Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Danny, like a lot of things lately, blames his parents for this.  

Because he could’ve sworn he closed the fucking portal before he left!  

Dropping to the ground, he just barely misses being hit by the clubbed tail of a bus-sized, spitting mad ghost-dragon. Wind rushes past him seconds after the tail does, blowing dust and grain-sized pebbles into his face—and not for the first time, he’s thanking his past self for the foresight of wearing a full-face mask rather than anything else.  

Tonight was supposed to be an easy one, and Danny is bemoaning the fact that he thought it would be. Seriously, it’s been so quiet! Just past two am and he’d been wandering around Amity making sure nobody from the Zone had gotten stuck on the other side before nightfall.  

It happens more often than literally anyone else in this city thinks. Not every ghost that comes through the portal is hostile and looking to cause trouble, sometimes – although it's been less often than since the portal first opened – they're just curious! 

Ghosts, Danny’s found, is a term meant to fill an ecological niche much like fish and dragons are. Not every ghost was ever alive, so they’ve only heard stories from the Living dead about the mortal world, and crossing over is, expectedly, not easy. So, it's not unbelievable that when word gets out about a stable portal existing between the Zone and the Mortal World, some curious souls would want to check it out! 

It’s not their fault that there’s a lot of bias against ghosts amongst the living, and the average person can’t tell the difference between a Spirit and an ‘Ecto-Entity’ (he’s been trying to workshop the name). A lot of them are good at staying under the radar though when it becomes clear to them that they’re unwelcome, but the Zone is different than Amity and finding the way back to FentonWorks isn’t easy if you’re unfamiliar with your surroundings.  

Which is where Danny comes in to help get these guys back home. It’s either that, or leaving them here to be caught by his parents or another ghost hunter, and that’s not a fate Danny wishes upon anyone. No less people who are just trying to get home. 

Besides, even Living ghosts get lost in Amity sometimes, so it’s not like it's a Zoneborn problem in any case. 

Anyways— 

He pops right back up from the ground before the ghost can attack him a second time, dancing backwards with a twist of scrambling feet to give himself a wider berth between him and the beast. Something it doesn’t really like, its lips curling back to reveal rows of gleaming sharp teeth before letting loose an ear-piercing, layered screech that reminds Danny starkly of a bobcat—or some other Lesser Big Cat—shriek.  

God, Danny thinks, fumbling for his thermos, allowing a moment to himself for awe to hollow out a space in his chest, aren’t you just gorgeous.    

Seriously! The ghost he's fighting is one of the many, many, fascinating, monstrous creatures that are born native to the Ghost Zone, and if it weren’t for the situation, he’d be all too happy to just sit back observe it.  

It's big and serpentine; draconic, with a lindwyrm-like build and two front legs as thick as tree trunks and mammalian-like feet. There’s the usual ectoplasmic sheen around it, indicating its place in the Zone if its blatant chimeric appearance didn’t give it away, and its scales are an opalescent blue-teal-green gradient like a peacock. Seriously, fucking gorgeous.   

That’s not all either! The tail has a mean club at the end like an ankylosaurus, and protective spikes running up its spine until it reached the base of its neck where there’s a mane of thick feathers that puff up like a frilled lizard. Absolutely breathtaking, really. Danny never cared that much about animals—not like Sam did, anyways—until he started visiting the Zone regularly.  

The beast has its own name, but it’s one of those Soulhum words that Danny can’t say and he hasn’t had time to come up with its own Mortal-friendly English variant yet. Hasn't had much reason to either since he doesn’t have anyone but his friends to talk about Zone beasts with.  

Ghost dragon works for now as a stand-in.  

His thermos unhooks from his hip, and Danny gets his fingers wrapped around the sides just in time to throw himself off to the side. The space he filled is quickly replaced by the dragon, its jaw unhinged wide and intent on swallowing him whole. Fuck.   

He is so mad at himself—he usually closes the portal after emptying his thermos to prevent more ghosts from passing through, but he must’ve forgotten this time around. How, he isn’t sure, it's hard to not notice when the portal is open, but maybe he accidentally put it on a timer instead. He’s done that before.  

"H̸̄ͅę̶̈́l̴̠͆p̷̳̎” he tries, dancing away again and gesturing to himself. His throat strains under the effort. His accident left him capable of generating his own ectoplasm, but it’s just barely enough to let him speak Soulhum—and even then, just barely. There are only a few words capable of being replicated by the mortal vocal cords, and Danny only knows a handful of them.  

It’s also only helpful when dealing with terrified sapient entities who don’t know English or any other Mortal Earthen language—and he says Earthen because there’s been a rare few times that some Living dead were aliens. The distinction is important.  

Angry, hostile, sentient creatures though? That’s a bit of a hit or miss. Frostbite told him once that his Soulhum sounded malformed and disjointed, which wasn’t supposed to be a thing as Soulhum was rooted in vibrational core frequencies. For someone’s Soulhum to be wrong, it meant that something was wrong with their core.   

And—well, technically there was something wrong with his core, what with it being almost nonexistent—so, one can imagine how terrifying it must be for a sapient ghost to meet someone with Wrong Soulhum. To an animal, it probably feels like something else entirely. Danny has ways to circumvent these problems.  

They’re mostly effective on sapients though.  

In this case, all it does is make the ghost dragon even more agitated, the beast reeling away from him with another aborted, piercing shriek, before slapping its tail against the concrete. Thnk, thnk, thnk, it goes, shaking the ground beneath Danny’s feet and cracking the sidewalk.  

Thank god we’re in the warehouse district, Danny thinks, gritting his teeth and dodging a swipe from the ghost’s large paws. Most people don’t stay out late in Amity Park much anymore, but downtown is still alive and pulsing with people trying to drink their weight in alcohol. This would be a nightmare to deal with if there were other people here.  

Right, well, he should end this soon.  

His thermos comes alive in his hand, humming faintly through Danny’s gloves, and he can feel the moment it connects with his ectosignature. There’s really no other way to describe the faint siphoning feeling he gets in the back of his mind, weak but there, as his thermos uses his ectoplasm to power itself.  

He’s gonna need to distract it first, just to give himself a better shot at catching it without having to fight the tractor beam. Damn, he should’ve thought of that first. Staying out of range of its tail and paws and hooking the thermos back onto his hip, Danny circles around the beast, staying within the line of sight as it twists around to follow him. 

Around and around he goes, trying to keep an eye on his surroundings to see if there was anything he could use to his advantage while staying out of the dragon’s attacks. He tends to carry light when he goes out, better mobility, plus fights are normally during the day, so he really only has his thermos, his grappling hook, and some smaller trinkets he keeps in a pocket on his thigh.  

But—ah! There, he spots a nearby streetlight sitting innocuously on the corner, and a lightbulb goes off in his head. The dragon’s been tangible this whole time, so if he could just... goad it into pouncing at him, then—  

Danny drops to the ground again as a tail comes swinging at him, the claws on his gloves scrape the street and send orange sparks skirting towards the sky. Wind rushes over him, and – up! Back onto his feet.  

