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Danny Fenton is a born and raised Gotham child, a Crime Alley kid in and out.   

His parents are scientists, and nobody wants to fund their research. There is a running bet for when his parents finally snap and join Gotham’s long list of Rogues, the mad scientist peanut gallery. Jack Fenton is a construction worker, Maddie Fenton works at a corner store. It’s not a life either of them wants, and yet they still make time for science.   

Danny Fenton is also Jason Todd’s childhood friend. He is his best friend. They are the other side to each other’s coin; two halves of a whole. They meet when Danny is stealing a candy bar from a convenience store and gets caught. Jason knocks over the card rack, and in the commotion Danny flees out the front door with him hot on his heels.   

When they get a safe distance away, Danny pivots on his heel and shoves the candy bar into Jason’s chest with a heavy scowl, refusing to say thank you — it’s not thanks, it’s repayment. He refuses to have a debt to anyone; not even a kid his own age. Nothing ever comes free in Gotham’s streets, you’re dead if you think it does.    

But Jason surprises him, and gives it back. Danny is going to yell at him — who does he think he is — only to stop short. Out from Jason’s pocket is another bar, and Jason grins wryly at him, shaking it slowly. He says he has his own, and runs off in the opposite direction.   

Danny doesn’t see him until a week later, and when he does, Jason is cornered by three kids twice his age. They are beating him, and Danny thinks about leaving — it’s none of his business, but through the legs of the older kids, he makes eye contact with him. And before he’s really thought it through, Danny finds a broken bottle on the ground and throws himself into the fight, slamming the blunt end of the bottle into the side of one of the boys.   

They are black and blue in the end. Danny’s lip is busted and they both have black eyes, and Danny is missing a tooth. It’s a baby one, he doesn’t care regardless. He turns to Jason and drops the bottle, grinning bloody and panting.     

“Now we’re even.” He says, and leaves before Jason can say anything.  

And it’s rinse and repeat. They keep running into each other. They keep helping each other. Repaying debt with debt until eventually Jason says that this cat and mouse is stupid, and they should just be friends.   

Danny agrees.    

It’s a friendship. Its partnership. It’s two balls of yarns being batted at each other; a game of cat’s cradle where they both decide to never untangle from each other. Danny doesn’t only protect Jason, Jason doesn’t only protect Danny. They’re equals, as they ought to be. Danny and Jason won’t have anything less.   

(“Where you go, I go. What you see, I see.” Jason says, his voice serious and full of conviction after Danny follows two guys into the even-shadier alleys of Gotham alone and nearly gets kidnapped. Danny’s lip is busted and his ribs hurt, but Jason has a vice grip on his fingers like he’s scared that he’ll disappear if he lets go. “Got it?”)  

(Danny huffs but nods, he squeezes Jason’s hand. He’s trembling, just a little. But if Jason asks, he denies it. “Got it.”)   

“Like Batman and Robin.” Danny says when they sit on a rooftop late one night, hanging their feet off the edge and kick-kick-kicking at the old brick at their heels. They’re trying to glimpse a look at the dynamic duo as they soar across the foggy orange skyline, a silhouette of black, a flash of yellow. It’s a game for them both; trying to find the pair before the other does.   

Jason is winning, but Danny is close behind.   

When they’re a little older, Jason steals two cigarettes from his dad and brings them to the rooftop with a lighter. Danny mocks him for getting into an ‘unhealthy habit’, but when Jason lights them both and hands him one, he still takes it.   

(“Now who's getting into an unhealthy habit?” Jason says mockingly, holding his own cigarette clumsily between his fingers while Danny eyes his.   

“Shut up.” Danny retorts, but he’s hiding a smile in the curve of his lips and his voice lacks any kind bite. When he tries to suck on the unlit end, he chokes on smoke and careens into a coughing fit.  

Jason laughs his ass off, and ends up doing the same.)    

(They will get better at it with time.)   

When Danny is eleven years old, his parents sit him and Jazz down and tell them that they’re moving out of Gotham. They say it as if it's good news. It is. It shouldn’t be. Jazz is ecstatic. Danny feels like his feet are going to give out underneath him.   

What about Jason? He thinks as they say that it's in Illinois.   

He can’t leave him here.   

They’re supposed to have each other’s backs.   

What is he going to tell him?   

He tells him the truth. He tells him when they’re hiding at the closest park, sharing a carton of Marlboro reds and a small bag of starbursts. Jason is chewing on the red and yellow ones, pressing the pink and orange ones into Danny’s hand.  

Danny rips it off like a bandaid.   

“I’m moving.” He says in one breath. Fingers crushing the carton box as Jason stills. Their bird watching pauses as he turns his head to him.  

He stares at Danny, uncomprehending. One second, two. “You’re moving?” He repeats, and Danny nods, a ball of knots growing in his ribs. Jason’s brows thread together, he’s frowning. “To… a new apartment?”   

There is a spiderweb in Danny’s throat, forcing it shut. He pries his jaw open, and forces himself to speak. “No, out of state.”  

Jason won’t speak to him. He walks the other way when he sees him. He ignores him when Danny walks side by side and tries to say that it’s not his fault. It’s like talking to a brick wall. Jason is an immovable object, and Danny is an unstoppable force. Danny doesn’t want his last two weeks in Gotham to be one without his best friend.   

I don’t have a choice.  

I don’t want to leave.  

It wasn’t my decision.  

Please believe me.  

Please don’t ignore me.  

Please talk to me.  

(Danny and Jason are two halves of a whole. There was no separating one from the other without having friction.)   

Danny is half-convinced Jason will never speak to him again. He goes back home alone, in tears. Jason is mad at him. Jason’s not speaking to him. Jason is ignoring him. His parents come home late that night again, and Danny refuses to have dinner. He locks the door to the only bedroom they have and hides under the bed.   

On Saturday, Jason climbs the fire escape on the outside of the window and pushes it open. It creaks and squeals against the ruined frame, and he climbs through the gap. Danny stares at him from the bed, widened eyes.   

But Jason says nothing. He sits on the floor with his back to the window and crosses his arms, he’s angry. He’s scowling. He says nothing until Danny crawls over and fishes out a cigarette from under their dingy mattress and hands it to him.   

(It’s a ritual. It’s their ritual. When something is bothering the other, one half will hand their other a cigarette — any cigarette. Whether it be the one they’re using or a new one from the box. It’s an invitation, a go ahead, a silent ‘tell me your troubles’ to the other so that they can talk.)   

(If the other half takes it, then they can vent, rant, yell. Anything to get what’s haunting them off their chest. The half who gave it to them is silent, a shoulder to lean on, and ear to listen to, until they get the cigarette back, Then they can say anything.)   

He lights it, and like a dam bursting, begins to yell.   

I don’t want you to go.  

It’s supposed to be you and I, always.  

We’re supposed to have each other’s backs.  

It’s not fair. You can’t leave me.  

Who am I going to talk to now?  

Why are you leaving?  

You’re going so far.  

I’m sorry for ignoring you.  

I’m sorry I made you cry.  

I’m sorry for hurting you.  

Please don’t forget me.  

He talks and talks until there’s nothing left of the cigarette but a burnt nub of ash. The remains are scattered around on the floor, Jason chucks it out the window, and Danny hands him another one.   

Jason gives it back, his eyes rimmed red and his chest heaving, panting. His chest hurts and his heart hurts. It feels like he can’t breathe, there’s a fist gripping his lungs; his throat. He wants to cry, he doesn’t want to.   

Danny is similarly as red-eyed as him, his face scrunched up in pain. He takes the cigarette that Jason gives back, and hops off the bed. For a moment, Jason thinks he’s going to tell him to get out, to yell back. They’re both stray dogs that bite the hands that feed, and they have always fed each other. It would be about time one of them showed their teeth.   

Danny hugs him instead, tight and suffocating, crushing Jason’s ribs as something wet and cold gathers at his shoulder where he’s shoved his face. “I’m not gonna forget you,” Danny croaks, “I’ll never forget you.”   

Jason digs his hands into the back of Danny’s shirt, he hangs his head and sobs.    

They both promise to find a way to keep in contact. Jason’s there in the kitchen when the Fenton parents return home from work. It’s Jazz who suggests penpals, letter-writing, since they don’t have phones. It’s a great idea. Jason writes his address on a napkin in the kitchen and Danny shoves it into his backpack.     

The next week, Danny is out of Gotham with his family and leaving half of himself behind.  

Danny hates Amity Park from the moment he sees their stupid welcoming sign. It’s too bright, too clean. It looks polished and shiny and fake, right out of a ‘Welcome to Hollywood!’ postcard. Most importantly, it has no Jason.   

He finally has his own room in the house they move into, and he hates it too. It’s empty and plain and smells like plaster and dust. It feels all wrong. Danny is angry and hurt and alone. He sees his room and turns to his right on instinct to make a joke, but the air by his side is cold.  

Danny takes the napkin out of his bag, and then throws the bag onto the bed. He hides in the closet until Jazz comes looking for him.   

He hates the middle school even more. It’s nicer than the school he and Jason used to go to before, with better teachers and better floors and better desks. It’s too bright, too nice, and he feels out of place like he does with everything else in this stupid city. He’s behind everyone in his class.   

(“We have a new student with us, class.” The teacher says, a woman whose name Danny doesn’t bother to learn. Danny stands next to her desk, hunched into himself and his hands shoved as far as they go into his threadbare jeans. “This is Danny Fenton, he just moved here from Gotham.”   

The reaction is immediate - shifty eyes and nervous chatter spread like a disease from desk to desk. Danny hears a girl whisper ‘He looks freaky.’ to her friend. He makes eye contact with her, and she wires her jaw shut. He continues staring at her.    

The teacher says to treat him kindly. Danny thinks fat chance. When she asks him if he has anything he’d like to say, he asks for his seat. He collapses into a desk by the window and hears the screech of desk legs moving away from him. He hates them too.)  

He doesn’t get along with anyone. He doesn’t talk to anyone. He refuses to. His parents say they hope he makes new friends, and Danny doesn’t want any. He wants to go back to Gotham where Jason is. He butts heads with teachers, ignores his peers. He finds a spot in the bathroom during lunch and opens a carton of cigarettes that he nearly got caught taking.   

This place isn’t Gotham, and he hates it for it.   

He’s an outcast and he knows it — from his wardrobe that he hasn’t replaced, to his speech. His voice is thick with Gotham’s imprint; an accent that he never thought much of until he’s surrounded by people who don’t sound like he does.  

(Late in the year, a teacher pulls him aside in a fit of annoyance and asks him why he couldn’t be more like his exemplary sister. Danny grins with all his teeth and tells that teacher that they’ve never even met his sister.)  

(Gotham sinks its smog-and-coal stained claws into people and never lets go. It leaves a stain on the soul that smudges when you try and wipe at it, and Danny thinks it’s stupid that the people here think Jazz was left untouched by Gotham’s rust and rot. She wasn’t.)  

(When school ended she’d disappear down the cracked and puddly streets much like Danny did with Jason, and only reappear back home when he did. And she returns as he did: ruffled and wild-eyed, teeth- baring . She’d be clutching a book or two — yellowed, torn, old, new, stained — under her arm like a dragon guarding an egg.)   

(Sometimes, like he did, she’d come back with a busted lip, a missing tooth. Something scratched, torn, bleeding. And they’d fix each other up silently while waiting for Mom and Dad to get home. Her fingers are quick and nimble, much more than Danny’s, but they are calloused like his. Her knuckles sometimes bloody. Half her books are borrowed, not bought.)  

(She has her own scars that Danny doesn’t know the origin of, just like he has scars she doesn’t know the origin of either. Jazz has serrate edges just like Danny, she just hides it better than him.)  

Danny finds people. Eventually. He watches during lunch as a kid with blond hair shoves another boy from their grade. His eyes turn to the teachers monitoring the lunchroom, and he waits, half-expecting for them to step in.   

He shouldn’t have expected anything. He sees a teacher watch the blond get in the boy’s face, and turns away. He’s right to hate this place. He watches as the blond takes the glasses off the other boy’s face, and breaks them.  

And Danny stands up, blood beginning to boil. It’s not his business, but he and Jason have got in the way of fights before. Call it instinct if you will. And as he stands, he dumps the food from his tray onto the table and stalks across the room. There are eyes on him, other kids watch as he passes them by.   

The blond never sees him coming. He’s too busy mocking the boy, saying something in a nasally voice and calling him a mean nickname. There’s a girl there too, dressed in black, getting in the way of the blond and arguing back.   

Danny raises his tray like a weapon, and brings it down hard onto the blond’s head. He stumbles, he cries out, and Danny sees him whirl on his heel towards him. He looks hurt, infuriated.    

“You hit me!” He yells, and he looks half in disbelief. And the other half indignant - like he can’t believe someone would dare to. There are tears forming at the ends of his eyelashes. The other boy picks up his broken glasses and scurries away with the girl. He looks grateful. Danny twirls his tray and looks the blond in the eye.   

And hits him again.    

“You can hurt people, but I can’t hurt you back?” Danny scoffs when the boy yells at him to stop. But he doesn't hit him again. The boy runs off in tears, holding a red and swollen face, and Danny ends up in the principal’s office before class afterwards is over.   

He sits opposite to the kid he hit and his parents, alone. The principal calls him Dash, and Danny says, “I’m sorry.” The moment he hears it. All three adults look at him, the Dash looks smug, as do his parents. Danny smiles something mean and full of broken glass. “Not for hittin’ you. That your parents named you fuckin’, Dash.”    

He gets yelled at by three adults that day, and gets sent home with a week long suspension.   

When he tells his parents, they descend on the school like a pair of vultures — full of fury and out for blood, ready to tear into anything they can get their talons on — and currently their target is the principal. Danny comes along, and finds that they’re not the only ones. The bullied boy’s parents are there as well, their voices come through the door as they yell when the Fentons arrive.   

The bullied boy is sitting outside the principal’s office when Danny’s parents go in, and two loud voices ascend into four. He looks surprised to see him. “Thanks.” He says when Danny sits down across from him. “For saving me from Dash, I mean. You didn’t have to do that.”   

Danny just shrugs, uncomfortable with gratitude. “He’s a dick.”   

“I’m Tucker.”  

“Danny.”   

So Danny makes one friend. He tells Jason about it in his next letter — one of many that he’s sent since he was able to. And by extension, he makes a friend in Sam Manson. She tells him ‘good hit’ when Tucker sits next to him during lunch when Danny comes back from suspension — now reduced to three days and detention after.   

Danny likes her for all of five minutes. And then his opinion sours. Sam asks him about his upbringing, about Gotham. She judges his smoking — he’s been caught doing it — and Danny is willing to let it slide. But Sam is judgy; pushy at all the wrong times, and Danny thinks he’d like her better if she knew what she was talking about.   

His opinion on Sam Manson? A brat.   

And he ignores it, for a while. He likes Tucker enough to tolerate her. He thinks she has some kind of superiority complex. She boasts about being vegetarian, and judges Tucker for eating meat, and other stuff that Danny thinks is annoying.   

When Danny has enough, he turns to Sam and asks her if she knows what the shelf life for a head of lettuce is. She says nothing, she looks confused. He asks her if she knows how much it costs for a loaf of bread.   

Her silence is loud. Her silence is damning.    

He turns to Tucker, and asks him if he knows the shelf life of a tomato, and the same bread question. Tucker looks between him and Sam like a fish out of water, he looks confused. “Like a week? It depends.” He stammers, “And bread’s been four bucks? I’ve heard my parents talking about it.”   

Danny nods silently, and turns back to Sam. He knows all he needs to. “You’re privileged.”  

He watches, fascinated, as her face turns a new shade of red.   

Sam doesn't look at him for a week after, and Danny refuses to apologize. Tucker is caught between a rock and a hard place as his old friend and new friend are feuding with each other.  

They’ll... sort it out eventually.   

Letter-sending is almost religious between Jason and Danny. When Danny gets home the first thing he does is beeline for his mailbox and search it for a letter response. Jason tells him that Crime Alley isn’t the same without him there. His dad has been getting into shit he shouldn’t be, and he’s dragging Jason along with it.   

(‘He has me jacking tires from cars.’ Jason says in a letter one night, ‘And he gets pissed if I take too long.’)  

(Danny hates Willis Todd with all his being.)  

Danny tells him about school in Amity Park, he tells him about the fight he had with a kid named Dash - and the subsequent friends he made from it. He says he’s been getting into the astronomy books in the library. His reading is getting better. So is his writing. His best subject is math.   

He sends Jason a book he thinks he’ll like. He stole it from the library.   

(‘Mom and dad have a creepy lab in the basement now.’ He writes one day in the kitchen, one eye watching the door leading down to it. He isn’t sure what they’re making, but he can hear them working. He avoids it like the plague. ‘I have no idea what they’re making down there, but I bet it's more ghost stuff.’)    

(He’s never liked their inventions. They were half-baked creations they made from whatever junk they could find from their respective jobs. In Gotham, Danny would drag Jason into the bedroom when they went home and his parents were working on something in the kitchen.)  

(“They’re safety hazards.” He complains when Jason jokes that he thinks it's cool. He has a vice grip on his hand, and locks the door when they’re both inside. “I’ll bet you that it blows up in an hour and we have to evacuate the building.” He never touches their things.)   

When they’re both twelve, Jason sends Danny a curveball of a letter. ‘I stole the wheels off the Batmobile.’ He says in the first opening sentence. ‘And then I hit Batman with a tire iron.’  

Danny needs to read it three times before he can understand what it says. “Bullshit.” He says involuntarily at the kitchen table, and gets glared at by Jazz. The letter keeps going, and tells him about what happened leading up to it and after it — the crime front he uncovered at the wayward youth school he was sent to, his step-mom’s death, Willis’ arrest. It all sounds too crazy to be true. But Jason’s never lied to him before, not about this.   

And then Jason, that asshole, ends his letter with, ‘And now I think I’m getting adopted by Bruce Wayne.’    

Danny’s yelling fills the house. There’s no way — there’s no. Way. Bruce Wayne and all his philanthropy would never, not once, look at Crime Alley. Except when Danny checks the Gotham news at the school library the next day, there are articles and articles of papers talking about Bruce Wayne’s new son: Jason Todd.     

Danny sends two letters. The first one is just a single paper with the words ‘WHAT THE FUCK JASON?’   written in bold sharpie, longform across the page. Danny writes ‘open first’ on the envelope he seals it in.   

The next letter is a proper one, tearing into him about stealing Batman’s tires — what was he like? Did he say anything? Was he as monstrous as the rumors say he is? — and apologizing about Catherine, and reluctantly about Willis. He updates him about the livings of Amity Park and everything that’s happened, and then he tells Jason to tell him all about Wayne Manor.   

He gets a letter response back in less than a week, express shipping. Danny calls him a fancy motherfucker in his reply back, but he’s grinning ear-to-ear as he scans through the letter.   

Jason tells him about the monster-sized library in the left wing of the house — and he did say wing. Danny can’t believe this. And he says that there’s a butler named Alfred, and Alfred will make him anything he asks as long as he does so politely. And that his bedroom alone is bigger than both their apartments combined.  

He encloses photos, and Danny pins them up into his room.   

(For Danny’s birthday that year, Jason sends him the latest phone with a note attached - Bruce helped pick it out with him, and there’s a number attached to it. Danny tears through the living room to find the outlet and plugs it in. The first thing he does is text the number.)   

(He gets an immediate response back. Danny’s never slammed the ‘call’ button faster, and they both cry when he hears Jason’s voice pick up on the other end. The phone call goes well into the evening — it’s Danny’s favorite birthday present.)  

“My parents are forcing me to go to this stupid ball next weekend.” Sam complains one Monday at lunch, where the three of them are tucked away in a neat little corner that gives Danny a good view of the entire room. It means that Dash and his gang can’t sneak up on him easily.    

His eyes slide to her lazily, his chin in his palm as he swirls the peaches on his tray disinterestedly. They’d begun to get along… steadily… recently, and it was through this that both him and Tucker found out she was mega-watt rich.   

(When she told them, Danny in an automatic response says, “I could tell.” And she whirls on him so fast he thinks sparks fly from the ground, their feuding nearly re-ignited.)   

He hums low, and stabs a peach with his fork. “Yeah?” He says, “Have fun.” Sam’s complained about these things before now, and he thinks it’s funny listening to her talk shit about all of the people she met and saw at whatever socialite event she was dragged into.   

Sam rolls her eyes at him, angrily grumbling under her breath. And she murders a tomato in her salad, “The only upside is that it’s a charity ball. My parents have been excited to go to one of the Martha Wayne Foundation galas for ages. ”   

Danny’s head snaps up so fast he recoils back, he chokes on nothing, eyes bugging out of its sockets. “You’re going to Gotham?” He asks, breathless with the feeling of his heart skipping too many beats in too short of a time. Sam and Tucker look at him, surprise written on their faces.   

He doesn’t care. Sam’s going to Gotham. She’s going to a Wayne gala.   

A Wayne Gala. Where Jason will be. He knows he will, Jason’s told him all about it before.   

He leans forward, eyes ever wider than before. “Can I come with you? Please?”     

He hasn’t seen his best friend in a year. And Sam and Tucker look at him like he’s grown a second head. Like they can’t believe he would willingly ask to go to one of these parties when he has never shown an interest before. Not when he’s an even more avid-hater of rich people than Sam.   

“We can make fun of rich people together.” Danny continues, like he’s trying to sweeten the deal of Sam bringing him with when he never has before. He is. He hasn’t told either of them about Jason, he never wanted to. They’ll have to know about him after this, but for now Danny wants to keep him a secret a little longer. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right? It’ll be fun. Please?”    

Please, he thinks, I’ll beg you, watching Sam like a hawk. His fingers dig into the table, he wants to go. He wants to see his best friend. He can make it a surprise. Just like how Jason sent him a phone, but even better.   

Sam agrees with a slow, confused ‘ yes’, like she’s only saying it to figure out why Danny’s even asked . Danny’s grin is blinding in return, driven like the sun. “You won’t regret this.” he says, sitting back down. There is joy pushing against the back of his teeth and swelling all the way down into his lungs, pushing and pushing against him with a cheer.   

It takes convincing to let Danny come along. But all Danny tells his parents is that Jason will be there, that he and Jay won’t leave the building, they’ll be safe, and they agree. They’ve always supported him through thick and thin. He promises to be careful, he will.   

It’s Sam’s parents that take more convincing, and Danny isn’t surprised. They don’t want to bring just anyone with, and especially not Danny when they see him - unrefined clothes, his jeans fraying at the hems, shirts wrinkled and his hair uncombed. But Sam promises to be on her best behavior, and reluctantly throws in that she’ll wear whatever her mom picks out.  

And just like that, Danny is coming along. Sam’s dad drags him out shopping for a suit when he reveals that he doesn’t own one — “I would have bought you one anyways.” He says at some fancy boutique with a name that’s as equally as presumptuous. “We can’t have a plus one coming with us in a cheap suit — no offense, Daniel.”   

Danny bites back what he wants to say; vitriol in its most poisonous form. All the sharp things he’s picked up from Crime Alley and put in his mouth in hopes of filing down his teeth, he swallows. He grins a grimace. It just barely feels like teeth baring. “None taken, Mr. Manson.”   

(They end up finding him a nice suit in classic black, and Danny thinks that’s it. But it’s not, he spends the next few hours getting it tailored to him. Mr. Manson is having fun, he says his wife loves to play dress up with Sam, and he’s starting to see the appeal.)   

(Danny tenses his jaw — embers simmer in his gut, and he stares at Mr. Manson, wishing to spit acid at him. He wants to rust every pretty, shiny thing he owns. I am not a doll, he thinks, and realizes exactly why Sam rebels so much. It’s only been a few hours, and he can’t stand it.)   

(He finds that he really hates suit jackets. He’s not quite sure why. But he likes the vests. He hates ties, and Mr. Manson buys him a silk blue one that Danny thinks about pawning the moment he gets back from the Gala.)  

(“I get it now.” He says bluntly the next time he sees Sam, he meets her in her room, larger than his but smaller than the photos he’s gotten from Jason. He throws himself onto one of her bean bag chairs, landing on it with an ungraceful plop. )  

(His fingers itch for the cigarettes he has in his jacket’s pockets, he digs for his lighter. He pulls out neither, for now. This is Sam’s room. She doesn’t like his smoking, and they’re slowly becoming friends. “You’re a saint for dealing with that for twelve years.”)  

(Sam snorts at him, turns her head and gives him a grin. “Wanna put on makeup that would give my parents a heart attack?” She asks, and she’s already reaching over to her dresser for an occultic-looking eye shadow palette.)   

(Danny matches her grin with his own, and sits up. It’s not smoking, but that will just have to be a thing between him and Jason. “Hell yes, what do you have in mind?” They  call up Tucker to join them.)   

Sam’s parents own a private jet that Sam hates with a burning passion. Danny knows this because she’s ranting to him about it from their seats inside it, the ground far below them. They’re on their way to Gotham, and Danny’s excitement has twisted and churned into fear. Like milk into butter.   

His leg hasn’t stopped bouncing since they took off, and he misses half of Sam’s rant on the horrible usage of private planes amongst the elite and the fact that they pump more carbon into the air in one hour than a hundred cars ever will. He tells her as such, and promises to listen to it again when he’s not as distracted.   

(“Why are you so nervous anyways?” She asks with a heavy frown, leaning back into her plush leather seat. “You haven’t said anything at all about why you wanna go to this thing.”)  

(Danny doesn’t wanna tell her. He chews the nail of his thumb, and he’ll chew it to the bed he thinks. He feels like a sparking live wire, his nerves frayed down to the thread. He’s going to see Jason in just a few hours, it doesn’t feel quite real. He still remembers the day he left like it was yesterday.)  

(“I know.” He says when he realizes he hasn’t said anything at all. He presses his chin onto his fingers. His foot tap-tap-tapping. He wants a smoke to soothe his anxieties, but they’re on a plane. He’ll voice this to Sam later and she’ll scoff and say that she doesn’t feel any sympathy for him. But she gets him a sucker to chew on anyways.)  

(“I can’t tell you,” Danny continues, and looks up to meet Sam’s eyes. “But it’s a surprise. You’ll see when we get there.”)  

(If I tell you now I won’t be able to stop.)   

When they touch down they have a chauffeur waiting for them and a sleek black car parked. It’s all a little intimidating, overwhelming, but Sam just seems over it. And Danny can’t stop staring out the window as they drive into the city. It’s weird to be back. But it’s familiar, and welcoming in that way.  

Sam seems all the more interested in the architecture, and so Danny points out the gargoyles perched atop some of the roofs. There are streets he recognizes, at first. Streets he’s gone down with Jason countless times, and then there are ones that he doesn’t. The richer parts of Gotham that Danny couldn’t afford to breathe in.   

(“You know a lot about Gotham, Danny.” Mrs. Manson says from the front, she peers over her shoulder with a sweet, practiced smile. “Did you research the city before we got here?”)  

(“No, Mrs. Manson.” Danny says, glancing at Sam in confusion — didn’t they know? But her embarrassed look tells him no, they didn’t. Sam never told them. “I grew up here.” He knows his accent has steadily begun to fade since arrival, but surely it wasn’t entirely gone?)   

(Mrs. Manson blinks, her practiced smile sewn into her face. “Oh!” She says lightly, there’s only a slight crinkle in her brows as she tilts her head. “Mind I ask where?” She looks discomfited, and wary of how he might respond.)  

(Danny’s never told Sam where he grew up. He didn’t want to deal with questions, or discomfort. But with Jason so close to him, he smiles all sharp things and discarded syringes. “Park Row, Ma’am,” he says, leaning in his seat, “but only the Uppercrust and tourists call it that. Everyone else just calls it Crime Alley.”)  

(Mrs. Manson says nothing, but both she and Mr. Manson look green around the gills, as if being near a street rat makes them physically ill. Danny soaks it in with delight. Good, he thinks, be uncomfortable. He settles back into his chair.)   

They stop at a high-end hotel that Danny’s only ever imagined staying in. A bell hopper takes their bags and Danny swallows the urge to bite his hand off when he grabs Danny’s bag. Don’t touch my things, he nearly snaps, ingrained-old instinct twitching his hands out for the handle before he forces it back to his side.   

It’s not going to be stolen, he tells himself. And follows the Mansons into the lobby. He feels out of place immediately, with its red carpet and marble floors and shimmering chandeliers. He squares his shoulders and sets his jaw in response, falling back on old habits of making himself appear as the biggest person in the room.                 

They primp and preen for the night incoming once they reach their hotel room, their bags already waiting for them. Danny snatches his first and puts it somewhere easy to hide, and he ignores the shared looks between the Manson couple. He doesn’t care about their judgment.   

Sam’s dragged into a separate room by her mother, a plastic garment bag hung over her mother’s arms as she cheerily slams the door shut. Mr. Manson prepares himself, and Danny gets ready on his own, doing only what’s required of him.   

He paces through the room after he’s gotten into his suit, tugging on the sleeves of his fresh-ironed button down that’s been tailored to him specifically nervously. He’s going to wear a hole into the carpet or his socks, whatever comes first, and chews on his lip. He’s itching for a cigarette, and didn’t bring any with.  

The tie is almost suffocating around his neck, tied there by Mr. Manson in a bout of faux-kindness. Danny knows it’s only an obligation to prevent him from looking like a mess.   

(When Sam comes out nearly an hour later, she wears a murderous expression on her face and her mother comes out looking like a preening bird. Mrs. Manson is wearing white, but Sam wears a soft baby pink. In a dress that goes below her knees with a small bow at the front. It’s sleeveless.)   

(Danny chokes on a laugh when he sees her, Mr. and Mrs. Manson mistake it for him choking on air, speechless. When he makes his way over, he gives her a raised-eyebrow once over. “Wow.” He says, and smothers his grin when purple eyes flick to him dangerously.)  

(Watch your next words, Sam’s face reads. Danny presses his lips together to try and not laugh.)   

(“You look ridiculous.” His shoulders tremble with restrained glee, a fist pressing into his mouth. Sam glares at him like she’s mentally peeling the skin off his body like a potato, but the tension in her shoulders recedes slightly.)   

(“Good.” She sniffs, and looks down at the dress with a scowl. She keeps her arms hovering over herself like she’s afraid of touching the fabric.“I thought you were going to compliment me.”)  

(“In that?” Danny snorts, “Never.”)   

(He reaches for his phone and takes a picture to send to Tucker, and Sam nearly kills him for it. He manages to hit send before she can steal it out of his hands. And then he dodges her.)  

And when it’s finally time to leave, Danny’s hands tap against his pockets in a quick-pace rhythm that matches his heartbeat. He’s stone-faced with anxiety, with fear, and as they make their way to the rented-out limousine Sam links her arms with him.   

It’s a comfort and anchor that he desperately needs, and he squeezes her arm gently with a weak smile. They had a better friendship thing than he thought.   

If there’s one thing Danny’s learned, it’s that he hates the paparazzi . They’re loud, bright, and demanding. Hordes of them push against the red velvet ropes that lead into the building where the gala is being held, and Danny wants to sink into his seat when he sees them from the limousine window.   

He can hear them shouting question after question, like a hive of buzzing bees. Well, no, that’s insulting to bees. But there’s wave after wave of them like an overlapping tide, Danny can hear them through the car when they pull up.  

