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Danny couldn’t remember ever flying so quickly before. The doors and islands of the Zone were little more than a hapless blur in his periphery, the bright shades of green and violet wavering into an indistinct haze. Danny’s core thrummed like the awful, resonating chimes of a church bell’s dying song. It gripped at his chest, tight enough to burst through the constricting confines of his ribs. A warbling keen cloyed its way up Danny’s throat and he could do nothing to swallow it down.
All at once, Danny threw on the brakes, feeling his surroundings shift in a dizzying dip at the sudden shift in speed. Black dots floated in his vision, awful little motes that joined the endless dance of the particles that made up the Zone. He took in one deep, shaky breath after another, each tearing at his tight throat.
The thrum in Danny’s chest grew, an awful crescendo that crashed over him, shaking every inch of his ectoplasm until he felt his form ripple at the fingertips with the intensity of the emotion. Danny raised his gloves to see them more clearly, hardly able to see each individual finger through the thick tears welling over his white lashes.
Memories trickled in— flashes of bright smiles and warm laughter. Of soaring over tall city spires with the sound of a grapnel an inch behind him. Of wandering crowded streets for ice cream, listening to the endless chatter of a boy he loved like a son.
Jason— his Jay.
Danny crumpled in on himself, that keening sound coming from his core as much as his wrecked throat. There wasn’t enough air in the realms to fill his useless lungs. There wasn’t enough space to breathe the air he didn’t need. Danny clutched tightly at his arms, but could hardly feel the cold press of his fingertips through his suit.
Every inch of Danny shook as he clawed at his memories, desperately searching for that last smile that he never knew would be a last. The last laugh. The last question, one of hundreds of thousands more from the boy who loved to learn like nothing else.
His Jay— his son.
The keen grew in Danny’s chest, rising in pitch until it twisted into something far darker. A wail escaped his lips, until Danny’s entire face was scrunched up, his jaw dropped wide as he threw everything he had into the sound. It rattled his skull and shook his teeth, piercing even his own ears with the echoes of a death he knew far too intimately.
A wail of death, for death. Grief in every wavering note.
Danny could have screamed for hours— felt that he must have, for all of the agonized hurt digging its way around his core, making a nest of his unbeating heart.
Eventually, the wail stuttered in Danny’s throat and died— as most things were wont to do in his life. The sound broke through his teeth in a desperate, awful sob that wracked his frame. Danny’s eyes were shut tight, the Zone nothing but an amorphous backdrop to his grief as he clutched himself tightly and floated in the abyss, unknowing and uncaring of where he lay.
Anything could have taken him now in the state he was in. The very Zone could have swallowed Danny whole, dragging his ectoplasm to the deepest edges of its depths.
He would have allowed it to happen, if there was any chance in the universe that his death might tilt the world on its axis and bring his son home.
If only his half life was worth a fraction of that toll.
Danny gripped his legs tight to his chest, digging sharp claws into his flesh and burying his face against his knees. His throat was all knives and daggers, emotion choking each strained sob that bubbled to the surface. It wasn’t enough. Not the wail, not the aftershocks of its explosive force. There was nothing Danny could do to let the hurt building inside of his chest escape fast enough.
This grief wasn’t new. Danny had learned how to navigate it when he was fourteen and the stars were his only escape from gravity’s clawing grasp— when the fire and brimstone of his parents’ life’s work opened new doorways with the hinge of his casket.
He’d learned it again, in short order, when that same gravity came, one by one, for each person that ever mattered to his soul and dragged them six feet below the soil.
Bereavement was nothing new, not when Danny had spent more years speaking to headstones than to the people that lay beneath them.
There was a point in Danny’s life, not that long ago, when he chose to close his heart and toss away the key. Years upon years spent ignoring the warmth that still lingered at the center of his core as he fell into the ice of his colder half.
How long had Danny wandered the Zone? How far had he gone? The path he’d taken wound further than any worldly traveler could manage in several lifetimes, and most of it was little more than a hazy afterthought in Danny’s mind.
There were entire worlds Danny couldn’t remember visiting, with only trinkets and journals to tell him that he had ever been. Stories he must have known intimately at one point, yet they were all sand between his fingertips now, lost to the ever-shifting hourglass of time.
