Chapter Text
After how Jack's last unexpected call had ended, Danny was downright terrified of picking up the phone again. How much had they figured out? Were they mad at him? Did they hate him now? Not knowing anything about how they'd reacted was killing him. Had his dad even told Maddie what had happened?
But they'd switched to a guilty plea, no longer contesting the severity of their crimes. They'd accepted the full sentence. They'd just... stopped fighting it. Was that because of him? He felt so nervous it was making him sick.
His phone rang. He swallowed twice before he picked it up.
"H-hello?"
"Danny," Jack said, with too many emotions in his voice for Danny to untangle. "I, I wasn't sure you'd pick up this week."
Danny swallowed again. But there was one base he needed to cover. "You know these are recorded, right?"
"I do." Jack sounded about as frustrated as Danny felt, but after a moment, he sighed shakily and pushed forward. "Danny... you know I still love you, don't you? I always will. Both of us will."
That was all it took. Danny pressed a hand over his mouth to stifle a sob, tears welling up in seconds. "I'm sorry," he choked out, unable to think of anything else. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." This is all my fault. I got all anxious and worked up over nothing and now we're here.
"You don't have anything to apologize for," Jack swore, and Danny had to cover his mouth again, squeezing his eyes shut. "It doesn't matter what Maddie and I would've done if we'd known... certain things." He sounded choked, but he pushed on. "What matters is what we did, and... and you didn't make us do that. You didn't make us make those assumptions. A-and I don't want you to think you did. God, Danny... I'm so sorry."
Danny wanted to cry, but he swallowed it down. They were on a time limit. "It's okay, Dad. I-I'm not mad."
"I know you're not, son." Suddenly Jack sounded exhausted. Jack hesitated, and then continued, "Any, uh, updates? On your medical issues?"
Danny winced. "Um, not really?" He struggled to find a way to explain that wouldn't give anything away. "The... situation is a lot more complicated than you're probably thinking right now. But that's why I have to see meta specialists for everything." He tried to remember the developments of the last week. It felt like it had been longer. "I'm getting my pacemaker next week, Bruce and I will go in and get it adjusted and stuff and talk about what to do.”
Silently, Danny cursed himself for making this so much more difficult than it had to be. How long would it be before he could have an unsupervised conversation with his parents again? He couldn't explain anything to them like this.
"...Okay, Danny." Jack sounded defeated, probably coming to the same conclusion Danny had. "I just... why didn't you say anything? In the beginning, before- before anything happened?"
Danny's throat tightened, but he forced himself not to break down this time. What was it that Bruce said? Compartmentalize. Box it up and put it aside for now. He could feel guilty later. "I was scared, Dad," he said, quiet and sincere. "It was a while before I understood what happened. And I thought I'd work up the courage in time, but things just... kept getting worse. I didn't know what to do."
"I'm sorry, Danny," Jack said again, soft and grieving. Danny exhaled shakily. "What about your future? Are you still going to...?"
"I haven't been making stuff up," Danny insisted, leaning into the rails. "I, I do tell you guys as much as I can, you know. I'm still going to school, I'm gonna go for my master's degree. Um, puberty did, like, completely stop after my accident, but apparently that's not super unusual for a serious health event like that. I met an... ice meta specialist last summer that checks me out sometimes, and he says there's no meta-related reason that should have happened, so Bruce thinks we might be able to induce it medically."
Jack chuckled. It sounded wet. "God, maybe we should go over everything again now that I know how to listen," he murmured. "Does... does Bruce know?"
Danny hesitated for a moment before he realized there wasn't really any way he could deny it. "...Yeah, Bruce knows. It was, um, made clear to him when he agreed to take custody, since most foster homes wouldn't be able to handle my medical needs and Vlad was... you know." He winced at the sound Jack made. "I... don't know if I would've told anyone on my own. Probably not."
"I'm so sorry, Danny," Jack said again, voice rough with emotion. "I'm so sorry for all of the ways that we failed you."
"Dad..." Danny hesitated, not wanting to insist it was okay again but not sure what else to say. "I should've told you. I never even gave you the chance."
"We made you feel unsafe," Jack said hoarsely. "That could never be your fault, Danno. Your mom and I... tried to foster an environment where you and your sister felt like you could tell us anything, and... and we fucked it up. You didn't do anything wrong."
