Chapter Text
Damian crouched down, letting his hand graze the wet ground. There wasn’t any physical evidence of a murder—no blood or weapon. They were wasting their time.
Still, Grayson insisted on taking the baseless call seriously. He was much too trusting for his own good.
“Find anything, Robin?” Grayson’s voice crackled through his comm.
“No.” Damian stood up with a huff. “This was a ridiculous venture. How are we to get anything done when we are wasting our time with every little girl that cries wolf?”
Grayson just chuckled, flipping off the roof of the building he’d been investigating, and landed perfectly in front of Damian.
“We’re just as much detectives as fighters, baby bat,” Grayson smiled widely, which never managed to not be unnerving coming from the bat, “and detectives—”
“Investigate every lead, yes you’ve said,” Damian rolled his eyes.
Grayson was not a bad teacher, in fact, he was probably the most adequate of any Damian had the displeasure of working with. However, Damian didn’t understand his obsession with following every single lead. It was a waste of time and energy. Wasting unneeded energy got people killed. Damian had watched it happen more than once.
He just didn’t understand it.
“Well, I did find something.” Grayson pulled an evidence bag out of his belt with a flourish.
Damian raised his eyebrows at his brother as Grayson wiggled the bag back and forth. It looked to be a cloth with blood on it, likely dropped in transit.
“So the anonymous tip was correct?”
“Seems like it,” Grayson hummed, bouncing on the heels of his feet. Damian noticed it was something he did unconsciously whenever they came to a stop. Grayson was always in motion like the kinetic energy he used, never truly stopping but simply shifting the energy. It was an art unique to Grayson.
Damian watched Grayson tap his comms to link up to Oracle’s system. Damian still maintained that they didn’t need Gordon or Brown— especially Brown —but Grayson had the backbone of a wet paper towel when it came to those he considered family.
“Oracle, did you manage to track down the origin of the tip?”
“No,” Gordon rarely allowed herself to sound so frustrated with a task, which spoke of its difficulty, “it turns out the phone it came from was reported missing to the company twenty minutes ago. I’ve been trying to narrow down where the call came from and get the security cam footage but—”
“It’s a needle in a haystack.”
“Exactly.” Both older heroes sighed in unison. It was something they unconsciously did, Damian observed, likely a result of spending years working together.
It reminded Damian of the small moments when he and Mara were allowed to train with each other instead of against each other. They moved in tandem, having memorized each other's strengths and weaknesses long ago. It reminded him of how his father and Drake had once moved, completely sure in each other, but they always had something more. . .
After working with Grayson, he realized that it was trust. He and Mara never had the option to trust each other, always too on edge from their grandfather pitting them against each other. It had taken a long time—and more lectures than Damian thought necessary—for him to realize that Grayson did not expect the same from him.
Despite his distaste for Brown, he found working with her without needing to watch her every move liberating in a way being with Mara never was. Sometimes he would find himself wishing he could have a similar dynamic with his cousin, but he didn’t know if they could move past their long history.
“Well, we’ll get this back to the cave and run some tests. Hopefully, we can unravel this before it slaps us in the face.”
Damian couldn’t help but agree with the crude metaphor. The last thing Gotham needed was more dead bodies.
“ How do you know they’re going to find me? ” The spirt paced back and forth, its footsteps not making a single sound. “ You didn’t even tell them who killed me .”
“ You don’t know who killed you,” Dani sighed, watching from an adjacent alley as Batman and Robin grappled out of the crime scene. Looks like there wasn’t as much evidence there as she had hoped. Fuck.
“ Oh, ” she stopped, raising her see-through, gray hand to rub her neck which was still sluggishly bleeding from her death wound, “ I forgot .”
That was the problem with spirits, Dani thought to herself. Their memories were scattered at best, but many of them could only say a few words while stuck reliving their death over and over again in their minds. She wasn’t sure why Gotham had so many of them—something about the ectoplasm underneath the city that she could feel but couldn’t find, she guessed—but she always found herself unable to let them suffer.
She knew what it was like to die now. Some nights she could still feel her atoms destabilizing as thousands and thousands of volts of electricity shot through her core—only to be brought back just as she was collapsing in on herself like a dying star.
Dani didn’t come back quite the same, turns out dying changes you even if you’re already a ghost. She didn’t mind the slight power down, she wasn’t Danny strong to begin with, and she wasn’t melting anymore so that was a win.
What disturbed her was the changes to her core. And her eyes.
Dani shook her head, breaking herself out of her thoughts. She didn’t have time for self-loathing while the spirit’s mystery killer was still out there.
“It’s okay,” Dani smiled at the spirit and slung her slightly worn yellow bat over her shoulder, “we’ll figure it out. You’ll find peace.” Dani laid a hand on the spirit’s usually intangible shoulder, but Dani’s own ghostliness canceled it out, making it as solid as Dani was.
Dani reached down into her core letting the feeling of contentment vibrate through her ectoplasm. She could feel the spirit’s ectoplasm react, first violently opposing the calm by trying to drown it out with its own frantic buzzing, but quickly realizing it wasn’t going to win. It withdrew into itself, slowly but surely mellowing out to match Dani’s vibration.
She tried to ignore the magenta light her eyes cast on the spirit, turning the gray a familiar pink. Dani closed her eyes, trying not to let her uncomfortableness seep into the calm she was trying to project.
The color change had been surprisingly gradual. Dani hadn’t even realized it was happening until last month when Vlad’s magenta was staring back at her in the cracked gas station mirror. She screamed, shooting an ectoblast at the mirror, only to see her hands glowing the same, nauseating pink.
