Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Danny dodged another ectoblast, rolling through the green expanse of the Zone.

"Really, Daniel," Vlad sighed as if his repeated attempts to end Danny's short afterlife were simply him trying to calm a toddler's tantrum, "you know we wouldn't have to come to blows if you would just accept my offer."

"Sorry, my parents don't let me eat Froot Loops anymore." Danny let his form shift, stretching out of the way of another ecto-ray. "Too much sugar, and they get ecto-contaminated too easily."

With a roll of his eyes and pulling his cape around him, Vlad disappeared in a flash of pink. Danny found himself skidding to a stop, yelping as Vlad appeared before him. The older halfa swiped at him, forcing Danny to duck as he flew deeper into the Ghost Zone.

The Zone was ever shifting, always changing every time Danny, Sam, and Tucker dared to explore the swirling green skies and endless doors. However, the Fenton Portal always opened up into the same general area, even if it was never the same spot. 6 months after that fatal accident, Danny could confidently say that he knew his way around the Zone.

As he and Vlad danced around each other, that confidence seeped out of him. Of course the Infinite Realms were, well, infinite, but Danny hadn't ever internalized that knowledge. So many of his ghostly issues had stemmed from what he was quickly realizing was just a small portion of the Ghost Zone. The map he, Sam, and Tuck had begun to sketch out felt useless in his pocket.

Danny grunted as Vlad dodged another of his ectorays, a clone shoving Danny towards the original. Course correcting, Danny couldn't stop himself from crashing into a gelatinous cube.

Fire raced along Danny's skin. He screamed, desperately pulling against the goo that only sucked him further in. The thick ectoplasm (because it had to be ectoplasm, what else in the zone had that same slimy consistency) glowed an ominous purple. Danny's screams died as that purple ectoplasm choked him, enveloping him as he wondered if he was dying again.

(He'd already died twice, maybe third time's the charm?)

As he floated in the middle of the ectoplasm, Danny felt his core condensing, retreating further into his chest. He curled into himself, feeling so impossibly small as his blood continued to boil. As he whimpered and silently screamed, the burning began to fade into a dull ache. He felt himself slipping, slinking through the back of the cube.

He hadn't realized the Ghost Zone was so loud. His hands flew to his ears as he fully slipped out of the ectoplasm cube. It had worked so well at muffling the noise, but now he could hear the wails of the dying and damned and Vlad was shouting and he sounded concerned and Danny couldn't even begin to understand why the man would be concerned when he'd never cared about Danny being hurt before.

A hand grasped at his shoulder, and Danny bolted.

Everything felt too much, too big, too loud. Danny had never felt so small in his life. He flew through the zone blindly, tears glittering past him as he sobbed. His emotions felt too big for his chest, and he wished Mother would come comfort him from this nightmare already.

Wait. That wasn't right. Mother couldn't comfort him anymore. He had Mom and Dad and Jazz now. Mother hadn't been a comfort for years.

But Danny's thoughts swirled. Memories he knew should be fuzzy and distant flashed in his mind's eye with startling clarity. He knew, he knew, that his old life was far behind him, but it all felt far too real and familiar and everything was too confusing and too much and it all hurt.

He flew, crashing into doors and islands with a clumsiness he'd not had since his first month as Phantom. He kept miscalculating where his body would be, how quickly he needed to turn to just barely graze past his obstacles. Curses and confused shouts followed him as he tried desperately to find something familiar. While his body ached, he felt a sharp sting in his stomach.

His hands scrambled to his middle, but he felt nothing out of sorts. Still, images of his grandfather bearing down on him, spearing him with a dagger that he'd been too slow to dodge, bombarded him. His mother had just stood by, had just watched until Grandfather had left and then she could move, and his akhi was screaming--

Danny slammed into the ground. He curled up, gasping and sobbing as his transformation rings finally sparked to life, traveling up his form. He curled into himself tight, trying to put himself back together when he felt fourteen and six and everything between all at once.

The wails around him had long since quieted, Vlad lost to the rest of the expanse of the Zone. However, Danny couldn't hear the approach of another ghost until delicate fingers trailed through his hair. He jumped, desperate to get away. The fingers hesitated before wrapping around his form and pulling him to a bosom. He tried to push the hands away, but a familiar voice shushed him.

"Oh, dear child, you've lost your way haven't you?"

This wasn't Mother. Mother had always called him habibi, beloved, dearest one, never child. He was her son, her little warrior, her greatest gifts along with his akhi, but this voice still promised comfort and Danny felt hurt and overwhelmed and so, so afraid.

Those delicate fingers trailed back through his hair, nails scratching at his scalp. "There we are. Now, it seems there is something you desire quite deeply, yes?" The woman hummed as she held Danny close.

He should know this woman. Danny could feel the fuzzy edges of memories trying to edge into the forefront of his mind, but her core pulsed with warmth and safety and promise. Hiccupping, Danny nodded his head.

The woman chuckled as she continued to soothe Danny. "Well, dear child, I have a secret." A secret? Danny was quite good at keeping secrets, if he did say so himself. He had so many already, adding the woman's would be like a drop of water in the ocean. The woman leaned down and whispered in his ear, "dear child, I have the power to grant wishes. Whatever you desire, I can make reality."

Grant wishes? Like the djinn Mother had always warned him and Damian away from? But the woman's core had pulsed with warmth and his akhi had reassured him that djinn were not real. Danny whimpered as he curled into the woman's hold. "How?"

"It is quite simple," the woman said, "all you need to do is say 'I wish'."

That felt too simple. Surely, this woman was promising him something that would bite him later. As comforting as she was, his core pulsed with an urgent warning to be careful. He had to be smart about his wish. If she were truly a djinn then anything he could say would be twisted to her favor.

Still. Still, fear and exhaustion pulled at his bones. Danny needed to be careful but he was so tired and so small. "I wish..." Power swirled around him, reacting to the words as he ached and cried. "I wish I was with my akhi!"

The woman's red eye gleamed and that power circled around Danny. He let himself fall into it. The Ghost Zone began to close in on Danny as the woman's voice echoed around him.

"So you have wished it, so shall it be."

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

Damian would have thought that after seven years his mother would have learned to take a hint already.

He dodged under her blade, grunting as he was forced to retreat. Last Richard had said, the rest of his family were still fifteen minutes out from even reaching Nanda Parbat. It would still be another ten minutes on top of that for them to find the pits and help Damian in holding his mother off.

"Focus, Damian," Mother said as she swung her blade once more, catching Damian's cape, "I taught you better than this."

Damian scoffed. "If you have the energy to lecture me then clearly you are not putting your all into this fight." He threw a batarang, trying to create enough distance so he could properly pull out his katana. Of course, his mother could never make things easy for him.

She deflected the batarang easily, continuing to push Damian closer to those damn pits. Damian could only guess if it were intentional or not. "I do not want to fight you, Damian." Huh, so she had become bolder in her lies. "If you would just come home--"

Her pleas were lost to a sudden hissing. Damian whipped around to see the pit closest to them bulging upwards, as if about to erupt. He and Mother scrambled back. The green waters burst, waves cresting over the edges of their pool as a tiny hand emerged from the pit. It slapped down as another hand breached the waters. A head of black hair burst up, tiny gasps and hacking filling the room.

The waves pushed the child closer and closer to the edge. Damian felt his heart drop as he got glimpses of the child's face. Familiar dark freckles danced across the child's face. Blue eyes so similar to their father's. A look of fear that Damian was sure had been etched into his eyelids, taunting him for his cowardice every time he'd closed his eyes.

It'd been 8 years. 8 years since he'd watched his mother cradle his baby brother close to her chest. 8 years since he'd watched his brother's body sink deep, deep, deep into the pits and never surface. 8 years since he'd sobbed and cried and blamed his mother for the death of his baby brother.

8 years since he'd seen Danny alive.

A chill wound up his body as he watched Danny (because it had to be Danny, there was no one else who it could be) pull himself half-way out of the pit. His tiny body trembled, looking exactly the same as he had when he had died. Even his training clothes still held the fresh blood stains of Grandfather's fatal blow. This shouldn't have been possible, but Damian had long since thrown his ideas about possibility out the window.

Mother hadn't moved, so Damian risked a glance at her. Her grip on her blade had slackened, loose like how she gaped at the return of her long dead son. Yet, her eyes bounced around Danny's form. A calculating glint lit up across her gaze, and Damian knew. Protective rage, something he hadn't felt in quite a while, began to bubble. He couldn't. Danny would not be his replacement. Damian had to get Danny out of Nanda Parbat, now.

Those blue eyes lifted, and for a moment Damian's heart stuttered. He was still in his Robin uniform. Would his younger brother even recognize him? He and Mother stiffened, waiting as Danny blinked up at them.

Danny barely spared Mother a glance before his eyes locked onto Damian. Those young blue eyes, framed by deep dark bruises under them and looking far too cynical for the fear that practically spilled off of him, stared Damian straight in the eyes. Damian licked his lips. Maybe if he spoke? But his voice had dropped since the days he had spent with Danny. For once, Damian cursed puberty for changing him from the recognizable young boy that Danny had looked up to.

The silence stretched. Mother shifted, about to call Danny to her. However, before she could speak, a sniffle shattered the peace. Danny's eyes lit up with recognition as he stared at Damian. He reached an arm out. Tears and snot dribbled down his face as he shouted, "akhi!"

Like a bullet, Damian dashed towards Danny. He scooped his tiny brother (too tiny, had Danny always been this tiny?) out of the pits. Mother raised her blade high, not willing to let her new replacement heir go. Damian ducked, unable to apologize as Danny whimpered and curled tight into his hold.

Running towards the exit, he opened his comms. "Nightwing, eta?"

A crackle ran through his ear as Richard responded, "5 minutes until we land, baby bat. Can you hold out a little longer?"

Grunting, Damian worked to not lose his balance and drop his new precious bundle as he slid around corners. "Change of plans." He could hear more footsteps following him, his mother clearly getting the rest of the League to chase him and Danny down. "I need an extraction."

"Are you injured?" Father's tone was gruff, but Damian had long since learned how to interpret the nuances of Father's emotions. He would have been touched by the concern if he weren't worried about the blood that seemed so fresh staining Danny's shirt.

He threw a batarang at an assassin, clearing a path forward. Danny whimpered, clinging to Damian tightly and Damian thanked whatever deity above that his baby brother seemed to understand that he needed to hold on right now. "I'm not injured, but the situation has changed and I cannot continue to fight. I am making my way outside now."

A grunt. Damian would have much to answer for, he was sure, but it seemed Father had understood that he didn't have the time to explain.

"ETA's now four minutes. We'll have extraction ready for you as soon as you get outside." Richard's voice crackled in his ear.

"Understood." He ducked into a roll, wincing as he pulled Danny in close. Hearing Danny's whimpers by his ear as he was forced to jostle the younger around shattered whatever was left of Damian's heart. "Shh, Danny, it's alright," he murmured, Arabic thick on his tongue, "akhi will keep you safe, I promise."

"Akhi," Danny said, little hands fisting Damian's cape, "akhi, I'm scared."

"I know, Danny," Damian said. He wished he could continue to comfort Danny, but the assassins were only growing in number. His baby brother would have to wait. He slid through the halls, grunting as he tucked him and Danny into a summersault. A knife flew over them as Damian pushed himself to run faster. Funny how now that the League had its sights set on a new heir they completely forwent any attempt at keeping Damian alive.

The exit barreled towards him, and Damian knew he just had to keep moving. Just a little further, and he’d be home free. He adjusted Danny in his hold. His baby brother had already been so good. He’d clung to Damian with just the right amount of strength to let Damian focus less on keeping Danny safe in his arms and more on getting them out of Nanda Parbat. He couldn’t wait until they were safe in the Batwing once more.

The shouts grew fainter as Damian kicked open the exit, rushing outside. The engines of the Batwing roared, the vehicle just beginning its descent. Danny let go of Damian to grab at his ears, and Damian hated himself as he forced Danny to let go.

“It’ll get quiet again soon, Danny,” he soothed, guiding Danny’s hands back around his neck, “I know, it’s very loud, but I need you to hold on tight for me, okay? Your akhi needs both hands to help keep us safe, so I need you to hold on really tight. Can you do that for me?”

He felt a nod against his neck as a rope tumbled down out of the opening. Damian grabbed on, trusting the sudden grip Danny had on him as he began pulling himself up. Darts whizzed past him as Richard and Todd both helped pull the rope into the Batwing. He could feel the pressure shift as Damian found himself stumbling onto the Batwing’s floor.

He didn’t pay attention to Drake closing the hatch nor his father beginning his interrogation. Damian stumbled over to the nearest seat, flopping into it as he reached up to grab Danny’s trembling hands. He tried to push them away, but Danny only grabbed harder at Damian’s cape.

“Danny.” He tried to keep his tone soft, but concern brought an edge Damian knew would scare his brother. “I need to make sure you’re not hurt. Please let go.”

Danny shook his head, clinging to Damian harder. “No! No, it’s not safe!”

Had his brother always been this stubborn? Damian continued to try and pry his baby brother away from him. “It is safe, Danny. We’re safe now, but I need to make sure you don’t have any injuries.”

If it was possible, Danny shook his head harder. “No, akhi, no! It’s not safe! Not safe!”

Damian really didn’t want to argue with a six year old, but the last he had ever seen of Danny, the boy had been bleeding out. He finally managed to grab Danny’s hands and forced some distance between himself and Danny. “We are safe,” Damian said, firm as he looked Danny up and down. The bloodstain on Danny’s clothes had begun to crust over, tinted darker by the leftover Lazarus waters. He lifted Danny’s shirt, so desperately afraid of what he’d find.

A scar, long and jagged and shiny, stretched from the edge of his brother’s ribs across his tiny stomach. More scars littered his abdomen, and Damian knew for a fact that some of those were not from his time in the League. With his main worry soothed, Damian checked his brother for any other injuries. Danny sniffled through the whole thing, keeping worryingly quiet as tears and snot dribbled down his face. Damian almost wished his brother would go back to wailing.

Once he finished his check-up, Damian smiled at Danny. “Good. I’m all done now, Danny. It’s okay. You’re safe now.”

Given the go ahead, Danny threw himself back at Damian. Damian cooed as Danny sobbed, rubbing his ruddy little face into Damian’s shoulder. “It’s all wrong, akhi! It’s all wrong! I’m too small!”

“You’re not too small,” Damian countered, rubbing Danny’s back, “You’re the perfect size.”

“No, no, I’m too small!” Danny hiccupped, sobbing hard enough that he began coughing. “I’m not ‘pose to be this small! I’m too small, ahki!”

Damian shushed Danny, rocking him back and forth. It hurt to hear his baby brother so visibly distressed. He couldn’t remember a time Danny had ever been so openly vulnerable in the League. Granted, it was difficult to be any kind of vulnerable in the League, but Danny had rarely ever shown any sort of negative emotion. His little brother had been a rare ball of sunshine, eager to learn and even more eager to please.

His baby brother just kept repeating himself, a chorus of “I’m scared, I’m too small, it’s not right, akhi, akhi, akhi!” Damian found himself unsure what to do. He soothed and rocked, but nothing he said or did seemed to work. Danny eventually cried himself to sleep, his sobs quieting into little whimpers before he fully slumped against Damian’s form.

In the back of his mind, Damian wondered if he looked like the mothers he’d see in the mall food courts, cradling passed out toddlers and looking like they needed at least three dozen different forms of caffeine and a 72 hour nap. Glancing around, Damian found himself mildly surprised to see Todd and Richard just staring at him. Drake kept glancing back, and Damian wished he’d just put the plane on autopilot already if he was so determined to stare with his other two brothers. Father at least put up the appearance of paying attention to other things, though Damian could still see the displeased quirk to his mouth.

“So, who’s the brat?” Todd asked, any pretense of approaching the situation with any sort of caution thrown to the wind.

Damian glowered at Todd, holding Danny just that smidgen tighter. “He is not a brat, you insolent little—”

Richard held his hands up. “Okay, let’s not fight in front of the kid. We just wanna know who he is. Did Talia try and clone you again or…?”

Damian huffed. “No, he is not a clone.” He glanced down at Danny, taking in his tear stained cheeks and raspy little breaths. Steeling himself, he turned back to his family. “This is Danyal al Ghul. Second son of Talia al Ghul and Bruce Wayne. My little brother.”

All attention turned to Father as Todd raised a brow. “Really, Bruce? You didn’t learn to put the condom on after Damian?”

Father’s hackles raised and Damian rolled his eyes. “Danyal was born the same way I was, so there is no earthly way Father would have been able to ‘put on the condom’ so to speak.” Everyone in the plane gained a vaguely uncomfortable look, but Damian didn’t see the big issue. The worst that had come out of the truth of his birth was the occasional jab of being a “test tube baby” from Brown and Todd. Though it certainly had to be jarring to learn that your former partner made not one but two children from your sperm without any form of consent or discussion before hand.

Drake finally gave in to his curiosity and put the plane on autopilot. “Still, Danyal looks young. Like way too young for you to know him as well as you seem to do.”

“Danyal died when he was six years old.” It seemed all his family were able to do were look shocked at his various dramatic reveals. Really, their lives included far more shocking information being dropped on a daily basis than the resurrected youngest son of one Bruce Wayne. “Originally Mother tried to resurrect him using the pits, but he disappeared. It seems that today is when the pits decided to let him resurface.”

Todd frowned. “Can the pits even do that? You’re talking about them like they’re sentient when aren’t they just pools of nasty green flavored water?”

“Says the man who sometimes describes the Pit Rage as if it were a separate being to himself,” Damian shot back.

Richard put a hand on Todd’s shoulder. “Again, no fighting in front of the kid.” He shot a stern gaze Damian’s way. “That means you too, baby bat.”

Damian turned his nose up at Richard, but didn’t respond. He only listened to Richard because he would hate to wake Danny up. Certainly not for any other reason.

Heaving a sigh, Father rubbed his temples. “Alright, so the facts are that Danyal is mine and Talia’s son, and that he is clearly young. You said he died at six?”

Nodding, Damian began rubbing Danny’s back. “Yes, and he currently looks exactly the same as he did back then. If he were the age he was supposed to be, he would have been 14 years old.”

“Is there a possibility that there might have been a portal in the pit?” Everyone turned to Drake as he held a hand to his chin. “I mean, we know that the pits have a form of healing properties, but what if a temporal portal opened up just as Danyal was put in. It would explain him showing up in the same place as when you last saw him, looking no different than the day he supposedly died.”

Huh. Damian frowned. Well it wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility. It might explain how Mother hadn’t been able to find anything when she dove in after Danyal, her nails caked with dirt as she desperately tried to find her youngest.

“Okay, so we’ve got another kid of Bruce’s that we obviously can’t leave with the League.” Todd leaned back in his seat, cavalier as he glanced around the room. “So what do we do now?”

“Obviously we take him back home.” Damian wouldn’t even entertain any other idea. “As Father’s child and my brother, it’s clear that his place is with us at Wayne Manor. To suggest that we do anything else is ridiculous.”

Richard held up his hands. “I don’t think Jason was trying to imply that we’re going to kick him out. As much as it was a surprise, Danyal clearly needs a safe home, and the manor is more than equipped to give him one. We just need to figure out what happened to him after he first got put into the Lazarus Pits.”

Damian bit down his urge to snarl that they would not be interrogating Danny. He’d had his time to come to terms with their childhood. He knew he hadn’t been able to shield Danny from any of the abuse they experienced—hell, he had even contributed to it at times. If Danny truly had come straight from his deathbed all those years ago, then Damian had so much he needed to make up for. His family were loving, but their interrogations could get intense.

Seeing how small Danny was, how fragile, Damian resolved himself to never let his brother experience any of that harshness again. Danny deserved a soft life, and damn it, Damian was going to give him one.

Father once more sighed as he turned back to the front of the plane. “We can talk more about this after we’ve all had some rest. It’s been a long day.”

Damian’s brothers all nodded, adjusting themselves to get ready for the long flight back to the Bat Cave. Damian himself leaned back, hoping to give Danny a bit more room to lay down. Seeing none of his family looking his way, Damian risked a quick kiss to Danny’s head.

He’d keep Danny safe. He promised.

Chapter Text

Danny rarely ever woke up feeling so warm.

These past few months he’d often found himself blearily staring at his alarm as he realized he’d only been able to sleep for the past 2 hours. His body ached and he’d drag himself out of bed down to the kitchen hoping that his parents hadn’t put their newest samples in with their groceries. To wake up softly, with his body feeling rested and cradled against a warm chest…

That observation had Danny frowning. He hadn’t slept with his parents since he was a child. Hell, he doubted he would have crawled into his parent’s bed now, especially after they’d taken to running after him in the streets, guns blazing. Groaning, he dragged his eyes open.

Looking down at his hands, he frowned at the chubby fingers gripping a black cape. Those couldn’t have been his. His hands hadn’t been that small since he was a toddler. He flexed his hands, trying to see if maybe he was just laying weird. The baby hands flexed before curling back into the cape. He could feel the softness of the material—clearly made for comfort rather than protection. He rubbed the cape in between his fingers, frowning as he tried to connect those tiny fingers to his own body.

A deep voice, one that had just finished puberty and was just settled into its more adult pitch, spoke near his ear. “Are you awake, Danny?”

