Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Danny Fenton never meant to become an internet sensation. It was a mistake or maybe he struck gold, depending on the perspective. It started at Tucker's 18^th birthday party, where board games, pizza, soda, karaoke, and laughter filled all the cracks in Danny's chest.

Mr and Mrs Foley had let them have the house to themselves on the agreement that it would be the 4 of them, Sam, Danny, Tucker and Jazz (who was home from college). They would be keeping an eye on them through the security cameras, and at the slightest hint of a house party, the pair would return and shut it down.

For once, nothing had gone wrong. No ghosts barging in, no accidental property damage, no chaos. Just good friends, good music and good times. Danny was having so much fun that he didn’t even shy away from Sam's video camera while singing. The youngest Fenton had always had a brilliant singing voice, but his stage fright had stopped him from showing off his skills in front of anyone who was not family or a close friend.

That should have been the end of it, except for Sam. She was trying to upload her usual anonymous poetry recording, but had accidentally posted Danny's karaoke performance. A haunting but hopeful ballad from the Infinite Realms, telling the tale of the first King's fall. The song is an open domain in the Infinite Realms and very popular for its revolutionary themes and near-musical lyrics that blended with the rapid flute melody. Finding a ghost willing to share a karaoke version was surprisingly easy. However, people online thought that Danny was the songwriter.

However, by morning, the song wasn’t just online. It was viral.

The following morning, while eating at Tucker's favourite breakfast diner, Sam finally checked her phone after noticing all the buzzing. From the corner of his eye, Danny could catch the blood draining from her face, turning it pale at whatever was on her screen. She taps aggressively, nearly frantically, which gains the attention of Tucker and Jazz.

“Sam? Is everything OK?” Jazz asked gently.

“I… I’m so sorry, Danny,” she whispered after staring hopelessly at her screen. “I meant to save it in our private share, not the… anonymous one.”

“What?”

“I… post poetry anonymously on this voice website. It's audio recordings only!” She explains, placing her phone on the table, her voice hesitant.

“Last night I accidentally posted the audio of you singing to the public anonymous profile instead of the private one I set up for the four of us.” She swallowed hard. “Some of my followers saved and shared it. It's got just over 40,000 downloads already.”

Danny felt his stomach drop into his legs and his vision go blurry. “What?”

“No one knows who you are!” She blurts out quickly, as Tucker quickly pulls out his own phone.

A few seconds later, Danny's voice blares out of the speaker, the haunting and uplifting melody blending well with his ethereal singing. The karaoke machine has a recording option that deletes background noise, making it far more professional than four teenagers dancing around the Foleys’ coffee table.

“Dude! You sound amazing!” Tucker says after a moment. “I can't believe I finally have a recording of you singing. Just look at these comments!”

All Danny felt was panic; his voice wasn’t supposed to be heard, not like this. Jazz gently soothed his back, Sam swore she deleted it, and Tucker gawked at the thousands of comments.

By the end of breakfast, the ballad on Sam's page had ninety thousand listens, with just as many downloads. Each download costing 10 cent. In 12 hours, Danny's singing had generated $9000!

Nine grand. For a single song.

It got so much traction because Damian Wayne had made an edit with a popular anime and posted it on his personal account. His small usage had exploded Danny's song in just a few hours.

“Take it down!” Danny hisses, slapping a hand over Tucker’s screen, glancing at nearby tables. “Please just take it down!” He pleaded.

“I did! I swear, I did! It's too late to stop it from spreading on TikTok and YouTube.” She tells him, and Danny's heart feels like it will explode until Jazz gently speaks up.

“Sam, can Danny have that $9000?”

His best friend blinks momentarily, thrown by the question, before she nods. “Of course! It's his money.”

Jazz taps her fingers under Danny's chin before turning his face towards her. “You should post more on that website. Sam can write the songs, Tucker can mix the beats, and you can sing.”

"What!?" He choked, shocked she would even ask him. Tucker and Sam are eyeing them with wide eyes, frozen in their seats. No one knew where the fear had come from, but the two knew how badly Danny reacted to the idea of performing.

13 years ago, Tucker first met Danny when he found the panicked boy in the toilet after it was announced the class would be singing Twinkle Little Star. It was the only time he ever called 911. He was praised as a hero, while Danny was scolded for overreacting. Tucker had held his hand until the sobbing boy's parents came to pick him up and has never left his side since.

“Think of it as therapy. Anonymous and safe. Maybe even earning enough money to get all of you to Gotham University. Danny, this fear has always left you in shambles, and this could be a form of exposure therapy.” Jazz convinced him.

Neither Danny’s nor Tucker's parents could afford to send them to such a prestigious University as Gotham, despite it being their dream school. Sam's parents could afford it, but refused to pay for a “useless” degree like botany. Average grades resulted from late nights spent ghost fighting; none of them qualified for scholarships, unlike Jazz. They had been growing uneasy with the realisation that dreams were not always promised, as the end of senior year approached in only a few months.

They would never ask it of him, but Danny could see the genuine hope tucked in their eyes as they waited for his response. He licked his lips, feeling his heart beating a mile a minute inside his ribcage.

He didn’t like being paralysed by such an irrational fear. He also really wanted to help them reach their dreams. Against his better judgment, Danny agreed, “Only until we get to Gotham to find jobs.”

Jazz’s smile was bright and knowing.

Over the next few months, “Siren” became an online ghost and internet sensation. Songs appeared haunting and beautiful, spreading like wildfire.

