#dp snippet

[ladylynse]

A DP ficlet for @schwoopsiedoodles. The prompt was technically 'New Years' but, uh, that was more of a starting point than a focal point with this one.

Phantasmagoria [FFN | AO3]: At first blush, the new year seemed like it would start off normally enough, but Danny should really know better than to expect normal by now. Still, this was not what people usually meant when they talked about a new year yielding infinite possibilities.

-|-

“Happy New Year, little brother,” Jazz said as she wrapped Danny in a hug. Fireworks burst on the TV, some celebration they’d switched to just before midnight, but Jazz clearly didn’t think that was loud enough to cover her next words because she lowered her voice before adding, “We made it through another Christmas, and we made it through last year, so we’ll make it through this one, too.”

“Happy New Year, you two!” Maddie said as she joined them and turned the affair into a group hug, and then Jack was on the other side, wrapping them all in a bear hug, and Danny—

Danny was being squeezed too tightly from every side now, and he was getting hot enough and feeling trapped enough that not phasing out of everyone’s grip was more of an active decision than what should be the tangible default of remaining in place. Jazz’s hair was tickling his nose, but better the smell of her shampoo than the scent of ectoplasm from his parents’ HAZMAT suits that lingered despite the intense decontamination and washing protocols. He should say something, maybe force out a laugh or joke about Jazz not breaking into song like usual, but—

But maybe that was it.

Maybe that’s what was bugging him, why he wasn’t as happy as he should be even though he knew, objectively, that Jazz was right, that everything was as good as it ever was these days.

Jazz wasn’t singing Auld Lang Syne.

It shouldn’t bother him. It’s not like she had to sing it. She just always had; it was practically as much of a family tradition as the annual Christmas argument. She liked the song—she had for as long as he could remember—and Maddie would join in once she started. So would Jack, even though he couldn’t sing any better than he could aim.

So why skip it this year?

There was something niggling at the back of Danny’s mind, a sort of awareness that came slowly, creeping over his skin and making it crawl in the process.

He didn’t feel hot any longer, but the feeling of being trapped definitely hadn’t gone away.

Maybe that was a good thing.

That meant that whoever was doing this to him didn’t know he’d realized something was off.

This didn’t feel like the Ghost Writer. Even if he’d mercifully decided to weave his stories into reality without rhyme, Danny doubted he’d give up the background narration entirely. He liked being in control of the narrative too much.

Danny wasn’t ruling out this being a dream, though, or some other happy simulation designed to keep him under, to keep him from questioning it. Things hadn’t worked out last time when he’d been dreaming of his friends, so if this was round two of ‘keep Phantom out of things by keeping him asleep’, shifting the narrative to his family might make a sick sort of sense. It would make more sense than an attempted reality rewrite from someone like Desiree—or someone armed with something like the Reality Gauntlet.

This was too personal for that kind of thing.

“Uh, Dad?” Danny finally tried. “You can let go now.”

“I’ll never let you go,” came the response, but it wasn’t Jack’s voice, it was Sam’s, and he was smelling her shampoo now, not Jazz’s, and Tucker was sandwiching Danny between him and Sam, and—

Shouldn’t he feel sick after a transition like that? After a lack of transition like that? This was a dream, but if Nocturn or whoever it was was trying to keep him down, wouldn’t they at least make him a little dizzy? It all might have felt seamless, a shift occurring between one blink and the next, but the whiplash between what is and what was—

“Dude,” said Tucker as he released Danny and stepped back, letting Danny see that not only was he no longer in his living room but he was also no longer in his house. They were in Sam’s room, and it was decorated the same as always; nothing seemed out of place at a glance.

Then again, if this was a dream, and he thought he knew how everything looked, would anything feel out of place when he was the one imagining it in the place it was now?

This was making his head hurt.

It just didn’t hurt enough to wake him up and snap him out of this, which was annoying.

Tucker was biting his lip, but his words burst out of him a split second later. “I know this is kinda a stupid question considering everything, but are you okay?”

He really wasn’t, but fine, Danny could play along. That was easier now that Sam had let him go at Tucker’s words, which had the unnerving effect of lessening his feeling of being trapped even though he knew he was still very much trapped.

But if the shock of the transition wasn’t enough to snap him out of it, and the shock of realizing what was going on wasn’t enough, what would be?

“I’m fine,” Danny said, and Sam promptly punched Tucker in the arm, who yelped.

“What was that for?”

“Asking a stupid question,” she ground out, “that made Danny feel like he had to lie to us and say he’s fine when he’s not.” Her gaze flicked to him. “What Tucker means is that it’s okay that you’re not okay yet, but we’re going to be here for you for as long as you need us.”

Wait.

What?

Tucker blew out his breath in something that wasn’t exasperation or a sigh but something else, something closer to…regret? Jazz would do that sometimes—she said it helped her to centre herself and get her thoughts in order—but had he ever heard Tucker do it?

“Sorry,” Tuck said. “I didn’t mean are you okay okay, because obviously this being a new year doesn’t mean what happened a couple weeks ago didn’t happen. I meant it more as a sort of ‘are you okay because you suddenly seem less okay than you were ten seconds ago’ and I wanted to know if it was something I did. Or Sam!” Tucker’s eyes flicked to Sam as he quickly added, “Please don’t hit me again. That really hurts.”

Coldness pooled in Danny’s stomach again, spreading outward and freezing his lungs. It was harder than it should be to repeat, “A couple weeks ago?”

Tucker’s laugh was a little too high not to be full of nerves. “Or, like, last week, with the funerals. And Vlad.” Sam’s foot shot towards Tucker’s leg, but he was already dancing back in anticipation. “He asked!”

“What about Vlad?” Danny pressed.

Sam stopped her attack on Tucker and frowned. “What do you mean, what about Vlad?”

“See?” Tucker flung out an arm towards Danny. “That’s why I asked if he was okay!”

Sam scowled at him, but it melted away when she turned back to Danny. “Okay, I get that it probably doesn’t feel worse than what he was always trying to do, but the paperwork’s that much closer to being official now, and I just…. I don’t want to lose you. We don’t want to lose you. And if we can’t figure out some way around this….”

“We will,” said Dani’s voice from behind him.

Danny jumped before spinning to face her, the what? spilling from his lips before he could think twice about it. Danielle was in her human form but in a black T-shirt and shorts he didn’t recognize, and—

And that wasn’t all he didn’t recognize.

A far cry from Sam’s bedroom, this place was basically a white box, sharp clean lines and maybe twice the size of his bedroom back home. Not small, but not necessarily big, considering it didn’t have windows or a visible door or, well, anything.

Anything, he realized as he looked around again, except some poorly hidden cameras.

Crud.

Maybe he didn’t have to recognize this place to know where he was.

Danielle was ignoring the cameras, apparently. She must’ve seen them—Vlad had trained her and he wasn’t incompetent in that, Danny was pretty sure—but she wasn’t looking at them. “We’ll get out of here,” she said. Repeated, presumably. “I can’t tell you how, obviously, but we will.”

Danny walked over to the nearest wall, turned his hand intangible, and promptly failed to stick it through the wall.

He wasn’t surprised, considering he’d dreamed himself up what must be some luxury cell courtesy of the Guys in White, but it was really disappointing to confirm that he was aware that he was dreaming but couldn’t control it.

(This had to be a dream. Nothing except dream made sense.)

“If you keep doing that, they’re going to separate us.”

“No,” Danny said with an assurance that better suited Jazz than him as he studied the wall for what seemed to be nonexistent flaws, “they wouldn’t have risked putting us together if they didn’t want something.”

“Yeah, and giving it to them would be bad. Got that. Hence the whole ‘not telling you how we’ll get out of here’ thing.”

“Except even that tells them something.” He turned back to Dani. “It tells them you have a plan.”

“Or it tells them I want them to think I have a plan.”

“Which is still technically a plan. It’s just a poorer plan.”

