Thinking about a forever teen Danny interacting with the batfam.. again lmao
[Pt 2 here]
The first time Danny interacted with a Bat was when he was squatting in what he assumed was an abandoned apartment in crime alley. Spoiler alert; it wasn't abandoned! It was, in fact, Red Hood's safe house.
Danny had been napping on the "surprisingly nice" bed, (The bed being so nice should have tipped him off, but he was so tired, damnit.) when Red Hood enters the room, startling Danny awake. They stare at each other for a minute, since neither expected to see another person there. Danny breaks the moment by diving off the bed, snatching up his backpack, and launching himself out the window he had crawled in from. Danny ignores the cussing and calling for him to wait.
Danny ain't no fool. Just because the world seems to be mostly accepting of metas and aliens, doesn't mean they're accepting of him. They haven't repealed the Ecto-Acts in the last 30 years. He refuses to be a lab rat for some shady government because a "hero" wants to "save" him. He's older than most of these fuckers in spandex, and is technically a king, so they got no authority over him.
"Kid! Come back!" Red Hood is keeping up rather well, but not well enough.
"Eat shit!" Danny shouts back before using his small size to squeeze into a space between 2 run down buildings that can't even count as an alley. Red Hood can't fit by a long shot, so he grapples to the roof, probably hoping to cut Danny off. Unfortunately for Red Hood, Danny isn't going that way or back. No, there's a secret passage entrance Danny throws himself through.
He doesn't like being down there. Too many undead roam the halls and can sense him. He's not sure how to help them and currently can't access the realms to ask Frostbite, so he just gives them some of his ectoplasum and tries to get out before their "Masters" notice him. He feels guilty every time.
But all in all, his first accidental Bat meeting was less than 10 minutes.
--
The second Bat he "meets" is the stabby new Robin. Danny figured crime alley was a bust, so he'd try one of the nicer areas to not cross paths with Red Hood. Unfortunately, the shady building he decided to sleep in the rafters of got invaded by the Bats a few days later. He's not sure who else was there, but Robin ended up in the same rafters.
They stare at each other for a minute, just taking in the other person who's not supposed to be in these rafters. Robin is clearly sneaking in to bust the owners, and Danny looks like some scruffy homeless kid that was just sleeping.
"What are you doing here?" Robin whispers with a scowl.
"I was sleeping." Danny scowls right back.
"Why are you sleeping here?"
"What does it look like? Not all of us have sugar daddies, bird boy."
Was that mean? Yes. Should he act like the 44 year old he technically is? Yeah, but he's frozen at 14. He can be a brat. No one can stop him. And also, this is the second time a Bat has woken him up from a nap, the first time was only a week ago. He's not feeling very mature.
Robin grits his teeth before his com goes off, distracting him, and Danny takes advantage of that, grabs his shit and phases through the wall into the next building.
--
The third time he meets a Bat is truly his undoing. He got stabbed in front of Nightwing during an attempted mugging. He hates the universe and totally blames Clockwork.
Danny was minding his own business when he got dragged into an alley by 3 drunk men. They're holding knives and trying their best to intimate him.
"Give us all your money."
"Do I look like I have money?" Danny snarks, waving a hand in a "look at me" way. Which, yeah, he's pulling off the homeless kid look really well with how dirty and worn out his clothes. No one in their right mind would look at him and think he has money.
"Hm. Well, if you don't have money, I can think of something else you can give us."
"Yeah, please struggle. It makes it more fun." Well, shit, Danny was not expecting to be grabbed by pedos. Danny bare gets to think about how it'll be good stress relief to break all the bones in their limbs before a tall shadowy figure drops from the roof and lands on the attacker farthest from him. The landing breaks the pedo's leg, his screamings about it are cut off by a sharp punch to the face.
When the shadowy figure straightens and is revealed to be Nightwing, pedo #2 charges him. Between how poorly it goes for him and all the puns and quips Nightwing is making, Danny can't help the giggles that slips out.
"You think this is funny, brat??" Pedo #3 shouts at him.
"Yeah. It's hilarious." Danny maliciously grins at him.
"Why you, just die, whore." And before Danny can question how HE's a whore, he's been stabbed. And it's a pretty good stab if you want to kill someone. It's a jagged downward stab, it nicks his heart and completely fucks up one of his lungs, and the guy even goes the extra step of pulling the knife out. All in all. The perfect stab to kill someone.
