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Chapter Text

They didn't get there in time to stop the summoning. That was the worst thing: breaking in through the skylight to find missing Jason, his little brother, bleeding out in the summoning circle. The whole thing was glowing, too, an unhealthy green that was too familiar to too many of them. It glowed brighter where Jason's blood had seeped over to it, and there was no blood on the other side. On the contrary, the green was starting to follow the blood, glowing trails licking towards his body.

"Wing," said Batman tightly, while Red Robin, Black Bat, and Robin went wild on the cultists. Dick was already moving to retrieve him, but the amount of blood -

No. He refused to think about losing little wing again, not while a moment's hesitation could make the difference. He dove into the circle instead, get out his kit so he could pack the wounds and apply pressure. Oracle was already telling him about the ambulance on the way. The blood was - there was too much of it, on the ground or in the glowing runes, but the bleeding was slowing. They might have made it in time.

Jay tried to say something, but only managed a horrific gurgle. Dick shushed him, told him that help was on the way.

And then the first of those Lazarus-green tendrils made it to Jason.

There was a . . . sound, almost, except Dick didn't hear it with his ears. It was something like a shriek. It was something like the endless scream he, they were all, trying not to voice. It got louder and louder, while Dick worked frantically to stabilize Jaybird. Then the runes lit up like a circus Ferris wheel, and Dick realized it wasn't louder, it was closer when the suddenly blazing green coalesced.

The crown formed first. It didn't look like much, not a fancy coronet set with diamonds, just a simple ring made of white fire. That was what his mind insisted when he looked at it, at least, but even accounting for the flicker of the flames there was something not quite real about it. Dick knew it was a crown, though, without being certain how he knew. It was like looking at a platonic ideal.

The . . . person . . . who formed beneath it was just as unusual. They seemed to be made of eyes and the hint of movement in the shadows and whispers. Dick, who sometimes felt like he spent half his life in the shadows, wasn't as unnerved by that. The green was almost like animal eyeshine, except the color. The whispers were loud enough to identify as whispers, and not loud enough to understand. Then they flickered, or something, and the person blinked into being fully present. The eyes and shadows and whispers cut out instantly, replaced by a mostly-humanoid figure wearing an expression that would make anyone who'd never met a Bat quail. "Ả̵̧̨͓̯̤̏l̸̘̼̫̏l̸̬̦͑̑̃́ ̴̮͓̱̬̿́r̸̦͍͕̺̝̒̇̓ḯ̶̖͎̹͂̽g̸̮͔̣͒h̵̦̣͖̐t̵̢̛̰̫̠́͜,All right," they demanded, in a voice that was the howling of nuclear fires and whose echoes reached Dick's ears before the words did, "w̸̙̜͓̲͠h̴̯̊͠a̷̩̒̌t̶̨̡̡͛͊̐͐what?"

Then they appeared to actually process the scene, because they said, "O̵̘̽̒ḥ̴͉̦́̇̿͠ ̷̤̠̤̈͗̾̄̈́f̸͎̲̜̱͒ͅǔ̵͓̀c̷̼̭̍̇͌k̶̯̜͙̲̐̐ ̵̗̬̈́̽͐̆n̴̨͉̗̬̟͛͛́ô̷͇̓́̽͆.Oh fuck no."

The next few moments were a series of still images, totally disjointed from one another. He remembered being pushed aside, surprisingly gently for how quickly it had to have happened. He remembered the - being (the king) - looking at his work, frowning. He remembered them putting a glowing green hand to the compression bandage he just applied, and the flow of new blood just - stopping.

He remembered them taking Jay's arm, clasping both hands around his one.

"I̶͕̤̿́̇̇'̴̱̫̰̇̓̀̿͘m̵͂͜ ̵̛̝̤̮̻͆͠n̵̝̚̕o̵̞̥͎̬̲̒̏͛t̶̻̞̼͋̉͛̾͑ ̴̗̣̾̀͠g̶̢͉͖̮̓͛͌̚o̴̡͔̙̖̊͛͒̽ĭ̸̪̟ṇ̸̬̫̓̾̽̉g̶͍̀́̌͘̕ ̸̘̝̥̯̀̀ṭ̸̨̜͓́̕ǫ̵̲̭͖̉͘ ̶̜̝̒̎̋b̴̩̱̻̀̓̀̏̚ȩ̷̥̼͍̈́̓ ̶̛̜̖̮̆̃͘͝ͅá̷͚͍b̴̢̹͖́̑ĺ̸̪̽̓e̸̢͈͍͛̃̑͘ ̵̡̳̞̼̗͒͗͑t̷̟̞̜̺̯̂ò̶͙̺ ̴̳̪͒́̾̈s̷͓̰̿͒a̷̜̓̆̈́͝v̶̫̘̌ę̴̦̟̟͛͝ ̴͇̥͚̎̀͋̂̊y̵̩͐͊̽͘͠o̷̢̍̈́̈́̐ủ̵̢͇̺͎̙r̵̘̝̙̹̄̍̑̒ ̸̩̥̖̄l̵̤̦̳̳̒̚i̴̞͙͍̞̾̆̈́̅̐f̵̧͎͍̙͒̉̐̈̀ē̷̜̙̪̲̒͑̚͜,I'm not going to be able to save your life," they said, and something in Dick broke. "I̵̹̐͋̀͛'̶̼̖̤̎̌́͋̂͜m̸̠̝̂͋ ̴̨͔́͐͂̇̉s̶̗͐̽̈́̇̒͜ơ̴̺͕͎̻̐͜ṛ̶͔̮̀͗͜r̵͚͋̑̔̓̍y̷̗̪͌.I'm sorry."

Jason didn't say anything, didn't even move that Dick could see, but the king responded as though he had. "Y̷̱͚͚͑̂o̴͈͙̍ù̶̪͒̌̚ ̷̣͚͖̂̂͒d̵̼̫̬̒̐̋͌o̸̗͋͑͑n̴̜̠̠̂̾͘'̶͓̜̞͚͖̈́̚ṱ̵̰̝̣̈͐̃ ̷̗͇̻͒ẅ̸̯̭́̈͊̍̍ḁ̶̩̺͇̬̐̂̉͠n̵͖̱̲͖̍̉̈̚̕t̵̻̺̲̼̉̾̌ ̷͙̼̣́̊t̴͍̍h̵̬̩̫͌͝a̵̮̭̭̭̣͑̆t̸͈̜̣̖͑.You don't want that."

Again, a moment in which Jason didn't speak and the king replied anyway. "B̵̳́̿́̐è̵̜̘̣̕c̶̠̩͚͑̌͜ȃ̶̛̩̪̱͉̋͑͆u̷̡͚͐̎̕͠s̶̟͇͠ḙ̴̙̈́͜ ̶̣̣̩͘ĩ̸̘͍͚̍̉͌̕f̷͑͌̒ͅ ̵̺̒́̏̊y̵̯͉̅̄̇o̵̡͕̦͍͆͒́̔̂û̶̢̨̫̦̖́͑͗͝ ̵͚̪̈́d̴̘̣̮̱̐̈́̏̃o̷̪͂͒͐̕,̶͙̫͎̟̅ ̵̘̗̓̊ÿ̷̟̫̪̲o̷͛̀̃̈́ͅŭ̷̮̱̭͂̏̄͑ ̵̥̘̯̩̦̓́c̷̦̲̰͊a̴̟͘n̸̖̹̾̽̋'̷͉̟̐͑t̷̢͎͉̖͉͛̓̇͊͝ ̸̺̞̇̐̏̑ę̵̦̥̪̠̎̈̈́̂v̸̱͔̈́́̋́͜e̷̹̭̭̝̠͌̑̓̀͌r̷̝̼͊̾͝ ̵͙͖͒́̈́g̸̛̟̙̐̕ọ̸̧̟̝̽̆̓̚ ̵͖̫̲̊̾̋̚b̶̢̦̀ā̴̛̞̦c̶͚͙͉̘̐̅ͅḳ̶̹͖͖̘͑.̸̨͈͓͈̙̈́̑̒̅͛ ̷̱̪͋̉̄̿̓Y̵̼̙̓́͒͂o̷͔͍͎̠̗̅͋͆̚͠ú̷̜̼̀̽̿'̶͇͗̓̅l̷̼̬̟͖͊̍͋͗ļ̸̲̤̀̋̕ ̴̼̩͊̃b̷̹͇̙̲̰͑e̸͔̮͐ ̷̧̞͉̯̈̆̔͛ͅl̵̬̥̯̒͜ï̸̛͕̟̣̜̳͝k̵̳̰͉̼̄̏̈́̚e̷̪̟̐̇̈̕ ̸͉͎̟̝̦̓̽̇͑t̵̠̲͙͕̘̑́͋͠h̴̙̊͂̚͠ä̴̤́͒̀͐̆͜ͅt̴̝̭͕̥͖̑͑͋͘ ̸̢͌̀f̸̘̅̾̃̊̕o̷̩̔̓̈́r̶̬̭̘̰͙̍ẽ̸͈̔̅v̷̫̫͖͊̿̌ê̵͈̺̱̖̦̽̀r̵̜͖̅.Because if you do, you can't ever go back. You'll be like that forever."

That time, Jay did manage a real response, twitching his hand in a weak gesture towards the room. Robin and Black Bat were busy zip-tying the cultists, but listening intently. Batman was standing outside of the circle of runes, in a way that meant he'd tried to come closer and couldn't. Eyes, a lot more than just the two in the humanoid face, took them all in. Some of the howling had gone out of the king's voice when they said, "A̸̡̒l̵̜̍l̴̝͝ ̷͚̅ŗ̶̑ḯ̸͓g̴̤̀h̸̩͊ẗ̴̡,̴̮͋ ̷̧͒t̶̥͑h̷̨́ą̴͠t̵̡͊'̶̠̏s̸̡͆ ̷͓̈f̶͖͠à̵ͅi̷̗̅r̴̺̈́.All right, that's fair."

They put a hand on Jay's torso. Then they paused. "Ỷ̴̧ȍ̵͙u̶̞͛'̸̧̅r̴̜͐e̶̲̔ ̵͔̔ś̸̝u̶̥͑r̵̭͋e̵̗̊ ̴̖͠t̸͎̉h̸͙̎i̷̺̍s̸͙̓ ̸͚̀i̶̞͑ŝ̵̩ ̸̫́w̸̹̌h̴̺̓a̸͕͠t̴̞̎ ̵͎͋y̶̺͗o̸͈͋ū̵̳ ̴̮͂w̴̫͋a̴̡͋n̵̺̂t̸̢͋?You're sure this is what you want?"

Jay rolled his eyes in such an impressively Jay fashion that Dick almost laughed. The king did let out a single breath of it, and then pushed their arm into Jay's torso. It sank in to just past the wrist, like one of those optical illusions of either two people about to kiss or of a vase: chest, wrist. Jay didn't have a gaping hole in his chest, at least.

Then a ring made of the same light as the summoning formed around Jason's midriff. Two rings, as the king caught one and pulled it up towards Jay's head, the other matching its movement down towards his feet. Dick didn't need to be told to get out of the way of those rings. The unlight gave him a headache just to look at. After they'd passed . . .

Well, it was still Jay, at least. A smaller Jay, years younger, wearing - Jesus, the torn and tattered remains of the Robin outfit he'd died in. Also sporting the injuries he'd died with, bruises standing out starkly under corpse-pale skin.

To their credit, the king didn't flinch from the gruesome sight. Instead they leant in, picked up the too-still Jay in a bridal carry. Lifted with their legs, too. Dick immediately threw himself forward, and ended up throwing himself through where the kind was standing, without apparently affecting them at all.

"S̴͔̍ï̸̤n̷̘̈́c̷̙͛ẹ̷́ ̵͈̓y̵̞̓o̸̤̅u̶̧͠ ̸̘͋ǐ̴̲d̴̦̍i̸̖̽o̴̹̽t̶̺͂s̴͇̀ ̴͈̾d̴͉̽o̵̗͝ń̵̤'̸̲̈́t̶̨̿ ̷̢̈́š̷͙e̵͙̔ę̶̕m̶̱̈́ ̸̱̔t̷͓̀ö̷̖́ ̴̡̓ĥ̴̫ạ̴̿v̴̤̈́ȅ̵̮ ̶͚̈g̷̾ͅo̴̻͘t̴̨̍t̸̳̀ȩ̵̽n̵̹̊ ̶̟̇t̶̺̀h̴̛͚e̷͙͠ ̶̟̃m̶̧͊e̸̤̅m̴̬̓o̴̜͑,Since you idiots don't seem to have gotten the memo," they said, looking out at the room, "I̷̿ͅ ̷̗̋á̴͈m̶͍͛ ̴̼̎P̷̨̎h̵̜́ǎ̷͓n̴̤͑t̴͕̔o̵̞͑m̴̘̋,̷̟̐ ̶͍̈H̷̲̚i̸͎͌g̸̮͗h̵͇͑ ̸͚͋Ḳ̸͝i̶̮͝n̴͍͒g̸͕͗ ̴̼̔o̶̮̍f̸̃͜ ̷͇̂t̶̫̕h̶͙́e̸̫̕ ̷̺̾I̵̫̓n̸͎͗f̶̛͈i̴̯̔n̷̓͜i̶͍͊t̸̨̋e̴̢͊ ̷͖͂R̵̤͑e̴̞̅a̸̱̾l̶̘͐m̷͔̃ṣ̴͝.̸̘̽ ̸͎̒T̴͇́h̵̭͝ȩ̶͐ ̵̘͊c̷̩̕r̷̝̅o̶̹̽w̵͕͑ǹ̵̘ ̸̛̙ì̶̖s̵͕͠ ̵͕̚m̷̲̆ĩ̵̠n̷̫̈́ẽ̵̪ ̶̞̂n̸̺̾ȍ̴ͅw̵̩̐,̵̗̉ ̴̲̐a̵̹͝n̵͈̊d̸̗͆ ̸̜̾y̶̕ͅọ̷̔ù̷͈'̵͉̀r̸̡̓e̵̢̔ ̸͔̕į̸̀n̵͛ͅc̷̥͌r̸̲̚ě̷̬d̷̢̋i̸̧͌b̶͔̓l̸̮̆y̶̮͐ ̵̧̄l̵̖̈́u̷̧̍c̶̟̈́k̸̗̂y̸͖͆ ̵̘́ṫ̵̘h̸̬̄ä̷͇t̵̯̋ ̴͍͝ï̸ͅt̵͙̀ ̴̺̍i̷͈̅s̷̤̈́.̷̧͆ ̶̟̂Ṯ̶̆h̷̼̄ȇ̷͎ ̵̥͗l̵̹̈́ä̶̙́s̵̨̏ẗ̸̖́ ̸̫̈́ĝ̴̻u̵̧͘y̵͎͋ ̷̟̋-̷͕͑ ̸̺͒t̸͈͂h̵̛̤e̸̲̊ ̶̞̍ǫ̵̾n̵̹̕ë̸͉ ̴̟̓y̷͚̽ȯ̴͉ů̴̖ ̸̹̎m̶̰͊e̴͓̍á̵͈n̸̨̈t̷̘̚ ̷̤͂t̷͗ͅo̵̲̕ ̸̭̌s̸̬̆u̵̗̕ḿ̴̜m̵̫͑ö̵̪ǹ̷̡ ̶̟͛-̷̜̀ ̸̲̈w̵̹͆o̴̧͂u̴͕̚l̶̛̺d̷̞͑n̷̻̑'̵̹͛t̶̗̽ ̵̩̾h̵̩̑a̴͕͑v̵̞̍e̷̺̿ ̴̪̅l̶̮͛e̷͙̔f̵̣͝t̵̬͐ ̷̗̅ą̵̃ ̵̦̈́s̵̺̉ȉ̸̲n̶̼͑g̴̹͑l̵̑͜e̵͕͝ ̶͕̚ọ̵̓ñ̴ͅe̵̛͙ ̴͈̐ó̶͔f̷̱͊ ̴̥͆y̶̮͆o̴͚͆u̴̽͜ ̸̠͑b̵͉͂r̸̲͂ē̷̱a̴̬͝t̶̻̐h̶̐ͅi̶̳͊ñ̴̡g̴̜͝.I am Phantom, High King of the Infinite Realms. The crown is mine now, and you're incredibly lucky that it is. The last guy - the one you meant to summon - wouldn't have left a single one of you breathing." They turned to begin walking away, visibly fading as they did so.

