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Chapter Three

Masterlist

Danny leaned back on the couch with a heavy sigh, mentally going over the events of the past few months. Life had gone downhill fast after the group had returned from the Crowning, like a rollercoaster that ran out of track. It all started when Madd- when Mom had confronted him and Jazz about his being Phantom. He’d feared the worst before she started sobbing and babbling about how sorry she was for ever targeting him or believing what Jack said about ghosts. Jack had overheard about him being Phantom, attempted to End him, and caused Team Phantom plus Mom to have to scramble to change Danny’s identity and set him up in the chosen city. He’d somehow managed to interview well at Arkham despite Mom giving him a different application than the one he thought he’d be getting, and now he finally had a chance to rest in his brand new apartment.

When the short runthrough of events didn’t calm his buzzing core he sighed, giving into the fact that he’d have to set aside time to go through everything that had happened in more detail later. Opening his eyes, Danny looked around the Crime Alley apartment that they’d managed to get him under the short notice. The walls were thin and not entirely clean, but they weren’t the worst walls he’d ever seen in Crime Alley. The furnishings were sparse, as though he was prepared to move at any moment, because he was. Despite that, the room still managed to feel cozy and lived in. If his memory served him, this apartment complex was one that Jason would frequent occasionally which would make sense because he owned the building.

Sliding from the couch to their feet, Danny wandered over to the fridge in an almost daze, drowning in thoughts of their sun. They missed him so much it hurt. Their thoughts paused at the empty fridge standing before them. They’d forgotten to go shopping. A pang of longing went through them at the thought of food, both for the idea of food itself and for the thought of a chance to taste their love’s cooking again. With another heavy sigh, Danny started to move throughout the room, gathering up everything they needed in order to go on a short shopping trip.

They attached the chain that disguised some N Capsules to their jeans, neatly hiding it under their baggy hoodie. Next they snagged the N Taser, it looked like a regular taser while still working on ghosts, and their switchblade, which was a replica of one that Jay had given them once. Danny left the living room and entered the bedroom which only contained a dresser, a wardrobe, and a bed although everything still had that cozy yet abandonable vibe to it. Snagging their wallet from the top of the dresser and making sure the window was locked, they finally made their way to the front door to slip on their shoes which were a good pair of running shoes that had seen better days.

Danny took a deep breath, mentally preparing himself for any sort of situation they might get into before opening the door and stepping out, right into the path of a tall person, sending them both to the ground. Eggs dropped from their container, smashing their shells on his hoodie and leaving behind a gooey mess, but Danny only had eyes for the unfortunate person he was now tangled with on the ground. It was just his luck to have run into the very object of his thoughts right when he wasn’t prepared for it.

Jazz’s voice reminded Danny to breathe, and he calmed down quickly. There was no time for panic, he had a first impression to make. “Sorry about that, guess meet-cutes aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.” His voice was light, dramatic, and teasing, exactly the kind of tone he’d have used in their first life when he didn’t know what to say and just defaulted to the first thought that crossed his head. Evidently, Jason didn’t remember their past lives yet because there was no flare of recognition in his eyes as Danny’s words were processed. Danny is sure Jason’s face went through the five stages of grief, adding a few and not quite reaching acceptance before Jason groaned, burying his face in his hands.

“That…” Jason groaned out, still hiding his face. “That was almost a good pick up line until I registered that it was a pun.” Looking up, Jason seemed to realize what door he was in front of. “Well howdy neighbor, this is definitely not how I thought we’d meet. Been hearing you move in for the past week or so, nice to finally meet you. Your accent isn’t local, so what brings you to Gotham?”

“Many things.” Danny said with a wince as Jason accidentally dug his elbow into Danny’s ribs while trying to get free from the two person tangle. “If I’d realized you’d already known I was moving in, I definitely would have said hi sooner.” Danny winced again as their legs thumped the floor as Jason attempted to free himself. “Again, I’m sorry about this. I should have been looking where I was going, but my mind was a tad distracted by my hunger. All that work moving in only to forget to stock up on food is such a rookie mistake.” Danny had a better view of how their legs were tangled, so he swiftly untangled them, rising to his feet and extending a hand to Jace. “Name’s Danny. Not Daniel, not Dan, not Danno, not Danny Boy, just Danny.” His voice lost a tad of the humor it had kept up as he went over the names not to call him.

