#Danny: yes—Wait no that’s not I’m not a ghost | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

phantomrose96 · 21 days

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Sham Sacrifice: Chapter 2

(Sham Sacrifice: Chapter 1)

Chapter 2, because @ciestess voiced an idea that absolutely consumed my entire mind and I could not rest until I made this

...

Danny’s eyes tracked the swing of gunfire raining bullets across the horizon. Tucker reloaded, crouched, dodged left and pivoted, another blast of bullet confetti launched through a gaggle of zombie heads. He tossed the magazine and reloaded. Click. Ching. Danny flinched when a zombie smashed a hammer clean through Tucker’s head.

“God. Fucking…” Tucker pulled out of his hunch. He unclamped his fingers from his controller like bug legs unfurling. He extended the controller to Danny, bouncing it in his grip. “Your turn.”

“Huh?” Danny asked, as if he hadn’t been watching Tucker’s game the whole time.

“You. You’re up. I died.”

Danny accepted the controller, reloaded the screen, and jogged about a hundred feet forward before the first horde of zombies took him out football-style from the left. The death screen rolled.

“Oops,” Danny said.

“Not your best work.” And Tucker took the controller back. Tucker shot a few spare glances to Danny while the level restart loaded in. “Is it Vlad?”

“No. Well, yes,” Danny answered, flopping back into his normal position on the Foley attic armchair. Tucker’s mom had planned to toss it ages ago, before it became Danny’s chair. “But at least he left when my parents went all zombie mode into the basement.” Danny picked absently at the scabs of leather flaking from the armrest. “It was just weird.”

“I don’t mean this as an insult, but it’s definitely not the first time your dad’s gotten some math wrong,” Tucker said. “He blows up like three things a week doesn’t he?”

“He does. But he doesn’t care when he gets that math wrong. This one was like I broke something important.” Danny’s expression soured, and he picked a leather flake clean off the chair. “Vlad did, I mean.”

“Does any of the math actually work?” Sam offered from Tucker’s desk. She leaned an elbow around the back of his chair, head tilted to Danny. A pencil dangled from her loose fingers, nib-half worn to the History of an Invention report she was actually working on. Tucker had half-assed his earlier in the day about the palm pilot. Danny had not done his. “Like, it’s all crackpot theory, right? Do ghosts even follow math?”

“I think they follow some math. It’s not magic that makes the ecto-bazookas work, or the Fenton-phones work, or—well the thermos DIDN’T work—until I made it work.”

The unspoken thing Danny had been not-quite-saying hung in the air. He said it this time.

“So I’m wondering if I did it. Like the Fenton thermos. And now maybe they’re gonna do the math all over and realize the missing piece of the equation is one half-ghost son.”

“Well the order is backwards, for starters,” Sam said. “Thermos worked because you pumped ghost-energy into it. How would you have done that to the portal? You were human when you walked in.”

“Sam’s right. What do you think you brought to the table exactly? Button-slapping abilities?” Tucker loaded up the next level. “It was their portal, and their math, and it worked. There’s a million-billion kinds of math and they probably just forgot one thing.”

Tucker took a headshot and died. Mechanically, he handed the controller back to Danny.

“Yeah, probably.”

“Ask Vlad. He’s got a portal.”

“Like Vlad’s gonna tell me.”

“Just promise to be his diligent little son minion or whatever. He’s easy. Wait, let me do the next level. You know I like the cyberpunk levels.”

“It’s not your turn,” Danny said, reeling the controller just out of Tucker’s wiggling grasp.

“I’ll let you do two in a row for your next turn.”

Danny knocked Tucker away, distracted just long enough for a zombie cyberbeam to launch from the horizon and take him out through the head.

The screen washed sepia. Danny stared at it. You died.

…

Danny hadn’t really meant to stay the night at Tucker’s place. They’d just gotten really far in Man vs. Zombie, and Sam had gone home, and Danny was just resting his eyes between his turns with the controller.

So when he woke to the bright strip of sunlight beaming into his eyes through the attic skylight, his first thought was Fuck.

He was awake, here, morning, school. Fuck he had not actually done his History of Invention report, despite the stupid amount of grief it had already caused him this weekend. He pulled his face out of the armrest, now pineapple-patterned from the decaying leather, and pawed for his phone fallen on the floor. If it was still early enough, he could maybe still afford to desperately half-ass something before sixth period science.

He flipped his phone open. A text from Jazz. “Don’t come home. Make up an excuse.”

“…Fuck,” Danny whispered, through the sensation of his heart launching itself into his throat.

He scrambled upright, whole body shaking at the mercy of adrenaline shock so soon after being pulled from dead sleep. His mouth was dry, teeth unbrushed, wearing his old clothes from yesterday, report not done, Don’t come home, Don’t come home, Don’t come home.

They knew. He’d fucked it up. Somehow they knew. The math. Something. And it had to be with guns blazing, because Jazz would not send that text if they’d taken the “We accept you” angle.

Were they coming for him? On their way here? Tracking by his phone? Did they like Mrs. Foley enough to not SWAT-slam her against the wall when she opened the door for them so they could come capture the ghost pretending to be their son?

Fuck.

Danny was upright. Danny was standing. Danny was shaking. Danny wasn’t actually sure what the next thing was he was supposed to do.

Tucker’s ball of blankets rustled from the couch. “Mmph?” he asked, articulately.

“I have to. Go deal with my parents, I think,” Danny said, because any plan felt a little better than no plan. “I think they know.”

Danny was a ghost. Danny was gone. Tucker sat upright, alone, blinking himself awake. He was staring at the You Died sepia screen still displayed on monitor, now burnt into the plasma of the tv.

…

Danny paused with his human hand slick on the Fenton front door. The gears in his mind turned as his plan quickly unraveled into no-plan. He had no plan, right? What was his plan? Handle this Man vs Zombie style—open the front door ready to dodge wide, because both zombies and parents liked to camp behind closed doors with bazookas at the ready?

“—absolutely absurd, and entirely unscientific, with no probability of being true. It goes against everything we know about neurology.”

Oh, Jazz. Was Jazz enough of a bazooka-deterrent? Probably not. Knowing his parents.

Danny turned the knob. His heart hammered. If bazookas, dodge left.

The first thing he noticed was in fact the no-bazookas. It was what he was most looking for. And so it was Jazz’s expression he did not notice until second—whites of her eyes wide, snapped to Danny, with a look that would be accusatory if worry hadn’t won that battle. Her cheeks were pale. Her hair was unbrushed.

He noticed his parents third. Compulsively, he rocked back onto his right foot, still outside the doorway, still outside the threshold of the Fenton family household.

Seeing his parents tired was of absolutely no shock-value to Danny. It was at least a twice-per-month tradition to see them haul themselves up from the basement sweaty and glaze-eyed at 7am, babbling excitement about some new ecto-spectral-hoozy-whatsits whose concept had shimmed into their minds at 8pm and now existed, fully operational, 11 nonstop hours later.

So it wasn’t the exhaustion on their face. It wasn’t the stagnant smell of sweat or the paleness of their faces or the stains on their clothes.

It was the way they looked at him. Like their whole world had fallen apart with his foot passing over the doorstep.

“Danny,” Jazz said, choked, a break in the silence. “Things are…! A little weird here. So maybe, if you wanna just get to school, I’ll finish clearing up—there’s a misunderstanding Mom and Dad have with their math. I am state finalist in Math League and have been studying college-level calculus in preparation for school applications so I’ve offered to help them fix their math, or prove to them—”

“Danny,” Maddie said, an echo of Jazz, but it felt worse. Danny scanned her hands for anything pointed enough to be a weapon. They were empty. “Danny can I just ask you something honestly, just quickly? Jazz is right. I’m just trying to clear up an issue with our math. And I won’t be mad. Whatever the answer is, I won’t be mad. I just want an honest answer.”

She stepped closer. Danny fought the urge to match her with a step backwards. Her eyes roved over him in a starved way, looking for something.

“Were you there when the portal turned on?” she asked.

“No, I wasn’t,” Danny answered. He wasn’t sure what to do with his face to make it look convincing. “It just. It needed some time to boot up, or something, right? That’s what you two said.”

“That was our guess ,but we don’t really know. The security tapes are wiped. We tried to make them EMF-resilient but a very, very strong blast of EMF could still corrupt them.”

“Yeah. I mean the portal’s gonna do that, right? When it turned on? Ripping open the Ghost Zone that’s—gotta be huge EMF.” Danny’s focus bounced between his mother’s eyes. “Just a guess. I really don’t know. I was in bed, already, whenever the portal started working.”

Left eye. Right eye. Why was she looking at him like that? Like she was sad. Was this part a trick? Make Danny let his guard down, go hey Mom need a hug? and that’s when the bazooka-whipping starts? It made his ribs feel scratchy. Stop looking at me like that.

“Have you felt anything weird at all, since the portal started working? Any gaps in your memory? Any parts of you that don’t feel right? Is there any part of you that feels like it’s changed in a way you can’t explain?”

She reached a hand out. Danny instinctively recoiled.

“Uh, yeah. They taught us about this in health class. They call it ‘puberty’ there.”

“Danny,” Jack said, and his voice was scratchy from disuse, from a long and uncharacteristic amount of time spent not speaking. “Did you die in the machine?”

A beat. A moment. Like when the zombie sends a hammer through your head.

“I’M alive!” Danny declared with a crack in his voice, with hands slammed to his chest. “Look at me. What are you talking about?”

“It’s the only math that works,” Jack continued, his words like chalk, his voice too dead. He looked too much at Danny. “If one of you two walked into the portal, and died in it. And I don’t think it was Jazz.”

This was bad. This was weird. Danny had ghost powers, sure. ‘They can’t kill me I’m already dead,’ was a funny joke sometimes. But it was funny as a joke. He was a ghost sham, really. A faker, a LARPer, whatever Tucker had called it. He was a human who was just kind of a freak now. More of a freak than he already was. He looked dead, for someone who was super-duper still alive.

He’d buried that worry, already. They weren’t allowed to bring it back.

“Look… at me!” Danny continued, mouth dry. He threw his arms wide. “Look how super alive I am! I’m awake! Using energy! Eating food and sleeping with my human body. I’ve got flesh and blood and bones and stuff! I’m not a ghost-expert but ghosts don’t have that.”

This was weird. This made Danny feel like something was scratching to get free from inside his rib cage. It twisted his entrails. Sure Tucker and Sam had thought he was dead, for those first horrible few minutes, but then he changed back to a human and the nightmare ended there. Jazz never called him dead. The ghosts called him freak and halfa and whelp, but never ‘one of them.’ That was his whole thing: being different from the ghosts who became ghosts by something so normal as dying.

He was not dead.

“If you died in the portal, your ghost wouldn’t have been ripped out of your body. It would have been allowed to stay, and then you’d be…” Jack hesitated. “I don’t know what you’d be, but you wouldn’t be alive.”

“Dad,” Jazz said, and she stood herself bodily between Danny and Jack. “What an absolutely messed up out-of-line thing to say to your son! You don’t know that! Dad you’re tired, and just because you weren’t able to solve your math problem in one night doesn’t mean you get to treat Danny like this! I said I’d help you with your math! Now apologize to Danny.”

Jazz looked over her shoulder to Danny, her expression falling at the sight of Danny’s face.

Danny backed up over the door threshold. He shook his head. “I’m not comfortable with this. This is weird. I’m gonna go to school now.”

“Danny, I promise they’re just—”

Danny turned on heel. No backpack, no change of clothes. He took to the street without a single school supply and moved, and moved.

It was supposed to be guns-blazing. Molecule by molecule. Headshot you died. He’d prepared for that this whole time, in the shower, in his dreams, in his daydreams in class. He’d duck and dodge and explain himself over and over until they understood him.

Danny wasn’t sure he was capable of explaining himself anymore.

…

Danny knocked the heavy iron knocker. He was in ghost form, as a threat. He wondered if he still smelled like yesterday’s sweat now that he wasn’t wearing yesterday’s clothes. Now he was wearing the clothes he died in.

No one answered the door. Danny phased himself in.

“Vlad!” he called, and his words echoed along the slope of the two elaborate winding staircases that twirled and met at the top like caduceus. Gold-plated banisters. A security camera buried somewhere in the ceiling, no doubt.

Danny phased into the library. His eyes roved the three stories of bookshelves wrapping the perimeter like a sheath. Gaudy. Audacious. Like Vlad would ever read that much. Danny racked his brain because some something in here was the secret to opening Vlad’s laboratory. Jazz had told him. Some gold something to be touched, and pressed down, or pushed up? Or it opened to a button. Or a keypad, maybe.

Danny spat a curse. He was being stupid. He was frazzled. He wasn’t thinking straight.

He dove into the floor below. Intangibility was the only key he needed.

The sheetrock was cold, even when he wasn’t touching it. The darkness was so piercing it made static jump in his vision, some weird trick of the brain Jazz had explained where, in the absence of all light, the brain hallucinates its own. It came with a sensation of pressure against his eyeballs, and a complete disorientation of direction, and he simply just kept going down.

Danny emerged into a wash of cold air. Cold like metal was cold. The low lights of dials and clicking machines were bright to his eyes previously dunked into the pitchest nothing. He drank it in, eyes grateful for light no matter how little, inner ear grateful for orientation that had left his head swimming and his stomach tight.

His feet tapped down to the stone ground, and the air that breezed past him was chilled.

“Vlad!” Danny called again.

Nothing.

He moved by the floor lighting, which ran in trim along the perimeter of the laboratory rooms. It lit things from beneath, made machines gaunt and specimens into sharp geometries of darkness and flesh. It made the Fenton lab feel warm in a way Danny had never considered it warm.

His feet clacked. His breath puffed.

“Vlad!”

He followed light, followed a wash of green miasma percolating from some far room and catching on the particulate of water and dust that disturbed with the air currents. Danny disturbed it too, walking through, wearing its shade of green which his shadow robbed from the wall behind him.

“Vlad. I swear to god Vlad.”

He crossed the threshold of the portal room, where the dusting of green ambience became a medallion wash of golden-green coating, painting every surface of the room. The Fenton lab was one single expansive room, portal anchored into the far wall and facing all the dead and empty air in front of it. This was different. A much smaller room, walled on all sides save for the simple doorway, and each surface reflected the color back deeper and heavier. It was like a fishtank in the wall of an aquarium lit radiant aqua-blue by all the lights within, but green instead, pure ecto-green.

Danny approached the open portal. He stared into its placid swirls, mesmerized, and scared of it, in a way he hadn’t previously felt about the portal in the Fenton basement.

“Ah, seems the cat is a good mouser after all, it dragged you in my boy.” The words came sing-song. They came spine-shivering for Danny, who felt them like hot breath on his shoulder and reeled back, pivoted, fire crackling to life in his palms.

Vlad stood at the doorway, a solid 20 steps from Danny.

“Vlad.”

“So I’ve been hearing.”

“I need you to explain the portal.”

“Ah, I see you’ve spoken to your parents.” Vlad stepped in, washed in the ecto-green which muddied his ruby red eyes. He held his hands behind his back, cape trailing, a smirk on his fanged face. “Last I heard they weren’t taking the news very well.”

“What news. What did you tell them?”

“Me? Nothing. In fact, very kindly for your sake I even tried to drive them away from the answer but… We know how stubborn your parents can be.”

“What answer?”

“That you’re dead, Daniel.”

Shock washed like ice down Danny’s spine. It sent prickles like spider legs across his skin.

“Well, I suppose there’s still chance for some doubt. It could be Jazz. She could take the fall for you, if there’s any benefit to that at all.”

“I’m a halfa. We are halfas,” Danny said.

“A silly made up word by a silly child,” Vlad mused, and the light smile left his lips. “We are dead.”

“I’m not dead,” and Danny’s words were small, and they were childish.

“You are. I am. Embrace it. It’s nicer this way.” Vlad took a few steps closer, lionously tall in his saunter, feet clacking the ground. “It’s very freeing. After you’ve died already what is there left to fear?”

“I’m alive.”

