Danny x Tim soulmate au where they are disgustingly cute and very much head over heels in this long distance relationship. Danny plans to move to Gotham when he turns 18 and work under his soulmate at WEs science department. Danny swears to himself that he’ll tell Tim all about Phantom then, face to face.
Unbeknownst to him, Tim makes a similar promise to himself about being Robin/Red Robin (whichever he is in this). So neither know about the other.
Ras comes up with a plan to kidnap Tims soulmate for whatever reason and sends assassins to capture him.
…but they keep failing. Not because of the pesky local hero. No, he doesn’t even seem to notice thier presence. No, not because of the local supervillian mayor-he’s an incompetent fool. No, it wasn’t because of the over abundance of freaking pit demons running around (he would definitely need to look into that)
No, hs assassins, the greatest fighters in the world and even worlds beyond were being defeated by an insane
Home security system
Danny doesn’t even know he’s being hunted…by the assassins at least. They can’t even get to him at school because Casper high has a version of it now too thanks to all the ghost attacks on campus
You know what would be funny? At some point they almost get to him before the security system kicks in so you get something like the assassin landing right behind him just about to grab him, but instead they get launched away from him when they’re just inches away from getting him. Danny feels a breeze and turns around only to see nothing and feel nothing from his ghost sense so he just shrugs and continues what he’s doing.
Also, it’d be funny if it was either one or all of team phantom that notices, try and tell him/the rest of the team, isn’t believed, and thus captures (aka: ties up one taken down by security system) an assassin to prove it. Somehow they learn that it involves Danny’s soulmate and decides that going to Gotham is the best choice leading to:
Danny knocking on the door which is opened by Alfred.
A: can I help you, young sir? (Confused,concerned,slightly suspicious about why he’s here when no one in the manor said anything about someone coming over)
D: ya, I need to talk to Tim, please tell him his soulmate Danny is here. (Tired, exasperated, a little amused, definitely nervous about meeting his soulmate this way, especially now that he’s getting targeted more after leaving amity and the security systems behind)
Tim rushes down after hearing that and begins fussing over Danny after correctly assuming something’s wrong.
Danny stops him and puts his hands on his shoulders to hold him still.
D: I’m fine, I’m fine but I need to know something!
T: what do you need to know?! (Worried that he somehow found out about Red Robin and that he might lose Danny before they even had a chance)
D: please tell me why there are ninjas trying to kidnap me?
T: what? ( stops dead, brain halts, record scratch)
D: Why are there fucking ninjas trying to kidnap me?!?! Are you okay?!
T: what the fuck, what the fuck?!
D: vaguely explains situation: almost got kidnapped, stopped him, ninja said something about Tim, kidnapped the ninja, came to him
T: you captured an assassin?!? How?!?
D: security system and *insert whoever tied them up*
Tim is left questioning what he knows about Danny and wondering why this makes him like him more and Danny is just concerned why ninjas are trying to get someone to hold against Tim and is feeling protective.
Danny: Do you need protection? Are you ok? Do I need to move her and be your bodyguard?
Tim *record scratch - this feels backwards somehow*: What?
Danny: I mean, Apparently they have been after me for 6 months? So are you ok?
Tim: 6 Months?
Danny: Yeah. So, are you ok?
Tim: I’m fine… Are you ok? People keep trying to kidnap you!
Danny: Not the first time, won’t be the last. This isn’t about me!
Other bats watching both concerned and amused. Seems Tim’s soulmate is JUST as danger prone as he is.
Tim: But 6 months?
Danny: I thought they were robbers at first! Anyways, they only got close enough for me to notice a month ago.
Tim: …what kind of security system do you have?!
Bruce contacts the Fentons to security proof the manor
It
Works?
Sort of?
Alfred makes some updates to make it a little less volatile and it never makes a peep when he’s around
The security system DEFINITELY fucking hates Tim specifically though
Is it because his soulmate is a ghost and it’s seeped through? Is it because Damian added him to the enemies list? Is it jealous of his laptop? Is it because the Fentons are feeling protective of their boy?
Nobody knows but it keeps trying to launch Tim into fucking space every time he and Danny are in the same room
The Fentons accidentally and completely unknowingly invented an actual factual sentient AI which has become very protective of its creators’ children.
Said AI is not happy about the 6 months of assassins all because Little Danny’s soulmate had to go and make enemies with the leader of a ninja death cult.
Danny having to sweet talk the AI into letting allow him to snuggle with his soulmate. Like. COme on buddy! Please!
Tim and Danny about to kiss
Ai- *points gun*
Tim and Danny holds hands instead
Ai- puts away gun
Jokes on the AI. Danny and Tim can just meet up outside the house. That just comes with a completely different set of problems since it Gotham and all.
Tim eventually takes Danny to one of his safe houses for a lack of better options
The old High King of the Infinite Realms is out, and another one took his place.
So he asks around; a few ghosts here, a demon or two there, and learns something horrifying.
The new King is only one and a half, maybe two years old.
The new King is a baby.
He calls an immediate Justice League and Justice League Dark meeting to discuss how the actual fuck do they appeal to a toddler.
Danny is very, very confused-but grateful!-as to why the offerings that occultists made him changed from buckets of blood to teething rings. He has decided to start a collection of teething rings for shits and giggles.
The first time they summon him and see a teen they are confused. It’s John who steps forward.
John: You King Phantom?
Danny: Yup!
John: Forgive the confusion. We were told you were 2?
Danny: I mean, years dead yeah. I was 14 when I died though. So overall 16?
John: .. Why did you accept the teething rings?
Danny: Fangs are growin in man. My teeth and gums itch like a mofo.
John: Right. Ok. Fuckin fair. We were wonderin what sort of trades you’d accept for help from. Ya know, universe endin threats?
Danny: Space rocks. And shiny things. Oh! Learning stuff! I uh. Well. School as a ghost isn’t uh. Yeah…
John: You can NEVER meet Bats….
Danny: Could I meet Martian Manhunter? He’s super cool!
John: I can… ask him?
Alternatively
John: Why did you accept teething rings?
Danny: It make cultists stop offering me disembowelled sheep and stuff like that. If you had to choose between the sheep corpse or the teething toy which would you pick?
John:… The last one never had an issue with the blood though?
Danny: The last one was a power hungry maniac who got LOCKED AWAY. Of course he accepted that shit. I’m a protector spirit!
John: Well. What would you like then?
Danny: I dunno man? I’m like 16. Whatever shiny new cool shit there is I guess? A new gaming system? I figured out how to get electronics working in the Realms now. So…
John: … Yeah sure. I guess I’ll ask the kids team then?
Danny: Eh. Sounds fair!
John: Also sorry if this is rude… But you could barely pass for a 13yo.
Danny: Physical aging kinda stopped with my heartbeat. Plus was malnourished when I was alive so…
John: We can’t let you near Batman
Danny: Why not?
John: He’d try to adopt you. Sad small child in need of feeding up? Yeah….
Danny: Hahaha. No. Absolutely not! Keep him far, far away from me. I don’t need feeding up. I’m dead. It’s all good.
Batman, father of several teenagers: *sends several bags of Taki and Dorito type chips*
Danny: okay forget what I said about not needing to eat, can I get more of those snacks plz
Alfred would make him sed over a basket of real food too. Danny eats it and is just like. That was the best food ever! Alfred gets a little thank you note appear by his bed side.
JL have to summon him for help and are debating what to offer? Batman whips out a basket from Alfred with a note on top asking for help, and offering a meal a day from the chef every day for a month? Danny turns up before the ritual is even over.
Danny: I don’t need to eat. But that was amazing! Absolutely! Yes! Hi! How can I help?
Danny moves to Gotham, hear him out! There’s really good jobs there that pay through the nose and the cost of living is cheap!
Plus, the city is riddled with heroes and vilains! It’s so easy to slip under the radar!
Unfortunately, there are so many civilian casualties. Like, all the time. Even in Metropolis!
So Danny, for his first year in Gotham, opens small portals to the Far Frozen and gets schooled on being a field medic. None of his powers can really be used for healing, but they can make people feel better. He just has to be careful to be as far removed from the Phantom moniker as possible, so he can’t use any obvious powers.
He gets a bit of a reputation in Gotham; a small time hero of the people, for the people. A hero not invested in fighting, but in dragging civilians away from the danger. He doesn’t even have a moniker; people are too busy arguing over the best one for him.
So while aliens are attacking both Metropolis and Gotham, Danny is out in full kit; a gas mask to hide his face, all black, repurposed kevlar from the vests the GCPD did not properly dispose of, no identifying markers.
But one of the clean up crews notices something insanely worrying; the geiger counter they have to point at alien spaceship parts? Yeah. Yeah, it’s going off when they point it at the new small-time hero.
That hero’s power is radioactivity. Holy shit. It’s not at a level that will hurt people, but when he’s dodging through fighting the level goes up.
The clean up crew concludes and shares via Twitter that the medic-hero is only a danger to others if he gets too stressed.
Word spreads fast, and pretty soon the absolute second Danny shows up on a scene, all fighting stops.
After all, no one wants to piss off the living Nuclear Bomb.
Basically, Danny’s ghost-everything sets off Geiger counters, and now absolutely everyone is convinced that the medic-themed hero only refuses to fight because his meta power is just…being radioactive.
But he isn’t.
So now, because it’s the perfect cover and completely disassociated from Phantom, he has to play along and pretend like yes; that is his power.
Danny is stuck in a crumbling office with civilians injured and unable to escape, and as a last resort he’s forced to create a structure out of ice to hold what’s left of the building off everyone.
But his powers are getting stronger and instead of just ice, in his panic he summoned snow as well, turning the space into an Arctic scene.
His sudden show of powers makes headlines, and in conjunction with him being a radioactive hotspot, the press just begins to call him Nuclear Winter.
Danny’s Just happy it’s not something like Invis-o-bill.
Danny and Jazz are ordered to stay with their estranged uncle thrice removed, due to Jack and Maddie needing them out of the house for adult reasons they’re cleaning up and dodging a child neglect investigation as well as tax evasion.
The new city is…pretty big. Different. New, for sure.
But theyre pretty sure that their Uncle’s weird friend is either a ghost or an alien or, worse, a stalker.
They land on stalker.
But their Uncle! He’s hapless! A pathetic man in all but his job, and even then! He must be protected! He clearly doesn’t know how to tell a creep to fuck off!
So Jazz and Danny ban together to protect their Uncle Clark from Brucie Wayne, who is clearly a creepo stalker.
Oh gosh I love this! I want to come back to this later. Hilarious to think of what Bats thinks of these kids and how their hiding their envolvment from Clark
Consider this. They hide nothing. It’s so entirely normal to them. And Amity Park knew. So while it’s not the best, surely it’s not considered that bad. Right?
Clark is having mini heart attacks at every new piece of information. Bruce is trying to help, but the kids hate him for some reason. He heard them muttering about rich people aren’t to be trusted.
Apparently their rich Godfather regularly abused them. And no or noticed, or cared. Because he’s rich. And Clark has no idea how to cope. And he can’t talk to Bruce. Because the kids think he’s a stalker and are protecting him.
Which is so so sweet. But oh gods. Please. Let me be the adult? And he heard them talking about him. They seem to think he’s a hapless idiots outside of work. In need of minding. ,
And asking for advice has led to him being mercilessly teased. By everyone. He does not know what to do with all this. Thankfully Lois is around to talk to.