When he looks at Sam with wide, wide eyes, she looks back with a poker face. He wonders how many of these she’s been to for her to have a face like that. He forces his face to smooth over as well. They link arms once again right before the doors open, and he helps her out.   

He tries not to blink so much when he’s flashbanged with a hundred cameras at once. The shouting grows even louder, and he forces himself to tune it all out like white noise as he follows the Manson couple inside. On the stairs, they whisper to him and Sam that they’re to greet the Waynes first.   

Danny’s heart leaps into his throat, and he jams himself straight up like he’s been electrocuted. He feels Sam burning her eyes into him.   

He doesn’t look at her.   

He can’t tell if it's blood pounding or his heart beating that he hears in his ears as they walk towards the congregation of people at the near center of the room, Danny can’t help but compare it to an asteroid belt. Even from a distance, Danny can see Mister Wayne in midst conversation with a rich couple.   

There’s a picture perfect smile on Mister Wayne’s face that Danny’s only ever seen printed on the front of the billboards littered around Gotham. It’s almost surreal to see it up close and in person, and he feels stiff in his walking. His grip around Sam’s arm is near-bruising, he thinks.   

He loosens it with a quiet apology.   

It gets jammed back up his throat when he drops his eyes down and sees Jason Todd pressed against Mister Wayne’s side, dressed in a mimicking fine black suit like the one Mister Wayne wears. It looks even more expensive than the one Danny has on. He’s not sure how it’s possible.   

But Jason looks completely disinterested in the people around him, a look that Dany half-grins to. He’s not even trying to hide his boredom, and it’s so expressly Jason that Danny feels overwhelmed with too many emotions to name. That’s his best friend right there.   

He’s gotten taller in the year they’ve been away, he looks older. Danny bets he does too, but it’s so different seeing age on another person’s face. It’s sharp, abrupt. But Jason looks healthy. It’s the best thing Danny thinks he’s seen. And his hair has been cut, clean and professional.   

Look at you! He wants to shout, I almost didn’t recognize you!    

It’d be funny to announce himself with a joke, but he finds that words won’t come easy to him. He’ll stutter and trip right over his own tongue if he says anything, he can’t think of anything that works just right. All his words are all clogged up.   

Jason beats him to it though. Danny watches as his eyes sweep left, away from him, and then right. He counts the seconds before Jason sees him, because when he looks right his eyes flick to him, and then look away like an instinct.   

It would’ve stung, had Jason not immediately backtracked only moments later. Danny watches him do a double take, and then looks right back in Danny’s direction. Blue-meets-blue and the air holds still as their eyes lock.  

The room feels like it's in slow motion as a grin stretches toothily across Danny’s face. It slants and goes lopsided, and the corner of his mouth trembles with the strain of how far his smile goes. It’s only been a year, and they’ve talked on the phone. But it’s not the same as being in person.   

He sees the moment Jason processes the sight before him. Danny’s arm is already slipping out of Sam’s by the time Jason fills an ecstatic smile out from over his mouth. Jason is already turning full-body towards him.      

His lopsided grin fills out on the other end.   

"DANNY!" Jason yells, his voice slicing through the air like a bullet. He cuts off whatever Mister Wayne is saying, and startles everyone within earshot in the process. Mister Wayne doesn’t have time to look down — to admonish or see whatever it was that Jason was yelling at— because Jason is already running across the floor.    

Whatever part of his arm that was still linked to Sam is yanked away, and Danny breaks away from her. “JASON!” He yells, perhaps even louder than Jason did, the two of them always competing in some way or another.   

There’s a dizzying sense of glee as Jason collides with him like an asteroid, and Danny grunts as the air is knocked out of him. But he’s laughing, the two of them nearly toppling over as Jason wraps his arms around tight over Danny’s shoulders. His fingers dig into Danny’s shoulder blades like he might disappear, and they both spin around in circles.   

I’ve missed you so much.   

I can’t believe you’re here.  

I’ve missed you.  

I’ve missed you.  

I’ve missed you.    

“You didn’t tell me you were coming!” Jason cries, grinning from ear to ear even as his voice cracks down the middle, like lightning splitting a tree in half. Danny laughs brightly, unanswering, and hugs him tight as if they may as well fuse together. Jason pounds a fist into his shoulder blade, but goes back to squeezing him like a constrictor.  

“I wanted it to be a surprise!” Danny says as their spinning slows to a stop. They don’t let go of each other, they refuse to, but they do pull apart slightly to look at each other better. Jason looks at him like he’s greedily trying to memorize every part of his face, a death grip put on his arms, and Danny’s grin widens. “How could my own best friend be adopted by the Bruce Wayne and have me not come see it with my own two eyes? I had to make sure it was real!”         

Jason’s eyes narrow but his smile betrays his face, “I sent you photos!” He accuses, and Danny notices the slight fade in his accent.   

Danny’s grin tilts again, twisting into something mischievous. "Oh that's what it was?" He feigns an innocent tone. “I thought you sent me pictures of a really convincing green screen.” He has them hung up in his room.      

The fist of Jason collides with his shoulder, hard, hard enough to leave a bruise. "You jackass." And then it grips back around his arm, and Danny thinks that Jason might tear fabric with how tight his fingers are.   

Danny’s laughing harder than ever, and Jason is holding back his own.   

They’re only interrupted by the soft, sharp clearing of someone’s throat. It breaks their attention away from each other and towards the source of the noise.   

Ah, right, Danny thinks, seeing Bruce Wayne standing before them. We’re at a gala. He totally forgot.   

Bruce Wayne is a tall man, he’s taller than Danny realized. And he’s built like Superman. But he looks just like he does in the billboards. Danny is expecting him to be upset with them both, despite the letters he’s read from Jason stating otherwise. But he’s not. He doesn’t seem to care that Danny and Jason have disrupted his pretty, rich gala. Instead he looks amused, with his eyebrow arched in curiosity.   

Overall, however, he looks fond. Fonder than someone would have been if they’d adopted a kid as a charity case. And Danny silently and guiltily admits to thinking it, just a little. He thought Jason was just going to be a replacement for Mister Wayne’s other kid after he finally moved out.   

But Danny’s a good judge of character — or he likes to think he is — and trying not to end up dead on the streets has refined that ability at least a little bit. And the eyes of Bruce Wayne do not look like the eyes of a man who only took in Jason as a charity case. They look like the eyes of a man who actually, genuinely, cares about Jason Todd.       

The wriggly, protective thing settles in his chest.  

He doesn’t let go of Jason, which is fine because Jason doesn’t let go of him either, but he does twist his smile into something a little more polite. Or at least something more polite than he’s given the Mansons all evening.   

Mister Wayne’s eyebrow arches higher, and turns his blue-blue eyes onto Jason. “Who’s this, Jason?” He asks in that fancy High Gotham Elite accent, something that sounds like old transatlantic and the regular Gotham accent combined that Danny’s only ever heard in passing from whenever he and Jason snuck up to the nicer parts of Gotham.   

Jason doesn’t even bother to look sheepish, he just tugs Danny back into his side and loops an arm around his neck. “This is Danny, B.” He says, eyes flicking around the room to all the other onlookers. “We grew up in Crime Alley together, he moved to Illinois last year.”   

Danny watches discomfort flit across the faces of nearly every person present, soft murmurs sweeping across the floor like a small wind as their expressions turn flinty and cold. Danny doesn’t care — let them judge him for all he cares. In the end, they’re worse than him.    

Inching closer to Jason is as easy as breathing, although it’s completely unneeded as they are as close as they can physically get. Instead, he leans into him, straightening up like they’re back in Crime Alley and facing off a pack of angry older kids.    

He locks eyes with a balding white man who is particularly open about his own disgust in Danny’s presence at Wayne’s ‘pristine’ gala.   

Stay back, Danny thinks. He broadcasts. I bite.    

The man looks away first.   

Recognition crosses Mister Wayne’s face, and he visibly perks up, his smile softening as his blue-blue eyes then turn to Danny. “Oh, yes! I realize now, you’re always on the phone with him.” He holds out a hand to Danny, and Danny’s eyes flick to the glimmering watch wrapped around his wrist.  

He wonders how much he could sell that for if he stole it, and he wrestles an arm free from Jason’s grasp to lean forward and shake Mister Wayne’s hand. He doesn’t touch the watch at all. “Nice to meet you, Mister Wayne. Like Jay said, m’Danny.”    

“You too, Danny.” Mister Wayne says, and Danny is impressed by how sincere he sounds. Maybe he is being sincere, maybe he’s just a good liar. But considering he looks at Jay like how Danny’s parents look at himself, he just might think it's the latter. “It’s a relief to see that Jason has a friend here.”   

“Thanks.” Danny smiles, “Jay’s told me a lot about you.”   

Mister Wayne’s brows jump momentarily, he looks intrigued. And Danny grins as Jason tugs on his arm and hisses at him under his breath. “Well then,” Mister Wayne says, clapping his hands together softly. “I bet you both have a lot to catch up on then, hm? I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt to let you go off with Danny, Jason.”  

Danny perks up, excitement crawling up his ribcage as he shares a hopeful look with Jason. “Really?” He asks, and Mister Wayne laughs lightly.    

"Of course! How could I keep two friends apart? Go on ahead, chum. I'll come get you when the gala ends."  

And with that said, Bruce Wayne bids them adieu and turns back to the rest of the party, returning to conversation with the gothamite couple again. And with it, he takes all of the attention as, almost as if he were the sun and everyone else was the solar system that was orbiting it.   

Danny has to admit, it was impressive. But it doesn’t work on him.   

He turns and immediately throws his arms around Jason once again, rocking them side-to-side with a laugh, Jason’s hands scrabbling at his back and gripping back onto his jacket hard enough to leave wrinkles. He’s on cloud nine, pressing his nose into Jason’s shoulder and breathing him in, with Jason doing much the same.   

He still smells like cigarettes, and Danny bets he smells the same. But covered by time and the more likelier option, cologne that costs the same as a house, the smell is smothered and faded. Something old, something new, he supposes.   

Sam wants answers when they finally, for real this time, pull apart, flouncing up beside them both in her pink dress and a burning look in her eyes. She asks him if this was why Danny wouldn’t tell her why he wanted to come along — and why he told her it was a surprise.   

Danny slings his arm around Jason's shoulders and keeps him close, with Jason mimicking him, his nails dig into Danny’s jacket, and tells her yes. That’s exactly why he kept it secret. “I don’t like sharing.” He says with a jack-knife and playful smile, and shakes Jason’s shoulder. “I wanted to keep my best friend to myself a little longer.”  

(The sharp knife his tongue has turned into is quelled, and it’s a testament to how their friendship has grown from when they first met. Had she asked him a few months ago,  he would have said that it’s none of her business.)    

Sam's parents sidle in on behind her with saccharine sweet expressions on their faces, and Danny doesn’t fall for it for a second. He’s not dumb, he hasn’t forgotten that they too are disdained by him being near them. A Gotham street rat, the lowest of the low. But they are part greed, he is their in to the elusive Bruce Wayne, a man who somehow manages to be always in the public eye with his secrets on his sleeve, but also incredibly private.   

Danny ignores them.  

He introduces Sam to Jason, and Jason to Sam. (And when Jason learns her name, he raises his eyebrow and looks at Danny, and then back to Sam. “You look more different than how Danny said you did.” He tells her, “More… pink.”)  

(“It wasn’t my choice.” Sam grumbles, shooting her parents a look over her shoulder. Her mother just titters and says that she looks so cute, and she agreed to do it.)  

And it’s not long before Jason drags them off to a dark corner of the buffet table, he and Jason weave in and between the other socialites with the same ease as weaving down the sidewalk at noon. Sam lags behind, and eventually catches up. They steal snacks from the table, and talk shit about each person in the room.  

At some point, Sam is called away by her parents as they attempt to introduce her to the rare few handfuls of other rich kids in the gala that they want her to get along with. Danny tells her not to murder anyone before she leaves, and after she disappears into the throng of people, Jason tugs on Danny’s hand and drags him out to the west end balcony.  

It’s cold out, and Danny’s jacket isn’t meant to keep the chill out but he doesn’t care. He goes over and hops onto the balcony railing as Jason reaches into his pockets and pulls out a cigarette pack from his inner jacket. Danny zeroes in on the carton, and Jason laughs at him.  

"Don't tell Bruce," he says, handing the box to Danny first. "He's been trying to get me to quit ever since I moved in."  

"Hah!" Danny snatches one stick out from the carton, and Jason counts his fingers as he pulls out his lighter. "That sounds like Jazz. She's been trying to get me to stop since we moved to Amity." Granted, she's been trying ever since she found out before they moved , but now she was even more insistent. It was funny what she did and didn’t tolerate. "She hasn't found my stash yet." He had more than one. He had to, Jazz was clever.   

“She’s started to grow her hair out.” He tells him, scrunching his nose. Jason gives him a surprised look, “It’s weird. I don’t think she knows what to do with it.” She’s always kept it short for as long as he could remember. It’s harder to grab that way.  

(At some point while they’re outside, Danny suddenly remembers something and twists himself towards Jason — who’s leaning against the railing, his legs kicked out. He pulls the cigarette from his mouth, “Hey, you know since you’re a Wayne now, is it true that Bruce Wayne is Batman’s sugar daddy?”)   

(He tumbles into loud laughter when Jason chokes on smoke and yanks his own cig from his mouth, coughing into his arm harshly. “Wh- what?” He croaks, and Danny can see his eyes watering with the light filtering out from the window.)   

(“Don’t tell me you forgot.” Danny grins, gripping the railing and leaning forward to peer around him. “Seriously man, you get adopted by Bruce Wayne and you fucking forget all of the rumors surrounding him and Bats?”)  

(“I didn’t forget.” Jason says, his voice rasping as he glares at him. “I just wasn’t expecting you to say that shit so suddenly.”)  

(“So is it true?”)  

(“Duh, it’s true.”)     

(Danny whoops into the air, leaning back to punch the sky with a laugh. “I knew it!” He cheers, and from the corner of his eye Jason scrambles to lean over and catch him from potentially falling over the edge. “Suck it, David Roberts. I was right!”)  

(Jason sputters at him, his hand curled tight onto the shirt on his back. Danny sits back up, and it reluctantly falls away. “Do you still have that vendetta against him?” He asks, a smile disbelieving tilted on his face.)   

(He gets a scoff from Danny, “Of course I do!” He says derisively, he’ll always have a grudge against him, even if it’s as petty as something like whether or not Batman was a sugar baby. Never let it be said that Danny doesn’t hold grudges. “If I see him again I’ll rub it in his face.”)   

(Then he remembers another thing, and Danny perks up. Irritance melts away like snow under the spring sun and turns into genuine curiosity. “Hey— have you met the new Robin yet?” He asks, and watches Jason straighten up. “C’mon, you just said Batman was Bruce’s sugar baby. You’ve gotta have met Robin — what’s he like? Is he cool? I bet he’s cool, Robins are always cool.”)   

(Jason stares at him, and then splits into a wide grin. “Fuck yeah, he’s cool. He’s even cooler than the old Robin.”)  

(Danny clicks his tongue, but he’s matching Jason’s smile with one of his own. “I don’t know man, I don’t think anyone could ever beat the original bird.” He jokes, “But you should get me his autograph the next time you see him, just in case.”)  

(“No, no, I’m telling you, D, he’s fucking cool as shit—”)    

When the night ends and the Mansons are leaving, Danny and Jason walk back to Mister Wayne to tell him that Danny’s going. They’re both arm-locked again, and Danny dreads having to step away from Jason again, a feeling he knows Jason reciprocates by the circulation-crushing grip he has on him.   

Mister Wayne mourns his leaving, but tells him that he’s always welcome to visit whenever he feels like. “Any friend of Jason’s is always welcome to the manor.” He says, a grin blinding across his face.   

It lifts Danny’s spirits more than he thought it would. Jason throws decorum to the wind and cheers.   

It becomes a new routine for Danny to go to the Wayne galas whenever they’re hosted and Jason comes along. They coordinate it, funnily enough, and the Mansons are all too happy to bring him along as his and Sam’s chaperone.   

(Of which she blames him for because she keeps having to wear clothes her mother picks out until the both of them can wrangle Mrs. Manson into letting Sam wear the style she likes. It takes a bit of convincing and bartering — Sam can either pick the color and Mrs. Manson the style, or Sam can pick the style and Mrs. Manson the color. In the end, they settle on letting Sam pick the style and Mrs. Manson the color.)   

Danny is all too happy to spend the evenings with Jason again, and his parents are happy to let him go with the conditions that he keeps his grades up. They love him, and they’ll let certain things slide, but grades are not one of them. Danny thinks it's a fair trade in order to see Jason again.  

No matter what, they always end up on the west end balcony at one point or another that night. Sometimes Sam joins them, but she hates the smell of nicotine, so those moments are far and few in between. She stands outside the door and hides behind the curtains, hiding from her parents.           

Finally, eventually, Danny is invited to stay at Wayne Manor for a weekend or a break. There he meets Dick Grayson, who shows him and Jason how to scale up the chandeliers. Danny’s not too good at it, but Jason picks up on it remarkably quickly and helps drag Danny up onto one.   

(“He’s crazy!” Danny whispers, stifling his laughter as he situates himself on one of the arms of the chandelier. It rocked, and Danny kept a shaking vice grip on the metal. He can’t stop looking down, his jaw unable to stop dropping. “This is fucking crazy!”)  

(Jason is stifling laughter as well, hiding his mouth behind his hand. “I know! You should see him when he’s going down the banisters. I think he’s responsible for Bruce’s gray hairs.”)   

(Bruce asks them to try and stay out of trouble more often than not, a small fond smile on his face followed by an exasperated sigh. Danny and Jason cross their pinkies jinx around each other, hidden behind their backs, and chorus, “We will!”)  

And sometimes, Jason comes to Amity Park instead. Danny drags him all across town with Sam and Tucker, showing him all their favorite spots. He still avoids the lab like a plague, but points the door out to Jason when he comes over for the first time. And he shows him the ecto-samples in the fridge, and grabs a knife when a possessed weenie flies out and tries to attack him. It ends up embedded into the table, and Danny winces at the crack it leaves in the wood. Whoops.  

When Christmas break rolls around, Danny jumps at the chance to spend the time with Jason at the manor instead. He loves his parents, he does! But holidays are the only times he ever sees them argue badly and he doesn’t want to be in the house while they are. He calls Jason on the first day after his parents set the tree on fire by accident.   

He and Jazz are at the manor by the next evening. He loves his parents, but it's one of the few times they don’t notice their disappearances. It’s the only time.      

Whenever Danny visits, he and Jason stay late into the night talking, or playing video games, or stargazing. On warmer nights Jason shows him a way onto one of the rooftops and they sit on the tiling and look at the stars, largely unobstructed at Wayne Manor due to its distance from Gotham and its sickly orange light pollution.   

Danny points out constellations — things he can’t find in either Gotham or Amity — and rambles on and on about space. It’s not looking for Batman and Robin, but it's the next best thing. Danny brings out a bag of starbursts with him and they split the colors between each other. Jason buys him a book on Mars for his birthday, and Danny gets his hands on a limited edition ‘Dracula’ he finds at a thrift store in Amity.   

Of course, with how often Danny’s begun attending the charity events in Gotham, it’s only a matter of time where one of them gets hijacked by one of the many rogues. While Danny has witnessed villain fights in Gotham before, and turf wars, and gang fights, it’s still always a little terrifying.   

It’s even more terrifying when the first time it happens, he loses Jason in the chaos and crowd. They were together with Sam, and then the next thing he knows Jason is gone. Danny nearly breaks Sam’s hand with how tight he holds onto it — the difference to before and to now, is that he always had Jason with him.   

He’s in tears with abject terror, and when Batman gets him and Sam out of the building, he latches onto his cape before he can blink, babbling that Jason Todd — his best friend, his other half — was still inside. That he disappeared, he can’t find him.   

The idea of losing Jason to one of these things, after everything they’ve been through. Danny can’t stand the thought of it. It's incomprehensible.   

(“You and me against the world, right?” Jason asks, nine years old while they sit in a dirty alleyway behind a dumpster. He shares a sandwich he stole with Danny, and there are stray cats rubbing themselves against their feet.)  

(“Of course!” Danny says, and takes a piece of the sandwich. “You have my back—”)  

(Jason smiles, “And I have yours.”)   

Batman places thick, gloved hands onto Danny’s shoulders and snaps Danny out of his impending panic attack. In a gruff voice, he tells him that he’ll find Jason, and that he’ll make sure he was okay, but he needs to calm down. Danny forces himself to.   

Then he disappears back into the chaos, and Sam lets Danny crush her hands and hide himself in her shoulder.   

When they find Jason afterwards, everyone is being tended to by EMTs and there are police barricading the entrance. Danny crushes the front of Jason’s jacket with his fists and yells at him for disappearing during a rogue attack. He tells him that if he ever does it again, he’ll kill him. And then he drags Jason into a bone crushing hug.     

The second time this happens, Danny doesn’t even realize Jason is gone until the aftermath. They’d already been separated before the attack happened, and when he stops Robin and Batman before they leave, he’s trying to keep his breathing under control. He’s already searched the crowd for Jason Todd, and he cannot find him.   

"That- that asshole fucking disappeared on me, again ." His voice has an embarrassing crack in it. " Please tell me you've seen him." He doesn’t know why this has happened again, but he promises himself that he’s not letting Jason out of his sight.  

It’s Robin that steps forward this time, and he reassures him that he got Jason Todd out of the building, he was the one who got him out. “He’s probably looking for you too, uhh…” Those words alone are enough to make many of Danny’s anxieties fade away. He’s alive. He’s unharmed. That’s all he could ask for.   

"Danny," Danny says, blinking the sting from his eyes. He looks him up and down, and then frowns. “Jay owes me your autograph.”   

Robin makes a sound like a choked cough and a laugh, and he pounds his chest quick and short. A smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Next to him, Batman’s mouth presses into a line. “What?” Robin says.   

“Jay owes me your autograph.” Danny repeats, his frown steadily deepening.   

“And why is that?”   

He shrugs, turns his head to look over his shoulder and search for Jason again. It’s not helpful, he’s not tall enough to see over the heads of the crowd. He knows Robin said that Jason was fine, but he’s back to biting his lip anyways. “He says you’re cool, and I don’t doubt him. You’re doin’ a lot of good for the people in Gotham.”  

Robin is silent, and Danny looks back to him after seconds of it. He stares at him, at Danny, and then grins like he’s lit up the sun.   

By the fifth time it happens, Danny is cussing Jason Todd out in a way that would make even the most hardened criminals blush, Robin carrying him out in an impressive bridal as he does. “I’m going to put him on a fucking leash!” Danny snarls, all blood-stained lips and back-alley pocket knives. “I have his back, he has mine! And I can’t fucking have his back if he has no back to have.”    

Robin laughs quietly at him, and Danny shoots him a glare so venomous that it shuts him up in an instant. But he’s still wearing a shadow of a smile on his face. “I mean it, I mean it!”  

“I know you do.” Robin says, and puts him down. His hands glue themselves to his side, glove-covered fingers curled up tight. Then they cross across his chest. “But what happens if he says he’s gonna put a leash on you?”   

Danny scowls, turns away to let eyes scour across the streets with the other gala-goers, looking for Jason. “Then I’d let him.” They were partners after all, equals. It’s not Danny that gets a say in everything they do, nor is it Jason, they both do.    

(And he tells Jason as such when he sees him, jabbing a finger harsh in the center of his sternum. Angry and hurt beyond measure and confused on why-why- why Jason keeps disappearing. “I ought to keep you on a leash.” He hisses, his voice softer than the fangs he’d bared at Robin, but still sharp. “Seriously, Jay. What happened to having each other’s backs?”)     

(“I’m sorry.” Jason says, shoulders wilting and fingers gripping onto him. But he doesn’t tell him why, and Danny is licking wounds in the dark where he can’t see.)   

The eighth time the gala gets hijacked, it's not by any rogue villain in particular, but a gang that happened to have gathered too much power before anyone could notice. And when Jason nor Bruce are to be found for hostaging, the gang takes the next best thing — the now-famously known family friend Danny Fenton.   

Danny is terrified — an arm around his throat and a gun to his head, how could he not be? He’s seen plenty of violence growing up — fights and murders and gang wars out in broad daylight before he moved to Amity, Danny’s seen death before. Blood is carved out into the concrete streets of Gotham, a permanent rust cast over the city. Danny’s seen it before.  

But he’s never stared it in the face so broadly like this. His mouth has dried up and gone void of all his normal quips. He keeps glancing over to Sam, her face white with terror as her parents hold her close and tremble on the nice shiny floors.   

He can’t find Jason, no matter how many times his eyes sweep the ballroom they’re in. For once, he’s glad. He’s glad. Maybe it’s a good thing he disappears so often, so quickly, whenever there’s an attack on the galas. Something about gift horses and mouths and not looking into them.  

Robin appears some minutes later like a blazing fire, Batman quickly in tow, and he breaks the wrist of the man holding the gun to Danny’s head. And then he breaks his jaw with the cleanest punch Danny’s ever seen. He’s anger incarnate.   

Its chaos incarnate. There’s yelling and screaming, Danny throws himself to the floor away from the fight as Robin twists and dives at the next gunman like a wild dog. The air knocks out of his lungs with a grunt, and he crawls away from the fight.   

Or he tries to.   

From the corner of his eye he sees the gunman who held him hostage come to. He sees him sit up, blood spitting from his mouth with a crooked jaw. He sees the man see Robin, halfway through tearing a man clean in half with nothing but fists and Gotham-sharp teeth.  

And he sees him reach for his gun.   

Danny can already hear Jason yelling at him before he even gets to his feet. He can already hear the scolding that will turn his ears blue as his voice works on its own, a call of alarm and a bellow of “ROBIN!” and he can feel Jason gripping his arms and yelling at him like a phantom limb, his hands push him off the ground.     

His feet slide, and he’s staring down the barrel of a gun.   

There’s a deafening bang that makes Danny’s ears ring, but that’s something he only registers thirty seconds after a bullet rips through his jacket, his shirt, and then his skin. It’s only something he registers after he mind-numbingly crashes to the ground, but the shock of pain that runs up his spine with the feeling of skin-hitting-marble pales in comparison to the blossoming, terrible agony that erupts through his shoulder.   

Maybe it’s the shock, but he watches in morbid fascination as blood pools out and stains his shirt like a flower unfurling in the sun. He doesn’t feel it as he lifts his hand and brushes his fingers against it, he pulls it back and his fingers come away red.   

He knows getting shot hurts. But it’s mind-numbingly so. Or maybe that’s the shock again.   

Then he breathes in, sharp and rough because he’s forgotten to breathe, it sounds like a gasp, and then everything comes in to focus with startling, pin-pokingly clarity.   

And with that focus, he hears something guttural. Something furious. He drags his eyes up and focuses on Robin.   

Robin looks like fury unparalleled, he’s crossed the room to get to Danny and his jaw has dropped into a shriek or a snarl — Danny’s not quite sure, his brain feels fogged over. But whatever it is, it’s animalistic in nature. He arrives like a tempest, his foot stomping down onto the man’s wrist with an ugly snap. He follows it up with a swift kick to the gunner’s face, and Danny hears something crack.   

He twists on his heel, cape swishing and his body crouched like an animal about to pounce. And Robin’s diving back into the fight like a monster unleashed.       

And Danny is still bleeding on the floor. His hand sticky and hot, the reality of it all comes crashing down on him like a house. Through the blinding pain, he’s scared. He’s cold with terror.  

I’ve been shot.  

I’m going to die.  

I don’t want to die. Please.   

His heartbeat zips in his ears, rapid and quick as if it’s trying to keep up with the blood he’s losing. His senses are all over the place — there’s fighting and crashing and yelling, and then he’s back underwater with only his gasping and his heartbeat to keep him company.   

Sam comes into focus, she’s found her way towards him. And he doesn’t realize she’s there until she’s already curling her arms under his and trying to drag him away to the wall. She’s stronger than she looks, but he can feel her shaking. He looks up at her, and her face is pale.    

Then he’s laying next to the wall, and Sam is back in focus, leaning over him. Her eyes teary-red and face twisted in fear as she puts pressure on his shoulder. His eyes flick down to her dress, and there is blood staining the front of her corset.   

He licks his lips thoughtlessly, and tastes iron. “I wouldn’t rate this experience.” He says with a groan, turning his head. He’s trying to distract himself — anything to focus on something that isn’t his shoulder. “Zero out of ten, don’t get shot, Sam.”   

She presses her lips together, and he takes it as a victory anyway because he smiles a little himself. “It’s not something I usually try and plan.” Sam retorts, voice cracking and uneven. He feels bad, she looks like she’s going to cry. “Why’d you do that, Danny?”  

“She’s right.” Someone says, and Danny turns his eyes and finds Robin appearing beside him. He’s ruffled and bloodstained, and the whites of his mask narrow into slits. Danny distantly wonders how he did that. “Why did you do that, Danny?”      

Danny thinks for a moment, watching with blinking eyes as Robin grabs the end of his cape and tears off a chunk of it. He's going to ask why, but then Robin bats away Sam’s hands and takes her place. “He was gonna shoot you.” Is all he can think to come up with, and he sucks in air through his teeth at the jostle his shoulder receives when Robin presses down and presses down hard.   

Robin barks out a sound that sounds like a laugh, but is too harsh to be humorous. “I am wearing a specialized, military-grade body armor, if someone shoots me it’s just gonna fucking bounce off.” His lips pull back like all the stray dogs Danny’s seen get cornered in an alleyway, and it’s something so profoundly Gotham-like that Danny smiles back.   

“You don’t know that.” Danny retorts, his mouth always running before his mind can catch up. Sam makes a huffy-squeak sound, and Robin looks at him like he’s going to sink his teeth into his throat. Danny only offers back a sloppy, innocent smile.  

Robin scowls, and turns his head with a string of muttered curses directed for Batman. Danny tries to follow his gaze, but turning his head makes his vision swim and fuzz around the edges, which he knows isn’t a good thing. He hums deep, dazed, and finds himself looking at Robin’s face again.   

“Your friend Todd will kill you if you die.” Robin tells him, noticing Danny’s drifting off. He sounds upset on his behalf, and Danny’s not sure why, they’ve only talked a handful of times, for barely a minute each time. “You know that right?”  

“Someone’s already beat him to that.” Danny jokes, but neither Robin nor Sam smile at him. It has the opposite intended effect, and he watches Sam’s lip wobble precariously. Guilt plops like a rock in a pond in his stomach, and he presses his mouth into a grimace.   

He’s quiet, mouth tilting downwards while goosebumps crawl up his arms with a shiver. “I’m glad he’s not here, though.” He mutters, and it’s supposed to be to himself but Sam and Robin hear it anyway, and Robin tenses up like a spring pressed down. “I’d hate to see the look on his face.”  

Robin says nothing to him. But there is a stubborn, fixed set to his jaw.   

Paramedics arrive, and Danny is loaded onto a gurney. An EMT is tending to his shoulder, and he’s not the only one injured — other people have been shot as well, hurt by glass, by anything — but he’s one of the guests in critical condition.   

He looks for Jason in the crowd, up until the ambulance doors close. And he doesn’t find him.   

He does, however, find him when he wakes up from surgery. Their fingers entwined with Jason fast asleep in the guest chair that’s been pushed against his bed. Mister Wayne is there, leaning against the wall and dozing his eyes, and so is Danny’s parents and Jazz.   