"Wait!" called out B.

The king - Phantom - paused, half-transparent and still cradling Jay so carefully in his arms.

"What are you going to do with him?" asked B.

"W̴̜̎h̵͓̃a̸͈͆t̴̪̾ ̸̛̰I̴̬͆ ̵̬́c̸͙̍á̸̢n̴͍̂.What I can."

Chapter Text

Jason Todd-Wayne, Red Hood, second Robin, gasped awake in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room in an unfamiliar - no, he couldn't possibly be in a city, it was far too quiet.

And green. Lazarus green.

Oddly, though, the pit rage that had haunted him since his resurrection was absent. Without it, Jason felt like he could think for the first time in - years. Jason let his eyes slip closed. There didn't seem to be any kind of demand for him to get up, so instead he could just rest. It was nice. Peaceful. Jason dozed like that, on and off, for a long time.

Eventually, though, he felt some kind of rested enough that when he flopped over he didn't decide to go back to sleep. Instead he sat up, cool sheets falling off of him as he looked around. The furniture was very medieval chic. Jason was in a massive four-poster bed, done in some dense wood that had darkened nearly to black with age. On the wall opposite the bed was a really ostentatiously large fireplace. The fire inside it was doing its best to be cheerful, despite being Lazarus green. There was a door in the masonwork wall to the left of the bed. To the right there were two window alcoves, also masonwork, complete with embroidered cushions on the stone benches.

So: he'd been kidnapped -

No. Or rather, yes, he had been kidnapped, but from the new Catherine Todd Memorial Library ribbon-cutting. The cultists hadn't been stupid, either: they'd stripped him before tying him to the chair, and he'd seen nobody else until they came to get him. They didn't respond to his needling while they dumped him in the circle. The ritual itself was in a language he didn't know. He'd fought as best he could, since he could tell he was supposed to be the sacrifice, but naked and hogtied he was at too big a disadvantage. Hell, he still didn't even know who they were.

He knew that it had worked, though. Something, someone, not really alive but still alive enough, arrived with plenty of time to tell him he was going to die, again. They even arrived with time to be persuaded that he'd be plenty happy with 'alive enough'. He had to be very firm about that, he remembered. Right before they reached into him and -

Nothing, until he woke up here.

Probably not an enemy, then. Not if they required that kind of explicit consent, over and over again.

Jason cautiously stood and went to investigate the door. It wasn't locked, but there was a sticky-note stuck right next to the wrought-iron handle. It was so incongruous, cheerful yellow paper - well, green in this light, but it definitely wasn't pink - that he just stared at it like a fucking idiot for far too long before he reached to peel it off and read it.

Had to go out. I put some ectoplasm on the mantle. Try to drink it if you can. Feel free to explore. We'll talk soon. - ∞

Weird.

They weren't treating him like an invalid, though, which automatically put them one up over every single one of the Bats. Instead they'd just poured him into a bed to sleep off whatever it was they'd done. He poked his head out, just to see, but outside was a stonework corridor stretching off into the dark in both directions. There was even an unlit lantern just hanging there on a hook at eye level, as if to emphasize his freedom of movement.

Jason decided he wasn't ready to face whatever fresh bullshit was outside this one room, and went to investigate the fireplace instead. There was a green glass bottle on the mantle, just one, next to a long-stemmed wine glass. The bottle had a sticky-note on it that said, " - drink me!" Along with a surprisingly good drawing of a top hat, a card that was recognizably the queen of hearts stuffed in the band.

Beating the Bats on 'having a sense of humor,' too.

The liquid was green, and Jason was pretty sure that wasn't just the lighting. It didn't have the acid smell of decay that marked Lazarus water, though. In fact, when Jason cautiously wafted some of it towards his nose, he found that it smelled cool and clean; not menthol, but fresh-fallen snow.

Well. At some point, he had to trust that his mysterious savior actually did want to help him, and that point passed when he accepted that Jason wanted 'alive enough'. Jason poured himself a glass, which took a while because the stuff had the same consistency as pepto-bismol. At least it was pretty definitely not Lazarus water. He muttered, "Here goes nothing," and took a cautious sip.

In one sense, it was like drinking a weak-green-tea flavored milkshake. In another, the one that mattered, he felt the effect immediately: a boost of energy, shaking out the last cobwebs of sleep. Jason blinked down at it. He could accept that it was actually medicinal, with an effect like that. Hells, he'd be a billionaire independently if he could bottle it.

"All right," he said, and started drinking it in earnest.

He walked around while he did it. The room was really not that big, and sparsely furnished: the bed, two nightstands, and a single large chest at the foot of the bed were it. Oh, there was what looked like a wolf pelt spread out in front of the fire, but the only place to actually sit was in the window alcoves.

Jason went over, and looked out the window. Space was on the other side. Or rather, the Earth was on the other side, a glowing blue light in the void. It was a view he'd seen plenty, because it was the same one as the main Watchtower window in the mess. In fact . . . Jason leant forward, frowning. It was exactly the same as the one out the main Watchtower window.

Curiouser and curiouser.

It was a view that didn't get old, though, so Jason sat there, watching the Earth and drinking his 'ectoplasm'. He idly thought about the fact that he eventually would have to look for a way out, but for now he could stay here.

That was where he was sitting when the door opened.

Chapter Text

Jason was instantly on alert, but the person who came in was a person. They had a surprisingly slight build, shorter than Jason and all limbs, but moved with an easy grace that suggested lean muscle. A crown that seemed to be made of disembodied flame floated a few inches above their head.

Of course, Jason's mind was also insisting that they were made of eyes and whispers and the heavy tread of a predator beyond the scant circle of firelight. He was sure that was true, too, because this seemed like that sort of place. Before he could decide whether to speak, and, if so, what he was going to say, the other person preempted him.

"Oh, good, you're up," they said, in a voice that was a normal pleasant mild tenor instead of primal power. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I died."

"Well," they said, entering and closing the door behind themself. Jason tentatively identified them as 'male.' "I have good news and I have bad news. Which do you want first?"

"If the bad news is that I died," said Jason, "then don't worry about scaring me: that's not news."

"It isn't? I mean - that answers some questions, but just raises others."

Jason shrugged. "What's the good news?"

"You were right, I was able to pull you over to being - like me."

"Mm. And you are . . . ?"

"High King Phantom of the Infinite Realms," he said, giving a sardonic little bow. The crown followed their head, but the flame direction kept being up. "And you're Jason Todd-Wayne. In theory, you're in a private hospital recovering from your kidnapping. It was on all the news," Phantom explained in response to whatever expression he was making.

"I see," said Jason. It meant - what? Not that B and Big Bird and all the rest were abandoning him again, not with how they'd come to his rescue. Or made the attempt, anyway. He could've told Dickie that he was going to die without a lot more blood than an ambulance had, if he'd been able to talk at all. That Phantom could beat Dick in a fight, maybe? He was the only one who'd been in the circle with them, and Dick wasn't any kind of meta.

"It's funny," said Phantom, "because it's true. Well. Approximately. You're not going to recover from being dead, obviously, but you'll be able to fake it. For all anyone else needs to know, you really were just in some overpriced bed somewhere in Ireland or wherever. That's what rich people do, right?"

"Aren't you the king of wherever we are?" asked Jason.

"The Infinite Realms, yeah," said Phantom. "Since that and ten bucks won't even buy me a coffee in Gotham, you're still the rich kid in the room." Before Jason could even decide how he wanted to respond to that, Phantom added, "Anyway. I figure we have to spend a few days, maybe a week, getting you, uh, all formed up, and then I can send you home. But since you probably don't want your dad thinking you've actually been kidnapped," he reached into a pocket and pulled out . . . a cheap prepaid phone, the kind Red Hood used as burners all the time. "I got you this."

Jason looked at it. "I was kidnapped," he pointed out, even as he took the phone. "Maybe twice?"

Phantom looked horrified. "N̴͍̘̮̍ò̸̻!̶͎̫̇͗͛No!" he said, in a voice like an avalanche, and for a moment his eyes glowed green and the crown went bright enough to blind. Then he seemed to collect himself, because he said, "No. I won't take you back to Gotham yet, but that's - you wouldn't let a newborn out of the hospital for a few days either! More if there were complications. You're maybe a little older of a ghost than I thought, but you're still just a tiny baby. And there are at least two different overlapping complications."

Jason took a quick breath in. There was a lot to unpack there. One of the complications had to be the Pits, but the other . . . And those still weren't the most important thing, because the most important thing was - "I'm a ghost?"

Phantom looked at him. He looked at Phantom. Phantom reached up and scrubbed a hand through his hair. "I did not mean to tell you like that."

"You're kind of a disaster, aren't you?" commented Jason. A different kind of disaster than, say, Tim, or even Dick. But very obviously a disaster. "It's fine. I died with unfinished business. Why wouldn't I become a ghost?" He took a sip of the ectoplasm.

"Because that's not - " Phantom stopped, and scrubbed his hair again. The habit at least explained how messy it was. He sat down carefully on the seat across from Jason. "We tend to talk like there isn't a difference, because usually it doesn't make much of one, but what a ghost is, when you get down to it, is - memory and emotion. Not a soul."

" . . . go on."

"The original Jason Todd died. I'm not going to ask how. It's considered really phenomenally rude. However it happened, he felt strongly enough about it to cause an ectoplasmic imprint to form. Those are like - snapshots, of a person?" Phantom made an expressive gesture with both hands. "They have all of the original's memories and knowledge, but they're not - they don't have souls. They're more copies. A lot of the time the person who made the ectoplasmic imprint survives, and the imprint can keep existing separately from them."

Jason took another sip while he thought about this. "The ectoplasmic imprint is the ghost?"

"Yes," said Phantom. "And also no, because these things can't ever be simple. An ectoplasmic imprint will become a ghost, if it gets enough emotional energy. Out in the living world that tends to be in fairly short supply, but the Infinite Realms are literally made of it, so it's usually a question of where the imprint forms. With me so far?"

"Yeah," said Jason.

"You - or, rather, the emotional imprint that became you - didn't form in the Infinite Realms, I don't think. Most of the time that just means they dissipate after a while, but . . . "

"But?" prodded Jason when Phantom didn't continue, even after he drank more.

"But Gotham is weird," said Phantom with a sigh of pure bone-deep exhaustion.

Gotham is weird. Jason wasn't in Gotham when he died, but . . . Gotham got into your bones, and you carried it with you. Maybe that was literal. "I see. And I don't have a soul?"

"Oh, no, you do," said Phantom, squinting. "A really weird one, actually. It would've stuck to you-the-imprint after you-the-human died, which happens more than it doesn't. Like I said, we usually don't talk about it like," and here he did air-quotes, "'the human who formed my imprint died.' If you have the same memories and emotions and soul, you're pretty much the same person. You just say, 'I died.'" He stopped, looking at Jason to make sure he was still following.

"Did you?" asked Jason.

"What?"

"Die."

Phantom snorted. "I'm the ghost king; what do you think?"

Jason nodded. "Fair enough. Are there ghosts that don't have souls?"

Phantom allowed the diversion. "Some. Not many. Exist for long enough while sapient, and a soul tends to show up." He shrugged. "It gets into all kinds of metaphysical bullshit about what counts as birth and living, and in terms of whether or not they're a person the difference honestly doesn't matter."

Almost certainly not any kind of enemy. Enemies tried to minimize the personhood of their victims, not stand up for it. Just to check, though, Jason consciously tried to call the All-Blades to his hands. Nothing happened, which clinched it.

"Anyway!" said Phantom, cheerfully changing the topic by force. "The first thing is going to have to be making sure you're strong enough to pass as a living human. Since a baby ghost can only absorb ectoplasm so quickly, we have some time."

Jason didn't, actually: his status as Red Hood demanded that he be seen. But Jason Todd-Wayne probably wouldn't be in a hurry. "Am I a baby ghost?"

"The babiest," cooed Phantom, almost singsong.

Without saying a word, Jason met Phantom's eyes and flexed a bicep.

Phantom snickered. "Yeah, and if we were just talking bodies that argument might mean something. Since we're not, I get to call you the babiest baby until you stop being one." Despite his words, though, his face seemed to have darkered - Lazarus green, of course - in what Jason realized after a moment was a blush. "So," Phantom gestured to Jason's partially-full glass, "ectoplasm."