Jason took his hand, pulling himself to his feet with an amused smirk on his face. “Nice to meet you Danny. You can call me Jason. We’ve all forgotten to go shopping once or twice, and to be fair, you weren’t the only one at fault here. I was focused on my phone when I should have been paying attention to my surroundings.” Jason looked around, probably for his phone, quickly scooping it up once he saw it. When he turned back to Danny, he winced in sympathy at the messy hoodie. “Sorry about your hoodie.”

Danny looked down as if noticing the mess on his hoodie for the first time. “Eh, don’t worry about it. This is actually my least favorite hoodie, so I don’t care too much about it. I’m more saddened about the early death of the eggs, those could have made some great food. Speaking of,” Danny clicked his fingers to help convey the suddenness of the thought he was now speaking, “do you mind telling me a good place to get some food shopping done? I’m fairly new in town, clearly, and I didn’t really have time to research such places.” Danny rubbed the back of his neck as though nervous, but he really only wanted something to do with his hands, leaving them hanging was starting to feel awkward.

Jason smirked gently at him, and Danny had to fight back his instinctual responding smile, reminding himself that Jason doesn’t remember. “Seeing as I need to get some new eggs, why don’t we just meet up after I’ve had a chance to put the rest of this away and you to change hoodies? Say, five to ten minutes?” Jason moved while he talked, picking up the various groceries spread around the hall from their fall, Danny quickly moving to help him.

“Sure, sounds like a plan.” Danny held out the couple of bags he’d reassembled the contents of. “Here.” Jason took the bags, and Danny spoke again before Jason could move off, “I’ll just stand inside my doorway this time. Wouldn’t want a repeat of this situation, after all, my heart couldn’t take falling for the same person twice in one day.” Danny winked along with his words, trying to convey that he was teasing in more ways than just the massive shit eating grin on his face.

Without giving Jason time to respond, Danny slipped into his apartment, smoothly and swiftly closing the door. As soon as the door was shut, the smile dropped, and Danny ran his hands over his face and through his hair. That was not how he thought his first meeting with Jason would go. Danny had figured out during that conversation with his fright after the Crowning that there was no way Jason remembered because he would have found Danny before anything really happened. After all, that was what had happened in their second life, where they both remembered from the beginning. Danny had thought that the wave of energy the Crowning had produced might have awoken the memories, but that didn’t appear to be the case.

Moving on autopilot, Danny moved through the apartment, leaving the soiled hoodie in the laundry room to be dealt with later before heading to the bedroom to find a new hoodie. Jason’s ecto-signature had been off, but Danny expected that, even would have been worried if it hadn’t been. The first time they’d met, Jason had thought Danny was also dipped into a Lazarus Pit… The Lazarus Pit! Of course! Danny paused as a thought struck them. The remaining Pit Waters in Jason must be holding back his memories, maybe even cutting off or stifling his connection to his core! How would Danny be able to fix that was the new problem.

Shaking his head, Danny put that thought away for later, focusing on finding the perfect hoodie from his collection. Shortly after his accident, Tucker and Sam had started getting him hoodies with ghost comics on them or cartoon ghosts doing silly things or just hoodies with cartoon ghosts on them. One of these hoodies had a cartoon ghost and cartoon zombie face to face with each other on the front, both of them saying, “Same hat!” The back had the same ghost and zombie now saying, “Different colors though…” They both were wearing no hats. It was perfect, and the hoodie Danny planned to wear when meeting Jason for the first time.

Finally finding it, Danny wasted no time getting to his door while pulling it on. As Danny passed the counter he spotted his phone which he promptly scooped up, mentally chiding himself for forgetting it the first time. Danny opened his door to find an empty hallway, meaning Jason wasn’t done with putting things away, or he was caught up talking to the Batfam about something. Knowing how quickly Jason usually put things away, unless that had changed, and consulting his inner clock, Danny figured it was the latter and settled in to wait, pulling up a game on his phone in the meantime.