Goading. He’s good at that, and going off the size of the ghost, it’s still a juvenile. So, it’s young and inexperienced. Won’t know to look for traps just yet. Danny grins under his mask.  

Dropping into a crouch, he leaps back and, with ectoplasm bolstering his voice, does a pretty impressive impression of a snarl at the dragon. Danny swipes his hands against the ground, the metal plating on the upper palm and fingers screech against the stone and send another wave of sparks flying.  

The beast flinches back, and then lowers to the ground with a low, rolling hiss. Danny matches it, slowly pacing to the side, closer to the streetlamp, using what he can of his core to growl back. The sound is almost staticky, skipping like a broken radio or scratched CD, and warping between low and his normal voice.   

The beast hisses louder, its feather-mane shaking out and puffing up to appear bigger. The glow of the lights catch on the sheen of its feathers, and there are markings on the thickest parts to look like extra eyes.   

Gorgeous, Danny sighs wistfully, rolling up his shoulders and squatting completely, his arms bracing the ground between his knees. The light is right behind him, his shadow casting out a thick, dark line in front of him. He folds slightly, locked in a staring contest with the ghost as he drags his claws against the concrete again. 

Skkkt. Skkkkkt. Skkkkkkt.   

Come on, bud, Danny thinks, take the bait. I'm challenging you.   

The dragon’s lips curl back; its growling grows louder. Triumph lances through Danny’s chest as it lowers itself as well, shoulders shifting like a cat’s as if it was about to pounce at him.  

Alright Puff, Danny thinks, legs shifting to leap out of the way, let's get you back home.  

Ready...  

Danny curls into himself, shoulders rising above his ears and trying to rumble louder despite the way it hurts down to his collarbone. His thermos is still active, charged up on ectoplasm and feeding on his signature at his hip.   

The ghost pulls one paw back; its tail thrashes angrily.  

Ready...  

He seriously, seriously, blames his parents for this. The beast’s jaw starts to split open, revealing a gap between the teeth. Danny’s leg bends under him, gaining better purchase against the ground. 

Now!   

Danny leaps off to the side, one hand yanking at his thermos just as the dragon lunges at him, its mouth open wide. More wind follows as it just barely misses, slamming into the streetlight behind Danny with a painful sounding bang. There’s a creak as the pole bends under the weight and force.  

Got it! Danny cheers internally, putting more space between him and the dragon. He slams his hand onto one of the buttons of his device and hears the quiet whirr as the lid slides open.  

The ghost howls loudly into the air, louder than its shrieking from before, and thrashes angrily. The tail slams into the ground, wham, wham, wham, creating large fractures in the street, Danny can feel the force reverberating in his skull. It does nothing to deter him.  

He hits another button, and out shoots a pale beam of light that hits the dragon ghost and envelops it entirely. Danny doesn’t know what it's like to be stuck in the beam, but Ember was willing enough to explain that it felt like being caught in a strong current you couldn’t fight against.  

The reaction is immediate, the dragon flailing furiously as Danny hits another button, and with another whirr, it’s dragged towards him. This part always makes him a little nervous, an irrational part of his brain worried that the ghost will be able to break through the field and grab him before they’re trapped inside.  

It's never happened before, but the fear still remains.   

But the ghost dragon is sucked into the thermos without much fanfare beyond its angry, panicked snarling. And the moment its inside, the seal caps shut automatically and Danny slumps. Another thing about catching ghosts: the tractor beam is a pain to deal with, and it takes a startling amount of strength and control to keep it steady long enough to catch one.  

Makes sense, considering the amount of force needed to suck a ghost into it without the ghost escaping, but still. Danny’s elbows were sore for ages when he first started doing this, it's one hell of a forearm workout.  

Finally, he thinks, that’s done and over with. He was in the middle of doing his rounds through the warehouse district when the beast made its appearance, he should finish up here quickly and then head back home to release and close the portal before anyone else comes through.  

Okay, okay, looking around, Danny takes in the damages to the street and... winces, sucking in air through his teeth. There are dents in the ground from the lindwyrm’s tail, cracks spiderwebbing outward with pieces of the street broken up around them like an impact crater. There are gouging claw marks in the ground from its paws, and a broken streetlight.  

Definitely the work of a ghost. Well, it’s not like anybody coming in this morning won’t be able to tell just by looking at it. Still, he feels bad: Amity Park doesn’t have a Bruce Wayne in it to help pay for city repairs after an attack. Gotham lucked out on that one. Amity's kinda just... shit outta luck.  

Right, well, there’s nothing Danny can do about it other than send silent apologies to the people in charge of fixing it. Doublechecking the seal on the thermos, he clicks the small safety lock into place and hooks the cylinder back onto his hip. Accidentally freeing everyone from the thermos only needed to happen once for him to make sure it never happened again.  

Next step... ehhh, Danny’s nose curls up. Going back and releasing the lindwyrm-ghost back into the Zone. He’ll just have to return to finish up his round, but this takes priority. He wants to make sure the portal wasn’t back up. Last thing he needs is a wild goose chase across Amity trying to catch the Box Ghost.  

He wasn’t kidding about it being quiet tonight, and he's probably just going to call it early after finishing up here.  

There was a harpy kid from New Hellas hiding out in the Iverson Memorial Park, huddled in the corner of this little dug-out beneath the wooden playground. Danny was able to coax her out with little trouble though and got her home.  

Then there was a banshee wandering the shopping district in downtown Amity, that wasn’t so bad either. She apparently made a handful of friends with these chatty drunk clubgoers who had a bazillion and one things to say about her outfit and hair, apparently not realizing they were talking to a ghost. Danny was a little hesitant to break that up, so he just waited on the roof nearby until the ladies left before approaching.  

There was the handful of animals running around too... mostly just the smaller kind. A fox-like ghost that kind of resembled Scrat from Ice Age, only with twice the number of eyes and a green coat. A cat trying to break into a dumpster. What Danny thinks was a raccoon...  

Then a few others, like a group of Shadows from the Under-Root playing tag in the park, a teen graffiti tagger Danny had to chase for a few blocks before finally catching him, and a little old man who just wanted to check on his daughter. Danny didn’t have the heart to deny him, so he escorted the guy to the house before bringing him back.  

Overall: pretty quiet night, other than the ghost dragon.  

Danny grabs his grappling hook—made it himself from parts he filched from the lab and garage—and points it at the nearby building. Ready, and...  

The air shifts.  

Motherfucker, Danny groans, immediately dropping his arm and hooking his grappler back into its place. He needs to keep his mouth fucking shut. Murphy’s come to kick him in the teeth. 

Around him the pressure changes, growing thick and heady like a storm on the horizon. Instead of ozone, it’s ectoplasm, and goosebumps rise along Danny’s skin with a shiver he’s too late to suppress. The wind picks up, swirls at his feet, and the ecto buzzing under Danny’s skin grows louder.  

Oh, woah, Danny stumbles—hit with a headrush that turns his vision tilting for a moment—that is – weird. Black and white stars spark along his peripherals, and—should he sit down? No, that’d be a bad idea—  

An ominous feeling settles in his gut. Ectoplasm surges through the ambient air, churning, sparking across Danny’s nerves and flooding his threadbare core. For a moment it’s — nauseating — then intoxicating — energizing — before finally settling on the side of too much. Overfull. Heavy.  