Jason tilted his head, a gesture he'd learned to do because raising an eyebrow while helmeted up didn't work.

"It's condensed emotional energy, to help baby ghosts grow up big and strong." He grinned at this joke. "I think I got it right, but if you feel full, don't force yourself to finish it; you'll just end up puking it back up otherwise." Like a baby, he didn't say, and Jason heard anyway. "I'll get out of your hair so you can call your family - "

"Does this text?" asked Jason.

Phantom blinked. "Uh, probably? It's supposed to just connect to 4G. Let me know if it doesn't, though, I can probably get it fixed."

So he wasn't his own tech person.

"And if you're up for a chat after that, come find me. I'll be in the library. That's, uh, out the door, end of the hall to the right, and all the way up the stairs."

"Understood," said Jason.

"Good." Phantom stood up, and started heading towards the door.

"One more question," said Jason, on impulse.

Phantom looked back over his shoulder. "Yeah?"

"Why are you helping me?"

Phantom met his eyes solidly. "Because, Jason Todd-Wayne, you're one of m̸̢̦͚̀̇̿ǐ̸̹͎͇̀͝ͅn̷͕͉͚̅̿̍ĕ̴͖̈́̔͂͜͜mine; and if I can't even take care of ṁ̷͚̮͌y̴̨̺̼̍̊ ̶̋̾̔ͅo̴̧̊w̴̺̪͘n̷̢͋̎ ̴͖̆͝p̷̘̆̂͜e̸̹͙͑̅ō̴͉̓p̵͓͉͠l̴̝̘̅͘͝e̸̩̙̪̔̾͐my own people, I've no business bearing the crown."

Chapter Text

Jason texted one of Oracle's numbers, the ones for getting a secure proxy through an unsecured line. The connection did go through, because the phone lit up to tell him it was receiving a security patch and would restart once it was done updating. While he waited for Oracle's code to finish downloading, he drank more of the ectoplasm. The effervescent effect wore off, but it was still giving him a deep-seated sense of satiation in a way that said it probably was baby ghost food.

And he actually was a baby ghost.

The phone lit up again. Jason picked it up, selected the Oracle icon, and tapped himself onto her messaging program. Predictably, he got a text only an instant later.

Jason smiled down fondly, even as he typed in his response. It was really inconvenient with only a number pad.

Then, to show he wasn't really upset, he added more.

Once the message popped up on the groupchat, he realized that might not have been yesterday.

He'd know if he were in Crime Alley. He wasn't even in Gotham, as far as he could tell.

References to the color red were one of the codewords for unsecured lines, and meant it was really him talking.

If I can't even take care of my own people -

There was utter silence as everyone read and answered.

Level was another codeword, and meant he was not being coerced.

Jason rolled his eyes. Intellectually he understood why B was so overprotective of him, but it still grated.

Not even necessarily something bad. They all knew what injury recovery was like. Jason wasn't recovering from particularly bad injuries, as opposed to just massive blood loss, but there was whatever Phantom had done to him.

That was the best he could offer.

Huh. Zatanna was one of the best. If she couldn't find him . . .

Jason made a face.

Jason smiled. This was why Cass was his favorite. He went to take another sip, and as soon as he'd swallowed realized what Phantom meant by full. He suddenly was. He set the glass up on the mantle, next to the almost-totally empty bottle, before he went to lie down on the bed.

Jason made the decision right then that Dick could never know that Phantom called him the babiest baby.

Bruce - Batman - understood duty.

That was a good one.

That wasn't a bad question, actually. If ghosts were more or less copies of a person, and Phantom also had the person's soul, then finding out what they could about the person he'd been would help them understand his motivations as a king.

Jason closed the phone with a snap, and lay back on the bed with his eyes closed.

He loved his siblings, all of them, even Timmy the Sleepless Wonder, but they were a lot even at the best of times. A short rest, he thought, and then he'd go and try to squeeze answers out of the Ghost King.

Chapter Text

Jason was cool.

Jason remembered being cool, on bright nights under a clear sky, flying by grapple. These days, though, he ran hot, almost burning, and from March until September he had to have a full-length heat-wicking body pillow if he wanted to sleep at all. He was curled around something cool now, too, but it felt like that something was a body. At that temperature it had to be a corpse, and his eyes opened even as he scrambled up.

Phantom's crown flickered a cool white.

. . . right. He'd died, again, and Phantom had - done something. He put a hand to one cheek, testing, but wasn't really surprised to find that the ghost king ran cool.

He was surprised to find the ghost king in his bed, and - naked?! But a quick check under the sheets proved that, no, he was in boxers. Also, wow, Phantom had some really incredible Lichtenberg figures over basically the entire left half of his torso, including all the way down his arm. Like, Jason didn't think that kind of amperage would be survivabl -

Ah.

Jason poked the smaller man in his shoulder in an attempt to wake him. Phantom batted at him, and then more or less plastered himself across Jason like an octopus, all without waking. He wasn't breathing, but then again, ghost. After a few more equally unsuccessful attempts to wake him, Jason gave up and lay back down. He was comfortably cool, and the sleep he'd gotten here was his best in ages. The conversation could surely wait for morning.

Jason woke up again because an alarm went off, a cheerful pop song about getting up and seizing the day. Without opening his eyes, he said, "Why, Phantom. I didn't think you were the sort of rake to assault a young and naive - " Phantom snorted " - gentleman in his own boudoir!"

"I didn't," said Phantom dryly as he climbed out of bed. "You're the one who glommed onto me."

Jason thought about that. With how hot he ran, it did seem likely. "Okay, but actually: what the fuck?" He sat up.

Phantom laughed. "Nothing so fun. I reached out to my doctor, and he said that I should feed you ectoplasm if I could, but also if you're still small enough that you can draw it, skin-to-skin contact will let you pull from me directly." His usual one-piece black and white ensemble materialized already in place. "And, well, it is my bed. I wasn't going to let you kick me out of my own bed. You just didn't notice while you were still all unconscious."

Jason stared. "I was eating you?" he asked, horrified.

"Mmmore like a blood transfusion with fewer steps. You are," Phantom tilted his head, "definitely a little bigger than you were yesterday. Question is, how do you feel?"

Jason considered. "Pretty good? I don't feel worse, but I . . . it doesn't feel any different?"

"Well, you are still itty-bitty." Jason snickered. He was still about twice Phantom's size. "Come on, get up. Breakfast options are cereal and milk or pop tarts."

"Do I even still need to eat?"

"Depends on whether or not you want your body to do human things like make blood and form new memories. I, personally, recommend it."

Jason got up, and followed Phantom. They went down the hall to a tightly spiralled staircase in a stonework shaft, out through an enormous and cavernously echoing ballroom, and into a kitchen with fireplaces large enough to spit-roast an entire cow. Neither of them were lit, but between them and the long, heavy wood tables, Jason could easily see half a dozen people working there. "Are we in an actual castle?"

"Yeah," said Phantom, prodding two pop tarts into an incongruous toaster sitting on one of the tables. "It's got some incredibly unpronounceable Polish name. But it is the traditional seat of the monarchy, and ghosts are nothing if not traditional."

"I see," said Jason. "You haven't been the ghost king for very long."

"I've been the ghost king for longer than this universe has existed," said Phantom mildly.

Jason thought about that, and the argument the Justice League had a while back when punk Superboy showed up, and said, "So, what, six months?"

"Longer than the last few universes," Phantom corrected himself. Then he shrugged, as if to say: what can you do? "The crown came to me, and it goes to - whoever the ghosts feel has the most right to it. It's not really something you can say no to. I tried."

"I will take your word for it," said Jason. "So you inherited this castle, and you have to li- to stay in it because that's where the king is, and you have pop tarts or cereal because you can't cook on a medieval hearth."

"Pretty much," agreed Phantom

"Mm. I've cooked with worse. I don't suppose you have any eggs?"

"No. No eggs allowed. Sometimes they hatch."

That was a disturbing mental image. Before Jason could say anything else, the toaster dinged. Phantom put both of them on what looked like a wooden plate, and handed it to Jason. He put another two in, presumably for himself.

"What about bacon?"

" . . . not going to risk it," said Phantom morosely, mostly to the toaster.

"Ah-huh," said Jason. "Well. I'll think about it. In the meantime, I have questions."

"You and me both.

"Especially," he gestured between the two of them, "what you did."

Phantom was already nodding. "Oh, absolutely." He looked Jason up and down. "For reasons I'm not going to ask about, you were already a ghost-with-soul. For reasons we're going to have to talk about, you were somehow stuck to your own living body. Care to comment?"

"Not really," said Jason.

The toaster dinged, and Phantom put them on his plate. "Well, all right," he said dubiously, "but I, uh, I don't think I'm going to be able to get rid of the crud in your ectoplasm without knowing what it is - "

"The what in my what?"

"You've got, uh, gunk. In your ectoplasm. Which I think might be why you're such a tiny baby - "

"Ectoplasm as in the stuff I drank last night? Condensed emotional energy?"

"Yeah," said Phantom.

Jason waited until he took a bite to ask, "Did you drug it? I never sleep like that."

"Did I - ? N̴͈̹̤̋̌ǫ̵̣̿̅̈́͛No!" He sounded offended that Jason even asked. He finished chewing and swallowed the bite before continuing. "You were incorporating a lot of it very fast, is all. Well, that, and a whole bunch of it had to be going to healing. I'm not surprised you were tired!"

Jason folded his arms. "So it's going to keep happening?"

"Until you can make enough extra on your own. You are producing ectoplasm, but it's . . . pretty fucked-up, honestly. I didn't even know ectoplasm could be fucked up like that. I'll ask about it. Although it would be easier if you just told me." He leveled a severe stare at Jason.

"I call it Pit Rage," admitted Jason. "It - I'm usually angry. I'm the calmest here that I've been in years."

Phantom nodded. "That tracks: if all of the ectoplasm you make is rage-flavored, then of course you're angry all the time. And if you're angry all the time, then of course all the ecto you make is going to be rage-y. But the ectoplasm here isn't like that. You're absorbing clean stuff just by being here, and by drinking it. I think that'll help dilute it down, but if you want a real solution, I'm going to need a bit more info."

"I . . . see," he said. "Can I think about it?"

"For a day or two," said Phantom.

"Okay."

"So that's the first complication." Phantom held up first one finger, then two. "The second is that you asked me to turn you into the kind of ghost I am. You, er. You did ask, right?"

"I'd use 'demand,'" said Jason.

Phantom was visibly relieved when he nodded. It was cute, how concerned he was about not pushing. "That went off . . . fine, I guess, but it means you're like me now, with all the same strengths and weaknesses."

"And what kind of ghost is that?"

"I used to call it a 'halfa,'" said Phantom. "I thought I was half-ghost, and half-living, and I could switch between the two. But that was back when I was refusing to process my own death." He took another bite and chewed contemplatively. "What we actually are is ghosts-with-souls who then merged back with our not-quite-dead bodies, transforming both."

"Didn't I do that before? When I, uh, undied?"

"No. That was you-the-ghost possessing your own body. You can overshadow other people too, but it's generally unethical if you're not, like, taking over a drowning person because you know how to swim."

"That a hypothetical?"

"No."

Jason nodded. He hadn't thought so. "But now?"

"It's . . . not super easy to explain. The best I can do is metaphor. You know how electrons are both waves and particles?"

"Yeah."

"Ghosts are always like waves, and living people are always made of matter, which is particles. You and I are electrons. Except electrons don't choose when to act like a wave versus a particle, and we can. Or you will, once you're stronger. But it's still - it's not a change in what you are. You're the ghost of Jason Todd. You're always going to be the ghost of Jason Todd. I'm sorry."

"Don't be," said Jason immediately. "I was already dead, and you had nothing to do with it. When I came back, I came back wrong, and that's not your fault either. You saw - I'd have bled out before the ambulance arrived. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm getting the sense that being a ghost made it not great odds they were going to be able to resuscitate me."

Phantom didn't respond for a longer moment. "Normally I'd say no," he said slowly. "But the rage-gunk glued you to your body. It might've been enough."

"I'm okay with this," said Jason, and somewhat to his surprise it wasn't even a lie. He was, in fact, more than okay with it. It sounded, from the way Phantom was talking, like he was going to develop some kind of meta abilities. B wouldn't be happy, but . . . "I do have kind of a weird question, though. I promise it's relevant. Don't laugh at me."

Phantom tilted his head. "Well now I'm curious."

"Can you, uh. So you said you can possess people, right? Could you possess - Superman, for example?"

" . . . I try not to do things that would bring me to the Justice League's attention," said Phantom. "Actually."

"Right, but, like, if Superman were already, I don't know, hypnotized. Or being controlled by magic, or something. Could you override that control?"

"Oh." Phantom considered this. "Yeah, probably."

"Because, I hate to have to tell you, but transforming me into this halfa ghost thing right in front of Batman? Has probably brought you to the Justice League's attention."

"I know," moaned Phantom. "I already - well. There were plans in place for when something like this happened, and I put them into action. The big question is whether I can convince them that the Infinite Realms aren't . . . "

"A threat?" suggested Jason.

"I mean. We are a threat. Anyone who can possess Superman is a threat. What we are not is warmongering assholes. Most ghosts don't really have anything to do with the living world, and the ones who do tend only to want to check up on relatives. Which, on that topic, did you have a good call with your family?"

"I convinced B to hold off on calling in the Justice League for a week," explained Jason.

"He can - I mean, he actually is funding Batman?"

"It is legally inadvisable to say anything more on this topic," said Jason, with the cheekiest grin he could manage.

"Oh. Huh."

"Do you . . . have a problem with the Bats? Or I guess metahumans in general?"

" . . . I have complicated feelings about vigilantism, let's say," said Phantom. "Or maybe really simple ones, being the absolute monarch that I am. But I do think the Earth needs to have people who can defend it from space loonies, and they're the ones who stepped up. If push came to shove, I'd step up too."

Jason looked at him. He was fit, sure, but it wasn't like the ability to possess anyone would help in a fight where everyone was already likely to be on the same side. "No shit?"

"The Realms are a little bit sideways from Earth, but if the Earth stopped existing the Realms would too. Why wouldn't I defend my home?"

"Then that's your in. As long as I'm back home and not visibly dead at the end of the week, the JL will probably listen to you when you say that."

"You think so?"

