Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Woah. You look like shit."

Granted, that’s probably not the first thing Danny should be saying to the guy that just bit the curb, but in his defense; he’s not running on 100% right now either.

The man — tall, towering, and broader than Danny is tall — whips around on his heel, black frayed cape flaring out impressively. Danny would've whistled in appreciation, but he takes the time instead to wipe the back of his hand across his mouth, smearing the blood running from his nose across his cheek.

"Sorry." He blinks widely, not even flinching as the man with the horns zeroes in on him. "That was rude of me. I have a really bad brain-to-mouth filter; Sam says it's what always gets me into trouble."

And she's not wrong either, per se. His smart mouth is what landed him in this situation — with blood blossom extract running through his veins, and cannibalizing the ectoplasm in his bloodstream. Thanks Vlad.

The man grunts at him; a short, curt "hm" that shouldn't make Danny smile, but it does because he's somewhat delirious and poisoned. The man keeps some kind of distance, sinking towards the shadows of Gotham's alleyway like he dares to melt right into it.

If it's supposed to scare Danny, it doesn't work. Danny's never been afraid of the dark; quite the opposite, actually. It’s hard to be afraid of the thing you always hide in. He blinks slowly at the mass of shadows.

"You look hurt." The shadows say, the barely-there silhouette blurring around the edges. Danny squints, and licks his lips to get the blood dripping down his chin off. Ugh, he hates the taste of blood.

"I am." He says matter-of-factly, what’s the point in denying the obvious? "My godfather poisoned me. M'dying." The agony of the blood blossom eating him alive from the inside out looped back around to numbing a while ago, turning him into a half-conscious zombie as a result. 

"Hey," Danny stumbles forward towards the man, a bloodied hand reaching out to him. "You— you're a hero, right?” He was dressed in dark colors and was wearing a weird costume. Which, actually, wasn't any guarantee of him being a hero, considering the people Danny knows. But it's not like he could kill him any faster than Danny was currently dying. “You're not attacking me; which is more than I can say for most people I've met." And he said he looked hurt — that was like, some semblance of concern, right? 

Maybe not the best bar to judge someone at, but Danny’s head is full of cotton and gauze, and some of the first things he ever taught himself as a kid was to never be afraid of the dark. The man before him was dripping in it, bleeding into it like he ought to make it home. That— that had to mean something, right? 

The man makes no change in expression, but Danny realizes blearily that he wouldn’t be able to tell if he had anyways — hard to tell with the shadows on his face. He stays still long enough for Danny to latch onto the cape — stretchy, but strangely soft under his wet and red fingers.

He looks up into the whites of the man's eyes. "Can you help me? I don't— I don't wanna die." Again. He doesn't wanna die again. He blinks slow and lizard-like. "I mean— I'll probably get to see mom and dad again, but I told them I'd at least try and make it to adulthood."

There's a clatter down the street, and Danny's ghost sense chills up his spine and leaves a bitter, ashy taste in his mouth. He immediately knows who it belongs to even before the deceptively gentle, saccharine; "Daniel?" echoes down the way.

"Daniel? Quit your games, badger, Gotham is dangerous for children."

Icy hot panic shoots from his head to his toes, his heart jumpstarting into the fifth gear. In his rush of fear, Danny’s vision swims nauseatingly fast. 

His eyes widen, his mouth pulls back, and blood spills against his tongue. "Please." Danny rasps, desperate. He grabs onto the shadow's cape with both hands. "Please. He's going to kill me. PLEASE—"

"Daniel? Is that you?"

His lips part, dragging in air to plead with the darkness again. He doesn't need to, the whites of the man’s eyes narrow. The cape whirls around him before Danny can blink; and swaddled in shadows, the Night lifts him up, and steals him away.

The world blurs into a mess of oil smears as Danny's stolen away into Gotham's smog-smudged skies and sickly city lights. He clings onto the shadow of a man he met like a lifeline. He is a lifeline for all he cares, as they get further and further away from Vlad. The taste of ash and cinders sitting thick in his throat grows fainter and fainter. 

Half his face is smudged into the man's body armor, and Danny's only partly aware of the blood he's smearing onto the... fabric? The material — on his shoulder. He's got half a mind to apologize. He doesn't.

Instead, through the loud whistling of the wind, Danny mutters a string of slurry, delirious "thank you's" on a repetitive loop. He's not even sure if he can be heard, but the terror in his heart turns into pained relief anyways.

Flying always makes him feel better — the chill, the pressure, the weightlessness — and it feels even better now, with the heat of the blossoms and his own body desperately fighting against the infection being forcibly cooled. For a feverish moment, he can forget that Vlad stuck blood blossoms into his veins. He sighs out, eyes closing, and almost regrets it when blood coats his teeth.

His reprieve is broken a cruel, few moments later when they land on a rooftop with a sharp — at least to him — drop. His stomach jumps, and coils inwards in revenge. The hand splaying against his back shakes him sharply. 

"Hey," The shadows whisper. Danny blinks his eyes sluggishly open, and suppresses a startled flinch when he meets the stark blue gaze of the man’s eyes. "Keep your eyes open."

"Sorry." He murmurs, nose scrunching up as nausea roils unpleasantly in his gut. He licks his lips again, his blood is beginning to dry, and it feels like scratchy paint sticking onto his skin. It's uncomfortable. "Th’ wind f'lt nice."

The man begins running across the rooftop, the jostling movement only makes Danny feel worse. But the shadows said to keep his eyes open, and Danny figures that's a pretty smart idea considering his predicament. But he's going to vomit if he keeps looking at the world spinning around him…

He doesn’t really wanna see what his vomit looks like — he’s afraid it’ll come up blood, and he doesn’t want to get it all over the shadow man either. 

He makes a mental compromise and buries his face into the crook of the man's neck, clawing at his shoulders to try and keep purchase. He latches his fingers onto the cape and despite his trembling arms, refuses to let go. 

Danny only turns his head when there's a sharp pain in his lungs. He presses his forehead into the man’s shoulder and coughs blood over his pauldron.... oops. "Sorry," he repeats, voice hoarse, "'m gettin' blood on you..."

"Hn. It'll come off." He's told, and Danny blinks lazily again, nodding curtly. The man's voice sounds nice, as raspy and soft as it is. But before he can tell him that, they're in the air again, the wind whistling in his ears.

Danny relishes in it, but keeps the thought in the back of his mind. Up until they land again, and as another wave of sickly nausea and pins-needles pain washes over him like the tide, he blurts out; "I like y'voice."

...He doesn't get a response back.

Danny drifts in and out of consciousness, with the Night jolting him awake every so often with a sharp, quiet reminder to keep with him. Danny doesn't bother deigning a real verbal response to that beyond wordless grumbles and mumbles. A few times he stops to cough up his lungs — and for a worrying moment after a particularly sharp landing, gags on air, his stomach lurching angrily. Nothing comes out, and Danny is more embarrassed and exhausted than he is anything else. He wants to vomit, but he's terrified of what might come out if he does.

The man picks up greater speed after that.

Eventually they leave the roof to the stars — as hidden as they are amongst the smogly clouds — and drop down into an even darker alleyway than the one Danny found the horned man in. They land on something with a metal thunk, and the man slides them off onto the ground.

There's a gentle hissing sound, and Danny opens his eyes just as the man places him in a leather seat and straps him in. "Wh're w'goin?" He asks, lolling his head to the side to peer up tiredly.

"Somewhere I can help you."

Danny already knows that. The man wouldn’t have listened to Danny’s hysterical pleading and gotten him away from Vlad otherwise. But, hearing it being said aloud only confirms it in his cotton-filled mind, and something about hearing it said aloud makes Danny’s eyes sting with tears. They bead up on his lashes, threatening to pool over his face and drip down his bloodied cheeks. 

With it comes a lump accustomed to crying, one that Danny forces himself to swallow down silently with a mouthful of iron. His lips wobble, and he presses them together before trying to manage a smile. It feels pathetic, but oh does he hope.   

Just as it was in the air, the drive to wherever they're going is a mess of orange-streetlight smeared blurs and rapid-passing buildings. Danny keeps his head rested against the door, forehead pressing against the cold window, and breathing slowly through his mouth.

From his unfocused peripherals, the man — of which with the help of the passing lights, Danny finally realizes is dressed as... some kind of bat? Honestly, not the weirdest thing he's ever seen — routinely keeps glancing over at him. Danny’s never seen someone grip a steering wheel so tightly. 

"Do you know what your godfather poisoned you with?" The man eventually asks, his voice still as soft and raspy as it was earlier, if not a little firmer.

It takes Danny a moment to realize he spoke at all. His brain sluggishly catching up to his ears. "Hrm?" He blinks, lifting his head. Danny regrets it immediately, his vision tilts dangerously on its axis and muddies. He rests his head again. "Oh. Yeh. A flow'r called blood bloss'm."

They pass a streetlight, shining just bright enough that Danny sees the Bat-Man's lips purse. Danny's mouth opens, but he makes no sound, his mind trying to find the words he's looking for. "I'z- it's extinct."

The man snaps his head to look at him, so fast that Danny’s feverish mind forces a harsh, huff laugh out of his lungs. He regrets it quickly; a sharp stab of pain jabs a needle into his side, turning the laugh into a harsh coughing fit instead. Regardless, he manages to put it on hold long enough to weakly raise his hands and waggle his fingers, deliriously attempting a lousy pair of jazz hands. Danny slurs; "Shcience."

The coughing fit overtakes him then, and without the adrenaline of flying and running away from Vlad to distract him, the ache and burn of consistently coughing returns. Searing him down to the tissue, threatening to leave him with everlasting scars. 

Gritting his teeth, Danny unsuccessfully bites back the low, pained whimper leaking through his throat, and turns to curl up into the corner of his seat. His arms box over his head, pressing down against his ears and temples as if that will make him hurt less. Tears spring into his eyes, and he tries to use the feeling of breathing to distract himself from the sting.

If he's still breathing, everything will be okay.

Wherever they're going, he hopes they get there fast.

("You're a hero, right?" The boy asks, but the way he says it makes it sound like he was only asking as a formality. That of course Bruce was a hero, it was obvious.)

(He didn't know how to tell him that no, he wasn't. And then he wasn’t able to.)

Bruce's hands would be shaking if it weren't for the knuckle-white grip on the car's steering wheel. Every time he tries to focus on the road in front of him, his eyes are drawn back towards the boy coiled in a ball in the passenger seat.

He can't tell if it's rage or fear that's making his arms tremble.

The boy — Daniel, if the voice of his godfather was to be believed — is small. Bruce could wrap his thumb and forefinger around his wrist, and he's positive they would touch. A waifish, slip of a thing, and Bruce thought he'd been small as a child. His clothes — simple, unremarkable; a hoodie that hangs off his shoulders and a band shirt he doesn't recognize — look too big on him, and Bruce wonders if Daniel even knows he's shivering. 

(He was hard pressed to say no, he didn’t. From the moment Daniel had stopped him in the alleyway to now, he looked as if part of him was somewhere far, far away. It was either a miracle, or a testament to the boy’s sheer willpower, that he’d even been able to stay cognizant long enough to ask him for help. Especially considering his immediate deterioration and rapid onset hysteria at the mere sound of his godfather’s voice.) 

This was not how Bruce thought his night would be going — he was following a lead on Falcone and his people. Now he was rushing back to the cave with a boy who couldn't be any older than fifteen; a boy who was dying of poison because of his godfather.

Hurt and fury bubbles beneath his ribs.

(Who does this to a kid?)

He glances at Daniel again. Messy, sweat-slicked black hair clings to his forehead, and gathers around his ears. It looks like it hasn't been cut in months. He's unnaturally pale, and Bruce wasn’t sure if his paleness is from the poison, or his natural color. It highlights the dark circles beneath glassy blue eyes, peering unfocused and teary out from lidded eyes.

The blood dripping off his chin is damning and stark against his skin, and almost black where it gathers the thickest. Some of it half-dried against his cheek, but most is a horrifying dark red and wet, staining down his throat and into his shirt. Every time the boy coughs, Bruce fears that blood will spill from his mouth next.

He breathes in shakily, and swerves around a left corner. The boy jerks, unable to catch himself, and begins veering to the side towards him. Bruce throws his arm out to catch him, and pins him to the seat. Daniel grunts quietly, and sluggishly curls a hand around the door handle to pull himself back.

Guilt turns the back of Bruce's neck red. That, and embarrassment. "...Apologies." He murmurs, retracting his hand quickly. Daniel blinks slowly, Bruce nervously keeps an eye on the unsteady rise and fall of his chest.

He's pulled away from his staring when, much to his surprise, the boy smiles. It's weak, barely even there, and trembling like the rest of him, but glazed in fondness — or perhaps, more accurately, drowned in nostalgia. "S'ok'y." Daniel mumbles, blood sticking to his mouth as he slumps back into the corner. "M'dad drove the same way."

...There were a lot of questions there. But the hurting, discomforting squeeze of Bruce's heart turns his tongue to lead. His throat swells shut, grows a cancerous lump, and keeps his lungs thick. "..Hh."

(What does he say to that?)

A silence, one that is ugly and unsure, falls over them again for a few minutes more. Bruce should keep the boy talking — it's confirmation that Daniel was still alive; still breathing, Bruce hasn't failed, yet — and yet, he can't think of a single thing to say.

They're coming close up on the cemetery. Bruce turns down the road leading to it. His eyes flick to Daniel again. The boy is staring at him, the sickly yellow streetlights catching shadows on his face, leaving a glow lingering in his eyes.

(In his lazy eye, his mind tricks him into seeing a corpse. Bruce suppresses a flinch, and looks over again.)

(Daniel is still breathing. Good. Good. Good.)

He breathes in shakily, something dark and angry rearing its head once again. Who does this? Who does this? He grits his teeth, biting back the scowl pulling on his face.

("You're a hero, right?")

(No, but for now he can pretend to be.)

They end up in a tunnel somewhere. Danny's not quite sure where, but the road gets bumpy and the uncomfortable, rough jostling forces a wet groan out from his lungs. His eyes pound in their sockets, daring to pop out from where they sit as the discomfort ricochets around his temples and circles back around to the back of his head.

His head lolls, and Danny shoves it back against the seat with a thud, ignoring the dull pain it rings through his skull. "’re w'there yet?" He asks, blood spilling into his mouth that he tiredly tries to spit out. He's done with drinking it instead.

The numbness in his bones that he'd been so graciously left with was starting to fade now. Returning back to a burning, rhythmic soreness spreading through his limbs. It clusters up around his joints, pins and needles pricking through his fingers and down his spine, while a low, pounding, throbbing ache crawls through his sinew and muscle in a  malicious attempt to sever and devour him whole. There was no way to describe it beyond feeling like something was, little by little, chewing him up, chipping him off, and chiseling him out.  

Bat-man guy grunts shortly, shifts the gearshift into a new position, and glances over to him for the nth time that night. "Almost."

Almost. Almost was... good? Probably. Hopefully. Danny doesn't give a response, just nods mutely.

The car comes to a stop some minutes later, parked in a wide open space, with LED lights spread erratically through the floor.

Bat-Man barely has the car at a rolling stop before he forces it to park, not even waiting for the recoil to stop before  he's flying out of his seat. If Danny didn't know better, he'd have thought the man had phased right through the metal. That's not what happened though, and he watches the guy zip around the front of the car to the passenger side.

The door jerks open in moments, and despite knowing it was going to happen, Danny still jolts involuntarily, an incoherent squeak peeping through his teeth at an embarrassing pitch. He sits, uncomprehending and lame, as Bat-Man reaches over him and unbuckles the car seat, before wrapping his arms around him and pulling him out of the car.

The lights are painfully bright in Danny's eyes as Bat-Man pulls him out, and he whines involuntarily, tilting his face inward to hide it against the armor-weave.

"—sleep at a reasonable— dear god. What on Earth happened?"

Oh, forget the lights. Danny turns his head and braces against the brightness — and his tilting, whorling sight — to see who else was here. That was a whole British accent he heard, and he spots an older man with a cane standing near one of the tables.

"His godfather poisoned him." Bat-Man growls. Danny nods heavily, immediately regretting it when his vision pounds. "I need my antidote kit. Alfred, I need you to stay by him; make sure he doesn't start choking if he throws up."

The older man -- Alfred? Scoffs, and when Bat-Man passes by he follows after him. "As if you need to ask me. But where, exactly, do you plan on putting him?"

Without answering, Bat-Man shifts Danny until he's being held in one arm, and then approaches a metal table covered in nuts, bolts, and half-finished gadgets and gizmos. He doesn’t even waste a breath, and uses his free arm to shove it all off the table with a crashing, clattering, banging clang.

Then he delicately lays Danny down.

The metal is freezing, sinking through the fabric of his jacket and shirt, and Danny turns his head to watch Bat-Man. He catches a glimpse at Alfred's expression in the process, and barks a wet, harsh laugh at the dirty look he’s burning into Bat-Man’s back. 

Bat-Man's hands still from where they're tilting him onto his side, and Danny manages to cover his mouth with his hand to stifle his puddling giggles. "Sorry." He says, half-dried and sticky blood clinging to his palm as he tries to catch his breath. "Th'look on ‘is face w’s funny."

The Alfred man sends another look at the Bat-Man when he glances at him; one eyebrow arched judgmentally, before stepping over as Bat-Man gets Danny full on his side. Then he disappears down somewhere, heavy, booted footsteps echoing through the room. 

"I hope he knows that he'll be the one picking all of this up when we're done, because I will certainly not." Alfred says stiffly, shooting another dirty look to the ground where all the junk was pushed onto, before procuring a pristine handkerchief out of thin air. One of those nice looking ones, that are probably made of, like, butterfly silk.

Danny almost smiles, but Alfred starts reaching for his face, and his smile is forgotten in lieu of a flinch instead. Vlad never hit him in the months Danny’s lived with him — not yet, at least. Danny thinks that if he stayed any longer he would have eventually — but he developed a love of grabbing his jaw bruisingly tight, and forcing him to look at him whenever he could. There's a pause, before Alfred's hand glides over his cheek. Despite the callous padding on his palm, his touch is resoundingly gentle.

He cups Danny's jaw, featherlight and not the least bit forceful, and starts wiping the blood from his face.

...Oh.

Danny blinks uncomprehendingly up at him. He hasn't felt an actual affectionate touch in months . Vlad tried to be whenever he wasn’t grabbing him, but every touch to Danny's person felt oily. Danny wanted to peel his skin back and scrub it raw every time he pulled away.

So in comparison, this was like warm sunlight on his face, and he hums low and pleasantly. "Tha'feels nice." He mumbles, relaxing unconsciously.

"I would hope so, young man." Alfred-guy says, folding his already blood-stained handkerchief in half for a cleaner square and moving to clean the blood from his throat. "All this blood can’t feel all that pleasant."

No, no, Danny thinks sluggishly, not that part.

"May I ask for a name?" Alfred asks before Danny can correct him. "It's not every night that the young master brings someone back with him."

Danny stares. "Danny." He says, "Mnh... jus’ Danny. M'godfath'r calls me Daniel, an' he poison’ me." 

Alfred nods, the skin around his eyes tightening almost imperceptibly, and pulls his handkerchief away. It was stained right through with blood, dripping out of the fabric and smearing along Alfred’s palm. Danny has enough sense to cringe with shame. That probably won't come out, and he kinda wishes he’d stopped the man from doing it in the first place. "I wish we were meeting in better circumstances, Mister Danny.” Alfred says calmly, folding the handkerchief delicately. “It's a pleasure to meet you."

His good midwestern manners kicks in, and Danny nods curtly. His head spins vengefully for it. "Y'too, sir."

Bat-Man reappears in that moment, clearing off a space on the table across from them with a kit of various bottles and vials and other doodads that Danny's too incoherent to recognize.

He watches him yank off the vambraces wrapped around his arms, and then the gloves on both his hands. Alfred brushes the hair off his forehead, gathering Danny's attention again.

"If you don't mind an old man’s pondering, but, how did you meet?" He asks, Bat-Man glances over his shoulder at them both, but says nothing. There's a clattering of bottles before he bounds off again down a tunnel. Danny takes that as his sign to explain instead.

"All'y." He slurs, shifting when the pressure on his shoulder grows too uncomfortable. His stomach flips, and he freezes in place to breathe in slow. He swallows blood dripping from his nostrils into his mouth when the nausea passes. "Mm— I w'z runnin' from Vlad, an' I saw him in one 'f the alleyways."

Alfred raises a brow, his expression perfectly placid. “And you approached him?” The question was left unsaid, but certainly not unheard, and even Danny’s fog-gauzed mind can pick up on the ‘that was dangerous’ in Alfred’s tone. He’s heard it plenty of times from Jazz before.

…His heart hurts, and despite the ache Danny’s face still flushes with embarrassment. He wasn’t expecting to be chided. “S’not like he coul’b’ an’more dangerous than Vl’d.” Worst case scenario, Danny would’ve died in the alleyway faster than he would have under Vlad’s thumb.

Bat-Man reappears again then with more things, and starts messing around with his collection of bottles and tubes and whatever — probably to fix an antidote.

...Would he even be able to make one? Fuck, Danny hadn't thought of that. Blood Blossoms interact with him differently, his physiology was the only reason the poison even worked at all.

He forcibly keeps his breathing even, and zeroes in on Alfred. "I thou' he was a hero.” He mutters, feeling heat rise up to his ears. “N' I was right, he is."

Pain suddenly claws up his spine and burrows into the bottom of his skull, and Danny breathes in sharp. Blood bubbles up against his tongue, and he chokes. "He's— mine, at least." Even if all he does is get him away from Vlad. 

Nausea hits Danny like a steamboat. Or maybe a train. Or one of Skulker's punches to the gut — either way, one moment he's laying on his side, half-conscious and trying to watch the Bat-Man putter about his little detox station as Alfred diligently kept Danny's sweat-soaked forehead dry and his face free of blood. Then the next, a sensation he can only describe as his stomach trying to wring itself inside out claws desperately through his gut.

In the way only the feeling of being about to vomit can bring, Danny has a moment of clarity, and he shoots up from the table as the back of his throat hollows open and he gags wordlessly. "Bucket." He retches, holding himself up on violently shaking arms as his vision begins to swim again. "B'cket, I n'd a buck't."

The man, Alfred, lurches off to the side, and Danny's not quite sure where but he manages to produce a tin bucket out from thin air. just in time for Danny to snag it from his hands and empty out the contents of his stomach into it.

(There was hardly anything in it but his own bile and what little food he'd eaten today — he hasn't had an appetite since he found his family dead in their beds, silent and peaceful as if all they'd done was go to sleep.)

(He knows not every death is created equal, some are simply clumsy, unremarkable. But still, it just felt fucking cruel—)

When he's done, the little smoothie from hell he left behind is tinged red, and there's the distinct taste of iron on his tongue. It coats the back of his throat, and for a moment, Danny simply stares uncomprehendingly at it.

"Oh, " he mumbles, feeling only a little better as his nausea's hotflashing fades and takes with it what little clarity he had left. His grip weakens, and the bucket loosens in his grasp. "Tha's no good."

From the corner of his blurring eye, the Bat-Man stops what he's doing to turn and look at him. Danny sees the wide, shock-blue color of his eyes; they look alarmed.

It's okay, Danny thinks, instinctively trying to reassure. Blood-and-spit still coats his bottom lip, as cotton returns to blanket over his brain. His mouth refuses to move however, his jaw feeling too heavy to allow him to make a sound. Alfred takes the bucket from his hands, and only then does Danny realize his soft swaying.

He and the Bat-Man stare at each other, something akin to fear in the other man's eyes, before he breaks the prolonged eye contact and returns to his antidote-making with a renewed vigor.

Alfred comes back into view, and with a kind hand, pushes Danny to slowly lay back down on his side. Danny does so silently, his arms trembling terribly. Alfred's hand cups his cheek, protecting his head as Danny becomes more vertical, and Danny can't help but tilt his nose inwards and press into the meat of his palm.

His mind is all over the place, low rumbling pain is beginning to set back in again, but Alfred's hand is warm and Danny so desperately needs the gentle touch. It's been so, so long.

Despite making all of his own inventions, Vlad's hands were too soft, too well-maintained, and every saccharine hand he ever laid on Danny was too tight, too possessive, too much. Too thick; syrupy. it felt like a leash threatening to wrap around his throat and chain him to the floor. Danny’s only ever wanted to carve his own skin out from his body whenever Vlad tried to touch him.

Alfred's hands were rough and calloused like his parents' were; toughened from years of hard work and handling machinery. He noticed it before when he was cleaning the blood from his face, but he was noticing it again now, and it was like sleep to the insomnic. Or like a balm to the heartburn.

It's okay, Danny thinks deliriously, the reassurance he wanted to give the Bat-Man earlier washing over him instead. It's okay, he breathes carefully, it's going to be okay. I'm going to be okay.

When he’s finally laying fully back down, the hand on his cheek begins to pull away. The brief respite it gave to his muffled mind immediately combusts, his skin growing cold as his irrational peace crashes and burns at his feet.

His eyes — since when had they been shut? — shoot open. 

No, no , no, wait, this is wrong.

An agonized whine slips past him, paining and hurting, terrified, and he latches out and leeches his hands around Alfred's wrist. "Don’t go.” Danny rasps, voice breaking in two. “Pl’se, ple’se, please. Don’t leave me. Pl’se don’ leave me.”

He claws at Alfred’s sleeve, trying to pull him closer with a low cry. Tears bubble and bleed onto his eyelashes, his core hums, and he can feel the ectoplasm beneath his skin begin to buzz. No, no, no, he was doing so good. He was doing so, so good.

Like sharks smelling blood in the water, Danny can practically feel the blood blossom in his veins thicken. Behind his eyes, his mind conjures the image of a wolf lunging at an injured rabbit, and just as its glistening maw snaps down on the animal’s neck, agony ricochets through his lungs.

A sob beats out of his chest, and flowering pain burns through him like wildfire. Clawing maliciously, hungrily, through his nerves and sinew and bone, down to the keratin of his fingernails, and swallowing his head whole. Blood spills down his nose, and Danny cracks out another sob.

“Please!” He cries. He chokes on his lungs, and coughs violent and wet. Iron coats his tongue, and begins dripping into his mouth. Panic fills his head with static, the ectoplasm buzzes louder in his ears. Danny gags on blood.

He manages to latch his fingers onto Alfred’s shirt, scrabbling for the fabric even as the man swoops forward once again and wraps his arms around him. Danny’s propped up, and he pushes his face into the man’s collarbone with hysteric tears burning down his face.

“Don’— don’ leave me. Pl’ase, ple’se, pl’se.” He babbles, voice thickened in grief. Through his tears and blurring lashes, he peers up at Alfred, and catches the stern tightening around his eyes. Terror spins his head this way and that, and Danny’s grip tightens. No, no , no, he’s sorry, he’s sorry. He’ll be good.

More blood fills his mouth, and Danny’s everything is alight in stabbing, terrible agony as the blood blossom toxin devours him whole in renewed fervor. His fear feeds the ectoplasm, and in turn feeds the blood blossom. With another sob, blood spills down his chin and stains down his throat. He chokes, and tries throwing his head back — he’s going— he’s going to get blood on him.

Alfred’s hand stops him, “None of that, Mister Danny.” He orders, sounding deceptively calm as he pushes Danny back against his shoulder. Danny tries to fight against it, but his strength has all but been consumed by the poison, and so he acquiesces with a high whine.  “We're not going anywhere.”

Fingers find their way through his hair in an attempt to soothe; it does nothing to stop his snowballing terror, but it distracts Danny from the second bubble of blood pooling up his throat. “M’sorry.” He gurgles. Blood sputters from his lips, and joins the rest dribbling down his chin.

His tears block out his vision. “M’sorry, m’sorry, m’sorry, m’sorry, m’sorry.”

He should’ve— he should’ve known better than to think he could find a way out of this. Blood blossom is blood blossom, and it’s been extinct in the living realm for centuries. But he just- he just wanted to get away, he wanted to hope. But they're not going to find him a cure, he’s going to die here and the blossom will destroy his core and he’ll cease to exist forever.

Another sob tears out from him, leaving its claw marks in his lungs as it verges on the edge of a shriek. “I’m sorry!” Danny wails, creating divots into Alfred’s shirt. “I don’ wanna go, please, I don’ wanna go. I can b’ good, I prom'z'.”

Alfred’s grip on him tightens, and Danny barely hears the low growl vibrating out of his throat. “Bruce.”

“ I’m almost done.”

He shouldn’t have bothered these people with his problems, he should’ve just— just found an alleyway to die in. Somewhere away from everyone else— but he didn’t, he had to be fucking hopeful. And now he was going to die here in front of people who didn’t deserve to watch—

“I’ve got it.”

Danny’s vision dots and blacks as Alfred suddenly moves him, and his hands scrabble for him as he starts to pull away. “No no no—” He slurs, more blood spitting from his lips. Don’t leave him alone, please.

The Bat-Man appears to take him instead, a vortex mass of black that sweeps an arm behind his back and pulls him back close. Danny’s fingers, shaking, weak, aching, latch desperately onto what of his cape he can reach.  “Don’ wanna die.” He cries, burrowing into Bat-Man’s shoulder. He’s scared, he’s so scared.

A new hand cradles the back of his neck, and Bat-Man’s voice rumbles low like an incoming storm. “You’re not going to.”

There’s a prick in Danny’s arm, cutting through the dying haze of his mind. He nearly misses it, it’s nearly drowned out by the prickling, burning pain consuming him, but he feels it for a brief, singular moment.

Relief sludges through him seconds after, dousing water over his bones and tissue and chasing away the blossom’s ravenous hunger. It spreads through his arm; down to his fingers and up to his shoulder, following along his collarbone and out to weave through his ribs and lungs and heart.

He did it. Danny thinks deliriously, feeling his lungs and sinew attempting to stitch themselves back together as the injection stifles the poison and spreads down to his legs. He barks out a laugh — it hurts, and he regrets it within seconds, but not enough as he probably should. He did it, he did it, he did it.

The Bat-Man carefully pulls the syringe out, and only now does Danny register the old-familiar sting of needle piercing skin. And when it’s placed at Danny’s feet, the Bat-Man raises his hand again and carefully presses his hand — rough and calloused more than Alfred’s — to his jaw. Danny freezes, silent as a mouse, and lets the man tilt his head and press his fingers to his pulse, before using what strength he’s got left in his arms to fling them around Bat-Man’s neck.

The Bat-Man makes a startled grunt, and Danny tries to say something, but it comes out slurred and incomprehensible even to his own ears. So Danny just pushes his face into Bat-Man’s shoulder, smearing blood against the armor weave. He’s too exhausted and happy to feel bad, and he’s shaking so much that it’s only because the Bat-Man tentatively wraps his arms around him in return that he doesn’t collapse.

'Thank you, thank you, thank you.' Is what he wants to say, but he can't find the strength in his tongue to move it. He ends up choking on some sort of half-there sob, hoping that this alone can properly convey the sheer gratitude he feels. The arms around him tighten minutely.

Bruce only loosens his hold when Danny's gone completely limp against his chest, and it's only so that he can shift the boy's weight onto one of his arms in order to check for his pulse again. His hand stays remarkably still despite the bone-deep trembling he can feel in his arms, and only when he feels the arrhythmic fluttering  of a heartbeat against his skin does Bruce breathe out.

"He's alive." He murmurs, if only for the reassurance to himself. He was alive. Daniel was alive, for now. "Just unconscious." It was hard to say he looked alive. Danny became, somehow, even paler than when Bruce first laid eyes on him, and the blood soaking down his front didn't leave the mind to wander beyond the image of a corpse.

Bruce feels for a heartbeat again, just to be sure.

(He doesn't think he'll ever be able to wipe the image of Daniel wringing out a slur of apologies, thick red blood bubbling out of his mouth as he was actively dying, out of his mind. His hysteric sobs will haunt Bruce's dreams hand-in-hand with the rest of his nightmares. If he'd been a few minutes too late...)

Alfred makes a curt sound, dragging Bruce from an oncoming spiral, and appears with a new handkerchief — from where, he wasn't sure. "I'm not surprised he passed out." He mutters matter-of-factly, rounding around the table to Bruce and Danny's side. "Simply surprised by how long it took."

"Hn." Bruce plucks the handkerchief from Alfred's hand before he can clean Daniel's face, and begins doing it himself. They'll need to run some kind of DNA scan to figure out his identity, he hadn't given a last name. A blood test too. Danny said his godfather used blood blossom, an extinct flower, to poison him. Bruce wasn't sure if it was true, or just the delirious hallucination of a child trying to survive.

(And if it was true, then there was no telling whether the poison would have any long term effects on the boy. He'd been somewhat stable the entire time — barring the rapid deterioration at the start when he heard the sound of his godfather's voice — so this sudden, abrupt, decline had been both alarming and terrifying.)

Alfred arches an eyebrow at him, and plucks the syringe off the table to dispose of it. "May I ask what your next plan is?" He asks anyways, expertly dismantling the syringe's needle and throwing it in the sharps container nearby. "I hope you don't plan on sending him on his merry way when he wakes up."

Bruce jerks, "What?" He looks up at Alfred, pausing from cleaning Danny's face to stare at him, quietly balking. He hasn't thought of what he was going to do yet, but that hadn't even crossed his mind. "No, I'm not."  Not when he wasn't sure what the aftereffects of the poison were like. Not when the only person Danny could go to was his godfather — the very man who poisoned him.

(And the mere reminder of it forces the return of something hot and dark and angry to bubble underneath his skin, like a dark shadow skimming the surface of the water.)

No, no. Sending Daniel out when he woke up wasn't an option. Bruce would never sleep again if he chose that. But, then— well, what was? He couldn't keep him in the cave; Bruce spares one glance around the decrepit, abandoned train station, and doesn't even need to consider it.

But the only other option he could safely think of — one where Daniel would be left undisturbed and unfound by the rest of the world, somewhere no one would think to look, — was here in the tower. Except, how would he explain how he got there? Any and all excuses led to tying Bruce Wayne to Batman.

He looks down at Daniel. Most of the blood has been soaked in by the handkerchief. If he tried cleaning off anymore all he would be doing is smear it around. With the blood no longer being the sole point of his attention, he could finally take in the rest of the child's face.

There really wasn't much to look at beyond, well, just how young he was. Baby fat still clung around his cheeks, and blood was soaked on the dark hair curling at the nape of his neck. Bruce hadn't noticed it earlier, too distracted with trying to do something, anything to save him, but Daniel was as light as a feather. Lighter than he ought to be. Picking up his arm, Bruce silently wraps his fingers around his wrist, and presses his lips together when his fingers touch and then some.  

(He hates that he was right.)

Was he really going to prioritize his secret identity over the safety of a kid?

"Well?" Alfred's voice breaks through the thoughts in Bruce's head, and he snaps his eyes back up to the man who raised him. Alfred's brow is perfectly arched, and he stares at Bruce expectantly, awaiting an answer. "What will you do now?"

Chapter Text

Consciousness comes to him slowly; hazy and dreamlike, and thick like molasses. As if someone was leisurely walking through every room in the house and flicking each of the lights on. Or like the steady hum of a spaceship steadily waking up from its slumber. 

His breathing is the first thing Danny becomes cognizant of. A familiar, comforting relief behind the action that even after dying he still takes for granted. The next thing he realizes is that even as air fills his lungs, there is a three pound weight in his chest attempting to stifle him. Or maybe more accurately it’s like there’s a cotton filter in his sternum. When he tries to push past it, his body shudders, and a teeny squeak still slips through his throat as his lungs protest in discomfort. 

The noise fast-tracks his waking, and the rest of Danny’s body hums to life. The next thing he realizes is the ache in his bones; a thrumming burn through his tissue that reminds him far too much of the first time Sam dragged him and Tucker into working out with her, and the next morning he woke up with muscles so sore that his knees trembled when he sat down. 

At least that time there was a strange pride that came with the ache, and it was enough to soothe him. This time, the only thing that soothes him is the fact that he hurts significantly less than before— 

Before…

Like a final switch being flipped, everything rushes back to him at once. Vlad, the blood blossoms, the alleyway, the high ceiling room and the hero-man-bat-guy who saved him—  

Holy fuck.

Danny’s eyes shoot open, air rapidly rushing into his lungs as, with a burst of adrenaline, he pushes himself up. His head spins and black motes dot his vision, but he ignores his body’s protests. “I’m alive.” He breathes, disbelief dousing over him, the words slipping out before he’d even thought them in his head. His voice is raspy, scratchy like he’s got a cold. Shit, that hurt. 

Despite that, he laughs; loud and freely even when his lungs catch in his chest, stuttering, and a weak cough slips out. But there’s no blood in his throat, none coming up for him to spit out, so the weak fear that flutters in his heart at the sound just as quickly tapers away. It’s a cough because his lungs are sore, not because he’s dying.

He runs his hands through his hair, feeling the individual strands despite the sleep-tangled knots his fingers catch on. Slightly soft, but thick, the hair at his roots feels dirty and the hair hanging at his nape is stringy. When he looks at his palms, he can faintly see some of the oils shining on his fingertips. 

More laughter bubbles out of him, tears springing to his eyes and dewing on his lashes. It kinda hurts to laugh the same way it hurts to breathe after running a mile, but Danny does it anyway. His recollection of last night was fuzzy at best, only growing more incomprehensible as it went on, but he remembers blearily the joy that starburst through him when the Bat-Man got him an antidote. It was coming back for another round.  

He runs his hands through his hair again, less out of a need to touch it and more out of habit, and lets his palms rest around his throat. “He did it.” He croaks, grinning at absolutely nothing, “Haha! He did it!” 

Shit, he knows he went through this revelation last night but he was still so happy. He was alive, and man that felt so good to say. He loves being alive. Danny breathes in again, deep, and joy buzzes beneath his skin at the feeling of it. Everything still hurt, but it was all pale in comparison to the agony he was in last night. It was like choosing between a too-warm summer’s day, and the full concentrated power of the sun. 

He pats his fingers against his throat, for a moment just appreciating the feeling of skin touching skin, before pressing his index and middle finger against his pulse. His throat grows thick, delight threatening to choke him out whole, at the slow, steady, thump—thump—thump beating against his skin. Shit, shit, shit. Has he mentioned he loves being alive? 

Another laugh escapes him, before Danny drops his hands, purposely letting them rub over his arms as they fall into his lap. Okay, he thinks, blinking and trying to focus on more than the feeling of being alive. Okay, okay, okay. He has to figure out where he is now. 

Because wherever he was? Was not the room he passed out in. In fact, he’s not even sure he’s in the same building. Maybe. Probably. He wasn’t on that metal table anymore; instead he was in a massive canopy bed instead. It was huge, seriously. Two of his dads could lay in and there would still be room for his mom, him, and Jazz. And the mattress was so soft that Danny felt like he’d sink right into it like quicksand if he moved. 

Jesus, he thinks, curling his fingers around the ‘Sam Manson’ purple duvet. His mirth over being alive steadily cooling down and turning over into disbelief. The room itself was— wow, even bigger than his bedroom in Vlad’s manor, and straight out of a gothic vampire novel. With a high ceiling and pointed arches and intricate tracery— Danny exhales out through his mouth. 

Maybe he’s listened in on Sam’s rants about gothic architecture way too many times and it rubbed off on him, but he can’t help but admire it all. There was no way this was Vlad’s place — for multiple reasons that he doesn’t need to go over — but he still has no idea whose place he was in. Was it that Bat-Man guy? A friend of his? 

Danny’s hands tremble as he tries pushing himself back, and he makes it less than a foot before his arms nearly give out — and, oh. He should probably check on himself before anything else too. He’s shaking, not violently, but shaking. Right, yeah, he probably should’ve expected that. Blood blossoms. Cannibalistic flowers but only to ghosts. It’d been chewing on him like a tiger with a slab of meat for a while before he found Bat-Man. He’s weak. 

His legs— do his legs work? He tries to lift his left leg, and for the most part there’s a small burn in his thigh and calf up until his knee starts to bend — then the burn sharpens, his muscles tighten, and a sharp pain shoots down his knee. Fuck, Danny hisses out involuntarily, lurching over as his leg drops and spasms. When he tries it with the right, he gets the same result. 

Fumbling to push off the blanket, Danny gets most of it shoved off before he wraps his hands around the meat of his thigh and starts trying to massage the pain away. Ow, that hurt. That hurt a lot. He probably should’ve expected something like that, ow. Ow, ow, ow. 

On the brighter side of things, he can feel his legs! He can move them. Danny just needs a little healing. Maybe, um, not with his ectoplasm. Not for now, just to be safe. Natural healing, unfortunately. Living, natural healing, that is. He’s alive. He can do that. 

Breathing, as stifled as it feels right now, is so nice. Danny continues massaging his thigh for another few seconds, before moving down to his calf, and then alternating to his other leg. The worst of the ache fades away, and Danny carefully lifts his leg and moves it until he’s sitting criss-cross.

