Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Seven months ago, Jimmy Olsen disappeared. 

Someone Clark had known since he was a thirteen year old intern, now old enough to have his own apartment. And as far as everyone could tell, he just vanished off the face of the Earth.

The apartment was still there, untouched except by forensic examination. Bruce had kept the rent paid, had done so without Clark asking him. Had saved him and Jimmy’s parents the pain of having to go through Jimmy’s things. An acknowledgement that Jimmy would never be coming home again.

He listened for his voice or heartbeat constantly. He searched in places full of lead that might block his sight. When he wasn’t actively saving others or writing articles for Perry he was looking for Jimmy, only to return back to Lois and Jon each night with nothing. He wished he had a clue. Anything. But everything connected to that clinical trial vanished. Information Jimmy had shown them beforehand only led to empty clinic fronts and disconnected lines.

When he’d heard the voice, hoarse and panicked calling for him, he’d thought it was a hallucination. But even if it was, he couldn’t bear not to check. And as unbelievable as it seemed, there Jimmy was, only…different.

He was flying for one. His cheeks were gaunt, revealing he hadn’t been eating well. His hair was long and unkept and blue and…

And Clark still can’t hear his heartbeat, even with Jimmy right in front of him. Almost afraid of this still being a hallucination, Superman reached out and Jimmy all but collapsed against him .

“It’s some kind of Government Agency. They were experimenting on me. And him.” Jimmy gestured to the jar he was holding. Inside was a small floating sphere, icey blue in color and glowing weakly like a lightbulb about to blow. The words were in a rush, almost as if Jimmy was afraid of running out of time. “They said he was called Phantom, I think. Or D946, but I think that's like when they call me A9 and it’s just a subject number. I think they were trying to give me your powers.I’ve got the ice breath, laser vision, flying-I mean obviously the flying, and I think the energy weapons they hit me with were supposed to hurt more than they did.”

Now that he mentioned it, there were numerous burns on his clothes, with his skin only slightly red beneath it.

“Superman!” A voice with a tinny loudspeaker sound announced. “In front of you is a very dangerous specimen. Please assist us in the apprehension of Subject A9. Do not listen to anything it says. It is not a human and has no rights. It’s a dangerous ecto entity and needs to be destroyed and studied.”

Jimmy clutched the jar tighter and Clark felt the heat behind his eyes that indicated his heat laser vision was beginning to activate.

Superman lost a little time after that.

~

When Clark came back to himself it was amidst a scene of destruction. There were vehicles scrapped, weapons broken to pieces. People were scattered about, some thrown into trees, some injured, but none dead. He'd not let loose on humans like that except for the time Darkseid was controlling him and he'd never wanted to lose it like that again. He didn't regret it, not really, as much as he felt he should. And especially not when he could see Jimmy still curled defensively, fearful eyes not on him for losing control, but on the destroyed group of people who'd been experimenting on him for seven months . Deep Breaths Clark, Jimmy needs your help, don't lose it again.

Back under control, Clark forced his voice calm. "Jimmy, we need to get you and your friend to a hospital." Clark wasn't sure if the orb was still alive, or if it ever was and Jimmy hadn't pulled a Wilson on a random object during his capture. But either way they needed to know what those people did to him. 

But Jimmy shook his head, terrified at the mere concept. "No hospital. At least not here." 

"Here?" Clark pressed gently.

"America," Jimmy clarified, his voice shaking. "They were talking while they thought I was unconscious. Something about a loophole law. Made me count as a thing they could legally seize. They'll get me again."

They absolutely would not, even if they came to the hospital in force. But he wanted Jimmy to feel safe. And even if Clark would fight them off, them showing up at all would probably send Jimmy into a panic, which, if he did have Clark’s powers,  would be very bad. Thankfully, he knew a place no shady organization could ever touch. "What about the Watchtower? It's in space, no government domain?" 

It wasn't Jimmy that responded, but the orb. It jumped around its jar excitedly, colors flashing a bit, and firmly putting to bed whether or not it was alive.

"I guess he wants to go to space," Jimmy, looking as surprised as Clark felt.

"Then I guess we're going." 

~

 This did not seem the time to find out if Jimmy had also had Clark's ability to survive in a vacuum, so they were taking a Javalin. Clark  flew both-all three of them there (If Phantom was sapient enough to have opinions on space, it was absolutely a person) as fast as humanly possible. Phantom didn't have another big show of excitement, but vibed quietly the entire time they were in the javelin.

“He’s really happy.” Jimmy said, almost under his breath.

“You can tell from the vibrations?” Clark guessed. 

But Jimmy shook his head. “I can kind of…tell what he’s feeling? It’s not very precise but he’s happy. I’ve never felt him happy before.”

“Jimmy…” Clark almost didn’t want to open this can of worms, but the more time they had to prepare the better. “What can you tell me about what happened? Do you know who those people were?”

“At first they said they were with the National Institute of Health. I didn’t buy it though. They’d drugged and kidnapped me while I was sleeping and kept me in a room with an armed guard. I wasn’t allowed to leave my room except when flanked by more armed guards. And even then it was only to the lab for tests. They insisted this was normal, everything was fine and I’d be free after the end of the two weeks. Sure I was underground with no windows or calendars or anything, but they let me keep my watch. I knew it had been way longer than two weeks.” Jimmy glanced at the aforementioned watch. “I did try and use my watch. Hell, I’d tried screaming for you. But they must have known you’d come looking and prepared the place specifically to block you out.”

Jimmy had screamed for him and he’d never heard it. Clark’s stomach twisted unbearably.

“Then something changed. I remember one of the scientists saying something about the threshold being passed and that under the Anti Eco Acts I no longer counted as a person. After that I was just subject A9. After that they stopped pretending.” Jimmy’s tone simmered with anger. “They called themselves the G.I.W., I’m not sure what it stands for though. The experiments made me tired, so I slept a lot. But I also spent a lot of time in the place where your body is essentially asleep, but your mind is aware, you know? And I overheard things. Phantom was their former test subject, but they’d done something that injured him too severely for them to use anymore. Also that wherever he was from considered him a hero. They would sneer about it. And…” Jimmy clutched the jar tighter. “That all they had to do to restart their experiments in earnest was wait till their ‘treatments’ killed me.”

It took everything Clark had not to accidentally damage the control yoke. He forced his breathing to be even. “But you got out first.”

“I’m not so sure. Right before my escape attempt-I felt my heart stop.”

Clark knew that, or at least knew that Jimmy’s heart wasn’t beating. “How did you find Phantom? Was he kept in the lab they did the testing in?”

“No, at least not all the time. They would bring him in during some of the tests and hold him in front of me like they were looking for a reaction. I don’t know what they wanted, though.” 

Fair. “And your powers?” Clark asked, hoping to remind Jimmy that he wasn't helpless any more. That even if he himself failed, Jimmy could now say he could save himself.

Jimmy frowned in remembrance. “They showed up shortly after I became A9. The first thing I guess wasn’t a power yet. I was washing my face and my eyes started glowing, like yours do right before you do your lasers. There weren’t lasers yet, but that was the first sign. I started getting stronger, even as I was feeling weaker. I accidentally bent a metal chair leg, and I tried to be really careful after that because I knew if I broke anything, it wouldn’t get fixed. I think the only reason they kept me in my room instead of a cell at that point was they didn’t want to give me a chance of escape while moving me. It still felt like a cell though. Everything everywhere was this stark white. And clean.” Jimmy paused in his thinking.

"They were obsessed with cleanliness. They were obsessed with cleanliness. One time while I was struggling, before my powers came in, they strapped me down to a bed for testing and I hit my face and got a nosebleed. They stopped everything until it was cleaned up. Like completely. I had to shower to make sure none of my blood was visible. And my clothes were laundered to perfection. None of them had so much of a smidge of dirt on their shoes. It was a little freaky, to be honest. Oh right, powers. Um, the ice breath thing started during one of the times they were showing me Phantom, I’m not sure why. It’s the one I have the hardest time controlling though. The lasers didn’t show up properly till my escape attempt. Same with being damage resistant, but that’s just a guess.”

And the entire time Clark was passing the information along. To Bruce and Lois, to root out this GiW and the laws it was operating under. To Diana and Arthur, to provide sanctuary on Earth if need be. To anyone if they'd heard of a missing hero named Phantom and to be surprised the only one who had was Boston Brand. And the heartbreaking follow up of him asking if he should let Phantom's family know he'd been found and if he was found alive or gone. Clark didn't know how to answer that one. 'He seems to be an orb' was the best he had.

The Javelin docked shortly after Jimmy stopped talking. Clark just held his friend, reassuring him through touch that he wasn't alone and that he was NEVER going back. They exited and Clark had to blink as it looked like the hanger had been decorated for Pride. Or Mardi Gras. Or a paint factory exploded. Either way bright, eye catching colors were splashed over every inch of the hanger. It confused him until he felt Jimmy release tension he didn't know he was holding. 

Right, his captors had a fixation with stark whiteness and order. He likely hadn't seen much, if any color, till he escaped. Surrounding him with a mishmash of color helped ground him that he was really out. This had Bruce's fingerprints all over it. Ah, and speak of the devil

~

Jimmy had acknowledged he didn't need to breathe or have a heartbeat. He hadn't thought about the whys of it or come to any conclusions about what that meant for him and his future, but he acknowledged them with the understanding that there would be an epic meltdown later. For now he was still in survival mode.

Superman being there helped, but it wasn't until he saw the rainbow of colors in the Watchtower that he relaxed , that a knot in his stomach that had been there so long he’d grown accustomed to it loosened. It was a mess and so antithetical to where he'd been kept it felt almost like a magic ward keeping them away. He thought he felt Phantom relax too, but it was hard to tell how much of what he felt from Phantom were really things he was feeling from Phantom and how much was him projecting.

"We have a guest room prepared." Not even Batman’s legendary stealth could hide his all black costume in this wash of colors. He stood out in stark contrast from it, but not in a way that made Jimmy uneasy. Or at least any more uneasy than the fact that he was Batman . "Until such times that we get the Anti-Ecto Acts overthrown, you and Phantom will be treated as political refugees. You have my word you'll be safe here." 

There was an 'Or Else' that hung there. Not for Jimmy, but everyone else. "We have a medical specialist on the way that's familiar with Phantom's biology and may be able to provide insight into what they did to you. A Dr. Frostbite-" 

Jimmy felt a spark of relief coming from Phantom. He knew him and trusted him. "Phantom knows Frostbite." he acknowledged. Batman looked mildly surprised. "I can kind of sense what he's feeling." Jimmy explained. "Just a little. I don't know if it's a me thing or a him thing or-" 

"It's a good thing." Superman reassured him. "It's the only way we can communicate with him currently. Hopefully Dr. Frostbite can help him more. For now, though, let’s get you both settled in."

“We have a room with an adjoining bathroom set up for you-”

Jimmy felt a prickle of unease, reminding him of his set up in captivity.

“-there are also public spaces you have access to, including the cafeteria. However, I would advise waiting until Doctor Frostbite has seen you first, so we know if there are any foods that should be avoided or extra supplements needed.” Batman began walking as he talked.

Jimmy tried to listen and take in everything Batman was explaining, but Superman knew what he was retaining was probably very little. The Watchtower’s layout was confusing on purpose to make things more difficult for any would-be invaders. And Jimmy had just come out of a long stint in captivity and heavens knew if he'd been allowed to eat or sleep properly in that time. It all had to be overwhelming.

The hallways didn’t have the same color mish-mash the hangar had, but there were things stuck there to break it up anyhow. Pictures, streamers, and some art that looked like it had been done by children. He didn’t know if it was from those with families, or fanart children had sent the various heroes who worked here, but it did its job of making the Watchtower look like a friendly lived-in space well.

“This will be your room.” Batman continued, stopping at a doorway that only had a single sliding curtain instead of a proper door. Clark had felt almost a reflexive concern for privacy, but realized this was more important. It was letting Jimmy know he wasn't trapped. That he could leave the room whenever he wanted. That he was safe.

Inside the room was the same color explosion as the hangar. There was also a large window looking out into space, unopenable, of course, but more than Jimmy had had prior, seeing as the facility he’d escaped from was underground. There was a bed with colorful sheets, and several chairs. A small desk had a computer waiting for use. It was surely set to only access the greater internet and not anything local to the Watchtower, but it was again another freedom they could offer him that he hadn’t been allowed before. Not just the ability to relax or gather information on his own, but contact. Being able to send messages and talk to other people not on the space station. 

“The room next door is being set up for your parents. And an additional one for Phantom’s family.” Batman continued. “We don’t know how long political asylum will be necessary, and both families are unwilling to be far from you two now that they have you back. They’re on their way now. One of your co-workers, Lois Lane, is coming with your parents. She may not be staying as long term, but she decided she was coming.”

Superman and Jimmy shared a look, both knowing not even the greatest superheroes on Earth would stop a Lois Lane that had it in her mind to do something. And Superman knew how personally she’d taken Jimmy’s abduction.

“Are we expecting it to be a long time? The law is clearly in violation of several other human rights laws.” Superman pointed out.

“It is, and I believe we can get it overturned fairly quickly. The problem is the GiW themselves. They were government contractors, not government agents as they claimed. They also operated in cells. The lab Jimmy and Phantom escaped from was one. There are more. They need to be found and neutralized before Jimmy and Phantom are safe to return.”

“There’s more of them?” Jimmy sounded dismayed and Clark couldn’t blame him.

“For now.” Batman said in a tone that promised a horrific amount of unpleasantness for any GiW he found. He walked over to Jimmy and lowered himself to be looking up at him, a tactic Superman recognized as one he used with scared children. “I will never disparage Superman or your friends at the Daily Planet their ability to do detective work, myself and the rest of my team are the best. And right now our main focus is finding and exposing all remaining GiW cells.”

“But why? I mean, not that I’m complaining but…” Jimmy struggled to find the right words. “Superman knows me, but you’ve got all of Gotham? Why is it a priority for you?”

“Jimmy, two of my own have died and come back to life. By the wording of that law and the GiW policies, they would be considered ‘things’ to be eliminated. And even beyond that, even if it was just you they hurt, it would still be my top priority because it’s abhorrent and everything the Justice League stands against. Everything I, and everyone who works with me, stand against. They will not escape. They’ve evaded notice for this long, because they used the brilliant tactic of making themselves look so much like a joke no one ever glanced twice. But their cover is broken. They can never hide again.”

It felt like an oath. And Superman knew just how serious his friend was taking this. Batman’s family was everything to him and while he had been focused on getting Jimmy out, he was right. Jason and Damian could be held indefinitely on the same grounds Jimmy was. Batman was putting on a calm façade for Jimmy, but Superman knew he’d be out for blood.

“Right now our job is catching them, your job is recovering. In the bathroom we’ve installed a number of disability safety features in case you’re having issues with recovery. While I imagine Superman is going to be keeping a close ear on you, when he’s not staying by your side, I’ve set up alert buttons in case a medical emergency arises-”

The planning put into this was all Bruce. But Barry had to be involved with the actual renovations. That was the only excuse for how this had gotten done in the time between when Clark started reporting what Jimmy had told him and they arrived.

Clark really loved his friends.

Chapter Text

Jimmy put the jar on the windowsill looking out the void of stars. Phantom had seemed excited about space so hopefully he'd like the view. If he could see. Jimmy wasn't sure, to be honest. It wasn’t like he currently had eyes. Could he sense what was around him? If so, a window was likely no different to a wall. But it was the best he could do.

"Do you want me to stay?" Superman asked. Not that he’d be going far if Jimmy did need space. But he wanted him to have the option.

"You probably have a million other people that need help-" Jimmy hedged, but the anxiousness in his voice made it clear space was not what he wanted.

"That's not what I asked. Do you want me to stay?" Superman asked gently.

Jimmy tried to say no, that he was out, he was fine . But the thought of being alone, even in the middle of the Watchtower full of heroes, filled him with dread. "Please," he whispered. 

"As long as you want." Superman promised. "I won't let them touch you ever again." 

He was safe. He was out. He was out and he was safe and they were gone and the experiments were done and he was dead but he was free but he was dead— Jimmy barely managed to cover his face with his hands before he screamed .

Seven months of terror, of fear and uncertainty, of his body becoming more and more unrecognizable overflowed into sobs and wails. He couldn’t afford to show weakness to his captors. Had to stay alert and on track to plan his escape and get whatever information he could. Had to feel himself die and know that all that he could let himself think about was getting himself and Phantom out of there. And now all of it was coming home and wasn’t ironic that now that he was free he’d just b r e a k.

He was barely aware of Superman. His kind words seem to wash over Jimmy leaving little more than a vague impression they had been there at all. He broke into fresh sobs when Superman ran his hand through his hair and he realized he couldn't remember the last time touch hadn't meant pain and injections and stolen blood. "Why?" he asked when he could at least form real words. "Why did they do that to me? Why did they kill me? They killed me. I felt it." He half expected to have to struggle for the words out, for emotion to clog his throat. But the words slipped out with ease. It made sense, though. After all, how could he be talking if he wasn’t breathing? But he was talking and not breathing so who even knew how his body was getting the words out-

"I don't know." Superman answered as honestly as he could. On any level, he couldn’t imagine why anyone could ever do to another being what the GiW did to Jimmy and Phantom. “And we don’t know you’re dead. It’s true your heart isn’t beating,” Superman quickly pointed out, wanting Jimmy to know he was taking him seriously. “But what they were doing was changing how your body worked. They may have just changed it to work without a heartbeat. There are several alien species and even some on Earth that don’t require hearts.” Jellyfish sprang to mind, but he was sure there were others.

"What do I do now? I don't even know what I am. Alive? Dead? Mutant? Zombie?" Jimmy’s voice was beginning to get hysterical.

"You're Jimmy, and that's the only thing that matters." Superman said, his voice full of conviction. “What you're going to do is recover while the rest of us take this group down permanently and make sure it's safe for you to go back to whatever life you want to live. I know there's still a place for you at the Planet. But I can also understand if you'd just want a fresh start elsewhere. Everything else can wait till you’re back on your feet." 

"The Planet probably has a new photographer by now." Jimmy muttered.

"They can have more than one. Lois and Perry? They never stopped looking, never stopped pushing to find you." Superman promised. 

"What about Clark?" 

"Him too." There was a fondness, almost like a hidden joke. But Jimmy couldn't quite bring himself to ask about it.

Then Jimmy felt something inside him. Like a twitch he couldn't explain. "Someone's here." he forced himself to focus and realized half the room was covered in ice and frost. "Did I—?" Completely lose control of whatever powers he had and not even realize it? 

A knock on the wall drew Jimmy’s attention away from the winter wonderland his room had become and to the impossibly large shadow that was now silhouetted against the curtain. "May we come in?" 

"Who's we?" Superman didn’t recognize the voice and the only one they should be expecting was the doctor. 

"I'm Frostbite. I'm here with—" 

"Where is my brother?!" a girl about a year or so older than Jimmy barged in prompting a flare of joy and recognition from Phantom. She seemed to feel it too and her eyes were drawn to the window. "Why is he in a jar?"

"I don't know. I just grabbed it and ran from the lab they were experimenting on us in." Jimmy tried to explain, but a mountain of a man barged in, sliding on the ice to the window and twisting  the lid off the jar without hesitation. 

Phantom sang through the empathic bond. Love and hope and family and belonging and— "He's really happy to see you." Jimmy explained, trying to explain through the surge of emotions. 

"I'd hope so," said the girl in an exasperated voice. But she looked like she was about to cry.

Jimmy backed into Superman as more and more people flooded into the room, crowding around the orb that was Phantom and chattering loudly, talking over each other. The temperature began to drop and the red head who burst in first looked him up and down and something clicked in her eyes. 

" Fenton Family, stop! " The intruders froze at the authoritative tone in her voice as she turned to Jimmy. "Who are you?" 

"Jimmy Olsen." He squeaked, trying to calm back down. 

"Are you the one who got Danny out of there?" she continued. 

"If Danny's Phantom then yes." 

"Which one of you is Frostbite?" Superman cut in, his voice almost but not quite hostile. Jimmy was definitely close to panicking and making the room even more icy than it already was. "He's the only one we were told to expect after we brought Jimmy and Danny here and we were hoping for answers." 

"That would be me." A yeti with powder blue fur entered the room. Because why not at this point. "The Fentons informed me the Great One had been found and was in dire straits." He sounded as lost as Jimmy felt.

The girl pinched her nose. "Am I to assume that you were expecting a doctor to look over Jimmy and figure out what happened to him?" 

"Yes." Superman's voice was firm. 

"Dad, did you listen to anything after being told that Danny was found?" she accused. 

"No?" the big man admitted.

The girl let out a long suffering sigh. "Okay, Mom, Dad, Sam, Tucker, Dani, take Danny and find someplace Frostbite can do his thing. Frostbite, when you've gotten Danny as stable as he can be, can you please come back and see what you can do for Jimmy here?" 

"Of course, I'd be honored to help the liberator of the Great One." Frostbite nodded his head. "If I'd known I had more than one patient, I'd have brought help." 

Superman put an almost defensive hand on Jimmy’s shoulders. The last thing he needed to hear after having to rescue himself was that less than an hour later he’d already gotten lost in a shuffle.  

"And we'll be discussing that later, Dad ." the girl's voice was pointed, which gave Superman some feelings of vindication. "You all go, I'll do triage here to get ready for when Doctor Frostbite is ready. Is triage the right word? When the nurses do the preliminary work at hospitals. Oh, it doesn’t matter, you know what I mean."

"Thank you, Jasmine. It should not be long, as I was made aware of the Great One's condition. However, it would be good to join him as soon as you can." 

“Danny’s going to need all of us there.” Presumably her mom said, in the tone mothers use when reminding their children of things they really should know.

“I am aware.” Jasmine’s voice was the kind of brittle that seemed like it would break into very sharp pieces under just a little bit more pressure. “But seeing as how our family decided to completely ignore the person who rescued Danny and who is in fact the only reason we have him back and not even pass on that he needed medical attention, I think the least I can do is help here, wouldn’t you say?”

“She’s got a point.” The younger boy said.

“ Tucker!” The black haired girl hissed.

“You wanting to do the maximum to help Danny doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a point.” Tucker stood his ground. “Danny’s got all of us, Frostbite’s priority, and we all understand what’s going on. What’s he got?  A public access superhero and he probably doesn’t even know what a liminal is. Do you know what a liminal is?”

“No.” Jimmy answered.

“He doesn’t even know what a liminal is. Look at all this ice, Sam. He is freaking out.”

Jimmy couldn’t deny it. Especially as the ice seemed to grow thicker. He felt like his heart should be pounding and his breath coming in rapid gasps. But his chest was still and his lungs never inflated. Because he was dead dead dead they’d killed him he was—

“Is there a shock blanket in here?” Jasmine took control as she saw Jimmy’s eyes expand and his body still.

“Drawer under the bed.” Superman told her. He’s seen Jimmy stiffen and he wished he could hear breath, a heartbeat, anything to let him know how Jimmy was doing.

Jasmine went for the drawer, but the big man beat her to it. He yanked it open and swaddled Jimmy and Superman both in his rush. “I’m so sorry.” his voice was filled with regret. “I’d just heard Danno had been found and I stopped listening and thinking.”

The honest contrition broke through Superman’s annoyance. “Is there anything I should be doing? I know with normal shock you usually try to elevate the person’s legs, but—” But if Jimmy’s heart wasn’t beating, bloodflow wasn’t exactly a factor.

“Hold onto him, please. Physical contact with someone he trusts is the best thing you can do for him right now.” Frostbite pulled out a small green pill and then his hand turned invisible as he phased the pill into Jimmy’s body!

“What was that?” Superman asked, alarmed.

“Something akin to a cross between a sedative and a mood stabilizer.” Frostbite gently. “It won’t do much, but it should take the edge off, at least enough that he won’t accidentally hurt himself. I don’t feel safe giving him anything stronger until after we have a better idea of what his biology looks like.” Frostbite looked Superman in the eyes. “Your friend is not well, but the Great One is in far worse shape. Keep him close until his loved ones arrive. They will be his balm more than anything I can currently do.”

“Superman?” Jimmy’s voice was weak, but his eyes were beginning to focus again. “What happened?”

“You had a panic attack, young man. A well-deserved one from what you’ve been through. And probably not the last. Now, I’m going to get the Great One on the road to recovery, and I trust you’ll be caring for yourself as well?”

“I don’t know how to,” Jimmy admitted.

“You rest and let yourself be taken care of. And hopefully answer Jasmine’s questions so if a further treatment plan is needed, we can jump on it. But you’ve already made it through this worst. I promise, it’s all downhill pedaling from here.”

Frostbite left with his patient and Jasmine herded her family out after him, but this time with nothing more than a comment to ‘be quick’ from her mother. 

Jimmy felt a twinge of nervousness at being separated from Phantom - from Danny. But he could literally feel how safe and happy Danny felt with them, so he tried to put the nervousness to rest. 

Jasmine sighed again. "I am so so sorry for all of this. I can understand Dad’s excitement, after a year and a half of no word about Danny, but that’s not an excuse not to at least tell Frostbite about you. I'm Jazz Fenton, and I'm the one who usually runs herd on our family. Something I failed to do spectacularly."

 18 months. More than twice the time Jimmy had been there. If he had been there that length of time, would he have been reduced to nothing but an orb too? "It's okay." 

"No, it's not." Jazz said firmly. "I'm sure you have questions, and I'll answer what I can, as well as getting information ready for Frostbite. But I need to know, would you prefer I be blunt or dance around things." 

"No wrong answers." Superman promised soothingly. “And that includes changing your answer partway through if need be.”

Jimmy considered. He was afraid of the answers, but he already knew the worst thing, right? And knowing would at least be better than worrying it over in his head.  "Blunt." he said. "I'm dead, aren't I?" 

"Undead.” Jazz answered smoothly. “Or unalive. Not in the meme internet way of saying dead without saying dead to get around censors, but without more information I can't say more with any certainty." 

"What's the difference?" Superman pressed. 

"Undead is someone who's dead but presents traits of being alive, like being able to think and move. Unalive is someone alive who presents traits of being dead. Danny, at the time of his capture, counted as unalive." 

That he might not anymore hung heavy in the air. 

"Until Frostbite does some tests I can't say if they just contaminated you with ectoplasm till you started presenting as unalive or if they killed you." She winced at her words, but was doing her best to honor his request for bluntness. "It was the GiW that did this to you, right? You were a baseline human when you were captured?" 