Fuck, Danny usually only feels this way when he enters the Zone. His body absorbs ectoplasm as much as it generates it, so it’s like dumping a bucket full of water into a shot glass, he normally needs a minute to adjust. 

But— the Overworld is never supposed to have as much ecto as the Ghost Zone, so he shouldn’t be feeling this when he’s not in the Zone. He shouldn’t be adjusting to anything.  

Is this another Pariah Dark situation? Panic lances up his spine at the thought.  

The streetlights around him flicker, shudder, then start blinking. The ground doesn’t shake, but Danny can still feel the air moving, ambient ectoplasm thickening like milk to butter. Growing and growing, sending Danny’s senses through a spin cycle until—   

All the lights go out. 

Danny grabs his thermos. 

A loud crack whips the air, a combination of breaking ice and shattered glass ringing through the street. Instinctively Danny tenses up, ready for a shockwave to knock him back— only for him to be yanked forward, like a leash being pulled. He stumbles, catches himself, and feels his heart beating.  

What is this— he looks around rapidly. His ghost sense isn’t going off, why isn’t his sense going off— what’s going on?  

A prick of light appears before him, ecto-bright and vibrant, as big as a thimble. Danny takes a step back, and it grows, swirling like a whirlpool; like a blackhole. Bigger and bigger it gets, till it's the size of his golf ball, then his fist, and only getting bigger.  

Fuck, fuck, Danny’s panic doesn’t subside in the slightest. It thickens in his lungs.  

Here’s a thing about natural portals: they’re rare. They’re so rare. They only appear in places thick with stagnant, ambient ectoplasm, because ectoplasm flows through everything. The ground, the trees, the air, everything. It’s an energy and energy needs a place to go, when it doesn’t, it either fizzles out or builds up.   

The energy needed for a natural portal to form is a lot, and it only needs more to keep it sustained. So they’re usually not that big—estimated to be on average as big as a fist at best—or last that long; normally a few seconds.  

Amity Park doesn’t get natural portals, not before or after the portal was turned on.  

There shouldn’t be one forming right now, not right before Danny’s eyes. That’s not normal. Something had to be making this portal and Danny really, really, really didn’t want to find out what was on the other side. But he was going to anyways.  

Shit. Shit.   

Bigger and bigger it gets, until suddenly it's half Danny’s size and blinding, swirling green. Blazing through the sky are lashes of light, shimmering curtains of green and purple like an aurora borealis, twisting and turning like incense smoke. It’s mesmerizing.  

It reminds him of the night he freed the ghosts in the lab.   

It takes Danny a moment to realize that the lights of the city have gone out. There goes his hope that nobody was going to see this; he already knows the school will be all abuzz about it tomorrow.  

Please be friendly, he thinks, raising his arms defensively, please be friendly. Or reasonable. Someone I can work with. He stumbles back a few steps, gives himself space and time to react to whatever will come through. His teeth grit together.  

The ectoplasm grows thick, and thick, and thick, until Danny is all but choking on it. It’s dizzying, terribly so, he tenses up, and— 

A child stumbles out of the portal, their face obscured by the light at their back and their eyes reflecting the vivid, inhuman glow of the portal.  

For a moment, the world stops spinning. The wind stops blowing, pawing at his clothes. The lights above stop thrashing. Even the ectoplasm thick in the air stops, stops buzzing under his skin and spilling in and out of his core.   

Danny and the child stare at each other, both their eyes wide.  

Wait—  

His ghost sense still doesn’t go off.  

Danny’s blood runs cold, and he remembers that there is panic hollow in his chest. The air rushes back into him.  

That’s not a ghost.   

Behind the child, the portal stops spinning. It suspends in the air for a beat, then another, before making a soft sighing sound, and dissipates. Pulling apart and fading into nothingness.  

The city takes a breath, and the streetlights flicker back on. The sky goes dark.  

The child whirls around as if sensing the fading at their back—maybe they can, Danny isn’t sure—and upon realizing the portal is disappearing, cries out in alarm in a language Danny doesn’t recognize. There’s a katana strapped to their back.  

His thoughts screech to a halt.  

Oh, oh no.   

With the unnatural glow of the ectoplasm disappearing, and the regular lights returned, Danny gets a better view of the child. He can’t see their face yet, they’ve turned to lunge at the fading portal, but he catalogues everything else he can see.  

Dressed in black from head-to-toe, Danny immediately notes many things. Like the jika-tabi shoes he’s wearing that are wrapped up to his calves, and the black obi around his waist, the vambrace wraps around his forearms, the tunic and loose sleeves and pants. Most importantly: the fucking katana.   

For a moment, Danny’s transported back to Ancient Japan from when Vlad was trying to mess with time. The get-up reminds him briefly of the shinobi shozuku he wore, just less form-fitting.  

Shit, Danny sucks on his teeth, don’t tell him the kid was from Ancient Japan and accidentally fell into the Zone, and then here. No, that wouldn’t make sense, why the dramatic shift in atmosphere then? But maybe someone had a hand in it, is it Vlad again? 

His panic shifts to heat, anger surges through the back of his head. If Vlad is behind this, Danny’s going to end him. That idiot—  

Wait, that wasn’t Japanese Danny heard though. That was another language, so the kid couldn’t be from Ancient Japan? And wouldn’t Clockwork contact him if Vlad was trying to mess with time again?  

The kid—boy, Danny notes—still has his back turned to Danny, hissing frantically at the air where the portal was in a tone that certainly implied threats. His shoulders were hunched up tersely, puffed up like an angry kitten.  

Danny tilts his head to the side, trying to peer around the kid as his stomach sinks with uncertainty. Shit, he must be scared out of his mind. How old is he? He’s tiny. Danny thinks about all the ghost kids he’s met, their physical ages and physique.  

...Kid’s probably around six or seven then? Definitely too small to be ten. Too big and coordinated to be a toddler. He can make out the boy’s brown skin in the light, his hair is dark and short, slightly curly.  

“A̶h̸— ” Danny grimaces, thumps a first against his sternum with a cough. Transitioning from Soulhum to English is always a hiccup, his throat slightly hoarse and dry. “Uh, hello?”  

The boy whips around, wide-eyed, and— 

Danny’s stomach drops, he flinches back a step.  

Oh, oh shit. Oh shit. Forget his earlier time-traveling theory. This is worse. This is so much worse. His blood chills.  

Staring at him, undoubtedly, is Damian Wayne.   

Except not.   

Because last time he checked, Damian Wayne was thirteen and back in Gotham with his family and Danny’s template. And Danny’s checked. He’s checked pretty damn recently. He would’ve known if Damian Wayne was missing, and unless news is released today, he shouldn’t be. 

That’s still Damian Wayne’s face staring at him though. Younger, smaller, with big green eyes and a round face, and a fucking katana strapped to his back. He looks like a mini assassin.   

