So you're a go to source for all things Dick&Tim bros and you tend to write primarily from Dick's POV. So, odd question, but if you were to summarize their relationship from his POV in FIVE panels which panels would you pick? Keeping in mind that one specific aspect of their relationship that you love needs to be clearly represented by each panel (loyalty, trust etc). I hope this is a fun challenge and not an annoying question so if you don't want to answer that's cool! Have a wonderful day!
No more talk. The same thoughts run through two minds... (SotB 29) / You're my equal. My closest ally. (RR 1) / I can't stop thinking how much I rely on him. (GoG 3)
25 Feelings Dick Has About Tim
This was such a kind ask & a cool challenge which I totally failed; here are TWENTY-five panels of Dick's POV on Tim sdfdsfds Look, I got carried away! Marcia and Cindy! The boys!!
OKAY SO BEFORE I GET TO THE PANELS A FEW NOTES:
WARNING THAT THERE ARE SOME NEGATIVE EMOTIONS IN HERE because I love conflict but but but you gotta remember those are not the final word!! They are complicated people and sometimes they get mad at each other BUT ultimately their relationship is so hugely important in both their lives & they love each other and rely on each other so much -!!! <3
Also I have CONCLUDING THOUGHTS at the end about what Dick's POV leaves out (mostly: a lot of Dick defending & protecting & supporting Tim, which Dick does instinctively but isn't very self-aware about most of the time)
I have loosely organized my list into 5^5 format (5 categories with 5 examples each!), so if you want to skip to a relevant one, here are the categories!!
Below the cut:
I hate him and find him infuriating (#1-5)
On second thought, he's endearing & fun (#6-10)
Grief is complicated & he's all tangled up in mine (#11-15)
I love him & think highly of him (#16-20)
I rely on him & though it's hard for me, I trust him (#21-25)
I hate him and find him infuriating (#1 - 5)
1) He thinks he’s so smart and can psychoanalyze me and Bruce, but he doesn’t know me at all, he should get lost (New Titans 61)
2) He thinks he’s so smart and can psychoanalyze Bruce but he doesn’t know Bruce at all, he should get lost (Gotham Knights 26)
3) He is so nosy about stuff that is MY business (Robin 0)
4) He sounds like an insincere suck-up half the time... but okay, fine, if you push him he's got a sense of humor about it (New Titans 65)
5) I'm sure he's a better vigilante than me. It's my fault for being a failure, but I resent him anyway. (Nightwing 9 - Dick's having a nightmare)
On second thought, he's kinda endearing (#6-10)
6) He worries too much and gets anxious so easily, but it makes him fun to tease (Robin 67)
7) I'm not that competitive - okay, so maybe I'm a little competitive, I gotta make sure he doesn't get a swelled head (Prodigal)
8) I'm supposed to be his favorite! It is not cool for him to be fanboying over my not-girlfriend's not-boyfriend!! (Birds of Prey 19)
9) We have fun together. I can kick back and relax when it's just the two of us. Plus I get to boss him around a bit. (Prodigal)
10) He’s always trying to reassure me, and I guess it's a little comforting, but also he doesn’t really get it. Or me. He makes excuses that he shouldn't, because he doesn't understand that I suck. (Nightwing 64)
Grief is complicated and he's all tangled up in mine (#11 - 15)
11) He reminds me of everything I try not to think about. Sometimes the memories are so strong it hurts to look at him. (Batman 441)
12) WHY IS HE BEING IMPOSSIBLE ALL OF A SUDDEN??? THIS IS SO FRUSTRATING (Nightwing 139)
13) We're the same. He says all the things I don't let myself think about. It's like arguing with myself. (Nightwing 139)
14) He thinks he gets to tell me what to do but he doesn’t, fuck him (Battle for the Cowl)
15) Life sucks, so what. I sucked it up so he should too (RR 1)
I love him and think highly of him (#16 - 20)
16) He’s the closest thing to a brother I’ll ever have. If someone hurts him I will hurt them harder. (Nightwing 6)
17) I can't handle the idea of losing him. (Nightwing 97)
