open the door just in time to miss the alarm flash across all three brothers' faces.

And just in time to see the Wayne's fancy iron front gates get plowed over by the GAV at high speed.

Danny bursts into a sprint down the front walkway, and with some quick calculations, times his jump for when his Father pulls the GAV around on a single axle, the rest of the tank tracks in the air, the side door swinging open to allow him to land inside and the GAV keeps turning until its made a full 180 degree turn and is screaming back down the Wayne front landscape.

Danny sticks his head out of the back window, "See you in class, Damian!" Then he pulls a contraption out of the window behind him and a second later is sending something rocketing towards Tim's face.

Tim is nearly tipped to the ground by the wad of rolled up cotton slamming into his face at what feels like Mach 3.

Dick pulls it off his face for him with a cautious eyebrow.

He holds it up and is absolutely astounded to see the projectile is a t-shirt with a giant print of a man's massive smiling face and the words,

'SORRY ABOUT THE PROPERTY DAMAGE’

BLAME THE GHOSTS!'

written around the image.

Dick is stunned speechless, lowering the shirt in shock and confusion.

The man's grinning visage is quickly replaced by Bruce's scowl standing in front of him.

Dick grimaces and raises the t-shirt again.

Chapter Text

The next interaction with Daniel Nightingale goes just as normal as any other that Damian’s had with him.

That is to say, mildly odd, a bit disconcerting, but not entirely out of the realm of cultural differences.

Damian is willing to admit a minor, minor, possibility that his superior upbringing may have undue variations in his conceptualization of this, but he digresses.

Damian is currently being subjected to Nightingale’s inane chatter as he walks towards the school exit.

They have just finished their joint presentation and there is no reason! for Nightingale to be trailing next to him.

He is glad to see Richard’s insipid smile in front of the car if it means he will not have to listen to any more.

Damian fully intends to make an artful detachment and demand Pennyworth drive quickly once he enters the car. However, as they exit down the stairs, Damian is forced to dodge as a massive form lunges towards the space next to him.

He quickly realizes they seem to be embracing Nightingale.

“Danno!" The oaf yells, nearly bursting Damian’s eardrums.

He sees Nightingale grimace in the hold, reluctantly returning it before pulling back.

“Daaaaad, you’re embarrassing me.”

The man blinks, then hurriedly sets Nightingale back down, “Of course-“

“Actually Danny, physical displays of affection have been proven to increase familial bonds and lead to a stronger relationship between parents and children,” A clear voice cuts through, and Damian turns to see Nightingale’s sister also descending the stairs with a psychology textbook in hand.

Nightingale rolls his eyes, “Oh yeah? And what does it say about making your kid die of embarrassment?”

The girl scoffs, “Please, Danny, we both know it takes more than that.”

Just as Nightingale goes to open his mouth again, Richard jumps between them with a smile.

“Hey there!” He says, already shaking the largest man’s hand, “I’m Dick, Damian’s older brother, are you Danny’s father?”

The man beams, and Damian can tell the smile reminds Richard of the t-shirt which haunts his dreams, “I sure am! Danno and Jazzie-pants are all my own, best kids I coulda asked for!”

At this, the elder girl also blushes, “Daaad, I asked you not to call me that in public…” she whines, clutching the textbook close.

“Sorry, Jazzie, I’m just too proud! My little girl, getting the first ever Ectopsychology degree!”

“I told you, I’m still in the middle of fighting the board for the major declaration, it’s not official yet,” she says with an air of exasperation.

“I hate to interrupt,” Pennyworth says primly, and Damian could almost embrace him for-“Would you happen to be the same man that drove your… truck on my lawn last week?” Pennyworth says with a raised eyebrow, slashing any of Damian’s hopes of being able to extract themselves from this conversation quickly.

“Oh the GAV!” The man laughs, entirely unbothered by Pennyworth’s stare, “We were picking up ol’ Danny here, I didn’t want our food to get cold back home! It was game night too!”

Dick glances around the front pickup area serendipitously, “I can’t help but notice your GAV is not here,” He says with a disarming smile.

“Oh no,” The man waves him off, “Mads is doing some new mods to it right now, we’re walking home.”

Nightingale groans next to him, “But I have a backpack on, with textbooks!”

“I can carry it for ya, Danny boy!” The man says, easily grabbing the back pack, letting the sister put her book in and then sliding it on, the entire thing comically small on his large back.

“Ready to go?!” The man says, turning oddly towards the building instead of away.

Both Nightingale children nod and then take a running start.

The sister jumps first, using her father as a spring board to reach the second level and then catch her brother and flip him up to the roof proper. He immediately lefts her up next to him.

The fathers gives them a jaunty wave, before the backpack transforms and shoots him up to the roof in one fell jump.

Nightingale was carrying a disguised jetpack for his books!?

Then the trio are off jumping from Gotham Academy’s roof the next adjacent.

They almost expect the father’s large form to be unable to make the wider jumps but it seems he is just as capable as his children, with a jetpack to spot the higher ones.

“I see I shall have to ask Master Bruce for Tank-Resistant garden fence then,” Pennyworth says, turning back to the car, “Again.”

Chapter Text

If one has spent a decent amount of time in an engineering lab, perhaps even been raised above (and in) such a lab, it would come as no surprise that the construction of potentially hazardous items can sometimes be accidental.

Danny’s teachers and classmates evidently do not share this sentiment when he attempts to leave their group to disarm the pipe-bomb in front of them during their field trip to the Gotham railroad museum.

Danny doesn’t get it.

“Once you accidentally make one, you figure out pretty fast how to unmake one,” Danny shrugs in reason, it’s not like it’s hard. Well, it’ll probably be a bit different because it’s not from spare pieces of a microwave but still!

“Microwaves don’t have spare pieces, Danny,” One of the chaperones says. Oh, she must have heard Danny’s mumble.

“Sure they do! Everything has spare pieces if you do it right!” Danny smiles, “Here, watch this!” Danny lunges for the bomb, dodging a reaching arm with practiced expertise.

Once he has his hands on it, he’s pulling his Fenton family goggles from his pocket and the mini toolkit his parents got -made- him for his 12th birthday. Complete with a laser cutter!

Danny uses the magnification of the goggles to get a closer look at the design, holding it up to his face. The timer seems to be a separate connection… hmm.

Danny turns his ear to it, shaking vigorously, but he pauses as shouts sound from behind him sitting criss-cross on the floor.

Except…when he turns around, nothing’s different except the group looking startled and pressing themselves farther against the wall.

“Nightingale!” Damian hisses from the herd, “What are you doing!?!”

Danny tilts his head in confusion, vision tinted slightly green through his goggles, “I’m..deconstructing it??” Danny looks down as he unscrews a few pieces, listening for the disconnection of the timer, “Thought that was obvious,” He grumbles.

Danny pulls his goggles to his forehead to get a better gauge of the wire colors before pulling two of them out. The timer display turns off.

The group seems to sag in relief as the red numbers go dead.

Danny barely notices, looking intently at the object as he turns it in his hands.

Hmmmm.

He flips his goggles back down and reaches blindly for his toolkit. Danny continues unscrewing, grabbing a different screwdriver and his mini weld set, before setting two metal grids to the side and holding it back up.

“See! Spare parts!” He says with a smile.

The green goggle tint prevents him from seeing his chaperone’s face drain of color.

It does not prevent him from seeing Batman crash through the window three seconds later.

Chapter Text

Danny wishes he could say he didn’t have enough time to change it, wishes he hadn’t had the time to run every possibility through in his head and know they wouldn’t work.

He’d had the time.

He wishes he could say his heart didn’t beat erratically in his chest, his brain screaming with adrenaline, wishes he could say he wasn’t afraid of death the second time.

He was.

The truth is, when it happened, Danny’d had the time to send apologies to his mom, to his dad, to regret the weight he’d put on his boss, Mr.Wayne.

And he’d still had one split second left to feel his core burn in his chest as the heat of the solar flare hit him.

—

“As of Monday morning, Wayne Industries officially lost contact with the Anabasis spacecraft and its sole pilot, 22-year old Daniel James Fenton.” Bruce refrains from flinching as camera flashes fill the air and blind him from his position on the podium.

“Despite repeated attempts to regain contact or establish a corrected course, the spacecraft remained unreachable,” Bruce takes a breath, letting the words fill his mouth at a crawl, “As of 13:51 on Tuesday, all signals from the Anabasis and its pilot were completely lost due to increased solar flare activity and the mission has been declared unsuccessful….Wayne Enterprises mourns the loss of a great engineer, and a greater man.”

The words taste just as bitter on his tongue as they had when he’d said them to Jack and Madeline Fenton.

Bruce looks back at the crowd, “Thank you, I will now take questions.”

                 ‘-hired so young-!’

          ‘-any compensation for the family!-‘

‘-is Wayne enterprises responsible-!‘

                                    ‘-an investigation into-!‘

Unbeknownst to anyone, the man who will one day be known as Superman stands among the crowd of reporters and flashing lights.

A fighter pilot in Coast City who will one day be chosen by a Green Lantern ring listens with regret in front of his living room TV.

A young boy from an empty house who will one day fly from the rooftops stares in disbelief at a classroom projection of the event.

Every number of people with incredible destinies watch the press release.

But they don’t know it yet.

No, not quite yet.

—

The day is no different from any other. Bruce gets up, groggily drinks Alfred’s coffee, showers and gets dressed, and goes to work. Just like any other day.

The only way today is different is that Wayne Enterprises has recently ordered the clearing of an old communications sector to make way for a new one.

At least that’s what Bruce thinks right up until a woman he doesn’t know bursts through his doors, arms filled with cables and a vintage satellite communication board with a neon green headset over her ears.

She is flanked by no less than three frazzled security personnel, two Engineering Development Leads, Lucius Fox, and Bruce’s own son, co-CEO Tim Drake-Wayne.

Bruce’s secretary trails in meekly behind them.

Bruce is already standing and ready by the time the group of people reach his desk, a determined yet harried look on the front-woman’s face.

“Mr. Wayne, sir, you have to see this,” She says, before he even has a chance to open his mouth.

“See what?”

“Well… less see and more hear- just, uh wait a second,” The woman scrambles through the tangled cords in her arms, casting a glance to Bruce then to his desk, “May I?”

Bruce nods with no small amount of confusion, surprised when the bundle of technology is dropped unceremoniously onto his desk with a clatter.

“So I was a part of the clear-out crew for the Communications building in Tristate, you probably don’t even remember it, but we were going through just closets and closets of old wires and electronics- I mean it’s just crazy what people will throw away, found an old DS in there-“ the woman rummages through the wires until she finds a long cord and haphazardly plugs it into Bruce’s desk outlet, “Of course, none of this stuff works, I mean it’s been down there for almost two decades, but I-“

“Miss Pecard, if you will? Please.” One of the engineering leads urges.

She glances back at them, then back around, “Right. Right. So we are clearing out these closets right, and none of it works, right?”

She meets his eyes, “Or at least it shouldn’t. But I saw these headphones, and I put them on, just to have more space- and I- Sir, there’s a person on the other side.”

Bruce raises an eyebrow, “Is it picking up an old radio station, why all the-“

She waves her hands at him frantically, “No, you’re not getting it Sir! It wasn’t even plugged in! This specific communication device is from the failed launch of the Anabasis 14  and it is picking up a voice! And I think- I think it sounds like-well, here you go.” She gently lifts the headset off of her own head, holding it out to him.

Bruce casts a look to Tim but gets nothing except urging warning in return.

He wearily takes the headset, holding one side up to his ears.

“-Hello, this is-zzch-mes Fenton, of the - krrrch-sis, please, can any-“

Bruce doesn’t react outwardly except to grip the headset tighter and cast another look to Tim.

He turns to the woman, -Ms.Picard- “Has anyone responded yet?”

“No Sir- uh, well-“ She glances back, “We were waiting for you Sir.”

Bruce takes a deep breath, slips the headset fully on and raises the attached mic to his mouth, “Anabasis, this is Bruce Wayne sending, repeat your signal.”

There’s a laugh on the other side, staticky and broken, but a laugh all the same, “Brucie boy, you’ll nev-krrx-is time, it’s Danny, I’m here, don’t know wh-zrrch-oo dark to tell. What took so lon-kzzch”

“Danny, I’m here, we’re going to come get you, just hang tight, we don’t have good signal but we can hear you.”

“-ank goodness, where else am I go-chhhck”

Bruce lowers the mic and lets his voice turn commanding, “I need that communications room set back up, immediately, everything gets checked, and get a team on finding that signal, NOW!”

“Sir, this is the only speaker receiving the signal, nothing else even turns on, it isn’t even Wayne Tech!” One of the engineering leads steps in.

And indeed, when Bruce looks down at the logo on the communications box, instead of a sleek WE, there lies a bright green F emblazoned on the side, “Lucius,” Bruce looks up, determination filling him, “Find Madeline Fenton and Tucker Foley. The rest of you, we need to move fast but we keep this out of the press for as long as we can. We’re bringing the Anabasis and her pilot home.”

He lifts the mic back up, “We’ve got you Danny, trust us.”

“-n’t have many other op-“

The group begins to scatter, Lucius already dialing a number as he passes through the door, the engineers discussing signal transmitters and Ms.Picard looks hesitantly at the mess of cords on Bruce’s desk before following them out.

Tim is the only one left. He looks at Bruce meaningfully.

“B, the Anabasis mission is nearly 19 years old.”

“Hn.”

“Do we really think Fenton survived up there for that long? Even with recycled air, the food and water wouldn’t sustain someone that long.”

“We’ve seen weirder.”

“True,” Tim pauses, fingers hesitating on the screen pad in front of him, “Are you going to call in the League?”

Bruce stands and sweeps to the hidden compartment of his wall, “We meet in 30.”

He still doesn’t remove the headset.

—

In the end it takes them another three days to bring Danny and the Anabasis back to Earth.

Tucker Foley is instrumental in this, coming in with a stone cold efficiency, razing their equipment to the ground and building it back up in a matter of hours, now able to receive the Anabasis’s signal.

Except the signal doesn’t seem to be coming quite from the Anabasis itself.

Maddy Fenton brushes this off in the same way that Bruce had always remembered her doing, with a tone of voice that brokers no argument and leaves you certain that she has it handled. One way or another.

The only time Bruce doubts her is when she flips an assisting engineer over her shoulder for trying to remove her from the main control panel after 56 consecutive hours awake. It seems that her strength has not diminished with her gray hair.

Bruce has to forcefully remind himself of the figure that used to stand broadly next to her.

(It doesn’t help.)

Bruce is the one to wrangle her to nap on a couch moved in from the lobby, if only because she refuses to head back to a hotel.

Still, when the signal pings a bright constant circle on the outer space system map, Bruce can hardly blame her for jumping straight to the console.

He’s doing much the same, Clark and Hal already on standby and they send the distance coordinates immediately. Telling Danny they’re on their way

Hal reaches it first.

“Green Lantern here, I’m not sure what I’m seeing here- it.. looks like the whole craft is covered in ice. A lot of ice.”

Once again Bruce is irritated that he has to handle this as a civilian.

“We can handle that back on Earth, GL, for now, let’s focus on bringing it back into the solar system first,” Superman cuts in.

“Entry should be able to melt it anyways,” Hal says, before signing off to focus on the task.

Bruce mentally urges him to fly faster, watching the tense frames of both Foley and Maddy as they wait on bated breath for the return.

“Are we close?” Danny’s voice comes through over their speakers.

“Yeah baby, we’re close, you’re almost home hon,” Maddy says, eyes pinned to movement of the dot on the screen.

“I can’t feel movement, are you sure? It’s still too dark to see anything.”

Maddy snaps her head to him, then to Tim next to him, fear in her eyes, and it makes Bruce put a hand to his comm, “Green Lantern, you’re certain you have the Anabasis in your possession?”

“I’m reading the name through the ice right now, Wayne. We’re sure.”

“Entering the solar system just past Jupiter now,” Clark informs them.

Bruce is about to respond an affirmative when he hears a commotion behind the doors and he turns to see a red-headed woman come through.

Notably, she is dragging one of his security team behind her by his wrist.

Jasmine Fenton.

“Really Mom, you just weren’t going to contact me about Danny’s rescue?”

Maddy Fenton steps up, finally looking fully away from the screen, “I didn’t think you’d want to hear it from me, Jazzie-“

“Don’t-“ Jasmine lifts a hand, finally dropping the security guard, “Don’t call me that. I’m here for Danny, not you.”

Bruce nods to the security to back off, letting Maddy watch with a forlorn look as her daughter strides past her and immediately raises a headset to her ears.

Bruce can see the moment her brother’s voice filters through her ears by the way her shoulders drop with relief.

“Danny,” She practically breathes the name, coated with reverence.

Whatever is said between them is kept to individual headsets. As much as Bruce would like to listen in and have all the information, he doesn’t understand Foley’s modifications well enough to listen in yet.

“We’re entering the atmosphere now,” Hal says.

Clark echoes it, “Get medicals on standby-“

“Hey, guys, this ice still isn’t melting…” Hal interrupts, voice wary.

The Fentons and Foley all tense, eyes locked to the screen, to the location blip.

Scenarios run through Bruce’s mind at lightning speed. Ways to melt it, or crack it, though they don’t know what it is and if it’s not melting during reentrance they may not be able to break it. More than that, it’s questionable and likely a part of whatever’s kept Danny alive all these years. If they melt it….

“Mom! Just let me-“

Bruce looks over at Jasmine’s voice, unsurprised to see her hunched over the console talking furiously into the headset, a hand pressed to the ear and the other braced on the control panel.

Whatever she’s saying, he doesn’t hear, but Danny’s voice breaks out over the general speakers.

“I’ll try Jazz, I don’t know if-… but I’ll try,” Danny says earnestly.

Try what?

There’s a moment of tense silence, the sound of wind rushing through the speakers as GL and Superman descend the only sound.

Until, “Did you know-krrshc-Ugh, can’t be called Anaba-sssrch,” his voice is filled with the tells of exertion.

“Danny, you’re breaking up!” Tim yells next to him, and the room flies into movement, engineers scrambling to fix the problem.

Tucker seems to be stuck in place, hands moving reading dials but eyes never leaving the screen.

“The ice is melting, we might be okay here guys,” Hal says, voice layered in wind.

“Come on Danny, you got this, come onnn..” Jasmine says to the screen, to her brother.

“-krrrrch- can’t be called Anabasis, it means to travel up, tech-srrrch-going down, so it’s the Katabasis, from gree-krrrshc -I can’t wait-chrrx - see you aga-AAAAH!!”

A scream cuts off Danny’s words, leaving them all standing with held breaths and urgent hearts.

“The last piece of ice is gone, we’re about to land Mr. Wayne, get ready for us.”

Bruce glances at Tim before motioning for the return committee to follow him as he strides from the room.

Foley and both Fentons are hot on his heels.

None have bothered to remove their neon green headsets, despite the lack of connection to a console.

Bruce arrives at the same time as the medical team on hand, both of them early to watch as Superman gently lowers the metal craft incased in a green shield to the landing pad.

“I’ve got the door,” Clark says, flying around and somehow gently removing it from hydraulic pressure hinges.

The medical team files in immediately, each with a red utility bag clutched in their hands.

They emerge with a field board carried between four of them.

And on it…. Daniel Fenton. Just as he remembers him.

Blue tinges his lips and cheeks, and before they manage to get an emergency blanket over him, Bruce catches a tinge of blue at his fingertips where the gloves are removed.

“He’s practically frozen solid, how he was just responsive is unclear, but we can’t find a pulse or-“ A medic starts.

She is interrupted by Jasmine lunging forward, just to press her forehead to Danny’s chest, and Maddy does the same soon after, Tucker kneeling with a hand linked with Danny’s own.

It feels personal. Like they’re intruding on someone grieving.

The moment is shattered by a loud gasp, Danny’s chest rising with a large enough breath to rise up partially before falling back  down flat.

And his eyes snap open, flashing in the light.

Immediately the gasp turns to more gasping, breathing labored and shallow, sounding like there’s truly no air to bring in.

“Mo--mm..”

The medics rush forward, pushing the Fentons out of the way to place on oxygen mask on him and pull back the spaceflight suit to gain access to Danny’s bare chest.

The room seems to collectively rock backwards on its heels with relief.

Bruce doesn’t.

Because for as amazing as this is, something happened up there.

And Bruce needs to know what.

Not just because of the Anabasis’s recovery.

Not just because Danny is still alive despite all odds.

Not just because Bruce is pretty sure Danny’s eyes flashed green as he woke up.

But because he still looks the exact same as the day he left, nineteen years ago.

Chapter Text

The first they see of the mysterious figure is barely a flicker above the battle. Only a few of them really spot it and the rest only see it due to footage from the bat plane after the fact.

Any other footage after it is the equivalent of a child’s colorful finger-painting regarding the figure.

Superman doesn’t even pause to evaluate the flicker in his peripheral before he goes back to trying to push the newest alien ship away from Metropolis.

Why was it always Metropolis?

Why not St. Louis? Or-or Fountain, Mississippi? Or literally anywhere in Canada! He has nothing against Canada, he just would like to go farther than his city borders to stop an alien invasion, just once. For some variety, you know?

Just as Batman’s plan starts working, and they’ve finally got the mothership on the edge of metropolis, Clark’s grip goes light.

For a moment, he panics, worried they have kryptonite or some shield or repelling ray, but when he’s still able to fly backwards he realizes that’s not possible.

Instead, he stares in awe at the figure stationed above them, above the heroes, the ship, all of it.

The man is large, at least as big as Clark, with one hand stretched out to the ship, and there’s just enough time for Clark to see a large skulled ring on the man’s hand before he swipes downwards and Clark watches as the entire mothership crashes downwards, crushing inwards as if gravity itself has increased upon it.

Clark looks back up at the man, taking note of the large glowing green crown above his head, and the starry black cape that sways gently behind him despite the winds that sheer against Clark’s face. His hair flows gently as well, giving off the same glow as the crown, even though it shouldn’t be visible in the midday sun.

In fact, the man’s entire figure seems to glow, only getting brighter as he holds his arms out and streams of sickly green light seem to stream towards him from around the city, around the battle site, all absorbing into the man with a green flash.

Clark only spares a glance to Batman to get an affirming nod to check it out before he’s flying up to him, hesitance growing as he watches the figure survey the damage with eyes of pupiless green.

The figure smirked as he approached, meeting him in the middle but saying nothing, only serving to increase the tension in the air around them.

When they were even, Clark chose to take the first step of diplomacy, “I am Superman, Protecter of Earth. Thank you for helping us, But..Who are you?”

The figure stared at him for a long time, eyes boring into his skull with an intensity not unlike Batman’s. The feeling of judgement being passed weighed down on his shoulders before, finally, they spoke,

“I am High King Phantom of the Infinite Realms of the Eighth Dimension,” Power radiated through his voice, “The Great One, Feller of the Tyrant Pariah Dark, Tamer of Vortex, Conquerer of My Future Now Past, Keeper of Death and Life, Wielder of the Ring of Rage, Bearer of the Crown of Fire and The One True Balance.”

Superman felt an icy grip around his heart as he took in everything those titles could mean. And if his experience with extra dimensional beings was anything to go by…

“You are well met, Superman, Protector of… Earth.”

The king seemed to hesitate on the name, indicating maybe an unfamiliarity with it, but then why would he be here.

Superman composed himself, remember the diplomatic training of the league, “And.. Your Majesty is here because…?” Words seemed to escape him as he stared into those eyes.

Silence reigned between them again, tense and still, not even the king’s cape seemed to move anymore.

“You will find out all in due time, Superman of Earth,” He paused and glanced around them, eyes suddenly clarifying to just two Lazarus green irises, “But for now, I am here simply to observe.”

Without pausing, the king began to fly down to where Clark could see the other heroes congregating.

Superman followed just in time for Batman to step forward and ask him for an introduction and more importantly, information.

Clark jumped in to avoid the amalgam of ominous titles, simply saying, “Batman, this is King Phantom of the Eighth Dimension. He’s.. visiting?”

Batman raised a patented bat glare at him, “Eighth dimension, is that at all related to your troubles with a certain fifth dimensional imp?”

That’s exactly what Superman had thought but by Rao he hoped not. Just as he was about to reply though, King Phantom cut in with a flare of his glow.

“Watch your tongue, Man of Bats, accuse me of being a fifth dimensional pest again and we shall see how long you last in no dimensions at all,” the king paused to look down at him, “Mortal.”

Chapter Text

It all started with a dare really. You’d think, after all these years, after having done at least a bit of growing up, Danny would be able to refuse a dare from his best friend.

But here he was, about to drop through a mystic portal with full intentions to make Tucker eat his words.

And Sam too, for agreeing!

“Come on Danny, times a ticking, sands a wasting.” Tucker said in a sing song voice, floating behind the portal lazily.

“Yeah, Danny, we didn’t spend two days finding the perfect dimension just for you to chicken out,” Sam said, laying on her back in the air and pretending to inspect her nails.

Danny felt his eye twitch.

“I told you, Sam, he couldn’t be mysterious and mystical if he tried, even under pain of a double. Dog. Dare.” Tucker emphasized.

Danny whipped his head around, staring his best friend in the eyes, “You really think so Tucker? A double dog dare?”

Tucker smirked, leaning back with his arms crossed and a smug look, “I know so.”

“Then prepare to eat Lunch Lady’s hairnet, Tuck, you’re on!” Danny grinned and shot backwards through the portal.

He relished the way Tuckers face went green as he passed through. Well, greener.

Danny turned invisible the moment he felt the resistance of a dimensional barrier go past him, and boy was that the right decision, the whole place was in chaos.

Danny floated invisibly in the sky with a puzzled look on his face. Was that guy… flying? What in the-?

A laser beam passed through him, making Danny look down to see he was intangible, but why? Could he be tangible again? He focused, and yep, there he was, tangible and visible- visible?! Danny lost focus and disappeared again.

Hmm, okay so looks like his default state here is invisible and intangible but like even more so than back home, interesting.

Danny looked back at where the laser came from, surprised to see an entire ship behind him. And not like a pirate ship, oh no, not even a cruise liner, a big, bony looking alien ship.

Danny wanted to squeal! Aliens! This realm had aliens!

Calm down Danny, remember the dare, mysterious, mystical, think, what gives off big mystical vibes?

Ok, first off, royalty. Danny summoned his crown, ring, sword, and cape, ok good but what else?

Eldritch maybe?

He’s already got fangs, and blue skin, he could probably let his hair be a little more free floaty, and he’s already a full grown adult with shoulders like his dad, that should be enough right?

Another laser shot through him.

Rude!

He looked back, surprised to see a group of people aiming weapons at the big alien ship.  He looked closer.

Was the… was the alien ship trying to… to crush this city?

Were these…. bad aliens?

Noooooo, that meant he had to stop them! But he likes aliens!

Danny reluctantly reared up to punch the big ship, pausing when he saw how the other flying people were struggling against it.

Super-strength? Now there was mysterious and mystical.

He smirked, oh he had the perfect entrance!

Thank youuu Kingly strength.

Danny positioned himself in front above the ship then created a double actually touching the ship.

He let himself appear, keeping his double invisible as he held out a hand and then swiped it down, using the double to push the ship into the ground.

Luckily, as Danny had just noticed, the ship seemed to be floating just outside the main city area and most everything below it was already destroyed.

Err, well, it certainly was now.

He fought the urge to wince. Mystical powerful beings in the sky don’t wince, Danny.

Still, he looked around at all the destruction. He hadn’t been back in a human realm since his own life, and the destruction had been common place then too, in his own hometown at least.

This was… worse, much worse. He really had to hold back a grimace as he saw a couple ghosts start forming on the edges, he could feel that they were feeding off of his own ambient ectoplasm.

Yikes okay, maybe giving a source of brand new ectoplasm at the sight of a disaster was not the best idea but… he could fix this!

Danny held out his arms, calling the newly formed ghosts to him, letting them use him as a portal to the Zone.

And then he very quickly locked up his aura from releasing more. No one saw that right?

He stood there floating for a minute before he saw the blue and red flying man begin to approach him.

He smirked again, aw yeah time to see if it worked!

Danny lowered himself marginally to meet the man in the middle.

“I am Superman,” Weird name but okay, “Protector of Earth. Thank you for helping us. But…” Superman looked hesitant, “Who are you?”

Aw crap, okay think Danny, big dramatic name, do NOT blurt out your real one. Double dog dare, come on think of something, anything, you have been staring for way too long-

“I am High King Phantom of the Infinite Realms of the Eighth Dimension; The Great One, Feller of the Tyrant Pariah Dark, Tamer of Vortex, Conquerer of My Future Now Past, Keeper of Death and Life, Wielder of the Ring of Rage, Bearer of the Crown of Fire and The One True Balance.” Danny blinked slowly, hoping that was ‘mystical’ enough for Sam because ancients he was really running out of coronation titles there.

“You are well met Superman, Protector of… Earth.”

Hang on. Earth? He was on Earth? Not his Earth but really this was Earth? With Aliens?

He wanted this to be his Earth, dang it why did he have to get the boring ghost invested one?!!

The man looked like he wanted to back up by about thirty steps so.. it worked?

“And.. Your Majesty is here because…?”

Danny stopped his gentle float.

Uhhh. Uhh. Okay good reason, think of a good reason to be here. Visiting? No that’s dumb, it’s not a zoo. Uhh, curious, no that’s not mysterious enough! Okay mysterious, mysterious, think mysterious. OooOooooOo, MysTeRIouSssss.

Who does he know that’d be mysterious enough to pull this off?

…

Clockwork!

Okay, what would Clockwork say? Uhhhh

“You will find out all in due time, Superman of Earth,” Was that good? No that sounded threatening, “But for now, I am here simply to observe.” That was better right, okay leave before he asks more questions.

Danny floated down to where the other colorfully dressed people stood in a semi-circle.

Well colorful and one in all black.

“Superman, who is this?” The one in all black said with a glare as he stepped forward.

Danny opened his mouth to recite the titles again, points for mystical-ness, when he was cut off.

“Batman, this is King Phantom of the Eighth dimension, he’s… visiting?”

‘Batman’ raised an eyebrow under his cowl, “Eighth dimension, is that at all related to your troubles with a certain fifth dimensional imp?”

Now Danny felt justified in being at least a little offended, “Watch your tongue, Man of Bats,” that was a sufficiently mystical naming right?, “Accuse me of being a fifth dimensional pest again and we shall see how long you last in no dimensions at all,” Danny paused, “Mortal.”

Hah in your face Tucker, he was so good at this!

Chapter Text

Nearly an entire year and a half after he arrives to live with his father, Damian recognizes Wayne manor for the safe haven that it is. One that he hasn’t had for years.

He realizes that perhaps he would like to stay here.

And if he wants to stay here… there are some things he left behind at the League.

More specifically someone.

It takes him 4 more months of waiting for the right moment before he realizes that he may well never find a right time.

After that it takes another month and a week to actually say anything

Predictably, it’s all Drake’s fault.

Him and his inane demand to watch the ghost busting movie.

But… the movie is also what introduces him to the concept of ghosts.

After that he does his own research. After all, they can’t all be mindless snot-formen blobs. Right?

When he comes upon Casper The Friendly Ghost, Damian finds he may actually have the vocabulary necessary to broach the subject.

He chooses to do so in the mid-afternoon before patrol. Father is in the cave already, searching for cases and wrapping up old ones. Nothing pressing is happening, not for at least another 2 weeks on Halloween.

“Father?”

“Hn?” His father tilts his head in his direction but gives no other indication he’s listening.

“Do you remember the ghost movie Drake forced us to watch a week and a half ago?”

“Hm.”

“I-“ Damian feels his mouth close around the words, “I think perhaps- I believe I’ve met one of these… spirits.”

Here, his father turns partially, one hand still on the computer console but now facing him.

It makes it both better, and so so much worse.

Damian looks down, arguing with himself over staying proud and deferring to his father.

“At the League. And I think he-it-he is still there.”

Father turns in his chair completely now, even standing up and coming to kneel in front of Damian.

“Damian, is it a person? You said it was a.. ghost? How do you know about them?”

Damian avoids looking in his fathers eyes, “I do not know if he is a ghost, I did not know what a ghost was until this month but I cannot help but to make the comparison, even if to me- to me he has always just been-“ Damian takes a breath and then makes the eye contact he’s been so dreading, “Danyal is my brother, and I think, when he died, I think he became a ghost.”

There’s no reaction except the widening of his father’s eyes.

“Your-“

“His existence was a secret of the highest level, his demise… even more so.”

“How do you know he- If it was the pits is he not just revived?”

“He and Grandfather fought, D-Danyal lost, of course, and when he was put into the pits… it, didn’t work. Mother was furious for days, disappearing and threatening to send me to you without Grandfather’s permission, then one day, she stopped. I didn’t know why, until I heard my brothers voice in the halls myself,” Damian doesn’t know how to stop and his father doesn’t tell him to, so he keeps going.

“I would see him sometimes then, though he looked different, wandering or running through an old training sequence of our youth. The more I interacted with him, in the quiet moments I saw him alone, the more he became.. tangible, physical, it was like he was back.

Mother, she never mentioned it directly, but she made it clear that his presence like that, it wasn’t something we could tell grandfather. So I didn’t, I kept it a secret between just us, and I suppose it was easier to keep a secret when one of us was dead.

I did not think I should tell you if I would just be returning there, but now… I do not want to go back and so I cannot leave him there alone, without any of you, any of the family that was supposed to know him before me.”

Silence reigns through the room as Damian finally meets his father’s eyes.

“Damian I-“ He paused, eyes filling with steel, “We’ll bring him home, Damian. I promise.”

Chapter Text

“You ever look at someone and wonder how hard it would be to get past their defenses and stab them?”

Damian snapped his head to the side, looking at the young boy now standing beside him.

The boy put his hands up in front of him with a wince, “Not that I ever do that. Totally not, whaaaat???”

Damian huffed and turned back around to watch the gala participants.

“It’s just you kinda looked like you were contemplating the logistics of stabbing Mrs.Halterguild for squeezing your cheeks.”

Damian scowled.

Then, after a moment’s beat, “It would not be very difficult. She is nearly blind in her left eye, I would be able to approach without repost.”

The kid hummed, turning back as well before motioning to another group to the far right, “What about Mr. Beckensmith, he’s a retired vet right?”

Damian rolled his eyes and scowled harder, “The man has only seen the battlefield of an office as he bribed his way from being fully enlisted and instead managed to pay for increasing higher ranks and medals. He is a disgrace.”

The kid cocked his head to the side, looking suspicious for a second and then nodding with concession, “Fair enough, I bet I could get close enough too.”

Damian scoffed.

“What, don’t believe me?”

Damian leveled a doubtful glare at the civilian, making it clear by looking him up and down, “Hardly.”

The other smirked dangerously, “If I can get close enough to poke him and get away without being noticed, will you believe me?”

Damian narrowed his eyes but nodded succinctly and watched as the boy immediately took off, making a few loops around other people before finally backing up to Mr. Beckensmith and poking him on the opposite side as a group moved past.

Damian pursed his lips. Interesting. Certainly better than he would expect from an amateur and an amateur civilian at that.

When the boy returns to his side Damian brushes off the asks of meaningless praise.

“Come on, I did it, now you have to go poke Mrs. Halterguild without getting caught.

Damian sneers, “And why would I do that?”

“Because I don’t believe you either, the woman’s old but I bet she sees you and squeezes your cheeks again. Old ladies just have a sixth sense for that stuff you know.

Damian nearly growls but sets off on his task. He makes sure to stay on her left side, but the woman turns at the last second, forcing Damian to use a passing waiter as cover to remain hidden and finally get close enough to poke her gaudy dress.

Then he sidles back up to the boy on the edges and provides his best ‘I am more capable than you’ scowl. The boy simply laughs and says, “Who’s next?”