And yet Danny still remembered, in stark detail, how Tucker’s cheeks had dimpled when he smiled. The sound of Sam’s footsteps, always by his side. Jazz’s embrace, warm like nothing else.
Time had never taken those memories. Never would, even if their souls had moved on— even if Danny hadn’t.
But time had still moved, heedless of Danny digging his heels in, wishing not the first— or the last— time that he could direct its flow. Humanity became a foreign concept, the world little more than memory and emotion in the back of Danny’s mind as he lost himself to the Zone.
He’d never felt more like a ghost.
It hadn’t even been a conscious decision when he finally left the Zone.
Danny could still remember that fateful day when a dark, misshapen portal popped in front of his path and pulled him through with a sharp tug. He’d hurtled across a rainy sky, twisting to right himself beneath gray storm clouds.
In the wake of earthly wind, Danny couldn’t help but suck in a sharp breath of air.
It was Danny’s first breath in years, an awful mixture of petrichor and smog that didn’t compare to the wind that rolled off of the farmlands surrounding Amity Park.
Yet after letting his lungs still in the endless green expanse of the Zone, that breath had felt something like coming alive again.
For all the grief that kept Danny steadfast from the mortal realm for so long, it took very little to fall back into step with it. The world was as familiar as it was strange, and that warm spot at his center longed to see more of it.
Danny could still remember what it felt like to finally reach for that warmth, wondering if it would still answer his beckoning call…
Could still remember the flood of it pouring outwards like a burst dam, as though it had been desperately waiting for his embrace.
Danny hadn’t realized just how much he missed the slow beat of his own heart.
Gotham city was no Amity Park, but there were sides to the city that came close enough to breathe familiarity. The shadows stretched longer than they should, the cold bit sharper, and enough ectoplasm lingered in the air to shudder with emotion. An echo all around, inviting Danny to wander the city’s narrow alleyways with the confidence of a stray cat on its home turf.
Not even the rogues could turn him away from his newfound comfort.
Not even the shadow of a man who reminded Danny of the role he’d occupied so many years ago.
Not even when both came head to head and Danny found himself knelt before that very man, breaking every self-imposed rule to keep his distance so that he could hold his hand to the man’s side and keep his blood from spilling out over the asphalt.
Batman, he’d called him at the time.
Bruce, he called him not long after, the name sweet on his tongue.
Just as with the portal— both the one that robbed Danny of his life, and the one that robbed him of his exile— it happened quickly. Those walls Danny built up around his heart and core, determined to never hand his love freely to those that might leave, meant very little to Bruce Wayne. He stormed into Danny’s life with silent footsteps and a calculating mind, ever as passionate as Sam and as intelligent as Tucker.
Bruce came seeking answers, wishing to know what force had kept him alive on that fateful, bloody night he knew death should have claimed him. Danny gave him none of the answers he sought—
He gave him a thousand more questions instead, each just as persistently hunted after.
In time, with the nervous, slow heartbeat of someone who knew death far too intimately, Danny allowed some fraction of the mystery to falter and wane.
He never did learn his lessons without a steep cost.
For all the hesitance that Danny entered Bruce’s life with, it brought immeasurable warmth to his core to have a hand to hold in his— a voice to say his name, with love in every syllable. He loved that man with everything he had…
And he loved his sons just as fiercely. Perhaps more.
Danny had never really thought much of being a father, not with Vlad’s incessant attempts to claim him as his own, nor with the reckless neglect that shadowed his own household. Danny hadn’t even been able to keep himself alive to keep any of them alive. The mere thought of being so intimately responsible for another living being had Danny’s core thrumming uncomfortably, unsure he could ever amount to such a task.
And yet…
Though Dick was distant, ever opposed to his father’s shadow as the best of teens, and Jason little more than a scrap of a thing freshly plucked from the alleys of Gotham— Danny loved both more than he could say.
Neither shared Bruce’s blood, but both of them were his in all of the ways that mattered, and Danny readily shared that role. Perhaps it was the ghost in him, knowing how intimately bonds forged between souls when thoughts of family graced the mind. He’d missed that more than anything, grieving his own severed bonds at the footsteps of headstones that could not answer his call.