Danny turns his eyes onto Jason, and squeezes his hand tightly. Jason shoots up like a rocket, eyes wild and wide and focusing instantly on Danny. He looks like he’d been crying.   

“You’re not allowed to die without me.” Jason says, voice rasping and hoarse, and quiet enough that it hardly disrupts the quietness of the room. It’s not what Danny’s expecting him to say, and as such it tilts a laugh out of him as abruptly as a kick in the chest. It makes his shoulder, put in a sling, hurt.    

He wraps a grin across his face. “Okay.”   

(Robin shows up on his windowsill later that night, and when Danny sees him he lets loose a string of swears that would have Alfred Pennyworth holding out a jar full of quarters.)  

(“Holy hell, man.” Danny says when his heart rate has finally stopped going through the roof, his only good hand clutching over his heart. He can feel it pounding through his paper-thin gown. “Does Batman know you’re here?”)  

(In the dim lighting, Robin’s sheepish expression tells him all he needs to know. “Jason was worried about you.”)  

Everything crumbles out from under Danny’s feet when he’s fourteen.   

It starts with a phone call on a late night in April. Danny hasn’t heard from Jason in nearly two days, and the third is creeping up on him like a snake in the grass. No texts, no calls. His messages have been left unread since yesterday.   

And maybe it’s not a good thing that Danny is so attached to Jason. He can hear Jazz telling him all about unhealthy codependent relationships and their negative impacts on the psyche and development of people, but he doesn’t care. He wouldn’t be so worried if his texts weren’t left on delivered.    

Something feels rotten in the state of his heart, choking up his ribs until unease threatens to choke him out. So in the safety of his room he burns a walkway into the carpet as he types out Bruce’s number and tries to convince himself that everything was fine.    

He knows that Jason and Bruce got into a fight recently — but about what, Danny’s unsure. Jason wouldn’t share with him, and even though he’s come to expect the strange bouts of secrecy, Danny is still a little hurt that Jason won’t share his troubles.    

Right before he presses ‘call’ , Danny has a last-minute moment of doubt — a fear that maybe he’s overreacting. That he was worrying for nothing. That maybe Bruce confiscated Jason’s phone, and any day now he was going to get a letter instead explaining what happened.   

But he didn’t survive Crime Alley for as long as he did by always ignoring his intuition, and Amity Park is making him soft if he’s thinking about doing it now. He knows Jason and Bruce got into a fight, but he also knows that Bruce loves Jason and he would know if anything happened to him.   

His thumb hits call, and Danny holds his breath as he shoves the speaker to ear, listening to it ring.   

It rings. And it rings. And it rings.   

Danny’s afraid it’s going to go to voicemail, he’ll call again if it does. And then it clicks, Bruce’s voice comes through with a hoarse, “Hello?” It barely sounds polite, like he’s only partially remembering his manners. Danny wouldn’t pay it much to mind if Bruce didn’t sound like he’d been crying all day.   

In the last two years of Danny’s life, in all the times he’s visited the Manor and gone to Galas, in every letter, conversation, and text he’s sent and had with Jason, he’s never seen or heard Bruce cry.   

His blood turns to ice with dizzying speed.   

Danny twists on his heel, and his pacing kicks up speed. “Mister— Mister Wayne?” He stammers, he’s never stuttered before. “I’m sorry- sorry to bother you this, uh, late at night. But I’m calling because Jason—”   

He hears Bruce inhale sharply on the other side. Danny’s anxiety skyrockets into terror.   

“—hasn’t been answerin’ any of my texts, and— and I’m gettin’ real worried.”   

There’s a special kind of dread in his stomach that you can only really feel when you’re worried about someone. The kind that makes you antsy; that makes you need to move and keep moving, but doesn’t get the feeling to go away. It sits itself on Danny’s shoulders and presses down and down on him, until he’s got himself hunched up to the ears.   

The silence on the other end of the line has him winding up like a coil ready to spring, and Danny forces himself to keep his breathing steady as Bruce says nothing. That special kind of dread moves itself, crawls up his stomach until it sits in the back of his throat, waiting for him to choke.   

“Mister Wayne—? Mister B?” Danny calls, “Bruce?”    

He hears a shaky breath, and then Bruce’s voice is crackling through on the other end. A sigh that sounds as trembling as Danny’s legs feel. “Jason— Jay— he’s—” Bruce’s voice cracks, “he’s dead. He’s been killed.”   

Danny’s mind lags, and then his vision whites out with a mind-numbing shock, and everything grows rapidly hot, then rapidly cool, like a blacksmith striking his white-hot weapon. Bruce’s words are like a dumbbell dropping. Weighted with a thud that resonates through the soles of his feet, and equally as incomprehensible.  

He’s not sure how long he’s silent for - time blends together while he’s trying to wrap his mind around the fact that Jason was dead. He can’t. He can’t. It sounds like an awful joke, a lie. Jason was going to steal the phone from Bruce’s hands right this moment and tell Danny it was a lie.   

Danny is granted no such mercy.   

When he finally speaks, his tongue is lead-heavy in his mouth, and dry. “What?”      

There’s a rustling sound, and Bruce speaks again. He’s grief-stricken, robotic. “I’ll send you and your family invitations to the funeral.” He says, and Dannny stares at a wall, unable to say anything at all. “I’ll pay for the flights, your hotel costs. Everything.”  

Funeral. That word rings in his ears. No, no, no, no, no, no.   

Danny says nothing. Bruce breathes out again, sounding on the verge of tears again. “I am... so sorry, Danny.”   

And then he hangs up. Just like that. Like he hasn’t pulled out the age-worn rug from beneath Danny’s feet.   

He barely has the sense to pull the phone away from his ear and stare at the end call screen. His best friend is dead. Everything feels all clogged up, from his heart to his lungs to his brain, nothing’s connecting. As if someone’s tightened the pipes and blocked the water from passing through.   

His best friend was murdered.  

Danny didn’t even ask who did it.  

His best friend is dead.    

He turns slowly around the room, jaw hanging in horror while his thoughts repeat the words back to him. Maybe, if he thinks it enough times, it’ll drive a pickaxe through the ice-thick layer covering his mind and something will break through. Maybe reality — that Jason was still alive. That this was a nightmare. That he was going to wake up any moment now.   

Jason is dead.    

Danny’s eyes land on a photo on his desk, framed, of him and Jason. The memory of the photo pulls to the front. His parents had taken the photo when he and Jason were still young and on the first day of school in second grade.    

Jason was murdered.  

Jason is the only one smiling in it, but it’s because he’s laughing at Danny. Danny, who is glaring at the ground in embarrassment, one hand gripping onto Jason’s hand and the other white-knuckling the strap of his secondhand backpack.   

There’s a snapping sound in the back of Danny’s head, the sound of a pickaxe cleaving an ice lake in two. Reality crashing down onto him like a bolt of lightning.  

He’s gone.  

His lip curls, it wobbles. Tears fill his vision rapidly, and grief claws its way up his throat until he’s gagging on it. It lurches, then lunges, and Danny’s knees hit the ground with unrestrained, striking pain.   

When he breathes in, it hurts. His lungs balloon up with air, raggedy and torn. His next breath out—  

Danny shrieks.    

Jazz comes barreling through the door within seconds, and Danny doesn’t even notice. He hunches into himself, clutching the phone to his chest and tearing his lungs into ribbons. She pulls on him, and he lets himself be moved until Jazz has him leaning against her.   

His fingers claw onto her shirt, and his next breath is another shriek. Another awful, horrid wailing sound that rattles through the house. Danny hurts in a way that he wants to make physical. On himself, on the walls, on the floor, on anything he can get his hands on.   

There’s the sound of thud-thud thudthudthudding , like incoming thunder coming up the stairs and down the hall. Danny’s parents burst into the room like a storm, ghost weapons drawn and ready with the fury of two grizzly bears coming to protect their cubs. Instead, they find Danny, inconsolable on the floor of his bedroom.   

(Sometimes, grief has a gravity that you never get up from.)  

Danny skips school for the rest of the week, paralyzed with grief. He draws the windows, locks his doors, and buries himself under his bed and blankets with a blackhole in his chest. He cries so much his eyes ache and his throat goes sore.    

The funeral comes around that weekend, and Danny almost refuses to go when Jazz and his parents come knocking. The thought of lowering Jason into the ground is too much to bear, not when they had so many plans for the future.   

Jazz coaxes him into it, picking the lock on his door and sneaking in to see him herself. She crouches at his bedside, where he hides like a hedgehog under the blankets, and draws him out with the convolution of closure. She’s got a quick tongue, one that’s made for silver and scalpels and cutting precision, and she tells him that he’ll regret it forever if he doesn’t go.  

So Danny, with limbs made of lead, drags himself out of bed. And when the funeral comes around, he wears the only suit he owns — the one that’s been fixed and stitched after he’d been shot a year ago. His fingers run over the stitching on the inside.   

It’s a closed casket funeral, something that both horrifies and infuriates Danny all the same — he wants to know what Jason’s murderer did to him that resulted in this. He wants to know, but he’s sickeningly relieved he doesn’t.   

(He’s not sure if he could handle seeing the body.)   

There aren’t any more tears left for Danny to shed as the coffin lowers into the ground, so instead he wants to vomit up his grief.   

He catches Bruce Wayne before he leaves, and the man looks just as bad as Danny does. He snags his fingers on his sleeve, and stops him in his tracks. When Bruce turns to look at him, his once-vibrant eyes gone dull, Danny looks back up at him.   

(Danny is certain that he looks as dead as he feels.)   

Sorrow ages Bruce, it carves itself onto his face like stone. And Danny says nothing for a long moment. He could almost call it solidarity, the anguish that clouds heavy in the air is both of theirs to share.   

Danny licks his lips, and when he speaks, his voice is rasp. “Who did it?” He asks, curling hands tight around Bruce’s sleeve. He grips his other hand around his jacket, gripping hard enough to leave wrinkles.   

He surprises himself; tears fill his waterline. “You said he was murdered, Mister Wayne.” He continues, and his lips twist with a slow-igniting hatred for Jason’s killer, “Please, who did it.” 

Bruce looks down at him, and he says nothing.   

Something hot and angry flashes through Danny, his face twists up all ugly-like. For a moment, he wants to snarl. He wants to tear something to shreds. Instead, he shakes Bruce’s jacket desperately, “Bruce, please,” his voice fractur es, “tell me who did it.”       

Bruce refuses, his face full of grief.   

Danny lets go of his jacket, the slow-burning hate threatening to unfairly round on Bruce like a hound. And he leaves.   

He never returns to Gotham.   

Danny steps foot into the lab for the first time a week after he hears the news of Jason’s death. He’s alone, the night late, and everyone is asleep. The lab is deathly quiet, and the portal is a looming, bottomless pit at the end of the room.  

It doesn’t work, or so he’s heard. Just a giant hole in the ground with nowhere to go, and nothing to fill it.   

Looking down the tunnel feels much like looking down the barrel of a gun. And then it looks like all of Crime Alley’s grungy, trash-cluttered alleyways, the stench of rot at the mouth.  

Danny steps inside, numb for all but the overwhelming sorrow in his chest. It’s stuck in his throat, thick and heady, he needs—he needs—he needs to spit it out. To vomit up his own heart, to scream and wail and let the whole world know what he’s missing.   

Can he? Will anything even come out? Half of it is already buried in Gotham.   

If he dies here, will he find Jason?   

Phantom falls out.   

Mom and Dad find him curled up in a ball outside of a working portal, crumpled to the ground and clutching his heart like something is missing. There is. There is. Danny is wailing, and he can’t stop. He doesn’t know when they come down—just that it’s shortly after Danny feels the crackle of his skin settle and the inverted colors of his gloves disappear.  

Mom’s in a sleeping robe and curlers, Dad’s in his pajama pants. Did he wake them up? Or did the sound of the portal did?  

He hurts. He hurts. His hand burns. Up his arm and across his shoulder blades, sprawling over his throat and face. There is something in his chest that he can’t place, coiled tight and cold despite how much he burns.  

What is that, he thinks over the grief clouding his mind and vibrating in his throat. Over the pulls of his parents' hands as they sit him up and pull him against their chests, peeling him out of the half-destroyed suit trying to stick to his skin. What is that, what is that, what is that.  

There are voices. Mom and Dad are trying to speak to him. Danny can’t hear them over the sound of his own choking sobs. Their hands are on his face, pushing his hair out of his face, lightly brushing over his cheek, over his throat, down his arm. It hurts. Danny sobs again.  

Jason, he thinks, belatedly realizes he whines into his Mom’s shoulder. The grief returns, and he swears it’s stronger than before. Consuming, flooding, filling from his toes to the top of his head. He’s drowning in it; Danny opens his mouth and nearly shrieks.  

Shriek shriek shriek, some part of him chants. Danny clicks his jaw shut and hides, “I miss him,”  he whines into Mom’s throat. He thinks Mom is crying. He thinks Dad is too. “I miss him, momma. I miss him I miss him I miss him.”  

He’s taken to the hospital. There are new scars up his arm and face, and a weight, ball, in his chest that only Danny can feel. He can’t stop crying. He can’t stop wanting to shriek.  

He’s kept overnight for observation, and sent home a few days later. Dad drives, Mom reaches her arm back from the passenger seat and entwines her hand with his. They both look like they’ve been crying.  

That night he tries and goes into the lab again; the door code has been changed. Mom and Dad don’t tell him what the new one is, and Jazz doesn’t either when he asks.  

That night, Danny turns into a ghost. He doesn’t bother going into the lab again.  

He tells Sam and Tucker two days later.  

(The Phantom is an unsettling child.)  

(It’s hard to believe that he’s the city’s hero. He doesn’t look like one. He looks more like the monsters he fights.)  

(There are whispers, and whispers, and more whispers amongst the townsfolk. There is a hole in that child’s chest, a swirling black one where his heart should be. Black lightning figures claw up his arm and face, staining his muted green skin.)  

(He’s crying.)  

(He’s crying.)  

(He’s always crying.)  

(Who is he crying for?)  

(Black tar tear streaks permanently carve lines into his cheeks. There are reports of the boy sitting in the park, legs curled up on a bench with a finger snagged on the hole in his chest.)  

(He pulls and picks at the edges like a scab, staring ahead like he’s lost in thought. He picks and pulls at the hole with the ungloved hand of his scarred arm. It’s how the people find out that, underneath the child’s gloves, his hand is burned down to bone. Skeletal and clawed, horrifyingly thin, only regaining skin and muscle as the bone reaches his forearm where his gloves end.)   

(Some days, when Danny feels more dead than alive, he turns the portal off in the basement and sleeps in the tunnel.)  

(He doesn’t have a grave; it’s the closest thing to it.)  

When Danny realizes he can find Jason in the Ghost Zone, he lunges into it with a vigor he’s missed since the funeral. He spends a weekend inside it, scouring the Zone for hide or tail of his best friend. His core thrums with near-deranged levels of hope.   

He finds the Undercity of Gotham; a massive floating island that holds a looking glass of his home city on it. There are spiraling industrial skyscrapers, monorails that twist and turn upside down like rollercoasters. The buildings twist, warp, and stretch in physic-defying ways that can only come from the Infinite Realms. Buildings float above the city, still connected to it.     

Danny flies above it all, hawk-eyes scouring into every alley and street he can see. In Crime Alley, he finds Robin. And he almost misses him entirely.   

He doesn’t look like Robin at first. Not when Danny’s eyes briefly pass over him. No, for a moment he looks like Jason, and it’s that, that makes him turn back. Snags his attention like clotheslining a wire, Danny twists around and flits right over.  

It’s not Jason, Danny realizes moments later, but the fact that it’s Robin is what makes him stay. Black-char feathers protrude from his forearms, messy and some broken, with long, talon-like hands. Burned down to bone and spindly; horrifyingly long and sharp like the Beldam’s.  

An old hoodie around his waist, red and dirty, stained in smoke and soot. It looks like the one Danny got Jason when they were ten years old. He stole it from a Goodwill bucket. It’s what made him pause.  

Black feathers in his hair, sticking haphazardly from twisting, smoky curls, coiling in the air like candlelight. Sticking out from behind long, pointed ears that look like Danny’s own. His knees are drawn up to his chest, wearing jeans that have holes at the knee.    

He wears the Robin-green mask, and there is the insignia on his chest that Danny almost doesn’t see.   

Danny hadn’t known he died.  

“Robin?” Danny calls, tugging the goggles off from his eyes. The name tumbles out of his mouth before he can stop himself, and Robin snaps his head up so fast that Danny reels himself back. He’s never seen him so sullen before. So… unaware.   

He frowns at him. “What’re you doing here?”   

Robin stares at him, then his brows thread together. “Who’re you?”   

Danny’s frown deepens.   

“What?” He looks down at himself; his white boots and star-trapped hazmat suit that he always has unzipped and tied around his waist. At his gloves and olive-green skin, and his ugly, black lichtenberg figures. “I know I look different, but I didn’t think I looked that different.”  

He drifts forward like wood on water, head tilting to the side as he looks back up to Robin. “It’s Danny? Danny Fenton?” Robin jolts as someone had hit him with an electric stick, like someone had tased him. “I’m looking for Jason, have you seen him?”   

Robin stares at him. He opens his mouth to say something, but no sound comes out. It wires itself shut, only to open again. It’s strange— it’s almost uncomfortable.   

Danny thinks for a moment that he should crack a joke to break the steady-rising tension. He didn’t think he’d get a reaction like this — he thinks he should ask Robin if he’s become a fish.  

But silent as the grave, Robin lifts his hand — long and clawed and boney — and peels his mask from his face.  

Underneath is Jason Todd, his face a mirror of grief and thickened horror. There are black markings on his face that kind of resemble the mask he was wearing. “Danny,” he whispers, “what are you doing here.”     

Danny stares back.    

In a single moment, everything suddenly clicks into place. A broken piece finally found; the missing piece from the center of a puzzle finally being slot back into its spot.   

The disappearances, the secrecy, Robin’s fury when Danny had gotten shot. Jason was Robin this whole time. His best friend was Robin.    

And he was also here.  

Shock steals the tongue from his mouth, leaving him mute and tilted off balance.  

His arms lift on their own, and without any conscious thought of his own, he lurches forward. Jason lunges at the same time, and they collide like two stars, crying.    

Jason drags him to his favorite gargoyle, his fingers bruising tight around Danny’s, and when they get there, the gargoyle turns from its spot, rumbling with the sound of rock scraping against rock, and nuzzles Jason in greeting. It makes no sound, and returns back to being a stalwart guard.  

Jason pushes Danny down onto the ledge, his hands never releasing their hold on Danny, and demands to know everything  — what he’s doing here, in the afterlife. And Danny, the tips of his ungloved fingers beginning to turn a pale emerald, tells Jason about stepping into the portal.   

He can’t meet Jason’s eyes when the color drains from his face, and Jason’s fear becomes so thick in the air that Danny can feel it sinking into his core. His hands curl tight into the stone ledge.  

“Danny,” Jason breathes, his eyes wide, “you didn’t… kill yourself because of me, did you?”  

“No.” Danny sinks his teeth into his lip to stifle his grimace, uncomfortable even with his own lie. His core twinges like an instrument going out of tune, and he ignores it. “No, no. I didn’t. I promise, I didn’t.”  

Jason looks unconvinced, and Danny knows why. But he doubles down, it was an accident. “I didn’t know the portal was going to turn on, seriously. It was an accident.” He insists, “But- but enough about me. Jay, what the fuck happened? Bruce wouldn’t tell me anything at the funeral.”  

It’s a mistake to ask, it’s a stupid mistake.   

Jason opens his mouth, and then fixes it shut. Any color he had left disappears from his ghostly face, and he shrinks down into his hoodie. His eyes flick around nervously. “I- um, well.”   

And Danny curses himself — Jason was murdered; his death is worse than Danny’s will ever be. He shouldn’t have asked him that.    

He hurries to remedy himself, twisting fully and nearly slapping his hands down over Jason’s. “You don’t have to tell me that.” He says quickly, face twisting in regret, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked that. You don’t have to tell me. I can talk about something else.”  

Jason says nothing, but he nods, silent. Danny takes the ‘go ahead’ with both hands and stumbles his way into a one-sided conversation about the latest discoveries in space, and all of his ghost fights he’s had. He tells Jason about his fight with the Lunch Lady ghost, and about that time Sam turned into a fire-breathing dragon during their school dance because she got her hands on a cursed amulet and Paulina pissed her off.  

He tells him about the first time he met Skulker, and Jason is frowning the entire time Danny talks, which is a better alternative than before when he was silent and pale instead. “Why didn’t you just dodge?”Jason asks when Danny complains about getting shot.  

Danny stares at him, and as his silence extends longer than it should, he can physically see a headache forming on Jason’s face. “I...” He says carefully, sheepish embarrassment crawling green up his neck. “didn’t… think of that, at the time.”   

Jason makes a low, distressed sound in the back of his throat that resonates down to his core. A sensation that is indescribable to Danny, but recognizable all the same. “I’m showing you some of the stuff B taught me.”   

They fall into a comfortable silence some time later, looking below to the mirrored, wonderlandian version of Gotham that bustles and shifts with life just as much as it does in its living counterpart. It’d almost feel normal, but they’re missing cigarettes to share.   

Jason breaks the silence. “It was the Joker.”   

Danny snaps his head up, and looks at Jason with eyes wide and the feeling like he’s been kicked in the gut. Breathing is a habit he can’t seem to shake as a ghost, and he holds it for a moment. “What?”  

“The Joker.” Jason repeats, a set in his jaw and his eyes fixated to the ground below. “He did it.”    

The Joker, Danny thinks. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what he means. The Joker killed him, and Danny doesn’t know how. He doesn’t need to. The act alone is enough for him to want to bury his teeth into his throat.  

He breathes out slowly, and the unforgotten, embering hate he’s kept tucked away since the funeral creeps out like frostbite on his fingertips.    

The Joker.  

He’s pushed it to the back of his mind for a while now, too distracted, too busy to laser in on slow-roasting animosity he feels towards Jason’s killer. Like clothes being left on the line. Rage so intense that it leaves him shaking crawls up his throat.  

The Joker.    

Danny burns it into his mind, and looks away. “Okay.” His nails dig into the ledge, and the concrete cracks and crumbles under his fingertips.   

The Joker.  

The Joker, he thinks, I’m going to kill you.    

Jason keeps his word, and the next time Danny visits, he drags Danny out to the mirrored Wayne Manor and promptly kicks his ass. And then he does it again, and again, and again. And then he shows Danny all the stuff that he can do to get better.   

Danny is scrappy, he’s all made of claws and hounds teeth, but his biting and snarling is too unrefined and rough for anything more than back alley street brawls and school fights. It’s not enough, Jason makes sure it will be.   

It should be frustrating, and it is. But it's fun, in a strange, probably ghostly way. He learns from the ghosts of Martha and Thomas Wayne that fighting was as much of a social activity as it was a show of power. He doesn’t talk to them much, but he sees them occasionally. Thomas Wayne keeps a pair of brass knuckles that belong to his grandfather on him, and Martha keeps a nasty surprise in her heirloom ring.  

It’s cathartic in a way all his fights in Amity aren’t, and despite the amount of times Jason lays him flat on the ground, Danny is having fun. He’s learning in a way that doesn’t make him want to tear his hair out.   

Danny tries taking Jason through the ghost portal one day, insistent to meet back up with Sam and Tucker, and to bring Jason back to the land of the living even if it’s only for a little bit. But they both learn that Jason’s like Kitty, and his ghost is tied to the Zone. He can’t leave without possessing someone else, and neither Jason nor Danny want to do that.   

Danny makes up for it by promising to try and visit every day.  

His grief doesn’t go away despite reuniting with Jason, but like a soothing balm the edges soften and hurt a little less with the comfort of knowing that Jason was just on the other side.   

(Even if some days it’s not as effective, and Danny’s hit with a random bout of sorrow that threatens to swallow him whole. Overwhelming as the day he first learned of Jason’s death.)   

(In turn, it changes the way he looks — his skin becoming vibrant and emerald, his tears fade until they’re no longer opaque streaks down his face. The black of his eyes bleeds into white, and his scars shift into green.)   

It doesn’t matter in the end though, because six months later Danny has the worst week of his life and loses Jason again. And in one timeline, his family as well.   

For a second time, Danny scours the Ghost Zone looking for Jason. He stops ghosts and asks if they’ve seen him, he looks under nooks and crannies. He looks up, he looks down. And he can’t find him, it’s like he’s disappeared. He can’t find him, not even when he turns himself inward and turns his ear to the seventh sense frequency.  

Ghosts are like radios; they all have their own core sounds. It’s like recognizing someone when their back is turned, and when ghosts develop bonds strong enough, they can pick them out from a crowd. It’s normal. Just another way of knowing who from who.  

Danny tunes into the frequencies of the surrounding Zone, like standing in the forest and hearing the birds and bugs, and he hears nothing that sounds like Jason.   

And he doesn’t understand why.   

Jason’s lair is still in the Zone, Danny knows because he checked. He checked, and then he checked again. It’s an apartment building on the street he and Danny frequented in Crime Alley, and in it on the third floor is a small apartment with a door that leads to Wayne Manor, and another that goes to Danny’s.   

Ghosts are capable of moving on, of fading, and nobody knows where they go after, but they know that when they do go, their lair disappears with it.   

And Jason’s lair is still in the Zone. So he didn’t move on. He’s still here, somewhere.   

Danny visits his lair as often as he can — ghosts can feel it when another entity enters their home, it feels like a knock on the backdoor. Of someone tripping the floodlights, or the alarm.    

He visits, and Jason does not show up. Danny’s grief returns back twofold, and he reverts.    

“Wayne is throwing another one of his indulgent charities again.” Plasmius says when Danny is nineteen and they’re both in the midst of a fight, the two of them floating above the city skyscrapes of Amity. His hand engulfed in pink-red flame that he throws at Danny. It’s their second fight in a week, and Danny hates how persistent he’s been lately.   

It was normal for Vlad to do this — to bring up Bruce’s parties, and in a mocking voice ask if Danny was going to come with him. He needed a plus one, and who no better than the ex-family friend of the man? Danny’s learned to tune him out. Vlad never ends up attending anyways.  

(At least he’s stopped bringing up Jason. Vlad only made that mistake once.)   

Fire collides with his shoulder, and Danny grunts unwittingly. The heat lingers for a moment, and then sinks down into his skin, close to his core. He’s gotten used to the strange, consuming way ghost injuries work, and barely bats an eye as an instinctive film of frost slides over the burn like balm.   

He twists his wrist and slices his arm up, and a wall of shards fling themselves back. It’s only fair he returns the favor. Fire for ice, ice for fire. Danny bares fangs, churning a mean smile over his face. “Need a plus one, Vlad? I’m sure Mister Wayne will let you bring your cat.”  

Vlad sneers at him, “Oh how funny, Daniel.” He teleports out of the way of the shards, but not before one catches him by the arm. It slices his suit and Vlad hisses with pain as green blood begins to bubble up. “No, no, I’m afraid my little Madeline will have to remain home. All those people will ruin her fur.”   

“So you’re not going?” Danny clicks his tongue, his voice a coo and just as mockingly sweet. He twists his body, and avoids the path of a red-pink plasma blast, and the heat grazes past his stomach. Jason’s training, despite being brief, has come in handy in the last five years. Danny moves with an uncanny grace through the air. He’ll never win a fight against Batman or his clan, but it’s good enough for the people he does fight. “Shame, I’m sure you and Luthor would get along like a house on fire.”     

Vlad’s expression warps with displeasing anger, and he immediately raises a hand full of dripping molten. Even after all these years, he is easy to rile up. All it takes is finding the right button. “Don’t compare me to that incompetent.” He snarls, and he throws it with a force at Danny. “I am nothing like the idiot who can’t even keep control over his own company tech.”  

The conversation is forgotten in lieu of Vlad’s vendetta against Luthor, but Danny keeps the charity locked in the back of his mind as he and Vlad try to tear each other apart. He’s graduated high school by the skin of his teeth, and with Sam and Tucker preparing for college, Danny doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life. He’s long since realized that his dreams of becoming an astronaut are nothing more than flowers left on his grave. That aspiration was left at the foot of the portal with the rest of his heart.    

But school is out of the way, and the ghost attacks are beginning to dwindle down. The prospect of Danny leaving Amity Park is beginning to look more and more possible. More and more like a reality . He never wanted to stay in Amity Park — and a long time ago, he wanted nothing more than to return to Gotham, where the other half of himself lay.   

At a lull in the fight, when Danny’s blasted Vlad back far enough that he can pause, he finds his eyes drawing towards the horizon.  

He hasn’t stepped foot in his home city since Jason’s funeral, and just like the day he left, something burns in the core of his chest, low and rumbling and hateful. Familiar in the same way that his grief is, familiar in the same way that dipping a red hot weapon into water and watching it steam is.   

Ember can be sated with the promise of letting her perform on the terms that she uses no mind control. Technus is on parole with Pandora after he fucked with Athens. Aragorn is being kept under control by Dorathea.   

Skulker will always go after Danny, but Danny can handle him just fine inside or out of Amity Park. And he’ll be out of commission for a while after their last fight. Spectra, the Box Ghost,   

Lunch Lady— anyone else? Sam’s planning to stay local, and Valerie is too. They can handle them just fine on their own.  

Danny’s business in Amity is nearly finished.   

His business in Gotham—  

Is not.    

(When Vlad Plasmius flies back into the fight, the hole in Danny’s chest — nauseating, spinning, always churning, always crying — is turning and warping sluggishly like a rubber band being stretched and pulled. The tears that are always marring his face come down ink-thick, dripping off his chin in gelly chunks.)   

(He’s not sure if Daniel even notices that he’s crying again.)  

When Vlad returns, Danny dodges one of his fireballs — it skims past his ear and would have burned off the hair at the side of his head if Danny had been a few seconds too late to dodge. He doesn’t return fire. Instead, he shoves his hands into his pockets, and tilts himself upside down. “You said Mister Wayne was hosting another charity soon.”   

Vlad raises an eyebrow at him, wary in the pivot of behavior when Danny doesn’t try and attack him back — ghosts are prone to mood swings, but Danny’s always been good at handling them… Sometimes. Danny nearly smiles at him — he’s learned since last time. The hand that had been ready to fire at him lowers a little. “I’m surprised you remembered, little badger. Yes, I did. Why?”  

His core thrums low, and it thrums loud enough that Danny doesn’t even need to vocalize it. Something ugly sits in the back of his throat, between his lungs, burning beneath his skin that he keeps hidden beyond the tense hunch of his shoulders. “Weeelll…” He drawls, “While you were dusting rubble off your ass, I got to thinking: it has been a while since I’ve been to Gotham. And you need a plus one, or you won’t go.”  

He twists himself back upwards with a shrug, his mouth stretches up into something Danny attempts to make innocent. It doesn’t work, Vlad eyes him like he’s an animal hunting.   

Danny feels like an animal hunting. Finally. He throws his hands out of his pockets, “So, I will, reluctantly, grant you your lonely, old man wish and accompany you to Gotham. I’m sure Mister Wayne will be surprised to see me.” He says, and he keeps his eyes locked on Vlad.   

