Chapter Text
The first time Danny was summoned was after Pariah Dark was locked back into his personal time out coffin. At the time, he hadn't made that connection. (In his defense, he was confused as to what was going on, where he was, and why his skin felt simultaneously too tight and too loose. It was a supremely uncomfortable feeling on top of a whole lot of confusing information.
The first time led to a fight, because Danny's life was an actual shitshow, he swears to any god listening. The people who summoned him were seriously fucked up dudes with actual glowing runes on the floor, blood splattered everywhere, and there was a decapitated goat head involved. He didn't even give them the chance to finish their villainous monologue, just started throwing hands because what the actual fuck.
He fought the dudes (villains? Cultists? Magicians? Who even knew), buried the goat head out of guilt, and flew back home. (FROM MEXICO! It took him hours!!) Jazz grounded him for not stopping to call her once he was out of the danger and realized what country he was in and he didn't think much more about it. Except for the poor goat; he thought about the goat sometimes and was very happy he never had nightmares about the poor thing. What the actual fuck even was that?)
It took Sam summoning him for the realization to hit that being summoned wasn't just another ghost power. Tucker laughed at him as the realization hit him and Sam cackled until her knees gave out.
Danny was summon-able because shoving Pariah's ass into time out gave him the old man's titles. Destroyer of worlds. Bearer of the Crown of Fire. Keeper of the Ring of Rage. High King of the Infinite Realms. Commander of the Immortal Legion. All-Father of the Nightmare Realm. Defeater of Shadowed Ice. Holder of the Staff of Time.
There was a scroll of titles! That were now Danny's! The scroll, when unrolled, was as long as Jazz was tall! DANNY HAD SIX FEET WORTH OF PRETENTIOUS TITLES TO HIS AFTERLIFE! Why was his life (death? Afterlife? Existence?) this way??
He may have been a little rougher with Plasmius during the next fight after that discovery. It was petty and pointless because Danny sure as fuck wouldn't want Vlad with any of these powers or associated duties, responsibilities, or loyal subjects but that wasn't the point. The point was Danny was a Child King, essentially, and mad about it. Fuck Vlad Masters at all times anyway. The fruitloop was a grade-A ass.
(Some of the titles were cool, through. He could admit that. And Pariah's lair was a castle with a moat of acid, which was pretty cool. There was some nonsense about how once he was done going through it it would collapse in on itself since its Ghost was no longer housed there, but that might be after Danny was 100% dead so...Future Danny will have even more cool stuff.)
All of this to say, that when he's sitting at a table with Sam and Tucker in a park with some drinks and feels the tug in the center of his chest, he knows what it means.
“Oh, c'mon.” Danny whined as he felt the tug all along his stomach, the sensation of a hundred fingers trailing down his back and he tasted...spearmint? Maybe?
“Oh, a summoning! Haven't had one of those in a bit; here, have a new phone!” Tucker said as he shoved a new cell into Danny's hand because this wasn't new anymore.
“I'll tell Jazz. Turn off that phone's tracker and I'll tell Ellie you would LOVE a glitter bomb for Christmas.” Sam threatened and reached over to take Danny's half finished boba tea.
“Rude!” Danny managed to get out before he went intangible and let the summoning tether pull him away.
It had taken him longer than he wanted to admit to figure out how to ignore summons and some additional trial and error to figure out how to metaphorically slam a door into someone's face if the summoning felt too icky. And now, during his last months in his junior year of high school, he had summoning down to an art. He would get better as more time passed, as practice made everything easier, but at least now he didn't have to worry about being summoned in his pajama or during a shower.
(He managed to yank his boxers back on for that one. Thank everything because it was a frat party that summoned him and they had been massively drunk. They screamed, he screamed, they apologized and begged him not to kill them, it was a whole thing. Once he got them calmed down, one of them managed to give him a pair of jeans and a shirt and they all went their separate ways. At the time, it had been mortifying but looking back? That had easily been one of the most hilarious things he'd ever been involved in.)
