Work Text:
1.
Jason almost didn't spot them at first, a figure sitting on the edge of one of the tallest buildings in Crime Alley. Their shoes lightly kicking as they leaned dangerously far over the edge. Jason grappled up to the top of the building. Whoever this was wouldn't be the first person who saw no other way out of a truly shitty situation.
Jason made a lot of noise as he walked over and sat next to the potential jumper, grapple still in hand just in case. The stranger looked surprised, then smiled at Red fucking Hood before looking back over the city below them.
They both sat in silence for a moment, the stranger's shoes still idly kicking, Jason cataloguing his appearance. Pale skin, male, about Jason's age, tall, thin, baggy but new-ish clothes, relaxed posture. Jason finally decided to break the silence, "Nice view."
The stranger laughed, "I guess so, though I was told it's better from higher up. And from downtown too, it's not the same without all the traffic and streetlights."
It was true, nothing beat the view from one of the skyscrapers downtown. "The lights all turn into twinkling stars," Jason murmured.
"So I've been told." He didn't have a Gotham accent, Jason noted.
Jason couldn't help a short laugh as he tucked his grapple away. "Who told you?"
"A little birdy." The stranger turned and winked at Jason, like he wasn't an infamous crime lord on the FBI's most wanted list.
Jason barked another laugh, charmed by his audacity. "I'm Red Hood."
"I know," the stranger assured. Then he twisted in place and offered his hand, "Danny."
Jason took the hand and shook, briefly distracted by the sense of deja vu that came with it. "So, what made you move out to Gotham?"
Danny laughed, "What gave it away?"
"Besides the accent? How about just how friendly you are?"
Danny laughed again, then replied, "Gotham U. Got a full ride scholarship and… well… a good friend was from here." Danny turned wistful as he spoke about his friend, his gaze turning back to the lights below.
"This the same friend who told you the city lights twinkle like stars?"
Danny's voice grew soft, longing, mournful, "Yeah. He really loved this city."
"What was his name?"
"Rob, his name was Rob. He loved parkour and climbed onto rooftops to watch the lights before… the accident. The kind you don't really recover from, just find a new normal. He had to move, all the way to, well… not my hometown exactly. Y'see there's this river, my town on one side, his on the other. We met shortly after he moved, Rob was fifteen and I was barely sixteen. I had crossed over to visit some friends, and we got along great! I showed him around, introduced him to my friends, warned him about the jerks and places to avoid, all that good stuff.
"I was always over there visiting as often as I could get away with after that. Showing him the ropes, listening to his stories, hanging out. Eventually I realized it was a crush and maybe I'm not as straight as I thought I was and… we started dating." Danny lapsed into silence then, eyes distant as he stared at the city.
Jason couldn't help noticing Danny had only referred to Rob in the past tense. "What happened to him?"
Danny shook his head before turning to look at Jason. "I don't know. I went to go visit one day and he was just… just gone. I asked around, but no one knew where he went."
Jason couldn't help wincing, the not knowing must be the worst. "That really sucks. But hey, there's still hope. Maybe he just moved back to Gotham."
Danny snorted and looked away, "No, I don't think he did. But thanks anyway. It was really nice of you to stop and listen, I know how busy you guys must be."
"Don't sweat it, we need breaks from time to time too." It felt weird to refer to himself as part of the various Bats 'n' Birds, but he knew what Danny meant and it wasn't worth the effort to correct him. Especially when the situation was too complicated to bother explaining to someone that with any luck Red Hood would never meet again.
"Well this has been fun and all, but I should get to bed, class in the morning and all that." Danny tipped forward.
Jason panicked and grabbed the guy by the back of his shirt. Danny let out a garbled choking noise as he fell back onto the roof. Jason quickly tipped himself over the edge of the roof, no need for him to stick around. Danny was still moving, he'd be fine.
2.
Jason hadn't really thought about Danny since that one time meeting, not for a few weeks. Then he ran into Danny again. On top of another building, this one a bit taller and a bit outside Hood's territory. Danny was sitting on the edge again, idly watching the traffic below. Unlike their previous encounter, Danny was sitting cross-legged, his chin resting on his hands, elbows on knees, shoulders curled in, back hunched. Jason once again made sure to make plenty of noise as he approached, sitting right next to Danny. The other man didn't even look up, just heaved out a huge, world weary sigh.
"That bad, huh?"