Vlad still looks wary. Uneasy. Danny expects this, and he watches him narrow his eyes in suspicion, rather than hope. “While I am… touched by your offer, Daniel, I want to know why.”    

That would be giving his enemy a loaded gun. Danny refuses to hand over the one he’s got.  

“If you don’t attack me for two weeks after the charity, I’ll let you pick out the suit.” He says bluntly, “And I’ll spend quality time with you on weekends until those two weeks are up.” He knows it’s something he’ll regret — he hated suit-shopping with Mr. Manson when he did it seven years ago, and he knows Vlad will be ten times more insufferable, and spending weekends with him sounded like a nightmare . But he can’t take it back.   

But it’s hook, line, and sinker. Vlad’s eyes dilate like a cat seeing a laser pointer, his mouth twists into a grin, and he lunges forward. Danny flinches back, his hands igniting in green plasma, ready to knock out his teeth, but Vlad doesn’t attack. He grabs his wrist instead, “Deal.”   

Oh yeah, Danny’s going to regret this as Vlad drags him down to earth, a vice grip on his wrist that he could easily get out of in a number of ways. But, a look to the horizon that brings return of the ugly thing in the back of his throat makes him think it’ll be worth his while.    

Being back in Gotham feels like deja vu. The towering skyscrapes passing over his head, the bustling streets. It’s all much the same — recovering from a Poison Ivy attack, if the vines sprawled over the walls were saying anything — but the same nonetheless.   

He’s in the back of a sleek limousine, sunken into the leather seats with a pit in his stomach. The car is ten times nicer than anything the Mansons could afford. It’s similar, but not the same. Danny’s changed too; taller than before, leaner, older.     

It was a fight to let Danny keep his piercings in, and it's a fight he wins with the terms that he wears something gala- appropriate. Danny sticks a hanging diamond in one ear, a pearl in the other, and lines the holes up the curve of his ears with gold. And for good measure, he puts a diamond ring through the piercing in his eyebrow.       

Vlad sits across from him with a look of satisfied smugness, preening like a cat that caught the canary with the purring core to match. Danny wants to take the bottle of champagne from the ice bucket and dump it over his lap — see if he’s smug then.   

He refrains, and itches for the cigarettes he remembered to stowaway this time around. Smoking doesn’t have the same effect as it did before, but habits are hard to break and Danny’s not too keen to break this one. It’s stashed away in the pocket of his pants, and his lighter hidden in his vest.   

But he must be broadcasting his need for a smoke too loudly, Vlad gives him a reprimanding look that is so annoyingly authoritative and parent-mimicking that it's a nicety that Danny only rolls his eyes. “Don’t give me that look,” he says, lip curling at the corner, “you’re not my dad.”   

“I could be.” Vlad retorts smoothly, and gives him a dark look when Danny fakes a gag. His fingers thread over his lap. “That… stuff kills, Daniel.”   

Danny snorts roughly, and he thinks for a moment to light a cigarette just out of spite. He doesn’t, he won’t waste a stick on him, but he checks the front to see if the driver is listening. He leans back into his seat when he sees the privacy screen pulled up; “I’m already dead, fruit loop.”   

Pulling up to the entrance is another bout of deja vu, but it is unwanted. The paparazzi are as unchanging as they were seven years ago — nasty, gossip-feeding parasites that jump their prey with their dizzying questions and seizure-causing, flashbang cameras.    

Pulling up to the red carpet, Danny feels much like he’s about to put on a show. He’s buzzing, is what he is, straight down to the core. A tunnel-visioned intensity that makes him want to pull back his teeth and bite. To sink his teeth into something, to do something irreversible. Unchangeable.  

Unmuzzle me, he thinks, fingers curling around the door handle, let’s see what happens.   

Vlad reaches over and blocks him, and Danny snaps his eyes onto him with an unspoken, glaring, ‘What?’ . Uncharacteristic severity is written on Vlad’s face, “I’m not sure why you’ve decided to come back here, Daniel,” he says, “but we’re more alike than you think.”  

“No,” Danny snaps, instantaneous. He curls back his lips and shows teeth, “we’re not.”   

Eyes narrow at him, Vlad raises a challenging brow. He lets go of the door, and leans back against his seat. The paparazzi have turned their attention onto them, and they need to get out of the car soon. “How so.”  

The door clicks, and Danny is throwing his leg out before he’s got the door all the way open. “I succeed.”    

He’s granted a soft mercy in that the paparazzi don’t recognize him at all. He was never that important in the grand scheme of things — a friend of Jason Todd-Wayne to the media, and that’s all he ever was. So when he steps out of the car, the paparazzi lose interest quickly in favor of the more recognizable Vlad Masters.   

Vlad Masters, like always, has to ruin it. One reporter yells over the cacophony of voices, pushed to the front of the red velvet rope, asking Vlad who he was with. Danny was hoping he’d be able to pass through without a trace.   

With a charming, honey-warm smile, Vlad slinks forward with a graceful tug on Danny’s arm, and brings him to the front of the reporter’s camera. “Why,” he croons, placing his hand on Danny’s back, “this is my godson! I’m sure some of you remember Daniel Fenton, yes?”   

If only Vlad was actually a vampire, Danny laments. Then he could push him into the sunlight and watch him crackle and turn to ash. Unfortunately, that is something that someone from Gotham would be more likely to do, and so he settles on giving him a look that would kill him a second time.   

He manages it despite the flood of lights turning back onto him, clamors of voices trying to get a peek at him. Danny grants Vlad the mercy he didn’t show him, and plasters a lopsided smile onto his face for the cameras to snap and catch.   

But he doesn’t stay for questioning, he lets them take their pictures, and then turns on his heel to stalk inside. His fingers flex, curling in and out of fists, and Vlad hurries gracefully after him as he reaches the top of the steps. Vlad’s annoyance pokes at him irritatingly.  

“I told you that I would come.” Danny says with unhelpful innocence the moment Vlad is beside him, meeting his glaring gaze piercingly. The orchestral music buries his voice so that only he and Vlad can hear. “Not that I would play nice.”    

“Do not embarrass me, Daniel.” Vlad hisses, trying to look the utmost calm as eyes turn onto them. Danny feels a little smug when Vlad doesn’t even try to flash red eyes at him.   

“I should be saying that to you.” Danny retorts, smiling gleefully when Vlad’s eye twitches. He detaches himself from him before Vlad can get a word in, and disappears into the throng of socialites.   

Finding Bruce Wayne is easier now that Danny’s nearly a full head higher than everyone else in the room — those Jack Fenton genes coming in handy — and it’s even easier to see just how Bruce is capable of drawing attention to himself. He is the brightest person in the room, a sun creating its solar system.  

Knowing now, through Jason, that he is Batman — even years after the fact, Danny would still sooner believe that Bruce was Batman’s sugar daddy instead. And he has to applaud the man — his acting skills are phenomenal.    

But still, something seizes nostalgia in his heart. He hasn’t seen Bruce since Jason’s funeral; hasn’t spoken to him either. His contact number lingers in his phone, but has gone untouched for the last five years.   

Danny doesn’t know how to feel about him — petulant anger, perhaps, for preventing Jason from telling him he was Robin. It’s a childish, unfair anger, Danny knows the importance of a secret identity, knows the importance of who should know and who should not. It’s not fair to hold it against him.  

He can’t blame Bruce for wanting to keep it secret, for wanting Jason to keep it secret too. Batman has many, many enemies.   

And much like the sun he compares him to, Danny’s feet carry him forwards, weaving silently through the crowds of rich people vying for even a second of his attention. The Crown Prince of Gotham, Danny can’t help but think to himself. He huffs silently.    

The little prince too, Danny realizes when he gets closer. Bruce hasn’t noticed him yet — or, at least, he’s pretending not to have noticed him. And there’s a little shadow clinging to Bruce Wayne’s side, his newest baby bird; Damian Wayne.   

A smile stifles itself on his face when he sees the surly expression on Damian’s face, his hand curled subtly around the pant leg of his father as two elderly women crouch down and coo at him. Danny thinks the only reason they haven’t started pinching his cheeks is because Damian looks like he’ll bite their fingers off.   

It reminds him strongly of Sam, who hasn’t gone to one of these things ever since Danny stopped.   

The feeling of someone staring drags Danny’s attention away from Damian, and instead brings it back up and up, and onto Bruce. He meets his eyes, and Bruce stares at him with a furrow between his brows — like he recognizes him, but he’s not sure from where.   

Danny, in return, plasters a crooked smile across his face — one more genuine than what he gave the paparazzi. Arms spreading like wings, he steps around a middle-aged man and on instinct slips into whatever remains of his Gotham accent; “Mister B! It’s good to see you again.”   

Recognition flashes through Bruce’s eyes, and he smiles widely.   

“Danny.” He says, breathing his name out like he can’t believe his eyes. Danny’s grin grows ever wider, and Bruce slips between the crowd surrounding him — little Damian trailing behind — and pulls Danny into a one-armed hug, a bright laugh barking out of him. “Look at how big you’ve grown! It’s good to see you again.”   

The downside to being a ghost is that Danny can only sense other ghosts and, if they let him, their emotions. Surrounded by the undead, Danny’s gotten used to blocking out the white noise of ectoplasm and its intent. A ghostly radio, if you will. Everyone always knows a little bit of what everyone else is feeling.    

But that little trick doesn’t work on humans, and so he hesitates when Bruce hugs him — he wasn’t expecting it, and he’s unsettled by the realization that he doesn’t know if Bruce means it. He puts his hopes into thinking he does, and softens unwittingly.   

“You too, Mister Wayne.” He admits, breathing in and startling himself with the smell of Bruce’s cologne — it hasn’t changed since he was a kid; still rustic, still old. He returns the hug quickly, and pulls away like he’s been burned, clapping Bruce on the shoulder with a friendly smile.   

Only then, when he pulls away, does Danny also realize that he can sense Time on Bruce. He can sense it the same way he can breathe in dust and have it choke him in the back of his throat. In the same way people are sometimes, and at random, hit with a bone-seeping exhaustion that leaves him wanting to bury himself. Indescribable but undeniably recognizable.   

His smile almost falters — what was Bruce doing with Clockwork?    

He doesn’t ask, — he doesn’t know how to. It doesn’t matter in the end anyways, because he’s drawn away from the dust in his nose by the feeling of his ghost sense tingling in his chest. It creeps up his lungs, rising like a spider up a tree, before it suddenly stops. Stuck by the time it reaches his collarbone.    

It buzzes softly, and then dissipates. Danny almost frowns.   

Damian Wayne appears, coming out of Bruce’s shadow like a ghost, and hovers close to his father’s side. He glares daggers up at Danny, and Danny would think it endearing if he wasn’t so focused on the fact that he’d triggered his ghost sense — but only halfway. That’s never happened before.  

What did that mean?   

“This must be Damian?” He asks Bruce, offering out a questioning smile. Bruce gives him back a nod, hand placing itself on Damian’s shoulder like an anchor. Fondness painting a brush across his face, it’s a look that Danny saw once a long time ago.    

His heart stings, just a little bit. “You’ve really expanded your nest since the last time I saw you.”   

Damian’s eyes narrow at him, it reminds Danny of a stray kitten puffing up its fur, and Bruce laughs lightly. Danny wonders if it makes him suspicious. “You are… very right, Danny.” Bruce says, still smiling, “Tim’s also here, I’m sure you’ll run into him somewhere.”     

“Father,” Damian says before Danny can respond, his eyes carry an unnatural tint of green in them as he glowers up at him, blending in like watercolor to be near-unnoticeable. “Who is this man?” Danny can respect the distrust palpable in Damian’s voice, they can be kindred spirits that way.   

"I’m Danny," He says, and holds out his hand for Damian to shake. He doesn’t take it. “Fenton, that is. I’m - was, uh, Jason’s best friend.” Was. Not is. Danny hates the reminder, even after five years. There’s an ugly squeeze in his chest that he tries to ignore, his smile tightening up like screws in the corner.  

Damian’s lip curls up in the corner with barely concealed suspicion, and when he looks to Bruce for confirmation, Danny drops his hand. He only seems sated when Bruce nods, and straightens up more than Danny thought he possibly could.   

“How has Amity Park been treating you, Danny?” Bruce asks, a genial look on his face that Danny still can’t help but question. Maybe it’s because he knows he’s an actor now, and maybe he’s scared that perhaps Bruce doesn’t like him as much as he thought before.    

“It’s… treatin’ me well.” He says, a moment of hesitation slipping through his voice, his mouth tilting awkwardly. He’s never been good at small talk, it feels like he’s trying to wedge out a weed rooted stubbornly in his garden. “As well as it can, at least. It’s not Gotham, that’s for sure.”    

“I doubt anything could be like Gotham.” Damian sniffs, as prickly as the cacti sitting on Sam’s windowsill. Danny hums low, noncommittal. Five years ago that was a good thing, and five years now, Danny’s not so sure.   

“Are you planning on going to college?” Bruce asks, his head tilting like a curious puppy. Danny can’t help but just keep marveling at how well of an actor he is. “I remember you saying that you wanted to be an astronaut when you were younger.”  

Danny’s smile twists bittersweetly. “No, actually.” He says, and sees surprise flitter itself across Bruce’s face. “That dream is… no longer possible, unfortunately.”  

Bruce’s brows thread together, his smile drooping in oblivious confusion. “May I ask why?”      

Against what is probably his better judgment, Danny unfurls his hands and rolls up the sleeve of his scarred hand. Spidery, silvery, lichtenberg figures crawl up his arm like cracks in a window, disappearing under the rolled fabric at his elbow and up to his shoulder. Some of the scars are raised, the ones thicker, and the thin ones smooth.   

He watches Bruce’s eyes widen in alarm, he watches Damian’s do the same. And he resists the urge to pull his arm away when Bruce grabs his wrist in his hands that are too calloused for a playboy billionaire. “Dear god.” Bruce exclaims, looking over Danny’s arm in barely concealed — or well-acted — horror. “What happened?”    

Danny’s reply is probably curter than he wanted: “Accident.” He says, his smile pressing bitter into a line. Gently, he wrings his arm from Bruce’s worried hands and rolls down his sleeve. “Was sometime after the funeral. I’m no longer healthy enough to be an astronaut.”   

“That must have been quite the accident, Danny.” Bruce breathes, worried pity embroidered into the lines of his face. Danny knows, and he thinks that Bruce might be thinking of a reason different than what he shows on his face: lichtenberg figures aren’t permanent. They fade with time. Danny’s scars should have faded by now, and he knows it’s concerning that they haven’t.  

Quite the accident indeed.   

But he shrugs dismissively, hand raising to rub at the back of his neck. His fingers catch around strands of hair. “It is what it is.” He says when he drops his hand, “I’ve come to terms with it. Sorta.”   

Eventually he detaches himself from Bruce, eventually, because he sees Vlad approaching from the corner of his eye and from the clouding in his lungs that indicate him of a ghost nearby. Vlad’s got his greedy look in his eyes, the one Danny knows means that he’s chomping to use something to his advantage.  

It’d be quite the boon for VladCo to collaborate with Wayne Industries and all its connecting branches. But unfortunately for him, Danny notices him faster than Vlad can clumsily weave through the rest of the Gotham Elite. With a less than graceful smile, he dismisses himself from his conversation.   

Then he turns, and with the years of expertise of weaving through crowded streets, Danny disappears into the swarm of socialites that sweep forward like the tide. He smothers a grin when, from the corner of his eye, Vlad’s face twists up in petty frustration as he gets swept forward, then pushed to the back of the crowd.   

Finding Tim Drake is easier than Danny thought, but it’s unintentional. Much like Bruce, Tim is surrounded by a crowd of Gotham’s Finest, another sun in the galaxy of the ballroom. He’s in a group of older men, people that Danny can only assume are fellow tycoons trying to bolster themselves up in the eyes of the second biggest fish in the room.    

It’s funny how much they puff and preen themselves up, like fish trying to spread their fins and make themselves look bigger. More important. Unlike fish, it’s ineffective. They look like blustering fools in Danny’s eyes, and Tim Drake’s strained expression only makes it more apparent.   

He wonders if anyone’s ever told them that people with power don’t tend to show it off?   

Tim Drake’s eyes drag over to the side, disinterest lighting under the chandeliers, and they lock onto Danny as he approaches. Danny slinks his shoulders back, fixing a lopsided smile to his face. He tries to look relaxed.   

He expects to see some kind of dread cross Tim Drake’s face — another little fish come to bother him.   

Instead, he’s surprised, and Tim Drake perks up with blinking eyes and ducks between two tycoons with a polite smile already stretching across his mouth. “Danny Fenton!” He says, coming to a stop before Danny in only a few quick strides. “What a surprise, we weren’t expecting to see you tonight.”   

Dirty looks burn themselves into Danny by the tycoons Tim was talking to, with scowls marring their faces as they side-glare at him with all of the subtlety of someone throwing a brick through a window. Danny’s smile grows into a grin, he hopes they know that with any kind of bark, they need a bite to go with it. Danny’s long since perfected the art of sharpening his teeth.  

“Tim Drake!” He exclaims back, leaning back on his heels while his hands shove into his pockets. “I’m surprised you recognize me.” Bruce hadn’t, but he’s not sure if Bruce was only pretending.   

Tim smiles, easy-going and tilted. The picturesque image of a teenage CEO “There are pictures of you in the manor with Jason.” He says. Danny tries not to think about what that means — it’s only natural that Bruce would have photos of Jason up. Of course he would. “It’s hard not to recognize you.”  

Danny wonders if, just like Bruce, Tim’s smile was real or not too. This family is full of liars, he muses, and he can’t hold it against them. He’s one too.   

The corner of his mouth crinkles up in the corner, “You sure?” he asks, tilting his head to the side. “Bruce didn’t at first, and I’ve changed quite a lot since I was fourteen.” More than you know.    

Tim shrugs, “You know how Bruce is, he forgets what shoe goes on which foot in the morning.”   

Danny’s smile hollows, “I suppose.”   

“What are you doing here, if you don’t mind me asking?” Tim’s nails scratch behind his ear, curiosity feigning through his voice. A carefully placed falter in his smile that makes him look genuine. “You haven’t gone to one of Bruce’s charities in years, and the Mansons weren’t on the invitation list.”   

The Mansons. Sam told him before, years ago, when his grief was still newborn-fresh and burning holes into his chest, that her parents were all up in arms about the lack of invitations they were getting. They wanted her to try and convince him to go back to Gotham.   

Obviously, he told Sam that she can tell her parents to fuck off.  

“Oh, I’m here with my—” Danny forces a smile and tries not to choke, “—godfather, Vlad Masters.” It’s a good thing that Vlad was trying to cozy up with Bruce right now, he can’t imagine what kind of smug preening he would do if he heard Danny refer to him as his godfather with his own voice.    

A low, surprised hum emits from Tim’s throat, his eyebrows raising. “The CEO of VladCo?”   

It’s not a surprise to Danny that Tim already knows who Vlad is, he’s a rival businessman after all. He nods lazily, and when he looks to find where Vlad is, he finds him still trying to get through the crowd of socialites barricading Bruce Wayne. His expression was as calm as could be, but there was a tick in his jaw that made Danny think he was seconds away from barreling through people like a steamroller. And if that was the case, Danny’s hand was resting over his phone and ready to record.   

“The very same.” He says, looking back to Tim. “My parents were college friends with the guy apparently. They fell out of contact for a few decades and only reconnected a few years ago.”    

Their conversation ends with Danny rolling his neck with a series of loud, cold-causing pops and him offering Tim a fang-tilted grin. “I’d love to keep this conversation running,” He says, the tips of Tim’s ears turning faint pink, “but I need a smoke break and a rich-people break, no offense.”    

“None taken.” Tim responds quickly, his voice half-a-mutter before he fishes out his phone and holds it up. He smiles, “Can I get a photo before you go, though? Something to hold over Dick’s head for not coming.”   

And Danny is never one to pass up causing Dick trouble, his grin fills out on the other end and he barks out a laugh that comes from the center of his chest. “You’re speaking my language!”   

He settles himself on Tim’s left side, throwing his arm around his shoulder as he bends his knees and stretches his prettiest smile across his face. Tim holds up his phone with a matching grin, and through a series of quick click-click-clicks, he snaps a few quick photos.   

Danny peers over his shoulder as he goes through the photos. They’re all the same, but Tim settles on one in the middle and holds it up for Danny to see. He whistles low, under his breath, and playfulness pulls over his mouth. “That’s a good one,” he jokes, “send that one, my hair looks fantastic.”    

Tim snorts at him, red still cherry-dusting over his cheeks. But he nods anyways, and as he exits out of the photo album, Danny steps away and around until he’s facing him again. He’s never liked looking over someone’s shoulder on their phone that much.   

“I’ll be on the West End Balcony,” Danny tells him, shoving his hands into his pockets and nodding towards the balcony. Carefully, he sees something flash through Tim’s expression — wide-eyed, dare he say startled. But it’s gone before he can pick through it. Times like this made him wish that everyone here was a ghost — they’d be easier to read that way.   

I’m out of practice, he thinks. It’s not a good thing. He’s becoming a rusty knife. He shouldn’t.   

Danny keeps his smile and begins to back up slowly, “Let me know how Dipstick reacts, alright?” He asks, and Tim waves a hand at him, mouth half-tilted and mimicking with a murmured ‘yeah yeah.’ Danny grins at him, and flips himself around on foot like a skater on ice, marching towards his favorite balcony.   

(When Danny is out of earshot, Tim pulls out his phone and opens up the group chat. He dodges out the way of an approaching businessman, and quickly loads up the photo into the dock. It’s the group chat that only recently added in Jason.)  

(Tim is perhaps a little too eager, a little too smug . His fingers fly across the screen. But he’s not eager enough, perhaps, the moment he hits send he turns his phone off and shoves it back into its pocket.)  

(And ignores the buzzing.)   

Tim: Hey Jason, your best friend just appeared in Gotham for the first time since your funeral. 
Tim: [image] 

Time is a funny, funny thing. Maybe even funnier now that Danny personally knows the man in charge of it all — man? Entity. Amorphous personification of the concept of time and all things connecting to it.   

Stepping out into the West End Balcony is like a dull knife being driven into the space between his ribs, wedging itself into his lungs and filling it with time-made ash and dust. It’s a blast from the past, as bitter as crab-apples and as painful as it is familiar. Timeworn instinct has his hands digging into his pockets for his cigarettes before he can think.   

The last time he stood here, his heart used to beat right. And it used to beat at the same tempo as the boy he shared the space with. The carton clunks, dull and cardboard, while his fingers scrape against the side. Danny fishes a cigarette out from its bed, and shoves the box back into his pocket.   

Like casting a line out into the ocean, Danny reaches out his core and silently broadcasts a whalesong; tuned to a frequency only a ghost could hear. Gotham is full of ghosts, and he doesn’t doubt they hear what he’s saying — but, it only matters if the right one hears him.   

He waits for a response, and gets nothing back. Danny turns, and makes himself a tripping hazard on the railing; sitting on the edge and sticking out his legs for no one but the air to step on. Gotham responds by winding its hot city wind through the skyscrapers and structures.  

Gotham takes an invisible finger and tilts his head up, and Danny only sees the ugly pollution-yellow sky staring back down at him. Time is a funny, funny thing, because despite all his love stars, when faced with the blanket smog that covers them up, he feels more at home.   

Maybe it’s from who he’s used to sharing it with.  

Nimble, calloused fingers find his pockets again, and Danny pulls out his lighter with rehearsed ease. He catches his cigarette between his teeth, and click-click-click, the lighter blooms to life with a small flame dancing beside his fingers.   

There’s a poem here, he can feel it. Under the smog-written sky and surrounded by concrete, there’s one here. He’s too tired to find it.    

Danny lights the cigarette, and the lighter dies in response. And when it returns to his coffin-like pocket, Danny slumps, he’s left alone with his thoughts, and breathing out smoke he lets them cash in.  

He’s tired.   

He’s tired.  

Ancients, he’s so fucking tired.   

There’s a sleep-heavy ache in his eyes when he allows them to close, and if he would, he’d sit himself on the ground and duck his head between his knees. He’s not as small as he used to be, but he thinks he could still hide.    

Instead, Danny soaks in the sounds around him; lets it sink under his skin like water soaking through his clothes. Orchestral music floats through the two glass doors like it’s coming through underwater, muffled by walls on all four sides. Late night traffic travels around the sides of the building from the roads in front and behind him.  

Danny’s surrounded by the special kind of ambience you only hear on the west end balcony. With a cigarette hanging from his lips, his mouth curls into something threatening to become as ugly as the rest of the rust-stained city.   

He used to play a part in this ambience, once upon a time ago. Him and Jason both did, they had parts to play in the whole symphony of the city. Whether it be the drumming of their feet slapping against the street, or their voices ricocheting against the walls. They all had their parts to play.  

And now it was just him. Jason was nowhere to be found.   

Something hopeless and fear-making wound like a spring through the whole of him, steadily winding up like a music box chrrrrting, ready to play once the fingers let go . Something all-suffocating with a dizzying sort of intensity that’s familiar to all ghosts.       

Danny holds his cigarette from his mouth, and holds his breath, trying to rid himself of the awful, shiver-making fear that’s creeping through his veins. When he breathes again, two minutes later, the spring jitters and jolts. The music box begins to play a grieving tune that he’s learned to heart.   

Grief. It’s an awful, fickle thing. It’s greedy, all-consuming, a hunger that’s never fucking happy, never sated. It must always be eating. Eating away at whatever it can find of its host, eating away until there is nothing left of its host.  

There are ways to sate it. Time is one of them.   

But ghosts are emotional creatures, they have no bones, no organs, no buffer to sequester the wounds of feeling away in order to mitigate the damage it does. They feel from their crowns to their soles, and emotional wounds never really heal.   

Not the worst of them anyways. Not the ones you die with.   

No, no, instead, they scab. They scab and fester, never really scarring. It never scars, that would be too kind. That would mean healing. No, it scabs. It covers itself in dried blood until it’s ready to be picked at again, and again, and again, until it’s bleeding fresh again. Until it’s bleeding like it never really stopped.    

Danny’s grief will never go away. Of that he knows for certain. Grief is a parasite all on its own without the influence of ectoplasm, but with it, it is never ending. It’s as fresh as the day it appeared and burrowed itself into a hole in his heart, and it will eat and eat and eat.    

He opens his eyes when his ghost sense tingles, mixed with the phantom pain of a scream locked in the back of his throat. It leaves a heavy feeling in his mouth that is neither grief nor nicotine, and it sits at the base of his tongue and coats his throat like a hand ready to suffocate him.   

If he narrows his eyes and focuses, it almost tastes like ectoplasm.   

But he doesn’t dwell on it long, cigarette hanging from his lips, because the source of the feeling drops down beside him. The heavy smog in his mouth evaporates, only to be replaced with an instinctive kind of horror that makes him flinch uninhibited.   

The Red Hood drops beside him, and he comes bearing a core of his own. One twisted. It sounds like a record player out of tune and played backwards; warped and slowed down, submerged underwater. Danny’s never heard something like it, goosebumps rush over his arms.   

He almost misses the fact that the vigilante is standing in the same spot Jason did, and when he realizes, that fact alone is enough to make him forget his onset horror. His core seizes something possessive.  

Don’t you dare stand there, Danny almost hisses, a burning-sort of possessiveness coiling over and around his ribs like a weighted tangle of blankets. He grits his teeth, nearly biting his tongue to prevent himself from saying it, and a snarl curls his upper lip.   

He yanks out his cigarette to press his mouth into a line, nicotine smoke pouring out between like a cheap mockery of his ghost sense. Danny chews his jaw, and exhales deep out his nose. The possessive feeling dares to only make itself sharper, rather than duller.  

“Red Hood.” He says plainly, trying not to sound as irrationally hostile as he feels. His cigarette is pinched between the ‘v’ of his fingers, and his only free hand coils and uncoils itself on the railing like claws. Danny almost looks down to make sure he’s not leaving scratches. “What a surprise to see you here.”    

It’s only through process of elimination that Danny knows who most of the vigilantes in Gotham are. Nightwing is Dick, Red Robin is Tim, Bruce is Batman, Damian is Robin, and Cass is Orphan. He’s pretty sure that Duke Thomas is the Signal, but that he’s not for sure about.   

However, there were vigilantes who he didn’t know the identities, of whom he had no interest in actively seeking out the identities of — it was none of his business. But Spoiler and Batwing were some of those vigilantes, Bluebird as well.   

And Red Hood too. Most recent of the roster, as far as he was aware, and local crime lord.   

It was fine, Danny of all people knew the importance of a secret identity. It was only through Jason he was able to figure out Batman’s and his cohorts.   

The Red Hood says nothing to him; he just stares, and despite his helmet he reminds Danny of a deer in headlights. He could barely pick out what he was feeling through the static strangeness of his core, so Danny didn’t bother. Instead he focused on the wound up tension in his shoulders.  

It was like he wasn’t sure what to do in front of Danny, like he wasn’t expecting him to be here at all.    

Danny presses his lips together, and he forces himself to raise an eyebrow despite the displeasure frosting over his core and through his chest. “Am I in your spot?” He asks, still as plain as day, and he pushes himself off the railing.   

He doesn’t want to leave, he only just got here. But he wasn’t going to fight with a vigilante. “I didn’t think vigilantes used the Wayne Hall balconies,” he continues, and angles his back to the door, “I can leave.”   

Danny takes a step back.  

And like stepping on a live wire — or maybe his brain pressed a button that finally got him working — the Red Hood lurches, his hands arched and reaching for him like he’s going to grab him. Danny will bite his fingers off if he does.   

“No!” The Red Hood yells, sounding like Danny leaving was the last thing he wanted. Danny stops in place, and the Red Hood straightens up, his fingers cringing back. His arms twitch, and then drop to his side.  

“No,” He repeats, and he sounds surer of himself. Sturdier. “You’re fine. I’m just stopping here for a quick rest before resuming patrol.”   

…Danny narrows his eyes. His arms cross, and he takes a step back anyways. The Red Hood’s shoulders scrounge. “I thought you only worked in Crime Alley.” Suspicion crawls up his throat, and Danny knows better than to look away, but he spares an internal glance to Tim.  

The Red Hood is silent for two seconds too long, and Danny takes another step back. “Detour.” He says, and Danny calls such bullshit.    

But, if the Red Hood isn’t chasing him away, then Danny will take back his spot. He breathes out smoke, turning his head away from the Hood. “Alright.” He says, and threads his wariness through his voice as he walks back to the railing.  

Maybe it’s just him, but it feels like the Red Hood is tracking him as he moves. Danny thinks maybe he should ask the Red Hood if he thinks he’s a wolf.    

Danny moves a little further away when he sits back down, crossing his arm over his stomach as he presses his cigarette to his mouth. It burns the back of his throat, and he watches the Red Hood from the corner of his eye.  

And the man… is silent. He says nothing more and lets a quiet fall over them — Danny tries not to care enough to make it feel uncomfortable, but Hood is unsettled by something. Spooked, even. He’s lost in thought, Danny doesn’t need to see his face to know that, and he leans against the railing in a mimic to Danny.   

It’s not good enough, he switches to something different, deeply uncomfortable. And then does it again, and again, and again. It’s distracting, annoying, like a fly buzzing against the window. Danny watches him adjust and adjust.  

