Chapter Text
Bruce timed his visit to be shortly after Harley and Ivy would have finished eating dinner, close to 8:30. Danny remained invisible on the way there, but Bruce could sense him flitting around close by, a slight shift in the air giving him away as he went from one side to the other, nervous and agitated. It was hard to determine whether it was better or worse than before the attempt with Dinah.
Harley was playing loud music when they approached; Bruce could hear her singing along inside, carefree and cheerful. Ivy's low voice was there too, murmuring between verses.
Bruce knocked on the door. He preferred not to startle Harley if it wasn't urgent.
There was a pause, the music turned down, and then Harley opened the door and beamed at him. "Batsy! And you used the door! I'm flattered, really." He knew that she meant it, even if she was also teasing him. "Come on in! You got one of the kids with you?" She peered over his shoulder like she expected one to pop out of the shadows, which was... fair. "I heard you got a new one."
Danny giggled quietly, and Bruce let out a long-suffering sigh. He suspected they were both going to hear that plenty more times in the next few months.
"Yes. Danny." Bruce moved inside, letting Harley shut the door behind him, and swept toward the living room, across from the kitchen.
When he looked back over, Harley's eyes sparkled shrewdly. "And a street name?"
"Phantom." Bruce reached up to tap... some part of Danny, and Danny took the cue and turned visible, waving at Harley. His shoulders were up, betraying his nervousness, and his hands were wrapped around his ankles. He jumped when Harley squealed.
"Oh my goodness, you're so cute!" Harley beamed, bouncing over to pinch Danny's cheek. Danny phased out of her grip and flew to Bruce's other side, giving Harley an uncomfortable smile. Harley was unfazed. "Not just a name, huh? Where'd he get you, then?"
"Harley, give the kid a moment to breathe." Poison Ivy came in from the kitchen to give Bruce a nod before examining Danny. "You never stop, do you, Batman?"
"Hn."
Danny examined both of them curiously, and then said, surprisingly to Poison Ivy, "I have a friend that's a huge fan of yours." Ivy's eyebrows flew up, and Danny grinned a little. "Sam Manson. She's a big environmentalist."
Ivy snorted, her surprised look smoothing into a smile. "You want an autograph for her?"
Danny gave her a bashful smile. "Please?"
Ivy accepted the card that Danny offered her - he must have grabbed it before leaving - and signed it with an amusingly practiced flourish. As rogues went, Ivy did have quite a few fans. "So, Bruce, I assume you need something."
Bruce nodded. "Harley. You still practice therapy under the table, yes?" He knew that she did. She didn't have a steady stream of clients, but she tended to see at least one or two every week, most of them sporadically.
"Yep," Harley confirmed, popping the 'p.' Interest and curiosity entered her eyes, and she sat down, glancing briefly at Danny, who ducked his head self-consciously. "Still practice confidentiality though, so you ain't hearing nothing from me."
"It's not that. Danny has intense anxiety around his nonhuman nature," Bruce explained. Danny kept his head down, avoiding eye contact. "Unfortunately, one of his former rogues posed as a counselor early in his career, and it's made him uncomfortable with most therapists. I thought you may be able to help."
Harley clicked her tongue in surprise, and asked Danny, "You and Black Canary didn't get along?"
Danny winced, giving Harley an apologetic shrug. "I kept snapping at her," he admitted. Dinah hadn't mentioned that, and it was surprising to hear. It took a lot to make Danny snap. "I don't know why. It's not like me."
"You were on the defensive," Harley said, eying Danny with blatant curiosity. Then she smiled, leaning forward with gleaming eyes that Bruce was instinctively wary of. "So tell me, what'd that bitch do? It must've been bad for Dinah set you off."
Danny looked startled, but he didn't pull away. "Posed as a high school counselor. It wasn't just me - she talked to pretty much everyone while she was there, telling people that they'd grow up old and alone or that their lives would be downhill after high school, that no one would love them if they weren’t pretty, stuff like that. We didn't even get a new counselor after that because the whole thing was so bad."
Well, that wasn't going to help. Bruce made a mental note to look into it, maybe push them in the right direction. Surely Danny wasn't the only one with a lingering fear of therapists.
"But what about you?" Harley pressed, a light of fascination in her eyes. It was clearly putting Danny off a little, and Bruce started to worry that he'd miscalculated. He glanced up at Ivy, gauging her reaction, and Ivy gave him a neutral hum. "I bet she did something really fucked up to you." Like she was asking for gossip.
