Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Fionn Ainsley walked through the halls of the G.I.W. facility, trailing behind the agents that he hated dealing with on a general basis.

“Really, kid, I dunno why we need you to check the defenses,” Agent K complained. “We don’t need no magic.”

“Tech magic,” Fionn commented mildly as his eyes swept over the pristine halls of the basement. Shiny and white, just like their obnoxious uniforms. “And you’re lucky you have me.”

Ha. Seriously, he’d been such an idiot taking this contract. It should have been a red flag from the start, and he couldn’t even undo it. Well. He would blame his cursed bloodline, but if he was going to be honest, you could blame his own stupidity. He should have looked more into it before he took the contract. Shouldn’t have done a magic contract. Should have done, well, more due diligence.

Sue him, he had gone into this whole situation not wanting to deal with demons or ghosts or anything of the like. It was about survival at first. Making something new, something that could be sold, traded, what have you. Something that could keep him alive. So, really, it was his own fault he didn’t know about the Infinite Realms, didn’t know shit about ghosts, didn’t do his own research beyond learning the names of demons and learning how to recognize them and talk to them without getting himself into trouble.

Well, he was paying for it now, he thought grimly. He was dearly paying for it, but hopefully, he could resolve the situation before they reached critical mass and everything imploded.

“Right, well, here it is,” Agent K said. “Fentons caught it, had to take it away before Maddie lost her damn mind ripping it to shreds before we could get any info.”

He keyed open the door, and there was Danny Fenton, floating in a tank, caught in stasis, somewhere between shifts. Fionn’s eyes swept over him, and a smile touched his lips. He wasn’t too late. They were barely getting scans. The torture hadn’t started yet.

“Right, thanks, K,” Fionn said, and snapped his fingers.

Magic surged, a magical EMP, his specialty, and there were shouts as Fionn breathed out, letting a spell take hold that allowed him to see in the dark.

“Kid! Where are you!” K was shouting, and Fionn walked to the tank as K fumbled for his phone, failing to turn it on and get a flashlight. “Ainsley!”

Danny wouldn’t wake up for a bit. Fionn had time. His hand pressed to the cool glass tank, and he sent a shock through it. Physical magic wasn’t his forte, but once he figured out what he had gotten himself into, he had learned as much as he could in as little time as possible. He’d moved here somewhere between fourteen and fifteen, leaving behind Glasgow in the dust, mostly because he didn’t want to fucking deal with demons popping up all the time. He’d had to buy back his own soul three times, and it was getting old.

The glass cracked, and K let out a scream.

“IT’S GETTING OUT!” he screeched. “AINSLEY!”

The glass shattered, and the sludge, some kind of fucked up ectoplasm, splashed out, and Fionn caught Danny. The ectoplasm, or whatever the hell it was, didn’t feel like ectoplasm, had saved the collar on his throat from getting shorted out, but it was relatively easy to get in now. Fionn’s fingers sparked, shorting out the collar, and it fell apart with a clink.

“Well, it’s been fun, K,” he called through the sound of screams and people running into shit, in a mad scramble to find weapons that would work. None of them would. Fionn had shorted them all out, and the idiots were too stupid to realize they needed to carry around regular guns, too.

“Ainsley! What are you doing?” K snarled as the light switch he barely managed to find flicked up and down, not responding to his input.

“Hopefully preventing the complete and total destruction of this timeline,” Fionn drawled, and shifted Danny in his arms, now caught in his human form, thank gods. Fionn couldn’t deal with accidental intangibility right now. “See ya!”

He wasn’t great at teleportation. It was complicated, really complicated, and took a lot more practice than he’d had time for. But, he could do short distances. Very short distances.

He and Danny flickered out of existence, to where his car was parked outside of the G.I.W. outpost. Fionn wasn’t necessarily strong, but he was strong enough to heft Danny into the passenger seat and buckle him in. The boy was unconscious, and would be for some time. Fionn couldn’t worry about that right now. He climbed into the driver’s seat, turning the keys in the ignition, and flicked on the headlights. The yellow vintage VW beetle, tricked out with enough magic to easily evade APBs and maybe even avoid the Justice League, rumbled to life, and he peeled away. With a snap of his fingers, the goo, he was just going to call it goo, was cleaned off of them and vanished into the ether before it could ruin the leather seats. Once he got up to enough speed to take his hand off the clutch, he pulled his phone out of his pocket, unlocked it, and pressed the button waiting on the screen once he checked to make sure Jack and Maddie were not in the house, because he didn’t want to explain that shit to Danny. Thank gods Jazz was at college now.

The explosion was cataclysmic. A green mushroom cloud reached up to the heavens in the rearview mirror, and he breathed out a sigh of relief. Portal was taken care of. He’d contact Tucker later to let him know Danny was safe, to not worry. Tucker didn’t know who the hell Fionn was, probably just seeing him as another faceless figure in the crowd, but. Well. Fionn was in a delicate position, okay? A very delicate position.

They would very quickly figure out it was Fionn and Danny missing from school tomorrow. Fionn was the weird one. He got good grades in class, kept his head down, and had no friends. The weird Scottish guy whose accent had only faded enough that people understood what he was saying that showed up freshman year and had a doctor’s note excusing him from gym class. He drove a vintage beetle, and was good in science and math and English, and that was all anyone knew. Magic was layered on him, making him faceless in a small town like Amity Park. People forgot he was even there. No one knew he lived alone. No one noticed the weirdness.

Without him there with the magic active, people would notice. People would know Fionn Ainsley was gone. And so was Danny Fenton.

Well, he’d cross that bridge when he came to it. He had already cleared out the apartment of any incriminating evidence. It was boring, bland, and had nothing they would be able to trace. Even his computer was gone, safely stored in the trunk, and his plethora of grimoires had either been sent away already or packed in boxes next to the computer. Large duffels in the backseat, stuffed with clothes and provisions.

It was going to be a long drive to New Jersey.

He would have to answer Danny’s questions when he woke up, but in the meantime.

A tap of his index finger on the steering wheel, hand back on the clutch, and the music started up, Sleep Token crooning over the speakers, low enough to listen to, not wake Danny up.

