Somebody tells Shang Qinghua that Mobei Jun dresses in his revealing plunging necklines and high-slit side skirts and etc for him, and Shang Qinghua is just like uhhhh no? That's ridiculous? Like come on why on earth would his opinion have any influence on how his king dresses?
But once the idea has entered his head, he can't quite shake it. See the thing is, the Mobei Jun he wrote in PIDW actually did wear whole entire outfits most the time. As the pinnacle of masculine ideals he was more into the high collars and buttoned buttons and cool armor that actually covered his vital points than his SV counterpart.
Shang Qinghua's just never really focused on the discrepancy because, well, most of the time he's around the Moboobs he's not thinking critically about anything at all. But, yeah. Even though ice demons don't have a problem being scantily clad in the cold, it is kind of weird that Mobei Jun dresses like a total harlot?
Not that he's shaming his king! Mobei Jun can dress however he wants and Shang Qinghua will enjoy the view!
He starts to think that perhaps he should figure out how he butterfly effected this particular change, though. Mysteries are dangerous. Obviously it's not actually his gaze that Mobei Jun is trying to draw, but there has to be some reason for it. Maybe he just spends so much more time in the human realms getting overheated that he needs the extra ventilation? Shang Qinghua decides to test a few theories, jokingly telling himself that the first thing to do is eliminate the assertion that the all you can eat beef buffet is being set out for his enjoyment.
It'll probably be easy to debunk. He just finds a way to shoehorn in some compliments on Mobei Jun's looks into their next few interactions, totally bracing himself to get his ass kicked the first couple of times for even mentioning anything at all. At the very least he's expecting his king to maybe take some of his outfits out of rotation, like he is not expecting a positive reception to his observation that "this mantle really emphasizes my king's broad shoulders and powerful chest, he should try wearing it shirtless" to result in... Mobei Jun showing up forty-eight hours later in the mantle and a loin cloth and precious little else?!
Then it keeps happening. Shang Qinghua decides he must have chosen the wrong kind of debunking test. Clearly, his king's a little starved for compliments! It's getting a bit absurd!
He decides damage control is in order before he accidentally praises Mobei Jun into becoming an exhibitionist (if it's not already too late...) and he pivots to... well. Leering, a bit. He spreads his compliments out more, also being sure the compliment Mobei Jun on wearing, like, actual coverage, and looking cool in armor and furs and etc (not hard, because he does). But he lets his king catch his eyes wandering a few times.
He's fully prepared to get his ass kicked for that, and he does. Not as badly as he'd feared, but it does net him some impressive bruises. It doesn't seem to deter his king from dressing how he pleases regardless, and Shang Qinghua despairs. Well of course some wandering eyes wouldn't turn Mobei Jun off of his preferred wardrobe! He's a grown ass demon king, not some uncertain youth who would blush and cover up!
Damn though, refuting this whole "he's doing it for you" theory is more complicated than he thought it'd be. Maybe he should move on to just, figuring out the actual reason, rather than attempting it process-of-elimination style...?
Meanwhile Mobei Jun is getting increasingly impatient. Qinghua has finally started signalling his interest in taking their very respectable slowburn courtship to the next phase, so why is it stalling again...?
SQH: "I can't figure out what's behind MBJs attire choices."
MBJ: Tits? out. Clothes? scant. Pose? heroic. Eyes? begging SQH to fuck him and in no way subtle.
Demons on the other side of the nation be catching these vibes. MBJ perving on his advisors has gone beyond gossip to just accepted historical fact due to how long its been going on. Long term bets have been made on when theyll fuck already and if they already did.
SQH: "goddamn mystery right here"
A drag path,Ā etched in the surface, as evidence I left there on purpose - DPXDC Au
i have an idea for a new batdad au.
i have an idea for a general oneshot but the gist is, after having a rough day--between school, getting another detention thanks to Dash, ghost fights, having an argument with his parents about his misbehavior that morning, and getting into a small argument with his friends-- Danny, after a ghost fight, picks a random direction and just flies. And he flies as fast as he can, burning off a bunch of ectoplasm and healing himself from his fight as a result.
But he eventually ends up in Gotham. Pretty standard premise. But he doesn't really do anything. He just picks a random rooftop to detransform and sit on. And he sits there, taking in the sights of the city and vaguely dissociating for a few hours before feeling like he's finally calmed down enough to return to Amity. He turns the location off on his phone before shutting it down, that way he doesn't have to deal with texts and calls from his parents about missing curfew. He's already going to be in trouble, so it doesn't matter how long he stays out for.
And at first he thinks it's just a one-and-done deal. He probably won't ever return to that rooftop ever again. Until he does,,,, about a month later. This time after a particularly nasty dealing with Vlad in his civilian life. He didn't feel like there was anywhere safe enough for him to go in Amity, so despite himself, he decided to dip after a few hours.
It becomes a pattern. Until eventually Danny's sitting on that rooftop at least once a week. Trying to find a slice of peace in America's most dangerous city. He has a lot of thoughts about Gotham, many of them reflective, and many of them comparative to Amity. He tries not to do it too often, especially once he catches himself feeling bitter once or twice.
And then he meets Batman.
Their first meeting is brief, inconsequential, and lasts no more than probably five minutes. Danny had never heard of the Batman prior to this, and so after meeting him,, he's kind of hyped. He leaves the man to his city, and doesn't really plan on seeking him out, but it doesn't stop him from feeling a sense of solidarity with him.
There are a few more run-ins with Batman after this. Sporadic and random, but they happen. Until eventually--Danny guesses that Batman figured out he had a pattern--Batman starts showing up often to this spot Danny's carved out for his own. Danny allows him. He knows he's encroaching on Bat's territory, and he views it as them existing in parallel to each other.
Danny's first proper conversation with Batman--the first one that lasts longer than a minute and consists more of short, awkward answers from Danny and curt responses from Batman--is when Danny, city-watching and lost in thought, tells him that he thinks Gotham is pretty.
Batman turns and looks at him, and goes: "...You do?"
Danny stumbles through an explanation after that, and somehow the conversation keeps going. And keeps going. And keeps going.
They don't always talk, and Batman doesn't always stick around for long, but Danny likes the little bouts of camaraderie they have. It reminds him of passing some of his classmates in the hallway, and they nod in greeting at each other. Sometimes, Batman lands on the roof, and then disappears a few seconds later. Danny thinks he might be checking on him.
Something interesting starts happening sometime after this. Usually, if Danny is flying to Gotham after a ghost fight, his injuries heal on the way there. Something about the rate he's burning ectoplasm that exacerbates his healing. Like cauterizing a wound.
That's been faltering lately. Danny doesn't know what's wrong. It started with a twinge in his shoulder that should've disappeared after a fight with Skulker, but lingered all the way to Gotham and up until Danny had to fly back to Amity. When he got back to his bedroom, it healed.
In any case, he didn't pay it too much to mind -- his little bumps and bruises were easy enough to hide from Batman. And they healed before he got home.
And then he shows up on their shared rooftop with a shiner that refused to heal, even when Danny tries to force it, nothing changes. It only forcibly reminds Danny that he doesn't have as much finesse over his powers as he wished he did.
He's frustrated and hurt, and on top of that, his ribs smart from a hit he took point blank. Deep breaths hurt. He pushes himself against the HVAC that's not up to code, throws up his hood, and curls into a ball.
This isn't something he can hide from Batman. A fleeting thought hits him to just leave so he doesn't have to explain himself if the man decides to stick around.
He doesn't.
And Batman, much to Danny's brief, insincere consternation, sticks around. He notices immediately that something is wrong. Danny keeps his head buried in his knees and tries to deflect.
It doesn't work.
Normally, Danny is very good at getting people to get off his back. Just be a bit prickly, a bit snappish, throw in some sarcasm, and they back off with a scoff, or they decide to scold him for that instead of pursuing their original reason for bothering him.
Unfortunately--Danny should've seen this coming, considering Batman's occupation--Batman sees right through him. He sticks around, verbally prodding at him, and when Danny snaps at him, he falls silent and just. waits. And perches patiently from a distance away. Which stings in a cathartic way.
Danny's resolve crumbles in minutes. Eventually, he silently turns his head and rests his cheek on his knee. He doesn't say anything, just hopes that maybe the light pollution in the city is bright enough to show off the bruise circling around his eye. Or it isn't bright enough, and hides it.
Batman is quiet for a beat. Then calmly and flatly asks who hit him. Danny stays stubbornly silent, and refuses to meet his eyes. When it becomes apparent he won't respond, Batman stares, and then reaches for a pocket on his utility belt.
He pulls out an icepack, and holds it out to Danny.
Danny is flabbergasted.
And then feels immediately fragile for reasons he can't articulate or understand.
Quietly, he takes it, and mutters "thank you". It's the kindest thing he's said all night.
Batman nods, and when he has to leave, it's with great reluctance.
This keeps happening. Danny shows up occasionally injured, mostly bruised and scratched up, thankfully. Batman appears, and notices, and quietly prods. Danny sometimes throws out an excuse--he fell, he tripped, he made some other clumsy mistake--and Batman doesn't believe him, but he doesn't pry. He quietly hands off to him something that could help. A bandaid or an icepack. Or just his quiet company.
The bruises increase; Batman gets just a little bit tenser each time. And then it plateaus.
And then it comes to a head after a nasty, ugly fight with Plasmius that included his favorite physical pastime: strangulation. Danny books it to Gotham the moment he thinks the coast is clear, and is furious upon landing to find that the bruising refuses to heal.
