…I know the abandonment issues are getting bad again when I start feeling like I fucked things up when my friend sends me one single message with a period at the end and I’m scared I upset them
Really sorry to everyone who suffered through the fact that I didn't know about the existence of readmore. I can't fix the thread now but the individual posts are better? Sorry I have like a very rough idea of how this site works 😭
Check the: The King and his Red Knight tag to find all the parts
"Go here, Danny. Go then, Danny. Go to a random cemetery in the middle of the night for no reason, Danny." A voice grumbled, accompanied by the sound of sneakers rhythmically tapping stone.
Danny Fenton, currently Phantom, sat on a gravestone, his white hair a beacon in the dark night. There were no stars in the sky for him to gaze upon, their light hidden behind swaths of smog and neon lights playing off the gray clouds.
Clockwork had dumped him here, with no explanation for why. Not that he ever really explained much when he sent Danny off on his tasks. He supposed he should be grateful, at least he was in the same when rather than being transported a thousand years into the past.
"Wait here King Phantom. You will understand in time." Danny mimicked his mentor's voice as he let himself float off the grave he'd been dumped on after Clockwork shoved him out of a portal. His body floated higher until he could flip around, his legs crossing. He sat upside down, his chin in his palm as he glared petulantly at the assembled gravestones surrounding him, his toxic green eyes glowing.
"So far all I've seen is a concerning amount of ecotplasm for a city without a ghost portal and some blob ghosts! How long am I supposed to wait here?" Danny asked the air, and the aforementioned blob ghosts who were hanging off his body, soaking in the ambient ecotoplasm he radiated at all times now.
Neither provided him with an answer to his question and Danny let out a frustrated groan as he lowered his still flipped body to look once more on the gravestone he'd been tasked with waiting on.
Jason Todd, the name read. The dates, too close together, made something in Danny squeeze painfully. He'd been young, barely older than Danny when he stepped into the portal. Only for this teenager there had been no ectoplasm to bind to his dying body and repair the damage of death and force him back into a semblance of life.
"Who were you and why did Clockwork send me to you?" Danny asked the gravestone, one clawed finger tracing the words before he pulled back with a sigh when the gravestone gave him no explanation. The dead didn't always speak, not even to their king.
Turning his body Danny looked over the rest of the cemetery. It was empty, as most usually were this time of night, of the living. There were a few shades wandering around, circling closer to him, drawn by his presence. No full ghosts though, but oddly enough there rarely were in cemeteries. This was where the dead came to rest. To remember, if they wanted to. Cemeteries were sacred spaces to the dead, much as a temple or a church would be for the living who were religious. Ghosts who still clung to life, to their obsessions, did not frequent cemeteries, did not dare trespass and disturb those who had already found their peace.
Danny himself was an oddity. He had never shied from cemeteries, enjoying the peace he found in them, the guarantee of safety offered. And perhaps, he mourned that he himself would never have a gravestone for the living to place their flowers and their tears at. Who would make a grave for someone who was both alive and dead? There would never be a body to bury for him. His human half would continue to live on so long as his ghost core remained and could fuel it.
Maybe that was why he found peace in cemeteries, for all his whining that Clockwork had dumped him here. Cemeteries were for the living and the dead, one of the only places both existed in harmony naturally. For someone who was as much dead as he was alive such a place held a certain degree of belonging for him.
Danny straightened out in the air, letting his body lie above the grave as he folded his arms behind his head and looked up at the covered sky. He complained and whined about this task, but he was secretly glad that Clockwork had given him something to do. Even if it was just 'hang out in a random cemetary'.
Ever since he'd graduated high-school, revealed himself to his parents and discovered how deep prejudice and hate could run, and he'd run away to the Infinite Realms for sanctuary while his friends moved forward with their lives, he'd felt unmoored. A ghost with no haunt. Bored was too light a word for the gaping emptiness he felt in his chest, for the loneliness clawing at him. Clockwork, Wulf, Pandora they could help chip at the ache inside of him but not banish it. Not now that his family, his friends, were spread so far apart and so distant from him.
Not that he resented their choices, their distance, in fact he'd fought for them to do just that, to get out of Amity Park, to go to college, to become more than overworked teen superheroes. Still he missed them, even if he could visit them whenever he wanted. It was becoming clear as time moved forward that the world they belonged to and the one he did were two different things.
Danny Fenton couldn't go to college when his parents had declared him dead. Danny Fenton didn't exist as far as the government was concerned. Danny Phantom couldn't return to Amity when those same parents were waiting to capture him and tear him apart 'molecule by molecule'. Danny Phantom couldn't go back when the GIW were crawling over the town like ants.
So neither Danny Fenton or Danny Phantom returned to Amity after that day. And he made sure they couldnt follow him when he ensured the portal that took his life to function never opened again. He didn't need the portal any longer to get in and out of the Infinite Realms, and it was safer for the ghosts, his subjects, if the temptation of the Fenton portal was gone.
The world of the living was not yet ready to accept that the dead didn't always stay dead. And Danny would keep his people safe until they were.
Danny jolted from his lazing state of reverie when a pulse of emotion rocked through him, the strength of it stealing his breath if he had any to take.
Fear/Trapped/Dark/Fear/Help/HELP pounded into him and Danny frantically flipped around, head swiveling, poisonous green eyes wide as he triedf to locate the source. The emotions, the plea for help, burned his core, his Obsession screamed at him.
Help/SomeonePlease/Dark/Trapped/CANTBREATHE/HELP another wave of messages, of emotions pushed themselves at Danny and this time underneath the onslaught he could hear a rhythmic thudding. Danny looked down, horror filling him when he realized the thudding was coming from under the ground. From the grave he'd been hovering over for an hour now.
Danny flew down, sending back a wave of I'mHere/HelpIsComing/I'mComing to the boy trapped in his own coffin, feeling the intense wave of relief and hope sent back before he dived into the earth as if it wasn't there. Danny paused for a moment when he passed the thick wooden coffin, seeing a boy in the dark with wide, panicked blue eyes and fingers tipped with shredded nails and fresh blood.
"Hey, I'm going to get you out of here, okay?" Danny told the boy, keeping his voice gentle, soft. The boy jolted, fixating on the only source of light, Danny's growing green eyes. Danny hoped his smile came off as calming instead of 'freaky AF' as Tucker liked to call it. He grabbed the boy, Jason, as carefully as he could and then let his intangibility wash over the terrified teen as he lifted them both out of the coffin.
When they emerged from the coffin and the ground Danny set the teen down, leaning him against the gravestone, his own gravestone, and pulled back a bit. The boy was gasping in air as if the fetid, polluted air was the sweetest thing he'd ever tasted.
Danny tilted his head as he watched the boy ground himself. Now that the emotions were leveling out and his Obsession was purring in contentment rather than growling in a frenzy, Danny could feel something off about the boy.
Disregarding the fact that he'd just come back from the dead, of course. But that wasn't the oddest thing Danny had seen in his afterlife. No the boy felt... not like a normal, living human. Not even like an Amity Park resident, who all felt more than slightly liminal. No this boy, this Jason Todd, felt closer to liminal than even Jazz, Tucker or Sam, who were three of the most liminal humans Danny had ever been around.
Jason felt almost...like a ghost. But not. Danny could feel the tickle in his throat that proceeded his ghost sense but the tell-tale mist never emerged. It was as if Jason was...like him. But Danny couldn't sense a core either. Even halfas had cores.
"Who are you?" Jason spoke, breaking Danny from his thoughts and examination. Jason was looking at him with a mix of gratitude and suspicion. Which, fair. Danny had just pulled him from his own coffin and there were so many questions that could stem from all of this, disregarding all the weirdness that was just Danny himself.
"I'm Danny, Danny Phantom. Or just Phantom. I go by either. And you're Jason, right?" Danny asked, smiling at the teen and oops, yeah that was definitely his scary smile based on the slight flinch there. It wasn't his fault his teeth were too sharp now and his lips split a bit too wide.
"How did you know that?" Jason asked, blue eyes narrowing. Danny nodded at the gravestone the boy was leaning against with a raised brow. Jason turned and almost toppled over from the movement. Danny frowned as the boy caught himself on his gravestone. His skin was still pale, too pale, and as Danny watched Jason swayed again.
"Shit. You're fading. You didn't form a core and your body isn't stabilizing." Danny cursed, moving towards the boy who scrambled back, only to be stopped by his grave.
"What the hell are you doing?" Jason asked, hands fisting as he tried to rise only to fall back to the ground when his legs refused to hold his weight.
"Saving your life. The dead aren't supposed to come back. There's always a price to pay, a balance that is struck. Currently, as you are, if I don't get enough ectoplasm in you to form your core, you'll fade and turn into a brain-dead husk." Danny told Jason, tone stern and no nonsense as he grabbed him. Jason made an effort to break free, but it was weak, and even at full strength, he wouldn’t have been able to break Danny's hold. Few in this realm could.
If they had the time, Danny would've approached this situation in a far different manner, but this close he could hear Jason's heartbeat, a weak flutter in his chest, skipping beats as it tried to fuel a body that was past saving. Jason didn't have the time for Danny to approach this gently and kindly, to coax trust out of the teen like he would a feral cat.
Jason had minutes left before his ectoplasm starved body consumed itself trying to make a core and failed because while wherever they were had more ambient ectoplasm than most places, it was far from enough to sustain the birth of a halfa. Maybe if Jason had stayed dead for another year, he'd have naturally formed a core and risen as a proper ghost. But that wasn't what happened, somehow he'd gathered enough to fix his body of whatever wounds or illness had put him in that coffin to begin with and come back to 'life' but without a core to sustain his body he'd be dead, again, in minutes. And Danny was not about to watch while a teenager, another teenager, died.
"How do I know I can trust you?" Jason hissed as Danny pushed his arms down and laid his clawed hands on Jason's chest.
"You don't. But you don't have another choice." Danny said with a shrug. "Now are you going to let me save your life or not?" Danny asked, not moving his hands. He'd save Jason either way but this would be easier if Jason worked with him.
"Fine." Jason spat and Danny smirked as his hands began to glow a toxic green that matched his eyes.
Ectoplasm pooled out of his hands and rushed into Jason, filling him until the boy glowed bright enough to rival the neon lights of the city around them. The green light flared around him like an aura, slowly shrinking but getting impossibly brighter as the glow centralized around his chest until a small glowing ball of green, like a trapped star, blazed from his chest.
Jason gasped, back arching as Danny pulled his hands away and the light vanished under Jason's skin. For a moment Jason's blue eyes burned green and his hair flashed snow white before returning to black, with one single lock of unearthly white left above his forehead. Jason collapsed back against his grave, chest heaving. Danny watched, eyes full of a sad understanding.
"What the fuck was that?" Jason panted out.
"Welcome to the world of the half alive, half dead." Danny said with a smile. "Want to get a burger and talk about it?" He asked, standing up and dusting off his hands.
"Make it a chili dog and you've got a deal."
~~~~~
Fixed some typos added some lines
Maybe I'll continue this AU. Maybe not. This scene was in my head for days and I wanted to share
This is simply an improved thread where I implement the readmore feature to eliminate the wall of text. (I can learn, see?)
Jason snuck glances out of his peripherals at the strange...man? Teen? Alien? Hero? Villain? Demon? Eldritch abomination here to consume his soul? As he devoured his sixth chili dog. Luckily the... Danny had gotten enough chili dogs to feed a small army because apparently coming back from the goddamn dead worked up an appetite. Danny was matching his pace for eating, soon they'd put a speedster to shame with the sheer amount of calories they were intaking. Jason didn't care, he'd just been dead he'd eat himself into a food coma if he liked, fuck you very much.
This night had been...weird. On a scale from 'Dick dancing in his undies down the hall to I Need A Hero' to 'Gotham assuming it was just a natural eventuality for Batman to become a cannibal' this was definitely at 'Alfred dancing to the macarena because it was Jason's first birthday at the manor and he begged' which was to say, weird as shit but oddly enough not the weirdest thing to happen to him. Which really said something about life as a teenage vigilante when dying and coming back to life and being saved? By an eldritch demon teenager wasn't his #1 weirdest thing to happen to him. Top 5 though, for damn sure.
Danny hadn't said much in way of an explanation for... anything at all since the cemetary when he'd filled Jason with that glowing green shit. It couldn't be bad though, because Jason had never felt better. He definitely didn't feel like he'd just been dead, even if he knew his heart was beating far too slowly to be healthy and breathing suddenly felt optional. But 10/10 would let a strange eldritch being give him a shot of green soul expresso again.
Once Jason had agreed to 'talk' to Danny the older teen had grabbed him, again, and really did the other boy have no concept of personal space? Jason had been ready to, forcibly, introduce him to the idea when Danny had picked him up, as if he weighed absolutely fucking nothing, and then zipped off into the night. Jason had been too stunned, and secretly amazed, by the experience to complain at that point.
It wasn't the first time he'd flown by super-proxy, but never before had he felt like gravity...simply didn't apply. He'd been shaken from his shock by Danny asking him the directions to the best chilidog stand in 'this starless smog ridden city', which, accurate, but rude. This was Jason's starless smog ridden city and it might be a shithole but it was his shithole thank you very fucking much. But Jason had to play GPS for whatever odd definitely not human being had decided to inprint on him and hadn't had a chance to say that.
Jason knew, intellectually, that he should be far more wary of Danny than he was. His Bat training should've had him sucker punching the man as soon as his guard lowered and getting the hell away. But while he knew he should, Jason really didnt... want to. Danny, despite being a complete unknown felt... safe to Jason. In a way few people ever did.
Even Bruce didn't radiate the same Calm/Safe/Protected feeling Danny did. And for a kid who had spent the majority of his life feeling anything but those things, Jason would admit he didn't want to let go of the sensation any time soon. Danny had also saved him from having to dig himself out of his own grave and quite probably saved his life, so sucker punching him would be a poor way to repay him and Alfred had taught him better than that.
