#ttac(wygiaf)

[avelnfear]

This is a snippet that might someday make it into my fic.

“He’s the least dangerous one.” Jason snorted at Ra’s Al Ghul’s words. “He’s the civilian in a family of Bats.” Jason let out a short laugh, clamping his mouth shut as soon as he heard his voice. He was clearly struggling to hold in his laughter, but no one could deduce why. “By taking all of you first we have taken away his support, making it easy to deal with him.”

Anyone who knew Ra’s Al Ghul knew that he’d just told them that he’d captured the heroes and then ordered the death of a person they’d left behind. By the destroyed look on all but one of the heroes faces, this person would be dearly missed.

Jason tried to keep from laughing, he really did, but the combined looks of horror on his family’s faces and the smugness coming from a man who was so very wrong proved to be too much. He burst into laughter so hard that one might think he’d been hit with Joker’s Gas. The room’s occupants looked at him with varying levels of confusion, concern, and disbelief.

When his laughter didn’t dissipate for a long time, Ra’s became angry. “What do you find so funny? You’ve just been informed that your beloved will be killed, and you find that funny?” His tone was biting even in his clear confusion.

Abruptly, Jason stoped laughing. The change was so sudden that it was unnerving. Several people, captive or otherwise jolted with the jarring shift in attitude as all amusement had left Jason’s face.

“I don’t find it funny.” Jason leaned forward as much as the chains binding him would allow, locking eyes with Ra’s, his face deadly serious. “I find it fucking hilarious.” Jason waited until Ra’s opened his mouth to continue as everyone else watched in stunned silence. “You think he’s the normal one, the civilian in a group of heroes. You think he’s not very dangerous if dangerous at all. You think your assassins can do anything to him. You think he needs us for support. You think you’ll be able to kill him. You think you are safe. You think he’ll never be able to find you. You think you’ve won.” Jason’s voice was soft and quiet yet piercing. He leaned back, expression blank. “As for me? Of course I don’t find it funny. The sheer amount of things your wrong about it hilarious all on its own, without any context. I can’t fucking wait to see the look on your face when you find out just how wrong you are. You’ve fucked around, now it’s time to find out. Your brilliant fucking strategy is an absolute shit show because of misinformation. If I were you, I’d start praying, hoping that some god is willing to further piss off the one you call a civilian by protecting your sorry ass to the best of their ability. It might buy you an extra minute to exist.”

There was a massive thud from down the hall, coming from an impact that struck the whole structure. Jason tilted his head down, grin sharp and inhuman and eyes flashing green.

From down the hall was clearly heard, “Cucumber on a stick! I overshot!”

The other captives tensed, that was Danny! What was he doing here? How was he here?

The assassins in the room tensed. That voice belonged to the civilian lover Red Hood was just ranting about. How was he here? How was he still alive?

Ra’s felt something odd swell in his chest, tightening his muscles and making his heart race. He knew it was a civilian on the other side of the door, he knew it. There was nothing special about Danny Nightingale except that he’d changed his name from Daniel Fenton. Then why, why, did Ra’s suddenly feel like prey that had wandered into the path of a predator?

[avelnfear]

Prologue

Masterlist

Danny looked over at his moon contentedly, the one who’d been with him through and despite everything that had happened these long years. Life had thrown so much at them even before they’d found each other, but they’d been able to help each other through it since they met. Thousands of years had passed since their family and friends had gone to the Beyond. Danny and his love had stopped aging, and thus had to watch everyone else grow old and pass on. Watching that had given Danny and his peace a need to stay close to each other at all times. The world had moved on, and they were finally ready to do the same, to join their friends and family in the Beyond. Death began to tug at Danny, pulling them towards something new. Danny only hoped they’d be able to keep their promise to their beloved to find each other if they were reborn.

Jason looked to his soul, finally at peace. This was the person who’d shown him what it was like to truly live again. The person who’d saved him from the Pit while chaos happened all around them. When everything started settling down, his rock was there to keep him steady, and he’d forever be thankful for that. They had supported each other through this long life, and Jason knew they were ready to move on, to do the same if they were born again. If you’d asked Jason when he first died if he had any regrets, he’d have told you yes, and if you asked for years afterwards if he had regrets, his reply would still have been yes. Now, as he stared into his star’s eyes, he had no regrets as Death gently pulled him into its loving embrace.

As the sun rose, the two felt their souls drift away as they watched the light fade from each other’s eyes. A day later, their bodies were discovered by the townspeople of their chosen home. The town had already been alerted that their heroes would be passing on soon, but they weren’t in mourning and wouldn’t ever start mourning. Instead, they held a huge festival in honor of the heroes, who’d changed their small town forever, finally finding peace. Another festival was set up to honor the day the heroes arrived. In honor of one of the heroes, they renamed their town Amity Park because the first Amity Park didn’t exist anymore and they wanted to always be counted as the home of their heroes. Clockwork was so touched by this that it made sure every universe now had the town of Amity Park in Illinois, and Amity Park would always have those same festivals.

~`~`~`~

Danny’s eyes filled with tears, their vision blurring slightly, as they held their lover in their arms. This, the pair’s second life, was clearly not meant to end as peacefully as the first. His blood mixed with his soul’s in a large puddle on the ground. Despite how it was ending, Danny was grateful for the knowledge gained in this life and all that it meant for their next one. The thought that this was not truly the end gave Danny comfort as Darkness overtook him, gently yet swiftly bringing him to Death and a new life.

Jason felt Danny’s tears on his face, but he was powerless to do anything about them. A combination of extreme blood loss and plenty of wounds made it impossible to do anything but blink despite how much he wanted to comfort his beloved. He knew that they’d see each other again, but that didn’t stop the pain of this death. Jason only hoped that he’d be able to protect his family and his lover better in the next life. He watched Danny fade away as Darkness drew Jason into its familiar embrace before handing him over to Death to start a new life. 

Clockwork sighed as it watched its King and his Knight be reborn again, their titles and feats stripped away until they were ready to bear them again. Knowing that no one else in this universe would, or could, give them the respectful burial they deserved, it buried them itself, but it did not give them easily found tombstones. Instead, it grew two trees at the head of the graves, which were located in the Knight’s hometown. The trees twined around each other until it wasn’t clear there’d been two trees in the beginning. Clockwork, satisfied with its work, made sure that every universe now had the trees in the same spot. It was pleased by the thought that its King and his Knight would always have a piece of their past with them, even when they didn’t remember. It sat back to watch the new life of the pair that had already been through so much, yet still had so much more to go.

[avelnfear]

Master List for Third Time’s A Charm (Wherever You Go, I’ll Always Follow) (ttac(wygiaf))

Prologue  Chapter One  Chapter Two  Chapter Three  Chapter Four  Chapter Five  Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen

[avelnfear]

Chapter One

Masterlist

Danny studied the room, trying to keep their breathing steady. It was a simple room with no furnishings done completely in black, although the floor was black marble and the walls were black wood. A simple black door stood in one wall. There really wasn’t enough in the room to help with their anxiety, so they took to pacing the room. Danny started out on the ground until that simply wasn’t enough, slowly transitioning to floating then to zooming from one side of the room to the other.

As he paced, Danny’s mind drifted, his tail curled and uncurled behind him. He thought back to when he’d first met Jazz, and the instant connection they’d both felt. No one could have imagined how that one meeting would lead to all of this. Danny’d already been tossed around a few towns while waiting to be adopted, some of his paperwork turning up missing or filled out in symbols that didn’t mean anything, and he’d already learned that his voice didn’t always like people by the time he met Jazz. Through the pity of some attendants, he knew some sign and was decently proficient with writing and reading.

Jazz had only been nine, meaning Danny was about seven since no one was really sure when his birthday was. The two of them had quickly become inseparable, maybe because of the short gap between their ages. Over the next eleven years, things had moved fairly quickly, starting with the addition of Tucker and Sam into their little group. The addition should have added a level of separation to the group, but they’d only grown closer. The group got together shortly before Tucker’s seventh birthday.

They’d all learned a lot by separating into groups to do things. Danny and Sam went into gymnastics together, Jazz got lessons on survival and first aid and a couple in hunting, and Tucker learned to be self-sufficient and very good at computers. They all taught each other everything that they could. The four of them also took various martial art and sign language classes, again sharing insight and the like. Maddie thought her kids wanted diverse interests, so she’d signed them up for dance classes as well.

From the outside looking in, it looked like they were preparing for something, gearing up for some massive undertaking that no one could figure out. From the inside looking in, they knew they were preparing for something, but they didn’t know what. Eventually, something changed. The four of them abruptly quit their extra classes the summer before the younger ones’ freshman year. Coincidentally, this was about a month before the completion of the Fenton Portal, an invention designed to break through the dimensional barrier and open a doorway to the Ghost Zone.

Then the portal was completed, and Danny died. His story should have ended there, but he had somehow come back. The next few months had shown the four exactly what they had been preparing for as their town was suddenly open to visitors from the Ghost Zone. The years had flown by in a flurry of fights and training, discovery and working, and trying to keep their grades up. Jack and Maddie had thrown themselves into ghost hunting, not really noticing when Jazz graduated early with Danny following closely behind. 

In the mess of building up for the crowning ceremony, the Fenton Siblings hadn’t really kept tabs on the Fenton Parents, so Danny simply prayed they hadn’t made any questionable inventions while they were distracted. There were hardly any words spoken at FentonWorks as both sides were in a flurry of preparation for various things. Still, Danny had hoped that his parents would have at least thought to check up on their schooling.

Now, on the day of the crowning ceremony, Danny just couldn’t keep still. Clockwork had been its usual cryptic self about why the crowning ceremony was taking place separately from the coronation despite the words meaning basically the same thing in English. That had made Danny very stressed until Pandora and Dora had explained that the crowning ceremony was just to crown him as King until the coronation when he was given the Throne because the Realms wouldn’t last until the preparations could be made to have a proper coronation. 

Danny tried to stop his pacing. He knew that this was a stressful event, knew he usually got out stress through movement, knew that he wasn’t even harming the floor, and knew that they’d already made every possible preparation. However, the pacing session had started to feel different, heavy, in a way that he didn’t really like. It reminded Danny of those times when he was alone at night, that a choking sense that something was missing would drown him, like an unseen tsunami. This sense had only been mixed with several different types of anticipation, and it was hanging heavily in the air around him, making it hard to breathe without completely restricting his breath.

They pondered all of this, thoughts racing as they kept pacing. Flashes of playful growls, brief impressions of blue, and a feeling that was at once peace and loss flickered in and out of focus, dancing in and around the thoughts in their head and the strange pressure flooding their senses. Danny drifted through their thoughts, losing their sense of time as they did, until the sound of their name broke them from their trance.

Looking up, they saw their people standing in the doorway. The familiar sight brought comfort to Danny, and they found themself looking over their friends to double check that everything was okay. Sam chuckled as she noticed what they were doing, popping a hip as if posing for the inspection. Tucker merely smiled, and Jazz shook her head bemusedly.

Sam wore a little bit fancier clothing than usual, a black cropped tank, short black skirt with an ectoplasm green grid on it, dark purple leggings, and black combat boots. Her black bob was cut jaggedly and left to hang around her face. Her bracelets and choker matched, both looking like chains with black capsules in the center of some of the links, hanging from the choker was a red duck candle charm. 

Tucker wore his usual army green cargo pants with extra pockets, brown combat boots, muted mustard long sleeve shirt, and red beret. His red duck candle pin was pinned to the end of his beret. He wore bubble bracelets with the same black capsules as Sam in them. His black half circle glasses were set on his face over a black face mask.

Jazz had needed to dress up a little for her part in the ceremony, so she was wearing a black jumpsuit decorated with teal chain and vines and the rare pair of ectoplasm green eyes. The suit was tucked into black combat boots that had teal lines framing the structure. A short cap hung from her shoulders, Danny’s symbol done in ectoplasm green on the back. At the bottom corner was a red duck candle pin.

Danny had also been told to dress for the occasion, wearing a similar jumpsuit to Jazz except his was decorated with ectoplasm green eyes as the main feature along with silver snowflakes and his neckline was higher, turning it into a turtleneck of sorts. Over this was a cape made to brush the floor whether he walked on it or floated over it, but if he started flying in earnest then it would shrink to the walking size. The inside of the cape was a perfect night sky, like someone had ripped a patch of the sky in order to make it, except for the inside of the hood which was red. The outside of the cape was a black that rivaled the space between the stars in depth. The pin keeping the cape attached was a silver pin in the shape of a crown, the gems in said crown being shaped like stars.

“Is it time?” Danny’s voice was quiet, yet it carried across the room to the three that were still at the door. Sam smiled at him and Tucker gave him a thumbs up as they shifted to let Jazz into the room.

“Yeah little bro, it’s time.” Jazz’s voice seemed very loud in comparison to Danny’s, but there was no mistaking the kind tone it held, matching the expression on her face.

Danny heaved in a deep breath. Sam’s smile turned reassuring as Tucker let his eyes speak his reassurances as they watched Danny approach. Danny felt himself relax as he met with his friends. They assumed the formation, Sam and Tucker in the front, Jazz behind them, and Danny at the rear as they walked out the door. As much as he was relaxing, the strange anticipation-panic-missing was building. 

Since they were already in the Clocktower where the crowning ceremony was to take place, it didn’t take very long to arrive before Clockwork, coincidentally taking just enough time to let the anticipation-panic-missing build while still remaining bearable. Sam and Tucker split off to stand before Clockwork a couple steps off to the side and forward, mirroring each other. Jazz walked in front of him until they were three quarters of the way to Clockwork. There, she turned sideways as he passed, bowing slightly in his direction. As he moved past her, she fell into step behind his left side. Danny stopped before Clockwork, head held high and face carefully blank.

Amusement and pride flickered in Clockwork’s red eyes like a bonfire as it gazed upon him, but its face was otherwise devoid of emotion. “We few are gathered here today to witness a momentous occasion, The Crowning of a King. Historically, every King has treated their Crowning differently. Today is a day that will change nothing yet stand out as a herald of great change. The High King of All Ghosts is a title that goes hand in hand with several others. Including titles received from predecessors, it is my honor to bestow upon you, Phantom, some titles of your own. However, before we get to that, it appears I will say a few more words. What has gone before shall now come again, when the pieces shall finally find their place. All is as it should be. Now,” Clockwork lifts its hands, the Crown appearing between the hands without touching them. “I bestow upon you the titles of The Balance, Endless One, and the Unbound Star. Let these people and this Crown bear witness.” Here, it lowered its hands until the Crown rested on Danny’s head. “With this Ring,” The Ring appears, floating before the finger it will rest on. “And all these people as witnesses, I name you The Balance, Endless One, and the Unbound Star.” 

The Ring slipped onto Danny’s finger, and his glow intensified, growing brighter and brighter as his power surged due to the titles. His eyes were glowing so green that they were gold. Black ice grew around, dimming the glow and acting like a second skin while still obscuring his form. Danny had the weird sense of being able to see what was happening as though from outside of his body.

Clockwork stepped back. “And thus the Crowning is complete.” As one the four people in the room bowed, thumping their fists on the left side of their chests twice. “All hail the High King of All Ghosts!” Clockwork called out.

Once again in unison, Clockwork, Jazz, Sam, and Tucker called out, “The King is Dead! Long Live the King!” Over and over the words rang out, and as they did, Danny felt something build up, flowing out from and into his core. Suddenly, he could feel the Infinite Realms and everything in them in their entirety. He knew something was happening around him, but he couldn’t process it as he felt each and every one of his subjects as they felt the effects of his Crowning.

All too suddenly for Danny’s very overwhelmed brain, his vision went black, but it didn’t stay that way for long as memories began rushing by. Danny didn’t understand what was happening, but it soon clicked that these were his memories from other lives playing on loop. There were only two lives, but they were vastly different. One ended in peace after a long while, and the other ended abruptly after a very short time.

Danny watched as the memories started yet again. Suddenly, with the force of a train, a thought struck him. Jason was who was missing from his life yet causing such a big impact. Maybe the impact was so big precisely because they hadn’t met yet. A tiny voice whispered shortly after that first thought that he’d never found his biological family either.

These two thoughts seemed to trigger a change because he was no longer watching the memories, but living them again. When he’d lived through all his lives again, catching up to his most recent Crowning, Danny snapped back to awareness. The black ice that had been holding him broke off with a resounding crack, revealing that nothing had changed appearance wise despite what some might have thought with the light show earlier. If memory repeated itself, the changes to his appearance would come at the coronation.

Looking around, he was alone in the room, but that was expected since it had probably been a few days since the ceremony. Tucker, Jazz, and Sam had set up one of the adjacent rooms to be a comfortable resting place while they waited for him to stabilize after the massive surge in power that the ceremony brought him. They hadn’t told him which room it was though, but he had a simple fix for that.

Reaching out with Danny’s new-old senses, they easily located their people, quickly and silently moving through the wall. Appearing behind their people, they smirked mischievously. “So.” They started, watching as the room’s occupants jumped.

“Holy dragon plushies, don’t do that, Danny!” Jazz gasped, pushing a hand into her chest as if trying to calm her heart.

“Empty gum wrappers!! Warning would be nice!” Tucker barked out as he pulled himself back into the bean bag he’d fallen out of at the sudden appearance of Danny.

“Pink lacy frills!” Sam gasped, going pale before swiftly recovering. “Ancients, Danny! That wasn’t very nice.”

Danny chuckled for a few seconds, thoroughly enjoying his people’s reactions. “I found out two things. One, the curse on Amity Park that doesn’t allow anyone to swear is a legitimate curse, not a wish from Desiree. As long as you consider yourself from Amity Park, then you can’t swear, regardless of whether or not you were born there or you leave. If Amity Park shaped you at all, you get the fun of developing your own swear language.” His people were now all staring at him, waiting for the second thing he’d figured out. “Secondly, I’m the one who first made Candy Cores in both forms, Khuzbu and Khuzba.”

“Wow!” Tucker said in awe. “Wait a minute, how did you get all of that from one simple ceremony?”

“Well…”

Tags: @blacksea21090 @chrysanthemum9484 @samgirl98 @may-rbi @justwannaseesomebrozawa @serasvictoria02 @treepainting 

[avelnfear]

Chapter Five

Masterlist

Danny leaned back in his chair with a sigh. He finally managed to complete the paperwork for the Joker’s breakout and subsequent recapture. There was a stupid amount of paperwork required, and Danny no longer had a coworker to share the load with, making it even worse. As Danny leaned a little farther back, his back popped several times in rapid succession, and he sighed again, this time in relief, as he felt his back relax. Leaning forward again, Danny closed the second binder of the day with a sense of wonder that it was finally over as it seemed like the paperwork would never end.

“Paperwork truly is the worst form of punishment… Maybe I can use that elsewhere…” Danny mused aloud as he put his desk back in order before picking up the binders and heading for the door.

Walking through the halls was a simple affair of nods of acknowledgement for and from the guards around him. The head guard’s office was only four halls from Danny's, but there was a mandatory increase in the number of guards due to the recent breakout. In no time at all, Danny arrived at the head guard’s door, so he took a deep breath and knocked on the door. There was no response for enough time that he knocked again, louder this time.

“Come in!” The gruff voice calling out from inside the room didn’t belong to the head guard, but Danny entered regardless. The office looked the same that it usually did, cabinets at the walls, desk towards the back, and the only chair behind the desk. This wasn’t a place to dally for anyone but the head guard. The difference was that Warden Claw sat in the chair with Head Guard Chancey standing behind him.

“Warden Claw, Head Guard Chancey, I have the paperwork here for the recent breakout and for those already recaptured.” Danny set a short, respectful nod to each of them before putting the binders on the desk.

Warden Claw grabbed the binders, looking over them before handing them to Chancey. Danny stood still in the usual respectful posture that guards should have before their superiors although he did want them to hurry it up already. Jason had messaged him earlier that the Batsiblings from the Batburger were safe and all crashing at Jason’s apartment for the next little while as a safety precaution, but Danny hadn’t been able to respond in the chaos of making sure that everything was running as smoothly as possible.

Finally, the Warden looked up. “Do you know why I’m here?” His voice was gruff and harsh, clearly trying to be intimidating since Danny had heard the Warden sounding less harsh and gruff before.

“No, although I assume it has to do with making sure I’m not in league with any of the escapees.” Danny made sure to keep every outward appearance of being respectful even as he rolled his eyes on the inside, almost insulted at the idea that he would ever willingly work with a clown.

“Exactly that. What can you say to convince me that you aren’t in the pockets of those hooligans.” The Warden folded his hands and leaned his face on them, a posture that normally inspired a sense that the person doing it had authority or something like that, Danny was pretty sure he tuned Jazz out when she tried to talk about that stuff.

Danny tilted their head, trying to convey the idea that they were thinking about the issue at hand. “Well, depending on whether or not you already suspect me, there might be nothing I can say to convince you. All I can say is that I’m not native to Gotham although I had heard about it before I moved. Where I used to live, I managed to get some heavy clown trauma, so I’d never work with Blinky or whatever he’s called. I don’t really care about what Harley does because she’s a therapist, or used to be one, and I have therapist trauma. I got enough lectures about the environment from my best friend, and I have developed a healthy respect after that one breed of plants tried to kill my town. That means I wouldn’t go anywhere near Ivy on account of not wanting to get attacked by plants or eco-lectures. As for Penguin, money isn’t my motivation for anything. I’m already paid well enough here, and it isn’t worth going with any of them just to run into the Bats and Birds.” Their head tilted the other way and their eyes squinted as they thought further about the issue at hand. “Furthermore, for one reason or another, admittedly usually to avoid getting on the other end of an angry or working Bat or Bird, I wouldn’t go to any of the Rogues. There should be a note about that in my file from my interview.”

The Warden stared at Danny for several long moments. “Well said. I guess we’re glad to have you. Just don’t quit on me, I don’t want to have to find someone to replace you, if that’s possible.” His voice was much smoother and more gentle, proving Danny’s theory about intimidation right.

“I’m not going to quit on you, I have no reason to.” Danny nodded to give his words a sense of finality to them, trying to reassure the two that he meant what he said. Without saying anything more, the Warden got up and left the room, going back to his own duties most likely.

Head Guard Chancey settled back into her chair and set the binders down on it. “Sorry about that. I tried to tell the Warden that you weren’t the type of person to work with the Rogues here, but he wanted to make sure of that himself. Now, you will watch over the Arts and Crafts Room until your shift ends. The Joker is there, so try not to antagonize him. Any overtime caused by the recent breakout will be paid to you as both overtime and emergency pay, so expect a larger paycheck than normal. Dismissed.” She looked down immediately after she stopped speaking, making the dismissal doubly clear.

Danny headed to the Arts and Crafts Room on autopilot. It wasn’t unusual for inmates who escaped to immediately go back to their old schedule as part of the rehabilitation process, but Danny hadn’t been assigned anywhere near the Joker before this. Danny had considered it a minor blessing and thanked the Ancients for this small piece of goodness. Now, he had no choice but to be in close quarters with someone who had killed his Jason in three lives. Someone who’d killed-

Blinking revealed he was in front of the A&C Room, Danny shook the memories out of his head, there was no time to think about that now. He lowered his head for a second, locking his emotions from showing on his face, not wanting to give the psycho clown any unneeded information. As soon as he felt ready enough, he opened the door smoothly and quietly, closing it behind him and heading to his post with no words said to the occupants of the room. Interactions between guards and inmates were supposed to follow a strict protocol, but not many of the guards actually followed said protocol, Danny mostly included. The Joker looked up and grinned at him, and Danny instantly knew this was going to be a long ending to his shift.

~`~`~

Danny finally put the last completed sheet into the binder, the words on the page blurring horribly due to their tiredness. Somehow this binder seemed even thicker than the ones from earlier in the shift, but that might just be a product of faulty memory seeing as Danny had now been at work for way too many hours. They couldn’t even see the clock clear enough to figure out how long it had been. 

Taking a deep breath and summoning enough willpower to move, Danny strode purposefully towards the head guard’s office once more, keeping their face blank of any and all emotion. Arriving at the door, Danny saw that it was open, Head Guard Chancey leaning on the wall just beside. It seemed she’d been waiting for them because she waved them in without a word and shut the door behind them.

“Are you okay?” Her voice was concerned, but Danny couldn’t figure out why, not even having the energy to tilt their head in confusion.

“Why-” Danny cut themself off at how gravely their voice sounded. “Why do you say that?” Their voice wasn’t much better, but this time it didn’t feel like swallowing gravel, merely sand.

Chancey raised an eyebrow while gesturing for the binder in Danny’s hands. It took two tries to get the binder to her, and Danny had a horrible sinking feeling forming in their gut. “How long do you think you’ve been at work?”

The odd question threw Danny off and made the horrible feeling grow stronger. “Like twelve? Maybe? I can’t exactly read the clock right now, too blurry.” Danny had to put some conscious effort into sounding better this time, and even that didn’t fully make their voice sound better.

“Danny,” there was clear concern in Chancey’s voice this time, and that was odd for a reason Danny couldn’t muster up the energy to figure out, “you’ve been here for thirty hours, not counting the two you spent dozing at your desk. Is there someone I can call to take you home?”