He's not fast enough to leave before Batman shows up, seemingly having pinpointed the time of Danny's arrivals by now. He whirls around on his foot when he hears him landing, and isn't fast enough to slam his hand over his throat and duck before Batman sees it.
And Batman sees it.
And Batman is very calm, and very furious when he says; "Who did that?"
Danny, despite his flawless deflections all the other times, falters and panics. Caught off guard by his arrival and already running on adrenaline, he stammers out an inconsistent slurry of excuses.
"Nobody. Nobody! It was nobody-- just my, just my uncle--" Danny's eye twitches in panic, "Just- nobody. Nobody important. Nobody did anything."
It's too late to take back anything.
"Your uncle?"
Danny refuses eye contact, staring off over the edge of the roof widely, "No! No-- nobody. Nothing. Nothing happened." His ruined voice says otherwise.
"Is he the one that's been hurting you?" Batman sounds very resolute as he says this.
Danny isn't quite sure how he managed to get out of that conversation-- it ends up being a total blur--but he does know that he gets out of it with his secret identity intact.
He doesn't return back to Gotham for almost a month; he regrets it every time he misses the days he goes and visits. The passing time presses down on him. He feels increasingly flighty and on edge; his temper shorter.
When he returns, Batman is waiting for him already. He doesn't say anything, and for a -- disappointing? -- moment, Danny thinks they're just not going to acknowledge Danny's freakout the last time he was there.
But.
Batman is waiting for him.
And with a burner phone for him.
There's only one number on it: his own.
He doesn't need to say anything for Danny to catch his meaning, or what his intentions are.
Danny stares at it dumbly for who knows how long, his eyes stinging suspiciously, before he looks up at Batman. He's gawking.
The first thing out of his mouth: "Are you sure?" it's croaky.
Batman grunts affirmatively at him. Holds it out closer to him: "For emergencies."
"You don't have to do this." Danny says, but he's reaching out for the phone anyways, snatching it out of Batman's hands, and cradling it preciously to himself. He's so cognizant of his hand and the weight of the phone against it.
Batman says nothing; it means everything to Danny.
"And you're sure?" He repeats, and sniffs conspicuously. He hates how fragile his voice sounds. He knows how monumental this is, not just to Danny, but to Batman as well. That solidarity in heroism coming back to bite him as Danny knows, intimately, how important it is to allow someone access to you personally. "You-- you're sure? You're sure." He sounds like a broken record.
Batman nods curtly.
Danny's vision wobbles. His next words come out in a broken, horrifically fragile, barely-there whisper: "What if- what if I just, just want to talk? Uh-- text. N' it's not an emergency."
Batman thinks for a moment. "ā¦You can do that," he says after a beat, "Call if its an emergency."
"Really?" Danny doesn't know why it hurts so much to say that. He sounds pathetically squeaky.
"Yes."
Batman is a man of few words; Danny quite likes that about him. He's surprised by it himself.
The dam ends up breaking; Danny's tears spill over and his shoulders convulse. When he cries, it's entirely silent, he doesn't want to draw attention to himself. He makes short, choked-off breathing sounds, and begins to curl into himself. He's not sure why he's reacting this way; it's just a phone.
He still ends up tilting in towards Batman, and collapsing into him. Batman catches him, and sinks them both to the ground, and lets Danny smear tears into the armor plating of his suit.
-----
I dug my heelsĀ into the gravel
As evidence for you to unravel
A drag pathĀ etched in the surface
Can you find me?
Danny's horribly embarrassed about crying over a single phone.
He can't remember the last time he ever cried like that, or when he last cried in general. It's just not something he does. Get teary-eyed? Sure, but nothing ever enough to break seal and fall down his face. Nevertheless actually sobbing.
He's mortified later, when he's come down from the emotional high long enough to realize and care what happened, and pointedly pretends it didn't happen when he makes it back to Amity.
Danny didn't have a breakdown over a phone of all things. He most certainly didn't sob into the armor plating of another hero from a city nearly a thousand miles away. And he most definitely get tears and snot on Batman.
It didn't happen. It's too humiliating.
In any case. The first thing he does upon getting back to his room--it's well past midnight and he can feel his shoulders already burning from the disappointed stares from Mom and Dad boring into him--is check for cameras.
He doesn't know when they started showing up, but he bets it was when Vlad started visiting more often under the guise of "reconnecting" with Dad.
Danny only realized they were there nearly two months after the fact.
He tries not to think about it too hard, otherwise he gets incurably nauseous.
(There's always no less than three in his room when he goes looking. He's never found one in Jazz's. He doesn't know if he should feel relieved or not; regardless, he wants to peel his own skin off.)
He doesn't find any from when he last checked (this afternoon after school). Only then does he pull his burner out-- and still he hunches around it, trying to keep it out of sight, and marvels.
It's inconspicuously black and simple.
Danny spends thirty minutes messing with the ringtone, then spends another thirty coming up with a new contact name for Batman that isn't his hero moniker. It's one of those rare moments of awareness he has, remembering that cause has an effect.
(He has a premonition over texting Batman--because Batman said he could, and Danny might take him up on that--and someone; Dash, his friends, Jazz, his parents, Mr. Lancer--anybody--looking over his shoulder, seeing the contact name, and questioning him.)
He ends up going with 'Buzz' after his favorite astronaut.
(He can't explain why he's texting someone over burner rather than his regular phone, but at least he won't have to explain why the name is Batman.)
He considers sending a message. Something to check and see if the number Batman gave him was actually his--a part of him thinks he's been punk'd--or (more irrationally) see if the connection would still hold even this far from Gotham. Or, perhaps, to just tell Batman he made it home safe.
All options sound terribly unappealing, Danny's lingering mortification over his reaction to getting said phone clinging to him like a leech. He shuts the ideas down.
Batman wouldn't punk him, he's not like that. Flip phones don't need wifi, they need cellular connection. Amity Park has plenty and so does Gotham. The connection is just fine. Finally; Batman is on patrol (something Danny should be doing; there might be a ghost that snuck through the portal despite him checking before he left that it was off) he's too busy for Danny to be bothering him right now with unimportant updates.
With that being said; Danny shuts the phone with a satisfying clack and collapses into bed.
(He's back up again about two hours later, his ghost sense going off like a bucket of ice water being dumped on his head. He hates it when that happens, his nerves are always immediately shot.)
His first message is the following morning. Danny agonizes over it for ages in his room, stuck between needing to leave for school before he's late, and needing to sate his own anxiety over his phone.
The end result, as normal, is Danny approaching it the same way he approaches every uncomfortable thing: jokingly.
>> "hey houston do you copy?"
(It takes him five minutes to hit send. He plans on shoving his phone into his pocket and ignoring it immediately after.)
It takes thirty seconds for Batman to respond.
>> "Yes."
Danny startles. And then his surprise alights into glee, like a spark against gunpowder, that he promptly tries to keep contained. It's not normal to be this happy about a reply. It's not a big deal. The feeling burns in the back of his throat; Danny presses his lips together in order to stifle the smile.
He leaves his room and starts heading downstairs.
>> "just checking to see if the phone works"
>> "didn't expect you to respond so fast"
>> "thought you'd be sleeping or smth. arent bats nocturnal?"
>> "Yes."
>> "I am not."
Batman is a terrible texter. Danny had no expectations of how he'd text, and yet it's exactly what he thought it'd be.
He's irrationally delighted by it.
That smile he's been trying to hide slips out and spreads across his face. It's like Danny can hear him talking, it's a bit dizzying how excited that makes him.
It's a bit unreal that he's actually texting Batman.
How crazy is that?
He hurries down the stairs, grinning from ear to ear.
>> "cool cool"
And runs into his parents in the kitchen.
The smile immediately fizzles out, the lighthearted, fluffy feeling in his chest dropping like a stone in a pond. Danny closes his phone before he can even think about it, curling his hand inwards to his chest the same way he does when he's trying to hide the screen of his other phone. The same one that's in his back pocket and hasn't been touched since his alarm went off.
"Where did you go last night?" Mom asks, mouth curled into a deep frown. "You left your phone in your room again."
Dread replaces the happy lump in his throat, and his lungs turn hollow and cold.
(He started leaving his phone at home sometime after his trips to Gotham became commonplace. Both to avoid uncomfortable questions if his parents checked his location, and then because it felt nice to be untraceable.)
Feeling like one of those little lumps of plastic that shrivel under high heat, Danny's shoulders hunch up.
Crap.
He averts his eyes and seals his mouth shut.
"Daniel James." Dad goes, his voice outside of its usual loud bluster. Danny inwardly slumps. "We thought you stopped doing this."
Especially love Danny's feelings about Vlad's spy cameras. A lot of times when it's brought up, people just kinda brush it off. Just one more villainous deed on Vlad's rogue rap sheet. But actually, yeah, I think it would feel extremely, personally violating.
For sure!! I was going to include it, but couldn't figure out a good way to implement it and make it sound natural, but Danny was supposed to mention that he changes in the bathroom nowadays, rather than in his room. Even after being sure he found all the cameras, he can't guarantee that he did get all of them, and feels paranoid.
At least in the bathroom he can trust there won't be any cameras. He's checked multiple times and never found a single one.
Danny was having a terrible day, or more like a terrible week. His parents had discovered that he was Phantom, and had immediately attacked him. The only reason he had managed to get away through the portal was Jazz holding them back as she shouted at him to run.