He finally, finally, flips over until his stomach leans against the railing, his legs kicked out. It is so starkly Jason that that possessive, angry thing in Danny’s chest rears out its fury head and he nearly sinks his teeth into Red Hood’s jugular.   

How dare you. How dare you. Howdareyouhowdareyou.  

Danny forces himself to stare at the doors, blood and ectoplasm pounding static in his ears. Ghosts are emotional creatures, and that means they can be irrational. He nearly smushes the cigarette in his hands.   

When his cigarette is nothing but a butt of crumbling nicotine-paper, Danny crushes the cig in his hand and watches the ash flutter in soft gray flakes to the ground. The heat of the stick stings his hand into something painful, but it’s nothing his healing can’t fix. It won’t even scar.   

He wipes the remaining ash staining his hand on his pant leg. Danny can already hear Vlad’s complaining in his ears when the fabric comes back smeared, and he wipes his pants again for good measure.   

Red Hood is already holding out another cigarette before Danny can reach for his pockets.   

(“A ciggie for your thoughts?” A young Jason Todd whispers one nippy Gotham night, an impish grin pressing like ink across his face. A cigarette pinched between two fingers. “I stole two from my old man, he won’t even notice they’re gone.”)  

Danny stares at it, his tongue made of lead in his mouth. He flicks his eyes up to the whites of Red Hood’s helmet, something pitting and unreadable in the bottom of his stomach. “I have my own.” He says when his jaw finally decides to move, and the wilt the Red Hood hides is a snowflake melting in Danny’s hands. It is brief, but Danny still sees it.   

He shrugs, acting as if he hadn’t been expecting Danny to take it. “Alright.” He pulls away, quiet.  

It’s a split second decision, Danny doesn’t even think it through. When the Red Hood looks away, Danny snatches the cigarette out of his hands and sifts his lighter from his pocket. “But if you’re offering,” Danny says, holding the cig between his teeth, “then I won’t say no.”   

The Red Hood says nothing in response, and Danny lights the cigarette. Over the sound of his muddled core, Danny thinks he can hear something hopeful. He waves it away with the smoke falling from his mouth.   

Silence returns to them, a little more comfortable, and a little more expectant. The Red Hood leans back against the railing and stifles a fidget with his hands, staring out over the gardens below like he wasn’t trying to look at Danny.   

Whatever he was expecting, he began to lose hope for it as seconds dragged out into minutes. Whatever had been digging tension into his shoulders finally began to pull away, leaving him slumping. Danny eyes him out from the corner of his eye, unsure of what he was expecting.  

The only thing he can think of is Red Hood was asking for his thoughts. He was asking him what was wrong. What the weight on his shoulders was. ‘Tell me your thoughts,’ Danny thinks he was saying, ‘something only I will know.’    

He thinks of Jason, and all of those nights on rooftops, in parks, behind dumpsters, anywhere they could hide, and he thinks of all those times smoke twisted through the air and choked itself in Danny’s lungs.   

Danny’s breath in is quiet, but the Red Hood flinches like it’s a warning bell. He doesn’t look at him, grief filling in the hollow of his heart like a leak in a ship. Danny takes a bucket and fills it until it’s spilling over the edge.   

And he dumps it over the side. “The Joker killed my best friend.”    

Five years and he’s only finally said it out loud. Five years and countless, smolder-torched, sleepless nights stuck in a cycle of grief and anger and blood-dripping revenge. And he’s only now just said it aloud.   

He breathes in trembling.   

Nails dig into the railing, bone-breaking tight, and Danny looks down to make sure he hasn’t cracked the concrete. It crumbles against his palms, but it remains unwavering. He stares for a few seconds too long, and then he looks up.   

Danny doesn’t look at the Red Hood, but he can see him tense from the corner of his eye. He pets the stone idly, feels the pebbles dig into the pads of his fingers, catching under his nails.   

“He beat him to death.”   

He beat my best friend to death.   

He beat him to death.   

He hates him.   

He hates him he hates him he hates him.   

Danny closes his eyes when he takes his next breath, almost afraid that he might start spitting fire if he doesn’t. Or maybe he’ll spit glass instead, he’s always chewing something sharp. Burning, seething, always-needing hate sends vertigo spinning through him in waves, and Danny’s teeth grind into each other. “He beat my best friend to death.”      

The Red Hood is silent, and if it weren’t for the muddy tune of his static-warping core, Danny would have thought he left. But he’s there. Just silent. He doesn’t speak until Danny opens his eyes, lashes blink-blink- blinking to push back the sting and tears that threaten to well up.   

He finally speaks when Danny looks at him, and he’s as soft as gravedirt when he says: “How do you know?”   

Rulebreaker, a quiet part of Danny’s mind whispers. The cigarette is still perched between Danny’s fingers, half-forgotten in his grief. He bounces it idly, and takes a drag. “His ghost told me.” He says, smoke pouring out. His ghost told me before he disappeared.   

Whatever answer the Red Hood was expecting, Danny doubts it was that. He just stares at Danny, face obscured and unreadable by his blood-red mask. Danny uses his silence to look away, to gather his thoughts.   

Maybe he should pass the cigarette back over, he thinks, and let Red Hood tell him a thought in return. Troubles for troubles, it would only be fair. Danny shared his secret, Red Hood should share one of his own.   

But Danny would never ask that of him. They were strangers. So Danny will give him another secret instead.   

“I want him dead, Red Hood.” Danny says, voice slicing through the air with all the elegance of a dull and jagged knife cutting through butcher meat. There is an unexpected shake in Danny’s voice that he doesn’t want present.   

Red Hood jerks. He stares.   

Danny presses forward, his face scrunching up ugly like and smoothing over with the sharp hiss of an inhale being dragged through teeth. “I want to kill him.” It comes out a whisper, ragged and hoarse. It’s his very own vice that Danny gets to keep all to himself.  

Well, a vice that he used to keep all to himself. It should scare him how easily he wants to spill blood, how quickly Danny wants to wrap his hands around Joker’s throat and rip off his head. He’d do it without a second thought.   

Danny pushes himself off the railing, his hands trembling with ill-concealed hurt. He takes one last hit, and breathes out one last cloud of smoke. “I think I’ve taken up too much of your time, Red Hood.” He says, offering the silent vigilante a lopsided smile that he barely believes himself.   

It’s a twist in behavior. It’s probably suspicious.   

The Red Hood just stares at him.   

He should go visit Jason. It’s been so long. It’s been too long. Are there florists open this time of night? Danny wonders, and he bets there probably is. There’s always something open in Gotham.  

The cigarette crumples up and crushes itself in his fist-curling hands. Danny turns on his heel and leaves.

Chapter Text

Jason nearly falls flat on his face when he sees the photo of Danny. He’s in a warehouse, finishing up with a gang selling drugs on his turf. The guys he’s got tied up are cursing up a storm at him, throwing every insult under the sun his way that he’s all heard before. His eyes drag over to them, and silently Jason adjusts his jacket to reveal the guns strapped to his thighs, his hand hovering over the handle of one. 

They all fall silent, and Jason moves his hand away. His phone in his other hand, texting Oracle to alert the police. Jason hates that he has to; these guys will be out of their cells in a matter of months, and nothing will change. 

But he’ll play nice. 

And then his phone buzzes, and when Jason looks down he sees a banner from Tim. A message he planned on ignoring, but his eyes skim over the text on instinct, and suddenly the air is stolen right from his lungs, and his thumb is hitting the screen before he can really think it through.

[Hey Jason, your best friend just appeared in Gotham for the first time since your funeral.]

Impossible. He thinks, yanking his phone close to his nose, as if that will make it any less real or fake. Danny hasn’t been in Gotham in years, Jason checked. But then the image loads, and then he’s staring Danny Fenton in the face. And then he’s greedily tracing every minute, new detail he can find. The gang left half-forgotten in his mind.

Danny’s hair has gotten longer, ink-black curls coil under his ears and spill on his shoulders, pulled half-up to keep his bangs out of his face. It looks good. He looks taller. He’s got piercings in his ears, gold and jewels lining up the sides like a magpie’s find. He’s got an eyebrow piercing. 

Something old, something new; Danny is smiling and it still looks just as Jason remembers it. Crooked, lopsided, warm like the sun and belying the mischief underneath it. He remembers to breathe in that moment, and the sound comes in sharp. Danny’s eyes are as blue as they’ve ever been. 

(“I don’ get why books talk so much about peoples’ eyes.” Danny complains to him one day when he’s visiting the manor, his legs thrown over Jason’s back like an anchor tied to its ship. They’re sunk into the mattress of Jason’s bed, sunlight peering through the windows. “They’re just eyes! I don’t need t’know that they’re ‘as blue as the sky,’ or- or the ocean, or whatever blue thing in the world there is.”) 

(Jason’s smile comes to him like breathing, and he twists around to lay on his back. His arms trap Danny’s legs to his stomach. “Pretty sure it’s jus’ for emphasis on how much they’re noticing the person’s face.”)

(Danny’s face scrunches up, and Jason’s smile splits into a grin, heart swelling three sizes on instinct. “I think it’s stupid, s’just some fuckin’ eyes.”)

(“Eyes are windows to the soul, Dan.” Jason retorts, barking out a laugh when Danny gives him a deadpan look. His hands creep for a pillow, one of the soft downy ones wrapped in silk, and he throws it at Danny’s face. “And besides, speak for yourself! Your eyes are the bluest thing I’ve ever seen.”) 

But most importantly, Danny looks tired.  

Hiding is something that comes free with the purchase of living in Gotham, and Danny’s good at hiding things, he always has, but Jason knows him like the palm of his hands. He looks tired, and Jason wants to reach through the screen and ask him why. There’s an age-worn look there, catching in the flint of his iris, where his smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. 

Jason gets the ETA from Oracle, then leaves as fast as his legs can carry him and his grappling hook can zip through the air. He needs to see Danny with his own eyes, to confirm himself that Danny was here, and that it wasn’t his mind playing tricks on him. Or that it was Tim playing a cruel joke on him — and if it was, he’ll have to rethink his whole killing thing. 

Gotham’s air is warm and suffocating, but her winds bite at him as he soars through it.

It’s second nature for him to find the west end balcony, and Jason finds himself with his feet locked in place on the building beside it. Grappling hook in hand, and a balloon in his lungs, all swelled up and squishing the air out of him. 

It’s just his luck —with whatever he has left— that Danny is there as well. In the same spot he’s always been, with a cigarette caught between his teeth. He’s stuck halfway, head tilting, eyes closed, with the shadows of Gotham on his back and the light of the gala at his front. 

For a moment, for a fleeting, terrifying moment, Jason thinks Danny’s going to tilt himself back off the side.The thought has him blindly tilting himself forward with his heart in his throat. Hands reaching for his grappling hook, swinging down to drop down beside him.

Danny is staring at him before his feet even hit the ground, face nigh unreadable beyond the small, wary furrow of his brows. Danny’s never looked at him like that before, it feels like  stumbling on the last step of the stairs. 

Then, like fire to black powder something flashes and ignites in Danny’s eyes. Mouth curling, eyes burning, for a moment, just a moment, they’re kids again, getting into fights and turning soft hands punch-rough. Danny looks at Jason like he’s going to tear him to shreds.

Jason’s mouth runs dry like a desert in the summer, but his blood chills in fear cold in his veins. Why are you looking at me like that? His mouth opens, but his tongue is leaden in his throat, and no sound comes out. It’s me. Don’t you recognize me?  

Danny yanks the cigarette from his mouth like it burns him, his free hand gripping onto the railing like it’s the tether to a leash, nails threatening to turn into talons. “Red Hood.” He says, voice low and timbre, smoke dripping from his lips like dragon’s breath.  

Oh.

That’s right. Jason suffocates on his heart as it sinks and soars with relief. Danny doesn’t know it’s him. In his tunnel vision, he forgot that simple, easy fact. It’s not because it’s Jason that he’s angry. It still doesn’t explain, though, why Danny looks at him like he ought to sink his teeth into his throat and rip him open. 

He’s half-distracted by that, and then distracted by the need to drink in the sight of Danny again. A photo is one thing; the real person is another, and with his fear subsiding, Jason rakes his eyes over his best friend and swallows him whole. His eyes are bluer in person, his memory and Tim’s photo doesn’t do them justice, and Danny inherited his dad’s height. He’s gotten so tall. They both have. They both used to be such scrawny kids. 

So distracted is he, that he forgets to respond to Danny, to say anything. Not until Danny tries to dismiss himself, and Jason kickstarts into gear. White hot panic fills in his lungs, burning him up like magma. No, no, no, he’s moving without thinking, always when he’s with him, and he nearly latches onto Danny. Nearly wraps his hands around his arm to hold him in place. Don’t leave. You’re finally here; don’t go. 

Danny stays, but he stares at Jason’s reaching hands like he’ll bite them off, stares at Jason with his eyes burning, watchful. Jason’s excuse is lousy and he knows it, but he wants, wants, wants to stay and figure out every new thing about Danny. 

And he feels like he’s losing something. Time bleeds together beside him and Jason feels trapped behind a glass wall of his own making. Something old, something new. The distance of which Danny keeps him at is foreign to him. He hates it. 

Tell me everything, he thinks, because he can’t find the words to say it. He hands Danny a cigarette instead, and hopes that it’s enough. Tell me everything and more, tell me what I’ve missed. 

In the end, he still feels like he’s losing something, but he also feels like he’s missing something. Answers that are water, and that water is slipping through his fingers. Danny leaves him with more questions than answers; something that’s never happened before, and Jason watches him walk back inside with a spinning mind. 

What do you mean you spoke to my ghost?

I told you that the Joker killed me?

Have I told you anything else? Have I already told you everything I’ve wanted to?

What happened while I was gone? 

Is that why you’re scarred?

Because Jason isn’t blind, he’s never been. Not in Crime Alley, not as Robin, not now. And not when it comes to his best friend. He sees the silver lightning scars ripped jagged up Danny’s arm, sees that they disappear under his sleeves. He saw, faded as they were, invisible until the light hit right, as they spread like tree roots up his throat and across the side of his face.

Scars that Danny’s never had before. Scars he didn’t have when Jason was alive the first time. Scars he didn’t have the last time Jason saw him. Or — what he remembers to be the last time he saw him, because apparently he saw him as a ghost. He sees the curve of his ears and how they point more than a human’s should, he saw the glint of his canines, sharper than they should be; sharper than he remembers. Metaphorical fangs turned real.    

Jason should’ve asked where he got them from, should’ve taken Danny by the front of his collar and stopped him from leaving. Who did this to you? He should have said, a fire burning in his chest and wrapping around his throat, pulling his voice into a snarl. He should have said, his guns weighing heavy on his sides; Who did it. I’ll take care of it. Just tell me who. Tell me everything.  

Instead, something crawled into his mouth and died, and his tongue is glued to the roof of it. And he doesn’t say anything, because saying something means telling his best friend who he is. It means having to take off his helmet and mask. It means telling his best friend that he’s alive, that he has been. That despite being two halves of a whole, Jason spent five years letting him think he was dead. 

He can’t tell him, not when he’s in too deep already. Not when Jason is so unrecognizable to who he used to be that if he told him, Danny would hate him.

And Danny is still grieving him. So plain as day mourning, still angry over his death. Angry enough that he wants the Joker dead, angry enough that he wants to hang the noose and kick the chair out himself. 

Jason wishes he told him that he looks tired. 

Instead he’s standing alone on the balcony, trying to get his thoughts in order as music blares muffled through the gold-light door. He’s left staring at the crushed cigarette laying on the ground, Gotham’s ambience at his back and a poem hanging in the air that he has no words for. It’s already there. Like stars on a painted ceiling.

And there are so many questions he needs answers for. 

Like his ghost. His ghost.

What did Danny mean by his ghost? 

Does he really want to kill the Joker himself? Was it just the grief talking? Jason knows — or thinks he knows — Danny like the palm of his hands. He’s been through everything with him, he’s seen him say something and then immediately follow through with it. He knows when he’s being serious, he knows when he’s not. 

Danny wants to kill the Joker. Stealing is one thing; murder is another. And Danny wore a look on his face that looked like he meant it when he told Red Hood that he wanted to kill Joker. But saying and doing are two different things. Jason doesn’t know what to think.  

Something old, something new. Danny is still the same, and yet he’s changed so much.  

What did Danny mean by his ghost?  

Jason doesn’t ever remember being a ghost. But Danny knows the Joker killed him. He knows how he killed him. Danny’s parents are ghost scientists, and Jason remembers the letter he got one day telling him about the portal they were building in the basement. 

He remembers thinking about telling Bruce — this was something beyond the glowing green samples stored in the fridge, giving life to the food inside. This was beyond the weapons, the inventions they made that only saw the light of day when the Drs. Fenton brought them up to showcase them.

And he didn’t, because if he hadn’t told Bruce about everything before, he wasn’t going to start. He admits, it was part fear that Bruce might intervene and prevent him from seeing Danny that he didn’t.  

Neither of them had expected it to work — but it sounds like it did. 

(Jason has avoided Amity Park for a reason. He knows he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from going there if he didn’t. But now, he just might have to look into it. He’s missed too much.) 

And Danny wants to kill the Joker, and Jason isn’t sure if he means it or not. Because the look on his face when he said it is oh-so familiar. It’s the one he wore when he needed Jason to distract the clerk while he snuck behind the counter to steal cigarettes from the shelves. It was the one he wore when an older kid cornered them near one of Gotham’s many alleys, threatening them over something Jason can no longer remember clearly. 

(He remembers puffing himself up, rearing for a fight. Danny, with glass in his teeth and blood between his fingers, lands a square kick to the spot between the kid’s legs. His knees hit the ground, and Danny’s hand found Jason’s to drag them both out of there.)

It’s the look of a boy, Gotham-touched grime in his soul, soft fingers turned calloused and scarred, about to do something he’s not going to regret. It’s the look of a boy that has set his mind to something and is going to do it. Some might call it the eyes of a cornered animal, but Danny’s never been cornered, not when Jason’s been with him. 

(But Jason hasn’t been with him. Not for the last five years. So can he really say it wasn’t the eyes of a cornered animal?...Yes.) 

Jason gets off the balcony before he can be seen, and he shouldn’t, but he loiters. He should get back to patrol, the night is never over. Not in Gotham. But he stays, hidden atop the roof nearby.

An hour later, Danny walks out the doors with a man Jason recognizes as Vlad Masters — another new mystery for him to uncover. The paparazzi have long since left. Gotham’s nights are dangerous and everyone knows that, not even the vultures would stick around for a scoop, not unless there was something worth seeing. 

A black limousine pulls up beside them, and Masters walks around the back to reach the other side. He’s bristled like an angry cat. “I thought I told you not to embarrass me.” He hisses, eyes snake-narrowed.

Danny, for the most part, just looks unbothered, his hands shoved into his pockets without a care. But he narrows his eyes right back, an expression made of stone. “You have a pretty low bar for what you think is embarrassing.”  

Masters just scowls, “I don’t understand you, I would have thought you’d spend the whole time mingling with the Waynes, badger.” He says. Danny ruffles at the nickname, lips curling into a snarl. Jason finds himself unconsciously mimicking him. “And yet, I find you sequestered away in the corner like a little fly on the wall. Were they not up to your standards?”  

‘Sequestered’ Danny mouths mockingly, eyes burning like he was going to claw his hand down Masters’ face. Instead, his hands dig into his arms. “I did talk to them, that’s more than I can say for you. You couldn’t even keep Mister Wayne’s attention for more than a minute.”   

Jason frowns, and Masters scoffs, puffing up like an owl with its ego bruised. “Regardless, I am not the one losing here. Or did you forget what you promised me?” 

Jason’s frown deepens. Danny doesn’t promise anything. At least, he doesn’t promise with just anyone. He deals; he repays; he indebts. But he does not promise. Promises were power, with only one side benefiting. It was trust to promise someone something. Danny doesn’t trust easily, neither of them do.

Something that hasn’t changed. Danny rears up angrily, mouth twisting, teeth baring, snarling out a fury sound. A wire cut live and sparking. He grabs the door handle and yanks it open harshly. “I didn’t promise you anything, Vlad.” He hisses, Jason strains to hear him. “I offered and you agreed. Do not fucking twist my words.” 

There it is. Jason should’ve known better, guilt string-plucking in his chest for his doubt. Danny doesn’t promise things; not to people like this Masters guy, at least. 

Danny grabs something from the car and throws himself back. “Don’t wait up.” He snarls, a wild thing just as Jason is, and yanks on a red hoodie over his arms. It zips up, and hangs off him, smothering the vest and button-up beneath. “I’ll meet you back at the hotel.” 

Then he slams the door shut, shoulders hunched and with a scowl carved into his face. They’re both made of broken glass; independence — disobedience — and rebellion cut into them from every broken beer bottle shattered on the streets.

(Jason makes a mental note to look into Vlad Masters — Danny’s never told him about him, so they must have met after he died. The man leaves a rot in Jason’s mouth, and there is a greed festering inside him that Jason knows has left him in decay.)

(He doesn’t like how close Masters acts with him, doesn’t like the affiliations between them both. Masters reminds him of Luthor and every other rich socialite with their hands in something dirty. He hates even more that Danny is making deals with him. What has he missed?)   

Jason follows after Danny, partially concerned that Danny is wandering Gotham alone. Regardless of what he can do, Gotham is still dangerous. It is bone-rotting, lung-choking and unforgiving. Danny knows this, Jason knows he does. He’s partially curious to know just where he’s going, and whether or not it was important enough to visit in the dead of Gotham’s bloody nights.

Danny surprises him — slipping between alleyways, sticking close to the shadows. Someone taught him how to be stealthy — or, at least, refined what stealth Danny already had. More new things that Jason needs to learn. More things he will never get to know. 

Who taught you that?  

Just what, exactly, have I missed?

I want to know everything.  

Five years is a long, long time to be away from someone. If a caterpillar can become a butterfly in two weeks, then what can five years do to a human? It’s a long time to change, to become something else entirely. Jason’s become someone new, and he thinks, so has Danny. 

Dread pools in his ribs, into his lungs, and weighs heavy on his heartstrings. The urge to drop down in front of Danny, to grab him by the arms and ask him to tell him everything, returns with a vengeance. This is why he avoided Amity Park. 

Will I still know you like I used to? Jason trails behind Danny from the rooftops, like a ghost. Do you still love the stars? Do you still take tea over coffee? Will you tell me, if I ask?  

And if he doesn’t? If he doesn’t ask, like he isn’t right now? 

If he doesn’t ask about his ghost — something that still boggles his mind, because it means the Fentons were right and that portal might have worked, and Danny found Jason’s ghost? If he doesn’t ask what his ghost told him, if he told him anything else? Did his ghost tell you that he was Robin, like he always wanted to?   

He will just have to keep his questions to himself. He will just have to tuck them into a folder in his mind, and file it under all of his other regrets.  

He feels like he’s Robin again; keeping secrets and hiding things from his best friend because it simply wasn’t safe enough for him to know. It’s maddening.  

Why has nothing changed since he died? Why has nothing changed, now that he was alive?

Danny leads him to the Gotham Cemetery. Jason freezes outside the gates. Oh, he thinks.

Oh.

He thinks back to what he thought earlier. 

What could possibly be so important that he’d go to it in the dead of Gotham’s night? The cemetery. Of course. Something old, something new, something bittersweet sets over his tongue that he swallows down. 

Jason forces himself to follow. 

“Hey.” Danny says as Jason settles behind a tree, voice gentle in foreign familiarity. He’s standing at Jason’s grave, his hands shoved into his pockets. The light is low but it doesn’t stop Jason from seeing the starlight-soft look in Danny’s eyes and his half-tilted smile, the smile that Jason is more familiar with than the wary scowls. “Sorry I’m late.”

Guiltish misery wraps its hands around Jason’s lungs. Pin-prickingly, stabbing at his heartstrings, Jason’s mouth moves on its own; “It’s okay.” but no sound comes out. Danny doesn’t hear him, and neither does Jason himself.  

Danny sits down before Jason’s tombstone, groaning low and tiredly as his legs fold beneath him. He’s older than Jason, and immediately his mind switches over to all the jokes he used to lob him with. 

(“Need help crossing the street, old man?” Jason, eight years old, asks with a grin so wide and painful across his face; giggles in his chest. He hooks his elbow with Danny, and keeps him tight against his ribs. “You’ll need all the help you can get in your ancient age.”)

(“I’m not that old.” Danny says, glaring at him before they scurry across the street with the light still green. Traffic laws are a joke in Crime Alley, it’s like a game of frogger as the sound of honking horns and screeching tires follows their heels. “We’re six months apart!”)

(“Six months and four days, actually.” Jason corrects when they reach the other side, snickering as they race down the sidewalk. Drivers lean out their windows and curse them out as they get away, Danny dodges an empty soda can thrown at his head. “Can’t forget the four days.”)

“I would’ve come sooner.” Danny tells him, pulling him from child-fuzzy memories and back into reality. Jason peers around the tree to see him running a hand through his hair, head ducked down. His palm splaying against his neck. “Sorry I didn’t. I got scared.” 

Scared? Jason blinks, he leans against the bark and bumps his helmet against the wood. The thunk is loud in his ears, but Danny makes no indication that he heard. Of what?  

But Danny doesn’t say what, he drops his hand and glances off to the side. He sits like a man who isn’t quite sure what to do, his mouth pressed into a thin line, his eyes scrunched. Grief carves into the lines of his face like a sculptor carving into marble. 

“I was gonna get you flowers on my way here.” Danny continues. His voice cracks, begins to wobble, and Jason sees Danny’s jaw tighten and his eyes close for a moment. When they open, there’s a wobbling sheen on his bottom lashes; tears threatening to bleed.   

Danny flicks at the tears with the nail of his thumb, it does nothing. It just makes his breath hitch. “Um, but they- uh, didn’t have any open on the way here.” He says, giving Jason’s grave a tremulous smile. “Sorry, I’ll make sure to pick some up on my next visit.”   

Next visit. Jason’s heart squeezes uncomfortably, before he reels at the words. Danny’s going to be visiting again, after five years of being out of Gotham? Next visit, why are you visiting again? Was this the reason he came to Bruce’s little charity ball with Vlad Masters? So that he could come visit Jason’s grave?

It couldn’t have been. There are other ways to get to Gotham that don’t require making deals with shady rich men. Danny’s smart, smarter than Danny himself gives him credit for. He’s brilliant. Why did he need Masters’ help to get him to Gotham?

There had to be another reason why.

God, there were so many questions that Jason wants the answers to. He’ll find them, one way or another. 

But, he focuses in again. Danny is only here for the night. One night, and he doesn’t know when he’ll be back again. Jason wants to commit every detail of his best friend to memory before he leaves. 

“You like zinnias, right?” Danny pets the grass at his side absently, and yes. Yes, Jason does, and Danny remembers. Even five years from his death, he remembers. Of course he does. 

“Yeah, you do. You used to pick the petals up off the sidewalk from those uh, fuck — the vendors. The Victorian flower language too, I think. Got a book on that somewhere. I’ll get you red an’ yellow ones.” 

Grief traps in Jason’s chest, and he barely tamps down the bitter laugh forcing itself out of the chokehold of his throat. You fucking sap, you big fuckin’ sap.

Red zinnias. Steadfast beating of the heart. The irony. It’s got double the meaning now, now that he’s alive. But Danny doesn’t know that, so the heart that’s beating could only belong to him. But even with Jason alive, he’s hiding. Between the both of them, the only one here with a beating heart is Danny.

(Between the two of them, the only heart here is one that's made between the two of them.)

Yellow zinnias. Daily remembrance. Of course. That doesn’t need any explanation, the writing is right there on the wall. Raised, so that even the blind may read it. It doesn’t need to be said what that means, Jason can hear it on the wind, in the grass, in the trees. His heart crumpling like a rag being twisted out to drain the dirty water soaking in it. 

I miss you.

I miss you.  

I miss you. 

I’m right here. Is what Jason wants to say. It’s what he should say. He should step out from behind the tree; should speak up and say something. To announce his presence. To do something to let Danny know that he’s speaking to someone who is more than a ghost (who feels like one anyways) and a corpse in the ground. 

Here I am. Here I am. HERE I AM.

His feet are gravebound to the dirt, his tongue cut out of his mouth and shoved into a jar. He feels, in some way, like he’s clawing out of his own grave again, but the dirt keeps falling and his arms are burning. His lungs are filled with more soil than air. He’s not getting out. 

Shame burns cigarette smoke in the back of his throat, shriveling up what little remains of his tar-filled heart. It should be his lungs, and it’s got that too. His feet are grave-bound to the floor.

Danny’s begun to cry, much to Jason’s horror. It should be more incentive for Jason to step out. He doesn’t. His best friend sniffles and scrubs at his face, soaking tears into his hoodie’s sleeve. “I’m sorry for not visitin’ sooner,” he says, voice spiraling with grief, “I don’t have an excuse. I should’ve come sooner. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” 

Don’t be, Jason thinks. Finds himself surprised by the truth of it. He should be upset. Five years and not a single visit. He abandoned him like everyone else. Except he didn’t. 

He’s not upset, he can’t be. Not when Danny’s finally here. Not when he’s still crying over him five years after the fact. Not when he’s going to put flowers on his grave that means he thinks of him daily. Not when Danny knows who killed him and wants him dead. 

Jason isn’t sure of what to think of that still. He wants Bruce to kill the Joker. More importantly he wants change in Gotham. He wants something to be done. He doesn’t know if Danny is being honest or not — and honesty doesn’t mean anything if someone doesn’t act on it.  

Danny continues talking to his grave, his voice full with sorrow. He talks about the gala, about running into Bruce and talking to him again. 

Jason listens in dutiful silence, soaking in Danny’s voice like a sponge. This is what he was expecting on the balcony; this easy conversation. Except it’s not a conversation, Danny is talking and not expecting a response. Jason feels like a stranger imposing on his own grave.He should slink away, let Danny have his peace on his own.

He refuses to move. He can’t bring himself to.

If he closes his eyes, he can pretend that he's sitting in front of him. He can pretend he’s thirteen again, with him and Danny crawled under the bed at the manor and trading all the stories they couldn’t fit in their letters. Danny tells him about another fight he had with Dash Baxter, eyes rolling but smug teeth flashing in a stifled smile. Then he tells him about something Sam and Tucker did; about one of Sam’s protests she led against the biology lab, and Tucker coding his PDA to play Doom. Easy, stupid middle schooler shit.

They’d sneak out to the balcony for their vices, Danny clutching a carton of cheap cigarettes in hand. Alfred always finds the ones Jason hides, so they usually share whenever Danny comes to visit. Jason tells him about Gotham Academy, about the people there and the classes. Prep school is another beast entirely, he likes seeing Danny’s reactions to the politics that goes on inside. 

Or, further back, they’re eight again, climbing a rickety fire escape to the rooftop and hanging their feet over the edge to find Batman and Robin. Danny was in the lead before he left for Amity Park. Jason remembers it clearly; they’d spent all night outside on that rooftop. 

Jason doesn’t close his eyes.

Jazz decided to change career goals; psychology’s become more of a hobby for her, and she’s going to go to med school instead. She’s thinking of doing an internship in Metropolis. Danny says he’s glad that it’s not Gotham, and when he told Jazz this, she laughed at him and told him that she was going to save that for later. 