That’s Bruce Wayne’s kid, Danny thinks, his breath picking up, or at the very least, Bruce Wayne’s kid’s clone. Someone cloned Bruce Wayne’s kid. Someone cloned his template’s youngest kid and dressed him up as an assassin.   

Someone cloned his template’s son, and then Murphy dropped him at Danny’s feet.  

What kind of fucking joke is this!?   

What’s he supposed to— 

Woah! Hey—  

“Shit!” Danny hisses, leaping back from the small, gleaming sword suddenly slicing right for his chest. Little Damian’s moved, unsheathed his sword and was now trying to attack him. Of course, Danny should’ve figured it wouldn’t be easy.  

He shouldn’t know how to use that, a small voice in the back of his mind notes as Danny dances away from Damian. The boy pirouettes, a faint stumble in his step as he stops, and then twists around to face Danny.  

His face is twisted angrily; lip curled into a defensive snarl with a scrunch between his brows. Again, Danny thinks of an angry kitten, and feels a wash of endearment. He shoves the feeling off with a wave of discomfort. Not the time.  

“Hey,” Danny tries, holding his hands up in surrender, fingers splayed and relaxing his posture into something non-threatening, “you don’t need to attack, I just want—”  

Damian lunges again at him, spitting something out in that foreign language that, if Danny would hedge a guess, is probably an insult or threat of some sort. He twists out of the way of the sword, curling his hand into a fist and using his forearm to shove it away by the flat of the blade.  

—to help.   

Danny sighs internally. He sticks out his foot and hooks his ankle around Damian’s, pulls it back and trips him. It has the desired effect, Damian stumbles again and Danny spins around. “I can’t understand you, pipsqueak.”  

As if that would be of any help. It makes him feel better at the very least. Danny keeps the distance between them, circling slowly to the side as Damian corrects himself quickly. Good recovery time.   

Good footwork too, he adds, eyes flicking down to the way Damian spreads his feet. Mom put him and Jazz through... frankly a ridiculous amount of martial arts growing up. Largely in the name of keeping them safe from ghosts. Along with a lot of weapon handling.  

Which is a bit ridiculous if Danny has to say so, considering very little of the self-defense he’s learned has been helpful against the beings that quite literally fly. But it’s the thought that counts, he supposes. Bitterly, he can give her credit for that.  

"أين أخذتني؟” Damian snarls, baring his teeth. At the very least, he’s learned not to try and attack him blindly, the kid begins circling him as well. Surveying him probably, with the way his eyes flick to Danny, to their surroundings, back to Danny again.  

Was it too much to hope for him knowing English? No? Yes?  

Danny sighs outwardly this time. “I’m going to pretend I know what you’re saying,” He doesn’t have his phone on him and he doesn’t know what language Damian is speaking, this is... frankly a worst-case scenario. What’s he supposed to do? 

Fuck, he blames his parents for this. How is he supposed to handle this?   

This was Bruce Wayne’s kid. This was Bruce Wayne’s kid. This was his template’s kid. He had a sword and didn’t speak English, Danny had no ways of communicating with him, and no way of getting him to stop attacking.  

And he was Bruce Wayne’s kid.  

Damian lunges again, noticing his distraction. Danny ducks out of the way, pushes the blade away with the gloved palm of his hand. He doesn’t trip him again, just backs up towards the nearest light. 

Danny can see traces of his template in Damian’s face. Danny can see traces of himself in Damian’s face. And it— it’s—  

His shoulders haunch up slightly, a little knot of distress wriggling its way in between his ribs. It’s weird. Danny’s seen photos of the senior Damian Wayne before, both before and after finding out the truth of his birth, and he noted the similarities then too. Did the same with his template.  

It’s different seeing it in person. It’s always different in person. Can’t catch awe in pictures of mountains. Gotta go stand at the base of one and feel the overwhelming revelation instead.  

Little Damian has the same sharp wings on the edge of his eyebrows that Danny has, sharp and teeny because he’s teeny. When Danny was little, he asked why he had them but not Mom or Dad, and they said it’s because his grandparents had the little wings and sometimes genetics skip a generation.   

Right. Skipped.  

Danny’s hair is longer than its ever been, but when it was shorter it swooped to the side similarly to the way Damian’s does now. Maybe he’s just looking too deep into similarities, but the curl peeking out from his forehead looks like one Danny used to have as a kid.  

The tilt of his scowl looks like one Danny wears, and his stomach flips in a funny way that has Danny pressing his lips together unhappily.  

Damian is, without a doubt, his template’s kid. Danny doesn’t know what to do about it other than dodge the strikes of his sword and decipher what language he’s speaking.  

He nearly gets stabbed in the side, Danny’s spine arches out of the way and he pirouettes, pushing off the ground to jump behind Damian. Damian follows instantly, swinging. “جبان!”  

I don’t know what that means, Danny thinks helplessly, scrambling to put space between them. He doesn’t want to fight back and hurt the kid—Damian is fast and worryingly capable for a... however old he is—but he’s still just a kid. Hell, he barely reaches Danny’s waist at his full height. Danny could fucking punt him by accident. 

One kick to the chest and he might break a rib or something! Danny’s strength isn’t augmented by ectoplasm or anything, but running around all the time to fight ghosts doesn’t leave someone weak.   

“Let me help.” He begs, yanking space between them and dropping to his fours out of habit. The words kinda just... spill out, also habit. A lot of the ghosts Danny ferries back to the Zone are children; they’re curious, and then they get lost. It’s not their fault. Danny finds them hiding in all sorts of places, and he’s figured out a system to get them to trust him when their language barrier is limited. “I can help. Let me help.”  

It’s futile, considering he knows Damian can’t understand him. But he tries anyways. Danny leaps back from Damian again, feeling the whoosh of his sword pass by him. Help, help, let me help.  

Ectoplasm burns under his skin, chases the chill out of his fingers. He curls them to prevent them from clawing across the ground. Danny tilts his head to the side, and once more out of habit, tries to access his core and send a feeling of safety-friendly-help across. “Please let me help you.” He pleads.  

Damian doesn’t hear him. But he doesn’t lunge again. He eyes Danny warily, his sword tilted defensively. There’s a gap between them, and Danny’s eyes are drawn to the labored rise and fall of Damian’s chest: he’s getting tired. Running out of breath.  

Still just a kid, Danny thinks, hope sparking between his lungs. He reaches back to his core again, brushes against the threadbare thing, and— safesafesafe— tries to rumble a little louder.  

I’m safe. I’m safe. I promise I’m safe. Let me help? I can help.   

Damian makes a face, brows scrunching together and scowl softening just enough to peel into bewilderment. Unease spills across his shoulders, his body tilts away from Danny—Danny doesn’t move.  

“ما أنت؟” Damian says, and Danny doesn’t need to understand what he’s saying to hear the pure confusion in his voice. Defensive as it is, distrustful, but ultimately confused. Danny grins a little under his mask, tilts his head fully to the side.  

Body language is important for all species, human or otherwise, living or not. Unable to speak fluent Soulhum, and the Soulhum he does know sounding wrong, Danny relies on it a little more than usual to get his point across, even if said body language is inhuman in nature.  