"I'm regretting one of my class choices," Danny said morosely.
"Which one?"
"Shakespeare studies."
"What's so bad about that?" Some of Jason's disdain managed to leak through the modulator.
"Everything," Danny said wearily, then quickly course corrected. "I mean, nothing!" He let his hands and head fall, sighed once again, then rocked back into a more upright position. "Look, I figured I'd just get my English requirements out of the way this year, right? And since I've already got my associates I get a lot more interesting choices for my electives and… and I thought I wouldn't hate Shakespeare this time around."
"If you've hated it in the past, why think now would be different?"
"It's… well… Rob told me Shakespeare is all dick jokes and action scenes."
"Yeah, it is," Jason agreed. "Once you get past how the language has evolved it's just dick jokes and sword fights all the way through, when it's not devastating insults. For the comedies anyway."
"For the comedies!" Danny threw his hands in the air. "That's the problem, Shakespeare is kinda known for writing tragedies. And don't get me started on the language problem, that's the biggest stumbling block for a reason! It's like I've run into a wall and all the help Rob gave me back in high school has run out." Danny went back to petulantly resting his chin on his hands while pouting down at Gotham.
"I'm guessing you're not an English major."
"Mechanical engineering."
Jason winced, "Ouch. Yeah, trying to wade through Elizabethan English is going to be torture for you. Having to study the politics surrounding the tragedies like Macbeth or King Lear or any of his historical stuff is going to make this really hard."
"I'm considering dropping the class and taking something else during summer school," Danny admitted. "I'm running out of time to drop the class without it affecting my GPA, but the other problem is I'm not actually failing the class. I can afford to scrape by with a C since it's not one of my major's classes, it's just… hard."
"Which is worse, sticking with this class or taking a summer course?"
Danny winced, "Okay, that's fair. Just… ugh! It's hard."
"And when you manage to make it through the other side with a passing grade it'll feel good to have stuck with your goals. But uh… in the future if you need more English classes stick with something related to your major, like writing a research paper or debate. Don't you STEM types have to write tons and tons of research papers?"
"Yeah, yeah I probably should've. It's just, I saw the Shakespeare studies and immediately thought of Rob. He would've loved to take that class."
Jason nodded, "That's very sweet, actually. I'm sure Rob would be proud of you for trying."
"He'd call me a dumbass for making such a stupid decision when I need to learn to write a proper research paper anyway."
Jason couldn't help laughing, Rob sounded like a proper Alley kid from the way Danny described him. On that note, "Yeah, but he'd call you even more of a dumbass for just quitting the moment things got a little hard. You made this dumbass decision, don't make it worse by half assing it."
Danny laughed, "Yeah, yeah that is something he'd say." He laughed a bit more before calming down, smiling down at the twinkling lights below them. "You're right, I should stick with it. Ancients know the tutors are making fun of me already, but if I quit that just makes me bad at English and a quitter."
"Quitting itself isn't always bad, sometimes you're the frog in boiling water and you gotta jump out. It's just knowing when you should quit and when you should fight that's hard."
Danny sighed again, gentler this time, almost fondly. "Ain't that the truth?"
The pair lapsed into silence after that, both watching the city blink and twinkle under them.
Eventually Danny stood up, "Well I should get back to it, that essay isn't going to write itself."
"You came out here to procrastinate your essay?"
"I came out here to clear my head. You just said a wise man knows when to quit, I wasn't getting anywhere and needed to stop staring at a blinking cursor for a bit," Danny defended snippily.
"Fair enough." Jason tipped his helmet slightly towards Danny, conceding the point. He had the sudden desire to follow Danny home, offer to help him with his essay, tutor him for the rest of the class even. That wouldn't work, Red Hood was far too busy to be tutoring some random college student.
"Thanks," Danny said sarcastically. Then his voice softened, "Have a good night." He waved as he hopped back onto the roof proper, then sauntered over to the roof access.
Jason figured Danny'd be fine from there and tipped himself over the edge to be on his own merry way. Though he did wonder why Danny was on top of an apartment complex on the Burnley side of the Crime Alley border, shouldn't he be in the Gotham U dorms? Well, he did say he already had an associates, he probably doesn't have to live in the dorm. Though why any student would choose a commute that far was beyond him. Any money saved on rent would end up being spent on the commute.
Well, it's not Jason's problem. So long as Danny wasn't hurting anyone he could live his life however he wanted.