Once in the ghost zone Clockwork was instantly by his side leading him to Far Frozen to help with his injuries. Once the worst of it was over Clockwork told him that to help keep him safe he was sending Danny far away from Amity; to Gotham. Whether he agreed or not didn't seem to matter as in a blink of an eye Danny finds himself standing in an alleyway with nothing more than what he already had.
The next few days were hard, and Danny was really trying not to let that get him down too much. So it only makes sense that the universe would take that as a challenge to do worse by raining.
When walking aimlessly in the grocery store to escape the rain he was absent mindlessly picking things up, reading them, and putting them down. That seemed to be a problem for some people though as in the next moment an older woman is grabbing his arm, and demanding him to put back what he was going to steal and asking where his parents are.
The woman doesn't even give him a chance to respond though before she is shouting at and pulling Danny towards an older teen (Tim) who is also standing in the aisle and now staring at them with wide eyes as they approach.
"You need to keep a better track of your little brother! I caught him trying to steal while you were over here looking at your phone!"
The older teen makes eye contact with those words. Now, Danny will admit that while this guy and him did look oddly a-like they weren't brothers, or at least he hoped that was the case. He would know if he was adopted right? Probably.
"Yes," Tim reaches out and pulls Danny out of the woman's grasp; tucking Danny into his side, "I'll make sure to do that thank you."
The woman obviously wants to continue talking, but before she can Tim is already walking away from her with Danny right next to him.
Danny is so thankful that Tim was willing to not correct the woman that he doesn't even notice when Tim plucks a couple hairs from him.
Tim did not like grocery stores. He knew it showed his privilege and Jason never let him forget that he had grown up with the silver spoon, but he still didnāt like them. When he was a kid his parents always had groceries delivered and for the most part Alfred did the same. Tim certainly only ordered his own groceries, but sometimes he still had to go to one himself.
Part of the reason he hated shopping so much was because of the attention he always attracted. When he dressed up he got recognized as Tim Drake-Wayne and was mobbed by either paparazzi trying to get a quick scoop or actual mobsters looking to kidnap him and get a ransom. When he dressed down every store clerk seemed to assume he was there to steal. Dick said it was because his Bat-paranoia that had him constantly on the lookout for threats came across as someone up to no good, afraid of getting caught.Ā
He idly watched a younger teen from the corner of his eye. The scruffy looking teen picked up one of the jars off the shelf and carefully read it then put it back. Jason and Cass had both talked about how that was a way to push off attention if you werenāt planning on buying anything and just needed somewhere out of the weather. More power to him, honestly, the stormfront that had burst was looking to last another week.Ā
Tim moved into a different aisle so the kid didnāt get caught up in the usual negative attention that plagued him when he was out in public. He finally found the energy drinks and was staring at them trying to decide if he wanted to try and sneak them past Alfred to store them in the manor where he would need them the most frequently or if it was safer to hide them in his nest when said negative attention landed in the form of a screeching Karen.
He pulled off one ear of his headphones so he could at least pretend to listen to whatever she was howling about. God damn, he had fought actual supervillians with less damaging sonic attacks than this woman. It took him a second to realize she had dragged over the other teenager and was ruthlessly shaking him by the arm.Ā
"You need to keep a better track of your little brother! I caught him trying to steal while you were over here looking at your phone!" She screeched.Ā
Tim made eye contact with the kid and all his Bat-training roared to life as he took in numerous details in a glance. The kidās unwashed hair (black), his wide, scared eyes (blue) with almost racoon-dark rings under his eyes, his pale skin with visible bruises and cuts. Tim couldnāt tell definitively if this kid was related or not, but the very fact that he looked close enough to pass at the Wayne Manor dinner, made him pay attention. Even disregarding the fact that both Jack and Janet Drake could have cheated on each other and would absolutely hide the fact if a bastard came of it, there was always clones as a possibility.Ā
"Yes," Tim reached out and pulled the kid out of the woman's grasp; tucking him into his side, "I'll make sure to do that thank you."
He could see her taking a breath to start up another tirade, but quite frankly, Tim did not have the patience for it and he could feel this kid shivering against him. So he turned the pair of them, keeping the kid pressed against his side, and speed walked away. Once they were out of sight, Tim spun so he could face this kid.
āHey man, thanks for the save, Iām so sorry you had to get dragged into that.ā The kid said, practically ready to apologize for his entire existence right there.Ā Ā
āDonāt worry about it, I could get you away from her so I did. Itās no problem. My nameās Tim, whatās yours?ā
āUh, Danny.āĀ
Tim visually checked the newly named Danny over, he could see a few signs of hidden or older injuries on top of the bruises and exhaustion. And god damn did they look like brothers. Though to be fair, Tim certainly wasn't related to Dick or Jason and he looked pretty similar to them in the right lighting. He could tell that Danny was growing uncomfortable with the inspection.Ā
āYou've still got your backpack? Good. Let's finish our shopping and get out of here before anyone else throws a fit.ā
Danny blanched, his eyes darting around. Tim smiled and used a card trick Dick had taught him to show his credit card.Ā
āDon't worry little brother! I've got dad's card so get what you want.ā
Danny looked nervous but followed along while Tim led him through the store. Tim started filling his basket with no prep needed foods and some other basics. Bruce had done a lot of research when he first took up the mantle on what best met the needs of the city's unhoused population. Jason had almost completely rewritten the list during his time at Robin.Ā Tim shopped efficiently, knowing he didn't have long before Danny's fragile trust ran out.Ā
āYou donāt actually have to buy me things you know.ā Danny whispered.Ā
āWell she thinks youāre my brother, so I have to show that Iām a good one. Family obligations and all that.āĀ
āI guess I understand that.ā He sounded sad, and there was a weight to his words that worried Tim.Ā
āWhat brings you to Gotham?ā Tim asked as he picked out a small first aid kit.Ā
āIs it that obvious I'm not from around here? Is it the accent?āĀ
āYeah partially, but also most Gotham kids would have pulled a knife if someone tried to manhandle them like that.ā
āOh.ā Danny looked confused for a moment before shaking his head. āI'm here looking for someone. Theyāre supposed to live here in Gotham. Iām hoping I can stay with them for a little bit. āĀ
āAre you sure youāre not looking for me? If youāre looking for a sibling, we already look alike.āĀ
Danny gave him a look, before focusing on the shelves around them.Ā
āI donāt think so, well, unlessā¦ā Danny gave him another look, a hint of color rising in his cheeks. āUnless you, you know, changed, since you were born. Iām looking for my sister.ā
āOh, nah. If I was going to transition Iād be more likely to go the other way.ā Tim said with a laugh, though Danny looked even more concerned.Ā
āYou can do that if you want to, you know!ā He seemed desperate for Tim to understand, which was both a little touching and a little heartbreaking.Ā
āYeah I could, but family obligations again.āĀ
Danny fell silent and looked upset, but like he didn't have the words to say to help as they finished their shopping, still under the watchful gaze of the shrieking wretch, who had at least fallen silent and stayed far enough back that she couldnāt hear their quiet conversation.Ā
They checked out with a cashier who clearly wasn't paid enough to pay them any mind. Tim took advantage of packing Danny's backpack with what he had purchased to hide a number of $20 bills among the purchases. No doubt Danny wouldn't trust the offer if Tim just handed him the money outright, but this way he could make sure the kid was taken care of.Ā
The two boys walked out of the store and stood under the awning to look at the rain still pouring down outside. He reached over and playfully mussed Danny's hair. Danny batted his hand away in annoyance, but not before Tim managed to place a tracker on his hoodie and snag a stray hair. If there was even a chance that this was related, Tim would do everything to make sure he was safe.Ā
āAlight. See you around Danny, stay safe.ā Tim said.Ā
Danny gave him a nod and one last look of confusion before turning away. Tim left to head to his car and was ready to drive to the cave to test the sample when an alert from his watch grabbed his attention. He pulled a comm device from the watch and slipped it into his ear.Ā
āRed Robin online.ā He said.Ā
āArkham breakout, Red.ā The heavily modulated voice of Oracle reported. āWe need all hands on deck.āĀ
āCopy that. Iām a few minutes away from the closest safe house to suit up.āĀ
āUnderstood. Patching you through to comms.āĀ
Timās ear was filled with updates from the other bats. An explosion had rocked Arkham. Considering the two-colored pyrotechnics best guesses were that Two-Face was the one staging the breakout, though who knew who else would take advantage of the chaos.Ā
He grimaced and pulled up his trackers on his carās screen. He could see Bruce and Damian heading towards the Asylum. Dick was racing across from Bludhaven while Jason was circling in Crime Alley, daring any to harm the streets he had claimed. Timās own marker was on the other side of the city from the others. Right next to his was the blinking marker for the tracker he had put on Dannyās hoodie. He was about to dismiss the markerās token when it suddenly pulsed one last signal and went silent.Ā
āFuck.ā Tim hissed. Danny must have found the tracker and destroyed it.Ā
āLanguage Little Bird!ā Dickās voice forcefully reminded Tim that he was on an open channel.Ā
āRed Robin! Report.ā Batman barked.Ā
Tim allowed himself a moment to sigh before he switched into debrief mode.Ā
āI am unharmed and in no danger. A personal tracker I was monitoring was destroyed. I donāt believe this relates to the breakout.āĀ
āOh a personal tracker? Who are you tracking?ā Dick asked, his voice both genuinely curious and obnoxiously over the top.Ā
āJust so you know, Replacement, stalking isnāt how you make actual friends.ā Jasonās voice carried his usual derisive tone.Ā
Tim wanted to pull his hair out. If he didnāt say anything they would continue to harass him when they should be paying attention to the breakout. If he did they would go all āBat-paranoiaā on Danny. (Just like Tim himself had done and fully planned on continuing too. Yes, he was self-aware. No, that would not stop him.) Danny had already found one tracker, if he had to suddenly deal with the entire Bat-clan after him he might run and considering he had flown under their radar so far, he might completely disappear. Even if Danny wasnāt actually his brother (yet), Tim didnāt want to put that kind of pressure on him.Ā
He hopped out of his car moments after pulling into the parking garage of the safehouse and ran to where a spare uniform was stored. The hair he had snagged went into an evidence bag, then he started to report while getting dressed.Ā
āFine! Iāll answer but we need to focus on the current breakout. And you have to promise not to go all Bat-stalker on him!āĀ
ā-Pot and kettle, Drake-ā
ā-Oh little bird has a boyfriend-ā
ā-Names!-ā
ā-Jesus, you are all useless-ā
Tim ignored the voices shouting over each other as he mounted his motorcycle. He angrily kicked his bike into gear.Ā
āHeās not my boyfriend, I think he might be my brother!ā Tim enjoyed the silence his words brought for a moment before he continued. āI ran into Danny at the corner mart, a woman mistook him for my brother and after seeing him I almost believed it myself. He looked like he had been living on the streets. I didnāt think he would trust me to bring him to the manor and I didnāt know for sure, so I bought him some food, snagged a hair to test and placed a tracker so I could find him again. Unfortunately, he must have found the tracker.āĀ
āFuck.ā Jason growled softly.Ā
āFuck indeed.āĀ
āLanguage, Little Bird!āĀ
Tim groaned and focused on weaving through traffic to meet with the others to put the fires around Arkham.Ā
Here's my take. I hope you enjoy! I'm going to add more later. I'm finally able to write again and I'm going to make it everyone else's problem.
