Danny’s split isn’t a secret identity—it’s a fracture. Something that formed quietly under pressure, until it became the way he survives.
Danny is, by all visible measures, a good kid. He studies, shows up, does what’s expected. He helps people when they need it, steps in when things go wrong, and carries more responsibility than anyone his age should have to. Around his parents, at school, even during rescues, he is composed—careful with his actions, measured in his choices.
But that composure has limits.
Outside of those spaces—when the structure falls away, when the fights drag on—something in him shifts. Not dramatically, not in a way he can name. Just enough. His restraint thins. His reactions sharpen. Violence becomes easier, quicker, more instinctive than deliberate.
It isn’t a performance. It isn’t even a choice.
Sometimes, afterward, there are gaps. Moments he can’t fully recall, decisions he doesn’t remember making. Not enough to alarm him immediately—just enough to unsettle, if he lets himself think about it too long.
When he ends up in Gotham, the inconsistency becomes harder to ignore—not for him, but for everyone else. People notice the difference in posture, in tone, in the way he handles conflict. They compare notes.
Eventually, they settle on the simplest explanation.
He doesn’t correct them. Not because he’s hiding anything—but because, from his perspective, there’s nothing to explain.
Danny doesn’t notice it at first.
There are a lot of things Danny doesn’t notice, mostly because noticing them would mean stopping, and stopping would mean thinking, and thinking would mean admitting that something is wrong. So he doesn’t. He goes to school. He studies. He answers questions when he’s called on and keeps his head down the rest of the time. He helps when people need it. He shows up when things go bad.
He is, by every measurable standard, a good kid.
People like him. Teachers trust him. He smiles easily, apologizes when he bumps into someone in the hall, stays after class to finish assignments. There’s a steadiness to him, a kind of quiet reliability that makes adults relax around him.
Nothing about him feels dangerous.
The first time someone in Gotham mentions his twin, he laughs.
“Wrong guy,” Danny says, easy, casual. “I’m an only child.”
The guy—one of the other kids in his class, forgettable in the way most people are—frowns like he’s trying to solve a puzzle that won’t quite click into place.
“No, I’ve seen you,” he insists. “Like—last night. You were—” He hesitates, glancing around. “You didn’t look like… this.”
Danny shrugs. People say weird things all the time. Gotham is like that. He’s learned not to dig too deep into it.
“Must’ve been someone else,” he says, and moves on.
Not constantly. Not enough to be obvious. Just small things.
A comment from someone who swears they saw him somewhere he doesn’t remember going. A look that lingers a second too long. The way conversations cut off when he walks into a room, like he’s interrupting something he wasn’t supposed to hear.
Danny blinks. “Yeah. Why?”
His lab partner hesitates. “You just—zone out sometimes.”
“I’m tired,” Danny says, because that’s easier. Because it’s true.
At night, Gotham feels different.
He doesn’t think about it in those terms, not exactly. He just knows that something in him settles when the streets get darker, when the noise shifts into something sharper, more deliberate. The city hums in a way he understands.
Faster than back home. Rougher. People don’t pull punches, and neither do the things that lurk just out of sight. Danny adapts the way he always does—quickly, instinctively, without stopping to question it.
He learns where to stand, how to move, when to strike.
He learns how to end fights before they drag on too long.
There are moments—small, fractured things—that don’t quite line up.
A bruise he doesn’t remember getting.
A smear of something dark on his sleeve that he doesn’t recall earning.
The faint echo of his own voice, sharp and cutting, saying something he can’t fully piece together afterward.
He’s always been a heavy sleeper. Always been the kind of person who pushes through exhaustion until things blur at the edges. It makes sense that some details slip.
“You’re different,” someone says.
Danny looks up from his locker. “What?”
The girl watching him—sharp-eyed, observant in a way that feels uncomfortable—tilts her head.
“Sometimes,” she clarifies. “It’s subtle, but it’s there.”
Danny huffs a laugh. “Everyone’s different sometimes.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
He doesn’t ask her to explain.
Later that night, something goes wrong.
It’s not unusual. Things go wrong all the time in Gotham. That’s practically the city’s default state. But this—this is messier than usual. Louder. The kind of situation that spirals if you let it.
He steps in. He moves. He reacts.
Not a clean break. Not a full blackout. Just a stutter in the flow of things, like a skipped frame in a video. One second he’s bracing for impact, the next it’s over.
The people who had been there—threats, problems, obstacles—are down. Not dead. He checks that, distantly, automatically. Just… handled. Efficiently. Thoroughly.
More thoroughly than he remembers intending.
Danny stands there for a moment, breathing hard, trying to retrace his steps.
“Okay, seriously,” the same guy from before says the next day, dropping into the seat across from him. “You have a twin. You have to.”
He shoves his phone across the table.
It’s a blurry video. Dark, grainy, taken from too far away to be clear. But Danny recognizes the alley immediately. Recognizes the shape of the scene, the way it unfolded.
The figure in the video moves like him, but sharper. Faster. There’s no hesitation in the motions, no second-guessing. Just clean, decisive action. Brutal in a way that makes something in Danny’s chest twist uncomfortably.
Danny stares at it for a long moment.
“That’s not me,” he says finally.
It sounds right. It feels right.
The guy frowns. “Dude, that is literally your face.”
Danny pushes the phone back across the table.
“Then I guess I’ve got a twin,” he says lightly, and stands up.
He doesn’t look at the video again.
That night, he pays closer attention.
Not consciously. Not in a way he would admit if someone asked. But there’s a thread of awareness there now, a quiet, persistent tension under his skin.
He notices the way his thoughts sharpen when a fight starts.
The way hesitation drops away.
The way everything narrows down to action and outcome, stripped of the usual noise.
He notices how easy it is.
That’s the part that bothers him.
Somewhere in Gotham, people keep telling each other the same story.
About a kid with messy hair and a familiar face.
About how he’s polite, soft-spoken, harmless—until he isn’t.
About how there must be two of them.
Danny doesn’t correct them.
Not because he’s hiding anything.
But because, when he tries to line everything up in his own head, he can’t quite make it fit either.
to let the city believe in twins.
