Chapter Text
Everyone in the Batfamily knew that Tim Drake solved cold cases as a hobby. It was as impressive as it was concerning.
The man drank his weight in caffeine each day just to keep on top of his case work, his field work and his patrols as Red Robin, and yet he chose to spend his free time working on more cases. The thing was - he was damn good at it. Originally, Tim had claimed to be picking up after lazy cops who couldn't be bothered digging into scenes enough to get results, or who didn't have the wit to put the pieces together even if they were all laid out in front of them.
That was soon found out to be a lie, when a year-long hunt for a notorious con artist was solved within a week of Tim investigating it. And it only took him a week because he worked on it as a hobby rather than dedicating his full attention to it.
Dick had asked about it once, leaning over the back of his chair while Tim was practically nose-to-screen with the Batcomputer. Something along the lines of ‘Is there anything you can't solve?’ to which Tim had responded by bringing up his personal folder with a few compiled cases in it. Anything that stayed unsolved even after his best effort would go in there. He had alerts set up in case any new mention of the cases victims or perpetrators came up in the newsfeed, social media or on government records.
However, that alert had never brought him anything genuinely useful before. Until now.
A short beep went off from Tims tablet, which normally wasn't enough to draw his attention away from deep research, but he had his alarms coded based on tone. This was a noise he rarely heard, so he perked up immediately and swivelled his chair around to look at it.
Gov Security Feed Alert: Case #6, facial recognition [Danny Fenton] 1 match.
Tims eyebrows shot up and he grabbed the tablet - previous task forgotten.
Tim had received false alerts for cases before, but rarely his cold cases. They were often too obscure, with too little data in the system to trace back from. Facial recognition software was a bitch too. You’d be surprised how easy those cameras are to trick.
Still, any scrap of evidence was worth looking over. After all, this case had been in the back of Tims mind since he had been forced to put it aside a year ago. A missing 15 year old, never found, presumed dead. The idea of it chilled anyone to the bone, but especially an ex-Robin. They knew first hand the dangers that lurked in the streets. The way it felt to fall into the wrong, scar-riddled, calloused hands and barely escape with your life (or spleen).
Tim didn't consider it catastrophizing to imagine the countless traumatising fates such a teen could have fallen into. Although the way he listed them aloud to his brothers, succinct and emotionless, had them sending him weird looks. Well…most of them. Part of their training was approaching difficult topics with an iron resilience, lest they all curl up and despair. And what use would that make them?
Which is why Tim didn't mention to the other birds how this case had stuck out to him like a bleach stain on stealth gear.
If he recalled correctly, the police abandoned the Danny Fenton case because the argument that he was missing rather than dead was impossible to justify with evidence. Yet contrarily, declaring him dead was also a stretch, since his parents insisted he was but failed to provide any proof of this other than claiming to have ‘seen his ghost’. This claim wasn’t entirely off the table, necessarily, given the whole aliens and magic are real thing, but for scientists, the Dr’s Jack and Maddie Fenton had a remarkably poor credibility and virtually no government or university funding.
The one thing that had stuck out for Tim and got him started on his independent research was the statement given to the police by the missing teen's older sister, Jasmine Fenton. She was the one to insist that Danny wasn't, in fact, dead and that a missings person investigation should be undertaken. What's more is that parts of her statement were redacted. It took Tim a good few hours to trace back the paper trail of evidence and undo those redactions (inconvenient, yet surprisingly enriching).
For what Tim presumed was the protection of their reputation, the Dr’s Fenton had removed any mention of their personal laboratory hidden beneath their house - Immediate red flag number 1, even given his current residence in a manor with a vigilante lair beneath it.
Don't get him wrong, it was a cool thing to do. Tim had his own lab set up in the batcave after all. But there was a great and sometimes blurred overlap between hero behaviour and villain behaviour. And a lab with dangerous chemicals and prototype-stage machinery underneath a residence with kids in it was one of them.
Red flag number 2 was that Jasmine Fenton had reported an accident in said hidden lab. Another redaction.
Naturally, Tim assumed that said accident was what sparked the teenage son's need to run away (if he really was missing rather than dead). The only issue was the significant amount of time between the accident and Danny's absence, at least according to Jasmine's timeline. Hence the missing persons claim.
The Dr’s Fenton were self-proclaimed ‘ecto-biologists’ (a debatably theoretical field) unable to be backed or peer-reviewed by either the scientific or occult communities. In other words, it was subjectively a ‘mad science’, an ego-driven spiral into unknown territory, destined to end in flames. Certainly not a place one would want to raise a child within.
Tim hated filing his cases away, but whoever had covered this up had done a damn thorough job of it. Unless there really was nothing to find. Tim could only hope the kid had simply gotten sick of his parents shit, jumped a train somewhere and was out living his life. He had hoped that if he was ever alerted to the case, it would be because the kid had been spotted in another state, under a new name, with a new job, living his best life.