There was also the issue of... Jason didn't have anywhere else to go, if he ran from Danny. The thought of returning to the manor, to Bruce, to the man who had looked at him and seen a killer rather than believing the words of the son he claimed to love, who had taken Robin from him, who had left him to die. Who hadn't saved him. It... he couldn't. Not now. Not when the memories of how he had ended up in the coffin were too fresh. Maybe... one day, when the very thought of the man he'd called dad didn't make something twist and ache and burn inside of him.
"So." Danny spoke up as he finished what was probably his tenth chili dog, both of them having eaten their way through the entire supply Danny had bought during Jason's musings. Which had been an experience as Jason hadn't realized demon eldritch teens kept Earth currency on them, but hey, you learn new shit every day.
Jason turned his head to look at the man, his savior. They were sitting on a rooftop for lack of any other private area to talk and eat this late at night. Though Jason was the only one sitting on the rooftop, Danny was just floating above it, occasionally flipping upside down, truly as if gravity meant nothing to him.
"I'm sure you have a lot of questions for me. Sadly I left my 'Congratulations, you're part of a very exclusive race of beings, current population: 4. Here's what that means' PowerPoint at home. And truthfully, I've never had to explain to another halfa what it means to be a halfa before. So it might be easiest if you ask me questions and I answer." Danny said, smiling a bit bashfully as he rubbed a clawed hand at his neck with a shrug.
Jason took a moment to regard the other teen. Danny truly only looked a couple years older than him, probably Dick's age, and Jason suddenly had the feeling Danny was as lost and unsure as he was. It was comforting, and certainly helped tip the scales in Jason's mind away from 'probably a villain or evil entity' because Danny's appearance did not lend one towards thinking 'hero' at first glance. For all he wore a reinforced suit reminiscent of a hero costume complete with a stylized logo on it. His unearthly white hair that floated around his head as if he was underwater, his luminescent green eyes that looked poisonous, his claw tipped hands, fanged too-wide smile, sharply pointed ears and slightly green tinged skin all looked a little too menacing to make on assume 'yup thats a hero'.
"Why were you at the cemetary, at my grave?" Jason asked his first question, the one that had been rattling in his head since the panic and confusion had faded.
"Ah that's an easy one. My mentor, Clockwork, he likes to send me to places and times where I need to intervene to 'protect the timestream'. He dropped me off on top of your grave and told me to wait. So I did." Danny responded with a shrug and a 'what can you do?' smile, as if his answer didn't spawn more questions than it answered. Jason would get to those later.
"What did you do to me?" Jason asked next, keeping himself on track. Bruce had trained him for interrogations, and he'd make use of those skills now, when he was in desperate need of information with a source in front of him ready to spill.
"I saved your life. In a way, but I also sort of killed you?" Danny said, waving his hand in a 'so-so' motion as he grimaced. Jason raised his brow, because what the fuck. He knew that statement should send him into a panic but the longer he spent around Danny the harder it was to get upset, the calm the older teen radiated for him kept him relaxed, which was also a concern.
"Ah, yeah, that sounded bad, didn't it?" Danny asked with a wry chuckle.
"It really fucking did." Jason said, voice deadpan.
"So basically, you weren't really fully alive when you came back. I think you were in the process of becoming a ghost. Had you continued accumulating ambient ecotoplasm for about another year or so, you would've risen as one. But you didn't. For whatever reason, and however the fuck, you accumulated enough ectoplasm to fix your body and 'restart' it." Danny explained, leaning forward, green eyes sparkling as he fell into explaining something that made abso-fucking-lutely no sense to Jason. Ghosts? Ectoplasm? More questions for the ever growing list.
"But your body was dead, you were dead. And death does not like to release her hold on her children so easily to life. So when you came back prematurely and in your body to boot, your body was trying desperately to make a core. The only thing that can give the dead an existence. But cores need ectoplasm to form, and a lot of it to sustain a human body on top of it. There simply wasn't enough ambient ectoplasm around to fuel it and your body was eating itself to fuel the creation. It would've killed you in minutes, left you a vegetable, had you not gotten a massive dose of ectoplasm. So I gave you what you needed. You now have a core, which will sustain your human body and ghost half for as long as it remains whole. So you're now both alive, and dead. Or a halfa as we're referred to in the Infinite Realms." Danny said, doing little jazz hands and shooting off tiny blasts of green energy from his palms like mini fireworks.
"Congratulations on becoming effectively immortal!" Danny finished as Jason blinked owlishly at him. He was fairly certain he'd heard every word Danny said but he understood maybe... 65% of that speech.
"So let me see if I have this right." Jason said slowly as Danny nodded.
"I was dead." Jason stopped and looked at Danny for confirmation. The older teen seemed content with letting Jason parrot back his words and he smiled and nodded.
"I came back to life but not exactly. I needed some ecto-bullshit but didn't have enough of it?" Jason continued.
"Ectoplasm. It's like blood, food, and coffee all in one for ghosts and the ghostly adjacent." Danny clarified, and Jason hummed in acknowledgment.
"You gave me a shot of the soul expresso, and turned me into a... lich?" Jason finished, voice distinctly high.
"Oh, Ancients no. We are not lichs. A halfa is half human, half ghost. The perfect balance between life and death, a child of both. No decaying bodies and penchants for raising skeletal armies here." Danny hastened to correct, hands waving in front of him as he obviously sought to calm Jason.
"Well... I mean unless you're Vlad but he's a fruit loop." Danny muttered, frowning slightly before shaking his head, "but we won't talk about him right now." He finished and Jason... was going to leave that the fuck alone.
"And you're... like me?" Jason asked, voice returning to a normal register as the calm Danny radiated soothed the panic he'd experienced over possibly being a lich.
"Yeah, all it took was enough electricity to short out a city block and a portal to another realm opening through me and boom! Instant halfa!" Danny said with a grin as he raised his left arm, the white glove on it vanishing to reveal a clawed hand covered in glowing green lichtenburg scars that disappeared under the black of his suit. Jason wondered how far they went.
The glove rematerialized as Danny put his hand down, still grinning as if he hadn't just described a painful and torturous way to die. Was a lackadaisical attitude towards one's own death a Ghost thing or a Danny thing? Then again, Jason had no idea how long Danny had been a halfa, for all he looked barely legal. Jason didn't know how many years it would take for him to joke about his death. He pushed memories of bones breaking, maniacal laughter and burning pain with a last thought of 'he didn't come' down.
"What...do I do now?" Jason asked, the words coming out as a surprise to him. Perhaps spurred by thoughts of his own death. Jason had so many other questions he wanted to ask, but none felt as important as that one. What was he going to do with this second chance? Where would he go?
"Well," Danny started, grin fading and face going solemn as he lowered his floating body closer to the roof and closer to Jason, but not within his personal space. So he did know the meaning of it.
"You can come with me, back to the Infinite Realms. Me and my mentors and court can help you get used to your new abilities, your new existence, safely. Being a halfa, it's not easy. Especially if you do it on your own. But you don't have to be alone, if you don't want to be. If you want to stay here, that's fine. I can check in on you and help you adjust. But in the Infinity Realms, you'll be surrounded by people who understand what you're going through, who can guide and train you. And once you have a handle on your new existence, we can help you do whatever you want." Danny offered, voice infinitely gentle and soft as he looked at Jason with green eyes that seemed to gaze into his very soul and saw something in it that resonated with him. Something that made Danny smile a soft, kind, understanding smile that spoke of a deep empathy, of a knowing. As if he'd been right where Jason was. Confused, his world suddenly turned upside down and leaving him lost at sea. Danny stretched out a hand, an offering of guidance, of companionship, of aid and judgment free acceptance, of a home where he would belong.
For a moment Jason was reminded of a night not unlike this one where a street rat crouched by the tires of a superheroes car and was offered a similar choice, a similar chance.
Jason had a feeling this offer would be different though. He had a feeling if he took Danny's hand there would be no judgement darkening those viridian eyes. No doubt marring the promises he spoke. No backs callously turned on him when he needed a warm embrace the most. Somehow, he knew with a bone deep certainty that resonated in some new part of him, that once Danny decided someone was 'his' there was no power in this world or the next that could ever change that or shake his faith.
He had a feeling if he took Danny's hand there would never again be a 'too late' or 'he didn't come'. He'd never be allowed to fall if he took the hand held out to him, his wings clipped too early.
The choice was an easy one to make. The choice between solitude and loneliness, stuck in a city, in a world that had left him to die, alone, broken and bleeding. Or to take the offer of freely given aid and belonging. Even without the feeling inside of him pushing, begging him to grasp onto Danny and follow him wherever he led.
"I'll go with you." Jason said, grasping on to Danny's clawed hand tightly, with all the desperation of a child who'd been abandoned far too many times. Danny smiled at him, all sharp teeth and a bit too wide for comfort but so filled with happiness, and relief and understanding and belonging that Jason couldn't help returning the smile.
"Let's go home then." Danny said and reached out his free hand, dragging a claw through the air and leaving a swirling portal of green in its wake. Jason barely had time to take a breath before Danny tugged him through, and they left Gotham behind, nothing but a fading memory of green light and abandoned chilidog containers to mark their passing.
"Fucking goddamn shitnuggets!" Danny stifled a chuckle at the loud swearing he could hear in the next room over.
Getting Jason accustomed to life in the Infinite Realms was... perhaps not what he would call easy. Coupled with teaching the younger teen how to control his powers...well suffice to say Danny had heard more swears than he thought existed and his own swearing vocabulary was growing daily.
As Jason was still a fledgling halfa by all accounts Danny had made the executive decision to move him into the castle that he spent most of his afterlife living in. Not his first, second, or hell even his 257th choice in homes but apparently there were certain expectations when one became a sovereign to an entire race of entities.
With how many rooms Jason had inadvertently, or at times purposefully, destroyed as he adjusted Danny was beginning to think living in a castle with, functionally, unlimited rooms was a good idea. Space and physics meant little in the Ghost Zone and the castle had yet to run out of rooms for Danny and the newest halfa to move to each time Jason lost control. It did make coming up with a working map of the castle a lost cause, but that was Tucker's pet project and not Danny's, so not his problem.
Danny stood up, cracking his neck as he gave his most recent project a once over. In his escape from the Fenton household he'd ransacked their armory, and their digital drives. Whatever he couldn't grab to take with him, he'd destroyed as much as possible.
Originally doing so had been a backup plan, an eventuality he'd desperately hoped he wouldn't have to enact. But wishes were only worth anything is Desiree was around to hear them, and Danny ended up having to fall back on the plan he had never wanted to use. The plan being: Swipe all the Fenton tech he could, grab the hard drives that Tucker routinely backed up the entire contents of the Fenton computers to, install the kill drive Tucker made to said Fenton computers so all digital files were completely wiped, destroy whatever he couldn't take and make sure the Fenton portal never opened again.
It was called plan Burned Bridges. And when Danny and his team had made it, all of them had hoped it would never be used.
However, it meant his work room in the castle, whichever room it was for the day, was always filled with a multitude of Fenton gadgets and weapons in various states of repair and dismantlement. Printed blueprints were taped to every available wall and often even the ceiling and floor.
Danny rationalized the time he spent dismantling, building and, more often than not, modifying the various Fenton tech as his duty, as the Ghost King, to know every threat to his people, and how to counter it.
The real reason, the one that Danny hardly admitted to himself, was that it made him feel a bit closer to who he was. To the loved son he used to be, before he died. Before he became someone his own parents hated. He'd spent hours in the lab with his parents, listening as they build new inventions and showed him how they worked, or more realistically how they didn't.
Mom Maddie used to joke that Danny was born with a screwdriver in his hand, and even had baby pictures of Danny waving a small Phillips head around.
Working with his parents in the lab used to be the only way Danny could spend time with them. He wasn't sure if he had a passion for inventing and tinkering or if it was something he developed as a survival mechanism to ensure he got the attention he craved as a child. Whatever the source, Danny now had something akin to a need to work with his hands, to take apart things and put them back together, oftentimes better than they had been before.
Danny frowned at the dismantled Fenton Thermos. He was trying to streamline the design, make it smaller, more compact and possibly modify the form entirely. He loved the thermos but it didn't exactly scream 'respect me' when he used it in a fight. He'd been laughed at more times than he could count by other ghosts, until they experienced the wonders of Soup Time, that is. Still a different, and sturdier, form could be beneficial. He was still nervous about Dan breaking free of his own thermos one day, so a better, stronger, containment method would be wise to make.
"Bitchtits and fuckwaffles!" Jason's voice cursed and Danny shook his head with a smirk as he left the work room to see what trouble Jason had gotten into today.
When he opened the door to Jason's current room he was met with the amusing image of Jason with his head stuck in a desk, one arm phased through beside his head up to the elbow, the other pushing frantically at the wood while his legs kicked in the air.
"Need some help? You look like you're stuck." Danny asked from the doorway, trying to keep himself from laughing.
To help Jasom get used to his intangibility, Danny had brought some furniture from the living realm to the Ghost Zone, much to Walker's general annoyance. Danny remembered how often he'd phased through furniture on accident. Waking up in a different room, dropping beakers, getting different parts of his body stuck in awkward places.
Of all the ghost abilities, intangibility was both the most versatile, but it was also the hardest to control for a new halfa. So obviously, it was what Danny was training Jason on first. That and learning to transform to his ghost half, which Jason was struggling with. It'd only been roughly two weeks since Jason came back to life, though, and his circumstances were different from Danny's, which he kept in mind. It had taken months for Danny to get a handle on his own powers, until more kept popping up and restarting the cycle. Jason still seemed to have access to ghost powers in his human form, which was promising as it was the same for Danny, and had already started to show many of the first few every ghost shared. As evidenced by his current situation.