Danny, oddly, seemed to respond to that, his shoulders loosening slightly as he considered his answer. Perhaps the demedicalization of her interest was helping? "She was the first one to make me ashamed of what I am."
Even Danny looked surprised that he'd admitted that, but Harley's eyes gleamed with satisfaction. Bruce relaxed. Harley knew what she was doing. (The information itself was not surprising; it was such a recurring point of conflict that it would've been odder for it to be anything else.)
"That's a tough one," Harley said sagely. "I bet she called you a freak, right?" Danny flinched, his body tensing, and drifted back an inch or two. "That's low-hanging fruit with meta kids. It makes you a permanent outsider, makes you unlovable. Labeling you a freak lets people punish you for daring to exist." Danny looked away, shoulders rising. "It's a convenient little gotcha for bullies."
"Can you help?" Bruce prompted. Harley batted the words away impatiently, focused on Danny.
"You know, as a therapist she really should've gone with something more personal, it's kinda sad," Harley continued smoothly, watching Danny's reaction. "I hope she's embarrassed. I'm almost embarrassed for her."
Startled, Danny laughed a little, and relaxed enough to give Harley a genuine, if wry smile. "It worked, didn't it? Still hearing her voice almost two years later."
(Ivy politely removed herself from the room, disappearing into the bedroom.)
"That's nothing," Harley insisted, waving her hand dismissively. "I've been hearing puddin' for fifteen years, mostly in the cell next to me." Danny laughed, and Harley grinned at him. "What's she say to you, then?"
Danny faltered, but he didn't tense up, and his smile stayed mostly intact, even if it was noticeably strained.
"She'll... ask me if..." Danny stammered uncomfortably, but Harley's eyes stayed bright and expectant. "If I'm a ghost pretending to be human, or a freaky kid with freaky powers."
It could have been worse, Bruce acknowledged to himself grimly, but for a fourteen-year-old who was already dealing with the trauma of his recent death, a newly overhauled body, and a rapidly declining relationship with his parents, it must have been devastating. It clearly had been devastating.
"Oh, she hit you with the false dichotomy and impostor syndrome," Harley hummed, with a sympathetic nod.
Danny looked skeptical. "What's false about it?"
Harley gestured at Danny, and Danny laughed a little, shrugging to cede the point.
"And there's plenty, anyway," Harley tacked on. "If we're talkin' life/death dichotomy, ghosts are actually a little toward the middle, right?" Danny looked thoughtful. "Then you got your zombies, people that come back all the way, brain-dead folks whose families keep them on life support. She needs to get a grip." Danny laughed again, relaxing.
“You’re right,” he admitted. “But this was only about five months after my accident, and I’d barely started to understand what had happened to me. I guess that made it really easy to get to me.”
“You were still building your mental framework,” Harley nodded, tapping her knee thoughtfully. “Figuring out how to feel about what happened, how to think of yourself. Knowing her type, she probably rushed to get to you during that phase.”
Absently, Bruce imagined Clark in a similar situation: if he had been taken in by someone less understanding than the Kents, someone who showed him horror movies featuring aliens and used them to explain to Clark what he was and what he was naturally predisposed to become. If someone told him when he was young that he did not belong on Earth, that he did not belong anywhere.
What sort of man would Clark have been, then? Like Danny, embarrassed and ashamed of his errant biology? Like Kara, hurt and anger held back only by his compassion? How would his turbulent introduction to the world have gone, if Clark had such a fragile self-image? Would he have attempted it at all?
It was not just cruel, but dangerous. Bruce didn’t understand why so few people seemed to realize how unwise it was to foster such dark feelings in people with so much power. Shame, rejection, and abandonment rarely induced lasting docility; they fermented into resentment, then anger, then hatred, for a world they believed hated them first.
Danny snorted. “Knowing her, yeah, I bet. Nothing would make her happier than a constant source of misery to feed on. And… I know that, really, but it doesn’t stop me from hearing her whenever I have to explain how I’m different.”
(It was possible he'd forgotten Bruce was there, but Bruce found he was wary of drawing attention and possibly disrupting this.)
Harley nodded again. "She made a false dichotomy and then locked you out of it," she noted thoughtfully. "Now that's some clever psych work." Danny cocked his head warily, and Harley clarified, "As a psychologist it's hard not to admire some of the better traps I see. Puddin' was great at that, had a beautiful mind for abuse."
