Chapter Text
Danny didn’t find the “baby bird.”
He found five mugging attempts, two spontaneous hauntings, one man selling “cursed pigeons” in an alley (jury’s still out on whether that was legit), and what he was pretty sure was Poison Ivy yelling at a cop car.
But no baby bird.
By the time he trudged back toward his apartment, the Gotham skyline was bleeding orange into black. The city was quiet in that Gotham kind of way—which meant the screams were just a little farther away than usual.
Danny’s boots scuffed against the cracked sidewalk, his backpack slung lazily over one shoulder. He’d changed out of his hoodie hours ago, trading it for a jacket that might have been bulletproof. (Technically ghostproof, but close enough.)
The streetlight above him buzzed, flickering green for half a second.
“Don’t start,” Danny warned it. “I already chased your weird kid-shaped anomaly all over the city. Not my fault Gotham’s full of dead people with issues.”
The light hummed once, then went still.
He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. You’re all mouth until someone threatens to unplug you.”
He was exhausted—not physically, not really. Ghosts didn’t get tired in the human way anymore. But there was something about this city that drained him. Like Gotham had too many ghosts per square mile and they all wanted to be his problem.
He pushed open the door to his apartment building, stepping into the familiar scent of burnt coffee and floor cleaner. The ghostly night clerk, an older lady with rollers in her hair, looked up from her tiny TV.
“Evenin’, sugar. You look like you wrestled a tornado.”
“Yeah,” Danny muttered, forcing a smile. “You could say that.”
He took the elevator to the fourth floor. The flickering bulb above the door blinked twice in greeting—he’d long since given up trying to fix it. It wasn’t broken. It was haunted.
Inside, the apartment greeted him like a tired sigh.
The air was cool, tinted faintly green, and his reflection in the darkened window glowed faintly around the edges.
“Home sweet haunt,” he said to no one.
No reply.
Which was weird.
Usually, Lady Gotham didn’t know how to shut up.
She was the type to whisper poetry in the pipes, hum lullabies through the vents, and startle him awake by breathing “my king” in the middle of the night like a supernatural Alexa.
Now? Nothing.
Danny set his bag down and frowned at the silence.
“Hey, city lady? You good? You haven’t monologued at me for—what, three hours? That’s a new record.”
No answer.
The radiator hissed in what could have been passive-aggressive disapproval.
“Oh, don’t you start. You’re not her.”
Still nothing.
He walked to the window, glancing out over the distant skyline. Somewhere out there, he knew Gotham’s little vigilante family was starting their nightly rooftop chaos—her birds, as she called them.
He could feel her presence hovering over the city like a fog. Faint. Distracted.
“She’s watching them again,” Danny muttered. “Of course she is.”
He sighed and leaned his forehead against the glass.
“Can’t even be mad. I’d babysit the flying trauma squad too.”
The reflection in the window flickered faintly, and for a second, he thought she might answer. Instead, the only sound was the low, constant hum of the city’s pulse.
Somewhere below, tires screeched. A gunshot. Then laughter. Gotham’s lullaby.
Danny flopped onto his couch with a groan.
“Alright, fine. Don’t talk to me. I didn’t wanna gossip about your undead bird children anyway.”
He stared up at the ceiling, the light from the street drifting over his face. His core thrummed quietly in his chest, uneasy. Whatever had caught Gotham’s attention wasn’t gone—it was just… dormant.
And he hated that.
His phone buzzed. Tucker.
Danny groaned and answered.
“Dude,” Tucker’s voice crackled through. “You sound like you got hit by a truck.”
“Close,” Danny said. “I got hit by Gotham.”
Tucker laughed. “How’s that city treating you, King Spooky?”
Danny squinted at the wall. “She’s mad at me.”
“The city is mad at you?”
“Yup.”
“…I don’t even know how to respond to that.”
“Don’t. Just accept it.”
“Right.” A pause. “You still looking for the ecto anomaly thing?”
Danny sighed. “Yeah, but I think it found me first.”
The call ended after a few more minutes of banter, but Danny didn’t move. He stayed sprawled on the couch, staring at the cracked ceiling.
Outside, Gotham murmured softly to itself—alive and dead and heavy with secrets.
He could almost hear her voice, faint but fond.
Rest, my king. My birds have need of me tonight.
Danny smiled tiredly. “Yeah, yeah. Go make sure they don’t fall off any roofs.”
The hum faded again.
He closed his eyes. For a long while, there was only quiet.
Then, from somewhere in the city, a spark of ectoplasm pulsed—soft, steady, familiar.
The baby bird’s hum.
Danny groaned into his pillow. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
Danny had just started to drift.
Not sleep—he didn’t really sleep anymore—but that nice, floaty state where the world stopped being loud for five seconds.
Then something went CRASH! outside his window.
