Familar Stranger
DP x DC au with a dash of dimensional travel where Danny, due to his ghostly nature, looks slightly different depending on how others perceive him.
Warning: OP has no knowledge of space other than Google and is also a non-native English speaker; proceed with caution.
Same startup kits; Danny becomes the successor to the Infinity Realm (he's a baby by both ghost and human standards, so there's a temporary council for now). Anyway, he still has some power over the ghosts, so he asks them to lessen the amount of fighting to focus on schoolwork and "princely education."
Now here's where my brainrot begins.
The Lazarus Pits, necromantic rituals, or portals of any kind that have "death" or "soul" in them tend to be connected to the Ghost Zone. However, the zone has its own defensive mechanism, so unless someone *Fentons* actively makes a gateway or has "experienced" death, it's nearly impossible to come upon the zone. A certain furry bridage in Gotham has unknowingly ticked all the checkboxes.
During a misson, one of the bats got caught in a magic situation and got transported to the Infinity Realms. They wandered around, dogding ghosts, slowly getting insane from all these damn corridors and living paintings, before they stumbled upon a seemingly random door (CW is involved; he's having a great time testing the poor bat).
Opening the door leads them to the universe. They closed the door, then opened it again. Yep, that's an entire universe complete with its own planetary systems and, oh, so pretty stars growing and dying in a blink of an eye. Another check around shows them that this is the only door so far in the endlessly long hallway. They look down (if there's even a down, for there's only infinity) and take an experimental step. The Milky Way lit up under their feet, with stars gathering around to form a twisting path to nowhere.
For the next couple of hours, days, or minutes, they made their way through the galaxies. Just when they were about to spiral into a midlife crisis, they heard... humming?
Did they finally lose it? They asked themselves before noticing a glowing figure sitting on an asteroid nearby.
"Hello?"
The figure flinched, and life paused. The blackhole by their left stopped spinning, the stars weren't twinkling, and the figure turned their head. Now it's their blood that runs cold.
"You're not supposed to be here."
Lazarus-colored orbs stared back at them with a familiar face but an unfamiliar voice. Damian tilted his head, looking at them in confusion (there's something wrong, wrong, wrong-). They blinked because, what the hell, seeing something other than a scowl on the boy's face is WeirdTM. Suddenly, that's a teenaged Jason staring at them, much closer than he(?) was before.
At this point, they realized— eyes moving over the entire regalia and the glowing crown that just appeared—they're probably in deep sh*t.
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So about that dinner…
[DP x DC fic]
[Love at first... murder? - part 2]
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Part 1
Ao3
---
Danny lets out a long groan as he enters his apartment.
He’s dead tired— hehe, ‘dead’ tired— due to an exhausting schoolday and having been unable to fall back asleep last night after what happened.
So sure, he might have started having a panic attack when he got back to his apartment when what he had just done had finally fully sunken in.
And he might have spiraled even more, even going as far as to try and trap himself in a Fenton thermos, thinking he was back on the path to becoming Dan.
Luckily for him, a green sticky note, left by his favorite unnecessarily cryptic mentor, appeared.
It let him know that he is no more on the path to becoming Dan than prior to the incident and that the actions he had taken that night, while vexatious, were necessary for the betterment of the timeline.
Whatever that means.
By the time he had come to terms with his actions enough to stop spiraling and remember that he has school soon. He checked the time, noticing that he only had a few minutes left until his next class started.
Which meant he had to sprint to his classes and start the day off already tired and emotionally drained. He hadn’t even been able to at least get a coffee beforehand. And so he spent the rest of the day fighting to stay awake during his lessons, sporting eye bags big enough to carry the weight of his sins.
Danny glances at the space-themed clock on the wall that Jazz had gotten him as a housewarming gift. 6 pm. He should probably get started on dinner.
Deciding to go with something simple, as he simply does not have the energy for anything fancy right now, Danny opens the cupboard and grabs the first thing he sees: a box of mac n cheese. Danny rubs his eyes and squints at the box, trying to read the instructions when he gets interrupted by a knock.
…
On his window.
…
Danny turns around to see Red Hood at his window, outside of his 3rd-floor apartment. He pauses before shrugging it off. Stranger things have happened. He sets the box down and makes his way over to the window. He opens the window once he reaches it, only to come face to face with a bouquet of sweet peas, the colors ranging from white and pink to lavender.
Oh, those are his favorite.
He gingerly takes the flowers before looking over the top of the bouquet at the person who handed them to him. Ah, yes. The crime lord. Who had seen him commit murder.
Danny stares at him, debating on whether he should ask him what he’s doing here or thank him for the flowers. Red Hood speaks up before Danny can make a decision.
“So about that dinner… ” He trails off, tone laced with hope and a slight nervousness.
“Right.” Danny nods with understanding, despite not having a clue what Red Hood was talking about, his joke the night before having slipped from his mind.