It did not take long at all for Danny to feel the tug of those bonds between his new love and the sons that he cared for. Perhaps it was their dangerous lifestyle that echoed his own, or perhaps it was simply how easily he fell into step with the manor and its inhabitants.
All Danny knew was that in a few short months every bit of his core belonged to that man and his two sons.
With every devoted word on Bruce’s tongue, every thoughtful conversation with Dick, and every laugh shared with Jason they became his— and he theirs.
His love. His boys. It was never perfect— nothing in Danny’s life could ever be so clean and simple— but it was his.
All three of them… three, always three… always three…
Where was Danny now? Where had he been then? Nothing mattered more to him in the cosmos than those three names which encompassed his heart so fully.
Bruce. Dick. Jason.
Three names, closer to his core than the ectoplasm that made up the icy marble itself.
Bruce. Dick. Jason.
Three… always three…
Bruce. Dick… Jason.
Three… now two.
Danny wasn’t even sure when he stopped sobbing, the slow, uneven breaths just as awful as a substitute in their absence. His core felt more heart than ice at the moment, an awful staccato of reverberations that squeezed tightly at his center.
He wouldn’t be surprised if it cracked under the force.
Something far colder than Danny’s own ice trickled through his body, finding purchase in every inch of his being. Slowly, tentatively, he opened his eyes.
Perhaps, in some kinder universe, Danny might wake in the bed he shared with Bruce, the man he loved nestled beside him and his son still sleeping fitfully, close enough that Danny could hear the gentle beat of his resting heart if he strained his ears enough.
The universe was never so kind.
The green abyss of the Zone stretched on before Danny, the ectoplasm of its neverending sky blown in errant wisps in a long arch before him. There must have been an island nearby, now reduced to nothing more than drifting bits of stone and dust.
For all the hurt cloying at Danny’s chest, his core felt in as many pieces.
The ice filling Danny from top to bottom spread out until it licked at the ectoplasm surrounding him, flecks of snow and ice joining the broken bits of island. He could only stare ahead, a discordant buzz of static in Danny’s ears as the cold ate away at the warmest parts of himself and left a yawning emptiness in its wake.
Danny had known grief before. Tucker, Sam, Jazz— himself.
He had known it, so surely, and yet no amount of experience could have prepared Danny for the moment he felt one of those new bonds tethered to his core flutter, rattle, and snap .
He’d been in the Zone when it happened, in the Far Frozen surrounded by friends, three weeks into a trip Danny had been reluctant to take in the first place. He’d been so nervous, so afraid that something might happen to his little family in his absence. Bruce had assured Danny everything would be fine, that they’d all be there waiting for him once he returned. Danny chose to believe him, trusting in his love as much as he trusted in the wards and shades he’d set about Gotham to watch over and protect his family.
Those safety nets meant very little across the sea.
Danny had been so far away— further than the stretch of the ocean, or even the stars shining overhead… He’d promised to take Jason flying as soon as he got back home. It had been too long since they escaped the city and got a good look at the stars, just the two of them.
A fresh wave of emotion clawed its way up Danny’s throat, the broken whimper that escaped him a mere echo of that first, splitting scream he let out in the Far Frozen. It had been enough to rattle the mountainsides to their base and shatter ice.
Frostbite had tried to grab him, to console him—
He was beyond consolable.
Danny’s hands found their way into his hair, sharp nails digging roughly at his white locks. He felt a dig into his scalp and doubled down on the pressure, drawing ectoplasm to his fingertips.
It was something— something to feel beyond the empty pressure consuming his core.
Something like stepping foot in his parents’ lab once more, holding a hazmat suit that was more white than black. Like staring into the tunnel of the portal, not knowing what lay in the dark.
Danny should have known that Jason, who followed too readily over the rooftops and held weapons with too much skill for a boy his age, would share a fate far too similar to his own.
A brilliant star, flickering too brightly—
Gone.
Danny wished, more than anything, that he could show Jason the stars again. Just one last promise— one last chance to stay by his boy’s side and see his warm smile. If he could only turn back time a fraction and stay… If only…
Danny’s head spun as he dug his nails deeper into his scalp, beads of ectoplasm rolling down his gloves.