He didn’t know that voice. Danny pushed himself away, panic spiking as long arms trapped him in this mysterious person’s lap. Fuck, where was he? Trying to remember anything from the past day only made Danny’s head began to pound. He thought he’d been chased by Vlad last, but then memories of his grandfather swinging that damning blade superposed that. Everything jumbled, and Danny had to wonder what the fuck was going on.

The deep voice hummed and those large, gloved hands moved to rub Danny’s back. “It’s okay, Danny.” Arabic. Danny hadn’t heard his mother tongue in years, at least not spoken directly to him. “Your akhi is here now. I’ll protect you, so it’s okay.”

No, Danny thought, there was no way. He dragged his gaze up to his supposed ‘akhi’s’ face. The boy before him was older—probably close to the Seniors at his high school in terms of age. The slant of his nose and the shape of his chin sparked a sense of familiarity in Danny, though the baby fat he remembered clinging to his akhi’s cheeks had clearly been trimmed with age. He frowned at the domino mask clinging to the boy’s face. With clumsy hands, he reached up, pulling on the mask.

The boy winced before grabbing the mask himself. He took his mask off, and oh. Danny would recognize those eyes anywhere. Sure, Damian was older now (which of course he was, if Danny had aged then clearly Damian would also age), but he still had that same essence to himself that just screamed Damian.

“Akhi…?” Danny nearly did a double take at his own voice. It practically squeaked it was so high pitched. He knew his voice had begun cracking with puberty, but surely it had never cracked this high.

Damian smiled, smoothing his thumbs across Danny’s cheeks. “That’s right, Danny. It’s me. You’re safe now.”

As reassuring as it was to see Damian alive after so many years apart, Danny couldn’t put aside the sheer amount of wrong fluttering through his system. “Where are we?” He thanked all that was good and holy that Jazz and his parents had been adamant in Danny keeping up with his first language. Sure, the online lessons were never quite the same as having real conversations, but it saved him from sounding horrifically out of practice. He squirmed, trying to get a better look at wherever the hell he had ended up.

He and Damian were sitting in some sort of rocking chair, the lights dimmed as music played from a giant, antique looking radio thing in the corner. He could see a variety of different chairs littering the room, ranging from bean bags to what looked like a full hammock swing type thing. Danny could see a few different textures lining the walls, squares offering what looked like little spikes and ridges and even a furry texture akin to velvet. Something about the sheer amount of variety made his brain itch to go run his hands along them, or to go stare at the blue glowing tube of bubbles that stood in the corner.

The more Danny looked, the more he saw things he wanted to explore. Foam structures practically begged him to create a fortress or an obstacle course. There was a small table pushed to the side that seemed to have a lid that urged Danny to open it and find what treasure was inside. If Danny were honest, the room looked like a much cooler version of the kindergarten classroom he’d first met Tucker in.

Damian continued to rock Danny in the rocking chair—something that Danny hadn’t realized Damian was doing until now. “We’re currently in Wayne Manor—our Father’s home. You fell asleep on our flight home after we escaped Nanda Parbat. Pennyworth suggested that this room would be the most appropriate room for you to rest in.”

Should Danny have been offended by the fact that he got put into a literal kindergarten room? Probably, but at this point, Danny could feel curiosity beginning to overcome any of the embarrassment that might have built up. He nodded along to Damian’s explanation, but the whole time he could feel himself straining out of Damian’s hold to get a better look at things. He felt the rocking stop, bringing his attention back to his akhi.

“Did you want to go play?” Damian asked.

It was a simple question, but Danny felt a hesitance boiling in his chest. He glanced between the treasures in the room and Damian before biting his lip. “… can I?”

Damian’s expression crumbled into something sad and regretful. “Of course you can, Danny.” Damian pushed himself off of the rocking chair and set Danny down the floor. “Go ahead and play with whatever you want.”

Being set on his feet, Danny found himself wobbling for a few moments. His legs were definitely a lot shorter than he’d last thought. Catching sight of a mirror, he toddled over to it, trying to get used to his center of gravity completely shifting. The mirror lined a small corner of the room, and a bench with a batman themed cushion on top sat flush with it. Danny pulled himself up, glad that Damian didn’t rush to help him. He took a moment to settle himself on his knees before taking a deep breath. He looked up.

When Danny had first joined the Fentons, he remembered feeling so nervous about all of the photos his parents kept taking. There was always that paranoia in the back of his mind that Grandfather would find out and come take him away from the Fentons. Mom and Dad hadn’t done much to soothe that fear, promising that they were making a scrapbook for his real family once they came back to get him. That scrapbook came out often, and Sam and Tucker had teased at enough of Danny’s “baby photos” for Danny to have an intimate knowledge of what he looked like as a kid.

The face staring back at him from the mirror was a near perfect replica. He reached up to touch his reflection, staring at how the burn scar on his left hand morphed his image of his early years. How strange, Danny thought, to see his old baby fat laden face with the edges of a Lichtenburg scar stretching up his cheek. He tilted his head, eyes trailing down the scar until it disappeared into his training clothes. Training clothes that had been thrown out as soon as he’d been taken back to the Fenton’s hotel that night they found him.

Damian sat next to Danny. “Do you know where you got those scars?” He asked it so gently, even if he wasn’t the most subtle about it. Danny supposed children weren’t the most receptive to subtleties like that.

Nodding, Danny shoved himself away from the mirror. Well that at least confirmed one thing. Danny’s vague memories of falling into that weird cube weren’t just him hallucinating. Though, he could have done without the sudden fresh reminder of Grandfather’s attempted murder. He hated how uncoordinated he felt as he explored the room, letting his hands graze along every texture he could find.

Even as he felt frustration build at having to relearn how to move his body, Danny felt his core practically trill at all of the interesting textures the room offered for him to explore. He found himself petting different wall squares, enjoying the bumpier ones the best as he pressed his hands against them. He ran his hands up and down, finding that the more he moved the more he could remember how to move in this tiny body of his.

Damian didn’t ask any more questions as Danny explored. A part of Danny wondered what could be going on in his akhi’s head, but the larger part of him appreciated the time to sort his own thoughts out. It was a lot easier to deal with the competing memories in his head when he could stumble through the Wayne Manor kindergarten room.

After having touched almost everything in the room, Danny beelined it straight to the table with the mystery lid. He grabbed onto the lid, grunting as he tried to pull it off. Damian rushed to Danny’s aide. “That one is a bit too heavy for you, Danny, let me.” With a swift movement, Damian had taken the lid off, setting it aside before pulling the table more into the middle of the room. “There, now you can play with it from all sides.”

Danny’s eyes sparkled at the sandbox revealed to him. He immediately stuck a hand in, smile stretching wide at how the sand gently rolled across his fingers. “It’s soft!” He exclaimed, cupping the sand and watching the grains slip through his fingers.

Damian nodded. “It is. This is special sand. It’s made to be soft.”

Soft sand? Sure, Danny had encountered a few kinds of play sand before, but never sand like this. Growing up, the sand pits at the playground had always reminded him of missions in the desert. They’d always been too coarse, too likely to scratch and hurt and remind Danny of days he’d laid in the sand, wondering if maybe he should let it consume him if he couldn’t survive even a single survival training. He marveled as he kept cupping the sand, letting it spill over and through his hands like silk.

“We have other toys for the sand box, if you’d like to see them?”

Danny whirled to look at his akhi, sure that his eyes were wider than they’d ever been. “Can I? Can I, please, please, please?”

Damian laughed and stood up. “Of course. Let me grab them.” With great long strides, Damian pulled a chest that was hidden in the corner. The chest glided along the floor, wheels making it easy to maneuver. Once Damian had it set in front of Danny, he opened the chest with a flick of his wrist.

Danny gasped at the pile of toys, figurines, and different plastic and wooden tools. A part of him, the part that still felt 14 and was confused and scared, balked at the idea of playing when he still had so much he didn’t know about the situation. However, his core was practically bouncing in his chest, and he found himself digging through the chest before he could even second-guess himself.

He grabbed a shovel and what looked like a rake first. Turning to the sandbox, Danny immediately began creating little hills, delighting in the way the rake left neat little rows in the sand. He hummed to himself as he went about creating his perfect landscape, building a miniature mountain range to go diagonally across the sandbox. He raked one side of it, creating neat little boxes where sometimes the lines were vertical and others the lines were horizontal. He left the other side smooth, though it looked closer to the rolling dunes of the desert he grew up near.

Satisfied with his work, Danny put his tools away and got to work grabbing his toys. As he sorted through the various action figures and dolls and figurines, he heard Damian settle on the ground beside him. “Danny?” Damian asked.

Danny hummed. “Yes, akhi?”

“Do you remember what happened before you woke up?” Damian sounded so serious as he said it, careful with his words yet having a certain urgency to them.

Danny paused in his gathering of his toys. Tilting his head, he tried to remember what had been going on. “… I ‘member a lot of green.” How much could he tell Damian? If they were really at their father’s then that meant that something happened between Mother and Damian. Though, that didn’t guarantee that their father was anyone nice. Danny wanted to trust Damian, but he also didn’t know how he had been reunited with his akhi. Deciding to keep it safe, Danny returned to gathering his toys and said, “and I ‘member being scared. That’s it.”

Damian pursed his lips as Danny set his toys on the ground. “… Danny, you crawled out of the Lazarus Pits. Do you really not remember this?”

He did what? Danny frowned as he picked up a Batman toy. It looked like one you might get in a Nasty Burger meal, with just the right amount of off-putting weirdness. Placing the batman squarely on top of his mountain range, Danny shook his head. “I don’t. But why was I in the Pits? Grandfather said I’m not ‘pose to be near the Pits.”

Damian just frowned more as he leaned forward. “What’s the last thing you remember, Danny?”

Oh that was a complicated question. “It’s jumbled,” Danny said as he picked up a snake figurine. He settled it on the highest dune in the desert side of his sand world. “I ‘member Grandfather sparring with me.”

Danny searched through his pile, finding a strange rabbit looking figurine with what looked like was supposed to be horns. Though, one of the horns had broken off. “I ‘member being excited because Grandfather said we were using for real swords. Grandfather was angry, but he was always angry.” As Danny spoke, he settled the horned rabbit at the foot of the hill the snake lived on. “It was my first time using for real swords but I… I couldn’t dodge. I failed so Grandfather killed me.”

“You did not fail.” Danny felt hands grab his face. He was turned to look at Damian. His akhi’s eyes practically glowed from how intense his gaze grew. “You never failed. Grandfather was cruel and terrible and he should have never used real blades against you, do you understand?”

Sure, Danny understood. Long talks with Jazz had left him knowing that how his Grandfather had treated him was nothing short of abuse. However, hearing Damian denounce their Grandfather when he’d practically worshiped at the man’s feet? His emotions felt far too big for his body. Tears trickled down his cheeks as gloved thumbs brushed them away.

“Do you understand, Danny?” Damian asked, softer as he continued to hold Danny’s face oh so gently. Sniffling, Danny nodded. Damian relaxed as he brought his forehead to Danny’s. “Good.”

They stayed like that for a moment before Damian let Danny go to continue playing. Danny continued to set his pieces up—a green tupperware lid settled near the base of the sand mountains as a fox and a black kitten sat next to it. Moving to the other side, he grabbed as many trees as he could and began setting them up in a semi-circle on half of the cross-hatched sand. Once his forest was set up, he went back to the chest to search for more figurines.

As he was searching, Damian began speaking again. “Mother tried to revive you.”

Danny glanced up, tilting his head. “When I died?”

Damian nodded. “She brought you to the Pits as soon as Grandfather left. However, when she put you in, you never resurfaced. It’s been eight years since she tried to revive you.”

“I know,” Danny answered, already going back to sifting through the toys and trinkets.

“You know? What do you mean you know?” Despite the harsh words, Damian’s tone remained curious, more concerned than anything.

Finding his next targets, Danny reached deep to pull his new treasures out. “I know it’s been years. I’m not ‘pose to be this small. I’m ‘pose to be bigger.”

Damian frowned. “How big are you supposed to be?”

“14.” The answer came easy as Danny piled his new figurines next to the sandbox. “I know I’m ‘pose to be 14, but I’m 6. I’m not ‘pose to be 6.”

“It’s okay that you’re still 6.” Damian shuffled a bit closer, watching as Danny picked up two little bears in lab coats. “You don’t have to be any older than you are, Danny.”

Of course Damian wouldn’t understand. Danny shook his head as he placed the bears in the middle of his forest circle, adjusting them so they stood opposite of each other. “But I was 14. I know I was, but then I got turned 6 and then I woke up and saw you, Akhi.”

Things went quiet for a moment, as Damian chewed on what Danny was telling him. That was more than fine with Danny. It let him continue to place his toys, humming as he grabbed a baby figurine (probably stolen from a nativity scene) and placed it in between the bears. He then placed a mother lion over the baby, her snarling face directed towards one of the bears.

Curiosity burned in Danny’s gut, and he felt his question slip out before he could stop it. “Why are we at Father’s house?”

“Because it wasn’t safe with Mother.”

“Why wasn’t it safe with Mother?” Danny grabbed a green disk and pushed it into the sand, making it stand up.

Damian pursed his lips, clearly not liking the question. “Mother… Mother wasn’t always a good mother. She wanted to do something that would really hurt you.”

Huh. “Like what?” Danny asked as he grabbed a tiny computer and a purple fairy to set looking at the disk.

“Well…” Damian took a deep breath and let it out. “Mother wanted to train you to become the Demon Head.”

Oh. “But I don’t want to be the Demon Head.”

For some reason that simple sentence allowed Damian to deflate a bit with relief. “I know, Danny, but Mother wouldn’t have taken no for an answer. So I took you with me.”

Danny frowned, going back to the chest and searching for every ghost figurine he could find. “Why are you with Father, Damian?”

“It’s complicated, Danny.” Damian watched with curious eyes as Danny picked up all of the ghosts. “Why are you grabbing so many ghosts?”

“I need to find the right one.” Once sure he had gathered every ghost figurine, doll, and toy from the chest he spread them out onto the floor. Ghosting (ha!) his fingers over them, he picked each ghost up to observe it from every angle. “Why’s it comp-lee-cated?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Danny watched as Damian’s face scrunched in discomfort. He knew any question surrounding their family would probably be complicated, but Damian had always been eager to lead the League. Danny couldn’t imagine a world where his akhi abandoned everything he worked for to go live with their father—a man who had never bothered to visit them once despite their mother’s insistence that their father loved them very much. In Danny’s opinion, he’d do just fine never meeting the man, thank you very much.

He had a good life with the Fentons. He didn’t want to give up his mom and dad just yet.

Damian sighed. “I… Mother tried to hurt me in the same way she was going to hurt you. I couldn’t stay with her when she wasn’t safe.”

“But I thought you wanted to be the Demon Head?” Danny paused in his sorting to look up at his brother. “You loved Grandfather.”

“I did.” Damian looked so remorseful over that fact. As if loving someone who hurt you was some big crime. “I was foolish in following his teachings, and I’m sorry I ever allowed myself to hurt you because of them. That was wrong of me, Danny, and you deserve so much better.”

Scrunching his face in confusion, Danny set down his ghosts. He stepped over his piles, careful not to disturb the ones he’d already decided weren’t correct and the ones he still needed to judge. Once he’d cleared his biggest obstacle, he threw his arms around Damian’s neck, slotting himself back into Damian’s lap. “No sorrys,” he said, firm as he hugged Damian tight.

Danny felt Damian hesitate for a moment before his hug was returned. “But I hurt you.” Damian’s voice began to sound nasally, the way one’s voice did when they started to cry. “I hurt you, and I didn’t protect you. I let you die.”

“No.” Danny shoved himself further into Damian’s hold, burrowing his head under Damian’s chin. “No, you didn’t. You’re wrong, akhi.”

“I’m older.” It was a stupid argument, and both knew it, but Damian doubled down. “Older brothers are supposed to protect little brothers.”

“Nuh-uh!” Danny shook his head, wondering if he continued to cling so tightly to Damian that he would accidentally slip intangible and overshadow him. “You’re wrong. Little brothers protect big brothers.”

Damian laughed, incredulous as he shoved his nose into the top of Danny’s head. Tears dripped down onto his hair with little plop plop plops. “That’s ridiculous. I promised to protect you and I failed.”

“No, you didn’t fail!” Danny pulled himself back so he could look Damian in the eye. “I didn’t die so you didn’t fail! You’re wrong, akhi! Wrong, wrong, wrong!”

“You did—”

“I didn’t! I’m right here!” Danny pulled Damian’s hand to his neck, trying to get him to feel for his pulse. “See! I’m alive. I’m alive, akhi, so don’t be sad. You didn’t hurt me, I’m right here.”

Damian’s face crumpled and he pulled Danny back to his chest. The brothers stayed like that for who knows how long. A part of Danny wanted to wiggle out of Damian’s grip—he needed to finish setting up his sand world. However, Damian clearly needed the reassurance. In a way, maybe Danny did too. It was nice, to be so wholly wanted by someone. To have Damian sob into his hair as he reveled in Danny being alive. How happy and relieved he was just to see Danny, even if Danny was much younger than he was supposed to be.

Maybe Damian would enjoy the Danny scrapbook. Maybe it would just make him sadder. Danny just wished he didn’t have to choose like this.

Once Damian had thoroughly finished crying, he sniffled and let Danny go. “Now,” he said, unceremoniously transitioning out of the intense conversation, “tell me what you’re doing with all these ghosts.”

Danny immediately set to telling Damian exactly what he was looking for. He lifted each ghost, telling Damian how that ghost wasn’t right or why it wouldn’t fit in his make believe world. Damian nodded along, never asking for context but occasionally asking about why certain ghosts failed their vibe checks. It was fun, Danny decided, to explain why the little ghost with the top hat was far too fancy but the ghost with the sandals was offensively casual.

Danny finally settled on a small, mint green ghost. It looked almost like a blob ghost, though it had a chipped little smile. The painted on eyes also had bled a bit at some point in its creation, so the poor thing looked like it was crying. He settled it right in front of the green disk, sinking it so it was half in the sand and half out.

Taking a step back, Danny admired his work. It was pretty cool looking if he did say so himself. Mouth stretching wide in a yawn, Danny rubbed at his eyes before turning to Damian. “Can we keep it like that?”

Damian hummed as he swept Danny into his arms. “If no one else wishes to use the sand tray, then I suppose it would be fine if we kept your creation. However, if someone else expresses a desire to use it then we have to put all the toys back, okay?”

That seemed reasonable enough. Danny nodded, bringing his hand up to muffle another loud yawn.

“It seems we should both be getting ready for bed then, hm?” Damian began walking them out of the room, and Danny hadn’t realized what time it actually was. He knew it had been just after school when Vlad had begun chasing him, but that could have been hours ago. Still, Damian didn’t seem particularly concerned as they left what Danny now dubbed the coolest room to ever exist in a house.

Wrapping his arms around Damian’s neck, Danny nuzzled into his older brother. “Akhi?”

“Yes, Danny?”

“Can I sleep with you tonight?”

He felt Damian stumble a bit. Right. Right, Danny was stupid. Bed sharing had never been a thing in the League. If you were really so weak as to need another to watch your back while you slept, then clearly you didn’t deserve to be there. Jazz had spoiled him, setting the precedent of asking to sleep in his room when he’d had a nightmare until he grew comfortable enough to ask her first.

“Of course, Danny.” Damian’s voice broke Danny out of his spiral. Danny squirmed, looking at Damian with what he was sure was open shock and awe. “Let’s get your teeth brushed and pajamas on first, though, hm?”

With a wide smile, Danny returned to leaning on his akhi. “Of course, akhi! Ahbak.”

Damian kissed Danny on the head. “Ahbak, Danny.”

Chapter Text

Damian hadn’t been expecting anybody else at the breakfast table when he brought Danny down.

Waking up with the young boy had been a whole other experience, Danny actually whining when Damian had informed him that it was time to wake up. That kind of behavior would have never been something that Danny could have gotten away with in the League, but Damian had to admit it was kind of cute. He had decided to let Danny stay in the borrowed t-shirt and sleep shorts as he ushered his younger brother through washing his face and brushing his teeth. Seeing how Danny swayed on his feet, Damian indulged and decided to carry Danny down to the breakfast table.

Maybe if he had paid any sort of attention to the Family Group Chat that Richard insisted they all use, Damian would have been able to prepare Danny for the sudden attention. However, Damian had dared to ignore the group chat in favor of focusing on his little brother. Truly, a terrible mistake that had to be punished with Brown screeching as soon as he entered the dining room.

“Oh my God, he’s absolutely precious!” Brown shook Cain’s shoulder as she stared at Danny. “Just the cutest little baby assassin in the world!”

Danny flinched at the sudden loud noise, rubbing at his eyes as he leaned closer to Damian. Damian scowled at Brown as he shifted Danny in his arms. “Be quiet. You are scaring him.”

Richard had the gall to grin at Damian as he turned in his chair to better look at Damian and Danny. “Sorry, baby bat,” Richard said, looking very much not sorry at all, “everybody was curious about Bruce’s new bundle of joy so we decided family breakfast was in order.”

Damian narrowed his eyes as he scanned the table. “I do not understand why you all insist on coming over so often when all of you do not live here anymore.”