They spend the night like that, choosing each other’s targets to attack non-lethally as though they were attempting to stab them, and Damian finds the gala going by in a significantly less tedious manner.

Right up until the boy laughs at him when he chooses a target. Only one bark of laughter escapes, but it is enough for Damian to consider stabbing him as well. If only with a butter knife.

Instead, Damian grinds his teeth and asks, “What is so different about Vlad Masters, do you really believe you would be unable to succeed?”

The other gives a breathless chuckle, “I’m pretty sure even you wouldn’t be able to successfully stab Vlad Masters,” The boy’s shoulders sag even as his jaw tightens with irritation, “He sees everything.”

Damian narrows his eyes. Something naws at the back of his brain but currently the critique of his capabilities takes precedence.

“I would be capable of stabbing Masters even without my favored sword,” Damian scowls and stands taller with annoyance.

“Sure you can, man,” At this, the boy quirks a sharp smile, “If you can actually get him, I’ll personally get you a magic sword,” he says with an air of amused indulgence. Like he thinks Damian is some insipid child saying he will find a fairy.

Damian grits his teeth and shakes the other’s hand, then immediately sets off after his target. How dare this civilian question him! He is the Son of the Bat, this is not even a challenge!

Damian growls as his approach is thwarted for the third time by the man turning in his direction and almost spotting him. How dare he! He will not fail!

Just as he reaches to jab the man in the side, already poised to make his escape, Masters whips around and clamps his hand around Damian’s wrist with a vice grip.

“Really Daniel I thought we were over-“ Masters pauses, looking at Damian critically as he glares at the man’s offending hand, “You are not young Daniel.”

“Remove your hand from my person at once,” Damian growls.

Instead of listening to Damian’s very sensible directions, Masters tightens his grip and twists his arm, most likely in an attempt to hurt him.

“Now why is a child attempting to-“

Damian doesn’t wait to hear the rest of the man’s words, sliding a dagger into his other hand and swinging towards him, until that hand is caught as well.

“Heh-Hey there!”

Damian snaps his head to the side just in time to see Grayson take his dagger and slide it into his pocket. He ignores the bark of laughter he hears from across the room.

Masters’ hand disappears from his arm suspiciously fast, “Mr. Wayne, what a pleasure!”

Damian looks over his other shoulder to see his father standing behind him, a thin smile on his face, “Vladimir!”

His father’s figure quickly obscures his vision, putting an arm over Masters’ shoulders in a way that clearly irritates the man but forces him to follow as he is steered away.

“Dami, I thought we talked about the stabbing at formal events,” Grayson says through a strained smile as he looks over the crowd to make sure no else saw.

“Tt, it was merely a demonstration of my skills, he was in no real danger until he refused to release me. I simply sought to correct that mistake.”

Grayson pinched the bridge of his nose, “Demonstration for who, Dames? We all already know your skills.”

“Tt,” Damian scowled and turned away.

Instead of pushing it, Grayson simply sighsheavily, “Just, stay out of trouble for the rest of the gala okay? We’re almost done.”

Damian scoffs, waiting for Grayson to leave. Once he did, Damian finally looks over to where he had been lingering with the boy.

Gone.

Clearly he’d taken the cowards way out when he’d seen that Damian had been accosted by Masters.

Pitiful.

Damian spends the rest of the night scowling from the wall and looking surreptitiously for a head of black hair blue eyes unrelated to him.

Of course it wasn’t until they were actively leaving that Damian sees him.

He immediately splits off from his family, nearly stomping over to the boy. He reaches to grab the other by the shoulder when the boy spins around, blue eyes meeting Damian’s green.

“You,” Damian sneers.

“Me,” The other shrugs. He had an amused smile on his face, though it was strained at the edges.

They stare in silence for a minute, before the other’s smile grows and sharpens once more, “I didn’t expect you to actually try to stab him, y’know,” A slight laugh escapes him, “Not that it was unwelcome by any means, but still, unexpected.”

Damian scowls again, glaring at this foolish civilian.

“Oh, I never introduced myself did I?!”

The boy exclaims and holds out a hand, smile dangerous, “Daniel Fenton. Or if we’re being technical,” a pause as Damian finally returns the gesture and finds his hand trapped, “Daniel Masters, a pleasure to meet you Damian.”

“Hurry up little badger,” A voice says beside them, and Damian notices that it is indeed Vladimir Masters.

The man approaches, placing a heavy hand on Fenton’s shoulder, making the boy go taut, and then they both step into a dark car, leaving Damian on the front steps.

Damian’s anger flares and he shoots a glare directly to the boy getting into the car. It dies the moment they meet eyes and Damian sees the fear hiding in the other’s eyes.

Fear that Damian is all too familiar with.

Fear that reminded Damian of himself. Reminded him of his own eyes when he’d been under his grandfather.

But why did Fenton look like that?

Chapter Text

Dick sat in the tensely quiet car trying his best not to fidget. It’s not entirely silent of course, Barbara is talking over the radio to Bruce about the nights oncoming patrol and Bruce is… not contributing to the conversation, but a part of it at the very least.

Maybe it’s just Dick feeling the near purposeful silence coming from Damian in the backseat. He’d been irritated about being the only other one coming to the gala, and sure, they’d had that hiccup with the stabbing attempt, but that was par for the course.

Dick thought he’d handled it well, all sharp pointy things considered.

Clearly not, if the pensive storm of silence emanating from behind him was any key.

“So Damian…” Dick starts, unsure, but hey it’s not like he can expect Bruce to notice, “I just wanted to make sure everything was okay after the gala.”

A pause.

“Everything. Is Fine.” Damian grits out.

Even Bruce perks up at the tone, so something is definitely up.

“Be that as it may…I wanted to make sure you didn’t take my words wrong, I just thought we’d gotten past-“

“It was not you,” Damian snaps.

Dick blinks, sharing a moment of questioning eye contact with Bruce next to him.

Just as he opens his mouth to speak again, Damian interrupts.

“It was Masters.”

Dick quirks an eyebrow, “The guy you tried to stab?”

Damian’s face twists into a sneer, “Yes. Though if he had not tried to restrain me I would not have been so tempted to maim him. The encounter was merely meant to be a practice hit, a….” Damian looks away out the window, “A demonstration.”

“You said that before. A demonstration for who, Damian?”

His face resets into his typical scowl and for a second, Dick thinks that’s all they’ll get, that he’ll leave it there, but Damian turns away from the window to look down at his hands clenched in his lap.

“There was… a boy. With Masters,” Damian finally makes eye contact through the rearview mirror, “We.. interacted during the festivities, demonstrating our shared capabilities to move past other’s defenses.”

Dick squints, blinking repeatedly as he tries to decode Damian’s words, “You guys spent the night…. pretend stabbing people?”

“Tt. It was nothing so juvenile,” Damian scoffs, “We simply found our interests for the evening aligned and shared a demonstration to each other. As I said.”

“Of course,” Dick nods seriously despite the smile on his face, “But why does that have your feathers ruffled, Baby bat?”

Damian takes a deep breath, eyelids flickering closed for a second, and when they made eye contact again, his eyes were softer than Dick had ever seen him.

“He was afraid. After my interaction with Masters, he disappeared. I thought he ran. But he was accepting of my approach just before our departure…” Damian pauses, “He was only afraid in Masters’ presence.”

Dick watches in his peripheral vision as Bruce’s knuckles tighten over the steering wheel.

They’re already on the bridge, it’s too late to take a shorter route directly to the cave. But oh how Dick wishes it wasn’t, this has everything wrong written all over it.

“What was his name?” Dick can feel the Nightwing seep into his voice and tries to control it.

“Daniel Fenton, though he said that it would be Daniel Masters by technicality.”

Bruce taps the speaker button of their radio, keying in Oracle, “Compile information on Vladimir Masters, and any connections to a Daniel, surname alternatively Fenton and Masters both, as well as a timeframe of interaction and all film from tonight’s gala. Both were present,” Bruce orders as they enter Bristol.

“On it,” Oracle’s distorted voice replies. Dick can almost imagine her nod as her face sets and she gets to work.

“Father?”

Dick looks back at Damian, finding him staring intently at Bruce’s gruff profile in the front seat.

“Trusting your instincts is one of the most primary parts of being a detective,” Bruce recites, “I’m trusting your instincts, Damian. If you’re suspicious of Masters, we will follow through.”

Damian’s eyebrows raise slightly, eyes widening, “Oh.”

Any response is cut short by their arrival to the Batcave through a side entrance. Oracle already has the files on the large screen, details still appearing as she works. Clearly Dick is going to need to remind her to sleep tonight.

“Vlad Masters, millionaire packers fan, modest beginnings, lab accident in college, came out of it and immediately began a rise to riches through suspiciously beneficial business deals,” Oracle reads out as she adds more business contracts to the screen, “Sounds like that lab accident was the most beneficial thing, he’s likely an early age meta.”

Bruce hums lowly in agreement, and Dick can already tell his mind is spinning with contingencies and plans.

Oracle continues, “Reconnected with Madeline and Jack Fenton, mutual friends from college now married, and moved to a small town in Illinois to be closer after their reunion. Became mayor of that small town and after the parents left to travel abroad, on Vlad’s funding, and with the sister away for college, he is now guardian of one Daniel Masters nee Fenton, due to one spectacularly expedited name change and a handful of temporary guardianship papers.”

Bruce’s eyes narrow as he stares up at the images on the screen, a young Vlad, some pictures of press reports after his business deals, his mayoral election, and a handful of shots of him standing next to a young black-haired teenager.

Dick catalogs the tenseness of the teenager in every picture, and feels an uncomfortable familiarity to Slade at the look in Vlad’s eyes.

It makes his own shoulders tense with the feeling of being owned. Possessed.

“This sleazebag is the reason Barbie practically confiscated the Batcomputer from me?”

Dick turns to see Jason walk out from their armory storage, everything but his helmet on. Making the sneer he casts at the screen perfectly visible.

“Hood,” Bruce grunts.

“Don’t worry, old man, I’ll be out of here soon, I was running some forensics before O kicked me off,” Jason says as he walks past them with heavy footsteps.

“We have a case,” Bruce says, making Dick roll his eyes. Really? Not a single hint of ‘I’m happy to see you, Jason’?

“What, rich guy taking in a black-haired blue eyed kid? Gee, sounds familiar. Someone stealing your act, B?” Jason looks back as he reaches his motorcycle, “I’ll keep an eye out for any child soldiers in leotards- oh wait,” He casts them a deadpan look before hooking a leg over his bike.

“Hood-“ Dick starts.

“Besides,” Hood snarls, slamming his red helmet on his head, “You wouldn’t like the way I deal with him.”

The retreating roar of his engine is enough to push Dick towards the batcomputer instead of watching Bruce stare longingly down the tunnel.

What he sees paints an increasingly bad picture. One that’s unfortunately pretty close to what they expected.

“B, come look at this,” Dick calls, feeling the weight of his presence approach over his shoulder.

“We don’t have an accurate timeline for their first meeting, but if Daniel’s dip in grades is any indication, Vlad has been around for barely two years, and now he’s Daniel’s guardian? Something’s wrong with that picture Bruce.”

“Hn.”

Dick continues flickering through the compiled history, now more recent, “Traveling away from Daniel’s hometown, homeschooling him, B, this is textbook isolation.”

“Tt, clearly Fenton required my demonstration so he can attempt it himself. If I was thwarted then his own chances of success against Masters are abysmal,” Damian sniffs.

“That’s why we’re here. Get suited up, we’ll add a stakeout to tonight’s patrol,” Bruce says, turning to the suit cases in a way that’s meant to make the bat cape swirl ominously.

Dick glances one last time at the blown up image of Vlad Masters on the screen, his cold eyes seem to loom over them. Even by the same scale, Daniel Fenton looks small next to him.

Determination rises as Dick turns on his heel over to his own suit.

Time to get to work.

—

Danny stares at the dull eggshell white of the hotel suite’s ceiling above his bed. Despite the lights being off, he knows it’s eggshell white and not the beige-blue it appears to be because he spent most of the daylight hours staring at it too.

Danny tries not to think about the fact Vlad is barely a room away.

He tries not to think of the fact that Vlad sent his parents an entire ocean away.

He tries not think of the fact that Vlad has torn him away from the place he’s known all his life, tries not to think of how he’s stuck here, how he’s stuck with Vlad, can’t get away from him, no matter how he tries, tries not to think of the times that he’s not even in control of his own body, trapped in his own mind with his powers tucked away under chains, of the times that Vlad simply makes him act like his perfect son.

Danny snaps his eyes open.

The eggshell white ceiling stares back at him.

He traces the pale light shining across it from the window until a shadow rushes past it.

Immediately, Danny whips his head to the window, raising from the bed with a sense of curiosity.

He stares out of the window into Gotham’s streetlit darkness, and thinks he sees something dipping through the shadows

Danny again curses Vlad, slamming his fist in irritation at the loss of his night vision. It’s too soon after the taser but he still tries anyways, feeling nothing but the sore tugging of his core in return and the flicker of green eyes in the window.

The hair on his arms prickles.

Just as he’s about to turn away from the window to continue staring aimlessly at the ceiling, a hand clamps down on his shoulder.

“Little Badger,” Vlad’s voice purrs lowly, “Watching the nightlife are we?”

Danny knows better than to shrug off Vlad’s hand, but that doesn’t stop the urge to drive his elbow into the fruit loop’s sternum, “I was just heading to bed,” He says almost robotically. He just wants this interaction to be over.

As he tries to turn away, Vlad’s hand tightens to keep him in place, “Ah ah ah, Daniel, I want to have a conversation with you,” The grip turns painful and Danny grits his teeth, “It’s bad manners to walk away from someone when they’re talking to you.”

Danny lets himself be turned enough to face Vlad, even just to glare at him, “What? Our little talk earlier wasn’t enough for you? You gonna tase me again like you did at the gala?”

Vlad scowl turns into a vicious sneer, “We can have this argument as many times as you need, Daniel. You are mine, I’ve sent your parents on their dream haunted tour of Europe instead of simply killing your imbecilic father, so perhaps instead of fighting me, you should be grateful.”

Danny sighs through clenched teeth, “What did you want, Vlad?”

Vlad hesitates, eyes scanning him for disobedience before speaking, “I have a business meeting tomorrow-“

“And let me guess, you want me to tag along to make you look good?” Danny scowls.

Vlad’s eyes darken in warning, “I’d thought after Chicago you’d desire to stay back,” he pauses to let Danny remember, “Perhaps I was wrong?” He questions with a raised eyebrow.

Danny feels his heart jump a beat, his muscles tense, remembering the sight of Vlad possessing the CEO, forcing the man to hold a gun to his own head, of knowing exactly the feeling of trying to fight your own body- because that moment had been one of the very first times in months Danny had been free from under Vlad, and it was only because Vlad needed to prove a point to Danny, only because Danny had tried to reach out, had tried to help someone else-

And someone else had paid the price.

So instead of cutting back with any number of scathing, cutting insults, Danny swallows his words and simply nods.

“I’ll stay here.”

Vlad smiles, smarmy and smug, “Good choice Daniel,” He lifts his hand away to wave it in the air as he talks, “I’ll have food delivered of course, make sure to keep up with your studies, I’d hate to have a repeat of last time and have to teach your lessons personally."

Danny clenches his fists by his sides, nails digging into his palms, “Of course not.”

“And Daniel?” Vlad says, stopping at the door.

“What, Fruitloop?”

Vlad’s eyes glow deadly red as he expands his aura over the suite room, “Don’t ever embarrass me at a Gala like that again.”

Danny forces himself to meet Vlad’s eyes, “I won’t,” he whispers.

Vlad shuts the door solidly behind him, leaving Danny alone.

Chapter Text

It is nearing 3am when Tim receives the perimeter alarm for Drake Manor.

He furrows his eyebrows at the little pop-up on the Batcomputer.

“Hey… Steph..?” He slowly turns his chair, keeping his eyes fixed on the screen until the last moment.

Steph pops her head up from her post-patrol stretches, “Yeah Timmers?”

“You want to come check out a perimeter alarm at my old house?” He says, already buckling his utility belt back on over his civilian clothes.

Steph shrugs as she gets to her feet, “Sure, why not.”

By the time they get there, whoever has tripped the sensors is gone from the immediate boundaries.

Tim starts into the darkened pine woods in front of him, Steph grumbles but follows.

They get hardly a minute in before there’s a large crash and a scream. Immediately, they take off running towards the sound.

What they approach is something he doesn’t think even Batman could have predicted.

Danny Nightingale is there, because of course he is, and he is hanging upside down from a tree branch.

A very high tree branch; about 15ft off the ground tree branch.

There’s also a telescope hanging from his outstretched arm, the other he lifts to wave at them, “Oh hey Tim.”

Tim’s arm waves without his permission, “… hey…Danny..”

Danny goes back to whatever he was doing before they arrived, which… apparently was trying to climb the tree without letting go of the telescope. Weren’t those heavy??

Suddenly a voice called down from above them, “Do you want some help, dear?!”

Tim and Steph snapped their heads upwards, staring in awe at the woman standing at the top of the tallest pine tree Tim had ever seen.

It swayed in the gentle wind. Or maybe that was the weight of Danny moving around on its lower branches. Who could tell really.

“No I’ve got it Mom!” Danny shouted back up, finally able to leverage himself into a sitting position.

“Is your whole family up there!? What’re you doing out here?” Tim asked, bewildered as the shadowed woman shifted again to look up.

“No..” Danny looked at him like he said something stupid, “It’s just us obviously, it’s not like Dad would fit on these trees.”

“Right…. Obviously,” Tim responded skeptically, watching as Danny slowly struggled to reach up to the next branch without releasing the telescope.

“I’m… ugh… star… come on.. just star… gazingghh… whabout… gruhhhh. What about you? Aha!” Danny got one branch up, cheering with telescope raised.

Only for it to immediately throw off his balance and he slipped over the side with a screech, making Tim and Steph lurch forward with their hearts in their throats until he caught himself on it like a sloth.

Steph wheezed with her eyes wide, “At least we know what the scream was from. You almost died!”

“I almost dropped my telescope is what I did! Alright, one more try….” Danny begun the struggle anew, “So why are you out here Tim, with friend to boot?”

Tim glanced at Steph, “I used to live here. I was checking the property alarm.”

“Huh.” Danny shrugged as he got upright, “Didn’t know it was private property. That’s probably where that fence Dad pulled off the GAV came from. He was surprised it’d managed to scratch the bumper.”

Tim felt his spirit die a little more, “Good to know.”

He watched confused as Danny looked at the tree and his telescope and then back at the tree, before collapsing the tripod limbs and tucking it close to his back under his jacket, zipping it up so he looked like a gorilla carrying its child… then proceeding to clamber up the tree like a goddamn spider.

Steph grabbed his arm roughly, face twisted in dismay, “How the hell-“

Tim sighed, closing his eyes as he watched the mother and son set up a no doubt expensive telescope precariously on the upper branches and then start stargazing.

Nevermind that they were 40 feet in the air.

“Steph, meet the Nightingales. They’re new to Gotham.”

Chapter Text

It takes Danny an embarrassingly long time to actually make it to Gotham to confront Timothy Drake-Red Robin-Original Owner of Thine Genes.

Correction, Danny thinks he deserves to have taken his sweet time about it and will continue to do so; Ted Tobin on the other hand... thinks Danny needs to get his priorities straight and hurry it up, he was Robin for goodness sakes!
Five months? Really?!

Danny thinks Ted Tobin needs to shuzhhh because they both know that two of those months were spent trying to figure out where Danny ended and Tim began, and then even more so where Tim ended and Red Robin began.

Because of course his new body had identity issues free with purchase.

After finally figuring out how to deal with the Danny in Tim mind situation, (there was a rough couple of months he called himself Tanny,) Danny unabashedly decided he didn't want to deal with the default identity crisis and squished it into one manageable little box he labeled 'Ted Tobin.’

The voice that sounded like Jazz said that was ignoring his issues, but Jazz also sounded like the child therapist Jack and Janet Drake had sent him to so he'd get labeled a genius, so he ignored it.

He'd spent five months abroad, struggling to pick up behind his original -No, Bad Danny you are your own person- behind his doppelgänger on the search for Bruce.

He finds out Bruce was stranded in time just too late enough to be there to bring him back. He figures they probably don't want him there anyway, so he takes what he knows about time travel from Clockwork and conspicuously sprinkles it into First Tim's path.

He only had to actually impersonate the original once, and it's all too easy to let Danny fade to the background and let Tim, in all his collected calm calculation, manipulate the situation.

It works, thankfully, and he hopes he doesn't have to do it again. (He doesn't know that he could.)

Once he hears that Bruce is back, that he completed his mission, what he set out to do, the reason he became Red Robin in the first place, Danny becomes more Danny, but this time, Tim doesn't fade out like he had at first, which is what caused the Tanny situation.

And after finally, finally, figuring out the identity crisis, Danny really started to get sick of people calling him Red Robin- okay they didn't call him that exactly but one can only hear 'Hey aren't you that vigilante from Gotham-' so many times before one has to stop.

So he switched up the Red Robin outfit he'd been wearing since waking up in- or rather out of- The Pod.

(He only took it off for rare occasions, but 'Hey aren't you that rich kid from Gotham' is less easy to change with a color swap of his Kevlar.)

The dark grey (not black, the family would think it's threatening) base color, with gray fading and green accents like his bandoliers (It's a callback to Robin, just enough color to keep firmly in the child-vigilante category so they're less likely to attack), heck even the lower face mask with a domino suits the new him better.

Ha, suits.

Anyway!- Danny takes another sip of his coffee and returns his mask to his mouth- He was in Gotham now and that was that.

New suit. New memories. New him!

Danny is currently remotely hacking into his own comm channels and his- no-Tim's gauntlet from the upper business side of Gotham.

From there it's short work to ping off one of Tim's trackers still laced into Danny's suit hem and he knows it'll send them running. The calculating and paranoid part of him wants to investigate first, test the waters, maybe watch(stalk) the now reunited family; but the reckless punch-ghost-now-do-homework-later part of him says that's not worth it and it's better to confront them now.

He doesn't even have to guess to know which side won that debate.

Not Ted Tobin that's for sure.

"Red Robin, l've got your distress beacon in the financial district, what's wrong?"

"Your tech must be glitching Oracle, I haven't stepped foot in the Financials all night, Spoiler just saw me."

Steph pipes up, "I did, we're nowhere near-“

“Then you better get near because the cameras at that location are showing me a masked figure-oh fantastic, he just waved. He knows we're watching, be careful."

"On my way." Batman's growl echoes across the comm line.

Tim sighs into his own comm before replying, "Me too then."

Danny is sitting on top of the water tower when Red Robin arrives with Spoiler in tow-unsurprisingly they look up and spot him within seconds.

They jump into fighting stances when he jumps down and lets his cape flare out. He even lands within it, letting it cover him all Batman like and everything.

Danny smirks, no wonder Phantom had wanted a cape. Danny likes his.

"Who are you?" Red Robin says, tense and fists still up.

Oh right. Danny rises slowly, putting his hands up, "Really, no recognition? Not even a little?"

Steph answers for him, "What? You think because you dress a little like Red, we're supposed to know you?

"A little like him-! A little-!" Danny is offended in the way that only Steph can make him, "I know for a fact this is better than any copycat vigilante's sewing project!”

Red Robin cuts in again, "Who are you."

"Hey dumbass," Danny rolls his eyes and sighs inwardly, he can't even have coffee right now, "You remember all that time you spent with the League of Assassins? Ra's and his creepy fruitloop self?"

The two bats tense. But Danny doesn't break eye contact with Tim.

"Well do you also remember when your heart stopped?"

Red Robin's eyes narrow in suspicion. They both ignore how the comm fills with yells and questions, Steph gets even more tense.

"Just for a minute. Not long. But long enough. How 'bout your back up plan? You remember that?"

More suspicion, but not quite recognition, but he knows it's close, he just has to get him there.

"Come on RR, I, of all people, know how fast that brain of yours works."

The lenses of Red Robin's eyes widen exponentially, ah there it is. He sees RR's fists loosen and knows exactly what's next.

"You're-'

Danny chucks his rock, hitting Red Robin square in the jaw and making him stumble back. Spoiler jumps in front of him on guard immediately.

"You know what that was for, Asshole! I've been holding onto it since Iran!" Danny whoops. Finally!

That rock had been in his belt for months, but he knew the only time he'd get a chance Tim wouldn't dodge would be in a state of pure shock.

Totally worth it even if it ruins his chances of trust.

Hopefully not, but still.

"Red, you okay?" Spoiler says, voice filled with defensiveness.

RR groans with regret behind her, cradling his jaw, "Yeah, Steph I'm fine."

Spoiler goes rigid, "Red, don't use-"

"He's fine. If he knows how to hack my gauntlet he definitely knows our names."

Danny feels his neck prickle and immediately jumps to side in time to avoid Batman's hand trying to grab him.

A sense of relief floods through him at seeing Batman-B, Bruce, his dad- alive and present.

Because it's definitely not Dick under that cowl.

Even with the demon child scowling at his side.

Danny has to reel in every memory of driving himself into the ground to bring Bruce back and focus on the now, focus on letting Ted Tobin shine.

Danny casts a glance at Red Robin, "Tim you wanna explain or should I?"

No one gets the chance to speak before there's the sharp sound of metal as Damian draws his blade. Oh great, just as bloodthirsty as in his memories, wonderful.

"Who is this fool, Drake? Even someone as idiotic as you knows not to reveal our identities.”

"And you are just as unpleasant as I don't remember, Demon brat," Danny snipes with crossed arms.

"I will eviscerate you-!"

"You could certainly try you little bloodthirsty cheerio!" God he hates this kid and he's only actually met him once!

The anger clouding his vision snaps clear as Batman steps forward and between them with a separating hand, "Who are you? Why are you here?"

"B, l've been asking myself the same questions for months now. If anyone's got the answer it's Red over there, the one doing the gaping fish impression."

"Father, why is this urchin speaking so familiarly to you?”

Batman doesn't respond, still glaring Danny down. Danny, who very much wishes he had all of Ted Tobin's batglare resistance, glances over at Red Robin with a pointed look.

He finally steps in front of Steph, between all of them, "Everyone, relax. He shouldn't be a threat to us, identities or no,” Tim glances back at him.

Danny gives a small nod back, "I love Lucy pumpkin watermelon.”

There's a moment of pause as Tim's shoulders sag with weight and everyone else seems to recoil with confusion.

"Did I just have a stroke? What the fuck was that? That wasn't a sentence-"

"No Spoiler you didn't have a stroke, that was a code phrase," Red Robin looks at Batman with a wince, "Specifically the code phrase for my clone…that I… made..."

Everyone's heads whip to Danny, who takes it as his cue to remove his lower mask.

"Sup,"

"..For in case I died."

Tensions rise somehow even higher as they take in Danny's -Tim's- face. Danny takes the opportunity to reach between the roof installments to grab the coffee he stashed there.

Now that he doesn't need his mouth covered, there's nothing stopping him.

"This simpleton is your clone? Tt. Of course."

"Was it too much to hope that he'd split the insults between the two of us? Rather than double it?"

Tim shrugs with bone deep exhaustion,

"Probably.”

"Cave," Batman growls, "Now."

"Now that one I expected. Lead the way, B." He steps past Tim, handing him the now empty coffee cup, "For the DNA test. The first of many I'm sure."

Then he drops down into the alley of the Batmobile.

It's the first time he's ever seen it. He's intimately familiar with the locking mechanism.

He's never been inside before. He barely hesitates to open the door and get in.

The car comes to life around them and Danny sighs.

Tonight was gonna be a long night.

Ted Tobin wanted to sigh too.

Chapter Text

Danny lazily twirls the Batchair back and forth with his foot as he watches the family argue about him. He’s doing it mostly to see how Damian’s sword hand twitches with his casualness. It’s not his fault he already knows them and they don’t know him.

He’s also doing it a little bit to keep from spinning all the way around and just diving into the Batcomputer’s files.

But hey if this all goes sour… his gauntlet’s remote access has already started syncing the new data so he’ll be up to date anyways.

A steaming mug enters his field of vision.

Mmm coffee.

Danny reaches towards it with grabby hands, “Rough night for you?” He says as he sips without looking away from the family, “Ow hot.”

Tim chuckles from his spot standing next to him, staring at his family with his own cup of coffee in hand, “I’d say you have no idea, but you were there and you’re practically me so… coffee. Figured if I needed it, you probably would too.”

“Mmm coffee was a good starter,” He takes another sip, much cooler than the last, “But I’ve got a correction for you,” he glances up at Tim from the corner of his eye, “I’m not you. Haven’t been for a long time.”

Tim’s eyebrows scrunch together in surprised confusion.

Danny finally turns to look at his original properly, “Oh don’t get me wrong, I woke up with plenty identity problems. Thought you were dead for the first few weeks and I was the replacement, found out you weren’t and lost my purpose… all that. But in the end,” He shrugged and took a sip before meeting Tim’s eyes, “All the identity issues, they were just slowing me down from helping find Bruce, helping you. So I got over them. Now I’m all good.”

Tim is staring at him.

Danny finally registers the silence and realizes the others are staring at him too.

“What? Do I have a coffee-stache?”

“You mean to tell me…” Steph starts, “You just ‘got over’ the identity issues of being a literal clone… because it wasn’t pragmatic enough for the mission?!”

Danny shrugged, “I had more important things to focus on.”

“That is such a Tim thing to do.”

Both Tim and Danny snap to her, “I resent that remark!”

The argument is interrupted as another bike revs into the cave.

Dick.

Danny rolls his eyes and feels bitterness bubble up inside him. Of course he’s here.

Ted Tobin tries to tamp down on the annoyance but Danny ignores it.

“Nightwing.” Bruce greets stiffly.

“B,” Nightwing swings off his bike and removes his helmet, “What’d you call me for? What’s going …on…" Dick trails off as he catches sight of Danny sitting in the chair, mask off, and Tim standing next to him, also mask off.

“Oh.”

Danny scoffs, “Oh, he says,” Danny rolls his eyes again, “The wit of the Boy wonder strikes again,” he says mockingly.

It’s enough to make the group look over at him with a highly skeptical look and a raised eyebrow.

The silence stretches on.

“So is it an evil clone or like…. twin?? What’s happening here?”

“Clone? Yes. Evil? No.” Danny says with a fake smile.

Tim sighed and stepped forward, “It’s a long story, Dick.”

“Yeah it’s a long story, Dick.” Danny snarled as he stood and addressed the rest of the family, “ ‘Course it’d much shorter if you’d just ask me but why would we do that?”

“Whoa I just found out about you. What’s with the animosity?” Nightwing said with his hands up in mock surrender.

Danny refrained from rolling his eyes, again, “See, you might have just met me but I’ve got all of Tim’s memories, and truthfully Dick, the last memory I have of you is you replacing me with the demon brat so while you might have buried that problem with Tim, I’ve still got plenty issues with you. And I don’t have the same hang ups as he does, I’ve never actually met you, I am perfectly fine chewing you out for it,” Danny snarls.

There’s a bit of a stunned silence as the rest of the family stares not at him but at Tim in almost expectance.

Really? He literally just said he didn’t hold the same opinions as Tim. Whatever.

Danny claps his hands together, “Welp… That was extremely therapeutic. Anyhoo, since we’re getting nowhere with this, while you guys run the DNA tests I gave you and the ones you think I didn’t notice, I’m going to go upstairs, form my own opinions of Alfred’s cookies and then find a place to pass out for a couple hours. Good? Good.” He nods succinctly at the group and moves towards the stairs.

Ted Tobin notices the figure step out from the shadows before he does. Black Bat, of course, but with her mask down, he recognizes her as just Cass.

She looks at him for a solid half minute before tilting her head slightly. Danny mimics it with slight smile.

‘Not Tim.’ She signs. And wow, that’s the first time he’s seen and understood ASL; wild.

Danny grins at her, “She gets it.” He says to the room at large.

‘Half-Tim?’ She signs again, this time with another head tilt the other way.

Danny feels his fingers move before he realizes it, a little bit uncertain as he finger spells, ‘Half T-E-D  T-O-B-I-N’ Then, ‘And half-me.’ He signs with a self assured shrug as he leans back.

Cass lingers for another second before straightening and nodding at him in concession.

“Explain.” Comes Batman’s growl from behind him.

Danny sighs and turns back around, feeling Ted Tobin practically jump to obey Bruce and-nope, he’s not doing the self-esteem problems right now. “You’re going to have to actually ask a specific question for me to explain it, Batman.”

Batman’s eyes glower -how does he even notice that?- but he answers, “You said you were only half you and half..Tim.”

There’s a note of uncertainty as he says Tim. Clearly having to decide between saying Ted Tobin. Danny decides for him.

“Half-Ted Tobin is what I said, actually. It’s what I call all the Tim and Red Robin thoughts swimming around in my brain. Ya know, the urge to stay up for 3 days straight, drink nothing but coffee, take down an assassin organization in my free time, those thoughts,” Danny looks directly at Tim as he says it, watching his shoulders hitch higher and higher with shame as the rest of the family also stares.

Tim avoids it by putting the attention back on him, the bastard, they were playing by sibling in trouble rules clearly, “And the other half?” He says, urging.

He throws his doppel a bone, “Is me. I have all your memories up until that moment in the League, Tim, but they’re just that, memories. I don’t have any of the emotional context for them, or the trauma I’m sure was associated, my brain didn’t experience them, just stored their information as electrical impulses. It’s why clones turn out different; I have your memories, not your experience. Same goes for training by the way, which sucked. Having to retrain so much of our skills from memory, alone. But all that means I am not you, I chose the name Danny by the way, since none of you asked. So you can all stop referring to me as ‘the clone’ in your head.”

There’s a slight tap of a shoe behind him, “I had thought I’d raised you all with better manners, Master Bruce.”

Danny turns around to see Alfred Pennyworth standing in front of the elevator doors, cookie tray held close and eyebrow raised disappointingly at Bruce. Cass chooses to skitter off to the shadows with a cookie already in hand.

“It’s nice to meet you, Alfred. I’m Danny, Tim’s accidental clone.”

Alfred nods primly with a gentle smile, “So I heard. From Ms. Barbara, but all the same.” He shoots a sharp look of reproach to Bruce before looking back, “Would you like a cookie? Forgive me for assuming, but I made butterscotch chip, Tim’s favorite.”

Danny smiles at him, and turns to join him in the elevator, enjoying the look Alfred gives anyone who dares to stop him.

Danny follows Alfred up to the kitchen, enjoying the small talk of favorites and what he’s been doing since waking up, what he’s learned… Ted Tobin says that this is just another interrogation, knows it’s all going to be fed back to the family afterward, but Danny simply shrugs and lingers in the first true contact he’s had in quite a while. In ever?

So he follows Alfred, still lightly chatting, up to a new room, several doors down from Tim’s he notices, and sags when the door closes between them.

He brushes his hand against the door handle, tucking it in close when it simply goes through.

Shit.

It was getting worse. 

Danny changes into the clothes on the desk and lays himself down on the bed with a small sigh of exhaustion.

Trying to hold it in completely for that long, was not easy.

Danny rolls over and forces himself to fall asleep, ignoring Ted Tobin saying he should stay up and do something- nope sorry, Danny is tired, Danny has been up for two days, Danny is going to sleep.

No matter what his inner brain self says.

—

The thing about dreams as a clone is that they mostly don’t happen.

Most of Danny’s dreams are white emptiness, occasionally filled with random bits and references to his recent five months of existence.

But sometimes… sometimes Danny feels like there’s something happening in the background, something he’s missing, just out of sight and just blurry enough he can’t make it out, like a TV left playing in the other room.

He can’t seem to look closer, no matter what he tries.

