Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

—

“Oh, great,” Danny mumbled, squinting at the ghost. “Who are you supposed to be?”

The parking lot around them was a disaster zone, with broken glass and crumpled frames strewn around. The night hadn’t been long, but it had been bad, and now someone’s car business wasn’t going to survive if it didn’t have really good ghost insurance.

His back hurt, and he really wanted to go home.

“Rather less refined than expected,” the ghost sneered instead of answering. “Rumors painted you as far more.”

“You sound like my English teacher,” Danny informed him.

Normally he took ghost’s appearances with a grain of salt, but this ghost had stepped out of apparently nowhere after the last ghost got thermosed, and something about him was setting off alarm bells. His fur cape and weird historical armor should’ve looked ridiculous, but it didn’t. The jeweled sword at his side should’ve looked flimsy, but it looked dangerous, and like there was some kind of power running along the blade. Something electric.

He looked like a headache and a few hours of fighting left, and it was the last thing Danny wanted to deal with.

“I was promised a battle worthy of retelling throughout the generations,” the ghost growled, raising the rapier to eye level. “You will prepare yourself. And if you fall, then my prize will be your screams.”

“Super. Do I at least get time to–Ah!”

Danny threw himself back, narrowly missing getting run through at the neck. He dropped, but the other ghost kept the distance closed, following him through what immediately became a scramble.

There was no time for fancy planning. Danny clapped his hands together, charging them with a roar of ectoplasm that burst outward like a small bomb. It wasn’t enough to hurt like he’d hoped, but it finally bought Danny space, and Danny followed it up with a couple of twisting kicks that threw off ectoplasm in arcs. The ghost sliced the arcs to ribbons before they hit, and Danny danced back further, both of them measuring each other up.

“Okay, back up,” Danny called, not daring to put his fists down. “You want to fight me, and I don’t even know who you are. Why are we doing this?”

The ghost’s lip curled. This time he swished his sword up and aside in some kind of salute. “I am the Herald of Devastation. You may call me Harald.”

“Herald, Harald. I like it.”

“And as for why, the answer is obvious,” He continued, as though he didn’t hear. “Why does anyone seek to conquer? What draws the souls of man to test their mettle at the teeth of darkness and fate?”

“I don’t know,” Danny sighed, tilting his head back expressively. (Not far back enough to lose sight, though.) “For the plastic trophies and the victory ice cream after?”

The silence that followed was charged, and maybe he shouldn’t be this flippant around a ghost he didn’t know, because the glint in those glowing eyes gave him a bad feeling.

“You will show me respect, boy, or this night will end before it’s truly begun. En garde!”

The next few seconds happened in a rush that compressed itself into basic snapshots. Harald the Devastator’s sword flashed, and the energy dancing on its edge exploded in lightning. Everything was bright. Every inch of him was on fire, and up was down and spinning left and right. He slammed full-body into something flat, and it tore through the brick wall like paper. Another hit, and he was lying on the ground, staring at the spinning sky.

“Holy shit,” He wheezed. “Ow.”

Metal boots clanking told him the ghost had landed and was walking towards him. Danny scraped his senses together, phasing intangible through the ground and getting some distance behind him. Seeing him now showed that his sword was darker, as though it needed time to build up another charge.

Danny’s first burst of ectoplasm made the ghost pause, but it was the sharpened barrage that had Harald bring his sword up and deflect them in earnest.

It kept him distracted enough that Danny coated one of his own boots in ectoplasm, and he leapt down for a kick that he knew for a fact hit like a truck. It barely knocked Harald off balance enough to stumble, but the ghost caught himself, eyes bright.

“So there is strength to show,” he crowed. He looked energized, fired up like this was everything he wanted. He looked like he could keep this up indefinitely.

Danny couldn’t do that. He was tired before the fight started, and if they fought much longer he was going to screw up. He might’ve already screwed up by not fleeing, and as it was he was in trouble, and he needed to be smart about this. The only weapon he had on him was his parents’ thermos. Maybe he could lead him somewhere–

He dove out of the way at another charge, and this time something sliced this shoulder and arm and left burning lines in their wake. He twisted and pulled up in a hard loop, and it was enough to get out of reach. He kept up the maneuvering as he raced in the most direct route he could, and it turned out to be lucky that he did, because ectoblasts chased him closely.

The blasts stopping was a short warning. Danny caught movement from the corner of his eye, and he only just stopped in time to not spear himself on the end of Harald’s sword, now extended ahead of him.

“You would flee from the glory of battle,” the ghost growled. “Your heart is weak, and thirsts for victory no more than a coward’s.”

“My heart ‘thirsts’ for my warm bed,” Danny snapped back, trying not to look at the pool behind him. Electricity plus pool plus ice–useful, right? Just a little further. “And maybe a good eight hours of sleep, if I’m feeling wild.”

The ghost’s eyes grew calculating, and he abruptly straightened. “If the warmth of the hearth is what drives you, then perhaps those stakes will put true fire to your spine…”

“Huh?” said Danny. Before he could say anything else, the ghost turned heel and started flying away. “Hey… Hey, wait!”

He dropped anything like a fighting stance and dove after him. It was hard to keep him in sight, and no matter how fast he flew he had a nagging feeling that the ghost was going just slow enough not to lose him. It was almost enough to consider giving up and trying to catch him some other night, except something about this was setting Danny on an edge he couldn’t describe. He’d messed up back there, somehow, and this sudden change in direction was a threat, not a break.

The ghost slowed and Danny didn’t understand until he saw the Fenton Ops Center looming ahead.

“Hey, why are we headed to the portal?” Danny called, pulling almost even.

“It’s not the portal,” The ghost called back imperiously, cape billowing from the flight. “I seek what will stoke a beast’s spirit within you. What more, than to spill the blood of your dearest kin?”

“Whoa, whoa!” Danny shouted, putting on a burst of speed to pull ahead. He put his arms in the shape of an ‘X’. “Hands off, the family’s off limits. And they’re ghost hunters anyway, so you really don’t want to bring them into whatever stupid mess this is.”

“We shall see,” Harald rumbled, and he weaved past Danny in a motion he couldn’t quite track.

“No–hey, stop!”

They phased through the walls of the house into the living room. His parents were in the kitchen, Jazz was halfway up the stairs, and everyone was looking at him, and for a moment he wished the ground would jump up and swallow him and his enemy both.

“Ghost,” his parents howled, springing into action. Jazz bolted up the stairs, and Danny fired ectoplasm in streams from both hands, forcing the ghost back through the wall and outside.

“You are a bastard?” The ghost sputtered, off guard.

“Excuse me?” Danny shot back, narrowly missing with a punch coated in green. The sword came back into play, and he danced back, but he was pressing a brief advantage.

“No–less than a bastard…” He paused with the sword brought back into a guard, concentrating. “A stray?”

“Is any part of this ever going to make sense?” Danny shouted, clapping his hands. Instead of ectoplasm, a jet of ice shot through the air, and this time it actually tore a strip through the cape.

“Cease!” the ghost roared, and Danny pulled up and back, ready to shoot more. Far down below he could hear his parents causing a commotion, but they felt far away.

“I have challenged you to a rite of warriors, and you showed yourself to be unworthy of your supposed standing. I have seen your soul, and truly, you are about to learn more than most opponents ever will: My power lies not in the sword, but in my eyes, and my sense of that which ties and that which does not.”

“You have powers about…” He closed his mouth and opened it.”.... I need you to treat me like I’m failing high school English, okay? Because I am!”

“You will take this new challenge, or suffer the results.” Harald swiped his rapier vertically, lining it up with his face. “If you do not defeat me, I will destroy that which truly holds true power in life: the blood of your line, through whatever kin lives on. Face me on these grounds, and fate will show who is truly the most worthy.”

“How about I just face you now, huh?” Danny shouted back, and he shifted to avoid a shot from the ground that would’ve taken out a leg. “We can fight now! Not do–whatever else you’re implying you’re about to do!”

“You will best me in this hunt,” The ghost said with finality, locking eyes. “Or they will fall.”

“Wait!”

Danny lunged, pulling out the thermos, but the ghost burst into motion that left a small shockwave in its wake, and when he’d blinked again he was invisible.

“... Fuck.”

—

“Jazz-I-have-a-problem!” Danny blurted, and Jazz shrieked, swinging a book up like a weapon.

“Danny! You didn’t knock!”

“Sorry,” He said honestly, triggering his transformation back to a human. “I’m kind of freaking out, I think that ghost outside just went off to kill people, and I’m not fast enough to beat him to wherever he’s going. And I don’t even know where he’s going.”

“... Oh,” Jazz said faintly, paler than before. “That’s–that is really bad, actually. Um.”

“I know.” He put his fists against his head, then started pacing. “He said something about going after my blood kin, and he kept saying things like how you and Mom and Dad aren’t actually my blood, and that his freaky ghost powers told him so. Which is stupid, because I’m obviously their kid, and your brother, like I have been my whole life. So he’s wrong, what do I do now?”

“A–a ghost says his ghost power said you’re not blood related to us?” Jazz sputtered.

“Exactly!” Danny threw his hands up. “Really stupid, right!”

“Yeah!” Jazz said, and then blinked at him, studying him hard. “Um. Right.”

He was going to ignore that. “Right. And anyway, I can get through the Fenton DNA lock on the gate and everything, so it’s extra dumb.”

“The Fenton DNA lock doesn’t check for genetic similarity,” She pointed out slowly, still studying him. “It just–matches the signature to whatever’s saved on file, like fingerprint matching.”

“Oh.” Danny’s pace slowed. “Well. That still doesn’t change anything. Because we’re all blood related, and it’s stupid that we’re even considering this at all, and he’s just trying to get in our heads and distract us. Right?”

“Right,” Jazz said, but her brow was still furrowed. “Right. You’re my annoying little brother, I’m your responsible older sister. And–we can confirm this for real, and maybe call the others to see if they have any ideas for where to figure out where this nut job ghost is going.”

“We don’t need to confirm it, but you can knock yourself out as much as you want,” Danny replied, voice not nearly casual enough. “Because. It’s not real. I’m gonna call Sam and Tucker and tell them what happened and maybe we’ll come up with some idea about what fake family he thinks he’s going after, and then we’ll figure this out and all go to sleep without anyone dying.”

“Right,” Jazz said, rushing out of the room.

Danny pulled out his phone and called his friends, waking both of them up.

The call lasted a while, long enough for all three of them to get a solid start. Tucker was making a family map of everyone related to the Fentons, and Sam pulled up the hand-drawn charts they’d made of the best ways to cut through the ghost zone. If Harald the Herald was going towards Aunt Alicia, for example, they’d need to get there fast. Danny was making a list of every distant relative that he knew–

Then Jazz came in, holding a box Danny dimly recognized from the back of their parents’ closet. “Move over,” She elbowed her way to her desk.

“Mom and Dad are still out?” Danny asked. To the phone he said “I’ll call you back,” then hung up.

She nodded, absorbed in opening the box and skimming the hanging folders inside. Then she pulled one out, flipping through pages rapid-fire.

Then she stopped. “Here’s my birth certificate. And here’s–” She flipped the page. “... Yours.”

She didn’t turn.

“Jazz?”

She didn’t answer, and Danny leaned over to take the file from her hands. “What’s it say? I’m–”

He fell silent, staring at watermark on his own page, and at the differences to hers. They looked different.

Too different.

“You’re from New Jersey?” She mumbled, trying to sound light like it wasn’t a surprise.

He was. Gotham. The names under ‘Mother’ and ‘Father’ weren’t Madeline or Jackson. They were Sheila and Willis, and his own last name wasn’t Fenton.

“Daniel… Edmund… Todd?” Danny said numbly.

The room was silent, just like the rest of the world. Like his head.

“I’m.. I…”

He fell silent again.

“Well, this kind of makes sense,” Jazz mumbled.

Danny shook himself out of his shock enough to stare at her. “How?” he demanded plaintively.