Red Robin had been trained better than to hedge his bets on hope.
His instincts told him that something in that basement had gone wrong and the kid had been caught in the crossfire. Yet he had nothing tangible to back up his hunch.
Until this new alert.
Pulling it up on his tablet, Tim discovered that his data-combing and facial recognition software had traced through some recently-processed body-cam footage from a Pennsylvania police department. A single glance made it immediately clear that it was sheer luck for the program to have picked up anything at all from the footage. As a whole, it was layered in static and artifacted beyond recognition. The software had recovered a singlular frame from thousands which managed to capture a clear image.
The face of one Daniel Fenton.
Black hair dishevelled, clothes a mismatch of thrifted layers. Exhausted, fearful eyes-
Tim frowned and zoomed in.
Green eyes.
Not forest green. Not spring green. Luminous, toxic, inhuman green.
Tim knew from the case file that Danny had blue eyes. He had seen them in pictures of the young, energetic teen. Smiling with his arms around his friends.
The eyes in this image were devoid of that carefree joy. They glinted with sharp - bordering on manic - energy. They spoke of trauma, of desperation. It was all too familiar.
“Can’t be,” Tim muttered, clicking out of the frame his computer caught for him so he could see the video as a whole.
A mess of static and grating noises assaulted his senses. The video was almost entirely corrupted. Some segments were a mess of dead pixels, others inverted or bathed in fuzzy gray static. Squinting, Tim could just make out the figures' general movement.
Danny, Tim identified from the one clear frame, was backing up from the camera. His posture was hunched, shoulders drawn together. Then the figure spasmed, the footage glitching in tandem. Arms (at first two, but fracturing into six) flew up - possibly to block, possibly to attack. The footage lagged and froze, until suddenly the screen was filled with light. The audio peaked before splitting into an ear-piercing buzz. After a mess of pixels and jagged shapes, the footage became somewhat coherent again, showing the camera on the floor. Glass, metal and limbs littered around it.
Something was being yelled. Loud, desperate and angry, but Tim couldn't distinguish a single word from beneath the layers and layers of static.
He watched on in silence as the footage abruptly cut out, presumably because the camera was destroyed. On a second screen, Tim pulled up the full report of the incident. Five cops on the scene. Three who discovered the kid and an extra two called in for backup.
All of them had been knocked unconscious, only to awake with deep gouges in their body in various places. It was unclear what had hit them. No shrapnel or bullets left behind. Too jagged to be knife wounds. The ground and surrounding building were unmarred (save for a few cop cars) so whatever they’d been struck with was either quickly removed or had dissipated.
That could be anything from spectral weapons to shapeshifting.
Tim rewound the footage again, playing it over a few more times. He stopped on the single frame clear enough to see Danny's face and frowned. He absently bit at his nails as he took in every detail he could discern.
The kid looked human, save for those bright, Lazarus-green eyes. The sight alone put Tim on edge. That colour had only meant one thing to his family and that was resurrection and rage.
So, the kid wasn't dead. Not anymore, at least. Runaway was still on the table, and escaped-lab-rat was becoming a terrifying possibility.
So the accident could have killed him after all, it just didn't stick? But who had access to a Lazarus Pit and why throw some random teen into it? Given the violence from the clip and everything he had seen from Jason upon resurrection, Tim dreaded imagining the chaos that was currently loose on the streets.
Given the year of time between his missing persons report and now, it was a surprise that he hadn't been spotted sooner. Unless he hadn't been resurrected until recently. Or escaped whoever resurrected him.
Regardless, Tim needed to find this kid before he hurt himself or anyone else. Help him through the rage and keep him stable enough for therapy and rehabilitation. But to do that, Tim would need backup, and there was one person who knew the habits of a disoriented, freshly resurrected teen. If his theory was correct, then he was going to need advice from someone who’d experienced this first hand.
Tim pulled out his phone, his heart hammering with a caffeine-and-justice-fueled urgency to tear into this case immediately, but the time on the homescreen made him pause.
There were only a few minutes left until Batman was due to arrive back in the cave and no doubt take over the bat computer. Bruce liked to make his case reports while the details were still fresh in his mind.
Tim had no intention of hiding this case from his adopted father, but he didn't want the man to think that Tim was getting distracted or overly invested in nothing. He needed more evidence to prove if this kid was a meta or not. As unfortunate as it was, people went missing all the time, and it was only when something deeper was going on that the Bats took notice.
With a sigh, he quickly closed every tab and window relating to his case and pushed away from the bat computer. One hand held his laptop and coffee, the other dialled one of the many numbers he knew off by heart.
The elevator doors closed behind Tim right as a deep engine rumble filled the cave.