“You’re a dead body with its soul still stuffed inside it like a Christmas goose. A lot of things in your body don’t work anymore, but ghosts don’t work right anyway and it is, for all its defiance of nature, a perfectly symbiotic relationship.” Vlad’s smile brushed his lips again, warm. “It’s nice to share this with you. Isn’t it nice to share things with people?”

Danny’s heart was beating too fast in his chest, and it was a human heart, a human beat. “I’m not dead,” he declared.

“Your wounds heal quickly because the ghost piloting you only needs to remember form. It stacks cells back into place and calls it good. You’ll endure fatal injuries as you no doubt have many times in your fights, but they’re trivial because physical trauma is not what kills a ghost. It’s what creates one. You’ll necrotize in places but it’s okay, because you’ll carry on, and it will bother you only if you let it bother you, if you’re too sentimental about the puppet you’re still inside.” Vlad closed in closer, neck craning to appraise Danny. “Ghosts love a facsimile of life so you will keep your heart pumping, your lungs breathing. You’ll eat and you’ll sleep but you’ll find you won’t perish if you don’t. It just won’t be a good time if you want to keep occupying your flesh form. Take better care of it. You won’t get another.”

“You’re psychotic. And you’re wrong.”

“I have all the math to prove it.” Vlad leered from over Danny’s shoulder. He circled the boy, knocking Danny’s balance, who still on a hair trigger stood ready to fight. The light from the ghost portal painted Vlad’s face like the phases of the moon as he moved. “Did your parents explain that part to you properly?”

“No, because they didn’t get the math right.”

“Oh they’ve gotten it right. This time. It only took them two decades longer than it took me.” The portal rolled like static, and its fizzling pattern crashed like an ocean wave across Vlad’s cape. “No amount of man-made power is sufficient to drag the entire fabric of the Ghost Zone up against our own, tear a hole through it, and anchor it to a stable frame. It requires something with a pull on the Ghost Zone, a strong pull, and that thing is a human life at the moment of an extraordinarily violent death.”

Danny backed a step away from the portal, from Vlad, but the walls boxed him in. He swam in its green light.

“You stepped in and you turned the portal on, that’s what you thought, right, Daniel? Pressed a careless button on the inside and now here we are. Silly parents for not finding that button first.” Vlad’s face hardened. “No. Jack and Maddie knew about the button. Maddie explained it to me over the phone. What engineer designing and building their own portal would forget the location of the on button? They’d pressed it from the outside. It didn’t work. And so you pressing the button was not the important part. It was you dying to the electrocution that clicked everything right into place. And while your ghost should have been torn from your lifeless corpse and pulled to the Ghost Zone you instead pulled the Ghost Zone here. Your ghost got to stay put. You opened the portal. You became the undead freak you are. And now we’re here.”

Danny’s eyes bounced between Vlad’s. His cheeks felt hot, like he was enduring an accusation of wrongdoing. And he had none of the knowledge to refute what was being said.

“You’re messing with me. You’re wrong,” Danny shot back. He thrust an arm out, drenched in the fog of the portal. “If the portal needs a person to die in it then explain your portal! Are you so casual about it? You killed someone? You’re admitting to murder and you think I won’t do anything about it?”

Anger flashed like a storm across Vlad’s face. His aura swelled, pressing down with a pressure on Danny as Vlad halted and cast his shadow clear across Danny, coating the back wall. “The killing of other people with the wanton carelessness of half-baked machines is the domain of Jack and Jack alone. I’ve brought no such harm onto anyone else.”

“Then how do you have this portal?”

“This portal? This portal that I’ve had for 20 years? Which I opened when I solved the piece of Jack’s broken math that he was never able to solve until this morning?” Vlad stalked closer, hunched, imposing. Danny stepped back. “My boy Daniel you’ve had it so easy. You had it so simple. A truly clean break. So clean so lucky. A single lethal dose of electricity and it was already over. I’m jealous. You never even suffered.”

Vlad stepped closer, striking distance, arm extended. Danny flinched, but Vlad only swept his cape around, clenched in his fist, and pivoted to approach the portal.

“Put out of your misery before it even started.” Vlad slammed his fist against the portal rim, and the explosive metallic clang bounced through the rooms. His laugh belted out. “I should have been so lucky.”

19. Vlad Masters was 19. A sophomore in college. A man actively in the midst of sabotaging his social life to chase a woman who was already deeply in love with Vlad’s best friend who he hated more every day. He wasn’t sure what he ever enjoyed about Jack’s bumbling ineptitude, or his loudness, his brashness, his poor social skills, his bad breath, his mullet. Maybe Vlad had gravitated to Jack because deep down he loved how superior it made him feel to surround himself with the likes of Jack Fenton… And now, he hated how enraged it made him to watch Maddie’s eyes skip past his to focus on Jack Fucking Fenton again and again and again and again.

But surely there was hope still. Surely it was a matter of time before the rose-tinted glasses fell away and Maddie saw bumbling and inept and every such word in the basket when she looked at Jack. There’d come the day she tested the waters with Vlad to complain about one of Jack’s little quirks, and they’d find solace together in all the things Vlad was that Jack wasn’t, and all the things Vlad had that Jack didn’t. And he’d be gone, back to bumble elsewhere, and it would be just them.

The day didn’t come. It wouldn’t come. And maybe Vlad needed to change himself for Maddie. If he listened to her and Jack’s ghost ramblings, if he could put Jack in his place and solve the things Maddie couldn’t, it would show her. She’d understand.

Because that was the thing about Jack. His math was never right. Enduring Calculus 1 with Jack was all it took to prove this to Vlad. How many times he’d caught a single error on a single line for Jack, like a dropped stitch that would unravel the whole sweater. Every problem, without exception. Jack only passed on his homework grade with Vlad’s help. On his tests, he failed.

So Vlad was staring at Jack’s equation, full of bogus math, which Vlad knew was wrong because Jack had penned it, and Vlad had not yet fixed it himself.

“I’m telling you Jack, it won’t work.”

“Bogus V-man it totally will!”

It wouldn’t. But Vlad wouldn’t fix it for him. Not yet. Vlad would let Jack embarrass himself first, fully in front of Maddie, watching on, judging. Vlad would solve it for her. After. Once Jack had made a fool of himself for the hundredth time since college began.

He leaned in to study the portal frame. The gears were turning in his head already. He didn’t hear the whir of the power source catch.

…

19. Vlad Masters was 19. A tube ran down his nose and into his lungs, supplying oxygen for lungs which were failed by a diaphragm sloughing itself away. He was poisoned from the outside-in. Irradiated by ecto-energy none of the nurses or doctors could fully understand. It damaged his DNA. First obvious in the skin of his face where the blisters of his ecto-acne drained and sloughed. “Acne” was the wrong word. An unkind word. They were boils where the blast had cooked his skin, microwaved his cells. The skin on his body blackened over time. Organs decayed. Vlad Master read a lot about radiation sickness. He knew everything he had to expect.

Jack and Maddie had stopped visiting. They were dating now. It was on their last visit they’d told him, and Vlad hadn’t taken it well, and he’d perhaps burned a few bridges with the words he chose. It was deserved. Considering what Jack did to him.

He’d found the error in Jack’s math, by the way. Errors, but all the rest paled in impact compared to the lambda. The ecto-energy. The necessary ecto-potential to pull the Ghost Zone here. How stupid. How idiotic. For Vlad to die to a machine so botched in its construction.

When Vlad was released from the hospital, it was not because they’d cured him. It had been because there is a certain cruelty in making a 19-year-old live the last of his days bedded down in a white-walled room with just his books, his equations, and no one coming to visit anymore.

He was released with bedrest instructions. Vlad did not heed them. In his beater car, every cell of his body aching, he drove. At the materials lab, he disconnected his oxygen tank and moved through the lab space with the tube dangling loose from his nostril. No one was Vlad Masters’ friend. No one cared to stare long at his ugly boil-ridden face. No one stopped him as he hauled sheet metal, and supports, and bolts and wiring and resistors and power tools, checked out with a valid student ID, from the lab. The lab inventory room would not be seeing these back.

It was a prep bunker, buried beneath a vast lot of empty Wisconsin land, that Vlad hauled his materials. He and Jack had discovered it as freshmen. Poked through its bowels with flashlights and quipped and laughed over how eerie it was. Deep beneath the sheetrock, boxy rooms carved out of walls of stone. Shelf upon shelf of dusty canned foods, and shotguns sealed in cases fastened to the walls. The locks had rusted with water damage.

His arms ached until they throbbed, dragging beams of metal across the stone floor, scratching chalk-mark stains into the ground. His skin sloughed, inflamed, burning to the touch. Vlad didn’t bother to rest, because these injuries would never heal anyway. He hauled, and welded, and wired up his circuitry and resistors with a care and caution Jack would never have bothered to practice. He checked it against his math by flashlight. He took naps on the cold stone floor and woke with deep purple bruises on every part of his body that had pressed against the ground.

His appetite left him. His lungs filled with mucus. The boils on his face had spread down to his chest, his shoulders. The touch of his shirt chafed them, so he worked without one, a figure of skeletal rib ridges jutting from tight skin that bloomed with the projection of his shadow against stone walls.

He knew why Jack’s math was wrong.

A silly mistake. A stupid mistake. Anyone with half a mind for the paranormal should have realized the Ghost Zone was not so easily at your beck and call. Not without chumming the water with something it would rise to feast on.

And in that violent death, what would happen to the ghost? It would stay, wouldn’t it? If it successfully anchored the Ghost Zone to the portal it stood inside, then by definition the ghost would stay?

And was that death? Yes, in a way. But it was a death one would get to keep living. As opposed to the death Vlad was headed for, whose coldness and finality scared Vlad more than anything he could put to words.

He’d fixed the oxygen tank back to himself. He couldn’t work without it, hauling it about on a little dolly with him, back and forth, while he fetched and affixed the last of the plating he needed to craft the frame of his silent soulless portal.

He’d stolen a generator from the sports storage shed. It was meant to be enough to power the portable stadium lights they hauled onto the fields for late games, an absolute obelisk meant to cast light across an entire football field.

Surely, it contained enough power to kill one simple human.

Vlad fixed the last bolt in place. Jumper cables clamped generator to portal wiring. It was a pure skeleton. A paltry thing, like the bones of something already picked clean. Built in haste, sloppy, by a 19-year-old whose fingers were too inflamed to clutch a wrench any longer.

He could have asked Jack for help. Maddie. But he wouldn’t let them have this. They had to solve the portal on their own. They didn’t get to know his hard work. They did not get to save him.

Vlad would save himself.

A ghost anchored to a body. What was that? What monster was that?

Vlad moved. He coughed mucus from his lungs. It made it hard to breathe. So he moved slowly, and crouched, bony jutting angles, painted blotchy purple, all bruises and skin, sloughing away.

He crouched, because the portal he’d constructed was not large enough to hold him standing up. He bowed inside it, a small thing, a pathetic man of little life. He wheezed. He hurt. His eyes burned.

And he held in his hands the remote to flip the generator switch, and connect the circuit, and bring to life the math Vlad had so kindly corrected out from under Jack’s grip.

Vlad did not. Because throwing the switch would kill him.

Deep in his animal brain, his dying brain, he knew this intimately. It filled him with a drowning fear like paralysis. He did not want to die.

He would die if he did nothing.

It would be this one throwing of the switch which could save him. Which would burst the portal to life right through his heart. Electrocute it out of its rhythm, slaughter him like a pig on spot and… maybe… hopefully… drag the Ghost Zone here. And whatever he was, dead, would stay.

And whatever he was, dead, would be better than this.

Vlad held the remote in his clammy hands.

And from within the humming skeleton of his portal, his fingers caressed the on button.

…

The portal sung its happy contentment, mused in its healthy green aura, staining all the slabs of rock wall. Danny swiveled his head, recognizing now the bunker this had been before it had been a laboratory.

“I’ve harmed no one, Daniel,” Vlad concluded, his voice too measured for the horrors it had spilled forth. Too calm against the blossoming terror its words had wrought across Danny’s face. “I opened the portal to save myself. You’re lucky, Daniel. It was because of my fast thinking that your father is not a murderer. I took that honor from him.” Vlad’s head tilted to the side, suddenly sympathetic. “Although, you’ve maybe made the title whole for him.”

Vlad reached out, Danny shot away.

“Dad didn’t kill me,” he choked. “I did this to myself.”

“How lucky Jack is, to always dodge responsibility for his actions.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Of course you don’t. If you believed me, you’d have to accept you’re not wriggling out of this. There’s no denial you can bring home to your parents. If you believe me, then this is reality.” Vlad smiled, a playful glint to his fangs. “I suppose I should have more sympathy. I quite like being this way. It is so much nicer than wasting away to death, like I was. But you. You were healthy before this. This killed you, and it didn’t save you from anything.” Vlad cocked his head. “Such tragic fates, both of us, due to the carelessness of Jack Fenton.”

Danny shook his head. His heart beat—his human heart beat—all too fast in his throat. It made him sick. It made him feel like the walls were closing in around him. This was Vlad’s doing. Vlad’s trap. Vlad’s prison he’d been forced to join.

"That's not true. I'm not like you."

“Of course not,” Vlad said, sweetly. “How sweet denial is. Deny it if you like. Call me a liar. But if you ever want to come to terms with what your father did to you, consider coming to me. I understand you in a way no one else will.”

Danny gave no response. He gave no acknowledgement of Vlad’s words. He took to the air, phased himself up through the sheetrock that had been packed atop the doomsday prepper bunker. Up through the mansion, which had been built atop the portal beneath it, and not the other way around. Into the open sky, he breathed fresh air not stagnant and damp beneath the ground, bathed in light pure white from the sun and not tainted green like the bowels underneath him.

And he flew back toward the portal that made him, leaving Vlad with the portal from which he’d made himself.

...

(inspiration post from @ciestess)

#sham sacrifice #danny phantom #dp #dp fanfiction #vlad masters #danny fenton #YELLS AND THROWS THIS AT YOU #ive been spinning around like a top on this idea #tw: suicidal ideation

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the-b1ah · 20 days

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I love your DPxDC gif au! It's adorable!!! I love how good at parenting Jason is. It really does just take willpower, love, and a whole lot of books. Any chance we can get Danny and Jason's first hug ever??

Omg this is such a cute ask!!!

I’ve always had the headcanon that Danny eyes literally get starry when he gets excited and when he’s in his ghost form it’s even more noticeable.

And yes those are the pants from the ice cream scene they are his favorite.

Okay so context:

This isn’t super long after they met in the alley, so Danny is still very banged up. He already feels guilty for taking advantage of Jason kindness since they’re still pretty much complete strangers. Danny is also waiting for the other shoe to drop and Jason to get sick of him or try to kill him (ya know like most people do).

Jason on the other hand is getting six traumatic flashbacks to his own childhood per day with just how much Danny reminds him of himself fresh off the street (sassy, mistrusting, with the world on their shoulders). He’s mostly focused on getting Danny comfortable, tracking down the GIW, and keeping the alley safe. He was under the impression that Danny would bite him if he tried any physical comfort and was not prepared for the hug at all. Jasons poor touched starved ass blue screens so hard he almost has a heart attack.

When he realizes Danny is freaking out it’s already a bit too late so hugs don’t really become a staple until mucccchhhhh later.

The rest of the day all Jason is thinking is He’s going to have such a hard time giving up this kid once all the GIW stuff is sorted out.

Little does he know…

————————

What they were thinking after the hug:

Danny: oh no I fucked up. I def crossed his boundaries. I shouldn’t have done that. I’m gonna get kicked to the streets. I ruined everything like aways do———

Jason: affection? In this economy? Amazing I’d fight god for you.

Origin| masterlist

#art #art stuff #fanart #animation #danny fenton #danny phantom #jason todd #dc fanart #danny phantom fanart #red hood #dc crossover #dc x dp crossover #dc x dp #dpxdc art #dpxdc #dc #dp crossover #dp fanart

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minty364 · 4 months

Text

DPXDC Prompt #61 Part 5

There were two new arrivals to the dining room. Both with black hair but one of them had an odd white stripe, the stripe reminded him of his hair in ghost form.

