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Letting out a sharp sigh of relief when his key finally slots into the lock, Danny pushes the door open and kicks his boots off unceremoniously, blinking blearily at the darkness blanketing the living room. He and Jay were supposed to make one of the new recipes they found together once he got back from his appointment in the Infinite Realms (not that his roommate would know that’s what he was actually doing), but Jay must’ve decided to head to bed once he realized Danny was late.
The microwave clock reads 10:47PM from where it’s shining through the kitchen doorway and there’s some suspicious rustling coming from Danny’s room. He rolls his eyes with a scoff, assuming it’s one of his rogues popping in for a visit.
He drops his bag just outside his door—the sounds immediately stops at the soft thump—and pushes his way into the room to find… Nightwing?
“Uh… hi.” Danny blinks—once, twice, then a third time—in confusion. “Can I help you?”
Nightwing looks like his heart’s jumped into his throat, hand dangerously lax around the Physics textbook he must’ve picked up off Danny’s messy, paper-covered desk. “Daniel Fenton?”
“Yeah, that’s me—Danny.” He shoots Nightwing a weak smile. “Is everything okay?”
“Do you have an identical twin?”
Danny’s smile melts into a frown; do clones count as identical twins? “Not that I know of?”
“A brother?” Nightwing asks, voice strangled.
The amount of patience Danny has for this situation is steadily shrinking by the second, and he crosses his arms across his chest; how are you supposed to answer that question when your ‘brother’ is really your evil future self from an alternate universe? “One, he’s older than me though… what is this about?”
“I…” Nightwing pauses, hand on his hip as he thinks for a breath then starts tapping away at a little screen attached to his suit at the wrist (gauntlet?). “I don’t know how to explain this, so I’ll just—you aren’t squeamish or anything, right?”
Once Danny confirms he isn’t, Nightwing steps towards him and twists his arm to show Danny a gory image of Jason’s bedroom, where a dark-haired body lies face down and surrounded by a wide, still-wet stain. There’s fleshy bits and dried blood everywhere the eye can see, and the colour drains from Danny’s skin as he scans the picture over and over again.
“Jay?” Danny chokes out, chest aching at the thought that he inadvertently killed another person, someone who didn’t do anything but get too close to him. “He—”
“What? No, that’s—” Nightwing’s face twists, stepping towards Danny again and raising his hands as if to catch something (or someone). “Danny, that’s you. DNA’s a one-hundred percent match, and your roommate ID’d your… the body.”
He freezes, skin feeling too tight as his core screams mineprotectmineMINE. “Is Jay okay? Why—in his room—” Danny reaches up to clutch at his shirt, heart pounding away at his ribcage like it’s trying to escape. Shit.
Nightwing says something but the words are unintelligible through the static roaring in Danny’s ears. Taking the matter into his own hands, he pats his pockets down and, after not finding his phone, turns on his heel to grab his bag from the doorway. He digs through it with a frantic energy, pulling miscellaneous items out and throwing them to the side in his haste.
Once he’s found it, Danny manually turns his phone back on—having shut it off before he entered the Zone—and finds a full log of missed calls from a variety of numbers he doesn’t recognize. Scrolling to Jay’s contact, he lets his thumb shakily hover over the button for a second then forces himself to press it. It rings deafeningly loud, once, twice—
“Finally found it?” Jay says immediately, uncharacteristically gruff.
“Jay?” Danny murmurs, fighting to keep his worry from making his voice waver.
There’s a thud on the other end, like something heavy fell over, before Danny can hear hands scrabble for the phone.
“Danny?” Jay shouts; there’s a slight wheeze in his breathing as it echoes down the line.
“Are you okay? I’m—”
“Am I—fuck that, are you okay? How the hell are you even alive?”
“It wasn’t me, it—I don’t even know, there was…” he trails off slightly, trying to figure out how to explain the situation before remembering the key presence he abandoned in his haste to get ahold of Jay. “Hold on, Nightwing’s here, I’ll just get him to… yeah, gimme a second.”
He unceremoniously hands the phone over, arching a questioning eyebrow at the incredulous look on Nightwing’s face, who takes it and starts going through the motions of explaining the situation with the little information he has.