He was spat out in a parking garage, which wasn't as unusual as it sounded. There was a summoning circle drawn in chalk, ringed by electric tea lights at the cardinal points, and a bowl of burning sage and mint. A favor summoning? He hasn't had one of those in almost a year.
He let visibility come over him as he settled the tail of himself into the bowl. His hair swayed around him and he nudged the crown of fire into the shape of a collapsing star. It was a pretty sight but also a visible indicator that he was not just some random ghoul playing trickster.
“Who calls?” He asked, feeling pretentious as his voice rumbled through his chest and around the enclosed space.
“I request a boon of you, All-Father.” A woman's tired voice responded. She was to the East of him, which was an interesting place to stand for a favor summoning. Standing to the East implied she thought she was of a standing to bargain for a boon – most favor summons stand to the West, with the implication being they were willing to accept any favor the being they summoned bestowed upon them. The North was for simple favors – people looking for general good news, a bit of luck, lost items of little significance, things like that. The South was used exclusively for prayers; he usually didn't come for those, just sent general good vibes.
He was, at this base, a protector spirit so he was able to provide favors if he wanted. It didn't hurt him to reach into the ether and smooth out small wrinkles in a single person's tapestry of fate, not once Clockwork showed him the trick to it. He seldom had anyone summon him for a favor he wasn't able to grant with just a few bits of his ectoplasm sacrificed.
“What boon do you wish?” He asked as he tried to think of what kind of favor someone like this well-dressed woman would even want from a ghost. (He was pretty sure that pantsuit was designer label – he thought he saw Jazz rent one for her last paper presentation.)
“Make me the Chief Financial Officer of my company. They're going to choose that mangy cur because of the way it would look but I deserve it! I've sacrificed years of my life for this company and that beast was only hired because it looked good to have more diversity in the upper roles. My father is on the Board and my grandfather was the CEO of the company we merged with – if not for his actions, we wouldn't have been able to expand into the European market! My connections make me perfect for the role and my degree is exactly what the position is looking for. I'm clearly the better choice, but they won't promote me because of their stupid diversity quota! That beast will sent all our profits to his various child brides or whatever those people do!” The woman said vehemently.
How the fuck had this bitch found his summoning? If it was Pariah Dark's summoning, that would track, but he didn't do favor summonings for pretty obvious reasons.
“And why should I grant you this?” He asked, changing the crown of fire into a black hole. Chances are he was not going to be giving anything to this racist woman and he might even go looking for the person she's talking about to see if he could drop a blessing on them just to spite her.
“You have to! I have an exchange!” The woman cried out and Danny felt his eyebrows arch at the sheer audacity. Oh, so she thinks just because she gives him something shiny or –
That was a whole ass baby.
“What is this?” Danny hissed, the black hole atop his head pulling heat and light out of the space around them. The woman held a wrapped infant out in front of her, like she was offering him a laptop or something equally inanimate and not prone to wiggling.
He snatched the child out of her hands, holding them close to keep the wiggling babe from meeting the concrete below them. The baby was awake but quiet, settling against Danny's chest trustingly. They were so small; he's never seen one this small before. The blankets wrapped around them seemed to be the only clothes covering the child - were they even wearing a diaper? Both wrists and ankles seemed free of any kind of hospital tag but surly they should still have one? Shouldn't they still be in the hospital at this age?
Did...did this woman kidnap someone's baby!?
“The exchange has been accepted then?” The woman asked, sounding expectant and smug. If Tucker heard her, he would absolutely want to trip her into a puddle with dog pee in it.
“This child is not yours to bargain with.” Danny said and his voice almost made him flinch due to how much like Dan he sounded. Dangerous and on the wrong side of rage.