Yeah. He was going to be pissed when he woke up. Welp. Hopefully he wouldn’t be crazy enough to fly out of the car. It would take a bit for him to stabilize enough to control his abilities, much less go ghost form.

Gods, Fionn had really fucked up this time. Whoops.

Chapter Text

Danny woke slowly, fitfully. It took time. He found himself drifting in and out of consciousness multiple times, feeling the sun on his face, the vibration of a car beneath him, an aching feeling just behind his eyes. There was always music playing, soft over the speakers, and when he finally came to, he had no idea where he was. He woke with a grunt, fully this time, and looked around in confusion. His whole body ached in a way he was unfamiliar with. Everything hurt.

“Finally up?” someone with a thick accent he couldn’t place right now asked, and his head whipped around to take in the sight of a teenage boy in the driver’s seat.

He knew this guy, he thought through the puddle in his brain. Who...? Oh. Finn. Finn Ainsley. He’d forgotten about him. Unassuming, weird, kept to himself. Scottish. Showed up freshman year. Red hair, natural, long, always in a ponytail or messy bun, naturally curly as hell, with fly aways that framed his face. Piercing blue eyes, short, weirdly so, freckles. Lots of freckles. He wasn’t pale. He was always sun kissed, as if he spent quite a long time outside.

“Finn?” he asked, his throat protesting at the treatment, and Finn sighed.

“No,” he said, like he said this a lot. Danny had never spoken to him, so he didn’t know. “Fionn.”

“F... Finn?” Danny repeated, and Finn’s eye twitched.

“I don’t appreciate you putting that British bullshit on my name,” he snapped. “Fyin. Pronounced like that. F-i-o-n-n. Fyin.”

“Fionn,” Danny said, and he nodded, satisfied. “Where—?”

“Sorry,” Fionn muttered, and Danny blinked at him. “Had to extract you. No choice.”

“Extract—?”

It all came back, and Danny’s eyes blew open in horror. His parents, capturing him, finally, after he let his guard down. Mom, about to do vivisection, furious and spitting mad at him ‘killing her son’. Dad, backing her up. The G.I.W. coming to take him by force, the collar cutting him off, cutting off his powers, keeping him trapped in some weird, half-shifted state. Unconsciousness. Not knowing what was happening.

“Who are you?” he snapped, because Fionn was not a member of his Fraid, and Fionn barked out a harsh laugh.

“An idiot, mostly,” he said, and the music went down even more, without him touching a single thing. “Sorry. My fault.”

“What is your fault?” Danny growled, and Fionn sighed, loud and long.

“Where to start...” he muttered. “Alright. Here goes. I’m a magician, but I’m also an idiot. About three years ago, I got a contract. Magic contract. I’m the only tech magician in the world. I mix technology and magic, and I do a damn good job of it. I didn’t think much of it, okay? I like to avoid the hell outta ghosts, and don’t know much about them. Someone wanted a firewall. A damn good firewall, that would fly under the Justice League’s radar, and so I built it for Amity Park. It paid a lot, but then it started bothering me. So, I started digging a bit. Learning, realized they fucked with something they shouldn’t, and like an idiot, I signed a magical contract that meant I couldn’t take down the firewall, or tell someone else how to do it. Contacting the Justice League is... not something I’m willing to do, so I moved my ass to Amity Park to ‘monitor’ the firewall, figure out what the hell was going on, because there’s not a whole lot of information on the Infinite Realms that’s recorded. Magicians do not tangle with the Realms, okay? It’s more of a ‘do not fucking touch’ situation, and they were calling it the Ghost Zone, okay. I didn’t know. They made it all sound very legal, and I thought it was suspicious they were wanting to keep out the Justice League, but it was good money, alright? Damn good money. I didn’t know enough about ectoplasm to understand the Anti-Ecto Acts they had backing it all up and— Whatever. Anyway. I got you out.”

Danny was staring at him in horror. He had been there the whole fucking time?

“How old are you, really?” he demanded.

“Sixteen,” Fionn said, flat. “I’m not kidding, or lying. I was thirteen, okay? I only knew enough about magic to keep my own skin clean and my soul in my body, because— Anyway. And I needed money. I wasn’t welcome home anymore. Not with my problems, which were not my fault, by the way. I needed to eat, needed a roof over my head, needed— Fuck, it was a lot of fucking money, okay?”

Danny stared at him, feeling like he was leaving a lot out.

“I need to go back,” he said, and Fionn snorted.

“No,” he said, flat. “You’re not going back. Not right now.”

“The portal— If they can catch me, the ghosts aren’t—”

“It’s gone,” Fionn said, and Danny stared at him in horror. “I blew it up. Don’t worry. Your parents weren’t home. You need to stay the fuck outta Amity Park until we can get those damn acts repealed. Got it?”

“My friends—”

“I’m gonna be contacting Tucker when we get where we’re going,” Fionn said, and looked out the window. “Been driving a bit. We need to stop. Made reservations at a motel.”

“And where are we going?” Danny demanded, and Fionn’s eyes flicked over to him.

“Gotham,” he said. “Batman’s territory, G.I.W. needs to move carefully, given how fucking much they wanna avoid the Justice League knowing about them. Should cover us a bit.”

“Wha—”

“You got family in Gotham. I assume you know you’re adopted?” Fionn asked, and Danny froze.

“How did you—?”

“Of course I know,” Fionn said with a snort. “You weren’t stealthy about being Phantom. Come on, ghost phobia? Please. I didn’t even need to do a spell to figure that one out. Of course, I dug into you, and got into the adoption records.”

“They were closed?” Danny asked in horror, because how the hell—

“You have an older brother,” Fionn said as his eyes flicked up into the mirror. There was a charm hanging off of it. “We’re gonna be going to him. He knows about you, so it won’t be a shock when you pop up. He’s got connections, so it shouldn’t be a problem for you to ‘become’ a meta, which should keep the G.I.W. off your back a bit. Money goes a long way and all that.”

“And what about you?” Danny asked, steely, and Fionn snorted.

“Been living on my own since I was twelve, Danny,” he said. “I’ll be in Gotham, in contact. I got plenty of money to cover my ass. I’ll drop you off with your brother, and then I’ll be going.”

“You can’t just drop me at someone’s house!” Danny protested. “Who is this brother?”

