āThereās nothing more I can do for him Alfred, Iāve tried. His brainā¦ itās the brain of a ghost. Ghosts forget. Wellā¦ full ghosts anyways. Heās tricky,ā Rachel said.
Alfred knew she was trying to be honest with him, to see sense. But Alfred knew his friend. Before he was let out of the bear, before Constantine got to him, he remembered. Alfred knew he remembered. He could feel it. With every sad vague comment from the teddyās voice box on the days Danyal mourned his old life to the moments where he mentioned things from his old life to Alfred like the old man that knew about cloning or the girl he used to know who liked ghosts. Danyal knew. Alfred just had to figure how to make him know again.
āThere has to be something, anything that might work,ā he snapped, the sound coming out just a little too harshly, āIām sorry, Iām just very confident in him.ā Alfred paced the floor, the carpet in his servantās quarters worn from years of abuse.
He heard Rachel sigh in response, āThe only thing- the only thing I can maybe suggest? Is that we let him and Damian back together.ā She shook her head, looking as though she didnāt even believe what she was saying. But it was something right?
Alfred stopped pacing to really face her, āWhat do you mean? Youāre the one that said we should keep them apart.ā
After everything happened, both Damian and Danyal were inconsolable. Danyal was near catatonic, only ever mentioning how he felt far away. He only seemed to remember Damian and Alfred but nothing before that. He kept asking if Damian was okay, talking about how he promised to leave them all alone and never bother them again if he just knew he was fine.
Damian was similar, holed up in his room refusing to talk to anyone but Danyal. He wouldnāt accept food, only drinking water from the reserve under his bed. Itās been days since heās eaten anything which was bad considering the amount of broken bones he had in his body.
āI know but- look I was able to set your bones back into place but Damian hasnāt let me near him without Danyal and if we donāt fix his shattered clavicle, the pieces are going to start causing more damage. Besidesā¦. Itās a soul bond. Thereās nothing stronger than that. Nothing that I know of,ā Rachel ran a hand through her hair, āItās so strong that maybeā¦ itāll trigger something in him to remember?ā
Alfred knew that she was right. Damian wasnāt the type to let himself relax enough to heal. He never was. He was always the kid that hid his injuries in order to avoid looking weak. He was the boy that could be bleeding internally and still keep fighting. He was the child that was so used to torture training that he didnāt realize that family bonding didnāt have to be painful when he first arrived. Damian was strong. And even more stubborn. Inherited from his father no doubt.
āIf anything goes wrong, I donāt know if we will be able to separate them again,ā he said, already reaching for the door. Keeping them apart wasnāt helping anything. So if they planned on changing the situation, they only really had one option. He just hoped it wasnāt a mistake.
Damian was upset. No he was angry. Beyond angry. He was fuming. And he didnāt know why. Obviously Danyal was safe, he was being worked on by Rachel to try and restore whatever Constantine might have disrupted or taken. He remembered him asking who he was, maybe Constantine wiped his memory? But why? What would be the purpose of that?
Damian had no reason to be so agitated, not really. He needed to rest and let his bones get set back into place so they could heal butā¦ he couldnāt. Damian could hardly walk and yet he couldnāt sit still. He had never been apart from Danyal for so long. Even when he travelled he used to bring the teddy with him to talk to about whatever mission he was on. The shelf without Danyal on it looked empty and wrong.
Why couldn't he see him? After everything happened and they finally got Constantine out of the house, everything was so fast. Damian woke up in a bed in the cave with an IV and people were touching him. Looking back, it was probably Dick trying to figure out which bones were broken but at the time Damian really didn't care. He just wanted to know if Danyal was okay. It took both Dick and Father to hold him down when he pulled out his IV and rolled out of the bed to try and get to his friend.
Then they locked him in his room and told him he couldn't see Danyal at all. It had been days and Damian was starting to lose his mind a little. He couldn't stand anyone else near him and he couldn't eat, he was just so antsy. The last time he slept had to have been when he was unconscious. He couldn't really walk right without hurting himself so he spent almost the entire few days on his bed, rocking back and forth like some sort of psychopath, trying to self regulate to calm himself down.
It didn't make any sense. Why couldn't he see Danyal? Was everything okay with him? He couldn't possibly be dangerous, he wasn't the reason Damian's bones were in shatters. Danyal was his friend. And he wasn't here and it was stressing Damian out, Why wasn't here here? Why couldn't he see him!?
Damian was about to roll out of bed again to try and break the door down when it suddenly opened, Alfred and Roth on the other side. He didnāt want to see them. He didnāt want to see anyone. He turned away, ignoring the pain in his body.