Danny didn’t even bother trying to process how long he’d been at work, focusing on the second part instead. “I’ll be fine. Just need to make it to the apartment without giving that stupid clown any sense of satisfaction for getting to me, and I’ll be good. I’ve dealt with worse, don’t worry.” He had to blink hard for his eyes to focus before taking a deep breath and summoning more willpower, standing straighter and bringing the world back into focus. “See?”

Chancey stared at him in mild horror. “You do see how this is just more worrying, right?” Chancey merely sighed at his nod. “Fine. I’ll take over filing this properly for you, just make it home. If you miss two shifts, I’ll assume you died. Contact me when you wake up so I know not to frantically hire someone to replace you. Go home.”

Danny nodded slowly, trying to hide how much the motion made the world swirl for him. He closed his eyes, taking in another deep breath and willing himself to appear perfectly fine. Clocking out and leaving the asylum was a blur, and Danny blinked only to find himself in the elevator to his and Jason’s floor of the apartment building. Danny just needed to make it in his door before he passed out, that was all, he could do that.

~`~`~

Jason heard the elevator announce its arrival and immediately headed out into the hall to see who it was. The other Batsibs were asleep right now, staying at his place until they were sure Danny was okay. He was grateful that they were willing to do that for someone they’d barely met yet who clearly meant a lot to him, but the apartment was driving all of them crazy with the lack of privacy it offered.

The door opened, and Danny blinked blearily at him, still in their uniform, which was odd enough, but their eyes were also unfocused in that way that only tiredness causes, extreme tiredness. They looked even more similar to Tim than usual, but Jason quickly put that from his mind, going to support them. This proved to be a mistake because as soon as Danny wasn’t responsible for supporting their own weight, they collapsed into sleep, nearly taking Jason to the ground with them.

Deciding to handle this like he would if Tim was passed out in the hallway to his apartment, Jason picked up Danny, ignoring how light they were, and carried them to his apartment. Opening the door was proving to be a bit of a struggle though because he’d locked the door behind him out of habit. Before he could do anything drastic, Dick opened the door with a confused look on his face that quickly turned into concern when he caught sight of Danny in Jason’s arms.

When Dick stood aside, Jason walked in with Danny, heading straight to the bedroom to put Danny on the bed where they’d be comfortable. As he walked quickly though the apartment he noticed that Tim and Damian were also awake. Both of their reactions were nearly identical to Dick’s when they caught sight of Danny slumped in Jason’s arms, worry and concern. 

Jason would have found their reactions to Danny being unconscious heartwarming if he wasn’t too busy being worried about Danny. He’d never seen his friend like that, although he’d never seen them after a breakout either. Jason really hoped this wouldn’t happen every time a breakout happened, his heart couldn’t take it.

As soon as Danny was situated, Jason headed back to the front room to find the three Batsibs talking about what could have caused Danny to be like that. “You guys are thinking about it too hard.” Jason said instead of any form of greeting. “When I met him in the hallway, he looked like Tim after a day of no sleep and no coffee, maybe slightly worse. The most likely conclusion is that he didn’t get any sleep dealing with the aftermath of the breakout.”

The others considered that as Jason went to the kitchen to work out some stress in a healthy manner that would also keep him close enough to be there if anything went wrong with Danny, cooking and baking. Even without being able to see the others, he could almost feel their concern when he didn’t decide to suit up and beat some guys up to get out the stress. Stress cooking and stress baking were usually reserved for times when Jason didn’t know if he could trust himself not to kill anybody, but this wasn’t one of those times.

“You good, Jay?” Dick asked, trying and failing to keep his concern out of his voice, merely muffling it.

“I’m fine, just don’t want to leave Danny alone in the house with you idiots.” Despite the harsh words, Jason tried to keep his voice light to convey that he was teasing. When he heard some chuckles, he knew he’d succeeded. Now he only hoped they could keep this light atmosphere until Danny woke up to answer their questions.

~`~`~

Danny came to with the smell of delicious food and baked goods in their nose. They kept their eyes closed, their body relaxed, and their breathing even, not sure who was in their house. Wait. This wasn’t their bed, the sheets were of a different material and the bed wasn’t a brick. Where were they? Familiar voices reached their ears, but they couldn’t put their finger on who the voices belonged to, their brain still trying to claw its way free from the grabbing hands of sleep.

They focused on their breathing while they waited for their brain to fully wake up, content to just rest in this bed that smelled like Jason. Wait. Jason. They’d made it to the floor of the building that held their apartment, and Jason had met them in the hall. He’d moved to support them and then… and then they must’ve fallen asleep. That means… the voices clicked into place as their brain surged back into full awakeness mode. Jason, Tim, Damian, and Dick were teasing each other outside the door.

Danny basked in the comfort and peace from being so close to their loved ones without having to confront the fact that none of them truly knew them anymore. They would get moving shortly, messaging the people that needed to be messaged and going about things like a normal every day adult, but for now, for now they would simply relax in the bliss that was in such short order in their life. Before Danny knew it they’d drifted back into sleep, a truly restful one this time instead of the sleep of the truly exhausted from before.

~`~`~

Jason raised an eyebrow at Damian as he came back from the position he’d taken up by the door to the bedroom. Damian huffed, yet answered the unspoken question anyway. “Nightingale has fallen back to sleep.” Jason waited to see if an insult was forthcoming, but there was none, Damian simply settling back down at the table. Jason and Dick traded incredulous looks while Tim just stared into his coffee like it held the answers to the universe.

“You seem tame today, Demon Brat.” Jason remarked, careful to keep his voice from dipping into the accusatory tones that would set the small terror off.

“Tt. Just because Nightingale has proven to be more competent than the rest of you, minus Cain, doesn’t mean I’m tame. I’m not some wild animal you have to carefully tame.” Damian let his disdain show in everything from his voice to his face, but Jason saw something in his eyes that he couldn’t decipher. 

Jason didn’t respond, simply humming a vague non-answer as he turned back to the chocolate chip pancakes. There was something off about the way Damian was acting lately, but Jason didn’t know what. It didn’t seem to be a bad thing, a gentle Damian couldn’t reasonably be an entirely bad thing, but Jason didn’t like not knowing. Call it Bat training, good old paranoia, the assassin training, or whatever you’d like, but Jason didn’t like not knowing what was going on with the people he was close to.

Dick stood up suddenly. “I have to start getting back to Bludhaven, tell me how Danny is when he wakes up?” Jason nodded, not wanting to take his eyes or focus off the pancakes. “Thanks for breakfast Little Wing. See ya Baby Bird, Baby Bat.” Dick nodded towards Jason, then Tim, then Damian before leaving to head back to his town.

Tim stayed staring into the coffee, barely acknowledging Dick’s farewell. Damian gave a curt nod before focusing on the food in front of him. A comfortable silence descended over the apartment, the smell of pancakes and other foods making it seem much cozier than the impersonal decorations did. Time passed like that, no one talking as food was prepared and eaten. Jason felt something within him settle, felt the green go even more quiet than normal, and he didn’t want it to stop.

The quiet calm atmosphere dissolved quickly when the door to the bedroom creaked open and Danny stumbled into the kitchen, falling into a seat at the table that was, thankfully, empty. Without speaking, Jason set down a couple plates of food and a cup of coffee in front of them. They hummed in a grateful tone before digging into the meal before them, washing it all down with coffee. Jason just kept supplying them with food until the consumption rate slowed down and they looked more present.

“Ask away.” Danny ordered softly, not looking up from their food just yet.

“Why were you alone in the hallway when you were that tired?” Jason tried to be gentle yet show how concerned he was.

Danny hummed again, this time in a tone Jason didn’t know how to decipher yet took to mean that Danny was still slightly tired. “I didn’t want to let the stupid clown have any sense of satisfaction for getting to me, so I declined the head guard’s offer to have someone take me home.” Danny pushed aways the last empty plate and rubbed their face with their hands. “I hate clowns, especially ones like Bozo er Blinky er Smiley or whatever his name is. You would not believe the amount of paperwork I had to do simply because a clown drew a picture of killing me, showed it to me, and then broke a pencil. After all of that, there was absolutely no way that I was going to give him the satisfaction of knowing he got to me.”

“The Joker did what?” Tim asked, finally looking up from his coffee.

“So that’s his name, huh?” Danny blinked a few times. “Yeah. It’s stupid, but I had to put together another binder because of the incident on top of the two for the breakout and recapture stuff. I get that my late coworker was probably corrupt, but why did he have to die and leave me alone with the paperwork?” Danny let their head fall to their arms on the table, likely still not entirely awake.

Damian suddenly leaned forward. “How many hours did you work to be that tired?” Jason figured it was probably a profiling question from the Demon Brat, but it was a little out of character for him to sound that worried.

“According to Chancey, the head guard, I was working for thirty hours not counting the two I dozed off for, but I don’t think I dozed off at all, more likely just got lost in thought for a stupidly long amount of time. Plus several of those hours were spent guarding the A&C Room, the Arts and Crafts Room, meaning I was also expending energy to lock my emotions away so that the stupid clown wouldn’t be able to see anything that could be used against me in the future. I also don’t think I managed to snag a lunch break either, so there’s that.” Danny hummed tiredly again. “I’m off then.”

“Off?” Jason questioned, mind racing to try and figure out what they meant.

“Yeah. I’m going to message Chancey and then sleep in my own bed for a little while. Not that yours wasn’t comfortable enough, just think I need some time to recharge and get stuff sorted out before I have to head in again. It was nice seeing you guys.” And just like that Danny was gone, the door closing behind them. A short time later the sound of another door opening and then closing reached his ears and he sighed. Danny sure was a mystery.

Taglist: @blacksea21090 @chrysanthemum9484 @samgirl98 @may-rbi @justwannaseesomebrozawa @serasvictoria02 @treepainting @fluffykster @enderglace @sigdexae @persephoneblackrose @angelofsongsoteira @lazy-bouqet @littlefeather345 @icedbluesoul @autumnwulf @thefearfullone @alixanterm @skulld3mort-1fan @dulceringo @vidimirrayne @betinaplayingwriter @the-legal-shipper @currant-owo @crystalqueertea @fisticuffsatapplebees @bugaboo25 @dannyphantomphan @botwadtict @kyrianclawraith @mnemovoid @lyra689 @demiourgias @d4ydr34min9 @idontgetpaidenoughforthisshit I think that’s everyone

[avelnfear]

Chapter Four

Masterlist

Danny gently brushed his fingers through Jason's hair, looking down at the relaxed face of his friend in sleep. He hadn’t expected Jason to fall asleep while in his presence for a very long time, let alone on him. It was a pleasant surprise that made Danny reflect on himself like only his paradise could, but he focused instead on the motions of brushing his fingers through the hair, too afraid of what he’d find if he looked inwards like instinct said to.

Eventually, his thoughts drifted, not being able to maintain focus on one thing for too long as his core had yet to settle from the adventure it took to get here. Finally getting used to his new job had helped, but his main obsession wasn’t getting fulfilled because his family was too far away. Even the family member closest of all was only close physically because Jason had no memory of the long journey they’d been on far before they’d met in this life. 

Having all of these memories was so confusing, it threw everything he thought he knew about his life into the trash and set it on fire. Yes, he and his fright had always felt like they had instincts they couldn’t explain that were pushing them to gear up for some big thing that had turned out to be his death, but he’d found ways to reason away the crisis that would come from that. Jazz had always told him that his way of dealing with most trauma by ignoring its impact and joking or talking around it would come back to bite him, and it did. It really did.

More than that, his current internal crisis was about something so much bigger than just having to flee his home and not see his family for so long, after all the time travel he’d done that was nothing. It was- Danny stopped that thought in its tracks, he wasn’t ready. He’d learned long ago to build up to the most troubling thought because doing otherwise would upset the already precarious balance of his sanity.

Danny felt like he was being torn apart by not having someone else who remembered more than just this life. He would reference something, only to have to explain it to his fright or watch it sail right over the head of whoever else he was talking to. Danny wanted to talk about it, to reminisce about it with someone, anyone, but he couldn’t properly put some things into words. Even Ghost Speak, as impossible as it was, couldn’t properly convey his feelings sometimes because he had no real idea what he was feeling. Learning about his past by reliving it had been such a confusing experience, and he didn’t know how to deal with that.

His thoughts paused as he focused once again on gently brushing Jason’s hair with his fingers before racing back through time to think about the hour that had led up to this. It was another one of their spontaneous hangouts made possible by the fact that they lived so close to one another. Jason had shown up, grumbling about brothers who called stupidly early in the morning to talk about nothing, and Danny had chuckled lightly, letting Jason rant as much as he wanted, as he needed to. They’d settled onto the couch, Jason using Danny’s legs as a pillow because he kept falling over when he tried to sit up. In what seemed to be no time at all, Jason had dropped into sleep.

Danny’s thoughts turned inwards so suddenly his breath stalled for a couple seconds. The core, heh, of his internal struggle was the strange pressure he felt to forgive Maddie, and even Jack, for all the horrible things that happened just because they were family. After all, Danny’s main obsession was family, but his second obsession was freedom. Most people thought that the two things would clash far more often than they did, but they usually worked together, for Danny saw freedom as only worth it if there was someone to share it with, someone to have it for, hence why freedom was the secondary obsession.

Maddie had realized what was so wrong about her approach to life, and she’d done it in such a crushing manner that she nearly broke her mind. Everything had come crumbling down around her, and she’d apologized so much for her part in how everything went down, crying about how she’d never wanted to hurt anyone, least of all her children, and bemoaning everything that she’d done wrong. Maddie herself had told Danny that he never needed to forgive her for her part in everything, but Danny found himself trying to force that forgiveness anyway.

Jack had never apologized, never admitted any wrongdoing, never seen how many people he was hurting, never seen how much damage he was causing, and never stopped hunting Danny, but Danny’s core still yearned to forgive him, to bring the family back together. Danny acknowledged that Jack had done a lot of wrong in his life, but Danny still wanted to give him forgiveness that he hadn’t earned, hadn’t even tried to earn, all because he was family.

Neither of them needed forgiveness, Danny knew that. Maddie was working on forgiving herself while still repeating over and over that she would never pressure Danny into forgiving her, that forgiving her was his decision, but she didn’t fully understand what it meant to be Danny. Danny always felt pressured to keep the family together, to make the right decision, to keep his family happy to the extent that he didn’t know what to do with himself if he wasn’t doing anything for that. Jack didn’t even think he’d done anything that needed forgiving, and there was no way Danny would try to talk to Jack about that.

Danny knew all of this, yet he felt pressured to forgive things that shouldn’t be forgiven. His core demanded a family he could connect to, knowing he couldn’t contact his fright for now, too dangerous, knowing he couldn’t contact Maddie, too dangerous and still too hurtful and tearful, and knowing that he couldn’t contact Jack, too dangerous and too much attempted murder between them. Danny didn’t know what to do. 

He didn’t want to forgive Maddie. She’d sworn long ago to keep her family safe, but the moment that someone accepted her ideas and her, she threw that out the window. Her thoughts had narrowed down to protecting Jack and his happiness, becoming just as obsessed as him about ghosts. At least she’d tried to stay on the sane side of it. She’d tried to pay attention to her children, but she couldn’t do much when she got absorbed into her work so quickly and so completely. He didn’t want to forgive someone who had proved time and time again that she was not dependable, that she was not to be trusted, that she would only break his heart. He didn’t want to forgive Maddie, yet he kept catching himself forcing his thoughts to call her Mom.

Admittedly, there was less pressure from his core to forgive Jack, but instead it played that what if game. That was a dangerous game to get into, especially for a ghost. Emotional damage was almost more damaging to a ghost than any other type of damage, so playing the what if game was like playing with his life. He knew that, yet logic was not the driving force he always went by. As the days passed, it got easier and easier to remember what Jack had done, to cast aside any lingering familial bonds with him.

The root of the problem then, was Maddie. Maddie, the person who actually kick started the whole adoption process when she found Jazz playing with young Danny at the park, the person who’d tried to take an interest in his interests for the first couple of months before getting swept away by the portal, the person who’d made Jack set aside time to put up the glow-in-the-dark stars to make Danny feel more comfortable, and the person who’d always tried to push Danny to do his best. Maddie, the person who’d shot at him with intent to heavily injure or kill, the person who’d ranted almost everywhere about the many ways she wanted to tear him apart molecule by molecule without knowing that it was him she was talking about, tainting every place they went with that memory, the person who’d made most of the more harmful inventions, the person who figured out that electricity hurt him more than most, and the person who’d turned most of the town against him in the early years. There was a sharp contradiction between the two Maddies in his head, but he knew from Jazz that separating Maddie like that was a trauma response.

The answer hit him with the same force his body had hit the wall. He couldn’t forgive Maddie, not so soon and maybe not ever. It just wasn’t possible for him, and trying to force it would only tear him apart. He couldn’t forgive someone who had done so much to him, and there was no way he would be talking to a therapist anytime soon due to his own issues, meaning that forgiveness would likely be a longer process once it finally got started. Even though the realization hurt, there was a sense of freedom building in his chest that swirled like glitter through his core. Finally, he felt settled in his own skin. The thought was a sweet lullaby that lured him into sleep. 

~`~`~

Jason woke up gently, rising from the dreams to settle into his own body with a smooth feeling that was missing most of the time. He kept his eyes closed, enjoying the feeling of peace that surrounded him while he tried to remember why he felt that way. Realizing it was because he fell asleep on Danny, his eyes snapped open and his face flushed. Sure enough, there was Danny, asleep with his head tilted over the back of the couch.

Danny seemed so peaceful in sleep, causing Jason to realize that there had been an invisible weight to his friend’s shoulders before now. Jason couldn’t help but stare, feelings swirling in his gut, unfamiliar ones. Jason’s brows furrowed as he tried to figure out what he was feeling. It was, was the odd mix of happy-peace-nerves-joy-meant-to-be that Jason had come to associate with Danny, but there was something more to it, some level that seemed to have been added while he watched them sleep. The meaning of it escaped him, but he didn’t want to spend too long thinking about that, preferring to spend this time memorizing every single bit of Danny’s face, not knowing when it would be possible to do so again.

In what seemed to be no time at all, Danny’s eyes were fluttering open, unfocused until they locked onto Jason’s with startling clarity. “Hey.” Jason whispered softly.

“Hey.” Danny’s response was just as soft and quiet, not carrying like it usually did. 

Jason wanted to stay in this relaxed state forever, but he knew that they needed food. “Wanna get some Batburger?” Jason offered, not really wanting to cook at the moment and assuming Danny wouldn’t want to cook either.

Danny gave him a soft smile in response. “Sure.” And they separated to their separate apartments to get ready to leave.

~`~`~

When they walked into the Batburger, it was mostly empty save for the workers and a group of people in one of the corner booths, a group of people Jason recognized. He nearly groaned but held back, not wanting to be seen by them. Danny walked up to the counter and Jason followed, trying not to get noticed by the group even though he knew it was inevitable. Against all odds they made it through the ordering process, Danny continuing their odd trend of not ordering any fries, but Jason knew that the good luck would not hold.

Sure enough, as the two of them were choosing their drinks, a voice called from the only other customers in the store, “Jason! Jason, is that you?!” Jason groaned at Dick’s obviously played up tone of hurt. He debated whether or not to ignore Dick, quickly coming to the conclusion that doing so would only make everything worse.

“Is that the one you were complaining about when you knocked on my door?” Danny suddenly asked in his ear. It was a testament to Jason’s skill that he managed not to jump, although he did lean away.

“Yeah.. that’s him.” He muttered. “Is your eyesight finally failing you old man?” Jason called back to his brother the irritant, enjoying Dick’s betrayed gasp even if it was fake.

Despite Jason’s words, when it came time for Danny and him to pick a spot to sit, he walked towards the table where Dick, Damian, and Tim sat. Tim had clearly been bribed with coffee to be there, but Dick and Damian were probably on one of their brotherly bonding outings, which usually weren’t held in Crime Alley, meaning that Tim was also bribed with a chance to run into Danny. Great. That meant such good things for this meal, not.

True enough, they were barely settled into their seats when Dick burst into words once more. “Hello, my name’s Dick, this is Damian, and the one falling asleep where he sits is Tim! I wasn’t aware that Jason had any new friends recently, so I don’t know your name, sorry!” Dick flashed his blindingly brilliant Dickie smile while maintaining his hurt expression when he looked at Jason, obviously, to anyone who knew Dick at least, trying to put Danny at ease.

“Interesting choice of words there.” Danny’s tone was neutral, expression almost bored as he met Dick’s eyes with a tilt to his head.

“Huh?” Dick blinked, clearly thrown off by this unexpected reaction.

Danny simply tilted his head in the other direction, eyes still locked on Dick’s as they sharpened. “You apologized for not knowing my name, despite clearly assuming that Jason hadn’t told me about you. You automatically assumed I was a friend of Jason’s, not an acquaintance, not someone who he owed a favor to, not just someone who he fights with, but a friend. You didn’t specify which one was Damian, relying on the fact that I wouldn’t interrupt you to give clarity with describing Tim, who, by the way, doesn’t look like he’s falling asleep where he sits, rather like he’s retreated into his thoughts. You introduced yourself first with the tone of someone who expects people to look at you weirdly due to your name, or maybe just treat you differently for your name, probably trying to get it out of the way and likely already having a funny retort pulled up in your mind. You also didn’t share any extra information about Damian other than a fond tone, pointing towards you expecting me to know about him, and by extension all of you, likely from news sources or Jason. In short, you said what you said the way you said it to appear properly social while fishing for clues about who I am, maybe even leading into an interrogation gentle enough to be written off as just the type a concerned brother would give here in Gotham.” Danny blinked, seemingly caught off guard by his own words. “Sorry, force of habit. My sister used to quiz me about people based on how they talked as a way to double check her own thoughts before she got good enough at reading people that she didn’t feel that it was necessary anymore, then it became more of a game. Guess I’m more tired than I thought.”

Dick sat stunned for several long minutes, looking like what Jason felt the first time Danny had done that when tired. It hadn’t happened often, but it was always shocking when it did. Amused, Jason looked at the other two people at the booth, seeing a similar shocked expression on Tim’s face, who also no longer looked as tired, but Damian didn’t look at all like Jason expected. There was no shock in his expression or body language, rather amusement and some things Jason couldn’t quite define. It sent a disquieted feeling slithering up Jason’s spine, but that was normal when it came to the Demon Brat.

“If anyone could deduce so much about you, Richard, then you must be slipping.” Damian huffed out.

“Are you saying that I couldn’t do the same to you Damian Wayne?” There was an odd emphasis put on Damian’s last name that Jason hadn’t heard before, not from Danny at least. There was also a new light in Danny’s eyes, though this was one that Jason recognized, the spark of a worthy challenge.

Just like that, it was like the world fell away for the two of them, and Jason suddenly felt like an outsider who was ignorant of the world. He couldn’t explain why he felt that way, but he did. Damian didn’t respond past a raised eyebrow, but Danny just kept staring the same, although Jason felt like something in the air had changed even if Danny hadn’t. The green that had lain quiet for so long suddenly roared its head, and Jason redirected his eyes to his hands that were clutching the edge of the table so hard his fingers were white.

“Order for Todd.” All the tension in the room suddenly snapped, and everyone at the table turned towards the front counter where the words had come from, numbly Jason walked over and got the two trays of his and Danny’s food. He nodded his thanks to the worker and turned back to the table, keeping his eyes on the floor for a reason he didn’t know, which was rapidly becoming the normal sensation of the day.

When Jason got back to the table, things felt so much looser, more free than before, although no one was talking. Setting the trays on the table, it was like whatever was keeping anyone from speaking snapped. “What do you do for a living?” Tim burst out before his mind appeared to catch up to his mind and he flushed slightly, yet still watched Danny, determined to have the question answered now that it was asked.

“Oh, I work at Arkham as an assistant head guard for the Rogue Wing. It basically just means that I do most of the same work as a regular guard with a couple of added responsibilities and a bit more paperwork. I actually didn’t mean to apply for anything over a regular guard, considering I’m a little on the young side, but the person who referred me to the job handed me an assistant head guard form. I didn’t even know what position I applied for until my interview.” Danny chuckled the last line, clearly wandering in the past a little as they stopped talking to devour a burger, one of four on their tray.

“Why didn’t you order any fries? Sorry, weird question, but I’m curious.” Dick tried his best to seem sheepish, but Jason saw through that for the attempted ice breaker it was.

Danny hummed as he washed the burger down with a sip from his soda. “No fry can ever compare to the fries at my local burger joint growing up, so I never bother to order fries anywhere else.” Danny clearly saw that more questions were about to be asked because he quickly kept talking. “The fries there were so good that a pair of inventors literally made an invention specifically to keep them at the perfect temperature, although the fries were good cold too. Rumor has it that wars have been fought over the recipe behind those fries, although no one can say whether or not this is true.” Danny had leaned in, voice gaining intensity like the best of storytellers, drawing his audience in. Jason had leaned in too, and he saw his brothers had done the same. “It’s been said that the burgers are absolutely nasty, but the fries make ordering combos worth it because it makes the fries cheaper. I’ve heard a tale or two of one man who ate nothing but those fries for a solid year and proclaimed he was all the better for it.” Danny smiled at them like he’d just told a massive joke or revealed a big secret and leaned back in his chair, not even looking as his hands unwrapped the next burger. “Of course,” his tone was lighter now, seeming to let the air back into the space around the occupants of the table, enabling them to draw their first real breath since Danny had gone all intense, “this is all rumor, none of it is confirmed as fact.”