The one without the stripe sat next to Tim and the other one sat next to Danny.

“You weren’t kidding when you said they looked identical,” the guy without the stripe said, “Names Richard Greyson, but you can call me Dick”

Dick had a bright smile on his face, it was clear he was a morning person.

Damian made another ‘Tt’ noise at his introduction.

The guy with the stripe in his hair grunted in agreement before holding out a coffee mug for Alfred, who was already standing next to him ready to pour. He took a swig before speaking, “Names Jason, you may look alike but seeing Damian eat meat, even from an alternate universe is weird.”

Danny took a bite of his bacon and swallowed like he was making a point before speaking, “I go by Danny, I faked my death years ago, as far as I’m concerned we were all strangers in my world.” He started, he took a moment to think about exactly how’d he explain everything. He knew it wasn’t exactly a pretty story but he also knew from the stories Talia told him when he was younger that Bruce was all about planning ahead, so keeping information from him might not be the best way to go about all of this.

He took another bite and swallowed before speaking again, “My foster family is fine though, I have a roof over my head and food. They spend most of their time in their lab working. They study Ectology, or the study of ghosts.” Jason raised an eyebrow at this but didn’t say anything. Danny continued, “They actually succeeded in building a portal to their realm, the realm of ghosts, or Infinite Realm as we call it.”

“We? You say that like you're one of the ghosts” Tim asked laughing a little bit.

He quickly got silent when Danny wasn’t laughing with him.

Damian made another ‘Tt’ noise before speaking, “Clearly this imposter has lost it, ghosts don’t exist and all of this nonsense is just that nonsense.” He glared at Danny.

Danny smiled at him and it caused Damian to falter a little before he glared at Danny again.

“Yes, Ghosts are real,” Danny sighed before continuing, “Trust me, it sounds crazy but I’ve seen some crazy things in my world. Although now I’m wondering if just showing you guys would be easier… Alright I’ll show you all but know that no one except my sister knows. Secret identity and all.”

“Wait,” Dick interrupted, “Does Robin not exist in your world?”

“Robin existed but there hasn’t been a Robin since Joker murdered the last one.” Danny answered.

Everyone fell silent at that and the atmosphere got heavy. Everyone, especially Jason was giving each other knowing glances.

Danny cleared his throat before continuing, “Anyways, yes ghosts exist, unfortunately the portal in this world probably doesn’t work like my own world. It’s been about a year since I turned it on and since I was here in Gotham when they tried it in this world there’s no telling what they did after it didn’t work. Actually now that I think about it, I wonder if they exist here,” he thought about the GIW in his world and it occurred to him. If ghosts weren’t running rampant in Amity Park, they probably didn’t exist here.

He brought out his phone from his pocket and looked it up. His eyes lit up a bit at the information he found. Or more accurately the information he didn’t find. Searching GIW in this world brought zero results, so great he wouldn’t be hunted for existing here.

He let out a sigh of relief at this. He turned to everyone and they were watching him closely. He gave them a small smile, “It’s been a while since I had a moment where I didn’t have to worry about being hunted for existing.” He explained. He figured he might as well get the conversation out of the way no matter how difficult it was.

Everyone at the table was silent as they waited for him to continue. The tension was thick in the air however, you could tell that even though Danny had just arrived everyone was ready to jump to defend him, even if he wasn’t their Damian he was still part of the family even if he had just arrived into their lives. It cemented Danny’s determination to tell them the truth.

He took a deep breath and then spoke again, “The portal didn’t work at first when they tried it, I of course wanted to help so when they were away I went in to see if I could figure out the problem… Long story short, it helps to build the on switch on the outside of the portal. I’m not proud to admit that even with all of my training, there were just too many cords that even I tripped.” He didn’t have to say much else about that as their faces told him they understood what happened. He gave a dark chuckle and continued, “Yeah hurt like hell but I don’t have to worry about losing anything anymore.” He then took his phone and phased it into his chest.

The room went silent again for a moment, but it was broken by Jason who started cackling.

He wheezed for a moment before he got out, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t ready for not Damian to make a fucking pun!”

Meanwhile everyone else was still too stunned to speak. Finally Damian surprisingly spoke, “What else can you do?”

Danny smiled, this was going to be fun.

Master Post:

Last:

#dp x dc prompt #dp x dc #dc x dp #danny fenton #danny phantom #ghost prince danny #danny and damian are the same person #my asks are open #all my prompts are free to use #Even if I write these parts if you want it to go different your welcome to write your own fic #My goal with these is to spread creativity #as is my purpose on this earth

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madds-is-ace-trash · 1 year

Text

Nightwing why are you warring a cape? Well for the baby of course! Dcxdp

This takes place in the same universe as my fic Mother of the storm and her star child.

A few years have passed and Danny is completely settled in and moved to bulhaven with dick. Eventually around the time he’s Turing 9 he insists that he wants to go out at night with dick. Dick is hesitant but Danny insist, pointing out how his abilities would make him the perfect recon detective. Dick can no longer argue when Danny beats both Damian and Cass the first day of training and he is out out in the field.

Danny hose out in his ghost form and picks the name phantom because it feels right and now nightwing patrols with a bird if his very own for the first time in a while. Danny is very good on patrols, he sticks close to dick often clinging to him and hiding behind him when dick is interacting with people. He’ll often turn invisible but it still doesn’t fell like enough to dick. He quickly released that he missed the cape and the layer of securing it added when Damien was his Robin.

So nightwing starts wearing a cape, and the people of his city starts coming up with all sorts of theories for the sudden change. The range from him practicing because he’s taking over the cowl to him hiding new gadgets. Very few have seen Danny and those who have are often not believed because, “nightwing had glowing eyes under his cape!” Is not very believable.

He doesn’t wear the cape all the time just when he has Danny, the cape is long the outside is black but the inside has a blue and black feather design so it looks like wings when he glides. It has a feature where it retracts in to a role on his back when he need more freedom of movement. And I’m addition to the cape he now has an extra loop hanging form his belt for Danny to grab on to as the hop rooftops. (Danny can will him self to weigh nothing so dick tends to pull him along as he floats any way)

As the news of dicks sudden costume adjustment is circulating he has to come to the watchtower with B for a mission. Danny tags along hiding in his cape like all the Robin had before him with Bruce. Meanwhile Bruce is totally not going all mushy over his grandson he is totally normal about this. All of the Leagers keep giving dick looks.

Until flash finally ask

Wally: so um nightwing what’s with the cape? I thought you hated them?

Dick*with a bright smile across his face*: it’s for my shadow!

Wally: your shadow? How is a cape ganna hide your shadow.

Dick: no not my actual shadow it’s to hide my bird.

Diana: your bird?

*Dick flares one side of the cape revealing the feathered pattern underneath but nothing else is visible hidden under the cape*

Wally: I don’t se-

Dick: whistles like a bird call

Danny slowly fading in to view giving the league a small wave as he scrambles to hide behind dicks legs: Hello

Hal: really Bruce another one!?

Dick Smiling at the small boy in his cape before closing it : nope this one’s all mine!

Meanwhile John Constantine who is present for this mission is freaked the fuck out. Because that kid with the flowing white hair and glowing freckles is definitely not human. And worse than that from what he can sense it’s pretty darn powerful to. He watches as all of his coworkers are working to get the boy out from hiding cooing over him.

Clark: he’s looking a lot better nightwing

Wally: Waite you already new about him?

Clark: yes the boy is nightwings child I’m guessing he only is just now joining the team

Diana: what’s your name little one?

Danny poking his head out of the cape: phantom my name is phantom

Fuck why was that name familiar? Oh shit that’s right John had heard rumors of the new ghost king and a prince milling around the infinite realms this must be the little ghost prince. How the fuck did dick end up with him? Waite sups said that was dicks kid, hold did dick?

John: ha Oh my god! You crazy fucker you fucked the ghosts king!

#danny phantom #dc x dp #danny fenton #dp x dc #dp #phandom #ghost king danny #i write some times #dpxdc #ms&sc #dc x dp prompt #you can use it as one I don’t care #this will not be continued so feel free to steal the idea #I just want Danny to hide under his papas cape #dick is very confused #over what John siad #and now the league is side eyeing him #Wally ask Danny who his mom is and he just says ‘dead’#this dose not help dick trying to explain he did not fuck the god of the dead #eventually they ask Danny if he knows who the king is #and he just says ‘Yhea me!’ and the crown of fire just appears over his head #he smiles and shows of his little baby fangs #John is having a melt down #the league just thinks it makes him even cuter #Danny explains he’s only a prince now until he’s big enough #John has to explain that actually makes a lot of sense because the realms have been running them self for years #The whole team is now having a crisis because they realize that means Danny has died #Danny is surprisingly nonchalant about it #he turns human to show them he’s fine #Batman is desperately trying to get everyone back on track so they can get to the mission

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f0point5 · 3 months

Note

I know we have a different Y/N now but I saw those pictures of max playing padel and I just kept thinking about Max’s Y/N watching 🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲

i miss them

SAME. Ngl I saw the pictures and this just came to me so… I hope this satisfies your craving for them lol

*******************

“Once again,” you declare to Max as you enter the padel court, your hands full with water bottles, “I’m so glad you’re fast,”

“He’s only fast on wheels,” Lando jokes, shaking his head at Max as he takes a bottle. “Seriously, mate, Fernando is a great player, and so was Charles yesterday, so you are definitely the problem,”

Daniel and Fernando agree as they take their bottles, while Max gingerly waits for you to hand him his.

“It’s the- it’s my, like, shoes, mate. They’re sticky,” he defends himself indignantly while Lando and Daniel snicker. “I swear they’re-“

“Don’t worry,” says Fernando, clapping Max on the shoulder. “We tell them what it is in the champions group chat. Oh, no, we can’t, they’re not there,”

The snickering stops, and Lando and Daniel look like kids whose teacher has just asked them to hand in their homework.

“Well,” Lando huffs. “That was uncalled for,”

Everyone just laughs, and Daniel ruffles his hair.

The other three chug at their water while Max stands next to you, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. It’s cute, how unused he is to not being good at something, even more unused to continuing to do that thing regardless. As much as you tease him, you’re immensely proud. You know that voice in his head telling him to stop embarrassing himself all too well. He’s been better at quieting his than you ever have yours.

“Honestly, it’s the wrong shoes,” he mutters to you, sliding one of his feet along the floor.

“I know, Maxy,” you say, tempted to kiss the pout right off his face. “But hey, you’re going home with me, so did you really lose?”

“That’s not worth extra points, so yes,”

“You know, I really thought we’d make it at least six months before I murdered you,” you say, poking him in the chest hard enough that he rubs at the spot over his heart.

“I don’t get it,” Max says, his face twisted in hopeless bewilderment. “How does being with you mean I won padel?”

“Mate, look at your girlfriend. You won life,” Daniel explains, coming up behind you to sling a damp arm around your shoulders.

“Danny, if you ever get that Red Bull seat, call me, because this dufus ain’t cutting it,” you joke, squeezing at his hip. Daniel laughs and lets go if you with a sticky pat to the back as Max groans.

“Naw, come on,” he says, sliding his arms around your waist as you cross your arms over you chest, purposely avoiding looking at him. “I don’t even care about padel,”

He doesn’t pull you closer, mindful that he’s sweaty, and you feel your heart ache a little. Max was the centre of his world, thousands of people spent their lives anticipating a flick of his wrist, but he never once took another person for granted.

“Cut him some slack,” Lando says, and you watch him pour some water over his curls with a grin. “He knows he won the lottery,”

You frown at that. “He didn’t.” You finally turned to Max, looking up at his flushed cheeks and glassy ocean eyes as you press a palm to his cheek. “the lottery is luck. He got me on purpose,”

He smiles at that, hands ghosting over your hips as he lets go of you. “Who cares about being a padel champion?”

You shrug, brushing some hair away from his forehead, just to touch it. “I’d rather go home with a four time world champion anyway,”

#max verstappen x reader #f1 x reader #f1 fanfiction #max verstappen fanfiction #f1 imagine

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five-rivers · 11 days

Text

Funeral

“I’m sorry,” said Danny, speaking to the headstone in lieu of anything else to talk to. He certainly wasn’t going to speak to the empty and expectant grave a few feet away. “I wanted to wait. I want to wait. It’s just–” He cut himself off, curling his hands into fists. “There are so many things I haven’t seen, haven’t done. Jazz got married, you know? She’s pregnant. If I was– I could have–”

He fell silent and adjusted the collar of his overcoat, trying to keep the frigid Ghost Zone wind away from his currently human neck.

“Sam and Tucker are thinking about getting married, now that we’ve all graduated,” he said softly. “I would have liked to see that, too. And have a career. Travel. I know you wanted to do that, too. But–”

He broke off as his voice pitched weirdly, too high, too loud. Sparks jumped off his fists as his emotions rose. He flickered in and out of sight and tangibility, and his skin started to–

With an effort, he wrenched himself back together.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “This is why I have to go. I’m too unstable, and it isn’t like you. I’m not just a danger to myself.”

(A premonition: Disturbed soil, a hand reaching out, a solid body… but there was nothing there now. The ground was troubled only by slowly growing grass.)

He turned away from Dani’s grave and walked back to the mortuary shrine.

The wind kicked up again. There was ice in it.

A motto was carved above the threshold of the shrine. It read, LET THE DEAD BURY THEIR OWN DEAD. Appropriate. No one fully living would be here tonight. Sam, Tucker, and Jazz had all wanted to be, just like they had all wanted to be there for Dani, but there were rules about this kind of thing, old rules, and–

Ice feathered out from under his feet. And it wouldn’t be safe for them.

The mortuary shrine was cozy on the inside, not at all like a morgue, or an embalmer’s studio. There were some similarities, overlaps in function, but the shrine was not organized with decaying fleshy bodies in mind. The central altar, for example, was high off the ground, for ease of access by the celebrants, but it was soft, bed-like, for the sake of the one who’d lie there. The other altars were filled with other things, like candles, foods, oils and wines, salt, cloth, books, and strange implements Danny couldn’t name. All things needed for a burial.

There was other furniture, too, and the associated accouterments. Elegant ghost lanterns and a fireplace, burning with cold fire. Lovely chairs and small tables carved from bright wood. Plush footstools. Tapestries and curtains, softening the stone walls.

Three ghosts waited for him there, the proper number for a rite like this. Frostbite, his horns only inches from the ceiling. Pandora, who had taken a smaller form for the occasion. Clockwork, who looked much the same as he always did, except that he wasn’t changing forms, instead wearing a guise of solid middle age.

(Danny still had to look up at all of them. He'd managed to catch up to Jazz, but he'd never reached his father's height.)

“You are ready,” said Clockwork.

It wasn’t really a question, didn't necessarily call for a response, but Danny understood. This was his last chance to back out without any more consequences than the ones he was currently experiencing.

But those consequences were bad enough. He shuddered as intangibility and invisibility rippled through him again, and he just barely kept a grip on his more destructive powers.

“Yes,” said Danny. He looked around the shrine, nervous. He hadn't been here when Dani did this. He didn't know what came next. Not in any detail. “Should I change?”

“No,” said Pandora. “Not unless you feel the need to. The ritual will be a guide, as it was for your younger sister.”

“Then we shall begin,” said Clockwork.

Danny nodded.

Frostbite came forward fist, and leaned all the way down to kiss Danny’s forehead. “You are dead, Great One, and we will remember you.”

He stepped back, and Pandora took his place. “You are dead, little warrior, and we will send you on with honor.” She pressed a kiss to his forehead as well.

Then, Clockwork came up. He looked down at Danny for longer than the other two. “You are dead, Daniel, and the time comes for all the dead to be laid to rest.”

When Clockwork’s lips brushed against Danny’s forehead, he felt the first strands of the ritual wrap around him like silk. Still thin and tenuous enough that he could break free, but not without damage to both the weaving and himself.

