Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Danny wakes up that morning, nothing is out of the ordinary.

Or- no, that's a bad way to start.

For starters, everything is out of the ordinary, just not out of the ordinary for Danny.

He wakes up- that part is true- in more or less the same state he has every day over the past nine-hundred and forty some-odd days.

Slowly, reluctantly, and without any meaningful feelings on the matter.

He has, in fact, woken up in the same bed, in the same room, on the same floor of the same house that he has every single one of those something-something however-many mornings, nights, or evenings, with the same crumpled sheets and the same painted-blue military-grade reinforced walls and the same peeling posters he'd torn down, ripped apart, pieced together, and hung up again however-many times before, and the same gigantic glass scifi-alien-prison type divider that let him gaze out into the dark, unlit, practically abandoned laboratory that had been there... probably since before he was born, though the space-prison bedroom was likely a more recent addition than that.

He hoped.

He stares unblinking into the light for several long, empty moments before closing his eyes again, wondering if maybe today will be one of the days he just stays in bed.

He probably shouldn't stay in bed. One day in bed had a nasty habit of turning into two days in bed, and if he was going to go for two days then he knew from experience he'd definitely sucker himself into a full week, and spending a full week in bed was like begging for another poster-shredding downward spiral.

And there was only so many times you could tape paper back together before print became illegible.

His eyes open again, almost by themselves, tracing the ceiling for the... God, the most infinite of times.

The little glow-in-the-dark star making up the leftmost part of Orion's Belt is still missing, leaving behind a dot of blue sticky putty in its place. The actual star is still where it was yesterday, jammed one-spoke deep into the slight gap between glued-on baseboard and the reinforced steel wall.

The long, thin scrape in the paint next to the sink still glitters silver in the light.

His pile of clothes from the day before is still on the ground where he'd left them. His dresser is still bolted to the floor slightly further from the bed than he would have liked. His textbooks are still jammed into the cardboard box hidden under his desk, also bolted down, also infuriating off-center.

Desk, dresser, bookshelf, sink, bed, cubicle, toilet.

All the same as the day before; all the same as the day before that.

Probably not dreaming, then.

He lets his eyes glance to the corner and back, lightning-quick. Camera. He adds it to the inventory- one more bit of proof that he's actually awake, and not just dreaming of being awake. Which was is an important thing to know at the start of each day, because the alternative is just sitting around waiting for something dream-like to happen, and usually that just leads to disappointment.

Like, if Jazz suddenly burst in with a rocket launcher in hand, declaring that it was time and she was "busting us out of here!".

Or of Sam walking in with her mom in tow, sitting down on the edge of his bed to explain that she'd reached out to her family's lawyers, spoken with social services or the police or the government or anyone and his parents had no choice but to give him away.

Or that one really, really good one of just opening the door and going to school like he remembered doing so many times before, bumping into Tucker in the hallway and goofing off until the bell rang for class.

The bell that never seemed to ring at all, so they just filled the time talking about nothing even the slightest bit world-ending or tragic.

(He did his best not to think of Jazz, or Sam, or Tucker. It was better if he didn't.)

Anyhow, when the sleep-times are too much like the awake-times, things get confusing.

There's all kinds of things he might be able to trick himself into thinking- and he'd learned, by now, not to take advantage of that particular brand of escapism.

It never lasted, anyways.

Eyes closed. Black. Eyes open. Blue.

Awake, for real, actually.

Again, he contemplates staying in bed.

That's what life is like down here. What it's been like for a long time, actually. But it's better than it used to be, so there's really no point in complaining.

Even if he had, in fact, tried complaining.

As if that had ever helped.

Ugh.

Not even fully awake and already tired again, he rolls over, dragging a pillow up over his head.

So, maybe it will be a bed day. Week, month, whatever.

It doesn't matter. Nothing does, anymore.

It's probably another few hours of laying there, drifting in and out, until the food chute clunky down a tray of breakfast. Pancakes, from the smell, so it's probably Saturday.
Dad likes to go all-out on Saturdays.

He doesn't move to get it. It'll still be there in another hour, and he's not really all that hungry yet anyways.

So, really, the day doesn't start off all that special, or unique, or different, in any way at all that may suggest it could be.

Which is why he figures he can probably be forgiven for still being in his pajamas when the freaking Justice League walks in.

Or... kind of just a few of them?

A fifth of them? He isn't sure how many there are, come to think of it. But when he hears the fenton-tech ghost-proofed ectovator (see: "elevator") hit the lab's floor with a cheery "ding", he expects the pair of boots stomping in to belong to his parents, not the Batman.

Or the Batman's new sidekick, "old guy in a trenchcoat", but forgive him if the internationally-famous space-travelling superhero in a cape takes up the bulk of his attention.

He blinks at them. They blink back.

It's awkward, and Danny has never handled 'awkward' very well.

"So..." He clears his throat. "I'm, uh. Going to guess Mom and Dad aren't home?"

It's so incredibly quiet.

At least it is, until Trenchcoat turns to Batman (the mother-freaking Batman!) And just kind of completely blows his cover right out of the water like it's nothing.

"That is a dead kid."

Danny gapes. Batman does... nothing, really, and it's creepier than it should be in a fully-lit room in what he assumes is the middle of the day.

"Hey!" He blurts, offended. "I'm right here!"

Trenchcoat frowns and raises an eyebrow.

Danny frowns back, and folds his arms, too. So, there. Now everyone can look grumpy and constipated.

"Daniel Fenton?"

Hearing Batman- Batman! (He might be freaking out a little)- say his actual name is freaky.

"Uh... Yeah?"

"Your parents have been taken into custody," he explains. The real, actual Batman explains.

Holy shit.

"They have agreed to cooperate with federal investigations into the trafficking of anti-meta materials with the stipulation that care of their son is assigned to the Justice League for specialized treatment of his condition."

Huh.

Well, that certainly feels.. dream-like.

His eyes flick across the room, rapid-fire: Star-scratch-books, paint-mirror-camera. Check.

The air still smells like plastic and dirty laundry and cold pancakes. His parents make pancakes on Saturdays, but his parents aren't there.

He certainly feels awake, but he'd felt awake in dreams before, too, and he'd felt like he was dreaming when he was awake sometimes as well, so what good was that, really?

But his parents, in custody? That means they'd been arrested, right? Arrested for... something to do with anti-meta stuff?

They'd never been interested in metahuman physiology before, at least not that he'd ever heard, but that could be a recent development. If they'd gona to a bad supplier, or someone connected to a supervillain, then he can see how that might have gone south. But arrested?

He tries to imagine his mom being led to a police car in handcuffs and fails. His dad, maybe, for like... property damage, or something, but his mom?

Nobody makes Maddie Fenton do anything she doesn't want to do. Nobody.

A tingly, back-of the head sort of giddiness crept into his chest. "Care of the Justice League", he parrots back. "And that's you?"

Bat-dude makes a short, sharp gesture to Trenchcoat Guy. "My associate, Mr. Constantine, posesses expert knowledge of metaphysical sciences. He has volunteered his time to assist us in providing for your unique needs."

Trenchcoat- "Mr. Constantine"- lets out a snort that a normal person probably shouldn't be able to hear through two inches of bulletproof glass, but they already know Danny isn't a normal person, so he can look as skeptical as he wants, thank you. "My needs?"

Mr. C looks about as thrilled as he does, fortunately.

"Doctors Jack and Madeline Fenton claim that their ecto-contaminated son has spent the last several years inhabited by a powerful ghost that has been unwilling to vacate. As an exorcist specializing in demonic activity, it's not my main specialty, but I've done it before." He shrugs, like it's no big deal. "Who am I to say no to a child in need?"

Oh. Oh, that's hilarious.

Danny laughs, but it comes out feeling sour, like eating a whole pack of Tucker's weird, imported, cheese-flavoured sour tarantulas in one go.

Now the Bat and the Coat are both frowning, with almost the exact same scowl-lines, and that just makes him laugh even harder.

"Something funny?"

"They still think I'm possessed." He means to say it like a question, but it doesn't come out as one. "It's been- how long? How long, and they still believe that." He looks to the two men, both of them, and feels nothing. "Do you believe them?"

"I don't," C-man says, stepping forwards. Danny can see now that he's fidgeting with something in his hand- something square and shiny and golden. "I think this runs a little deeper than that."

Hope bubbles up from somewhere in his chest. Bright and glowing and almost too good to be true.

"I think," the man continues, still fiddling- pacing, now, closer to the window than even his family had been in ages, "I think that humans mucking about in the occult rarely find good things waiting on the other side. I think that meddling with spirits is dangerous, and messy, and beyond most mortal comprehension, and no amount of "precautions" or lead-lined suits-" He gestures to a row hanging up against the wall, two different sizes in orange and blue, "-are ever enough to account for that. And I think," he looked to him now, pale-blue eyes piercing into blue-green, "I think that a homemade laboratory filled with supernaturally-charged contaminants probably wasn't the safest place to raise a child."

He feels floaty. "Probably not."

"Probably not."

"So..." He swallows. "You... know, then? What...?" What I am.

Click. "I do."

Click.  It's a lighter. The shiny thing in Trenchcoat's hand- it's a lighter, with some kind of fancy-pants design etched in on the front. When he flicks it, a tiny blue flame appears, only to go out as he snaps it closed.

It's weird, but he's seen weirder things, and these guys- these heroes, adults, who have power and connections and might actually get him out of here- they know what he is. 

But he still needs to be sure. "I'm not possessed," he tells them. He's said it a thousand times before, but this time he says it like it means something. "I'm not."

C-man nods, unfazed. "We know."

"I died," he adds. "It wasn't their fault- it was an accident, but I-" He chokes. There's a lump rising in his throat and he thinks he might actually cry, but- but, God, has anybody ever actually listened before? Has he ever actually said this out loud?

He doesn't remember standing, but he is now, bare feet colder than normal against the floor, palms suddenly pressed flat against the glass.

"It was- there was this machine, and it wasn't working, and I knew it was stupid but I wanted to help, so I went inside to check it out, and- and it turned on, and I... I..."

"It killed you."

Danny jumped.

A guy in a big black kitty-ear costume wasn't exactly subtle, but to be honest, he'd actually forgotten for a minute that he was there. He'd gotten so worked up, that the guy had just sort of...  faded out.

But he sure noticed him now. Could practically feel his eyes boring into his skin, rock-solid. "The machine," he said. "It turned on, and you died."

He wasn't usually the sort of person who ran out of words. But what do you say to that? What do you say to someone when they lay it all out in the open, the final moments of the worst day of your entire life?

All he could do was nod.

Sixteen years old, almost as tall as his father, king of the dead, and nearly three years buried in a glorified fish tank, and he felt all of about six years old and three feet high, trying not to burst into tears in front of the fucking Batman.