When Jasons phone buzzed, he was surprised to see Tim’s profile light up.
It was safe to say that he and Tim were on good terms nowadays, but they were hardly at the ‘checking in on each other’ stage of their relationship. Really the only Bat Jason expected to hear from these days was Dick. Jason had the group chat muted and only browsed through it when he was really bored. Or to check who was or wasn't attending that weeks family dinner (Any less than 3 Birds present and he was not attending).
Jason adjusted the bag on his shoulder and finished crossing the street before he read over the message.
Timbit:
I need some help with homework. You free tonight?
‘Homework’ meaning ‘a case’, since this was his civilian phone and Tim took anonymity very seriously.
Truth be told, Jason was free that night. He had no pressing business at the moment other than checking in with the usual henchmen, and it hadn't been too long since he last patrolled Crime Alley, so missing a night wasn't an issue.
The thing that made Jason pause, however, was knowing that there were at least a handful of other vigilantes who were free that night as well. Damien and Duke were in the manor, Steph and Cass were doing patrols close. The only one absent was Dick, and even he could usually be summoned at short notice.
So why message Jason?
You:
How urgent is it?
Timbit:
8/10. Time sensitive.
You:
This for a test?
Timbit:
Nah. Independent studies
Ah, so Bruce wasn't involved. Still, an 8/10 meant at least rogue-gallery level threat. Jason may be under the no-kill rule, but he would gladly mess up a villain. And he had enough leeway to still be a nuisance while doing it.
You:
Fine. I’ll be at your place in 20. You’re paying for takeout.
Timbit:
Why can't you just come to the cave? I’m already there.
Not bothering to dignify that with a response, Jason pulled his civilian helmet out of his bag and unlocked the brake disc on his bike.
Tim arrived back at his apartment to find the door already unlocked. He sighed before even seeing Jason sprawled out on his couch, flipping absently through the book he left on the coffee table.
“James Patterson? Even your books are crime-based,” he chuckled, tilting his head over the backrest to look at his brother. “How about a simple rom-com for once? A little fantasy even?”
Tim threw his coat over his brother's smug face. “Shut up. I brought Pad Thai.” He set the plastic bag down on the table and flopped down on the armchair.
“Ooo.” Jason wasted no time grabbing the boxes and stabbing his fork in. “Alright. I've been placated. Now spill. What’s this independent research you’ve been doing? Another smuggling operation? Corruption in Arkham?”
“Missing kid,” Tim said simply, pulling his laptop and tablet out of his bag.
Jason’s eyebrow raised. “Who’s?”
“Dunno. Some so-called ‘Ecto Scientist’s. They reported the kid dead but their daughter managed to get a testimony in claiming that he was missing. He came up on a PSP body cam an hour ago.”
Tim turned the laptop towards Jason, giving him a clear view of the case outline.
“Fenton…” Jason pursed his lips. “Doesn’t ring a bell. He didn't go missing in Gotham. What’s so special about this case?” Why am I here? was left unsaid.
“Well,” Tim bit his lip. He needed to be careful here, not to say anything that could trigger Jason's anger.
Jason was doing better. A lot better than he’d been since he first came back from the dead three years ago. It was hard for Tim to hold a grudge or even harbour distrust towards Jason when he had seen his brother at his worst. Curled up in a corner, fighting through flashbacks of his own death, hoarse voice begging for relief.
Tim had reconciled with his brother. They’d been on missions together, bared their scars, bonded over feeling like failed Robins. He admired Jason - had seen first hand the strides he’d made to get help. Go to therapy, rein in the violence and reconnect with his family.
But that didn’t mean Tim wasn’t still cautious.
He had seen the way Jason's judgment could cloud in a split second, his eyes lost in Lazarus green. Instinct would take over and drive him to act before him or anyone else had time to think. It took great strength for his older brother to claw his way out of the Pit Madness each and every time, and Tim admired that. He also had experienced first hand what happened when Jason couldn’t manage to snap himself out in time.
Right now, Jason's eyes were clear and blue, trailing over the worn edge of Tims couch. He was in his street clothes, looking for all the world like a regular 22 year old. The only thing that gave any indication of his past was the faded scar that ran from his lip to his jaw bone and a slightly crooked nose that hadn’t been properly set after one too many breaks.
“His name is Danny,” Tim began, getting down to business. “I have reason to believe this kid ran away. His parents had a lab with experiments beneath their house. His sister mentioned an accident. Suddenly he’s gone and the parents are trying to cover it up. I think he might’ve died, but…”
Tim hesitated, pressing his lips together. Before he could conjure the right words, Jason interjected. “-but didn’t stay dead.”
He nodded, although it came off more as a sad head bow. “Yeah.”
To his credit, the only reaction Jason gave was the slight twitch to his lip. “What makes you think that?”