Frostbite, meanwhile, had turned to one of the lesser altars. There was a small teapot chilling there, above a braiser of cold fire. Frostbite poured its contents into a large mug, then added three scoops of shimmery white powder, each from a different small pot, before stirring three times.

He held the mug out to Danny. “For your nerves.”

“Is this drugged?” asked Danny, taking the mug. He kept his tone light. Considering the parts of this Danny knew were going to happen, that was really the least of his worries.

“Drugged and poisoned,” said Frostbite. “We did research into the best way to ritually account for your continued life. This is it.”

If Danny was younger, he’d ask if it was going to kill him. He knew better, now, about how durable half-ghosts were. Memories of long-ago history lessons, of trivia, of drugged drinks and gentle, honored deaths on cold mountains ghosted through Danny’s mind. But those were children.

He raised the mug to his lips and took a drink. It tasted of chocolate, cream, and a bewildering array of spices and herbs, from capsaicin to vanilla to rosemary. There was also a bitter undertaste, and Danny would have pulled away instinctively, but as soon as he’d started the reflexive motion, Frostbite put a friendly but firm hand on the back of his head, and another on the bottom of the mug, keeping it tilted back.

(A premonition: Other hands hovered nearby, ready to assist if Danny resisted. He could feel them. One over his nose, another stroking his throat, taking advantage of the remaining reflexes of his human body. But they weren’t there. Not yet.)

The rites, now started, would not be so easily refused.

Danny drank deeply, finding a strange sort of enjoyment in the extended physical contact. He’d been avoiding touch ever since a nasty scare with his ice powers and Sam’s skin. There had been close calls before that, too, with his newer, more esoteric powers, but until then…

Frostbite tilted Danny’s head all the way back, ensuring the last few drops of the drink fell past Danny’s lips, then pulled the mug away. Danny licked his teeth and lips, and swallowed one more time. He didn’t feel anything yet.

“What next?” he asked, wincing at the edge of power behind the question. He should probably just. Not talk. Especially not with drugs in his system.

“After a death, the first step is to clean and prepare the body,” said Pandora.

Of course. Danny nodded. The mortuary shrine… wobbled.

Frostbite swept Danny up into his arms - which would have been more embarrassing if Frostbite wasn’t huge - and carried him to one of the lesser altars. It was smooth-surfaced and the neighboring, even smaller altars had bars, bottles, jars, basins of water, and washcloths, all arranged to stand at precise angles from one another. He was laid down on the altar, and Frostbite and Clockwork started to undress him.

At first, Danny tried to help, peeling out of his overcoat and sweater quickly. But then, his movements seemed to… blur. His mind was still sharp, as far as he could tell, but his limbs were becoming clumsy, slow.

It was Clockwork who untied his boots, and Frostbite who unbuttoned Danny’s shirt. By the time they got to his underthings, it felt like there was a barrier between him and his body. Not anything solid, he could still move, still react, but something muffling, slowing. Frostbite laid him down so that he was flat on his back on the lesser altar. Clockwork started going through Danny’s hand with a wet, lightly perfumed, comb. Frostbite, meanwhile, took out a set of dentists tools and eased Danny’s jaw open with one claw.

Across the room, at the main altar, Pandora laid layer after layer of cloth. Some of them were patterned, others plain. Some were thick with embroidery, others were gossamer thin. Some were edged with beads or woven with gold, others looked tattered, as if they’d been previously used for something else, the scrupulously cleaned.

Clockwork, done with Danny’s hair for the moment, moved on to his feet. It was hard to describe the intimacy of being cleaned like this by someone else. By someone he knew. He wasn’t a patient, Clockwork wasn’t a nurse. He wasn’t an infant, and Clockwork wasn’t his parent. But this was an act of care and love, offered without judgment. It was also embarrassingly efficient and thorough. When a body was cleaned, prepared for internment, it wasn't just the normal surfaces that were cleaned, but areas generally considered private.

As Clockwork moved upwards, the powers that churned along the surface of Danny’s skin quieted. They did not go silent - they never did, these days - but they were no longer so maddeningly active.

Finished with Danny's mouth (which now felt much more clean than it ever did after the dentist's) Frostbite moved on to his nails, clipping and cleaning them, smoothing rough edges and cuticles. Danny tried to be helpful with this, to at least hold his hands in the right way, but the effects of the drugs were progressing. His movements were slowing, growing smaller.

He should be panicking. The loss of control, at least, should bother him, given the constant vigilance his rapidly growing powerset required. But, as a human, his emotions were still principally dependent on physical systems and chemical reactions. His heartbeat was slow, and growing slower.

They turned him over to work on his back, and Danny half-dozed, eyes barely open, as they diligently scrubbed him clean.

Then, he was on his back again, anointed with oils and perfumes, smokes and incense wafted over him. Something wet drew a line from his lips to his groin.

Danny's heart twitched to a stop.

Blue-white rings flared from his core in an instant, painfully arresting the moment of death, then swept out to Danny's extremities. He flinched, twisting on the table, onto his side, suddenly able to move again. Everything was too bright, too loud, too close, too present. He covered his face with his arms.

The panic he’d missed earlier was in full force now, shining bright and pure and crystalline in the way only ghostly emotions could. He was in danger. He was dangerous. He could feel his powers coiling, ready to strike, whether it be his will or against it. He fought them, and paid the price, bones and skin going soft, their fine, detailed structures destabilizing, running like wax, like the flesh of a caterpillar in a cocoon.

A hand scooped through his sticky, melting flesh and pressed a cool, hard, surface to his lips. He drank. It was the same thing Frostbite had given him before, but without the bitterness. With every gulp, the ritual spun onwards, strands thickening, multiplying. By the time he was finished drinking, his skin was sticky and damp, but solid again underneath that.

“No poison this time?” he asked.

“Just because you cannot taste it does not mean it isn’t there,” said Frostbite. “Do you know what separates a medicine from a poison?”

“Dosage?” hazarded Danny. Jazz was an MD. He’d picked up a few things.

All three of the older ghosts chuckled. Frostbite went as far as to ruffle his hair.

“He does learn,” said Clockwork, unzipping Danny’s jumpsuit (it had grown with him) and gently pushing aside Danny’s hands when he moved to help.

Whatever was in the second drink, if there was anything at all, it didn’t act nearly as quickly as the first. He could feel so much more, his sense of touch unblunted. It made the process of Frostbite, Clockwork, and Pandora undressing him all that much more, especially when they chided him (ever so gently) for trying to help them, for doing anything but lying there like a corpse.

(Deja vu: Rituals as old as humanity, reaching back, reaching forward. The preparation of the dead, laying them to rest. The duty of the family, to clean and prepare, to stand watch, sit vigil, to March the wake, to mourn, to celebrate. The dead did not move to help. They did not move at all.)

They washed the spaces between his toes and fingers, his teeth, the backs of his eyelids, the insides of his ears, every nook and cranny they had cleaned when he was in human form was cleaned again. The stickiness from his earlier destabilization was wiped away, replaced with a dry, fresh feeling. Invisibility and intangibility stopped wisping across his skin, too tightly bound by the ritual to be used even by accident.

The perfumes they used now were different, they tickled at his brain and core both, summoning feelings of nostalgia, regret, longing, grief, quiet, peace. They traced symbols in them, in languages Danny didn’t know but could feel the meanings of, of linear past and spreading future, of the pinpoint present, of decay and rot, of the loosening of muscles, of the blurring of boundaries, of reconstruction, of change, of stability, of things remade, of things caught in time forever.

Frostbite picked him up and brought him to the main altar. It was soft, piled high with cloth. They felt cool and silky on Danny’s bare skin and there was a pillow under his head. Absently, he ran his palm back and forth across the top cloth. Or, no, not quite the top one. The main one he was touching was large, large enough to hang off the altar and pool on the ground, but there was a smaller strip of embroidered cloth, almost like a long belt or ribbon, at the height of his biceps.

There was, he noted, another such ribbon under his ankles, and another under his knees. He wondered what they were for.

He didn’t have to wonder for long. Clockwork picked up the long ends of the ribbon and wound it around his ankles in a complicated fashion. The twists and turns showed off the intricacy of the abstract embroidery. He finished it off with a knot that disappeared under the rest of the ribbon.

The strings of the ritual gathered faster, wound thicker, tighter, with a physical anchor.

Clockwork moved on to the ribbon at Danny’s ankles. The weaving was slightly different, but had the same effect.

He expected the one under his arms to go the same way. But instead Pandora, Frostbite, and Clockwork gathered flowers from another altar. They were all black and white, so it took Danny a moment to recognize them. Lilies, roses, marigolds, carnations, asphodel, nettle, nightshade, poppies, lycoris. Flowers for death, for funerals, for mourning.

Clockwork wrapped Danny’s hands around the bouquet, and pressed the ring finger of his left hand against a rose thorn. A drop of blood welled up. Blood, not ectoplasm. Danny stared, surprised. But he didn’t get to stare long. Clockwork produced another ribbon, and wrapped it around the flowers and Danny’s wrists.

Then, he picked up the other ribbon under Danny and tied it around his upper arms and elbows before tucking the ends into the ribbon around Danny’s wrists.

It all felt very secure.

Under normal circumstances, Danny would have been able to escape such flimsy restraints in a hummingbird’s heartbeat. But it wasn’t just the ribbons that held him. He could still escape, yes, but it would take a great deal of effort.

He twitched his shoulder, just to check that he could. The motion was slow, heavy, and smaller than he expected.

Pandora put a stilling hand on his shoulder and held a coin up in front of his face. It was large and silver, inscribed with symbols from languages both long dead and never alive. Danny wondered if they had made it just for this occasion.

“A last chance,” said Pandora.

His last chance to back out, is what she meant. To say something. He could do it. He could stop the ritual and suffer the consequences. He could be a danger to everyone around him for the rest of his existence, however long or short that was.

He gave Pandora the tiniest shake of his head. She smiled and pressed the coin against his lips. He opened his mouth, just enough to take the coin. It fit comfortably on his tongue, in between his teeth but not jostling against them. If it wasn’t custom made and sized, it might as well have been. It tasted metallic and sweet, as if, given enough time, it would dissolve on his tongue.

Pandora took out one more embroidered ribbon and wrapped it around his jaw and the top of his head, holding his mouth closed. There was enough tension in the ribbon to press, but not enough for its edges to dig into tender flesh. Taken together, the coin and ribbon made an effective gag.

His wail was now bound just as effectively as his intangibility and invisibility, as effectively as his tongue and voice. For the first time since the incompatibility between his powers and his body became clear, the stress of keeping his wail under control was lifted away.

(A possibility, unraveled: Danny standing at the center of a crater made with his own voice. No, kneeling. No, weeping, curled on the ground, head touching dirt and fractured concrete. He knew those buildings, teetering on the edges of new cliffs. He knew them.)

This was the right decision.

The three older ghosts busied themselves at the other, smaller altars briefly, allowing Danny to collect himself and sink deeper into that sense of relaxation. The wail wasn’t the only thing that had been taken off his shoulder. All his other voice-based powers were similarly locked away, and he hadn’t even noticed losing his shapeshifting, but he couldn’t touch that, either.

When Pandora stepped back into his field of view, she was holding a mask. A death mask, more specifically, styled after Danny’s own face. Frostbite, next to her, held a small, square cloth, like a handkerchief and a small bottle.

Clockwork reached out and touched Danny’s face, briefly tracing each of his features. His lips, his nose, his eyebrows. He slid his fingers down, pressing Danny’s eyelids closed. The motion was gentle, but held a strange sort of finality.

Danny found that he could not open his eyes.

Fabric, soft and smooth, whisper thin, covered his face and was adjusted, straightened. Something fragrant dampened it from above, near his nose. More perfume. He inhaled. Exhaled. Stopped.

Stopped.

Before he could have any more thoughts about not being able to breathe, the death mask was pressed into place. The weight of it pressed the thin shroud over his face snugly into his skin. It made his other limitations - his eyes, his breath, his general immobility - more acceptable, somehow.

Other talismans were placed on his skin or tucked into the ribbons. Some, he could identify by touch. The ticklish barbs of a feather. The cold roundness of another, smaller coin. The familiarity of his childhood stuffed bear. Others, his powers identified for him. The sparkling wonder of a lunar meteorite. The shiver of a carved piece of ghost ice. The thrumming power and glory of a vial of ectoplasm shed by a god Danny had fought and defeated. He hadn’t known they’d kept that.

But other things were too strange to identify by touch alone. He could make guesses. Maybe that was a flower petal, maybe this other thing was a coil of string, and while he was sure that last was paper, he couldn’t say what was on it.

With every token placed, another one of his powers was called up and locked away, like bound by like. His awareness of the stars winking out as the meteorite was placed was sad. The powers he’d ‘earned’ from that god being placed firmly out of his reach, however, was only a relief.

He was verging on helplessness, now. Helpless, but unburdened.

Clockwork started to speak. None of the words were recognizable, but Danny knew the feeling of a prayer. This one was old. Old old. Old even by the standards of ancient ghosts. They hummed briefly in his bones before settling in them like lead weights. Or golden ones.

The edges of the sheet he was lying on were lifted up and folded over him, then tucked under him. Wound around him. It was a winding sheet. Of course. Of course. The next cloth, too, was pulled up and over him, the motion a little more brisk now that the tokens were held in place by the first sheet. Then, the next. Cerecloth and cerements.

Danny twitched a little, at first, at certain unexpected touches, but when the third wrapping added its comforting, soothing pressure he was reduced (or, perhaps, elevated) to a state of perfect limpness.

They added more tokens between the third layer and the fourth, but Danny couldn’t even begin to guess what they were. They were too muffled by layers of silk - those layers being both the literal layers of cloth and the figurative layers of the ritual.

Clockwork’s prayers were getting harder to hear, but Danny felt like he could recognize some of them, now. Snippets of Akkadian, Egyptian, Greek, Latin, a word or two off the Oracle Bones. Prayers for the dead, for their revenge and their remembrance, for their reverence and their reward, for their repose and their return.

He was wrapped again and again, until the pressure, the gentle rocking motion necessary to wrap him, and the nearly unintelligible rhythm of Clockwork’s prayers threatened to lull him to sleep.

He could hear snatches of Esperanto, now, and English.

“... rest, and rest in peace… until waking… to hope… blessing in memory…”

Some parts of it felt familiar. Others were strange, so strange, but he was bound so securely, now, that he almost felt as if he was floating.

“... iron and wood, we entrust this most precious… an embrace… the hallowed graves… deliver and defend…”

No, he was floating, sort of. He’d been lifted up, sheets and all, and now he was being moved sideways. Sideways, and now down, down, into a snug cavity. Was he bordered by flowers? Pillows? Both? He couldn’t tell.

“... into silk… like dust by sunlight into gold… changed… after a long day, to sleep…”

A faint weight draped over him, a final sheet covering him. He felt, with a strange sense that lay deeper than instinct, further down and closer to his heart and soul, that Pandora, Frostbite, and Clockwork had drawn closer, that they were kneeling beside his casket or coffin, heads bowed.

“Now we lay thee down to sleep,” whispered Clockwork, words startlingly clear despite his voice being harder to hear than ever, “we pray thy grave thy soul to keep, until thou choose the form thou take, and the hour thou shall wake.”

“And should thou never wake,” whispered - someone. It was getting harder to tell the muffled voices apart. “We shall mourn for thy sake.”

Very slowly, the force pushing in and down on Danny increased, deliciously. It was almost enough.

(Danny didn’t know where that thought had come from.)

A loud thump shuddered through Danny. Another. They were nailing him in. Another restraint. Another limitation. Another step towards the cumulation of the ritual. Almost. Almost.

Thirteen nails sealed Danny into the coffin.

(He had been snug before. Now, he wasn’t sure he could have moved even if the ritual hadn’t removed the ability from him.)

(All his powers were bound. There was no more sense of responsibility keeping him awake. His body was cocooned in every way possible. There was no more fear about destabilizing and melting. None of his choices would change what would happen to him next. Only a curiosity about what it would feel like to be buried kept him from succumbing to his soul-deep exhaustion then and there.)