Jazz winced, holding up her hands. “It’s not something I can really explain! Just that–you don’t look like dad, really, do you? I look like Mom when she was younger, but you don’t look like either of them. And we still have a box of my old baby stuff, but there’s no boxes of any of your baby stuff... I don’t know.”

Danny looked back down at the birth certificate. No one had ever told him he was adopted–and if Jazz hadn’t known, had they ever told anyone? Were they ever going to tell them?

(And why keep it a secret? Had there been something embarrassing about it? About him?)

Danny shook his head, pressing his knuckles to his forehead. “I can’t deal with this right now. There’s a ghost out there, and he’s trying to kill my family. My other family,” he added, backing up and sitting on the edge of Jazz’s bed.

Jazz turned towards him, and he fought a grimace as her silence shifted.

“Do you wanna talk about i–”

“No, I do not want to talk about my feelings about this,” he interrupted.

She was, of course, unswayed. “But you’ve just suffered an enormous shock, Danny, and you’re probably questioning your security and worth in our family system! I really think we should–”

“No! No, not doing this, I’m not listening and actually I’m texting Sam and Tuck right this second.” He grabbed his phone.

“This isn’t emotionally healthy, Danny!” Jazz snapped. He ignored her, and he could see her clenching her fists from the corner of his eye. “You’re only making it worse by repressing everything and putting it off, you know!”

“Uh-huh.”

He could feel the heat of her glare as she tried to outwait him, but he was determined not to crack. Eventually she sighed, and he felt his shoulders relax, and she looked back down at the file box.

“Before we move on completely and let this blow up in our faces some other time, I want it said that I love you and you’re still my emotionally constipated little brother whom I Iove even when he’s being stupid.”

He paused in texting, making a face. “Um–thanks. I think.”

He could hear her smirking. “Any time.”

—

The search went badly from the start. There was one record that showed him living in a foster home in Monmouth County, New Jersey, but it was contradicted in the next file. There was another identical one in Ocean County, and Jazz suggested hesitantly that someone’s files had gotten sent to the wrong place. Danny shrugged, and Tucker muttered suspiciously about a cover up.

Danny didn’t know what to think, so instead they searched digital records in Gotham.

“Bad news,” Tucker groaned. “The records here are a mess, and there’s an article about half the courthouses in that area burning to a crisp like ten years ago. And I think your parents might’ve split up, or changed their names, or–something, because nothing’s adding up like a few months in. This is going to take time.”

“Danny’s real parents might not have time, Tucker,” Sam replied.

“Blood parents,” Danny said immediately, and he could almost hear the wince.

“I meant that, sorry. Your bio-parents. They just might not have time, so–I’m going to look up a good route in the ghost zone, and we should think about maybe trying to go to Gotham and head him off.”

“We could use one of the Fenton Finders,” Jazz said suddenly. “They’re not very good here in Amity Park, but in Gotham there won’t be a bunch of ghosts causing interference. In Gotham–”

“There’ll only be one ghost besides me,” Danny realized, hopeful. “That’s a good idea. Go to Gotham, find the only other ghost, beat him up, go home.”

“And bring a secret weapon, or something,” Sam added. “Are you sure we shouldn’t come with and be your backup?”

Danny pressed his hands together until they tingled, looking down at them. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea. He was–kind of faster than anything I’ve ever seen. Like, anything else, and yeah, you guys help me when I’m in over my head all the time. But if he’s fast enough to get one of you before we blink–”

He broke off, but he didn’t need to finish.

“Yeah,” Sam said quietly. “Not without a better way to shield ourselves. I don’t know–maybe Jazz can help us check the armory, maybe your parents fixed the broken specter deflectors.”

“Or maybe Danny will catch that maniacal ghost tomorrow and it’ll all be over anyway,” Tucker cut in. “Who knows?”

“Yeah,” said Sam with more feeling. “That’s probably going to be it. And at least it’s only Friday night…”

“Technically it’s Saturday,” Tucker offered.

“It’s the weekend!” Danny sighed. “That’s going to have to be enough.”

—

Danny drank an ultra-tall energy drink, patted his face to wake himself up more, grabbed a Fenton Finder, and then flew out immediately. Who knew how fast Harald The Doom Herald (or whatever he was) could go? (Who know how much time his unknown relatives had left?)

Flying through the ghost zone gave him too much time to think. What if he got there just a few minutes too late? What was his blood family like? Were they still together? Why had they left him? Did they have any siblings? Were any of his family members nice?

Maybe after all of this, would they like to meet him?

Danny shook himself hard as he tumbled out of a natural portal, one that seemed to vanish unless you looked at it just right.

“Okay…” he said, looking around the alley. After a few seconds of making sure he was alone, he floated to the alley’s mouth, then stopped. “... Whoa.”

He’d been on road trips with his family before, but for some reason they’d never picked a haunting in a city this big. Smog crowded the night sky, skyscrapers stretched like they resented how the laws of gravity kept them from competing with the ghost zone’s vertical reach. Even at the hour of the night, there were corner stores open and people walking and cars, and there were lights everywhere. It stank, and there was trash in the street, and he could tell people were staring, but for one deep moment his eyes were locked on the enormity of the city around him, awed.

It didn’t last long, unfortunately.

“Hey!” someone shouted. Danny jumped, and there was a seedy man glaring at him. Several others along the sidewalk had stopped to stare, and none of the looks were friendly.

The man continued, pointing. “Yeah, you–what’d’you think you’re supposed to be?”

“Uh–I’m a ghost?” Danny told him, gesturing. “Boo.”

The man spat at him. “I tell you what you are… Either a cape, or a god-damn rogue, with a getup like that. I don’t care what your deal is.”

“Wait–I’m not actually–” Dany started, but he was drowned out.

“I don’t give a shit! Get the fuck outta here!”

“But I’m not–”

It didn’t matter. Others were already chiming in.

“Yeah, get out of here!”

“We don’t need another rogue.”

“Fuckin metas! Mr Freeze is bad enough–”

“Go back to whatever hole you crawled out of!”

Danny backed into the alley, holding his hands up. “Okay, okay! Fine, geeze, I’ll just go and–”

He darted behind a dumpster, phasing through a wall.

A few minutes later he phased out of a wall in a completely different alley, looking completely human. “Holy shit,” He grumbled, kicking past a fallen over trash bag. “Freaking Gotham…”

This time no one replied, and he stopped in the alley’s shadow, trying to think. Maybe it was probably a bad idea to run around in spandex in a city as full of supervillain activity as Gotham, but all bets were off when he found Herald the Harald (or however it went). He wasn’t strong enough to fight him from his human form, not when he’d need every scrap of advantage he could get.

(Maybe staying human would help him stay off Batman’s radar, considering Danny’s villain-seeming history in Amity Park. Maybe this was for the best.)

A car alarm went off down the street accompanied by raucous laughter, and when Danny peered around the corner he saw a crowd of teenagers swinging baseball bats at a parked car. They were all wearing the same kind of jacket, and the street was quickly emptying.

“Fuck,” Danny whispered, backing back into the alley. He could try to stop them, but–this wasn’t his city, and this wasn’t his fight. He was supposed to be protecting his family! His family who could already be dead, just from how much time he’d been wasting.

Danny snatched the Fenton Finder from his pocket, holding it up in the shadows.

Nothing came up.

Danny slapped it on its side a few times, but the screen only glowed steadily, not a blip in sight, and Danny didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Either the stupid device had decided not to work, or he’d beaten the ghost here.

(Or his family had moved and he was in the wrong city completely, but that thought was too horrible to consider. He had to trust his friends to keep searching from back home, they’d call him if they found out more.)

Unable to stand still, Danny phased invisible, striding out of the alley.

If the Fenton Finder wasn’t going to help him, then maybe his ghost sense would. He had all weekend, he might as well start sweeping the area.

—

Gotham was… Gotham was dark. Not just physically, but–despite the concentration that it took, he found himself staying invisible even after he passed that one gang around the car. Any time he didn’t he felt watched, like he was a bug crawling on the back of a much greater predator, or a mouse unwittingly surrounded by coyotes.

He just needed to find his ghost, catch him, and get out. He didn’t want any trouble.

In the smallest of mercies, it didn’t seem like any of Gotham’s infamous rogues were making a big move tonight. Just the smaller crime.

The smaller crime and him.

Danny heard the commotion in the flickering parking lot, but he’d pulled his jacket closer around himself and sped up to pass it. It sounded like someone was hitting someone hard, and he glanced up despite himself–

A gasp escaped him, because blood and teeth were spilling down the man’s front, and a black-clad nightmare of a man was the only thing holding up. The victim’s mouth was sagging open and his eyes didn’t seem aware, and the ground was wet and littered with other crumpled people.

The second thing that hit Danny was that his own gasp had given him away, and the cloaked figure whirled around to look at him–and locked on, visible portions of his face transforming into a mask of shock and horror.

“No…” the figure breathed.

Danny stumbled back, and he slammed his forgotten invisibility back up hard enough that he was on the verge of transforming on the spot.

“Wait…” The figure–the Batman said, shaking himself from his stillness. Instead of clearing, the lower part of his face contorted further, in what looked like–grief. He dropped the unconscious man, reaching out as though in a dream. “Wait–Come back, wait, wait…”

Danny pressed his hands over his ears like they were on fire, and invisibly, he flew away as fast as he could.

—

Across the street, a teenager lowered his shaking camera after Batman finally left. That’d been…

That’d been–

Tim forced his fingers to unclench, and they tingled from how tightly he’d been gripping the plastic. He shoved the camera into his protective case, then raced home.

He needed his dark room–he needed to see if he was right.

—

Chapter Text

—

The weekend went badly, and after more than two days of sleepless, slightly manic searching, Danny finally retreated home.

“We’ll find him,” Sam told him over the phone as he flew. “Just go home and sleep, you really need it.”

He did. He was also starving, and he needed a shower, and–

“Danny!” His dad cried from the kitchen, catching him just as he walked up from the basement . “I didn’t know you were down there. You have perfect timing, you won’t believe who just dropped by!”

“Oh no,” Danny said, completely without filter, and for a moment he had to swallow back a shout and a scream and the urge to fall to the floor and just lie there.

“Oh yes, dear boy.” Vlad was sitting at the table between Danny’s parents–adopted parents?--and had been looking dour at the way his dad was crowding him. As soon as he saw Danny, the glare turned into a smirk. “So good to see you. And what was it that you were doing downstairs?”

“Chores,” Danny said woodenly.

“Ah yes, of course.”

“Well, kiddo, wash your hands and sit down. Dinner’s almost ready, and we’re all here!”

“Except Jazz,” his mom reminded him.

“Except Jazz, who had tutoring,” his dad agreed.

Danny hadn’t looked at his parents since seeing his birth certificate, and all he wanted to do was ask them when they’d planned to tell him. If they’d loved him when they adopted him, or if it’d taken time. Was adopting kids like adopting a puppy? Did it matter to them, that he wasn’t really theirs? Did it matter that his grades were never as good as Jazz’s? That he was constantly in detention, constantly cutting class, had they ever thought back and regretted–

To his horror he felt his eyes starting to burn, and Danny quickly faked a yawn, striding past and out of the room. “H-hey, I’m really sorry but I’m really, really tired, and I’m actually not hungry, I’m going to bed. Good night!”

“Oh! Um,” said his mom. “Good night, Danny!”

“Good night, kiddo,” said his dad. “Don’t let the ghost bugs bite!”

Both of them were more subdued now, but Danny couldn’t handle worrying anymore. He dashed up the stairs and ran into his room, throwing his phone on the desk and flinging himself on the bed before he did something he’d regret. He wanted to howl into his pillow, but he was so volatile he feared it’d tap into his powers.

He hadn’t realized that Vlad followed him until his door creaked.

“Is something the matter, Daniel?” Vlad asked, voice full of fake concern.