"I can't see you, but I know you're smirking at me, you undead twatmonkey. Help me dammit!" Jason growled at Danny.
"It's king undead twatmonkey to you." Danny retorted, smirk widening.
Jason had quickly grown more comfortable around him, and Danny had discovered that insults and curses were just how Jason communicated. Danny would admit he enjoyed the banter, even if Jason didn't properly appreciate his puns.
"It's going to be king double dead twatmonkey if you don't get my damn head out of this stupid fucking desk!" Jason threatened, raising his still free hand to flip off Danny.
"Fine, fine, don't get your tail in a twist." Danny conceded, walking to Jason and placing a hand on his shoulder, letting his own intangibility wash over Jason before he pulled the teen out of the desk.
"I don't have a damn tail." Jason grumbled as Danny released him, and he settled on the chair, glaring at the desk as if it had orchestrated this entire ordeal specifically to embarass Jason.
"Not yet, but when you transform you will." Danny said, illustrating his point by letting his lower half morph into a tail.
"I still can't transform." Jason huffed, crossing his arms.
Danny let his smirk drop as he sensed the emotions Jason was trying to hide. He still hadn't perfected hiding those from other ghosts. All ghosts had some level of empathy, some ghosts, like Danny, had a stronger version of it. But all ghosts had it to one degree or another.
Empathy was such a universal ability amongst ghosts that emotions themselves were an almost integral part of ghost language. Danny had his theories about ghosts, emotions, and empathy. Perhaps it was because most ghosts formed from strong emotions imprinted on ectoplasm, or because they felt something so strongly when they died, it fueled their forming a ghost. At their base, ghosts were nothing more than a strong emotion, for what was an Obsession but an ideal, a task, an action one had such a atrong emotional connecrion to that it tranacended even death itself? Whatever it was, ghosts were more in tune with both their own emotions and others, and in Danny's opinion, they felt far more potently than humans.
Regardless, right now Jason was feeling insecure. Uncertain and afraid. Unworthy/Failure/Worthless/NotEnough/NeverEnough wafted in the ectoplasm rich air between them, and Danny let his tail wrap around Jason's shoulders in a facsimile of a hug. Jason had never said anything, but Danny had quickly gotten a sense that the younger teen was afraid if he didn't do well enough, if he failed, that Danny would abandon him.
Danny would never, but he knew the only way for Jason to understand that was by showing him. Words meant little to someone who had undoubtedly heard them before only for others' actions to prove them nothing more than lies.
Danny knew all too well how easily words could be betrayed by actions. How quickly love could turn to hate, promises of protection into threats against your life. Danny let his own emotions fill him and leak into the air. Comfort/Belonging/Acceptance/Patience was a silent message he sent to Jason, and he felt the younger teen relax minutely under his tail.
"Have you considered using 'Going Ghost'? It helped me focus a lot when I was starting." Danny offered the advice for what was probably the 10th time.
"I'm not using your stupid ass catch phrase. It makes you sound like a massive dork." Jason asserted, wrinkling his nose. Danny snorted and shoved Jason lightly.
"I'll have you know my catchphrases are the epitome of cool." Danny said, pushing a wave of cold air at Jason with the word 'cool'. Jason grimaced at the pun.
"What if I can't? What if there's something-something wrong with me? What if I'm defective?" Jason finally said, fidgeting with his hands.
His body flickered in and out of visibility, a testament to his anxiety and how badly it was affecting him. Danny knew well that in the early days of being a halfa one's emotions could easily run rampant and cause ability misfires. He was just thankful that right now, it was insecurity and anxiety that had a hold of Jason and not anger or rage. The fewer ecto-blasts flying around the better, at least for the longevity of the room.
"You're not defective, Jason. It took me awhile to get the hang of transforming too. My circumstances were vastly different, and my issue was more getting unexpectedly turned into my ghost half or back into my human half when I least expected it. But issues with transforming seem to be the norm for halfas." Danny soothed the younger teen. He himself wasn't sure why Jason had yet to transform, but he had a few theories in mind.
Danny, when he had first died, had been forced into a constant state of fight or flight. Between the ghosts that could then freely move between Realms and wreak untold mayhem, and his own home filled with weaponry designed to kill him, again, and his parents ever ready to capture and dissect him, Danny's 'birth' as a halfa was filled with danger. He needed his ghost half to survive. Jason, however, was as safe as a new halfa could be. There were no scientists running around with ecto-guns taking pot shots at him, no Lunch Lady trying to drown him in a typhoon of meat. To put it simply, Jason didn't have a dire need for his ghost half.
The only other halfa who could perhaps give Danny better insight into Jason's path as a halfa would be Vlad. His transformation into a halfa had been a slow thing, not filled with deadly encounters and life threatening situations. But they were far from the point of desperation that would make Danny willing to call on that fruitloop.
Still, if Danny wanted to prove his hypothesis that danger, or the lack of it, was what could trigger a new halfa's transformation the easiest he'd need more data. In a carefully controlled environment, but with enough risk that Jason honestly felt he was in danger. Without actually putting him at risk, because Danny refused to do that. His Obsession would never let him purposefully place someone in harms way.
"How about we go out? Get some fresh air? You haven't met any of the denizens of the Infinite Realms yet," Danny changed the topic, seemingly at random.
Jason perked up from where he'd been glaring at his curled fists. Danny's words of comfort had soothed him somewhat but there was still that niggling doubt in his aura that said it would take far more than a few words to banish his doubts and fears.
"I was wondering if this weird ass world even had other ghosts or if it was just us." Jason grumbled as he stood, shaking off Danny's tail. Danny held out his hand and let Jason take it before pulling them both into the air and flying out of the room and towards the doors of the castle.
"I asked everyone to leave me alone for a few weeks. Some of the ghosts here are... weird." Danny explained sheepishly.
He hadn't thought it would be a good idea for someone like Skulker to come barging in for their once monthly 'hunt the halfa' game. It was no longer an actual attempt to kill Danny, but it was closer to a hangout between friends. Just. In the way of ghosts, which was to say, often including a fight. And Jason certainly didn't deserve to have Kitty or Johnny barreling in because of their latest breakup, the younger teen would have thought they were under attack!
Jazz would be so proud, look at him being mindful of someone else's mental health!
"Coming from you that's saying a lot." Jason told him, but his attention was on the swirling world around them. Jason's eyes were wide as he took in the vast Infinite Realms in all its green and purple glory.
"I'll have you know I'm practically normal by ghost standards." Danny huffed in mock-offense. Jason gave him a look that said he doubted that.
"Don't you have like, king duties or whatever you're supposed to be doing?" Jason asked him as they swooped around floating doors and islands, Danny waving occasionally at ghosts he saw. None approached, though many watched with interest.
Rumors spread fast in the Ghost Zone. The dead were the worst gossips. Everyone had heard by now that there was a new halfa under the King's protection. It was only because Danny had made it a royal decree that he was to be left alone that no curious ghosts had come by to visit and snoop.
"Sort of. But the fun thing about the dead is there's no rush to get anything done. We literally have eternity. A few weeks break from it all is a blink for most ghosts." Danny said with a shrug.
Besides, if there was something of extreme, world ending importance he needed to do, Clockwork would stop by and shove him through a portal. A couple thousand years of paperwork could wait a few more weeks.
"So where, exactly, are we going?" Jason asked. The younger teen was quite obviously resisting the urge to point at every door and island and ask about them. When they had first returned to the Zone, Danny had quite thoroughly warned Jason to never open any door or visit any islands without him, informing him that ghosts were very territorial of their haunts and didn't take kindly to uninvited guests.
"To visit a friend of mine." Danny said with a secretive smile.
"What's with that smug look? Danny? What the fuck are you planning?" Jason demanded, Danny laughed, the eerie noise bouncing around them as he shook his head. They took a sharp right and Skulker's island appeared before them, the skull topping it leering out into the Zone with a baleful red gaze.
"Danny? What is this place? It looks creepy as hell. Don't tell me we're stopping here at bargain bin Skull Island." Jason said as they slowed, and Danny gently lowered Jason to the ground.
"Wait here for me, okay? I need to let Skulker know we're visiting so he doesn't assume were intruders and try to shoot us." Danny said, patting Jason on the shoulder before flying off, leaving the younger teen behind.
"Danny! Asshole don't leave me here! Motherfucker get back over here! And what was that about getting shot? Get back here, you eldritch shithead!" Jason yelled at him, but Danny just waved before shooting off towards the skull, Jason's yells falling off behind him.
"Hey Skulker! You in here?" Danny called out as he slipped through one of the eyes.
A blast of energy passed by his head close enough to ruffle his hair, and Danny followed the trajectory to see a gun fold back into Skulker's suit. The hunter ghost was down an arm as he worked on the appendage, probably trying to fit in a cannon or more missiles if Danny had to guess.
"Child king, have you come to donate your pelt to my collection?" Skulker asked, not even looking up at Danny as he floated closer. The potshot had been his way of saying hello.
"Not today, Skulker. I actually have a proposition for you." Danny said as he leaned close to the arm Skulker was working on to see what he was doing. Yup, looked like a new canon.
"Then tell me, child king, before I shoot you. I do not have time for your drabble." Skulker told him as he lifted the improved arm and reconnected it to his suit.
"So I have a new halfa I'm helping. He's having issues transforming, and I think maybe a little good old fashioned, fear for his life might trigger it. So I thought maybe you could play a little game of tag with him." Danny explained as he pulled back and crossed his legs in the air.
"Without actually trying to kill him," Danny added when Skulker's grin got a little too predatory. Skulker frowned and crossed his arms, regarding Danny.
"And why should I agree, or not simply hunt him and add his pelt to my collection?" Skulker asked, "You may be protected as the king, but your charge is not the same." Skulker added.
"Because he is under my protection Skulker, and any ghost who harms him will answer to me." Danny growled.
As he spoke, a burning crown appeared above his head, even as a long cloak made of the cosmos itself settled around his shoulders. Reinforced hazmat material was replaced with pitch black armor and a glowing ring burned on his hands. Gone was Danny Phantom, teenage halfa superhero. Now before Skulker stood King Phantom, The Star King, Benevolent King Of The Infinite Realms, Defeater Of Paraiah Dark. Skulker bowed his head, kneeling before Danny as his aura blanketed the room, demanding obedience.
"Understood, my king." Skulker intoned, not willing to look up and meet glowing green eyes.
For a moment, the aura surrounding them grew until it was suffocating, a reminder of the power Danny wielded. Then, in a blink, it was gone, and Danny was once more just a teenager in a reinforced hazmat suit.
"Great! You get to satisfy your Obesssion, Jason potentially gets to transform, or at the very least gets some exercise and I get some quality entertainment. Everyone wins!" Danny said, clapping his hands together with a chuckle and a grin, as if he had not just threatened Skulker with the end of his very existence.
"Then it sounds like it's time to begin the hunt." Skulker said, standing and sharing a smile with Danny, as if the threat against him had been nothing of concern. And for a ghost it wasn't.
If anything, Danny's show of power was comforting, a reminder that the king who ruled them was as strong and able to protect and lead them, as ever. Ghosts could not abide a weak king, could not survive one. So, they tested him, always, to ensure he'd be able to keep them and their realm safe. If he could not defeat the denizens of his own world, what hope did he have against those in the living realm who wished to eradicate their world?
"Give me five seconds to find a good place to watch and then come out guns blazing!" Danny ordered with an excited smile as he zipped out of the skull to find a place to sit and watch.
Jason would probably be upset when he figured out what Danny had done, but it was time for the halfa to learn how things worked in the Ghost Zone. And he'd be safe, Danny would make sure of it. And if he did transform, well then he'd probably forget about being mad.
"Danny I know you're fucking watching you undead shithead! When I get my hands on you, you won't be 'half' alive! You'll be extra fucking dead!" Jason yelled out as he ducked under a tree, narrowly avoiding an honest to fucking God missile.
Who knew ghosts had missiles? Not Jason, that's for damn sure. Why did this Robo-cop reject get fucking missiles, and a canon and shoulder guns and all Jason got was his head stuck in a damn desk? Who did he talk to about his death package because he wasn't informed sweet ass guns were an option!
Jason slid across the ground, hand grasping a tree trunk and forcing his body to make a sharp turn as he avoided a volley of shots from the over weaponized flaming trash can on his tail. Batman on a fucking stick, he'd thought Gotham rogues were freaky shits but if all ghosts were like fire Mohawk here then he was definitely out of his depth. At least the Riddler never had a built in jetpack!
"Danny! This isn't funny anymore!" Jason shouted as he dived for cover. A stinging blast cut through the jacket he was wearing, leaving a throbbing burn in its wake.
"I liked that jacket you asshat!" Jason snarled over his now injured shoulder as he dodged yet another shot.
"The child king can't help you now, halfa child. Now stay still so I can ensure your pelt is not too damaged before I remove it from you." Big and robotic told him, grinning as he lifted his arm to reveal yet another goddamn gun. How many did he have? And where could Jason get some? Was there some kind of ghost gun store?
"Where is he? Did you do something to him?" Jason demanded, turning on his heel to face the other ghost. Anger flared in his chest, burning him, at the thought of this pile of scrap hurting Danny.
"I did always want the child king's pelt above my mantle." The over weaponized tin-man told him, mouth spreading in a predatory grin. Something in Jason snapped and he saw green.
Protect. Protect. Protect. Justice. Justice. Justice. Pounded inside of Jason, a faster tempo than his slowed heart. Something inside of him surged, pushing, demanding and Jason let it wash over him.