“He's more mine than anyone else's. My stupid sister and her worthless cur are dead, so the mutt fell to me. It's a dark mark on our line, so it as well be used for something worthwhile.” The woman retorted with a scoff. He was sure his face was doing something, but he was so angry it was taking considerable concentration to stay in a human shape at all. The baby in his arms was clearly mixed, his skin closer to Tucker's shade than Danny's, and this woman was talking about him like he was a mistake. A piece of dirty trash to be hidden away – what had happened to his parents? Was his mother aware of what her family thought of this child? Had she died scared about what would happen to him? Had she even wanted her family to get custody if something happened to her and her...partner? Spouse?
He felt ice start to creep along the wedges of his awareness. Under him, the tealights popped as his anger grew. The garage went dark as all light was sucked into the crown of fire, heat following after to leave the concrete level they were in to get colder and colder as he cradled the baby close and wrapped any bit of warmth he could keep around them.
He let the crown reform, feeling the blue fire of his rage condense into a stately crown. His crown always looked different, never seeming to settle into a single form, but this felt more like a diadem with something sharp and heavy at the temples. It (and maybe his eyes, they felt like they were burning) gave off a faint light, enough to throw his features into something inhuman. His mouth felt awkward, like when he first got braces back when he was ten. His teeth must have elongated – that was going to feel interesting when he went back to his human form.
“I give you nothing, for this insult!” Danny snarled. “Be thankful for your life, you fool child!” Danny yelled, letting his voice crash into the cars around them with enough force that the metal and plastic bits screeched as they buckled inward. The woman screamed and threw herself to the ground, raising her arms to cover her head as Danny turned himself and the baby invisible and intangible to fly out of the garage.
He was furious and the baby was upset – whimpering and wiggling but not crying. Why wasn't he crying? Was there something wrong with him? Was he mute? He was clearly distressed, why wasn't he crying?
The woman had been speaking English and sounded vaguely American, at least to his ears. So hopefully he was still in the United States.
He took a breath and settled down on the roof of what looked like an apartment building. The baby was wiggling and his face was scrunched up and red. He let himself transform back into his living form, thinking about skin contact and warmth, and spent the next few minutes arranging the boy against his chest, skin to skin. He really wasn't sure that if that counted towards all babies and not just newly born ones, but he was so small. He was wrapped in one blanket and there was a diaper, at the very least, but other than that he didn't have anything else on him. His diaper didn't feel wet or heavy, so there was at least that, but he really needed to do something.
The baby stopped wiggling and twisting once Danny got him settled as comfortably as he could and it was...certainly something to be so close to someone so small and fragile. He wondered if Dani came out this small, if any of his other clones had been this small. (He wondered if anyone held them as they melted. If it hurt. If they were scared or confused or in pain. He hopes they were empty shells, that maybe that was the reason they were unstable.)
He held one arm under where the baby's bottom was, keeping him snug against him under Tucker's button up shirt that he had swiped, and used his other arm to reach out to put his hand against a nearby wall that was probably built as a windbreak. It was dark out but the city he was in was lit up enough that the stars weren't visible from where he was. He could hear cars down on the street, people murmuring as they went about their night, a few air conditioning units whirled away, sirens in the distance, and soft footsteps approaching him from behind.
He turned his head and watched as the actual real life Nightwing walked towards him with open body language and empty hands. So, he was definitely still in the United States of America, at least. Now to figure out if he was in Blüdhaven or Gotham.
“Hey there.” Nightwing – actual Nightwing, Sam was going to lose her mind – said as he stopped a polite distance away and eyed him with the kind of curiosity that could only mean Danny was being profiled in the most casual way.
“Hi. Nice night?” Danny asked and immediately felt like slapping himself. Who opened a conversation that way?
Nightwing smiled and wow, that certainly was...a wonderful smile. Even with most of his face obscured, that smile was doing the work! If not for the fact that Danny was pretty sure Nightwing was older than his older sister, he would be swooning about that smile. Damn.
“It is.” Nightwing said in response, like Danny hadn't just said something ridiculous, and he walked up to peer down at the little face poking out of Danny's shirt. “And who is this cutie?”
“I...I don't actually know.” Danny admitted and looked back down at the little boy. He was awake still, looking at the faces above him, and he was still so quiet. He didn't look upset anymore, thankfully, but he had been so quiet this whole time. Surely that wasn't normal?
