Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was, of fucking course, Timmy.

It wasn't like Jason could fault the logic. Dick had a life in the 'haven, and Damien was literally a baby. If it was Steph it'd look like he was dating her. It couldn't be Babs because she needed her Clocktower full of assistive devices. The only person left was Cass, who these days communicated almost entirely in punching and emojis. So it was Timmy.

Jason honestly would've preferred Cass.

" - as unobtrusive as possible while I'm here," Timmy was saying.

"Look, Replacement," said Jason, and then stopped.

The problem with having ancient evil ghost magic stuck to your soul for a decade - aside from the obvious - was that all the things that made perfect sense at the time stopped making sense. And he knew that, of course he did, because he knew how B thought, but . . .

"Sorry," said Jason. "That was shitty of me. Tim."

Tim blinked up at him with wide blue eyes. "Jason . . . ?"

"You are supposed to be spotting me," said Jason. "There is no way to do that unobtrusively.' So just . . . " He scrubbed a hand over his face. "I'll settle for 'quiet, but in the same room.' Okay?"

"Um," said Tim. "Okay. I didn't - why do you need a spotter?"

"Because I need to practice h̵̳͓̳͈̀ắ̴̟̚͠ú̸̢͖͇n̶͓̓̃t̷̟̺̙̰̑̓i̷̟͘n̵̞̞͘͜g̷͔͎̾̋͝ͅ ̵̨̞̬̻̌t̴̳̎͜h̸̗̤̑̾į̵̥̬̥̏̾n̸̪̂ǵ̶̨̜̹̏̎̇s̷̭̠̘̀haunting things."

He first did the voice for Dick and Cass and B, when he inevitably showed up as soon as Arkham was secure. They met for maybe five minutes on a roof in the Bowery. Cass didn't even say anything.

B made up for it by demanding a debrief immediately. Jason called him on not starting with the Arkham debrief, and Dickie backed him up. And, since it wasn't like he could argue that it was more important, they did that first. B couldn't give more than, 'something tripped the alarms,' which was the best Jason could hope for.

Jason replied by stating that he was a ghost, in the voice. B and Cass both did a much better job hiding their reactions than Dick, but they sure as hell had them. B tried to ask all of the after-action report questions like they didn't have after-action reports. While Jason was telling him to wait, Cass clapped him on the shoulder and took a running jump off the roof. Jason thought she had the right idea, and followed. And he didsubmit the report, too.

Tim, being Tim, must've read them. But this was the first time he was hearing it live and in-person. He actually didn't react beyond a single weird blink, and Jason remembered that, right, one of his first teammates had been a ghost. "Practice haunting . . . ?"

"I'm not a pre-me ghost anymore," said Jason. "So I'm going to be getting ghost abilities. Invisibility I don't mind, but being intangible at the wrong time is - not safe." He left it there. Tim was smart, he'd understand.

He did. "But you have a body!" he objected immediately.

Jason tilted his head. "Yes . . . ?"

"Ghosts don't have bodies."

"The ghosts that you have met didn't have bodies," corrected Jason. "Or, well, Secret - "

"Greta," said Tim softly.

"I'm not that kind of ghost," said Jason. "I'm - Phantom compared it to wave-particle duality. I'm like that."

"You're a lot bigger than an electron."

"And electrons don't get to choose how to act," said Jason, shrugging. "It's a metaphor. I only need a spotter until I can choose. Got it, Tim?"

" . . . yeah," said Tim.

"Good. The other thing is that you're not allowed to bring a coffee machine here."

That at least got an immediate reaction. "But - !"

"No. If you're not coordinated enough to handle things like using a kettle and folding a piece of paper in half, then you need the sleep."

" . . . the things we do for family," said Tim. "Fine. But in return, you have to cook."

"Sure," said Jason, and did not mention that he was going to cook anyway. It was important to let Tim feel like he won sometimes, or he would keep trying. "Guest room is across the hall. Dinner is at six. Phantom is probably going to show up for it."

Tim, already setting his laptop up on the coffee table, froze. Then said, very evenly, "So when you said you didn't have any way of contacting him - "

"I don't," said Jason. "But he said he needed to have a frank conversation with whoever my spotter is, and I said in that case he should just come to dinner."

"I see." Tim frowned pensively. "You trust him that much?"

" . . . He's never once lied to me. Even when I was dying, he didn't tell me a comforting lie about it. There are things he isn't telling me, obviously, but he doesn't lie about that, either, and fair's fair. It's - nice."

Tim looked at him for a longer, more assessing moment, as though he could see that wasn't the most important fact about Phantom. "Well," he finally said, "I'll reserve judgement until I meet the man."

"Mm. I'll let you get settled in." There wasn't much to settle. Tim's go-bag had all the absolute necessities for a weekend, and he could just go back to his houseboat as and when he needed more civvies.

Tim did put his duffel away before coming back to settle on the couch. Jason already decided on chili con carne. One, he could just make a whole lot of it in a massive batch and, two, he wanted something with meat. He even ordered groceries in, like the normal rich brat he wasn't. And good chili took time, so he didn't feel bad about starting early with the beef stock, although he was a sane man and used the pressure cooker instead of going for eight hours of simmering like pho would take. By 1730, the apartment smelled of spices and peppers and warmth, and Jason was working on cornbread muffins. Like, there was no point to having chili without cornbread, right? And it was easy to make it as muffins, too, which cooked faster and were nice and portable.

The portal opened pretty promptly at 1800. Tim jerked upright and tried to pull a bo staff that he didn't currently have, which was funny, and then Phantom came through and -

Jason had never actually seen him in daylight, before, had he? In daylight it was very, very obvious that his skin tone was, in fact, slightly blue-green, and his hair wasn't just messy but actually floating, and his eyes were not only Lazarus green but glowing slightly. And even with all of that, Jason's instincts were only telling him, mint.

Tim's instincts were obviously doing something else, cataloguing his appearance and trying to figure out how to incapacitate him probably.

"Uh," said Phantom. "Hi?" He waved, a little.

Tim blinked. "Hi," he said.

"Phantom, this is my brother, Timothy Drake-Wayne."

"Tim, actually," said Tim. "And you're . . . High King Phantom of the Infinite Realms?"

"Only when I'm ordering someone not to do something stupid," said Phantom. "When I'm not being the high king, my name is Daniel Nightingale. Danny." He held out a hand.

Tim, almost mechanically, took it, and shook with the firm-not-crushing grip trained in to baby Waynes from adoption.

Phantom made no remark on it, anyway. Instead he turned to Jason. "Jason, I realize this is going to sound incredibly dumb given the givens, but . . . the CEO of Wayne Enterprises? Really?"

Jason shrugged. "The list of people who know I actually died, either time, is very short."

" . . . well now I just feel stupid," said Phantom, turning his attention back to Tim. "Wow, ok. I promise I will do my best not to be weird about it, but my tech guys will lock me out of my own computer if I don't at least get them autographs." He reached into a pocket to pull out a perfectly normal pen, and a small notebook.

Tim took them. "You have tech guys?" he asked as he signed.

"Why would I not have tech guys?" asked Phantom. "Uh, two, please."

