Dead on Mayn
Day 1 Prompts: Bones, Ghost culture is weird, "You can see me??", Jason meets Danny as a ghost.
Word Count: 1805
Pretty proud of this one!! Enjoy!
Quick Summary: Danny misplaces like all his bones after a GiW run-in and needs them all back to get out of ghost form. Jason finds a human spine that somehow makes the pit rage fade. Oddness ensues.
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Jason feels just slightly lost. Just a bit.
He's feeling slightly lost because he is 100% sure that he is seeing a real human spine on his apartment's fire escape.
It's perfectly isolated and polished, smoother than if it had been picked clean by a Gotham vulture. It may also be glowing slightly, which is a whole different issue.
If Jason knows anything, it's that he most certainly should not pick it up. That's the dumbest possible thing he could do.
But, as he looks at it, he gets this lonely sort of feeling twisting in his gut.
Okay, bad sign number two. The mysterious glowing spine is messing with his head. Even still, his mouth turns down in a frown, eyebrows furrowing.
He sits, still fully geared up in his window after a long night of patrol, and contemplates the situation for a moment. Finally, he sighs and brings it all back to the question it always boils down to.
What Would Batman Do?
Batman would call a magic user to identify the object. Batman would quarantine it and study it, take samples and test it. Batman would certainly not bring the object around his personal belongings.
Jason nods, acknowledging the inner Batman voice's opinion.
Mind made up, he scoops the bone into his arms and brings it inside. He gingerly lays it on his coffee table and promptly leaves to start up dinner.
—
Danny just needs one more piece.
The GiW did a number on him. I mean, dissection is par for the course, but dissection and then losing the parts they stole? Rookie moves.
Furthermore, Danny can’t get out of ghost form until he finds it. He’s collected most everything else, but it's taken weeks.
His ribs came from different places in the ocean, his femur from atop a news building in Metropolis, etc. He even had to venture up to that one Justice League space station to get his skull! Some idiot was using it like a paperweight in the room with all the cameras and whatnot. Danny scoffs at the memory.
He’s been flying all over the place, searching high and low for where his bones disappeared to.
This must be a ghost thing he didn’t know about. Or, more likely, a halfa thing no one knew anything about. All he knew was he didn’t want anyone he didn't trust getting their hands on his stuff, (the stuff being him), and somehow that translated to all his bones teleporting away from the GiW.
All he needed now was his spine.
All the other pieces of himself he found either somewhere secluded or somewhere he would deem safe. (Explaining to Jazz he was visiting her at college for his hand bones was awkward. Even worse, she’d already found all of them and had them organized by the time he got to her.)
This is why Danny is confused.
The last tether in his chest seems to be leading to… Gotham.
Gotham? The biggest, most dangerous city in the US? Not only home to a boatload of people, but also to a veritable menagerie of rogues and vigilantes?
Floating high over the city, Danny just sighs.
He needs his spine back. He needs it so he can be human again. The GiW is still after him. Hell, his parents are hunting him probably as he floats here. He’s safer if he’s human.
He tries to center himself, settles his core with the frigid air and thoughts of comfort and safety after this mess is over, before he begins his descent into the city of crime.
—
Jason is exhausted. Patrol was long. It's been a long few weeks, honestly.
He settles, fresh out of the shower, armor piled on the floor nearby, on the couch in his living room. The TV has a rerun of Pride and Prejudice on, and Jason sighs softly.
The spine on his coffee table glows as faintly as it had since he picked it up weeks ago.
Jason can’t explain why he finds this comforting.
It casts the room in cool blue-green at night, low and rippling like water in a fishtank.
It seems morbid to have it, but Jason, (heads in a duffle bag guy) really doesn’t mind. He finds himself spending more time in the living room, more time in the proximity of the bone.
Jason hasn’t taken the time to analyze this, but as he spends more and more time in the living room, the sickly green of the Lazarus Pits seems to fade. It sits in the corners of his vision, as always, but its presence in his mind feels… dull. Cowed, like a rambunctious dog by its exasperated owner.
He may not fully, consciously, recognize this change, but he does know the glowing spine makes him feel better. He falls asleep easy in this room now, even if the couch is far from comfortable.
Even now, his eyelids droop with exhaustion. He’s warm and safe and home.
He sighs again, tipping his head back onto the cushions and beginning to doze.
His half-sleep-half-wake state is broken pretty quickly though by the feeling of something shifting. Something in the air maybe, changing and moving.
Jason’s mind registers it as a wrong sort of feeling, but something in his chest, not his heart or anything cheesy, but something there in all but a physical sense, registers this change as good. Good and right. Good…
but anticipatory.