He'd died. He'd been killed. Him. He wasn't sick, or delusional, or being controlled- He was dead.

And he was never going to go back to normal.

"I died," he says again. "I died."

Click.

"Daniel Fenton died."

Click-click.

He looks up.

Blue eyes look back.

Calm, cool, collected.

"But you're not Daniel Fenton." 

Chapter Text

Daniel Fenton had died.

"But you're not Daniel Fenton ."

If this guy Constantine- C-man, Trenchcoat, Scruffy-faced bastard, whoever he was- had known that he'd just shattered every hope and dream of freedom Danny still had left in just five words or less, he certainly didn't seem to care.

His theory- his expert assessment- was altogether simple:

Once upon a time, two meddling scientists dipped their toes into the depths of the unknown.

Once a taste of eternity had settled on their tongues, they had- dangerously, stupidly, recklessly- gone right on ahead and built a doorway to the nether realms into the foundation of their own damn house. Like one might petition the city to install an add-on guest room, or put up a homemade greenhouse in their backyard to grow tomatoes.

This had been foolish.

(That part, Danny couldn't help but reluctantly agree with.)

Then  as foolish people tended to do, they had multiplied. Brought two bright and beautiful children into the world, right smack dab on top of what was, essentially if not in practice, a portal to hell.

That was right about when the man had descended into a lengthy, infuriated, somewhat-incoherent ramble about hell itself, which was, apparently, one: a real place that souls of any kind could go to, and two: "the exact sort of place any sane and rational person with an IQ in the double-digits or above  should know not to be fucking around with, lord in Heaven almighty."

A younger, kinder version of Danny may have felt compelled to defend the abuse against his family, but a lot had happened since then, hadn't it?

"Obviously," trenchcoat continued, once drawn back to his original topic, one of the poor little buggers had gone and fallen in. Which was as sad and tragic as it was predictable and avoidable, but there really wasn't all that much that could be done about it now.

Because, he explained, (calmly, like they were talking about some bad weather and not someone's horrific final moments) either the super-charged extradimensional force of an antimatter rip tearing through reality had shredded poor, unsuspecting, fourteen-year-old Daniel apart atom by atom immediately on contact, or the high-frequency electrical current had surging through his small body had fried his neurons flat-ended first.

Either way, little Daniel Fenton had passed on to the other side right then and there, and the basest material of his earthly remains had been sucked into limbo like a Xenomorph in an airlock promptly after.

Which was when- apparently- an opportunistic spirit had come across their golden ticket back to the land of the living.

Conveniently, just enough of the actual Daniel Fenton's residual energy had been kicking around for it to assimilate a few key memories and mannerisms into it's own highly-detailed and convincing imitation.

By the end of that long-winded and exceptionally graphic explanation, Danny's brain had already receded back into the comfortably dull, floaty-dreamy place it had occupied some time earlier- some time between last night and this morning, before the aluminum tray of now-stale pancakes had first clunked their way into his fish tank.

Yippee.

The Bat had said something after that. Probably something sounding equally sensible and likely on paper. Not that it mattered, really. He wasn't going to have a choice one way or another what happened next, so there really wasn't much sense in paying attention. Not when it was just going to keep getting worse like this.

"Your choice to impersonate a deceased child is no a priority concern at this time," the Bat had informed him, just as cold and clinical as his ally. "At this time, Jack and Madeline Fenton believe their son to be alive, and their cooperation with our investigation relies on our ability to keep him that way."

Danny hadn't responded to that. He couldn't see any point.

Scruffy Bastard had muttered something then, grumbled under his breath, but it had been muffled by the cigarette he'd lit up between his lips.

It nags at the flat, distant part of him that someone is smoking in his parent's house. But then again, is it even their house anymore, or does it belong to the government now? What happens to your stuff when you went to jail? Does the bank sell it, or was that just for stuff like foreclosures?

He's lived here as long as he can remember. The idea of anyone else just buying it and moving in like him and his parents and his sister had never existed hurts.

Is this what full-ghosts feel like, he wonders, watching the world move on without them?

Whatever, it doesn't matter- smoking in someone else's place without asking is rude, and on top of that, it's bad lab safety.

(Plugging in a machine while you're still inside it isn't the best move, either, but he'd just been some dumb kid when that happened. Adults were supposed to know better.)

There's so much more talking after that, but it's nothing his hazy mind chooses to latch onto for very long.

After a while the talking finally stops, though, and new faces start trickling in, all hazmat-suited and bootie-covered up, and they begin going about what looks like the long and labour-intensive process of packing everything up.

All his parent's research notes, all their tools and weapons and computers, all their machines and loose parts and even their trash is swiftly and professionally packed away in clear plastic tubs and bags labeled "EVIDENCE", all sealed up with bright red tape.

He watches it all from the floor, blank and empty, still barefoot in his stupid blue-striped pajama pants.

And he just... drifts.

He can't remember if his new guardianship had been part of the spiel he'd tuned out. Had they bothered to mention where he was going? Would they? It sounded like they'd already decided he wasn't even a person, just some body-snatching imposter taking advantage of a grieving family. Would you tell a toaster you were having a garage sale?

Hell, maybe they were just going to pack up and leave him behind- turn out the lights, board up the doors, plaster the yard with "CRIME SCENE" tape and walk away.

It wasn't like he'd be able to break out. If he could, he'd have found a way by now. Heck, long before now- back when he still kind of gave a crap about going back to his real life, back to his stupid school with his stupid teachers, all his dumb classmates and all the dumb ghost attacks and even Dash shoving him into lockers every other week.

Or maybe they're going to bag him up as evidence, too. Maybe there's someone in the back of a transport trailer rooting around for a plastic bin big enough to fit him.

It would look really, really weird if he was brought in as evidence in court, but hey, disembodied souls piloting kid-shaped meat puppets aren't people.

The inside of his head goes kind of quiet for a while after that.

You're not Daniel Fenton.

He has to admit, it's a perfectly sound hypothesis.

More than a little abrupt, yeah, and certainly not gentle, but it sure made a lot more sense than the idea that a regular human kid could survive a lethal combination of ecto-radiation, high-voltage electricity, and nuclear fission, only to be possessed and inhabited by a completely unrelated ghostly entity for three years solid by coincidence, that- for no reason at all- just so happened to be immune to any and all forms of anti-ecto technology known to modern science.

And if they didn't believe that, then it was no wonder the real story wasn't holding water.

"Sorry guys, I'm actually not an evil spirit or a possessed kid; my DNA was just so incredibly corroded by ectoplasm at the exact moment of my death and immediate resuscitation that I kind of just became something else. Is it something you've heard of before? No, actually, funny story, there's really only one other guy on the planet like this! Where is he? Uh... I dunno, probably somewhere in Canada by now? Kind of lost track of him after my entire life went up in flames. Super convenient, I know, but I pinkie-promise I'm not lying, so would you mind setting me loose upon humanity? Please ignore the fact that I set off every ghost-detection system within a hundred miles by sneezing and can't be killed, thanks. Can you please text my sister and ask her to come pick me up?"

Yeah, no wonder. His own family hadn't bought that, and they loved him.

Loved him enough to barter for his safety while facing a Justice League-level prison sentance.

And oh.

Wow, yeah. That was a bit if a shock, wasn't it?

His mom and dad were going to go to court. Would probably serve time. Jail time.

Maybe that was part of why his bones felt like they were turning into soup- finding out the people who read you bed-time stories and nagged you about keeping your grades up were being considered supervillains by the federal government seemed like the kind if thing that would hit as a bit of a shock.

Finding out that the only people in a position to help him get his life back are convinced he isn't real probably wasn't much better.

So, yeah. Details like time passing and his childhood home being dismantled around him kind of passed him by for a while after that.

It wasn't until ancients-only-knew how long that the mist seemed to clear, and he came back to himself staring vacantly at the knees on a pair of ratty trousers.

Donk-donk.

Ah. Scruffy bastard, tapping at the glass.

Nothing important, then.

A second knock. Donk-donk. "Oi. Phantom."

He looks up in mild annoyance. Trenchcoat- had he already forgotten the name?- peers back, just as and apathetic as ever. He raises a hand, and into plain view appears a glimmering golden disc, about palm-sized, hanging from a flaking leather cord.

Scruffy swings it in the air a few times like a pendulum, casual as can be, and Danny tries to ignore the creeping, prickling no-bad-danger-wrong his ghost sense is giving him.

He can see weird, looping sigil carved along the pendants surface. Nothing he can read, but if his ghost half says it's bad, he's willing to play things careful.

"Phan-tom," Scruffy says again, sounding almost contemplative. "Did you pick that name for yourself? A bit bland, isn't it?"

Danny doesn't answer. Just glares as best he can and waits for the big blond asshole to make his point.

Apparently, that's not the response scruffy was hoping for. The guy frowns at Danny, like he's the one who's making everything so difficult. Like he's the one who waltzed on in to his home and decided he had all the answers already.

He's so caught up in his own cold, simmering rage that it takes the sound of a tongue-click for him to realize his eyes have begun to glow a pale, unearthly green.

"There we go," scruffy hums. "Hit a nerve there, didn't we? What, you don't like being called a phantom?"

"My name is Danny," he spits.

"Right. And I'm the Queen of England."

Danny decides he doesn't care what trenchcoat's name is. He's going to be Scruffy Bastard forever.

"Careful," comes the warning, and the medallion sways again. "Won't be behind of all this fancy warding, soon. Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

Right. So he wasn't getting left behind, then. That was reassuring. "Where are you gonna take me?"

"No place like anywhere I'd send you, 'f I had my way, but it seems this is more of a diplomatic assignment than my usual deal. Lucky you."

"Lucky me," he mumbles back. "You realize that isn't an answer, right? You can't just say something vaguely threatening and pretend it means something."

"You think I'm threatening? Colour me flattered."

He's about to snap, say something stupid, describe to this gigantic dick exactly what he thinks of him- how many horrific, stomach-churning things he's seen and done and handled just fine- and precisely how wildly, ludicrously unimpressive his shabby, doctor-who-style dumpy-ass getup and cool  edgy, lone-wolf type deal is, what a smudge of black appears in the corner of his vision.

"Constantine," the Bat growls. "I didn't bring you here so you could play with your food."

Constantine. Right, that had been the name. Danny narrows his eyes at the man, still glowing faintly back at himself in the glass. He'll have to remember that, this time.

Constantine, still a bastard, raises his hands in a show of innocence. "I didn't do nothing! Just having a talk, cross my heart."

Whether or not he is believed is not addressed. Batman- The freaking Batman!- (He can almost hear Tucker squealing in his ear)- just stalks forwards, holding a hand out for the little gold disc.

Danny hears scruffy sigh, but he gives it up without argument. "Careful," he cautions the man. (The. Freaking. Batman.) "It's on loan- the owner will be wanting it back."