…With plenty of breaks in between, from both the soreness in his muscles, and how weak his arms are right now. It’s also while he’s doing this that Danny realizes that he’s not wearing his Humpty Dumpty band tee. Which is an embarrassing amount of time to realize considering the shirt he was in now was borderline comically big on him. It was a faded AC/DC shirt that made him feel even scrawnier than he already was — something he was never sure the reason for; dying at eleven, or simply unlucky genes — and while it wasn’t falling off him, it was absolutely not his size. 

He was still wearing his jeans from last night though — they still fit him, and there was blood stained black in the denim. Splatter and smeared, probably from his hands. Danny silently pulls the covers back to check if he got any stained on the bedding. He did not. Cool, one less thing to feel bad about. 

Tugging on the edge of the shirt, pulling it forward to look at the writing and watching incredulously as the fabric wings out, Danny’s brows furrow together. “Whose shirt is this?” He mutters, and again, where the fuck was he?  

“It’s one of mine.” 

Danny clamps down viciously on the shriek that lunges into his throat, he gasps sharply, sounding too much like a zipper being shut, with a full-body flinch. His fingers let go of the shirt, and he instinctively twists towards the noise, hunching up defensively even as he chokes on a mote of dust. “You—!” He wheezes, throat swelling at the opening to cough. “—fuck—”

Sitting in the corner is a fucking dude. A whole ass man. How the fuck— Danny has fought ghosts for the last three years, and he likes to think that he’s gotten pretty damn good at not getting snuck up on regardless of his ghost sense. He likes to think he’s got some pretty good situational awareness, so how the fuck—  

He loses the fight with his lungs and descends into a coughing fit. Tears spring to the corner of his eyes and Danny fluctuates between rubbing them away and keeping an eye on the fucking guy that’s been there for who the hell knows how long. Laughing hurt, but coughing hurts even more, like someone was raking their nails down the inner tissue and then using it as their own personal slime ASMR. 

The man who’d spoken practically materializes at his side, having crossed the shadowy corner he was lurking in within the length it took Danny to blink twice. He hovers beside Danny for a few moments, hands flailing in reservation at his side, and Danny’s not sure himself if he should move away from the stranger or focus on coughing.

The bed then dips, and Danny drops his arm to catch his weight before he falls over. As he does, a heavy hand awkwardly splays between his shoulder blades while the other pushes on his arm, helping him stay up. Danny forces one, watering eye to open and stare at the man, and through the blur of his tears and his eyelashes, he sees the man uncomfortably, pointedly looking away from him. 

The hand on his back starts gently patting his spine, it doesn’t really do anything to help with his coughing, but the attempt is kinda sweet, and it’s soft enough that it’s not obstructing him either. “Sorry.” The man murmurs, his voice low. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” The words come out slightly stilted, consonants bleeding together despite the stiffness. 

Wait a minute. Danny jerks slightly, familiarity hitting him like a shot to the head, and still covering his mouth with his arm, he turns to try and look at the man fully. His mind flashes to last night and the few times he can remember the Bat-Man speaking. His voice wasn’t as raspy as before, but the intonation… there was no denying that it was the same person. 

That’s… actually a little comforting to know. He felt a little better now knowing that there was at least someone familiar with him. Even if the Bat-Man was as familiar as a street sign. He saved Danny’s life, he could trust him — at least a little bit — for now. 

His coughing manages to subside enough for Danny to find his tongue, and he drops his arm in order to breathe in deep, “It’s—” he wheezes, “it’s fihh— fine.” Another few short coughs squeeze out of him, but Danny pounds a fist against his rattling chest and they finally dissipate. His lungs burn, and he forces himself to sit up. “W’s just startled.” 

The man says nothing, and as Danny rubs the hack-caused tears from his eyes he finally tries to get a look at him. None of the lights were on, and most of the windows had these big, heavy ornate curtains drawn closed around them, but the ones that didn’t had gray sunlight peeping through the glass, leaving just enough light for Danny to see most of the room. But leaving enough darkness for, apparently, a grown man to hide in it. Okay— well, that sounds creepy when he puts it that way. 

Point is, there was enough light in the room that Danny could see the man’s face. His hair was black like Danny’s, although neither quite as long — not surprising, he hasn’t cut his hair since his family’s funeral a few months ago, and he’s gonna put a glass box around that thought before his grief can overwhelm him — or as messy, and sat flat on his head. He was pale as a ghost; Danny’s tempted to put his arm next to his and see who was whiter — the man or the literal dead kid.    

(He shelves the thought for now.)  

He can’t exactly call him gaunt, quite the opposite actually, but the sharp cut face of his face and the weight carving lines in his skin casts an optical illusion that Danny almost doesn’t see through. The circles under his eyes certainly don’t help. 

It’s his eyes themselves, however, that make Danny’s heart jump and his throat catch unexpectedly. They’re as blue as glaciers, and as equally piercing, but it’s not the color that makes Danny’s heart pound uncomfortably. It’s the fact that looking into them, Danny can see his own. He didn’t notice that last night. He was dying last night. 

Danny swallows dryly. His fingers curl in his lap, digging into the soft duvet. “Um, I’m uh, Danny.” He forces himself to look away and scan the room again, “Where am I?” Get that question out of the way first and foremost, then he can ask the others. Like how long has he been unconscious, what he should call the man, and how long, exactly, had he just been lurking there in the corner of the room. 

(Because if the answer was ‘the whole time’ Danny was going to die of embarrassment and shame. That’s at least a nicer second way to go than being eaten alive by a parasitic anti-ghost flower.) 

The man is silent again, remaining so for a few seconds too long before finally answering. “You’re in my house.” He says, his voice still murmuring soft. Danny already guessed that, but still, surprise jumps in his chest like the crack of an egg being dropped on the floor. He wasn’t really expecting him to readily admit that. “I brought you here after you passed out.”

His surprise turns into an uncomfortable guilt, shame curling around the shell of his ears and weighting at the nape of his neck. At what, he wasn’t quite sure — whether it be from the fact that he passed out, or because it was now beginning to dawn on him that the man had given up his secret identity for him. Even though he didn’t know his name, Danny still knew his face, and from one hero to another, he was beginning to feel bad.  

(Even if the idea of calling himself a hero was uncomfortable at best, and skin-crawling at worst. He was just doing what he had to in Amity Park. He couldn’t leave the living to the ghosts, and he couldn’t leave the ghosts to the living. There was no one else but him who could do it.) 

Danny’s fingers release the duvet, only to grip it again. The joints in his fingers were starting to ache from use, and he ignores the pain to knead at the blanket. “Oh. Thanks, you didn’t have to do that.” He would’ve been fine waking up in that big room with the lights just fine too, would’ve felt less bad about it.   

From his peripherals, the man’s mouth purses. “Hn.” With Danny no longer looking at him directly, the man was now looking at him instead. “The cave wasn’t a good place to keep you.” 

Ah. Cool. Great. Danny’s not sure how to respond to that, so he nods mutely. It’s almost fascinating — perhaps even worth studying — how quickly things had shifted to being uncomfortable and stifled, with the air thick with their conjoined awkwardness to create an atmosphere thicker than Gotham’s polluted sky.  

Shit, there were a lot of things Danny should ask about. Like the man’s name, where exactly was his house in Gotham — because from the size of this bedroom alone he had to wonder how big the whole house was and where that would fit with the rest of the city. — and most importantly, what’s going to happen now? Danny’s fixed — he thinks, he hopes, — and well, just, what now? Is he going to be kicked out? How long until the man’s hospitality runs dry and he asks him to leave? Will he let Danny heal some more or is he going to fend for himself by the day’s end? 

His words stick themselves in the back of his throat, and Danny feels ill at the idea. He really, really doesn’t want to leave immediately. He can barely move his legs and there’s no telling whether or not Vlad is prowling the streets for him right now, he can already imagine what kind of fuss he’s kicking up right about now. Is he going to involve the local authorities? Gotham’s police aren’t worth a penny of salt but Vlad’s a billionaire and when you’re rich, anything is possible. 

With all these thoughts running a mile a minute in his head, Danny only notices Bat-Man pulling his hands away from him — he totally forgot about them even being on him, — because the chill blanketing over his skin snaps him out of it. That is, snaps him out of it too fast. Panic lodges in his chest like a steamhammer and Danny gives himself whiplash with how quickly he rubberbands around, snagging his hands around the man’s wrist like a bear trap locking around a rabbit. 

“Please don’t go.” He begs, heart pounding loudly in his ears. The words don’t even pass through his mind before they’re already tumbling past his lips, not even allowing Danny the grace of thinking it through before he just does. The man stills, freezing like a statue as his eyes widen in surprise. 

Danny stares at him, eyes equally as wide and desperate, and then his mind syncs back up to the world around it. Oh, he thinks, mortification rapidly burning through his face. Shit. He has no idea why he did that. It’s — shit, why did he do that? 

He releases the man from his iron grasp, his hands trembling and that was either from exertion or his own horror. Danny was going to pretend it was the former, for his own sake. His face felt like it was on fire, and he probably matched the red blooms of the blood blossoms with what was undoubtedly a blush. Danny stammers; “I’m— uh, sorry.” He says, “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that. You— uh, sorry.” 

He was being clingy, why was he being clingy? It was the same thing as last night when that Alfred guy pulled his hand away from him. At least this time his core didn’t react so negatively with him, it was still as dormant as it has been for months. He shouldn’t be clingy. He barely knows this guy. 

Bat-Man unmasked again remains silent, simply just staring at him like a deer caught in headlights. Danny shrinks away from him out of sheer embarrassment, the feeling fisting around his ribcage and rattling them like jail cell bars. He hides his face behind his hands with a nervous little laugh-whine building in his throat. “I just— I’m sorry. That’s so embarrassing.” He forces himself to laugh, it sounds painful and it feels painful. 

He can’t get the panic to go away, can’t shake away the trembling, terrified little voice telling him that the man was going to go away now. It clings on him like tar, and his only reprieve is the fact that it’s not triggering the electric buzz of his core.   

“I just— Vlad hasn’t let me leave his mansion at all since my mom and my dad and my sister’s funeral, and— and it was only ever me and him in that house and I hhhh—” Danny’s voice disgustingly breaks. His tongue thickens in his mouth, and more tears pop up into his vision, hot and burning and bleeding out again. 

Danny presses the meat of his palm into his mouth to muffle whatever ugly noise he might make, biting into the skin with just enough force that his fangs don’t break through and cause a bleed. He’s tasted enough blood to last him a lifetime, thank you. 

Squeezing his eyes shut, Danny shivers down his spine, and fumbles for his voice again. “I hhhh-ate him. I hate him so much.” He wishes so badly that Aunt Alicia had gotten custody of him like she fought to do, because even if he’d be in Arkansas he wouldn’t be with Vlad, and he loves his Aunt Alicia and he knows she loves him. And if he was in Arkansas on her little ranch he wouldn’t have gotten poisoned.  

But instead he was forced to live with Vlad, and he no longer believes that future version of him he met that told him that it was Danny who chose to rip out his own ghost. Everything he wants to say hooks itself at the base of his tongue and sticks in his throat, forcing him instead to swallow it down and try and speak again. The bubble of tears in his eyes pop and stream down his face.  

He’s been so alone since his family died. He hasn’t been able to talk to Sam and Tucker because Vlad stole his phone when he wasn’t looking, too encased in grief to notice anything past his own nose, and he misses them so much. He wouldn’t give him back the phone no matter how many times Danny pleaded and threatened and cried, and every day felt like torture in that house. 

“I just— I just don’t want— don’t want him to find me.” Danny gasps, his chest caving in with a cut off sob. He scrubs his knuckles, worn and rough from years of fighting, against his eyes as he sucks in a breath. “I— please don’t let him find me. Please. I’m sorry for grabbing you, please don’t go.” 

His chest shudders with every breath he takes, and Danny shoves his hands into his face to scrub away his desperate crying. He doesn’t know why he’s crying so much, he doesn’t know why he’s so upset, and the man stays silent the whole time. Danny can’t tell if that’s somehow better, or worse. 

There isn’t long to wonder about it. The man lifts his hand hesitantly, lets it hang in the air for a few, long moments, his eyes wide and unsure, before dropping it down again. “I won’t, Danny.” He finally says, and Danny heaves with a relief that he could vomit up. “And your godfather won’t find you, I won’t let him. I—” The man’s mouth presses together, “…I promise.” 

Danny’s not a kid, hasn’t felt like one since he was eleven and dead, so he doesn’t believe in promises. But he’ll hinge on this one for the time being. 

When he’s finally calmed down again, Danny is exhausted. His chest hurts, his eyes ache, and he’s sore all over, his shoulders ache from moving his arms so much and it still feels better than he did last night. But the man sits with him the whole time, silent as a rock and about as still as a gargoyle. It’s no wonder Danny didn’t notice him earlier, if it weren’t because he could see him, he would’ve forgotten he was even there. 

But when he can finally find his voice again, and use it without it breaking, Danny uses it to ask his next important question; “What do I call you?” He’s tired of calling him ‘the man’ and ‘bat-man’ in his head. 

The man stiffens almost imperceptibly, and if it weren’t because Danny’s spent the last three years fighting ghosts — who, by the way, use a lot of their body language to communicate —  he probably wouldn’t have noticed it at all. An apology is already building up on the tip of Danny’s tongue, you don’t have to tell me, he’s going to say. You’ve already shown me your face, and let me into your house and secret base, and lent me a shirt. 

He watches as his face twitches and ink-presses into discomfort, (and the longer Danny watches him the more he is reminded of those little dogs that look like they’ve gone through Vietnam with the big, unseeing blue eyes) before the man clears his throat. “My name is Bruce.”

Danny blinks; once, twice. “Bruce?” He repeats. Huh. It’s not a name he was expecting, but it’s not like he was expecting any kind of name from him. It suits him. The man, now named Bruce, nods curtly, looking as if he swallowed a lemon. Danny’s midwestern manners comes and kicks him right in the head right then and there, and he adds; “It’s nice to meet you.” 

Bruce stares at him, and then only nods again with a tiny exhale and a noise Danny can’t quite call a grunt, but is the closest description to it. He makes a short noise in his throat that’s too deep to be a squeak, but is about as short as one. 

But they both fall into a silence again after, with Danny staring at Bruce and Bruce staring at Danny. Danny’s got more questions he’d like to ask, but they kinda just… linger in his head and don’t bother to travel down to his throat to be spoken. His fingers curl in his lap, and he’s the first to look away and lose their silent unspoken staring contest.

Which is, apparently, exactly what Bruce needs. He shifts, shoulders rolling back, and starts moving off the bed — for a brief, terrifying moment, that horrid earlier panic recoils back in Danny’s chest and he almost, almost, lunges to grab onto him. ‘You said you wouldn’t leave!’ He nearly yells, and catches his voice by the skin of his teeth. 

His eyes glue onto him with terrifying intensity instead, and he acutely becomes aware of his own breathing and forces it to remain steady. Danny thought he hid it well, but Bruce notices something, because he freezes, and settles back down onto the bed. It creaks quietly under the weight.

“Are you hungry?” He asks. 

Danny balks. What? “What?” 

“Are you hungry?” Bruce repeats, “I can have Alfred make you something.” 

Alfred. Danny’s mind procures a mental image of the older man he saw last night. The one with the cane and the handkerchief that he got all bloody. Embarrassment coils in his chest, burning hot like iron. Danny breathes it out. “I— sure, yeah. Can I come with?” He doesn’t want to be alone. 

Immediately Bruce frowns, his brows threading together with an expression Danny can’t read. His heart skips a beat, and Danny’s mouth runs dry. Or not, he thinks, digging his nails into his palms and feeling like he just made a mistake, he could also just stay here. That works too.  

(It doesn’t, not really. Panic is still thrumming like a hummingbird beneath his heart.) 

Danny breathes, his mind stumbling, and he opens his mouth to say just that— only for Bruce to drop his ice eyes down to the bed and frown even deeper. “What about your legs?” 

His—? Danny looks down at his legs, most of which are still covered by the duvet and sheet, and suddenly remembers earlier when he tried to move them and the white hot, pin-sharp burn that shot through them when he tried. Realization settles down around his head, releasing his flutter-heart from the panicked claws surrounding it. Oh, that’s why, he thinks, tension draining from his shoulders. He was just worried about Danny’s legs. 

…Wait, he saw that?

(That reminds him again that Danny needs to ask how long Bruce had been sitting there.)

“They don’t hurt that bad.” Danny lies, something that’s far too familiar to him. From a technical standpoint, he’s not even wrong. They didn’t hurt that bad in comparison to some of the other injuries he’s gotten over the years. He keeps his eyes locked on Bruce, and watches as the man’s eyes twitch around the corners, just barely squinting. “I can walk.”

Danny stares at him easily, despite the hammering returning to his chest. 

Bruce looks at him for a few long seconds, before reluctantly, he backs off, and raises to his feet. “Okay.” He says, and stands up fully. Danny jerks, and triumph blooms up and outwards through the space between his eyes, and down to his sternum. “I’ll take you to the kitchen.” 

Yes. Yes! He wasn't staying in the bedroom, he was heading down to the kitchen with Bruce. Danny doesn’t bother quelling the giddiness swirling around like a flurry of snow inside him, pushing the blankets off him as far as he could and instinctively raising one of his legs — 

Only for the same, sharp sore pain to rocket from the back of his calves, around his knee, and through his thigh. Danny freezes on instinct, his teeth sinking down into the back of his bottom lip as air rapidly fills his lungs. Fuck. He thought some of it would have subsided by now.  

Bruce stands by the side of the bed with his brows still creased, the corners of his eyes still tight, and something in the way he stands just tells Danny that Bruce already knew he was lying. Well, the stubborn part of him that had gotten him through countless fights, through Pariah Dark and his own evil future self, rears its head at the unspoken challenge. 

Gritting his teeth and focusing on his breathing — focusing on his breathing always helps distract him from most of the pain — Danny digs his hands into the mattress, and starts pulling himself back to the headboard. As he’s doing that, he forces his legs to move towards the edge of the bed. Starburst shots stab through the sinew and tissue, aching up to his hips, and Danny, in response, grinds his teeth down harder. 

I’ve sewn my own head back on before, he thinks with a tight breath in. Many times, actually. He can handle a little leg pain. He doesn’t really want to, but he’s going to. From the corner of his eye, Bruce’s eyebrows climb up his forehead. 

Triumphantly, Danny manages to sit up to the edge of the bed. His legs are trembling, pulsing and throbbing with pins-and-needles in his knees, and his arms are shaking from holding himself up, but he did it. He’s only just now realizing that his shoes are missing and he’s barefoot. His eyes catch them sitting at the foot of the nightstand right next to the bed. Cool, there’s that mystery solved. 

Bruce hasn’t said anything the whole time Danny was getting himself to the edge of the bed, only moving to give him the space to sit while still remaining within an arm’s length. Danny’s a little grateful, it allowed him to focus on moving rather than responding to anything he might say. 

Although whatever that was, he wasn’t sure. He was starting to learn that the man wasn’t a sparkling conversationalist. 

Staring at the ground, Danny breathes out slow and braces his hands against the bed. Now for the hard part, and moment of truth — he might be able to move his legs, but could he stand? Well, he was about to find out. 

Counting down from three, Danny breathes in, breathes out, and ignores the sharpening burn through his calves as he tenses his legs up and pushes himself up to his feet. Hot, white pain screws itself from his soles and upwards, and Danny bites his lip down hard as his arms pinwheel from the elbow down to keep himself from falling over. 

Fuck, he exhales shakily, stumbling two feet forward before stopping. Shit that hurts a lot, like a combination of trying to walk when his feet are asleep, and muscle strain. From his peripherals, Bruce’s hands drop from his side and reach out for him like he’s about to catch him, his face twisted in concern. 

Danny’s half tempted to take his arm, but before that, he needs to see if he can walk — or at least shuffle — on his own. His legs are trembling despite his attempts to stop them, and the idea of his knees knocking together would almost be funny if it weren’t for his situation right now. Keeping his eyes glued to the floor, Danny threads his brows together and slowly, slothfully, takes one step towards Bruce. 

And then another. And another. He alternates between looking at his feet and glancing up to where Bruce is, until finally he can reach out and, tentatively, curl a hand around his arm and hold onto him. Bruce lets him. When he does, Danny looks up, slightly out of breath and his legs still shivering, and gives him his best cocky grin. 

It slants uncomfortable and awkward on his face, stiff from months of disuse, but it exists. “See?” He says, triumphant, “I told you I can walk. Lead the way.” 

Chapter Text

Gawking at the ceiling makes ignoring the pain in his legs easier. Which feels obvious; Danny’s had three years to refine and perfect the art of ‘distracting oneself from one’s own pain because human painkillers don’t work’. But, still, sometimes it catches him on his blindside just how effective it is. And man, effective it is. His legs have been shivering something fierce for the last twenty feet, but that’s been naught but a distant thought — because look at those arches!  

Intricate stonework curving over his head with stone spines jutting down, a technique Danny can’t name but admires nonetheless. The rib vaults — he thinks those are the right words — would have Sam foaming at the mouth, and not for the first time, he’s upset that Vlad confiscated his phone a week after gaining custody of him. He wants to take pictures of the ceiling and send them to Sam, if only to watch her seethe with envy. 

He and Bruce haven’t said a word to each other since they left the bedroom, where Bruce told him that they were heading to the kitchen because that’s where Alfred was likely to be. Danny has no idea what time it was when he found Bruce last night, but it was currently early morning. The pale gray sunlight coming through the windows — the tall, arched windows with heavy drapery hanging around the edges and more tracery around the frames, it’s just—

The awe itself is one hell of a painkiller, Danny’s pretty sure his mouth has been agape since the moment he stepped foot outside the bedroom. He couldn’t help it, this— uh, manor? Castle? Whatever! — was gorgeous. He’s almost giddy with it. They haven’t said a word to each other this whole time, but Danny was going to have to break the streak just to comment on the architecture. Vlad can eat his fucking heart out, this is how you do ornate masonry and mansion design. 

(Also, just how rich was Bruce? This was insane.) 

What was he thinking about again? Right, that they were heading down to the kitchen to find Alfred, because it’s early morning and that’s likely where he’ll be. It’s sunrise, even. The sunlight streaming through the windows lights up the hallway they’re passing through, and wherever they were, it was still in Gotham. The city was reaching for the sky all around them from the window, not quite as tall as them — but trying to be.  

It’s a bit strange — but it’s not like Danny doesn’t feel a little relieved about it, considering Vlad’s castle was out in the middle of nowhere, sequestered away in the hills west of Madison — meaning that Danny couldn’t go left or right without running into wilderness, and the closest town was a thirty minute drive away at best.  

It makes sense, though, that Bruce lives somewhere in the city — how else would he have been able to travel around Gotham that easily if he didn’t live at least somewhere nearby? Danny’s memory of last night might be shoddy, but he can still vaguely piece together the fact that the car he’d been put in was so totally not street legal.  

All in all, he’s still not quite sure where he is, just that he’s in Gotham. He doesn’t know the area that well. The only reason he and Vlad were even in Gotham at all was because Vlad wanted to try and set up a meeting at Wayne Enterprises with Mr. Wayne, and he didn’t trust Danny to stay back in Wisconsin. 

Which is, of course, just fancy-talk for ‘Vlad’s going to poach the company right out from under Mr. Wayne’s nose and leave him bankrupt’. The only reason he hasn’t done it sooner was because, apparently, Mr. Wayne’s an even worse recluse than Vlad is, and only recently returned to Gotham and started making semi-regular appearances and decisions in Wayne Enterprises.  

He kinda feels bad for the guy, Vlad’s going to rob him blind and— 

Oh, wait.

Danny’s gaze snaps from the ceiling down to Bruce instead. A small reprieve for his neck, because a small crick has been steadily developing there from his head being angled up constantly, uncomfortably, and also decidedly not a relief because not only is Danny eye level with Bruce’s just, the sensitivity of his muscles everywhere seems to trigger his brain into remembering that he was supposed to be in pain. The same pain he’s been so dutifully trying to ignore.  

As the ache and burn in his legs begin to creep back to the forefront of his mind, Danny keeps his eyes on Bruce. Because, of course, he briefly forgot that Bruce was a hero. 

He can just… ask him to watch out for Mr. Wayne… Maybe. Maybe? The idea wraps skinny fingers made of dread around his throat, and a spot between his lungs hollow out nervously. Bruce seems like a nice enough guy — he saved Danny’s life, he brought him to his house, he revealed his identity to him — he’ll probably listen to Danny if he tells him to warn Mr. Wayne about Vlad. 

…Although that means he’ll have to explain why Mr. Wayne needs to be warned, and then he’ll have to figure out a way to explain what Vlad can do, and decide whether it’s worth it or not to reveal Vlad’s secret, and tell this stranger about Liminalities. And is it really worth it to reveal something like that, even if it’s Vlad? The only reason they kept each other’s secret was because of mutually assured destruction, but Vlad tied Danny to a sinking ship the moment he injected fucking blood blossoms into his veins, and— 

He’ll probably have to tell Bruce that he was a Liminal too, and what if he reacts badly? He’s a total anomaly. A freak. A monster. Bruce could react badly and then Danny will probably get kicked out, and—  

The next breath — lovingly, refreshingly, — is slow, steady, and still stifled by the feeling of a cotton-wad filter stuffed in his lungs. He’s pretty sure the discomfort will fade with time, just as the pain in his legs will, which is still eating at his mind like a parasite, but the doubt and fear remains. 

Danny grits his teeth down, and takes another breath. He can cook up an explanation or an excuse that’s close to the truth that he can tell Bruce. He’s good at lying — he thinks he is at least. Nobody parsed out that he was Phantom for three years. He can come up with something. He’s sure of it. 

The fear begins to withdraw back into its shell, taking with it on sticky fingers the doubt and anxiety swirling around his head. Danny forces his eyes away from Bruce — who he’s hoping didn’t notice his staring, but he’s pretty sure knows anyways because it’s not like Danny was being secretive about it — and in front of him. 

There’s still an unknown ways to go until they reach the kitchen, and he can feel the bones in his knees grinding against the cartilage, creaking in his ears and painfully rooting up his thighs. He’d prefer to stave off a second panic attack until after he’s sitting down somewhere.  

They make it to a set of semi-spiral stairs, and the immediate sight of it lurches nausea straight up into Danny’s throat, accompanied oh-so- kindly with a stomach-turning hot flash that fills his vision full of spots. Oh, fuck that. He thinks, viscerally and full of prejudice as his legs stiffen into boards and fixate to the rug. Bruce stops with him. 

By this point, Danny’s face has gone all tingly and numb with discomfort. His hips hurt as if Skulker had buried one of his bowie knives there, and then decided to leave it in, and he can feel every individual bone in his feet rubbing together like cricket legs. Hell, even the joints in his arms were beginning to ache again and he hasn’t even been using them beyond his one arm hooking with Bruce’s.   

And, speaking of hooking onto him, guilt gnaws a little bit in his already churning belly over it. Because Bruce has been nice enough to act as anchor and cane for him this whole time, and Danny’s pretty sure he’s left crescent moon-shaped divets on his skin in return, having completely boa constricted around his arm unconsciously. He forces himself to loosen up his grip, and an embarrassed apology lodges itself behind his teeth. He can’t seem to loosen it up enough to get it out. 

(At least with his core dormant, his super strength is too.)

But, back to the matter at hand. There’s no way he’s going to make it down those stairs, not when he’s pretty sure the blood blossom ate whatever was left of his muscles, sinew, and blood supply — well, at least the stuff he didn’t already cough, bleed, or vomit out. The mere idea of it makes his head pound like a concussion, and Danny wants to make a point of being able to walk, that he was okay and didn’t need help, but—

But something’s going to give, he knows it. Whether that be his own mental fortitude or his actual legs, he really doesn’t know. He kinda really doesn’t want to find out. 

Maybe he should just turn around. Maybe he can just swallow his stubborn pride and admit defeat and return to the bedroom, let Bruce go down to the kitchen without him— 

And what, be alone?

…Okay, yeah. Scratch that idea. Danny’s heart immediately jackhammers against his ribcage at the thought, and a sardonic huff of a laugh catches itself with it. That wasn’t an option. He doesn’t know why, but the idea of being alone terrifies him down to the core. He’d rather just cope with the pain instead. 

Man, he fucking hates blood blossoms. 

There’s movement in the corner of his eye, and Danny instinctually whips his head over, and looks up to see Bruce staring at him. They make eye contact for a moment, before Bruce averts his eyes and looks at something next to him. “We’re on the second floor,” he murmurs. Danny’s heart stops for a horrifying moment. “If you want, I can carry you down.”

Oh.  

Danny exhales out on the breath he’d been holding. Oh. He— he thought Bruce was going to ask if he wanted to turn around. But he— it wasn’t that. He was just offering to carry him down the steps instead. That— that was— An uneasy smile timidly ghosts across his mouth, inching at the corner for a brief moment. It hovers over his face as he tries to remember how to speak. 

Yes, please, that’d be fantastic, he thinks. It’d save him so much trouble, and he wouldn’t have to go back and be alone. But— he can’t seem to find a way to say it though. The words are turned to stone in his mind, and his voice won’t work. Doubt creeps back in, wreathing through his hair with — infuriatingly enough, — embarrassment holding its hand. 

(What if he’s bothering him?)

(He’s already done so much, Danny can’t possibly ask for more—)

(It’s fine. Danny’s gone through worse. He doesn’t need help. He’s never had needed it before.)

The idea of Bruce helping has him instinctively wanting to hide, even though he wants it. He’s grateful, and he can’t even express it properly. This is ridiculous, he had no trouble asking for help last night—  

Danny’s turn to avert his gaze, his smile fading, and he looks over to the staircase. Shame drapes over his shoulders like an overly saccharine lover, “You— uh, you don’t have to do that.” He says, sounding mortifyingly small for such a simple sentence. “I can— uh…” His jaw screws shut, his fangs clacking against his teeth.  

Reluctantly, he forces himself to slip his arm out of Bruce’s hold, and pointedly ignores the immediate frown it generates. Danny’s legs wobble precariously without the support, he can feel every individual ligament in his legs tremble, and ignores it desperately to come up with a new solution. 

What can he do? Think, think, think. What’s something he can do? He can actually reach the stairs, first, actually. Danny forces his feet to shuffle forward, but his legs lag beneath the order to move. He stumbles over his ankle, and takes a handful of tripping, precarious steps forward fast enough that, from the corner of his eye, Bruce lunges forward ready to catch him should he fall.

Danny does not fall, he latches onto the railing, brows furrowing. His feet feel on fire, and it’s much harder to ignore the pain he’s in while he’s brainstorming. If this is how the Evil Queen felt when Snow White forced her to wear burning hot iron shoes, then he kinda feels bad for her. 

Bruce quickly strides up to his side, concern etched through the lines on his face and evident in his ice-like eyes. Danny ignores it even as more embarrassment heats up on the back of his neck. He grips onto the railing, clawing into the stone like a cat latched onto the curtains. His teeth grind together, “I can just…” Danny limps forward to the first step. 

Hm. Those look a lot steeper when he’s actually standing at the base of them. The pounding in his head returns with a panicked vengeance, and his mind damn near shuts down with nausea. Danny rapidly blinks the feeling away, chasing it away and breathing deep. Bruce hovers beside him.

He looks down at the carpet. Maroon red with geometric patterns and frayed edges. They go all the way down the stairs too, covering most of the stone other than a few inches from the wall and railing. Danny drags his foot against it, cringing slightly at the slightly rough feeling against his skin. It pierces through the burning soreness his legs are in order to let him know that it was an unpleasant sensation. Easily ignorable when he’s not dragging his skin against it. 

It’s got good friction though, and an old, old memory immediately dredges up from the abyss of his mind and holds it up at the forefront. When they were kids, him and— and Jazz would take their sleeping bags and slide down the stairs in them. Sometimes at the same time, sometimes one at a time so that they’d crash into each other like bowling pins at the bottom. They’d slide down on their bellies because that’s the only reason mom and dad allowed them to do it. 

It’s not the same — Danny doesn’t have a sleeping bag, or Jazz, and he still can’t think that without dying a little inside, — but the concept is there. And he’s in jeans. Gross, blood-crusted jeans, but jeans nonetheless, the denim should protect him from rug burn. The stairs are steep and narrow enough that if he gets the right momentum and angle, he could just push himself forward and slide down until the next landing — which he could see. 

He already knows it’s gonna hurt like a bitch, but it’s less nauseating to think about than walking the whole way down. Trying to carefully lower himself down to the ground is out of the question, that he knows immediately, so like a puppet getting its strings cut, Danny drops to the floor. 

Bruce makes a sound that Danny can only describe as a verbal exclamation point, his eyes widening in alarm as he flinches forward to catch him. But Danny presses away from him, arching away and into the railing as he catches himself before he can hit the ground too hard. Although his body loudly and achingly protests him doing so. 

His hand releases from the railing, his muscles tremoring, and Danny looks up with a burst of assurance to smile at Bruce. He’s huffing a little, mildly out of breath. “I can just do this.” He says, and gestures to the ground. Where he is now currently sitting. His legs somewhat hanging off the side of the stairs. 

Bruce stares at him, eyes still wide and piercing through the strands of black hair hanging over his face. His mouth parts for a moment, opening and closing like a fish, before it then screws shut and he nods sharply. The alarm on his face steadily melting away, until its only lingering concern settled in the wrinkle between his eyes. 

“You’re going to slide the way down?” He asks, there’s not an ounce of judgment in his voice, only curiosity. 

Saying it out loud though, does not stop Danny’s face from instantly flaring up with heat and dyeing his cheeks pink. His smile freezes on his face. “Hah! Uh— yeah, um, I’ll admit, I don’t think I’m going to make it down the stairs like this. Not yet.” Which is still embarrassing at best to admit, and shameful at worst. “But, uh, I can slide down them.” 

It kinda feels stupid now that he’s looking up at Bruce like this, and Danny finds himself bowing his head to hide his face as a voice that sounds suspiciously like Vlad chides him harshly. What was he thinking? This is childish— he shouldn’t be doing this. Especially in such a nice house. Especially when he can still technically use his legs. He should just get up and walk instead, it’s only one flight—  

There's a quiet thud, and Bruce is sitting down next to him, his legs sticking out just like Danny’s is. 

Danny stares at him. 

Bruce stares back. 

Danny’s brows furrow. His brain lags. Wh— what? “What are you doing?” What is he doing? Why’s he sitting down— Danny’s the only one who has to sit down and drag himself down the stairs— 

“You said you were going to slide down the stairs.” Bruce says, slow and carefully. It takes Danny a moment to realize he’s not saying it to be condescending — it’s just stilted, unsure, like when they were talking in the bedroom. Danny fills in the blank by himself. ‘So I’m going to slide down with you.’  

Oh, oh he hates how quickly his eyes burn and bubble up with tears over that silly, simple act of kindness. He blinks rapidly, trying to chase away the sting, and Danny presses his lips into a line to prevent them from wobbling. “Okay.” He says, voice quiet so it doesn’t break, even if there’s an annoying lump in his throat that wants it to. 

Danny pointedly looks away so he can swipe his nail thumb over his eyelashes and flick away the water pooling up on them. He breathes in quietly, plants both hands onto the edge of the stairs when he’s done, and pushes himself down.

Bruce is quickly realizing that Danny’s a lot like a book with ink stains smothering some of the pages. There are some parts of him that are easy to read, like just right now, when he curled into himself like a wilted flower after telling Bruce he was going to slide down the stairs, embarrassment and shame so evident in the hunch of his shoulders that it practically wafted off him. There are some parts that have ink drops covering some of the words, preventing him from figuring out what was about to happen, like earlier when Danny had dropped to the ground suddenly, like a rock, to sit on the floor.

And then there were some pages that had ink spilled entirely across the page, only allowing him to read some of the words at the top and bottom that hadn’t been covered. Like even earlier, when Danny was staring at the ceiling, only to begin staring at Bruce instead. He’d been thinking about something, something that had spooked him apparently. What that was, Bruce hasn’t figured out. 

There’s a lot to figure out about Danny, some of the pages aren’t just blocked out, but glued together entirely by the dry ink. Pages that need to be carefully separated rather than forced open, something that takes precision and time.  

They make it down the stairs probably faster than if they’d simply walked — Danny’s not too sure, and he doesn’t really care enough to think about it for too long. Halfway down he stops to massage his legs, which, as he expected, did not appreciate the rough jostling that came with sliding down stone stairs with only a rug to soften the worst of it. Neither did his back actually, which had been relatively unnoticeable in terms of aches and sores in comparison to his legs. 

But they make it down, and Danny grips tight onto one of the bars as he carefully bends his legs to get up. Bruce slides down beside him moments later, and gets up with an envying amount of ease — Danny can’t help but halfheartedly mutter ‘showoff’ under his breath, still trying to move his legs. 

Whether or not Bruce hears him, he doesn’t know, but the man immediately turns to hover over him just a foot or two off to the side. Danny can feel his eyes boring into him, like a gargoyle. When he finally gets his legs propped up, Danny turns to the railing and hooks his hands around the flat top, mentally steeling himself for the effort it’s going to take for him to stand. 

Okay, he thinks, flexing his fingers and breathing quickly. He can do this. He can do this, he can do this, he can do this. They’re on the ground floor now, the finish line is close, he can feel it. He’s no idea where the kitchen is, but it’s on the ground floor so it counts. They’re close. 

A short puff of air escapes past him, and quickly counting down from three, Danny hoists himself up onto his feet. His arms and legs, expectedly, burn and ache in protest, and the joints in his knees and ankles quiver dangerously. Danny ignores the pain to the best of his ability — although the rapid onset headrush is a lot less easy to ignore, and he closes his eyes as vertigo swims through him. 

Shit, he’s going to be so mad if he vomits. Eugh, he’ll throw every ghostly cuss in the book that he knows out into the open, Bruce hearing him be damned. Please, just, don’t vomit.  

For a few seconds there’s nothing but silence and the black of his own eyelids, he groans unpleasantly from the back of his throat. Then, as the nausea fades, Danny blinks his eyes open and finally turns to look at Bruce, who is now one step closer than he was before, a crinkle in his eyes. 

(Danny wonders for just a brief, brief moment, if looking perpetually worried was just Bruce’s natural resting face. Then he remembers a few minutes ago when they were walking down the hallway, and Bruce looked completely impassive. So it’s not that he naturally looks worried — he’s just worried about Danny.)

(Right. Yeah. That’s totally normal, actually.)

There’s a moment where they just stare at each other, and then Danny straightens up, his legs still fucking shivering, and runs a hand through his gross hair. The tips are all crunchy with dried blood — something he forgot to notice earlier when he woke up. He really wants a shower. 

“Sorry,” he says, “headrush.” He reluctantly slips his hand off the banister and steps towards Bruce. Bruce does this little head nod, and without saying a word, steps forward with his arm out for Danny to take.

Danny latches onto his arm easily, and then hooks their elbows together tightly — which he still feels bad about, but they’re in the last leg of their walk and Danny can’t afford to collapse now. Bruce stands there, watching him get his legs steady, and then begins leading him down one of the hallways. 

Within minutes they’re turning a corner, Danny marveling at more of the architecture, and taking one quick trip down another corridor before the sounds of music begin filtering through the hall. Delicate, classical music bouncing off the masonry all muffled but pretty, and behind the music, if Danny cranes his ears, he can hear someone moving around. 

He glances up to Bruce, and faintly sees a smile ghosting over the man’s face. Barely there, but emanating fondness. Danny looks back forward. 

They make it down the hall to an open door where the music is loudest. There’s a short corridor, barely three feet long, and then three steps down leading into a large, open kitchen. There was one big window on the far end wall where the morning sun was spilling through, rendering the use of the electrical lights useless, and counters and cabinets lining the rest. There were two — two! — ovens, and a large kitchen island at the center, with a few stools up against the side. 

Inside, of course, was Alfred. Standing at one of the ovens making something — Danny’s nose tells him eggs, and the smell of food makes him both terribly hungry and terribly ill — and doesn’t seem to notice their entrance, a cane leans within arm’s reach against the counter. The music isn’t that loud, and as they enter the kitchen, Bruce slips out from Danny’s grasp — momentarily making his heart leap into his throat with an irrational fear — only to grab his hands and walk backwards down the stairs. 

“Good morning, Master Bruce.” Alfred says, not even turning away from the oven or looking at them. Danny’s shoulders jump, tamping back a startled gasp that leaps onto his tongue, but Bruce barely so much as flinches. Lucky. Danny forces his eyes away from Alfred to stare at the stairs, and his legs shake violently as he carefully moves down them, gripping tight onto Bruce’s hands like a lifeline. “I see you’ve finally decided to remove yourself from Mister Danny’s side—” 

Now Alfred turns, Danny’s made it down one step. He freezes like a deer in headlights when Alfred’s eyes land on him, and the both of them stare at one another for a breath-holding second. Then Alfred sighs, soft and not at all exasperated, but Danny still cringes a little anyway. “—and I suppose never mind.” 