The kids of course like Lois. She has a spine of steel. They can respect her. She can help them protect Uncle Clark!
Lois of course sees this as an opportunity to Fuck with Bruce and Clark. She very subtly feeds into it. Talks about everything in a way just slightly off. She is waiting for the big reveal. It’s going to be amazing.
Danny: Why is Batman stalking you? Do I need to beat him up?
Jazz: We could totally do it! Mum and Dad taught us fighting and guns!
Clark: Ok. Why do you think Batman is stalking me?
Danny: Bruce Wayne is Batman. Bruce Wayne is stalking you. Ergo…
Jazz: Batman is stalking you. Also, Luthor is fishy.
Clark: … I can’t believe I have to do this. I’m Superman. Bruce is my colleague. Please stop protecting me from my colleague.
Danny: Luthor is the real issue.
Jazz: We should gonna be a chat with him soon!
Clark: … Did you not hear what I said? I’m Superman. I can handle Lex.
Jazz: No. You clearly can’t. You’re compromised.
Danny: Don’t worry. We will take care of it!
Clark: Bruce. Bruce, they know. And I think they are planning to murder Luthor!
Bruce: How?
Clark: They figured out you were you know. And wanted to know why you were stalking me. And no. I have no idea how they found out.
Bruce: Hm..
Clark: How do I stop them commiting murder Bruce?
Bruce: glue yourself to their side. How I stopped Dick.
Clark: I want to know more. But I also don’t….
Imagine that Danny and Jazz don’t bother hiding liminal signs. Because most of Amity Park is liminal. Especially the kids. So Superman sees Jazz’s eyes glow every once in a while when she threatens someone, Sees Danny being stronger than physically possible for nonliminal humans(Less than Kryptonians but that’s just cause Danny is holding back) and puffs of ice breath come out of both their mouths when threats are near. To Danny and Jazz this is normal. But Superman starts questioning if his cousins twice removed adopted Kryptonians too. Going to talk to Batman about the kids.
Bruce becomes overly invested after a while. These kids make no sense! Time for him to investigate! It takes him a while. But when he get’s into Amity’s servers? Yeah….
Bruce: Clark. How do you feel about keeping the kids?
Clark: …. Am I going to want to arrest my cousins?
Brice: Already done. But yes. I have a presentation for the League. So. Do you want to adopt them?
Clark: I think I have to. They can’t go anywhere else! How would I stop them killing Luthor!
Bruce: Good point. I can help with the paperwork. The fact you’ve had them for months will help.
John Constantine is at the presentation to explain the dangers of opening a portal to the afterlife and keeping it open long-term. And how a whole small town was now completely drenched in death magic and how the kids are gonna have some special dietary requirements.
John: Superman your cousins really fucked this one up. Bloody hell that place is gonna make some powerful death mages in a few years once those kids spend some more time there. Everyone there is already liminal.
John: If they come in ta their magic, call me.
Clark: So… Not aliens? Liminals? What does that mean?
Bruce: Enhanced physical abilities. Minor powers based around personality. Hmm, emotional volatility.
John: And, some of em can uh, develop ‘ghost’ powers.
Clark: So them plotting the downfall of my biggest villain ?
John: Sign they like ya! Oh, possessive as fuck o the people they care about. Protective too!
Clark: That explains why they keep interfering in my dating life… But why do they keep calling Batman “fruitloop”? Like yeah their shitty Godfather was rich but fruitloop seems like very specific.
Bruce *slides over a picture of Vlad in full fruitloop mode*
Clark: No that nickname makes a lot of sense now…
John awkwardly patted him on the shoulder.
John: Yeah, good luck! Anyone ya wanna date will be run through a fuckin gauntlet o’ challenges of worthiness.
Clark: At least they like Lois I guess?
Bruce: Hn?
Clark: Yeah, I know. It does give her an unfair advantage.
John: … No. No I get it. Pretty fuckin normal.. She as a spine o’ steel. Oooft, that’s the Godfather? Poor kiddos.
Bruce: Hm.
Clark:… Can we arrest him too?
Bruce: None of his actions are either provable or we need new laws around the things he did cause they aren’t well regulated. But currently there’s no laws against cloning without consent of donating party, digitally mapping an AI after a woman to be your love interest, mind control still doesn’t have good regulations in the area… And child abuse charges won’t work here cause liminals aren’t considered people under current government regulations.
Clark: … Can we use that against him? As he is in fact breaking the law by existing?
Bruce:.. We could. But we won’t. It would be unethical.
Clark:… Look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t want to.
Bruce: I want to. That doesn’t mean we are going to!
Bruce: Clark if we want any chance of repealing these liminal acts we can’t use them that way. So you would be choosing revenge against Vlad Masters over these kids being able to legally exist and not have the cops show up whenever they please to take them away with no warrant and no guarantee they won’t be vivisected. You are strong enough to protect them from that. But they’re much younger than you and age much slower than humans. They could outlive you. They might not reach adulthood before you can no longer care for them.
Clark: Dammit. Ok yes fine. Oh! John, could you make a spell to restrict his powers?
John: Probably? Yeah. That would work… Might wanna ask Danny if I can test it on him. So’s we know it works right.
Danny: Why not just use the antiecto belt mom made? It has the added bonus of hurting a lot.
Clark: I forgot your parents are ghost hunters. When my cousins said that I assumed they did some kind of tv show. Didn’t take it seriously.
Bruce: They told you upfront? Do you know how many hours I spent…? Hn… *Stalks away*
Danny: Oh! You’re work husbands! Ok, he gets a pass on being a fruitloop. Jazz, did you know they were work husbands!
Jazz: Ok. We can ditch the first 6 plans then!
Danny: Yup!
Clark: How did you two even GET UP HERE!
Jazz: John taught us to portal last week.
John:… I didn’t expect ya to manage this distance jus’ yet….
Clark: Ok. Fine. So we buy the anti ecto belts. Are they the ones that stop over shadowing?
Jazz: Yes. Not that any ghost will. They would feel the familial bonds we formed and run scared. But you should get some for the rest of the team!
Clark: The what now?
John: Already? Damn. The really do fuckin’ like ya big blue!
Danny: Yeah! Anyway. We have a plan to work on! Bye!
Clark: You have no idea how much harder you just made my life….
John: Look, the lad just wanted a way ta visit his mirror sister. I couldn’t refuse the pleadin.
Clark: I should adopt her too shouldn’t I?
John: Yup. If'n you wanna keep them happy.
Clark: Good to know. Also, why do they think me and Bruce are work husbands?
A/N: A late night Idea that came to me instead of sleep and I wrote this down during lunch break
Danny was just in Gotham because the city spirit had asked him for assistance with a rather persistent unruly Ghost that didn’t understand that this was her haunt and she did not want them there.
So when he got the notice he did his kingly duties and made sure the Ghost was no longer annoying Lady Gotham. He was the Ghost King but even he didn’t want to anger a spirit as old as her. He had watched the spirit take a ghostly club and hit Clockwork the Ancient of Time with it without remorse the first time they were introduced. So yea, no messing with this one.
He had been about to portal back home when he felt a strange pull one that was close to when he got summoned but yet it didn’t feel as demanding but more like a little kid pulling on his shirt hesitantly. So he checked it out…
… and came across a group of vigilantes investigating an occult side.
Invisible he watched them, curious. He used to do the teen hero stick too before the whole Ghost King business allowing him to get some semblance of a normal life with his rogues, might as well see how others to that hero stick. Besides the pull he felt appeared to come from that tall one wearing a red helmet something was up with that guy.
“Come on, ask the ghosts a question or are you too chicken to do it?”
“I will not participate in this nonsense, Red Hood.”
“Come on guys it will be fun!”
“For whom? You, Spoiler?”
“RR aren’t you curious?”
“We just gotta ask the board a question and if a ghost is around they will answer by moving it, right?”
“Ghosts don’t exist.”
Okay Danny was not taking personal offense here but he was a half ghost and he ruled the Ghost Zone filled with ecto-entities that could count as ghosts. So yes, ghosts existed. It was a simple decision then as he floated down invisible crouching next to board still invisible and out of the way from them.
Making sure he made a lot of scraping noises as he moved the small wooden piece on the board to ‘YES’.
-Too be completely honest everything I know about John Constantine is from AO3. With random snippets like ~steel blue eyes or short blonde hair… and not to forget the “Gods! I need a drink don’t contact me for the next month.. or better yet don’t at all” 👍✨👌
Let me summarize Constantine for you.
His name is
And his bio is
And usually he gets these reactions from anyone who knows him
Danny transfers to Damian’s highschool, specifically he transfers into Damian’s class. Damian’s immediately smitten with him, head over heels love at first sight. Maybe Danny’s done some animal rights protests and fundraisers with Sam? Maybe Danny just has good vibes.
Damian has no clue what to do with this feeling. He’s emotionally constipated so Danny’s first day ends with him getting a note in fancy lettering that reads
“Your eyes are like sapphires.”
It’s only one sentence (I can’t write good poetry) But there’s a beautiful Drawing of him below the writing. Danny smiles and puts this in his school binder. Damian sees this as an absolute win.
If we go with the Idea that Damian has the reputation of being cold and calculated it makes this prompt cuter.
Just Damian being a fully trained assassin and part-time vigilante but the moment Danny walks in he’s googling
“How do you talk to cute boys?”
“What is a crush?”
“ How to romance a guy as a guy?”
Just imagine being one of Damian’s classmates, oh my God they must be so confused. The kid who usually talks like a dictionary and is as cold as block of ice is suddenly leaving romantic poetry in the transfer student’s locker?!? He actively participates in class activities to talk with him? What kind of witchcraft is this??
Danny is doesn’t know who his secret admirer is, but he kinda hopes it’s Damian.
But Danny’s hardly mysterious, he’s literally just vibing! He’s just happy nobody’s shoving him in lockers or trying to fight him.(Damian can be very very scary sometimes)
Danny’s kind of oblivious sometimes. Or if we go an angst route he just doesn’t believe someone could actually like him so he brushes off obvious signs. He comes off as oblivious but actually he just doesn’t have the best track record with relationships.
Whichever sibling is with Damian when he talks with Danny must be conflict. Because this behavior is strange for Damian but he’s not wildly out of character. They’re talking about crows and how they came to be associated with death. The conversation ends Danny leaves and Damian’s blushing?? Jon was right what the hell!?
Imagine if someone recorded them.
To Danny he’s just having a casual conversation with a classmate he’s friends with. Everyone else sees Damian staring at Danny with pure adoration in his eyes as he lists off the names and historical facts about planets and constellations.
The video goes viral within an hour of posting.
That video.
That damned video.
That damned video that shouldn’t even exist.
Phones were strictly prohibited in class and even though several of Damian’s classmates seemingly took joy in breaking that rule, less so the associated punishment, someone took a video.
A video of Damian no less. How his guard had been so low as to not notice the camera or the person behind it felt like a disgrace to his upbringing as an assassin and now detective, but it was clearly lacking. And that inattentiveness arose while merely talking with Danny, as he often did.
His siblings would not remain in his good graces, as little as they currently were, if they would bring up the video or it’s contents in any simile of mockery.
13 seconds of Danny talking about stars. The Audio was strangely distorted but Damien knew what Danny had been talking about that class. Betelgeuse, meaning both the star and his dislike of the associated movie’s portrayal of the undead.
