Chapter Text
“Is he okay?”
“I think so. He’s not breathing, at least.”
“That’s… good?”
“With our kind, it could go either way. No heart beat to check either. We just kinda need to hope he wakes up on his own.”
Jason let out a groan.
“Oh look, a sign of life! Well, you know… a sign of consciousness, at least. Hey Jason, wake up.”
Jason groaned one more time, louder, just to make it clear to whoever was bothering him that he really didn’t want to do that. Then he opened his eyes.
His pack was standing over him, or at least several members. The younger ones. They seemed to be in Danny’s basement again. Hadn’t Jason just been about to leave this place?
“Hey Jason,” Danny said, leaning in closer. “You passed out for a minute there. Are you feeling alright?”
“Yeah, I’m…fine?” Jason paused speaking halfway through. Why did his voice sound echo-y?
“Glad to hear it,” Tim said. “You think you can stand up?”
Jason nodded, and started to get up. Only, instead of using his arms to push himself onto his feet like he had been trying to do, he ended up pushing himself up into the air, and found himself hovering a foot off the ground.
“Whoa!” Jason yelled, pinwheeling his arms for a moment before he got his balance.
“Easy, you’re good,” Danny said, himself going to hover in front of Jason. “I know, a weightless body takes some adjustment at first.”
“Weightless?” Jason asked, wavering in the air.
“Um, yeah…” Danny said. He looked at the others. “Anyone happen to have a mirror?”
“On it,” Tim said. He pulled out his phone and snapped a picture. He then frowned at the result. “Nevermind, forgot that would be blurry.”
“Tt,” Damian tutted at them all in that derisive way of his. “All of you are idiots. Allow me to describe what you look like, Todd.”
“No need, brat,” Jason replied. While the others had been talking Jason had taken the opportunity to look down at himself.
He was wearing his typical Red Hood gear, except the colors were inverted. His black body armor was now bright white, the red bat on his chest a teal blue. His jacket, usually brown, was now a silver-gray. All of his gear seemed to be accounted for, just with inverted-color like his clothes.
Jason could feel that he was wearing his helmet. “What color is my helmet?”
“Glowing blueish-green,” Danny said. “It matches the bat on your chest.”
Jason nodded to himself. “Is this my…”
“Your ghost form?” Danny finished for him. “Yeah. It is. How do you feel?”
Considering that Jason had been half-convinced that he was going to transform into some kind of version of the mangled, broken boy the Joker had left him as? “Pretty frickin’ awesome.”
“Oh great,” an unfamiliar voice moaned. “There’s two of them.”
Jason had his gun in his hand and pointed at the direction of the voice before he even had a chance to think.
“Hey now.” A blond man with stubble on his face, a British accent, and a “I was over this yesterday,” attitude rolled his eyes at Jason. “I come all this way to help you guys out and this is the thanks I get?”
“Danny!” Jason’s most annoying (only) older brother appeared from behind the man, beelining it for Danny and wrapping him up in a tight hug.
“Dick!?” Danny shouted in surprise, before hugging him back. “What are you doing here?”
“I found Constantine!” Dick said proudly.
The scraggly man, Constantine apparently, snorted. “More like dragged me out of hell to fix up his precious pup. And no, that’s not an exaggeration.”
“You went to hell for me?” Danny asked, sounding both confused and touched.
“Anytime,” Dick smiled at him. “Besides, Constantine was pretty easy to find.”
Dick’s eye twitched in a way that meant he was lying, but Jason chose not to call him out on it.
While Dick turned his attention to Damian and Tim, greeting them in turn, Jason eyed Constantine. “So. You here to undo that curse you put on Danny?”
Constantine rolled his eyes again. “To be clear, he placed it on himself. I would have been fine with him agreeing to not purposefully hurt anyone from our universe. It was his choice to become a bloody pacifist.”
Everyone looked at Danny. “Oops?” he said.
“Yeah, oops,” Constantine snorted. “Let’s make this quick, shall we?”
He walked up to Danny and eyed him up and down. “Do you give your word not to cause harm to any beings?”
Danny opened his mouth, then closed it again. He seemed to think for a minute. “...I promise not to cause excessive harm to other beings, unless doing so is necessary to prevent greater harm,” he said eventually.
Constantine shrugged. “Works for me.” He stuck out his hand in a clear signal for a handshake, and Danny took it. Their hands glowed golden for a moment before fading.
“Great. Just so you know, I’ll be made aware if you break that. Any turning evil, and you’ll find yourself on a one-way ticket to hell before you can say ‘ghost.’”
“I won’t,” Danny said assuredly. “I already defeated my evil self.”
Constantine just stared at him. “Yeah, I’m not touching that.” He gave a half-hearted wave to the room. “I’ve got some business elsewhere to take care of. I assume you’re all fine getting back to your dimension?” Before anyone could say anything, he continued, “Great. Glad we could visit. Don’t contact me again.”