“Go away, Vlad.” Feeling like every limb was lead and he was full of broken glass, Danny grudgingly sat up. “This is a bad time.”

“It does seem like one,” said Vlad, leaning against the door frame. “Why exactly is that, might I ask? You weren’t at home all weekend, no matter what your sister claimed.”

“It’s none of your business, V-man,” Danny ground out.

Vlad opened his mouth, but before he replied Danny’s phone buzzed on his desk–the one right next to the door. Danny froze, but Vlad scooped it up before he could even blink, looking at the text preview.

“ ‘Back from Gotham, yet’?” Vlad read incredulously. “Daniel, what on earth were you doing in Gotham? What part of your small mind made you think that a place like that is anywhere to play around–”

He was going to lose his goddamn mind if Vlad kept talking.

“-Get out, get out, get OUT!” Danny bellowed, and all at once he was standing in the doorway, his phone was in his hand, and Vlad was hitting the hallway wall as though he’d been shoved.

Danny met his gawk with one last glare before slamming the door in his face.The wall trembled, and he wanted to scream, because now he didn’t feel like sleeping at all.

—

Dawn wasn’t far off. Gotham was waking up around Batman slowly, and he’d have to leave soon, or risk being caught in the dawn light.

The shadows still hid him for now. They were a shelter, if not from his grief then at least from prying eyes.

The parking lot was empty, and some of the damage from the other night’s fight was still there. Blood that he’d spilled caked the ground in dark splotches, and it was only a few feet away from where he’d seen–

He’d seen…

Bruce sucked in a tight breath, forcing himself to an even, deep rhythm. He had total control. Every inch of him was completely locked down. Even the parts of him he couldn’t defeat were locked up tight in a reinforced bunker, where nothing could get out unless he willed it.

(For now, anyway. So much of the time now, none of it seemed to matter. Why would it, when his son was dead? He hadn’t been good enough, hadn’t trained him enough, hadn’t been fast enough, hadn’t made a single goddamn difference in this miserable city that would’ve helped save the life of one little boy.)

Bruce released the air in a silent, even stream. Then he inhaled again.

He’d been doing badly, of late. Knowing it didn’t change anything, and it didn’t make him care, but he knew the world was darker now. He wasn’t so sure he’d recover this time, or that he wanted to. What was the point, when trying so hard had done so little? Had there ever been a point at all?

(What if the problem was that he hadn’t gone far enough? It would be easy. It’s not like he hadn’t thought about it.)

And then, that night, he’d been caught up in that haze of darkness and hatred and pain, and when he’d looked up he’d been stricken by a young face like a knife through his chest. The sight alone of those huge blue eyes had been enough to paralyze him, and the horror had drowned him with guilt and cold self awareness like a tsunami. He’d been left reeling, and the face had vanished, and he’d been sure the entire drive home that he’d really lost it, that he was now hallucinating more than just occasional snatches of voice.

It was strange. Finding that the security cameras had caught something didn’t make it better. It was real and it wasn’t–because the distortion on the digital recording combined with all other signs to indicate a childish, magical answer:

Ghosts.

Ghosts were real, supposedly, and he had to contend with the concept that his son’s had risen from its grave to witness him in an act of sheer brutality. Not that Jason was a stranger to any violence of the streets, but in death his face had grown soft again, innocent, and freshly cut by the awfulness of it all.

Bruce had done that. How was it that even in death, he failed those he loved?

His comm crackled in his ear.

“Sir… Shall I assume you will make your way back to the cave shortly? If you spend much longer, the sun will rise before you arrive.”

“Hn.”

It wasn’t a true answer. Alfred didn’t question it, but he didn’t sign off, either.

“... Sir, if I may be so bold… I would urge you to put the apparition you saw from your mind.”

Bruce stayed silent. He could hear the distant traffic of the city stirring around him. The lot was motionless.

“The glimpses we have of those that have moved on may be a gift, at times. Wondrous and beautiful… But we must also take care not to lose ourselves in what is beyond our reach. It will do you no good to cling to echoes of the past, as in the end that is all they may ever be.”

His throat felt dry, drier than a desert and caked with sand and ash. He couldn’t swallow, and in the end, he said nothing.

After a long silence, Alfred sighed quietly.

“Very well, sir. I will make sure to have breakfast prepared for when you eventually return.”

He didn’t deserve Alfred.

(Not that life was about what anyone deserved.)

—

The next time Tim went out, it was with a mission.

He’d assessed the situation as much as he could, and there was no denying the facts: Batman had hit a breaking point, and if someone didn’t intervene, something horrible was going to happen.

He did his best to triage. Batman needed help, but if he had another night like the one at the parking lot, Tim worried that no help would be able to arrive fast enough.

Tim had gone back to the parking lot, of course, and there was nothing. The photos showed up ethereal on film, only an odd lens-flare with no particular source. The security cameras reacted more strongly, and for a moment, the ghost’s feet had left the ground and not come back down.

Then it was gone–vanished into thin air, leaving a shattered Batman in its wake.

Jason never would’ve done that on purpose, but no one could guarantee that Jason was in his right mind after death. In life he’d been a hero and a source of justice, even when he’d struggled. But in death…

It was normal, some research said. Other research said it was deeply abnormal, but some of the sources didn’t seem reputable, and then sometimes it was all mixed together, which meant Tim had to pick and choose at nearly random. He knew what he wanted–no, what everyone needed–and he’d made a list of ways to get it.

Either they’d convince Jason to go home, or they’d make him go.

He got holy water as a backup plan and wore his trousers with the deepest pockets to carry it. The main plan was a series of different exorcisms, lots of youtube videos about how they should work, and a paid off ‘psychic’ that Tim was embarrassed he’d ever reached out to. Inglorious progress aside, he was confident that he had enough on his own to at least try.

Tim rubbed his arms against the seasonal chill, opening the cemetery’s gate. He had a bouquet in the crook of his arm, and he took it now, scanning for a particular grave stone.

Throwing the entire evening’s plan into disarray, someone was already there. Tim’s pace stuttered, and he disguised it by turning down the next row of graves, stopping at a random one. When he snuck another look at the man at Jason’s grave, he realized it was Alfred Pennyworth, the Wayne’s butler.

What was he doing here?

No–it made perfect sense. So much sense, honestly, that Tim was a little ashamed he’d wondered at all. Not all housekeeping was as fleeting as his own, and Pennyworth had obviously been close to the Wayne family for years, and it made complete sense that he would mourn Jason’s passing. Even more sense, then, if he’d noticed the shift in Bruce lately.

Tim pretended to bow his head over the random grave, settling down to wait. He wouldn’t disturb Pennyworth’s time with Jason. If anything, he deserved it more than Tim did, particularly considering what Tim was hoping to do. Exorcisms were messy, after all, when they were effective.

Tim was braced for a stakeout.

Unfortunately, his plans crumbled when Pennyworth made no move to leave.

They vanished completely when the wind shifted, and he heard the man’s voice rising and falling softly in a plea.

(This was private, and he was intruding.)

Tim couldn’t move, as though he’d been locked in place. He couldn’t hear the words, but the tone–

It was like all his plans were held together with cheap glue, and these unplanned few minutes were a bucket of water. Who was Tim to meet Gotham’s second Robin–his own Robin–with violence, when he’d helped and given hope to so many? Who was Tim to take someone that was so loved and cherished, and to metaphysically rend them apart? Who was Tim to not even try talking? Didn’t he owe it to Robin? Didn’t everyone?

Tim dropped the bouquet at the random grave, turned, and left as quickly as he could.

—

There were other things he could do.

Alfred Pennyworth clearly already knew there was a problem, if he was trying to talk to Jason’s ghost as well, but Dick Grayson must not know, or he wouldn’t have stayed away.

Tim took a train to Bludhaven, then hailed a cab.

Several hours later, Dick Grayson went to Gotham, and Tim hoped.

A few minutes after he arrived, Dick left again. Tim didn’t know until later, and when he found out his heart sank. He went back to Bludhaven to try again, and this time Dick didn’t leave at all.

Tim scratched over that option from his list, moving back to the first option.Talk to Jason’s ghost, and/or make sure he never appears to Bruce like that again. (Re-think his options for that second one. He didn’t want to tear Jason from his resting place, if he could help it. Just… from places he wasn’t supposed to be in.)

It was possible that Alfred had already done the task, but it didn’t hurt to look around, just to make sure.

Picking the most likely starting point, Tim looked up Jason’s first (and only) home in Crime Alley. Then he put on his biggest and filthiest coat, matched it with a rattier hat, and hurried over while the night was young. It still wouldn’t be safe, but he wouldn’t stay in the open for long.

The street was (relatively) quiet when he got there. He paced along it, then ducked into the alley, climbed a fire escape, and waited.

It took hours, and while he waited the moon rose, before being covered by a dreary rain. Tim pulled his jacket around himself harder, squinting in the bad lighting.

And then, sometime past midnight, he saw him.

There was no one else out in this weather, and the harsh street lighting made him look washed out, but it had to be him. Jason looked exhausted, and at least as cold as Tim felt. (Did ghosts get cold? Did they remember being cold?) His hands were stuffed deeply into pockets, and he stalked down the sidewalk like a man on a mission.

Except that mission wasn’t to go to his old home, because he walked right past it without glancing. It was at that point that Tim realized he risked losing him, so he climbed down as fast as he could, catching up as the ghost turned a corner.

“Hey–Excuse me. Excuse me!”

Jason jumped with a muffled explicative, spinning around to face him.

Tim didn’t smile, because he knew better in Crime Alley, but he brought up his hands disarmingly. “Sorry–I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t scare me,” said Jason, studying him hard. Then he shrugged to himself, apparently satisfied. “What do you want?”

Tim lowered his hands as he pulled his words together. It was easy to be distracted by how alive Jason looked: his cheeks and nose were dark with the cold, and water had plastered his hair to his face. There was a scratch on his chin, and he could hear the rustle of cloth when he shifted.

(No wonder this hit Bruce hard.)

Focus.

“I wanted to say that I’m very sorry for your loss,” Tim said gently, rehearsing lines he’d practiced in a mirror.

Jason jolted as though he’d been burned, eyes burning into his, but Tim kept steady.

“Gotham lost something special when you passed.”

“I’m sorry, Gotham what?” Jason sputtered, staring at Tim like he was coming at him with a knife.

Tim lifted his hands again, wondering if maybe he should’ve started gentler and worked his way up to this. “I, ah, I know you’ve… passed on.”

“You know I’m dead,” Jason repeated slowly. He looked down at himself, (he still looked solid), then into space, as if re-tracing how he came to this position. “Holy shit. Um.”

“It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Oh. Um. Okay? What do you want, though, because this is, uh, not what I expected.”

Tim rubbed his hands together, hiding his own discomfort. “You’re dead but you’ve come back,” He began. “You’re here for him, right?” A beat, no comprehension. “For your father?”

Jason jolted again, but this time something in him coiled, like every shred of interest from a creature much larger than him had all zeroed in on Tim at once. It surrounded him like a physical presence.

“Yes,” Jason breathed. “What do you know about him? And how did you know to find me?”

Tim brushed past that second question. “First you should know that he misses you–a lot.” … Jason was hanging on his every word, and those few words seemed flimsy. “... More than I can say,” He admitted more quietly. “When he lost you–it was bad.”

“I’m sorry,” said Jason helplessly.

“No,” Tim said quickly. “It’s not your fault. It’s just that–he misses you, but you’re dead. And… if you’re dead, you can’t come back. Not like he needs you to.”

Jason’s eyes had grown perfectly round, and his mouth sagged open. It was as though the problem of being a ghost and how he’d never have a body to live a regular life again had never occurred to him. Like he simply hadn’t thought this far.

It left Tim feeling strangely ashamed. It had wounded Bruce to the bone to see his son’s ghost, and seeing him again would tear that injury wider, and this was necessary–and still, Tim wondered if maybe it would be ok to offer Jason a home, instead of trying to usher him onto the great beyond. Tim’s parents wouldn’t notice if it was just a little haunted, would they?

