#And the GIW suppressed info after that

[mutable-manifestation]

Part 2 of The Gotham Puddle Boy: Danny Fenton

Danny wasn't too concerned about getting in a car with a stranger in what may well be the crime capital of the world. 

If he got weirdo - or Dash-like - vibes he could just slip out of sight and vanish into the wind. Being half ghost made a lot of human dangers less so.

Plus, perks of being a Fenton: riding in the car with a stranger wouldn't make him nervous about their driving. No one in the world was worse at it than his dad.

So a few minutes of trading jokes and a promise of video games was all it really took to get Danny to say "sure" to going back to Tim's house. 

The car was nice, at least, and they bantered over music even as they left city limits, which Danny chose to ignore for the time being.

Around 10 minutes later they turned to approach the gates of a veritable mansion that unfortunately brought forth the memory of his first time approaching Vlad's house. 

He was silent as Tim buzzed them in, and as they crawled slowly up the driveway he took the opportunity to ask.

"You live here?”

“Yep! Bruce Wayne is my adoptive father. Welcome to Wayne Manor!"

Not long after the building’s front door was opening before they could touch the handle, with an older man in a suit greeting them. "Master Tim, welcome home. I see you've brought a guest."

A hand clapped down on his shoulder as he was introduced, "Danny this is Alfred, Alfred this is Danny. We'll be in my room playing Damned."

"It is a pleasure to meet a friend of Tim, Mister Danny."

"Ah, you too. And just Danny is fine, Mister Alfred."

Alfred smiled and secured a promise that they'd be down to at least stretch their legs and eat something after an hour had passed before Tim was ushering them through the building to his room.

Sam was a good person, but also openly hated rich people despite technically being one. Her parents, however, were a nightmare hidden behind a thin facade of civility when in public. Vlad was also a nightmare. Axion labs had been run by some tycoon and they killed their innocent dogs. Lex Luthor openly hated Superman - which would be totally understandable if it were because he never so much as glanced at Amity Park’s issues instead of because of his incredibly Xenophobic stance on any and all non-humans. All told, Danny didn’t have a good track record with -illionaires - not the adults, at least.

'...Okay, maybe I should just avoid Bruce,' he thought, settling on the floor at the foot of the bed in the enormous room they'd entered to face the gloriously massive TV while Tim booted it up.

An hour later, Alfred was knocking on the door to herd them to the dining room where he'd prepared "refreshments." It was nice to enjoy homemade food that didn't fight back for once - he hadn't eaten at Sam or Tucker's house in a while and takeout wasn't quite the same. Even if they were unfortunately healthy snacks - the strange slices he'd learned were apricot were surprisingly good.

Alfred had them stretch their legs again two hours later - this time snackless - and Tim decided to give him a tour. The house was immaculate and the kitchen would have made the Lunch Lady greener than normal with envy.

It was also empty.

"Don't you have a bunch of siblings?" he asked on the way back to the room.

"Yeah, but they're all out doing their own things until lunch." He stopped just after closing the door behind him to grin at him. "Speaking of which. Can you stay for lunch?"

Danny blinked at the sudden manic energy starkly contrasting with the incredibly normal question. 

"Uh, I don't have to be back at the hotel until like 5, so, sure?"

"How do you feel about playing a little prank?"

Danny grinned, "What did you have in mind?"

---------------------------------

POV Jason

Jason’s patience was running incredibly thin. He had been looking at tubes of water for hours while Bruce kept asking variations of the same question. His only consolation was that Duke took up half of the attention or he might have punched him by now.

The only reason he even showed up was that he’d been told there was potential Lazarus water in Gotham - or something similar. But after hours upon hours of tests by the computer and him and Duke staring at it he was certain; that was water. Bruce had lost it.

Just as he braced himself to try and knock some sense into Bruce, Alfred came to fetch them to lunch. 

‘Finally,’ he thought, power-walking to the exit.

“I’ll be up in a minute, I want to set up one more scan to run while we’re eating,” Bruce threw after them.

“It had better only be a minute.” He paused to glower ominously over his shoulder, simmering with rage at all of the wasted time - and using that to smother the concern trying to bubble up.

“Finally,” Duke said once they were out of the batcave. “I thought we were going to be in there forever!”

