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Danny took a breath and let it out slowly as he started to get ready for the day. It had been six months since his parents lost custody of him since he had been welcomed into the folds of the Wayne Family. Since Batman himself had saved him from his parents’ experimentation table. His parents were now safely locked up in Arkham Asylum where they would spend the next ten years serving their punishment and Danny was safely living within the confines of Wayne Manor.
Things had been going rather well so far. The Bats had been insanely understanding about Danny wanting to live a normal life now that the portals had all been shut down. The most they requested from Danny was the occasional help on their gadgets and Danny was more than happy to help with that. He had more fun working on the Batmobile and Batplane than he ever did being a vigilante.
And they had encouraged his special interests! They even indulged him in it, letting him have his own little study dedicated to just his experiments and inventions. It had been amazing when Bruce had first shown him all of the spaces that were just for him. He had a bedroom that was as big as his parents' old living room and had an entire space dedicated to his inventions. And on top of that, Bruce had encouraged him to build his own portal so that if he wanted to go to the ghost zone he could. He had even made a space in the Batcave that was just for him if he ever decided to build it.
Six months in and he hadn’t decided yet if that was something he wanted to do. He hadn’t gone ghost a single time since he had moved to Gotham. He was starting to miss it if he was going to be honest. There was something about his ghost form that was just truly comforting. It just felt wrong, though, almost like it was taboo to do such a thing. Which he had no real reason to feel that way. Batman or well, Bruce, had assured him multiple times now that he was more than welcome to change into his ghost form whenever he wanted. Had just requested that Danny let him know if he was going out when he was Phantom so that they wouldn’t think he was a new rogue or anything of the such.
He was missing it, though. The longer he went without shifting into his ghost form, the tighter his skin felt. It was starting to feel like he couldn’t fit in his human form anymore. He could feel himself growing more restless as the days went by, and could feel himself fraying at the edges.
Which was why he was letting himself spend the day in his Phantom form even if it was kinda terrifying the more he thought about it. It was the first time since Batman had saved him and none of his new family had ever really seen him in this form before. It was nerve-wracking but he was going to do it.
He let the bright rings wrap around his body and breathed out as he felt himself change into Phantom, it felt like taking a deep breath on a cold winter’s day. He let himself phase through the door, using his powers a little more than he used to dispel some of the pent-up energy.
The Fenton’s had hypothesized that ecto entities relied on ectoplasm to live, that they needed it like humans needed oxygen. But that wasn’t quite right. Ghosts were ectoplasm. Despite the fact that they were sentient and sapient-looking beings, they were more closely aligned with plants. They created their own energy to survive. And Danny had been letting the ecto that his ghost form created build up inside of him and now he was just about ready to burst from all of it.
“It’s fine,” he breathed out before floating out of the room. His feet were mere inches from the ground as he made his way down the stairs and into the breakfast room where he could already hear the rest of his family sitting around talking and preparing for their mornings. The only people who lived in the manor were Alfred, Bruce, Damian, and Duke. So it wasn’t like everyone in the Wayne family was going to be there to see him. Jason lived in Crime Alley, Dick was in Bludhaven, Steph lived on campus, Cass was in Hong Kong and well, no one actually knew where Tim lived now that Danny was thinking about it.
Why did no one know where Tim lived? He shook his head, he was distracting himself from the matter at hand. And that was having breakfast with his new brothers and adoptive father.
Things quieted as he floated through the wall and gave them an awkward smile. “G’morning,” he mumbled, dipping his head down as he took his usual seat beside Damian.
Bruce gave him a small, proud smile. “Good morning, Danny. Or should we call you Phantom when you’re in this form?” He asked and Danny felt his cheeks blush, a bright green color when he was in this form.
“Danny’s fine. Phantom’s just what I went by when I was out as a hero,” he said, stabbing at the pancakes placed in front of him. “Sorry, I just–”
“No need to apologize, Daniel,” Damian said, a small smile on his face. “We are happy that you feel comfortable enough to show us this side of you.”
Danny gave him a small smile. “Yeah, I uh, I realized I’m needing to take better care of my ghost self. And you guys are safe, I don’t have to worry like I did with the Fentons,” he said quietly.
“Is there anything we can do to help?” Bruce asked him, arching a brow in curiosity.
Danny let out a quiet hum as he cut up his pancakes, frowning at the slightly strange texture. Dick had warned him that Alfred’s pancakes weren’t the best but he wasn’t expecting them to be like straight-up rubber. Jason had said that no one had the guts to tell him that they were gross and well, Danny had eaten much worse than rubbery pancakes.