Bruce doesn’t even turn around; just keeps an intense focus on Danny. 

A sheepish smile stretches Danny’s face, and if he wasn’t currently holding onto Bruce like his life depended on it, he would’ve given Alfred a little wave. He settles for a meek nod instead, and takes another cautious step down the stairs. “Good morning, Mister Alfred.” He says quietly, an old shyness rearing its head at him. He thinks for something else to add, and his mouth switches to autopilot. “How- uh, how are you?” 

Oh, eugh, small talk.  

(Look, he was already on an emotional high when Bruce revealed himself earlier, and he was so shocked by his sudden appearance that Danny didn’t have the time or attention to feel shy. But now that he was awake, not riding an ecstasy high over being alive, or being scared into the second half of his grave, his years long bashfulness was popping up.) 

Alfred doesn’t outright smile, but there’s a faint crinkle in his brows and a softness around his eyes that Danny can see, indicating some kind of amusement. And then he raises a singular arched eyebrow at him, and Danny feels reprimanded. The back of his neck heats up instinctually. “I’m quite well, Mister Danny,” Alfred says, turning back to the oven to continue cooking. “But what about you? How are you feeling?” 

Danny takes the final step down the stairs, and lets Bruce usher him into one of the stools. He needs a little help getting into it, which is embarrassing and annoying, but the relief it brings to his aching legs is — well, not quite instant, but there. He leans over to massage his burning calves as Bruce takes a seat beside him. 

“I’m not actively dying anymore.” He says in regard to Alfred’s question, and immediately regrets saying it, because despite his brain running on autopilot, ‘being a smartass’ is a built-in and active feature. Darnit. 

He may as well run with it, and adds as he switches to his other calf; “So I’m pretty peachy.” Awkwardness sits like a duck on a pond in his chest; still, uncomfortably big, and distracting. 

There’s not much of a response. Bruce just stares at him with an unreadable expression, and Alfred briefly glances at him with the same arched eyebrow, no longer amused but not outright disapproving either. Danny wants to curl into a ball and die inside, the heat on his neck creeps up to his ears and burns over his cheeks. 

Maybe there’s something wrong with his delivery— he remembers that at least getting him some kind of response from Sam and Tucker and Jazz, whether that be overdramatic groans or deadpan looks or a comment of some kind. But also Bruce and Alfred are adults and most people don’t really like jokes about dying. The adult ghosts he’s talked to notwithstanding. 

So, quick! Topic change.

“I- uh—” He looks over to Bruce, his mouth runs again; “thanks for that, I mean. For saving me.” This is a terrible topic change, his cheeks burn redder and embarrassment lumps up in his throat. “You— you didn’t have to do that.” 

Bad response. This just went from bad to worse. 

He gets a response this time, but it’s one that results in Bruce’s brows threading together and a frown carving downward on his face. Alfred stops what he’s doing to look at him too, and if Clockwork had an ounce of mercy in his heart he’d rewind time for Danny so he could redo this conversation from the start.

(But of course he’s not going to do that; time can’t be abused like that. If Clockwork would rewind time for Danny to redo this conversation, then Danny wouldn't be here, because Clockwork would have rewound time the first time around when Danny hysterically begged on his knees for him to so he could save his family. Yet here he is, time untouched, and his family six feet under.)  

“I wanted to.” Bruce tells him, brows still furrowed, and— and— 

And, oh. 

So that’s what it’s like looking in a mirror. 

So that’s what it feels like to have that thrown back at you. That’s what that feels like. He’s lost count of how many times he’s said that to someone as Phantom. Whether it be a fellow ghost or a fellow human, he’s had dozens of them turn and ask him why. And without fail, always, his answer is the same. Because he wanted to. Even when being Phantom weighed down on him worse than any kind of chain and it felt less like a want and more like a have to, his answer never changed, and was never not true. 

‘You didn’t have to do that.’

‘I wanted to.’

So that’s what it’s like to be on the receiving end of it. He could never understand why it silenced people, but now he does. His eyes sting again, and this would be the second time today he’s nearly cried, and if he can’t reel it back in time it’ll be the second time today he’s cried at all. He doesn’t understand why either. He hasn’t had the energy to cry since the funerals, he’s been dry of tears in place of misery for months. His heart hurts in a way only something that feels missing does, and Danny swallows down a sob in favor of a choked off sound.  

“Okay.” He says. It’s the only thing he can parse up right about now, and again he brings his hands up to scrub the tears from his eyes. It works, but it doesn’t banish the heavy, strangling feeling in his throat. “I’m Danny Fenton.” There, a proper introduction with his full name. 

Bruce nods, “Bruce.” He repeats. 

Alfred is looking over at them, a gentle expression on his face, far softer than before. “Alfred Pennyworth, Mister Danny.” He tells him, “Are you hungry?” 

Oh, that’s a good topic change. Far better than the one that led to this, Danny should take notes. As for the question— “I’m not sure.” He says honestly, his voice still a little thick, “I don’t think I can keep anything down.” 

Alfred’s mouth purses into a line, and Danny has half a mind to apologize for the inconvenience. “How does a smoothie sound, then?” Alfred asks, turning the burner off and taking the pan off the stove. He shuffles over to a pair of plates beside the counter and slides one egg onto each, right next to two slices of toast with jam on them. It was a very standard, stereotypical American breakfast. 

It was so… normal. Gosh it was so normal, so painfully regular that after months with Vlad, it felt practically abnormal. It was strangely domestic to watch, and Danny is vividly reminded of watching his mom and dad bustle around the kitchen on the weekends making him and Jazz breakfast. The only difference here, is that at least the eggs weren’t coming to life to try and Gaston down someone’s throat. 

“I could try that.” Danny says. He’s not sure if he can drink all of it, but the idea sounds a lot less nauseating than actually trying to chew something. Alfred nods, and picks up both plates and passes one over to Bruce, who has yet to stop staring at Danny. 

Danny decides to just stare at him back, only for the guy to immediately break gaze to look down at the plate in front of him with a frown. The nerve! Danny almost scoffs at him, and decides to just do it in his head. He does, however, narrow his eyes at him in offense. 

Bruce does not address him. Instead he just turns to look at Alfred, who has already left the other plate on the island, and grabbed his cane to walk around the kitchen to the fridge. “I’m not hungry, Alfred.” 

“No.” Is all that Alfred replies, his voice stern and without room for argument. He doesn’t even look behind him or at Bruce, simply reaching the fridge and opening the freezer door to grab an expensive-looking bag of frozen berries from the shelves. When the door shuts, that is when he turns to level Bruce with an unimpressed stare. “You have been awake all night, if you’re going to make it through the day you are going to eat something.”  

He sounds like a parent scolding a child, and Bruce looks so properly chagrined that Danny can’t help but grin out of pure amusement, laughter bubbling up all frothy-like in his lungs. And, also— “That answers that question.” He says to nobody but himself, and innocently stares at a wall when Bruce turns to look at him. 

(Which, okay, is still really embarrassing because it does mean that Bruce saw his little mini-celebration-of-being-alive, but— that— he’s not gonna think about that, or otherwise he’s going to turn into a cherry tomato.) 

Bruce makes a low exhaling noise and slumps in presumed defeat, “Hm.” He grumbles, and reaches for the nearby fork. Danny watches Alfred make an exasperated face, and fails at tamping down on the creeping, widening of his smile. 

“So, Mister Fenton, where are you from?” Alfred asks, putting the frozen bag down next to the blender before ambling over to the sink. 

“It’s just Danny, Mister Pennyworth,” Danny tells him, his eyes following him across the room. “And I was born and raised in Amity Park, but I’ve been living in Wisconsin near Madison since my godfather took me in.” Which isn’t bad, but all they know how to do in that state is eat cheese, be German, and drink beer. 

He’s never going to forget the one time they were driving through rural Wisconsin to get to Vlad’s castle and they stopped at a four-way stop sign in the middle of nowhere, and he saw, no joke, a house on one corner, a house on the other, a house on the third, and then an open bar on the fourth with six cars parked in the front. 

“It’s just Alfred, Mister Fenton.” Alfred retorts, his sleeves already rolled up for him to wash his hands. The water’s running when he glances over his shoulder to Danny, “Is that far from Wisconsin?” 

Immediately Danny’s face scrunches up and he shakes his head, humming out a ‘eh, nah’ sound in the back of his throat. He shakes his hand. “Amity Park’s up in Illinois,” he tells him, “that’s barely three hours. So not really, I guess.” It’s also ‘the most haunted city in America’. And he makes sure to put that thought in quotation marks with an internal eye roll for good measure.

Which yeah, okay, it’s not like the statement is wrong — he should know, he was part of said haunting — but it’s way too easy to make fun of the fact that the city decided to make it their whole slogan. Whatever makes the tourists come in, he supposes. They never even paid him any royalties.  

He watches Alfred idly, and sees the man tilt his head faintly to the side, his hands stilling for a brief moment. Bruce doesn't give much of a reaction, other than a faint scrunch between his brows that smooth out seconds later.  

“I suppose compared to traveling to Gotham, three hours isn’t that long.” Alfred says, turning the water off and reaching for an olive green hand towel hanging off a towel ring. Danny watches him dry his hands, and contemplates whether or not he should just bite the bullet and tell them about Amity being terribly haunted for the last three years and that their slogan was, in fact, not a gimmick and very much a real thing. That ghosts were real and they were haunting Amity Park — re: terrorizing — and that it’s exactly why Amity changed their slogan. 

…Danny thinks about it a little longer, and in the end just shrugs quietly. Bruce is watching him again, and Danny turns his eyes away to lock with Bruce’s. Staring contest two-point-oh — or is it three-point-oh now? He wasn’t keeping track with the staring. But Bruce doesn’t look away this time, so Danny’s determined to win. From his peripherals, Alfred hangs the towel back onto the rack and then turns back to the fridge. 

Thinking about Amity Park hadn’t been a good idea, because now memories of the ghosts and ghost fights are creeping back up on him, and with it comes memories of the lab and the portal. That awful, stupid portal. He tore it apart one night with his bare hands, just days before the Guys In White could swoop in and commandeer the lab and confiscate mom and dad’s tech. Anything he couldn’t smuggle into his lair was destroyed. 

He’d shouted, and screamed, and would’ve razed the whole place to the ground in his grief. He burned their copies of the portal’s blueprints into ashes, all of their copies he ensured were nothing more but char and cinder. The original copies went to his observatory, a place where the GIW would never be able to reach.   

By the time he’d finished, it was as if a hurricane had hit the place. Ectoplasm samples were splattered across the ground, glass was smashed and scattered throughout the room. The frame of the portal was warped and bent beyond repair, with wires ripped from the wall and torn to ribbons. The blast doors were unable to open and close ever again because he’d bent them straight out of their frame, and torn panels out of the tunnel. The button that had killed him, that stupid faulty safety lock, he’d dug his fingers straight into the crevices and wrenched it straight out of its socket. He’d smashed it straight into the ground until it resembled nothing more than a crushed soda can.

It took him all night to demolish the lab. It probably would have been faster if he’d just stayed as Phantom, but he didn’t want to be. He didn’t want to be dead. His hands were all torn and bloody by the end of the night, his arms and legs and lungs aching.  

Then he sat on the floor in the center of the room, surrounded by the carnage, and sobbed until his voice gave out. Wailed and wailed until his vocal chords buckled and collapsed under the weight of his grief, and then he cried more. 

No more would ghosts haunt Amity Park. No more was he “the ghost hero; the Phantom”. That day, and ever since then, he was just… Phantom; Danny Fenton. A dead-alive kid with a broken heart, and no family. 

Yeah, thinking about Amity Park hadn’t been a good idea. He refocuses back onto Bruce so he doesn’t have to think about it any longer.  

Bruce stares back at him, and then tilts his head at him. Danny mimics him, tilts his head too in the same direction without thinking. The corner of Bruce’s mouth twitches, quickly enough that Danny nearly misses it, and then it smoothes back over like it’d never been there at all. 

There’s the sound of the blender turning on, the gargling roar of the blades drowns out the music still playing throughout the room. Him and Bruce are still locked in on each other, even when the blender dies down and there’s quiet bustling of Alfred opening one of the cupboards to grab a cup. 

But in the end, Danny regretfully is the first to turn away when Alfred walks over and hands him the cup. “Thanks, Mister Pennyworth.” He says, fingers curling around the glass. There’s a chill against his skin that he doesn’t quite feel, and there’s a single white straw stuck right through the smoothie.

Danny takes a sip. It tastes better than anything he’s had in weeks.

Danny drinks half of it before he loses his appetite, which sucks because Alfred didn’t even give him a whole lot to begin with, and guilt chews at his insides for wasting the food. He only gets down enough to chase away the sharp blade of hunger before he can’t anymore, and Danny quietly pushes the glass away. 

Bruce got his phone out while the two of them were eating — Alfred snagging the other plate he’d made when they came in — and Danny usually doesn’t like watching over people’s shoulders, — it makes him feel like a creep, — but he finds himself watching Bruce scroll through the news app and slowly skim over articles with bold black font and eye-catching titles. 

One catches both of their attention, and while Bruce straightens up, Danny’s heart leaps into his throat with a white-hot flash of terror. 

[ Billionaire Vlad Masters demands for Gotham PD to conduct a city-wide search after disappearance of godson and ward, Daniel Fenton ]

That—! 

It was barely even sunrise, and yet he’s already flocked to the media. Danny’s hands shake fearfully furiously.  

“That fucker.” Danny snarls, the words slipping past his filter before he can catch it with his teeth. Alfred instantly frowns at him, and Danny would apologize if he wasn’t currently trembling. He just barely refrains from snagging the phone from Bruce’s hand and furiously scrolling through the article himself. His shoulders hunch up to his ears, muscles tensing up like a coil on a spring. “It hasn’t even been a day.”  

Bruce ‘hms’ low, rumbling and deep, and taps the link to read the full article, his glacial eyes crinkle sharply. Danny shuffles halfway off his seat to stick one foot on the ground, — ignoring the way lightning hot pain stabs straight through his bones, — digs his nails into the cushions, and drags himself into Bruce’s personal space to read the article with him. 

Which he almost immediately regrets, because it makes his already boiling blood boil hotter. It’s strange to be so terrified and so angry at the same time. 

The article is full of a bunch of horsey, croc-o-tears baloney with Vlad playing the terrified guardian card concerned over his missing, delinquent ward. It’s all words, but Danny can picture so clearly Vlad’s cloying voice utterly dripping with ‘woe is me’ sentimentality, wiping away fake tears as he tells the interviewer — and where he found one so quickly in order to get this published is beyond him — about how Danny ran off last night, and how he was so worried, Gotham is so dangerous he could be dead or kidnapped or worse— and he can’t believe this could happen. 

Danny wants to reach through the screen and strangle Vlad with his own bare hands. He can’t breathe. He knew this would happen, but he didn’t think it’d be so quick. 

The article goes on with Vlad telling lies about who Danny is as a person. That he hasn’t been the same since he found his family dead in their home — which may be the only ounce of truth, but how dare he air that out like it was nothing more than the morning weather — and that he’s become so unpredictable with grief. That Vlad was hoping that taking him with him to Gotham would do him some good, because he hasn’t left the house since the funeral, but instead he ran away. He makes Danny sound like an unstable teenager unaware of his own actions. 

He can’t breathe. 

He hasn’t left the house because Vlad never let him. He put locks on all the doors and windows and anti-ghost barriers around the property, even though Danny hasn’t been Phantom since he destroyed the lab. He took his phone, he locked him in his room, he never let him leave.  

Why is Vlad even doing this— he knows that he injected Danny with blood blossom. He knows what that does to ghosts, he knows that Danny wouldn’t have survived the night. Why does he still think Danny is alive— why couldn’t he just assume he was dead.  

(He knows why. It’s because Vlad didn’t find his corpse last night. It’s because Vlad’s crazy and Danny’s memory is fuzzy, but he remembers very clearly the moment he heard Vlad’s voice and begged Bruce to help him. Because it was after that moment that everything began to blur together. He knows Vlad knew that Danny was in that alleyway.)

(They’ve been archenemies for three years. Vlad knows Danny just as well as Danny knows him. He knows how hard Danny is to kill, he knows that Danny can get out of practically anything. He knows that if he doesn’t see it with his own two eyes, then there’s a chance that Danny was still alive.)

(He really hates that Vlad’s right.)

His next breath comes in ragged, like he’s trying to claw in air. Danny is. That cotton-wad filter in his lungs has thickened and spun cobwebs up into his throat, and his chest hurts. He tears his eyes off the phone and onto Bruce, wild and frantic. Doubt slams into him like a freight train, and horrifyingly, he wonders if Bruce might change his mind and believe the article instead. Because Vlad’s a really good manipulator when he wants to be, and what if—

(Irrationality is one hell of a thing, and it loves fear like one loves to raise a child.) 

Danny latches his fingers around the fabric of Bruce’s sleeve, and grips him tight. “He’s lying.” He hisses, he’s still shaking. He might just fall out of his seat, his heart beats wildly out of its place. “He’s lying, Bruce, please.”  

Please, please, please.  

“I know.” Bruce murmurs, and a thing to know about irrationality is that it can be knocked over like a jenga tower balancing on a single block. Relief rushes over him, and Danny wheezes out a pained breath. Miraculously, he hasn't coughed the whole walk down to the kitchen, but this is like tripping on a piece of gravel on the sidewalk, and he tilts over into a fit. 

His fingers tighten on Bruce even more, clawing into him like a kitten caught stuck on the curtains. Guilt bites at him for a moment, but his coughing pulls him away from the feeling. His eyes squeeze shut on instinct, and Danny forces one hand to loosen and let go so he can cover his mouth. 

It’s so stupid how scared Vlad has made Danny of him. He wasn’t even this afraid of him yesterday. Sure he’s been slowly growing more wary around him since the funeral, Vlad’s been steadily declining and it was like watching a live frog sit in slowly boiling water, but this— this is just so sudden. They’ve been fighting each other for years, he’s never been afraid of him even then. 

And now, unexplainably, the idea of somehow being next to or around Vlad terrifies him. Danny can’t chase away the idea that Vlad might just kill him the next time they’re behind closed doors — if he’s crazy enough to fill his bloodstream with the extract of a fucking parasitoid anti-ghost flower, then who knows what he might do. 

He wants his mom and he wants dad and he wants Jazz, and not for the first time, he wants these last four months to be nothing but an awful nightmare that he’s going to wake up from any moment. And he’s gonna wake up in his bedroom at FentonWorks, where there’s glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling and a shelf full of mini model motorcycles, and his posters are all up on the wall with peel-off tape and his fountain pens are all lined nicely in their places in his desk. 

But that’s not gonna happen because they’re gone, and not all deaths are created equal. Some are clumsy; unremarkable, and sometimes all it takes is a broken water heater and a well-meaning dad and carbon monoxide poison to ruin everything.

(He can’t even remember what the last thing he said to them were.) 

His lungs burn from his coughing, and Danny tries his damn hardest to stop it early, but all it does is cause him to choke on air and cough harder. Bruce moves his arm — the same one that Danny is clinging desperately onto, and curls his fingers around Danny’s upper arm, keeping him from toppling right over onto the ground. 

(Which is another stupid, stupid thing and Danny’s really starting to hate his body right now. He shouldn’t be so fragile and weak. Yesterday he could run and jump, today he can hardly move.) 

Alfred has water for him when the coughing finally subsides, and Bruce quickly lets go when Danny finally regains himself and straightens up. Danny does the same, murmuring guilty apologies in his head when he sees the divots left in the fabric from his nails.  

“We know he’s lying, Mister Fenton. There’s nothing Mister Masters can say that will convince us otherwise.” Alfred repeats quietly, as if Danny needs the extra reassurance, and Danny can feel shame tarring up in his ribs over thinking otherwise. Of course they do, they saw what Vlad did to him last night. He just— he wasn’t thinking. 

Danny nods mutely, his tongue thick in his mouth. 

All of this could have been avoided if Aunt Alicia had just gotten custody of him like she was supposed to. He was supposed to be staying with Auntie. She fought so hard for him when Vlad challenged her legal guardianship. She’d gotten the best lawyer her money could buy and that wasn’t enough, it should’ve been, but it wasn’t. It wouldn’t have mattered who she hired, who the judge was, because Vlad was always going to overshadow them and rule in his favor. 

He should be in Arkansas with Auntie right now, not here. Not with Vlad. He should be at her cabin growing rhubarb, helping with her horses, helping her fix that leaky pipe in the barn that’s never going to stay fixed. 

After the ruling Danny had stood with her outside the courtroom and clung to her like a leech, wracked in grief and sobbing, unwilling to let go. She’d gone and bought a new dress so she could look presentable, and she was wearing Grandma Mae’s pearls, but she still smelled like woodsmoke and rhubarb, and even that wasn’t enough to hide the sorrow bruising beneath her eyes.

They needed four people to pry him off her, and he shrieked and fought the whole time as they dragged him away. He hasn’t seen her since. 

Bruce stares at him silently, a hard line in his eyes. He looks upset, and when he realizes Danny’s looking at him, he looks away and to his phone. “We can start building a case for you.” He mutters, Danny watches him leave the news app and open the notes. “Get you out of your godfather’s custody.” 

“It’s not going to work.” Danny rasps instantly, and feels his stomach drop immediately afterwards. It’s true and he hates that it’s true, but now he’s going to have to explain why— Bruce stills, and his eyes are back on him. 

He’s silent for a moment, something searching, before he says; “It will, I’ll make sure of it.” That sounds mildly ominous. “Do you have any living relatives? We can get into contact with them. Get you into their care.” 

“My Aunt Alicia.” He says. And his dad’s family, but dad’s been estranged from the Fenton family since he married mom, so the only time Danny ever met them was at the funeral. “But it doesn’t matter, because it’s not going to work.” 

“If you’re worried about the money, Mister Fenton, we have plenty.” Alfred says cooly, and Danny already figured that considering the house they lived in, but that’s not what he means. Frustration pops up in his sternum and splashes scalding hot against his ribs. “If Mister Masters wants to drag out a custody battle, we are more than capable of following suit.” 

“It’s not the money.” Danny stresses, “It’s— He—” His jaw clicks shut automatically, his voice and the words on his tongue drying up like a lake in a desert. It’s not the money and it’s not whatever Bruce is thinking, and he appreciates that they’re willing to do this for him but it’s not going to work. 

Now they’re both staring at him expectantly, and Danny stammers over himself. He doesn’t owe Vlad privacy, his mind whispers, hissy and sharp. Not anymore. He doesn’t owe him secrets, doesn’t owe him safety. He poisoned him, he tried to destroy him. 

He needs to tell them something because if he doesn’t, they’re going to waste their time trying to protect him. If he doesn’t tell them something, they’re going to go forward as they are, and Danny is going to end up back with Vlad again anyways. 

(And what about being Liminal?)

He’s just going to have to take a leap of faith.

The thought of going back to Vlad is enough to get his mouth moving. “He has powers.” Danny says, rushing it all out in one breath, watching as Bruce and Alfred’s eyebrows raise up to the sky. He keeps going even with the blood pumping in his ears. “I— I know it sounds super crazy, but it’s true, I swear. He— he can possess and control people, and it’s how he got custody of me because he possessed the judge into ruling in his favor, and that’s why I’m not with Auntie when I should be.”

Danny drags a hand through his hair, tugging through the knots and at the end strands in distress. “It’s also how he got so rich — he possessed other tycoons and forced them into signing away ownership of their companies to him so he could assimilate them into Vlad.Co, and that’s why we’re here in Gotham in the first place because he’s been wanting to sink his claws into Mr. Wayne’s company for years now—” Bruce’s eyes tighten around the corners, and Danny thinks he sees a shadow of a scowl go across his face. “—and the only reason he hadn’t sooner is because Mr. Wayne’s an even worse hermit than Vlad so he hasn’t been able to find a plausible reason for them to interact without looking suspicious, up until now.”  

“And I know it sounds crazy and unbelievable, but I swear, I promise it’s the complete and utter truth.” He sounds so totally crazy; he sounds off his rocker. Danny can’t tell if they believe him or not, it’s like he’s staring at two brick walls. His heart is in his throat. His voice breaks. “And that’s why it doesn’t matter what you do legally, because all Vlad needs to do is possess the judge and make them rule in his favor and everything you did would be for nothing.”  

Rant over. Danny glues his mouth shut, strangle-fig in his ribs, and forces himself to not look away from Bruce or Alfred. He needs them to believe him for their own good, but he also desperately wants them to not to. He doesn’t want to know what their opinions on people who aren’t normal or human are like, he wants to live in ignorance and believe that they’re fine with the strange and abnormal. He doesn’t want the other shoe to drop, but he’s always going to have to be the one to fell it from his fingers. 

He threads his hands together, holds his breath, and waits. 

Bruce is the first to do something — even if that something is as small as him simply frowning and furrowing his brows. Agonizing silence passes, — and only now does Danny realize that Alfred had turned the music off at some point, — before finally; “He has… powers?” 

It’s not denial, but it’s not acceptance either. Danny nods quickly, and regrets the vertigo it gives him. “There was an accident when he was in college with my parents, they were working on an invention and it malfunctioned and blasted him in the face.” He rambles, because maybe if he explains it it’ll make a little more sense. “He was hospitalized for years, but it gave him powers. He never forgave my dad for it.” 

Bruce does not say anything. His eyebrows just furrow deeper together while a short, light, ‘hm’ slips out of him. Danny’s not sure what that’s supposed to mean — whether or not he believes him, or if Bruce just thinks he’s crazy. 

Alfred finally reacts, looking mildly bewildered; “He blamed your father for his accident, and yet agreed to be your godfather?” 

That also wasn’t denial, but it still wasn’t acceptance. Danny sucks in air through his teeth, the strangling feeling receding a little. “My parents named him godfather without telling him, they thought they were still friends. And Vlad was madly in love with mom, he wanted to try and steal her away from dad and make me his son.” 

Well, Vlad finally got his wish — a third of it, at least. And yet it hadn’t been enough.     

Both Alfred and Bruce look at him, appalled.

Yeah. Yeah. That about sums up his life. It’s sardonic, isn’t it? 

Like a puppet with its strings cut, his strangle-fig anxiety suddenly drops away into nothingness. In its place bleeds in just pure hopeless exhaustion. 

Danny sighs through his nose, slumping in on himself. He’s gone through every range of emotion on the spectrum, and he’s only been awake for what— an hour? Hour and a half? “I know it’s crazy,” He says tiredly, “I know it sounds unbelievable. But it’s my reality, and- and it’s gonna be yours if you still wanna help me. There’s still enough time to back out now.” 

There’s your out, he thinks, feeling like Atlas with the weight of the world on his shoulders. It might not be everyone’s, but it’s his, and he’s used to carrying it on his own. He wants them to believe him, but if they don’t then he’s all prepared to leave the moment he can — he can plan his next steps on his own. All he needs to do is wait until he’s eighteen, and then he’s no longer within Vlad’s custody. That was four years away. Three years and eight months if he wants to be specific. 

(Spending his fourteenth birthday alone was… terrible, honestly. Vlad had tried to do something to celebrate, but Danny’s grief was barely one month young and so bleeding raw it was still breathing. He sat at the table and stared at Vlad without a word, disconnected from the world around him until Vlad finally dismissed him.) 

Bruce’s mouth purses together, and he looks at Danny, his glacier eyes piercing. Danny watches as something steeles behind them. “I promised to keep your godfather away from you,” he says, voice murmuring soft, “if that means avoiding the courts, then we’ll avoid the courts.” 

Hope is not something that comes to Danny easily or often, and when it does it’s often usually desperate and wild; wide-eyed and keening, frantic like a bleeding rabbit. It’s something that Danny needs to take both hands and sink his claws into, wrestling it to the ground to try and keep it in his hands long enough to get what he needs to do done. Otherwise if he doesn’t, it will slip straight from his grasp and skitter into the underbrush. When it shows up, it’s often because the other choice scares him too much to accept, and so it borders delusion. 

Danny breathes in softly. The air sends soothingly warm relief burrowing through his bones and tissue. It’s still not acceptance, but it’s definitely not denial, and the fact that Bruce was willing to take Danny’s word for it over this was— …it was great. There’s no other word for it, no beating around the bush. It made him hopeful. The lingering kind that settles over his skin like a blanket of sunshine. 

(And he didn’t even have to tell him about Liminality.)

“You said you have an aunt, Mister Fenton?” Alfred asks, speaking carefully, as if he’s trying not to disrupt the air. When Danny nods, his mouth slants up to the side, “Would you like to give her a call now?” 

Danny’s answer is immediate, punching out of him; “Yes.”    

Chapter Text

Mom and Auntie used to talk a lot more often when Danny was little — especially before Auntie divorced Hudson. Although his memories before that time were fuzzy at best, he still has some recollection of phone calls on and off during the week for Mom to pick up. Phone calls full of Auntie telling Mom all about how Hudson was driving her up a wall, and that one day soon she was going to go out and feed him to the neighbor’s pigs when no one’s looking. 

He doesn’t remember every single issue she ever had with that man, but he knows that sometimes she’d call because he’d dug up her rhubarb again. Other times it was because he hadn’t fixed the pasture gate like he was supposed to — and said he would — and one of her foals escaped, leading to a manhunt between her and some of her neighbors in order to find the thing before the coyotes did. Then it was because he was out drinking again, hanging out with his buddies rather than helping Auntie like he’d said. 

There were a lot of issues, Danny knows, that ultimately led to their divorce, but those were the ones he remembers being some of the most repeating. Mom hated Hudson with a passion, perhaps even more than Auntie did at times, and while she never voiced her disdain — not while he and Jazz were in earshot, anyways, — Danny could see it in the tight corners around her eyes and the displeased purse of her lips whenever Auntie called. 

She always had this very specific frown that she reserved for people she didn’t like — people like Hudson and Vlad and Mr. Lancer. Danny remembers very clearly the day Auntie called her to let her know she was finally divorcing him. It was an early morning on the weekend, Mom was making breakfast for him and Jazz, Dad was upstairs in the shower. 

The phone rang, Mom picked it up without missing a beat and trapped it between her ear and shoulder and barely got out her customary ‘hello?’ before she was shrieking louder than Danny’s ever heard her. It cut through the house, scaring both him and Jazz so much they screamed with her out of shock. Dad came barreling down the stairs like a bear not even a minute later in nothing but a towel. He was soaking wet and holding a small ectoray gun in his hand. 

It was chaos and confusion, but Mom was glowing, talking rapidly to Auntie through the phone about how happy she was for her.  

The moment the separation was filed and official, Mom drove them all down to Arkansas to celebrate. There was no choice in the matter, but it was fine, it was the middle of June so it’s not like Jazz was missing any school for it. They were down there for a week before they finally had to leave, and ever since then they’ve been visiting her regularly. 

It takes only a few seconds after the air punches out of him for Danny to remember something important about his Aunt: 

She has one phone, and one phone only.

Shoot.  

And that one phone only was a landline. An off-white one installed in the wall in her kitchen-dining area, one she put in there so she and Mom could call each other whenever they wanted. And that, like all landlines — and phones in general, — it was prone to scams, polls, and surveys. For that reason, Auntie Alicia keeps a sticky note plastered on the wall beside it with the FentonWorks home line — and Mom and Dad’s cells — written on it. That way, when they call, she knows who it is.

(She has the numbers memorized, but she says it doesn’t hurt to have it posted there anyways, just in case.)  

If she didn’t know the number, there was a chance she’d simply just ignore it. Sometimes she’d answer, listen for a few seconds, and then hang up with a few choice words depending on what was said. He and Jazz learned their first swears that way. Mom and Dad hadn’t been happy. (They were even less happy when Danny brought those words home with him.) 

With that in mind, the breathless excitement slamming him in the chest at the prospect of hearing her voice again quickly withers into uncertainty. His lungs twist up, and he tries not to let it show on his face as Alfred picks up his phone, turns off the music, and then passes it off to him with the keypad open. 

His hands tremble, just a little, with the weight in his palms.

“You can use my phone for the time being, Mister Fenton.” Alfred says, “If you’d like, Master Bruce and I could leave so that you may have some privacy with your aunt.” 

Priva—? Danny jerks unwittingly; he stops himself from making a startled noise, but can’t prevent the wide-eyed look he sends Alfred’s way. A small tilt of a frown crosses Bruce’s face, and his brows flinch a sinking moment downwards, then his expression clears. 

“You don’t have to do that, Mister Pennyworth.” Danny says without thinking, his mouth running dry. The idea of being alone hadn’t even crossed his mind, and the idea of them leaving — even if it was just to let him talk in private with Auntie — makes his throat swell up. “It’s fine, you and Bruce can stay here.” Please.  

(Oh gosh, there’s something wrong with him, isn’t there? Jazz would know what it is.) 

Alfred’s expression flickers, as fast as a hummingbird, before he nods and concedes. Danny’s shoulders relax — he hadn’t noticed they’d tightened up. “Alright.”

Bruce says nothing, just keeps watching him. Danny tamps down the urge — and somewhat instinct — to stare back. 

Cool, cool, cool. They were staying. That’s- good! Good. Danny breathes out through his nose and turns back to the phone in his hands. Now he just needs to… call Auntie. Easy-peasy. Playing fetch with Cujo is harder than that. 

His hands stall over the buttons. His mind runs blank.

It’s not that he doesn’t know her number — he does! Mom had them memorize it to heart in case they ever needed to call her for something. It’s just… something in him hesitates. A lump that stretches from his throat to his collarbone that makes it hard to think, and even harder to act. A mental block that refuses to send the signals from his brain down to his fingers. 

He just needs to type it in. And hit the call button. Easy as pie. He can do that. It’s just a set of numbers. It’s just talking to Auntie.

His hands still stall. 

The fear sets in. The hesitation clouds over. 

…What if she doesn’t pick up? That’s a strong possibility, he’s seen her do it before, and if it does happen he knows he can just call again. But what if he keeps trying to call and she refuses to pick up each one? What then? What will he do? He’ll have to give up and then suffer the burn of humiliation in front of Bruce and Alfred, and then what? What if they can’t get into contact with her, what if somehow Vlad manages to hack the phone lines and figure out where he’s calling from and finds him? 

Static fills his ears at the thought, a deep nausea roots through his chest. That doesn’t really make sense at all but it sounds just so out there that it’s crazy enough for Vlad to try it. What if he’s already flown over to Arkansas to see if Danny went there— 

“Danny?” 

Danny’s eyes tear away from the phone towards Bruce, breathing in sharp and deep enough that it sounds a little bit too much like a gasp and it makes the expanding of his lungs burn. His lower lip curls inward unwittingly, leaving a taste that feels too much like horror in his mouth. Bruce was leaning forward a little, his elbows resting on his knees as he stares at Danny with a little less concealed concern. 

(“I won’t let him find you. I promise.”)  

His head clears a little, and he wheezes out a pained sound, soft and with the coarse edges of his exhale. “Sorry.” He says, voice slightly rasp. He means it. He looks back to the phone. 

Typing in Auntie’s number is a little easier, but his hands are still shivering with lingering dread still withering in his lungs. He has to force himself not to think about it when he hits the call button and shoves the receiver up to his ear. 

The phone rings for a beat, then two, and the air grows heavier as he waits. It quickly becomes suffocating, the nausea thickening. Then finally, click—  

“Hello?” 

Danny almost bursts into tears right there, his heart explodes in his chest, gagging him on the relief that floods his sternum. “Aunt Alicia.” He gasps out, choking on his own lungs that constrict with relieved laughter. It stammers out of him. “Aunt Alicia!”  

For a split, terrifying moment, he thinks that Aunt Alicia might not recognize his voice. Might not recognize him. It’s only been four months and yet it still feels like a lifetime. He’s ready to beg, plead, do anything to convince her that it was really him. 

That is not what happens.  

Instead, he gets a shrieking earful of a cry on the other end of the line. So loud that he flinches away from the speaker and his poor ear rings. His aunt collapses into sobs on the other end of the line, and it feels wrong to, but a smile yanks across Danny’s face as he returns the speaker to his ear. 

It’s fine, because the almost-tears he nearly shed start spilling down his face to match her. His lung-choking relief teetering out of him in hiccupping giggles. His aunt blubbers on the other end — he’s never heard her so out of sorts before, not in this way at least. 

“Oh, Daniel James? Is that really you?” She says, stammering over herself. She doesn’t sound nearly half as gruff as she normally does, it’s rare he’s ever heard her so soft. His smile grows so wide he can’t see through his tears. “Cause’ I swear if you’re not, and you’re some no good tomfool tryin’ to scam me—”

He barks out a laugh, and scrubs his eyes desperately in order to see. He’s so happy to hear her voice again. “It’s me! I promise it’s me, Auntie. It’s Danny. I’m so sorry I haven’t called.” His voice teeters haphazardly. “Vlad took my phone and I haven’t been able to use any of the landlines in his house, and it’s—” 

It’s been hard. On top of Vlad taking his phone and everything else, Danny just never had the energy to call or to figure out a way to. The last four months have been nothing but a depressive haze to him, a blurred together smear of oil paint on a canvas with so many colors mixed together that he can barely pick one shape out from another. 

Every day just felt the same; with Danny catatonic with grief, with Vlad desperately trying to get him to adhere to him and spend time with him and do what he wants. With Vlad trying to get him to use his powers. He hated the fact that Danny had forced his core and powers into a form of dormancy, he still can’t figure out the reason why — it meant Danny couldn’t access his powers or his ghost form until he forced it awake. 

He slumps into himself, curls into the phone with a shivery sigh. “I’ve missed you, so much.”

Aunt Alicia sniffles, and makes a pained noise. “I’ve missed you too, Danny, like a damn limb. We’re all we got left of each other.” Her voice cracks, “You have no idea how much I’ve been fightin’ with that bastard to let me see you. It’s been worse than a pack of chickens with a rat. Is he with you? Are you safe?”  

He shakes his head fervently, hates that it makes him feel sick and dizzy. He glances over at Bruce, and for a moment feels his wobbly smile ache to return. The corner of his mouth twitches. “I’m— I’m safe, Auntie. And no, I’m not with him.” His heart aches, then squeezes, and he bites the bullet so he can get the lead out of the way. “I ran away from him last night.” 

“Oh my God.” Aunt Alicia breathes, and she doesn’t sound upset — not angry at least — but the shock that winds through her voice still results in Danny’s chest squeezing up and his breath skipping out of him. He nearly spills out an apology, it taffies to the roof of his mouth. “Where are you? Oh my God, Daniel James. What did he do to you? I’ll fly out there to Wisconsin right now and beat him within an inch of his life.” 

The threat makes him both huff out a laugh — it stings in his sternum — and constrict with fear. Aunt Alicia is a force of nature to be reckoned with, it’s a trait that runs in the family, but he doesn’t want her going toe-to-toe with Vlad. He doesn’t know what he’d do to her — because if he was able to hurt Danny, Mom’s own son, then there’s no telling what he might not hesitate to do to her own sister. Especially with Mom gone. He can’t lose anyone else.

“I’m not in Wisconsin.” He quickly tells her, shifting in his seat — ow, ow ow ow ow, his legs bite him in revenge for the movement, — and leaning against the counter. The cold marble sinks into his elbows. “He took me on a business trip with him. That’s— that’s how I was able to get away from him.”  

He can hear her frown over the line, and he’s so not ready to tell her where he actually is. He tenses up in preparation, like a ship preparing for a storm — or a crash against the rocks. “Where… are you then? I’ll fly out and get you, I’ve got some extra money squirreled away, it should be enough—”

The court fees probably already took a chunk out of Auntie’s savings, the last thing he wants is for her to spend more on a plane ticket of some kind and waste more of her money. Even if tickets flying to Gotham are probably really cheap. 

He cuts her off with a nervous, wet titter, sucking in air behind his teeth like a hiss. It makes a little whistle sound between his fangs. “Please don’t, Auntie. Save your money, I’ll find a way to you, I promise.” He says, trying not to sound too pleading. “As for where I am? Uh— I’m in, uh—” his voice drops meekly; “Gotham?” 

Danny barely has the time to shrivel into his shell like a turtle before his Aunt responds. He hears her sharp inhale from over the receiver, and manages to pull the speaker away just in time for her to cry; “Gotham!?” 

“You’re in Gotham?! Masters took you to Gotham!? You’re alone in Gotham!?” She’s rapid fire like a gunshot, panic and indignancy square in her voice like a fireworks show. Danny winces, and embarrassment and guilt and a few other unnamed emotions pile in his chest. “That city’s worse than a brown bear— I’m coming to get you, now.”