“Like you’re an expert on plans.” Danny snorted, conceding her point, so Danielle continued, “All that really matters is they’re guessing. Which they are. Because they don’t know us. Not well enough, anyway. It’s going to be their downfall.”

“I hope you’re right,” he murmured.

“Of course I’m right. I’m me. Besides, I’m not spending my entire birthday locked in here.”

Danny didn’t bother to verbalize the look he sent her; even someone as dense as the GiW agents he’d run into in Amity Park would be able to interpret his confusion.

Dani rolled her eyes at him. “Fine, my chosen birthday. New year, new me. Everyone else can have resolutions. I want cake.”

Danny grinned. “Cake would—”

Alarms swallowed the rest of his words.

He jolted awake, fumbling without opening his eyes for the whatever-it-was that was making that racket so he could make it stop, and it took a precious few seconds to blink awake and remember and scramble to make sure there were no remnants of any ghostly tampering.

Nothing, as far as he could tell.

No helmet, no dust, no goo, nothing new or out of place. He was still in bed, but he was awake. The beeping had stopped by now, so maybe he had imagined it? Maybe it had simply been the last bit of a dream before it had woken him up?

Danny crawled out from under the covers so he could take a peek out the window, and he winced at the glowing green eyes of his reflection before blinking them back to blue. He really had been on edge if his powers were this close to the surface. Maybe he should head downstairs for some water and—

There was someone sitting on the roof across the street.

They were looking in his direction.

They’d probably been looking in his direction the whole time.

That wasn’t as bad as it could be, considering the things that could be explained away because this was the Fenton household, except that Danny knew the silhouette of that particular someone.

It would explain the beeping, too, though he’d never realized it was that loud.

Against his better judgement, Danny opened his bedroom window. It wasn’t particularly cold out—Jazz probably had her bedroom window cracked right now—so it wasn’t like he had to break through a seal of ice to get it open. The main reason he kept his window shut was to discourage ghosts from popping in on him, and that only worked with the polite ones. Still, mild weather or not, he hadn’t been woken by his ghost sense.

“Valerie?”

She heard him, or maybe she just saw the window opening, but either way, she called up her sled and slid almost silently through the air until she was less than three feet from him. Her visor wasn’t shielding her face, and her arms were crossed, which he was hoping to take as a good thing and not a bad thing. “How long?”

“How long what?” Even as he asked it, he realized what she must mean. Oops. She’d heard him after all. “Sorry. From the beginning. Like, the beginning beginning, not just since Technus gave you your new suit.”

Something in her expression tightened. “Please just be straight with me.”

“What? I am!”

“No, I mean—” She broke off with a frustrated growl. “Look. If you answer my questions, we can leave the past in the past. Start fresh. New chapters and all that. But if you insist on playing dumb, I have no reason to trust you—or give you the benefit of the doubt. So how long?”

“I don’t—”

“How long, Phantom?”

Oh.

“Could you, um, be a little more specific than that?”

He was waiting for the dream to shift on him again.

It didn’t.

As Valerie’s frown deepened, he realized that maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe he really had woken up. “Please?” It never hurt to be polite. In theory.

“How long has this been going on?”

She was still watching him, but there was a catch in her voice that hadn’t been there before, and it seemed real enough.

Of course, everything else had seemed real, too.

If this were a dream, his response wouldn’t matter. His response might even shift him somewhere else entirely. If this were really Valerie, though? This Valerie looked lost and was doing a poor job of hiding it behind a show of familiar anger. This Valerie—

“And how long,” she croaked, her composure crumpling entirely as her voice cracked, “is this going to keep going on?”

Wait.

“I don’t want to do this again.”

The dream—not-dream, whatever this was—did not conveniently remove him from the conversation.

“Don’t want to do what again?” he asked, even though he suspected he already knew the answer.

“I can’t keep jumping through possibilities.” The words were soft, more of a reluctant admission than anything else. “If this is you, stop it. It’s cruel even if you don’t think it is, and you always insist that you’re the good guy anyway. If it’s not you….” She swallowed. “Help me. Please. Even if you’re not my friend, be my ally. I— Our truce doesn’t have to end when this is over.”

She sounded like she meant it.

Maybe he should hope this wasn’t a dream after all, if only so he didn’t have to worry about having Valerie on his back all the time.

Then again.

If this wasn’t a dream, she’d be spitting distance from his secret even if she thought Phantom—in a feat of spectacular stupidity—was currently overshadowing Danny while under the same roof as the people who hunted him down at every opportunity.

If she were being honest about what might be an indefinite truce, though, that might not be a bad thing.

Danny wouldn’t say this in Sam’s hearing, but Valerie was a better shot than her, and having Val back him up from time to time would be beneficial in more ways than him not having to worry about her taking a shot at him.

“Indefinite truce if we get out of this alive?” he asked, offering her his hand.

She didn’t look amused at his choice of words, but she swallowed whatever scathing insult she’d wanted to spit at him and shook his hand instead.

“Great,” he said. “Meet me on the roof? I should really change for this.”

That earned him an eyeroll, but she grumbled, “Fine.”

He really did change before following her, first out of his PJs and into clothes and then transforming into Phantom, but she was waiting for him on the Ops Centre without a blaster, so that was a win.

“Thanks,” he said, even though he hadn’t really thought she’d fire at him right after being the one to call a truce. “And—please don’t shoot the questioner—can you elaborate on the whole ‘can’t keep jumping through possibilities’ thing?”

She sighed and sat down, hugging her knees and looking out at the horizon instead of at him. “It means exactly what it sounds like. Sometimes it takes longer for the shift to happen, but whenever it does, I’m somewhere else, in a new situation, and most of them aren’t pleasant.” She gave him a sidelong glance. “Case in point, finding you where I found you, because I don’t have to be a genius to figure out what’s going on there.”

Danny winced, and not just because his parents were proof that geniuses could be astoundingly blind when they weren’t looking for something. He didn’t want to get into what Valerie thought now, though. They had more important things to talk about. “I’ve been doing the same thing. The shifting between situations like it’s a dream thing.”

“If you’re going through the same thing, then which of us is dreaming?”

If Nocturn or someone like him was involved, it wasn’t necessarily one or the other. They could both be dreaming.

Or this could be something else entirely and neither of them were dreaming, since Danny wasn’t sure why Nocturn would want them both to be aware that they were dreaming when that meant they’d be actively trying to snap out of it.

Still, better that they were dreaming than some something horrendously damaging and somehow unforeseen had happened to the timeline and they were dropping through alternate realities like they were tissue paper faster than Clockwork could sort it out.

“Beats me,” Danny said, offering Valerie a grin in the hopes that it would cheer her up. He held out a hand, and she took it and let him pull her up. “Let’s find out.”

(see more fics | check out the awesome fanart for this fic)

[shycorvid]

Danny- *glaring at a field of grass* You all better be on your best behavior. Sam- *holding a picnic basket* We've already talked about this, Danny. Just because it's green doesn't mean it's ghost-related! Danny- *hisses*

[hughmanbean]

Dick and Jason are dead. A causality of battle.

Well, not really. But the otherworldly hunter thought they were, and it really wasn't in their best interests to dispute that. It was too chaotic to get back to Bruce, so they decided to just wait it out.

There was a scuffle and the crate opened, the two of them taking the opportunity to jump out.

Jason scans the room. Dick stretches.

"What in the-"

---

"You sure, Skulker?"

"Trust me, High Whelp, these two were knocked out cold!"

Danny opens the door. They look at him. He turns back to Skulker.

"You know, for the Best Hunter of the Infinite Realms, you sure aren't good at keeping your prey down."

[starry-bi-sky]

my body's aching like a knock-down drag-out

and my poor heart is an open wound A Childhood Friends Au snippet that very briefly delves into Danny's life post-accident. CW: Mild Mentions of Blood, Violence, VERY mild gore ig. Danny briefly recalls getting impaled during a fight.

