Call to My Bedside
When Danny wakes up with shackles around his wrists and chains pinning him to the wall, he’s not all that surprised to see his mother in front of him.
And no, he doesn’t mean Madeline Fenton, although he wonders if he’d be surprised by that either and really, what does that say about his life?
But no, he’s not all that surprised to be staring into the eyes of Talia Al Ghul right now.
Even if his heart stops at the sight of her.
Immediately, he tries to stand, shoulders pulled painfully behind him as he tries not to let her loom over him.
This is a woman he barely remembers, through no effort of her own, but that’s what happens when you left a kid to be trained by strangers before he’s whisked off to America against his will at age 5.
Really she was lucky he remembered her at all.
She crouches down slightly to make up for their height difference, face softening too quickly to be real, “I am Talia Al Ghul. Though you may not remember, you are my child-“
“I remember.” Danny cuts her off, trying to keep the anger from making his eyes glow. He does remember, he remembers enough to know that it would be dangerous for them to know he has powers.
He settles for glaring at her.
For a second it seems she just watches him, but the kindness drops from her face as she straightens.
The slap catches him hard enough to jerk his head to the side, chains rattling behind him as he unsuccessfully tries to catch himself.
Instead, they go taut behind him, leaving him to jerk sideways, breath rough by the surprise of the hit.
“Do not interrupt me, child.” Her voice rings cold in the air.
Danny doesn’t bother to lift his head, instead keeping his eyes pinned to the grimy floor. Had he forgotten how unforgiving this place was? What it was like?
“Look at me.”
Danny kept his eyes downwards. He didn’t want to look at her. He wanted to go home.
“Look at me, or suffer the punishment,” She said, voice steely.
He slowly lifted his head, eyes meeting hers.
“Good. You know who you are then, child? What place you are meant to hold in this world?”
Danny doesn’t answer, only glaring.
She barely blinks but her eyes sharpen in warning.
Danny grits his teeth, “I’m Danny al -Al Ghul, heir to the Demon’s head of the League of Assassins-“
The second hit is just as hard, but Danny is better braced for it.
“Your name is Danyal Al-Ghul, you are my blood and the blood of Batman, your heritage dictates a higher quality of discipline than this and you will show it.”
Everything in Danny’s being rebels against the name. He hasn’t been Danyal in years. And he refuses to go back to it.
He straightens his back, ignoring the ache of his shoulders as he snarls at her, “My name is Danny, Danny Fenton. I haven’t been your precious heir in years, and you can’t make me now.”
They couldn’t and he wouldn’t let them, not when he had the power to-
Talia idly pulls something from behind her and he feels the blood drain from his face.
It’s a picture of him, Tucker, and Sam, next to it is a larger grid of images, each making his heart drop further in his chest.
Sam. Tucker.
Jazz. Mom. Dad.
All of them in cells. Chained.
Hurt.
His family, his family-
“Did you think we would not know of your gifts? Would not know how you would think to leave us? You clearly do not remember as much as you think you do.”
Danny can barely hear her over the static rushing in his ears.
She grabs his face roughly, “We are the League, child, and you are one of us. You may have thought you were like them, but we are better. Meant for better, and you will not be allowed to squander the gifts bestowed on our bloodline through you. Until you can make the right choice yourself, as your blood, we will make them for you.”
Danny looks into her eyes, the certainty behind her words, and he feels a gaping emptiness open inside him. The kind that knows it’s not going away.
He wants to go home. He wants to see his family, and his friends. He doesn’t care that his parents don’t know his secret, that he’s just barely getting a handle on it himself, he just doesn’t want to be here. Not again. Please, not again.
Talia releases him, and he lets his body droop, sinking into himself as he crouches over the ground, the restriction of his arms keeping him from even fully curling around himself.
“Remove the chains, he will not be going anywhere,” Talia says, her shadow falling over him in the dim light of the doorway.
Danny barely moves as the cold metal falls away from his wrists.
And he knows she’s right.
He won’t be going anywhere. Not as long as his family is in danger.
—
The first months were hard. Harder than Danny remembers. Maybe his five-year old self had just had it easy.
He doesn’t now.
“Again!” His instructor shouts, bamboo staff coming down on the back of Danny’s knees.
He doesn’t let himself stumble. Not anymore.
At least his Arabic is getting better, he can understand it completely, as if he’d never forgotten it -as if it’d been his mother tongue- and he can speak it smoothly again, though shallow. You can’t even hear his American accent anymore.
Danny hasn’t spoken English since that first week, when they’d beaten it into him every time he’d tried.
When they’d beaten him for not understanding fast enough. Not reacting fast enough, not responding fast enough, to a language he didn’t know, hadn’t known for years now.
They’re right about one thing.
Pain is an excellent teacher.
“Again!”
He moves fast enough to dodge the bamboo stick this time, body shooting forward against his opponent.
Dodge, lunge, feint, block, swipe, block, block, block-shit-block, reach-
His back slams against the stone floor of the courtyard, knocking the breath out of him.
The instructor doesn’t step in. He won’t.
Not even when his opponent’s hands clamp around his throat.
Danny struggles, trying to use his inhuman strength to pull the arms away, but that inhumanity has waned since he’s been here, drained like the rest of his energy.
He feels the weight begin to build in his skull, he can’t breathe, he doesn’t have much longer, what can he- Danny forcefully moves his arms away, fighting instinct, instead pulling his legs up and rolling, just as they’d drilled into him, the change in leverage giving him the break he needed to be free as he stands-
The bamboo slams into his back, knocking him forward, “Again!”
Danny rolls with the momentum, ignoring the new throbbing in favor of dodging his opponent’s grappling fists.
Dodge, lunge, dodge, swipe, dodge, dodge, hit, swipe, block, forward, dodge, block-
Danny breathes through the sweat dripping down his skin, the way his ribs creak with every breath, the way his muscles feel numb and disconnected. None of it matters.
He just has to win.
He doesn’t have any other options.
He never did.
Not really.
This is why they brought him here.
Why he was born.
He has to win.
Danyal twists the arm of his opponent back until there’s a sickening crack.
“Again!”
A new opponent flies towards him with fists already raised.
He doesn’t have any other option.
He never did.
——
The next time he sees Talia is just before the ceremony to his next stage. She is waiting in his room when he walks in.
“Mistress,” He greets, bowing his head, feeling phantom pain bloom on his cheeks. It’s the only thing that makes him call her that.
“Danyal, your training is going well,” She says, voice idle in that meandering sort of way. This isn’t why she’s here.
“I will improve,” He says anyways. Because he knows he’s not meeting their standards yet, knows they’re disappointed by the heaviness in his bones that weighs him down and drains his energy.
She stands, making Danny go stock still as she approaches, featherlight touch on his chin as she tilts it upwards.