"Alright," said Tim, signing again, and, "I don't know anything about ghosts."

"I have tech guys," said Phantom, deadpan. "One of them may or may not be the ghost of Nicola Tesla. They're both major WayneTech fans."

" . . . sure, why not," said Tim, weakly. "So. Uh. You had some stuff you said I needed to know?"

"Yeah. Mostly about how to handle unexpected instances of intangibility."

"What does that even mean?"

"It's easier to show you," said Phantom. He walked over to the couch and then walked through said couch before turning back around. "Ta-dah!"

Tim looked fascinated despite himself. Jason couldn't understand why, since Secret had been on his first team, but it was Tim, so - "How does it work?"

"Believe me, if I could give you an easy explanation . . . the closest I've got is that I can switch from being made of atoms and molecules into being made of something else. Which I realize is not very helpful, but," he shrugged. "I just don't interact with ordinary matter if I don't want to. And the way I interact is pretty weird, too."

"So you could, like, break into - I don't know, the White House?"

"If I wanted to get the DEO on my ass, yeah," said Phantom.

Tim zeroed in on that like a bat with a bug. Jason decided to head it off by saying, "Before you guys get all technical on me, maybe we could actually sit down and eat."

"Yes please," said Phantom, brightening up immediately. Danny. "It smells amazing in here, rich boy."

They sat down and Jason doled out the chili and the cornbread. Then they ate. Tim usually got quiet while eating, or at least while eating real food as opposed to protein bars and energy drinks. Phantom moaned theatrically. "Seriously, Jason. How did you do this?"

"Still just cooking," said Jason, amused.

Damny looked at Tim. "See, he says that, but, like, I couldn't do this even if you gave me the entire contents of his pantry."

"Neither could I," Tim admitted easily. "Jason just likes to cook. Which, um. Does he even still need to eat?"

Phantom hummed, but did settle down into being serious. "Yes and no. Ghosts don't, but ghosts also don't - hmm. Most ghosts don't have bodies that do things like make blood and rebuild their skeletons without them thinking about it. Jason doesn't need to eat, but if he wants to do any of those things subconsciously, he should. Changing as a ghost is . . . a deliberate effort, always, and it doesn't change the person. Which is another one of the things I wanted to talk about."

Tim made a go-on motion.

"Ghosts, at least the kind I'm nominally the king of, are made of memories and emotions," said Phantom.

"Not souls?" asked Tim, managing to sound genuinely curious because he was genuinely curious.

"No. Although plenty of people confuse one for the other, and a lot of ghosts also have souls, so it's not like it's a weird mistake to make. I made it too. But no. Memories and emotions."

"Okay . . . "

"Anyone that's got a strong enough memory of themself and emotions about it can form a ghost. Although most don't." He frowned, clearly thinking about how to phrase the next part. "But a side effect of the 'strong sense of self' and no bodies is that ghosts don't really, uh. Well, they can and do change, sort of, but not by accident. It's kind of like braces, maybe? If a ghost decides they want to look younger or older than - it's usually the age of their death - then they can, but only if they decide how they want to look and then just start thinking of themself as looking that way? Or being a dragon, or a yeti, whatever. They have to put in the effort, end even then, it's . . . well, I'm not going to say cosmetic. A ghost dragon has claws, and can use them. A ghost yeti can survive the Arctic without preparation. But it never changes the underlying person. The dead don't change like that."

"Jason's changed a lot," said Tim, not really a question.

"Jason is alive . . . ḛ̴̙̊͛n̴̥͈͆̾ö̷̦͉́ũ̵͔̻͐g̶̠̩̓͝h̸͓̦̓̚enough, let's say. He can form new neural pathways, just like any other living person."

"Just like you, you mean," said Jason.

Phantom snorted. "I died at fourteen. But you're right, I look like I'm in my twenties because I do have a mostly-living body and it did regrow my skeleton. And finish puberty. Three separate times, in fact."

"You're in your twenties?" asked Tim.

"I am literally older than the universe," said Phantom, rolling his eyes.

Jason said, "I can choose to be a dragon?" because he was not touching the puberty thing with a ten-foot pole.

Phantom looked over at him. "I just said you can't. You have a body that knows what shape it should be."

Jason pouted at him.

Phantom laughed. "Don't worry, it's a very nice shape. In the short term, what you're going to have to work with is not always being visible, not always being tangible, not always having gravity affect you, or for a change, some combination of the above. Although you get a handle on gravity real quick once you start floating above about eight feet."

Jason managed not to look at Tim. "That a hypothetical?" he asked instead.

"No." Phantom ate more chili. "The biggest problem, by far, is partial intangibility. If your feet go intangible you just sort of . . . sink. Into the ground. And then get stuck there. You need someone to pull you out, you know?"

"No," said Jason, gesturing. "I'd pull myself up."

Danny gave him an appreciative twice-over. "Fair enough. But for the incredibly weedy teen I was, it was a problem. Like, a 'don't think about the albino rhino', kind of problem. If you know that you can be intangible, and you're thinking really hard about how bad it would be to be intangible right now, then you're going to Cassandra truth yourself into being intangible."

"Cassandra?" asked Tim.

"The Greek seer? Given the gift of prophecy by Apollo, then cursed to - "

"We know who Cassandra was," said Jason. Phantom ate more, still making those small appreciative noises. "So you're saying I can psych myself into accidentally using my abilities."

"Once they happen at all, yes. I kept dropping dishes and things."

"How long do they take to develop?" asked Tim.

"For me it was a couple of weeks," said Phantom. "But, uh, it happened to me all at once. One day, normal teenager, the next . . . Whereas Jason has already died and come back before."

"So it could be tomorrow," said Tim.

"Or it could be six months," said Phantom. "We don't know. The situation is unprecedented."

"The things I do for family," said Tim.

"Which do you think is more likely?" asked Jason urgently. He didn't hate Tim. He also didn't want the sleepless wonder in his space more than necessary.

"Sometime in the next month?"

"Was that meant to be a question?"

Phantom sat back, running a hand through his hair. "Sometime in the next month."

Jason tensed. He went out last night, of course, and he was back in contact with his people, but - Crime Alley needed the Red Hood. "Is there - I can't be cooped up in here for the next month!"

"Of course not," said Phantom, looking confused. "That's why you have a spotter? So you can go out? And, again, the first week, week and a half are probably safe anyway."

"Oh." He could set up for a few weeks' absence, with warning. "Okay."

"And then it'll take practice before you can control them enough to not need a spotter."

Tim sighed. "Understood."

Jason directed the conversation to other topics. Tim allowed it to be directed, but also, he kept asking these questions that weren't probing, exactly, not like he was looking for weaknesses, but like he was looking for Danny. Danny didn't bother to hide that he was a STEM student, or his opinion of the latest Disney movie he'd seen, which was Moana. At the end of dinner, Danny started to stack up plates, presumably to take them to the kitchen. Jason said, "Same time next week?"

"What?"

"So you can see how I'm doing." So I can see you.

"Oh. Thursdays are better for me, actually."

"Thursday it is. And . . . the League wanted to have an informal conversation."

