Work Text:
Technus floated through the ghost boy’s personal computer.
He had fought the ghost boy again and lost…again.
Technus was angry. It wasn’t fair that the ghost boy constantly thwarted his plans for world domination.
This time, though, Technus was going to have a better plan. He had hidden in the boy’s computer to find something that could help him conquer the world. So far, he had only found files on the ghost boy’s enemies, a few files of the game Doom, and pictures—nothing he could use.
“Hello, what’s this?”
Technus opened the file and saw the juiciest video. He grinned; it looked like he wouldn’t have to do much to get rid of the ghost boy.
____
Bruce Wayne had been in the middle of reading a report for Wayne Enterprises.
An email notification suddenly popped up. He took a quick glance and did a double-take.
The subject header read: An Email from Your Son.
Bruce quickly went through every last one of his children but couldn’t think of anyone who would send him an email instead of a text.
Bruce ensured all his malware protection made by Barbara was up and running before opening the suspicious email. A video was attached to it, which made Bruce’s paranoia ricochet up. He hesitated for a few moments before his curiosity got the best of him. He pressed on the link and waited with growing trepidation as the video downloaded.
When he pressed on it, he saw a boy who looked like Damian but wasn’t. First, he had blue eyes. Blue eyes like Bruce’s. Secondly, he was paler than Damian, and his hair was longer and shaggier. The boy also held himself differently. While Damian stood and sat straight and proud with a haughty look most of the time, the boy on the screen hunched and didn’t seem to have any confidence.
“This video is for the eyes of Bruce Wayne only. If anyone other than Bruce Wayne sees this, well, let’s say it isn’t gonna be pretty for you, and your life will be in danger. Honestly, even if you are Bruce Wayne, your life will be in danger anyway.”
“Cool, now that we have established that,” the boy took a deep breath. “Hi, Dad. Sorry for throwing that out there, but I couldn’t think of another way to tell you who I am. My name is Danny Fenton, but I was born Danyal Al Ghul, the younger twin brother of Damian Al Ghul, heir to the demon head. This email is set to be sent automatically three days if I haven’t opened it. If you’re seeing this message, then I’m dead. Or at least, more dead than I already am,” Danny mumbled the last part.
Bruce felt his heart fall to the bottom of his stomach. He had another child…one who was dead if this video was to be believed.
“It may be cruel of me to send you a to send you a message post-mortem, but you deserve the truth, and telling you earlier would’ve put you in danger. As to how this video wasn’t sent earlier, well, when I know I’ll be on vacation or something else comes up, I set it up in a way to give me more time so there’s no way for this to be sent by accident.”
Danny took another deep breath and straightened his shoulders. Bruce could see the remnants of Bruce and Talia in him as his eyes sharpened with determination.
“I don’t know how I died, or should I say, who most likely killed me. I have a lot of enemies. It could’ve been the GIW; maybe it was one of my rouges or even my adoptive parents, the Fentons. I was a superhero, Phantom, in my small town. Not everyone saw me as one.”
Bruce could see the haunting look in his son’s eyes—the same look he saw every morning in the mirror, the same one that shone in his other children’s eyes.
“When I was fourteen, I died. It was a stupid accident. My parents had built a portal to the afterlife. It didn’t work. I was being stupid. My friend wanted me to go into it so she could take a picture. My parents are smart but airheaded. They put the power switch inside the portal. I tripped and accidentally turned it on.”
“Dying sucked. I’ll spare you the details, but it wasn’t pretty. When I got out of the portal, I was alive but changed. I had ghost powers. It turns out that having an interdimensional portal opening on top of you can turn you into a half ghost-half human freak of nature.”
“Thanks to my fuck up, pardon the French, a bunch of ghosts were now able to freely come to our world through the portal and cause chaos. I had powers, and I could stop them. It’s not like I couldn’t do anything, so I started fighting them, and voila, I became a superhero.”
“My parents are ghost hunters and have vowed to get rid of ghosts ‘molecule by molecule,’ and since they don’t know I’m Phantom, that includes me. So, if it turns out that they did kill me, please don’t judge them. They didn’t know it was their son, and I take full responsibility for that. Oh, also, due to the whole ‘molecule by molecule’ thing, the chances of there being a body to be buried is basically zilch. Sorry about that.”
Bruce made a distressed noise at his son, apologizing for there being no body to bury. Were all his children cursed to suffer?
“Now that that is out of the way, I’m sending this email because now that I am gone, no one is left to save Damian from the League of Assassins. We were raised in an assassin cult. I faked my death at six years old and escaped. My biggest regret was leaving Damian behind to suffer at the hands of our grandfather, Ra’s Al Ghul.”
“You’re a civilian. If you learn too much about the League of Assassins, you'll be in danger, but I need you to save Damian. He’s likely still there. Damian took great pride in being the Demon’s Head heir. He’ll be a little stabby, a by-product of being raised by our fruit loop of our grandfather. Our grandfather also brainwashed him. He tried with me, too, but Damian was a bit more susceptible because he was raised to believe he would be the best in the world after our grandfather.”
“It’s not his fault, so please be patient with him and save him. I’m begging you. My biggest regret was not getting him out of the League; now, I’m dead. But you, father, you have a chance to save him. I can only hope the rumors that you have connections with the Justice League are true.”
Tears streamed down Danny’s face, and Bruce was close to following his son’s footsteps.
“Please, please, save him.”
Danny stared straight at the screen, piercing Bruce’s soul.