Also here are some random headcanons I came up with while writing this. First of all: all of the Bat-fam are so weird with money and in so many different ways. Tim and Bruce were raised uber rich. They will put every charge on a black, metal credit card. Bruce rarely carries anything lower than a fifty in cash, and will just write off any extra as a tip. Tim carries 20s in a bunch of different hiding spots around his person. Dick and Damian are raised very differently, but money is basically fake for both of them. No matter how well or poorly the circus was doing Dick would have been taken care of by those around him, and Damian grew up in the assassins and only knew about money as a foriegn concept. Jason always pays in cash, always carries cash on him in a bunch of hiding spots, but usually like really small amounts. He has three dollars in his boot, because that's what he had to do as kid on the streets.
Ear pieces! Bruce and Dick lean into their rich and ditzy personas and always have ear pieces in. They easily pass them off as the latest airpod or whatever and no one questions them. Tim is too paranoid of sound based mind control so won't wear the earpiece all the time, plus they impact the quality of his music (I head canon him as a audiophile) He gets alerts on his smart watch then pulls the earpiece out of a secret container in the watch. Jason can't be bothered to wear an earpiece unless he's under cover. His helmet has comms and when he's out of costume he wants to be left alone. Damian hates the rules his school has about technology or he would do the same as Bruce, he has to hide his ear piece in the pencil case for his art supplies.
Exhaustion hung in the air of the Batcave. It clung to each of the people within the cave like a thick miasma and weighed on them all like the thick blankets they all longed for. Alfred fussed over Damian who probably had some cracked ribs and would be benched for a while. Dick hovered, ignoring his own probable concussion and repeated instructions to sit down, as he checked in on the rest of the family. Bruce showed his age as he gingerly pulled pieces of his armor off, his movements stiff from the fighting. Even Jason hadnāt immediately fled the cave for his own safehouses, instead he had collapsed on one of the cave couches and may have fallen asleep in his armor and helmet.Ā
Tim tiredly dragged himself to the Bat-computer. It had been a long, almost eight hours. Two-Face was captured once more, fortunately Bruce knew which buttons to push on the former DA and was able to instigate a personal confrontation that led to his arrest. There were a few other rogues missing once the fires were out and the riot quelled, which was going to be a problem eventually. Oracle was already working on trying to track them down.Ā
However, the biggest concern was Jason mentioning that Black Mask had been making moves again, trying to push into Crime Alley, sending more drugs and thugs into Jasonās turf. While Two-Face may have orchestrated this breakout, he had outside help that seemed to point to Black Mask. He hadnāt been active since Red Hood had smashed through his organization.Ā
He had one thing that had been weighing on his mind all night. Was Danny his brother? Yeah Danny said he was looking for a sister, but civilian records were never that accurate, and it would be just like Jack or Janet to further obfuscate the records to keep an extramarital baby from getting tracked back to them. He set the DNA sequencer to run then went for the showers.Ā
By the time he was clean and changed the creeping light of dawn could be seen coming through the windows on the security cameras in the manor. Damian and Dick had already been called out from their school and work respectively. Jason was now snoring on the couch, the sound coming out like garbled growling through his helmetās speakers. He would be miserable when he eventually woke up and realized he slept in his armor. Alfred was fruitlessly trying to herd the Bats up to get a proper sleep in the Manor, but everyone was unsubtly hanging around to see the results of the DNA test.Ā
He knew they wouldnāt be able to keep their noses out of it. He might have to ask Alfred to help him keep the others in line if Danny was his brother. Otherwise it would be a mad dash to try and find him and Tim was trying to spare him from any Bat-stalking other than his own.Ā
Tim settled at the Bat-chair in a pair of loose sweats with a towel draped around his shoulders. Everyone else was back in civies, fighting off sleep in their own way as they waited for the computer. Even Damian, who seemed to hate all things Tim Drake, was lingering to see what the results would be.Ā
When the chime finally echoed through the cave, Tim couldnāt tell if he was relieved or not. The only reason it would process that fast was if it was a close match to someone already flagged in the system. Namely the Bats, their families, or their close allies. Tim pulled up the analysis on the large screen as the rest gathered around his shoulders.Ā
Dannyās DNA had some weird markers that the computer either didnāt recognize or needed more time to analyze, but was otherwise complete. There was no record or profile in the Bat-computer, unsurprisingly considering Tim had only just met him, so the computer began searching for connections. The first person must be Dannyās mom, someone Tim didnāt recognize. She had dark hair just like Danny, though hers was long. It felt like a gut punch to see that she was deceased, apparently having died fourteen years ago. She must have died right after Danny was born.Ā
Tim could tell that the others were still processing that information by the way they were muttering together, when the next parent popped up. He only needed a fraction of a second to recognize the father. His hand whipped out in an instant tabbed to a different screen hiding the information. He stood, spinning out of his chair as the others shouted and complained.Ā
āBruce, you need to leave the cave.ā Tim demanded over the noise of the others.Ā
āTim, I-ā
āNO!ā Tim shouted, silencing the others with his rare display of temper. āYouāve already proven you canāt handle this well. You need to leave the cave.āĀ
āIf heās mine-ā
āHeās not. And I wouldnāt hide that from you.ā Tim softened his voice enough that Bruce believed him. āI know who his father is, and I donāt believe you can be objective with this case. Please leave the cave.āĀ
Bruce looked conflicted,Ā but Alfred appearing at his side to escort him upstairs was enough to convince him to leave. He looked back several times as he walked up the stairs to the manor but he left.Ā
Tim waited until he was certain Bruce was gone before he quickly turned and printed off the page before running a program he had created specifically to hide his activities from Bruce, which deleted his history since his last log-in. He pulled the paper off the printer and stared down at it, his eyes burning. There, still warm from the printer, was Arthur Brown. His list of aliases and crimes followed his picture.Ā
And underneath Dannyās parents was listed another family connection, half-sister. Stephanie Brown. Tim felt rare tears fall as he thought of his fallen friend.Ā
.Ā
Prior to Red Hoodās fiery emergence onto the scenes, before Damianās existence had been revealed, before Bruce had fostered Duke, for a brief time Stephanie Brown had taken up the mantle of Robin. Tim had made a solid attempt at returning to civilian life, hanging up his own cape and trying to be a good son for his returned father.Ā
Stephanie had shown her intelligence and dedication, taking on the training that Bruce had put Dick, Jason and Tim through. In many ways she was the best of the Robins. She could keep the rogues off balance with her chatter like Dick, she could be a voice for the poor and downtrodden like Jason, and she could solve even the hardest mysteries and riddles like Tim. Unfortunately, she also had her share of their flaws. She was angry, stubborn, and insubordinate. In many ways she was justified, having had to take up the cape to stop her own father from committing crimes, and she had a hard life even before that.Ā
And Bruceā¦ Bruce, despite having raised, trained and worked with three teen boys before, still wasnāt good at understanding kids. The two of them fought at every turn, and because Steph wasnāt actually his child, and she had become Spoiler on her own, there was a limit of what he could do to punish her for her failures, real or blown out of proportion. When he finally tried to bench her for good, she struck out alone, stealing what she needed from the Batcave, including one of Bruceās secret plans for dealing with Gothamās crime-filled streets.Ā
She actually managed to set the plan up and run it almost perfectly without any support or equipment from Batman. Until Bruceās typical secret keeping ways came back and bit them all. The conclusion of the gang war Stephanie had started should have ended up with someone by the name of Matches Malone as the new head of all organized crime in Gotham. Except Bruce had never trusted Steph with the information that Matches was simply a pseudonym he used when he needed to go undercover. With no Matches to take the head, Gotham dissolved into a city spanning war.Ā Ā
Ā Stephanie tried to keep control of the war, but it was soon out of her hands, and eventually she was captured by Black Mask. Leslie Tompkins did her best to save her life once Stephanie was eventually rescued, but her torture at the hands of Black Mask was too severe. Stephanie Brown died in Leslieās clinic.Ā
Tim had been devastated when he had learned she had died. Bruce tried to blame Leslie and have her kicked out of the city, but Tim was able to talk him around. Tim returned as Robin to Batmanās side. Eventually Damian joined the family, Bruce was briefly lost to time, and Tim became Red Robin. Then after Bruce was found Jason came back to the city with all the chaos that followed and eventually led to a tenuous truce between the Red Hood and the Bats. By the time Duke joined the family the dynamic had settled into its current state.Ā
With everything life had thrown at him in the recent years, Tim didnāt feel like he ever had a chance to properly mourn the loss of Stephanie. They had dated for a time and while their relationship was as rocky as every Batās relationships, and they eventually broke up, he still considered her to be one of his closest friends outside of Young Justice. He missed her.Ā
The only person who was more affected than Tim was Cass. She blamed Bruce and refused to work closely with him again. Something she saw in his body language whenever Stepanie came up set her off every time. She now worked exclusively with Oracle and her Birds of Prey, taking missions all over the world. Tim knew she was absolutely opposed to taking a life, and was one of the only Bats that would likely never cross that line, but that first night after she had found out was the closest Tim had ever seen her to killing someone.Ā
.