English drifts from her lips, “You have his eyes, his cheekbones…” her eyes drift down again, and it still doesn’t feel like she’s even really looking at him, “My chin and my jaw…not like Damia-“
Her hand drops.
Danny can’t figure out the change but he can feel it. Hesitantly, he asks, in Arabic still, “Talia, why… are you here?”
The steel returns.
“The bat is dead. You are the last of his power,” She says, then pauses. She seems torn about saying more.
She doesn’t, exiting silently as Danny stares into the air, unmoving.
His… birth father… was dead?
A man that was a great enough warrior to impress the Demon’s Head. Impress Talia.
A man… he didn’t even know the real name of.
It’s not like the Bat was anything more than a name to him.
A name he had to live up to.
Danny sighs and turns to his drawers. He has a training ceremony to prepare for.
——
Danny doesn’t resist the arms that hold him back as they swipe a broad slash across the skin of his back with the whip, simply letting himself curl inwards around the pain before he’s dropped unceremoniously to the ground.
He pulls himself back up just soon enough to see the next person dragged in and thrown in front of him.
The handle of the blade is pressed into his hand.
It wouldn’t be hard.
It should be hard. Right?
Killing a man whose crimes he doesn’t even know should be hard. It’s meant to be hard, right?
Danyal wishes he doesn’t know how easy it will be to fall into it.
But he can’t keep doing this. Collecting scars because he’s clinging to morals that aren’t even his.
He can’t keep doing this. He can’t keep doing any of this.
He has to.
Danyal slices the edge of the blade across the man’s neck.
The cut is clean. Deep.
He’s dead in less than a minute.
Danyal’s own blood continues to flow.
——
Danyal doesn’t know what’s happening. One minute he’s training, trying to push past the exhaustion lining his bones, and the next the entire west side of the courtyard is in flames, crumbling down the side of the mountain.
Danny runs through the rubble of the passageways, searching for the source, searching for reasons, searching for… he doesn’t know, but he knows he can’t be caught doing nothing.
He doesn’t find anything except ruins.
Danny is called to meet Ra’s Al Ghul two weeks later. His grandfather. The Demon’s head.
The man doesn’t even look at him.
Danny stays kneeling all the same, better safe than beaten again.
“Are you familiar with Red Robin?”
Danny inclines his head, just barely, “I… can’t say I am…Great One.”
The following hum is derisive.
“He is one of the Bat’s… followers. Recently, he has proven himself to me. His ruthlessness is impressive, his ability to pursue his goals: admirable. He would make the perfect heir,” Ra’s says and he must know it makes Danny’s heart drop, why else would he say it, “Do you know what Timothy lacks, Danyal?”
Danyal stays quiet, eyes tracking the grit of the floor.
After a pause, near silent footsteps enter his vision, “You are the culmination of his mentor’s blood and my own, blessed with the gifts of the Lazarus pits, and yet-“ the cape swirls as Ra’s turns away, “Yet it is squandered by the mistakes of your upbringing!” He yells.
Danyal clenches his fists, willing himself silent.
The air of the room falls level again, “I grow tired of your mediocrity, Danyal. You will advance, or I will stop wasting my resources keeping your baggage alive.”
Danny’s head whips up before he can think better of it, meeting Ra’s Al Ghul’s eyes where they stare down at him.
“Do not mistake my past grace for mercy, Danyal. Mercy makes men weak. There is no room for weakness, and we are here to purge it from this world. Do not forget that.”
“Of course, Great One.” Danyal’s heart pounds in his ears, fear jumping across each beat sporadically, “I will do better.” He tries to fill his voice with confidence.
He’ll do better.
He has to.
Ra’s looks at him, then turns his back and waves a hand dismissively, finally allowing Danyal to stand and leave.
He feels Ra’s’ eyes on his back the entire time as he leaves. And no matter how much he wants to, he doesn’t stop in the hallway. Even once the door is closed, he continues forward.
In his mind, Danny stops and heaves a breath through the grief crashing over him.
In his mind, Danny is a million miles away, at home, with his family around him, happy and safe.
In his mind, Danny rushes back into Ra’s al Ghul’s grandiose throne room and attacks him with the sword he’s forced on him, not stopping until he’s free or dead.
In reality, Danyal breathes out with false calm and moves on.
He has training to get to.
——
Danyal can feel the pressure of the Leagues- of Ra’s’- expectations pushing down on him.
It’s not new.
But he doesn’t let it weigh him down anymore. He doesn’t have that luxury.
Instead, he uses it to push himself harder, farther, pushing until he reaches those expectations.
And surpasses them.
And keeps going.
He won’t-can’t stop. So he keeps going.
Moving up, learning, training, getting better, faster, getting stronger.
Getting weaker.
Danyal ignores the strained whisper of his core in his chest in favor of aiming at the target in his scope.
An Ethiopian politician, making a name for himself by drafting new acts supporting the build of a dam on the Nile River.
It would endanger the lives of thousands in Egypt, cutting them off from the water that has flowed through their country for millennia.
It would never make it through the legislative ruling without him.
This is their duty. To cull the disease. To burn away the parasites killing the world. The ones feeding off excess.
Danyal pulls the trigger and starts packing the gun away.
His hands move with robotic precision, even without his guidance. No, his eyes and his focus are elsewhere.
Instead, Danny stares at the newspaper laying damp on rooftop gravel, eyes scanning every detail, every line.
May 7th of 20XX. Almost two years.
Alien invasion recently. Superman.
New hero in Russia.
Multiple car crashes in Pakistan. All survived.
None of it really matters to him, not really, it doesn’t tell him anything interesting, nothing he needs to know. It’s not even an American newspaper.
But…It’s the closest he’s come to freedom in three years.
Is it bad that what he calls a taste of freedom is knowing how long it’s been since he’s been free?
The rifle case clicks shut beneath his fingertips and he stands without so much as a lingering glance at the newspaper.
Danyal leaps off the roof, scaling down the side, ignoring the way his legs want to collapse beneath him as he lands in an alley.
He heads towards the rendezvous, job finished. Efficient as always.
Exactly as is expected of him.
———
It is several months more that he begins to realize there may be something truly wrong.
He’s training-fighting, losing- with the Lady Shiva. If Red Robin could beat her, Danyal must as well.
He’s fairing… okay.
They’ve been engaging for a while now, for a fight, a minute at least, maybe two.
He feels his breath rough in his chest, his face slick with sweat, his body buzzing with adrenaline and the push to do better-
His heart squeezes, seizing up tense and frozen for just a second, his body following in surprise-
There’s a sword through his stomach.
Danyal tries to focus again, to swing his sword, like he’s been trained, but everything feels… loose.
The sword is removed from his stomach, wet blood sliding down his tunic. Cold floor beneath his knees, had he fallen? No, he had to stand, get up, get up, get up. Get up!