White light covered Jason, blinding him for a moment. When it cleared Robo-bitch was still standing there, though his gun had lowered slightly as he stared. Jason didn't care, the overwhelming need to protect, to see justice done, drove him on. His feet left the ground as he flung himself at the other ghost, gravity a forgotten concept as his fist connected with the flaming tin-can the other ghost called a face.
The ghost rocked back from the force of the unexpected attack, arms flailing as he sought to regain balance. Jason didn't give him the courtesy of finding it as he grabbed onto the metal monstrosity's arm with both hands, feet planting on his chest as he heaved. Metal screamed and the hunter's body went one way while Jason and the detached arm went another.
Jason let out a feral grin as he flipped through the air, finding his balance far faster than the armless wonder. He had Dick to thank for his fast reflexes in a fight. Jason hefted the arm, looking over it for a second before he readjusted and started tapping on it until a god's honest damn canon popped out, pointed straight at the one armed gun toting idiot who decided today was the day to fuck around and find out.
"Now tell me where Danny is or say hello to my little friend." Jason hissed, tightening his hold on the arm as the canon lit up with energy, priming to fire.
"You think you can hurt me with my own weapon, ghost child?" Cyberpunk wannabe asked, tone patronizing as he looked down on Jason.
"I don't think, Gundam cosplay, I know. And if you won't tell me what I want to fucking know, I'll beat it out of whatever scraps are left of you when I'm done!" Jason snarled, firing the canon.
The force propelled him back through the air, but it struck true, leaving a sizeable hole in the tin man's edge lord son's chest. Jason capitalized on the shock the other ghost seemed to be under and raced at him, pulling back the arm and using it as an improvised bludgeoning weapon.
The arm was no crowbar, but it did the trick.
In a move that would make any pro-baseball player proud, Jason swung the arm with all the force a teenage boy filled with angst and righteous anger could muster. Which was to say, a considerable amount. Scrap yard went flying, body carving a sizeable trench in the ground of his island. Jason chased after him, barely giving him a moment to lift his dazed head before his commandeered arm pimp slapped him through two trees and halfway across the island of questionable design choices.
"Are you going to tell me where Danny is, you amalgamation of misfit guns, or do I need to keep beating the shit out of you with your own arm?" Jason demanded as his feet slammed into the brutalized chest of the little robot who couldn't. He waved the arm around to illustrate his point, more than ready to continue using it to beat its previous owner further into submission.
"The child king made a good choice in bringing you here. You show far more promise than even he did in our first battle." Dead and apparently utterly brain dead responded, smiling up at Jason of all things as if his body wasn't sending out concerning sparks of green energy, missing an arm and currently sporting a head sized hole in his chest.
Jesus christ on a cracker, ghosts were a whole new breed of utterly insane and Batman really did not train him for this shit. He almost missed the Gotham rogues, they at least would be properly afraid if he beat the everloving fuck out of them with their own arm.
"You are worthy prey for the greatest hunter, Skulker. I like you, ghost child." Punk rock science fair project announced and Jason grimaced.
"Dude, did you just refer to yourself in the third person? Seriously?" Jason demanded, lifting the arm and preparing to smack some intelligence into the undead armory. He obviously didn't have any braincells left, so some more head trauma couldn't make it worse.
"Alright, I think you've damaged Skulker enough for one afternoon." A familiar voice called out seconds before Jason's new favorite weapon was pulled from his hands as easily as taking a toy from a baby. Jason whipped around and saw Danny floating behind him, holding the arm in one hand a bowl of... fucking popcorn?! In the other.
"Thanks for the help Skulker, sorry about the damage to your suit but I appreciate you going easy on Jason. I'll drop off some extra weapons soon, alright?" Danny addressed the one man army under Jason.
"It is fine, child king. I needed to make some upgrades to my suit. And it was worth it to find a worthy adversary." The Terminator's secret love child said, and Jason yelped as he was easily flung off of the ghost, Skulker? And sent flying. He caught himself in the air and glared at the two ghosts.
"What the fuckity fuck Danny?!" Jason demanded, marching up to Danny who had tossed the stolen arm back to its original owner.
"Hey Jason, look down." Danny responded with a shit eating grin.
Jason's eyes narrowed, but he couldn't resist looking down, pausing his attempted murder. Jason yelped again as he realized he was currently floating several yards off the ground. Jason scrambled, panicking that he'd fall and flailing in the air for a moment until he realized he was floating. On his own. His fear and surprise morphed to wonder as he looked down at himself.
He was dressed in his Robin costume, but different. The color pallette had been washed out, turned to black, white and red. The cape was a bright, snow white, the main body retained it's blood red coloring, with black and white accents, and the green sleeves, tights, boots and gloves were now pitch black. Jason raised a gloved hand and felt at his face, fingers coming in contact with a familiar domino mask.
Jason wasn't sure what to feel. Elation and excitement that he'd finally accessed his ghost form. Fear, anguish, and grief that he was dressed in the costume he died in. The warring emotions swirled inside of him as his hands dropped, and he looked to Danny, feeling lost and overwhelmed.
"Yeah, your ghost form takes on the clothes you died in. It can be... a lot at first." Danny said softly, moving closer to him and laying a comforting hand in his shoulder.
Somehow, Danny always seemed to pick up on how Jason was feeling and knew exactly what to say. Perhaps because he, more than anyone else, knew exactly what Jaspn was feeling because he'd gone through the same thing himself. Jason looked over the older teen and noted, again, that he was wearing a reinforced hazmat suit. Jason had never considered it before, but had that been what Danny died in?
Hazmat suit. Electricity. Portal. Danny had died in a lab accident.
Jason had never asked more about how Danny died, for all the other boy had readily offered the information up without hesitation. Now he thought he had a clearer picture of how it happened.
Jason wasn't sure if he wanted the information he had now.
"If you don't like it, you can change it. The fun thing about being a ghost is that we are basically balls of ectoplasm around a core. You're not limited to how you looked in life. Your ectoplasm will shift to fit whatever you most want it to, whatever feels the most like you. When we first die, how we looked in that moment has the strongest emotional connection for us, and so that's our first form. But it doesn't have to be permanent." Danny explained to him, voice taking on a soothing lilt as he spoke.
He motioned at his own body, and after a moment, the hazmat suit vanished, to be replaced by void black armor, sparkling with what looked like stars and edged with green tinted frost.
"See? Ghosts can look, can be, whoever they want. It's your afterlife. Make it into whatever you wish." Danny told him as the armor faded to be replaced by the familiar hazmat suit with the stylized emblem on the chest.
"If the ghost child wishes, I would offer my assistance in helping him mold a suitable form to better fit that of worthy prey." Skulker chimed in from where he was fiddling with his arm, trying to reattached the ripped appendage.
"Skulker would know best about modifying a form. His entire body is a mechanized suit. He says he's the best hunter in the Ghost Zone but he's actually better known as the best weapons inventor and mechanic." Danny agreed, throwing up a glowing shield to block the energy blast Skulker shot at him in response to his words.
"I am the Ghost Zone's greatest hunter!" Skulker announced, guns popping out of his abused body to point at Danny, who just laughed as if the threat was meaningless.
Yeah. Bruce really didn't train him for this level of insanity.
"I-" Jason spoke up, voice cracking. Danny turned his attention from deflecting energy shots and missiles to Jason, and even Skulker put away his guns, for the moment.
"I don't know. If I want to change." Jason said, voice coming out far smaller than he wanted it to. Danny smiled at him, it still had too many teeth and stretched too wide but it filled Jason with a sense of comfort and understanding nonetheless.
"That's alright, too." Danny assured him, tugging Jason in for a hug. Jason grumbled, but his arms latched tightly around Danny, and he didn't let the older teen pull away until he was certain any wetness in his eyes was gone. It was sweat, okay? But they would think it was tears, and Jason Todd did not cry!
"I'm still mad about you leaving me to play extreme laser tag with king of the landfill over there." Jason muttered as he pulled back, but any anger he'd felt was gone, replaced by a warm feeling in his chest.
He was still confused, and trying to find his bearing in this crazy new world he'd been dropped in. But he wasn't alone, and Danny didn't look like he'd be abandoning him any time soon. In fact the older teen seemed prepared to wait as long as it took for Jason to figure everything out, and ready to pick him up whenever he fell. It was... comforting. It was new. To know that if he failed, there wouldn't be disappointed looks, or threats of being fired, of being dropped back in the gutter he came from. If he fell, there would be someone there to catch him.
"Honestly, understandable. But I figured you might need a shove to transform. Like pushing a baby bird, or a robin, out of its nest so it can learn how to fly." Danny said sheepishly, rubbing at the back of his neck. Jason frowned, unimpressed. Danny was right, obviously, but he didn't appreciate his methods.
"And also you need to get used to how ghosts work. This whole thing," Danny waved at the destroyed island that was, somehow, repairing itself as they talked, "is basically how a lot of ghosts interact. You're as likely to get a 'hello' as a fist to the face for a greeting." Danny said with a shrug. As if to emphasize his point Skulker sent another missile their way that Danny deflected right back at the ghost without diverting his attention from Jason, rasing an eyebrow as if to say 'see?'.
"You're all batshit insane." Jason deadpanned. Danny laughed at his words, arms wrapping around his middle as he rocked with the force of his laughter.
"Yeah. Yeah we are. But it's never boring here!" Danny confirmed, wiping a few tears from his eyes. Jason felt a smile tugging on his lips and he gave in to the urge, noting that his own smile felt a bit wider than it did in his human form.
"So. How do I get my own guns?" Jason asked when Danny had fully finished laughing.
"Me or Skulker can help you make some. I have some lying around, and I'm sure he has some extras cluttering his workshop that Ember would like to see gone." Danny said with a shrug. The hulking I-Robot extra actually looked a bit sheepish at the mention of this 'Ember' and Jason would bet it was his old lady.
"I could. Perhaps. Spare a few for the halfa child. If only to make him more fitting prey for me to hunt." Robo-whipped grunted, making Danny grin.
"We also need to talk about the fact that you were fucking Robin man!" Danny enthused, changing the topic in his typical way. Jason was 99% certain the other halfa had ADHD with how easily off topic he could get.
"When were you going to tell me? Wait, did that mean I was in Gotham? Oh man, I've wanted to visit for ages. No wonder that place had so much ectoplasm!" Danny was flying in circles around him now, talking fast enough to give the Flash a run for his money.
"Ah yeah. Sorry. There isn't really a good way to work that into a conversation. Like what am I supposed to say 'Good morning, by the way I was a child hero and died doing it'?" Jason groused, shrugging. No point in worrying over secret identies now that the cat was out of the bag.
"It means we have something else in common though! I was a teenage superhero!" Danny said excitedly, bouncing in the air. "Still am, technically but I'm sort of retired at the moment." Danny said with a shrug. Jason's eyes widened and he took in Danny's form again. His suit didn't just resemble a hero costume, it was one.
Jason grinned. Well if Danny was a superhero, and currently retired, then he probably needed to keep up with his training. And hadn't Danny said ghosts basically communicated with fighting? And Jason still hadn't entirely forgiven Danny for his little stunt.
"Uh, Jason? Why are you smiling like that?" Danny asked, backing away slowly from the grinning halfa.
"I just want to give you a proper, ghost hello, Danny." Jason said, voice sugary sweet as he stalled closer to his... mentor? Guide? Friend?
"Ah. Fuck." Danny said, but his lips were twitching in a smile as he turned tail, literally, and flew off.
"Get back over here shitdick and let me say hello!" Jason shouted, grinning and he started to chase. His... tail? When had that happened? Was grabbed, drawing him up short. Jason turned to look at the rust bucket who was gripping onto his tail.
"Here, ghost child. This will make your hunt easier." Skulker told him, holding out a wicked looking gun. Jason grabbed it, smile widening in delight at the way the gun fit perfectly in his hand. It was no arm, but it would do. It would do quite nicely.
"Good luck on your hunt, young halfa." The TSA's worst nightmare saluted with his still detached arm. Jason gave him a vicious grin of thanks before he shot off after a laughing Danny.
Laughter, shouts, and colorful curses filled the air around Skulker's island as the two halfas chased each other around it. Curious ghosts gathered around the outskirts, watching their king and his new charge. More than a few smiled at finally seeing their king happy again. As their king really smiled for the first time in a long time, it was as if the entire Infinite Realms had finally released a long held breath.
Warning: Jason's prolific and creative use of curse words.
"And so Johnny he said- can you hand me the flat head?" Jason cut off his story to raise his hand. Danny tossed the tool at the other halfa, using a touch of telekinesis to keep it on track.
"Thanks your royal fucknuggetness," Jason called out, managing to turn his head intangibile to avoid being brained by the socket wrench Danny chucked at him.
"Oh hey I'll need that in a second, you're so thoughtful!" Jason cooed as he set back to working on his current project.
"So Johnny said he'd help me build my own bike if I can beat his greasy ass in a race. And Skulker said he'd help too, so it can have as many sweet guns as I want!" Jason chattered excitedly, his happy tone a marked difference to the sullen, frustrated and often angry voice he'd so often had those first two weeks in the Ghost Zone.
Turned out all Jason needed to regain his trademark Robin cheer was regular harrowing games of tag (complete with lasers, ecto-blasts, canons, missiles, and a considerable amount of hand to hand combat), regular time in a workshop, as many guns as he could fit in his (now expanded) room, and some delinquent ghost friends to hang with.
Granted Danny hadn't realized that by introducing Jason to Skulker, and fostering a mentor/mentee relationship between the two, that it would lead to Jason befriending Ember and then by extension meeting Kitty, Ember's best friend. Who of course had to introduce the newest halfa to Johnny. And Johnny and Jason got on like a house on fire. Literally. Danny had walked into a room the two of them were in once and it was on actual fire.
If Jason's core wasn't a fire core, Danny would eat his hazmat suit.