“W-what if.” Jason cleared his throat, licking his lips. Tim clearly wasn’t the only one bargaining in his head. “What if I, uh. Y’know, c-came home, uh, anyway? Like, hypothetically? Say what if no one realized I was dead, and I just, hah, walked right on back–”

Tim stared at him for a moment, before, “Are you genuinely telling me you think they won’t care that you died?!”

Jason flinched, folding his arms around himself in a protective, vulnerable position Tim had never seen before. “I, uh, wasn’t sure,” he mumbled. “Like, I don’t get how they knew. It’s not like they were there.”

Because he’d been overseas. Ethiopia. Away from home, and–Tim swallowed hard, because he hadn’t known the details, but. He’d known Jason had left Gotham first. And if Jason had died before Bruce reached him–

–Oh, Bruce. No wonder this was all going to hell.

“He knows,” Tim whispered, and it was almost lost in the rain.

Jason looked at his shoes, and when he looked up, his eyes were glassy. “Okay. But did he, like–want to meet me? Did he ever want to see me again, him or Mom?”

“What do you mean?” Tim blanked, because, Mom?

“Did they want me, or was I gone because they didn’t?”

“Of course Bruce wanted you,” Tim said honestly. “I'm not a parent, but I don’t think anyone could've wanted a son more than he wanted you, Jason.”

Jason started to smile, a painful, gentle dawning–and then it froze.

“Jason?”

Tim blinked, then nodded slowly. “Yes. Um–that’s your name.”

“No, it’s not. I’m Danny. And who’s Bruce?”

Tim looked at him. Studied him subtly in the dark, comparing every line of his face to the reference photos he’d held up to the light with his ghost-photos. All of them matched, just like when he’d looked before.

“I’m sorry,” Tim began gently. “It sounded like sometimes memories get, uh. ‘Loose’ in the ordeal of, um. Well, dying–”

“No, that’s not what’s going on here,” he interrupted. “My name was Danny when I was alive, I’ve never been a Jason,” he burst out, throwing his hands up. “Was everything you said actually about some guy with a different name? And you don’t know Willis at all or anything?!”

“Willis?” Tim repeated, quickly reassessing. “Ah. He, ah, I–I’m sorry, but he died two years ago.”

“Wait, what?!” Jason shouted.

Tim cringed. “It–it was in an attack from Two-Face. It’s… I’m sorry for your loss?”

“I don’t believe this,” Jason sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “... Like genuinely. I’m actually not sure I can even believe this yet. You recognized that name, but the rest was just…” He waved a hand.

“Mmm,” Tim said diplomatically. “That sounds difficult.”

“It means that I might not actually be looking for at least one of my parents after all. Maybe I’m looking for aunts and uncles!”

“Willis was an only child,” Tim blurted, before biting his tongue.

It was too late, because Jason looked him sharply, then squinted. “Wait, how would you know, assuming you even do? Actually, you know what, I get the feeling that if we talk any longer it’s only going to get weirder.”

“Please think about what I said,” Tim said in a rush, realizing quickly that he’d gotten distracted and hadn’t said everything he’d needed to. “And–also please, my research says that you should really, deeply consider that moving on might be a good idea for you. Everything that’s out there is only going to be good things.”

“Great,” said Jason darkly, and the look he was giving Tim seemed a little unfair. “Thanks.”

“And–thank you again for all your good work,” he said desperately, because although it was selfish, this was his own chance to say goodbye to his hero too.

“Good bye, kid,” Jason said with finality. With a twist on his heel that shed water droplets in a shower, he turned, and vanished.

Just, vanished into the rain.

Tim let out a shaky breath he’d been holding, looking around. As badly as that’d gone, he really, really hoped that worked.

—

Danny stopped when he was several streets away, ducked into an alley, and screamed into his arms. That had been the worst rollercoaster conversation of his life, and everyone in this city was completely and certifiably insane. He’d thought he’d call it a win if he left after keeping Harold The Ghost from killing anyone. Now he wondered if he’d be able to escape feeling traumatized even if no one died.

He mashed his hands over his mouth, then kicked a trashcan so hard it bounced off a wall, scattering trash everywhere. A family of raccoons startled from the dumpster, chittering and showing creepy tiny hands. Danny sulked away, striding out.

None of this was working, and maybe he just wasn’t as good at his vigilante job as he’d hoped. Maybe he needed help, and not for the first time he really, really wished he had anything like a responsible adult he could turn to. Maybe if his dad wanted anything to do with him–but then, maybe his dad didn’t even know he existed, maybe he could turn to his dad if he found him! Why was he letting himself get all messed up by some random sketchy kid from Gotham?

He was out of his depth, though. Maybe he should reach out to Batman, who was at least guaranteed to be somewhere in the city. Batman probably knew how to find a human better than Danny did.

Except Batman was a maniac.

Danny cringed again, pivoting on his heel and striding the other way down the sidewalk. The only time he’d seen Batman was in that bloodbath of a fight. And–Danny didn’t really fight humans, maybe that much blood was normal, but was there really always that much teeth involved? He hadn’t thought so, but maybe things were different when there was no way to cram someone into a thermos.

(Was it normal for vigilantes to react to people like Batman had?)

(It was weird. It’d been weird.)

Maybe that was normal in Gotham.

…

(Or maybe Danny was just so desperate he was thinking about reaching out to a maniac, Danny wondered darkly.)

Even weirdness aside, there were a lot of creeps Danny would consider bargaining with by this point. If he thought they had a better chance of keeping his family alive, then who cared if they were assholes to him? Danny dealt with assholes every day, back home, even ghost-hating ones, and meanwhile Batman probably knew Gotham better than anyone–

–Danny’s attention prickled at the sound of jingling behind him, like spare change in a pocket, or a chain at someone’s belt. Someone was following him. Danny paused, and that was a mistake, because a deep, unpleasant voice snickered.

“Hey kid, hold on,” they called, and some kind of malice was stamped all over it

Fuck. Danny walked faster.

A second laugh, from someone further back, there were more of them. The first voice jeered, “Now that’s not very nice! We just wanna talk–”

Danny broke into a run, and he could already hear pounding shoes behind him. He got ready to go invisible even if it gave away his–

–there was a huge impact and a broken-off shout, and then everyone was shouting, and Danny threw a look over his shoulder, where he was met with chaos.

Speak of the devil and Batman showed up to take those creeps apart with prejudice. Danny slowed, then stopped, tucking himself in the shadow of a newspaper stand.

The fighting was merciless. There wasn’t as much blood as the last time, but one of the creeps went down with a deep sequence of cracks that echoed in Danny’s head long after.

And then the fight was over, and Batman shook his fists out, turning towards him.

Danny squared his shoulders, lifting his head and wishing he could float to eye level without his powers becoming a whole thing. (Wishing he was in ghost form, really, and maybe he should’ve changed even with Gotham being what it was. Wished he wasn’t this vulnerable.)

Batman reached him, and then–something rippled across the visible parts of his face, like a tremble or a spasm, and his voice sounded like he’d been gargling rocks and knives.

“Are you alright, Jason?”

All at once, the trepidation vanished in a wave of outrage. “Wait–Jason?!” Danny threw his hands up by his head, completely distracted. “That’s not my name! Where did you hear that?!”

Batman didn’t answer, apparently shocked into some kind of rigid stillness. Danny felt icy prickling on his neck, and he cringed a little, forcing himself to calm.

“It’s–look, please don’t call me that. It’s a really long story.”

“Okay,” Batman rasped, airless. Like he couldn’t not talk, and it was weird. Offputting. “... Son–”

He broke off. And Danny just… stared.

The night was too loud and too muffled, and for a moment he scoured the parts of Batman he could see directly.

“... Willis?” Danny asked, feeling tiny.

Batman flinched, and Danny’s heart sank again, hopes dashed.

“That’s–that’s not my name,” Batman said quietly, and Danny nodded quickly.

“Right. Sorry–ignore that. I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

The silence that followed was somehow painful and deeply awkward, and Danny intertwined his fingers behind his neck, trying to see a way out of this.

In for a penny, in for a pound. Danny shuffled, glancing at all the men lying motionless on the sidewalk behind them, then braced himself.

“Okay, this is probably stupid timing, but–Can you… I mean. Can I–”

He closed his mouth, and after a moment Batman’s head dipped. “Go on.”

Desperation forced his hand, and he blurted, “Can I give you an anonymous tip about a murder someone’s planning?”

Batman stilled, before his face set in concentration, and he nodded.

Okay. “So, first I need you to bear with me, but ghosts are real.”

Batman looked at him.

Danny looked back.

Batman said nothing after a few seconds, and Danny relaxed the tiniest bit.

“Right. And, uh. There’s a really evil one who said he was headed this way, and he wants to hurt, um–”

Batman still just looked at him. Danny wished he’d go ‘huh’, or blink, or anything, and Danny scratched the back of his neck awkwardly.

“... Sheila Haywood and Willis Todd. Those are his targets, plus anyone related to them by blood. He’s going to try to kill them if he can, so–maybe look into them, and see if there’s anything you can do to protect them?” Danny shrugged uncomfortably. “I’ll do what I can, but I’d recommend a ghost shield.”

But they weren’t ghost hunters (probably), and neither was Batman. Batman might stand a chance if he had a weapon that used ectoplasm, but otherwise–

Batman was still just standing there, mouth twisting. After what seemed like an eternity, he unwound enough to rumble, “I’ll look into it.” Then, infinitely more gentle, “You don’t have to worry.”

He hadn’t thought he’d feel relieved, but he did a little, like a door cracking open. “Thank you,” Danny sighed, air whooshing unsteadily out of him. “I appreciate it.”

He thought he could see Batman’s head tilt in acknowledgement, and maybe the corners of his mouth tug down even more, but it was hard to be sure, and either way it was time for him to go.

“So, um. I’ll get out of your hair. You’ve probably got a lot of, uh.” He glanced at the slumped people, then away. “Yeah.”

“Wait,” Batman said, holding out a flat hand in a ‘halt’. Danny stopped in his tracks, unease curling in his gut, because this had gone well, but there was always a risk of things heading south. “... You don’t remember anything about those names, do you?”

Danny froze again, and this whole damn city had so many surprises that it was going to give him a heart attack that he wasn’t even sure he could die from.

“Do you?” Danny shot back defensively.

Batman’s lips parted, like Danny was the one asking outrageous things, and he seemed like he was going to say something, a thousand things, but nothing came.

Absolutely nothing.

Suddenly Danny couldn’t stand to wait there, dangling on the edge of some awful precipice like whatever this was. His skin was filled with ants and electricity and he whirled around, cramming his hands in his pockets and storming away.

This was a stupid idea.

—

Chapter Text

—

Watching people had been one of Tim’s earliest lessons. It had been his mother’s way of teaching him to stay still, because image was everything in society, and every chink in his image of perfectly coiffed discipline was a reflection on her. He’d learned to watch, learned to listen, and had taken comfort that he’d tell her everything later.

He’d grown older, and with it he became mature enough to understand that she didn’t always have time to hear how he’d teased dropped phrases and thinly veiled undertones apart as he waited for the adults at their gatherings. His parents didn’t often have time in general, anymore, and as busy as they were, they had more important things to do than rehash details that they doubtlessly already knew.

Tim had learned how keep what he’d learned close, ready to bring out any detail at the slightest prompting. Over time it had become enough to simply watch and know, and to find joy in the experience. He’d pushed it further to its natural conclusion, and now it was years later, and he was trapped with the worst part of watching.

Something had gone wrong with Bruce. Even after he’d done the unthinkable and tried to intervene, nothing had worked. If anything it was worse, with Batman’s erratic behavior through the roof, and it was all his fault. Maybe something had happened with Jason’s ghost, maybe Tim had misjudged the depth of Bruce’s original damage.