āYoung Master Damian, you can see Danyal now,ā he heard the butler say.
Damian didnāt stop to actually consider why, he just knew he had to take this chance. If something was wrong with his friend, he had to be there for him no matter how many broken bones he had. He wanted to run.
āSet my bones. Now,ā the sentence came out like an order, sharp and cold but Damian didnāt really care. Up until this point the thought of anybody coming near him was absurd but now he needed his body in working order if he was going to be an adequate help for Danyal. He held out his arm as much as he could for Roth.
And with a large unnerving crackle, he felt every broken part of his body snap back into place, artificial fusion much like the many times Damian was dipped into the Lazarus. It hurt a great deal but that was as never the part that made Damianās stomach turn. A sensation Damian could easily ignore for the time being.
āHow do you feel Young Master,ā he heard Alfred say.
Damian just rolled his shoulder in response, pushing past him out of the room, āWhere is Danyal.ā
He was led to a bedroom that no one ever typically used in the house, a stark surprise considering just days before his friend was being locked away like an animal in the basement. The room was mostly untouched, infact completely untouched. As if Danyal wasnāt in the room at all. Even the bed didnāt seem to give under his weight as if he wasnāt even there.
Danyal was pale As one might expect from a ghost. His skin glowed, making his body look almost transparent in nature, the blueish green aura around him emitting a deep sadness that Damian knew too well. He had spent enough with his childhood teddy to always recognize that feeling. Danyalās sorrow was specific and easy to identify.
āDanyal,ā he said, gasping as if uttering the borrowed title allowed him to take his first breath in a long time.
The ghostly form lifted his head, Damianās first friendās eyes finally meeting his. Damian watched as the blank stare turned into recognition, his entire face shifting from a blank slate to full of emotions, sadness, fear, worry, all wrapped up into one. It was an expression that probably mirrored Damian's perfectly.
"Dami," he said, his ghostly form flying into Damian's arms, hugging him tightly. And just like that, all the anger in Damian was gone. He didn't feel like a part of him was missing anymore. Everything was okay. That invisible weight that made his feel like something was vey wrong was now lifted as it were never there.
"Are you okay? Did Constantine do something to you?," Damian pulled back enough to look at him, hoping that he rememberedā¦. something. He knew Danyal remembered him. But what about himself? What aboutā¦ what came before?
āHe tried to exercise me but Iām notā¦ a demon so it hurt. Real bad. But donāt worry! Raven fixed it,ā he said with a sad smile. One that Damian feared the possible meaning of. He had never spent much time with Danyal like this, with a face of his own that wasnātā¦ a bear. But it felt like he could read him like he could any of his brothers.
That was what Danyal was to him he supposed. A brother. The first one heād ever had when they met. Yeah there was Dick and Todd and maybe Drake but he didnāt know how to let them in the way he knew how to be honest with Danyal. He needed to be strong for them. With them because they were strong too. But Danyal wasnāt a competitor or a goal to hit. He was just Danyal. And that was why he always went to him first.
āDonāt give me that faceā¦ youāre making me nervous,ā he was able to say, though admittedly the words almost got stuck in his throat. He didn't want to admit to himself that he was scared, instead pulling Danyal closer. He didn't want to look at him when he had the feeling that he was about to hear him say something that was going to crush his soul.
Damian realized possibly for the first time that Danyal wasn't an adult. He was just a kid. Maybe 15. It was odd to think that someone Damian looked up to for much of his life would turn out to be so small in his arms. It was even more odd to think that someone that was clearly much wiser was so much younger visibly. Like Danyal was stuck in the body of what he once was while Damian got to grow up. It made him shudder slightly to think about it. The feeling it gave him reminded him of the familiar sorrow that he often felt from Danyal.
"Don't worry about me Damian... besides, there's nothing we can do," he heard Danyal say softly, sadly, resolutely.
Damian pulled back to look him in the face, "What do you mean? What do you mean nothing?" He searched Danyal's eyes for any sort of hint of... something. Maybe a smile? A laugh? Some sort of hint that maybe he was kidding? He still wasn't entirely sure what it was that was wrong with Danyal. Something felt inherently different but he didn't want to admit that, let alone accept that maybe it was something that he couldn't fix. It made him feel powerless. And he hated it.
It didn't take much for Danny to figure what had happened. It was something that he didn't to admit. He couldn't remember who he had been before he was Danyal. Because he was a ghost. Ghosts forget. It was what they did. The longer they were separated from the things that tied them to their human lives, the less they tended to remember. That was just how it was. Which would have been easy for him to accept an hour ago.