“Richard Grayson,” Fionn drawled. “Eldest son of Bruce Wayne, adopted. You know, like Wayne Enterprises?”

Danny stared at him, confusion bubbling and overwhelming him.

“Probably shouldn’t tell him about the ghost thing until you’re sure you can trust him,” Fionn added, off hand. “Story is your adoptive parents found out you’re a meta and flipped the fuck out. Got it? It’s a small town in Illinois, they’ll buy it. Bigots galore out there.”

“What about my... birth parents?” Danny asked, and Fionn pursed his lips.

“Dead,” he said, and looked back out the window. “They were the Flying Graysons. Circus performers. Romani, if that matters to you. They were famous, but that didn’t mean they made a whole lot of money. They already had one kid to pay for, couldn’t afford a second, so they decided to give you up in the hopes you’d grow up well. They died in an accident in Gotham, Bruce Wayne was there and saw the whole thing, adopted Richard in the aftermath. Richard was old enough to remember his mother being pregnant, remember the adoption. He won’t be blindsided or anything. Probably just sad.”

This was way too much information. Danny knew he was adopted. His parents had never told him, but he found the paperwork when he was around twelve or so. He knew it was closed and he would never find out who his birth parents were. All of this information was... too much. He had never mentioned it to Tucker, never asked him to dig into it, because he figured his parents had a reason for it to be closed. Fionn, apparently, had no such reservations about privacy. After the accident, he had considered doing a DNA test, but it would have set off too many G.I.W. flags. He couldn’t risk it.

“You’re...” Danny trailed off. “How long have you had this planned?”

“About three months after I moved to Amity Park,” Fionn replied as he took an exit off the freeway they were rumbling down, heading towards a small town, lights winking in the distance. “I was gonna tell you to cut and run, but... Well. I knew enough to know you wouldn’t take off until everything blew up in your face, and revealing myself early would have just turned everything into a clusterfuck.”

“So, you made a huge fucking mess, and refused to clean it up?” Danny demanded, and Fionn’s eyes flicked to him, judging, cold.

“I’m not reckless like you,” he said, and it was so chilly. “I know what recklessness can do.”

“So, your answer was sitting on the fence?” Danny demanded, and Fionn snorted.

“Sure. Call me a fence sitter,” he drawled. “At least I’m not an idiot that makes excuses for genocidal maniacs that want to vivisect me. Unlike you, I know when an adoptive family’s love runs out.”

Danny’s eyes narrowed. He wanted to hit him. No, he wanted to blast him out of this damn car. But, he kept his mouth shut. He wasn’t about to start attacking humans now, no matter how much of a dick they were.

“We’re gonna sleep for a few hours,” Fionn said cooly. “Get some food. We’re three hours out from Gotham. We’re in New Jersey now. I don’t wanna drop you off in the middle of the night.”

“You know, this car is seriously noticeable,” Danny snapped, and Fionn rolled his eyes.

“I know you’re smart,” he accused him, and Danny flinched. “You just suck at time management. Think about it. Two years, and no one noticed me. No one talked to me. I’m scrawny, a nerd, with a ‘medical condition’ that exempts me from gym. And a foreigner. With a thick ass accent I had to half drop so people could understand what the fuck I was saying. Don’t you think it was weird I was never bullied? Or Sam bullied me into joining your little Fraid?”

Danny looked around the car. Beyond the charm hanging off the mirror, it looked normal. Well, not normal. These seats were... really nice. Dyed leather, pale yellow, stitched together with a floral canvas material. Bucket seats, with a headliner of the same canvas material. He didn’t know much about custom refurbished vintage beetles, but it stuck out. Surely, there was an APB out by now?

“Magic?” he asked, and Fionn snorted.

“Took you long enough. Yeah,” he said as they reached the outskirts of the town. “Was my little sixteenth birthday present to myself. I’m very good at magic that makes me another face in the crowd. Not even the Justice League could track this car. Tech magic is nifty that way. It will never ping any electronics, any search algorithms, nothing, and I’m the only tech magician in the world. Which is biting me in the ass now, but whatever.”

“How is it biting you in the ass?” Danny demanded, and Fionn sighed.

“I am magically restricted from taking down the firewall, and no one else knows how,” he muttered under his breath, and Danny... seriously wanted to smash his head through his steering wheel. Thirteen or not, seriously, who fucking made it so a whole town couldn’t ask the Justice League for help? What the fuck was his problem? “Whatever. You like tacos, right? I want some tacos. Drive thru, and then we’re going to the motel. There’s a little Mexican place in town. Jamaica, horchata, carne asada tacos, freshly made pico de gallo, the works. Twenty-four hours, too. Not gonna be eating no fucking Taco Bell. Fuck that. It’s been a long day.”

Danny let his mouth click shut, and Fionn took that as a yes.

Richard Grayson... Gods, Danny hoped he didn’t hate him. Or he got him killed. The memory of Dan was still fresh in the back of his mind, and he had the whole of the Infinite Realms on his shoulders after Pariah Dark. He wasn’t sure he could sleep tonight. He had slept all day, after all. Maybe he would just stand watch. Fionn couldn’t be that good at magic. After all, he was only sixteen, and Danny barely had a handle on his powers, which were only growing by the day. But... that firewall...

If Tucker knew how he did it, could he take it down? Tucker wasn’t in the Justice League. But... Tucker was...

Magic, Danny knew, came at a price.

Tucker would have to learn magic to take it down.

And he wasn’t sure he wanted him to.

Chapter Text

WELCOME TO GOTHAM.

There was no quirky catchphrase on the sign welcoming them to the city, and Danny could understand why. The Amity Park sign proclaimed it as ‘the most haunted city in the US’, and it always made his gut twist when he saw it. What could you even say about Gotham? ‘Worst rogues in the world’? Nah, no thanks.

But...

“Lots of ambient ectoplasm, right?” Fionn asked as he tapped on the steering wheel. He had turned up the music again. He seemed to prefer metal and punk and goth music. He had similar tastes to Sam, and Danny still hadn’t been able to contact them. To be clear, he couldn’t. He had no phone, and would dearly like to know where it was. Was it at the house? Had it been destroyed in the explosion? Or did Fionn swipe it and not give it back? Sam and Tucker had to be panicking by now. After all, FentonWorks had been blown sky high, and there was no news from Danny. They had missed a whole day, and Danny had not shown up to school.