Danny hiccuped, covering his mouth for a moment as he swallowed an apology of his own. He fumbled for something else to say instead. "Bruce is really good about it," he tried, not sure if he was reassuring his dad or accidentally rubbing salt in the wound. "He's been working really hard to make sure I feel safe and supported and stuff. It's a big part of why he pushed me to start seeing a therapist too, and... it's helping a lot, I think."
"I'm so glad," Jack told him, choked but sincere. Danny bit his lip.
"...Did you tell Mom?"
There was a brief, stifling moment of silence, but maybe Jack was remembering being cut off by the time limit too, because he answered quickly.
"I did. I had to, I couldn't let..." He trailed off for a moment, then took a deep, audible breath. "I needed us to be on the same page. I, I hope you... don't mind."
Danny swallowed thickly. "How did she take it?"
"I'm... not certain how much she believes me," Jack admitted. "But I pointed out some of the things that it explained, and she agreed to, to switch our plea easily enough. She's been very quiet since then. She... said she needed to speak with you." Danny couldn't stop the weak gasp that escaped him. "She's not-" Jack cut himself off, and then modified, "If she treats you badly, Danny, tell me. I'll... I'll talk to her."
A chill ran down Danny's spine; he wasn't sure he could handle being the cause of his parents' divorce on top of everything. "O-okay."
Jack took a deep breath. "Is there anything else you wanted to tell me? Something that you weren't able to before?"
Danny hesitated, thinking about it. "...Phantom helped Ember put on a concert in Metropolis last week," he offered at last, soft and hesitant. "One of Bruce's friends took me. It was pretty cool."
"Phantom?" Jack said, suddenly sounding disgruntled. Danny's heart stopped. "That treacherous spook is still around, is he? I hope you aren't friends with him."
Danny couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe, hecouldn'tbreathe, couldn'tbreathe couldn'tbreathecouldn't-
The phone slipped through his numb fingers, clattering to the ground. He could hear his dad calling out, sounding panicked, but he couldn't answer; for the second time that week his chest felt like it was being crushed. He folded forward, hands clutching at his chest, and struggled to inhale. His heart pounded.
He didn't know why he had expected anything different. He didn't know why it hadn't occurred to him that knowing he was a ghost didn't mean his parents knew his hero identity. Didn't know why he'd ever thought the danger had passed.
He barely noticed when someone shot up the stairs, but he did when they sat next to him and gently pulled him against their side. He tilted his head up, but his swimming eyes couldn't quite make out who it was that had apparently been waiting for something to go wrong.
"This is so bad for your heart," they muttered. Dick, Danny realized with a start - when had he arrived? "It's alright, baby spook, I've got you. Take it easy, breathe out, one two three four five... breathe in, one two three four five... hold it..." Instead of counting, Dick picked up Danny's phone and spoke into it, voice icy. "You're an ass. Tell Madeline to wait half an hour before she calls. And she will be calling, because if you leave Danny hanging for another week, I'm flying out to confront you personally."
"I, I-" Jack stammered. Unsympathetic, Dick hung up on him and set the phone aside before refocusing on Danny, who was still struggling to hold his breath through the urge to hyperventilate.
"Out, one two three four five six seven eight," Dick coached calmly. Danny basically sobbed out the breath, his head spinning unpleasantly. "In, one two three four five..."
Dick coached him like that for the next few minutes, until Danny had stopped gasping and shaking (but the tears had started flowing.) Then he prompted quietly,
"What happened? It sounded like things were going pretty well."
The prompt nearly sent Danny into tears again, but he held himself together, trying to recover some of his dignity. Instead, he swallowed, letting his head rest on Dick's shoulder. "They're fine with me being a ghost," he said at last, scratchy and miserable. His chest ached. "They just hate the ghost that is me."
"They're still holding a grudge against Phantom," Dick concluded. His other hand rested briefly on Danny's head, then started to comb through his hair, gentle and soothing. "If they didn't know until just now, you don't know how they'll react knowing, right? Maybe they just... didn't know."
Danny hiccuped, burying his face in Dick's shoulder. "I feel like I'm losing it," he croaked.
"If you are, you're doing it in a much healthier way than the rest of us," Dick told him, and Danny managed a laugh. "You don't need them, Danny. Yes, it would be really, really nice if they accepted you for who and what you are, but you don't need them. You have plenty of people who do love you for the amazing person you've proven yourself to be. There's no reason for you to have to pretend anymore."