And then Two-Face got out of Arkham, and then Bruce was captured. And then–

Tim hadn’t expected Alfred to help, but this wasn’t the first time Alfred had surprised him, and he hoped the man understood Tim’s gratitude.

He stole a costume that wasn’t his, using it to save Bruce.

And then–

–Things didn’t stop breaking, but they broke less.

Tim didn’t keep the uniform, but he got another one. He didn’t stop going out at night, but now it was different. He kept watching, but now it wasn’t always from the outside.

Jason’s ghost didn’t bother them again on their patrols, though Tim knew he’d been spotted at least once in Gotham since. He’d been prepared to move his security camera search protocols from his own makeshift system to the Batcomputer, except when he’d tried he found Batman already had his own in place. (He’d given it an upgrade, then let them be.)

He’d found the reopened notes on Willis Todd and Sheila Haywood and their families, and all possible enemies, and the amulets and totems of makeshift supernatural protection Bruce had arranged. There were also small libraries of speculation and investigation from that awful window before he’d become Robin, unrelenting in ways that left him thinking about photos of manic scribblings in a room from Arkham. There was a photo from before Tim had realized Jason was ever back, distorted almost beyond recognition. Jason had looked–

–Maybe the wary, piecemeal Jason they’d met was the gentlest form of him they could’ve met, considering the otherworldly alternative. The other form led to a rabbit hole nightmare of archaic literature (also scanned, also attached), including tomes of tortuous deaths and quests for immortality and incoherent rumors and myths.

Tim copied all of them to places where he could read them later. It was more than he’d had previously, and he’d be an idiot to ignore it when the supernatural was so obviously relevant.

As far as the ghost himself, there wasn’t much to go on, but Jason had only been seen once since then, and they had more immediate problems on their hands. Maybe in a way this was a twisted opportunity for life to move on.

If the Red Hood wasn’t clearly a ruthless murderous rogue out to make a name for himself, Tim would’ve been tempted to thank him for the distraction. As it was the deaths were mounting, crime circles were rippling and throwing all their tracking off-script, and he and Batman needed to focus.

—

Patrolling Gotham aimlessly hadn’t worked. Danny stretched himself thread-thin and had nothing to show for it but a perpetual, lingering dread that maybe he’d found a fight that would destroy him like others didn’t.

They’d looked into what that creepy kid had said. Willis… according to Tucker, the last record he could find had been in Gotham a couple of years ago. Now that he knew where to look, there was a coroner’s record, and then an unremarked upon burial. There had been no funeral, or at least, not one that was announced.

Willis had no siblings. He had a cousin that lived in a middle class part of Gotham that they weren’t sure knew Willis had ever existed, let alone mourned him. It was distant enough that they couldn’t tell if it would matter to Harald, but they resolved to watch the area anyway, and Danny made one more trip to Gotham, hiding a sensor stolen from his parents’ alarm systems. They’d boosted its range as much as they could, hidden it in a rusty air conditioner’s shell, and set it to alert them at the faintest ping.

His mom… Her name had practically fallen off the planet years ago. She had a step sister (not related by blood) that had once posted on social media about having lunch with her when she visited, and that had been over ten years ago. Sheila had moved several times, and Danny suspected Harald was headed towards her.

Sam and Tucker both promised to keep looking, though they all knew Tucker had the best chances of a breakthrough. Sam could ask around more than Danny’s basic internet searches could, but Tucker could break into government databases.

This was what made it a surprise when Sam was the first to flood their chat with a string of urgent texts, leading with a link to the Gotham Daily.

It wasn’t the most reputable newspaper, but that was probably why it’d published the details it had: a slightly distorted photograph of a new criminal, coupled with descriptions of ‘green glows’ and ‘superhuman strength’.

It was more than enough. Not even waiting for the last periods of school to finish, Danny raced home, through the portal, and towards Gotham.

—

The ghost sensor hadn’t tripped. It was the first place Danny checked, before he swept the city invisibly for anything that looked out of place.

It was after dark by the time Danny finally found something, and when he did he wasn’t sure what he’d found. A vague ping on his ghost sense–not a real trigger of it, and it faded the more he concentrated, but it’d been there. With the possibility that some ghost had managed to figure out a way of being sensed easily, he couldn’t ignore it.

The sense led him to an alley he’d have missed if he wasn’t looking for it. There was a weird car there–he’d seen home-brewed vehicles before, but this wasn’t anything like the Ghost Assault Vehicle, and was glossy black and built like a high tech sports car. Armored, but like a motorcycle suit, not like a bank truck.

The ping on his senses was a man that was breaking into the car. His head was completely covered by a red, fitted shell, and although Danny could match him in height after his growth spurt, he wasn’t built with enough muscle to strain at his leather jacket like this man was.

He was a perfect match for the newspaper’s Red Hood, and Danny had found the right place.

Red Hood dropped the prybar off to one side once the driver’s door was open, and then he reached in his pocket, taking out a strip of cloth that unfurled as he moved it inside. It had two holes in a line–like a green eye mask.

Danny dropped his invisibility, stepping into the alley’s horrible lighting. He’d thought the move had been pretty silent, but Red Hood still dropped what he was doing and whirled around, aiming two guns at Danny.

Danny had prepared to open the talk himself, but he didn’t get a chance. Red Hood stiffened at the sight of him, and his snarl came out low and heavily modulated.

“What the hell are you supposed to be?”

“Me?” Danny repeated, crooking a finger at himself. He was still in human form, and unless the crook had senses of his own, he should look perfectly ordinary. “I’m a teenager witnessing a break-in, what about you?”

“Don’t play fucking games,” Red Hood snapped back. He switched off the gun’s safeties, and Danny phased intangible, just in case.

“I’m not playing anything except maybe i-spy,” Danny quipped back. “Speaking of, I spy something dead and really green. Seen anything like that, lately?”

He’d been planning to continue, but the crook had stiffened as he visibly coiled up with reactive fury, and before Danny knew it there was a blaze of bullets pelting through him, and Red Hood was charging.

“Shit,” was all he had time to say, diving to the side. The bullets followed, and he ducked to fling himself through a wall, but by that point Red Hood had hurled himself bodily through him, and the howl left in his mind made him freeze like an idiot.

It wasn’t–it wasn’t ghostly. Red Hood wasn’t a ghost, there wasn’t a ghost here.

Danny didn’t know what he was, and he couldn’t really make sense of the distant screams still echoing in his mind, but this wasn’t Harald or any ghost in a meatsuit–it was just some spooky, freaky Gotham criminal that was only distantly adjacent.

“I’m going to bury you till there’s nothing left,” ground out a voice over him, and Danny dragged himself from his own head, looking wide-eyed just in time to get punched. It hit like a damn truck, and Danny was knocked flat like a wet napkin, blinking away stars.

“Holy shit,” he wheezed. A gun appeared in his face, and Danny threw his hands up, phasing back intangible just in time. (Why had he stopped intangibility at all? That was stupid, but he must have done it, even though he’d been trying not to.)

Against his expectations the bullets stopped after a few seconds, maybe as it became obvious that they weren’t doing anything. Danny rolled out of the way, springing to his feet, but as soon as he reached a defensive position the man was on him again, swinging for another haymaker. Danny braced, confident in his intangibility this time, and that just made it all the more bewildering when the hit met his raised arms and drove past his block and nailed him in the side bad enough to knock him off his feet.

Being beat up as a human wasn’t a new experience, but being beat up by someone who had ghost-level strength and was definitely breezing right past all intangibility was. It hurt to breathe, and if he wasn’t more resilient than most, Danny had no doubt that his ribs would be shattered. He hunched over that side even as he scrambled back up, watching Red Hood with entirely new assessment now.

“What are you?” Danny asked.

“Better than you ever would have made me!” Red Hood roared, and if Danny hadn’t tapped into some of his ghost side he wouldn’t have made it out of the way of the next hit. It was also how he avoided the next kick, not wanting to see if kicks hit the same way punches did.

“That wasn’t an answer!”

“You don’t have the right to ask me anything!”

“Dude, calm down!”

Danny phased invisible and floated out of the way, and the Red Hood froze, head twitching as he listened for where he’d gone.

Danny was done with this fight. Red Hood wasn’t one of ‘his own’ as far as problems went, but he was still a problem he didn’t want to leave unsolved.

Danny went to the car, noticing the bat motifs and realizing who it probably belonged for the first time. Well–he’d have to worry about that later, for now he checked to see if–yes, there was rope under the back seat!

When he left the batmobile Red Hood was prowling around to his side, clearly having some sense for Danny’s presence himself. Danny was ready, and he tapped deeply into his ghost flight, uncoiling the rope.

The next few seconds were a mess of speeding wildly around in tight mid-air circles, dodging swings strong enough to knock his head off his shoulders, all while tangling the man up in as tight a coil as he could. Red Hood made a good attempt to shuck the rope off before it caught, but he couldn’t beat someone who’d been outmaneuvering ghosts for two years.

He could tear straight through the rope, though. “Hey!” Danny shouted, dropping invisibility for a moment.

“I’m going to tear you to pieces,” Red Hood promised, shrugging the rest of the rope off. “Make you stop haunting me for fucking good.”

“Like I haven’t heard that before,” Danny shot back sourly. “Zero points for not using your own work, I give that an ‘F’!”

“Fuck you!”

Danny dodged another hit, turning invisible and lunging for the batmobile’s trunk. Intangibility made quick work of the trunk’s lock, except it gave Red Hood a movement to race towards, so Danny grabbed the first thing he saw, swinging an enormous launcher of some kind like a huge baseball bat.

The impact sent Red Hood flying across the alley, scattering a huddle of trashcans and cracking the brick wall, and Danny froze, remembering too late that he wasn’t fighting a damn ghost, he was still fighting a human. Maybe one juiced up on meta powers or freaky abilities, but mortal.

“Hey,” Danny called warily, not moving. “You still moving?”

No verbal response.

But then–stirring. Dazed, dragging himself off of trashbags and struggling, but alive.

Relief flooded through him thickly enough to make him weak, and this time he took long enough to actually find a winch buried in the trunk’s hidden panel, phasing its cable out.

“Well, buddy, whatever you are, I’m glad you’re not dead-dead,” Danny said conversationally, tying up the criminal who seemed too dazed to put up a fight anymore. “Anyway, tell me if anything hurts enough that you need a hospital or anything, okay?”

No response but a half-conscious growl and a slightly stronger struggle. That was good enough.

Danny finished the last knot (it was hard, the cable was too rigid to curve easily) and stepped back, surveying the disaster zone around the alley.

“Awesome,” he said to the alley tiredly, then left.

—

Batman had banned Tim from working on all cases related to the Red Hood, but he hadn’t banned him from anything involving Jason Todd’s ghost. Therefore, it was alright for Red Robin to be investigating the alley. In fact, not only was it okay, it just meant he was doing his due diligence, and no one could fault him for it.

… There was probably a lecture coming up about ‘following letter and not the spirit of the rule’, but it still wouldn’t change anything. Some things were more important.

The alley had been swept clean of all traces of the Batmobile, but the fight’s damage remained. Here were the bullet holes from Red Hood’s opening salvo, and there was the cracked brick from where ghost-Jason had thrown him.

Tim had memorized the footage that wasn’t too corrupted by the fight’s supernatural effects, and he walked through the stages of it all, reenacting it in his head. Ghost-Jason had stood here, Red Hood there. The Batmobile was here.

It was a fight that raised questions. There was clearly something very personal about ghost-Jason that provoked Red Hood, but the ghost didn’t act like he was in on whatever it was. At the same time, Jason had come to the alley looking for him, so he knew something–just, something else.

‘Speaking of, I spy something dead and really green. Seen anything like that, lately?’

It implied the Red Hood had died. And as far as the rest of it went, there were lots of things that were supernatural and green. (He’d been learning about all of them and more in his research.) Ectoplasm was green. Green Lanterns were green. Kryptonite was green. Lazarus water (as obscure as it was) had been described in Bruce’s notes as green.