"Sure," said Phantom. "We can do that. Next time it's convenient, I'll drop them a - well, I was going to say briefing, but I don't particularly feel like being brief." He paused, not frowning, not quite smiling. "We can go from there."

Chapter Text

Nothing happened for almost two weeks.

Well, not nothing. Jason looked into the 'hellmouth under Arkham' thing. Batman did have an entry on it, dated too closely to his own death for it to be a coincidence. The thing was shut, according to Blood, an occultist who'd lived in Gotham for almost two hundred years now and was an occasional consultant for both Batman and the Justice League. Murders at Arkham kept popping it open again, and he had to keep resealing it. However, these days it was closed more than it was open; progress, while slow, was being made.

So then Jason had to read Blood's file, too, which was a trip in its own right.

The Red Hood patrolled and held meetings and saw to business. Was seen. Red Robin shadowed him, silent as the grave, leaning against whatever wall was nearest and tapping at his thighs. Jason knew it was because he was working on his HUD, but from the outside it looked . . . very impatient.

It unnerved his people enough to ask about it.

"Oh, him?" asked Jason. "He's doing me a favor."

"A Bat," said Max, incredulously, "is doing you a favor."

"Favor, reparations," Jason waved a dismissive hand. "Whichever."

That was apparently eerie enough that everyone visibly decided not to ask.

Danny came back to dinner on Thursday. Jason made chicken cacciatore and reported no ghost powers yet. Phantom nodded and didn't look worried.

Tim took the opportunity to press him - gently - about contacting the League. Phantom blinked and said, "I'm waiting for the right weather."

"Does the weather affect what ghosts can do?" asked Tim, leaning forward in interest.

"Depends on the ghost," said Phantom. "Generally speaking, dramatic thunderstorms work better than a mild grey drizzle."

It was April, and the mild gray drizzle that'd been falling all day didn't look likely to end anytime soon. Tim looked at the window, which Jason could tell he wasn't looking forward to patrolling in, and said, "I see."

"Also, I finished the translation for you," said Jason brightly. "And I have questions for your guy."

"Oh?"

"If someone happens to have a microtome scribe that can write in cinnabar ink," said Jason, "would it still work? As long as the surface was lacquered bone and the person doing the scribing is - "

Phantom blinked at him with all of his eyes at once, which was incredibly disconcerting. "You know," he said, "that literally never occurred to me. It might work. I can ask. I assume you do have a microtome scribe?"

"Please," said Tim. "Wayne Enterprises does a lot of microcapillaries for medical diagnostics. A microtome scribe is just the smallest pen we have that can be person-operated."

"And you'd just give one away like that?"

"I'm told you're going to use it to destroy the book that nearly lost me my brother a second time," said Tim.

"Destroy," said Phantom, contemplatively. "Yeah, sure. I'd use the word 'kill,' but destroy isn't far off. And I can probably return the microtome after, but it's likely to, uh. Do something unusual."

"'Something unusual,'" said Tim.

"Don't ask me. Sometimes ecto contamination just makes it so the car works without gasoline, and sometimes ecto contamination makes it so the trees talk. It's really a crapshoot."

" . . . what do the trees say?" asked Jason.

"Oh, you know. They mostly just sing these really ethereally beautiful harmonies about sunlight," said Phantom. "But you can have your tech guys go ham on it, if you like."

Tim narrowed his eyes. "You know what," he said. "I will."

Which meant that he was going to outfit a scribe with as many bat-bugs as he could without preventing the thing from working before handing it over.

"Cool," said Phantom. "I'll let you know if it'll even be useful."

After dinner they did go on his regular patrol. Jason didn't really have to kill people these days, even in Crime Alley. He usually just shot for kneecaps instead, when he shot at all. Which he didn't, because no one wanted to be out in the chill grey drizzle.

Tim waited several hours to ask, "So . . . are we going to talk about it?"

"About. . . ?"

"About how you're clearly compromised and shouldn't be involved with anything that involves Phantom."

Jason looked at him. They both had dominoes on, but - "Do we need to? I thought that was obvious."

Tim nodded. "And you're not going to try muscling back in on the territory?"

"Nah," said Jason. He did not mention it was because Phantom was squirrelly enough that he figured he was going to get put back on it anyway.

That whole week was pretty calm, actually. Jason had to break up two unsanctioned drug labs trying to set up on his turf, one of which was in an occupied apartment building with kids in it, and in that case he definitely shot through the knees. When he stopped to chat with the working ladies, who all knew him and flirted back, they didn't have any warnings for him. Tim even unbent enough to thank them without trying to pass them cards for the local community center and vocational schools. A few days later he helped Tim run a drug bust in Midtown in return. They were headed back to the Coventry apartment when Jason felt something . . . weird.

It hurt. It felt like the concussive blast and bright heat of an explosion, echoing inside him. Jason was so shocked by it that he almost let go of his grapple. He did fumble his landing.

Tim noticed immediately. "You okay there, Red?" he asked, as his line was retracting.

"Some ghost shit," said Jason, because he'd felt that in his ectoplasm, not his gut. "Let's go back."

It took some doing. He could only feel it passing into or out of the area, which meant a whole lot of back-and-forth as they figured out where the area was.

"What are you two doing?" asked Oracle on comms, once they'd been at it for more than five minutes.

"Hood said something ghostly," said Tim.

"What I actually said was 'ghost shit'," said Jason. "We're outlining the boundary where I can feel it."

"Copy," said Oracle.

It was almost a perfect circle, so once they had enough of the arc they could just head to center to figure out what it was. It turned out to be the roof of some random apartment building. The problem was, there wasn't anything there. At least, there wasn't anything visible there, either to them or on local cameras.

"Was it a mistake?" asked Oracle.

"No," said Jason, closing his eyes and tilting his head. "It's definitely here. I just - it might not be something that has happened recently."

"Pulling up historical incident reports," said Oracle.

Jason went over to lean up against the fence that ran around the roof. Like a lot of apartment buildings in Midtown, this one had a rooftop common area, with potted plants and a barbecue.

Tim was looking at him. 

"What?"

"Nothing."

It was not nothing, not with that assessing gaze, but also Jason knew he wasn't going to get a straight answer out of him. He snorted to let Tim know that he knew he was full of shit.

"Found it," announced Oracle. "There was a murder-suicide in that building back in the nineties. Lover's argument gone wrong."

Tim was still looking at him.

"What?" Jason asked again.

"Do we think it caused a ghost?" asked Tim, ignoring him.

"I don't know if it's a ghost, but there's definitely something," said Jason. "If it's been there since the nineties, it can't be very urgent."

"So we're good to go?" asked Tim.

"Sure."

When Phantom came to dinner two days later, Jason told him about it. "Is that a ghost power?"

Phantom said, "I guess? Honestly I don't really think of it like that. It's not really a power unless you count having a sense of smell a power, too."

Jason met Tim's eyes and they shared an unspoken understanding that Phantom - Danny - was insane. Tim said, delicately, "If it's a sense that baseline humans don't have, then it's a power. Just like magic-users' ability to taste magic is a power, even if they don't have any meta genes."

Phantom tilted his head. "Huh. Well. All right, if that's the definition - then yes, it's a power. But not one that causes any kind of trouble! You'll just know when there's another ghost around."