“Yeah,” Danny finally agreed, tight, still pissed at him. Seriously, who the fuck cut off an entire town from the world and blocked them from being able to call for help for money? He couldn’t stand him.

“It’ll help cloak your signature,” Fionn said, and his eyes scanned the road. It was insanely early in the morning. Fionn had woken him up at midnight, rushed him out the door as quickly as he could, and said they would reach his brother’s apartment at around four or so, since the roads were clear. He was in Bludhaven, apparently.

“Seriously, how are we supposed to explain this?” Danny asked bluntly, and Fionn pursed his lips.

“The story is you suddenly manifested powers, and your parents reacted badly,” he said. “Don’t claim to have gotten the meta gene. That won’t work. There’s no meta gene in your family history, and you have no idea what happened. Talk about bad lab safety that may have led to it. Keep it as vague as possible. You’re scared. You don’t want CPS to drag you back to them. You’re worried you’re going to die if you go back to them. Say they tried to kill you.”

“Is that seriously going to work?” Danny snapped. “He’s going to call CPS. He’s going to want an investigation.”

“Well, it’s either that, or you tell him you’re non-sentient as defined by law, and it’s legal for you to be hunted down like an animal, and you don’t even have the protections of a lab rat,” Fionn snapped. “Let him decide if he wants to go up against the law without knowing what kind of person he is.”

“I thought you’ve been planning this for years,” Danny sneered, and Fionn sucked in a breath, turning red.

“Listen,” he hissed. “I am doing my best, but I am not good when it comes to people. I’ve never been good with people. So, I’m sorry when things fall a little flat when it comes to how people might react to shit.”

“Well, maybe you’d be a little better with them if you weren’t such an asshole—”

“Do you seriously want to fight about this?” Fionn snarled. “I am trying, okay? I’m fucking trying, I just—”

He cut himself off, and heaved out a breath, taking his hand off the clutch to rub a hand over his face as they sped down the freeway, descending into the fog that laid heavy over the city.

“Do what you want. Tell him what you want,” Fionn said. “After I drop you off, my job is done.”

“I thought you said you were staying in Gotham,” Danny snipped, and Fionn’s eye twitched.

“I am. To keep their trail muddied,” he said. “And to respond in an emergency. That’s different. It’s none of my business how you handle things with your biological brother.”

“Did you take my phone?” Danny asked quietly, and Fionn inhaled shortly.

“Yes,” he answered honestly. “I can’t give it back. It’s too much of a risk for tracking.”

“Then how am I supposed to tell everyone I’m okay?” Danny cried, and Fionn’s eye twitched.

“I’ll get you a new one,” he promised. “I set up a secure server before all of this. I’ll add you and your... friends to it. They might be able to track Tucker’s designs. They won’t be able to track mine.”

“What, so you can monitor my messages?” Danny demanded, and Fionn twitched.

“Can we just...” he trailed off, and Danny glared at him. “Listen. I know I’m a fuck up. I know that. But, goddamn, I’m trying to clean up my mess, okay? I’m trying to clean it up. Let me help.”

“I don’t know how much you can, considering you can’t take down the firewall, can’t talk to the Justice League, can’t do much of anything,” Danny said snidely, and Fionn twitched.

“I’m working on breaking the contract,” he hissed. “It just takes time. Now that I’m out of Amity Park, I can make more progress. I know— I know people that are good with contracts that wouldn’t enter Amity Park. For reasons. I can get... help. If push comes to shove, I can find a good hacker that’s willing to take a risk to teach them my tricks so they can take down the firewall.”

Danny glared at him, and Fionn twitched.

“We got sucked into another dimension with no help because of you. The world nearly ended,” Danny snapped, and Fionn broke out into a disbelieving laugh.

“Oh, and you think that’s a bad thing we couldn’t communicate?” he asked, like he was blown away by Danny’s stupidity, which Danny didn’t appreciate. “You really have no idea of the weight of the crown you bear, do you? Do you seriously think the Ancients sealed Pariah Dark for shits and giggles?”

“What does that mean?” Danny asked angrily, and Fionn’s eyes flicked to Danny.

“The denizens of the Infinite Realms,” he said slowly, like he was explaining it to a child, “are not your run of the mill villains that the Justice League can handle. If anything, if they showed up, Pariah Dark would have won. Flat out. They would have made a fucking mess, fucking with something they could never hope to defeat, and that would have been the end of it. Do you even realize the power you bear?”

Danny stared at him, shocked, and Fionn’s eyes hardened.

“Do you even realize Dan slaughtered the Justice League like they were insects before he even made it to Pariah Dark?” he asked quietly, and Danny flinched. “You get it now? At best, they would have all died. At worst? They would have been overshadowed. There’s a reason no one from Justice League Dark noticed what was going on with Amity Park. They don’t go there. Ever. The veil is too thin, and it’s better to leave well enough alone. You realize you are king over Trigon? That you can order him around as you please, and there ain’t shit he can do about it? Do you fucking realize that?”

Danny knew the weight of the crown was heavy. He didn’t even bear it yet, but he knew it was heavy. But, everyone had been gentle about it. Kind. Compassionate. Fionn was neither kind nor compassionate. He slapped Danny in the face with reality, reality Danny desperately did not want to face, and Danny hated him for it. But, in a way, it was soothing. And Danny hated that, too. Finally, someone that was straight with him. That cussed him out, that told him to focus. Someone that didn’t soften the blow. It had been only three months since he was declared heir to the throne, the Crown Prince of the Infinite Realms.

“I’m not saying this to be a dick,” Fionn muttered, and looked back at the road. There were only a few other cars on the freeway. A semi was rumbling past, and Fionn glanced at it before flicking his eyes away. “I’m saying this because people like us... We don’t get the luxury of a childhood. We need to grow the fuck up, no matter how everyone else feels about it. No one is gonna be straight with you because they feel bad for you. They feel like you’ve been wronged.”

He was quiet for a moment more, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel.

“That’s their issue. Not ours,” he muttered. “Doesn’t fuckin’ matter if we’ve been wronged or not. What matters is what we gotta fuckin’ do, regardless of if we know what the fuck we’re doing or not.”