“Hey, I still come home for summer break!” Thomas piped up, pointing his fork loaded with pancake at Damian. “Besides, it’s been a while since B brought a new kid home.”

“How’s he doing, by the way?” Drake asked, setting his own utensils down. “He seemed pretty upset last we saw him.”

“As you all can clearly see, he is fine, however he would be better if you all weren’t here to overwhelm him.” Damian didn’t care that he was practically snarling at his family at this point. While he loved his siblings (as much as he would never admit it), he very much understood how absolutely overwhelming they could be. The Wayne siblings (plus Cain’s girlfriend) were well-meaning, but they also had skewed versions of what boundaries and appropriate conversation looked like. (No, Damian was not included in that number. He could understand stupid social cues just fine, he just chose to ignore them.)

Unfortunately, having watched Damian grow up, his family had grown mostly immune to his more volatile moods. As such, Todd rolled his eyes as he leaned back in his seat. “The kid looks plenty fine to me.”

Glancing down at Danny, Damian supposed at a glance one could assume Danny was doing fine. His baby brother was scanning the table, curiosity bright in his eyes. However, none of his siblings felt the way Danny’s hands tightened around Damian’s neck nor how he tensed as if waiting to flee at a moment’s notice. His brother may be young, but Danny had always been quite the little pretender. One couldn’t survive in the League if they couldn’t at the very least mask their intentions.

Huffing, Damian debated simply walking out of the room. He could just request Alfred bring breakfast somewhere quieter. Sure, this wouldn’t completely deter his siblings, but it would certainly send a message about not ambushing his baby brother at breakfast. Just as Damian was about to turn on his heel and leave, he felt a pat on his shoulder.

Turning to look at Danny, Damian raised an eyebrow as Danny held up a hand in front of his mouth and leaned close. “Akhi, who are these people?”

The quiet Arabic had all of Damian’s siblings leaning forward and trying to hear exactly what Danny was saying. Damian rolled his eyes before turning to Danny and answering in Arabic, “these are my siblings. Father adopted most of them, though one of them is technically a sister-in-law so to speak.”

Danny gasped as he pulled on Damian’s shirt. “Akhi, you have ekhwat?”

Damn it, Damian’s heart wasn’t supposed to melt like this. He had a reputation to uphold! “Yes, I do.”

Danny looked back out at the table of Waynes, watching as each of them gave him a little wave in greeting (minus Todd who stuck with a simple head nod). “Does that mean they’re my ekhwat, too?”

“Yes, I suppose that means they are.” Damian wouldn’t say how the idea of Danny referring to any of their other brothers as akhi rankled under his skin. Danny was allowed to feel however he liked about his new siblings.

Of course, Danny seemed to sense his discomfort as he throw both his arms back around Damian’s neck. “Don’t worry, akhi,” he said, soft and conspiratorial, “you’re my only akhi akhi.”

Smiling, Damian ruffled Danny’s hair. “And you’re my only Danny.” With the reassurance, Damian bit the bullet and started walking towards his seat at the table. The seat next to his had been left open, and Damian took care in helping Danny sit at his spot at the Wayne dining room table. Once his younger brother was properly situated, Damian turned to the rest of his family. “Is Father going to be joining us?” He asked, switching back to English.

“God I hope not,” Todd muttered in between bites of pancake. Cain jabbed Todd in the ribs with her elbow, earning her a glare.

Before anyone else could put up a fuss, Richard cleared his throat. “Bruce said he’d join in a bit—he got caught up with something last night so he’s sleeping in a little.”

Odd. Damian had never known his father to be someone who took advantage of any sort of offer to sleep in. Perhaps Father was simply avoiding Danny. That seemed the more likely answer, in Damian’s eye. While his father had never had any trouble taking on Gotham’s criminals head on, he always seemed to flounder when confronted by his children. Hopefully Father would find his testicles and actually come down for breakfast.

With all Danny had been through, he deserved to be able to at least meet his father.

The door between the dining room and the kitchen swung open as Pennyworth pushed a cart in. “Good morning, Master Damian, I saved you a plate.” He set Damian’s breakfast in front of him before turning to Danny. “And it is lovely to meet you, Master Danyal. I am afraid I have not been informed of your meal preferences, so I beg your pardon if this meal is not up to your standards.”

With that, Pennyworth revealed a smaller stack of pancakes decorated with what looked like a smiley face. Danny’s eyes sparkled as he stared at the meal before he looked back to Pennyworth. With a shy voice that Damian had not heard from his brother before, Danny said, “Shukran, jadd.”

Pennyworth paused for a moment before nodding his head to Danny. “Af-waan, young Master Danyal. And please, call me Alfred. All of the residents of Wayne Manor do so.” At Danny’s nod, Pennyworth took his cart and left the room.

Once the door to the kitchen swung back closed, Thomas leaned across the table. “Dude, does Danyal know any English or do we have to start learning Arabic?”

“I can speak English!” Danny piped up with a pout, crossing his arms. “Arabic is just easier.”

Everyone’s attention swung back to the smallest Wayne as Danny spoke. Richard took the initiative to respond first as he nearly leaned over Drake to smile at Danny. “Ah, we’re sorry for assuming Danyal. My name is Dick! I’m one of Damian’s older brothers.” Richard then pointed over at Thomas. “That’s Duke, he was the most recent addition before you came here. Then there’s Steph and Cass, Cass is our sister and Steph is Cass’s girlfriend. The grumpy one on the end is Jason—”

“I am not grumpy, you asshat,” Todd said.

Richard gasped. “Language, Jason! We have little ears present!”

“I’ve heard worse.” Danny shrugged as he grabbed his fork and knife. He seemed to frown as he couldn’t quite hold the utensils like one would pencils yet. Instead he ended up grabbing the fork and knife with his whole fist, moving it clunkily as he started to cut into his pancakes. “It’s not like he said fuck.”

Richard’s whole face crumpled into despair as Todd began laughing. “Oh, I think I like this kid already.” His smile grew sharp and Damian rolled his eyes at Todd’s continued lack of maturity. No matter how old the man grew, Damian was sure he’d never stop acting like an overdramatic angsting child.

Drake ignored the drama happening at the end of the table in order to turn to Danny. “Hi, Danyal. It’s nice to meet you. My name is Tim.” He held his hand out for Danny to shake.

Danny stared at the hand for a few minutes before going back to his pancakes. “Nice to meet you too,” he mumbled as he shoved a jaggedly cut piece of pancake into his mouth.

To his credit, Drake didn’t let Danny’s small rejection get to him. He simply turned back to his own pancakes as he continued to strike up conversation. “It’s pretty overwhelming having all of us here suddenly, huh? It sounds like yesterday was really confusing for you.”

Danny shrugged. “It’s fine. It was scary at first, but I’ve seen scarier things.”

“What kind of scary things?” Brown asked.

A wave of protectiveness bubbled up in Damian’s gut. Before he could snap at Brown, Danny swallowed a bite and began to speak. “Lots of scary things. Grandfather was always scary, but Mother said that he was just cranky ‘cause people in the League were being stupid. I think Grandfather was just mean, but I’m not ‘pose to say that.”

“Well, you can say whatever you want here, Danyal.” Brown smiled as she gave Danny a wink. “I promise none of us would ever tell your Grandfather.”

“Of course you can’t, akhi said he died.” Danny rolled his eyes, something that Damian couldn’t help but find completely and utterly charming on his baby brother. “But you’re not ‘pose to say bad things about the dead. At least that’s what Jazzy says, but Mom and Dad say all sorts of bad things about ghosts.”

Pausing, Damian set his fork down. “Danny,” he started, keeping his words slow as he felt the whole room stiffen, “who is Jazzy?”

Danny froze. While it had been years since Damian had trained by his brother’s side, he could still recognize the training that morphed Danny’s expression into one of seeming nonchalance. “I don’t know.” He shrugged, as if that would let him get away with an obvious slip in front of a room full of the greatest detectives in the world.

Damian wondered what Father would think once he finally decided to grace the room with his presence.

“It’s okay if you don’t know, Danyal,” Thomas said, voice soft as he and the rest of the family all collectively decided to ignore their food in favor of the clearly much more interesting conversation unfolding, “but it sounded like you were talking about people you knew.”

Danny squirmed in his seat, kicking his feet back and forth. “I don’t wanna talk ‘bout it.”

“But it sounds like something important.” Drake turned in his seat so he could better look at Danny. “You’re not in trouble or anything like that, Danyal. We just want to help you.”

“If somebody’s hurting you, we wanna help.” Richard always managed to sound the most sincere when trying to convince young children of any of the bats’ intent. “You’re Damian’s little brother, which means that you’re also our little brother. Family helps family.”

Tears began to slip down Danny’s cheeks as his lower lip trembled. “I said I don’t wanna talk ‘bout it!” Shoving himself away from the table, Danny hopped out of his seat before dashing away. Damian didn’t waste any time listening to his siblings’ shocked noises or the beginnings of an argument. He just ran after Danny.

The two brothers didn’t manage to get far—only managing to get to the main staircase when Danny ran face first into Father’s legs. Danny fell onto his bum with a small ‘oof’, still rubbing at his face to try and get rid of the tears. Father, for all of his awkwardness and inability to emotionally connect at times with his children, immediately knelt at Danny’s side.

“Danyal?” Bruce asked, holding a hand out to the boy. “Are you alright?”

Sobs growing harder, Danny shook his head. Damian slowed to a walk, frowning when Danny turned and held his arms out to him. “Akhi!” Danny sobbed, looking so similar to when he had first crawled out of the pit. Damian didn’t hesitate, sweeping Danny up into his arms and rocking him.

“Shh, Danny, it’s alright. Akhi’s here. Akhi will protect you.” The small murmurs in Arabic seemed to at least comfort Danny as he shoved his face into the crook of Damian’s shoulder. When Damian caught his father’s gaze, he saw a mix of pride and regret dancing across his expression. That mix quickly turned to concern as his father stood back up.

“What happened?” Father asked, taking a step closer, but not attempting to reach out to Danny again.

Frowning, Damian said, “Danny said something concerning at the breakfast table. I believe we should discuss this somewhere quieter, however. Danny seemed to enjoy the sensory room Pennyworth and Thomas insist we add to the manor.”

“Then we’ll go there.” Father turned on his heel and led Damian away. Feeling how his baby brother shook with sobs, Damian hoped that whatever Danny had to tell them, it wasn’t as awful as what his imagination was creating.

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

Danny didn’t know how to feel about being put in the Kindergarten room again.

As cool as the room was, it felt more than a bit embarrassing to be put back in it as if he were a simple tantrum throwing child. Shame bubbled in his gut at the fact that he started crying over understandable questions that the Wayne family clearly had for him. He couldn’t just name drop his sister like that without raising so many flags after all.

At the moment, he found himself just running his left hand along a ridged tile. It was hard to feel things along the palm of his left hand at the best of times, but pressing the scarred skin into the mats felt nice. Tingly in a way that told him it would have been bordering on painful if he hadn’t burned that hand down to the literal bone. Some days Danny wondered if his bones had been charred—or if that was even a thing that bones could do. How funny would it be to have someone open him up only to find all of the hand bones in his left hand blackened?

He practically scraped his hand along the tile.

Maybe it was a bit childish to be avoiding Damian like this. After all, he’d ruined breakfast and then sobbed into Damian’s shirt for another good ten minutes. Once Danny had stopped crying, instead of talking like a reasonable person, he had squirmed until Damian put him down and immediately set himself to his task of finding the nearest thing to distract himself with.

This definitely had nothing to do with the fact that Bruce Wayne (his father apparently) was also sitting in the room.

See there was a part of Danny that had known as soon as Damian mentioned Wayne manor who their father truly was. While Amity Park was sheltered, even they had heard of the exploits of one Bruce Wayne. So ending up in Wayne Manor and then being greeted by all of the famously adopted Wayne brood on top of that? Danny may be oblivious at times but even he could connect those dots. A philanthropist billionaire with all of the power and connections in the world?

It was a no brainer. Of course Grandfather and Mother would do anything to tie the almighty Bruce Wayne to the League.

Though, Danny hadn’t really wanted to acknowledge that he had a viable bio family to return to. Mom and Dad had never shied away from the fact that his living situation with them was temporary. He still remembers that night in the emergency room, his parents pulling out their foster licenses as they promised to house Danny until his real family found him. Surely, surely something bad must’ve happened for Danny to get lost in the woods all alone.

“Don’t worry, sport,” Dad had said as he had ruffled his hair, “we’ll take care of you until your family finds you. I’m sure they’re looking real hard for you.”

At the time, that had comforted Danny. Surely, he still had some use to the League if he was still alive. Grandfather would send someone to collect Danny, and perhaps they would spare the Fentons for keeping one of their own safe for so long. As the years passed, Danny realized just how idiotic his younger self was. As if Grandfather would ever try and take Danny back when he had fumbled on his first ever fight with real weapons.

“Are you feeling better, Danny?” Damian asked, interrupting Danny’s musing.

He bit his lip and nodded. He really, really didn’t want to talk about the whole spectacle he’d created in the dining room. In fact, Danny wanted nothing more than to go intangible and just sink through the floor. However, he had opened his stupid, dumb mouth, and he couldn’t just keep fucking around when he had a family to get back to and a town to defend.

(As if his parents would let him come home when he’d found his “real” family.)

Instead of diving into the inevitable interrogation, Bruce pushed himself off of his seat to kneel down next to Danny. “I don’t think I properly introduced myself.” He held a hand out, smiling softly. “My name is Bruce Wayne. I’m your dad.”

He wasn’t. He was, but he wasn’t, and Danny could feel tears welling up again because he didn’t want Bruce to be his dad. He wanted his dad, but his dad was just a foster dad and Bruce Wayne was nice. Nice and rich and clearly capable of raising children so of course Danny would be handed over to Bruce with no fuss, and his stupid child body had him sobbing again because he couldn’t handle even the slightest disappointment apparently.

Bruce looked so very uncomfortable with Danny, and Danny found he didn’t care. He’d always thought it would be the half-ghost thing that would take his parents from him, but instead it was a fucking cube that left him six years old and wanting the one person who had been his sole comfort at the young age of six.

As Damian once more came over to sweep Danny into his arms, Danny found he at least could soak up all of the affection he’d missed from his older brother. Sure, he hadn’t been able to openly cuddle with Damian often, but Damian clearly prided himself on being Danny’s older brother and Danny did everything he could to make himself a little brother worthy of Damian’s pride. He shoved his face as far into Damian’s shoulder as he could, the idea of leaving his brother making him cry all the harder.

“It’s okay, Danny,” Damian whispered, Arabic promising what Danny hoped was a private conversation, “Father won’t hurt you. It’s okay, I promise.”

That wasn’t the problem, but Danny couldn’t communicate the problem when he felt far too small for all of the emotions crashing over him. It wasn’t fair. None of this was, and Danny couldn’t even say half of his words correctly or keep himself from spilling his secrets because apparently six year olds had the worst impulse control known to man. He hadn’t been this emotional when he was actually six, had he?

Of course he hadn’t. If he had, Grandfather would have absolutely killed him sooner.

It took far too long in Danny’s opinion to sob himself out, but Damian was oh so patient throughout the entire thing. Danny wasn’t sure where his older brother had learned how to soothe small children, but he appreciated being allowed to cling and cry. It was nice, to be soothed by quick Arabic and calloused hands. At least if he was stuck with a fucked up situation then Danny was going to bask in as much of his older brother’s attention as he could while he had the chance.

Sniffling, Danny refused to lift himself from Damian’s shoulder. He’d already thoroughly humiliated himself, so he might as well commit to the bit. He could feel Damian shift a bit, probably sharing a look with Bruce before turning his attention back to Danny. “Danny…” Oh he hated the careful tone his brother had picked up. “You mentioned yesterday that you were 14.”

Danny stiffened. He nodded. He couldn’t lie to Damian. Not when he’d already shoved his foot straight into his mouth.

Damian didn’t try to move Danny away from his shoulder. Instead, he simply paused in his soothing to focus solely on Danny. “Danny… what happened when Mother put you in the Lazarus Pits?”

Well, Danny supposed the jig was up. Though, Danny couldn’t remember what ‘jig’ he’d been playing in the first place. He pushed himself away from Damian’s shoulder, rubbing his face to try and get rid of any lingering tears or snot. “… there was a portal. At the bottom.”

Most people couldn’t remember a lot from when they were that young, but Danny could never forget that night. He’d felt so cold as Mother cradled him, dashing through Nanda Parbat in a desperate attempt to get to the pits before Grandfather realized what she was doing. Damian ran behind her, tears dripping down his face as he kept mouthing to Danny. He’d be okay. He couldn’t die yet. Mother would fix him. He promised.

Danny knew exactly how long it would take for a person to bleed out from a wound this size. Grandfather had stood over his corpse for 1 minute and 47 seconds. Most people bled out within 2 to 5 minutes. Danny took his last breath 3 minutes and 31 seconds after his grandfather had slashed him across his tiny chest, fury in his grandfather’s eyes for having the absolute gall to be so indescribably weak.

Danny’s first death had been a lot more peaceful than his second. He remembered slipping into that blackness, that nothingness and wondering if that was all he was now. Just a figure floating in the inky black darkness with nothing but his thoughts. Sure, he was disappointed and sad and ashamed that he had died so quickly, but there was a contentedness that came with it. Knowing that Danny no longer had to prove himself to anyone. All he needed to do was lay there and float.

He woke to the Lazarus Waters choking him. It was painful, to begin drowning just as soon as he’d bled himself out. He’d sunk further and further, scrabbling when he slipped through the portal. It was funny, how it had opened beneath him with the tiniest whirr before closing behind him once he fell through. It deposited him somewhere forested, with trees far larger than any he’d ever seen in his life. He heaved up Lazarus Water on the grass and dirt beneath him. It burned past his throat, but he was breathing and alive and he wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that.

He'd wandered, hand to his chest as it began to bleed once more. Danny hadn’t been on many missions before, but he knew for a fact that he was far away from home. Without any weapons and once more bleeding, Danny had wondered if he had been revived for nothing when a scream pierced the air. He’d swung around to see a girl, older than him yet younger than his akhi, staring at him in terror. However, once she saw the blood staining his chest, her little eyes grew determined as she grabbed his hand.

“Mommy! Daddy! There’s a boy! He’s hurt!”

Jazz began to drag him closer to where she had last seen her parents, when Jack and Maddie Fenton burst through the trees, weapons out and searching for the ghost harassing their only daughter. Upon seeing Danny, the two had immediately sprung into action, his mom sweeping him into her arms as his dad picked up his sister. They rushed to the GAV, Dad taking the wheel as Mom taught Jazz how to stop the bleeding.

By the time they’d reached the emergency room, Mom and Dad had already diagnosed Danny as having some kind of ectoplasm poisoning—clearly a leftover of the Lazarus waters bringing him back from death. The doctors asked all sorts of questions. His name, his age, where his parents were. Danny kept tight lipped where he could, playing the part of a lost little boy as best as he knew how. He didn’t know where his parents were, they were camping when a bear came through their camp. He was scared so he ran. His name was Danny, just Danny.

Mom and Dad had looked so worried when they were finally allowed to see him. “Oh sweetheart, you must be in so much pain,” Mom said as she handed him a sandwich, “here. Blood Blossom is the best cure for ectoplasm poisoning.”

He couldn’t just refuse the food, so he took a bite. The sandwich burned, but in that way a particularly spicy curry would. It warmed his stomach just like how Mother’s meals would when she offered Damian and Danny the privilege of eating her cooking.

“Do you have a place to stay?” Mom had asked, smoothing Danny’s hair back as he laid on that hospital bed.

When he shook his head, Jazz had popped up from where she had been hiding behind Dad to grab Danny’s hand. “You can stay with us!” She turned her puppy dog eyes to Mom and Dad, something she would teach Danny how to do during the years they spent as siblings. “Can we keep him, please? Please, please, please?”

Mom and Dad shared a look, one that Danny hadn’t been able to understand back then but one that he knew now was some kind of hesitation. “Sweetie…” Mom started, already trying to minimize the tears that would surely come. “We can’t just keep Danny. He’s got a family who’s probably really worried about him. They’re gonna come looking for him, and they would be really sad if we just kept him.”

Jazz’s lip wobbled and Dad rushed to save the day. “But, since Danno here doesn’t have any family nearby we can keep him company until his family comes.”

It was so strange to see Jazz shout in victory, turning to Danny and speaking of how she always wanted a little brother and how they were going to have so much fun until Danny’s family came for him. That first day became two and then a week and suddenly the Fentons were signing agreements with the Illinois DHS and he got assigned a social worker and the Fentons promised to house him. Temporarily. Everything was always temporary with Mom and Dad.

Throughout his story, Damian and Bruce had both remained quiet. Contemplative looks were shared, though Bruce seemed to throw Damian the occasional fatherly glare of “don’t you dare do the thing I know you were thinking of doing”. For a moment, Danny considered not telling Damian and Bruce about the portal incident. He was already bombarding them with his whole tragic backstory, did he really need to go into the nitty gritty of dying the second time?

But then he remembered how he ended up in this situation in the first place, and Danny realized that as much as his instincts begged him to keep his identity as a halfa a secret, there was no way he would be able to explain the full situation without explaining how he ended up being chased by Vlad in the ghost zone in the first place.