Oh- oh no, no no. He just thought why that was a bad idea, why he doesn’t want her to do that. And worse— he scrambles over his tongue. “No, no, please don’t, Aunt Alicia. Do not come to Gotham. Vlad’s got the whole city looking for me, he could hear about you coming in. I promise I’m safe, I got found by a nice man and he got me away from Vlad. He’s the whole reason I’m able to call you.”

His aunt barks out a laugh, harsh and fierce and completely disbelieving. Danny’s heart begins to sink. He knew she was gonna react this way— “Safe!? The people in Gotham are about as safe as a well full of lead, Daniel James. You have no idea what this man could do to you—” 

What he could do—?  

Danny’s not an angry person. Really, he’s not. It’s the last emotion on his roster for him to feel when things don’t go his way. Upset? Yeah. Annoyed? All the time. Everything in between? Very much so. But angry? It’s not as often as one would think. 

But he’s gone through every range of emotions on said roster in the span of like, an hour. His nerves are shot like a sparking livewire, fried to the high heavens and still kindling. Has he known Bruce for, in total, maybe two hours? Yes. But he saved his life. He saved his life. He got him away from four months of nothing but misery and isolation, and then he went and created a— a cure for a poison he didn’t even know about. From an extinct flower.  

Then he risked his secret identity and brought Danny back to his house, let him stay in one of his guest rooms, lended him one of his shirts so that Danny didn’t sleep in his bloody Humpty Dumpty tee, and is letting him call his aunt so that he can let her know he’s okay. He let Danny try and walk down to the kitchen on his own and didn’t try to turn him around when they reached the stairs, instead he let Danny figure out a solution and, despite how silly it was, joined in with him so that he didn’t feel embarrassed. 

Now his aunt is judging him without even meeting him or giving him a chance— 

(Danny is immediately thrown back into the last three years of terrible PR as Phantom. The complete and utter lack of chance from almost everyone in Amity Park. He might be taking it too personally but—) 

It’s hard not to feel incensed on Bruce’s behalf. Danny’s filter is shot through, his lips pull back and he hisses without thinking; “There’s nothing he could do that’s worse than what Vlad’s already done.” It comes out too much like a snarl for his liking, and guilt strikes him through like an arrow — he’ll feel bad when he’s not currently boiling. 

Aunt Alicia falls silent. Danny pushes forward, his mouth running like a train without rails. “If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t even be calling you. If he was gonna do worse, he wouldn’t have even let me call you. I’ve been with him for hours now and he’s not done anything to hurt me, and I’ve been unconscious for most of it! If he really wanted to do something, he wouldn’t have waited for me to wake up.” 

He’s not gonna stand for this injustice. He’s not, he’s not, he’s not. “There are good people in Gotham, Aunt Alicia,” he tells her fiercely, righteously, “good people who want to help. It is not that hard to believe.” Danny’s not talking about only Gotham anymore, and he knows it. But his Aunt, and Bruce, and Alfred don’t. There’s no need for them to know.

His blood simmers beneath his skin, and for a brief, clarifying moment, his core sparks a buzz in his chest. It pulses through him like a static shock, trailing behind a heartbeat of stinging through his veins, and on instinct he inhales and remembers to breathe. Then he squashes the sensation back into submission, like a foot stomping on the embers of a fire, and feels his core force itself into dormancy again. 

The incension fades, and leaves him cold in its wake. The tension bleeds from out of his shoulders, iron pools weakly on the back of his tongue, and he swallows it down without thinking; distracted. Aunt Alicia is still silent, Danny can hear the room static through the other end. 

“Do you wanna talk to him?” He asks softly, slumping in on himself; “He’s been with me this whole time.” Maybe that will soothe her worries — because that’s really all she is; worried.

Bruce’s eyebrows raise up his forehead, and from the corner of his eye Danny sees him briefly stiffen, and then carefully straighten up. 

There’s a beat where Aunt Alicia still doesn’t say anything, and for a scary moment Danny wonders if she was going to hang up. That he pressed too much and was too harsh, and now she wasn’t gonna wanna talk to him anymore and he burned his bridge with the only family he was still in contact with— 

“This whole time?” She repeats, sounding equally quiet as Danny and much less upset. There’s a question there; hesitance, one that he knows she’s gonna ask with a simple— “Why?” 

Aunt Alicia still sounds wary, but there’s no outright accusation there. So Danny doesn't get upset — at least not in the fury way — and his face heats up, his chest burns like he just went through a coughing fit. Embarrassment floods through him, and he purposefully stares at the counter, his finger scratching his jaw. “I didn’t wanna be alone.” He mumbles, hoping that it wouldn’t catch on the ears of Bruce and Alfred, even if Bruce already knows he doesn’t like being on his own from his freak out earlier. 

It’s just easier when he doesn’t have his heart on his sleeve. 

There’s no sound on the other end, and then there is; a soft, uncertain sigh that terrifies him for a heartbeat. “Hand the phone over to him, songbird.” Aunt Alicia tells him, and there’s a hardy undernote beneath her voice, one he recognizes from all the times she struck the fear of Alicia Walker into his dad. 

His face burns hotter, even if his heart swells with an overfilling fondness — he thought she’d forgotten all about that nickname. He hasn’t heard it in years. She’d started calling him that when he was six, and she found him sitting by the crik near her cabin with his feet in the water, singing to himself because he liked the sound his voice made when it echoed through the trees. 

Danny nods mutely, and then twists himself over to Bruce and hands out the phone to him. Bruce stares at him, bright and piercing, and Danny quietly gestures his head to the phone. 

A few more seconds of staring, and then he silently plucks it out of Danny’s hand, and holds it up to his ear. Danny’s heart hammers in his ears — yes, he knows Bruce is a vigilante… at least he’s pretty sure he is. Now that he’s thinking about it, he hasn't actually confirmed with him that he was a hero. He’d just assumed he was with the way he’d eaten shit in the alleyway.

Because, hah, haha, same. At the time, he’d thought there was no way he wasn’t some kind of hero — Danny’s done that same thing so many times over the years that it was practically customary. It has to be some kind of rite of passage.

But also, Danny’s knocked his own ghosts into alleyways an equal amount of times they have for him — so it’s really up in the air. Although they weren’t being pursued by anyone, so maybe his first assumption still stands—  

Regardless, Aunt Alicia is still Aunt Alicia. So he’s got every right to be worried. 

“Hello?” Bruce says, brows sinking low together. Danny can’t hear what Aunt Alicia is saying on the other line, so he swaps places with Bruce and stares at him intently instead. He watches as Bruce’s mouth purses for a moment, and then makes a ‘mh’ sound. “That would be me.” 

And that’s how the conversation goes; with Bruce listening to Aunt Alicia and occasionally giving some form of answer — whether it be a grunt, or a verbal response, it varied. Danny tries to crane his ears to listen in, to see what Auntie’s saying, but the best he can get is inaudible mumbling from the other side. 

Alfred had, at some point — probably while Danny was talking to Auntie — cleaned up all of the dirty dishes, and was now just sitting there on one of the stools with the two of them. He was reading a newspaper, procured from somewhere. Danny hadn’t seen where. 

Bruce tells Aunt Alicia a handful of things. Danny learns that he’s an employee for Wayne Enterprises — Danny immediately concludes that he’s probably one of the shareholders, based on how large his house is. Or someone of an equally important role in the company. Which is great, he probably has a close in with Mr. Wayne, and can probably easier warn him about Vlad.

(Danny’s still gonna ask him to warn Mr. Wayne, just to make sure. He’s pretty sure Bruce is gonna do it anyways, but it doesn’t hurt to double check. He doesn’t want Vlad to get any more than he’s already stolen from others.) 

He also tells Aunt Alicia a modified version of how they met. Which, fair, Danny wasn’t expecting him to go out and tell Auntie about being a masked vigilante — the idea didn’t even cross his mind. And he quietly adopts it to his own cover when Bruce tells Aunt Alicia that they met when Bruce was heading to his car after staying late at Wayne Enterprises. 

“Danny ran up to me while I was getting to my car.” Bruce says, they’re both staring at each other. “He asked me for help, so I let him get in when I unlocked it. He’s currently staying with me for the time being.” 

There’s a few minutes where Bruce does nothing but go, “Hm.” and very briefly, almost unnoticeably, nods to something Alicia says. Danny’s pretty sure during that time, his Auntie was threatening him within an inch of his life — which is both equally heartwarming and mortifying, since he just grilled her about how Bruce wasn’t a bad person. …As far as he’s admittedly aware.  

Eventually, the phone gets handed back to Danny once Aunt Alicia is satisfied with her talk with Bruce, and Danny practically snatches the device from his hands so he can speak to her again. “I told you I was safe.” He rushes out, and gets a gruff huff in response. 

“I suppose you did.” Aunt Alicia agrees, and silence follows on both ends — Danny has nothing more he wants to say, nothing he thinks is important enough to mention, but he doesn’t want to hang up. — for only a brief moment, and then she adds; “...I still don’t fully trust this Bruce, Daniel James. But there’s nothin’ I can really do about it right now, is there?” 

Danny shakes his head, his mouth pressing together, spreading and stifling an almost smile — he’s not sure if it’s bitter or not. “Not really…” His voice trails off, and his eyes fall down to his legs and arms. He couldn’t stay with Aunt Alicia in the state that he’s in even if he wanted to. 

His teeth sink into his bottom lip, chewing thoughtfully. “I—...” Danny hesitates, and despite the sinking, heavy feeling in his ribs telling him not to, pushes forward, “I’m not gonna lie to you, Auntie. I’ve been… hurt pretty bad.” Matching accents with her is an accident, but it’s an easy accident to slip into, “Nothin’ that can’t be fixed, and I’ll try and come see you when I can, but I don’t know when that will be.”

Aunt Alicia makes a soft, sighing sound, it sounds tinged with grief. He can imagine her closing her eyes, standing next to the phone, and his heart squeezes. “Take your time then, songbird. Don’t push yourself too hard, you’re just like your momma; the both of you hate sittin’ still even if it was for the betterment of your health. Call me once a week, you hear? Once. A. Week. I don’t care who's up there, if I don’t hear from you, I’ll storm up to Gotham and find you myself.”

A grin pulls across his face with all his teeth showing, wet laughter huffing in his lungs. “I will, I promise.” He usually doesn’t like making promises — the last three years have shown him that they’re far too difficult to keep in his line of work. But, Danny was no longer in that line of work, he feels confident that this is one he can feasibly keep. 

“You better.” Auntie warns, and more silence falls between them for a few seconds more, neither of them wanting to hang up. “What number is this? I want to write it down so I know when you’re calling.” 

Oh, oh shit. 

Danny flusters, fumbles, and glances at Bruce and Alfred widely. “I- uh, this is actually a cellphone, not a landline, Auntie. I don’t know the number.” He quickly mouths at the two of them; ‘help!’  

Bruce to the rescue, he nods and begins quietly relaying the landline number to him, and Danny quickly repeats it back to Aunt Alicia, who in turn begins writing it down. Danny thanks him when it’s over. 

There’s nothing left to say now. The two of them sit in silence again over the line. Danny’s lungs tighten painfully, and his throat thickens up with grief. He doesn’t wanna hang up. He wants to sit and keep talking to Alicia and tell her anything he can think of — but, that’s the problem. There’s nothing to think of. 

His time with Vlad has been nothing more than one long blank. Anything he can remember that wasn’t just him sleeping or sitting in his room, are things he doesn’t want to relive or retell. There’s no good news to tell her other than he escaped, and no mundane things to talk about. 

He doesn’t wanna be the first to hang up. He really doesn’t.

Aunt Alicia takes the initiative then, and clears her throat — it sounds a little watery, cracked, and Danny purses his lips to prevent his eyes from stinging. “I should better go,” she says, voice weak, “my horses are gonna wonder where I’m at, and you sound exhausted. Get some rest.” 

Danny slumps in on himself, he thought she couldn’t tell behind everything else. But nothing ever slips past her — nothing ever slipped past Mom either… most things that is — he’s not counting being Phantom. “I will. Take care of yourself.” 

“I should be saying that to you,” Aunt Alicia retorts. He hears her take a breath over the line, and then sighs it out shakily. “I know I’m three months late, but happy birthday, songbird.” 

That’s— that’s— 

That’s not fair. Tears immediately bleed up into his eyes and refuse to disappear until they’re dripping off his lashes. Danny squeezes his eyes shut, feels them slide down his cheeks, and wills his heart not to break. “Thanks.” He croaks, and quickly hangs up before he can break up over it. 

Too late. He quickly drops the phone back onto the counter and listens to it clatter against the marble, he probably— probably shouldn’t have done that. That’s not his phone, and while he’s scrubbing his eyes and trying to find his breath, Danny peeps out a miserly “sorry” to Alfred. 

Alfred waves him off and plucks the phone off the counter, “None to worry about, Mister Fenton.”  

Alfred asks Danny if he’d like to take a shower the moment he can finally recollect himself — something he automatically goes to decline, just out of pure exhaustion, before he stops himself. He’s emotionally spent, and the idea of going back upstairs to shower has him itching to sink to the floor and sit there for the rest of eternity. Just take him out back, hose him down, and call it a day. 

He’s also not that confident he can even stand in a shower long enough to get clean. Sure, he was able to walk all the way down to the kitchen, but he was able to distract himself the whole time in order to make it bearable. But standing? There’s nothing to do to distract himself, and with how much he’s pushed himself to even get down to the kitchen, he really doubts his legs could handle a little bit more. 

Even now, sitting in his stool, he eyes the ground warily. There’s a pulsing soreness in his legs that’s been steadily settling in since he snapped at Aunt Alicia, something he could dismiss earlier because he had other things to think about, but now no longer could. Even just trying to idly kick them sends a shooting pain up his sinew and bone, as if daring him to try and even stand. 

How’s he going to get through the day like this? It was still morning. It was still morning, and he wants to curl up and go to sleep; make it tomorrow already. Let the hinges of last night’s nightmare disappear completely already, let him go back to normal now. He’s over this. 

He pointedly avoids Alfred’s steady gaze and keeps his vision on the tile. Danny’s tongue roots around in his mouth, trying to find the right words to form, before finally he unsticks it from the back of his teeth; “I don’t know.”

Because on one hand, yes, a shower sounds terribly unfeasible right now, and borderline straight nauseating. But on the other hand, he feels so gross and the thought of being able to scrub it all away sounded fantastic. The top of his head feels plastered to his skull, the hair below his ears feels uniquely heavy and uncomfortable the only way loose and long hair can, and it was only made worse by the dried clumps of blood that keep itching the back of his neck. 

There was also the option of a bath, but that either meant Danny uses a pail to wash his hair — not very effective, in his experience, — or dunking his head down into the water and scrubbing. Danny’s arms might not be in as bad of a state as his legs, but he wasn’t willing to test that theory and accidentally drown himself just because he overestimated the strength of his upper body. 

Bruce was on his phone, doing something, and Danny manages to catch a glimpse at the screen before skittering his eyes away to look at something else. 

“Are you worried about standing?” Alfred asks, and Danny very nearly scrunches his face up — was it really that obvious? He forces himself to nod, bashful embarrassment creeping up along his spine like a particularly malicious snake. No use trying to hide it, considering Alfred already clocked it. “If that’s the case, there is a shower chair I’m more than happy to lend until we can get you your own.” 

Danny finally looks at him, and frowns. “Are you sure?” 

Alfred nods at him, and some of Danny’s embarrassment tapers off a little at his complete unbothered-ment. “It’s no chip off my nose, Mister Fenton. It’s gathering dust in the back of my closet, you have more use for it than I do currently.” 

…He reluctantly agrees, the draw of being clean outweighing his nerves and his own dread at having to walk all the way upstairs again. With that said, Alfred grabs his cane, stands up, and leaves the room first to grab it. Danny watches him go.

Then immediately turns to Bruce, who, he notices, has since discarded whatever it was he was doing earlier, and was now going through the news app again. For a moment, Danny hesitates — he’s fine with sitting in silence, if that means not bothering him, but he’s gotta ask; 

“Is Mister Pennyworth your butler?” 

Which feels like a stupid question to ask aloud, but he asks it anyway. Alfred calls him ‘Master Bruce’ which implies that Alfred works for him in some capacity, and the fact that he was doing servant-y duties and stuff has him really only drawing to one conclusion. 

Bruce pulls away from his phone to look at him, “..Yes,” he says after a beat, Danny twists back around to lay his head on the counter. Bruce’s eyes follow him the whole time. “Alfred’s been with me since I was a kid.” 

That explains the casualty Alfred regards Bruce with, then, and the way he was able to boss him around earlier. He blinks, and then frowns, his brows furrowing with steady realization. Alfred only made enough food for him and Bruce to have — meaning there’s no one else in this big house. Bruce looks pretty young, and Sam’s grandma lives with her and her parents, and the way he said that implied it was only him and Alfred. 

So… 

He bites the inside of his lip, and decides to shoot his question anyways; “What about your parents?” 

The reaction is immediate, and Danny regrets it just as quickly. Bruce’s eyes shutter, he looks away, and there’s no physical movement, but Bruce seems to almost close off for a moment. “They passed away when I was young.” 

“Sorry.” Danny mumbles, shriveling up a little inside with shame. It’s not enough to stop the passing, fleeting thought of; I guess you and I are in the same boat, but at least he has enough sense and self-control not to say it out loud. His filter was starting to shake off its rust, at last. It couldn’t have done that an hour ago? 

Bruce ‘hms’ lowly, “You didn’t know.” 

It’s very tempting to let the both of them fall into awkward silence, that’s what they’ve been doing all morning. Danny twiddles his thumbs, and decides to push through it. “Does he clean the whole house?” 

“No.” Bruce says, instantaneous. “Only the rooms we use. The tower is too big to clean on his own.” Curt, straight to the point, and slightly stilted. Bruce still doesn’t look back at him, and Danny feels kinda like he keeps running into a brick wall and knocking the wind out of himself. 

New tactic: change the topic. Second time’s the charm, right?

He looks down at the AC/DC shirt hanging off him, the ends slightly pooling in his lap and the collar sagging just low enough that he could see his collarbones, and then looks back up to Bruce. “I like AC/DC too.” He says, trying and just falling short of sounding casual. He suppresses the heat growing on the back of his neck. “What other bands do you like?” 

He can already guess that Bruce liked rock — for obvious reasons that he was wearing — but, just to make sure…

Bruce finally looks back at him, which Danny internally takes a success. His mouth twitches up for a moment, and then he just lets the smile spread weakly across his face. It’s covered slightly by his arms, his head is still laying on them, but he’s pretty sure Bruce sees it anyways. 

He gets stared at for a moment, a contemplative look wrinkling around Bruce’s eyes and between his eyebrows. “...Nirvana,” he answers finally, “and Metallica, and others. I have some of their shirts too.” 

The smile on Danny’s face grows into a grin, triumph fills up his lungs and winds around his ribs. Got you, he thinks, lifting his chin so he can rest it on his wrist. “Rock?” He asks, and when Bruce nods shortly, his grin only gets wider. He tilts his head forward. Some of his hair falls into his face, providing a perfect conspiratorial curtain over his eyes, and he asks, in an equally conspiratorial voice; “Have you ever heard of the band ‘Dumpty Humpty’?”  

“That was the shirt you were wearing last night.” Bruce says. Danny nods with a short, airy, hum, and then straightens up completely. There’s his in!  

He spins the stool seat around and knocks his knees against Bruce’s — it flares up a burning sensation in his legs, and Danny perfectly ignores it beyond a sharp inhale that he tries to stifle. “They’re a goth rock band.” He tells him, matter-of-fact and half-heartedly curbing some of his enthusiasm — for now. “Everyone in my school listens to them, I got to go to their live concert back in the Fall. It’s where I got my shirt.” 

Speaking of his shirt, they better not have thrown that away. That cost him forty bucks out of his allowance and was the only belonging he still had from home — the rest was in his closet back at Vlad’s manor. At least he was able to keep them. 

Bruce looks vaguely interested, and Danny jumps on it like a jaguar. He drums his hands against his thighs — it hurts a little, he ignores that too, and then nods to his phone. “Pull up YouTube, I gotta show you some of their songs.” 

Much to his delight, Bruce does exactly that. Danny quickly dives into telling him every piece of trivia he knows about Dumpty Humpty — from their founding, to the members, the lore behind the name, and the officially known reason for being called an inverted version of a children’s nursery rhyme, — while Bruce searches the name of the band up in the search bar.

“Their ‘King’s Men’ album is, in my opinion, their best one yet.” He says, watching over Bruce’s arm as he taps on the little icon with ‘Dumpty Humpty’ next to it, and goes into their channel. “It’s one of their older ones too, right when they were beginning to start out. ‘Yolk Rot’ though? Absolute garbage, don’t listen to that one, it’s no good.” 

He doesn’t care what Tucker says, ‘Yolk Rot’ is a laughingstock of an album and a complete disregard for the band’s whole genre. Nobody cares that the name is cool. 

Danny gets a faint nod of acknowledgement, and Bruce enters the little playlist page. Before he can begin to scroll down though, Danny immediately stops him, shock dumping over him like a bucket of water. “Wait, wait, wait, wait.” He leans into Bruce far enough that he can see the screen closer, without falling right over. 

His jaw would drop to the floor if it could, “They released a new album?!” His eyes don’t deceive him, he doesn’t recognize the cover art or the name — and he knows their entire discography by heart. When was that released? It has to have been while he was with Vlad, he didn’t have any access to the internet during that time. 

As if Bruce was sensing his thoughts, he taps on that playlist instead, automatically playing the first video in the lineup. As an ad plays, he scrolls down to show him the timestamp. Yeah! Two months ago! Motherfucker!  

(He really needs to check everything the moment he has a chance — just how much has changed in the last four months? It’s a little daunting.)  

They listen to that instead, and Danny practically vibrates in his seat the whole time, too excited about a new album to pay much attention to the apprehension of showing someone his music taste and hoping they liked it too. The fact he wasn’t able to listen to this with Sam and Tucker — they always make a listening party whenever a new album of one of their bands’ drops — is disappointing, but barely crosses his mind. 

Even better, he catches Bruce faintly nodding along to the beat. So, Danny wants to fistbump the sky for his success. It’s always a hit-or-miss when trying to introduce music to people; songs he thought Sam and Tucker would like have sometimes completely gone over their heads. He was kinda preparing for something similar here.

They get through the first three songs before Bruce’s phone buzzes with a text from Alfred, letting him know that he could bring Danny over to one of the bathrooms on the first floor — which Danny does not audibly sigh with relief, but he does quietly. Thank anything, he doesn’t have to crawl the stairs. 

Bruce looks over at him, turns his phone off, and pockets it as he stands up. “Think you can walk?” He asks, his hands briefly twitch, ready to bring them up for Danny to take, before dropping back down to his side.

Danny’s smile fades from his face, and he looks down at his legs. His legs, which have gone from a weak pulse of aching, are now a steady throbbing sensation. An unpleasant throbbing sensation, one sending an uncomfortable gnawing up his spine and rooting around beneath his shoulder blades. 

His mouth begins to slant downwards, that gnawing creates an unease in his chest. He tries to move his legs again, and the spasming burn slams through them even worse than they did when he tried to get out of bed. His mouth pulls back and he hunches up, the embarrassment rapidly sets in. “No.”  

Dammit. He was hoping to at least be able to walk there on his own, but— but no. His body wasn’t going to allow that, he’s already strained himself too hard today. It was still morning.  

From the corner of his eye, Bruce nods, and then, in one big swoop, lifts Danny up like he weighs nothing, turns on his heel, and walks straight out of the kitchen. Danny’s going to go out and say it; he yelps. His fingers automatically dig into the front of Bruce’s shirt, wrinkling it under his fists, and he clings onto him like a tree. 

Yes, he can remember that Bruce was carrying him last night. But, he was mostly delirious and largely incoherent through a fair chunk of it. And also trying not to vomit his own stomach out. He had bigger concerns than being embarrassed over being carried.

However, he was now no longer delirious and incoherent, and with the extra embarrassment of needing help in the first place sticking onto him like a leech, it’s no question that he feels rather shy. “Do I even weigh anything to you?” He peeps at Bruce, unable to stop himself from making a reference. 

“No,” Bruce says automatically, and briefly looks down at him. Danny swears up and down that his mouth tilts very faintly upwards, into a little smirk. “It’s like holding a couple of grapes.” 

Oh, well.  

Mortification momentarily forgotten, Danny laughs so hard he teeters straight into a coughing fit. 

“Did Mister Pennyworth make you clean up the stuff you knocked to the ground after I fell unconscious?” Danny asks at some point during their little journey to the bathroom that Alfred set up for him. He’d completely forgotten that up until now, and the memory strikes him randomly like a lightning bolt. 

He’s still mildly embarrassed over needing to be carried — he feels like a little kid, and not in a good way — but the feeling has faded just enough that he’s comfortable enough to want to continue talking to Bruce. 

Bruce’s brows thread together, “You still remember that?” 

Danny makes an ‘eh’ sound, and frees his hand to shake it ‘so-so’. “It’s all fuzzy,” he admits, “everything got all… weird and incomprehensible after Vlad showed up. I do remember that, though, and you didn’t answer my question.” 

“Hrm,” Bruce averts his eyes, he’s silent for a long moment. It’s incredibly damning. “...yes. He did.” 

Danny grins widely, “Incredible.” The image of Bruce in that big bat, armor… thing… suit… picking up scrap and junk and putting it back on the table was incredibly amusing to him. 

Oh, speaking of the bat… suit… thing… “What do I call you?” He asks, Bruce looks at him in confusion. “As in, hero-wise? Vigilante-wise? When-you’re-in-that-suit-wise? Because I’ve been calling you Bat-Man in my head, and I am… assuming that is not your name.” 

The blank stare Bruce gives him is not instilling a lot of confidence in him, and Danny feels the back of his neck begin to heat up in embarrassment. Just like before, Bruce does not say anything for a long moment, and Danny is just about to ask him if he said something wrong. 

“Batman.” Bruce says. 

What. 

“What.” He repeats. 

No way. There’s no way he guessed correctly on the first try. It was not that simple. Danny was going to— to— …he was going to do something drastic if he was right. He’s not sure what, but it was going to be unprecedented and unhinged.  

“Batman.” Bruce says again, and Danny’s jaw drops. Bruce looks away from him, “I am the Batman.” 

“You’re pulling my leg.”  

Bruce purses his lips. “Hn. No.” 

Danny was going to do something unprecedented and unhinged.  

“You’re going to warn Mr. Wayne about Vlad, right?” Danny says, his face crinkling inward as he frowns, finally remembering to ask about that. There’s a tittering little mouse chewing on his ribs, and it doesn’t really feel like his place to ask, but he has to and it’s gonna bother him until he makes sure to know that Bruce will do something about it. “Or- or at least find a way to convince him not to work with Vlad?” 

His voice is too meek for his liking, uncertain; shy. This isn’t his city to worry about, isn’t his people to fuss over, but it is his archnemesis that’s going to be trying to screw them over. He doesn’t really know much about Mr. Wayne — he reappeared back in Gotham a few short months before Danny’s parents died, and he only knows about it because Sam was telling him all about it.

Apparently her parents were all abuzz about Mr. Wayne’s reappearance, and were trying to find a way to get into contact with him so that they could hopefully forge some kind of relationship with him. It was supposedly a bust, that man was a terrible hermit. Which should spell bad things for Vlad’s attempts — but, as Danny knows, Vlad can be very manipulative when he wants to be, and he doesn’t know how Mr. Wayne will react to that. 

But, he doesn’t need to know the man — staunch billionaire or not — to know that nobody deserves to have the rug swept right from under their feet and stolen straight from their house. He watches for Bruce to look at him, and just as he expects, he does. 

There’s an unreadable look lining around Bruce’s eyes, sinking them inward. Danny’s not really sure what it means, it’s different from the blank staring he was doing earlier. “Yes,” he says after a beat, and there it is again! That faint, ghost of a smile, crossing across his face. It’s gone before Danny’s even sure it’s there. “I’ll make sure Mr. Wayne knows, don’t worry.” 

A very simple answer, very succinct. Danny slumps a little, as much as he can without slipping straight out of Bruce’s hold, and sighs out through his nose, “Cool. Good. Great, even.”  

“By the way, where’s my Dumpty Humpty shirt?” He asks, “You guys didn’t throw it away, did you?” He’ll cry if they did, and that was a threat. 

“Alfred’s washing it.”

Oh, good. He doesn’t need to weaponize his tears. Danny can’t wait to get it back.  

Through a quick series of winding hallways both tall and short, they eventually make it to the bathroom Alfred sent them to. Alfred is by the door waiting for them, leaning against the wall with his cane clutched in his hand. He looks over as the two of them come down the hallway, and doesn’t even react to Danny being carried. 

Danny, however, quickly remembers to be embarrassed, and his face begins to burn up. Bruce sets him down the moment they’re standing in front of the door, and keeps a hand on his back and his other arm in front of him for Danny to latch onto. Danny does so, tightly.

His legs immediately, viciously bite at him the moment he puts any weight on himself, and his knees threateningly buckle for a brief second, teetering Danny forward. If it weren’t for Bruce’s arm in front of him, he probably would’ve crashed into the door. 

His face burns hotter, and he ducks his head down so that his hair will cover his face. “Sorry.” He mumbles, staring intensely at the ground as he tries to find the strength in his legs. That’s — well, he should’ve expected that. It doesn’t prevent the mortification from returning tenfold and swelling up in his throat, though. 

Bruce doesn’t say anything, just keeps one hand on his back and his arm in front of him until Danny can finally stand on his own. Then all he does is remove the hand from his back. Danny wobbles, he teeters, and then straightens up shakily. 

He only has one word: ow. This hurts, so much. He can’t compare it to the other injuries he sustained over the years as Phantom, because those ones weren’t lingering, stinging nettles of pain spreading throughout his muscles and tissue and bone. It was usually centralized to one spot — and they always had some kind of difference to them that he could focus on and then ignore. Being impaled hurts differently than being stabbed, and being stabbed hurts differently than being shot. His arm being cut hurts differently than it being cut off, and so on and so forth. 

“There are towels on the sink for you, Mister Fenton.” Alfred tells him once Danny’s all settled and standing, looking at him. “As well as shampoo and conditioner for your hair inside the shower, you are free to use it as you wish. I will be nearby in case you need anything.” 

Danny stares at him, processing everything he just said through the haze of his legs hurting. That was— really nice of him to do that. But he doesn’t have to stick around for Danny’s sake, and Danny doesn’t really know what to do with the information that he will. Is this just something that butler’s do? Or is this special treatment because Danny’s injured? He was so accommodating, it was strange. 

With nothing to say, Danny nods shortly, “Okay, thank you.” Then he hurries — re: hobbles — as fast as his legs can take him into the bathroom, and closes the door behind him. 

The bathroom is about as beautifully decorated as the rest of the house, with the same gothic victorian style to match. However, instead of a tub, a modern shower — still trying to keep with the theme of the room — was up against the wall instead.  

Just as Alfred told him, there were two towels folded on top of the sink. The shower chair was sitting inside the shower, and the hair supplies he mentioned were on one of the low shelves in the corner. There was also however, a small bag full of — Danny squints at the writing — shower steamers next to the towels. 

What the hell are shower steamers? He’s never heard of them before.

His legs are shaking. He should sit down before he collapses. 

Danny reaches for the curtains, tugs them closed, and turns on the water. Then he finds a seat on the toilet — he practically clings onto the sides, his legs violently trembling while he sits down, — and reaches for the bag of… shower steamers… on the sink. 

The bag crinkles, his fingers curl around it, and Danny yanks it towards him without knocking the towels to the ground. He flips it around to the back, and searches for some kind of description for them. When he finds one, his eyes scan over it and— oh. They’re basically bath bombs for showers. 

Jeez, that’s so bougie, Danny immediately smiles in disbelief. This couldn’t be Alfred’s, could it? He didn’t ring Danny as the kind of guy to need them — but to be frank, Danny hasn’t known Alfred long enough to make that kind of judgment call. He very well could be. 

They were lavender scented. 

Danny pops the bag open and is hit with the thick scent of lavender, pulls out a tablet — it fits in his palm very easily, they’re shaped like circles and slightly thicker than his thumb, — and leans over to toss it into the shower. The moment the water hits it, it begins to fizz and dissolve. He watches it in fascination for a few seconds, and decides that he should probably get into the shower and not just sit outside it. 

Danny almost falls asleep; he can’t help it. He’s exhausted, his eyes are puffy and hurt from crying, and he’s so sore and tired that it’s like a lullaby to stick him under the hot water and expect him to stay awake. Especially since the pressure was really nice. He dozes off a total of five times before he finally rinses out all of the shampoo and conditioner in his hair, and he hasn’t gotten to scrubbing off all the grime and blood still sticking onto him. 

The shower steamer absolutely did not help either, because he’s starting to remember from Sam trying to teach him how to garden that lavender and lavender oils were used specifically for stuff like joint pain and inflammation, discomfort — all that good stuff that Danny was currently in right now. And while medical pain relievers haven’t worked on Danny since his accident, the same could not be said for aromatherapy treatments.

Yeah, he has yet to figure out how that works. 

He idly traces his nails over his sternum, an idle tick he picked up a few short weeks after his accident, because that’s where his death scar should be. If the lighting was just right, anyone would be able to see the faint outlines and the shimmer of scar tissue that wasn’t actually there. It was like a mirage. That was the only scar that did that; the rest were unseen. 

It was one of the few lucky things he got as a Liminal: any injuries he sustained as a ghost wouldn’t scar his human form so long as he stayed a ghost until it healed. It meant he didn’t have to worry about cover stories for unexplainable scars — like the decapitation ones circling around his neck — or about uncomfortable assumptions about where he got them.   

It was really convenient, even if it meant he had to be mindful about going to roller rinks or bowling alleys or anything with a blacklight, ever. That was a shocking revelation to come to — and fortunately, it happened when he was still newly Liminal.    

Point is — what was his point? Oh, yeah. Point is; Danny was currently falling asleep, and that should probably be his sign to get out, and yet he was not taking it. He was very comfortable, thank you, and he still needs to scrub off any and all lingering bloodstains and dirt on him. 

Most of his aches have gone away, sans the strange, gnawing feeling scrounging around behind his shoulder blades and spreading down his spine, and the pulsating cramping in his legs. The steam floating around wasn’t helping much with his stifled breathing, but it wasn’t actively making it worse either. But he was also not standing up, so it’s not like he was standing in the thick of it either. 

The gnawing in his back was making him uncomfortable, actually. More than that, it was making him uneasy, it felt way too familiar to when the poison first set in for him to be anything but anxious over it. It felt rather… muffled, in comparison, and it was only around his shoulder blades — not rooting down his arms and through his fingers, and steadily making its way downwards — but it was still unsettling. 

Bruce had found an antidote to the blood blossom, so it was probably just a side effect. A lingering soreness that would fade away with time with the rest of his pain. He watches tiredly as the blood on his legs slowly eroded away under the hands of the water, and swirled, rust-colored, down the drain. 

It was nothing to worry about.  

Chapter Text

Danny is laying on the ground.  

There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for this. He swears.  

That explanation being... being... uh. Hm. 

He’s very warm and very tired. And soaking wet and in pain. Yup. That’s his excuse, he’s sticking with it. His lower back is pressing into the fuzzy rug up against the tub, and his ankles are still hooked over the lip of said tub, draining all the blood out of his foot down to his thigh. It is about as unpleasant as it is pleasant.  

I’m gonna lose feeling in my leg, Danny thinks, blinking at the steam cloud on the ceiling. He doesn't move. He’s all loose-limbed and lazy, and completely unsure on how long he was in the shower for – other than long enough that his fingers and toes have pruned up quite impressively.  

To clarify: he did not fall out of the tub. That is not what happened. He’s not that much of a loser. Standing was just... not an option when Danny finally gained enough awareness to get out of the shower.  

Well, it was, for about five seconds. And then Danny flexed his leg and was rewarded with the delightful sensation of a wooden stake being driven right below his kneecap, like a knife trying to pry open a bottlecap. It rooted down through his shin, and any idea of standing was promptly thrown out the window with terrifying levels of accuracy and speed.  

Danny’s always been a beast at dodgeball. Dying be damned.  

So no, Danny did not stand. Instead, he dragged himself out of the tub very humiliatingly, like an eight-year-old girl pulling herself over the lip of a pool like she was a mermaid on a bunch of rocks at shore, but with a lot less grace. His arms trembled the entire time, the gnawing in his shoulders immediately, spitefully, sending pins and needles down his spine and punching the air out of him.  

It sucked, and he’s not sure how long it took for him to slug himself over the side and onto the ground, other than that he was panting when he was done, and he was shaking.  

So, yeah, Danny’s laying on the ground.    

Hopefully not for too long, he’s a little bit worried that Bruce or Alfred are going to knock on the door and ask after him. Do a bathroom wellness check. Maybe. They seem like the sort to probably do that. Bruce got him away from Vlad, anyways.  

He should get up.  

Danny casts his eyes from the ceiling to his knee, of which is still hanging off the side of the tub, and does an experimental little twitch—then promptly hisses on air as it sends a fresh root of needles and pins up – perhaps down, in this case – his thigh. His limbs lock up.  

The pins-needles bleeds into a bruising soreness that Danny can feel in his throat. It twitches a nerve in his thigh that reminds him of plucking guitar strings. It’s unpleasant. He still needs to get up; man, shouldn’t sitting have made him feel better? That’s usually what happens when he’s sore and tired.   

Although, he thinks sardonically, those other times I wasn’t stuck with a ghost-eating poison. Or the remnants of one. Something, something, variables. He’s not really sure – he only managed to pass sixth and seventh grade through the skin of his teeth – and that was with Sam, Tucker and Jazz’s help with homework and all the classes he kept missing. Rinse and repeat eighth grade.  

He should get up.  

Not only because he doesn’t want Alfred or Bruce to find him lying on the ground like a slug under the assumption that he might’ve fallen in the shower and died like a geriatric, but also because his hair is still wet despite being wrung out. It was clinging to his shoulders and neck like saranwrap; the ends feel like teeny cold tentacles.  

Er, tendrils. As Tucker would’ve told him if he said that aloud – there's no suckers on the end. Sam would’ve backed him up.  

That reminds him of a ghost he fought once... some knock-off Davy Jones-looking jerk with the creepy tenta-beard to match. Gross. Danny can’t recall what his name was for the life of him – didn't attack Amity enough to warrant it – but he does remember the asshole yanking out his eye.   

That had hurt. A lot. Danny cut off his stupid beard for that. And then got stabbed through the throat for the trouble.  

Moving on.  

He should get up.  

...He really doesn’t want to, though. His legs are going numb just like he thought they would, static slowly turning through his feet and spreading down. Self-fulfilling prophecy, he is. And his limbs are all heavy like they’re chalk full of lead. He really doesn’t want to get up.  

His legs don’t feel much better than they did before he started showering, and he thinks the lavender gave him a headache. But he still has to get up, and dry off, and get dressed – putting on jeans when your legs are damp is always such a hassle – and maybe he could do one of those towel turban-thingies he saw Jazz doing growing up. His hair is long enough for it.  

Danny has to leave the bathroom too, and after that— that he doesn’t know. Bruce said he wouldn’t take Vlad to court, but they haven’t actually talked about what they’re going to be doing instead. He, uh, thinks Bruce is going to let him heal up a bit before anything? Hopefully?  

He told Auntie that he’d see her when he saw her, but—would he even be able to go and see her? What if Vlad puts some kind of— of surveillance thing around the town she’s in because he thinks that Danny might go there? 

He'd be right, of course, but does Auntie Alicia even ping on Vlad’s radar? In all his laments about Mom, he never brought up Auntie. Danny never thought to ask. More the fool he. There was that one future he saw – er, caused? – when Vlad never had his accident and got to marry Mom, but Danny can’t for the life of him ever remember if he saw Auntie in it.  

There’s too many what-ifs to think about—and he still has to get up, and get dressed, and talk to Bruce and Alfred, and maybe get into contact with Sam and Tucker— and there’s so much he has to do— it’s all weighing down on him like a mountain too steep to climb, and Danny hurts—    

Storm clouds, gray and rumbling, gather in his lungs, grow thick enough that Danny can taste the ozone on his tongue. He slams his eyes shut before the pressure can build behind them, opens his mouth to breathe.   

(“One at a time, Danno,” Dad says, standing in Danny’s room and kneeling at his side. He’s— four, he thinks. Little enough that his head doesn’t quite reach Dad’s hip, old enough that his parents thought he could learn how to clean his room by himself. There was a pile of toys and clothes in the center of the room, and Danny had taken one look at it and burst into tears at the size. “Put it in sections, it’s like how your ma and I clean the lab.”)  