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

What they don't tell you about being dead is that it hurts. That it can hurt. That it can hurt more than when you were alive. That when you die, the emotions you die with stick with you like a leech that just won't let go. That emotions are ugly little thorns that stick their barbs into you and grow beneath your skin; or, at least, whatever’s left of it. 

Danny is familiar with anger. It kept him warm in Gotham, when his parents weren't home from work and he and Jason were crowding Crime Alley with their presence. It kept him warm in Amity, when the fresh sting of moving was still needling into his heart and he wanted nothing more than to rip and tear into the closest person next to him.

He's familiar with violence. With fights. With death. He's seen people die in Crime Alley probably every day. From overdose, from gunshots, from stab wounds; anything that can kill, rest assured he's seen it. He's familiar with getting his own knuckles rough and bloody when other kids turn and bare their teeth at him and Jason; they're all just starving dogs stuck in a fighting pit, primed and ready to rip out each other's throats. 

Black eyes, stomped hands, bloody noses. You name it; he’s had it. Gotham is paved with the blood of her children, and Danny likes to imagine that when he was born, the doctors handed his mother a file and told her; “Take it. He’s going to need it for his teeth.” 

Danny’s mom (and dad, for that matter) was too busy trying to keep him and Jazz fed, so Danny stole the file from her drawer with Jazz’s help, and did it himself.  

He’s familiar with anger, he thought he was getting better at it these days. It doesn’t come to him as easily as it did before. Of course, that was before Jason died. 

Danny is less familiar with grief. Caring kills and Gotham kills the caring, so Danny cares very little about other people. Or he tries to. But grief hurts. His grief hurts. It hurts too much. It hurts like a bug trying to crawl out of his chest; like a rat chewing a hole through his heart. Some days he wants to dig his hands into his hair and split himself down the middle. Some days he just wants to scream. 

He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s dead. 

He wants the whole city to hear him wailing, some days. It sticks itself in the back of his throat like bile, and Danny is one wrong retch away from letting it loose. It sticks in his lungs like all the tar he’s smoked in since he was nine. It pushes and aches at his temples, in his head, like his brain is trying to swell out of his skull. His thoughts becoming so loud they threaten to commandeer his tongue.  

He has no mouth, but he must scream. 

Something they don’t tell you about being dead is that it hurts. That it hurts more than when you were alive. Something they don’t tell you about being dead is that it’s violent. That it’s bloody. Or as bloody as it can be when everyone has no blood. 

Another thing they don’t tell you about being dead, is that it’s a lot like Gotham that way.

With no threat of death, Danny’s enemies forget death itself. Blood comes easy, like water, and teeth are encouraged. Bring your own fangs to the fight. Dying is something you can just walk off. 

Danny’s been dead for three months. He can’t say he’s been walking it off easy. He’s perfected the art of turning his nails into claws since his heart was still beating, but he can’t say he’s perfected fighting other ghosts. 

Scrappy is just not enough. 

He feels like he’s back in Gotham again. Back in her death-shroud alleyways, fighting someone bigger than him. But there’s no Jason to watch his back, and Danny has to get himself out of there alone. Or he might just not get up at all. 

Black eyes, busted lips. It’s familiar to him like an old scent, Danny isn’t quite sure that he’s missed it. It’s more familiar than his fights with Dash. 

But there’s no one else who can do it but him. Not Sam, not Tucker. He can’t lose them too. He can’t. He can’t. He can’t. His heart can’t take another break, he already feels like he’s going insane. 

With no threat of death, Danny’s enemies fight like death themself. He learns why when Technus puts a street sign through his stomach one day. It pins him to the asphalt like a moth pinned by its wings. 

Danny claws at the metal like how an animal caught in a trap chews off its leg, and every move is blinding pain. He thinks he was howling, but it’s hard to tell. He couldn’t recognize the sound of his voice. 

He bleeds green. It mixes in black with the pitch blackhole in his heart, which throbs and twists and cries in time with his reckless panic. The finger-choking terror of dying again strangles out the air he doesn’t need. His blood evaporates, only to reabsorb into him. It just bleeds out again, cycling like a snake eating its own tail. 

Danny breaks his nails clawing at the metal, and eventually gets it in his mind to pull it out. So he does, and the end drips ectoplasm green as he gets to his feet. In red-vision, Danny sends the sign back with snarling, vicious fervor. The pain is irrelevant in his rage.

Only after the fight does the hole the pole left start to close. Danny doesn’t shift human until it’s gone. Unlike other injuries, a scar stays behind. Ugly; mottled, it aches for a week with every twist and stretch his body makes. He hates it. 

Being dead is agony. 

Every part of him is in pain. Every step, every word he speaks, everything he does, it is prerequisite with pain. The body is temporary, but the soul is forever, and death has carved into it with its freezing green hands and left him with never-ending heartache. It has torn from him and stolen what of him it could, and in return it’s left him with sorrow. 

His pain is his grief, and he’s sobbed in the safety of his room more times than he can count. It’s still as fresh as the day he heard the news of Jason’s death. He knows, instinctively, that it will stay fresh forever. 

In his room, Danny shoves his hands over his mouth and shrieks in whatever, muffled way he can into his pillow. It’s not enough. It’s never enough. He needs to be louder. He needs to be heard. He refuses to be. 

Being dead hurts. 

[cypherscript]

Wrong number.

*Ding*

Konner sits on the couch with a few of the young justice team. He pulls our his phone, not recognising the number he checks the subject that just says help. Konner opens the text, curious now.

'Hey dad, can you help me? What do you do when you get stuck halfway intangible in an object?'

'Sorry but you have the wrong number but I might be able to still help.'

Konner taps Miss Martian on the shoulder, "Hey M'gann, can you help someone who is phased into something? Like halfway into an object?"

"Someones stuck? I should be able to help or my uncle J'onn could."

"You up for a trip then?" M'gann nods as the rest of the team lets them up. "Lemme just find out where they are."

'Hey, i got someone with me who can help with your phasing problem. Can you send your coordinates?'

'Locate.satlocal has been sent.'

'Alright, were on our way.'

"Got it, lets go help them."

[clockwayswrites]

“He is a protector spirit!” Nightingale yelled. Wailed. It wasn’t a yell, it was a wail. The echo of it stuck inside Red Hood’s mind, bouncing around like a bullet. Nightingale’s fingers pushed under the edge of Red Hood’s glove and found a strip of skin to stroke. It forced Red Hood to take a shuddering breath. The bullet stopped bouncing.

[candelias]

Maybe you'd like to read the first part

It was cold, that's the first thing they noticed.

They could barely see it for a moment before the creature looked down, towards its sacrifice, and froze solid. The green light in its eyes had surged like a wildfire, spreading and engulfing the entire cave, forcing silence upon them and replacing it with eerie shrill murmurs indignation whispers static. It had been moments of pure agony for all their senses, but eventually, it had subsided enough to lower the arms that covered their eyes and ears. It was cold. They could see their breath in the air around them, the walls claimed by bluish-green ice, tiny snowflakes falling slowly to the ground. The heroes' capes swayed gently in a breeze that was nonexistent before. The chanting had ceased, that was the second thing Robin noticed a split second later, dazed. Looking towards where his grandfather had been moments ago, now occupied by a massive pillar of the same ice that covered the walls. Only this one was darker, murky in a way that spoke of how contaminated what it contained was. A few feet off the ground in the center of the pillar, with eyes wide open and a grimace expressing the deepest terror, his grandfather lay.

It was cold, and Damian couldn't see his baba Richard anywhere.

[jackdaw-and-hattrick]

Snippet I probably won't use

“Can you fix it?” Jason whispered, eyes locked on the young man before him with a kind of long-dead faith. His knees had grown soaked where he knelt before him.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and Jason was shocked to see real tears in those bright green eyes, “there's nothing I can do.”

Something in him tightened, whatever hope he’d allowed to build in him quickly morphing to anger.

“Why not?”, Jason half yelled, the words tasting too much like desperation in his mouth.