"She'll get it back," comes the flat reply. And then he turns to face Danny.

Danny feels himself straighten. Watches warily as the Bat approaches the isolation chute built into the front of his room and drops the medallion inside with a thunk.

He swears can feel the interior chamber depressurize a fraction of a second before it happens. Once the door slides open, he can feel the ghost-repelling force of the strange artifact seep inti the air in waves.

He doesn't look at the heroes as they wait expectantly for him to- what, exactly? Pick it up? Put it on? The thought honestly makes him a bit queasy. "What is that?"

"That is an anti-posession amulet," dickhead says, looking just a bit too self-satisfied about it.

Danny levels him with his most unimpressed stare. "You said I'm not possessed."

"Don't beleive for a second that you are, no. But a charm that can stop a ghost from getting into a vessel can sure as hells stop a ghost from getting out of one, provided you're working with the right kind of hoodoo." He wiggles his fingers in the air, like a birthday party magician about to do a trick. "It's not  ideal, but she'll work in a pinch. Just until we get you settled in."

Danny eyes the thing where it sits, shining innocently in the cold white light. It looks simple. Unimpressive, even, like a cheap halloween trinket from the dollar store, but he doesn't trust that. Not for a second. "And you're going to make me wear it?"

"Just during transport," the Bat cuts in. "It can come off as soon as you arrive in long-term containment."

"Which is... where, exactly?"

It's a bad sign that scruffy is grinning. He can tell. The man is easier to read than a block-board children's book, the kind with the farm animals and textured felt. "Gee," he says lightly. "Well you see, normally you'd be going into Justice League lockdown up on home base, but popular vote said that specially-warded spirit-grade containment "wasnt likely to be needed on a space station".

This was said mockingly, and with air quotes, like it was personal.

"And so when they got me on the phone, I told them, well, you've got a rogue little beastie and no crate to kennel it, then, don't you?"

"But then they told me that nah, it's all been figured out, don't you worry about it, your partner's on his way. And I said, "well then, who's my partner?" And they told me-" He turns, facing the Bat with a look- "That you had installed an entire hells-damned cat's cradle in your secret fort."

The Batman stares, impassive.

"You said a specialized unit would be frivolous."

"Phantom."

Danny jolts.

Those eyes are back on him again. Sharp, dark, and piercing, it's like they know something he doesn't. Or like... like he sees something Danny can't, and it bothers him.

It's cool, present, and completely unsettling, but they flick pointedly towards the open chute and the intended message is clear. Don't make this difficult.

Right.

He swallows hard, suddenly aware of how dry and gross his mouth feels. When had he last brushed his teeth? Last night feels like it was weeks ago.

Do I have to? He considers asking, but that seems childish. They've made it pretty clear that he's considered a threat, and he sure wouldn't be giving the villain of the week any leeway if he was in their shoes.

"Is it gonna hurt?"

He regrets asking as soon as it passes his lips. It makes him sound scared, and he isn't- not exactly, but he is nervous.

Whatever weird magic they're about to put on him, it feels creepy, and while he knows he's not a coward, he's not sure if he can just let this happen if he doesn't know.

He steels himself for- he doesn't know what, exactly. A mean joke? But nobody laughs. If anything, the room goes even quieter than it had been before, and that was pretty impressive seeing as the only people in it were two grown men and a half-ghost.

"No idea," scruffy admits.

The Bat shifts in place, but says nothing.

Danny sighs. Great work, guys. Super helpful.

The medallion remains inert, as unremarkable es ever, teasing them all.

He wishes, probably for the millionth time, that Jazz was here. She'd know what to do to make this all better, somehow. She'd know what to say to make him just... get out of his own head and get through this.

Jazz had always been good at that. Calming people down, solving problems, settling arguments. Conflict resolution, she'd called it. Deescalating high-stress situations.

"At the end of the day, bad things are still going to happen," she'd told him once, after... gosh, some regular old day at school. Probably after Dash had treated him to a swirly in the locker rooms. "Sometimes, you make all the right choices, and bad things happen anyway, and it's not your fault. It just sucks, and all you can do is try your best."

It hadn't sounded like very good advice at the time, but in hindsight, that might have been partly due to all the toilet water in his ears.

He'd never been all that bright. He'd once spent a whole two and a half hours at the doctor's office as a kid with a popcorn kernel stuck up his nose.

But Jazz... Jazz had always been the smart one.

Even if she isn't here.

So, Danny takes a deep breath. Squares his shoulders. Wishes, privately, that he'd gotten up when he was supposed to and put some actual pants on before what was left of "normal" went belly-up, but hey. Too late for that, now.

It takes about six steps to close the distance between himself and the open chute. For every step, it feels like the ghost part of him is trying to crawl out of his skin- like something inside his soft tissue is the positive side of a magnet, and the thing he's moving towards is the positive side of another, equally-powerful magnet.

When he reaches out towards it, he half-expects it to go flying, repelled by the offending force that makes up the physical structure of his body.

It doesn't move, though. It lets him grab it by the cord and lift it up, just like any old tacky necklace.

It's almost a bit of a letdown.

Still, though, he can't shake the woozy feeling of wrong-bad-icky as he lifts it up, loops the strap over his head, and-

Whoa

Faintly, he can hear a man's voice echo in the distance- hears them mutter something that sounds like, "Ach, there we go, then," before he... rolls?

He thinks that maybe he might have sat down. Or fallen. One of the two, definitely, and maybe he'd banged his head on something on the way because all he could hear was some kind of high-pitched whine like a mosquito flying around inside both his ears.

He raises an arm, searching for the wall- he'd been near a wall just a second ago- and waves blindly into open air.

And that- that wasn't right. He's in his room, or he had been, and the guys outside- blue-eyes and the smudge-, right? He'd...

Whoa.

Now he's definitely on the floor again. He can tell because there's a pair of scuffed leather boots right next to his face, and unless one of the loud, blurry shapes in the room could walk on ceilings, they were both on ground-level.

He tries again to sit up, only to lose track of his hands and just sort of tense his stomach like he's attempting a sad, caterpillar-style ab crunch.

Is this what being drunk is like?

If so, he is going to be the most chill and responsible twenty-one-year-old on the planet someday.

Brown blur warps and twists into a handful of cool new shapes before black blur oozes into view, dripping and trailing like wet smoke.

He hears a low noise, sort of like a groan from a big old senior dog, before he's spinning again.

Then something touches him, and he- kind of jerks back on instinct, only to collide with something solid.

Maybe that was where the wall had gone?

But then the wall is moving, too, and he imagines that he must have bumped into it too hard and tipped it over, and now everything is getting knocked down like a row of dominos with him in the middle.

The world flashes into broken lines of light, dark, light, dark, light, dark, and something is touching him again.

He tries to move away, shake it off, but it won't budge from where it rests pressed against his back.

But it's... warm.

It's warm, and it's been so long since he's felt anything warm against his cold, pale, not-quite-dead skin.

Even longer still since it didn't hurt, or- even worse- pull away and leave him cold again.

Danny can't remember why he'd been in such a rush to move, now. It must have been something important, but if it was, would he really have forgotten it so fast? Would he really be so warm?

The sky is falling.

The sky is falling, but it's okay because he's falling with it, and he can fly, and everything smells like ozone and vinyl and burnt plastic.

It smells like his dad.

So why does that make him feel like crying?

Chapter Text

John Constantine watches the dark knight of Gotham loom down over the downed spirit with no small amount of satisfaction.

He'll never admit it- at least not within earshot of this dark and gloomy ponce- but he hadn't actually walked into the room entirely certain they were going to walk back out again successful.

What was it he'd said? "A spell to stop a ghost from getting into a vessel can stop a ghost from getting out of one?"

Brilliant bit of quick-thinking, that one. Hell of a reach, too. Rare dumb luck that it'd worked.

In fact, he thinks to himself, tapping another smoke from his (crumpled, stale, ever-dwindling) pack, Incapacitating the nasty thing had actually been rather straightforward, all things considered.

No screaming, no rending of clothes, no bloodied eyes- none of the typical dramatics you got from pissing around with a member of the undead.

He'd nabbed a poltergeist in Bed-Stuy a few years back that had turned its own skin inside-out just for asking it to tone down the wailing. That had been a messy job. (There'd been no saving his shoes after that one.)

No, this little bugger just had popped the amulet up over his noggin, easy as you do, and flopped on down to the ground like a bag of fish.

He'd said it before, and he'd say it again- magic was a tricky, fickle thing. If the thing you knew to be true was ninety-nine percent certain, mundane actions proved its likelihood ninety-nine times out of a hundred.

Wave your arms, summon a lesser demon or two, channel a scrap of divine mana- anything in the room with ninety-nine percent certainty might as well be a wish on the wind, or a hells-damned coin flip.

Sure, it seemed rather counter-intuitive. Magic was supposed to be some brilliant, miraculous cure-all, wasn't it?

He sniffed. Load of shit. One magic solution, twenty mundane problems. Birds flying backwards, soured milk, teakettles that never boiled right again. Pain in the fucking arse.

Honestly, he'd have been pleased to have nothing explode into a thousand green, glowing, fiery hells.

So, he's still riding the wave of relief when Batsy  determines that the body has a pulse. "It's slow," he says, "and far weaker than human, but it's steady."

John hums, not particularly alarmed. "Yes, you'll see that sometimes. Fella has to keep the blood moving, or the body will start to rot."

Batsy grunts back, ever the talker. "It's alive, then."

"Ah... not in the classical sense, no." He gestures, vaguely, to the sort of... torso-ish area, on himself. "Body's like.. an oven mitt, yeah? You stuck your hand inside so you don't get burned when you take the cookies out.

"Doesn't have to be a pretty oven mitt, or a fully intact one, but it's better if you can still bend your fingers, yeah?"

The man grumbles again, but seems to accept the clunky explanation for what it is. Continues on taking whatever vitals and measurements he deems necessary- BPM, blood pressure, temperature, pallor, whatever.

John breathes out a line of smoke into the air and watches idly as it thins and disappears- lets the usual thank-god-not-dead-still-have-time jitters fall away with it. "You think you're going to be able to do this, then?"

"Hm." The man doesn't look up.

"This," he says again. Waves a hand. "You lost one too, once, didn't you?"

He's worked with the Knight before. Seen how he thinks, how he operates. Respects the man, even if he's loathe to show it. It's the only reason he's willing to take the back seat on this one  even though the small, nagging, paranoid, territorial part of him wants nothing more than to mark his territory all over this case- but he has to ask.

He has to make sure.

"It's not their kid," he says gently.

"I know."

"He's not your kid, either."

"I know."

Hm.

He rolls the filter between his lips and tongue; pinches it flat. Eyes over his comrade warily. In his experience- which is extensive, to say the least- there's a story behind that which isn't going to be available for friendly discussion any time soon.