Damian isn’t a ghost, but at the very least what Danny is doing is confusing him enough to make him pause. He fades out of the ghost-like rumble. “I’m trying to help you, bud,” he coaxes, dropping into the tone he uses with the ghost kids: soft but unpatronizing, open. “I can help. Let me help. Please?”  

No response, Damian’s eyes narrow. Slowly, Danny raises his hands up from the ground, loose and relaxed. He unfurls his fingers, splaying them out, palms towards the ground in a gesture of ‘unarmed’, and then he gestures to himself.  

I’m safe, I’m safe, he tries to convey, showing Damian his palms and then gesturing towards himself. Again, again, again, until the tension bleeds out of Damian’s shoulders and he looks more doubtful and wary than ready to rip his face off.  

Well, he still looks like he’s ready to rip his face off, but less actively about to do it.  

Again, again, again: I’m safe, I’m safe, I’m safe.   

The moment Damian sheathes his sword, Danny nearly cheers. As it is, he does so in the back of his head and merely outwardly slumps with relief. Good, perfect. No more fighting. Danny tilts back until his butt hits the ground and then kicks his legs out in front of him, before crossing them.  

It startles Damian for a moment, and he jerks back, but he doesn’t unsheathe the sword. Which Danny considers a win. Slouching, he drops his chin into his hand— 

Scchhk.   

Shit, he forgot about his gloves. Both of them startle, Danny yanking his head back and his hand away with a flinch before looking down at it. Damn, did he scratch his mask—? Damian watches as he carefully taps at it, lip curled bewilderedly.  

Okay, no. He’s good. Cool. Danny gives a thumbs up to Damian.  

Damian merely scowls at him, and Danny squashes down the endearment with a vengeance. “ماذا تريد يا وحش لعازر؟” Damian says—demands, his arms crossing over his chest. “لماذا أخذتني؟”  

“I can’t understand a damn thing you’re saying, Damian.” Danny retorts, dry as a desert. He’s not sure if Damian actually goes by Damian, or if like Danny he goes by a different name, but until he learns what that name is— 

Damian jerks again, his eyes growing big, and then narrowing sharply. “كيف عرفت اسمي؟!”  

Oh, never mind? 

Danny perks his head up and tilts it. “Damian?” He repeats, and Damian’s shoulders hunch, his scowl sharpens. “Damian? Your name is Damian?” He points at the boy, “Damian?”  

“نعم أيها الأحمق! هذا أنا!” Damian snaps, his hands balling into fists, “كيف تعرف اسمي أيها الوحش!؟”  

Huh, Danny’s not sure what to think about that. He squints at Damian, mouth pressing into a line. That’s... good? He supposes? That he knows the boy’s name now? Maybe he doesn’t mind it, like how Dani doesn’t mind being called Danielle.  

He’s thought about what it’d be like if his name was Bruce instead of Danny, and it made him sick to his stomach. Maybe Damian doesn’t know he’s a clone. Will Danny have to tell him? Mn. He will if he doesn’t know.  

Hn. He says this as if he’s planning on keeping the kid with him; he’s just trying to figure out how to get Damian to stop attacking him long enough for him to think. Which... he has done. Damian’s not attacking him anymore.  

Shit. What now?  

Danny presses his knuckles into the mouth of his mask, staring intently. What does he do? Damian came in through a fucking portal, and that portal is gone now, and Danny doesn’t have the power to send him back where he came from. The kid’s basically stranded here.  

Maybe he could drop him off at a police station? Leave the kid at the door and have the cops figure it out.  

...Yeah. Right. That sounds like a perfect idea. Leave the katana-wielding, assassin-dressed, potentially volatile Arabic kid at a police station and just hope for the best. That sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. What would they even be able to do other than get a translator for him anyways? They might just haul him off to CPS or something, and then Damian would go into the foster system, or shipped back off to wherever he came from.  

Does he even want Damian to return back home? Danny thinks about it for a moment, and finds his chest curling with discomfort at the thought. No. He doesn’t. People don’t just learn how to wield a katana or how to attack people, they have to be taught. Damian was taught how to use his sword, and Danny can’t think of any reason why someone would clone Damian Wayne and teach that clone how to hurt people, without the answer being something insidious.   

After all, Dani was made to lure Danny into a false sense of security so she could kidnap him back to Vlad’s mansion. Who’s to say that Damian wasn’t made for a similar reason? There’s no reason for anyone to clone anybody.  

But if he doesn’t want Damian to return home, what can he do about it?  

Obviously he can’t just leave him here. Damian doesn’t speak English, which means, obviously, that he probably can’t read it either. While Amity Park isn’t Gotham, it’s still not safe even without the ghosts haunting it. Danny would never forgive himself if he just left Damian here and he was killed or trafficked.  

...Will Danny just have to take him home with him until he can figure out the answer? His heart skips a nervous beat; his spine goes numb.  

How is he going to explain that to his parents? Wake them up when he gets home and tell them ‘Mom, Dad, this is Damian. He’s a clone of Damian Wayne, yeah, that Damian Wayne? The son of the man you accidentally cloned to make me? The man you didn’t tell you accidentally cloned and then continued to not tell even after realizing? That man? Yeah, I have his son’s clone. Oh, where did I find him? In Amity’s warehouse district. Why was I in the warehouse district instead of sleeping? ‘Cause I’m the Phantom. Why?’ 

Danny sneers under his mask. Yeah, not a fucking chance. He became the Phantom to prevent his parents from realizing he was catching ghosts in the first place, there’s no way he was going to spoil that secret.  

But what else can he do? He can’t ask Sam and Tucker to hide him in their houses; they’d also have to come up with a lie for their parents and at least Mom and Dad are eccentric enough for them to believe something plausible, so long as its ghost related. Danny might be able to guilt them into letting Damian stay out of sheer principle.  

Do they even have the room for him? Their house isn’t that big, Mom and Dad got it with the thought of having two kids in mind. There’s not really any room for a third unless they make room, and Jazz hasn’t graduated yet.  

Anxiety buzzes under his skin, pressing against his lungs like a weight on his chest. He doesn't know what to do. The idea of having his template’s son’s clone living under the same roof as him makes him feel ill, but he can’t just leave Damian here. He likes that idea even less.   

He can’t leave Damian here, but he doesn’t want to take him home. He can’t leave Damian here, but he doesn’t want to take him home.  

Danny, internally, drops his head into his hands and groans. How did this night get so twisted up? He already knows his answer, even if he doesn’t want to admit it. The idea to abandon Damian to fend for himself in Amity Park is so laughable it doesn’t even warrant an argument.  

Fuck, now to just... somehow convey this to Damian. He said he was going to help, and even if Damian doesn’t understand it, Danny is going to try. Blinking back into focus, Danny zeroes in on the very same boy he was just thinking about. 

Said boy who is scowling something fierce at Danny, his arms crossed agitatedly over his chest and his foot tapping. “هل تستمع لي حقا؟” he says, and there’s a tinged note of desperation at the end, “أهلاً؟”  

“Damian,” Danny calls softly. The boy jolts, before scowling even deeper. Without saying more, Danny tugs off his gloves, mindful of the metal claws attached to the end, and shoves both into his jacket pockets.  