Chapter Text

Gotham, a few months later.
Damian practically runs Tim over in his rush to connect to the game room's surround system. Jon was hot on his heels and at least had the decency to shout an apology as the pre-teens rushed by.
“Hey! Watch it!” He screamed at their backs, irritated. “I could’ve dropped my coffee.”
“Sorry again, Tim!” Jon apologised.
“You're fat anyway, Drake!” Damian sneered.
Tim rolled his eyes, adjusting his hold on his mug as Dick rounded the corner. “What's got them rushing?” He grumbled.
“Siren just dropped a new song., Dami is a bit of a fan.” Dick laughs.
“Who?” Tim frowned.
“That’s right, you were in space for 5 months. Siren is this anonymous singer that everyone is going crazy over. He's an amazing singer, but no one knows anything about him. No face, no name, just music. And it's… well. You'll see.”
Tim rolled his eyes again. “He’s probably autotuned.”
“Maybe. But, Tim, I'm telling you, listen to his music and you'll find you can't stop. Siren is a fitting name.”
“He can't be that good,” Tim mutters, following his brother into the game room. Damian and Jon have cranked up the speakers to the loudest setting and are dancing around the room.
The first note hits him, smooth as silk and layered with melancholy. Then comes the voice, low and rich, carrying something that digs into his bones. The music invades his ears, and Tim feels like he is ascending on a different plane. The ethereal, angelic voice glides into his chest, rattling his bones and making his knees weak.
Damian is actually crying as he sings along to the lyrics, connecting to the words in a way nothing else had ever done before. It sent shivers down Tim's spine, and he clutched the counter like the ground tilted. Too strong, too dangerous.
“What song is this!? It's so good!” He screams at the dancing Dick, who laughs.
“I know, right!?”
“This is too good… this has to be a real Siren.” Tim continues pressing his hands over his ears. His mind flashes back to the past few months spent with his team, running from a mind-controlling alien that had nearly trapped them in the 3rd space sector.
“Dick, we’re in danger! Get away from the speakers! It's mind control! This isn’t normal, it's got to be a metahuman, an alien. A siren, a literal siren!”
Dick blinked, “Or just a talented singer?”
Tim rushes to the control panel of the surround system, while Dick stops dancing with a sigh, muttering under his breath. As soon as he slams it off, Damian releases a screech of an angered cat and launches himself at his back, demanding his music back. Jon flouts nervously on the side as the two Wayne brothers roll on the ground. Yelling insults and taking dirty shots.
“I wish I could enjoy things without my siblings ruining it.” He mumbles, striding forward to break up the fight. Only to scream in shock when Tim pulls out pepper spray, yowling like a madman.
“No. No. I know mind control frequencies. We've fought aliens with this exact MO! He’s… he’s softening people up for takeover!” Tim lunges for the speakers, yanking the cord altogether out of the wall.
“DRAKE!” Damian shrieked, still clawing at Tim's face. “BRING HIM BACK!”
“Never!”
Jon hurried out of the room “I'm going to get Mr Wayne!”
“Make haste, Jon! Bring my father to stop this buffoonery! DRAKE, YOU BASTARD!”

Chapter Text

Batman stood in the Cave, arms crossed, listening as Oracle pulled up analysis.
“No trace of meta-frequencies. No subliminals. Nothing but a really good voice,” Babs confirmed.
Tim paced like a caged tiger. “That’s what they want us to think, but I'm telling you he's hiding something. No one can sing like that without powers!”
“Plenty of people are geniuses in different fields.” Bruce's tone was gravelly.
“Not like this!” Tim screeched, jabbing a finger at the waveforms.
“Father!” Damian interrupted sharply, “Siren is mine. He is not a threat. He is an artist. Drake is simply jealous that he has no talents to speak of.” Crossing his arms.
“I’M NOT JEALOUS…”
“Children,” Bruce growled. They fell silent, though Damien still glared daggers at Tim.
Alfred entered the Cave chuckling, carrying a tray of tea. “It would seem Master Tim's paranoia has met its match in Master Damian's fanboying.”
Bruce refuses to prioritise the case, pointing out there's no evidence of a threat. “Sometimes mystery is the power itself.”
For a moment, the Cave was silent except for the faint echo of Siren’s latest upload playing softly in the background. The family listened, each lost in their own thoughts.
Somewhere across the city in a cramped dorm room, Danny Fenton tugged at his hoodie, pressing his headphones tight. The comments scrolled endlessly on Sam's laptop, as Tucker fine-tuned the next track and Jazz hummed while highlighting her notes.
No one would ever know who Siren really was.
Nit Batman. Not the world.
Just a voice, haunting and untouchable, like a ghost on the wires.

Chapter Text

It didn’t happen all at once. At first, Siren’s uploads were in a strange corner of the internet. Beautiful, haunting tracks tucked into niche playlists, whispered about on music blogs and picked up by insomniacs and night workers at 3 am in the morning. But then, the shares started, which led to TikTok trends, remixes and stories. The songs began to spread like wildfire, unstoppable and uncontrollable. Not because Siren begged for attention, but because people who needed it the most found comfort inside the music that helped them when life wanted to consume them.

Maya Johnson – New York, America
Maya’s scrubs were sticky with sweat as she collapsed against the wall of the hospital's back stairwell, trembling and exhausted. It was the end of her 18-hour shift on the ICU ward, and as she looked back on the gruelling day of 4 code blues, 7 violent, screaming patients, with all the typical hospital ongoing in between. She felt too numb and too overworked, as her coffee had gone cold hours ago, and she didn’t have time to eat.
She walked to the bus stop, shoes pinching, the ache in her back making her bite down on curses. Scrolling numbly as she tapped on the link her coworker had texted, “listen when you need to breathe.”
The moment the first note hummed through her earbuds, something inside her shifted. It was just a voice and piano accompaniment, no heavy production. Just a voice carrying a melody that wrapped around her chest and loosened the knot she hadn’t noticed tightening there.
It's beautiful, light as air and strong as steel. She could feel the hope and love pouring from the song right in her very soul. It made her stand taller. It made her want to breathe deeper. For 3 minutes and 42 seconds, she wasn’t suffocating. She was floating. For the first time in years, Maya thought about her childhood dream to be a singer before medical bills and rent ground her down.
She leaned against the bus sign, eyes closed, and let the music wrap around her. The exhaustion and numbness faded, not gone but lighter, like she could carry it a little longer. She shared the track in the family group chat, captioned “this saved me.”
The next day, her steps felt steadier, her back straighter. “I saved 3 more patients, and I think it’s because of the song. It reminded me I wasn’t just running on empty, and I wasn’t alone.” She told that same coworker.

Nguyen Minh Nam – Hanoi, Vietnam
In a tiny, cramped apartment in the slum district, Minh sat on his bed, trying not to cry. The city was loud, but his apartment was even more deafening. His Mom was crying in her room as his stepdad shouted about money and bills. He wanted to cry, scream, and punch a wall. Do something, anything.
The 13-year-old scrolled through YouTube, desperate for distraction, when he stumbled on a video titled: Siren – “Hollow Sky.” He almost clicked away; it looked boring, unimportant. But then the voice came through, soft at first, the notes falling and rising, steady like the tide. Mihn didn’t understand all of the English lyrics, but it didn’t matter. It felt like someone was reaching through the screen, telling him that being scared didn’t make him weak. That silence didn’t mean emptiness. That maybe tomorrow could still come. And for the first time in a long time, Jorge didn’t feel alone.
The next day, he picked up his tattered guitar. His calluses were gone, his fingers soft, but he strummed anyway. Jorge sang along, his voice cracking, off-key but real. Siren reminded him that music could still exist in this city of gang fights and war, and maybe so could he.