Please, you have to get-
There’s hands on him, moving him, the hallways are too dark, -get up, you have to get up- he can’t tell where they’re going. No they’re not dark, his eyes are closed, he pries them open, gasping for breath as the pain in his stomach tears deeper.
Please, he just wants to go home.
Darkness still clouds his vision, but the people carrying him barely glance back as he groans.
His eyes flicker shut, too heavy to keep open as he tries to focus on anything but the pain, on not bleeding out, on please don’t let him die here, not here, please.
They enter another door, letting him stumble across steps farther and farther down.
When they reach the bottom, it seems as though every sound is sucked out from the room. An eerie silence thick in the air.
It forces his eyes open, just a squint, darkness prickling at the edges of his vision.
He barely catches a glance of cave walls before he feels himself thrown forward.
And familiar green fills his vision.
Panic surges.
Pain in his stomach. -His hand. The button!-
Green water surrounding him. -The portal is on!-
Liquid fills his mouth when he tries to scream. -There’s no sound between dimensions.-
It feels like burning acid running across every nerve of his open wound, creeping into his pores like tar covering a dying animal.
But it doesn’t feel like death.
He would know.
It feels a little like life.
He doesn’t want it.
He doesn’t get a choice.
He never does.
It feels like a thousand screaming souls, begging for justice and for freedom, just as he is.
They shout and yell at him to do something, to fight where they can’t, why can’t they, they’re so helpless, angry at their helplessness, angry at their inability, angry angry angry
Their pleas fill his ears, louder with each passing second.
He’s angry, angry, angry- how dare they, how dare they- he could win, they can’t stop him, they deserve it-who’s they?- he’s going to kill them, they can’t stop him-
Frigid humid air stings against his skin, no longer submerged, and green fog tinges everything.
But he-they- need to fight, kill them, stop them, do something, do something because they can’t- fight!
Danny lunges at the first person he sees, an assassin in all black at the edge of green waters.
His fist nearly collapses his skull. It doesn’t stop him.
There’s another and Danny lunges again, ignoring the sword that slashes towards him, grabbing it and snapping the metal with one hand, the other around the ninja’s neck, gripping, cracking, breaking-
Something heavy hits him over the head, the world staticking for a second as his hand loosens, a body dropping to the floor.
Hands reach at him, pulling, holding, restraining, and he fights with sharpened claws and fangs and burning fists of glowing energy and hands ripping hearts from their chest- until there’s so many bodies around him and restraining him, that it actually slows him down.
Enough to realize his powers are flowing easily once more, surprise cutting through the fog in his mind.
He stops actively pulling against the arms holding him down, his cheek now pressed painfully against rocky floor.
Where is he?
A nauseatingly familiar voice fills the room, “You managed quite the damage, Danyal,” Ra’s al Ghul stands in front of him, when Danny is able to lift his head and look, “Perhaps there is still potential hidden behind your weakness, the capabilities of your rage is akin to my first venture into these pools, so many centuries ago.”
The smile on Ra’s’ face sends twitches down his spine and confusion pools in his gut, “What…?” he murmurs, head still murky, but a bolt of fear races through his chest, and he forces his words into the League dialect once more, “What happened…? I..-“ His voice is small, and slowly he feels the assassins holding him release his arms and back away. He pushes himself upright to his knees, finding less strain in his muscles, in his bones, than he has for nearly two years.
“You failed your training, little Al Ghul,” A voice, Lady Shiva, speaks from his right. Her sword is still red.
Danyal’s eyes jump to hers, the memory rushing back- blood, the sword, falling, the water- his hand grips the side of his tunic even as his head snaps to the side, finally seeing the green waters lurking just next to them.
The Lazarus Pits, his training says.
Ectoplasm, his core whispers.
He looks down at the hole in the fabric of his tunic, any bloodstains around it all but gone. There’s not even a scratch.
The rest of his clothes are still layered with blood.
And Danyal knows it isn’t his.
He stands, watching as other league members file in, dragging away the bodies surrounding them.
There are too many to count.
He doesn’t even try.
Ra’s Al Ghul steps forward, drawing his focus once more.
He eyes Danyal critically, “Walk with me, child,” He says, already turning away with robes moving gracefully.
Danyal hurries to move with him, one step behind as they trail through the halls and corridors, slowly moving farther and farther up through the compound.
Finally they step out from an arch, the gentle late afternoon sun lighting up the sky with colors. Just enough light to see clearly, not enough to blind or burn.
It would’ve been a perfect afternoon to die on.
Instead, Danyal catches the sword thrown towards him with surprising grace. Ra’s face is filled with dangerous curiousity as he speaks, “Attack.”
Danyal doesn’t question it. Doesn’t wonder why Ra’s remains unarmed, doesn’t question if he might hurt him. He just acts, lunging forward at the command with nary a second thought.
“Starting today, you will train with me. Each week,” Ra’s speaks as he easily dodges and blocks Danyal’s hits, forcing him to take a new approach each time.
Danyal nods, “Of course, Great One.”
Ra’s knocks him to the ground, standing over him with sword drawn, “Call me Grandfather, Danyal. You’ve earned it.”
Danny’s heart squeezes.
He nods, “Of course Grandfather.”
——
After that, things change. Ra’s Al Ghul keeps to his word, calling for him each week, sometimes no more than a few days apart.
All too quickly it becomes a part of Danyal’s routine. The brutal training sessions of Ra’s beating him down and letting him up only to do it again.
He wishes he had it in him to question the Demon’s Head, but he doesn’t, so when Ra’s tells him to attack, even when unarmed, even when Danyal should rip his throat out with one use of intangibly, Danyal listens and attacks him.
Months into the now singular training, Danyal realizes that he hasn’t left this compound in a while, there hasn’t been a spontaneous move, or travel for a new master.
It’s just been… Ra’s.
He feels more stable, more stationary than he remembers being in so long. His youngest years had been the same routine of constant movement from base to base, compound to compound. And then he had lived.. in America, and had a single home, a house he knew the direction to from anywhere in town. For so many years, he been able to settle in one place.
Only to be uprooted once more, thrown back to everything he’d left behind, everything he’d-
Danyal enjoyed knowing where he would return to at the end of the day. The sense of familiarity that came with the same room, the same bed and halls, day after day, week after week.
Maybe that’s why it catches him by surprise when Ra’s calls for him at the base of a landing pad, jet idle behind him.
Danyal allows a nearby assassin to pass a pack into his hands, clearly full of materials.
For a moment, Danyal wonders where they are going? What new training awaits him at the other end?
Then Ra’s steps aside, dangerously graceful as ever, and reveals the bay of the jet to be not empty, but filled by assassins, each standing at command.
Danyal looks to Ra’s once more.
