“You know, one of these days you’ll just leave a note or something.”
It was a dark street, unnaturally vacant for the middle of the night in Old Gotham. But that could easily be attributed to her.
The being, the woman, as she preferred to be recognized, tilted her head with a slight, amused smile. She was tall, taller than Jack, but only that. Only just that tall in this form that she liked to take on when seeking Danny out.
“Would you have come, had I just left a note?”
“... Probably not.” Danny sighed, relenting.
She understood human social conventions, clearly, and was not above using his Midwestern manners to rope Danny into accompanying her. Can hardly turn her away if she came out here off her island for him already.
She hummed, offering a cracked hand out to him, which Danny took gracefully enough.
She was a tall woman, her wings closed elegantly on her back, the appendages chipped and fissured like stone rather than the feathers they were clearly meant to be. She was lovely, even in her eerie, cracked state, just as stone to the touch as any of the gargoyles on her city’s skyline. Her statue almost didn’t do her true being justice.
Over the years, Danny had gotten good at not asking other supernatural beings about their features. It was just rude in some cases, triggering in others. Though, maybe there was some desensitization at fault too. Jaz would say so.
He’d made internal observations about the darkness that she wore like a tunic though, because internal was mostly safe. She couldn’t read minds.
The shadows wrapped around her like an aura of dark, clothing her and shielding what was hers all the same. He’d never asked Gotham about the fluid that dripped from her fissures and from under the blindfold, leaving stained impressions of where her eyes should be. It was too dark to be human blood, black, and without the glow of any infused ecto, so Danny was more than content to let it lie.
“No Emon tonight?” he asked instead, noticing Gotham’s sword tucked into the rope belt around her shadowed waist, but a distinct lack of eagle.
“He’s busy assisting a fellow bird in need of guidance.”
Danny nodded easily enough. He didn’t actually want details. That sounded like a good way to get involved where he didn’t want to be.
“You yourself are a little far from the University. Visiting Slaughter Swamp again?”
“Yeah.” Danny hummed, letting Gotham guide him into her shadows as the two of them were swallowed whole. “As long as I’m here, you know? Thought the big guy could use some peace before he loses himself fully.”
“Mh. Appreciated. Cyrus wasn’t a righteous man in life, but he has more than earned his rest.” Lady Gotham sighed, her shadow peeling back to reveal a place that Danny was well accustomed to by now. “Tea?”
“Yes, thank you.” Danny replied, even though he knew that she knew his favorite blend and didn’t really need to ask. The one Jaz had started making for him once everything had settled in Amity and they could meet more casually during her breaks.
Even as he sat in the cushioned armchair like he always did here. Just like every time Gotham insisted he visit her-.. Well, not her haunt, because all of Gotham was her in the same way all of her was Gotham.
She herself was her haunt. But here, the hollowed inside of the statue in her likeness, or maybe just the likeness she took on in honor of the statue erected for her, Danny could only say that it was something of a haunt inside a haunt. Kind of like Clockwork’s Clocktower, but that was a little convoluted since he was and wasn’t time itself.
Anyway. Danny was half sure that Lady Gotham didn’t really require this place, given he wasn’t sure she required a physical form, but it was appreciated nonetheless, if only because of Danny’s human-ness and how hard it would probably be to hold a comfortable conversation with the abstract concept of a city.
The place was as nice as it ever was, like a study or something, with plush chairs and a deep red rug and wood furniture that looked too expensive to even be in Danny’s presence.
Sam would call it rich gothic. Tuck would just call it rich. Danny called it.. Well, homey. It had become more and more homey every time he was invited here. He half thought that Gotham was trying for that.
She poured him a mug of tea and herself a mug of black coffee, much like every other time, and took a seat on the velvety sofa across the dark wooden coffee table from Danny. Danny accepted his drink with a quiet thanks, and Gotham leaned back onto the sofa in a more relaxed posture. Her wings spread to accommodate, the sound like cracking stone and falling rubble as she relaxed with the most Gothamite of drinks known to man and non-man alike.
“Aside from tracking down Reverants, and thank you for that by the way, how have you been, little King?”
Danny didn’t even wince at the nickname. So. score. “I’ve been well. You have lots of ambient ectoplasm to feed off of, and paying college isn’t an issue anymore since Clockwork dipped into the treasury.”
“Ah, yes. I had wondered about your classes. You’re enjoying yourself here, then?”
“I am.” Danny hummed into his mug, leaning back comfortably in a way he wouldn’t even have dreamed of months ago. “It’s a nice vacation.”
“I’m not calling it that.”
“That is what Kronos is calling this.”
“And I told him, too. I’m not calling it that.”
Gotham huffed, quietly amused as she ever got, and Danny took the moment of comfortable silence to trace the rim of his drink thoughtfully.
“Have.. Have you heard from Clockwork recently..?”
“Kronos? No, not recently. He ebbs and flows, though, as you’re aware.”
She didn’t ask why. Didn't push for more, and Danny loved her for it. Gotham was always content to let Danny speak at his own pace without the fear of being interrupted or cut off. His thoughts always had taken a moment or two to fully form.
