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the electric kiss of hoarfrost

little (long) thing based on my halfa death defying idea (also on ao3)

Dick waves Bruce and Tim out his bedroom door, a dull smile slowly slipping as the door closes behind them. It'd been a week since the mission, and this was the first time they trusted him to be alone.

Well, as alone as he can be, with an emergency button strapped to his wrist, Alfred staying in the Manor instead of aiding in the Cave for patrol, and Cass somewhere around the bedroom wing. Even Babs was in the Cave instead of her own apartment or the Belfry or something!

Dick's not even sure when he went from the Watchtower's infirmary and its gnawingstretchingcoldbiting window into emptyvoidpainanguishdeath space to his childhood room in the Manor. He can't remember if it was him or someone else that got him back on solid ground.

The two beating sources in his chest always direct his attention elsewhere whenever he tries to focus on it.

His heart was beating slower than it ever had before his brain swelled—barely making forty beats a minute. The heart monitor Alfred hooked him up to only caught its namesake and not the other... thing beneath his sternum.

It was like a small jawbreaker, shifting up and down beneath the bone. Its beat was offset from his heart, and Dick thinks it changes based off what he feels; Sometimes, it's slow enough to fill in the empty beats of his heart. Others, it was faster than it—vibrating his body like it was being shocked by his own escrima sticks.

Dick pulled the blankets over his head, trying to drown out whatever show Tim had put on his TV. It seemed so loud even though Dick had watched as the volume went down and down to single digits before Tim placed the remote on his bedside table. He didn't want to reach out to it, didn't want to grab it, didn't want to feel cold.

Though Steph had bullied Alfred into setting his fireplace ablaze, it was still too cold in his room. Cold, cold, always too cold. It's been hours since Steph was even here—surely it was meant to be warm by now?

It just reminded him of there. Grabbing hold of the souvenir, using his left foot to try and kick himself up regardless that the ship was slowly sliding out the airlock, his right ankle broken beyond use and his lungs screaming at the air rushing past him faster than he could breathe. How the cold crept up it like a reverent lover. Slowly—so slowly—making it burn in numbness. Taking over his whole leg, then his other ankle, then his hips, then his navel before he couldn't hold on any longer.

The flying of the vastcoldyawningcoldwarpingcoldencompassingcold. The helpless feeling of protectsaveaidsavesurvivesavelivesave. The need to see his colleagues, his mentors, his friends, his family—ensure they're alive and safe—make them stay that way—protect them—save them—

His healing-much-too-fast ankle itches and burns and feels cold against the freezing bandages and he tries to kick at his mattress to unravel it and get it off but—

Dick turns his head more than he should be able to. His bed—blue sheets, five different sized pillows in the colors of his family's symbols, the metal frame he had to beg Alfred to get to replace the intricate and clunky wooden one when he was nine—it was all as he left it the last time he crashed in the Cave and woke up in it. Except it was distinctly three feet away from his horizontal body.

The yelp he lets out makes his lungs and throat spasm. He turns back into the blankets, coughs tearing through his body, hoping that this was another awful hallucination. Like the Lazarus green around his family, concentrating in blob-like shapes around his head, spiraling in certain parts of the Cave and Manor that Jason liked to frequent.

Like Jason himself, on lonely, rainy nights patrolling Blüd. Like Wally.

Who is still alive.

Dick swallows, shoving the coughs back down and not caring how it still makes his torso twitch. The blankets are pushed off his face slowly, everything tense in anticipation of the cold air of his room. It makes his nostrils flare, but he's more focused on how the ceiling is so much closer than it should be. He looks down at the bed over his shoulder and sees that he's even higher than before.

Okay. That's... fine. This is fine. He can just... fly, now. Or... hover? Either way. It's fine. Surely. Everything is. Fine.

He sits up easily even with nothing to push off of. He stands easily, gravity pulling the blankets down and Dick is grateful he was slow as he watches them land in a roughly neat position. But he was still four feet above it. He didn't even need to extend his arm all the way to touch the ceiling.

Everything. Is. Fine.

Dick steps to his right and dips a whole foot at the nothing beneath him. His ankle was hurting by how tightly he kept it in a standard standing position. Should he just... let it hang? Pointe? No—even the thought of that was making his brain melt.