Danny was still being careful about introducing Jason to the denizens of the Infinite Realms. Skulker, Ember, Kitty, and Johnny, he had known for years. And while originally his relationship with all of them had been downright antagonistic in the beginning, now he counted them as friends.
Clockwork, Pandora, and Frostbite were also ghosts he trusted and respected greatly. However, he saw them firmly as mentors and guides. And he could recognize that they were incredibly intimidating. Not exactly who he wanted to introduce to a fledgling halfa struggling to find stability and comfort in a new world and body.
Skulker, Ember, Johnny, and Kitty, while more than bit wild, felt a bit closer to normal, to human, than the older ghosts did. Clockwork, Pandora, and Frostbite were who he'd run to if the world about to end, and know without a shadow of a doubt they'd help him handle it.
Skulker, Ember, Kitty, and Johnny were who he'd go to if he wanted to feel alive, like a teenager rather than a king. Or who he'd go to if he wanted to burn the world down. That group would definitely be down for it.
There was another ghost Danny was putting off introducing to Jason, but one he wouldn't be able to stall for much longer. Fright Knight. While the ghost was a terrifying creature, he was unfailingly loyal to his king, and Danny ordering him to a scout the Infinite Realms and report any brewing troubles, and handle any issues or uprisings he could on his own, would only keep him busy for so much longer.
"And what kind of race are we talking? Can you hand me the ecto-solder?" Danny asked, and he swiped the tool from the air without looking as he carefully replaced a chip into a new ghost net gun.
The original netgun pulsed a current of electricity through it, causing severe pain to any ghost captured. And if the ghost was weak enough, potentially causing it to destabilize to the point of core shatter. Also known as the final death for a ghost. Danny was making the gun and net far more humane. Capture only, not harm.
"Johnny wants to do a street race," Jason informed him and Danny paused, putting his tools down to look towards the other halfa.
Jason was very pointedly not looking at Danny while he worked on a plasma canon. Currently Jason was in his human form, while he could now easily shift between forms it was obvious he was more comfortable in his human one. Unless they were 'training' ie, playing extreme sports under the thin excuse of training. Danny on the other hand rarely shifted to his human form any more.
Since...his 'coming out' to his parents and the way his human life went to hell in a handbasket, he'd felt more comfortable, safer, in his ghost form.
Actually. Danny wasn't entirely certain if Jason had ever even seen his human form. Danny mentally went over the past month since Jason's resurrection,and he couldn't think of a single instance where he'd been in his human form around the other halfa.
Well that would be a problem for future Danny to deal with, right now he needed to address this upcoming race.
"Are you asking for...permission?" Danny asked, tone faintly amused and a bit concerned. A normal street race was dangerous, a ghostly one would be downright deadly by human standards.
"What? No. Why the fuck would I ask you for permission? You're not my dad, you're only just two years older than me!" Jason sputtered, head whipping around to stare at Danny. The older halfa snorted, relaxing slightly.
"Good, I'm too young to be someone's father figure." Danny said with a grin.
"You can also barely take care of yourself." Jason deadpanned. Danny gasped, falling back in the air dramatically as if he were fainting.
"I resent the accuracy of that statement." Danny gasped out, only his years of battle-trained reflexes saving him from getting hit with the hammer Jason threw at him in response to his theatrics.
"So do you need me to help you get a bike? I've never tried grand theft auto, but they can't charge you for any crimes if you're already dead!" Danny flipped around, grinning at the thought of some harmless crimes. Alright maybe hanging around with Skulker and his group was rubbing off on him.
"You know what. Not a bad idea," Jason paused his tinkering, seeming to put honest thought behind the idea before he shook his head.
"No. No, somehow Batman would know and then we'd have to deal with him hunting my undead ass down." Jason said with a grimace and Danny shrugged.
Jason still had issues with Batman, and Bruce Wayne, and what a revelation that had been to find out notorious empty-headed playboy Bruce Wayne was actually the cryptid superhero Batman. Sam so owed him twenty bucks for being right that Batman was real. Whether or not Tucker was right and he was also mothman was still up for debate.
Jason's issues with the hero though ran deep. Danny was giving him space to come to terms with whatever those issues were, while making it clear he was always available to lend a listening ear if the other halfa needed it. Danny wouldn't prod at the obvious wounds, Jason would come to him when he was ready and Danny could wait however long that took.
Jazz really would be so proud of him. He had been listening to her many, many, rants about mental health, trauma and healing. Just. Not when if came to him, of course. He was fine. No trauma here. Nothing that needed to be unpacked. Nope. He was fine.
"No I just wanted to, toss me that blow torch? I just wanted to see if you wanted to...come?" Jason finished, sounding almost nervous as he took the blowtorch Danny floated to him.
"It would be entertaining to watch you lose," Danny said with a nod, laughing as he dodged various tools thrown at him.
The workroom, which has finally become a permanent room now that Jason had some semblance of control, had already looked like a warzone, the flying tools just added further to the chaos. Somehow Jason and Danny could always find the tools they needed no matter where they ended up. The workroom's organized chaos was a far cry from the perfectly ordered nature of Jason's now, also permanent, room.
"Actually it's approaching the fall break for college. We could invite Sam, Tucker and Jazz to come and watch the show too!" Danny said excitedly when the barrage of screwdrivers, wrenches and mallets ceased.
"I-Your human friends and sister?" Jason asked, suddenly sounding nervous. A wave of insecurity, Unknowns/WillTheyLikeMe/WhatIfTheyHateMe/NotEnough pulsed out of Jason. He was getting better at controlling the volatile and stronger emotions of a ghost, but sometimes when it overwhelmed him the other halfa still let out empathetic messages.
"Yea. They know about you, I told you. Otherwise they would've stormed the Zone looking for me after a week of no visits. They're all really excited to meet you, Jason. They'll love you." Danny assured the younger teen, floating to him and wrapping his tail around Jason's shoulders. The move was becoming a common occurrence, Danny wrapping his tail around Jason to comfort him or simply to stay close to the other halfa. He'd noticed Jason enjoyed physical touch, even if he'd rather die again than admit to it.
Home/They'reFamily/Acceptance was pushed towards the younger halfa as Danny squeezed Jason's shoulders. And while the other boy did relax minutely, he was obviously wound tight.
"How about we meet them, in the living realm, first?" Danny offered. He kept the fact that if he didn't introduce Jason to the rest of his spook soon they really would storm the Zone.
It was nothing short of a miracle that he'd put them off for a month already. He had Jazz to thank for that. Once he'd told his older sister that Jason was, possibly, slightly, traumatized she'd become his number one advocate in the group chat. Putting a stop to any plans by Sam and Tucker to sneak in and get a peek at the newest halfa.
Jazz kept reminding them that Jason needed space to adjust to his new species, his death, his new life, his new home and two random people barging in could severely harm his sense of safety and the tentative trust Danny had built with him.
It was a true miracle that Dani never checked the group chat. Not even Jazz would be able to stop their little sister from flying straight back to the Zone to meet Jason. She would be ecstatic to meet another halfa, one close to her age and who she wasn't a clone of.
Hopefully if Danny could introduce Jason to Sam, Tucker and Jazz then when Dani undoubtedly burst into the castle in a ball of frantic energy and unadulterated chaos he'd be more calm about it.
"In the living realm?" Jason parroting, shoulders hunching under Danny's tail.
"Yeah, it won't be anywhere close to Gotham. We can meet Jazz first, she'll be the easiest." Danny leaned forward to whisper to Jason, as if telling him a secret, "I'm pretty sure you're already her favorite halfa anyways." Danny told him with a warm smile. Jason jolted slightly in surprise, turning wide, disbelieving eyes on Danny.
"I can't be her favorite, obviously. I'm her brother. Dani stole all of her fancy shampoo the last time she visited, so she's out and well then there's Vlad, and he's no one's favorite." Danny's nose scrunched at the mention of his nemesis-godfather.
"Dani?" Jason latched onto the new name and Danny couldn't resist facepalming. Had he really forgotten to tell Jason about Dani at all? Ancients he really was the worst guide to being a halfa in all Realms.
"She's my clone. Vlad made her when he was trying to make a perfect clone of me so he could live out his twisted family fantasy. Long story short, me and Jazz adopted her basically so now she's my little sister. Up until a month ago she was the youngest halfa!" Danny gave Jason the sparknotes of the entire Dani debacle.
"A clone...like Superboy?" Jason asked, nose scrunching up as he presumably tried to connect Danny's story with, hopefully his only, experience with another clone.
"Is it just a thing for heroes to get cloned? Some kind of super-bingo I was unaware of?" Danny asked, surprised but not entirely shocked to hear his experience being cloned wasn't unique.
He was excited to hear Superboy was a clone though, Dani would love that! She had devoured Clone Wars looking for 'clone rep' and finding out there was an actual clone hero would send her over the moon, maybe literally.
"You only get bingo if you were cloned by a billionaire who is also your nemesis." Jason deadpanned, Danny's jokes shaking him from the stupor he'd fallen in as a result of the bombshell Danny had dropped.
"Oh well then, bingo!" Danny declared, throwing his hands up. "What do I win? A mug? A t-shirt?" Danny asked, grin widening when he felt the tension slowly leaving Jason.
"Your life is a clusterfuck, anyone ever tell you that?" Jason asked him.
"Often. But at least I'm not boring!" Danny said with a carefree shrug.
He'd already had his breakdown/existential crisis about how utterly insane his life was years ago. He'd gotten over it and capitalized on the benefits his crazy adventures offered him, which was a neverending supply of comedy material. If the comedy was more often than not only appreciated by Danny, and sometimes simply Danny laughing at other people's horrified reactions, well. He was just seeing the bright side of things. Lemons, lemonade and all that jazz.
"One day we need to have a talk about this Vlad." Jason grumbled, picking up the blowtorch and returning his focus to the plasma canon he'd been working on before their discussion about bikes and races took a sharp detour to clone-town.
"We can talk about my billionaire when you decide to talk about yours." Danny said with a huff.
Vlad was... a sensitive topic for Danny. He had yet to figure out if he hated the man, pitied him or felt some odd kinship. Not to mention the many, many awful things Vlad had done to him and his family over the years.
"Fine." Jason grunted, face shuttering at the mere mention of Bruce Wayne in any type of serious capacity.
"If I ever meet that slimy fuck it's on sight. You've said enough concerning shit about him that I have a distinct urge to turn him into ghostly Swiss cheese." Jason grumbled, a clear peace offering. Danny couldn't help curling over as laughter burst out of him. Jason had, unintentionally, made a pun.
"If you ever see him, I won't stop you."
Honestly if Vlad ever got near enough to Jason for the other halfa to shoot him, he'd help turn him into Swiss cheese. Danny's core burned with the overwheleming need to protect at the thought of Vlad putting Jason through even a fraction of what he'd done to Danny over the years.
Danny might have only known Jason for barely a month, but the other halfa had wormed his way deep into Danny's core and sunk his claws in. Jason was his, as much as Tucker, Sam, Jazz and Dani were though the connections were different the sentiment was the same. They were his. His to protect.
And if anyone tried to harm them. There was nothing in any realm, in life or death, that would stop Danny from keeping those he saw as his safe.
Warning as always for Jason's foul mouth and prolific use of various curse words.
Whoops got Jazz and Maddie's eyecolor switched
Jasom tugged at the material of his t-shirt before fiddling with the leather jacket covering it. He checked his appearance in the mirror for the fourth time, eyes trained to pick up the smallest clues, examining his form looking for imperfections with the same level of scrutiny he used to turn to crimescenes. He knew he wouldn't find anything wrong with his outfit, just as he hadn't the previous three damn times he'd checked.
But. Well. Fuck it. Jason was nervous, alright?
He'd never admit it out loud, and if anyone accused him of it, he had a modified ghost gun tucked under his leather jacket they could shove down their fucking pie hole.
Oddly enough, Danny had been the one to tell him to make sure he brought some weapons with him. He would've anyways, obviously. He wasn't going to meet a stranger in an undisclosed location weaponless. He wasnt a fucking idiot. But it was odd that Danny thought weapons might be necessary while meeting with his sister in a café. When Jason had asked Danny had shrugged.
"It's just how my life is. Anytime I want to do normal shit someone pops out of the wood work to try and 'take my pelt' or 'exterminate me' or 'rip me apart molecule by molecule' so I just expect a fight whenever I leave my room." Danny had told him, tone careless as if he hadn't said some deeply concerning shit.
And look, Jason got that life as a ghost was vastly different from life as a human and life as a halfa was an entirely different fucking game altogether. Ghost customs seemed to be founded on a basis of domination and violence. And it made sense in a way. Ghosts couldn't die, injuries healed in minutes or hours. You could throw a ghost through a building and they'd walk out the other side with a grin.
But there was a very clear difference between ghost violence and the violence Danny described without a care. Ghosts didn't aim to kill, or even torture. Fights were just how they communicated, made friends. Things worked differently when everyone you knew was virtually indestructible and also made of volatile emotions.
But ripping someone apart? Exterminating them? No ghost would do that. Ghosts knew better than any living human how traumatic, how painful death could be. A ghost might throw a truck at you, because they knew you could take it, but they'd never torture you. Or at least, none of the ghosts Jason knew would.
Even Skulker, for all his threatening talk, would rather burn his own suit than torture someone. Jason knew for a fact the trigger happy tinman did actually have a heart. He'd seen the hunter ghost cuddling Cujo when he thought no one was around. And Jason knew all the ghost animals he 'hunted' were actually kept in incredibly detailed and realistic enclosures on his island, well cared for and loved.
Jason looked around his room as a shudder in what he now knew was his core raced through him at the thought of someone hurting, really hurting, Danny. The urge to protect, to enact bloody justice upon whoever would dare lay a finger with malice in their hearts on the kindest soul Jason had ever met, almost forced Jason into his ghost form. Jason barely kept hold of his human form, only stabilizing when he grabbed another gun from the wall. The weight of the weapon soothed him, making his core purr.