Danny knew that the universe was cruel, that it took and took without remorse or care for the gentle lives cradled in its endless womb. Time, just as endless and certain, could not waver for one lost soul. Clockwork would never allow it, as he had never allowed it for anyone Danny lost before.
Tucker. Sam. Jazz.
His love seemed to come in threes, trios of names carved into the cold surface of his core.
Bruce. Dick …
“Jason,” Danny whispered aloud, the name rough and stuttered. “Jason,” he whimpered, hardly able to speak it past the threat of another sob.
He had failed his son. One more failure, one more death dogging Danny’s heels—
And yet he remained, ever the sole survivor on a sinking ship with no sign of land.
Yet… Danny wasn’t alone this time around.
He could still see the hollow look in Bruce’s eyes— feel it reflected in his own as they skittered from the man he loved to the tiny child he held. Jason was always so lively and fidgety, never one to hold still. A bouncing leg, tapping fingers, a hand running through his curls…
He hardly looked himself in Bruce’s arms.
The body was too small, too fragile. His beautiful curls were plastered to his forehead with blood, and the suit he wore with such pride stained just as red. There was nothing to him, nothing beyond broken bones and a still heart.
(So still.)
By the time Danny reached out to touch his blood-stained cheek, Jason’s skin was already colder than his own.
Jason was not Danny’s son in blood, not even on paper, but nearly three years had been more than enough time for the kid to wriggle his way into Danny’s core and find a place there all his own. He was his son in every way that mattered, and had he or Bruce ever worked up the courage to exchange rings and vows, Danny would have gladly taken the Wayne name to share it with his boy.
His boy, gone— more distant than the stars he’d never get to share with him ever again.
The ice surrounding Danny strengthened, seeming to expand in the empty, glacial pit of his core with something new and dangerous. A simmering anger, one he hadn’t felt since the collapse of the Fenton portal. It grit at Danny’s teeth and pulled his hands into tight fists that strained at the rubber of his gloves. A cold beyond cold grew inside until it burned . If ever there was a moment for him to breathe the fire of a dragon like Dora, it was now.
Danny was flying again, hurtling back through the Zone, through the shattered remnants of the island. His core squeezed and thrummed, a war drum beating a furious tattoo the likes of which his heart had never known. The cold splintered into sharp fractals down his veins, burning icy frostbite at his fingertips. Danny could hardly see where he was going— hardly cared. He let the energy flood his hands and explode outwards, sending shot after shot into the abyss around him.
Dying stars weren’t nearly as explosive and striking as the light show pouring off of Danny now. Islands fell to his fury, ectoplasm froze in his ire. His form shifted and twisted, more monster than man as his voice teetered on the edge of a second wail. He screamed enough to shake the heavens— enough that the whole Zone must have felt some fraction of his grief carried on the sound. If any ghosts witnessed his outburst, none stayed in the wake of it. Even the little blob ghosts that tittered endlessly through the realms had fled, leaving Danny alone in a void of his own making.
For a long moment, surrounded by nothing but shattered rubble and endless waves of green, Danny’s mind wandered to those long years spent traipsing the far corners of the realms. The blur of travel had been a soothing salve that allowed his thoughts to drift away, just as aimless and careless as his unplanned route.
After all, it was death that had set him on that first journey. One last death that shattered what little tethers kept Danny anchored to his old haunt.
Jazz was the last bastion he had in Amity, her smile so shaky but no less warm in the end. Danny had held her hand, gripping a little too tightly, as though doing so might ground her to the earth for a few more moments.
“I love you.” Those were her final words, as though Jazz had rationed out her every last breath to ensure what echoed of her voice was filled with as much love. Danny had repeated those three words like a mantra— like a prayer. His brow to hers, those three words pouring off of his tongue over and over, even as the beat of her heart slowed and came to a shattering stop.
Love, always in threes.
Danny tried to think of the last words he spoke to Jason. He wished he could say it was something as warm as an ‘I love you’, but for all the scattered thoughts in his head, he couldn’t be sure .
All Danny knew was that Jason had not died in anyone’s arms. There was no soft ‘I love you’ to shut his eyes, nor warm hands to cradle him to rest. Each came too late, with nothing but a memory to receive them.