"It was. Just a normal guy doing a clinical trial for some extra money. And…I felt my heart stop right before my escape." Jimmy admitted, feeling like it was a confession. 

"Believe it or not, that's not diagnostic for differentiating between undead and unalive." Jazz gave a half smile. “Danny’s had Shrödinger’s heartbeat ever since the accident. It’s just one of the ‘dead’ traits the unalive can have. Have you reverted back to a living form?" 

"No." Jimmy's voice was small.

"You may not be able to until you feel safer," Jazz reassured. “You’ve been in survival mode and it may take time for you to feel safe. Like really safe and not just your head knows you are, but your mind keeps looking for threats.”

"Why did they do this to me?" Jimmy asked, the question that kept circling in his head. The question he’d asked so many times at the facility only to be ignored. In the beginning he’d just been told it was part of the trial. Then some invisible line was crossed and he went from being Mr. Olsen to Subject A9, and his questions weren’t even recognized.

"I don't know." Jazz took a deep breath. "Their mission statement, all their actions until this point— it's about destroying anyone and everything with even the slightest hint of ectoplasm. So forcing it on a person enough to change them? That's new. And bad." 

"Is there any way to fix this?" This was the hardest question, save asking if he was dead, if only because he was so sure of the answer.

"If you're anything like Danny, there's no going back to 'normal',” Jazz did finger quotes. “-but you'll still be able to live a mostly normal life once you have your powers under control. If you're undead...less so." she hedged.

That was more than he expected, at least. "If I am undead, what do I do? Where do I go from here?" Do you mourn your own death? What kind of future could an undead have? Was he just some kind of ghost haunting his loved ones?

"I don't know," she answered regretfully. "but you already have some good friends here. And you saved Danny, so all of us are behind you too. That’s the Fenton family and an entire nation of Yeti’s at least . We'll figure something out." she promised. 

"There's more I probably should ask, but I don't know." Jimmy felt...lost. He'd had a goal to focus on with his escape, but now that he was out he didn't know what to do next. 

"You've been through a lot and your mind needs time to heal." Jazz assured him. "May I ask some questions for Frostbite?" 

Jimmy nodded. 

"Do you want Superman to stay in the room for this, or would you rather keep as much privacy as you can?" Jazz asked first.

"He stays!" Jimmy insisted, the response knee-jerk. He almost felt panicked by the thought of Superman leaving. 

Jazz didn't seem to take notice of how insistent he was. "Some of these may seem odd, but I promise they're important, so please answer honestly. Have you had thoughts that seemed to cycle in your head over and over again to the point of compulsion?"

"I don't think so?" Jimmy answered, thoughtfully. "I was pretty focused on escape once I heard they were just waiting for me to die, but I think that was justified." 

"Has thoughts of escape continued here?"

"No," Jimmy answered honestly. The Watchtower, surrounded by heroes and out of enemy jurisdiction, felt like the safest place he could be.

"Have you noticed powers following a similar theme, or elemental affinity?" Jazz continued

"They're kind of like Superman's. And, um, I seem to be doing a lot of ice when stressed." He gestured to the Winter Wonderland of a room.

"That's," Jazz looked like she was holding something back. "Okay, have you known Superman long? Like as a person, not a headline?" she clarified.

"Years." Jimmy promised. "Almost since the beginning."

"Good. You clearly gain comfort from him staying here with you. Would you feel just as safe with Wonder Woman or Green Lantern?" she asked.

" No ." Jimmy answered immediately, seeming almost surprised by the answer.

Jazz looked the opposite of surprised. "Thought so. Superman, would you be okay staying close to Jimmy for the foreseeable future?" 

"Of course," Superman said. "Honestly I hadn't really planned on letting him out of my sight until his kidnappers were taken care of."

 "It might be longer than that." Jazz warned. 

"Why?" Jimmy asked. "I know I'm not in great shape, but he's also Superman . The world depends on him." He couldn’t imagine the world changing enough in seven months for that to no longer be true.

"Because he's the only current member of your Fraid and no matter what that makes him crucial for your recovery." Jazz answered succinctly. 

"My/his what?" Both Jimmy and Superman asked, confused.

"A Fraid is a term for a ghost's...community isn't quite right, but close. Individuals the ghost shares a bond with. These bonds can be romantic, platonic, familial, the same bonds baseline humans have and form with each other. When the ghosts in question are healthy, it's really no different than a human relationship of the same kind. But when they're not, when they're hurt physically or mentally, the Fraid is an important stabilizing influence. That's why all Danny's family and friends came with the doctor. No matter what treatment Frostbite gives, it will go better having us with him."

“Which is why your mother didn’t want you staying behind.” Superman realized. “By not having his full fraid, he won’t heal as quickly.”

Jazz closed her eyes. “Danny is in worse shape, but he has all the support he needs to get better. It’ll be slow, but a guarantee at this point. You’re not in as bad a shape but your support is almost nothing. If I can help bridge the gap between your recovery and his, I will. It will get better once your loved ones get here, but right now Superman is the only fraid bond you have, and while a two person bond is far from uncommon, it does leave you vulnerable in the thankfully rare situations like this.”

"Is that why I've been clingy?" Jimmy asked, slightly embarrassed. Superman was still holding him and he couldn’t bring himself to try and get down quite yet.

"That and the trauma." Jazz assured him. "Which we will be dealing with, but one thing at a time." 

"One thing at a time." Jimmy repeated. “This bond, it won't...hurt the other people, right?" 

"They won't even notice." Jazz promised. "Unless they're liminal enough to be close to unalive, and even then there's no compulsion aspect to it. It just means they're important to you. Indulging in hobbies you enjoy can also help shore up what a fraid normally does. Reminding yourself of who you are can go a long way. And you can probably use the stress relief.” She glanced towards the door anxiously.

“You can go.” The words tumbled out of Jimmy’s mouth before he even realized what he was saying. “A year and a half, you and Danny waited long enough.”

She bit her lip. “But I need to fix this and make it right and—”

“I’ve got Superman, I’ll be good. You need to help your brother.” Jimmy insisted.

Jazz bit her lip, her eyes trailing to the door again.

“Go.” Superman said gently. “It’s not your burden to pay for anyone else’s mistakes.” If Jimmy was okay with her going, so was he.

“I’ll make sure Frostbite comes as soon as possible!” She promised, all but running from the room. Leaving Superman and Jimmy with a lot to process.

Chapter Text

Clark thought he was ready for whatever results of the medical exam they might hear. He was braced for horrific experiments. He was ready to help Jimmy with long term repercussions. And given he seemed to be mimicking Kryptonian traits, and given a Kryptonian's lifespan...possibly very long term repercussions.

But everything he thought was prepared for went out the window the moment the word 'undead' left Jazz Fenton's mouth. He forced himself to keep listening, to remain present in the conversation. But everything felt like static. When Jazz left, to go be with her brother and help him recover, the static only seemed to get louder and Clark hoped, and not just for Jimmy's sake, the doctor got there soon.

"Sorry you're stuck with me." Jimmy muttered, clearly embarrassed over the ‘fraid’ thing and his own admitted clinginess. “Hopefully when my parents get here you can go and get things done.”

"Don't be sorry." Clark assured him. "Honestly, it's better for both of us that I stay here with you for the duration."

"Really?" Jimmy asked in stark disbelief. “I mean, I can see how it benefits me if this fraid thing works like Jazz says it does.” Which…seemed likely. “But how is being stuck here benefiting you at all?”

"Because it keeps me up here and not free to do things that will be very hard to legally defend later." Superman answered dryly. Not things he would regret. Not at this point, not after hearing the word undead apply to his friend. But given the government was involved to at least some degree, it would be better for him to not make any more public a scene than he already had so it couldn’t be used against them. No matter how much they deserved— No, not going there. He was not allowed to go there. He was already past the limit of what Superman was allowed to do. What he could do without becoming something that was more of a threat to people than a help. It was in the hands of his friends now.

"So a 'Fraid'.” Jimmy mused. “I guess that would be Mom and Dad. Lois and Clark. I don't know, maybe some more people from the Planet?" He rattled off the top of his head. How close was close enough to form a bond? Did work friends count? Lois and Clark were already beyond work friends, theirs was a bond forged in fire. But like did coworkers he just hung out with in the break room count? Where was the line?

The question let Clark push back the static a bit. Focus on the now and future. On helping Jimmy and not just revenge. This was a systematic problem and something that would take time and convincing to fix. Blowing up the GiW wouldn’t help as long as that law was still on the books.

"It sounds like a good start." Clark assured him. Get everyone here. Jimmy’s Parents, him, Lois, Clark-Oh, that could be a complication. Jimmy would be expecting Clark and Superman. Would he be able to sense they were the same person through the bond? They never did establish if the empathic link he said he shared with Phantom was on his end, Phantom's end, or if something external was linking them. Well, it might not come up because they couldn’t both be there at the same time. But maybe it would, because if the bonds felt different if Superman disappeared and he showed up later as Clark, Jimmy would know anyway because it would be the same bond. It was enough to push the static away almost completely because he had an important decision to make.

And yet, in the end despite it being a heavy decision, it was a simple one. Having these bonds with people he cared about was anchoring to Jimmy's well being. Something physically necessary for him to recover from what was done to him. Breaking or damaging one of those bonds by one of his identities not showing up or being caught in a lie would be detrimental at best. And he was not doing that to Jimmy, not after failing him repeatedly for seven months in a row.

"Just so you know, Clark won't be showing up with Lois," he told Jimmy, bracing himself for whatever response was to follow.

"He won't?" Jimmy sounded scared. "Is he hurt? Did someone else get him?"

"No, nothing like that.” Still, it touched his heart that Jimmy immediately jumped to the idea that something had to have happened to Clark, that he didn’t even entertain the idea of Clark not showing up of his own volition. “I'm just already here." He changed his voice to the inflections he normally used as Clark as well as his body language and he watched the light go on in Jimmy's eyes.

"Oh." Jimmy whispered, his voice small. Years of interactions with both Clark and Superman shuffled through his mind and it made sense, for all it seemed impossible. He sat down on the edge of the colorful bed and stared at the ice-dusted ceiling. "That's…that’s a lot."

"Jimmy?" Clark asked, suddenly worried he'd done more harm than good. Jimmy had been under an unimaginable amount of stress. A shock to his system was likely the last thing he needed. He’d just gotten out of shock, or whatever passed for shock for the undead. What had he been thinking‽

"I'm okay. It's a lot, but a good a lot which is better than anything else going on in my head.” Better than wondering about being undead and what it meant at any rate. “Wait, does Lois know? Lois better know!" Jimmy asked, almost indignant.

There was such an 'or else' tone that Superman had to laugh. The first time Jimmy had seen him in over half a year he’d watched him go on a rampage and yet felt zero hesitation in threatening Clark should he not be being upfront with his wife. "Yes Jimmy, my wife and mother of my child knows who I am. Ma would have had my hide if I didn't tell her before asking her to marry me."

"Good." Jimmy nodded to himself, letting his hackles go down. And then letting the surreality of the situation wash over him again. "Holy crap. So who knows besides Lois? So I don't mess it up."

"My parents, and son of course. Some of the older leaguers like Batman, Wonder Woman, and the Flash. Shazam. Superboy and Supergirl. All of Batman's kids. Nightwing grew up calling me 'Uncle Clark'."

"How many kids does Batman have? Or am I not allowed to ask?" Jimmy hastily corrected himself. Secret identities were secret for a reason, after all.

"Let's just say if someone's a vigilante in Gotham, odds are better than even they're one of his kids." Clark smiled as Jimmy raised both eyebrows. "Don't tell him I told you, but he's a total dad. And he wants to dote so much, but doesn’t really understand normal human socializing behavior. Or rather…" Clark seems to struggle to find the right words. “He’s a genius when it comes to analyzing other people or figuring out what their behaviors mean and what they’re trying to achieve with it. But he can not apply it to himself and his family in a meaningful way.” Clark rolled his eyes fondly.

"Wow." He’d known Superman for years, and while there was a lot he knew he didn’t know, a lot he would never have asked (there was still almost a layer of disbelief that Superman was Clark) , he’d always known Superman as a person. But the other heroes always seemed larger than life and thinking of the frankly terrifying Batman as a Dad who had trouble connecting with his kids was just…foreign.

But the wonder of this new reality began to fade as the surprise wore off and the worries he’d tried to suppress since he felt his heart stop and only got worse once Jazz had told him what may have happened to him resurfaced. "What do I do if I'm dead? Like dead -dead and not 'unalive'?" The question slipped out almost against his will.

He could almost feel Clark (that was still so weird) wince. "Then we take it one day at a time until we figure out what it means for you. We have at least two members of the League who are undead, Deadman and The Spectre.” Who should probably also be warned to stay in the Watchtower or at least not in America for the time being. “Not to say you're under any obligation to get into hero work just because you have powers. It’s an option if you want it, but an obligation to no-one."

'Having Powers' was a nice way of putting it. It was easier to think he had powers than that he was dead. But he wasn’t at the point where he could really believe it yet. He didn't feel like a person who touched a magic rock or inhaled a mystery gas and could now do something amazing. He felt like someone who’d been turned inside out and frankesteined into something alien.

Clark felt the temperature drop and knew Jimmy was starting to spiral again."I'd bet not having to worry about keeping yourself alive would give you access to seeing a whole range of things people normally couldn't. Mountaintops where the air is too thin, areas of the ocean where the pressure is too intense. And space. You wouldn’t believe some of the sights out here. Our space probes and telescopes have gotten much better, but it’s so different up close."

And imagine all the shots I could take, Jimmy realized. Being able to get up close to a villain fight and not have to worry about being crushed or lasered. And he could fly, which meant he could take shots previously only available through drones. And that wasn’t even starting on the things Clark mentioned. That...that felt nice. His hands itched for a camera, wishing he could take pictures now .

There was another polite knock on the wall. “Hello, may I enter?” Frostbite asked.

"I expected you would take longer," Jimmy admitted, standing up. “Given Phantom’s condition.”

"I will not say the Great One's condition is not severe, but core reversion is a known phenomena, albeit a thankfully rare one not seen since Pariah Dark’s first imprisonment, and one we already have a documented treatment for. It was merely a matter of setting up a tank with enough triple purified ecto and refreshing it every few hours as need be. After that it's just a simple case of rest and being in the presence of his Fraid."

"So he's going to be okay?" Jimmy asked, feeling a little of the ever-present anxiousness in his chest ease. Jazz had said his recovery was guaranteed, but he didn’t know how much of that was wishful thinking.

"With time, yes. It will be quite a while before he's back where he was before his abduction, but I expect a rough corporeal form in a few days and a full humanoid one in a week or so. But let's talk about you. You may be pleased to know that from Jasmine's preliminary questioning, odds extremely high you're further on the unalive than the undead side of the spectrum."

"Really?" Jimmy looked at Clark in surprise, wondering which, if any, of the questions could have led to that conclusion. Clark looked equally lost.

"Ghosts and other undead and ectoplasmic beings are beings of habit and memory. As such, it is hard for us to switch gears, even with good reason and external stimulus. It is something enemies, from other ghosts to hunters, use against us. But even then, it is very hard to fight against. You spent several months focused solely on the concept of escape. Once you achieved your goal you moved past it, no longer seeking escape or even leaving the room you were given. That points far more to a living mindset than an undead one." Frostbite explained. “An undead so focused on escape would likely have done their best to get away from the Watchtower itself, much less a room. It would be a part of their nature. Even for their own good they would not be able to help themselves.

"Oh." For the first time since his heart stopped, Jimmy felt hope. "So I might be able to turn back? Jazz mentioned something about a living form." 

"It is exceedingly likely." Frostbite reassured him. "Now Jasmine mentioned your abilities seem to be mimicking your friend's. Do you know if this was on purpose on the part of your captors?" 

"I don't think so." Jimmy thought it over. "I tried to hide what powers I was getting. Some of it I couldn't, like when I broke something with my strength or froze my coffee with ice breath like Superman's. But they didn't seem to care that I was hiding it or what powers I actually had. It was just injections, pills, questions, samples, and scanners. Sedation if I refused. I was sleepy a lot but I don't know if it was long term sedation or a side effect."

"Then it's likely coincidental." Frostbite wrote something on a clipboard. 

"You think it's by chance Jimmy developed the same powers as I did?" Clark asked in mild disbelief. The odds of that being completely coincidental seemed astronomical. 

"By chance no, but coincidental." Frostbite glanced up to see them both confused by his statement. "From the sounds of it, their only objective was moving Jimmy down the liminal scale to solidly unalive or undead. That he would develop powers was a given, but if they were planning on dissecting or harvesting him, what powers he developed wouldn’t matter in the slightest.”

“What do you mean, harvesting?” Clark asked, panic entering his tone. Jimmy didn’t look much better.

“Ectoplasm is an extremely adaptive and versatile substance and quite common in the Infinite Realms. There are human scientists who have figured out how to use it as a power source. But as common as it is in the Realms, it is somewhat rare on this side of things. Barring access to a permanent portal, the most reliable source is to render it from ghosts. A small amount is not harmful, rather like a blood donation. But the more that’s harvested the more the ghost can destabilize. Weakness is the most common side effect, but extreme cases can lead to fading or core reversion.”

Core reversion. What Phantom had suffered from. “So they were using Phantom as a battery, accidentally took too much, and were trying to turn me into a new battery?” Jimmy felt nauseous in a way he hadn’t in as long as he could remember. The question of ‘why’? finally answered.

“That is our current theory, yes.” Frostbite’s tone was dark. “But we were talking about your powers.” He was obviously forcing his voice to sound brighter with the subject change.  “As I mentioned, we are beings of habit and memory. In addition, our own self image can dictate our outer one. If you started with a power that even superficially resembled your friends - flying is quite common and you seem to have inherited your ice affinity from the Great One - that connection could be enough to make you believe your abilities were being reproduced in him, which would be enough to become a self-fulfilling prophecy."

"Oh." Jimmy blushed, blue spreading across his cheeks. "Sorry. I didn’t mean to copy you."

"It gave you what you needed to escape." Superman assured him. “So I’m glad you did.”

“Okay.” Jimmy still sounded embarrassed about it.

"It is important to remember, though, that though you have the same end results, your powers are fundamentally different from his." Frostbite warned. "You will have issues and weaknesses he doesn't, and vice versa."

“So even though Jimmy has abilities similar to mine, he won’t be affected by Krytonite?” Superman ventured.

“I do not know what that is, but unless it also affects ghosts. It should not.” Frostbite confirmed. “Likewise there are things that would be harmless to you, such as the ecto-powered weaponry the GiW, use that would cause serious damage to Jimmy.”

"Okay. Wait, I was wondering if my ability to kind of feel Phantom and what he was thinking meant I have empathic abilities? Does that mean I'm going to?" Jimmy asked.

"Do you want empathic abilities?" Frostbite asked.

Jimmy thought for a moment. "Not really. It seems invasive and hard to turn off."

"Then let's be thankful you're not going to." He said with a wink. 

Ah, because if he believed he wasn't going to he wouldn't and...this was confusing. He decided to just settle on he wouldn’t be getting empathic powers and leave it at that.

"I would like to get a sample for precise analysis.” Frostbite said, “Would you consent to letting me cut some of your hair?" 

"My hair?" Jimmy blinked, expecting a blood sample at least. 

"Normally we use scanners or in more serious cases, which this is, the equivalent of a blood draw. However, given your odious treatment for the last several months, the damage from which your mind is still processing, we are trying to do everything in our power not to trigger any strong negative emotions till you're more settled, or at least till the rest of your fraid arrives to help. It is the same reason my fur has been colored blue as opposed to its natural white."

“Sorry,” Jimmy said, embarrassed. “You don’t have to-”

“I am more than pleased to do whatever I can to help a patient. And remember this is not for your benefit alone. My other patient had suffered at their hands for even longer.”

Right, Danny had been a prisoner of those white walls for twice the time Jimmy had. “I’m sorry, I-”

“Peace, young one.” the yeti put a gentle hand on Jimmy’s shoulder and he felt himself calm down. “You have done nothing to apologize for. Today you overcame adversity and saved not only yourself, but the hero who saved the entirety of the Infinite Realms, more than once at that. It is us who should apologize to you, for not being able to find you or the Great One in your hour of need.”

Jimmy could feel Clark tense behind him. No, the last thing he wanted was his friend feeling guilty. “So hair will tell you everything you need?” Frostbite wasn’t the only one who could forcefully change the subject.

“Yes, ectoplasmic saturation is equal in every part of the body. To someone liminal, there will be small traces. For someone unalive, strong saturation. For someone undead, their body will all but completely consist of it. Therefore, being able to analyze any sample of your cells gives us a baseline for what healthy will look like for you and how to get you there in swift order. If you consent to a sample.” 

"I am overdue for a hair cut," Jimmy admitted. And he knew that was an understatement. He had access to plenty of soap and shampoo, given his captor’s cleanliness obsession. But hair length did not fall under that obsession and they weren’t foolish enough to let him have anything sharp like a razor or scissors, so his hair was far longer than he’d prefer and he knew he had a scruffy fuzz that only vaguely resembled a beard if you squint. “So go for it.”

"I can't promise this will be fashionable," Frostbite apologized. He took what appeared to be a set of surgical scissors and attempted to snip a small lock of hair off. They all winced as the scissors shattered, sending shrapnel of metal throughout the room.

"That was...unexpected." Frostbite raised an eyebrow. He conjured a set of scissors made from ice and attempted again with the same results, only the ice evaporated before it hit the floor or walls. "Those should have been at least as strong as tungsten." 

"One of my better known powers is invulnerability." Superman admitted. He’d had the hope after seeing Jimmy relatively unharmed from the blasts that damaged his clothes. A hunch after the first pair of scissors exploded. And honestly couldn't help but be a little relieved that was one of his powers Jimmy copied.

Frostbite threw back his head and laughed. "Useful indeed, even if it is currently presenting us with a problem. I see we’ll have to rethink how we get our sample."

"Wait, does this mean I can't cut my hair? Or shave?" Jimmy asked, panicked. He did not want to be stuck looking like Rapunzel or with that scraggly beard "How do you cut your hair?" he asked desperately.  

"Laser vision," Clark said, sounding a little embarrassed. 

"How do you cut your hair with laser vision ?" Jimmy asked incredulously.

"Very carefully and initially with lots of damage to the bathroom." Clark admitted, sheepishly. "I could probably cut off a lock of yours though without issue."

Jimmy ran a hand down his face. "Please." 

Clark pulled the piece Frostbite had away from his head and let his own eyes turn red. He calibrated it the way he did when he shaved, enough to burn through his hair, but not his skin. He was using his hand as a backstop, so as not to accidentally burn a hole in the space station, and he didn't think Jimmy would take it well if he hurt himself trying to help. Thankfully the beam of concentrated heat and light sliced the hair off neatly. 

"How do you even do the back?" Jimmy bemoaned.

 "With a mirror and even more holes in the bathroom." Clark half-joked.

"I'll take this for analysis.” Frostbite froze the hair sample. “Now I know Jasmine gave you the basics, that spending time with your fraid will help your recovery. Another thing that will help will be to use your powers, preferably in a form of play."

"Play?" Jimmy asked, a little incredulous.

"Play is important for all sapient beings.” Frostbite pointed out. “Making snow for snowball fights is a common way my people learn our powers. And I know the Great One likes to fly around to relax." Frostbite laid a hand on Jimmy's shoulder. "Your powers are a part of you. To only use them in defense or as a weapon makes that part of you a weapon. If you shun them, you're hurting a part of yourself. It will take time for you to fully be comfortable with yourself, but play will help. And if I may say so, you already have far better control over your ice than the Great One did when his first manifested."

"I already accidentally froze this room in a panic attack and I haven't even been here an hour." Jimmy admitted, suddenly aware of how much his room was starting to resemble the fortress of solitude.

"Perhaps, but you have not frozen yourself solid or sent spears of ice through people, so a marked improvement." Frostbite laughed.

Neither Jimmy or Clark felt as amused. "Do I have to worry about being around my normal human family?" Jimmy fretted. He missed them terribly, but if he could hurt them by accident.

"No," Frostbite assured him. "The Great One had to go straight from activation to weaponization to rescue his entire fraid and thus was forced to skip a few steps. Some sweaters or jackets will be the extent of protection they'll need. Would you like me to take care of the ice you’ve summoned already?” He offered.

“If you could?” Jimmy asked.

Frostbite smiled and waved his hand. All the ice and frost flashed blue and then faded into nothing. “Once things are more stable, I or one of my people can help you learn how to do so yourself.”

“Thank you.” Jimmy said, relieved. “How long does the testing take?”

“I should have final confirmation of things in the next few hours.” Frostbite assured. “Still, sooner begun is sooner done. Is there anything you need of me before I get started?”

“If I’m not getting empathic powers, why could I sense what Danny’s thinking so strongly? That happened even before my powers were developing.”

“Would it make a difference to know?” Frostbite answered evasively.

Jimmy and Clark shared a look at his sudden cageyness. “Yes.” Jimmy said. “Otherwise my mind is going to come up with worse and worse scenarios. And I’d like to not get into that spiral.”

Frostbite still looked like he didn’t want to say, but it was warring with his desire to not bring further mental harm to his patient. “It’s…’gross’, is I believe the word.”

“I can handle gross.” Jimmy said dryly. After all the horrors, gross seemed easy.

Frostbite steeled himself. “As we’ve already covered, the reason for the Great One’s current state was they used him as a power source, rendering every bit of ectoplasm they could. In order to induce a change like they did in you, they would need a lot of ectoplasm. The ectoplasm in your body reacted to the Great One’s thoughts and feelings because it used to be his ectoplasm. It is likely why you also inherited an ice affinity far past mimicking your friends, as the Great One has an ice core.”

“Oh.” Jimmy’s voice was small.

“You did not steal power from him. It was forced upon you.” Frostbite correctly determined why Jimmy had ducked his head. “Those who bear the sin of what happened are those who tormented you both. The connection was so strong because the ectoplasm was the Great One's. But the moment you felt your heart stop was the moment you developed a core of your own. It will act as a filter and generator of ectoplasm. So while at least some of the ectoplasm in your body is his, it will soon become yours. And that point you will probably lose the ability to sense the Great One’s thoughts, however,” Frostbite smiled. “In that time, he will have regained his ability to openly speak and communicate. And that is only possible thanks to you. So from all those whom the Great One has saved, thank you.” Frostbite knelt down into a deep bow.