For some reason, he doesn’t think other clones have this problem.

Chapter Text

The dining room was suspiciously quiet for a Wayne breakfast when Danny walked in.

He glanced up from his phone, pulling one earbud out, “Oh feel free to continue arguing my morality like I’m an object, my music’s on full volume.”

Dick looked uncomfortable, “We weren’t-Look, Ti- Danny, we are just a bit curious as to why you’re…. here,” Dick finished, glancing at the others like asking if they’d share the plate of batguilt-fries with him.

“Surely the world could have done without a second Drake,” Damian cut in before Danny could even start.

“And we could have done without even one of you, yet here you are,” Danny glared, “Factory defects and all.”

Damian jerked upwards with a raised knife, narrowly pushed back down by Dick.

Danny rolled his eyes, turning his attention back to his phone-Tim’s phone-their phone. He held a folded paper out to Bruce with two fingers, still typing, “I have a list, if you want it.”

He continued typing as they opened the note and read it, he knew what it said.

To Do in Gotham:

1. Get to Gotham
2. Find original - don’t freak family out
3. -Find- Talk to Bruce
4. Convince Vicki Vale that Tim is actually engaged to Tam Fox
5. Get safe house
6. New identity? (what do clones do? - ask Connor)
7.  
8.  
9. Leave?

“What’s number seven and eight?” Dick asked, and Danny actively made sure his typing pattern didn’t change.

“Don’t know yet,” He answered with a shrug, the picture of nonchalance. Bruce probably didn’t believe him.

Didn’t matter. Dick did. Because Dick felt guilty.

Bat guilty.

About time he believed him about something.

And Danny didn’t care about Damian’s opinions one way or another.

He stepped away from the table, plopping another grape in his mouth as he walked past, “Welp that’s it for me, busy day, fake engagement, gotta find some crutches because I don’t think Vicki will accept my ‘you got new legs Lieutenant Dan-ny’ joke, all that,”

Danny slipped out the door past a sleep-deprived Tim with a jaunty salute, “All’s well in Clone Town!”

Danny kept walking, his brain running miles ahead of him, Ted Tobin steering the wheel with his fingers on the keypad of his phone as he moved forward and mentally filled the list.

Number 7: Find Ra’s Al Ghul and the Lazarus pits.

Number 8: Stabilize yourself.

Danny continued up the stairs. He had people to see and rings to buy. Busy is the life of a saboteur.

—

Red Robin watched his clone linger in the jeweler’s store, trying to keep the frown from taking over his whole face.

He was making Tim’s life difficult. Tim suspected it was on purpose. Largely because people would ask way too many questions if two Tim Drakes showed up in Gotham at the same time.

Hence, Red Robin being relegated to rooftop surveillance.

He turned his attention back to the clone, watching as he left the shop and turned down the street. Red Robin swept after him, following from above. The clone remained focused on his phone- which was also Tim’s by the way, and stolen-  as he walked down the street, turning into an alley without even looking up.

Tim tilted his head and swung to the rooftop, peering into the darkness.

“You could always just come down and actually talk to me, you know?”

Tim dropped into the alley, unsurprised to come face to face with the clone. It was weird to see his own face look so annoyed by him.

“Thought it was best to stay out of sight. We’re not exactly a daylight hero.”

Danny rolled his eyes, “Already annoyed with Vicki Vale?”

Tim nearly growled, “That is your fault,”

“Oh come on, you can’t tell me it’s not hilarious.”

“You’ve spent all morning in ring shops! I have meetings!”

“Lucius can handle them. It’s not like we actually did anything this last year anyways.”

Tim stared at him for a second, confusion in the squint of his eyes and laced with suspicion.

Danny groaned with a roll of his eyes, “Fine, you want me to stay put somewhere so you can do your civilian thing?”

“Yes.”

“I am not staying in the manor. You can’t make me.”

Dread filled him as Tim smiled, “Not a problem.”

Danny glared at Tim standing arms wide in the center of the room of his emptiest safe house, “This is so not what I meant and you know it.”

Tim’s face betrayed nothing, “Look, none of us are happy with this situation-“

Danny scoffed. Understatement of the century.

“But..” Tim continued with a pointed look, “It’s my fault, and I get that. So…compromise? You stay here, work on cold cases while I sort out my current job, and when I’m done, we’ll figure out what to do, okay?”

Danny sighed, feeling Ted Tobin stir to life with plans already forming.

“Fine.”

Tim nodded succinctly, reaching for a laptop and multiple cords, “Ok, here’s my old computer, -huh, I could have sworn that had a different charger- anyways- I’ll take this,” he plucks the phone from Danny’s hands in one smooth motion, giving a mocking smile in return to Danny’s glare, “Thank you very much, now I just have to-and find the guy who…”

Tim’s voice tapers off into mumbles as he heads into the bedroom to peel off his suit, fingers focused on the keypad of his newly reacquired phone.

Danny slumps himself down on the secondhand couch, dust echoing around him. This was fine, he could do stuff in the meanwhile, maybe help Tim with his case -or solve it himself, he bets he could- and then finish the new specs for the suit wings that Danny’s suit still didn’t have.

Tim fumbled through the doorway, now in civilian clothes, already on a call with Lucius probably, or Tam. Tam helped him a lot.

Danny slouched further into the silence.

It felt like being left behind by his parents.

They had bigger priorities.

Archaeology.

Ghosts.

Danny shook his head, opening the computer and letting Ted Tobin fish through the passwords for case files.

He’s nearly 3 hours deep when he really pauses for the first time, finally stopping the continuous notes sitting next him, each a different clue. Most for different cases.

The current case pulled up on his screen scratches at him, facts slotting into place with rapid fire precision.

The officer assigned to the case is a vet.

The case is perpetrated by a senatorial candidate.

The officer assigned served on three active fronts and two undisclosed.

The guilty candidate is running support for a bill cutting veteran supports.

Best of all?

It’s not in Gotham.

Danny smiles as Ted Tobin’s plan fills in, piece by piece.

—

Ra’s Al Ghul should really make it harder to hack into his confidential back market mercenary dealings.

Then again, maybe it was for the better. How else would he make sure Red Robin was able to intercept the assassin in time to save that poor officer’s life the night before his case-closing arrest?

—

“Detective, I assumed holding my business outside of Gotham would keep it from being the concern of you and yours,” Ra’s’ voice is muffled through the bag over his head, “It seems I was wrong.”

“Oh well, you know me…,” The bag is ripped roughly off his head, leaving him blinking rapidly against the light even as he smirks, “Always butting into things when I shouldn’t. It’s kind of what we do.”

“Tell me, Timothy,” Ra’s says, turning his back to him once more, as he waves his ninjas away, “What does this officer matter to you, more than a state away from your precious city? What-“ Ra’s pauses as a different ninja approaches him to whisper in his ear. His body stills.

“Well, we’ll start there. First of all, as I’m sure you just found out, I’m not Timothy,” Danny says, standing up smoothly. He relishes the look Ra’s gives him as he turns around. “And secondly, the officer wasn’t what mattered. Getting you here on the other hand. Now that.. that takes a little more planning.” Danny brushes himself off, removing the cowl to leave just his own domino behind.

Ra’s al Ghul hums, his eyebrow twitching up even as his eyes narrow in suspicion.

“What? No sudden desire to stab? No impromptu attempt to put a sword through my chest?”

“You are curious. So much like the detective, and yet… my people tell me he is currently patrolling in Gotham with the Grayson boy.”

Danny scoffs, “Oh great, another fruit loop interested in me, like I need a new one of those.”

Ra’s stare doesn’t change. Albeit a bit more annoyed, but still flat and calm.

“You wanna know what makes me different from Timothy, Ra’s?” Danny pauses, taking a deep breath and letting the ectoplasm ripple inside him for the first time in months.“The difference between me and him,” When he looks up he know that his eyes are glowing a fluorescent green, “Is that I’m stronger.”

—

Bonus Scene:

Dick stared at Tim’s clone as he left, sweeping past the original’s bleary form stumbling to the coffee machine.

“Are we sure he’s Drake’s clone? He seems… less of a fool,” Damian sneered, watching Tim stand listlessly in front of the cabinet, coffeemaker off, and tablet in hand.

He looked out of the Dining room doors, spotting Danny standing not far away in front of one of the closets by the stairs rather than the actual steps, fingers tapping away.

Damian turned back to his breakfast, “I retract my statement. Clearly his stupidity was simply blinding.”

Chapter Text

When Danny wakes up with shackles around his wrists and chains pinning him to the wall, he’s not all that surprised to see his mother in front of him.

And no, he doesn’t mean Madeline Fenton, although he wonders if he’d be surprised by that either and really, what does that say about his life?

But no, he’s not all that surprised to be staring into the eyes of Talia Al Ghul right now.

Even if his heart stops at the sight of her.

Immediately, he tries to stand, shoulders pulled painfully behind him as he tries not to let her loom over him.

This is a woman he barely remembers, through no effort of her own, but that’s what happens when you left a kid to be trained by strangers before he’s whisked off to America against his will at age 6.

Really she was lucky he remembered her at all.

She crouches down slightly to make up for their height difference, face softening too quickly to be real, “I am Talia Al Ghul. Though you may not remember, you are my child-“

“I remember.” Danny cuts her off, trying to keep the anger from making his eyes glow. He does remember, he remembers enough to know that it would be dangerous for them to know he has powers.

He settles for glaring at her.

For a second it seems she just watches him, but the kindness drops from her face as she straightens.

The slap catches him hard enough to jerk his head to the side, chains rattling behind him as he unsuccessfully tries to catch himself.

Instead, they go taut behind him, leaving him to jerk sideways, breath rough by the surprise of the hit.

“Do not interrupt me, child.” Her voice rings cold in the air.

Danny doesn’t bother to lift his head, instead keeping his eyes pinned to the grimy floor. Had he forgotten how unforgiving this place was? What it was like?

“Look at me.”

Danny kept his eyes downwards. He didn’t want to look at her. He wanted to go home.

“Look at me, or suffer the punishment,” She said, voice steely.

He slowly lifted his head, eyes meeting hers.

“Good. You know who you are then, child? What place you are meant to hold in this world?”

Danny doesn’t answer, only glaring.

She barely blinks but her eyes sharpen in warning.

Danny grits his teeth, “I’m Danny al -Al Ghul, heir to the Demon’s head of the League of Assassins-“

The second hit is just as hard, but Danny is better braced for it.

“Your name is Danyal Al-Ghul, you are the Demon Head’s grandson and the son of Batman, your bloodline dictates a higher quality of discipline than this and you will show it.”

Everything in Danny’s being rebels against the name. He hasn’t been Danyal in years. And he refuses to go back to it.

He straightens his back, ignoring the ache of his shoulders as he snarls at her, “My name is Danny, Danny Fenton. I haven’t been your precious heir in years, and you can’t make me now.”

They couldn’t and he wouldn’t let them, not when he had the power to-

Talia idly pulls something from behind her and he feels the blood drain from his face.

It’s a picture of him, Tucker, and Sam, next to it is a larger grid of images, each making his heart drop further in his chest.

Sam. Tucker.

Jazz. Mom. Dad.

All of them in cells. Chained.

Hurt.

His family, his family-

“Did you think we would not know of your gifts? Would not know how you would think to leave us? You clearly do not remember as much as you think you do.”

Danny can barely hear her over the static rushing in his ears.

She grabs his face roughly, “We are the League, child, and you are one of us. You may have thought you were like them, but we are better. Meant for better, and you will not be allowed to squander the gifts bestowed on our bloodline through you. Until you can make the right choice yourself, as your keepers, we will make them for you.”

Danny looks into her eyes, the certainty behind her words, and he feels a gaping emptiness open inside him. The kind that knows it’s not going away.

He wants to go home. He wants to see his family, and his friends. He doesn’t care that his parents don’t know his secret, that he’s just barely getting a handle on it himself, he just doesn’t want to be here. Not again. Please, not again.

Talia releases him, and he lets his body droop, sinking into himself as he crouches over the ground, the restriction of his arms keeping him from even fully curling around himself.

“Remove the chains, he will not be going anywhere,” Talia says, her shadow falling over him in the dim light of the doorway.

Danny barely moves as the cold metal falls away from his wrists.

And he knows she’s right.

He won’t be going anywhere. Not as long as his family is in danger.

—

The first months were hard. Harder than Danny remembers. Maybe his five-year self had just had it easy.

He doesn’t now.

“Again!” His instructor shouts, bamboo staff coming down on the back of Danny’s knees.

He doesn’t let himself stumble. Not anymore.

At least his Arabic is getting better, he can understand it completely, as if he’d never forgotten it -as if it’d been his mother tongue- and he can speak it smoothly again, though shallow. You can’t even hear his American accent anymore.

Danny hasn’t spoken English since that first week, when they’d beaten it into him every time he’d tried.

When they’d beaten him for not understanding fast enough. Not reacting fast enough, not responding fast enough, to a language he didn’t know, hadn’t known for years now.

They’re right about one thing.

Pain is an excellent teacher.

“Again!”

He moves fast enough to dodge the bamboo stick this time, body shooting forward against his opponent.

Dodge, lunge, feint, block, swipe, block, block, block-shit-block, reach-

His back slams against the stone floor of the courtyard, knocking the breath out of him.

The instructor doesn’t step in. He won’t.

Not even when his opponent’s hands clamp around his throat.

Danny struggles, trying to use his inhuman strength to pull the arms away, but that inhumanity has waned since he’s been here, drained like the rest of his energy.

He feels the weight begin to build in his skull, he can’t breathe, he doesn’t have much longer, what can he- Danny forcefully moves his arms away, fighting instinct, instead pulling his legs up and rolling, just as they’d drilled into him, the change in leverage giving him the break he needed to be free as he stands-

The bamboo slams into his back, knocking him forward, “Again!”

Danny rolls with the momentum, ignoring the new throbbing in favor of dodging his opponent’s grappling fists.

Dodge, lunge, dodge, swipe, dodge, dodge, hit, swipe, block, forward, dodge, block-

Danny breathes through the sweat dripping down his skin, the way his ribs creak with every breath, the way his muscles feel numb and disconnected. None of it matters.

He just has to win.

He doesn’t have any other options.

He never did.

Not really.

This is why they brought him here.

Why he was born.

He has to win.

Danyal twists the arm of his opponent back until there’s a sickening crack.

“Again!” 

A new opponent flies towards him with fists already raised.

He doesn’t have any other option.

He never did.

——

The next time he sees Talia is just before the ceremony to his next stage. She is waiting in his room when he walks in.

“Mistress,” He greets, bowing his head, feeling phantom pain bloom on his cheeks. It’s the only thing that makes him call her that.

“Danyal, your training is going well,” She says, voice idle in that meandering sort of way. This isn’t why she’s here.

“I will improve,” He says anyways. Because he knows he’s not meeting their standards yet, knows they’re disappointed by the heaviness in his bones that weighs him down and drains his energy.

She stands, making Danny go stock still as she approaches, featherlight touch on his chin as she tilts it upwards, English drifting from her lips, “You have his eyes, his cheekbones…” her eyes drift down again, and it still doesn’t feel like she’s even really looking at him, “My chin, my jaw…not like Damia-“

Her hand drops.

Danny can’t figure out the change but he can feel it. Hesitantly, he asks, in Arabic still, “Talia, why… are you here?”

The steel returns.

“The bat is dead. You are the last of his power,” She says, then pauses. She seems torn about saying more.

She doesn’t, exiting silently as Danny stares into the air, unmoving.

His… birth father… was dead?

A man that was a great enough warrior to impress the Demon’s Head. Impress Talia.

A man… he didn’t even know the real name of.

It’s not like the Bat was anything more than a name to him.

A name he had to live up to.

Danny sighs and turns to his drawers. He has a training ceremony to prepare for.

——

Danny doesn’t resist the arms that hold him back as they swipe a broad slash across the skin of his back with the whip, simply letting himself curl inwards around the pain before he’s dropped unceremoniously to the ground.

He pulls himself back up just soon enough to see the next person dragged in and thrown in front of him.

The handle of the blade is pressed into his hand.

It wouldn’t be hard.

It should be hard. Right?

Killing a man whose crimes he doesn’t even know should be hard. It’s meant to be hard, right?

Danyal wishes he doesn’t know how easy it will be to fall into it.

But he can’t keep doing this. Collecting scars because he’s clinging to morals that aren’t even his.

He can’t keep doing this. He can’t keep doing any of this.

He has to.

Danyal slices the edge of the blade across the man’s neck.

The cut is clean. Deep.

He’s dead in less than a minute.

Danyal’s own blood continues to flow.

——

Danyal doesn’t know what’s happening. One minute he’s training, trying to push past the exhaustion lining his bones, and the next the entire west side of the courtyard is in flames, crumbling down the side of the mountain.

Danny runs through the rubble of the passageways, searching for the source, searching for reasons, searching for… he doesn’t know, but he knows he can’t be caught doing nothing.

He doesn’t find anything except ruins.

Danny is called to meet Ra’s Al Ghul two weeks later. His grandfather. The Demon’s head.

The man doesn’t even look at him.

Danny stays kneeling all the same, better safe than beaten again.

“Are you familiar with Red Robin?”

Danny inclines his head, just barely, “I… can’t say I am…Great One.”

The following hum is derisive.

“He is one of the Bat’s… followers. Recently, he has proven himself to me. His ruthlessness is impressive, his ability to pursue his goals: admirable. He would make the perfect heir,” Ra’s says and he must know it makes Danny’s heart drop, why else would he say it, “Do you know what Timothy lacks, Danyal?”

Danyal stays quiet, eyes tracking the grit of the floor.

After a pause, near silent footsteps enter his vision, “You are the culmination of his mentor’s blood and my own, blessed with the gifts of the Lazarus pits, and yet-“ the cape swirls as Ra’s turns away, “Yet it is squandered by the mistakes of your upbringing!” He yells.

Danyal clenches his fists, willing himself silent.

The air of the room falls level again, “I grow tired of your mediocrity, Danyal. You will advance, or I will stop wasting my resources keeping your baggage alive.”

Danny’s head whips up before he can think better of it, meeting Ra’s Al Ghul’s eyes where they stare down at him.

“Do not mistake my past grace for mercy, Danyal. Mercy makes men weak. There is no room for weakness, and we are here to purge it from this world. Do not forget that.”

“Of course, Great One.” Danyal’s heart pounds in his ears, fear jumping across each beat sporadically, “I will do better.” He tries to fill his voice with confidence.

He’ll do better.

He has to.

Ra’s looks at him, then turns his back and waves a hand dismissively, finally allowing Danyal to stand and leave.

He feels Ra’s’ eyes on his back the entire time as he leaves. And no matter how much he wants to, he doesn’t stop in the hallway. Even once the door is closed, he continues forward.

In his mind, Danny stops and heaves a breath through the grief crashing over him.

In his mind, Danny is a million miles away, at home, with his family around him, happy and safe.

In his mind, Danny rushes back into Ra’s al Ghul’s grandiose throne room and attacks him with the sword he’s forced on him, not stopping until he’s free or dead.

In reality, Danyal breathes out with false calm and moves on.

He has training to get to.

——

Danyal can feel the pressure of the Leagues- of Ra’s’- expectations pushing down on him.

It’s not new.

But he doesn’t let it weigh him down anymore. He doesn’t have that luxury.

Instead, he uses it to push himself harder, farther, pushing until he reaches those expectations.

And surpasses them.

And keeps going.

He won’t-can’t stop. So he keeps going.

Moving up, learning, training, getting better, faster, getting stronger.

Getting weaker.

Danyal ignores the strained whisper of his core in his chest in favor of aiming at the target in his scope.

An Ethiopian politician, making a name for himself by drafting new acts supporting the build of a dam on the Nile River.

It would endanger the lives of thousands in Egypt, cutting them off from the water that has flowed through their country for millennia.

It would never make it through the legislative ruling without him.

This is their duty. To cull the disease. To burn away the parasites killing the world. The ones feeding off excess.

Danyal pulls the trigger and starts packing the gun away.

His hands move with robotic precision, even without his guidance. No, his eyes and his focus are elsewhere.

Instead, Danny stares at the newspaper laying damp on rooftop gravel, eyes scanning every detail, every line.

May 7th of 20XX. Over a year.

Alien invasion recently. Superman.

New hero in Russia.

Multiple car crashes in Pakistan. All survived.

None of it really matters to him, not really, it doesn’t tell him anything interesting, nothing he needs to know. It’s not even an American newspaper.

But…It’s the closest he’s come to freedom in so long. In almost two years.

Is it bad that what he calls a taste of freedom is knowing how long it’s been since he’s been free?

The rifle case clicks shut beneath his fingertips and he stands without so much as a lingering glance at the newspaper.

Danyal leaps off the roof, scaling down the side, ignoring the way his legs want to collapse beneath him as he lands in an alley.

He heads towards the rendezvous, job finished. Efficient as always.

Exactly as is expected of him.

———

It is several months more that he begins to realize there may be something truly wrong.

He’s training-fighting, losing- with the Lady Shiva. If Red Robin could beat her, Danyal must as well.

He’s fairing… okay.

They’ve been engaging for a while now, for a fight, a minute at least, maybe two.

He feels his breath rough in his chest, his face slick with sweat, his body buzzing with adrenaline and the push to do better-

His heart squeezes, seizing up tense and frozen for just a second, his body following in surprise-

There’s a sword through his stomach.

Danyal tries to focus again, to swing his sword, like he’s been trained, but everything feels… loose.

The sword is removed from his stomach, wet blood sliding down his tunic. Cold floor beneath his knees, had he fallen? No, he had to stand, get up, get up, get up. Get up!

Please, you have to get-

There’s hands on him, moving him, the hallways are too dark, -get up, you have to get up- he can’t tell where they’re going. No they’re not dark, his eyes are closed, he pries them open, gasping for breath as the pain in his stomach tears deeper.

Please, he just wants to go home.

Darkness still clouds his vision, but the people carrying him barely glance back as he groans.

His eyes flicker shut, too heavy to keep open as he tries to focus on anything but the pain, on not bleeding out, on please don’t him die here, not here, please.

They enter another door, letting him stumble across steps farther and farther down.

When they reach the bottom, it seems as though every sound is sucked out from the room. An eerie silence thick in the air.

It forces his eyes open, just a squint, darkness prickling at the edges of his vision.

He barely catches a glance of cave walls before he feels himself thrown forward.

And familiar green fills his vision.

Panic surges.

Pain in his stomach. His hand. The button!-

Green water surrounding him. The portal is on!

Liquid fills his mouth when he tries to scream. There’s no sound between dimensions.

It feels like burning acid running across every nerve of his open wound, creeping into his pores like tar covering a dying animal.

But it doesn’t feel like death.

He would know.

It feels a little like life.

He doesn’t want it.

He doesn’t get a choice.

He never does.

It feels like a thousand screaming souls, begging for justice and for freedom, just as he is.

They shout and yell at him to do something, to fight where they can’t, why can’t they, they’re so helpless, angry at their helplessness, angry at their inability, angry angry angry

Their pleas fill his ears, louder with each passing second.

He’s angry, angry, angry- how dare they, how dare they- he could win, they can’t stop him, they deserve it-who’s they?- he’s going to kill them, they can’t stop him-

Frigid humid air stings against his skin, no longer submerged, and green fog tinges everything.

But he-they- need to fight, kill them, stop them, do something, do something because they can’t- fight!

Danny lunges at the first person he sees, an assassin in all black at the edge of green waters.

His fist nearly collapses his skull. It doesn’t stop him.

There’s another and Danny lunges again, ignoring the sword that slashes towards him, grabbing it and snapping the metal with one hand, the other around the ninja’s neck, gripping, cracking, breaking-

Something heavy hits him over the head, the world staticking for a second as his hand loosens, a body dropping to the floor.

Hands reach at him, pulling, holding, restraining, and he fights with sharpened claws and fangs and burning fists of glowing energy and hands ripping hearts from their chest- until there’s so many bodies around him and restraining him, that it actually slows him down.

Enough to realize his powers are flowing easily once more, surprise cutting through the fog in his mind.

He stops actively pulling against the arms holding him down, his cheek now pressed painfully against rocky floor.

Where is he?

A nauseatingly familiar voice fills the room, “You managed quite the damage, Danyal,” Ra’s al Ghul stands in front of him, when Danny is able to lift his head and look, “Perhaps there is still potential hidden behind your weakness, the capabilities of your rage is akin to my first venture into these pools, so many centuries ago.”

The smile on Ra’s’ face sends twitches down his spine and confusion pools in his gut, “What…?” he murmurs, head still murky, but a bolt of fear races through his chest, and he forces his words into the League dialect once more, “What happened…? I..-“ His voice is small, and slowly he feels the assassins holding him release his arms and back away. He pushes himself upright to his knees, finding less strain in his muscles, in his bones, than he has for nearly two years.

“You failed your training, little Al Ghul,” A voice, Lady Shiva, speaks from his right. Her sword is still red.

Danyal’s eyes jump to hers, the memory rushing back- blood, the sword, falling, the water- his hand grips the side of his tunic even as his head snaps to the side, finally seeing the green waters lurking just next to them.

The Lazarus Pits, his training says.

Ectoplasm, his core whispers.

He looks down at the hole in the fabric of his tunic, any bloodstains around it all but gone. There’s not even a scratch.

The rest of his clothes are still layered with blood.

And Danyal knows it isn’t his.

He stands, watching as other league members file in, dragging away the bodies surrounding them.

There are too many to count.

He doesn’t even try.

Ra’s Al Ghul steps forward, drawing his focus once more. He eyes Danyal critically,

“Walk with me, child,” He says, already turning away with robes moving gracefully.

Danyal hurries to move with him, one step behind as they trail through the halls and corridors, slowly moving farther and farther up through the compound.

Finally they step out from an arch, the gentle late afternoon sun lighting up the sky with colors. Just enough light to see well by, not enough to blind or burn.

It would’ve been a perfect afternoon to die on.

Instead, Danyal catches the sword thrown towards him with surprising grace. Ra’s face is filled with dangerous curiousity as he speaks, “Attack.”

Danyal doesn’t question it. Doesn’t wonder why Ra’s remains unarmed, doesn’t question if he might hurt him. He just acts, lunging forward at the command with nary a second thought.

“Starting today, you will train with me. Each week,” Ra’s speaks as he easily dodges and blocks Danyal’s hits, forcing him to take a new approach each time.

Danyal nods, “Of course, Great One.”

Ra’s knocks him to the ground, standing over him with sword drawn, “Call me Grandfather, Danyal. You’ve earned it.”

Danny’s heart squeezes.

He nods, “Of course Grandfather.”

——

After that, things change. Ra’s Al Ghul keeps to his word, calling for him each week, sometimes no more than a few days apart.

All too quickly it becomes a part of Danyal’s routine. The brutal training sessions of Ra’s beating him down and letting him up only to do it again.

He wishes he had it in him to question the Demon’s Head, but he doesn’t, so when Ra’s tells him to attack, even when unarmed, even when Danyal should rip his throat out with one use of intangibility, Danyal listens and attacks him.

Months into the now singular training, Danyal realizes that he hasn’t left this compound in a while, there hasn’t been a spontaneous move, or travel for a new master.

It’s just been… Ra’s.

He feels more stable, more stationary than he remembers being in so long. His youngest years had been the same routine of constant movement from base to base, compound to compound. And then he had lived.. in America, and had a single home, a house he knew the direction to from anywhere in town. For so many years, he been able to settle in one place.

Only to be uprooted once more, thrown back to everything he’d left behind, everything he’d-

Danyal enjoyed knowing where he would return to at the end of the day. The sense of familiarity that came with the same room, the same bed and halls, day after day, week after week.

Maybe that’s why it catches him by surprise when Ra’s calls for him at the base of a landing pad, jet idle behind him.

Danyal allows a nearby assassin to pass a pack into his hands, clearly full of materials.

For a moment, Danyal wonders where they are going? What new training awaits him at the other end?

Then Ra’s steps aside, dangerously graceful as ever, and reveals the bay of the jet to be not empty, but filled by assassins, each standing at command.

Danyal looks to Ra’s once more.

“An Al Ghul does not only follow, Danyal,” He says with a sharp smile as he approaches, laying a heavy hand on Danyal’s shoulder, “An Al Ghul leads. And as you are my heir, you must learn to command the respect of our members.” The hand squeezes on his shoulder, making him look up, meeting Ra’s in the eyes, “By any means necessary.”

Danyal looks away, looking back at the assassins waiting for him, for his command.

He’s not ready.

He has to be anyways.

The hand on his shoulder feels like lead as he steps out from under it, filling his voice with power he doesn’t feel, and sending the squadron scattering to new assignments.

Flight, equipment, weaponry, information, planning, infiltration, execution, all of it, it’s all on him to control.

Danyal turns back to gauge Ra’s’ reaction, only to find him already halfway gone, the sight of his retreating back the only response.

Okay, he’ll do this.

He can do this.

He has to.

What else can he do?

——

He takes to leading missions with the hand of a natural.

It’s easy.

Send these people here. These people here. Block every exit, erase every loose end, don’t leave any witnesses. Finish the mission.

Their missions are for the betterment of everyone, they are fixing things, getting rid of corrupt leaders, people unworthy of what they have, everything they’re doing is for a reason. It has a purpose.

He has a purpose.

So he ignores what’s behind every number he sends for each job. Ignores the calculation behind every call to secure the exit that has five private guards. Ignores the number behind the perimeter assignment because he knows the building has a late hour maid present each night.

They’re just numbers.

And he’s good at this.

At least he’s good at this.

He kills the first person to question an order.

They don’t question him again.

Everything runs smoother when they don’t question him.

It’s easier this way.

It’s always easier.

——

He’s traveling again. Spending more hours sleeping in hotels and safe houses than any bed he might deign to call his.

More and more time goes by, bit by bit, hour by hour, each filling his body with sand like setting concrete.

Slowly, Danyal feels it begin to wear on him. The exhaustion of the missions, his own body weighing him down with every strike he takes. Refusing to react with the speed demanded of him to succeed.

Danyal pushes past it. It doesn’t matter. This is his duty, it is all that is expected of him and he will do it. Even as he finds himself clutching his chest in the dark of a mission, blood still leaking from his target below him.

He forces himself past it, eyes flickering, steeling himself, then wiping down his blade and leaving, muscles tense and bones shaking.

He makes it as far as the car waiting in the near abandoned parking garage below, his chest continuing to tighten, heart erratic beneath his ribs. Danyal grunts, pain lacing up his arm, struggling not to stumble as he staggers into his seat with a near gasping breath.

He pulls himself together, his words as confident as he can make them as he speaks to the assassin in the drivers seat, “Call the Demon’s Head. Bring me to him. Now.”

Danny feels his heart twitch in his chest, his hand flickering in his vision, or is it his vision that’s flickering, he can’t tell, still the cold leather soothes him, heart pounding louder louder, yelling, screaming in his ears, angry so angry so angry, rage rage rage, fix it fix it fight fight fight for us fight! Don’t let it go, never let it go, revenge, make them pay, they have to pay-!

He comes back with a gasp and a burst of pain across his shoulder, adrenaline and fury still coursing through his veins in equal measure.

His hair is wet, green liquid dripping down his face in sluggish trails. It lays plastered on the curves of his face, framing his eyes as he stares up at the Demon’s Head.

The same malicious smile sits on his face, “Welcome back, Danyal.” The words are tinged with expectance.

Danyal pauses, collecting his words around his tongue like a lead weight in his mouth, “I- Why was I put in the Lazarus pit again?” Danyal can only hope he’s showing the right amount of deference to even be allowed such a question.

“You were brought to me collapsed, and your heart failing you. T he Lazarus pits provided a temporary solution,” Ra’s says, his eyes sharp, “But it is temporary. This problem will not be allowed to continue.”

“Of course, Master,” Danyal pulls himself to his knees, “…I believe it’s because of my accident-“ Danyal pauses, this is the closest he’s come to actually telling them how he got his powers, what it did to him- “There was electricity, and the shock, my heart was-is damaged. I don’t know why it’s getting worse-“

Ra’s hums, “The body can be fixed, child. The mind cannot. This,” Ra’s places a hand on his back as Danyal stands, “is merely an obstacle to our goal.”
Danyal looks at the bodies hidden in shadows behind him.

“I will not fail you, Grandfather.”

“I know, child.” His words are a guarantee, without room for anything else.

He will prove that Ra’s is right to believe in  his strength. He will be enough.

——

It is barely months after that second time that Danyal once again feels his body’s failings encroach on him.

His heart beats off pattern, falling out of rhythm more with every passing day.

Danyal takes a deep breath, willing it to calm himself.

He will not let this stop him. He is an Al Ghul. He is capable. He is strong, and he will not be held back by his own body.

Danyal turns his focus inwards, ripples traveling along the surface of the ectoplasm in his core he’s left untouched for so long now.

He lets the ectoplasm submerge him, turning his form ghostly, his eyes sharper green than they’ve ever been before.

Danyal lets his feet lift off the ground, just for a second, weightlessness enveloping him, the buzzing of the world a background in his ears.

Then his toes touch the ground again and Danyal snaps into movement towards his closet. He puts on his usual league clothes over the old hazmat suit, feeling the layers lighten as he covers them up. Until it feels as though he’s only wearing the league clothes, and his white gloves stare in his face.

Slowly, he removes them, staring for too long at the green lines like cracks trailing up his arm.

Danyal turns away.

He has work to do, he can’t let himself be held up with small feelings like that.

As Danyal travels the halls, every step an effort to remain flat on the ground, he feels the ectoplasm within him roil, coursing faster and stronger than he ever had before, even in the Ghost Zone or in Am-.

It revitalizes him and Danyal arrives to Ra’s Al Ghul’s training with bold confidence filling him.

Ra’s greets him an enigmatic smile and a challenge of his strength.

Danyal meets him in kind, dodging every lunge, swiping every parry, light on his feet like he hasn’t been in years now.

Their fight lasts longer than any other they’ve had, his muscles able to hold up stronger in this form, his stamina infinite as the ectoplasm he draws from without any need for breathing or rest.

Ra’s Al Ghul is impressed even as he holds Danyal beneath his boot, his sword pressed to his neck. Glowing green sluggishly leaking from the scratch.

Danyal pays it no mind.

Instead he stares at the small cut on the crown of Ra’s’ head, a single crimson red droplet crawling down the side of his face.

Danyal did not win. But he didn’t loose either.

Satisfaction fills him in a rush, carrying him through even as they reengage.

——

Danyal strives to reach his goals, to hit every target set out for him, beat every opponent put against him, to reach the expectations and the potential that the Demon’s head sees him.

To make himself worthy to be here, to stay.

And he knows his weaknesses hold him back, make him vulnerable, put everything-one- in danger.

So he stops being vulnerable. Stops letting his body, his weaknesses, dictate his capabilities.

Faster and faster his store of ectoplasm drains within him.

And Danyal makes himself stronger and stronger, short exposures of the Lazarus pits to keep it from stopping him.

He can’t stop.

So he keeps going, keeps training, fighting, growing- when had he gotten tall? When had he gotten older?

He keeps working, to be better, to be the best.

And as he approaches the Demon’s chambers weeks later, he is surprised to hear yelling.

More than that, he is surprised to hear Talia Al Ghul’s voice be the one yelling.

He pauses outside the door, eyes narrowed and body resting on the edge of invisibility.

He does not want to know the punishment for eavesdropping, nor for interrupting them… and yet…he hasn’t spoken to Talia, not truly, not since she told him the Batman was dead. Barely seen her except beside the demons’s head in ceremony as he stands at the edges of a room.

It has been entirely too reminiscent of his childhood.

Danyal’s ears prick up as the volume increases once more.

“You cannot ask me to bring him back to use him for-!”