The past few days were a blur. All he could really focus on was the inherent feeling in his chest that he was far away from something important. Other than that, the only thing he could really do was sit there and hope that something would start to make sense. He would watch silently as the woman with demonic magic tried to put his brain back together. But everytime something started to click, it would be gone just as soon as he started to have it, slipping away before he could really grab it. Like trying to keep an ocean wave on the sand of a beach when the tide just wants to pull it away again.
Sometimes for brief moments he could remember something important to him. Like a tube of purple lipstick or an old beat up looking PDA. Sometimes a flash of a memory would come up like sitting in a school cafeteria or looking at the stars. Sometimes he could briefly recall what his mother might have sounded like. Calling his name. D- D-ā¦ it started with a D maybe. But it was a good name, his. If only he could keep it.
The hardest part though? Was trying to remember how he felt about the things he remembered. And trying not to feel sad by it when the sudden clarity was taken away again. Did he like the lipstick? Or did it belong to someone wished he could remember? Did he look at the stars often? Maybe he liked them. But he just didnāt know. His momā¦. Was she a good person? Did she love him? He had a feeling he really couldnāt say either way. In the end he didnāt really remember anything. All he knew was that it made him incredibly sad.
He sat in that sadness. It was all he really could do. What else was there to feel? Other than the pull. The one that told him he was too far away. He couldnāt possibly figure out what it meant but he did know that it made him even sadder that he couldnāt do anything about it. Whatever he once was, was reduced to a weightless creature of sorrow. If a creature was even something he could call himself either.
It wasnāt until he saw him that it all fell into place. Damian. His person. His boy. He had watched him grow up and taught him how to communicate and grow. Damian was the boy whose childhood had been taken far too young and when given the opportunity to have one, didnāt know how to want it. The boy he learned to love and care for. His little brother. And now he was all grown up.
Suddenly Dannyās entire life flashed before his eyes. His friends, his family, his death. Everything that came after his death when he found out that staying dead was optional. The fights, the loss, the injuries he hid at school. The nights, the music, the wind in his hair as he floated among the stars. He loved those stars.
He remembered the moment. That flash of light that changed the way he existed. The pain of his body necrotizing away until there was nothing left but his heart. The look on his motherās face when she realized she had shot her baby boy. The way he knew he wouldnāt never be able to ask her to forgive him for what he had become. The way he closed his eyes and let it happen.
He remembered waking up in a form that was new. What was once flesh and bone was now stuffing and beaded eyes, harboring a voice box. He remembered how long it took for him to figure out how to move, how to communicate. How scary it was to try it. He remembered how warm Damianās hugs were when they cuddled and how hard it was to watch the boy cry. He remembered telling him to look out the window at the stars. Danny loved those stars.
It was all at once in a wave of overwhelming emotion that he could do nothing but keep to himself. He was the big brother after all, he had to keep it together. Damianās hugs still felt the same, even with Dannyās body no longer being fluff. He suspected it was because of the boyās desperate need to hold something real. Something he never grew out of.
āDonāt worry about me Damianā¦ besides, thereās nothing we can do,ā the words came out before he could even think. What Constantine had done to him? It was just a simple exorcism. But it wasnāt what was causing his memory problems. It was justā¦ something that happened. But it was going to have to be addressed, he just didn't know how he was going to do it.
Damian pulled away from the hug to look at him and Danny knew his little brother was looking for some sort of sign that he was joking. It made his heart tighten in sadness when he saw it.
āWhat do you mean? What do you mean nothing?ā Damianās voice sounded shakey, like he couldnāt bear to hear it even if Danny told him the answer. Thisā¦ this was going to be hard to explain.
Danny gave him a reassuring smile before turning his attention to Alfred who he knew was waiting just outside of the room to listen. He waved his friend inside the space. It was something they both deserved to hear from him directly.
Alfred paused before entering, standing next to the bed with a look of concern in his face, āDanyal, is everything alright?ā
Danny smiled sadly. No. No it wasnāt.
āI am so grateful that my heart somehow found its way into Damiās teddy. You two gave me a new family when I couldnāt go back to what I used to have. And that meansā¦ so so much to me,ā he started. He wasnāt really sure how to say it. Not really. He wasnāt even sure how he himself was handling it.
āWhat are you saying,ā Damian let go of Danny, taking a step back. Danny knew that he was scared of what he was going to say next. Danny was too.