Danny intentionally puts a mental block on his too-enhanced-for-a-human hearing as he turns away and heads back to his bag to collect the bits and bobs that were strewn about earlier when he was searching for his phone in a panic. It’s mostly junk so it’s over relatively quick; some spare parts from a toaster he tore apart a few years ago, a cracked casing from Tucker’s old PC tower that was too damaged to salvage, and a plastic grocery bag full of charred chunks of warped metal from an old invention of his that exploded in the middle of an experiment.
Once that’s done, Nightwing and Jay are still talking—or Nightwing is still talking as Jay listens—so Danny makes his way to the kitchen and grabs a glass of water from the filtered pitcher they keep in the fridge. He keeps the lights off, and the lack of buzzing electricity paired with the cold liquid soothes the frayed edges of his frazzled nerves. Despite being on high alert—because someone cloned him!—and his stomach still swooping from pure, unadulterated fear—because he was fucking cloned! Again! Shit, he has to call Dani, she needs to keep an eye out, maybe even stay with Jazz or Dan—he doesn’t notice the approach of Nightwing from behind him; too busy being swarmed by a flurry of intrusive thoughts, disgustingly-gory nightmare material, and the worst-case of every scenario he could think of.
“Danny?”
The man in question jumps sky-high and barely manages to hold back from going ghost, instead dropping his cup with a short scream before he stifles it and watches the glass shatter around his feet.
They both stare at the shards in silence before Danny breaks the quiet with a soft ‘oh fuck’ and makes grabby hands at the phone clutched in Nightwing’s hand, the sounds of Jay shouting muffled slightly by the bulk of heavily-reinforced gloves. Glass crunches under Nightwing’s boots as he takes a step closer and hands it over.
“Someone better start fucking talking, what the hell is—”
“Jay,” he murmurs, voice low and fighting a smile despite the circumstances. “Everything’s okay, dude. Just dropped a glass and it shattered on the tile, I didn't hear Nightwing come into the kitchen and he startled me.”
“You sure?” Jason responds over what sounds like boots thumping in the background. “You’ve got eyes in the back of your head, no one sneaks up on you—and don’t call me dude.”
Danny huffs dryly as their age-old argument is rekindled yet again, rubbing a tired hand over his face as he glances at the clock then does a double take.
“Your room is—”
“Fucked, yeah. I know, I was there.”
Danny winces. Yeah, I know that too. “What I meant was, your room is a crime scene and I bet our whole apartment is too, so you’ll need to find somewhere to stay until we can… do whatever we need to do to pretend this never happened.”
“Danny—”
“Is it about the corpse of my body that isn’t actually my body?” Predictably, it was; Jay stays silent, and Nightwing watches him wearily. “Then I don’t want to talk about it.”
The silence lingers briefly before Jay takes a breath so deep the speakers rumble and releases it; Danny considers the sound for a moment, huffing a slight laugh when he puts the pieces together; having recognized the tinny crackle of Jay’s helmet microphone.
“Brought the bike back out?” he asks, smiling weakly even though Jay can’t see it. “Thought you’d wait until later, now I owe Morgan twenty bucks.”
“Needed to blow off some steam,” Jay murmurs, quiet enough that Nightwing won’t be able to hear. Danny’s smile sours, almost having forgotten that—that someone killed Jay’s roommate in front of him; no shit he’d need an outlet after… that.
Danny clears his throat, hoping it doesn’t sound awkward as he checks his watch and almost curses at the time. It’s nearly midnight, just over an hour since he arrived home and found Nightwing in his room. Jay’s probably staying with one of his brothers—unwillingly, of course—so he needs to figure out somewhere secure for himself to stay, and make sure to keep this under wraps so the GiW doesn’t feel the need to investigate. Thankfully, there’s no branch in Gotham; Batman chased them out a couple of years ago, which is one of the reasons Danny picked the GothamU offer over some of the other STEM schools with higher scholarship bursaries, like UMet’s internationally-ranked aeronautical engineering program—conveniently located under fifteen blocks away from an incredibly well-known GiW hotspot, and well in range for him to be detected. He very nearly got his head blown off just from visiting for one of the fall open-houses.
[…]
(JASON’S POV:)
“How did you get this number?” Jason says gruffly into his phone, sticking it in the crux of his shoulder as he mashes away at the tiny controller-buttons.
“Jason,” Dick complains, his dramatic sigh sounding tinny over the shitty speakers. “I wouldn’t have to get new burners if you would stop blocking me.”