“You don’t have to-”

“Yes, I do.” Frostbite cut him off. “The Great One has earned that title by the numerous services he’s done. He stopped the tyrant Pariah Dark, who once laid waste to our people, in single combat, stopping him from merging the Infinite Realms and the Living World and making it all his Kingdom. He stopped Plasmius, the Great Defiler, from stealing a relic that would allow him to travel in time and change the past. He stopped the GiW from detonating a nuclear device in the mouth of a breach between worlds, something that would have caused the unraveling of both. All he has done for us, and yet…when the time came that he needed aid, we could do nothing. You did. So thank you, Liberator of the Great One. The People of the Far Frozen will be indebted to you for the remainder of your life and beyond.” He rose and looked Superman in the eye. “You will protect him. Not only from outside threats, but from his own fears.” It wasn’t a request, but a command.

“I will.” Clark didn’t need Frostbite to tell him to do that.

“Good. I will send the sample to be analyzed while I pick up some more supplies for both the Liberator and the Great One. If anything happens, the human known as Jazz Fenton has the means to contact me.” He focused in on Jimmy again and spoke, not as a doctor, but person to person. “You’ve done it. You’re safe. You can rest now and wait for the rest of your fraid.”

“I’m safe,” Jimmy repeated, as if trying to convince himself.

“It will come in time.” With a much more moderate bow, Frostbite left.

“So, I guess we just wait till the others show up.” Jimmy guessed.

"They're already on their way." Clark promised. He could hear the Javelin docking.

It almost felt surreal. After so many months with only his captors he was really going to see Lois and— Jimmy froze. "What am I going to tell my parents‽"

Chapter Text

"Jimmy, they're just going to be happy you're here." Clark tried to reassure him.

Jimmy failed to be reassured; his hair stopped obeying the laws of gravity as he began to pace, his feet never touching the ground. "I might be dead . How do I tell my parents that I got through umpteen villain fights without a scratch, demonic possession with no side effects, and I'm undead, unalive, whatever from a clinical trial‽"

"I would argue this was very much a villain scheme." Clark said dryly. "Jimmy, we spent the past months with no sign if you were alive or—" 

"Dead? Turns out it's that one!" Jimmy threw his arms up in exasperation.

"Or gone !" Clark interjected. And now he really understood Boston Brand’s wording on the Javelin. Even dead, there was hope. "Jimmy, I've woken up every day for months never knowing if I'd ever see you again. If the last words I'd ever say to you were 'See you in two weeks'. You're here. That's enough. That's more than I could have dreamed of this morning. I can only imagine how much worse it must be for them. You don't need to explain anything. You just need to be here. You could be like a movie ghost, a barely there shade, and we’d still be so grateful to just have that tiny piece of you back." He cocked his head to the side. "And they're here now." 

"What do you mean—" He cut off as the curtain burst open and Flash skidded to a stop carrying both Jimmy's parents, one under each arm, and Lois holding on to him piggyback style. Clark was suddenly very glad Frostbite had gotten rid of the ice. That wouldn’t have ended well.

"Told you, I'd get you here fastest," Flash said jokingly as he set his cargo down, unaware of the near total wipeout by ice he’d avoided.

"Jimmy!" Both his parents launched themselves at him, hugging him. He bobbed under the new weight but was still floating a few inches off the ground.

"Mom...Dad..." It sunk in that at some point while trapped that he hadn't believed he'd see them either. Even knowing they were on their way hadn't seemed real. But they were here, he was holding onto them. They were together. It was going to be okay. Jimmy felt something snap in place, something that felt warm and comfortable.

"Thanks, Barry." Lois whispered, as she slid down more sedately. 

"Any time, Mrs. Kent." he gave her a wink as she went to stand by her husband.

Clark knew she was holding herself back by the tips of her fingers. That she wanted to jump into the hug and just reassure herself that Jimmy was here, he was safe, and they'd never let those bastards touch him again. But if you didn’t know her as well as Clark did, she seemed remarkably calm. "You did it. You found him." 

Clark shook his head. "He saved himself, and a fellow prisoner. Got himself out and to where I could hear him. He did all the work, I just helped with the aftermath."

"The aftermath is going to be what keeps him alive." Lois noted, before seeing her husband wince. "What?" she asked flatly. 

"Let's go with 'with us' instead of 'alive' for now." Clark suggested.

Lois didn't quite know what to make of that, but it was nothing good. Jimmy wasn’t dying. He’d be in medical care if his life was in danger. That ‘for now’ was going to get an explanation, though. "Salt the earth in their wake?" she suggested.

"Leave nothing but a glassy wasteland." Clark muttered, his voice full of uncharacteristic vitriol.

Her eyebrows rose. "What did they do ?" Luthor didn’t get this reaction out of Clark.

They killed him, Clark thought, but didn't say. Not even as a whisper. Partially because he didn’t know if Jimmy had also copied his super hearing, and partially because he felt if he said the words out loud he’d break. "Later," he whispered. "Let Jimmy have this."

He didn't know if it was having his fraid there in its entirety, or just being able to hold his parents again, but Jimmy did seem to be settling, the slight glow around him seeming to strengthen. Clark hoped this was a good sign and not a bad one. He knew Frostbite needed to run his tests to know how to best care for Jimmy, but the knowledge that there was no one on the Watchtower who could help Jimmy if something went wrong ate at him. Sure, Jazz could contact the doctor, but who knew how long it would take him to get there?

While Superman was fretting, all three Olsens were still hugging it out, Jimmy's parents apparently uncaring that their son was hovering or able to hold both of them in the air. Their son was back and a few new superpowers didn’t even register as a problem. At least, it was all uncommented on until his mother said, "I wouldn't have thought it, but blue looks good on you." 

"Blue?" Jimmy asked, confused as to what she was referring to.

"Your hair." His father explained. "Looks a fair sight better on you than that Hotwire person.”

“Hotwire?” Jimmy asked, more confused by the second. 

“The zappy one with the shirt cut too low." his father clarified.

"Livewire?' Lois corrected. 

"That's the one. Like I said, it looks much better on Jimmy." 

"My hair is blue? Since when?" Jimmy glanced upwards at his overgrown hair, light blue bangs dangling in front of his eyes. “It wasn’t blue this morning.”

"At least since you called for me. I thought you knew." Clark explained, having assumed it had been blue longer. Given the timing and Jazz and Frostbite indicating Jimmy would have a living and non-living form, the blue hair probably appeared when his heart stopped. Clark was not going to voice that theory out loud. "Or at least noticed when we cut your hair."

"I was a little distracted with trying to imagine how you cut the back of your hair with laser vision." Jimmy confessed. "Because I, um, might also have invulnerable hair." he explained to his parents.

"Oh, just like Rapunzel in that tv show." His mother said excitedly.

"No, she had healing hair, dear,” his father corrected. "Remember, she brought that thief fellow back to life?"

"In the movie. In the tv series her hair became invulnerable and she used it as a weapon." his mother corrected the correction.

Flash shot Lois and Clark an 'Are they for real?' look, to which they just shrugged. They'd spent a lot of time with the Olsens while looking for Jimmy. And they were very much just like that. They rolled with everything almost too easily.

"I still say it looks good, but you can always wear a hat if you don't like it." Mrs. Olsen offered.

At this point the ludicrousness of the situation, of using a hat to hide magical blue indestructible hair, caught up to Jimmy and he began laughing. Real, mirthful laughter, Something he couldn't remember doing for so long.

Lois broke her poise to come over and ruffle his hair. "We got you, Jimmy. Hats and all," she joked.

Jimmy felt something else snap into place. It felt like the final piece of a puzzle. Like relaxing an overused muscle, something let go inside Jimmy and in a flash of light he thudded to the floor, hair red, eyes green, and a heartbeat that was a little off, but going.

"I'm...I'm ali-I'm back!" Jimmy exclaimed in almost disbelief. 

"I guess we don't need to wait for the Doctor's analysis after all." Clark said with a smile as he memorized Jimmy’s new heartbeat, his breathing rate, everything he could to ensure he wouldn’t lose him ever again.

"I guess not." Jimmy breathed. He was breathing. The thought alone made him almost giddy.  

"Does that solve the invulnerable hair problem?" Jimmy's dad asked. "Or do we need Superman to cut it since you don't have lasers."

"I do have lasers." Jimmy admitted. "Or at least I did? I don't know if I still do?" He’d had powers in his living form before his transformation, but with the advent of having two forms, he didn’t know if the powers were now limited to one or the other.

"Then the problem is solved either way. Good." His dad nodded to himself and Flash looked even less sure of what was going on.

Lois pinched her nose. "How about you two tell us all you can, and we'll figure out where to go from there." she suggested.

"Yes, I would like to hear that too." There was a steely glint in Jimmy's mother's voice. "Who took my son and where can I find them?" Clark and Jimmy shared a look, and then Jimmy began to talk. 

“It was a government-adjacent group posing as a clinical trial. They knew my address from my application. The night before the trial was going to start they broke into my house after I was asleep, drugged me, and took me to a lab before I woke up. The lab was made so Superman wouldn’t be able to hear me inside. I don’t know if that was specifically for me or…I wasn’t the first person they’d kidnapped. They’d gotten a teen hero named Phantom long before me. It sounds like they were using him as a power source, but took too much. So they tried to force someone else to get the same kind of powers as him, and that someone was me. I don’t know why me. But I was who they chose.”

“How did they hold this young hero for so long?” Mrs. Olsen looked at Superman pointedly.

“Because we never knew about him.” Superman admitted. “I’d never heard of him before Jimmy saved him, and when I asked the League, the biggest network of heroes on Earth, only one of them knew him.”

“If he knew he was missing, why didn’t he ask the rest of you for help?” Mr. Olsen pressed.

“I don’t know.” Superman said, feeling a little lost. “The GiW used a law they snuck on the books to make people with that power source count as things instead of people to deny them their rights. But why Deadman would think any of us would go along with it—”

Lois gasped and Jimmy felt his heart drop. Her ability to gather information was legendary and he could see her put it all together. “The Anti-Ecto Acts, GiW, when you transformed back, before you were saying you were back you started to say something else. That you were ali-oh, Jimmy! ” Lois surged forward and wrapped her arms around him,Jimmy hugging her back almost more as reflex than conscious thought. 

“We’re going to get them.” Lois swore. “Even if no one else on this satellite helps, we’re going to get them. They won’t get away with doing this to you!”

“Doing what?” Mrs. Olsen asked, panic obviously rising. “What did they do to my baby!”

Jimmy squeezed Lois tighter before letting go. He didn’t want to say it, didn’t want to acknowledge it. But Clark and Lois obviously weren’t judging him for it and… hadn’t he just told Doctor Frostbie that not knowing and having to guess just made him spiral? No, his parents shouldn't have to be the only member of his fraid out of the loop. “I’m kind of…undead.”

His parents, usually faultless in their ability to roll with anything, faltered. “Jimmy…what do you mean?” his father asked quietly.

“Undead, you know. Kind of between dead and alive.” Jimmy looked down and started fidgeting with his hands. “Doctor Frostbite says I’m closer to the alive part of the spectrum, if that helps? I mean, I was able to go back to a living form, which, you know, until it happened wasn’t a guarantee.” He was rambling; he knew he was rambling. 

“I’m now firmly on board with your glassing plan.” Lois whispered, quietly enough that even someone she was next to couldn’t hear her. She didn't think he was being literal, but she was mentally preparing some spin in case he was. 

Clark gave a short nod, but was glad Jimmy hadn’t reacted to what Lois said. It meant super hearing wasn’t one of the powers Jimmy had copied from him, and he was as relieved by its absence as he was relieved by Jimmy’s new invulnerability. Every day, Clark heard a thousand things he would never wish on anyone else. He was happy Jimmy was spared that.

“Where are they?” Lois and Clark had never heard Mr. Olsen so enraged, though not without reason. “Tell me where they are and I’ll—”

“You need to stay here,” Clark insisted.

“The hell I—”

“I need you to stay here, Dad.” Jimmy pleaded, desperation bleeding into his voice. “Please don’t go!” Red light started glowing in his eyes again. “I can’t…I can’t…”

“Jimmy?” His Mom came to the other side of him from Lois. “Jimmy, baby, talk to us. What’s wrong?”

Jimmy was starting to glow again, and Clark heard his vitals spiking. He wasn’t sure if this was just another transformation triggering or something worse. “Say you’ll stay.” He begged. “Please!”

“I-of course.” Mr. Olsen’s ire left him at his son’s distress, though he wouldn’t say having Superman begging him to stay didn’t unnerve him as well. “I’m sorry, Jimmy.” He put his hand on his son’s hair, and Jimmy practically melted under the touch, the glow around his body and in his eyes fading

“Sorry,” Jimmy apologized back. “This is temporary, I think. The clingyness, not the undead thing, that’s kinda permanent.” He looked at Clark pleadingly.

Being on the verge of a second panic attack (he hoped it was only another panic attack) meant Jimmy had probably been struggling to get out as much as he already had. “The specialist we talked to said ghosts, and others closer to the death spectrum of life and death, create social groups called fraids.” Clark explained. “He said they normally function exactly like human relationships, except when the ghost in question is severely physically or mentally injured, in which case the presence of the fraid helps them stabilize and heal. The four of us are Jimmy’s fraid. We need to stay close to help him. That’s why I’m not spearheading finding the remaining cells. And why he reacted so badly to you implying you were leaving to hunt them down.”

“Oh son,” Mr. Olsen pulled Jimmy into a hug of his own. “I didn’t know, I am so sorry.”

“It’s okay. Just…just please don’t leave.”

“Kiddo, you’re going to need a crowbar to pry us away. And I think Lois and Superman feel the same,” his dad reassured him.

“Frankly I’d like to see the crowbar try.” Superman said dryly. 

“I don’t understand how this could happen,” Jimmy’s mother asked. “How could this group have evaded notice for so long.”

“Obfuscating stupidity.” Lois half-growled. “They’ve made it into a damned art form. When Superman sent me the name of the group I did some digging while waiting for our ride. At first I thought it had to be a mistake. That there was no way a group this incompetent evaded Superman and Batman working together for over half a year. And then I realized that was their play. They purposefully made themselves a laughingstock so no one would take them seriously. So no one would look too closely or dig too deep. It almost worked on me; I thought it was just another group with the same name.” 

“They snuck that law of theirs under the radar as a rider on another bill.  Because most people don’t believe ghosts are real, and they did the equivalent of legislating Bigfoot, all while taking it way too seriously to the point of absurdity, for anyone to actually pay attention. It passed without being removed because it didn’t seem like it was worth the effort of removing. They seemed to focus in on a small town tourist trap in upstate New York called Amity Park, which advertises itself as the most haunted place on earth. They were making a big nuisance of themselves destroying property and chasing teens wearing bedsheets. Apparently they spent the time tanking their reputation to a desired level, before packing up and leaving about a year and a half ago.” Lois said flippantly. She wasn’t prepared for both Clark and Jimmy’s reaction.

“A year and a half? You’re sure about that?” Clark pressed, while Jimmy looked straight ahead with a blank stare.  

“Of course I’m sure. You know that!” Lois did not need her husband questioning her research skills.

“That’s when they captured Phantom. So either their activities in Amity Park were a diversion or it may not have been entirely a tourist trap,” Clark said grimly.

“Phantom was a hero, you said. Did he help you escape?” Mrs. Olsen asked.

Jimmy wished he could let Clark tell them, like with the fraids. But Clark didn’t know about anything that happened in the facility. He had to tell it himself. “He couldn’t. He wanted to, but…by the time I got there…Doctor Frostbite called it core reversion. He’d lost his body, he was just a floating ball that couldn’t even move on his own. I thought he was an inanimate object at first. But as the experiments continued, I guess as the changes started, I could kind of feel thoughts and emotions. He was so scared.” Jimmy's voice got softer. “Not just because of what happened to him. He was scared for me. And blamed himself for not being able to help me.”

Flash, who for the last few minutes looked like he didn't know if he was supposed to leave or not, now looked like he wanted to see if he could punch everyone remotely involved and be back before anyone noticed.

“When I…when I felt…when I di…when my powers came in all the way, I grabbed him and ran. I said it before! I don’t know why-”

“When you died. You don’t have to protect us from it.” Lois said softly, holding the hand closest to her. 

His parents looked like they were gut-punched, but quickly agreed with Lois. “You don’t have to talk about anything you’re not ready for,” his mother assured him. “But don’t hold anything back to spare us. We want to help. And if listening helps, please let us do it.”

“I died.” The words slipped out easier. “I came back to life when Lois ruffled my hair, but before that I was dead.”

“I’m so glad you came back to life. But you know, even if you hadn’t, we would have loved you just the same.” His father told him. 

“Thanks, dad,” Jimmy said softly. He never doubted it, but hearing it out loud helped.

“What else did the doctor say?” Mrs. Olsen asked. “Is there anything else we can do to help? What about food? I’m sure you need a good meal.”

“Actually, he’s looking better than he did half an hour ago.” Clark observed. Jimmy was still looking rough and underfed, but not as much as he had when Clark had found him. Sure, being ‘alive’ again helped, but there was more to it than that.

Lois and the Olsen’s gave him a look, horrified that this was ‘better’.

“I am feeling better,” Jimmy admitted. He wasn’t sure how much of it was regaining his freedom, how much was no longer being sedated (if that was the reason he slept so much), and how much of it was his fraid. “I think I want to wait for the medical analysis before eating. I’m not really hungry, haven’t been in a long time." Then he saw the looks on their faces. "They weren’t starving me!” he quickly corrected himself. “I just didn’t trust the food they were giving me, so I ate as little of it as possible. I don’t even know if I need to eat anymore.”

“Batman did suggest waiting until the medical report came back,” Clark threw in, an attempt to reassure.

“But, well, he told me, aside from being with my fraid I should play with my powers to familiarize myself with them and do things that relaxed me before. So I guess taking pictures. I’m not sure how to even start ‘playing’ with my powers.” Invulnerability was kind of passive, and super strength, laser vision, and freezing things seemed a bad idea on a space station. Flying seemed the safest, but he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with it besides just floating. 

"I do wish we'd thought to bring your camera," his mother bemoaned. “I didn't even think of it."

"Red Robin might have a spare around," Clark offered. "He used to do photography as a hobby."

"That would be lovely." Jimmy's dad answered before Jimmy could refuse. "He's one of the younger heroes, right? Maybe the two of you could 'hang out'."

"Dad," Jimmy bemoaned. "I don't think this is the time for looking for more friends." He was definitely not up for social calls.

"It's the perfect time. Your fraid helps you heal, right? So it's the ideal time to look for new friends." His mom added cheerfully.

"They're amazing." Lois said softly, leaning against Clark. 

They really were. There was nothing Clark could do to hide his own grief at Jimmy's absence and what he'd been through. The Olsens, though, seemed to have moved past their anger and horror at what had befallen their son. They moved on to an almost natural-seeming acceptance, making it feel normal again. They made it feel like the horror was over in a way even the bright colors and open door hadn't managed to achieve.

Clark sent a quick text to Bruce asking if Tim had any spare cameras on the Watchtower Jimmy could use. He'd gotten a reply that 'This would work nicely' and he had no idea what Bruce was planning but had a feeling he'd find out.

“It sounds like we should be talking to Phantom’s family.” Mr. Olsen said. “I’ll bet they have some ideas for how to get used to your powers.”

“They’re in one of the lounge rooms.” Flash supplied. “They’ve settled in now but they were, uh, not very subtle about getting there.”

Subtle did not seem to be in the Fenton’s vocabulary.

“If Jimmy’s up for it, of course.” His dad squeezed his hand again.

Was he up for it? It wouldn’t be a lie to say he found the Fenton’s intimidating, but that wasn’t entirely fair to them. Yes, they had startled and overwhelmed him, but all they'd really done was run into where their lost family member was and be relieved he was there. The same thing his parents and Lois had done, and they'd done it at Flash induced super-speed.

They were also the only ones who would have any answers about what being unalive was. Jazz had said he could have a mostly normal life, but he was a little skeptical of her idea of normal. “Yeah, it sounds like a good idea.” Jimmy agreed. “I’m guessing Flash and Superman know where the lounge is?

“It’s not far.” Superman promised. “We can do a whole grand tour later. Once we know your dietary needs and restrictions, we’ll hit up the cafeteria. It’s not fancy, but given the amount of aliens and extraplanar beings, the food options are diverse.”

“Speedsters can’t be picky, but there are some very much appreciated calorie-dense options.” Flash grinned again. “And always a supply of Zesti Cola, even though no one claims to be ordering it and there’s never any record of it being shipped. Our top two theories are an interdimensional prank, or one of the Bats.”

“‘One of the Bats’ doesn’t count.” Clark rolled his eyes. “It’s the default option when something non-nefarious is happening that we don’t understand. There’s no reason to think it’s one of the Bats.”

“No reason to think it’s not.” Flash said, but obviously joking.

Clark rolled his eyes. “Speaking of the Bats, I asked Batman if one of Red Robin’s camera’s might still be up here. His answer was…Batman-like, but I’m assuming a camera will be making its way here soon.”

“Batman-like?” Mrs. Olsen asked.

“You know how in detective movies detectives will make an oblique comment based on some genius observation they’ve had, but refuse to explain what they mean until the parlour scene? That’s Batman’s default way of speaking.” Lois smirked.

“Be nice,” Clark chided gently.

“This is me being nice.” Lois elbowed him playfully. “So what did he say? Word for word.”

Clark sighed. “‘This will work nicely’.”

“Uh-huh. Clear as mud, as per usual, until it suddenly makes sense. So are you going to show us the way to this lounge, or not?”

“Right this way.” Clark did an exaggerated bow and led her out. 

Jimmy’s parents helped him up (not that he needed it, but it was appreciated) and made their own way to the door. Jimmy was right in step with them until he reached the curtain.

He knew he wasn’t trapped. Batman himself had told Jimmy he was free to move around the Watchtower. The whole point of the curtain instead of the door was to show that he couldn’t be locked in, he was always free to go. He’d seen people come in and out of his room several times. But somehow…somehow it didn’t seem real that that could apply to him too. That he could just push back the curtain and leave.

It was almost frightening, and he didn’t know why.

“Do you want me to get the curtain for you?” Flash asked softly behind him. As if it somehow made sense to him for Jimmy to be afraid of opening his own damned door.

“No need.” Jimmy tried to keep his voice firm. He didn’t need help with this. He’d busted out of an evil quasi-governmental facility. He could handle a curtain.

Still, if only to himself, he could admit he was scared as he reached out for it. Scared an alarm would go off, or it suddenly wouldn’t move and he be trapped here just like he was trapped there and—

Jimmy flung the curtain aside with more force than was strictly necessary. It didn’t break, being a curtain and not a door. But he could not guarantee no super strength accidentally went into it.

His heartbeat was still slow, but seemed to be pounding harder in his chest as he took a step outside the door. Oh god, he was NOT going to break down crying in the hallway because he walked through a curtain.

Because he was free.

And if Jimmy walked to the lounge an inch or two higher off the ground than he normally was, no one commented on it.

Chapter Text

The lounge was a lot more sedate than Jimmy had imagined the family being. The large boisterous man, who’d been taller than even Clark and had seemed terrifying when they first met, was sitting quietly on a couch wearing small glasses and doing needlepoint. Next to him was a white-haired glowing girl snoozing while using him as a pillow. His wife was at the table tinkering with something electronic. The two teens younger than him were playing a video game (the boy was Tucker, which mean the girl with black hair and the girl with white hair were Sam and Dani, but he didn’t know which was which) and Jazz sat softly reading a book to Phantom, who was bobbing towards the view of the stars in an open vat of translucent green goo.

It was an altogether cozy scene. At least until Jimmy felt Phantom notice him and the orb rose out of the goo. He was glowing much brighter now, a blue corona of light emanating from him interspersed with more solid bits of green. "Do not!" Jazz hissed, grabbing him and physically shoving him back in the goo. "Frostbite said you needed to stay submerged at least until you regained a corporeal form, and even then only come out for short bursts."

Jimmy felt a wave of annoyance from Phantom and the large man chuckled.

"Doctor's orders, Danno. Don't worry, you'll be right as rain, soon enough." He gently let the girl down so she was laying completely on the couch. Then he got up and without preamble engulfed Jimmy in a huge hug.

"You saved my boy. You need anything, you let us know."

"Maddie Fenton." The woman had also gotten up and extended her hand to shake. "Danny's mother. This is my husband, Jack. Our daughter Jazz, and our niece, Dani."

"With an I," Jack added, since Dani wasn't awake to say it herself.

"And Sam and Tucker, Danny's best friends." Tucker gave a small two finger salute, his eyes never leaving the screen, and Sam didn't budge. 

"You make up Danny's 'fraid', right?" Jimmy's mom seemed eager to use the new term. "I'm Ellen Olsen, this is my husband, Mathew. We also have Lois Lane, who's worked with Jimmy since he was an intern and I'm sure you know Superman. Oh, and the Flash is here because he brought us up and I think he got swept along."

"They're like a typhoon." Flash quipped.

"Oh we're going to get along great!" Maddie laughed. It was a little broken, like someone trying to find what joy they could.

"I'm out." Tucker pushed his controller away. "My ego can't take this anymore. Anyone else want to play against Sam?" 

"Want a go?" Sam waved her controller towards Jimmy, her eyebrow rising in challenge.

"I don't really know the game." Jimmy admitted. On the other hand, it would probably get him out of any conversations his parents were having about the nitty gritty of him being 'unalive' and he didn't think he was ready for those yet. "But I'm willing to learn."

Sam’s grin gave the feeling of being fanged, for all her teeth were perfectly normal. “I have so much to teach you. Let’s start with the controls.” She walked him through the controller’s layout and they started on a beginner friendly map, with her giving him plenty of tricks he could take advantage of.

"This is friendship betrayal." Tucker declared. "You're taking it easy on him. You're teaching him your mojo."

"Yes," Sam said with a smirk. "Because when I asked if he play Doomed before, he admitted he hadn't and that he was willing to learn from me. Unlike two other guys I could name who insisted they were experts who knew everything about the game and were better at it because they were boys."

"We were literally fourteen, Sam. Let it go!" Tucker bemoaned. Jimmy felt Danny's agreement.