One at a time.  

One thing at a time. He can do that. Danny can do that. One step at a time.  

He opens his eyes, the steam cloud on the ceiling is dissipating. His first step is: get up.  

“Alfred, could you get a room ready?” Bruce asks when the door clicks shut, the stiff, limp-ish walk Danny has repeating in a cycle in his mind. He should’ve checked to see what side effects that poison Masters inflicted on him could’ve done last night like he’d thought to. He’d been preoccupied.  

Some kind of tissue damage? Evident from the bleeding last night and the limping today, unless it was a pre-existing leg injury, but that seems like the least likelier option. And if it’s an effect of the poison Masters used, then what other damage has it done to Danny's body?  

He didn’t drink much, but that could be from several factors – like stress – including the poison, and the residual coughing could be from some sort of lung degradation. There’s also the blood loss to worry about. Danny told him that Masters used a flower called blood blossoms – a name as telling on itself as poison ivy – but they're extinct, how long ago was that exactly?  

These are things he should’ve been looking into last night while Danny was asleep, more the fool he.  

(It’s damningly quiet on the way up to the basement from the terminal, Danny is still unconscious – or, perhaps more accurately, asleep , and resting his head on Bruce’s shoulder. His cheek still smeared with dried blood that the handkerchief couldn’t wipe away. Bruce can feel the ridges of his spine through his shirt, they’re too prominent.)  

Alfred cuts into his train of thought, weathered hands folding over the curl of his cane. Bruce’s eyes flick down to it: that’s another thing... “He’ll need more than a room if he’s going to stay here.”  

Bruce frowns, “I know.”  

“I’m sure some of your old clothes are still here somewhere,” Alfred continues, glancing over to the door when the sound of water runs through, “probably packed away in a box in the basement. It’ll fit Mister Fenton better than those baggy shirts you wear now.”  

“Alfred.” He hadn’t had time to look for a shirt that would fit Danny, he just didn’t want him to sleep in the bloodied one. “He’ll get his own clothes.”  

“I would hope so.” Alfred raises an eyebrow at him, Bruce looks away from him. “But for now he doesn’t, and you can’t expect him to wear that dirty band shirt he arrived in, or the same bloody jeans?”  

No, of course not. Danny’s shirt was being cleaned right now though, he wasn’t lying when he’d told him that, but the jeans... Alfred’s right, he can’t stay in those. Bruce doesn’t know how long Danny will be staying with them, not with Masters on the prowl and the police looking for him, and Danny as in bad shape as he is.  

Hm.   

“We’ll figure that out later,” he says, “but he needs a room on this floor.” Another thing he should’ve done last night as well, but— well, Bruce’s room is on the upper floor. It made sense at the time; it wasn’t like he was going to be sleeping at any point that night.  

(The bed looks like it’s going to swallow him whole when Bruce lays Danny down, the covers and mattress sinking inward like a disturbed mud pit. Danny doesn’t so much as flinch, merely makes this hitched little sighing sound before settling, his breathing quiet and labored.)  

(Bruce steps back, hesitates, and then begins untying his shoes.)   

Alfred stares at him for a long moment, Bruce keeps his eyes firmly affixed on the door, quietly listening to the shower run. Then he nods, “Very well then,” Alfred says, and begins to turn to leave, “will you be looking into our new Masters friend in the meantime?”  

“Danny doesn’t like being alone.” That much was evident, and he wasn’t in any physical state to be left to wander the tower anyways.  

“You have a phone, do you not?” Before Bruce can respond to that, Alfred turns fully and heads down the hallway, disappearing around the corner with only the sound of his cane tapping the floor to show for it. Bruce watches him go, before sighing out of his nose.  

He was looking into Masters earlier: when he and Danny were in the kitchen waiting for Alfred to call for them. There’s only so much public information about him though, he’ll need to use the computers down in the terminal if he wants to look deeper into it. Or ask Danny.  

Mn. 

(Face pale, eyes blown wide; the stench of blood stings Bruce’s nose as the boy’s grip turns iron tight on his cape. Gotham is dark, the streets ever darker, and the dirty yellow glow of the streetlight does nothing but enhance the look of terror on his face. He's not even sure Daniel noticed the stream of blood pushing past his lips and down his chin. He bleeds like he’s been shot, but there’s no gun wound in his chest.)  

Best not. For now.     

Bruce pulls out his phone, and leaning against the wall, opens his notes and begins typing. He’ll transfer it over to his journal later when he has the time.  

Vladimir Masters, forty-four years old and born March 3rd in a small town in Montana. No recorded siblings and his parents died nearly twenty years ago – what that cause was, he’s not sure. He’ll investigate it later when he’s on the computer. He has a PhD in microbiology and engineering, is founder and current CEO of Vladco, and major shareholder of his associate companies.  

Bruce pauses, then adds a note about looking into those companies and his involvement in them. Danny said he’d possess his business partners and then have them sign their company over to him in the process. Considering there hasn’t been an uproar about that; Masters must be doing something that prevents them from recognizing they’re being possessed.   

Masters got his degree at UW-Madison in Wisconsin – where he lives now, and where Danny lived as well after his parents died – but, curiously, it wasn’t until several years after his enrollment. Those seven years he was hospitalized.  

That must be from the accident Danny told him about. There’s no mention of what hospital he was in, nor any mention of why, what injuries he sustained, or the cause of it. Just that he was in the hospital, and then suddenly discharged without warning. A few years later, he started up Vladco.  

Just what were you doing for three years, Masters? Bruce thinks, brows furrowing and his mouth pressing into a line. Vladco started with a boon of money and only kept a steady trawl up to the top despite their main products being ghost weaponry, he probably used those powers Danny mentioned to get the money to start up, and then continued partnering with various businesses that eventually assimilated themselves into the fold.  

From the outside it looks like a mutual decision between partners. Danny says otherwise, and now Vlad’s after Wayne Enterprises. 

Bruce huffs. Not on his life.  

But that’s all he can find on him for now – Bruce cranes his ear to the side slightly, listening – and Danny's still not done in the shower. He exits out of his notes, and opens the search engine. What can he find on blood blossoms?  

He finds a link to an article. He opens it.  

Blood Blossoms, otherwise known by their scientific name Rosa Hemato, or blood roses, are an extinct genus of flower from the Rosaceae family, and assumedly did not require a certain climate to grow, with traces of their existence being found throughout the continents. Most reportedly found in Europe and the Americas, and in some places in Asia. Traces of their existence date as far back as ancient Rome, all the way to colonial America, and have been used in a variety of cosmetics such as perfumes and makeups, and may have even once been edible.  

...Hm. Bruce frowns. While using poisonous substances as ingredients for makeup have been a long-standing human tradition throughout history, eating them is another story. Humans don’t typically make a habit of eating things they know will kill them, unless it's for medicinal purposes – but the article would have mentioned that if they were. It hasn’t, yet.  

Blood blossoms were described as having deep red petals, likely where they gained their moniker from, with black-purple stems and leaves, and sharp thorns. Despite their adaptability, they grew in small numbers, and their appearances dwindled significantly during the 1400s through the 1700s wherein they were used during witch trials to help burn the accused.  

Their use in the witch trials throughout Europe and America was due to the belief that they had an impacting effect against demons and ghosts, much like how the Irish believed that iron could keep away fairies from their door. Blood blossoms would be lined around the accused witch in order to ‘trap’ whatever demons or ghosts had possessed her, as well as prevent her from using magic, and then burned alongside the witch. This method is the leading theory as to the flower’s extinction, as afterwards they have not been seen since.

The article goes on to detail what these ‘anti-ghost’ properties are, but there’s no mention of whether or not they were poisonous to humans. Merely harmful towards ghosts and other supernatural-like entities. Hm.   

Masters has a PhD in microbiology, it’s not too far-fetched to believe that he could’ve created a hybrid-type flower meant to mimic a blood blossom but instead its harmful properties reversed to be used on humans. But if that’s the case, why an extinct rose? There are plenty of pre-existing poisonous plants he could’ve used instead, but he chose one that’s been extinct for centuries, and one specifically and allegedly anti-ghost?  

Is he trying to stick to a theme? His company’s focus is anti-ghost weaponry. Except, Danny’s not a ghost. That’s another thing, why would Vlad Masters poison his own godson? One that, by Danny’s own words, he wanted to be his son?  

...Danny also mentioned that his parents and Masters were partners in college and were working on an invention that ended up hospitalizing him due to a malfunction. He didn’t say what the invention was, nor what his parents did.  

A company that mainly built ghost hunting equipment, and Masters making a poison from an extinct flower that was said to protect against ghosts. Either the man developed a fixation for them while he was in the hospital, or that was always his focus.  

Once is life, twice is a coincidence...   

Bruce exits the article, replaces the search with ‘Amity Park, Illinois’ and, pausing for a moment, adds ‘Fentons.’   

At the top of the screen is a news article, and a rock forms in his stomach as his eyes skim over the title.  

[ Infamous Ghost Hunting Family Found Dead, Son Only Survivor ]   

...thrice is a connection.  

Bruce glances at the door. The shower is still running, and Danny is still inside. A low, humming static buzzes in the back of his head and boils the blood under his skin. An anti-ghost weapons company, an anti-ghost flower poison, a friendship gone sour after an accident, and the only other two present becoming ghost hunters.   

(“He’s going to kill me. Please!”)    

There’s a connection here. Danny claimed Masters blamed his dad for the accident that supposedly gave him powers of control. He also claimed that Masters was infatuated with his mom, and wanted Danny for his own. Bruce can already see where seeds of resentment and jealousy could sow just from that, but something doesn’t add up.   

The twenty-year gap – why wait so long? Could just be from plotting, of course. Masters biding his time before wanting to strike; but if what Danny says is true then why couldn’t he have just forced someone else to do it? Did he want to do it himself? Is there a specific range Masters has, and he can only control someone for so far?  

Conjecture, that’s all this is right now. He should find out how Danny's parents died first before coming to any conclusions. The Fenton deaths could be unrelated entirely.  

Bruce hits the link. 

And what does this have to do with ghosts?    

Getting dressed fucking sucked just like he thought it would, and Danny's hair was... not as dripping as it was when he got out, but isn't exactly dry either. Damp at best at the roots, and only getting wetter the further down it went, he can feel water droplets dripping off the ends and soaking into the back of his – well, Bruce’s – shirt.  

At least his legs are dry, he made sure of that before even attempting to put on his jeans again. Skinny, baggy, or in between; doesn’t matter. Damp legs and denim fucking suck to deal with. Danny already has enough going on.   

Employing three – technically two-and-a-half, but Danny’s making the executive decision to round up – years of ghost fighting and all the injuries that entails really makes getting dressed that little bit easier.  

Leaning against the sink, fully dressed and totally not trembling, Danny blinks, blinks, and then blinks once more at the wall. This is... just like that time Technus stuck a streetlight through my stomach that one time, he thinks, acutely ignoring the fact that it was more than one time.  

Next step: leaving.  

Danny turns, hissing quietly when his thighs grind ungratefully against his hips – he thinks, that’s what it feels like – and his calves gnaw. His shoulders are still throbbing, but there's less weight on them than his legs, so they’re not his primary concern right now.  

He limps for the door, curls his fingers around the doorknob – the metal, despite how long Danny was in here for, is cool against his skin – and, hit with shyness and reminded of how long he spent showering, opens the door slowly.  

Alfred said he would be nearby if he needed anything – he totally forgot that – so—  

Danny peeps.   

He’d say it was a chirp if he still had his core active and if there was any ectoplasm behind the sound, but he doesn’t and so it’s a peep. But still he peeps and nearly slams the door shut with the force of his flinch.  

Bruce is— 

Right the fuck there.   

Standing next to the door like an oversized guard dog. For a moment Danny has Cujo superimposed into his eyelids, but it’s Cujo while he’s in guard dog mode so that means he’s bigger than a Ford F150 and—  

Danny hopes this doesn’t become a habit. Bruce scaring him, that is. It’s deeply embarrassing.  

His face burns up like a bonfire instantaneously, and in an attempt to prevent aforementioned door-slamming, overcorrects and pits his weight forward. Not a good idea when his legs have the tensile strength of jello. The door swings open, taking Danny with it, and slams open— ... ish. 

Bruce stares at him, already pushed off the wall and tensed defensively – Danny would take the triumph of startling him back, if it didn’t come with the cost of his own pride – and his eyes slightly wide.  

Danny stares right back at him, face burning and his heart pounding in his chest. It ought to jump right out at this rate. 

He opens his mouth; lets it hang there for a second as his brain tries to come up with something to say. He’s pretty sure he makes an aborted ‘ah’ sound that cuts itself off. 

Ding!  

“I tripped.” He says, like a liar.  

Bruce stares at him, doesn’t say a damn thing. The tension bleeds out of him, janky-like in his shoulders even as his expression relaxes minutely. Lucky. Danny feels like he could fry a lobster on his cheeks. His eyes flick from his face to the bathroom behind him, and then back to Danny.  

“Are you alright?” He asks, his brows furrow slightly.  

Danny sucks in air through his teeth; it makes a little whistle sound. Tries to ignore the way the space between his throat and collarbone get all cotton-y thick and his chest tightens. “Yeah,” he breathes out as naturally as he can, it’s not very effective, “uh— sorry, I... did not mean to do that.”  

No shit. Danny just barely stifles the grimace. His feet shuffle – then wobble, because ow – and he takes a gander to peer behind the door. His balance toddles, his grip tightens. The hallway is empty save for the two of them. Huh. 

“Where’s, uh, Mister Pennyworth?” He asks, leaning back and looking towards Bruce again, “I thought he was gonna stick around instead?” Not that he doesn’t mind that it was Bruce here instead, it’s just the fact of the matter.  

Bruce stills for a moment, eyes watching Danny sharp and cat-like – bat-like? Hm, no – and then he moves forward. There’s a pause, “Alfred’s finding a room for you,” he says, holding his arm out for Danny, “...I asked him.”  

Danny blinks, “Oh,” reluctantly he hooks his arm with Bruce’s again, and pulls away from the door, “you didn’t need to do that.” He could’ve just kept using that one room he was in – uh, stairs be damned. He would’ve figured something out.  

Bruce starts herding him down the hallway again – to where, Danny has no clue, but he’s sure he’ll find out when they get there – and Danny watches his brows furrow again and his mouth bend slightly. “Your legs.”  

...Right. Danny bets his face is still pinkish, but at that the heat returns with a flourish and his stomach churns with renewed embarrassment, blanketing over his lungs as well to make sure he really felt it too.  

“I’d survive,” he mutters, quickly averting his eyes even as his mind unhelpfully supplies an image of the stairs from earlier. Eugh, it’s nauseating just thinking about it— 

Oh, wait. Hold it.  

He looks back up, frowning now too, “Are there— are there no elevators here?” Bruce had said tower earlier when Danny asked about Alfred – and they’re overlooking the entire city when he passes the windows. There’s no way a building this big doesn’t have an elevator.  

Because first, that would be insane , and Danny knows Gotham is the reigning champ of America for being weird – not even Amity Park can outdo that, it’s only had ghosts for three years. Gotham’s been crazy since conception – but he doubts they’re that insane. 

And second of all, it’d be against building regulations.  

...Who else lives here?  

Bruce’s face goes through a quick microcosm of expressions before finally settling on one that Danny thinks might just also be embarrassment, or discomfort. His gaze shifts away briefly, and Danny nearly misses the quick throat-clearing he does. “The floorplan for the top floor was meant to mimic a regular home, so no elevator was included.”  

Danny stares at Bruce, and then his upper lip curls slightly in disbelief. “How’d they get away with that?” Wait, this is Gotham. Danny’s expression flattens like a system reboot, “Don’t answer that.”  

Bruce makes a very quiet, short huff from his nose. Danny’s going to take that as a win.  

They fall into a silence after that, and Danny finds himself feeling much less unsure in this one than when they were moving to the kitchen. His legs hurt, still, and he thinks his steps are smaller and slower than before. He’d call it more of a shuffle, really, but also, he refuses to call it a shuffle because that’s embarrassing as well.  

...Hm. 

He’s going to need to do something about this, huh. Danny doesn’t heal as quickly in his human form than his ghost form, but the blood blossoms really did a number on him and he’s... not quite sure how long it’ll take for him to heal from this. If he can heal from this at all.  

That’s one of the other reasons he stuck to his ghost form while healing from fights; his human form can’t recover from injuries like he can as a ghost. He can regrow an arm in a few hours just fine while being Phantom, but as Danny? 

He’d just bleed out.  

And those blood blossoms really did a number on him.  

His throat is starting to hurt from talking and the earlier coughing, his spine is beginning to ache like he’s been hunched in a chair all day, he doesn’t need to talk about his legs, and he just feels sore all over. There’s a headache pulling and twisting like undersea taffy in his temples, he kind of just wants to go lay down somewhere.  

Danny presses his mouth into a thin line. He looks to the side, an idea popping into his mind.  

He could...  

Mn.  

He could... with Vlad not here... wake up his core, just a little bit?  

Vlad doesn’t have a ghost sense like Danny does, and they’re so far up from the ground that even if he did spontaneously develop one, Danny wouldn't be close enough to trigger it. Maybe. Hopefully. Danny’s didn’t go off until the ghost was within a certain range of him, it’d probably be the same for Vlad.  

Fear creeps into Danny’s ribs like a weed, like the crawling thorn-vines in the Underroot in the Zone. What if Vlad did develop a ghost sense? What if he could sense ghosts at a broader range than Danny can? He’s older than him, his powers more developed, it wouldn’t be too far-fetched – or outside Danny’s luck – for Vlad’s ghost sense, if he got one, to be more powerful than his.  

Or, what if despite the city's size and population density, he could somehow sense the ectoplasm Danny would give off after waking up his core? There aren’t any ghosts in Gotham – Danny would’ve sensed them like he did Vlad, despite the dormancy – so what if activating his core is like a beacon going off and regardless of the distance, Vlad would feel it anyways?  

That’s not how that works, his mind whispers, but what if?   

Danny’s spine goes numb as a cold sweat breaks out across his forehead. His vision swims for a moment, and his throat thickens, chest tightening up like a screw bolt.  

Then everything would’ve been for nothing, and Bruce would be found out and he and Alfred would be in danger. Vlad would kill them without a second thought, and Danny would be right back where he started, and worse.    

Vlad would probably poison Danny again, and there’d be nothing he could do about it but feel as he’s destroyed from the inside—  

“Danny?”  

A bubble pops. Danny wheezes. The air trips over a rock on the way out, stumbling him into a coughing fit that has both him and Bruce stopping and Danny hunching over, his eyes instinctually stinging.   

Bruce hooks his arm out in front of him, acting as a bar to hold Danny up so his own weight doesn’t drag him down, and Danny latches onto it like a life preserve. Well, with one arm anyways, the other is busy shoving the crook of his elbow into his mouth so he doesn’t get germs or spit everywhere.  

Bruce’s other hand is on his back again. He’s not patting like last time, just resting it there, probably to help keep him up.  

With how much coughing he’s been doing in such a short amount of time, it’s only natural that there’s the faint aftertaste of copper in the back of his throat when Danny finally stops. His lungs burn, but his collarbone hurts like there’s something trying to scratch and claw its way out of his chest.  

“Ye—” Danny coughs again, shakily trying to straighten up with one eye scrunched shut to prevent both from tearing up, “Yeah?”  

The hand on his back moves up to press lightly between his shoulder blades as Danny stands up, and he can feel the chill of Bruce’s fingertips through the fabric of the oversized shirt he’s wearing. He can also feel the heat of his palm leeching through.  

Bruce stares at him, long and quiet, concern etching crow’s feet around the corners of his eyes. Then he looks away, shuffling back around so that he’s beside Danny again, rather than somewhat perpendicular to him.   

“We’re almost to the living room.” Bruce mutters, dropping his hand from Danny’s back and taking the tether it had on him with it. Danny’s cheeks burn; he nods mutely and readjusts his grip on Bruce’s arm.  

They start walking again.  

Bruce’s arm stings, very faintly, from the crescent moon indents Danny left with his nails. He doesn’t know what had spooked him so bad, but it had turned the boy’s grip from firm to vice-like within seconds. When Bruce looked down, Danny’s eyes were wide and unfocused as if he was trying to stare through the floor, his chest frozen like he’d forgotten how to breathe. Or like he was holding his breath. 

It was very similar to just before he called his aunt. Still and antelope-like, his face statue-esq. HIs reaction was much the same as well, this time lacking an apology but replaced with a coughing fit.  

It concerned him.  

The article about the Fentons’ death didn’t go in-depth about it, likely out of respect for the family, and something Bruce had been expecting. He’ll need to get his hands on the police and autopsy reports for more information. But it had told him enough for the time being.  

For starters: Danny’s family died four months ago from a carbon monoxide leak in the house – the water heater had, allegedly, broken down due to age. Ruled a complete and total accident by investigators, but considering what Danny told him about Vlad, Bruce isn’t going to rule that out quite yet. But without any proper evidence, it’s still merely conjecture.  

Danny hadn’t just lost his parents though, but an older sister as well. 

He’s thirteen years old.  

Finally, perhaps the one that had hurt Bruce the most: Danny was the one who discovered their bodies. Not a neighbor or a friend, but Danny himself. He’d gone to a neighbor after finding their remains, and that neighbor then called the police. They were declared dead on scene.  

That had been a punch to the chest.  

Those dark circles under Danny’s eyes make more and more sense every new thing he learns about him, and whether or not Vlad Masters had a hand in the Fentons’ deaths, he still attempted to murder Danny. His own godson. He won’t be getting away with it.  

Bruce leads the both of them out to the living room, and watches from the corner of his eye as Danny’s eyes blow wide and his jaw slightly drops in wonder. Whatever tension that’d remained in him bleeds out, his neck craning up and back to stare at the ceiling, before tracing down the pillars and to the tall windows.  

The light stings Bruce’s eyes, he blinks quickly before settling into a squint. Hm.  

Danny has no such issue, too busy entranced to be bothered by the brightness. Somewhat. Bruce watches his eyelids flutter for a moment when they pass a patch of sunlight, a stray sunbeam catching on his eyes and shrinking the pupil rapidly, freezing baby blue eyes to ice. His nose scrunches up briefly, and then smooths out when they’re out of the light.  

The corner of Bruce’s mouth twitches faintly.  

“This place is huge.” Danny whispers, lip curling in disbelief, still looking to-and-fro around them. He looks away for the nth time, and then back at Bruce, his expression faintly closes off, “Are all the floors like this? How does everyone handle it?”  

Everyone? Bruce frowns, “Me and Alfred handle it just fine,” he whispers back, they’re closing in on the couch and Bruce maneuvers them around one of the armchairs to reach it.  

Danny frowns at him now, “Yeah, but what about—” he makes an aborted circle away from himself, as if gesturing to an invisible crowd, “—everyone else, on the other floors? Are the other apartments like this?”  

Other apartments—? Oh, okay. He forgot, Danny didn’t know. Bruce presses his mouth into a thin line, amusement burning distantly behind his left lung, “Danny,” he murmurs, “there’s only me and Alfred here.”  

Danny stares at him, his face falling blank. His arm drops to the side with a dead thunk, his shoulders flinching minutely when his elbow connects with his hip. Bruce moves around the coffee table, his shins bumping gently against the edge of the couch.  

He is still being stared at even as Danny slips his arm out of his hold, before plunking right down onto the couch cushions. Bruce remains standing. “Yeah,” Danny replies slowly, “in the penthouse. Right? It’s just you and Alfred in this penthouse, right?” 

“In the tower,” Bruce corrects, and watches with steady building amusement as Danny blanches, “Alfred and I are the only ones in the building.”   

There’s an audible breath, Bruce hears a faint whistle in the sound – he noticed it earlier when Danny woke up, but his canines are sharp. Genetics? Bruce’s are similar; it’s helped in situations. He watches as Danny’s chest visibly expands with the inhale. 

“What?” He hisses, bewildered.  

Ah, he should probably explain, Danny’s eyes are as big as saucers. Bruce opens his mouth— 

Footsteps, imbalanced and slightly heavy, but trying to be soft and mostly succeeding anyways. Bruce doesn’t need to hear the accompanied quiet tapping to realize it’s Alfred, and he turns his head towards the noise.  

At the same time, Danny’s head snaps up and twists in the same direction, his face completely falling flat and void of his confusion. His shoulders coil, his spine straightens, and Bruce momentarily thinks of a cat on alert.  

...Hm. Sharp senses. Alfred mentioned that he flinched when he went to clean his face last night.  

Bruce watches him from the corner of his eye for a moment longer, and then turns his attention to the hallway just as Alfred emerges from it. He makes it two steps out before he pauses, and then raises an eyebrow at both him and Danny.  

“Am I interrupting?” Alfred asks.  

From the corner of his eye, the wind blows out of Danny’s sails, and he slouches with a faint huff, “No, Mister Pennyworth,” he says, “just got startled.”     

Alfred’s eyebrow arches higher, then smooths down, “My apologies,” he starts walking towards them again, “I’ve been told I have a quiet gait.”  

Danny huffs again, a small smile tilting the corner of his mouth, his shoulders hunch into themselves. “I bet,” he says. His smile drops then, bending downwards into a frown. He glances at Bruce, then back at Alfred, “Bruce was telling me that it’s just—uh, just you and him here.”   

“He would be correct,” Alfred stops behind the couch, nodding at Bruce in acknowledgment before turning his attention back onto Danny, “his family’s owned the building for generations. Not to worry, Mister Fenton, we two are the only ones that know you are here.”  

Color drains out from Danny’s face, leaving him from pale to a worrying shade of white as a vague, overwhelmed look of bewilderment creases the corner of his eyes and forehead. “Oh,” he goes, voice faint, “okay. Yeah. That— that makes sense.”   

He looks down at the cushions, nodding slowly, “No- yeah. No yeah, no, that, uh, makes a lot of sense,” he mutters, “what with the whole... Batman thing. Easier to keep a secret identity if you’re the only person living in the—the uh, tower.”  

Danny looks back up at Bruce, blue eyes wide, and leaning forward slightly, he whispers: “The whole building?”   

Bruce whispers back: “The whole building.”  

Slowly, Danny’s eyes crinkle up, he only looks more bewildered, “Dude,” he continues whispering, “how rich are you?”  

Bruce shrugs. 

Blunt nails pick at a crusted patch of blood on his jeans; Danny can see the silhouette of his fingers smeared into the denim like a footprint in grave dirt. Do most rich people own their own buildings?  

Vlad owns a castle, but he’s a fucking billionaire so of course he’s a statistical outlier and shouldn’t be counted, and Danny’s only experience with other rich people are Sam and Paulina.  

Sam owns a home theater in her house, and Paulina... Danny doesn’t actually know what the inside of her house looks like, he’s never seen it so he can’t compare. But Sam comes from generational wealth though like Bruce, and he remembers her complaining about her parents talking about buying another vacation home and how distasteful she found it, since that house could’ve gone to someone who needs it.  

How common is it for people to be born rich? He's not sure, Dad said he was born in a log cabin and moved to the U.S as a teenager to escape the war. Danny never got to ask what he meant— 

Moving on.  

Mom grew up in Arkansas in a small town – no, in a village – and when Danny was little and first visited Aunt Alicia and his grandparents, he thought it was an Amish town at first. Mom and Dad had roared with laughter when he’d asked from the backseat.  

What was he going on about? Right, Bruce owns a skyscraper.   

Sure, that’s normal. Probably. It’s generational wealth, and Alfred said the ‘tower’ has been in Bruce’s family for years. So, it’s not like Bruce bought it, he inherited it! Sam will inherit whatever properties her parents own, if they don’t disown her that is.  

Okay. Cool. Great. Bruce owns a building. That’s normal. That’s normal rich people behavior, and probably even more normal old money rich people behavior. Because Bruce is probably old money now that he thinks about it. Sam is too. Vlad’s not, though he sure likes to pretend he is.  

Danny blinks. Okay, he can handle that. Bruce is rich like Sam is rich, some of his confusion bleeds out of him. Still mind-boggling, but manageable. It’s not too different from owning something like, a manor, or a mansion.  

He leans back into the couch cushions – wincing slightly at the ache it presses into his lower spine and lances up his back – and watches Bruce shuffle to the side, while Alfred moves around and sits in one of the nearby armchairs.  

“So, uh,” Danny drums his fingers against his thighs, a pit grows in his stomach. He clears his throat, “what now?”  

“I-- I mean, I know something was mentioned about gettin’ me over to Aunt Alicia,” not his exact words, but the sentiment is there, “but how long do you think that’s gonna take?” And how with Vlad on the prowl.  

Danny sincerely doubts that Vlad has any sort of influence in Gotham – actually, he knows he doesn’t because that’s part of why he’s here to get Mr. Wayne – but he’s raised the alarms about Danny’s disappearance, so the police will certainly be looking for him.  

Then there’s also Amity to worry about, Danny’s heart does a little flip, and his heart goes hollow for a moment. If Danny doesn’t turn up here, will Vlad check Amity Park next? He might target Sam and Tucker, maybe out of some belief that Danny managed to get cured and flew back over for their help.   

And of course, there’s Auntie in Arkansas to worry about. Danny already promised to keep in touch with her, so maybe he can ask her if she sees anything weird going on around the town. Auntie’s as smart as Mom, she’ll know whether it’s something that’s her normal kind of weird, or out-of-the-ordinary kind of weird.  

Dealing with Vlad and his creepy stalker tendencies was so much easier when Danny was still in Amity. At least that was predictable. He doesn’t know predictable here.  

Alfred breaks him out of his thoughts: “However long it takes for you to heal, Mister Fenton.” He says, gesturing towards Danny’s legs with his cane, “while I’m not sure what Masters used to poison you, it’s certainly done you quite a bit of harm. You’re in no shape for travel.”  

Danny flushes across his face, discomfort and embarrassment tendril-coiling around his ribs and up his spine. He knows that, but it’s not like he wants it pointed out, it— it's weird. Bruce did it earlier when they were talking about Danny getting a new room, and he wasn’t any less mortified by it.  

He turns and looks at Bruce for his input – the real target of his question – and finds him with his forehead wrinkled and a distant frown indenting the corners of his mouth, “It wouldn’t be safe for you to leave right now anyways,” he murmurs, which isn’t really what Danny asked, “Masters has the police looking for you, your face will be everywhere soon.”  

“And how long until they give up?” Because they’ll have to eventually! The police normally do.  

Bruce and Alfred share a look with each other; one Danny isn’t able to decipher between either of them, but it does make him nervous. He scrapes his nail against another patch of blood on his jeans; it flakes a gross rusty brown color off under his nail.  

Whatever silent conversation they have, it’s over within seconds, and Bruce turns his ice-flint eyes back onto Danny, “You can stay here until you’ve healed from the poison,” he says, “we’ll figure out what to do from there.” 

Danny scowls, “You didn’t answer my question.”  

“Your aunt doesn’t have legal custody of you, she could be charged with kidnapping if you’re discovered living with her,” Bruce continues. Danny feels the blood drain from his face, shit, he hadn’t thought of that. Vlad would charge Auntie for kidnapping him, even if she had a solid alibi. Which, of course, she does.   

Bruce’s arms cross over his chest, his frown deepens, and his eyes drop down to the ground. Danny slouches, sinking back into the cushions in some half-hearted attempt to let the couch swallow him whole. His lungs have gone numb and hollow, an anxious buzzing between the tissue that makes him feel like he’ll begin floating fizzy-like to the ceiling.   

Unintentionally mimicking Bruce, Danny folds his arms over himself and quietly fiddles with the front of his – still comically large – shirt, grasping and releasing the fabric just to feel it bunch up in his palm. His hair is in that weird in-between where it’s not damp anymore, but not fully dry either, and with the lack of a brush it’s begun to curl.  

The collar of his shirt slides just enough to dip below his collarbone, Danny curls his fingers around the edge and pulls it back up. He doesn’t let go, just folds some of it over his thumb and back again.  

Bruce looks up, he stares at Danny closely. Danny would say he could see the gears turning in his head, but in all honesty he’s not sure what Bruce is thinking right now. He’s gone still like a cat watching a bird on a line, Danny goes still as well and stares unblinking back.  

“Danny,” Bruce says after a long moment of silence, Danny blinks, “how does your godfather control people?”  

Oh.  

Oh.  

Oh no.  

The funny thing about the fear response is there's never a mention of that feeling of your mind going hollow, as if it was emptying of any thoughts it could have to make room for an instinctual response. It’s like emptying out a bucket full of water, Danny can feel the weight shift and drain right out.  

Reverting to primal instincts, he supposes.  

Danny’s tried to train himself out of that because it got in the way of fighting, and in normal situations he’s succeeded. Can’t dodge out of the way of an ectoblast if he’s frozen in place. Gotta think fast. Gotta move fast. Don’t think. Just do.  

This is not a normal situation.    

Danny breathes in sharp, jolting up and ignoring the lance of pain it strikes through his sides, “Um—” I said a leap of faith, he thinks, wrestling to get his brain under control and to think through the vertigo. He told himself to take a leap of faith but hey, he forgot leaping meant falling and Danny can’t catch himself anymore. “I—” 

Leap of faith, he tries to convince himself again, glancing between Bruce and Alfred who are both watching him expectantly. Leap of faith. They’re trying to help. They’re trying to help me.  

Bruce can’t help if he doesn’t know the details, so of course he’s going to ask for details.  He already decided to trust him.  

He breathes in again, tries to chase the clouds out of his head. Don’t think, just do. “It’s— uh – it’s hard to explain,” he stammers, staccato and stilted, “there’s— there’s— there—” a frustrated noise that makes his throat hurt, Danny squeezes his eyes shut, tries breathing again, “—there’s a lot to explain.”  

Bruce is watching him when he opens his eyes, and Danny does nothing but curl into himself more, drawing up his knees despite the shivering ache it rends through him in order to hide.  

He watches Bruce in turn, close and peeling. If he tenses, any flinch of his hand, Danny will see. Silently, Bruce twists – is he leaving? Danny’s heart skips into his throat – and then he sits on the coffee table, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees.  

Bruce stares at him, fingers threading together out in front of him. He says nothing.  

“...It’s not—it’s not going to, to uh, to make sense,” 

“I have time.” Bruce says.  

“It’s gonna sound crazy,” Danny continues, and he should really stop stalling. He probably looks like he was lying about Vlad’s powers and didn’t want to elaborate because of it. His fingers release off the shirt and wring together instead.  

Bruce’s eyebrow arches, “This is Gotham.” That gets a weak snort out of Danny, and he sees the corner of Bruce's mouth twitch.   

Danny’s fingers untwine, and while he wasn’t smiling earlier, he feels his expression droop like he had been. His fingers, untwined, cup the side of his face, and his eyes sting unwillingly, “...and you won't freak out?” he asks, his voice shrinking to the size of a thimble, “You’ll believe me?”  

Bruce nods, this barely perceptible flinch of the head. It doesn’t make Danny’s heart stop beating like it ought to jump out of his chest, but it does make him feel a little less drowning-like.  

He deflates, the sound shaky and trembling even as it rushes out of him all at once. His fingers pick at his jeans, his shoulders going numb while his lungs thicken, “Okay,” Danny whispers, breathes, eyes looking everywhere but Bruce, “okay. Okay. Um... where do I begin...”  

How much should he tell him? Enough to keep him safe, he supposes. If Bruce doesn’t go to the courts, and if he’s a vigilante of some sort, then he’ll probably try and confront Vlad. Danny would be sending him to his death then if that’s the case. If he does. He might.  

Should he tell him that Vlad tried to kill his Dad? No, no, because then Danny will have to explain how he knows that, and how he managed to prevent that, and then he’ll have to come up with an explanation without outing himself. Who would believe that an eleven year old managed to thwart multiple murder attempts on his own without the help of an adult?  

Yeah, nobody. Nobody alive at least.  

What does he say? The truth, the full truth, and nothing but the truth, and risk outing himself, or omit a few things and hope it doesn’t end badly? What if Bruce thinks Vlad is evil because of his powers, and not despite it? What if he thinks badly about ghosts. He didn’t seem all that bothered or freaked out about Danny saying Vlad had powers to begin with, but that could change! People always can change, and they can change on the turn of a dime.  

God, Ancients, Entities—he's going to be sick. This would be so much easier to deal with on his own.  

His powers. His powers. Just his powers. Just tell him about his powers and that’s it, nothing about what he’s done with them – other than what he already has, with the overshadowing stuff. Danny can go from there. Bruce doesn’t need to know what Vlad’s tried to do, what he has done. To Danny. Other than the poisoning stuff.  

He hurts. Danny’s throat thickens up with a whimper that he swallows.  

“Vlad’s powers are... complicated,” he starts, forcing strength into his voice and uncurling, “and, uh, the way he controls people, it's called overshadowing. With the way— with– he does to – to take over businesses—”  

He makes a frustrated noise, “Vlad needs to be alone to get away with it. And it’s not like— like— he doesn’t need to touch someone to overshadow them, but he—well, no, he does, but not in the way you’re thinking where it’s like a one tap and done, but— it— it's–”   

Another groan, louder, angrier, Danny’s hands slide away from his cheeks and over his eyes, and he scowls into his palms. This shouldn’t be hard. Why is it hard? 

He lifts his head and puts his chin in his palm, eyes narrowed and glaring—not at Bruce, but himself. Fuck , he’s just going to have to come out and say it. And he’d been so relieved earlier.  

“Vlad — is — Liminal.” He grits out, dragging the words from between his teeth, “and he can do more than just possess people, but—”   

Someone’s phone goes off, cutting through the air loud and buzzing and Danny flinches back out of surprise. There’s not much farther he can go on the couch, but the jerky movement stings him. Bruce jolts as well, minute and teeny, Danny barely catches it off the ledge of his lashes.  

Bruce is on his feet in a flash, patting at the pockets of his sweats and pulling out his phone. Annoyance creases his eyes into crow’s feet, his mouth down-turning into a barely there scowl as he flips the screen face up, presses a button, and plants the speaker against his ear.  

“Hm.” Bruce grunts, – eh, that’s a stretch – barely audible to Danny's ears. 

What terrible timing, Danny thinks, the graphite scraggle-ball of tension in his lungs suddenly dissolving into disbelief. He blinks, his lip curling as if mimicking a slanted triangle. Then a laugh pops out of him, sharp and stark, and Danny dissolves into quiet giggling like sugar in water.  

He tries stifling it, planting his palm against his mouth and melting into the crevice of the couch. It hurts his lungs like hiccups; Danny’s not quite sure if he’s losing his mind or not. He sure damn feels like it.  

He shouldn’t be laughing! He should be quiet and not distracting Bruce from his phone call, and Danny feels his chest heat up in embarrassment about it. It doesn’t stop the giggling though, or the sudden pressure in his eyes.  

Whatever the call is about, it’s over remarkably quick, and whatever input Bruce gives, Danny doesn’t hear it on account of his laughter stuffing into his ears. He’s recollecting himself by the time he’s finished though and has gone silent by the time Bruce pockets his phone again.  

...Tension lines Bruce’s shoulders, quiet as the rest of him is, and it helps extinguish any of the awkward mirth trying to weed up in Danny’s lungs. His crooked smile dies against the heat of his palm, and he drops his hand: “Who was it?”  

Bruce stares at the couch cushions, forehead wrinkled. He glances at Danny, then back at the cushions, “...Wayne Enterprises,” he murmurs after a long beat.  

Oh. Oh. Oh shit. That’s right, Bruce has a job. Danny inhales sharply, nearly coughing, and if there really were any lingering traces of laughter left in him, it immediately burns away into a cold bucket of water dumping over his head. His eyes go wide, “You’re not late, are you? I’m so sorry— did I get you in trouble?”  

He totally forgot! People have nine-to-fives! It’s the middle of the week! Jobs! Working! Fuck!   

Before the guilt can take hold completely, Bruce shakes his head, this minute thing. His eyes tilt astray, and he’s silent again for another, albeit shorter, beat. 

“It’s Masters,” he says, Danny’s heart flip-flops straight into his throat and he feels the blood drain from his face, “he’s refusing to leave the lobby; they want me to handle it.” 

They—  

They—  

Huh?  

Danny— he— he isn’t sure what to say to that, other than the fact that he’s suddenly got static in the back of head, making his ears ring, and a whine building in the back of his throat. Ice cold numbing in his shoulders and veins.  

There’s something to be said about the fact that right after Vlad reported him missing, he immediately resumed with his plan to take over Wayne Enterprises, but Danny’s not really focused on that part.  

“I — like— like, right now?” He asks, because his alternatives are to tell Bruce not to go, and some other third incomprehensible thing that he’s not really sure what to make of. It’s sitting thick and pretty in his throat though, like he ought to throw up.  “You—  are— you’re, you’re security detail?”   