Jessica Martin – Calgary, Canada
Traffic on the intersection between Deerfoot and Glenmore Trail was a nightmare. Horns blared and drivers cursed as cars stayed gridlocked, unmoving. Jess’s inbox buzzed relentlessly on her phone mount as clients and partners at her firm asked for updates. Her blood pressure rising with every passing minute and horn blaring.
Then the radio DJ cut in, “Alright, folk, I don’t usually do this, but I can't stop replaying this track. A new mystery artist called Siren, people say it calms them down, and I see where they are coming from. So, let's test that theory, shall we?”
The car filled with harmonies, and Jess’s hand froze halfway to her horn. The sound was haunting, comforting and unlike any song she had ever heard before. Ethereal but grounded in a human way. As the music swelled, the shouting around her softened, and all the frustration seemed to melt away. She took a deep breath and turned to look out the driver's side window, another driver had rolled their window down, head tilted, listening. To her right, a little girl in the backseat of a minivan pressed her hands to the glass, mouthing along like she already knew the words.
Jess took a deep breath and for the first time in her memory, traffic didn’t feel like war.

Mark Bell – Lake District, England
Miles away, in a quiet hospice facility in the rural hills of the Lake District, an elderly man called Mark sat propped against white pillows, eyes half closed. He hadn’t spoken or smiled in days, he was eating very little, and nurses were worried he was fading fast. His teenage granddaughter Emma sat beside him, scrolling on Instagram, when she thoughtlessly played one of Siren’s songs, “Brighter Days”, aloud.
At first, there was no reaction. Then Mark's lips twitched into a small smile. Slowly, his cracked voice rasped out a hum, following the melody. Emma's eyes filled with tears, and she hit “repeat” once the song finished. For the next 10 minutes, his room wasn’t filled with silence, but with a shared song.

Chapter Text

Siren’s music didn’t stop at America’s edge or the small, strange corners of the internet.

Tokyo, Japan

A stressed university student stayed awake and focused through exams by looping Siren’s songs, claiming they “reset her brain.” She confessed to her roommate that without that voice reminding her to breathe, she might have collapsed from the weight of expectation. Later, in a trembling midnight post, she admitted Siren’s songs felt like they “held her hand through the silence,” keeping her alive long enough to see morning.

São Paulo, Brazil

Protesters blasted Siren’s tracks from a speaker during a tense standoff with police. Not as an act of defiance, but as a shield, something to remind them they were still human. A girl on the frontline said the music calmed her heartbeat enough to keep standing when fear told her to run. Journalists covering the protest later wrote that Siren’s voice “became the anthem of fragile courage,” something softer than chants but stronger than silence.

Johannesburg, South Africa

A taxi driver played Siren’s playlist on repeat, claiming passengers tipped better when it was on. “They sit differently when this song is playing,” he wrote in the comments. “Like their shoulders drop, like for a few minutes, the city isn’t crushing them.” His cab became known as “Siren’s taxi,” and regulars sought him out to hear the tracks again.

Sydney, Australia

A radio host admitted on-air that the mysterious singer had helped him through the death of his father to cancer. “I thought I’d never laugh again,” he confessed, voice breaking between songs. He told listeners that Siren didn’t cure grief, but “gave it a melody, something I could hum while I carried it.” The next morning, the station inbox overflowed with emails of thanks, as though his vulnerability had unlocked thousands of others.

London, England

A war veteran wrote in a blog that Siren’s music kept his nightmares at bay better than the medication ever had. “When the flashbacks hit, I put him on repeat until the panic feels smaller,” he wrote. His therapist asked what was different, and he replied: “For the first time, it feels like someone’s in the dark with me, singing me home.” His post went viral, gathering thousands of comments from others who confessed they’d found the same refuge.

Cairo, Egypt

A young girl recovering from surgery clutched her phone to her chest while Siren’s songs played softly from the speaker. Her mother whispered that the music calmed her more than the sedatives. Weeks later, the family uploaded a thank-you message, shaky and heartfelt: “You don’t know us, but you helped heal our daughter’s heart. Literally and figuratively.”

Toronto, Canada

A teenager admitted TO a forum that Siren’s voice stopped him from ending his life after relentless bullying. “It sounded stupid, depending on some stranger’s music,” he wrote anonymously. “But I swear, that song reminded me I was still a person.” He deleted the post hours later, but not before hundreds responded, begging him to hold on and promising he wasn’t alone.

Seoul, South Korea

A dancer uploaded a video choreographed entirely to Siren’s latest track. She captioned it: “I wanted to show what his voice feels like when it moves through me.” The video went viral overnight, and she later admitted the dance wasn’t a performance; it was therapy, a way to keep her body alive when her mind was tired of fighting.

Paris, France

An elderly widow played Siren’s recordings on loop as she knitted scarves for her grandchildren. “His voice keeps the loneliness away,” she told them one holiday dinner. Later, she confessed to her daughter that the songs felt like “a conversation with all the people I miss, wrapped up in a voice too young to know such sorrow.”

By the end of the year, playlists across Spotify and YouTube were filled with titles like “Siren to Sleep,” “Songs That Heal,” and “Voices That Saved Me.” The mystery only deepened the impact. Nobody knew who Siren was, and nobody cared. Comment sections turned into confessionals with thousands of people writing variations of the same thing:

“I didn’t do it last night because of this song.”

“I haven’t felt peace in months until now.”

“This made me believe in tomorrow.”

“I listened with my daughter, and she smiled for the first time since her diagnosis.”

“This song reminded me I’m more than the mistakes I’ve made.”

It was no longer just music. Each upload was a lifeline cast into an ocean of strangers, each one catching hold in ways Siren could never have predicted. Siren wasn’t just a singer anymore. He was an idea. A phantom voice belonging to no one and everyone at once.

Chapter Text

Tim Drake didn’t see beauty in the melodies; he saw red flags.