17) He’s so good and I’m not. I'm afraid I’m bad for him. (Nightwing 110)
18) He’s better than me, and it’s kind of a relief because I know no matter what he’ll be okay. (Gates of Gotham 3)
19) In my head he’s the responsible one. (Gotham Knights 10)
I rely on him, and though it's hard for me, I trust him (#20-25)
20) I know I have to trust him but I'm afraid he'll make the wrong choices and get hurt (Nightwing 139)
21) I'm sure I know what he should do because I see myself in him - not that I can take my own advice, but he should (Blackest Night 3)
22) I trust him. When I’m losing my grip on things, he pulls me back. (Gotham Knights 10)
23) I want him to trust me (Red Robin 12)
24) He can tell when I'm lying. Sometimes he sees my weaknesses better than I wish he did. (Detective Comics 874)
25) He’s always there when I need him. (Teen Titans / Outsiders Secret Files)
Final rambling thoughts:
TIM: Uhh, okay, so I'm just skimming this list - do you really trust me? you're not just saying that? - but anyway, I'm confused because you left some stuff out? Like some stuff that's kinda important?
DICK: No? I think I got everything?
TIM (starts counting on his fingers): The time I was having a bad day but then I called you. The time I got captured by Two-Face but then you saved me. The time I fell off a train but then you saved me. The time I fell off a building but then you saved me. The time I fell off a different building -
DICK: I feel like you're trying to make some kind of point but I'm not sure what it could be.
SO THE THING IS, I put 25 panels in here and not a single one has Dick catching Tim when he’s falling!!! But I think that's a central motif of their relationship from Tim’s POV, not Dick’s. I love Dick, but in some ways I think he is spectacularly un-self-aware.
And I think he especially has a lot of blind spots about Tim. He kinda intermittently gets that Tim admires him, and he enjoys it in a playful I-get-to-boss-you-around way. But Dick tends to consistently underestimate all of his own good qualities & skills, and he meets Tim at a point in his life when he's especially down on himself & his abilities. And so he's unable to see his own influence on Tim, & therefore unable to fully understand a lot of Tim's priorities and loyalties and motivations, because you can't actually understand Tim without understanding Dick's impact on him. There's a fascinating moment in Bruce Wayne: Murderer when Dick's completely blindsided & upset to discover that Tim doesn't entirely trust Bruce, even though this has been a definitive fact of Tim's whole thing ever since he showed up with his Batman needs Robin theory, and Barbara has to actively remind Dick of the obvious-to-everyone-except-Dick fact that a lot of Tim's loyalty is to Dick, and Tim loves Bruce but feels free to be more wary of him. (And to give Bruce credit: this is not something he ever begrudges.) But anyway Babs points this out, and Dick manages to sorta process it for about five seconds, but he cannot actually accept it into his worldview so instead he discards it at the speed of light and goes off and has an argument with Tim instead sdfsfdsf
All of Dick's virtues - Dick's kindness at the circus and Dick's determination to fight through grief and Dick's rigid sense of morals and Dick's vigilante skills and every time Dick has ever backed Tim up or listened to him or protected him or saved him from something or just been casually kind to a stranger in Tim's presence etc etc etc - all these things loom really large in Tim's mental story of Who Dick Is, and What Dick And Tim's Relationship Is. Tim meets Dick before he meets Bruce, trusts Dick more than Bruce, aspires to be Robin instead of Batman. And so in Tim's default version of the story, Dick is the super-special and admirable hero and Tim is... nobody in particular, a tagalong outsider who's barely managing to be a hero, not part of Dick and Bruce's family and not part of their story, who, if he's VERY LUCKY and tries REALLY HARD, might be able to fight his way to proving himself and offering something to Dick that Dick will value, if Dick doesn't get fed up with him first.