He shows his palms to Damian, then slowly gets up. Damian tenses, one foot stepping back and a hand rising towards the handle of his katana. Danny pauses, waits for Damian to lower his hand, and then stands up fully.  

“Damian,” he repeats, gentle. Damian’s eyes narrow.  

“هل هذا كل ما تعرفه لتقوله؟” He scoffs, curling into himself. Danny’s mouth twitches. Kid looks annoyed, and the little brother embedded in his soul wants to annoy him even more.  

One more time, “Damian,” he says, unable to hide the grin from his voice. Damian all but snarls at him, but before he can change his mind and attack, Danny offers his palm out to him. With his other hand, Danny points down the street.  

He hopes the message is clear: Follow. Come with me.   

Damian looks down the way Danny is pointing, then looks back at Danny. “هل تريدني أن أتبعك؟” He raises an eyebrow.  

...Danny can parse a guess what Damian is asking, just out of sheer context clues. He hopes. Tentatively he nods, drops the pointing hand, and curls the fingers of his palm in what he hopes is a universal gesture of ‘ come.’   

"لماذا ينبغي لي؟” 

Come on, kid, Danny thinks exasperatedly, quit being stubborn.   

He doesn’t say anything, just gestures for Damian to follow again. Trust me, Danny thinks, trying to beam those thoughts directly into Damian’s skull. I can help. Maybe if he rumbles again, Damian will do it. That seemed to work somewhat the first time. 

Ah, not needed.  

Damian’s shoulders slump, and the fight drains out of him. He still looks distrustful, but the tension running through him seems to fall right out of him. “بخير” he hisses, “سأتبعك، ولكن إذا حاولت القيام بأي شيء فسوف أقطع حلقك.”  

...Sure, whatever that means. Danny waits patiently, and Damian glowers at him one last time before taking a reluctant step closer to him. Then another.  

Perfect, close enough. Danny lunges forward and wraps an arm around Damian’s waist, pinning the katana to his back tight enough that, hopefully, Damian can’t unsheathe it. That’s if he can get his arms unpinned though. 

Damian yells in alarm, but he’s not fast enough to duck out of the way, and he’s not strong enough to wriggle out of Danny’s hold as he pins him against his chest and with one arm hoists him up onto his hip. Kid’s probably seventy pounds soaking wet and Danny is about six feet tall and two hundred at best.  

With his other hand, Danny grabs his grappling hook and twists around, aims for the sky, and shoots. The wire whines, and Damian stills the moment he hears the sound, his head snapping up and nearly knocking Danny in the chin. Oh good, maybe he knows what this is?  

“Hold on tight,” Danny mutters, feeling the line go tight in his hand. Damian’s legs wrap around his waist, and he loosens his hold just enough to allow for little arms to wrap around his neck. There might be some risk of strangulation, but he doubts Damian is foolish enough to choke out the guy hurtling them through the air at unknown speeds.  

He tugs on hook just to make sure its secure, and—off they go.  

Flying through the city is admittedly harder when he has one arm around someone and he’s trying to keep them from falling, but it’s definitely worth the alternative of walking. Besides, with how tight Damian is holding onto him, he’s not sure he could drop the kid if he tried.  

The wind is loud in his ears, as it always is. It howls past him and Damian, and the thrill and adrenaline that rushes through Danny’s veins when he hooks onto another building and begins to descend is unmatched. He’s long since gotten used to the terrifying, stomach-dropping sensation.  

Eat your heart out, Red, he thinks spitefully, grinning wildly under his mask, your hoverboard has nothing on this. He hasn’t seen her out tonight, but granted, Red only shows her face when there’s a ghost attack, and no ghosts attacked other than the dragon beast. Too far away from Val’s neighborhood though, whatever ghost sensor she’s got didn’t go off.  

Eventually they reach Danny’s neighborhood, and as the buildings get shorter, Danny lands him and Damian on the roof of a nearby apartment. Normally he doesn’t mind the height change and the risk, but he has fragile cargo he’s not too keen on breaking.  

His feet touch the ground, and immediately Damian is trying to clamber off him like a wet cat clawing its way out of a pool. He’s shaking a little and scowling. That might just be his default setting though.  

Danny laughs quietly, his wire receding back into the gun and the hook clicking back into place in his palm. “Flying not for you, hm?” he teases lightly, mirth fogging thick in his chest.  

Damian glowers at him amidst patting at his clothes. He cheeks his arms, legs, chest, and then reaches up for his sword. His fingers brush against the hilt looming over his shoulder, and Damian huffs a sound of relief, and relaxes. Only for a moment though, the kid snaps to attention.  

...Damn. Okay, Danny already didn’t really want to send the kid home, but this is just reaffirming that decision. Frowning, he glances off to the side, and very quickly spots FentonWorks. Hard not to, it's like a giant beacon, regardless of day or night.  

He points at it; Damian follows his line of sight. He doesn’t bother to say that they’re going there, so Danny takes the time to watch Damian’s reaction to the house—and it doesn’t disappoint. Damian’s head recoils and his jaw drops slightly, his defensive grumpiness forgotten in favor of being bewildered.  

Hah, that never gets old.  

Damian looks between him and the house, looking no less disgusted than he did before. Until finally: “نحن ذاهبون إلى هناك؟” he says, still sounding absolutely baffled and turning to look at Danny fully.  

Again, no translation needed for that one. Danny can pretty much parse what Damian is saying by context alone, and he grins beneath his mask and nods. “We are,” he crows quietly, twisting to walk backwards towards the house and arching a finger at Damian, “c’mon.” 

Damian looks vaguely like he’s regretting his life choices, but he follows anyways.  

The houses are close enough together that it’s barely any trouble to pass between them. Danny keeps his pace steady with Damian’s, and feels more like he’s striding than he is running or jogging. For every one step he takes, Damian takes five. It should not be as endearing as it is.  

They make it to FentonWorks, Danny uses his grappling hook to get them onto the roof and from there it’s... somewhat easy pickings. He has two options: take Damian and climb up to the balcony of the OPS Center, and then enter the house that way, or try and climb down to his bedroom window.  

Climbing through the OPS Center is fine, but the only entrance to it is through Mom and Dad’s room, so unless Danny feels like playing that quick-time horror event, he’ll want to climb down through his window. Which is what he normally does.  

Is this even a debate? What is he thinking? Of course he’s going in through the window, if he can grapple through the city with a small child attached to his chest like a koala bear, he can climb in through a window the same way.  

Danny turns and finds Damian standing under one of the support pillars of the OPS, looking up at it with an expression of disbelief and wonder. Which—yeah, okay, fair. The OPS Center always tends to make people speechless regardless of their eccentricities. Danny snorts quietly and strides over.  

“Damian,” he stage-whispers, and Damian’s head snaps over to him. His disbelief immediately disappears into a blank mask. Shame. Danny motions for him to follow, before walking over to the side where his window is. Damian follows silently. 