Unfortunately for him, Danny isn't just someone. He's already mostly dead, which means while it hurts like a bitch and it's hard to breath, it won't kill him. It does suck he coughs up some blood before he turns off his need to breathe.
Danny ignores the cussing and sounds of Nightwing breaking bones, probably panicking over just seeing "a kid get murdered". And unfortunately, no breathing means no talking in this form. So the poor guy can't be verbally told Danny's fine, and to stop freaking out. Good thing saying something isn't always needed.
Danny lets his eyes turn a glowing bright green before silently stepping to his would-be murderer.
"What?? What the fuck??" Pedo #3 screeches. Danny gives him a blood filled smile before reaching up, grabbing the wrist of the hand holding the knife. He breaks the guy's arm in less than a second, before slamming him into the disgusting alley ground and proceeds to break both of his legs. The way Danny crashed the bones in these limbs means the guy is never going to have full mobility again, but Danny can't even pretend to care. The man targeted what looked like a scrawny 14 year old homeless kid to rape and murder. If anything, Danny is letting him off easy.
"K-kid? Are you okay? What am I saying? Of course not." Nightwing frets and tries to get closer, but Danny is tired of... well everything, so he just turns and books it out of the alley. Danny ignores Nightwing's frantic shouting as he twists and turns out of the man's sight long enough to pull up his invisibility without outing the power. He watches a panicked Nightwing run by before tapping into his flight and taking off to the nearest graveyard. Sitting in the ambient ectoplasum there while drinking what he has left in his thermos will speed up his healing.
He'd so leave this shithole of a city if he could. But Lady Gotham won't let him go and he's positive Clockwork is working with her to keep him there. He doesn't know what they're planning, but he hates it already.
---
After the stabbing, Nightwing and the other two must have spilled about him, because he's suddenly dodging Bats everywhere he goes. He starts developing even worse paranoia because they just won't take a hint.
Talking was a no go at first with his healing lung, but running away, swiping claws, biting, and throwing shit at them aren't exactly subtly "Leave Me The Fuck Alone!!" vibes. Once his lung is healed, you can add in cussing, hissing, spitting, and verbally telling them to fuck off. None of it works. It fact, Danny thinks they like the challenge, which is annoying, but slowly becoming amusing.
Though, even just the idea of him starting to enjoy something means the universe has to throw a curve ball. And this one takes the form of a scarecrow attack.
So admittedly, Danny had no idea what fear toxin would do to him, but Joker's toxins didn't do anything to him, so he thought it'd be the same shit. That was a stupid mistake on his part.
He didn't bother holding his breath when helping the Panicked Bats get civilians out of the attack radius. Any mask that was given to him was given to a civilian before he passed them off to someone with an antidote.
But to be fair, the effects of his mistake doesn't hit him til after the fight is over and the civilians are taken care of. It starts with his paranoia raising. He's suddenly eyeing the people and buildings around him. He can FEEL his parents' gaze on him, even though he knows that's impossible, they died because the portal finally blew up and took them and half the town with it. No one who died as humans from it became ghosts, and the people who were already ghosts died a second time. The only reason Danny and Tucker weren't there was because they were gift shopping for Jazz on the other side of town while Sam distracted her. It was one of the worst days of his life. It's tied with the day his parents vivisecting his ghost half and the day the GIW vivisected Vlad and him, and Vlad just straight up died from it in front of him.
That's relevant because Danny starts hallucinating a half melted Sam and Jazz (there were no bodies left behind, but his brain likes to torment him), he can't understand what they're trying to say to him, but there's the unmistakable sound of an ectoblaster echoing in his ear behind him and he... just bolts. The agents that vivisected him launch themselves at him (he doesn't process the "agents" look exactly the same as when he last saw them 24 years ago), but Danny is determined to NEVER be caught again.
He freezes when melted versions of his parents, wearing maniac grins and holding sparking weapons, cut him off. The moment they so much as twitch towards him, he bolts straight through a building using his intangibility.
A tiny part of his brain is trying to reason with him. There's no way anything he's seeing is real. This is what fear toxin is known to do. Stop and evaluate the situation!
But it's drownt out by the fear. And, ancients, is there a lot of fear. It suffocates his logical thoughts and makes him forget how to properly use his powers to escape.
He finds out later, it took the Bats 2 hours to get close enough to give him the antidote and another hour for it to kick in. They honestly thought it didn't work at first, because just like the toxin, the antidote took it's sweet time to work on him.