But that's not Dick's version of the story!!!
Dick's version of the story is almost the exact opposite, a story where Dick's an outcast failure black sheep who's screwing up everything he tries, and meanwhile Tim is The Sudden New Perfect Robin Who's Better Than Me And Probably Bruce Loves Him More And Probably They Gossip About What A Loser I Am, mixed with a complicated edge of Tim Thinks He's So Smart But He Doesn't Know Me/Us At All. Dick gets much more attached to Tim over time, and Tim gets unnervingly better at the know-it-all psychoanalysis so then Dick gets to have complicated feelings about him being right instead of just annoyance at him for being wrong, plus Dick's relationship with Bruce improves a lot, so Tim stops feeling so threatening. But Dick never fundamentally changes his basic theory of their relationship in which Tim is highly impressive and capable, and Dick is not so much.
And so asking Dick about Tim is kinda like if you asked George Bailey to tell you about Harry Bailey in It's A Wonderful Life; like, you'll be there for five hours while he tells you how great Harry is, and how accomplished Harry is, and how he doesn't really get how or why Harry does the things he does, and maybe George does feel a little resentful or jealous sometimes, but that pales in comparison to all his admiration and trust for Harry who he loves so much, who's better than him in so many ways, and he's not gonna openly gripe but secretly he can't help but feel sometimes like he's such a failure in comparison to Harry, a perfect person who emerged fully formed from Zeus's head with all the virtues and also all the accomplishments, etc. etc. etc. --
-- and he will not actually remember the part where he changed and saved Harry's whole entire life unless you literally send him to an alternate timeline in order to force him to remember it. <3
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Stuck in the middle of a forest made of
Flesh and bones and they're all scared of
A lost little boy who has lost his heart
Fear's not enough, they have to
Tear him apart
—-------
There are two things Daniel Fenton knows that his family knows as well:
He’s adopted.
He can’t remember anything else before that.
‘Adoption’ is a loose term, implying that they went through the official legal processes and troubles of adopting a child into their home willingly, and with the full intention of doing so going into it. That is not what happened. What happened is that Jasmine Fenton found a half-dead child, in strange clothing, in the middle of the woods at her Aunt Alicia’s cabin, and then she went and got her parents.
What happened is that a twelve year old Danny woke up in the same cabin, wearing clothes much too big on him that didn’t belong to him, and with very little memory of before that moment. He wakes up like a spring being set loose, sitting up so fast he scares the daylights out of Jasmine Fenton sitting next to him. He wakes up, reaching for his sleeve for something that isn’t there, and when it isn’t his mind stutters, like he’s tripped at the top of a steep hill.
When they ask him for his name, he tells them, clearing muddled thoughts from his mind; Danny. He’s twelve.
(He thinks that’s his name, at least. It sounds right; it feels right. If he thinks really hard about it, he thinks he can remember someone calling him that, utter adoration in their voice. So it must be his name.)
The Jasmine girl convinces her parents to take him home with them, and they give him the spare guest room upstairs. He has nothing to fill it with.
It’s… a strange experience, to go to a ‘new’ home when he doesn’t even remember his old one.
The official adoption process… happens. He can’t say it’s easy, or difficult. He’s oblivious for the most of it, Jasmine intends on helping him settle in and Danny can’t say he enjoys the smothering. He learns that he is stubbornly self-independent, that’s one new thing he knows about himself.
His adoption papers say ‘Daniel J. Fenton’. Danny remembers staring at the name ‘Daniel’ for a long, long moment, something curdling sour in his sternum. His name is Danny, that he knows. But it’s not Daniel. But he doesn’t know any other way of saying it, so he keeps his complaints to himself.
(Jack Fenton boisterously claps his hand on Danny’s shoulder and jerks him around, grinning wide as he welcomes him into the Fenton Family. Danny’s mind blanches at the touch on his shoulder, an instinct snapping like the maw of a snake, telling him to cut off the man’s fingers for daring to touch him.)