3.
It was several more weeks before Jason saw Danny again, once more sitting on the edge of a roof. Jason had been running around Old Gotham chasing down leads and had stopped by the Clocktower since he was in the area, on his way out he noticed the figure across the street. Unlike before Danny wasn't staring down at the lights, but up at the Clocktower.
Jason plopped gracelessly next to Danny, looking up at the Clocktower. He already knew there were no outward hints Babs lived there, and there were enough secret entrances there should be no hints the Bats or Birds of Prey would often stop by. Then again, Bats often chose breaking and entering over going through proper entrances, even secret ones.
"This was one of Jay's favorite views," Danny said softly.
"Jay?" Jason asked, the modulator hiding his surprise. "You got another friend from Gotham?"
"Huh?" Danny blinked and looked over at Jason confused, then he blushed and looked away, down at the bustling streets below. "No, it's uh… I was talking about Rob. Back where he came from he wasn't the only Rob, so he went by his middle initial as a nickname."
"What'd it stand for?" Jason asked before he could think about it. Robert was a pretty common name, but a middle name would make finding this mystery kid a bit easier. So Jason was curious and was treating Danny's friend like a cold case, sue him.
Danny shrugged, "Dunno, never asked."
"Let me guess, you didn't ask about his last name either."
Danny rolled his head to give Jason the most deadpan stare over his shoulder, "We were sophomores in high school, we really didn't care. Besides that, why do you care? Trying to find him?"
Jason shrugged, "I'm curious."
"Well I don't think either of us are ever going to find out," Danny said bitterly, going back to watching traffic below them.
Jason felt like an asshole, this wasn't a case, and even if so Danny was just a civilian with a friend who's been missing for years. "Sorry." The modulator made the apology fall flat.
Danny sighed, "No, sorry, you're trying to help."
"Yeah, but you didn't ask for help."
"No, no I didn't." They let the silence sit after that, just watching the city bustle below them. "I feel stupid, still being hung up on him so long later. He was my first heartbreak, you know? I had dated before, but it was a mutual break up. With Rob I didn't even get to say goodbye."
Jason nodded, the not knowing was always the real killer. It's part of why Bruce always had a cold case or two he had as background work, to give closure to families. Jason thought it was just another sign that Bruce had no life. "So tell me more about Rob, all I know is he liked being high up and his favorite author was Shakespeare."
"I think his actual favorite was Jane Austen, he loved Pride and Prejudice and Emma."
Jason nodded, "A man of taste." Then he cringed under his helmet, Rob probably died when he vanished, he never became a man.
"Guess so, my friend Sam argues that Mary Shelley is the queen of gothic romance and anyone who likes Austen is just a preppy poser."
Jason couldn't help laughing at that, "Well he's not entirely wrong, Mary Shelley is definitely the queen of gothic romance, but Austen wasn't writing gothic romance so that's like arguing apples make terrible steaks."
"Isn't the saying apples and oranges?" Danny asked incredulously, though he was smiling.
"Who says we have to limit ourselves to what other people say?"
"Sure, sure, make up whatever saying you feel like, freedom is a boulder tumbling down a hillside."
"Poor Sisyphus," Jason said flatly.
Danny burst into laughter again.
4.
It had been a long, rainy night so far. Jason was in the area, so he decided to go visit his favorite grotesque as a way to calm down before schlepping back to Crime Alley. Imagine his surprise when he found someone else already sitting under it.
"Danny."
"Red Hood."
"What uh… how'd you even get up here?" Grotesques, like gargoyles, were more often on the side of a building rather than something stable like a roof.
"Parkour, I told you Jay liked it. I do too, he actually gave me a lot of advice back when we met. Well, more like criticized me a lot. Roasted me until I told him to teach me better so he would shut up."
"Yeah? Were you being an idiot that deserved getting roasted?"
"Shut up, ancients!" Danny scowled at him from where he was sitting curled up under the grotesque, knees by his ears. "What are you doing here anyway?"
Jason shrugged, "Patrol."
"Uh huh, and seeing someone hanging off the side of a building didn't have you thinking I was a potential jumper… again."
Jason didn't even dignify that with a response, mostly because he didn't want to admit he hadn't seen Danny until after he arrived.
"Maybe I should pick up smoking, you Bats don't think the guy smoking on a roof is about to jump."