“I do not ask for anything, Daughter! He belongs to the League! And the League to me! It was a mistake to allow you to keep-“

Ra’s’ voice drops too low to be heard through the door, muffling the rest of his words.

Danyal steps back from the door, standing in the hall with questions blooming in multitude.

Moments later, Talia Al Ghul steps through, a force of fury in every step. She catches sight of him immediately, and when Danyal makes eye contact, her eyes are filled with worry, stress, regret, a thousand what-ifs and plans and concerns.

Somehow he knows none of it is for him.

He bows slightly, and she passes by him without a word.

Danyal watches her hair flow as she retreats  further and further down the hall until he finally turns around to enter the room.

Ra’s Al Ghul is waiting for him.

He gives no indication that he knows Danyal’s heard him, so Danyal doesn’t say anything. But he doesn’t make the mistake of thinking that means Ra’s doesn’t know.

He always knows.

His training continues.

For days, and weeks, and months more, he continues.

But even a ghost cannot lie to himself forever.

——

When Damian wakes up with chains around his wrists and the familiar feeling of harsh metal beneath his knees, he is not surprised to see his mother standing in front of him.

He wishes it were only his mother.

Instead, his grandfather stands in front of him as well, eyes staring down at him with impassive judgement. Damian feels his spine straighten against his will, the feeling of ‘never good enough’ creeping through his limbs.

He glances at his mother behind Grandfather’s looming form. Her face is uncharacteristically open, the barest hint of a tension evident in her jaw, her eyes almost brighter with the concern hidden behind them.

Damian forces his eyes away as Grandfather begins to speak. The League dialect sounds like an empty echo of home.

“You’ve wasted your time with your father Damian,” he starts, “Letting your training go to waste as the league continues to work to better the world.”

Damian wants to sneer, a scowl forming on his face even as he slips into the words of his first language, “The league does nothing but hurt innocent people. My time as Robin has saved hundreds.”

Grandfather’s eyes sharpen, “And I see it has taken your discipline as well.”

Damian grinds his teeth, “Anything I have learned, I learned from my Father and my family,”

“Your family?” Grandfather says, his tone almost mocking as he raises an eyebrow, “You are an Al Ghul-“

“I am a Wayne too!” Damian says, straining as he rises to his feet, “I am Damian Al Ghul-Wayne! Just as you wanted me to be! And it is my choice to be a hero, to be Robin, and I stand next to Father and the others with pride!”

Grandfather’s glare intensifies, “Do not interrupt me again, Damian. You will not be exempt of the consequence.”

Damian stares him down, fear pressing against his insides with a scream too familiar to his youth. He turns away with a click of his tongue.

Shame whispers at his cheeks.

Grandfather waves a hand blithely as he turns his back, “Bring him.” He pauses at the door, “He remains bound.”

Damian watches his Grandfather leave, his eyes drifting sideways to his mother.

“Mother, why am I here?” He demands, tone sharp and clear. He tries not to let show how lost he is.

Mother steps forward, laying a gentle hand on his face and the other at the crook of his neck, cupping his cheek as her eyes soften. Regret sits behind them.

“Mother.” He says again, pulling slightly away from her hand, “Why am I here?”

She sighs, stepping back, “The Demon’s Head has need of you.”

Then he watches her leave as well, and Damian finds his arms and hands grabbed as assassins unchain him from the cell and push him forward.

He reluctantly lets them lead him through the unfamiliar halls of wherever they are, just a few paces behind his mother.

They stop in front of an open doorway, and when Damian is dragged in front, the sight he is met with brings confusion over anything else.

In front of him is a young man, no older than Todd or even Drake, laying asleep in a hospital bed with a heart monitor attached to him.

The beeping that fills the room is shallow and unsteady, much like the boy’s breathing. His hair is dark with speckled streaks of grey and a natural pallor to his skin.

Worse than that is the IV Damian can see tucked into the crook of his arm, tube trailing up to a bag.

Slowly feeding Lazarus water into his veins.

Damian whips his head around to look at his mother, only to find her staring disdainfully at the boy in the bed.

It only serves to confuse Damian more.

What had this man done to cause his mother such ire?

“Take the sample.” His Grandfather’s voice commands. And Damian feels the arms holding him shift to a more secure grip, pulling him to his knees even as he fights them. A man in a white coat approaches him, and Damian fights harder when he notices the syringe in his hand.

The sting of the needle is dull against the fear crashing through him as his grandfather watches.

His mother looks away.

Finally, Damian jerks as the hands he now knows are Ubu’s release him, still hovering close as he is dropped. He is surprised to see that they actually took blood, rather than dosing him with something. Sedative or worse.

Damian scowls at his grandfather, but he simply looks unconcerned as the assumed doctor moves forward to take a second sample, this time from the boy laying in the bed.

“Why am I here, Grandfather?” He asks, eyeing all parties critically.

“Haven’t you realized, Damian?” His Grandfather asks with a mockingly raised eyebrow, “His heart is failing, and the Lazarus waters can only fix so much by the nature of his defects. Your brother needs you, Damian,” Grandfather says, voice serene, “And you are going to help him.”

Damian barely has a moment to process his words before the hands are pulling him back once more, he yanks his arms from their grip, “Grandfather! What are you- let me go!” Damian turns fully to incapacitate the assassins, only to have Ubu pull his binds harshly sideways and give the servants leverage enough to actually tame his movements.

“Who is he?! Mother!” Damian turns to her, unsurprised to see her turning a blind eye once again, “Mother who is he!? What is Grandfather talking about?! What are you doing!?” The assassins pull at him again, successful in getting him through the doorway as he struggles.

Just before the door closes, he hears the Doctor speak to his grandfather, and his response.

“The boy is a match Great One.”

“Good, prepare Danyal for surgery. As soon as possible.”

The surprise is enough that the door closes in his face and he is dragged back through the hallways.

He stands as much as he can, walking at pace, refusing to allow them to disrespect him by letting them drag him.

He glares at Ubu as he shuts the door of the cell between them.

Once he knows he is alone, Damian takes a better register of his situation. He is still in his Robin uniform, so that means he was out with the family- he has a brother- they’ll be looking for him. He believes he’s on a boat, the rocking, the design of the doors and walls- a brother!- he has to make sure he can be found. Grandfather has plans for him-why tell him now- he doesn’t seem to be listening to Mother right now- his brother’s name is Danyal- he might be in danger-they both could- how is he going to get out-

Damian stops.

He readjusts his clothing, feeling the minute shift once more. There’s something between the collar of his suit.

Slowly, Damian runs his hand along the fabric, finding a small bump he recognizes as a tracker.

One of his own bat-made trackers. But how..?

Mother.

Damian scoffs to himself. Of course, he should have known she would never show such an obvious display of affection without reason. She was still largely loyal to Grandfather, but Damian was not so naïve as to think she did not care for him at all.

The vibration of the tracker is rhythmic beneath his fingers, the only solace he gets.

His family is coming.

He knows it.

He just hopes it’s fast enough.

——

Perhaps Grandfather’s first mistake was taking him as Robin, when his family was always the most on edge, the most prepared, the most connected.

Or perhaps his first mistake was training Bruce Wayne in the first place.

Either way, Damian watches from the other side of an observation window as his Grandfather and Father engage in a fight racked with fury on both ends.

Richard jostles him, bringing his attention back into focus.

Right.

His newest brother.

He mumbles an explanation to them, words slurred as they leave his mouth. But he knows they heard him. The shock-caution-threat painted across their faces could mean nothing else.

Perhaps his Father was under a curse. Surely there was a limit to how many unknown children one person could have in a single lifetime?

All the same, once freed, he moves to help Drake and Richard remove the boy-brother, Danyal- from the operation table next to him, stepping over the doctors knocked unconscious at their feet.

Reluctantly, he allows Drake to support him under one arm, the anesthesia still weighing down his eyelids.

They rush through the halls like a bull, both him and Drake separating to fight off more than one assassin. Even Richard has to set down Danyal to join the fight at least once.

But finally, they make it to the Batplane idling next to the hull.

The moment they are onboard, the plane starts to move away, but his Father is still not on board.

Still fighting with Grandfather as they burst through the doors, fists and weapons engaged in equal measure.

Father dodges sideways, blocking hits until he reaches the rails, then he jumps over without hesitation. And just as Damian is about to shout for him, arm reaching out futilely, Richard blows past him.

He is leaping out of the open cargo door with just as much surety as his father had leapt, a cord tied around him, and with perfect precision, he watches Richard catch his father at the extension of his swing.

It’s a perfect demonstration of their partnership.

And Grandfather is left scowling out at them from the ship.

His mother stands alone and calm on the upper deck, watching.

Damian turns his attention to his family.

And to Danyal with them.

——

Returning to the cave is less of an affair than Damian may have expected from such a mission.

His father is-has been- silent for most of the flight, staring at the body of Danyal with blank eyes.

Even Drake and Richard conspicuously cast a glance back every few minutes. Damian controls himself from doing the same. He is not so undisciplined as to be as obvious.

Still, the tension only rises the longer Danyal continues to remain asleep. Even by the time Damian feels the last of the anesthesia leave his own system, Danyal is unchanged.

Damian is certain his grandfather would not choose someone so sickly to be his heir, someone so incapable of protecting themselves in this state. Surely there was a reason he was kept, a reason he was allowed this weakness when Damian was-

Regardless, Damian didn’t trust it. The others could get pulled into this invader’s lies all they wanted, Damian would be there to stop him, he was sure of it.

Still, he watches Pennyworth dote over him in the medbay, Father laying him down on a medical bed with harried care, removing his cowl with barely a thought.

Damian ground his teeth, did they not understand that this was an operative trained by his Grandfather? An assassin with no attachment to them that was favored enough by Grandfather to warrant Damian being-

Damian turned to his locker, glad to replace his weapons stores and feel the weight of his sword at his side once more. It would be a pain, but he would have to find a way to receive a package from his mother if he wanted his other sword back.

It was merely a replica of one of his betters but the desire remained.

He watched from the corner of his eye as the family began to gather in front of the Batcomputer, the screen’s light casting shadows on them even in the artificial cave lighting. Finally, they were going to be doing something.

Damian approached, lingering at the edge where he could still see through the curtains of the medbay.

“I’m not the only one who noticed a suspicious lack of life threatening wounds right?” Drake began, turned away from the console with one hand still on the keys, “I mean, there was that first surgery cut, but that was the same as on Damian. It certainly wasn’t enough to necessitate Lazarus water being entered directly into this kid’s bloodstream.”

Damian scowled, “He was like that before they attempted this. Grandfather said that there was something wrong with… Danyal’s heart, said that I would be able to fix it.”

Father cast another brief look at the medbay, Pennyworth’s shadow still moving within. “I’ll have Agent A call Leslie. Robin,” he turned towards Damian, “Did Talia or Ra’s mention anything else to you? Where .. he’s been this whole time?..Why you didn’t know of his existence?”

Damian shook his head, “No, only that he was my brother and that the pit water was being used to fix him somehow. That I was needed to save him.”

Father hums, turning back with pensive silence.

“B, we don’t even know how long this kid’s been there, he’s older than Damian,” Richard pleads. And it makes Damian duck his head with clenched fists. Who was he? Why was he so much more favored by Grandfather?

Why had they told him he was the firstborn?

“He could always be a clone with advanced aging, we know Talia is capable of it, she’s done it before,” Drake adds. But the theory sits uncomfortably with all of them. Something just not quite right.

“But then why did they need Damian?” Richard says back.

Father grunts.

“Is it really…” Richard starts, “I mean, we have to consider that she actually kept it secret again. Even from Damian.”

“But B wasn’t even with Talia before that, Damian was the first time they… y’know.” Drake says, a grimace on his face at the end.

Father hums, “But I’d fought Talia before. And I had trained with Ra’s.”

“All it would have taken is one DNA sample, right.” Richard says with a sigh, carding his fingers through his hair, “Well, we might as well-“

There’s a slight clatter on the medbay level, silencing everyone as their heads snap to the sound.

When nothing follows, Father motions them all to head up, flanking the room.

Damian is the closest, entering first. No sooner does he notice Pennyworth laying on the floor before he feels a hand slip around his neck and another quickly snatch the sword at his side. Within seconds, Damian feels his back pressed against another body, the cold steel of his own sword stinging at his neck as he stares into his Father’s eyes.

Except his father is not looking at him, he’s looking at the person holding him.

Danyal.

“Where am I!? Who are you!?” The voice behind him demands, the vibration buzzing against him with the familiar staccato of Damian’s native league dialect.

His family shares a weighted look, clearly hesitant to say anything. Already Damian can see the way their fingers twitch towards weapons and utility belts.

The steel at his neck tightens, “Tell me now or I slit his neck and deliver your bodies to the Demon’s Head myself.”

Father’s stance tightens, anger pulling at his gloves even as he forces himself to put his hands up in surrender. When he answers, it is in the League dialect, “We’re not a danger to you, Danyal,” the blade doesn’t so much as twitch, “Put down the swor-“

Stephanie Brown’s voice rings out across the cave from beyond the room, “Hey, Kate and I just finished patrol and-“

Damian doesn’t pay attention to the rest of the sentence because the moment Brown starts speaking, his assailant’s grip loosens just a bit, accompanied by a low whisper of, “English?…”

Damian immediately jabs the flat of his arm up, putting the blade farther from his neck as he begins to grapple with him.

In the blur of movement, Damian sees his sword coming at him, throwing his body back with a barely a second to spare, feeling the supporting hand of Richard on his back as he joins their combined front.

Danyal now stands alone in front of them, stolen sword extended in warning.

And now that Damian can see his face, he knows why his family was hesitant… Danyal’s eyes flicker a bright Lazarus green.

“What do you want from me? Why am I here?” he demands once again.

His Father steps up, “I don’t know how much know about me: my name is Bruce Wayne,” There’s barely even a flicker of recognition, “But you might know me better as Batman.”

The eyes widen, eyes scanning them with fervor before narrowing with suspicion and denial, “The Batman is dead, Talia Al Ghul told me so herself.”

Drake steps forward, “She was wrong. He came back-“

Damian rolls his eyes, “Clearly Mother must have told you. Do not be stupid.”

Danyal’s brow furrows, silently mouthing the word ‘mother’ beneath his breath, “I don’t-“ He cuts himself off with a grimace, hands tightening on the shaft of the sword, “I don’t believe you, what-“

“What happened? Did we bring back the demon spawn, why are you all-“ Brown bursts into the room, words already filling the air. Only to stop when she sees Danyal.

He raises the sword at them again, noticeably less stable as he supports it with two hands, “Who are you!? Why am I here!? Tell me-“ He grunts again, putting a hand to his chest, “Tell me, now! I-“ the sword drops, Danyal using it to support himself like a cane. Father steps forward, hands extended. It only serves to make Danyal lift his head to glare at him.

“Stay back-“

“We’re only trying to help-“

“I said-“ Danyal grunts, hand clenching at his shirt as he drops to his knees, “Stay- Stay back- I-“

The sword falls from his hands with a metallic clatter on the stony ground, Danyal gasping for breath.

“Back- off..” He whispers, the English falling from his lips with desperation as he curls in on himself.

Father rushes forward the moment Danyal’s body goes limp, lifting him onto the medical bed as the room bursts into motion. Richard is grabbing medical equipment as Drake helps father with providing CPR and as Brown moves to get Alfred, all of them quick to jump to action.

Damian slowly steps forward, picking up his abandoned sword from the floor.

He turns it over in his hands, making sure it is not damaged from the ordeal.

Just what had Grandfather been doing to Danyal?

Chapter Text

Damian stared at his inbox. There was an impossible email, addressed to him, in his inbox.

Addressed to Damian in Robin’s email.

If this was a prank from one of his insipid teammates, Damian was going to eviscerate them.

Damian clicked on the email.

There were barely 3 lines of text, not even 20 words total.

And yet, 3 lines of text and a singular sign-off brought Damian’s world crashing down around him.

Damian, I’m alive.

Mother has found me.

Would our Father help me?

-Gemini

Chapter Text

After fighting back and forth on if it was even worth it to reply, he settles on something small.

How.  -is it really you?-

What happened?

Of course he would.

        -Gemini

There are few that even know of his existence.

Fewer still who would try it, try to claim to be his brother.

And there’s only one person who ever called them Gemini.

“Danyal, we’re not Gemini, we are born in January and anyways, the stars have no effect on our strength nor our abilities as an opponent.”

“But we’re twins. So that makes us both Gemini. It can be like our secret name for each other.”

Gemini, the sign of twins. His twin.

But then how??

A knock sounds on his door. Damian whips his head up.

“Damian, it’s time for patrol.” Grayson’s voice sounds through the wood.

Patrol. Of course.

He was patrolling with his father tonight. Not just his.

Danyal’s too.

He had to know.

“I will be down shortly.”

Damian entered the Batcave, stepping down from the last step with a slight sound.

It was enough that both Tim and Dick looked over in confusion.

Damian ignored them, staring resolutely at his father in the suit in front of the batcomputer.

Once he was within a few feet he steeled himself and cleared his throat, “Father.”

Bruce turned around, looking down to see Damian and then glancing around confused.

“Damian..? Why aren’t you dressed? I want to leave soon, there’s been trouble at the south side and I-“

“I have an issue I believe I need to share with you.” Damian interrupted.

Bruce shut his mouth with a click and Damian could hear as both Drake and Richard’s eyes bored into the back of his head.

Damian never interrupted Bruce.

He clasped his hands behind his back in a rather desperate attempt to stop them shaking.

“Of course, what’s wrong?”

Damian paused, took a deep breath, tried to convince himself of the inevitability and then blurted out, “I have a brother.”

“Aww, Dami, you’re finally calling us your broth-“

“No.” Damian cut Richard off sharply, “From the league. I have a brother from the league.”

“..What?” Bruce’s voice came out thick, strangled by an emotion either anger or something stronger.

“He is- was- I - I believed he was dead.”

Bruce’s fists clench and he almost growls out, “Explain, Damian. Now.”

Damian allows himself to go numb to explain it without wavering, “We were twins. Grandfath- Ra’s had no use for both of us. When we began to advance in training individually and stagnate as a pair, we fought.” He paused and forced the words out, “To the death.” Damian feels the words twist in his throat, it was never meant to be like this, “I won. And Danyal…”

“Didn’t,” Richard finishes for him.

Damian twitches forward, hesitating as his father nearly drops himself to one knee, supporting himself on the chair next to him. “Danyal… I had another son… named Danyal.. and she took him from me… Again.”

His father says despondently. Richard is already next to him reaching out.

“Perhaps not.” Damian whispers.

Both of their heads snap up to him. “What?”

“I have been… contacted by someone claiming to be Danyal. He says Mother has found him and…” Damian grows unsure, “He asked if you would be able, be willing to help.”

“He’s alive? You’re sure it’s him?”

“He used a code I’ve never shared with anyone else and that no one else in the league knew.”

“How can we be sure? I mean, Bruce’s kid? Asking for help?”

“Shut it, Drake.” Damian snaps, Drake raises his hands in surrender.

Just as he opens his mouth to talk again, his phone gently chimes with an email notification.

It’s him.

Damian races to open it.

“He says he’ll be in Gotham tonight. And that he’ll find me.” Damian says as he looks up at his father. The panic, relief and desperation warring in his own eyes is reflected back at him.

“Then let’s make it easy for him. Still up for patrol, Little D?” Richard sounds with a smirk.

—-

The night is quiet but tense between Batman and Robin.

They hop the rooftops in sync, stopping a small crime here or there. There’s been no sightings of anyone unusual, even with Nightwing and Red Robin scattered across the lower districts. Even Red Hood was called in about the situation, though they’re not sure he’s really looking as all they got in response was a scoff and a derisive “Another one? Really, B?”

Damian shoots his grapple after his father over one of the main roads, only to get yanked back. For a second, he fears he will plummet into the sea of cars below.

Then his back hits the gravel of the roof behind him.

The shouts of his family are but white noise in his ears as he stares at the dark, hooded figure in front of him.

“Hey, brother.”

There’s a spark of green and the flash of smile beneath the shadow of the hood, “Long time no see and the first thing I catch you doing is jumping off a building? Not a great start.”

The voice is familiar in every way he hadn’t realized. Lilting like his own do to hide the accent of a non-native language, smooth and sharp with wit and strength.

Damian stays awestruck for a second before scowling, “I had a grapple.”

“Robin!” His father barks from above them, swinging down from a water tower like a vengeful shadow.

There’s barely a sharp intake of breath as Danyal lurches backwards and vanishes from sight.

Both are immediately on guard as Batman puts himself between Damian and where Danyal was.

“Who are you! Show yourself!” Father says again, growling.

As Danyal’s shape fades into existence yet again, Damian tries to push past his own questions for the sake of them all.

“Father. It is alright, this is… Danyal. My.. twin.”

Here, his father falters. Apparently, so does Danyal if the cringe he gives is anything to go by.

“I don’t really go by- anyways, yes I’m Dami--Damian’s twin. And I need your help, Talia’s found me and she’s trying to make me join back with the league.”

Damian gets even more tense as the person in front of him stutters over his name, he ignores the rest of it, “Why did you stumble on my name? What did you call me when we were younger? The code you signed on your email.”

Something in Danyal’s eyes went pained, “I called you Gemini, because that’s what we are, even though you always emphasized that we were Sagittarius and ‘besides the stars have no effect on..”

“On our strength or abilities as an opponent.” Damian finished for him, “It is you..” he said amazedly as he stepped closer, “But how? How are you here? How are you alive?”

“Simple answer?” Danyal pulled down the hood of his black sweatshirt to reveal a head of fluffy white hair, “I’m not.”

Damian felt his blood freeze in his veins. The spark of green under his hood… it had been his eyes…Glowing a vicious Lazarus green.

“And as for how I’m here? Well that’s a rather complicated answer, but it all starts with one thing. Ghosts.”

Their father made a sharp inhale beside them and Damian took a stuttering step back, “You’re a ghost?.. You mean, you didn’t survive? … I killed you?”

Danyal’s eyes zoned out before flaring an angry green and then settling as he looked back up, the edges of his body going fuzzy, “Listen, I don’t really remember much from when I- we  were 6, and I don’t much care to. My ghostliness, I think it’s why Talia is trying to get me back. I can’t think of another reason.”

Damian scowled, “Perhaps it is because she is our mother and believed you dead and lost-“

“That woman is not my mother!” Danyal shouted, glow flaring, eyes flashing as he leaned in.

He took a breath and pulled back to collect himself, “Talia was not a mother to us. You have to know that by now at least, Damian.”

Damian looked away and scowled again.

“You barely knew her,”

“Because she sent me to my death!” Danyal flung his hands up.

Batman struggled to choose a side between the two children in front of him. He had loved Talia once too, but he had also seen the toxicity of their relationship.

“Danyal, Robin, we need to focus. If Talia came to recruit one of you, she might be coming for the other.”

“She is. She kept saying some nonsense about ‘making our family whole again’ now that she’s ‘in control.’ I came because I had a feeling she wasn’t gonna take my Hell-No as an appropriate answer with that goal.”

Batman froze as it pieced together in his mind, “The League of Assassins. She’s finally been able to regain control over all of them and become the Demon’s Head after Ra’s Al Ghul’s death.”

This could be bad. Very bad.

Chapter Text

Danny tried to resist, he really did, he swears. It’s just… making eye contact with The Batman was kinda nerve racking in a ‘I’ll do whatever you want’ kind of way.

“If I get stuck haunting a stupid cave for the rest of eternity I’m gonna be pissed. Just putting that out there,” Danny said from the backseat of the Batmobile. It was a last ditch effort to convince Batman and Robin that he didn’t need to come back to their cave.

Robin-Damian Damian Damian, his core whispered- lurched a bit in his seat as Batman slammed the brakes at the entrance to the cave and looked at him in the rear view mirror.

“That can happen?” His gruff voice asked.

Phantom laughed nervously, they were really taking this seriously, “Technically a ghost can get stuck haunting anything, anyone or anywhere that has an emotional connection. Don’t worry though, I already have my own haunt.” And I’m not technically all the way dead he didn’t add. Sure, he was just bit more dead than he usually let on to his friends… but less dead than Batman thought he was. Not that he was gonna correct him though. Secret identity and all that. Plus he’s, y’know, Batman.

Batman gave him an odd look, but turned back and the Batmobile starting moving again, making its way to its designated spot in the cave.

When Batman got out and opened the back door, he was surprised to see it empty.

Danny vanished through the roof of the car. If he was getting kidnapped by his estranged vigilante family, he was doing it on his terms.

“I can’t believe you actually live in a cave!”

Danny floated upwards, taking in the scope of the cave as he rose in the air.

Why was there a giant T-Rex?

“I can’t believe I’m in Batman’s cave. Like wow.”

Danny looked this way and that, trying to take in the entire cave at once.

His eyes snagged on the cases of suits lined up on a platform.

“Wow you have so many…” He said as he drifted down towards them.

How many iterations were there? When did he use blue? Or red? Or-

Danny stopped, standing next the case of an old Robin uniform propped up on its mannequin, the one past it, another Batman suit.

Danny paused and looked at the empty mannequin in the case in front of him, adjusting the height he floated at so his own reflection lined up correctly with the mask.

Would he have been a superhero too? If he’d stayed in the league? Would he have fought at his father’s side?

Danny looked at the Robin suit again.

At his brother’s side?

No.

Danny shook his head.

Grandfather never would have let them both survive. Never would have let them both leave. He was never meant to be at his brothers side, not meant to be his friend, only his competition, his obstacle. And Damian, his.

What were they meant to be now?

A shuffle of clothing alerted him and Danny looked to see Damian approaching him from a flight of stairs, eyes unsure on his otherwise blankly scowling face.

“Father wishes to run some tests.”

Danny blinked, setting his feet on the floor to walk next to Damian as they went back down to the main level.

Danny stops in his tracks as he steps off the last of the stairs.

Batman has his cowl off.

Batman is not wearing a mask.

Come to think of it.

Neither is Damian. But he already knew Damian, even if he’d never remembered the name until a few weeks ago, he’d known the face in the mirror. Even if the mirror image was too pale, the eye color too blue, he knew his brother.

He did not know the man behind Batman’s mask.

Then, before Danny has even the opportunity to cover his eyes, Batman turns around.

Danny blips out of sight on instinct, but it doesn’t help, he’s not the one he’s doesn’t want to see.

His father- Batman, no mask!- looks puzzled. And god, he is so much easier to read without the cowl, even if puzzled just means a raised eyebrow and a tilt of his head by like 3 degrees.

“Danyal?”

Danny forces himself back into visibility, “You took your mask off.”

“Tt. Of course he did. He is our father.”

“But now I know Batman’s identity! Well, not really cuz I don’t know his name, but I mean I kind of recognize his face, nobody knows Batman’s identity, he’s Batman!”

“Ha! He’s barely a man!” A voice laughs out behind them.

He and Damian turn in synchronization to see who it is.

“Oh god that was creepy. It’s like the Demon Brat multiplied.” A girl with blond hair says as she comes down a flight of shadows stairs herself.

Danny looks at Damian and sees his scowl, “Tt. Brown. Of course you are here.”

“Puh-lease, obviously I was gonna show up to see the newest of B’s kids. The rest of the fam will be here soon, would have already been if B hadn’t been stubborn enough to order them to finish patrol.”

“If the League is active again, we should not leave Gotham undefended,” Batman says sternly.

“Yeah whatever, hey Demon Twin, he run the DNA test yet?”

Danny scowls, clenching his jaw at the name, “That is not my name, Brown. You may either call me Danyal or Phantom but do not try to stick me with an insult.” Screw her, she didn’t get to call him Danny, not when she’d insulted both him and Damian, when he didn’t even know her.

The girl raises both eyebrows and blinks dumbly, “Holy hell, don’t even need a DNA test for that, it’s like a glitchy funhouse mirror.”

“Stephanie.” Batman says sternly. And shiz, Danny looks back at him, yep, he still has his mask off.

Then Batman makes eye contact with Danny, “Danyal, I need a sample from you to run a DNA test. We need to be certain this isn’t a trick from one of my enemies.”

From Talia. He hears behind the words.

Danny steps forward closer to the massive console of the computer in front of them.

“You can try, I’m not even sure I have blood like this,” Danny says with a shrug.

Batman’s hand twitches as he grabs a needle and syringe, “We’ll see.”

As turns out, when Danny is thinking about it, yes, he does have blood, so hopefully also DNA, even if it’s bright green with the occasional speck of red.

Danny doesn’t watch as Batman inputs it into the computer, turning back to his brother, but he stops next to him.

He doesn’t really know what to say.

Evidently, neither does Damian, if the awkward tension between them isn’t just him imagining it.

Luckily they’re interrupted from attempting a non-fighting conversation by the roar of not one, not two, but three motorcycles roaring into the cave.

The sheer volume makes Danny jump backwards into a fighting stance.

“Relax, Danyal, it is simply Richard and Todd, no doubt.” He hears an echoed shout in the cave and sneers, “It seems you’ll have the displeasure of meeting Drake as well. How unfortunate.”

When the bikes come to a halt, one of the drivers immediately back-flips to dismount, landing with his arms up facing Danny.

“Oh quit it, ya big show-off, some fancy acrobatics aren’t gonna fool a league kid into liking you,” one of the other biker says, this one wearing a red helmet. Something clogs his throat when Danny looks at him, a chill running up his spine.

By the way the man tenses, he wonders if it was mutual.

“Come on, Jay, there’s no reason to not put our best foot forward when meeting Dami’s family, I wanna make a good first impression!” The one who back flipped whines.

The last one, in all red with two yellow straps on his chest, just stares at Danny. He sighs and heaves a leg over his bike, approaching them cautiously as the other two continue to argue.

“Here’s hoping this one doesn’t try to kill me.”

Danny feels his face scrunch in confusion, “Why would I try to kill you? I just met you.”

The man chuckles, “See, you’d think that, huh? But I’m 0 for 2 on my last two brothers so,” the guy shrugs and sticks his hand out, “Red Robin, or if you are who you say you are..Tim.”

Danny rises in the air a bit to make up the height difference to shake his hand, “Danny Phantom-Al Ghul, a pleasure to meet ya Tim,” Danny smiles, “But if you want to keep your record, I mean, I can always give it a go.”

He hears several gasps and a quiet what-the-fuck echo out around him.

Danny sees the new people making a weird face and he looks back towards Damian to make sure he didn’t do, say, anything wrong.

He was met with a look of utter revulsion on his brother’s face, Damian going so far as to physically recoil from where Danny had shook Tim’s hand.

He had to assume that Damian was an isolated case, because the rest of the family’s faces were covered in shock, not disgust.

The computer dinged behind Batman. The DNA test was done.

And although his blood was highly corrupted, it matched nearly perfectly with Damian’s,

“Congrats B, it’s a boy.”

And the other match was-

“Talia fell in love with Bruce Wayne!?”

Chapter Text

“Talia fell in love with Bruce Wayne!?” Danny says, whipping around to the man in question.

Everything starts piecing together like the worst Fruitloop themed puzzle ever. Danny had seen his face when Batman had removed his cowl of course, and it’d looked familiar, but that could have been anything, he never thought- Bruce Wayne!? His biological father, Batman, a man who hadn’t even known he existed, who Danny had never known, was Bruce Wayne? The richest man in America?

“You didn’t know?” Tim asks and Danny wants to scream.

He doesn’t, because that would be unassassiny-like and he’s not 100% sure it wouldn’t come out as a wail- but the desire is very much there. It feels like half of his life-view is crumbling before him.

“No, I didn’t know,” Danny starts tersely, “Talia never told us who Batman- who our father was, not until we could beat her in a fight. I… never got the chance.” He winces at the last statement, feeling the way the room goes colder at the reminder.

“Tt, clearly you would not have been able to anyways.”

Danny feels his eyes flare in frustration as he looks back to Damian, “I was a better fighter than you were, it’s not like you were finishing her challenge any earlier than I was, Damian.”

“The tutors may have favored you but it was not the tutors who bested you was it?” Damian snarled back.

“Whoa Damian-“

Memories flickered through Danny’s mind.

A fight. A snowy cliff. Red. Pain. Cold. Darkness. [Green]

“Danny, you good there?”

Danny jerked his head up, not realizing he’d curled in on himself, “I’m .. fine.”

“You sure? You kind of… flickered,” Nightwing said, motioning vaguely with his hands, “Like a lightbulb.”

Danny cringed, “It’s one of the side effects of being like, this,” he motioned to himself, “I’m not exactly meant to exist on this plane of existence so sometimes I.. don’t? I guess? I don’t know, ghostly stuff is always pretty hard to explain.”

A “Hn.” Is all that comes from Bruce.

Danny practically feels their stares close in on him like walls.

“Whatever! The ghost stuff doesn’t matter!” He says, throwing his hands up and rising slightly off the ground, “What matters is that Talia is after me and is probably coming after Damian, so you need to figure out how to stop her. I didn’t come to talk, I came for protection.”

Danny takes a second, mimicking a breath and collecting himself. He couldn’t blow up like Danny, not when he had to make them see him as Danyal.

An Al-Ghul shows no weakness. An Al-Ghul shows no weakness.

“Tt. There is no reason to continue to refuse to call her Mother.”

Danny feels his eyes flare as turns back to where Damian stands, still scowling. Just like he always was.

“I’ve already told you, Damian,” He says, restraining the urge to yell that Maddie was his mom not Talia, “She was not a mother to me and I will not pretend she was when she is the reason I am being hunted.”

“She raised us,” Damian says with a scowl.

Danny feels old anger spark in him, “She trained us.”

He remembers cold nights and hard floors, cruel orders and harsher whips.

“She made us stronger,” Damian says with stone in his voice. Danny hates it, hates it because it’s exactly what they were always told. ‘It made them stronger’ but that didn’t save him so what did it matter? Damian and him never did anything but fight, they never saw each other except to fight, so much so that the first time Jazz invited him to dinner he’d thought she’d poisoned it and tried to burn down the kitchen.

Danny hates it. He hates it. He hates it. He hates it.

He forces himself to let it go. This isn’t him. Not anymore.

Danny turns away from Damian completely, fists still tightly clenched as he looks Bruce- not his father, never his father- in the eye, “Now that you have proof I am who I say, how do we stop Talia?”

Back to business. Just finish this and you can go home.

Bruce turns back to the console, “First, we need to figure out her goals, and where….”

Danny steels himself as Bruce- as Batman-continues. He could do this.

He could pretend to be a ghost of himself for however long it took.

Pretend that he really had died -stayed dead- that day with Damian.

Pretend that he remembered more about his life in the league than he did.

Pretend he wasn’t an entirely different person now.

Pretend like he still knew who he was.

Pretend like every word from Damian’s mouth didn’t pull him back to a time when he was small, too small, but never weak, and-

Yeah, he could totally absolutely do this.

Definitely.

Danny cringes as the butler tells them all that a meal is ready and everyone starts to move away from the darkness of the cave. With every step into the warmly lit lights of the manor above the cave, Danny feels his hackles rise more.

It feels exposed, making him feel like his lies are muddying just by being there, the warmth of the atmosphere, tones of family, grief, growth, loss, suffocating him as he goes deeper. Knowing that he’s part of that, he’s not going to stay, he’s lying to Damian, he’s hurting him, he’s-

Danny gets one step in the dining room before he sees the family dining table sitting there, an ornate chandelier illuminating the plates laid out at each spot, favorite foods in the middle… and two slightly elder ghosts at the head of the table with love in their eyes as they watch the family sit.

He doesn’t belong here.

Danny takes a staggering step back.

He doesn’t belong here.

Damian notices his retreat, mouth opening to speak-

He doesn’t belong here.

Danny turns tail and vanishes, throwing himself back through the ground with intangibility until he reaches the cave. From there he pauses at the entrance they’d come through, turning back instead of running.