(He keeps the thought to himself, tension rising up his shoulders the longer Jack Fenton’s heavy hand stays on him.)
They found Danny in the summer. It’s a perfect coincidence, Maddie Fenton says before she goes back into her lab with Jack Fenton. She says it’s enough time to allow Danny to adjust; that they’ll enroll him into the school year in the fall. Then she stuffs a canister of ectoplasm onto the top shelf, and disappears like the ghosts she studies back down the stairs.
(There’s something eerily familiar about the ectoplasm sitting in the fridge, something unsettlingly so. Danny knows what that stuff is, but he doesn’t know where. When the house is empty, he takes a can from the fridge and inspects it.)
Jazz wants him to leave the house. Danny doesn’t want to step foot outside of the FentonWorks building until he has something that quells the feeling of vulnerability he gets whenever he does. He tried to once, and he felt exposed. Unsafe.
He turned back around and went inside.
—-------
Where do we go
When the river's running slow
Where do we run
When the cats kill one by one
—------
One day, when the house is empty — or, as empty as it can be; the Fenton parents down in the lab, and jazz out with friends. Danny is making a sandwich, and he caves into the urge to flip the knife in his hands between his fingers. A childish impulse, but one he falls for nonetheless. It comes to him easily, like second nature, in fact. The slip of the blade between his fingers is seamless, flowing with an ease like water running down the wall.
He’s almost startled by it; his body holds memories that his mind does not. Muscles that know which way to move and twist, limbs that know how to hold and how to throw. He continues twirling it, fascinated, as if he were a scientist discovering a new species of animal.
It’s not for a handful of minutes when a new thought hits him; an impulsive thought that pops in the back of his mind like a firecracker; Danny moves without thinking.
He turns, and throws the knife. The pull of his shoulder, the flick of his elbow, is familiar like a hug. He knows when to let go, and the blade flies through the air in impressive speed, embedding itself into the wall with a hearty, loud thunk. Sinking into the drywall like butter.
Danny stares at it in shock, he feels relieved — about what? — before he feels the guilt. He scrambles across the kitchen to pull it out, heart racing in his chest at being caught, and prays no one notices the hole it left behind.
(He runs up the stairs before anyone can find him, food forgotten, and hides the knife beneath his mattress like a guilty murder weapon.)
After that, he leaves the house more. It’s more out of fear of being caught than the desire to leave. But Danny is quickly learning that among all things, he is someone who was dangerous, before he lost his memory. Even with his mind in fractures, he is still dangerous.
He’s not sure how to feel about that — he thinks he should be scared. He feels a little proud, instead.
—------
Hazel beneath our claws
While we wait for cerulean to cry
Unsettled ticks run through time
Enough for the hunt to go awry
—-----
There’s another thing he learns about himself. That he knows about since he woke up. He knows that he left someone behind. He doesn’t know who, but he knows they must have been close; he’s always looking down and finding himself surprised when the only shadow he sees is his own.
He thinks that he must have sung to them a lot; he finds himself humming familiar melodies when he’s lost in thought. Lullabies lingering at the tip of his tongue, an instinct to turn and sing them to someone beside him. He can’t remember the lyrics, but his mouth does, it tries to get him to say them when he’s not thinking. He can’t.
Danny’s found himself humming under his breath more times than he can count, trying to recall whatever it is his mind is trying to claw forward.
(“That’s a pretty song, Danny.” Jazz tells him at breakfast one day, Danny screws his mouth shut. He hadn’t realized he was humming. “What is it?”)
(Something mean and possessive rears its head on instinct, uncoiling like a snake from its ball. His shoulders hunch defensively, he bites his cheek to prevent himself from baring his teeth. He doesn’t know what song it is, but it’s not for her. “I don’t know.”)