"Honesty is the best policy, boys, and actions have consequences." Sam cracked her knuckles. “And also…sorry if I was being a bit of a bitch back in the room. I was focused on Danny and how to get him back as soon as possible and I didn’t even think that you needed help too. I can be a little ghost-brained, so sorry.”

“Ghost-brained?” That sounded concerning.

“Told ya he didn’t know what a liminal was.” Tucker joked. “It basically means death-touched. Not as much as you or the Dannys,” he gestured to the sleeping girl, “for most liminals it means being a little ‘ghost-brained’ as Sam put it. Mostly either feeling territorial or prone to hyperfocus and hyperfixations, so not that different from normal neurodivergence. Sam’s got a little more of the territoriality than most of us, and Danny’s hers.”

“You make it sound like I think I own him.” Sam rolled her eyes. “He’s my friend and I protect what’s mine. But you also protected what’s mine, so I shouldn’t have been shitty.”

“It’s okay. I just kind of…really didn’t understand anything that was happening.” Jimmy admitted. “And what’s me being, uh, ghost-brained and what’s trauma.”

“Yeah, Danny’s going to be going through that too.” Sam shot a look at the tub. “I don’t know if I want to hug him or strangle him for scaring me so badly.”

“Hug him, strangle the GiW.” Tucker suggested.

“Can do.” Okay, how was she making flat teeth seem sharp?

"Delivery for James Olsen," came a tired and annoyed sounding voice behind them. "One new camera, courtesy of Batman."

"Sorry, You didn't have to." Jimmy looked embarrassed. He’d been expecting at most an old one that had been lying around he could use temporarily. Not a new one for him specifically.

"Oh, I very much did." There was something sharp in Red Robin's grin. "Here," He gently tossed the box to Jimmy.

Jimmy caught it, half expecting the camera that had started this whole mess, because that seemed like a very Batman play, and he wasn't sure how he'd feel about that. Wanting that camera had led to...a lot. And not any of it good. Well, he had saved Phantom, so that was something.

But it turned out that it wasn't the same camera. That camera wasn't even in the same league as this camera. No amount of extra part-time jobs or clinical trials could have convinced him he'd ever be able to afford this camera. And Jimmy was torn between the urge to set it down gently and back away and the urge to declare mine like a gremlin. "I can't afford this." He finally said.

"Luckily for you, Batman can." Red Robin said flippantly.

"I don't know if I can accept this."

"Please do." Red Robin pleaded, the air of disinterest gone. "Let me have this petty revenge."

"Petty revenge?" Jimmy was confused now.

"My instructions were to pick out a good camera for you, and then join your protection detail. Of course, you're on a flying space station no one can reach without authorization from the core seven members of the Justice League, that is literally filled with superheroes. And you're staying in close contact with Superman. The fact that I'm redundant here is painfully obvious. So why would ‘master strategist’ Batman assign me here as opposed to anywhere I could actually do good?"

"To keep you out of the way?" Sam guessed.

"Exactly." Red Robin sat in a huff on one of the unoccupied couches, pulled out a phone, and began typing. The very image of a grumpy teenager. "He might as well have just said it, but we all know he's allergic to open communication. So please accept it. You might actually need a camera medically, which I’m not going to pretend I understand, and I need to get one over on the old man."

"Why do you believe Batman's trying to keep you out of the way?" Jazz asked, closing the book.

"Well, let's see." He was answering Jazz, but staring straight at Superman. "A teen hero, who was a ghost, was captured based on the idea that she-he didn't have any rights due to being dead. He was tortured and almost reduced to nothing. Gee, Uncle Supes, I wonder what Batman thought my reaction would be?"

It was the accidental gender switch that made things click in Clark's mind. "You were going to blow up Mount Rushmore again." he said flatly.

Red Robin threw his hands in the air. "We weren't even going to blow up Mount Rushmore the first time. That was sabotage!"

"You should." Sam said. "The defacing of Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe is an affront to the Lakota peoples and a symbol of colonizer’s disregard for the land and the people they steal it from."

"Valid, but not the point." Red Robin noted. "The point is the last time there was an active undead teen heroine, the government kidnapped, experimented on, and tortured her in a hidden lab in Mount Rushmore. So it seems that would be a real good place to start looking for answers, don’t you think?"

"This has happened before?" Ellen was aghast.

"A different group, and before the Anti-Ecto Acts even existed." Superman assured her.

"Yeah, funny how the Anti-Ecto Act popped up right after we freed Secret from there. Almost like they were covering their asses so if they got her again, you'd let them keep her." The accusation was clear in Red Robin's voice.

"We would never let them keep her." Superman's voice was firm and unyielding. "But you and your team went in blind with no intel and..." Suddenly everything he knew about Young Justice and how they acted around each other was re-contextualized with the information he'd gotten under the past few hours. "You were a fraid." Superman said in shock.

"Of course I was afraid!" Red Robin snapped, the trained Bat poker-face gone entirely. He was still glued to his phone though. "They took her, they were going to hurt her again, and you weren't listening."

"No wonder you and Wonder Girl lost the plot when Kon and Bart died." Clark was still lost in his revelation.

"We did not—" Red Robin said automatically before remembering his endless cloning attempts and Cassie's cult. "Okay fine, we don't deal with grief rationally. But you've met Batman."

"And it doesn't track." Jazz looked pensive. "Even if they were part of a fraid, and if a teammate was a ghost that does seem likely, a fraid bond does not affect normal humans in any way. It wouldn't make someone more likely to have obsessive reactions. You'd need to be crazy liminal to have reactions to a fraid member like a ghost does and not like a human..." She looked at Red Robin, remembered what line of work he was in, and closed her eyes, pinching her nose. "Red Robin, have you and your teammates ever encountered strong death magics, traveled to one or more afterlifes, or been brought back from the verge of death or death itself?"

"Yeah." Red Robin answered without hesitation. "Not that uncommon in this line of work. I've spent some time near Lazarus Pits. Been to a few afterlife's, including 70's Disco Hell." 

"Oh man, that place sucked." Sam griped. "That Dante guy was such a tool. Too cool a name to be wasted on him." 

"I thought the name was cliche." Tucker added, at least partially to rib Sam. 

"Supergirl punched him?" Red Robin volunteered, still sounding confused about, well, everything in this conversation.

"Nice!" Tucker and Sam high-fived and Jimmy felt a surge of vindication from Danny. 

"Kids, what were you doing in Disco Hell?" Maddie asked sternly.

"Found it while mapping the Infinite Realms." Sam said casually. "It sucked."

"Trying to escape a corrupt courthouse." Red Robin answered in clear surprise when her gaze turned on him. 

"I knew the current justice system was going to hell," Tucker joked.

"Well, welcome to liminality." Jazz sighed heavily.

"We don't have T-Shirts, but we could probably make them." Sam chimed in.

"And you get to join in on my planned discussion with Jimmy about how your psychology likely doesn't adhere to normal human principles and what to expect from that. Your friends can join us too, as I'm guessing your ghost friend didn't tell you about this." 

"I don't think she knew. And also she's alive again now." Red Robin threw in. 

"Yeah we can pencil her in too."

"Jazzy-pants is the best in the field in interactions between human, ghost, and liminal psychology." Jack said proudly.

"I'm the only one in the field." Jazz rubbed the bridge of her nose. "And if liminality is this common in heroes, I'm going to need to get some apprentices."

“Do you think the threat of his mind functioning in a non-rational fashion would be enough to get B to see a therapist?” Red Robin asked, with a smile that Jimmy privately thought was almost as fanged and terrifying as Sam’s. “We could say it’s checking for liminality, and then sneak some actual therapy in.”

“I am not qualified for this,” Jazz muttered.

“Black Canary is.” Red Robin volunteered. “Just say you’re along as a specialist in liminality and let her do the therapyizing.”

“I am 99% sure that’s not a word.”

“It is if you understood it. So I contacted the rest of the team to let them know about liminality affecting our minds. The non-active members of the team will probably get here first. Everyone cool if Empress brings her parents?”

Jimmy stared at the box as his parent’s discussion with the Fentons on caring for an unalive son, Sam's resuming her game with Tucker while he tried to use what she taught Jimmy, and Red Robin clarifying how much he could communicate over his phone faded into the background. He opened the box and pulled out the several thousand dollar device.

The moment it was in his hands, the two warring impulses settled firmly into mine. He barely glanced at the manual as he familiarized himself with the various dials and the apertures adjustment. Somehow he felt as if he knew the camera. Like he'd gotten back a missing limb or something.

"Does anyone mind if I take some pictures?" he asked the room at large, only half listening for a response.

"Fine with me," Red Robin said absently, still typing on his phone. "Do retired members need to wear their old costumes here? Arrowette has some hang ups regarding hers."

"They don't have to if they don't mind people potentially recognizing them, which is very much a risk for Arrowette. She can just wear a mask if that helps." Superman suggested. "And I'm fine with pictures, as well."

"Thanks, I'll tell her that." Red Robin immediately zoned them out.

Other murmurs of consent came from around the room but Jimmy barely heard them as he lifted his eye to the viewfinder. The first thing that caught his notice was actually Danny, glowing in front of the sea of stars. He clicked the shutter and felt... relief. Like finally being able to breathe air or see the sun again. This was something he was born to do and it had been seven months since he was able to .

He turned the camera around and it fell on Lois and Clark. There was nothing overly romantic in their postures. He, Flash, and Red Robin were the only ones here who knew they were married, after all. But they still subtly leaned towards each other.

Click

Red Robin on the couch, posture casual, but still radiating annoyance at Batman.

Click

Jack Fenton returning to his needlepoint.

Click

Tucker howling in defeat as Sam schooled him once more.

Click

Dani curled up against Jack Fenton, using him as an oversized plushie.

Click

Click

ClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClick

Jimmy had just gotten almost the perfect angle for a picture of his parents when he was jolted out of his trance by the same feeling he had right before Frostbite arrived. It also made him realize exactly how he'd been positioning himself. "When did I start floating again?" he asked, concerned.

"About ten minutes ago." his mother answered helpfully.

Ten minutes? It felt like he’d just started taking pictures. 

"This place is amazing." A girl with short blonde hair and wearing a dust colored cloak and mask walked in.

"Tell me about it." Another girl, equally blond, but with longer straight hair, wearing a red mask came in. "I remember when we had to make do with a tricked out cave."

"We definitely should have asked Snapper Carr for more funding." added a third, this one with dark hair wearing a gold and purple full body outfit.

"Don't knock the tricked out cave." Red Robin said, jokingly, waving to them from his spot on the couch. "It's served the Bats for years. Everyone this is Secret, Arrowette, and Empress. I thought you were bringing your parents."

"Uncle Ish and Aunt Bonnie said they'd watch them."

"Aunt...that's still a thing?" Red Robin asked, a little surprised.

"Empress and I are basically cousins at this point." Arrowette sighed. "I just wish they'd make it official instead of acting like it's a fling three years later."

"They're still making excuses for spending time together." Empress shook her head. "But it's free babysitting for Mom and Dad, so I can't complain."

Flash opened his mouth to ask a question but hesitated.

"Parents permanently deaged, currently toddlers." Red Robin filled in.

"Ah." Flash looked no less awkward for the explanation.

"And you're taking care of them by yourself?" Jimmy's mother fussed.

"Uncle Ish and Aunt Bonnie help. So do my friends. Some of whom do so by vaguely threatening my landlord when he tries to raise my rent and doesn't think I notice." She shot Red Robin a look.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Red Robin answered, not bothering to hide his smug grin. "By the way, nice mask, Secret."

Secret had been staring at Jimmy, which on one hand, made sense because he was still floating holding a camera. But it didn’t feel like that. "You're like I used to be. But...different?" she sounded confused.

"I guess, I still don't really understand what I am." Jimmy admitted.

“You know she’s out of it when she didn’t even notice Rob complimenting her mask.” Empress laughed.

Secret eeped. "It's just one of Arrowette's old ones, recolored. I never needed one before, because I didn't exactly have a civilian identity." She fidgeted nervously.

"It looks good." The earlier playfulness was gone from Red Robin's voice, replaced with sincerity.

"Thanks." She smiled, then glanced back at Jimmy. “You really don’t know?”

“The doctor said I’m unalive, which is like undead, but different? I died, and then my heart started back up when I felt safe? I don’t understand it at all, to be honest.” Jimmy admitted.

"Life and Death are a spectrum and you and the Dannys are smack in the middle." Jack answered cheerfully.

"Alive, Liminal, Unalive, Undead, and Dead." Maddie filled in, breaking from her conversation with the Olsens. "All ghosts, zombies, and other dead that can think and act in the world qualify as Undead, while true dead are beyond the touch of the world forever."

"Oh, then I suppose I was undead, but now I'm alive?" Secret asked questioningly. "I don't have any of my powers anymore, at least." Which in her opinion was a small price to pay.

"If you weren't at least liminal, I'd be very surprised." Jazz said, then cocked her head. "Definitely liminal. Danny said he felt you when you entered."

"I think I did too." Jimmy admitted. "Just a weird feeling, but I had it when Doctor Frostbite came too."

"It's unusual to be able to sense a liminal as opposed to someone who's unalive or undead." Jazz mused. "But if you were fully undead at one point, that might change things. But I think we'd need Frostbite to look you over and he has his hands full between Jimmy and Danny."

"Can we get back to the non-human psychology thing?" Arrowette crossed her arms, focusing on Red Robin. "You know, the reason you called us here?"

"Yeah, apparently exposure to death magic and getting dragged to different afterlives can change your brain chemistry. Who knew?” Red Robin shrugged. "Also we were apparently something called a 'fraid'."

"Ghost social group, size can range from between two individuals or a few hundred. Most fraids are a tight-knit group that act as family for each other. These relationships can be familial, romantic, or plantonic." Jazz recited as if from a textbook. "Maybe I should just write a book. Or at least a pamphlet."

"Sorry to put you on the spot, I know you’re going through a lot with your brother." Red Robin apologized. "But something affecting our minds and ability to rationalize is a priority."

"No, it makes sense, just, you're doing important work but..." Jazz huffed in frustration.

"What Jazz is trying not to say, is that we are also liminal as Hell, especially the Fentons, with Jazz, who's been exposed to death energy pretty much since birth, being close to Unalive and now that we know someone hurt a member of our fraid to the point of core reversion, the fact that Danny needs us to heal is the only thing keeping us from tracking down the GiW and ripping them apart with our bare hands ." Sam's statement ended in a bloodthirsty snarl.

"I'd rather use my guns, but the statement stands." Jack said grimly. "If Danny didn't need us to stay here with him, we'd be peeling them like an onion, from skin all the way down to marrow!" 

"Well, yeah, that's normal." Red Robin said, only to realize most of the adults in the room were now looking at him with either shock or (in the Fenton's case) sympathy. "That's... not normal?" he ventured.

"Anger is, certainly." Lois sounded unsure. "Even a level of violence. Ripping people apart or peeling them...less so."

"Is this my fault?" Secret asked nervously. "Because I was a ghost and also I pulled you into my soul to pull you out of that ambush." 

"I'd almost repressed the memory of that." Red Robin winced. "But that was more an 'icing on the cake' thing. There was also disco hell, and having open cavity surgery next to a Lazarus Pit, so a culmination, really."

"Why were you having open cavity surgery next to a Lazarus pit?" Empress asked pointedly. 

"In case the surgery didn't work, in which case the dip in the pit would probably be the biggest contributor to my apparent liminality." Red Robin shrugged it off. 

"Batman would never approve of that." Superman said with full confidence.

"You're right, he wouldn’t. But he didn't really have a say when lost in the time stream, did he?" 

There was something brittle and sharp between Red Robin and Superman in that moment. And to the surprise of most, it was Superman who looked away first. "Jazz, I'm sorry to bother you further, but it seems you're the best person to ask this. With...ghost psychology...if a fraid member is missing, believed gone by most, but you know there's even the smallest chance they could be alive— how far would you go?" 

"End of the Earth, no question. No, even that's not a limit. The only thing that stopped us from finding Danny is we didn't know where to look." Jazz answered solemnly and without hesitation. 

Superman closed his eyes. "You were always going to go. The best I could have done was make sure you didn't go alone. I'm sorry. Not just for not believing you, but for not supporting you." 

Red Robin's eyes were wide open and his jaw dropped slightly. Then he swallowed. "You know, no one believed me, not even Wonder Girl. But you're the first one to actually apologize." 

"Wonder Girl didn't believe you?" Arrowette asked dryly. "After everything we've seen and done?"

"No, no, actually it makes sense." he finally put his phone down. "If I'm 'liminal' enough to be thinking in a decidedly non-human manner, then it makes sense that I might be creating these social bonds myself, not just be the recipient of such a bond from Secret."

"You are," Jazz cut in. "A two way bond, which it sounds like what was happening, needs to occur at both ends."

"So the old members of Young Justice are a fraid with Secret at the center, but I probably have my own fraid with the other Bats. I don't know if they're all liminal enough to reciprocate, but I wouldn't put it outside of the realm of possibility. So to Wonder Girl, I'm a member of her fraid, but Batman isn't. She wouldn't have the psychological drive to do whatever it took to find him, but she would to stop me from what looked like a suicide mission to try and save a dead man. Because that was what looked like the best way of protecting me." He pinched his nose. "I need to go over every social interaction I've ever had as to whether or not I understood what 'rational' was from other's perspectives."

Jimmy held his camera a little closer. It probably should have made him feel better that there were other people, heroes at that, who'd gone through whatever psyche changes he was going through as well. That Secret had been fully dead but still managed to come all the way back to life.

It didn't.

"I think I'm going to go back to the room and lie down for a bit." Jimmy hedged. Now, how did he get back on the ground. Flying was so easy when he wasn’t thinking about it. But now that he was he had no clue how it worked.

But as had been the case since he escaped, Clark was there to help, flying just high enough to grab his hand and help guide him down. “I remember the learning curve in flying on purpose.”

“Danny had so much trouble orientating himself.” Tucker snorted. “He’d just randomly wobble and flip upside down.”

Jack and Maddie shared a sad look. 

"Oh you must be exhausted and I dragged you in here." His mother looked contrite. "We can all go back. If you don’t mind resuming our conversation later, Maddie."

“Not at all, Ellen. There’s so few people I can talk to about this, but our boys have to come first,” 

"No, no. You and Dad stay and talk to the Fentons! You need answers and as long as Superman's with me it's fine, right?" 

"Jimmy, we just got you back! If you think we're letting you out of our sight—? Not to mention the Doctor said we have to stay near you."

"Let him have his rest." His Dad put his hand on her shoulder. He looked his son in the eye and Jimmy squirmed realizing he dad had seen through his excuse immediately and knew exactly what Jimmy was doing.

Jimmy didn’t know if he was grateful or not.

"Flash, can you have some extra cots moved into the room or set up here? If both fraids are staying for the time being, they'll need to sleep." Superman asked. 

"Both or all three." Flash asked with a lopsided grin, angling his head towards the former members of Young Justice.

"Since Secret is no longer in danger from whoever did this, our fraid should be safe to leave once we've finished our brief on liminal psychology from Miss Fenton." Red Robin answered, still texting away. "The other three should be here soon, so we should be getting out of your hair then."

"Really? Cause I think we could turn this into a whole thing. The 'Fraid Wing' of the Justice Tower." Flash joked.

"It's not a bad idea." Lois mused. "There's not a lot of information on such things, at least not in the living world. A centralized hub with information, and maybe some more doctors like Frostbite being readily accessible could be a good thing."

"I'll leave that in your capable hands." Clark resisted the urge to give her a loving smile or a quick kiss to her forehead. He loved Lois so much and he hated not being able to show it. "You know where to find me." 

"Sorry," Jimmy mumbled, as he headed back. There was a part of him that balked at leaving Lois and his parents behind. He didn’t know if it was the ghostly part of him, the traumatized part of him, or both. But it didn't have to be for long. Not even long enough to fake a nap. He just...he didn't want to ask this with anyone else watching. Hearing. He needed to know, though. It was swirling around his brain, screaming to get out. In fact, he didn't even make it all the way to the room before the question tumbled from his lips.

"Clark, how did you handle it when you found out you weren't human?"

Chapter Text

On a better day, Clark probably would have anticipated the question. Would have picked up on it, just as Mathew Olsen had, that even when it was better for him to stay in the group, Jimmy wanted a chance to talk alone with the one person present who wasn’t human.

It wasn't a better day and Clark felt like he'd been punched in the gut. 

"It wasn't...It wasn't a single moment, I guess. I was always a little faster and stronger. Then I started getting a lot faster and stronger. More so that was reasonable. More so than humanly possible." It wasn't a happy memory. "About the time when I started melting things by looking at them Ma and Pa decided to come clean. Showed me the spaceship. I—" How did he handle it? 

"Not well." He summed up finally. He felt like he’d been shattered. Like all of him was a lie.

"I knew they were changing me, giving me powers and waiting for me to die." Jimmy said darkly. "I thought they were going to, like, remote control my corpse, or vivisect me, or something. Not make me undead. But there are other people who went through this, not just Danny. There's doctors ready and that should make it better." 

"It doesn't," said Clark knowingly. 

"It doesn't." Jimmy agreed. "I didn't know my hair turned blue." He pulled down a lock of his bangs. "And it's back to normal now, but it's probably going to turn blue again at some point. And my eyes turned red. And I lost time when I was taking pictures. And I think I might break the arm of anyone who tried to take my camera. I was so focused on trying to escape I never realized— Clark, I don't recognize myself anymore!"

And any words Clark might have had caught in his throat. 'It's still you' sounded... trite. Likewise 'The trauma alone probably would have done that' didn't seem especially helpful. ’That's normal' seemed like the worst of the responses. Why wasn't his brain being helpful? 

“Neither did I. Nothing about me outwardly changed, but I felt…fake, I guess. I looked like a normal person, but I wasn’t. I never had been. And even though I had seen how human-looking Kryptonians were from the holograms on the ship, I had nightmares about sprouting extra eyes or my skin turning green. Even though I was technically no different than I had been, I felt like…” Clark broke off, not wanting to say the next part. Not wanting to put that thought in Jimmy’s head.

“Like a monster.”

Or the thought was already there. Of course, aliens in stories could be good or evil. Undead had very specific connotations. "Like a monster.” Clark agreed. “It took me a long time to figure out what my place was in this world, or even if I was supposed to have one. It's hard. But you have the same things I did. A family who loves and supports you, no matter what you are. The support of the people like you, even if you don't really understand them, at least not yet." Clark...never really understood other Kryptonians. He hungered for knowledge of his lost culture, but it was never really his. “In the end, I realized who I was didn’t have to be any more complicated than Jon and Martha Kent’s boy. Everything after that was up to me. Like I said earlier, one day at a time. We'll find pieces of yourself you lost and learn how the new pieces fit in. And none of it you have to do alone." 

Jimmy leaned against him. "I'm tired, Clark.” And he meant it on all levels. This was the longest he’d been awake since the changes started. But he also felt like his soul had been wrung out. 

"Some sleep probably wouldn't be a bad thing." Clark said gently. 

"Can't." Jimmy muttered. "If I sleep, I might wake up." 

‘Back there’ was implied. "Never again," Superman swore. "I'm here. They're never touching you again." It felt hollow, after all, he hadn't protected Jimmy in the first place. 

"Promise?" Jimmy asked, as if Superman so much as saying it made it true. 

"Promise." Clark ran his hand through his hair, like he did to Jon when he was overtired. Jimmy leaned into the touch and his breathing began to even out. He'd fallen asleep floating. Clark gently picked him up and floated him back the way they'd come. 

"We didn't even make it to the room." Superman said quietly, before gently putting Jimmy down between his parents. Jimmy subconsciously leaned into both his parents. “He’s been waking up for months surrounded by enemies. I think next time he wakes up, it should be with his loved ones.”

His dad held his hand and his mom ran her fingers through his hair, brushing it from his eyes. "My miracle," she whispered. 

Clark felt like he was intruding. He'd been by Jimmy's side since he called for him. It was time to let his parents have their turn without him hovering, even if Jimmy was asleep. The former Young Justice members were sitting with Lois and Red Robin was taking notes as quickly as he could write them. 

"Hey," Lois smiled at him, her voice low so as not to wake up Dani and Jimmy. "We're playing 'what's a normal human reaction?’. It's been interesting." 

"Red Robin is the worst at it." Empress said, a grin in her voice. "Like you'd think being the token normal, he'd have a shot, but no." 

"What do you mean 'token' normal?" Arrowette elbowed her. "What am I, chopped liver?" 

"Hon, both your parents were in the hero business and you've been in training since you were, like, two. Sorry, nothing 'normal' about you. Rob, on the other hand, didn’t get involved till he was what? Thirteen?" Empress said jokingly. “You never had a chance, but Rob absolutely could have been just a normal kid.”

Secret giggled as Arrowette looked put out. "Fine, but I'd like to point out 1) I’m the one with a successful normal civilian life and 2) I'm winning the 'normal reaction' quiz." Arrowette said defensively. 

"We can't argue with her there." Secret said sadly. "I never knew I was carrying so much from that time with me." 

"It was a long time." Red Robin said, putting his hand on her shoulder. "And you spent most of it in a DEO cell." 

Not too different from what happened to Jimmy, except no one was even looking for Secret. If she hadn’t escaped, they could have done whatever they wanted for however long they’d wanted. Almost unbidden his eyes tracked to Danny in his vat of goo. 

That would have been her. They would have taken her, a murder victim killed by her own brother, and tore her to shreds so they could study what was left. "I'm glad the boys had the presence of mind to fake your 'death' with Robin's smoke bombs." 

Secret looked shocked, "You knew about that?" she asked in a small voice.

"We knew right away. We also knew the DEO's story was sketchy, so we trusted your judgement." Superman shrugged. 

Arrowette pinched her nose. "And you don't think it might have helped telling them you trusted them, instead of keeping it a secret and only talking to us when you thought we messed up and making us feel like screw ups." 

Superman's mouth opened and closed in shock, but Red Robin took it in stride. "Just blame Batman's allergy to clear communication. That's what we do in Gotham."

"What do you think about fairy lights?" Flash flopped down, joining them. 

"Fairy lights?" Arrowette asked, confused. 

"You know, like Christmas lights, only it's not Christmas. I kinda like the rainbow thing we have going on here, and thought, hey, why not make this space more cozy. Beanbags, throw pillows, fairy lights. No offense to Batman, but industrial efficiency is not what I look for in my break rooms." 