She hadn’t changed forms since.
“ Do you think supper’s ready? ” the spirit asked. Dani pulled back into her core, opening her eyes to see the spirit blinking aimlessly at the horizon.
“I don’t know,” Dani smiled ruefully at the woman. She’d probably been on her way home for dinner when she was grabbed. “Why don’t we go see?”
The spirit nodded, her mind still a million miles away. But better absent than in pain, Dani thought as she led them away from where the woman remembered being captured and towards the twenty-four hour dinner Dani loved.
Dani wasn’t new to Gotham, but she also wasn’t a resident. She passed through once or twice a year, staying for a little longer than she would most places. Gotham was nice in a way other places weren’t. It had enough ambient ectoplasm that she never felt, well, dehydrated, and there was always someone to protect.
She hated the remnants of Danny’s obsession that was hooked into her core like a fishing hook, making her choose between indulging it and having her core ripped apart again. It was another reminder that no matter how far she traveled or how hard she tried, she would always be just a shell of what could have been.
A failure. A broken porcelain doll whose pieces were held together with clear scotch tape. Vlad had always made that crystal clear .
Dani’s footsteps followed a familiar path through alleys and sidewalks that she probably shouldn’t be going down, but her bat made people think twice before messing with her. The diner was just on the edge of old Gotham, nestled in the more suburban part of the city.
It was on the corner of the block, surrounded by brownstones on either side. Dani walked in, the ding of the bell above the door cutting through the old-school rock playing from the speakers.
She sat down in her favorite red, cracking booth by the front windows so she could watch Gotham come to life through the glass.
“Hi there doll,” the familiar middle-aged waitress addressed her with a smile, not noticing the spirit sitting down across from Dani, “what can I start you with?”
“A water and a hot chocolate please.”
The waitress nodded, “I’ll be back to get your order in a min.”
Dani put her backpack and bat on the inside of the booth away from wandering hands. She had a bit of money from her summer work and the pity cash Sam gave her when the trio remembered Dani existed.
Not that Dani blamed them. Sometimes she wanted to forget she existed too.
The spirit stared out the window, translucent blood leaking from her neck to her blouse creating a gray-scale pool on the now white fabric. Dani wondered what she was thinking about. Maybe nothing. Maybe her life.
A life that was taken from her.
Something dark in Dani’s core twisted as she thought about how the girl was grabbed. Murdered. Spent her last few moments choking on her own blood, fighting against hands bigger than her own—
“Here’s your hot chocolate hun.” The waitress set down her drinks on the table. Dani blinked up at the waitress, trying to push thoughts of blood and death to the back of her mind.
“Right, thanks. Can I have a few more minutes?” Dani smiled up at the waitress sheepishly.
“Of course. Take your time doll.” The waitress gave Dani a patient smile, bustling away as new customers came in.
Dani cracked open a menu trying not to think about the hands of the killer wrapped around the woman’s neck.
Dick sighed. The blood on the cloth they found didn’t belong to anyone with a criminal record. They’d have to try and match blood type to missing persons which was an even longer shot in the dark.
Damian was probably right. This was probably a waste of time—yet he couldn’t get the anonymous message out of his head. He reached forward, pressing play on the recording that he already had memorized.
“ A girl was taken—and murdered. Her throat was slit. In the alley behind, um, Bad Boy Bails Bonds. ” There was a pause with a long sigh of someone with too much resting on their shoulders. Dick would know. “ Please. Let her rest .”
The call ended with that. Dick shifted in his seat. The last line always left him feeling like he was missing something.
It wasn’t a plea to stop the killer or protect future victims. It was a plea for the dead carried out by the living.
It sent a shiver down his spine.
Dick was about to message Barbara about his findings when a large, red alert began flashing across all of the screens in the Batcave.
“ Justice League to Batman: Emergency Alert. ”
“Fuckin’ christ,” Dick cursed under his breath, jumping up from his seat.
He turned to grab his abandoned belt, but Alfred was already holding out a new one for him.
“What should I tell Master Damian?” Alfred raised a brow at Dick in a way that never failed to make him feel like a kid all over again. He knew he shouldn’t just leave Damian—the kid would be livid if he woke up and Dick was gone without telling him.
“Right, right,” Dick clipped the belt around his waist, opening his mouth to ask where Damian was, but Alfred bet him to it.
“He is sharpening his sword in the training area.”
“Thanks Alfie,” Dick jogged over to the training area, ignoring Alfred’s pointed look that was usually followed by scolding for running in the cave.
Damian was already standing at alert when Dick arrived.
“There’s an emergency,” Damian stated. The kid was just as hard to read as Bruce sometimes, but after living with the kid for a year Dick could see the slight tension in the grip around his sword and the slight pinch in his brows.
He was scared.
The last league emergency—well, it didn’t end well for them. Dick could hardly blame the kid.
“Yeah,” Dick smiled at Damian and ruffled his hair. Damian swatted his hand away, clear displeasure written across his face, “but don’t worry. I’ll let you know if I have to be in the field, but I’ll try to avoid it. Cyborg will be happy to have someone else running backend.”
Damian didn’t show any change of emotion on his face, but his grip on his sword handle lessened just slightly.
Progress.
“See ya soon, lil’D.”
Damian nodded but didn’t move until Dick was out of his sight—out of habit or concern, Dick didn’t know. But he’d figure it out. Some day.
For now, he had to focus on the Justice League and hope the world wasn’t ending. Again.