It knew that if anyone tried to hurt Danny, Jason had the firepower to put them in the ground.
Jason had known Danny for only a little over a month but he already knew he'd burn the entire fucking world to ashes if the other halfa was hurt. Danny had done more for Jason than anyone in his life, or death, barring maybe Alfred. Danny offered him a home, a place to belong, care and comfort with no expectations. Danny gave and gave and gave and asked for absolutely nothing in return.
When Jason ruined room after room getting used to his new body, new powers, the stronger emotions that sometimes controlled him, Danny had simply smiled and laughed and moved them to new ones. When Jason snapped and lashed out because the pain inside of him was too big for his body to contain Danny just took it like it didn't phase him, offered him hugs he didn't know he needed and lended a listening ear whenever Jason was ready to talk.
Danny was everything Jason had ever wanted, needed, and he barely regretted that he'd had to die to find it. To find a place that finally felt like home, to find someone that felt like home. Jason had searched all his life for this, bled for it, begged for it from people who could never give him what he so desperately needed. He would be eternally grateful to whatever diety had brought him back from the dead in that cemetery where a ghost king waited to show him what it meant to belong.
Danny meant so much to Jason already. He was his friend. He was his guide in this weird world of being a halfa, and he was, technically, his king. So Jason was scared shitless about meeting someone who meant the world to Danny. About meeting the sister he spoke about with literal stars in his viridian eyes.
Danny had assured him, though it did nothing to ease Jason's nerves, time and again that his sister, Jazz Nightingale, would love him. Apparently, Danny and his sister used to have a different last name. But whatever it was, Danny kept that secret locked tight. Jason assumed it had something to do with Danny's parents, whom he never spoke of. Not that Jason could criticize. He'd yet to speak about Bruce to Danny further than jokes.
Jazz Nightingale. The name of the woman who would hold Jason's fate in the palm of her hands. Jason knew if Jazz hated him, Danny would be forced to pick a side. And he'd pick his sister. Of course he would.
Jason would never be someone's first choice. Even as Robin, he'd been nothing but a replacement for the bird who left the nest. The boy who made Robin. And he'd seen how easily he'd been discarded, fired, in the end. Left to die, broken, betrayed, and unloved. Unwanted.
Jason grabbed a holster for the gun hanging from his subtly shaking fingers. His anxiety clumsy hands slipped fitting the holster on a few times, colorful curses tumbling out of Jason's lips. He should probably be careful about those, too.
Danny didn't care about his language, and Johnny and the rest found his insults hilarious. But Jason remembered how his 'uncouth' mouth had made Gotham high society disdain him. How it had branded him as 'other' as someone who didn't belong.
He could take that, take the disgust from those born with silver spoons shoved so far up their asses they could taste them. No matter how it had stung. How the disappointment in Bruce's eyes had torn at him. How it was just another reminder that he could never live up to the standards golden boy Dick Grayson had set.
What he couldn't take was if this Jazz Nightingale turned that same disdainful glare on him that he'd so often suffered under at balls and galas. Because it could mean Danny's warm, shining emerald eyes would turn toxic and venomous. His bright, too-wide grin dimmed and drawn into a scowl of disapproval.
Jason finally settled the holster and second gun at his hip, slipping his leather jacket back over them so they were hidden from sight. The comforting weight helped ground him, and Jason took a deep breath, eyes drawn back to the mirror to take in his form once more. He dusted at his clothes, removing invisible specks of dirt. His hair was carefully combed, the white streak standing out starkly against his jet black hair.
A rush of Comfort/Belonging/Acceptance/YouBelong/You'reSafe/You'reProtected washed over Jason, announcing Danny's arrival before the door to his room even opened. Jason felt the taut muscles in his back relax, his body reacting instinctively to the aura of peace, comfort, and calm that Danny carried with him like a cloak.
It was a good thing that he was relaxed because when the door opened, a boy Jason did not recognize was standing there.
"Danny?" Jason asked, confused.
The boy felt like Danny, but he looked entirely different. Gone was the snow white hair, glowing green eyes, and hazmat hero costume. Instead, a boy with luminous sky blue eyes, hair as black as Danny's was white, and skin tinged with the rosy hue of life instead of the green tinge of ectoplasm He was even dressed differently, in a worn NASA hoody that was probably at one point oversized but now fit snugly on the other teen's body. A pair of jeans, ripped not from fashion but wear, and a pair of bright red Converse completed the look.
"Yeah, sorry. I forgot you've never seen my human form before." The boy, Danny, said sheepishly, rubbing at the back of his neck.
"Holy shitsticks, you look like you could be Dick's long lost cousin." Jason said, curiosity about Danny's human form temporarily overriding his nerves.
Jason walked forward, examining Danny. Physically, he was the same as his ghost form. Though now that his feet were planted on the ground, Jason could appreciate how tall Danny was. Definitely over 6', Dick wishes he had Danny's height. He had the same musculature of his ghost form, too, a side effect of being a superhero. The older teen was a damn tree, built like one too, and Jason squashed the jealousy at that.
He'd shot up an inch and a half already in the time he'd been here. Regular, large meals filled with ectoplasm, coupled with the ectoplasm rich environment, meant he was healthier than he'd ever been. His malnutrition stunted body was finally getting its chance to grow, but he still came barely to Danny's shoulders.
"Really? Huh." Danny asked, tilting his head.
"Yeah, you've got all the qualities for a Wayne adoptee. Good thing you're legal now. No Batman induced trauma for you." Jason replied with a scrunched nose, pushing down the mental image of a younger Danny being adopted by Bruce.
"Ugh ew, no. One billionaire in my life is enough." Danny said, pulling a face at the thought of a second billionaire trying to adopt him. Jason couldn't help the smile that tugged at his lips at the thought of Danny running circles around Bruce while the stoic superhero frantically tried to adopt him.
Would Jason's life and death have turned out differently if he had Danny when he was Robin? If it had been Danny showing him the ropes and welcoming him into that world rather than a distant Dick Grayson? A brother who had only become one in truth rather than simply name long after the damage from his estrangement was done.
Jason loved Dick, and knew his older brother loved him. But that love didn't ease the hurt whenever he fell short of the standards the other man had set. When Jason suffered for Bruce's mistakes that had driven Dick away and kept him away and resentful when a new Robin flew through Gotham's skies.
"Are you ready then? It's about time to go." Danny pulled Jason back to reality, the nerves that had been pushed aside roaring back to life with a vengeance.
A warm hand gripped Jason's shoulder, steadying him as he wrestled with the emotions that suddenly felt like far too much. One of the worst side effects of his death by far was the emotions. They were all so much more potent, so much more overwhelming than they'd been in life. His emotions could so easily override his sense now, and Jason struggled to keep his control.
"You'll do fine, Jason. Jazz already adores you. Just be yourself." Danny's voice was pitched low, a soothing timbre that helped take the edge off the nerves convincing Jason he'd fuck everything up, again.
"I'm ready." Jason said, the words only tasting slightly like a lie as he took a deep breath.
"Got your weapons?" Danny asked as he raised a hand to rip a portal into the air.
"Do I look like a dumbass to you?" Jason snarked, making Danny smile at seeing Jason's sass return to hide his nerves.
"Considering I punted you through a wall yesterday you look like a little bitch to me." Danny teased as he tugged Jason towards the glowing portal, not giving him time to second guess the decision or back away.
"What was that? I thought the guy who flew into one of my blasts this morning said some dumb shit." Jason bit back, stumbling slightly when they walked through the portal.
The difference in gravity between the living realm and the Inifinte Realms threw him off for a moment as he regained his balance. He took in a breath of air and couldn't help the grimace that took over his face. The air tasted thin, weak, and it reeked of rotting garbage and piss. Danny had formed a portal in a dark alleyway to avoid notice, and Jason had opinions on his choice of location.
"Ugh why did you drop us here? It stinks worse than your fucking socks." Jason grumbled, thankful that his new biology meant he didn't need to breathe as much as a human, or at all if he didn't feel like it.
"My socks aren't that bad." Danny defended, pulling Jason along as he closed the portal and moved them out of the disgusting alleyway.
"Your socks could be considered a biological weapon of mass destruction they're so fucking nasty. I'm fairly certain they break the Geneva Convention." Jason told him as they finally left the alleyway and joined the throngs of people on the sidewalk, all of them rushing along, utterly unaware they were in the presence of two people who broke the laws of life and death.
"And why is the air so weak?" Jason added on before Danny could do something dramatic and embarrassing like pretending to faint in public from Jason's insults. He could see the older halfa considering the merits of making a scene just to be a little shit.
"It's the lack of ectoplasm. Most places in the living realm don't have a lot of it. Amity Park and Gotham are the outliers for that." Danny told him, evidently giving up the idea of being dramatic in favor of guiding Jason towards a café.
"No idea why Gotham had so much, Amity Park at least had the excuse of a portal to hell being opened in it." Danny continued to speak, easily going on a tangent. Jason's distraction tactic was a success. It was easy to get Danny going on tangents if you had a good idea of his interests, and ghosts were always a safe bet.
"Gotham's built different." Jason said with a shrug, not surprised to hear that the creepiest, crime-ridden city in the world was more than slightly ghostly. It tracked.
"Or it's cursed." Danny said, opening the door to the café before Jason could dig into that concerning detail.
"Jazz!" Danny shouted almost as soon as they walked in, eyes locking on a woman who was probably in her early twenties.
Her fiery hair was held back with a light blue headband, falling in a long waterfall down her back. She was tall but not slight, body clearly muscled, though not as noticeable as Danny or Jason. She cut an intimidating figure, and Jason couldn't help but think if Dick ever saw her, he'd been head over heels. He'd always had a thing for redheads who could kill him.
Jason felt his body freeze, but Danny's firm grip on his shoulder forced him to move forward as the older halfa essentially dragged him to the booth in a corner where his sister was standing and waving with a beaming smile.
Danny only released him when they got to the table and Jason couldn't easily make a break for it, throwing himself at his older sister and crushing her into a bone breaking hug. Jazz matched Danny for height but Danny still managed to sweep her off her feet and spin her around until the woman was laughing.
"It's so good to see you, Danny. You look good. Happy." Jazz said, resting a hand on Danny's face when he finally released her from his bear hug.
Jason felt his heart twinge at the open love and care he saw in Jazz's eyes when looking at Danny. She looked at him as if he was the most important thing in the world to her. Jazz looked at Danny the way Catherine used to look at him.
"I am. Happy, I mean. You look like you're doing good too, Jazz. College treating you well?" Danny asked, voice soft and warm and full of love. Only a deaf, blind and brain-dead idiot wouldn't be able to see that the Nightingale siblings loved each other fiercely and completely.
"I am! Remind me to tell you about the paper I'm writing on the effect neglect has on the developing minds of pre-pubescent children." Jazz said, smile widening as she spoke about something she was clearly passionate about.
She turned her head and pinned Jason to the spot with her teal eyes that glowed just a touch too much for a normal human, her pupils too dark, too deep. Her teeth were ever so much too sharp, and her ears had the same pointed, elfin look as Danny's. Jason's battrained mind couldn't help picking up the many small details that came together to paint a clear picture that Jazz wasn't entirely human. Danny had mentioned that his sister and friends were more than a bit liminal, and Jason could see what he meant.
"And you must be Jason. Danny's told me so much about you, it's nice to finally meet you." Jazz extricated herself from her brother and held out a hand to Jason, a soft smile on her face. Her subtly glowing aquamarine eyes were welcoming, accepting, and for the first time, Jason thought there might be some truth to Danny's words.
"Hi. Danny talks a lot about you, too." Jason finally managed to get out the greeting from a slightly numb mouth. Jazz took his hand, shaking it with a firm grip, and he noted her hands were calloused. As if she was no stranger to wielding a weapon.
"Danny, could you go get us some drinks?" Jazz asked her brother.
Danny hesitated, turning a concerned look to Jason, who reluctantly nodded at Danny. Surely he wouldn't fuck everything up in the five minutes it took the older halfa to get drinks.
"I'll take a Chai tea," Jason told him, and Danny nodded, shooting one last look at the two of them before heading to the line for the counter.
It was probably a bad idea to shoot the windows out with his guns and jump out of them like a bat out of hell? Right? Yeah. That would make the worst first impression, Jazz would think he was off his fucking rocker.
"Let's sit," Jazz said, motioning at the booth. Jason sat down gingerly across from Jazz, his back ramrod straight. That window was looking particularly shootable.
"So, Jason." Jazz started, folding her hands under her chin and leaning forward.
Jason wanted to avert his eyes from her pricing eerie gaze. Somehow, it felt like she was seeing too much. Was this where she told him to stay away from her little brother? Where she told him he wasn't good enough for the time and attention Danny had devoted to him? Jason's hands twitched for his guns. Fuck first impressions. He was going to defenestrate himself before he had to hear someone else tell him how unworthy he was.
"How are you doing? Is Danny taking care of you? Is he making sure you get enough to eat, enough sleep?" Jazz asked, blindsiding Jason worse than if she'd hit him with the clunky thermos Danny liked to carry around. He almost wished she had, he knew how to handle an attack. Handling someone's concern for him wasn't something Batman trained him on.
"I-what? Jason stammered, unsure what to do with this woman he barely knew asking if he was being taken care of.
"I know you're in a really delicate state right now. It's important that you're still taking care of yourself, and Danny should be ensuring that. But my brother can hardly take care of himself, let alone another semi-living being. So I want to be sure you're doing alright." Jazz explained, taking pity on Jason's confusion.
Jasom just stared at her, mouth hanging open. Jazz met his gaze, holding it so he could see the sincerity of her words painted clearly in her glowing eyes. So he could see the care in them, the concern, for him.