Danny would really like to know this kid’s story. He wanted to ask. It didn’t seem fair, that Fionn knew everything about him, even Dan, but Danny didn’t know shit about him. How did he end up a tech magician? Why was he the only one? Who was he before he moved to Amity Park? Why was he adopted? Why did his parents get rid of him? Why did he look so hunted? His eyes were scanning in a way Danny was familiar with, his body language tight, like he was ready to bolt at any fucking moment. He was scared of something, but also resigned. Danny would love to know what was going on in his head. What kind of environment would make someone like Fionn Ainsley?

“At some point, you will be in the news,” Fionn muttered. “Richard Grayson lives quietly. He used to be a cop, got fed up trying to fix the corruption, and is a social worker now. But, he’s still Bruce Wayne’s oldest son. As soon as I hand you off and confirm where the fuck you’re going, I’m gonna go figure out which firewall to set up. I’ve already got the firewall up to keep you from pinging as ecto-contaminated, when they inevitably do a DNA test to figure out if you are who you say you are. I won’t slide in a meta gene; your parents don’t have one, and I’d rather not paint your mother as an adulterous woman, or raise more questions, like how you have your father’s DNA but randomly got a meta gene, and if someone tampered with it. You’ll appear as completely human. I don’t know enough about genetics to fake your powers, so I’m not gonna touch that. Need a fucking PhD for that shit, and I have learned my lesson about fucking with shit I don’t have full knowledge about.”

His voice was bitter, and Danny wondered if he was as angry with himself as Danny was angry with him.

“As far as anyone is concerned, you have your base powers. Flight, invisibility, intangibility. Nothing else. Not even ice,” Fionn said tightly. “Do you understand? And do not, under any circumstances, shift. I am not kidding. Your aura is massive, and not even I can cover that, and I’m not going to. Don’t make my work harder than it already is. You’re unstable right now, and we can’t get you into the Infinite Realms. Only your early powers. Nothing else.”

Danny wished he had told him all this before Danny snapped him about his cover story not holding up. Gods, Fionn was a fucking nightmare. Danny wanted to snap at him, but fine. Fine.

“I will be telling your brother I’m a hacker,” Fionn said as his fingers continued to rap out a beat on the steering wheel, a nervous tic Danny was still growing accustomed to. “And I will tell him I’m willing to get your custody without a court case, because I’m also worried that your parents will try to kill you, and have the abilities to do so before the court case is concluded. As far as you’re concerned, you don’t know shit about my abilities. Do you understand? You know nothing. You’re completely clear. You need the benefit of ignorance. I will be taking the risks.”

Danny didn’t know how to react to any of that. How had he missed Fionn’s presence all this time? Magic was terrifying. Now that he knew about it, Fionn was... There was some sort of aura on him. Something that made it hard to tear your eyes away from. The energy around him hummed, and Danny had never met a human magician before, but he knew in an instant that Fionn was a magician, and he hadn’t met enough to know if he was powerful or not. But, there was something else. Something to the left of death had touched him. Danny felt like he should recognize it, but he didn’t. There was an imprint on him, old, very old, musty, humming in discordance with his own magic. Danny knew in his gut that Fionn didn’t want that imprint, had never wanted it. What was it? There were... two. Danny could identify that much. Two imprints on him. What was that?

Danny wouldn’t ask. He got the feeling Fionn would blow up in a spectacular way, and he didn’t want to deal with that. Not at all.

“How old is Richard?” he finally asked, and Fionn’s eyes flicked to him.

“... Twenty-five,” he said. “He’s nine years older than you. He... your mum died the show she came back after healing from birth. I don’t know if Bruce knows about you or not. He might not.”

Danny took a deep breath in, and let it out. Okay. Okay. He could deal with this. He could totally deal with this. What could he possibly say to Richard? Hi, I’m your brother, please take me in, my parents are trying to kill me?

Gods.

Fuck.

He hated this.

Why was he even going along with this? This was a bad idea, but... He didn’t have anything else. The G.I.W. would expect him to run to Jazz, and he needed to keep her safe. With Fionn’s abilities, he would be able to escape their notice for a while. He had to pray he would escape their notice. If Fionn could hide a whole town from the Justice League, then he had to be able to hide one person. Right?

Danny wanted to cry.

He didn’t want to cry in front of Fionn.

And he definitely didn’t want to cry in front of the brother he never knew existed.

Fuck.

He should have cried in the shower when he had the chance, instead of stare numbly at the wall as the water poured down around him. He should have cried in the fucking shower.

Chapter Text

Dick felt like he had barely fallen asleep before he was woken up by rapping on the door of his small apartment in Bludhaven. He woke with a jerk, gasping for air, and took in the light coming in through the window. It was faint, the sun haven’t even risen yet, and his brain swirled with the possibilities of an attack. None of his siblings would knock on his door. They would either let themselves in through the front door, or crawl in through his window. Fumbling, he found his phone and checked the time. 4:26 am. What the actual fuck? He could hear faint voices coming from the hallway outside his apartment, and he stumbled out of bed, clad in nothing but pajama bottoms, and grabbed the first shirt he could find and pulled it on.

He flicked on the light of the living room, and heard a voice, male, from behind the door.

“Why are we here so early?” someone hissed. “We should just— I dunno! Not be here! Come back at a reasonable hour!”

“It’s fine,” came another male voice, with a Scottish burr, just Americanized enough where the average American could understand what was being said, but nothing more. “This is an emergency.”

Dick looked through the peephole, and blinked several times at the sight before him. Two kids standing in the hallway, maybe sixteen, boys. Despite himself, he pulled open the door, kicking himself internally for letting his guard down the second he saw a set of kids.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the fully American boy blurted, blue eyes wide, black hair messy, and Dick stared down at him in silence. That was a midwestern accent, he clocked. Midwestern? The fuck was he doing in Gotham? “I— Sorry. I’m sorry, we woke you up.”

He was dressed like a normal kid, in a NASA hoodie, jeans, cuffed, beat up red high tops. Nothing special. A scar on his eyebrow, the hoodie too baggy to really pick out his physique beyond ‘skinny’. But, those eyes... They seemed so... Oh, this better not be another Bruce spawn, he thought with no small degree of irritation.