"I can practically guarantee it."

"So Mr. Wayne is Batman's sugar daddy, then?" said Phantom.

Jason laughed. He knew the rumors, and unlike his siblings, leaned into them as much as possible. "Bats wants to be my dad, yeah."

"Oh . . . "

"What?"

"Sounds like you have a problem with him."

"I do," said Jason, and left it at that. "How about pancakes?"

"What?" Phantom blinked at the total non-sequitur.

"I can do a mean pancake. If I do banana-nut, I won't even need eggs."

"Oh. That sounds really nice, actually. I don't have any bananas, but I can go shopping. Uh. Later, though. I have to get going now." He fixed Jason with a look. "You're free to go explore the castle, but I'll refill the ectoplasm too. If you can drink that, you should."

Jason rolled his eyes. "Yes, mom," he said.

Phantom gave him an extremely unimpressed look, but let it go. "I'll see you later then, I guess."

He headed back towards the door.

So. Not going to trust him with how he was getting to and from the Infinite Realms just yet. That was annoying, but Jason could see why not immediately after admitting that he could influence the JL.

He finished his own pop tarts and spent five extra minutes examining the pantry for good measure, but Phantom was gone when he made it back to the bedroom.

His phone was on the floor, having apparently fallen during the night. It was still charged, though.

So. First things first. Jason opened Oracle's program.

He never slept a solid eight hours at once. But, more to the point, no one other than Signal would be awake at nine in the morning.

Duty done, Jason got up to get the bottle of ectoplasm. As promised, it was full again.

He could've sat there watching the Earth while he drank, but instead decided to do some of that exploring. He went down the hall to the right, but instead of heading back to the kitchen he climbed. At the top was a single short vestibule before another door.

The hinges creaked horribly, but let him into a round tower room, eighteen feet across or so. It was lined floor-to-ceiling in bookshelves except for the sections of wall occupied by the huge fireplace or the window niches. There was another pelt - bear, this time - sort of in front of the fire but really over most of the floor.

There was a bean bag chair on the pelt, and a stack of books on the bean bag chair. The top one was a math textbook.

Jason nodded to himself, and went to investigate the bookshelves. They didn't seem to have any sort of organization, huge leather-bound codices side by side with modern paperbacks. Jason picked one at random and opened it to the title page.

It was at this point that Jason realized he was holding a first edition copy of Pride and Prejudice, and almost dropped it with a startled yelp. Only almost, though. And there was no one around to see his indignity anyway. Well. Phantom was the king. There was no reason he couldn't have a first-edition anything he wanted. And, given that he suddenly had something like five hours free, it wasn't the worst idea.

But. First things first.

Jason spent a couple of hours wandering around, getting a feel for the place. The castle was built differently than a real one; there was almost no space for, like, food storage, which was kind of the point of real castles. There was, weirdly, space for stables and kennels, which maybe meant that horses and dogs could make ghosts? And none of the towers, which had arrow loops and murder holes and all, was a Christian chapel. Mostly, the rooms were all empty, with not even dust or cobwebs. There were other rooms that could've been bedrooms along the corridor, too, but they were just as empty as the tower rooms. So there really was only one bed.

There was, at the very bottom of the tower that held the library, a single locked door. Just the one. It had a sticky note on it.

Please leave this room alone for now. - ∞

Between that, and the fact that Jason didn't even have a paper clip for picking the lock, he decided to leave it alone.

For now.

There was an outside, a wide courtyard paved with large flat flagstones - aside from the raised garden beds. The sky was, of course, Lazarus green. Jason did not stay outside really long. He went back to the bedroom instead. He could read a bit, drink the ectoplasm, sleep while he processed that, and then probably more people would be up.

Chapter Text

Jason woke to the same unchanging green light as he'd gone to sleep with, but feeling ravenous; not in his stomach, which hadn't felt hungry the whole time he'd been here, but in a different way. It was almost exactly like Pit Rage, except that instead of the green creeping into his vision being full of anger, it was instead full of empty want. Fortunately, he'd only been able to drink a fifth or so of the ectoplasm, and left the rest on the nightstand. Jason didn't even bother with the glass, just guzzled the rest straight out of the bottle. The effect was immediate cool relief washing through him. In fact, he was still hungry when he finished the bottle, but it was recognizable as hunger.

Then he tapped in on his phone.

Jason considered. Maybe a bit more honesty, here.

Of course Timmy jumped on that immediately.

And of course fucking Timmy wanted the evidence.

He was absolutely not telling them that Phantom thought he could get rid of the crud. Not yet.

Once again, Cass was the best sibling hands-down.

Everyone went quiet, digesting that.

That was a damned good question, actually.

His heart would be in his throat if it were beating at all, which, he realized, it wasn't.

He added, to really hammer the knife home.

Jason swallowed around the sudden lump in his throat. Of course his Big Bird would ask that. And - he didn't know Phantom very well yet, but he already knew there wasn't a world where he wouldn't.

He was going to have to explain to Phantom how to set up a dead-drop to receive it without his unbearably nosy family figuring out how he was getting to and from the Realms.

Jason narrowed his eyes.

Chapter Text

The evil magic book was in the library. It was on the bottom of the stack on the bean bag chair. The two on top of it were in Chinese, and not simplified modern. Jason sighed, picked up the one marked as "heaven," and started reading.

A confused half-hour later, he reported back to the group chat.

Jason snapped a few pics of each: the title page, the table of contents, one of detailed close-ups of part of the array diagram. He queued them up to send, the array first because that was the one a magic-user would have to check, before he carefully put the books back exactly where he found them.

Then flopped down on the pelt and let himself consider the implications.

Whatever Phantom had done to the cultists, he'd done it in a way that O couldn't detect. There was no way she didn't have eyes on them from the moment the Bats entered the building on. Cameras. Whatever. And that was legitimately terrifying, because it implied it was super-advanced alien tech or magic of some kind.

Probably magic. He was definitely planning on using magic to destroy the evil magic book. That was not something Jason actually had a problem with. It wasn't even like B wouldn't pick that, now that he knew it was an option at all. He was gonna just be a dick about it, because he didn't come up with that plan and had all of the control issues. On the whole Jason was glad that the book was here rather than someplace B could get at it.

Which meant that he trusted Phantom more than he trusted B. Well, obviously, but also . . . why? Because they guy had handed him a phone and wasn't telling him any lies? He sure as hell wasn't telling Jason the entire truth! And Jason couldn't blame him, exactly. The man was king and reasonably didn't want to have to throw down with the Justice League. Jason wasn't telling the whole truth. It still . . . it left Jason stuck in the middle, totally dependent on his good will.

On the other hand, Phantom had just left the book there! Right out in the open! There weren't even any guards. The man was testing him. He had to be.

Well. Jason could test him right back, in that case.

Nodding to himself, he pulled the first book back over, and settled in to read properly.

"Oh, here's where you're hiding," said Phantom.

Jason jolted. He was used to his increasingly large number of increasingly crazy siblings attempting to sneak up on him - and Steph - but none of them could do it anymore. Not even B, not since he'd come back to Gotham.

"No, you're fine," said Phantom. "I just - are you actually reading that?"

Jason rolled over. "Uh, yeah?"

"Like, for real? Not just for - "

"Are you aware," asked Jason, genuinely curious, "that this requires a frankly egregious number of human bones?"

" . . . of course it does," said Phantom, faintly, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Uh," said Jason, doing his best to project 'clueless civilian.'

"This guy," said Phantom, gesturing, "always sends over incredibly detailed diagrams that perform exactly to spec on the very first try, and they always require disgusting quantities of horrible ingredients."

"So the twelve tons of human bones . . . " prompted Jason.

"Oh, I'll go get them from the Paris catacombs, no big," said Phantom. "Does this one also want a lake of mercury?"

"Not liquid," said Jason. "But it's specifying vermilion ink, and in classical Chinese, that's always cinnabar."

"Wonderful," said Phantom on a sigh. "I'll take your help if you're willing, but that's not actually why I was looking for you. I was gonna go on that grocery run. Did you want to write a list?"

"Yes," said Jason immediately. "Your pantry needs help. All of the help."

Phantom laughed. "If you want, I won't say no, but I warn you: I can burn water. You're automatically volunteering to do the cooking too."

"I assumed," said Jason. "I'll take care of the human food if you take care of the ghost food."

Phantom . . . frowned. "Are you hungry again?"

" - yeah," said Jason, who'd been successfully ignoring it for hours.

"Please have led with that," said Phantom. "Come on."

He went back to the kitchen, and Jason followed because what else was he going to do? He sat down while Phantom got a mug out and held out a hand in a fist and ectoplasm just started oozing off of it.

"What the fuck," commented Jason, watching in fascination. "Have I been drinking your - secretions?"

Phantom grimaced. "Please never say that again," he said, which wasn't actually a no. "I told you, it's more like a blood transfusion. I have - just, way, way more ectoplasm than is reasonable, and you're - " he tilted his head, looking at Jason in a way that probably had nothing to do with eyes, or at least the eyes in his head, " - actually finally starting to stabilize, thankfully. But you're not out of danger yet, so please just drink." He punctuated this by putting the mug down in front of Jason.

Jason managed a five count before he picked it up and carefully started to drink. He was hungry, in the ghost way, actually fully ravenous, so there was no way he wasn't drinking it even knowing what it was, but a man had to have some dignity. "It's not blood, though. And you don't put it in my veins."

"No, because ghosts don't have veins. You don't even have to drink it, technically, but it's the fastest shortcut to convincing your mind that it belongs to you and is safe to incorporate."

"What's the other option?" asked Jason. "To drinking, I mean?"

"Sharing experiences," said Phantom. "Or at least, the emotional reactions to those experiences. It is emotional energy, after all, and as long as it matches what you feel you can just absorb it. But you've still got that rage gunk clogging up your system. And more importantly, not everyone reacts the same way to things, so it's a bit . . . hit or miss. This way is just - faster. Which was a concern."

A pretty big one, given that Phantom had cheerfully hopped into bed mostly-naked with a total stranger on the chance it could help.

"I see," said Jason, and passed the empty mug back. "More?"

"Sure," said Phantom.

Jason drank half of it in almost total silence. Then, he said, projecting 'innocent civilian' as hard as he possibly could, "So, uh. Six of the cultists pled guilty."

Phantom said, "Oh, wow, really? Six?"

Jason nodded.

"She did a number on them then, nice."

"Who did what?" asked Jason.

Phantom looked at him, obviously considering something. "Gave them some really screamingly bad nightmares, probably. As to who . . . well, I told you about Neverborn ghosts, right?"

"No."

"Really? I thought I mentioned . . . "

"No." He took a sip. "I'm listening."

Phantom laughed. "Right. Neverborn are the ghosts of things that were never alive to begin with."

"What?"

"Ghosts are memory and emotion," said Phantom. "As long as people feel strongly enough about something, and remember it, a ghost can form. It's not the same kind of ghost as one that grows out of an ectoplasmic imprint, obviously, but . . . " He sighed, and ran his hands through his hair. "One of my - tutors, for lack of a better word - is the ghost of the concept of linear time, for example."

Jason stared. "Are you saying you have time travel powers?"

"No! He's just . . . very good at butterfly wings, let's say. Anyway, you're a Gotham Wayne."

"Adopted," said Jason, bristling.

Phantom shook his head. "That's not how it works, Jason. It's always memory and emotion. People remember a black-haired, blue-eyed, constantly-kidnapped Gotham Wayne."

Jason couldn't really dispute that. The cultists kidnapped him in broad daylight, from a library ribbon-cutting. Phantom said it made national news. He drained the cup in lieu of immediate answer, and had one by the time he set it back down. "So?"

"So, Gotham really loves her Waynes."

Jason stared at Phantom. "What."

"I didn't do anything to the cultists. One of my subjects submitted a petition for a little bit of extra oomph in dissuading some people from doing something that was - really, just, like, phenomenally stupid - but all that meant was I didn't have to go do it myself." He scrubbed his hand through his hair again. "I hate cultists."

"You and me both," said Jason, nudging the cup back over.

Phantom obligingly refilled it. "You're hungry today, huh?"

Jason snorted, because obviously. "Did you have paper and a pencil?"

Phantom picked up a backpack that was inexplicably sitting on the table and took out . . . a piece of paper and a pencil.

Jason took them and started writing out a list. He drank the ectoplasm. After a while he asked, "Is milk okay?"

"What?"

"You said that the eggs sometimes hatch, and meat is a no-go, but - one of my brothers is vegetarian, so I can cook around that. What about milk? Or dairy in general?"

"Oh. Milk's fine, hard cheese is fine as long it's not blue cheese, yogurt is fine as long as it's not live culture - "

"Really? What kind of ghost does a yogurt culture make?"

" . . . a stupid one," said Phantom. "A really, really stupid one. It's like being punched by the ghost of lactose intolerance."

"I will take your word for it," said Jason. "Although, you know, most laying chickens in America don't have access to a rooster. The eggs shouldn't be fertile."

"And yet," said Phantom, and left it at that.

"Fine. Dairy, no eggs, no meat." Jason continued to write down items. "I assume paneer is fine, no bacteria involved. What about bread? And alcohol?"

"No, yeast is - yeast doesn't make ghosts. Alcohol is irrelevant; I don't drink."

"Good to know, I suppose," said Jason. He slid both the list and the cup back across the table.

"Are you okay?" asked Phantom. "Because that's - a lot more ectoplasm than you've been taking, and - "

"This is for if I'm thirsty while you're out." Then how that would sound registered. "Uh, I mean - "

"No worries," said Phantom. "I mean, you're built, don't get me wrong, but the whole situation is entirely too fucked-up for flirting." Meaning he would be flirting if the situation weren't entirely fucked? "And on that note, I'm going to make that run." He grabbed the list and the backpack and headed towards the door - not the one that went to the ballroom, one of the other ones.

"No, wait," he said, and Phantom -

Phantom turned back.

Right. "Can you get hold of a laptop for me? I mean, I can write, but translating is hard enough without also having to copy the entire thing out by hand."

"Not in the next hour or so," said Phantom. "But in general, yes. You can read it, in the meantime." He ducked out.

