Chapter Text
Danny blinks awake with a gasp, consciousness tumbling forward and up out of the dark.
Light polluted cloud and sky greet him, the earliest stirrings of a full autumn chill. Dizzy, Danny groans, confused and stunned as the world comes back into focus. Cold stone leeches up against his back, the unfortunate crick smarting in his neck.
Gotham cemetery. Right. Where…? Danny presses a hand to his chest with another moan, tipping forward between the bracket of his drawn up knees. Ugh.
“W-What the hell?” Danny gags, stomach cramping. Geez. “Thanks for, for the heads up, huh?”
Nothing answers, and it takes… more than a moment for the spinning to pass, for the nausea and hurt to abate, the thunder of his core to soften in his ears. Danny picks his head up slightly, eyes narrowed as he blearily observes the rows and rows of graves, the loitering shades. Flexing his trembling hands, he finds that the skin is fine if dry, just that the bones are sore.
Huh.
Did I just…?
No. Nope. Nuh uh. Hrgh. Danny rakes his hands through his hair, wincing lightly at the drag of his nails over his scalp and the flop of his stomach.
Real. He’s real.
Still real.
Suddenly, a few things make a little more sense. "A… A meddler, huh," he says to the empty air, and isn't too sure the faint drift of amusement at that is just his imagination.
Ancients, whatever.
Danny takes a bit longer, sits there for some time more, before shoving himself up to his feet. Everything goes wavy, and he droops against the headstone until it all settles again. Hrgh. Licking his lips, Danny slits his eyes open, smoothing his hands against the textured stone. Real-real-real — outer hills, Bristol county or something, Gotham cemetery, Jason Todd-Wayne’s grave.
Not Jasper’s. This grave is both of theirs, Danny guesses, but. Jasper’s alive while Jason isn’t; another kid’s life and memories buried here. If that makes sense.
Makes way too much fucking sense.
M i n e .
“S-Sorry,” he says, straightening up, and pats the stone awkwardly before going invisible. “Fuck.”
It’s easier to leave than it was to arrive. Again a few shades trail after Danny, but none follow out past the boundaries. He looks back at them and their near shapeless forms, their regrets and wants so faded and soft like dust.
Not mine, he tells himself, tired, really, though… not nearly as much as usual, somehow.
Ah, who knows. Danny shakes his head, and with a frown, tightens up on the lack of visibility, unwilling still to be spotted in what amounts to rural and underpopulated rich countryside for this awful city. The brilliant pillars of emotion that make up the Bat and birds are scattered ahead of him, burning bright with hope and longing.
Carefully, Danny turns his attention away from them. Not my circus, not my monkeys, and yet. He sighs, tipping his metaphorically stolen hat.
“What even is my life?” he mumbles, walking down the lonely road back to civilization, unwillingly charmed by the looming lights like a dumb little moth.
Home.
There’s… another weight almost gone. Something not quite where it once was. Different than debt, different than what Danny’s used to. Another unwelcome certainty that he shoves aside for… later, for kinder things as the city rises up around him.
Jasper walking across the graduation stage back in June. Duri trusting Danny with a tough math question when she really, really shouldn't have. Vlad texting him a shitty picture of Milton and Snowy curled up on the couch. Padre Maldonado’s niece earnestly trying to weasel a dance out of Jasper at her quince back in July.
Shrek. The picture frames on the walls.
The blood in his teeth.
Love you.
Real. Still real.
Once he crosses back onto the island proper, however, Gotham paws at him, daringly curious if guarded. Danny’s too… Exhausted doesn’t feel like the right word, but he doesn’t have the will to chase her off. She gives up soon enough though, bored, and the focus of her attention wanes completely by the time he catches the first bus back to the station.
The closer Danny gets to the apartment the more soothed yet bemused he becomes, though. Because even as he’s recklessly paying for overpriced junk food just around the corner at nearly eleven at night, he feels Jasper.
Jasper, who is a flailing spool of anxiety and frustration, staticky embarrassment. Nothing serious, nothing that threatens to set Danny on edge — because while Wes and Tyrell are gone… He is, also, not alone.
Danny pauses outside to feel them out a little better, and then pushes on in with a call of, "There had better be clothes on!"
There's a sputtered Oh, fuck you, and Ruza's hoarse laugh from the couch. Her fluffy head of hair turns in Danny’s direction just as he kicks the door shut, the pale blonde running golden under the side lamp’s light; Milton is watching from the cat tree, but makes a swift retreat to the kid’s bedroom upon his entrance. Ouch.
There isn't, however, a visible Jasper to fit this funny little picture.
"Oh," Danny says dryly, and dumps the bag on the counter. Where the pulsing uncertainty radiates sits empty space, merely an invisible weight to the couch cushion. "Oh, how long have you been like that?"
The cushions shift. "An hour," Jasper says miserably, and Ruza pats valiantly at solid but empty air. "What the fuck."
Hm. Well.
"Ruza, my dude, gonna ask you to scoot, alright?" Danny says, and she huffs, full of curiosity and amusement.
"Yes, Mr. Nightingale," Ruza says. He rolls his eyes. "See you later, Casper?"
"You're not fucking funny," Jasper hisses.
Ruza laughs again, hopping to her feet. "I'm always funny," she denies, scooping up her bag. "Later hater."
Danny sees her out, carefully ignoring the rumpled state of her clothes and the swollen lip, and pauses after he shuts the door again. Well. Yeah. That'll do it.
