Eternally 14 Danny in Gotham and he's chronologically older than Bruce
Ooh, I like this
Danny is fourteen. He's been fourteen since he died. After a while, people started noticing that he wasn't aging, and his parents confronted him about it.
'You aren't our son', they said, 'just a pale mimicry', and, blinded by grief and anger, they tried to End him.
He fled, and made his way to the only other place he knew of with enough ambient ectoplasm for him to sustain himself on.
Ironically, it was because of a gala that Vlad took him to, where he was introduced to the Waynes.
Thomas and Martha were polite and everything, but it was their son, little Bruce, that made the gala more entertaining than agonizing.
He was chubby and happy and opinionated and so alive, it made Danny ache.
Before he left, little Bruce made him swear he would come back, and, well... He was going to be back in Gotham anyway, why wouldn't he honor his promise?
As a halfa, Danny had to sustain both his human and ghost halves, had to spend time in both of them, and, while he hated to take advantage of the Waynes, where else could he get food that it wouldn't be missed?
He could pay it back in being a friend to little Brucie, anyway.
The gala had been the Wayne Winter Gala, and it had been at the Wayne mansion.
It had been a year or so ago and his memory had gotten significantly worse ever since he had become a ghost (and lost some neural plasticity-), but, even as he didn't remember how to get there, his body remembered the path he had taken to get there, and he so off he went.
Wayne manor was large. Without the guests, it seemed much larger, much emptier, and much lonelier.
There were the three Waynes, plus a bit more than twenty staff, but the manor was an ancestral manor, meant to be filled by families of old who had four or more children and other family members and all the staff necessary for attending to the family and the upkeep of the manor.
He could stay there, act as an "imaginary" friend for bruce, and satisfy both his human and ghost halves.
He hadn't quite been sure about how to go about acting as little Bruce's imaginary friend, so he had just sort of shown up when he was out on the grounds, climbing trees and stuff.
"Danny!" Bruce lit up at spotting him, and a smile crossed his face. He hadn't actually expected Bruce to remember him.
"Hey-a, little Brucie. How's life been treating you? Sorry for just showing up, but I thought it must be lonely, here in this large manor, with nobody your own age around to play with."
"'M not little! B' yeah, it is a little lonely- or, it was! Now I've got you to play with!"
"Yep! You've got me now! So... What do you want to do? Play hide-and-seek or something?"
Things went well, for a while. He accompanied little Bruce around, just being a friend to him through most of the day, and wandered away occasionally to pilfer food from the kitchen and pantry.
(It didn't fight back. It made him miss home, but at the same time he was relieved.)
At night, he turned to his human form and slept in the attic. It was lonely at times, having relegated himself to the attic where hardly anyone ever went, but he was too high to bother anyone with his night terrors, and it was only for the nights, anyway.
Things took a turn for the worse a couple of months into being Bruce's "imaginary friend".
From what he gathered, they had gone to see a play at the monarch theater, and exited through the backdoor out into the alley to avoid the press, only to get shot by an overzealous mugger.
He- he had stayed behind, because it was too late, and he had to be human for an equal amount of time as he was ghost to maintain the equilibrium between his halves, and- he hadn't been there.
He hadn't been there. He didn't know it happened until the next morning, when they weren't back. He was unable to stop it, unable to do anything about it!
When the staff heard about the death of the mister and missus, they began bailing.
They couldn't stay, they said, without anyone to sign their paychecks. They had to have money so that they could afford the expenses of living.
All but one. One Alfred Pennyworth said everything that he wanted to, called them immoral money-grabbing scoundrels without a srap of loyalty, and worse. He had been cheering him on invisibly.
When Alfred went to the police station to fight for the custody of little Bruce, Danny went with him.
He was ready to stop being human-shaped in his ghost form.
He was ready to embrace the eldritch side of being half dead.
He was ready to use body horror.
He was ready to fight for Bruce; sometime, in using the Waynes to sustain his human half, his ghost half had claimed Bruce as part of his Fright, and he wasn't going to lose him to some human that only wanted him for his fortune!
