Danny has been acting strange for weeks. Damian, being the attentive and loving boyfriend that he is has decided that it’s up to him to find out what’s wrong with the half ghost. For weeks he spends his time stalking his boyfriend, taking him as best as he can when he can. When he isn’t following Danny behind his back, Damian is doing everything to spoil his boyfriend and make sure that he’s happy.
It’s not working tho! He doesn’t know what he’s doing wrong. Usually he’s an amazing boyfriend but no matter what he does, it just seems as though the ghost king is restless. Danny isn’t sleeping, he’s floating through the halls of their house at all hours of the night. It’s as though the halfa is looking for something. But what? What the hell is Danny looking for? Why isn’t he happy?
One night on patrol, Damian mentions it to his brothers, not sure what else he could do to take care of his boyfriend. He’s usually so good at this. Why isn’t it working?
“His death day is coming up, right?” Todd questions.
“Yes. It will have been ten years since his accident. We have already made plans for what we are going to do to commemorate the event. Why?”
“When it’s my death day I always like to go to my gravestone. I know I’m not there anymore. But it soothes the pits and I dunno the weeks before my death day I get restless.”
“We’ve been together for five years now, Todd. He has never behaved like this in his death day before.”
“I don’t fucking know dude. Maybe since it’s the ten year anniversary it’s striking something in him. Does he have a grave he can visit?”
“No. He never fully died. And he was never buried.”
“Why don’t we hold him a funeral and give him a grave?”
So that’s what the BatFam does! They decide to hold a funeral on Danny’s death day. It’s really more like a memorial service and it’s pretty morbid. But the grin on Danny’s face as his friends and family all take the time to tell their favorite Danny stories makes Damian feel as though he’s the best boyfriend in the world. Manson and Foley both give tear jerking speeches about the day Danny died and how it had hurt them. But that they had also were so proud of the halfa and how far he had come since then.
After the eulogies Damian’s brothers all decide to throw Danny into a casket and bury him, just so the guy can get the full experience. Danny finds it absolutely hilarious and also cathartic as hell. Danny floats out of the casket to find a headstone with his birthday and death day on it. He immediately bursts into tears and pulled Damian into his arms.
“I didn’t realize how empty I felt for so long,” he whispered, face pressed against Damian’s chest. “As fucked up and morbid as this was, it was what I needed. No one ever grieved my death except me. My parents didn’t even grieve, they just wanted to experiment on me.”
“Danny, I grieve your death every single day,” Damian said, running fingers through his beloveds hair. “Every day I think about what you missed out on in life, I grieve the childhood that you lost. I grieve the parents who disowned you. I know for a fact that Manson and Foley grieved, you heard their speeches. Watching you die did a number on them and is something that still effects them. Just remember, though, you are still here and with us.”
Danny pulled back and kisses Damian, effectively embarrassing his boyfriend in front of his friends and family. The vigilante absolutely hated any kind of public displays of affection. “Thank you.”
Every death day after that, Danny and Damian find themselves in the cemetery in front of his gravestone. After a few years, Danny finally finds the courage to tell Damian the full story of how he died. Damian had a rough idea but no one had ever mentioned the full story as to how it happened. It may be fucked up and morbid, but the peace that Danny feels is more important to Damian than any kind of discomfort that he would ever feel.
Danny let out a yelp as Jazz dragged him out of his bed and looked at her wide eyed. “What is your problem?” He demanded, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
“Jack and Maddie didn’t take you coming out as Phantom very well,” she said harshly.
The halfa frowned and stumbled after his sister as her iron grip squeezed his wrist and bounded down the hallway. Just a few hours before Danny–with the help of his sister– had finally told his parents that he was Phantom. He had thought that they had taken the news pretty well. His father had stared at him with his usual dumbstruck expression while his mother’s eyes shone with that usual analytical glare as he told them. Maddie had thanked him for trusting them with the information and had told him that they would need some time to absorb everything that Danny had told them. “I mean all things considered, they took it well,” Danny mumbled, following Jazz down the stairs to the lab.
“No, it didn’t go well. They pulled me aside and asked how long you’ve been brainwashing me. Danny it’s not safe, they’re planning on catching you when you aren’t paying attention and are going to experiment on you! They think you killed their son,” Jazz snapped harshly. “We’re enacting plan “oh shit”,” she said. Finally Danny woke up enough to truly take in everything going on around him. Jazz looked like she hadn’t slept all night. On her back was a large duffel bag, likely packed with everything Danny would need. In her free hand sat a Fenton Blaster. “I overheard them call the GIW. After they vivisect you they’re going to sell you to them. I already spoke to Sam and Tucker. Everything you need is in this bag.”
“Wait, wait!” Danny stammered, trying to keep up with his sister’s long strides. “I don’t want to leave! It’s my senior year and-”
“And it doesn’t matter Danny,” Jazz snapped, shoving her brother down the stairs quickly. The red head threw the duffel bag at Danny and marched over to the portal and opened it wide. “You have to go. Find CW or someone and tell them Amity is no longer safe and we can figure something out. You have a burner phone that Tucker already encrypted and it’s going to be okay. Just go.”
Danny’s core seemed to feel more frozen in his chest than it ever had before. “Jazz,” he said, holding back a sob. Jazz’s face crumpled as she wrapped her arms around her brother’s shoulders.
“Little Brother, I love you so much. You’re going to be okay, I don’t know if you’ll ever be able to come back here. But when you’re safe, text me, call me I don’t care. I’ll come to you and we will never see them again. I go back to Harvard tomorrow and once I’m able to separate myself from Jack and Maddie I’ll let you know. I’m not risking your safety,” she said as her baby brother sobbed into her shoulder, fingers digging into her shoulder while he clung to her like she was his only life line.
