After a reveal gone... weird, the Fentons believe Danny is dead and haunting them and is in denial when he claims to be half alive. They mourn him, and maybe even blame themselves and their research for causing him to become a ghost rather than dying properly.
But he is still their son, and they can't bear to hurt him, so they instead turn to superstitions and traditions from other cultures to try to get him to "move on" or "appease his restless spirit" or "put him at rest."
(Danny is actually eating better than ever now that his parents are regularly leaving out offerings of food at his altar.)
Eventually they come across the ancient Chinese practice of ghost marriage and decide to give it a shot. Maybe Dann-o can't move on because he died single, right? According to their research, ghosts would sometimes appear in their family's dream to tell them which other deceased person they want to marry, so Jack and Maddie hold a seance to consult their dead son.
(you could've just asked, y'know. You don't have to light candles and incense every time you try to talk to me.)
Danny, by this point is exasperated by his parents' failed and increasingly ridiculous attempts, decides to play along and says he wants to marry the Dead Robin.
He didn't expect this to be the time his parents' hairbrained plans actually sorta works.
Anyway, now Danny has to find the poor ghost he accidentally married so that they can get a ghost divorce. Well, guess his parents are getting rid of him after all, because looks like he's going to Gotham.
Now if only the Bats would stop looking at him so weird whenever he says he needs find the dead Robin so that they can annul their marriage.
"Red Hood, what did you do!?!"
"Fuck off! I swear I've never met this guy in my life!"
tw: many mentions of death, grief, and a depressed reader. smoking, insomnia.
there’s one thing that’s been ever constant in your life, and that’s the presence of death. it snakes its menacing fingers into your shadow to follow you wherever you go like a black cloud. inescapable. familiar. it's no wonder, living in gotham. living next door to the cemetary.
ghouls wail, you wake up, you eat breakfast, and you pass an occupied hearse on the way to school.
you come home, the sun casting ghostly shadows against scraggly grass-covered ground, solemn stones sticking out of the ground in a line like silent soldiers.
you go to bed.
except, you can’t always fall asleep.
you can never really fall asleep.
wind whistles through your ever-open window, tree branches scraping against the side of the house.
it’s hard to feel alive when you’re surrounded by so much death.
you’re not afforded the peace of rest quite like your neighbors are.
the sweet release of exhaustion settling into your bones and sleep carrying you off into dreamland like a fish in the gnarled claws of a seabird.
you knew that, once.
not much, anymore.
so it's no wonder that you find yourself majoring in forensic science, spending your summers working at the local mortuary.
your parents used to love joking about it, that their daughter who grew up next door to a graveyard found herself a job working with the dead. it used to be sort of funny, in a sad sort of ironic way.
it got a lot less funny once they too joined the silent line of gravestones facing your childhood home. driving to work every day is a constant choice, a consistent battle and haunting reminder that you too could join them—instantly, even.
you're still doing a lot better than you used to be, though.
you’ve worked on tens of hundreds of bodies at this point. that’s the job, that’s living in gotham. you don’t remember every single person you’ve worked on, but you think about all of them just the same. jamie, the ten year old boy. reese, the mom who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. like life, like death, the list goes on.
work ends, and you try to compartmentalize—but you’re only human. it doesn’t always work.
you’ve been struggling through the same self help book every night, to no avail. tea brewed, lights low, you crack it open for what feels like the hundredth time.
your eyelids grow heavy, exhaustion rattling in your chest as you take each breath. you're not sure you can handle much more of this book.
sleep takes you, the worn leather of the couch cushions wrapping around you like the embrace like a lover.
“oh great, a friend.”
you startle, your eyes flicking from side to side. the speaker’s sarcastic tone is a little appalling, albeit off putting.
you turn in circles and circles, looking for the source of the voice.
“right in front of you,” they intone, and you blink, stepping back, as your eyes land on the voice.
the voice, attached to nothing, attached to everything, towers over you. your eyes follow the line of his figure upwards: beat up old vans on his feet, a pair of faded, worn blue jeans slung low on his hips, and a deep, dark red hoodie that swirls with invisible patterns.
“eyes are up here,” he says, a smile on his words. it’s refreshing, the sense of foreboding fluttering out of your system.
you track your eyes up, up to his strong, scarred jaw, up to his deeply blue eyes, up to the spark of white hair streaking through his otherwise jet black locks.
you exhale sharply, not meaning to. he watches you, looking his own fill.
"you look familiar," the words fall from your lips before you've even really realized you said them.
"do i, now?" he replies, looking away as he lights a cigarette between his lips. the background is blurry around the two of you, forming into a rough idea of gotham. wet streets, shadows that seem to linger.
you shrug, no longer as blindly sure of yourself as you felt two seconds ago. "guess not, then."
he shrugs back, flicking his head to the side to get his bangs out of his eyes. you follow the movement, your gaze lingering and locking into the burning cigarette between his lips.
a smirk forms as you watch him, and once you realize, you're sheepishly flicking your eyes back up to meet his gaze. "you, uh, gonna share?"
his smile grows wider as he carefully passes it over, the movement so mesmerizing, the idea of sharing something with this stranger just so intoxicating. it pushes the idea of an indirect kiss far from the front of your mind.
you puff on it, closing your eyes as you take a long drag and the smoke fills your lungs.
"those kill, you know." he whispers to you, not daring to speak any louder, you look so peaceful.
"hypocrite," you reply, turning back towards him. there's no one there. it's just you in the alley now, walled in by fire escapes as you look up at the square of night sky above you.
you blink, opening your eyes to that same sky lightening outside your apartment window, lips still burning from the cigarette.
