The Wayne Manor had survived assassins, alien invasions, Lazarus Pit incidents, demonic houseguests, and at least three separate “this is definitely the night I quit vigilantism forever” declarations from various members of the family.
What it had never survived gracefully was Danny.
Or rather, it had survived him in the same way a cathedral survives a cat: structurally intact, spiritually altered, and constantly aware it is being judged.
Danny Fenton had been hired as the Wayne family’s live-in butler under circumstances that could only be described as “Bruce Wayne had paperwork he didn’t read and Alfred had already resigned twice that week as a symbolic gesture.”
Danny arrived in a pressed black suit, a duffel bag, and the expression of someone who had already decided everyone in the house was going to disappoint him and he would still do his job flawlessly out of spite and professionalism.
Alfred liked him immediately.
Everyone else developed opinions that ranged from “concerned fascination” to “this man is actively ruining my emotional stability with one eyebrow raise.”
Because Danny did not behave like a butler so much as a long-suffering stage actor trapped in a billionaire soap opera.
He polished the Batmobile with reverent precision while muttering things like, “Yes, Master Wayne, I’m sure this scratch came from your tragic brooding again, not your inability to park like a functional adult.”
He served dinner with surgical grace, sliding plates into place while adding softly, “If you’re going to eat like vultures, I can at least arrange a tasteful presentation of your chaos.”
And worst of all, he never, ever asked questions.
Which was the only reason Bruce hadn’t fired him on principle.
Because Danny’s eyes said he already knew everything anyway.
Jason Todd noticed first.
Jason had the survival instincts of a man who had died once and refused to be surprised by anything again. So when Danny handed him coffee after patrol and said, “Careful, it’s hot, unlike your personality,” Jason simply took the mug and said, “I like him.”
Dick Grayson tried to be friendly for approximately twelve minutes before Danny looked at him mid-story and said, “If you gesture any wider, you’re going to summon a circus you already escaped.”
Dick left the room laughing too hard to be offended.
Tim Drake tried to analyze him.
Danny responded by reorganizing Tim’s entire workstation without touching a single classified file, then saying, “Your paranoia is adorable. Like a raccoon guarding an empty trash can.”
Tim stopped trying to analyze him and started quietly respecting him instead.
Damian Wayne, for his part, declared Danny “insufferable” within the first hour and “useful” within the first week. This was, in Damian language, a love poem.
Danny called him “miniature grim aristocrat” once and survived only because Alfred was in the room.
Alfred Pennyworth adored him in a way that could only be described as “finally, someone else understands what it is like to be surrounded by children who could legally be considered national disasters.”
“You do realize,” Alfred said one evening, as Danny adjusted the tea tray for precisely the third time, “that you are not technically required to antagonize Master Bruce while also ensuring his survival.”
Danny didn’t look up. “And yet, here we are.”
“Indeed,” Alfred said, not displeased in the slightest.
Bruce Wayne, however, was less enchanted.
Batman had faced gods and monsters, but nothing quite prepared him for a butler who looked at him the way one might look at a particularly disappointing architectural choice.
Danny rarely spoke to Bruce directly without adding a layer of commentary that felt like a velvet-gloved insult.
“You’ve left blood on the staircase again,” Danny said one night.
“It’s not mine,” Bruce replied.
Danny nodded. “That’s worse, actually. Now I have to wonder which of your emotional support vigilantes is leaking.”
Bruce paused. “You are aware I could fire you.”
Danny finally looked at him, expression calm. “You are aware you would have to replace me.”
That was the end of that conversation.
But Bruce noticed something else.
Despite the sarcasm, despite the commentary, despite the constant implication that Bruce Wayne’s civilian persona was a performance so bad it should have been union-regulated… Danny never missed anything.
Injuries were treated before they were mentioned.
Equipment was repaired before it failed.
Patrol schedules were anticipated before they were decided.
Once, Bruce came back from a rooftop chase with a cracked rib he hadn’t admitted even to himself yet, and found Danny already in the kitchen with pain relief, bandages, and an expression that said, “Sit down before I become legally violent.”
“You’re not medical staff,” Bruce said.
Danny replied, “And yet I’m the only one in this building who treats you like a fragile idiot instead of a mythological symbol of suffering.”
That was the pattern of the house.
Danny antagonized everyone, and in return, everyone quietly relied on him like gravity.
Then the universe decided the Wayne family deserved a reminder that stability was temporary.
The invasion began without warning.
The sky split like torn fabric over Gotham, a wound of red light and screaming wind. The alarms in the manor didn’t even finish their first cycle before the walls shook hard enough to rattle centuries-old glass.
Tim was already at monitors. Damian had weapons in hand. Jason was halfway out the door. Dick was swearing in three languages.
Bruce was Batman before anyone could ask him to be.
And Danny… Danny was still in the hallway, adjusting a tray that had tipped during the tremor.