He slowly raises in the air and takes another 'step'. Only a few inches, that time. And he was actually shifting to the right. Flight as a whole.

Dick closes his eyes and imagines moving to the foot of his bed, past it, over what he thinks should be the armchair. There was a slight breeze tousling his hair throughout the stillness. He cracks one eye open—

"ACK!" He falls hard, no time to land properly even if he wouldn't be tangled in wires. The chair was another foot to his left—stupid, stupid, of course it was, he had flown to the right before going forward—

His back hurts. His ass hurts. His ankle felt worse than it had whenever he was actually still in bed. Everything tingled as the jawbreaker under his sternum beat faster and twirled and sent singing electricity through everything and suddenly he felt so much better—

The door banged open and Dick yelped again, flinching so hard he fell on his side. Delicately firm hands take hold of his shoulders and ease him up before they lightly dance across his face, his sides, and his ankle.

Blinking the starburst from his eyes shows Cass's scarred face pinched in a way he rarely sees. She finishes investigating him and turns her dark eyes to his face, eyebrows scrunched in confusion.

Dick smiles a crooked thing and ignores the mind-melting revelation in favor of his old Lady Shiva training, hoping to at least redirect Cass's attention elsewhere.

~~...~~

There was a man in the mirror, and it wasn't him.

He looked like Dick. He copied Dick's movements. He never did something Dick didn't do, never did anything weird or wrong, and followed him even as he pulled out his phone, turned around, and tried to watch the man behind his back.

The man was his reflection.

Dick turned back to stare at him head-on, the lights of his bathroom bright and piercing and doing nothing to dissuade the differences.

He had Lazarus green eyes, and his hair was like the edges of electricity. It was still the sloppily groomed middle part that Dick's had for years, but it was white. He wasn't even wearing Dick's grey tank-top and dark blue sweats.

It was his Nightwing suit, but wrong.

Anywhere black was now a blinding white. Anywhere dark grey was now a lighter variant. The blue undertones to the dark colors had shifted yellow-orange. His symbol was a yellow-orange.

It was wrong.

Dick backs up until his back hits the window. The reflection does the same, but the moment his body jostles with the force of his retreat coming to a stop—

All the yellow-orange and green turns blue.

Not the blue of water. Not the blue of cold ice. Not the blue of the sky.

Nightwing Blue.

Something blue trails up from his right ankle. Dick stares at the reflection and watches as arms—vines—spider legs—lightning climbs higher and higher until there's a weird tingling sensation on the left half of his body, the reflection's lightning jumping to the left leg at the same time.

Dick looks down, further and further until it's his own body taking up his vision.

And the blue lightning trailing across his limbs.

There's a knock on the door and he blinks. "Master Dick, are you alright?" Alfred calls before a weight makes the handle shift but not turn.

The lightning was gone. Dick looks at the mirror and doesn't see the wrong suit; The white hair and green eyes were gone. It was just him. Sweaty and disheveled after a too-short routine on the trapeze.

"Fine, Alfred!" he yells, shaking his head and catching it on the tank-top he tried to yank off at the same time. "Just—got lost in my... scars!"

Alfred hums to block a chuckle. "You can always do that after you're clean and in bed, Master Dick. Though, I suggest you do so in the morning, when the others are home. They are more successful in dragging you out of your memories than I."

Dick almost slams his head into the shower door. He turns the faucet on and the cold has him hiss. "Will do, Alfie!" His shoes clicking further into Dick's bedroom sound, and he sighs.

With one last look in the mirror, Dick steps into the lukewarm water, ignoring the way his eyes flashed green and his skin burned.

~~...~~

He was finally back in Blüdhaven after two months of monitoring and small patrols in Gotham to shake the rust off. Barely able to convince B that he doesn't need a chaperon in his own city.

Nightwing was alone, for the first time in too long.

The jawbreaker-sized thing beneath his sternum sent electricity surging throughout his body. One blue bolt of lightning formed on his right foot, the white of his boot slowly creeping up his suit. He stomped both out quickly.