The seconds pause is enough time for someone else to notice him.

“Running already?”

Danny lurches, nearly squeaking as he startles and his visibility flickers. He follows the voice to a figure leaning against a slightly dim doorway on the side. An illuminated locker room sits behind him.

“You’re… Jay, right? The Red Hood?”

The man hums and walks closer, “It’s Jason. You’re the new kid. Talia’s huh?”

Danny wants to shrink in on himself, his muscles tightening as he gets closer, “I’m- yeah.”

Jason scoffs, looking up the stairs like he can see straight to the dining room, “God, B and this fucking family…” He turns a critical eye to Danny without moving his head, “What’s got you fleeing so soon? It didn’t look like you were causing any sort of trouble-“

“I just-“ Danny sighs, rubbing the back of his neck, “I don’t belong here okay? As far as you all know, I’m not even supposed to exist anymore. I doubt you want a dead kid messing up your family, right?”

Something in Jason’s face twitches, his shoulders shifting, “Take it from me, kid… they haven’t even considered that.”

Danny tilts his head, really looking at Jason for the first time, something tickling at the back of his senses.

Jason doesn’t hesitate to meet his eyes.

He looks back through the exit tunnel, turning back a second time, “Tell ‘em I’ll be back okay? Just… not now, alright? But I’ll be back.”

And Jason nods, a silent guarantee.

Danny returns it, finally turning and flying full speed through the tunnels until he meets open air.

It feels slightly sticky compared to the coolness of the cave, but Danny simply looks around to get his bearings before turning into the distance with determination.

He doesn’t stop until he sees the shine of a golden globe pass under him. He enters the hotel straight through the walls of the elevator shaft, dropping his ghost from the second he hits carpeted halls.

And then he pauses…

Which room were they in again?

Thankfully, he doesn’t have to wait long, as one of the doors gets thrown open moments later by the lumbering figure which can only be his dad.

“Ghost!” Dad says as he bends through the doorway, ghost-finder in his hands as he looks around until finally spotting Danny, “Danno! You’re back!”

The incessant droning of the ghost-finder is overshadowed as Danny struggles to breath around his Dad’s hug, “He..y.., Da..d” He wheezes.

He sees Jazz come bursting out of the hotel room next. She gives him a hard look before they’re both swept into Dad’s arms and practically carried back into the room.

His mom is there, tinkering on a tool Danny himself had helped design a few weeks ago.

His dad, of course, goes straight for the fudge in the mini fridge. Danny steals the remote from Jazz and plops himself down on the bed free of machine scraps.

Even as he has to keep Jazz from smothering him with a hotel pillow, Danny smiles. He feels his shoulders loosen for the first time all night.

This. This is where he belongs.

—

The demon brat’s twin was… something. They hadn’t really had the time to start forming real expectations, but most of them didn’t expect.. a ghost.

Tim can see the way Bruce’s eyes linger on the wafts of snowy hair, aching guilt lining his body whenever Danny’s back is turned even just slightly.

It doesn’t go away as they all file up to a late dinner. By Alfred’s order, they all go, pair by pair trickling up to the dining room like the most awkward yellow brick road ever.

Somewhere in the stilted chaos, Jason manages to slip out from the group, probably the first time he’s left the manor without fighting with Bruce in months.

Of course that hardly matters when the moment they step into the dining room, Danny freezes by the door, flickering again.

Tim watches as his eyes jump across them all, the table, the room, the chairs- Danny steps back and-

Vanishes.

Damian is lurching towards the door, “Danyal!”

But it’s empty. All of them had felt his presence leave, even if they hadn’t realized that’s what it was, suddenly the room is a few degrees warmer and just a bit emptier than before.

Tim looks to Bruce.

They don’t know what that was, why Danny left. Was he just scared? Or could something have happened to him? They didn’t know enough about ghosts, and what they did know said they weren’t very strong. Boston Brand couldn’t interact with the physical world without possessing someone- Danny had already said he wasn’t meant to exist on this plane, had he run out of strength?

Dick approaches Damian still brooding in the doorway, setting a hand on his shoulder- Damian throws it off immediately.

“I am fine,” he snaps, “Danyal is a coward.”

Bruce stands, “Damian, don’t say that-“

“Why shouldn’t I!? What does he have to fear!? He ran away like a coward and left me behind!”

Silence settles in the room.

Tim decides to break it, “Any chance you’re not just talking about him not staying for dinner?”

A knife pierces the wall behind him.

“I will end you, Drake.”

“Master Damian! I do not have enough portraits to continue covering holes in the paneling!” Alfred scolds, standing at the doorway.

Damian stops, glaring at them all before turning to Alfred, “I’ll take my dinner in my room please, Pennyworth.” Then he turns on his heel and strides from the room. It is too fast to be anything but fleeing.

Steph slumps into the chair beside Tim, “Boys are weird.”

Tim scowls, “Oi.”

“I stand by my statement.”

Chapter Text

Let m e ou t! Let me o ut !

This is isn’t real! It’s n ot real! Accept it, play along play along. Get out! Convince him, you have to convince him! G et out! Wake u p! Snap out of it! Play along play along play along

Wake up! It’s not real wake u p wak e up accept it w ake up wak e up wa ke up get up get up get up

Bruce sits bolt upright with a haze of fog still between his skin and his mind. Immediately, his gut feels off, the way his shoulders are loose with the lack of anxiety and paranoia that he’s grown used to, the way his vision is not quite aligned to his senses.

And yet.. he can’t seem to raise the right sense of alarm. His mind stays slow and calm, even as he mentally screams to start investigating. Someone, something is messing with his mind.

He turns his head to the side of the bed he’s in-another thing he does not recognize- surprised to find Diana laying next to him.

How is she here? No, they were on a mission, investigating.. something. Why can’t he remember? He’d had Oracle on comms, Wonder Woman at his side, it was a Justice League mission- why is he-

Bruce winces, sharp pain running across the front of his brain. What was-

The door slams open, a boy he doesn’t recognize standing there, dark black hair, and blue-green/-blue eyes. His mind jumps to son, a shallow feeling of family bubbling up that makes Bruce want to recoil, this isn’t Damian, it’s not Tim or Jason or Dick or Cass- this isn’t his son! This isn’t his family! he wants to yell out.

And yet, his mouth calls him Danny, a name he doesn’t know and says with such familiarity.

“Dad! Babs is being a know it all again!”

Bruce feels his face smile without his permission just as he sees Barbara step around the doorframe.

She’s standing, she’s younger, she looks just a little different, hair pushed back by a teal blue headband- Bruce wants to scream, something is wrong!- instead he smiles more as she ruffles Danny’s hair.

“Little Brother, you’re going to be late for school,” Barbara says, despite the fact that she has always, always been an only child.

Diana sits up beside him, and Bruce can’t even turn away from the two in front of him, no matter how much he tries, barely managing a wide eye look from his peripheral. He can’t tell if Diana even catches it. He can’t move, can’t interrogate the only unknown here, kid or not, can’t research or ask Oracle for more information. Barbara hasn’t been able to reply to him any more than he has.

Within a blink, they’re downstairs-how did they get here, what’s happening, is there a time distortion as well?- and Bruce is standing at the stove top, a pan of broken eggs with small bits of shells in them in front of him.

It’s manageable. He could still finish these eggs- unbidden he steps aside, a jovial laugh as Diana goodnaturedly scolds his cooking abilities, emptying the pan and starting anew.

Bruce turns. Danny and Barbara are both sitting at the table, Danny the picture of teenage recklessness, homework spread in front of him.

Every word looks like scribbles, staring too hard makes his brain hurt.

The toaster dings. Danny looks up at it, glaring. Bruce swears his eyes flash green-

“All done! Enjoy!” The clink of plates hitting the table makes them both look over as Diana sets them down.

Barbara and Diana share a look even as Diana stiffly turns back to the counters.

Bruce looks at the toaster.

Empty.

“Come on, Babs we’re gonna be late for school!”

Barbara hesitates, a pained look hidden just behind her eyes, “Danny, I- my legs hurt right now okay? I can’t drive us to-“ The words sound like a struggle to get out. And Danny stands stock still in the living room, looking at her with unnatural stillness.

“But you always drive us to school.”

Bruce watches Barbara’s body snap back to that same stiffness as before as she moves to stand from the kitchen table.

Bruce forces a step forward, smile on his face, “How about I drive you today, kiddo?”

“Okay, Dad!” Danny smiles, movement returning to the room. He moves to grab his backpack left against the wall and Bruce throws another look at Barbara from the side of his eye. She’s okay for now, body more natural as she returns the look with wide eyes herself.

Still, she stands and follows after them as his feet lead them to the car out front.

It’s an old station wagon, a stereotypical family car.

Even as Bruce walks around to the driver door, keys somehow already in his pocket, he catches Danny staring at the car with narrowed eyes and suspicion.

Bruce looked back at the car- truck, had it always been a truck, no, no, no, it changed it changed, things were changing.

Danny climbed into the backseat like nothing was different and Bruce did the same, Barbara behind him in the backseat.

His body is autonomous on the drive, even as Bruce tries futilely to jerk the wheel or slam the pedals, they continue to go forward on the road, Bruce’s face as calm as ever. It’s almost familiar, the two of them bickering in the back seat, chattering like his own children, there were his own- no! They weren’t! His kids were out there! Not here! Not here not here-

Bruce stops, awareness heightening abruptly, his limbs his own.

They’re at a stop light, despite there being no other cars around.

The backseat is silent.

Bruce turns back, surprised to see Danny staring silently out the window. He looks at Barbara next, grateful to see real emotion, pain, panic, on her face, not just hidden behind wide empty eyes.

Danny continues to stare out the window.

Bruce follows his line of sight across the street to a closed down burger restaurant. The outside looks clean, but the sign looks burnt and destroyed. Yellow caution tape flaps in the wind across the entrance.

“Danny, what are you looking at?” He asks, surprised to hear the words come out, completely of his own volition.

Danny doesn’t move.

“We don’t go there anymore.”

Bruce narrows his eyes, clues filing into order, “Why, Danny. What is that place?”

“We just don’t.”

“Why Danny, why is that place so-“

“We just DON’T, okay!” Danny shouts, face angry as he turns around to yell, and there- his eyes, that flash of neon-

Bruce is facing forward again. The light is green. The car moves, sound resumes.

His chance is gone.

Bruce wants to grit his teeth, clench the leather of his gauntlets beneath his fists. He barely manages to tighten his hands around the steering wheel.

Too quickly they arrive at the school. Barbara slowly getting out even as Danny practically races up the steps. Bruce wants to help her, surprisingly, his body follows. Allow him to support her under a hug, a fatherly hand on her opposite shoulder, fingers supporting her armpit as they go up the stairs.

Danny looks at them with a tilt of his head and furrowed brows.

Words fall from Bruce’s mouth, unbidden, as his feet force him backwards, “See you after school, Danno! Bye, Babsy-pants!”

The look vanishes from Danny’s face.

Seconds later, a man approaches them, eyes zeroed in on Danny.

“Ah, Daniel, glad to see you’re on time!” The man says, and Danny looks at him, blinking harshly with confusion apparent.

“You must be young Daniel’s father… Jack, was it?” The man says, smiling slightly and turning to Bruce, grey hair tied in a ponytail behind him, “I am his teacher, Mr. Lancer.”

Bruce’s neck tingles, an odd sense of familiar paranoia prickling his nerves, “It’s Bruce, a pleasure to meet you,” he shakes the offered hand automatically, watching as the man’s smile sharpens at the edges.

“And the same to you… Mr. Fenton.”

The name rings hollow in his memory, barely scratching a memory before it is buried under fog and stuffed cotton.

“I just have so much to teach the boy,” The man smiles again, watching as Danny finally walks fully through the school doors, turning down a hallway.

Even under whatever spell this is, Bruce is wary of this teacher, though he can do nothing to show it, even feel it past a surface notion of wrongness. But still, his feet carry him down the steps without his permission, away from a kid he is ostentatiously supposed to protect.

As he gets closer to the car, Bruce feels the cloud over his thoughts get thicker, step by step, each clogging his mind more.

He catches sight of the school’s announcement sign, the date.

Mid-October, the numbers hard to read, but he caught enough.

They were months into the school year already. How long had he been here? How long before he’d even woken up enough to know it? How long had he been away from his family?

His fingers clasp around the cool metal of the door handle.

Bruce blinks.

The bell rings.

Faceless, unfamiliar kids flood out of the doors and Bruce gets out of the truck- car, it was a car, it was a car-greeting Danny with a hug, Barbara with a helping hand.

They leave almost immediately, the two of them in the backseat as Bruce drives.

Occasionally, Bruce will look in the rear view mirror and find a completely different sight, the road cracked and broken, buildings abandoned, streets empty; and yet when he checks again, it’s gone. The reflection the same as the road before him.

He can only see it like a translucent image in his peripheral.

Somehow their route home does not take them back past the burger restaurant again. Bruce has used and discarded three different mind strengthening techniques by the time they are back in front of the house.

He parks, noticing for the first time how the air shimmers in front and top of the building, the light shifting like a curtain covering furniture when he doesn’t look directly at it.

Diana is sitting on the couch in the living room when they come in, a laptop perched on her lap, looking for all the world like a stay at home worker.

The seemingly blank pieces of paper on the coffee table are discarded as she gets up and moves towards the kitchen.

“Welcome home Danny, how was school Babs?” She says, food preparations already set out around her.

Bruce walks towards her, a hand across her shoulders; the picture of loving parents.

He hopes the feeling of solidarity gleams through anyways.

Freedom of movement snaps through his body so suddenly he nearly staggers. He looks at Diana, a thousand words in one glance, then turns to Danny.

The boy is staring at the door on the side of the kitchen. By its placement, Bruce would guess storage, a pantry, a basement maybe. He hesitates to break the unnatural stillness in the air.

Diana is already halfway to the door, Barbara is at the table, thumbs flying across her phone screen.

He makes a decision, throwing away the facade, “Danny, where are we? Why are we here?”

Danny’s face furrows, head tilting in confusion, but his eyes don’t leave the basement door, green light seeping from the edges.

“We’re… at home. Right? I just wanted… I wanted to go home..” Danny says, eyes flickering that damning bright green.

Bruce presses on, he needs answers, “What happened here Danny? What is this? Why are we here?”

“I…” Danny’s face furrows further, “I don’t…”

The doorbell rings, snapping Danny’s attention to it. Taking with it his mind and movement, fog sliding over his senses.

Bruce’s looks at the basement door from the  side of his vision, any hint of green light gone.

“Danny, your friends are here!” Diana calls out, voice shallowly chipper.

Bruce’s vision jumps to the front door, thankful that he follows Danny as he leaves the kitchen.

No no no.. no no.. not them, leave them alone, leave them out of this!

Tim and Stephanie stand at the door, plastic smiles on their faces as they high-five Danny.

“Hey guys! Ready to play Doom?!” Danny says, a wide smile on his face, leading them both inside.

Straight past Bruce.

They walk right past him, shallow words and teenage garble trading between them like it’s natural, like it’s real. Why wouldn’t it be?

NO! Not them! None of it’s real! Let them go!

“You know it Danny! I got new mods, maybe we’ll finally beat Steph!” Tim says, loud in way he never is, pulling a bulky PDA from his pocket.

Stephanie laughs, elbowing the both of them, “Not in a million years, T!”

Bruce watches, helpless to stop them as they go past him, raging against his own body.

Tim casts a desperate look over his shoulder before they disappear up the stairs.

He manages a glance at both Diana and Barbara, each returning the tense undercurrent of urgency that runs through them all.

Even as the fog thickens, submerging his thoughts like polluted waters, he forces his mind to center on one thought, even if that’s all he can do for now, he will not be locked back into this lie they are trapped in.

He will fix this.

Somehow.

Chapter Text

“See man, the moon!” Kid Flash said as they came outside, standing on the pile of rubble.

“And Superman! Do we fulfill our promises or what…” his voice trails off as a grinding clanking sound echoes behind them.

They turned around, confused to see a tricked out pale yellow Volkswagen bug trucking its way up the rubble and crumbled building blocks. It stopped before it got too steep, a man in a familiar white lab coat stumbling out.

Immediately, they were on guard, the man haphazardly climbing towards them.

Robin drew two batarangs in each hand, standing in front of Superboy as he got closer. It didn’t even matter that the Justice League had just landed behind them, if this CADMUS scientist tried something, Robin would be the first to defend Superboy. Without hesitance.

The man stopped in front of them, huffing for breath.

“You’re-!” He stopped, leaning over his knees with gasping breaths, “Sorry, one sec!” He held up a finger, gasping for another few seconds before stepping forward-

Chains of water surrounded him before they could blink, Robin looking back surprised to see Aqualad standing with extended weapons and a grim face.

“This is odd.” The man looked at the water wrapped around him, wriggling a bit before shrugging. His eyes zeroed in on Superboy, “You’re okay!” He said with a blinding grin.

Superboy recoiled and Robin immediately stepped between them.

“What.”

The man glanced at him briefly before looking back over Robin’s head, “You are okay right? I mean I tried my best but I couldn’t figure out a way to get you out- I mean if I’d known you were there to begin with I’d would have never-but then I wouldn’t have-

“Who are you?” Superman asks, suddenly close from behind them.

The man’s mouth clicks shut, looking between them all before a grimacing smile rises to his face.

He extends his hand at the elbow between the liquid chains, “Dr. Danny Fenton, ex-biochemical engineer of CADMUS labs Mr.Superman,sir.”

Flash zips forward, the eyes of his cowl narrowed, “Ex?”

The grimace turns into a wince. “Oh.. heh, yeah, I’ve found that arson is usually a pretty good kickstart of sudden unemployment,” there’s a thoughtful pause as he looks over the rubble, “It’s usually accidental though.”

Nobody responds.

“What? You didn’t think that lab fire started on its own did you? How else was I supposed to get you here?”

“There’s a Justice League public phone! That’s literally its entire purpose!” Kid Flash shouts, throwing his hands in the air. At this point, Aqualad cautiously lowers his water bearers, releasing Fenton.

“Oh, sure, I call a bunch of superheroes and tell them my boss is doing a Grow-Your-Own-Superman in the boiler room. That’d go over well.” He pauses, “Though the sidekicks was a surprise.”

The comment goes uncorrected, as the rest of the league has snapped to face Superboy the moment he says it.

Superman looks stricken as Superboy reveals the logo on his torn shirt.

Fenton unceremoniously breaks the tension, “Sorry I never asked, do you have a name? I’d feel really bad just calling you-“

“… They called me.. Superboy..” He says, still not looking away from the man of steel in front of him.

“That’s not-“ Fenton rubs his temples and sighs harshly, “Okay, I can fix that later, whatever-“

“You’re not gonna be ‘fixing’ anything, Doctor.” Robin snarls.

Fenton blinks. “Huh?”

Batman steps forward, “Green Lantern.”

Green construct cuffs snap around the Dr.Fenton’s wrists, though he looks at them puzzled.

“Superman, check for survivors in the damage, Flash find some salvageable evidence before it finishes burning. The rest of us, we’ll continue this interrogation at the hall.”

“Wait what?” Dr. Fenton says, perking up like a meerkat even as Batman turns away with swirl of his cape.

“What about me?” Superboy asks, desperation in his hesitant step forward.

Batman looks to Superman. Superman nods, and then shoots off into the rubble and emergency vehicles.

“For now, you come with us.” Batman says, and Superboy’s shoulders loosen just a hint.

The dark knight pauses again before turning completely, “And don’t think we’ve forgotten the rest of you,” he says, cowled eyes narrowed over his shoulder, “Robin.”

Robin shirks back, “Heh.. Right.”

“Wait what’s going on?” The Fenton scientist yelled back over his shoulder as Green Lantern pulls him away.

He starts to say something but the construct fully engulfs him now, shifting from a platform to a soundproof bubble.

It seems to shock him enough, Fenton tapping at the walls and looking like he wants to take it apart and take a sample.

Robin grit his teeth.

He was not gonna let these CADMUS freaks touch Superboy again.

Not Fenton or anybody else.

Chapter Text

Danyal wakes the next time with a weight to his limbs. From the moment he opens his eyes, he realizes he is not where he is supposed to be.

This is a medical bay, but it is not in the league, the constant twittering of League doctors monitoring his health is suspiciously gone. No shadows on guard outside the door.

The most glaring thing though, there was no Lazarus Water in his veins.

Perhaps Ra’s had decided he was no longer worth the expense, had decided-

No.

It was something else. That wasn’t an option he would consider.

Danyal tested the feeling of thin metal on his right wrist. Handcuffs, not shackles. It was odd.

But again, this wasn’t the league.

But he’d need to go back before Ra’s became angry. Danyal couldn’t fail.

He glances to the door as it opens, an old man-the one from before- and a younger, slender man standing just behind him.

Danyal stays still, his breathing even, forcing his heart to stay at a constant, stable rate. He watches them, analyzing.

The old man blinks, “It’s good to see you’re awake, young sir-,” He steps into the room, left foot a second slower, old weakness?- English accent, in Europe? the man behind him follows- stiff posture, rib injury, core focused strength, gymnast, combat trained and familiar- Richard Dick Grayson, Nightwing, he’s in America, Batman- “You gave us quite the shock earlier, myself especially.”

Nightwing watched Danyal warily, he saw him as a threat, and by the angle of his feet, a threat to the older man. He remembers now, he’d attacked him before, Nightwing was here to prevent it again.

They are heroes.

He was a part of the League of the Assassins.

He doesn’t fit here, could never.

Danyal considers the merits of speaking English, he wants to, deeply, and perhaps it would even benefit the situation; but his chest clogs with fear before he can even compose a sentence. It’s been too long anyways, the League dialect is easier.

“How long have I been here?” Danyal says, still not moving enough to even jostle the cuff at his wrist.

Nightwing sighs deeply, “We rescued you and Damian from a League of Assassins boat yesterday.” The words of the language are stilted, either by unfamiliarity or awkwardness, and who’s Damian? There’s a pause, “Do you know who I am?” Nightwing asks, caution in the words.

Danyal takes a deep breath, finally sitting up, despite the rattling of the chain on the cuff, “You are Nightwing, Dick Grayson, correct?”

Nightwing nods, his eyes briefly flitting to the elder man, “And you?”

Danyal’s eyes narrow, trying to find the trap, “I am Danyal Al Ghul, Heir of the Demon’s head, Blood of the Batman.”

Danyal watches the eyebrow of the old man tick up in his peripheral.

Nightwing pinches the bridge of his nose, “God I can’t believe Talia did it again,” He murmurs under his breath. In English. And Danyal would be lying if he said he wasn’t happy to hear the language again, even just a little.

“Perhaps it would be best to bring Master Bruce back from his meeting,” the old man says pointedly. Danyal ignores as he changes and resets the IV attached to him, familiar with the autonomous care. With or without his consent.

“I’ve already notified him, he should be here soon.”

“Very good. In the meantime,” he turns to Danyal, “I am Alfred Pennyworth, the Wayne family butler. It seems I did not get the chance to introduce myself the last time you were awake.”

Danyal can’t help but blink at the almost joking tone Alfred says it with, knowing that Danyal had been the one to knock him out. It makes his lip twitch, and he silently huffs, surprising himself with the action.

The amusement vanishes as the door opens once more, footsteps barely audible in the second before.

The man standing there is large, tall and broad shouldered, strong- dangerous, calloused hands from training- his eyes stay glued to Danyal, blue and steady amidst the square jaw and sharp features, black hair tussled like he’d been rushing, just like Dad always-

Danyal feels his jaw wire shut, back straightening.

The thin chain of the handcuff jingles in the sudden silence.

This he remembers. This is Batman. The Dark Night of Gotham. The Detective.

The source of every expectation Ra’s Al Ghul has ever placed on Danyal.

He feels his face try to screw into a sneer, because he hates him and everything he’s done that has ever affected Danyal, but his face remains still. Controlled. Because there’s nothing he can do about it anyways.

Batman had introduced himself before.

As another name. A civilian. His training forces him to remember it.

Bruce Wayne.

It means next to nothing to him. But the man doesn’t stop looking.

It’s Dick that speaks next, “Danyal, this is Batman, Bruce Wayne, your father.” The smile is at odds with the weary tone of the words, “He was there when we saved you and Damian a few.. yesterday. God that feels like longer.”

Saved? The sentiment makes him want to scoff. He doesn’t, because Batman’s eyes already narrow with Nightwing’s words, and Danyal doesn’t need to make it worse.

A thousand more questions rush through his head. Each one bitten back with practiced force.

Instead he dips his head briefly, aiming for a show of respect, whatever that might mean here. However little he means it. Danyal can adjust regardless.

“Hn.”

Danyal lifts his head. That was the only response?

They uproot him entirely, chain him, throw him into unfamiliar waters where everything-everyone- is in new danger and all he does is grunt?

Danyal bites his tongue hard, letting his head lift, carefully non-defiant. He’s not quite sure his eyes get the message because he can feel the glare from them.

“Master Bruce,” Alfred pipes in, tone sharp.

Batman sighs, but the set of his shoulders changes, no longer so heavily lined with suspicion.

“What do you know about why Damian was-" There’s an even sharper cough from Alfred. Another sigh, “Fine. What has Talia already told you about me?”

Danyal glances between them, purposefully keeping his eyes from jumping down to the metal around his wrists.

No one else speaks.

“I know that you are Batman, the Dark Night of Gotham. You are also the detective, great enough to impress the Demon’s Head, Ra’s Al Ghul. The Demon’s daughter informed me you were dead.”

There’s a slight twitch on Batman’s face. “I survived Darkseid’s attack, although it led to me being lost in time and assumed dead for nearly a year,” Batman’s eyes flick across the room, almost considering, “Red Robin was responsible for my return just over a year ago.”

Red Robin. Timothy Drake. The one Ra’s favored. The second source of expectations placed on Danyal.

And he was lost in time? What did that consist of, what did it mean for Batman? Did it matter if it didn’t affect Danyal?

“I see.” He says. Silence lingers. They still expect him to speak. He hedges his bets, asking something he actually cares about, “Why am I here, Batman?”

The question seems to be expected and yet still strike with surprise.

“I… regrettably, did not know you were… present at the league. I do not believe in their methods and would not have left you there had I known.”

And that makes it all okay. Danyal wants to scream. But he narrows his eyes instead, only more suspicious, “And why were you there then?”

“We followed the shadows that had taken Damian. He told us who you were.”

Danyal pauses, leaning back slightly. They were willing to answer his questions, to actually talk to him. Of course they were, they were meant to be heroes.

But it had been so long since he’d actually talked with anyone other than Ra’s, and their conversations were a battleground of expectations and tests.

He fights with his conscious knowledge of this and the habits that have been beaten into him so thoroughly.

“Who is… Damian?” He asks, watching their reactions for the answer.

All three seem surprised by the question. But not angry. Of course not, he reminds himself.

“You’ve mentioned him several times like I am supposed to know who he is.” He had barely been told anything since his forceful return, and any knowledge he had from before stopped at Dick Grayson. And then Timothy Drake.

Danyal had purposefully ignored the hero world he had lived in-

He forces his eyes up to meet Batman’s, noting the hesitance in the set of his shoulders.

“Damian is… your brother. He was.. Talia’s son, before he came to me just a few years ago. He was raised in the league.”

Danyal blinks, anger disbelieving in his chest. Is that what she did?

“When.”

There’s no response, save a twitch of Batman’s eyebrow.

“When,” Danyal says again, his breathing controlled, “Did he come to you? How old was he? How long ago?”

They seem to pick up on the way Danyal’s tone has changed. Good for them.

“Nearly three years ago. He was ten.” Batman answers, voice rough. Tinged with curiosity and unfulfilled questions.

Danyal breathes deeply, his heart rate picking up against his wishes. Icy rage flares.

The beeping of the machine at his side matches the pounding in his chest, uneven, unbalanced, uncontrolled.

Keep it under control. Keep it. Under. Control.

Control is power. Control is strength. Control is the only thing that will ever be enough.

He breathes deeper. Holding his breath. Once. Twice.

The beeping is steadier with each tone.

“Danyal?” An old voice asks beside him. It’s Alfred. The butler.

Danyal shifts his jaw from its clench, “I am fine.” His eyes slide back into focus, still on Batman, “Damian is your son then.”

Batman nods solemnly, a heavier sigh through his chest, “Talia and I have had an… interesting relationship. But I loved her. Once. She has never failed to make me regret it.”

That was why she had visited him. Her words. What she had almost said. Talia had wished he was Damian, wished he was Bruce. Just not Danyal of course. The weapon she discarded for a better version. One she could love.

One who would be heir.

Batman continues, “Talia is Damian’s mother, told him he would be my heir, as I’m sure you were but-” Batman stops, looking at Danyal as confusion flicks across his face, “You weren’t.”

“I was never told I would be heir of the Batman, only of the Demon’s head.” This, at least, Danyal is familiar with, “That’s the only reason they needed me: to be their weapon made from the Demon Head’s enemy.” Danyal breathes, “A weapon does not have parents, and I have never been more than a weapon to them, crafted for the league’s purpose. For Ra’s.” 

Ra’s is the reason Danyal is alive at all. Is the only reason he has survived the league, but he is also the reason Danyal had to, no- has to survive.

Danyal drops his eyes, tired, so so tired, like he always is. Unerringly, his eyes find the shine of the metal around his wrist. Arm held carefully still to keep from jostling it, even as his other hand has found its way to his lap.

“You can’t really believe that,” Dick says, disbelief in his own voice, unsurety in the frame of an unfamiliar language.

“It doesn’t matter what I believe.”

And it doesn’t. It only matters what he can do. That’s he’s strong. He just has to be strong enough. Ra’s is the reason Danyal suffers, has always been, and Danyal will never let him escape that.

Silence lasts. Danyal quickly grows tired of it.

Luckily, Batman breaks it, “Why were you exposed to the Lazarus waters?” He asks, voice rigid and flat once more. 

Perhaps the casualness is getting to him because Danyal manages to lift one lip in a slight sneer, “The only reason anybody uses the Lazarus Pits.”

The Batman stays silent, clearly talking about the unorthodox method of exposure they had resorted to.

Danyal sighs this time, serious, “My heart is damaged. Electricity. The pits are a short term solution for it. Grandfather had said he found a long term one.” Danyal doubts it matters now. Whatever care his Ra’s al Ghul’d had was fragile, dependent on Danyal’s performance. 

The palm of his left hand tingles sharply.

Would this be enough to tip the scale against him? What would he lose for being here? Who would he-

Danyal looks into Batman’s eyes, “Am I to be a prisoner here?”

The man glances over him at the two on the other side, Danyal doesn’t follow it, nor the silent conversation he’s sure is happening.

Instead, Danyal focuses his ears, senses sharpened by training, by the pits, by his accident… and turns his attention to the person hiding in an alcove above them.

Low breathing, higher pitched, the scent of sword polish and hair gel. The person was small and armed.

“You’re not a prisoner… but if you leave.. you’ll be in danger,” Batman says, voice deep, “We can’t let that happen.”

So either be followed or don’t leave. What great options.

Danyal tries not to scowl, not to show any inflection at it, “And do I have to stay here? In your…. Cave?”

“It might be difficult to move- uh.. the medical things-” Nightwing starts, but Danyal cuts him off by swiftly removing the IV tucked in the crook of his elbow.

He presses his thumb against the small well of blood as he looks forward.

Alfred shouts, jolting towards him, “Master Danyal! That is hardly sterile-“

Danyal’s eyes snap to him the moment the title leaves his mouth, heart stilling for a second, commands in his eyes. Alfred falls still.

Danyal lets it fall away the next second, barely two beats missed. The beeping starts again.

“I see.” Alfred straightens, stepping forward slowly to turn off the IV and coil it, removing other monitors, “Another one for the dramatics then.”

Nightwing steps up, hands out placatingly, “There’s..mm really no need, Danyal, uh-” He glances back to Batman, “Of course you can leave the cave-,” the next words are in bright clear English, “I’m sure there’s already a room picked out for you.”

“Right you are Master Dick,” Alfred says, “Young sir, do you need any help moving?” He directs to Danyal.

He wants to rip his hand from the metal cuff. Snap the thin chain to pieces.

Instead he looks to Nightwing, then Batman, “The restraints?” He says, voice as empty of want as he can make it.

The click of the key in the lock echoes in his ear and it’s only through practiced calm that Danyal does not immediately jerk his arm away from it. Instead, he calmly retracts his hand, bracing slightly against the bed as he turns and plants his feet on the floor.

The others have already moved out of his way, watching intently, waiting for him to fall- to fail.

Danyal straightens his legs. He stands. He breathes. He controls his heart. He walks forward.

He does not fall. He doesn’t have the option to fall.

“I can go now.” He says, looking at them. His knuckles are white on the edge of the bed.

Nightwing looks at Batman once more. The man grunts, then turns from the room in a way that he can only imagine would perfectly flare a cape.

Danyal’s feet feel like they’re filling with cement. Nightwing stares at him expectantly. Danyal understands expectations- but these ones, it leaves him helpless and-

“Follow me then, dear boys,” Alfred says, stepping in front smoothly, already moving towards the door, “We can go upstairs, I’ll start on a meal and Master Dick can show you the rooms.”

Nightwing goes next, leaving Danyal to follow not quite behind him, the angle purposeful to keep him in sight.

Nightwing casts a wary glance to him every few minutes, continuing a light chatter with Alfred. Danyal stares forward, taking in the cave from his peripheral - computer, showers, training mats, an unfamiliar shadow watching him, armory, swords, knifes, suits, cars and vehicles lined up on platforms, a t-Rex, giant penny, a glass case- Danyal lets his eyes linger on the shadow, never faltering his steps.

His neck itches at the attention.

He looks forward. Nightwing is looking at him again, snapping forward the moment Danyal’s eyes narrow. Good.

The steps are slightly narrow, dark, but they come out to a warmly lit study. Dark wood, papers, books on shelves, a portrait on the wall, pictures on the desk, three black hair boys, another of only a single with stiff posture, a ballet dancer- they keep walking. The door-clock- closes behind them like the clamping of an artery.

Nightwing and Alfred’s conversation continues in smooth, low-toned English. Danyal blinks, slowly, slower than he needs to, for a breath of a second relishing in the almost familiarity of it all, the dissonance from the last three years alone enough to well emotion in his chest.

His eyes open. He continues after them.

“This is where I’ll leave you, I’ll be up with some food some young sir,” Alfred says abruptly, turning towards a swinging door that reveals a glimpse of a stainless kitchen.

“So…” Nightwing says, swinging his arms a bit at his sides, “uh… I can show you the room you can sleep in, yes?”

Danyal’s shoulders tighten, rising from a subconscious millimeter slouch. He nods stiffly.

His heart remains under control. Always under control.

“So this is the Wayne Mansion, you can go for food any time, uh…” There’s an unsure pause as they start up the stairs, “You can meet the rest of us soon maybe, a correct introduction to Damian…depends on Bruce really… he can be … over …over.”

Nightwing looks at Danyal properly, “I’m usually better at this, most of the bat kids know the League dialect but… I haven’t exactly practiced it.”

Danyal stares at him. He doesn’t want to hear the sound of the League’s twisting words, he wants to leave. He wants to find his family, protect them, get them as far away from Ra’s al Ghul and the league as possible. He wants to go back to Ra’s convince him to let his family go if Danyal stays willingly. Wants a blade strong enough to run the man through and-

“I know you are probably stressed and this is all unfamiliar but … we want you to stay… you won’t be hurt here. This is different than the league, you’re safe.”

Danyal scoffs, not bothering to stop it, he hasn’t been safe since the day he tripped over a wire and died.

Nightwing doesn’t seem surprised by the response.

“This can be your room,” He says, opening a door in the hallway and gesturing a wide arm to Danyal. “The rest of us are just down the hall.”