"Don't, it's a nasty habit and hard to kick."
Danny nodded, "Rob said the same thing." He looked around at the grotesque he was curled up under. "I've been trying to find all the places he used to talk about, I'm pretty sure this was his favorite grotesque."
Jason just nodded, not about to admit the same. This one was a bit hard to get to due to height, but everything else about it made it the perfect place to hide. Mostly the fact it was on a little platform and actually had room to curl up under. Well, for a child anyway, Danny looked awkward half sticking out and getting soaked. "So, you know it's a grotesque?"
"Yeah, it's not a gargoyle if it's not attached to the gutters. Something about mouthwash?"
"Gargoyle and gargle come from the same root word and refers to the sound a throat makes," Jason supplied.
Danny made a finger gun at Jason, "Yeah, that. Must be some kinda Gotham thing to know that."
"Well we are the city with the highest capita of gargoyle to building," Jason bullshitted. Even among the vigilantes few people cared about the difference, at least in the day-to-day stuff. The others only got pedantic when they were trying to be annoying. "So, Rob have a favorite gargoyle too?"
"Of course!" Danny leaned towards Jason and cupped his hand like he was about to tell a secret, "Don't tell the big guy, but he liked the gargoyle way better. I found him ages ago." Danny reached up and pet the grotesque's arm. "He couldn't hide under the gargoyle like this guy, even if he fit about as well as I do before… before."
It was sounding more and more like this was Danny's way of getting closure, obsessing over his missing friend for a bit and then letting go when he went back home after getting his degree.
The pair of them lapsed into another comfortable silence. Until Danny looked up at Jason, "So uh… back to patrol?"
"Not yet."
Danny looked around at the miserable rain and the otherwise empty area. "Why? Don't you have muggings to go stop or something? Bank robberies? Maniacs with weird gasses?"
"I'm curious to see how you parkour down in this rain."
Danny's eyes narrowed at Jason, "You're sounding an awful lot like the other Bats, always escorting me to safety."
"I'm not a Bat," Jason said quickly, crossing his arms. "But just out of curiosity, how many have you met?"
"Wouldn't you like to know, weather boy?" Danny tipped dangerously far.
Jason jolted, grappler in hand in an instant and halfway to jumping from the roof before he realized Danny was fine, simply leaned forward to crawl out from where he'd squeezed under the grotesque.
Danny gave Jason a funny look as he stood, "Well, you offering me a ride or what?"
"You made it up here just fine."
"You nearly had a heart attack just from watching me stand up, you'd probably keel over if I did get down on my own."
Jason rolled his eyes (and head), "Fine, but only because I don't want to watch your dumb ass go splat."
5.
It was over a month before Jason saw Danny again. The air was downright frigid, the kind of night that had everyone's breaths clouding in their faces and frost on every window come morning. The kind of night that had most people staying indoors rather than suffer shivering. And yet there was a figure sitting on the edge of a dilapidated apartment building in Crime Alley. When he got closer he was relieved to see they were at least bundled up in a puffy jacket. Scarf and hat too, possibly even insulated pants. It wasn't until he actually sat down next to the figure and got his first look at their face that he realized it was Danny.
Jason couldn't help a snort, "You expecting snow?"
"In a city with a villain named Mr. Freeze? Always."
"Fair enough." They both lapsed into silence after that, eyes idly tracing the rare cars that drove past and the girls working a corner a couple blocks down. "So, what has you out here tonight? Shouldn't you be cracking down for finals?"
"I needed a break from cracking down for finals. Clear my head and all that."
"Shakespeare again?"
"Engineering Modeling and Tolerancing, actually."
"Fuck, just the name about gave me a headache."
"3D modeling is hard! The program was built by someone who never had to actually use it, I swear."
"Yeah, that does sound tough. And you probably don't have any choice on the program, school computers and all that."
"So long as it exports in the right format it doesn't matter so much, but at this point it's too late to switch to a different program. I'd have to learn all the shortcuts and a new UI and… just ugh. It's faster to just stick with it to the end of the semester, I already have some recommendations on better programs to try."
Jason nodded. "Shakespeare doing better?"
What little of Danny's face that was visible flushed faintly, "Yeah, if the teacher has pity while grading my last essay and I do well on the final I might even manage a B."
Jason was so proud of Danny, strangely so. "Glad you didn't give up?"
