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Danny Fenton had no idea what it was, but there was something in the Infinite Realms that felt off. He had felt it for a few days now but he hadn’t been able to pinpoint what exactly that feeling was except that something was in the Realms, something that didn’t belong here. He just needed to find what it was and send it back to where it belonged. But before he could do that, he had to pinpoint the feeling.
The way Danny was connected to the Infinite Realms was weird, he didn’t know how to explain it. Despite the fact that he had turned down the crown and title of King, the connection grew stronger. Clockwork had informed him that the connection was because he was the balance. Despite his desire to live a normal life and not become royalty in the Realms; the Infinite Realms claimed him regardless. Clockwork had told him that it was because he was the balance, that the Realms had claimed him as such. He was the only true halfa in existence, Vlad was starting to turn more ghostly every day, and his body was slowly dying, Ellie was created she hadn’t been born alive and then half died so it wasn’t the same.
But Danny? He had died halfway, he had become half living and half dead and had become basically a Schrodinger’s cat because of it. And since he had this perfect balance to him, he was the one to rule the balance, to keep up with if things in either the land of the living or the land of the dead were out of balance. This resulted in his getting his ass thrown onto the newly created Council of Ancients that ran the Infinite Realms as a fucking junior member because apparently, his connection to the Infinite Realms meant that he was on his way to becoming an ancient. And now he had been stuck with a position of power despite his refusal.
So, because of this, he was immediately alerted by the Infinite Realms themselves that something was wrong. Someone was here that wasn’t meant to be and he had to get them out of here before it threw everything out of wack.
The problem was that the Infinite Realms didn’t tell him where this thing was, all it told him was that something that didn’t belong was there and he needed to find a way to get it out. Which was how he was brought to his current location. He stood in the castle of the Infinite Realms searching through the archives for that Ancient’s damned infini-map because he swore he left it here but where?
“What are you doing?” An annoying, irritating voice asked angrily and Danny turned to find Ghost Writer glaring at him, his arms crossed over his chest. “You are destroying my library.”
“I’m looking for something,” Danny said with a huff before he turned back to the pile of books he was tearing apart to find that stupid fucking map.
“What are you looking for!? I have a system Daniel, a system and you are destroying my library!”
“I’m looking for the stupid map! There’s something in the Infinite Realms that shouldn’t be here but I can’t fucking find it without the map. Where did you put it?” Danny exclaimed, turning on a heel to glare at his enemy.
Ghost Writer scoffed, pressing a hand to his chest in offense. “ I didn’t do anything to it except put it in its rightful spot,” he said before summoning the map and holding it out for Danny. “You will be cleaning this up once you finish your blasted mission or else I will be having another conversation with FrostbiteFrosbite regarding your behavior.”
Danny rolled his eyes and snatched the stupid map from him and stormed out of the library, muttering about hateful librarians. Frostbite was the one in charge of Danny until he had actually become an Ancient, had said that he would be responsible for any of the child’s actions until he was old enough to conduct himself. Despite the fact that Danny was twenty-two in living years, he was considered a baby ghost until his hundredth year of existence, he would be considered an ancient upon his five hundredth year of existence. Until then, he was just a baby who couldn’t control himself, according to the other ghosts. It was why he got along so well with Ember, Johnny, Kitty, and Youngblood, they were all still considered baby ghosts as well.
The halfa grumbled to himself as he looked over the map of the Infinite Realms and tried to relax as Clockwork had instructed him, letting his shoulders drop down, letting the tension leave his body. He let out a soft hum as he focused on the pull he felt in his core, the very thing telling him that there was something wrong in the InfiniteInfinte Realms that he needed to fix. Slowly the information on the map started to change and morph and then it appeared.
He let out a groan as the dot appeared in the ghostly version of Gotham, his least favorite part of the Infinite Realms. With an annoyed huff, Danny rolled up the map and stuck it in his chest, and took off out of the castle and through the realms to the worst part of the Infinite Realms.
It wasn’t the ruler of the area that was bad, actually, he adored Lady Gotham, she was a member of the council and the sweetest ghost he had ever met. It was the souls who drove him up the wall. Each one demanded that he solve their murder, demanded that he help them get revenge on this villain or that one and basically drive him insane.