She’s Gotham-touched too, she knows it’s blood just as much as Danny does. She wants to help the people there, but knows what Gotham’s like. She knows what she can and cannot do. Determination doesn’t equate skill, it just means the willingness to learn. 

Sam is staying in Amity Park and doing online classes for college, but Tucker got a full ride scholarship in software engineering. Danny’s thick with pride as he tells Jason’s headstone. Jason’s happy for him — they weren’t close, not like he and Danny were, but they were still friends. 

Jason soaks it all in; tell him more. He wants to know everything. 

"I don't know what I want to do." Danny says when he’s finally done talking about everyone else, his chin laying on his knees. “S’not like I can be an astronaut anymore, but there’s not anything I can see myself doing.”

The corner of his mouth coils, sardonic. “I’ve had five years to come up with somethin’ new, and I’ve come up with nothin’ at all.” He huffs. It’s a rough, bitter sound. Gotham has been steadily seeping back into his voice since he arrived in the graveyard, and now it comes out thick, like it never left. 

Danny’s face falls slack, like a puppet losing its strings, and he sinks into himself. “I guess I…” He exhales slow. “I’ve just been distracted.” A faraway glaze eclipses his eyes, and before they close, tears begin to bleed onto his eyelids. Again, grief mars the lines of his skin, settling into the curve of his mouth and threading between his brows like second nature.

Fuck, it’d be so easy for Jason to just step out. Move. His best friend is grieving. He could save him the pain of it and tell him now. Move, move, move. 

He doesn’t move.

For a while, there’s nothing but silence, just Jason hiding in his shame. A rat on the street would be bolder than him, and Danny’s eyes don’t open. Eventually, his head tilts and slumps into his knees, Jason almost thinks, somehow, that he’s fallen asleep — but Danny’s hand threads into the hair on the back of his head, his finger beginning to tap an invisible beat into his skull. 

It’s the perfect opportunity for him to slip away. Danny’s distracted; lost in his thoughts. He won’t notice if Jason slinks off now. He could go and hide away on a roof nearby, ensuring that Danny gets his rightful privacy without leaving him to the teeth of the streets.  

Jason still doesn’t move. 

Danny begins to hum. It’s a low, breathy sound, and it shakes unevenly. There’s no discernible melody, but a breeze picks it up and travels it through the air anyway, rooting Jason to his spot. His throat swells, and his back sinks into the bark behind him. 

For a full minute, maybe two, Danny just hums. It’s a simple tune, but it fills the graveyard with the sound. When it goes up, he sharpens, when he goes down again, it flats, and sometimes it wobbles.  

When he lifts his head, when he finally opens his eyes, he’s still humming. Soon it dies down, and the next time Danny exhales, it comes out tumultuous and slow. His hand slips heavy from his head and drops into the grass. 

“Where’d you go, Jay?” Danny murmurs, and despite his voice coming flat, he still sounds so tired. Danny’s eyes flick up, lifting off the grass to burn into the headstone. He’s not even looking at him, and yet Jason still freezes up, he still feels pinned under the weight of his stare. “I know you’re still out there, somewhere. I know it.” 

Jason breathes in shakily, a sting deep in the back of his throat. He gives no answer; guilt is an animal with claws, and it burrows deep into Jason’s heart to make itself a home between the tendons. He’s right here.  

Silence falls over them again, and this time it’s only the sound of the city around them that bleeds into the air. Danny stares at Jason’s grave, staring like he’s expecting an answer. He doesn’t get one. 

Danny sighs out low, and stands. His knees tremble slightly, and he rubs his sleeve into his eyes, catching the stray tears falling from his lashes. Like breaking a spell, Jason jolts from the fog of sorrow hanging in the air. 

“I’ll see you later, man, an’ I’ll make sure to bring you those flowers you like.” He tells him, and miraculously, the shadow of a smile flits over Danny’s mouth. “Y’better be here when I get back, alright? I’ll kick y’fucking ass if you’re not.” 

Jason bites back a huff, his mouth upturning in a wobble. I will, he thinks, and watches Danny trail out of the graveyard with his hands in his pockets. He waits until he’s disappeared behind the gate before following.   

Guilt is a thing with claws, and Jason leaves the cemetery with it eating his tongue. But he makes sure Danny gets back to his hotel safe before he slinks back to Crime Alley; he might not be a ghost anymore, but he can still trail behind Danny like he is. 

Chapter Text

A few weeks after Danny’s visit to Gotham, he buys an apartment in the city. It’s this little thing, a one bedroom on the same street he grew up in. In Crime Alley. When he tells his parents, they protest heavily. They don’t think it's safe. They think he should reconsider. There were plenty of apartments and places to live somewhere else. And what about college? 

College is not in the cards for Danny, and now he isn’t sure what he wants to do, now that being an astronaut is off the table. It’d be a waste of money to go without a goal in mind, he thinks. He says he’ll take a gap year and apply at one of the community colleges funded by the Wayne Corporation, possibly. It just wasn’t in his cards right now. 

“If things get tough,” He says at dinner that night, “then I can talk to the Waynes. I’m friends with the family, remember?” He ended up getting Bruce’s number in his phone again before he left — he’s not sure what that means, he thinks (he hopes) it means that his worries were all for nothing, — and in the process got Tim’s as well. They don’t talk much, Danny isn’t sure what to say. But he sends Tim memes whenever he comes across one and thinks he’ll like. Tim sends memes back in return.   

His parents do remember. They remember. They also remember the horrified shriek that echoed through the house when Danny learned of Jason’s murder. They remember running up the stairs and bursting into their son’s room and finding him sobbing into his sister’s arms, curled up like a little kid, like he was in pain. He lost his voice that day, stuck like a rabbit with its throat caught in a trap between screaming out his grief and sobbing it. 

They’re still not sure if they should let him go. 

In the end, Danny wins them out, and he lets them help him search for an apartment. They take a break from their lab work to help search for cheap furniture to buy. They may have more money than when they were in Gotham, but that frugal part of you never fully goes away. They all agree that they don’t want Danny to be seen carrying in nice-looking furniture when he moves in. 

He ends up with a basic set, all mismatched, and in the warm summer of June, his parents rent out a u-haul and drive him down to Gotham to move in. It takes them a day to get there. They meet the landlord when they arrive;, a skinny and frail old man with wispy white hair and a wrinkled face. He gives Danny the keys and tells him what apartment number he is, and then he leaves. 

His parents help him move in. They help him carry his heavy furniture up to the second floor, where his apartment is. Danny isn’t sure if he wants them to help. His mom and dad are strong, but they are getting old;, closer to their fifties now that their children are grown. His dad’s hair is slowly beginning to thin, and rather than the white eating at the sides of his head, it now streaks through his hair like salt-and-pepper. His mom’s hair is graying out too, and there are more lines in their faces than he remembers there being. 

When he voices his concerns, his mom laughs spiritedly and says that they may be getting old, but they are still as spry as when they were in their twenties. Danny isn’t sure if he believes them or not. He can see his dad struggle a bit when they return to get his bed frame, and they have to take a break before they go back down for the rest of their things. 

Five years ago, his dad could do this without breaking a sweat. It forces a heavy thing in the back of Danny’s throat. (He is less afraid of his own death than he is of his loved ones, and while he has always felt rocky with his parents, he still loves them more than anything else.) 

Danny’s apartment is exactly as he would have expected it to be: shabby and worn through. The entire room smells like stale cigarette smoke and weed, with nicotine stains the wall in partnership with poorly covered bullet holes, and stains in the carpet that are a color he can’t discern. The fridge has a broken light and when he tries to turn on the gas stove, it click-click-clicks before lighting, fire fwooshing out while the smell of gas fills the air. There’s rat droppings in the cupboards and the closet-like bathroom is just as bad. 

The ghostly part of him can sense the heavy stench of death in the room; people have died in this room. People have died in every room of this building, he knows. They have died on the streets outside, and in the alleys squeezed between them. He can feel it like a heavy fog in the air. 

It is painfully nostalgic, a bittersweet feeling in his chest that he grimaces to. Secondhand sorrow coils between his sternum for all the dead surrounding him.

When the last box is placed in his apartment, his parents offer to help unpack. They are hesitant to leave and Danny knows it, although he doesn’t know if it’s from empty nest syndrome or because it's Gotham. He thinks it might be both. He is their youngest child finally leaving home to a city known for its danger. 

He knows they’ll never forget their time here, he knows they’ll never forget his childhood here. 

“Are you sure you don’t want us to stay behind, sweetie?” His mother asks, a frown she tries to hide settled in the creases of her face. She fiddles with her hands, a nervous habit Danny has since noticed when she feels truly unsure and doesn’t need to hide it. Hesitancy looms over her like a rain cloud. 

His dad jumps in hastily, splaying his hands and smiling painfully wide to hide the glistening in his eyes. “You’re mother’s right! We can help you get everything set up, champ. I could probably do something with that stove of yours to make it faster!” He says, his voice still booming like it always does, even if there’s a stutter in his teeth. 

It makes Danny’s heart squeeze, knowing just how much they care. It was hard last summer, telling him that he was the Phantom. Terrifying, actually. They couldn’t comprehend it. He hadn’t felt his heart beat that fast in years when he stood in front of them at the kitchen table and told them he was a halfa, begging them to believe that ghosts weren’t inherently evil. 

His parents were people of science, however, and after much, much shock, they slowly came to terms with it. How could they not? The evidence was right in front of them. Their son was dead-alive. Alive-dead. Somewhere stuck in the between. The tears they shed that night could fill a river, moving from the kitchen to the living room as Danny explained how he died. 

(When Danny tells them that he died after a week Jason did, his mom and dad look horrified. Mom covers her mouth when he adds that it was his idea to go inside it, his dad looks ashy pale, gripping his pant legs so tight that his knuckles turn white. There is a conclusion coming to their minds that he can tell they don’t like.) 

(“You’ve always hated our inventions, Danny.” Mom says in a hushed voice, and Danny winces at the wording, sinking into the back of the cushions in shame. He never thought that his parents noticed. Mom quickly grabs his arm, “No, no, there’s nothing to be ashamed of Danny. We were… perhaps too careless with our inventions, too enthusiastic. You had every right to hate the things we made when they had a tendency to… to malfunction.”)  

(Malfunction is a delicate way of putting it, is a polite way of putting it, when Danny remembers every time they had to evacuate their old apartment complex because whatever half-baked creation his parents made inevitably blew up into ash and smoke. There were soot marks permanently burned into the ceiling when they left.) 

(Her hand slides down and grabs his, and she cups it in both of her hands, squeezing tightly. He forces himself to look up, and there is a look like her heart breaking when he stares into his mother’s eyes. “You’ve always avoided the lab after we moved, Danny. And you had every right to, why on Earth did you ever think about going into the portal?”)

(Danny struggles to come up with an adequate answer; a way to verbalize what came over him that day five years ago. The answer is there, hanging in the air like a knot in a noose, waiting to be tightened. He opens his mouth, and then closes it.)

(Finally, with a tongue made of lead, he shrugs lamely and looks away. “I didn’t know there was an on button inside.” He mumbles, and despite being the truth it feels like a lie. It is the truth. He didn’t know there was an on button inside it. So he didn’t care what happened.)

(Something dulls in mom’s eyes, like she thought of something else that Danny hadn’t said. Her eyes shimmer, and she squeezes them shut, breathing in so deep that it shakes. And then she pulls him into a hug, a hand burying into his hair and pressing him close. “It must have hurt so much, sweetheart. I’m so sorry.”)

(It is something that Danny doesn’t expect her to say, it’s like missing the last step of the stairs. It startles him so much he laughs this short, bark of a thing, broken in its melody. He feels his dad press against his back and wrap his big arms around them, his nose pushed into his hair.) 

(Because yeah. Yeah, it did hurt. It hurt more than anything else he’s ever felt before ( that was a lie. He’d hurt worse just a few days prior to walking inside) . It had torn him apart and sewn him back together again, only to undo its work like Penelope unraveling her shroud, again and again. The pain was nothing he ever spoke to Sam or Tucker about, and it was something they never brought up.) 

(No, that’s not true. They brought it up, once every blue moon, and Tucker would call it a zap. As if Danny only experienced a mild static shock. Like it was painless. It’s a pretty lie that Danny lets him and Sam believe.)

(His eyes sting and tears immediately wobble into his vision, coming up with such a force that he doesn’t even need to blink before it spills over. “Yeah.” He forces out, voice unexpectedly rough and cracking. “Yeah, it- it hurt. A lot.”)

He tells them about fighting the Lunch Lady a month later. He tells them about finding Jason. It comes spilling out like a waterfall. 

(“I found him, mom.” He says, holding onto her tight while she keeps him tucked under his chin like a little kid. The secret of Jason being Robin stays hidden under his tongue, it is not his secret to tell. Not his identity to expose. He grips her tighter. “I found him, mom. Right there in the Ghost Zone, and he was my Jason. He wasn’t an echo or a— an imprint of him.”)

(Mom is silent; quiet and attentive, and so is dad, who rubs his large hands up and down Danny’s spine in an attempt to soothe him. It only works a little. Danny breathes in like a gasp as the urge to cry overcomes him again. He always avoids talking about Jason, his grief is like a never-healing scab that can be picked off at any time. It is ingrained into his core.) 

(“And then I lost him.” He forces out, a sob layering under his words that he chokes on and swallows. The hand on his back stills, and he can feel mom and dad breathe in like a question. He turns his head and pushes it into mom’s shoulder. “He disappeared. Just— just gone.”)

(“And he didn’t move on.” He says, voice snarling like teeth biting before his mom can ask, because he knows that’s what she was going to ask. It’s what Sam and Tucker asked when he came to them in tears hours after he found Jason gone. It’s what Jazz said when he finally told her about it. It’s what every one of his ghosts asked when he told them about it and begged, wailed, pleaded for their help.) 

(Danny grits his teeth and tries not to dig his nails into mom’s clothes as a fresh wave of tears run down his face. “His haunt is still there. If Jason really moved on it would have disappeared with him. That’s how it works. But it’s still in the Zone, so Jason’s out there. I just don’t know where.”)  

(Sam once asks him why Danny didn’t just move on from it a year after Jason’s disappearance. She asked him why he didn’t give it up. Danny nearly saw red, and nearly bit her head off for it. It was incomprehensible to him to just stop looking for Jason, to give up. Not when he was out in the zone somewhere. Because he had to be in the zone.)

(Danny once tried to take Jason through the portal with him, and much like what happened to Kitty, it didn’t work. Jason was too tied to the Ghost Zone to leave.) 

(Some bonds are just unbreakable, he thinks. Bonds forged through blood and time and trust, and when you’re on the streets of Gotham, you hoard what little trust you have in someone like a dragon with its gold. It is scarcely given and fiercely kept.) 

(“I’ve been looking for him.” Danny whispers when talking becomes too hard for him, when it runs the risk of him crying. “When- when I’m not fighting ghosts or, or in school or with my friends, I’ve been looking for him.” He has explored the Ghost Zone in every reach he can. He has met so many people. He’s met the ghosts of aliens from planets in every corner of the galaxy. He has met gods and god-like beings and their disciples.) 

(He’s met famous scholars and writers (he’s gotten the autographs of all of Jason’s favorite authors). He has found entire cities that are mirrors of the living, looking-glass versions of their mortal counterparts just like Gotham.)

(He’s visited the ghostly vision of Gotham so many times, and he avoids the imprint of Wayne Manor like the plague. There are newspapers that he reads. There are the ghosts of Martha and Thomas Wayne in many of them.)

(Jason’s haunt connects to Wayne Manor, but it is also the street they grew up in. It is a small brick building with a door that leads to Jason’s room. A ghost knows when someone enters their haunt, it alerts them like a doorbell in the back of their mind. A foreign signature in a place drenched in your own.)

(Danny visits it every time he goes into the Ghost Zone. It’s always his first stop.) 

(He tells his parents all of it. He tells them of the ghosts he’s met, of the places he’s seen. And when he feels brave, he tells them about Rath and the terror that his future self brings him. He keeps some details hidden, the ones that he can afford to keep without muddling up the story.) 

(Rath is a teeny, scrawny little thing. A funhouse mirror version of Danny himself; a manifestation of the rot Gotham’s left in his soul. His grief incarnate, a little boy with charred black arms and leaking eyes, in clothes that sag on him. Danny’s childhood wrapped up into one, missing its key component, and drowning in sorrow because of it.)

(He tried speaking to Rath once. That little boy with his voice lost from wailing, but there’s no speaking with grief. It simply just swallows you whole. Rath tilted his head at him, and lunged with a snarl to gouge his eyes out. There was no reasoning with him, not anymore.) 

(Danny speaks and speaks and speaks until he can’t think of anything else to speak of. He is tired and sad, and it feels like his heart has been ripped out and rubbed raw again. And yet, he also feels so much better. Like a long, heavy weight has been taken off his shoulders.)

(Yeah, last summer was hard. His parents walked on eggshells around him, and they forced themselves to unlearn their bias of ghosts. It was more than Danny could have ever dreamed of, and when they felt ready for it, they asked him more about the Zone.)

He smiles sadly at his dad, “I think fixing the stove can be a priority another time.” He says, watching him wilt and his smile fall. Jack Fenton was always so good at making himself look like a kicked puppy. “I can handle unpacking by myself, I promise.” 

His parents still look so unsure, like they want to argue. Danny watches his mom purse her lips tightly, confliction running across her face like a datastream. She takes dad’s hand, squeezing their fingers together despite the droop in her shoulders. 

“Oh, alright then, I suppose.” She relents, her hand placing on dad’s arm. “I guess we could go; we’re just going to miss you so much.” 

Tears seem to have won over his dad, and Jack Fenton sniffs back before he can cry properly. “Our little boy, all grown up.” He says, voice wobbling. It makes Danny laugh, and it makes his heart pang. His smile grows impossibly wider and so much fonder. “You’ve become such a kind, wonderful young man, Danno. We’re so proud of you.” 

Danny laughs again, and it cracks. “You’re gonna make me cry, dad.” (He feels a welling of guilt in his gut that he ignores — he doesn’t feel like a kind man. He doesn’t feel like a good one either. Not with what he plans to do.) 

His father holds out his arms in hopefulness, “One last hug for your old man before we head out?” He asks, mustering up a smile on his face. 

Of course he takes him up on it. Danny barrels into him, nearly knocking dad over with an oomph. He’s as tall as him now, but he still feels little in his bear hugs. With arms wrapping around his middle, Danny hugs his father tight and breathes him in one last time. 

“Careful there!” He laughs, patting Danny’s back roughly. “You’ll break my ribs with that ghostly strength of yours!” But he holds on just as tight.

Out of spite, Danny bends back and lifts him off his feet, laughing when dad tenses up and nearly scrambles out of surprise. His mom laughs with him, stepping back to give them room for the few seconds that dad is in the air. 

When it’s her turn, Danny has to hunch to hug her. Something bittersweet to him as she plants a kiss on his forehead and says that he’ll always be her baby. “Even if you do have that horrid smoking habit.” She adds on with a disapproving eyebrow raise. 

Danny turns red in embarrassment, and walks them back to the GAV. Gothamites of all kind slow to stop and boggle at the monstrous, road-illegal thing that is parallel-parked next to the curbside. In the past, Danny would have died with mortification to be seen with it. Now it just makes him laugh. 

Before he goes back into the apartment building, he buys a newspaper from a nearby convenience store.  

The first thing he does when he gets back up to his room is one: make a mental note to buy a bicycle chain lock for the door. The locks jiggle and there are splinters along the side that show signs of it being broken into in the past. The second thing he does is pull his cigarettes out of his pocket and light one. 

Danny starts to unpack with a cigarette hanging from his mouth, placing the newspaper he bought onto the counter. He has a cheap loveseat that he pushes off to the side, and he moves the boxes into the kitchen. It’s a matter of organization that Danny has to think about before he does anything. 

It’s as he’s pushing the sofa up against the wall facing the windows that his phone rings a familiar tune: Sam. The phone is fished out before he can think about it and when he stares down at the screen, he realizes it's a facetime call. 

He presses answer and walks over to prop his phone up onto the counter. The smiling faces of Sam and Tucker greet him. Immediately, Danny grins. “Hey Danny.” Sam greets, smiling a dark-painted lazy thing. From the background it looks like they’re in Tucker’s room. Sam is in Tucker’s desk chair, and Tucker is behind her, leaning against it. “Have you moved in yet?” 

Danny pulls the cigarette from his mouth and huffs, a cloud of smoke following his breath. “Yeah! It’s a shithole.” He grins lopsidedly, and his feet carry him off to the side to allow Sam and Tucker view of his apartment. He lets thirty seconds pass, allowing the both of them to really see the rest of the room. And then he steps back into frame. 

Sam and Tucker both look like they’re trying not to look judgemental, like they’re trying to hide a grimace that Danny sees anyway with the small turns at the corner of their mouths. He grins wider, mirth filling his lungs. “I know, it looks awful doesn’t it?”

“It’s— it’s not so bad.” Sam says with a strain in her voice, a forced smile on her face that tries to be reassuring. Tucker nods along readily, and he looks just as unsure as Sam does. Danny stifles laughter behind his teeth. 

“No, no, it looks bad,” He takes a drag of his cigarette, shaking his head. “You can say it, I won’t get offended. It’s an apartment in Crime Alley! Of course it looks bad.” 

Sam remains silent, a rearing of her stubbornness showing itself. Tucker takes a different approach, and heaves a dramatic sigh of relief, slumping like a weight. “Okay, you’re right. It looks bad.” He frowns, “Sorry, man.” 

While Danny snorts, Sam sighs. “Yeah, it looks bad. What are those stains?” She asks, and both she and Tucker lean closer in tandem to the screen, eyes squinting at the floor behind him. Danny glances at the carpet, and shrugs. 

“Blood, probably.” He says, and while years in Amity Park have accustomed him to a clean environment, the desensitization of Gotham still remains. Tucker and Sam both make faces and lean away, as if the stain itself was capable of passing through to them. “Yeah, there are bullet holes in the walls.” 

“Are you sure it’s safe to be there?” Tucker asks, a furrow appearing between his brows. He adjusts his glasses and leans against the chair. Sam is frowning heavily, and Danny can already see her thinking up of a new way to fix the problem. 

“Oh, absolutely not.” Danny tells him cheerily, taking a last hit of his cigarette before placing the dead stick onto the counter. He itches for another one. Instead he walks over to the shelf his parents brought in and starts moving it. “It’s Crime Alley, Tuck. Safe isn’t even in its vocabulary.” 

Tucker and Sam look like they’ve both swallowed a lemon.

“But it’s where I want to be right now.” He says, grunting quietly when the shelf is against the wall he wants it to be; near the short hallway leading to the front door. He can push it in front of it if someone tries to break in. “And Crime Alley’s apartments are the only ones I can really afford right now without mooching off my parents, and I’d rather not depend on them.” 

He can hear the disapproving hesitance from where he stands. And he ignores it. 

Danny walks back into frame, lifting up a box onto the counter. He hums lightly, fingers run over the tape keeping it shut. “Why do you even want to be in Gotham, Danny?” Sam asks, and she sounds genuinely perplexed. Danny stills. “I thought this place only had bad memories for you.” 

His blood turns cold, and like a dime being flipped his slow heartbeat fills his ears. “It does.” He replies automatically, before he can think. Shit, shit. He knows that Sam or Tucker would ask that question, and yet he still feels unprepared for it. His heart pulses quickly against his ribcage, knocking, asking him what he’s going to tell them that isn’t the truth. 

Danny stammers, “I mean— I just— I guess I felt nostalgic.” He says, and it's a weak defense. He looks away, finding himself instinctively scratching his jaw. A new tick of his when he’s nervous. From his peripherals, he sees Sam and Tucker both narrow their eyes at him. 

He cannot tell them the real reason why he’s moved back to Gotham. He can’t tell them of the little secret and vow he told himself five years ago, the one that’s been left to fester and burn like an open wound close to his core. The one that, if he thinks too much about it, sends a searing hot electricity through him, filling him from crown to toe top-full of direst wrath.  

(Danny was always the angrier one in the duo of Jason and Danny. He was always the one with glass in his mouth, cutting his teeth and tongue so that he could spit blood at the world around them. His knuckles had more blood and bruises on it than skin, once upon a time. All because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He has grown from it, that fury has turned to a small simmering candle.)

(But sometimes, sometimes it rears its head, and electricity will buzz under Danny’s skin. There is lightning before the thunder, the second before a fist pulled to punch lands, the spark before it becomes a blaze.) 

He stumbles over his words, and then sighs long and low, drooping his head. “I… was thinking that I can’t avoid this place forever.” He says, and the best lies always have the truth in it. Because it’s not a lie, not completely. But it’s not close enough to the truth either. “And that maybe if I came back, I’d be able to do something about those bad memories. Make them better or make it hurt less.” 

Like wool over their eyes, it fools Sam and Tucker. Their narrowed eyes soften, and Danny feels like a snake is in his lungs as they both adopt their own versions of gentleness on their faces. “Oh, Danny.” Sam breathes out, and the snake squeezes, “Of course, we understand.”

Tucker nods, smiling at him. “Yeah, bro, that’s really brave of you. I know it can’t be easy coming back.” He says, “Maybe you can reconnect with the Waynes again, you always thought well of Mister Wayne whenever you came back from visiting.”

Danny smiles weakly, the gesture cutting into his cheeks like a knife. Perhaps he could. He was still upset with Bruce for hiding Jason’s killer from him. But he doesn’t hate him. Maybe five years ago, he did, when the death of Jason was still fresh in his mind and freshly bleeding in his heart. Now he just doesn’t know what to think of him. He was Batman. Jason was Robin, and the Joker killed Robin. 

It would need to be something he’d have to speak to Bruce about in person, he thinks, in order to resolve it. To hear his judgment on it and make an opinion from there. Danny has learned in the last five years, much to Jazz’s smug delight, that talking to people about something he was upset about did make him feel better. 

The conversation slips on from there into something more light, more breathable. And while they talk, Danny unpacks. He sets up his bed in the corner of the room, adjacent to the windows, and unpacks his cheap TV and table stand. It’s directly across from the couch, in front of the windows. He puts up knicks and knacks he’s collected over the years on the shelves.

When he puts up the curtains, he notices that more than one frame jiggles loosely. Sam makes a comment on the musty stains permanently dyed into the glass, and Danny talks about getting something to fix the cracks. Gotham winters can get brutal, and even if he can withstand the cold, doesn’t mean everything else in his apartment can. 

“Oh, watch this.” He says halfway through unpacking, and pulls out a stick of thick white chalk from a box. “This is something I learned from Clockwork a while back; I think he knew I was going to move to Gotham.” He grins sillily, popping into the camera frame to show them. “I wonder how?” 

Sam rolls her eyes, smiling while Tucker huffs. “It’s not like he’s the Master of Time and can see all past, present, and future.” Tucker snarks. 

Danny hums lightly, curt like he isn’t sure he believes Tucker, and walks to a piece of bare wall not yet blocked by furniture. He starts to draw on it. The chalk shimmers with faint ectoplasm on the plaster. 

“Uhh…” Tucker’s voice cuts through, “Are you sure you should be doing that? Won’t you get in trouble for that?”

“There are bullet holes in the wall, Tucker.” Danny retorts, arching his hand to make a big circle. “I don’t think the landlord is gonna care if I get washable chalk on his walls.” Inside the circle, he inscribes the symbols of the Infinite Realms. “I don’t think he’d be able to see it anyways, he was really old.” 

When he is done, Danny steps back to admire his work. It’s not bad, he thinks, for a lack of practice. He tosses the chalk off to the side, it lands on the couch and rolls back into the cushions. Ectoplasm heats under his hand, slowly glowing from his fingertips before stretching down the rest of his palm. 

Danny’s fingers press against the wall, into the center of the circle. The result is immediate, ectoplasm is siphoned off his hand and into the circle. It glows, and then swirls. He steps off to the side for Sam and Tucker to watch its transformation. The circle fills with a swirling pool of ectoplasm, like a smaller version of the basement portal, and then it warps and stretches. 

It fills out a rectangular shape, shifting like taffy being pulled this way and that, before settling into a solid shape. It solidifies, and instead of a wall there is a glowing purple door, warped in nature and seemingly shifting like a trick of the eyes. He can hear the gentle hum of the zone standing next to it, and can see the carving of the circle in the wood. 

He gestures dramatically, grinning from ear to ear. “Ta-da~” He sings, “A door to my haunt! For whenever I feel like visiting it.” He pats the wood, making a strange thunk-thunk sound. “And then watch this.” 

Danny touches the circle again, and the door twists and recedes like water going down a drain. The circle flashes bright green, and then fades into nothing on the wall, invisible to the naked eye. “I can hide it whenever I want! So if I ever invite someone over—” which he doubts, “—I won’t have to worry about them asking, ‘Hey Danny? Why is there a creepy fucking door in your studio apartment?’”

He gets a pair of laughs for his efforts, and Danny grins wider. 

Sam and Tucker have to end the call when Danny is nearly done unpacking, leaving him alone with only his thoughts and the Gotham ambience outside. There were only a few boxes left, and they promise to call him tomorrow. He tells them that they better keep that promise. 

The silence that follows after they leave feels somberly, as if the reality of moving in has finally set in and filled the air with its loneliness. With its change. Finally, Danny lets the strangeness of moving back to Gotham hit him when he reaches the last box, and he stops to take another smoke break to let it settle. 

It feels so strange to be back in Gotham, he thinks. He’s all grown up, or almost grown up. He can vote and pay taxes, but he doesn’t feel much older than he was at fourteen. There’s a disconnect that makes him feel sad. 

There are cars running outside, driving by. He can only catch glimpses of them, his apartment faces an alleyway. There are dogs barking in the distance, strays he bets. It’s already dark out, and he wonders if he looks out the window he would see the bat-signal shining through the night and staining the permanent cloud that hangs over Gotham. 

Bruce would be so disappointed if he learned the reason for Danny’s return to Gotham. But Danny’s not here for him. He’s here for someone far more important. And like that, the simmering anger that has tucked itself into the furthest corners of his heart starts slipping through. His heart has teeth, ready to strike and snarl and bite.  

He crushes the cigarette in his hand and throws it away. When he opens the last box, it is with hands that tremble and with a face of stone. With a delicateness he does not feel, he reaches in and pulls a corkboard from the box. On the corner frame is a small, near inconspicuous carving of another ghost rune. 

Danny hangs it up on an empty space on the wall, out of sight from the window. It’s plain, and he has nothing to pin to it. He presses the small rune on the corner, pushing ectoplasm into it. Unlike the door, it does not twist and warp and shape itself into something new. Instead it bursts into green flame, eating away at the board and revealing the same thing underneath it, just in dark blue-black-purple. 

Now this board, this board Danny has something to pin to it. The newspaper he bought earlier sits abandoned on the counter, and Danny unrolls it with something like viciousness in his chest. On the front page is an image of a damaged street, and above it is titled: “JOKER STRIKES AGAIN, 3 DEAD AND 27 INJURED”

Danny rips out the first page, he rips out every mention of him. His hands shake and threaten to crumple the paper as he turns back to the board, there is hot blood pounding in his ears. There is an impending sense of finally in his chest, like a setting sun giving the stage to a starless night. There is a stern set in his jaw, five years of festering rage rushing forth like a tidal wave, threatening to make his vision swim. 