Vaguely, ever-so-vaguely, Danny could feel his coffin lifted, moved. He knew where he was going. Out of the mortuary shrine, across the lawn, down the rows and rows of graves, and to one grave in particular. He’d wanted to be buried next to family, and Dani was his only family available.

They stopped. He was lowered. Down. Down. Stopped again.

A chill stole over Danny, like the cool side of a pillow, but all over his body, as if it meant to draw out the last of the warmth of life from his ectoplasm. Restful.

The dirt came down in sifted shovelfuls, like rain on a roof, like distant thunder. And– he did have more powers, either so subtle he didn’t notice them as such or as of yet undiscovered. These were buried as thoroughly as the others.

Up and up the dirt piled, until he could barely feel it as it came down. Until all that was left was the weighty, solid thump of a headstone coming down.

Then there was nothing. Nothing but silence, stillness, silk… and sleep.

Danny woke with the comfortable confusion of someone who had gotten their blanket wrapped around them unevenly while they slept. Slow, unhurried, well-rested, but just slightly less cozy than expected.

He shifted, mumbling and rolling over. No, that wasn’t any good. He made a face. There was something on his face. He reached up to wipe it off, and the sheets wrapped around him tore like cobwebs.

That roused him further. This… he did not think this was his bed. It was his, but not his bed.

He wiped something thin and crackly off his face and inhaled deeply. Dust. Salt. Dust, salt, and something like decay, but sharper, fresher, cleaner.

He breathed, remembering. His mouth tasted like silver and sugar. His hands quested outward, seeking, seeking, until he found the edges of the space he was in.

This was his grave. His coffin.

It was bigger than he’d imagined.

His eyes opened to a darkness relieved only by his own faint glow. The many sheets he had been wrapped in had been reduced to fragile scraps, except a very few that remained stubbornly wrapped around his shoulders. His mask was a thin shell. The flowers were desiccated, colorless strands and flakes. The pillows were flat and torn, showing the wooden sides of the coffin in places. The only token he could see and identify was the plush and pristine form of Neil Bearstrong. He gathered the toy close, pressing him against his chest.

He’d made it. He was awake, aware, and apparently stable, when before he’d been bracing himself for death. He breathed out, breathed in. His breath caught in his throat, and he giggled.

Did that mean Dani had made it, too?

He rolled onto his back and put a hand against the lid of the coffin. It looked strange there. Disproportionate. But of course it did. His body had just finished reformatting itself into a stable form. Frostbite had told him that he’d probably look different, maybe even radically different. Clockwork had even confirmed that medical opinion, from a temporal perspective.

Positives: his hand was a recognizably human hand. He was awake.

He didn’t dare turn human - if he even could - until he had Frostbite and the others look him over. He wouldn’t be able to phase through the Ghost Zone’s soil. Teleportation was inadvisable while he was this disoriented. So were portals. And most powers, really.

He’d have to dig his way out.

Bracing himself, making sure his limbs were free of restraint, he drew back his fist to punch the lid. The dirt would come in fast, and he wasn’t sure how deep he was. Six feet was traditional, of course, but it was also traditional for the dead to stay that way. So.

The lid flew upward under the force of his strike, all the dirt overhead bending away. He grabbed the edges of the hole and pulled down, widening it enough for him to claw his way out without warping his body. He… wasn’t quite ready for that, after the whole melting thing.

He burrowed upward, feeling like something between a worm and a badger, batting away dirt, crawling, squirming, reaching upward. Despite his best efforts, some of the winding sheets came with him, clinging, slowing his passage. Still, his hand hit free air. Grass tickled at his fingers. He set his palm down on the ground, and pulled.

The dirt did not want to let him go. It pulled back, its embrace offering an eternal peace, but Danny was firm, eager to go, to see, to live. He pushed himself up, and out, then lay, panting, on the ground.

That had been… more tiring than expected, actually.

Someone propped him up, large hands bringing him into a sitting position. “Daniel,” said Clockwork. A loose and oddly cut robe was wrapped around him.

“Mm,” said Danny, his voice cracking.

A cup was raised to his lips. He drank greedily, the sweet, floral liquid soothing his dry throat.

“Shall we get you cleaned up?” asked Pandora, another hand, laid on the center of his back.

“Can you walk?” asked Frostbite. “Or fly?”

“Yes,” said Danny, hoarsely. He reached up to put his hand on Clockwork’s shoulder. It took some to get it there. It was further away than he’d thought.

He was smaller than he had been. Not entirely unexpected. Returning to one’s appearance at death was, apparently, one of the more common ways for this to go. But had he really been this small at fourteen?

They did not go to the mortuary shrine, but made their uncertain way to the other shrine in the graveyard: the revival shrine. The structure was much the same inside and outside, but it had only one altar. The rest of the space was reserved for a bath, bed, and mirrors.

Pandora guided him to a chair in front of one of the mirrors. Danny stared. He wasn’t much to look at right now, but what he could see of his body…

It hadn’t been a winding sheet dragging at him as he’d crawled through the dirt. It had been wings. He shrugged the loose robe off his shoulders to see them better. They were patterned with white and black, star and moon shapes on a dark background. He had antennae. Long, soft, feathery looking things curving up and back from his temples.

Clockwork brought a damp cloth to his face and, slowly, began to clean away the dirt.

“Surprised?” asked Clockwork.

“Are you?”

Clockwork chuckled.

“Did Dani– Is Dani–?”

“She woke seventeen years ago,” said Clockwork. “She is quite smug about technically being older than you in terms of lived experience.”

“She would be,” said Danny.

He pulled away from Clockwork’s ministrations to get another look at the mirror. He had about the same proportions he did when he was a teenager, and his hair was as white as it ever was in ghost form, but it sparkled, as if someone had dusted it with silver glitter. His antennae matched the color pretty well, too. Star-shaped freckles littered his cheeks, and when he tilted his head this way and that… There was an effect like a hologram, depending on the light, of a dark or glimmering domino mask around his eyes.

And, beneath that, his basic features, the structures of his bones… They looked about the same as they had when he was young. Except… softer, somehow. More neutral. The change, as subtle as it was, gave him a genderless mien.

(The idea of that trend continuing elsewhere on his body didn’t bother him nearly as much as he would have expected before this.)

He wondered what he would look like in human form. But… later. Later.

For now, Pandora was running a tiny brush though the delicate hairs of his antennae, removing irritating bits of soil and grass.

“In fact,” said Pandora, “I would wager that she will be smug about physically appearing older than you.”

“She looks older than me, too?” asked Danny. “That’s hardly fair.”

“That is the way of things, I’m afraid. She hadn’t truly died until she was buried.”

“But she’s okay?”

“She’s doing very well, last I saw her,” said Frostbite.

“And Jazz? Sam and Tucker?”

“All fine,” said Clockwork. “They visit you frequently.”

Pandora did something complicated with telekinesis that pulled most of the dirt from Danny’s skin and left him feeling distinctly fluffed. The fuzz along the bases and upper edges of his wings stood on end. He shook himself all over, then plucked the washcloth from Clockwork’s hands so he could clean behind his ears and in-between his toes.

“Clothes?” asked Clockwork.

“Cut for wings?” challenged Danny.

“Of course.”

#danny phantom #dannymay #dannymay 2024 #dannymay 2024 day 21: funeral

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wolfjackle-creates · 4 months

Note

👀👀 u no what I'm gonna ask right (please more for the uncle clark pretty please 🙏🥺)

What's this? Another 565 words? Couldn't be.

-----

Danny wanted to fidget, only he was floating a foot above the ground without legs. “I can fix that!” He took barely a thought and his human-half bled through to his ghost form—his internal organs started working again and his legs formed as he let gravity bring him down to the ground. “See?” he asked with a self-conscious grin. “I totally have a heartbeat and you have nothing to worry about Uncle Cl— Wait. What do I call you? Uncle Superman?That’s weird.”

Danny’s grin faltered when Uncle Clark didn’t reply right away and appeared to be taking a few deep breaths. “You just. Restarted. Your heart.”

“No I didn’t! I always had a heartbeat!” Danny tried to insist. His uncle just gave him a look and Danny laughed self-consciously. “Okay, fine. But seriously, what do I call you?”

“Superman or Kal. And how about you? Constantine calls you Prince Phantom and said you were thousands of years old when I know for a fact you’re seventeen.”

“Oh, Danny’s fine. I go by Danny Phantom when I’m like this. And dude, I can’t believe my uncle is an alien! That’s so cool. And, wait! The older superboy! He’s your clone. Dani is gonna flip when she finds out. Can we introduce them? They’re so gonna make up a mirrors-only club and talk shit about us and their creators.”

“You’ve got a— No. Nope, later.” Uncle Clark took another deep breath and Danny suppressed a wince. He was so not joining the Justice League after this, was he? But then he watched as his uncle turned to Batman. “Batman, once this gets sorted, I’ll need you to sit Danny down and give him the presentation on secret identities.”

“It’s fine! No one expects the dead kid to have a secret identity. Besides, all my rogues know who I am. There’s no secrets among the dead, after all. It’s my parents and the government I have to keep off my back.”

Uncle Clark took another deep breath and looked at Batman. “Batman, I apologize for every time I laughed at you when you complained about your kids getting up to things behind your back.”

Batman’s lips turned slightly up and he nodded his head to Uncle Clark, but didn’t say anything besides, “Hn.”

Then Uncle Clark was looking at Danny again. “Okay, we’re gonna start over. Danny, why does Constantine think you’re thousands of years old and a death prince?”

Danny sighed. Uncle Clark so wasn’t going to let him get away without answering. “Well, I am a death prince. And my regent and adviser is the Ghost of Time, responsible for upholding the time stream. He sends me to the past or future occasionally if he needs someone to intervene. Your likeness gets carved into a couple of stone tablets and all of a sudden everyone thinks you’re thousands of years old.” Danny rolled his eyes. “No one even asks anymore!”

Clark closed his eyes and mouthed something. When he opened them again, he looked straight at Danny. “Okay, here’s what’s going to happen. You and I are going to find an empty conference room. I’ll get us some tea and refreshments. And you are going to explain everything. And you know what my day job is, I’ll know if you’re lying or trying to hide anything.”

Danny winced. “Yes, Uncle Cl— Kal. Uncle Kal.”

-----

I guess there's a next

Again, if anyone wants to continue this, go for it! It's so much a back burner fic it's not even funny.

#dpxdc #danny fenton #clark kent #clark is danny's uncle #danny is clark's nephew #clark is having a bad day #and he had such high hopes for it #don't think he missed that comment about danny's parents #he just doesn't want to discuss *everything* in front of the entire league #bruce is just happy that its not him this time

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clockwayswrites · 11 months

Text

This is why Moku and I are dangerous to each other:

clockways — Today at 2:01 AM

OKAY Danny/Tim where Danny is either ghost king or working for Clockwork or playing Reaper or something showing up to talk to Tim like "MY DUDE, you have got to stop killing so many people, even if it's in the name of good, esp when they're surrounded by rancid ectoplasm"

And this is now the Bats learn about Tim's LOA kill count

Mokulule — Today at 2:12 AM

Heheheh oh yesss

Does Danny show up in the middle of like a supposedly secure location in the middle of a mission?

Like “dude please, I do not need the assassin influx, you have any idea of the trouble you caused killing so many at once?”

Mokulule — Today at 2:19 AM

I’m kinda imagining these new ghosts still following Ra’s Al Ghul fanatically unless Danny can somehow get them rehabilitated and imagine if they found their way to the living world?! Do you want that madman to have a ghost army?

clockways — Today at 2:19 AM

I think a mission or right in the middle of the cave, yeah

and totally, like the pit waters have a Not Good effect on the ghosts so they're even more off than normal I think

Mokulule — Today at 2:22 AM

Okay but I am liking the implication here that Tim has been having this ongoing crusade against Ra’s in the background of everything where he keeps blowing up LOA bases and somehow managing to keep it secret

Here B thought Ra’s was his nemesis, turns out attention had shifted to Tim years ago

clockways — Today at 2:25 AM

Yes, Tim is 100% the Detective now and Ra's keeps being a creepy obsessed mo-fo and Tim just keeps finding ways to blow shit up. if it started at 17 could say Tim is 20, 21 now so they've been at it three years or so

Mokulule — Today at 2:26 AM

And like Danny has had enough, there’s so many of them they have their own realm in the realms and are stirring up trouble trying to find ways back into the living world

clockways — Today at 2:27 AM

Yeeeees They're basically segregated into a specific area of the realms and are still causing shit

Mokulule — Today at 2:28 AM

Maybe they even have their own pseudo pit from gathering rancid ectoplasm and it’s messing up the ecosystem and they’re hurting the blobs that would otherwise be cleaning that shit up

And the pseudo pit is definitely not helping their mental stability

Just trash assassin baby ghosts

clockways — Today at 2:29 AM

LOL Blob ghost sucker fish! yes xD

Mokulule — Today at 2:29 AM

They need rehabilitation and a bath and like it’s really not helping that Tim keeps sending more

clockways — Today at 2:30 AM

Every time Danny starts to get a handle on it BAM more assassins and more bad juice

And then Danny has to ramp up the blob ghost breeding again

Mokulule — Today at 2:31 AM

Yeah and he can only handle a couple at a time and he also has to make sure they don’t go back once he’s gotten them out and it’s just a mess

clockways — Today at 2:31 AM

OKAY OKAY WAIT. Danny makes an appointment with Tim as Wayne CEO

Shows up in his human guise with Tim as just Tim which sets up all sorts of alarms

Mokulule — Today at 2:32 AM

Ahahahaha yesss this is like a corporate problem 😂

clockways — Today at 2:32 AM

How is this normal seeming dude associated with the LOA?? What does he know about Tim??? Who is he???

Dany is just :) Look at me, using the proper channels!

Mokulule — Today at 2:32 AM

Danny is trying to go about this the right way official like

🤝

clockways — Today at 2:32 AM

🤝

Mokulule — Today at 2:33 AM

😂 everyone is very suspicious of Danny Fenton

clockways — Today at 2:34 AM

It doesn't help that he has officially been missing in the living realm since he graduated high sch9ool

(someone ((lancer)) finally noticed and reported him)

Mokulule — Today at 2:34 AM

Oh yeah even more suspicious for potential LOA connection

The fact that it was an old teacher and not his parents reporting him missing despite having graduated high school is also concerning

clockways — Today at 2:37 AM

mmmmy hum just all these red flags and it's very frustrating for the whole batfam.

Mokulule — Today at 2:38 AM

And like the guy looks like Danny Fenton, but is he really? He’s somehow very careful about not leaving prints and DNA where he goes, they’ve not been able to get any surefire confirmation this is indeed Danny Fenton

clockways — Today at 2:38 AM

AND THEN there is a gala that Ra's also shows up to... as does Danny. Just... to keep an eye on things. (He's worried about ghost assassins.)

But Tim sees Danny out of the corner of his eye and !!!

(Danny just went intangible through the wall, he's totally not on the guest list)

Mokulule — Today at 2:40 AM

Oh yes, he’s dressed up well enough, he’s had to learn that as a king and fits in just fine

clockways — Today at 2:42 AM

Tim can't help but recognize that Danny is handsome.

Mokulule — Today at 2:43 AM

Tim thinking he’s got two enemies at the gala now - has Tim told the other bats about Danny or is he hiding that? Cause then Tim might think the others have Ra’s handled so he has to handle Danny- and yeah okay he is very handsome, now that he’s not busy internally freaking out over what he knows (which he was at the first meeting)

clockways — Today at 2:45 AM

Depends how much the Bats know about Ra's interest in Tim. If they're aware at all, he's told them I think since Danny know is a threat to them all. 🤔

But I do still see him handling Danny either way since Danny hasn't met the family- keep things separate until there is no doubt.

Mokulule — Today at 2:46 AM

Okay but Clock, has Danny in his attempt at going through proper channels and requesting a meeting completely forgotten to mention the word ghost since he thought that was implied when he said the dead assassins were a problem for him?

clockways — Today at 2:47 AM

100%

He is still a disaster at explaining things

And look Tim is damn cute, Danny was a little flustered.