“They're not yours?” Nightwing asked casually as he reached out to trail a gloved finger down the baby's cheek.
“No, I...I was just given them. Like a transaction – here's some money, give me my food. Here's a baby, give me a promotion I don't deserve. Same way!” Danny said and felt like he was starting to loose the plot a little. Did Nightwing wash his gloves? Was he rubbing grim and blood and dried saliva and who knew what else over this baby's cheek?
“Hey, hey, let's calm down, okay?” Nightwing said soothingly as Danny realized with a start that he was starting to panic. He was at the very least on the East coast and there was a baby! In his arms! That some psycho gave him for a promotion! A PROMOTION! What was he going to do with a baby! He was in his junior year of High School, he couldn't take care of an infant! He would barely take care of Dani and she lived out of a van! All he did was set her up with an identity, steal money from Vlad to give her, and make her van so it could travel both on Earth and in the Ghost Zone! Yeah, he also built her van so it was a proper home on wheels, but van-lifers did that all the time! He called Dani every week, made sure she had submitted all the tests for her GED, but he wasn't her parent!
Was this baby's family going to look for them? Was it just that his aunt was a racist dirtbag but her parents weren't? Did she have other siblings that she kidnapped their nephew from? What about the other parent's family? Were they looking for a missing baby? What about child protective services? A foster family?
“It's alright, just breathe kid, you're doing good, just keep breathing.” Nightwing said as if from underwater as a hand settled on his shoulder. “Take a deep breath, now hold it with me. That's good, just bit longer. Okay, now breathe out.” Nightwing walked him through staving off a panic attack, which was super nice of him.
“Sorry, sorry, I think it just hit me that I have a whole ass baby and no idea what to do with them.” Danny said, feeling a little lightheaded.
“Yeah, I had wondered what the story was there. Meta teen appears on an apartment roof cradling something and then wraps it up in their shirt? Makes for an interesting patrol, that's for sure!” Nightwing said good-naturedly.
“Ah, yeah, sorry if I gave you a mild heart attack.” Danny said in response. He should probably correct the assumption that he was a meta, but at least metas were legally recognized as humans with rights and protections so...better to be a meta than an ecto-entity in a legally dubious situation with a legally dubious baby.
Fuck, he really hoped the GIW didn't have any offices around here. He wasn't sure if any of the satellite campus' could track summonings but he knew the Illinois headquarters could. He was going to have to be on alert once he got back home – at least now he knew his parents would try to get those assholes out of their city, if only because they legally swiped their research and patents. His parents may not be actively trying to hunt him down and experiment on him, but they were still...weird about the whole Halfa thing.
(Sometimes he wondered if this was some kind of karmic payback for them being so cool about the trans thing. Their kid turns out to be trans? Totally cool, fully supportive, 100% in his corner. Their kid turns out to be half ghost? Multiple conversations about fixing him, trying to get him back to normal, saying he was the exception that proved the rule in regards to ghosts being evil, non-invasive experiments that only stopped once Jazz walked in on one and blew her lid. They loved him, he knew that, he just wished they loved all of him.)
“Don't suppose you have a description of the person that gave you this child?” Nightwing asked, which broke him out of his contemplation.
“Oh, yeah, uhm...A white woman, she looked older – I'm not good with ages but definitely older than college students – and I saw her from above so I'm not sure about her height but she looked...average? She had shoulder length brown hair and was dressed well – a tan pantsuit that I'm pretty sure my older sister once rented for a fancy college thing, she presented a paper with her professor about some neuroscience thing – and she was talking about wanting a promotion to the position of CFO, which should narrow things down by a lot. She didn't have any facial scars and I didn't see any tattoos or any facial piercings – I didn't notice if she had pierced ears, but that doesn't mean she didn't. She mentioned a sister that died – apparently this little one is the sister's and he's mixed, which the woman who gave him to me certainly was opinionated about. Like mega racist, kind of opinionated.” Danny described and Nightwing nodded to show he was listening.