“An Al Ghul does not only follow, Danyal,” He says with a sharp smile as he approaches, laying a heavy hand on Danyal’s shoulder, “An Al Ghul leads. And as you are my heir, you must learn to command the respect of our members.” The hand squeezes on his shoulder, making him look up, meeting Ra’s in the eyes, “By any means necessary.”
Danyal looks away, looking back at the assassins waiting for him, for his command.
He’s not ready.
He has to be anyways.
The hand on his shoulder feels like lead as he steps out from under it, filling his voice with power he doesn’t feel, and sending the squadron scattering to new assignments.
Flight, equipment, weaponry, information, planning, infiltration, execution, all of it, it’s all on him to control.
Danyal turns back to gauge Ra’s’ reaction, only to find him already halfway gone, the sight of his retreating back the only response.
Okay, he’ll do this.
He can do this.
He has to.
What else can he do?
——
He takes to leading missions with the hand of a natural.
It’s easy.
Send these people here. These people here. Block every exit, erase every loose end, don’t leave any witnesses. Finish the mission.
Their missions are for the betterment of everyone, they are fixing things, getting rid of corrupt leaders, people unworthy of what they have, everything they’re doing is for a reason. It has a purpose.
He has a purpose.
So he ignores what’s behind every number he sends for each job. Ignores the calculation behind every call to secure the exit that has five private guards. Ignores the number behind the perimeter assignment because he knows the building has a late hour maid present each night.
They’re just numbers.
And he’s good at this.
At least he’s good at this.
He kills the first person to question an order.
They don’t question him again.
Everything runs smoother when they don’t question him.
It’s easier this way.
It’s always easier.
——
He’s traveling again. Spending more hours sleeping in hotels and safe houses than any bed he might deign to call his.
More and more time goes by, bit by bit, hour by hour, each filling his body with sand like setting concrete.
Slowly, Danyal feels it begin to wear on him. The exhaustion of the missions, his own body weighing him down with every strike he takes. Refusing to react with the speed demanded of him to succeed.
Danyal pushes past it. It doesn’t matter. This is his duty, it is all that is expected of him and he will do it. Even as he finds himself clutching his chest in the dark of a mission, blood still leaking from his target below him.
He forces himself past it, eyes flickering, steeling himself, then wiping down his blade and leaving, muscles tense and bones shaking.
He makes it as far as the car waiting in the near abandoned parking garage below, his chest continuing to tighten, heart erratic beneath his ribs. Danyal grunts, pain lacing up his arm, struggling not to stumble as he staggers into his seat with a near gasping breath.
He pulls himself together, his words as confident as he can make them as he speaks to the assassin in the drivers seat, “Call Ra’s Al Ghul. Bring me to him. Now.”
Danny feels his heart twitch in his chest, his hand flickering in his vision, or is it his vision that’s flickering, he can’t tell, still the cold leather soothes him, heart pounding louder louder, yelling, screaming in his ears, angry so angry so angry, rage rage rage, fix it fix it fight fight fight for us fight! Don’t let it go, never let it go, revenge, make them pay, they have to pay-!
He comes back with a gasp and a burst of pain across his shoulder, adrenaline and fury still coursing through his veins in equal measure.
His hair is wet, green liquid dripping down his face in sluggish trails mixed with foreign blood. It lays plastered on the curves of his face, framing his eyes as he stares up at the Demon’s Head.
The same malicious smile sits on his face, “Welcome back, Danyal.” The words are tinged with expectance.
Danyal pauses, collected his words around his tongue like a lead weight in his dry mouth, “I- Why was I put in the Lazarus pit again?” Danyal can only hope he’s showing the right amount of deference to even be allowed such a question.
“You were brought to me collapsed, and your heart failing you. The Lazarus pits provided a temporary solution,” Ra’s says, his eyes sharp, “But it is temporary. This problem will not be allowed to continue.”
“Of course, Master,” Danyal pulls himself to his knees, “…I believe it’s because of my accident-“ Danyal pauses, this is closest he’s come to actually telling them how he got his powers, what it did to him-, “There was electricity, and the shock, my heart was-is damaged. I don’t know why it’s getting worse-“
Ra’s hums, “The body can be fixed, child. The mind cannot. This,” Ra’s places a hand on his back as Danyal stands, “is merely an obstacle to our goal.”
“I will not fail you, Grandfather.”
“I know, child.” His words are a guarantee, an assurance to Danyal.
He will prove that the confidence placed in him is not mistaken.
——
It is barely months after that second time that Danyal once again feels his body’s failings encroach on him.
His heart beats off pattern, falling out of rhythm more with every passing day.
Danyal takes a deep breath, willing it to calm himself.
He will not let this stop him. He is an Al Ghul. He is capable. He is strong, and he will not be held back by his own body.
Danyal turns his focus inwards, ripples traveling along the surface of the ectoplasm in his core he’s left untouched for so long now.
He lets the ectoplasm submerge him, turning his form ghostly, his eyes sharper green than they’ve ever been before.
Danyal lets his feet lift off the ground, just for a second, weightlessness enveloping him, the buzzing of the world a background in his ears.
Then his toes touch the ground again and Danyal snaps into movement towards his closet. He puts on his usual league clothes over the old hazmat suit, feeling the layers lighten as he covers them up. Until it feels as though he’s only wearing the league clothes, and his white gloves stare in his face.
Slowly, he removes them, staring for too long at the green lines like cracks trailing up his arm.
Danyal turns away.
He has work to do, he can’t let himself be held up with small feelings like that.
As Danyal travels the halls, every step an effort to remain flat on the ground, he feels the ectoplasm within him roil, coursing faster and stronger than he ever had before, even in the Ghost Zone or in A-.
It revitalizes him and Danyal arrives to Ra’s Al Ghul’s training with bold confidence filling him.
Ra’s greets him an enigmatic smile and a challenge of his strength.
Danyal meets him kind, dodging every lunging, swiping every parry, light on his feet like he hasn’t been in years now.
Their fight lasts longer than any other they’ve had, his muscles able to hold up stronger in this form, his stamina infinite as the ectoplasm he draws from without any need for breathing or rest.
Ra’s Al Ghul is impressed even as he holds Danyal beneath his boot, his sword pressed to his neck.
Glowing green sluggishly leaks from the scratch.
Danyal pays it no mind.
Instead he stares at the small cut on the crown of Ra’s’ head, a single crimson red droplet crawling down the side of his face.
Danyal did not win. But he didn’t loose either.
Satisfaction fills him in a rush, carrying him through even as they reengage.
——
Danyal strives to reach his goals, to hit every target set out for him, beat every opponent put against him, to reach the expectations and the potential that the Demon’s head sees him.
To make himself worthy to be here, to stay.