He crashed out hard once it did, though. Like, he fell unconscious and stopped breathing. It terrified the Bats and took them a minute to realize he's not actually dead. Well, full dead.
He finds out eventually that they originally thought he was a meta, but after all the weirdness he accidentally showed during the cat and mouse chase, they started to wonder if he was an alien. But the whole fear toxin incident convince them he escaped from some shady organization that experimented on him (not untrue) and killed his family. There's still a bet on if he's an alien or not, and that being why he was targeted.
Which is a fair conclusion, between his powers that seemingly make no sense and all his scars from fighting and being experimented on by both his parents And a shady government agency. It's especially fair after he has a major freak out coming to in the Batcave's med bay. The smells and medical equipment setting him off into a massive panic attack that leaves him behaving like a feral cat. He manages to squeeze himself into the small space between the top of the cabinets and the ceiling and growls at anyone so much as peeking into the room.
"Hey, kid. You're alright. You're safe." Nightwing tries and gets hissed at. He'd been trying for about 10 minutes to get him to come down. "Um, guys, maybe someone else should try. This isn't working. I don't think he likes me at all."
Black Bat steps into the room at his plea and waves Nightwing away. Once he's out of the room, she drops to the floor. The move confuses Danny enough to stop growling at her. He stares wide-eyed at her as she just lays full starfish on the floor.
"What are you doing?" He finally asks after 3 full minutes of silently staring at her.
"Laying."
"I see that, but why?"
"You're scared. I'm showing I'm not a threat." Black Bat sounds amused, but not malicious. Danny stares at her for another 2 minutes without blinking once.
"Why am I here?"
"You're scared. We want to help." She makes it sound simple.
"You can't." Danny lets bitterness leak into his voice.
"Why?"
"I'm not human anymore. You can't "help" me."
"I think we can." Danny starts growling again, so she adds. "We have beds and food and can keep whoever is hunting you away."
He pauses his growling again. "You don't even know who I am."
"You're sad, and hurt, and help others before yourself. You're good." Danny frowns at that.
"You're weird." He states before climbing down and sitting near her. She doesn't move a muscle. "You can't help me without getting in trouble with the government."
"Hm?"
"Yeah, I'm not considered a person because of the Anti-Ecto Acts. Anything that uses or needs ectoplasum to survive is considered non-sentient and is to be turned over for experimentation and termination. And anyone caught helping us can be arrested for treason." Danny explains. "I barely escaped when I got caught. My godfather didn't. I hated him. He was mean, controlling, and creepy, but I didn't want him to die."
"I'm sorry."
"My problems are not your problems."
"I disagree." Danny blinks at her, his gaze sharpening when she starts moving her arm farthest from him. She moves slowly, reaching up and hooking her fingers under her mask.
"Wait!" Danny leans forward a hair as if he was about to physically grab her hand to stop her, but jerks himself back. He sounds small when he speaks again. "Are-are you sure?"
"Yes."
"Why??"
"Trust you."
"But WHY? You don't know me."
"I know enough." Is all she says before pulling her mask off. He slams his eyes shut and claps his hands over them for good measure.
"No, you don't!!" He hears her move, sitting up, before gentle hands pull his hands away.
"Yes, I do." She says sweetly. "Look."
Danny peeks at her. She has a bittersweet look on her face that brightens when she sees Danny looking. She's still gently holding his hands, loose enough he can pull away if he truly wants to.
"I'm not as young as I look." She tilts her head at the seemingly random comment. "I'm not actually 14. Not anymore. I'm stuck at when I died."
He hears her, and their eavesdroppers, gasp. It's the first time he's talked about it. But something tells him to tell her (them, if he's acknowledging the eavesdropping Bats).
"My parents were mad scientists that wouldn't be out of place in your rouges gallery." He stares at his and Black Bat's hands. "They were obsessed with ghosts and made a portal to the infinite realm, where "ghosts" live. They failed twice. Once in college, my godfather was hospitalized from the attempt, and the second time they failed, I accidentally turned it while being stupid with friends and died. They didn't notice, too happy their portal was suddenly working... That was 30 years ago."
There's a choking noise from the eavesdroppers.
"If I stay, you're going to be stuck with a freaky kid that doesn't age and can't be killed by the usual methods and has so much PTSD, like a ridiculous amount of PTSD. Are you sure you want to deal with that?"