Martha and Thomas Wayne in particular drove him up the wall. The two had approached Danny numerous times begging for him to protect their son, to try and get him to stop whatever it was that he was doing and each time Danny said no. If it didn’t go against the balance of the realms, he didn’t step in. The fact that their son decided to not get help after their murders and become a vigilante in a furry costume to fight crime was not a reason for Danny to intervene. Now if he had summoned his parents and tied their ghosts to him, then Danny would step in.
His job was to make sure that the ghosts passed over and that they stayed in the Infinite Realms rather than cause mayhem in the living realms. Just as he made sure that humans didn’t stay within the Infinite Realms if they ever appeared here. The only one he ever had to deal with was usually John Constantine but at this point, it seemed like he finally got the message.
Danny flew through the Infinite Realms and his feet slowly landed on the ground of Gotham City. He looked around and wrinkled his nose as the tug to his core grew stronger. Yup, whatever was wrong was here. He pulled the map out of his chest and looked at it once more.
“Oh good, you’re here,” a woman said, her voice laced with a strong Jersey Accent.
Danny glanced up and smiled at Lady Gotham who stood before him, her form that of a nineteen-twenties Black woman. She dressed as most women who had been a part of the Harlem Renaissance , or well in the Lady’s case, Gotham RenaissanceReneissance as a lot of the same things that had occurred in Harlem had trickled into Gotham at the time. Her hair sat coifed up in a beautiful afro upon her head, large hoop earrings hug from her lobes and a beautiful flapper-style dress and simple black heels covered her. She was gorgeous beyond words and Danny felt his core flutter at the ghost before him.
“Hi Lady Gotham,” he said with a small smile on his face.
“Hi Danny,” she said before grabbing his wrist and pulling him through the streets of what looked like Upper Gotham. “I’m glad you’re here, I need you to figure out what we should do, he’s not a ghost but he isn’t alive either. I know him but he doesn’t know who he is, he also doesn't know that he’s dead and it’s not right? As in he’s not dead correctly?”
Danny frowned and followed the ancient down the street quickly. “What do you mean he isn’t dead?”
“He’s like you, but not?” Lady Gotham said, screwing her nose up as she frowned.
At that, the halfa let out a soft hum, maybe that was why the Infinite Realms had been bothering him so much to fix this. The two hurried down the streets of Gotham until they approached Wayne Manor and Danny let out a whine.
“Please don’t tell me that Martha and Thomas are here?” He complained.
Lady Gotham just gave him an amused smile and opened the doors to the manor and led him inside. “Alright, Lord Phantom has arrived, we shall let him look at the boy and decide what we should do now.”
Danny sighed and looked over the room to find both Waynes in the sitting room as well as a young boy around the age of fourteen sitting slumped down on the couch, his arms crossed over his chest. He was wearing a ripped-up and destroyed Robin suit, his lips curled up in a scowl.
He looked at the boy and then at the Waynes. “I still don’t understand what I’m doing here,” he said, feeling even more confused. Then his core tugged at the boy roughly and he nearly stumbled at the weight.
He looked at the boy again. “You’re not dead. But you are dead,” he murmured, stepping towards the kid and walking around him slowly as he took him in. He was definitely in a ghost form, the snow-white hair, red eyes, and greenish skin were the giveaway. But there was a strand of black hair at the front of his head, not only that but there was something obviously different about him, something not quite dead.
“Yeah, that’s what they said too,” he grumbled. “Look do you know who the fuck I am? Because these assholes know but they won’t tell me shit.”
Danny frowned, his brow furrowed in concern as he looked the kid over once again and took a seat on the couch with him. “What do you know? Do you remember anything?” he asked, taking the kid’s hand in his and pressing his fingers to the pulse point on his wrist and feeling the dull beats of a heart. It was far too slow, even slower than Danny’s in his human form which only beat five times per minute. This kid’s heart was still beating once per minute.
Robin shrugged his shoulders. “Not much. I woke up wearing these ripped-up clothes and had a major headache, I’m kinda hungry and something feels wrong. I don’t think I’m supposed to be here but I don’t know where I’m supposed to be either.”
Danny hummed and looked him over. “You want answers?” He asked.
“Phantom, you don’t know if it would be more harm than good,” Thomas warned, stepping forward. Danny held a hand up, ignoring the man as he looked down at Jason Todd, a boy who was completely and totally out of balance, who had died before his time and not only that, he didn’t die right.
“You were very scared when you died, but not only that, you were very angry,” Danny said softly, looking Jason in the eyes, ignoring the complaints from the Waynes as Lady Gotham ushered them out of the room. “You went to find your mother, desperate to have her love. But what you got was betrayal, betrayal, and a crazy ass clown who murdered you in cold blood and your dad didn’t make it in time.”