Danyal steps in, looking around, counting exits, tactical advantages, possible listening devices- He turns around, giving Nightwing a stiff nod, “Thank you for the room.”

Nightwing still stands at his door, “Anything else I can help with for you?” He says.

Danyal considers staying silent, obedient, but he hates hearing the language at every turn, he never wants to hear it again, the words they forced in his mouth, ripping away what was in their place-

“Can you just speak English?” He says, realizing too late how weak it sounds, “You don’t have to use the league tongue, I can-English is.. fine.” Fine. Better. Familiar. A remnant of a family he’s almost certain he’s lost now.

Nightwing barely quirks a brow, eyes flicking over him.

“Can do,” He nods, “Well then… Welcome to Wayne Manor, Danyal.”

And he closes the door behind him.

'It’s just Danny, please.' He wants to whisper to the silence. But he’s grown too used to shadows and it catches in his throat.

He goes and sits on the bed. Staring out of the window. A window he can’t leave from. Where would he go? He doesn’t have anyone, they’re all in danger because of him. He can’t leave.

He’s trapped.

Always trapped.

Bound. Stuck to one place. One thing.

Emotions well in his chest, in the back of his throat, thick and dark and painful. He wants to cry. He can’t. Emotions constrict around his lungs.

And Danyal sits, staring at the wall, wishing he could cry. But the emotions just twist themselves until they’re tight enough, heavy enough to fall down, settle back like a layer of heavy chainmail over his insides.

Danyal turns on the bed, facing the wall.

It’s empty tan-beige. Neutral colors. No personality. Temporary.

This is familiar to him. This he can do.

Danyal stands again, he strips down his tunic, his shin-guards and pants- notes the lack of his typical weapons- methodically placing it on the dresser. Not his dresser, he already has one, painted blue with yellow stars back in-

Danyal gets in the shower, glad to find soap there, contemplating not using it, not wasting the energy. He watches condensation develop on the glass walls, water droplets collecting until they finally rush down the glass.

His finger lifts, already wanting to trace the letters he knows. Three lines, an H. One. i. Or e, he could write hello. Or ghost. Mom. Dad. Jazz, Sam, Tucker. Write it in English so he wouldn’t forget the way they were meant to be spelled, let the water wash it away.

His fingers ache where they’d been broken for it. For tracing letters in dirt or on mirrors, in the foggy glass at night. A break for every word.

Danyal can see his hand shake, inches from the glass. Pain and fear a leech on his bones.

He drops the hand. Turns to wash away the soap and get out, towels left on the counter.

He doesn’t even glance at the mirror as he goes out.

His tunic is where he’d left it, neatly set on the dresser top… but…

Danyal opens the drawers, changing into the boxers, the next one is dress pants and collared shirts, but in the third-

Rough denim scuffs against his fingertips.

They’re dark wash jeans, fancy and nothing like the ones his mom would buy on sale from the thrift store but…

He doesn’t let himself debate it further, he has to wear clothes and no one is here to tell him which. They put them here so they should expect him to wear it- it could be a test but he doesn’t care, let them do what they want if only to pretend the jeans are stiff from ectoplasm stains instead of fresh starch.

He chooses a white t-shirt, ignoring the collared shirts and polos that are probably meant to go over it.

He breathes, letting his shoulders drop, tilting his head back with his eyes closed, pretending for only a second that he’s getting dressed for school. Jazz is across the hall getting her books together, Sam and Tuck are on their way to walk together, his parents are already downstairs working.

'See?' He wants to say, 'I’m still the same person, nothings changed!'

The metal of the door knob clicks and Danyal’s head snaps towards the sound.

There’s nothing. Danyal doesn’t trust it, eyes narrowing as he scrutinizes the tall double doors.

“I know you’re there!” he calls out, fists ready, “Open the door and show yourself or I will!”

There’s a harsh tutt behind the door before it swings open, revealing a kid standing there. Short, black hair- hair gel-, dress slacks and shirt hiding multiple bladed weapons-

“Clearly I meant for you to know I was here, I am not incompetent,” The kid scoffs. So Nightwing wasn’t lying about them all knowing the league dialect…. Yet somehow, it sounds different coming from the kid, familiar in a way that makes Danyal's skin burn. He looks irritated, arms crossed in front of him even while his eyes wander over the room and Danyal with curiosity. And judgement.

Danyal rolls his eyes at it, “Did you need something from me, or did you just want to stand there looking like a hair gel commercial?”

The boy’s face goes red impressively fast, “How dare you-” he moves- and a knife is flying at his face, Danyal dodges, catching it in a second, shifting to throw it back but stops, half way extended. He looks at the hilt, there’s a League marking engraved on the bottom no larger than a droplet.

Danyal's eyes flick up to the boy still standing in front of him, glaring him down.

That’s all it takes before the boy jumps forward, another knife in his hand.

Danyal blocks it, twisting the arm as he drops his own acquired knife to his other hand and lunges forward.

The boy flips over his arm, and Danyal doesn’t let his surprise show as he reaches to grab the second knife he’d forced the kid to drop.

The boy tutts at him again, “So this was who Mother replaced me with? Street rabble?”

Danyal blinks, Mother? Then it clicks.

So this was Damian. The child the demon’s daughter wanted, beloved by all. Treasured. Preserved.

Danyal grits his teeth against the bitter taste in his mouth. He lunges forward, already expecting the larger dagger Damian uses to block him as he’s forced to retreat.

Danyal doesn’t stop, continuing to press him, “The Demon’s Daughter is no mother of mine,” he spits as he slams a kick against Damian’s elbow, blade dropping once more. Danyal cuts a shallow slash across Damian’s left cheek before dropping his own stolen knives.

He doesn’t stop though, continuing to push Damian back- Damian swerves to the side, grabbing his arm, flipping him, Danyal retaliates, grabbing the others shirt and taking him with him.

He catches his feet a second before the other, using it to pin him face to face with Danyal’s arm at his throat, “Maybe if you were good enough, you wouldn’t have had to be replaced at all and I never would have been forced to be here, this is your fault. I was free,” He grits out, teeth bared, “You got to live these last three years because I paid for it, and you’re angry because they don’t want you!?”

There’s something startling in Damian’s wide eyes, “What are you talking about?” He snaps, “I am Damian Al Ghul, Heir to the League, Ibn al X-“

Danyal slams him harder against the floor, cutting him off. Green simmers, almost boiling, under his skin. He grits his teeth harder against the sharp pain through his chest.

He leans closer to Damian, snarling, his grip bruising, “You don’t even know what you escaped, what Ra’s really wanted with you, do you? What being heir means. You’re nothing more than a -”

Damian jerks his head upwards, colliding with Danyal’s forehead and knocking him back with a grunt. Danyal’s grip loosens momentarily and Damian pulls free.

He slams a palm strike into Danyal’s front, pain lancing through his chest as he gasps, heart convulsing.

He moves through it by force, both rolling off each other with violent hands.

They stand opposite each other once more. Blood drips from the cut on Damian’s cheek. Danyal’s ragged breaths join Damian’s in the silence. He can hear footsteps on the stairs. His heart clenches in his chest painfully. There’s barely enough Lazarus water in his veins to keep it pumping for a week, less if he keeps this up.

The door flings open with a slam, both of them turning to look.

Batman stands there, battle calm in his eyes.

Damian turns fully at the sight of his father, but Danyal doesn’t shift from his stance.

“Father, I-“ Damian starts, but Batman just lifts a hand, silencing him.

“What. Happened.” Batman says, looking straight at Danyal, not even a question. A demand. Green tinted steel shoots up Danyal’s spine and he does nothing but glare back at the man.

Batman doesn’t break eye contact, “Damian.”

“I was determining if he was a threat. He is from the League, Father,” Damian says  shortly, standing tall despite the blood on his face.

Batman looks between them briefly, and oh what a picture they must make.

Two kids, both born in the same cage, one trying to claw his way out of the chains and the other trying to fight his way in.

Exhaustion washes over Danyal, and he drops his fists, letting them hang by his sides.

Batman hums, barely a sound, but a muscle twitches in Damian’s jaw.

“Father-“

“Go Damian. Now.”

Damian looks back at him, not-quite-hate in his eyes, before dropping to a crouch to grab the knife closest to his feet with one hand and turning to leave.

Faced with Batman’s sole attention, Danyal lifts his chin defiantly, daring him to take action, to punish him, to do something that he can predict, can defend, can justify the anger he feels when he sees him.

“I know it was different in the league, but here, this is not acceptable.”

Danyal half-scoffs. He finally steps out of his stance, “I could leave.”

“That’s not-” Batman pinches the bridge of his nose, voice like gravel, “I am trying to protect you, the manor is not the league. I understand what it must have been like to be raised like that, but you can’t hurt others, no matter what teachings you’ve had. I can guarantee you won’t be hurt here, I won’t let-”

Danny huffs a dry laugh, “You won’t let?” He steps forward, rage bubbling back up, “Hurt me? I’m not worried about me, Batman. You can’t stop him. Ra’s is going to get what he wants, and as long as that is me, everyone around me is in danger, I’m dangerous. I'm a weapon, a weapon of your enemy. You can’t fix that, can you?”

“We can protect ourselves-”

Danyal scoffs again, “Because you’ve done such a good job of that already? Don’t forget, all of this is because of you, they wanted you, and now they want me because of you, Batman. You.”

Something stricken shoots through the man’s face before it flattens. Batman nods and steps back, a hand on the doorhandle, “Don’t leave.” Is all he says, before the door clicks shut.

Danyal feels the walls closing in on him like a cell.

He looks to his left.

The bathroom door is open. He can see his reflection in the mirror, any condensation gone.

Danyal stares.

When he had been younger, back in- before. Danyal would stand in front of a mirror and pick out parts he thought looked like his parents. Like a Fenton. His shoulders were from Jack obviously. His eyes and hair  too. His jawline was from Maddie, his hands from Jack, and the love of engineering and planning from Maddie. He had the same legs as his mom. Same voice as his dad, always loud. If he didn’t look too hard, he could almost convince himself he was really their kid, their son.

But he could never quite place his tanned skin, or the texture of his hair. The shape of his eyes and nose. Always just a little bit wrong.

What had pretending done but put them in danger?

Danyal turns on his heel, flicking the lights off and putting a glass soap bottle on the door handle.

He knew he’d wake up regardless… but he wasn’t taking any chances.

Danyal rubs his chest with the heel of his palm as he lays down on the far side of the bed, his back to the door, staring out at the city beyond the window glass.

How close would he come to freedom before he’d have to give it up again?

And he knew he would.

For his family, he would give the Demon’s Head anything.

Everything.

If that’s what it took.

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to pretend he would fall asleep.

———

Bruce runs over Danyal’s words again and again during the flight.

'This is because of you, Batman,'

He flicks a switch.

'You.'

The landing gear lowers.

'You can’t fix this.'

He can see the way the shadows of the forest twist around the clearing.

'Dangerous.'

Wheels touch grass. Batman lands at the coordinates, just on the side of the field in front of the woman waiting for him.

'Because of you.'

He breathes.

“My Beloved, how are you?” She greets him as he descends the ramp.

Bruce says nothing. He cannot even begin to fathom what he would say if he did.

Instead, he stares at her. A woman who had once meant so much to him, whom he had nearly thrown away everything for. And who had nearly done the same for him.

But she hadn’t. Wouldn’t. And it had hurt him, but he had recovered.

And then she hurt him again.

She had stolen and lied to him in his vulnerability.

And still, he had found himself loving her.

Had allowed her to continue hurting him. Again and again. Out of a vain hope that she would change. Because he thought that he could change her. That she would change for him.

It was foolish. It was senseless.

Yet he found it just as impossible to stop.

And so she had hurt him again.

“Talia.” Her name grated against his heart, “Why did you not tell me I had another son?”

“The boy is no more yours than he is mine, Beloved,” She says with a roll of her eyes, as if explaining a basic fact, “He belongs to my father. And to the league.”

Bruce is silent. He notices a slight bruise forming on her left cheek.

Talia’s face is tight, “Do you not care about the son I have given you? Has Damian not satisfied you?”

Bruce feels the leather of his gauntlets stretch over his clenched fists.

“I deserved to know,” He near growls, “Just as I did Damian, just as I did with Jason. You cannot continue to keep my children from me-“

“If it was not for that boy, you would not have met Damian at all,” Talia snaps.

Bruce blinks. Hard.

“His return brought Damian into your arms, you should be grateful.” She spits at him like an accusation, “Damian is ours, Bruce. From our love. That boy was made before we truly knew each other, before we understood each other as we do now. He was borne of nothing more than my father’s obsession. Damian is our son, not him.”

“His name is Danyal, Talia!” Bruce bellows, “He is a child, and he is a person! Just like you, and me, and Damian, and he deserves more than to be written off as one of Ra’s al Ghul’s projects! He deserves better than this!” Than us, he doesn’t say. Deserves better than him.

Talia straightens from already perfect posture, “I made a choice Bruce, for Damian. To protect Damian. I knew our son was never meant to bear my father’s hands, he was never meant to be what Danyal is.” Talia pauses, eyes sharp on him, and he can see when she chooses her next words. Already knows they are meant to cut him, to hurt him. He steels himself and listens anyways.

“Perhaps you should ask him where he’s been all these years I’ve supposedly kept him from you, Beloved.” She says coyly, stepping forward.

“What are you talking about.”

She takes another step, “The truth of the matter is that Danyal could have gone to you any time he wanted. He chose not to. Chose to stay away.”

He stays silent.

“Oh- Did the boy not tell you?“ Talia says, barely hiding the falseness, “Danyal was living in America before he returned to his rightful duty. Almost didn’t work, but…” Talia hummed, “His gifts were fortuitous in the end. A risk well calculated, my father’s doing I suspect.”

Talia almost seems blaisé as she talks about it, but he can see the way it irks her. Her father had tricked her. Somehow. Or had manipulated her into some choice she hadn’t known about.

Batman says nothing, analyzing, taking in clues.

“Beloved,” Talia sighs, “Surely you must know, the boy must return.”

“And surely you know: I can’t let that happen.”

Talia glowers at him.

“It’s him or Damian, Bruce, you must choose, just as I did.”

“No.” Bruce growls.

“You cannot have both,” She snaps at him.

Batman stands firm, staring her down, resolute.

“You invite his anger on them both,” She snarls, “You save no one.”

Batman ignores the words. He has made it his job to make sure that’s not true. He’ll die before it is.

“Fine.” She snaps again. But she lingers for a few seconds more. The lines of her face softening.

“I remember I once loved that same unbending drive.”

It feels odd to hear her confirm something he’s not sure ever really existed.

Then Talia turns away and walks into the forest. Shadows contort and reform around her at the edges of the clearing. Slowly emptying until there’s nothing left but the trees and the grass and him, standing alone at the center of it all.

He turns to leave.

He won’t choose between his children.

He climbs the ramp.

He will protect them.

He sits down in the pilots chair, flicking switches and gears.

All of them.

Engines roar to life below him.

He will not fail.

And yet… he cannot forget her words. Twisted they may be, and just as easily lies.. but, her irritation at her father’s plans… he had always been good at telling when it was real.

'Living in America… chose to stay away,'

Living in America?

Had he been secluded at one of their bases here? Had it even been close?

Had Danyal been just miles away, suffering, and Bruce hadn’t known?

But it felt wrong. What Talia had said sat like a jagged puzzle piece, poking and prodding at him, not quite fitting the theories he threw at it.

‘Returned.’

Did she only mean returned to the League’s home base? Closer to their original strongholds in Asia?

It didn’t make sense. She would have crafted the words differently, to drive her point home.

She’d said ‘supposedly kept him from you’ like she hadn’t. Like she hadn’t kept Danyal hidden, the way she had Damian. It didn’t add up.

She could have just been lying. Bruce didn’t think she was. It couldn’t be that simple. No, there was something specific about the way she’d phrased it all, like she was telling him a secret. Like it was something Ra’s had hidden. Like something Danyal was hiding.

Batman narrowed his eyes, staring out at the landscape in front of him as it rushed past.

Whatever it was, whatever she wasn’t telling him, Batman needed to figure it out before it came back to hurt him or his family. Danyal included.

Then there was the rest of it.

The ‘gifts’ that Talia had mentioned.

He knew Danyal had been forced to interact with the Lazarus waters, but he didn’t know to what extent. What it had done to him.

It’d had an effect on him, that much was clear by the acid green of his eyes when he stood off against them in the Batcave. And earlier when Bruce had first interrupted the fight with Damian.

He didn’t even think Danyal had noticed they were glowing then. Too defensive to think about it. Or perhaps he was used to it.

How many times had he been submerged? Had been so injured that Ra’s saw fit to put him in?

How many times had Bruce not been there to protect him from it?

Even if he was only acting out of defensiveness… was that not Bruce’s fault too?

That he still felt unsafe in the Manor. That he didn’t know if Bruce would act the same as Ra’s, as the League.

And Danyal was right, he was responsible for the pain the league caused him, for them hunting him. If he had never let himself be pulled into Talia’s web- or if she was to be believed… even before that.

When exactly? When had Batman become enough of a threat that Ra’s had decided to use him? Was it because he had refused to be his heir? Or before that? Before or after Dick? Jason?

He doesn’t even know how old Danyal is. How long Batman had let him suffer because of h-

“I do hope you aren’t planning to brood like this with your children around, Master Bruce,” Alfred says, cutting through his thoughts, “I don’t believe your pride would survive the repercussions.”

Bruce glances at the monitor Alfred has decided to call from.

“Hn.” Bruce grumbles.

Alfred is right, his children would tease him mercilessly for ‘brooding’ as they called it. If only Dick at least, who hasn’t missed a chance to do so since he’d been a freshly christened Robin.

How would Danyal fit into that? Would he grow to tease like the others? Or remain stoic like Damian?

“I’ll be approaching in 30 minutes, A.” He says. ‘Will Danyal be there?’ He doesn’t say.

Alfred says nothing in response. The engines fill the silence.

He grits his teeth, he just wants to know the situation, to stay updated, he wants to know if something’s happened or anything’s changed.

He sighs, forcefully loosening his jaw, “Who’s going out tonight?”

“Mm, I believe Miss Brown and Master Tim were discussing going together. Master Thomas is in bed, as is usual, though he did mention he’d be out early.. and I believe Madame Cassandra is staying in. She seems to have found a new project.”

Batman hums in confirmation. He wants to know what Cass had found interesting. More than that, he wants to know if Danyal was okay, Damian too.

“It seems it circles around our newest resident, though she hasn’t shown herself to him yet. Master Dick also seems to think the young sir is his duty as much as Master Damian had been.”

Batman feels his lips tug downwards as he grunts in response. Damian’s first year with them was… a regret. His own absence was devastating. He’d have to find some way to assure Dick that Danyal wasn’t his responsibility this time, that he could still be his own person. Perhaps he should encourage Dick to return to Blüdhaven. Affirm that the family would be alright without him.

Batman sees Gotham’s cloud of smog come into view. The bay follows soon after, and the buildings next.

“I’m coming in now.”

“Very good sir.” Alfred answers, nodding in his peripheral before the call clicks off.

When the Batplane arrives to the cave, Alfred is nowhere to be seen. The other’s suits are missing as well, meaning they are already out for the night.

Batman doesn’t pause more than to look around, already heading to the Batcomputer with determined steps.

He enters his access codes, running through his security checks unconsciously, mind spinning on theories and clues.

He picks apart his and Talia’s interaction again and again, trying to pull everything he can from it and put it into his report file. Maybe if he can just read over it again, remember something else, maybe it will be enough to protect Danyal, maybe it will be enough to stop Ra’s, maybe it will be enough understand why Talia did this to h-

A gentle hand slides over his just as his finger goes to slam the enter button of the keyboard.

He looks over his shoulder, already recognizing the feeling of stitching against his suit.

Cass looks at him meaningfully. Her gentle hand shifts into a lean against his arm, the pressure a comfort. She stares up at the Batcomputer and reads through his writing piece by piece.

Bruce waits for her. He knows she struggles with so many words. Knows that she gained more from watching him type it than she will from reading an exact account but the details will be helpful anyways.

She nods to him, fingers tapping lightly against his arm as she thinks it over, scanning and rescanning the document.

Cass has been developing fidgets recently, small twitches of movement that don’t serve a purpose other than to let her move.

Bruce wants to smile every time. He’s pretty sure they’re on purpose, but still.. it’s freedom for her.

She nudges him, reaching for a button across the keys. It flicks to a camera screen a second later.

The one in Danyal’s room.

Bruce feels a twinge of guilt at the disappointment Cass aims at him before they both refocus on the image.

The empty image.

Danyal is not in the room, and Bruce feels his eyebrows scrunch as he goes to pull up the other camera feeds to locate him, make sure he hasn’t been taken-

“Downstairs.” Cass says.

Batman gets a half turn around, checking the cave for a foreign presence, before Cass stops him again.

She points to the screen, drawing his attention to a bottom square.

Danyal stands in the hallway of the manor, staring at the portraits on the walls.

He feels a light tap on his shoulder in parting before Cass’s presence at his side disappears silently.

He stares up at the figure of his son standing in the hallway, mind still whirring about possibilities and clues and lies and secrets.

Danyal continues to stand in front of the portrait for another minute, clenching and unclenching his fists at his side.

He rips his eyes away from the portrait, turning down the hallway and ducking into the kitchen.

It’s empty when he gets there. Then again, the whole mansion had seemed empty. Aside from the ever constant, ever familiar feeling of eyes weighing down on him.

Danyal considers making himself food.

He considers jumping out of the window and seeing how far he could get.

He wonders if their cabinets have something he’d know and could do himself or if he’d be hopelessly lost.

He wonders how long it will take for the Demon’s Head to find him. Wonders what he’ll do when he does. Wonders if his-

He stops himself short.

“May I offer you some tea and snacks, young sir?”

Danyal turns slightly to face the old butler-Alfred- who’d entered behind him and nods.

Can he even say no?

Alfred gestures to a chair set up by the built in breakfast nook.

He sits. Even as the domesticity of it all throttles his heart in his chest. The way they must eat together every morning, appear together in every photo, smiling. A family portrait. Batman’s family. Batman got to keep his. But Danny’s is tra-

Danyal breathes purposefully, staring down at his hands, clenching them tighter.

Suddenly a hand reaches across his vision, pressing a button on an ancient looking miniature TV sitting just tucked into the kitchen corner.

It flickers to life on some random news channel, low mindless chatter softening the air.

Danyal feels his shoulders lower slightly, just barely, as the silences retreats. He glances up, expecting to find Alfred there staring at him, questioning him, why he’s acting like this, why he-

Alfred’s back is to him. The man busy at the stove with the tea kettle.

“I hope you like lemon ginger tea,” the man says, getting a small jar from a cupboard, “It’s been quite a bit since I’ve had the opportunity to make some.”

Danyal doesn’t quite trust it, still watching the man warily. He doesn’t understand why they would welcome him into their house, Batman or no, he was a threat to them. He was nothing but a threat.

“How about something to eat?”

Danyal watches the man move over to the fridge.

Something moves in his peripheral and his eyes jump to the side.

Narrowed eyes comb over the fancy china case against the wall. But he can’t see anything odd. The glass is clear, refracted reflection shining back him over the china. A dark phone sitting on the ledge. Dark wood pressed against the wall. He doesn’t know what he saw.

Alfred sets a small plate down in front of him with a light clatter, immediately turning back as the tea kettle begins to screech.

The movement makes a small carrot tumble off, rolling across the counter to Danyal.

He stares at it.

He breathes in, out, in out, in out in out too fast. Too fast-

A finger rolls to a stop in front of him and he can only stare at it as strong arms grip and pull him back, keeping him restrained.

Granite counters blend until they are stone floors.

He can’t look away from it. Confusion bleeds in with denial and regret and bloodthirsty stubbornness.

“Look at me, boy.”

Danny’s head is jerked back by his hair, forcing his eyes up to his instructor.

The man glares down at him.

“I have taught warriors better than you by a thousand, and you dare to try to escape under my hand?”

Danny tries to grin, barely managing a crude sneer, coppery blood in his teeth, “You should have kept a better eye on me, you fucking nutcase.”

His eyelid flicks closed automatically as cold gunmetal rests against it.

“Say that again.”

Danny swallows his regret, in for a penny in for a pound. He juts his chin up, forcing the man to follow the movement with his gun.

“What, were you dropped as a bab-” His open eye strains to see his instructor’s thumb press down the hammer of the gun. A warning.

He can feel his hands shake under the assassins hold. His throat burns.

“You scared of a chil-?” He barely has time to register the hand moving before the butt of the gun slams into his nose with a sickening crack.

Pain floods his face. He gets half a shout out before his chin is grabbed by unforgiving hands.

He stares into the man’s cold eyes.

Danny says nothing. Too focused on trying to breathe when his nose is filling with blood and his mouth is clamped nearly shut.

“Better.”

He resists the urge to spit in the man’s face as he steps back, straightening and waving a hand to the assassins. Even without their hands on him he can feel their presence looming behind him.

Danny drops his head, curling in on himself as much as he can, trying to ignore the feeling of blood as it slides down his face.

His eyes are left to stagnate on the finger thrown to the ground in front of him.

Pale skin stands stark against dark floors, contrasted by blood and dirt marring it. He can see the calluses and small scars.

He doesn’t understand.

He might.

He doesn’t want to.

“You are not the only one I can punish to get my point across, boy.”

He looks closer at the finger. At the nicks of careless knives and tools, of a hand that had cradled- no- please no-

“The oaf was very insistent it be him.”

Danny snaps his head up, fear striking through his chest, “No! Please-“ he catches himself, “Please don’t hurt them! They don’t- Hurt me, just me! They don’t deserve it, they didn’t do anything-!”

Sharp eyes stab into him. Fury behind them.

“Hurt me, Master Shrike, just me. Please.”

There’s a pause as the man continues to stare down at him before he lifts one lip in a sneer, “Do you think you command me, child?”

Danny freezes, “I don’t- I- No, Master. I don’t.”

“Then why,” Shrike near growls, “Do you beg me? Why do you plead like you have a right to ask for anything?”

“I don’t-” 'I don’t understand,' he starts to say but he’s cut off by Shrike’s boot hitting his face. He’s learned by now when not to dodge. He can’t give them another reason to hurt his family.

A second kick lands.

“You will be quiet!”

Danny waits for a beat, then slowly pulls himself up from the floor, not lifting his eyes.

He can still see his father’s finger on the floor.

“You do not command me. You are a tool! A weapon in the Demon’s hand! I choose to act, to punish or break you! You do not act, do not speak until you are to be used!”

Danyal stays silent.

He wants to scream, to fight back, they train him and they train him but he can’t fight back because if he does- his eyes flick to the bloodied finger.

He can let them. For his family, he can let them call him a weapon, can let them say he has no will. He can do this one thing.

He’s not giving up, he tells himself. But for his family’s safety, he can let them think he is. Just this once.

Danny stops, eyes shutting for just a second as he bends into a kneel, holding his hands up in front of him.

There’s a pause, cruel satisfaction radiating off the man in front of him.

Danyal licks his lips, steeling himself, “I am ready for my lesson,” Danny forces the words out, “Master Shrike.”

He doesn’t bother to look up and see the man’s sneer.

“Good.”

He sees the kick coming.

He still doesn’t move.

He stays still.

The world moves around him. Voices. Muttering. The sound of dishes, water being poured.

There’s a carrot.. orange and bright in front of him.

His heart is beating too fast. His eyes sting.

Calm down. Control it. Control it. Stop, stop-

A tea cup clatters in front of him.

“Sir Danyal, are you quite alright?” He hears someone ask. Alfred. It’s Alfred. Batman’s butler. He’s not-

He tries to speak, ‘I’m fine’ he tries to say. But his throat constricts. He simply nods, staring down at the carrot.

A freaking carrot.

It’s ridiculous.

He’s fine. He’s fine. He’s. Fine.

Danyal takes a deep breath. He breathes out. Silently.

He does it again.

He holds it until his heart slows down, stops stuttering from beat to beat.

He breathes out.

He reaches for the tea, ignoring the eyes on him-always watching him- ignoring the way his hands shake.

He drinks the tea. Let’s it burn his throat and distract him.

He breathes.

Alfred does not turn to look at him. Staying busy at the sink with dishes that already looks clean.

He is thankful.

He breathes.

Low murmurs fill impenetrable silence. Danyal drags his eyes over to the small TV.

His breath stops.

A banner of words crawls across the bottom of the screen.

‘DalvCo factories shutting down after mass destruction.’

He tries to tear his eyes away.

‘Four buildings exploded just after midnight on Saturday in downtown Chicago, Elmerton, and Red Lake. 12 workers dead. Police have not caught the perpetrators.’

And they won’t.

Danyal can recognize a message.

He knows what it means. Who is sending it.

He tries not to let it show how his mind begins spinning. Churning out plans and strategies- If an attempt had cost his father a finger, what would they do to them now, because of Danyal?- he had to fix this.

He looks down to his shaking hands. He stops them. And the tea in his cup stills.

He stops. Pauses. He eyes Alfred still at the sink without looking up.

He places it just on the edge of the counter. Then turns away and lets go.

The cup falls.

It shatters against the floor. Danyal jumps up from his seat at the same time Alfred turns around.

“What’s happened?” He says, already hustling over with a towel. “Are you hurt?”

Danyal steps away and around him, towards the door.

He almost bumps into the display case but a reflection off the phone catches his eye. There’s a small pink ballet sticker on the back.

His hand moves before he can think and it slips into his pocket. He looks at Alfred.

“It’s no trouble, Young Danyal,” Alfred says as he crouches over where Danyal had been sitting, “I’ll clean this up and get you more. You can help me prepare for breakfast-“

Danyal considers knocking him out, so he can’t stop him, or alert anyone, but a body is more suspicious. Instead he paints his face with fear and steps out of the room as quick as he can.

He turns down the hallway, trying to remember where he’d walked from the cave.

Mere hours ago.

He goes the opposite direction, following a halls as far to the outer edges of the mansion as he can, typing in Vlad’s number with nervous hands as he goes.

He makes a final turn before he opens a window, glances backwards, and jumps out.

He lands in a roll, already running. His finger presses call and he listens to the phone ringing as he runs.

Once. Twice. He swipes branches out of his way. Three times. Four. Five. Six.

‘We’re sorry the number-‘

Danyal hangs up and presses again.

He doesn’t stop running.

He just has to protect them. He has to warn Vlad. Warn whoever he can. Tell someone.

It rings again. Once. Twice. Three times. Four. Five. Six- ‘We’re sorr-‘

Danyal presses it again and runs faster.

If he can get caught by the League maybe Ra’s will overlook it. Maybe he can still protect them. He can fix this. Please just let him fix this.

‘We-‘

He tries again.

And Danyal continues rushing through the woods, wishing his feet would carry him faster, further, higher-

The sound of his steps pounds in his ears. The phantom feeling of eyes on his back.

He slams his finger down on Vlad’s number again, letting the dial tone drown his heartbeat out.

Once. Twice. Three times, Frick! Vlad pick up! Four- the speakerphone clicks.

“Vlad!”

There’s barely a pause, “DANNY!?”

Danny nearly trips, his heart stuttering dangerously, hopefully.

“Dani?…” He says, then jolts to his senses and continues running, a glance thrown behind him, “Dani, how do you have Vlad’s phone, are you okay? Have you been to Amity?”

“Danny, where the hell are you!? I’ve been looking all over for-“

“Dani, you have to listen okay, there’s dangerous people after me- after us-“ Danyal jumps another log, scaling a small stone wall, “You can’t fight them, you have to run, they’ve got my family, Tuck, Sam-“

“Danny wait no listen to me-!”

“You can’t fight them! You can’t, okay!?” Danny scans his eyes back and forth frantically as he runs, mind spinning, calculating how he’s going to get out, away, controlling his heart rate as much as he can, “You have to promise me! Just find Vlad, get out of Amity. Warn him- I couldn’t - my parents- you have to-“

“Danny, listen to me!” Dani yells, stopping him in his tracks.

“Your parents are out, Danny,” She says, voice rushed, but his ears barely hear it. “They escaped, they called us weeks ago to start looking for you- Danny, they’re out.”

She goes quiet. Waiting for Danny.

His parents were-

Danny draws in a deep breath, standing stock still in the middle of the trees, stolen phone still pressed to his ear.

He couldn’t believe it.. they were-

Something clangs against a tree behind him and Danyal whips around ready to-

His head blossoms with pain.

Everything goes dark.

Chapter Text

When Maddie wakes up with chains around her wrists and a pounding her head, she is surprised to see her family in front of her.

As she blinks in the darkness, ignoring the way her eyes won’t focus, her surprise gradually washes into fast-paced terror.

It’s not just her family in front of her, but also her children’s friends. Her son’s friends.

But her son is nowhere to be seen. Amongst the grime and dinge of the space, there is no unruly mass of black hair.

She counts again. 1, 2-

1, 2,-

Her son exists as a group of three to her.

Jazzy, Jack, and Danny.

Tucker Foley, Sam Manson, and Danny.

But- she counts again.

1, 2-  1, 2-

Her son is not here. Danny is not here.

Her family is injured, Jazz and Jack in one cell and the kids in another, her in yet one more, and her son is missing.

Maddie tries to remember what happened, why she is injured, where they are, why-

There were people, she had fought them, all black clothes and blades, Jazz had come downstairs at the sound, Jack had defended her, Maddie watched them both go down under a blow, the distraction enough- Danny had never come home from school.

Her husband starts to rouse, a low groan.

“Jack.” She whispers harshly, “Jack!”

“Maddie-kins?” Jack mumbles, trying to push himself upright but stumbling when he realizes his hands are bound together by manacles.

His are not chained to the wall like her own, but they are still heavy steel.

“I’m here Jack, I’m alright,” She can see him turn to her in the dim light, “Banged up, but alright.”

Indignant anger flashes across her husband’s face, “Who did this? What happened-those people!” Jack increasingly gets louder, “The ninja people! They got past our ghost barrier-!”

“They’re not ghosts, hun,” Maddie cuts in, making him look over.

Some of his righteous exuberance fades, “Then why..?”

Maddie shakes her head, immediately regretting it, headache increasing as she tries to talk, “I don’t know. But Jack, Danny’s not here, I don’t know where he is, but he never came home, something’s wrong-“

“Danno!” Jack yells, looking frantically over the group through the bars between them.

Finally, his volume seems to rouse the others. Sam and Tucker both wake with a lurch, Jazz soon on their heels with a groan.

“Danny!” Sam yells, looking around them, “They got Danny!”

“And my tech!” Tucker yells, hands patting himself down.

Sam glares at him, “That’s what you’re worrying about?!”

“What, like having a satellite capable PDA wouldn’t be helpful right now!? Danny told us to run, you’re the one who made us stay-!”

“We weren’t gonna leave him-“

“Oh well look at us now, we’re not doing much better than-“

“Kids!” Maddie yells, and their heads snap over to her, “What are you talking about? Where’s Danny?”

For some reason they both seem to glance at Jazz before answering, receiving a hesitant nod.

Sam started, “We don’t know where he is now, but we were walking home and something exploded-“

“We thought it was just another ghost attack!” Tucker cut in, looking increasingly distressed, “But then Danny was fighting off these freaky ninja people, and telling us to run-“

“But we couldn’t just leave him there! We tried to help-

“There were so many, and they grabbed us and then we saw them grab Danny and…-“ Tucker stopped, looking down at the chains on his wrists, “And then we woke up here…Mrs.Fenton, where are we?”

“I don’t know, hun,” Maddie looked at her son’s friend, then to her own daughter, her husband, “But we’ll figure it out. And then we’re going to find Danny.”

Jack beamed at her, his trust in her confidence shining through.