"Then why doesn't it alert me to you?" asked Jason immediately.

"What?"

"I mean. I found this ghost just moving around the city. But you don't feel like - "

"Oh, no," interrupted Phantom. "I have to be, um, really leaning in to the ghostly aspect, if I want to have that effect. I mostly don't bother."

"But you can," said Tim, earnestly.

Phantom gave him a look, and then said, "You're not going to stop until I demonstrate, are you?"

"No," said Tim.

"Okay, but, uh, as a warning, for the living this kind of dials the Lovecraftian horror creep factor up until the he knob falls off."

"I am warned," said Tim levelly.

Phantom just sat back and closed his eyes and -

The green tone of his skin got deeper, less of something that could be passed off as the lighting and more a teal that Jason would recognize regardless of circumstance. His hair went from floating to being actually made of fire, the same cool white flame as his crown. The shadows in the corners of the room, which were not deep because Jason hated giving any of his family the opportunity to lurk, suddenly got deep enough for lurking, and one by one eyes started opening. The whispers were back, louder, and it became obvious that they were unintelligible because all the voices were saying different things. The predator was no longer just breathing, it was rustling its wings, and it definitely had more than two of them.

Jason paid very little attention to any of this, however, because Jason was busy paying attention to the bloom of concussive heat against his sternum, like a bomb going off right next to him. He curled in on it, and was dimly aware of falling out of his seat, but it didn't matter. It hurt.

Instantly the sensation cut off, replaced by two sets of hands - one warm, and one cool - and Phantom asking, "Jason? Jason!" in increasing alarm.

"'m fine," he managed.

"You are not fine, and I think I'm going to have to move up your first scheduled meeting with my doctor to this weekend," said Phantom. "Feeling another ghost around shouldn't hurt."

Jason rolled onto his side. "It - the memory was what hurt."

"Memory?" asked Phantom.

Jason pushed himself up. "It felt," he said, enunciating very clearly, "like dying."

Both Tim and Phantom looked at him with dismay. Tim, obviously, because he knew how Jason had died the first time. Phantom, because - "I won't do it again, then," he said. And, yeah, he was back to just being a little green instead of teal, and his hair was visible separate from his crown.

"Kind of a shitty first power," said Jason, rolling himself back up onto his feet. "As powers go, I mean."

"Could be worse," opined Tim. "Could be, like, a speedster? I hear they can get stuck experiencing the world in slow-motion while getting the hang of superspeed."

"That," said Phantom, also standing back up, "would suck. On the plus side, there's only one ghost actually for-sure stronger than me, so it can't ever be worse than whatever that was. But, yeah, definitely going to take you to meet the yetis this weekend."

Tim looked at Jason. Jason looked at Tim. Jason said. "And the yetis are . . . ?"

"Friends. My doctor, who is also the only actual ghost doctor, is a yeti," explained Phantom.

Tim frowned. "I feel like that's a lie. Like, even if most people don't become a ghost, and most people who become a ghost aren't a doctor, enough people die that - "

"Oh my god, a doctor for ghosts," explained Phantom, "not a ghost that has a medical degree! He's the only person I know who might possibly have any real ability to untangle - " he gestured at Jason " - that."

Jason frowned. "When were you going to tell me we had to visit these yetis?"

"After you figured out flying. You can't really get around the Realms on foot, and it's not like you're getting more dead. But if the basics are causing you pain, it's urgent."

"What if I'm busy this weekend?" Jason wasn't, but he wanted to see what Phantom would do.

Phantom looked at him. "Are you?"

" . . . I can be free," admitted Jason.

"Great. So I should come pick you up at eightish on Saturday?"

"In the morning?" asked Jason. "Weekends are for sleeping in!"

"The Far Frozen isn't actually far in terms of distance, but the yetis arranged things so it always takes a minimum of half an hour to fly there. And that's if you're a friendly who they already know and like. For a stranger? It's going to take between two and four hours. Since I don't have any idea how long the checkup will take, it's best to leave early."

"I see," said Jason.

Tim said, "Could one of us come too? Someone in the family, I mean."

Phantom glanced at him. "Yes, actually. But it has to be someone who genuinely means the yetis no harm. They don't let people with ill intent arrive at all."

Later, once Phantom flew off through the wall, they discussed options. B was out immediately, since his control-freak tendencies had him frothing at the mouth about literally everything since Phantom showed up. Tim, too; his control-freak tendencies were focused focused on WE these days, but . . . Actually, the only people who didn't have those were Steph and Cass.

"So, Cass," said Jason. Steph was great, but she just did not have the obsessive devotion to detail for this.

"Cass," agreed Tim.

Then they had to go over the whole thing again on Batchat, but at least B didn't try to override their logic. Dick did, because he wanted to meet yetis, but he wouldn't be able to stop himself noticing how to attack them. The important thing was that Cass agreed, and planned to come over tomorrow after a short patrol and stay overnight to be up early on Saturday.

At least patrol was uneventful. They even went to check on the maybe-ghost. Jason was not very surprised to find it gone.

Chapter Text

Friday was bullshit.

The problem was not the letter. The letter was an invitation, written in beautiful calligraphy, for an informal conversation between three representatives of the Justice League - none of whom could be Constantine - and High King Phantom of the Infinite Realms. It specified a date, two weeks out, and a time (noon) and a set of coordinates. It was accompanied by two printouts. One was all eight hundred pages of the Metahuman Protection Act, hardcopy. The second was another stack of paper, the full text of a fairly non-controversial law about environmental remediation in heavily curse-contaminated areas. Neither of them were the problem either. The problem was that last night, while Watchtower electronics were in low-power mode to protect them from a solar flare, all thousand plus pages had appeared in the main meeting hall of the League.

"So he's serious," said Wonder Woman, looking at the stacks and stacks of paper.

"As a heart attack," said Jason, eying them. Wonder Woman did not like him even a little, but since he was the only point of contact they had for Phantom, he'd been called up at ass o'clock to meet with the JL Dark.

"How did he even get here?" asked Zatanna. "A portal wasn't something that our magical defenses wouldn't have blocked."

"Over the entire moon?" asked Jason. Obviously not. There wasn't a spell that could do that. "Remember, he's dead. The man does not need to breathe."

Everyone took a moment to digest that. Then Constantine crossed his arms down on the table and put his head down. "I am so glad," he said, "that I'm not allowed anywhere near this."

"I think that shows good sense on his part, personally," muttered Tim, which Jason agreed with. Tim was missing a lot of CEO time for this.

"Regardless," she said. "Do we have any idea why these two laws in particular?"

"No," said Jason looking at the stacks. It was a lot of paper. A lot of paper that Phantom had ghosted, or magicked, or whatevered onto the Watchtower, for no apparent reason other than to make a point.

"We should split it up, then. Try and figure that out before this meeting. We'll focus on CAZRA, since we're all familiar with the MPA."

Later, back in his apartment, Tim commented, "That really could've been an email."

"Could it have?" asked Jason, thinking about Oracle and Signal and the cell relay in Crime Alley that insisted that was where he was the whole time he'd been gone. "Could it have really?"