Now Tim was staring down at results that showed that Steph had a brother. Her shit-head, bastard of a father must have cheated on her mom. He would have definitely had the resources to hide the affair, though Tim was uncertain if he knew about the pregnancy. Had he known and abandoned Danny and his mother with no support? Or did he never look into her again? Did he even know she had died?Ā
Danny must have been put up for adoption. Tim would have to track that down. Why wasnāt he either in foster care or with his adopted parents? Had he been raised in Gotham? Surely one of the Bats would have run into him at some point if he had. If not, where had he grown up? Had he been safe? Cared for? Loved? Tim didnāt know and he needed to-
āTim!ā Dick voice shook him free from his thoughts. āYouāre spiraling. Whatever is going on in that big brain of yours, just know, weāll find him. Weāll make sure heās taken care of, even if he never sets foot in the manor.ā
Tim nodded numbly, before looking back at the paper in his hands.Ā
āYouāre right. Weāll take care of him. Bruce canāt know. Whatever his problem was with Steph I donāt want it to affect Danny, he canāt be objective about anything to do with her.ā Tim said.Ā
He actually had a pretty good idea of what Bruceās problem was. He saw all failures and mistakes as a personal failing. If something happened to someone he had trained, then clearly he hadnāt trained them enough. He should have done a better job of benching them and ensuring they stayed benched. Whatever. He always blamed himself, but because he had the emotional range of a cup of day old coffee, it came across as him blaming those around him. And with that came him pointing out every flaw and problem of those around him in some misguided attempt at preventing the mistakes from happening again.Ā
Bruce had done that with all them at one point or another. Dick when he quit as Robin and left to form the Teen Titans. Jason for his anger, and expanding on his flaws even more after his death. Damian had to deal with it for the mistake of being born into the League of Assassins. Even Tim had more than his fair share of Bruceās ire.Ā
Regardless of Bruceās emotional problems, they needed to find Danny. They needed to make certain he was safe and wanted for nothing. It was the least the Bats owed Stephanieās brother.Ā
āOh my god.ā Jason muttered, having woken up during the noise and finally removed his helmet.Ā
āWhat now?āĀ
āSomeone needs to tell Cass.āĀ
āOh shit.ā
I'm playing around with the time line a lot. DC cannon is my sandbox and I'm making castles. Also I'm a hurt comfort author, so there will be comfort in the future eventually. I've got a couple more sections planned for this story.
Danny changed from his Ghost form to human, allowing invisibility to fall off him like a coat dropped in the doorway after a long day. He had kept an invisible eye on the conflict between the Bats and the inmates of Arkham. While Jazz had many opinions on the Asylum and how those who were sent there were treated, Danny knew that a riot or breakout at the Asylum would only mean danger spilling out into the rest of the city.Ā
He had caught and knocked out a few of the inmates, including some weirdo with a knife and a bunch of tally marks all over his body. He kept himself invisible and carefully knocked each of them out in one blow so they wouldnāt even know that they werenāt downed by one of the Bats. He wanted to do more, but he absolutely couldnāt be caught there.Ā
The last thing he wanted was to intervene and land on the radar of Batman. Batman was part of the Justice League. The GIW had already contacted the League to request aid in his capture. Tucker had seen the files before Danny had fled, his wounds barely stapled closed from his time with them. The last thing Danny had been able to do before losing contact was to send a duplicate flying north, to lead the agents away from his friends and Jazz.Ā
He knew they were being watched, their every communication was monitored. If he made contact in any way, they could all get dragged away to the GIWās ālabs.ā He couldnāt risk it. As soon as his duplicate had left, he hugged his friends goodbye one last time and Danny had hitchhiked his way to Gotham City.Ā
Gotham had a couple of benefits even with the presence of the Bats. One: no one would notice the presence of one more homeless teen on the streets. Two: the city was cursed from the sewers to the skyscrapers and that would help delay the GIW if they searched the city for him. Three, and worst: so many people died in the city that the streets were thick with ectoplasm, rank ectoplasm, that stank of fear and pain, but ectoplasm enough for a halfa to heal even the worst injuries.Ā
And by all the Ancients, Danny had the worst fucking injuries. Tucker and Sam had managed to staple his chest closed, in between Tucker throwing up and Sam swearing a blue storm. He didnāt actually have half the things that were supposed to go inside his chest, but if being a halfa had any benefit it allowed him to survive horrific injuries. He had only managed to regrow the bones in his hand by spending two nights in a cemetery on the way to Gotham.Ā
The fourth reason he had come to Gotham was he hoped to be able to meet his sister somewhere in the city. Not Jazz, she was safe at her college where she pretended to be desperately searching for him so no one would suspect her. Not Ellie either, Dannyās clone had disappeared into the Paris catacombs and had promised to stay there until it was safe. The GIW didnāt currently have authority outside the United States, but the Justice League did, and neither of them were going to risk her getting mistaken for Danny and getting captured by them.Ā
No, the sister that apparently lived in Gotham was a girl named Stephanie. That realization had been one of a number of unpleasant realizations. Apparently Danny was adopted. Jazz had known, because she had been there when they picked him up from the foster home, though she was still surprised that the Fentons had been allowed to adopt at all. His birth mother had died shortly after he was born, but she had at least been able to put down his information on his birth certificate, including the name of his birth father, Arthur Brown.Ā
Researching his father was immediately disappointing. Arthur Brown was a criminal who tried to place himself as equal to Batman. Jazz called it an incredible act of ego and sign of the fragility of Arthurās sense of self, that he had to challenge someone who was known to be one of the smartest heroes. Arthur had been arrested and as far as Danny could tell was still in prison.Ā
However, other than making Danny a bastard and abandoning his birth mother, Arthur apparently had done one other thing, he had a daughter, Stephanie Brown. The last Danny had looked into her, a couple of years ago, she was hoping to move out from the dark shadow of her father and become a nursing student. Danny definitely didnāt bring up that he felt insecure considering both his blood and adopted sisters were so smart and going into such complicated fields, but somehow Jazz was still able to guess and gave him a whole lecture on self-worth.Ā
Danny doesnāt really care that much about the differences between an adopted family and a blood family. While it had been an unpleasant discovery, he was happy once he came to terms with it. He and Jazz would both love to meet Stephanie and get to know her for herself, not simply because of a blood tie. They had held off at first so they didnāt expose her to the chaos that was the elder Fentons, especially if they thought a ghost was around. Then after Dannyās accident he was so busy with the ghost fights and ghost hunters he couldnāt.Ā
Now however, Danny needed to meet her. He needed to form a relationship with her. Not strictly because of their blood relation, but because he was a ghost without a Fraid. Specifically a heavily injured ghost who had to abandon his Fraid to keep them safe. Frostbite had stressed how important it was that a young ghost like Phantom have a Fraid, a family, chosen or otherwise, around them. Part of a ghostās image of themselves, their very form was shaped by their relationships with others. Without those bonds he may not be able to heal, or if he faces too much stress, he might discorporate and face his true and final death.Ā
Ectoplasm and Fraid bonds didnāt care for laws or blood anymore than Danny did. He didnāt have a bond with the parents who raised him at all. That had been severed with the same knife they had used to cut into his arms to examine his tendons when they captured him, though it had been frail and struggling long before that. With Tucker, Sam and Jazz so far away, he needed someone to make new bonds with, and hopefully Stephanie would be willing to at least meet him.Ā
Danny shook his head free of his hopes as he slipped out of an alley and onto a Gotham street on the opposite side of the city. With the return of his human body returned the ache and pain from his injuries, and the weight of his now full back-pack. That nice guy at the store had been strangely willing to spend a bunch of money on some random nobody. He definitely had money, but he didnāt seem as big of a fruit-loop as Vlad, so Danny was willing to trust him a little.Ā
āHey punk!āĀ
He had food a plenty, ectoplasm thrumming through his veins trying to patch his wounds back together, and apparently Tim had even hidden some cash among the purchases. Danny was feeling pretty good. He was still sad that Tim wasnāt able to live his truth like Danny was, but now it seemed to be the perfect time to start the search for Stephanie. He thought maybe he could find some information on her in the library.Ā
āIām talking to you, you twerp!āĀ
Danny side-stepped someone in his way, as he walked with his hood down to keep some of the heavy rain out of his eyes. If he couldnāt find anything at the library maybe he could inquire at one of the local colleges? If he learned one thing from Jazzās endless lectures it was that community college was the way to go if you wanted to avoid as many loans as possible, and if Stephanie was paying her way through college while their father was in prison, she would definitely want to save money.Ā
āYou fucking fucker.ā
He gasped as a knife slid between his ribs. He reacted on instinct, a punch flying out with all his ghostly strength, as images of labs and his parents hovering over him, their own knives in their hands flashed through his mind.Ā
Danny eventually was able to take a shaky breath to see some thug with a black skull on his jacket crumpled against a heavily dented car. He couldnāt tell if he was still breathing. But when he looked down he could see the handle of a knife sticking out of his side. He wheezed, and stayed on his feet by sheer force of will.Ā
āFuck.āĀ
.