It would be so easy, he thinks, to go out as Phantom right now and hunt the clown down. It would only take a night. All it would take is a night, and then he could sink his hands into the Joker’s chest and rip out his heart where he stood. It would be so easy.  

The thought alone forces Danny to stop as he is hit with another rush of fury, really making his head and vision swim. Thorny vines wrap around his throat, making it hard to breathe. He stares at a spot on the wall until the shaking passes. 

If he wants to be discreet about this, then he can’t do it now. Even if he wants to. He doesn’t want witnesses. He doesn’t want an audience. He made a mistake, telling Red Hood about his grief. He wasn’t sure what he was thinking. Perhaps he wasn’t thinking at all. But he can only hope that the Hood hasn’t mentioned it to Bruce. He knows it hasn’t been long since they started working together. He hopes that the Hood has already forgotten about it. 

He pins the newspaper clippings onto the black-blue-board, and stands back. It’s bare now, but it won’t be forever. 

He presses the circle again, and the pinboard reverts back to its original blank state. 

Chapter Text

The first thing Danny does when he wakes up — sprawled across his bed, the insistent blaring of his phone alarm shouting in his ears — is groan, and shove his face into his pillow. Low and rumbling, and vibrating through his small bedroom. The sound clings into the corners, then bounces back to his ears seconds after he stops — and he only stops because his throat tickles, catches, and then forces him to cough. 

Without moving his face from his pillow, Danny reaches for the pack of cigarettes stashed under it. At the same time, he reaches with his other hand for the lighter sitting on the edge of his hobbled-together nightstand. 

He didn’t fall asleep until three am last night. He was busy listening to the building, too busy adjusting, too busy eavesdropping on the outside hum and buzz of Gotham’s sneaking nightlife. He never left his apartment, but leaned against the creaky old window and tried to see the Red Hood roar past the street on his motorbike. Tried to see if he could spot Batman and his Robin from the window, if they would fly over the rooftops like they sometimes did when he was a kid and it was too cold to birdwatch from outside. 

(It was rare, but they sometimes did see them. A blink in the night, a split second where a shadow passes over the alleyway. They always had to be quiet, and it was always late.) 

The abusive couple that’s always fighting have yet to start their morning arguing — and Danny bets that there will be, there always is. They live below him, and he could hear the man shouting at the top of his lungs last night about something or other. It’s been ages since he last had to deal with that, but his ears adjust quickly, and his mind tunes them out. 

There’s a family of four on his left, an overworked father and an overworked mother and her two young children. He saw the mom coming in with an infant on her hip and a toddler clinging to her hand, groceries hanging from her elbow while he was leaving to go for his own food run. 

(For a moment, he thought about offering her help — but kindness doesn’t come costless in Gotham, and sympathy is often spit on. The likelihood of her agreeing was second to none, with her frenetic eyes and messy hair and white-knuckle grip on her keys, everyone has the eyes of a cornered animal. Danny bites his tongue and averts his gaze.) 

(It makes a twinge of guilt twang his ribcage, but Gotham isn’t Amity. They have their own rules here.) 

It’s not like it matters anyways what time he goes to bed, Danny hasn’t slept well since he died. Discontentment and unrest keeps his heavy eyelids open, inscribed into his bones like an itch he can’t reach. Not by choice. Too much left unfinished, nowhere to sleep—

He groans again, raspier and throat vibrating, chasing the ghostly buzz out from his head, and lifts his head from his pillow. Very little light spills into the room from the window, casting a hazy gray hue across the floors. Danny blinks the sleep from his eyes, and with his lighter pinched between his ring finger and thumb, he snags a cigarette from the box with the remaining two. On his stomach, the lighter click-click-clicks, and spits out a small flame.

The cigarette lights, the lighter clicks shut, and Danny catches the cig between his teeth and flips over onto his back, scarred-arm slinging over his eyes to block out the light. His limbs groan in stiff relief, shaking away the last dredges of not-enough-sleep exhaustion from his marrow, and he sinks into the mattress with a nosing sigh. 

It’s weird to be back. It’s weird to be back. The foreign strangeness, the old familiarity, it sunk in deep after his call with Sam and Tucker, and it still now a day later clings to him. He doubts it’ll go away anytime soon. 

It’s so nice to be back. He wasn’t expecting that. He thought it would hurt. It does, but it hurts the same way pressing down on a dark bruise does. Like a tension bleeding out from his shoulders that he didn’t realize was there, a relief filing through like the soothing unclenching of his jaw.   

Gotham is just as he remembers it. Towering, sprawling skyscrapers clawing their way up to the sky, pointing their crooked finger roofs to the clouds, as if demanding a God for the answers of its own creation. There is no God up there, merely the smog staring down at them, like it always does. The sun is awake, he can hear the city slowly waking up too. The nightlife settling down; the daylife rustling up. 

Crime Alley smells like booze and nicotine, like rotting garbage and dried blood and drugs. Smoke and gunpowder cling to the discolored bricks of the buildings around him, sinking into the atoms of the stone until it’s fused to it. Garbage is glued down by grime and chewing tobacco and unnameable substances, to the corners in the alleyways. Huddled between the plastic are the homeless, clinking their morning beer bottles together with their evening beer bottles.  

It’s all familiar like the old blanket you find in the attic is, the one you used to chew on as a kid until it was discolored and fraying and falling apart at the seams, until it could no longer be washed because it’d been washed so many times already. It’s still warm when you wrap it around your shoulders, and it still smells like dust and spit and the skin of your child self. 

It’s familiar like nostalgia is; aching and bittersweet, burrowing behind the heart and leaning against it. 

When his cigarette is nothing but a stub, Danny crushes it against his palm and gets up. The burn will heal without a trace before lunchtime. The chill of the morning hits him immediately, and goosebumps rise up against his skin in the time it takes him to cross the room. His shoulder pulses in discomfort, the muscles aching as it tends to do before it rains and in the cold. 

His hair is a mess, sticking in places that defy the laws of physics, and when he runs his fingers through it, they snaggle and tug on little knots. He pulls his hand away, and slides it to rub the nape of his neck instead, a jaw-cracking yawn pulling out of his chest. 

He pauses at the doorway, and then with a quick flick of his wrist, the cigarette box and lighter fly off the bed and into his awaiting hands.  

Danny needs a job. 

In hindsight, he should’ve found one before he moved. He was just… busy. Distracted. It’s a failure on his part, one he needs to rectify immediately. There’s only so much money he has in his savings, and it’s not enough to live off forever. Rent is due at the end of the month, it’s going to take a chunk out of it already. 

He already knows this will be hellish, as if getting a job in Gotham wasn’t hard enough already. His resume is practically non-existent; he never had the time for a part-time job after his accident. Too unreliable, too unpredictable. He tried it once, and he was fired by the end of the summer. Too many ghosts, too many fights, too many unexcused absences and disappearances.  

It’s a miracle he even graduated high school. 

He’ll make do. Somehow. He’ll find something to sustain himself. 

Oddjobs if he has to. He could work at the docks, they’re always needing new people. Retail might work too, even if the thought of dealing with customers all day makes his skin crawl and his spine tingle — he’s heard the horror stories from Valerie. 

The cheap coffee maker buzzes in the corner, and Danny watches from his perch atop the island counter as, after a few seconds of loud grinding, it spits out coffee from the nozzle and into a thrifted mug that Tucker bought him. It’s yellowy-white, with big bolded letters printed along the side that say; “Joke’s on you, I’m dead inside” but where the word ‘instead’ was, was thick black sharpie scribbled against the ceramics, blocking the lettering out. So instead it looks like it says; ‘Joke’s on you, I’m dead’.  

(Allegedly, Tucker bought it that way, or so he says. He knew Danny would get a kick out of it. Tucker was right.)

It’s his favorite mug. 

The moment the pouring stops, Danny reaches for the mug. He leans across the gap for it, legs crossed and core straining, one hand digs into the ledge to prevent himself from falling straight to the floor. 

— BANG! — 

Muffled, loud, as if someone slammed their fist against a wall. It lurches through the floor right below him, and he would’ve mistaken it for a gunshot. Except Danny knows what gunshots sound like, and this bang doesn’t ring in his ears, it’s too sluggish, and he hears no faint thud below him of a body hitting the ground, nor a scream. 

Regardless, his slow heart flinches in his chest, and Danny flails helplessly out of unwanted surprise. 

Yelling burbles up through the floorboards like blood from an open wound anyways, first just the man, but then the woman rises up to meet him to create an ugly cacophonous duet, a blur of mindless arguing and swears that’d make a sailor blush. Danny catches himself on the lip of the counter, just barely preventing himself from breaking his teeth or jostling the coffeemaker. 

Irritation flares its ugly head in his chest, popping up like a bursting ember, glowing soft and pulsating behind his ribs. It burns like an acid reflux, and as the yelling continues, and as Danny’s racing heart slows, his mouth capsizes into a scowl. 

There it is, he thinks sarcastically, pushing himself back up and steadying carefully, there’s the rooster crow. He knew it was going to happen — there’s always one in Gotham. Even in his absence he still remembers how the city’s pulse beats, how the cogs tick beneath his feet. But, despite knowing it was going to happen at some point, it doesn’t stop the annoyance from flooding through. 

He reaches for his mug again, and grabs it without any distractions. It warms his death-chilled fingers to the point of burning. If he tilts his head and strains his ears, Danny can hear the cars outside and their engines humming, rumbling. The sound of the city coming to life, crawling out of its stone and concrete mausoleum, letting the bats and the birds back in to rest. 

Danny lifts the mug to his mouth, and sips silently. He stares out his window, where if he tilts back, he can just barely see a sliver of the streets and the cars beginning to roll past. Good morning, Gotham, he thinks idly, the tip of his tongue burning. His eyes flick away from the light, to his cork board hanging from the wall.

It was bare last night when he pinned up the newspaper on its mirror counterpart. But now he’d gone and pinned up photos on them. His graduation photo with Sam and Tucker in one of the corners, the three of them grinning wide and blinding in their black caps and gowns. Danny was the only one without a cord. There’s one from his Junior Prom; they all went together. There’s a few of him and Jazz, two with his parents.

The rest are of him and Jason throughout the ages.  

He hates—

Something thick rises in his throat, a spider black and fat and hairy crawling up and sitting on the back of his tongue. Tickling the soft part of his mouth and hollowing out his throat, then clenching it shut, coaxing him to gag on air. 

He hates—

The space between his ribs and lungs hollows out a core and begins to warm, rising up heat in his veins and causing a simmer. A boil. A bubbling. Behind his eyes there’s a burning feeling, his chest twists into a knot, Danny grits his teeth. 

He hates—

Humming fills his ears, creeping out from the back of his head, low, sweet, crooning, awful. Winter wind snap at the shell of his ears, except it’s summer and Danny’s inside, and it's biting the edge of his skin like it ought to make him bleed. It roots and burrows under his bones and begins to bleed inwards to his heart.

He forces himself to look away.  

He hates that all his photos of him and Jason stop at fourteen. He hates that he doesn’t have any photos of Jason graduating, that he doesn’t have any photos of the two of them celebrating their sixteenth birthdays together. That he doesn’t have any photos celebrating their eighteenth. There should be more. There should be more. More, more, more. More photos, more memories, more everything.  

They never thought they’d make it this far. He hates that it was only him who did. 

What would he sound like?

What would he look like?

How tall would he be? They were such small kids.

Would he smile the same?

Would he laugh the same? 

He can’t remember the sound of his voice. 

The lightbulb bursts, the pop of glass shattering filling his ears. Danny flinches, he didn’t— that humming — it was the sound of the lights. It was an electrical hum— he didn’t hear it. Either way, he ducks his head on instinct, one hand loosing off his mug to cover the back of his neck and head. 

Shit, he thinks, the seconds ticking in his ears as he remembers how to breathe and what his heart racing against his chest feels like. His blood rushes in his ears, and Danny lifts his head, wide-eyed, to stare at the living room. Flecks and crystals of glass glint against the floor.

Ancients fuck, it’s only been a day. It wasn’t even ten o’clock.

The tension bleeds from his shoulders, draining down his spine, and Danny drops his head back and groans at the ceiling. The fog clearing from his mind with the arch of his neck and the rumble of his throat. That’s another thing he’ll need to add to the list of things to do today. 

Later, later, later. He’ll clean the glass up later, first just— just get out of the apartment first. Job hunting. Pull up his phone and look for listings anywhere. Maybe ask around. 

He did pretty good yesterday when he was getting groceries. He can go two-for-two. 

It’s nice being back in Gotham. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. Doesn’t mean it’s not opening up the never-closed wounds. His poor weeping heart is going to need tissues.  

Danny breathes in slow; quiet through his nose, raises his mug back up to his mouth, and downs the whole cup in one big swig. The coffee burns down his throat, leaks into his chest, and scalds the grief knotting up between his lungs. It melts it down and drips it back to the pit of his stomach where it belongs — for the time being.

“Good morning, Jason.” He says, his heart aching. 

There’s silence.

He jiggles the handle, and when the door of his apartment doesn’t swing open and the locks stay flimsily in place, Danny reluctantly lets go. He needs to get that bicycle lock — or better yet, just replace the whole door when he has the money and chance, — as soon as possible. Just another thing on his expanding list of shit he needs to buy and do. 

Danny pats himself over once, twice, three times; his key and his wallet in his left jacket pocket — the zipper up and shut — his phone and his lighter in the right. His cigarettes in his back pocket, right beside the pocketknife. 

That’s everything, he thinks, breathing out through his nose and turning away from his door.  

Danny squints. 

He squints hard.  

He knows this guy. He absolutely knows this guy, which is— weird. A different kind of weird than the usual weird that he’s grown accustomed to in Amity Park. Granted, he should’ve expected to run into familiar faces in Crime Alley — not everyone has the luxury of being able to leave, after all — but— still. It’s weird. 

It’s like looking into a mirror of the past. 

Standing behind the counter of a corner store he and Jason used to [steal from] frequent often growing up, is a man that couldn’t be a few years older than Danny himself. His hair is dark brown and wavy, shaggy, and pulled back into this itty little spoof of a ponytail off his neck. It’s not very efficient, because there’s hair falling out of it and framing the man’s face. 

He’s shorter than Danny — but that’s not a feat, everyone is shorter than him — with brown skin and dark brown eyes, and a mottled scar stretching from the corner of his mouth up to his ear as if he tried to fight a line of barbed wire and lost. 

The guy hasn’t noticed Danny’s staring.

Danny makes a hesitant step towards the counter, searching for a name to pair the face with — there’s not many kids he can recall that had such unique scarring on their face, so either the guy got it after Danny left, or his memory is worse than he thought— 

No, no wait. Recognition strikes him like a bolt of lightning. Danny straightens up, he remembers now. He leans forward, tests the name on the tip of his tongue, and then calls; “Luis?” the man’s head snaps up, “Luis Narvaez?” 

Luis Narvaez, he was one of the kids that used to beat on him and Jason growing up. He was a few years older than the two of them and had his own little gang of punks out of many in Crime Alley. Danny remembers how he got that scar trying to climb over the barbed fence by the junkyard, his foot got stuck and he landed face first into the wire. 

Fucker hadn’t been able to talk properly until his stitches healed, Danny and Jason had laughed at his expense when they found out. 

(“Maybe a scar will fix his face.” Danny had snickered, filled top to brim with childish cruelty and petty vindication, lacking any sort of sympathy for the kid who’d kicked him in the face and made him bleed on multiple accounts.) 

It’s weird to see him. It’s even weirder that all of the hatred Danny used to hold for him as a kid is all but faded, he thought it would stick with him forever. Except now, nineteen years old, Danny just feels distantly fond, and dare he say it, relieved.  

Luis turns to Danny, and he watches his gaze travel up-up-up— and then reach Danny’s face. He watches as the unease immediately sets in, Luis doesn’t recognize him like Danny does him, and Luis’s eyes set into a suspicious narrow.

He tenses up at the counter, Danny watches his hand disappear under the edge. “Who’s asking?” 

“Danny Fenton,” Danny says, and waits. Luis narrows his eyes further, the shadow of a scowl appearing over his mouth. Nothing, nothing, then — there it is. Recognition. Danny’s lips shift into a lopsided grin. 

Luis’s eyes go from narrow slits to wide saucers in seconds, growing bigger and bigger until Danny has half a mind to believe that they’re going to pop out of his head. Luis looks him up, down, up again, and then repeats a dozen more times until Danny’s standing in front of him in only a few short strides. 

Danny’s grin grows wider until he’s showing all his teeth, laughing under his breath as Luis grips the counter and leans back to look at him. 

“Fenton?” Luis repeats, and when Danny nods, Luis sweeps back over him again. Then he gestures to his hip with his hand, disbelief carves itself into the man’s face like a scratch on stone. “Danny Fenton, runty Danny Fenton? That Danny Fenton?”

“Do you know any other Danny Fenton?” 

Luis doesn’t deign him with a response, merely stares at him like he’s a puzzle he can’t comprehend, looking him up-and-down one more time before running a hand through his hair and pushing back the loose bangs falling in his eyes, “Mierda, creciste alto.” 

Danny snorts. 

“It’s good to see you, man,” Danny says, holding out his hand to Luis experimentally and tugging him forward to pound on his back when Luis takes it. “I can’t believe your ugly mug is still alive.” There’s a bark of laughter, Luis’s hand leagues warmer than Danny’s but equally callused, and he returns the gesture with a harsh slap to Danny’s shoulder blade. 

“Who are you callin’ ugly!” Luis exclaims, words steeped thick in Gotham’s voice, he meets Danny’s grin with a set of baring teeth. It’s inherently tilted, the scarred cheek twisting with the stretched skin.

It’s weird. All that bad blood between them from their youth — gone, dissipated like sugar in water. As if Luis Narvaez didn’t break Danny’s tooth when he was six and cause a hefty dental bill that his parents had to pay off. As if Danny didn’t try and claw his eyes out when he was eight and Luis tried to steal a mars bar Danny stole from this very corner store. 

As if all the blood they have tried to split from the other’s skin — all the bites, scratches, and dog fights — were nothing more than childhood memories. The happy kind, tinted in the yellow joy of nostalgia that most kids have, rather than the oil-slick, black and thick kind that dogs his heels. 

“I should be sayin’ that shit to you! The fuck’d you do to your face!” Luis points an accusatory finger at him, right under his nose. Danny snaps his teeth at the tip of his index on instinct. Luis yanks his finger away before he can break off his first knuckle, he hears his jaw clack in his ears. 

Luis hisses, clutching his hand close to his chest. “Mierda, veo que todavía estás mordiendo—” 

Danny brushes his fingers against his cheek where the faded lichtenberg scars should be. It’s funny, people don’t usually point them out of fear of being rude, but it’s not like he hasn’t seen them staring. They’re not as visible as they used to be. Leave it to Crime Alley to drag forth the ugly in its yellow jaws. 

He shrugs, drops his hand; “Accident.” 

“No shit.” A scoff, Luis inspects his hand for missing knuckles, and then shakes it out like he’s cleaning a rag before dropping it down to his side. Again, he looks Danny up and down, then grumbles listlessly under his breath. “I can’t believe you’re still alive. I owe Andrews twenty bucks.” 

Andrews. Danny tries to remember if he’s heard the name before, it’s vaguely familiar to him. Familiar the same way Luis Narvaez’s face had been, so it must be another kid of Crime Alley. That narrows it down the same way trying to find a specific rat in the subway does. One of Luis’ friends, probably. 

They’d made bets on him? On whether or not he was alive?  

Danny frowns, “Why?” 

“Cause you’re fuckin’ alive,” Luis repeats, and that shouldn’t surprise Danny as much as it does, it doesn’t surprise him as much as it should either. His frown deepens, curving wrinkles between his furrowed brows. “I thought for sure that after Todd kicked the bucket, you’d follow suit.”

Oh. That’s why. 

Green, vibrant, violent, sears the edges of his vision. 

He can’t say he likes the callous way Luis says Jason’s name, it leaves his tongue sitting sour in his mouth. The lights above them flicker, once, twice, and then buzz like bugs for a few seconds.  

His mouth that presses into a thin line, eyes curving into crescent moons like the tendons of a smile. “Nah,” he says, feeling hollow in the chest, “‘M fit as a fiddle.”

“Yeah? Color me surprised then,” Luis grumbles, there’s no heat behind it. There’s a ding to the side and the both of them look over Danny’s shoulder, a man comes in through the door and disappears down one of the aisles. “Are you going to buy anything?” 

Not initially, but… Danny eyes the wall of cigarettes behind Luis, one hand going to the pack in his back pocket. He’s not low, but… he nods to the shelf, “The Marlboro reds.” It wouldn’t hurt. 

Luis nods, and as he turns around to grab the box, Danny kicks his legs back and leans against the countertop. “By the way,” he starts, watching Luis reach up, “is anyone hiring? I’m looking for a job.” 

Looking online only does so much, and a lot of the listings he looked at required things he didn’t have. Like years of experience or a bachelor’s degree. Luis would probably know if there were places nearby that didn’t have online hiring. 

A pluck, Luis pulls down a pack, and then looks over his shoulder at Danny. His eyes begin to narrow at him, suspicion fills tension through his shoulders, rolling them back slightly as Luis plops the box onto the counter. “Depends,” he says, eyeing Danny, “what kind of job are you looking for?” 

What kind of question is— oh.  

“The legal kind, Narvaez,” Danny straightens up and pulls out his wallet for his card, unsuccessfully preventing himself from rolling his eyes, “how fuckin’ dumb do you think I am?” 

Luis makes an ‘eh’ sound, it’s pitchy and rolls around in his mouth like a marble, holding his hands up in surrender. “You decided to come back to Gotham, Fenton,” He tells him, and there’s a beep as Danny swipes the card through the machine, “it remains to be said. Receipt?”

Danny stares at him, then pockets his card. “No. And any jobs?” 

“You know Old Fox?” 

Maybe. Just like the rest of Crime Alley it’s familiar, itching at the back of his mind like a scratch he can’t reach. Danny furrows his brows. Old Fox, Old Fox, Old Fox… Oh. Old Man Fox. “On swindle? He’s still kicking?” 

Old man Fox; Elijah Fox. An old geezer that ran a mechanics shop down on swindale street, Danny remembers running by that place with Jason all the time. Fox was the crotchety old man that ran the place like a navy seal, he used to yell at them and any other kids loitering around the place because he knew that they were going to try and steal his tires.

And anything else he didn’t have bolted down.

A flash of teeth, Luis bares a grin at him. “Aye, yeah! Well, one of his guys got caught in the recent Joker attack so Fox has been lookin’ for someone to take his spot until he gets out of the hospital, you know mechanics?” 

He does actually, before the stars became an option, Danny used to — and still does — love old motorcycles and cars. He’s been fixing up the specter-speeder since conception, and Johnny’s even let him look at his bike when it broke down during one of his joyrides through Amity. Some of his savings came from changing the oil on one of his classmates’ car, or checking out their engine, or fixing a busted AC, among other things.

Danny shrugs with one shoulder, slipping the Marlboro reds off the counter and into his jacket pocket. He can hear someone coming up behind him, probably the guy that came in, “I know some stuff.” 

Luis snorts, “Go see if you know enough stuff for the bastard to hire you then.” 

(Danny sticks his nose to the lip of the bottle and sniffs. The stench of old beer immediately fills his senses, clogging up the back of his throat and burning in his nose. He recoils, exaggerating a disgusted sound as his nose scrunches up and threatens to sneeze out the stench. The bottle is empty, stolen from a pile beside a bedraggled drunkard when he wasn’t looking.) 

(Beside him, Jason erupts with laughter. His feet kick out and knock against age-stained, old brick, his fingers grip onto the ledge even though he leans back instead of forward. Danny has half a mind to grip onto him, a nerve whispering that he might fall clinging incessantly to his skull.) 

(It shouldn’t be as easy as it is to get on the roofs — and it’s not, not technically. But there’s this little alley in Crime Alley where an old dumpster is pushed right under an equally old — probably older — fire escape, that rattles and bangs and creaks under the slightest shift in weight. At the top is a rusted ladder that’s missing a rung, and it leads right to the roof.) 

(Danny showed it to Jason after they started this — uh — friendship thing. This partnership. The view isn’t great, but it’s not terrible, and it’s great for hiding from the other kids. No one ever thinks to look up.)  

(For a moment, he thinks he’s embarrassed, Jason’s laughter makes heat spread throughout his chest, burning up through his heart. But it’s— different. Usually, embarrassment makes Danny want to tear his teeth into something, to turn that awful heat into a rush of anger so it can be put to good use. It makes his arms lock up and itch to hit.) 

(This is— not that. Danny still wants to bite something, but he doesn’t want it to hurt. He thinks he might be embarrassed, but it’s — good. A good kind of embarrassment. This heat is all buttery-soft and melting across his ribs, it makes Danny think of yellow-bright sunshine and the smell of food carts that he sometimes sees parked along the street.) 

(It’s a horrid feeling, Danny would quite like to keep it. He’d like to keep Jason’s laughter, too, and feels rather pleased that they’re high enough up that the sound can only go up and get caught on the passing wind.)   

(His mouth twitches, he can’t quite smother the grin that wants to stretch over his face. He feels his lip split, the pain sharp and stinging, and he runs his tongue over it to soothe. “Don’t— don’t laugh at me.”)

(Jason keeps laughing at him, Danny has half a mind to punch him in the arm in order to shut up. He keeps it to himself.)

(“You’re not s’pose to sniff it!” He cries when he can find the lungs for it, his face is flushed red, as if someone had beaten him only just enough to make the marks show, but not hard enough to bruise. “You throw it!”) 

(“Why would I do that?” Danny demands, and there is that embarrassment, the proper kind. He still doesn’t want it to hurt, though, but he’s not sure what to do with the feeling. He can’t let it stay in his chest.) 

(Jason points out to the street below them. It’s empty, it’s that point in the day where there shouldn’t be anyone but the homeless out and about. “So you can see how far it goes, duh,” He tells him, and then turns around and grabs another empty bottle that Jason had brought, “I’ll show you.”)

(“‘M not fuckin stupid, Todd,” Danny hisses, “I know how to throw.” And, just so he can make a point, Danny tightens his grip on the neck of the bottle, and reels his arm back before Jason can beat him to it.)  

(The bottle splatters against the road like an overripe tomato, scattering shards of glass across the asphalt.) 

Danny’s feet crunches over broken glass laid out on the street, a wordless song humming in the back of his throat. It buzzes in his ears, filling a film of static in the space between his skull and his brain. 

He does know enough ‘stuff’ for Old Fox to hire him. He officially starts next week. 

He’s… not sure if it was worth it. 

(“Fenton?” Fox repeats, his beady grey eyes narrowing at Danny. He feels like a moth trapped under a microscope, caught in the beam of Fox’s wit-sharp gaze. He’s gotten old — they all have — and Danny tries to remember if he'd always been this small.) 

(“Yes, Daniel Fenton, sir.” He says again, arms folded behind him, wrist caught in hand. There’s a scoff somewhere off to the side by one of the guys — Danny knows how he sounds, and he’s rolling his eyes too — that he pays no mind to.) 

(A few seconds beat past. Then a scowl rips across Old Fox’s face as the realization sets in, and suddenly there’s another finger shoved under his nose, crooked and wrinkled and sprinkled with sun spots. Danny grits his teeth.)  

(“You.” Fox snarls, his voice a barbed-wire whip. Danny tilts his head very slightly, me, he thinks. “You little rat, I recognize you now.” Then his eyes snap behind him, searching for something.) 

(“Where is he?” Fox demands. Danny stares, then furrows his brows. Who? “Where’s that fuckin’ co-conspirator of yours?”)

(Oh.)

(Was he fucking with him? Or did Old Fox really just forget that Jason was dead? It’s not like it wasn’t a public thing. It’s not like it hadn’t been front page news or anything. Fox surely wasn’t that old that his memory was failing him.)

(He’s got to be fucking with him. The idea makes his thoughts turn to static.)  

(Danny’s fingers flex, then clench into fists. He digs his nails into his wrist, threatening to break surface and bleed. The room drops a few degrees; electricity zips under his skin. “Jay’s not with me,” he says, baring his teeth at Old Fox, “sorry to disappoint.”) 

(Fox scoffs at him.)  

It really shouldn’t have been as easy as it was — finding Old Fox’s garage was a test of muscle memory that Danny had thought long since atrophied, more the fool he — but Fox has never been orthodox, not in any of Danny’s memories at least, and he interrogated Danny right then and there in the middle of the floor. 

So long as he promised not to blow anything up like his ‘hack parents did,’ Danny was hired. 

It’s still daylight, so Danny should go out and buy a box of light bulbs to replace the one he broke this morning, because he’s pretty sure he doesn’t have any in the apartment already, and also get that bicycle lock for the door. The idea of staying out any longer than he already has though, makes his skin itch and his hackles raise. 

Danny snags a cigarette from his pocket and routes himself in the direction of his apartment. 

Chapter Text

(Jason is a line of heat against him, deliciously warm and chasing away the ever-hungering chill of sorrow taken permanent residence in Danny’s chest. The rumbling crackle of a campfire lapping warmth at his feet, at his fingertips.)  

(The worst part about being a banshee, Danny thinks, tears streaming idly down his face as he pets over the feathers sticking out from behind Jason’s ears. He smells like burning skin and smoke and nicotine. Is that the grief never goes away.)  

(He doesn't think the grief would go away regardless of being a banshee or not, but Danny hates the way that he always bursts into tears whenever he visits Jason in the Zone. The anguish that swells in his ribcage and balloons in his lungs every single time his eyes land on him threatens to overwhelm him every single time. Nearly knocks him right out of the sky.)  

(Jason Jason Jason Jason Jason Jason, his core chants without fail. His throat thickening into a wail as his lips wobble and his eyes brim with oil-black tears. He reaches out and digs his gloved fingers into Jason’s elbows, and they wrap around each other.) 

(Jason’s core sings back in turn with him, harmonizing. In the seventh sense frequency, they sound like one song.)  

(Now here they are, lying on the roof of one of the Undercity’s buildings. The Zone is a mess of sounds around them, roiling low and deep like the bottom of the ocean. There are voices and talking of people below them. The twisting, turning, monorails sprawling through the city rushing overhead.)  

(“Y’fingers are fuckin’ cold.” Jason grumbles, his ear twitching against Danny’s hand. He says this almost every single time Danny comes to visit, and he does nothing to push him away.)  

(Danny grins and giggles—not giggles, actually, he’s not juvenile, he chuckles— wetly. Joy-tinged grief warbling in the back of his throat, threatening to suffocate him. He closes his eyes as a fresh wave of tears hits him and pools down his face.)  

(Banshees are mournful creatures, and most of them, he’s discovered, are Realms-born more often than not. Spirits that were never alive in the first place, and designated with grief in their chest for one thing or another.)  

(Banshees that were once alive, like him, are rare. For good reason, Danny thinks, this grief is maddening on the worst of days. He knows what it’s like to live without it.)  

(“Tell me t’stop then,” Danny says when he finds his voice, whispering and thick with tears. Voice cracking and heavy. He clears his throat quietly to try and chase the sound away. Jason Jason Jason Jason, his core sighs, purrs contently.)  

(You’re here you’re here you’re here, the back of his mind chants. Danny drains his hand away from Jason’s ear and trails it down his candle-warm cheek. He hasn’t worn the Robin mask since Danny found him, and is he thankful for it. The black, mask-like markings underneath are soft as velvet under his fingers.)  

