Taking it with Phantom now turned Robin, let’s assume he had been de-aged and was wandering different universes, cause I have a VISION. He’s around Tim’s age physically now, but mentally? He’s less human than he is ghost now a days.
So the questions is: just how long Danny stays.
Angsty route is that Danny never intended to stay longer than to just help Batman, and when he sees him healing — perhaps to a human it’s been so much longer, long enough for people to have become comfortable seeing this new Robin, long enough for years to pass, but so short for Danny because time is almost nothing even to a half ghost — and he vanished.
Just up and vanished, because he looked at Batman — he looked at Bruce Wayne — and saw a man who has healed since Jason’s passing. And if this is BEFORE Jason’s return, then I do believe even Red Hood would be confused as to how his replacement is just? Not? There? Not anywhere, what will he think?
Does he believe, in his own burdened mind that maybe Bruce had done it again, he caused another Robin to die because what else could have caused a prominent figure both in the vigilante night life and in the civilian one to suddenly disappear?
Jason’s no longer angry that he had been replaced, now he is angry that even that new Robin had died and Bruce is keeping it hidden.
And the rest of the Batfam?
Bruce who had become dependent on his third child, who could trust and rely on his capabilities and warmth, being the very glue that kept him together — and Dick, whose second brother is now missing, the one he would crack silly little jokes with, and who loved to bother him with that cocky smile and affectionate shove of his shoulder when he would visit — and Cass who felt seen because Danny just knew even when she didn’t speak, like he could hear the voice kept tightly in her chest, and had made her feel like she was just as normal as anyone else — and Damien, who had been righteously upset from the get go, who ran his sword straight through Danny who simply laughed, his blue eyes lighting up with expectation and joy, and who never scolded Damien for his differences and more violent tinged upbringing — all these soul touched people?
He was their brother/son/friend and they wanted him back.
On the other hand, the non angsty Danny side, this boy is just chilling with a smoothie and patting himself on the back for helping out a fellow hero(s).
As for Tim, I’m not sure.
If there is no reason to become Robin, then is there anything truly to integrate himself into the Wayne household?
But he is a kid, a tiny wisp of a child and maybe Danny saw him some nights when he would burst across rooftops and cock his ears to listen for crimes.
He would stop for a moment, and maybe he wanted to help the kid too. Because he was so tiny and pale, and there are bruises clinging to his eyes from lack of sleep.
He begins to act as Tim’s little shadow, a companion, and when finding out Tim is all on his own?
Well, Danny had never really thought too hard about his actions and simply dropped the child right in front of Alfred so that Tim could be feed.
Bruce doesn’t even notice the kid, at first. After all, Tim doesn’t need to be a Robin, Danny has this role filled, so what does Tim do? He stays away, hiding dem sight and trying not to bother because he has nothing to offer the Batman.
Bruce doesn’t notice until Dick visits and finds Danny with a kid not even younger than himself, obviously taking care of the kid and is demanding why Bruce hasn’t introduced them to Timothy Drake.
Tim in this way becomes Timothy Drake-Wayne, but he still isn’t a Robin. But what if he wants to be included? What if he wants to help? What if there’s a moment in all this where Danny get’s hurt, or Bruce, or maybe even both, and Tim decided that he would be the tech support. He would be the mini Oracle of that time, without ever taking the name.
In the future Bab’s and Tim are a fearsome duo.
And maybe that’s what causes them the most pain, because even together, they are not capable of finding Danny.
At least, not until John Constantine gives an unexpected clue: “You never even knew, did you?” Perhaps he’s sympathetic, or maybe he’s just curious because surely they must have noticed how very not human Danny is. “That kid was already dead.”