"Yeah. I just wish Rob were here to see it." Danny sniffled, then started talking before Jason could get a word in. "I wish I could've brought him to Gotham, taken him to see his family again. He really missed them after… after the accident."
"He got removed from his family?" Jason asked.
"That… yeah. Yeah, he got… removed."
It made sense, an accident that left Rob forever changed could cause an investigation, especially in an area as poor as Crime Alley. Parents there are basically always under scrutiny if the least thing happened to a kid. Sending Rob all the way to Illinois seemed excessive, but it wasn't uncommon for a kid to end up the next state over while in foster care. Gotham was pretty close a to couple state borders, and a couple more were just a short trip through a bottleneck. It definitely wouldn't be a stretch if Rob had family in Illinois to stay with.
"Have you… seen his family?" Jason asked carefully.
"Yeah, a few of them. I keep running into them."
"Do they know what happened to him?"
Danny glanced over Jason's way, then shook his head.
And… well… fuck. That was messed up. Surely Rob's disappearance is already a case, especially if his family was kicking up a fuss. Still, it wouldn't hurt to look into it.
"It just doesn't seem fair," Danny sighed. "He always wanted to go to college someday, get a degree, open a bunch of charities…"
Wait, what?
"I suppose I'm in the same boat, since I can't go be an astronaut after my accident."
Hold up, what the fuck?
"It's just, I'm still doing the whole college thing and he's just… gone." Danny made a poof motion with one of his bemittened hands.
"You had an accident?" Jason asked absently, mind spinning over everything Danny just dropped on him.
"Huh? Oh uh… yeah. Got a bit electrocuted, I'm fine now but it left a bit of nerve damage that means I'll never get cleared to join NASA. Not as an astronaut anyway. But I can make the tech that gets others into space, be mission control."
"Oh." That was news to Jason, then again it's not like he and Danny were friends who saw each other regularly. Still, how did Danny get electrocuted? Wait, didn't electrocuted mean specifically that Danny died? It's a portmanteau of electricity and execution. No wait, people used it to just mean an electric shock all the time.
"I'm thinking about going into astrophysics, but I figured I'd start with something I know I can do, get a job making things for NASA and then go back to school for astrophysics."
"Sure, solid plan." Jason was just realizing how little Danny had talked about himself, he knew more about Rob's hopes and dreams than Danny's. Jason shook his head, focus. "What did you say about Rob wanting to open charities?"
"What? Oh, right, that. Yeah, Jay grew up poor and saw how little help there was at the time, he wanted to give back and help in real, tangible ways after he grew up."
"So he wanted to get an English degree and use that to somehow make enough money to open charities?"
"Uh… I guess so," Danny said a bit uneasily. "I mean, part of that would be stuff like debate and persuasion, maybe he thought he could convince some rich people to donate? I mean, all of that were his plans before the accident, it all kinda went out the window after. Yanno?" Danny laughed a little, sounding forced.
"He didn't think he could go to college because he was disabled?"
"He kinda thought his whole life was over," Danny eventually murmured. Then he suddenly twisted and stood up, then hopped down onto the roof proper. "It's late and I'm freezing. You must be too, no matter how insulated that suit is." Before Jason could respond, Danny was already striding for the roof access door.
"Right, it's freezing," Jason murmured. He should get moving again, the cold was definitely creeping through his layers since he stopped.
Why did this Rob kid sound so much like Jason before his death?
+1
Jason had dove head first into looking up as much about Danny as he could. Where he came from, what his socials when he was in high school looked like, who he hung out with, his grades, his medical history, and everything Jason could track since Danny moved to Gotham. What came up was concerning in its own way, but what was downright suspicious was there was not a single mention of a Rob or Jay in any of Danny's socials. Plenty about his friends, lots of his classmates, like any kids they all practically lived online while in high school, and yet this mysterious Rob didn't appear at all. Not even a mention or hint. Jason theorized it's wasn't the foster system's ban on posting a foster child's face to the internet.
There were too many coincidences.
Really, Jason had been lying to himself since the grotesque. Back when he was Robin, Bruce had even said Jason was the only kid he knew with a favorite gargoyle. It seemed impossible, his mind rejecting the possibility purely out of self defense.
He went looking for Danny. It was late afternoon on a weekend, he could be anywhere in Gotham (or out, his mind whispered with a strange surety). It shouldn't have been a surprise when he found Danny ordering a chili dog from Jason's favorite food truck. He stomped up in all his Red Hood glory, feeling lost.