“So your parents are ghost hunters?” Bruce asked after Danny had paused to consider whether he reveal his secret identity.

Danny shook his head. “They’re ecto-biolotists. They study ghosts.”

Damian frowned. “How can they study something that doesn’t exist?”

“They do exist though!” Danny flapped his hands as he rushed to explain. “See, they made a portal and it didn’t work at first ‘cause Mom and Dad get super focused so they forgot to put the on button on the outside of the portal and one of my friends dared me to go in and I went and I thought ghosts were fake too but then, but then I tripped and, and, and—”

“Slow words, Danny,” Damian said, taking a moment to grab Danny’s hands, “you don’t have to rush. We have all of the time in the world right now.”

Danny took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. Once Danny had taken his breath, Damian let go of his hands. Danny immediately went to the basket of fidget toys to grab something to mess with. “So I tripped and I hit the on button. That’s why I’ve got scars, cause I got shocked really bad.” Danny took a moment to show off the burn scar on his left hand and the Lichtenburg scar trailing up his arm. “And, and the Ghost Zone—that’s where Mom and Dad’s portal goes—the Ghost Zone’s made of Lazarus Water! But like, good Lazarus Water not the icky stuff Grandfather has. Anyways, so when I pressed the on button I got shocked but I also got like Lazarus Water—it’s called ek-toe-plasmum, by the way—I got ek-toe-plasmum in my DNAs and it turned me into a ghost! And then ghosts started coming out and I started fighting them and—”

“Danny,” Damian interrupted once more, but Danny felt a lot more annoyed that his older brother was interrupting him when he was telling Bruce and Damian the biggest secret of his life (outside of the fact that he used to be an assassin which Sam, Jazz, and Tucker would hopefully never find out). “I understand that you had a traumatic experience, but what do you mean you turned into a ghost? I know we don’t have the meta gene, but many metas gained their powers in lab accidents like the one you’re describing.”

Danny frowned (though it looked much more like a pout). “I’m not a meta though! I know I’m not!” He stamped his foot, as embarrassing as giving into the urge was. He couldn’t believe that Damian just wouldn’t believe him. However, he knew a quick way to prove it. “I am a ghost! Just watch!”

At first, Danny wasn’t actually sure if he’d be able to go ghost. Sure, he could still feel his core vibrating away in his chest (it had seemed surprisingly active and in tune with his emotions now that he thought about it), but Danny hadn’t tried to use any of his powers since first de-transforming in the Zone. There was a very real chance this wouldn’t work, and Ancients, Danny would hate to put up this fuss only for this to be one of the times that his powers decided to go haywire on him.

Closing his eyes to focus, Danny felt that familiar ring of icy cold power appear around his middle. The rings washed over him, as if spreading a layer of frost that settled gently over his limbs. When he opened his eyes, he nearly preened at the moment of shock that covered Damian and Bruce’s faces before they settled back into concern. Holding out his arm, Danny stared at Damian. “See! Try and grab my hand.”

Damian raised an eyebrow. He reached out, and Danny let his hand go intangible. Shock reappeared, this time making a permanent home on Damian’s face as he watched his hand go through Danny’s arm. Allowing himself to float, Danny watched Damian and Bruce’s jaws drop as he let his legs turn into his ghostly tail.

“I’m a halfa—half ghost, half alive.” Danny felt those rings begin to pop back up, and quickly lowered himself back to the floor. As his transformation dropped, he made a note to himself that clearly his ghost form was something that he could not keep up for long while he was tiny like this. “Ghosts keep coming out of the portal Mom and Dad made and wrecking the town so I fight them and put them back. I was fighting a ghost in the Ghost Zone when I ran into a cube that made me small.”

“That would explain why the bat computer had so much trouble in scanning his blood,” Bruce said as he looked at Danny, his posture falling into one of a detective who had just snatched a particularly interesting clue.

Danny inched closer to Damian. “You took my blood?” He wanted to sound accusatory, but with his squeaky voice it sounded more scared than anything.

Wrapping an arm around his shoulder, Damian pulled Danny close. “When we first got home, Drake insisted that we make sure you were who I said you were. It was only enough to run the test, and we made sure to properly dispose of it after we used it.”

“So you don’t still have it?” Danny looked up at his akhi, hating how he was begging for reassurance.

Damian shook his head. “No, we don’t still have it. We incinerated it just as we do most other harmful substances that we need to examine in the bat cave. Why would we keep a blood sample when we already ran the necessary tests?”

Oh. Relief fluttered throughout Danny’s chest. At least he didn’t have to worry about another potential Vlad incident. “Okay good,” with that taken care of, Danny pivoted to the other extremely important bit of info, “did you guys find something weird?”

“Well, for a moment your DNA was unreadable,” Damian said, glancing at Bruce as he did so, “however, when we did finally get the scanner to read it, it noted that there was what looked to be Lazarus Water interwoven within your DNA. We just assumed that it had something to do with the Lazarus Pits.”

Danny shook his head. “Nope! It was the portal my mom and dad made.”

Damian frowned and shared a look with Bruce. Bruce shifted so he was once again kneeling in front of Danny. “Danny, it sounds like you’ve been through a lot.”

Shrugging, Danny began rocking on his feet. “It wasn’t that bad. It only sucked sometimes.”

“Still, no child should feel like they have to take up that kind of role.” Bruce laid a hand on Danny’s shoulder, his eyes soft and remorseful now that he’d found the answer to whatever had sent him into detective mode. “I’m sorry that you had to go through all of that.”

“It really is okay though!” Danny stopped rocking to shove Bruce’s hand off of his shoulder. “I’m strong! I can take care of myself! Mom and Dad always said me and Jazzy are self-suh-fish-ant. So, it’s fine.”

“It’s not,” Bruce insisted, “Danny, it really is not fine. I know you’re strong, and capable, and plenty of other positive things, but you are still a child. A child should never have to protect his entire town from the mistakes of his parents.”

Danny felt his brow scrunch. “My mom and dad aren’t bad.”

Bruce frowned. “I never said they were. I was just saying—”

“No!” Danny shoved himself away. “No, you imp-imp—you didn’t say it, but you meant it! Everyone thinks my parents are bad or weird or crazy, but they’re not! They make mistakes sometimes, but they’re good! They always put Jazzy and me first and they love me! They love me, they do!”

“Danny…” Damian reached out, but Danny brushed him off.

“Mom and Dad love me!” He screamed, uncaring at the scene he was creating as he felt tears bubble up again. Stupid child body with its stupid child emotions and stupid inability to handle anything. “They love me, but they don’t wanna keep me.”

Oh, that hurt so much more to say aloud than Danny had expected. He hiccupped as he rubbed at his face. “They—they love me, they do! They said they love me and they let me call them Mom and Dad and they made me a room! They love me, but they don’t want me. They don’t want me, akhi.”

Danny didn’t think he’d ever get tired of Damian sweeping him up into his arms. “It’s okay, Danny,” Damian said, but Danny wouldn’t have it.

“It’s not! I love them! They’re my mom and my dad, and I don’t wanna leave them! But they hate ghosts, and they’re gonna give me to you guys and I don’t want to leave my mom and dad, akhi! I don’t! I don’t want them to send me away, but they don’t want me!”

It seemed Damian and Bruce didn’t really know what to say to that, but Danny didn’t mind. He just sobbed as he sat in the realization that even if he gained a family, ultimately he was still going to lose another. Eventually Bruce came over and pulled both Damian and Danny into a hug, holding both of his biological sons close as his youngest kept sobbing over a family that had all of the time in the world to decide they wanted to keep him and decided against it.

Chapter Text

It wasn’t often that Sam spoke with Jasmine Fenton.

Their interactions were usually pretty limited—a hello in the school hallways or before Sam and Tucker were brought up to Danny’s room. Even then, it wasn’t often that she went to the Fenton household. Most often, she, Tucker, and Danny either haunted Nasty Burger or hung out in Tucker’s attic bedroom. Though, once Jazz had been folded into Team Phantom, she’d occasionally popped into the group chat to remind them to stay safe during ghost fights or to let them know if the Fenton Parents were pulling anything suspicious.

So Sam thought it was pretty reasonable to be worried when she woke up to her phone ringing and Jazz’s caller id.

Trying to banish the fog of sleepiness as quickly as possible, she pressed answer and brought her phone to her ear. “Hello?”

“Danny’s missing.”

Sam’s heart dropped. “What do you mean, Danny’s missing?”

Jazz must’ve been running about through the house because she heard footsteps thudding up stairs as Jazz hissed into the phone, “Danny is missing! I’ve looked everywhere! I checked his room, I checked the kitchen, I checked the lab, I called Tucker, and I’m calling you because Tucker said that the last you two saw him, he was chasing after a ghost!”

Of course, of course the one time that Sam and Tucker don’t follow Danny and actually listen to him when he tells him that he’s got everything handled, he goes and disappears. “When did you last see him, Jazz?” Sam pushed herself out of bed, already dashing to her dresser to drag out her clothes and speed through her morning routine.

“I saw him last at dinner,” Jazz said, sounding so very frazzled and on the verge of a panic attack, “He said he was going to explore the Zone a bit and I told him to text you guys so he wasn’t alone, but now Tucker’s saying he hasn’t seen him since the ghost and—”

“Okay, okay, Jazz, you need to breathe.” Sam herself wanted to punch Danny into the fucking stratosphere because the idiot had broken the one rule they all had to follow when exploring the zone. “We’ll find him. You still have the booo-merang, right?”

Jazz took a breath. “Y-yeah. It’s in my room.”

“Perfect. Grab that and then Tucker and I will meet you at your house. We can take the Specter Speeder and just follow him into the Ghost Zone.” Hopefully, Danny hadn’t gotten himself thrown into Walker’s prison again. Scratch that, Sam hoped Danny had done something as simple as gotten himself thrown into Walker’s prison. Anything else and she was going to strangle him when she saw him again.

“Okay, thank you, Sam,” Jazz said, sounding so relieved to have help and Sam felt her heart ache a little.

“Of course. I’ll see you in a bit.” Hanging up, Sam wiggled her way into her day clothes before she called Tucker.

He picked up before the second ring. “Did Jazz call you?”

“Yeah, we’re meeting up with her at the Portal.” She grabbed her “ghost hunting” backpack, shuffling through it to make sure she had all of her equipment at the ready. “Do you need me to call fake sick for you too?”

“Nah, I’ve still got some mental health days saved up with my parents. I’ll just tell them I need a day.” She could hear Tucker fumbling with something, probably his own version of her go bag. “How long are we gonna put him in Soup Jail after we find him?”

“Oh, he’s going to be stuck in Soup Jail for at least a week after I’m through with him.” Sam finished lacing up her boots, not bothering to hide her stomping feet as she sped out of the Manson Mansion. “I swear to every Ancient there is that if he’s doing some stupid shit with Frostbite and lost track of time—”

“Yeesh, Danny’s really in for it this time.” It sounded like Tucker was zipping something up. “I gotta go tell my parents I’m staying home then sneak out. I’ll meet you at Fenton Works?”

“See you there, Tuck.” Sam didn’t bother hanging up, knowing Tucker would first and shoved her phone back in her pocket. Her parents would probably ground her for weeks for skipping school like this, but Sam couldn’t care less. As long as Danny was safe then she could deal with whatever preppy bullshit her parents tried to throw at her.

It didn’t take long for her to reach the Fenton Works porch, hoping up the top step just as she saw Tucker turn into view. Her best friend panted as he hauled his backpack. Even after months of chasing Danny and their various ghost adversaries all around town, Tucker still lacked the stamina that Sam had and that she knew Danny was hiding.

She waited for Tuck to reach her, letting him catch his breath before she knocked on the door. Jazz opened it, her hair askew but headband and gear in place. She clutched onto the booo-merang like a lifeline, and Sam supposed it was. At least in a sense.

“Thanks for coming so quickly,” Jazz said as she ushered them both towards the lab, “Mom and Dad are still asleep so we should be in the clear. I still can’t believe Danny disappeared like that.”

“We can worry about the why’s later. For now, we need to get our idiot back.” Sam took the stairs down to the lab two at a time, uncaring of the noise as she immediately started heading towards the Specter Speeder. She threw her backpack into the back, sliding along the bench until she was in the cockpit. Starting up the Speeder felt familiar to her at this point—a lot more familiar than the golf cart that her parents occasionally had her drive in order to “prepare her for when she could start getting her driver’s license”.

She nearly scoffed. As if driving a golf cart around one of the biggest fuck you’s to the climate crisis would do anything. The Specter Speeder, however, was much more environmentally friendly and also at least a million times cooler. She could feel a small twinge of excitement as the Speeder purred underneath her, ready to go and explore the hazards that was the Ghost Zone.

Sure, the Fentons were fucking crazy and bordering neglectful towards their kids, but damn if they didn’t make some cool ass fucking inventions.

Sam pulled the Speeder in front of the portal, watching as Tucker set it on a timer. He slid in next, also throwing his backpack next to Sam’s while pulling his own phone out. “It’ll stay open for exactly three minutes. That should give us enough time to throw the booo-merang and get the Speeder through the portal. Jazz said she’s gonna throw the booo-merang and hop in while we’re taking off.”

Sam raised an eyebrow. She knew Jazz was a pretty terrible shot, but being bad at shooting things did not necessarily mean that she was terrible in any other areas of athletics. Shrugging, she just kept her foot on the brakes. “I shouldn’t be going too fast, but you’ll have a hand out to pull her in, right?”

“Really? You’re gonna trust my weak nerd arms?” Tucker waggled his arms for emphasis.

Rolling her eyes, Sam gestured to the steering wheel. “Someone needs to drive, and it’s sure as hell not going to be you.”

Pouting, Tucker leaned back. “Okay, fair.”

The timer beeped, and those yellow and black striped doors pulled back to reveal familiar swirling green. Jazz pulled her arm back, throwing the booo-merang. Sam hit the go pedal right as Jazz began sprinting. Just as the nose of the Speeder began to pass through the portal, Jazz grunted and leapt into the Specter Speeder, using Tucker to stabilize her. The door to the Specter Speeder closed and they were off.

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

Tucker was bored.

Okay, maybe that was bad to say when his best friend had disappeared and he was flying with his other best friend and his first best friend’s sister through the literal afterlife to find the first best friend, but he was. Sam was so focused on flying that she couldn’t actually engage him in any sort of fun conversation, and Jazz just kept staring straight at the booo-merang, as if it would get lost in the Zone the minute that she took her eyes off of it.

Which, honestly, a little rude of her to not trust the tracking device he’d added to the booo-merang. Sure, the Ghost Zone Positioning System (GZPS for short) he was working on was spotty at best, but he could still see the clear arc that the booo-merang was making even if some of the doors and islands they were passing weren’t accurate.

Even if they ended up losing it, Tucker knew they’d be able to track it down again. Even if at this point the tacker acted more like sonar than a true GPS tracker. Still, Tucker wished that the two girls by his side would stop white knuckling their seat/steering wheel respectively and just say something.

They’d already been going for hours, and Tucker knew his parents were going to have a whole lecture saved up for him when he got home about misusing his mental health days. Honestly, some days Tucker wished he could just tell his parents. Spill his guts about how his best friend had died in front of him and now he was following said friend around town, fighting the monsters that had come out of the Fenton’s portal and doing everything in his power to defang all of the weapons that his best friend’s parents kept creating.

There were a lot of things he could ask his parents for advice about. How to deal with the bullies at school or being gay or which coding project he should work on next. He appreciated being able to go to his parents for all of that, but he wished he could ask them more things. Ask them what to do when Danny came home bruised and bleeding. Ask them when he should report his friends’ parents to CPS and if that would just put them at more risk. Ask them how to deal with the fact that he may be more than a little in love with his best friend who was also dead because of a stupid fucking dare that he started and how to deal with the guilt because it ate him up alive, and he still wanted to kiss Danny stupid sometimes but Danny clearly wasn’t gay and he was so busy just trying to survive.

Tucker fidgeted with his phone.

Maybe there was something to those myths about the underworld that talked about it driving people crazy or being places of pure suffering. While the Ghost Zone was clearly a pretty morally neutral place, the endless green and shifting environments would be enough to fuck with anyone. Looking around, Tucker could have sworn that they had been flying through what looked like the streets of Ancient Rome. Now they were following the booo-merang through what Tucker could only describe as “de-bug mode”.

Doors clipped into each other, and the space around them seemed lined with a light, almost white sort of green. The checkerboard design seemed to imply a horizon, but it kept shifting perspectives even as they flew straight. There were trees in this part of the zone, some floating just completely detached while others seemed to be part of little patches of grass and nature. They glitched, pixelating before settling back into an unrendered green.

With all of the shapes and colors and just random bullshit, Tucker thought it looked like a game developer’s personal hell. Maybe this was where all the people who worked on Skyrim and other Bethesda games ended up after they died. Stuck to live in the representation of just how broken their virtual worlds would always be.

The world around him shifted once more as they emerged into what looked like a cityscape at night. The green of the skies darkened, though ectoplasm green bat shapes broke through the near black skies. Tucker watched as some of the bat shapes flew through the skies, before suddenly stilling as if they were nothing more than clouds. The actual cityscape reminded Tucker of the future levels in Sonic ’06. Broken roads held up by beams only to reveal even more roads beneath.

Buildings branched off of each other, almost as if creating trees made solely out of skyscrapers. Everywhere around them, Tucker could see more and more bat imagery whether it was the shadows on the windows or even the shapes of some of the doors. Some of the roads stretched into wide smiles, as if mimicking a clown’s painted face. The more Tucker looked, the more he found remnants of a gothic city that had been twisted and curved into something unbearable.

The booo-merang flipped between streets, leading them on what Tucker thought would be a fucking terrible sonic level, in his opinion. For a moment, Tucker wished that the Fentons had put real seatbelts in the Specter Speeder as Sam was forced to make sharp turns and dangerously sharp nose dives. Really, seatbelts wouldn’t even have been that hard to install. With all of the other insane materials the Fentons managed to gather, Tucker was sure they could spare at least a little of their budget on safety gear.

Who was he kidding? This was the Fentons he was talking about. Safety was a mere suggestion to them.

One hand gripping his phone and the other holding onto his seat, Tucker wondered just where the hell Danny had ended up. They’d just flown through a section of city with overgrown vines and what looked like a Blood Blossom’s ectoplasmic cousin. Really, everywhere Tucker looked, it seemed this section of the zone just had a little bit of everything. Was this a fucking meeting point for all of the different layers and parts of the Ghost Zone? How the fuck did one slice of the Zone have so many different themes shoved into one broken ass amalgamation of a city?

The booo-merang hung a sudden right as it began flying straight towards what looked like just a bat shaped hole. Green sparked in the mouth of the hole, like someone striking flint until finally a swirling green portal burst to life. The booo-merang didn’t stop, flying straight through the portal and out of sight.

Sam grit her teeth as her fingers flexed along the steering wheel. “Hold on, we’re probably going to have a rough landing.”

Understatement of the century. Of course Danny had managed to get himself stuck in a natural portal that probably led to who knows where. Stuffing his phone into his cargo pants pocket and snapping the little flap shut, Tucker switched to holding onto the Specter Speeder bench with both hands. He caught Jazz doing the same. Good, at least they both were doing something to try and keep themselves safe.

Sam practically slammed her foot on the gas, and Tucker felt himself thrown back into the bench as the Speeder started hurtling towards the portal. They had no idea where or when they’d end up, and while Tucker knew Sam and Jazz just didn’t want to leave the booo-merang, he kept thinking about how they were barreling head first into an unknown that could potentially get them really hurt. Maybe even fuck with the time stream if they brought something like the Specter Speeder to the past.

Tucker didn’t have time to consider the consequences with more than a passing thought as that sudden drop of gravity hit him. The whirling green of the portal lasted for nothing more than a second before the Specter Speeder fell onto metal ground. It screeched as Sam rushed for the brakes. The Specter Speeder swerved, pulling a full 360 as it slid further into wherever the natural portal had dropped them. Tucker and Jazz were both thrown out of their seats, Tucker just managing not to completely bash his head against the dash board. He felt Jazz pull him close, holding onto him as they spun and threatened to flip over.

Just as Tucker thought he’d lose his lunch, the Speeder finally began to slow. He leaned back as they came to a stop, looking up at Sam who was panting and looked one second from breaking the steering wheel under her grip. Jazz tapped along his arms, drawing Tucker’s attention. “Are you okay? Did you hit anything?” She asked, ever the older sister.

Tucker shook his head. “I’m fine, just a little thrown off.” He could hear Sam groan above him. Danny would’ve appreciate the pun, he was sure. “What about you? Are you okay?”

Jazz smiled. “A little bruised, but I’m fine. How about you Sam?”

Sam didn’t respond, just staring out of the windshield. Tucker raised an eyebrow as he pulled himself up. “Sam?” He asked, flopping back onto the Specter Speeder’s bench. “You good?”

“Tucker,” she said, her voice as tight, “take a look at where we ended up.”