Tim looked back at his laptop, frowning. "And he already knows enough about them to rule out Constantine right off the bat."

"Nightingale does spend a lot of time in London."

" . . . okay, fair point," said Tim. "This meeting is supposed to take place in the middle of a field in Wisconsin. Is he expecting collateral damage?"

"Not expecting, no." 

But planning for. It was a very Bat thing to do. Tim nodded his approval. "Do you think if you just ask tomorrow - "

"I absofuckinglutely do not, no," said Jason.

"Right," said Tim on a sigh. "Right, so we have some laws to read, clearly. Let's get everybody looped in, I suppose."

He had other things to check on too, but that was the one none of them would call him on.

So Oracle downloaded a copy of the laws and she B and Nightwing and Steph got to work reading them while he and Tim went to do their other jobs.

The day continued to be ridiculous. The needle exchange was fine, but the working ladies tipped him off that the Black Mask was planning something. Worse, they couldn't tell him what Sionis was planning. He went to go do a spot check on his lieutenants.

That led to him finding a few dealers who weren't his muscling in on his territory and selling to to fucking kids. So then he had to hospitalize some guys, and B always got real twitchy about that. And he still didn't know what Sionis had planned.

Invisibility and intangibility and flight really could not come soon enough.

But, since he didn't have anything more right now, he went home to shower and get changed for patrol.

Cass showed up promptly at sunset. Working with Cass was always a treat. Her first language wasn't words, and it showed. In a partnership she was always just where he needed her to be, exactly when he needed her to there, and watching her move was a work of fucking art. They did a big looping circuit of Crime Alley and turned in before eleven.

The bombs went off at two thirty AM. Five of them , in five of his safehouses, and if he hadn't been in Coventry he probably would have been in one of them. As it was, he was fine, but pissed. There were kids in those apartment buildings.

They were also up to code. Between that,  him and Cass, and the Robins showing up to help unprompted, they did get everyone out alive, at least. It was four thirty by the time everyone was safe and accounted for. The question of how his safehouses had been compromised and the bombs couldn't be solved that night, but Jason knew he wouldn't be able to sleep, so he didn't even try. Instead he invited Cass to spar - which meant putting him on his ass a half-dozen times - before she sent him off to shower.

When he got back, she made him lie down on the couch, head in her lap while she stroked his hair. He had no idea what she was getting from him, and she didn't offer, but it was - nice. Soothing. He closed his eyes.

Chapter Text

Jason apparently did sleep, because he woke to Danny saying, "That is adorable."

"Excuse you," said Jason, without heat or opening his eyes. "Waynes don't do adorable. Sexy, okay. Handsome, absolutely."

"Adorable," repeated Danny.

Jason opened his eyes. He was still on the couch, with his head on Cass' lap. She was staring at Danny. Danny was looking back at her.

Jason said, "Danny, this is my sister, Cassandra. Cass, Danny. Phantom when he's being king."

Cass waved.

"She doesn't talk much," added Jason.

"Not out loud, maybe," said Danny. "Are you okay? You look like shit."

"Rough night," said Jason. "The arson."

"The - what?" asked Danny.

Jason blinked at him a little stupidly. He knew Danny slept in the Infinite Realms, and didn't have phone alerts for major events happening in the outside world, but - "Someone set fire to some buildings in Crime Alley last night," he explained. "Five of them, all at the same time. So, arson."

"Oh," said Danny.

"It's probably gang war stuff," added Jason.

"Or insurance fraud," said Danny, only halfway joking. "Did everyone get out all right?"

"As far as they've been able to tell, yeah," said Jason.

"Well. Good. And this is going to be a bit of a drive, so you can sleep on the way, if you like."

"A drive?" asked Jason.

"Sure," said Danny, reaching up and making a little hooking motion and just - pulling reality open. "Come on, I'll explain once we're over there. Do you prefer Cassandra? Cass? Some - "

Cass gave him a thumbs-up.

"Cass it is, then." Danny smiled and gestured to the glowing green portal. "This way."

They went through the portal. Jason was half-expecting the castle.

Jason was not expecting the inside of a very tiny alien craft, but that was very much what he got on the other side. He waited until Cass and Danny were inside with him and Danny had neatly zipped up the hole in reality to ask, "What?"

"The air in the Infinite Realms isn't good. We don't need to, but I figured your spotter would, so I brought an air supply and transport for both of you. Please do not touch the oxygen canisters," he added, since Cass was examining them curiously. "Some safety stuff before we get started. In the absolute worst-case scenario I'll open a portal back to Earth, but in the case of a sudden depressurization - Cass, do you know how to use an emergency rebreather?" He held one out.

Cass nodded, and took the rebreather.

"Good. This thing is generally going to just go through any ecto, landscape and ghosts included, but it can be shorted and it has crumple zones and airbags and all that in case of a crash. Cass, when you have to exit the vehicle, make sure to take a helmet and oh-two tank hookup." He gestured to several cabinets, inside of which were, in fact, helmets. "Just try some on now to make sure you get one in the right size. You need the pressure cuff to form an airtight seal. It's basically just a SCUBA setup after that."

Cass nodded, and went to go try on helmets. Jason, who didn't need any of this by virtue of already being a ghost, looked around instead. The room was fairly small. A door - an airlock - was at one end of the room. Oxygen canisters, big ones for pressurizing the vehicle, lined one wall; the helmet cabinets and smaller canisters for EVA were on the other. There was a second door, which was unlocked when Jason tried it.

There was a cockpit on the other side of that. A single large bench occupied most of the space, and a very large control panel. It was designed off a basic HOTAS, so Jason thought he could probably fly it himself if he needed to. And of course there was the canopy, a single massive semicircle of, not glass, but pressurized plastic, crystal-clear. The sky was, of course, the formless Lazarus green of the Infinite Realms. Jason was impressed.

Also worried. "Did you steal this from a DEO lab?"

"No," said Danny, coming around and taking the central seat on the bench, in front of the console. "The DEO wish they had my tech. Or my guys. Okay, everybody sit down, seatbelts on."

Cass came and sat down on his right. Jason took his left. Phantom went through something very close to a preflight check, and the vehicle hummed slightly as it began to move, although movement was pretty difficult to gauge given the total lack of exterior landmarks. Danny didn't really fly for very long anyway before engaging an autopilot, and saying, "All right. The two of you are free to move around the cabin, or take a nap, whatever. I'm - "

"Can you show us how to fly this thing?" asked Jason.

Danny could, in fact, show them how to fly the thing. It was actually a consumer-video-game grade HOTAS, wired into a vehicle that moved like a spacecraft. Jason knew spacecraft, and this moved like one. There was no friction or drag, and airfoils would have done nothing. It moved forward until acted on by an outside force, and little jets seemed to control roll and pitch and yaw. It was weird, but only a few minutes of practice and he began to relax into it. After twenty minutes, he began trying tricks. An hour in, and he was confident he could fly this thing, even in whatever passed, amongst ghosts, for a dogfight. Two hours in, Cass had to threaten him to let her have her chance to drive. And then threaten him again, to make him stop trying to backseat drive.