“I just.. I don’t know. What's the point of him leaving me here? Of me going to University at all? Of being here?”
Gotham didn’t respond to any of the questions, even if they were a little rhetorical, but she tilted her head in a way that Danny was able to read as ‘go on’ from all the months of being with her.
“I-.. I don’t know. I’m going to be king. That's a whole job in of itself. And I haven’t even figured out what I want to do with the rest of my half-life while I have it. Do I focus on the classes that would help me as High King? Like- like government or civics or something? Or do I have to pick a whole other career path that will be essentially worthless once I die? And for that matter, taking funds out of the Royal Treasury was way too easy. I had expected at least a little push back from the Observants.”
“Ghost’s don’t need money. The Infinite Realms doesn’t run on that sort of wealth.”
“And-” Danny faltered, tugged out of his spiral of stress by the non-sequitur. “I-..What? Then why is there even a Royal Treasury at all?”
“The same reason there’s a Royal Armory, I presume. Things that were pretty in a being’s life remain pretty in death, even if the dead have no real need for them. A collection, though most of the Realms functions on bartering. Multiple afterlives and civilizations, you know.”
“That-.. Huh.” Danny huffed, almost bemused. “That.. Actually makes me feel a little better. Not like I’m wasting tax dollars or something. Wait, but, then how did Pariah even-”
“Conquest. Right. Yeah, that tracks.” Danny sighed again, deeper, as he slumped into his cushy armchair. “Back to feeling conflicted about using it.”
Gotham huffed, sounding amused, and sipped her pure black coffee to fill the lull. Danny also sipped his tea, with enough sugar in it to prove he didn’t fully hate himself.
“You haven’t run into any Bats or Birds.” Gotham observed, and it was an observation. She’d be the one to know.
“S’pose not.” Danny replied blandly into his mug.
“Would you like to?” She asked him simply, like the words didn’t ratchet Danny’s stress levels back up to at least 9.
“Is that really a good idea?” Danny hedged, thinking of multiple ways that encountering a vigilante in the wild could go.
“You’re sure to meet one of them soon enough, the way you’re going.” Gotham hummed, not fucking ominously at all. “They’re good humans, just a little.. Twitchy.”
“Twitchy.” Danny repeated, eyeing the being before him skeptically. The woman who kept a shadow on Danny always and insisted on bi-weekly tea and coffee check ins, or she’d come looking. The woman that asked Emon to tail him around campus for the first month of classes before Danny politely but firmly told the bird to go home.
“Twitchy.” Gotham affirmed with a nod. “Good in all the ways that matter, though. And you could do with other people around you. I know how you dodge socializing in University.”
Emon was also a fucking snitch, apparently. And how would a being like Gotham know about socializing. She was a personification. Of.. A city. Of people. Shit, yeah okay, she might have a point.
Danny sighed, slumping a little more in his chair. He could be purifying a swamp right now. Messing with ecto and figuring out the funkyness of Gotham. But no. He was being bullied for not having friends.
“They also are aware of the League of Assassins, so you could talk to someone about that.” Gotham continued, and Danny was sure that if her bloodied blindfold wasn’t covering her eyes, they’d be rolling at his dramatics. Good naturedly, sure. And if she even had eyes. But that wasn’t the point.
“I’m not even sure what to make of that myself, actually.” Danny eventually replied, peeling himself off the cushion back into more of a sit. “There hasn’t been another full summoning since the last one, but I can still feel different sigils or attempts sometimes. You’d think they’d get the memo after the first go round.”
Gotham just shook her head, amused for some reason. “Just keep going the way you are. You’re doing just fine, school and magic-wise. Relax. Enjoy your life. And for the love of the Realms, go make some friends outside of your biology group.”
‘Emon you fucking snitch.’
Across Gotham, all the way in Bristol, in the cave basement of the Wayne Manor, the Bat Computer glitched. Just for a split second, and the screen lagged.
But it was done under the gaze of Red Robin and Batman. Both stopped to stare at the screen for a moment, discussion of the current case pausing at the unnatural sight. Because the Bat Computer was the highest of tech, with a separate generator for it alone in case of a power black out, and a lag likely meant a hacker or a virus or something equally bad.
“Oracle, run a diagnostic on the Bat Computer. Something’s wrong.”
Neither Bat nor Bird nor Oracle had the ability to notice the incorporeal being of shadow that seemed to ooze out of the tech onto the floor, and then up onto the cave wall. The shadowy ooze seemed to, for anyone able to even see it, phase through the stone, out into the fresh air of the Gotham night. It took on the shape of a dignified bird, solidifying and taking off.
Then the previously dignified bird shuddered and did something akin to sneezing, almost losing balance mid-air.
It righted itself, shaking off the feeling of someone walking over its grave for the second time in as many seconds, and had a sudden sneaking suspicion.
Emon could feel it. Someone was talking shit.
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Feel free to use as a prompt! I have a vague idea of a plot that I might take to ao3, but the fun of the phandom is sharing the prompts for other takes!