13 seconds of Damien listening aptly, a look that seemed quite unlike him from the outside, but one that he always felt coming when Danny brightened the dull school day with their talks.
13 seconds of someone making a mistake that would haunt them when, not if, Damien learned who had taken it. Let alone post it with a caption of “Angry Wayne Kid and his Crush #DamianWayne #CelebRelationships #WayneFamily #GoodLuckDanny”
Never had Damien been so glad to know that another person did not use social media beyond basic communication.
Now he just had to hope that the video and associated press would not harm his attempts to court his beloved.
Danny would like to think he and Damian were friends. While they never talked much outside school they talked enough in classes to make up for it. Damian was the type to speak his mind when someone was bothering him. He had no problem telling some guy who acted chillingly similar to Dash to piss off before he chopped their dick off and shoved it down their throat. Damian didn’t say that directly of course. He had a more elegant way of putting it, like hitting someone with a silken pillow full of bricks. They all knew what it meant the second the word “Castrated” was used.
Damian hadn’t told him to piss off yet. He listened to his rambles about space and debated with him on the characteristics flora and fauna would have if certain planets ever grew life. He didn’t seem to grow tired of all the space facts thrown at him with every conversation and never got angry with Danny’s obsession with the stars. The feeling was mutual; Danny could never grow weary of Damian’s love of animals. He’d learned more about cows and reptiles in the few weeks he’d known Damian than he’d ever learn from any book.
Point was, Damian was someone he cared about deeply. That’s why the camera’s being shoved in his face and the rapid fire questions from people he vaguely recognized from TV was so alarming.
“What do you have to say about the recent exposure of your relationship with Damian Wayne?” A reporter with sleek black hair questioned shoving a microphone way too close to his face. Danny considered taking a bite out of it just for shock value.
“Um… I don’t know? He’s a cool guy to be friends with,” The reporter gave a pained hiss at his words before turning to look at the camera.
“ohhh~ Sounds like a tough rejection for Damian awaits,” Before Danny has the time to process what was said another reporter is shoving yet another microphone is his face backing him into a wall.
“Why don’t you like him?”
“What don’t you like about him,”
“Did he hit you? Is that where you got that bruise on your cheek?”
Danny brushed his hand against his cheek and sure enough there’s a bruise. A token of walking home alone as a vulnerable looking tourist. Stealing his money was low but the pistol whipping was just uncalled for.
“no, I got mugged,” Why would Damian ever hit him?
“What do you think of Gotham so far,” he felt like that question redundant considering his previous response. It was also completely unrelated to the apparent obsession they had with Damian.
“ 6/10 not enough gargoyles on the rooftops, the vigilantes are cool though,” He laughed, glancing around for any kind of escape from this situation. This is why he never watched or read anything news related here the reporters were like starving vultures.
It was like playing twenty questions with a group of people who never let you have a turn to ask.
“Are you dating anyone?”
“ I’m flattered you think I have game but no” He hasn’t landed a date since Valerie broke up with him.
“What is your relationship with the current Robin?”
“Never met him next question.”
“Is it true you’re being stalked?”
“Does you guys following me count?”
Danny was tired he didn’t even want to get lunch anymore. He just wanted to go home and spend the rest of his Saturday playing Doomed. Instead he was standing on a street corner being interrogated. Maybe if he threw himself into traffic they’d leave him alone?
“Danyal!”
Bless the ancient’s he’s saved! The savior the holy Blah Blah foretold would rescue him from the flock of blood thirsty reporters has finally arrived; just in time!! He was definitely being dramatic but the sight of his knight in shining cardigan running towards him was enough to bring tears to his eyes.
It was like a miracle! His interrogators scattered like mice at the sight of Damian rapidly approaching. Perhaps his hero would appreciate some lunch as a reward for this rescue?
Danny Leaned in to bump his shoulder into Damian’s in thanks. The looked at his friend and smiled. Damian was still scowling but he looked better now he knew Danny was safe. Which, Danny could not lie, super flustering.
Danny: Thank you! I have no idea why they decided to bother me. I think they found out we are friends? But they kept asking if I was dating anyone? I don’t know why though?
Damian had never felt thankful for how oblivious Danny could be. And having Danny at his side, leaning into his side to be protected made him feel incredibly good. Hmm.. He may have to research that. Never mind.
Damian: Yes. Someone posted a video on social media of us talking. I am known to be. Reclusive. You know I do not suffer fools well.
Danny laughed and nodded. That was indeed, very very true.
Danny: I mean. It’s understandable. Your Dad is Bruce Wayne. Most of the idiots at school want to be your friend for money reasons. It’s so shallow…
Damian: Yes, and then there is you. On a scholarship and you refuse to let me buy you anything.
Danny: I have pride thank you! Also!! I make money! Not loads! But! I have the patent for the thing! And the uh, other ones. I might not make loads, but I make enough to pay my own way! Speaking of! As a thank you to my most valiant knight. Let me buy you lunch? There is a new cat cafe. And, it has vegan options!
Damian: Well, how could I say no to such an offer. It would be good to see how they treat the cats. If they are not up to standards I can ask Father to help them.
Danny smiled softly at Damian. He might be harsh with his words. A wee bit violent at times when pushed. But he hid a caring side. Ah!
Danny: Oh! They asked if you hit me! Which, rude! So you might want to get people on that! You only hit people when they piss you off. Generally after warning them you will if they continue. I don’t understand why people don’t get that!
Damian:… I will talk to my Father. What did happen?
Danny: Oh! Someone tried to mug me on my way home last night. It’s fine though. I am preeetty sure I broke their arm when I got away.
Damian: You worry me at times Danyal.
Danny: And I will tell you again. You don’t need to worry. I can look after myself!
Having been declared legally dead and without a cent to his name, Danny arrives in Gotham desperate for any job. So when he gets hired by a rich couple to babysit their kid while they’re away (which apparently is quite often) without them even doing a background check on him, he thinks he’s hit the jackpot.
Until he finds out just how neglected this kid is. Danny knows from personal experience just how that can mess a person up so he decides to shower this kid with all the love and attention he could ever dream of. And maybe figure out a way to stop him from sneaking out at night.
#double adoption bait #there’s two now
Danny is acting as a live in nanny, which saves him so much money. Sure he has had to learn how to cook! But, Tim is a sweet kid. Only 8 and so so used to being on his own. no, Danny won’t stand for it. Tim is his family now, and he will look after him. His first few pay checks were saved up till he could buy a decent fake ID, paper trail and all. Look, Gotham is shady a fuck. Danny made himself a distant cousin of the Drakes. Was pretty easy. Of course he is looking after Tim.
Tim was very wary of him at first. It didn’t help that Danny caught him sneaking out at night. Look, if he won’t look after himself Danny will make him. Danny did out his foot down. Tim is not allowed out on school nights. And he has to pass a basic amount of dodging and stealth training to be allowed out for more than 2 hours.
Tim was not happy, but as Danny pointed out he was there to look out for him. And dammit he would! Tim took to his training scarily well. Kid was so damn smart. Danny still wasn’t letting him out on his own though!
So, here they were, the two of them following Robin 2 who he been running off on his own more often lately. Oh well, it let Tim get some great photos. Danny was pretty damn sure Th would come back as a ghost. Boy was obsessive enough.
Danny wasn’t expecting Tim to help him make and perfect his fake ID, but honestly he remembers Tucker at this kid’s age and it’s not all that far off
Kid knows Gotham, helps Danny pick a branch of the family, and really seems keen to have him join the fold once they’ve had a couple months together
Sure, that first time Danny caught him sneaking out led to a pretty rough patch, but Danny was a teen vigilante; he knows just how futile it is to ban the kid
So when Tim screams “you aren’t the boss of me” after Danny brings it up, Danny just nods sagely and says “yup, but I am your guardian so I’m going to guard you”
Tim: *susface* you can’t stop me sneaking out
Danny: you can’t stop me sneaking after you bitch
Tim: WHAT NO HOW DARE YOU you’ll get me caught!
Danny: I’m the one catching you, who is anyone gonna tell? But if you can beat me at hide and seek I’ll let you keep going out
Tim thinks this will be easy
No problem
Even Batman doesn’t notice him
Danny finds him in five minutes flat
Tim would be SURE Danny cheated, but Danny gives him the security footage that shows him not moving an inch and then walking right to Tim’s hiding spot
(Danny doesn’t mention that Tim’s intense emotions might as well be a homing beacon)
Tim is INTENT on finding Danny
He cannot be beaten
He knows every hiding spot in Drake Manor, and which ones Danny could fit into
He even cheats and uses the cameras once an hour has passed with no luck
He gives up The Next Day
(Danny made him dinner, rung a bell, and rehid before Tim saw him)
He’s got a lot of new respect for his minder and when Danny promises to teach Tim how to do it, Tim is ecstatic
Years later when Tim has muscled his way into being Robin, Bruce is fucking STUNNED by how little stealth training he needs
Tim is a shadow’s shadow
His hand to hand is also damn good but low on actual technique
Danny comes back from a TWO DAY vacation to visit Jazz and Tim cheerfully informs him he’s a vigilante now
Danny shadows all his patrols and commentates as punishment
Danny has prepared for this day. He knew it was coming. So he ALREADY has his own new persona sorted. He is NOT letting Tim out with just Batman as backup. No way. That idiot already got a child killed. Well it’s not happening to HIS BROTHER!
So, two days after Robin 3 hits the scene Mockingbird arrives. And seems to be following Robin 3 around and giving him tips and tricks, even as he mocks the local thugs. Batman seems to dislike him, which the thugs were pleased about. Until they realised, if Batman can’t get rid of this one, no one can.
Danny takes great joy in sneaking up on the Bat himself. Thugs are now extra wary when they see the newest Robin. Look it was bad enough before. You saw the baby bird and knew Batman was probably somewhere close but you had a chance to get in and out right? And sure a lot of the time Batman would appear out of nowhere but there was only one of him! And now there is Mockingbird. Who for all his loud quips and banter is actually really freaking stealthy. Stealthier than the Bat!
And Mockingbird seems to pretty much exist as Robin 3’s minder. They don’t go out solo, they don’t appear if Robin 3 doesn’t. They exist to look after one dumbass teen. And well, the goons can respect that sort of care. Bat’s on the other hand looks like he is losing his goddamn mind about it.
It doesn’t take the goons long to work out the rule either
Mockingbird has one job, and one clear berserk button: Robin 3
And let’s be honest, none of them enjoy the part of gooning that is “try to beat up a literal child”, even if they’ve come to terms with it and the child kicks their ass every time
(Well, some of them do, but their numbers wane EXTREMELY fast after Mockingbird’s debut. Some are found still alive but usually they seek alternate employment far, far from children
Danny doesn’t allow risks to his loved ones)
But while there was always the “fuck Robin’s here get him restrained” for 1 and 2, Robin 3… you don’t want to get your hands on Robin 3
Yeah, the Bat is also much touchier about his new boy and will go Extreme Prejudice if he’s in danger, but the Bat is the nice one
The Bat knows they’re all criminals, and gets that this is part of the vigilante thing, they’re gonna try and knock out or incapacitate his trainees. Vengeance is swift, but the Bat is merciful
This comes into clear contrast once Mockingbird joins the scene
He doesn’t stop Robin from fighting or get in the way; the kid’s as hands on as both predecessors, there’s the exact same frantic scrabble to take him down and get the weapon out of his hands so you can tie him to something
(Any rogue who wants Robin dead wants to do it personally anyway, so you double don’t want to be the one that ruins that)
But you point a gun?? At Robin 3?? Your hands are empty before you know it, and that sly, mocking voice comes from just behind your ear, where you know no one could be
“Now that’s not fair is it?”