Danny was absolutely no help, because Phantom wasn't even in the vehicle. As soon as Jason had seemed confident enough, he'd dropped out through the fucking floor, and popped back into view a moment later. Jason was supposed to follow him while piloting. He briefly popped back after he began playing with stunts: not to admonish, but to praise his skill. He popped back in when Cass took over, too, ready to give the same instructions all over. Cass punched him gently and while Danny was looking startled, Jason translated, "She means she heard it all the first time." Danny sighed and gave up gracefully, and was playing loop-de-loops with Cass now, easily pacing them.

A couple of other ghosts were pacing them too, including an actual dragon - what the hell - but the dragon was also playing loop-de-loops and carrying on a conversation with Phantom. They were obviously friends. Ghosts had been pacing them almost the entire way, coming in ones and two to exchange words with their king before flying away again. Phantom seemed to know most of them, and the ones he didn't he welcomed anyway. After a short conversation most of them flew off. Once or twice Phantom popped his head in - through the canopy, which was a trip and a half - and said he had to go help them with something, and dropped out of sight. But he was always back within ten or fifteen minutes, the cool light of his crown leading them forward in the murky green.

Jason was in a quietly contemplative mood when they, quite suddenly, arrived. You wouldn't think an entire glacier could appear suddenly like that, but, no, they flew through one of the big diffuse clouds of ecto and on the other side was the glacier. Phantom popped back in and said, "I'll take back over now. Landing's always a bitch."

They shuffled so Danny could take the controls, and then Jason said, "So those ghosts . . . "

"What?"

"Your friends? The ones who kept coming up to us . . . "

"My subjects, you mean?"

"Also your friends," said Jason. "You were nothing but happy to see that dragon."

"Dra - Dorothea?" Danny did not look away from his piloting. "She's my friend too, but she was here as my vassal. Her shithead brother is trying to gain traction for overthrowing her. They were all here as my subjects, for one reason or another."

Cass tugged on his arm, and then signed several things.

"I don't - "

"She said they're all your friends. Even the ones you don't know."

"Well. Maybe."

Danny landed them smoothly, running through post flight with a casualness that spoke of lots of experience. Cass put on a helmet and Jason helped with the tank hookup. Then they both cycled through the tiny airlock, one by one.

They yetis were hominid, at least, but they seem to have settled on being humanoid polar bears. Phantom didn't hesitate to assault the biggest, fanciest one in a flying tackle. "Frostbite!"

"Your majesty!" replied the yeti, Frostbite apparently, while catching him.

"Still just Danny," sighed Danny, in the long-suffering tones of someone who knew he would be ignored. "Everyone okay here? No problems in the Far Frozen?"

Frostbite made a wavering so-so motion with his ice arm. "We will talk later. Who are - oh."

"Right," said Phantom, letting go of him and floating back down to ground level.

Frostbite continued to stare at Jason. "Hello."

". . . hi," said Jason. "Phantom - "

"Right," said Phantom again. "Frostbite, Jason, and his sister Cass. Cass, Jason, Frostbite. Frostbite, can you help?"

"I am not sure there is any help needed," said Frostbite, still looking at him.

"Help is definitely needed," said Phantom. "Do you want to tell him, or should I?"

" . . . I can," said Jason, looking around.

"Perhaps in a more secluded area, though," said Frostbite graciously.

"Yes please," said Phantom.

He and Cass followed them. The yetis' home looked like a cross between a paleolithic cave and, well, the Batcave. Jason was impressed, and said so.

"Well, just because we have been ghosts for a very long time needn't mean we must stay in the past," said Frostbite. "We do try to keep track of innovation in the living world, and adopt those that seem most useful. We'd like another wifi router."

"Talk to Technus," said Phantom.

"Not a Realms router," said Frostbite. "A solid one. There are several simple modifications that should improve performance, but we do not wish to destroy the - "

"Sure, why not," sighed Phantom. "I am all for destroying the capitalist system, why wouldn't I let you guys invent ghost routers with signals that can cross the divide, this won't cause any problems for anyone at all ever."

"Your majesty," said Frostbite, sounding hurt.

"Fine, fine," said Phantom. "One, and you try all the modifications on the ghost net before you make them in solid, and you have the Wizard check what they do in the living world before deploying any."

"Of course," said Frostbite. "I would never do anything to hurt the living."

"You'd never try to," said Phantom. "But you might succeed anyway."

There was a contemplative sort of quiet, and then they walked into the Watchtower med bay.

Or, that was what it felt like, anyway, with all the screens and panels and the donut-shaped thing that looked like it might be an MRI. Jason looked around with interest, as did Cass.

"All right," said Frostbite. "What is the problem? It cannot be that you are a halfa - "

"No," said Jason. "It's that my - when I feel other ghosts - it hurts."

"Ah," said Frostbite. "Well. That's unusual. What does it feel like?"

" - like dying," Jason managed.

" . . . forgive the delicate question," said Frostbite, "but your death, it was, ah . . . "

Jason looked at Cass, who knew already, and Phantom, who didn't. "The Joker beat me bloody with a crowbar - I wouldn't have survived anyway - but then he exploded me," he recited, dully, like an after-action. "Other ghosts feel like the explosion."

Then, and only then, he looked up. Phantom was looking at him in horror. Horror, but not - pity. Jason relaxed.

"Then you likely have fire powers, and strong ones at that. Once you get those under control it will simply be a natural extension of those," said Frostbite. "I cannot help there, unfortunately. Me and my people lived at the roof of the world, and all our powers are ice."

"It's fine," said Phantom. "There's no way Ember wouldn't help even if it wasn't me asking."

Frostbite looked at him. "Are you sure that's the best idea?"

"They have more in common than fire," said Phantom. "So! That explains the ghost sense, but since we're here, you might as well do every test."

Frostbite did every test. 

He kicked Phantom out first. He was very polite, and he repeated the phrase, "doctor-patient confidentiality" about fourteen times, and at the end, Jason was in the room and Cass was in the room and Phantom wasn't.

"And now," said Frostbite, turning back to him, "we can talk."

"I - " began Jason.

"You," said Frostbite, "smell like Ducra."

Jason felt his entire mind seize up while he processed the statement.

"Also, you have those swords of hers sheathed in your soul," added Frostbite. "So."

Well, when in doubt - "You have a problem with that?"

"On the contrary," said Frostbite gently. "I would like to know how my great-grandniece is doing."

" . . . oh," said Jason, weakly. Phantom said this, that ghosts who wanted to interact with the living world mostly just wanted updates on living relatives. It was just shitty luck that - "She's dead," Jason managed to force out. Then, more easily, "She's dead. I'm sorry."

" . . . Ah," said Frostbite. "Are you certain?"

"I buried her myself," said Jason.

"Then you have done me a great service," said Frostbite. "And I am sorry for your loss."

"Me? You're the one who - "

"I had no chance to know her," said Frostbite gently. "She was born generations after I died."

"She was three thousand years old!"

"I have been a ghost for forty-six thousand years," said Frostbite, calmly. "And I lived five thousand years before that."

"You're - fifty thousand years old?!"

"Is that so odd?"

Jason looked up at him - huge, fuzzy, horned, with one arm that seemed to be ice-encased bone, and found that he did believe it. "I suppose not. I - would you like me to tell you about her?"