His eyes swept back to the other one. The Scottish one. Brilliant red hair, definitely natural. Clear blue eyes. Freckles. Tanned skin. His hair was extremely long for a boy, pulled back into a messy, floppy bun. Curly fly aways everywhere. His ears were full of piercings, along with his left eyebrow, with two piercings clustered at the edge. A nose stud in one nostril, a septum piercing, a bottom labret piercing, and a medusa piercing. Jesus. Who let their kid get that many piercings? There was a necklace Dick couldn’t see tucked under a baggy Sleep Token tee, with a flannel thrown over it. Ripped jeans, shit kicker combat boots. The American looked like a fucking nerd, and this one looked like a delinquent. His wrists were decorated with a variety of bracelets, and he stared Dick down like he was sizing him up, deciding if he was adequate. The fuck?

“Richard Grayson?” the Scots boy asked bluntly, and Dick crinkled up his nose.

“I prefer Dick,” he said, and wondered what the fuck was going on.

“On purpose?” the other boy blurted, and Dick blinked before he shot him a tired smile.

“I get that a lot,” he said, because at least this one seemed a lot less wary and angry. “Now, can I know who the kids are at my front door at 4:30 am?”

“I...” the American one glanced at the Scottish one, like he was looking for guidance, and the Scots boy gave him an irritated look.

“Dick,” he said, and nudged the other forward. “This is Danny Fenton.”

“Okay...” Dick said hesitantly, wondering if that was meant to mean something to him. He worked with a lot of homeless kids, but he had never once heard of a Danny Fenton.

“Sixteen years ago, your mother, Mary Grayson, gave up a baby for a closed adoption, yes?” the Scots boy asked bluntly, and Dick froze before his eyes slowly, slowly trailed back to Danny.

He never learned what name the parents picked for that baby. What he looked like. Dick never even got to meet him. He knew he was a boy, but Mom had given up even the right to name him, and never spoke of him again. Four months later, she was dead. And he never said a damned thing to Bruce, because what was Bruce gonna do? Adopt and care for a baby? They both knew who and what they were. Bringing a baby into that situation... No. Dick resolved to not beg him to get his brother back, by any means necessary. Mom had said he was in a good home, with a good couple. They were scientists, and they made good money with government grants, and traveled the world, just like they did. It had hurt her and Dad, so, so much. The knowledge that they couldn’t afford their own child ate them alive, and Dick had felt so guilty about it. The fact that they chose him. He had hated it.

“... Yes,” he said after a long, long pause, and stared at the boy, this Danny. What the hell was his supposed brother doing on his doorstep with another minor, presumably? Where were his parents? Why was he here alone?

“I...” Danny trailed off, swallowing thickly. “My... I need help.”

Dick stared at him for a long moment. Help. He was asking for help. Was he asking Nightwing for help, or Dick Grayson?

“... Why don’t you two come in,” Dick said after a long pause, and stepped aside.

The two boys stole inside, and Dick closed the door behind them. His Nightwing costume was put away after his patrol. The escrima sticks were hidden. There were no batarangs hanging around, no grappling guns, nothing out in the open. Hopefully, none of his siblings would break into his apartment. He needed to send a text, now.

Dick: Presumable civilians in my apartment, do not approach.

He sent off the text in the group chat and muted it before he turned to the boys, who were looking around. The Scots boy had hard, appraising eyes, like he was scanning for any deficiencies, and Danny was fidgeting, like he was looking around to find... something. Evidence that Dick was alive, maybe. Evidence Dick was real, and lived here.

“I didn’t catch your name,” he said to the Scots boy, whose hard eyes flicked back to him.

“... Fionn,” he said, and did not provide his last name. Okay. Red flag. There were cameras in the apartment, and he knew Tim would be checking them immediately and running facial recognition. That was a Gaelic name, Dick thought. Not anglicized. He knew something of the history of the UK. It was harder on the Irish, but that didn’t mean the Scottish had a walk in the park, either. Maybe that was where that anger was from, like it was baked into his being. It didn’t seem like something new. He reminded him of Jason.

“Okay, Fionn,” he said, and he saw a subtle relaxing in his shoulders at the correct pronunciation. Okay. He thought he knew how to win this kid over. “Why don’t you two take a seat and tell me what’s going on?”

Danny sat down cautiously on the couch, and Fionn gave Dick a suspicious look before he took a seat, too. Dick sat down in the armchair, noting the distance, but feeling like it would be a bad idea to sit on the couch.

“I...” Danny trailed off, looking at Fionn hopelessly, like he wanted Fionn to explain why the fuck they were here.

“I found you,” Fionn said, and Dick waited for him to say how, the adoption was fucking closed, “and I thought you would be a better fit than Danny’s current... situation.”

Okay, not saying.

He shot a look at Danny, who was shifting in discomfort.

“His parents are trying to kill him,” he said, blunt, and Dick blinked several fucking times. “There was a lab accident. Danny developed abilities and hid them from them, because he didn’t know how they’d react. They found out, and they flipped out and tried to kill him.”

“We don’t—” Dick started to say, because there was no record of the meta gene in the entire Grayson family, and Fionn twitched.

“It’s not a meta gene,” he said, flat. “We aren’t sure what it is, but his parents are convinced he’s the devil incarnate and want him dead. I had to rescue him, and brought him here. To you.”

“... Okay,” Dick said after a long, long pause, before he looked at Danny, who was staring at the floor. “... You gonna let Fionn do all the talking, Danny?”

It was a gentle question, and Danny quivered. He was terrified. Fionn was clearly his shield, but Dick needed to hear it from him.

“They...” Danny trailed off, and blinked, eyes a bit too wet for comfort. “It’s true. They... they want me dead, and I had to run. No one knows where I am. I... I don’t think they know who my biological family is. At least, I hope they don’t. I don’t know... how a closed adoption works, or anything. I found the paperwork, but there weren’t any names on it, and uh, uhm, I don’t know if our... mom and dad, if they said their names, or, or... I would have gone to my sister, my adopted sister, their biological child, but they would... they would follow me, and I didn’t wanna put her at risk, and I’m so sorry, I just, I just, I didn’t know where to go, and Fionn kinda just took over and took me here, and I—I—I don’t know what’ll happen if we end up with a CPS case, because they’ll immediately know where I am, and I dunno what they’ll do, if they’ll just hunt me down and kill me as soon as it’s open, before we even go to court, because they—they are good with working with the government, the government has been—”

“Danny,” Fionn said sharply, silencing him, and Dick blinked, slow. The government has what? What the fuck was— “Sorry.”