"Trust me, it's not Batman's either." Red Robin was grinning. "He's, like, every flavor of Goth at once, I swear. I mean, you've seen the Batmobile and the Cave. I think the 'industrial efficiency' is more him trying to be nice and not foist his aesthetic sense on everyone."

“So we have at least one dark gothy room elsewhere, and make a fun comfortable room here.” Flash mused. “Maybe poll to see what anyone else might like.”

“Our house could probably use a refresh too.” Maddie said, coming over, though not sitting down. “We’ve gone a bit industrial efficiency ourselves, since we work out of our house, but it should be our home first.” She glanced over at Jimmy sleeping nestled between his parents. “I know you’ve already done so much for us and the Olsens, but I was wondering if I could ask another favor?”

“You can always ask.” Superman assured. He didn’t want to risk flat out agreeing, especially not after hearing two members of their fraid express a desire to graphically murder the GiW. Not that he didn’t want to give them a bad turn, but he didn’t want to peel anyone.

“I’ve been talking to Ellen and we want to help her make a photo album or sorts.” Maddie explained, which was a much better option than peeling a person to death. “Back when Danny first got his powers, there wasn’t really much of an understanding of Liminals. One of the side effects of liminality is being caught in hyperfixations and without being aware of the problem and setting yourself limits, it’s very easy to be consumed by them. Jack and I were consumed by our work, and given it involved studying ghosts, Danny didn’t feel comfortable telling us what had happened to him. And with our hyperfocus elsewhere, it was all too easy to hide.” Maddie looked downcast.

“The result of it, though, is Jack and I…we missed all of this.” She gestured to where Jimmy was sleeping between his parents. “We missed him discovering and learning his powers. We missed our chance to reassure him when he was scared, and our chance to see him grow out of it. I don’t—” her voice choked a little. “I don’t want Ellen and Mathew to miss a thing.”

Clark’s heart went out to her, to the real regret he heard in her voice. “And you want an album?”

“Physical albums can come later. Just…pictures to put in it. Celebrations of their escape. Him practicing flying and ice, and whatever other powers he might have. I know Red Robin at least has a camera phone. Because unless he also has duplication, Jimmy can’t take pictures of himself and no one else is touching that camera.”

Jimmy had confessed he might break the arm of anyone who tried to take it, but only Clark was there for that. So this behavior was to be expected from someone who was liminal or unalive. “I think it’s a good idea, but we need to ask Jimmy first. He already had so much done to him without his consent. I don’t want to add having pictures taken of him to that.”

“That’s fair.” Maddie admitted. “I just wish-”

“No wishing!” Sam and Tucker said, almost by instinct.

Maddie looked surprised, but then smiled. “I would love to have had pictures of Danny from that time.”

She spread her hands. “If he agrees to it, I want them to have what we didn’t, just—” Her words were interrupted by a soft tap at the door, before Frostbite stuck his head right through the door. 

He grinned. “Apparently, the door sensors do not recognize ghosts, could one of you be a dear and step close enough to cause it to open? I don’t want to risk dropping what I’m carrying accidentally. Some of it may not take passing through solid matter well.”

Flash darted to the door before Maddie, who was closest, could even turn. “Got it!” He exclaimed cheerfully as the door opened to admit Frostbite, carrying a large container of green goo similar to what Danny had been submerged in. Danny again tried to rise up to greet his friend, only to be slammed back down by Jazz. 

"Oh, my- Did the situation become more complicated while I was gone?" Frostbite asked, looking at the group of teen heroes gathered in the corner where Jazz was forcefully making her brother follow doctor's orders. 

“Sort of,” Jazz admitted. “I mean it, Danny, stay put! A whole bunch of previously unidentified liminals, one of whom was undead and came back to life.”

Frostbite chuckled, stepping aside to gesture to a smaller yeti whose fur was colored soft pink and a translucent human man, dressed as a doctor from a generation or so prior. "I actually expected as much, though not the exact circumstances. That is why I brought some help. Snow and Tom will stay on site here."

He set the container of goo down on a table to introduce them. "Snow is a fully fledged medic in the far frozen and as capable as I am in matters of ghostly health. And Tom was a human doctor in life. While he's still learning our side of things, his knowledge of human anatomy and medicine outstrips our own by a great deal." 

"I'm sure medicine has moved forward in the years since I've been alive, but I'm happy to do whatever I can." Tom offered with a genuine grin. 

Superman stared a little.

Red Robin was staring at the man, at first surprised, but slowly a grin spread across his face. "This helps things." he said almost to himself. "This helps things a lot."

Clark felt a little bad for being suspicious. And reminded of Bruce. Tim was right, having doctors on hand would help things. But he couldn't help but think that wasn't what Tim was talking about. It was, after all, very similar to how Bruce had reacted to Jimmy’s need for a camera, knowing he could use it to get Tim where he couldn’t attack Mount Rushmore.

Frostbite began to set up something in Danny's tank that looked like a cross between a drip feed IV and fish tank filter. Snow walked over to Dani, and Tom to Jimmy. 

"He just got to sleep." Mathew protested. 

"I'm sorry, but he needs food more than rest." Tom said softly. "As we don't know the quality of food they were feeding him and whether it was properly balanced for his new nutritional needs." 

Unsaid, it probably wasn't. At all. If anything it would be engineered not to be. "A smoothie and then we can let him get back to sleep." Tom promised, holding up a tumbler with a straw. 

“Do I know you?” Superman asked, still staring at Tom.

“I don’t believe so.” Tom tried to think. “This is my first time in the land of the living for several decades. You were probably a small child when I died. Unless you’ve been to the Afterlife.”

“No,” Superman shook his head. “You look familiar, but not like someone I know. More like someone I’ve seen someplace.”

“My work was published in a few medical journals.” Tom suggested. 

“Maybe.” Still didn’t feel right.

"Jimmy. Wake up for just a moment." Ellen gently shook his shoulder, hating to wake him, but she’d voiced her own concerns about his need to eat. 

"Mom?" Jimmy asked sleepily. "Mom!" He turned and squeezed her. "You're here, you're really here." Then he realized he was still holding his father's hand and pulled the man into a hug. "I was afraid it was just another dream." 

"You're free," Mathew promised. "And you're never going back." 

"And to make sure you're recovering, I'm afraid you do need to drink this." Tom pushed the tumbler at him. 

"What is it?" Jimmy asked, rightfully a little cautious of doctors handing him things. (Tom looking human made him more wary. Ironically, he felt safer with the Yetis). Jimmy took the tumbler and opened the top to reveal a glowing green goo that looked way too much like the injections for his comfort. 

"Nothing tasty, I'm afraid. But healthy. A mixture of proteins, vitamins, and sugars in a suspension of purified ecto."

"Is the 'purified ecto' necessary?" Jimmy wrinkled his nose. 

"Yes," Tom stressed. "The GiW altered your body so you need it, but weren't supplying you with enough in order to keep you purposefully weak." 

"I bent steel with my bare hands." Jimmy said flatly. "By accident." 

"But how many hours a day could you function for?" Tom pointed out. "Your body was made stronger, but wasn't given the fuel to run. If you want to recover, you need that fuel. As does Phantom and—" 

"I don't need nutrition shakes anymore." Dani whined from the couch. 

"You didn't need nutrition shakes." Snow said firmly. "Then you started pushing your limits and ignoring your body's warning signs. Don't think Chief Frostbite didn't notice that, just because he's focusing on the Great One." 

Dani made a grumbling sound, but accepted the drink begrudgingly.

"So what is 'ecto', exactly?" Jimmy hesitantly stirred the straw. 

"It's an imperfect analogy, but think of it like the Infinite Realm’s version of water. Extremely common in the environment and every living thing is made primarily of it. The average human brain is 73% water. Danny's brain is more like 33% water, 56% ecto." Or at least it had been. No one knew what it would look like, or if the organ still existed, until Danny reformed his body. "If we hold the same for you, you are, to say, severely dehydrated." 

"Oh." It made sense. That didn't mean Jimmy liked it. He took a tentative sip and it felt like raw egg whites and tasted like poorly dissolved protein powder. He grimaced.

"Are his eyes supposed to glow like that?" His father asked nervously. 

"Yes, actually. It's showing he’s absorbing the ecto properly." Tom assured. 

“Oh, good.” Mathew immediately relaxed.

"This is permanent, isn't it?" Jimmy asked quietly. He kept thinking he’d accepted it, but then something new, like a nutritional need, would somehow bring it home in a way it hadn’t before.

"It is," Tom said. "Can't try to take the flour out of a baked cake and expect anything of either set to be recognizable. Or functional. But you're in good company." He gestured to Danny bobbing in his tub and Dani petulantly drinking her shake. “You can't go back to being 'normal', the same way you can’t go back to being a child or a baby.”

“Unless you’re Empress’s parents.” Ellen helpfully supplied. 

Tom faltered at that, but kept going. “No one can go back to what they used to be. But by the same token, we never stop becoming. What you can do for now is keep yourself healthy so you don't worry your parents." 

"Self care is rebellion against the GiW," Danny piped up and it took a moment for Jimmy to realize he was hearing it out loud instead of just impulses over their link. Whatever that vat of goo was, it was working. Likely ecto. Because Danny needed it, and so did Jimmy.

"I'm so glad to hear that you'll be setting a good example and following the doctor's instructions to the letter." Maddie said with pointed cheerfulness. Danny sunk in his tank, grumbling. 

Jimmy grimaced again, but continued to sip the drink. Danny was right. Taking care of himself was sticking it to their captors, in a way.

And the doctor was right and it wasn't just Danny and Dani. Superman and Supergirl weren't human either. And they hadn't even started as humans. And there were other hybrids like Raven and Wonder Girl. He was in good company. 

So he sat back and sipped his shake, watching Danny settle sullenly in his tank as he suddenly had to be a good example for Jimmy. Saw Dani try to hide her shake when she thought no one was looking only for Jack Fenton to intercept her. He watched Flash hang up Christmas lights for some reason while the former Young Justice members were laughing at Red Robin over something. It was...nice. Nice in a way he hadn't felt for a long long time. Jimmy smiled, then the corners pulled downward. "Um, it feels like my heart is purring? Wait, it stopped." 

Tom chuckled. "Startled me too the first time I felt it. It's your core, which to the best of my admittedly limited understanding, is like a ghost's nucleus, the center of their being. The 'purring' is a good sign. Mine is doing the same right now." 

"It is? So, like, it always does that?" Jimmy asked. 

"Not always. It happens as a sign of your core generating energy. Either by directly consuming it, as you are now, or by indulging in one's purpose." 

"Purpose?" Mathew asked. 

"For most ghosts, and I'm afraid I don't know how well it translates to the Unalive, we have something that it feels like… oh, how should I put it? Our raison d’être? What we were put on Earth to do? For me it's practicing medicine and helping people heal. It can be as varied as singing a song or playing a game or collecting something they value. Though sadly, there are those whose purpose is in the hurting of others." 

"That's how I felt when I was taking pictures." Jimmy admitted. "But, my- uh core didn't purr then." 

"It may not have been able to." Tom pointed out. "Remember, you are severely 'dehydrated', which means your internals were not functioning properly. Which is why, while I'm willing to answer questions, I do have to insist you go back to finishing your shake. And don't worry if the purr doesn't start again right away. Like an actual cat's purr, there's a level or relaxation involved, and it likely stopped because of an anxiety spike." 

"Okay." It hadn't crossed Jimmy's mind that his core stopping purring was a bad sign, but at least that was out of the way before he thought it. 

"Is it actually called purring?" Ellen asked. "Does it make a sound?"

"It's usually referred to as thrumming in the medical sense." Tom admitted. "But purring is as good a descriptor as any. And it's more a vibration felt than an audible sound." 

"Danny was vibrating,” Jimmy recalled. "He was excited when we were going to space and he was just vibrating the whole way up." 

"He might have a space-themed purpose." Tom mused. "Though unlikely from what I've heard, then again the Unliving are so unique, perhaps they can hold more than one purpose..." He seemed lost in thought. 

Jimmy resumed sipping his drink. The contentment of a few minutes ago didn't quite return. Too much new information. And something about cores. Core reversion, that’s what they said Danny was suffering from. Did that mean he had an orb like that inside him, and if he got hurt enough, his soul would retreat into it? How did it fit with his other organs? Trying to imagine it made his head hurt. Honestly, he probably really just needed to go back to his nap and let sleep reset his brain. Nestled between his parents, Clark and Lois in sight, Jimmy let the conversation between his parents and Doctor Tom become white noise as he began to slide back to slee- 

"Hail the conquering heroes!" The loud proclamation jolted him back awake as the room turned as one to Superboy arriving with a shit eating grin.

"Here you go, Boy Wonder. As requested." Wonder Girl tossed something small to Red Robin, who caught it mid-air and then inserted it into a tablet Jimmy hadn't seen him bring. 

"What does it say?" Impulse zipped around to Red Robin's shoulder.

"Analyzing." Red Robin was zeroed in to whatever was on the tablet. 

"What's our ETA till Knightfall?" Wonder Girl asked. 

"Unknown." Red Robin said. 

"He's sounding more like Batman every day." Arrowette snarked. 

Red Robin looked up and shot her a look. "At least I'm using words and not monosyllabic grunts. Also I don't know the ETA till Knightfall because it depends on whether or not Oracle's feeling like being a dirty snitch. Therefore I'd like to get this processed in my mind as much as possible so I can start coming up with our next move before that." 

"What's nightfall?" Lois asked. 

"When his Dad shows up to yell at him." Superboy said with a laugh. 

Red Robin gave him a dirty look, then went back to the tablet.

Clark suddenly felt the pressure of being the ‘responsible’ one in the room. “Why is Batman going to show up to yell at you?”



“Because he doesn’t ask the right questions.” Red Robin responded, his team snickering around him. “Now let me read this.”

“Red Robin-”



“I was completely honest in my answers to his questions and did as he asked and banished myself up here.” Red Robin snapped. “Now, if someone else could fill them in on Liminality so I can focus that would be great!”

“It explains so much about Rob.” Arrowette said cheerfully.

Jazz made a disgruntled sound under her breath at being put on the spot again.



“I think I can fill in the basics!” Flash cheerfully volunteered. “So being around death magic, experiencing deaths, going to the afterlife, stuff like that, can change people's minds to be a little more ghostly, and operate more on ghost logic than living logic. And also maybe cause territorial behaviors and extreme hyperfixations.”

“So, so much about Rob.” Arrowette repeated.

“Turns out we’re all a little ghost brained,” Empress said, “as a result of the various shit we ran into as Young Justice.”

“Like when Secret pulled us into her soul and we all experienced being violently killed over and over again til she let us out.” Superboy nodded.

“When what‽” Secret screeched.

“You know, when that ambush by the Pointmen went bad and you pulled us into your soul so we could escape and-”



“No, no, I remember that part. What was that part about experiencing violent death?” Secret was starting to hyperventilate.

“Oh yeah, being swallowed by darkness in an eternal fall, being burned to death in lava, frozen and shattered into little piec-OW,” Superboy rubbed his ribs where Wonder Girl elbowed him hard. “What was that for?”

“You got us out alive.” Impulse reminded her, trying to be helpful.

“I tortured you.” Secret whispered. “I was trying to help you escape and I tortured you. No wonder you were so upset. And I was upset that no one thanked me!”



“Secret, you didn’t know that was happening and we didn’t tell you, which was on us.” Wonder Girl cut in. “From your perspective you saved our lives, which you did , and then we gave you a hard time for no apparent reason. As much as we rail on the Bats, we were all kind of shit at interpersonal communication. It was bad, but I think we can all agree actually dying would have been much worse. So thank you, Secret.”

“Don’t thank me! I wish I never become a Warder!”

Frostbite dropped his equipment, Jack froze in his needlepoint, and Maddie gasped.



“She’s so young,” Maddie whispered.



Frostbite, who until this moment had seemed almost unflappable, had lost all sense of poise. “A Warder. No wonder you were unfamiliar with fraids.”

Secret shrank back a bit as her friends began to inch closer to her.

“You poor thing.” Frostbite’s voice dripped with grief. “A horrible death leading into an isolated afterlife. Doomed to guide souls to the Infinite Realms, but never see them yourself. I know not how a resurrection such as yours was possible-”

“Pissing off Darkseid.” Impulse said flippantly.

Flash and Superman both made a choking sound.

“-but I’m glad you were freed from such a fate.”

“Am I, though?” Secret asked quietly, not looking anyone in the eye. “Life isn’t permanent. Not for humans, anyways. I’ll die eventually and then I’ll be right back there.”

“No.” Frostbite gently took her hands into his. “Unless you are sacrificed again, your death will be no different from any other’s. While I cannot say what corner of the Infinite Realms you will find yourself, you will be welcomed into what comes next like any other mortal.”

“I’m free?” Secret asked in disbelief as Lois just mouthed Sacrificed??? at her husband. “I’m really free, I don’t have to be a Warder ever again?”

They were interrupted by the sound of heavy footsteps. Batman strode through the door Frostbite left open, but he wasn’t the same as he’d been when Jimmy had arrived. Then he was warm and welcoming. Now there was anger in every movement. “Red Robin,” he growled.

Superboy laughed. “Knightfall has landed.”

Chapter Text

Red Robin smiled in false innocence. “What’s wrong, B? You seem really upset about something.”

“You disobeyed a direct order,” Batman growled.

“No I didn’t.” Red Robin’s tone was almost mockingly placating. “I got the camera and came straight here and stayed just like you said.”

“You lied during the brief,” Batman accused, folding his arms across his chest and staring at him with steely eyes.

“I have no idea what you mean.” Red Robin put his hand over his heart. “B, I told you nothing but the absolute truth.”

“You said your team was staying away from the DEO and Mount Rushmore.” Batman reminded him in a low growl.

Red Robin tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Did I? No, I don’t think I did. If I recall properly, what I said was they’d never go without their leader there. That’s when you put me on fake guard duty to pretend you weren’t getting rid of me. Oh!” he looked like a thought had just occurred to him, holding a finger up in the air. “Did you forget I’m not actually the team leader? That’s Wonder Girl. I’m the tactician, a job which I was thankfully able to do remotely with my phone. But surely the world’s self-proclaimed ‘greatest detective’ wouldn’t overlook a simple fact like that?”

Batman looked like he was holding onto his temper by the barest of grips.

“Not gonna lie, this is exceedingly hot.” Sam whispered.

“TMI, and also, don’t you like Batman?” Tucker whispered back with a grimace.

“Oh, I do, gotta respect the Goth vibes, but I love rebellion against authority more.”

“But about telling the truth and responsibility, which I can only imagine this is where this is going, let’s talk about you.” The faux calm and innocent voice of Red Robin was starting to unravel. “You said that the GiW were Government Contractors, not Government Operatives, and we needed to focus on them and not old hurts.” All emotion left his voice, the next words stone cold.

“The head of the GiW is Markoff.”

That meant nothing to most of the people in the room, but to those who did know, that reaction was immediate. Superman narrowed his eyes threateningly and there was nothing subtle about the way the former members of Young Justice swiftly surrounded Secret, as if Markoff was in the room and she needed immediate protection. Secret herself seemed frozen between abject terror and incandescent rage.

“And it’s not just Markoff. The GiW was built using members of the DEO and APES. While they were publicly making sure they were a laughingstock, the DEO was slipping them jobs under the table in exchange for their research. Namely their research into how to weaponize the undead and- as we all now know— making their own. A process I believe is usually called ‘murder.’ Also ‘kidnapping,’ ‘medical malpractice,’ and, oh, lest we forget- ‘slow torture’.”

“And what I want to know, what I demand to know-” Anger was slipping into Red Robin’s voice. “Is why Markoff was free to do this‽ You said we had rushed things, that we should have let you handle it. We let you handle the aftermath so we could focus on our friend. So answer me this, why in the hell wasn’t Markoff in jail for the time he spent torturing Secret? I was under the assumption from the post-action meeting with the Governor that, ‘she’s dead, she doesn’t have any rights,’ wasn’t going to legally fly and the Anti-Ecto Act was to cover their asses for when they tried again. But no, you just swept it under the rug. Let them sweep it under the rug.” 

Tim removed the drive Wonder Girl had given him and tossed it at Batman, the movement casual but with just a little too much force behind it. Batman caught it more on instinct than anything else.

“This is the data my team, my friends, just brought me. Data that would have been so easy to destroy, given the public kerfuffle Superman just made. Data that likely wouldn’t have still been there tomorrow, but I had to go behind your back to get. Why? Did you actually agree with Chase back then? That the undead aren’t people and don’t have rights? That ghosts of children deserve to be rendered into that?” Red Robin off-handedly gestured to Danny’s tank. “Because we all know that’s where his experiments on Secret were going. Maybe that’s why Jay never came home, he knew you never saw him as a person after Ethiopia.”

Superman flinched back, wincing. That was below the belt. Way below the belt. How could Tim ever think-

“Red Robin, stop.” The tone was exasperated and coming from a direction no one expected. Jazz Fenton rolled her eyes, rising to her feet. “Batman made a mistake in judgement. He was probably trying to keep from getting sidetracked by false leads because he knew time was of the essence." She put a comforting hand on Red Robin's shoulder. "He is not a threat to your fraid. He is not trying to hurt your fraid. And you do not have to try and provoke his temper so it will only come out at you and your friends will be safe from him.”

Red Robin seemed startled, the viciousness and anger gone from his voice. “I wasn’t-”

“You were. Danny does this every time Vlad gets within twenty yards of him.”

“No, I don’t,” Danny whined, bobbing near the top of his tank like he would emerge.

“You do, man.” Tucker said, his tone fondly exasperated. “You really, really do.”

“Everything you’ve said, every tone you’ve taken, it’s all carefully calculated to rile him up, isn’t it?” Jazz pressed.

Red Robin said nothing, which really said everything.

Batman pinched his nose. “This was unnecessary.”

“This was completely necessary. Because once you decide you’re right, you don’t listen.” Red Robin snapped back, before he turned his attention to Superman. “And your track record isn’t much better, but you apologized, so that’s something.” And back to Batman. “I’m not always right. But I’m right more often than not. I see patterns. I am coming after your ‘World’s Greatest Detective’ title with a vengeance, old man. I figured out Gotham's best kept secret when I was nine. I’m the one who figured out you were lost in the time stream and tracked you down when the rest of the world wrote you off as dead. And you will conveniently forget those facts the moment you have a differing opinion. Because I’m just a dumb kid doing things impulsively- no offense, Imp.”

“None taken, it’s my thing.” Impulse gave him a thumbs up.

“-And not because I saw a pattern you didn’t or because I put stopping an innocent suffering higher on my priorities than doing things in a way that will look good to people in power. Miss Fenton is right. I manipulated you. From the moment you decided to end-run me, when you realized the connection I would draw and rather than follow it to see if it had merit, decided to get me and my friends out of the way. I played along, sulked and got angry. Played up the indignant teenager, because you’d be suspicious otherwise. I gave you completely accurate, but misleading intel to get you to believe you were in charge and look away. I organized a successful raid on an evil government compound- and don’t tell me the DEO isn’t evil, we all know better- by just texting on my phone. I calculated exactly what to say to get you so furious at me you’d miss anything I didn’t want you to notice. I am manipulating you right now by explaining everything in a logical and straightforward fashion so there’s no way you can say my emotions are getting the better of me and this is an outburst.”

“And you’re not surprised I can do any of this. You know I can do all of this and more. You’re only surprised you fell for it. So why wasn’t it worth it to at least send someone to check out the DEO?”

“At the time I believed it to be a dead end that would cost too many resources.” Batman said.

“And yet you were perfectly fine wasting the resources that were me and my team, which BTW are amazing resources, by banishing me up here and leaving them hanging.” Red Robin threw up his hands. “But you know what? Fine. If you don’t want to justify it to me, why don’t you try justifying it to your father. What do you think about B's tactical descisons, Doctor Thomas?”

The room froze and almost as one, all heads turned to Tom.

“Me?” Tom asked, looking at Batman in confusion.

“That’s why you were familiar.” Superman realized. “Your portrait with your wife was above the mantle in the sitting room.” He had seen it many times in his visits to the Manor.

“That’s still there?” Tom- Dr. Thomas Wayne- asked, flabbergasted. “Wait…Br-”

“Uh uh uh.” Flash quickly cut him off. “We have a real strict no real names in front of civilians and this room is kind of full of civilians. But, uh, now that you mention it, I remember that painting too.”

Batman was still staring in shock. “Dad?” His voice wasn’t Batman’s though. It was closer to what Superman, Flash, and Lois knew as his Bruce voice. But somehow coming across as younger, fragile almost.

Tom looked just as lost as Batman. He gave Frostbite a quick look, but the yeti had nothing to say that could help. “Is that really you? You were so small. And why that costume-no,” Tom glanced around. “That does seem to be the done thing, apparently. But codenames, and he said civilians, are you doing the same kind of work Alfred used to? Did he train you?”

“I can assure you, Alfred wished B had gone into just about any other line of work.” Clark said, since Tom had already dropped the name and few people knew the first name of the Wayne’s butler. “But he’s also probably the only reason Gotham is still standing.”

“That’s good, that’s…oh, son!” Tom gave up any pretense of proprietary or professionalism and threw himself around Batman. “You’ve gotten so tall and…you’re older than me.”

Something painful passed between both of them.

“There’s so much I want to ask, so much I want to say…” Batman said, but his voice shifted again. “But not now. I can’t now. I need to focus on this case. The GiW needs to be stopped. I have to protect them.”

“Them?” Tom asked. “Danny and Jimmy?”

“My sons,” Batman whispered, far too softly for anyone but Clark and Tom to hear. “My sons are in danger.”

Tom straightened himself up, steel in his eyes. “Then you have work to do.” He glanced back towards Jimmy. “We both have work to do. But after-”

“Alfred will be thrilled to see you again too.” Batman softened a bit. “And the children would love to meet you. And Mom. Is she-?”

“Still in the Infinite Realms. I was brought here as a medical consultant. If we had known we’d be meeting you—”

Lois abruptly started laughing. 

"I don't think this is time," Clark said gently. Though if any day could spawn hysterical laughter, it would be today. Still, her laughter sounded more mirthful than anything 

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry.” Lois tried to wave it off. “It's just... of all your kids, he takes after you the most." 

"I only have one child," Tom said before Bruce pinched his nose. 

"He's gone, isn't he?" His tone was flat, hinting towards exasperation.

"And his whole team with him,” Lois threw in, still giggling behind her hand. 