And he knows his weaknesses hold him back, make him vulnerable, put everything-one- in danger.
So he stops being vulnerable. Stops letting his body, his weaknesses, dictate his capabilities.
Faster and faster his store of ectoplasm drains within him.
And Danyal makes himself stronger and stronger, short exposures of the Lazarus pits to keep it from stopping him.
He can’t stop.
So he keeps going, keeps training, fighting, growing- when had he gotten tall? When had he gotten older?
He keeps working, to be better, to be the best.
And as he approaches the Demon’s chambers weeks later, he is surprised to hear yelling.
More than that, he is surprised to hear Talia’s voice be the one yelling.
He pauses outside the door, eyes narrowed and body resting on the edge of invisibility.
He does not want to know the punishment for eavesdropping, nor for interrupting them… and yet…he hasn’t spoken to Talia, not truly, not since she told him the Batman was dead. Barely seen her except beside the demons’s head in ceremony as he stands at the edges of a room.
It has been entirely too reminiscent of his childhood.
Danyal’s ears prick up as the volume increases once more.
“You cannot ask me to bring him back to use him for-!”
“I do not ask for anything, Daughter! He belongs to the League! And the League to me! It was a mistake to allow you to keep-“
Ra’s’ voice drops too low to be heard through the door, muffling the rest of his words.
Danyal steps back from the door, standing in the hall with questions blooming in multitude.
Moments later, Talia Al Ghul steps through, a force of fury in every step. She catches sight of him immediately, and when Danyal makes eye contact, her eyes are filled with worry, stress, regret, a thousand what-ifs and plans and concerns.
Somehow he knows none of it is for him.
He bows slightly, and she passes by him without a word.
Danyal watches her hair flow as she retreats further and further down the hall until he finally turns around to enter the room.
Ra’s Al Ghul is waiting for him.
He gives no indication that he knows Danyal heard him, so Danyal doesn’t say anything. But he doesn’t make the mistake of thinking that means Ra’s doesn’t know.
He always knows.
His training continues.
For days, and weeks, and months more, he continues.
But even a ghost cannot lie to himself forever.
——
When Damian wakes up with chains around his wrists and the familiar feeling of harsh metal beneath his knees, he is not surprised to see his mother standing in front of him.
He wishes it were only his mother.
Instead, his grandfather stands in front of him as well, eyes staring down at him with impassive judgement. Damian feels his spine straighten against his will, the feeling of ‘never good enough’ creeping through his limbs.
He glances at his mother behind Grandfather’s looming form. Her face is uncharacteristically open, the barest hint of tension evident in her jaw, her eyes almost brighter with the concern hidden behind them.
Damian forces his eyes away as Grandfather begins to speak.
“You’ve wasted your time with your father Damian,” he starts, “Letting your training go to waste as the league continues to work to better the world.”
Damian wants to sneer, a scowl forming on his face, “The league does nothing but hurt innocent people. My time as Robin has saved hundreds.”
Grandfather’s eyes sharpen, “And I see it has taken your discipline as well.”
Damian grinds his teeth, “Anything I have learned, I learned from my Father and my family,”
“Your family?” Grandfather says, his tone almost mocking as he raises an eyebrow, “You are an Al Ghul-“
“I am a Wayne too!” Damian says, straining as he rises to his feet, “I am Damian Al Ghul-Wayne! Just as you wanted me to be! And it is my choice to be a hero, to be Robin, and I stand next to Father and the others with pride!”
Grandfather’s glare intensifies, “Do not interrupt me again, Damian. You will not be exempt of the consequences.”
Damian stares him down, fear pressing against his insides with a scream too familiar to his youth.
He turns away with a click of his tongue.
Shame whispers at his cheeks.
Grandfather waves a hand blithely as he turns his back, “Bring him.” He pauses at the door, “He remains bound.”
Damian watches his Grandfather leave, his eyes drifting sideways to his mother.
“Mother, why am I here?” He demands, tone sharp and clear. He tries not to let show how lost he is.
Mother steps forward, laying a gentle hand on his face and the other at the crook of his neck, cupping his cheek as her eyes soften. Regret sits behind them.
“Mother.” He says again, pulling slightly away from her hand, “Why am I here?”
She sighs, stepping back, “The Demon’s Head has need of you.”
Then he watches her leave as well, and Damian finds his arms and hands grabbed as assassins unchain him and push him forward.
He reluctantly lets them lead him through the unfamiliar halls of wherever they are, just a few paces behind his mother.
They stop in front of an open doorway, and when Damian is dragged in front, the sight he is met with brings confusion over anything else.
In front of him is a young man, no older than Todd or even Drake, laying asleep in a hospital bed with a heart monitor attached to him.
The beeping that fills the room is shallow and unsteady, much like the boy’s breathing. His hair is dark with speckled streaks of grey and a natural paleness in his skin.
Worse than that is the IV Damian can see tucked into the crook of his arm, tube trailing up to a bag.
Slowly feeding Lazarus water into his veins.
Damian whips his head around to look at his mother, only to find her staring disdainfully at the boy in the bed.
It only serves to confuse Damian more.
What had this man done to cause his mother such ire?
“Take the sample.” His Grandfather’s voice commands. And Damian feels the arms holding him shift to a more secure grip, pulling him to his knees even as he fights them. A man in a white coat approaches him, and Damian fights harder when he notices the syringe in his hand.
The sting of the needle is dull against the fear crashing through him as his grandfather watches.
His mother looks away.
Finally, Damian jerks as the hands he now knows are Ubu’s release him, still hovering close as he is dropped. He is surprised to see that they actually took blood, rather than dosing him with something. Sedative or worse.
Damian scowls at his grandfather, but he simply looks unconcerned as the assumed doctor moves forward to take a second sample, this time from the boy laying in the bed.
“Why am I here, Grandfather?” He asks, eyeing all parties critically.
“Haven’t you realized, Damian?” His Grandfather asks with a mockingly raised eyebrow, “His heart is failing, and the Lazarus waters can only fix so much by the nature of his defects. Your brother needs you, Damian,” Grandfather says, voice serene, “And you are going to help him.”
Damian barely has a moment to process his words before the hands are pulling him back once more, he yanks his arms from their grip, “Grandfather! What are you- let me go!” Damian turns fully to incapacitate the assassins, only to have Ubu pull his binds harshly sideways and give the servants leverage enough to actually tame his movements.
“Who is he?! Mother!” Damian turns to her, unsurprised to see her turning a blind eye once again, “Mother who is he!? What is Grandfather talking about?! What are you doing!?” The assassins pull at him again, successful in getting him through the doorway as he struggles.
Just before the door closes, he hears the Doctor speak to his grandfather, and his response.
“The boy is a match Great One.”
“Good, prepare Danyal for surgery. As soon as possible.”