Bruce had been too late. Minutes— mere minutes, each second more precious than the last.
Danny had come even later, only three broken words strong enough to make it past the tight clench of his throat.
“I’m so sorry.”
Too little, too late, but Danny couldn’t stop that small apology as it doubled over into many more, a mantra as desperately spoken as the one that carried Jazz to rest.
He wanted to hold his boy, but Bruce wouldn’t let go; Danny wasn’t sure if he could. His love never did handle death well. Even once Danny shared his other half, letting Bruce understand a fraction of the ectoplasmic world that lingered beneath the surface, it did nothing to stymie the old grief that had led him to climb mountaintops and don his cowl.
Danny understood him, in that sense.
Yet for all Danny understood his love, he was not prepared for Bruce to finally look him in the eyes with distant blues, a quiet request on his lips.
“Can you find him?” he had asked in a desperate whisper.
Those words echoed in Danny’s mind now, kindling to the cold fire rushing through every drop of ectoplasm in his form. He had no energy left to wail, only enough to let out cracked shrieks, more static and Ghostspeak than anything of real substance.
“Can you find him?”
As if Danny wouldn’t try, as if he hadn’t three times before. As if Bruce needed to ask .
That was the worst of it all, Danny thought. The chance was so infinitesimally small, hardly there at all, but he knew he would try. It would take time for anything resembling a core to form, but he would look.
And Danny knew he wouldn’t find anything. He knew it with the same certainty he felt when Tucker and Sam first passed. There weren’t words to describe what Danny felt— it was more instinct than rationale. There was just this… sense that they were out of reach, as if he were a spider sitting upon invisible threads stretching throughout the Zone, fully aware that his net had failed to capture any trace of their essence.
Danny tentatively reached for that thread he felt for Jason, once so lively and strong— now only a raw wound. A missing limb. A loss far worse.
“Can you find him?”
Those words shook Danny to his core, just another lancing jab to something already so fragile. He hadn’t been able to give Bruce an answer. The only words he had were too raw and explosive, too many hurtful things teetering on the edge of his tongue. Danny’s core had buzzed fit to burst, anger and hurt winding through him in equal measure.
Why did Bruce have to ask for the impossible?
Danny’s hands fell to his sides, still gripped into tight fists. Glacial spikes surrounded him, sharp spires thrown helter-skelter in every which way. A forest of swords, the ectoplasm surrounding them icy with the chill. His anger bounced from one target to the next, resting for too long on Bruce’s failures before falling to his own. He knew the risks his family took each day. Danny knew, and yet he’d never stopped them. He let those echoes of his past play out every time Jason set his mask over his eyes, and never once had Danny tried to pull it away. He’d trusted Bruce’s teachings and careful planning. He’d trusted his wards even more, his sigils and the ghosts that haunted the city always a buffer to help protect them from the worst .
So much for keeping his family safe this time around. One cautionary tale should have been enough.
The green of the Zone drifted all around, the color too bright and glaring to Danny’s puffy eyes. It stretched on forever, nothing standing out to guide the way, yet he knew exactly where he was. With a shaky, warbling sigh, Danny turned around. His internal compass knew that Gotham lay behind him, the portal he used nestled at the heart of an island filled with ruins that echoed the city’s shape and structure. No matter how far he went, home would always call him back.
(Amity just as much.)
Danny couldn't stay in the Zone forever— wouldn't. This wasn't like the last, when he had nothing left to return to but headstones. Amity was a haunting memory, the town a hollow reminder of the past, but Gotham… Gotham still had Bruce, Dick— even Alfred, more father than butler that he was. Danny had fled to let out his outburst somewhere his wail wouldn’t level entire cities and destroy more lives, but now…
He still had to bury his child.
His child, so bright and full of wonder… taken too soon.
Taken.
Danny’s anger boiled over, all of it pinholing onto one face. There wasn’t enough guilt in the universe for him to forget that, for all his failures, one lone man had robbed Jason of his life.
Danny’s breath hitched as he wondered, with awful, sinking dread if the last sound Jason heard was a laugh.