By all accounts, that was how he'd gotten her. Before there was attraction, before there was sympathy, there was admiration - a fascination with the Joker's cleverness, an early awareness that she was being manipulated. And then she let it happen, curious, wanting to see it play out. And then she was caught.
Harley was a brilliant and impressively spirited woman; she always had been. Reducing her to a dress-up doll was one of the worst things the Joker had ever done.
"So," Harley continued, oblivious to Bruce's silent recount, "I bet somethin' happened, and that's why Brucie's pushing even though you're not comfortable with it."
Danny hesitated, studying her.
"...I starved myself," Danny admitted at last, eyes on Harley. Harley tilted her head, inviting him to elaborate, and he did. "As a ghost, I need ectoplasm, and... I was wrong about how much. I couldn't even figure out why I was wrong." An edge of frustration crept into his voice, but it was directed at himself, not at Harley.
"I get it," Harley nodded again. "You had to confront your differences, you clammed up, you decided you'd rather go hungry than remind anyone that you were different."
Danny shrugged, grimacing slightly. "Pretty much."
(Infuriating, the effect this one woman had had. How one cruel insult at just the right time could affect someone for years after.)
"Well, this lady got a lot of bang for her buck, I'll give her that," Harley commented, following the same line of thought. "That's a disabling level of mental illness. Any other issues?"
Danny hesitated again, studying her, but he wasn't nearly as tense as Dinah had described, and he hadn't snapped at Harley once. It might be different once he was aware that he was in a session, but it was also possible that having already been through one painlessly would make future attempts easier. Danny reached up and thumbed the line of his jaw as he considered.
"I nearly had a panic attack when I was trying to explain how I interact with my rogues," Danny said at last. "Cass had to snap me out of it."
(Bruce noted carefully: Danny had recognized the feeling of a panic attack coming on. He glanced at Harley, who gave him a cheerful thumbs up, assuring him she'd caught it too. He was becoming less surprised by the day that there was at least one timeline where Danny had spiraled out of control; the whole situation was like a pressure cooker. The buildup of pain and rage must have been immense.)
"How come?" Harley asked, like she was asking Ivy why she'd come home early.
This earned another grimace, and Danny crossed his arms uncomfortably, even spinning to an angle so he wasn't quite facing Harley anymore. He really did project his emotions like a loudspeaker.
"Baseline ghost psychology is a little different from how humans think," Danny explained carefully, watching Harley but not meeting her eyes. "And most of the traits they take on are kind of frowned upon in humans. And since, you know, I have some of those, I... don't like talking about it."
Harley studied Danny with avid interest, leaning forward slightly. "But you did anyway."
Danny shrugged, looking away to the floor, still floating a few feet above it. He didn’t bob or sway in place, but his hair drifted slightly, betraying his complete defiance of gravity.
"Bruce wanted to know if my rogues would figure out everyone's identities, since they all know mine," he muttered, picking at the cuff of his jumpsuit. "I was trying to explain that he didn't have anything to worry about."
Harley made a 'time out' sign. "Hey, uh, if all your rogues know your identity, who the hell is it a secret from?" Her incredulous expression said it all.
"My parents, mostly," Danny shrugged. His backward drift indicated that the topic wasn't open for discussion. Harley glanced at Bruce instead, one eyebrow raised in question.
"My other children have been compiling a database of videos of Danny's parents shooting him down," Bruce explained, figuring that summarized the situation well. Danny glanced at him, less startled than Bruce had expected, so perhaps he'd remembered Bruce was present after all. "They seem to think it's funny."
Allegedly, it was for evidence purposes, although they'd filled that a while ago and emailed the videos to the Justice League prosecutors. There was even a points system: five points for a new video, two for a new angle of an old event, plus one to three points per incident for videos with multiple captured instances.
Harley blinked. When was the last time he'd seen her genuinely shocked? "Yeah, humor as a coping mechanism, pretty common in teen and former teen vigilantes. Excuse me, what the fuck?"
Danny visibly geared up to defend them, then, unexpectedly, gave up and stared at the floor instead.
"I can't wait to get into that," Harley decided, and then spun to beam at Bruce. "So, do I get the part?"
Bruce's mouth twitched.
"What?" Danny asked, spinning midair to face her in confusion.
Harley grinned at him. "This was an audition, right?"
Danny blinked at her, and then realization spread across his face, shortly followed by cautious optimism. "Oh!" He smiled.
Bruce allowed himself a smile as well. "Yes. Thank you, Harley. I'll pay you five times your going rate. When are you available?"