Danny tried to beat back another wave of emotion and largely failed. "I just want it to be over," he admitted miserably. "I thought it was over and then he said that and..."
"And it wasn't," Dick said with a nod, still playing with Danny's hair. "You want me to answer for you? Make sure your mom's on the same page?"
Danny genuinely considered it for a moment, then shook his head. "I can do it. Just... stay here?"
He was embarrassed to even ask, but Dick nodded instantly.
The thing about Danny being a ghost was... it explained almost everything. It raised a lot of questions too, of course, but at the same time, it was Occam's razor. Nearly every question they'd had about Danny, every problem, every mystery - as soon as they considered the idea that Danny even could be a ghost, the answers clicked into place.
Because, while Maddie understood that Danny wouldn't have been in a position to appreciate it, they really had tried an enormous range of solutions to get their trackers and anti-ecto compounds to stop reacting to him.
Take the anti-ecto cleaner. The first version of it had worked by breaking ectoplasm down into base components, but that had stung her and Jack as well, and it wasn't a huge surprise when Danny got an outright rash. The second version reacted specifically to the psychokinetic plasma, which isn't present in ectocontaminated humans - except in Danny, apparently, who got another rash. The third version targeted ectoradiation only, which would harmlessly (if temporarily) reduce ectocontamination if anything... but it made Danny itch.
Or the security system - the first version targeted masses of ectoplasm, and she and Jack hadn't set it off, so she assumed ectocontamination didn't register at all. But it had fired at Danny.
So they refined it to only fire at ectoplasm giving off EMF at the frequency associated with ghosts, rather than the much lower frequency seen in ectocontaminated humans. But then it fired at Danny again.
So they'd tried redesigning it so it would only register ghost cores, not ectoplasm. It fired at Danny anyway.
So they'd fixed it to only fire at ghost cores with power readings equal to an ectopus' or higher. And, senselessly, bafflingly, it still attacked Danny.
They had tried quite literally dozens of methods to keep their equipment from hurting Danny, and none of it had worked. Now, Maddie wanted to bang her head into the jailhouse wall. If they had thought to add together all the characteristics their unintentional experiments had attributed to Danny, would they have come to the obvious conclusion? Or would they have remained hopelessly oblivious, continuing to come up with new and increasingly creative ways to make their youngest child afraid to come home?
And yet...
And yet, Maddie was certain there was still something they were missing. One more revelation, one more discovery that would lock the last few things into place. Why Danny had suddenly started to skip school, how he'd hidden everything Vlad was doing to him, what had kept him so busy that he'd been constantly missing homework and chores and curfew.
Jack clearly thought that it was the stress of living in a house full of ecto-hazardous materials, and that wasn't unreasonable. But Maddie didn't think that was it. There was something else, and she had a feeling it had something to do with the reason Danny had been moved all the way to Gotham.
To Bruce Wayne, who was widely rumored to be one of the main backers of the Justice League.
It fell into place when Jack staggered out of the phone room, looking no less rattled than when he'd gone in. It didn't bode well for how the conversation had gone. The guards gave them space, as had thankfully become routine after calls with Danny, and Jack collapsed next to her. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and tugged her close enough that they'd be difficult to overhear.
"Phantom has a secret identity," Jack croaked into her hair, raw with guilt and horror. And the last few loose ends knotted together.
In this context, Jack could only mean one thing: Phantom had a secret identity and that identity was Danny. Danny, who was the same age, who had the same build, who missed class nearly every day and often snuck out at night. Who ran away from every ghost fight but never accepted any self-defense gear they tried to give him, and who had been so clingy the night before their arrest that it was obvious later that he'd known it was coming.
Jazz knew, obviously; she had that scrapbook dedicated to Phantom, showcasing his accomplishments over the last two years. Did he tell her, or did she find out on her own? Did Danny's friends know? Did Vlad?
No wonder Danny had broken down when she blamed Phantom for their arrest; no wonder he'd resorted to begging her to stop talking about ghosts at all. Had he ever heard such vitriol directed at him from his mother? (Of course he had; Maddie hadn't shut up about how much she wanted Phantom gone since he first appeared. She felt sick.)