“The thing is, the Pits, they're a part of you. The reason the rage never faded was because of what you are; a revenant. Decades of death throws permeated the ectoplasm, and when you were tossed in they saw what you were and bonded with your core. Like sees like and all that. What matters is that trying to remove those pieces from the pits would just break your core.”

“So?”

“Jason,” narrow hands wrapped around his face, the harsh cold shocking him out of himself, how did he know his name?, “it would kill you. Actually kill you. As in, do not pass go, do not collect, completely, totally gone.”

Jason fought the urge to repeat himself. He had things to live for, he had to remember that, no matter how much he was doubting their weight in the face of this new hit. He had never expected the pits to be cured, so why was he breaking over the confirmation of his suspicion? Why was he so hurt by the realization that it really was just him? Jason’s heart was that his heart? hurt like a bullet wound three days after when the ache set in.

“Hey, hey, look at me.”

Jason did. For the first time, he fully saw the man above him. He looked like an angel.

“It's ok. You’re ok. I know you don't believe that, but it's true. Look at you, you’ve got all the rage and sorrow of untold souls clawing at your head, and you still choose every day to be good. I’ve seen folks like you. Most take decades to move past their pain, but you? You took two or three years. That's like a week in ghost terms. You took all that hurt and redirected it to make your world a better place. I don't know about you, but that's pretty damn impressive. The pits are you, yeah, but so’s the progress.”

“Pretty damn hard to get excited ‘bout that right now.” Jason half-spat, half-sighed.

“Yeah.” the man pulled back for a moment, only to settle down next to Jason, one arm wrapping around his shoulder.

“What, no great wisdom to impart?”

“No, sorry.”

Jason looked up. It was a rare clear night, a new moon darkening the sky, and above he could just see a handful of constellations not drowned out by city lights. Thinking about the strange silver-haired angel next to him, some little childlike piece of him wondered if he was the moon cast down from heights to hold him.

“Pretty night.”, he said, cursing himself for breaking the soft quiet that had blanketed the two.

“Yeah, yeah it is.”

[beesbiteandwillowrites]

DP x DC snippet: "To Whom Do Gods Pray?"

Danny never wanted this.

Right now, he couldn't even tell anyone what he did want. Happiness, probably, whatever that entailed. Snuggle up with Jason in one of those giant armchairs that were scattered around his keep and listen to his love read to him in a soft voice, letting the cadence of his voice lull him to sleep. Fly with him through the Infinite Realms, to the edges where the vast green expanse gave way to countless unexplored galaxies so they could stargaze together. Jump through portals together and explore new dimensions to find the ones that have the best versions of all their favourite foods.

Not sitting at the bedside of his love as Jason teetered on the edge of life and death, balancing on a knife's edge. The heart monitor beeped loudly, too loud, too fast, and Danny didn't think he could ever hear anything else than the sound of Jason's heartbeat as it tried to jump out of his chest.

"Great One," Frostbite said gently. "Your consort is strong, as he has proven time and time again."

Danny wanted to scream. Jason never should have been forced to prove how strong he was. He couldn't help but think of all the times he had been here, sitting at Jason's bedside, as Jason recovered from wounds that had him teetering on the edge, that had almost killed him.

Danny was the Ghost King, the Ruling Monarch of the Infinite Realms. He ruled the dead of any and all dimensions. He had gods kneel in front of his throne, promising their allegiance. And now he was once again powerless, nothing more than someone who prayed their lover would not die.

To whom do gods pray? Who could he ask for guidance when he could bend the fabric of the universe to his will?

"He has a good chance to pull through, Great One," Frostbite said, and Danny swallowed bile.

"When will he wake up?" he asked hoarsely, holding Jason's hand between his own.

"We are working on an antidote for the serum he has been injected with," Frostbite. "Right now, his heart rate will remain stable enough as long as he remains unconscious, but if we wake him, external stimuli will cause the serum's adrenaline response to kick in. We would not be able to guarantee his survival should that happen."

Danny's core thrummed in his chest, feeling like it was about to burst. "How long?" he asked through gritted teeth.

"A few more days, Great One. Batman used a unique serum. But we will succeed."

Frostbite laid a clawed hand on Danny's shoulder and it felt like it burned him. Danny felt like he was drowning. He wanted to scream, to cry, to hit something, anything. He wanted to hurt the man who hurt his love so much he had put him in this bed more than once before.

Batman.

Fury bubbled up Danny's throat and he almost choked on it. Batman had hurt his love time and time again and Jason had pleaded with Danny every time to let it go. Batman had slit Jason's throat in favour of the mass-murderer that had killed so many, that had so many of Danny's subjects crying out for justice. He had beaten Jason half to death on a rooftop after he had lost his friends, had kept beating him long after Jason stopped fighting back, long after he had lost consciousness. He had brought Jason back to the scene of his murder under false pretences (and Danny would never forgive Batman for all the nights he had to hold Jason through nightmares of his father beating him with a crowbar after that).

And here they were again, with Jason close to death, close to becoming a permanent part of Danny's domain, almost murdered again by the man who he still saw as his father, even after everything, and Danny was drowning in despair.

He needed Jason to wake up.

He needed him.

All Danny could do was hold his hand and pray.

To whom do gods pray when everything else has failed?

[impyssadobsessions]

DPxDC Ficlet/Snippet Pen Pals

I had to write it out a bit XD My head still swarming with the idea. >w<

Damian made it to his room. Part of him wanting to collapse on his bed and sleep in, despite how childish that seemed. Another part eyed the envelope Alfred had left on his nightstand. He had almost forgotten about his Pen Pal. Daniel Fenton. Damian snorted, despite neither one of them giving out their real names, Daniel wasn't hard to find. Last year as a safety protocol, he had located the recipient of his letters and found out everything he could. A boy his age, fourteen now-thirteen then, with physical features that would mistake him for his brother. His siblings teased he had found his own sibling this time, which was not the case! Daniel had a family, two researchers of the paranormal and an older sister. Besides his parents strange profession, Daniel was an average teenager. One, Damian would think would bore or infuriate him- he did infuriate him actually, but instead he was interesting to talk to. Most of their letters were nothing more than small talk. They share their aggravation of their older siblings. Apparently, his older sister was very nagging as he put it. However, when Damian discretely mentioned his own, Daniel did suggest quite a successful prank to pull on them. Other letters, were more helpful and meaningful. Being miles and states away, the average boy was able to call Damian out without a qualm and give comfort without being asked. Only after talking with Daniel, did Damian ever wonder what it would be like to grow up in an average home. Damian grabbed the letter from the bedside table, opening it up. He could at least look at it before bed, and think of a reply tomorrow. He would never admit, but he had missed writing to his Pen Pal. Daniel mentioned struggling in school last he heard from him. Which was odd, as his grades were above average before. Maybe he should check into his school, again. It wouldn't hurt to update his profile- Damian's eyes widened once he unfurled the sticky letter from itself. The paper was filled with his friend's penmanship, blurred and feather from being exposed to moisture. However, that is not what made Damian hold his breath. It was the glowing green stain smeared across the page over Danny's signature. It couldn't be. Why would... Inspecting closer, Damian saw blood like material in the green. It was red, as if the green substance was keeping it fresh. Like... Damian furrowed his brows and ran out the room with letter in hand. He was going to get to the bottom of this. He was going to find out what happened to Daniel James Fenton.

[ladylynse]

Happy Halloween, and trick or treat, please!

I was considering asking for one of the other "duffel bag" prompts you didn't already extend, but I thought I shouldn't be a one-trick ghost who asks for the same thing over and over.

SO, instead I am going to ask for a prequel to the DP prompt "Danny returns Lancer's wallet". For whatever reason, I just like to cause Danny and Lancer trouble, and want to see Lancer's wallet in Danny's pocket. Whether that annoys or concerns Danny.

Happy Halloween! Something in between this ficlet and this ficlet it is! Since Lancer didn't know the wallet was missing in the second ficlet, I actually built this off the first one (“Danny, why do you have Mr. Lancer’s wallet?”), in italics below.