Sure enough, the entirety of Young Justice had vanished. “It’s just…he sees and recognizes the ghost who showed up to help was your father and just…didn’t say anything.” Lois continued gleefully. “Didn’t try to get Grandpa on his side. Just sat on it because he knew this was the perfect distraction to make his getaway when you came to scold him. Honestly, the whole reason he needled you the moment you walked in the door and monologued at you after Jasmine called him out on what he was doing was to keep your attention on him and not practicing situational awareness around the room where you’d notice Tom. He was manipulating you by telling you about how he’d manipulated you, even flat out telling you he was keeping you from noticing things he didn’t want you to. I don’t know if Agent A ever hit you with the Mother’s Curse, but if so, it took.” The look on her face was pure delighted mischief.

“My children are menaces,” Batman said, in a long-suffering tone.

“Only because they take after you,” Clark returned, mildly teasing.

“They came like that,” Batman groused, then looked at the flash drive in his hand. “They’ll be hiding in the Watchtower. Now that we know Markoff’s involved, Secret’s in danger. They’ll keep her up here, but try to stay away from us, because nothing they do will disobey orders if they weren’t given any, which leaves them free to act. That’s the exact kind of loophole Red Robin loves exploiting.”

“Again, because he takes after you.” Lois was not done being amused by a long shot.

Batman gave her a flat look. “They won’t leave her alone, so they’ll all stay here until they think it’s time to bust heads. Please keep an ear out for them,” he asked Clark, then curled his fingers around the flash drive. “I need to analyze everything they found, but hopefully this will let us root out the remaining cells. Red Robin may approach you, as you’re not in his chain of command. Keep an eye on him.”

“Always do,” Superman said fondly.

“He’s just like you said,” Jimmy commented after Batman left.

“What do you mean?” Tucker asked.

Jimmy winced. He probably wasn’t supposed to repeat what Clark told him. He looked to Clark as if asking permission, and Clark nodded. “That he loves his kids very much, and he’s great at reading people, but bad about translating that into telling his kids he loves them.”

“I have grandsons,” Tom said in awed wonder. “At least two. Maybe more. One takes after Bruce. And their mother, I didn’t even think about asking about their mother-”

Clark made a face and quickly tried to hide it, which indicated to Jimmy that this was not a great topic to bring up. Also he was doing his level best to ignore the name Tom just dropped. Ferreting out Superhero identities was something only done by the coffee machine and only when you were trying to be utterly ridiculous about it, like saying Batman and the Robins were an actual bat and birds transmogrified into humans, or that Green Arrow was actually Oliver Queen. It was never something to be seriously discussed because even working for a company that ferreted out the truth for a living, it was understood you did not look for a superhero’s civilian identity. To do so puts them at risk and prevents them from saving lives. Tragedy should never be the price of curiosity.

So he was going to ignore all that forever. Maybe just fiddle with his camera some more and-

“You need to finish your smoothie,” his mother reminded.

Or he could finish the gross smoothie. Which even he had to admit made him feel better, even if the taste was bad. He could understand Dani trying to hide hers.

“Finish your…oh dear.” Tom seemed to snap out of the trance he was in. “Dreadfully sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

“You just saw your son for the first time in three decades and found out you had grandkids,” Lois said. “You’re allowed to need a minute.”

“I appreciate that, Miss…” Tom paused as he realized he hadn’t gotten her name.

“Mrs. Kent. Or Miss Lane, I use my maiden name professionally. My son is twelve. I’d need a moment too.”

“Yes, well. I’m here professionally to support underage victims of horrible crimes, and I can’t do that job if I’m caught up in my own head.” He turned back to Jimmy. “Your mother is right, you need to finish your nutrition shake. A rest after that is fine, but I will want you to drink another after you wake up.”

“What about normal food?” Ellen asked. “Is there any more changes to his diet we need to watch out for?”

“None,” Tom reassured. “In fact, the opposite. As a hybrid, his food tolerances exceed human norms, so technically he can eat more things than he could before. He could eat now if he was hungry, though sleep seemed to be the higher priority.”

It was. “I told my parents, I don’t really feel hungry anymore. I don’t know if it’s a liminal thing, or a trauma thing.”

“Hmm.” Tom sounded like he didn’t like that. “Without further testing, I can’t say which, but you need to eat just as much as any other living being. No longer being hungry isn’t the same as no longer needing to eat. Hold on.” Tom pulled a small notebook from his coat and handed it to Jimmy. “Use this as a food diary. Please write down what you eat and when, just so we can be sure you’re getting everything you need. It would be worthless to bring up your ecto levels only to have you starve on your caloric needs.”

Jimmy actually felt better as he took the journal, if only because this was the first treatment that felt normal. It wasn’t gaining psychic reassurance from his loved one’s presence, or drinking radioactive-looking sludge, or going into a trance and flying when he took pictures. It was a simple food journal to track his eating habits. It was the most normal thing that happened today.

“Will he have to be on the nutrition shakes permanently?” Mathew asked with concern.

“Unlikely,” Tom assured him. “He will be on them for the foreseeable future, but once his core stabilizes he should be able to generate his own ectoplasm. But it will take time and tests to make sure he’s developing as he should. And there’s always a chance he may need to go back on them if something goes wrong. We should probably schedule regular checkups, even after we’re past the stabilization point.”

He sighed. “A permanent medical presence in the world of the living is seeming more and more like a good idea, but in the current political climate, unfeasible.”

“The current American climate.” Superman corrected. “We’re already in talks about political asylum for the unalive in other countries until we get that law reversed. One of those may be a fine place to set up such a clinic."

“Our current patients are American, though,” Tom fretted. “It will be hard to get them to appointments.”

“I can help Jimmy, and I’m more than willing to help the Dannys if they need it.” Superman promised.

“That’s very kind of you, but unless you have a private jet— do you have a private jet?’ Tom asked.

“I don’t,” Superman chuckled, both at his own capabilities and the knowledge that Tom’s son had more than one. “But I can fly and circumnavigate the globe in under five minutes. I don’t mind being a taxi.”

“You can what?” Tom seemed like he wasn’t sure he had heard right. “Are you a ghost?”

“Alien, actually.”

Tim did not look like he knew what to do with that. He glanced at the others in the room, as if to see if this was a big joke.

“I’m even faster.” Flash boasted.

“Are you an alien too?” Tom asked, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was asking.

“Nope, human Earthling.” Flash was grinning.

“Tom, were ‘metas’ a thing that was around last time you were here?” Lois asked, trying to gently meet him halfway.

“Not that I know of?” Tom sounded utterly confused.

Lois knew metas had been around far longer, but also that they hadn’t been as public back in Dr. Wayne’s time. “Metas are people with extraordinary powers gained in a variety of ways. Jimmy and the Dannys would count as metas,”

Holy shit, he was a meta. Somehow that hadn’t processed.

“As does Flash, and well, most of the others on the Watchtower.”

Tom’s eyes opened wide “Bru—”

“Batman,” Lois corrected forcefully. “Is one of the few who aren’t metas, but whose skills more than make up for it. And I know this is a lot, but you were friends with Alfred, I know you know about OpSec.”

At the word OpSec, Tom blinked and seemed to recontextualize everything he’d been saying. “Oh, no…”

“It’s cool.” Tucker waved back. “We’re cool.”

“Being the family and close friends of a hero, one whose identity needed to be hidden so you know, that,” Sam gestured to Danny’s goo tub, “doesn’t happen, gives you some perspective. Don’t worry, we’re not going to snoop into Batman’s business.”

“It would be rude, especially with how much he’s helped us,” Maddie added.

“And Jimmy’s made it very clear that trying to figure out a hero’s identity is something to be reviled.” Ellen nodded.

“I did?’ Jimmy didn’t recall this conversation.

“Do you perchance remember the time the Metropolis Gazette ran that speculatory article over who Steel might be? More to the point do you remember the three day rant of yours that followed?” Mathew’s voice was filled with mirth. “Believe me, you made your point quite clear.”

Jimmy blushed (normal red this time, not blue), and sunk into the couch seat, focusing on his smoothie.

“Damn straight,” Lois said with a sharp nod. “Thankfully the lawsuits for endangering the people they speculated about hopefully drove the point home, but Perry would have fired anyone who even tried that on sight.”

Clark and Jimmy both gave a sharp nod.

“Tom, do I need to get someone else to act as assistant here?” Frostbite asked seriously.

“No!” Tom yelped. “I can do the job, I promise! I can focus, sorry for getting so distracted, you don’t have to send me back-”

“Peace.” Frostbite smiled, holding up a hand. “If I were to send you back, it would only be to pick up your wife. I know how much being separated from your son hurt, and to be reunited by chance must feel like fate. It is understandable to be distracted and I would not want to separate you, especially when your son is doing so much to help the Great One. But I need my assistant here to be focused on the task at hand,” he said solemnly. “Can you do that?”

“I…yes.” Tom put his hand to his chest, right about where Jimmy had felt his core purring in himself. “My purpose is to help anyone who needs it.” He reaffirmed to himself. “Br-Batman is fine for the moment. My grandchildren are fine for the moment. Jimmy Olsen and Danny Fenton need my help and I’m going to help them.” Tom’s eyes were glowing slightly. “We need to get vitals on Jimmy, I understand the restrictions on blood draws and scans, but we still need basics like temperature and blood pressure. Traditional scans may produce a trauma response that messes with them but in another form…Can we retrofit an ectoplasm analyzer into a thermometer?”

“Give me half an hour,” Maddie promised.

“Or less!” Jack gave a thumbs up. “Don’t know why we didn’t think of that ourselves.”

“Weight is a concern too, as we know Jimmy hasn’t been eating well and may no longer recognize when his body needs food. Did Danny’s weight change after he became unalive?” Tom had pulled another notebook from his pocket and was scribbling notes as he spoke.

“No,” Jazz answered this time. “It fluctuated a bit, but not outside the healthy human range in his living form. Ghost form was impossible to get a read on due to gravity's tenuous hold on him.”

“Then weight standards should still hold.” Tom nodded to himself. He turned to the Fentons. “I’d like your permission to view your son’s medical records so I can ascertain trends in unalive physiology. I’ll also need Jimmy’s past medical records.” He glanced over at the Olsen’s.  

“We have all the equipment, besides the scanner, right here on the Watchtower.” Clark added in.

“At the moment.” Maddie said, already starting to rewire what she’d previously been working on. “Can someone bring me a thermometer casing?”

In a blur of red, Flash was gone and back. “It’s one of the ten thousand spares Bats keeps on hand,” he shrugged. 

Maddie didn’t even look up as she accepted it.

“Could you bring the equipment… no, a medical checkup doesn’t need an audience. Can we move the necessary equipment to his room?” Tom seemed really in his element.

“We can, but I think your patient has fallen asleep again.” Lois pointed out.

Sure enough, Jimmy had dozed off again, leaning against the back of the couch, cup held loosely in his lap.

Tom leaned over and examined the tumbler. It only had a few sips left, and the patient did need rest if he was this exhausted. Blood pressure would be off anyway, and he needed Danny’s current and Jimmy’s old records to understand any readings. “We’ll prepare to do a full run-down after he wakes up. By that time the ecto analyzer should be done and we can get a before and after reading, before he drinks his next nutrition shake.”

“Should we get him to bed? He’ll get a crick in his neck if he sleeps like this.” Ellen fretted.

Clark thought for a moment. He could easily lift everyone on the couch, but that would probably wake Jimmy up. And while it wouldn’t be a disaster, he’d still like to avoid it. “Superboy, I know you’re listening in, if for no other reason than Red Robin told you to. I could really use your help with something. The rest of your friends can stay hidden if they want.”

“What do you need?” He heard Kon ask from elsewhere in the Watchtower.

“I’d like to move Jimmy back to his bed so he can sleep comfortably for once. But he’s holding onto his parents and there’s no way I can lift all three without waking him, unless I picked up the sofa, which wouldn’t fit in the door. But you can. You have the perfect power for it.”

Nothing brought Kon out like a chance to show off his tactile telekinesis.

Sure enough, he showed up seconds later, grinning ear to ear. He didn’t loudly announce his presence this time, knowing there was a sleeping person in the room. He just walked up to Mrs. Olsen and held out a hand, like he was helping her up. Confused, she took it.


Superboy spread his TTK over her, her son, and her husband, lifting them up without so much as a hair being moved. The elder Olsen’s eyes popped in wonder and Kon gave a two finger salute to the rest of the room before floating them out.


He was always a bit of a showoff. It used to bother Clark until he realized it was just a side effect of how desperate he was for validation from anyone. Kon deserved this moment in the spotlight and many more.


“We should go too.” Lois stood and dusted her skirt off. “This fraid is staying together.”


Yes. Yes, it was. A Kryptonite crowbar wouldn’t change that.

Chapter Text

Jimmy awoke to the sound of voices. He held himself perfectly still, not even adjusting his breathing, waiting for any small tidbit of information he might use to escape. 

But the voices weren't his familiar captors. One of them was too young, another prisoner, maybe? That would make escape harder. The other voice was familiar. But...not like his captors. It made him feel safe. Since when could he feel safe? Not since before, at home. At the Planet- 

Clark! The voice was Clark! And Clark was Superman, and only his long practice at not emoting while he pretended to be asleep kept him from reacting because he was still not over that, holy crap! He had escaped! He'd gotten Danny out! He'd- 

"You know he loves you." 

"No I really don't!" Red Robin hissed. He was talking to Red Robin who still sounded really angry at Batman. At least he assumed it was Batman they were talking about. 

"Tim..." 

Oh, Jimmy was not supposed to hear that . Against his will, he knew Batman was a man from Gotham named Bruce, had a father named Tom, and at least a couple of kids, one of whom was named Tim. That was absolutely enough to figure out Batman’s secret identity with a quick google search and he did not want that capacity, thank you very much!

"Don't give me that 'You're being a petulant teenager' look, Uncle Clark. You're his work friend. You don't live with him and nothing in your life revolves around your ability to read him. Sometimes he's the best thing that ever happened to me. He calls me son and I can tell he means it, that he'd burn the world to keep me, to keep any of us safe. Other times it's like the mission is all that matters to him and in order to carry it out he can be a level of cruelty that makes me wonder if he doesn't need to be in Arkham himself." 

Yikes, Jimmy thought. That was another thing he really didn’t want to know about Batman.

"Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if it was on purpose and he programmed himself a little personality variance to like, keep his mind on the mission without distraction, or to keep any evil mind readers from knowing how much they could use us to get to him." 

"That sounds like him," Clark admitted ruefully. 

"But the point is, I never have any idea which version of him it is I'm dealing with at any given moment. Is it the Batman who sees me as his son, or as his underling? And I can risk it for me, I can handle his disapproval for not being perfect. I've done it for years. But my friends? I'll take matters into my own hands, thank you very much."

Lois sighed. She must be awake too. But she sounded across the room and there were warm bodies on either side of him. Must be his parents. He could be mortified about that later when knowing they’re there wasn’t like a physical balm. “Kid, I know what you and yours are capable of. Believe me, you’re terrifying.”

“Thank you,” Red Robin said, taking it for the compliment it was.

“But you can do a lot more working with us rather than at cross purposes. We have someone to protect too.” Lois’s voice was firm and a little fierce.

Jimmy couldn’t see with his eyes closed, but it felt like Red Robin was looking right at him. “A fraid.” The former boy wonder said in a thoughtful tone. “If you feel half as protective toward him as I do my team… fine. We’ll work with you. But on the condition it’s as equals. No hiding information, and no keeping us out of the loop for our own good.”

“At this point you probably have more access to information than I do.” Superman admitted. “Because Secret isn’t currently suffering the same physical damage as Danny and Jimmy, she doesn’t need her whole team with her. You can split up.”

“While you’re stuck here,” Red Robin observed, causing a twinge of guilt in Jimmy’s gut.

“Which is for the best.” Clark said, as calmly and assuredly as he’d said right to Jimmy’s face earlier. “It is the main source of my impulse control right now, same as the Fentons. I would not be responsible with the level of freedom your group currently has.”

“I don’t think you’d be the disaster you think you’re going to be.” Lois said assuringly. “But yeah, you’d cause some problems that could be spun against you.”

“Secret was alone a lot.” There was guilt in Red Robin’s tone. “Not all the time, obviously. But we all had our own lives and cities. We hadn’t known about fraids, if we had, we would never… so many things that went wrong were our fault. My fault.”

“You had no way of knowing.” Superman said firmly. “No one did. That information isn’t readily available this side of the veil. Not yet, at any rate. There was nothing different you could do with the information you had.”

“Maybe.” Red Robin sounded unconvinced. “I could have tried harder to be a better friend.”

“Given your role models, you’re doing great.” Clark reassured. 

Red Robin laughed humorlessly.

“And for the record, the reason Markoff was free to act is he was officially reported as permanently brain-dead. With what we know now, it was obviously a lie. But at the time it was leveraged against us, that we could either mutually drop our cases against each other, or Secret and, by proxy, all of Young Justice would be charged with the murder of a helpless scientist.

“A helpless scientist who’d spent every hour he could torturing her.” Red Robin said darkly.

“You know that and I know that. But taken before the wrong judge- you do remember Traya’s custody hearing, right.”

“The one that ended with us in Disco Hell.” Jimmy could hear the snarl in Red Robin’s voice. “You’re right, the dead have no guaranteed rights and a court case could just as easily have ended with them returning her to DEO custody.” he heard Red Robin take a deep breath, like he was struggling to calm himself. “Even if the courts rule to keep the Anti-Ecto Acts, they’re not touching her.”

“Agreed. We’re actually looking into political asylums in other countries so the unalive aren’t trapped on the Watchtower. She and her mother may need to temporarily move, but she’ll be safe.”

“Thank you for that, and… telling me about Markoff. Why you did what you did. It helps.”

“Well, we all need Arrowette to read us the riot act every once in a while so we remember to be better at communication.” Clark chuckled and Red Robin joined him, sounding much more relaxed.

“She wants out of the hero business, but I’ll see if I can’t hire her on as a consultant. Get her to yell at you guys and us on alternating weeks.” 

Jimmy could not tell if he was joking or not.

There was the sound of a body shifting and fabric against metal. Was Red Robin leaving through the air vent? When the curtain door was right there? Bats were crazy.

But the question became ‘What now?’. What he should do is let Lois and Clark know he was awake and what he’d heard by accident. But he felt ashamed. What had been a means for survival for the past seven months now felt like being sneaky and underhanded. And to be honest, just the thought of revealing him was terrifying, even though he knew Lois and Clark were protecting him.

Idly, he wondered how long a part of his mind was going to be stuck in the labs.

But that wasn’t a productive thought. No, if he wasn’t going to reveal himself, the best thing he could do is go back asleep. Maybe he’d be lucky enough to forget the whole thing, or chalk it up to a dream, or at least have the details fuzzy enough so he didn’t remember Red Robin’s name was [REDACTED].

(He pictures the word in his mind in giant print just for emphasis.)

He felt Clark's hand on his head (he didn't hear him moving, he must be floating) and just melted under the touch. 

"I'm glad he's sleeping so well." Clark said. 

"Given that he's likely been starving, it's not surprising." Lois whispered. 

"Starvation doesn't stop nightmares." Clark said solemnly.

He didn’t feel like he was starving, but that was true. Even bone dead exhaustion wasn’t enough to stop them, and it didn’t help when you were living in one, and the hell you were experiencing and the hell your subconscious made up started to merge. Since the last night he went to bed in his apartment, the only time he’d woken up not feeling like a rat in a trap was earlier that evening (Day? Morning? Hard to tell on a space station).

He felt one of his parents shifting beside him, not quite sure which one without opening his eyes. It made him feel almost like when he was a small child, crawling into their bed after a nightmare, trusting them to keep him safe.

And it wasn’t just his Mom and Dad. It was Lois and Clark. It was Batman and Red Robin. It was Jack Fenton and Sam Manson ready to rip his enemies limb from limb. And apparently Secret did enough damage to their leader the last time they met for Batman and Superman to believe he was braindead.

Let them come. He was safe. He was going to focus on that as he went back to sleep and hopefully forget everything else.

~

“Good morning sleepy-head.” Clark greeted as Jimmy sluggishly sat up.

“How long was I out for?” Jimmy yawned.

“As long as you needed to be,” was Clark’s non-answer. “Doctor Tom wanted to do his tests as soon as you woke up, I’m sure he’d understand if you wanted a shower or to brush your teeth first.”

“Nah, bring him.” Jimmy said, stretching. “It’s a minor rebellion.”

“Letting the doctor have his way is rebelling?” Lois asked.

“I told you, they were obsessed with cleanliness.” Jimmy reminded. “Brushing teeth after every meal, drink, or pill. Showers first thing in the morning, before bed, and if I got anything spilled on me.” Anything could range from coffee, the green stuff he now knew was ectoplasm, or his own blood. “With the knowledge that if I didn’t comply, they would do it for me. Putting off a shower? It would make them squirm so badly.”

“I don't know which prison is the dirtiest, but let’s send them there,” his mother muttered.

“So yes, Doctor Tom good, let’s get him in.” Jimmy tried to pivot the conversation. “He’s still okay with Tom or does he want to be called Doctor Wayne?”

“Tom.” Superman answered. “The Fenton’s asked last night. Turns out he found all the upper crust formality very frustrating in life, but necessary in the society he was in. Now that he’s dead, he does what he wants. And what he wants is to be called Tom.”

“All right, I’ve got everything on the cart,” Tom announced as he wheeled it in. “We’ll do the base exam now.”

“That was fast. Were you just waiting in the hallway the whole time?” Mathew asked.

“Of course not. I ran the same physical on the younger Dani, established a baseline for her human side, and spent the rest of the time correlating her results, her cousin’s results, both pre and post accident, as well as Jimmy’s prior medical records so I at least have some idea of what I’ll be looking at. After that I waited in the hallway till I heard you were ready for me.” At their looks of disbelief, he scoffed. “I will have you know as a ghost fulfilling his purpose I have been very patient. First things first. I’ll need every one to use one of these.” He pulled a basket off the cart filled with what looked like neon green thermometers. “These are the ectoplasm analyzers we had the Fentons construct. If you could each stick it under your tongue and press the button-”

“Why?” Clark asked, confused. “If it’s for measuring ectoplasm, wouldn’t only Jimmy give a read?”

“That is certainly a possibility.” Tom allowed. “However these are sensitive enough to measure liminality, and given the phenomena seems to be quite a bit more widespread than anticipated, it’s been deemed worth checking for all living fraid members.”

The senior Olsens and Kents thermometers lit up with a white light; Jimmy's was a blueish green. "No liminality at all in you four, that's a first. And unalive, but we knew that." Tom took Jimmy's thermometer and pressed a button on it. A holographic display lit up above it, strange symbols that none of the living seemed to understand, but Tom clearly did. 

"Well your core is doing it's job. Almost all of your ectoplasm is your own and not Danny's. But your ecto levels are still concerning, especially after you had a nutrition shake last night." He pulled a familiar silver tumbler off the cart and Jimmy grimaced. "I was going to check your temperature next, but I want you to drink this first." 

Reluctantly, Jimmy took the nutrition shake and began sipping. As his did, Tom did other traditional check up tests. Reflex test with a rubber mallet, listening to his heartbeat and breathing. And an eye exam. 

It was the blood pressure test where things got weird. Tom fit the cuff around Jimmy's upper arm snugly and pushed the button causing it to inflate. It did so before making a strange straining noise, and then the cuff literally exploding with a tearing sound and a pop of displaced air. 

"Well, that certainly wasn't how I expected the test to fail." Doctor Tom said, removing the remnants of the cuff. 

"If you expected it to fail, than why do it?" Lois asked. 

"Because a single point does not a dataset make." Doctor Tom insisted. "We don't have much ground data on unalive patients. It failed on the other patient because when the cuff cut off the blood flow from the brachial artery, her body converted her internal structure where she was being compressed to pure ectoplasm, and reforming her human internals outside it's area of effect, negating any limiting of her bloodflow. There was a chance this would apply to all unalive due to their inherent adaptability of a partially ghost body. However, this patient was born unalive and that means a patient with a more human self image might not have the same reaction. Ideally I'd be able to do a case-study, but there simply aren't enough to make a relevant sample size."

“How many?” Jimmy asked. 

“There are some edge case liminals who’d need more in-depth testing, but only counting the cases for being confirmed unalive- including yourself? Four have been recorded existing. Obviously I’d want a bare minimum of fifty for a normal case study, a couple hundred more ideally. But that is obviously not going to happen.”

Only four. Him, the Dannys and one more. Secret, maybe?

“Should we be concerned as to why it failed?” His father pointed out. “I’ve heard about ghosts messing with electronics by their presence. Is that why?”

“No, I believe it’s the same reason Chief Frostbite had difficulty obtaining a hair sample earlier. Jimmy’s power of invulnerability."

“So it did carry over into my living form.” Jimmy bemoaned.

“It seems so, and logically it would make sense too.” Tom seemed very thoughtful. “Your living form is a state where you’d normally be more vulnerable, and you couldn’t allow yourself any vulnerability where you were. It may be that you’ll gain enough control to turn it off later, but that is far from a certainty.”

“Great,” Jimmy muttered. “So blood pressure is a wash?”

“Blood pressure is a wash.” Tom agreed. “Now let me get a second reading with the ectometer.” The green former thermometer again went into Jimmy’s mouth and beeped blue-green. “Closer to what I expected, but still low. We’ll want to keep monitoring it throughout the day.” A normal thermometer followed suit. This one beeped angrily, the light turning red.

“Does he have a fever?” Ellen fretted.

“Quite the opposite. Body temperature at 67° Fahrenheit, which may be impossible low for the living, but is well within normal standard for an unalive person with an ice core. However the thermometer’s presets aren’t calibrated for that and it sent up an alert. Not something that would have been a problem with a mercury thermometer.”

The final object he pulled off the cart was a scale that he urged Jimmy to step on. Tom paused as he looked at the digital outreach. “That,” he said solemnly, “is certainly cause for concern.”

The readout ‘84lbs’ glowed innocently from the scale. 

“Didn’t you say something about flying messing with weight?” Jimmy ventured hopefully.

“When an unalive person is in their ghost form, where their body is in a constant state of flux between being a part of this plane of existence and not, thus not being fully bound by gravity, yes. In their living form, no.” And to be honest, Tom was a little concerned about how his living form was still living, but it certainly didn’t seem prudent to say that. “I rescind my earlier appraisal that sleep was more important. You need food. For the next week, at least, I want you on five meals a day-”

“I don’t think I can eat that much.” Jimmy admitted. He didn’t think he could eat that much before he got used to eating as little as possible.