He scrolled through the comment threads of YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit and other platforms with growing dread. “Conditioning,” he muttered under his breath. “Classic cult dynamics.” Every time someone wrote about how Siren “saved their life,” Tim felt the noose tightening. That kind of influence wasn’t safe. Not in Gotham. Not in America. Not in the world.

So, he fought back.

He posted long analyses on forums with both his personal and hero accounts, including tone breakdowns, frequency analyses, and speculation about subliminal effects. He even cited obscure Bat-computer data. Each post ended with the same warning: “This isn’t just music. This is manipulation.” The responses were brutal.

“Bro, touch grass.”

“Tim Drake vs. Siren: zero wins, 200 Ls.”

“Imagine being jealous of a SoundCloud ghost.”

Memes spread faster than his warnings. His face photoshopped onto tinfoil hats. “Red Robin Hates Fun” trended on Twitter for days. Even other heroes chimed in, Superman himself, when asked about Siren during an interview, had shrugged and smiled. “It’s… strangely comforting,” Clark admitted. “But harmless. I wouldn’t overthink it.”

For Tim, it was proof that no one else was paying attention. For everyone else, it was the nail in the coffin of his credibility.

The world tilted. On one side, a faceless voice that soothed the soul. On the other hand, a vigilante who couldn’t stop shouting that it was dangerous.

And the world had chosen who to believe.

Chapter Text

3 years later

By the time Siren’s music had become a global phenomenon, Danny Fenton's life looked ordinary, at least from the outside. He was just another face at Gotham University, lugging heavy textbooks across campus, clutching Styrofoam cups of coffee that never seemed strong enough, and sitting through endless lectures with half the room half-asleep.

Sam and Tucker had followed him east, the 3 of them pooling Siren’s online revenue into tuition, rent, and groceries. Tucker dove headfirst into computer engineering and coding, while Sam explored environmental policy and activism. Danny majored in astronomy and astro engineering, keeping his head down, quietly grateful that their collective secret had bought them a chance at normalcy.

But “normal” was never quite true. At night, in their cramped off-campus apartment, Danny still transformed. Not into Phantom, at least not entirely, but into Siren, the voice without a face. Tucker would handle uploads and encrypted accounts, Sam would edit comments and fan responses, and Danny, sitting on the edge of his bed with a battered microphone, would sing.

The lyrics never revealed him. He avoided names, dates, or even hints of identity. Siren was always a shadow, always a mystery. In fact, the lack of detail only deepened the obsession. People around the world spun conspiracy theories about Siren’s origin. Was it an AI? A collective of artists? A disillusioned pop star under a pseudonym? A meta-human choosing anonymity? The mystery fed the myth.

Danny, however, was no myth. He was a college student balancing exams with the unbearable weight of being adored by millions for something he couldn’t take ownership of. He would walk into lecture halls and overhear classmates humming melodies he had recorded in his pyjamas, not realising the composer sat two seats away.

Some nights, when the stress of school and his double life pressed too heavily on him, he’d almost confess. Almost. But then the thought of what would happen, his face revealed, his history dissected, his ghost half unmasked, would send him spiralling back into silence.

Siren would never have a face.

Not now. Not ever.

Chapter Text

Despite the mocking. Tim Drake didn’t stop. He couldn’t.

From the very beginning, he’d seen something no one else seemed willing to acknowledge. Siren’s music wasn’t just catchy, it was invasive. The harmonics bent moods, altered behaviour, cut deeper than simple soundwaves had any right to. It was conditioning, and Tim had the training and data to back it up.

But every time he tried to raise alarms, he was met with ridicule. Online, his carefully constructed threads were torn apart, ridiculed, and turned into memes. “Red Robin vs. Siren Fans” became a running joke. Whenever Tim warned about subliminal influence, replies flooded in with mock quotes: “Don’t listen to the song or you’ll do your taxes with a smile!”

It ate at him, but he pressed harder. If his logical warnings failed, perhaps leaks would be more effective.

He began seeding conspiracy forums with redacted fragments of Batcave data. Always anonymised, always oblique. References to “meta-auditory threat signatures” and “psychoacoustic alteration potential.” Hints that Batman’s team had flagged Siren as a potential danger.

If he expected fear to spread, he was wrong. Instead, the fandom weaponised it. “Red Robin is just jealous he can’t sing,” one viral post mocked. “Imagine getting ratioed by an anonymous SoundCloud ghost.” Others accused him of punching down, targeting a faceless artist bringing comfort in a world that rarely offered any.

The backlash escalated beyond words. Fans spammed his official Tim Drake accounts, sending clips of Siren’s music set to mocking captions. Some hacked together videos of Red Robin’s combat footage, overlaying it with Siren tracks to create absurd edits: “Red Robin brooding while Siren makes the world better.”

And as the ridicule grew, so too did Danny’s collapse.

He stopped checking comments, stopped looking at trending hashtags, but he couldn’t escape them. Strangers in class would play Siren songs aloud. Billboards in downtown Gotham advertised radio compilations. Even YouTube ads recycled snippets of his melodies. The world adored him, while that same world hated Tim Drake for daring to cast doubt.

Danny began to shake before recording again. His stage fright, once a slight tremor, became paralysing. He’d sit before the microphone, mic stand adjusted, Tucker waiting at the keyboard, Sam ready to monitor feedback, and nothing would come out.

His throat locked. His pulse roared in his ears.

He was Siren to millions, yet he couldn’t sing three words without imagining Tim’s shadow looming behind him, whispering “fraud.” After one terrible night, when his voice cracked so violently he nearly ripped off his headphones in panic, Danny whispered the decision he’d been circling for months:

“When college ends… so will Siren.”

Sam and Tucker didn’t argue. They could see what it was doing to him. They’d already gotten more out of this strange double life than they’d ever dared hope. Tuition, security, even fame in disguise. If Danny needed to let go, then that’s what he’d do.

Chapter Text

Danny graduated from college with a perfect 4.2 GPA and was valedictorian of his class, with gowns, tassels and proud smiles. Danny shook hands with professors, posed for pictures with his parents, and tried to pretend the milestone felt real. But inside, he was already grieving.

That night, he returned to the microphone one last time. His fingers hovered over the controls, trembling. Sam dimmed the lights. Tucker nodded silently, offering a small, supportive smile.

Danny closed his eyes, inhaled, and sang.

It wasn’t flashy. No upbeat hooks, no experimental layering. Just his voice, stripped bare, carried by a soft, mournful piano line Tucker played beneath him. The lyrics spoke of leaving quietly, of vanishing without explanation, of being both loved and unknowable. It was haunting, aching, and final.