Of course Danny had called the Justice League. Knowing Phantom was Danny snapped everything into sharp focus, and with growing nausea, Maddie realized that they had practically forced Danny's hand. Between their refusal to close the portal, the danger they posed to the ghosts he seemed to protect, and their constant attacks on Danny himself- what else could he have done? They could have killed someone. They could have killed Danny.
Jack, thankfully, saw the tears welling in her eyes and took them to mean she understood, and he pulled her closer, letting her temple press against his shoulder.
"I didn't realize-" Jack choked off the end of his sentence, his arm tightening around her. "I- it was supposed to be a joke, but I said something and- and I guess Danny was already so scared that-" Maddie could put the pieces together, and she squeezed Jack's arm. He stopped, took a short breath, and continued, "Someone, I, I think Mr. Wayne, c-calmed him down, and he said to give him half an hour before calling again. I'm sorry, Mads."
Maddie just nodded in acknowledgment, already a thousand miles away as she thought it over, frazzled and impatient. Danny must have been scared sick; she'd known his anxiety was on the rise, but she'd thought it was because of the ghost attacks that happened every day at his school. Danny had been terrified of ghosts since he was little, after all.
Not anymore, she supposed. Now, it couldn't be more obvious that he was afraid of them. Living in a house full of ghost sensors and anti-ecto materials, he must have been fighting tooth and nail to keep them from realizing what he was. It went well beyond a refusal to tell them; the lengths he had gone to stated clearly that he thought they would hate him for becoming a ghost. And why wouldn't he? He had all the evidence he'd ever need to prove it.
She wondered distantly if he'd thought it wouldn't matter that he had died in their basement, to their magnum opus. Had his nearly perfect human body formed around his intense desire for things to stay the same?
(There were still unanswered questions. Where was his body? Had he hidden it? Thrown it into the Zone? Or had he absorbed it into his ghost somehow?)
(She remembered sitting with him as they rushed to the hospital, her hand clamped firmly around his wrist to track his fluttering pulse while she talked him through each labored breath. Had that been for nothing? Was he already dead by then? Did even he realize he was dead yet?)
Maddie shook her spiraling thoughts off impatiently and refocused. How could she put Danny's fears to rest, far away from him and unable to even directly reference his worries?
She leaned back, stared at the ceiling, and put her mind to work.
Half an hour floated by, at once too slow and too quick. Wringing her hands, Maddie entered the phone room, sat down, and dialed.
"...hello?" Danny's voice was thin and breathless with fear. Maddie closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
"Hi, sweetie," she said softly, setting a closed hand on her chest as she willed her own pounding heart to slow. (How was Danny's heart handling this? Did it even matter?) "Your father asked me to apologize profusely on his behalf. He wants you to know that he didn't understand, but we're all on the same page now and nothing has changed. He asked me to remind you that he loves you."
She heard Danny take a deep, shaky breath. "Okay," he whispered, with the sort of audible creak that meant he was one sharp word away from going dead silent.
Maddie's heart pounded.
"I want you to know that I'm proud of you," she said, as firmly as she could. "I've been thinking about... everything." Consciously reframing the last two years, feeling like she was seeing clearly for the first time. "You've worked so hard and been so kind, and I'm sorry that I didn't see that sooner. I'm sorry that we made things so difficult for you."
Difficult - a devastating understatement. Danny had shown courage and initiative well beyond anything they could have expected from him, and she and Jack had dragged him down every step of the way.
And he had kept going anyway.
She could hear Danny crying quietly, muffled and erratic as he tried to stop. She hoped it was good - relief, or happiness. She waited patiently, holding her words in her mind, and after a minute Danny regained control.
"I love you," he managed at last, still scratchy. "I'm so sorry."
Maddie's heart broke for him. "Don't be. You were right." She hesitated, worrying briefly if her next move would dance too close to Danny's identity - she'd never had to safeguard a secret identity before, had never even considered it. But it was the best idea she had, so she continued, "Have you been following the court case?"
"Um, not really. My therapist told me to stop." Danny sounded guilty, as if the reason wasn't so obvious that Maddie wanted to smack herself for even asking; it must have been crushing to hear about their feeble attempts to prove in court that he deserved how they'd treated him.