Something is coming. Jason sits up and leans forward.
His eyes rove the room for signs of this thing he knows is coming but can’t identify, before his gaze is inexplicably drawn back to the bone.
Oh.
—
Gotham is pretty much what he’s been told it would be. The atmosphere is gloomy, what with the near constant rain/smog combo blanketing the city. Crime is happening literally everywhere, and Danny means literally. The tall, sharp architecture paints the city as a gothic, dark place of high roofs and gargoyles. It’s dank, and it’s honestly kinda intimidating.
…Danny kinda loves it.
It’s got its own charm and beauty. Danny is enamored by the vibes it gives off, but maybe that’s his ghost half speaking.
Anyway, Danny is still following the pull in his chest down. He zips through buildings, skates along vertical walls, and still seems just as far away as he had been when he got here.
The streets get dirtier, the air gets grittier, and suddenly, Danny jerks to a stop. He knows, abruptly, like he’s been slammed into a wall, that he’s crossed a line into somewhere he shouldn’t be.
The oppressive feeling of trespassing weighs his shoulders down.
He’s entered someone’s haunt.
Danny stretches his own senses out, and feels like staggering at the sheer size of this thing. Hell, this haunt must span a whole chunk of Gotham. That means it belongs to someone powerful.
Or, at least, some nearly as powerful as Danny. (His haunt is currently the entirety of Amity. The power boost that allowed that is courtesy of being Ghost King.)
The tether Danny has guiding him to his spine pings softly again, resting deep in the heart of this haunt and just like that, the oppressive weight lifts.
It’s still there, ready and waiting, but it seems… friendlier somehow. Welcoming.
Danny shakes himself out, trying to throw off the nervous buzz in his ecto. He needs his spine, and it’s somewhere here.
—
Danny finds his spine easily. The house it resides in lights up in his senses like a beacon.
It’s drenched in bad energy, but gaps in the miasma show through, like light breaking through the clouds. Green-blue tinged light. Yeah, this guy has his spine for sure.
And, if Danny’s passing thoughts are to be believed, they may be feeding Danny’s remains with whatever evil shit is clogging up his house. He feels stronger just getting within a block of it.
…He doesn’t know how to feel about that.
Danny floats closer, going so far as to rest his ghostly form on the fire escape outside the window. He peers through the window before reeling back.
There’s a man inside, leaning towards a table where Danny’s spine sits, calm as you please. That weird black and neon green goop seems to not just be around the house, but rather, it was centered on the man’s form. It looked…
Ancients.
That can’t be comfortable. It was smothering the man’s fledgling core.
As Danny sat and observed, the light emanating from his spine wavered and rippled, much like water, and a ball of that disgusting goo ripped away from the man and into the bones.
Danny, being as close as he is, feels a rush of power flood his spectral form.
He only realizes his eyes flare green because the man whips around to look at him. Danny flinches and blinks, while the man’s brow furrows and he tilts his head in confusion.
Danny pauses only a moment before drifting into the apartment. It’s homey, he notes, as if this isn’t the oddest situation he’s been in in a bit.
The man straightens up where he sits, clearing his throat.
“Uhm. So. I guess you can see me?” Danny says, his tone much more questioning than he means it to be.
“Am… am I not supposed to?” The man replies, leaning back on his couch and crossing his arms over his broad chest.
Danny shrugs, drifting over to the table. He curls in the air over the table like a cat, still a foot or two above his spine. Protective. “No, you totally should be able to. Just not used to it. I mean, you are-”
Danny squints and inspects the man closely, realization dawning over him slowly. “You are a halfa.” His voice contains notes of awe. Their, ah, species, is pretty rare. (Understatement.)
The man only looks confused. “Is that a word I should know the meaning of?”
Danny blinks. Then he hums thoughtfully. Like always, he comes to a pretty impulsive decision. No thinking, just word vomit. “Listen, buddy-”
“Jason.”
“Right. Listen, Jason. You’ve got a really weird mass of junk around you that really just has to go, and I've just found out that pieces of me can cleanse it, or something-”
“What.”
“So what I think is going to happen, is you get to keep my spine for a bit and-”
"Again, what??”
“AND! And I will come stay with you for a bit. Win-win!” Danny throws his hands out to either side triumphantly.
Danny gets to live somewhere that seems- (feels, like, down in his core feels) safe, somewhere he can heal up and gain his strength, Jason gets that weird crap fixed, and everyone leaves happy!
Jason looks utterly dumbfounded. “I am… wildly confused.” Even as he says this, it looks like the beginnings of a smile are tugging at his lips.
Danny gives him a feral grin back. Oh yeah, this is going to work out just fine.
FIN