Lacking anything better to do, Jason did. It wasn't particularly easy, because in addition to not being simplified Pinyin, it was actually written in the formal literary style. Still, it was a technical manual, with regular diagrams added to show how the thing was meant to be put together. It was, basically, a room made entirely of human bones, sealed on both sides with black lacquer, and then with the active containment runes - oracle bone script, he thought - written out on it in vermilion ink. The reason it had to be so big when the book was comparatively tiny was so all the runes would fit, and the runes couldn't be drawn any smaller, say by laser etching and electroplating, because if the runes weren't drawn by someone of the correct moral fiber they wouldn't function at all. It took Jason entirely too long to figure that out, because classical Chinese didn't have things like 'lasers', and instead of just using the modern Chinese, whoever had done this had invented a character Jason initially thought meant light-chisel.

Phantom clearly had some very clever people, was the point.

And Gotham. He had the ghost of Gotham, and - she, apparently - had petitioned to be allowed to fuck those cultists up. Phantom had maybe given her some ectoplasm to do it. Or maybe just permission, but either way, he hadn't hesitated even a tiny bit.

He was, Jason realized, completely fucked.

Chapter Text

Phantom was back not much more than an hour later.

Initially Jason thought it was an attack, because when a glowing green portal spun itself out of nothing about two feet from him, it was always an attack. Then Phantom walked through it, carrying a set of Hawaiian patterned grocery bags. He gave Jason and the butterfly knife Jason just pulled on him an extremely unimpressed look, dropped the groceries on the table, and went back through the portal. It took him another few trips to bring all of the bags. Jason stared as the portal shut behind him.

"You just," he said. "You make your own portals?" Ripping holes in the fabric of spacetime was inadvisable at best, and Phantom seemed to do so far too casually.

"One of my kingly duties is going around shutting down portals to the Realms," said Phantom. "Obviously I have to be able to close them, and opening them is just that in reverse."

"Right, okay, but - you could, I don't know, go rob anyone you wanted - "

"I do," said Phantom, faintly smiling. "Mostly haunted objects. People don't notice because I put the object back once I rescue the ghost."

" . . . I meant jewelry or things. You could have as much money as you want."

"I know," said Phantom. And then, teasing, "Rich boy."

Jason sighed. "Or you can go to my apartment and get my laptop."

Phantom looked at him. "Sure. I can do that. Where is your apartment?"

Jason gave him the Coventry address, the one that Jason Todd-Wayne theoretically lived in. It had security that was high-end for Gotham, but not, like, Bat-level. There was a WayneTech tablet in there that Jason never used because B put trackers in all the electronics he gave his brood. Hopefully, that would come in handy now. "Great! Then I guess I'll start cooking. It's about that time."

He could make something easy, like pasta, but . . . so he decided to make Indian, muttar paneer and rice and tomatoes instead.

Jason hadn't even finished emptying the grocery bags by the time Phantom was back, stepping out of the portal like he was just walking from another room, laptop in hand. And a wad of folded-up fabric. He put both down on an unused table. "Here. Do you need any help?"

"From someone who can burn water?" asked Jason, looking at the fabric. "No. Are those - "

"Your clothes, for when you go home," said Phantom. "Do you want me to stay here? Or get out of your hair?"

"Plenty of room," said Jason, gesturing at the tables. "And it is your kitchen."

Phantom snickered. "All right." He went over to his backpack and pulled out . . . a physics textbook. And a binder. And, while Jason was still just chopping onions, paper and pencil and calculator. He cracked open the book, took out a fresh sheet of paper, and started doing what was obviously homework.

Like. Why?

That might be a question Phantom would answer, even. He waited until Phantom finished his problem before he said, "So, uh. Modern physics?"

Phantom glanced up at him. "It is kicking my ass right now. Like, I can rearrange the equations and plug numbers in and get the right answer, but I don't get it, you know?"

" . . . yeah," said Jason, who intimately understood both the macro- and microeconomics that led to ghettos and the urban poor, but genuinely didn't know how zeta tubes worked. "But then why take it?"

"Well, just as a random example," said Phantom. "I used to have a top speed of something like a hundred and eighty miles an hour?" Which was fast, but not, like, Superman fast, much less speedster fast. "But since we did the unit on speed-of-light and time dilation, what I've got now is a top acceleration of eight and a half meters per second per second and I probably top out at the speed of light."

Jason blinked.

"I'm a lot more versatile. At least, when I actually understand it. So," he gestured, "classes."

"Ah," said Jason.

The thing was, modern was not a 101 level class. It was upper-division, which meant that Phantom was fully capable of passing as human, and has already been doing so for a minimum of two years. Possibly three. And there wasn't even so much as a blip that this guy even existed until he showed up to save Jason's - death.

Yeah. No way anyone in the League was going to be happy about it. Even if he was the kind of person whose reaction to needing human bones was to raid the catacombs of Paris.

Jason kept sneaking looks at him all the way through preparing dinner. It was genuinely a pain to do with an actual hearth, but at least it was big enough to have three different pots and he could move them as close to or far from the fire as he needed. The pots were quality cast-iron, too. Admittedly, having to use preground spices wasn't ideal, but he was not doing fresh without at least a spice grinder.

Phantom just kept plugging away at his homework the whole time, although he did switch from physics to astronomy. He caught Jason looking, once, but didn't remark on it.

Then the food was ready. Phantom took small portions of all of it, took his first bite, and then said, "Oh my god."

"Not bad for a rich boy, mm?" teased Jason.

"One, how dare you, don't rich people have, like, personal chefs? And, two, how did you do this? Like, what black magic?"

"It's called cooking," said Jason, who personally thought the peas were a bit dry.

"Oh my god," repeated Phantom. "You're going to spoil me. You're going to get me addicted to this and then you're going to go home and I'm not going to be able to eat, like, normal food anymore."

"Preprocessed garbage," said Jason. And, "You could visit, you know?"

Phantom frowned.

"I mean, you're doing all this for me, and you're a cool dude. I wouldn't mind."

"I'm not doing this to get anything out of you," said Phantom.

"That is incredibly clear," agreed Jason.

"And I'm pretty sure Batman hates metahumans."

"He hates the kind of collateral damage metahumans do," said Jason. "But he's not my dad. I'm an adult. I can invite whichever friends I want to my place." Admittedly, he'd always have to do it to his 'Jason Todd-Wayne' apartment, not one he actually lived in, but . . .

"Well he's gonna have to get used to it real fast, then," said Phantom. "Considering."

"Um," said Jason.

"Since you will be able to do ghost things," said Phantom, stabbing the fork in his direction.

"I'm going to have powers?" asked Jason, deliberately squeaking.

"You're going to be able to go invisible and intangible and probably fly. Most ghosts have other abilities, too, but those are the basics."

So nothing that wouldn't be extremely useful for his lifestyle. Deathstyle? Whatever. "What kind of other abilities?"

Phantom shrugged. "I can tell you about some?"

"Please."

That carried them all the way through dinner. Some of the abilities sounded more useful than others. The ability to grant wishes, but the compulsion to grant every wish, didn't seem nearly as good as just general ice powers. Phantom even demonstrated those for him.

After dinner, Phantom went right back to homework. Jason went back to reading the technical diagrams until his shitty phone buzzed to let him know it was finally done with the upload.

Jason rolled his eyes. They didn't really talk about the trackers so much as around them, but that wasn't even plausible-deniability levels of 'talking around.' It was just . . . He's the only one who buys Japanese hardware so it won't be either WayneTech or LexCorp. All the other Bats just wear them, and have since Jason died. The first time Jason died. If he'd been wearing one, he wouldn't have died this time.

Now was not the time to start reconsidering his stance on trackers.

Jason smiled.

"They all okay?" asked Phantom. "Your family?"

"Yeah. Bats sent a message."

"Oh?"

Jason rattled off the coordinates to the Kathmandu Lazarus Pit.

Phantom stared at him. "I'm going to need you to do that slower, so I can put those in my geohash," he said, pulling out his phone. It was a clunky monstrosity, obviously some kind of home build. Phantom tapped at it a few times and said, "Okay, go."

Jason said the coordinates again, slower, and Phantom typed them in. "Huh. Is there a reason Batman is sending me coordinates somewhere in Nepal?"

"It would be nice to live in a world where Bats tells people important things," said Jason. "But that's not the world we do live in. This is probably a test, though."

"Thanks," said Phantom, dryly. "I'm definitely not going tonight. I have a lab in the morning."

Jason eyed him. "Can't you open portals to wherever?"

"One, I've never been to Nepal, so it'll be much easier to just fly there than try to portal over. Two, Nepal is . . . I don't really directly handle any Hindu or Buddhist countries."

"So you can't go?"

"So I'm going to not be an asshole and send a message first," said Phantom, already tapping away at the brick.

Jason watched him. "Who does handle them? If not you."

Phantom didn't even look up. "The ten judges."

Jason said, "The ten - do you mean - the ten Yama kings?"

"Oh, a mythology buff," said Phantom approvingly. "They prefer to be called judges. Technically my subordinates, but, like, I am not stupid enough to try giving them any orders." He finished tapping and put the phone down on the table. "Any other bombshells to drop tonight? Because I've got a research paper due on Monday and I really do need to spend time looking up references."

"Not so much a bombshell as - my brother Dick - "

"Your brother goes by Dick?" Phantom interrupted. "Like, on purpose?"

"Richard Grayson," said Jason. "But Rich Grayson would be too on the nose, so . . . He wanted to know if you'd bring a care package."

"Mm. Sure. I have no idea when I'm supposed to find somewhere for the dropoff, but . . . " The phone buzzed. He picked up the phone and tapped out another text.

The phone buzzed again ten minutes later. Phantom picked it up and read the text. He tapped out his own answer, smiling fondly. He had a whole conversation over the course of the next half-hour, in between working on his laptop. And he was working; Jason offered to do the dishes because he didn't have anything better to do, and while hauling water to the copper he could see that Phantom was browsing several scientific paper databases. He was just also replying to whoever he was texting, like a perfectly normal person.

When the plates and cutlery were both clean and the pots that had lids were in the scullery, which was where Phantom had a block of ghost-ice that worked as an icebox, he sat back down.

"So?"

Phantom glanced up at him and said, "Do you need more ecto?"

He did, Jason realized. "Yeah."

"Then you should drink again," said Phantom, pulling the cup back across the table to refill it. "You don't have to stay and watch me do homework if you don't want to."

"Is there, maybe, some kind of - exercise room?" asked Jason

"There are barracks, and an indoor training area, but there's no, like, equipment."

"That's fine," said Jason. "I can do MMA drills. I'm just - restless."

"I bet," said Phantom, sympathetically. "Take as long as you need. I'll just come get you when it's time for sleep. It's through the scullery, door to the right, and upstairs from the storeroom. The staircase is on the left."

Jason followed these instructions. The room was long and low, lit in the same sort eerie green as the rest of the place, but the floor was even enough. He breathed out, took up a stance, and began.

Some later Jason became aware of being watched. Usually he had a better sense of time, but now . . . 'a while' was the best he could do. Phantom was sitting midair, not saying anything, not doing anything but following his motions with his Lazarus-green eyes. Jason finished the form, bowed politely, and then turned to greet him. "Is it that time already?"

"Pretty close to it, yeah," said Phantom, and, "What are you, a ninth-level blackbelt or something?"

"I do," said Jason, "tend to get kidnapped. Speaking as a Gotham Wayne." Phantom snickered. "We're all - trained."

"I can see that, yeah," said Phantom, very definitely eating the eye candy. "How did they ever get the drop on you?"

Jason met his eyes squarely. "There were people who aren't trained in the line of fire."

"Fair," said Phantom. "Do you need more ecto?"

"Yes," said Jason, without even bothering to check. Just - "It's really not too much? You're pretty much literally feeding me your - blood. That's not normal."

"I did tell you that I make, just, unreasonable amounts of ecto, right?" He turned to go. "Also, I died when I was fourteen, and nothing about my existence has been normal since. I see no reason to try and start now. Besides, it's nice to be able to do something good with it, for once."

Jason followed him, stunned. I died when I was fourteen, in such a light and casual tone. That - deserved a response. He swallowed. "I died the first time when I was fifteen," he tried.

"I know," said Phantom, opening the door to the scullery.

"You - know."

"It's not like I don't know how to Google things, my dude," said Phantom. "Although I'm pretty damn certain the obit was lies from start to finish, they really couldn't - you died at fifteen. I'm sorry."

" . . . it was the Joker," said Jason, in a rough whisper.

Phantom, two steps ahead of him, stopped. Jason didn't, and bumped into him. "The. Joker."

" - yeah," admitted Jason.

"Welp," said Phantom, "fuck."

"Pretty much, yeah," said Jason.

Phantom turned to get a cup and ooze ecto. A moment later, so low Jason almost didn't hear, he said, "I died by electricity."

"I know," it was Jason's turn to say. "You're a cuddly motherfucker when you're asleep, and you have scars."

"I - fair enough," said Phantom, and didn't say anything else until they were standing on opposite sides of his bed, and Phantom had . . . dismissed his clothes again, or whatever. Then Phantom said, more than a little awkward, "So, for bullshit psychosomatic reasons, the transfer actually does work better if you ditch the clothes, even though it's all ecto."

"What?" asked Jason, before he remembered the skin-to-skin contact thing. He's been wearing the same clothes for a day and a half now, so he really did need to change regardless. He reached down to pull the shirt over his head, and then looked around, uncertain where to put it.

"Just drop it," said Phantom, dismissively. "It's your ecto, and you don't really know how to detach things yet, so it'll just evaporate when you stop paying attention to it."

Jason thought about that, as he unbuckled his belt and took off his pants - leaving briefs, not boxers - and said, "Have I been naked this whole time?"

Phantom held a hand out it front of him and wavered it from side to side. "Ish? If you're not the kind of person who thinks of himself as naked, and you're not, then you'll have clothes. But there's really no difference between the ecto that is your clothes and the ecto that is your you. That's why I brought you clothes: objects made of ecto evaporate outside of the Infinite Realms."

Jason stared. "And the ecto transfer works better skin-to-skin because . . . ?"

"Skinship is more intimate," said Phantom, simply. "That mental shortcut doesn't actually work for Neverborn, but for most ghosts that can remember having a human body, it does."

"Makes sense," said Jason. "I promise not to be weird about it if you aren't."

"Deal," said Phantom immediately.