The sorry was directed to Dick, who straightened up slightly.

“What he means is the government has turned a blind eye to a lot of things, as they are contributing scientists in a relatively new and very important field,” Fionn said carefully. “There have been approximately twenty-six calls to CPS, and none of it went anywhere, despite them turning their entire house into an unsecured and dangerous lab, not feeding Danny or Jazz appropriately, neglect, among a number of other things. The children were never removed, and the cases were hushed up. We aren’t sure how far the agency they contract with will go to keep them ‘clean’, so to speak.”

Danny blinked, looking at Fionn in shock, and oh, he didn’t know about the CPS calls. How did Fionn know about them? Dick felt a sinking suspicion, but he kept his mouth shut.

“If you could just keep Danny for a bit while I work something out long term, I would appreciate it,” Fionn said carefully, and Dick looked between the two of them.

“And your relation...?” he asked cautiously, and Fionn looked down at the ground.

“... Classmates,” Danny said, and Dick felt more suspicions roil. “I... Fionn offered help, and I didn’t want to involve any of my friends in this.”

This was so fucking suspicious, and Dick had no idea what to do.

“Okay,” he said, and took a deep breath in. Whatever the fuck was going on, it was safer to keep them close than sending them away. If they were spies, it would be better to keep them and monitor them. If they were kids that needed help. “Fionn, do your parents know where you are?”

“... Yes,” Fionn said after a pause, and Dick paused. That was a lie. They had no idea where he fucking was. Fuck. He could not get hit with a kidnapping charge on top of whatever the fuck was going on with Danny. “I have somewhere to stay in Gotham. Danny just needs somewhere to go.”

... Okay, his family or friend here was going to get hit with a kidnapping charge. Well, that was better than Dick taking the fall.

Fionn stood.

“I have a bag packed for Danny in my car,” he said, and oh, he had a license, good. Hopefully. Gods, Dick hoped he didn’t steal a car without a license. “I’ll go get it. Here.”

He pulled a phone out of his pocket, a Galaxy, from what Dick could see, and handed it to Danny. It looked new. Brand new, not even a case. Dick would have to get him one. He withdrew a charger out of his back pocket and passed it to Danny, a long cord neatly rolled, and Dick tried to remember if he had seen the bulge in his pocket. Danny took it, and Fionn turned for the door. Dick’s window faced the alleyway, easier to let the family in, so he couldn’t see the street and get a license plate. He pulled his phone out and sent off a text to Tim.

Dick: Watch the cameras on the street, see where the redheaded kid goes for his car, and get me a license plate and anything attached to it. Including APBs, and who it’s registered to, and where. Title, everything. Kid’s in a flannel, Sleep Token tee, shit kickers. Lots of piercings, long hair. Can’t miss him.

Tim sent back a thumbs-up, and Dick turned his attention back to his little brother, or so he claimed. He would need to run a DNA sample, stat. Dick thought he would never see him again. Never told a damn person about the situation. He hadn’t even gotten to meet him when he was born. Dad didn’t let him. Said there was no reason to make it harder, but Dick remembered seeing the massive man and redheaded woman load a carrier into a car from the hospital window, and wondered if that was his brother.

He had never known.

Lots of babies were born in the hospital, but the lady looked pretty damn fine, compared to his mom after birth, so he thought it was him.

“Danny?” he asked gently, and Danny’s eyes flicked up to him, eyes wet. Well. Either he was one hell of an actor, or... or he really did think his parents were going to kill him. “Would you like some tea? I got... I got some chamomile... I think...”

“Okay,” Danny said hoarsely, and Dick internally winced.

Yeah, Bruce was gonna be pissed he didn’t have a chance to plan for this. Welp.

Chapter Text

Tim: 1974 VW Beetle, vintage, refurbished. Owned by one Fionn Ainsley, registered in Amity Park, Illinois. Pulling records on Fionn now. No APBs or alerts on the vehicle.

Tim: Now, can you kindly tell me what the fuck’s going on? Bruce hasn’t seen your text yet, and your cameras have no audio. Who the fuck is that kid? Why did the redhead leave?

Tim would really, really like to know what the hell was going on, and why some car registered in Illinois was in Gotham. It wasn’t the kind of car you stole. It stuck out too much. Pastel yellow, clearly a custom job, he was willing to bet someone sank at least 60k in it, possibly more. It didn’t match the driver at all.

Dick: Oh, so it WAS his car. Okay. Ainsley. He wouldn’t give me his last name. He’s Scottish, has clearly been in America a while, if he’s managed to clean up his accent enough.

Okay, that answered approximately nothing.

Tim: What is going on?

Dick: Uh... Fuck, Bruce is gonna be pissed.

Dick: Okay, so. Sixteen years ago, four months before my parents... died. Uhm. Mom gave birth. We were famous and all, but that didn’t mean we made much money. Mom and Dad thought they couldn’t afford a second kid. Not responsibly, anyway. So, they gave the baby up for adoption. It was a closed adoption. I never told Bruce, and if he knew about it, he never brought it up. Didn’t even know the baby’s name, only knew he had been adopted by a well-off family of scientists, who traveled a bit. That’s it.

Oh... Oh, if Bruce didn’t know, he was going to be pissed. He would have looked into the Graysons, but if it was a closed adoption, then you would have had to have been looking for the records, and he doubted Bruce back then would have been paranoid enough yet to check medical records.

Tim: And the black haired kid? Is that him?

Dick: Can you look up scientists with the last name Fenton? I don’t want to push him too far. He’s either damn good at acting, or he’s genuinely fragile right now. He’s claiming to be Danny Fenton, has an older sister named Jazz he doesn’t want to drag into this. Fionn, the redhead, clearly knows more than he’s letting on. He got into the records somehow and tracked me down. Idk how he found my address.