"I- Yeah, Danny is taking care of me. He-He's great. Reminds me to eat and badgers me to sleep," Jason broke under the warm gaze, and words vomited out of his mouth.
And it was true, Danny was taking care of him, even if sometimes they both forgot to sleep when they were in the workshop and occasionally it took one of their stomachs letting out a mighty roar to remind them to eat. But Danny was also constantly throwing protein bars at him, the really good ones that even speedsters liked to snack on.
And he'd carried Jason to bed, kicking and screaming occasionally, more times than he could count. And if Jason couldn't sleep because nightmares filled with the sounds of breaking bones and insane laughter infected his dreams, Danny would stay up with him, playing video games until he passed out on the couch, cuddling his controller like a teddy bear.
"Good, I'm glad. The last thing you need right now is to be negelected." Jazz said with a firm nod, her eyes sparkling with relief and pride.
"I want you to know Jason, if you ever need help, or someone to talk to, I'll be here. If there's ever something you don't want to talk to Danny about, I'm more than happy to lend an ear." Jazz continued, gracing him with another warm smile and a look filled with so much care he felt his core warm in his chest.
"Why?" Jason asked, voice sounding far smaller, far younger, than he wanted it to. Jazz's smile turned sad as she looked at him.
"You're important to Danny. So you're important to me," Jazz started, leaning slightly back and dropping her hands to the table.
"Danny hasn't been... happy these past several months. I won't say why. That's his story to tell. But he's been hurting and lonely." Jazz said, shoulder hunching slightly as she turned her eyes full of sadness, anger, and helplessness to her hands.
"But since you came along, Danny's been happy again. I heard it in his voice when he called, read it in how he texted. Danny is happy, and like himself again. He's alive again, rather than just existing." Jazz snorted humorlessly at her small pun. Great, it was genetic. Maybe they really were related to Dick.
"This is the greatest gift you could ever give me, Jason. And one I can never repay. For what you've done, you'll always have me as a friend. If you want." Jazz continued, drawing Jason's attention back to her.
"Seeing him, like this? Happy, content, full of life, and passion? I thought I'd never see my baby brother like this again." Jazz said, eyes pulling up to look at Danny, who was joking with the barrista who was quite obviously trying, and failing, to flirt with him. His smile was bright enough to light up the entire café and his laugh was a sound made of the very essence of joy. Jason could see the other patrons of the café perking up simply by hearing it.
Her eyes said she was offering more than friendship. She was offering a family. Jason might not see Danny as a brother, he wasn't sure yet if he had a word in his vocabulary to fit what Danny was to him, but he knew he could see Jazz as a sister so easily. He wanted that, to have her look at him how she looked at Danny. With unconditional love, with a certainty that there was nothing he could ever do to shake it.
"And maybe, a bit, it's because I couldn't be there for Danny when-when he died," Jazz barely stuttered over the words but it was clear that as much as Danny's death didn't effect the halfa, it very deeply effected his sister.
"So let me be there for you, Jason." Jazz said, voice warm as she grabbed one of his hands between both of hers, cradling his hand as if he was something delicate, something precious. Someone to be cared for and protected.
"O-Okay." Jason said, and what else could he say?
Jason was selfish enough to admit he wanted even a sliver of the love he'd seen Jazz so freely give Danny. If he could have even the smallest fraction of that, he'd be happy. Because thats all Jason had wanted, to be loved, to be wanted, to know that the love he was given didn't come with conditions or wouldn't be ripped from him the first time he made a mistake.
"Wonderful! Give me your phone and I'll put my number in." Jazz said, and the smile she gave him was as bright as Danny's, almost blinding in its radiance.
Jason fished out the phone Danny had given him when he could see again. It was some type of modified phone, made to work across Realms and even with ecto-interference. Currently, there was only one number in it, Danny's. Jazz took the phone and quickly added her information to it, sending herself a text to get his number before handing it back.
"Call me. Anytime, for anything, and I'll answer." Jazz told him, voice solem with promise, and Jason knew she'd keep her word.
"Now, before Danny gets back, do you want to see some pictures I have of him when he was figuring out his powers?" Jazz asked, a wicked gleam in her eyes that all older siblings had when the topic of embarrassing their younger siblings came up. Jason couldn't help the grin that slid on his face as the heavy atmosphere dissipated.
"Fuck- I mean hell, dammit. Heck yes." Jason said, flushing at his slip. Jazz just giggled at his cursing, scrolling through her phone to find the pictures as Jason relaxed into the booth.
Yeah, he hadn't fucked anything up.
~~~~~
The tag list is growing almost as much as this story is.
"Jason!" Danny called out as he rummaged through his room. Clothes and various bits and bobs were strewn about as he searched for something.
"What?" A muffled voice called back through the wall.
Danny growled in frustration when turning a box filled with random items didn't reveal what he was looking for. Walking to the wall, Danny stuck his head through into Jason's room.
"Fucking Batman on a cracker! Danny it's creepy as shit when you do that!" Jason yelped, stumbling back slightly when Danny's head appeared next to his shoulder.
"We're ghosts, bird boy, creepy is our thing." Danny said, grinning. His lips didn't stretch quite as wide when he was in his human form like this, but he knew the otherness that followed him even in human form still made his smile a hair too wide, his teeth slightly too sharp, giving an overall uncanny appearance.
"Anyways, have you seen the ecto-dejecto? I knew I had some in my room but they're all gone." Danny frowned. He was certain he hadn't used all of them yet.
"Yeah, Jazz told me to hide them from you if you went more than 48 hours without sleep. It's been 75 hours, Danny." Jason fixed Danny with an unimpressed look.
Danny gasped, pushing himself the rest of the way through the wall so he could proceed to crumple to the ground, hands grasping his chest as if he'd been shot.
"Betrayed! By my own friend! What a cruel, cruel world!" Danny wailed, flopping on the ground.
Jason leaned against one of his, many, bookshelves, arms folded as he watched Danny's theatrics with a bored expression, even going so far as to grab a book from a shelf to flip through. Introducing him to Ghost Writer was both the best and worst decision Danny had ever made. Best because Danny didn't think Jason could look that happy, worst because the castle now had 4 libraries, Ghost Writer kept popping in at all hours and Danny now had to share his new friend with Ghost Writer and Skulker's gang.
Make no mistake, Danny was happy that Jason was settling into the Ghost Zone easily, as if he'd always belonged there. As if there had always been a spot in the Zone, waiting for him. But Danny missed when Jason spent all of his time with him. Now that Jason was making friends and was out more Danny had to fill his time. With things like paperwork and kingly duties and lessons. It was awful.
"You done, theater kid reject?" Jason asked, prodding Danny with one booted foot. Danny grinned up at him from the floor as he slowly aat back up.
"I do need that ecto-dejecto, Jay. I promise I'll sleep soon! I've been trying to re-create the Ecto-Skeleton and I'm 60% there, I think." Danny defended his recent bout of insomnia. Besides, halfas didn't need as much sleep as humans and with the ecto-dejecto he could keep going!
"And!" Danny piped up before Jason could say whatever insult was on the tip of his tongue, "we have to meet Sam and Tucker soon so I don't have time to sleep yet! So just give me one more and once we get back I'll go to sleep, okay?" Danny bargained, he even threw in puppy dog eyes for good measure. Jason sighed, rubbing at his face with a hand.
"Why can't you just drink coffee like a normal person?" Jason asked but he was turning to his bookshelf and sticking his hand through it to pull out an ecto-dejecto. Undoubtedly the hiding spot would be moved before they left.
"Halfa metabolism. We burn through the caffeine so quick I'd need to drink it by the gallon to get an effect." Danny said with a shrug, swiping the ecto-dejecto from Jason.
He was glad he'd changed the design from a syringe to just a small bottle like a 5-hour energy. He'd seen the way Jason had gone pale and horrified when he'd seen the original designs. Jason didn't have to say it, his face and emotions said enough. He'd still confessed later, in a rare moment of openness that his mother was an addict and had died from an overdose.
Danny had given him a long hug after the confession and the two of them had sat watching romcoms and eating ice cream until Jason stopped shaking.
Danny made sure the ecto-dejecto that was still in syringes were kept locked up and out of sight after that.
"Maybe I could," Danny paused as he gulped down the liquid, jumping a bit when the rush of energy hit him, "find a way to mix this formula with an energy drink formula and make something similar? It might have a weaker effect but that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing." Danny continued, words coming faster as the ecto-dejecto started working.
"Later, energizer bunny from hell. We need to meet your friends soon, right?" Jason grabbed his arm before Danny could take off to figure out exactly what he'd need to do to make a Ghost Red Bull. Ghost Bull? Ghoster?
"Right!" Danny agreed, looking down at himself and groaning. He hadn't changed out of his working clothes, an old t-shirt and thick overalls so stained and splattered with grease and ectoplasm they looked tie-dyed.
"Gotta get changed, see you in five minutes!" Danny said, rushing through the wall and back into his room.
"It's like living with an overpowered toddler high on sugar, what is my fucking afterlife?" Danny heard Jason mutter just before he stepped back into his room. He took in the mess, clothes were scattered everywhere, a box was stuck to the ceiling, random items were floating around.
"This is going to be a problem." Danny murmured before shrugging. "And as with most of my problems, I'm going to ignore it until I can't." He decided, moving through his room to pick up random bits of clothing, sniffing them to check if they were appropriate to wear.
Four minutes and some creative contortions to grab hidden clothing later Danny was dressed in, mostly, clean clothes. He was wearing a hoody Tucker had bought him that said 'My head is in the clouds but my body's six feet underground' a pair of black jeans, from Sam, and his red converse.
"Coming in!" Danny shouted as he dove through the wall again, jumping from a table to avoid walking through the ocean of chaos on his floor. Jason barely twisted aside in time to avoid Danny crashing into him.
"We have doors you Ancients damned savage." Jason snapped at him as Danny popped up from the ground with a smile.
"This is faster though!" Danny told him as he dusted off his clothes.
Jason was settling his favorite leather jacket on, a gift from Johnny. It was a light brown color and fit in well with Jason's biker-chic style. All he needed was the bike, which he would be getting soon once the race with Johnny happened. Danny knew whether Jason won or lost Johnny and Skulker would make him a bike. The ghosts in the Zone spoiled Jason rotten. The race was just because Johnny hadn't had anyone to race in ages.
"Ready?" Danny asked and Jason paused, Unsure/Scared/WhatIfTheyHateMe/WhatIfDannyLeaves/NotEnough/Failure/Disappointment poured off of Jason in waves at the reminder. Meeting Jazz had done a lot to ease Jason's nerves with meeting Danny's human connections, but it took more than a very supportive Jazz to erase what seemed to be years of deeply rooted insecurities.
"They're going to love you, Jason. Just like Jazz did. Just like Skulker, Ember, Kitty and Johnny did. Just like Ghost Writer did." Danny soothed, pushing out a flood of YouBelong/You'reEnough/NeverLeaving/Home/Belonging/Protected/Wanted into the room until his emotions drowned out Jason's fears.
It was a good thing Jason was still such a young halfa. His powers would only grow with time, as Danny's did, and eventually it might be a struggle for Danny to overwhelm the other halfa's emotions with his own. Hopefully by then Jason would be a bit more in control of his emotions.
"Remember, Tucker loves tech and games. Sam is a vegetarian and loves plants. If you get either of them talking about those things you won't have to even say a word." Danny reminded him, having told Jason about his friends plenty of times.
He'd figured Jason might be calmer if he had intel before meeting two new people at a time. The combination of empathetic messages and Danny's words seemed to work, Jason visibly relaxing.
"Right. Yeah. This'll be fine." Jason said, taking a few breaths in what Danny recognized as Jazz's favorite breathing exercise for calming nerves. His core purred, sending a comforting chill through his body at the knowledge that his sister and Jason were getting along. Jason belonged with them, and seeing him being so easily accepted into Danny's hodgepodge family soothed a deep part of his core.
"Unless a secret government organization busts down the doors to capture and experiment on us!" Danny chirped with a grin as he opened a portal, snagging Jason's wrist and tugging him through.
"A warning asshole! Is that too much to fucking ask for?!" Jason demanded as he tripped, catching himself before he fell as the different gravity threw his sense of balance off for a moment.
"And what was that about a government organization Danny? You can't just drop goddamn bombshells like that!" Jason continued as he stood back up, Danny releasing his hold and closing the portal behind them. He'd portaled them straight into Sam's townhouse. Because of course her parents wouldn't make her live in a dorm, damn rich people.
"You know what, I like this one." A feminine voice called out, Danny whirling around as his core sang.
"Sam!" Danny shouted, tackling the young woman dressed head to toe in black, green and purple.
"You only like him because he looks like a biker store vomited on him." Tucker's familiar voice teased seconds before his arms circled the pair.
"Don't tease him too much. He's nervous." Danny chided his friends, his wide grin and the rumbling purr loud enough to be heard lessening the severity of his words. Ancients he'd missed his friends.
"I'm not nervous! You're a lying liar who lies Danny." Jason called out, but when Danny looked over, he could see Jason shuffling from foot to foot, one hand under his jacket, undoubtedly grasping tightly to the gun hidden there.
When he was scared or nervous, Jason always seemed to reach for a weapon. Danny had joked and called them his emotional support guns before, and Jason hadn't corrected him, just shot at him. So obviously, Danny was right.
"I missed you two." Danny murmured to his friends, unwilling to pull away just yet even if Jason was obviously nervous.
"We missed you too Danny, don't ghost us like that again." Tucker told him, Danny and him both snickering at the pun while Sam and Jason let out twin groans.
"Now introduce us to the newest halfa." Sam ordered, pulling free from the hug despite Danny's whines.
"Sam, Tucker, this is Jason." Danny said, waving between his friends.