Huh. Well, Tucker supposed it was important to figure out exactly where Danny had gone off to. Turning his head, he felt his mouth drop open. “No fucking way…”

“What? Where did we…” Jazz joined their stunned silence as the three teenagers saw the row of Batman costumes in glass tubes. The cave around them stretched up and out, revealing metal walkways and a variety of vigilante gear. Tucker’s fingers itched to go exploring, see if he could find the famous bat computer he’d heard about on the deepest corners of his favorite hacker forums.

Maybe at this point, Tucker shouldn’t have been surprised. Danny had always been more likely to get caught up in the stranger aspects of life. Really, ending up in the Batcave might as well have been inevitable at this point.

“What the fuck?”

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

Danny thought he should be a bit more shocked that Bruce was Batman.

As he laid against Damian’s chest, sniffly and exhausted, Danny listened to Bruce and Damian’s murmurings. They’d switched between different topics, though all of them centered around Danny. Now, Bruce was mentioning contacting someone from the Justice League Dark to come and make sure that Danny hadn’t been cursed or affected by some kind of magic. Danny hadn’t realized there had been multiple Justice Leagues, but apparently they had some sub-groups focusing on different specialty areas.

It must’ve been nice, knowing that if things got bad enough that there was a whole team of superheroes who could come to your aide.

Damian rubbed Danny’s back as he said, “is there something in the batcave we could try before we resort to Justice League Dark?”

Bruce hummed. “Well, we don’t even know what de-aged him in the first place. We could try and run some tests, but I doubt we’ll get anything since the DNA scanners already had so much trouble with his blood.”

Right, the eternal weirdness that was Danny. He’d also have to talk to Bruce and Damian about the future—what it would look like for him to move in with them and if they even wanted to try for custody. While Danny knew his parents were all for reunification, he had no clue if Bruce would actually be okay with suddenly taking on a new kid. Just because the man had a bit of a reputation for taking in stray children didn’t mean he’d want another one thrust upon him all of a sudden.

“No tests,” Danny mumbled from where he’d burrowed himself in Damian’s arms. Really, he could have fallen asleep again just from the rhythm of Bruce and Damian walking to the batcave. Now that they stood in some fancy elevator, the building foundation transitioning into cave walls.

“We won’t do anything you don’t want to do, Danny,” Bruce said, “though doing a general check up might be a good idea. We haven’t been able to see how being in the pit in the first place affected you, but knowing that you were de-aged like this, I want to make sure that there are no negative side-effects.”

Oh, Danny could give many a negative side-effect for Bruce to chew on, but he supposed acting like the age of his current body wouldn’t count in Bruce’s mind. Instead he just grumbled as he looked away from Bruce.

Stepping out of the elevator, all three’s attention was quickly taken by somebody yelling. Danny didn’t have time to ask to be put down as Damian and Bruce both dashed towards the noise. The voices sounded familiar, but Danny couldn’t pick out how as what sounded like an argument rose through the batcave.

“If you don’t start answering my questions—”

“Well excuse us for not wanting to answer when you’re waving a gun in our face!”

“Hey, maybe we should all—”

“You don’t get to decide shit! You’re the ones who—”

“If you would just listen to us—”

“Guys—”

“Danny?!”

Danny gasped as he, Damian, and Bruce all observed the scene in front of them. Jason had his gun pointed at Jazz, Sam, and Tucker. The Specter Speeder sat just behind them, skid marks showing exactly what kind of rough landing Danny’s friends and sister must have had. The booo-merang sat in between Jason and the rest of Team Phantom, still beeping as it tried to get its user to throw it again so it could find its target. As soon as Damian had slid around the corner, Danny holding tight onto his neck, Jazz had turned and gasped at the newcomers.

Wiggling, Danny managed to sneak out of Damian’s arms and run towards his sister. “Jazzy!” He practically slammed into her legs, wrapping his arms around her. “Jazzy, I’m sorry! I’m sorry, ukhti, I’m sorry!”

Jazz’s face crumbled as she knelt to the floor, throwing her arms around Danny. “Danny, you scared the bejeebers out of me! Do you know how worried I was when I woke up and you were gone?”

“Wait, that kid’s Danny?” Sam asked, her attention half torn between Jason still pointing a gun at them and Danny clutching onto his sister for dear life.

Tucker’s own eyes were wide as he stared down at his tiny best friend. “Dude, how did you get so small?”

“Stand down, Jason,” Bruce said, tone firm as he observed the commotion, “clearly they’re not a threat.”

“Right, three random teenagers who know the baby pit assassin and somehow managed to sneak a full ass vehicle into the batcave aren’t a threat.” Jason snorted, but lowered his gun and slipped it back into his holster. “How the hell does the squirt know these assholes, anyway?”

Sam glowered and started, “well if you had just let us explain—”

Tucker grabbed Sam’s shoulder and pulled her back a bit. “Easy, Sam, let’s not start a fight with the guy who had a gun on us like five seconds ago.”

Rolling her eyes, Sam crossed her arms. “Tucker and I are Danny’s best friends, and Jazz is Danny’s sister. We didn’t mean to end up in the Bat Cave. How the hell did you guys end up with a baby version of our best friend?”

“I think there’s a lot that we need to speak to each other about. How about we move this conversation somewhere else?” Bruce interjected, sending a sharp look to Jason who just huffed and crossed his arms.

“No, I think we deserve to know more about why Bruce Wayne is one, in the batcave and two, has our best friend who is apparently now 5 years old.” Danny could almost see Sam slamming her foot down in emphasis, but instead she just glared at Danny’s billionaire bio-dad.

Of course, instead of actually helping the situation, Danny just pouted and interjected with, “I’m six not five.”

Sam groaned. “Same difference! You’re also not off the hook either, Danny! What the hell were you thinking going off into the—” she paused for a moment, glancing at Bruce, Jason, Damian before deciding against mentioning the Ghost Zone. “—going off alone like that! We have the buddy system for a reason!”

Okay, yes, they did, but it was supposed to be a quick trip to Far Frozen! Nothing dangerous before Vlad had decided to pop in and play another round of “Join me and kill your father, Daniel.” Danny could feel himself pouting as he turned intangible to slip out of Jazz’s hold. “I can eh-splain that later, but Bruce knows I’m a halfa!”

Jazz frowned. “And you’re okay with that?”

Danny nodded, hopping a bit as he moved to stand between his Amity Park family and his new biological family. “Yep! I gotta eh-splain.” He gestured to Bruce and Damian. “Guys, meet Bruce Wayne, my bio dad, and Damian! He’s my akhi.” Danny then turned around and gestured towards Sam, Tucker, and Jazz. “Bruce, akhi, these are Sam and Tucker, my two bestest friends, and Jazzy, my ukhti!”

Danny’s two sets of family stared each other down, the tension thick as Danny stood in the middle of it. Danny couldn’t keep himself from fidgeting, waiting and watching as his two families processed what Danny had just announced.

Tucker seemed to finishing processing first. “Wait…” He said, eyes wide, “your bio dad is Batman?!”

Chapter Text

Damian didn’t know what to think of Danny’s friends.

He supposed that it was only natural for Danny to have had a life after he was first found by the Fentons. He had people he loved and a home he did not want to leave. It was Damian’s fault really, for building such expectations up around the people Danny had cried over. His baby brother was someone extraordinary, someone who had defied death twice and showed endless mercy despite being raised in nothing but pain. When thinking of Danny’s other family, he supposed he expected people who defied expectations and shone just as brightly as Danny did.

He hadn’t expected them to be so… normal.

Tucker Foley—one of Danny’s self-proclaimed best friends—looked sheepish as he was scolded by Sam Manson, Danny’s other best friend, for just blurting out Father’s secret without any sort of thought as to what the potential consequences were. Danny seemed used to mediating fights between them, hopping up and down as he tried to get them to focus on him and also figure out how Foley had managed to figure out the Bruce Wayne/Batman connection. Jazz Fenton knelt next to Danny, pulling him away from Manson’s scolding as she spoke to him in soft tones and ghosted her hands along Danny’s form.

While Damian felt mostly neutral about Foley and Manson, he couldn’t help the rising distaste in his mouth as he watched Fenton interact with Danny. She seemed almost maternal as she fretted, reassuring herself that Danny was truly alright as he fidgeted but allowed her mother henning. It reminded Damian a bit of his relationship with Richard back when he’d first joined the Wayne family. Danny seemed so comfortable with Fenton. So used to her affections as he seemed to seek it out in a way Damian was used to having to himself.

Danny called Fenton ukhti. Damian swallowed back the jealousy threatening to drip off his tongue.

Father cleared his throat. “It seems clear to me that there is a lot about this we need to discuss. I can understand your hesitance, Sam, as it seems you all have had some very scary experiences recently.”

Manson snorted. Foley jabbed her in the ribs. Danny quickly piped up by saying, “Sam and Tucker and Jazzy won’t tell! They keep my secret and haven’t told anybody!”

“I know you really trust them Danny,” Father said, “but we still need to discuss what we’re going to do from here.”

Danny frowned. “It sounds like they’re in trouble.”

“They’re not in trouble, Danny.” Jason snorted at Father’s declaration, rolling his eyes when Father sent him a glare. “We just need to know how they got into the batcave. We can’t let dangerous people come into the cave whenever they want.”

“Oh, we can promise nobody’s going to be dropping in the way we came any time soon, Mr. Bruce Wayne Batman, sir,” Foley said, his posture straightening out as he spoke to Damian’s father, “see, we were tracking Danny through the Ghost Zone and our tracker went through a natural portal. Unless another natural portal opens up, which isn’t super likely because the fact that a natural portal opened up in the first place is kind of a statistical wonder, nobody can replicate our entrance into the batcave.

“Like, the actual generation of natural portals is already so random that it’s been hard to calculate where they’ll show up, but they also have the ability to teleport you to different time periods since the Ghost Zone doesn’t exist in the same time flow as we do. So like, there’s a chance that a portal could open up into the bat cave again, but it opening up at this moment in time in the exact same place that it did has such a low chance of ever occurring that the probability is basically zero at this point. If a natural portal did open up here again any time in the near future then that’d be something worth studying and we’d have to see if maybe there was something about the batcave that makes it more likely to attract natural portals.”

Damian raised an eyebrow as Manson finally nudged Foley’s shoulder, as if to urge him to quiet down. Foley’s mouth practically clicked shut as a flush rushed across his cheeks, quickly looking away from everyone. Danny puffed up his chest as he gestured to the little group. “See! They’re good!”

Okay, seeing Danny looking so very proud of himself was quite cute, Damian hated to admit. Still, Foley’s rambling definitely wouldn’t completely assuage his father’s mind. Sure, they didn’t have to worry about another potential breach in the batcave’s security, but there was still the fact that Foley had figured out their secret identities within minutes of meeting them. On top of that, they still had no idea exactly how Danny had been turned into a child.

Fenton cleared her throat. “How about you explain what happened, Danny, so we can all start on the same page? Then if any of us have questions, we can ask after that.”

Tilting his head a bit, Danny considered Fenton’s proposal before nodding. “Okay, okay, so I know I wasn’t ‘pose to go to the Ghost Zone, but I was only gonna go for a bittle bit! I just needed to talk with Frostbite quick—Frostbite’s a good ghost. He’s a yeti.” Danny said this to Damian and the other two bats, as if this were an important aside. “Anyways, so I was gonna talk to Frostbite when Vlad showeded up!”

“Vlad showed up and you didn’t call us!” Manson’s concern must manifest similarly to Todd’s because she looked all the more peeved. “Danny!”

“I didn’t take my phone! It was ‘pose to be short! And no inrupting!” Danny stamped his foot before continuing. “So Vlad showeded up, and he was like ‘Daniel join me and forsake your father!’ and I was like ‘no, you dumb frootloop!’ and then he chased me and we went super far into the zone! Then I ran into this cube thing and it made me all small and then Desiree—she’s a genie—she showded up and was like, ‘what do you wish for’ and I wished for my akhi because I was small and scared and confuseded and then it got kinda fuzzy but I woke up and I was with akhi!”

Manson, Foley, and Fenton all looked at each other. “Maybe the cube messed with your ectoplasm?” Foley asked as he looked Danny up and down.

Nodding, Manson crossed her arms. “Maybe. Do you remember anything else about the cube, Danny?”

“Ummm,” Danny hummed as he swung his arms, “it was ek-toe-plasmum, but it wasn’t green. It was porple.”

“Okay, what the fuck is ectoplasm?” Todd asked.

“Lazarus water,” Damian answered, not wanting to bother with any of the other groups’ attempts to explain it to Todd. “Should we be analyzing his ectoplasm then?”

Foley pulled out what looked like a heavily modified PDA—how the boy was still using such outdated technology when smartphones existed, Damian could only guess. “That’s probably our best bet, but it’s going to take a while.” He scribbled furiously with a stylus as he moved back to the strange vehicle they’d apparently flown through the Ghost Zone. “If we were back home in Amity Park then I could probably get a sample analyzed in a solid 15 to 30 minutes, but without my home set up this could take hours to analyze.”

Danny’s face scrunched up. “I don’t wanna do tests,” he mumbled, scraping his foot against the ground.

Fenton cooed, “I know, Danny, but we need to take some of your ectoplasm if we want to figure out how to help you get back to normal.”

Pouting, Danny nodded. Damian frowned as he watched his brother tense at Foley bringing out what looked like a blood draw kit. They’d clearly modified it for their purposes, probably to take into account the specific properties of ectoplasm. The whole set up had Damian’s baby brother tensing, and Damian found himself stepping over to Danny before he could stop himself.

Settling himself down on the floor, Damian grabbed Danny’s hand. “It’ll be alright, Danny,” he said, Arabic soft and quiet, “I won’t let them hurt you.”

Danny’s pout grew fiercer, but he still allowed himself to sneak closer to Damian. “They won’t hurt me, akhi, I just don’t like it.”

Damian squeezed Danny’s hand, ignoring the stares he got from the Amity Parkers. “You’re allowed to not like it. I stand by what I said though. I will not let them hurt you.”

That had Danny huffing, but Damian took it as a win when he noticed the tension in his baby brother’s shoulders drooping. Once Foley had everything set up, he handed the actual syringe and tube to Manson. Manson nodded as she settled on the floor near Danny. “Alright, you know the drill, Danny.”

Scrunching his nose, Danny seemed to focus as two white rings popped into existence, traveling across his body. Damian watched as for the second time that day, Danny showed off his ghost form. The hand Damian was holding felt cold, even through the thick latex of the hazmat suit gloves. He felt tempted to move his grip, reach for Danny’s pulse point, but he would not deprive his little brother of his comfort when Danny had begun tensing once more.

Danny practically threw his arm out, squeezing his eyes closed. Manson pulled back the sleeves and gloves, searching for what Damian assumed was Danny’s veins. As she found the right one, she nestled needle in the crook of Danny’s arm. “Alright, you’re gonna feel a pinch on three. One… two…” She pushed the plunger, watching the needle sink into Danny’s arm. Danny, ever wanting to prove himself, stood still and stoic as bright, glowing green liquid filled the syringe.

Damian had to wonder how often they’d done things like this, that Manson worked with such precise movements and with such steady hands. The teenagers were so very young, yet they handled the modified medical equipment with the same comfort that professionals working years did. Manson filled a tube with the ectoplasm drawn from Danny, handing it to Foley as Danny transformed back into a human. Seeing the little bead of blood in the crook of his arm, Manson shuffled through their supplies before grabbing what looked like a bandaid with little ghosts on it.

She smoothed it over the draw sight, earning a scowl from Danny. “I’m not a baby, I don’t need a bandaid.”

Manson rolled her eyes. “If you had stayed in ghost form then we wouldn’t have needed to put the bandaid on.”

Danny’s pout grew in intensity as he decided that he absolutely needed to snuggle up to Damian right that second. Of course, Damian wouldn’t complain about the sudden brother cuddles. If they were able to return Danny to his correct age then there was a high likelihood that Danny wouldn’t so openly seek out Damian for affection like this. With that in mind, Damian scooped Danny up and sat with him in his lap.

Foley frowned. “This is still going to take a really long time. Like I said, I don’t have any of my home set-up or my pc.”

“Would using the bat computer make it go faster?” Todd asked.

Eyes wide, Foley glanced between Todd and Father. “I—is that okay? I mean, it’s the bat computer, like you guys probably have super secret stuff on there that you don’t want me to touch and like I know Danny can vouch for us, but it seems like you guys probably don’t really trust us and I—”

“Do you think it will help your process if you had access to the bat computer?” Father asked, interrupting Foley’s nervous rambling.

Swallowing, Foley nodded. “Yeah. If I can transfer the program I’m using onto the bat computer then the processing speed should help it run a lot smoother.”

Father nodded to himself. “Then we’ll just supervise you as you use it. Does that sound like a fair compromise?”

“Yes! Yes of course! Oh Ancients, I’m going to be using the bat computer.” Foley stood up, gathering his equipment as he practically bounded after Father and Todd. Manson’s face twisted as she glanced between Foley and Danny. Clearly she felt torn between which of her two best friends she wanted to look after. Fenton put a hand on Manson’s shoulder.

“You go keep an eye on Tucker,” she said, “I’ll keep an eye on Danny.”

Manson frowned, but nodded all the same. As she left to go follow Foley, Fenton settled on the ground next to Danny and Damian. “Hey Danny,” she asked, reaching out to nudge his shoulder, “how are you feeling?”

Danny mumbled something unintelligible as he kept himself curled in Damian’s arms. Damian frowned before adjusting his hold on Danny. “Would you like to do something fun while we wait for the test results?”

“Fun?” Danny asked, squirming away to look Damian in the eye.

“Yes,” Damian let go of Danny so he could stand up before holding a hand out, “how about I show you and your ukhti something cool, hm?”

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

Jazz hadn’t expected Damian Wayne to be so kind.

The older boy had led her and Danny out of the Manor, stating that there was some sort of cultural festival with live music happening that day. He swung Danny with her as they walked down the street, his smile gentle and fond as Danny squealed every time they lifted him off of the ground. Jazz hadn’t expected him to respect Danny’s nickname for her, but he referred to her almost exclusively as Danny’s ukhti when talking to him.

It was nice. Even if Damian hadn’t actually talked to her yet.

So far their interactions had been solely through Danny. Sure, Danny hadn’t seemed to mind yet, but Jazz had thought that Damian would have at least said hi to her or something. Though, she supposed she didn’t actually mind the lack of communication all that much. It definitely made it easier to keep her jealousy in check.

Which, Jazz had never really felt jealousy before. Oh sure, she’d wished she could have had the normal parents some of her classmates seemed to tout around instead of the ghost hunting and ecto scientist parents she’d been born to. However, she also understood that there was truth to the adage of the grass always being greener. She only saw the good parts of her classmates’ parents. Even if her own parents had taken up a much more normal career, that didn’t take away from the fact that they loved her and tried to make sure she was loved and taken care of.

Her parents also understood the importance of keeping families together. They’d talked extensively with her when they’d first applied for a foster’s license, talked about how they wanted to help other kiddos just like her. How they wanted to help parents who were struggling keep their kids. They’ve only ever used it once, but Jazz knew from the start that she would always be the Fenton’s only child.

(“Can’t we keep him?” Jazz had asked a year after they’d first taken Danny in. “If his real family doesn’t come get him can we please, please, please keep him?”

Her mom had smiled in that fond way as she brushed Jazz’s hair back and kissed her forehead. “I’m sorry sweetie, but Danny has a family who’s probably working really hard to find him and get him back. We can’t keep him.”)

Seeing Damian now, Jazz bit down on all of the nasty things she wanted to say. If Danny’s bio family really was the Waynes, then why hadn’t they come earlier? Why now, when Jazz had been so certain that she’d finally be able to keep Danny even if it was never official. She kept glancing at Damian, as if that would give her any kind of answer. She knew she should just talk to him, but she couldn’t ask that kind of thing when Danny was just trying to enjoy the company of his ukhti and akhi.

Walking down the streets of downtown Gotham, Jazz wondered what kind of image she, Damian, and Danny made. Did they look like siblings, going to see a festival together? Or could they already tell that Jazz was the odd one out, the temporary replacement until Danny found his real big sibling. He’d gifted her the title of ukhti, but surely Danny understood that once they figured this out, they couldn’t go back to their normal lives.

Danny had his real family to go to.

They rounded the corner and Jazz could hear the echoes of a live band, Bollywood music echoing down the streets. Danny gasped beside her as he pulled on their hands, clearly excited about what Jazz could now see was some type of AAPI festival. She kept her grip on Danny tight, not willing to let him go when there were crowds of people walking from booth to booth and gathering around a large stage. His little eyes are wide with wonder, and Jazz finds herself frustrated that she never took him to festivals like these back home in Illinois.

Danny quickly takes the lead, his little legs pumping as he leads Damian and Jazz around the festival. He oohed and aahed at each artists’ booth, never letting go of either of his sibling’s hands. The scents of a variety of foods wafted through the air, leaving Jazz’s mouth watering. People bustled around them, their voices loud as they tried to speak to each other over the noise of the crowds.

Eventually, Damian had broken away for a moment, running up to one of the food stalls. He ordered quickly, grabbing a bag of some kind of food. When he returned, he handed the bag to Danny. “Here, for us to share.”

Danny gasped as he pulled out a small ball of something fried. “Falafel!” He bit into it eagerly before holding the bag out for Jazz. “Try some, ukhti!”