“What’s the restaurant’s name?” Dick whispered, clearly drawn in by Danny’s behaviour.

“Not telling.” Danny said with a smile, digging into the second burger while Dick made a hurt gasp that was only half acting this time.

“Why are you guys even here? You usually stay out of Crime Alley.” Jason decided to steer the conversation back on track, not wanting to get stuck in the endless hole of the weird conversations Danny could hold, not today.

“We were thinking about showing up to your apartment unannounced. Richard wanted to whine about you not spending more time with the family as a means of getting you to agree to coming over to the Manor next Wednesday. Alfred has promised to make some of your favorite meals if you agree, and Father asks that you extend the offer to your new friend, although I did try to inform him that you have not confirmed whether or not your new neighbor is a friend.” Damian kept his tone straight to the point, even as his eyes hid some amusement over the whole thing as Dick gasped about betrayal beside him.

Jason pretended to think it over. “All you had to mention was Alfred’s offer and I’d be there.” Jason turned to Danny. “They’re going to bug you about visiting until you do, are you free and willing to go Wednesday?” Jason already knew what the answer would be, but he asked the question anyway, something about seeing Tim get intrigued about a new mystery seemed funny.

“Nah, I’m busy that day. I’ve got to work some of the odd hours, and every other hour is taken up by an activity. ‘M booked.” Danny didn’t even pretend to consider it as he washed down the remnants of the last burger, eating fast like he always did in public. “Although I have heard you wax poetic about Alfred’s cooking so it is tempting.

The meal was filled with innocent questions as Danny watched them all eat. It would have seemed odd to Jason, but he’d grown used to the way Danny lived his life. Through the meal, Jason watched Dick become more comfortable in Danny’s presence, only really noticeable to those who knew him, but Jason somehow knew Danny knew that Dick was becoming more at ease. All attempts to find the source of why he knew left him with a headache, so he quickly abandoned the thought. Tim also relaxed, although Jason was sure this was mostly faked to put Danny at ease. Tim preferred long periods of observation to make sure people he found suspicious were actually okay people. Damian was even more of an enigma than usual, making references that were heavily veiled behind things he would usually say, and amusement was a frequent visitor of the deep depths of his eyes.

Suddenly, Danny got an alert that had him settling his expression into a serious one. “I have to go.” Danny stood up, abruptly cutting off the easy conversation that had been flowing before. “There’s been a breakout, Joker, Harley, Ivy, and Penguin have gotten out. The other assistant head guard is dead, so I’m being called in.” He looked around at them with no real emotion on his face, making Jason repress a shiver. “I wouldn’t stay on the streets for long. My coworker told me Joker was in a funny mood.” With that, Danny took off.

Jason, Dick, Damian, and Tim looked at each other, many emotions flickering between them as they silently conversed. Without another word, they sprung up, tossing everything left on their trays, which was mostly just some wrappers, and they bolted for the safehouse nearby that held a spare of all their gear. Jason hoped Danny stayed safe before putting all thoughts of his friend out of his mind, focusing on the task at hand. Jason hoped that Gotham was ready for whatever the Joker had in store for them.

As soon as everyone was suited up, Jason turned on his comm. “O. We have insider information that Joker, Harley, Ivy, and Penguin have broken out of Arkham, get everyone on.” 

There was a flurry of activity and words as everyone else booted up into high gear, a breakout that involved Joker didn’t spell anything good. Finally, B’s voice came over the line, “Hood, report.”

A/N: I’m still not entirely happy with the ending, but I cut it there because I was starting to get way too frustrated with the chapter. I may edit this a bit for when I post it to AO3 eventually, but I’m just vibing on tumblr for now. Sorry this took so long.

Taglist: @blacksea21090 @chrysanthemum9484 @samgirl98 @may-rbi @justwannaseesomebrozawa @serasvictoria02 @treepainting @fluffykster @enderglace @sigdexae @persephoneblackrose @angelofsongsoteira @lazy-bouqet @littlefeather345 @icedbluesoul @autumnwulf @thefearfullone @alixanterm @skulld3mort-1fan @dulceringo @vidimirrayne @betinaplayingwriter @the-legal-shipper @currant-owo @crystalqueertea @fisticuffsatapplebees @bugaboo25 @dannyphantomphan @botwadtict @kyrianclawraith @mnemovoid @lyra689 @demiourgias 

[avelnfear]

Chapter Three

Masterlist

Danny leaned back on the couch with a heavy sigh, mentally going over the events of the past few months. Life had gone downhill fast after the group had returned from the Crowning, like a rollercoaster that ran out of track. It all started when Madd- when Mom had confronted him and Jazz about his being Phantom. He’d feared the worst before she started sobbing and babbling about how sorry she was for ever targeting him or believing what Jack said about ghosts. Jack had overheard about him being Phantom, attempted to End him, and caused Team Phantom plus Mom to have to scramble to change Danny’s identity and set him up in the chosen city. He’d somehow managed to interview well at Arkham despite Mom giving him a different application than the one he thought he’d be getting, and now he finally had a chance to rest in his brand new apartment.

When the short runthrough of events didn’t calm his buzzing core he sighed, giving into the fact that he’d have to set aside time to go through everything that had happened in more detail later. Opening his eyes, Danny looked around the Crime Alley apartment that they’d managed to get him under the short notice. The walls were thin and not entirely clean, but they weren’t the worst walls he’d ever seen in Crime Alley. The furnishings were sparse, as though he was prepared to move at any moment, because he was. Despite that, the room still managed to feel cozy and lived in. If his memory served him, this apartment complex was one that Jason would frequent occasionally which would make sense because he owned the building.

Sliding from the couch to their feet, Danny wandered over to the fridge in an almost daze, drowning in thoughts of their sun. They missed him so much it hurt. Their thoughts paused at the empty fridge standing before them. They’d forgotten to go shopping. A pang of longing went through them at the thought of food, both for the idea of food itself and for the thought of a chance to taste their love’s cooking again. With another heavy sigh, Danny started to move throughout the room, gathering up everything they needed in order to go on a short shopping trip.

They attached the chain that disguised some N Capsules to their jeans, neatly hiding it under their baggy hoodie. Next they snagged the N Taser, it looked like a regular taser while still working on ghosts, and their switchblade, which was a replica of one that Jay had given them once. Danny left the living room and entered the bedroom which only contained a dresser, a wardrobe, and a bed although everything still had that cozy yet abandonable vibe to it. Snagging their wallet from the top of the dresser and making sure the window was locked, they finally made their way to the front door to slip on their shoes which were a good pair of running shoes that had seen better days.

Danny took a deep breath, mentally preparing himself for any sort of situation they might get into before opening the door and stepping out, right into the path of a tall person, sending them both to the ground. Eggs dropped from their container, smashing their shells on his hoodie and leaving behind a gooey mess, but Danny only had eyes for the unfortunate person he was now tangled with on the ground. It was just his luck to have run into the very object of his thoughts right when he wasn’t prepared for it.

Jazz’s voice reminded Danny to breathe, and he calmed down quickly. There was no time for panic, he had a first impression to make. “Sorry about that, guess meet-cutes aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.” His voice was light, dramatic, and teasing, exactly the kind of tone he’d have used in their first life when he didn’t know what to say and just defaulted to the first thought that crossed his head. Evidently, Jason didn’t remember their past lives yet because there was no flare of recognition in his eyes as Danny’s words were processed. Danny is sure Jason’s face went through the five stages of grief, adding a few and not quite reaching acceptance before Jason groaned, burying his face in his hands.

“That…” Jason groaned out, still hiding his face. “That was almost a good pick up line until I registered that it was a pun.” Looking up, Jason seemed to realize what door he was in front of. “Well howdy neighbor, this is definitely not how I thought we’d meet. Been hearing you move in for the past week or so, nice to finally meet you. Your accent isn’t local, so what brings you to Gotham?”

“Many things.” Danny said with a wince as Jason accidentally dug his elbow into Danny’s ribs while trying to get free from the two person tangle. “If I’d realized you’d already known I was moving in, I definitely would have said hi sooner.” Danny winced again as their legs thumped the floor as Jason attempted to free himself. “Again, I’m sorry about this. I should have been looking where I was going, but my mind was a tad distracted by my hunger. All that work moving in only to forget to stock up on food is such a rookie mistake.” Danny had a better view of how their legs were tangled, so he swiftly untangled them, rising to his feet and extending a hand to Jace. “Name’s Danny. Not Daniel, not Dan, not Danno, not Danny Boy, just Danny.” His voice lost a tad of the humor it had kept up as he went over the names not to call him.

Jason took his hand, pulling himself to his feet with an amused smirk on his face. “Nice to meet you Danny. You can call me Jason. We’ve all forgotten to go shopping once or twice, and to be fair, you weren’t the only one at fault here. I was focused on my phone when I should have been paying attention to my surroundings.” Jason looked around, probably for his phone, quickly scooping it up once he saw it. When he turned back to Danny, he winced in sympathy at the messy hoodie. “Sorry about your hoodie.”

Danny looked down as if noticing the mess on his hoodie for the first time. “Eh, don’t worry about it. This is actually my least favorite hoodie, so I don’t care too much about it. I’m more saddened about the early death of the eggs, those could have made some great food. Speaking of,” Danny clicked his fingers to help convey the suddenness of the thought he was now speaking, “do you mind telling me a good place to get some food shopping done? I’m fairly new in town, clearly, and I didn’t really have time to research such places.” Danny rubbed the back of his neck as though nervous, but he really only wanted something to do with his hands, leaving them hanging was starting to feel awkward.

Jason smirked gently at him, and Danny had to fight back his instinctual responding smile, reminding himself that Jason doesn’t remember. “Seeing as I need to get some new eggs, why don’t we just meet up after I’ve had a chance to put the rest of this away and you to change hoodies? Say, five to ten minutes?” Jason moved while he talked, picking up the various groceries spread around the hall from their fall, Danny quickly moving to help him. 

“Sure, sounds like a plan.” Danny held out the couple of bags he’d reassembled the contents of. “Here.” Jason took the bags, and Danny spoke again before Jason could move off, “I’ll just stand inside my doorway this time. Wouldn’t want a repeat of this situation, after all, my heart couldn’t take falling for the same person twice in one day.” Danny winked along with his words, trying to convey that he was teasing in more ways than just the massive shit eating grin on his face.

Without giving Jason time to respond, Danny slipped into his apartment, smoothly and swiftly closing the door. As soon as the door was shut, the smile dropped, and Danny ran his hands over his face and through his hair. That was not how he thought his first meeting with Jason would go. Danny had figured out during that conversation with his fright after the Crowning that there was no way Jason remembered because he would have found Danny before anything really happened. After all, that was what had happened in their second life, where they both remembered from the beginning. Danny had thought that the wave of energy the Crowning had produced might have awoken the memories, but that didn’t appear to be the case.

Moving on autopilot, Danny moved through the apartment, leaving the soiled hoodie in the laundry room to be dealt with later before heading to the bedroom to find a new hoodie. Jason’s ecto-signature had been off, but Danny expected that, even would have been worried if it hadn’t been. The first time they’d met, Jason had thought Danny was also dipped into a Lazarus Pit… The Lazarus Pit! Of course! Danny paused as a thought struck them. The remaining Pit Waters in Jason must be holding back his memories, maybe even cutting off or stifling his connection to his core! How would Danny be able to fix that was the new problem.

Shaking his head, Danny put that thought away for later, focusing on finding the perfect hoodie from his collection. Shortly after his accident, Tucker and Sam had started getting him hoodies with ghost comics on them or cartoon ghosts doing silly things or just hoodies with cartoon ghosts on them. One of these hoodies had a cartoon ghost and cartoon zombie face to face with each other on the front, both of them saying, “Same hat!” The back had the same ghost and zombie now saying, “Different colors though…” They both were wearing no hats. It was perfect, and the hoodie Danny planned to wear when meeting Jason for the first time.

Finally finding it, Danny wasted no time getting to his door while pulling it on. As Danny passed the counter he spotted his phone which he promptly scooped up, mentally chiding himself for forgetting it the first time. Danny opened his door to find an empty hallway, meaning Jason wasn’t done with putting things away, or he was caught up talking to the Batfam about something. Knowing how quickly Jason usually put things away, unless that had changed, and consulting his inner clock, Danny figured it was the latter and settled in to wait, pulling up a game on his phone in the meantime.

~`~`~

Jason stared at the door that had just closed in his face. His new neighbor, Danny, was nothing like what he thought they were going to be. Shaking himself both mentally and physically, Jason walked to his own door, quickly entering his own apartment, locks opening swiftly with practised ease. Letting his body put things away on autopilot, Jason let his thoughts drift.

When he’d first heard his new neighbor moving in, Midwest accent and all, he’d brought it up to the sibling group chat, and they’d all made bets on what type of person his neighbor was and how quickly they would move. The usual things. Jason hadn’t thought they would be staying for long, and that they were likely to be timid due to how long it took them to introduce themselves, factoring in the fact that the Midwest was notorious for being friendly from what he’d heard all his life.

Danny was nothing like he’d expected. On the outside, with the baggy hoodie, Danny looked like a stiff wind would snap him in half with ease, but Jason had felt the hidden muscles while struggling to untangle himself. Usually Jason would have been free in a heartbeat, but it was like his brain had glitched the moment Danny touched him. Something about it was so familiar, yet he was sure he’d never felt anything like that before. Danny hadn’t appeared to have the same issue, moving with all the grace that Dick usually did, like someone trained to fight and entertain. Danny also punned like Dick but more subtle. 

Despite how much Danny seemed to be like Dick, Jason shied away from that comparison. It just didn’t feel right. Danny had the same eyes as Tim, icy blue, even possessing the same deep eye bags that spoke of someone who didn’t sleep well. Danny’s eyes, while sharing the same color as Tim, reminded Jason most of Damian, assessing and sharp, yet they also bore the kindness of Duke. There had been a hint of a scar that trailed from the edge of his chin to somewhere under the hoodie. The scar was barely noticeable because of how pale it was on Danny’s pale skin. The black hoodie with black pants and black running shoes had only served to make him appear paler. 

The sound of his phone blowing up drew Jason from his thoughts. The sibling chat was blowing up with concern for him. It took him a moment to remember that he’d been messaging with them before the fall. Jason sighed, spying that they were all on comms, he made the decision to join them on there rather than just texting them. It was the work of five seconds to locate one of the spare comms hidden all around his apartment. Putting it in, Jason heard a wall of concerned cries from most of his siblings while Barb tried to get them to calm down as the sole voice of reason.

“Yo.” Silence, deafening silence, dawned over the line before everyone began speaking at once again. Jason let it go for a couple minutes just to let them get the panic out of their systems. Deciding enough was enough, he spoke again, “Alright, everyone shut the fuck up or I won’t answer any of the questions.” The comms fell silent again.

“What happened, Little Wing? You were messaging us and then just fell off the face of the earth.” Dick tried to sound less worried than he was, but Jason was skilled at picking up human emotions.

Jason chuckled. “Nothing as dramatic as that Dickiebird. I just ran into my neighbor, literally. We talked for a little bit, and I just got back into my apartment.” Jason leaned on the counter as the comms dissolved into chaos once again, everyone wanting to know who’d won money in the bet.

“Tt. I still do not understand why the betting was so intense for such an insignificant event.” Leave it to the Demon Brat to get everyone to shut up.

“Damian,” Tim said slowly, clearly trying to keep his tone kind while wanting to scream at Damian for supposed stupidity, “we’re talking about someone who moved into Crime Alley, into a building that is known to be owned by Red Hood no less, who has a background so secure Oracle can’t crack it, that just got a job at Arkham as a guard assigned to the main Rogue wing, and they just so happened to move into the one apartment that was open on the top floor despite a lot of the building being empty. The whole thing sounds more than suspicious enough for us to get, as you put it, intense about this.”

In the silence that followed, Jason decided to finally offer some information. “Their name is Danny, they look like a twink yet feel like they have a decent amount of muscle, and I did not manage to get their pronouns.” Jason broke out his Mission Report Voice, knowing it would catch everyone’s attention. “They wore all black and didn’t appear to be armed, although they could be good at concealing their weapons. They look like Tim, act like Dick, and move like a combo between Dick and Damian. They looked like they had been getting about as much sleep as Tim too. Definitely from the Midwest, although they did appear to know a little bit about what they were getting into and some of the unspoken rules of Gotham, such as not being overly friendly yet still showing a sense of community and not pressing someone on what they were doing. They didn’t try to follow me into my apartment, even closing their door before I could move off, possibly to give me more comfort knowing they wouldn’t know exactly where I live. Danny has a scar that is faint yet visible that trails from the edge of their chin to somewhere below the neckline of their hoodie. They didn’t seem to know who I was, but they did agree to go shopping with me seeing as I lost some eggs and they didn’t buy groceries as they were moving in.”

There was some silence as everybody processed what he said, but that was quickly broken by Steph, “What do you mean you lost some eggs?” Her voice clearly showed her disbelief.

“I did tell you that I literally ran into them.” Jason kept his voice dry. “The only reason I have the time to talk to you guys right now is because some eggs decided to kamikaze on their hoodie.”

The comms exploded with laughter. It seems like the majority of his siblings the bat siblings found his phrasing funny, which was the whole point. Idly, Jason looked down at his phone, immediately letting out a string of expletives, carefully avoiding the use of the words that would make his siblings rush over in worry. Quickly, he snagged his wallet and shoved his feet into his boots.

“What? What’s wrong?” Dick’s voice broke through Jason’s steady stream of curses. 

“I’m fucking five minutes later than I told Danny I would be for shopping. Shit! Talk to you guys later.” Jason didn’t give anybody time to respond before turning off the commlink and yanking it out of his ear in the same motion. He dashed to the door, barely glancing in the mirror to make sure he hadn’t somehow gotten something on his shirt or jacket while he was in the house.

Jason threw his door open and himself through it, spinning to close the door and then lock it as fast as he could, only fumbling slightly. Looking up, he saw Danny in their doorway, playing on their phone. As he starts to step towards them, their head jerks up, and a smile lights up their face. 

“Hey, long time no see.” Their smile turns obviously teasing and they pitch their voice up and down to really sell that it was meant to be teasing. Jason winced, about to say something when Danny interrupted him, “Don’t worry about it, although we might need to stop at a fast food place before shopping because I definitely need a meal now.” Danny laughed while they spoke, conveying that it was still meant to be lighthearted.

Jason laughed along with Danny. “I, uh, never got your pronouns. Mine are he/him, may I know yours?” Jason smiled sheepishly.

“Oh! I knew there was something I forgot. I use he/they and sometimes she. Gender is weird.” Danny rubbed their neck again.

~`~`~

The shopping trip went well! Danny had gotten a few strange looks from Jason a few times. First was for his large order at Batburger, but Danny had quieted Jason’s suspicion by informing him that he hadn’t eaten all day. The next time was because a couple of the seven different types of mushrooms in his cart could kill someone who didn’t, or did, know what they were doing with them, the fact that they’d been placed right next to raspberry sparkling water didn’t help, but Danny just waved Jason off that time, he knew what he was doing. Danny was pretty sure his cart organization looked like a disaster just waiting to happen, but he knew what he was doing. Things were bagged with what they were going to be used with, so the concerned stares weren’t necessary from Jason and the cashier.

As all good times in Danny’s life, something had to quickly make it take a nosedive. They were two measly blocks from their apartment building when a group of robbers dragged them and their groceries into an alleyway that Danny knew was a dead end. Knives were being waved in their faces, and Jason looked like he didn’t know what to do because he couldn’t show too much skill in front of a civilian while still wanting to beat these amateurs up. As for Danny, he was just focusing on slowly working the bags down so that they wouldn’t spill any of their precious cargo when they hit the ground.

The leader walked up. “What’s taking so long? Divest them of their valuables.” The leader had a scar on one side of his face, Danny could use that.

“Hey, Lopsided!” The leader turned from the minion he was addressing to glare at Danny while everyone else looked at Danny like he’d lost his mind, which was rude in Danny’s opinion. “Do you want me to even you out?” An easy smile rested on Danny’s face, and he made himself stand like he was just offering a friendly favor to a friend, bags closer to the ground like this.

“What?!” The leader growled out, leaning forward and twisting his face in a way he probably thought was aggressive but actually just showed Danny a glimpse of what his fighting style would be like.

Danny kept the easy smile in place as he tilted his head. Speaking slightly louder he said, “My bad, you must be hard of hearing too. I asked if you wanted me to even you out. Ya know, your face. Your nose is crooked, and there’s only a scar on one side of your face. I don’t guarantee that I can fix the nose without a few more supplies, but I can definitely even out your face, it’ll be easy!” Jason looked very impressed and very concerned, but he didn’t say anything, likely speechless or wanting to see how this plays out.

“You’re clearly new in town, so I’ll give you some advice and one more chance.” Lopsided was somewhere between a growl and a smile now, looking smug as someone who just figured out something massive that was previously missing. “I’m not your friend, and I should kill you for those remarks. Apologize and I won’t slit your neck right here.”

Danny laughed gently, keeping his eyes on Lopsided. “I am new in town, thanks for noticing, but I should be the one to give you some advice and a chance. Listen closely,” Danny leaned in, using that action to disguise the fact that his arms were now free of the bags, and said bags were on the ground, “you only have one chance. I never said we were friends. People don’t need to be friends to be friendly ya know, and you should kill me even though you can’t.” 

With his last word still fading from the air, Danny launched into motion, pulling his switchblade free and flicking it open as he used the goon in front of him like a springboard to launch him at Lopsided, sending the goon to the ground. Before anyone could do anything, Danny’s blade was cutting deeply into Lopsided’s face, giving him a wound that would definitely leave a matching scar. Danny swung his legs around to rebound off of the leader, Danny couldn’t call him Lopsided anymore, and into another goon. From there, Danny let instincts take control, ripping through the ranks of the robbers with obvious ease while the majority of his focus went to not causing any fatal wounds in the people who dared threaten his Jason. It was the work of a few short minutes to have every goon disabled on the ground, the majority unconscious and all having bleeding wounds due to his switchblade.

Turning, Danny saw Nightwing and Jason standing together with their jaws open in shock. Immediately, Danny’s throat felt closed up, and he knew that his voice had left the chat. Great. Danny leaned down to wipe the switchblade off on one of the goons before closing it. Danny figured they needed a few more moments to gather themselves, so he went to go check on his groceries. It wouldn’t do to have lost something and only find out after getting home.

“T-” Jason paused, audibly swallowing. “That was very impressive.” He exhaled harshly. “Very impressive.” His voice was quiet and breathy.

Danny looked up, nodding quietly with a small smile. Danny signed a simple ‘thank you’ to him. Jason’s eyes widened slightly before a look of realization flashed across his eyes and gave way to understanding. Nightwing still looked shocked, so Danny sent a concerned look at Jason while flicking his eyes over to Nightwing and grabbing his groceries.

Jason sighed. “I’ll get him functioning, you head on to the apartment and I’ll check in with you when I get back.” Danny nodded and started walking, feeling satisfied for having defended one of his people even if that person didn’t belong to his fright just yet.

~`~`~

Jason sat on the edge of the roof with one of Nightwing’s extra communicators in his ear listening to the silence as everyone struggled to process what they were hearing. It had taken a few minutes for Jason to get Nightwing to respond to him, and he’d spent all of them thinking about the sudden switch Danny had made from speaking to not. Danny hadn’t had any issue mouthing off to the amateurs attempting to rob them, but the moment he noticed Nightwing he’d gone silent. Jason had thought about what could have caused that, if anything had even caused that, and why he’d had so much ease understanding Danny’s nonverbal cues. 

“Okay okay… Run that by me again” Jason sighed at the phrase he’d heard three times before. Steph at least sounded less confused and more amused this time.

“It all started after I met up with Danny in the hall…”

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[avelnfear]

Chapter Ten

Masterlist

Damian wondered if it would be okay to give into the urge to tackle Danny for cuddles now. He’d held back during the entire plane trip back, and he had snuggled with his mother rather than Danny when he’d found where they’d been fighting. He’d spent way too long pretending that he didn’t know such an important person in his life, and it was getting hard, he could practically feel himself vibrating in place. Damian was staring at Danny as he tried to figure it out, even though he knew that he could be considered rude for doing so. 

Nellie was curled into one side, so the other was open for snuggling and there was enough room on the couch. Finally after twelve centuries, it was only five minutes according to his internal clock, Danny noticed him staring and smiled an okay. Still, Damian waited until Nellie gave her consent too before diving at Danny.