In bed, they pressed close, Phantom bowing to necessity and allowing himself to be the little spoon. Jason had no complaints about that at least; Phantom was still cool, in a very comfortable way. Phantom didn't seem to find the flickering fire of his crown distracting. Well, he wouldn't, he was used to it. He proved it by falling asleep after only a few moments. Jason watched him, in the unsteady light. Asleep, he looked like . . . just a guy.

Asleep, the shadows in the room were full of green eyes, and whispers, and the slow, steady breathing of an immense predator. But that didn't mean Jason was in danger. It meant that someone else was on watch; that Jason didn't have to be. He closed his eyes and, slowly, relaxed into his own sleep as well.

Chapter Text

An alarm went off. Phantom jackknifed, flailed, hit Jason in the face, and then finally hit the button on the phone to make it shut up. "Sorry!" yelped Phantom. "Sorry, sorry, you can go back to sleep."

"I am not going back to sleep," said Jason, who, again, had just been smacked in the face.

"Well, uh - "

"I'll make you breakfast," decided Jason, sliding out of bed. "Uh. How do I - "

"Just think clothes thoughts," said Phantom. "Remember what you want to be wearing."

"Remember . . . ?"

"How it feels to wear your clothes. How it makes you feel to wear them. Come on, you were doing this in your sleep, it's not going to be hard to do it awake."

Oh. Memory and emotion, of course. Jason considered. He didn't want anything related to Red Hood, obviously, but he also didn't want any of the stuffed monkey-suits that Brucie and Timmy loved so much. He wanted to be dressed for a casual day in: a t-shirt worn-in to threadbare softness, and yoga pants tight around his hips and thighs. Those were comfortable, but they also made him feel powerful. Settled in his own skin.

"Gnrk," said Phantom, as they appeared on him.

"Something wrong?" he asked, tilting his head.

"No, no, nothing," said Phantom, but his cheeks had the greenish cast that meant he was blushing.

So flirting would absolutely be happening if Phantom were a little less scrupulous. Good to know.

"You don't have to make me breakfast," Phantom added.

"I don't," agreed Jason, and went over to the door.

The kitchen, however, had a surprise for him that morning: a woman sitting at one of the tables, eating cereal and idly tapping on a phone. She looked up when he entered, blinked, then smirked. "Well hello."

"Phantom," said Jason very, very evenly.

Phantom followed him into the kitchen, and also did a double-take. Unlike Jason, though, he apparently recognized this person. "I thought you were going to Nepal."

"I did go to Nepal," said the stranger. "Aren't you going to introduce me?"

Phantom sighed. "Sure. Jason, this is my younger sister, Nightingale. Nightingale, this is Jason Todd-Wayne."

Jason looked her up and down. She did have the same coloration as Phantom, and the same facial structure. And the same body structure, long runner's legs and trim waist. In fact, she was more-or-less what he'd expect Phantom to look like, as a woman. "Fraternal twin?"

"Clone, actually," said Nightingale.

What.

"Nightingale!"

"Anyway. Situation in Nepal is completely fucked. Like, full-court, formal council meeting levels of complete fuckery."

Phantom ran a hand through his hair. "All right, fine. I guess I'm not passing quant lab, but sure, I can call a full formal council - "

"It's not urgent," interrupted Nightingale. "Like, it's FUBAR, but it's been FUBAR for a minimum of eight hundred years. It won't get worse if you wait for summer break."

Phantom took a deep breath, which was obviously to steady himself since he didn't need to breathe. " . . . please have led with that," he said, in faintly strangled tones.

Nightingale laughed. "Love you too." So much, much more siblings than clones. That was always a worry, since clones seemed to really only come in 'superhero' and 'supervillain.' "I moved it, at least, so it should actually drain. Apparently the water table moved."

Right, thought Jason. The Lazarus Pit was supposed to drain into the water table. That was an actually horrifying thought. Jason shouldn't know anything about it, though, so instead he asked, "Are you staying for breakfast?"

"Depends on what breakfast is," said Nightingale.

"Banana-nut pancakes," said Jason.

"Yes, please," said Nightingale promptly. Phantom ran a hand through his hair again.

"So, Nightingale," Jason began, as he got ingredients out.

"Yeah?"

"You got from here to Nepal and back overnight?"

Nightingale looked to him. Then she looked at Phantom. "I thought you said you told him about ghosts?"

"I did," said Phantom. "But not everyone is crazy enough to immediately go from 'intangibility is an option' to 'I'm going to fly through the planet.'"

"What?" asked Jason, as he peeled a banana.

Nightingale looked at him. "Do you know what a gravity train is?"

The Red Hood did, because the Red Hood was a Bat. Jason Todd-Wayne, however, was not. "Nnno," he said, and for his troubles got to listen to Nightingale's explanation of a gravity train while he finished the batter and made pancakes and Phantom got out a fucking lemonade cooler and filled it with ecto. Assuming it was possible to drill an airless hole through the planet, Nightingale explained, such a train would accelerate under gravity to the midpoint, and then decelerate again on the second half, slowing to a stop right at the other end. From anywhere on the planet to anywhere else it would take a grand total of forty-three minutes; thirty-eight if the path passed through the planet's core. Honestly, her explanation was pretty good.

"But," said Nightingale, "we don't just fall under gravity. I mean, it's smart to do it that way the first twenty times, until you get a feel for where gravity is pointing. Otherwise you'll end up missing the ground and getting shot way out into space."

"Ask her how she knows," said Phantom fondly.

Nightingale stuck her tongue out at him. "I'm not quite as fast as - Phantom - but I still get where I need to go."

"Which in this case was Nepal."

Nightingale shrugged. "I wanted to be there for daytime local. The ten judges don't really ever stop, but they're less busy during the day."

"I see," said Jason, who didn't. "I think it's just you." He slid a plate of pancakes over to her, and one to Phantom. "Who jumps from 'intangibility' to 'fly through the planet.' Where do you spend the rest of your time?"

She shrugged. "Wherever our king needs me. I do troubleshooting."

"You don't, uh, have a normal identity? I know Phantom goes to college - "

"Oh my god, these are amazing!" interrupted Nightingale.

"Thank you," said Jason.

"Like, seriously. Restaurant-quality. Better. IHOP wishes their pancakes were this good. Belgium wishes their pancakes were this good!"

Jason smiled smugly, because he wasn't afraid of facts.

Nightingale said, "But no. I was never a baseline human, and it's a little dumb to pretend. Besides, I enjoy my work. I get to go all over the world. This past week it was Kyoto, London, Cairo, and now Nepal."

"I did not send you to Kyoto," said Phantom, eating his own stack of pancakes. He wasn't offering effusive praise, but he seemed to like them at least.

"I sent myself," said Nightingale. "For the cherry blossoms."

"Oh," said Jason. "I suppose they are in bloom right now. Was it nice?"

"Mm. Pretty, but all the food is overpriced."

"And London?"

Nightingale made a face. "It rained. At least Cairo was sunny."

"Fair," said Jason, who'd been to Cairo. "Can you tell me what you were doing there, or is that, like, Infinite Realms secrets?"

"Oh, it's fine," said Nightingale, flapping a dismissive hand. "Same thing on both ends, regardless. We finally got a semi-functional court system going, and then every other case was some Egyptian ghost angry at some British ghost for robbing their grave and unwrapping their mummy and burning their body a hundred and fifty years ago."

Phantom said, "I made a blanket judgement that in every case like this, the tomb-robber was wrong and, if they're a ghost, then they owe reparations."

Jason nodded, because that seemed fair.

"The British," said Nightingale, "are known for being entitled pricks for a reason. Especially British from that period of history, and especially the kind of person who would both be an Egyptologist and then form a ghost. They always get all whiny about it, since they, quote, 'didn't know they were going to be sued.' Like bitch, please, you did read the," she did little finger-quotes in the air, "'curse' on the wall? The one that explicitly said they'd sue your ass in the afterlife? So I spend a lot of time in Cairo and London, tracking down and beating up entitled British assholes as their parole officer."

" . . . This has no impact on the living world at all, does it?" asked Jason. He'd only ever heard of Selina repatriating a few Bast statuettes, and nothing that might be ghost activity.

"None whatsoever," said Phantom. "At this point it's really just whack-a-mole. Good for practice, I suppose, but I have classes."

"I don't," said Nightingale with relish.

"Speaking of, I have to get going if I'm going to make my eight AM," said Phantom. "Nightingale, you're with me. Jason - please don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"No promises," said Jason, fighting a smile.

"And I'll do the dishes when I get back," said Phantom. "I'd be a really shitty roommate, otherwise."

"Oh, they were roommates," said Nightingale like a voiceover, and Jason laughed. Yeah, he liked her.

He barely waited until the portal closed behind them before he had his phone out.

Chapter Text

It was a long and boring day.

Like, Phantom had classes, he got that, and he'd left five gallons of ecto, and he didn't care about Jason wandering around his haunted castle, which after the first hour Jason got antsy enough to do.

He didn't go places he'd gone before. He went back to that locked door in the basement. Jason considered himself the kind of person who had lockpicks, so he wasn't surprised that they were inside his jacket cuff, exactly where they should be, when he manifested his work clothes on. It took him and his lockpicks a grand total of three minutes to open the door, only to find a mausoleum. A mausoleum in the Infinite Realms, complete with a massive mummiform stone sarcophagus engraved with interlocking ∞ and a spell in half a dozen languages, repeated over and over. Jason knew just enough to recognize the Latin sopor and the Chinese 睡 and the Hindi नींद and decide that whatever was in that sarcophagus, he wasn't stupid enough to wake it up. He backed out of the darkened room, and locked the door very firmly behind him.

Jason did drills for a while. Then he went to go read. He meant to alternate between the evil-book-destruction manuals and real literature, but couldn't find the copy of Pride and Prejudice. He looked. He looked a lot, until after an hour of panic at losing a literally priceless treasure, he went back up to the library.

The second book he found was a copy of Pride and Prejudice. Right next to a copy of The Tempest. Neither were first edition.

. . . right.

"I'm sorry," said Jason, feeling like an absolute idiot about apologizing out loud to a library. "I didn't - " No, that wasn't right. Memory and emotion. "I did mean to take it. This book got me through . . . a lot of rough times. And it was a first edition! But. It's not mine, so. I apologize."

Nothing happened, of course. Jason hadn't really been expecting it. He just took the Austen, and the Shakespeare, and went back to the bedroom to read them as he slowly worked his way through the dense Chinese.

At around eleven in the morning, he got back on so Signal could try and track his signal. It worked up until the specific cell tower in Crime Alley, and then . . .

Jason made a huge salad for lunch, although he ate only half of it, and washed it down with probably a gallon of ecto. He planned to feed Phantom the remaining greens for dinner. But then he thought, well, with what protein, and decided to make fried tofu to go with it. By that time, he was feeling sleepy, so Jason went to take a nap while whatever he was doing with the ecto knocked him on his ass again.

He woke to find it already past dinner time, so Jason ate the salad and some fried tofu and drank more ecto. He finished cleaning up before flipping open his phone.

Although Phantom had a Midwestern accent, so that wasn't totally weird, either.

He definitely wasn't going to tell them about the ghost powers until he had good enough control of them to be useful, but they were all going to be useful. He'd be able to get anywhere in the world in forty-five minutes or less. He'd be able to go invisible and intangible. He'd possibly even be capable of restraining Superman in case of evil magical mind control, which - was sure as hell a thing. Even the clothes-changing would be useful for disguises.

Chapter Text

Jason briefly woke up when Phantom climbed into bed.

"Go back to sleep," said Phantom, cuddling in, and the corners were full of glowing green eyes, so Jason did.

"Where were you last night?" asked Jason, after the alarm went off.

"Astronomy lab," said Phantom.

"You have quant lab at eight AM and astronomy lab in the evening on the same day?" Jason got out of bed.

"Quantitative analysis and astronomy, yes. I usually have a nine-hour block in the middle to come home and take a nap."

"Usually?"

"I went to Nepal."

"Oh."

Phantom ran a hand through his hair.

"Jason," he said, eyes green and luminous and so, so sincere, "you don't have to answer if you don't want to, but . . . did someone put you in - the rage ecto? To resurrect you?"

" . . . they're called Lazarus Pits," said Jason, as good as an admission.

"Okay," said Phantom. "Okay, thank you."

"I - "

"I can rid you of it. Or, well, I will be able to, once you're - but it's pretty deep stuff." He got out of bed and clothed himself in a blink of ecto. "Like, the ghost equivalent of open-heart surgery. So it's okay if you don't trust me that much."

Jason stared. "Correct me if I'm wrong," he said, "but you already did ghost open-heart when you turned me into - your kind of ghost."

"Well," said Phantom. "Yeah. That's true."

"And so far you haven't asked a single thing from me that I wasn't willing to give."

"I just - I - I don't want to be anything like the last guy. There isn't a single ghost, even his own personal knight, who will call him anything other than the Pariah. That's not the kind of king I want to be."

Sympathy warred with Bat training. Bat training won. "Oh? What happened to him?"

"His own privy council created the Sarcophagus of Eternal Slumber, shoved him inside, locked it, and threw away the key. And then spent the next thousand years trying to make a ghost strong enough to beat him."

Well. That explained the sarcophagus in the basement. It didn't explain why Phantom was keeping it in his basement, except for all the ways it did.

Jason tilted his head. "Until they eventually got you?"

"Are you kidding?" asked Phantom. "When I fought him, with every trick and tool and ally I could scrounge up, I barely managed to get the crown off his head."

"That was when you became the king?"

"As if. That was just when he stopped being the king - 'will of the Infinite Realms,' and all that." To Jason's expression, he added, as though he were reciting, "If the king is hated enough for someone to take the crown off, then they're no longer worthy of it. Losing it weakened him enough that I could trip him back into the Sarcophagus, was all."

"You're worthy," said Jason.

"Am I?"

"You're wearing the crown, and he isn't," Jason pointed out. "A majority of ghosts think you are, and from what I can see, it's because you're a just king who cares about their well-being and works hard to ensure it." Phantom did not look convinced. "You even offered to wash the damn dishes."

"That was - it's not fair to make you do all the chores!"

Jason just looked at him. "Exactly. So I'll make you breakfast." He clothed himself too.

Breakfast, since it couldn't have any eggs, was cheesy toast points. Phantom ate his almost silently until Jason poked him in the forehead. "Earth to ghost king," he said. "Come in ghost king."

"Huh? Oh, sorry."

"Penny for your thoughts?"