~`~`~

Jason stared at the door that had just closed in his face. His new neighbor, Danny, was nothing like what he thought they were going to be. Shaking himself both mentally and physically, Jason walked to his own door, quickly entering his own apartment, locks opening swiftly with practised ease. Letting his body put things away on autopilot, Jason let his thoughts drift.

When he’d first heard his new neighbor moving in, Midwest accent and all, he’d brought it up to the sibling group chat, and they’d all made bets on what type of person his neighbor was and how quickly they would move. The usual things. Jason hadn’t thought they would be staying for long, and that they were likely to be timid due to how long it took them to introduce themselves, factoring in the fact that the Midwest was notorious for being friendly from what he’d heard all his life.

Danny was nothing like he’d expected. On the outside, with the baggy hoodie, Danny looked like a stiff wind would snap him in half with ease, but Jason had felt the hidden muscles while struggling to untangle himself. Usually Jason would have been free in a heartbeat, but it was like his brain had glitched the moment Danny touched him. Something about it was so familiar, yet he was sure he’d never felt anything like that before. Danny hadn’t appeared to have the same issue, moving with all the grace that Dick usually did, like someone trained to fight and entertain. Danny also punned like Dick but more subtle.

Despite how much Danny seemed to be like Dick, Jason shied away from that comparison. It just didn’t feel right. Danny had the same eyes as Tim, icy blue, even possessing the same deep eye bags that spoke of someone who didn’t sleep well. Danny’s eyes, while sharing the same color as Tim, reminded Jason most of Damian, assessing and sharp, yet they also bore the kindness of Duke. There had been a hint of a scar that trailed from the edge of his chin to somewhere under the hoodie. The scar was barely noticeable because of how pale it was on Danny’s pale skin. The black hoodie with black pants and black running shoes had only served to make him appear paler.

The sound of his phone blowing up drew Jason from his thoughts. The sibling chat was blowing up with concern for him. It took him a moment to remember that he’d been messaging with them before the fall. Jason sighed, spying that they were all on comms, he made the decision to join them on there rather than just texting them. It was the work of five seconds to locate one of the spare comms hidden all around his apartment. Putting it in, Jason heard a wall of concerned cries from most of his siblings while Barb tried to get them to calm down as the sole voice of reason.

“Yo.” Silence, deafening silence, dawned over the line before everyone began speaking at once again. Jason let it go for a couple minutes just to let them get the panic out of their systems. Deciding enough was enough, he spoke again, “Alright, everyone shut the fuck up or I won’t answer any of the questions.” The comms fell silent again.

“What happened, Little Wing? You were messaging us and then just fell off the face of the earth.” Dick tried to sound less worried than he was, but Jason was skilled at picking up human emotions.

Jason chuckled. “Nothing as dramatic as that Dickiebird. I just ran into my neighbor, literally. We talked for a little bit, and I just got back into my apartment.” Jason leaned on the counter as the comms dissolved into chaos once again, everyone wanting to know who’d won money in the bet.

“Tt. I still do not understand why the betting was so intense for such an insignificant event.” Leave it to the Demon Brat to get everyone to shut up.

“Damian,” Tim said slowly, clearly trying to keep his tone kind while wanting to scream at Damian for supposed stupidity, “we’re talking about someone who moved into Crime Alley, into a building that is known to be owned by Red Hood no less, who has a background so secure Oracle can’t crack it, that just got a job at Arkham as a guard assigned to the main Rogue wing, and they just so happened to move into the one apartment that was open on the top floor despite a lot of the building being empty. The whole thing sounds more than suspicious enough for us to get, as you put it, intense about this.”