When the last note faded, no one spoke.

Danny saved the file, uploaded it, and shut the laptop. He didn’t even stay to watch comments roll in. He just walked to his room, lay down, and stared at the ceiling, tears sliding soundlessly into his hair.

When the last note faded, no one knew it was the end. The final song uploaded under the name Siren appeared like all the others — quietly, without fanfare, no announcement. A haunting ballad layered in harmonies so rich it felt as though a choir of ghosts had gathered in some cathedral that didn’t exist. The comments flooded in as always: “This saved my life.” “How do you keep topping yourself?” “You must be an angel.”

And then nothing.

A day passed. A week. A month. Fans assumed a break. Artists took time between uploads. The world waited with patience at first, convinced another track would arrive, convinced the silence was temporary. But the silence stretched, taut and unyielding, until it became unbearable.

Chapter Text

Once it became clear that Siren wasn’t returning, forums exploded, and the world was on fire.

Fans wept openly online, flooding Twitter, TikTok, and Reddit with clips of the farewell track. Hashtags trended worldwide: #ThankYouSiren, #WhereAreYouSiren, #AngelOfTheInternet.

“I don’t know how to get through without him,” one anonymous Tumblr post read. It went viral within hours, with thousands of screenshots. “Siren saved my life. His songs got me through nights I didn’t think I’d survive. Now he’s gone, and I feel like the world has just lost a voice of an angel.”

Another thread exploded on Reddit: “Why do the Bats have to ruin everything? Siren never hurt anyone. If he were meta, who cares? He gave us hope. And now Red Robin couldn’t stop until he scared him off.”

A hospice nurse recorded her elderly patient crying when he realised no more Siren tracks would ever come. A teenager in Japan uploaded a shaky video of herself clutching her phone, whispering through tears that Siren was the only reason she’d stayed in school. In Brazil, murals sprang up in cities, painted overnight. Siren was depicted as a faceless figure crowned in light, with wings of sound cascading from their shoulders.

Conspiracy theories bloomed like weeds. Some insisted Siren had been silenced by government censorship. Others argued Batman himself had forced him offline. Many pointed directly at Tim Drake, connecting his long history of “anti-Siren harassment” with the sudden disappearance.

The anger was volcanic.

Danny, still anonymous, still invisible, scrolled through it all in silence. He wanted to scream that he was still alive, still here, just choosing to stop. But he couldn’t. He had promised himself the persona would end. To break that promise would mean dragging out the cycle that was destroying him.

So, Siren remained a ghost.

Chapter Text

Both Tim Drake and Red Robin bore the brunt of public backlash. It started slow at first. He had kept his obsession quiet enough that only deep-forum regulars understood how far he had gone, spinning conspiracies, demanding Batman investigate, pushing narratives that Siren was a danger. But whispers spread, and the internet, ever hungry for villains, pieced the story together.

Old screenshots resurfaced. Clips of Tim ranting during livestreamed rants went viral. The narrative crystallised: one obsessive man, armed with paranoia and a platform, had hounded an anonymous singer into silence.

The memes grew crueller: “Red Robin stole our Siren” was plastered across photos of Tim mid-battle. Videos accused him of “killing art.” Threads connected his name to Siren’s silence in every language across the net. Even in public, people muttered insults when they saw him. “That’s him. That’s the one who made Siren quit.”

#CancelTimDrake trended worldwide.

Inside the Batcave, the fallout was worse as tension thickened.

Damian was the first to speak what everyone thought. “You killed it,” he snapped one night, arms crossed, glare sharp. “You killed art. Whoever Siren was, people loved him. You couldn’t stand that.”

Dick tried to mediate, but his silence was damning. His neutrality read less like support and more like quiet disappointment. His attempts at comfort only twisted the knife further.

Bruce said nothing for weeks. He didn’t yell, not really, but disappointment radiated more powerfully than anger. He let Tim stew in the cold weight of public scorn, perhaps believing time would teach what words could not. But then, one night, as Tim reviewed case files at the monitor, Bruce approached quietly.

“Sometimes, Tim,” Bruce said, voice flat but firm, “paranoia costs more than it protects.”

Tim didn’t answer. He just stared at the screen, watching the cursor blink, feeling for the first time that maybe he had been wrong. Not about the power of the music, not about its strange effects. But about the cost of his obsession.

The silence from the wider world, of fans who once praised Tim’s detective brilliance, now branding him the destroyer of something irreplaceable, and it crushed him.

Guilt hollowed him out. He replayed every warning he’d shouted, every online theory he’d pushed, every late night spent convinced he was protecting Gotham. But there was no victory here. No proof Siren was dangerous. Only silence. Only loss.

Sometimes he caught civilians humming Siren’s melodies under their breath, unaware they passed him in the street. Every time, it was like glass in his lungs.

Chapter Text

10 years later

Danny had always been a dreamer. Long before the internet and his siren songs had tangled his name with conspiracies, long before he’d found himself drowning in the spotlight he never wanted. Danny had stared at the night sky and wished he could be there. Not metaphorically, but actually there. The stars had called to him with an insistent pull that music couldn't compare to.

And after college, after everything, he finally got there.

NASA. 4 bold letters that seemed larger than life when he was a kid became a badge on his chest. He wasn’t a singer anymore, not really. The world knew the siren had stopped singing, and conspiracy theorists still traded distorted recordings of his songs, trying to decode what they “meant,” but Danny? He had walked away. He had no need for the spotlight. He had found something purer, steadier, and infinitely more fulfilling: space. The thrill of solving real mysteries. The joy of reaching, if not touching, the stars.

It hadn’t been easy. His degree had been gruelling, his doctorate worse. But when he walked into NASA for the first time, past the clean, sharp hallways and into the mission control room with all its buzzing screens and murmured voices. Danny felt something settle inside him that music had never given him: peace.

He had found his place.

Sam had been there every step of the way. The world had always said they wouldn’t last, that Danny Fenton and Sam Manson were too different, too stubborn, too… something. But they had. She had sat in the audience when he defended his dissertation, grinning widely when he stumbled over the words and then recovered. She had kissed him in the parking lot after he got the NASA job. She had been the one to tell him, with her usual bluntness, “You don’t need to be anyone’s siren anymore. You’re mine. That’s enough.”