It's been too long since Nightwing flew through Blüdhaven, and Dick doesn't want him to be any different from the last time he patrolled. Double-checking his equipment, Dick smiled his Robin smile and did a flip off his apartment's roof, laughter bouncing through the connecting alleys in a haunting way.

He started early. The sun wasn't even fully set when he began weeding out the criminals, the goons, the bad and the evil, the monsters, those that dare to make His unsafe.

It was freeing.

It was intoxicating.

The scum festered under His Family's watch, who were too hesitant to create a power vacuum in politics they did not know. There were so many out tonight. Murderers, kidnappers, rapists, dealers—even middle school bullies roamed the streets in the supposed 'safety' of darkness.

Not anymore.

Not if they harm those who are Nightwing's.

Hours passed. Oracle and Batman and Robin and Spoiler all asked him questions, and he vaguely remembers giving clipped answers every single time. Busting a deal here, taking down a gang there—always moving, always busy, always fighting. He thinks some of them apologized for the mess they semi-knowingly created. He thinks one or two offered to help. He knows he denied it.

Nightwing didn't want to put His Family in Harm's Way.

At some point, Oracle signed off. At some point, the horizon started to bask His City in reds and oranges of a dawning day.

Around that time, his escrima sticks ran out of charge. But he was still moving. Still busy. Still fighting.

Nightwing cracked someone's knee, sending them to the ground in an undignified heap. He punched another's diaphragm before kicking them in the head, down and wheezing. He flipped over the last, swept their legs out from under them, and heard their gun skid against the concrete.

Escrima sticks planted into their back without conscious thought. Lightning barely danced at the edges of his vision before the goon beneath him was electrocuted.

Dick gasped and ripped his escrima away. The goon—person—groaned in pain before their breathing evened out, a little stuttery but oh so clearly alive.

He doesn't know what happened. He doesn't know why he did that. He doesn't—

Dick looks around the alley, trying to find something he recognizes. Anything.

Since when was he by the docks?

The sun crested the waves and blinded him. He hadn't even noticed the sky's shifting hues in his search.

Everything ached. His suit was cut in spots and there was blood around them. And some blood not near his wounds.

What the fuck was any of that?

Dick sent an anonymous tip to the least corrupt cop in Blüd and grappled onto the nearest warehouse. His apartment was a good thirty or forty minutes away at top speed. Citizens were going to see him.

Gritting his teeth, Dick grabbed his spare grapple and did something Batman tried to beat into his skull was an awful idea:

He used both at the same time, threatening shoulder dislocations and tangled wires.

There were times in his mad scramble to get home where his grapples weren't attached to anything. Weren't pulling him forward, momentum long since meant to make him drop. And he was still going forward. The wind in his hair. Gravity but an illusion to him.

He had to remember to use the grapples in case someone took a picture of him.

Dick was home in seventeen minutes, jawbreaker thrumming and singing a buzz into his shoulders that had popped disconcertingly on his last roll.

~~...~~

It's been three hours, and Dick can't sleep.

The Blüdhaven news was filled with relief that Nightwing was back, with slight surprise at how brutal some of his take-downs were. Witnesses actually came forward to express their own surprise, but every single one completely understood.

Nightwing wasn't there to protect them for a while, and was making up for lost time. Maybe something had happened for him to be especially brutal to some criminals, everyone speculated, but they weren't going to complain. He deserved to 'let loose' on the really bad guys, some declared.

Even his last 'fight' was talked about. The woman he had electrocuted with his blue lightning had to be checked on by a professional when she didn't even wake up in transport.

She was fine. Bruised, a bit dazed, and grumbling about a fast blue bitch... but fine.

Dick still couldn't sleep. Especially when the white tried to creep up his boot again. Especially when he leaned his head against the chipped tiles of his shower and saw the off-white glow green. Especially when he tried to put a bowl on the counter and it shattered like the many times a young Conner tried to set the table in Mount Justice.

Like he forgot his own strength.

It made no sense. Dick wasn't strong enough to do that accidentally. He wasn't a Meta. He wasn't an Alien. He was just... Human.

He shouldn't be able to make blue lightning, have white hair and green eyes, or fly, either.