His form rippled at the notion, claws and teeth elongating as his core stuttered out a discordant buzz. It had been a long time since Danny let his emotions truly take over, throwing caution and restraint aside to embrace the power humming throughout his ectoplasm. It was dangerous and other, something he’d fought years to control that he now allowed to freely rush across his skin.
Danny was no stranger to revenge. After all, it was no accident that shut down the Fenton portal, nor one that razed the last GIW facility to the ground (and deeper). There was a time when Danny tried his damndest to make peace and balance, not dissimilar to Bruce’s own ideology, but Danny had learned time and time again that some people did not deserve mercy.
He did not take life lightly, his or any other. There were prices that came with blood— burdens that would forever weigh his shoulders.
Set on his course for Gotham, still more claws and teeth than the man Jason or even Bruce knew, Danny thought that he’d take on any burden for them.
His anger was sharper than any blade, all of it directed ahead as Danny threw himself across the Zone with one goal in mind. Before the night was out, Joker would join the cemetery he had done his best to fill.
Danny would not bury his child while his killer still walked the earth.
~*~
After the endless green of the realms, Gotham’s cloudy night sky pressed against Danny’s senses like a fog. It was raining, cold droplets carried on a colder wind, too chilly for late April.
Not nearly as cold as Danny’s thrumming core.
There was a peacefulness to Gotham that Danny often saw, quiet little corners where the shadows were at their darkest and the spirits at their calmest. They faded now, seeming to shrink back against the aura of Danny’s unbridled rage.
His eyes wandered over the tops of the skyscrapers, finding the distant roads that wound towards the manor. Danny could practically feel the grief that radiated from their home, the emotion permeating the air like the crackle of storm-heavy clouds.
Thunder shook the sky above, seeming to echo Danny’s thoughts. It did nothing to quiet the buzz of his core, the static that prickled across his arms only serving to worsen the sensation. On any other day, Danny would be home to escape the storm. He’d bundle up on the couch in his favorite blanket with a hot cup of cocoa in hand and Jason snuggled up beside him.
It hadn't taken Jason long to discover just how uncomfortable thunderstorms made Danny. It was shortly after Bruce and he began dating, when Danny was a stranger to their household who Jason regarded with distrust. He was so new to the manor himself, so small and scrawny— far too alike Danny for his comfort. There was a wariness about his features, and a hesitance to accept comfort. He ate his food like a man starved, as though at any moment someone might yank the plate away.
He'd sat down cautiously on the couch, sitting as far away as he could with his body turned towards Danny. He'd watched him more than the television.
Weeks went by like that, with Jason sticking close enough to haunt Danny's every move when he visited the manor, but always keeping just enough distance that he could escape if needed. He wasn't shy about his distrust, either, telling Danny on more than one occasion that he'd hunt him down if he did anything funny.
Danny took it all in stride, doing what he could to try and make the boy comfortable. It felt something like soothing an agitated cat, hoping that with enough time and distance the creature would come to him.
It was on a stormy night when Jason finally sat close to Danny— still distant, still tense, but there in the seat beside him. Bruce was finishing up work in his office, leaving the two of them alone as Jason fixed Danny with a suspicious glare, his eyes flickering from him to the television where a comedy film was playing.
"You don't like storms, do you?" the boy asked, trying and failing to sound casual.
Danny let out a huff in response, pulling the blanket over his shoulders more tightly around himself. "Never have. Getting struck by lightning will do that to you."
Jason's eyes had stretched wider than saucers, all of the tension fleeing his shoulders as he gaped.
"You were hit by lightning? Did it hurt? Do you have a scar?" The questions tumbled out one after another, his eyes gleaming with curiosity.
Danny couldn't help but grin in spite of how closely the topic brushed his death.
The tension between them shattered after that, a dam broken so easily by storm waters. Jason had so many questions, and Danny did his best to answer what he could. He found the boy had a love for reading and learning that reminded him fondly of Jazz, and Danny did what he could to expand the little personal library squirreled away in his room. Visits meant only for Bruce became ones to just visit the manor itself, with Jason sometimes stealing his attention more than his partner. The boy was a quick study when it came to his English lessons, but he would often ask Danny for help with math and science, seeming to prefer his easygoing answers to Bruce’s more analytical ones. After all of his failed classes, and the high school diploma Danny left behind, it felt strange helping a kid with his schoolwork.