"If it is not too painful," said Frostbite.

So Jason did: her acerbic words and her sense of humor drier than deserts and how she pushed, pushed, pushed, until you faced the lies you were telling yourself. All the while, Frostbite did his mysterious ghost medicine. It . . . helped, he thought. To be able to tell all these things to someone who genuinely cared, and who also grieved. Cass, too. She came over, partway through, and started hugging him, and didn't stop.

At least giving ecto samples didn't involve needles. The donut-thing wasn't an MRI, and unlike an MRI Jason felt it in his everywhere, but it wasn't bad. It was like watching something make a noise underwater, and hearing it a moment before his mind expected it. He also had to go stand behind some of the panes of ice while the yeti king did something like an X-ray, and projected the image on one of the screens. It showed him, and a pulsing light somewhere in his torso.

"Ah, I was right," said Frostbite, looking at the readouts. "Fire. Also looks like perhaps poison as a secondary? And of course you are a halfa, so we can expect them to grow as you do."

"They grow?"

"Naturally the living change and grow," said Frostbite. "And despite being a ghost, you are alive, young one. You can learn to do most things a ghost can do, if you put forth the effort."

Jason remembered Phantom - or rather, in retrospect, Danny - talking about the difference between top speed and top acceleration, and nodded.

"Then there is only one topic left to discuss," said Frostbite.

"Oh?"

"You must cease repressing your emotions immediately."

Jason was not stupid enough, at least, to deny this. He just blinked up at the old ghost, and said, "Uh. What?" like the dumbest asshole in the Infinite Realms.

Frostbite smiled a smile that was all teeth, and explained.

Later, once he was done, he led Jason and Cass back out to what was obviously a training field. Some of the yetis and Phantom were doing target practice with their ice powers, taking turns being the ones to throw and blast the targets. Phantom wasn't particularly accurate, but his blasts were visibly stronger than the yetis' and so he usually did hit the target. He tapped out when he noticed the three of them standing there, though.

"All done?" he asked, once he hovered over.

"Yeah," said Jason.

"Cool." Phantom turned back to Frostbite. "Unless you have objections, I'm just going to portal them straight home from here."

"Mm. I sense no animosity from young Cass, and Jason - well, you are a very young ghost, but . . . " He hummed again thoughtfully. "I think I'd prefer you take them clear of the glacier all the same, your majesty."

"Can do," said Phantom.

They went back to Phantom's little alien craft. Phantom even let him do the launch. There was no rearview, but Phantom, outside the vehicle again, popped in after half an hour to tell them they were far enough away to stop. Stopping actually involved reverse thrust, because, again, the spacecraft would otherwise coast along forever. After they'd come to a complete stop, Phantom tore a hole in reality so they could get home and dropped them, neatly, back inside of Jason's apartment.

It was a little past three in the afternoon. Jason was hungry. Cass must be starving. "Stay for a late lunch?" asked Jason. "Or an early dinner. Whichever."

"Nah, gotta go put the Speeder away," said Phantom. "If Ember isn't too impossible to track down, I can grab her and bring you around later? Or is tomorrow better?"

" . . . who is 'Ember'?" asked Jason.

"A ghost with fire powers. One of the strongest," said Phantom. "She trained me, and I think the two of you will get along like . . . a house on fire."

Jason gave him a flat stare.

"So? Later today? Or tomorrow?"

"I have a thing tomorrow. Back to Thursday?"

"Sure, but Tim can't come with to watch. Ember's primary is mind-control, and she's . . . "

"Too dangerous to have the CEO of Wayne Industries under her control?"

"S̵̹̰̓͒ë̶̗̤́͌v̷̙̋ẹ̷̈n̵̡̓ṭ̸̉e̶̮̥͌̉e̷͖̊n̴͚͎̑Seventeen," said Phantom.

Jason blinked.

"And she's not a halfa," he added. "She's as seventeen now as she was when she died. She'll think mind-control is a good idea, and that nobody is going to notice that she did it. I keep telling her, people aren't that dumb, especially when it comes to family, but - nope! Teenagers gonna teen."

"Can she mind-control me?" asked Jason, because he didn't want to try tackling that 'teenagers gonna teen.' Like. At all.

"Yes, but she's not going to. I would notice."

"Fine. Thursday, Tim stays home. Pinky promise."

"Gotcha," said Phantom, and ducked back through the portal, which swirled closed behind him.

Chapter Text

"We're back," said Jason, thumbing open his comm.

"Copy," replied Oracle, with only a moment's delay. "Should I get everyone on?"

"It's three in the afternoon on a Saturday," said Jason. "Let them sleep. I'm going to get to work on the drawings."

"Do there need to be drawings?"

"Phantom has a craft that I am pretty sure would work as an actual spaceship if it came down to it," said Jason. "It is maybe how he got to the moon. Yes, there will be drawings."

"Copy," repeated Oracle.

He cooked for both himself and Cass, made some drawings, cooked again, fed them both again, and took a nap. He was feeling extremely good when evening rolled around and they both armored up for patrol.

"Comms up," he said.

"Copy," said Oracle.

"Report," demanded B.

"That was a whole lotta bullshit," said Jason.

"There wasn't a doctor?" asked Tim.

"There was a doctor. He is a yeti," said Jason. "There was a lot of very complicated ghost tech that probably did require the trip out. The drive was three hours and forty-three minutes." Phantom was pretty much spot-on there, he meant.

"There was a dragon," added Cass, totally unnecessarily.

"There was a dragon?" asked Tim, alarmed.

"Also friendly. She flew loop-de-loops with it," said Jason, taking the gap between adjacent buildings at a run. "Phantom let us both drive."

"What were you driving?" asked Dick.

"He called it a 'Speeder,'" said Jason. "It's a craft that works in the Infinite Realms. Which have a poisonous atmo, apparently."

"Do not," said Cass. "I checked."

"When? - Never mind. Did you take a sample?"

"Yes."

"That's my sister," said Jason. He got a light punch for it, but didn't mind that so much as the fact that they were going to have to take a trip to the Cave to analyze it. But. "The doctor in question turned out to be a relative of one of my teachers."

Utter silence over the comms before Tim asked, "Your League teachers . . . ?"

"It's cute that you think I only trained with the League," said Jason. "The teacher in question was some kind of great-grandniece, and is dead now. I had to break the news."

There was another silence on the comms before, very carefully, Damian said, "Was this the massacre of the All-Caste?"

"Shit, you heard about that?" Damian had to have already been with Bruce by the time that was happening.

"Grandfather ordered it," said Damian, like this was an explanation. "I did not think it was . . . he should not have done that."

"No, he shouldn't," agreed Jason. "But he did, so hey, they're all dead now."

Another silence, during which Jason dropped like a ton of bricks onto someone who was very much not supposed to be in the Alley. Tim politely waited until Jason was done before he said, "Did you . . . do anything about it?"

"I went and hunted down all of their enemies, yeah," said Jason, zip-stripping the guy. " - don't go looking, B. Their enemies were . . . "

"Their enemies were abominations of magic, and Todd did humanity a favor by exterminating them," said Damian.