Other things disappear too. Sometimes it’s as mild as your belt, or your shoelaces are suddenly tied together, and yeah Mockingbird will ABSOLUTELY steal your pants and you’ll never know how
If you get a shot off though? Things appear places they shouldn’t, and you realize just how nice Batman is that he only kicks your ass and restrains you for the cops
Danny doesn’t want Tim to find out about all the background stuff he does, because Tim’s a competent kid and would hate to be undermined, but now the goons are all a lot more careful about what might accidentally seriously maim a child
(Part of this is in response to Batman’s wave of violent fury after Robin 2 died. Self preservation. But finding jagged edges of ice between your toes, in your ears, up your nose?
You only fuck with that once before you start wondering where else Mockingbird could get that ice. How much bigger the chunks could be
Penguin is desperately trying to hire Mockingbird to maintain the Iceberg Lounge)
Red Hood’s return is correspondingly extremely different. Jason’s furious another kid got put in the suit, but it takes about 30 seconds to realize this kid has Protection
Serious Protection, and it ain’t from Bruce
There’s a lot more jealousy, a lot more “why does he deserve this when I didn’t”, it’s still anger and bitterness as he plans, takes heads, taunts Batman
But Danny never forgets a soul
So Jason gets a visit before Jason gets anywhere near Tim (who is very upset that Danny is definitely keeping a secret from him, but Danny will make it up to him)
Danny apologizes that he didn’t save Jason. That he and Tim were watching over him, but Danny couldn’t protect him too
It’s not what Jason wanted, it’s not even close to Bruce admitting his failure. But Danny’s so obviously relieved to see him alive, explains that dying can be a much less binary scale than people think, notices the pit
Danny won’t tell Bruce if Jason doesn’t want him to, cuz Jason gets to come out in his own time, but he offers help. Kindness. Tells him how Tim got started, got caught, and got ghost training to keep going
How much Tim worried when Jason disappeared
And he asks Jason to at least tell Tim he’s okay, because Tim thought he could stop if Jason ever came back
(Tim doesn’t fucking stop, he lied to himself and also to Danny)
And Jason asks where the Joker is, because there’s been hide nor hair of him since about a week after Robin 3 debuted
And Danny goes real quiet
Because he can tell Jason where the Joker is, but Jason won’t be able to see him. Not without one of those body finders that can see through rock
Danny doesn’t. Allow. Risks. To his loved ones.
He couldn’t save Robin 2, but he can keep Robin 3 from being anywhere near the same danger
(Jason solemnly swears never to lift a finger against Tim because holy fucking shit nope nope nope his plans are now Bruce And Bruce Only)
(He does sign one of Tim’s favourite photos of him as Robin though)
Jason is also so relieved to know that someone saw. That someone cared enough to keep a Robin safe. And that Robin 2 was avenged. It hurts, so badly, that it wasn’t Batman. But gods, Jason could come to adore Mockingbird and Robin 3. Danny admits to Tim.He is keeping a secret for someone. But, don’t worry, you will know soon. They just want a bit of time first ok?
And then Jason comes round for dinner. And Tim lights up. His Robin is alive! He’s angry, and hurt, and bitter, but he’s here! And he’s letting Danny help him!
Red Hood spreads the word as well. No one in his gang goes after kids, Robin 3 is included in that! “You can disarm him, and move him away from a fight, but nothing worse than a bruise. Mockingbird is not playing around. I do not want hassle with him! ”
And you know what, his people get that. Boss hates hurting kids anyways. And yeah, they’ve seen what Mockingbird does to people who hurt Robin 3. Word spreads fast after all. Everyone knows it was probably Mockingbird who got rid of Joker. Is there any proof? No. But within a few weeks of Robin 2 dying and Robin 3 starting up Joker vanished.
Jason is slowly healing but by bit. The pit madness has been dulled, so he can control it now. He’s still so angry at Bruce. But why would he involve innocents? And damn, but little Robin 3 is so smart. He’s honestly a regular genius. And Jason is so glad he has someone looking out for him like the Bat should have.
And for some reason they are willing to let him into their lives? He can go over to eat, and get medical care? Mockingbird reminds him of Alfie so much it hurts at times. And then they slowly become Danny and Tim. Somewhere between fixing the pits and Timmy begging training in guns from him, they start to feel like family.
And Jason gets told what Danny did. To Joker and a number of other idiots who went to far on Tim. And yeah, he is glad he didn’t go there. But, while speaking with Danny he comes to realise, wait. Talia set him up, she wound him into a rage focused on Tim. That makes her a threat to Robin 3 and he needs to be warned. This includes a pretty in depth discussion of the LoA and their ways of working. Jason won’t let them be unprepared. He owes them more than he can ever repay. He won’t let Ras and Talia hurt them.
When Damian arrives it is to a very different family dynamic. Jason still hasn’t told Bruce he’s alive. Dick has been brought in, as has Alfie. Babs knew, but kept quiet. In case he needed to be taken in. Then Danny stepped in and mediated for him. He’s got his brother back, and another two as a bonus prize.
Damian tried to assert his place as the ‘blood son’ only to be smacked down entirely. Tim isn’t Bruce’s kid. He has a great guardian thankyou. Why would he need Bruce for that? And Danny won’t allow that sort of behaviour to go unpunished. Yes he is a child. That is why he is not being hurt. But he will face consequences! For a start, if he can’t be trusted to not attack allies, no weapons.
No Batman, he attacked my ward, I will NOT give them back until he learns. Control your son, or get out of my way. Damian, why do you believe Tim is a threat you need to dispose of?
Damian is not pleased by this, interloper! Drake is bad enough, but his older cousin? A nightmare to deal with. Nothing phases him. You can’t hit him, he is more stealthy than anyone Damian has ever met! And somehow he calmed Todd from the rampage Mother tried to incite. And, on top of that, there is nothing in his background that would account for any of this! It’s infuriating. And Father can’t even do anything about him! He is starting to feel like perhaps Mother and Grandfather have overestimated Batman.
If this Mockingbird can flit around Gotham’s skies as he pleases with no repercussions, then surely Father is not all that impressive. It is either that, or Mockingbird is indeed that powerful. Even Superman caves to Father. What does that say about this person?
Danny’s still a little shit though
He takes all of Damian’s weapons
(ALL of them. It takes HOURS. Damian is furious)
But he won’t leave the baby high and dry, clearly Damian needs weapons as emotional support
So Danny replaces them with nerf weapons
He has Bruce’s credit cards and nerf has a lovely array of “bladed” foam weapons
Damian sulks when all his weapons disappear
DAMIAN RIOTS DAYS LATER WHEN FOAM IS FOUND IN THEIR PLACE
He rants and yells at Danny, Danny watches impassively (he’s in his 20s by now, he’s a little shit but he did grow up)
Then Danny shoots Damian in the forehead with a nerf gun, tells him his true training begins today, tosses the gun to Damian and disappears
Completely confused, Damian turns to Tim for an explanation
Tim shrugs, shoots Damian with his own nerf gun, and explains how Danny trained him before he became Robin
Bruce is just happy they’re all getting along, because that’s definitely what the screams of rage and pitched nerf battles means
Dick adores Danny and Tim. They are not only good at the work they do. They are also good at communication. Danny will not let B do his growly bullshit. At all. He looks after Tim and Damian. Sure he seems intent on driving Damian up the wall. But honestly Damian seems to respond well to the implied challenge. The fact that Danny said he lacked the discipline to be allowed real weaons? Oh it burned at him.
Add in the need weapon training, pranks as tactics nd evasion drills? Well Dick has never been so entertained while keeping up his training. The fact that Danny is making it so Damian has to play to train as well seems to be helping the baby bat.
Damian can admit that he respects the interloper. He does not like him, or Drake. But he can respect their skills. Daniel is more than happy to train his skills, in weapons and in tactics. That he uses juvenile methods does not matter when the results speak for themselves.
And, privately, he can admit that perhaps he should have relied less on his Mothers knowledge. It was clearly outdated. He overheard Daniel and Drake discussing the Robin title the other day. Robin was deemed a training title. Once Drake felt ready he could take on a new name. Had he known that sooner he would have been less likely to attack Drake.
Daniel has been slowly allowing him access to his weapons for training again. Until g proves himself tempered enough however they ’re kept locked away. Apparently he can not yet be trusted. It burns, but also made him realise something. While he was allowed to harm any when with Mother and Grandfather such behaviour is deemed barbaric in Gotham.
His Mothers family means less than nothing in this city. His Fathers legacy is important. But for very different reasons. Daniel is making him speak with his sister. She can be trusted to keep anything he says confidential. She works with many heroes apparently. And the children of heroes. Father still refuses to go, which Daniel called a weakness. Failing to meet ones own demons and fight them head on. Damian can reluctantly understand Daniel’s viewpoint. It is why he agreed. She will appear you be able to explain how people expect him to behave. Which should be useful.
He has already made mistakes basing his behaviour on Mother and Grandfather. He will take as much Intel as he can get so he can ensure he makes no more.
Mother foolishly discounted Pennyworth as beneath attention. any who know the truth know he is the true patriarch of the house. How his Mother missed that he shall never know.
At least his skills are being tested and expanded here. Richard has taken to joining them as well. He and Daniel between them have a wealth of knowledge he can put to good use. Now, he will figure out how to trap one of them. These pranks are indeed juvenile, but Daniel insists they are good for training tactical thinking and spatial awareness. He plans to test Daniel and Richard. It only seems fair. Perhaps Drake would help. It might ensure their continued acquaintance is pleasant.
Danny being there is going to take on a way different twist of Bruce’s time lost in the past
Danny would help Tim with every power and friend at his disposal. It would take, at least a month less, Tim would NOT lose a spleen and Ra’s Al Ghul would have a FEAR of Red Robin and his Mockingbird.
Tim; I swear, I’m NOT insane! Bruce is just lost in the time stream?
Dick; Have you considered grief counselling?
Danny; Ok honey, take your time. Lay it out for me. What do you need my help with? Dick, go make sure Damian doesn’t get himself killed I have this.
Dick; feeding his obsession won’t help him?
Danny; Who says I don’t believe him? Tim is probably the smartest person I have ever met. If he says B is temporally dislocated, he probably is!’
Tim; God I love you so much Danny! Here is my ideas!
Danny; Ok, counterpoint, I don’t leave your side at ALL. The LoA ARE NOT SAFE! So I am going with to put the fear of ME into the Demon’s Head. Ok? ok.
Tim; Ok, So here’s where we start!
Danny; Good to know. Now what are your back up plans? How do we do this without losing body parts? What tools do we need? Come on love, you have to have your backup plans. You know I’m with you 100% but still. An ounce of prevention…
Tim; Yes yes yes, a pound of cure. FINE!
Imagine after all this goes down they meet the canon version of themselves. The Jason taht tried to murder Tim, the Tim who never had a Danny, The Bruce who was never called out and forced to communicate, the spoilt brat which was the original Damien. They meet Feral-chaotic-unhinged Tim, his overprotective-enabling-babysitter-brother Danny, Semi-stable-slightly weary of tf is wrong with them-secretly alive but unknown Jason, Calming down-getting along with Tim Damien. Just the babysitter world being stuck in canon for a while. And the other family having to see what could have been. Tim sees how he could have been with support. Just to add some angst for flavour.