-|-

“Danny, why do you have Mr. Lancer’s wallet?”

“What?” Danny asked, not understanding Valerie’s question, but he followed her pointing finger and, sure enough, there was a wallet on top of his backpack, neatly flipped open to reveal Lancer’s driver’s license.

Youngblood was so going to pay for this.

And, okay, fine, it might not be Youngblood, even if Youngblood had been playing one too many pranks recently. It might not have anything to do with ghosts. It could be Dash or someone else acting on his orders.

Still, that did not make it better.

Danny’s parents might not murder him for real if he got suspended from school, but they would have him do his make-up work in the lab while they worked in the meantime, and that might result in him being murdered for real by one invention or another. Just. Accidentally. Which, in that light, strictly speaking wasn’t murder. What did that make it, criminal negligence causing death? That ship had already sailed.

Technically.

Not that he was going to tell his parents that, let alone any authorities.

Danny snatched the wallet off his backpack and stuffed it into his back pocket, hoping it wouldn’t seem out of place there. “This isn’t what it looks like,” he said quickly. Why did Valerie have to have such sharp eyes? Why couldn’t this be a class he shared with Sam or Tucker so they could help distract her?

“Uh huh.” Valerie wasn’t even pretending to believe him. “If Dash or Paulina put you up to this as some twisted sort of test to get invited to the next big party, they’re pulling your leg. Ten to one they tell Lancer if you don’t turn it in before lunch, assuming they’re not telling someone right now. And leaving it out in the open like that is just plain stupid. I know you’re smarter than that.”

Danny groaned. “That’s why I said this isn’t what it looks like.”

 Valerie raised an eyebrow. “Are you really going to stand there and tell me that’s a fake?”

Danny tried a smile, but judging by Valerie’s expression, it didn’t come across as one. “Would you believe me if I did?”

Valerie huffed. “They’re setting you up. I know their style. Just give it back sooner rather than later, okay?”

Danny might be set up by the living or framed by the dead, but that wouldn’t matter if Lancer caught him with his wallet and Danny didn’t have a better explanation than this isn’t what it looks like and I think I’m being haunted. The ever handy and only sometimes true excuse of ghosts only went so far, even in Amity Park.

“I promise you, I do not intend to keep this for any longer than I have to.” Danny didn’t want to keep the wallet at all, really. He’d much rather steal money from Vlad than Lancer, and Danny was pretty sure he already knew the closest thing to Lancer’s deep dark secret. Giving this back ASAP was the plan.

But if this was Youngblood and not a human’s prank, there was unfortunately a very, very high chance of the wallet ending up in Danny’s possession again. As in, after he returned it. As in, returning it a second time would be awkward, something he’d try to spin as a coincidence and Lancer might buy if he were feeling particularly gracious.

If Danny wound up with the wallet three times, he was screwed.

Which is why taking precautions would probably be prudent, even if it meant hanging onto the wallet for a little longer.

And skiving off biology to sneak home to dunk Lancer’s wallet in some phase-proof foam.

…That might come back to bite him, but if it did, that would be Future Danny’s problem. Current Danny thought it was a great idea to get Youngblood to stop doing this to him.

Assuming this was Youngblood.

If it was Dash after all, treating the wallet wouldn’t help, and there was still a half decent chance of it ending up in his possession more than once.

Eh, Future Danny’s problem. He was only going to figure out how to cross that bridge if he actually came to it. It’s not like a thorough examination of the wallet would tell him who had stolen it either way.

It…may not be a bad plan, though. If only because then he could make sure nothing had been slipped into Lancer’s wallet. Because that could be bad, depending on what that something was and how incriminating it was.

Danny couldn’t see right now how this could be Vlad’s scheme, but he still wouldn’t put it past Vlad if it wasn’t Youngblood or Dash.

“You’re not….” Valerie hesitated and bit her lip. “I mean, you guys aren’t…. You’re still okay, right?”

Danny stared at her.

“Like, your parents haven’t, uh, not gotten groceries or something when you need them, right?”

Wait.

Did she think—?

“Because if it’s money you need,” Valerie continued, her voice somehow even quieter than before despite the sudden rush of her words, “I can talk to my boss. Even if you get detention, it’s just for an hour, right? So you could start a shift after that. You could be the mascot. No one would know it’s you, so no one else will know it’s because of…this.”

“We’re still fine,” Danny blurted out. That was probably true. Jazz had gone grocery shopping last week, anyway, and barely anything had gotten contaminated since. “I should just…return this. Now.”

Valerie was frowning at him.

Great.

She didn’t believe him.

Actually, how bad that was depended on which part she didn’t believe.

There wasn’t a way to ask that wouldn’t make this worse, was there?

“So, uh.” Danny reached down to pick up and then shouldered his backpack. “Yeah. I’ll see you in math, I guess?”

“Don’t do anything stupider than you already have.”

“Can’t make any promises,” Danny quipped, but Valerie just pursed her lips and finally—finally—left, though that was more likely so she could make it to class before the bell rang than because she was finished with him.

Danny headed for the washroom instead of class, locked himself in a stall, and dug the wallet out of his pocket to get a better look at it.

Yeah, there was no mistaking it. This was Lancer’s wallet. It even contained a picture of his ‘sister’.

Crud.

Why did this kind of thing always happen to him?

(see more fics | related musing)

[shycorvid]

More Clockwork having to pretend to be a "normal" person to help Danny with a ruse:

Clockwork- *staring down at his lower half* What the hell are these? Danny- They’re… they’re legs, dude. Clockwork- Disgusting.

[alyakthedorklord]

AFAB/Damian’sTwin!au Danny, presumed dead, transitioned while away, meeting Damian again, and immediately dumping as many puns into the conversation as possible.

Ex: “Hi Damian! Im back bc of some death defying trans-dimensional shenanigans! I’m kinda glad I died, honestly. It let me do some soul searching I wouldn’t have gotten to do while connected to a mortal body. Find out what I really was in spirit. I mean, I wouldn’t have stood a ghost of a chance back in the league, grandfather would have sent me to the grave. Again.

Jason: stop.

Dick: no keep going this is beautiful

Danny: i seem to have a real connection with Dick

Damian: I’m disowning you. I just got you back and I’m disowning you.

[spacedace]

Yooo, got more Ghosts of Gotham snippets for you, this time with All The Danny Angst. All of it. Literally almost 5k words of Danny angst/hurt/comfort. My boy is straight up not having a good time and disassociating to the max to try and not be aware of that fact. Context/notes at the very end :D

*

For a long time, he wasn’t anywhere.

Wasn't anyone.

When it first happened, Danny was distantly aware of voices screaming-wailing-furious around him. Hands like vices on his arms then jolting and tugging and arms wrapped around him fierce-protective-scared. Something hot falling on his face from above, hitching breath beneath his ear, bodies covering him like a blanket or a barricade.

Mostly there had just been the pain.

So many times he’d been hurt over the years. Battles, fights, wars. He’d been hurt before. He’d known pain. He’d died of pain, once, maybe. Or maybe it hadn’t been the pain. Maybe he just thought that sometimes because the agony had all he’d been able to feel as the portal tore open a hole through his heart and changed him forever as it ripped a doorway between the Realms. Maybe that was happening now. Worse this time. Beyond anything he’d felt before, beyond his ability to even truly comprehend.

A piece of himself - of his very soul - torn out with bare fingers, digging in and ripping him apart. Something so much a part of who he was that he’d never known life without it suddenly yanked out by the root. Like a limb hacking itself away from his body with a knife, like his heart cracking open his ribs from the inside with the intention to maim and kill. A part of what he was that hated him so much it took vicious delight in trying to kill him as it tore itself away.

Hands in his hair. Safe safe safe. Lifted from the ground, from the bodies that cradled him, from the agony of the waking world.

Jazz.