(Just out of Danny's straw-narrow peripherals, Alfred is staring at Bruce with an eyebrow raised at him. Bruce pointedly does not look at him.)   

“Something like that,” is Bruce’s response, and that—that goes against Danny’s earlier assumption of him being one of the shareholders, or some other higher up but it—it makes sense. Some kind of vigilante working in security work. And Bruce is old money, so he doesn’t technically have to keep a high-paying job. 

Maybe he still is a higher up, if Wayne Enterprises is calling him in to come deal with something, rather than Bruce already being there. Danny’s not sure what other jobs there are than security guard though. Wait— no— 

"Are you leaving now?” Danny asks, voice going foreign to his ears. His thoughts go hollow, he sits up completely, legs kicking down off the couch and to the ground. Heels thump against the stone floor, and it hurts up his shins, his nails dig into the cushions. “Like— like right now?”  

Vlad won’t attack someone in broad daylight; it’d ruin his reputation. But— actually, Danny doesn’t know that for certain anymore. He wouldn’t attack someone in broad daylight before. He probably still won’t. But—! That’s, that’s not his focus.  

He’s leaving? He’s leaving right now?   

Bruce blinks at him, and then his expression softens, as faint as thinning clouds, “Alfred is here too, Danny,” he tells him quietly, raising a hand and pressing it over the knuckles of Danny’s fingers – wait – his—? “I won't be long.”  

Danny’s locked his hands around Bruce’s arm, nearly clawing up it to keep him in place. His grip is tight enough to bruise, to the point where his fingers creak and ache like he’s popped them too many times and they’re now sore.  

It’s a good thing he doesn’t have his ghostly strength right now.  

The heat from Bruce’s fingers only draws attention to how cold Danny’s are, and as Bruce tries to carefully pry himself free, Danny’s grip only tightens and locks harder like a noose. What— what is he doing? Let go.   

His eyes burn again—with embarrassment, he’s sure—and Danny forces himself to release his hold. There are red marks where his fingers were. It won’t bruise, he knows that at first glance. He still feels shame coil into his ribs, thick and serpentine and constricting. 

Bruce doesn’t look the least bit upset, Danny isn’t sure if that’s better or worse for his pride. He’d turn invisible and disappear if he could. He’d sink back into the couch and turn to camouflage, but there’s too much tension running through his spine like an electrical current to allow him to.  

“He won’t use his powers in public,” Danny croaks, still wide-eyed, trying to change the subject back onto Vlad. His hands hover in the air, ready to snap back out, “too many witnesses.” 

“At, at least he wouldn’t before. I don’t know anymore. He’s been acting weird since—” Danny’s shoulders curl up as his throat closes, he looks away, “Can’t predict him anymore.”  

Bruce nods, and Danny’s not sure if he hates how unpitying he looks. There’s no judgement, no annoyance. That’s not supposed to happen, not from living folk. But – he – there’s a lotta things that weren’t supposed to happen. Like losing everyone. So he should stop expecting things to go the way he expects them to. He doesn’t like that.  

“I’ll be careful,” Bruce murmurs, which is a lie if Danny’s ever heard one. Bruce is a vigilante, or a hero of some sort, Danny knows his kind. His reflection is in his eyes.  

Vlad Masters holds himself the way Carmine Falcone does: like he’s the most powerful man in the room.  

It’s not an obvious thing, as most powerful men don’t need to portray their power like a neon sign. But Bruce sees it in the straight line of his shoulders and the upright curve of his spine, in the fold of his fingers curled behind his back that’s neither too loose nor too tense. 

Just like Carmine Falcone, Vlad Masters sets Bruce’s blood to a quiet boil the moment he lays eyes on him. His own fingers in loose fists at his sides twitch; he tightens them, lets blunt nails bite into his palms, and then lets go. The indents of Danny’s nails on his arm have since faded, and he feels them all the same.  

Despite his best attempt at reassuring him, Danny was still pale-faced and rabbit-eyed as Bruce left, his shoulders hunched and tight, hands clenched around the cushions in a white-knuckle grip. Like that was all that was stopping him from getting up. Bruce doesn’t think he blinked once the entire time he was within his line of sight.  

It was nearly enough to convince Bruce not to leave at all – and he was already hesitant. But Vlad Masters is in his building and refusing to leave until he spoke with ‘Mr. Wayne’, and while Bruce would’ve let security handle that normally—this is not ‘normally.’  

He wants to meet proper the face behind Danny’s poisoning.  

There’s not many people in the lobby, but those that are recognize him quickly and watch him closely. It makes his insides itch, hair standing up on its end on his neck. This is exactly why Bruce tends to work from the tower... when Alfred isn’t doing it, the eyes make his skin crawl.  

Vlad Masters stands by the front desk in front of Lucie Warren, one of the secretaries that works in the mornings. She’s the one who called Bruce telling him about Masters and his insistence to meet him, she sounded surprised when Bruce said he’d handle it.  

Vlad Masters stands with his back to the door, two security guards lurking nearby, and no visible bodyguards. No hidden ones either, Bruce does a quick sweep of the room and doesn’t spot anyone in plainclothes.  

He frowns.  

Lucie Warren’s face relaxes into relief the moment she looks around Masters and spots Bruce approaching, tension bleeding from her shoulders as she leans back in her chair slightly. Masters turns immediately.  

The blank expression on his face immediately melts away into a polite grin. Bruce knows baring teeth when he sees it, his hackles raise, and he keeps his shoulders relaxed. “Mister Wayne!” Masters purrs, turning fully towards him and clasping his hands together. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”  

(“Quit your games, badger. Gotham is dangerous for children.”)  

(‘Daniel’ goes still, he stops breathing.)  

He doesn’t sound nearly as deceptively concerned as he did last night, but the voice is undeniable, and the anger in Bruce’s veins flares dramatically, unexpectedly, and rushes him hot. He stares down Masters as the man closes the gap between them and holds out his hand in greeting.  

Whatever cologne he’s wearing is dark and spiced, cheap. It makes Bruce’s nose itch; he wrinkles it for a moment to satiate the sting. Masters’ hands are manicured and uncalloused, unusual for a man who reportedly builds his own inventions. Bruce has no intention of shaking his hand, and narrows his eyes before looking back up at Masters’ face. 

Well, still down, perhaps. Masters is shorter than him.  

Masters’ hair is brushed and slicked back, but not in its usual ponytail that Bruce saw in all the photos released of him. Hm. Bruce notes the concealer he’s wearing, perfectly matched and heavier under his eyes and near his jaw.  

There’s a short, extended silence between the two of them. The bustle of the lobby around them fills the ambient air, and it doesn’t take more than a few seconds before the corner of Masters’ eyes tighten, his false-smile growing sharp, and he drops his hand with a light sound.  

“I do apologize for the trouble,” Masters lies, voice smooth like liquid caramel: ready to crystalize and stick at a moment’s notice, “but I simply thought it would be beneficial for the both of us if I could speak with you in person.”  

(“—he’s been wanting to sink his claws into Mr. Wayne’s company for years now—”)  

Mn. Bruce bets.  

He glances over Masters’ shoulder to Lucie Warren, who winces apologetically when she meets his gaze and mouths a ‘sorry!’ at him with a grimace. He looks back at Masters, dark eyes staring sharp and greedy at him. He thinks, without Danny’s warning, he wouldn’t have agreed to any sort of partnership with Masters regardless.  

Vlad Masters wears the same covetous eyes as Gotham’s Elite.  

Bruce blinks slowly, black blood churning under his skin, “Why?”  

Perhaps not the response Masters was expecting, for the man flounders for a moment – not quite visibly, his head reels back for a quick moment and his shoulders jump minutely, and he blinks once, then twice. “Well,” he starts, “simply because I was hoping to persuade you to a... partnership between our two companies, it would help the both of us.”  

(“—possessed other tycoons and forced them into signing away ownership of their companies to him so he could assimilate them into VladCo—”)  

Just this morning, Vlad Masters released a statement about Danny being missing. He’d played up an entire act of the concerned godfather, and in that same breath had sent Danny spiraling into a panic attack.  

Just last night Vlad Masters poisoned Danny, and he used a poison he likely had to make himself since blood blossoms are extinct. Meaning it wasn’t just an attempted homicide, but attempted murder. Attempted murder, on a kid.  

(“Woah. You look like shit.”) 

(Bruce jerks – how come he didn’t hear anyone approaching? – and turns towards the source of the voice. It takes a moment for him to register the youthful pitch; it takes another for the iron stench of blood to hit his nose.)  

(There’s a boy standing at the mouth of the alley, trembling and bleeding.)  

And here he is, trying to cozy up to Bruce like none of it ever happened. As if his godson wasn’t missing, as if he didn’t try and kill him just a few hours before. Here he was, trying to appeal to Bruce in hopes of – if Danny is right – taking his company for himself.  

Bruce’s presses his mouth into a thin line, bites his nails into his palms, and then releases when it threatens to break skin. "Wayne Enterprises isn’t looking for any partnerships currently, Mr. Masters,” he says, voice a smidge colder than it ought to be. Masters startles, as does Lucie Warren, “if that’s all you had to say to me: leave. – Please.”  

Masters’ eyes widen for a moment, his smile falters like a crack in ice, then tightens like a screw. He laughs low and stilted, “At least hear out my proposal, Mr. Wayne!” He says. Bruce nearly turns towards the door to leave, but – he doesn’t want Masters following after him. He pivots on his heel and stalks towards the elevator. 

Masters still follows after him, regrettably. Anger churns hot under Bruce’s skin, scalding iron pressing against the inside of his sternum and spreading through his lungs and ribs; leaking into his shoulders and hinging the joints.  

(Blood spills from Danny's mouth like an overflowing sink, and he makes a wet, strangled noise, clawing at the front of Alfred’s shirt and staining it dark red. He’s wide-eyed and crying.)  

“Surely you must rethink this, my dear boy,” Masters tries, trying to sound placating rather than pleading. Bruce’s blood enters a flash boil, “as rivaling businesses, wouldn’t it be better for the both of us if we worked together?”  

Rivaling. Rivaling, he says. Bruce doesn’t even bother to deign him with a response for that. The security guards that had been lurking nearby since Bruce arrived begin to walk over as Bruce closes in on the elevators, and Masters remains pursuing him.  

Masters keeps on, “With your connections, it could help me find my godson as well—” 

Danny.  

Bruce comes to a complete stop, and pivots around to face Vlad Masters. Masters, for his credit, stops before he can run into him. Security pauses. The buzzing in Bruce’s ears quiets, but now he can feel his heart thumping against his chest.   

There’s a moment of silence.  

Bruce forces himself to be the one to break it, “...your godson?”  

He finds that he hates the shining look of triumph in Masters’ eyes as he straightens up. Fixing a look of heartbreak on his face, Masters places a hand against his chest and curls his fingers slightly.  

“My godson, my Daniel, he went missing last night,” Masters says, demurring and hushed, dark eyes drooping with grief. It’s almost convincing. “I’ve already reported it to the police, surely you saw the news?” 

He did. So did Danny.  

Masters keeps going, “And while— and while I certainly don’t doubt the capabilities of Gotham’s finest police force, I can’t help but worry. Daniel – my Daniel – he only just turned thirteen recently, and the death of his family’s hit him hard. My boy just hasn’t been the same. I fear that by the time the police find him, it’ll be too late.”  

Bruce’s heart is so loud in his ears, it threatens to deafen him. The way Vlad Masters talks about Danny reeks of ownership, possession nearly tangible every time he says ‘my.’ Slick and oily, and despite his act, there’s a dark, proprietary look in Masters’ eyes.  

It makes his stomach turn.  

Four months.  

(“I just— Vlad hasn’t let me leave his mansion at all since my mom and my dad and my sister’s funeral, and— and it was only ever me and him in that house—” Danny’s face is hidden behind his hands, but his fingers sprawl just enough that even in the dim light, Bruce can see his eyes peering through. He’s shivering and unblinking.)  

Danny spent four months alone with this man.  

You are never going to find him, Bruce thinks, carefully checking to see that the rage he’s feeling isn’t showing on his face. It’s not. He can feel it burning in his eyes. Not if I have anything to say about it.  

“You’re the Prince of Gotham, Mr. Wayne,” Masters continues, “that’s not a name to be taken lightly. Undoubtedly you must know the ins and outs of the city, it was your family that had a say in its infrastructure. I was hoping that should Vladco partner with Wayne Enterprise, you’d be willing to help use your connections to aid in my child's search.”  

Bruce had some... he can’t call it hope. It’s not hope in the slightest, but curiosity, about what kind of story Masters would try and spin to his face. Following the story he gave the public would be wisest to keep suspicion off him, and he did just that.  

There’s a lot of people listening in that are pretending they aren’t.  

“Mr. Masters,” he speaks softly, a stark contrast to the dark beating in his lungs, “I’m not sure what connections you’re thinking of, but Wayne Enterprises doesn’t have that sort of sway with the police. We’d be of no help.”  

“But—”  

Ah, perfect timing. Bruce is done here; he won’t listen to Masters talk for another minute. 

The elevator dings, ringing loud and clear throughout the lobby, and Bruce turns his back on Masters to watch the doors slide open. A young man steps out, looking at his phone, and looks up just in time to catch Bruce’s gaze.  

Bruce doesn’t look away fast enough to miss the man’s eyes widen comically, before taking one big sidestep to give him room to enter. “Mr. Wayne!”  

Mn. Bruce grimaces, and without sparing a glance back at Masters, brushes past the young man and into the elevator. Reluctantly hitting the floor to his father’s office, Bruce looks back out, and as the doors close, he watches the stunned expression on Masters’ face.  

The doors slide shut, and the elevator begins to move.  

The tension deflates from his shoulders, Bruce exhales loudly and leans back against the elevator railing. He coils his fingers tight around the metal, the chill seeps through. Quietly, nearly inaudible to his own ears, Bruce mutters: “Asshole.”  

Hm.  

That was... neither as productive as he was hoping, and perhaps just about as productive as he was expecting. At least now he can say that he’s met Vlad Masters in person, what he got out of that... is yet to be seen.  

What he does know is the possessive way Masters talks about Danny brings him back to his question about why he would try and kill him. ‘My ’ child, 'my’ Daniel, it could very well be just an act of the concerned godfather, but that’s negating the tone Masters used while he was saying it. Bruce’s skin crawls, and his lip curls into a quiet scowl.  

...Hm.  

Bruce furrows his brows, adjusting himself slightly so that his back is leaning against the wall. His arms cross.  

(“—hasn’t let me leave his mansion at all since my mom and my dad and my sister’s funeral—”)  

(“Vlad took my phone and I haven’t been able to use any of the landlines in his house—”)  

Vlad has been isolating Danny, that much is obvious. Common abuse tactics include isolating the victim from loved ones and controlling their means of communication. Danny hasn’t seen anyone in four months; he hasn’t had access to the internet for four months. He said the only reason they were in Gotham at all was because Masters wanted to try and poach Wayne Enterprises.  

Masters is possessive of Danny. He could’ve left Danny back in Wisconsin while he came here, Danny’s about the age where he can be left alone without adult supervision. But he didn’t. He brought Danny with him to Gotham instead. Is he so possessive that he wants Daniel to always be with him? Possibly. But Gotham is huge, and he wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on Danny at all times anyways while they were here if Masters was trying to set up a meeting with him.  

He very well could have just left Danny back home, when Bruce was looking up Masters earlier it said he was living in ‘the Dairy King’s Castle’ and that’s in the middle of nowhere. Was he so worried that Danny would run off, even into the woods, if he left?  

Maybe that’s what the poison was for, says a quiet thought. Bruce jolts, straightens up. Maybe Masters didn’t poison Danny because he wanted to kill him – maybe it was a control tactic. An awful, horrific control tactic, one that would’ve killed Danny had he not found Bruce, one that makes Bruce’s fingers tilt and arch into claws, but a control tactic nonetheless.  

That would explain the obscurity. Less likely for someone to find a cure if the flower no longer exists. It would also explain why Masters hasn’t come to Gotham sooner – Bruce has been back for just over half a year now, developing a poison like that would have to take time.  

He frowns. How long has Danny known Vlad Masters? He said that Masters didn’t know he was named godfather, but he never said when he found out. It could’ve been after the Fentons died, but that doesn’t seem right. A pit forms in Bruce’s stomach.  

How long has Masters been planning on poisoning Danny?  

It could also still be a recent decision, however. Masters has that PhD in microbiology and he doesn’t come off to Bruce as a fool. It could’ve also been developed before they left for Gotham. 

However long it took to make—regardless, Masters intended to poison Danny. Obscurity and lack of a cure for such a rare, modified flower means that Danny wouldn’t be able to run to anyone else for help. It’d be very easy to fall into a repetitive cycle after that if Masters intended it to control him.  

Masters could’ve poisoned Danny to prevent him from trying to leave and seek help, with Masters being the only one who could possibly have a ‘cure’ for it, Danny would have to stay and comply to him to survive. Repeat. Masters wouldn’t even technically need to leave anywhere for him to have a reason to use it either, it’d be easy to condition submission into Danny by poisoning him every time he ‘acted out.’  

This could’ve been the first attempt at it, but Masters underestimated Danny’s determination to escape. And now look what happened.  

The elevator’s almost near the top, dread weaves a tight ball in Bruce’s chest. Maybe he should’ve just turned and left the building instead, it would’ve gotten Masters out too, considering he was going to follow him anyways.  

Bruce’s mouth presses into a thin line. Maybe he can sneak out the back and return to Wayne Tower that way.  

...There’s something he doesn’t get. With blood blossoms being extinct, and with Masters – probably – using some genetically modified version of the plant to make his poison, how did he manage to cure it? While he's learned a lot of different ways to cure poisons from traveling, it still deserves to be said. The antidote he used was made of a variety of antitoxins that were meant to treat the symptoms he could identify.  

Unease fogs beneath his sternum. He should get back to the tower and run that check-up on Danny. He should do that right now, actually. He should’ve done that while Danny was asleep, but—  

(He’s so small. He is so small. Bruce strains his ears to listen to Danny breathe, half-terrified that he might stop in the middle of the night. He’s not sure, he’s never seen a poison like this before. Danny’s breathing is labored and quiet, but it’s there.)  

(Bruce sits, and waits, and has never felt more like one of Gotham's many gargoyles.)  

He hadn’t.  

He reaches the floor to his father’s office, and the doors have barely opened all the way before Bruce is slipping through the crack and turning for the stairs. He knows he could use the elevator again, but – he got lucky that it didn’t stop on any floors going up. The same can’t be said for going down.  

And, if worse comes to worse, he can skip a few flights. It’s not like he can’t erase the footage.  

The door bangs against the wall when he opens it, echoing through the stairwell as Bruce fishes his phone from his pocket. Alfred’s one of the very few contacts that he has, finding his number is hardly a challenge.  

He’s left on voicemail. Bruce’s stomach drops. “Alfred,” he hisses, and tries again, “pick up.” 

Voicemail again.  

Then twice.  

Bruce is going to hurtle himself over the side of the railing if he doesn’t answer soon. He’ll catch himself. The third time is a dud, and with one hand on the outside railing and a low growl, he tries a fourth time.  

Click. Finally!  

“Alfred,” Bruce starts, hushed and checking over his shoulder, “I need you to take Danny down to the terminus—” 

“I fear I’ve beat you to it already,” Alfred interrupts, Bruce’s blood runs cold. He grips the railing. “how fast can you return?”  

Bruce is already hopping up onto the railing, “Right now.”  

Chapter Text

Mom used to play the fiddle.  

It was an old thing, belonged to her dad’s dad, and it was made of some kind of wood that Danny can’t remember the name of, but it was glossy and dark. Handmade, too. He thinks. In the summers, before the portal opened, she’d take it out and play for them in the backyard while he and Jazz were running around. 

She’d play some high-paced tune, quick and plucking, as jumpy as the two of them were being, as if she was trying to infuse the music into both of their bones like water and sun to a flower. That’s what Danny likes to think anyways, that’s what it felt like. He always ran faster when Mom was playing, Jazz called it cheating.  

They had so many noise complaints. 

Sometimes, she and Dad would set up a fire pit – though it was against city regulations, that’s never stopped the two of them before – and she’d play then too. Instead of a song that’d put the summer sun to shame, she’d play low and slow. Lazy like a cat out sunbathing. Meandering like fireflies; though Danny only saw those when they went camping or when they were visiting Auntie.  

She’d hum along sometimes, while playing. But Mom, for all her talents and her genius, couldn’t hold a note to save her life. She was always either too sharp or too flat. Singing was Dad’s thing – and Danny’s, even if he was too embarrassed to admit it. But she’d hum along, and even though she was a terrible singer on her own, it paired nicely with her fiddle.  

The last time he saw it was four months ago, he’s pretty sure – he's hoping – that it went to Auntie. It should’ve, because it didn’t go with Danny when Vlad stole custody of him. And if it did, if Vlad somehow took Mom’s fiddle and he’s got it stashed away somewhere in that stupid mansion of his, Danny might actually kill him. 

A string broke once when she was playing. Danny had thought it was the end of the world at the time, thought she was gonna have to throw away the whole thing all because a string broke. It took thirty seconds for him to work himself into a flurry of tears and a wire ball of anxiety.  

Mom laughed at him, set the fiddle aside, and took a minute to wipe the snot and tears off his face and told him that she wasn’t gonna throw her fiddle away all because of a measly string. Told him it was normal for that to happen.  

“They break when they get old,” she told him, letting Danny watch as she changed out the broken string for a new one, “or when it’s too cold, or when there’s something wrong with the instrument. They’re fussier than babies.”  

“Can’t put too much tension on them either,” she added, and she was slipping into one of her lecture voices, “pull ‘em too tight and they break just as easily, and you can get hurt bad from a broken string. You know Arthur? Down by Alicia?” 

Danny already knew who that was at the time; Old Arthur who also played the fiddle, Danny heard him play every time he saw Auntie. He’d nodded, and Mom gave him this half-tilt funny smile, like she was about to tell him a joke. She jerked her chin at him, “Lost his eye from playing on strings too tight for its pegs.”   

Danny feels like that string right now.  

Drawn too tight for its peg and about to snap and take out an eye. His – or someone else’s, he’s not really sure. Keyed in fierce for a fight that’s not there. He’s got fiddle strings for sinew, wound up and tight, he can feel his shoulders shaking and jolting in their sockets while his elbows are locked into place.  

It’s not a great feeling. His shoulder blades hurt the way it hurts to swallow when his throat is sore. Bloated and aching like he’s pressing on a bruise, but there’s no bruise, he just hurts. His spine aches, rough like rust on nails, and his lungs itch to cough.  

Bruce left a little bit ago, and Danny feels like it was probably the worst mistake of his life. He’d felt—confident, at first. Not confident. Comforted, and mortified by it. He’s fourteen; he shouldn’t be acting like he’s three years old and getting dropped off at daycare for the first time. But he is— was—and he can’t wrap his head around why.   

Point is: he'd been fine. Ish. About it.  

Um. He isn’t, anymore.  

He shouldn’t have let Bruce leave.  

Danny’s nails dig tighter into his knees, piercing through the denim and biting into the skin. It hurts, and it kinda feels nice, but it still hurts, and it makes him feel worse. His shoulders hunch high up, like a turtle trying to hide in its shell.  

He shouldn’t have let Bruce leave; he should’ve tried convincing him to stay. Wayne Enterprises could call someone else in to deal with Vlad! They could’ve had security just toss him out like bouncers in a club, that would’ve solved all of their problems and Bruce wouldn’t have had to leave.  

Fear turns his chest hollow; his lungs chill up like he’s swallowed a mint and began breathing snow. Danny’s trying to keep it steady, but it’s not really working. His heart knocks around his chest like rocks down a hill, like a runner’s feet in a marathon. Pounds against his ribcage like it’s trying to break them, he can feel it down his left side.  

He shouldn’t have let Bruce leave. He shouldn’t have let Bruce leave. He shouldn’t have let Bruce leave.   

Vlad’s going to figure everything out. He’s going to take one look at Bruce and find out that he’s the same person that Danny escaped with last night. Bruce is gonna say one thing to him and Vlad’s gonna hear his voice and piece it all together, he’ll follow him out of the building and follow Bruce back to the tower where he and Alfred are.  

Or, worse, he’ll kill Bruce and it’ll be all Danny’s fault because he couldn’t keep him safe. That’s not right. That’s not fair. If Bruce dies because of Danny, he’ll never forgive himself. He’s supposed to keep people safe.   

He’s supposed to keep everybody safe. He’s gotten so good at it too. He’s gotten so good.  

He shouldn’t’ve let Bruce leave alone.   

Maybe there’s still time. He could activate his core—it might take a minute but he can do it, he’s cured—and he’s a fast flyer. He’s real fast. And it’s not like Wayne Enterprises is hard to find, Danny saw it when he arrived in Gotham and its got Mister Wayne’s name plastered over the front of it. Danny could see it from the window of their hotel room. He could find it right easy.  

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He could do that. He’d stay invisible, Vlad doesn’t have a ghost sense like Danny does, and even if he spontaneously does develop one, it still wouldn’t matter because then his attention would shift off Bruce and turn to Danny like it always does. He could lead him away from Bruce and Vlad would forget about him.  

He doesn’t even have to do anything if Vlad doesn’t sense him—he'd just shadow behind Bruce and make sure Vlad doesn’t try anything. And he might, even if he doesn’t realize Bruce is Batman. He can keep Bruce safe, and Alfred too, they’ve been so nice to him. It’s the least he could do.  

Sure he’s not gone ghost in months —and that’s weird weird weird now that he thinks about it, he’s been dead for so long—but that doesn’t really matter. He doubts it’ll take him long to warm up his powers, and even if it does Danny doesn’t need to rely on them. He can fight mean. He knows how to fight mean.  

That sounds like a plan—he thinks? It’s probably not a good plan, but good plans require time and patience and Danny has neither. He has until Vlad realizes Bruce stole Danny away from him and then everything’s gonna go to belly up. He needs to be on top of it when it does.  

Danny reaches inwards for his core. Even with his eyes open it burns into the front of his mind, seeing it the same way someone sees a memory. Like pressing your palms against your closed eyes until you can see a kaleidoscope of orange and red stars. It’s still dormant, locked away deep like a blizzard trapped in a glass globe.  

He takes a moment to stare at it; it makes his eyes strain and hurt. His throat tightens up and his head pounds. The bottom of his ribs ache and press bruisingly soft and sore against his skin when he breathes in. He hurts. He hurts. He hurts.    

It spins in place like a blackhole, reality warping around the edges. His vision pulses. There’s stardust crackling through the bends of his eyelashes. An aurora borealis lashing around the curves of the globe its trapped in.  

There’s the specific smell of cold that Danny can only find on the back of his hands when they’ve been half-frozen from the winter air. He feels the sound of Dad laughing behind his ears and sinking down his spine, and Mom’s perfume stinging in his nose. There’s Jazz’s paperback smell and her sharp nails pinching his arm.  

Metallic electricity crackles behind his teeth like pop-rocks, he bites down and feels it rattle through his jaw. There’s motor oil and gasoline and dirt sticking to his knees that he can feel plastered through his jeans.  

There’s stars. Floating aimlessly and glittery through the bubble, weaving around the borealis and sinking in and out from the surface. There’s his baby blanket he still kept on his bed pressing against his palms, the sherpa flattened and still slept with.  

And there’s music. Ringing like a thought in his ears. Nonsense Soulhum words and Mom’s fiddle and Auntie’s guitar and Dad’s humming. Danny’s eyes spring up wet. He misses singing. He tastes the smell of a creek bed in the back of his mouth.  

Danny’s core is dormant but no less lively, locked away in its little snow globe where he can look and not touch. All he needs now is to reach forward and crack it open from the self-made shell he’s put it in. Then he could go help Bruce and keep Vlad away from him. It’ll probably take a moment for the chill to bleed throughout his body after he opens his core but—  

Someone touches his shoulder. Barely. A featherlight brush of their fingertip against his shoulder, and Danny—  

Danny’s embarrassed to say he startles. Bad. The world comes into focus around him like he’s being yanked back by a vacuum, the imprint vision of his core slipping away from him and back into the recesses of his chest and mind. Danny breathes in so sharply that it’s more accurate to say he gasps.   

How could he get snuck up on like that—  

He wasn’t that distracted, was he?—  

He reacts faster than he can control the way he does— he turns towards the source of the touch. But at the same time, his head ducks away out of habit—normally such a small shift near him means he’s about to get snuck up on by a ghost—and his arms jolt up and shove out to block the hit coming.  

While that’s happening, one of his feet dig into the floor, sending a stinging nettle’s worth of pain from toe to ankle through the back of his leg, and the other kicks up, digs into the edge of the couch instead. Now, normally what happens next is that Danny then leaps out of the way of an incoming attack from a ghost, usually one with a big hammer or axe that they’re trying to cleave him in half with.  

What happens here is that he throws himself across the couch and closes the half-distance between him and the corner. Like some kind of startled cat that just had a cucumber placed next to it. His spine hits the bone of the armchair, sending a dagger up the small of his back and tree-rooting through his shoulders and down to his hips. He chokes on the pained nose that rips up his throat. His fingers claw into whatever nice fabric the furniture’s made of.  

Skk–thump.   

Ancients. The couch rocks back slightly from the sheer force of him knocking into it. He blinks once, he blinks twice, strands of his hair falling into his eyes as his heart stomps grapes into his side. He’s half pressing himself into the corner of the couch, his one leg curled up and pushing into the cushions while the other perches on the edge.  

Alfred comes into focus, looking vaguely alarmed, his arm still outstretched for him.  

Danny gapes at him.  

Oh.  

Oh.   

Oh he seriously just did that. Mortification bursts yellow in his chest and lathers sticky and thick across his ribs, gluing lung and muscle and bone together. His face goes hot and tingles numb through his cheeks and nose. That was—that was a serious overreaction on his part.  

Uhh— damage control?  

Danny moves his mouth to say something – nothing comes out. He closes it. Tries again to open it and say something: nothing. Alfred is kind enough to wait, although he drops his hand in the process.  

His mouth flaps like a fish, but no sound comes out. Ugh! Danny snaps his teeth closed and scowls at himself, dropping his eyes to the couch because he doesn’t want Alfred to think he’s scowling at him. Say! Danny grits his teeth together, then takes a breath. Something! 

“I—” He sounds choked, he doesn’t mean to. Danny cuts himself off before his voice can crack and the sound can make it to his eyes— too late. He feels pressure build behind them, and hisses to himself. His throat is all thick.  

Try this again, quieter now. “Sorry.” he gets out. Good, better. That at least tells Alfred he didn’t mean to react that way. Danny slowly tries to get his fingers to unlatch from the cushions. His fingers peel out shakily.   

“It’s alright.” Alfred says, his voice carefully measured and—Danny’s embarrassment burns brighter. Aw, no, he’s taken on the same tone Danny’s used on scared civilians before. He’s not a scared civilian, Alfred just startled him because Danny wasn’t paying attention to what he was doing.  

Oh man—he totally forgot Alfred was there. Danny’s spine goes numb and not from the pain. He could’ve totally blown his secret in his haste to help Bruce. God, he’s a mess.  

Danny screws his eyes shut, his face still burning. He’d hide behind his hand if he could get one to let go of the couch. “Sorry.” He says again, he’s so embarrassed he doesn’t know what else to say.  

I didn’t mean to do that, he thinks. It comes out: “Sorry.”  

He’s slowly sinking back into the couch cushions though, the tension draining out of him. That means something, right? Progress! He still wants to curl into a ball and die a little. Good grief.   

“You’re not in trouble, Mister Fenton.” Alfred says. He’s not as soft-spoken as Bruce, but the way he says it is firm and nonjudgemental enough that some of Danny’s embarrassment fizzles out in his palm. He can still feel the yellowy thick of it all locked up in his jawhinge.  

He nods mutely. He knows that, he’s just— embarrassed. Horribly, terribly so. Nice to hear though. “I— sorry,” Danny grimaces, “I didn’t mean to do that. I— just— I jumped.”  

 If he could just let go of the couch now...  

Alfred raises an eyebrow at him, folding his hands over his cane and relaxing back, “You did more than just jump,” he intones dryly.  

Okay— that— 

Danny snorts weakly. His fingers release from the cushions with little more than the indent of his nails. Alfred’s eyes crinkle up around the crow’s feet, he looks mildly pleased. His arms pulse achy in the joints. His chest hurts. Danny sniffs quietly.  

“Sorry,” Danny flicks out again. Dammit.  

Alfred’s mouth twitches, and Danny can’t really look into that more before his expression melts stern into metal and Alfred’s brows thread together to a frown. “Are you worried about Bruce?”  

He— 

His mouth opens. His throat locks up again.  

Danny zips it shut and looks away. His eyes sting again— Ancients he’s sick of that—and he breathes out through his nose. Alfred... just waits. And eventually Danny nods, the bubble in his mouth thickening. Was he being that obvious?  

“He’ll be alright.” Alfred tells him.  

Hah!  

No!   

His chest seizes tight and fear crashes against his back like an ice-cold wave, soaking him down to the marrow. Up to his ears his shoulders go, Danny shakes his head and air traps itself in his sternum. Heat bubbles up into his eyes and pops before he can close them. A tear marches down one cheek, then another. 

Danny rubs his eyes furiously.  

“You said so yourself,” Alfred tries again, Danny’s still rubbing his eyes, sinking in air to choke the tears back down. The fear’s back and Bruce is in danger— “Mister Masters wouldn’t use his powers in public.”   

Danny shakes his head again; more tears bleed down. “I don’t—” his voice cracks a little, he hates it, “I don’t know that anymore.” 

He doesn’t know Vlad anymore. He doesn’t feel like he knows Vlad anymore, in any case. Everything is wrong and not like it should be. This isn’t right. He doesn’t like this. It’s not fair.   

He wants things to go back to how it was before. He can’t trust Vlad to not use his powers in public, and he can get caught for all he cares, but not when it comes at the cost of other people and their lives. He misses when he could trust Vlad to be awful the way Danny knows him to be.  

He misses when he knew what ways he was going to be hurt whenever they fought—and while Danny never really knew, he at least could trust the outcome of it all. There was some predictability to it all.  

He misses when his biggest concern with Vlad was trying to figure out whether or not he was trying to kill Dad again, or trying to lure Danny back to his stupid house so he could trap him inside it—the difference never really mattered because Danny always ended up going anyways.  

(It’s not like ignoring him was any viable option. Not when the risk was his Dad’s life in either of those scenarios. When Vlad wants attention, he wants attention.)   

(He wants to marry Mom, and he wants to kill Dad, and he wants Danny as his son, and Danny is the only one he knows that he doesn’t have to hide any of that from. He doesn’t need to be tactful, or subtle, he can just take.)   

Danny hates him so much. He makes his head hurt.  

“What makes you think he'd do anything?” Alfred asks him, cutting into his spiraling thoughts and— 

And— 

What kind of question is that? Danny snaps his head up from his hands in indignation, his vision blurs spottily but he doesn’t need it to be perfect to give Alfred his most bewildered look he can manage. Why would he ask him that?  

Alfred’s face is carefully neutral. That calmness sparks a fit of irritation in him.  

“Because—” Danny pauses, then wets his lips, “—because he’s gonna know.”   

“Know?”  

Oh! This man! Danny hisses: “That Bruce saved me!”   

Alfred’s expression shifts. His eyes narrow slightly, and Danny’s heart stutters a beat for a moment—he looks upset— “Did Masters see you last night?”  

Of course he—  

Danny’s thoughts skid to a stop.  

Clarity breaks an ice bucket over his head.  

He didn’t.  

Oh. 

Oh.  

Danny slumps into the couch, the breath deflating out of him like a balloon. The clouds break, and the world comes back into focus. His eyes drift away from Alfred’s face to stare listlessly over his shoulder. Vlad didn’t see anything. He’d set off Danny’s ghost sense, which meant he was close. But he hadn’t seen anything. 

He would’ve pursued them if he’d seen them leave. But he hadn’t, which means he didn’t. 

Danny looks back at Alfred, stupefied. “No.” He’s all stuffy. Gross. That didn’t take long at all.  

A slow, certain nod, and Alfred continues: “You think Masters heard you last night?” 

...No. Danny’s next breath feels wonderfully clear of fear, as rattled as it sounds as it slips past his teeth. “No,” he shakes his head, it makes his skull pound, “um— not, uh, not Bruce, at least.” He definitely heard Danny, but not Bruce.  

“Then is Masters the type to seek revenge on a random ‘ security guard’ with his powers?” The way Alfred says the word ‘security guard’ is funny, but Danny doesn’t pay much attention to the inflection.  His heart is slowly coming back down to its regular tempo.  

“...No,” Danny slouches, it presses an over-stretched ache into his spine. “Vlad’s petty but – he’s not that petty.” He’s not that stupid at the very least, as much as Danny wishes he could say otherwise. Vlad would’ve been caught by now if he was stupid.  

He wipes the back of his hand across his nose, sniffling, and— he frowns faintly. There’s a streak of red spread across the skin. Residual blood? It’s happened before. He looks back up at Alfred. “Before... uh. Before everyone died, he’d probably just– get Bruce fired, I think.” 

“And now?”  

Danny thinks. He draws up blank, he’s not sure if that’s better or worse.   

...Worse, actually. At least he can prepare for Vlad if he can predict what he’s gonna do. He wrings his hands, it aches. There’s a tingling sensation in his knuckles as if they’re falling asleep. Danny’s brows furrow slightly. “I don’t know.”  

“If Masters doesn’t know that Bruce is the one who saved you last night, then currently all that he’s done wrong is help remove him from Wayne Enterprise premises,” Alfred says, and yes, yes, Danny gathered that. But— hearing it said out loud... “Will Masters hurt him for that?”  

“...Probably not.”  

Alfred nods, “Then Bruce will be alright.”  

...Danny breathes out slowly again. Blinking beyond Alfred’s face and over his shoulder. He’s still— apprehensive. There’s still a pebble sitting ugly in his ribcage that wants to tangle up bigger, but—but his head feels a little clearer. The static in his ears has gone.   

He fiddles with his fingers, looking down at his lap. “...Okay.”  

Silence settles over the two of them. He can’t quite call it comfortable, but it’s not uncomfortable, at least. Sinking into the couch, Danny half-wants to disappear somewhere between the cushions and not emerge until Bruce returns. He draws his aching legs up to his chest and wraps his arms around them, resting his chin on his knees and staring off into space. 

...Maybe he could still go ghost and check up on Bruce. Just to be safe. He needs to get Alfred out of the room first though, that way he can transform. No, that won’t work ‘cause when Alfred comes back he’ll see that Danny’s gone and he might call Bruce.  

He could go to another room to transform then? Bruce said Alfred was getting a new room ready for Danny to stay in, as opposed to the one he woke up in on the upper floors. He could go to that room and just go ghost there, then he can check on Bruce without Alfred wondering about where he went.  

That doesn’t sound like too bad of a plan! Danny’s next step then should be to... 

Danny’s eyes flick over his knees and to the ground, and then becomes acutely aware of the incessant, burning, throbbing in his legs. And his arms. And the pulsating ache in his shoulders and spine that he’s been stubbornly trying to ignore.  

He looks over to Alfred with his cane. Alfred, who certainly doesn’t look frail in the slightest, and likely isn’t if he’s able to get around this big penthouse... tower... building... just fine, but probably shouldn’t be supporting the majority weight of another human being. Which he most certainly will likely be doing if he helps Danny get to his new- uh, room.  

Danny drops his head into his knees and swallows a whine.  

I can crawl, he thinks, entirely unconvinced and unmotivated to drag himself across the length of the building just to find his new room. Especially if Alfred is there to witness it. Oh! Or he can hug the wall! He can just hug the wall and use that to support his weight, that way Alfred doesn’t have to help him and risk them both falling down.  

Yeah, sure. That works. He can do that. Danny pulls his head out of his knees. He can feel Alfred watching him as Danny slowly sits up, gripping the arm of the couch for purchase as his legs stab him with a hundred- thousand tiny needles up the length of his foot and knee as if they’d fallen asleep.  

“Mister Pennyworth?” He starts once his feet are on the ground. He scoots himself forward until he’s sitting on the edge of the couch, braces himself, and then... “Bruce said something about me getting a new room—?” Up he goes- 

Nope—nope, that’s down.  

Danny doesn’t even get his legs all the way up beneath him before a white-hot shock burns through his nerves and he feels the cartilage-bone-whatever in his knees grind together, and then collapse under his weight like a house of cards. He gets the sharp, zipper-like gasp out, and then the pain reaches his eyes and honeycomb static blurs the edges, and he goes down.  

"Mister Fenton!”  

He blinks, and he’s on the ground, holding his breath on an inhale and with his legs burning fiercely, his arms twisted around to cling onto the couch cushions like a life preserve. His heart pounds against his ribcage loudly, Danny gaping faintly.  