Jason ignored him as he fished out his phone.

“Oh hey, group text from Tim; he has a guest that fits the family theme so he’s going to try and prank Bruce to see if he’s actually ‘lost the plot.’”

Jason grimaced, “Great, so instead of a productive lunch we’ll be playing house plus ‘guest that definitely isn’t the former Jason Todd, just a very similarly looking friend of the family’ for an hour.” He ran a hand down his face, sighing in frustration. “Count me ou-”

He froze in place, every muscle flinching to a stop. 

“Uh, Jason?”

“Quiet.” He hissed, eyes darting to the stairs as voices began to drift their way. 

Every hair stood on end as he stood there, something in his blood echoing dissonant signals of danger-run-hide-flee-don’t move-stay still-stop-stop-stop even as his conscious mind demanded he confront the problem head-on. But he couldn’t move - frozen as surely as if he’d been hit by one of Freeze’s ice rays.

As the stranger came into view his mind gave up on the danger signals, finally settling on don’t move don’t move don’t move even as near-unbearable levels of anxiety bubbled up in his gut. He barely registered Tim standing next to the guy as his head turned to stare him down, Jason’s eyes widening and shoulders hunching now that this… person’s full attention was on him.

The person hesitated a moment at the top of the stairs before smiling.

“Hi! I’m Danny, you must be Tim’s brothers?” he chirped, voice friendly enough that the anxiety uncurled just a bit. Just enough for Jason to register Tim staring at him oddly and Duke looking between the two of them.

Tim descended the stairs, done waiting for “Danny” to take the initiative, perhaps, while Duke took his silence as a cue to give the guy his cover story.

“Just me, actually,” he said. “The name’s Duke. J here is a friend of the family.” 

“Oh, uh, nice to meet you both anyway. Sorry for crashing you guys’ lunch,” he rubbed a hand over the back of his neck sheepishly before following Tim down to their level, still smiling calmly. “My parents are in town for some engineering convention and Tim kind of rescued me from dying of boredom.”

Abruptly, Jason found himself completely calm - relaxed, even. Suspiciously so; all of the rage and frustration he’d felt ever since emerging from the Lazarus Pit was suddenly swapped out for a level of relaxation he could nearly call “Zen.” 

He would nearly suspect a meta had broken Bruce’s rules, but he was the only one to react. Tim and Duke were clearly unaffected and the guy was either one hell of an actor or had genuinely only noticed him when he saw him. 

Meaning this was potentially Lazarus related - and even that thought could not cut through the sheer tranquility he was feeling to cause panic. His thoughts, at least, were unaffected.

Also, he kind of just wanted to enjoy not being angry for the first time in ages. Sue him.

So he plastered on a Wayne-family PR smile and ended the second awkward silence of the day. 

“Don’t worry about it; any friend of Tim’s is a friend of ours, at any rate. We have maybe two more minutes before Alfred actually manages to wrangle Bruce out of his study, why don’t you fill me in on this prank.”

[halfagone]

Hey hey Halfa dear,

Idk if this thought is anything you might find interesting, feel free to do whatever with it or nothing with it, or anyone else if you publish this;

I read something probably like a decade ago now that featured someone getting letters with no return address. They would come inconsistently but they were all from the same person just kinda addressed to the whoever lived at the random address they picked. Just talking about their life.

I just remembered this idea and thought it might be an interesting plot device. Maybe this is a Danny writing them trying to process what he's going through after something ghostly, or if he graduates and decides to start traveling with Dani for a bit he writes these to process.

Or maybe, even, he gets the idea to write these letters after becoming a halfa, or any of the big wild events of his life. And like he doesn't include directly identifying info, but he vents about what's happened, and he just writes them as ways to vent, and, well, they end up being delivered to a bat. Idk which bat. That's up to you. (I do think it's something that would grab Jason tho, his dramatic Jane Austen loving ass would love this shit)

I think for like why Danny starts, it could be that like Jazz is trying to get him to do something to take care of his mental health, so if he's not willing to do therapy or talk about things, suggests things like writing a letter to no one, and well, he does in a moment of needing to let out his emotions some how, and then impulsively like mails it and feels lighter, so he just... keeps doing it.