There were gasps around the room, and Damian heard at least one person yell his most common nickname in the tone that said they thought he was about to hurt somebody. He ignored all of them in favor of finally, finally, curling up into Danny’s side, one arm reaching behind them to tangle his fingers with Nellie’s. Damian’s eyes slipped closed as he let out a noise of contentment, but he knew that there were shocked looks directed at him from almost every member of his family. It wasn’t his fault that acting like the well adjusted person he used to be would have doomed the world to ending, so he didn’t feel like the gazes were quite warranted.

“So. How about I start out with a brief backstory and then we can get into your questions?” Danny’s voice sent soft rumbles through Damian with how close he was to them. It made Damian let out another sound filled with how content he was to be right where he wanted to be.

“That would be acceptable.” Father’s voice was tense enough that Damian knew him being so close to someone Father considered an unknown probable threat wasn’t giving everyone else the same comfort it was giving him. Oh well.

Danny took in a deep breath, telling Damian which story they were going to tell before they even started. “This is not the first life we’ve lived together. At first, we didn’t really know each other. Tim and I were online friends who discussed superheroes, but we didn’t know each other irl, we didn’t want to. In those days Amity Park, my hometown, was a neighboring city to Gotham, only about an hour or so away. I was adopted at around the age of ten by the Fenton family, in that life at least. I met Jason about eight years later when a government agency picked up signs of contamination on both of us. They called us ghost scum even though the actual term coined by the species we were technically a part of is Existences. Jason and I had both died at least once, brought back at different times and in different ways, but it meant we showed up on their scanners.”

“They’re called the GIW and they’re nearly nonexistent.” Nellie sounded sleepy, but Damian refused to open his eyes to double check.

“Yes, I was getting to that, but thank you.” Danny was surely smiling at Elle, but Damian knew it would drop as soon as the story continued, this was a hard time to relive for all of them who were there and remember. “The GIW did horrible experiments on us with a secondary purpose of killing us eventually. One of the worst things they did was make us believe we were being rescued utilizing some sort of hallucinogen that would make us see and hear whatever we wanted to see and hear then pretending to break us out only to punish us for attempting to escape. It took too long for us to be found, so by the time a real breakout was actually happening-”

“Jason flinched at his own guns.” Damian interrupted, finally opening his eyes to stare at Jason as the memory of that day played in his head. “He only realized it was a real gun when he used it to save us from an agent who was sneaking up on us. The hope and fear that lit up his face at that moment will always stay with me. No one got mad at me when I started to use excessive force, mainly because they were too busy doing the same. By the time we realized Da and Pops were gone, we’d basically destroyed the entire base, leaving the crippled remnants of their agents behind.” Damian saw the horror in Jason’s eyes, and all it did was remind him of that fateful day.

Danny ran their fingers through his hair, and he let it relax him enough for his eye to drift closed, leaning into the point of contact. “We didn’t fully trust that it was actually real, so Jason and I ran to Clockwork and Frostbite, two Existences who live in the dimension all Existences can call home, the Infinite Realms. We stayed there for a couple months to a couple years, time is hard to judge around Clockwork. When we got back, we couldn’t be separated from each other for too long because that typically meant the next experiment would be absolutely awful. Jason and I lived that life to an end that was a long time coming, dying side by side in the same way we’d always lived. It was a good life. Jack and Maddie were good in that one, we managed to rescue Talia from the mind control and brainwashing she was under, and we lived a full life that was full of love and joy.”

“If only it could have lasted into the next.” Elle’s voice was so miserable that Damian scooted closer to Danny to tangle the fingers of their spare hands together, giving his precious ghoul as much comfort as he could.

“Elle is right, the next life was absolutely awful. Damian was never born because Talia died early, Tim died as a tiny child, almost everyone we knew and loved were dying left and right. A combination of having to personally see most of those deaths, Fear Toxin, Joker Venom, and being constantly dipped into the Lazarus Pit drove the Dick of that life to such insanity he eventually blew up the entire universe, forcefully making everyone  in that universe move on. Jason and I remembered our first life for the entirety of our second, but I didn’t remember either life we’d lived until I reached what I think is eighteen years of mortal life and full maturity as an Existence. Existences don’t age or count maturity in the same way that mortals do, so Elle is technically my adult child even though she’s only about sixteen-ish in mortal years.”

Elle hummed. “Jack’s a piece of shit in this life though.”

Danny groaned playfully. “You’re so lucky that you can swear because you weren’t there when most of the town got soul cursed because of that stupid wish.”

“What, you gonna tell me I’m strawberry crepe grounded because you’re jealous I can say fuck?” Elle was probably smirking, if the teasing frame of voice was anything to go by. Damian just stayed floating in the void of black behind his eyes, letting the voices of his loved ones wash over him as the sense of peace rocked him to sleep so suddenly that he barely registered when it happened.

~`~`~

“I’ve never seen Demon Brat go to sleep like that before.” Jason’s voice was quiet and full of shock, managing to express himself while still making sure he didn’t wake his brother up.

“You mean you don’t remember him sleeping like this before, just like you don’t remember him ever calling you Pops before.” There was a slight smirk on Danny’s face that Jason saw in the corner of his eye as he kept staring at Damian, half expecting him to wake up because Danny hadn’t lowered their voice at all. “Don’t worry he won’t wake up.”

Dick shifted, drawing Jason’s attention to the stiff way he was sitting. “Why did he call you Da and Jason Pops?”

“Because that’s what I call them!” Nellie chirped.

Danny chuckled. “He married Nellie here in our first life, so we were his in-laws. Talia is his mother, Bruce is his father, Jason is his pops, I’m his da, and you, Dick, are his dad. He just didn’t have a chance to address you as such before falling asleep.”

“How does he remember? Is there a way that we could remember?” Tim sounded like he wanted to ask more, but Jason respected his ability to cut his questions off, staying silent because he didn’t think he could do the same.

“I think he made a deal with Clockwork to prevent the chaos of our second life, taking upon himself the burden of remembering for us. I don’t think he remembers the second, because I don’t know if he ever existed in the second. As for a way that you could remember… Jason will remember eventually, as soon as the Pit’s Influence finally leaves him behind. As for the rest of you… only if you become an Existence, of which there are many types. If you’re asking to see if you managed to solve your case before, you didn’t.” Danny looked so sad at the end there that Jason couldn’t help what blurted out of his mouth next.

“What happened to Tim with the twin case?”

Danny looked even closer to tears, and Jason felt like kicking himself at seeing that expression on their face. “He died.” Shock kept the room completely still and silent. “He didn’t share it, adding another massive project on top of his work in his civilian life and his vigilante life. The rest of you, not knowing what was bothering him and not wanting to push him too hard just tried to pick up the slack in a desperate attempt at giving him a break. It didn’t work. The more time he had off from his other obligations, the more he sunk into the twin case, but he never found anything.” The words poured out of Danny like a waterfall of agony, paralyzing everyone else in the room with the sheer depth and intensity of the feeling. “It.. It got to the point that we all tried to bench him, but he grabbed a spare suit and snuck out. On route to the Twin Case Safehouse, which is where I live now, he ran into the Joker, who killed him. We.” Danny paused, taking in a deep, fortifying breath that had Jason stiffening in fear for what would be said next. “We managed to keep Tim alive and back to the Cave. He was the right kind of personality and in the right kind of space to become an Existence after death, but he-” Tears started leaking from Danny’s eyes, as he broke off to do some calming breathing techniques. A minute of silence later, he picked the thread of the story back up again. “He said that he didn’t want to continue existing, that he didn’t deserve to, because he’d never finished his case. He said that the only solution he could come to is that his target was already dead and he refused to continue living in any way when they’d already passed into Limbo. He was the first to die.”

“Who else died to the Joker?” Bruce’s voice was quiet and fearful, yet steady, like he was horrified of the potential answers but needed to know regardless. Jason needed to know too, Danny had come home exhausted every time he’d been assigned to guard the clown. Jason needed to know how bad it was.

“Jason and I in our second life, Bruce, Tim, Dick, Duke, and Steph in our first life. He ordered the bomb set that killed Jazz, Tuck, Sam, and Jack in that first life as well. He was at least involved in the situations that killed most of you in the second life as well. He blinded Dick only a month before he killed him, so there’s that. He baited Scarecrow into the attack that killed Alfred. He tortured Jon into silence and a near coma, and he was at least part of a lot of the hero deaths that occurred in that first life, although most of those weren’t the most well known of heroes. Every time I see him, I refuse to give him any satisfaction, locking my emotions and feelings deep inside to present a blank mask to him all the while fighting back my natural instincts to kill him,” Danny’s face and voice were as dark as the topic, “To torture him and show him just what he put my family through in a life he no longer remembers, to show him what true fear really is, to make him the focus of every joke he once pulled, to-” Danny cut off when Damian stirred in his sleep, automatically brightening as he turned a little more towards Damian to pass their fingers through his hair again, muttering things that Jason couldn’t hear that caused Damian to sigh and relax back into sleep.

“We’re movin on from this topic. You guys can go discuss whatever ya want to in another room, but I’m gonna set this couch up inta the bed it can become and Ma, Damian, n I will be takin a nap. Don’t disturb us for your own safety, now shoo.” Nellie glared at them while flapping her hands until everyone had left and closed the door.

Jason was worried for Danny, that was a heavy topic and a heavy burden to carry. He was worried for Damian too, carrying the same weight for so long must have been exhausting. Talia was waiting for them in the sitting room that everyone settled into for the post questioning discussion. She took one look at their faces and gave them all an understanding smile.

“I remember everything too. Jason and Danny both needed a stand in to take the burden of remembering everything in order for this whole thing to work. Ask all your remaining questions to me, I’ll answer what I can.” At the disbelieving looks she received, she let out a short bark of laughter. “I swear on my loyalty to High King Phantom that I will not lie to any of you for this discussion.” The words sent a feeling of power through the room. “Believe me now?”

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[avelnfear]

Chapter Nine

Masterlist

Danny had just finished getting things set up for dinner that night when there was a knock on the door. It was odd because Ellie had a key, and Jason would either call out while knocking or just break in through the window. Something in the air told them that they wouldn’t be back to enjoy dinner, so they sighed as they started putting everything away.

After that was done, they marched to their door and yanked it open. Standing in the doorway, looking slightly awkward about it, was one of his oldest friends. They hadn’t started as friends in their first lives, and they never even met in their second. This life, though, Clockwork had sent them to meet them with some time travel shenanigans. 

“Hey… Can I come in?” She had her hair brushed in front of her face, and she was wearing a simple pair of grey leggings with an oversized long sleeve shirt with a cartoon ghost on it. It was an outfit he’d bought and hidden for her when it became clear she didn’t have some of the common comforts normal people did.

“Hey yourself.” His smile was surely a mixture of sad and nostalgic, but they’d promised long ago not to lie to each other. Instead of saying more words, he stepped to the side and gestured into his apartment with a sweeping motion of his arm.

When they were both situated on the couch, Talia smiled at him with a sad smile of her own. “Thanks… How’ve you been?”

Danny narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re dilly dallying. You, almost as a rule, don’t do that. What aren’t you telling me? We’ve never lied to each other, don’t start now.”

Talia’s eyes narrowed in return. “You remember.” The smile grew into a smirk of sorts. “I’m here because Father did something stupid. Something I had no real way to entirely stop if I wanted to take over the League and stop him completely. Elle won’t be coming home, nor will any of the Bats aside from Alfred, Father took them to get to you. He thinks he can control you through them, but I know better. Before I left to come here, I activated a plan that cleared my people out of the base except for those who are protecting Damian in my quarters. I’m here to ask you to let me help you fight your way through the base and to ask you to let me be the one to kill Father, if only so that you can claim your retribution long afterwards.”

“You remember too.” Danny went silent, thinking things through. As he came to a conclusion, a horrible, terrifying smile that was a bit too wide for his face appeared. “That sounds like it will be purr-fect. After all,” His voice had dipped into a purr that screamed danger, “I don’t let anyone get away with messing with my people.”

The grin Talia gave him in response was downright deadly. Danny was sure the result of all of this was going to be an absolute bloodbath, but he couldn’t quite find it in himself to care. They had decided to mess with his family, so he was going to mess with what they cared about right back. Ra’s would rue the day that he’d decided to mess with Danny.

~`~`~

Tim came into consciousness slowly, with all the creeping slowness of waking from sedatives. As soon as his brain processed what he was seeing, he struggled to stand, not managing it due to the chains and magic that surrounded him in the room that housed the Lazarus Pit. His eyes darted around, noting the placement of his family, a girl that looked eerily like Danny, and, the one he’d been looking for all along, Ra’s al Ghul.

“It seems you are all awake now, good.” Ra’s was smiling in a way that meant he thought everything was going according to his plan, and it seemed like an even more disgusting plan than usual, Ra’s didn’t usually include civilians.

“What do you want?” Bruce’s voice was gruff and tense, and Tim could tell there was even more tension and anxiety in Bruce than was being shown in his voice or body language. “Where’s Damian?”

Tim’s eyes widened as Bruce’s words made him look over the room again, revealing that Damian really wasn’t with the group of hostages. Tim and his family exchanged glances with each other, expressing the horror and worry they all felt as they all ran through all the horrible reasons for Damian not being tied up with the rest of them.

“Do not worry about him, he’s with his mother. Worry for yourselves and your purpose here.” The smile on Ra’s face got even more disgusting, somehow. Tim found it a little insulting that Ra’s said that.

Tim was worried. He was worried about Gotham and the people they weren’t there to protect, Danny in particular. He was worried about Conner and the rest of the Supers when they heard that the Bats had all been kidnapped. He was worried about whatever plot was happening this time. He was worried about Damian, who had been separated from the group for whatever reason. He was worried about what Danny would think when they all simultaneously disappeared. He was worried about how disgusting and self-satisfied the smile on Ra’s face was.

“B already asked you what you want.” Dick’s voice was dark yet still cheerful, likely for the purpose of giving Ra’s a false reason to blab his plot. Ra’s knew that Dick was always cheerful unless all hope was lost, and he thought that all hope should be lost, thus he would explain more that they could then, hopefully, use to escape.

Ra’s laughed a dark laugh. “You won’t get out of those chains without my express permission, so there’s no harm in telling you. I want the connections that I can get once I get my hands on Daniel Fenton. Once I have those connections and weapons, I will be able to live forever with such power at my hands that the world will finally fall into my rightful, ruling hands.”

Tim’s expression hardened. “That won’t work out in your favor.” He didn’t fully understand what Ra’s said, but he knew that it wouldn’t work out, call it instinct.

“On the contrary, it will. See, he’s the least dangerous one.” Ra’s was about to continue when Jason snorted. With a glare at Jason for interrupting him, Ra’s continued on, “He’s the civilian friend to a family of Bats.” A chuckle burst from Jason’s lips, and everyone in the room looked confused at that reaction, even Jason. After a moment more of confused staring, Ra’s got back into his swing and went on, “By taking all of you first, we’ve left him without any support thus making it easy to deal with him.” Jason let out a short laugh this time, and Tim was getting concerned about how confused Jason seemed to be about his own behaviour. Was this another side effect of the Lazarus Pit? Was- Ra’s broke through Tim’s spiraling thoughts with a sharp, “What are you laughing about?”

Jason couldn’t seem to answer him, every time he opened his mouth more chuckles spilled out. The confusion and horror on his face as it seemed like he couldn’t even stop himself from laughing unnerved Tim more than just the plain laughter would have. It was almost like Jason was under the effects of Joker Venom. Tim exchanged glances with the rest of the hostages, except for the girl who looked like Danny, this wasn’t normal.

“What do you find so funny?” For all the confusion in the tone, Ra’s voice was still sharper than a League member’s katana. “You’ve just been informed that your closest civilian friend will be under our control through you and your little group being used as hostages. We even have preparations made to stop any of the super powered friends of your little group from rescuing you. What. Is. So. Funny?”

Abruptly, Jason’s laughter cut off, further unnerving everyone in the room. Jason had just barely subtly signed the word “instinct” to the rest of them before he was leaning forward in his chains with a cocky smile on his face, although Tim could see the confusion hidden deep within his eyes. “I don’t find it funny.” He paused likely for dramatic effect, because Jason was a dramatic little fuck like that. “I find it fucking hilarious.” The room sat in stunned silence as Jason leaned backwards, looking ridiculously at ease for being chained to the floor in the same room as a Lazarus Pit except for the fact that Tim could see conflicting emotions hidden deep within his eyes and posture.

“Wha-” Ra’s began only to be interrupted.

“You think he’s the civilian among us.” He chuckled a little. “You think that capturing us was anything but putting a fancy signature on your death certificate, and I mean your final death certificate. You think he’s the least dangerous one. You think your people can do a single fucking thing to him? You think he needs our help. You think you’ll be able to control him. You think you’re safe. You think you’ve won.” Jason’s tone was the same as the one a parent uses to explain to their child that the square peg won’t ever fit in the circular hole about five hours into that conversation.

“You-” Ra’s once again got interrupted.

Jason scoffed. “Me? Well I’m just waiting. Waiting for that gorgeous expression you’ll make when you realize how extremely,” Jason pronounced every syllable of that word with sharp carefulness, “wrong you are. Your wonderful fucking strategy is an absolute shitshow of misinformation. If I were you, I’d starting fucking praying. I’m talking hands and knees, tears running down your face, wailing at the sky, rocking on the ground, don’t give a shit except about being granted a positive answer praying. Because I really doubt that any god will answer you with anything but a negative, they wouldn’t want to anger the one you call a civilian.” The grin that took over Jason’s face was sharp and mildly unhinged, but the confusion still rested heavy in his eyes.

The girl look-a-like of Danny burst out laughing, drawing the confused attention of the rest of the room. “He’s so very right, ya know. I don’t think he knows how right he be, but sweet baby Ancients is he correct. You wanted to use Danny’s loved ones as a controlling mechanism? Translated that equals you wanting to learn why death is not a mercy, it’s a sentence. Pa is going to rip you limb. from. limb. at the very least, but don’t worry, you’ll feel it all. Every. Last. Bit. Of. It.” The girl’s voice was dark, sharp, and targeted towards the end, losing the mirth that had colored it when she first started speaking.

Ra’s walked over to the girl, stiff with anger and slapped her hard, right across the face. The girl’s only response was to start laughing once again. Ra’s growled in growing anger. “Little girl, you should stop laughing because you don’t know who you’re messing with.”

That got her to stop laughing, but the expression on her face sent chills down Tim’s spine. It wasn’t particularly terrifying for any reason he would usually give, but it was far too calm for someone who’d just gotten slapped hard enough to be rocked backwards. “I know exactly who you are, Ra’s al Ghul. I know all about your twisted rap sheet. To be frank, I expected you to hit harder. I mean, come on, I’ve been hit harder by literal toddlers. You should reevaluate your life if you think that you are dangerous to me.” 

Ra’s stiffened even further, and the girl, for some reason, found that so hilarious that she burst into laughter once again. This only served to piss Ra’s off even more. Tim, and his family which he saw whenever he managed to drag his eyes away from the horror show in front of him, could only watch as Ra’s proceeded to beat the girl up as she laughed the whole while.

Finally, when the girl had blood freely flowing from her broken nose on top of more invisible injuries, Tim couldn’t take it anymore. “Are you such a wimp that you have to beat up a girl to make yourself feel better?” Tim felt the words were a bad idea as they slipped out, but he was already doing it. Ra’s turned with a look so full of anger Tim questioned if he’d ever see another one like it. He had just managed to brace himself when the slap hit, shifting with it to lessen the blow even though that barely helped.

Over the ringing in his ears, he heard a massive boom coming from the direction of the big double doors. The boom repeated twice more, almost like a slow and steady knock. “What?!” Ra’s snapped out, although Tim didn’t think his voice was loud enough to be heard beyond the door. Three more of the slow booms resonated throughout the room from the doors. “What?!!” Ra’s shouted, this time actually being loud enough that Tim thought it could be heard through the door.

A final massive boom echoes as the doors are blown open, revealing a small pile of assassins that appear to have been beaten into unconsciousness denoted by the bruises spreading across a lot of the visible skin, some of the bruises were already turning purple. Tim might be having issues seeing because of the reflexive tears from the slap, but he swore he could see some bones poking out of skin. The area past the pile was darker than it should be, the only light seeming to be from the room itself. That wasn’t normal, the base was usually well lit, especially in frequently used areas. What was going on?

~`~`~

Jason was alternating between looking at the pile in shock and glaring at Ra’s for his actions. Nellie had done nothing to him other than pointing a couple of things out though Tim had, admittedly, antagonized Ra’s to get his slap. However, Jason’s blood was boiling as he watched a little bit of red leak out of Tim’s nose, the slight swelling already happening by his eye, and the blood starting to bead at the split in Tim’s lip. The odd orb in his chest that had prompted his strange speech was howling like a hurricane in his chest, roaring in a way that he almost understood.

“Who’s out there?” Ra’s yelled out, tone arrogant and demanding in a way Jason knew wasn’t going to end well, although he wouldn’t be able to give a concrete answer as to why he knew that with such surety.

The only answer from the darkness beyond the door was a long sigh followed by something being thrown into the room. It clearly wasn’t going to reach them, not with its size or trajectory, so no one did anything to try and get out of the way. Ra’s just watched the thing with dark eyes. The thing landed, revealing itself to be an assassin who was folded in on themselves, pinned in place by their own broken bones. Something darkly satisfied and knowing settled a large portion of the hurricane in the orb in his chest, calming it to merely a raging windstorm.

Danny walked in calmly, in the same style he did when entering the store on their grocery runs, like nothing was wrong. Despite the fact that there was no weapon anywhere to be seen on Danny, and none in the pile of assassins, there was blood splashed all over Danny’s face and clothes. His hands were clean, but there was no totally clean spot other than that.

“Hello Ra’s al Ghul, how are you today?” His voice was cheerful, but his eyes promised pain as they stared into Ra’s own.

“You-” Ra’s was once again interrupted, giving Jason an odd sense of pride-joy-funny that he couldn’t quite place.

“Da!!” Nellie’s voice was full of relief and joy along with a fair bit of pain. “It’s so good to see you!”

Jason watched as Danny looked over to them all and froze. His face closed off and became harder than steel as his eyes locked with the wounds on Nellie and Tim. There was no massive shift in the way Danny stood, but something about him now screamed dangerous in a way that Jason definitely found attractive.

“I was going to let you live for a while, seeing as I hadn’t heard from you. But, sugar, I think you need to learn your lesson. Those are my people, and they do not belong here. You are lucky that I was alerted of this now because my patience can only last for so long. You are a lucky son of a chocolate ice cream cone because if I kill you here and now then I won’t be able to do everything I want to. Thankfully, for me, not for you, I have an old friend of mine with a bone or twenty to pick with you, so she’ll be the one to kill you so that I can properly punish you after your death. You’ll have to deal with being beaten by a girl while you dance around acknowledging the fact that you done messed up. Don’t worry, you’ll never have the chance to do so again once it’s my turn.” Danny’s tone was even icier than it had been when Dick got chewed out for sparking the panic attack of Tim that one time, it was harder than it had been in the few times gangs had tried to rob them on their grocery trips, and it was so incredibly attractive to see how protective Danny was over the people that he cared about.

Danny walked forward to the point where no one could see his face other than Ra’s, and while he did that, Talia walked in behind him with an oddly proud look on her face. Jason didn’t have long to study her expression though because Ra’s suddenly let out a cry filled with fear. Looking back, Jason saw that Ra’s was kneeling before Danny, staring up at their face with a look so complicated that Jason couldn’t read it.

“Is it my turn to deal with the pathetic old man, my friend?” Talia purred out, everything about her radiated satisfaction and pride.

“Go ahead. Just remember what you need to do once he’s dead.” Danny’s voice was starting to warm up again, less like an ice age and more like a heavy blizzard.

Jason heard the sound of Talia fighting and taunting Ra’s, but he only had eyes for Danny as they checked over Nellie and Tim to make sure they were mostly okay, even giving Nellie a pill that seemed to fix most of the wounds she’d gained from the lunatic. Talia sounded like she was wrapping things up as Jason watched Danny study the magic and the chains as though looking for a way to free them all. They’d managed to get the chains to let them go when the magic disappeared. Finally looking away from Danny, Jason saw that Talia had killed Ra’s and was pointing a weird metal cylinder built like a thermos at his corpse. Jason tilted his head slightly in confusion as Talia just stood there, waiting and watchful like a big cat with eyes on its prey.

A green mist started forming above Ra’s corpse, the color only slightly different than the Lazarus Pit behind it. “May you never be reborn again, in this life or the next.” Talia said in a soft voice that was surprisingly open for the assassin she’d always appeared to be. As the last echo faded and the mist started to take form, she pushed a button on the odd thermos and a blue light shot out, wrapping around the shadowy green form that was taking the same shape as Ra’s. When the blue light retreated into the thermos, it took Ra’s soul with it, leaving only his corpse behind.

Jason, and the family he could see out of his peripheral vision, watched carefully as Talia sauntered over to Danny, clipping the thermos to his belt as she flung an arm around his shoulders and leaned into him in a way Jason was sure she’d never done with anyone before. There was a gasp from the doorway and suddenly Damian was throwing himself into Talia, who let go of Danny to wrap her son in a hug.