Mokulule — Today at 2:48 AM

So when Tim asks him what he’s doing there at the gala and he tells him that he’s keeping an eye out for assassins - Tim maybe takes that as a threat - like Tim thinks they’re playing 5D mental chess here, but Danny is a disaster and is not even playing chess

clockways — Today at 2:49 AM

!! OH Added bonus, Danny's etiquette training is all be like Dorathea and Pandora and etc, so he has a rather unusual speach pattern in King Mode which makes him seem that maybe common english isn't his first language but if he is Danny Fenton that doesn't track....

Mokulule — Today at 2:50 AM

Oh yesss good

clockways — Today at 2:50 AM

They have to end up on the dance floor, of course.

Mokulule — Today at 2:50 AM

Of course

Obligatory

clockways — Today at 2:51 AM

Danny is just all :) I'm putting my training to use! This is going so well!

Tim >:| What is this man playing at...

Mokulule — Today at 2:51 AM

Yes XD

clockways — Today at 2:52 AM

Ra's takes an instant hatred to Danny because he is Taking Tim's Attention!

Mokulule — Today at 2:52 AM

Eventual reveal is going to be hilarious

clockways — Today at 2:52 AM

Which makes Tim think that Ra's and Danny are old enemies

Mokulule — Today at 2:52 AM

Oh yess hahaha Ra’s now trying to have Danny killed

Now Danny is having to deal with both living and dead assassins he is not amused, but if he gets them away from Ra’s in the living world that will help some problems down the line. Just every assassin Ra’s sends disappears and no bodies turn up

clockways — Today at 2:55 AM

It's driving both Tim and Ra's mad

Things maybe come to a head when some of the ghost assassins try to go after Tim and Phantom shows up?

Mokulule — Today at 2:57 AM

XD Does Tim realize this is Danny or does he now think there’s another player?

Are they aware of Phantom as a ghost hero?

clockways — Today at 2:59 AM

HUM so I kinda want to say Tim does put 2 + 2 together- at least at some point. Maybe just because Phantom's new outfit mirrors what his formal clothing had. Not like perfectly but there's a lot of parallels in color and things

Maybe not till he's safe and- if they know of Phantom- they're back somewhere secure

Tim just holding an ice pack to his head jolting up and pointing a finger at Phantom "You're Danny!!!"

Phantom: Uh, yeah??? Of course I am?

And then @mokulule got distracted by fic and I went to sleep cause it was 3am. But my can we go from 'random statement' to 60% of a fic outline in no time. (Not it.)

#how promptous #dp x dc #brain dead #dead tired #Tim Drake/Danny Fenton

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gilbirda · 1 year

Text

The Wonderous Beauty of the Statuesque Scarlet

Jazz knew she was tall. It wasn't like it affected her life or anything (sarcasm). It wasn't like she didn't end dates early because the dude asked her if it was really necessary for her to wear heels. Yes, she was tall. And strong. On top of that, she had duties as Ghost Princess, so finding a partner was not easy for her. Or so she thought until a guy just her type bumps into her and completely bluescreens.

[Read on AO3][Read on FF]

----

Jazz knew she was tall.

Even when she was in the waiting line of, let’s say, the bank and an old lady commented “wow you are tall!”; even when a date ended early because the guy kept asking why she had to wear heels if she was already tall; even when Danny threatened to kick her shins complaining about her inheriting their dad’s genes.

Yes. She was well aware she was very tall.

Thank you very much for pointing it out.

She was happy with her height, now — she had accepted that kids would look at her in awe and comment on her height, and that some would ask if she was an Amazon. And you know what? She embraced it now. Yes, she was tall, and big, and her biceps were noticeable — but that wasn’t because she was an Amazon, but because of all the training and the fighting that being the older sister of the King of the Ghosts entailed.

Not that she could say that out loud.

The thing is she was used to people stopping and staring at her, craning their necks and lifting an eyebrow, looking back down to check if suddenly the flat shoes she was wearing had magically turned into impossible high heels that explained her height.

What she wasn’t used to, though, was making a man completely bluescreen.

“Oops, sorry.” She quickly rushed to grab the dude’s arm when he stumbled after colliding with her.

“Uh…”

“I should have seen where I was going, sorry.”

He just kept looking up at her, eyes wide, body frozen in place. There wasn’t a single coherent thought behind those blue eyes. She would know, she was a psychologist.

“Are you alright?”

“Huh?”

She bit her lip, wondering what to do. This had never happened to her before.

“I… uh, I’m fine.” He finally blinked and came back to his body. She didn’t miss his eyes roaming towards her naked arms, and the bracelets on her wrists, official Wonder Woman merchandise.

“Ok. Then I should just—”

“Do you like coffee?”

She blinked. He blinked, slowly realizing what he said. His cheeks tinted a bit red in embarrassment.

“I’m more of a tea gal.” Jazz giggled, enjoying this maybe way too much. He was cute all flustered. It was a nice change from all the bullshit she got from men all the time.

“Do you want to— uh, I mean.” He breathed in, breathed out, gathering his thoughts. “What I want to say is, do you want to go for coffee — or tea! — with me?”

“Like, right now?”

She looked around. They were right in front of a coffee shop. He had been on his way in when she accidentally body slammed him.

“No! No. Not right now.” He looked away back at one of the tables set up on the street. Jazz turned to look as well, trying to see what he was looking at. “Maybe some other time?”

It felt nice being hit on like this. Refreshing.

Also, it helped that he was cute, and handsome in a bad boy way, with a leather jacket and combat boots. She wasn’t scared to admit to herself that she had a type and he checked a lot of boxes in her list.

“I would love to!”

She quickly searched in her purse for some paper — an old restaurant ticket — and a pen and wrote her number and her name, with a little smiley face.

“Here,” she grabbed his hand and put the paper with her number in it, closing his fingers around the ticket, just in case. Her hands were usually cold, a side effect of her liminality, but she hoped he assumed it was because of the weather. “I have to go, but text me soon!”

He smiled back at her, and Jazz knew she was a goner. He had this boyish crooked smile with a hint of a dimple.

She hoped he texted her back, once the awe of her height had passed.

***

“So…”

“Shut up.”

“I mean—”

“I said shut up, Dickhead.”

“She’s cute.”

Jason growled, his hands fiddling with the piece of paper with a phone number in it. He had to text her. Soon. If he waited then she would get the wrong idea that he wasn’t interested and he was very interested—

“She’s tall, huh?” His brother kept going, unprompted. “Did you see those muscles? I bet she could snap me in half. Hell, she could snap you in half.”

Yes. He had seen those arms. He had imagined them around him already.

“What are you waiting for? Text her!”

“We have a case to look over, though.” He tried to put the paper with the phone number in his jacket, but Dick was quicker and stole it from his hands.

“Jasmine. It’s a pretty name.” He hummed, considering. “Jasmine and Jason. It has a nice ring to it. Also both names start with J, funny coincidence, don’t you— Jay? What’s wrong?”

Jason had stopped listening, his mind going back to the conversation with her. He had been ridiculous and messed up everything; but did he really mess up something so simple?

“I forgot to tell her my name.”

Dick’s eyebrows went to his hairline, his lips stretching in a big smile. “That bad, huh?”

“Shut your mouth, Grayson.”

His reaction only made his brother’s smile get bigger, if that was physically possible. He placed his elbows on the table and rested his head on his open palms.

“Could this be love at first sight?”

“You know that doesn’t exist—”

“You are now living in a Hallmark movie, Jay.” Dick sighed dramatically. “So romantic.”

Jason breathed slowly, controlling his thoughts. If he got riled up by the teasing, he would only get even more teased and then the conversation would go nowhere useful. They had to compare notes for a case, it was kind of the whole point of meeting up with his brother, and both had things to do after this.

Jason thought the whole thing could have been an email; but again, if Dick hadn’t insisted on meeting at the coffee place because it was nice outside, he wouldn’t have gotten the phone number of the prettiest girl he had the pleasure of stumbling into.

“I’m living vicariously through you, just so you know.”

“Fuck off, Dickhead,” Jason snatched back the paper with the number and checked that it was still in one piece and the numbers hadn’t been smudged by his brother. It was fine. Even the cute smiley face drawing next to “Jasmine” was intact. “Let’s get to work.”

“I would, but someone forgot to get me my coffee~”

Oh shit.

Really?

Did he really forget to order their drinks? The one thing he had walked away from the table for?

Jason let his head fall onto the table, ignoring the laughs and giggles coming from his brother.

***

>>Hey.

>>Um

>>I'm Jason, the guy from the coffee shop?

>>Sorry for taking so long to text, I had stuff to do

>>Anyway, what do you think about next friday around 5?

>>You name the place

Jazz couldn’t help but smile down at her phone, reading back on the conversation with Jason.

She appreciated that he let her choose the meeting place, which was a good sign. After suggesting a nice coffee place that worked as a library as well, he commented he loved that place too and asked her if she had taken a book from there.

Turns out he loved books too, and didn’t shy away from any genre of literature — from classics to modern trashy romance.

His favorite author was Jane Austen. He tried not to geek too much, but after sending her a photo of his first edition Pride & Prejudice, that had a lot of sticky notes and his own annotations, she knew he was a big Austen nerd.

The contrast was more shocking when he turned up with a biker leather jacket, a white shirt, jeans and the same combat boots. He was combing back his flattened curls, complaining about parking in Gotham and that he hoped he didn’t make her wait too long.

She had to wait, but only because she arrived fifteen minutes earlier than the meeting time.

Not that she would tell him.

Jazz felt her mind become fuzzy as she watched him smile that crooked smile again, complimenting her carefully put together outfit — shut up Danny, she wasn’t trying to impress anybody — and the braid she spent so long trying to get right, undoing and redoing it.

“I have a sister that likes braiding her hair, and a friend of the family that usually comes over as well. They always complain when I don’t do it right.”

“Did they teach you how to braid?”

He chuckled, taking a sip of his latte. “Actually, funny enough, my little brother taught all of us. His mother let him do her hair and made him practice until he got it right.”

Jazz had a pinch in her chest like every time loving mothers were mentioned. “That’s nice,” her voice betrayed nothing as she looked down at her hands cupping her tea. “I tried to teach my little brother, but he didn’t have much interest.”

“Too girly for him?” He lifted an eyebrow, leaning in with a tiny smile so she knew he was joking.

She appreciated the change in topic, and she liked the opportunity to talk about Danny. “Nah. I mean, he had a ‘ugh, girls suck’ phase and stuff, but fortunately it didn’t last long.” Because then he had to become a superhero, but she couldn’t exactly say that.

Both laughed a little before a comfortable silence settled in their table. A few times their eyes met over the lids of their cups, making Jazz blush and look away.

“So… have you read anything interesting lately?”

From then on the conversation barely stopped. Jazz had never talked that much before, at least not about her favorite books and why she liked them. Jason listened, actually listened to what she said and added his own comments and corrections, no matter what she threw at him, showing he was also interested in the same things.

He talked as well, mentioning his own first edition collection and how his father let him have a private library with all the books he wanted. He talked around some topics, like his childhood or stuff about his father, but she didn’t want to pry. It didn’t feel shady, more like… it felt familiar, not wanting to bring up painful memories. She could understand that.

They asked for more coffee and more tea, and those chocolate chip cookies that looked delicious, talking and debating about the pros and cons of reading on a kindle or paperback.

The sun was low by the time they finished their drinks and the cookies, and neither really wanted to go home just yet. Jazz’s stomach grumbled. She was so hungry and the cookies only helped to awaken her stomach.

“Wanna… go have dinner?”

She looked up at him, blushing a little. “A coffee and a dinner date? You really are the full package.”

His cheeks tinted a bit red, but he didn’t look away. “Would hate to cut the night short when I’m enjoying my conversation with a beautiful lady.”

Jazz felt her cheeks catch fire. Jason had been cute and kind the whole time, but this was the first actual “move” he pulled on her.

And it was working.

She wanted to continue.

At her approval, they paid the bill — split in half, and he didn’t make a fuss about it. Good — and walked back out to the cold night in Gotham.

Jazz shivered a little. Maybe a flowery summer dress wasn’t the best for the night, but she didn’t expect being out so late. Time really flies when you are having fun, huh?

“Not used to Gotham's micro climate?” He commented.

She looked back at him, stopping her hands rubbing her naked arms. She had noticed he liked her arms so maybe the dress didn’t have sleeves. So what.

“How did you know I’m not from around here?”

“It’s obvious you’ve been in the city for a while, but your midwestern accent still stands out.” So he was observant, and had been analyzing her as much as she did him. “Do you want my jacket?”

It was so cliché that she just giggled. “Sure, if you don’t mind.”

Jason took off his jacket and extended it to her. It fit her frankly well! He was a bit shorter than her but he was more built and had wider shoulders, so the jacket sat comfortably on her body and gave her enough room around her arms and, thank the Ancients, around her chest. Maybe she should look around the men's section of the clothing store instead of getting frustrated with women’s clothing that never fit correctly.

“Thank you,” she said with a smile, which he acknowledged with a nod.

Now that he didn’t have the jacket, she could admire how the white shirt he wore left little to the imagination. It wasn’t too tight, but it creased in the right places and it let his muscular arms really shine.

He hit the gym regularly, that was obvious, but he wasn’t obsessed about it. He carried himself with the confidence of someone that knew what they had and didn’t need to make a show to get attention. Still, he carried himself with certain deliberateness — relaxed shoulders, quiet steps, head slightly down.

Jazz was used to Danny employing the same techniques to separate himself from his Phantom persona, to not be noticed just in case someone looked too close.

She was willing to set aside the thought. After all, Jason had been a delight the whole time and she had noticed many green flags in the time they talked. If he wanted to hurt her or if he was involved in shady stuff, she would have known already.

Also, it wasn’t like he could overpower her. She was strong. Stronger than a human, even with his size and probable training.

And Danny always said she needed to live a little. Maybe that meant dating around a bit, get to know new people, sleep with a cute guy—

Wow. That came out of nowhere.

She blushed, realizing she did like this guy. Enough to consider letting her hair loose a little. They were consenting adults, right? If he was interested and she was interested, then why not?

“Where do you want to eat dinner?” He asked as they arrived at his parked bike. And what a bike! She wasn’t an expert in these things, but it looked expensive and well maintained — well loved.

“I chose the coffee place, you choose the dinner place?” She shrugged, and the movement sent a puff of his scent to her nose. He smelled like gunpowder and engine oil.

Jason nodded and opened a side trunk to withdraw the helmets, giving her one. It was crimson red, matching the bike. “Alright, I know a place.”

***

Jazz was beautiful.

From the moment he arrived — finding her sitting at the table, looking at her phone — he understood why so many writers and poets could go on about the beauty of their partners. It would sound cliché, but his mind started comparing her soft looking skin to flower petals, and the pink of her lips—

Stop, Jason.

He knew she was smart and shared some interests with him, but he got the impression she was the shy kind over text and preferred meeting in person. He’d hoped that this date gave him a better insight into her character.

So they talked. For hours.

Honestly he didn’t have ulterior motives for this meeting. If it went well, he was interested in knowing her more, that’s for sure. It had been a while since he just hung out with someone for non-work related issues, and dating wasn’t really one of his priorities; but if this Amazon goddess liked his company as much as he had liked hers so far, he was willing to try.

The restaurant he took her to was cozy and not that well known, but the food was great. When they got there he couldn’t help but notice how she attracted everyone’s gaze, how her height and her beauty were such a beacon of light for the people around her.

She didn’t seem to care, though — her eyes were either fixed on her hands fiddling with the hem of the sleeves of his jacket or on him as she talked about the latest movie she had seen.

They sat down in a relatively secluded corner of the restaurant, the soft light hanging on the wall giving it all a romantic touch that was just perfect for the occasion.

Jazz took off his jacket now that they were indoors, and he lamented not taking a picture of her flowery dress and biker jacket combo. Maybe she would want to wear it again. He hoped so.