Oh, sure, it was certain come out eventually. Old Batsy wasn't exactly an open book, but nothing painful ever stays buried long. Especially not in their line of work.

One way or another, it'd come up again. Whatever it was.

As long as it's not everyone else's problem when it does.

He sighs, but settles on letting it go for now. He's no good at all the touchy-feely crap- he'd drop a line to Kal, later, to keep an eye out for him. Or maybe Diana. The dour-looking bastard had a soft spot for the Amazon, and she had a good level head on her shoulders.

And she hadn't recently exploded a watermelon in the JL kitchen using microwave vision, either, thank you kindly.

That was why he stuck to on-call consultations- spend too much time around giant floating space starfish and sentient knock-knock books and your brain turns to butterscotch pudding. Big loon. And what in the nine circles of hell was a "tick-tock", anyways?

Fucking nutter.

"I'll tell him you said hi."

He jumps. Only a little, because he's a fucking professional, but it's a tense situation and he isn't expecting the dry commentary. So sue him.

"Just thinking of loud," he mutters, wiping the ask from his coat. "Almost finished, then?"

"Do you have somewhere to be?"

Well. No, not exactly, but that wasn't the point  "Mad science gives me the heebies."

"Hm."

He scowls. Snarky bastard.

Still, though, he cleans up quick, tucking away all sorts of little dinky gadgets and vials into his carpenter's belt of tactical doo-dads before he nods. "Done."

"Need a hand?" John kind-of-offers, reluctantly. He needn't have. The pinnacle of smooth efficiency, he watches Batsy scoop the gangly thing up into his arms like he'd done it a hundred times before.

Hell, with all the nonsense he got up to, he probably had.

Speaking of.

"Robin all up to date then, is he?"

"Robin won't be involved."

"Off on assignment?"

"Something like that."

Interesting. "And the rest?"

"I'll be keeping my team involved on a strictly need-to-know basis."

John whistles low as he makes his way to the exit.  "You know they're not going to like that."

"They dont need to like it." Boots and armor stomp-swish behind, barely lagging under the added weight. (Built like a damn wall, wasn't he? He could tell what Selina liked about that.) "They just need to follow orders."

He laughs, then. Can't help it- it just sort of bursts right out, never mind he's got the walking, talking embodiment of a constipated scowl on his heels.

Sure. Following orders, keeping your nose in your own business. That was what the bats were known for. Right.

This was all going to turn out swimmingly.

The high-pitched noise that's been ringing in Danny's head for the past million years finally, blessedly, stops.

He decides to celebrate by immediately throwing up all over himself.

This is less than ideal.

"Ugh," he whines. Nasty.

It's mostly water, thankfully. Skipping breakfast mean that all he had left in his system was pizza from the day before and a can of sprite- one or two glasses of tap water before he'd gone to bed, too.

Still, it absolutely soaks his thin cotton band shirt, and it's warm in a way that is distinctly unpleasant.

Whoever's holding him up seems to handle this far better than he does. The arm across his back doesn't falter, not one bit, even though he knows there's no way they escaped the splash zone.

They just push a soft cotton cloth into his shaking hands and wait patiently for him to compose himself.

"I'm going to lay you back down now," they mutter, quiet, like they know how raw everything still is. "Try and stay on your side. Deep breaths."

He does as they say, feeling the way his body  is carefully positioned on a soft, flat surface. Not a bed, but not an examination table, either.

His eyes peel open slowly and out of sync. He sees... lights. Artificial lights- he can sort of hear them buzzing if he concentrates- but not like the ones in his room. These ones are dimmer, and warmer. Sort of like a sunset shining through thin curtains.

It's... nice.

Deep breaths, the voice had said. Right. He can do that.

He takes one now, long and slow, and lets it out through his mouth with a whoosh.

Then he does it again, because it does actually seem to help.

In, out.

In, out.

Soon enough, he starts to feel a little less like he's going full speed on a demonic roller coaster and a bit more like he just has a mild case of the flu. Fortunately, that's around the same time he starts hearing footsteps approach, and he manages to successfully turn his head to face them.

He is abruptly reminded of the events of the past several hours.

"Oh. Hey," he croaks at the batman. (Batman!) "You're still here."

He is. Or- they both are. Or "here" has changed, which... it seems like it has.

He looks around, taking in the new digs.

It feels bizarre, almost dreamlike, to suddenly wake up in a brand new place after so long. He wants to pinch himself just to be sure it's real, but his arms still feel weird and floppy from the whole... whatever. Magic-thing. Like he'd been shoved into a wardrobe and landed in Narnia, except instead of a talking goat there was an eight-foot-tall terminator with devil horns offering him a paper cup.

He doesn't take it. Not because he doesn't want to- his mouth tastes and feels like the bottom of an old gym shoe right now- but he honestly isn't a hundred percent certain he isn't going to just drop it immediately if he tries.

Fortunately, Arnold doesn't wait for him to explain himself. He just puts it down on the ground hear his shoulder and waits.

For what, Danny isn't sure. A backflip? A hilarious quip? Not that he's not down. Under normal circumstances, this would be the perfect opportunity for a witty one-liner, but there really just isn't anything coming to mind at the moment.

Maybe this is the time for the old tried-and-true Fenton family detachable finger trick?

He's gearing up to wrangle his hands into position when his plans are unexpectedly foiled.

"How do you feel?"

Huh..

That's... probably a good sign?

He runs his tongue across his teeth. "Uh... better? I think?" His arms and legs tingle, and there's a sharp throb inside his eyeballs that doesn't bode well, but he's has worse. At the moment, the bulk of his discomfort isn't exactly physical.

If it had been awkward talking to a fully geared-up superhero when he was standing in his house in his jimjams, it's infinitely worse now that they're alone and covered in throw-up, calmly discussing his medical details. And he doesn't even have his simmering indignance to hide behind anymore- just that same, familiar exhaustion creeping it's way back in, bone-deep and weighty.

And... a beach towel?

It's black, of course. He shoots the hero a look.

His look is ignored. Which is rude, because his looks are incredibly well-practiced, thank-you.

Instead, he watches the Bat... well, not quite "pull a face"- he's starting to get that the guy isn't as much of a thespian as, say, the flash- but he does make a face. A slightly-less-blank sort of face, about three inches to the left of his previous face.

Less "impenetrable fortress" and more... brick wall. Textured. Still a void, but a void with nuance. Maybe.

Or maybe he just tilts his head ten degrees and stares.

Danny... stares back.

"Are you experiencing any pain?" He asks next.

"Uh." No, he's not over it. This feels so, so weird. "I... guess I have a bit of a headache?"

A hum. "Are you still feeling nauseous?"

He is. Just a little, though. Probably not bad enough yarf again.

He shrugs.

Then  he nearly cracks his neck scrambling back, because the bat is reaching for his belt and what the hell is that, oh ancients he messed up, he messed up and now they were gonna shoot him and he must have beefed this so insanely hard because Batman doesn't even do guns.

He really, really wishes he wasn't wearing pajamas right now.

"Easy," the Bat says. Then he raises a finger, and for a crazy second Danny thinks he's about to make a phone call, but all he does is lift a thin, matte-black gadget into the air and turn it on.

It's a pen light.

Danny almost shat his pants in front of a League member over a pen light.

The hand in front of his face holds still and steady in the air, and he watches the light wave  back and forth a few times behind it. "Keep your eyes here," he tells him. Flashes the light a couple more times. "Now look up."

He does.

"Follow my finger."

His brain chooses then to pop back in and say hello. "Pull my finger" it utters in a deep, gravelly voice.

Danny has to literally bite his cheeks to stop himself from laughing.

He wishes, again, that Tucker was here.

It's surreal. All of this is so surreal. All of it, everything, all the time, and not just today.
His whole entire life has been a shitshow since... hell, probably since day one now that he's thinking about it, and he has a sneaking suspicion that if he starts letting it get to him now then he's gonna lose his mind and he's never gonna be sane again.

No. Enough of that, now. He can't afford to go looney tunes.

Not now, at least.

(He's getting an eye exam from the freaking Batman.)

"Hm." The man in question drops his hand- turns off the light. (The button doesn't click. For some reason that's intriguing.) "Your response time is good, by human standards."

"And that is... good?"

"I won't be able to determine that until we can establish a baseline," he answers smoothly. "But assuming your physical body is designed to naturally imitate normal human functions, then yes."

Ah. Right. Imitate.

He's going to... choose not to think about that right now.

But hey, at least they're finally talking about something he understands.

"My lowest resting heart rate is about six BPM," he recites. "Blood pressure is twenty-one point eight systolic, and oxygen is two point two-five..." what was the acronym? P-something? P-dioxide. "...PCO2?"

He hopes that's helpful. Hopes he doesn't have to go through all those tests and evaluations again.

Fortunately, the information seems useful enough. He watches the Bat pull out something that looks kind of like a smaller, chunkier version of a smartphone and begins typing stuff in.

(He doesn't flinch this time. He's not a total weenie.)

"Isn't all this in my parent's notes?" He asks eventually. "They kept all my vitals on record."

The Bat hums. "Everything seized from Fenton labs will have to be processed before we'll be able to access their research."

"And... how long will that take?"

Type-type. "The Fenton's research into ectobiological warfare over the past two decades has been extensive to say the least. Between the raw data and the blueprints they developed, I imagine it won't be accessible for several months." A pause. "Barring any unforseen emergencies, or course."

"Oh." He looks down.

Which reminds him, actually. "Am I going to be able to get my stuff?"

"After decontamination, yes. In the meantime, you'll find a clean change of clothes in your quarters once you feel well enough to stand." He glances up from the phone long enough to make more of that freaky, piercing eye-contact.. "I presume that was your primary concern.

Danny nods.

Looking around, it seems fair enough to assume that this is what the man is referring to when he says "your quarters". It's a square, spacious room with a high ceiling and a bed tucked against the far end. There's a desk, and some bookshelves, and a door that looks like it opens up into a small private bathroom. There's a little dining table, too, and a bench built into the floor like you see at restaurants when you ask for a booth. The ceiling is a bright, popcorn-texture white, just like inva regular room, and all the walls are painted in a mild, inoffensive beige.

As far as cells go, he has to admit, he's seen worse.

That doesn't mean he can't see it for what it is, though.

Yeah, it could pass for a cozy little studio apartment at first glance, but he knew what to look for. Like the lamp over the desk that was built into the wall so there was no cord to tamper with, or how nothing solid bigger than a basketball was designed to be lifted up or moved.

He con see what looks like a water cooler next to some kitchen-style cabinetry stocked with paper cups just like the filled one he was now ignoring. And the cabinetry, he's willing to bet, isn't all custom-built, open-concept, no-closing-doors -style because it fits a certain design aesthetic.