Why you hide in the tags? But yes. Babysitter verse feral ass kids just going. No. You do not get to do this. We are gonna steal you all away. Ours now. You lost having child privilege! You don’t look after them well enough to deserve then!
They manage to take them all back to their universe and now the Justice League needs to stage both a rescue mission for the Batkids + Kon, who Tim decided can join his Kon and stay with him, and an intervention becasue obvoiusly avoiding therapy was not going well for Bruce.
Whereas the Babysitter verse knows they can’t keep them forever, their universe’s Gotham needs someone to take care of it, but they can help them in the meantime. Look how thin they are, how big are those eyebages?
The Justice League arrive into alt Gotham and meet Babysitter verse. And just… wow. OK, we can see why you stole the kids now… How is he so well adjusted? I see… So, this was more to give them a break? You had no real intention of keeping them? You just saw our B needed a push to go to therapy. What convinced yours? A snarky teen calling him weak for avoiding it? Well that’s certainly one way of doing it…
“You ever look at someone and wonder how hard it would be to get past their defenses and stab them?”
Damian snapped his head to the side, looking at the young boy now standing beside him.
The boy put his hands up in front of him with a wince, “Not that I ever do that. Totally not, whaaaat???”
Damian huffed and turned back around to watch the gala participants.
“It’s just you kinda looked like you were contemplating the logistics of stabbing Mrs.Halterguild for squeezing your cheeks.”
Damian scowled. Then, after a moment’s beat, “It would not be very difficult. She is nearly blind in her left eye, I would be able to approach without repost.”
The kid hummed, turning back as well before motioning to another group to the far right, “What about Mr. Beckensmith, he’s a retired vet right?”
Damian rolled his eyes and scowled harder, “The man has only seen the battlefield of an office as he bribed his way from being fully enlisted and instead managed to pay for increasingly higher ranks and medals. He is a disgrace.”
The kid cocked his head to the side, looking suspicious for a second and then nodding with concession, “Fair enough, I bet I could get close enough too.”
Damian scoffed.
“What, don’t believe me?”
Damian leveled a doubtful glare at the civilian, making it clear by looking him up and down, “Hardly.”
The other smirked dangerously, “If I can get close enough to poke him and get away without being noticed, will you believe me?”
Damian narrowed his eyes but nodded succinctly and watched as the boy immediately took off, making a few loops around other people before finally backing up to Mr. Beckensmith and poking him on the opposite side as a group moved past.
Damian pursed his lips. Interesting. Certainly better than he would expect from an amateur. And an amateur civilian at that.
When the boy returns to his side Damian brushes off the asks of meaningless praise.
“Come on, I did it, now you have to go poke Mrs. Halterguild without getting caught.”
Damian sneers, “And why would I do that?”
“Because I don’t believe you either, the woman’s old but I bet she sees you and squeezes your cheeks again. Old ladies just have a sixth sense for that stuff you know.”
Damian nearly growls but sets off on his task. He makes sure to stay on her left side, but the woman turns at the last second, forcing Damian to use a passing waiter as cover to remain hidden and finally get close enough to poke her gaudy dress.
Then he sidles back up to the boy on the edges and provides his best ‘I am more capable than you’ scowl. The boy simply laughs and says, “Who’s next?”
They spend the night like that, choosing each other’s targets to attack non-lethally as though they were attempting to stab them, and Damian finds the gala going by in a significantly less tedious manner.
Right up until the boy laughs at him when he chooses a target. Only one bark of laughter escapes, but it is enough for Damian to consider stabbing him as well. If only with a butter knife.
Instead, Damian grinds his teeth and asks, “What is so different about Masters, do you really believe you would be unable to succeed?”
The other gives a breathless chuckle, “I’m pretty sure even you wouldn’t be able to successfully stab Vlad Masters,” The boy’s shoulders sag even as his jaw tightens with irritation, “He sees everything.”
Damian narrows his eyes. Something naws at the back of his brain but currently the critique of his capabilities takes precedence.
“I would be capable of stabbing Masters even without my favored sword,” Damian scowls and stands taller with annoyance.
“Sure you can, man,” At this, the boy quirks a sharp smile, “If you can actually get him, I’ll personally get you a magic sword,” he says with an air of amused indulgence. Like he thinks Damian is some insipid child saying he will find a fairy.
Damian grits his teeth and shakes the other’s hand, then immediately sets off after his target. How dare this civilian question him! He is the Son of the Bat, this is not even a challenge!
Damian growls as his approach is thwarted for the third time by the man turning in his direction and almost spotting him. How dare he! He will not fail!
Just as he reaches to jab the man in the side, already poised to make his escape, Masters whips around and clamps his fingers around Damian’s wrist with a vice grip.
“Really Daniel I thought we were over-“ Masters pauses, looking at Damian critically as he glares at the man’s offending hand, “You are not young Daniel.”
“Remove your hand from my person at once,” Damian growls.
Instead of listening to Damian’s very sensible directions, Masters tightens his grip and twists his arm, most likely in an attempt to hurt him.
“Now why is a child attempting to-“
Damian doesn’t wait to hear the rest of the man’s words, sliding a dagger into his other hand and swinging towards him, until that hand is caught mid-movement as well.
“Heh-Hey there!”
Damian snaps his head to the side just in time to see Grayson take his dagger and slide it into his pocket. He ignores the bark of laughter he hears from across the room.
Masters’ hand disappears from his arm suspiciously fast, “Mr. Wayne, what a pleasure!”
Damian looks over his other shoulder to see his father standing behind him, a thin smile on his face, “Vladimir!”
His father’s figure quickly obscures his vision, putting an arm over Masters’ shoulders in a way that clearly makes him irritated but forces him to follow as he is steered away.
“Dami, I thought we talked about the stabbing at formal events,” Grayson says through a strained smile as he looks over the crowd to make sure no else saw.
“Tt, it was merely a demonstration of my skills, he was in no real danger until he refused to release me. I simply sought to correct that mistake.”
Grayson pinchesthe bridge of his nose, “Demonstration for who, Dames? We all already know your skills.”
“Tt,” Damian scowls and turns away.
Instead of pushing it, Grayson simply sighs heavily, “Just stay out of trouble for the rest of the gala okay? We’re almost done.”
Damian scoffed and waited for Grayson to leave. Once he does, Damian finally looks over to where he had been lingering with the boy.
Gone.
Clearly he’d taken the cowards way out when he’d seen that Damian had been accosted by Masters.
Pitiful.
Damian spends the rest of the night scowling from the wall and looking serendipitously for a head of black hair and blue eyes unrelated to him.
Of course it’s not until they are actively leaving that Damian sees him and immediately splits off of from his family.
He approaches with irritation, preparing to grab the other by the shoulder when suddenly he turns around and blue eyes meet Damian’s green.
“You,” Damian sneers.
“Me,” The other shrugs. He has an amused smile on his face, though it’s strained at the edges.
They stare in silence for a minute, before the other’s smile grows and sharpens once more, “I didn’t expect you to actually try to stab him, y’know,” A slight laugh escapes him, “Not that it was unwelcome by any means, but still, unexpected.”
Damian scowls again, glaring at this foolish civilian.
“Oh, I never introduced myself did I?!”
The boy exclaims and holds out a hand, smile dangerous, “Daniel Fenton. Or if we’re being technical,” a pause as Damian finally returns the gesture and finds his hand trapped, “Daniel Masters, a pleasure to meet you Damian.”
“Hurry up little badger,” A voice says beside them, and Damian notices that it is indeed Vladimir Masters.
The man approaches, placing a heavy hand on Fenton’s shoulder, making the boy go taut, and then they both step into a dark car, leaving Damian on the front steps.
Damian’s anger flares and he shoots a glare directly to the boy getting into the car. It dies the moment they meet eyes and Damian sees the fear hiding in the other’s eyes.
Fear that Damian is all too familiar with.
Fear that reminded Damian of himself. Reminded him of his own eyes when he’d been under his grandfather.
But why did Fenton look like that?
Fenton makes eye contact with Damian before a determined expression crosses his face. A nearly unnatural wail yells from his rather small frame. “PEDO! PEDOPHILE! KIDNAPPER! HELP!”
Every one starts to crowd Masters and Fenton. Damian does not stray. If he’s read this situation correctly Fenton will be coming to him. He’s not sure what he’s done to make Fenton trust him to help him escape what is obviously long term abuse. He assumes the poking game was some sort of test. Damian had however failed. Masters was obviously the only target that mattered and Damian failed to “stab” him. Whatever it was that has made Fenton place his in Damian he will not fail.
Damian is proven correct in his assumption as Fenton sprints at him the moment the crown lets him. Damian has the hand it to the boy he’s made an impeccable distraction for all the adults. Fenton does not slow as he grabs Damian’s wrist and pulls him along.
Damian has already started forming plans on how to make Fenton disappear, legally or otherwise but just to be certain he asks “What are we doing?”
“Running away; you’re helping” Danny informs.
Again as expected the question is does Fenton have a plan “How?”
“See I knew you’d get it. You got knives right? You stick me as the kinda guy to have knives.”
Turning a corner Damian smoothly passes Fenton a knife. He’s decided he trusts Fenton’s judgement.
“Sick, now I gotta cut out two trackers” Fenton states slicing open his side without flinching. He digs his fingers in the cut and yanks out a small object; crushing it. It’s both impressive and angering. They stop. Odd as Fenton didn’t even stop while slicing himself open.
Fenton turns to him and states “Imma need your help with the next part. See the second trackers in my ankle. I won’t be able to walk after.”
Damian is furious. It’s such a simple yet devious plan. The only way for Fenton to escape is to cripple himself. Even if he cuts the tracker out he’ll be too injured to run. Damian pulls out a second knife.
“Wow y'know I knew you’d have knives, but it’s wild I can’t tell where you’re keeping em. Or even how many you have. Welp here we go. Cut here; NOT too deep.” Fenton’s clearly losing his composure. Damian will not blame him. He’s been quite well so far.
Damian gently pulls Fenton to the ground kneeling beside him. He places the blade to the lateral malleolus. Fenton nods, bites his hand and shuts his eyes. Damian takes his queue and cuts Fenton open. Tracker B is not as deep. Logical if you do not wish to damage the person you are tracking. It almost makes Damian feel better. Damian wraps his wound and states “It is done.”
“Thanks” Fenton grits. “Alright, Alright. Look fireman carry me outta here? Is your place good or do I need a find a place?
Damian thinks for a moment. Father would be more than willing to help Fenton. He answers as he picks him up. "Yes, my place is sufficient”.
“Cool cool. Gods I hope you’re okay with non-humans or this is about to get real awkward. Run straight through every wall you see till we’re outta the building, K?”
A tingly feeling overcomes Damian and he does just that. Damian cannot say he had pegged Fenton as inhuman. He thinks this case has just gotten much more complicated then rich pedophile. He’s not sure if this is worse or better.
“Nice, we can’t use any more of my powers now that we’re out. Vlad’ll be able to track em. Just take me to your place as fast as possible, maybe?”
“Understood. Is it alright for me to call a ride?” It would be much easier to call Pennyworth but he does not wish to frighten Fenton.
“Ya do what ever, I’ve already put my neck on the line might as well go all the way. All or nothing y'know.”