“If you’d stop being annoying I wouldn’t block you,” Jason replies, smirking as Danny snorts from his position on the ground, leaning against Jason’s legs. “What d’you want now?”
Dick hesitates—his ‘bad news’ kind of hesitate—and Jason sits up slightly, accidentally jostling Danny who immediately pauses their game and turns a bit to scan his face before arching an eyebrow and jerking a thumb out to the side away from the couch as if to ask, want me gone? Jason shakes his head easily, sitting back again; content to wait for Dick to get his words back, which surprisingly doesn’t take long at all.
“Little Wing…” he starts, voice low and slow. “They just found Danny dumped just outside Crime Alley. He was shot walking home from work, they’re thinking mugging gone wrong. I’m sorry.”
“What?” Jason barks, probably too loud due to how Danny jumps then tries to hide it; he clearly decides to give Jason some space to talk as Danny shoots him a small smile then swiftly flees into the kitchen. “Dick, that’s not possible.”
“I know you liked him, Jay, but—”
“That’s not fucking possible, Dickhead, because he’s been right beside me all day. We both had tonight off so we spent the evening on the couch.”
Dick is silent, only the sound of his breathing coming through the speakers and Jason scrubs a tired hand over his face.
“Same shit as last time?”
“DNA’s a match,” Dick says quietly then sighs. “Whatever’s going on, there’s no way this kid could have done anything to deserve this.”
Jason grunts in agreement, nudging the controller beside him out of the way with his foot as he levers himself up off the couch with a groan.
“I’ve gotta go but… check on Danny, please,” Dick murmurs and Jason rolls his eyes, about to snipe something sarcastic back when Dick speaks again. “I’m just… worried, about how this might affect him. Knowing that someone out there is cloning you against your will—and that another someone is hunting them down and brutalizing them.”
Jason takes a long, slow breath; agreeing with the sentiment but not willing to voice it. “Got a spotter for tonight?”
Dick snorts at the phrase, an older code meant for unsecured lines and/or prying eyes and ears. “Damian’s with me, wanted to practise those new moves I taught him.”
Wanted to practise those new neutralizing strikes, more like.
Jason grunts again then hangs up halfway through Dick’s next sentence without saying goodbye. The phone immediately buzzes once, twice, a third time with messages—all from Dick—and Jason snickers not unkindly as a few more notifications come in then taper off.
Setting his phone on a side table nearby to prevent distractions—and/or accidentally startling Danny again—Jason makes his way into the kitchen and finds it empty. He checks the hallway closet, both bedrooms, the bathroom, and then circles back to the kitchen and living room to make sure Danny’s not just hiding.
Like searching for a cat, Jason thinks to himself. So check all the common-sense places first, then go crazy with the weird ones.
He searches the whole apartment top to bottom—literally. Inside all the cupboards, even the ones Danny’s too big to fit in; under the bed and couch, and the desks and tables; and in the wardrobe in Danny’s room that they now share. He even opens up the ceiling panels to make sure he doesn’t overlook anything.
There’s one more place Danny could be, and Jason fights a slight fit of panic at the thought that his roommate might have vanished without a trace the second Jason let eyes off him. He locks the front door behind him as he leaves, placing one of their spares under the doormat just in case Danny gets back before he does, and heads down the hallway towards the roof access stairs. As soon as he’s reached the end of the hall, he lets out a bit-off huff of relief; there’s a small chunk of metal, an old mangled thing from one of Danny’s experiments, wedged into the frame to keep the door open—making sure it stays like that so he can get back into the building.
His favourite thing to do is watch Gotham ‘breathe’, and says it’s because you can’t see the stars through the smog. Next best thing, he’d said in one of those first few weeks of living together with a wistful look on his face as he stared out the kitchen window, watching people hustling by on the streets below. Even the cacophonous sounds of angry honking and screeching brakes can’t wipe away his oddly serene smile.
Jason pushes into the stairwell, double-checking it doesn’t slam closed behind him and the metal chunk stays in place, and makes his way up the remaining two flights of stairs to the access door; through the small window in the door, he can see Danny leaning up against the brick retaining wall surrounding the roof’s edge, head hanging low as his shoulders rise and fall with deliberate slowness.
He lets his boots scuff against the concrete for a few steps until he’s close enough to reach the handle and walks out into the bleary darkness, stray bits of loose gravel crunching under his feet.
“Hey,” Danny murmurs, [...]
to be continued...