āBefore I knew you both, I went by another name. It was Danny,ā he smiled, recalling the memories as he began to explain, āIām from a town called Amity Park where I lived and died. When I died though, I found out I also lived. So I lived as a human and a ghost. Like a superhero with an alternate identity.ā
Damianās eyes widened with recognition, āFather and I went to Amity Park to investigate a local vigilante but we never found him. After we left nobody ever saw him again. He went by-ā
āPhantom,ā Alfred finished. Danny could tell that Alfred was beginning to put the pieces together. Despite the limitations of the voicebox, Danny had always chosen his words carefully, trying to explain what had happened to him but it was something that without access to a full vocabulary he couldnāt really express.
āYou used to always say that someone had your heart in her keeping,ā the butler said slowly.
Danny nodded in response, āI meant that literally. Except I had to say she instead of he because that was just how the quote in the book went. Damian had my heart.ā
He reached inside of his chest, pulling out the marble like orb, holding it in his palm carefully. It was cracked, something he had expected was probably the case, as he had been hurt very severely by his mother all those years ago. The green glow was dim and weak, barely there. It was barely holding itself together at all.
Damian and Alfred reacted about as much as Danny had expected. Wide eyes as he casually reached inside of his ghostly form as if he wasnāt removing his only organ. But while Alfred seemed to stare at it with interest, Damian stared with recognition.
āI remember Father taking me to a build a bear to try to bond with me as a kid. Found that in the container of stuffed hearts and I thought it was so odd that it was so different from the others,ā Damian said, his voice getting more gentle, something Danny had only ever seen him do with his animals or occasionally Jon Kent. It was as if the part of him that he reserved for when he was around something he found precious. Which meant he probably wanted to hold it.
Danny trusted Damian completely so he had no issue with that, silently giving his heart to his brother, "I go where it goes, so when it ended up in the teddy bear, I was trapped in that form. At first, I tried to get out you know? But then I started to actually really like you guys." Danny chuckled, trying to lighten the mood a little.
But there wasn't much he could do to put it off any longer, "Like I said... I loved being Danyal. It- It's been so good," he felt his eyes glaze over in ghostly tears, his sorrow finally enveloping him, "But I'm not just a teddy bear. At least I used to be more. I had a family. A best friend, the most beautiful girlfriend. I had the possibility of maybe still getting to grow up even though I was dead. And I missed it."
Danny felt Damian reach out, taking his hand, trying to comfort him as his head hung, tears falling and evaporating before hitting the floor as they aren't anything more than ghostly apparitions. He didn't want them to feel at fault for anything that happened but they needed the context to what he was going to say next.
"And I can't go back because I'm dead now. For real this time. And my core is dying," he looked at Damian, his brother, the kid he learned to love and care for, now in the body of a man, something Danny could never achieve, "The reason I keep forgetting is because everything I was tied to when I was alive is gone. I only have clarity now because of the soul bond. But it wont last for very long, my heart is really weak and Constantine's attempted exorcism finally cracked it enough that I can't fix it," Danny was ugly crying now, his vision blurry with phantom tears.
Damian was wide eyed, the color drained from his face and there was nothing Danny wanted to but take that expression off of his face, his chest pained from the guilt. Alfred's expression was more resigned, as Danny had expected it probably would be, his aged features seeming to accept the information sadly. The silence of it was deafening as they sat in the knowledge.
Danny was dead. And yet, somehow, he was going to become even more so.
After several seconds of uncomfortable silence, Damian spoke, "What happens when a ghost dies?" It wasn't emotional or desperate in tone. It was simply a question asked from acceptance. It was the part that Danny was afraid to face.
"My soul dissolves and I no longer exist," he said quietly, "I'll be truly gone."
"How long do you have," Alfred asked, his tone just as reserved and calm.
It almost scared Danny more that they weren't freaking out. Because he was. Inside. He had never once thought about death enough to be afraid of it. And then when he died, it wasn't permanent. At least not at first. Danny supposed it must have made him cocky. Thinking that he had conquered the only thing that humanity couldn't change, only to fall like Icarus after flying to close to the bright beautiful sun. He had gone too long without his living body that he really truly died along the way. and just when his heart had healed enough to try again, it was broken nearly in two. And all he had left was to watch the pieces finally give way and fall apart.
"A few more weeks if I'm lucky but I don't think my heart has that much left to give. It's... too broken," he sniffled a little, wiping the phantom tears from his eyes.
"Damian, you have my mark. You are my little brother and watching you grow up has made me so happy. I really want you to know that. When I'm gone, your mark will disappear and your soul will be unbound from mine. But there is something I need you to do for me okay?"