Crouching at the ledge, Danny steadies himself with one hand and peers over the side. Damian copies him. They’re right under his window, perfect. Nudging Damian with his elbow, Danny ignores the dirty look he receives and pushes the kid off to the side slightly.  

Hooking his fingers onto the side, Danny twists around and digs his feet into the wall, clinging to the side. Once he’s sure he’s steady, he opens one arm and gestures for Damian to hold onto him.  

The sheer offense written on Damian’s face is damn near laughable, you’d think Danny asked Damian if his mother was a horse instead of asking for him to hang onto him. Who raised this kid?  

“أنا لست طفلاً، ولا أحتاج إلى التمسك بك!” Damian hisses. Danny knows damn well that he knows Danny doesn’t understand him, so he just says nothing and keeps his arm out and open, waiting for the kid to do something. Whether that be try and stab him while he’s vulnerable, or reach out, time will tell.  

One beat passes, two beats pass, three beats....  

Danny raises an eyebrow under his mask, and hopes he can convey his best look of expectation possible through his eyes alone. I can do this all day, kid, he hopes his obscured face says.  

A minute passes. Danny is still holding on.  

Damian gives first, throwing up his arms with the angriest, disgruntled child yell Danny’s ever heard. “بخير!” He snaps, then scoots forward and reaches his arms out for him, grumbling under his breath.  

Ah, victory is sweet. Danny grins smugly to himself and hums lightly, swaggling his head and giving Damian time to wrap his arms and legs around him. Once he’s sure the kid is secure enough, he starts climbing down the wall.  

His window is unlocked, as it should be and as he expects, the screen popped out of its frame in preparation for the night, and Danny swiftly slides it open and crawls into his room. It's a little difficult with Damian on his chest, but he makes do.  

Once again, Damian clambers off of him the moment his feet touch the ground, and the kid is already off across the room away from him before Danny’s even stood up. Fast. He already knew that from when Damian was trying to cut his face off, but still. Worth saying.  

“الآن بعد أن اتبعتك، أيها الوحش، ماذا تخطط للقيام به الآن؟” Damian says sharply.  

Hm. Danny holds up a finger for him to wait, and ambles over to his bedside. Damian makes a frustrated noise; for a moment Danny worries that he’ll unsheathe his katana and cut him down where he stands, but when he hears no telltale sounds of unsheathing swords, the worry fades.  

His phone is on his bedside table charging, it turns on the moment Danny’s hand hovers over the screen and – fuck! He reels back with a grunt as the brightness flashbangs him instantly, and motherfucker— Danny thought he turned it down before he left! Fantastic— 

Blinking the stars out of his eyes, Danny scowls and squints through the blinding light to turn said brightness down all the way. It still hurts his eyes to look at, but at least they’re no longer watering. Danny opens up the home page and enters the phone translator.  

Perfect, great. Next step: he twists on his heel, taps the speech-to-text, and then shoves the phone microphone close to Damian’s face. Kid recoils at the light too, face scrunching up in disgruntlement and a deep scowl, and nearly swats Danny hand away. “يا!” 

Danny stands on his toes and watches the phone, and—success! He grins as the mic picks up Damian’s voice and inputs it into the translator. He pulls his phone away and flips it over to see what the translator says about it.  

[Translate from: Arabic]  

Oh! So Damian’s been speaking Arabic this whole time? Okay, that... feels kind of obvious. Mn. He’ll think about that later. For now... Danny punches in Arabic onto the translation side of the screen, and then starts typing.  

“مهلا! ماذا انت؟--” Damian starts. 

Danny shushes him, finishes typing, and hits the text-to-speech.  

[My name’s Danny, you’re in Amity Park, Illinois, in America. A ghost portal brought you here and I don’t know why. I want to help you.] Says the robotic voice, and it’s the most curt, awkward thing Danny thinks he’s ever typed. It’s succinct though, and that’s his main concern for right now.  

Damian goes still. Danny watches him closely. He types in more: [I’m going to hand you the phone after this, it’s going to translate what you say. I’m sorry, I don’t have a better option right now.]  

Just as he said, Danny hands the phone to Damian right after the robot stops speaking. Not before swapping the translation, erasing the text, and hitting the mic button. Damian takes it quietly, his brows furrowing and eyes squinting to adjust to the light.  

He looks at the phone, then at Danny, then back at the phone. “هذه هي أمريكا؟” He says after a moment of distrustful, static silence. The phone chimes, and Danny watches as the screen translates: “This is America?” 

He holds his hand out, Damian stares, then gives the phone back. [Yes,] Danny types, [I’m sorry, I don’t know how you got here. You can stay with me.] He almost says, ‘until further notice’, but his fingers stop before they can. He doesn’t really know that, does he? He doesn’t know if or how Damian is going to get back, and he doesn’t think he wants Damian to go back either.  

Like he said: nobody clones anybody without a reason, and most reasons aren’t good at all. Nobody teaches a kid how to wield a katana – nor makes one tailored to their size – without a reason. Damian had been aiming to kill when they were fighting; someone taught him that.  

Damian’s face twists angrily, the kid puffs up, and he looks ready to argue with him. Danny isn’t sure if he should be surprised or not—but just as Damian opens his mouth, he pauses, then deflates with a frown.  

The cogs turn behind his eyes, and whatever conclusion he comes to, his shoulders slump and he crosses his arms. But only for a moment, his hand thrusting out seconds later in demand for the phone. Danny passes it to him with a curl of his mouth.  

“Fine,” the translator says, comically bland and robotic in comparison to the pure vitriol that Damian spits into the word. “I will stay here with you until Mother can send for me.”  

Hm. Danny tries to ignore the cold twinge of unease that strikes through his heart. He’s, uh, going to think about that later. For now, he just takes the phone back and types: [Understood. I need to do something really quick, but I’ll be back. You can take the bed.]  

He still, after all, has the ghost dragon sitting in the thermos. He hasn’t forgotten that part. Damian scoffs at him, turning to side-eye the bed with distaste – hey now, Danny thinks that’s a little uncalled for considering it's not even messy – before decidedly climbing onto it.  

The mattress creaks quietly under the weight, and Damian scowls deeply as if it personally offended him. Honestly, cute, Danny will give him that.  

The weight of the night finally hitting him, Danny shambles across the room to his desk, toeing off his boots in the process and letting them stay where they are. He shrugs off his jacket, and tosses it over his chair with a muffled thump.  

Maybe I should’ve warned him about my face, Danny thinks. The glow of his eyes reflecting off the wall and casting it in a shade of vibrant, ecto-green, a buzzing pressure behind his iris and pupil that he’s long since grown used to. He blinks rapidly, the buzz fades out of his eyes, and the glow disappears. 

Hopefully Damian doesn’t know what Wayne looks like, because Danny’s officially done with explaining tonight. It’s a problem for the sunrise. He can feel the kid burning holes into him; he tries to ignore it as he plucks his grappling hook off his belt and lays it on his desk quietly. He unclips the thermos next, tugs off his mask, his back turned to Damian, and pulls his hair out of its ponytail.  