Jazz hadn’t actually had any falafel before, but she took a small ball regardless. She supposed eating some food would be good since she’d been flying through the Ghost Zone for most of the day. She popped the little ball into her mouth, enjoying the crunch of the fried outside and the burst of soft, spiced chickpeas.

Danny held the bag out for Damian to take a piece before seeming to realize something. He stared at the ball he’d taken a bite out of, smiling in that mischievous way that told Jazz her little brother was going to say something entirely groan worthy. “Akhi, ukhti, guess what?”

Damian fell for it. “What, Danny?”

Danny’s grin grew wide as he held out his piece of falafel. “It’s halfalafel!”

Jazz snorted, nudging her brother as he giggled at his seemingly clever joke. Damian shook his head, allowing Jazz to be the one to hold Danny’s hand as they continued exploring the festival and eating their treat. They didn’t talk much, mostly agreeing with Danny when he found something that caught his eye or entertaining any of his questions and observations.

Eventually, Jazz felt Danny stop. She frowned, looking down at her brother only to see him staring intensely at something. She followed his gaze to find a group of children gathered around a jump rope.

The children were singing rhymes, watching as different children hopped in and out of the jump rope. They’d made a whole game of it, testing how long they could stay in before eventually having to jump out. Jazz couldn’t make out exactly which rhyming game they’d picked for their games of jump rope, but they clearly were having fun shouting it over the noise of the festival and the blaring music of the main stage performances.

Jazz frowned before nudging Danny. “Did you want to go join them?”

Danny shuffled his feet before shaking his head. “I’m not a kid.” He kept staring though, almost longingly at the children.

Damian raised an eyebrow. “You’re 6.”

“I’m not ‘pose to be 6 though.” Danny, ever the stubborn kid, rocked on his feet but couldn’t take his eyes away from the jump rope game.

“Danny,” Jazz said, kneeling to better look him in the eyes, “you’re allowed to go play with the other kids. Sure, you’re usually 14, but right now you’re 6. 6 year olds need to go play with other kids.”

Danny frowned, still unsure before turning his attention to Damian. Damian’s eyes softened as he nodded towards the children playing jump rope. “Go play, Danny. Just make sure you stay where your akhi and ukhti can see you.”

With both of his siblings giving the go ahead, Danny nodded before dashing towards the other children. Jazz watched him speak to the children, probably asking if he could join, before he hopped into the whirl of the jump rope, hopping along with the other children.

Without Danny as their buffer, Jazz found herself just standing awkwardly next to Damian. She should probably be getting to know Damian. After all, if Danny was going to live with him after this whole mess was sorted out then Jazz should make sure that he was going back to a supportive and loving family. Her parents meant well, she knew, but they wouldn’t hesitate to hand Danny back over to the Waynes even if they weren’t the best fit for him.

“You’re staring.”

Jazz startled. She quickly looked away from Damian, back towards the group of children as she stuttered. “Oh Ancients, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to—I mean, I didn’t realize.”

“It’s fine.” Jazz could feel Damian’s eyes on her, boring into her as if trying to pull out all of her secrets and lay them bare on the concrete. Now it felt like he was staring, and if he was going to call her out on staring then should she call him out on staring? What was the proper social response to meeting your younger brother’s bio sibling for the first time and wanting to be polite but also wanting to be angry because he was the reason your parents were going to send your little brother away.

“If you have something to say then say it.” Damian apparently was the blunt kind of person, turning to look at Jazz fully and frowning.

Of course, Jazz really didn’t want to deal with that kind of blunt confrontation, but she turned to speak to Damian anyway. “I don’t know what you mean by that?” She wanted to sound more assertive, more like she did when she was reminding her parents that just because they were teenagers didn’t mean they didn’t still need their parents, but she ended up just sounding unconfident, her statement a question as she buckled under Damian’s intense gaze.

Damian raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms. “You clearly have something you’d like to tell me. Danny is no longer within earshot. He won’t be hurt if you just say it.”

Oh. Oh, no, Jazz wanted to run as far away from this conversation as quickly as possible. Sure, this might help ease misunderstandings, but Jazz really didn’t want to have a conversation with someone she found so intimidating. She’d talked with blunt people like Damian before, but never had she had to have an emotionally charged talk with a blunt person like Damian when she was personally affected.

Swallowing hard, Jazz tried to gather up every bit of her courage to be as honest as possible. “I don’t want Danny to live with you.” The words spilled past her lips, and oh that sounded so bad. Damage control, she needed to do damage control before—

“Danny doesn’t want to leave you either.” Jazz blinked as Damian spoke. His gaze turned back to watching Danny, and she felt herself relax at the break from his piercing stare. “He mentioned your parents were just fostering him with the intention of reunification.”

Jazz scowled. “They’re stupid.” Damian glanced over at her with a raised eyebrow, and Jazz found herself ranting before she could stop herself. “I love my parents, they’re great and awesome and they try their best to put me and Danny first when they can. However, they’ve always told me that they don’t want other kids. They took Danny in on an emergency basis and then switched to an indefinite foster, but they’re adamant that his parents are just out there looking for him.

“It’s been 8 years. You guys weren’t coming and Danny calls them Mom and Dad. They let him call them Mom and Dad even though I told them that he was attached and it would hurt so much worse if his bio parents came around, and they ignored me. We found Danny bleeding out in a forest in the middle of Maryland! He would have died, and my parents are still convinced that he has a ‘real family’ out there somewhere looking for him.”

“Do you blame me for him getting hurt?” Damian asked, and Jazz nearly wanted to punch him for managing to stay so calm and aloof.

“Of course not! You’re only a few years older than me, so you were a kid at the time.” She pulled her hair over her shoulder, running her fingers through it in a desperate attempt to regulate herself. “I just don’t think a parent who let their child run through the woods after getting so badly hurt and then didn’t look for him for eight years should just take him from his home, his life like that.”

Damian shuffled, crossing his arms. “To be fair, Father didn’t realize that I existed until I showed up at his doorstep when I was ten years old. He found out that Danny existed yesterday. If Father had known that his other son was out there, alive and needing a home, he would have come straight away.”

Huh. “What about your other parent?”

Damian winced. “Our mother… she isn’t safe to be around. There is a reason I left when I did.”

There was a deeper story there, but Jazz could only push so far. She fidgeted with her hair, beginning to braid and unbraid it. “… I’m being selfish when I say I don’t want Danny to leave.”

“How is it selfish when Danny also doesn’t want to leave his own home?” Damian asked.

Worrying her lip, Jazz kept her eyes firmly on the ground. “I love my parents, and they love me and Danny, but… they’re not. They’re not safe parents.”

Damian frowned. “Elaborate.”

Saying this shouldn’t feel like a betrayal, but it did and Jazz hated herself a little bit for it. “When… when my parents first applied for their foster’s license, they were a lot more careful about things like lab safety and taking time to make sure I was taken care of and all of that. After we’d had Danny for a while though they…”

She could feel her throat clog up. Her parent’s weren’t abusive. She knew they weren’t. Abusive parents didn’t take time out of their schedules to go to every single one of their kids’ spelling bees. Abusive parents didn’t shower her with praise and encouragement and adoration because Jazz was growing up to be a little scientist just like them. Her parents had never hit her, and she’d never felt unsafe in their care. She loved her parents, she did.

But she let herself spill every gunshot, every time she’d patched Danny up after they’d chased him around town. How their careful and studious integration of lab safety deteriorated the longer they had Danny. Her words shook, and Jazz wanted so desperately to tell Damian that the Fentons needed to keep Danny. That ripping him from his home and his friends and the life he knew would hurt him far worse than any benefit staying with his biological family would have.

Damian remained stoic throughout her explanation, not even letting a twitch of the lips through as Jazz spilled exactly how her parents were not the best fit for Danny and how he needed something different. He needed a better home, and he needed someplace where he wouldn’t be forced to become a hero.

Jazz’s lower lip wobbled by the time she’d finished, but she hadn’t cried. She wouldn’t cry, not when Danny could come back at any minute. Damian hesitated for a moment, his hand twitching awkwardly at his side, before he laid it on her shoulder and squeezed.

“Thank you for your honesty,” he said, appreciation thick in each word, “it must have been difficult to say all of that.”

She shrugged. “I just want the best for Danny.”

Damian nodded and let go of her shoulder. “I do too. I couldn’t help him when we were young, but I am glad I am able to help him now.” He paused for a moment. “If… if you ever need a place to stay for whatever reason, I am more than sure Father would offer you a place in our home.”

Oh. How sweet. Jazz smiled as she shook her head. “Thank you for the offer, but I think I’ll be fine.”

Nodding, Damian turned to look back at the children playing jump rope. He frowned as he scanned the crowd of children. “Where is Danny?”

The question had Jazz turning, looking between each child for a familiar head of hair and dark, dark freckles. She couldn’t find him, frowning as she started looking around the area. “I can’t see him… Danny? Danny!” She called, twisting and turning.

Damian joined her. “Danny!” He called, moving to get a better view of the crowds as panic began settling in. “Danny!”

“Danny, where are you?” Jazz could feel her heart leaping into her throat. She’d had her eyes on him, she knew that Danny had been having so much fun with the kids playing jump rope. How could he disappear the one moment she looked away?

“Danny, this is no time to play hide and seek,” Damian scolded, though Jazz knew the aggression was merely poorly hidden concern, “come out! Danny!”

The two older siblings began racing through the crowds, desperate to find a hint of where Danny had gone. No matter where they turned, Jazz couldn’t see the familiar flop of Danny’s hair nor the bright green t-shirt that he had borrowed from the Wayne. Swallowing down her fear, she reached into her pocket and took out her phone. She sent just one text to the Team Phantom group chat.

Danny is missing.

Chapter Text

Danny hadn’t meant to leave the jump rope area.

He really hadn’t! He was having fun, jumping in and out and taking turns with the other kids swinging the rope and actually jumping. It felt nice, as if he had been transported back to his kindergarten years except without all of the learning how to be a normal American child. Really, Danny could have played with the children for hours.

But he felt a cold gasp crawl up his throat and caught sight of a familiar vulture and just knew that trouble would never leave Danny alone.

So he slipped away, chasing after the stupid fez wearing ghost birds as he prayed that Vlad hadn’t found him. Surely, surely, he had lost Vlad back in the Ghost Zone. There was no way for Vlad to be able to track him down so quickly. Sam, Tuck, and Jazz had the booo-merang, but Vlad shouldn’t have anything to find him. If Vlad could track Danny down…

Danny shook his head and kept running. It’d be so much easier if he could fly after the birds, but he’d already transformed twice today. If he were 14 and had all of his normal energy then that would have been nothing, but Danny’s core trembled in effort at transforming for even a few minutes. He knew it was stupid to just go running after the birds, but maybe he could avoid a fight by just souping them? He’d have to transform again to get access to his little dimensional pocket.

The same pocket that currently had his phone. He felt a bit bad about lying to everyone about not having his phone on him, but to be fair, he was still getting used to the whole being six thing. Plus, as much as he adored his friends, what could they do to help if Vlad was chasing him through the Zone? Sure, Sam was a pretty good shot and Tucker had been slowly working on retooling the Fenton tech for their purposes, but in the end they were still just regular teenagers being thrust into a world of eldritch deities and the souls of the damned.

Danny had training. Sure it had been years, but he would never forget his lessons with Mother and Grandfather. They made sure of it.

Skidding around the corner into an alleyway, Danny felt his ghost sense go off just before talons sunk into his shoulder. He hissed before turning intangible, letting himself fall the foot the vulture had managed to take him off the ground. He rolled, hissing as he felt the pull from the puncture wounds left behind. The vultures all landed on a nearby fire escape, frowning down at Danny as the leader rolled his eyes.

“You really thought just picking the kid up would work?” The leader asked.

The vulture that had picked Danny up shrugged. “The kid is tiny now! I thought his ghost powers might’ve shorted out too!”

“Well clearly they haven’t!” The leader exclaimed as he gestured to Danny. “How are we supposed to get him back to the boss now?”

“So you guys are here because of Vlad?” Danny interrupted the birds, gritting his teeth as he settled into a fighting stance. “How the heck did he find me?!”

The three vultures stared for a moment before bursting into raucous laughter. They leaned on each other, covering their eyes with their wings as Danny felt his face heat up in embarrassment. “Oh Ancients, he’s so squeaky!” The third bird who hadn’t spoken yet exclaimed, leaning against the other two.

The bird who grabbed Danny practically hiccupped with laughter. “M-maybe I shoulda squeezed him when I grabbed him! You think he makes a sound like one of those rubber chickens? Ha ha ha ha ha ha!”

Danny scowled as he stamped his foot. “Shut up! Tell me how Vlad found me! Now!”

Another wave of laughter crashed around the alleyway. Danny swore he could feel his cheeks burning as the vultures kept making fun of him. “Oh look at the little baby throwing a tantrum!” the leader cooed, mocking as he smirked down at Danny. “Does baby need a bottle? Is baby hungry?”

Growling, Danny held his hand out. He felt ectoplasm bubble in the palm of his hand, the heat before an ectoblast boiling before a voice echoed throughout the alleyway. “That’s quite enough.”

Danny lost his ectoblast as the vultures all clicked their beaks shut. Danny turned on his heel to see Vlad Masters himself, strutting down the alleyway as if it were his own personal cat walk. Danny’s face contorted into a snarl, and he took a step back.

Vlad raised an eyebrow. “Oh, don’t be like that, Daniel.” Danny bristled at how Vlad continued to Americanize his name. At this point, he was sure it was deliberate—a way to try and take Danny further away from his home culture and mold him into Vlad’s perfect idea of a family. “I know it’s been so scary being on your own, but it’s okay now. Your daddy’s here.”

Disgust coated Danny’s tongue as he felt his whole face scrunch. “Ew, never say that again.” He took another step back, feeling his hackles raise. The vultures flocked behind him and effectively cut off his escape route. Danny threw a glare back at the vultures before turning his attention back to Vlad. “What are you doing here, Vlad?”

Grabbing his chest in the most annoyingly melodramatic way possible, Vlad held a hand to his forehead. “You wound me, Daniel! I have been so worried about you, my only son, running away and you treat me as if I’m some villain? For shame. I’ll have to ground you when we get back home.”

Danny snarled, flinching as Vlad drew ever closer. “Shut up! You froot loop, what the hell are you talkin’ about!”

Vlad tsked. “Such a potty mouth. Really, Daniel, I taught you better than that.” He reached down, seeming intent to pick Danny up. Using this as his chance, Danny swung his leg up, catching Vlad’s knee. The man cried out as Danny dashed off, looking for a place to hide and transform.

Cursing, Vlad’s own transformation rings popped up. He flew after Danny, mouth curled into something vicious and fingers sharp claws. Danny let himself go intangible, slipping into the concrete. He didn’t stop, flying blindly through the thick layer of foundation before popping back out behind the vultures. They squawked, but gave chase as Vlad shouted, “After him! Don’t let him escape!”

Danny stumbled back out towards the main streets, panting as he tried to avoid as many people as possible. He could see the vultures flying after him, looking much too visible in the broad daylight. Reaching in to feel for his core, Danny cursed as he felt how little power he truly had. Even just going intangible had his core burning, begging to rest or for some ecto-dejecto. His shoulders ached and pulsed with each step, the shoulders of his t-shirt stained with blood and now decorated with holes.

He'd have to apologize to Bruce later. Even if Danny didn’t mean to ruin the shirt he borrowed.

Diving back towards the alleyways, Danny felt like his ribs were catching on the meat of his chest, the pain sharp as he dodged an ectoblast thrown by Vlad. His little feet could only take him so far, and Danny needed to transform if he wanted to be on equal footing with Vlad. But there were so many eyes, so many people looking everywhere. Danny huffed as he spotted a dumpster, sliding underneath it.

Transforming for the third time that day felt like pulling a muscle. His core ached as he forced it to grant him more power, allow him to access all of his ghostly abilities rather than just the few powers he could get away with using in human form. Gritting his teeth, he floated through the dumpster, turning around to face Vlad head on.

Vlad smiled, wide and condescending as he watched Danny fly towards him. “Aw, look at how adorable you look in your ghost form, little badger!” He dodged an ecto ray, looking far too pleased at Danny’s pained expression. “Just think, now you’ve got so much more time to master your ghost abilities! If you’d just come home with me, I could show you just how powerful you could become!”

Danny really didn’t have the time nor the patience to listen to Vlad’s words. He dove straight towards Vlad’s chest, growling as the man simply teleported out of the way. “Stop it! Stop, I’m not your son!”

“Oh, but little badger, how else would I have found you if not for my fatherly intuition? Well that and some help from a few ghosts who saw your little rendezvous with Miss Desiree.” Vlad smirked, his clones melting off of his form and surrounding Danny. “Wanting to be with your brother? How very sweet of you, Daniel. It certainly took me a good few hours to find out exactly who your brother was, but thankfully the Gotham Police Department still has one Damian Wayne’s DNA on file.”

The clones lunged. Danny dropped, watching as pink smoke erupted from each of the clones disappearing. He could feel the strain in his core begging for him to detransform, but he needed to go just a little longer. Just long enough to get Vlad in a position where he could put him in soup jail. He grunted as he forced himself to keep flying, trying to lure Vlad and his stupid vultures away from the more populated areas of Gotham.

He couldn’t hear the shouts in the street as Vlad chased him, but he certainly caught people beginning to point at the strange child and vampire flying through the sky. If they were back in Amity Park then the people beneath him would have learned to get the fuck out of dodge as soon as they saw him and Vlad flying around. With all of the insane rogues in Gotham, Danny would have thought that the Gothamites would have learned to hide when they saw shit like two glowing people flying through the air, not point and gawk.

Rolling out of the way of a vulture, Danny cried out as an ectoblast caught his shoulder. He felt himself falling, hurtling straight towards a nearby roof. Somebody shouted his name, but he couldn’t place the voice as he crashed into metal and stone. He gasped, coughing as he felt pain flare from his back and along his shoulder blades. He turned onto his side, practically hacking up a lung. His transformation rings began to flicker into existence, and Danny closed his eyes, forcing them back down. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. Not when Vlad still had his eyes on him and an extreme lack of care for any sort of property damage he might cause.

Hands ghosted over his side, and Danny lashed out, growling as he felt his eyes flash and his cheeks split open to reveal muscle and sinew and teeth far too large and far too many for his child mouth. Jazz pulled her hand back, her hair a mess and panic in her eyes. His core ached, another flash of pain that quickly settled back into the agony that had been tearing through him. Danny felt his face settle back into a more human shape, and a whine stuttered out of his throat.

“Danny!” He felt hands back on him, and he found himself pulled up towards Damian. “Danny, where does it hurt? Tell me where you’re hurt.”

Everywhere, his core, Danny didn’t know what to say. He could only whine as tears blurred his vision, dripping down his cheeks and glowing ectoplasmic green. “Akhi…” he whimpered.

Jazz cooed as Damian smoothed Danny’s hair. “I know, Danny,” Damian said, “but I need you to tell me where you’re hurt. Please, I need to know—”

“Now isn’t this precious?” Vlad landed on the roof with a tap tap. “Such concern for our dear Daniel here! But not to worry. I’ll take him home and clean him up just as soon as he starts to behave.”

“You won’t touch him,” Damian snarled as he moved to stand in front of Danny.

Laughing, Vlad teleported just in front of Damian. “Oh please, my dear boy. Try and stop me.”

Danny lunged through Damian, ignoring the slight shiver at phasing through someone without actually overshadowing them. He grabbed onto Vlad, ignoring his traditional methods of fighting to sink his teeth into Vlad’s shoulder.

Vlad yelped, grabbing onto Danny, but Danny just bit harder. His core was screaming, and Danny wanted to scream with it, but Vlad had dared to threaten his akhi and his claws sharpened before hooking into Vlad’s flesh.

“You insolent, rabid little—” Vlad tried to pry Danny off of him, stumbling around the roof, but Danny had latched and would not let go. If Vlad tried, he’d rip chunks of his flesh off with him, mark his words. Ectoplasm and blood filled his mouth, and Danny wished he could spit it out, but he just sunk his many teeth deeper, tearing into Vlad as if he were nothing but a wild animal and Vlad were his most recent prey.

Danny could hear scrambling as Vlad tried to go intangible, only for Danny to go intangible with him, forcing the man to risk Danny tearing out his intestines rather than just his shoulder. As Vlad stumbled around the roof, his ukhti’s voice called, “Danny! Unlatch, now!”

He really didn’t want to, but Danny opened his mouth wide, pushing himself away from Vlad and spitting out the ectoplasmic blood onto the roof. He heard the familiar unscrewing of a thermos and watched as Jazz pointed the thermos towards Vlad. The vampiric man’s eyes widened as his whole form began to compress, being sucked into the thermos with nothing more than a scream. Just as Jazz capped her thermos, the three vultures squeaked.

“Ah, well, we’ll just be heading back to the Ghost Zone now…” the leader said, flapping his wings only for Danny to pull out his own thermos. He uncapped it, watching with tired eyes as the three vultures swirled together, their screams growing higher pitched as they were sucked into the thermos with a schloop!