It was fun.
In time, Jason inched closer and closer to him on the couch during those lazy, stormy days when Danny waited for Bruce to finish his work. One day, when the old windows of the manor creaked against the wind and thunder boomed overhead, Jason finally closed that distance, leaning against his side. Tentatively, Danny raised the corner of his blanket and felt his core purr when Jason accepted the gesture and snuggled closer.
From that point on, he was already Danny's son.
He never meant to play favorites between the two boys, but with Dick often off on his own, already feeling that he didn't need one father let alone two on the best of days, Danny couldn't help but forge a closer bond with Jason. The more he saw Bruce, the more he saw of his new son. Jason would make faces whenever he held hands with his love and exchanged pet names, but he also knew— since Bruce had told him— that Jason had begged his father not to screw their relationship up. They’d had a good laugh then, with Danny assuring Bruce that if either of them would screw things up, it would probably be him.
Bruce had tsked at that, pulling him into a soft kiss. He never did like when his humor leaned so self-deprecating.
But it wasn’t all humor to Danny; he truly worried that revealing more of himself would ruin things with Bruce. He’d hidden under the guise of a meta for a time, but knew that shroud would only last for so long under Bruce’s scrutiny.
Roughly seven months, to be exact.
Unfortunately, it happened during an argument. They were down in the cave, Danny sitting on the edge of the medbay cot as Bruce paced back and forth in front of him. No amount of reassurances would put the man’s anxiety to rest, his eyes lingering with worry on the gunshot wound in Danny’s shoulder.
It had been a shot meant for Bruce.
“I don’t care if you’re a meta, you’re not indestructible!” Bruce had retorted, his cowl still hung around his neck and the gloves of his suit still stained in Danny’s blood.
“I’m sturdier than you think,” Danny said, struggling to meet his eyes.
There was a lump in Bruce’s throat then, his brows drawn together and worry in every line on his face. He ran a blood-stained glove through his tousled hair, glaring at Danny as he said, “You’re always so reckless. You can’t just… You can’t…” A deep breath, a shaky sigh as he turned away, looking fixedly at the wall. “What if I had lost you?” he asked— demanded.
Danny could only sigh, feeling his core begin to thrum more wildly as the severity of his predicament settled in. All of the pride and relief he felt at rescuing Bruce dissolved then, replaced by fear as he realized that Bruce was demanding answers he had never readily given anyone.
The words hadn’t come easily. Danny was pretty sure they argued for awhile, an awful back and forth as he worked up every nerve in his body to finally share something he held so dearly to his chest. It was all a blur up until then, the argument a haze of building anxiety until Danny finally blurted out three fateful words:
“I’ve already died.”
The headrush that simple statement gave Danny was enough to have his vision swimming (and a little blood loss probably didn’t help on that front). It didn’t help that Bruce quieted immediately, his expression morphing from a concerned anger to complete bewilderment.
“... What?” The sharp incredulity in his tone hurt, reminding Danny far too much of skeptical parents that weighed their bias with the word of their son and found him wanting.
Danny almost ran there and then. It would have been so easy, just one quick flight through the cave ceiling and out into the night. Bruce would never be able to find him, not if he didn’t wish to be found.
Danny dug his fingertips into the bed of the cot, bowing his head in shame at the mere thought. He weighed his love for Bruce— for his new, budding family— with the fear stuttering through his core.
He found that fear wanting.
Two years had passed since then, with more secrets laid bare than Danny would have ever thought himself possible of sharing. With each new admittance, he felt his love for his little family grow. The ice of his core warmed at being truly seen for the first time since Jazz’s passing, particularly when Jason and Dick did not shy away at the cold chill of his ghost form.
For all of his skepticism and worry, neither did Bruce. He cupped Phantom’s cheek, the kiss he deposited on his lips a fond promise that he understood.
It was not the smoothest adjustment with all of the prying questions knocking around Bruce’s brilliant mind, but the man did his best to be patient, and Danny was content to go with the steady flow. Part of him burst with joy as he shared his other half with his family, describing more pleasant tales of his adventures over the years.