Ow. Ow. Ow.   

“Shit,” Danny wheezes, turning quickly to cough into his arms—damn, and he was doing good on that front—while he tries to regain the feeling in his legs. “That— that fuckin’ hurt.”   

“I have no doubt about that.” Alfred says, and Danny picks up the quiet thunk of his cane hitting something—and then there’s a creak, a quiet rustle, and through his arms he feels something press against the couch next to him. His head snaps up quickly, and through his coughing— 

Alfred’s getting on the ground beside him, holding onto the cushions for support with one leg trembling slightly. Danny’s tongue dries up in his mouth—he doesn’t need to do that, Danny’s fine, he’s had worse— his fingers itch to reach over and bring Alfred back up to his feet, but his legs won’t move.   

“Are you alright, Mister Fenton?” Alfred asks, moving slightly closer with one knee propped up against the floor. He’s kneeling, and Danny keeps gawking at him as Alfred reaches out for him—Danny snaps his eyes to his palms, they’re open and facing towards him, relaxed and nonthreatening like Bruce—and then they press flat against his arm.  

Fingers curl around his upper arm. Danny tenses and shifts—as much as he can when his legs are as good as dead beneath him—instinctively, turning so that he can yank himself away and drag Alfred down with him if he so needed to. He’s had to before; ghosts don’t experience weight distribution the same way the living do, but Danny’s gotten throwing them off their game down to a science.   

Alfred’s not dead, which makes this easier. He’s already off-balance, so Danny’s other arm comes up to shield across his chest and point his elbow out towards him. Makes it more versatile—he can twist around and take him down by his arm, especially if he goes out towards the table rather than down—and—  

This isn’t a fight, Danny remembers abruptly, just as Alfred’s hand slides to support the back of his arm instead of holding it from the front. Embarrassment slams face-first into his chest as he starts carefully getting pulled to his feet.  

Alfred’s about as strong as he looks, and Danny means that as a compliment, but it does nothing in the face of Danny’s legs refusing to work underneath him. Danny tries to help but using the couch beside him to get up, and it does very little other than spread the pain from his legs to his arms. It’s like that time he tried to do a pull-up in gym class once, and he couldn’t even get his arms to bend ninety degrees. 

Alfred said something, what was it? "I’m- just fine, Mister Pennyworth. M’ peachy,” Danny grits, and cocks a half-hearted smile at him. Just like that pull-up bar, he can’t even get it to reach his eyes. “I guess my legs just... clocked out for the day.”  

He was hoping to crack some sort of smile out of Alfred with that, some flat attempt at loosening the tension. It falls flat as his legs though, because Alfred just presses his mouth into a frown and he gives Danny a look that has him feeling mildly scolded.  

“Apparently.” They get him back onto the couch, and Danny takes the moment to reach out and offer his support to Alfred in turn. Alfred tilts his head at him and narrows his eyes, but says nothing as Danny helps push him back up by the elbow.  

“I’ll send Bruce a message about acquiring a wheelchair for you before he returns,” Alfred says, grabbing his cane and reaching for his phone at the same time. Alarm shoots up through Danny's lungs, and his eyes blow wide.  

“A wheelchair?” Danny repeats, failing to keep the exclamation out of his voice. His throat thickens up with straight-laced panic. He’s not that bad! His legs aren’t that messed up! They’ll heal! They’re healing! He can walk! “I don’t think that’s necessary, Mister Pennyworth—”  

He’s fine! He’s fine! He’s fine! He just needs to wait a little! He didn’t wait long enough before walking again, he’s okay! He can walk!   

Alfred looks at him sharply. His expression doesn’t shift in the slightest, but Danny can all but taste the change in mood in the air, settling under his skin like a wafting fog. His protests die in his throat and he screws his jaw shut, he shrinks into himself.  

“Is there something wrong with using a wheelchair, Mister Fenton?” He asks him softly and very, very pointedly. Shame tangles up in his gut and Danny’s face alights and burns across his cheeks. His mind conjures the image of a rabbit getting caught in a bear trap, steel iron snapping down around its neck.  

No words come out of his mouth, stuck behind the lump in his throat. “I—” he starts, “—no. No. Not at all— it’s just-” he doesn’t need it. He doesn’t need it. “I – I don’t need— I’m okay. I’m fine, I promise I’m fine. I just don’t think—”  

He’s fine. He’s fine. He’s fine!   

He doesn’t want to say it, even in his head it sounds shameful—but Alfred is looking at him, and Danny can barely look him back in the eye as his excuses slip through his fingers like water. His shoulders hunch up to his ears. “I’m not that weak.”    

It sounds fucking awful out loud, but it’s true. Danny doesn’t need a wheelchair; he can walk just fine without it. His injuries will heal in no time, and they’ll heal even faster once he can get his core back up and running out of its dormancy. They’d be wasting their time and their money.  

Danny always gets back up, that’s what he does. He gets up. 

“It’s not weak to need a wheelchair, Danny,” Alfred says after a brief, suffocating silence. He doesn’t sound mad, his voice firm and unyielding, but Danny feels guilty nonetheless. “you’ve been terribly hurt, and you’ll only hurt yourself more if you continue to push yourself as you are.”  

He doesn’t have a rebuttal to this. Danny ducks his head and nods.  

“...Then I shall alert Bruce, and we’ll see about getting you a wheelchair for the time being.”  

...Right. Yeah. Danny blinks back the sting of mortified tears in his eyes. He can fly at speeds equivalent to a fighter jet and regrow a limb in a matter of hours, but he can’t walk right. He can already hear the likes of Ember or Youngblood laughing their asses off at his expense. He knows Vlad would have a field day with this—just another thing Danny would need to depend on him for, and not dissimilar to the fucking jigsaw traps he had set up meant to trap him in the house back when Mom and Dad and Jazz were alive. 

“A cane as well,” Alfred continues, Danny glances at him through the fall of his hair, “I have a spare in my closet that you could borrow for the time being.” Alfred glances back at him, “We’ll have to adjust for your height.”  

Did he really have to look at Danny when he said that? He knows he’s short—he’s always been the smallest kid in his class, and he’s barely grown two inches since he died. His eyes hit just below the dead center of Bruce’s chest. It sucks, he always thought he’d get big like his Dad, and now he’s barely gotten big at all.  

He doesn’t say any of that though, obviously.  

It’s... it’s nice that Alfred’s letting him borrow his cane though, he’ll admit. Already having lost the argument about the wheelchair, there’s no point arguing about the cane. Danny feels vaguely overwhelmed by it all.  

They're so nice to me, Danny thinks in the back of his head, it’s weird. Most adults don’t really like him from the get-go. Dash would’ve never gotten away with all his bullying if they did.  

Danny blinks, focuses back in on the world around him, and— Alfred's frowning at him. Nevermind then, he thinks.  

“You’re bleeding.” Alfred says, putting away his phone and reaching for the pocket of his vest. Danny blinks again—he frowns—he is?  

His nose has been runny this whole time that he didn’t notice, and he thought the blood he saw earlier was just residual from last night. Danny reaches up and scrubs the back of his hand against his nose, and when he pulls back, there’s a thicker streak of blood smeared against the sheen of mucus. 

Oh, Danny’s brows furrow, well that’s not that bad. He doesn’t need anything for that— 

There’s always a difference between a runny nose and a bleeding nose that somehow manages to be both very subtle, and also very noticeable. The viscosity, for one. Danny feels the little prick in the back of his nose, and that’s all the warning he gets before— 

One, two. 

Danny’s gotten so pale ever since he started ghost fighting. He hasn’t had the time to exist as his living self long enough to regain his old tans during the summer. With that being said; the color of his blood against his skin is laughably stark.  

He stares dumbly at the two drops of bright red blood on the back of his hand, already thinning out and sliding to smear across his hand. Then another one joins the pair, and blood feels a lot warmer and satin-y when it’s fresh on his face than snot. Blood slips down over the bow of his lip and gets caught on the closed seam of his mouth. 

Out of habit, Danny licks his lips. The gross, familiar taste of iron blooms across the tip of his tongue and that’s enough to shock him to his senses. His hand snaps up and pinches his nose tightly, unintentionally milking some of the blood out and smearing it across his fingers and palm. It plugs the worst of the flow.  

Tilt your head forward, Danny thinks automatically, leaning to do just that. That way he won’t bleed all over Alfred and Bruce’s nice couch. But, more importantly, so that the blood doesn’t drain down his throat.  

He started doing this when he was eleven after one-too many fights where he broke his nose and got sick of choking on his own ectoplasm. It was only after he started looking up how to do first aid stuff that he learned that tilting your head forward was what you were supposed to be doing anyways.  

“I got it, I got it,” Danny reassures nasally, holding up a hand to Alfred when he pulls out his handkerchief—a different one from before, it doesn’t have any blood on it—and takes a step towards him. He quickly drops it so he can cup it under his chin and catch the blood starting to drip off. “I know what m’doing.”  

Why is he bleeding again? The poison should be gone, and Danny doesn’t get stress nosebleeds, so it can’t be that.  

As if answering that question, a pounding sensation blooms across the back of Danny’s head and into his eyes; vertigo hits him hard and fast as if he woke up one morning and immediately got a head rush and a hot flash. The breath steals itself from his chest, nausea hits him just as hard.  

What the fuck? Danny gags mutely, curling in on himself while rushing static floods his ears and white spots bleed his vision. Blood dribbles through his pinched nose and pools hotly against the crease of his palm. What isn’t coming through, he can feel pooling up in his nose and starting to leak to the back of his throat regardless. 

Confusion floods the spaces in between the pounding in his skull.    

He’s pretty sure Alfred is trying to say something to him, but it’s drowned out by... everything else going on.  

The pain has dulled like a receding tide in favor of the rapid fever settling over him, and Danny doesn’t trust it for a second. It’s gonna be like a tsunami, he knows it. Rearing up to kick his ass and— 

Pain blooms throughout his left leg, unfurling white hot and burning through his lower calf, and then immediately shooting up his leg. Wrapping through the cartilage and sinew, up his thigh and spreading like a disease across his next leg and chest. 

Danny makes a punched-out noise.  

“It’s back.” He gags, and there’s blood coating the back of his throat. It’s not as bad as it was last night, but it’s not as weak as it was at injection and— why is it back—he thought Bruce cured it—   

“It’s back,” he repeats, voice breaking off into a whine. He releases his grip on his nose and blood spills down like an open would, splashing red and warm against his skin. “Alfred its back, why is it back—”   

Bruce’s feet slide against the ground as he rounds the corner—a bout of irritation licks up his sides; his mouth presses into a line to stifle the scowl. He always knew these shoes had terrible traction. It might be faster to just kick them off— 

Alfred and Danny come into view, and he quickly tosses those thoughts off to the side.  

Danny looks terrible, but he’s sitting up on his own in one of Bruce’s chairs and that’s enough to loosen the ball of tension knotting up in his chest. The color he regained this morning is gone though; harder it is to see in the terminal’s poor lighting. 

He’s bleeding again, Bruce thinks despairingly. There’s not half as much blood as last night. He’s holding one of Alfred’s handkerchiefs to his nose, fingers wet-stained red and dripping down his wrist. He’s shaking like a leaf, hunched over himself in an awkward position that, even to Bruce, looks distinctly uncomfortable.  

Bruce runs faster. Alfred’s back is almost entirely turned from him, his attention focused solely on Danny, and Danny’s simply distant. Staring at the floor as if he’s trying to peer right through the concrete and view Gotham’s fossils.  

They’ve yet to notice him. Bruce’s footsteps are near non-existent even in the cavernous space of the train station and both of their attentions are elsewhere.  

(“It’s one of mine.”)  

(Normally when someone flinches, their eyes briefly close as they jolt away. Danny’s blow right open instead, his pupils shrinking as they’re consumed by the blue of his iris. He turns towards Bruce rather than away, arms coming up in a fractured defensive block.)  

(His eyes are wide and wild, and they zero in on Bruce instantly.)  

Bruce shifts his weight from his soles to his heels—just slightly—and his footsteps get a smidge louder. Just loud enough that he can hear them echo against the floor, and subsequently, the room.  

It’s enough. He sees Danny twitch, his shoulders coil—and then he looks up without a shift in his blank expression. He looks right through Bruce—  

And then his eyes come back into focus moments later. Danny’s face crumples, around the blockage of his arm, his mouth spasms, caught between smiling at him and twisting up in upset. Bruce’s stomach twists uncomfortably.  

“Bruce.” Danny rasps. His voice is thick, Bruce can hear the blood clogging up the back of his throat, and his stomach twists up tighter until he can taste the faint dredges of nausea. Alfred turns over his shoulder and spots him.  

“You were quick.” Alfred tells him at the same time as Danny chokes out another ‘Bruce.’ Bruce slides to a stop in front of them, keeping in mind the poor traction of his dress shoes. Alfred takes a step off to the side so he can take his place in front of Danny. Despite his matter-of-fact tone, Bruce catches the hint of relief.  

“Mn.” He took a shortcut. He took a few shortcuts. He’ll have to wipe the footage from the WE cameras of him scaling down the sides of the stairwell, but he doesn’t think the GPD will issue him any traffic tickets.  

He would’ve taken one of the secret entrances into the terminal, but it’s still daylight out and the morning rush is still ongoing. There’s no way he could’ve gone through without being spotted. They’ll find out if that was the wrong choice sometime soon.  

“Bruce!” Danny repeats, his voice pitches upward in distress. His hand comes out and clamps around Bruce’s wrist in a vice grip, not entirely dissimilar to when Bruce first told him he was leaving and Danny latched onto him without realizing.  

Danny tugs at him as if Bruce’s attention wasn’t already wholly on him. There’s a wild, panicked look in his eyes. “Bruce,” he says, half-hissing and hushed. His mouth opens, closes, then repeats a few times. He shapes a few words, but doesn’t say them, until finally giving up with a choked noise.  

Danny’s eyes rove over him, and the fingers around his wrist pulse sporadically. Tight, loose, tight, loose-tight-tight-tighter. The hand holding Alfred’s handkerchief twitches, and then Danny’s squeezing up his forearm, searching.  

Bruce doesn’t know what he’s doing, but they need to focus on stopping Danny’s bleeding. He made extra of the—he can’t call it antidote; it didn’t work— and it’s in one of the fridges he’s got down here. It’ll keep him stable long enough for Bruce to figure out how to make a proper cure.   

He carefully starts plying his arm out of Danny’s hold. His fingers are ice cold and, Jesus, he can feel Danny shaking through his fingertips. Danny’s hand immediately tightens to something that would’ve been bruising had the kid been bigger or stronger, and he makes a wounded sound.  

“Bruce.” He hisses again. Danny’s gaze fluctuates between looking him in the face, and looking down through his chest, or over his shoulder. Focusing and unfocusing like a camera lens. “Vlad. He didn’t — you’re not—” 

Oh. Of course.  

Masters had completely slipped Bruce’s mind. “He didn’t try anything.” he tells him, Danny stares at him for a long moment, searching again—signs of Masters’ ‘overshadowment’? He’ll have to ask what that looks like later; hopefully their conversation won’t be interrupted again.  

Whatever it is that Danny’s looking for, he doesn’t find it, and some of the tension drains out of him. He—reluctantly—releases his iron grip on Bruce’s arm—Bruce rubs over a sore spot on his wrist—and his free hand latches onto his shirt. 

(Bruce’s shirt, technically.)  

“I thought you got rid of it.” Danny says, sinking into his chair and curling back over into that uncomfortable, hunched position. They’re back on the poison. The guilt that slams into Bruce would break his ribs had the blow been physical. “I thought you cured it—”  

("I thou' he was a hero.” Danny mutters to Alfred, Bruce hears it from his short distance away and ignores the discomfort roiling under his skin in favor of throwing together a cure. “N’ I was right.”)

“I know,” It’s a terrible consolation, and Danny’s face screws up in a mess of emotions, “I’m sorry.” Bruce had thought he did too, but saying that won’t make it better. Tears prick up in the corners of Danny’s eyes, he sucks in air and chokes on a wet cough.  

He tries to cover it with his fist. Bruce zeroes in on the small flecks of blood that splatter against his skin.  

They can’t keep delaying. They already know his condition is worsening, and he’s lost so much blood already from last night. He can’t keep losing more. Bruce straightens, pivots on his heel, and marches towards the fridge.  

He returns with the little bottle of extra antidote, one of his syringe kits, and a box of nitrile gloves. “It might not have cured you, but it kept you stable,” he murmurs, setting his stuff down on the nearby table, and doubling back around to go grab cotton swabs and rubbing alcohol.  

The terminal is old and run down, but Bruce keeps all of his necessary medical equipment in safe, sterilized spaces. His brief time in medical school wasn’t for nothing, not barring his other training.  

Danny found him in that alleyway at twelve thirty-two am, he got his first injection at one-oh-five. He woke up just past six o’clock, and they were just past nine. Busy morning. Bruce shrugs off his jacket, and Alfred steps over to take it from him. Mh. He sends him a look. Alfred ignores it.    

What that means then, is that it took just about eight hours for the ‘cure’ to metabolize and for the poison to... return. Bruce’s brows furrow. He doesn’t stop moving—he rolls up his sleeves and slips on the nitrile gloves—but... that’s not how poison works.  

Poison doesn’t work that way. The antidote Bruce made may have not cured it completely, but it had weakened it, enough that Danny stopped bleeding out and had appeared cured. Danny's immune system should’ve been busy fighting off the intruder to his body and eliminated the rest of the poison after that. Or, at the very least, eliminated it enough that it shouldn’t be making him bleed again.  

Now that he’s thinking about it—that part doesn’t make sense. Why was he bleeding again when the poison should be weakened? He may not be bleeding as heavily as he was last night, but he’s back to bleeding, period.  

Bruce keeps his breathing steady, disinfecting the metal lid of the glass bottle with a wettened cotton ball. The poison might’ve weakened his immune system—considering Danny’s muscle atrophy—Bruce isn’t super surprised by that outcome. If that’s the case, then naturally his body would struggle with fighting off the poison and flushing it out. 

...Mn.  

Something doesn’t seem right. He’s missing something. Frowning, Bruce removes the cap from the syringe, flips the vial upside down, and starts drawing the antidote—maybe medicine might be a better term for it now—into the syringe.  

The blood blossom poison, whatever this stuff is, it’s not acting like a proper poison. It's—  

He glances over at Danny. The boy hasn’t taken his eyes off Bruce since he stepped away from him, and Bruce feels like a moth pinned under a needle. Blood drips languidly down his wrist, staining his skinny arm in red and either sinking into the crook of his elbow, or dripping down onto his knee.  

—it’s acting more like a disease than a poison.  

A cold chill runs down Bruce’s spine. 

Masters, you monster. What have you done?  

The lights catch on the lip of Danny’s irises and flip the blue from sky to ice. His hair has dried entirely, and was just a sitting tangle of waves and faint curls on his shoulders and face. He’ll need a comb. He needs new jeans; he can’t wear the same bloodied ones he nearly died in. He needs new socks because the ones he’s wearing now are all dirty from the terminal floor. He has a new room on the first floor of the penthouse because his legs are weak.  

Bruce turns and finishes filling the syringe with the stabilizer-medicine-antidote. The bottle clacks against the table when he puts it down, and Danny’s eyes snap onto the needle as Bruce turns to face him.  

Unlike last night, when he was delirious and half-conscious from blood loss, Danny shrinks away and into the back of the chair, his face going pale. His free hand snaps out and grips the sides, and one leg shakily comes up to dig into the edge of the seat. “Does it have to be a needle?”  

Bruce doesn’t move forward, but he adjusts the way he holds the syringe so that it, hopefully, looks less daunting. “It’s the most effective, Danny.” He says softly. Danny just leans back further and eyes him warily.  

Hm. He knows it's natural for people to be afraid of needles, but they can’t switch to anything else right now. Bruce’s knowledge on the poison is limited; Danny could deteriorate any moment now and while that might make injection easier, Danny would suffer.  

Danny’s eyes flick over Bruce’s shoulder.  

"It might be best for you to look away if needles scare you, Mister Fenton,” Alfred suggests, not unkindly, appearing and rounding around to Danny’s side. Bruce’s jacket isn’t with him, so he must’ve gone and put it away.  

“Probably.” Danny says blandly, his white-knuckle grip on Bruce’s chair arm not lessening in the slightest. He watches Alfred walk over to him with unblinking hare eyes, and then looks back to Bruce. “Does it – does it have to be an injection?”  

“Yes.” Bruce says.  

Danny’s expression twists, then he turns his head away and grits his teeth. Bruce can better see the blood staining down his face this way. His lungs constrict.  

“Fine.” Danny says after a moment, forcing it through his teeth. “Do it.”  

Bruce pauses, then nods and closes the short space between them. He makes his footfalls slightly heavier again, and watches as Danny flicks his eyes to the ground, unfocusing briefly – listening? – before snapping over to him.  

It’s only for a moment; Danny looks away again the moment he spots the needle. Bruce can feel him staring out of the corner of his eye once he’s beside him.   

How should he do this? Ah, he knows. Bruce kneels. Danny’s small, it’s easier to see and keep the needle at the angle he wants if he’s closer.  

Danny’s sitting in that awkward hunch again. Bruce frowns. It won’t necessarily get in the way of the needle, but it, plainly put, looks uncomfortable. Danny’s arm is also tensed up, and that will just make it hurt more for Danny when Bruce injects the needle.  

Mmm...  

“Relax.” He mutters. Danny’s arm flexes up, relaxes, flexes back again, and repeats a few times before locking in place. Back to where they started. Mn. He’s not good at comfort. He’s not sure how he can get Danny to quit locking up. He doesn’t want to hurt him, but at this rate he might just have to.  

How can he...  

Oh. He has an idea.  

Hesitantly, Bruce reaches out. Slowly, because Danny is jumpy and flinches terribly when he’s startled, and he knows the moment Danny notices because the boy’s shoulders jump minutely and roll back out of its hunch. His head turns slightly towards him, and his eyes track Bruce’s hand with the same intense ferocity as an animal contemplating whether it wants to bite.  

Vlad Masters, Bruce thinks distantly, hurt fury thickening in his throat, what have you done to this boy?  

He delicately places his hand on Danny’s opposite shoulder, closer to the curve of his neck than the curve of his arm. There’s a beat where he lets Danny react and adjust. After that beat is over, Bruce carefully runs his thumb up and down his throat in a soothing motion.  

...Bruce feels exceedingly awkward about it, but his Mom used to do something like this for him whenever he was a kid and scared of getting shots. His heart aches.  

(He also ignores the gaze Alfred is burning into him; he knows what Bruce is doing.)  

Danny doesn’t bite him. Bruce didn’t really think he would. He just goes still, his trembling steadily ceasing under Bruce’s stilted ministrations. “Relax,” he repeats quietly, then decides to add: “...I want to help.”  

All remaining tensions drains right out of Danny’s shoulders. There’s an aborted, wounded—ah, peep? — and he looks up quickly to see Danny staring at him with his wide eyes filled with tears. Danny’s mouth opens, shuts. He looks away and the tears in his eyes tremble. “Okay.”  

(“Thanks for that, I mean. For saving me.” Danny’s face turns pink, he looks vaguely embarrassed, “You— you didn’t have to do that.”  

(Didn’t have to? You could hear a pin drop with how silent the room gets. Bruce just stares at Danny as even Alfred turns to look at him. Danny’s face just continues to turn redder. Bruce tells him the truth: “I wanted to.”)  

(Danny goes still, and then stares at Bruce like he can’t quite comprehend what he’s hearing. He gawks. His eyes fill with tears.)  

Bruce thinks he might break every bone in Masters’ body after this.  

He waits a few moments longer before retracting his hand from Danny’s shoulder; he needs his free hand to steady Danny’s arm for the needle. Danny slumps, but he doesn’t tense up again.  

Bruce preps the needle, turns it towards Danny’s skin; “Ready—”  

“Don’t—” Danny cuts off, his voice cracks. He gathers himself. “Don’t count. Don’t tell me; just do it.” 

...Okay. He can do that. He waits for Danny to relax again, and when he’s looking away with his eyes shut, Bruce pushes in the needle and injects the medicine. Danny’s breath hitches, but his arm remains loose and limp, and after a few seconds, Bruce pulls out the needle.  

“All done.” Bruce tells him, a tad awkward, rubbing circles into his arm with his free hand. He turns and deposits the empty syringe on the table for disposal and stands up, slipping Danny out of his hold to remove his gloves.  

He frowns at the bit of blood that comes out of the injection site, turning to look for a bandaid—ah, Alfred hands him one. Bruce peels it open and applies it over the small opening. Then he removes his gloves.  

Danny’s quiet, then slowly pulls away the bloodied handkerchief covering his nose. Blood stains his fingers and palm, as well as part of his lower face. He doesn’t look much relieved, staring at the blood with dead eyes. “It’s not gone though.” He mutters. “I’m still dying.”  

Bruce... has nothing to say. Danny’s right. All this did was slow down whatever this... poison-disease Masters made is. Slow down or stop—he's not sure, and he’d need to run blood tests and put this stuff under a microscope in order to figure out what exactly it was.  

He needs to figure out how exactly its affecting Danny so he can treat it more effectively. There’s the toxin myopathy causing his muscle atrophy, and then there’s the coughing and possibly weakened immune system, and who knows what else.  

Bruce is going to strangle Vlad Masters. He’s going to open every closet he has and let the skeletons fall out. He’s going to dig up every ounce of dirt on the man until there’s nothing he can scrub away and clean. He’s going to make sure that man is locked so far behind bars he’ll never see the light of day again.  

But first he has to help Danny.  

“I’ll find a cure.” He tells him— 

“No you won’t,” Danny snaps, and the amount of vitriol behind it makes Bruce pause. A scoff, then Danny huffs out a sharp, wet laugh, and smears the blood on his face across his arm as he tries to wipe it away. “You’re not gonna find one. You’ll never find one.”  

Bruce understands where this defeatism is coming from, but he simply cannot allow it. This is not something he will accept. If Vlad Masters is capable of creating a poison-disease out of an extinct flower, Bruce can figure out an antidote for one.   

“I will.” 

“Hah!” The sound is pitched high, and Danny grins. It’s not a happy one, and it trembles. Bruce’s shoulders curl up. Severe psychological stress can trigger hysteria, and Danny’s not a danger to him or Alfred, but he might endanger himself— “I doubt that! It’s blood blossoms, Bruce! Those fucking things have been extinct for centuries!”  

He knows. He’s going to try anyways.  

Danny keeps going, “Even if you do, somehow, manage get your hands on one of those stupid roses, who knows how long that will take! Who knows how long I’ll last! I could be dead in a week! Or a month!”  

Bruce’s heart flips. They don’t know that for certain— “Danny—”  

A peel of wet laughter slips out of Danny’s mouth, and Danny plants his hands firmly over his eye and tangles his fingers into his hair. It chokes on the edge of a sob. “I’m gonna die,” he keens. No— “I’m— it’s gonna hurt— I don’t want it to hurt—”  

Horror biles up in Bruce’s throat, and he unwittingly imagines Danny as he was last night, covered in his own blood and lifeless. Absolutely not. 

“I’m never gonna graduate,” Danny continues, his voice barely breaking past a whisper. Bruce sees him grit his teeth and block a sob. He isn’t successful on the second one. “I’m never— who’s gonna tell Sam and Tucker— my Aunt—”  

Bruce drops back down to the floor, “Danny,” he whispers, and reaches for the boy. He doesn’t hear him—or he’s just ignoring him. Either way, Bruce brushes his fingers over Danny’s wrists to try and catch his attention. “Danny.”  

Danny sinks his teeth into his lip, and Bruce sees his sharp fang split through skin and cause a thin sheen of blood to well up. “You should’ve left me in that alleyway.”  

Absolutely not.  

The angry heat that burns through Bruce’s chest causes him to firmly split the arms blocking Danny from seeing his face, "No.” Bruce hisses in a voice more suited for the cowl than a terrified little boy. His eyes sting fiercely.  

He skips grabbing Danny’s shoulders and moves instead to cupping his face instead. Mindful, at the very least, to keep his hold light and loose enough that Danny should be able to pull out of it with ease if he should choose to.  

Danny does not, but his shoulders jump up and, for a brief moment, Bruce thinks he’s going to leap right out of his reach. He doesn’t. He just stares at Bruce widely, tear streaks staining his face a different shade of red. “You are not going to die.”  

Danny opens his mouth.  

Bruce cuts him off: “No.”  

“You are not going to die,” He repeats; he needs to hear that. “I will find a cure for you. You are going to live.” The both of them need to hear that. Danny is going to live. Bruce will make sure of it. Danny is going to live, and then Bruce is going to grind Masters’ face into the dirt. 

Danny struggles to speak, before finally, he goes: “You don’t know that.”  

Bruce decides, abruptly, like a bucket of water was just dumped over his head, that he doesn’t like that answer. “I do.” 

Blue eyes narrow at him. Hm. Bruce can see himself in them. “Liar.” Danny hisses, and his hands reach up and wrap around Bruce’s wrists. Ah, does he want him to let go? Bruce loosens his hold on Danny’s face, only for Danny to scowl at him and tighten his grip.  

“Yes,” Bruce agrees. No use trying to deny that, but he’s not lying about this. “Do you want to live?”  

Danny said he didn’t want to die last night. Delirious, half-conscious and dying as he was. He said so himself. But not wanting to die and wanting to live are two different things.  

Danny reels back as if hit; he would’ve slipped right out of Bruce’s hands if it weren’t for the grip he had on his wrists. As a result, he pulls Bruce back with him. Slightly. It's like flicking a pebble at a bottle and expecting it to move. At best it just makes a small ‘ting.’ Bruce only moves because Danny wants him to.  

His reaction is greater than Bruce was expecting, he sums it up to the desperate human nature to survive. That's good. He wants Danny to live as much as Danny does. Danny inhales sharply as he rocks back, and for a moment, Bruce sees a flicker of something wild and ravenous in the boy’s eyes, blazing like the shards of a blizzard. It’s gone in a blink as Danny shoves himself forward, digs his nails tight in Bruce’s wrists, and snarls: “Yes.”  

Bruce says, as earnest as he can: “You will."

Chapter Text

Danny’s never met a ghost that wasn’t secretly starving.  

For— 

A lot of things.  

(“Do you want to live?”)  

The dirt under their fingernails. The smell of flowers. The rain and warm sunshine. Goosebumps and shivering. Hunger. The lung-burn lack of air and satisfaction that comes with running a marathon. Freezing cold feet from snow-soaked boots and stiff-chilled fingers.  

Even the Realms-Born dead, people who have never been alive in the first place, are starving.  

He’ll tell you a secret later. About why that is.  

If he remembers. 

When Danny was eleven, he met a Realms-Born woman with the eyes of a ravenous wolf; wild, wide, and black. She wrapped Beldam-bony fingers around his arms and pressed her forehead to his, and asked—begged, snarling, starving—about being alive. Her mouth twisted into a pulled-back muzzle grin that wouldn’t reach her eyes.  

He didn’t know how to answer her then. She’d howled, cut into his arms, and thrown him to the ground.  

(“I WANT TO LIVE!” She howls, throwing her head back to shriek at their unending sky swirling up ahead. There are Gods in the Zone, Danny isn’t sure any of them are listening to this woman’s haphazard prayer. He doesn’t think they’d answer it anyways.)  

He still doesn’t know how to answer her.  

The nature of a ghost is to linger.  

Bruce carries him upstairs. Danny can feel his own heartbeat pressed against his chest; and he wants to spit it out so he can make sure it's still beating. He knows it is; he still wants to check. He wants to see it squishy-soft and wet and warm, bleeding in his hands. Getting blood stuck in the cracks in his palms like water lodges itself into cracked desert dirt.  

This is not a new feeling. Danny’s wanted to feel his own heart since he first died.  

Danny’s never met a ghost that wasn’t secretly starving.  

And not all deaths are created equal.  

And— 

They get him upstairs, and there’s a brief flurry of activity. Bruce disappears and Danny doesn’t even have the energy to be clingy and be afraid – thank God, he thinks – and then he’s back, and they’re hooking him up to an IV—where the hell did they get that? The- uh, terminus? They called it? Danny didn’t even have time to admire the place—because he’s lost a lot of blood in the last... not even twenty-four hours.  

It makes sense. He can tell. He's exhausted and dizzy and shaky—and that could be from the cause of a lot of things, but the blood loss has gotta be one of them. Because of the blood blossoms.  

The blood blossoms.  

Danny doesn’t want to think about that. He’ll stick that fear behind a glass wall and let himself be numb for now. His tears are drying on his face now that the terror’s died down.  

Because he’s dying. He's still dying. Vlad has gone and killed him.  

He wonders if ripping out his core would’ve been preferable to this.  

He thinks of apocalyptic wasteland he saw in that far-off – and now it’s really far-off, he thinks – future. The city in a bubble and the world destroyed. He thinks of his other self—an eleven-year-old boy wearing his face but not his eyes— robbed of his life. So he’s robbing everyone else.  

Danny takes it back.  

Vlad’s robbed him of his death here.  

(“I want to live!” And big, ugly fat tears roll down the woman’s face. Danny watches from the ground in ill-concealed horror and awe, arm held up defensively to his face and bleeding sluggish green. She crumples to the ground like a beaten dog and a stringless puppet, clawing at her shoulders and shrieking. “PLEASE LET ME LIVE.”)  

Danny’s never met a ghost that wasn’t secretly starving.  

And he doesn’t hurt as much as he did just ten minutes—five minutes?—some minutes ago. Bruce’s ‘cure’ doesn’t work but it does its job well enough, Danny feels nauseous at the thought.  

And he’s sitting on the couch in their big penthouse living room. The sun is streaming in through the windows, their tall, tall windows. It’s bright, and it’s lovely, and— it's too open. Danny doesn’t want to be here.  

They’re talking to him gently, and he doesn’t want to be here. It’s too bright and it’s too open. Like he’s standing in the middle of a bare island of the Ghost Zone, staring out to the stretching miles of green.  

“I want to go to my room.” He says, his voice disconnected from his mind like he’s speaking out of a recording.  

They help him to his room. Alfred and Bruce, that is. And they hover. And they hover. And they hover. Danny blinks, and only a few seconds have passed. He's sitting in an armchair in a new room, and vaguely thinks to admire the architecture. He doesn’t.  

Danny pets the fabric of the arm beside him, and it sends zinging sensations up his arm. Not painfully, it’s just the texture is strange to his mind, and he pulls his hand away before it can send a shudder down his spine. He presses his fingers into his palm, and his fingers are cold.  

He can still feel Bruce’s hands holding his face.  

Ghosts feel everything.  

“Your wheelchair should be here by tonight.” Bruce murmurs, standing a safe distance away. Danny kind of hates that Alfred already told him about that, and when did they have that conversation when Danny’s been here the whole time? And it makes sense, because Danny can’t walk right anymore and he’s dying, and— 

He hums flatly, it shakes in unbidden tears, and he pulls his knees up—they're weighed like lead and the stinging, lightning pain has receded to an aching soreness that’s still hard to ignore, but tolerable—and curls into the chair.  

Bruce says nothing else, his expression flat and his shoulders tense, and his eyes scrunch up around the corners—Danny thinks of Cujo’s sad eyes, and Ancients he misses his dog—and he kind of looks like he wants to say more. He doesn’t.  

Alfred speaks instead, and his voice is soft like a weighted blanket, “I’ll go retrieve my spare cane for you in the meantime.” And then he’s gone, his cane clucking against the floor loudly. Disappearing out the door. 

And then it's just him and Bruce, and it’s quiet.  

And Danny’s never met a ghost that wasn’t secretly starving.  

For the last three (because he’s still rounding up) years, Danny thinks he’s been dead longer than he’s been alive. Ghosts are relentless like a flood, and they cling to life like a hangnail, and sometimes to get rid of them you need to rip them out regardless of if it bleeds.   

(“I want to feel the sun,” the wolf-woman wails, because there’s no sun in the Ghost Zone. She howls. “I want to feel the rain.” Because the rain in the Zone isn’t the same. “I want to live.” Because none of them are. “I want to breathe.” Because none of them can. “I want to FEEL.” Because none of them CAN.)  

“Danny...” Bruce starts, and then stops. His hand twitching.  

He’s going to leave soon; Danny can feel it in the tense muscles in the air. In this suffocating silence, he’s going to step out of it. Danny wants him to stay. Danny wants him to stay, and he feels overfull on the feeling, like if he bends the wrong way, he’ll throw it all up on the floor.  

He wants Bruce to stay the same way he would rip flowers out by the root so he could stuff them in his pockets. Because children are messy, and he was a child once. And he’s still a kid now. And he’s a dead kid. And he’s a dying kid.

And he thinks, if Bruce reaches out for him now, he’ll sink his fang-teeth into the meat of his hand and keep him in place. He doesn’t know why. Bruce has been so kind to him and Danny can’t fucking stand it.

He didn’t do anything to deserve this.  

Frostbite is nice to him because he’s the Great One, Danny thinks if it weren’t for that, he wouldn’t even care about him. Pandora likes him because he helped her retrieve her little box of horrors after the Box Ghost stole it from her. She probably would’ve never looked his way otherwise.

Clockwork tried to destroy him. He only didn’t because of second chances, and Danny likes to pretend that it doesn’t still hurt sometimes. And that he doesn’t wonder if Clockwork would ever change his mind on a dime for him.

Bruce is an anomaly, and that should make sense because he’s got Danny in his eyes. But it doesn’t. Danny wants to dig his nails into his arms like the wolf-woman did when he was eleven just to see if he’s real. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone. His nails aren’t sharp enough anyways.

Bruce has been so nice to him. Danny can still feel his hands on his face, and the comfort hurts like a sunburn. He wants to press his dead-cold hands to the irritated, red-warm skin and leech the heat right out. He wants to scratch at the burning until it turns up red and bleeding, until the skin starts peeling so he can get it off.

(“I want to feel. I want to live. I want to feel. I want to be.” The woman prays, because what’s praying if not begging. Desperation and faith go hand in hand. “I want to feel, I want to feel, I want to feel.”)  

Bruce does, in fact, leave. Just as Danny suspected. And he doesn’t want him to—

But he leaves, slowly, and very reluctantly. Aware that he’s not going to get a response out of Danny any time soon. Danny doesn’t chase or freak out; he wants to. He doesn’t.

Bruce leaves, and Danny presses his hands to his cheeks where Bruce had held him like his Dad used to. He only feels the chill of his fingers, and his shoulders jolt with the shocked sob. His fingers creep up and tangle in his hair instead, Danny finds some solace in the fact that he feels actual strands, not wisp.

It’s too bright in here; Danny needs it to be dark.

Danny slips to the ground—he tries, experimentally, to stand, but again his legs give out and he tries not to make the same mistakes twice. His legs don’t hurt as brightly as they did before, but they still ache, and they’re weak.

The indignant, childish rage that sweeps through his lungs has his arms twitching at the joints to shove the chair right over. He thinks the crashing sound it’d make would be quite cathartic.

This isn’t fair.

Danny’s never met a ghost that wasn’t secretly starving.

And it takes him too long—with his weak arms and weak legs and this stupid IV— to half-crawl, half-push himself around the room to get all the curtains shut so all that’s left is the lights to extinguish.

He gets to the lights—and it's easy to reach up and flick them off. He’s swallowed in darkness in seconds, and the relief that floods through him is temporary bliss. He could hide somewhere now.

Danny will tell you a different secret: he’s never been afraid of the dark. He mentioned it last night, right? The dark doesn’t scare him; it hasn’t since he was a kid. A younger one than he is now.  

He thinks he was four when he first realized it. Monsters can’t see you if you can’t see it, and you can never see anything in the dark. Monsters can’t find him if they can’t see him, and so even if they hide in the dark all the like, they still won’t find him.  

If they’re hiding in the dark, he’s hiding there too. The shadows are friendly when they can’t touch you. He remembers peeking out of his stars-and-ships comforter late one night, his room soft aglow with a nightlight in the corner.  

Danny remembers getting up, creeping out, and unplugging it.  

He remembers feeling relieved.  

He stopped using a nightlight from then on. He’s safe and hidden in the dark, and if he isn’t safe in bed, he’s safer in the dark expanse beneath it. Or in his closet, tucked behind the hamper with his blanket.  

Monsters can’t hide, he remembers thinking triumphantly, when I’m already here.  

The room isn’t half as dark as he’d like it to be, but it’s better than the bright and burning sunlight beaming through the glass. Now it’s merely slivers of silver peeking through the fabric.  

Danny crawls halfway across the room and stops when his lungs burn with marathon-strain and his arms shake with loose-limbed exertion, his legs twitching unhappily like a still-warm corpse.  

He looks pathetic when he catches himself in the mirror.  

The rage that sweeps through him would’ve knocked him on his ass if he wasn’t already on it. 