I just think this has the potential for so much angst and also, shenanigans as the bat on the other end like desperately tries to find the person writing these letters. Esp if there's like a tech blackout for Amity, so like traditional mail is the only real way information can get out of Amity, and since he'd have to be dropping it stamped in a mailbox and not just in his own, since this relies on not having a return address, no reason to suspect this letter is from Danny or that it contains anything they're trying to suppress

Okay now that I've dropped off this idea with you im gonna go try to get some sleep, 💜💜💜💜

HOHOHO Okay... Possibly big brain moment? We'll have to wait and see? But! Danny has been living in the Ghost Zone ever since a really nasty incident (could be with his parents or the GIW, whatever your imagination prefers) so that he can heal and gather his strength. (He's an adult here, he doesn't have to worry about things like school and mandatory reporting.) And while he's in the Infinite Realms he ends up going into what is essentially a black market that's filled with, like, mortal magical items. (It's black market because if Walker hears about it, they'd all have to scatter like the rats getting found in the kitchen from Ratatouille.) He finds this mailbox, if you will, and it looks like something someone just ripped off a post from a suburban street and just kept for some reason? But the dealer insists that it's magical, cursed even! It doesn't have much of a function, though. As far as they've come up with, the mailbox just burns whatever mail you toss in there, so it's really just useless. Cursed! But useless.

But Jazz has been insisting a lot recently that he should really do something about his mental health. He needs to unload his feeling somehow, and no, punching the first person closest to you is not the way to do it! So Danny's like, hey! One man's trash is another man's treasure, I'll take it!

So Danny gets this mailbox set up, and he writes his letters and, just for kicks, writes these really weird, obscure no-context phrases on the front of the letter every time before he tosses it in the mailbox to- presumably!- be burned to ash. it can be anything from "potato salad" to "blood of my enemies". Danny doesn't really put too much thought into it, he just thought it was a fun little thing he gets to do, to lighten the mood you know?

But then Jason gets these letters. The first letter he receives in his mailbox doesn't have a stamp, doesn't have a return address, and it's not even addressed to him, but he thinks one of the rival crime lords must have sent it to him because the outside says, "YOU ARE NEVER SAFE."

Obviously he has to take it seriously, so he reads it even if it's not technically addressed to him. And at first he thinks someone is just fucking with him. Maybe Damian and Tim somehow managed to work together to write this mean-spirited prank? He tries not to think too deeply into it, but he does try to do research on some of the topics the letter brings up and he can't find anything??

And the letters keep coming. He's gotta admit some of the shenanigans the letters mention would be really good for a novel, and Jason can get so engrossed in the descriptions and he always gets a good laugh at the snarks. But then he gets a letter that has no words written on it, just a little, cartoonish heart scribbled on top. Jason is a little surprised, but he's not not going to read it, you know? So he reads the letter, and he finds himself quickly falling in love with this imaginary, mysterious person that's naming everything they love in their life, trying to show appreciation for the things they miss, and all the things they wish they still had. And fuck if Jason's not bawling his eyes out by the end of it.

Danny might have sent these letters out as emotional catharsis, but Jason is seeing himself in these letters too. And maybe, just maybe, Jason can heal along the way.

Now Jason is desperate to find the other person. Because that letter was way too emotional to be a joke. Not to mention there were dried tear stains on that letter, and surely that should help them somehow! He calls in some favors and gets some magic folk on the case, only to find out that whoever is sending these letters is in the Ghost Zone. But Jason knows they're alive (er, well, alive and dead, but it still counts!) and he just really wants to know if they're safe and well-taken care of, and are they lonely? Do they need help?

So he gets the magic-user helper to... fix up his mailbox a little. Obviously, there must be a connection of some kind between this mailbox and wherever the other guy is sending his letters through. The letters don't follow him to every safehouse or anything, just this one. By the end of the week, Jason has a huge packet, filled with all sorts of emotions and admissions, and just so much affection (no, he's not in love, stop laughing Dick it's not true).

Danny goes to open his mailbox to send through another letter and just screams his head off when he sees the manila folder on the other side.

When he realizes he's been sending someone all his rants and rambles and one too many vents, he's absolutely mortified.

I loved this so much, thank you for sharing this. I hope you did get some rest!