Danny retreated to where their group was sitting, stunned into being statues, with a fond look on his face. Turning to them, he spoke, “Ask your questions after we get everyone back home, I’m sure Alfred is worried about you all.” Danny’s voice brokered no arguments, as did his actions as he swept Tim up into his arms while Nellie attached herself to their back. “I’ve got the injured ones, let’s get going.”

The Bats could only trade glances as they unfroze to follow behind the assassin and the assistant head guard. The glances told Jason that none of them knew what was going on, but they were all determined to find out. Jason felt an intense need to know why Talia was acting so out of character and why he had a strange orb filled with foreign emotions and sensations. As he walked with the group, following a path out of the base that was littered with unconscious or dead assassins, he swore he could see flashes of another person where Danny should be. One with white hair, a cape, and a pair of heeled combat boots. It faded quickly, and as soon as they left the base, the flashes disappeared like they were never there. Jason put it out of his mind, he could worry about it after making sure his family was okay.

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[avelnfear]

Chapter Six

Masterlist

Tim stared down at his computer screen, not typing anything, just staring. It had been months, months, since his parents had talked to him on the all important 18th birthday. The talk had been enlightening and infuriating, but he was so happy that they’d finally seen fit to tell him that he never had an imaginary friend for the first few years of his life, instead he had a twin. That was information that totally should have been left unsaid for 14, fourteen!, years. 

Tim sighed, again, knowing his thoughts usually weren’t this sarcastically spiteful. He had been searching every way he could think of to find his missing twin, but nothing had worked. His parents hadn’t even left a birth certificate behind when they abandoned their child. There was no record of a Nathaniel Drake anywhere he looked, which made sense because Tim didn’t remember Neil speaking very much. He’d come back from one of the hangouts with Jason’s new roommate, Danny, to find that one of the automatic searches had turned up nothing.

This didn’t help with his already low mood, but Tim supposed he shouldn’t have gotten his hopes up on a day like today. It had started with Alfred cutting him off again, which was normally fine because Tim didn’t even like coffee but today was different. He’d been up the entire night diving into yet more searching for his twin, but he’d found nothing. The only good thing about the day was being able to cancel a stupid meeting for shareholders at Wayne Enterprises for “outside commitments” that he didn’t tell them was just a hangout. 

Speaking of hangouts, he should probably see if Kon could come to one soon, if only because he wanted some comfort from his best friend. He’d been searching for so long, and he hadn’t found a single clue. Tim had a good brain for facts and memorizing, but he had a tendency to throw out anything he didn’t view as important anymore. An imaginary friend was certainly not as important as stalking Batman and Robin, but a twin should have been. Tim just wanted someone to give him comfort and say all the right things to make this situation go away. The former was possible, but Tim didn’t think the latter was realistic.

Tim sighed again, rubbing his face with his hands to try and get his thoughts to quiet down. After all, he didn’t have time for a breakdown with how little he’d found out about his missing twin. He had to set up an automatic search again, expand the search parameters again, maybe get some coffee by bribing someone, and, judging by his clock which was five minutes fast, he needed to get at least one of those things done before he had to get ready for patrol. Great.

He only managed to get the parameters expanded and ready to be sent off to the program that was running automatic searches before he had to head down to the Cave to get ready. It was with a heavy heart that he left his computer to head to the study and the elevator hidden there. There was so much more he should be finding, but it was like someone had gone to the trouble of hiding his twin from him. Even if there was no record of an orphanage in one of the cities his parents had visited when they were four receiving someone named Nathaniel Drake, there should at least be a record of a four year old boy with black hair and blue eyes that had issues talking sometimes.

Arriving in the Cave, Tim shook his head free of the thoughts clogging it, he didn’t have room to think about all that while on patrol, that wouldn’t end well. It took Tim five minutes to finish suiting up, as opposed to the usual two and a half, but he couldn’t bring himself to care until Dick sent him a concerned look over it. He knew better than to let his inner turmoil show so easily, but this was unlike any inner turmoil he’d ever had before. Determinedly, Tim sent what he hoped was a reassuring smile back, as he firmly compartmentalized his thoughts in order to focus on patrol and the here and now. 

Bruce, suited up and ready, stepped into position in front of the Batcomputer, ready to give the troops their orders. Tim didn’t trust himself not to give anything away, so he kept his eyes on the dark figure backlit by the screens. He felt several sets of eyes on him, but he didn’t dare turn his head. This was his own issue, it wasn’t something he should have to go to the other Bats and Birds with for help. Bruce waited until all of their eyes were on him, but he sent Tim a concerned look of his own that told Tim this night was about to turn into a long one.

“Since it is getting close to Halloween, we’re going to start patrolling in pairs.” Bruce was one sentence in, and Tim already had a bad feeling he knew where this was going. “Robin is with me, Spoiler and Orphan are paired up, Red Hood has declined help with Crime Alley, and Nightwing and Red Robin will be patrolling together. There is no trading of partners.” Bruce said more, but Tim was only barely listening.

It made sense, it really did, but that didn’t mean that Tim didn’t hate it. They’d sent the person who deals best with emotions out on patrol with him because the family was starting to get concerned about him. The only person he wasn’t a hundred percent sure about being in on the plan was Jason, but there was still a decent chance that Jason wanted him to talk about what was bothering him too. There wasn’t even any way to get out of it without sounding like he really did need help either because he was starting to go a little crazy over the lack of leads. Still, why couldn’t they just do the normal thing and stay out of his business until he was ready to do a big reveal, maybe with a Powerpoint and-

“Tim!” Dick shouted from a few feet away, anticipating Tim’s instinct to try and sweep the leg of whoever startled him. “I’ve been calling your name for like five minutes. We need to head out for patrol, remember.”

Damn it, he’d just affirmed their feelings that something was wrong. “Yeah, sure.” Tim tried to sound clear and enthused, but he failed, voice coming out mumbly and almost pouty.

Dick sent him a look filled with concern, so much so that Tim didn’t really want to meet his eyes. “You doing okay? If you need to stay in tonight, I’m sure I can handle it. We are patrolling together all week after all.”

Tim just sighed as he headed to his bike, letting his silence speak for itself. This wasn’t going to be very fun, but Tim had dealt with worse, he’d get through this. There was no way that Dick would be able to get any information out of him because this was far too personal of an issue to even think about sharing with any of the others. He’d even made it look like he was looking into just a regular missing person so the others would assume he was avoiding the issue- Oh. Now he saw his mistake, but it was too late to change any of that. How hard could it be to avoid Dick’s attempts to talk about it anyway?

~`~`~

The answer is very hard. 

Tim had only endured three days of questions during patrol and subtler questions during the day if regular civilians were around, but he was already nearly at his wit’s end. There’d been no time for doing any searching while Dick and occasionally one or two of the others were needling him to try and find out what he’s hiding from them, and the lack of progress was already bad enough when he was doing something to try and change that. Now, with no progress and no way to attempt to make progress, he was getting increasingly irritable at an exponential rate, and there was no way that he could make their questions stop.

In a desperate attempt at doing something to throw them off the scent and get his itching to research to go away, he’d started looking into Danny again, even though he’d promised himself that he would leave them alone. Drastic times called for drastic measures, and the drastic measures had yielded results. He’d learned a lot about Danny’s backstory, but he refused to share any of it with anyone but Jason, the only one who hadn’t needled him about the search into his twin or let him be needled over it. Danny had been adopted at a young age into a family that seemed like it was at the very least neglective.

The recent name change from Daniel Fenton to Danny Nightingale had come when their adoptive father, who researched ghosts from a scientific standpoint with their adoptive mother, had declared that they were possessed and needed to be hunted down in order to be freed from “the ghastly ghost, er-, ecto entity possessing my baby boy,” which just sounded like it would lead to the vivisection of someone that Tim was becoming close with. Tim had started helping the people leading the man, named Jack Fenton, on a wild goose chase in between bouts of trying and failing to find enough private time to search for Neil.

Jason had told Danny that he and Tim had been alerted by an anonymous hacker as to their backstory, and Tim had even offered to see if the hacker would help send all the evidence to the Justice League to get help. Danny had declined their offers, simply stating that there were already plans in motion to fix the situation. Tim had continued helping with whatever he caught the mysterious helpers doing, not looking into it anymore at Danny’s request. Normally, a request for privacy wouldn’t totally stop him from trying to help, but Tim was currently on the receiving end of a massive invasion of privacy. 

For once, as Tim headed out for the fourth day of patrol with Dick, he wished that it wouldn’t be a quiet night in Gotham. He didn’t go far enough to wish for an Arkham breakout because Danny was on shift, but if the interrogation tactics continued tonight, he didn’t know how long he could stay away from that topic. There was only so long he could avoid answering the questions without tipping them all off that it was something worth looking into, so the only way out of this situation was for higher priority tasks to swamp them until they didn’t remember what they wanted to look into in the first place.

Tim’s wishes were answered for the first half of the night, the patrol route he and Dick were on was too busy for any idle conversation, and Tim felt himself start to relax for the first time in days. It was nice to just focus on the flow of the fight, what the bad guy’s goal might be, and the quickest way to stop whatever that goal was. He was finally having a good time on patrol like he usually did. 

Sadly, as they always say, all good things must come to an end. The second half of the night was oddly quiet, suspiciously quiet. Tim suspected that the others might be making sure he and Dick had enough of a quiet night for the interrogation to continue. He could only block out Dick’s questions for so long before his own worry about missing something relevant to any sort of case would make him tune back in, but he’d take his chances that he could hold out for the rest of the night.

Over and over he told himself the plan: Make it to the end of patrol and then retreat to the separate apartment he’d gotten just for this purpose, tricked out with so many traps and defenses that only those expressly trained in breaking in should be able to get in uninvited. It had been tested by everyone at one point or another, and only Cass or Damian had managed to sneak in without alerting Tim. Tim had so many escape plans for that place just because he knew that everyone would know that’s where he goes for privacy.

Tim tuned back into what Dick was saying, not wanting to get so lost in his head that he missed something. “Come on, you can tell me anything. I won’t get mad or call you stupid or anything like that.” Dick’s tone was imploring, but Tim just rolled his eyes in response, too used to this form of questioning to crack now. There was only a couple of minutes left and then he could escape this stupid conversation. “Tim,” Dick whined, elongating his name to comical proportions, “we’re family.”

That sentence turned Tim’s blood to ice. It was the phrase his parents always used when they wanted something out of him. “Do it for the family.” They’d say. “We’re family, Tim.” They’d use it like a reprimand or a prayer. Family was supposed to be something sacred, yet they’d thrown a member of their family away just because they thought they’d have enough with just Tim. They’d thrown him away too, even though they put a roof over his head and occasionally stocked food at the manor. “Tim, we’re family, how could you do this to us?” “Tim, we’re family, just do this one thing for us.” “Tim, you’re a member of this family, these grades aren’t good enough.” “Tim, what use is your memory if you don’t use it to honor your family.” He thought he’d moved past that, the unease he felt with someone claiming him as family, but hearing someone he cared about use it in much the same context as those people, the ones who’d willingly thrown away a son, he couldn’t deal with it.

Someone was saying something, but Tim couldn’t hear them over the thudding of his pulse and the screaming of his lungs. Family, family, family! His mind kept turning over and over all the times the word family was thrown in his face. Tim knew he had to snap out of this spiral or it would just get worse, but he couldn’t. All those times had suddenly taken on new meaning, a meaning he hated. Family had been so important to them, but it hadn’t, the idea of it had. They’d married for profit, and they’d had kids for profit. They’d thrown Neil away just because they didn’t see an early enough return on their investment, would-

A sudden burst of pain rocked Tim’s head back, bringing him back to the present. “Look at me.” A voice said, and he looked up to meet icy blue eyes that were seeming to stare into his soul. “Nod if you can see me.” There was a pause, but Tim was still reeling too much to do even that simple of a movement. Another burst of pain rocked his world, this time he saw a hand retreating, telling him that he’d been slapped. “Look. At. Me.” The tone of the voice told him that there would be no arguing, it urged him to obey. His eyes focused on the blue eyes again, this time registering the rest of the face, the black hair and slight scar at the chin and close to one of the ears telling him this was a friend. Danny. That thought alarmed Tim, but he couldn’t think of why. “Nod if you can see me.” Danny’s voice was much gentler this time, and Tim was grateful for that as he nodded.

“Did you have to slap him?” Dick’s voice made Tim want to retreat, but the glare Danny leveled at Dick made him curious enough to continue trying to force his brain to work.

“Considering none of your methods were working, you’re lucky that I had already figured out the whole secret identity thing, or Tim could very well still be out of it.” Danny’s tone was icier than Tim had ever heard it.

Wait. Danny already knew their identities? Tim’s brain finally recalled that he was currently wearing his Red Robin outfit, minus his domino. That meant that Danny would know his identity regardless of if they already knew or not. Then again, the texting records Tim had been shown after the whole “we know your backstory” reveal had included references to figuring out some big secret with vows to keep it a secret from everyone. That meant Danny likely knew he was the “anonymous” hacker.

“Focus.” Danny’s voice brought him back to the present even though he hadn’t been slapped again, and it was far warmer than it had been when directed at Dick. “Dick is going to apologize to you for invading your privacy so thoroughly that you had a panic attack, or he’s going to apologize for whatever sparked the panic attack. If it has to do with a case you aren’t making headway with, at least consider letting them in on the secret because they’ll see the issue from a different angle than you will. That being said, I’m only asking you to consider it because no one should be able to demand private information from you. If you would like to stay at my apartment for privacy, go ahead, no one will break in during that time without at least minor injuries, and I’ll just dump them on the fire escape after they go unconscious. Now, do you want to hear the apology or get some rest?”

“Can’t rest.” Tim slurred out, tongue feeling sticky and stale at the same time, and his throat was dry enough that just two words made him start coughing. Blessedly cold water flowed down his throat, soothing it and stopping the coughs.

“I’m sorry Tim, I didn’t mean to push that far, but the reality is that I did end up pushing that far. I’ll get everyone to back off, so you just worry about whatever you want to worry about.” Dick looked as apologetic as he sounded, which was very.

Tim took a deep, calming breath. “I understand why you felt the need to push, but I was clearly not ready to talk about it. Thank you for apologizing.” This time, his words were far clearer although they also sounded extremely tired.

“Wonderful. Now, get out of my apartment, Dick, and tell your whole group that I don’t want any visits through the window or any sneaky means. If they want to visit Tim while he’s here, the only way through is to be invited through the front door. Go.” Danny’s voice was back to being colder than ice with the return of them addressing Dick. Surprisingly, Dick simply nodded and left. “As for you,” Danny’s voice was back to being warmer, although it wasn’t quite normal levels of warmth, “get some sleep, and we’ll talk in the morning.” Tim didn’t even have time to protest before falling asleep.

~`~`~

When Tim opened his eyes, he saw a ceiling he was sure he’d never seen before. Looking around, his eyes caught on the sight of Danny sitting in a chair and writing in a book he’d never seen before. It was a grey book with black etchings on it in intricate details. A copper double border decorated the front cover, and the pages were a pale purple shade. Two ribbons dangled from opposite edges of the book, one gold and one silver. The gold one was sitting on a page at the very beginning of the book, but the silver one was dangling outside of the book, waiting to be slotted into place once Danny was done. The pen they were using was blood red and looked surprisingly plain considering all the detail in the book. There was an expression on Danny’s face that Tim had never seen before, longing mixed with deep sorrow and bitter hope.

Tim didn’t know how long he watched Danny write, entranced by movements he couldn’t fully see because the book was tilted up, showing him the cover instead of what Danny was writing. Danny eventually stopped writing, carefully putting the ribbon in place on the page they’d just finished working on and putting the book and pen in a bag that looked like it could and had withstood a lot. Danny looked up to see Tim awake, and the previous heart wrenching expression vanished to be replaced by a caring expression and a gentle smile.

“Hey sleepyhead. You slept for a little longer than I thought you would.” Danny’s voice was gentle and quiet, but, now that Tim thought about it, their voice was always quiet, it just sometimes carried farther.

“What were you writing?” Tim asked, unable to stop the question.

“Letters.” Danny’s face and voice were sad, their eyes dropping to the floor. “I was writing letters for someone who might never read them.”

“That’s sad.” Tim commented, deciding to not just suddenly clam up, he trusted Danny, as impossible as that’d once seemed.

Danny laughed gently yet sadly. “I won’t disagree with you there, but I will note that it is also a hopeful action. Writing the letters gives me hope that they may someday be able to read them, although that might be all for the wrong reasons.”

“Can I read them?” Tim asked, wanting to keep the easy conversation flowing even if he knew that it would end and what the answer would be.

“No. It’s written in a code I developed with that person, so I don’t think you can read it. Also, it’s a little too personal for that Little Bird.” Danny shook his head softly, and his tone remained gentle. “Would you like some breakfast?”

Tim blinked in surprise at the sudden question. “Yes… You aren’t going to ask about what I’m hiding?”

Danny lifted his shoulders and then lifted Tim with deceptive ease. “Nah. It’s not my place to ask that, you’ll talk when you’re ready. Worry about talking after breakfast because I’m sure we only have so much more time before I get a visit from the Batfam.” Danny continued to ramble on about numerous topics, none of which were important, allowing Tim to just relax without giving his brain enough downtime to start overthinking things again. 

Danny was right, Tim decided, he needed to talk to his family about searching for his twin. Not because they were his family, or because they could help him out with it, or anything like that, but because it was the right thing to do. He wanted to tell them, and that was reason enough. Months in the making, he was finally ready to tell them about his twin. And, okay, it was partly because they were his family and they could help, they were willing to help. In fact, all the trouble he’d gone through with them recently was them trying to help. 

~`~`~

It took a surprising two hours for Tim’s family to come try and visit him. Although he understood a little more about why when he saw that it was the entire Wayne family, including Alfred and Jason. Still, Tim had apparently been sleeping for a long time, so he thought that they’d had time to get ready to ask Danny if they could visit. 

When everyone was settled down with various drinks of choice in hand, although the space was a little too small for so many of them to gather if only because there weren’t enough regular seats causing Danny to drag bean bags from a random closet, Tim couldn’t hold back that question. “What took so long? Breakfast got done two hours ago?”

Jason snorted in amusement. “It turns out that Danny can be fairly scary. I don’t know how much you remember from the whole mess, but Danny managed to do his own version of an Alfred Stare with really good results. They tried to visit earlier, but Danny chewed them out for it. Cass said she thought she’d be caught if she tried to sneak in, and Damian said that all of us together couldn’t beat Danny in a fight if they were incompetent enough to not heed our warnings that what they were doing was the wrong way to go about things. After that, they just decided to invade my apartment until Danny texted me that it was okay to come over.”

Tim considered this for a few moments. “Makes sense.” He turned to Danny. “Speaking of the panic attack, why did you slap me?” Bruce made a noise of concern that didn’t go anywhere with Alfred and Danny immediately glaring at him.

“Dick was nearly in a frenzy because he’d already tried all the normal tactics, so I knew nothing typical would really work. At first, he didn’t want me to help out or really tell me anything because you two were in costume, but then I told him I already knew who you guys were and to bring you inside while I got Jason for any ideas he could give. Jason brought up how we could get a square of a certain color and that should snap you out of it, but he did admit it could send you into an entirely different panic attack, thus that idea got tossed out but it reminded me of something else. You can probably guess the situation, but I’d once met someone who was used to fighting to the extent that it was almost an instinct. When they had a panic attack bad enough that they weren’t processing anything they were seeing or hearing, I’d have to slap them or sometimes spar with them to get them to come down from that. Something about your brain autofocusing on the present to do threat assessment and stuff like that, I don’t really know all the science behind why it works. It doesn’t work for everyone, but I took a gamble that ended up working by slapping you.”

“Oh. Okay. That makes sense.” Tim blinked, thinking through everything Danny had said. He figured that the situation they were talking about had something to do with ghosts.

“Now, I’m sure they all have something they want to say or express, but that’s something to be done between family members. This is a meeting for Tim, so I’ll keep this short. I will not tell anyone about your identities. In fact, if that situation never happened, nor anything like it, you all would have no idea that I know who you are. I don’t need a lecture or a threat about keeping it a secret because I was already doing so. I won’t use it as leverage or anything like that either. To be clear, your secret is safe with me, no matter who or what is after it.” Danny fixed Bruce with an intense stare the entire time he was talking, even though the words were directed at all of them, making it very clear that Bruce was the main person the message was intended for.

“Well,” Dick drew it out comically, clearly trying to break the tension in the room, “I, for one, am happy that you know about our identities because you were able to help Tim when I wasn’t. Thanks for that.” There was a lot of sincerity in Dick’s voice despite how the inflection made it sound teasing.

Danny laughed gently, and the tension broke. “I would’ve tried to help the idiot vigilante on my fire escape because he got the wrong window in his panic whether or not I knew the identity of him. However, as I said earlier, this conversation is for Tim. What he uses this conversation for is up to him. He could explain what he’s hiding, tell all of us to buzz off, tell those of you who invaded his privacy or stood aside as his privacy was invaded what for, or whatever else he wants, within reason, and he’d have my complete support for it.” Danny’s voice was not quite as warm as it usually was, letting everyone who already knew him know that he was serious about this.

“Fair enough.” Jason grinned, twisting to look at Tim with a wolfish grin that somehow made Tim feel comforted. “The floor is yours Timmy, what would you like to say?” The way Jason was leaning towards Tim probably looked aggressive to others, but Tim saw it as Jason nonverbally telling him that he had someone in his corner, aside from Danny. It was comforting.

“The case I’ve not been telling you guys about is a personal one. I’d like no interruptions while I talk, or I might not be able to get it all out.” Tim spoke clearly and as calmly as possible despite the panic starting to creep in slightly. He didn’t really want to have to share what his parents had told him, but it was clear he wasn’t getting anywhere on his own.

“Go ahead Baby Bird.” Dick said, everything about him screaming gentle encouragement. Huh, Tim didn’t know anyone outside of Alfred who could get the people of his family to wisen up about their stupidity this quickly. Well, he didn’t know anyone else before now.

“On my eighteenth birthday, I visited Janet and Jack, like I always do for important family events.” Tim paused to take a deep breath, looking up to see understanding dawn on Dick’s face. Sometimes being part of a detective family meant things got picked up even if you weren’t sure you wanted them to be. This was sometimes. “They said that they had something important to tell me now that they were no longer responsible for me.” Another pause, another deep breath. “They told me that they’d lied to me and convinced me when I was around four or five that I’d simply had an imaginary friend named Nathaniel. Turns out, I’d had a twin that they’d taken along on a work trip and abandoned at a random orphanage because I was doing slightly better in school, and they weren’t seeing enough of a return on their investment.” Tim spit the last word, talking about the situation, even the bare bones of it, was making him just as disgusted with the people who’d brought him into this world as he’d felt that day. “I’ve been looking for Neil since then, but I haven’t been able to find anything. I didn’t want to bring it up to anyone because it felt too personal, but I just. Can’t. Find. Anything.” Tim couldn’t bring himself to look up and find out what anyone’s face looked like, it would just make everything far too real… again.

The silence stretched on for a long time. “Did Janet and Jack say they left your twin at an orphanage, or did they just say they left him in the care of the town they were at?” Danny’s thoughtful voice prompted Tim to look up and see his face looking just as thoughtful, head tilted slightly and one hand on the chin.

“I think it was, care of the town, why?” Tim asked hesitantly, wondering where Danny’s thoughts were.

“I thought as much.” Danny sighed. “Janet and Jack sound like the kind of jerks who make themselves sound better no matter who they’re talking to. It’s much more likely that they simply abandoned Nathaniel somewhere close to the orphanage, maybe even with no warning or explanation to the child. I have someone I could talk to about this while I’m out of town soon, but it’ll likely take him a while to get any results about this.”

The family looked like Tim felt, horrified. He hadn’t even considered that the two would even do something like that to their own flesh and blood. Then again, look at all they’d done to him. They hadn’t even noticed when he started running away from the house to go be Robin, they hadn’t known anything about him except for the things the public could know, and they only told him about his sibling when he was no longer legally their problem. It was exactly the kind of thing they’d do. Tim knew his expression was probably sinking even more with his thoughts, but he couldn’t bring himself to care about that with the new, awful revelation about two people he was increasingly disgusted to be related to.

“They-” Jason cut himself off, sounding absolutely furious. “You know someone who could find information better than the Bats?” It was clear to Tim what Jason was doing. He was focusing on the safer topic to avoid triggering one of his Green Fits, as the family sometimes called them.

Danny shocked everyone by laughing. “Sorry, sorry, I shouldn’t laugh when you don’t know. I know a person who knows quite a bit more than all of you combined, but he doesn’t always like to tell me things because I accidentally lost one of his books once. We’re on much better terms now that I’ve somehow added to his collection, but he might delay my information request just because of that. Also,” Danny eyed Bruce, amusement still clear on their face despite the fact that Bruce was starting to glare at them, clearly annoyed at how well Danny seemed to know what he was thinking, “I don’t question his methods because I don’t want to get on his bad side again, once was bad enough.”