“I don’t want to,” he cried. “They’re my parents, they won’t hurt me-”
“Danny, they can and they will. Just go,” Jazz said, pulling away from her brother. “We will be okay here. Sam and Tucker are both ready for anything. We’ve already let Valerie know that Phantom will be gone.” Jazz smiled and tucked a strand of hair behind Danny’s ear. “Go, I love you, be safe, I’ll contact you when it’s safe, you’ll do the same.”
Danny nodded and wiped at his face. “I love you too,” he said and hugged her tight once more before he shifted into his ghost form and stepped through the portal feeling lost and aimless in a way that he had never felt before in his life.
The halfa didn’t know how long he drifted in the realms. It could have been hours, days, months–fuck even years he wasn’t sure. But everything felt aimless and wrong. Danny didn’t have a home anymore–no he didn’t have a lair anymore. He didn’t have a haunt and there was something about it that just made his core feel hollow in a way that he had never felt before. He didn’t know what he was doing. Sure, he had his castle that he could stay at but it didn’t feel right. It wasn’t his. He had no real connection there aside from the fact that he ruled these realms. It wasn’t his lair, though, and it wasn’t his haunt.
Ghosts had come and gone and tried to elicit some kind of response from the halfa, each one had failed and gone away grumbling to themselves. The baby was sad and none of them knew what to do to take care of him. While Danny was their High Prince until his teachers had decided he had learned enough to rule, he was still a baby in terms of being a ghost. Danny was the most powerful baby ghost they had ever seen but he was still a baby. Because of this, every ghost in the realm had the desire to do whatever they could to help him and nothing they were doing seemed to help.
The poor ghosts were losing their minds trying to fix the poor halfa but they couldn’t do that when they didn’t know what was wrong. All they knew was that the portal to Amity Park had been closed permanently. Skulker had tried and failed to fight with the halfa. Ember had tried to get Danny to play guitar with her only for him to phase through her. Johnny 13 had tried to race him. Nothing worked. The only one who seemed to have any success was Spectra and that was simply because she was feeding off of the ghost’s sorrow until Kitty had run her off.
It seemed as though their baby halfa was broken and no one had the pieces to put him back together. No one but Clockwork it seemed. Somehow the boy’s wandering had landed him at the entrance of Clockwork’s lair.
The ancient floated out of the clock and gave the boy a sad look. “Oh, my poor boy. I’ve been waiting on you,” he said. Danny just let out a sniff and fell into the ghost’s arms and let out a sob.
“I feel empty,” he mumbled into the ancient’s cloaks. “Something’s missing Clockwork.”
“It is your purpose,” Clockwork said softly. “You just had your entire obsession ripped away from you.”
“But it’s protection, I can still protect!” Danny said, scrunching the fabric in his hands tight. “Why do I feel this way?”
Clockwork smoothed the boy’s hair over soothingly as he led the boy into the large clock. “Your obsession was largely associated with protecting the people of Amity Park from danger. That is gone now. You will always have your obsession to protect and you are still doing that. You are protecting your subjects by letting your sister permanently close the portal. But now there is a part of you missing. You also are in dire need of a haunt and that is not somewhere within the realms.”
Danny pulled away from the ghost and wiped his face tiredly. “What do I do, then? How do I fix this?”
The ancient shifted into a baby and smiled. “I have been looking at the timelines and I think that I have an idea for you, Daniel,” he said, moving towards a large portal. Danny frowned but followed his mentor nonetheless.
“What is it?”
“I have noticed that the ghosts here who once lived and then came to exist here have been getting restless. With the help of the Observants we learned that artifacts are being stolen, especially from the graves of our older ghosts. Would you be interested in collecting them and returning these items back to their graves?”
Danny perked up. “I can do that?”
“Of course, it’s causing distress within quite a few beings. These were things they were buried with, things that they miss dearly now that they have been separated from them. It is as though they have been separated from their own haunts just as you have since those items tether them to the world. With them being moved around, it is taking them away from their haunts,” Clockwork explained, showing a picture of a ghost aimlessly wading through the streets of a town, looking just as lost as Danny felt. “Artifacts are tethers for most ghosts. As a halfa you were slightly different as your tethers were more so the people in your town than physical objects. And since you are still half living, you are able to collect more things that mean something significant to you.”
“But ghosts can’t. And their artifacts being moved from their homes–it’s ripping them away from their haunts?” Danny whispered, core aching at the thought of others feeling the same loss that he was experiencing. Clockwork was right, he would make new connections in his human life. These ghosts would never be able to do that.
“In one timeline it seems that you did this by becoming a cat burglar,” Clockwork said, showing a picture of Danny in an all black costume as he snuck into a museum. “Would you be interested in doing it that way, become a bit of a criminal and let loose?”
“I can do that?” Danny asked, eyes wide as he watched a version of himself steal an artifact from the museum and disappear before anyone even noticed.
“You spent a very long time being a hero, Daniel. You will always be a hero and protect your people, but in this version you become a bit more of a criminal. It seems you have a lot of fun in this city, as well. It seems to become your new haunt,” Clockwork said with a smile, shifting into his middle-aged self once again.
“This would be amazing! Is it in the same dimension?” he asked, whole body vibrating in excitement at the prospect of not only helping his people but also getting to cause a little chaos.
“It is. Now, have fun,” Clockwork said before pointing his staff at the halfa and sending him away without another word.