No, this isnt freedom.

It's just a shint new tank for the same old fish.

"Do you know your average body temperature?"

"If it's more than three degrees above ambient levels then I'm probably sick." He shifts. "Is there a shower in here?"

The Bat nods. "In the bathroom. To your left."

"Thanks." He moves to stand. A gloved arm at his side takes a shot at assisting, but he shrinks away.

It's fine. He's managed to make it this far without help- what's a few seconds more?

He just wishes the man in the suit would stop looking at him.

"Phantom."

Danny stops. He's only two, maybe three steps away from privacy.

Batman doesn't move. Doesn't try again to touch him. He just watches.

"You'll be safe here," he tells him. "Human or not. We're not your enemies."

Oh yeah? He thinks of shooting back. Well, you're not my friends, either.

In the end, he doesn't say anything at all.

Chapter Text

The bathroom door shuts behind him with a click, and he's sure to check twice to make sure it locks.

God, he's tired. How has it only been-

Wait. How long has it been?

He can't imagine he'd been out of it more than a day, but from what he can remember, the medallion could have knocked him on his back end for a week and he wouldn't know the difference.

Ugh. He shakes phantom tingles from his limbs, rubs at his neck to try and wipe away the heavy feeling of rough, ancient cord.

His hand comes away damp and clammy with stale sweat. He crinkles his nose and wipes it off on his ruined pants. Gross.

Upon inspection, the room he finds himself in is- thankfully- absent of any recording devices, video or otherwise. Which is good, because... ew. Just ew.

It also means that he has no reservations against facing the mirror and doing his best to reach deep into his mangled core.

The figure in the mirror watches back as he feels inside himself, poking at the tender hollow between his lower ribs.

He feels it begin to stir in response. Timid, tentative, but awake. Just as he'd felt it do when the magic ringing in his head was lifted off.

It's faint. Weak. But it's there.

In his reflection, too. A flicker of green. Like staring into the sun just a second too long before closing your eyes.

He lets out a shaky breath, relieved.

His core is still there. Still... not exactly alive, but present. Feeling. Extant, and within his reach. After so long dormant, he'd wondered.

Of course it has never fully disappeared, even despite his parent's- and, very, very rarely, his own- best wishes.

No, it had only fallen asleep. Gone into hibernation with time and disuse, waiting for circumstances to change. Not gone, not vanished, but dozing- counting it's cards with one eye open.

That silent, watchful little something had known when he'd emerged from his house. Sensed it, somehow, and passed the word along like a faithful spark of wildfire.

Danny himself- his surface self- however much of him there was, through wild, spinning shadows and shapes and whistling, tv-static numbness-  had been at least partially aware of the outside world, and had received the excited whispers loud and clear.

Hello, hello! Hungry, hungry, hopeful-weary-welcome, breathing, feeding, good!

It was like a weight had been lifted that he didn't even know was there. Like taking off a heavy winter jacket, or... or like washing off a face full of mud.

Now that the anti-posession charm was gone, the sensation was magnified: Ambient ecto-energy.

Back in his room- (in the lab)- he'd been surrounded by layers and layers of ecto-reflecto and anti-ghost technology. Even the normal, harmless, every-day environmental ecto-radiation that filtered harmlessly through the air had been largely repeled.

After his entire waking second-life- and, to an extent, his first one as well- constantly bombarded by spare, loose energy, he'd been unprepared to suddenly lose that background force, but he's had no choice- even ghostly plant remnants, the kind that could be found basically anywhere, like the spiritual equivalent to pollen, had been seamlessly and efficiently filtered out.

And if ecto-floral particulates couldn't get in, ectoplasm didn't stand a chance.

Now, though...

He isn't sure what measures the Justice League had taken to ensure his containment, but it isn't nearly as watertight as his parents could put together.

He takes a deep breath. Deeper than he needs. In, then out.

For a second, he feels nothing.

Then, there's a shift.

He tries not to let himself get too excited. He won't be walking through any walls or doors any time soon, but he'll definitely be able to start siphoning off some of the energy seeping in to feed his ghost-form.

Maybe if he's patient and careful and doesnt do anything stupid like push his luck, he'll be able to gather enough ecto-radiation to go full ghost again.

Not enough for a full-on Batman-versus-Phantom showdown, not any time fast at least, but enough for a strategic breakout. Maybe.

Again, if he's careful.

But that won't be the end of the road, either. Even if he gets out, he'll still be a Justice League-level fugitive, and his parents will still be locked down in maximum security for who-even-knows-how-long. He'd have to evade not only Batman and the bastard, but Superman, The Flash, and Wonder Woman, too.

And then there was still the GIW to contend with after that.

His mind conjured up all the distinctly unpleasant implications of a GIW-JL team-up, and he shuddered.

Yeah. He'll have to work on that.

To Constantine's good credit, he doesnt receive the call from clark until all the required samples from the Phantom's blood have been marked, measured, and evenly distributed into a handful of sterilized vials.

Frankly, it's about four minutes later than he'd anticipated, and he's grateful.

It would be unwise to try and divide his attention between handling biohazardous fluids and engaging in a "feelings talk" with Clark Kent.

He has just enough time to set the centerfuge to and turn it on before the second ring.

"Clark."

"Bruce!" The man's voice is bright. Cheerful. Genuine, too, in a way that all the high-scociety elites in a room full of old-money windbags and new-money schmucks couldn't quite pull off. "We haven't seen you around in a while, how are you?"

To Bruce, talking to Clark is like listening to a breath of fresh air. Fresh. Invigorating. Hopeful. The man is honest and forthright like not many are nowadays, and he enjoys it when he can.

It helps that he's a terrible liar, and can't cover an ulterior motive to save his life.

"Constantine asked you to check in."

"You can't actually know everything," the voice on the speaker gripes back. "But yes, he told me he was concerned."

Bruce huffs. Concerned. "He shouldn't be. I have everything under control."

He hears a sigh, but the sound is fond. "Of course you do."

"Hm."

A beat passes. "So. How's the kid?"

"He's not human."

"Niether am I. What's your point?"

"He's not an alien, either. Chemical markers all indicate earthly origins, with no long-term markers to indicate otherwise."

"So, he's not possessed?" he asks. "Or... he is, but he's also not a human or an alien."

Bruce sighs. "Constantine thinks he's something like a poltergeist. His theory is that the parent's portal-generator malfunctioned, killed their son, and let out a spiritual entity that was able to reconstruct his remains into physical vessel."

Seven minutes remaining on the timer. He starts laying out a tray of slides, and grabs a brand-new bottle of dye off a lower shelf. "After that he figures the Fentons couldn't handle the loss, so instead they put all their hopes into a simple possession. Locked the thing up in a warded basement suite decorated to look like a kid's room. It's been down there ever since."

"Whoa."

Indeed.

"And... how long?"

"Just under three years." He sighs. "It may have been longer, if they'd never tripped our radar."

Clark lets out something that might be a nervous laugh. "It's a good thing they did, then, huh?"

Good? He has to wonder. Convenient, certainly. But better?

That remains to be seen.

Of course Clark can sense his unease, even through a wired receiver ten thousand miles away. "You have your doubts."

"Someone has to."

"And it's always you." Another sigh. Clark does that a lot, he's noticed- mostly with proximity to Bruce. "No, don't go clamming up on me now," he says pointedly. "I just mean... I wish it wasn't always you. Or just you. It's... good. That you don't just take things at face value. I think folks do that too much already."

Then he clears his throat. "So, walk me through the evidence. What've we got?"

Bruce finds himself relieved for the return to topic. "The body appears to be endothermic, with abnormally low oxygen levels."

"How low are we talking?"

"By human medical standards, he'd be considered dead."

The phone's speaker fritzes on the higher note of a long, low whistle. "A meta?"

"Preliminary genetic testing reads negative, but I'm still waiting on a specialist to rule it out."

"Wally's tests read negative. You think an artificial mutation is possible?"

He thinks of all the rooms he'd seen, piled high and halfhazard with various strange, glowing machines, all humming with the power behind unknown force and function.

Imagines something like that falling into the hands of one of his sons. Maybe not now, but perhaps when they'd been younger. Less experienced. More impulsive.

He thinks of the pale, skinny being with the body of a child, looking up at him and asking if a warding charm would hurt.

If his knuckles itch a little under his rubber gloves at that, then it's his own private cross to bear.

"...I haven't ruled that out."

"...right."

Hm. He glances at the clock again. Two minutes.

He opens his mouth, but Clark beats to the punch. "Time to go?" He asks knowingly. "It's fine, I can hear your little chemistry things going in the background. Just let me know what you find, yeah? If he is a meta, I might be able to lend a hand."

Bruce can feel himself pull a frown. "I can handle a meta."

"You don't like metas."

"I don't like metas in Gotham," he clarifies. "I have no problem with metahumans in general."

"I hate to break it to you, but I don't know if that distinction is appreciated by Gotham's meta community."

"You don't know Gotham."

He knows exactly how it sounds, but it's true. Gotham, for all that it appears to the rest of the world to be more or less a dark stain on the map, isn't just a city- It's alive.

Septic, rotting, but alive.

He still believes it can be saved, of course. He doesnt think he'd have the strength to keep fighting if he didn't. But that corruption is infectious, breeding and spreading like microbes in an open wound.

It likes to take people apart. Put them back together bigger, louder, more. Amplifies everything about them, for better or worse, antil they're so much of themselves that simple skin and bones can't hold it in.

He's been here long enough to have seen it firsthand. Long enough to feel it's effects in himself.

Contrary to pupular belief, The Batman's fierce refusal to allow the big names out of Gotham isn't just some puffed-up claim of ownership, or territory, anything so petty as that. He's not a child. Of course it would be convenient if Clark could just swoop in, scoop up all it's rogues, and wash his hands of it. Of course.

He just doesn't want to imagine a Gotham with a superman caught between in her claws.

Clark is a good man, but he's still just a man, after all.

And Harvey Dent had been a good man once, too.

He hears Clark let out a sigh again; the third one in the past nine minutes. "I understand. Gotham is your baby, Bruce- I'll stay out of it."

Tension leaves his shoulders like air from an old balloon.

This is just part of why he considers Clark a friend. He's bright, and loud, and open in a way he only wishes he could match, but he'd always understood his boundaries. Always seemed to know when not to push. "But you know you can still call and ask for help if you need it  right?" He asks, one last parting shot. "You don't have to tackle this alone."

The spinning, whirring wheel at Bruce's side beeps, then begins to slow. He thinks of everything that has to come next- testing, double-checking, analyzing samples, photographing and recording his findings.

It'll probably take up the better part of the next few days. Longer, if his contacts can't come up with anything solid.

Still, though, the prospect isn't as daunting as it may have felt an hour before. Instead of weary, he finds himself invigorated- stimulated by the prospect of a fresh challenge.