He misses his person. Dearly. He knows, the longer he is without them, that they must have been close. Otherwise, he wouldn’t feel like he’s missing a chunk from himself. He wouldn’t be turning to someone who's not there; reaching for a hand that’s missing, birdsong on his tongue, a story to tell.
A dream haunts him one night. Warm and familiar, he’s holding onto someone smaller than him, they’re tucked into his side like a puzzle piece. He’s humming one of his songs that is always playing in the back of his mind, an unfinished tale of a harpy and a hare. Danny can’t remember their face, not all of it. He remembers green eyes, hair dark like his own, skin brown like his.
He loves them more than anything else in the world, a fact he knows down to his soul. He loves them so much it fills his heart with sunlight. Danny squeezes them tight, nuzzling into their hair; he makes them laugh. Then, he proudly boasts something. That when he takes something of their father’s, that his person — a sibling? That feels right — will be… the word fades from Danny’s mind before he can make sense of it.
His person hugs him tight, his… brother? And their mother — a woman whose face he can’t remember either, but who he loves like a limb nonetheless — appears, smiling. Her hands reach for them both, voice calling them, ‘her sons’. There’s ticking in the distance, it sounds like the fastening of chains.
Danny wakes up cold, tears streaming down his face. The details of the dream already fading from his mind like the cold pull of a corpse.
—-------
Harpy hare
Where have you buried all your children?
Tell me so I say
—-------
When school starts that Fall, Danny joins the sixth grade class, and quickly learns more things about himself. One of those things being that he’s smarter than the rest of his grade, whatever education he had before, it was better than the one he’s getting now.
Everyone knows he’s adopted right off the bat. He tells them when the teacher forces himself to introduce himself, but it’s not like they needed him to tell them for them to know; he never existed in their little world before now, and the Fentons are pale as they come. Danny is not.
He befriends Sam Manson and Tucker Foley; they ask him about the scars fading up and down his arms, they ask him about the scar carved diagonal across his face.
Danny, as politely as he can, tells them he doesn’t remember. He thought kindness would come second nature to him, his dream burned into his mind where he hugged his brother so sweetly. Apparently, his sweetness is only second nature to people he considers his own.
(It becomes even more apparent when Dash Baxter tries to bully him later that day, and Danny ruffles like an eagle threatened. His mind whispers, hissy and agitated, sinking like a shadow at his shoulder, several different ways Danny could kill him for talking to him like that, and fifteen more ways he could cripple him.)
(Danny ignores those thoughts, up until Dash Baxter tries to grab him. Then he breaks his nose on the wood of his desk. It’s easy how quickly the rest of his grade sinks him down to the status of social pariah.)
(At least Sam and Tucker still talk to him after that. When Danny goes to the principal’s office later, he wisely doesn’t mention the worse things he could’ve done than break Dash Baxter’s nose.)
—--------------
It clicks and it clatters in corners and borders
And they will never
Hear me here listen to croons and a calling
I'll tell them all the
Story, the sun, and the swallow, her sorrow
Singing me the tale of the Harpy and the Hare
—-------
More dreams come, of course they do. Each one halfway to forgotten whenever he wakes up, ticking faint in his ears. He is many different ages. He is young, shorter than a table. He is older, holding onto his little brother. He is singing in almost every single one. He is singing to his brother.
Danny can barely remember the lyrics, he’s begun leaving a journal by his bedside so that it’s the first thing he can write down when he wakes up. He’s a storyteller, he learns. He feels like a historian, trying to piece together a culture long dead and forgotten.
His most vivid dream-like memory is not a happy one, and for once he’s almost relieved he barely recalls it. He is somewhere that isn’t home, but his mother and brother are there. He is dressed in black, blades keen in his hands.
They are atop a moving train. They are fleeing something. His brother is struggling to keep up, he is small, and young. It’s beautifully sunny, they are somewhere green and lovely.
It is a fast dream.