Blood on her face, down her chin, pinking her teeth. Eyes like storms and seas, hair crackling like an inferno. Her fingers on one hand were blackened, some bent at wrong angles. She didn’t flinch as she brushed damp hair from his face with them, expression steady. There were things on the ground behind her, soft and strange and almost shaped like people if all the pieces were put together right.

They didn’t move.

There wasn’t much white left beneath all the red and black. It still made Danny flinch to see them. Jazz pulled him close and started walking. Those from fore, that cradled him and protected him - not part of him, but not hurting him either - followed in silence. Pink shirt splattered in more red. A letterman jacket torn. Blond hair ragged and burned. He knew their names once, before he was torn apart, before the pain. Now they were only distantly familiar. Echoes of a past lost to the pain of the violent unanchoring of his Core.

Jazz carried him, tucked him close as doors opened and the deathly stillness of where they’d been gave way to the chaos of beyond. There was something familiar in the brick of the buildings, the slant of the roads, the sounds of the people. Something that belonged to him, or did once before those pieces of himself turned and tore himself apart. His to protect. But he couldn’t tell if there was a him at all anymore, let alone a part of him able to feel that need to guard and defend.

Amity Park burned around them. More screaming - in fear, in rage, in declaration of war - as figures blurred in a mess of chaos. Running, fighting, falling.

Danny didn’t feel much of anything.

Jazz was safe safe safe as she cradled him close. The world seemed to shift around her to let them through. Bending and warping itself so that the path was always clear. Blood dripped down, fresh against the drying black on her face. From her nose, her eyes. Her heart was stead beneath his ear. Safe. She’d keep him safe.

More followed Jazz. Indistinct shapes with names he couldn’t remember. Faces he almost knew beyond the ash and dust and blood that coated them. Their steps silent in Jazz’s wake, eyes sharp on the world around them, hands shaking on weapons. Maybe he’d never been the protector. Maybe it had always been them.

They walked through chaos untouched, only pausing as they arrived at a familiar, haunted structure. Looming, shadowed, reeking of death and danger. It cast dark shadows even with the sun hazed and dimmed with choking smoke.

Home.

What had been home.

The crowd stayed on the street. Turning to face the flood of white descending upon them on the heels of wailing sirens. A flash of red high above. The cry of a Valkyrie leading the charge. Determined screams echoing her call.

Val.

Jazz thrummed safe into his shattered Core and never once looked back behind her. Brick and chrome. A wall that tracked the height of children that had died so many years ago. Steps down down down. Brick lost to chrome. Green and green and green as she carried him forward towards what had briefly been his death bed, into the swirling, gentle green and into the realm beyond.

Danny closed his eyes.

—-

When he opened them again the world was ice and cold.

Jazz slept beside him. Face pinched and pale. Fingers slightly shiny and pink where they’d been charred before, prints gone with the long healed burns. There was blue creeping through the copper red of her hair. She shivered, and a large hand tugged the fur draped over her like a blanket higher, a damp cloth pressed to her forehead.

Dan, solemn and quiet in the blues and whites of the Yeti healers. He reached a hand to smooth it through Danny’s hair. Low rumble of here where here? It sounded familiar, something echoed in the black that had been all Danny had known while he drifted in Unbeing.

The pain had come back the moment he’d opened his eyes. Now churning with a horrible hollowed-out feeling. Jazz and Dan soothed it, but there was an aching emptiness where others should be. Where others had been before they’d torn themselves away. In his chest his Core felt like shattered glass, grinding over itself in search of what was no longer there.

Hush here rest Dan rumbled, lulling with the assurance of here here here. Jazz shivered in her sleep but reached out. Safe here safe.

Everything hurt.

Danny slipped into Unbeing once more.

—-

Jazz and Dan were gone when he drifted upward once more.

Elle curled against his side instead.

She clung to him with shaking hands, face buried in his chest as her shoulders shook. She did not soothe with Bond Calls of safe and here like their siblings but keened to him with scared hurt betrayed in agonized tones that set his teeth on edge.

She smelled of ash and blood.

He made himself aware of his body, of his arms and hands, even as his mind tried hard to pull back. Turned in slow degrees until he was wrapped around her in a protective hug. Too torn apart to respond with the shushing warble of safe here safe that had been pressed into him for the days-weeks-months he hadn’t Been. He settled for rasping, half-forgotten vocal cords, for a song he could barely remember hummed into her hair.

Elle clung tighter. Burning tears and gasping sobs and shaking so hard that a distant part of him thought it might shatter her Core too, like glass. He wanted to help, to protect. When Unbeing crept upon him, tried to pull him down and out of the overwhelming agony of having two of his Core Bonds viciously yanked out of him, he fought it.

Trembling and sick feeling, the sting of salt in an open wound as he tried to run a hand down his little sister’s small back in reassurance. He felt like he was choking on the rioting emotions that rolled off of her and polluted their Grave Bonds. He wanted to shove her away and curl in on himself. He wanted to hug her tight and comfort her.

He did neither in the end.

Unbeing pulled hard and he was too weak to fight it. Soothing nothingness eclipsed all, dragging him back to obliviousness. No Jazz. No Dan. No Elle.

No Danny.

—-

The bed beneath him was far less comfortable than the last time he Was. A mattress with a pile of worn and musty blankets in the corner of a small room that smelled mold-sweet. A window with a moth-eaten quilt stapled over it, only barely keeping too-bright sunlight at bay. Warped floorboards and water-stained ceiling and a baseball bat with dark red stains leaned against the wall. A battered laptop on a half-broken milk crate, images of space and low volume talk about star nurseries light years away from lonely little Earth.

Dan asleep at Danny’s side, large frame almost taking up the entirety of the small bed. Black hair in a familiar, awful mullet as he lay in human form. The smell of capsaicin and lidocaine and hand sanitizer rubbed into his skin. A forming bruise along his jaw, half hidden by the scruff of his unshaved face.

The documentary continued on. Danny lay in the dark and let himself fall into the wonder of space and the lulling hush of his brother’s breathing. Then he was nothing at all.

—-

There was a dresser in the room the next time he was aware. One leg missing, it was kept balanced with a stack of old Psychology Today magazines. White paint fell like snow on the floor around it where it peeled away. A collection of over-the-counter pain relievers and muscle relaxers gathered like soldiers at one end while half melted candles were settled around objects he couldn’t make out like an altar at the other.

He smelled the sweet smell of oranges and cloves on the muggy, warm air. He blinked passed the images of space on the laptop to see a small dented pot on a hot plate, steam wafting off it as Jazz leaned over to drop a half-wilted sprig of rosemary into the simmer pot. There was still blue in her hair, a long, wide streak stark and bright against the copper, almost glowing in the dim light of the room. Her mouth moved over words spoken too low to understand but soothing in their cadence and Danny felt something painfully heavy at the edges of his muted senses ease. Her magic burned low like a campfire after all the stories had been told, warm and reassuring as it wrapped around him.

He let his eyes close as she finished. Words of power replaced by soft sniffs of pain and the hush of someone crying and trying very hard not to be heard.

—

Elle sat beside him, sallow in the low glow of the laptop when next he slipped out of Unbeing. She wasn’t crying as she had last time he remembered seeing her, but her eyes were tired as she stared longingly at the images on the screen. Not a documentary on space but some overly saccharine hosts of a show about obscure travel destinations talking too brightly over sweeping images of far-off places.

The light that crept past the makeshift blackout curtain of the quilt was street lamp yellow. The laptop clock said it was a little before midnight. He watched Elle watch the travel show, her hands shaking as she picked at her nails til they bled. Her lips were chapped and torn from biting them, hair greasy from running her fingers through the locks over and over again. As the show ended she sat and shook for the seconds it took for the next to begin, looking like she might be sick.

She never was able to feed her Obsession as easily as he could his.

He wondered why she didn’t return to her travels. Why Dan didn’t order her off to go exploring as remedy to her burgeoning Core Sickness. Why she sat curled up in a ball rocking at the foot of the bed staring at images of places that would do her much better to go and see herself rather than watch on a screen in the dark.