“Not full meals.” Tom assured him. “For now a simple cup of chicken noodle soup and a glass of orange juice will suffice. I’ll also see about getting some fats added to your nutrition shakes, as fat is necessary to help the body absorb nutrients, which you very much need. Maybe some ice cream for your next meal. I’ve noticed the residents of the Far Frozen seem fond of cold treats. I don’t know if it’s a common trait to those with ice cores or not, but worst case scenario it will be a nice treat with a necessary fat boost.”

“Ice cream sounds good.” Jimmy quickly inserted. He didn’t want to imagine the nutrition shakes with fat added. They were bad enough as it was.

“Then the only question is if you would prefer to have food brought to you like the Fenton family needs to, or go to the cafeteria?”

“Why do they-” Jimmy started to ask before realizing he already knew the answer. Because Danny couldn’t go with them and they couldn’t leave him alone. At least he didn’t have to trap his fraid in one room. “Cafeteria,” he answered. “And how long am I going to need everyone with me? I mean, I love having them here, but they all have lives they need to go back to. Superman has to keep the world safe, and Lois has a husband and kid.”

“That’s where Clark is.” Mathew said in realization. “He’s looking after Jon.”

“I technically have seniority on him for knowing Jimmy longer.” Lois agreed without technically lying. “And I think it’s safe to say it’s better for one of us to not show up and miss forming a bond, than to form a bond and leave. And Jon’s going to be thrilled too, you know. I know you didn’t spend the most time with each other, but he’s had a front row seat to see how much you missing affected everyone else,” Lois squeezed his hand.

“We can discuss it on the way to the cafeteria.” Tom insisted. “If you start to feel tired again, or faint, let one of us know so we can support you.”

“I’m good.” Jimmy tried not to feel mildly annoyed. He wasn’t in any worse shape than yesterday (or earlier today, he really had no idea how long he slept), and he’d managed far more than walking to the cafeteria then. But at the same time while he knew he’d looked gaunt, he had seen himself in the mirror after brushing his teeth the morning of his escape, he’d not known just how dangerously underweight he was. And why his family was concerned.

He definitely should be feeling hungry. Even people in starvation scenarios don’t stop feeling hungry. Maybe his was a symptom of his near undeath and it wasn’t recognized because there were only three others like him, two related? Was it not supernatural at all and he’d managed to give himself a good old-fashioned eating disorder? Some combination of the two?

That was for Doctor Tom to figure out, he supposed. The intersection of living and undead medicine were why he was brought along.

They passed by the lounge where the Fentons (and friends) were still camped out. Bean bags and throw blankets and other things had been added. Someone had set up a tablet by Danny’s tank that was showing a video about space that Danny bobbed in front of intently.

Maybe space was his special interest the way photography was Jimmy’s? Doctor Tom had said it was unlikely, for some reason, but it seemed to be the case. Would reading about photography feel the same as actually taking pictures?

He hadn’t realized he was reaching for his camera until he felt a gentle hand blocking his. He blinked up at Superman, startled.

“Sorry,” Clark apologized, his voice full of concern. “Later you can take all the pictures you want, but I don’t want you losing time until you get something to eat.”

It was fair, but Jimmy felt a flush of embarrassment. “You never answered my question,” he deflected the conversation back to Tom. “How long is everyone stuck with me?”

“After the last seven months I think we can all agree we like knowing exactly where you are,” Lois said dryly. “So I wouldn’t say we’re stuck with you.”

“And I’m afraid this is a very much ‘we’re figuring it out as we go along’ situation.” Tom apologized. “I’m not sure how you being living affects the situation, how the fact that your fraid is completely alive without any liminality affects things- there’s just too many wildcard variables. This is new, though not the worst it could be.” His eyes flicked back toward the lounge they’d just passed, at where Danny was stuck as an orb and no one was sure if he was still unalive or fully undead because there wasn’t enough of him to test.

No, Jimmy’s situation was far from the worst it could be. And he needed to remember that.

The cafeteria was somehow both the most normal and surreal thing yet. Normal because, well, it was a cafeteria. Closer to the ones on corporate buildings or mall food courts than in schools, because there were multiple windows to get food. But still, food lines, tables, people milling about with trays. It would have been so mundane if those people weren’t, well, some of the best heroes on earth. Vixen and Hawkgirl seemed to be teaming up to fluster Green Lantern. Wonder Woman was laughing about something with Zatanna. Was that a ‘Kick Me’ sign on Booster Gold’s back?

Watching heroes seemingly reenacting high school was so surreal.

“Hey, Fraid #2!” Flash zipped by. “Just grabbing some snacks for Fraid #1. Fraid #3 is still hiding in the vents somewhere, but they’ll come out when they get hungry. Or come up with a complex plan to steal food. Either/or.” He shrugged carelessly.

“How do you know they’re still here?” Clark asked, even though Jimmy knew Clark knew they were.

“The active team came up on Impulse’s spaceship. It’s still parked in the hangar, so they’re still here.”

“I forgot they had that.” Clark pinched his nose. “Did you ever find out where Impulse got it?”

“A favor for helping a sultan with something about the SuperCycle’s original owner.” Flash shrugged again. “FYI, I asked about why they never use the Supercycle anymore. Protip, don’t ask about that. It makes my head hurt and also makes Red Robin sad.”

“Right. Standard Young Justice Protocol?’’

“Standard Young Justice Protocol.” Flash nodded. “Let me deliver the food and I’ll be right back.” He zipped away, loaded down with bags and packages of food, and sped out the door, ruffling Supergirl’s cape as he passed her on the way. She swatted at him but he was already gone.

“So we’re Fraid #2, Danny’s is Fraid #1, and the Titans are Fraid #3?” Jimmy hazarded.

“I guess.” Lois shrugged.

“It feels odd, like numbering different friend groups.” Tom mused. “Though I guess fraids can also be a family and those are known by surnames. Naming a fraid isn’t something normally done, but this is an odd circumstance.” Then he shifted his attention to Jimmy. “An odd circumstance that isn’t getting you any chicken soup,” he added firmly.

Right. Food.

Jimmy had the oddest sense of imposter syndrome as he picked up a tray. He didn’t belong here. Not in a way that he didn’t deserve to be here, but like when Lois had them going undercover somewhere and he had to pretend he was an intern at wherever they were infiltrating. It was fine. He was supposed to be here, the heroes knew he was supposed to be here. And there was nothing wrong with being on the most technologically advanced space station orbiting Earth, surrounded by its greatest defenders, all to get some chicken soup.

For half a second, he entertained the thought of asking if they could take the food back to the room or lounge. But the whole reason he’d asked to come was so his friends and family wouldn’t be trapped in one place. He could stick it out for one meal.

He learned a few things in line. Most of the people here know Lois, but there’s an almost fifty percent split between the people who call her Mrs. Kent and Ms. Lane. Heroes he never even heard of were coming over to say they were glad he was found, and his Dad was a lot more adventurous with food than he thought after he saw the man pile a plate with purely alien food.

“This is surreal,” Jimmy admitted, as the finally sat down.

“Are you doing okay? Is this overwhelming?” his mother fretted.

“A little,” Jimmy admitted. “But I think everything is going to be overwhelming right now, so you know ‘do it scared’.”

“Do it on a full stomach.” Tom raised an eyebrow challengingly.

Jimmy picked up his orange juice and began to sip it. Honestly, it was the best thing he’d tasted in months. Much better than the bland food he’d been served as a prisoner and infinitely better than his nutrition shakes. And if anything the soup was better. There was just something magical about chicken soup’s ability to taste like home and comfort.

The cup of soup was small, meant more as a side dish than a meal. Still, he was barely halfway through when he began to feel a sensation he hadn’t felt in recent memory. “I think I’m full.”

“That’s a relief,” Tom sighed. “I was worried you’d lost that sensation too, and we’d be guessing both ways. You don’t have to finish the cup, but I’d like you to take a few more spoonfuls. We do need to start stretching your stomach to be able to handle full meals. And don’t forget to fill out your journal.”

Right, that. Jimmy pulled the little notebook out of his pocket and wrote down ‘½ cup of Chicken Soup, ¾ glass of orange juice.’ “Should I add the nutrition shake too?”

“No, so little of it gets to your stomach, by the time it gets there, it barely counts as anything,” Tom answered nonchalantly.

Jimmy froze, his pen hovering above the notebook. “Where does it go?”

“Into your body.” Tom answered, as though that explained anything.

“But not my stomach?” Jimmy was confused.

“No, here— this may be easier to demonstrate than explain.” Tom pulled a glowing green vial of ectoplasm out of his coat. “Mrs. Olsen, if I could have you and Jimmy each hold out a hand for me.”

They shared a confused look, but did as asked. Tom poured a small amount in Ellen’s hand, where it beaded up in her palm, and then the same amount into Jimmy’s. Almost immediately, the amount in Jimmy’s hand shrunk, as if it were rapidly evaporating, while Ellen’s stayed the same.

“As you can see, every cell in your body can absorb ectoplasm. That includes all the cells in your mouth and esophagus. What actually reaches your stomach in the end amounts to little more than a multivitamin. It’s a boost, but not enough to count towards your daily food input.”

“So I just ate it with my hand?” Jimmy asked, poleaxed.

Ellen reached for a napkin, but thought better of it, and then reached over and smeared the ectoplasm on her son’s face like warpaint.

“Moooom,” Jimmy couldn’t quite believe that just happened.

Ellen chuckled. “Just making sure it didn’t go to waste.”

Jimmy rolled his eyes, but knew it was likely vanishing even as he did so. “So what about after lunch, what comes next?”

“Well, we’ve established your medical baseline, though I will be monitoring it closely while we get you back to full health. Next, I thought the Fenton’s would be the best ones to ask.” Tom smiled. “If you’re up for it, I think it’s time you learned how to use your powers.”

Chapter Text

A pensive look came over Jimmy's face and he stirred the remains of his soup. 

"What’s wrong?" Mathew asked. 

"It's— okay I know this is dumb, it feels weird to think of them as powers I can use and not...I don't know. It feels more like— things that are happening to me?" 

"Right?" Flash seemed to materialize in a chair that hadn't been there prior. "Like, I just want to walk across the room and grab the TV remote, not suddenly accelerate to twenty miles per hour and slam into the wall. Here’s a secret, kid. Everyone here,” he gestured widely around the cafeteria. “Had their powers as something that was happening to them at one point. Only difference is who will actually admit it. That’s universal. How you view them afterwards, that’s up to you.” He made a face. “Not gonna lie, we’ve had more than a few who viewed their powers as a curse, but it never seemed to make them happy."

“Imagine that.” Lois said dryly.

“And the first step in avoiding that is figuring them out, in particular the metaphorical on and off buttons. Trust me, they get a lot less annoying when you find those, right, Supes?” Flash turned his attention to Superman.


“I can’t say you’re wrong.” Clark admitted. “But this is something for Jimmy to figure out in his own time.” He shot Flash a stern look.

Flash held up his hands in surrender. “Not trying to rush things, for once. Just trying to be supportive.”

A curse, huh. Yeah, he could see that. For one thing, his powers were forced upon him through imprisonment and experimentation, turning him into something foreign. For another, he was only not undead on a technicality, a technicality that clearly didn’t count with the United States Government.

But Frostbite had been clear that mental health and physical health were very linked in ghosts. He’d been worried about Jimmy mentally weaponizing his powers. Hating them could only lead to a bad place.

It was funny, now that he thought about it. As a dumb and impulsive thirteen year old, he’d never been able to imagine having powers and not being a superhero. But Clark saying he didn’t have to was a load off his mind. He wasn’t ready for that, and wasn’t sure that he’d ever be.

What do you even do with powers if you don’t want to be a villain or save the world? Do you simply not use them? Is it rude to just fly to work? 

Jimmy's thoughts were interrupted by a paper airplane landing perfectly next to his plate, followed by a brief flare of fire running up to it, singeing the paper, but apparently not hot enough for it to burn. 

"Oh that's what they were working on," Superman commented, while the rest of the table stared at it. 

"Wanna fill us in, Big Guy?" Lois asked, still staring at the airplane as if it were a threat. 

"Young Justice, Red Robin and Superboy, respectively. They've been discussing something involving thread treated like flash paper and Superboy's TTK. It's a messaging system. As long as the thread is connected to the airplane on one end and Superboy on the other, he can control exactly where it goes. Then light the thread once it lands and poof." Clark gestured like it was a magic trick. 

"Or they could just talk to you," Lois pointed out. "You can hear them from anywhere." 

"True, but pretty clearly, they didn't want to talk to me, they wanted to talk to Jimmy." Clark pointed out. 

Tentatively, Jimmy unfolded the paper.

Consent Form 

Do you consent to being photographed by Red Robin during your powers training session for the express purpose of making a milestone photo album for your parents? 

☐ Yes 

☐ No 

You can either check a box or answer out loud. If you check a box, please fold the paper in half and leave it on the table. Impulse will intercept it before it's cleaned up. 

RR

“It’s a consent form, for a photo album?” Jimmy explained, confused. 

“Oh we discussed something like that yesterday with Maddie.” Ellen recalled. “It was something she wished she’d done with Danny.”

“It was also made clear you wouldn’t be photographed without your consent.” Lois promised. “Which is what I guess the form is for.”

“Oh.” Jimmy looked at it again. “Is that something you want?” 

His parents shared a look. “It would be nice.” His father explained. “A way to see where you start and to see how far you’ve come in the future. But only if it’s something you'd be comfortable with. The last thing we want to do is bring back bad memories.”

Jimmy shook his head. “I doubt it will. They didn’t really care about my powers at all, it was all blood draws and scans. So I guess a tentative yes to the pictures?”

Superman nodded. “Superboy will be listening, so they know your answer.” He glanced at the food in front of the rest of the table. It would take some time for everyone to finish eating and that left Jimmy at loose ends. Letting him and Doctor Tom leave to talk to the Fenton’s was out— Jimmy needed to stay with them. To stay with his Fraid.

(Though he hoped he’d be able to get away for a little bit soon. He knew Jon was in good hands with his grandparents, but the urge to check in with his son was strong.)

And given the amount of trauma recently experienced, the last thing he wanted was to give Jimmy a chance to spiral again. Maybe in the future, it would be better to do as the Fentons had done and have food delivered to the rooms or lounge so there were other things Jimmy could do since he was barely eating, but he needed something Jimmy could do now and-

“Have you ever done food photography?” Clark asked suddenly, seemingly apropos of nothing from the looks he was getting from everyone at the table.

“Food photography?” Jimmy repeated, confused. 

“I know you usually get either action shots or posed pictures for the Planet, but what about the pictures of food people put on blogs or instagram?” Clark asked. He couldn’t just suggest Jimmy cut loose on photography in here. Too many people hadn’t given consent to be photographed and some would react very poorly indeed. But food was safe.

“I don’t know.” Even as he said it, Jimmy’s hands reached instinctively for his camera. “Those kinds of pictures are usually taken when the food is freshly served, not half eaten.”

“That just means it’s a challenge.” Clark was grinning and really what could Jimmy say to that.

Click

It was okay, but he could do better. He knew he could do better. Reposition the spoon so the light is only caught glancing off the far side.

Click

It needed more for the picture to tell the story. The tableau of a meal, comfortable and warming. Get some of the other food in the shot and-

Click

Click

Click

Cli-

“Please put this in your mouth.”

Jimmy was broken out of his trance with Dr. Thomas shoving an ectometer at him. He blinked and then took it, waiting for the beep before handing it back to the doctor.

“Oh these readings are much better than I anticipated.” Tom sounded pleased. “We’ll check their decay ratio before your next meal, but if this holds without a strong decay rate you may be on the nutrition shakes for less than half the time I expected.”

That was good news. “What’s a ‘decay ratio’?” 

“How fast you use energy versus how much you create. A high decay rate isn’t outside the realm of possibility, given how much energy you lost last night. But I don’t know the deficit you started with either.”

“Okay,” Jimmy took that in. He bobbed slightly, letting him know he was floating again. “Uh, how do I get down?”

Clark gently hooked his arm and pulled him groundwards. “If it helps, you didn’t try to take photos of anyone this time. I think even in the trance you remembered what you should and shouldn’t take pictures of.”

“I don’t like this trance thing.” Jimmy muttered. “Am I really going to do this every time I take pictures?”

“No.” Tom said simply as he recorded the ectometer’s readings on a chart.

Jimmy perked up. “Really?”

“The ‘trance’, as you put it, is a symptom of your ectoplasmic ‘dehydration’. Your body is so low on ectoplasm that when you start indulging your purpose, your brain, or core-I’m still not sure how they’re interacting and co-running your body, is shutting down everything unrelated so it can focus on energy production and boils the rest down to instinct. Consciously, you know it’s rude to take pictures of people without their permission. While in the trance-state that rule just becomes an instinct that doesn’t require thought. However, once your ecto levels have stabilized, your body won’t need to go to these extremes.”

“That’s good.” He sighed in frustration. “I hate that I can fly without realizing it, but the moment I want to do it on purpose I have no clue how it works.”

“That means your instinct is there, but your human mind is getting in the way. We sometimes see that with the freshly dead, but they learn soon enough.” Tom reassured him.

“And Space is probably the best place to learn in.” Flash chimed in. “Humans can just about fly anyways where the gravity is low. And it would be normal to be weightless.”

“Then we can be up in the air with you too! At least for long jumps.” His father grinned and ruffled his hair.

“That sounds nice.” Jimmy admitted.

“It is.” Clark said fondly. “Flying was always one of my favorite powers, but there’s nothing like sharing the sky with someone. And between myself and the Dannys, at minimum, I don’t think you’ll have any trouble finding people to go flying with you.”

“Is that okay, though? Flying just to fly?” Jimmy asked, thinking back to his earlier thought on what to do with powers.

“There’s no legality issues as long as you’re not high enough to interfere with air traffic.” Superman had made sure he was well aware of air traffic laws. “The biggest issue would be being recognized, as most metas don’t want the fact that they’re metas publicly known.” 

“There’s no legality issue about flying. There are, sadly, still legality issues about him existing in the first place.” Tom reminded them.

“For now,” Flash answered in uncharacteristic seriousness. “There won’t be for long. I know you haven’t seen your son since he was a kid, but trust me. Gods are wary when he gets involved. He got Circe to back down on a curse. He can get a slipped-under-the -table bill removed in a snap. Especially when it only serves the interest of a fringe group of literal mad scientists.”

“Lex would be all over it,” Lois argued. “Using metas as a power source? His only regret would be that he hadn't implemented it first.”


“Even Luthor couldn’t weather being publicly in support of a group that abducted and killed a middle class underaged kid.” Sure, Jimmy didn’t really think of himself as a kid, he was nineteen with a solid job and his own apartment. But he’d spent most of his teenage years working at a newspaper, he understood spin and wording. “And the fact that it’s me makes it worse. I’m very publicly friends with the two people he hates more than anyone else in the world. And I’ve helped Lois on her exposés of him. If he gives even a whiff of support, it opens him up for accusations that I was chosen at his behest. Even if it’s under the table support, between Batman, Lois, and Clark, there’s a good chance it would be found out. Luthor’s evil, but he’s sadly not stupid. The best chance he has is to let the bill and the GiW go under and try to steal their research as they’re being dismantled.”

“Well, that’s not happening.” Ellen said, full of confidence. “I’m sure there’s enough people here to make sure that ‘research’,” she made her disdain of the word very clear. “-never sees the light of day.”

“If we could tie Luthor to the GiW…” Lois said dreamily. “He’s weasled and bought his way out of far too many of his crimes.” Oh how she’d love something that would stick well enough to tear him from his glass tower once and for all.

“We have no evidence he even knows they exist.” Clark reminded her. “And believe me, Batman and I did very much consider him a person of interest in Jimmy’s abduction. If he had been involved, one of us would have found it.”

“You can let a girl dream.” Lois argued playfully. “But Lex is a problem for another time. Right now, it’s time to help Jimmy figure out his powers!”

~

“Hey, Jimmy!” Danny greeted enthusiastically, bobbing in the tank, but not trying to fly out. The repeated manhandling by his sister must have been paying dividends. 

In addition to Danny’s Fraid, Secret and Red Robin were currently in the redone lounge area. Secret seemed to be in deep discussion with the elder Fentons and Snow, while Red Robin was relaxing where he’d been the previous night, but now with a camera of his own around his neck.

Jimmy had expected a camera like the one he’d been given. After all, if Batman and Robin could throw that kind of money around on impulse, why not? But it wasn’t. Red Robin’s camera was an old Nikon N90. It was also, clearly, very well loved.

He’d known Red Robin was a hobby photographer, Clark had said as much last night. But there was a difference between a casual hobby and a passion and Jimmy knew the second was what he was looking at. The condition of such an old, well-used camera. The love and respect with which it was handled, even casually. For the first time, Jimmy wished he did know the identity of someone out of mask, because, well, he kind of seemed like someone Jimmy would like hanging out with.

But he wasn’t going to ask a random hero if he wanted to hang out. He was sure the two of them had more than enough on their plate anyways. Jimmy with the whole new powers and illegal existence thing, and Red Robin with liminality on top of all his other superhero stuff.

Secret looked up at Jimmy and breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m still getting used to the fact that I can feel you coming.” she admitted. “I keep thinking because I can feel you approaching, you must be someone powerful and dangerous, but it’s just because our souls are on a similar wavelength.”

“Same,” Jimmy rubbed the back of his neck. “I could feel you and the Dannys as I got closer to the room.”

“You get used to it.” Danny chirped. “People from the Realms cross into my hometown all the time.”

“You used to use going to the bathroom as an excuse to fight hostile ghosts so often, half the town thought you had a ‘psychic bladder’.” Sam snorted.

“You were our home-grown Waffle House index.” Tucker said fondly.

“I hate you guys.” Danny said with absolutely no heat in it.

“It’s kind of weird,” Jimmy agreed. “Being able to just sense people.” Speaking of— “So, Tom says the next step is helping me with my powers. How are we doing that?”

“The first part,” Tom explained, laughing. “Is asking those more experienced for advice. While I may have a few ideas, I feel it might be wise to ask those who have actually worked with burgeoning unalive children for their help.”

“There wasn’t exactly a lot to it,” Tucker admitted. “Mostly Danny manifests a new power in the middle of trying to protect the town, he practices with it till he can do it on purpose a reasonable amount of times. Then just tracking numbers. How fast he could fly, how much weight he could lift, that sort of thing.”

“How many nightmares he could give us trying to duplicate himself.” Jazz muttered.

“I came here to escape the GiW and I am feeling so attacked right now.” Danny griped in an overly dramatic tone.

“We can start with a list of what powers we know you have.” Maddie suggested. “Then we can build with things you might have and figure it out one at a time. And of course if there’s anything we can do to help you with your powers and lifestyle adjustments, Jack and I would be happy to help.”

“Thanks.” Jimmy felt embarrassed. And was putting a pin in ‘lifestyle adjustments’ for later. What kind of adjustments would he need? Dr. Tom already said he wouldn’t need the nutrition shakes long term. Was he supposed to be sleeping in a coffin or with grave dirt or something? No, for later. Focus on the now.

“I can fly pretty well as long as I don’t realize I’m doing it.” Jimmy started, still a little frustrated by it.

“Mood,” Danny commented.

“I never had any problem with flying.” Dani chimed in proudly.

“Someone stick their tongue out at her, since I don’t have one at the moment.” Danny called out. 

Jazz, Sam, Tucker, Secret, and Red Robin complied, making Dani roll off the couch laughing. The fact that she never reached the ground and continued laughing midair didn’t help the mood of her cousin stuck in a tub.

“Please continue,” Maddie tried to direct the conversation back to its main topic.

“Um, Super Strength, I guess. I bent steel accidentally and I know I busted through a few doors on my way out of the lab.”  Jimmy admitted. “I can do ice, mostly when I’m freaking out, but also accidentally froze my coffee once when I was trying to blow it cool. I haven’t actually done any ice on purpose. I did some eye lasers when I was escaping, but I haven’t tried to do them since, since it seemed like a bad idea on a space station. And I’ve got some degree of invulnerability.” he reached up and touched where the lock of his hair had been cut. “Superman’s heat-laser vision deal could cut through my hair, so I’m not completely invulnerable.” Which he was glad for, to be honest. To be that untouchable to the world around his was frankly a frightening thought.

“Why,” Sam asked, flabbergasted, “were laser vision haircuts even on the table?”

“Because both normal and magic scissors shattered trying to cut my hair and that’s how Superman cuts his.” Jimmy rubbed the back of his neck again.

“Fair,” Sam was still frowning. She walked over to Jimmy and poked him gently in the arm. “You’re still visible and solid.”

“Should I not be?” Jimmy asked, shying away a bit.

“You’re embarrassed and uncomfortable. With Danny, with most ghosts honestly, that comes with an instinctive reaction to vanish.” Sam explained. “One of the hardest things for Danny to learn was suppressing that. But you’re not even flickering.”

“I haven’t been able to do either of those things.”  Jimmy protested. “Nothing like that happened when I was a prisoner either. Should it have?” he asked again, looking to Dr. Tom.

“It is... unusual.” Snow and Dr. Tom shared a look, silently collaborating on their patient’s health.

“Frostbite said his powers were based on the fact that he thought they were trying to mimic mine.” Superman added. “Would that have caused him to skip powers more normal for ghosts?”

“It’s a thought,” Dr. Tom admitted. “Most ghosts, well, know that they’re ghosts. Danny and Dani also knew about the forces that changed or created them. So there’s not a lot of research that could have been done on the subject. Mayhaps I can make notes on Ghost and Alien powers he may develop in the future and work towards those. Are there any powers of yours that Jimmy has yet to manifest?”

“Super speed, X-ray vision, Enhanced Hearing, the ability to survive in vacuum,” Clark listed, ticking them off on his fingers.

“Surviving in vacuum is also universal among ghosts and unalive, so that one is likely a safe bet, even if I find myself hesitant to test it.” Dr. Tom confirmed.

“But if you can, that might be a good place to work on the lasers,” Snow pointed out. “Just drift outside and fire away into the void of space.”

“I want to go flying in space.” Danny muttered, sinking to the bottom of his tank dejectedly.

“Dude, you are in space.” Tucker reminded. “You’re in a space station that was probably built using some alien technologies and has had numerous alien species aboard.”