“My ghost side has a tendency to create bonds with people I consider family, so it’s wanting to create those bonds with all of you,” he said carefully, staring at his rubbery pancakes rather than at his new family.
“I think that’s completely okay,” Bruce said with a small smile. “Can you explain a bit more about the social aspects of being a ghost? I think that we would all appreciate a quick lesson so that we can better support you.”
Danny blushed again and nodded. “So ghosts are protective creatures,” he said with a snort as he rested his chin on his hand. “It’s like your own personal protector but on top of that, we’re very social creatures who rely on one another, we get power from it actually. A lot of ghosts bond through fighting with one another, it’s a way to bond. But also indulging in activities together is another one. So, going out to hang out, spending time together, that all helps build the fraid bonds. A ghost’s family is its fraid. So the closer I get to you, then you’ll become my fraid which comes with a few perks? I guess you could call them perks.”
The halfa wrinkled his nose as he wracked his brain to figure out how to explain the perks. “Since you’re humans you’ll get access to a few of my powers,” he said slowly. “Sam, Jazz, and Tucker all turned kinda liminal because of our fraid bonds. It gave them some enhanced strength, they were able to see in the dark, and the shadows pulled to them a little more so it was almost like they could turn invisible at night. So you guys would get some of those same benefits.”
“That sounds awesome!” Duke said excitedly, a wide smile on his face.
“What benefits do you receive?” Damian asked with a frown, tilting his head to the side.
“I get the benefit of having stronger bonds which will make me stronger as well. I’ll also know when you’re in danger or not–something that I think will be a bitch considering your night jobs,” he said with a soft laugh. “But family bonds mean I’m healthy. If I have a lack of fraid bonds I’ll get sick and weak and grumpy. It’s why I finally gave in and changed to this form because I could feel it start to happen.”
Bruce frowned as he mulled over the information that Danny had just thrown at him. “What do we need to do to create these bonds with you?”
Danny blushed a bright green. “Spend time with me.”
“Tomorrow we shall go to the park together and take Titus on a walk,” Damian announced. “I shall have the strongest bonds with you, Daniel. Just you wait.”
Duke snickered. “It’s not a competition, Dami. We’re doing this for Danny’s health and to be closer to our brother.”
“And I will be the best at it, I will become Daniel’s favorite brother,” Damian exclaimed.
“You just want super strength so you can fight Jon,” Bruce said with a laugh and Danny giggled into his hand.
“I don’t know if you’ll be as strong as a Kryptonian, Dami. But I did see Jazz pick up the fridge like it weighed nothing one time,” Danny said thoughtfully, tilting his head to the side as he tried to think more about how strong his friends and sister were by the time he had left Amity. “So maybe don’t pick a fight with Superboy, it might just end with you covered in a lot of bruises.”
Damian huffed out a sigh. “I will still be the best brother, regardless,” he said, pushing his lower lip out in a pout. Danny snickered and took another bite of his rubbery pancakes, chewing far longer than he had ever had to chew a pancake before.
Danny just mustered up a small smile for his new family. Hopefully, this would go well.
It was, in fact, going extremely well. Someone had told the rest of his siblings about his need to create bonds and now Danny was going out almost every day with his family to spend time with them and bond. Bruce had continued on as normal and was there as unwavering support. He came by Danny’s little lab more often as he tinkered with different things and asked him about his different inventions. They spent a lot of time working together in comfortable silence as they focused on the tasks at hand. He had offered solace and promised Danny that he would be here through everything, that he was here for Danny in whatever way the sixteen-year-old needed.
Dick had managed to coax him into going to an amusement park with him. He had been rather impressed with the fact that Danny couldn’t get motion sickness and the two went on every extreme thrill ride the park had. It had been an amazing time. Dick and taken him to get dinner afterward, the two sitting in a booth together talking about Danny’s life and the parts that he was missing.
It had been nice to talk about, and it finally hit Danny that his siblings may not have had the same experiences he did but they got it. They knew a lot of what Danny was feeling because they had been in similar boats. Dick’s parents had been murdered in front of him, he had been taken from the circus and thrust into a completely different world. And even though it was different, even though Danny’s parents hadn’t died, moreso they lost their minds, he understood how scary it was to be taken from everything he had ever known and just expected to move on like nothing had happened.
It was why he had become Robin in the first place was because he couldn’t move on from what happened.