—-

The next time he saw her she looked better.

There were still dark circles beneath her eyes and a weariness to the set of her shoulders, but her nails weren’t bleeding and her hands were steady as she fussed with safety pins to make the blazer of the second-hand skirt suit she was wearing fit better on her tiny frame. Not perfect, but better, healthier. A little closer to the bright-eyed girl he’d been watching grow up in quick moments over the years when she came to visit.

It was a different room they were in this time. An open door nearby showed the bedroom he’d come to himself in, mattress stripped bare with the sheets and blankets being shoved into a laundry bag by Jazz. The room he was in was a little bigger, a squat living room with a window leading to a fire escape and a grungy and unfamiliar city street beyond. He sat on a floral couch that smelled of cigarettes and mildew, a plate of half-eaten scrambled eggs in his lap. The laptop was open to space once more, set on a crate acting as a coffee table beside a half-zipped purse and a cup of cold coffee.

The eggs were burnt and left a greasy residue in his mouth. He ate them mechanically as he watched Dan step in to help Elle try and salvage her work with the suit and the safety pins. The hospital scrubs he wore made his too-pale skin look even more washed out, but his hair was neat in the low ponytail he wore it in and his hands deft as he helped Elle force the oversized blazer to fall into something a little more fitting.

Somewhere in the distance there was the sound of people shouting and fighting, sirens wailing in the distance, the laughter of a kid echoing through the thin walls separating them from the apartment next door. Danny ate his eggs. The shattered glass in his chest was a little less sharp, cutting edges finally grinding down little by little.

He was slipped out of Unbeing more often, he was pretty sure. Less time seemed to be passing between his moments of awareness of the world around him, his time as Danny instead of Nothing stretching out longer. The pain was still there, still awful, but it was less. He could feel his other Core Bonds now. The emotions of his Grave not something he instinctively pulled back from and rejected, but something he could recognize and feel and even respond to in kind sometimes.

—-

There was an afternoon where he sat in the living room with Elle and Dan. Nail polish and acetone sharp on his nose as Elle sat on the floor and focused on painting Dan’s nails. Satisfaction curling along the Bond between them as she finished without smudging. Her eyes bright and hopeful as she turned to Danny, asking what color do you want?

The options she flourished at him were limited. The bright blue with the black glitter that adorned Dan’s nails. The black and dark red she’d worked into something like an ombre on her own nails. The last bottle was a deep purple, almost black until the light hit it just right. The color of Sam’s favorite lipstick as she smiled and smudged the color in the shape of a kiss onto his and Tucker’s cheeks at the end of summer break before they all piled into different vehicles to go back to their respective colleges.

Just so you don’t forget me, dorks. A laugh, a wink, a hug so tight that it felt like there was nothing else in the world except the three of them.

“Purple.” He’d said, voice hoarse and unfamiliar even to his own ears.

Dan dropped the medical journal he’d been reading to turn and stare at him. Elle went still, eyes wide and bright with hopeful tears. Her smile watery as she grabbed the bottle from their makeshift coffee table and scooted over to sit at his knee.

He was there the whole time. Feeling the cold polish on his nails, the warmth of Elle’s hands wrapping around his, the low rumbling purr Dan filled the air with. The longest he’d been anywhere for…he wasn’t sure. A long time. Elle’s hair, cut into a short bob the last time he’d seen her before everything…went wrong, had grown out. It fell in curls past her shoulders now. How long did that take? How much time was he losing?

Danny curled between his siblings, staring down at the deep purple of his nails until it was gone and all that was left was the increasing ache of Unbeing.

—-

There was a woman with a baby on the couch next time he came back. He blinked at her, trying to place who she could be as he stood in the crooked doorway between the bedroom and the living room. Dan knelt on the floor with his medical bag open, tending to a gash on the woman’s arm with quick stitches and reassuring words. Jazz bounced the baby in her lap where she sat on the coffee table, talking low about you’ll be safe and won’t find you here and we’ve got you.

The woman and her child are strangers to him, but there was an echo of familiarity to the situation. Someone scared or hurt or hungry, ushered into their tiny apartment for sanctuary. A pair of teens with bruises and wary eyes. An older man and his dog shivering from cold. Men, women, children, outside, and in between. Anyone his Grave met in need of help.

Danny shuffled passed them, following a path he can’t remember taking before but knew all the same to a dimly lit shoebox of a kitchen. The cupboards are thin in their holdings, but well organized. He found mason jars of loose-leaf tea that smell of herbs and Jazz’s intentions, starts the kettle on the stove and stumbled his way through a process he must have done a thousand times before but that he was never truly aware when he did. A bottle for the baby with the tin of powder milk in the fridge. Tea for the mother, honey and lemon for health and taste. A collection of snacks scrounged together for everyone to chew on. Check to make sure all the blinds had been pulled closed on the windows.

The baby was back in the woman’s arms when he came back out. Dan packing up his medical supplies and gathering up the used, bloody gauze. A door Danny has no memory of walking through is open leading to another bedroom unfamiliar to him. Jazz inside makes the bed with clean sheets before she went through and checked the locks on the window and those installed in the door to make sure everything worked. She brought the keys to the woman, so that she might be able to lock the door to the guest room behind her and know she was safe. Kindness did not mean safety in Crime Alley, every little bit of extra assurance that could be given would help settle their occasional guests’ nerves.

“Thank you.” The woman said, voice rasping and strained as she took the baby bottle and acknowledged the tea set out for her on the nearby table, keys slipped into her shirt for safe keeping. There was a ring of bruises around her neck and a little blood that hadn’t quite managed to get wiped away drying on her upper lip from a recently broken nose. There was still fear in her eyes, always darting to the door as if expecting someone to break in at any moment. Jazz had pulled the blood-stained bat from their bedroom, prepared if someone did.

“No problem.” He said, voice rusty from lack of use. The woman didn’t seem surprised by it, he wondered if he was known beyond the vaguely familiar walls of his Grave’s apartment. If he wandered out with one of his siblings sometimes distant and hollow. Becoming a known sight to the neighborhood with his vacant stare and silence as he drifted by oblivious to the world around him. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe the woman with her injuries and haunted expression just didn’t have it in her to think it strange that he croaked like a half-dead frog.

Dan dropped a hand on his shoulder, squeezing reassuringly. Thankful here? thankful echoing out through their Bond and filling Danny’s chest with warmth and aching melancholy at the same time. He tried to push back here with you here to his brother but only felt the broken glass of his Core grind together. Dan smiled down at him anyway.

He felt himself tipping back into Unbeing as Dan drifted off to scrounge together some spare clothes for their guest. Jazz keeping her sharp eye on the door. They were strong enough to protect themselves and the young family that was hiding with them. His last though as he drifted into Unbeing was that he wished he was strong enough to stay.

—-

There were chips in the purple of his nail polish when he came back next.

It was still there though, still shiny beneath the gold-red slant of the setting sun as he sat in the squeaky folding chair on the roof with Jazz. It hadn’t been that long since his last moment of awareness. Less time in the Unbeing, more time in his Grave.

“I just don’t know what to make of him.” Jazz said, tapping at the can of birch beer she held as she stared out over the narrow slice of Crime Alley they could see from their apartment’s roof. “Sharon says he isn’t mad at me or anything, but I can’t figure out why else he feels like he has to shadow me whenever I’m closing for the night.”

The seat was a familiar kind of uncomfortable beneath him, the street below one he recognized even as he failed to produce any kind of memory of seeing it before. The fact that they lived in Crime Alley - famous the world over as the worst neighborhood in one of the most crime ridden cities in the world - was something else he was only passively aware of. He didn’t remember being told that was where they were or the process of getting them moved there. He just knew.

“Sounds like he likes you.” Danny said to the fretting silence that his sister had fallen into. He couldn’t recall the rest of the conversation - was it a conversation if she was just talking to a wall? If Danny was an empty shell for her to hold up to her ear to try and make out the impression of a response? But he recalled his sister’s anxiety, her fluttering worry, the impression that she was looking at things all wrong.