Tim got an alert on Fionn Ainsley. Sixteen, moved to Amity Park from Glasgow, seemingly already had permanent residency after coming on a student visa. How could he get permanent residency in a mere two years? He came here at fourteen... He did genuinely own the car. The title was in his name, and his name alone. Suspicious, for a sixteen year old. Normally, at least his parents would also be on the title. Tim looked for more information, on his parents, on something, but found nothing. Was he alone? That didn’t make sense. That would have sent up flags somewhere.

Tim frowned. Emancipated, maybe? But when? He didn’t think a fourteen year old could get emancipated in Scotland, he would have to check the laws. It would take time to get the records from Scotland. He passed his drivers license exam on his sixteenth birthday. School records...

Normal grades. A’s and B’s, as long as he’d been in America. Nothing suspicious. Social media, maybe? No, no social media whatsoever.

Dick asked him to look into the Fentons. He searched, and got several pings. Ectobiologists...? What the fuck was that?

There were a variety of research papers, and he saved them for later. He’d scan over them later. Madeline and Jack Fenton. Two children, Jasmine and Daniel Fenton. With a closed adoption, it was relatively simple to put your own name on the birth certificate, so that didn’t help. He dug into the adoption records, which were sealed, but that wasn’t a problem, and...

Tim: Well, the adoption records line up. Your parents did, in fact, sign over a baby boy to the Fentons, Jack and Madeline. They have their own biological child, from what I can see, Jasmine, who I guess is Jazz.

Tim: See if you can swipe a DNA sample from him. I’ll at least be able to verify he’s your biological brother.

Tim: So, why’d he come to you?

There was a long pause, and then Dick texted back.

Dick: He believes his parents are planning to kill him. He said there was a lab accident, and he gained some kind of power, he didn’t say yet, and he hid it for a while, because he was afraid of their reaction. They found out and according to him, immediately tried to kill him.

Dick: Fionn said there were twenty-six calls to CPS, and the Fentons have some kind of government contract that ended in it all getting swept under the rug. Can you check on that?

Tim frowned. What kind of fucking government agency closed out CPS investigations for the sake of two contractors? Especially something like an ectobiologist, which he’d never heard of before?

Idly, he searched it up, and oh. Oh, fucking wow. There were, in fact, twenty-six calls to CPS, just as this ‘Fionn’ claimed, who was only looking more and more suspicious. It started with claims of neglect. Dangerous living environment. All of the calls were from a variety of sources, so it wasn’t just someone with a vendetta. Teachers, neighbors, even other students at the school or their parents. Jesus Christ. But, in the past two years, there were claims of physical abuse. Daniel kept showing up to school with bruises and burns. The fuck? Jasmine went untouched, but...

Tim: They’re all here. Every last one was closed out without even being investigated. Agents were never sent to the house or to the town in general.

Something niggled in the back of his mind, and he expanded his search to the whole of Amity Park. Just to check. It wasn’t anything, but—

Wait.

Amity Park wasn’t exactly small, but it wasn’t big, either. A population of around 100,000. And every single call to CPS had ended in the case being closed without an investigation, or an agent sent to the town. For every child. There seemed to be some kind of automatic system in place that closed out the complaints without even being looked at by an actual human being. What the fuck?

Tim: Okay, what the fuck is going on in Amity Park. Every CPS call ended in the case being closed without being overlooked by an actual human. Regardless of the child. There’s some kind of automated system that closes out the investigation before a social worker can be sent.

Dick: ??? The fuck???

Tim: Looking up government contracts for the Fentons now.

He searched them up, and the system ran and ran, before there was a ping. Nothing. No contracts on file. ... What? Humming under his breath, he ran another search. Okay, so if there were no contracts, what about payments? The search ran, and there were multiple pings. Massive payouts, made out by the G.I.W. The fuck was that? It was a fully funded, legitimate government account, but he had never seen numbers like this for two individual contractors. The payments were huge.

G.I.W. He searched that, and found very little information. Ghost Investigation Ward. Headquarters in Amity Park, Illinois. Seemed official enough. Dedicated to the research on ectoplasm and the entities born from it. Ectoplasm? Their papers mentioned it. Was that what ectobiologist meant? Why did this random government agency he’d never heard of before have such massive payouts? What was their budget? He tried to search, but there was an error. No information on their budget. When was it established? There was no official information.

The fuck was going on here?

Tim: Okay, I’m gonna need some time. Things aren’t adding up, but I think I can say that the odds are high there’s some kind of government blackout and martial law in Amity Park. Or something. And the Fentons are connected, or at least getting paid. Can’t find any contracts or what they’re being paid for, but man, they are getting paid a LOT. Like, way too much, especially considering there’s no official record of what they’re researching or making or whatever the hell they’re doing. There’s not even an itemized receipt for their budget needs.

Seriously, what the fuck had Dick just stumbled into?

Dick: Okay. What are the odds I’m gonna get charged with kidnapping Danny?

Tim: ... Well. They’re not zero.

Dick: Fucking fantastic. Welp. Here we fucking go, I guess. I gotta call work and take a half day. It’ll be too suspicious if I miss a whole day. Fuck me.

Tim: Uhhh are you just gonna leave Danny home alone???

Dick: No. I’m calling Jason to watch him. He’s a crime lord. He can skip a day.

Tim: ... We are seriously the only fucking family that will call in a mob boss and demand he miss work to babysit.

Dick: Welp. If anything, Jason at least won’t hesitate to shoot someone in the head if they try and fuck with a kid. And I will have plausible deniability. So. S’fine.

Tim was getting a headache.

Tim: Just get the DNA sample and swing by the cave before you go in. If we’re putting our necks out like this, I’d like some actual proof that Danny is who he says he is.

Dick: Fine. I’ll swing by the cave and give you the DNA. Shouldn’t be hard to get some saliva or something.

Tim: Thx.

Dick: And get everything you can on Fionn Ainsley. There’s something off about that kid.

Tim: Alright. I got his records from America, but I’ll look into Scotland. See if I can’t find a birth certificate or something. There’s some shit that isn’t adding up with him, too.

It was currently five am, and Tim hadn’t slept, but, well. The problems never stopped. Not much to be done about it except deal with it.