In the silence that followed, Jason decided to finally offer some information. “Their name is Danny, they look like a twink yet feel like they have a decent amount of muscle, and I did not manage to get their pronouns.” Jason broke out his Mission Report Voice, knowing it would catch everyone’s attention. “They wore all black and didn’t appear to be armed, although they could be good at concealing their weapons. They look like Tim, act like Dick, and move like a combo between Dick and Damian. They looked like they had been getting about as much sleep as Tim too. Definitely from the Midwest, although they did appear to know a little bit about what they were getting into and some of the unspoken rules of Gotham, such as not being overly friendly yet still showing a sense of community and not pressing someone on what they were doing. They didn’t try to follow me into my apartment, even closing their door before I could move off, possibly to give me more comfort knowing they wouldn’t know exactly where I live. Danny has a scar that is faint yet visible that trails from the edge of their chin to somewhere below the neckline of their hoodie. They didn’t seem to know who I was, but they did agree to go shopping with me seeing as I lost some eggs and they didn’t buy groceries as they were moving in.”

There was some silence as everybody processed what he said, but that was quickly broken by Steph, “What do you mean you lost some eggs?” Her voice clearly showed her disbelief.

“I did tell you that I literally ran into them.” Jason kept his voice dry. “The only reason I have the time to talk to you guys right now is because some eggs decided to kamikaze on their hoodie.”

The comms exploded with laughter. It seems like the majority of his siblings the bat siblings found his phrasing funny, which was the whole point. Idly, Jason looked down at his phone, immediately letting out a string of expletives, carefully avoiding the use of the words that would make his siblings rush over in worry. Quickly, he snagged his wallet and shoved his feet into his boots.

“What? What’s wrong?” Dick’s voice broke through Jason’s steady stream of curses.

“I’m fucking five minutes later than I told Danny I would be for shopping. Shit! Talk to you guys later.” Jason didn’t give anybody time to respond before turning off the commlink and yanking it out of his ear in the same motion. He dashed to the door, barely glancing in the mirror to make sure he hadn’t somehow gotten something on his shirt or jacket while he was in the house.

Jason threw his door open and himself through it, spinning to close the door and then lock it as fast as he could, only fumbling slightly. Looking up, he saw Danny in their doorway, playing on their phone. As he starts to step towards them, their head jerks up, and a smile lights up their face.

“Hey, long time no see.” Their smile turns obviously teasing and they pitch their voice up and down to really sell that it was meant to be teasing. Jason winced, about to say something when Danny interrupted him, “Don’t worry about it, although we might need to stop at a fast food place before shopping because I definitely need a meal now.” Danny laughed while they spoke, conveying that it was still meant to be lighthearted.

Jason laughed along with Danny. “I, uh, never got your pronouns. Mine are he/him, may I know yours?” Jason smiled sheepishly.

“Oh! I knew there was something I forgot. I use he/they and sometimes she. Gender is weird.” Danny rubbed their neck again.

~`~`~

The shopping trip went well! Danny had gotten a few strange looks from Jason a few times. First was for his large order at Batburger, but Danny had quieted Jason’s suspicion by informing him that he hadn’t eaten all day. The next time was because a couple of the seven different types of mushrooms in his cart could kill someone who didn’t, or did, know what they were doing with them, the fact that they’d been placed right next to raspberry sparkling water didn’t help, but Danny just waved Jason off that time, he knew what he was doing. Danny was pretty sure his cart organization looked like a disaster just waiting to happen, but he knew what he was doing. Things were bagged with what they were going to be used with, so the concerned stares weren’t necessary from Jason and the cashier.

As all good times in Danny’s life, something had to quickly make it take a nosedive. They were two measly blocks from their apartment building when a group of robbers dragged them and their groceries into an alleyway that Danny knew was a dead end. Knives were being waved in their faces, and Jason looked like he didn’t know what to do because he couldn’t show too much skill in front of a civilian while still wanting to beat these amateurs up. As for Danny, he was just focusing on slowly working the bags down so that they wouldn’t spill any of their precious cargo when they hit the ground.

The leader walked up. “What’s taking so long? Divest them of their valuables.” The leader had a scar on one side of his face, Danny could use that.