“That's a lot of information, thanks. The nearest hospital with a pediatric wing is United Gotham on 8th, it's about three miles from here, are you comfortable coming with me there or would you prefer I take the boy myself? If you choose the later, I'll just need you to describe how you got this kid in more detail before I let you go or you can come with me and I can stay with you while GCPD questions you, since you look like a minor. I'm legally allowed to sit in on questioning with minors and if the cops try to tell you to make me leave, I can legally tell them to fuck off and respect your rights in place of an advocate or your guardian.” Nightwing explained and he had clearly done this spiel before. Being a sanctioned vigilante sounded like it had perks – Phantom had the legal right to be cut open without anesthesia and then taken anywhere the government wanted to place him with no questions asked.
Ancients, he hated the American government sometimes. Also, thanks Nightwing for telling him which city he was in, really appreciated it!
“Uhm, I can go to the hospital. I'm a little worried about the baby and would like to talk to a doctor about him. I can follow you if you wanna grapple there, that would be faster – I can fly.” Danny said like an awkward duckling.
And so they went. Following Nightwing as he swung through the air was amazingly cool – it may not be flying, but it certainly looked like it. And it also really showed how much Gotham (and Wayne Industries, to be fair) had retrofitted so much of the city to be vigilante friendly. There were so many places for a grappling hook to hold onto that were very clearly reinforced and made to some kind of code. There were multiple street signs that were large enough to be seen from above, and angled so they could be read from above, and a few of the taller buildings Danny saw had places on the outside for someone to stand or sit at while still looking over the city, but with cover in case of rain probably. The Hospital's upper floor was basically the vigilante floor – there was an entire emergency room up there and what looked like an ICU, along with the normal patient rooms. When Nightwing opened the door from the roof, it was into a fully stocked emergency room.
Amity Park's only Hospital wished it was this efficient. When he was Phantom, he had to use the ambulance doors like everyone else even when he was bringing in civilians who had unfortunately gotten in the middle of a ghost fight or on the wrong end of the GIW.
It was a busy half hour of doctors taking the baby from him, nurses talking to him about the baby (after they asked after his own health! What the hell even was Gotham???), getting to watch them take some saliva samples from the boy, getting him into hospital baby clothes (which were a thing, apparently, who knew?), and one of the nurses handing him a bottle and teaching him how to feed the boy when he asked if he could do it when they talked about getting him fed.
He vaguely knew how to feed a baby – one of Tucker's cousins had one recently and Danny got to feed the girl once – but it made him feel better to have a nurse give him a refresher. The baby was underweight, but not dangerously so, and he wasn't chilled (thank everything) but he was showing signs of dehydration. When he mentioned how the baby hadn't made much noise, the nurse in the room had mentioned that might be a sign that he was used to being ignored, which was heartbreaking. But also apparently might be a good sign, in that it would have to have been a recent thing since he was only a little underweight. So most likely his aunt had been the one neglecting him and he was so little he might be able to jump back from it easier than if it had been long term neglect.
Nightwing stayed with him the whole time. He even held the baby at once point, after taking off his gloves (which were removable with an invisible seam at the elbows; Jazz was going to be so smug about being right about removable gloves) and washing up! It was watching Nightwing coo at a baby and wishing he had a phone that made him remember he did in fact have a phone in his chest. He fished it out and asked to take a photo of Nightwing, who grinned and agreed. And then he sent that photo to the only contact in the phone, which was the heavily encrypted server Tucker had built from the ground up.
Holy Batman is that a baby?! Tucker immediately responded.
I think you mean “Goodness Nightwing, is that a bby”. Sam responded. Danny rolled his eyes.
I'm in Gotham and yes, that is in fact a baby. Good eyes, Tuck!
Ur not funny, either 1 of you. Thanks for the confirmation that the GPS on that phone is in fact working. Tucker responded.
This is going to be a WILD story. Sam said and Danny closed out of the app as it seemed the police were here.
Joy.