Maddie pressed on. "We've been forced to reevaluate a lot of the assumptions we made about Phantom," she explained quietly. It was true, even before Danny had slipped up enough for Jack to catch on. "Every day, the Justice League lawyer calls in experts, reviews old footage, and shoots down everything we say. Proving that he was under mind control, comparing casualty statistics to other active heroes, analyzing his behavior around ghost hunters... it's been quite a while since Jack and I believed Phantom was what we made him out to be."
And while Maddie couldn't bring herself to bring it up directly, most impactful of all had been the breakdown from the xenopsychologist, who laid out the currently accepted criteria for sapience and highlighted exactly how Phantom met those criteria. Then Ember. Then Technus.
Logical reasoning. The ability to follow a line of thought to a reasoned conclusion, such as when Phantom figured out how to bypass or disable some of their inventions.
Moral sentiment. A sense of right and wrong, separate from what is practical. Like Phantom fighting ghosts when they were behaving aggressively, allowing them to stay when they weren't, and rescuing them when they were captured. How he never raised a hand to a human, but still sometimes intervened with street crime.
Metacognition. The ability to reflect on oneself and learn from mistakes. Phantom rarely got caught in the same trap twice, and had occasionally even been caught berating himself for his mistakes.
Awareness of others. The understanding that others might have opinions and motivations separate from one's own, easily proven by Phantom's continuous attempts to reason and plead with the Red Huntress.
Agency. The ability to set goals and act to achieve them. Their very first assertion against Phantom had implicitly acknowledged that he was a sapient being with goals and motivations.
"I'm sorry that it took so much to bring us around," Maddie said at last, when Danny didn't reply right away. "This was... necessary, I think. We were too stubborn for too long, and Phantom-" Her breath hitched despite herself. "-needed to do damage control. I understand."
"Oh," Danny said, an odd weight to his voice that she didn't fully understand. "You still think Phantom-" He cut himself off and hesitated, and Maddie tensed, both of them struggling to dance around the elephant in the room without looking at it. "Just a second, okay?"
Maddie's brow furrowed, and heard Danny's muffled voice over the phone - he'd covered it, or set it down. Asking how much he was allowed to say, maybe, or working out how to say it. She exhaled, pressing her hand over her eyes, and waited.
No wonder calls with Danny had been such a whirlwind, she reflected. His life had gotten much more complicated than she and Jack had ever realized.
After a minute, Danny returned. "Phantom didn't call the Justice League, Mom," he said quietly. Maddie froze. "Batman came to Amity to do a membership assessment. It was his decision to make an arrest. Phantom... didn't really have a lot of say in it." There was a little hitch in his voice toward the end, but that was all.
It took Maddie a long moment to process that, feeling like the wind had been knocked out of her. It had been a slow, difficult adjustment to start thinking of Phantom as a hero, and even with the newfound understanding that Danny was Phantom, a part of her was still playing catch-up. Knowing that he had been a candidate for League certification took things to a whole new level.
"...Did he pass?" was the only thing she could think to ask.
Danny huffed, a soft, self-deprecating scoff of amusement. "I don't know why I'd know about that," he dodged gracelessly, marking a line in the sand. "But you probably would've heard about it."
Maddie wanted to ask more - why Danny hadn't passed, if he would get another chance, if he'd gotten any feedback on what he should work on (and if she and Jack could help) - but she bit her tongue. Is this your new career goal? she wanted to ask him. Is this why you gave up on being an astronaut?
She refocused, running a hand over her face with a shaky sigh. "I shouldn't have assumed," she said at last, soft and resigned, and tried not to remember realizing that she'd sent Danny careening into an inconsolable fit of tears when he was too far away for her to comfort him. When he was still settling into a new home, surrounded by people he didn't know and who might not be able to soothe him.
Because they'd had fifteen minutes to talk and she'd spent all of it unknowingly blaming him for something he hadn't even done, when she should have been reassuring him in any way she could. If wishes were fishes...
(But what could she possibly have said when he had known with certainty that they would be convicted, and she'd had no idea?)
"Have you been working on your career plans?" Maddie asked instead, following her previous line of thought and hoping that the subtext would be understood. Was 'hero' even a viable career? She had no idea - the inner workings of the Justice League were far too much of a mystery for her to even guess. It was odd to imagine that Superman was paid for his work, but even more unreasonable to assume that he wasn't. Did superheroes have day jobs?