Considering that Jason was a ghost, it probably meant ectoplasm, but Red Hood’s reaction was ringing a different bell, even if Tim couldn’t see it yet.

Tim knelt down where Jason had been knocked on his back, and Red Hood emptied a round in his face. There was a pile of rounds buried in the cement, and the flashes of Jason thrashing in fear played themselves against Tim’s will.

Jason had been familiar with Red Hood, in some weird, un-Jason-like way. He’d been teasing, like Nightwing was teasing. When he was Robin, Jason had rarely actually joked with his enemies… He’d always had too many walls up to relax like that, and his banter had been much closer to goading.

So–if Jason had changed when he became a ghost, and Tim looked at him through a Nightwing lens, what was this?

Insight sang like a javelin with this new angle, and the answers came all at once: Jason thought Red Hood was a ghost, and Red Hood wasn’t, and it had surprised him. Red Hood thought Jason was something else, and Jason surprised him too. They’d been fighting like mirror images, having the same conflict from different sides.

And–

Tim chewed on that thought furiously, because ‘mirror images’ stuck with him, and he replayed the fight and scoured anything from late nights reading that might trigger what that meant, because he was on to something. They’d fought like mirror images–both of them wrong, but still centered around something united.

They were the same.

The thought made everything else go quiet in his head, and Tim stayed still, like it was a soap bubble that would break if he disturbed it.

Jason was dead, and according to him, Red Hood was dead. Jason was a Robin, Red Hood had been leaving Robin-themed clues. Jason had lost some important essence of himself. Red Hood…

Tim reached for his mask so quickly he jabbed himself in his haste to use his mask-overlay options to replay the fight’s actual footage. Memory could alter itself, he could be misremembering something crucial for this last piece–

–But no, in the instant where he paused and Red Hood was lined up opposite to Jason, they were the same height, barring helmet and boots. He played the footage, and their proportions were all the same. Ghost Jason was thinner, but–he already knew that there were minor differences, was muscle mass enough to actually disprove anything?

“Holy shit,” Tim whispered, as the full magnitude of it all sank in.

They were both Jason. Different, exaggerated aspects, but–Tim could see both of them making sense. There’d been a condescending article published years ago that had captured Jason’s awe at the sight of one of Gotham’s most lavishly decorated Christmas events, and it matched the ghost’s innocence. Meanwhile Jason had always been the darkest of the Robins, and he’d seen that too as the arguments got worse near the end. If Jason’s darkest side had been unrestrained–

It lined up. Somehow. The Red Hood’s actions weren’t anything Jason would have done in his right mind, but it lined up.

Then what was it supposed to mean? Two different reflections of Jason, a ghost Jason and–and a second ghost Jason? Or–what? Red Hood seemed pretty solid, and Tim knew by now that there was more than one way for a dead person’s likeliness to return.

Maybe the Red Hood was some more physical remainder. Or was he still a ghost and he was just possessing someone? If he was possessing someone else, then the body would be different from his own, Tim reminded himself, head starting to pound.

He pressed his knuckles against his forehead, unwilling to let this go.

Red Hood was a dead echo of Jason, somehow, and he and his other piece had clashed. He’d been more physical than the ghost, but they’d still been similar enough to hurt each other, to the ghost-Jason’s surprise. Maybe Red Hood still had Jason’s body somehow. Maybe he’d chosen a head-to-toe concealing costume to hide the damage from decay.

It explained a lot while also explaining very little, and it meant that Tim had a lot of research to do before he could even think of his next move. Maybe this was why it’d been impossible to really talk Jason’s ghost into leaving, there’d always been a bigger picture that was being left out.

And this bigger picture was killing people.

Fuck. Lots of people. Even with the main targets having been criminals, there’d been far too much collateral, and there were promises of so much more. Red Hood wasn’t the part of Jason that cared, and it showed.

Jason wouldn’t have wanted this, not if he’d been in his right mind. Hell, he’d already tried to confront himself, even if this facet was too flighty to really secure his other self properly. (Even at a distance Tim had seen how terrible the knots had been, it was no wonder Red Hood got free within minutes.)

So what now?

Tim sucked in a shaky breath, switching the video overlay off. Ghost Jason and zombie Jason would probably clash again. Batman couldn't leave Red Hood alone, so Bruce was hunting Red Hood too. Red Hood had left behind the green domino mask that Batman had almost succeeded in hiding from him, and Tim was the current Robin, so this was probably going to drag Tim into it, unless Batman had his way and he kept Tim cloistered for his own protection.

So one way or another, Tim didn’t really need to look for anyone right now, because they would probably find him, unless everyone found Red Hood first. What Tim needed was a way to resolve this after that happened.

Which would be a lot easier if he had any idea how one Jason had become two, or what the best case scenario was. Did they want both Jasons to move on, still? How did the presence of a body and a second half of Jason change things? It wasn’t like they could just glue Jason together and hope for the best, it’d been over a year since his death, he certainly wasn’t intact enough.

And yet, Jason was intact enough to wage a one man war on Crime Alley’s underground and not obviously lose.

Tim… put a pin in that thought for now. He needed more information, and at this point he needed to research how all of this could have happened, and why. The fact that the supernatural was involved cleared out some options, but ghosts were a fairly rare and unusual remainder after death. What did it mean that there were two of them of the same person? And for them to have broken like this…

Had someone done this to Jason? Had they been made this way deliberately, with the kind side too inept to do anything but tie someone up really, really fast, and to do it badly?

Something subtle shifted in the alley’s silence, and it was all the warning he had before,

“Robin.”

Tim stood, trying to hide the way his head was spinning from the revelations, and his heart was thumping in his chest, and he turned to face the man storming towards him.

“Batman.”

“Explain,” Batman demanded. There was a muscle jumping in his jaw that had Tim’s gut filling with rocks.

“I’m following a lead on a personal case about a ghost,” Tim said reasonably.

“Consider this case and all related cases off limits,” Batman snapped. “Return to the cave immediately. Wait for debrief after patrol, then consider yourself restricted from patrols until further notice.”

… Fuck. “When you hear about what I’ve learned–”

“We will talk about your irresponsible disregard of my orders and further consequences,” Batman talked over him.

Tim gritted his teeth, weighing his chances. As he stood there, Batman’s eyes narrowed further.

“Go. Now.”

He went.

—

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Sam prodded, eyeing him dubiously. “You’ve been favoring your ribs all day.”

“Yeah, it’s fine, It’s just bruising,” Danny said, then wished he’d said it a little more slowly.

“Even with your healing?” Tucker asked, eyebrows raised. They were walking home from school, and there was no one close enough that he needed to say it quietly.

“It’s in my human form!” Danny protested, putting a hand subtly against his side. “You know those things don’t heal as fast.”

“Yeah, but… we also know that you still heal faster than most people.”

“It’s been days, so this must’ve been pretty bad,” Sam agreed. Worse than you told us went unsaid, making Danny wince.

“Maybe more than I thought,” he admitted. “But it’s also just in a bad spot, okay? Ribs do that thing. They hurt any time you move.”

Sam glanced at Tucker past Danny’s head. “Hey, are people supposed to tape their ribs when they get injured?”

Tucker leaned over to answer her directly, “Nah, ribs you just leave normal. I think they fix themselves.”

“I swear I saw some video instructions on it…” She tapped her chin. “I’ll post it in the group chat if I find anything later.”

“I’m right here,” Danny grumbled.

“We know,” Sam and Tucker chorused, and Danny huffed despite himself.

“Gee, thanks.”

“Speaking of thanking us,” Tucker chirped, digging his phone from his pocket. “I did something you’re going to really appreciate. You know how Gotham has lower ectoplasm levels, and how there’s so much crime that everyone’s installing security systems everywhere?”

“Uh–Yeah, kind of?” Danny said, squinting.

“If the CIA’s going to come after you from hacking their cameras, you have to tell me first,” Sam informed him. “I’ll need time to set up your lawyers.”

“I’m not getting caught, Sam,” Tucker retorted disdainfully, and she laughed. “Anyway, as I was saying, I’ve set up a system that’ll basically expand the range of that ghost sensor so we can actually monitor maybe five times the radius. If there’s a ghost anywhere that’s messing with Gotham’s cameras, we’ll know.”

“That’s… actually really useful,” Danny said. “I didn’t know we could do that.”

“Neither did I, until I did,” Tucker said smugly, tapping away at his phone. After a few seconds his smile dropped, and he stared at his screen’s display.

The other two stopped also.

“Tucker?” Sam asked.

“So,” Tucker began slowly. The tone gave away enough for Danny to groan, dragging a hand down his face. “The good news is, we have good warning!”

“And the bad news is I’m still in Amity Park, and he’s over there right now,” Danny stressed.

“Not yet,” said Tucker seriously, looking up from his phone. “The range is good, but if you go now…”

“I’m on it,” Danny said. They were standing in an open street, so Danny ducked down by a parked truck, rolling under and transforming.

“Danny, you’re still hurt,” Sam called under it.

“Not when I’m in ghost form!” Danny replied quickly. “Gotta-go-call-me-later-bye!”

He flew away, leaving the two of them behind.

Sam looked over at Tucker, and neither of them said anything at first.

“Come on,” she said at last. “My parents are out, so we can use my place to try and track things from a distance.”

“Movie theater, here we come,” Tucker mumbled.

—

Chapter Text

—

He hadn’t ever really thought about the ways emotions were physical experiences until that journey to Gotham. Happiness had simply just been the thing that made him laugh, and made his day better. Anger was a hum all over that made him eager to fight. Sadness was… it sucked. He didn’t like it.

Fear settled through him on the flight to Gotham. It was like every inch of him was being microwaved bit by bit, and like he was slowly boiling alive.

Danny had made a dangerous enemy that was out to kill someone to get at him. He knew the enemy was making his move. Two simple, tiny little facts that made it feel like every upcoming few minutes were about to change everything, and if Danny didn’t make it in time it could end everything.

The journey passed in a haze. By the time he got to Gotham’s natural portal he was rocketing faster than he’d ever moved, and every nerve was on such wildly high alert he had to settle down the panic just to focus on his ghost sense.

There–that way.

Danny blasted towards it at top speeds, throwing the alley into disarray from the wake and phasing intangibly through buildings and not caring if his ghost form was seen. Speed was all that mattered.

He didn’t find the Harald before Harald found someone to attack.

Miraculously… the attack wasn’t over, and his target wasn’t dead.

“Hey,” Danny bellowed, screeching to a halt as he took the scene in. “Pick on someone your own size!”

The dilapidated street was in chaos. A couple of cars had been destroyed, windows were shattered all along the street, and people on the sidelines were in the middle of fleeing.

Harald was standing twenty feet opposite to a much more human figure. The details of the latter sank in slowly, and when the smooth-shell helmet faced him, Danny wondered if his eyes were playing tricks.

“A hunter’s patience is inexhaustible, but I must say this dreary, uninspired hunt has taxed this refrain to its greatest limits,” Harald sneered. “I will enjoy slaughtering your kindred, and taking the highest joys in bleeding you for every undeserved hour wasted.”

Danny glared at him, tearing his eyes away from Red Hood. “Dude. No one asked you to go on this stupid self-inflicted quest in the first place. This is completely your own fault.”

“What the hell are you two talking about?” Red Hood shouted from the side.

“He’s been on my case about killing someone for weeks,” Danny shouted back without looking. “Just stay out of this, and I’ll take care of him and you can go fight with the bats or something.” And with any luck his relative was taking this chance to hide.

Harald had already drawn his rapier, but now he flourished it in a violent salute, and the motion sent his fur coat rippling like a storm was brewing around the sword.

“Prepare yourself,” he snarled.

And instead of attacking Danny, he charged at the Red Hood. Danny raced to intercept, and he was fast, but a crazed Gotham criminal was apparently even faster on the draw, because bullets filled the air and forced Danny to phase intangible.