Leslie Tompkins ran one of the best no-questions-asked clinics in Gotham. Part of the reason hers was the best was simply due to funding. Her clinic received frequent āanonymousā donations, which usually just happened to follow after she had performed necessary medical treatments to one of the Bats. The other part came down to protection. Between the Bats, the Red Hood Gang and the Gotham Goonion, there were a lot of people invested in keeping her doors open, no one who messed with her or her clinic would be able to stay out of the hospital for more than a week. That is if they werenāt sent straight to the morgue.Ā
She had earned that respect by treating everyone who walked into her clinic equally. Rogue or Bat, goon or cop, random citizen or outsider, everyone received care in her clinic if they needed it. She had stitched up a cut from a Batarang on the Jokerās hand just a few months ago. Then when he tried to poison her for daring to see him so vulnerable, Harley Quin broke both of his hands, fortunately not undoing Leslieās hard work. She was quite familiar with Harley having to patch her up numerous times after āloverās quarrels" between the two before they eventually broke up for good.
When a teenager with a knife stuck in his ribs stumbled in she braced herself and brought him back, ready to continue not asking any questions, and just treating the injury. She immediately wanted to go against her reputation and start asking questions when she saw the vivisection scar that stretched up the boyās torso, neatly bisecting his top surgery scars. That desire became even stronger when he told her not to worry about his probable punctured lung because he didnāt have most of the organs on that side yet. She ground her teeth and focused on making her stitches as neat as possible.Ā
āWould you at least like me to remove the staples and put in neater stitches?ā She ground the question out.Ā
He looked down at the messy staples, then looked up at her with stars in his eyes.Ā
āYou can do that? We tried the best we could, but we didnāt have anything else that would work.āĀ
Leslie gave him a quick nod and tied off the first set of stitches. Why did this kid seem so familiar to her? Sure he looked like any of the Waynes, though only Timothy was as deathly pale, but there was something else. Something about him.Ā
āI hadnāt even heard this guy coming. I guess thatās what I get for not paying attention in a city like Gotham. My friends always said my situational awareness would get me killed again, and I guess they were right! Itās like Iāve met the nicest people in Gotham like this guy who gave me money and food earlier and now Iāve met the meanest people.āĀ
Danny was apparently someone who talked to distract himself from the pain. At least with how lively he was talking whatever meta abilities he had probably included a healing factor. Thank god.Ā
āLike who just stabs a guy! Like Iām here looking for my sister, trying to find a library, and he just ups and stabs me. Oh well. Things were looking a little too bright, so I guess with my luck I was due. At least I was able to keep my organs this time.āĀ
Leslie breathed through her confusion and rage. What the fuck had this kid been through already? Jesus fucking christ. She kept up her work, allowing Dannyās chatter to wash over her. He had told her that anesthetic didnāt work on him, which unfortunately made sense. Considering she only had a small supply of meta strength medication on hand, he had insisted he didnāt want her to waste any on him.Ā
When she had finally completed the last stitch on the massive injury on his chest, which was already healed significantly, she sat back, washed her hands and breathed a quiet sigh of relief. There was a bottle of vodka in the drawer of her desk that she had been given as payment for treating one of Penguinās goons and it was calling her name.Ā
āTell me buddy. What name would you like to put on the paperwork?ā As a clinic she had to at least pretend to keep records even if she promptly burned them.Ā
āDannyā¦uhā¦ā He looked aside and down for a moment before looking at her again. āBrown! Danny Brown.āĀ
She raised an eyebrow at him, then she wrote the name down on her paper.Ā
āJust a word of advice, Danny, you have got to learn to lie better if you want to make it in this town. Though kudos on the generic last name, no one will be able to find dirt on a name like that.āĀ
āItās not a lie! Itāsā¦ new.ā He paused. āIām looking for my sister, and her last name is Brown, and hopefully she wouldnāt mind if I use it too.āĀ
āAlright then, Danny Brown. Try not to get stabbed again. But if you do, my door is open.ā Leslie said as she signed off the sheet and put it into the burn pile. The encampment on fourth could use some material to keep them warm with all the rain.Ā
āThanks doc! See ya!ā Danny smiled as he skipped out the door.Ā
Leslie flinched and raced after him, but Danny had already disappeared into the rain. That smile. A thousand small details suddenly cascaded through her mind. That smile that was so familiar, the shape of his face, the texture of his hair, the blue of his eyes. He was looking for a sister. He wanted to borrow her last name.Ā
She could remember the moment perfectly when Stephanie Brown had been the one bleeding in her clinic. She had volunteered in the clinic before Gotham descended into that massive gang war. Leslie could perfectly remember the way she would smile as she walked out the door. And she could perfectly remember the moment when Stephanieās heart stopped on her table.
Role swap au where Zuko was the Avatar who got frozen for a hundred years, so when heās rescued from the ice instead of a goofy twelve year old Katara catches this mysterious teenager with long hair and a cool scar and a fucking DRAGON
Katara: BOY???? HOT BOY?????? HOT TEENAGE BOY?????????
Look, you know how you keep a net from falling on you? YOU AIRBEND IT, SUCKA. Air comes right after fire in the cycle so itās not like the guy has any other options. Do you want a flaming net falling on you? No? Then learn to airbend. Or this tiny old man will cart you away like a trussed turkey and lecture you about the power of laughter, going with the flow, opening your chakras, and other hippie shit.
Sokka, slouching against a fence, not moving: Oh nooooooo, that creepy old man stole the Avataaaaaaaaaar.
Sokka, sitting down on the ground: We should dooooo something.
Sokka, pulling out his lunch: Otherwise he might actually learn something. That would be teeeerrible.
Katara, indignant rage coursing through her body: Sokka!!!!!!!! We have to go look for him!!!!
Sokka: Might! Actually! Learn! Something! Katara!
Katara: *wavers*
Katara, also sitting down: We have to go look for himā¦. *gets out her own sandwich* But, maybe after lunch.
Actually, I thought a bit more about this: If Aang isĀ āgrandpa figure who wonāt fucking stop teaching Zuko to be a better and more spiritually fulfilled person,ā then what is Iroh doing?
And then it hit me.
Iroh:Ā *sitting in a teahouse at a paisho table*
Iroh, deadpan:Ā I must capture the last airbender.Ā
Iroh:Ā It is the only way to make sure the powe rof the Avatar wonāt be turned on the Fire Nation.
Iroh:Ā Only then will I be redeemed in the eyes of the Fire Lord for my failure at Ba Sing Se.
Iroh:Ā ā¦
Iroh:Ā Anyway, itās your turn.
About half of the B plots are just Iroh finding new ways to feign incompetence and bad luck so that his political watchdog canāt proveĀ that heās letting Aang - and by extension Zuko - get away.
i think about this post all the time and if i may, i would like to suggest keeping the banished royalty angle for zuko.
he was the eldest son of fire lord sozin, who knew the avatar was the greatest threat to the fire nation, but also knew the new one would be a firebender and he couldnāt exactly merc his own people, now could he? but he always planned to order a convenient little assassination on whoever the new avatar turned out to be and in the meantime took out the air temples so that avatar couldnāt learn the next element in the cycle. of course, when it turns out to be his son,Ā sozin, stellar dad that he is, thinksĀ āif you want something done rightā and shoots a fire blast at his firstborn.
zuko enters the avatar state, blows up half the palace, etc etc as one does, gets a nasty scar for his trouble, and escapes, hence why he was hanging out far enough south to necessitate katara and sokka cracking open a cold boy a century later.
all this is to say 1. i think itās a good way to maintain zukoās background and characterization in an au like this and 2. it leads to a secret second roleswap
I started wondering why Katara an Sokka would feel the need to get Zuko away from Aang.
Zuko, sure, I could see why heād be resistant to learning from him. 90% of Zukoās character is not wanting to listen to people who are genuinely trying to help him.
But to be consistent with their canon roles, Katara and Sokka should be trying to help Zuko find teachers to train Zuko. So why would they try to rescue Zuko?
And I think the answer should be: They donāt believe Aang is an airbender. Much less the legendary Last Airbender theyāre searching for to teach the Avatar. They donāt think heās malicious or trying to hurt Zuko. They just think heās a crazy old man whose crazy old man antics are delaying them from finding the real Last Airbender and also constantly almost getting them caught by the fire nation.