"He beat my highscore on Doom and he feels strongly about social issues." Danny continued, watching as Tucker and Sam's eyes lit up.
Danny only knew the bit about social issues when he'd finally gotten Jason to engage in a 'what if' game. He'd asked him what he'd do if he ever went back to Gotham, and Jason had, after a bit of gentle nudging, confessed that he'd like to improve the lives of those who lived in Crime Alley, where he'd grown up.
His initial plan had included a hostile takeover of the drug trade that Danny had to nix. Danny didn't mind a good fight, but, and he quotes, 'cutting off the heads of all their lieutenants and holding them at gunpoint' was not a good idea. What if they came back as ghosts? Then theyd be Danny's problem! However Danny could support the idea of lowering crime by controlling it, especially with the argument Jason had made, complete with data and sources.
It was like what Danny did with the ghosts. He couldn't stop their Obsessions, but he could make sure they were channeled in less destructive ways. Trying to stop them entirely was a losing game, controlling them on the other hand was better. And meant, until he closed the Amity portal for good, that the collateral damage and risk to life from ghost attacks was drastically decreased.
Danny was impressed with Jason's argument, it was obvious this was something Jason had spent time thinking about, perhaps before he'd died even. It was also promising. It meant Jason might one day be up to returning to Gotham. Not forever, Danny didn't think, but there was a lot of unfinished business in that city for the other halfa, business he'd need to deal with before he could fully heal.
Danny knew well the weight that unfinished business could put on a soul. How it could drag you down, and he didn't want that for Jason.
"What are your thoughts on animal rights?" Sam asked, pulling out her phone to undoubtedly give Jason her famous speech with a power point presentation to back it up as she stalked towards the halfa with a glint in her eyes.
"Don't forget to ask about Mothman!" Tucker shouted at Sam, who waved a hand at him. Jason just looked confused at the mention of the cryptid myth.
"Hey, Danny, can I show you something?" Tucker whispered as Sam dragged Jason to her couch, turning on her massive flat-screen and pulling the PowerPoint up. Jason still looked nervous but also a bit relieved that he hadn't been immediately tossed out.
"Sure, Tuck." Danny said, letting his friend drag him into a seperate room. He had to wonder if this was planned, he wouldn't put it past his friends.
"So you know how you told us Jason was Robin?" Tucker started as he slid into a chair in front of a massive set of monitors. Tucker and Sam were roommates and Tucker got to enjoy the benefits of having an heiress best friend, meaning he got to get the latest and greatest tech.
"Yeah?" Danny said, floating over until he could sit on the arm of the computer chair.
He'd asked for Jason's permission before he'd revealed that fact. Jason had agreed knowing eventually Sam and Tucker would see his ghost form once they started visiting the Ghost Zone again. They kept his last name a secret though, so Sam and Tucker didn't know Bruce Wayne was Batman or that Richard Greyson was Nightwing.
Even with the obvious issues Jason had with Batman there was still loyalty, love, there. Despite whatever Batman had done to make it so Jason could hardly say his name, he refused to betray him.
"Well, I've been keeping track of Batman and the other Gotham Vigilantes since then. Just in case one of them suddenly realizes what happened or something happens to them. I thought maybe, one day, Jason might want to know." Tucker explained, pulling up articles, images, and videos on the monitors.
Danny felt his core pulse, purring again. Tucker hardly knew Jason besides what Danny had said about him, but despite that he'd done this for him.
"And well...look." Tucker said, voice strained and solemn as he pulled up a new article.
"A New Robin Flying To The Scene?" Was the title of the article, a rather good shot of a boy in-
"Oh my Ancients, please don't tell me that's what I think it is." Danny feels himself pale, hand going to his mouth.
"It is." Tucker says, looking as pale and sick as Danny. Because there on the screen was a picture of a boy, far smaller than Jason and practically swimming in the costume. A costume covered in holes, and rips and bloodstains.
Because it's the costume Jason died in.
"It's been only what, seven? Maybe seven and a half months since he died and Batman already replaced him?!" Danny demanded, feeling anger kindle in his chest, cold flames licking through him.
"Seems it's Batman's thing. The second Robin, Jason, appeared only a couple months after the first one became Nightwing." Tucker said grimly, the mouse creaking under his tight grip.
"I can't fucking believe this shit." Danny growled, barely stopping himself from transforming, his voice taking a static edge as anger flared higher in his chest. The temperature of the room dipped, frost growing over Danny's hands.
"He died. Jason died and Batman couldn't even wait a full year before he shoved another child into a costume? Was one dead kid not enough for him?" Danny demanded, though there was no one here who could answer his question.
Danny was tempted to open a portal to Gotham and get the answers he wanted. To force Batman to retire Robin entirely. Jason had died in that suit, and he should've been the last. When would adults learn that children had no place in their wars? Danny knew, far too well, the damage being a teenage superhero could do to a child. Knew the pressure it put on them. The danger it put them in.
Danny had no choice when he took up his mantle. There was no other hero in Amity to fight in his stead. No Justice League coming to save the day, no matter how many calls, emails and letters they sent.
But Gotham already had heroes who were adults. They had Batman and Nightwing, they didn't need a child to fight!
Danny knew he wouldn't stop another teen from becoming a hero. The Teen Titans did good work, and he knew the world needed heroes. But he would never encourage such a thing. And he couldn't believe Batman would either, not after he already got one kid killed in his crusade.
"We can't let Jason see this." Danny said and Tucker nodded, minimizing the article. Hiding the image of a boy, too small, so small, so young, wearing a goddamned death shroud.
"Jason is just starting to open up, to believe I won't throw him away. If he sees this it'll just confirm that he's replaceable, a failure." Danny muttered, anger surging. Batman, no Bruce Wayne never deserved Jason. Didn't deserve him when he was alive and sure as hell didn't deserve him now that he was back from the dead.
"Want me to keep an eye on things still?" Tucker asked, placing a steadying hand on Danny's forearm.
"Yeah. He deserves to see this, one day. When he's ready. And I want to know if Batman gets another kid killed. Because if he does there will be a reckoning." Danny growled darkly.
He was almost tempted to go now, this very second. His Obsession, his need to protect, howled inside of him. He wanted to grab that little boy who was far too young to fight in a war and bundle him up, whisk him off to the Ghost Zone where he'd be safe and far from Batman. But he couldn't. Couldn't risk Batman finding out about ghosts and leading him straight to Jason. Danny just hoped the third Robin didn't have his wings brutally clipped the way Jason's had been.
One day Jason would return to Gotham, and Danny would be with him. And on that day Batman would have a list of sins Danny would hold him accountable for. And if Danny had any say in it, he'd lose every Robin he ever had when Danny swiped them out from under his ungrateful nose.
"Hey dorks! Get out here and play Mario Kart with us so I can beat all three of your asses at the same time!" Sam's voice came from the door, accompanied by a pounding fist.
Danny and Tucker shared a long, dark look before the temperature in the room slowly rose as Danny got his anger under control. Articles, images and videos were wiped from the monitors, hiding the evidence. When they walked back out both had strained smiles that eased when they saw Jason, smiling and happily chatting with Sam.
Danny and Tucker collapsed on the couch, grabbing controllers and eagerly joining the game. Letting the memories of what they'd seen fade away as they reveled in acting like teenagers. Not heroes, not kings, not traumatized ghosts. Just four teens, shouting and crying out as they played round after round of Mario Kart.
Danny knew, as Jason shouted and cursed and bantered back and forth with Sam and Tucker, that his spook was finally whole. Much as it had been with the Ghost Zone, Jason fit in as if he'd always belonged there. As if there'd been a Jason shaped hole in their lives, simply waiting for him to fill it. And Danny knew that Jason belonged with them.
Jason belonged with Danny, with Jazz and Sam and Tucker. With Skulker, Ember, Kitty, and Johnny. With Ghost Writer. Jason had always belonged to them.
Jason was home, and Danny would do everything in his power to show the other halfa that. That this home would always be there for him, that it would never, could never, abandon him. Nor could they ever replace him.
Not to be horny on main, but I need shin soukoku content where in his half-tiger form, Atsushi’s got barbs on his dick and fucks Akutagawa with it. I will take art, fanfic, anything. If you know of any content like this, I beg you for it, please
Wrote these for a friend of mine, and I figured I might as well share them here. So, here are some wholesome headcanons for skk and sskk.
Soukoku:
• I feel like whenever they’re cuddling, Dazai likes to be the little spoon. Like, holding Chuuya in his arms is all well and good, but when Chuuya wraps around him and holds him tight, he feels protected in a way that he isn’t usually able or allowed to feel. And Chuuya will never admit it, but he knows this and he thoroughly enjoys being able to provide that kind of safe space for Dazai
• Chuuya is the only one to completely understand Dazai, and the same can be said for the vice versa. They’re able to tell what the other is feeling at all times. They always know what the other needs, and they’re ready to provide that for them
• Dazai always goes to Chuuya when the urge to commit suicide gets too high. Chuuya knows how to get him out of his head, out of his self-deprecation, out of his boredom with the world, and Dazai has come to crave that sense of security and safety and firmness whenever it gets bad enough
• Likewise, Dazai is always there to ground Chuuya whenever he becomes too stuck in the thought process that because he’s the vessel of a god that he is a monster. Dazai makes Chuuya feel human, and Chuuya does the same for Dazai when everyone around them makes them feel inhuman
Shin Soukoku:
• These two bicker like an old married couple, but they are the strongest pairing. The level of trust they have for one another, their compatibility, and their adaptability allows them to change what needs to be changed without tiptoeing over each other. They rarely lie to one another, and it’s led them to be able to build a solid foundation for their relationship
• Neither of them are very good with emotions, Akutagawa least of them. And even though neither of them is able to pinpoint what the other is feeling with 100% accuracy, they’re usually pretty good at establishing what the other needs in the moment, be that food, space, silence, conversation, physical affection, etc
• Akutagawa absolutely despises early mornings, and he’s slow to rise. Atsushi loves slowly waking him up with kisses and cuddles and physical affection. Akutagawa will never admit it, but he loves it when Atsushi does this: it puts him in a good mood for the start of the day
• They both have bad mental health days, and they take care of each other on those days. When Atsushi has a bad mental health day, Akutagawa will cook him his favorite foods and they’ll spend the day cuddling in bed. Akutagawa will either tell Atsushi everything he loves about him, and he points out everything he loves about the things Atsushi hates about himself, or he’ll just get a book from his library and read out loud to Atsushi, allowing Atsushi to just relax. When Akutagawa has a bad mental health day, Atsushi has to help him through basic self-care. Not because Akutagawa shuts down and can’t take care of himself, but because he just won’t. So Atsushi will make sure Akutagawa showers, eats, brushes his hair and teeth, gets dressed (even just in comfy clothes), that kind of thing. And when that’s said and done, he’ll take Akutagawa into his arms and chat about anything he can to take Akutagawa’s mind off of what’s bothering him until he’s ready to talk about it
This. This is the only thing keeping me going. Because I only just got caught up on the manga and it made me want to rip my hair out, and I need this in my life after that lol
What does it say about my family that my biggest insecurities about myself are literally only there because my sister feels the need to point them out and nag me about them constantly? Oh, and then she’ll turn around and tell me that she’s only pointing out all my flaws to help me.
I can’t sleep, I’m halfway to a mental-breakdown-induced shitty at-home haircut, I think I might be genderfluid, and I’m spiraling.
No one actually needs to address any of these things, I’m just seeking validation, but I don’t want to be a burden on any of my friends, so I’m posting this here instead.
and COMING IN HOT at NUMBER FOUR on my list, it's Fragment 147! an accidental poem created when the original parchment containing a text by Sappho was used to stop a wine jug more than 2,000 years ago- eventually the wine dissolved most of the parchment, leaving just a few words and BOY do they prove that the Universe has a sense of irony.
Text reads "This is Smaug, the dragon from the Hobbit. Smaug famously stole a mountain full of gold. So full that he sleeps buried under gold. We're talking literally tons and tons of gold by weight.
Forbes tracks Smaug as the second wealthiest fictional character. He had been first, but the price of gold took a tumble more his vast, overwhelming fortune is only worth $51,400,00 0,000.00. Or $51.4 billion.
That means EVEN THOUGH he has an ENTIRE MOUNTAIN full of almost nothing but solid gold , Smaug would be ranked at the FIFTEENTH wealthiest American.
Fourteen Americans have more money than a gold-hoarding dragon.
Please consider that next time you say deca-billionaores deserve their wealth and shouldn't pay their employees livable wages.
Image below of Smaug covered in gold. All you can see is his eye.
Okay, but also, the second wealthiest fictional character is less wealthy than fourteen actual people? Like, fiction writers coming up with the most absurdly wealthy people they can think of still fall short of actual real-life people
You get to know one character quickly and effectively
Builds attachment
Simpler
Let’s you cheat at info dumps
Epistolary stories are an option (journal style like The Martian or Dracula where everything takes place in letters or blogs)
Limitations:
Tougher to distinguish between viewpoint characters with each one you add
Untrustworthy narrator
Hard to be epic in scope
Gives away that the protagonist lives
If your audience doesn’t like the voice of your main character it will be a horrible experience for them
You don’t get the advantages of third person
Third Person
Advantages:
Large casts work better than in First Person
Sometimes better for scene/setting of immediate nature
Epic scope
Best for hiding things from the reader (except for omniscient)
More viewpoint freedom
Easier to off characters
Shows inherent discord (conflicted thoughts and dialogue)
More immersive (for some)
Easier to forgive characters of their mistakes
Limitations:
Can’t cheat on info dumps
Don’t get the advantages of First Person
These are from my notes on Brandon Sanderson’s lectures. I highly recommend them to anyone interested, I believe he is posting the most recent semester on his YouTube once a week.
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