The social workers let Bruce go back to the manor with Alfred as they "decided on his placement".
Bruce was in shock, still, at the way his life had been irreversibly changed.
Danny kneeled down to talk to Bruce, invisible to anyone but him.
"Hey, little Bruce. You know how I swore to come back at that gala, and how I honored it? I am swearing to you now that I won't let anyone take you from Alfred, from Mister Pennyworth. It means that I won't really be around for a while, but that just means I'm fighting for you, 'kay? I'm not leaving you, you got that?"
And fight for him, he did. The heating seemed to fail, with pockets of cold air and breezes where there logically shouldn't be any.
The lights flickered all the time, and people- people in charge of deciding who should get custody of Bruce Wayne- were suddenly prone to hysteria and hallucinations of towering monsters with jaws that unhinged and a maw that was just teeth, each the size of your hand.
When he wasn't terrorizing the social workers, he was either asleep or stuck like glue to Bruce's side.
Bruce... Wasn't doing too good. He was either empty, raging at the unfairness of the world, or sobbing.
When Danny's work payed off, in Alfred getting custody of Bruce, he knelt down by Bruce's side and explained it.
"Your parents aren't here anymore. I know- I know it hurts. Mine aren't here for me anymore, either. But, with them gone, the adults want an adult to be your guardian- to watch over you. I've been busy for a while, trying to get them to appoint Alfred as your guardian, and I succeeded."
He took a deep breath to prepare himself to explain the next bit. He couldn't give him the complete truth, but he had to discourage him from delving into the supernatural in an attempt to get them back.
"I know that you don't want this, that you want your parents back, but they are dead and gone. The thing is, 'dead' and 'gone' don't mean exactly the same thing. I'm dead… ish..., but I'm not gone. I don't know what makes it so that some people come back as ghosts and some don't, but, as far as I can tell, your parents are gone."
He winced at the way Bruce had gained hope, only to lose it again. This felt cruel, but it was necessary.
"I know you would want you parents to stay behind and not move on, but ghosts are unchanging imprints of a person. They can't change, not like the living can. They would be a snapshot of your parents, not your parents. There is no way for you to get them back. It must feel like nothing but a platitude to you, but I am sorry."
Danny's parents hadn't actually been too far off in what they had thought ghosts to be. That is, normal ghosts, those that are trapped on a plane just adjacent of the living plane.
The ghosts he knew? Those were Realms ghosts. The ghosts of the infinite realms were made up of ectoplasm, which could be shaped into pretty much anything, so long as there was a consciousness to keep it shaped.
The days formed a grim routine. Bruce would wake up, eat, go to school, take his anger out on bullies, get detention, go home, eat, train, eat, sleep.
Danny shadowed him through it all, even as Bruce began to ignore him, as though it would make him go away.
With each day, Bruce seemed to become more an echo of the boy he had been before, more ghost than living, as though he died in that alleyway with his parents. Perhaps the boy he had been before had.
He even had a blooming Obsession: taking down crime. Well, more accurately, justice, but he focussed on crime, doing his best to ensure that nobody else would die like his parents did.
And then, after five miserable years, Bruce broke. "Nothing is working! It isn't enough, Alfred! Crime- crime is going on, business as normal! No charity, no nothing, has even begun to make a dent! I'm- I have to go. I have to leave. I have to get out of Gotham!"
Alfred tried to protest that he was only thirteen, but it didn't matter. Bruce got his way.
On the day of Bruce's leaving, Danny stood before him, human in front of someone else for the first time since he had set foot in Gotham.
"I know you are probably just going to ignore me, like you have for the past five years, not that I didn't deserve it, but I've been by your side throughout it all, and- I can't. I'm dead in all the ways that matter, and I can't follow you any longer. Not out of Gotham."
Holding back tears, Danny open his arms and asked, "Before you go, can I- can I have a hug?"