“I’ve got the entire night planned out for us. First, we’ll have dinner at Pete’s. They recently rebuilt and they have this amazing cannoli, you have to try it sometime.
“And then after dinner, we’ll go to the Gotham Observatory—“
Danny, not even questioning how the crime lord found out where he lives and that he loves space, cuts him off in excitement.
“Wait! Isn’t that the one with the crystal powered telescope?”
Red Hood nods and holds out a hand to him expectantly.
Danny stares at the hand for a moment before shrugging, setting the flowers down on a table, and taking the offered hand. He lets Red Hood lead him out of his own window.
Once Red Hood has helped him down to the ground and led him to his motorcycle, it dawns on Danny he’s going on a date(?) with a known crime lord— or wasn’t it former crime lord now?
Well, who was Danny to refuse a trip to the observatory and some good cannoli?
Who knows, he might even get a new boyfriend out of it.
---
Red Hood takes his helmet off and sets it down on the table between them so he can eat.
Danny tries not to stare too much but damn, he’s handsome, even if he’s still wearing the mask.
Danny takes a bite of his food to try and distract himself, idly noting that ohhh, this is some good spaghetti. He'll have to try the cannoli if it's as good as their pasta.
Red Hood is the one to start the conversation.
“Hey, so, since we didn’t get to talk more last night, I still wanted to thank you for your service to the city”
“My what?”
“I’ve been wanting to kill that insane clown for years now.” Red Hood continues.
“And while I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t get to end his miserable existence myself, I’m so glad he’s finally gone. So, thank you” he says, looking Danny right in the eye with an earnest expression.
Feeling a mix of flustered at the heavy gaze that’s on him, and confused by the other’s words, Danny stammers out a bewildered “You’re… welcome?”
Red Hood nods at him before continuing.
“And you don’t have to worry about others finding out if you don’t want them to. I ain’t a snitch, and I’ll try to keep the Bats off your back the best I can.”
Danny gives him a nod in gratitude.
“Though honestly, I’d doubt you’d have to deal with much trouble even if people did know it was you who got rid of him.
“The Joker has done a lot of horrid shit and caused a lot of grief for Gotham over the years. He’s had it coming for a long time now, so don’t even feel too bad about it. It might even become a local holiday when his death comes out!”
However, something Red Hood had said stood out to Danny. He stiffens before blurting something out in a tone that sounded even more panicked than when he accidentally killed the clown.
“THAT CLOWN I PUNCHED WAS THE JOKER?!”
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I love the comic book writing sensibility that Frequency has, like how Three and Five's ending is great for the story being told but if it were a published comic it would still leave them on the table for if a future writer wanted to use them.
whats funny is that despite doing my best to keep in line with dc comics/comic writing sensibilities throughout the fic (staying as comics-accurate as possible in terms of continuity/tone/characterization/story elements etc) that particular comic writing reality was one that was like. kind of a genuine anxiety that i didn't know i had until i started writing this thing.
ive said before that in the original concept for Frequency all of the clones (besides Thad) were going to end up dead. whether it was via killing each other or unintentionally being the instrument of their own demise (disney villain style). obviously it changed because creating an entire narrative about this one character's redemption arc and then not allowing any of the other villains to have a shot at redemption felt hypocritical and like. mean. not to mention antithetical to the whole ethos of the story.
but the reason why killing off all the other clones was my first instinct is partially because i had this kinda subconscious recoil to the idea that any of them would actually continue on after the story was over.
like, because i was trying to stick to canon so much, while figuring out the story a thought came up a couple times that basically went like, "okay, well, if this was a real comic, then...". and inevitably i had a realization that if this WAS a real comic, my original clone characters would be canonized, and therefore available to any future writer who wanted to yank them out of their respective endgames and inject them into other stories. which i Did Not Like the Idea Of.
classic "making up a guy to get mad at" except it was more "making up a reality to get anxious about". because obviously no matter how much it sticks to canon, Frequency still exists in a fan-created space.
but! i'd never made up original characters to put in my own fanmade stuff before and was definitely feeling protective. because all those original clones i made had yknow: a story purpose and narrative function to facilitate the actual key characters, Thad and Bart. the idea of them being removed from that context in any capacity, even if it was in the hands of a good writer, made me have this gut "no STOP you're ruining it!!!!" reaction.
they were all made for Frequency, and to foil Thad as a character, i didnt like the idea of Three being brought back as a one-note villain or Jude and Nathaniel getting folded into the wider Flash cast of allies. and none of them were made to be main character material. plus the character roster at DC is already uhh Extremely Stacked i genuinely did not want the takeaway to be "and here's the nEW ADDITIONS TO THE FLASH FAMILY!" because that wasnt the intention
anyway i got over it lol. i still did my best not to leave any loose ends, and have each ending be wholly satisfying on its own, and ideally the oc clones basically continue on offscreen while the true adventures are based around Thad and Bart. but yeah it felt right to leave off on that note (and served the story much better than killing everybody off)
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