Clammy and pale, panting with sweat sheening across his forehead. Teeny tiny in the band shirt Bruce lent him. He looks like he’s fucking eleven again. Freshly dead with a winter corpse chill in his chest. He didn’t look half this undone when he died the first time.  

Dying didn’t hurt this much the first time.   

Danny doesn’t remember dying the first time.  

It wasn’t this fucking slow.  

Because he’s dying. And he’s dead already. He has been for years, and no amount of hiding will hide that.  

And the nature of a ghost is to linger.  

And Danny can feel the cold chill of the fancy stone floor of the bedroom Bruce is lending him, it seeps into his bloody jeans and the AC/DC shirt he tried so hard to not get blood on earlier, even at the expense of his own comfort. He succeeded at that at least. He can feel the heat trapped under the shirt that’s making him itch, and he can feel the sweat dripping down the sides of his arms, and he can feel—  

And he can feel—  

Everything.  

And he looks like he’s eleven again. He is eleven again. He never stopped being eleven. He’s eleven and dead. And he’s fourteen and alive.  

(“I want to live I want to live I want to live I want to LIVE—”)  

Stupid boy, snarls a voice that sounds suspiciously like Vlad’s. Danny rears back, his mouth twists up and angry. He should throw something at the glass and shatter it. But this isn’t his house, and there isn’t anything worth throwing at his reflection.  

He snarls back at it though, look what you’ve done.  

(“Do you want to live?”)  

Is that even a question?  

Danny’s never met a ghost that wasn’t secretly starving.  

Including himself.  

“I want to grow up.” He hisses, and his fingers curl into fists, grappling at the floor.  

The admission hurts like the first time he said it; like the second and third and fourth time he pressed the prayer to the carpet of his bedroom and pretended it was his grave he was speaking it to. He can pretend that’s grave dirt in his mouth and not his own tongue.  

Back then he said it in desperate fits to himself when ghost fighting got too much. Something to vomit out the grief building stones in his stomach. When he’d been a ghost for too long and couldn’t stand the weight of his own lungs in his chest when he changed back.  

Or when the individual strands of hair on his head were much too heavy and much too compacted to his skull, tickling his neck and behind his ears and making him itch and itch and itch at the skin until it was red. When his own joints were too much to bear and he could feel each rib pressing against the inside of his skin.  

When he couldn’t stand the feeling of being alive even though he missed it so much.  
 

(There’s a reason overshadowing isn’t a more common ghost tactic.)  

“I want to grow up,” Danny’s dizzy with the nauseating hunger to live, “I wanna go to homecoming, and football games, and— and I wanna take my fucking CATs. I wanna go to Prom with Sam and Tucker. I wanna see them graduate.” 

He wants to graduate. He wanted to see Jazz graduate. He wanted to see her get into college and get married. He wanted to see Dad walk her down the aisle if she ever got married. He wanted to see the wedding dress she’d wear, what job she would take. If she had kids. What their names would be. Who he’d be to them.  

He wanted to see his Mom and Dad become grandparents. What their reactions would be. How happy they’d be.   

He wants to graduate. He wants to imagine how proud his Mom and Dad would be for Danny to get his diploma. Jazz's smug voice telling him she knew he could do it. He doesn’t know what job he wants, but he wants to go to college, or technical school.  

He wants to see what Sam will do with her life, what places she will go; what change she’ll bring to the world. He wants to see Tucker get his dream job and make it big with his technology. He’s so smart. He’s so proud of his best friend.  

He doesn’t know if he'll ever get married, he wants to see if he does. He doesn’t know if he’ll have kids. He wants to see it if he does.  

Danny wants to grow up. He wants to live. He’s fucking clawing for it. Begging. His reflection watches him, eyes wide as a hare's and wild. Ravenous. Mouth parted slightly in shock.  

It leans forward; Danny hugs himself and his arms touch his knees as he follows suit. “I want to live.” it whispers in his voice.  

(“Do you want to live?”)  

YES.

“Please let me live.”  

Chapter Text

Gotham has an oppressive, smudged beauty to it. Like old worn converse with dirt smudged along the sides, sitting by the door. Danny thinks of a half-forgotten attic full of bruised cardboard boxes and tangled up packing tape, dirt stuck on the sticky sides. The city’s pretty like a rusted axe; gorgeous like an old barn sloped on its side with the roof caving in.  

The buildings are all clumped together like fingers and tree roots. Scraggly and gangly, ready to be chopped off by the teeth of a shovel and bitten by the blade of a mouth. Smog blooms over the tops of the canopies. Grief tastes like pollution.  

Gotham tastes like an overgrown cemetery; all the graves sunk into the ground with moss and vines smothering the stone and names beneath. Danny tastes the smell of wet dirt and grass. He wants to lay down and fall asleep here.  

There are so many people he can’t keep track of them all. It’s familiar in a foreign way, and shouldn’t feel as fucking nostalgic as it does. He’s only been away for four months. It’s loud and busy and he feels struck dumb by it. Oddly enough, he wants to reach out and touch the cars.  

This city looks like a cave, he also thinks, eyeing the tops of stalactite skyscrapers so he doesn’t dig into the desire to talk to a stranger walking by. Sam would love this place—  

Vlad curls his hand around Danny’s shoulder, and his thoughts die with a pianoforte of white noise to focus on the feeling. His shoulders lock up; Danny turns his head just enough to see him in his peripherals. Not like he needs him within his sights, not when Vlad is standing so close to him that he can smell the stink of his cologne.  

“Badger,” he murmurs, voice bleeding wolf-grin pleased. His palm is docile on his shoulder; his fingers dig divots into his skin like a leash. “Good boy for waiting.”  

For a brief, nauseating second, Danny thinks about tipping his fingers into the sides of Vlad’s face and peeling the skin off like nail polish.  

Stay away from me.  

He yanks his shoulder out of his grip and promises to scrub the skin raw of the residue later. Vlad’s hand returns only seconds after to scruff him by the back of his neck, disguised as pressing against the space above his shoulders. He drags them both inside the hotel they’re staying in.  

[Crawl into my mouth, said the Wolf to the Rabbit, so that I may keep you close.]  

They’re staying on the thirteenth floor, and Gotham is still pretty from this far up. It reminds him of flying through Amity, although Amity isn’t half as pretty. Its skyscrapers are made of glass, not brick and stone. You can clean blood off glass really easily, gone like it wasn’t ever there. Can’t do that with brick. Glass can only show the things you want to see.  

Is it weird that he feels bitter?  

Danny presses close to the window like he might phase through it, and it’s a very tempting thought. But his core is dormant, and he doesn’t want to activate it with Vlad so close. His breath fogs against the glass, Danny moves to see the traffic below. 

There’s so many people down there. It was a little maddening to be there on the sidewalk with them. He wants to go down again and let them pass him by. It’s been four months?  

What’s been going on since he’s been gone?  

He wants to go down there. He wants to go down there. He wants to go down there. He wants. He wants. He wants. He wants. He wants—  

Get me out of here. I’ve been buried alive.  

Sh.  

Not too loud.  

Vlad’s right there.  

Danny watches him from the window’s reflection, tracking him moving across the room like a hare. He’s been very possessive lately. Following Danny around the house when he leaves his room. Most of the doors in the manor have been locked. Danny’s been waking up with him sitting on the bed, running his fingers through his hair. 

He’s been sleeping in the closet or under the bed to get away from it. Vlad hasn’t been liking it. He yelled at him for an hour for disappearing like that last time.  

Danny tracks Vlad across the room, and it would be very easy to run right about now. The door is right there. It’s not locked. It doesn’t have any anti-ghost measures on it. Vlad would chase him, but he’d chase him regardless of what he did or when he left.  

His feet stay rooted to the floor.  

Gotham is so pretty, and Danny might not know or care a lot about other cities, but he knows about Gotham. Everyone knows about Gotham. Infamous, awful city. Churning out liars and thieves like the portal churns out ghosts.  

Gotham is, also, a good place to disappear. Danny could take the first step towards it.  

His feet stay rooted to the floor.  

[Crawl into his mouth? cried the Bird to the Rabbit, that will kill you!]  

“You will stay here while I speak with Wayne,” Vlad tells him.  

Danny wants to make him afraid. He stares from the corner of his eye, tucked into a chair sitting in the corner of the suite. He wants to crawl under his skin and rip his veins out like the roots of the weeds in his Momma’s garden. A pianio, syrup-thick intensity blanketing over the back of his mind like an urge to yawn.  

It's fuzzy thick knotting in the backs of his shoulder blades and below the knot of his neck. He’s felt it before in his fights too; the bloodier ones. Some desperate need to lunge and scratch. To close the distance and snap.  

He’s hurt a lot of people in an effort to keep everyone safe. He doesn’t miss picking the blood out from under his fingers.  

But he wants him to be afraid.  

“What's stopping me from leaving.” Danny mutters under his breath, petulant and vindicative and mutinous. Why can’t you go back to normal? It’s a weak retort, and he internally cringes at it— 

And then he flinches. Idiot.  

Vlad is there in seconds. The room flooded with snarling, seething rage like cigarette smoke. The lights above them whine and flicker, glass like chattering teeth, and Vlad digs his fingers into Danny’s jaw and presses his forehead to his.  

“You will stay.” Vlad hisses, eyes in blistering red. Static in panicked forte plays in the back of Danny’s head.  

[Where else can I go? said the Rabbit.]  

Not loud enough it seems.  

“You can't stop me.” Danny spits back, debating the merits of clawing out Vlad’s eyes like he’s done so many times before to a hundred different others. It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve blinded each other.   

[Run, says the Bird]  

There’s fighting. They're always fighting. 

This is new.  

This is— 

Terror.  

No, that’s not new. That’s just ghosts. This is survival.  

Hm.  

That’s not new either. 

This is— Danny keeping his distance. Trying to keep his distance from Vlad. He’s come back with a syringe. It’s pulsing and blood red, and the saccharine sweet stench of roses sits on the back of his tongue.  

Where did he get that—  

Why did he bring that with him.   

Danny clutches iron-tight onto the side of the couch, legs bent to bolt, and terror blocking air in his chest. Vlad’s blocking the door. Each breath is deep, and heavy, and—like drawing up a bucket of water.  

[Run, says the Bird]  

“Vlad.” Danny flicks between his face and the syringe, and a sob is bubbling in his throat. There’s terror as bile. “Vlad—”   

And Vlad’s expression isn’t changing; he still looks furious. And angry. And desperate. He’s not speaking but he doesn’t have to, Vlad’s core does all the speaking for him. Lashing Soulhum tune-sharp into the air like a discordant choir. The lights are still flickering. 

—mineminemineminemineminemineMINEMINE MINE—  

“Vlad—” Danny tries again, and Vlad takes a step closer, and Danny takes a step back. “Vlad, please—”    

The shriek that peels out of him is unwilling and guttural; Vlad lunges for him and he dodges. But Danny is clumsy and scared and he wishes he could say that he gracefully bolts for the door, but he doesn’t.  

He stumbles his way into the coffee table and bangs his shins, and normally that shouldn’t bother him—but here he drops down onto it with a cry. And then he’s immediately trying to scramble over it—reaching for the couch pillow and throwing it at Vlad and— 

It glows pink-red before it can even make contact, and shoots off to the side to hit the wall with a muffled thump.  

Because Vlad has his powers, and Danny does not.  

And for the first time since they met, they’re on unequal footing.  

[Run, says the Bird]  

Vlad grabs him by the hair and drags him back— and Danny shrieks loudly, clawing at his hand and wrist because maybe that’ll make him let go— maybe someone will hear— he twists and kicks and—  

Let go let go let go let GO!  

THAT HURTS!  

It does nothing. 

“I am sick of you leaving,” Vlad hisses, shaking him by the roots. Danny’s vision swims and he yelps, digging his fingers into Vlad’s knuckles—grasping— let go of him— he’s going to kill him— “You did it when you were a child, and I hated it back then too.”  

Yeah—their fights—he knows what Vlad’s talking about— Vlad’s core rings loudly like a church bell in his ears and God is it disorientating—  

There should be some kind of pressure point in his wrist—Danny only knows about it because Sam excitedly showed him once when they were ten— and he tries to claw and scrabble for it— where is it—  

That syringe is too close to his head.  

“You are my son,” Vlad continues, and Danny hates that hates that hates that—he shakes his head and scrunches his eyes shut – and Vlad jolts him harder with a furious sound. “You were always supposed to be my son!” 

“No I wasn’t!” Danny cries back, because he’s stupid and furious and scared and he tries to go limp and drag them both to the ground—and it doesn’t do jack shit because Vlad has his ghostly strength, and Danny doesn’t, and he feels some of his hair rip out of his head.  

He screams again, loud enough to make his throat hurt. “LET GO!”  

Vlad lifts him off the ground—Danny heaves a cry—and shoves—throws?—him forward. Danny can’t get his footing underneath him and crashes into the console table. It comes tumbling down— he curls up and cages his head between his arms— and then he’s scrambling to his feet. Getting away from Vlad.  

[Run, says the Bird]  

“Please don’t kill me.”  

“Maybe I should,” Danny chokes on the strangled fear that lurches in his throat, “You can’t leave if you’re dead.”  

[RUN, says the Bird]  

“NO!” Danny shrieks—he’s on his back he needs to get off his back— and primal, wild fear winds his leg back and nails the heel of his foot into Vlad’s jaw. There’s an audible click as his teeth snap together—that's going to bruise—  

Vlad’s eyes flare big and the lights above them whine louder and then the light directly above their heads swells—and shatters above them. Glass rains down and Danny throws up his arm to protect his face, trying to drag himself back and— 

GET UP—  

Vlad grabs him by the ankle and drags him back—Danny tries to kick him again— get off get off get off—and it’s for nothing. Vlad bats his leg away and pins him to the ground with a foot stomped into his chest—the wind knocks right out of him. Danny wheezes out a pained sound.  

The syringe is right there—next to his exposed knee—  

[RUN, HOWLS THE BIRD]  

Danny wakes up itchy with sweat and shivering; a scream lodged like popcorn kernel between his teeth. Jerking, he tries scrambling to his feet, and remembers three things at once: 

One: he’s under a bed – he realizes this seconds too late, and ends up banging both his head and spine against the ribs of the frame. Pain strikes through his bones, and Danny chokes on a yelp as he flops back down and tries to curl up into a ball, clutching the back of his skull with a whine.  

Two: He feels a little bit better than before, and also feels completely nauseous. His legs ache pitifully as Danny tries to bring his knees up to his chin, and his stomach roils petulantly and unhappily.  

Three: this is not the manor.  

That one takes a second to sink in, but when it does, most of the nervous tension drains right out of him and Danny does his best rendition of melting into a puddle on the floor. He’s— in Bruce’s penthouse – uh, tower – in Gotham. Right.  

Damn, he thinks, tucking his nose into the crook of his elbow with another whine, there goes no nightmares. He’s got new ammo for the chamber. Or however the phrasing goes. Maybe he was just so exhausted from last night that his brain couldn’t muster up any nightmares to bother him with.  

Mrh. What time is it?  

Feeling like a rusty wheel, Danny twists around muzzily and tries to search for the nearest window through the sleep-smeared oil spills blurring up his eyes. There’s one across from the bed, and it takes him a few seconds to refocus his vision.  

Light peeks through the curtains; Danny squints. He thinks it might be a little brighter than before? He won’t be able to tell unless he gets up and opens them though, and... he doesn’t really wanna do that right now. At least he didn’t sleep the day away. The thought sounds really appealing, and about as nauseating as eating.  

Danny stretches his arms out in front of him, and grief twinges a guitar chord in time with the twinges of bruising sore achiness rooting through the tendons of his arms. Ow, his elbows...  

His arms flop onto the ground with a sharp jolt, and Danny tilts his head to rest his cheek on the floor. He stares at the IV in his arm.  

The room is dead silent minus the sound of his breathing. Danny idly runs his fingers against the ground, basking in the texture rubbing against his skin. There’s a rug under the bed, fucking— fancy as hell and incredibly intricate. Made of that kinda rough-soft fiber stuff. Or whatever it is that’s used to make rugs.  

Danny tries to ignore the swelling balloon of dread nestled in his chest. If he’s quiet he can feel his core the same way he can feel his heartbeat. Dormant like a volcano, but no less alive.  

. 

. 

. 

He’s dying.  

He doesn’t want to be.  

He really, really doesn’t want to be.  

And he doesn’t know what to do about it.  

Danny doesn’t really... remember dying the first time all that much. He died in the middle of August, two weeks out from starting middle school and six months before he turned twelve. He’d been so excited; he’d gotten all his school supplies with Mom the weekend before, and a new backpack because the one he had was falling apart at the seams.  

He remembers... he remembers coming back home from the park with Sam and Tucker, because it’d gotten hot and they were sweating really bad and his house had the best AC in the city, according to Tucker. Sam’s hair was still blonde. She discovered boxed dye that October and didn’t tell either of them that she was dying it.  

(She walked into their shared homeroom a week before Halloween with her skin smudged dark teal around her hairline and ears, her fingers were in much the same state. He’d never seen her so happy.)  

(He thought it’d be a shame to see it wash out, and then Sam kept dyeing it.)  

He remembers going to the living room to watch TV with the both of them. He remembers his parents coming up dejected, and then leaving for Menards to see if they had any more wiring stuff.  

After that— it gets a little muzzy. He knows he went down to the lab with Sam and Tucker. He can vaguely recall walking down the stairs and he thinks he remembers Sam and Tucker being surprised by the portal. He can’t really remember putting on one of the suits, he just knows he did because his ghost is wearing it.  

Wait— no. Yeah no. He did put on one of the suits; he remembers trying to search for the ones made for him and Jazz and not finding it and having to use one of the bigger ones. He remembers the boots were too big because they’re still too big when he’s a ghost, but also because he remembers pulling his pantlegs over them like he did with his snowpants.  

Danny can’t say he remembers much after that. He likes to try and pretend that he does, if only to make himself feel better about his utter lack of recollection, but nothing comes up when he tries to think about it. No concrete memory playing behind his eyes that he can say for certain is what happened.  

He remembers.... he remembers... 

Danny sighs slowly out of his nose.  

The portal looked like the barrel of a gun.  

But he remembers thinking that before going to get a suit. So it doesn’t count.  

He remembers... he remembers... he remembers—  

Nothing. He remembers nothing. No flash of light, no sudden darkness. No secrets of the universe suddenly revealed to him in his parents’ basement. It didn’t hurt. Didn’t feel like anything. If it did, he doesn’t remember it. It all happened so fast.  

He thinks he remembered more of what happened when it first did—he remembers the confusion he felt in his room later that night, trying to figure out if that cold feeling in his chest had always been there—but that muzzy recall has since slipped out of his reach.  

...He tries not to think about it too hard. Nobody likes knowing they’re forgetting something.  

He remembers stuff that happened after. He remembers Mom and Dad coming home.  

More importantly he remembers the sensation of them coming home. Their conversation is a concept in Danny’s mind, but he remembers vividly the smell of Mom’s perfume and the feeling of her holding his face. He remembers laying on the couch with her while Dad drove Sam and Tucker home.  

Sam and Tucker told them that he was standing in front of the portal when it turned on, for a while Danny thought that was what happened too. It wasn’t. He was inside it.  

That first week was weird for him. He kinda just floated through it while his core settled itself. His parents questioned him about what happened, but Danny couldn’t give them a straight answer. They dropped it eventually.  

Dying the first time wasn’t half this vivid. He got to go out like a light switch the first time.  

He doesn’t know what to do. Despair thickens in his throat.  

He doesn’t wanna be dying. He doesn’t wanna be dead anymore. He’s supposed to start high school in three months.  

He doesn’t want a wheelchair; he’s supposed to be a— a fucking—a hero. He’s supposed to get up from anything. He’s regrown his own fucking limbs, dammit! He’s fought Ancients before! He defeated Pariah Dark when he was eleven years old! His fangs hadn’t even grown in yet! 

What would Frostbite think, if he saw him like this? What would Pandora think? Or— or Dorathea, or Wulf, or Sidney? He can’t imagine what Clockwork must be thinking right now, he’s probably watching him right now. Curled up under a bed like a child.  

Why didn’t Clockwork stop Vlad? Were things always going to end up like this? Is this just one step closer to getting his core ripped out and becoming a one-man mass extinction event across the globe? Was he always meant to meet Bruce and Alfred? Are things happening just like they did in the past future?  

Is he going to kill Bruce and Alfred?  

Danny makes a wounded sound. I don’t wanna do that, he whines, folding up his arms to hide in them. I don’t wanna kill anyone. I don’t wanna be a monster. They’ve been so nice to him.  

He wants to live. So, so much. Please just, someone, let him live.  

The doorknob clicks.  

Danny’s head shoots up from his arms, a frisson of fear shoots down his spine. Shit, shit, who is that? His legs feel made of lead, and Danny scrambles to scoot himself to the wall, ignoring the tingly, root-thin prodding it sends through them.  

His heart is in his ears. The IV line tugs sharply at his arm— fuck, he forgot that was there! The pole was sitting right next to the edge of the bed, leading down to where he was hiding 

For a brief, hysterical moment, Danny thinks about yanking the IV right out.  

The door tentatively swings forward; Danny presses himself flat to the wall, and holds his breath. “Danny?” It’s Bruce, his voice hardly above a whisper. Belatedly, he softly raps his knuckles against the door.  

Danny cringes. The fear bleeds out of him, but in its place is just plain embarrassment. He’s really sick of feeling his heart pounding against his ribs, it happened so much today, it’s nauseating.  

He doesn’t say anything. Light bleeds in from the hallway, spilling sideways into the bedroom. Danny can see Bruce’s legs in the doorway. It looks like he’s changed out of the suit from earlier, ‘cause he’s barefoot now and in sweats.  

Neither of them say anything for a beat too long, Danny a coiled ball of tension with his hand over his mouth.  

Bruce takes a small step into the room, and Danny notes in the back of his mind how dead silent it is. “Are you under the bed?”  

...Danny glances at the slats keeping the mattress up. He peels his fingers away, and mutters weakly: “A little bit.” 

Danny hears a soft huff that... doesn’t sound displeased. Thoughtful, maybe? Ah, maybe amused? There’s not much time to think about it because Bruce starts walking over, and Danny turns his attention to watch the movement of his feet closely.  

Danny succumbs to the urge to inch further under the bed as he gets closer, limited by how far he can go by the IV stuck in his arm. He makes up for it by sticking the afflicted arm out towards the edge of the bed and letting the rest of him shrink.  

He’s not gonna be upset that Danny’s hiding, right?  

Expecting him to come right up to the edge of the bed, Bruce does the exact opposite of that and instead stops a safe distance away. There’s a pause, and then Danny watches him lean down and place his shoes next to the bed.  

...They look like they’ve been cleaned. The dirt on the whites of the converse is all gone. Did Bruce clean them? 

“I grabbed your shoes from my room.” Bruce murmurs as he straightens back up. Danny blinks back the unexpected sting in his eyes. That- that was nice of him. Now Danny didn’t have to go and get them himself. Or ask.  

Wait—his room?  

That was Bruce’s room!?  

Wh— Danny doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with that information. His voice dies in his throat for a few seconds, and he gapes like a fish as it reboots. “...That was your room?”  

A beat. Bruce's feet shift, then: “It was the first place I could think of.”  

Ah.  

Cool.  

Danny’s just gonna pretend his heart doesn’t feel like it’s being crushed by a lemon squeezer. Cool. Cool cool cool. This guy’s an asshole. A gift that keeps on giving. Saves his life, lets him borrow his clothes, lets him call his Aunt, promises to help him with Vlad, lets him sleep in his room—  

He closes his eyes and tries not to think about what happened to Bruce and Alfred in the bad timeline.  

The quiet stretches out between them as Danny tries to find the words to say, and also tries not to burst into tears on the spot. Again. He’s never cried this much before. Not in a single day, and certainly not in a year.  

A rustle catches his attention, and Danny shoots his eyes open just in time to see Bruce lower himself to the ground and sit crisscross in front of the bed. Still that safe distance away. Danny probably wouldn’t be able to reach him unless he moved forward to the edge. Plenty enough room to get out if he wanted.  

More silence, Danny still can’t see Bruce’s face from this angle, but he can see the baggy, plain black t-shirt he’s changed into. It looks soft to the touch. And also his awful posture, elbows resting on his thighs and his back hunched.  

It’s so plain and human that it draws a wet huff and a weak smile out of him. Vlad’s always got to have the best posture, he always looks like he has a broomstick stuck up his shirt. The only time Danny ever saw a break in it was— 

Ah. At Mom and Dad and Jazz’s funerals.  

Danny shuts down that train of thought.  

Where was he? Right. Bruce looks terribly human, and it makes Danny’s chest hurt at the abrupt familiarity of it. The grief of it overwhelms him like a wave. He wants to reach out and touch and make sure it’s real.   

Ghosts can’t feel a damn thing. Not cold, not heat. Not wet or dry. Danny can’t tell the difference between polished wood and plastic when he’s dead, and he can only tell the difference between bark and tread plate because its bumpy. He can tell the difference between a rock and a rag because one squishes when he squeezes it, but he can’t feel the softness. 

He can feel wind when it passes over him, but he can’t feel the cool breeze that it brings. Just that it’s pushing against him. He can feel the pressure of rain landing on his shoulders, but he can’t feel the wetness or the cold of it. The Molten Springs in the Zone feels like a humid summer’s day, and the Far Frozen feels like a chilly spring morning.  

Why bother running when you can’t feel the effort that goes into it. The burning lungs and legs synonymous with marathons. Who needs to eat when there’s no satisfaction with sating a hunger that’s not there? When you can’t feel things the same way you can’t feel your own body heat.  

Who needs grand, cosmic, soul-tailored powers, when you don’t exist.  

Bruce is real. He’s real, and alive, and Danny feels horribly envious of it. He wants that. He wants to live. He’s so envious he’s starving with it.  

“How do you feel?” Bruce asks him suddenly, everything about him played in pianissimo. It drags Danny out of his wayward thoughts and he blinks, then blinks again to shove the fog from his mind. 

How does he feel?  

... 

“...Awful,” Danny mutters, staring at the ground and deciding to toy with his hair. He closes his eyes, pressing his mouth into a wobbly line. “I’m—” he trips over the syllable, “I’m scared, Bruce.”  

Bruce doesn’t say anything, which is fair. He doesn’t think there’s much to say in the face of this. Danny continues, frog in throat: “I don’t know what to do. I...” He wants to grow up. He wants to grow up. He wants to grow up. “I want my Mom. I want my Dad. I want my sister.” He wants them to wake up like they were supposed to.  

“I’m sorry,” Bruce murmurs, and Danny thinks he hears a slight wobble in his voice. “I can’t bring them back.” 

He makes a wounded noise. He knows, and Danny closes his eyes despairingly. His fingers tangle around his hair. “I don’t wanna die.” He whispers. He’ll say it as many times as he has to. Maybe it’ll stick.   

Danny opens his eyes just as Bruce begins to shift again. There’s a tentative pause, it lasts no longer than a heartbeat, and then Bruce shuffles down and lays on his side. Danny can see his face fully now.  

“I’ll find a cure,” Bruce repeats. Like a broken record. He looks terribly earnest. 

Danny sniffs. “You said that already.”  

“Mn.” Bruce goes, his eyes shuffle over to the side, “it’s true.” 

Hah! Oh, he doesn’t know that. But Danny likes the conviction, it swats away some of the hopelessness smogging up in his lungs. He huffs wetly and rubs the meat of his palm against his wet lashes. “What if you can’t?” He asks, “What if I die?”  

Bruce’s gaze snaps back onto him, and then he stares. And stares. And stares.  

...Did Danny say the wrong thing? He shuffles slightly, watching Bruce back.  

"I’ll avenge you.” Bruce says finally, quiet and full of certainty.  

Well.

There’s not much Danny can say in the face of that. There’s that lemon-squeezing heart feeling again. Bruce has gone and punched him in the gut. A lump grows in his throat and he points out, choked: “You don’t know me."

“You’re a person,” Bruce responds, “that’s enough.”  

They don’t move from that spot for a while. Danny doesn’t want to climb out and do anything – he technically can’t, his legs are still jello and he refuses to let Bruce carry him everywhere until the wheelchair arrives – and he’s perfectly content to stay under the bed.   

“Can you tell Sam and Tucker if I die?” He asks, watching Bruce’s shoulders tense up in displeasure, before going back down. “They’re my best friends; I want them to know what happened if— if this doesn’t work out.”  

Bruce’s brows furrow, he stares at the floor contemplatively. “...What are their names?”  

“Samantha Manson and Tucker Foley,” Danny tells him, “Sam’s parents are rich; her great grandpa invented that sandwich—uhhh... tape toothpick stuff. It should be easy to find her.”  

Should he ask Bruce to tell Valerie too? He’s not as close to her as he is with Sam and Tucker, they did kinda go out for a while... although he’s not sure how valid middle school boyfriends and girlfriends are in the eyes of dating. And they were starting to be friends again after, and... 

Danny purses his lips. He really likes Valerie, vigilantism aside.  

“Valerie too,” he decides to tack on, “Valerie Gray, that is. Um, we’re not super close like I am with Sam and Tucker. But she’s uh—she's really cool, and we’re friends. So I think she should know if I... if I die.” He feels his face starting to heat up in embarrassment, and he avoids looking at Bruce in favor of messing with the ends of his hair. 

Bruce quietly raises an eyebrow at him.  

“I can do that,” he says. 

“Did you... uh... get to talk to Mister Wayne while you were at work?”  

Bruce blinks, then narrows his eyes. “Yes.” He says firmly, “Masters won’t be getting an in with Wayne. Ever.” Wow, he sounds really confident about that, Danny’s mouth curls up sideways into a smile.  

“I’d still be careful,” Danny tells him, half lightly, the rest serious, “Vlad can be pretty convincing. Overshadowing notwithstanding.” 

Weird that he’s able to say that to an adult. His heart still flutters nervously with the doubt that Bruce isn’t gonna believe him. There’s no shift in his expression or posture after Danny said that.  

.... 

Danny’s probably gonna have to tell Bruce about being Liminal.  

He shoves that thought off to the side before it can overwhelm him. Not now.  

“Wayne wouldn't work with him anyways,” Bruce mumbles, “he sells ghost hunting weapons.”  

Wh– Danny snorts roughly. He sounds so grumpy about that. “And other stuff.”  

Bruce pins him with a deadpan look, and surprised laughter boils up in Danny’s lungs like melted sugar. His mouth threatens to spread into a grin. “He sells.” Bruce says emphatically, “Ghost. Hunting. Weapons.”  

Giggles burble off the tip of his tongue. Danny’s resting his head on his arm and turns to smother the sound into his skin.  

“He’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone willing to work with him.” Bruce mutters, an unhappy tilt to his mouth. “Gotham has no problem with ghosts.” 

Ah. The irony. Danny smiles lopsidedly. “You know this?”  

“I do.”  

“If I die,” they’re circling back around to this because Danny’s finally collected enough of his thoughts to, “...are you going to kill Vlad?”  

Bruce goes very still; Danny would feel impressed by it if he wasn’t focused on the question instead. Bruce is a very still person, he’s learning. Hardly having moved the entire time they’ve been talking.  

It’s an important question to Danny. He doesn’t actually know what Bruce does as Batman; doesn’t know where the full extent of his morals lie. If he has a line, and where that is.  

“No. I don’t kill.” Bruce says strongly, and Danny’s shoulders relax of some of their tension. Bruce’s eyes flick to the movement, then back to him. “...that’s not a problem?” 

“No.” Danny parrots, and, despairingly, starts tripping over his own tongue. “No, I— I wouldn’t– I wasn’t going to—...” he pauses, trying to get his thoughts in order. Bruce waits patiently. “...I uh, I don’t— don’t want you to. Didn’t. Want you to. And I wasn’t gonna ask you to.” 

Vlad sucks, and he hates him, and he wants Vlad to hurt a fraction that Danny has. And, yeah, sure, in concept, the idea sounds nice. Vlad won’t be able to bother him anymore if he’s dead. But— Danny tries to actually imagine it. To actually picture him dead.  

And he thinks of Vlad, cold and pale and stiff and lifeless the same way he found Mom and Dad and Jazz. And—  

The horror that wells up inside him is too great for words. He recoils from the mental image so hard he’s surprised it doesn’t show on his face.  

So, in concept the idea sounds nice. But in reality— the thought of it just makes him ill. He doesn’t want Vlad dead. He doesn’t want him dead just as much as Danny doesn’t want to die. 

“I just...” Danny does a weak, one-shouldered shrug, looking everywhere but Bruce, “I don’t want anyone else to die.”  

Bruce suddenly sits up— 

And a spark of panic zings down Danny’s spine. Don’t tell him he’s leaving— he flips onto his stomach before he can think about it, pushing himself onto his elbows and getting ready to scramble after him. Wheelchair be damned. “Where are you—”  

Bruce grabs something on top of the bed—...the bed?—and then settles back down, propping himself up on one arm while he holds something in his other hand.  

Danny blinks. Then squints.  

...is that his hoodie.

Bruce carefully holds it out to him, not making eye contact. “Alfred washed your jacket,” he says, then puts it down and pushes it closer to him. “Your shirt is taking a little longer to clean.” 

Holy shit. 

He totally forgot about his hoodie.

Dumbly, he reaches out—needing to scoot forward to reach it—and hooks his fingers around it. “Makes sense,” he says faintly as he pulls it towards him, “there was a lot of blood.” 

From the corner of his eye, Bruce grimaces.  

Danny sticks his nose into the fabric and breathes in. Whatever detergent they use, it’s scentless and Danny just smells clean fabric. Ah—he's a little disappointed. Some part of him was hoping it’d smell like FentonWorks. It hasn’t in months— but. Wishful thinking and all.  

He glances up at Bruce, then scrunches his hoodie the long way before laying some of it across his arm to use as a pillow. Kinda like how he used to hug his baby blanket when he was little. Or... ah, when he felt really stressed from ghost fighting in middle school.  

“Thanks.” Danny says plainly, laying his head down and not bothering to move back to his spot further under the bed.  

Bruce nods simply, and lays down with his arms crossed. Danny snorts. He looks so serious.  

“I can tell you about Vlad’s powers tonight.” Danny mutters quietly, fiddling with the zipper of his hoodie. He’s still afraid, but—he thinks he can do it. Maybe. He might be fine. “He’ll probably be out looking for me.” 

It'll be fine. It’ll be cool. Great. It’ll all go fine. Danny purposely shuts down any lingering thoughts about it because he can already feel the cold breath of fear fogging up his lungs like a car window. If he just doesn’t think about it, it’ll be fine.  

Perfect. Great. He can tell Bruce about Vlad’s Liminality. And then maybe his own.  

Uh, a version of it, at least.

Danny fell asleep.  

Bruce watches the stress fade out of his face and waits until his breathing has deepened before carefully sitting up. He rolls the knot out of his shoulder from laying on it for so long, and shifts around until he can lean against the bed frame.  

At this angle, he can’t see much of Danny at all beyond his hands sticking out from under the bed.  

He waits for a beat, drawing up his knee, and then sighs through his nose. Bruce scrubs his hand over his face, and rubs his eyes with his thumb and finger.  

Truthfully, he's a bit skeptical about Masters having powers.  

But there’s no net positive in ignoring what Danny has to say about it. He tries to think of one, but it simply rounds back to being unreasonable to toss it off to the side and refuse to accept it as an option.  

If Danny is wrong and Masters doesn’t have powers, then he doesn’t have powers. Bruce is hard-pressed to think of any severe consequences that will occur in the aftermath of that truth. He’ll still have to figure out how to unearth Masters’ crimes, and it’ll take the same amount of time to find out how Masters got all those CEOs to sign their businesses over to him regardless.  

It could be a manner of tricks. Blackmail is the first thing that comes to mind.  

If Danny is right though, and Masters does have powers and can mind control—overshadow—people, then Bruce will have to figure out how to counter that and bring in enough proof of it to get him behind bars. It sounds too fantastical to believe; like something straight out of a comic book. But if it’s true, then it’s true and it’d be detrimental to deny it.  

But if Danny is wrong... 

Bruce’s brows furrow, and his gut twists up uncomfortably.  

If Danny is wrong, the main problem lies in convincing Danny that. And with how fervently Danny believes that Masters has powers, it’s going to take a lot of convincing and proof to show him that he’s wrong.  

People don’t come up with something like that for no reason. There’s typically a foundation for the belief to take root, regardless of what the foundation is made of. Conspiracy theorists, for example.  

Danny’s parents were ghost hunters; Danny grew up around people who believed enough in ghosts to make a career out of studying and hunting them down. Danny is more likely to believe that someone could have powers than someone who doesn’t believe in ghosts. If they don’t include any variables that might influence that.  

Now at this age, Danny is old enough to have outgrown the belief in the fantastical. Things like the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny or Santa, if he grew up with parents that celebrated those traditions.  

Where the problem lies... 

When someone experiences trauma that they struggle to understand, their mind will latch onto anything to make it easier to digest. This can happen to anyone at any age, but it’s reasonable to expect it more often in children as their minds are still developing and they’re very imaginative.  

When his parents died, Bruce came up with a lot of things to try and convince himself that they’d come back and that it wasn’t real. He used to pretend that his mother was still there for him to talk to, and that his father would come through the door any minute. He was just running late. 

Expectedly, none of it worked.  

With that in mind: Danny grew up with parents that honestly believed in ghosts. Danny would’ve grown up surrounded by that belief as a child and would be more inclined to believe it.  

Bruce was able to do a little bit more research before coming to see Danny again, and knows a few more things. 

First: Danny is actually fourteen. Masters lied to him about his age. Bruce can’t say he’s surprised; with how possessive Masters looked while talking about him, it makes an unfortunate amount of sense. 

Second: Danny has likely known Masters since he was at least eleven. And that is a very damning thought, Bruce is trying not to think too long about it yet. He can’t trust how he may react.  

Masters held a school reunion for his graduating class at his castle—and it is an actual castle, Bruce... has no words. He found Jack and Maddie’s names on the guest list. Danny and Jasmine would’ve been eleven and thirteen respectively at this time.  

Jasme was just under the legal age requirements to be left home alone at the time, so they would’ve both been taken along if the Fentons weren’t neglectful. Bruce is taking his bets on that they did.  

It makes the most sense anyways; Masters would need to start his obsession with Danny somewhere. Bruce’s heart constricts.  

So: Danny has probably known Masters since he was eleven – Bruce will need to confirm with Danny first before guaranteeing that as certainty – and age eleven is usually around the time kids start aging out of the belief in things like ghosts, the Tooth Fairy, and other fantasy ideas.  

Where the problem lies: even if Danny is wrong, Masters still did something that resulted in Danny convincing himself that Masters had the ability to control people against their will. So much so that he still strongly believes it, years later. 

That, or this belief of powers is recent and came from the four months Masters spent with Danny alone. Isolation is an abuse tactic, and Danny’s exhibited more than enough signs of psychological abuse and C-PTSD to fill a case file.  

Whatever happened, whatever Masters has done behind closed doors: Danny’s mind is struggling to comprehend it and is trying to process it through the belief that it was, essentially, mind control. There are very few things Bruce can think of that would require such an intense explanation.  

Or Vlad Masters does actually have powers and really can overshadow people. 

...Bruce is almost hoping that Masters has the powers.  

He scrubs his hands over his face again, and lets his fingers drag back up through his hair to push it out of his eyes. Bruce lets his hands tangle in the strands on the back of his head, and closes his eyes.  

Danny’s wheelchair should be here before the sun sets, and Bruce went and ordered him a phone to use to, hopefully, keep in contact with his Aunt and those friends he mentioned earlier. It should be here either today or tomorrow, and he plans on implementing a few safety measures into it before handing it over.  

(Just some tracking and privacy concerns; he doesn’t know yet what Masters has available. And if Danny wants to keep in contact with his friends, he’ll need something that will protect him from being tracked.)  

He still has hours before patrol. That blood test he wants to do to examine what it is that’s happening to Danny’s cells will have to wait until later, as much as he dislikes the idea. Danny’s lost enough blood for one day; Bruce would rather he keep what he has left until its replenished itself.  

It’ll happen this week regardless, the sooner the better. Just... Bruce glances down to where Danny’s hands are sticking out from under the bed. Not today.  

He could finally sit down and do that deep dive into Masters and the Fentons, and look more into the blood blossoms. That works. He’ll head down to the terminal and get started on that. 

Shifting to stand, Bruce gets his knees underneath him and— his eyes catch on Danny’s hands sticking out of the bed. Bruce stares for a moment, then traces the IV line up to the bag.  

Hm. He purses his lips.  

Bruce glances at the door.  

He’ll grab his laptop instead. And a new IV bag.

[Run to me, says the Bat, I will keep you safe.]