The surprise is enough that the door closes in his face and he is dragged back through the hallways.
He stands as much as he can, walking at pace, refusing to allow them to disrespect him by letting them drag him.
He glares at Ubu as he shuts the door of his cell between them.
Once he knows he is alone, Damian takes a better register of his situation. He is still in his Robin uniform, so that means he was out with the family- he has a brother- they’ll be looking for him. He believes he’s on a boat, the rocking, the design of the doors and walls- a brother!- he has to make sure he can be found. Grandfather has plans for him-why tell him now- he doesn’t seem to be listening to Mother’s decisions- his brother’s name is Danyal- he might be in danger-they both could- how is he going to get out-
Damian stops.
He readjusts his clothing, feeling the minute shift once more. There’s something between the collar of his suit.
Slowly, Damian runs his hand along the fabric, finding a small bump he recognizes as a tracker.
One of his own bat made trackers. But how..?
Mother.
Damian scoffs to himself. Of course, he should have known she would never show such an obvious display of affection without reason. She was still largely loyal to Grandfather, but Damian was not so naïve as to think she did not care for him at all.
The vibration of the tracker is rhythmic beneath his fingers, the only solace he gets.
His family is coming.
He knows it.
He just hopes it’s fast enough.
——
Perhaps Grandfather’s first mistake was taking him as Robin, when his family was always the most on edge, the most prepared, the most connected.
Or perhaps his first mistake was training Bruce Wayne in the first place.
Either way, Damian watches from the other side of an observation window as his Grandfather and Father engage in a fight racked with fury on both ends.
Richard jostles him, bringing his attention back into focus.
Right.
His newest brother.
He mumbles an explanation to them, words slurred as they leave his mouth. But he knows they heard him. The shock-caution-suspicion painted across their faces could mean nothing else.
Perhaps his Father was under a curse. Surely there was a limit to how many unknown children one person could have in a single lifetime?
All the same, once freed, he moves to help Drake and Richard remove the boy-brother, Danyal- from the operation table next to him, stepping over the doctors knocked unconscious at their feet.
Reluctantly, he allows Drake to support him under one arm, the anesthesia still weighing down his eyelids.
They rush through the halls like a bull, both him and Drake separating to fight off more than one assassin. Even Richard has to set down Danyal to join the fight at least once.
But finally, they make it to the Batplane idling next to the hull.
The moment they are onboard, the plane starts to move away, but his Father is still on board.
Still fighting with Grandfather as they burst through the doors, fists and weapons engaged in equal measure.
Father dodges sideways, blocking hits until he reaches the rails, then he jumps over without hesitation. And just as Damian is about to shout for him, arm reaching out futilely, Richard blows past him.
He is leaping out of the open cargo door with just as much surety as his father leapt, a cord tied around him, and with perfect precision, he watches Richard catch his father at the extension of his swing.
It’s a perfect demonstration of their partnership.
And Grandfather is left scowling out at them from the ship.
His mother stands alone and calm on the upper deck, watching.
Damian turns his attention to his family.
And to Danyal with them.
——
Returning to the cave is less of an affair than Damian may have expected from such a mission.
His father is-has been- silent for most of the flight, staring at the body of Danyal with blank eyes.
Even Drake and Richard conspicuously cast a glance back every few minutes. Damian controls himself from doing the same. He is not so undisciplined as to be as obvious.
Still, the tension only rises the longer Danyal continues to remain asleep. Even by the time Damian feels the last of the anesthesia leave his own system, Danyal is unchanged.
Damian is certain his grandfather would not choose someone so sickly to be his heir, someone so incapable of protecting themselves in this state. Surely there was a reason he was kept, a reason he was allowed this weakness when Damian was-
Regardless, Damian didn’t trust it. The others could get pulled into this invader’s lies all they wanted, Damian would be there to stop him, he was sure of it.
Still, he watches Pennyworth dote over him in the medbay, Father laying him down on a medical bed with harried care, removing his cowl with barely a thought.
Damian ground his teeth, did they not understand that this was an operative trained by his Grandfather? An assassin with no attachment to them that was favored enough by Grandfather to warrant Damian being-
Damian turned to his locker, glad to replace his weapons stores and feel the weight of his sword at his side once more. It would be a pain, but he would have to find a way to receive a package from his mother if he wanted his other sword back.
It was merely a replica of one of his betters but the desire remained.
He watched from the corner of his eye as the family began to gather in front of the Batcomputer, the screen’s light casting shadows on them even in the artificial cave lighting. Finally, they were going to be doing something.
Damian approached, lingering at the edge where he could still see through the curtains of the medbay.
“I’m not the only one who noticed a suspicious lack of life threatening wounds right?” Drake began, turned away from the console with one hand still on the keys, “I mean, there was that first surgery cut, but that was the same as on Damian. It certainly wasn’t enough to necessitate Lazarus water being entered directly into this kid’s bloodstream.”
Damian scowled, “He was like that before they attempted this. Grandfather said that there was something wrong with… Danyal’s heart, said that I would be able to fix it.”
Father cast another brief look at the medbay, Pennyworth’s shadow still moving within. “I’ll have Agent A call Leslie. Robin,” he turned towards Damian, “Did Talia or Ra’s mention anything else to you? Where .. he’s been this whole time?..Why you didn’t know of his existence?”
Damian shook his head, “No, only that he was my brother and that the pit water was being used to fix him somehow. That I was needed to save him.”
Father hums, turning back with pensive silence.
“B, we don’t even know how long this kid’s been there, he’s older than Damian,” Richard pleads. And it makes Damian duck his head with clenched fists. Who was he? Why was he so much more favored by Grandfather?
Why had they told him he was the firstborn of mother? Of father?
“He could always be a clone with advanced aging, we know Talia is capable of it, she’s done it before,” Drake adds. But the theory sits uncomfortably with all of them. Something just not quite right.
“But then why did they need Damian?” Richard says back.
Father grunts.
“Is it really…” Richard starts, “I mean, we have to consider that she actually kept it secret again. Even from Damian.”
“But B wasn’t even with Talia before that, Damian was the first time they… y’know.” Drake says, a grimace on his face at the end.
Father hums, “But I’d fought Talia before. And I had trained with Ra’s.”
“All it would have taken is one DNA sample, right.” Richard says with a sigh, carding his fingers through his hair, “Well, we might as well-“
There’s a slight clatter on the medbay level, silencing everyone as their heads snap to the sound.
When nothing follows, Father motions them all to head up, flanking the room.
Damian is the closest, entering first. No sooner does he notice Pennyworth laying on the floor before he feels a hand slip around his neck and another quickly snatch the sword at his side. Within seconds, Damian feels his back pressed against another body, the cold steel of his own sword stinging at his neck as he stares into his Father’s eyes.