They married in the spring, under a sky so clear that Danny swore the stars were smiling down at them. Jazz cried. Tucker gave a speech that made everyone laugh until they couldn’t breathe. And Sam… Sam kissed him like she was claiming the whole universe.

The house they bought wasn’t huge, but it was theirs. The money from his siren years had been enough to secure them comfort for life, something Danny didn’t take for granted. It meant they could pay off student loans in a single stroke. It meant he and Sam didn’t have to stress over groceries or the electric bill. It meant they could afford to give their kids futures that weren’t weighed down by debt and worry. For that, Danny was thankful, even if the memories of how he’d earned that money still made his stomach twist sometimes.

Chapter Text

When their first child was born, a tiny girl with Sam’s sharp purple eyes and Danny’s messy black hair, Danny cried harder than he ever had. Holding her, he realised something terrifying: he didn’t want her to know about the siren. Not yet. Maybe not ever. The world had taken enough from him when it tore apart his songs, dissected them, and accused him of meanings that never existed. He didn’t want his daughter to grow up carrying that shadow.

And yet, one night she wouldn’t stop crying, when she was just a bundle of raw need and lungs too loud for such a small body, Danny did something he hadn’t done in years.

He sang.

Not for the internet. Not for strangers. Not for fame.

For her.

A lullaby, soft and trembling at first, then steadier. His voice, stripped of any production, was bare and gentle. The song wasn’t magical. It didn’t carry the weight of a siren’s pull. It was just a father’s voice, cracking on the high notes, warm and unpolished. And it worked. She sighed, her eyes fluttered shut, and for the first time, Danny realised he could sing again. Not as the siren, not as a performer, but as himself.

When their son was born two years later, Danny sang for him too. Small songs in the dark. Lullabies in the rocking chair. His children would never know how famous his voice had once been, how people across the globe had obsessed over it, argued about it, feared it. To them, he was just Dad, and his songs were just the sound of home.

Sometimes, late at night, Danny thought about the old days. About the glowing comments sections, the fan theories, the suspicion, the paranoia. About the way his songs had been torn apart by people desperate to prove something supernatural. He thought about the conspiracies that had nearly ruined him, the way people had whispered about his “true nature.” He thought about the fear.

And he realised, as he tucked his kids into bed and kissed Sam goodnight, that he didn’t miss any of it. Not one bit.

Music had been a hobby, a joy he stumbled into. And it had been wonderful while it lasted. He was glad people loved it. He was glad they found comfort or meaning in it, even if it was nothing more than notes strung together. But he didn’t need to go back. That chapter was closed.

Now he had a different kind of joy.

The thrill of solving puzzles in the lab. The awe of watching launches he had worked on soar into the sky. The quiet moments of family dinners, Sam’s hand in his, his daughter telling him about her day at school, his son demanding just one more story before bed.

He had traded the wailing hunger of the internet for something steady, something real.

And when he did sing now, soft and secret, just for his children, he finally felt what music was supposed to feel like: safe.

Danny sometimes wondered if his kids would ever stumble across his old tracks. Maybe someday, years from now, they’d discover the voice that had once captivated millions and held the world in a thrall. Maybe they’d listen, maybe they’d ask questions. He hoped they’d understand that their father had been young, uncertain, and searching. That music had been fun, but it hadn’t been his forever.

Because this life, his life now, was his forever.

The stars, his family, the songs only his children would ever hear.

Danny Fenton, NASA scientist. Danny Fenton, husband. Danny Fenton, father.

The siren was just a ghost now, fading into history. And Danny was glad.

Because he didn’t need the world’s adoration. He had everything he wanted already.

And for the first time in his life, he never wanted to sing for anyone else again.

Chapter Text

The absence of Siren carved out a hollow in culture. Online forums continued to swell, half in mourning and half in hope: “Any updates?” “They’ll come back, they have to.” “Legends never stay gone.”

Memes about Siren’s disappearance trended. Artists recorded tribute covers. Poets wrote about the silence. Therapists referenced the phenomenon in lectures, talking about the unprecedented mental health impact of music that had reached across borders, soothing soldiers overseas, comforting children in hospitals, and bridging language divides in ways no one expected.

Some universities even launched “Siren Studies,” small electives folded into musicology or cultural anthropology. Professors dissected the harmonic structures, the way layering and tonal shifts consistently evoked neurological calm. One lecturer called it “a sonic panacea, medicine for the spirit.” Students signed up in droves, driven less by academia than by longing.

Radio DJs sometimes held “Siren Hours,” replaying the catalogue of songs as if trying to conjure a return. Inevitably, callers broke down live on air, recounting what the music had once meant to them: the mother who said her daughter with leukaemia only slept peacefully when Siren played; the soldier who said the songs felt like home; the teenager who admitted they had thrown away a suicide note after hearing one upload in the dead of night.

The world had not simply lost an artist. It had lost something holy.

But time moved forward. New music emerged, and new trends swept through. But none replaced Siren.

A decade later, people still whispered. Old tracks continued circulating, their numbers growing as generations who had never heard the songs in real time stumbled upon them like forgotten treasure.

A woman in Chicago played the recordings every night for her newborn, who calmed instantly, generations removed but still soothed. A man in Tokyo introduced his students to the catalogue, framing it as a study in emotion through sound. In London, teenagers sampled clips into electronic tracks, blending the ethereal harmonies with pulsing beats — new genres sprouting from echoes of the past.

The songs lived on, but as relics, fossilised pieces of something no one could revive.

The years passed, but Siren never returned.

No farewell tour.

No final song.

Just silence, an absence that became louder with time.

The world still talked about him. Not as an artist, not just as a celebrity, but as something closer to myth. In every café, in every dorm room, in quiet car rides home and sleepless nights, his voice lived on.

Chapter Text

The Mother

In Gotham, an elderly woman sat in her rocking chair, which her husband had built before their son was born. Her boy had been 13 when Siren’s first recordings took over the world. Angry, restless, caught in the whirlpool of adolescence, he’d seemed unreachable. And yet, one night, she had woken to hear his voice not raised in rage but whispering along to the quiet melody leaking from his headphones.

"I’m not alone," he’d confessed when she asked. "Siren makes me feel like I’m not broken."

Now her boy was grown, married, with children of his own. But whenever she heard those songs, she remembered that fragile turning point.

“I wish I could thank you,” she whispered into the warm night air. “For giving me my son back. I wish you knew what you gave us, even if it cost you too much.”

