DPxDC Prompt #13
Danny was born in Gotham and ended up for adoption shortly after. The woman who birthed him listed the father on his birth certificate as The Batman. Everyone laughed it off as a joke from a woman who didn't know or didn't want admit who the father was. They left it be, but no one really thought it was true. It couldn't be. Right?
Took me a while to come back to this, but I didn't forget. For those that were interested, here's some of my further thoughts for this one:
Danny's birth mother died from complications a couple days after he was born.
She did not know his father was actually Batman.
She thought his father was Matches Malone.
Danny's mother is not the first person to list Batman as her kid's father. She's not the last. Over the years, several Gothamites have used Batman in place of an actual father.
Bruce has a system to alert him if his name or certain aliases show up on birth certificates so he can check in on it if it does. Just to make sure. For himself. He never disputes it and doesn't plant to unless it comes up on it's own.
However, Batman is specifically not programmed to ping the alert because of the above point. It happens with enough frequency it would be difficult to personally check each case; and Bruce doesn't even sleep around as Batman, so it's implicitly assumed wrong anyway.
Danny was just, one hell of a coincidence. Or the universe starting early on making every turn in his life a left. (The phenomenon typically referred to in fandom as Fenton Luck, but clearly the name doesn't apply here. It's not Fenton. It's just Danny.)
Danny was a premie. Why? Because I said so.
After getting their degrees, Jack and Maddie spent a couple years traveling the country with their prototype Fenton Ecto-Detectos (the lack of r is intentional) to find the place with the most ambient ecto to settle and start their research in. That place ends up being Gotham.
Jazz is not adopted. She was, however, a very complicated pregnancy that ultimately ended in Maddie being unable to conceive again.
At the time they are still in Gotham, Jack and Maddie are actually very good, attentive parents. It will be at least a few more years of ectoplasm exposure before contamination sets in, making them more Liminal and in turn more Obsessive. Obsession will slowly spiral them to the degree of negligence seen in the show.
The decision to leave Gotham comes when Danny is about 2 and a half. Obviously the city is dangerous and corrupt and polluted. For many non-natives, that's reason enough to leave as soon as they have the means.
For Jack and Maddie, the biggest factor was coming to the conclusion that, "Something about Gotham's arcane geography makes the city very hostile to the development of ghosts."
Turn out ghosts not forming in this city is counterproductive to their goal of proving ghosts exist and are a real threat people should be defending against. Since Gotham is a dead end for their research and a hazard to their children, Jack and Maddie decide to move to Amity Park.
Danny has a memory, buried deep in his psyche, his earliest memory. Waking up in his crib in the middle of the night to a strange woman made of smoke and stone cupping his face and saying goodbye. This memory only resurfaces when he first returns to Gotham.
I'm thinking reveal gone right but GIW are fucks. The Fenton's suddenly retracting all of their prior research and recalling all their weapons for 'safety defects' raises some big red flags to the organization.
Then with Jack, Maddie, and Jazz's "contamination" finally crossing beyond the "safe" threshold...
But still far too human to survive the kind of experimentation the GIW preforms...
:)
. . .
Runaway teens are unfortunately common in Gotham. Normally Gotham police officers wouldn't get involved unless the kid started trouble.
But this kid looks like he's been to hell and back several times over. There comes a point where they just can't turn a blind eye. Someone has to check in, if only to make sure there isn't something big and ongoing that needs to be taken down.
A kid that looks like he's been the victim of human experimentation and won't -or can't- talk is definitely one such situation.
Since the kid isn't talking, GCPD resorts to fingerprints, DNA, and searching his bag for any hope of a clue of where he came from and what happened to him.
Which is what ultimately leads to Jim Gordon pacing in front of the Bat Signal. The birth certificate they'd found buried in the bag says The Batman. The DNA test says Bruce Wayne. And Jim Gordon says he needs a vacation.
There was a nonverbal teenager in Gordon's station, with a black eye so severe the man was surprised the teen wasn't blind in it.
Sadly, worryingly, the black eye was the least amount of trauma that child had.
The boy, Daniel, was wearing a hoodie that he refused to take off, but everyone saw his wrists when he'd reached for the Pad Thai they'd ordered for him.
Handcuffs, after all, leave a very specific cut if they're too tight.
Strange lacerations and bruises ran along his face, and the more Gordon thought about them, the more he started to realize that there was a high chance they were probably from a muzzle.
Trying to talk to Daniel in ASL had only resulted in a confused look, before ultimately being dismissed.
Then the DNA results came back.
Two minutes after that he'd gotten ahold of Daniel's birth certificate.
This kid was a walking, talking threat to Batman's identity.
The normal thing to do would be to reach out to Bruce Wayne and contact the CPP.
But there was nothing normal about Bruce Wayne.
So, naturally, he'd lit the batsignal. If anyone knew who this kid was, and sending him to Gotham was supposed to be a trap for Wayne, Gordon refused to be a part of that.
He was going to get Batman before he reached out to Bruce Wayne, to give the man the warning he needed so he wouldn't walk into the situation unprepared.
"Gordon."
Gordon took a deep breath, trying to mentally prepare himself.
"I already know; Oracle told me on the way over," Batman continued, gravelly voice subdued. "How bad is he?"
"...He's definitely displaying signs of physical trauma from being restrained and beaten. We suspect he was muzzled at one point. We have no idea how he got into this city, and no idea who he is running from. Given some of the...tricks, we've seen him do when he loses focus, we assume he's an artificial meta."
It must have been painful, Gordon thought, for Batman to hold himself so unnaturally still. The man was clearly fighting against showing a very visceral reaction.
He still had to say it, though, and Gordon hated that he did.
"We think he may have escaped from a meta-trafficking ring, but since he's nonverbal, we can't be sure."
"Have any of you fools tried Sign?" Robin asked behind him, voice tight and annoyed.
"Let me reiterate; he either can't speak, won't speak, or doesn't know how to speak, in any language. That includes writing."
"I want to see him," Batman said, jaw twitching as he tried to keep his emotions in check.
But Gordon had known the Bat longer than anyone.
The man was beyond livid.
"Not as the Bat, since his mother listed 'Batman' as the father."
"You think it may be a trap?"
"It's very hard to escape from traffickers, and more likely he was let go so they could follow."
"...I suppose you should call his biological father, then."
"Is his biological father ready for this?"
There was a small scuff, and Gordon knew he was surrounded by more Bats than the two he could see.
"His biological father is sufficiently prepared."
"Well then," Gordon hummed, turning to go back into the station. "I have a call to make."
I wanna write this. But the 18 wips are screaming at me... Can I yoink this...?
Like are u asking me or Ailithnight?
I'm fine with it if it's me ur asking, lol. If it's not me ur asking, link me up when u write this prompt cuz I wanna read it.