"You're incorporeal," Bruce said flatly, talking to him for the first time in years.
"I'm- I'm not your typical ghost. I can- I can make myself corporeal, and- I- I'm currently corporeal–" he was cut off as Bruce slammed into him, the younger boy nearly knocking him off his feet with his greater height.
"I'll miss you," Bruce whispered, barely loud enough for him to hear, and Danny hugged him tighter, holding the boy he viewed as a cousin close, for possibly the last time.
"A- and I'll miss you too, little Bruce. Just… Don't forget me, please? Alfred and I will be waiting for you to come home…"
Bruce nodded into his neck, content to soak in the warmth and affection before he had to pull away and leave.
"Alright, alright… Weren't you- weren't you leaving..? I wouldn't want to- to hold you back…"
Bruce pulled away, staring at Danny, soaking in every detail. His friend, that he'd had for years. That he wouldn't be able to see again, for a long while.
"I- yes. I have to get going. But I swear, I won't forget you, Danny. How could I?"
Wiping his eyes, he turned away, and headed to the driveway, where Alfred was ready to drive him to the airport. When he looked back, Danny was gone.
True to his word, Bruce never forgot Danny. Not when he was training with various different martial arts masters, or training with the league of assassins, or doing ballet (extremely useful for balance), or coding, or programming, or engineering, or dogsledding, or net-weaving, or lassoing, or-- you get the point.
In the eleven long years he spent away, learning anything he could consider even tentatively as possibly useful for his return, he didn't forget.
Danny and Alfred are waiting for me.
He kept them waiting, but he didn't forget. He couldn't. It stayed in the back of his mind, even as he shed names and personalities as he went from thing to thing as he learned.
I have people waiting at home.
After eleven years, he made his way back, spirit buoyed and heart light, until he stood in his driveway.
He had sworn to remember Danny, and he had, but did they remember him?
His fears were allayed as Danny flew down the driveway, the distance between each stride longer than it ought to have been, and hardly stopped before grabbing him into a hug.
"You didn't forget..."
"I promised I wouldn't," he agreed, tears squeezing out of his eyes even as he closed them, revelling in the hug from his ghost.
After a few minutes, Danny let him go with a squeeze, and he looked up to see Alfred.
"Welcome home, Master Bruce," the ever-faithful butler said, also holding back tears.
"Oh, come on, Alf', just hug him already! You know you want to!"
With Danny's encouragement (and when did that happen? When did they get acquainted?), Alfred wrapped him in a hug.
Reaching out with one arm, he pulled Danny in, and truly relaxed for the first time in a long while. It felt safe. It felt like home.
Once they parted, they went inside and Alfred made them tea.
They sat together in the living room in an awkward silence, sipping their tea, before Danny broke it.
"So… When you left, you said that nothing you had been trying to do actually impacted all the crime, and that you had to leave. Presumably you went about learning how to make it actually trickle down while you were gone. So. What are you planning to do?''
"I'm going to fight it from both ends. At the top, I'm going to do what I was doing before, but with more of a focus on rooting out and exposing corruption. From the bottom, I am going to make them doubt if it is actually worth being corrupt."
"That's all good in theory, but how are you going to go about it?"
"I'm- I am going to be a vigilante. I am going to go out there, at night, and intimidate the criminals, make them fear, make them- make them doubt themselves, if it is really worth it."
"I should have known... Fine. If Alfred agrees, I won't oppose it. I could help with the information gathering, even."
"Really? How?"
"Didn't you ever wonder how you were the only one to see me? I can go invisible, Bruce. And, I'm a ghost, so I can go intangible too, making me perfect for reconnaissance. It isn't like I'm inexperienced, either, though when I was a vigilante I was fighting ghosts, not corruption."
"You were a vigilante? But- didn't you die at fourteen? You were out there fighting ghosts at fourteen?"