Danny was quiet for another minute, probably trying to formulate an answer that Maddie would understand and their eavesdroppers wouldn't. Frustration briefly burned through her, but she swatted it away impatiently. Maddie had no one to blame but herself.
"Well, I told you about getting back on track to be an astrophysicist," Danny said after a moment, slow and deliberate. "But I have a mentorship too. I'm learning a lot, but B really wants to get all my medical and legal stuff handled before I start to focus on it."
A day job and a hero career, Maddie translated mentally. Did that mean heroes did have day jobs? Did Superman have a day job, or only some heroes? She couldn't think of a way to ask. And B? Was 'B' Bruce, as she had assumed all this time, or Batman? ...Both, so Danny could tell them as much as possible without lying?
She swallowed a lump in her throat.
Then she reprocessed what Danny had said, and her heart picked up, anxiety and guilt nipping at her heels in equal measure. "You said you were fainting," she said, unpleasant understanding crashing over her. "Is that during..."
"Emergencies, yeah," Danny confirmed, not sounding nearly as worried as Maddie felt. Was that a good sign or not? "We're going to talk about it with the cardiologist again once I get my pacemaker, but B says it's not a big deal even if we can't prevent it. If we know why it happens, we can plan around it."
It occurred to Maddie that Batman must have taken a key role in managing Danny's health. The thought was dizzying, and Maddie wasn't sure whether to be more worried or relieved. The Gotham vigilante didn't have much public-facing interaction, leaving most of it to Superman and Wonder Woman, but her impression of the man was that he was strict, perceptive, and meticulously careful.
If Batman had chosen to handle Danny's training himself, it completely explained the whirlwind of problem-solving that had followed Danny's move to Gotham, as well as the move itself. It was even fascinating, in a way; if Maddie was interpreting things correctly, it meant that one of the first steps in Batman's tutelage was to address any medical and psychological problems. (Or had the doctors been Batman's idea, and the therapist Bruce's? Or were the doctors standard practice? Surely superheroes had to meet an extremely high standard of health and fitness.)
"Keep us updated," she requested at last, reaching up to run her fingers through her hair. "...I'm sorry, Danny. I can't tell you enough how sorry I am about everything."
She remembered talking to Batman after their arrest, when he checked on them in lockup, while they were still frustrated and confused by the whole thing - before they started to realize how serious the charges were. He'd been downright chilly in his demeanor then, and she'd gotten the impression that it was more than Batman's characteristic reserve.
("I did review your research," Batman had told her. "I understand how you came to the conclusions that you did. Your initial research was published in 2005, almost five years before the foundation of Justice League Dark, and since the vast majority of ghost experts do not operate in an academic framework, your research never had to pass peer review. Therefore the fact that you had no firsthand experience went unremarked.")
She'd been indignant then. Now...
By then, he must have already known more about the situation than she did now - must have known that she'd been unknowingly hurting her own son for over two years. For the first time, she saw the situation as he must have seen it then: Danny working tirelessly to defend everyone, no matter what they thought of him, no matter what they said or did to him, powering through overwhelming hostility that would have broken the will of most grown men. And being repaid only with an environment that was constantly unsafe, where even the people who were supposed to protect him were trying to hurt him, long after their negligence had already killed him.
What must Batman think of them? She swiped her tears out of her eyes.
"I forgive you," Danny said earnestly, oblivious to her train of thought. He even sounded grateful for the apology. "Really. For everything."
The way he emphasized it said that he suspected how much time she would be spending trying to recall every fight they had ever had with Phantom, every time she had unknowingly hurt her son and then smiled about it.
(Hadn't there been one just days before their arrest? The new anti-ecto compound, the hydrophobic one that dissolved ectoplasm on contact- it must have been excruciating-)
The corrections officer tapped her shoulder, and she glanced up at him and sighed. "I have to go, Danny. I love you, and I'll talk to you next week, okay?"
This week was the uncertain one, she reassured herself. Danny had no reason not to answer next week.
"Love you too," Danny said, softer than usual. "Talk to you next week."
After spending the last few days in a stressed-out haze, Saturday evening brought little relief. Danny stumbled through the end of the day without ceremony, picking at his food at dinner until the combined forces of Dick and Cass persuaded him to eat almost half of it, and then played games with Stephanie after.