“Understood, do the cameras need to be wiped?” he asks. Texting Pennyworth for pick up.
“hmm, naw they’ll probably help. Or Vlad’ll wipe em. He’s like me, powers that is. He doesn’t want people to know. Cameras will slow him but they’ll only help me. Evidence and all that.”
That makes things more complicated. Fighting inhumans is always more annoying. It’s interesting that Fenton doesn’t care if he’s outed as super.
“I see, Pennyworth will be here in four minutes. I informed him it was urgent.”
“Cool thanks. Don’t try to stab Vlad. He’ll just turn intangible. I think I’m gonna pass out now.”
Fenton does in fact pass out. Damian wonders if it’s from pain, blood loss, or shock.
Tim works as the CEO of Wayne Enterprises. Tim has a secretary, and then he has another one to help her because holy shit, the amount of crap Tam puts up with is insane and she needs an assistant of her own.
Tim’s second secretary is one Danny Fenton.
Tim, Tam, and Danny are the last ones in Wayne Enterprises, as the building had to be evacuated due to Superman being mind-controlled and targeting major corporations.
Superman targets Wayne Enterprises.
Tim looks out the window as he his secretaries make their way towards the emergency exit, and there he is.
Floating there.
Staring at him.
Tim swears he can see his Uncle Clark sobbing as his eyes heat up.
Then Danny grabs him, yanks him into the stairwell, and just as the building starts to crumble around them, shoves both Tim and Tam into a glowing green portal.
Danny takes a blow to the head.
They land on a floating island, in a swirling vortex of green, and the one who got them there is unconscious on the ground with a nasty headwound.
Meanwhile, after the Justice League manages to snap Superman out of it, the man throws himself at Batmans feet and just…sobs.
Breaks.
They get the story in bits and pieces.
Tim was in the building, still. The burning, twisted wreckage of Wayne Enterprises.
Batman spiraling is something all the batkids except Dick are experiencing for the first time. And then someone mentions how it’s not actually as bad as after Jason because technically Bruce still has the rest of them kind of anchoring him.
But consider this, maybe he’s worse than when Jason died. Not only Is this the second son he’s lost, in a burning building, but it was at the hands of one of his best friends.
Bruce can’t bring himself to kill Clark because he knows he was mind controlled, doesn’t stop him from attacking Supes though. The Bat boys have to use every ounce of strength and training to pull him off Clark while Cass grabs at the kryptonite knuckle busters. He allows it but doesn’t return to the watchtower and Supes stays clear of Gotham. Batman hits Gotham’s streets even harder than after Jason. Cutting all communications with the Justice League, even Diana can’t get through to him and had to leave Gotham in a rush.
Tim was also the one who brought him out of his spiral and continued to be the one who stayed with him the longest even with all the bumps along the road. Tim also risked his life to bring Bruce home after his stint in the time stream.
So my point being, Jason has a front row seat to Batman’s brutality and Dick is there to witness it first hand this time instead of Tim’s reports. Damien is shocked to see Bruce using, not only near lethal strikes but also the league training coming through the longer Bruce spirals. There is also no body found so they are all worried about the implications and possibly another Jason situation.
Jason has to reevaluate his thoughts on Bruce’s strict no killing rule and why he has it. He also has to think back to Tim’s stories from back in the early days after he was found out as Red Hood. Tim had told Jason once that Bruce had almost killed the Joker, thought he had at one point but the bastard came back, but Superman had stoped him. Tim had also tried to get him to understand that if Bruce killed as Batman he wouldn’t stop. Jason hadn’t believed him but he was starting to realize that it may be true.
Dock knew Bruce had been bad after Jason’s death, felt guilty for not seeing it past his own anger, he had heard Tim’s stories and had taken them with a grain of salt because Bruce couldn’t have been worse than before he became the first Robin. He was wrong. Oh , he was so much worse and the guilt tripled knowing he had left a young Tim to deal with this alone.
Damien is shocked. And after being away from the LoA and growing used to his father soft but firm guidance… he hates to admit it but he is afraid. Thoughts of the League and the possible threat of his father becoming like Ra’s, even just the slightest… poor boy is starting to wish for Tim to still be alive, somehow, someway, just so he can return to the comfort of a storm but loving father, not this cold blinded by rage being. He also has a new respect for Tim, to be able to deal with and handle Bruce in this state, from what he’d heard from the other, after Jason’s death. Tim was either extremely brave or plain stupid to blackmail Batman in that state.
Everyone can understand Bruce’s grief but they are all worried about him. With Clark out of the picture and Diana having no luck… no one knows how to help or stop him. From hurting others and himself.
bonus if they still haven’t found out who was behind the mind control.
Alfred is in the background watching and supporting them all as best he can, all the while grieving the loss of another grandson and the potential loss of the man he views as his son. He will continue to provide food, comfort and medical attention as he always does. And pray by some miracle, Tim comes home to them. Be it a body or alive. Alfred’s last shred of hope is resting on the capture of the one responsible and the lack of a body or rather bodies, as Tam and her assistants bodies were never recovered just like Tim’s was never found in the wreckage. All three will remain as missing, in his mind, until solid proof of death or life is found.
I don’t know why, but I just had this idea of Tim trying to reach out to his family and friends from the Ghost Zone and it coming across…off.
Danny is still out cold, and Tim & Tam are pretty sure even if they do get him back from…wherever the hell it is he took them, he isn’t going to survive. His pulse keeps slowing, his body temp keeps dropping and even though the wound itself seems to have healed disturbingly fast Danny’s just not waking up.
They’re on a floating island in an endless world of impossible geography and mind fuckery, but they’re not totally without luck. There’s a building on this island, a brownstone like what they’d see back on earth but with some strange additions to it. A giant green and chrome… observatory? It looks like a flying saucer but that’s definitely a giant telescope poking out the top of it. There’s also a giant sign attached to the side of it claiming the building “Phantom’s Lair” which is…concerning. but it’s not exactly like they have a lot of options.
The front door is open and thankfully (?) it looks like no one is home. They manage to carry Danny inside and lay him down on a large couch in a fairly normal looking living room. Tam finds a kitchen stocked largely with junk food and seemingly endless vials of what looks concerningly like Lazarus Water.
Tim searched the place from top to bottom, which takes much longer than it really should. The building is larger on the inside, with endless rooms and halls and stairs. He’s worried about getting lost but every time he thinks he might have lost the path he finds himself right back at the living room where he left Tam and Danny - which is impossible, considering he was on entirely different floors during some of those mix-ups. Good news at least he finds some medical supplies - normal, human medical supplies - and even better, various bits of tech that he’s pretty sure he can use to try and contact his family.
They decided to hole up in the living room - the couches are big enough for all of them, access to the kitchen and living room and easy enough to block off from any potential unfriendles that might show up - and Tim gets to work. Some of the tech he finds boggled the mind a little, it looks like whoever made it is powering it all with Lazarus Water somehow, but he’s figuring it out.
He knows, logically, that chances are slim that he’ll get a message out. That even if he does the odds are it won’t be his family or the League that gets the message - he’s pretty sure they’re in an entirely different dimension at this point - but he has to try. He records a message and starts playing it over every frequency he can remember the Bat Clan or Justice League ever using, using his own comm as a means of trying to anchor it all down somehow.
Back on Earth, things get…strange.
Barbara is monitoring the city, trying to keep everyone going while Bruce spirals, and for a moment - just a second - she sees Tim’s face on one of her monitors.
Damian is in his room, comm in his ear listening to those of his siblings that are out patrolling, staring blankly down at the sketch of Tim he’d just completed. A crackle of static and then he hears Tim’s voice, faint and tinny, “-here, - here, -here”
On all channels that the BatFam and Justice League uses, Tim Drake in quick, half-realizes seconds, appears as a ghost. Haunting those left behind.
“Here…here…here…”
Tim’s voice echoed through the comms, tinny and distorted, and Bruce felt his heart break a little more. One of his children must have been listening to an old recording of Tim, and the comm had picked it up. That was the only logical conclusion.
He couldn’t bring himself to go out, not after he’d nearly snapped a man’s neck in front of Damian.
He knew he wasn’t the only one mourning, he knew that. But it was so fucking hard to remember it in the middle of a fight.
He kept…forgetting.
He would allow himself to go just a little too far, a little too violent, in the faint hopes that he would hear Tim crop up and scold him. Like he had done after Jason. Like he had done after Jason came back.
But Tim did not pop up.
It was just Damian, his youngest, staring at him in horror after being forced to come between Bruce and the criminal they’d been trying to apprehend.
And then it was Jason, who looked too tired to say anything beyond a quiet “Just…go back to the cave, B.”
Bruce had done just that. He’d gone back, sent Damian upstairs with Alfred, and then locked himself away.
He couldn’t take his anger out on Clark. He couldn’t. The man was already guilt-ridden and Superman hadn’t been seen since the incident.
But he was Bruce Wayne, the Goddamn Batman; he would find out who had forced his best friend to murder his son.
And then.
Well.
He had plenty of contenders for the title of Batman, and Cass, while quiet, was the best option for a successor.
He would go after the culprit as none other than himself, not Batman. He would kill them. And Cass would fill the cowl he left behind.
~~~~~~
Clark buried his face in Jon’s hair, hands shaking as he clutched his son to him. Lois ran her hands up and down his back, and Jon not only humored him, but clung back.
Ma was down in the kitchen, stress-baking.
Pa was down in the barn, stress-fixing.
Clark was home, was so far removed from the city where he’d…
Where he’d…
After, when they’d pulled Bruce off of him, he’d gone to Lex. Had begged Lex to put him down.
Only for Lex to raise an eyebrow at him, pity in his eyes, and tell him no.
Tell him that he had to live with what he’d done, and what made this time so different from the others anyways?
Clark hated the man even more after that.
That hatred had turned on himself when Lex had a gleam of understanding and told him to go home. To mourn without dragging a city down with him.
To grieve the way so many families had to every time Clark lost himself.
So Clark had fled.
He’d run home, grabbed Lois and Jon, and ran all the way home to his parents.
Kon had passed him by on the way, and his….eldest hadn’t even looked at him.
Clark couldn’t blame him.
His breath caught in his throat, and Lois leaned fully against him.
God.
He’d killed Tim.
He’d killed his nephew.
He could still see the shock and dismay in the boy’s face, the absolute second he’d realized he was going to die.
Clark couldn’t do this. He couldn’t. He had to…he had to be put down, or-
What if he hurt Lois next? Jon? Kon?
How many more people would he be forced to maim or murder?
He-
His phone rang.
“Leave it, Clark,” Lois muttered, glaring at the device, “Whatever, whoever, it is; it can be handled tomorrow.”
But Clark could not.
What if it was Bruce?
What if they’d found the body?
Oh God, what if it was Kon?
Clark shakily let go of Jon and picked up the phone, holding it to his ear.
“Hello-?”
“Not….fault…Clark! Clark, it….fine…help…trapped-” The phone went dead, battery completely drained.
Clark kept holding it to his ear anyways.
“Dad?” Jon asked quietly, eyes wide.
Clark didn’t say anything.
That had been Tim. That had absolutely been Tim. It had been staticky and faint, but it was Tim.
Tim had said he was trapped.
The phone shattered in his grip and his hand went back to cradling the back of his sons head.
Not only had he killed his best friends son, but said son was trapped and unable to move onto the afterlife.
~~~~~~
Damian felt like…well. Damian did not know what to feel like.