(Jay grumbles again, brows furrowing to match the frown tilting his mouth downwards. His talon-fingers tighten around the front of Danny’s shirt, unrelenting and unreleasing, thin and sharp like the Beldam’s. The legs tangled around Danny’s tighten up, trapping him in place more than they already are. “No.”) 

(Danny grins wide, wider than what should be humanly possible. He swells and swells, the one hand that still has skin on it curls loosely. Danny presses his knuckles lightly against Jason’s throat and feels it jump, “Then shut up ‘bout it.”)  

(Danny Danny Danny Danny, Danny feels Jason’s core hum, and he’s not sure what to do about it other than wish he could crawl under his skin and stay there with him. He drops his hands and curls them tight to the front of Jason’s shirt too.) 

(In return, Jay loosens his hold and wraps sharp, plucking fingers around his wrist. Danny relaxes immediately. Heat chasing chill like dogs chasing cats up trees. The cold recedes; presses further and further inward as Jason crawls his fingers up his arms until it's his turn to touch Danny’s face.)  

(“Y’hands are fuckin’ warm.” Danny parrots, still grinning as Jason wipes futilely at the tears on his face. He does this every time they’re together and Danny weeps. It used to be embarrassing, now he just soaks in the sensation and tries not to float away.)  

(The tips of his nails brush against the underside of Danny’s lashes. Catching on sticky black tears and swiping and swiping and swiping. Danny just usually ends up crying harder first, then later finally calming down.)  

(Jason’s hands are so long and sharp, he could pluck out Danny’s eyes without a second thought. Without a struggle. Danny wants him to. He wouldn’t fight it if he did. Wouldn’t be mad or upset. Take his eyes, take everything he wants. Just let him be the last thing Danny sees if he does.)  

(“Tell me t’stop then,” Jason repeats back, a grin in his voice. Danny peels open his eyes to see it. He’s ravenous for it, he has to see it. He’s always been such an ugly, devouring thing. Dying’s only made him hungrier, like a starving wolf at the door. Like the begging, skinny street dogs begging for scraps on the side of the street with the rest of them.)  

(Jason’s mouth is split into a smile that shows off gleaming sharp teeth, a row of fangs that could rip out Danny’s throat within seconds. Danny has half the mind to tilt his head to the side and bare his throat to him so it’d make the job easier.)  

(He smiles back, tightens his grip on Jason. “No.”)  

Danny sits on the floor with his laptop, the sounds of Gotham buzzing by outside his open window. It lets him filter out the cigarette smoke falling from his open mouth and the burning cig caught between his teeth. He’ll admit; it’s nice being able to smoke in his own space without fear of getting caught. 

Technically it’s not allowed in the building. Technically speaking, nobody is going to know if they can’t see him doing it. The place already stinks of weed and cleaner and smoke, the landlord isn’t really going to notice or care if the smell gets worse. Plausible deniability and all of that.  

He hums under his breath; feels it vibrate down to his core and fill the room with light banshee song, and flies his fingers across the keyboard. Notebooks sprawl open at his knees, a small army of pens scattered by his thigh as he folds over his feet and types and types and types.  

The Joker is the sporadic type. It’s his theme. Wild, uncontained chaos unleashed to the masses in a violent, messy display of bright colors and an attempt at portraying insanity. He attacks whenever he wants at anything he wants, with little rhyme or reason behind it beyond catching the attention of the Batman.  

Danny’s been trying to keep track of him for years... sort of. He hasn’t been greatly successful at it, although not without lack of trying. But between protecting Amity Park, trying to survive high school, and searching for Jason in the Zone, his attention on Gotham and that fucking clown has fallen to the wayside.  

But now Amity doesn’t need protecting anymore, and Danny’s out of school. He still needs to find Jason—he has to, he has to—but, oh he loathes to say it, but— he can... set aside... some more time to find the Joker and kill him. Can focus more of his attention on that simmering bubble of rage festering behind his heart. He can devote his time to Jason after that.  

Jay will understand, surely. Especially considering he’s not contacted Danny at all in the last five years, hasn’t been seen hide nor hair around the Undercity or around his lair or the Wayne Manor. Danny hasn’t sensed him near his—which—is— unbearable . But it is what it is. 

Jason can—Jason can—Jay—Danny bites his nails into his palms and squeezes his eyes shut, static building in his ears. His core roils in his chest, protesting loudly. Jason can— wait. Just for a minute. Just for a second. It won’t take him long. It shouldn’t.  

It shouldn’t take him too long to kill the Joker. And he’s right. Granted, there’s no need to actually go out of the way to do all this research. Danny could fly out right now and span the entire city before the night is over, find the Joker, and end his worthless life right now. 

And—oh that thought is tempting. Oh, that’s really tempting. Pressure builds in his skull; his fingers slow at the keyboard. It’d be so easy. Danny turns his head slightly, stares at the ground. The ambient sound around him quiets and fades to the background.  

Nobody would even know what hit him, or know who did it. He wouldn’t even have to reveal himself.  

He could just—just find him. Right now. Stick his hand into the bastard’s chest and coil his fingers around his heart and squeeze, squeeze until it pops under his fingers like a water balloon. The Joker would be dead before his body even hit the ground, and no foul play would be suspected until the autopsy but by then Danny would already be out and back in the Zone. There’d be no fingerprints, anyways. No one would suspect him regardless. 

His friends might. Jazz and Ellie might. Mom and Dad might. But they don’t know that Joker killed Jason, Danny’s never told them. Logically speaking there’s no reason for him to suspect him other than the suspicious circumstances of his death and Danny going back to the Zone.  

So maybe he could wait a month or so before going back, as agonizing as the wait sounds. He could just go to the Zone through the door he made until then, then move there full time. Not much else keeping him tethered here.  

He could freeze the Joker from the inside out. Watch and see as the Joker flailed and panicked and tried to stop the inevitable in whatever way he can, and fail miserably. What would that look like? Would he feel as his organs shut down one by one from the cold or would he lose consciousness and die unaware? Maybe Danny could turn him into a statue and memorialize the terror on his face for all of Gotham to see. Jason must’ve been so scared too.  

Oh, he could overshadow him too. Although the idea fucking disgusts him. It’d be worth it though if he could make the man sit passenger to his own mind and watch as Danny mutilated him. He'd probably be able to taste the Joker’s agony in the back of his tongue, make him hurt in all the ways he made Jason hurt, and worse. Danny could probably figure out a way to prevent him from dying until Danny was ready to let him die.  

He could make him hurt. He could make him hurt incredibly so, he could make him hurt in a lot of unique, different ways, he thinks. Ways he couldn’t if he was just human, but— 

But—Danny breathes in sharp. Air floods his lungs – had he been holding his breath? – and suddenly the pressurized static in his head bleeds from his mind, and his vision clears of green. The rage, thick and heady and brewing, thick as fog and oil, simmers, then settles. It cools.  

He’s left quiet and cold. Danny blinks dazedly and lifts his head.  

But... that’s not what Danny wants to do. That's not how he wants the Joker to die. He has an idea , a plan. A specific way that he wants to put this clown in the ground, and it has nothing to do with his powers.  

Danny takes a breath, chases away the dredges of his anger, and twists back to his laptop. 

He’s trying to figure out a pattern. Nobody can be truly unpredictable, it goes against the nature of being human. Even subconsciously, people will create routines, habits, tells and practices that they might not even be aware of. Danny learned that from his childhood; Gotham ingrained it in him. Reinforced and brought to awareness by Jazz and Jason alike later on.  

The Joker must have habits. Unconscious ones he’s not aware of that he’s doing. Conscious ones too. The Joker is wild and advertises himself as such. The Joker is unpredictable; therein lies predictability.  

He thinks about all the tips he learned as a kid whenever the Joker was out of Arkham and roaming around – really, when any of Batman’s Rogues were out an about, especially the ones prone to hostaging and using the public as power displays. He turns to his notebook and picks up a pen.  

1. Avoid crowds.
2. Do not go downtown. 
3. No public transportation: the bus, the tram, the subway; avoid all of it. 
4. Avoid government buildings and public service places. Schools, postal service, parks, popular shops, libraries, etc.  

The Joker enjoys mass casualty and chaos. Unearthing and upending the daily lives of the people are his bread and butter, and if he can destroy a few government services in the process, so be it. Him and every other posturing villain in Gotham.  

He, Danny knows, is a showboat. Everything he’s ever done is for attention. The Bat’s specifically, but any will do. Feeds on fear and hatred like butterflies to nectar. If he can do something with a camera pointed at him, he will. A nasty reactionist, and the media devours it because that’s what sells.  

The Joker needs attention like a flower needs sunlight, a man-made god built to be untouchable to the masses. Immortalized in terror, masquerading himself as a monster. Danny wants him to die like the mortal man he is.  

First thing’s first: he should figure out where and what the Joker’s been doing these last few months, and what his latest attack was about. Later, he can look up all of Batman’s old busts on his hideouts and pick out a theme from there.  

(They’re sitting in the field right outside Danny's observatory, this great big fantastical thing that Danny’s been madly obsessed with ever since he discovered he had one.) 

(It’s incredible and fantastical, straight from some kind of sci-fi fantasy type movie. A big dome building with a giant telescope jutting out the side, and staring into the great big, vast green sky. It’s even bigger on the inside, with a long hallway leading to smaller rooms, and at the end of the hall it leads to the dome observation room.) 

(There’s a platform in the center that lifts up to the curved ceiling, and a loft off to the side against the wall where he and Jason can sit in a hammock and curtain of the rest of the world. Danny can close off the roof and with a flick of a button encase them in a field of stars without ever even stepping outside.) 

(There are no words to describe it, Danny wants to stay here forever. One of the doors leads to Jason’s lair.)  

(They’re sitting right outside his observatory right now though, laying on the purple grass and watching Danny’s asteroid field circle lazily around them. With a whim of a thought, Danny could make the asteroids spin faster. Jason thinks it might be some kind of defense mechanism to deter intruders.)  

(Well, they were watching the asteroid field. Danny’s watching Jason now. The other boy sits up next to him and twists around to stare at him, and Danny stares back, a small smile iron-branded onto his face.)  

(Jason’s eyes are scorching gold and burning into him. All black except for the iris. They stare for a beat, for a two, and then Jason’s brows furrow, a frown settles across his mouth. He looks vaguely unhappy, and thoughtful, and just before Danny can ask him about it, he nods at Danny’s chest.) 

(“Does that ever... hurt?” He asks. Danny looks down, starting to frown, and—oh, he’s looking at the fist-sized hole in his chest. Its steadily leaking some black ink-like substance, staining through Danny’s shirt and down the sides of his ribs. It’s made of the same consistency as his tears. He’s had it since he died.)  

(Danny hums in the back of his throat, unsure, “Not really?” He says, and tries to decide by what metric of hurt should apply. It doesn’t hurt most of the time, it throbs sometimes, but it doesn’t hurt. It’s just a sensation. It hurts when he picks at the edges, when he pulls and tugs at it, but that’s because it’s sensitive.) 

(It hurts worse when he’s mourning. When he falls into one of those ‘grief spirals’ that banshees are oh-so infamous for, when he doesn’t feel like doing anything but dropping his mouth and shrieking until his voice goes hoarse and his head and his soul and his body doesn’t feel like it wants to rip itself apart in tandem to his sorrow.)  

(It hurts to move when that happens, hurts to think. His nerves feel alight with electricity, rubbed raw and sensitive to any sort of movement and sensation. Where not even curling up into a ball makes it stop, when instead he wants to thrash and flail and kick around and scream.)  

(Oh, does he want to scream. He wants to rattle the ground with his grief. Wants to shatter eardrums. He has to, he has to, he has to. He doesn't wanna do anything but feel and make sure everyone else feels to. When that happens, he hides in his room all day and sobs. It makes fighting hard.) 

(Other than that, it doesn’t hurt much. Danny lifts his skeletal hand, the one that scarred, and trails a bone-charred finger just beneath the edge of the hole. Jason’s frown deepens.) 

(“It kinda does sometimes,” Danny continues, keeping his voice even, slicking black... ink? ...Tears? against the pad of his finger and raising it up to his eyes, it would be unnoticeable if not for the wet glistening against the bone. He looks at Jay. “Why?”) 

(Jay just shrugs, his brows still furrowed. “It cries when you do,” and oh, oh that’s horrifyingly embarrassing. Danny's spine stiffens, heat races up to his face and he laughs lowly—tries to, anyways. It comes out stilted and horribly awkward.) 

(“Oh,” he says when it passes, trying not to look Jason in the eyes. A painful grin still stamped to his face. “Sorry.”) 

(There’s not a response; Danny wants to shrivel up in a ball about it. Dropping his hand against his stomach, Danny looks back up to the astro-field. Jason keeps staring at him.) 

(He doesn’t count the minutes when he’s with Jason, so he doesn’t know how long it takes until he moves, but when he does, it’s to reach out his hand and brush the edge of his talon against the side of the hole. Danny immediately stiffens, locks in place, and blocks out the white stars that blurt behind his eyes.) 

(That is— burning. Too hot and too cold and flooding his mind with too many signals. It’s happened before that someone’s tried grabbing at it during a fight. Ember once tried to dig her fingers around the edge and pull, hoping it would hurt enough to distract him.) 

(It had hurt, awfully so. Danny had immediately snarled and tried to rip out her eyes for it. He’s thought about cutting off hands that try and reach for the biggest vulnerability on him.) 

(Jason touches it, and Danny locks his jaw in place and ignores the urge to bite him for it. It borders the line of painful, much too painful. Danny’s core hums high and loud, like a lightbulb with too much energy in it. Let go let go let go.) 

(He doesn’t let go, instead Jason tries to cover it with his hand. Splaying fingers around it like he’s trying to stifle a desperately bleeding wound. It reminds him—it reminds him of the time he got shot, Robin kneeling at his side and trying to stop the bleeding in his shoulder. There’s something important in that sentence, Danny can’t find it.) 

(This doesn’t hurt though, but the presence of it is far too apparent in his mind. Buzzing under his skin. Black tear-ink spills against his fingers and cries some more against his shirt.) 

(Jason’s face crumples with regret. “I’m sorry I make you cry,” he says, voice thick.) 

(Ah there come the tears, Danny’s eyes sting and bleed onto his lashes. “It’s okay,” he whispers, “s’cause I missed you.”) 

“Hey, Jayce.” Danny whispers, gripping flowers in one hand while he keeps his other in his pocket. His heart surges into his throat, swelling and swelling and swelling thick until he’s suffocating on blood and fluid and grief. So much grief, stuck in his throat like bile. 

Jason’s headstone stares back at him silently. 

Tears sting his eyes and flood his sight; this is his third time seeing it. That thought agonizes him. “I—” His voice cracks. Danny presses his mouth into a line to stop it from wobbling. He closes his eyes, and a set of boiling hot tears race down his cheeks. “Sorry . Sorry, y’know how I get.” 

This happened whenever we met in the Zone, too, he reminds and doesn’t dare say aloud. There are other people around in the cemetery, visiting their loved ones too, and he doesn’t want to be heard. He scrubs his palm down his face, folds it over his mouth, then pulls off with a sniff. 

It’s early morning in Gotham, Danny can smell it in the air. Wet and chilly and misty, he starts working for Fox in two days and Danny’s been busy with everything else. His pantry is filled, his door has a MacGuyver’d lock on it, he’s got some cheap furniture coming in to decorate more of his apartment with... 

He’s started making headway on the Joker... 

He hasn’t had time to head back into the Zone despite the sigil allowing him easy access to, it itches at him to visit soon. He tried to spend what little free time he had back in Amity to look for Jason in the Zone, so it’s been itching at him to go now that he has all this time now.  

But Danny’s got to be a responsible nineteen year old, and setting up his life in the living realm will make looking for Jason in between hunting down Joker much easier. At the very least, it’ll make it less stressful, and he can put his full attention to it. If life doesn’t get in the way. It always seems to. 

“I was better put together last time I was here, wasn’t I?” He jokes weakly, huffing wetly and kneeling down to place the small bouquet of flowers at the foot of his grave. Last time being when he was here for that charity gala with Vlad. He still has to cash in that favor from him and stuff. “Lasted a good ten minutes I think before bustin’ into tears.” 

The ground is wet and cold; Danny sits on his knees and feels the grass and dirt press against his jeans, morning dew soaking into the denim. He adjusts the bouquet delicately so that it’s sitting nice and pretty against the stone and ground, fluffing up the petals as best he can without disturbing them. More tears fall from his face; his soul throbs painfully. 

“And- an’ what’d I tell you?” He grins, gestures to the bouquet, “red an’ yellow zinnias, just as I said. Hope you didn’t think I’d forget, did you?” 

Jason’s headstone is still silent; there’s only the sound of the rustling grass and the cars racing past to fill the air. Danny kind of wants to shrivel up and die a second time, his smile gradually dying. Maybe a third time, he kind of counts that phone call to Bruce as his first death. 

He reaches back for his core, peels back the top layers of it like a pomegranate and feels it bleed against his fingers. Ectoplasm thrums beneath his skin, building pressure behind his shoulder blades, through his fingers, gathering intense and the needling kind of numb through his scarred arm and gathering in his sternum. 

For a moment, he imagines the skin bubbling up and melting off, sloughing away in chunks of half-liquid slop to reveal the blackened bone of his ghost form’s forearm right where he’d hit the emergency power button on the inside of the portal. It sears back behind his eyelids, and then it’s gone. 

Danny closes his eyes and shudders. The image fades from his mind, and he shakes feeling back into his hand. His eyes burn—with tears, with burbling green—and he barely peeks his eyelids open just enough to let him see the blurred, stone silhouette of Jason’s grave. 

His core vibrates in his throat, Danny curls his upper lip back just enough to reveal the glint of his teeth, enough to breathe. Then he calls out; pings the air in a frequency only other ghosts would hear. This humming, staccato thing that lilts up and then cuts off. 

(Soulhum is what it’s called. In English in any case. The name is different in the actual tongue, but untranslatable to the mortal word. Soulhum is the closest direct translation.) 

Are you there?  

Danny waits, his ghost floating to the surface of his skin. He can feel the transformation right there, one short reach away, crackling at his fingers. He waits, he waits, he listens for a response. There’s nothing. Jason isn’t here – not lurking near his grave in any case, as if Danny wouldn’t be able to sense him by a simple chill in his throat anyways. 

He’s not sure why he tried other than to get his heart broken. Jason can’t enter the living realm; they tried already when they were fourteen. Danny’s calling out to empty air and hoping that maybe he heard him. He’s not here.  

His nails dig into his thighs, hard and harder, until he’d be drawing blood if it weren’t for the denim. His shoulders jolt, his lip peels back into something vicious and an ugly, strangled sound squeaks past him. Danny unlatches his hands from his legs to cover his face; tears stain his skin. 

What was he fucking expecting.  

He’s not here.  

He's not here.  

He’s not HERE.  

He’s drowning. Spiraling. Sinking into mud-thick emotion that swallows around his ankles, to his knees—he can’t move— Danny’s mouth moves again, he can feel his teeth pressing against the meat of his palms. He reaches for his soul again— 

Jason, he calls, hair brushing over the sides of his hands, curtaining around his face. He feels like one of those statues, hunching over until his knuckles brush against his knees. Constricting, choking, Danny’s throat closes up and grief crashes into him hot and tidally. 

Jason, he calls again, ectoplasm burning behind his eyes. He opens his eyes and spreads his fingers just enough to peer through the gaps, just enough to see the black hair blocking his view of Jason’s grave. Jason, Jason, Jason, Jason.  

He’s a little afraid that if he checks his wet hands, he’ll find them stained black, if only because he’s not alone. But he can still feel his heart beating, rapping loudly at the chamber of his ribs. 

Jayce, his core keens, come back. Come here. Danny shudders, a coil tight in his gut, he wants to vomit up his own heart. Spit out what's left of it and bury it with the other half beneath his feet. Mom and Dad asked him if he wanted a grave; Danny denied them. He doesn’t want to be buried anywhere that isn’t with Jason. 

He weeps. He's weeping. He almost wails. He can feel it in the back of his throat, threatening to retch right up into the open air. Danny can’t swallow it, it’ll come right back up, but he can hold his breath and wait for it to pass. 

Until then he weeps. He cries. His soul reaches out and finds nothing in the air. 

When the feeling finally subsides, when Danny can lift his head above ground and he can breathe without wanting to die, his eyes hurt. His cheeks itch. He looks at his hands and finds them shiny and clear. 

He breathes in—shaky; hitched. The fog clears. Air tickles the back of his sore throat and he instinctively reaches for the cigarette box sitting in his pocket. He pauses. Everything about him is wobbling. Wait.  

He swallows dryly, “I got a job,” he croaks, looking up and peering through his hair at Jay’s gravestone. His mouth slants slightly, eyebrows raising. “You uh—you remember that fuck Old Fox down on Swindle, right? We stole tires from him once.” He chased them down three blocks before they managed to escape him. 

“Well.” Danny sits up, wipes at his face. Jason hates seeing him cry. He laughs wetly and tries to find his voice. “Bastard hired me for his auto-repair shop a few days ago, I start soon. Asshole asked about you, wanted to rip his throat out for it.” 

“Think he might have early onset dementia or somethin,” he jokes meanly, scrubbing the back of his hand under his eyes, it soothes some of the soreness. “Hey, if y’decide to show up sometime, maybe we can give him a heart attack just by having you pop by for a shift.” 

He doesn’t want the old man to actually die, but he thinks the reaction he’d have to a real ghost—Jason to boot—would be funny. Fox might just have an aneurysm right on the spot. Maybe come up with a few new swear words to add to the English dictionary. Wouldn’t that be fun. 

“Um,” his voice, his voice cracks again, “I’m back in Gotham now. Like— like, really back in Gotham. Got an apartment on the street we grew up on an’ everything, so you’ll be seein’ me around more often.”  

“Bit uh—” he looks down at his hands, chokes on a laugh because he’s not really sure what else to do. Makes a sound just for the hell of it, “bit late. Five years overdue, but you already knew that. Said that in my last visit.”  

The gravestone is silent.  

Please say something, he thinks, tears returning to stream down his face. No point in trying to wipe them away again, they’re just gonna keep coming. He lets them slide down his throat and soak into the collar of his shirt.  

“I don’t really know what else to tell you,” Danny admits, head tilting to the side, “nothin’ interesting’s goin’ on yet. Oh— no, I ran into Narvaez, he’s the one who helped me find out about Fox hiring. You remember him, right? Ugly fucker with the scar.” 

“Well, he’s working cashier at that corner store we liked to go to. Who’d’ve thought?” Danny admits, he can’t believe he was still alive. Him and Jay used to think that he’d get into one of the bigger gangs when he got older and would die in a shootout or something. That happened to some of the older kids they knew on the street.  

That, or maybe he’d get into drugs and overdose. Also a very real possibility. It’s nice to be wrong.  

His mouth curls slightly, a smile ghosting over his face. Danny lowers his hands and cards his fingers through the grass, if only to give himself something to do. “I’ll see about keepin’ in contact with’im. See who’s also still alive and kicking around. Think Powell is still around? Or- or, uh, Fix?”  

Danny can’t say he was ever friends with the other kids on the street, not like he was with Jason, but they had... allies, he supposes is the best word for it. Coworkers, maybe? Kids that they weren’t on bad blood with but weren’t in gangs with. Scratch their back and they’ll scratch theirs.  

Gotham’s not the friendly type, and Crime Alley eats each other if given the chance. You either worked alone or had an allegiance with some group or another. Drifters, runners, rats. Danny had Jason, Jason had him, and that’s all they needed. There was a... ah, mutual solidarity so to speak though, with all of Crime Alley’s kids.  

Which is just a fancy way of saying that someone would eventually warn you of trouble brewing on the horizon with the bigger fish, and that it’d be smart to duck and cover somewhere. Certain alleys and streets no longer accessible to sneak through ‘cause it’d been taken over by some gang or another. Traffickers on one street, a new dealer on the other.  

“I’ll keep y’ updated on it, see what’ll find out.” Danny says, grinning wet and weakly, “oh! Oh, hey, speaking of Narvaez, did you know that fucker had a bet on me? Yeah, him and his buddies apparently bet on me committing after you died.”  

Danny snorts wetly, “Andrews owes him twenty bucks.” But nobody tell him that.  

(Jason frowns, the black smoke of his curls drifting thick and coiling around his cheeks. HIs ears twitch, then pin back flat against his head. “Quit fuckin’ joking about that,” he says sharply, there’s a noticeable hitch in his voice.)  

If he wants him to stop, he’s just gonna have to come tell him himself. He dares him.  

(“I thought you said you didn’t kill y’self.”)  

(“Oh.” Danny looks away, unable to meet Jason’s agonized eyes, “I didn’t.” Ghosts aren’t supposed to lie about themselves, not like this. His core twinges. He thinks of taffy being stretched out of place before being smushed back together. Like a pill being swallowed and getting stuck in your throat on the way down. Not dangerous, but uncomfortable.)  

There’s not much else for Danny to talk about after that. He tells him about what happened at the Gala, he forgot to last time. He tells him about running into Damian and Tim there, talks about Vlad trying desperately to get noticed by Bruce and falling flat every single time—he told Jason all about the old bastard in the Zone when he first started popping up.  

Ancients did Jayce have words to say over Vlad Masters, especially after the fight with Pariah. Danny wishes he'd gotten to see the two of them meet at least once before Jason vanished, he likes to think it would’ve been a one-sided beatdown. Jason has a lot more experience in kicking the asses of powerful adults than him thanks to being Robin, and if Danny could eventually defeat Vlad, then Jason could in a heartbeat.  

“Met Red Hood at the Bruce’s charity,” Danny tells him, having eventually moved out of kneeling to recline back in the wet grass. One hand propping himself up and the other slung over a propped-up knee. He's burning a cigarette.  

Oh, wait—that's right, Jason wouldn’t know who that is. Danny scrunches his nose up and breathes out smoke, waves his hand away to chase it off, “Uh— he’s this uh, crime lord guy takin’ residence in the Alley. Vigilante type; uses guns. Was standin’ in your fuckin’ spot, by the way.”  

Danny presses his cig to his mouth, “Should’ve shoved him off the fuckin’ balcony for that,” he mutters darkly. Mh, probably for the best he didn’t. The guy was loaded with weapons and Danny's not dumb enough to think he wasn’t wearing armor.  

Probably for the best that Danny doesn’t piss off the guy with the guns. Though what’s the worst that could happen? He kills him? Hah! Danny grins a little, prickly vindication growing thorns in his chest. He pulls his lips back and bares his teeth. “Maybe next time.” 

Hopefully there is no ‘next time.’ He still feels a bit antsy over admitting to the guy that he wanted to kill Joker. Part of him wants to seek Hood out and tell him that he wasn’t actually going to kill the Joker and that was a heat of a moment slip-up, but seeking him out just to tell him that would incriminate him further. Something something, keeping your fucking mouth shut gets you further than opening it.  

A lesson Danny still needs to employ better... 

Nobody in a mask has come knocking yet, so he’ll just keep his head down. And if anyone does, there’s no real proof that he’s plotting a murder so they can’t lock him up on word alone. The board won’t reveal itself unless Danny wills it to and it’s not like Bruce or his family know about his otherworldly activities.  

Mh.  

By the time Danny finally decides to get up, the grass has dried and peeking through the clouds is the sun sitting straddle in the sky. Reluctance chains his heart to the ground, thickening a knot in his throat, and his knees pop stiffly in his legs as he stands.  

He raises his arms up, threads his fingers together, and leans back with a groan. His spine stretches out with a faint, burning ache that sends a coil of crack-crack-cracks up his back and into his ears. They drop with a thump to his side; black spots fill his vision.  

There’s a beat where he does nothing and simply stands there, staring at Jason’s headstone without a thought in his head as the world recalibrates. Gotham’s ambience fills the air in his stead with the sound of cars and traffic nearby.  

He blinks slowly, his eyes puffy and sore. The corners itchy from tears.  

I’m tired, Danny thinks, and rubs at his face with his fingers.  

I’m tired.  

I'm tired.  

I'm tired.  

There’s a space right next to you, can I sleep with you?  

I’m busy.  

He points sharply at Jason’s headstone, “I’ll be back, fucker,” he says sharply, trying to keep his expression severe. It falls away right quickly, softening away his broken glass edges as his mouth tilts lazily into a curling smile. Danny shakes his hand so-so, “About same time next week? At the latest? Definitely sooner if I’m able.”   

(“You know you can’t last a week without me,” Jason mocks, grin shark-sharp and ink-stamped on his face. They’re ten years old, sitting on a dumpster in a rare-empty alleyway. Jason kicks his ankle, “You’d keel over and die.”)  

“I’ll bring y’starbursts.” Danny continues, checking the ground for any of his cigarette butts. He would never leave any littering Jason’s grave—but just in case, his eyes sweep the ground anyways. “I’ll pick out the pink an’ orange ones for you.” 

I miss you, I miss you, I miss you, Danny’s core chants like a broken record. He breathes slowly so the knot in his throat doesn’t grow any bigger, but his eyes are building pressure behind them again. He blinks. He blinks. He blinks.  

He doesn’t like goodbyes.  

Danny takes a half-step back—trips on it really, and swallows thickly. His hands itch to reach forward and grab onto elbows, hook himself into soft flesh like the worst kind of barb. Whenever he had to leave the Zone and go back to the Living Realm, he’d hold onto Jason like a lifeline – and Jason would too. 

His mouth presses into a line, teeth sinking into the back of his lip to pin it in place between his incisors. He blinks. He blinks. He blinks. His eyes go hot. “I’ll — uh — see you. When I see you.”  

There’s not a response back. 

(He’s sitting there. He’s just sitting there. He and Jason atop a roof, sitting along the ledge by his favorite gargoyle, leaning against the wall. Danny’s tucked his chin over his shoulder, soaking in the heat.)  

(He’s not sure how much time passes. He just sits and drifts there, lethargic and sleepy, dozing off. He doesn’t have a grave; exhaustion hits him some days like a train because of it. The urge to curl up somewhere warm and dark and fall asleep, seated deep in his bones.) 

(He gets irritable easily those days. He’s tired. He’s tired. He’s tired. Leave him be. Let him sleep. He wants to rest in peace. Please let him rest in peace. He doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to do a thing.) 

(There’s a restless itch in his soul. He wants to sleep and he can’t until its been scratched. Get up and move. Do something. Too much to do. A fury simmering in his soul and claws digging into his skin beneath skin. Restless fury rearing its head, howling in the back of his head. Pressing on his brain like a tumor, like a headache that just won’t go away. A stomachache refusing to soothe.)  

(It doesn’t hurt the way it should. It doesn’t hurt at all, but it does. Go. Go. Go. Go. Aches like a lump in the throat. Exists like a pressure he can’t stand. The subtle overwhelming sound of static in an empty, too-bright room. When everything is too much and not enough. Like he can’t get comfortable enough in bed. Twisting and turning and it’s not enough. He has to bend and twist to get himself comfortable, but nothing is working.) 

(Get up. Get up. Get up. Get up.)  

(Jason is right here though. Danny tightens his grip and sighs quietly. He feels him reach out, his core humming and curling song around his. Tension melts from Danny’s bones. Just bury him here, he thinks. He won’t sleep anywhere else.)