Through gritted teeth, Dick breathed. He picked up the pieces of the bowl with his hands and threw them away. He grabbed another bowl and used his pinky as a cushion to gently set it down.

The milk was placed beside it. The tiny pantry door was opened and he reached for the cereal—or not, as he didn't even need to extend his arm like normal. Dick grabbed the door handle with his free hand and tried to gently set himself back onto the floor. He went too fast, too hard, into the floor. He could feel pieces of tile cut into his bare feet and the jawbreaker in his chest sing.

What. The fuck. Ever.

The pieces re-cut into his flesh with every step, but Dick just filled the bowl with Cinna-Bolts cereal, topped it with milk, and tried to grab a spoon from the drawer twelve times. His fingers kept fucking going through the metal, the plastic separator—even the fucking drawer itself!

Giving up, he just leaves the drawer open and goes to grab the bowl.

And there Dick stands still. Contemplating.

He was hungry. That's why he made this. But with every weird thing that happens to him, he can't help but think back to the day he die—

The day Dick learned Wally was still alive.

The offer he agreed to.

The price of his agreement.

It's been two months since then. Dick hasn't paid the price in all this time. Was this all happening because he was trying to ignore it? Ignore the powers, and the price needed to use them? Was this his own body—his own soul—backfiring on him and his suppression?

Dick grit his teeth to the point they squeaked.

He just wanted to be Nightwing, again. He just wanted to be with his family, again. He wanted to save people. Wanted to get his friend back.

The hand drops back to his side as he sighs a heavy thing. It doesn't matter what he wants or wanted or will want. What matters is what's already done.

"For the, uh—" Dick starts only to immediately stop. He didn't know anything about the Being—The Ghost King—that gave him these powers. No name besides Ghost King. No epithet, no proper prayer or offering incantation. Not even when to offer something, or if he could get anything else in return. He just shakes his head and decides to do his damned best.

"For the Ghost King. I... need a bit of help."

For a moment, nothing happens. For a moment, Dick feels insane. For a moment, he wants to collapse to the kitchen floor, dig his injured feet into the ground, and sob.

Then a Lazarus Portal opens in front of the counter.

Dick takes a step back, body tense and thoughts running through how absolutely idiotic it was to not even have his weapons on him, holy fucking hell, how stupid can the Boy Wonder be.

A blinding white hand inches out of the Portal. It hesitates before reaching further, an all-absorbing black arm following it. Dick half forgot the King wears a skin-tight hazmat suit.

If this was the King.

The hand grabs the bowl and Dick only now pays attention to how inhumanly long the arm is. He blinks and shakes his head to get rid of the melting feeling in his brain.

As the arm retracts, something comes out of the Portal. Dick bites his lip to keep his focus here.

It was the King, thankfully. Snow white hair, glowing green eyes, a crown of frozen fire floating stagnant above his head. His galaxy-cloak was on and, possibly, longer than he remembers.

The King focuses on the cereal with a curious tilt to His head. Dick somewhat remembers the Human form the King took before, and can see how little the King changes between the forms.

Blue-tinted tan skin. Messy hair floating in a nonexistent wind, the top half longer than the bottom. Half-lidded eyes shifting between pure green and white sclera. His jaw was bold, but not sharp enough to kill a man. Nose was straight and the slightest bit crooked. Lips were bigger than Dick's, glistening a light blue-white, and slightly parted to show nothing but green within His mouth.

Dick shakes his head and feels his own lip give way to his teeth. The coppery blood was refreshing, if a little... changed.

Like a sour crown melon.

The King tips the bowl and its contents into His mouth, throat not even swallowing but nothing spilling past His lips. It was the strangest thing Dick's ever seen.

The bowl was placed into his sink with not a drop of milk left. The King turned His attention to Dick, a content smile on His face. "It's been too long since I've had cereal. Thank you for that."

"Uh—no problem, man—ah, Ghost King..." Dick smiled a shaky thing, wanting to beat his skull into the nearest wall. All of Diana's lessons on dealing with royalty! Out the window the moment he sees a too-pretty King!

The King's face twitches and cringes and Dick wants to just run to his room and curl up and die—"No need for the formalities, Nightwing!" The King states with an echoing laugh beneath His words that does not match with His face. "Just call me Danny! Phantom, if you really must."