"I know," he says. Not happy, but also not aggrieved. "Thank you, Clark. I appreciate the call."

"Hey, any time. And good luck, yeah?"

Yes.

Good luck.  

Chapter Text

Tim's having a rough day.

It had started at breakfast. Or like... before breakfast.

It had started within two hours or so of the usual  allotted time at which boring, normal people with boring, normal lives might choose to begin the early morning meal that was typically referred to as breakfast.

Tim had been on a houseboat three and a half nautical miles off the coast of New Jersey, fighting off super-enhanced asassins with a stick.

He'd have preferred orange juice and toaster waffles, but hey, at least he wasn't dead, right?

By noon, he kind of wished he was.

Not enough to stand down and surrender, though. Obviously. Where was the fun in that?

Nah. He isn't crazy.

Just cranky, sleep-deprived, and- he thinks, as he frantically pieces together the elements of a makeshift explosive device in the bowels of a dead drug smuggler's coke boat while the 'roided out cult member at the door continues trying to bash her way in- maybe a little low on blood sugar.

Another metallic bang rings out, followed by a shriek of rage.

He scoops a fist full of skittles from his pocket into his mouth, careful not to mix them up with the loose gunpowder in his other hand. That's a mistake you only make once if you can help it, and he kind of needs all the gunpowder he has.

Which isn't a lot, but it's enough, assuming he doesn't miss.

He won't miss.

(He's really, really good at this.)

Another wild howl sharpens his focus. It's been a while since his last IED exercise with B, and he hasn't had a wink of rest since Tuesday, but this is something he can do with his eyes closed.

Bleach, draino, lyme, vinegar, nails, gasoline... What a helpfully prepared dead gang affiliate.

Yeah, no, this is gonna be easy.

It isn't until he's tied off the plastic bag housing the fuse and lifts the bucket into his arms that it occurs to him that there really isn't much of anything down here to shield him from the blast.

Ah, well. He gives it a mental shrug. We all gotta go out some time, don't we?

It isn't like he didn't give it his best go. He'd used up the battery on his sat phone, radio'd for help, hit his panic button, yelled for Kon. Even set off a couple flares when that failed, and after that he'd considered jumping ship.

But no, he couldn't out-swim a Bane knockoff, not even if he hadn't lost his rebreather getting out here in the first place. His lifeless body would wash up on shore a week and a half from now, near-unrecognizeable from bloat, and New Jersey PD would have to get him ID'd by his dental records.

Then that would just tie a neat little line connecting Red Robin to Bruce, and from there it would all just go to shit.

Not like this would be much better, going down with a such a low-level goon, but it wouldn't be a total wash.

Their contractor had already fled the country, but Tim made a few calls before all this that ensured interpol would be waiting for his plane as it touched down, and there was enough hard evidence in the package he'd mailed direct to prosecution to wrap him and his associates up nicely for a good, long time.

And, if he has to take his pick? "Disappeared at sea" is probably one of the cooler ways to vanish off the face of the planet, anyways.

It sure sounded cooler than "big dumb moron in red jumpsuit drowns in view of shore".

Besides, there's still a chance he'll survive the shockwave, and the shrapnel, and the shipwreck. He'd pulled off crazier odds before, alright? He was the spleenless wonder. He'd fought Ra's Al Ghoul.

Hell, h'd shot the Joker.

Red Robin could handle anything.

He's so focused on the bucket, the lighter, and his own impending doom that it doesn't immediately register that the exact pitch and tone of the banging-screaming-shrieking putside has gone up a scale.

Not until a new voice joins in, anyways.

And it... kind of sounds familiar.

"Red!"

Ah, fuck.

"Red!"

He's gonna be in so much trouble.

The howling cuts out, followed soon after by the loud crash-sploosh sounds of several large, flailing objects being tossed overboard.

"Red!" The voice calls out again. "Red, I can smell what you're doing down there and I swear to god if you set that off I will kill your ass!"

"Kon!" He calls back. "What took you so long?"

He's too relieved to cringe at the nails-on-a-chalkboard squeal as the busted door is peeled from its hinges.

He does wince a little when his teammate steps into view, though, eyes blazing a hot, fiery, laser-pointer red straight across the room.

"Drop the bucket," Superboy growls. "Now."

Tim's eyes flick back and forth between the ominous threat of certain death and the innocent bomb in his hands. "I... feel like you probably don't want me to do that," he says slowly.

Freaky-cool laser-eyes flash, and before he can blink the bucket is gone. Likely- his ears pick up on a swish and a distant sploop- tossed over the side of the boat alongside the unfortunate ninja-killers before it.

(It's fine. They're not dead- he can hear them scrambling at the sides of the ship. No worries.)

Then Kon is back, still just as furious, and Tim gets to worry if he's next in line for a swim.

"Uh..." there's a right answer for this, he knows it. "Thanks for the save?"

Before he can blink, he's got a wall to his back and a finger in his sternum, jammed accusingly with just enough force that he knows it'll leave a nasty purple-to-yellow reminder for the next three weeks.

Mean.

"You," the other boy grits out, "Are never, ever, doing that again."

"Doing what?" Tim asks, blinking innocence.

"You know what."

Damn.  He drops his arms. Lets Kon push him back, retreat with his hackles up around his ears.

It isn't the first time he's seen him get like this. It's not the first time he's been the cause of it, either. He knows what it's about  though- he just.

Wishes it wasn't.

"You know I'm not suicidal, right?"

"You could try and act like it."

That earns a wince. Okay, then. Not time to talk. Understood.

There's not much else to say, so he settles for watching his teammate pace the room, back and forth like a caged dog.

And believe it or not, it's progress.

It wasn't that long ago that a near brush with death would  send the youngest Kryptonian into an hysterical meltdown, probably taking out a few square acres of the surrounding area in the process.

At first, it had beenbkind of stressful, having a super-being constantly a hair away from an anger management crisis living two doors down, but they'd talked. Worked on it as a team.

Now Tim knows that it isn't really coming from a place of anger. Anger is just the band-aid slapped on top of the issue; the safe, numb, protective layer on top of the real hurt.

Fear . Helplessness . Anxiety.

There are plenty of perks to being a half-kryptonian on planet earth. Super-strength, super-speed, super-invincibility, flight, X-ray vision, heat vision, super-senses....

He will never be able to fully understand what it's like. Not completely. But he figures that knowing you'll probably outlive all your friends probably isn't one of those perks.

So, he lets himself sink to the floor and watches his friend pace. After a while his eyes begin to droop closed, and a bit longer after that he can feel himself begin to slip.

It's the last week and a half or so of recon, strategize, hunt down, document, attack finally catching up.

Tim stays in that space, half-asleep amid the damp old tool boxes, until a sharp ping drags him back awake.

"Your phone is ringing."

He blinks like a stunned deer. "My phone is dead."

Kon points to a chunky black square on his belt, and- hey, would you look at that.

"Oh," he notes dumbly, raising a brow. "That's not my phone."

"Then can you turn it off? It's hurting my ears."

He flicks the small slider on the side in a specific pattern- up, down, pause, one-two, up one-two, down- and checks the message that lights up on the display. Huh. "Do you have time to swing by Gotham any time soon?"

The other boy folds his arms and levels him with a glare.

"I'm not heading back straight away," he defends. "I gotta get back to the tower first- write this up, grab a shower-"

"Eat, sleep, drink some water-" Kon recites. He is still rather visibly PO'd, and likely will be for some time, but his eyes have gone back to normal and he doesn't look like he'll start breaking things any time soon. "I can take you tomorrow, but until then you're not going anywhere." His eyes narrow. "Why? What's up?"

"Not sure yet. It's B."

"If you seriously think-"

"It's chill. S'not a call- just set off one of my monitors in the lab."

"You have a lab?"

"He does. And he's messing around with the PCR machine, which means he's investigating something important, which means he's probably keeping secrets. Again." He pockets the device with a sigh. Hauls himself up off the floor. Yawns. "So. Do you wanna go get waffles?"

A mysterious grilled cheese sandwich has appeared on the dining table by the time Danny creeps out of the shower, freshly-dressed in his new, not-gnarly clothes.

It's on a flimsy paper plate next to a stack of disposable napkins, a juice box, and what looks like a cup of tomato soup.

No spoon, of course. He might try and poke someone's eye out with it, or something. Might to scrape himself a teeny-tiny hole in the wall to freedom. Then what would the Justice League do?

"Sorry,  American Government, we left the teenager with a recyclable kitchen implementation and he scooped his way to China. He's out of our juristiction now- nothing we can do."

Earth's mightiest defenders, laid low by soup. If only they'd been more careful.

Ah, but Danny can't let himself get too upset. Mostly he's just relieved somebody noticed he still needed food, undead status notwithstanding.

It helps that the soup is actually pretty good.

Five stars, would be taken against his will again.

He inhales it all in record time before getting back down to business: Escape plan time.

First order in motion: figure out what kind of enemy he's dealing with.

A more detailed inspection of the area would likely help with that, so he tosses his empty cup and plate into the nearby trash can (no bag in it, because that's a suffocation risk, apparently) and starts snooping.

After some time, he determines this:
There are no detectable cameras, recorders, body-imaging scanners, infrared receivers, or anything else that might be used to encroach on his privacy visibly installed inside the room.

That doesn't mean he's not being watched, of course. It just means he hasn't figured out how.

Yet. It's still a work in progress.

The other work in progress- cataloging all the materials at his disposal- has proven far more productive.

The list so far reads thustly:

1. Three sturdy, wall-mounted dispensers in the bathroom , which provide tissue, a three-in-one hair and body wash, and toothpaste (which he is careful not to mix up).

2. Two short-sleeved white shirts, two pairs of soft cotton sweatpants, two pairs of double-sided grippy socks, and two pairs of briefs, all new and unused and slightly too-big.

These are a welcome change after his shower, where he finds the tap is set to go no hottter or colder than lukewarm, but they do have the added effect of making him feel even more like an inmate than he had already- the fabric is oddly stiff, and smells weird, like walking into a stranger's house.

He rinses off his ruined pajamas in the shower and hangs them to dry above the door. (. It's weird to think they're all he has, now-  knowing that, he's reluctant to let them go.)

3. Two puffy white towels, one now damp and hanging to dry.

4. One weird, stiff-bristled toothbrush that has no handle- just a short, curved clip below the brush that... looks kind of like he's supposed to use his finger to reach his back teeth?

Weird.

It works well enough to get the nasty taste of vomit and morning breath out of his mouth, but he decides that the feeling of warm, minty spit all over his fingers isn't on his top ten list of "best parts of supervillain prison."

It's probably so he doesn't try to file the handle down into a weapon, but really, he thinks if anyone can take out The Batman with a toothbrush then they should be allowed to just go. They'd have earned it.

