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Danny could read it in the line of his spine. There was weariness to him that was unattributed to dying. To track the death that clung to his lips and whispered through his fledgling core, the death that tainted his bloodied and cracked knuckles was painful, but had little to nothing to do with the exhausted slump of his shoulders, nor the uneven pacing of his heartbeat. No, his weariness was more easily blamed on living. Pretending, puppeteering flesh laced with the pain of healing wrong, moving as if one whole when it was so obvious to Danny that the man had been halved since the day he died.
Jazz had always said grief was fickle and odd. Healing even more so.
She had not prepared him for what it is to grieve one you do not know and cannot help. One who would not accept help even should it be offered with no strings attached.
The other man was slumped over in his seat on the subway, and Danny was carefully ignoring the curve of his cheekbones, instead focusing on the gash marring his jawline, bleeding sluggishly and bruised.
He had been in a fight, a bad one, but one he survived, and one in which he had reciprocated, violently, if Danny were to believe the blood splattered on the sleeves of his jacket and flaking off his knuckles, far too easily for all the blood to be his own.
The visual art of violence was common on the streets of Gotham, a performance art in of itself, blood and gore painting sidewalks, pressure washed off every few weeks. Stains on public transport and graffiti of the rogues bringing neon brights to the brick and cement dread of the alleys. It was expected. Comforting or at the very least comfortable for a boy who died in his childhood home before he had ever been able to truly live.
In Gotham, Danny was just another monster in men’s clothing, a ghost amongst mortals who were willing to do more than he to survive. Willing to commit atrocities in the name of greed, just clawing for another pound of flesh, and the few shiny heroes trying to combat the world at large.
The man across from him was not a shiny hero. Not like the sunshine smiles and quick wit of the vigilantes who haunted the night skies easier than Phantom ever did, and not like the grim horror that the silhouette of the Bat did either.
He had fought rough and dirty, broken skin on his own hands from the strength of his punches, and Danny’s protector core ached to soothe and heal, but he resisted, eyes darting from hands to jaw to tuft of white hair standing starkly against black curls.
Danny breathed in, and shifted his weight, his movement apparently enough to wake the man across from him, but not enough to startle, or perhaps Danny was just not deemed a threat.
The thought was almost laughable, but if it protected him from catching the attention of one of the Bat’s watchdogs, then he would take what he could get.
He had lasted three years undetected, made his bed and slept in it, a shitty apartment on the edge of Crime alley and The Bowery, close enough to Hood’s territory to provide him some protection, but far enough from the man’s patrols to do what he pleased without interference. Besides, rent was cheap, what with the ghost rumors.
So Danny wasn’t completely undetected, maybe, but he was wholly unbothered. Batman’s little friends couldn’t get a read on him through their cameras, all their equipment shorting out at his ambient ecto, and quiet as they thought they were, he could hear them from blocks away.
Collecting his wandering thoughts, Danny turned his gaze idly back to his target, the man across the subway aisle kept his eyes closed, and Danny pulled the beanie further onto his hair, making sure the pointed ends of his ears were safely tucked away.
His small fangs could be hidden behind a grimace, and his eyes behind lenses. His ears were not always the most stealth. He liked it that way, most of the time. He had spent too long conforming, fitting his horror into tue skin of a boy.
Sometimes he liked to feel the fear of the other monsters walking Gotham’s streets, liked to bear his inhumanity with cruel smiles and laughter like bitter wind gales. Never harm, no, but to walk the streets of the underbelly unafraid, unarmed save for his penchant for turning unease and fear into a weapon.
This day, standing an aisle away from a ghost, barely skirting around Red Hood’s haunt, Danny suppressed the urge to lay claim. Either through violence or through comfort, and tucked his monster closer to his chest, closer to his core.
Danny shifted from foot to foot again, and watched through his peripheral as Jason Todd opened one eye, glanced around, and went back to sleep.
He got off on the very next stop, and walked the rest of the way home, despite having three stops to go.
Jason woke for his stop fifteen minutes later, and groggily stumbled off the subway and into the light, cursing the petulant child who had stole the tires off his bike, and cursing Dick even more for laughing at him rather than helping.
He woke, mostly unaware of the thing haunting the perimeter of his territory, the monster and man all wrapped up in one, who brought his elderly neighbors their groceries and never quite grew out of his teenage fashion sense.
Jason Todd went about his morning commute, made doubly long from having to take the subway, viciously unaccepting of Bruce’s offer of a ride, mostly unaware of the man who rode the line across from him, mostly unaware of the gleam of green eyes, shiny like a cheshire cat’s in the dark, protecting and haunting the streets right outside of Crime Alley.
And Danny, he didn’t ride the subway again for a week and a half, taking long walks from his apartment to his workplace in the Upper East Side, his glasses off and grin wide, just to deter anyone who may think him an easy target, what with his midwestern twang and thin frame.
He wouldn’t want any of his illustrious neighbors to get too comfortable and forget their place.