Of them all, Jason listened with rapt attention, his eyes lighting up with wonder whenever Danny’s stories glossed over figures that had found their way into mortal texts. He delighted in asking Danny to show off some of his abilities, much to Bruce’s concern as the pair of them ascended through the ceiling with bubbling laughter.
Danny’s core practically sang when Jason asked him for that first flight over the city.
He knew his family loved the wind and night sky. It was impossible not to, when standing up high over Gotham with the breeze rising up through the streets. There was a sense of freedom up there that the ground could never offer— the weightlessness of a grapnel, the warm haze of lights far below, the quiet like nothing else.
Though something much brighter lingered over the cloud cover, just out of reach.
It was without any fear that Jason grabbed onto Danny’s back like a little koala and asked him to launch up into the clouds. He didn’t have to be told twice, only pausing long enough to make sure his grip on Jason was secure before leaping into the sky.
Danny could still hear Jason’s laughter ringing in his ears, the boy’s face buried against his back, the wind carrying the sound away as Danny sped through the clouds. He gripped so tightly, pouring all of his trust into Danny as he rose higher and higher until the white fog dissipated into open sky.
There had been a shocked, delighted gasp. Danny had grinned, twisting around to watch Jason staring fixedly up at the clear night sky overhead.
“I’ve never seen stars so clearly,” he’d whispered, his breath fogging at such a high altitude.
Danny’s core could have burst through his chest with the ferocity of his purring. It reminded him of nights, so long ago, spent watching the stars with his first family.
“I can take you up here whenever you want to see them,” he’d offered.
“Really?” Jason had asked, sounding excited.
That purr in Danny’s core came out in a contented hum as his eyes roved over the stars. He still couldn’t see them as clearly as they shone over Amity, but this high up above the clouds, just out of the city, they were much brighter than anything they could hope to see from the ground.
“I’ve missed stargazing,” he explained quietly.
If Jason understood a fraction of the melancholy in those words, he didn’t let it show. He simply squeezed Danny tighter, his best attempt at a hug while still clinging onto his back.
“That sounds like fun,” he’d said, grinning ear to ear.
That wonder never quite left Jason's eyes, no matter how many times Danny took him skyward.
He practically lit up the sky all his own.
Now, beneath the gray, stormy clouds of Gotham, the last thing on Danny’s mind was flying high to see the stars. He felt far too low for that, his core practically dragging through the earth with the weight of his grief. Memories fought to overwhelm him at each turn, and it was all Danny could do to shove them aside for now and focus on the task at hand.
On the anger still burning through his core, cold enough to scald.
On the revenge he would take, and the costs it might carry.
Danny wasn’t sure what Bruce would think of the carnage he had planned for the Joker. It was one thing to explain his more ghostly half— it was another to see the viscera left behind by sharpened claws and gnashing teeth.
Danny only hoped that his love cared more for his son’s justice than he feared the snap of his jaw.
That he loved Danny enough to accept it, too.
At least, despite Bruce’s ideology and good faith, Danny trusted that he would not regret the Joker’s passing, however violent. He had to believe that Jason meant more to Bruce than putting that man behind bars ever again.
The storm grew, forks of lightning for once ignored by Danny as he began his hunt throughout the city. The phone shoved into his belt pocket buzzed with a call, but Danny hardly noticed it beneath the hum of static across his skin. It was simply background noise, pushed aside with every other worry and bittersweet memory fighting for control as Danny’s thoughts resolutely marched back to Jason over and over again.
It was all he could do to cling onto his anger like nothing else, desperate not to fall into the deepest wells of his despair.
Yet despite his best efforts to stymie the flood of his memories, one kept surfacing more than any other, refusing to quiet with the rest.
It was one of their flights high over the clouds, just Jason and Danny alone beneath the stars as he told stories of the fables attached to the constellations. Great warriors and fearsome beasts, each brought high to the heavens where they still rested.
Jason had been particularly quiet that evening, seemingly lost in his own thoughts. Danny had poked at his forehead, asking, “What’s on your mind, little Jay?”
Whatever question he expected his son to ask, it was not a very quietly-spoken, "What's it like to be a ghost?"
At the time, Danny had hoped that Jason would never truly have to know.
Now… It hurt knowing his boy never would.