“What happened when you got on his bad side?” Dick questioned, clearly, to Tim at least, cutting off Bruce before he could ask any insensitive questions.

“Hmm?” Danny seemed slightly thrown by the question, which didn’t happen very often. Now that Tim thought of it, that might be a sign that Danny had something going on with his emotional state, possibly even due to the whole situation with Jack Fenton. He’d have to ask Jason about that later. “Oh, he used my trauma around Christmas to basically torture me by mind controlling the town into acting out one of the Christmas classics.” Everyone who’d already met Danny was already used to Danny dropping absolutely insane facts about life before Gotham because he didn’t seem to know what normal was. Bruce and Alfred looked pretty shocked and at least mildly horrified.

“He did what?” Jason sounded like he was holding back laughter, and Bruce and Alfred turned horrified looks onto him, which he obviously noticed and just as obviously ignored.

Danny laughed out loud, a big, full laugh that a person usually does when they’re really happy or going insane. It wasn’t a sound often heard in Gotham because of the Joker, but this laugh sounded so distant from the Joker that Tim barely even thought of the comparison. This time Babs and Duke, those of them who hadn’t hung around Danny as much, joined Alfred and Bruce, those who’d never met Danny before this, in turning shocked and stunned looks at Danny.

“He somehow mind controlled the entire town to act out a Christmas Classic, rhyming and all, just because I lost one of his books. Turns out that he isn’t such a bad guy when his library isn’t messed with, but I’d rather not get into all the mess that went into our meeting and stuff like that.” Danny wiped at their eyes because the laughter had actually made Danny start crying. Tim hadn’t seen that happen before, at least, not with Danny.

“How do you know so much about us when it’s only been a few months since you arrived?” Bruce asked the question quickly, like he’d lost control of his mouth. The Bats, and likely Danny too, knew that he’d asked the question purposefully. Tim reasoned that Bruce probably waited for so long to get a read on Danny’s character, and, by doing it the way he did, Bruce had made it appear like he’d lost patience instead of the truth which was that he’d waited for Danny to feel comfortable enough that it was less likely for him to lie.

Instead of looking shocked or losing the amusement that had been dancing in Danny’s eyes since the mysterious informant had been brought up Danny simply smiled wider and said, “My sister is in training to become either a therapist or a psychiatrist, and she used to spend time with me by having me learn psychology along with her. I did the same for my hobby as a way to show that we care for each other. This means that I’m very good at reading people. On top of that, I’d figured out your identities before ever reaching Gotham, but I didn’t do very much digging until it might have been vital to my survival here. On top of that, my sister would constantly ask for my help proofreading papers she’d written about vigilantes and how their work impacted their lives, often using the Bats as people she’d study to fuel said papers. She hasn’t published them, but I still read them. I’ve always been good at reading people, this is just a step up from that.”

“So you’re saying you don’t exactly know a lot about us, you just know what we’re most likely to do based on what our behavior has been.” Bruce said it in a calm voice, but Tim could see the shock that he was hiding behind the calm facade. He understood it, no one had ever done anything like that before, never figured them out to that level.

“Yes and no. I know a decent amount about those of you who have hung out with me a lot because we’ve been talking about ourselves and all that jazz, but I don’t know too much about those of you who haven’t hung out with me as much, met me at all, or told me about themselves. I may be observant, but I try to stay away from assumptions as much as possible.” Danny seemed to be relaxed now, not as stiff or harsh.

Damian shifted slightly, drawing Tim’s attention. There was an odd look on Damian’s face that vanished too quickly for Tim to get a good look at. When Damian noticed Tim staring at him, Damian sent him an aggressive “What?” type of look. Tim just shrugged his shoulders while rolling his eyes before refocusing on the main conversation.

Bruce nodded in understanding. “I see. Why did you decide to work at Arkham Asylum?” Tim rolled his eyes again at the interrogation tone all the Bats and Birds knew so well.

“I didn’t.” Tim blinked in shock at the simple answer said in one of Danny’s most neutral voices. “When I decided to move here I was handed an application and told to fill it out so that I could get a job lined up for me because I don’t do well with being idle, never have. It was only as I was filling it out that I learned it was for Arkham, and when I brought up concerns about working there the response I received was filled with reasons to work there, the least of which being I might be able to beat up a clown with no real repercussions.”

“Why do you hate clowns so much?” Tim found himself asking. Oops, he’d meant to keep that thought to himself to look over later. That always seemed to happen around Danny though, Tim speaking his thoughts before he’d fully processed that he was going to.

“Let’s just say an event in my childhood that nearly resulted in the deaths of myself, my best friends, and several of the other people in my hometown was orchestrated by a clown looking ringmaster who only further leaned into the clown vibes as time went on. Moving on from that though, this is your conversation Tim, so do you want help with the search for Nathaniel? What do you want out of this conversation?” Danny seemed very uncomfortable with the topic of conversation before he switched it, so Tim wasn’t too frustrated at the abrupt topic shift.

“I would like some help with the search. Any information is a good thing, and I hope to one day reunite with Nathaniel. That being said, I don’t know how much you guys can help because I’ve already covered a lot of ground in this investigation.” Tim kept his voice neutral, not wanting to show how badly the lack of progress was damaging his hope, any more than he already had.

Jason hummed thoughtfully. “Which town did they desert your twin in?”

“I don’t know, they never told me. The majority of their work trips the year they left Neil were in the state of Illinois, so that’s where I’ve been focusing most of my efforts.” Tim settled in for a long conversation about the ground he’d already covered, but it would all be worth it in the end if only he got to see Neil again. He only hoped he hadn’t made the wrong decision by including more people in the search, too many cooks in the kitchen and all that. Maybe, just maybe, he shouldn’t have tried to keep all of this to himself. His was a family of detectives after all. Now wasn’t the time to wallow in the mistakes of the past, at least, not his past mistakes. Now was time to tear apart the mistakes of Janet and Jack’s pasts, and he couldn’t wait for their reactions to him disowning and disavowing them. Or wait, maybe he could, they were less important than Neil any day.

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[avelnfear]

Chapter Seven

Masterlist

Jason felt absolutely awful. His stomach couldn’t keep down any food. He could barely move without biting his tongue to keep from screaming as his muscles protested fiercely. Jason had tried to move to his kitchen for some good healthy food on the first day, but that had resulted in his collapse before he ever left his room, he hadn’t even made it to the door. Jason’s head was throbbing, making his vision wobble and sway like the earth was noticeably turning on a ship or something.

Jason wasn’t sure how much time had passed since this awful feeling began, partially because he used blackout curtains in his bedroom and partially because he couldn’t focus enough to read a clock or his phone. He’d been curled up on his floor for nearly the entirety of it, and he was nearly to the point of starting to pray for it to end. He hadn’t, yet, but he was getting kind of close. Jason could only hope that eventually one of the Bats would come to check on him as his eyes blur with tears and something else.

He’s sure he lost time again because the next clear sight he sees is the Batcave’s medbay. His sight isn’t perfectly clear, but some things are oddly in focus. The cot he was lying on, some of the medical equipment not hooked up to him, and Dick are the only clear things in his otherwise trippy vision. There were blobs of solid color that might be other people but trying to think of who they could be makes his headache even worse.

“-ick” Jason hears himself say as the pain in his throat flares at the attempt to speak. It feels like he’s piloting some sort of mech suit that still transmits pain to his brain, and someone is currently dismantling said mech suit.

“Jason!” Dick gasped out. “Are you okay? How are you feeling? That’s a stupid question, obviously it’s not great.”

“Dick.” Jason rasped out, interrupting Dick’s panicked rambling. “Calm down.”

A voice said something, but Jason couldn’t process it, his brain was protesting too badly. There was a bang, and a swarm of color entered the room which Jason assumed was the other Bats. More voices joined the one currently speaking, and Jason tried to understand what they were saying, he just couldn’t. The pain spiked in his head and a whining sort of whimpering sound filled the air, cutting off the voices babbling things he couldn’t understand.

Dick pressed a hand to his shoulder, stopping him from curling up and making him realize the whimpering sound was coming from him. He tried to stop it, not wanting to show weakness or allow his pain to hurt them, but it wouldn’t stop, only increasing in volume as the pain spiked horribly. The pain kept rising the more he tried to fight it down, but Jason kept trying, he couldn’t lose time again, what if he did something awful again? He couldn’t-

There were other hands on him, why?, oh, keeping him steady. Thoughts streaming together, pain spiking, a clawing itch crawling its way up his throat. The pain, the fading vision, the hopelessness, he’s- He’s dying. He’s dying again and he never even got to, got to apologize. Oh fuck. He had messed up so badly in the events surrounding his first death and now he was dying again without being able to feel like he belonged in the family again. He’s- oh fuck, oh fuck, shit, something’s crawling up his throat with the itch, it’s green, fucking green, but something’s off, too dark, too thick, he can’t- Who’s screaming, him!, why was he screaming, the agony!, where is he?

Suddenly, Jason snaps back into his body as, despite the many people attempting to keep him still, he curls slightly as a hand comes to his mouth as he hacks up… something. His vision is starting to clear, but the tears are making it hard to see what is in his hand. A feeling of peace-missing-hope-soon swelled from some place in his chest that he’d never been so aware of before. Everywhere the feeling touched relaxed as the pain left it, and he felt himself sinking back onto the cot like a limp, overcooked noodle. He felt like an overcooked noodle.

Someone scooped whatever he’d hacked onto his hand off of it, and the soothing feeling spread even faster, letting him relax even more. There was concerned silence floating around him, but he couldn’t bring himself to fully care about that as the soothing feeling swept through him, bringing him back to himself and making him aware of just how tired he was. All he wanted to do was sleep, but Jason knew that he really shouldn’t give into that urge.

When he opened his eyes, the medbay was crowded with his siblings, his grandpa, and his dad. His family, all there for him. The thought would have warmed his heart if it wasn’t because of the agony he’d been in until just recently being the reason for them being there. Jason knew it wasn’t the whole reason they were there, but it was the most important part of that.

“What’d I hack up?” Surprisingly, his voice was only mildly hoarse, like he’d been screaming for hours the day before instead of recently. The surprise he felt was echoed on the faces of the people around him, except for Bruce who just looked stoic with slight hints of concern and surprise.

Wordlessly, Tim held up a test tube half filled with a darker version of Lazarus Water, and Jason felt his stomach riot again. Fighting the urge to vomit what little was in his stomach, if anything, he nodded, and Tim hid it from view again. “We all know what it looks like, but I’ll be running some tests to see if the assumption is correct. Are you alright?” Tim’s voice sounded like he’d been crying, but there was no sign of that on his face, telling Jason that some makeup was applied.

“Other than not knowing how much time has passed or what happened, I feel surprisingly okay.” Jason experimentally shifted to show himself and all of them that there was nothing wrong with his body. “I’m just really tired.” Jason instinctively kept some of his tiredness from his voice, but he still sounded extremely tired to his own years.

“Makes sense. It’s been like three days since we found you passed out on your floor. Talk about heart attack inducing Little Wing.” Dick was clearly clinging to his normal ways of coping, but Jason could see how that thread was fraying. “We haven’t been able to get in contact with Danny because he left about four days ago for a week-long vacation according to the note he left for us and his workplace.”

Dick was clearly about to say more, but Alfred stepped forward. “May I suggest letting Master Jason get some sleep?” 

The medbay was filled with goodbyes and hope for good sleep as the room slowly emptied. When Jason was alone, he finally let himself fully slump, drifting off to sleep with the vague feeling of sinking into fluffy lava. Surely when he was this tired, the nightmares wouldn’t come back to occupy his mind again, right?

~`~`~

Jason ran through the back alleys of Gotham as fast as his small legs could carry him. The sound of a grapple firing had him diving behind a dumpster and curling up as he attempted to stop shaking so badly. There was the sound of someone landing in the alley, and he felt terror rush through him. Footsteps approached his meager hiding place, so he started holding his breath while wishing that they would just go away. He did want to-

~`~`~

Jason shot up, disoriented from whatever that weird dream had been. His breathing calmed down as the dream faded from his memory. Looking around, he saw that there was no one around, and his phone was on the small table at his bedside. He should probably look into that, but he felt sleep tugging him back into its cold embrace already. He was just too spent to resist. He laid down again, letting sleep claim him for hopefully better dreams.

~`~`~

Danny wasn’t having a good time. Don’t get him wrong, it’d started well enough, with the celebration of the holiday he’d gotten the week off for. Sam, Tucker, Jazz, and Ellie were all slated to visit him at one point or another for the holiday with Ellie staying the longest as his clone-daughter had less to do with keeping Jack and the GIW occupied while gathering evidence to get the Anti-Ecto Acts abolished. He’d only had one day of peace before things had gone very wrong very quickly.

First, the Observants had figured out he was in the Realms and swamped him with paperwork that “needed” to be done, despite the fact that Danny knew the paperwork could have waited for another thousand years without becoming pressing. He’d still done it, obviously, the disappointment the stupid eyeballs had felt when their “masterful” plan to slander him to other Realms Residents because he “didn’t bother to look over important official documents and requests” had absolutely failed was worth the bribe he’d given Clockwork to let him work on it in a Time Out.

It was worth it, until Clocky had decided to use the favor he’d used as a bribe to send him on several time missions because the Flash family had decided to mess with the timeline again. That all would have been fine, he was used to fixing the Flash family’s messes after all, but then the Observants had freaked out over the one, ONE, potential future they could see, giving the mean old Clock an excuse to send him on an even bigger time mission. He’d ended up accidentally spawning a church in his honor, although Clocky said that was meant to be, and he’d nearly failed.

Now, with no one but him in his lair, it was finally revealed to him that no one had properly cleaned up from the whole issue, and he just wanted to make it to his bed and pass out, after cleaning it all up because he wasn’t a heathen. No, the real tragedy of this whole adventure was that he couldn’t reach his bedroom due to someone, he suspected the idiotic eyeballs, had piled what appeared to be the entire filing cabinet of John Constantine’s paperwork in front of his door. He felt his eye twitch in his anger. 

Danny didn’t have to deal with this, he didn’t. He’d already done that paperwork, so it really should have been put away just like all the other paperwork should have been put away. Stupid eyeballs and their stupid plans to get him to “reveal himself for the tyrant he was always meant to be” which would never work because he would never be a tyrant. Waving a tired hand, he moved the door over by a matter of a few feet because that was far easier than dealing with all of that paperwork… again.

As Danny went to enter his room, a thought suddenly struck him. He’d forgotten to ask Ghost Writer about Tim’s twin in all the chaos of the time missions and whatnot. Eh, whatever, he could deal with that tomorrow, the plan for now was to flop into his bed and just disappear from the waking world for a few hours. Surely nothing about this could go wrong.

~`~`~

Clockwork smiled as it watched its King fall asleep. It didn’t like to use such methods when its King already had issues sleeping without their Knight, but such methods were necessary this time. It had to talk to Ghost Writer first. The best timeline wouldn’t result from its King knowing too much too soon. This life was the result of a careful balancing game that hadn’t ended just yet, and Clockwork wasn’t known for enjoying the fruits of a labor not yet fully completed for nothing. It had spent time outside of Time perfecting the art of subtle interference.

It wouldn’t reveal itself to Ghost Writer, of course not, but a glowing green scroll landed on the desk in front of Ghost Writer detailing what was necessary for the perfect story. It watched carefully as Ghost Writer read the entire letter several times to properly absorb the whole thing. It reminded itself to have patience as Ghost Writer took longer than it would have liked to finally nod with a wicked smile of confirmation. Clockwork always knew that would be the outcome, Ghost Writer was too obsessed with good stories for this to go any other way, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t mildly annoyed when things seemed to take too long.

With a sigh, Clockwork floated over to check on Jason Todd, knowing that Nocturne had followed through with their deal to give a short and fading nightmare about the second. It needed to subtly warn Jason’s core that it wasn’t time to remember anything just because some of the corruption had been dragged out of his body. Despite the fact that it had caused the dream that was so unnerving, it was glad to see that Jason was back to restful sleep that would help his soul heal.

Clockwork, for all it was Master of Time, didn’t have enough time to watch over its loved ones directly, there were far more important things to do. With a sigh, Clockwork moved over to make sure that certain events fell into place in order to make an important event happen. It didn’t really want things to go this way, but it couldn’t just give its King an easy life without losing what made its King its King. Everything was falling into place, so, now, all Clockwork had to do was wait.

~`~`~

Danny woke up an entire day later. It was the slow advance towards sleep that only really happens when they are completely exhausted. They first became aware of sound, although in a weird way as the sound simply incorporated itself into various dream scenarios, like he was in an artificial darkness while people talked all around them. The next sense was touch, then taste, then smell. It appeared that his fright had come to simply hang out since none of them could make it for the holiday. 

Finally, after what felt like an eternity of just listening to them talk about what Sam would rather wear to a fancy rich person event versus what Sam was made to wear by her parents, they were able to open their eyes. Their fright was sitting on some bean bags crowded around their bed, and they felt their heart swell with peace-happy-friends-here-family-fright-safe. A happy chirp slipped out and the room fell silent as everyone suddenly tackled them into a cuddle pile.

Ellie was curled up on top of them, Tucker on one side, Sam on the other, and Jazz had their head in her lap, brushing their hair with her fingers. The silence continued as the group basked in being able to be this close to each other after being separated for so long. Danny let their thoughts stay centered on who all was here, having to fight slightly to not think of who wasn’t. 

Silence was not meant to last for such a massive group of chaos gremlins, so Danny wasn’t surprised when Ellie broke the silence. “How’s Pops doing?” Nellie’s scared tone told him that she’d noticed that Jason hadn’t come with him. 

“He doesn’t remember me. I’ve-” Danny cut himself off to swallow back tears. If only Nellie didn’t remember, she wouldn’t have the burden of knowing someone who didn’t know her, “I’ve been living next door to him since moving to Gotham, which wasn’t expected, but it's been nice. We literally ran into each other for our first meeting this life.” Danny met each of their curious stares one by one. “He took me to dinner at Batburger, which continues to have amazing burgers and absolutely atrocious fries, and we went shopping for groceries for my apartment afterwards. On our way back, I got to fight in front of him because a gang tried to rob us. We’ve been hanging out ever since.”

Sam gently brushed their shoulders together. “It sounds like there’s some fun stories in there. From what you and Elle have said, he’s a really good guy, so I’m sure he’s treating you well. Still, tell us about him? The others too of course! Just. Pink princess ball gowns Danny, you don’t really talk about him.” There was clearly more Sam wanted to say, but she left it at that.

It was only fair to tell them about Jason, but Danny didn’t really want to. The more he talked about Jason, the more they’d realize just how affected he was by the not remembering thing. Frostbite had said they all might remember eventually, but Danny wanted to delay this. Jason was the one topic he’d truly avoided because it would only show them how unstable Danny was without him. He couldn’t put that worry on their shoulders when- 

No. He could put that on their shoulders. They were asking for more information, and Danny had been wanting for someone to talk to about all of this. If he couldn’t stop spiraling and tell his fright, then he couldn’t tell anyone, and he really needed to tell someone. He was slowly drowning in the knowledge that he couldn’t share with anyone, not completely so telling them about this, letting them in on what should never have been secret in the first place, was a good decision. 

“I’ll talk everyone’s ears off if I start now, but, when the situation calms down a little more, I’ll tell you guys everything. We can rent a Room of Memory or something if y’all want more details.” Danny let his emotions ripple through the room as he talked, saying more than he could ever say with such a simple thing.

“Y’all?” Tucker asked with a teasing lilt to it. “I thought it was just Elle that had an unexplainable Southernesque accent?”

Danny flushed slightly in mild embarrassment. “It’s perfectly normal for my daughter’s way of speaking to rub off on me, thank you very much.” Danny put as much fake snobbishness as possible into his voice and actions resulting in the entire group falling into a fit of laughter.

When the group had calmed down, they moved to the kitchen where Danny had already stocked a lot of already made human meals for this very day. Breakfast was a quick affair before the group scampered off to play some video games that were exclusive to the Infinite Realms. Elle held Danny back before he could follow the group, so, seeing she wanted to talk privately, he waved the others along.

“What’s on your mind Little Rocket?” Danny let his voice settle into the gentle purr it always wanted to be around his daughter. She hadn’t made any move to touch him just yet, so he held back the instinct to sweep her into a comforting hug at the hesitance in her stance.

“I, um, so. Gosh, this is harder than I thought.” Nellie fidgeted in front of him, and all he wanted to do was wrap her in a hug and whisper comforting words until she calmed down. But, he refused to press their relationship more than Nellie was comfortable with, so he stopped himself. “I was wonderin’, since my part in the whole wild goose chase is done, if you wouldn’t mind…” She took a deep breath and suddenly squared her shoulders, looking directly at Danny. “Ifyouwouldn’tmindmemovinginwithya!” She shouted in a rush. The panic seemed to seep out of her, leaving her panting and watching him with wide, tentative eyes.

Danny smiled softly, moving closer to finally sweep her into the hug he’d been fighting for so long. “I would love nothing more than to have you close to me, Little Star. As long as you are sure this is something you want, I am more than willing to get you all set up. Tucker already has you an identity ready as my sixteen year old adopted daughter, if you want it.” He swayed them from side to side in a comforting rhythm as he talked, continuing on into the silence.

“I- I just want to be close to you Ma. When the memories came in, that’s all I wanted, but I got so tied up with all the plans and what I’d already been doin’ and it just slipped my mind. I’d known that you’d be willing, and I thought Tucker might’ve already made me an identity. Still, I was so nervous Ma.” Dani’s voice warbled as she clung tighter and curled her tail, that used to be her legs, around him, like she was trying not to cry.

Danny slowly shifted to be floated in the air, curled around his precious child as he bobbed along to provide as much comfort as possible. “Let it all out, I’m here. You’re not alone. Let it all out.” His voice was a gentle coo right next to her ear as she relaxed her muscles and started to cry at the rush of feelings that were finally being released. He locked eyes with Tucker, both nodding at each other before Tucker left to go alert the rest of the fright to the new situation.

It might take a little bit of work, but Danny knew it’d be worth it to have his daughter close to him once again. He hadn’t been able to show it since coming to Gotham, but Danny was a very tactile person when it came to his loved ones. Little brushes of the shoulders as they passed each other to cuddle piles on the regular to dancing with them to anything that would allow him to make sure they were safe and happy. He just wasn’t very comfortable showing that to everyone in Gotham because of the memory thing, plus he might have to explain why or it might be too much of a clue.

One thing was for sure though, things were looking up. He’d gotten to see his fright and his grave. Bruce hadn’t gone too fierce with the interrogation. Tim had actually talked about the case instead of taking it to his grave this time. Joker had been quietly plotting instead of bugging him. There was some paperwork, but it wasn’t anything world ending. It seemed like he was finally getting some good luck. Better late than never. Unless he just jinxed it… Nah, that’s a problem to worry about later. Now, he just needed to comfort his daughter and enjoy his time with his fright.

~`~`~

In a cave somewhere distant, a man had just received a report from a kneeling subordinate. At the information he heard, a smile grew on his face. It was not a nice smile, rather it was a sickening one. A smile that wouldn’t look out of place on the Grinch. A smile that, while very clean, inspired dark thoughts about what could have caused it. A smile that would send shivers down anyone’s spine. A smile that spoke of hard times to come for anyone who saw it directed at them.

To the subordinates' credit, they didn’t flinch, merely waiting for further instructions without showing any emotion. They’d seen such a smile before after all, and they knew better than to let any weakness show. It wasn’t tolerated in this cave. With a flick of a hand, the subordinate was dismissed, retreating quickly yet respectfully to report to their real master, the man’s daughter. It seemed that things were going to get very interesting in very short order.

The man’s smile only got more bone chilling as he was left to his own thoughts, this would be interesting indeed.

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[avelnfear]

Chapter Eight

Masterlist

Talia wasn’t as cold as she was made out to be. Not in the depths of her heart, anyway. She couldn’t have been with her childhood friend that had kept her company, telling her tales of the outside world and showing her ways to win fights without showing her hand. Eventually, she’d understood how special her friend was, but even before then she’d been keeping her softer demeanor hidden. It would not do to show the League of Assassins or Father that she wasn’t as cold and unbothered as an Al Ghul should be.

Her friend featured in her dreams as often as in her waking moments, although the dreams were so different from what her life was like. It showed her in a very different environment, older, with a son, Father was long dead, and she was just meeting her friend for the first time as a grown woman. It showed her the consequences of her friend knowing their history too soon from the start, and anytime she was tempted to spill the beans about what she knew it was quick to remind her. The dreams were clearly not always in order and some details were hazy, but she was grateful for the valuable information they provided.

As was inevitable, her friend had to stop visiting for a period of time due to the rules of time travel and all that. She didn’t look for them, knowing that she’d find them again when the time was right. Father never found out about her friend, although he was suspicious for a little while about what she was hiding until she threw him off the scent with a more feasible “secret” than a time traveling friend from other lives. On the outside, she shouldn’t have had the level of experience needed to lie to Father, but, on the inside, she knew how because she’d lived longer than him.