Probably.
"Let me guess — "
Jasper groans. "No, you're evil, I'll just tell you, God."
"Spare me the gory details," Danny teases, and gets a pillow to the face. He laughs, meandering closer after scooping it back up, distantly aware of Ruza quickly disappearing into the distance — got her license, huh? "Sorry, sorry, sorry, just, uh, tell me?"
"... Ruza turned me down," he says, sounding less miserable, of all things. "But, uh, well… y'know …"
"... Do I?"
"Shut up," Jasper moans, the wrinkles in the couch scrunching up. Danny sits in the vacated spot, absolutely delighted despite, well. Everything. What a contradiction. "I don't know, I fell through the couch and then got stuck like this. You never said anything about this."
"Uh, no, I did," Danny says, amused, and Jasper drops his head back against his thigh. Real. "You just stopped listening because then you were mad at Vlad — "
"Well maybe you shoulda led with that!" he interrupts, truly and horrifically embarrassed now. "How do I fix this? She… Ruza didn't… she didn't care, thought it was cool, but… she knows it's something and I didn’t…"
Danny hums. “I mean, you can tell her or the rest of ‘em whatever you want… just, y’know, as long as you trust them.” He pauses. Then amends, “Okay, maybe don’t tell Weston.”
That gets a gusty laugh. “I might just… meta or something is easy enough. I dunno. Wes is just… yeah,” Jasper says, and then clears his throat. “Was it, uh, like this then? All the time or something, for you?”
Ow. “No, not at all,” he returns evenly, and absently reaches for Jasper, getting his forearm before his hand. “I didn’t… I had to figure it out or… y’know.”
“... Right,” he replies, a bit sour, and grips Danny’s fingers tight. “That must’ve sucked.”
It did. More than Danny realized back then.
Shaking his head, he frowns again, squinting as he tugs the slightest bit on his own core —
Light sparks, just a little jumpstart. Jasper shivers, but then visibility runs from their shared grasp and over him fully. He blinks up at Danny, his eyes haloing with a vivid yellow before turning back to a familiar blue. Huh. The kid untangles their hands to pat at himself, turn his arms over and back.
“That felt super weird,” he mumbles.
“I’ll bet,” Danny says, mutters under his breath Thank God that worked. A bit hesitant, he then adds, “Congrats, you, uh, have actual ghost powers?”
Jasper drags his hands down his face. “Why is everything happening right now?” he whines, curling over and into a ball. Danny pats lightly at his shoulder. “I don’t like it.”
“Mood, me either.”
Pausing, he peeks back at Danny from between his fingers, determinedly curious. “... So what’d you do today?”
Danny huffs, sagging onto the couch. “I dunno, something world view shattering I think…”
“Oh…?”
“Mhm,” he says, and then drops his head back to stare at the ceiling with a small chuckle. “Ask me about it when you’re, ah, twenty-three, maybe.”
Indignation immediately replaces the wonder. “What?” Jasper exclaims, hands falling away to reveal a magnificent scowl. “How’s that any fair? That’s not what I meant by telling me to wait — five whole years?”
“Bumpin’ it up to seven now,” Danny teases, because. Because it’s kinda too… much? So he allows another pillow to smack him in the face as retribution, but snatches hold of it before it can be yanked back, sitting up. “Oh, so it’s gonna be like that — ”
Jasper jerks out of his lap and scrambles to his feet, clearly intent on making a run for it. His right leg, however, sinks halfway down into the floor below — a thankfully vacant apartment. He hits carpet with a yelp, solid leg crumpling, and yells when Danny takes advantage to slam him with the pillow once, twice, thrice —
There’s a bark, and Danny’s yanked sideways — he snaps his head up to spy a green blur with teeth. “Cujo!”
With a playful growl, the ghost shakes his head, tail wagging furiously. Danny loses hold on the pillow, falling back onto the couch with an oof. There’s faint amusement from the Keep eeling in around them, something a little more unsubstantial from the apartment itself. Traitors, the lot of them, huh?
“I see how it is,” Danny says ominously, and chuckles when the drool smeared pillow is dropped over his head.
“Good boy, Cujo,” Jasper cackles. “Now help me up, c’mon!”
This is a… good moment. Danny feels so light. But it’s just a breath of air between the past couple of months and the foreseeable future — he’s under no illusions that this isn’t temporary at best.
With Jasper around, it’s easier to hide the detritus of his simmering stress when the dishes aren’t allowed to pile up in the sink or clean laundry left splayed all over the couch to pick from. Gotham’s keeping her relative peace for now, but she’s a conniving creature at heart, Danny’s unfortunately come to learn.
What’s she up to next…? He doesn’t know. Going forward, how is Jasper going to handle Dick and, eventually at some point, Bruce…? He doesn’t know. How is Danny going to handle all of that and himself? He doesn’t know.
Better or well, he hopes at least.
But… he’ll enjoy this moment for what it is. So far, Danny’s come to have more of them, these good moments. He just needs to remember them. Remember that even when the going gets tough, it’s not always tough.
Hard to remember in the moment, but it’s whatever, right now.
Danny watches as Cujo grabs Jasper by the back of his shirt, hoisting him up high enough to sorta, kinda, stumble to his feet. He glances back at Danny, his eyes glittering mischievously, but it’s just a good moment. The high is already falling for Danny, tired all of a sudden, and beneath that glee is uncertainty and fear of the things still to pass.
But, again, come what may… they’ll be okay.