His brother stumbles on something, and Danny, fast as a whip, snatches him by the back of his shirt and hoists him up to his feet before he can fall. “Watch your feet, habibi.” He murmurs low, a hand on his back. It’s hard to hear, there is wind in their ears.
His brother, face obscured in all but his eyes, which are green as emeralds, nods.
The dream blurs, but Danny falls behind. His foot catches on air — impossible, it should’ve been, at least. He never trips. — and he lands against the roof with a thud and a grunt. His mother and brother stop, and turn for him.
The train hits a turn before Danny can get up, and he shouldn’t have, something pulls on him, he swears, but he slips. He can’t find the purchase to pull himself up, cold fear hits him as his nails scrape against the metal.
His mother and brother’s horrified faces are the last thing he sees before he disappears off the side of the train.
(The ticking is at its loudest when he wakes up, pounding against his inner skull. He only manages to write down ‘train fall’ in his journal, before he’s flipping over to press his head into his pillow to get the pain to stop.)
—---
She can't keep them all safe
They will die and be afraid
Mother, tell me so I say
(Mother, tell me so I say)
—-------
When Danny is fourteen he is still humming songs he can’t remember, his mind still in a broken puzzle. But his room is now decorated with stars and plants in every corner. He has a guitar he keeps in the corner of his room, and he plays the lullabies in his head on the strings over and over again.
The ectoplasm in the fridge still unsettles him, still reminds him of a past he can’t recall. The knife beneath his mattress has returned to the kitchen — he doesn’t need it. He found a box in the attic last year, it had his name on it, and inside he found familiar, strange clothes, and more weapons than he thought was possible to carry on one person.
(Even without knowing that the Fentons prefer guns to blades, Danny knows, instinctively, that they were his weapons. He was — was? Is — a dangerous person. He takes the box down to his room to sort through. The weapons all fit into his callused hands almost perfectly — the grooves worn to fit his palm. They’re just a little small.)
(He tentatively takes a small blade with him to school one day, and feels much more comfortable with it sheathed beneath his shirt. He’s kept it on him ever since, like he’s reunited a lost limb to himself.)
Danny doesn’t have a name for his person, his little brother, nor does he have a name for his beloved mother. He’s haunted by dreams every few weeks, many of them repeating. He’s ingrained the words he can remember to memory, and the ones he doesn’t, he writes down in his journal. His little brother; Danny calls him a bird, he can’t figure out what kind. His little bird of some kind; when Danny takes something from their father — what, he can’t remember what — then his little brother will be a little bird.
(He doesn’t have a name for his brother, yet, but he’s calling his birdie in his head. It’s better than nothing.)
—------
Seeker, do you ever come to wonder
If what you're looking for is within where you hold
Will you leave a trail for them to follow a path
You'll soon forget
Home
—---------
When he’s fourteen, Danny dies. It does nothing to fix his fractured memories, much to his consternation. It just confirms something he already knows; that he was someone dangerous, and that he still is.
When the shock of death has worn off, Danny inspects his ghost in the metal reflection of the closest table. It’s blurry, hard to see, but shock green eyes pierce back at him, green like the portal. Lazarus, Danny’s mind whispers, and he blinks rapidly.
‘Lazarus,’ he mouths to himself. It’s familiar. Sam shows him with her phone what he looks like, joking that he looks like an assassin. Danny doesn’t think she’s that too far off.
He doesn’t tell her that. He tucks the thought away with the rest of his secrets, and fiddles with the hood gathering at his neck, attached to a cape with torn edges swinging down to his ankles. He pulls it over his shock white hair. It shadows over his face impossibly so, until all you can see are his green-green eyes peering out like a wolf hiding in the brush.
He ends up calling himself Phantom.
(Maybe now he can start putting lyrics to his lullabies; his memories may not have returned, locked away with the sound of a clock, but the dead can talk. One of them may just have answers.)