He turned around and started walking away, and as he did so faded until he vanished completely.
“Wow,” Jason said, whistling. “What a-”
Dick rushed over and scooped Danny back into another hug. “Danny! How do you feel?”
Danny slowly reached out a hand, rested it gently on Dick’s arm, and then pinched him.
“Hey!” Dick yelped, jumping back. “After all I did for you, this is the thanks I get?”
Danny was too ecstatic to pay him any mind. “It worked!” he said. “I can hurt other people again!”
“Yeah, maybe don’t sound so thrilled about that,” Tim said, stepping closer, Damian by his side.
“Don’t worry,” Jason said. “You do whatever you want. If that guy wants to send you to hell, he’ll have to go through me first. And if all else fails, Dick apparently knows the way, he can bring you back.”
“Little Wing’s right, there’s nothing to worry about,” Dick said. He smiled at Jason, looked back at Danny, and then did a double take back to Jason. “Little Wing! Are you trying out a different look? And did you grow taller?”
Because he could, Jason floated over to Dick, and punched him through the head.
Dick leaped back. “Hey, that’s cold!” he complained. “Also, rude. Also also, is there something you need to tell me, Little Wing? What did I miss while I was gone?”
Jason and Danny smirked at each other. “Oh, nothing much,” Danny said.
Now that Danny was out of danger, most of the pack left to go back to Gotham, though they still visited relatively frequently.
(They reported that they had been avoiding the manor at all costs, so as not to run into Bruce or Vlad. No one wanted to witness that, or worse, be put under the same kind of haze Bruce was in. According to Alfred, Vlad was “settling in.” According to the Gotham Gazette, Bruce Wayne had recently gotten into heavy metal, which explained all the loud noise and flashing lights coming from the manor.)
Tim and Tucker were working on a way to text through dimensions. They both insisted they were on the edge of a breakthrough any day now.
Damian spent most of his time visiting with Sam, training together. When he was at Danny’s, he would check in briefly with Danny before asking after Cujo. Eventually Danny just gave him a dog whistle. He didn’t see Damian quite as frequently after that, though he still came by every other week or so.
Dick stayed with Danny for three days, saying he deserved a break after everything he had been through, and that Danny time was his reward for a job well done. Since Danny owed him, he had a hard time denying him. Jazz video called one time while Dick had been in the room, and Danny introduced them. That may have been a mistake: now they made weekly phone calls to commiserate about their reckless younger siblings.
Jason stayed the longest, wanting to make sure he had fully mastered his powers before returning to Gotham. He didn’t want to be in the middle of a fight, only to lose control of something, like Danny had in his early days.
It took Jason two weeks to feel completely confident with his powers, a much faster rate than Danny had been able to achieve. Though of course, as Jason reminded him, Danny had to figure out everything on his own, and Jason had Danny there to help.
After his first transformation, control came much easier to Jason. He still had a few slip-ups in the beginning (he burned at least three rugs before he got his ecto-blasts under control) but it was nowhere near as bad as it had been before, thank goodness.
Eventually, Jason was ready to leave. He gathered his things, and he and Danny headed out to the park to say their goodbyes in private.
Before he activated his device, he wrapped Danny up in a tight hug.
“Thanks, kid,” he said gruffly. “Sorry I was a jerk before.”
“I get it,” Danny said. “It was a lot all at once. But, now that you’ve mastered your powers, you know what you can do?”
Jason released Danny and looked at him questioningly. “What?”
Danny smirked. “Haunt the hell out of the Joker.”
Jason froze, as he realized the infinite revenge possibilities that were now open to him. He laughed loudly. “Kid, you have given me literally the greatest gift I’ve ever received. What do you want in return? Name anything, it’s yours.”
“Your happiness is enough,” is something Danny did not say, because that would have been way too cheesy.
“Bring me back one of those chili dogs from that one food cart the next time you visit and we’ll call it even,” Danny said instead.
Jason gave him a thumbs-up. “You got it, kid.”
There was a screech behind them. Turning, Danny saw the squid-ghost that had given him such trouble before. It was flying around, waving its tentacles in the air, scaring off the few other people in the park. Ghosts were creatures of habit, if nothing else.
“Need any help?” Jason asked.
“Nah,” Danny said, shaking his head and transforming. “I got this.”
“That’s my pup,” Jason said. “Knock ‘em dead, kid. Well, deader.”
With a grin Danny flew off to meet the ghost. When he glanced back Jason was gone. Danny took no offense - it meant Jason trusted him enough to be able to handle himself.
Thrilled to be back in his element, Danny pulled back a fist and fired a blast, hitting the squid-ghost directly in the chest, causing it to squeal and turn to him. It waved its tentacles threateningly.
“Bring it on,” Danny said, and with a whoop of joy he did what he did best - used his powers to protect other people.
(Somewhere, in another dimension, one of the few other halfas in the world did the same.)