It was like a record scratch happened to his brain. He didn't dare focus on it.

"Of course, Phantom, my apologies. Feel free to call me my civilian name—it feels like an imbalance for anything else." Phantom stares at Dick for just a moment too long and he can't help the way the jawbreaker beats faster and faster, wondering if he offended the King by not saying his civilian name because He doesn't know it—

"You're an odd one, Dick." Phantom tilts His head too far for whatever bone-like structures surely must be in His neck—The crown and the cloak disappear and a weight lifts off his shoulders. Dick didn't even notice when it appeared. "It's almost refreshing, though I guess the overly-formal tone's just gonna stay for a bit, eh? Anyway, what'd you need help with?"

Even still being in this Ghost form, Dick can't help but relax and see more of the Human form in Phantom. Nothing even changed besides the removal of the crown and cloak. "Well, I—I finally had some time alone, and the—er—your powers kinda started going crazy—" Dick waves a hand flippantly, turning away from Phantom to hide the blood rushing to his cheeks. "—and something happened on patrol, and I used blue lightning on a Human, and I was scared she was hurt but she's fine and I don't remember wanting that to happen—and I've been flying when I don't want to and breaking things and my hand went through the drawer—"

His hand—the right one—gets grabbed in Phantom's left. A bolt of blue lightning passes between their jointed hands. Suddenly, green Lichtenberg scars appears all across Phantom's left half. Originating from the very hand keeping Dick's from moving. It crept up Phantom's arm, up into his torso where it thinly splintered off to the rest of the body.

Except his heart and neck and eye—

The branching figures focused on those areas like bees to nectar. Swarming, concentrated, ravenous.

Dick almost doesn't notice the burning cold winding its way through the right half of his body. It started in the hand Phantom still has a hold of, but it absolutely raced through him, pooling and spreading up from his right ankle.

It swarmed. It was concentrated. It is ravenous.

It... wasn't that bad.

Phantom looked at him for a few more seconds in pure silence, flickering eyes jumping from Dick's ankle to his hand.

Dick doesn't need to look down to remember the panic he felt on the Watchtower when he awoke to medics and friends alike gasping and shouting at his injuries. He doesn't need to look to remember the time Alfred used a cloth to clean him up the best he could and Dick, the dumbass, got curious about his injuries.

He doesn't need to remember how even the coldest setting of his shower's water hurtsburnsstabspeels at the creeping, trailing patches of purple-black skin.

"You're going through a more prolonged adjustment period than I did for the initial powers," Phantom gently states, rubbing his lightning-burnt fingers over Dick's frost-burnt knuckles. "Maybe because you knew what to expect and unconsciously suppressed them. Maybe because that's just how Ectoplasm works with you. Maybe it's because of the powers you're developing first.

"The specifics don't matter. I'm glad that you felt comfortable enough to give me a call. I'll teach you how to use these powers. And about Ghost culture and instincts." Phantom stops rubbing Dick's knuckles and he nearly whines as the dull pain he's had since reviving comes roaring back. "I-If you want me to, that is..."

"I'd love that, Phantom," Dick whispers in his still apartment, the forenoon sun breaking through a spot of clouds to light it up. The way Phantom's—Danny's—hair glistens in the natural light was hypnotic. "Anything to protect Mine."

Danny smiles a toothy thing and bends near his waist—Dick didn't even realize when his legs had turned into a tail, but his brain doesn't feel like its pouring out of his ears, and he wonders how well he could fly with that. A cold pair of lips graze his knuckles in a chaste kiss. It overpowered the purple-black of his joints, and yet Dick couldn't help but want more of Danny's cold over his own Death Cold.

The crown and cloak re-materialize and the pressure comes back, but it's... different in a way Dick can't even grasp. Danny Phantom—The Ghost King—looks up at him through floating white curls. "I look forward to our time together, Dick Grayson."

Dick is ridiculously glad that he doesn't have downstairs neighbors when he suddenly falls through the floor, Danny's startled eyes and exclamation cut off halfway before he follows Dick and grabs him halfway through the next floor.

Yeah. A teacher would be great.

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