What, you think Ozai would hesitate to kill his uncle? Nah, the only reason he wouldnāt kill Zuko on sight is if heās smart enough to realize itād be smarter to seize the North Pole and āeradicate the rest of the waterbendersā first to ensure the cycle is broken.
Anyway, you donāt survive 100 years after the genocide of your nation, actively being hunted by the people who slaughtered yours, by always introducing yourself with the marble trick. Aang knows well enough to hide his airbending. And itās an ongoing joke that Team Avatar - including Zuko himself - keeps just missing it, or misattributing it to natural forces, every time Aang pulls some wild airbending move that single-handedly destroys a fire nation fleet or occupation or invasion force. (What do you think heās been doing for 100 years? Sitting idle while people suffer? He damn well earned his status as the legendary Last Airbender.)
Be funny if they still donāt believe it even as Zuko does figure out airbending. Cause he does still have to do that before he can move on to the other elements to become a fully realized Avatar to face his nephew Ozai and put a stop to this war.
The team just think the mad old manās ramblings and shenanigans coincidentally held enough sound technique for Zuko to figure it out from there. They keep looking for the Last Avatar, but with time to stop Ozai before Sozinās comet ever running out, the shrug and move on to finding him a Water and Earth teacher and hope Zukoās āself teachingsā will be sufficient.
Aang, of course, still follows them around. Still working ābehind the scenesā to keep the Fire Nation too scrambled to stop them. Plus, even if Zukoās figured out enough airbending to start learning the other elements; heās still got a lot of personal and spiritual growth to go through before heās really ready for his full role as the Avatar.
Itās only on that last day, the day of Sozinās comet, when Aang and the rest of the White Lotus really let loose in a final push against the fire nation to buy Avatar Zuko the time he needs to fulfill his destiny; that is when Team Avatar finally actually sees Aang airbend and realize he truly is actually is The Last Airbender.
friend is trying to sell her car bc shes moving to a state with vehicle inspections and her prius lives in defiance of god. anyway so shes cleaning it out at my apartment complex bc we have dumpsters and her roommate forgot to pay the trash bill. i will be liveblogging my experience watching her do this and you will understand why i refuse to help her
guys theres a pile of chicken bones down there from wingstop im so scared
AND i hear "hey dude can i use ur washing machine real quick" and she pulls out a pair of pants from, i shit you not, 1940 and theyre moldified into a SOLID. those pants survived a war and couldnt last a year in her fucking shitbox istfg
i swear to god im not exaggerating here. anyway heres an incomplete list of everything we found inside:
-axe (stolen)
-earrings made out of dentures
-flavored condoms
-a quilt
-hello kitty sweater (stolen from a DIFFERENT ex-friend with a felony charge)
-deer spine
-baseball sized wad of human hair
-""sex apron""
-uranium glass plate
-pile of non-uranium non-car glass
-rollerblades
-complete phantom of the opera cd set
-magic the gathering cards mold-ified into a brick
-lego millennium falcon
-a CUTLASS??? (for "self defense")
-the back bumper of the car
-an entire fucking ant colony
and finally, perhaps the most disturbing,
-a pack of vanilla wax melts, inexplicably unmelted and intact despite sitting inside this terrarium-with-a-prius-wrapped-around-it in 100 degree heat for god knows how long
i must stress: before today she DID NOT KNOW about the ant colony in there . she thought ants just really liked to climb inside anytime the car was parked.
bringing this post back bc i found a video of her offering me the phantom cd set and i said no because the box was coated in a syrupy mat of human hair and she was confused because "we know whos hair it is" ???? as if the origin of the hair was the only fucking holdup
Post canon Toph who doesnāt want to go back to her shitty parents so she just decides to stay in the Fire Nation and bum off Zukoās hospitality.
Zukoās like no, yeah, I totally get it, and just makes her one of his advisors. At first itās just so she has a good excuse to stay but after the first meeting Toph storms out shouting about how EVERYONE was lying why would you even need to lie about what kind of tea you want??
Zuko: I mean theyāre politiciansā¦..but also who, and when, and in what way
They make a subtle Morse code system so Toph can warn him when someone is lying to him without tipping anyone off that she can sense lies.
Zuko gets a reputation for somehow being both extremely socially inept and yet somehow disgustingly perceptive?? You canāt get ANYTHING by him???
#my lord what EXACTLY is ms Beifongs role in these meetings #a nervous nobleman asks after the third time she interrupts them with stupid commentary #zuko with perfect deadpan: sheās my scribe
It's never good news when he's summoned to Qiu Jianluo's office this early in the day- it's rarely good to be summoned by him at all but in the morning is when Qiu Jianluo meets with outsiders... Qiu Jianluo only wants him at those types of meetings to humiliate him...
The man Qiu Jianluo is meeting with is tall, in stately black and grey robes. There's a streak of white in his hair at the temple and there's something familiar about his face. He had kind eyes, which Shen Jiu finds suspicious.
He expects orders from Qiu Jianluo, but his master waves a hand dismissively as he counts a large amount of gold coins.
"This man is your master now." Qiu Jianluo says.
"What?" he asks in shock before thinking better of it. But his old master doesn't even glance at him and the new one smiles at him before gently taking his shoulder in an iron grip he has no hope of shaking off.
"Come along," he says.
He sounded familiar too...why was that?
He's a little shocked by how quickly they leave the manor, taking absolutely none of his things when they go. One minute they're at the top of the stairs and the next they're already outside...
"Are you a cultivator?" he asks quietly.
His new master stops, and leans down to look him in the eyes. "Yes. How old are you Xiao Jiu?"
He wants to tell the man not to call him that but he doesn't dare. "Thirteen sir."
The strange cultivator pats his head. "No sir from you Xiao Jiu, call me Shixiong."
He explains that he didn't buy Shen Jiu because he wanted a slave. He can tell Shen Jiu has excellent cultivation potential and he intends to take him as a disciple... For a few years.
"I have business I must see to in three years time that I cannot involve a disciple in. I plan to train you as best I can then see you admitted to the sect I was trained at, Cang Qiong Mountain Sect."
It sounds too good to be true, but Shen Jiu can hardly say no. Good intentions or not the man still owns him.
Until a few days later when 'Shixiong' hands him all the paperwork necessary to prove he's a free man and not a slave. This is just the first gift Shixiong gives him as they travel around the country. Shixiong buys him clothes and books and teaches him to read and write and how to stand so that people think you're rich. Shixiong grew up on the streets too, he tells Shen Jiu, he's just learned to act like he hasn't.
And he teaches Shen Jiu how to cultivate, how to use the power he can feel under his own skin.
"Xiao Jiu has great talent," Shixiong says. "He'll be a master cultivator soon."
It's not all sunshine and roses of course, Shixiong is ...strange. He never gives anyone the same name twice, and never gives Shen Jiu a name at all. They meet a man on the road about a year into their wandering and Shixiong kills him without a word. After that he shows Shen Jiu that the man was a demonic cultivator, and a known criminal... But watching him kill a man so effortlessly was a little scary.
(Shen Jiu absolutely does not have a crush on Shixiong what are you talking about?)
Shixiong isn't the violent type though. Shen Jiu never sees him draw his sword. He doesn't even kill the actual demons they run into one night at an inn. Shen Jiu doesn't think he did anyway, Shixiong had sent him up to bed early.
The three years fly by, though towards the end of them, Shen Jiu starts to get anxious. What if Qi-ge is looking for him? Eventually he tells Shixiong the whole situation and Shixiong promises that Qi-ge is on the mountain still and will be there when they arrive.
Finally the day arrives, Shixiong must leave soon. They go to the sect and camp at the base of the mountain. Shixiong hands him a letter to give the sect leader.
"You aren't coming up the mountain with me?" Shen Jiu asks.
Shixiong shook his head and told him to sit. There were many things he wished to tell Xiao Jiu before he left.
The story is long, and Shen Jiu's stomach drops not long into it. It's too familiar. Shixiong used to have a dear friend when he was on the streets, one who he had to leave behind when he went to cultivate.
He tells Shen Jiu about rushing his cultivation, about trying to claim more sword than he could handle, and the year he spent locked underground, knowing every moment he was there his friend must be losing hope he'd ever return.
He talked about finally getting out and racing back to where he and his friend had parted ways...only to find smoldering ruins and bodies he didn't recognize.
He talked about his Shizun, a cruel and vicious man coming to drag him away from the ruins eventually. He talks about wanting to die.
Shixiong tells him about finally finding his friend again by chance, and being too ashamed of himself to explain himself.
He explained how he never explained himself, instead letting the pain they both felt ferment inside them until eventually it took his friend from him all together. He's very vague about what exactly happened. But Shen Jiu thinks he appreciates that.
"And then I was given a chance," Shixiong says. "A god came to me and told me it could not change my present, but that I could if I wished change someone else's future. And I have I hope, changed yours for the better, Xiao Jiu. But it's time for me to leave."
"Wait so Qi-ge doesn't even get to go back to a better future?" Shen Jiu snaps. There's no question of course who the man staring at him wide eyed is of course. He's not stupid. "He had to go be all alone again??"
Shixiong - Qi-ge laughs, "I'm not all alone, I just don't have my Xiao Jiu."
"Same thing!"
"Well you can't come with me," Qi-ge said.
"Why not??"