With Duke, it was a similar story. Before Danny, he was the most recently adopted and he understood a little more about what Danny was going through. The two had gone on a hike together and spent the entire hike talking about their parents. Duke’s parents had been driven insane by the Joker, and his biological father Gnomon was a rogue himself. And while he didn’t get what it was like to be hurt by them, he knew what it was like to see your parents dragged off because they were insane. Duke also knew what it was like to be different, to have powers he didn’t quite understand sometimes, and to feel other because of it.
Danny had next found himself going to a musical with Jason. And it had been nice, Jason knew what it was like to die, knew the fear that thrummed through his veins as he took his last breath. He had been dead longer than Danny had but he knew what it was like to come back and to come back wrong. They had found themselves ignoring the entire musical as they talked about their experiences, the loneliness of trying to reintegrate himself as a normal person but knowing that he was not. Dying changed a person, no matter how long they stayed dead before they came back. It wasn’t something a person could ever come back from and they both had experienced having people expecting them to be the exact same.
He and Tim spent an afternoon at the Nest playing video games together. The twenty-year-old was probably, without a doubt, Danny’s favorite of his siblings. The two had spent time talking about what it was like having parents who cared more about their work than their kids and commiserated over having to raise themselves for most of their childhoods. Tim even knew what it was like to have a pushy older sibling who didn’t know how to leave him alone when that was all he wanted. He got what it was like to have that strange independence that came from not having parents who cared about their well-being and he hadn’t pushed Danny to talk about his feelings, instead, he had given him an open invitation to come over and play video games or tinker with inventions in the Nest any time things got to be too much at the manor.
Cass had flown in from Hong Kong for a week and Danny had spent the time finally getting to know his new sister. They had gone out of town together out in the middle of the countryside where they could stargaze and relax. Danny had felt so at peace with the woman. They didn’t talk much, but at one point Cass had held his hand tight and told him she understood. That she knew what it was like to be seen more as a weapon or a way to further someone else’s agenda. And didn’t that hit hard? Hadn’t Danny spent the last two years being seen as a pawn in other’s games? Hadn’t Clockwork played with his life like it was a game? Hadn’t his parents seen his powers and immediately decided that experimenting on him would further their own research instead of taking care of him? Sure it wasn’t the same as Cass’ trauma, what she had gone through was horrifying. But she had told him to stop comparing their traumas, that they had both been used by others. But now it was their lives and they could do whatever they wanted with it.
He and Damian took Titus on walks together each morning, the thirteen-year-old happily talking Danny’s ear off as they walked around the Manor grounds together. It was nice just talking to Damian, the kid and he had more in common than Danny had initially thought. Damian’s mother had made clones of him that were sent to him, his mother was just as obsessed with him as Vlad was with Danny and the two had managed to joke and laugh about it once Damian got a little more comfortable with Danny. Danny had even managed to open a portal to let Damian meet some of the ecto creatures like the ecto-pus and some of the other ghost animals. He had been the one to really understand Danny’s interest in having a normal life, something that Damian had never really had before. And Danny had even found himself offering to be that normal person for Damian, even if he was half dead and was a former hero himself. The kid had even quietly admitted to Danny that he thought about stepping down from the Robin role to instead just be a normal kid for a while and was scared about disappointing his family. Danny had been shocked that the hardened boy was so willing to share that with him but had been honored.
And he had made sure to tell the kid that he would always support Damian in whatever he chose.
Alfred taught him how to cook and he horrified the old butler as he regaled the man with stories of his dinner coming to life as a kid and how he had to fight the Thanksgiving turkey almost every year. Alfred was like the calm after a storm, he was solid and comforting. And he gave the best hugs Danny had ever had in his life. The man didn’t say much, he didn’t need to. It was easy to see that the man would be there for him no matter what. That he was someone who would support Danny in whatever he did and love him regardless of what happened.
Each member had spent more time with Danny, learning more and more about what Danny liked to do, and sharing their favorite hobbies with their new brother and Danny could feel his own shoulders getting lighter and lighter as the bonds were created between each of them. It felt as though he could breathe easier now that he had these new familial bonds. And he could feel each of them on the edges of his awareness in a way. He could tell when they were hurt or in trouble, and he could tell when they started becoming more liminal as the bonds strengthened between them.
And from what it seemed like, they were all having fun with their newfound liminality.
Before Danny knew it, two years had flown by. He had found himself sitting at the dining room table on his eighteenth birthday with a wide smile on his face as he was surrounded by his fraid. They had grown closer and closer with one another and Danny had come to adore his family, had found comfort in them and he had finally gotten the family he had always wanted. It was astounding, it was everything he could have ever wanted.