It didn’t stop Harald, who got close enough that his first slice cleaved through the gun barrels like hotdogs. Red Hood was already reacting by Harald’s second slice, and he almost dodged it completely. He was ducking low, and the slice hit the arm he’d brought up to block, clipping the helmet beyond the arm deeply.

“Fuck,” Red Hood shouted.

Danny plowed into Harald from the side, then twisted in a dizzying, completely unplanned fling that successfully slammed Harald into the ground, where he turned the hit into a roll and leapt back to his feet.

Danny stayed on him, shooting ectoblasts to keep him on the defensive. Harald blocked the first, then darted around them to come closer–

Red Hood charged past him and ripped his smoking helmet off, flinging it at the oncoming ghost. Almost before it left his hand it exploded, forcing Danny back in the blast and leaving stars in his eyes.

“Holy shit, what was–”

Red Hood whirled on him and punched him with everything he had. Danny slammed up an ecto-shield, eyes huge, and the fist hit with a ringing gong that he’d never heard before.

“Dude–I don’t want to fight you!” Danny snapped.

“Fuck you,” Red Hood snarled. For the first time it sank in that he’d thrown his helmet, and now Danny could see he was wearing a domino mask under it, had a green glow around the eyeholes, and a shockingly familiar face.

Every thought left Danny’s head. There wasn’t even comprehension–he just stared.

The outside world slammed in from the side in the form of Harald with another rapier-led charge, and without missing a beat Red Hood stepped off the blade’s target-line and swung a haymaker that landed in ways his guns had completely failed to. It was bitterly vindicating that it caught Harald almost as off guard as it did Danny, though Harald snaked the blade around to try to cut him up close. Red Hood threw the attack off, dancing back like he was some kind of damn ghost-attacking ninja.

Danny didn’t waste a moment. He clapped his hands and threw a wave of ice at Harald from behind, forcing him to dodge completely, and Red Hood was just as willing to tag-team it by attacking the space Harald backed into.

It became a twisted kind of teamwork. Sure, Red Hood started targeting Danny if he came too close, but if they kept Harald between them, they took advantage of every opening the other gave them. Harald caught on fast and gained altitude, so Danny flew higher, driving him back down. Even when it didn’t close the distance completely, Hood found things to leap off of for those last few feet.

Harald’s sword glowed wickedly bright. Danny shouted a warning, throwing up a shield, and Red Hood ripped a stop sign out of the ground, hurling it at him. Lightning hit it like a force of nature, and Danny felt the blast through the shield, but when he opened his eyes, the sign post was glowing with heat, Red Hood was only slightly smoking, and he was already moving in for another hit.

Danny beamed, and maybe the fight was turning finally in their favor.

Then Harald dove for Red Hood and dove intangibly into him, and Danny and Hood both shouted in alarm. Hood convulsed, and the green light around his eyes seared with intensity, and some indescribable pressure in the air dropped.

“Fuck–”

Danny lunged for him, trying to rip the ghost out before he could do any harm, before recoiling at the touch. Screams filled his ears like ringing from a concussion, and his hands felt numb, and an unfamiliar kind of steam was rising from them, like they’d been half turned to icy vapor.

Red Hood’s face contorted in an uncharacteristic jeer, and a ghostly rapier formed in his hand. Every movement was an obvious struggle, and something was wrong in ways that screamed like a pressure tearing both of them apart like cosmic magnets forcing together and repelling and forcing again, and still Harald had enough control to bring the rapier slowly up towards his own neck.

Danny couldn’t touch him directly. He formed a sword-like stick out of ice and slammed it against the blade, and it was a good barrier, but the ectoplasm was starting to cut through it.

“It would be tragic if it weren’t so pathetic,” Red Hood/Harald croaked. “That you never had time to know what little the universe left you.”

“Shut up,” Danny hissed, and without lowering the ice-sword he slammed his knee into Red Hood’s gut. It was like a cross between having his leg fall asleep and plunged into a vat of acid, and Danny cried out, almost collapsing. He lost his stance with the sword, and now the rapier had pinned it against Red Hood’s neck, biting deep. Any moment now the ice would snap, and his neck would cut open wide.

Red Hood/Harald leaned over him, face split in a smile.

“Say goodbye to–”

FWOOM!

Something exploded, and everything was roaring, and when Danny could think again he was sprawled on the street staring up at the smog.

“Holy shit, what was that?” Danny wheezed, propping himself up. Red Hood was also sprawled, far away, and Danny panicked when he saw blood at his neck. Then Red Hood coughed, dragging in a ragged breath, and he sat up without his head rolling off. He was bleeding but he was intact.

He was okay.

Relief crashed over him like a waterfall, and while he was grinning like an idiot, movement tore his gaze away. Then the relief was being shoved aside, because Batman was stalking slowly towards him through the smoke, and he was carrying a huge, silvery launcher with the name Axiom etched on the side. Danny had never seen anything like it, but it wasn’t hard to guess who caused the explosion.

Wait–where was Harald-?

There was no real warning. Maybe a shift of light, or of his ghost sense, or a microsecond as he watched the others see it happen, but all at once there was an all consuming agony as a rapier pierced right through him from behind, skewering him through his stomach. Danny screamed, trying to shift like he could escape it just by moving, and Harald ripped the blade out through his side, scattering ectoplasm like burning gelatin.

Danny fell to all fours, and Batman brought up his fuck-everything-up-launcher, but the mask’s eyes were locked on Danny, and he hesitated.

Red Hood didn’t. He fell on Harald with a roar and a whirl of fists that caught Harald while he was distracted, and this time he kept up the barrage.

As soon as they were clear, Batman brought up the launcher, following them. He didn’t fire, and Danny wouldn’t have expected the hesitation from a ghost hunter, but apparently Batman cared about friendly fire even when the targets were ghosts and criminals.

Danny wasn’t going to question it. Every second of existence was agony, but he grabbed his thermos from where he’d stowed it in his chest intangibly, and he ripped off the cap.

Harald was still strong enough to block most of Red Hood’s hits. He wasn’t strong enough to keep himself stabilized under the force of a Fenton Thermos’s ectoplasmic-well, and Red Hood threw himself back when the beam caught Harald up in it. Harald screamed in rage, trying to resist, but it was already over, and he was dragged back no matter the struggle.

Danny slammed the cap back on, and the light vanished, leaving his night vision ruined and the street seeming unnaturally dark by comparison. His side wasn’t gushing ectoplasm, and he put a hand over it as he floated off the ground.

“Stop–” Batman was right over him, and Danny flinched under his stern glare. “You’re too injured to move safely.”

“I didn’t ask you,” Danny shot back unsteadily, clenching his free fist.

“You need a hospital. Stay down–”

“Hospitals are for living people,” Danny snapped, inching back when Batman looked like he'd reach for him. “Just give me some duct tape and I'll be fine!”

The street was empty besides the three of them. Red Hood was behind him by a dozen feet, and Danny felt raw and somehow unbelievably crowded.

Red Hood moved abruptly, and Batman’s attention shifted. “Don’t move,” he snarled, harsher.

Red Hood whirled, and somehow there was a fresh, undamaged gun in his hand, and Batman surged past Danny so suddenly he lost concentration on floating, jostling his injury. When the agony faded enough that he could pay attention again, Batman and Red Hood were fighting.

Danny’s brain felt like soup, and he shook it hard, trying to make sense of anything but the roar of gunshots that weren’t doing anything to Gotham’s dark knight.

Danny needed to leave, to flee home and try to stitch himself up. He needed to stay, to figure out why Red Hood looked exactly like him and how they’d ever meet again. He needed to get the hell out of here before Batman decided what to do with a violent ghost in his city, because in the end that’s all anyone like him would probably care about–

He felt sick, and then Robin arrived, and there was shouting he couldn’t really make sense of. Robin was yelling at Red Hood and Batman. Batman yelled back, everyone was shouting in between gunshots.

Then things were moving. Then suddenly a muscled leather jacket was clamping Danny against his chests and a burning gun’s barrel was jammed against his temple, and Danny’s world sharpened crystal clear as he tuned in to the immediate danger around him.

Red Hood was roaring, “I will fucking blow his brains out and break his neck if you don’t back the hell off right now!”

Like idiots, Batman and Robin both recoiled and held their hands up placatingly, and Danny stared at them. He’d been taken–hostage? And it was working?

Everyone was still shouting. Danny brought his hands up and grasped Red Hood’s arm, readying to hurl him aside even despite his injury.

Red Hood tightened his hold on Danny as he felt him tense, and he hissed against the back of his neck, “Play along!”

Well.

This was all stupid and baffling and Danny’s brain was still struggling to stay clear, but Danny’s grip eased, because ever since the gun had come up Batman and Robin had stopped trying to get close. They were obviously waiting for their chance, and when Red Hood stepped back they tried stepping forward, but when Red Hood fired a warning shot they only took half a step for his next step.

The next move jostled his wound, and Danny’s vision whited out. He could distantly tell they were moving, and everything hurt almost too much to think, and he scraped the last bits of himself that had it together enough to work to turn both him and Red Hood invisible. He felt the man stumble in surprise, and Danny felt his throat hurting like he was shouting as the pain rose, and then the movement steadied in a regular run.

—

When Red Hood put Danny down, they were in a warehouse. Danny had managed to cling to his ghost form, somehow, but ectoplasm had dribbled down his side, and his entire body felt like it was shaking sickly. He wanted to go home.

“Hold still,” Red Hood snapped, and Danny stopped trying to sit up. The other teenager had a huge first aid kit in his hands, and he was rummaging through it with professional intent.

Danny leaned back. Red Hood brought out a bottle of rubbing alcohol and upended it over the wound, and Danny recoiled, bracing to scream. It didn’t burn more than a faint shadow of what it would have been in his human form, and Danny stilled again uneasily, lips thin.

Red Hood said nothing, bringing out another bottle. He poured it directly into the wound, then pressed the edges of it together, and the next thing Danny knew he was doubled over and wheezing, and ectoplasm had frothed up at the edges of the injury.

Red Hood looked at the bottle he was holding. “Guess liquid bandages don’t work.”

“It’s not blood!” Danny keened feebly. “Don’t–don’t do chemicals!”

Red Hood breathed impatiently out through his nose, turning back to the kit, and after a few seconds he held up a medical stapler. When Danny just stared, he pressed the wound edges together again, and Danny shrieked as he stapled it closed.

And then it was over. Danny reeled, trying to catch his breath, and Red Hood pushed the kit aside, staring at him.

Danny stared back.

It was his own face on someone else. There were slight differences–very slight, like he’d seen more sun recently, or like he’d spent the last year exercising while Danny had spent it only being active in his ghost form. But the hair color was the same, the nose was the same, the chin was the same, the cheekbones were the same.

Red Hood waved at him, breaking the moment. “So what the hell is any of this supposed to be?”

“Um,” said Danny.

“You look like me–except for all of this glowy white-haired new stuff. That other ghost screamed about ‘killing your last living kin’, and we look like we’re goddamn twins.”

Was it too late to have second thoughts about being twins with a murderous criminal? Unfortunately, yes.

Red Hood was watching his expression closely, and whatever he saw while Danny hesitated had him whispering, “This is bullshit.”

“I didn’t ask for it either,” Danny rasped.

“Shut up,” said Red Hood. “That’s not…”

He fell silent, and Danny looked away.

“There isn’t anyone else left, is there?” Danny asked, already knowing the answer.

“Fuck, no,” Red Hood answered bitterly. “Willis died a while back. Sheila–it’s–” He broke off, gnashing his teeth. Then he stood up abruptly, vibrating with emotion that set Danny on edge. “They’re all gone, and good fucking riddance to goddamn fucking trash.”

“Okay,” Danny whispered, watching Hood start to pace.

Red Hood stopped abruptly, rounding on him. “No one ever mentioned a goddamn twin. How come no one ever said anything?”