Except his father is not looking at him, he’s looking at the person holding him.
Danyal.
“Where am I!? Who are you!?” The voice behind him demands, the vibration buzzing against him with the familiar staccato of Damian’s native league dialect.
His family shares a weighted look, clearly hesitant to say anything. Already Damian can see the way their fingers twitch towards weapons and utility belts.
The steel at his neck tightens, “Tell me now or I slit his neck and deliver your bodies to the Demon’s Head myself.”
Father’s stance tightens, anger pulling at his gloves even as he forces himself to put his hands up in surrender. When he answers, it is in the League dialect, “We’re not a danger to you, Danyal,” the blade doesn’t so much as twitch, “Put down the swor-“
Stephanie Brown’s voice rings out across the cave, “Hey, Kate and I just finished patrol and-“
Damian doesn’t pay attention to the rest of the sentence because the moment Brown starts speaking, his assailant’s group loosens just a bit, accompanied by a low, broken whisper of, “English?…”
Damian immediately jabs the flat of his arm up, putting the blade farther from his neck as he begins to grapple with him.
In the blur of movement, Damian sees his sword coming at him, throwing his body back with a barely a second to spare, feeling the supporting hand of Richard on his back as he joins their combined front.
Danyal now stands alone in front of them, stolen sword extended in warning.
And now that Damian can see his face, he knows why his family was hesitant… Danyal’s eyes flicker a bright Lazarus green.
“What do you want from me? Why am I here?” he demands once again.
His Father steps up, “I don’t know how much know about me: my name is Bruce Wayne,” There’s barely even a flicker of recognition, “But you might know me better as Batman.”
The eyes widen, eyes scanning them with fervor before narrowing with suspicion and denial, “The Batman is dead, the Demon’s Daughter told me so herself.”
Drake steps forward, “She was wrong. He came back-“
Damian rolls his eyes, “Clearly Mother must have told you. Do not be stupid.”
Danyal’s brow furrows, silently mouthing the word ‘mother’ beneath his breath.
“I don’t-“ He cuts himself off with a grimace, hands tightening on the shaft of the sword, “I don’t believe you, what-“
“What happened? Did we bring back the demon spawn, why are you all-“ Brown bursts into the room, words already filling the air. Only to stop when she sees Danyal.
He raises the sword at them again, noticeably less stable as he supports it with two hands, “Who are you!? Why am I here!? Tell me-“ He grunts again, putting a hand to his chest, “Tell me, now! I-“ the sword drops, Danyal using it to support himself like a cane. Father steps forward, hands extended. It only serves to make Danyal lift his head to glare at him.
“Stay back-“
“We’re only trying to help-“
“I said-“ Danyal grunts, hand clenching at his shirt as he drops to his knees, “Stay- Stay back- I’m-“
The sword falls from his hands with a metallic clatter on the stony ground, Danyal gasping for breath.
“Back- off..” He whispers, the English falling from his lips with desperation as he curls in on himself.
Father rushes forward the moment Danyal’s body goes limp, lifting him onto the medical bed as the room bursts into motion. Richard is grabbing medical equipment as Drake helps father with providing CPR as Brown moves to get Alfred, all of them quick to jump to action.
Damian slowly steps forward, picking up his abandoned sword from the floor.
He turns it over in his hands, making sure it is unharmed from the ordeal even as he watches his family rush to help each other.
Just what had Grandfather been doing to Danyal?
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The Messenger is Already Dead - 4
Part 1 &2 Part 3
“Talia fell in love with Bruce Wayne!?” Danny says, whipping around to the man in question.
Everything starts piecing together like the worst Fruitloop themed puzzle ever. Danny had seen his face when Batman had removed his cowl of course, and it’d looked familiar, but that could have been anything, he never thought- Bruce Wayne!? His biological father, a man who hadn’t even known he existed, who Danny had never known, was Bruce Wayne? The richest man in America?
“You didn’t know?” Tim asks and Danny wants to scream.
He doesn’t, because that would be unassassiny-like and he’s not 100% sure it wouldn’t come out as a wail- but the desire is very much there. It feels like half of his life-view is crumbling before him.
“No, I didn’t know,” Danny starts tersely, “Talia never told us who Batman- who our father was, not until we could beat her in a fight. I… never got the chance.” He winces at the last statement, feeling the way the room goes colder at the reminder.
“Tt, clearly you would not have been able to anyways.”
Danny feels his eyes flare in frustration as he looks back to Damian, “I was a better fighter than you were, it’s not like you were finishing her challenge any earlier than I was, Damian.”
“The tutors may have favored you but it was not the tutors who bested you was it?” Damian snarled back.
“Whoa Damian-“
Memories flickered through Danny’s mind.
A fight. A snowy cliff. Red. Pain. Cold. Darkness. Green-
“Danny, you good there?”
Danny jerked his head up, not realizing he’d curled in on himself, “I’m .. fine.”
“You sure? You kind of… flickered,” Nightwing said, motioning vaguely with his hands, “Like a lightbulb.”
Danny cringed, “It’s one of the side effects of being like, this,” he motioned to himself, “I’m not exactly meant to exist on this plane of existence so sometimes I.. don’t? I guess? I don’t know, ghostly stuff is always pretty hard to explain.”
A “Hn.” Is all that comes from Bruce.
Danny practically feels their stares close in on him like walls.
“Whatever! The ghost stuff doesn’t matter!” He says, throwing his hands up and rising slightly off the ground, “What matters is that Talia is after me and is probably coming after Damian, so you need to figure out how to stop her. I didn’t come to talk, I came for protection.”
Danny takes a second, mimicking a breath and collecting himself. He couldn’t blow up like Danny, not when he had to make them see him as Danyal.
An Al-Ghul shows no weakness. An Al-Ghul shows no weakness.
“Tt. There is no reason to continue to refuse to call her Mother.”
Danny feels his eyes flare as turns back to where Damian stands, still scowling. Just like he always was.
“I’ve already told you, Damian,” He says, restraining the urge to yell that Maddie was his mom not Talia, “She was not a mother to me and I will not pretend she was when she is the reason I am being hunted.”
“She raised us,” Damian says with a scowl.
Danny feels old anger spark in him, “She trained us.”
He remembers cold nights and hard floors, cruel orders and harsher whips.
“She made us stronger,” Damian says with stone in his voice. Danny hates it, hates it because it’s exactly what they were always told. ‘It made them stronger’ but that didn’t save him so what did it matter? Damian and him never did anything but fight, they never saw each other except to fight, so much so that the first time Jazz invited him to dinner he’d thought she’d poisoned it and tried to burn down the kitchen.
Danny hates it. He hates it. He hates it. He hates it.
He forces himself to let it go. This isn’t him. Not anymore.