All this rushed through her head in seconds as one of her people knelt before her. She hummed lightly to let him know that she wasn’t upset, merely thoughtful, and his relaxation only proved to her that this was the right way to lead. Leading through kindness and respect rather than fear and respect. The information was so much more free this way, and the loyalty was even stronger. 

“You did well Simon.” She practically purred the words as a plan with several contingencies sprung to the front of her mind. “Keep watch as you have done for so long and don’t worry about interfering just yet. Everything will work out. Report back to me when the day is set for that man’s plan, and remember Plan Ouroboros.” She nodded her dismissal, and the nod was returned as Simon retreated to his post.

Talia settled onto the ground with her legs crossed and her hands resting on her knees. She let her eyes close, extending her awareness to make sure she was still alone in the room while she descended into thought. It would not be wise to let down her guard even in her own room at the heart of a stronghold that belonged to Father. She needed to be careful, now just as much as ever and maybe even more than usual.

This situation was truly one that she could never have dreamed of, even when she’d discovered that she was not alone in her memories with the arrival of her precious child, her shining star. He’d kept it fairly under wraps, enough that no one who didn’t know what he should be acting like wouldn’t pick up on it, but she picked up on it, responding by nurturing him the slightest bit more in whatever way she could.

It’s not to say that she didn’t hope for her and her child to reunite with the friend they both knew, no, Talia had always hoped that such a situation would happen. She just didn’t think it would be so… perfect. The friend was currently away, there was no evidence of anyone else remembering anything, and she was currently in a position where taking over the League, with her friend and Plan Ouroboros to help, would go off without too many issues in most scenarios. It was absolutely wonderful, almost as wonderful as the faces of her loved ones as they realized just who she actually was and who she stood with.

That thought led her to think about Bruce, her Beloved. At first, she’d thought what they’d had was true love, but now, through the lenses of hindsight, she knew that it was true love, in a different way then her first imaginings. Bruce was her Beloved Brother, which made it a little weird when she remembered he was the Father of her precious child, but she dealt with those feelings as they came. Choosing to ignore them most of the time, like right now for instance.

Talia wondered how her other precious child was doing. It had broken her heart to have to curse him to deal with the side effect of the way she brought his mind back, but she knew it was a necessary part of his character going forward. She’d not tried to manipulate him nearly as much nor in the same direction as previously, but she still knew he’d done some heavy things that he’d surely regret, again. She hoped that one day he would see her as the maternal figure she’d hoped to be.

Her friend was going to absolutely tear Father apart, but that wouldn’t be beneficial. No, to truly make the amount of impact while maintaining the distance they wanted, she’d have to be the one to face Father. Which meant that she’d finally be able to show her friend the fruits of her labor combined with the genius of their training. It would only make the shocked faces of her loved ones even more amusing and entertaining. It would single handedly prove that she was correct to hide cameras all over the League’s bases, aside from all the obvious information gathering opportunities.

Talia was starting to grow restless, itching for a weapon in her hand or something to do, somewhere to move, but that was not what this exercise was for. She already had great self control, but there would never be any harm in making sure to hone that particular skill. Out of spite towards herself, she emptied her head of thoughts for the next two hours.

A knock at her door pulled her out of her thoughts, it appeared that it was time to go on a mission, and, judging by the breathing pattern and the depth of said breathing outside her door, it was one of Father’s minions and it was urgent. This was likely the mission to go and set up the structure that would be used to kidnap the Bats and the Birds, how amusing.

Standing and wiping any and all signs of emotion from her face, she made towards the door, this would prove to be very interesting, no matter how the cards fell.

~`~`~

Elle stared at her sleeping original, at her ma. They’d talked to Ghost Writer who’d told them that he’d do some research yet promised no results. She’d read between the lines to see that Ghost Writer just wanted a good story with plenty of suspense this time around. Danny had been mildly annoyed at the prospect of waiting, which she understood given what case they were looking for the answers to, but he hadn’t gotten too angry, meaning there must still be time or hope left. Clockwork had worked Danny till he was ready to drop, and even sleeping as much as he had didn’t fully get rid of the exhaustion.

Her thoughts were a mess because of the excitement-anxiety-happy-belonging that churned in her core due to the upcoming chance to live with Danny. She knew that she’d have to watch her behavior in order to not accidentally incriminate her beloved template to any of their precious bats, but she could, no, she would do it. Elle wanted so badly for all of them to remember, to know what all they’d been through together, but it just wasn’t meant to be.

She hoped that there wouldn’t be too many misunderstandings with her around. She’d only been speaking in Ghost Speak for a couple of years now, and it never really translated all that well into simple conversations in mortal languages. Elle had been exploring the Realms for those years, only using mortal languages again when she needed to go on missions now and then to keep Danny safe. 

Putting that thought from her mind, she curled around her original once again, basking in the complete sense of safety that they were giving off. Things would be okay as long as she always had her wonderful parent to come back to. She just hoped, prayed and desired for her Pops to wake up, or his memories to at least. She wasn’t sure just how stable her original would remain without him by their side.

~`~`~

Jason had slept until just an hour before Danny returned, and he was now standing outside of their door, building up the courage to knock. He didn’t know why it was so difficult, it was just Danny after all, but something was telling him that knocking on the door would change a great many things. It seemed nonsensical at best to assume that something so simple could truly change so much, but Jason hadn’t gotten this far by ignoring his instincts.

Taking a deep breath, he raised his hand to knock, only for the door to swing open and an unfamiliar girl to look up at him, blinking slightly in shock. A wide, teasing grin swept over her face as she leaned back to face further into Danny’s apartment and called out, “Ma!! Tall, Dark and Handsome is here to see you!!” Jason flushed at the words. What?! 

Did Danny have a girlfriend? Who? Why hadn’t they told him beforehand? Had Danny moved or gone missing? Who was this strange girl standing in the doorway? Why did she seem to recognize him? What was the nickname for? Why-? What-? Huh-? He could swear his brain was shutting down because his vision was going all weird and he could hear a strange humming that seemed to bubble in volume.

“-ason. Jason. Jason!” He suddenly became aware of the fact that he was laying on Danny’s ridiculously comfortable couch while Danny’s face swam into view in front of him. “Can you see me, Jason? Do I need to give you the same treatment I gave Tim?”

Jason flinched at the idea of being slapped like that, it had sounded like it really hurt. “No, no, I’m… good, I think. Um.” Why was Jason fumbling on this so hard? There was no real explanation for it.

“Ma!” The word was extended teasingly from someone out of sight, the voice was gleeful and reminded Jason of the girl who’d opened the door. “Is Tin Can awake and aware yet?”

Tin Can? Wait, did she know who he was? Who was- 

“Danielle Helene Rhea Nightingale, you stop teasing our guest right this instant.” Danny’s voice cracked like a whip with all the intensity of one of Alfred’s commands. He was glaring at someone behind Jason, and the fire in his eyes captivated Jason. It was so intense and so breathtaking and- he stopped the train of thought right in its tracks before it became a train wreck and got himself slapped.

“Sorry Ma.” It was the sort of dragged out apology done by someone who’d been reprimanded about this very thing far too many times. “I’ll be good.” The girl walked around the couch and into his sight, looking properly chastised. 

“Why does she call you Ma?” It took a second for Jason to recognize that he was the one who asked the question. The other two were looking at each other by the time he did, having a silent conversation that Jason couldn’t understand.

Danny sighed. “We come from a place that often uses a language that doesn’t translate well into any language that I know of. It’s a small town on Earth with a lot of immigrants that taught me their language. Elle here is my adopted child, and she used only that language for a couple of years. Old habits die hard and all that. The actual translation, before you ask, is a little bit close to something like: the parental figure who primarily looks after emotional needs that is there for their child in any time they are needed. English translates that to Mother and all the variations of it due to the supposed gender roles enforced by the history of the language and other stuff like that. She also tends to call me Pa or Da as well, but she’s been calling me Ma since I agreed to let her come live with me full time now that I have a safe space.”

The girl, Elle, nodded behind Danny, affirming what they were saying. “Yeah! I might have some weird stuff that I say sometimes, but I’ll always try to elaborate if it’s brought up that there’s a misunderstanding!” She beamed at him with a massive smile that lit up the room better than the lights were.

“Oh… That makes sense. What does the language sound like?” He felt his head tilt, internally cursing the fact that he’d started to copy a couple of Danny’s mannerisms, his brothers would never let him live that down.

Elle and Danny shared another series of looks that Jason couldn’t translate. “Are you sure you want to know? It’s not very… human in nature.” Elle seemed almost, afraid? concerned? conflicted?, one of those three or maybe all about the answer she would receive.

“I gathered as much from the translation and how you two are dancing around the subject. If you don’t want to share with me, then don’t, I won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to do. You’re someone Danny cares about, so you’re someone I care about.” He tried to smile to show more emotion than his voice was giving off, but he didn’t think it worked because Elle looked close to tears.

“It’s your decision Little Rocket, you decide. I’m not quite comfortable speaking in that language right now, so it’s all up to you.” Danny was more gentle and soft in voice and face and behavior than Jason had ever seen, and it made him fall more for him. Wait-

“Okay then, here goes!” She opened her mouth and made some sort of noise that sounded like sunlight filtering through water on a warm and sunny day mixed with the feeling of lots of clouds covering the sun while simultaneously feeling like watching the stars on a windy night while on a tall perch covered in the warm sensation of knowing where you’re going, who you’re going to, and how far you’re willing to go to get there over the rippling view of watching light bend at a molecular level all spiraling with the distinct flavour of peppermint and spearmint combined. It was an odd sound, but it wasn’t one he hated. The strange flavour was something he could do without, but the overall sound gave him an odd sense of peace-joy-mine. It was beautiful.

Looking over at Danny, Jason saw the sheer look of pride on their face, and it just made Jason fall even farther. He could admit it, to himself if no one else, that he’d fallen for his gorgeous neighbor with the wonderful fighting skills, mysterious past, good cooking skills, and the beautiful behavior around children. They were stunning, marvelous, funny, and loyal. He had always been able to feel something in his chest screaming in joy every time he was around his wonderful neighbor, but he’d ignored it before now.

~`~`~

Talia smiled darkly as she went over the plans her people had leaked to her about Father’s plan. It was wonderfully stupid, leaving her plenty of room to separate her precious child from the group to keep him away from the devastation and destruction that would surely be wrought upon the League when this plan went through. She checked the date for the kidnapping against the schedule in her mind, causing her smile to grow in darkness and size. Yes, that date would be perfect for the maximum destruction of Father’s ways.

She composed herself before turning back to Simon, who’d brought her the wonderful news. “Wait until the prisoners are with Father and you will not be missed before activating Plan Ouroboros. Alert the others. Thank you for bringing this to my attention and following my orders.” She received a simple nod as Simon headed out, but she considered that enough, knowing that her orders would be spread among all of her followers.

Turning, she walked deeper into her quarters. There was a small window of time for her to prepare everything that she would need to make Father’s devastating plan immediately backfire, but she was still confident that it would happen. All she needed to do was finally reach out to an old friend of hers as soon as Ra’s decided where he was going to imprison their loved ones. Truly, nothing could be as wonderful or exciting as this. Then again, her friend always was one prone to surprising things. Oh how interesting this was turning out to be.

~`~`~

Ra’s Al Ghul was excited. Everything was proceeding according to plan. Finally, he would have all the tools necessary to rule the world for all of eternity. All that was left was a little kidnapping, a little torture, and a little bit of breaking a civilian with wonderful connects, and he would have what was rightfully his. He couldn’t wait.

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[avelnfear]

Chapter Twelve

Masterlist

When Jason arrived at Wayne Manor, the last place he’d thought to check, he knew that Danny was there. An invisible hand was wrapped around the source of the odd feelings and instincts in his chest, and it was gently tugging him towards the backyard. He followed it with a single minded focus, not even noticing when he gained a trail of the sibling still at the Manor. The question still burned within the orb that was wrapped in the hand, making it hard to focus on anything else. 

The burning never seemed to ease or stop, at least it hadn’t for the hour or two it had taken him to find Danny. Every step felt like it took an eternity as it was weighed down with a weight so heavy he couldn’t find a comparison for it. Every breath was like one taken by someone on the brink of dying of thirst while in a desert, hot and raspy. He would have been worried that all of this was some odd sensation added to his usual fits with the Pit, but he could hear the Pit screaming at him to run away, trying to pull him away from the cold hand guiding his fire to the one person who could help.

The spiral of conflicting instincts fell quiet as he saw the scene he’d walked in on. Talia stood guard several feet away from where Danny, Nellie, and Damian were all curled up around one another. It brought an intense wave of belonging-happy-love-pride-mine-mine-mine crashing over him from that burning orb in his chest. It brought him up short and stole his breath in one smooth movement.

Jason stared at the scene before him, a boulder sinking through his stomach at the thought that he’d have to interrupt this even as a slicing wind seemed to demand that he join the cuddle pile. He took a step forward and Talia’s eyes snapped to his, carrying with them a knowledge-filled look that also seemed to be giving him permission. Like that was all he was waiting for, he stepped closer, stopping at some invisible barrier that he knew would be the point-of-no-return.

With a deep, fortifying breath, he stepped over the line, watching as Danny’s eyes snapped open and to his. Confusion was like a fog in front of them until it was washed away in understanding and a little bit of fear. Not a word was spoken, but the wind sang between them of the fact that nothing would ever be the same again. By the time he managed to tear his eyes from the magnetic pull of Danny's, the two others in the pile were awake and watching him with buried hope in their lives.

“You have a question.” Danny’s voice was soft and as quiet as ever yet there was something hard in it, like an ice that would never melt. It was clearly, to Jason at least, intended as a question that had failed to lift itself enough at the end.

A soft smile graced Jason’s lips, a smile that had been there since he saw the cuddle puddle earlier, and it didn’t fade as he said, “I do.”

Silence sat over the group for a few long minutes before Damian piped up with a sharp, “Are you going to ask it?”

The question was sharp, but Jason couldn’t shake the thought that it was only so sharp because of impatience. The sharpness was different from the usual brutal edge to Damian’s snark, it was more of a normal axe swing instead of the usual of an executioner's axe. Jason went to ask his own question when there was a flaring of fire from the orb.

“I- I don’t-” Jason broke off with a jagged sigh as he raked his hand through his hair. This should not be this hard.

Danny tilted his head. “You aren’t ready. Rest first. Question later.” That seemed to be all the talking energy Danny had for the day as he immediately laid back down, prompting Damian and Nellie to snuggle up once again, not that they’d drifted very far from each other in the first place.

“What just happened?” Tim’s voice was tense, like he was still waiting for something else to happen. Jason looked over at him to see that it wasn’t just Tim’s voice that was tense.

“Danny just told Jason to cool off before asking his question. There have already been too many big revelations for you all. You all need to process before we move on to the next big thing. You don’t have to be so tense, Tim, no one is going to blow up at each other.” Talia’s voice was cool, even, and oddly disappointed. Jason didn’t know what to think about it.

He took a deep breath, chest expanding and fire dimming slightly. “Okay. Process. Right.” His brain was a mass of mush in his head. The world around him was dimmer and brighter than it should have been, telling him that he was far too out of it to ask the question he needed to ask. “I can do that.” He would do that because he would have to. Things would be okay.

~`~`~

Things were not okay. It had been several months since the conversation in the garden that fall day, and he wasn’t quite sure that he’d processed everything. The burning in his chest was a near constant these days, growing and waning like it had a mind of its own. He’d started to hack up the dark green stuff from that one day in the Cave somewhat frequently. That was a double edged sword, good because it gave him more of his mind back, but bad because it gave him more clarity on the awful things he’d done. 

There were some things he didn’t regret, but there were also a lot that he did. He’d felt bad about what he did to Tim before, but now it was like he’d never known what guilt felt like before. Jason’d started talking to Harley about all the crazy shit in his head, and she’d been a big help, even though he couldn’t tell her everything.

The worst part was the dreams. While before his dreams had been filled with what he’d done wrong or how others had failed him, now it was like those few odd dreams were all he could have. He could never remember all of it, but he had flashes, flashes that kept getting longer and more intense. They always started out with a feeling of intense comfort-belonging-hope-love, but they rarely stayed that way, causing him to try to avoid sleep until Harley had bashed him over the head, both literally and figuratively, to get him to realize what he was doing wrong.

Beside all the crazy stuff happening, he and the other Bats had settled into a good rhythm with each other, becoming more and more like the family they all had always claimed to be, like the family he was finally admitting they could be. He’d even settled into a good pattern of days with the Nightingales. They traded who would make dinner or breakfast, telling stories about their lives to each other. Jason got to see more of the days when Danny couldn’t speak, realizing that he must have been really close to them in the past because of how well he could understand them even when speaking wasn’t an option.

The weird flashes of another person like the one he’d gotten when they were leaving the League of Assassins kept cropping up at weird times that didn’t make sense. The long black hair that he was used to sometimes appeared to be white and braided instead of in a ponytail or loose. The red duck earrings changed to snowflakes obscured by an odd mist, kinda like the kind that surrounds dry ice. Blue eyes were covered by black and white goggles or a blue veil with green snowflakes. He didn’t even want to get into the hero suit or fancy clothes that suddenly would swap in.

The whole Bat Family had learned that Danny hated Christmas, or, more accurately, he hated being forced to celebrate Christmas. He’d given them all gifts, amazing ones, but it was not in any way because of Christmas. It was apparently some trauma left over from his awful parents, and Jason respected that completely. He himself never really got into the Christmas spirit because of how many rogues decided to do Christmas themed heists and/or just had issues with the holiday itself.

Danny had continued to not give the Joker any satisfaction through making sure they didn’t show any emotion around him. This had the interesting effect of the longest stay the Joker had ever had in Arkham because he didn’t want to leave before making Danny react to him. Jason joined Ellie and Damian in providing comfort on days like that.

One interesting thing to happen over the months was when Danny introduced them all to Khuzbu, which was the human way of saying whatever its name was in Existence Speak. Khuzbu was a spherical treat with a hard outside, many different options for the inside, and a truly insane amount of flavor options. Dick had tried to joke by asking for the feeling of flying freely through the air only for Danny to deliver exactly that. The way Danny flavored the little spheres was by tossing it up and then catching it in a specific pattern, which was odd and kind of impossible until one considered that these were magic treats.

Jason would say that he’d had a lot of fun between the chaos of these months, if only the burning and howling wind-fire in his chest would have left him alone. It was hard to focus enough to even get out of bed some days, so he would lay there, paralyzed by snippets of memories and emotions that ebbed and flowed as if pulled by the invisible force of some moon. Those days were the ones where he would lose track of time only to come back to being taken care of by one of his siblings. 

The ups and downs were fine, just intense. The summer heat only seemed to make everything worse for Jason, but he managed to find ways to keep steady despite everything that was happening. There were some days when he felt lava flowing through his veins, others when he felt like a windstorm screamed through him, and still others when he felt calm.

Today was a day in July, getting kind of close to Tim’s birthday, and the whole gang was gathered together in the backyard of the Manor. He felt as calm as he could considering all the other factors, but he also felt oddly restless, like something big was about to happen or something massive was about to change. He felt oddly calm, now that he thought about it.

“Did I have a Lair?” The question finally burst from his lips, suddenly everything was silent, from the elements inside him to the people around him.

“Yes.” The simple word carried so much weight as it fell from Danny’s lips.

“Will you please take me there?” He didn’t fully know where that question came from, that was an absolute lie because he knew it came from the orb in his chest, but he was glad that it was out in the open. It just felt right in a way that he wasn’t sure it was possible to define with human words.

“Sure.” While the other word had carried a massive amount of weight, this one sounded like the wind was snatching it away, like it was being forced from lips that didn’t want to form the word, like it was a form of damnation to speak the word aloud.

Jason felt a sense of comfort and peace wash over him at the idea of going somewhere that he felt so connected to without even knowing if he’d seen it this life. He was going to a place that felt closer to home than he’d been in a long time. It was a feeling that somehow washed away some of the guilt that he felt over some of his actions in the past. The restless feeling also settled down some, like the massive thing was already set in motion.

He was so far in his thoughts that he didn’t notice the discussion going on around him, nor the fact that there was a betting pool and that several of his siblings were going to come along. He didn’t notice the strange looks he was getting from Talia, Damian, and Nellie, looks that were an odd mix of finally watching someone do something you’ve been waiting on and wondering what took so long. He was only drawn from his thoughts by Danny bumping shoulders with him.

“When?” Danny’s voice was quiet and soft, like always, but it felt somehow more there, more intense.

“Soon.” He offered a smile to cover his nerves as he answered the soft question.

“Tomorrow?” Danny offered a half smile of his own even as an indecipherable mix of emotions swirled in his eyes.

“Okay.” Jason could hardly wait.

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[avelnfear]

Chapter Eleven

Masterlist

Jason didn’t know how to feel. He’d just learned so much about someone he thought he knew in such a short amount of time that processing it all felt impossible. He knew that the others were having just as hard of a time with it all as he was, but that didn’t help his own knot of complicated emotions. His neighbor knew him through the kind of magic that allowed for reincarnation to happen. His youngest brother, because he could finally admit that the Waynes were really his family, had remembered for longer than his neighbor to spare them all from the horror of their second life. The person who he thought was a manipulative douchebag was actually pretending so that the world didn’t follow apart.

He felt like his life had somehow shifted even though nothing had really changed. …That was the issue though, wasn’t it. Nothing had truly changed even though it felt, however irrationally, that it should have. Such a big secret kept for such good reasons were still massive secrets. He felt betrayed, of course he did when such important people in his life were keeping such big secrets, but he didn’t feel justified to feel hurt by that betrayal. That would be like being hurt because the Justice League had defeated a massive world-ending threat. He was suddenly privy to information that made it seem like the world should have changed somehow, but everything had the audacity to stay the same.

It reminded him of his death in a bad way. When he’d seen what was happening in Gotham from his outsider’s perspective while at the League, and to some extent even when he’d come back, it had seemed like nothing changed. Jason Todd was dead, and he hadn’t been enough to even change the person he interacted with the most. He might have been the root cause of his death, but the fact that it appeared like nothing had changed, even to the other causes of his death, was so incredibly hurtful. Now, a somewhat similar, if flipped, thing was happening and nothing had really changed. 

Jason wondered if these same thoughts, or even similar ones, were going through his family's minds. It had taken something like ten hours for the family to stop asking questions of Talia, although she didn’t answer all of them, sometimes giving vague answers as well. If they were thinking similarly, Dick would probably be beating something up or bothering everyone with cuddling requests, Bruce was probably brooding or talking it over with Clark and Diana, Tim was probably trying to do some research or solving puzzles, Duke was probably just going about his normal life until he figured out how he wants to feel about it, Cass is probably keeping obsessive tabs on the family to make sure they’re safe, Steph is probably tagging along while munching on waffles in mostly silence, and Alfred is probably focussing on keeping his usual exceptional level of service while he works through his thoughts. 

If this was before Jason had met his new neighbor, who it turns out he’s known for longer than he’s even been alive apparently, he would most likely be taking out these feelings and issues on the town, probably in one of his little fits to add to that awful image. Now though, he was laying on his couch, staring at the wall. He’d started by sitting and staring at the ceiling, but he must have fallen over at some point. It was fine though, he didn’t plan on moving unless he had to, mostly in fear of what he would previously do happening again.

Jason’s mind wandered to what they’d found out about Existences. There were many names and titles that could go into an Existence’s, well, existence. The High King that Taila had sworn by was the ruler of the entire Infinite Realms, which should have been at least a little frightening yet instead brought comfort as well as questions that didn’t get answered that day. 

How long had it been since he sat down at his couch? He didn’t know, but that wasn’t as important as going over all he’d learned to try to process it so his brain should really start focussing.

His family was mostly composed of liminals, with Damian being the outlier as a Realms Blessed Existence Bonded Liminal, which was his fancy and full title, although Talia had hinted that it wasn’t his only title. The area in a Mortal Realm that was claimed by an Existence was referred to as a Haunt, and that place was almost like their own kingdom. All Existences who were strong enough could form a Lair, which was a place for them in the Infinite Realms, and it could either stand by itself as a door hanging out in the Realms or as part of someone else’s City, Town, Village, or Kingdom. Those four are pretty self explanatory.

There are some holidays celebrated by the entirety of the Realms, but otherwise it is pretty situational and/or regional when it comes to holidays. Talia hadn’t really expanded on what holidays they did celebrate, saying that it would be explained to them later or it didn’t matter. Come to think of it, that had been her answer to a large amount of their questions. It was partly annoying and partly understandable.

The reason the Pit’s Influence had stayed around longer for Jason than most other people was because he’d formed an Existence before being chucked into the Pit for full revival. Apparently that let the corruption in the stupid green goo latch onto him in a far different way than normal. Talia had said that his fits were the corruption trying to take control while relying on his instincts after hyping some of them up and suppressing others. Danny had been filtering the corruption out at a rate that didn’t make the corruption freak out in order to avoid hurting either of them, which meant it was slow work. The several months that Danny had been here meant that a few more weeks of filtering would make some of his suppressed instincts supposedly flare up.