His room is awash in darkness and would be almost pitch black if it weren’t the pale glow of his glow-up stars stuck to the ceiling and the streetlamps outside bleeding faintly into the room. His scary eyes let in a little light through the holes of his mask, but with them no longer on, the room is dark.  

Danny walks over to the door and slips out quietly, thermos in hand. He can make it to the stairs with his eyes closed, so he’s not really worried about being able to see. His Dad’s snoring can be heard through the door.  

Down the stairs, through the hallway—Danny feels a moment of grief when he passes the kitchen and, abruptly, terribly, realizes he could’ve just used the front door, he keeps it unlocked when he goes out so he can sneak in—and towards the lab.  

The door code hasn’t changed since Danny was a kid, so he punches it in with an ear to the ceiling—the beeps aren’t loud enough to be heard upstairs, but there’s always a first time for everything—and when it chimes happily, the pressure releases with a hiss.  

Moment of truth, Danny thinks, lips pressing together and shoulders tensing as he peels the door open, did he leave the portal on... 

At the bottom of the stairs, soft tendrils of green and purple light pulse and reach for the walls. Danny’s shoulders slump, a groan bubbles in the back of his throat, and he knocks his head against the side of the door. Mother fucker. Of course he did.  

He takes the stairs double-time, annoyance burbling behind his ribs with every step and droning under his skin. “Why are you up!?” he hisses when he reaches the bottom, scowling at the portal swirling innocuously at the end of the room.  

Colorful curtains of light drape across the walls and air, fluttering and drifting like reflections of water off tile. There’s a quiet, pleasant hum floating through the room, getting louder as Danny stalks towards the portal. It sounds like whale song and lullabies, the harmonizing hum of a fan and a music box playing.  

It buries feelings of nostalgia in Danny’s ribcage, that feeling of deep-rooted exhaustion where nothing but a warm blanket and sleep can cure. It’s heady, thick, and soothes some part of Danny’s nonexistent core. It feels both like and not like the portal Damian came through. Stable; calmer.  

“I thought I turned you off!” Danny continues, pointing an accusatory finger at the portal as if expecting a response. He’s not, but it makes him feel better. Lifting up his thermos, he flips it around to the buttons and clicks the safety lock.  

“Do you know how much trouble you caused me?” He holds up the thermos for a moment, and then brings it back down, “one of the serpent beasts! Seriously! How did this thing even get through, they travel in packs and don’t come around this area!” But of course, it would be just his luck that he’d get one. At least it was only one. Silver linings.  

He fiddles with the thermos buttons, searching for the proper release mechanism that wouldn’t just release the lindwyrm, but release it with enough force that it’d be shoved into the Zone before it could realize what was happening. “And now, and now, I have a kid in my bedroom! A kid! With a sword! And not only that, but he’s the Template’ s kid’s clone!” 

“I mean, what was I supposed to do? Leave him on the street? I’m not a monster! The kid is tiny! Absolutely tiny, his eyes come up to my fuckin’ hip! He looks one wrong gust of wind from blowing away!” Danny rants, brows furrowing together, his scowl deepening, “And sure he has a katana, of all fuckin’ things, but what’s that gonna do against a guy with a gun? I could carry Damian with one hand and stuff him in my backpack, and that’d be the end of it.”   

“And sure, I have no idea where to even begin on what I’m gonna tell Mom and Dad,” he huffs derisively, “maybe I should just tell them ‘hey Mom and Dad, my son is—’” 

Danny pauses.  

Oh, that sounds even worse out loud than in his head. He just had the worst epiphany ever. Danny tilts his head up, cranes his neck to the ceiling, and stares blankly like he’s searching the sky for answers.  

There’s a beat of silence, and then he closes his eyes. “Oh my god,” he whispers, “my Template’s son’s clone is in my bedroom right now.” With a sword, might he add. “My son is in my room right now.”  

Oh no, oh no. He is not thinking of that right now. No fucking way. He is sixteen years old. He does not have a son, no matter what technicalities there are biologically. Hell no. Hell no.  

Danny found out he was a clone four months ago. He is barely accepting that enough as it is, he is not dealing with the crisis of suddenly being a father—technically. One thing at a time. One crisis at a time.  

Damian is not his son, and his clone is not his son either. End of story. 

Opening his eyes, Danny looks back down at his thermos and punches the release button. There’s a loud whirr as the device comes to life, and he points the business end outwards to the portal like he’s holding a bomb. There's a small shift-click as the seal opens up, and then the tractor beam shoots out into the portal.  

A brief moment— 

Danny digs his heels into the ground and braces his legs as the ghost dragon is suddenly shoved out of the thermos, the force of the beam threatening to yank his capturing device right out of his hands if he’s not careful. The beast thrashes angrily, and then—in a blink—is gone into the Zone.  

Bye bye Puff, he thinks, slamming the thermos shut and lunging for the control panel on the wall. The off button gives under his palm, and there’s a hiss—and then a muffled clank as the blast doors abruptly shut. The room is dunked in darkness with only the emergency lights overhead to light the way.  

One beat, two, Danny feels the ectoplasm beneath his skin sink deeper into muscle and sinew, away from where he can feel it in the back of his mind. His core quiets its steady thrumming, until he can feel his heart beating in its place.  

His shoulders slump. It always sounds terribly quiet when he shuts the portal off, it’s unsettlingly and bittersweet. Pushing off the wall, Danny makes sure that there’s no way for the portal to turn back on until his parents wake up, and upon doing that, he pivots on his heel and shuffles back upstairs.  

Forget resuming patrol, he’s going to bed. If there’s a ghost attack, his sense will just wake him up.  

Damian is not asleep when Danny returns. Something he should’ve expected, and kind of already was. He is, however, sitting crisscross on the center of the bed, his spine straight as a board—that is the best posture Danny’s ever seen on a six year old—and a dark shadow of a silhouette. 

Well, Danny thinks, standing in the doorway, that’s not terrifying at all. Kid still hasn’t taken off his katana, Danny can just barely see the hilt of it peeking out from over his shoulder. He’s not going to bother asking him to either, whatever. Sleep with a katana, whatever makes him feel safer.  

He can feel the kid watching him as he steps fully into the room, closing the door quietly, and he’s not sure if Damian sees his face or not. He’s not going to bother asking. He walks over to his desk where there’s two pillows shoved under it and pressed against the wall.  

Danny pushes the chair out of the way, climbs under the desk, and pulls one of the blankets he has hidden under there over himself. Sleeping under his desk is a relatively new habit, but he likes the small space and the fact that his back is facing the wall. It’s cramped in a good way. 

Also, his bed faces his closet, and his closet is the type to have the door be a sliding mirror. He doesn’t feel like waking up and seeing his face first thing in the morning most days anymore.  

Damian is still watching him; Danny really couldn’t give a fuck. He’s laying down now, and sleep is starting to pull on his consciousness. His alarm is going to go off in, at best, four hours, and he wants to cherish what sleep he can get.  

“Good night , Damian,” Danny calls quietly, mostly sarcastically, and barely manages to see the boy jolt at his name.