She wished she believed it even half as much.

——

The first time they come, a group of five people, still dressed in black, weapons lining their body, Maddie yells and shouts. Demands they tell her where Danny is. They are silent.

They methodically go to each of their cells in pairs, one pointing a gun and the other setting down a bag of food. Military rations.

She screams and yells the entire time.

When they go to Maddie’s cell last, removing one arm from her shackles so she can eat, she takes advantage, lashing out with a yell and just as much anger as vicious desperation.

She punches the one nearest, a sloppy front kick displacing the other’s gun pointed at her.

Before she can attack again, one arm still pulled back to the wall behind her, the click of a safety coming off silences her.

There’d only been two ninjas in the cell with her.

One remained stationed at the corridor’s prison door they’d come through.

But the other two stand at the ready on the other side of the bars, their own weapons pointed unflinchingly at Jack and the kids.

No no no no-

She can barely see Jazz from where Jack stands in front of her.

Tucker is hyperventilating, both him and Sam pressing themselves back against the stone walls of their cell as much as they can.

“No! Stop! Don’t hurt them! Please, I’ll-I’ll cooperate, just don’t- please, don’t hurt them,”

She knows it will do nothing but still she tries. Hoping that she can still protect what she has left.

She’s not giving up, she tells herself. But for her family’s safety, she can let them think she is. Just this once.

The person at the door nods and the one who she’d punched, the one who’d unlocked her cuff in the first place, grabs her arm and jerks it back, locking it with a click.

And the two gunmen step back, weapons lowering.

She is too focused on them to dodge the rough kick aimed at her legs. Her knees buckle, hitting the ground with a painful slam and the motion jerks against her restrained arms.

She breathes heavily behind the curtain of hair around her face.

She breathes. Her side hurting, her shoulders burning under strain, her head pounding- She squeezes her eyes shut and breathes deeper.

She’s failing him. She can’t protect him, but she can’t let them hurt her family more. She can’t get him back-

There are no sounds to indicate the ninjas departing, barely a click of the lock. But she feels their looming presence leave even before the metal door slams in the corridor.

“Mrs. Fenton?” Tucker’s voice shakes in the pause, “Are you… okay?”

Maddie exhales slowly through her nose, thinking of her baby boy, whose voice sounds nothing like Tucker’s and yet it’s all she can hear.

Her head pounds, a never ending drum, the percussion of time working against her and her family.

She wants to scream. She wants to fight and yell and kick and hurt and claw her way back to her family.

She wants to cry.

She wants to hurt the people that are keeping them here, worse than just a sideways punch or a glancing kick.

They hadn’t even cared.

She’d fought and raged and struggled against them and they hadn’t even flinched.

They’d forced her to submit without ever laying a hand on her.

She’d fought, and it’d put them in danger

She sighs.

She ignores how the dim lit colors blur together in front of her eyes, pulling her legs out from under her.

She tilts her head back and tries not to think of her son in the same pain.

She doesn’t fight the second time.

———

Her days blend together, drifting into something almost sleep. Her body

shutting down in an attempt to heal.

Her mind twists dreams around her neck like suffocating possibilities.

Losing her family one by one. Jazz vanishing from her cell, then the two kids, then Alicia, her parents, her Grandad, her friends, Jack. And then Danny is pulled from her arms.

Every time she closes her eyes she wishes she had only been closer, had only been given a chance to fight them off, to protect him-

She tries not to wake the others.

“Maddiekins?” Jack whispers to her, his voice soft.

“We have to get out somehow, Jack.” She stares at the murky dark ceiling above her, “We have to find him.”

Jack looks at Jazz curled up just behind him. The Manson and Foley kids are similar.

They are animals trapped in a cage.

But she is alone.

She doesn’t like it.

She’s not meant to be alone. She’s not like her sister. She could never handle those weeks in the wilderness, off grid, with only herself for company.

She has always loved her family, wanted to have someone to share her life with.

She doesn’t know what to do now.

Without her family.

And unable to live her life.

It feels like emptiness on her soul.

“We have to find him, Jack.”

———

The locked bars between them become normal all too quickly. She adjusts to the uncomfortable pull of the chains on her arms, the dull pain behind her eyes.

She adjusts to the movement of sunlight through the small window at the end of the corridor between their cells. It seems to move slower and slower by the day.

She adjusts to the dry food and coppery water, the dirt on her skin and the grease of her hair. Adjusts to moving as little as she can just to avoid the sound of chains echoing around her.

She adjusts to her limited rebellion, her glares and calculation, mapping out the weapons of their captors, running through her martial arts katas in her mind.

She adjusts to the senseless violence, the beatings, the long stretches of food being withheld.

She adjusts to the stale weight in her bones, and the fear that coats the inside of her chest.

She adjusts to the way her son’s friends will bicker and fight over the smallest things, the sound of their pacing, trying to hide their nerves. Maddie’s heart aches for them as children.

Her heart aches all too often these days.

But she’s starting to adjust to that too.

——

It’s a quiet day, the stretch where they almost run out of food, just before the people return. No one has any energy left for bickering or talking.

The silence is near suffocating.

Every day is silent.

The silence replaces her children’s laughter. It replaces the sound of tools and experiments. The sound of cooking or phone calls.

All she can hear is silence ringing in her ears.

Jazz breaks the silence, almost suddenly, head still propped up on her arms crossed over her knees in front of her, “Mom? Dad?…”

“Yeah Jazzie-pants?” Jack answers.

There’s another beat of silence, then, “Why did they only go after Danny?”

Maddie sighs, “I don’t know hun.”

Jazz hums, eyes still staring straight ahead. It’s more thoughtful than Maddie expects and she wonders what’s going through her daughter’s mind. Wonders what she’s thinking. Wonders about her kids’ friends and their families. Wonders about her husband.

Her heart aches.

And she wonders about her son.

——

The people come. They go.

Maddie glares, hatred burning her from the inside out.

But she doesn’t fight them.

And every time, they lock her wrists back, twisting her shoulders more.

They watch as she gets weaker and weaker.

Maddie stirs again, trying to readjust her shoulders. Her arms have long since gone numb, but her ears pick up on fervent whispering.

She looks up to see Jazz pressed against the bars between Sam and Tucker, their voices echoing murmurs.

They look to be deep in conversation.

Maddie hadn’t realized they were close, that Jazz was friends with them too, had thought it was only Danny.

“-We have to tell them-“ Tucker’s voice peaks out, still hushed.

“No! Not yet!” Sam hisses back. And whatever she says next is lost to quieter whispers.

Eventually, they stop, Jazz moving to sit back against the wall. Sam and Tucker do the same, still lightly chattering between them.

They look upset.

They look worried.

She can’t stop the creeping feeling that it’s not just about Danny being missing.

Maddie catches Jack’s eye from across the cells.

He doesn’t know either.

Maddie sags, readjusting again.

——

Something changes.

The door clicks and she can see everyone’s awareness prick up, muscles tighten, bodies stiff.

It’s not right.

They were brought food just two days ago. They’ve been rationing it, carefully. Never careful enough.

Another lock clangs loudly.

Maddie catches Jack’s wide eyes as she pulls herself to her feet, straining to stand, to see past her cell walls.

Steps fill the room.

One, two, three, four, five-

Six.

She looks at the man in front. His clothes unfamiliar. They are black still, but not the same simple robes of the others.

She can see tight toxic yellow beneath his long black coat. Scars on his neck, short brown hair, square jaw. And a cruelty in his eyes that makes adrenaline course through her veins.

He looks at them all, eyes passing over their cells with careless judgement.

He stops on Jazzy. Maddie’s heart picks up.

“Take the girl.”

The ninjas step forward menacingly, and Maddie can only helplessly pull at her chains.

She yells, shouts. But it doesn’t seem to register until she sees Jack step in front of where Jazz is clinging to her friends through the bars.

“You’re not touching her.”

The ninjas don’t stop.

But Jack…well…

Maddie has only ever seen her husband truly angry a few times in her life. He’s a gentle soul, soft where Maddie is strong, kind where she is tough- but then she remembers that he chooses to be kind.

He chooses to use his strong hands to help instead of hurt like he knows they could.

All that to say: Maddie didn’t marry her husband because he was strong. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t.

He slams the first ninja’s advance to the side with a full force block of his arm and a yell. He tumbles unconscious to the floor.

“I said you’re not. Touching. My. Daughter!”

The next ninja draws his sword and charges.

Jack manages to drive his shoulder against him, ramming the man into the bars with a bang that shakes the metal.

The kids scream, voices frantic. Maddie joins them, yelling.

The man drops.

Jack straightens, still standing in front of Jazz.

There’s a look in his eyes. That single minded focus that Maddie had fallen in love with. The shadows only serve to darken the smudges on his face, the contour of his face tightened by lack of food.

Blood stains his arm, dripping sluggishly.

Maddie continues to yell, pulling against her chains, but her husband is undeterred.

The unfamiliar man raises his hand, carelessly halting the other three ninja moving forward from behind him.

He scoffs.

“What sloppy strength. It matters not to me who I take, any of you will do to punish the boy.”

None of them understand. But…

Maddie sees the realization dawn on Jack’s face split seconds before her own.

“Where’s. Danny.” Jack growls out, and the metal restraints suddenly look smaller on his hands than before.

Maddie’s own demands get louder, “Where is he!? What are you doing to him!? Let him go! Where is Danny!?” She pulls harder on her chains, if she was out she doesn’t know what she’d do but she can’t stop can’t just let them-

The man turns, cold eyes meeting hers. She snarls out a scream of rage and desperation.

He huffs a sarcastic laugh, “I can just as easily take you, isolated and weak as you ar-“

Jack’s yell cuts him off, charging towards the man through the open cell door.

The man moves faster than Maddie can properly track, and suddenly Jack is on the floor, pain on his face-

She can’t tell if it’s her that screams.

He holds a hand tensely around Jack’s collarbone, a leg extending Jack’s arm taut, “I am the great Shrike, I have taught thousands of assassins hundreds of techniques, brute strength will not be enough to beat me.”

Then he slams his fist down on Jack’s shoulder, pushing his leg against Jack’s arm.

The movement dislocates Jack’s shoulder with an agonizing pop and his screams join the cacophony.

Until they don’t.

“I don’t care… what you do…. to ..me,” Jack gasps between breathes, “You’re not touching them.”

The man- Shrike?- stands, looming over Jack’s immense form. “Fine.” He draws the sword at his back, “Then you pay the price for the boy.”

The sword comes down on Jack’s hand and this time Maddie knows she screams but it is drowned out by the others.

By Jack.

He lays on the floor, hand tucked to his chest while a growing curtain of blood slides down his hands.

His finger is a gaping hole.

“Why are you doing this to us!?” Sam shouts at the man, banging against the bars between them.

“Haven’t you heard the saying, girl?” Shrike sneers at her, another scoff on his lips as he wipes the meager blood-her husband’s blood- off of his blade. “The sins of the son are the sins of the father.” He turns carelessly to the remaining foot soldiers, “Take it. And then bring me to the boy. It’s time he learns his lesson.”

Maddie shouts and screams after his retreating steps, but it does nothing as they throw Jack back into the cell, Jazz doting over his refusals.

They drag their own men out.

And then suddenly it is silent again.

——

The man doesn’t return.

Maddie barely cares.

She talks Jazzy through helping Jack relocate his arm. And then…

Then she can only watch as Jack and Jazzy struggle to keep his wound clean.

Watch as they wrap it in scraps torn from the bags of food.

Watch as they tie a tourniquet as tight as they can.

Watch as it bleeds until it doesn’t. Getting puffy and red.

And all too slowly heals over.

And all Maddie can do is watch.

She watches until she can’t anymore.

She turns away, filled with shame. But she has never liked being helpless. And she can’t do anything, can only sit and watch as her life aches and burns before her.

So she looks away from the flames.

—

Before Maddie had been a mother, she’d worried about not being able to protect her kids, not being able to know when something was wrong.

Jazz had changed that.

She’d known in her heart that nothing could keep her baby’s needs from her. She knew when she was fussy, sick, when she had a nightmare in the middle of night. She’d be up, racing to the nursery with Jack by her side.

When she first adopted Danny, she worried it wouldn’t be the same.

Worried that because she wasn’t his by blood, she would miss things. What if his life before meant she would never connect with him like that, what if she couldn’t tell what was wrong? How to protect him?

The first time she jumped out of bed, standing in a dark bedroom before she’d even known why she was awake had changed that.

Danny was her baby.

And her heart was connected to his from the moment she met him. Just like Jazz.

And it’s because of this that she cries over the looming pit in her heart, bigger by the day. The feeling in her stomach that she needs to get to her son, that her son needs her.

After Shrike, it only gets worse.

Before, there would be weeks without food, limited water. Near starvation. And her heart would ache.

Before, people would come, fists determined, picking one of them and hurting without an explanation. Leaving them beaten and bruised.  And her heart would cry.

In the beginning, Jack would portion out what he could, save what was left, they were tense for the worst, unpredictable pain and suffering at every corner. And her heart would twist tighter.

In the after… things seem to settle.

And her heart screams.

——

The day when the ninjas linger in Tucker and Sam’s cell is nearly enough anxiety to kill her.

They have been too weak to properly do anything now, after so long of barely eating, barely moving… she feels as though her bones are metal as solid as the chains around her wrists.

Maybe that’s why none of them move when they remove the chains from the kid’s wrists.

Then they come to hers, and she only really processes the feeling of bare air against her wrists before they are replaced by new metal.

She looks down.

They are chains, yes, but they are only chained to each other, not to the wall.

The kids and Jack’s get removed completely.

They’re out of the cell before Maddie can even consider that she could fight back now.

Her arms feel disconnected from her body, like so many strings hanging from her shoulders.

She looks at Jack, gently touching Jazzy’s wrists where they are raw and red. Tucker has simply crossed his arms and tucked his hands in as close to his chest as he can.

Sam has similarly wrapped her arms around herself in a hug.

They are so young.

So so young.

But so is Danny.

They don’t deserve this. They don’t. They deserve better. And Maddie is going to make sure they get it.

She carefully, painstakingly, bends her fingers inwards, slowly regaining feeling.

In and out. In and out.

In.

And out.

——

She stands as much as she can, slowly walking along the edges of her cell. Her muscles burn with atrophy at first.

But she gets stronger.

It starts with one lap around the small cramped walls. She is still struggling by the end, legs shaking.

She does it again the next day.

And the next.

Until she can do two. Then three. Four.

Five.

The children see her as a pacing tiger.

Her husband knows better. But even he is scared.

Not of her. But for her.

She brushes it off, stopping her pace to stand in the middle. She lowers her body, widening her stance and bending at the knees.

She holds it until she can’t.

And then she does it again the next day.

Until she can.

Then she adds the first block, running the short sequence until her arms are numb and she can’t.

And she does it again the next day.

And then she adds another block. Practicing till her joints feel like they’re bleeding and she is forced to stop.

She does it again the next day.

And then she adds the first punch, simple forward, hitting air.

She runs the sequence again.

And again into the darkness. Again.

And again.

She doesn’t stop. Can’t if it means losing her child. Not if she has a chance to fight for him.

She won’t be weak again.

——

She doesn’t quite know when Jazz started keeping up with her exercise, following her forms quietly from her own cell across the corridor.

But she notices when she watches Sam start to follow as well. Her movements shallow and unsure.

She’d already taught this to Jazz, so long ago in their living room.

She could teach it to Sam.

Have her help in getting Danny back.

Sam could fight with Maddie, she could train her enough to possibly win, to give them more time. Sam has the potential, she could-

Maddie stops.

She won’t make another child fight just to protect her own.

She’ll protect Danny herself.

She starts Sam with basic blocks, demonstrating them through the bars. So she knows how to defend herself.

Tucker is forced to be her practice partner, when they have the strength.

Both start to get better.

——

It is luck, perhaps, that it happens when the ninjas are bringing them what little food they get.

Jack is speaking with Jazz over their own portions, trying to divide what they can- Jazz was always too economical about things, leaving too little for herself.

Maddie has already stowed away what she can, waiting with a loaf of bread in her hands while she watches them open Sam and Tucker’s cell, both of them pressed against the back wall. Standing, yes, but still scared.

Maddie tries to tell herself that if she had to she could jump in and protect them.

Nevermind that there are steel bars between them.

Nevermind that the same steel encompasses her own wrists.

Nevermind that she barely has the strength to walk the length of the cell some days.

Nevermind that-

A loud boom echoes above them.

The room freezes.

Another boom rattles the ground around them.

It’s then that Maddie realizes what they are. Explosions. Something’s happening.

Three of the original five ninjas are already sprinting through the door, the remaining two start securing their cells.

More explosions shake the ground. Dust streams from the ceiling. They’re at risk of collapse under here.

Sam is the first to move, kneeling and grabbing a large rock that’s already fallen from the ceiling. She hurls it at the guard who hasn’t closed their cell yet.

She’d forgotten that Sam was once on the softball team.

The man goes down.

Maddie meets her eyes over the body. And it’s just enough time for the last guard to slip by them all, noticed only by the clanging lock of the metal door. He was the one who carried the keys.

“Shit!” Sam yells, running out of her cell and banging on the door. It echoes, mixing with the sounds booming above them.

Tucker is quick to follow her out, and Maddie can see how fast they’re both breathing.

“Mom… what’s happening?..” Jazz says, hesitantly standing up to the bars, scanning the room as more rocks fall around them.

She can see the way Tucker’s eyes skid over all of them, jumping from thing to thing, it’s a look Maddie recognizes- an engineer.

“Sam can you still pick locks?” Tucker asks, and Maddie watches him, slightly dazed and stamping down hope.

“What?”

“Can you still pick locks?! Yes or no!?” He yells.

“Uh.. yes.. I think I can..”

“Do it! Pick the locks on the cells!” Tucker yells, running over to the man laying unconscious on the ground.

“I don’t have any-“

A small black bundle smacks Sam in the chest, falling open in her hands to reveal a lock picking kit.

Tucker is still rifling through the man’s pockets, pulling out knives and weapons and tools. Maddie can see even more and she still doesn’t know what he’s looking for.

Sam blinks, then hurries over to Jazz and Jack’s cell. It’s closest.

Tucker stands and throws another small tool at Maddie, running into his former cell for a split second before he breaks for the door, hands full.

Maddie watches him, and it’s not long before there’s a victorious click and Jack joins him at the door. She looks down, realizing the tool he’d thrown her way is small enough to pick locks as well

She starts in on the manacles clamped around her wrists.

She tries to maintain an eye on Jack from where Jazz stands over Sam’s shoulder at her cell door. Only looking away to peel the metal off her arms.

It makes her wrists feel naked in the open air.

Rocks pepper down on their heads.

Adrenaline pushes her forward and Maddie starts gathering the food in her shirt, tying it as close as she can.

“Jazz!” She shouts to her daughter, “Grab the rest of the food! Come on, fast!” Jazz whirls away, back into each cell, hurrying to pick up food and dodge rocks and- another click.

Sam scrambles back as Maddie’s cell gate slowly swings open.

Another boom sounds and she jumps into movement outside of the bars. The small window, their only source of natural light, is almost entirely collapsed, held open by other rocks.

She kneels in front of the collapsed ninja, pulling off more weapons like Tucker had, but she doesn’t discard them, she starts strapping them to herself.

“Mrs.Fenton, what are doing…?” Sam whispers beside her, voice almost horrified.

Maddie looks up to her, voice and face like steel, “We’re going to need these Samantha. I’m getting my son back.” She presses a small knife into Sam’s hand. The girl takes it, slightly stunned.

Maddie pulls the large sword and scabbard off the ninja and slings it over her own back, she pops up, hustling Sam along, “Move it, come on now,” She turns back, “Jazz! Co-“

A large boom echoes around them, matched by a smaller boom right by the door- she registers ducking slightly to protect from the dust, her husband and the two kids doing the same in the corridor. She registers the way large chunks of ceiling crash to the floor inside their cells, Jazz is running towards her, one arm over her mouth.

The air is thick and she can barely see, but she can see as a large crack splinters open in the ceiling just above her, a boulder size of stone falling down- no, no, not Jazz, please she can’t loose them both-

Muddy orange swipes past her faster than she can imagine, shoulder checking the rock as it falls between them.

Jack stands on the other side, breathing and covered in dust.

But breathing.

And Maddie loves him.

More than the day she met him, she loves him.

Jack sweeps Jazz into his arms with a grin, “I’ve got you Jazzy pants!”

Maddie spins around, a hand on Sam’s back, Jack and Jazz at her shoulder as she practically pushes them towards the door Tucker had blown open for them.

It’s been too long. They can’t have much more time.

She tries to run faster.

She’s too tired, too many meals lost, too much time spent idle, wasting away..

But still she’s faster than Tucker is, and she can tell when Jack picks him up too, still bounding forward.

Every hall they pass is filling with rocks, bodies and limbs sticking out from under them. She realizes there is smoke in the air too, fires are burning wherever stone is not.

They keep running. They just have to go forward.

Is Danny here?

Is he in danger?

What if they leave him here?

“Come on Maddy-kins, keep running,” Jack says, pushing gently at her back.

She’s practically dragging Sam at this point, but the adrenaline is keeping her going.

If Danny-

No. She can’t think like that, in her soul she knows that her baby is still alive.

He has to be.

“There!” Jazz yells, and Maddie follows her sightline.

There’s a crumbling wall, open to the air, there’s fire on the other side of what might have once been a tower, but it’s collapsed.

The brightness burns as much as the heat licking at their backs.

“We don’t have another choice, we have to get out of here now!”

They turn and run for the hole, avoiding rubble and debris at a sprint.

When they get there she jumps down first, padding her impact on wobbling knees and landing on the cascade of rubble leading down to the ground.

Sam skids down the 10 foot drop from the hole herself, but Jack hands Jazz down to her, then Tucker, then he climbs down himself.

They start to scramble down the pile of rubble, rushing as much as they can with loose rocks and fire all around them.

“Ah!!”

Maddie looks up from her foot placement just in time to see a rock come loose under Sam and send her tumbling.

“Sam!” Tucker and Jazz yell from behind her, but Maddie doesn’t listen, already moving down faster, chasing her as she falls. Sam is screaming but doing her best to catch herself, only succeeding in bringing more rocks down after her.

She sees a rock slam into the girl’s face, all sharp edges and cutting stone.

Sam goes limp.

It finally slows her descent but leaves her sprawled on the rubble where Maddie catches up to her.

She slides to a stop, jumping to check Sam’s pulse, fingers slick in the blood sliding down her face.

It’s there, but slow. She wipes her hand and checks again. Still there.

Maddie sighs, turning to look back for Jack.

He is still quite a ways away, but closer to her than the building. She can tell that he’s keeping Jazz and Tucker behind him, keeping them from repeating Sam’s mistake. Or worse, falling into them himself.

The burning, crumbling building serves as a backdrop in warning. ‘Go, go, go’ it says.

They can’t stay here.

Maddie takes a breath.

She slowly bends down, picking Sam up in a fireman’s carry and standing. Maddie forces her shaking legs to move.

One step in front of the other.

Now do it again.

She will not fall here. Not today. Not without her son.

One more time. Come on.

Slowly, Jack and the kids catch up to her, slow as she’s moving, trying not to jostle Sam or fall herself.

Again. Keeping moving. One more step.

One more.

They reach solid ground, debris petering out into destroyed grassy plain on the edge of a forest.

Soot and ash cover dying grass beneath their feet.

One more. Come on. One more.

She doesn’t stop moving.

Not even to pass Sam off to Jack when he offers.

Maddie can’t.

If she stops there’s nothing keeping her from turning around and storming back. Taking whoever’s left by the throat and forcing them to give Danny back.

Give her son back.

She keeps walking.

She doesn’t stop.

Not until her leg goes out from under her, Sam’s additional weight bringing her to a knee. Her breath comes out in huffs.

Jack’s gentle hands flutter over her shoulders.

“I’m fine.” She says, head dizzy with dehydration and exhaustion.

“Mom, we have to stop, we can’t walk anymore.” Jazz says, “We don’t have good shoes, and we need to rest,” her daughter looks around at them, “All of us.” She looks back at Maddie.

And that’s what does it. Seeing that look in her Jazzy’s eye. That tiredness. It makes her heart break just a little bit more.

Her arms go slack, legs following, dropping both her and Sam the rest of the way to the ground. Jack catches them both, keeping them from hitting their heads.

It’s all Maddie can do to stay awake, breathing heavily where they prop her against a tree.

Sam slowly wakes up, and Jazz distributes food to everyone, forced to take her own portion as well.

Maddie stares at the diminishing smoke in the distance. Is it her son’s funeral pyre? How would she know?

She would feel it, right?

She has to believe that.

She has to believe that her son isn’t dead.

Because she’s scared of what she’ll do if he is.

——

Maddie will find out later on why Tucker had jumped into action so fast when it’d happened.

She will find out later that he had been storing the salt packages that came in the prepackaged military meals. He’d been keeping the heating packs too, when he thought he could hide it.

Eating his meals cold.

He’d been doing it for weeks, months.

Building a bomb.

Maddie never asks how he was planning to get to the door. How he was going to get out of the cells.

Instead she lays a hand on his shoulder and thanks him.

Tucker doesn’t look at her. Not until tears trickle down his face and he whispers out for his mom over a whimpered plea.

Maddie turns away, her heart twisting, that they are responsible for taking another son away from his mother.

She has to keep him safe.

She has to keep them all safe.

——

Maddie thanks her Dad for taking her family camping every chance they could as kids.

She thanks her Mom for teaching her how to hunt.

She thanks her sister for teaching her every knot under the sun because knots were her favorite thing in the world.

It could have been weeks they spent wandering.

Could have been a month or more. Maddie couldn’t tell.

But they find other people.

A group of French-Polish campers who are more scared of their injuries than their arrival.

Sam and Jazz speak enough French between them to get by. Maddie thinks they would have called an ambulance anyways.

When Jazz tells her they’re in the Himalayas, she nearly collapses again.

How far from Danny are they?

Is he even in the mountains? Is he lost like they were? Is he back in America? Why are they here?

The group feeds them real food for the first time in…. a while.

It makes her nauseous, the solid food.

The clean, filtered water they offer as they send a pair to call medical services with a satellite phone.

How long has it been?

Danny would’ve be able to tell.

He would’ve been able to tell them exactly where they were just by the stars he so loved.

That night- or morning by the sound of the birds- when she is sitting on the back of an ambulance, she pretends not to notice her daughter and friends crying together.

They whisper and hug each other, and look far too distracted for the relief she can see in their bodies.

The paramedic talks to her in stilted English, his accent thick.

He says they’re being transferred to a hospital in Pakistan. They’ll be safe there, he says.

They’ll stay together, he says.

Maddie nods and lets them shuttle her family and children’s friends out of the mountains that had nearly killed them.

But she knows they’re not safe.

Not until she has her son.

——

From one minute to the next, Maddie is awake still in the forest, and then she is awake in the cold sterility of an empty hospital room. The weight of her stolen sword against her back is gone.

She’d gotten to used to it. The drifting from true consciousness between the never ending hours of nothing stuck in those cells.

Perhaps that’s why she’s not surprised by waking up in a hospital room, an IV in her arm and no idea when she went unconscious.

The empty room itches at her like a wool sweater on bare skin.

She’s alone.

So completely alone.

She hasn’t been alone in so long it feels-    claustrophobic.

Perhaps that’s why Maddie jumps to the door when she hears a commotion in the hallway. Almost scared to open it, scared it will be locked, scared she’ll be trapped again.

But it becomes so easy to move when she hears a familiar shout in the noise.

It’s Sam. And Jazz. Sam is pointing her knife outwards towards frazzled nurses, Jazz behind her trying to calm her.

Jack is standing with Tucker coming from a different hallway, also watching.

Is this what her life is now?

Constantly fighting one battle after another, putting kids- her kids- in danger, seeing them get hurt.

Even once she takes Sam’s knife, she’s so caught up in trying calm both her and the nurses at once that she doesn’t even pay attention to Tucker.

Not until everything starts to calm, only a few nurses staying to stare them down, and Jazz taps her on the shoulder, pointing past her.

Maddie turns.

And there Tucker is, standing stock still, staring at the TV mounted to the ceiling corner.

His eyes look more golden and more reflective than she remembers but she follows his eyes to the TV anyways.

It’s some news report, but it’s in Arabic, two different reporters with a map of Egypt to India beside them.

Tucker is saying something, “انفجارات في الجبل- uh it’s…” Tucker shakes his head roughly, a hand to his forehead, grimacing, “There was explosions. In the mountains. About a month ago or…” He looks back up and that same trick of the light shines over his eyes, “They don’t know what happened, who, or why, it’s… it’s all going too fast. I cant-“ He yanks his near shattered glasses off his face, eyes clenched shut.

Maddie looks between him and the TV, trying to gain context clues from the newscaster now that she knows the story that’s running.

She feels Jazz step around her to reach Tucker but she doesn’t pay attention.

Too caught up in the map they’re showing, red dots in swaths over it, a few scattered into the Himalayans, others into Afghanistan and farther.

They’re in Pakistan now…If… if they’d been held at one these places, then… could Danny be at another?

Could he have been hurt in the explo-

Could Maddie find him? She needs to-

Maddie sears the image of the map into her mind, burning every pixel of the red dots into her memory.

She needs a map.

She needs her son.

——

Tucker had been able to convince a nurse to let them leave, both Maddie and Jack reassuring them beforehand. But Tucker and the others had still hurried them out quickly, secretive whispers and glances between them.

Maddie had said nothing, they needed to start their search.

But now… staring a down a cop with far too many weapons as he approaches, Maddie can only wish Tucker and Sam had stayed behind.

“Mom…” Jazz says warily, and Maddie follows her eyes to the moving shadows.

The cop is almost too close, she can see the knives hidden under flimsy fabric.

She glances around, where can they go? They have to-

The city square, they’d just passed the side street- it was busy, so busy-

Maddie doesn’t think, she grabs Jazz by one hand and Sam by the other and starts running back the way they came.

She knows Jack is following her, he always does. She trusts him to have grabbed Tucker.

She sees shadows peal off after them in her peripheral, but doesn’t stop, can’t stop.

Not until they reach a tiny alley, running faster until they come out into a loud bustling city center.

People are yelling, cars honking, chatter and sound everywhere.

“Jazz! Take Sam! Find some way to hide us! Jack especially!” Maddie yells, then forces herself to let go, the girls running off into the crowd together with harried looks.

Tucker follows them.

And at the end of it, it’s just her and her husband running side by side, just like always. She can see the shadows racing after them as she pushes through the throngs of people. Tires squeal and she knows there’s more after them.

Faster faster, she needs to be faster-

She turns to Jack, “Jack, we need a car!”

Just as Jack turns to her, a question on his lips, she sees a ninja lunge for him, and Maddie leaps forward.

It barely takes a few moves, but she takes advantage of the space, twisting, blocking, and then flipping the man over her shoulder, away from her husband.

But into the street.

The ninja slams into the hood of a car.

Jack is running past her towards the traffic, cars swerving. All except one.

The dark car stops, door opening and already she can see the shine off the muzzle of a gun, and-

Jack, using the brain she loves, grabs a street food cart, swinging it around and near throwing it against the car, the door slamming shut.

Another ninja comes at her and Maddie turns to fight, but not fast enough to miss as her husband flings a fryer of hot oil through the driver’s side window and pulls the screaming driver out.

She blocks a punch, returning with one of her own when she sees Jazz, Tucker, and Sam running through the screaming crowd.

Tucker has a new shirt on, blood on his face, and bundles of fabric in his hands.

Maddie flips her current opponent over her shoulder and hits the next with an elbow to the temple.

“Kids! Get to the car!”

By the time they run past her, she is struggling to keep the attention of three more ninjas. She has to keep them away from the kids-

Maddie draws a stolen knife and shoves it deep into the gut of the one grappling with her, whipping around with another as a warning to the other two now in front of her.

No time there’s no time, she needs to get the car and they need to get out!

She rushes them, jumping at the last second, platforming off of them onto the cars behind them.

She can hear at least one follow her. She can’t pay attention.

“Jack, go! Now!”

Jack doesn’t question her, their stolen car shifting gears and revving forward just as she jumps.

She has to kick the following assassin back, watching him tumble to the rushing pavement, before the skylight opens and she drops through.

She lands in a tangle of libs between the front and back seats, but suddenly…

The world seems quieter.

She looks around.

Jack is gunning it through the streets, eyes almost glazed, dodging cars with artistic skill- and only a few scratches, Jazz is staring at her with wide eyes-

She extracts herself, bending and shifting into the passenger seat, ignoring the sting of still hot oil on the seat.

She looks at her hands expecting to see dirt and pale skin as always.

And she can only see red.

——

They take the car as far as they can, avoiding swarms of ninjas and other crashes, but Jack’s amazing driving pulls through.

Maddie puts a hand on Jack’s shoulder when he lets off the gas and she can see the tension in his hands.

“I… I didn’t mean to…” He mumbles, almost a whisper, still staring straight ahead, “I didn’t know it would throw the oil like that.. I didn’t mean to.”

Maddie just dips her head slightly, “I know dear.”

They lapse back to the quiet silence of the car’s engine.

They get farther and farther from the large city area that the hospital had been in, taking back roads and rarely stopping. They just keep going in the same direction.

Eventually they find a small creek of running water, barely 10 feet across at its widest point, but the water runs clear under the trees.

They wash dirt off their skin for the first time since escaping; when they’d done the same in a mountain river.

Maddie submerges herself under the surface, scrubbing at her face and hair,  and she rubs at her hands till they’re raw, but at least they no longer wash the color of rust.

One by one, they leave the creek, changing in the car to the clothes the kids had stolen from vendors and stores.

They swab everyone’s wounds, her’s and Tucker’s especially, with rubbing alcohol.

They bandage and wrap and apply antibiotic ointment, and she forces them to each take a standard antibiotic.

Then Maddie stuffs whatever she can into the duffel bags and tactical packs, leaves her and Jack’s hazmat suits in the backseat, and lights the car on fire.

Flames crackle as she zips up the bag and joins her family.

When she looks at them, free of blood and dirt, all in casual clothes, her husband in jeans for the first time since college, they almost look… normal.

She takes the gift shop tourist map from Tucker’s hands, opening it to stare at the carefully placed blood smudges on the mountain range and surrounding countries.

They’re not normal.

They start walking.

——

Every day that they get derailed by another ninja attack is another day they can’t get to Danny.

And yet..

Maddie looks at her daughter, huffing for breath and blood trickling down her arms. Jack carefully pulls out a shuriken stuck in Sam’s thigh, his heavy hands helping keep pressure.

They need to start running in earnest, they can’t keep trying to force their way in the same direction, it’s not working. They’re just getting more and more hurt… how long till they loose even more-

Maddie looks away from Jack’s hand and pulls out the map again, tracing lines out of Pakistan.

She looks for a red dot on the outside of the nearest ones, something far but not unreachable, with enough space between that they can lose the people trailing them.

She watches Tucker tell Sam a joke that has her desperately trying to swat at him as he stands out of reach from where Jack is doing first aid on her.

Maddie stands.

It takes her two hours to lose the ninjas tailing her from the American embassy.

But she does it.

And they run.

——

As they enter lower Russia and then into Ukraine, some weeks or months later, the ninjas start to disappear. Only showing up when they cross borders. She doesn’t understand why they aren’t following them as closely, why they suddenly don’t care, it’s all she can do to get them farther from the mountains they’d been trapped in.

They salvage a scrapped junkyard car.

The mods take two weeks and a bribe in foreign money.

Maddie hears Jazz call it the DIRC- the Danny International Rescue Car- and she feels the wind knocked out of her with the heartache.

The car makes it easier at least, to move between towns, catching glimpses of TVs in restaurants.