“Hey, Lopsided!” The leader turned from the minion he was addressing to glare at Danny while everyone else looked at Danny like he’d lost his mind, which was rude in Danny’s opinion. “Do you want me to even you out?” An easy smile rested on Danny’s face, and he made himself stand like he was just offering a friendly favor to a friend, bags closer to the ground like this.

“What?!” The leader growled out, leaning forward and twisting his face in a way he probably thought was aggressive but actually just showed Danny a glimpse of what his fighting style would be like.

Danny kept the easy smile in place as he tilted his head. Speaking slightly louder he said, “My bad, you must be hard of hearing too. I asked if you wanted me to even you out. Ya know, your face. Your nose is crooked, and there’s only a scar on one side of your face. I don’t guarantee that I can fix the nose without a few more supplies, but I can definitely even out your face, it’ll be easy!” Jason looked very impressed and very concerned, but he didn’t say anything, likely speechless or wanting to see how this plays out.

“You’re clearly new in town, so I’ll give you some advice and one more chance.” Lopsided was somewhere between a growl and a smile now, looking smug as someone who just figured out something massive that was previously missing. “I’m not your friend, and I should kill you for those remarks. Apologize and I won’t slit your neck right here.”

Danny laughed gently, keeping his eyes on Lopsided. “I am new in town, thanks for noticing, but I should be the one to give you some advice and a chance. Listen closely,” Danny leaned in, using that action to disguise the fact that his arms were now free of the bags, and said bags were on the ground, “you only have one chance. I never said we were friends. People don’t need to be friends to be friendly ya know, and you should kill me even though you can’t.”

With his last word still fading from the air, Danny launched into motion, pulling his switchblade free and flicking it open as he used the goon in front of him like a springboard to launch him at Lopsided, sending the goon to the ground. Before anyone could do anything, Danny’s blade was cutting deeply into Lopsided’s face, giving him a wound that would definitely leave a matching scar. Danny swung his legs around to rebound off of the leader, Danny couldn’t call him Lopsided anymore, and into another goon. From there, Danny let instincts take control, ripping through the ranks of the robbers with obvious ease while the majority of his focus went to not causing any fatal wounds in the people who dared threaten his Jason. It was the work of a few short minutes to have every goon disabled on the ground, the majority unconscious and all having bleeding wounds due to his switchblade.

Turning, Danny saw Nightwing and Jason standing together with their jaws open in shock. Immediately, Danny’s throat felt closed up, and he knew that his voice had left the chat. Great. Danny leaned down to wipe the switchblade off on one of the goons before closing it. Danny figured they needed a few more moments to gather themselves, so he went to go check on his groceries. It wouldn’t do to have lost something and only find out after getting home.

“T-” Jason paused, audibly swallowing. “That was very impressive.” He exhaled harshly. “Very impressive.” His voice was quiet and breathy.

Danny looked up, nodding quietly with a small smile. Danny signed a simple ‘thank you’ to him. Jason’s eyes widened slightly before a look of realization flashed across his eyes and gave way to understanding. Nightwing still looked shocked, so Danny sent a concerned look at Jason while flicking his eyes over to Nightwing and grabbing his groceries.

Jason sighed. “I’ll get him functioning, you head on to the apartment and I’ll check in with you when I get back.” Danny nodded and started walking, feeling satisfied for having defended one of his people even if that person didn’t belong to his fright just yet.

~`~`~

Jason sat on the edge of the roof with one of Nightwing’s extra communicators in his ear listening to the silence as everyone struggled to process what they were hearing. It had taken a few minutes for Jason to get Nightwing to respond to him, and he’d spent all of them thinking about the sudden switch Danny had made from speaking to not. Danny hadn’t had any issue mouthing off to the amateurs attempting to rob them, but the moment he noticed Nightwing he’d gone silent. Jason had thought about what could have caused that, if anything had even caused that, and why he’d had so much ease understanding Danny’s nonverbal cues.

“Okay okay… Run that by me again” Jason sighed at the phrase he’d heard three times before. Steph at least sounded less confused and more amused this time.

“It all started after I met up with Danny in the hall…”

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