Danny floated to the ground, twisting the cap of his thermos and finally letting those familiar white rings appear around his waist. Exhaustion weighed heavily on his bones as he detransformed, still holding onto his thermos tightly. He probably should have put it away and taken his phone out instead, but Danny’s core flared in pain and the holes piercing his shoulders felt like they’d torn back open, whatever scabs that had begun to form flaking off as blood trickled down his chest.

Damian and Jazz both rushed to his side, Damian pushing Danny’s shirt up to better see his wounds while Jazz checked his face for bruises. “Ancients, Danny, don’t you ever run off like that again! You worried us both sick, we thought you might have gotten kidnapped or hurt or—”

“He is hurt, and we need to get him back to the manor, now.” Damian tore strips off of Danny’s shirt and wrapped them around his shoulders, tying them tight despite Danny’s whines of protest. Danny felt his head swirl as Damian scooped him up, holding him tight to his chest. “Fenton, text Manson and Foley so everyone knows we’ll need medical ready when we get home.”

“R-right!” Jazz fumbled a bit with her phone, but got to texting. Damian strode across the rooftop, not quite jogging yet still swift and purposeful.

Danny closed his eyes and he let himself melt into his akhi’s arms. He knew he’d probably get the scolding of a lifetime once he was fully patched up, but Danny found he didn’t care. He was tired, and his core hurt, and for once in his life he felt safe.

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

If Danny kept waking up feeling so warm and cozy, then he was never going to want to go back home.

He burrowed himself deeper into whatever blankets had been thrown around him, trying to get himself to fall back asleep. However, he’d already acknowledged that he was awake, so his body decided that clearly, he needed to get up and begin moving.

Whining a little, Danny pushed himself up, wincing as he felt an ache radiate from his shoulder blades. Really, that was kind of an odd place for him to feel achy. Normally his bruises and injuries tended to stick around his stomach or his arms. Though, as he looked at the bandages winding around his shoulders, Danny quickly remembered just how he had ended up in his current situation.

“Oh good, you’re awake.” Danny jumped as he turned toward the voice. Alfred, the butler Danny had called grandpa of all things, continued cleaning up what looked like the remains of some kind of emergency first aide. “You gave us all quite a fright when Master Damian brought you back to the bat cave. Master Damian is currently getting some dinner to bring back—it was quite difficult to get him to leave your side.”

“I didn’t mean to scare anybody,” Danny mumbled and looked back down at his lap, fisting the blanket that had slid over his lap. It was soft, unlike most scratchy thin hospital blankets. It had a smooth texture, like nice cotton sheets or Sam’s fancy fifty dollar throw that Danny always stole whenever they were hanging at her house. “I just…”

“You saw one of your many enemies and didn’t want others to get hurt.” Danny swung his head to look at Alfred, who had finished throwing away the one-use tools and began sanitizing his work station. “It’s the reason many of those in this family give for why they do what they do. Granted, it is not always their direct enemy that is causing trouble, but there is usually some sort of trouble that they wish to prevent.”

Shifting, Danny shrugged. “It worked out. It doesn’t hurt bad anymore.”

“Yes, that would be the 600 mg ibuprofen that we gave you.” Alfred finished sanitizing the station and pulled off his gloves from the index fingers. “Miss Samantha made sure to let us know that you are usually given 800 mg of ibuprofen every 6 hours whenever injured like this, but since you are currently much younger and your body is so much smaller, we decided to scale down the dose. Thankfully, no complications have occurred and it seems that the ‘ecto-dejecto’ that Miss Jasmine used has also helped in soothing your aches and pains.”

That definitely explained why Danny’s core was no longer burning with pain. Though, it didn’t seem like the ectoplasm helped in returning Danny to his original age. It figured that there wouldn’t be an easy solution to his whole babyification. Still, Danny couldn’t bring himself to look at Alfred as he dumbly said, “oh.”

“Quite.” Danny could feel Alfred’s gaze as the man looked him up and down. “I assume you would like me to inform Master Damian and the rest of your party from Amity Park that you have awoken?”

He should, Danny really should, but he also wasn’t sure he wanted to face Damian’s frustrations quite yet. “Mr. Alfred—”

“Just Alfred, Master Danyal, though if you are more comfortable with ‘jadd’ then I would not be opposed, however I doubt that I have earned any such title from you just yet.” Damn, okay, so Danny wasn’t going to avoid a call out just because his siblings and best friends weren’t in the room.

Nodding, Danny fidgeted with the soft blanket. “Sorry, Alfred. Um, I… Am I staying here? With Damian and Bruce?”

There was a pause, Alfred seeming to choose his words carefully before he spoke. “Well, Master Danyal, I believe that is up to you.”

That finally got Danny to look up at Alfred. “What do you mean?”

Sighing, Alfred took a seat on the bed Danny was currently occupying. “Well, am I correct to assume that you already have a family that you are currently living with?”

Oh. “I mean, yeah, but…”

“Master Danyal.” Alfred adjusted himself so he was a bit closer to Danny’s level, looking far too sincere as he frowned at the boy. “We would never force you to live here. If you truly wish to live with your foster parents until you are independent then we would be more than happy to support you.”

Danny frowned. “But Mom and Dad don’t want me.”

“So I have heard, however you wish to stay with them.” There was no judgement in Alfred’s voice, only the certainty that came from repeating someone’s words back to them.

Which, Danny really couldn’t deny it. He wanted to keep his life in Amity Park. He’d grown attached, and he didn’t want to give up the life he’d managed to create with the Fenton’s so easily. He loved his parents, and he loved Jazz and Sam and Tucker and he had a home in Amity Park that he’d come to know so much better than any hint of his life in the League.

Yet, if he chose to go back then that meant the possibility of giving up Damian. Danny knew his parents. If he told them he’d found his brother, they’d want to know who Damian was living with. It was already hard enough keeping his identity as a ghost a secret from his parents. Keeping the fact that Danny not only knew where his bio dad was but also knew that his bio dad would most likely be open to taking him in if he had nowhere to go?

He thought of that stupid scrap book, sitting on the living room shelf. Mom had made a box for it long ago, had a bow and everything set aside for the day someone from Danny’s biological family finally came for him. The vague discomfort that his mom and dad always seemed to have around him once he had started calling them that. They’d never dissuade him—no, who would dissuade the fragile child who had been separated from his family so young? But there was a cruelty in that. Stringing Danny along, letting him grow comfortable but never too comfortable.

(He’d heard them talking late one night, a conversation that had repeated over the years. Dad would hold Mom’s hand, rubbing his thumb over her knuckles as they both frowned.

“What if nobody comes for him?” Mom asked, looking unsure. She was always the confident one, always guiding Dad with a gentle hand. It scared Danny to see her looking so lost.

Dad squeezed Mom’s hand. “Then we keep supporting him as foster parents until someone does.”

“And if he turns eighteen before that?” Mom sounded so crushed, as if it were a worst case scenario that nobody ever came for him.

“Then we’ll figure it out.” Dad took a deep breath, keeping his gaze on Mom. “But it’s not going to come to that. Somebody out there is looking for him. I’m sure of it.”

Danny crawled back into his room, crying every time he eavesdropped. He wished that somebody had been them.)

Swallowing, Danny fisted his blankets. “I don’t think I get a choice.”

Alfred placed a hand over Danny’s knee. “You will always have a choice, Master Danyal.”

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

“Okay, so do you guys want to hear the good news or bad news first?”

Tucker felt a bit of sweat bead up at the deadpan stares he got from Damian and Bruce Wayne. At least the gun happy one—Jason, he thought his name was—had left as soon as Tucker had finished running his program on the bat computer. Sam was also absolutely no help as she was too busy glaring daggers at the Waynes. He’d ask her to stop, but he was pretty sure she was trying to show that he had someone willing to stand up for him, but he really didn’t want the Waynes to think he was any sort of threat. Jazz herself looked torn between mediating and staying firmly at Danny’s side so he didn’t run off again.

“Good news first!” At least Tucker could always count on Danny to break the tension. It was still a little weird to see Danny so tiny, but he was kicking his feet and looking none the worse for wear despite surviving three different scoldings.

Taking a deep breath, Tucker turned to the data he had presented on the bat computer’s screen. “Okay, so good news! I think I know what’s going on with Danny.” He clicked a few keys, pulling up what probably looked like the most radioactive amoeba in the entire world. “So, when Danny hit that cube thing, it seems to have tried to ‘reset’ his ectoplasm. See, ghosts are typically made up of two things.” He pointed to the glowing green of the amoeba. “Ectoplasm.” He then pointed towards a tiny spark, like a glittering snowflake that had fallen off of his best friend’s core. “and an Emotional Core. Sometimes, this also includes memories, but the two basic building blocks are Ectoplasm and Emotions.”

He pointed back towards the ectoplasm. “See how its all droopy and squishy? Ectoplasmic entities are a lot more flexible in how they present to the world than humans or other creatures. Their physical beings are made up solely of ectoplasm and a core. Some cores are really small and basically can only hold the big five emotions—happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust. Blob ghosts, because they have small cores and can only hold basic emotions can thus only hold a blob shape—like the ectoplasm you see on the screen here.

“Other cores are a lot more complex and hold things like memories and more complex emotions. A ghost’s shape is dependent on the memories and emotions of the core of the ghost. That’s why a lot of ghosts’ appearances may fluctuate. For ghosts with bigger cores, sometimes little pieces of their core will flake off into their ectoplasm—like Danny here. So, his ectoplasm is inherently tied to his core and who he is.”

“What does that mean then if the cube was ‘resetting’ his ectoplasm?” Bruce Wayne asked, his arms crossed and his tone serious like he were interrogating a criminal.

Tucker shoved down any sort of anxiety trying to crawl back up his throat. “So, from what I can tell the cube that Danny crashed into, its function is to basically bleach the emotion from the ectoplasm. So for blob ghosts, their cores would be destroyed. For a more complex ghost, their cores revert back to when they first died or were first created. Though, I’m a little confused on how Danny got turned to 6 specifically when he first died a few months ago.”

“Oh that’s ‘cause I died at 6 first!” Tucker nearly choked on air as Danny just so casually revealed that he had apparently died as a child. “Grandfather has a big pit of ek-toe-plasmum though so I was dead for a few minutes maybe before the ek-toe-plasmum fixed it.”

Okay. Okay, so that changed a few things, but Tucker could deal with this. “Cool, okay so that explains why you’re eight years younger and not just a few months younger.”

“What’s the bad news then?” Sam asked, “if we know what’s wrong then we should be able to fix it, right?”

Right. The nasty part. Tucker sucked on his teeth. “Okay, so bad news is that there isn’t a way we can ‘fix’ it. See how there’s like little Danny snowflakes in his ectoplasm?” Tucker waited until he got unanimous nods. Turning back to his keyboard, he pulled up a clip of Danny’s ectoplasm. The snowflakes seemed to multiply in the clip, spreading out and populating the ectoplasm sample before the clip looped back to the beginning once more. “So those snowflakes are that bit of core I was talking about. They’re already repopulating the ectoplasm and working to get it back to the state it was in back before Danny hit the cube. Really, all we can do is wait it out until Danny’s ectoplasm fixes itself.”

“How long will that take?” At least Bruce didn’t sound angry when he asked.

Humming, Tucker tilted his head back and forth. “I’d probably say another 12 hours give or take. So by the time he wakes up tomorrow morning he should be back to normal.”

Nodding, Bruce turned to Sam, Tucker, and Jazz. “You three are more than welcome to stay in the Manor tonight. Alfred should be done cleaning up some guest rooms for you three. If you don’t mind, I believe Damian and I have some things we need to discuss with Danny.”

Before Sam could get her feathers ruffled, Danny grabbed Jazz’s hand. “Can Jazzy stay too?” He asked, eyes big and wide as he looked up at his bio dad.

Tucker wondered how many people got to see both Bruce and Damian Wayne visibly soften. “Of course, Danny,” Bruce said.

With that clear dismissal and the promise of Danny not being left alone with the Waynes, Sam stood up. “We’ll go check out our rooms then. Thanks for letting us stay.” She nodded her head, which Tucker had to admit was a lot more polite than he’d thought she’d be.

Gathering his own equipment, Tucker did his own little head bow. “Yeah, thank you so much Mr. Wayne, Batman, sir! We really do appreciate it.”

“Just Bruce is fine. We’ll make sure not to keep Danny up too late.” Bruce smiled, and it seemed less fake than the ones Tucker had seen in all of the press releases and paparazzi photos.

Tucker gave Bruce one last nod of thanks before turning to follow Sam.

Chapter Text

Danny knew Bruce didn’t want to interrogate him, but he really didn’t want to talk about it.

It was inevitable, they’d have to figure out his situation now that they knew his six-year-old state wasn’t permanent, but Danny also really didn’t want to talk about it.

Damian spoke up first, taking Danny’s hand in his as he urged Danny to look him in the eyes. “Danny, we’re not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do.”

Right. “But—”

“Danny.” Damian held Danny’s hand tighter. “I will be honest. Your ukhti told me a lot of things about your foster parents that do not endear them to me. I know you love them and you wish to stay with them, and I do not think they are the safest home for you.”

Defensiveness bloomed in Danny’s chest and he opened his mouth, determined to prove Damian wrong, but Damian continued on. “However, I also know that you are happy there. You have a life and a family and people you do not wish to leave. I would never want to take that from you when there is no need to.”

“Why are you askin’ me?” Danny crossed his arms. “Mom and Dad are gonna send me away anyways.”

“If they find out.” Danny felt his face scrunch in confusion as Damian kept his voice soft, neutral. “Danny, you do not have to tell your parents about finding me or Father. If you wish to keep living with them as you have, then we can pretend that this whole experience never happened.”

What? “But they’ll ask who my new friend is…”

“I do not have to meet your parents.” Damian rubbed Danny’s knuckles as he spoke. “I will lie if you would like me to. Or if you think there is too big of a risk then we can cut contact.”

Cut contact? Danny could feel his lip tremble. “You don’t wanna be my akhi anymore?” Oh, that was absolutely not what he wanted to ask. Danny could feel tears slipping down his face and Jazz rubbing his back as grief and disappointment washed over him—a tidal wave when it should be so much more manageable.

Panic spread across Damian’s face as he rushed to wipe Danny’s cheeks. “Oh, Danny, no. No, never. I will never, ever, ever stop being your akhi. Nothing and nobody in this entire world could ever make me stop being your akhi.”

Danny sniffled. “Th-then why… why do you not…” He struggled, frowning as he ground the heels of his palms into his thighs. The words kept getting stuck, like a particularly gross taffy that wouldn’t unstick from the roof of his mouth. He felt a whine building in the back of his throat, escaping as he tried to form his emotions into something intelligible.

Damian continued to wipe Danny’s tears away, pulling him close so he could rest his forehead against Danny’s. “I love you, Danny. I love you so much, and I want you to be happy and safe.” He pulled away, just enough to look Danny in the eyes once more. “I do not want to let you go. If I had my way, I’d keep you here with me so we could finally be just brothers together. However, you love your foster parents, and you want to stay with them. I will not take away any of your agency in this decision, Danny. If you truly want to stay with your foster parents, then I will do anything within my power to make that happen.”

“But I don’t wanna choose!” Danny wailed, throwing himself fully into Damian’s arms. “I want you and Mom and Dad and ukhti!”

Jazz scooted closer, wrapping her arms around Danny as she joined the sibling hug. “You won’t have to choose between us, Danny. No matter who you choose to live with, you can always visit.”

“That’s right, Danny.” Oh, Danny had forgotten that his bio father was there for a moment. Bruce, thankfully, stayed out of the hug though he did give Danny a reassuring smile. “We’re not going to keep you from visiting any of us. If your foster parents are against you visiting them, I am sure we can arrange for times that Jazz can come visit.”

But that still left so many unknowns. “Do you even want me?” Danny asked, eyes watery as he stared at Bruce. “Or are you just taking me ‘cause you’re ‘pose to take me?”

Bruce’s face crumpled, devastation filling each wrinkle and line as he held his hands. Almost as if to keep himself from reaching out. “Oh Danny, of course I would love to take you in. If you let me, I would love to get to know you more.” Sincerity dripped from each word, real sincerity not the saccharine kind that Danny had grown used to hearing from his mom and dad when they reassured him that they loved him even if he wasn’t theirs.

Even if they couldn’t keep him.

Sniffling, Danny rubbed at his face before continuing to argue. “But the ghosts and the portal. I’m ‘pose to—”

“You’re not supposed to do anything, Danny,” Jazz said, her tone firm as she kept Danny held tight between herself and Damian. “You didn’t have to do anything about the ghosts, but you did. You don’t have to fix it by yourself.”

“They hurt people though.” It felt childish as a declaration, but Danny couldn’t care less. Not when the only other person who was marginally capable of handling the ghost issue was Valerie and he couldn’t. His grades and his social life suffered because of his activities as Phantom, he couldn’t let hers nose dive in an attempt to take up his mantle.

“And it is not your responsibility to stop them.” Damian sounded so certain, and Danny thought it was a bit hypocritical of him. “You do not have to take on this burden, Danny.”

He did though, because nobody else could. Not with the same care for both humans and ghosts that he had learned to use. Before he could articulate this, Jazz spoke up, saying, “What would make you feel better about this, Danny?”

Danny frowned. “What do you mean?”

Jazz adjusted herself, pulling back to look at Danny more properly. “You shouldn’t make a decision based on what you think you should do, Danny. What can we do to help you feel better about making a decision?”

His frown threatened to turn into a scowl. There was nothing that could help him feel better about this. Danny was going to lose something no matter what he did. He curled further into Damian’s chest. No matter what he chose, no matter who decided for him, he still lost in the end, and it wasn’t fair.

“I don’t wanna choose,” he finally muttered, “I don’t wanna hafta pick.”

Damian held him tight. “Okay,” his akhi said, “then what do you want to do?”

That was the question now, wasn’t it? What did Danny want to do? The question itself felt wrong. People didn’t ask what he wanted to do. Not in any meaningful way. His parents had always talked about doing what was best for Danny, but they had never asked what Danny wanted. Even as he pondered the question, all Danny could think of was his duties, his responsibilities, what Amity Park would crumble into if he left for more than a day.

Still, Danny could feel his face scrunch as he tried to imagine what he wanted. What would his ideal be? Staying with the Fentons and having Damian live with him was the first thought that popped into his head, but he quickly shoved that to the side. Ideal clearly wouldn’t work here. But all of his other options just left him feeling sad.

“I wanna close the portal.” Danny’s brain to mouth filter really was just non existent at this point. “Not like, forever and ever but I wanna make a door. So if I hafta leave ghosts can’t hurt people.”

Damian nodded. “Okay. Do you want to tell your foster parents about meeting me and Father?”

“… yeah. I do.” Danny wouldn’t force himself to make this choice. He’d call his parents in the morning, let them know a sanitized version of what had happened. Maybe, if they were confronted with the reality that somebody else wanted Danny, they’d try harder to keep him.

(Such wishful thinking)

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

Danny woke to his whole being burning.

He bit down on his tongue, swallowing a scream as he curled in on himself. Painful heat radiated from his center, his very core feeling like it had been set on fire. His bones felt like they were cracking, lengthening and building on each other as the sinew of his muscles tore and resewed themselves together. Danny whimpered as he tried to do anything he could to escape the pain, the sudden stretching of his body as he wondered which Ancient he had pissed off enough to be struck with such agony.

His pain stretched on, seemingly never-ending as he tried to ignore how his skin felt stretched thin and his teeth ached from how hard he was clenching them. For a short moment, he wondered if maybe this was going to be his new normal. Would he be cursed to lay here in agony? Left unable to do anything but whimper and hold himself as he was pulled and molded and built upon. Tears slipped through his closed eyes, damp and hot against his already burning skin.

Danny wasn’t sure how long he laid there, but after waves of burning misery, he felt the fire simmer down into just a regular ache. Groaning, he slowly uncurled himself and began to roll off of his bed. He stumbled, his limbs feeling much longer than they had a moment ago. He fumbled into the bathroom. Looking into the mirror, he found his 14-year-old self staring back.

Relief bloomed in his chest. He was back to normal. Danny could have laughed, reaching a hand up to rub at his own face. The t-shirt and shorts he had borrowed actually fit him now, though they still looked like they were clearly fit for a person much more buff than he was. Tilting his head, he could see how his scars felt like they fit his body once more, his Lichtenburg scar especially not as prominent as when he was a chubby-faced child.

“Danny?”

Turning, Danny saw Damian standing just at the bathroom door. He wondered what his older brother was thinking as they stared at each other. Swallowing, Danny raised his hand in an awkward wave. “Hi!” He winced as his voice cracked, a returning reminder that he wasn’t completely finished with puberty as he cleared his throat.

Damian kept staring. “… hi.”

Danny wasn’t sure who moved first. One moment he was standing in front of the bathroom mirror and the next he had wrapped himself in his older brother’s arms, clinging as tightly as he could. They rocked a bit, Danny laughing as they waddled in each other’s arms. As nice as it had felt to be small and completely encased in Damian’s hugs, Danny found he much preferred being his full 14-year-old height and able to wrap his arms fully around his brother.

He whined when Damian pulled away, but found his core purring away in his chest as Damian held his face. “You got so big,” Damian said, Arabic as thick as the affection in his voice.

Danny laughed, nuzzling into his akhi’s hands as he said, “yeah, that’s what happens when you grow up, akhi.”