Silver lining, now she had her arms uncovered again, letting him — subtly — admire her biceps and her bracelets. She confirmed it was a Wonder Woman official jewelry line, and that she bought it to be funny but now was too committed to the bit.

Dinner was nice as well. After warming up at the café and talking about anything and everything, dinner felt a bit more personal, a bit of a deep insight of themselves.

She talked about her brother a lot. About her passion to become a great psychologist and the steps she had been taking towards her dream. About her parents — albeit she tried not to “be a bummer” and “get all depressed on such a nice date”.

She had a past she wasn’t ready to share, and he respected that, so he only kept his questions about her passion, her work and more stories with her brother.

It was around dessert that the conversation ramped down into more and more silence — not because they didn’t have things to say, but because, at least for him, the way the fairy lights illuminated her face was very distracting.

They shared a chocolate cake slice for dessert. She had a bit of chocolate on the corner of her lips, but she didn’t notice.

He didn’t think about his next move, he just leaned in over the tiny table and kissed the chocolate away. It helped that they had unconsciously gotten closer as they talked.

Her face was flushed when he sat back down on his chair, licking his lips. The cake was good, but her red cheeks looked tastier.

He wanted more.

“Um—”

Maybe she didn’t want more?

Jazz looked a bit lost for a second, her mouth open as she thought of what to say.

“Yeah?” He lifted an eyebrow.

She scrunched her nose, apparently having decided, and this time she leaned over the table, grabbing him by the shirt and pulling him into a proper kiss.

Her kiss was timid, like she didn’t want to scare him away or expected him to push her away any moment. When seconds passed and instead of rejecting her, he placed his hand on the base of her head to angle her better, she got braver and bolder, pressing her lips against his with a little more intensity than before.

She wanted him.

“Ahem!” A throat was cleared next to them, breaking the moment.

Jazz jumped back to her seat, her face completely red, looking down at the table like she had done something wrong.

Jason smiled up at the waiter, who was smiling politely but completely insincere. He knew this waiter, they weren’t friends, but Jason knew he had a little brother and that he was a student at Gotham University.

“Is the food to your liking?”

“Very.” He wasn’t talking about the food. The waiter’s eyebrow twitched, but his smile stayed in place. “Can we please get the check?”

“Right away, sir.”

Jason didn’t even look at how much everything was, his eyes glancing back at Jazz’s face and her lips — the way she was biting them, the way her eyes were eating him whole.

The walk back to the bike was quieter, with many stops to kiss and many burning side glances and handholding. He couldn’t get enough of her giggles every time he pulled her down for a quick kiss, or the feel of her hands on his shoulders, her strong arms around him.

Finally they reached the bike, safely parked on a quiet alley. It was late and no one was around, so he pulled her into the shadows for a more proper kiss, letting himself get lost in the taste of chocolate on her tongue.

Jazz was biting her lip when they parted for air, mischief in her eyes, which should have warned him of what she would do next. The world spun for a second as she grabbed him by the shoulders, switching their positions and slamming him against the wall with maybe a bit more strength than was necessary.

A traitorous moan escaped his throat.

“Oh?” She smiled. Of course she heard him.

“Don’t say a word.”

Her smile got wider. “Okay.”

In the heat of the moment she got bolder. She kissed him without any ounce of the shyness she had during their date — she was ravenous, eating him completely, holding him firmly against the brick wall.

He was warm, too warm, and the cold wind was starting to get uncomfortable.

“Do you… wanna continue?”

Jazz nodded, panting. “Your place or mine?”

***

The sun was shining right on her face, and since she was an early riser, no matter her activities last night, she was now wide awake.

That didn’t mean she had to get up from bed just yet. Because she didn’t want to.

Jason was also awake in her arms as they enjoyed the quiet lazy morning, hearing each other breathe, feeling each other’s warmth.

It was quiet in the apartment, a big contrast to the night they spent together. Jazz blushed and nuzzled her face against Jason’s curls in an attempt to hide from the world. She really got carried away, but there was something about him that made it impossible to resist — they only had one date, for Ancients’ sake.

He was so sweet and caring and cute and handsome and very irresistible. She just couldn’t stop, didn’t want to stop, and more than once she had to catch herself before she hurt him or did anything that was obviously inhuman. If she slipped, she hoped he forgot about it, too buried under the pleasure and the distracting activities from last night.

Jazz was positive that she had left some scratches and bites on him, and a quick look confirmed that his back and shoulders were—

Wait.

These looked at least a day old, almost completely healed. She knew wounds, she knew how long it took for a human to heal from what she did to him, and this was closer to what she expected from Danny’s partners’ healing factor.

She tried to not freak out, but he noticed her tense up.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

He turned around, eyes searching to see what was wrong, clearly not buying her shaky voice.

She saw the moment he noticed something was wrong about her, his eyes going down her face and staying on her neck, one hand reaching to touch the skin on her left shoulder. She could still feel the ghost of the bite in that area, a bite that probably had already healed by the morning.

By the way Jason’s eyes went wide, she knew he noticed the inconsistency.

Uh oh.

“What—?”

“I can explain.” He should, too, since he wasn’t normal either. Maybe he wasn’t human?

Not that it would make her less interested, but she was curious.

“Are you a metahuman?”

Jazz made a face. “Technically, no.”

He narrowed his eyes and shuffled away from her, his body tense. “What are you?”

“Something else.” She didn’t want to keep it vague, but she didn’t know who he was or who he could be working for. “And you?”

Jason’s eyes narrowed further at the accusatory tone. Jazz didn’t like how the quiet morning had turned to this, but if her security — and Danny’s — had been compromised, she had to push her feelings for Jason to the side. Danny was more important.

“You targeted me?” He now had a knife. Where did that come from? “Was the whole ‘date’ thing a set up?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

His eyes flashed green for a second. If she blinked, she would have missed it. “Don’t lie—”

“Wait.”

“What?”

Jazz lunged in, ignoring the very real and very sharp knife Jason had in his hands. If he stabbed her it would heal in a minute.

She placed her hands on his face, focusing, trying to see in the blue if the green would manifest again. She ignored him as he started to protest — vaguely registering that he put the knife away — humming in thought. Just to test, she let her core send a ping, a small wave of energy, only meant to say ‘hello’ to nearby ectoentities.

Jason somehow answered back, his eyes becoming green for a second.

“— the actual fuck is going on?”

Jazz blinked and came back to the situation, finally noticing she was almost straddling the man, her hands gently but firmly cradling his head. And she was still naked.

“You died.”

Jason’s cheeks had been slightly tinted pink, but now he was white as a sheet.

“How—”

“We’re the same,” Jazz made a face, “technically. I haven’t died, yet, but I do have one foot in the grave so to speak.”

“And you think we’re the same because…” He wasn’t believing her fully, but just enough to not pick up the knife again.

“Your eyes, they do this.”

She let her power flow freely, not needing to hide her inhumanity anymore. She saw the moment he understood, because his tense body relaxed and basked in her presence, her emotions projecting the calm and slight joy at finding someone like her.

His eyes swirled green in response to hers.

“I… I don’t—” he tried to speak through the stupor, “I’ve never—”

“You didn’t know?” About liminality, about ghosts, about people like her.

He licked his lips, blinking to refocus. “What are you?”

He really didn’t know. Someone would pay for letting him wander alone without guidance.

“I am Jasmine Nightingale, a liminal human.” His eyebrows went to his hairline. “I was born human but events led to me becoming deeply acquainted with the dead and everything in between. Like you.”

Maybe it was the influence of her aura still filling the room, or her serene voice, but he believed her.

“So you approached me—”

She hated that he looked hurt at the thought.

“I didn’t target you. I didn’t know you were like me until just now — I usually seal my liminality when I’m in the living world.” One of her hands moved to grab the white streak that now looked so obviously inhuman. “I should have known,” she chuckled, “the only good guy I manage to have a decent date with is not completely human.”

He frowned at her comment, making her freeze. Jazz quickly recoiled and withdrew her power, watching as he noticed the change.

There were a few moments of silence where she let go of him and waited as Jason pondered the new information.

His eyes were blue when he looked back up. “You’re not quite human,” she nodded. One of his hands lifted to touch her face, as if he was trying to make sure she was still the same person. “And I’m like you.”

“Kinda.”

He hummed. Birds chirped outside, reminding her that this was supposed to be a quiet morning in bed with the cute date she somehow scored. Nothing can be simple with her, huh. Figures.

“You really didn’t know about me?”

It was something in his eyes when he said it — a guarded sadness. She had seen that look a few times on their date, usually when he obviously changed the topic of conversation. He had been hurt before, and he lived life waiting for the moment someone else would hurt him again.

“I swear on my life, Jason. I only said yes to the date because I thought you were cute. Nothing else.”

His mouth twisted. “I’m not cute.”

“Yes you are.”

He rolled his eyes, letting go of her face and slumping back to rest on the pillow. “Am not.”

She leaned in, her long hair sliding over her shoulder and making a barrier that shielded them from the sunlight coming from the window. She felt his eyes roam through her face and down her body, reminding her that she was as naked. And so was he.

When he looked back up, his gaze was burning with reignited desire.

“Should I spend this fine morning convincing you?”

His breath hitched, the muscles of his stomach tensing in anticipation. “Nothing you can do will change my mind.”

Jazz’s smile widened when she caught the playful tone in his voice. He wanted this. He wanted to continue. And maybe a repeat of last night.

Alright then.

This time she didn’t need to hold back.

She let her hands rest on his shoulders, pinning him down to the mattress. She used a bit more strength than what was necessary, but not enough to hurt; just enough to make the point that if she wanted, she could do so much more.

By his sudden blush going all the way up to his ears, he got the message.

Jazz licked her lips, ready to devour that cute smile and every sound she could force out of it.

***

“Are you sure about this?”

“Positive.”

Jazz looked down at their entwined hands, squeezing Jason’s fingers, trying to ground herself.

It was silly being this nervous — it wasn’t like they were teenagers. If her boyfriend’s family didn’t approve of her they couldn’t actually do anything. Not that they would disapprove. Jason was sure they would love her, he told her so too many times on different occasions.

But it was… an experience. Knowing that your boyfriend of a few months was part of the Waynes. She usually forgot because Jason didn’t frequent the Manor and had a life outside of the glitz and glamor, so it had never affected their relationship.

That was until they learned about her existence — Jason didn’t hide her, but he wasn’t going to share every bit of his personal life — and asked if she wanted to come over to dinner one day.

Jazz didn’t mind, so she said yes. After all, Jason already knew Danny and had “passed the vibe check”, Danny’s words, so she took it as a sign that it was fine if they became official-official.

Still, she was very nervous. This relationship had been the longest she ever had and she knew how important family approval was and it didn’t matter that Jason was a bit estranged from the family, it did matter for her anyway and—

“I can hear you panic from here.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No. You don’t.” She rolled her eyes. “Are we doing this or not?”

Jason narrowed his eyes at her, not believing her at all, but let it slide. There was no point in arguing at the door.

“It will be fine.” He leaned so he could whisper. “They can be a lot but they’re harmless. Also I’ll protect you.”

She looked at him funny. Both knew she was the stronger one between them, a fact he very much enjoyed, so he didn’t mean it as in physical protection.

Jazz breathed slowly, taking in the offering of support. Jason would be there, he wouldn’t let them be mean to her.

Why the hell would they be mean to her? Silly Jasmine. They were just a family. Stupid rich, famous celebrities and very public faces in Gotham — but Jason’s family nonetheless.

She got this.

At her nod, Jason rang the bell and immediately it was opened by the butler. Alfred, if she remembered correctly. Was he on the side of the door, waiting?

“Welcome home, master Jason,” he nodded at them, “and Miss Jasmine.”

“Jazz is fine.”

The butler smiled, clearly not having any intention of using the nickname. Jason had warned her that Alfred could be a “petty motherfucker”, but that it was to the people he liked. She took it as a good sign.

“Please, come in.”

Jazz took another deep breath and walked into the gigantic Manor and straight into the fray. Maybe literally.

Inside there were so many people just looking at her, analyzing her, with various curious expressions.

“Told you she was real.” She heard what was supposed to be a quiet whisper, and a blonde girl elbowed a black haired guy next to her. Stephanie and Tim, going by Jason’s descriptions; which while colorful and varied in expletives depending on how mad he was at them, were actually very accurate. “Pay up, bitch.”

The guy grumbled but placed a few bills in her awaiting hand.

Jazz had to chuckle. That was weird, but funny. It made her relax a little.

“Ah, Jasmine, right?”

The voice made her look away from the people watching her like she was some kind of exotic animal (truly, what the hell was so interesting about her?) to find—

No.

It couldn’t be.

Could it?

Her liminal boyfriend’s adoptive father couldn’t be the actual Batman.

But the aura was the same, the same height and build, the same slight touch of death. Her eyes were sharp enough to catch the almost invisible and well healed scars on the man’s chin and the ones peeking from the black turtleneck.

He carried himself differently too, more relaxed, and if she wasn’t already onto him she would have been fooled.

Jazz smiled and shook the hand he offered, making a conscious effort to not squeeze his hand and reveal herself too quickly just to be petty. That was Danny’s thing. For now she would observe and behave like the perfect girlfriend.

They did make it hard, though. The whole Wayne clan was not what you’d expect from Gotham’s high society and acted more like a bunch of misbehaving kids in an unsupervised classroom.

It made sense now how Jason was so… so different than what you’d expect from the son of a socialite. At first he acted a bit guarded and checked that she didn’t take all the prodding and roughing between siblings and family friends badly; but once she laughed at the insanity he relaxed and let himself be part of the bickering like he belonged there.

She watched them interact, noticing the details that made it obvious now that the whole flock was a bat or bird — the question is who was who.

As she tried to play Guess Who with the Gotham heroes, it slowly dawned on her that Jason was another hero too. All the canceled dates and dodged questions about what he did in his free time. All his secrets and poorly disguised attempts at being subtle fit together in a single picture.

The Red Hood.

Danny was going to flip. If Jason hadn’t “passed the vibe check” already he definitely would have now.

Which she was more than fine with, if Jason was Red Hood. It actually made it easier for her to introduce him to the remaining secrets she was keeping from him until Danny gave the okay. After that night’s dinner, something told her that he would be fine with revealing herself to Jason.

Maybe Batman would stop being so difficult in the League meetings. The man had a thousand questions and didn’t trust anything they said, always asking for a second and third opinion. It didn’t become an open animosity because it was obvious it came from a place of caution and not hatred, but made the meetings drag for hours and Jazz’s royal armor was very uncomfortable to wear for so long.

Bruce didn’t seem to make the connection yet. If he did he was a great liar, because he did a one eighty from the dark vigilante and League member that drilled her and her brother with questions. He was more like… a hopeful puppy. Glancing between Jason and her, watching every touch and casual caress like a hawk.

Jason had mentioned that his relationship with his father had been very bad for a long time, but that they were working on it. Maybe he hoped that being nice to her got him cookie points in his son’s mind.

Whatever the case, she was going to have fun with this. As a treat.

***

Jasmine was… very tall.

Bruce’s mind was still repeating the moment she entered the Manor.Even at his six foot two he had to look up to smile at the guest. Not that he disliked tall women or thought that it was a bad thing, it was just an observation — maybe she was secretly an Amazon? Jason said he had looked into her enough to know that wasn’t the case; and had threatened with blowing up the Batcave if he dared investigate his girlfriend, so Bruce just observed. For now.

But she was too soft to be an Amazon, Bruce decided as the evening progressed. She smiled easily and didn’t have that constant battle-ready stance the Amazons he knew had. So he relaxed with the idea that Jason genuinely liked this civilian woman, she honestly liked him back, and she could be a good thing for his son.

If only he could shake the nagging thought that she felt familiar. Had they met before? He would remember meeting such a woman with striking red hair. She was definitely not a hero or Jason would have introduced her as such; nor she was a person that frequented the social circles Brucie Wayne did, given her humble origins and honest, hardworking job as a therapist.