----------
Home is where we are
Home is where you are
Home is where I am
-----------------
Dedicated to @gascansposts for being the one who introduced me to the band Yaelokre, and thus being the whole reason I was inspired to write this in the first place >:] Those lyrics at the line breaks are all from their album Hayfields.
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NO OK BUT I'M STILL NOT OVER BOOTHILL AND DAN HENG AND THE JADE ABACUS IN ENA'S DREAM!!!!!
For some extra context, I have a whole henghill manifesto I wrote over here, but the tl;dr is that Dan Heng decides to use the Jade Abacus of Allying Oath to save the Express Crew the first time. Boothill urges him to think it over carefully, but he doesn't stop him. And then, the second time Dan Heng decides to use it, we get this instead:
And just! That's so!! so!!!
Because like. We see in the first battle against Sunday that that Jade Abacus is effective, like we really do just get an entire army lead by a whole-ass Emanator of The Hunt right to our location and ready to fuck shit up. It's important. It's incredibly valuable. That is a huge amount of power to hold in the palm of one's hand.
But Tiernan's relic works the same way.
Galaxy Rangers are terribly dangerous. Boothill comments on this when discussing Acheron's motives, because he can't believe anyone would be stupid enough to get The Hunt on their asses. They're considered to be on a level even above The Annihilation Gang.
And now, with the burial relic, he has a way to get thousands of them, almost immediately, and all in one place.
And you can't tell me that wouldn't be something extremely useful to Boothill, like literally life-saving. He's wanted by the IPC. He makes his living as a bounty hunter. His whole driving motivation in life right now is to do whatever he can, up to and including throwing away his own human body, to ruthlessly hunt down one man and kill him in revenge. Like that has to be dangerous, the IPC is a massive entity with far-reaching influence and money and power and weaponry. He surely must have already had some close calls.
Like can you imagine it? Galaxy Rangers are solitary creatures. If Boothill were to find himself near death, he would probably be all alone. Do you think he had regrets? Did he wonder if anyone would find his own burial relic? Did it feel the same way it did when they melted his flesh, replaced it with metal? Did he lay there with his vision slowly blacking out until he thought of home, and family, and the little daughter who he never even got to hear her first word, until he was so full of fury that he could prop himself up on his rage like a crutch and find help?
Tiernan's relic would have been like a get-out-of-jail-free card. Just for one time, no matter where Boothill was, someone would find him. The Galaxy Rangers aren't sociable or organized between themselves, but they help their own. Someone would save him.
He chooses to give all of that up to help Dan Heng.
And I just cannot get over it, especially the wording of it, the pause before he speaks, the gentle way he tells him to hold onto his once-in-a-lifetime treasure...!! He wants Dan Heng to leave this to him! He wants him to keep this precious item that will help him save his companions again in the future! And maybe it's just...wishful thinking, me reading too much into it? But I mean. Just the way he says it...
I really do think it comes from a place of deep kinship and respect. That there's a lot of thought and feeling behind that statement. Something from one Pathstrider of The Hunt to another. Boothill fought for his home and his family, he fought really really hard! But. Sometimes that just doesn't matter. And now he's watching Dan Heng fight for his, too.
When he made that decision the first time, Dan Heng was in the parlor car of the Astral Express. He was completely removed from any danger. He could have chosen to get the hell out of Dodge and not look back. Obviously we know he would never even consider such a thing, but it was technically an option, and Boothill watched him decide to go back into the proverbial lion's den for his friends anyway. And I'm sure that was part of what sealed his decision, to later use Tiernan's relic instead of the Jade Abacus to summon enough people to disrupt Ena's Dream. Because he greatly values ideas like righteousness and justice and saving people, and Dan Heng so beautifully embodies all of that and then some.
Boothill doesn't have people to protect anymore, only ghosts to avenge.
And there is just something so endlessly endearing about him wanting to help Dan Heng, to make sure his friend doesn't go through that the way he did.
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