In terms of the Infinite Realms and death and all that jazz, they’d gotten some information from Talia. The Infinite Realms contained all afterlives, but there was also a thing called Limbo that existed for those who didn’t want to have even the slightest chance of interacting with the world or those who were too young to make the choice themselves. The souls who were too young could age safely in Limbo until they decided for themselves what they wanted to do. The souls who chose to go there after being deemed old enough would never be able to change their choice. There was also a place called the Beyond where souls who were waiting for reincarnation or fading into the Void. The Void was just ceasing to exist. 

All of this information was supposedly the barest of bare basics that Talia felt comfortable sharing without more permission from other sources. She did share with them that she was technically an outsider because she wasn’t even very liminal. In fact, most of the family would be considered outsiders and treated as such unless they were in the company of at least one Existence. It was odd to think that such world breaking knowledge would just barely cover the basics that they would need to know if they ventured into the Infinite Realms, which Talia seemed to think was heavily possible.

What most intrigued Jason was that Existences of a certain level could change to different forms. Apparently Danny and Nellie both had forms more capable of surviving in the Infinite Realms. Damian was also able to live in the Realms, according to Talia, and Jason was supposedly also capable of it as well. However, the rest of the family would need special charms to be able to even breathe and a special device to be able to properly navigate. 

Jason continued to float within his thoughts for an unknown amount of time, not even noticing when his body acted on autopilot to make food, eat the food, clean the dishes, or even to go out on patrol. When he finally came back to proper awareness, he had one burning question that felt like it would once again change everything, but he knew that he had to ask it. There was this fire in his chest that wouldn’t let him forget that one question. Now he just needed to find Danny to ask it.

~`~`~

Nellie was excited, Pops was finally in the right state of mind to remember! According to Grampa Clocky, she needed to make sure that Pops went to his Lair with Da in order to remember, but Grampa had also said she couldn’t rush it, nor could she tell Da. It wasn’t fun, but the outcome would more than make up for that. She’d missed when Pops would read to her until she fell asleep. She’d mi- 

“Nope! Don’ even dare silly thoughts!” She called out cheerfully as she slapped her cheeks a little. Soon she wouldn’t have to miss that, so there was no point stressing over it.

Making sure the blanket of shadows that kept her concealed was still wrapped around herself, she set off for Wayne Manor, where Da was still talking with Damian about animals or memories of the past. If her template was anything like herself, he would have been sorely missing the ability to talk to someone about those memories. It would have only hurt more to talk to someone who knew of the past yet didn’t really know because they didn’t experience it.

Once she reached the limit of how far her shadows could take her before she started getting noticed because of them, she slipped into invisibility and dropped the comforting blanket with a short thanks to Gotham. Now, she could truly move fast as she sped through the air with the sole intent of curling around her Pa and being close to her ghoul as she waited for that blessed day of memory remembrance.

~`~`~

Tim was honestly still kind of reeling from the heavy revelations of that day a couple weeks ago. He’d once gotten so obsessed with a case that it caused his death. He knew that he could get carried away when he really wanted to solve a case, but he never thought of it as something that could be detrimental to his health before. Normally, he would focus on research or things that he could solve as a way to process everything that he’d learned, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so with the knowledge that it’d lead to his death once.

He was even more thankful than ever that Danny had given him a safe place to tell the family about the case, Danny had probably saved his life with that, which, now that Tim thought about it, was probably the entire point. Danny had apparently been saving all of them from one thing or another the entire time they’d known the family, longer even. It was admirable and only made Tim more convinced that Danny was an amazing person.

Damian of all people was the person to help Tim the most with processing everything they’d been told. He’d sat by Tim and helped talk through all of the questions shooting through Tim’s head like bullets. That wasn’t something that Tim ever expected to happen, yet was apparently the way that he and Damian had bonded in that first life.

What a thing to have confirmed in the most confusing way possible, the idea of reincarnation. Which actually wasn’t even an idea at all. Tim wasn’t very religious, but he would have sworn by almost any god that reincarnation wasn’t something that could really be proven. Now, his thoughts on the matter had entirely shifted. There wasn’t any concrete proof behind the idea, not like he would have basically demanded before, but there was something inside of him that knew what had been said was the truth.

He’d worried about finding his twin before, but the intense feeling of hopelessness around not finding his twin was gone now. He trusted that the Existence Danny had asked for help would be able to help. There was just a sense of building dread that the answer to the question wouldn’t be something that he’d thought of before. He had the overwhelming feeling that discovering who his twin was wouldn’t be easy, in fact, it would most likely be about as earth shattering as the revelations that had happened recently. He could only hope to be ready for such an eventuality whenever it finally came.

~`~`~

Talia sighed and stretched as she finally arrived back to her rooms after one final check on everyone. Dick was talking about everything with Babs and Harley while Ivy was doing something out of town, which gave her some sense of peace knowing that he was conversing with a good therapist, however insane, and in the company of someone who knew him very well. Bruce was working through his thoughts by alternating brooding and training, which had brought a smile to her face with its normalcy. Jason wasn’t taking it well, but she hadn’t expected him to with all the corruption in his system. Duke had talked it out with his near comatose parents, which had apparently helped even for how morbid it appeared. Steph and Cass were assisting each other through it. Tim had worked through it with Damian and was now dealing with the emotional stuff by himself. Alfred was the only real shock, she wasn’t aware that he was an… old friend of Clockwork.

She figured getting some sleep wouldn’t be a bad thing as she’d pushed her body to the limits to make sure that her family and their town was safe these past two weeks. Now, finally, she could get some of the rest she so badly needed while waiting for the next part of the sly old clock’s plan to take place. Knowing him, however, the rest wouldn��t be nearly as long as she longed for right now. Oh well, a little rest was still some rest after all. She’d done her part, so she deserved at least that much.

~`~`~

Danny basked in the sunlight while Damian talked to him about whatever came to mind. It was nice to finally be able to relax as he’d been forced to take a break from work due to them being worried he’d overwork himself enough to become one of the inmates. It wasn’t possible, of course. His going insane would result in so many bad things that he made sure he was always aware of how close he was to the line, always stopping well before he crossed it.

Danny knew the level of calm could never and would never last, but he was happy to take advantage of it for as long as it could last. He was happy to finally have his family, all of his family, know about what had transpired before they’d even been born in this life. They didn’t know everything, but they would eventually. His Death Day was also coming up, but that thought wasn’t enough to dampen his mood. He just wished they could stay in this happy time for just a little bit longer, just a little longer…

~`~`~

Damian smiled down at Danny now that they’d finally fallen asleep. He knew that they didn’t need to sleep as much as they once did, but he wanted them to fully enjoy this relaxing atmosphere before it descended into the chaos that was inevitable in this family. Peace didn’t last for long, but Damian would make sure that his important people made it out alive this time. He didn’t know if he could take being one of the sole survivors again, it was too heartbreaking.

His ghoul landed beside him and rested her head on his shoulder, and, just like that, he knew that Jason had finally landed on the question that would assure his Pops regained the memories of their past. Damian sighed, knowing that the peace was going to fade especially fast this time. Still, having his ghoul next to him gave him enough peace that he felt himself start to fade into sleep. “Love you.” He murmured as he slipped into a restful sleep, only partially hearing her response as he faded from awareness into the gentle void of a dreamless sleep that reminded him so much of his ghoul’s shadows.

Yes, everything would work out this time. He’d make sure of it.

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[avelnfear]

Chapter Two

Masterlist

Jason was feeling a little nostalgic as he traversed Crime Alley via rooftop, going about his regular patrol. The night was as quiet as it ever got, leaving his mind to wander as his body went through the familiar motions of patrol. He made sure to keep an ear and an eye out for anything odd, but he didn’t do much to stop the path of his thoughts. It wasn’t necessary, and he could use some time to just think.

Jason had been nowhere near prepared for the mess that his life turned into when he’d made the fateful decision to go after the Batmobile’s wheels. Robin had been magic and wonder and freedom, but that all changed in a hurry. He’d thought he felt betrayed only to run directly into true betrayal. The mess with the Joker had been hurtful in a lot of ways, from the physical to how it all started to Bruce not making it on time to him not exhausting his previous options and a few other things that he tried not to think about. 

Coming back was somehow even worse. Rage was now his constant companion, frequently attempting to poison his thoughts and his actions. Green was constantly edging his vision, waiting for him to slip up so that it could take control. He felt like a wind up toy one more twist from exploding, or like a puppet that used to be well loved until the owner beat it against a wall for days then attached it to a machine and left. Coming back made him feel more like a clunky machine with questionable controls than a person.

Guilt was a steady beat that guided him through the day, built up to near impossible levels due to things he’d done, people he’d hurt, while drowning in a tsunami of green and rage. His nights were anything but peaceful, haunted with reruns of what he’d done to innocents, to his brother to Tim. The Batclan, his family, had worked tirelessly to learn his new limits and how to not send him running. As soon as they knew that he hadn’t been in complete control of himself, that is. 

Jason had been content to never tell them about the lasting Pit Madness, but Dick had found him at the tail end of one of his fits almost a year ago. It’s taken six months, which felt much too short to Jason, but he would now come to the Manor for dinner every once in a while. He even talked to the Bats over comms sometimes, and as the Bats slowly wore him down, as they got more likely to get caught up in one of his fits, he’d changed his system around. Now he used rubber bullets, and his few live magazines were harder to get to. He’d changed his knives to be slightly easier to see, trusting the Bats training to make that little bit matter. Additionally, although this was an accident, he’d found out that the Pit was paralyzed at his grave, meaning he had a place he could go to make the Pit harmless until he could regain control.

Thankfully the Pit had been relatively quiet for a few weeks now, but he was still wary because he had to be. Jason’s wandering thoughts were put on pause as he stopped a couple muggings and a robbery. All the situations were wrapped up rather quickly which left his mind free to wander again as he ascended to the rooftops. It really was a slow night in every way possible. 

Sometimes, when Jason least expected it, the intense sensation of something missing would hit harder than Superman could, leaving him reeling. He’d have thought it was just another side effect of coming back from the dead, but the sensation had always been there in one way or another, even before he died. Jason had mixed feelings about the intense missing that he felt. On one hand, the sensation clearly left him unsteady, and with no solution, due to there being no clear cause, but, on the other hand, the sensation could stop his nightmares in their tracks, letting him have a restful night.

Jason never fully remembered what he dreamed of on those restful nights, but he knew that he dreamed. Impressions of peaceful, comforting hums, flashes of blues eyes that pierced his soul, flashes of green eyes that were just a shade or two off from being Lazarus Pit green, and a feeling of loss and peace dancing with each other were all that remained of those dreams. He’d tried every technique that he could think of to remember more, but nothing had worked. 

Suddenly, the Pit screamed at him, knocking him out of his thoughts and off the roof in one fell swoop. Green slowly swarmed his vision, slowly because he was fighting it for all he was worth. Reaching up a hand, he activated his comms with a grunt. “Pit. Alert.” He ground out through gritted teeth just before green overtook him. He’d fought so hard that his consciousness started to fade, but he struggled still, attempting to at least be able to watch what happened, what his body did, while the Pit was in control. Ultimately, Jason lost that battle, fading from consciousness quickly.

Blearily, Jason slowly came back to awareness. He had just enough time to register that he was standing beside his grave before his legs buckled. Someone caught him before he could roughly collide with the ground, immediately lowering the two of them to softly sit in the dirt. Jason didn’t even have the energy to fight back against the person as he tried to assess himself. Deciding that he’d live, he turns his oddly blurry eyes to the figure who helped him. While he couldn’t see clearly, the vague shape and specific shade of blue told him that Nightwing was the one to catch him. Jason let out a tired hum of acknowledgement that sounded more pitiful than he thought it would.

Half his mind was fuzzy and slow, consumed by the now familiar sensation of missing while the other half was still slowly rebooting from the green. Words were being said somewhere above his head, but they fell like stones in a lake, not even fully registering on his radar even as they left behind small ripples of confusion. Jason thought he caught his name, causing him to try and understand what was being said on instinct, but it was like the voice, voices?, was speaking in gibberish, making it impossible to understand.

Much faster than the green had, black flowed in, robbing him of his senses and trapping him in his mind. As fast as he had left the land of consciousness, Jason didn’t realize that he’d been crying, that there was no blood on him that he hadn’t been in control for getting, and that the missing sensation had shifted slightly into missing-waiting. The first two were told to him when he woke up, but the third remained unknown until a few months later when everything changed and some things were put into perspective.

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[avelnfear]

Chapter Thirteen

Masterpost

Sam couldn’t stop pacing the edge of the Isle of the Phantom Fright and Grave. It was a long walk, but she’d already completed it ten times by now. Danny was bringing some people from Gotham to the Phantom Isle, and she couldn’t figure out how to feel about it. She’d always been told that her emotions were too intense, but this was one of the few times she actually agreed.

She and the others had all seen what memories Danny had been willing to show thanks to the powers of a Viewing Room, but that wasn’t enough, was too much, was- Ancients she didn’t know! Apparently, according to the stupid old Clock, she and the others would regain their memories of the past when they reached a certain point in their Existence, but she didn’t want to wait that long, couldn’t wait that long.

These people were some she had likely never met, people she didn’t know how to defend against, people that could betray Danny without her ever knowing because she was too busy helping to do damage control on the last betrayal. If the people were anything like the memories, they were highly trained and capable of doing damage to Danny that she wouldn’t be able to help undo. If they were anything like the memories, then they would never willingly cause that type of damage.

She knew that Damian knew of one past life, probably the one Danny had shown them snippets of, but she didn’t know if any of the others remembered. Sam was still haunted by the look on Danny’s face when she’d asked who all had the memories. There had to be something that Danny wasn’t telling them, but she couldn’t interrogate him about it when talking about it hurt him so much.

Sam huffed as she spun around to begin pacing again, the black and green of her skirt flaring around her in a satisfying way. She passed the beautiful architecture of the buildings on the Isle, all themed around different members of their little group, some of which probably belonged to the very people Danny was currently escorting here, the people to blame for her doing much more walking than she’d planned to today.

Footsteps on the path around her alerted her to an approaching person that could only be Jazz. Danny and Elle were with the group, along with Damian and Talia, and Tucker was locked away in his spiraling tower, trying his best to make sure Jack would never find Danny. With the footsteps came an overwhelming feeling of calm-soothing-happy-peace-arrival. The feeling oozed through the air in a way that made Sam’s spine crawl in an odd way.

“Glad to see someone’s in a happy mood.” Sam’s voice was low and grumbly, making her sound more like an immature child than she’d wanted.

“It is understandable why you would not feel the same, you don’t feel like you have enough information. You aren’t seeing or feeling what I am, what they are. Come, walk with me.” Jazz’s voice was calm, and her face was fixed into the expression she wore when she knew something that would help if only she could figure out how to share it without breaking any vows or rules.

Sam sighed, letting the tension in her body relax as she nodded. “This had better not make me late to greet them though.”

“Relax,” Came the knowing reply, “Danny will be a little late due to the changes the Realms are going through right now, he forgot to account for the moving of Skulker’s Hunt-Lair due to what today is.”

Sam scowled to be reminded of the main reason she was so worried besides the guests that would be arriving. She kept her mouth shut, knowing Jazz would just give her a vague answer about Danny knowing what he was doing when it came to this. 

They walked down a path that hadn’t been there a few seconds before, neither batting an eye because of how normal of an occurrence this was. It could only have been about a minute before they stopped in front of a sprawling landscape that looked like a lot of different types of animal habitats had been combined in a way that didn’t quite make sense to Sam, but she appreciated the care the plants had reviewed even if she’d never been able to enter this space. There was a cabin in the center area that looked cozy and easily defensible. All in all, it didn’t look like a horrible place, even if she wasn’t as good at Danny or Jazz at using a person’s surroundings and mannerisms to gauge their personality.

“What do you see?” The question felt calm on the surface, but a strange sense of anticipation laid under it, like a tiger in the shade.

Sam raised an eyebrow at Jazz before telling her about the observations Sam had made. Jazz nodded before saying, “I see Damian.”

Sam straightened, suddenly tense for an entirely different reason than before. No one had been able to figure out who the strange zones not claimed by any of them belonged to, but now Jazz was telling her that this strange field was Damian’s? Suddenly, the purpose of their walk hit her with the force of a fully charged ecto-laser. Jazz was trying to comfort her by telling her which place belonged to which person after letting her observe it with an open mind.

She suddenly felt much more enthusiastic for what was to come. That was, until a thought crossed her mind. “I’m not continuing this if it will stop me from being there when they arrive.” Her tone was one that usually brokered no arguments, but one could never be too sure with the Nightengale siblings.

“It will be fine, Danny forgot to calculate some islands shifting, so they’ll be a bit longer than earlier estimates. The latest we will be is a few moments after they arrive.” The look Jazz gave her was knowing, and the feeling that swamped Sam was one that told her to listen and follow without giving too much away.

“Lead on then.” Her tone was much more defeated than she felt, but it was the only form of rebellion she would give, playing it up was a necessity.

Duke, Stephanie, Cass, Alfred, Tim, and Bruce were all locked behind Clockwork Spoiler Fences. Meaning she only saw a wall of clocks rather than the actual interior. She was starting to get frustrated when they approached a massive big top tent surrounded by all sorts of interesting and out of place items. 

Jazz didn’t even ask a question this time, probably sensing Sam’s rising frustration. “The area belongs to Dick, it breathes him if you listen close enough. The out of place objects are symbols of those he considers family, those he would do anything to protect. Do you understand why I’m telling you this, why I’m showing you this?”

Sam almost snapped a rude answer out of frustration, but then some of the things in the yard registered to her. They looked newer then the others, less sure in a way that she couldn’t describe. There was a tech filled area that kind of looked like Tucker’s work area when he found a project that he couldn’t put down, there was a small library section filled with psychology books and notebooks with a good light above it, there was a mini greenhouse, and there was an area that looked like it was ripped from the night sky to be made into a nice lounging area with plenty of room for lots of people.

“I. You.” It was like the frustration drained out of her as the biggest  realization of the night hit her. “Dick is like Danny, very family oriented. It doesn’t matter if the others were locked behind fences because Dick isn’t. You wanted me to know that Danny trusting them has a reason. You’ve definitely seen more memories than us and know that I’d trust them anyway, but I needed to calm down first. I get it. We can go back now.”

Jazz gave her a bittersweet smile that had her hackles raising. “We aren’t quite done yet. Follow.”

Sam was nervous, yet she followed, there was nothing else to do. They came upon what looked like a building that would definitely fit into her mental image of Gotham, a bizarre mix of styles that somehow fit together, likely paying homage to several different stages in the person’s life. Most of the windows were covered in locks and ways to stop people from seeing inside, even far up the building. Sam could see a few traps that looked well made.

She looked to Jazz, confused, only to see a look that she couldn’t decipher, too many emotions in so few space. Turning back to the building, she looked closer, finding signs of wear and tear and a few hasty looking patch jobs. A couple sections looked burned, a few had odd water damage, and a few looked like they were being held together by pure will after an explosion. There were some paint jobs that looked like they were done with human blood, and there were some parts that looked like they would fit a mansion better.

Looking even closer, she saw something that stopped all the thoughts in her head. Something that stopped her heart, stopped her breathing, and had her feeling like she was falling. Hidden in a way most people wouldn’t catch were symbols, ones she could barely read, Existence Speak given written form. Most were written in a hand she recognized, Danny’s, but some of it was written by someone she’d never met. That wasn’t what had stopped everything about her though. Hidden just a little better were symbols she did recognize, could read, and never thought she’d see.

“I see Jason.” The words were near breathless, full of sorrow and hope and so many other emotions. They sounded almost like they hurt to say, pulled from unwilling lips in a way that had Sam’s emotions rising and swirling with defensive intent.

“Who was going to tell me Jason was Danny’s betrothed?”

~`~`~

Dick couldn’t put his finger on it, but something was off. He’d known Danny for close to a year now, long enough to know at least a little about how he operated, and Danny wasn’t straying from that pattern. It rubbed him the wrong way in such a way that he couldn’t verbalize it. Jason was off too and not just off in the way he’d been lately. The family had gotten used to the new normal, and Dick seemed to be the only one to notice something was very off.

If he was being perfectly honest, Dick expected there to be some tension in the air, a group of them was going to another dimension that contained all the afterlives and more, anyone would be tense at that. However, even those one would expect not to be tense had this sense of urgency underlaying everything they did.

He was getting better at knowing when to push and when not to, thanks to all the therapy he’d finally signed up for, but he couldn’t seem to find a way to safely navigate whatever was going on today. Figuring it would help soothe his nerves, and trusting his family to make sure he didn’t do anything stupid while he was zoned out, he went over his list for the day.

He had brought along his gift for Tim, so it wasn’t that he was forgetting anything. He had double checked to make sure their alibis were as good as possible. Dick had even taken the time to arrange back-up alibis that would work in some of the cases the originals would have failed. He’d done everything to plan for as much as he could, so the tension wasn’t coming from him in any way.

Then what could possibly be the reason? They were doing this trip for Jason, Danny had agreed, Damian and Nellie were excited for the trip until today, Talia was doing her best to make sure everyone had a good time, Bruce had done as much research as possible, Tim had asked every question he could think of, and the others were filled in on what all was going down. There was no logical reason for this much tension to be happening.

He was dimly aware of the group entering a warehouse and boarding an insane looking vehicle, was it frog shaped or was that just him stressing too much to see it clearly?, but he refused to focus until he figured out where the tension was coming from.

He didn’t get much further into his thoughts before someone was talking at him. “Why?” He internally winced at the word he hadn’t meant to blurt.

His awareness of his surroundings came back as he found himself staring into the emotionless face of Nellie. “Buckle before we have to host another funeral for you. Once was bad enough, don’t make it happen twice.”

Every thought left his head as he sank into a seat and numbly snapped the many straps around his body, there were more safely straps here than in the Bat Jet. As soon as he was fully strapped in, her words sank straight to his bones, giving him a horrible idea that he immediately brushed aside to focus on the world around him. That couldn’t be the reason for the tension, Danny and the others had to be more aware than that.

The strange ship they were in jolted forwards and suddenly they were in a wash of green. It was close enough to a Lazarus Pit that Dick knew the entire family would be on edge, but he found that he couldn’t rip his eyes away from it long enough to double check. Something about the place seemed so familiar, so… he couldn’t even figure out what. The tension from before fell to the second priority as he struggled to see as much of the world as he could.

“The Nightingale Dimension Hopper is completely opaque on the outside yet completely see through on the inside without showing any of the things that make it function.” There was pride in Damian’s voice, pride Dick never thought he would get to hear about anyone but Baby Bat’s animals.

He shifted slightly in his seat in order to see the screens better and let out a yelp of surprise when his seat adjusted itself so that he was facing the wall. There was purple spiraling into the green around him, the combo should have brought to mind the Joker, but all Dick could think about was his parents, oddly enough.

“Did we forget to mention the seats will adjust themselves based on who is seated in them?” Nellie sounded like she was going to say more when she was cut off by the slightly tense voice of Danny.

“Explanations can wait, I’m switching off of autopilot, there will be more shifts than originally calculated for. Everyone needs to be completely buckled in, now. Including you Nellie.”

There was a whine even as Dick heard the sound of her complying with her parent’s orders. The Hopper jolted before darting down in a dizzying spiral, Dick’s chair adjusting to let him see the doors snapping into rightful place mere seconds after they passed. Suddenly, they started heading up at a slow pace, still weaving around doors that shifted around them in a way that simply felt right. 

The trip was filled with sudden shifts in speed and direction as Danny continued to skillfully avoid doors that hadn’t been there a few seconds earlier. There were some near collisions that pulled gasps from those near Dick, but he couldn’t figure out why. It was clear to him why Danny needed to make those changes, they would have been hit otherwise.

Despite the strange flying that followed a pattern Dick was beginning to think the others couldn’t see, the flight was going fairly smoothly until Dick shouted a wordless warning right as Danny slammed on the brakes, hard. They came to a stop so sudden that it produced a screeching noise from someone in the room.

“Why did you stop?” Bruce’s gruff voice demanded seconds before a massive island snapped into place with a sense of purpose. 

Dick didn’t know what he was feeling, what he was thinking, or why it happened, but a weapons deck that just looked like a wall of weapons suddenly appeared in front of him. He ignored every button except one he knew would increase their speed. His hand was already moving towards it as Damian shouted from behind him, “Hit it!”

If he thought the Hopper was fast before, it was nothing compared to this. The speed they were going was hard to describe. Dick tried to think of something he could use to explain this to those not here, but the only thing he could come up with didn’t make sense. After all, how could a ship outspeed a Flash, but that was exactly what it felt like. Dick could almost physically feel time slowing down as the Hopper accelerated to speeds that could only be described as impossible.

As suddenly as the speed started, it stopped, which definitely should have snapped their necks. It made perfect sense to Dick that it wouldn’t, however, because it was an invention Danny made, so of course it wouldn’t kill those Danny invited to board.

Wait a minute, why would he know that?

A/N: I won't be tagging anymore people after this post, please just subscribe to the masterpost.

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