"Commsec," said five people at once. Jason grappled up to the highest level of the next building's fire escape.

"When was this?"

"Mm. A year ago." Jason ran up the side of the building, hauling himself up onto the next roof over, and paused for a moment. "When I was running with Kory and Roy. Anyway. Had a rough conversation with this guy about his grandniece while he did every test he could think of, and then we left. Flew out from their home for half an hour before we got far enough, and Phantom portalled us back."

"So locations don't connect one-to-one," said Tim.

"No," said Jason. "And he's accurate with them, too. You saw the drawings I uploaded?"

"Yes," said Tim, at the same time as Dick said, "Yeah," and Batman said, "Mm," and Babs said, "Yes," in her vocoded voice.

"There weren't more than three square meters inside that speeder, and he dropped the portal right on top of the airlock," said Jason. He took a leap to the next building over. Down at ground level, he saw someone stalking a pair of women. Smart of them to travel together. Smart of them not to have visible purses.

Stupid of them to think that would stop a desperate man with a knife.

"This just keeps getting better and better," said Dick.

"The Speeder is actually controlled by a normal HOTAS. It's wired up to a Virpil gaming HOTAS right now, but I checked under the console and it's a standard bus." Jason started following at roof level.

"Hot-swappable?" asked Babs.

"Looked like."

"Did you get a look at any of the wiring beyond that?"

"You know me, O. There were wires. He did say the DEO wish they had his tech."

"Truth," added Cass, making a hand motion. She had this. It was one man.

Jason got moving again. "It's a pretty fun thing to drive, though."

"Okay, so you drove to where these yetis live," said Dick. "Anything interesting?"

"Phantom flew alongside us most of the way, and it was sort of . . . all these ghosts kept coming up to fly with us too, and they were always asking for help, and he was always giving it."

"Even the dragon?" asked Barbara dryly.

"The dragon is named Dorothea," said Jason. "And she's his vassal. She was asking for help with a political problem. So, yes, even the dragon. And it wasn't like - there were never more than two or three, but it was the whole four hours."

More quiet while everyone thought about that. Jason heard the background noises of patrol, including Cass giving the women advice for not getting the wrong kind of attention next time they had to be in Crime Alley.

"So then we get to the glacier the yetis call home, and their king, or leader, whatever, is called Frostbite, and he's the doctor."

"Good doctor," added Cass.

"Oh, absolutely," agreed Jason. "Talked to me for two seconds and figured out what the problem is, and made Phantom leave for the ghost physical."

"What's the problem?" cut in B.

"I - my ghost sense, I guess you'd call it? My ability to feel when another ghost is around - feels like my primary power, and my primary power is going to be fire. Feeling other ghosts is like being about two feet away when a bomb goes off, and yes, I do mean it literally."

More silence. He grappled to another building. Steph said, "That's a bit on the nose, isn't it?"

"I didn't pick it," said Jason. "Although I'm also supposed to be able to learn whatever other ghost powers I want, because I'm alive enough to grow like that."

"He will have poison," added Cass.

". . . what kind of poison?" asked Tim.

"How should I know?" A thought occurred. "I hope it's contact fucking sleep. It would be fantastic if I could just drop people by touching them." On so many levels, would that be fantastic. "Or, shit, maybe I can pick the effect?"

"Hood," said B.

"Right. So then I did the ghost physical, and got a ghost MRI, and gave a bit of ecto for what they do instead of blood testing, the works. I'm doing okay now, I guess, except that I'm not actually producing enough ecto yet to sustain my own existence. It's okay. I have until my body dies to figure it out."

Cass said, "That is not what he said. He said - "

"Cass," Jason said, warning.

"He said therapy," said Cass.

"Cass," repeated Jason, holding out an arm like that would do anything to stop her if she didn't want to stop.

"He said that it's unsafe," said Cass, and she grabbed his arm and turned him and - poked him in the forehead.

"Uh," said Dick. "What?" and, yeah. Obviously that was why she said it on comms.

Jason sighed as he got moving again. "Emotion and memory. Repression is - I can't do that anymore. Like, medically I can't."

"What," said B.

"Emotion and memory," said Tim, more slowly. "That's what ghosts are made of. A soul, too, sometimes, but - Hood, what happens to a ghost that doesn't feel?"

"Nothing good," said Jason, darkly.

"Hm," said Tim, which probably meant he was going to ask Phantom now.

Jason said, "You're not allowed to come with on Thursday. Phantom went off to go find some other ghost with fire powers to train me, and her primary power is mind-control."

"Because that's not at all horrifying," said Babs.

"Anyway, after all that I had the conversation about my teacher." Jason took the running leap across an alley. "And when we finished, Phantom was doing target practice with the yetis. Ice bolts. He's more powerful than accurate."

"But very powerful," said Cass, pacing Jason. "Does not hit targets. Explodes."

Jason said, "And he mentioned that this Ember person was his teacher, so he either has fire or mind-control or both. I'm guessing it's both." Because why, if it could be both, if these were learned abilities, would it not be both?

"I reiterate," said Dick. "This just keeps getting better and better."

"But if he can . . . " said Tim, sounding pensive. "He could have forced those people to plead guilty, but it was one-and-done. Right, O?"

"Yes," said Babs.

"So the evidence suggests that he does genuinely have an ethical objection to mind control."

"We don't rely on it," said B, which, obviously not. But.

"He's just - he's really focused on his people," said Jason. "Of being worthy of them. And, because I died - twice - I now count as 'his people.'"

"You're ours," said Dick, immediately.

"Yeah, love you too, Big Bird," said Jason, rolling his eyes. "Shockingly, a guy can belong to more than one group of people at a time, Mr. Titans."

"Jay - "

"Commsec," said Jason, along with Tim and B. "Also, I honestly don't mind. He doesn't beat B for intensity, and so far he's been a lot less insane about the mother-henning. He doesn't put trackers in my civilian clothes."

"That you know about," said Babs, like an asshole.

"Well, you're welcome to look for the nonexistent trackers," said Jason. "Me, I'm gonna patrol."

"Copy."

A little while later, Damian opened a private (well, semi-private, Babs had ears on everything) line. "You hunted down the Untitled," he said without preamble.

"Hi, Robin, nice to hear from you," said Jason, signalling to Cass that he was on a call.

"You hunted down the Untitled," repeated Damian.

"Not hunted, no. Not after the first one. Set a trap for." Jason grunted as he made the next jump.

"My point, Hood, is that you killed them all."

"Yeeees?" asked Jason, not sure where the kid was going with this.

"You have All-Blades," said Damian.

" . . . which are useless unless the threat is magical," said Jason. "And they only manifest in the presence of true evil anyway."

"The Untitled, my grandfather, Trigon, and Darkseid," said Damian. "To name but a few. Although not, I think, Phantom."

"No."

"Interesting," said Damian, and in true Bat fashion, hung up.

"So," said Babs.

"Not gonna talk about it," said Jason.

"Whose idea of 'true evil'?" asked Babs.

"Not," repeated Jason, "gonna talk about it."

" . . . but these days you take them out to check before you kill people."

"Barbara, I swear to god - "

"Interesting," she said, and hung up on him, too.