"Yeah. It was trying, with me being half-dead, and still going to school after only getting two hours of sleep due to being up half the night fighting ghosts. Speaking of. If Alfred condones it, then fine, you can be a vigilante, but you will not stay out any later than two in the morning, got it? You will prioritize your health, even if I have to make you."
"What... You're half-dead? And what do you mean you'd make me?"
"Yeah, I'm half-dead. Parents were mad scientists with a lab in their basement, and I went inside their non-functioning gateway to the realm of the dead and pressed the 'on' switch that was on the inside when I stumbled. Not sure exactly how it worked, but I ended up as Schrödinger's boy, half-dead and half-alive. Anyway. If I have to, I'll overshadow you- basically possession- and make you care for yourself."
They sat in silence, the only sound the sipping of tea, as they waited for Alfred to come to a decision.
"When I did not stop you from leaving, eleven years ago," he spoke, setting down his tea on a coaster on the side table, "I let you go on a journey that you used to prepare for being a vigilante. I will let you, so long as you keep to a set of guidelines Danny and I set for you."
He found himself with an armful of twenty-four-year-old, the man that his son had become in the years they had spent apart murmuring thank yous into his shoulder.
Right then, everything was alright, and that was enough.
It started out simply. The first time, he went out for two hours, skulking in the shadows, patrolling the rooftops of Gotham, watching for crime.
He'd stopped a couple of muggings, foiled a robber, and stopped a transaction of money for drugs. A rather quiet night, all in all.
Danny came with him invisibly each time.
He didn't help- they'd discussed it, and they didn't want him to rely on Danny, not when he couldn't always help, and with him having run off to learn skills for being a vigilante, it would be a waste for him to not use them- but he did keep Bruce company whenever the night was slow.
They laughed together as they listened to the rumors surrounding him.
"A giant bat, going around fighting crime!"
"I heard it's the coalescence of our sins, come back to punish us! There's no way it's human, the way it moves!"
"It's some sort of creature!"
So, they didn't think his alter-ego was human, because of the way he moved.
(Probably from when he was being shot at and he bent over backwards so that his chest was facing towards the sky, went up on his hands, flipped himself backwards onto his feet, and continued fighting. Though, that was all acrobatics.)
If he continued moving like he was, like a human, that rumor would not perpetuate. It would die out and be disbelieved by most.
He didn't want that. Not when fear was a good motivation for staying out of crime, and what better way to fight crime than to stop a civilian from committing a crime in the first place?
If he wanted to scare civilians away from crime, he had to be frightening enough to make them double-guess potentially committing a crime.
He had to have a fearsome reputation, then, and moving like he wasn't human was a good starting place.
So, he had gotten Danny to try to teach him to lean into that, once they got back to the house, though neither of them were really sure if he could move like Danny. He wasn't a ghost, after all.
Unfortunately, he could copy it only the barest amount, not anywhere near to his goal of moving like a creature instead of a human.
Danny couldn't help him much, but that didn't mean that he just gave up, oh no.
To start, Bruce upped the frequency of which he did yoga, pilates, and contortionism.
He watched nature documentaries, committing to memory which movements screamed prey and which screamed predator, and he practiced.
He practiced until he moved like a predator, until they were second nature.
Until he could tell the ways that he moved that made him feel like a predator, and took those movements to make more.
Until Danny noticed people nearly jumping out of his way when he walked down the street, and the reporters simply took pictures instead of coming up to him to ask for an interview about something or other.
He didn't mind the reporter part, but Danny sat him down and they had a talk.
About how to know where to draw to the line. About what was too much. About the perils of secret identities.
"I'm not saying that you aren't doing good as Batman, Bruce, or that you should stop it. Not that you would. But– you need to know yourself. All this Batman stuff has the makings of an Obsession, and while that isn't necessarily a bad thing, I don't want it to become your whole identity."
Danny explained to him that he was a liminal, that he had slowly been becoming one ever since he'd started hanging around, and then that his liminality had increased when his parents had died and only grown since then.