5. One thin paper notebook, apparently held together along the spine with glue instead of staples or wire, which is hilarious- is to be found on top of the little corner desk.

A spiral-ring notebook, sure, someone could probably take apart and strangle someone with, but staples? Do they think he's gonna eat them? Huge vote of confidence in his IQ, thanks guys.

6. Three small, eraserless pencils- the stubby kind, like you got to fill out your scorecard at mini-golf. (No sharpener. So... use wisely?)

7. One stack of waxed paper cups, no packaging.

8. A handful of short paperback novels of various genres and reading levels.

9. One book of sudoku puzzles and crosswords that feels bleak just to look at.

10. An unsolved 1,000-piece puzzle depicting a sepia-tint photo of the eiffel tower with "L'Amour" scrawled below it in fancy, looping cursive.

Unexpectedly, that last one is the thing that weird him out most. Where did Batman even get that? Did he buy it at Target? Why that specific image? What the heck.

He shoves it back into it's shelf and decides that he's never going to be that desperate. He will not be here long enough to get that desperate. That is a promise.

Unlike the sparce materials inside his new cell, Danny finds the base construction to be a bit more complex than he'd first thought.

The walls, which he'd initially taken for common drywall, dodn't seem nearly as thin or flimsy when he taps at it, searching out weak spots by sound.

Sure, it feels about right, the density and the texture- but there's something behind it that muffleds what should be a sort of... hollowness.

And unlike back at home, the paint itself is just a basic, run-of-the-mill paint, no special ecto-rejecto coating or anti-ecto additives at all. Even if he was just a full human, he figured he could probably strip it off with just his fingernails no problem.

He doesn't, of course. There's no point in wasting time on senseless destruction when he still hasn't fully taken stock of his position.

Nothing he finds within reach is made of glass, or metal, or plastic. All light sources seem to be built directly into other things, flush with the walls and the ceiling and without any exposed screws or nails to allow easy tampering.

Whether the housings for lights and appliances were specifically engineered to snap and lock together mechanically, or if they're being held in place with some sort of heat-resistant glue, he can't be sure without taking one apart- and he isn't sure what he can do with that information even if he does, so again, no point in trying just yet.

The more he looks, the more he finds, the more questions he has, and the less he realizes he knows.

Danny knows he isn't useless, and he isn't stupid, but he also knows that for his brief stint of vigilante ghost-wrangling he'd relied far heavier on his physical abilities than his mental ones.

Really, there'd really been no reason not to. Why bother being sneaky when you can turn invisible? Why learn to pick locks when you can walk through doors? Why study self-defense when you can literally lift a grown man off the ground, or phase through fists, or fly away?

Without his ghost powers, he'd just been some random kid. And as a kid, he'd made full use of whatever advantages he could get. There had been little choice otherwise. He could coast on his strengths, or he could watch everything he loved fall to pieces in front of him.

Back when he'd first...

He shakes his head. No. Back at home, at first, when things had... changed... when he'd still thought he could just talk his way out, that his parents- someone- might listen...

(Well. That hadn't worked out.)

But after, maybe- Maybe that had been part of his downfall.

Growing up, he'd always been so proud that his parents- "The Fentons"- were such amazing scientists.

It didn't matter if half the town thought they were nuts and the other thought they were dangerous, they were brilliant.

For all their failed projects, and glitchy machinery, and borderline-criminal reckless damage of public property, he never once doubted that they knew ghosts.

Not individually, like he did. Not as sentient beings, with hopes and dreams and feelings, either,  but they knew the science. They knew the math. The physics, the numbers, the bare chemical makeup. In theory, they knew almost everything there was to know about locating, capturing, and containing the lingering spirits of the restless dead.

No Ghost was ever going to escape a prison of their making. As a ghost, he'd never stood a chance.

As a human, maybe, but the ectomaterial woven into the lattices of his DNA was always going to be his handicap in a house full of ghost-sensors and ecto-alarms and frenzied, passionate ghost-paranoia.

But here, where the ectoproofing wasn't so comprehensive, where trace elements were still able to get in...

Maybe that was the key.

Maybe he doesn't need to go more ghost.

Maybe he needs to get more human.

Chapter Text

When Danny had started school, he remembered learning that there was three basic states of matter: solid, liquid, and gas.

By the time he hit highschool, they'd started talking about plasma too, and they'd all received some hand-wavy oversimplified explanation about how it's sort of like something between a solid and a liquid, kind of like jell-o. 

In theur family, though, that was sort of like a farmer's kid being taught that cows had four legs and said "moo".

As such, Danny knew this: 

Plasma, as it is used in English, comes from the Greek word Plassein, to conform or mold onto. Like plastic, or plasticity. The form-ability of a thing; its malleability. 

Ectoplasm isn't actually a plasma, interestingly, but it does share the name, plus "Ecto". Ecto, meaning outer. 

Ectoderm, ectomorph, ectopic. Outer, outside-of, the outermost area.

In simple terms, Ectoplasm is named for its most notable outward feature: its shifting, changing exterior.

That unique characteristic isn't limited to its appearance, either.

When early ectobiologists had first begun to detect it using simple, rudimentary sensors, they'd had a dozen different words to refer to the stuff and it's effects. Bad blood. Ill humors. Miasma. Fairy fire. 

These things were all described in different ways: usually gasses or liquids, either black or dark red or white or watery yellow, and always foul-smelling, but also sometimes as bright and glowing and beautiful.

Where it came from was a matter of debate. Sometimes it came from a body that had too much or too little of something inside it, and caused illness. Sometimes it was an evil cloud that blew in on the wind, full of dark energy and evil intent. Sometimes it dripped from the walls of a haunted place, or slithered from the water, or appeared along dark roads in the wilderness to lure traveller's to their deaths.

It took a long time for people like the Fentons to realize it was all just different forms of the same stuff, and it wasn't until about 1996 that the author of a children's book had coined its final name: Ectoplasm.

The study hasn't really grown in popularity since germ theory came about, and stuff like viruses, fungi and bacteria were discovered to be at fault for a lot of the majority of the bad effects, but there are a handful of things that Danny grew up knowing for certain.

One: It can take any form that any other material can, and can imitate the appearance and behaviour of almost anything if there's enough of it together in one place.

Two: it is not inherently dangerous to humans.

Yeah, it can be used to hurt humans, but apparently so can a toothbrush or a plastic spoon. It's no more likely to get the average person of the street sent to the hospital any than the natural radiation inside of a banana.

Three: it is highly reactive to spiritual stimuli, and as such is the number one earthly substance most easily manipulated by an intangible force. As such, if you can follow the ectoplasm, you can follow the ghost.

Or the psychic, or the telekinetic, or whoever.

It wa part of the reason ony super powerful ghosts could make things move, or touch people, or form a tangible body. 

It takes a lot of ectoplasm.

Danny's current ecto-levels are currently hovering somewhere close to empty, and have been for some time. He will not be using it to smash plates and fling chairs in the incredibly near future.

But there's a chance that that's something he can use to his advantage.

It's day two of his second stint of unofficial incarceration, and despite his exhaustion at the end of day one, he'd found himself laying awake in his new bed for far longer than was strictly reasonable.

Memories of the past. Troubles of the present. Twisted, horrifying worst-case-scenarios and grim possibilities of the future. They made it a wee bit difficult for a young man to relax, interestingly enough. 

Who would have thought?

But, it had certainly given him plenty of time to think.

When a person dies, if there's enough electrical activity happening in the brain combined with something else, sometimes that thumbprint of energy will have just enough oomph in it to preserve itself using ectoplasm.

If it did, then the resulting insulated spirit could continue to exist even after the body was no longer inhabitable, resulting in a disembodied consciousness ectobiologists recognized as a ghost.

At least, that was the popular working theory. 

Most ghosts weren't actually sentient, after all- orbs, and blobs were good examples of ghost potential that hadn't really formed, leaving behind only primitive, formless shapes propelled by fragmentary bursts of fear, or sadness, or regret.

Not all of them where bad, though: Danny had himself come across a handful of remnants that radiated relief, or peace, or completion.

He figured it was just... a bit less common, to die both incredibly stimulated and happy at the same time.

But, anyways, those things weren't full ghosts, just pieces. Little scraps of thought and memory that still clung to the earth after most of the actual person had passed on.

Full ghosts- and he counts himself among those, at times- are far more complex.

And they are are not dumb. 

He'd wondered about that, when he'd first really started interacting with them.

All the ghosts he'd met- at least the first few- had seemed kind of... simple.

Not on the way that rude old people said it. More like... literally simple. Direct. Fixated. Single-minded.

Box Ghost had his thing with boxes. Lunch lady concerned herself with everything meat. It wasn't that it was their only thing- it was just the most straightforward and direct expression of their most important thing.

Caring for children. Girls getting justice. Whatever the deal with Skulker was.

Ghosts weren't lesser than their previous, living incarnstions, he'd learned. In a lot of ways, they were kind of more. 

Full ghosts, complete and successful ones, remained on earth and in the ghost-zone as the most distilled and concentrated expressions of their former selves.

In life, they'd had many things to focus on. Loads of stuff to capture their attention. Family, friends, bills, work, illness, groceries, cleaning the house, walking the dog.

In death, only the strongest part of the soul remained, and it's attention was completely undivided.

A halfa, he mused, doodling absently on the corner of his new notebook, was probably sort of something in-between.

A human, with all the varied worries, interests, and concerns that came with living and a ghost, fueled and sated in turn by pursuing it's basest impulses.

In-between, the two likely live together in a sort of mutually-beneficial symbiosis.

The human that desires to remain alive and whole so that it may continue addressing the concerns that come with living.

The ghost that disappears if it doesn't have a directive to pursue.

Danny's body- and Vlad's body, if their situations really had been as identical as the creepy weirdo had claimed- was missing large chunks of itself. Without the birth of the Phantom, he would likely be dead.

From the Phantom's perspective, it's primary directives was to.... do something. 

Admittedly, he hasn't really figured that part out yet.

But the something it had to do appeared to require Danny's skin and bones and DNA both functional and intact, and that was good enough for him.

So, the question: How could a half-ghost bypass a ghost-proof checkpoint at a strange and hypothetical airport?

The answer: The half-ghost hides the ghost inside their wooden leg and strolls right on through.

Failing that, they leave the ghost behind. Maybe come back for them later, maybe not, who knew.

There is, Danny knows, a rather solid block in the middle of his metaphor.

Without his ghost-half making up his missing parts, Danny is a very dead human.

So, what stood between Danny and freedom?

Well. A locked door. 

But what else?

His ghost.

So what did he have to do?

Well, he could try to hide it, or he could suppress it to the point that it couldn't be detected by the thin air-holes in the warding that are allowing these faint traces of ecto-material to be passed through.