The Veteran

In a small apartment in Chicago, a man with tired eyes and a prosthetic leg kept a stack of 5 old, scratched CDs on his desk. He didn’t play them often; it hurt too much. But when the nightmares became unbearable, when the faces of men he couldn’t save came for him in the dark, he would let Siren’s voice flood the room.

The guilt wasn’t there in the recordings, but the ache in Siren’s songs carried enough. He had once written a letter he never sent:

"Siren, your voice pulled me back from the barrel of my gun more than once. I don’t know if you meant to save lives. But you saved mine. And I’m sorry we pushed you away with suspicion. We didn’t protect you like you protected us."

He kept the letter folded inside the CD case, a prayer he would never stop repeating.

The Teenagers

In Seoul, two teenage sisters sat cross-legged on the floor of their bedroom, scrolling through old recordings uploaded years ago. Neither girl had been old enough to experience a new upload live.

Their parents sometimes spoke of the frenzy, of the arguments about whether his music was human or something beyond. But for the sisters, Siren was both past and present, his voice scoring their homework, their heartbreaks, their dreams.

“Do you think he’ll ever come back?” the younger asked.

The elder shook her head. “People ruined it for him. All the conspiracies. The way they tore him apart just for being different. If I were him, I wouldn’t forgive us either.”

They didn’t know they were speaking of a man who had traded microphones for rockets, microphones for telescopes. All they knew was the echo left behind.

 The Priest

In Nairobi, a priest sometimes began Sunday service not with a hymn, but by pressing play on a recording of Siren’s softer tracks. The congregation did not complain. They knew, as he did, that Siren’s songs carried something holy.

Not religion, but reverence.

He remembered how the Vatican itself had once debated the nature of Siren’s gift. Miracle? Curse? Mutation? No answer had ever been agreed upon.

But to the priest, the answer was simple. “If ever God spoke through a man,” he said quietly to his parishioners, “it was through Siren.”

And yet, each time he said it, he felt the sting of guilt, because faith had not been enough to shield Siren from the world’s hunger, from the endless dissection of what he was instead of who he was.

The Musician

In London, a guitarist in his late thirties tuned his strings for the hundredth time. He had been on the cusp of a record deal once, until Siren exploded into the world. His own songs, carefully written over a decade, suddenly sounded thin, flat, forgettable.

For years, he resented him. Resented how no one could compete with a voice like that. But over time, resentment decayed into awe. He had stopped chasing fame. Became a teacher instead. Now, when he held his guitar, he told his students not about bitterness, but about honesty.

“You don’t chase Siren,” he said gently. “You learn from him. He taught us that music isn’t about skill or fame. It’s about bleeding into the world, raw and unashamed.”

At night, when no one could hear, he still whispered a thank you into the chords.

The Teacher

Every year, a high school English teacher introduced her students to Siren. Not as an idol, but as poetry. She played the songs and asked the kids to write essays on what they heard, what they felt. The answers were always the same: rawness, truth, longing, connection.

And afterwards, she would tell them: “He left not because he didn’t care, but because he cared too much. And we forgot he was human.”

Her own secret guilt was that she had once signed a petition demanding Siren reveal his identity, as if the online anonymity he wore was some crime. Now, she could only teach the next generation to be gentler.

The Online Forum

Somewhere on the internet, forums still thrived, alive with posts from old fans. The threads were a patchwork quilt of grief and gratitude:

“He saved my life. I was fourteen and about to jump when I heard ‘Into the Deep’ for the first time. I stayed. I’m still here.”

“I still feel guilty. We chased him too hard. We made him leave. We asked too many questions, as if he owed us an explanation.”

“Do you think he’ll ever see this? If he does: I’m sorry. We’re sorry.”

“I named my daughter after one of his songs. I want him to know she dances when she hears him.”

It was a confessional booth without a priest. A thousand voices, whispering into the void, hoping their devotion might reach him somehow.

Chapter Text

In the end, Siren became a myth. Scholars compared the disappearance to ancient poets lost to time, voices whose legacies outlived the flesh. Internet forums spoke of The Silence That Followed as if it were an era. Civilisations did not collapse, but something intangible did.

Children born long after still stumbled across the songs online, still whispered to parents: “Why did they stop?” Parents never had an answer. Some said burnout. Some said mystery. Some said tragedy. The truth, harassment, paranoia, and fear never felt adequate.

“There was once a voice that could break your heart and heal it in the same breath. We loved him. Maybe too much. And he left because of it. But he gave us everything he could.”

And in bedrooms, in cars, in lonely city streets, his recordings still played. The ghost of a man who only ever wanted to reach the stars, but, for a time, reached the world instead.

The world would never stop wishing for one more song.

But Siren’s silence was also an answer.

No one would ever know who Siren really was.

He had given them his voice.

Now, he had taken back his life.

Just a voice, haunting and untouchable, like a ghost carried on the wires.

And maybe, they thought, that was the greatest song of all.

Anonymous. Eternal.

Chapter Text

Tim didn’t remember the exact moment the truth finally sank in. Maybe it wasn’t one sharp revelation but a slow erosion, a grinding down of all the certainties he once clung to until they crumbled to dust in his hands. All he knew was that Siren was just a person. Not an alien, not a metahuman, not some elaborate long-con villain. Just a human being with a voice that could shake people to their core.

And I had been wrong. Horribly, unforgivably wrong. The weight of that still sits on his chest, even years later.

Back then, the conspiracies had felt so real. Every pattern, every stray headline, every unverified story stitched together into something that made sense only to him. Gotham had taught him to look for traps, to expect deception, to assume every act of kindness was just a mask hiding some darker scheme. He told his self that he was protecting people. That no one could possibly sing with that much impact, with that much emotion, without some ulterior motive. It had to be manipulation. It had to be control.

But it wasn’t.

It was just… music.

When the proof finally came out that Siren had been nothing more than a human being who chose to disappear, it didn’t feel like vindication. It felt like a knife in the gut. he had spent so long being loud, so certain, fanning the flames of doubt and paranoia, that when the world moved on, he couldn’t.

People remembered. They always remember. The internet is forever, after all.

Civilians spat on my name. Fans of Siren cursed me online, in person, in ways that followed me no matter where I went. I would be at a café, just trying to blend in, and someone would mutter, “That’s the guy who ruined it. The conspiracy freak.” They weren’t wrong. Not really.