"Yes." Black Bat doesn't even hesitate. Danny nearly gives himself whiplash from how quickly he looks up at her face. "Can't scare us away."
"It should. I don't even count as human."
"So?"
""So"???"
"Yes. Why should I care?"
"Why should-??? Why wouldn't you???"
"Kid." An unmasked Red Hood stands in the doorway. "This family is full of freaks and mental illness. You'll fit right in."
The statement strikes a nerve, overwhelming him, but Danny doesn't understand what's happening at first, why his lips are trembling, his face feels warm, and his eyes sting. He hasn't felt this sensation in years. But whatever look on his face makes the infamous Red Hood panic.
"Wait! Kid! Don't cry!"
It suddenly clicks with Danny. He's about to cry. But understanding what is happening, doesn't stop it from happening. Fat tears start sliding down his face.
"Dickie! What do I do?? I accidentally made him cry!! You're better wi-" Red Hood cuts himself off when Danny starts laughing. Laughing at how panicked a crimelord is at tears. Laughing at crying. Laughing at the whole absurd situation.
"It's okay." Black Bat says softly. Whether it's to Danny or the panicky Bat is lost to Danny. But no one says anything else til Danny's tears stop and laughter dies down.
"I was Phantom, ya know?" And he hears several people choke. After he was forcibly retired, this ghost half became known as "The First Hero" in a lot of circles. The GIW repressed the fact he was a ghost when people outside of Amity Park found out about the child hero, they didn't want the public angry with them for making him disappear. It didn't work, Tucker leaked everything he could find. Danny doesn't blame him for that. Tucker thinks he's completely dead since the GIW didn't want to admit they lost him and declared him to have Ended in those files. Danny hasn't told him he's "alive" either. Danny can't bring himself to drag Tucker back into the mess that is his life, can't bring himself to contact the man who has made something of his life, has a partner and kids, has mourned and moved on. He just can't do it. "But before I was Phantom, I was Danny Fenton. But now... I'm just Danny."
"Welcome to the family, Danny!" An unmasked Nightwing cheers.
"I thought Phantom had white hair?" Someone says just outside the room. Danny mischievously leans towards Black Bat.
"Close your eyes. This is going to be bright." He whispers. She smiles gamely and closes her eyes. He gets to hear the others yelp when he lets his transformation take over, essentially flashbanging everyone, but Black Bat.
"Wha..?"
"Hair white enough for you?" Danny says, grinning with too many teeth, that are a little too sharp. Black Bat pats the hand she's still holding.
"Pretty." She smiles delighted at him and he feels his face flush bright green.
"Oh! Um.. Thanks?" He takes a deep breath and realizes something. "Now you know my name, so who the hell are all of you?"
"You don't recognize us?"
"No. Am I supposed to?"
"Eh, most people do." Nightwing shrugs.
"Well, I haven't been able to keep up with much in the public zeitgeist. I just periodically check if it's still legal to kill me. Sadly, the answer is "yes" every time, so meh."
"We'll be taking care of that." Red Robin informs him while stepping into the room and frantically typing on a tablet. "I can't believe these stupid things still exist. The Green Lanterns and Justice League Dark are going to have the biggest fit when they see these. The rest of the JL will help dismantle these too. I'll personally get them to destroy these vile laws."
"Oh.. Thanks, I guess. It'll be nice to not be hunted anymore."
"I imagine."
"Okay! Introductions!" Nightwing gets them all back on topic. "I'm Dick Grayson! Batman is Bruce Wayne. Robin is Damian Wayne."
"Tim Drake."
"Cassandra Cain. But call me Cass."
"Jason Todd."
"Wait, wait, wait. I recognize your name! Didn't you- oh, wait, that's insensitive..."
"It's fine. I did, in fact, die, but I got better. We can start a club of undead. We can invite Spoiler. She technically died, too."
"Literally everyone here, besides me has died, Jason." Tim says, not looking away from the tablet.
"Yeah, but Steph is the only one I'd invite. She knows how to have fun."
"Little wing!" Dick whines.
"Timber can be an honorary member, since he's dead inside, a fun chaos gremlin, and ain't a narc."
"Thanks." Tim says dryly while Dick dramatically cries. Cass giggles.
And Danny? He's tired of running. He wants to be able to be the child he's stuck as while getting respect over his knowledge. He wants to be a vigilante and help people again. He wants to finally have a safe place to sleep.
So he decides to give these weirdos a chance.