Pulling up the frame from the footage of Danny, Tim turns the tablet around and shows it to Jason. “We’ll, it's kind of a hunch right now. But the system face-matched him with this shot from a cop cam. See for yourself.”
Jason gave a sharp inhale. “Well shit. Tell me that’s not Lazarus green.”
Tim wrinkled his nose. “I’d really rather it wasn't. Trust me.”
His brother dropped his head into his hands and gave a long, drawn out exhale. “Bruce sealed the pits up. How did-? It's not possible.”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I’ve got kids last known location and some evidence to revisit. I figured we could track him down before he hurts anyone else.”
Jason's eyes grew distant, eyebrows furrowed in thought. “We don't know for sure that it's Lazarus water. It's so unlikely. There's no reason for it. He might just be a coincidentally green-eyed meta.”
Tim sat back and let Jason stew it over. He’d already gone through these stages of grief himself and decided the risk was well worth the effort. A dead end was leagues better than a loose, undead kid.
“So what’d you need me for? Be your Lazarus bloodhound?” Jason huffed.
A smile tugged at Tims lips. “Well, sorta. Yeah. I’ve seen the way you can sense that shit a mile away.”
Jason shrugged, suppressing a shudder. “It’s hard not to.”
Tim’s smile fell. “You don't have to do this if you-”
“No, I will,” Jason interjected, eyes flashing momentarily, giving a brief glimpse into the turmoil his brother was barely masking. “There’s a kid at risk. Of course I’ll help.”
Tims shoulders slumped in relief, although his mind was already reeling with the next steps in his operation. “Great. Thank you.” He snapped his laptop shut and stood. “I’ll see you first thing tomorrow in the cave. Bring at least a few days worth of supplies. I have no idea how long we’ll be gone.”
“Ugh,” Jason frowned at the mere mention of the cave. “Fine. But I’ll be taking B’s supplies. It's your mission so he has to pay for it.”
Tim shrugged, having no patience for Jasons Bruce-related hangups. “Works for me.”
Something was wrong with Danny.
Something was very, very wrong with him. Been wrong for a while and stayed that way despite his best efforts. Something had shifted within him after the GIW. After the box. After the surgical table. After the explosion.
Something had snapped in his core and never quite righted itself.
And Danny was afraid. And hurt, and tired and angry. There was a snowstorm under his skin, pouring from his core like a burst dam, seeping into his bones, his blood, his mind.
Danny couldn't pinpoint when exactly he had changed. Maybe when he was captured, when his parents turned their weapons against him (*him, not Phantom), when he saw his clone - his sister - melt in front of him as she screamed for his help. Maybe it was the moment that portal lit up inside of him, splitting him open and sewing him back together as an unholy conglomeration of blood and ectoplasm.
Maybe the anger had been brewing all along, simmering just beneath the surface, waiting for a reason to finally be let out.
What Danny could pinpoint was the moment he knew that he had changed for the worse. Passed the point of no return. When he no longer feared bringing the living to the other side with him.
He hadn’t felt angry during his fights with the ghosts in Amity Park. Nor had he been angry when his parents rejected him after he revealed himself as a Halfa. Scared, yes. Heartbroken, yes. But not angry. Not then, at least.
The point when he felt his instincts shift into something dangerous was the moment one of the Guys In White got too close. Too careless. Too smug.
Leering over the surgical table, gloved hands gripping a razor-thin blade, the smell of rubbing alcohol pervading his senses. They had their guard down. With Danny's head lulled against the table, eyes rolled back in his head, there was no need to suspect he was anything other than unconscious. A thin sheen of sweat coated his skin.
He looked as dead as he felt. Days of screaming and thrashing had gotten him nowhere. Every ounce of fight was drained from him.
No, not drained. Dormant. Waiting.
Danny felt rather than saw the hand move close to his neck. It bit into his skin, poised to make an incision. They had bound his wrists and ankles to the table. His neck too, fastened with a thick metal bar equipped with the best powerful power-nulling technology that there was.
There was just. enough. room.
To bite.
Danny's fangs sank into the man's wrist, cutting through flesh and tendons, cracking bone. Red hot liquid filled his mouth and he revelled in it. There were screams. A fist to his face, snapping his head to the side and tearing the limb off with it. He spat it out, grinning too-sharp, red-stained teeth glinting for the screaming scientists to see.
He couldn't have stopped it if he tried.
Something had awoken in Danny's chest then. Something that saved his half-life and doomed it at the same time.
Within hours he had freed himself, leaving a trail of gore and viscera behind him. He couldn't have cared less. His ribs had cracked open and something deadly was spilling out, coating his hands and core in death.
Yet his mind was sharp and a storm was building behind his eyes.
Nothing would hurt Danny Fenton again.