Jason let out a snarl. “He didn’t come, he was supposed to be there, he was supposed to save me.”
“And he didn’t, and you were murdered. You’re angry, aren’t you?” Danny asked, tilting his head to the side as he summoned a small portal that showed a version of Jason Todd clawing himself out of his grave and stumbling out mindlessly, like a zombie almost. Danny looked back at Jason.
“Your name is Jason Todd, you are best known as Robin, Batman’s sidekick, his right-hand man. You were murdered by the Joker and you want revenge, you want to avenge your death,” he said, staring dead into those red eyes of an angry revenant who let out a snarl.
“I want more than revenge, I want the Joker destroyed and I want my dad to be the one to do it. He should have been there,” Jason snarled out, his eyes glowing bright, ectoplasmic green as the anger grew more and more. “And I’ll get him to do it one way or another.”
“Phantom,” Lady Gotham said softly, worry lacing her voice as she watched the scene in front of her in concern.
“A revenant, Lady Gotham, Jason Todd died and became a revenant. He’s so angry with his own murder that he is forcing himself to come back to life to get revenge, even if he didn’t realize it himself. His human form has already dug itself out of the grave, now Jason needs to find a conduit to send him from our world to the human world once again.”
“And how are you going to do that?” The ghost asked, looking down at Jason who was now stewing in his own anger.
Danny quirked up his lips in a small smile and looked over at the small portal showing him what was happening in the world of the living. “Nothing, look,” he said as Talia al Ghul approached Jason’s zombie-like body and pulled him into a nondescript car. “The League of Assassins have found him. He will likely be dipped into the Lazarus pits and reconnected with his body.”
“So we just leave him like this until they do that?” Lady Gotham asked incredulously.
Danny looked back at Jason and shook his head. “No, we’ll make sure they pull him through. But we won’t be able to stop the rage he is going to feel, he’s angry and he wants revenge. And that anger isn’t going to go away until he finds that revenge.”
“Revenants die after they get their revenge, Phantom. He’s going to live a half-life up there, one full of anger and heartbreak and then he’s going to die again,” she said sadly, looking at one of her wards.
At that, the Lord of Balance let out a hum and took Jason’s hand in his. “No, he won’t. Jason Todd is going to live a very long life,” he declared as he collected a handful of ectoplasm and slowly pressed it into the revenant’s chest. “The ecto will keep him alive well into his eighties unless he somehow dies on the job or something else. Jason Todd, upon getting revenge for your death, you have my blessing as Phantom, Lord of Balance to continue living until your time has truly come. Do not waste this second shot at life,” he advised softly.
Jason tore his eyes away from the hole he had been burning into the ground and looked at Danny. “I can go back?” He whispered softly.
Danny just nodded and gave him a small smile. “Go back, get your revenge, and then live a very long and happy life. I don’t want to see you again for a very long time, do you understand?”
He swallowed and nodded his head. “Yes, yeah I can do that.”
The halfa gave him a small, secretive smile. “The rage you are going to feel is not a bad thing, it’s what’s going to keep you going, what’s going to keep you alive. Learn how to use it for more than just anger, okay? Learn to live with the rage and learn to live again.”
“How do I use it for more than just anger?” Jason whispered. “I’m so angry I want to kill I want to destroy everything.”
“You’ll remind yourself that not everyone gets a second chance, you’ll remind yourself that you are very lucky to be able to live again, many ghosts would kill for that chance. So you won’t waste it, right? You won’t waste my gift in allowing you to live after you’ve gotten your revenge.”
Jason shook his head and shot forward, hugging Danny tight. “Thank you.”
Danny just smiled and hugged him back as a portal opened behind Jason. He pulled away from the revenant and shoved him through the portal roughly.
“Are you sure this is a wise decision?” Lady Gotham asked softly watching through Danny’s portal as Jason came through the Lazarus Pits with a gasp.
Danny nodded his head. “Yup. He’s not meant for our world, not yet. But he’s going to be a very strong ghost one day. But until then, he deserves life.”
“What are you going to do about the Observants?”
Danny smiled and picked up a small green post-it note from where Jason had just been sitting. “I think we will find that they won’t put up that much of a fight,” he said, showing the note to Lady Gotham.
Send Jason Todd Back. - CW