“You’re right!” Danny perked up immediately, the orb that made up his body thrumming.

“Then space is your purpose.” Dr. Tom concluded.

“One of them.” Danny confirmed. “The other is protecting people.”

“The other? I know I theorized unalive patients could have multiple purposes last night, but I didn’t think it was actually real.” Tom sounded like he could have been knocked over with a feather. As if the concept was more shocking than the existence of aliens and his son being older than he had lived to be put together.

“Yeah, the living are more flexible than the dead, so there’s that.” Danny continued, as if he hadn’t blown Tom’s mind. “It’s actually more common, now that I think of it. I have Space and Protecting Others. Dani has Freedom and Family. Vlad has the Green Bay Packers and the girl who rejected him in college.”

“He sounds like a winner.” Lois commented.

“Tell me about it.” Maddie rolled her eyes. “Though as much as I hate to say it, we owe him an apology.”

“No, we don’t,” Danny said flatly.

“We might.” Jazz winced. “We thought he was responsible for your kidnapping and responded appropriately."

The Metropolis group shared a look of their own. Given how they wanted to respond to the GiW that was…not reassuring.

“Um, this Vlad guy’s still alive, right?” Flash gulped.

“He’s no more dead than he was to start with.” Dani crossed her arms. “And I say we still don’t owe him any apologies. Now this is supposed to be about Jimmy, not the fruitloop who tried to melt me to see how I worked.”

And just like that, all sympathy for ‘Vlad’ vanished. 

“You said enhanced hearing, is that enhanced sensitivity or range?” Maddie redirected the conversation.

“Both.” Superman confirmed. “If I focused now I could hear people talking on Earth. I can also track people by their heartbeats. And to be completely honest, I’m glad Jimmy didn’t get that one. I hear much more than I want to, and am very jealous of meerkats' ability to close their ears. I can also hear much higher and lower soundwaves than humans can.”

“It’s kind of how my watch works.” Jimmy held up his wrist. “If I press a button it plays a tone humans can’t hear, but let’s Superman know I need help.” He glanced his finger over the button and winced as the strange low drone that seemed to reverberate through his eardrums. “At least it’s not supposed to be audible. Sorry, I guess it got broken during the escape.”

Lois looked around the room to check the reactions. “Jimmy, I don’t think anyone else heard anything besides Superman.”

“And it sounded like it usually does to me.” Superman added. “So I guess enhanced hearing was something you got after all. At least you got the good kind and not the extremely embarrassing kind.”

“Embarrassing?” Flash asked, confused. “Why is super hearing embarrassing?”

“Let me put it this way. If safe brain bleach is ever invented, I am calling dibs.” Superman said flatly. “You do not want to know some of the things I hear every day. I can also do ice breath, which I know Jimmy has, but I don’t know if he got it from copying me or just because he has an ice core.”

“The difference is academic.” Tom said. “That will probably be one of a number of ice-related things he can do when all’s said and done. And if the main way he was used to your hearing being utilized was the pitch watch, it makes sense that’s how he manifested it in his own powers. So Super Speed and X-Ray vision are things we need to look out for in the future from alien mimicry and Invisibility and Intangibility from his inherent nature.” Tom clicked his pen off. “And of course, his transformation into his more ghostly form.”

“Right, that.” Jimmy gulped anxiously. “Blue-haired me.”

“It’s inadvisable to think of your ghost form as another person.” Tom warned. “But, yes.”

“Everything gets so much easier once you get that down.” Danny said excitedly. “Your powers get stronger, but they're easier to control. New stuff still throws me for a loop, admittedly. But the better I got with my ghost form the less I was sinking through the floor or having random body parts turn invisible.” Or his clothes. But he wasn’t going to bring that up. Totally to not put the idea in Jimmy’s head and not to save what little bit of dignity he still had.

Still, it was enough to make Jimmy glad those powers were on the list of ones he didn’t have. “How does the transformation work anyway? The first time it was like I felt something in me break.” That was the least of what he felt, but he did NOT want to dwell on the rest of it.

“I can’t really remember my first transformation.” Danny admitted. “In my defense I was also just hit with a city block’s worth of electricity, so I was a little out of it. And Sam and Tucker had thought I’d died-died so it was a time for all involved. Afterwards,” Danny’s tone became thoughtful. “It was like I could feel the power inside of me, in my core, though I didn’t know that at the time. And when I pulled on it, *poof*. Phantom time.”

Phantom time, huh. Jimmy focused inward, where he’d felt what he’d thought was his heart purring when he had his nutrition shake. He could feel the power, just like Danny had described. Pulling on it was almost instinctive and he felt it flow through him, boosting him. He knew intellectually he was stronger, but for the first time he felt stronger. But with that strength came a stillness, his heart stuttering, his breath stopping, and the blood holding still in his veins.

He was dying again.

“No, No nonononono,” Jimmy began to chant, forcing the power out of his body. His vision blurred and he could vaguely hear his fraid, but they sounded muffled, as if his head was underwater. “I don’t want to die! Please, I don’t want to die!” He pleaded to anyone who could hear him, anyone who could help him.

Then he felt something cold inside his chest and everything went dark.

Chapter Text

None of them in the room saw it coming. Jimmy had placed his hand over his heart, focused, and a very familiar ring (at least to those from Amity) formed around his torso. However, rather than shift him into ghost form, the ring wobbled as Jimmy started panicky whispers under his breath. 

What he said next was lost to everyone but Superman as the built up energy exploded outwards in a burst of ice, solid spikes around his body, but more delicate (and less dangerous) frost several feet out. Another burst immediately followed the first, frost starting to climb the walls of the room. 

Dr. Tom pulled a small green pill from his jacket, and plunged his entire hand in Jimmy's chest, making Ellen Olsen scream and frantically try to grab the doctor. It was Superman who held her back. 

"He's administering a sedative so Jimmy doesn't hurt himself." Superman explained, though it took a few moments for the panicked mother to really hear him. "Once he calms down, Dr. Frostbite recommended physical contact to help him." 

Jimmy slumped to his knees, eyes open, but unaware of his surroundings. Superman let go of Ellen and let her run to her son along with her husband.

“That,” Tom said solemnly, “Was markedly worse than what Chief Frostbite put on his chart from yesterday.”

"Does anyone know what just happened?" Flash asked. "Like, the panic I get, but what was that light?" 

"It signals the transformation between forms," Danny answered, trying to wriggle free of his sister, who’d grabbed and held him down in the tank the first moment things started going wrong. "It looks the same for me, Dani, and Vlad." 

"So he tried to shift and panicked?" Red Robin guessed. 

"I— um, I may be projecting." Secret said, softly. "But I think the idea of becoming a ghost after you've gotten your life back hits differently after you're murdered." 

Ellen sobbed, holding on to Jimmy tightly. "My baby," she cried brokenly.

“Jazz?” Danny asked tentatively.

She sighed. “I have knowledge, not magical therapy powers. It will be a lot harder to gain control over his powers if transforming triggers attacks like this. But this level of trauma isn’t something that can be fixed without time and work. There’s only so much I can do.”

“That’s what we’re here for.” Mathew said, his voice full of conviction. He moved behind his son, picking him up from the icy ring and carrying him over to a seat. “Because you’re not doing this alone.”

“Dad?” Jimmy mumbled, conscious thought starting to return at the movement.

“We’re here, Jimmy,” Mathew assured him, sitting next to him.

“All of us.” His mother swore as she joined him on the other side.

“I don’t want to die,” Jimmy mumbled, the last echoes of the fear still swirling in his mind.

“And you’re not going to,” his father promised firmly.

“This transformation, is it something he needs to learn?” Ellen asked, still fretting.

“Yes,” Danny answered, apologetically. “Not just because it’s useful, but because it’s probably going to happen anyway. We’re stronger in that form, and if he ever feels he’s in real physical danger, he’ll change without having any say in the matter and…and I think that would be worse.”

“It would,” Jazz agreed. “But barring the side of the space station imploding, it’s something not likely to happen here. So while it's not something we can ignore forever, it is something we don’t have to focus on for quite some time.”

“Sorry,” Jimmy muttered, feeling slightly ashamed. Danny was in so much worse shape, but handling it much better. He felt like he was falling apart at every little thing.

“Dude, don’t be.” Tucker waved him off. “Again, you saved my best friend. The last thing we’re going to be is annoyed at you for having to process some shit.”

“Jimmy, do you want to go back to your room and rest until your next mealtime, or do you want to work on more power training ideas? Just ideas, I don’t think it’s a good idea to do any actual activity now.” Snow’s voice was gentle, but firm.

He didn’t want to go back to the room. He knew that straight away. Not that there was anything wrong with it. It was comfortable, and he did appreciate the paint job. But having been confined to a room and bathroom for so long, he just wanted to be out of it. He wished he could be outside in fresh air, but that wasn’t an option right now. “Power ideas, I guess? We were talking about flying in low gravity around lunch.”

“Why low gravity?” Snow asked, confused. “Gravity doesn’t affect us at all when flying. Is it different for the unalive?”

“It’s more about perception.” Maddie realized. “Jimmy obviously can fly, but not when he thinks about it. It’s his human mind fighting his instinctual capabilities. So in an environment where his human mind agrees flying is possible, it won’t interfere and he can learn to control it.”

Snow blinked. “Well, that’s me told.” She sighed. “And that’s also why Tom is here. I was never a living person, so I’m afraid there’s a lot I never would think of.”

“You weren’t?” Now Lois was confused. “I thought all ghosts used to be human.”

“A misconception.” Tom explained. “A great many ghosts are, but the Infinite Realms does house life endemic to it. But even amongst those who used to be human, a great many don’t recall their lives in any real capacity, aside from a few things that form the core of their purpose. In this case one of the things that stuck with me was a passion for how humans worked, which is why I can still provide some insight into the unalive.”

“And once he can actually fly for real, we can do tag!” Dani exclaimed excitedly.

“It sounds like one down.” Superman put a reassuring hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. “Could we go outside the Watchtower to practice laser vision, since Dr. Tom said Jimmy’d be able to survive in space?”

The elder Fentons shared a look. “Not currently.” Maddie hedged.

“Space wouldn’t hurt him or anything, but his living body does still need to breathe, so he’d have to be in ghost form for it.” Jack explained. “So it will be great once he can do that.”

“But being forced into a ‘dead’ state while in the vacuum of space would probably not help ANY of his traumas.” Flash nodded, coming to the same conclusion the Fentons had. “And quite likely give him new ones.”

“Officially the last thing I need.” Jimmy was annoyed enough with the traumas he already had, thank you very much.

“We can table that for later.” Danny cut in. “Snow, can you help with the ice? Frostbite helped me a lot!”

“That is something I actually can do.” Snow nodded. “Cryokinesis, and other ice and snow powers are inherent to our people, something we regularly teach our young. And since Jimmy doesn’t have to go fight an Ancient to save his haunt, we can do it in a much more controlled manner.”

“I am putting a pin in several questions.” Lois stated. “Is there even an ethical way to work with invulnerability?”

“Starting with something tolerable to humans and gently increasing it until it gets to be uncomfortable rather than painful.” Red Robin cut in, reminding people he was there. “It won’t test his outer limits, but should give us a threshold of what he can handle with ease. We also might want to add separate tests with temperature, like starting with an ice cube and a heating pack. I’d assume the cold won’t affect him as much, but if the invulnerability doesn’t cover temperatures, heat might be a vulnerable point. Or his ice nature could make him even more resistant to it.” Red Robin shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”

“Strength we could find out in the weight room. We do have sets rated for Wonder Woman and Superman here.” Flash said. “But that’s just testing, not control.”

“Honestly Jimmy seems to already have pretty good control over his strength.” Superman pointed out, glimmer of pride in his voice.

“I do?” Jimmy asked, trying to figure out when this came up. He didn’t think he’s actually used his strength at all since finding Clark.

“You bent steel accidentally when you first got the power, but you’ve not had a single accident with it the entire time you were here.” Superman pointed out. “You didn’t bend your spoon when you were eating soup and when you hugged your parents and held their hands, they couldn’t tell your strength was any different than normal. So it looks like you’ve got that down pat.”

“That’s one less thing to worry about, I guess.” Jimmy leaned against his father.

“It was like that with Danny too.” Sam recalled. “We didn’t know he had it until he casually picked up a car. Usually with a new power it manifests in a very showy way and then it’s a struggle to figure out how to do it on purpose. We have no clue how long Danny had super strength before that moment.”

“I was flying you and Tucker around long before then.” Danny argued.

“Yeah, but was that a you having super strength thing, or a you cancelling gravity on us thing?” Tucker countered. “Extending your flight ability to us the same way you do with intangibility when you pull us through walls.”

“But if that’s the case, how can you tell what’s being lifted by overcoming gravity and what being lifted by negating it?” Maddie wondered out loud. “Is there a difference? Could all the strength we’ve seen various ghosts display just be gravity negation?”

“Kid already told us that wasn’t it,” Jack cheerfully pointed out. “Sure a normal human could lift an I-Beam in a zero-gravity situationship-”

“That’s not what situationship means, please never use that word again.” Jazz said, her voice somewhere between chiding and horrified.

“Right, Jazzy-Pants. Anyway, a human could lift it because there was no gravity. But a human couldn’t bend or break it any easier. Jimmy here bent the steel, so we know he’s using actual strength and not gravity, whereas we can’t be sure about Danny and the car.” Jack said, pleased with himself.

Red Robin gave a small golf clap. “Well reasoned. I also now want to see if Jimmy could take Wonder Woman in an arm wrestling competition."

“Why would you wish that on me?” Jimmy bemoaned.

“Because it would be awesome— and also Wonder Woman has more discipline than Wonder Girl and Superboy and thus would be way more likely to not take it too far.” Red Robin said simply.

Secret giggled. “You know Superboy heard you say that.”

“And he knows it’s true.” Red Robin was unafraid of any retaliation from his friends. Not unexpecting, just unafraid.

“I don’t want to arm wrestle anyone.” Jimmy protested. “Snow, what goes in to learning the ice?” Hopefully if he switched the conversation to another topic, arm wrestling Wonder Woman would quietly be forgotten. “I could kind of control it when I was using ice breath, but every other time just…” he gestured helplessly to the ice circle on the ground.

“It’s good you already have a method that works for you,” Snow laughed as she dispersed the ice as easily as Frostbite had.

Red Robin sat up. “Can Jimmy learn to do that too? Vanish ice he didn’t create?”

“With time and training.” Snow chuckled. “You seem excited for the possibility.”

“Okay, but you have to see my vision.” Red Robin laughed. “Picture Mr. Freeze trying to do his ‘eternal winter’ thing, but each time he freezes something a visiting photographer just snaps his fingers and the ice vanishes.”

“Funny, but I don’t try to antagonize villains. Except Luthor. That ship sailed before I was halfway through puberty.” Jimmy rolled his eyes.

“I never thought I’d meet a man worse than Lionel, but his son seems to have him beat.” Tom shook his head slowly.

“Lionel Luthor wasn’t a good man. He was selfish and didn’t think beyond what could benefit him at the expense of others. But his son? Lex is a full-on genius who could have revolutionized the world. But he won’t, unless it serves him in some other way. To Lex Luthor, everything is personal. Any success done by his employees is done as an extension of him. Conversely, any failure on their part, or anyone who disagrees with him is a personal insult he must answer disproportionately. He doesn’t recognize anyone else as a person, even someone whose life he created with his own DNA.” Red Robin said darkly. “Everyone is either a good tool or something to be destroyed.”

“I honestly did not expect that level of vitriol from anyone outside of Metropolis.” Jimmy said, mildly taken aback.

Lois put her hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. “Red Robin is Superboy’s best friend.” she said softly. 

And yeah, that…that would do it.

“So Ice?” Jimmy turned the conversation back to Snow.

“The first thing you’ll learn is how to safely draw the cold of your core, which I will not be explaining now.”  Snow raised her eyebrow, as if challenging him to fight back on that. But Jimmy was good. He’d tried to do the transformation thing right away and look how that turned out.

“Once you get a feel for the cold, we work on control. Usually we start with snow and work our way up to ice, but we may have to go backwards with you, since you seem to gravitate towards the ice more. It’s not the standard, but also not too unusual.”

“Probably because I don’t have ‘Snow breath’.” Superman pointed out.

“Maybe, but the Great One also started with ice.” Snow countered. “It may be a factor in being unalive.” Or in that Jimmy’s core was formed from Danny’s own ectoplasm, but she would not be voicing that out loud.

“I don’t know if it is.” Danny bobbed in his tank. “Jimmy is manifesting his ice differently than I did.”

Tom and Snow whipped their heads around. “How so?” Tom asked, excitedly.

“When my ice powers started coming in I couldn’t get them out. I was building up a lot of cold inside myself, to the point where I was actually hurting myself. I felt constantly cold, like I was wearing a T-shirt in a snowstorm, even though I was bundled up in a greenhouse. It escalated with me accidentally freezing anything I came in contact with. Eventually it got to the point where I froze myself solid and had to be rescued. That’s when Chief Frostbite saved me. And now that I have control of it, I’m pretty much immune to the cold, but when it was happening it was…it was really scary.” Danny’s voice grew soft.

“Your ice powers never attacked you the way mine did. Even when you panic and lose control of them, the ice is always expelled outwards. Like, it’s not good and getting that to stop happening is important. But, like, way better than what was happening to me.”

Snow and Tom seemed to share a look promising further research later. “It’s good Jimmy’s powers have more of a safety on them.” Tom concluded. “But I think once you’ve recovered, we should work on why your core turned against you like that. That’s not normal, and I don’t like that it happened.”

“I’m sure the Chief is working on it.” Snow assured him. “He’s been the Great One’s primary physician ever since.”

“Why do you call him that anyways?” Jimmy asked. “Like, there’s definitely a story there.”

“There is. It is not a small story though, reaching back to the history of our people and the Tyrant Pariah Dark.”

“I’ve got time.” Jimmy spread his hands, reminding them that he really had nothing he could do until he recovered more.

“True. Well, our story begins when the being known as Pariah Dark was crowned King of the Infinite Realms-”

~

It was funny what did and didn’t trigger trauma.

Everyone was very leery of the idea of putting a blindfold on him for this game, worrying that it would join the increasingly long list of things that put his brain in an absolute tailspin. But he’d managed to convince everyone that he didn’t feel any unease at the idea and it was worth a try.

And he’d had no reaction to tying the cloth across his face, because, really— why would he? Of all the crappy things the GiW did to him, blindfolds or really any type of sensory deprivation wasn’t on the list. After all, as much as he had been tortured there, torture in and of itself wasn’t the objective. They wanted to turn him into an undead battery and who cared what a battery saw, or heard, or felt? It wasn't like he’d ever be able to tell anyone about it. So despite their association with the concept of kidnapping, blindfolds didn’t bother him.

He kept his hand in front of him, so he didn’t bump into anything, but didn’t wave them around. He was trying to find the participants of this little game of hide-and-seek by sensing them, not luck.

The Dannys hadn’t thought of their ability to sense other ghosts as something to be trained, viewing it as more a reaction than an ability. But Secret had been very interested, as it was a power she didn’t know she had and wanted to hone it. And Jimmy had agreed, as being able to pinpoint a supernatural creature was far more useful than just knowing it was somewhere in the general vicinity. Hence the fusion of Hide-and-Seek and Blind Man’s Bluff. Which, bonus, was training through play, just as the chief doctor had suggested.

That being said, the simple concept was a bit harder in execution. Leaving the room while they hid and then coming back in blindfolded was easy. Just walking in, and he knew there were ghosts in the room. But that was all the data he’d been able to get. He couldn’t even say for sure if there’d been more than one, much less who and where exactly they were.

The game was almost over before Snow introduced a new variable: pulsing.

Pulsing was, as far as Jimmy could tell, the ghost equivalent of a small animal or bird puffing themself up to look big. It was basically a quick pulse of ectoplasm from a ghost’s core that roughly translated to ‘If you don’t back off, I’m ready to fight.’ And while it would be good to communicate to any ghosts trying to cause trouble that he was getting ready to throw down, pulses were also a LOT more easy to track than ambient core energy.

Dani and Snow he had found already, though he hadn’t gotten any points for Dani as she’d given herself away by giggling. He also wasn’t entirely aware of how the point system worked, except players both got points for successfully locating a hider and for being found as both sensing and pulsing were objectives in the game. Or it could be going by Game Changer rules, where the points were completely arbitrary and at the whims of Dr. Snow and Dr. Tom, who switched jobs between scoreboard and hider between rounds.

He felt a pulse to his left and turned. Eventually his fingers found a locker door which opened easily.

“Found me.” Secret giggled, taking his reaching hand like she was royalty and stepping out of the locker like she was being handed out of a carriage, even as he was taking the blindfold off with the other hand. The theatrics made him smile.

“My turn as seeker!” Dani declared, flying out of the room, too excited to wait. Jimmy passed the blindfold off to Snow, who followed Dani, since in her enthusiasm, she had forgotten that she was supposed to be blindfolded.

Secret shimmied under a couch. Jimmy didn’t think the small space under a couch or chair would bother him, since it wasn’t enclosed (even just thinking about shutting himself up in a locker like she had last round made him uneasy), but he was still playing it safe and ‘hiding’ in plain sight, standing on one of the chairs.

“You doing okay?” He asked her.

Secret raised an eyebrow at him from under the couch. “Got tired of being the one asked that?”

Jimmy shrugged, but honestly— yes. “Well, the difference is for me this is an improvement over the last several months. It’s not the same for you.”

She frowned, and Jimmy felt a little bad for bringing it up when she had been having fun. “It sucks, don’t get me wrong. But…I also know I’m lucky. We didn’t know Markoff was free and building his own organization. He would have come after me eventually. And Mom and I… we would have been caught entirely unawares. Now I’m safe here and Mom is getting relocated so she’s safe and the GiW don’t realize we’re on to them. In contrast to getting grabbed and ending up being electrocuted again…”

She trailed off.

“Sorry.” Jimmy apologized. 

“Don’t be.” She shook her head. “The only ones who should be sorry are Markoff and anyone who worked with him. And they’re going to be.”

Jimmy felt her core pulse. It was strange, his new instincts were telling him there was a powerful and angry ghost nearby. His eyes told him there was a scared girl around his age who was dealing with the loss of all the safety she’d gained since coming back to life.

And then there was the elephant in the room that as far as Jimmy knew hadn’t been addressed. He could feel her like he could the Yeti’s, the Danny’s, and Dr. Tom.  But he couldn’t sense liminals, even Jazz who according to Sam was a half step from being unalive herself. 

That he could sense her and she him, that she had figured out pulsing her core so easily, that she’d had a core to pulse. It all added up to one conclusion. Secret had never completely come back to life. Even if her body was physically completely human, much more so than his now was, she’d never completely returned to life. Her soul was very much still a ghost.

And if her soul had never stopped being a ghost, was she still a Warder?

He wasn’t going to say anything. She didn’t need those thoughts. And maybe the doctors had already brought it up and were helping her and it was none of his business. Or maybe saying it would break what little safety she had left. She’d been so happy and relieved she wouldn’t have to be a Warder again. And Jimmy wasn’t going to put that particular Sword of Damocles over her head for the rest of her life.

And honestly? Jimmy was torn over never wanting her to have to face this Markoff guy again, or wishing she got the closure of being the one to bash his head in.

Not something he thinks he would have thought before, but, well, he was ghost-brained now too. He could be a little vengeful on someone else’s behalf, as a treat. As long as it was something he was thinking and not acting on, it was fine.

It was going to be fine.

Or else.

He should probably bring this up with Jazz anyway. If for no other reason than to help her research into the intersection between human and non-human psychology.

Dani came back into the room, giggling to herself and Jimmy forced himself to push his anger down. He and Secret might have been kids on a technicality, but Dani was an actual kid who was playing a fun game with her powers, maybe for the first time, and that was good for her. She shouldn’t grow up with the baggage he and Secret were doomed to be carrying. (Not that she didn’t have some of her own baggage, given what she said about ‘Vlad’ trying to melt her down, but they could spare her this one.)

The three ghosts in the room pulsed their cores, or at least did their best to. Secret’s pulse was loud and clear and Dani easily went to the couch, though it took her a little bit to realize she was under it.

Dr. Tom had his own hang up with this exercise. He was used to viewing pulsing as a warning of incoming aggression and as such pulsing at a giggling child felt wrong on several levels. Conversely, Jimmy still hadn’t gotten the hang of actually being able to do it reliably. He could tell when other ghosts were pulsing, but not when he was doing it, and more often than not, he wasn’t.

Dr. Snow rolled her eyes at Dr. Tom’s meager attempts, but gave Jimmy an encouraging look, which probably meant he’d failed at it again. He sighed and tried to focus when something caught his ear. A low tone, like that from his watch, beeping at odd but specific intervals. It sounded almost like morse code. Scratch that, it was morse code.

He waited for the pattern to start again to translate it. A-R-E Y-O-U O-K-A-Y. The corner of his lips turned up, ever so slightly. “I’m fine, Clark.” he whispered fondly under his breath.

This was the first time since he’d been found that he wasn’t in the same room as his fraid. Mind you, he was just in the room right next door, which was apparently still close enough, as far as his new instincts were concerned. Which was good to know he wasn’t trapping everyone in a room with him. When they went back to the rooms to sleep, his parents and Lois and Clark could bunk on the rooms on either side. It would give Lois and Clark some privacy and let his parents sleep better than when they all tried to squeeze on a single person bed last night(? He still wasn't sure how time worked in space). He’d probably leave his curtain open though.

Still, it was nice of Clark to check in on him and make sure he was okay. He knew both his parents and Lois and Clark probably felt worse about having him out of their sight than he felt about being out of theirs, so he was happy to reassure them. This was going to get better. He was going to be okay.

But that being said, he was probably going to lose this game if he couldn’t figure out how to make his core do the yelly thing. But you know what? He could deal with those stakes. This was just a game. And it wouldn’t always be. 

There were serious things on the horizon. He’d probably have to appear in Court for both his kidnapping and getting that law repealed. And that meant he’d likely be publicly outing himself as a meta and even if he was able to step back into his old life again it would be different. He would be seen differently, treated differently. And there’d certainly be those like Luthor who would agree with Markoff’s philosophy of seeing him as a dangerous thing instead of a person.

But that was a problem for Future Jimmy. Today he was playing a game and maybe, if it all went well, tomorrow he’d learn how to fly.