He squealed as Damian pinched his cheeks before pulling him back in for a hug. “You grew up to be such a brat,” his akhi teased, loving as he held onto Danny.

“I’m your little brother, it’s my job to be a brat.” Honestly, Danny could have just soaked in the pure elation that came from just being with Damian as his full, true self, but his joy could not last forever. As Damian let him go, he realized that with his return to being 14, he couldn’t keep avoiding the reality of the situation. He reached into his pocket, letting his hand dip into that strange, interdimensional hole that usually he only had access to in ghost form.

He pulled his phone out, opening it to see all of the texts he had missed during his misadventures as a 6 year old. He winced as he saw all of the texts from Jazz, a few from his group chat with Sam and Tucker popping up as well. Finally, he saw a new text come in from his mom, asking if he’d gone to stay at one of his friends’ houses for the night.

Swallowing, he glanced up at Damian. His brother frowned, his brow furrowed in concern as he said, “would you like me to give you privacy?”

Danny nibbled his bottom lip. This probably should be a conversation he had with just his parents. He found himself reaching out and grabbing Damian’s wrist. “Stay?”

Damian’s eyes grew soft as he nodded. “Of course.”

They ended up sitting on the bed as Danny clicked on his mother’s contact. He fidgeted as he set the phone to speaker, holding it in front of him as it rang… and rang… and rang… Finally on the fourth rang he heard it get picked up.

“Hello, Madeline Fenton speaking.”

Danny took a breath. “Hey Mom.”

“Oh, Danny! I was worried about you, sweetheart. You didn’t come home for dinner last night so we were worried.” Danny could hear shuffling and a masculine voice—probably Dad confirming with Mom that it was him.

“Yeah, sorry about that. I um… I met my bio dad yesterday.”

The line went silent for a beat. Danny held his breath, praying his mom would be disappointed. That it would be hard for her to let her baby boy go now that there was somebody who wanted to take him. His core practically sunk as he heard Mom practically cheer.

“Oh honey, that’s amazing! Oh, I’m so excited for you!” She sounded so happy. Danny felt tears began to bud at the corners of his eyes.

There was some shuffling before his dad’s voice slipped through the speakers. “See, I told you that your family was looking for you, Danno! It took them a bit, but they finally found you!”

Danny swallowed the stupid lump in his throat. “Yeah, they did.” He wondered if they could hear his core cracking or his heart breaking.

Mom’s picked up the conversation. “Oh that’s awesome, sweetheart! We’ll have to set up meetings and get the reunification paperwork all ready and call your social worker—oh Danny, I’m so happy for you! This is just so exciting, you’re finally going to be able to go home!”

“What if he doesn’t want me?” The question spilled past Danny’s lips before he could stop it. “What if my dad doesn’t want to keep me? Can I stay with you guys then?”

Another beat of silence. Danny could practically see his parents sharing the Look™. “Of course he’s going to want you, sweetie.” His mom sounded so sweet, soft and caring and reassuring and it made Danny cry all the harder. “I know it’s been a long while, and it’s gotta be strange after getting used to us, but this is what’s best for you. You can’t stay with us forever.”

“Maddie’s right, kiddo,” Dad piped up, sounding just a smidgen further away. Mom must’ve taken the phone back. “We’ve loved being able to have you here, but you gotta go back to your real family. It’s scary, we know, but we promise that this is for the best.”

“Right.” Could they tell that Danny had started crying? Were they just not mentioning it to spare his feelings? Or maybe they just didn’t want to acknowledge that Danny had, in fact, gotten emotionally attached to them.

“You’ll have to bring your dad over for dinner after school today, sweetheart. We can get started on plans and how to transition you to your dad’s custody while also figuring out the school stuff. It’s probably not going to be super quick, I know we’ll have to set up supervised visit times to make sure that your dad is safe for you, but I have no doubt that everything will go smoothly and you’ll be home in no time!” His mom rambled, listing off pieces of the plan like Danny was just another invention they were excited to finally find the missing piece to.

Danny interrupted before his mom could continue rattling off all of the steps they’d need to take to begin the reunification process. “Hey, I need to get ready for school. I just wanted to let you guys know since, it’s kind of a big thing.”

“Of course, Danno!” His dad sounded so excited. “We’ll see you and your pops at dinner tonight!”

Danny didn’t even want to think about how he was supposed to get the Waynes to Amity Park. “Okay,” he said, “I love you guys.”

“Have a good day at school, sweetie!” With that they hung up.

Danny stared at his phone. He felt arms wrap around him as he was pulled into a hug. He stared down at his phone. His core shattered into a million pieces as his akhi held him together, whispering soft reassurances as his whole world broke apart in front of him.

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

Tucker grunted as he and Danny lifted their latest project off of the Fenton’s work table. With Danny slated to move in with the Waynes in a week, Tucker took every opportunity to hang out with his best friend.

When Danny mentioned wanting to figure out a way to keep the portal closed, Tucker had practically jumped him with his ideas.

So now here they were, building ghost-proof doors and an anti-ghost net that would keep ghosts out of the human world but still let the Specter Speeder and others into the Ghost Zone. As much as Tucker loved their trio, it was nice to get some time to hang with Danny just one on one. Though, Sam kept sending Tucker knowing looks, and Tucker would really like her to stop please and thank you.

Either way, Tucker counted himself lucky as he and Danny began moving the finished second half of the door to the portal. Actually creating the anti-ghost metal had been an interesting challenge, and Tucker was just glad that Danny had agreed to wear thick gloves any time they were handling it. The two worked in careful sync as they slotted the last piece into its space.

Danny held the door steady as Tucker ran to grab the power drill. Bolting the door went smoothly, Danny’s strength always impressive as he single handedly held the door in place. Once Tucker finished, the door slid back, revealing the open portal. Tucker wiped his forehead as he took a step back.

“Ready to test it?” He asked his best friend.

Danny nodded. “Let’s do it.”

Tucker grabbed their test remote. Taking a deep breath, he clicked the button. Yellow and black doors slid shut before another set of doors, these doors silver with that signature Fenton green, slid in front of them. Danny took a deep breath as he transformed. Now in his ghost form, he floated up to the door. Holding his hand out, Tucker watched as Danny’s hand shivered in that way it did when he went intangible. He pressed his hand against the door, smiling as it simply laid against the metal. His hand vibrated, clearly trying to phase through the metal but seemingly unable to.

“Okay, so the door works!” Tucker said, smiling wide as he pressed the button. Both doors slid back once more, revealing the swirling green portal. Tucker set it aside. “Should we test the safety net now?”

Another nod and Danny was de-transforming. His feet tap tapped onto the ground as he took a deep breath. He stuck his hand into the portal, smiling as his human hand went through with ease. Pulling it out and taking a few steps back, Danny cleared his throat. He chirped.

Tucker had always wanted to feel Danny’s chest when he chirped. Not in a weird way! No, Tucker just knew that Danny’s chirps never came from his throat or mouth like most human sounds. He chirped seemingly straight from his chest, the sound crackling like ice as if a warbling bird had gotten stuck in a glacier. Tucker wondered if he could feel Danny’s core vibrating in his chest like one could feel someone’s vocal chords vibrating if they felt their neck as they spoke. Tucker wondered if it felt similar to Danny’s purrs.

(As much as the other boy denied it, he purred like a content lap cat when happy. Tucker had stopped teasing Danny about it only because he knew Danny would start trying to hide them if Tucker kept pressing. He loved laying his head on Danny’s stomach and feeling Danny’s core purring far too much to give it up.)

A few moments after Danny chirped, a few answering chirps echoed through the portal. Blob ghosts, tiny and cute and oh so dumb, floated idly in the entryway of the portal as they tried to find the friend that had called them. They spotted Danny and attempted to dash towards him, only to squeak in indignation as a lattice of sparks lit up. They chirped and squeaked at each other, throwing themselves against the invisible net only to be met with more sparking and frustrated growls. Danny’s smile grew wide as he chirped once more, this one more staticky sounding as Tucker assumed he told the blob ghosts that heading into the human world wouldn’t work.

The blob ghosts grumbled amongst themselves, a series of clicks and hisses that Tucker couldn’t even begin to describe. One by one, they disappeared back into the portal, never having made it past the lip of the thing. With another press of Tucker’s test remote, the two doors slid back shut, effectively closing off the portal once more.

Unable to contain his excitement Tucker rushed over to Danny to give him a high five. “We did it! We fucking did it, dude!”

Danny’s smile lit up as he high fived Tucker before pulling him into a side hug. “We did it! Holy shit, we just solved Amity’s Ghost problem! Holy shit, dude!”

Tucker pulled Danny in tight, trying to ignore how right it felt to be so close to him. How it felt like they just perfectly fit in each other’s arms. “That’s right we did! We’re the fucking geniuses who just saved Amity Park from years of property damage!”

Clearly that hadn’t been the right thing to say as Danny’s eyes dimmed, his smile turning more into a grimace as he turned to stare back at the doors he and Tucker had spent days slaving away at. “Yeah… yeah I guess so.”

Tucker winced. Okay, he hadn’t completely put his foot in his mouth. He could do damage control, he knew he could. “Hey, um… are you…” he swallowed down his anxiety. “How are you doing?”

Danny raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“With the moving in with your bio dad and stuff.”

Shrugging, Danny slipped out of his and Tucker’s side-hug. “Fine, I guess.” He stared at the door they’d made, the way it shined and how it seemed to fit with the rest of the Fenton’s tech so easily. “Bruce is nice, and I’m happy I get to hang out with Damian more.”

Tucker nodded. “That’s fair. I mean, you’re gonna have a billionaire for a dad. I’m gonna feel left out as the only not-rich friend.”

Danny snorted. “This just means you get to be the double sugar baby.” He kept staring at the door they’d made to the Fenton Portal. “… I think I wanted them to fight for me.”

Ah, so they were going straight into serious talk. Tucker frowned as he turned to stare with Danny at portal doors. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Danny’s face was carefully blank, as if by not showing his emotions he could avoid feeling them. “It’s weird like, when I was little I used to dream about being with Damian again, but now… I just. They loved me, right?”

Danny’s face finally cracked as he turned to Tucker, practically pleading as he stared at his best friend. Tucker wanted to reassure Danny, wanted to take him in his arms and tell him that the Fentons were stupid and idiotic and that they absolutely loved him they just didn’t know what they had. He wanted to promise that the Fentons would regret ever letting Danny go and not just formally adopting him when they had the chance.

However, Tucker couldn’t bring himself to lie to his best friend like that. “… I don’t know, dude.” He hated how that one sentence seemed to completely break Danny as tears began streaking down his face. He wondered if one’s heart could break for another person as he saw Danny’s mask of indifference slowly slough off, tears coming fast and hard as he rubbed at his eyes. Before he could second guess himself, Tucker pulled Danny into as firm of a hug as he could manage.

“I wanna hate them,” Danny sobbed, ducking his head into Tucker’s shoulder, “I wanna hate them so bad, Tuck, but I just feel sad.”

“You’re allowed to feel sad, dude.” Tucker rubbed Danny’s back.

“But I don’t want to feel sad.” Danny’s breath hitched on each word, tears soaking into Tucker’s shoulder as Danny clung to him.

“I know, dude, but that’s kinda your job right now.” Tucker wondered if he should move them so they could sit somewhere, but the Fenton Lab didn’t really have a lot of sitting places. “You’re grieving the family you grew up with. Amity Park is your home, and now you’ve gotta move in with people you barely know halfway across the country. It sucks, but you’re right to be sad.”

Danny hiccupped, clinging to Tucker so tightly that Tucker wondered if maybe Danny thought he could keep Tucker there just with the force of his hug. “But it sucks, Tucker.”

“I know it does.”

“No, it sucks and it hurts and I still love them.” Danny’s sobs wracked his frame, leaving him shivering worse than when his ice core first started kicking into full gear. “I love them, Tuck, and they didn’t want me. Why wasn’t I enough for them? Why wouldn’t they at least try to keep me?”

“They’re stupid, that’s why.” Tucker hated to pull out of the hug, but he needed Danny to see just how serious he was being. After prying himself from his best friend’s arms, Tucker held Danny’s face in his hands. “Jack and Maddie Fenton are stupid and dumb and insensitive and they clearly didn’t know what the fuck they were thinking giving you up like that. You are amazing, Danny, and you deserve better parents than them.”

Danny’s eyes were rimmed red as he desperately sniffled to try and keep snot from running down his trembling lips. His hair stuck in every direction, more askew than Tucker had ever seen it. Tears kept trailing down Danny’s face, and Tucker did his best to wipe away every tear. “I don’t wanna leave, Tuck,” Danny said, voice soft and vulnerable, “I don’t wanna lose you, too.”

“Hey, hey, hey!” Tucker resisted the urge to rest his forehead against Danny’s. “You’re not going to lose me, dude. Just cause your foster parents are shit doesn’t mean I’m going to stop being your friend. You’re stuck with me forever, Danny. Nothing would ever make me stop being your friend.”

Danny’s eyes sparkled with tears and something else. “Promise?”

Tucker smiled. “I promise. No matter what, we’ll always be best friends.”

Mouth twitching into a responding smile, Danny’s eyes fluttered shut before he ducked in. Tucker gasped as Danny kissed him.

Danny’s lips were warm. Tucker would have thought that they would have been cooler, considering his ice core and everything, but Danny’s lips were so warm as they moved against his. He chased after Danny, arms wrapping around Danny’s neck as Danny’s arms snaked back around Tucker’s waist. Their movements were clumsy, clearly new as Tucker remembered one fateful sleepover night where they both confessed to never having had their first kiss.

However, despite their clearly amateurish kissing skills, Tucker felt warmth bubbling up from his stomach. Their kiss was awkward and wet and filled with chapped lips and some clacking of teeth but it was so perfectly them. They pulled away laughing, resting their foreheads together as they soaked in the joy of new affection recently requited.

“Hey,” Tucker said, trying so desperately to sound smooth when the air around them felt so soft and vulnerable.

Danny’s smile was bright, his tears slowed to a near stop. “Hey.”

“That was really fucking gay of you, dude.” The words tumbled out before Tucker could stop them, his face lighting up bright red as Danny leaned his head back and laughed.

Once he got his fill, Danny settled his forehead back on Tucker’s. “It’s okay, I had socks on.”

That got Tucker snorting as he rubbed his nose against Danny’s. “You absolute dork.”

“Hey, you’re the one who promised to be my best friend no matter what.” It was getting impractical to keep talking with their foreheads pressed together like this, but Danny seemed determined to stay as close to Tucker as he possibly could. “Which like… we’re still… we’re still cool, right?”

As much as Tucker wanted to continue to indulge Danny in his affectionate snuggling, clearly he needed to set the record straight. “Dude, you just kissed me. I mean, yeah, we’re best friends, but like… I’m pretty sure best friends don’t kiss each other like that.”

Danny’s cheeks lit up red as he let Tucker create a bit of space between them. “Yeah, um, I was gonna just, um here—” he pulled away fully, much to Tucker’s disappointment. Still, Danny didn’t seem opposed to the whole first kiss thing otherwise there would’ve been a bigger fuss. Tucker watched as Danny lifted his hands, brow furrowed in concentration as a small chunk of ice began forming in his palm.

Danny stuck his tongue out a little, moving one hand around the ball as if he were carving it with delicate touches and a single claw. Bits of Danny’s ghost ice evaporated into sparkling nothingness, creating a bit of a mist and keeping Tucker from fully seeing what Danny was creating. Once Danny’s hand stopped moving, the cloud of icey dust fell away and revealed what almost looked like one of Sam’s crystal pendulums.

Breathing out a sigh, Danny handed the ice pendulum to Tucker. Tucker grabbed it, eyebrows shooting up as he realized that the ice didn’t have the same frigid temp that most of Danny’s ice creations did. No, this piece of ice was cool, but not unbearably so. It felt more like a nice breeze on a sweltering day, the refreshing kind that had people craving for more.

Feeling along the sides, Tucker realized that there was something engraved in the ice. He held the pendulum closer to his face, eyes widening when he realized that Danny had managed to engrave binary onto the ice. He could hear Danny begin to fidget as Tucker bit his lip, trying to remember the binary alphabet he had learned one night in a fit to prove to his parents that he really was part computer. He frowned as he tried to figure out what Danny had written on his little ice present.

“Y… A… A… M… A… R?” Tucker spelled out, confusion thick on his tongue as he turned to Danny. “Yuh ay-mar?”

“Ya amar,” Danny corrected, the words smooth off of his tongue. His blush practically glowed as he fidgeted with his fingers. “It’s um, it’s Arabic. My Mother used to use that when she was talking about my bio dad. It roughly means ‘my moon’. I just… I had this whole plan, and I was gonna give you that and ask you out and it’d be all cute and stuff, but that plan’s kinda gone straight out the window and since I already kissed you I figured ‘why not’ and like I can absolutely just like destroy it and we can forget all about this and I’m sorry, this was stupid—”

“Hey, what, no, you can’t do that!” Tucker held the little pendulum to his chest, away from Danny’s insecure grip. “No takesies backsies, Danny! You can’t just kiss me and give me a cute gift and then try to back out when I’ve been in love with you for ages!”

Danny’s jaw went slack. “You’re in love with me?!” He squeaked, his voice cracking in the best way.

Now it was Tucker’s turn to succumb to the heat of a blush. “I mean yeah, have been since like the 3rd grade.”

Ancients, it was moments like these that made Tucker realize just how much of a dork Danny was. His jaw clicking shut, Danny shuffled a bit before he began rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. “Um, then is it okay if I ask you to be my boyfriend?”

How did Tucker fall in love with this idiot? “Of course I’ll be your boyfriend, you dumbass!” Deciding to throw all caution to the wind, Tucker grabbed Danny’s hand to pull him into another kiss. This one was much shorter, just a simple press of the lips, but nonetheless it left Tucker’s fingers tingling. “You’re lucky you’re so cute.”

Danny smiled so dopily wide as he held Tucker’s hand. “This feels so wild.”

Tucker could only laugh. “I know what you mean.” Rubbing his thumb over the engraved binary, he turned to Danny. “How’d you figure out how to make something so intricate with your ice? I thought you were still training with Frostbite on how to do more ice tricks.”

In an instant, Danny’s smile turned sheepish. “Yeah about that…”

Damn his brain for being able to connect the dots so quickly. “Wait is this why you went into the ghost zone without any of us?” Tucker took a step back, though he kept his hand intertwined with Danny’s. “Danny! Have you been taking secret lessons with Frostbite without telling us?”

“Well I couldn’t just tell you!” Danny waved his free hand emphatically. “The ice pendant was supposed to be a surprise to ask you out with, and if I told Sam then she would’ve just told me to man up and ask you out without some fancy gift and Jazz would’ve just been dropping terrible hints and it would’ve ruined the whole thing! I’d been visiting Frostbite for a month before Vlad decided to be creepy and chase me through half of the fucking Zone!”

Tucker laughed. He couldn’t help it. What else was he supposed to do? His best friend—boyfriend, Ancients, it felt so nice to say—had been de-aged and had his life turned upside down because he wanted to make a surprise gift to ask Tucker out. None of this would have happened if Danny had just asked Tucker out like a normal human.

“Ancients, Danny, you’ve got some really shitty timing to ask me out when you’re about to move away from Amity Park.” Tucker realized his mistake as soon as he said it, and he could see the instant grief on Danny’s face.

“Tuck, I’m sorry. I—”

“No, no, I’m sorry.” Tucker grabbed Danny’s hand. “I meant it like a joke, but it wasn’t funny. Look, it sucks that we’re getting together right before you’re gonna leave, but that’s okay. I can make long distance work.”

Danny frowned. “Are you sure?”

Smiling, Tucker kissed Danny’s cheek. “Positive. I’m not a tech whiz for nothing, Danny. We can text every day and I’ll face time you and maybe you can guilt your bio dad into flying me out to Gotham some time so we can have some irl dates.”

That got Danny laughing again. “You did not just say ‘irl’ with your actual human mouth.”

“I did, so what are you going to do about it?” Tucker teased, laughing as Danny dove in for another kiss.

They stayed like that, trading kisses and giggling in the Fenton’s lab of a basement. Tucker wished he didn’t have to cherish the time he had with Danny, that he could just enjoy the giddiness of a new relationship without the grief and loss of family tainting it. However, Danny still smiled at Tucker in that way that made him want to swoon, and Tucker knew that he’d be able to go back home without worrying if Danny was going to be hurt by his foster parents.

In an act of teenage reckless abandon, Tucker grabbed a Dremel tool from the Fenton’s work desk. He plugged it in, setting himself down in front of the doors he and Danny had just finished. With the whirring of the tool, he carved into the door, careful not to go too deep but enough to create a decent engraving. Danny flopped onto the floor next to him, watching as he worked.

It didn’t take long, and the engraving looked more like the crude attempts of kids carving into the bark of a tree, but Tucker was proud of his work. There, sitting in the bottom right corner, sat the words “Tucker <3 Danny”. It was stupid and meaningless and absolutely perfect. A little piece of them to forever live in the Fenton home.

Danny wrapped his arms around Tucker, settling his chin on Tucker’s shoulder. “Promise you’ll text me every day?”

Tucker leaned into Danny. “I promise.”