He had gotten mad, at first, when they'd teamed up to restrict him going out as Batman and his training for it, making him do more normal things. But, after a while, he had started to realize that he felt more balanced than he had in a while.
He was both Bruce Wayne and the Batman. He could be both, enjoy both, and, actually, him being both and not overindulging in one or the other was actually healthy for him.
Bruce had gone to the circus and watched the Graysons fall to their death.
It had hurt, seeing a child watch their parents die in front of them in a horrible parody of his own childhood, but he hadn't been able to do anything about it.
He went back to life as normal after that night- well, mostly. He couldn't stop thinking about it.
It haunted his dreams and his waking hours, and made him sloppy during patrol. The only reason the bullet hadn't hit him was because Danny had phased them both.
"Bruce. You're clearly distracted. You can't keep going like this- you're going to get hurt. It's not feasible. If you're so concerned about the kid, why don't you check in on him?"
"I've tried, Danny. I tried, after the first night I couldn't sleep because of it, and I couldn't find him."
"Really? But you're so good with technology. How come?" Danny questioned curiously, floating above the computer.
"The police took him with them when they left the circus, and you know that the cameras around the police station are all broken, so I couldn't see what they did with him, and they didn't even make a case about him, neither the police nor CPS, and I checked the feeds watching all the orphanages- all the orphanages in Gotham- and I couldn't find him. I couldn't find him!"
"Hey, hey, it's okay. You seem to really care about this boy… Would you like me to go looking for him? I-"
"Really? You'd do that for me? You… Oh, sorry, I interrupted you. Go on?"
A smile crinkled Danny's features as he ruffled his son's Bruce's hair. (He already had a daughter in Dani- though she had only visited a few times while Bruce had been gone, preferring to keep traveling the world- what was adding Bruce as a son?)
"Of course I'd do that for you! It's clearly been weighing on you, and I'd do it for you just because of that, but it's also dangerous, with you being the Batman. Anyway, yeah, I'll hop to it. See you tonight for patrol!"
With a final pat and a wave, he flew away, phasing through the cave's ceiling as a green blur, unaware of the way Bruce slumped after Danny's hand left his head as he flew off.
Danny hummed in a frequency outside human hearing as he flew in the direction of a place he had known unfortunately well sixteen years ago.
He had gone there to fight for Alfred to get custody of Bruce, and now to find out where they had put Dick Grayson.
He phased through the building from the back, straight into the record room, and began covertly going through the most recent placements.
There was nothing. Or so he thought at first glance. A second look-through, however, revealed one short, anger-inducing sentence.
Orphanages full– Richard Grayson to juvenile detention center.
How could they? This- they were talking about an eight-year-old child! Tossed into a juvenile detention center with no care, because the orphanages were full?
Did they even bother phoning more than two orphanages to ask if they could take him before punting him into a fucking juvenile detention center?
He didn't notice that he had been letting out his ghostly aura until frost started creeping up the sides of the file cabinet.
With measured breaths, he deliberately slid the file back down into the cabinet and turned and flew away.
Straight out of the building- through town- into Bristol- through the ground- and he came to a stop in front of the computer.
He switched forms smoothly as he sat down, and, after one spin of the chair, he got to work.
It didn't take him long to find out where all the juvenile detention centers in Gotham were.
There were more than he expected, but it wouldn't take him long to go through them all; not with his ghost powers. And so he flew off.
The first few he ghosted through seemed standard, not that he knew what would be standard for juvenile detention centers, but nothing about them seemed weird.
A couple, though, did seem… Weird. Not even normal weird, but Gotham weird.
That is to say: spooky and making him want to hurl. One had children in cages—
Well. He would definitely tell Bruce about them (his son was so competent and empathetic!).
He finally found his quarry in the third-to-last one. Taking note of it, he quickly ghosted through the other two to make sure that they were above-board, which they were, before turning back.
The kid had climbed on top of the basketball hoop and hugging it for dear life as the other kids shook it. The jeers and slurs were what did it for him.