Watching his father utilize lethal moves on a civilian, one improperly armed, had struck a chord in him.
Damian would not say he was afraid. He was…cautious.
Whenever Ra’s had been infuriated enough to fall back on training otherwise unused, it was only wise to vacate the compound until he had settled.
So Damian had asked Alfred for a lift, and let himself into Grayson’s apartment.
He knew that Grayson would have known the second he let himself in, and decided to pass the time waiting for patrol to end by sketching.
But his hands would only draw one person.
It was Drake.
…
It was Timothy.
Eyes crinkled as he laughed at something, mouth in the middle of telling a stupid joke.
And Damian could not stop making it more and more detailed.
He and Timothy had not…gotten along in the standard sense of the word. But they had gotten along in their own way.
After he had settled from his….brainwashing. It had been brainwashing, and he had to refer to it as such lest he be tempted to fall back to it. After he had settled, he and Timothy had struck an antagonistic accord.
They did not wish death or severe injury upon the other, but they were free to snipe at each other with words.
Damian refused to acknowledge the moisture gathering in his eyes, just like he refused to acknowledge Grayson sliding into the apartment and draping himself over Damian’s back.
Grayson let out a choked off breath and hugged Damian.
“Mind if we get that framed, Dami?”
Damian did not answer.
Words…were not enough to encompass what he desired to say.
Talking was an impossibility, though he did not know why.
Instead, Damian turned the page and started sketching Timothy anew.
~~~~~~
Jason had resorted to using real bullets again.
He knew that he was sliding back into old habits, but he really, really could not bring himself to give a shit.
He hadn’t killed anyone.
Yet.
The night was still young, and perhaps some of them had bled out after he’d left.
Oracle wasn’t saying anything one way or another.
She’d stopped saying much after Damian had requested help. Help to stop Bruce from killing some rando criminal.
Which.
Jason did not know how to deal with that.
When he’d answered the call, hed been furious. Where had this murderous revenge spree been when he’d bit it? What, was he not good enough to warrant it? Was Damian not good enough?
He’d stepped in, fired a rubber bullet square at Bruce’s spinal surgery scar under all that armor, and just…deflated.
The man that had turned around to face him…had not been Bruce.
The lines of grief were too stark. His hands shook, his shoulders hunched, and the man looked three steps away from collapse.
In the end, Jason had told him to go home.
There really wasn’t anything else to do.
“Hello? Anyone there? I’m here! I’m right here! I’m trapped, but I’m here! We need a pick up!”
Jason froze.
Clear as crystal, that had been Tim’s voice.
“Oracle, did you-?”
“Yes, although it wasn’t very clear. B might be…watching a recording.”
Jason could hear the disbelief in her voice.
“It was clear,” Jason muttered, standing on the rooftop of a half-finished building as he looked over at where Wayne Enterprises used to stand tall, “It was loud and clear. Tim’s trapped. He’s-Kon!”
It only took a second, but Tim’s little Super maybe-boyfriend was suddenly there.
He looked wild, unhinged. His hair was a wreck, he was covered in dirt, and Jason could tell just by looking at him that his powers kept incrementally shorting out due to stress.
Good to know that falling into insanity with the absence of one of them wasn’t just a Timmy thing.
“Take me to Wayne Enterprises; I think Tim’s alive.”
~~~~~~
Tim threw the toaster at a wall.
“Danny, sweetie, focus,” Tam goaded their semi-conscious meta, “We need to go back. Can you get us back?”
Tim was reminded, rather abruptly, of Dora the Explorer.
Unfortunately, toddler TV-show talking verbiage had nothing on the headwound his second assistant had sustained.
“Frostbite…” The man whined, before forcibly pulling his face out of Tam’s hands and trying to stand up.
Tim went back to disassembling what looked like a PDA. There had to be something, anything, to get a message back home.
The massive, migraine-inducing banging on the front door distracted him.
“Punk, open up,” Someone called out, “I know you’re in there. You, and the two illegal entries you brought in with you. That’s against the rules.”
Tim felt a chill go up his back.
“And you know what happens when you go against the rules.”
There are rules about entering another ghost’s liar.
Walker has those rules, as he does all the others, memorized. A ghost’s lair is about the single most protected space in the Zone - legally speaking. Entry without permission is not only taboo, it’s illegal - punishable by a minimum of four eons in Walker’s prison. And that was a very, very light sentence for such a crime.
That was not to say that law breakers in the Zone could evade justice by simply hiding out in their lairs forever. Especially when the laws being broken are done within said Lair. There are, as with all things, rules to follow.
Walker started with requesting entry - loudly, with increasingly more forceful slams of his fists against the door - running down the clock until he could move on to more…direct methods. It would take a bit to get through all the steps that the rules required, but that was fine. The punk wasn’t going anywhere.
And neither were the illegal entrants with him.
-
There was a giant…man? Outside. A giant, glowing man-like individual with a skull (?) for a face and a dozen or so armed…green, glowing men-like things. They were dressed like a riot squad. They didn’t have legs.
If they got out of this alive, Tim was going to sit Danny down and they were going to have a very long, very detailed discussion about just where exactly he’d brought them. He hadn’t decided if that would be before or after he strangled the other man with his bare hands.
Tam was doing her level best to barricade the doors and windows to try and stave off the coming assault, but Tim wasn’t putting a lot of faith in it holding. They might be able to evade the - men? Entities? - entities by going deeper into the endless maze of this impossible building, but Tim wasn’t totally sure that they wouldn’t be looped right back around again to where they started.
Danny wasn’t any help, slurring and stumbling about, talking about a walker - did he need one? Was he more injured then they thought? - and otherwise swearing about rules.
Tim was desperately trying to find something - anything - that he might be able to use as a weapon to defend themselves, the haphazard system he’d setup to reach out for help had started glowing a few minutes ago. Considering the tendency for things to suddenly go concerning luminescent in this hellscape, Tim was half expecting for him and Tam to start lighting up too soon. God he hoped it wasn’t some kind of interdimensional radiation.
He was in the process of leveraging a leg off of the kitchen table - fuck it was something at least - when he heard a deep, reverberating rumble echoing out from behind him.
Spinning he found himself frozen in place as a creature disturbingly dog-shaped loomed in a doorway that had not been there moments before. Easily the size of a minivan - bigger even - blindly green with terrifyingly red eyes, fangs as long as Tim’s forearm as it lowered it’s massive head and snarled at him, so loud and deep Tim could feel it reverberate through his chest. Around him the random bits and bobs thrown about the kitchen rattled from the dangerous low warning.
It was settled.
He was going to kill Danny when this was all over.
-
There was a tall, red-headed woman arguing with the police crew cordoning off the scene of the wreckage.
Jason recognizes her. Jazz Nightingale. A social worker that had been making waves over the past couple of years. Pushing hard on reforms, aggressively protective of each and every kid that crossed her path, nearly arrested half a dozen times during stand offs with officials or parents posing more risk than rescue to the kids in her charge.
She was one of the good ones. Someone he’d had on his list to try and work with one of these days. Try and get something more sustainable setup for the Alley kids, someone other than a Crime Lord for them to reach out to for help.
He had half a second to wonder just what she was doing there at the smoldering ruins of the WE building before it clicked.
Nightingale had been Tim’s assistant Danny’s last name. Gordon had mentioned having to break the news to a sister - no other family to tell.
“You don’t understand, I need to search the debris.”
“Ma'am, I’m sorry, I understand how hard this must be for you, but we can’t allow you past the barrier, the rubble is extremely -”
“I’ll be fine, I need to find something. I know it’s there, Danny had it on him, if I could just -”
Jason had seen people try and go through rubble themselves in the wake of tragedy, desperately trying to find the person they lost. Trying to prove that they weren’t dead. That if you just looked hard enough that their loved one would be alive and well. Merely trapped out of reach and in need of rescue - he ignored the voice telling him that he was doing the same thing, he heard Tim, he knew he was alive.
Jazz Nightingale wasn’t looking for a body though. She wasn’t asking to search for her brother. She was asking for something else.
“Start looking.” He grunted to Kon, turning to start heading toward’s Nightingale’s direction. “I’ll be there in a second.”
Clone-boy didn’t need the encouragement. Jason wasn’t even sure he’d heard him. He’d already been diving towards the ruined building with that haunted, desperate look in his eye Jason remembers Tim having when his sorta-maybe-boyfriend had kicked it.
He pulled Nightingale away from the cop. She didn’t even seem to care that Red Hood had suddenly appeared at her elbow and inserted himself into the situation. Just gritted her teeth and pressed on.
“Look, I need to get in there. I need to find -”
“Something your brother had on him.” He interrupted. “You said.” He titled his head at her, eyes sharp on her every movement beneath the hood. “You don’t seem very upset that he’s dead.”
The red-head’s fists clenched hard at her side, heckles up immediately as she all but spat, “Danny’s not dead. He’s not. He and the people he were with aren’t. Dead.” She looked like she was ready to bolt and hurl herself into the wreckage just like Kon had. “If you just let me search, as long as he didn’t have it on him - and he shouldn’t have, he doesn’t even need it, he was supposed to drop it off - I can get to them, I know I can, I just need -”
“You know where they are?”
Nightingale pulled up sharply, hands clenched tight enough at her sides he half expected to start seeing blood drip down from between her fingers. She cast a nervous look towards the cop she’d been fighting with before, shuffled away to leave Jason to deal with her - undoubtedly hoping Red Hood could scare her off where the cop’s bland condolences couldn’t. After a short beat she took a breath, bending a little closer to him and lowering her voice as she said, “Yeah. I know…I know where they are. I can get to them, I just need a device my brother had with him.”
Jason glanced over at the smoldering, torn apart building. Kon darting in and out of view as he searched. Rubble the size of houses, cement and rebar and steal beams all a pile of ruin.
“And if this device you’re talking about was shot to shit by debris?” He had a thousand questions he wanted to ask her, but they could wait. Right now all that mattered was getting to Tim. Getting him out of wherever the hell he was trapped.
Nightingale looked weary at the question. “Then I’ll have to take the long way.” She scowled, “It better have made it. I really don’t want to have to go deal with that Fruitloop in Wisconsin.”
Dick had managed to wrangle Damian to bed, but hadn’t been able to make himself leave the room after his little brother son fell asleep.
He just sat on the bed, running a hand through Damian’s hair.
Damian hadn’t spoken at all. Not once.
Nor had he signed.
Dick had shot a text message to Bruce, alerting him to the new development of Selective Mutism, and he hadn’t been entirely surprised when there hadn’t been a response.
Dick himself was mostly running on autopilot.
Uncle Clark had killed Timmy.
Timmy’s corpse was somewhere under the lead-lined concrete of Wayne Enterprises, broken and out of reach.
For as big as the building was, Dick was under no illusions.
If they wanted to host a funeral, they would need to redefine their definition of a corpse.
Dick couldn’t find it in himself to find anymore tears to cry.
He knew Clark hadn’t meant to. Hadn’t wanted to.
He knew Clark was probably on the brink as it stood.
But he couldn’t bring himself to send a text message absolving him of his sins.
Dick, for all that he knew it wasn’t Clark’s fault, could not forgive him.
After all; however sorry his Uncle was did not change the fact that Timmy was dead.
The only concession Dick could give Clark was that he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that the older man had not wanted to do that. That he had absolutely been mind controlled.