Suppress his ghost, or disguise his ghost as something else.

It's simple. Brilliantly so.

How is he going to do it without dissolving into a big nasty pile of meat?

Eh, it's a work in progress. 

But surely this pencil-sketch doodle of a monster truck running over a cranky British fart will provide him with the answers.

"Phantom."

Danny freezes. 

Then... discreetly flips the notebook face-down.

The Bat is back, standing tall and broad in the space of the open doorway.

He's dressed in what Danny presumes must be a sort of casual friday version of the super-suit- He's still in the mask, which is kind of wild, but there is a distinct lack of cape., and the inch-and-a-half thick layer of lego-brick body armor has been swapped out for a crewneck shirt and a pair of tactical gloves.

The pants, however, are the same as he remembers, as are the boots. 

Which makes him wonder: does The Batman keep a shoes-on house? 

It's hard to imagine the imposing figure in socks or fuzzy bunny slippers. Maybe if they were black? 

He has to shake himself out of the mental image. "Uh...yeah?"

"I'd like to talk."

Okay, cool. Jello elevated heart rate.

He turns himself away from the desk, but remains seated. "...About what?"

The Bat tips his head. Gestures to the weird little restaurant-table-booth dining table thing. "May I?"

Asking permission, huh?

That seems like a good sign.

"Sure," he says slowly. "Make yourself at home."

He watches the man stride over and take a seat with narrowed eyes; follows his hands while he sets a thin, pristine laptop computer down in front of himself and sets about clicking away, apparently completely unbothered.

Danny does spy the barest hint of a thin leather string trailing under that shirt, though.

Interesting.

Bats takes his sweet time pulling up whatever documents he's working on. It's another minute or do before he's ready to go. "Name?"

Danny sighs. He'd honestly been kind of hoping their "talk" would be at least a little interesting. "You know my name."

"You've been listed on all accessible documents as "Phantom.""

"Yeag? Well My birth certificate says "Danny.""

"The name listed on government files-"

"It's a nickname," he snaps. "It's what my friends call me."

"And have you been in contact with any of these friends recently?"

He folds his arms. "No."

The hero hums, then resumes typing. "Date of birth?"

"February 12th."

"What year?"

Every year, he snipes privately, but still says the real number out loud. It's too early to burn bridges just yet- especially when he still doesn't know what else is coming.

They go through more of the basics- more general paperwork stuff that Danny knows for a fact is on file already somewhere, like height, eight, blood type, medical history- Nothing of interest there until, well. The big one. But he still makes him go over it all, anyways. 

He'd had his tonsils out when he was nine, caught chickenpox when he was eight, still had his appendix, and no, he hadn't had any problems with his wisdom teeth.

He'd never had any kind of hepatitis so far as he was aware, had never smoked or taken drugs, and had only tried alcohol once at a really boring sleepover birthday party and it hadn't felt or tasted enjoyable enough to try again.

As far as he imagines interrogations go, it is super, super boring. 

Not that he was itching for broken fingers or anything, but half the time his nerves are the only thing stopping him from rolling his eyes, and the other half he finds himself just... internally questioning every life choice he's ever made.

Possibly also every life choice his parents have ever made as well.

"When was your last physical?"

"Uhhhh... I don't remember?"

"The name of your family doctor?"

"No idea."

"Search results showed three family practices in the Amity Park area. Would you recognize yours if you saw it?"

"Ohh... you mean like a clinic?" He shakes his head. "No, my sister and I always got our checkups at home."

"By a doctor."

"Yeah." Duh.

He wishes his chair could spin. The one bolted by the desk just kinda swivels a little before springing back in place. Which isn't the worst for fidgeting, but it could be better.

He kinda wishes he had a stress ball, or a spinner, or something he could do with his hands other than peel the dry skin off his nail beds.

Sam always used to tell him that was gross.

She'd helped him learn how to stop, after she found out about his ecto-side. "Dude, you're gonna give somebody a ghost virus." Back in class, where sometimes he picked so bad he'd start to bleed. "Here. Band-aid, silly putty. Go nuts."

He misses silly putty.

He misses Sam.

"What do you remember from the accident?"

Danny glances back to the table. The Bat has pushed the computer aside and is looking at him, now- again- leaning forwards with his hands clasped in front of him like a stern teacher.

Danny folds his arms and leans back, not particularly enjoying the attention. "Dunno." He shrugs. Picks a spot of the wall to stare at instead of just prolonging the weird eye contact. "Pretty much everything."

"Can you describe what happened?"

"I could, yeah. Do I have a choice?" 

"You do."

He smirks. Sure he does. This is just a polite conversation over coffee and biscuits. Any minute now, he'll have to excuse himself and catch the city bus back home.

He's annoyed, all of a sudden. What's the point of all this, anyways? His parents had already written down everything he's ever said, trying to catch The Phantom in a lie. In a couple months, all their physical notes would be released, and the Justice League could flip through them as many times as they liked. 

"Why are you asking?" He shoots back. "You got me. I'm in your secret dungeon-prison. I'm not getting out. So what's the point of talking? What do you even want?"

"I want to know the truth."

"No you don't." He swivels slower, making smaller, thunk-ier stops. "You've already decided what you think the truth is, so it doesn't matter what I say. You're still gonna think I'm lying."

That seems to shut him up. 

(He's too bitter to feel satisfied.)

There's a long, tense silence, during which the only movement is Danny in his shitty plastic chair going thunk-thunk-thunk.

The longer the silence goes on, the more he wonders if he's finally messed this up. If he had a chance after all and blew it, royally. 

If he doesn't want to talk, are they gonna find other ways to get answers?

If they don't believe he's a person, are they gonna have any reservations about cutting him open?

That's a bad thought, but now that he's had it he finds it difficult to shove back into it's box.

His parents- who loved him, who couldn't stand to see something wearing his face suffer- they'd been kind about it. Gentle. Still terrifying, but... they were his parents. As much as they hated the ghost, they didn't want to hurt him.  

These people... they didn't even know him. Didn't even think there was any human left behind to feel the way a human did. Would they be anywhere near as careful? 

Would they bother leaving anything behind?

"I had a son, you know."

He looks up, something hard and sharp still caught in the middle of his throat, and meets the batman's stare with wide eyes.

"He died," the man says simply. "The Joker killed him."

Danny's chest aches, and his tongue tastes like blood where he's bitten down, but the admission is so unexpected that he suddenly feels almost too confused to finish his panic attack.

The thing is, it's wild news.

Back when Robin had died, it had been all over TV. He'd been really, really little when he'd seen the pictures on telivision: a smouldering building, flashing lights, helicopter footage from above. 

He'd had to ask his mom what it all meant- who the kid in the brightly-coloured costume was in all the pictures. "That's Robin,: she'd told him.

He'd just nodded, said "Okay", and gone off to do something else without a second thought. He'd thought Robin was the hero's name until he was like, nine years old.

That was how he'd first learned about superheroes.

6pm news coverage of a dead boy.

There had always been some controversy about Robin's real identity, after that. Heck, he's seen YouTube documentaries on the topic.

"The true identity of Batman's sidekick: The real face of the first kid hero."

The theories had been crazy. 

Robin was an orphan, Robin was kidnapped by Batman, Robin was an alien. "Robin is Batman's son" had been on one of the tame ones. If it was the truth...

With as secretive as heroes are, this hero in particular, he wouldn't be surprised if only a handful of people on the planet knew.

And he'd just... told him.

If the man genuinely thought there was a chance that Danny could just be a cold-blooded undead mimic, preying off the memories of a dead kid, then that had been a spectacularly stupid move.

But he... isn't. He's just a weird, messed-up half-human.

Is that the point? Is he trying to get him to open up, to let himself be vulnerable? Humanize himself, get down onto Danny's level?

Or is it just some kind of super-manipupative 4D-chess kind of move- exposing a personal weakness as a feint, baiting a trap that a real monster couldn't resist striking for?

Danny thinks about it very, very hard, and finds that a world where a hero- a real one, not the kind of hero he'd tried and failed at being- was willing to use a dead kid as a weapon...

He doesn't want to be in a world like that.

"I'm sorry for your loss," he says softly.

The man nods. There's acceptance in the gesture, but also something heavier. "Thank you."

The quiet pause is... still kind of tense, in all honesty. There's still a pretty strong sense on injustice on his side that is nowhere near being resolved. But... he can see a peace offering for what it is. 

And he can also, kind of-sort of, maybe, understand the level of caution on display.

That doesn't mean he's going to just roll over and do whatever the guy tells him to do, or course. 

But he could... maybe meet him in the middle.

"Mom and dad didn't cause the accident," he starts. "Like... if that's something you're going after them for, don't. They didn't want me or Jazz anywhere near that thing."

"The portal." 

Danny nods, mouth dry. He has to sit on his hands- the fingernails are down to nubs now, and he's running out of frayed skin. 

"It wasn't working," he explains. "And they couldn't figure out why. The earlier prototypes all turned on and off okay, so they thought that maybe the ecto-electro converter wasn't able to handle the increased voltage- which didn't make any sense, because all the numbers said it should have been fine.

"But when they turned it on, it just kind of... ramped up, then fizzled out again. Like a car with no ignition."

He bites his cheek. "So, I figured... if the starter was still receiving power, but the converter wasn't receiving the signal to start converting, then either the electrical signal wasn't going through, or... it was something else." Shrug. "And... you always check the simplest answer first, right?"

"So you tried to fix it yourself."

"I did fix it myself." he snorts. "That was the only thing wrong- everything else, it all lined up and clicked together perfectly. Exactly according to plan.

"But I was... kinda caught up on the whole "no power getting through" thing, so it didn't really occur to me that I should also probably check that it was unplugged."

The scar on his ribcage prickles. He has to release one of his hands to rub the sensation away.

"Where were you when the portal opened?"

He shrugs again. "Dunno. Somewhere between the inner stabilizers and the amplifier." Thenlooks down, and sets about becoming very, very interested in the rubber-dot patterns on his grippy socks.

There are little smiley faces peppered around in the polka-dot pattern that grin up at him. It's a friendly reminder that he is still, without doubt, definitely here because of his own dumb choices.

There would be no blaming the Justice League for stupid here. 

Not this time, at least. The future was bright on that horizon.

"I don't like to talk about the dying bit," he admits.

"You don't have to."

He takes a shuddery deep breath in, then lets it back out. 

Slow and steady, he reminds himself. No flipping out.

"Cool," he breathes. "Alright. Okay. I, uh..."

A quick check confirms his audience is still sitting, still waiting patiently in his seat.

Right. Good. Cool. Fine.

He feels the pressure of his palm; the faintly-trembling imprint of his fingers on his chest., and braces. 

Deep breath in. Deep breath out. 

"I... guess you wanna know what happened after that, then, huh?"