She watches the news closer now, whenever they see English subtitles playing in gas stations and street advertisements.

After that first week… the explosions vanish from the news like so much dust in the wind.

They learn other things, smaller things. A new hero in Russia. The assassination of an Ethiopian politician. A market fire in Europe.

None of it is what she needs to know.

Maddie spends longer and longer every day staring at her map, gets another one from a gas station. Hunting down articles from public libraries, counting every single mysterious company, faceless building, mountain retreat, that exploded that day.

Her heart nearly stops when she sees there’s some in America too.

Were they ever safe?

——

Maddie’s skin itches as they book into the cheap low-rate Russian hotel for the night.

Its perfect. It’s so old that all of their records are on paper.

And they are so close to one of the locations on her map that Maddie feels like she can see it in the distance. Less than 30 miles.

Her baby could be there and she wouldn’t even know it.

Sam moves forward in the room first. Straight to a shower.

Tucker is no doubt taking apart yet another hotel radio. They’ve taught him all they can about unorthodox material sourcing. Will it be enough?

He’ll shower next. Then Jazz. Then her or Jack.

Jack goes first this time and Maddie is left staring out of the window at the hills beyond.

Somewhere out there those people are moving around freely, unaware, undamaged. And hurting her baby.

Jack’s hand on her shoulder startles her. She hadn’t realized he was out of the shower.

A nutrient bar sits in his hand.

Maddie takes it, if only because the constant fear of losing her next meal stands in the fringes of her mind like needles.

Her eyes flick close, red dots as clear against her eyelids as they had been on the map.

She looks at Jack standing above her, but his eyes are directed into the distance as well.

“…Jackie-bear?”

Jack glances backwards at the three kids milling around the room. He finally makes eye contact with her and nods, the smile on his face small and barely visible but it’s bright and self-assured.

They’re gonna save Danny.

They go tonight.

They sneak out nearly an hour and a half after the kids have gone to sleep, squished to one bed, Tucker on the floor this time.

Jack tries his best to be quiet, only knocking over her sword twice.

He drops the bullets in the bathroom while loading his gun, but at least it’s muffled.

Maddie is slightly surprised that the kids didn’t wake up, but thankful all the same.

They’d been traveling for 13 days from the last hotel, they needed it.

Maddie is much less thankful when she and Jack find Sam on lookout as Tucker hot wires the DIRC and Jazz lifts weapons into the trunk.

She should’ve have known Jazz wouldn’t have slept through it all.

——

After Russia, with the newfound determination shared between all of them, they start looking for Danny in earnest.

Place after place. Ruins after ruins.

They sort through rubble and collapsed cave systems and they find nothing.

The search gets more desperate, until they start to run out of bases they can easily access.

Tucker fixes this problem.

She doesn’t understand it, but the kids come racing down the hall with files and a stolen computer in Tucker’s hands.

Maddie is so focused on getting away that she almost doesn’t notice how the kids are mumbling over the computer in the backseat as she drives. Not until they are at least several miles into the forest.

“-need to get this under control! You can’t just-!”

“I’m just using it for the language, Jazz! It was just that one time!”

“You commanded them to-“

“It was a suggestion!” Tucker’s eyes flash with the reflection of the rear view mirror, just a second in her peripheral.

“Tuck, what if they ask how we got this, what are you gonna-“

“It doesn’t matter, Sam!” Tucker whispers harshly, and it’s a struggle for Maddie to stay facing the road, “None of this matters if we can’t get him back, so what if Aman gets  a little testy!”

Maddie’s muscles tighten, her fingers tapping restlessly against the steering wheel, checking the mirrors on a constant loop.

“You’re using it too much-“

“I’m not-“

“You don’t even know Arabic Tuck!”

“I do now!”

“No you don’t, Aman d-“

“I’m fine-“

Maddie can’t take it anymore-

“You’re being reckless, he won’t protect y-“

She jerks the steering wheel to the side, slamming on the brakes and jerking them to a stop on the side of the road, one wheel in the ditch.

Jack is staring at her confused, but she bypasses him, turning fully in her chair to look at the three kids in the back.

None of them look startled by the abrupt driving anymore.

But they still stare at her with wide eyes.

Sam looks defiant, as always. Tucker has stubbornness and strength in the same measure.

She looks at Jazz the longest, unable to tell what exactly she’s thinking. All she sees is her own eyes reflected back.

She turns to Tucker.

“Who is Amon?”

A muscle twitches in Tucker’s jaw.

Sam jumps in, “Nobody! It’s nothing! He’s not-“

“He’s an ancient Egyptian king,” Tucker says without looking away, effectively cutting Sam off, “I have his spirit inside of me because I’m his descendant.”

Maddie blinks.

He has … what?

She feels Jack turn around beside her too.

Maddie blinks again, “…What?”

“I have the spirit of an ancient Egyptian Pharaoh in me who gives me the ability to read Arabic and.. other things.”

“Other things.” Maddie can see the way Jack’s hand itches for his ectoblaster in her peripheral.

She kind of wants to reach for her own.

Then she catches Jazzy out of the corner of her eye. She’s staring at her again. Those same eyes that Maddie has seen her whole life looking back at her, unflinching.

Jazz is waiting for something.

She looks at the other two. Both are staring at her.

Sam’s defiance has turned sharp, ready, a little scared, and Tucker, Tucker is telling them this for a reason, she doesn’t know why, or what for, but they’re testing her. Testing the both of them.

Maddie looks down at the computer sitting in Tucker’s lap.

They need that. They need it to help Danny.

She looks back up to Tucker.

“This… spirit… it helped you get that computer?”

Tucker’s eyes jump down for a second, then back up.

“…Mads?” Jack whispers, but Maddie doesn’t listen.

She just stares back at Tucker.

“You’re using it to help save Danny?”

Tucker nods jerkily.

She considers it.

She has more questions, of course she does, ones like ‘Is it safe?’ ‘Is it going to hurt you?’ ‘How did it happen?’ ‘What else does it do to you?’ - somehow, the look in Jazzy’s eyes -in all of their eyes, really- convinces her not to ask any of them.

Instead she turns around in the driver’s seat, patting Jack’s leg twice before pulling back onto the road.

For Danny, she doesn’t need to know.

Still, that night, she sits with Jack, the both of them around a small smoldering fire, the kids asleep nearby in the back of the DIRC, and she wonders.

She whispers.

She worries.

Jack is worried too. This is uncharted territory for them. They’re so used to ghosts that just barge in and take what they want.

Is Tucker even really a ghost?

She looks to Jack for answers.

Everyone always says Maddie is the most levelheaded of the couple, always the best at thinking through their decisions before acting, and that’s.. true. To an extent.

But Jack, if you give him enough time, is better at seeing every angle.

Typically, once Maddie has made a decision, she’ll stick with it no matter what, even if it’s a bad one, it’s just how she is. But if he gets the chance to think, Jack will consider every possible perspective and come out with the best one. It’s what makes him such an amazing engineer, that perspective.

So Maddie looks to him, hoping he’s got an answer, “Jacki-dear?”

Jack sighs, rubbing his face and only thinking harder as he stares into the woods.

“What do we do about this?” She asks.

“Does it matter, Mads?” He still hasn’t looked at her.

“What? Of course- He’s - I mean- we don’t even know what this means-how do we know that’s really Tuc-“

Jack turns to her, “Maddie, think about it, does it really actually matter? If Tucker has got some sort of ghost grandparent way back when, then he’s always had it hasn’t he?”

“I guess, but doesn’t- I mean and he could- that thing could do any-“

“Maddie, if you really thought this ‘aduelman’ spook was evil, you wouldn’t have ever let Tucker fall asleep in the DIRC with Jazzy pants. You know that,”

Maddie stares at her husband, trying to push herself to just let go of the stubbornness she’s carried with her forever.

“Tucker is Danny’s best friend and he is here, with us, trying to get Danny back. So Maddy…” He gently grabbed her hand, holding it tight, how had they managed to keep their rings this whole time, how had he stayed so strong- “Does it really matter?” He asks her.

Maddy pauses. She thinks it through. She tries to consider the perspectives.

And she decides that no.

For Danny?

If it helped Danny?

Then there was nothing in this world that mattered less.

As long as it meant she would get Danny back.

———

Now that they aren’t hiding it, Maddie realizes just how much the kids had been doing for them.

Sam is impeccably good at navigating the compounds, at stopping them before they run into guards, always the first to hear them coming. Jazz is the first of their trio to act, jumping out with weapons they’ve given her, always fearless, already ready to defend her friends.

And Tucker takes to the husks of the computers with a single minded focus that she can’t understand.

Every computer they come across is a burnt ruin, and every time, it seems to be the center of the damage. But it only takes one restored desktop and suddenly, suddenly Tucker has widened their net by a hundred.

They have information now. They know something now at least.

It doesn’t make any more sense to them, but that night, when Tucker is scouring through the data, eyes glowing as he tries to read a language he doesn’t know, with the rest of them nearby tinkering or preparing supplies- they all stop when he speaks up,

“Who the hell is Ra’s al Ghul?”

——

Somehow, everything and absolutely nothing changes at the same time.

The name of Ra’s al Ghul hangs over each of them.

The Demon’s Head.

The League of Assassins.

The world is somehow heavier. Maddie trains harder and still doesn’t feel like it will be enough. Jazz and Sam train with her, practicing attacks that she hopes they will never have to follow through on.

It’s starting to feel like they won’t have a choice. If they ever did.

Still, they can’t stop. Now that they know.

They keep going after more and more of the compounds, some that are just ruins, and then ones that aren’t ruins at all.

Those are the hardest. The assassins are trained more than Maddie can compensate, more than she could ever prepare the kids for.

Maybe that’s why when she sees an arrow aimed for Tucker, aimed for a child that she is supposed to protect, supposed to bring home, she sees an arrow aimed at another child so far away from home and she jumps in front of him without so much as a second thought, decision already made, curling around his body in an effort to protect him however she can.

The arrow pierces her shoulder, but she is protected by the armored tunics she’s stolen from the assassins. Tucker wouldn’t have been.

She still cringes over the sharp pain, making eye contact with Tucker and finding that no, she doesn’t care about the Pharoah, she just wants them all to be safe.

Maddie grabs Tucker by the arms, pulling him down and behind a wall as fast as she can.

Tucker’s eyes are blown wide, his breaths shallow, “Th-Thanks, Mrs.s-Fenton..” he says breathlessly, eyes flicking over to the arrow in her back.

“Maddie!” Jack’s distraught yell jerks her attention away and she turns to see him running up with Jazz and Sam.

It’s easy enough to remove the arrow, to press a square of heavy gauze to her back as Jazz guides them out a back entrance.

They hadn’t found anything here, no Danny, no sign or clue or- but they keep moving, keep looking, keep searching.

She doesn’t think too hard about Sam lagging behind her, arrow in hand, worry on her face.

It’s not until they get home, patching injuries, washing away blood, that the poison kicks in.

Sam is the one who realizes it, when Maddie collapses to one knee beside the DIRC, face sickly pale.

Jazz is freaking out, Jack fussing over her relentlessly, Tucker panicking, hands twitching for some way to help. It’s all Maddie can do to keep breathing as her body feels like it’s locking up, muscles like stiff metal.

But Sam immediately runs towards the stash of plants she has built since the beginning, tearing open bundles of leaves and small containers.

Tucker notices, “Sam, what are you doing?!”

“It’s a plant based poison! I just need- no, no no I don’t, I don’t have enough!” Sam tips a container into a bowl, trying uselessly to get more out of it.

Maddie can’t look away from Jack’s eyes, staring down at him with such worry, Jazzy right next to him, she looks like she’s about to cry.

Maddie wants to hold her, wants to put a hand to her cheek and wipe away the tears with her thumb but she can’t move, pain a haze over the stiff rods of her paralyzed limbs. She only manages a grimace, jaw wired shut, hoping her eyes convey her message.

‘Not your fault, I love you, not your fault, I love you’

She can’t feel the tips of her fingers anymore, sharp tingling echoing up her arms.

Is she going to die? Will she ever see her son again?

Jazz jerks next to her, yelling at Sam, she forces herself to listen, to hear, “-that has the poison in it, you could kill her!”

“If we do nothing, she will die! I had no other option, it’s all we have!” Sam yells back, and Maddie can see a bundle of something held in her hands, clutched between her fingers.

Maddy is still holding Jazz’s arm, muscles too tight to let go, but she forces them to respond anyways, the slightest of squeezes, making Jazz look back at her.

Jack notices too, staring at her, eyes jumping from Sam to her.

‘Do it, do it, we have to try, we can’t give up, please, it’s okay, it’s okay, I won’t blame you-‘

Her heart feels stiff now too, her lungs compacted, unable to expand fully, and then there’s something in her mouth, a clump of ground leaves and herbs, the paste sitting on her tongue.

It’s a fight to swallow but Sam is already moving to get to her back, rubbing the same paste into the arrow wound.

It burns, it burns like it’s searing away her skin.

And she screams, the sound trapped behind her teeth at first, until finally her jaw clicks and her mouth opens and she can’t stop screaming, leaning forward over Jack’s arm around her midsection.

Her throat doesn’t stop hurting, but her lungs can breath again, her heart can beat again, her limbs still stiff but she can move again.

She pushes a hand out to land on Sam’s arm, “Thank you.”

Sam gives her a tiny, scared nod in response.

——

The arrow is a wake-up call to the fear that had settled around them in the year before-how long had they been out here?-making them all that more careful.

Assassins start following them again.

They stop being able to stay at hotels, racing through cities from one place to another.

She worries they will have to give up the search again, that they will be forced to run like they had before.

Maddie doesn’t know if she can, if she can let go of Danny like that again.

She thinks it would kill her before any poison ever could.

Her heart aches with a steady pulse every day.

And she keeps going. Watching as each of them force their feet forward again, trying to outrun the darkness chasing them as they race farther into the shadows.

But they keep going, and they keep looking.

——

Maddie lurches around a corner only to skid to a stop, stolen sword still raised in front of her. Her husband and Jazz still behind her.

But in the middle of the hall stands another enemy, a woman with smooth skin and dark hair and clothes lined with green and gold.

Something about her face is familiar, vague and out of reach and so intensely familiar. But Maddie can’t see past the danger that she poses, a decorated sword poised at her side.

Maddie blindly reaches one hand behind her, “Jack, get Jazz out of here, get Sam and Tucker,” She says, loosely gripping Jazz’s hand as she motions behind her for them to continue on.

There’s a beat of hesitance, but Maddie doesn’t dare turn her eyes away from the woman in the hall.

“Mads…” Jack murmurs.

“I’ve got this hon,” Maddie’s hand slips from her daughter. “I love you. Both of you.”

Once she feels the presence of her family retreat from behind her, she raises the sword fully again.

“That was not smart. Sending away the only ones who could help you,” The woman speaks, “Not that it would make a difference. You’re outclassed.” The woman gives an experimental swipe of her sword.

Maddie glares at her, hands tightening, acutely aware of the many injuries scattered across her body, the blood and dirt on her face.

“You’re not getting past me.”

The woman huffs, sarcastically amused, “You think you can beat an Al Ghul? You are barely even trained, girl.”

Maddie stares her down, stabilizing her back foot as the woman stalks closer.

“Still…” the woman glances down the hallway they’d run from, “You did make it this far. I suppose that is impressive. And your determination,” she says lowly, eyes combing over Maddie. Maddie simply grips the sword tighter.

“It is a pity to waste such skill by killing you. Out of respect, my name is Talia Al Ghul.”

The name is… dangerous. So similar to the one Tucker had found, it makes her wary, but she replies nonetheless, “Maddie.”

Recognition blinks into Talia’s eyes, “I see. My respect for you grows.”

Maddie’s brow twitches, “Why?”

“It was your training that allowed the boy to remain useful to me.”

For a few seconds, Maddie doesn’t understand. Can’t make sense of the words through the brain fog and adrenaline.

But there’s only one thing it could mean anyways.

Her blood goes cold with fury and her eyes snap up to meet Talia’s head on.

“Where. Is. My Son.” She grits out, her glare deadly.

Talia looks her over again, back foot repositioning, “It doesn’t matter, girl. He belongs to the Demon’s Head now-“

Maddie cuts her off by striking first, a wide swipe of her sword aimed first for the side then for the head.

Talia dodges artfully, retaliating with her own slash.

Maddie is not quite so fast, catching a scratch on her arm.

She doesn’t let it stop her. Not when this woman might know more about her son. Might be the key she needs to finding him.

She jumps into movement, flashing blades as fast as she can, and volleying kicks in between them.

Every Sensei she’s ever had has emphasized the strength of her kicks.

And it must be true because Maddie manages to land a solid kick to the woman’s thigh, hard enough to bruise.

Talia jumps back, slightly uneven, but only barely. She’s not breathing overtly hard, while Maddie is almost gasping for breath.

Maddie lifts her sword again. “Where is my son?”

Talia only watches her, analyzing, calculating. “You care for him.” It’s not a question, barely a statement, “Why? He is not even yours,” She says, disregarding.

“Danny is mine!” Maddie screams, trying to drown out the pain, “He is my son, I would do anything for him!”

The woman arches a brow at her.

“You cannot dare to- to-“ Her voice breaks, “-to tell me that he is not mine when my soul breaks with every minute he is apart from me!”

Talia hums, twisting her sword and then leaping forward. The force of the attack leaves Maddie unbalanced and clumsy, retreating with harried blocks.

She manages a deflection, catching a quick elbow to the face for her efforts and losing her sword as it catches. She stumbles but refuses to go down, glaring through the blood and sweat to slam her leg into Talia’s side.

The woman twists away from the contact to remain on her feet, stabilizing herself quickly.

“I tire of this, girl.”

Maddie spits congealing blood at her feet and stands taller, “A mother is always tired,” She raises her fists, “We keep going anyways.”

Talia lunges with a scowl, blade a hair’s breadth from Maddie’s throat as Maddie dodges. In the same movement, Maddie catches Talia’s leg swinging towards her and drops all pretense to tackle the woman by the middle, bringing them both to the ground.

Talia’s sword clatters across the floor.

Maddie grapples for control, pushing and clawing for any leverage that she can, but she has lost so much of her strength…

It’s not long until Maddie is slammed to the ground, Talia’s hand around her throat, legs pinned under the other woman’s body.

Maddie struggles as much as she can, trying to pry the hand away, digging in with every muscle.

“You have lost.” Talia says, staring down her nose at her, “Give up.”

“No-o, I’ll nev-never-“ Maddie grunts out a breath, “I’ll never- sto-p, bec-“ Her voice cuts off in a choke at the pressure on her throat, “Be-cause he needs me. He’-ll always- n-need me.” She strangles out.

She slams another fist against the woman’s arm, again and again, aimless resistance like a bull against a wall. And through it all, Talia al Ghul stares down at her, green eyes like a frozen lake, inscrutable and cold, until- suddenly they’re not.

Suddenly, the ice cracks and Maddie is confused by the churning depth of the waters beneath.

The pressure disappears, Talia standing and stepping back and it’s all Maddie can do to turn sideways and gasp for breath over her knees.

She strains her neck to look up at the woman, “Why..?” She gasps out.

There is silence for a second, the both of them watching the other, and there’s something that Maddie is missing, something that the woman has decided was worth sparing her over.

Talia kicks Maddie’s stolen sword towards her with a scrape across the ground and Maddie doesn’t understand, she can’t, her brain fuzzy, her body aching, but she keeps her eyes glued to Talia’s form as she gets farther away.

The woman pauses, just within hearing, “From one to another, I wish for your success, Madeline. If only it could be another way.”

Maddie lays there, breathless and bleeding until Sam rushes up with herbs and bandages.

And still she stares down the hall that the woman had disappeared down.

And she wonders why she is alive.

She won’t encounter Talia al Ghul again, but something still shifts. There’s less guards going after them, loosing them faster. So while their entrances never get easier, their extractions become.. simpler.

——

The kids are getting restless again.

They’re arguing over something, that much she could tell. She’s familiar with it by now, the whispered words and hushed shouts.

She wonders when they’ll stop having secrets to keep from her. She wonders when they even got this many secrets.

She wonders why they felt they had to keep it all secret in the first place.

As it has been the last few times… they end up breaking the secret themselves.

It’s Tucker, stomping over to where Jack and Maddie are trying to set up a perimeter for the night. Jazz trails behind him, lips pursed and concerned, but silent.

Sam on the other hand is not. The two have always argued more without Danny there to bridge the gap.

“It’s not our secret to tell, Tucker!”

“No! You heard them talking that night! If they’re fine with me then it’ll be alright! We have to tell them!”

Sam grabs Tucker’s arm, pulling him back and about to yell again, regardless that both Jack and Maddie are very clearly staring at them. But Tucker yanks his arm back before she can, whipping around to face her.

“Maybe you don’t want to go home, Sam, but I do! I know you don’t like your parents and Jazz has hers with us but I miss my mom and dad! I want to go home!” His voice wavers, “And the faster we find Danny, the sooner this is over, and the sooner I can forget it ever happened! And to do that, they have to know!”

Jazz stops him with a hand on his shoulder, making him suddenly go quiet. He looks at her with a harried desperation and she just nods.

Then she looks at them, that same cold steely fear in her eyes, “Mom. Dad. I- We have something we have to tell you.”

Maddie finally steps closer, “Of course, honey bun, what is it?”

“You know we wouldn’t be angry at you,” Jack says, also stepping up, only for his face to fall with devastated confusion when Jazz takes the slightest step back from him.

Sam and Tucker watch with hunched shoulders and bated breath.

“Do you.. remember when Danny had that- accident a few years ago? Back when the- portal opened?”

Jack and Maddie look at each other, blinking, “I think so, but Jazzy what does that have to do with this?” She asks.

“Well.. when the portal opened.. Danny wasn’t just next to it, like he told you.” Something painful enters Jazz’s eyes, “Mom, he was in it.”

The words don’t compute, some disconnect between her ears and her brain, because they don’t make sense, because.. “How did he..” Maddie can’t even finish the words. She notices both Sam and Tucker purposefully look away from her, avoiding her eyes.

“Nobody can survive that much electricity and that much ectoplasm,”

But that would mean- and she hadn’t- but she-

She can see the shock run through Jack’s body as he realizes something-

“Danny is the Phantom boy,” Jack gasps, eyes wide when Maddie whirls to look at him, to ask why he would say something crazy like that but-

Jazz nods. And this time it’s Maddy who feels shock wash over her- “How?” She ask, voice broken, fearing and needing the answer at the same time.

“It was my fault-“ Sam answers this time, and Maddie’s vision starts to shake at the edges, “I asked him to take a picture, he only went in because of me, and then he tripped, and there was this great big flash-“ Sam sighed, rubbing her arm and looking away, “He came out looking like Phantom. We thought he’d-that he’d…”

Maddie rocks back on her heels, feeling like her world is crumbling, her baby boy? Her baby? Her son?

“The other ghosts call him a halfa, he has ghost powers … but he’s also still human, and half ghost. The ectoplasm saved his life,” Tucker murmurs from the side.

Maddie can’t- she can’t- the words repeat in her mind, an incomprehensible loop.

They call him a halfa. He has ghost powers. He’s half ghost.

He tripped. They call him a halfa. Sam asked him for a picture. He has ghost powers. He tripped. He’s half ghost. He has ghost powers. He was taking a picture.

Her mind can’t- can’t wrap around it, every thought dying out too fast for her to grab onto, replaced by the next, and the next and-

“Mom? Are you okay?”

She looks up, -when had she kneeled?- meeting Jazzy’s eyes. She has one hand reached towards her, but half-pulled back, like she’s still afraid of Maddie’s reaction.

“I don’t- how is he still- but we tried so hard to-?” A heavy weight envelopes her shoulders. It’s Jack. Jack’s arms, Jack’s chest, Jack’s hugs, tight enough like he can hold the whole world together.

He’s holding hers together.

She curls her face into his shoulder, “Jack what do we do? If he’s- if he’s a ghost then we’ve lost him haven’t we? I-“

“No!” Jazz’s yell startles her into looking up, “You’re wrong Mom! The accident didn’t change Danny, it didn’t make him bad or corrupted or a shade or anything else you think about ghosts! He’s still just Danny!”

Maddy opens her mouth to respond, though she’s not sure with what, but Jazz isn’t done.

“And Danny still needs us! We need you to help find him! We didn’t tell you because we thought we were protecting him! Show us that we-“ Tears pool in her eyes, “Show us that we were wrong… please.”

Maddie lunges up, only barely beating Jack to it, wrapping her in a hug, “Oh baby, of course we are still going to find him, of course it- it didn’t change anything, we just… we don’t understand, Jazz.”

Jazz shoulders shake against her, “Just this once can’t that be okay? Can’t you just let this one thing go? You don’t have to understand it, please.”

Maddie feels conflicted, on one hand.. this is her life’s work, ectobiology is everything to her, it’s her passion.

But did she love it so much that her kids thought she would choose it over them?

Would she?

The thought horrified her.

“Of course Jazzy, of course,” She squeezes tighter, “It doesn’t even matter, we’ll find him. We’ll find him.”

Jack gasps above her head, “The ecto trackers! That’s why they would always glitch around Danno!”

Jazz leans back, scrubbing at her cheeks, “Ye-eah,” She says through a wet laugh, “He was always so worried you guys would notice but-“

“No, don’t you see?!” Jack grabs each of their shoulders with a hand, “It’ll track him! We have his ecto signature!”

Maddie’s eyes widen with hope like an exploding star.

They can find Danny.

——

At first, they start listing everything they’ll need to make an ectomachine. To try and manufacture everything again.

It’s daunting. It’s impossible. Not with their current funds, not on the run, not in a foreign continent.

And even if they could… they don’t have ectoplasm. They would have to visit every haunted forest between Portugal and China to get enough. It’s just… not plausible.

So they switch gears.

Specifically, they remove a couple gears from the DIRC’s engine and send it careening off a cliff to provide enough of a distraction to sneak onto a large cargo ship.

Pushing off from land feels like a breath of fresh air. It feels like a looming cloud of darkness being left behind.

Maddie doesn’t know how long the ship will take to get to America, they don’t even know where it’ll land.

But they know it’s going to America. Familiar territory. Their territory.

And that will have to be enough of an advantage.

Because it’s not over.

Not until she has Danny back.

Not until he’s safe.

——

They land in Virginia. The port is scattered with attentive shadows and blades.

They are gone before dawn the next day.

It’s a breath of fresh air to be surrounded by familiar sights, the people, the language.

Maddie is hesitant now, to use Vlad’s money, but it’s barely a choice to find a pay phone when they slide into a small mountain town at the base of the Appalachians.

Tucker calls his parents first. All he gets is a dial tone. They waste over a dollar in quarters calling back.

Sam does the same. First her parents. Then her Grandma Ida, but only her Grandma picks up.

Whatever she says leaves Sam’s face pale in the shade of the building from where Maddie watches her.

She calls another number, lightning fast. This time she gets angry, but still scared, yelling about-… The Red Huntress.

It’s like a blast of wind from a window you’d forgotten was open, a name Maddie hasn’t heard in… over two years if the newspapers are to believed.

That time of their life seems so far away.

And it only seems farther when Sam hangs up with a grim look on her face.

——

Just when Maddie thinks they’ve finally stopped keeping secrets, finally run out of secrets about her son, things she didn’t know, couldn’t protect him from- Just when she thinks she’s finally figured it out, there’s something new.

And she’s never ready for it.

Although, how could she ever be ready to see a miniature version of her lost son appear out of nowhere in the middle of an Ohio cornfield?

Or maybe she just isn’t prepared to hear her son’s best friends shout his name and then turn around to see someone not quite right.

The truth hits like a knife through her chest.

Jack is torn by it all, but suddenly, Maddie doesn’t feel nearly as guilty about stealing from Vlad.

Apparently, it wouldn’t have mattered anyways, Vlad is missing. Has been for a while…. Red Huntress had reported seeing shadows around his mansion.

Every word out of the young girl’s mouth only puts Maddie more on edge.

The children know her as Dani. She tells them she goes by Elle now, years between the person they’d known.

For Maddie it’s easier, easier to separate from her son.

——

Vlad is not the only one gone.

They arrive to town to find houses empty, roads abandoned, and Fenton shields rising over the horizon.

Their home is all but lost to them, with Sam’s parents under watch by too many shadows to risk and Tucker’s parents moved across country, away from this place that has cost everyone so much … they are so close and still the end moves farther away.

It takes a coordinated effort to get to Fentonworks, and when they get there… Maddie can’t-

They keep moving.

Grabbing everything they can from the lab.

Maddie sees the ghost shield set over the entrance to the portal and pauses for the first time in… so long.

It’s her greatest creation.

Her and Jack’s passion made real.

It had killed her son.

She should turn it off, destroy it and never look back.

Her fingers whisper over the control board. And yet-

“Mads?”

She turns to Jack, his arms full of tools and machines.

Maddie smiles, grabbing another box and jogging up the stairs, her husband at her back.

They meet Jazz at the stairs, a bag on her shoulders that looks too prepared to be rushed.

The ecto-pager rings. Tucker’s signal.

They have to go.

It’s only when she sees the shadow of the Op center eclipse the shadows chasing them that she realizes what Jack had been doing.

He was good at creating a distractions.

And the Fentons leave Amity Park once more.

——

They destroy seventeen inventions in an attempt to build one to track Danny.

Jazz is the one driving now, Maddie and Jack working in the back.

It still takes them almost three weeks of running before they come across the Boomerang.

The kids all share a look.

And this time they explain it right away.

How the Boomerang always sought out Danny.

How they found him when he would go missing in the ghost zone.

Maddie throws it across the field with a whip of her wrist.

She’ll follow it anywhere if it leads to her son.

——

They catch up to the device at another assassin base. And then another. And another.

And every time, Maddie runs in, hoping this will be the one, maybe this time they’ll find him, maybe-

And every time they don’t.

There’s something messing with the sensors, something in each base that draws an ectosignature too similar to Danny’s.

They follow them anyways.

The East Coast is saturated with them. But they get as far west as Colorado before the boomerang leads them back.

But no matter how many times they lose sight of it, they find it again.

Maddie revs the engine harder, trying to keep the small blip visible in her windshield ahead. She pushes to go faster.

Hoping that this time, this time it’s right, this time it will lead her to her son.

The boomerang jerks left into the forest.

Maddie follows. She always follows. The trees rush past the truck windows and all too quickly the trees thicken. They jump out together, well practiced, armed, ready, the blip tracker in Jack’s hands as she runs beside him.

Have to find him, have to find him, have to find him pounds in her ears.

The boomerang jerks left again, ricochets off a tree and then-

There he is.

Danny.

Her son.

Her child.

In the center of the clearing, lying on the ground is her son. The silver of the boomerang lies in the leaf litter by his side.

She can’t breathe.

She can’t believe it.

He looks the same as the day she lost him.

He’s changed so much.

She feels the soft fabric of his T-shirt under fingers as she runs to him, grabs him, Jack not a moment behind. She can feel his breathing, feel his skin, feel-

“Danny, Danny, Danny, my baby, my baby,” she whispers.

“Mom!”

Maddie whips her head up, automatically on guard from Jazz’s panicked shout.

She see curls herself farther around Danny, staring down the ninja watching them.

The person isn’t wearing completely black, but Maddie won’t risk it. Not now, not when she’s so close. She can tell just by looking.

The ninja puts their hands up.

“Kids, get away.” Jack demands, ushering Sam and Tucker closer to their circle anyways.

The ninja steps closer, revealing short cropped hair, smooth dark clothes, but still- Maddie can see the weapons, she can see the way she stands like all those that have threatened them before.

Jack raises his ectoblaster, “Back off! You’re not getting your hands on him!”

Maddie can see the way the ninja looks at them all, but then her mouth opens, “Not going to harm you,” the voice is small. Young, but strong, “Not the same as them. Different. Not Demon’s head.”

Whatever lie she’s trying to tell them doesn’t make sense, Maddie won’t let her take Danny, not again-

Something changes, the ninja’s eyes flick downwards, to Danny, and then multiple things happen at once.

The ninja steps forward, reaching out.

Jack pulls the trigger of his blaster.

Something hits Maddie in the stomach.

Maddie jerks back, folding over in pain and the weight in her arms vanishes- Danny!

But Danny is there, rolling to his feet and standing in front of her, his fists raised.

His eyes widen and he freezes.

“Mom?”

Maddie nearly cries, just hearing his voice- but Jack is still firing and-

She jerks her head to the side as Danny lunges towards Jack, getting in front of him just as the ninja dodges another shot.

Before Maddie can blink the ninja is on the ground, Danny holding a small blade to her throat. And there’s a look on his face that she doesn’t recognize, he looks so different all of a sudden.

“من أرسلك!”

Maddie blinks, hand freezing where it’s outstretched towards her son. She doesn’t recognize the words, doesn’t recognize the look on his face, his actions- and then Danny is flung backwards, another scuffle and the ninja is standing once more, hands out but feet steady.

“I will not harm you!” She says again, “Bat! I am Cass!” She points to herself, “Bat. Family. Not Demon’s head. Not Ra’s.”

Sam jerks at Maddie’s side, “I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but you are not anybody’s family here.”

All Maddie wishes for is to be in safety of their truck, far away from here, home, to be able to see her baby’s face, hold him in her arms again.

But he stands with his back to them, staring down the ninja with drawn fists.

The girl- Cass- speaks up again, directed only at Danny, “Not here. Won’t come here. Not with Bruce. You are protected here.”

Maddie doesn’t understand, because Danny hasn’t said anything, but the girl talks like she’s answering him.

There’s a stagnant pause-

“Danny..?” Jazz pleads into the stillness, and it makes him turn his head.

She can see the way his face crumples, the way his shoulders drop just that small amount, and Jazz jumps for a hug before anyone can say different.

Maddie can’t stop herself from doing the same.

Danny jerks to stabilize himself, turning in to their bodies as they swarm him.

She can feel how stiff his shoulders are, how rigid he stands, but she can’t let go, not now, not ever.

Her baby. Her baby is back. Her son. She has her son back.

Maddie tucks his head into her shoulder, another arm around Jazz, her back pressed under Jack’s hug.

It could be minutes or hours and she wouldn’t care, but she hears someone clear their throat behind her. Their family unfolds with a startle, Danny suddenly even more tense than before.

She follows his eyes and-

It’s Batman.

Batman.

A member of the Justice League. Batman. Standing and looking at her, at them, and why? There’s others at his side, and when she turns to look, she can see another flanking them, and the ninja girl is still there, with another masked person by her side.

“Who are you?” Batman asks, breaking the standoff.

His voice is deep, deeper than it sounds on the news, and she doesn’t understand the accusation he puts behind it. She feels like she’s missing something.

“We’re the Fentons!” Jack says, putting a hand out to shake, ever ignoring the tension.

Maddie feels the sudden urge to nudge Danny behind her, but he stays rooted at her side, standing stiff as a board.

When had he gotten taller than her?

She watches Batman’s eyes flick down to where she has an arm still curled in front of her son.

There’s more silence.

“Safe.”

Cass speaks again, and it makes several of them turn to look at her, Maddie included.

“Safe. Not harm. Family.” The girl’s hands move hastily in front of her, indistinguishable except the knowledge that it must be sign language of some kind.

Batman draws her attention when he turns to look at Maddie again. Danny grips her arm like he wants to pull her away and run.

“Who are you?” Batman asks again, but this time, it’s less accusatory and more… more like an actual question.

It doesn’t sound like he wants to hear the answer.

Maddie speaks anyways, “We’re the Fentons, this is my son, Danny. He was…” How does she even begin to describe the last three years? “We’ve been looking for him.”

The entirety of Batman’s group goes preternaturally still.

“Your…” Batman’s eyes drift to Danny, “Son?”