So while he could not send a text saying he forgave him, Dick did the best thing he could think of at that time.
Dick don’t let me see you
He eyed the safe where he kept a stash of kryptonite bullets and a kryptonite dagger, courtesy of Jason.
Indeed, a text warning Clark away was the kindest action Dick could take towards the man.
Dick needed to spill someone’s blood, and if it wasn’t going to be the mind controller, it was going to be Clarks.
~~~~~~
Cass watched the red-head woman speak with her Little Brother.
She had been digging through the rubble on her own, searching for proof before Kon had arrived.
But Jason’s demeanor was not angry-sad-closed. It was hopeful-confused-cautious.
Cass narrowed her eyes and refocused her attention on the woman.
Her demeanor was honest-stubborn-frustrated.
So she wasn’t lying to her brother. Or, at least the woman did not think she was.
Jason called for Superboy.
Superboy did not hear him.
Superboy was terrified-desperate-hurt, and could not hear outside of his own head.
She slid over next to Superboy and captured his attention with a hand lightly wrapped around his ankle.
“Red Hood wants to tell you something,” she said, pointing at Jason.
Superboy’s head snapped towards Jason and he disappeared out of her hand, only to reappear next to Jason.
Cass let Jason tell Superboy the hopeful news and continued her search.
She paused.
There was…a thing.
It looked like a ray-gun, broken cleanly in half by a piece of bloodied concrete.
Cass fought past her instinctive despair and made herself search for any…other signs of a body.
There were none.
And when she angled her body just-so, so that the light from the spotlights were completely blocked out, the blood had glowing green flecks.
“Superboy, this is not Tim,” Cass started, feeling the burst of air as her little brother’s more-than-friend-but-not appeared at her side, “But this thing; what is it?”
Superboy’s shaking hands took the ray-gun from hers.
“I don’t know,” his voice was a wretched thing, cracking and hoarse, “I don’t know. I have to-”
“Take me too,” Cass interrupted, holding out her hand.
Superboy did not hesitate before he took it, and she felt his TTK protect her as he took them both to the Red Head at super speed.
The Red Head turned to look, and her face lit up at the sight of the gun.
“You found it,” she breathed, reaching forward to take it from Superboy. Then her face fell into…annoyance?
Her body language had switched to annoyance-disappointment-exasperation.
“Damn,” she hissed, and Cass saw a flash of fangs, “It’s beyond what I can fix. We have to go to Wisconsin.”
~~~~~~
“Okay, so just so I’m clear; the law here also states that ignorance of the law is no excuse?” Tim called through the door, buying time.
The cop-because that was definitely what it was-sighed in irritation.
“Correct, mortal; ignorance of the law is no excuse.”
Tim pushed Danny away from the door, the man letting out a whine as Tam redirected the poor concussed man back to the overly large canine.
The dog had been a surprise, to be sure, but Tam’s quick thinking had saved them. Namely, she’d bodily shoved Danny at the dog in shock. The dog, in return, had started wagging it’s tail.
They were running on the assumption that the dog belonged to Danny.
“Okay. Alright. So what are my rights? I’m the citizen of another dimension, are there extradition treaties in place?”
There was a pause as the cop actually had to consider it.
“If you don’t know, are there any lawyers I could speak with prior to speaking with you?”
The door visibly caved inward just a bit with the next hit.
“Ask the punk!”
“I can’t, he’s injured! Doesn’t that mean he’s entitled to medical treatment?”
There was another pause.
Tim braced himself for the door to receive another hit, but instead of that there was a flurry of voices in a language that hurt his ears.
“Mortal, how long has he been injured?”
Tim narrowed his eyes.
It could be the cop asking for judging whether or not a doctor was needed, or it could be a distraction.
But if it was a distraction, what could Tim realistically to about it?
And there was a chance that this dimension had a law where injured convicts had to be seen to by a doctor.
Worst case scenario, nothing changed.
“…Since we got here.”
“So he is weak. Good. It will be easier to apprehend him this time. I will now start stage four of gaining access, do not move.”
Tim frowned, looking around and slowly piecing together mentally all of the home-alone-esque traps he could build to keep the cop out.
“Not like I can go anywhere else,” he muttered, making his way back to the living room to find more electronics to gut.
He had to get out. He had to make sure Danny and Tam got out. He had to do it soon, as he knew Bruce better than almost anybody, and he knew that the man was probably about to do something monumentally stupid.
He had to hurry, he had to-
“What are you doing in my house?”
Tim screamed and dropped the TV remote he had started to dismantle, turning around to face the voice.
Floating before him was a white haired, green eyed girl about Damian’s age.
“Uh…” Tim tried to come up with a plausible reason for breaking and entering, but ultimately came up with “Hiding from the police.”
The girl just nodded sagely.
“Understandable; Walker’s an asshole. Why’s Danny fucked up?”
Oh thank god she knew who Danny was.
“He took some concrete to the head,” Tim winced, deliberately not thinking about the statistics regarding permanent brain injury, “And we don’t have the supplies to treat him here, but the cop-Walker-”
The floating girl grinned maniacally.
“Hey, wanna learn how we treat authority in the Infinite Realms?”
Tim suddenly did not want to know.
~~~~~~
Tam screamed with delight, forcing her co-secretary to stay on the back of the overly large dog as it raced them towards a doctor or something apparently.
Tim was in the front, because of course he would insist on that seat, and the girl had stayed behind to fight to police.
From what Tam could see as they left, she was winning.
The dimension made no sense.
It was full of doors and paths and islands, people and creatures she had only heard of in myths, and the more she stared into the green void the more she could feel it staring back.
But it wasn’t scary.
No, it was laughing with her.
It welcomed her.
She felt something in her welcome it back.
And something changed.
Not noticeably, but enough that she knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that she had a place in this strange dimension, that she would always be destined for it one way or another.
She barely noticed the temperature start to get colder, and only started actively paying attention once a big fat snowflake got her right in the eyeball.
Ah, the frozen island that the other girl had been talking about. It was…snowy. Full of ice. Had some weird buildings. People wandering around…
Wandering…
“Are those Yetis?” Tam gasped, reaching forward to shake Tim.
Tim stared down at the Yetis in question, looking…nervous.
“…Tim, you’ve never tried to start shit with Yetis, right?”
Tim didn’t answer.
“Tim!”
None of the bats know whats going on as Cass, Kon and Jason all stare unamused at a weird looking van or what… Jazz calls a car. Honestly it looks like a engineering mess if they thought about it too much.
Jazz opened one of the back doors simply motioning for them to come in. When none of the 3 moved to go in she sighed, “Look, do you want to join me or..?”
Jasons skeptical on what’s going on but honestly- he’ll take the chance at finding Tim… or he’ll get kidnapped trying. Cass seems to have a similar mindset as they enter the back seat.
After the two enter Jazz moves away from the door and turns to Kon, “you can sit in the front if you want.”
He held up a hand, “No need, where are we going exactly?”
Jazz squinted at Superboy before her face lit up in realisation, “I’ll pull up the directions on my phone. We have rope in the back if that’ll make it easier to carry the car.”
Of course she has rope in the back of the car, not needed but of course she does. “No need, I just need the directions. It’s faster this way.”
And it probably would be, Jason however was getting mildly impatient. Sure he could be reasonable and be able to wait for a minute longer without it setting them back on whatever schedule this was but he really just wants to get Tim back before all hell breaks loose.
Right as he was about to say something Jazz handed her phone over to Kon, her eyebrows furrowed slightly as she moved to the front, “Please, try not to drop us. This cars sturdy but we could still hit the roof easily.”
And without any more explanation to the boy, she closed the front door.
“I agree with her, don’t drop us.” Jason more demanded before shutting the door.
A slight click of the doors locks could be heard as everyone got ready for what was an impromptu flight. All the while Jazz seemed a lot less weirded out by this whole encounter.
Maybe the bats should be the ones weirded out by her nonchalance. It’s fine. They can ask her questions now on the way there.
EVERYBODY SHOULD READ THIS!!!!!!!!! REBLOG…IT CAN SAVE A LIFE OR TWO!!! WARNING: Some knew about the red light on cars, but not Dialing 112. An UNMARKED police car pulled up behind her and put his lights on. Lauren’s parents have always told her to never pull over for an unmarked car on the side of the road, but rather to wait until they get to a gas station, etc.
Lauren had actually listened to her parents advice, and promptly called, 112 on her cell phone to tell the police dispatcher that she would not pull over right away. She proceeded to tell the dispatcher that there was an unmarked police car with a flashing red light on his rooftop behind her. The dispatcher checked to see if there were police cars where she was and there weren’t, and he told her to keep driving, remain calm and that he had back up already on the way.
Ten minutes later 4 cop cars surrounded her and the unmarked car behind her. One policeman went to her side and the others surrounded the car behind. They pulled the guy from the car and tackled him to the ground. The man was a convicted rapist and wanted for other crimes. I never knew about the 112 Cell Phone feature. I tried it on my AT&T phone & it said, “Dialing Emergency Number.” Especially for a woman alone in a car, you should not pull over for an unmarked car. Apparently police have to respect your right to keep going on to a safe place.
*Speaking to a service representative at Bell Mobility confirmed that 112 was a direct link to State trooper info. So, now it’s your turn to let your friends know about “Dialing, 112”
You may want to send this to every Man, Woman & Youngster you know; it may well save a life.
This applies to ALL 50 states PLEASE PASS ALONG TO FRIENDS AND FAMILY, IT CAN SAVE A LIFE….
Works in Canada too guys, just tried it!
Reblogging for anyone of the feminine preference that follow me. (Or for general knowledge.)
112 is actually a universal emergency number, it works all over the world. So if you don’t know the specific regional emergency number (like 911) just dial 112 and you will get help.
“oh they’re not taking away chronological dashboard, well everything’s okay then” they also said in the post they’re making reblogs collapsed (like comments on twitter) so you won’t see the full conversation in a post. they also won’t get rid of tumblr live despite it being an annoying and cancerous data-miner that isn’t legal in much of the world. they won’t even let you opt out of tumblr live for more than seven days. they implemented a terrible photo viewer that mimics tiktok and makes it so you can’t zoom in on images. they took away the ability to view prev tags. they’re making it so you have to sign in with your email to view almost any thing on tumblr. they’ve already made it so you have to sign in to send asks, even on anon. they’re slowly phasing out custom blog themes.
the things that make tumblr at all usable and favored by us– the older web blog features, the anonymity– that is still being taken away. it HAS been being taken away for some time now. i am urging you people to reveiwbomb the tumblr app. force them to acknowledge that users do not like these changes.
Good news! You can let Tumblr Staff know what you think about every version of Tumblr in a way that they might listen to! Here is a long survey from a blog associated with Staff and here is a short survey from the same blog. The blog, although full of surveys, does not allow reblogs. However, I took the long survey and later they improved one thing I complained about, so there is a chance more people complaining about changes could halt their enshittification. I cannot retake the surveys, so I must ask you all to send feedback where I cannot.
Pasting these links all at the end too for ease of access:
How many words do you have published on ao3 but it’s for the writers specifically. I saw this poll but “0” was one of the options and it was absolutely dominating so I want to see results without it.
RavenTao, or just Raven if you prefer. female, 28 I'm mostly an angst fanfiction writer, on AO3 by the same name. About about this blog? Uh, no theme, it's just whatever fandom I get sucked into for a while. It will definitely fluxuate. there is no rhyme or reason here.