“I don’t know,” Danny said helplessly. “It looks like my records are all screwed up. Maybe I got separated as a little kid, or just–” He tried to laugh, but emotion caught it in his throat to come out a cough, or maybe a sob. “--lost in the hospital.”

“That’s a bullshit answer,” Red Hood snarled.

“I know!” Danny snapped back. “And it’s all I’ve got!”

Red Hood was silent.

“You sure it wasn’t because you were born dead?”

“I wasn’t–” Wait, maybe he should’ve considered that as a possible cover story.

“Don’t lie,” Red Hood warned.

Danny glared. “I only died like a while ago. I wasn’t born like this, it just happened.”

“Oh.”

Silence swept over them, and Red Hood clenched his fists, filling with some emotion Danny couldn’t parse out.

“Well… you’re still dead,” Red Hood said quietly. “If you’re a ghost, then you’re more dead than I am now.”

“Oh,” said Danny. “... Yeah, I–I mean, I guess so. There’s something weird about you, but–yeah. I’m dead.”

The silence was heavy, and loud.

“A dead ghost that needed staples,” Red Hood mumbled.

“Well, another ghost injured me,” said Danny very reasonably. “Ghosts can hurt other ghosts worse than anything else.” Mostly because they were really strong, of course, but Danny wasn’t going to say that.

“Oh.”

Danny looked at the ground, and then at his brother.

He didn’t seem to know what to do with himself. Danny didn’t either. They were brothers, but they didn’t know anything about each other except one of them was dead and the other was a criminal mastermind that kept ending up in the news.

Danny should go. Red Hood was dangerous. Red Hood was–

Danny couldn’t help it. “You don’t have to tell me, but can I just ask what you’re actually called so I’m not calling you Red Hood in my head all the time?”

Red Hood looked at him, then touched his domino mask. Then he picked up a pad from the first aid kit, using it to work the mask’s paste off, and when it was done he looked at Danny and said, “I’m Jason.”

He jumped as Danny lurched upwards, flooded with indignation and just about shouting,. “You’re telling me you’re Jason?!”

“What?!” Jason barked, wrong-footed and defensive. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?!”

“I don’t believe it, this is insane.” He giggled a little hysterically, collapsing back on the dirty floor. “This explains everything! Oh my god.”

“The fuck is wrong with you?”

“Sorry–I felt like every time I went to Gotham I was going crazy, Batman and some weird kid kept calling me Jason, I was about to lose it.”

“You’re weird,” Jason informed him. “None of that is funny. Those bastards have ruined my life more than you’ll ever understand.”

“Right,” said Danny, humor fading. ”Uh. Sorry.” His brother was a criminal with a vendetta against Gotham’s vigilantes, and maybe he shouldn’t get too comfortable.

At least his side wasn’t gaping open anymore. If anything, the stability from the staples made it just this side of bearable to float into an upright position, straightening himself carefully.

“So–what’s your name?” Jason demanded, unfolding and refolding his arms.

“Danny.”

“Huh.”

After a few seconds the conversation seemed to die, and they lapsed into another silence.

Jason broke it this time. “So that’s it, then. I have a dead brother, and I only find out after it’s too late.”

“Hey, at least you’re alive,” Danny said calmly, and for the first time, Jason looked away. Then Jason looked at his shoes.

Danny held his breath for a moment, looking down at his own shoes. So many dangerous assholes knew his face and name and home address, but all of them were ghosts. Jason was human, and he was a very human kind of danger.

Danny wanted a brother, but if he told him the truth about his existence, and that he was alive, and how if anyone were to just look then they might actually find something to follow to a home with parents and a sister who were all of them vulnerable–

–It was too dangerous. He had already been too reckless as it was. Jason was a murderer who kept ending up on the news for killing people. He was nice now, but–

Danny just wished…

… Well, it was too late for that. And he knew better than to ever wish anything out loud.

“Hey,” he breathed instead, and Jason snapped his eyes back up. “I’m sorry all of this was too late, but I’m glad I got to meet you. Even with everything else.”

His words took a few seconds to sink in, and Jason nodded silently, looking away. Danny smiled tightly, waiting to see if he’d say anything. When it didn't seem like he would, Danny held back a sigh of disappointment, and shrugged, rolling his shoulders.

“Well, I guess I’d better–”

“--Wait,” Jason interrupted.

Danny waited, trying not to do anything obvious like holding his breath, but Jason opened his mouth, and then closed it.

Then: “Are you going? Like–’gone for good’ going, or are you coming back?”

Danny didn't have a heart when he was in ghost form, but his chest felt tight and overfull, and his throat ached.

Jason was dangerous. He was nice now, but Danny’d known people who were nice before they were cruel.

… and yet, Jason was a teenager with his face, the brother Danny never got to know. Neither of them have anyone else left. And–just then, he didn’t seem so bad. Maybe he had bad press like Danny did. Maybe–

“I could probably come back,” he found himself saying.

Jason didn't smile at the answer, but something eased in his expression, and he looked away. “Yeah. Okay.”

Danny smiled weakly.

—

Weeks later…

“Your brother made the Gotham Gazette’s front page yesterday,” Sam informed him, putting her lunch tray next to his.

Danny winced. “Oh… Um. For… donating to charity and petting puppies?”

“Hah,” Tucker said around his hamburger. “Good one.”

“The reporters are saying there was a really big shootout.” Sam went on, unboxing her salad. She picked up her fork, then hesitated. “Like, big big. It’s front page because he’s ‘changing the face of crime’ and the police are creating a big new taskforce to deal with it.”

“Do you think they’ll be any better than our local ghost task force?” Tucker wondered.

“I mean, it’s Gotham,” Sam said.

Danny dragged his hands across his face, shoulders slumped. “I’m still trying to catch up to what’s going on there, but I assume that means no.”

“Kind of, but also not,” Sam replied, spearing a tomato. “Gotham police are some of the most corrupt basically anywhere, so my money’s on some of them being just useless, like here, and others probably being, like, paid off or something.”

“Great,” Danny said, looking down at his hamburger. Suddenly he wasn’t as hungry.

Tucker swallowed his bite, eyeing him. “Dude…are you sure you still want to visit him this weekend? He won’t notice if you don’t, it’s not like he knows you were planning to.”

“I don’t know.” Danny picked at his fries. “I mean, it seemed like a good idea, but–maybe I’d better give it all time to cool off. He’s probably busy anyway.”

“Probably,” Sam agreed. “And you know, just because you’re blood related doesn’t mean anything has to come out of it. I mean… if my parents keep trying to control me like they do, they’re getting cut off as soon as I can.”

Danny’s head dipped closer to his plate. “I know, I know. It’s just… Like…” He raked his hand through his hair, face twisted. “For a couple of weeks there, I spent every second wondering what it would be like to have family that isn’t obsessed with ghosts, right? And then I spent a few minutes knowing someone was out there and not knowing if I’d get there in time. And then I go straight into having headline-a-week crime boy for a brother, and…”

Neither of his friends say anything for a moment, and Danny crams some fries into his mouth. (They’re cold.)

“I dunno. I just don’t want to get involved in anything that’s just going to blow up in my face on top of everything else.”

Tucker wiped his mouth, lowering his burger. “No offense, Danny, but even just emailing this guy is probably playing with matches around C-4.”

“I know!” Danny said quickly. “I know. It’s stupid. I’ll probably be too busy with whatever’s probably going down this weekend here, anyway. I keep seeing Walker’s goons any time I go to the ghost zone, and I think they’re up to something.”

“Probably,” Sam said.

Danny stared at his food, wondering if he should dump the rest of it. He ate some more fries, and shredded a packet of salt over them.

Tucker pointed at his burger. “Wanna trade that for the gummies in my bag?” Danny nodded, and he dragged the tray closer while Danny reached for his bag.

“Well, looking on the bright side,” Sam said, calling something up on her phone. The others looked up, and she showed them a picture of Red Hood. “At least we know Danny could probably get close to a bad boy aesthetic, assuming he really tried.”

Tucker choked on his burger, and Danny rolled his eyes.

Despite himself, he was smiling.

—

“Do you have everything?” Bruce asked.

Tim thought it was pretty heroic of him not to give in to the overwhelming urge to sigh.

“I’m not staying at the Tower long,” he pointed out. “I have too many ongoing cases.”

“It’s too dangerous to come back soon,” Bruce reminded him.

“So you’ve said.”

Bruce frowned at him, and Tim remained impassive under its weight. This entire plan was stupid, and he’d already made his opinion known dozens of times. Yes, the Red Hood was dangerous, and they couldn’t count on him showing any restraint if his apparent fixation with Robin came to a head. Yes, Tim was a target.

Yes, Tim was completely capable of protecting himself and Gotham but was somehow not good enough to take care of one highly enhanced killer, even with time to plan.

Tim knew better than to argue–Bruce was never going to change his mind, and the sooner he left, the sooner this stupid mess would be over.

“Tim–” Bruce called out as he stepped into the Zeta Tube, and Tim looked over. “Call me if anything happens. And keep your communicator on you at all times.”

“Don’t worry about me, Bruce,” Tim said, smiling. Then the Zeta Tube activated, and he was gone.

Bruce went back to the main computers. He’d done what he could, he had a dozen samples going through analysis right at that moment, and two of his leads were still a few hours out from it being the right time to make his ‘house calls’.

This left him with time, and with space to investigate while knowing Tim was really and truly busy.

Red Hood’s supernatural nature was obvious, as were his connections to Jason Todd and the dead boy’s ghost.

What he’d only managed to document lightly at the time was the ghost’s own capabilities–much more than those of a typical shade. His appearance had shifted the more he’d leaned into his power, until he’d been all but bursting with the seams with obvious magical energy.

Earlier that day, Bruce had gotten a tip: there was a brightly glowing ghost that was acting as a vigilante far from Gotham, one whose description sounded familiar.

Maybe this would finally shed some light on the Red Hood’s true nature–and a way to catch him that would finally disrupt his plans.

—

Having a dead brother that wasn’t around didn’t change things for Jason. He had his plans, and there was still vengeance owed to him. He wasn’t going to waste time figuring out how the hell a seance worked when having direct relatives had never brought him anything but pain.

It was easy to forget, when he was managing an entire criminal empire. Better that he did forget, given the need for focus.

Then, a random, unremarkable day months later, he was moving conspicuously heavy duffle bags into his newest safe house, and he realized he was being watched. He didn’t stop, he was too much of a professional for that, but he did reach under his jacket to take off that gun’s safety, listening.

And then–

“Hey, Jason! Are you moving somewhere?”

Jason turned, and Danny was there.

—

Chapter Text

“Mister Wayne, how simply marvellous to see you!”

“Vlad, it’s been too long!”

Bruce was hardly the first vapid behemoth to cross Vlad’s life, but he was at least one of the most socially trained. They clasped hands, shaking heartily, before Bruce clapped him on the shoulder (gently).

“I mean it,” Bruce continued, beaming. “You’ve been so caught up with your new political career, you haven’t been to Gotham in years! I don’t even know where to start catching you up.”

“Oh, I’ve kept track enough not to let Gotham’s tech centers move too far beyond us,” Vlad chuckled. “My current city of residence may be small, but our visions of Amity Park as an upcoming tech hub are most certainly strong.”

“Vlad, you flatter us!” Bruce chortled, as though the smug look in his eyes weren’t plain for all to see. “Come on, let me introduce you to Lucius. But first–Gerard! Bring my good friend Vlad part of our latest roast will you? It’s our latest blend from an obscure part of Paraguay, Vlad. I’ll admit I wasn’t sure about it, but it’s been worth every penny–”

“Oh, Mr Wayne, you do so spoil your guests.”

“Please, Vlad, you don’t think I forgot your generosity at the Gotham memorial fundraiser, did you? After that kind of generous support in Gotham’s time of need, you’re not just a guest, you’re a personal friend. Please, call me Bruce.”

The faceless employee brought them their coffee, and Vlad took his own, smile never wavering.

“Of course–Bruce.”