The tapping on the can stilled, and he could feel hope hope hope filtering in through their Bond before Jazz soothed it into here reassurance safe. Jazz was the best at controlling what came through the Bonds. Always able to make sure that they only felt what she wanted them to, slipping only rarely to allow them unfiltered access to the full range of her emotions. She was able to help them with that too, when they asked. He wasn’t sure if it was her Empathic abilities that gave her that skill, or her position as Grave Stone. Either way, she always worked hard to feel steady and sure to all of them, even in the most chaotic of times.

Danny remembered the press of safe safe safe she’d instilled in him after…After. How it was the only thing he could feel from her even though he knew she’d faced Them. He’d heard screaming - her voice - heard rage and fury and awful, awful wailing. He hadn’t felt any of it though.

Unbeing pulled at him at the painful memories.

Danny pulled back.

He was on a rooftop eating Thai food with his sister, listening to her worry that a guy that clearly liked her actually hated her instead because she was Jazz and always too in her head about those kinds of things. Unbeing kept him from the pain, but it kept him from everything else too. He’d end up back there again, eventually, he knew. The shattered glass of his Core was worn now, like sea glass tumbled smooth beneath the waves. There were still sharp edges though, still pieces where a whole should be.

Jazz bumped his shoulder with hers gently. Her smile was soft and hopeful as she said, “He does not. He barely even speaks to me.”

“Because you never shut up.” He said with a croaking sort of laugh. His voice sounded better. Less rusted and stuck in his throat. He sipped at his own birch beer, cool in his hand. “Whenever you get nervous you just start babbling and don’t stop. Has the guy even had the chance to say anything?”

She shoved him with an affronted squawk and by the end of it his hair was sticky with soda and his clothes dirty with the grime of the roof and the ache in his sides from laughter was greater than the ache in his chest. They climb the fire escape back down to their apartment, Jazz hustling her way through getting ready for work while Danny tried to scrub himself clean in the kitchen sink.

Everything was wrong. In a hundred, thousand different ways. The apartment, the city, the way they were all crowded together. Jazz should be in Princeton, becoming the world’s most effective and terrifying psychologist. Dan in the Far Frozen devoting himself to being one of the Yeti’s finest healers. Elle off darting across the world, never landing in the same place twice unless it was to come visit. Danny in Amity Park’s little community college, struggling his way through a planned path that might one day lead him to NASA and space.

He didn’t know where Tucker, Sam, and Val were. Only knew they were alive because he could barely, barely feel the Bonds connecting them to him. Amity Park was gone. A memory of fire and screaming had had barely been aware for. A collection of nightmares that left Elle shaking and crying often enough to trickle through the bleak distance of Unbeing for him to know it happened.

His Core had been splintered by his parents’ visceral, violent rejection. The Grave Bonds he had with them ripped out of him at the root with the full weight of their hatred and disgust at knowing what he truly was. The pain so excruciating and the fear of following the same dark path Dan had once upon a time so great he fell inward, tucking himself away from reality itself to live in the endless oblivion of Unbeing.

It was all wrong.

Somehow, though, despite all of that, he’d laughed with his sister over her crush on the guy she knew from work. He made dinner out of box mac n’ cheese and frozen chicken nuggets while Elle swore up a storm about how much she hated that fucking evil bald bastard that was her boss. He talked to Dan during his minuscule break at the hospital and listened to him bitch about Officer Grayson showing up during his shift again. He let himself fall into the comfort and steadiness of his Grave, those who were there with him, and Was.

He woke up the next morning as himself after going to sleep without falling into Unbeing. Dan’s hair in his mouth and snoring too loud in his ears. Jazz swearing in the kitchen as she burned breakfast, still half asleep from her long shift at the bar. Elle using all the hot water as she got ready for another day of nine-to-five drudgery working at LexCorp.

Danny stumbled out of bed, present in his own body for the first time fully since before his and his Grave’s lives had crashed and burned. His Core hurt, his body was heavy with grief, but he was Himself enough to feel it and not run. He was able to push back the lulling pull of Unbeing to step out of the bedroom and breath.

It wasn’t going to be easy. He knew from half-remembered moments of Jazz speaking to him. Gentle words about healing not being linear, of good days and bad, of healthy coping mechanisms and grounding techniques and the collection of half-broken dishes she had in a box for days he just wanted to break shit instead. But he knew these things because Jazz had been there for him to say them to him. Jazz and Dan and even Elle who he knew was fighting against her very Obsession to stay there with him to make sure he’d be okay one day.

Reaching out to them through his Bonds, his Core jangled like sea glass in his chest biting and sharp as ever. But the sting had become something he could live with, lessened a little by the warmth of feeling his Grave reach out to him in turn. Everything was wrong, and for such a long time he hadn’t been anywhere at all, had lost days-weeks-months to the numbing nothing of Unbeing. But as he sat on their smelly couch eating Jazz’s terrible food, losing his coffee to a half-asleep Dan as Elle snapped the wet towel she’d used to dry her hair at him, he felt…

He felt.

And that was as good of a start as any.

*

So this is actually the earliest in the timeline of the snippets I’ve written/posted so far (and honestly I don’t think there will be anything from before this, this is basically The Start, just from the point of view of someone not fully there for it all). It also takes place over the first year and change that the Pham are in Gotham. Danny is in a bad place for that first year so he missed most of it. He doesn’t even know about Dan stealing medical supplies from the big fancy hospital and getting on the radar of one Officer Grayson and that shit started basically their first week in town lol

Jazz does magic, becuase why not? She doesn’t have the cool ghost powers the rest of her family has (she has some from being a Liminal, but nothing like what Danny & co have), she needed something to even the playing feild when fighting ghosts so, magic. She’s also a bartender at a bar in Crime Alley called the Dead Man’s Hand and is already falling for everyone’s favorite friendly incredibly violent neighborhood vigilante.

More of my headcanon bullshit with a group/family of ghosts being called a Grave:

Originally I thought “oh the head of the Grave should be like the Grave Mother/Father/Whatever” and then I wanted to slap myself because Gravestone is right fucking there like, my god. How did I miss that before? The had of a Grave should be the Grave Stone. That just makes sense, seriously how did I miss that? lol

I have a lot of feelings about redeemed Dan, and they can pretty much boil down to: If he gets the help he needs and is in a better place mentally, he’d probably throw himself into doing everything he could to help people while never using his powers to hurt people again. My man is a total pacifist in this (at least as long as no one fucks with his family, promises might get broken then). He was studying under Frostbite to be a healer/doctor when shit went down and is doing the best he can to keep on that medical track with thier new limited resources.

Elle actually starts out working as an interpreter/translator for Lex Luthor. The pay is terrible, she’s constantly trying not to murder her boss (valid) and she has to commute all the way to Metropolis every day. Why does she do it then? How does she end up working for the Justice League instead? Those are for future snippets/scenes to cover haha

tl;dr on the context notes: I have a lot more scenes I’m gonna write and I have a lot of feelings about this AU.

Gonna start posting this on AO3 soon after I clean up what I have written and figure out what order I wanna post things. This is gonna end up being entirely vibes with scenes/chapters being largely out of order and generally none of the connective tissue stuff stories usually have, basically how it’s been so far lol

Side note, I’ve written almost 30k words for this AU. Most of it a mess, but still. This thing has me in a chokehold and is not letting me go lol

[hallowsden]

Have some Child of Freeze AU doodles!

:D

[wandixx]

Serious chaos one-shot snippet

“Hey, Dami?”

Boy hadn’t looked up from kittens he was bottle feeding but let out hum indicating he listened.

“I think about trying out more girlish style. Do you think it would suit me?”

Well, Damian had no idea but if Dani wished to give it a chance, then, well, the only appropriate course of action was to offer his aid.

Also features: Dani and Damian working at an animal shelter, Steph being fashionable, and Batman's rouge gallery and no, it's not a spelling mistake :)