A deep growl reverberated in his chest, the sound like far-away thunder, and he didn't restrain himself.
Normally, he kept himself in a human-like form, more for convenience than anything.
He had practiced his shape-shifting while Bruce had gone away to train, having recognized the usefulness of it when he had fought for Bruce to be placed with Alfred.
He had mastered it, eventually, and had one that he called his fear form.
It was more than five times bigger than his human form. His hair hung around his face in strands, flowing like kelp in the wind despite the lack of wind, only parted around the crest. His teeth appeared shark-like, pointed but with serrations, and shone like pearls. His upper body was draped in a ghostly fabric that rippled with each movement. His fingers were tipped with long claws- more like talons, really. His lower body made him look like an eel, being long and streamlined and snake-like, but with a long fin running the length of his tail until it tapered off into smoke like the rest.
He had measured himself, once. Thirty-odd feet, from the crown of his head to where his tail tapered off.
Merely ceasing to be invisible and intangible caused the lights to flicker and go out, which caused him to remember another feature of that form.
Bioluminescence.
He snarled, body sparking like an electric eel, and the boys scattered.
For fun, he lunged at them, snapping at their backs, until they had fled the gym.
With a deep breath to calm himself, he shifted to a less aquatic form.
His normal hair; sharp but not shark-like teeth; upper body covered with draped, shawl-like layers; gloved hands; smokey tail; and only two-to-three times bigger than his human form.
"I'm sorry about that," he spoke, wincing at the ghostly echo accompanying his words, "but I cannot tolerate bullies. Are you alright? Do you need help getting down? Oh, am I scary? Would you prefer to stay up there?"
"U- uh… I… I can get down by- by myself, but, um… Help would be appreciated!" He squeaked.
With a purr and a close-mouthed smile, he gently cupped his hands beneath the boy (younger than him! Younger than he had been when he died! How dare they let this happen to him!) and waited.
The boy took a couple of deep breaths before screwing his eyes shut and letting go.
Danny carefully lowered the boy down to the floor. Like this, everything seemed so small and fragile.
The boy, at least, was strong in spirit, having survived his parents' deaths and the placement in a juvenile detention center, and resourceful.
"I'm Phantom. Who are you? And do you have anywhere else to go? This hardly seems an appropriate place for you to live."
"I… I'm- I'm Dick. No- no, I, I don't- no, I don't have anywhere else to go… My- my pa- I- I… I'm all alone…"
"Well, that just won't do. I would take you with me, except… Somehow I doubt that they would take kindly to me showing up with a child out of nowhere."
"They..?" Dick asked timidly, grabbing onto Danny's thumb as he tried to put him down.
"Yes… I live with two humans. Peculiar ones, admittedly, as they allow me to reside with them, but they are good. Nice. They welcomed me."
"Why-- are they why you can't just whisk me away?" Dick asked, longing written all over his face.
How bad must this place be for him to ask a large being to take him away? One clearly not human?
"I am afraid so, little one. Can you endure? They shall surely want to use legal channels, and those are not the most expedient."
"You mean- you... You aren't just going to leave me here? You're going to get your human friends to come get me?"
"Perish the thought. Should they wish to, well… I have existed without their accommodations before. To do so would be no such hardship to me. To you, however, little human… Well. There is a reason I shall allow they to try the legal channels first. I fear I would not be able to take care of you nearly as well as they would."
"How- how long do you think it will take? You may have scared 'em off, but… They won't stay away for long. Not when I'm such an easy target, and one nobody cares much about."
"Longer than I care to leave you to their tender mercies," Danny admitted with a whale song like hum.
"Would you be opposed to the idea of me visiting? To keep you company and scare away and unwanted presences?"
"No! No, I- I wouldn't be opposed. I'd… I'd actually like that. I'd actually like that a lot."
Dick's tentative smile up at him melted Danny. Oh, there was no way he was leaving him to the wolves.
He would have to balance the timing between being dead for patrol and Dick, and alive to keep the balance, but it would be worth it.
