Chapter Text
Ghostlight in Gotham
Rain whispered through the shattered roof panels of Gotham’s forgotten Block 12 power station—Danny’s haunt.
The building had long since crumbled into disuse, abandoned by the living but claimed by the dead… or at least the half-dead. Danny drifted near the ceiling, long ghost-tail coiling below him like pale smoke, hair floating in slow motion waves. Some nights he slept, some nights he simply was, his glowing form suspended in the quiet like a lantern with no purpose.
Tonight, he felt nothing.
Listless.
Unseen, unheard, untethered.
And then—
the living stumbled in.
A man crashed through the rusted side door, panting, stumbling on shaking legs. He wore a cheap mask and held a bag stuffed with cash, bills still fluttering loose like molting feathers.
Danny’s eyes crept open, faintly glowing. A cold, almost bored curiosity trickled through him.
Again? Another trespasser?
The criminal didn’t see him at first—most didn’t, not until Danny decided they should. He pressed his back against a pillar, trying to steady his breath.
Then another sound entered the building.
Boots. Purposeful. Light but lethal.
Nightwing.
He slipped inside with the confidence of someone who knew every echo this city could make. His escrima stick hummed faintly with a charge. His expression was sharp.
“End of the line,” Nightwing called into the dark.
The criminal whimpered softly.
Danny let himself drift downward, glowing form blooming like a blue-white flame out of the shadows. When he passed through a beam of broken moonlight, his eyes gleamed bright cyan and eerie green tears dripped from the corners—ectoplasm that evaporated before it reached the floor.
The criminal noticed him first.
He screamed.
Nightwing’s eyes snapped upward—
Just in time to see a ghost with hair like unraveling starlight looming above him, expression tired, distant… watching.
Nightwing froze.
Not afraid—merely recalibrating reality.
Danny hovered silently, listless, tilted his head slightly as if trying to remember how social interaction worked.
“Uh… hey?” Nightwing tried carefully. “You… live here?”
Danny blinked.
The words took a moment to reach him. Sound meant little on the ghost side. Meaning even less. But he recognized intention, and Nightwing’s wasn’t hostile.
“Yeah,” Danny finally murmured, voice strangely echoing despite the still air. “He’s loud.”
He pointed lazily at the criminal with a single floating motion, hair drifting around him like a deep-sea creature.
Nightwing let out a slow breath.
“A ghost,” he muttered under his breath, “because Gotham couldn’t just have normal problems.”
Danny’s gaze sharpened at that, not offended—just… awake for the first time in hours.
“You didn’t bring him here, did you?” Danny asked. His tone wasn’t accusing. It was simply a tired question from someone who didn’t like being disturbed.
“No,” Nightwing answered. “I’m the one trying to take him away.”
Danny absorbed that.
Then nodded once.
And without warning, he dropped like a wisp of smoke solidifying—appearing right behind the criminal. The man shrieked, stumbled, and his phone flew from his hand as he tried to record the figure behind him.
His camera glitched instantly—Danny appearing in jagged distorted lines, frozen mid-scream, static slicing the screen.
Danny didn’t touch him—he didn’t need to. A cold wave pulsed outward, and the criminal collapsed, unconscious.
Danny floated back up, tail curling loosely beneath him, expression drifting back toward empty calm.
Nightwing stared.
“...Thanks?” he tried.
Danny shrugged one shoulder. “He was annoying.”
There was a moment of strange, gentle quiet.
Nightwing started to move toward the criminal, but paused again.
“Do you… want to stay hidden?” he asked, softer now. “I won’t tell the others you’re here if you don’t want that.”
Danny blinked.
That wasn’t what he expected.
Most living people either screamed or demanded answers. This one offered privacy.
He drifted backwards, back into his shadows, hair dissolving into the dark.
“I’m not hiding,” Danny said, eyes glowing faintly. “I’m just tired.”
Nightwing nodded. Like he understood that all too well.
“Then I’ll keep people out of your place when I can,” he said gently. “Call it a… roommate agreement.”
Danny stared at him.
Slowly—barely—he smiled.
A soft, weary thing, but real.
Then he vanished, fading into the ceiling like a blown-out candle.
Nightwing stood alone again.
“…Bruce is never gonna believe me,” he muttered, grabbing the unconscious criminal.
And somewhere in the rafters, a quiet ghost chuckled.