When he lost the third Smash Bros game in a row, Steph dropped her controller and announced, "Okay, this is just sad." She turned to Danny, and he looked away, setting his controller down with a sigh. What Steph said, though, was, "What about a spar? I heard you and Jason went at it, I want a turn."
Danny managed a halfhearted smile and nodded. "Sure. Let's go."
Stephanie snagged the bowl of fruit that Alfred had left on the table (an unsubtle hint for Danny to eat more) and brought it downstairs with them, eating about half an apple on the way down. She left it on a side table when they reached the sparring mat, turned to him, and raised an eyebrow expectantly. Danny cocked his head back, crouching, slightly, and she took the cue.
Steph, lithe and agile, fought more like Damian than Jason. She didn't have Damian's raw skill, training carved into every line of his movements, but she fought a hell of a lot dirtier; she had a way of altering her trajectory just right so Danny didn't realize they were going to collide until it happened, knocking him off balance seemingly by accident. Danny altered his movements to match, giving her a wider berth, and she switched tactics, with a piercing whistle that made him flinch and a hand in his hair to yank his head down.
"Cheap shot!" Danny called out, close to laughing, after she yanked him over into a ram that nearly knocked him out of the ring.
"That's the idea!" Steph retorted, grin bright.
It was kinda fun.
He lost by a narrow margin, Steph catching him in a dangerous headlock that he didn't want to mess around with unless he outright phased out of it, and he tapped out. She let go with a laugh, and he smiled briefly and went to grab a clementine and sit on the edge of the ring. A moment later, Steph plopped down next to him with a pear.
Danny's smile faded.
"Have you ever gone rollerskating?" Steph asked, randomly. Danny gave her a startled glance.
"Um, no? Why?"
"There's a rink near Gotham U," Steph told him, tone casual. "My friends and I were gonna head out tomorrow evening. I hate to be that airhead that invites her little brother, but they'll understand if I tell them you had a bad week."
It took Danny a moment to understand, and then he smiled shyly. "That sounds like fun. I mean, if you really don't mind." He had been feeling a little cooped up in the manor, and school wasn't much of a break.
"Nah. It'll be fun to see you thrash 'em." Steph flashed him a smile. "You should probably focus on pretending not to have superhuman balance though."
"Oh, probably." Danny felt a little disappointed, but the feeling was swept away quickly. "Well, that could be fun too."
Steph nodded, and then studied him for a long moment. He looked away.
"...Did I tell you I'm going for my master's in social work?" Danny gave her a startled glance, and Steph elaborated, "I'm aiming to be a parole officer, maybe give people that get out a better chance of actually reintegrating into society instead of just flopping in and out of prison."
"That's... not what I would have guessed," Danny admitted. Steph raised an eyebrow, looking amused.
"Oh? And what would you have guessed?"
Danny considered for a moment. "Sports medicine?"
Steph looked surprised. "I considered it, actually. But no. Figured this plays more to my strengths."
"Harassing people?" Danny suggested, and laughed when Steph elbowed him in retaliation. "Did you ever meet... you know..."
"My dad's?" Steph asked wryly. "Yeah, once or twice. He kept a running tally of how many days Dad had been out of prison between violations. Never figured out if he did that to be an asshole or if he thought it helped, but it was always pretty obvious he was just waiting for Dad to go back in." Danny sighed. "Hey. By the time your parents get out, I'll be qualified to take 'em."
Danny smiled bitterly. "You don't even like them."
"Nope," Steph agreed. "But you do. That's the important thing, isn't it?"
Danny shot her a pathetically grateful look before turning his gaze away again, picking open the clementine in his hands. "Maybe they won't even like me by then."
"Maybe not," Steph acknowledged, unusually soft. "But you'll still want them taken care of, won't you?" Danny didn't answer. "I asked my dad if he'd look out for them. He laughed in my face, but he'll at least consider it."
Danny wiped his eyes as soon as he realized they were wet. "Damn it," he muttered. "I knew this was coming, so why...?" Now that his parents had pled guilty, they’d been officially sentenced. And that was that.
"Doesn't make it much easier," Steph said simply. "It was hard for me too, every time Dad went back in, and then worse once I realized Dad was never getting out the legal way again." Danny sighed shakily. "Hey. Don't focus on it too much. It sucks, but your life doesn't revolve around your parents. The world spins on, you know?"
The world spins on. "Want to go again?"