Jason yelled, “We’re under attack by whatever cosmic nonsense this is, and you’re worried about tea?”
Danny didn’t look up. “I am worried about tea consistency. There is a difference.”
Then the world outside folded.
Something massive stepped through the breach in reality above Gotham, a silhouette of impossible geometry and crushing presence. The air itself seemed to bow.
Even Batman stopped for half a second.
Which, in Batman terms, meant the situation had officially graduated to “catastrophic.”
The manor’s windows blew inward.
A long, tired, deeply personal sigh.
“Of course,” he said. “It’s one of those days.”
Jason stared at him. “You cannot be serious right now.”
Danny finally set the tray down with care, straightened his cuffs, and looked toward the breach.
“I was having a perfectly tolerable morning,” he said. “And now we have apocalypse architecture. Honestly, I blame Bruce.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Bruce said immediately.
Danny gave him a look that could have stripped paint. “That is exactly what someone who did something would say.”
And then Danny stopped being just Danny.
The manor filled with a pressure like the world holding its breath too long.
Green flame erupted around him, not consuming but revealing, like the universe finally remembering a truth it had been politely ignoring.
Where the butler stood a moment ago, there now hovered something older than Gotham’s fear.
The Ghost King’s presence was not loud.
Danny Phantom rose fully into view, spectral crown-like energy hovering at his brow, eyes glowing with an endless, cold clarity.
Jason actually took a step back.
Damian just said, very quietly, “You are a ghost.”
Danny glanced at him. “Yes. Try not to make it your whole personality.”
Fast like a correction to reality.
He stepped through the shattered window without breaking it further and rose into the storm above Gotham, where Darkseid’s presence pressed down like judgment.
Inside the manor, silence stretched.
Tim whispered, “Okay. That is new information.”
Because Bruce was already watching.
Outside, the air warped as Danny met the god-tyrant in open sky.
Darkseid spoke first, voice like collapsing planets.
“You are not on any list of opposition.”
Danny tilted his head. “That’s because I’m not an opposition. I’m a problem you didn’t study for.”
The fight did not look like a fight at first.
It looked like Danny refusing physics.
Reality manipulation pressed in.
It slid off him like water off glass.
And then Danny moved again, and suddenly Darkseid was no longer the only overwhelming presence in the sky.
There was something older than conquest there.
Something that remembered making worlds before conquest ever existed.
Back inside the manor, Alfred spoke softly, almost reverently.
“I do believe,” he said, “we may have hired something rather exceptional.”
Jason muttered, “Yeah. You think?”
Bruce’s voice was low. “He’s been in my house this entire time.”
Tim replied, “To be fair, you let a demon clown decorate your basement.”
“That is not the point,” Bruce said.
Above Gotham, Danny finally stopped holding back.
The sky went silent in a way that felt like a verdict.
For the first time, something like uncertainty crossed the god’s face.
Danny drifted closer, expression tired now, almost gentle.
“You’ve been punching at a world that isn’t even your scale,” he said. “And I’ve been cleaning up after people who think your kind is mythology.”
When it ended, it didn’t end explosively.
It ended like a star deciding it was done being a problem.
Silence returned to Gotham’s sky.
Danny hovered there a moment longer, then exhaled, like someone finishing a tedious chore.
He landed in the manor garden like nothing had happened.
Suit intact. Hair slightly disheveled. Expression annoyed.
Jason blinked. “So… you’re what. A wizard? Alien? Government experiment?”
Danny walked past him toward the kitchen. “All of those sound like someone trying to get me fired. No.”
Bruce stepped forward. “Explain.”
Danny paused just long enough to look at him properly.
“I died,” he said simply. “Came back wrong. Stayed anyway.”
Then, softer, “And I got better at it than most people get at anything.”
Tim swallowed. “So Phantom… that’s real.”
Danny nodded once. “Among other things.”
Damian narrowed his eyes. “And you worked as a butler.”
Danny shrugged. “What better way to be a protector spirit than to protect heroes?”
As a truth shaped like one.
Jason exhaled slowly. “Okay. I really like him now.”
Alfred, from the doorway, said calmly, “As do I.”
Bruce studied Danny for a long moment.
“You stayed here,” Bruce said, “without telling us what you are.”
Danny glanced back toward the wreckage outside, then at the manor, at the people inside it.
“You didn’t ask,” he said. Then, after a beat: “And you needed someone who wouldn’t flinch when your world started breaking.”
Then Danny added, quieter but sharp again, “Also, your civilian persona is still unbearable. I stand by that.”
Even Damian looked faintly amused.
Bruce Wayne, for once, did not have a prepared response.
And somewhere in the quiet that followed, it became clear that nothing in the manor would quite go back to the way it had been.
Not because Danny had revealed himself.
But because he had always been there, holding the edges of their world together while insulting the seams.
And now they finally knew the name of the hand doing the stitching.