He smiled back, forgetting to keep his teeth behind his lips, but Dick only beamed back, his eyes shining with unshed tears.
He wouldn't fail Dick. He wouldn't.
"I found the boy," Danny told Bruce, shifting back to human with an unsettling cracking sound.
"His name is Dick, and the reason you couldn't find him was because they didn't send him to an orphanage. They sent him to a juvenile detention center. Not a particularly nice one, either."
"They sent him to a juvenile detention center? How could they do that?"
"Yeah. It stinks. Calls for investigating by the Batman, even. Bruce… I found him having been driven up a basketball goal! Like a cat! And the bullies were shaking it! I mean, I got them back for it, but I doubt they're going to stop after just one scare."
"What do you mean you got them back for it? Don't tell me you went all nightmare on a bunch of teenage delinquents?"
"Fine, I won't," he sulked, crossing his arms.
"Danny…"
"What? Don't pretend you haven't done it before, and for less! I don't- I hate bullies. Picking on those weaker than them… It's horrible."
"Yes, it is, but that doesn't mean you should have gone that far. They're just kids."
"Yeah, but they ended up in Juvie for a reason. Anyway, this arguing is pointless. What are you going to do about it? Dick shouldn't be there. He doesn't belong there. Especially not so soon after watching his parents die."
"Investigation by the Batman, I think."
"Okay, and then? What are you planning on doing after that? What are you planning on doing with him?"
"Find a good orphanage to put him in… And… Pay for him to get therapy..? What is it? Why are you displeased? What would you have me do with him?"
"I want to adopt him. Told him I'd get him out of there myself if needed. I mean, obviously I'm half-dead and fully dead legally, so I can't be his legal guardian, but either you of Alfred could do it."
"What? You want to adopt him? Why? I get that it's tragic what happened to him and how he got lost by the system, but we can force the system to find him again and take care of him. Why do you want to get personally involved with this one?"
"He reminds me of you," Danny spoke, resisting the urge to ruffle Bruce's hair, "black-haired, blue-eyed, parents murdered in front of you and incredibly messed up from it."
Bruce's expression shuttered, and it hurt to see. What had he done? Why did his son want to hide his emotions?
"So you're going to replace me?"
"What? No! What did I say to give you that impression? It just- I'm a protector spirit, you know, and... Seeing the way that he has been hurt and wronged, it makes me want to help him, and the mirroring does too. I'm not going to replace you, Bruce. Not at all. It'd just be- giving you a brother."
"And what if I don't want a brother?" Bruce challenged stubbornly, jaw set.
"Well, I no longer have any claim to my legal identity, which means that either you or Alfred would be the one to legally adopt him. He could be your son instead. Which would you prefer?"
"I- brother..? Why are those the only two options? Why couldn't you get someone else, someone you trust, to adopt him instead? What about Jim Gordon? Or, don't you have some relation you could entrust him to?"
Danny rubbed his chin as he thought about it.
"My parents are definitely not an option... There's Sam and Tucker, but they'd be late twenties, early thirties by now, and I wouldn't want to upend their lives out of nowhere, dropping a kid used to other countries and languages, on them out of nowhere without having checked in with them in a long while..."
Bruce had perked up and was listening intently. It wasn't often that Danny talked about his life pre-Gotham.
"Then, there's Jazz, somewhere in her thirties, and, again, same problem..."
"Anyone else from before you'd trust with this?"
"There is Dani- you've met her, right? She's my clone of ambiguous family relation but we've settled on daughter- she's a wanderer with no solid ties anywhere and uncertain living situation. I'm sure she would do her best if she suddenly had a kid dropped on her- like I did- but for her to be stable for him, she'd have to have an at least semi-permanent residence, and that would be anathema to her nature."
"No, I haven't met her... What about people in Gotham?"
"The only two I'd trust with Dick would be Jim Gordon- but he's practically married to his work, and hardly has enough time for his daughter. I wouldn't do that to Barbara- and Dr. Leslie Thompkins, but I'm not sure she could support him, and she's also married to her work."