"It's nothing. I mean. If your brother still wants to send it, I found a good place for a dead-drop."

"You did?"

"Yeah," said Phantom, "at noon," and gave him an address that wasn't quite in Crime Alley but was close enough that Jason knew it. It was a blind alley, in the sense that most of it was not covered by CCTV and therefore Oracle's eyes, but also in the sense that it was a dead-end. There were a lot of loading docks that broke up sightlines, but Jason knew immediately that the Bats were going to stake it out anyway - Duke, probably. He also knew that it wasn't going to make a goddamned difference.

It was going to be fucking hilarious, though.

Jason grinned and said, "All right. I'll pass it along."

" - oh," said Phantom.

"What?"

"You, uh. You have a nice smile," said Phantom, and - yeah, he was definitely blushing. Had Jason really never smiled at him before?

. . . Well, he didn't smile a lot in general. "Thanks, man. You're pretty cute yourself, you know?"

" . . . Jason. I'm green." He blushed fabulously about it, in fact.

"Yeah, and I won't pretend like that shade of green brings back good memories, but - maybe you can help me make better ones."

He saw the words hit Phantom, saw him open his mouth to reply in kind, and then saw him override his initial response. "I - I should get to class," he stammered out. He narrowed his eyes. "And you really don't have to clean the dishes."

"Whatever you say, ghost king," said Jason, waving him off jauntily. Phantom rolled his eyes, but did open a portal.

Jason did the dishes before opening his phone.

So Jason gave both time and place.

It was later than usual. The alarm hadn't gone off until eight thirty, looked like, and it was almost nine. 

Webcams were, after all, a thing.

So Jason told them about the ancient Egyptian ghosts suing the British archaeologists. He also told them about Phantom's class-action judgement, and how Nightingale spent a lot of time chasing down said assholes breaking parole. The Bats generally agreed they deserved it.

Then he closed the phone and went back upstairs, first to the bedroom and then the library. He returned the books from yesterday, and then instead of looking for a new one went to go read the Chinese manuals again, idly checking the chat every so often.

Signal went to pick up said care package and drop it off, on the basis that he might be able to see something even if Phantom decided to show up invisibly. Which, yeah, was a possibility.

At eleven thirty, Jason went to go make a lunch of pasta and pesto.

Signal dropped off the package on time - in civvies, obviously - and put up some cheap cams. He couldn't stay to loiter in the alley for the obvious reason that Phantom wouldn't show up if he was there. Instead he had to loiter outside, although he did look up, too, making sure he could see anyone enter.

At 12:04, Oracle lost the feeds from the cameras. By the time Signal got back into the alley, the package was gone, all without him having seen a thing. They reported this at 12:07. Jason chuckled at their antics.

Phantom called out, "Lucy, I'm ho-ome," an obvious joke considering Jason was sitting right there. "What's for - ooh, pesto pasta. Is any for me?"

"Yeah," said Jason. "I made a whole pot."

Phantom put the cardboard box down with a muffled thump. "Thanks. This is for you. Although seriously, what do Waynes put in their care packages, rocks?"

"Probably a few weights, for training," said Jason. "And a lot of food. Like, none of them can cook worth a damn, but god forbid they don't feed you."

Phantom paused in the middle of getting himself a bowl of pasta. "They do know you cook . . . ?"

Jason snorted, even as he pulled his knife to open the packing tape. "Like that matters - " he began and then stopped. There was a neat brown paper bag of what could only be Alfred's cookies, and there probably were weights somewhere down there, but what the box was mostly full of was books. Specifically, his books, a copy of every single one from the shelf in his room (mausoleum) back at the Manor. "Oh."

Phantom looked at him, not comprehending in the least.

Not anything other than his tone, anyway. "Good?"

"Yeah," said Jason. "Yeah, they - " But how was he supposed to condense his years in the League, his years as Red Hood, and the fact that they even still wanted to talk to him into something Phantom would get? Phantom still thought he was a civilian. "It's good."

"Then I'm glad." He sat down, took a bite, and moaned theatrically. "Seriously, though. Stop treating me like this, I don't have the budget for a personal chef."

"There aren't any gourmand ghosts who'd be willing to work in this kitchen?" asked Jason, gesturing. It was big and with the right lighting could be bright and airy.

Phantom said, "Well, maybe. But where would I put them? Like - there are not enough rooms in this place for all of them, and I seriously believe it's because they didn't get rest days. Or even time to sleep. Like, who even does that?"

"A terrible king," Jason stated the obvious. "They could commute?"

" . . . there's an idea," said Phantom. He ate more. "Huh. Okay. I'll think about it." And, indeed, he was quiet all the rest of the time he was shoveling food into his mouth. Though this time turned out to be at least partially because he had a one o'clock class that he had to run for.

Jason waited until the portal closed before he went digging for the laptop. It was, of course, a tiny WayneTech beast and it had all of the hidden Bat-extras. He booted it up and it connected without trouble to an Oracle-node as a WiFi hub, and he logged on to the Bat systems.

There were immediately sixteen things flagged for his attention, because Timmy was already building out the ghost database and of course he wanted their in-house ghost's opinion. Most of it was accurate, or at least accurate as far as any of them knew. Jason modified the abilities fields to list out some more of what Phantom told him, making sure to note that he didn't think any one ghost had all of the abilities. So far, Phantom had really only demonstrated the basics and ice, and Frieze did ice so they knew how to deal with it. He wrote up more on the crown, and how it wasn't so much an election as the residents of the Infinite Realms collectively deciding on who they thought was the king. And, of course, he wrote what had happened to the last king, that Phantom had the crown now.

He was young, as ghosts went. He'd died at fourteen, and he was comfortable with Googling things, and -

Jason started a new entry, and began working on translating the Chinese manual right there in the database. Within five minutes Tim was working on it too. He was better at reading the characters, but terrible with Chinese grammar. Tim was great at turning the disjointed collections of words into plain language. Between them they could translate each new page in less than the time it took Jason to photograph and upload it. They worked like that for an hour or so before Tim had to go off and do CEO things, but that was twenty pages, almost half of the first book.

Then Jason went to drink his ecto and sleep it off, except . . . except he only drank half a liter before feeling full, and he only slept ninety minutes. Phantom was back when he woke up, so Jason got up to go see what the older ghost was doing. It was homework, again, all spread out across the kitchen table, and then -

Jason knew he didn't make a noise. There should be no way for Phantom to know he was there, but almost as soon as he paused in the doorway, Phantom looked up and broke into the biggest grin Jason had ever seen him wear. "Oh thank god."

"You don't believe in gods," said Jason, mouth running on autopilot because - because -

Phantom was Lazarus green, the normal human-looking person in front of him and all the ever-watchful eyes in the corners, because ecto in general was Lazarus green. The only thing his mind would give him, however, was peppermint, cool and refreshing with just a hint of bite -

"W̸̡̢̧̡͍̰̳͎̠̟͑́͑̊̓̒͜h̵̳̜̱̪̯̗͙̰̘̝̊̒͊̚ą̵̢̢̬͇̪͔̯̮̮̗̗̟̞̪̬̹͚̠̾̐́̆̒̃͐̀̈́̄̈́̍̔͐͜͜͜͠ţ̴̯͙͈̽̒̆̉͌͘What?" demanded Jason, and while he was boggling about his normal-feeling throat producing that not-a-noise, Phantom bounced up and just full-on hugged him. "What?!"

Phantom pulled back. "Oh, sorry," he said, but he was still smiling. "You finished, is all. Congratulations, Jason: you're a real ghost now."

"Was I . . . not a real ghost before?" asked Jason, blankly.

"Well," said Phantom. "Yes? But also no. You were - ghosts are memories and emotion, right? So if you don't feel things, you can’t absorb enough emotional energy, condense enough ectoplasm, to maintain your own – memories. Sense of self. It's not really dying, ghosts can't die by accident, but coming back from fading is really hard. I only know of two people who've done it without my help, ever."

"And with your help?"

"You're the third," said Phantom, meeting his eyes squarely.

"And you didn't tell me this before why?"

"Do you think doctors treating a very sick patient about to have open-heart surgery tell them that they're more likely than not to die?" replied  Phantom promptly. "You already had to put up with the rage. I didn't see where telling you how much danger you were in could improve things."

Jason had to admit he had a point about the situation being completely fucked from the get-go. Still, there were limits. "I'm not in danger anymore?"

Phantom shrugged. “You have until your body dies to learn how to condense ecto. I’m not worried."

He pointed at a chair. "Then explain. Everything."

Phantom looked uncertain, although he did take his seat. "I'll do my best, based on what I've figured out," he said. He ran a hand through his hair. "You remember when I said Gotham is - weird?"

"Yeah," said Jason, because one, he did, and two, it was.

"You died under circumstances that I'm still not going to ask about, but which definitely created an ectoplasmic imprint. The imprint caught your soul. So far, so normal. The imprint formed in the living world instead of the Infinite Realms, which would usually just mean a few weeks until the imprint faded and your soul went to wherever it is souls go. Except. Gotham loves her Waynes. She didn't have enough ecto to kick you over into being a ghost, at least not all at once, but she had more than enough to keep you from fading indefinitely."

Jason blinked. "I'm . . . not sure how I feel about that, actually."

Phantom shrugged. "Cities don't have the same kind of morality as former humans. Or the same kind of thoughts, honestly. She was very definite that she hadn't fed you enough to become a ghost before - something - fixed your body enough to hold you again."

Jason took a deep breath. "Okay," he said, carefully. "Was I going to become a ghost otherwise?"

"Oh, yes. It wouldn't have been fast - decades at least, maybe as much as a century - but . . . yes. Eventually."

"Okay," said Jason again. "Go on."

"The whole reason imprints exist is to catch souls. At least, that's what my - friend - thinks." Jason wondered what word was originally going to go there. "If there's, like, a car crash or something, it keeps the soul from going anywhere while the body is in a coma, and then the soul goes back as the imprint fades. Usually, it takes a couple of weeks at the most. But most people's imprints haven't been nurtured by a city spirit, so when you woke up, it was kind of . . . you weren't entirely inside your body, maybe? Because the imprint had so much more ecto than a single person's death, however awful, can produce."

"I remember that," said Jason. Remembered staggering around the worst slums, looking at the back of his head and trying not to hear the twittering of birds in the shadows.

Phantom nodded, just once. "And then - someone, Gotham wasn't really clear on who, just they'd stolen you - took you away and, I guess, dumped you in a Lazarus Pit."

"Yeah," said Jason.

"For a normal person who is either dying or just dead, that forces an ectoplasmic imprint to form, and also does a whole lot of other things that they aren't supposed to do but do anyway because someone was wildly irresponsible and left the spell running without, you know, bothering to check up on it, much less maintain it - "

Jason interrupted what was clearly a building rant aimed, probably, at the ten judges by saying, "But I already had an imprint. A strong one. So it was enough ecto all at once to . . . turn me into a ghost."

Phantom nodded his agreement. "It turned you into a ghost, and the rage ecto became a pretty integral part of your ecto, and also you were an imprint stuck to a living body so the rage ecto just sort of added that in, too."

Jason's fingers tapped on the table. "Mm. Then. When did I . . . fade, you called it?”

"I don't know. I have to assume you were - suppressing your own rage, because rage isn't usually a useful emotion. But, again, was a core component of you, so . . . Also," he gestured at Jason, "living body, so you didn't lose your memories when you faded the way a normal ghost would. And you came back to Gotham. She tried to help."

"'Tried to'?"

"My man. Your entire postmortem is a shitshow from beginning to end," said Phantom. "I have no idea whether her interference helped or not, until the very end. Once you'd lost enough blood, Gotham came down on the side of summoning me. Like, wow did she do that. And I owed her a favor anyway, so . . . "

Jason thought about this. Gotham did help, he thought, even before he needed more help than she could give and decided to call in her king. He knew with absolute certainty, though, "You'd have done the same thing regardless of who it was in that circle."

"I'd have tried to, yeah," agreed Phantom. "I don't know that I could've done anything with anyone who wasn't already . . . Then again, the summoning wouldn't have worked using anyone who didn't at least have a ghost." He ran a hand through his hair. "It was messy and it is messy and it's not going to get less messy. You're still you. That's the best we can get, I think."

Jason thought about this, too. "I haven't been. I mean. You said the rage is a pretty integral part of me, and I - it's been affecting me from day one. Is it safe to get rid of it?"

"I think so? Since I only ever gave you clean ecto, I don't think you're built around rage anymore. And Lazarus Pit rage isn't natural anyway, it's a spell. I can - aim - the spell that's doing it at a different target." He tilted his head. "If you want."

Jason very much did want, but . . . "So some other poor schmuck has to have the rage instead?"

"Yeah," said Phantom. "I was thinking of maybe aiming it at the Joker. Since he's insane anyway, and I can't think of anyone who deserves it more."

Jason blinked in shock. And then, slowly, he started to grin.

Chapter Text

It wasn't even hard.

Jason expected that it would take a lot of preparation, like the array to destroy the evil magic book. Instead, Phantom had him stand in the great hall while he walked around, squinting and muttering. Jason eventually got fed up and said, "Just use your real eyes."

"My - what?"

"The thing in the corners, with all the eyes. That's you, right?"

There was a heavy pause. "Well, you're not wrong."

"But?"

"But they're all real. They just see different things."

Jason rolled his eyes. "So use the ones that see - whatever it is you're trying to see right now - to see it."

"Mm. I guess technically seeing it won't be able to hurt you, but you're still - pretty small . . . would you be willing to wear a blindfold? Just to be safe."

Jason sighed, but manifested a sleep mask. He didn't sleep with one as the pressure on his eyes always made him feel claustrophobic, but it was the kind of blindfold that Jason Todd-Wayne might have. Phantom didn't make any comment about it, at least.

Whatever he was using those eyes to see didn't take very long, because only a moment later he said, "All right. It's safe to take off the blindfold now."

Then they went back to the kitchen, where Phantom explained. "You have enough ecto that you can afford to give me a little bit. I'll use that to make the path I want the spell to use for targeting. We'll have to do it in-person, though. Are you going to be okay? Visiting the Joker?"

"I'll be fine," said Jason, dismissing this concern with a wave of his hand. "What do I need to do?"