Danny turns away from Damian completely, fists still tightly clenched as he looks Bruce- not his father, never his father- in the eye, “Now that you have proof I am who I say, how do we stop Talia?”
Back to business. Just finish this and you can go home.
Bruce turns back to the console, “First, we need to figure out her goals, and where….”
Danny steels himself as Bruce- as Batman-continues. He could do this.
He could pretend to be a ghost of himself for however long it took.
Pretend that he really had died -stayed dead- that day with Damian.
Pretend that he remembered more about his life in the league than he did.
Pretend he wasn’t an entirely different person now.
Pretend like he still knew who he was.
Pretend like every word from Damian’s mouth didn’t pull him back to a time when he was small, too small, but never weak, and-
Yeah, he could totally absolutely do this.
Definitely.
Danny cringes as the butler tells them all that a meal is ready and everyone starts to move away from the darkness of the cave. With every step into the warmly lit lights of the manor above the cave, Danny feels his hackles rise more.
It feels exposed, making him feel like his lies are muddying just by being there, the warmth of the atmosphere, tones of family, grief, growth, loss, suffocating him as he goes deeper. Knowing that he’s part of that, he’s not going to stay, he’s lying to Damian, he’s hurting him, he’s-
Danny gets one step in the dining room before he sees the family dining table sitting there, an ornate chandelier illuminating the plates laid out at each spot, favorite foods in the middle… and two slightly elder ghosts at the head of the table with love in their eyes as they watch the family sit.
He doesn’t belong here.
Danny takes a staggering step back.
He doesn’t belong here.
Damian notices his retreat, mouth opening to speak-
He doesn’t belong here.
Danny turns tail and vanishes, throwing himself back through the ground with intangibility until he reaches the cave. From there he pauses at the entrance they’d come through, turning back instead of running.
The seconds pause is enough time for someone else to notice him.
“Running already?”
Danny lurches, nearly squeaking as he startles and his visibility flickers. He follows the voice to a figure leaning against a slightly dim doorway on the side. An illuminated locker room sits behind him.
“You’re… Jay, right? The Red Hood?”
The man hums and walks closer, “It’s Jason. You’re the new kid. Talia’s huh?”
Danny wants to shrink in on himself, his muscles tightening as he gets closer, “I’m- yeah.”
Jason scoffs, looking up the stairs like he can see straight to the dining room, “God, B and this fucking family…” He turns a critical eye to Danny without moving his head, “What’s got you fleeing so soon? It didn’t look like you were causing any sort of trouble-“
“I just-“ Danny sighs, rubbing the back of his neck, “I don’t belong here okay? As far as you all know, I’m not even supposed to exist anymore. I doubt you want a dead kid messing up your family, right?”
Something in Jason’s face twitches, his shoulders shifting, “Take it from me, kid… they haven’t even considered that.”
Danny tilts his head, really looking at Jason for the first time, something tickling at the back of his senses.
Jason doesn’t hesitate to meet his eyes.
He looks back through the exit tunnel, turning back a second time, “Tell ‘em I’ll be back okay? Just… not now, alright? But I’ll be back.”
And Jason nods, a silent guarantee.
Danny returns it, finally turning and flying full speed through the tunnels until he meets open air.
It feels slightly sticky compared to the coolness of the cave, but Danny simply looks around to get his bearings before turning into the distance with determination.
He doesn’t stop until he sees the shine of a golden globe pass under him. He enters the hotel straight through the walls of the elevator shaft, dropping his ghost from the second he hits carpeted halls.
And then he pauses…
Which room were they in again?
Thankfully, he doesn’t have to wait long, as one of the doors gets thrown open moments later by the lumbering figure which can only be his dad.
“Ghost!” Dad says as he bends through the doorway, ghost-finder in his hands as he looks around until finally spotting Danny, “Danno! You’re back!”
The incessant droning of the ghost-finder is overshadowed as Danny struggles to breath around his Dad’s hug, “He..y.., Da..d” He wheezes.
He sees Jazz come bursting out of the hotel room next. She gives him a hard look before they’re both swept into Dad’s arms and practically carried back into the room.
His mom is there, tinkering on a tool Danny himself had helped design a few weeks ago.
His dad, of course, goes straight for the fudge in the mini fridge. Danny steals the remote from Jazz and plops himself down on the bed free of machine scraps.
Even as he has to keep Jazz from smothering him with a hotel pillow, Danny smiles. He feels his shoulders loosen for the first time all night.
This. This is where he belongs.
—
The demon brat’s twin was… something. They hadn’t really had the time to start forming real expectations, but most of them didn’t expect.. a ghost.
Tim can see the way Bruce’s eyes linger on the wafts of snowy hair, aching guilt lining his body whenever Danny’s back is turned even just slightly.
It doesn’t go away as they all file up to a late dinner. By Alfred’s order, they all go, pair by pair trickling up to the dining room like the most awkward yellow brick road ever.
Somewhere in the stilted chaos, Jason manages to slip out from the group, probably the first time he’s left the manor without fighting with Bruce in months.
Of course that hardly matters when the moment they step into the dining room, Danny freezes by the door, flickering again.
Tim watches as his eyes jump across them all, the table, the room, the chairs- Danny steps back and-
Vanishes.
Damian is lurching towards the door, “Danyal!”
But it’s empty. All of them had felt his presence leave, even if they hadn’t realized that’s what it was, suddenly the room is a few degrees warmer and just a bit emptier than before.
Tim looks to Bruce.
They don’t know what that was, why Danny left. Was he just scared? Or could something have happened to him? They didn’t know enough about ghosts, and what they did know said they weren’t very strong. Boston Brand couldn’t interact with the physical world without possessing someone- Danny had already said he wasn’t meant to exist on this plane, had he run out of strength?
Dick approaches Damian still brooding in the doorway, setting a hand on his shoulder- Damian throws it off immediately.
“I am fine,” he snaps, “Danyal is a coward.”
Bruce stands, “Damian, don’t say that-“
“Why shouldn’t I!? What does he have to fear!? He ran away like a coward and left me behind!”
Silence settles in the room.
Tim decides to break it, “Any chance you’re not just talking about him not staying for dinner?”
A knife pierces the wall behind him.
“I will end you, Drake.”
“Master Damian! I do not have enough portraits to continue covering holes in the paneling!” Alfred scolds, standing at the doorway.
Damian stops, glaring at them all before turning to Alfred, “I’ll take my dinner in my room please, Pennyworth.” Then he turns on his heel and strides from the room. It is too fast to be anything but fleeing.
Steph slumps into the chair beside Tim, “Boys are weird.”
Tim scowls, “Oi.”
“I stand by my statement.”
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Also btw, I’ve added this to my Drabble/oneshot collection on Ao3. It’s under my same Username(snaileer) with work name ‘Things That Could Exist’
Hope you enjoyed!
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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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