It was something in her eyes, he considered by the time dinner was served. They were a shade of blue he had never seen before, and with the right light he could almost glimpse green highlights, but from this distance he couldn’t be sure.

In any case, Bruce decided she was good. Family oriented, unafraid to say what she was thinking, and with a dark sense of humor that Jason was completely smitten with. Bruce knew that look, his son was a goner whether he knew it or not.

She fit perfectly in their family, he decided as well, watching her bicker with Stephanie about some celebrity drama that Bruce didn’t know about, taking the knife Jason was waving in Tim’s direction without even looking at her hands. She flowed with ease in the chaos and had an answer for any question without revealing anything about herself she wasn’t willing to say. Among a family of detectives, that took some skill.

Bruce was curious about her, about where she came from, but for his son’s sake he was ready to set his paranoia aside and trust that she wasn’t secretly a villain.

He did such a good job once he made the decision, up until they were saying their goodbyes. Bruce was pleasantly surprised when Jasmine– when Jazz hugged him instead of doing a handshake. Her arms were firm around him and her height let her comfortably rest her head against his, a soft gesture far removed from Diana’s strong hugs against her muscled chest.

Jazz took a breath and said: “See you on Monday, B.”

This puzzled him. Monday? Why would he see her on Monday? Bruce was not needed anywhere on that day; in fact, Batman was supposed to be in Watchtower duty on Monday. And the follow up meeting with the King of the Ghosts.

When they parted, surrounded by the noise of the others messing around and bickering with Jason, it dawned on him as he saw her eyes from this close.

Green.

They glowed slightly green, unnaturally green, if you saw them this close. Her skin was pale, with freckles that reflected stars under the house’s lights.

He knew someone else that fit all of these characteristics, someone in his life as Batman.

Jasmine smiled widely, watching him put it together with mischievous glee. She patted his shoulder a little bit too hard for what was considered normal, and walked away to join her boyfriend out of the Manor.

Paralyzed, Bruce watched them go.

***

Jazz giggled against her hand, trying not to be too obvious.

“What’s so funny?”

“You’ll find out soon.”

Jason looked at her weird but still continued walking to the bike, slightly swinging their joined hands, an extra spring to his step. This visit had been important, she knew, but hadn’t realized exactly how important it was for him. For all the trash talk and exasperation, Jason was a family man and valued the opinion and approval of the others.

And she had passed the test, if she had read their reactions well.

Well, let’s hope that the thing with Batman goes well too, since she needed his approval as well as Bruce Wayne’s. Funny enough Jazz was way calmer than before going to meet the family — Batman was just a man, and it simply wasn’t the same as meeting your boyfriend’s father. She didn’t have any reservations about fighting Batman if it came to it, he had been rude to her and her brother, and had lost all respect she had before they started the process of establishing a relationship between the Realms and the Living World.

But before she even considered what she would do the next Monday, Jazz knew she needed to have a conversation with Jason. If her suspicions were true and he was the Red Hood, whatever was going to go down with Batman was of his interest. Also, if they were going serious, he deserved to know about the Princess thing as well.

She waited until they were at his apartment to open her mouth about it. She let them both settle in, Jason shedding the jacket before going to the kitchen to get a glass of water. Jazz watched him, quietly standing at the door.

“Jason.”

He looked at her over the rim of the glass, eyebrows raised in question.

“We need to talk.”

He choked on the water.

***

“I don’t think we can mansplain, manipulate, manwhore our way out of this one, Little Wing.”

At his side, Jason sighed and took off his helmet so he could comb back his hair as he gathered his thoughts.

They were trapped, and even if they could probably get out of the gang base in one piece, then they would lose this chance to finally bust the drug operation Jason had been working on for the last few months. The gang would be out of Gotham by sunrise and the drug would be distributed elsewhere anyway.

Dick didn’t blame his brother for jumping into the gang base like this — it had been a last minute decision and he didn’t expect this much resistance. At first he had been annoyed that he had to coordinate with Nightwing since it was supposed to be a simple thing; but as they finally infiltrated the base they realized it had been a trap. Jason’s informant had sold them out and they were waiting for the vigilantes.

Calling for backup from the other bats was not an option. They were either busy with their civilian lives and couldn’t help until it was too late, or were away on a superhero mission.

Jason was thinking something along those lines, because he was growling and grabbing on his hair, cursing under his breath.

They were hiding in an empty room in the abandoned office building the gang was using as a base. It was small and only had one window, and the door couldn’t be locked but they pushed a heavy desk in front of it just in case.

It was safe, but they couldn’t move. Inside the building there were too many armed gang members looking for them, and some of them had night vision gear. Outside, there were snipers posted on the roof and hidden in nearby buildings, and they didn’t know where exactly they were.

They needed help. But nobody could arrive in time. If only—

An idea!

“But we could malewife.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

Dick turned to fully face his brother, the light pollution of the city coming from the window enough to illuminate Jason’s confused frown.

“Call Jazz.”

“What?”

“Yeah! She’s free right now, right?”

“Yeah because I stood her up!” He growled. “We were supposed to be on a movie date two hours ago!”

“So she’s free.”

“I don’t think you are focusing on the important part here.”

“She won’t be mad at you, she knows about the vigilante thing.”

Jason huffed. “That she knows doesn’t mean she won’t be mad.”

“You won’t know until you call~” Dick hoped his smile was reassuring. “I bet this is not the first time something is canceled because of your night activities.”

“It... It isn’t.”

“Was she mad, then?”

His brother looked at his feet, thinking for a moment. Finally, he said with a small voice. “No.” After another moment, he added: “She was very supportive, actually.”

Dick contained the instinct to squeal in joy. They were just so cute, the most adorable couple, and they fit so well with each other. Jason was the happiest he had ever seen him, ever; and when they were together his laughs were easy and his smiles were constant.

It didn’t hurt to know she accepted his brother in all aspects, guns and vigilantism included. Or that she herself was a protector of sorts.

The Princess of the Infinite Realms.

Not an Amazon as they suspected, but she sure was something else.

(It didn’t save Jason from being teased for dating a Princess, though.)

So it meant she was a hero too, or could potentially help them out of the situation.

“Good!” Jason looked at him, confused. “So call her and ask her if she can come and get us out of here.”

“I won’t force this life on her—”

“You kinda did the moment you guys came clean about secrets and went steady, Jaybird.” He patted his brother’s shoulder. “If she wasn’t willing to be a part of your life, all of it, she wouldn’t have said yes.”

Jason processed his words for a few seconds. With a defeated sigh, he put on the helmet again and connected the call.

“Hey.” Dick couldn’t hear Jazz’s voice clear enough to understand the words, but the tone was loud. “I know… I’m sorry.” Jason sighed. “Got caught up at work.”

Dick snorted as more loud words came from the helmet.

“I’m sorry, I thought it wouldn’t take this long— yeah, he’s here… really? Ugh.” He looked up at him. “Jazz says hi.”

“Hello~!”

“Dick says hi back. Hm… yeah. Yes. Can you? If you can’t— What, really?” Jazz was calmer as she spoke now. Jason’s body relaxed, so Dick took it as a good sign. “We are in a meeting room at the southwest corner of the empty office building close to the Elliot Memorial. The one with an antenna— Ok? Ok.”

“Tell her about the snipers.”

“Yes. There are snipers everywhere. Please, darling, be careful— Shut up.” He grumbled. “That’s not funny. No, I won’t say it— Okay,” he grumbled again and groaned loudly, one hand sliding down the face of his helmet, “you are right. Happy?” He hummed, ignoring Dick’s snickering. “See ya. Love you. Bye.”

With a sigh, he took the helmet off again.

“You guys are so cute.”

It was a testament of how long they’ve been dating, because Jason didn’t even blush at the comment, he just glared at him.

“She said she’ll be here in five minutes.”

Dick hummed. “Excited to see her in action?”

Now he blushed. “No.”

“Yes, you are.” And before his brother could continue bullshitting, he added: “I get you completely, though. There is something about strong women kicking ass— I’m not a coward, I’m man enough to admit that watching Starfire fight was a major turn on back when we dated.”

Jason scoffed and ignored him, not wanting to continue the conversation.

“There is nothing wrong with wanting to get railed by a strong, tall woman, Jay.”

“Is this really the time and place for such conversation?”

No. It really wasn’t, since they were hiding in a shitty meeting room as hundreds of people were searching for them to kill them. But Jason’s face was getting more and more red and it was totally worth it.

“I just don’t want you to deny yourself—”

“My sex life is none of your business, Dickhead.”

There was a brief pause as Jason glared at him, the effect lost in his red cheeks.

“But do you?”

“Do I what.”

“Wish for her to pick you up and manhandle you as she wishes?”

Bingo. He looked away. “None of your business.” He repeated a bit more weakly. Dick bit back a smile, waiting for his brother to crack. It wasn’t long before he sighed and said: “She’s very into trying anything and has the strength to back it up. We had… talked. About things.”

“She has a strap, then?”

“That’s it. Conversation over.” Jason crossed his arms, huffing.

Dick raised his hands in defeat, still smiling. “Okay, I’m sorry. I won’t pry.”

His brother didn’t quite believe him, but let him be, turning to glare at the window as if he could make Jazz suddenly materialize with the power of his mind.

Fool.

As if they hadn’t already seen the bites and hickeys she left on him. Was he even trying to hide them? Tim’s theory is that he wanted everyone to know who he belonged to like some kind of kink going on. Not that anybody was judging! Everyone has their kinks and gods know that each of them has seen and knows too much about the others’ sexual lives — word traveled fast down the hero grapevine and the walls in the Manor weren’t as thick as you would think.

So far Jason had managed to stay safe from it since he was very private and the thing with Roy had been very lowkey — Dick still couldn’t forgive that he found out a year into their relationship, and neither had told him — but Jazz was now a regular at the Manor, between the whole Infinite Realms talk and Alfred taking it upon himself to teach her how to cook edible food, so the couple was around the family plenty of time.

“‘I wouldn’t mind dying if it’s between those thighs’, right?”

“What?”

“You. That thought must have crossed your mind, yes?” He shrugged. “It surely did cross mine more than one back when Kori—”

The window was slammed open, the long body of Jason’s girlfriend swiftly sliding inside in one smooth movement. She was tall, but she knew how to move.

“Hello, boys.” She breathed once she was inside, one hand pushing back stray locks that escaped her braid. “Sorry for the wait.”

She was not an Amazon, but Dick could almost believe she was at that moment. The casual stance she usually had, as if she weren’t sure where to put her long limbs, was now gone. In its place, Jasmine was secure in her skin, strong, wearing a teal bodysuit that shimmered under the light coming from the window, betraying it was not simple spandex. Over the suit she had pieces of black armor on vulnerable places — kinda like how Diana suited up, but without the signature colors of Wonder Woman and with pulsing, glowing runes engraved in the edges instead.

They knew she was a warrior, that the title of Princess of the Infinite Realms didn’t only mean ballgowns and pretty jewelry; but seeing was very different from knowing.

“Hello, darling.”

She zeroed on Jason as he stood up from the floor, dusting his pants. Jazz got to his position with a few long steps and picked him up, narrowing her eyes as if she were trying to decipher something difficult.

“Not hurt?”

“Uh-huh.” His brother shook his head. “Have a little more faith in me.”

Still, she quickly checked him for non-visible injuries, smirking when Jason winced as she squeezed his shoulder. Instead of chastising him for lying, she leaned in to kiss his helmet on the cheek, patting the other cheek twice.

“Not a word.”

“Uh-huh.” She said in the same tone Jason had used to dismiss her worries.

They were adorable.

“Not that I don’t enjoy watching you two, but we need to make a plan.” Dick had to say, even if he liked seeing his brother relax just by the presence of his girlfriend.

“Right,” Jazz stood back up to her whole height, back straight, looking out of the window. “I took care of the snipers on this roof and the ones I detected around here, but I didn’t stay to check if there were more.”

Dick would have done a full sweep before jumping in, but Jazz was not a Bat. He wouldn’t judge her as such. Also, they had time to thoroughly train her.

“They took our gear.” Jason sighed, probably missing his guns. And his jacket. “So we’ll need to parkour down the old school way.”

“Or I could carry you.”

The smile that stretched Dick’s lips was like the one he had when Jason face planted right after trying to do a dramatic exit.

“I’m in!” He quickly approached her, completely ready to be carried like when Superman or Wally did it. He jumped into her arms without waiting for her to say anything, chuckling when she caught him anyway.

“Jay?”

Resigned, Jason sighed and walked to the pair. “I’ll wait here-”

Jazz could move fast, it turns out. Dick felt weightless as he was moved under one of her arms, watching with glee as she circled the now free arm around her boyfriend’s waist to lift him up with ease.

“This is exciting.”

“Shut up, Dickhead.”

“I feel like a little kid.”

“You behave like one.”

Jazz chuckled at their banter, walking towards the window. “Keep your arms in at all times during the ride and remember to have fun.”

She didn’t hesitate when she jumped out, the powerful leap rippling through her body, muscles tensing as they soared through the air towards the closest rooftop. Even if she said the thing about not moving, Dick decided to stretch his arms with a soft “wiii~” as he watched the street pass by far below them.

The landing was rougher than what the Bats were used to, but Jazz took the impact without flinching. Right. Inhuman durability. Undead Princesses didn’t have to worry about fucking up their knees.

She let them go, eyes already sweeping their surroundings even if she landed on a relatively secluded part behind some water tanks.

“We need to get back in.”

She turned towards Jason, expression unreadable. Dick saw her eyes run over his brother’s body, worry shining in her eyes, one eyebrow twitching slightly as the only sign of her actual emotions. She was trying hard to not show her thoughts, which was weird since she was usually very forthcoming as a civilian.

Princess. Jasmine was really a Princess. Dick understood the need to show a strong front when in a position of responsibility, he knew he also changed when he was acting as his team’s lead; but as everything about her other life, seeing was different from knowing.

Was this how people felt when they learned about them? When Brucie Wayne turned out to be The Dark Knight? Dick’s head was struggling to merge the picture of the warm presence of Jason’s cute girlfriend and this warrior princess.

“What do you need me to do?”

It was subtle, but Jason’s shoulders dropped with relief. He expected her to fight his decision.

His face was soft as he took off the helmet to look her in the eyes. “First we need our gear and they’ll probably have it still in the room they took us to.”

Jazz nodded. “Want me to get in and fetch it for you?” She said as if she were asking him what he wanted from the grocery store. He nodded, one hand extended to brush stray hairs behind her left ear. “Give me five minutes then.”

The air was charged when their eyes met, and Dick couldn’t look away. It was magical, in a way, how her blue eyes started to glow like some kind of bioluminescence, the shine low enough to barely illuminate Jason’s face as he got closer to her.

“Meet you here in eight minutes. We’ll do a sweep in the meantime,” Jason’s voice got low to match the sudden moment they were having.

“Ok.”

Their lips met and Nightwing finally looked away. He couldn’t even find the energy to make a comment or coo at them. It was soft, it was real, and, most of all, it was private.

He wouldn't be surprised if those two announced they were getting married within the year.

He looked back just as Jason’s boots were again on the roof, Jazz’s arms retracting from where she had circled them around his waist to lift him closer to her lips.

Cute.

But they had to get moving.

Dick cleared his throat, making them jump.

“Right. Um, I’ll get to it. See you guys in a bit!”

Without further comment, she jumped over the roof and landed without making a sound on the base’s brick wall, quickly crawling towards the same window they had jumped out from. Her movements looked weightless, like she was strong enough to move her body with fine precision. Or maybe it was a ghost thing, since Jazz’s brother apparently could fly.

The rooftop was quiet until they lost sight of her.

“I want to be the Best Man.” He turned to look at his younger brother. “I already have ideas for my speech.”

Jason narrowed his eyes. “What the fuck are you talking about.”

In response, Nightwing started humming the Wedding March as he flipped away, just in time to hear gunshots and destruction happening inside the building, probably following the spitfire of a girlfriend that literally crashed into Jason’s life.

---

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