Qi-ge gestures behind Shen Jiu. "What will he do without you?"
Shen Jiu turns around.
His Qi-ge looks awful. Pale and shaky and like he's going to throw up any second as he stumbles down the steps, he holding the same sword Shixiong has in his arms like an enormous baby.
Shen Jiu can't breathe.
"I could only change your fate Xiao Jiu," the older Qi-ge says behind him. "Not my own."
"When did he get out of the caves?" Shen Jiu asks.
"Less than a day ago."
Qi-ge attempts to get his sword in position to fly on and has to pause to dry heave. Shen Jiu took off toward him and caught him upside the head as he straightened up.
"What do you think you're doing running off in this condition?" he snaps. "Are you trying to kill yourself?"
Qi-ge gapes at him for nearly a minute before Shen Jiu feels like he has to explain himself. "... Qi-ge took too long so I came on my own."
And then his arms are full of a sobbing hysterical Qi-ge. He holds his dearest person tight and looks back towards the camp.
Black Canary is in a tight spot.
She prays to any high power that might be listening to help, and she actually gets it.
There's a huge alien spacecraft about to land, it's a total invasion attempt, if that mothership lands then it's gameover, and it's all hands on deck.
Specifically, the Mothership is an unholy amalgamation of magic and alien tech, and if it lands, it'll start pumping pollutants that will change the ecosystem on Earth and make it unable to support Humans.
It'll terraform into something for the aliens at an extremely accelerated rate.
Everyone is preoccupied.
The Mothership is getting closer.
Dinah prays to someone, anyone, to help her keep that thing off the ground.
She opens her mouth...
...And lets out the strongest, most powerful scream she's ever let out.
The Mothership isn't just thrown back, it's torn to pieces. Those pieces are then shoved well past the stratosphere.
Anything that was in the air around the mothership is decimated.
The buildings below it are starting to crumble.
Black Canary stands on the street, voice gone from the strain, and stares blankly at the destruction.
Who, exactly, had she called on?
Or: Undirected prayers go to the Infinite Realms, for anyone to look at.
Prayers allow the Prayee to borrow something from the Being that accepts the Prayer.
Danny accepts Black Canary's, and lets her borrow his Wail. Except he wasn't expecting the difference between his home dimension and hers to be so great, because while it's considered an overpowered ability even in his own dimension, in her's it could accurately be classified as Godly.
Constantine is looking at her weirdly. Its has been a month or so since the incident and everyone has already asked their questions and suspicions and shock about the sheer power of her scream. Some thought she just unlocked a hidden aspect of her power, others thought she did... something to make it that strong. But after that incident, Constatine kept a wary look at her at all times. Enough that others are noticing.
Its only until one day he dropped off a book in front of her titled "Having Patron Gods: Do's, Don'ts, and Definitely Nots" and left without a word a bit too quickly.
Dinah's never been particularly... religious. She hardly ever prays, but even less expects to be answered. But the last time, she was, and now...
Dinah knelt at the small altar she had made. It was simple, and honestly more of a completed checklist of things from the book Constantine had given her.
A metal bowl of offered food. Dinah went with grapes as it seemed the safest option, given she didn't know who or what she was praying too. Sticks of incense, an unoffensive orange blossom scent. A cup of rose water, as a fancy but low key offering. She wasn't still entirely sure about doing this, but, well... They'd answered her before, and she didn't know if they'd answer again. Better to establish some form of rapport now.
John's book had been very clear that there was no fury like a god scorned, and Dinah would rather not to have to fight off another invasion.
Dinah carefully lit the incense and clasped her hands in what she hoped was an appropriately prayerful position.
"Hello," Dinah said quietly. "I am Black Canary, and two weeks ago you answered my prayer to help protect people. I don't know if it was a one off thing, or you want me to be a follower of yours, or what you want at all.
I'm not going to demand anything. I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for answering my prayers. Thank you for lending me the power to protect people. Thank you for helping me save my loved ones. Whoever you are... thank you,"
Dinah kept her head lowered for a few moments more, breathing in the orange blossom incense and out her worries and fears. It felt a little like meditation.
When Dinah lifted her head, her eyes immediately zoned in on the empty bowl and cup. The cup was empty, but in place of the grapes there was a scrap of blindingly neon green paper.
Dinah picked it up carefully, and not for the first time hoped that John hadn't steered her wrong.
I'm glad I could help, it read. I'm called Phantom, and if you need help protecting people again, I will be there if you call. Acceptable offerings include chips, soda, and NASA souvenirs if it's a really big thing.
Well. Dinah blinked at the paper. That could have gone worse.
Oooooh now im just imagining different people who either has beef with Phantom or just worships him suddenly comes pouring into Dinah's life and she remembers the self help book and is like 'Damn, thats gonna have to be my problem, huh?' And cues her journey as a some sort of wizard priest on the side.
Once he catches wind of le bullshit, Phantom puts his foot down. Both of them live in fairly modern times, so it wouldnāt be a āfuck the prime directiveā level problem if he just gave her his direct line, right? Right. Lucky them, Fenton engineering works across dimensions just fine! Dinah is under strict instructions to call immediately if one of the little shits pops up so Phantom can com get them personally.
Whatās that? It wouldāve been awesome to have this last time someone got lost or was desperately needed on another plane of existence?
ā¦
Okay. Okay so this is gonna require, like, a model rocket, three cheeseburgers, the biggest bottle of coffee concentrate you can find, and at least one set of your coms. Maybe a PDA and some scarabsāhe might need to consult with his friendābut heāll let you know in 2 weeks.
(Dinah is mildly concerned. She now has a god on speed dial, and said god had just spat out 60 coms that actually do work across interdimensional travel. When she sent up the watchtower in a bottle kit as an additional thanks, she was just trying to be nice. She didnāt expect to hear something rip, followed by a teenager barreling into her at full speed.)
(Oh.)
(Oh no.)
(Dinah didnāt have a patron god, she had a patron *godling*.)
Constantine: Don't let the cute 14 year old disguise fool you, it's a timeless being from before Atlantis sank, before the plagues of Egypt, back when Nabu was just a twinkle in Vandal's eye
My HC is that he used to get the zoomies, but waa beaten for being unruly and disobediant. "If you have time to run around like a headless chicken, you have time to do chores".
So he still has too much energy, he just spends it on chores now. And he gets antsy without the chores. Thats a load bearing self regulation there.
One again, i need to post an image here without context to meme it in other sites. Thank you tumblr for putting up with my nonesense.
For those who want no-context spoilers for Adamant Blood.
This is an instant shit-yourself spell the protag accidently casts.
Bingge's been running around other dimensions getting progressively pissed that everyone except him is 1) waaaay happier and 2) gay? (Is he gay???)
Eventually he noticed something about all the various husbands he has in other worlds... They all have suspiciously similar personalities...
Then he runs into Bingzu who's just like, 'Oh right. You.'
They talk and maybe fight a little and Bingzu confirms all the random husbands are actually the same husband and Bingzu has been playing interdimensional matchmaker. Plucking up SY's from various universes and dropping them in worlds with Binghes.
Bingge gets mad. Where's his cute husband?? No fair!!
Bingzu is like 'you don't get one you're too much of a fuckboy' but Bingge throws a fit and refuses to leave him alone and finally Bingzu is like, 'ok ok! I'll get you a husband! But you're going to have to find him and win him over yourself. SY isn't going to be wife plotted that easily!'
Bingge is like, 'yeah yeah sure can't be hard' and then agrees that in exchange he'll stop fucking around in the multiverse.
So our dearest Horrible Little Guy goes home and starts looking for his very own Nice Husband.
Twist is that the SY of his universe is already dead.
Binghe spends ages looking but can't find them.
Returns to Bingzu to chew him out and Bingzu reveals the truth.
Binghe is, predictably, devastated, spirals for a lil, and then tries to find, and ressurects his future hubby. Without knowing who he is, or having any ability to speak to him to find out.
Shang Qinghua: *nervously babbling on and on about all the finessing he's done to secure the financial interests and tax rates/tithes of the Northern Kingdom along with all the new trade deals he'd had to broker as part of Luo Binghe's expansion, aware that this is a boring topic most people consider just slightly better than watching paint dry but somehow unable to stop so he just keeps going and going and adding more in and getting faster while he sweats*
Mobei Jun: *horny and mad about it because they're in public and he can't do anything about it and obviously Qinghua must know that and yet he just keeps going harder*
I'm trying to Photoshop an image of the bat emblem Danny has in More Like Home because I want people to have a clear image of it but I need to find a bigger fucking image of his suit because the Bat symbol is so much bigger that I literally can't scale it down enough djflkaj;f
Update: I did find two images of appropriate size, but Iām going to lose my fricken mind trying to line them up because I canāt figure out how to turn the Batman symbol transparent until AFTER I canāt move it anymore
So I keep putting it with the edges lined up with the edge of the DP symbol
Sorry for my bad art, I couldn't find my drawing tablet's pen, but here it is:
I'm still laughing at the super prominent D that appears nowhere in the hero name 'Phantom,' btw. Although maybe Mr. "I shouldn't be on this jury because I'm Batman" can find the heart to forgive him.
I didn't originally intend for the ears to pop up into the collar but it turns out that in order for the bat to be big enough to fit the entire D inside of it, I have to either do this or forsake the ears completely. I did always intend for the bat outline to be so big that it stretches past the shoulders of his suit though!
Yes I DID just put the logo over his suit and then trace it, badly, with a mouse