“My second regret was not being able to get to know you. From what I’ve seen with your older kids, you seem like a cool dad. I bet you’re the same way with the youngest one you hide from the public. I wish you all the best, dad. Thank you for listening. From Danny Fenton, your almost certainly dead by now, son.”
The screen went blank, and what he had just seen finally hit Bruce. He had another son—one who was most likely dead. One who followed Bruce Wayne. If Bruce had just let Damian be seen by the public more, Danny would’ve seen his twin and most likely made contact sooner.
Bruce let himself wallow a bit more in pity and grief and then picked up his phone.
“Father,” Damian answered instead of a greeting.
Bruce ignored the curt greeting and went straight to the point.
“Damian, did you have a twin brother named Danyal?”
“Who told you,” Damian asked in a tight voice. That was all the confirmation Bruce needed. He hung up on his youngest, afraid he would say something stupid. Damian called as soon as Bruce hung up.
Bruce ignored his (second) youngest and texted Damian the video.
A few minutes later, Damian called back.
“Father, I don’t care what state he is in. We must discover the truth of what happened to my brother. I don’t care if only a single molecule is left; we must find the truth.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
____
Danny was lounging on the sofa watching TV.
He had failed to find Technus, but he knew the boisterous ghost would reappear. For the time being, Danny could relax and catch up on his shows. Danny was about to pop a handful of popcorn when the doorbell rang.
He frowned. He didn’t want to get up.
“Door,” he yelled into the house.
Silence answered him.
Danny got up and grumbled to the door. He didn’t think to see who it was before opening. It was Amity. Ghosts didn’t knock, and the GIW crashed instead of knocking, so it couldn’t be them.
Danny opened the door and came face-to-face with a frowning Damian Al Ghul.
Danny’s mouth fell open.
“Dami—Damian?! What—how?”
Damian tackled Danny.
“Akhi, you’re alive!”
“How—what, of course, I’m alive, why wouldn’t I be? How did you find me?”
“Danny,” a deep voice said. For the first time in his life, Danny saw his father in real life instead of the covers of a magazine or through a screen.
Danny looked behind, making sure his parents hadn’t heard the door. Danny could hear his parents tinkering away still in the basement, engrossed in their latest project.
“Let’s take this outside,” he said while closing the door. He didn’t think their neighbors would even bat an eye at two strangers at the Fenton’s door. After all, they were weird people with multiple people coming and going.
“How did you find me,” Danny asked again.
Damian folded his arms and scowled at Danny.
“Well, it was the weirdest thing. Father got an email saying that you were dead and who or what could’ve caused it. We, of course, came right away to avenge you, but we came to find out that Daniel Fenton had just been to school today.”
“That’s impossible! I just reset the codes to the video. Nobody knows about it—Technus!”
That’s why Danny hadn’t been able to find the ghost; he had been in Danny’s computer messing around.
His brother’s scowl deepened.
“So you weren’t going to tell me you were alive! I mourned you all these years!”
“Damian,” Bruce Wayne, his father, spoke for the first time. He had a deep baritone voice that somehow soothed and scared Danny simultaneously.
“Give Danny some space. He’s been through a lot.”
“Tt,” Damian turned his face away from Danny.
“Dami, you’re out of the League,” Danny whispered, “I’m so glad you got out.”
Damian turned back to Danny, “You left without me. Why?”
“I—I knew I couldn’t convince you to come with me. I’ve been planning, though, to get you out. I was so close, too; I was going to get you out and deprogram you.”
“Well, I got out a long time ago. Why didn’t you go to father?”
Danny looked at Bruce Wayne, “He’s a civilian. I couldn’t bring him into this world.”
“Father is more than a civilian.”
“Damian, we can talk about this later. What’s this about a Technus?”
Danny sighed.
“Yeah, I should fix that. Come on, you might as well enter.”
Bruce frowned, “Wouldn’t your parents get angry for letting strangers in?”
Danny rolled his eyes, “Oh please, they’re so absorbed by their current project I might as well be invisible, pun intended.”
Damian groaned. Bruce, however, frowned. As he walked through the house, he became increasingly disturbed. Weapons were left out in the open. The security system attacked Danny randomly, and a mysterious green substance leaked from the walls. Bruce was also nervous about the huge addition added on top of the house. Damian and Bruce frowned at each other as they got deeper and deeper into the house.
The three of them entered Danny’s room. Damian couldn’t help but look around, wanting to know more about his long-lost twin. Danny liked space if the NASA posters and the hanging planets were anything to go by. He was messy. He had clothes thrown all over the place, and his bed was unkempt.
Danny opened his laptop and started looking through it. He let his brother and father look through his room. First, he had a job to do. He clicked the file he had his video saved and looked for any bugs.
It didn’t take long. Technus was still chilling in the file.
“Technus, you have five seconds to get out, or I go in there and kick your ass.”
“You cannot defeat me, ghost child, for I, Technus, am the master of all techn—.”
Danny didn’t let the ghost finish. He transformed and entered his computer, leaving behind a stunned Bruce and Damian.
It didn’t take long, and a few seconds later, Technus had been kicked out of his laptop. Danny was too angry to joke around. It didn’t take long for him to suck Technus up in the thermos.
A part of Danny was tempted to fly away and let all of this blow over, but deep down, he knew that was no longer possible. He looked into the horizon and turned back.
After all, his brother and father were here. He might as well face the future head-on and let it unfold.