It took ninety minutes of coaching for him to manage to get any ecto at all, and a further half-hour to get the one-eighth teaspoon that Phantom needed. Jason wasn't sweating at the end only because it wasn't exactly physical exertion; he hadn't fallen over because he was sitting to start with; and wasn't nauseous because he recognized the signs early and drank water. He watched dully while Phantom went and got a syringe and filled it with Jason's ectoplasm. All the while, Jason kept thinking about the five-gallon cooler Phantom filled with ecto yesterday.

Phantom was ready to go after that, but Jason pointed at the table he usually used for homework and said, "Sit. Study. I'm going to make dinner first."

"We should go while it's still light out," said Phantom. "And we're going to have to fly a fair ways."

"We are?" asked Jason. "Can't you make a portal?"

Phantom tilted his head, considering, before he shrugged and said, "There's a Hellmouth under Arkham. It's closed now - "

"There's a what under Arkham?" demanded Jason.

"A portal to Hell." To whatever horrified expression Jason was making, Phantom said, "Yeah. It's closed - stapled shut - but it's probably why Arkham is like that. Dropping a portal anywhere near it might rip out those staples. That's not a risk I'm willing to take, so. We fly."

"Okay," said Jason. "After dinner." And, because he couldn't keep it in and Jason Todd-Wayne wouldn't, "A portal to Hell. What the fuck. Whose idea was that?"

"You ever find out," said Phantom sympathetically, "tell me. If that person is a ghost, I can do something."

Phantom could do invisible and intangible as a matter of course. So could Jason, apparently, although it was going to take some time for him to get decent control. Phantom had no such problem, and could enforce it on Jason without difficulty simply by holding his hand. It felt . . . cool, a little, and there was a prickling awareness thrumming along whatever he had that passed for nerves, but Jason was familiar enough with the butterflies-in-stomach feeling to know that it had nothing to do with Phantom's powers.

Phantom wasn't inherently magical, so he didn't trip the anti-magic alarms. None of which extended down under sea level anyway, because Arkham didn't generally have to contend with anybody who didn't have to at least surface for people to get out on the island. He flew them both in as planned, first through the water and then through the bedrock, before bringing them up. They emerged past all of the alarms, and stayed like that, invisible and sometimes intangible as they ignored all security on the way up to the solitary confinement block. It wasn't hard to find the Joker's cell. It wasn't hard to get inside it. The man himself was swaddled in a straightjacket, lying on his cot and staring at the ceiling.

He jerked when he was stabbed with the needle, though, half a mil of Jason's painstakingly-collected ecto delivered subcutaneously. Phantom commanded, his voice like a star mid-nova, "Ű̴̧̔n̸̟̲̾͗n̸̥̈͝a̵̪͗t̸̬͒u̶̗͎͊́r̶̺͘a̵̭͓̕͘l̴̪͎̃ ̵͚̻̈́r̴͓͂͘a̶̲͋g̴̝̽̊e̷͎̟̒ ̴̳͗͌ŏ̶̙̀f̶̢̠͘ ̸̙̤͊t̵̙̏h̴̹͗̒ị̴̭̊̈́s̶̬͑̈́ ̶̎̍͜g̶̱̼̀h̵̹̽ó̴̳̰͑s̴͓̗͊͊t̶͚̐͝ ̸͔̫̾̍t̷̯͑̂ͅǫ̷̫̚ ̷̥͔̀ỹ̷̧o̶̖̤̿̓u̴̩̐͛.̵̳͎̑͒ A̴͎͈̩̬̩̽̾̓̌̏̅ͅñ̷̛͎͖̹̦̮̳̟͐̾ͅd̵̖̥̙̠̞͉̤͛̈́̚ ̴͙̿̑̌a̶̧͔̬͈̬̩͚̣͊͝l̵̨͙̠̹̟̹̾͝ḷ̸̋͒́͑̑̋̊̕ ̵̢͊̄͝ý̴̯͎̖͕̻̬̲̓̔̑̕o̴̪̼̻̎̾̋̌̌̒̾͝ͅú̶̧̜̣̗̑͗̕r̸̞̩̅̀ ̷̟̙͔͌͂͆̋͝o̷̖͌̆̃̍̒̈͗͝ẅ̵̢͇͇̹̩̘̬͙́͂̃̍ṋ̷̂̚ ̵̪̈́̐̈́̕ş̵̨̖̝͊̀͒̀̚͜ï̴̛͕̞̟̮̲̏̔́̿n̴͔̪̜̬̙̺͓̿̇͜s̶̰̃̿͊͑̕͝,̶̻̝̈́͛͆͂̅͘ ̴̗͍̋ţ̵̛͕̩͖̝̙̞̳̃̂̃͂̃͑ȏ̷̢̼̥͊͝o̵̙͆̈͐͂Unnatural rage of this ghost to you. And all your own sins, too."

Alarms started blaring at that point, far, far too late.

"You'd better hope you live a long, peaceful life," said Phantom, in a more normal voice. "And die a natural, boring, forgettable death. Because if you don't, Joker? If you form a ghost? You will spend the rest of eternity paying the restitution you o̵̞̤͘w̴̬̻͋̍͝é̴̡̤̿owe to all the ghosts of people you've killed. I will see to it personally."

"Stop!" called a new voice, a guard. Good to see that the two-minute response training was working. "Hands up!"

Phantom did not put his hands up. Instead, he made them intangible in addition to invisible and let gravity drop them. They plummeted down: through the floor, through every basement and subbasement, through to bedrock. Jason distinctly felt the tug of something - almost acidic, corrosive in some way - and realized it had to be the Hellmouth a full thirty seconds later. Once they were well beyond its reach, somewhere miles deep into the continental crust, Phantom opened a portal to take them home.

As soon as it closed behind them, Jason was on him, kissing frantically. For one perfect moment, Phantom kissed back, cool lips opening and his tongue like peppermint. Jason moved to put his hand on the other ghost, one on a hip and one on his neck, and at that point, Phantom froze. Jason kept kissing, hoping to get that moment back, but Phantom put one hand on each shoulder and gently pushed, and Jason went.

They stood there, panting. Jason wanted, wanted, wanted. He said, "I'm sorry, I - "

Phantom interrupted him. "I'm sorry."

"You?" asked Jason, incredulous. "You don't - I kissed you."

"Yes," agreed Phantom. "And I want to climb you like a tree, but . . . "

"But?" demanded Jason. If they both wanted it, then -

"That is so far beyond ethical that I might as well get a gimmick and start trying to conquer the living world."

Jason snorted.

"It is! It can't even not be unethical until you d̶̟́o̴͚̲͒͒n̴͍̊͆'̶̣̏̇t̵̫̭͂͠don't actually need me for your long-term s̷̤̓ǔ̷̮̊r̷̨͛̓v̸̛̭̒ͅị̷̌v̴̹̽ȧ̷͓ĺ̷̳̏survival!" His words rang in the empty kitchen.

Jason thought about how he'd have responded to that a week ago. Fuck, an hour ago. He forced himself to take a deep, calming breath and think past the hurt rejection to what Phantom actually said. Finally, he said, " . . . okay."

"Uh," Phantom blinked. "What?"

"If you're worried about me not being into it - even though, again, I kissed you - "

" - I'm worried about you not being able to say no - "

" - then I can wait," finished Jason as though he had not spoken, and poked him in the middle of his forehead. "You haven't threatened me into doing anything I didn't want to, ghost king, and you're not the kind of person who ever will. You can't even keep me from doing the damned dishes. But if that's bothering you - this power imbalance isn't going to exist forever. We can pick this up again once I'm . . . independent."

It was a long moment before Phantom said, "Okay. That's - okay. There are some things I'll need to tell you, and if you still want me, after - "

Jason snorted again. This guy, seriously.

"If you still want me, after, we can go on a date."

"I'll hold you to that," said Jason, and leaned in to give him a little peck, right where he'd poked him. Phantom looked conflicted about that, which - fucking good. But if he was uncomfortable, Jason couldn't get what he wanted by forcing him. "So, what now?" he added.

"Now, we get you home," said Phantom. "To living-world Gotham."

" . . . am I ever going to get to meet Infinite Realms Gotham?" asked Jason.

Phantom tilted his head. "Do you want to?"

The word 'obviously' was on the tip of Jason's tongue before he even fully registered the question. But then he did fully register, and . . .

"Yeah," said Phantom. "You'd have to have a wholehearted 'yes' before I'd even consider it, and even then . . . my crown affords me some protections that you wouldn't have. I'll think about it, if you will."

"Deal," said Jason, immediately. "Let me just go get my things. And, uh. Text my family."

"Sure," said Phantom. "And then we can have a talk about how the next couple of months are going to have to go." He - paused, clearly considering, and then visibly decided not to say something. "I'll wait right here."

Chapter Text

Dick breathed a huff of laughter.

Ways, plural. Because he'd died twice now, and apparently become a ghost both times. Or something.

Shit. Even though he already said it might be today, just - shit.

The one Jason officially lived in.

Dick was already calling out his response. He was in the Bowery anyway, covering. He could get there more easily than anyone else except maybe Cass.

Actually it looked like someone tried to assassinate the Joker, but literally no good could come of telling Jason that an unknown assailant snuck in and only tripped the alarms once they were actually in the cell, but didn't actually manage to kill him.

He texted to let Zatanna know where to go, before heading across the bridge. On the fire escape, he typed in the code to let him in the building, and the second code to let him into Jason's apartment, and the third code so that the security wouldn't attack him anyway. Jason didn't live here, of course, so the place was spotless. He started putting up cameras.

Moments later, Babs said, "Okay, stop. I'm not getting feed from them."

"Right," said Dick, trying not to imagine how that worked. Had Phantom somehow ghost booby-trapped the place? And then he didn't really have time, because Zatanna arrived and he had to go let her in. She paced around, as though measuring out how big a spell she might be able to set up, but before she could, the portal opened.

It was, of course, Lazarus green, a swirling vortex filled with unlight.

"Ready?" asked Dick, unholstering his escrima sticks.

"You know it," said Zatanna.

The portal flared, briefly, and out of it stepped -

Jason. With a laptop and a tablet.

It was two heartbeats before anyone said anything, during which Dick put the sticks away. Then Jason let out a genuine, totally aggrieved sigh, and said, "Bats wants you to make sure I'm me?"

Zatanna said, "A necessary precaution." She wasn't looking at him, though. She watched the portal spin itself down into nothing and close before she said, "If you will step over here?"

Jason put down the electronics moved as indicated. While she examined him, Dick asked, "Is, er. Is King Phantom not coming as well?"

Jason shrugged. "I suggested it, since he wanted to talk to the League, but he said he'd rather avoid the inevitable ambush. Which," he eyed Zatanna, "it looks like he was right to do. Why, did you need him for something?"

"Mostly we want to have that talk," said Zatanna, crouching beside him and running her hands down parallel to his legs in long slow passes. "And then maybe establish a more formal relationship."

"Yeah, I bet," said Jason. "He genuinely does not want to fight, if that helps."

"It does, actually," said Zatanna, standing back up straight. "I'm . . . your soul has several, ah, peculiar features, and most of them are there. You're definitely Jason Todd. You've just - one of those particular features seems to have - healed - since I last examined you."

"Yeah," repeated Jason, folding his arms. "I bet."

"She's just trying to help," said Nightwing, from his perch on the back of the couch.

"She's trying to make sure I'm not under some kind of compulsion, or a fucked-up mole, or something," said Jason, which . . . was not an inaccurate read. "But the kind of help I need is - " He stopped. Took a long, deep breath before blowing the air out slowly. "Not the League's concern. No offense," he added, to Zatanna.

Zatanna said, " . . . none taken." And, to Nightwing, "Well, I did what I came here for: it's him, and Phantom seems to have done the impossible and cleared the Pit." She looked at Jason again. "If you get a chance, do let Phantom know we're open to talk whenever."

Jason nodded, and waited until she'd left the apartment - and the apartment building - before he turned back to Dick.

"Little Wing?"

"Phantom more or less ordered me to not live alone for the next two months," said Jason. "For a lot of reasons, most of which I even agree with. But. It has to be one of us. Not Zatanna."

"Of course," said Dick, automatically. And then, more worried, "Are you - feeling okay?"

"Fine," said Jason. "It just turns out having ancient evil ghost magic stuck to your soul f̷͙̰̲̯͎̩̱͙̂̇̊u̷̼̿̀̒͂̍̇̑c̵̡̢̨̗͍̘͂̽̓̀ͅk̷̫̻̦̏̊̾̏̀̑̚s̵̡̞̺̤̬̩̽͑̔̓́͛͌͘ ̷̼̱̤̹̏̋̌̓ỳ̴̧̨͉̫̥̙̆̄̂͐͐͌̽o̶͈͚͕̳͗̂̇ṳ̷̩̪͐͐͌̉̾͂ ̸̡̞̠̼̑̑̓͐̽̊̚ͅų̷̯̫̣̐̀͐͆p̴͔̼̄̑̇̂͊̑fucks you up," and Dick jerked in surprise, pulling his escrima sticks as Jason's voice shifted into a register that no human throat could produce. Jason tilted his head, unimpressed. "Who knew?" Low-level gang-runners and merely human criminals would piss themselves if the Red Hood came at them with that body language, much less that voice.

"Little Wing," said Dick again, but had nothing to follow that up with. Well. He straightened up and put away the sticks, and by the time he was done he did. "Does that mean you had a good time at dead boy sleepaway camp?"

Jason cracked, and cracked up. "The look on your face, holy shit," he gasped out. And went back to laughing.

"Okay, but seriously," said Dick. "It was - Phantom didn't . . . ?"

For some reason, that made Jason laugh harder, even as he led the way to his bedroom, with the walk-in closet and the false back where his real clothes were. "Phantom," said Jason, "is adorable. He shoved ecto into me, shoved me into bed to sleep it off, rinsed, and repeated. And now I'm fine." He began stripping down so he could suit up, his lighter summer outfit even though it was only April. "I̵̫̤͔͐͘'̶̧̜̖̔̊̊͜m̸͗͑̉͜ ̷̳̩̣̉̃̒a̶̯̽́̕ ̷̼͚͍̹̈́g̷̡̜̦͛͝ḣ̴̢̻͆̃o̶̯̥͐͒̑͠s̴̳̉t̸̹̼͖͙̉̃I'm a ghost, and I'm better than I've been in probably a decade, and that's after fixing only some of my problems." He slipped his holsters and then his guns on. "So. Which of you idiots wants to move into the haunted house?"