"There is nobody else? At all?"
"Well, no. What did you expect? I've kept to you and Alf. I haven't exactly gone on a Gotham meet and greet, and haven't kept contact with anyone from before, either."
"...You aren't going to give up, are you?" Bruce asked with a sigh.
"Nope! I've seen him and now he's one of mine."
"...One of yours..? What do you mean by that?"
"Have I told you about Fraids before? It's basically the ghostly version of family, and it's all by choice. Instead of being related by blood, we have Fraid bonds. Mine are a little weird because I'm half-human and all of my Fraid bonds are with either normal humans or liminal humans, but... Yeah."
"Really? So who all is in your Fraid?"
"You, Alf, and Dani; and there's a tentative Fraid bond with Dick, Jazz, Sam, and Tucker."
"Is that all? Isn't it important to have a Fraid to support you? You only have real Fraid bonds with three people..."
"Well, see, the thing is... I don't know. I didn't exactly get the ghost primer when I died. I just got the existential crisis of I died but also somehow survived, but that got cut off when my town started getting invaded by ghosts and I had to fight them. And then I had to leave and come here. So, uh, I don't really know."
"You don't really talk about your life before Gotham, but you said that you had to leave... Why? What could have driven you to come to Gotham, of all places?"
"Bruce-"
"No, don't deflect! I want to know! You never talk about it, and at first I didn't think about it, but now... Something bad happened, didn't it?"
"Yes... Yes. My worst nightmare came true," Danny admitted, curling himself up on top of the computer and hiding his face in his coils.
"Short story? My parents were ghost hunters and everybody thought they were crackpots until I was dared by my friend to take a picture inside the supposed 'ghost portal' they were building, tripped and turned it on, and was in a cycle of death and revival until I fell out. Realized I was half ghost. Protected the town from the ghosts who came out after me and decided to terrorize."
He had been getting slightly nostalgic for it, but now he had to keep back tears (ghost tears were acidic, after all).
"And then... My- my parents discovered that I- that I wasn't all human and they- they s-said that I... Said I wasn't their son. They tried to kill me, to- to End me, for real. No- no afterlife, nothing... So I fled, I- I fled to the one place I thought I could lay low. It's worked! They haven't come after me..."
"Your- your parents tried to kill you?" Bruce asked, horrified, and it only got worse and Danny nodded.
"But- that's horrible! How could they think that? Sure, you aren't all human, but you are still human! How could they try-"
"Bruce. To them... To them it was the completely rational thing to do it that situation. They didn't even give me a chance to try to explain, just... Went for it. Went for me."
Bruce just stood there helplessly. He wanted to help, but what could he do?
He hadn't prepared! He didn't know what to do! His dad was crying and he couldn't do anything!
"They had noticed... Had noticed that I hadn't aged- hadn't aged all since the accident. They thought I had died and been possessed and- and- and they thought that Ending me would let me rest. They thought... They thought they were doing what was best for me..."
The ache in his voice made Bruce tear up.
"You- no! You may not be completely human, hell, you may not even age, but so what? I've heard rumors of a supposed alien in Metropolis, and they love him! Supposed 'humanity' doesn't define us! You've helped me, and helped me protect people, and even if nobody else ever knows, that makes you more 'human' than some people I know. Don't let anyone tell you that not being completely human makes you lesser!"
Danny nodded with a sniff. "I- I won't. I wouldn't have believed them anyway, but... It just hurt, because... They were my parents. They were supposed to protect me, but they were trying to hurt me, and they didn't even- didn't even think of it that way. Thought they were helping."
"I- I know," Bruce floundered, "but you've got us now. Me and Alfred. And neither of us would do that to you, especially if you told us it would hurt you."
Danny smiled, fragile but adoring, and floated down from on top of the computer to wrap Bruce in a hug.
He stiffened at the unexpected contact, but it didn't take long for him to melt into it.