Danny smiled when he caught sight of Jason and gave a little wave. "Hey, Hood. You hungry? This place supposedly makes the best chili dogs."
"I know, it's my favorite." The guy working the counter gave him a strange look, but Jason ignored him and kept going. "Hey, got a minute?"
"Sure."
Jason led Danny off, heading to a secluded alley where they could talk in private.
Danny sat himself on a stoop and took his first bite of chili dog. "This is actually really good. I'm usually more a burger 'n' fries kinda guy, but this hits the spot in its own way." He was eating a Jason Special, the kind of chili dog Jason ordered while on patrol because he suddenly had money to burn and thought getting one topped with everything was the height of decadence. Bruce still paid Sal to keep it on the menu. Jason didn't have mixed feelings about that at all.
Jason decided to just cut to the chase, "Is Rob short for Robin?"
Danny paused right before taking his next bite, then lowered his dog. "What?"
"This Rob you keep talking about, at first I thought it was short for Robert, it's a really common name. But you keep showing up in the places I used to patrol, talking about the things I like."
Danny kept staring up at Jason, his dog now cradled in his lap.
"When we first met you said 'crossed over' to go visit Rob, I thought it was a bit weird of a way to talk about going to Elmerton-"
"How do you-"
"… but you weren't talking about crossing a bridge over Sugar Tree River, were you?" Jason continued, not letting Danny interrupt him. "You were talking about the River Styx, weren't you?"
Danny stared up at Jason as he started to pace, his mouth open but not making a sound.
"And your parents are ghost experts, it stands to reason you'd understand it at least a little. Also I talked to some of the other Bats, the ones you've run into. They said you seemed awfully interested in the past Robins. None of us talk, so nobody thought it was odd until I started asking questions, but you asked Nightwing about handing the mantle down and you asked Red what his predecessor was like, and you asked Batman about turning Robin into an institution. Everyone else you just talked about your friend, like you thought you couldn't get anything about me out of them."
"You?" Danny whispered.
Jason stopped pacing, standing diagonal to Danny. "I'm the only kid in Gotham with a favorite grotesque, most don't even bother with the difference."
Danny tossed aside his chili dog and stood up, pulling his gloves off as he stepped up to Jason. He pulled Jason's helmet… well not exactly off so much as through Jason's head. Danny did the same with the domino next, pulling the whole thing off without any of the glue peeling up Jason's skin. Danny's cool hands were cupping Jason's face.
"Jason? Is it really you?"
Jason swallowed thickly, eyes closed, unable to take the raw hope in Danny's eyes as they studied his face. "I don't remember being dead."
"Is that why you vanished? You were revived?"
"I died, I was revived, but I don't remember being dead. I barely remember dying, and coming back is mostly a blur. I don't remember you."
Danny laughed wetly, "I'll live. Well, not really, but at least now I know what happened."
Jason nodded, eyes still closed.
"Jason, look at me. Just for a moment."
He did, slowly opening his eyes to see Danny smiling brightly at him. Then a bright light washed over him and Danny changed. His skin was still warm and pale, but looked much darker compared to his silvery white hair and neckpiece, his eyes a piercing, glowing green.
And this was familiar. This face, this costume. It wasn't memory, not quite, but it was the feeling of deja vu again. These cold, cold, cold hands against his face as these green, green, green eyes gazed at him over a bright, bright, bright smile.
"You're a hero," Jason breathed out.
Danny laughed again, "I wish. I'm a glorified babysitter at best. Or not even, since there isn't a single person that glorifies me."
"Those tips you said I gave you, all about being a vigilante."
"Yeah, and boxing. Bare knuckle boxing? I mean, my gloves aren't padded so I guess it still counts. And, and you encouraged me to tell my parents. I finally did after you… you revived."
"How'd that turn out?"
"Great, they accepted me. Together Jazz and I got them all turned around, you can't call them supervillains anymore."
Jason barked a laugh, he still didn't remember but that sounded right. "God, what do we do now?"
"I tell the others you disappeared because you were revived but you don't remember. And then… maybe we try being friends?"
"I… friends… yeah. I guess I can do that."
Danny literally brightened, his glow filling up the alley they were still in.
"After finals."
"Aw, c'mon!" Danny didn't dim, his smile fighting to show through his performative frown.