He jerked upright, heart (core?) skipping a beat. The sound came from directly below his apartment—right under the fire escape, in the alley where raccoons and bad decisions went to die.
For a second, he thought it was just Gotham being Gotham. Maybe a mugger, or one of the local ghosts trying to get his attention.
Then he felt it.
That hum.
Low. Electric. Wrong.
The kind of frequency that made the ghost half of him sit bolt upright and hiss. It wasn’t just death. It was his kind of death. Cold. Clean. Ectoplasmic.
And beneath it—like a heartbeat underwater—
was the same hum Lady Gotham had been cooing about for days.
The baby bird.
“…oh, come on,” Danny muttered, dragging a hand down his face. “Can I go one night without supernatural nonsense under my window?”
He shuffled over to the blinds and peeked out. The alley below was a smear of shadow and trash. One flickering light buzzed above the dumpster.
Something moved down there.
Something alive.
Or… close enough.
Danny squinted. “No way.”
There was someone in the dumpster.
Not moving much. Just a limp figure half-buried in black trash bags, glowing faintly around the edges. And not like the normal, “radioactive Gotham” kind of glow. No—this was ecto-light. Pure and uncut.
Danny’s stomach dropped. “…That’s my signature.”
He wasn’t even kidding. He could feel it—his own energy woven through whoever was down there.
His power, his realm, his mark.
Guess lady Gotham wasn’t lying…
“Oh, that’s not creepy at all,” he muttered, unlatching the window. “Cool. Love that for me. Definitely not gonna regret this.”
The Gotham night hit him like a wet towel—cold, damp, and smelling faintly of cigarettes and existential dread.
Danny swung himself out the window and climbed down the fire escape, metal creaking beneath his boots.
The closer he got, the stronger the hum became. It wasn’t just ambient anymore. It was alive, resonating in his chest like a tuning fork. His ghost core practically purred in response.
“Yeah, that’s not weird or anything,” he grumbled, crouching near the edge of the last step. “I’m not freaked out. You’re freaked out.”
When he hit the ground, the temperature dropped five degrees.
His breath fogged out in faint green tendrils. The air itself thrummed with recognition.
He approached the dumpster cautiously. “Hey, uh… if you’re a zombie or a cursed raccoon, now’s the time to speak up.”
Nothing. Just a faint drip of water and the buzzing streetlight.
Danny sighed and grabbed the lid.
“Please don’t be a corpse, please don’t be a corpse…”
He lifted it.
And blinked.
Inside was a boy—maybe twelve or thirteen, dressed in dark tactical fabric and a torn cape that had seen better nights. He was bleeding from a shallow cut on his temple, his knuckles scuffed, but what made Danny’s breath catch was the green shimmer seeping from his veins.
Faint. Familiar.
Ectoplasm.
“…You’ve got to be kidding me.”
He stared for a long second, then glanced upward.
“Lady Gotham?” he hissed. “You did not just throw a child in my garbage.”
No answer. The wind rustled mockingly.
“Oh, perfect. She ghosts me now.”
He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Alright, dumpster kid. Let’s see what the hell you are.”
Danny climbed halfway in (because apparently boundaries were optional now) and checked for a pulse.
There was one—but faint, erratic, half-frozen.
The ectoplasmic resonance was worse up close. It felt like static against his skin, a broken rhythm that tugged on his core every few seconds.
It was his. His energy. His spark.
He realized, slowly, what that meant.
“Oh. Oh no.”
This wasn’t just some random Gotham kid.
This was the hum Lady Gotham had been talking about.
This was the baby bird.
And somehow, against all logic, this kid was carrying his ghost signature.
Danny sat back on his heels, staring down at the unconscious boy.
“Okay,” he said slowly. “I can explain this. I just… don’t know how.”
He glanced around the alley, like the bricks might offer suggestions.
“Step one: don’t panic. Step two: figure out why a child has your ectoplasm. Step three: definitely don’t tell anyone you found him in a dumpster.”
The kid stirred faintly, murmuring something in his sleep. Danny froze. The voice was small but sharp, like a blade dulled with exhaustion.
He said one word.
“…Mother.”
Danny blinked. “Oh no. He has parents. Of course he has parents.”
He looked skyward again. “Lady Gotham, I swear, if you set me up with an angry parent questline I will salt your gargoyles.”
A soft chuckle brushed through the wind, unmistakably smug.
He is yours as much as mine, my king.
Danny’s jaw dropped. “I—WHAT?!”
But she was gone again, fading back into the hum of the city.
He sat there for a long time, staring at the unconscious, glowing kid in his trash.
“Okay,” Danny muttered finally, exhaling. “You know what? Fine. Add this to the list.”
He stood, hoisted the kid’s limp body carefully out of the dumpster, and muttered, “Guess I’m ghost-dad again.”
The alley pulsed faintly green as he carried the boy inside.