Even in the cowl, as Robin, Red Robin, whatever name I wore, it stuck. I would fight beside teammates who, in the back of their minds, remembered that I had once tried to crucify an artist whose only crime was being beloved. That paranoia lingered. I was too rigid. Too suspicious. Too unwilling to trust.

And they noticed. They always notice.

He became harder to work with, sharper in his words, slower to believe. Bad reputation following him like a shadow, he couldn’t outrun. People stopped listening when he warned about threats. Even Bruce’s eyes would linger a second too long sometimes, heavy with that silent judgment.

The irony is that my paranoia wasn’t even the worst part. The guilt was.

Time never talks about it. He never will. But in the quietest moments, when the case files are put away and Gotham has lulled itself into uneasy silence, he finds himself pulling out those old recordings. Siren’s songs. The ones he once swore were dangerous. The ones he thought were woven with some hidden psychic thread.

And he listened.

The first time he let himself truly listen, he almost couldn’t breathe. The voice that filled his headphones wasn’t alien or hypnotic. It was human. So painfully, achingly human that he felt like a fraud just for ever thinking otherwise.

When he let himself sit in the music, really sit in it, it guts him. Because now he hears what everyone else heard back then, stripped of suspicion.

The lyrics weren’t commands; they were confessions. Stories spun from love, from heartbreak, from loss so familiar it burned in his chest. He hears laughter threaded into verses, pain bleeding through choruses, friendship captured in harmonies and heartbreak lingering in half-finished notes.

One track, just a simple ballad about watching someone you love walk away, hit him harder than any punch he’d ever taken. Because he’s been there. We all had. That’s why people loved Siren, why strangers cried in unison. It wasn’t brainwashing. It wasn’t magic. It was recognition. Shared experience. That invisible thread binding people together because they had all felt the same ache, the same joy, the same desperate hope.

And he missed it. He had convinced himself that connection wasn’t possible without manipulation. That nobody could make people feel that deeply without tricking them.

That says more about me than it ever did about Siren.

Sometimes he thinks about the fans, the millions who loved Siren unconditionally. They didn’t care about conspiracies or secret origins. They just cared about how the music made them feel less alone. And he robbed them of that, at least in part. He can’t take that back.

Chapter Text

The world never knew his name.

Years after the last Siren upload, the internet still trembled with fragments of him. Threads resurfaced every few months, arguments about whether he’d been censored, silenced, kidnapped, or simply vanished by choice. Some fans still clung to the conspiracy that Batman had “shut him down.” Others whispered about shadowy government labs, convinced Siren had been too powerful to let roam free.

But the truth was simpler, and quieter. Daniel Fenton, astronaut, physicist, husband, father, was alive and well. He no longer sang to the world. Only to his children.

NASA had been the dream for as long as he could remember. Singing was never the point; it had been for money and therapy, a secret hobby that had slipped out of his control. But the stars… the stars were his constant.

The royalties from Siren’s viral explosion had smoothed the path. They paid for his degree, secured a home for him and Sam, and later set up trust funds for their children. It meant they never had to worry about bills or futures. For that, he was grateful.

And yet, every time he tucked his kids into bed and hummed softly, half afraid at first, his throat catching with the memory of endless forums, accusations, and paranoia, he found peace again. His son would curl closer. His daughter would smile and sigh. Their little bodies relaxed under the weight of his voice. Not Siren’s voice. Just Dad’s.

Danny had thought he would miss it, the adrenaline of watching a new upload sweep across continents, seeing his words translated into a hundred languages, hearing about the protests, vigils, weddings, and funerals where his voice played. But with time, the ache softened. The truth surfaced. He had never been meant to carry the hopes of the world.

He was glad people loved the music. He was proud it had meant something. But he had always wanted the stars, not the stage. Siren was never his future. His family was.

And when he looked at Sam, still fierce and steady after years of marriage, and at their children growing into themselves, he knew he had made the right choice.

Still, some nights, guilt gnawed at him. Not regret. He would never trade his family for fame. But guilt. Guilt for letting down people who had written confessions like scripture in his comment sections: “Your music saved me.” “I didn’t do it last night because of you.” “You made me believe in tomorrow.”

He had left them without explanation. Without goodbye, beyond one final song. A haunting, wordless farewell that carried both love and finality. He wondered, sometimes, if that had been enough.

Years blurred into decades, and still Siren’s shadow lingered across the globe. His playlists remained staples on streaming services. You could type “Siren to Sleep” into any platform and find millions still listening. Teachers used his lyrics to explain poetry. Therapists recommended his songs to patients battling grief. Parents introduced him to their children like a rite of passage: This voice once held the world together.

It wasn’t fandom anymore. It was folklore. Siren had become a ghost story shared across borders: a voice that arrived when the world needed hope most, and left before it could corrupt him.

Chapter Text

It was inevitable. The internet forgets slowly, but children are curious.

One rainy afternoon, his daughter barged into his study, tablet clutched in her hands. She was 16, hair tangled, eyes wide with the seriousness only teenagers can manage. His son trailed behind, trying and failing to look casual.

“Dad,” she said, voice firm. “Were you Siren?”

Danny froze.

On the screen, paused mid-video, was his own voice, older recordings, distorted slightly by compression, but unmistakably his.

For a moment, he considered lying. Telling them no, it was a coincidence. But the way they stared at him, hopeful, breathless, already certain, made the truth stumble out.

“Yes,” he admitted softly.

Their eyes lit like stars. Questions tumbled out. How, when, why? Why didn’t he tell them? Why did he stop?

He answered carefully. He told them Siren had been something he did when he was young, when music had been fun and money was tight. But music was never his passion. Space was. Science was. Their mother was. Them.

“I loved singing,” he said, “but I loved it for me. And I loved it for the world, for a while. But people started to… expect things. They wanted more than I could give. It stopped being joy. It became pressure. And I realised, I don’t want to be remembered as Siren. I want to be remembered as your dad. As someone who reached the stars.”

His daughter chewed her lip. His son frowned thoughtfully.

“But your fans,” she said. “They loved you.”

“I know,” Danny admitted, guilt catching in his throat. “And I feel bad for leaving without more answers. But if I hadn’t stopped, I might have lost myself. Or worse, I might not have had the courage to build this family. And I wouldn’t trade you for anything. Not even for all the love the world gave Siren.”

Silence stretched. Then his son smiled, awkward but warm. “You were cool,” he said. “But you’re cooler now.”

And just like that, the weight eased.