late at night, when the nightingale sings - Imshookandbi - Batman (2024)

Chapter 1: there is a rot in my lungs that I can't cough out

Chapter Text

“Woah. You look like sh*t."

Granted, that’s probably not the first thing Danny should be saying to the guy that just bit the curb, but in his defense; he’s not running on 100% right now either.

The man — tall, towering, and broader than Danny is tall — whips around on his heel, black frayed cape flaring out impressively. Danny would've whistled in appreciation, but he takes the time instead to wipe the back of his hand across his mouth, smearing the blood running from his nose across his cheek.

"Sorry." He blinks widely, not even flinching as the man with the horns zeroes in on him. "That was rude of me. I have a really bad brain-to-mouth filter; Sam says it's what always gets me into trouble."

And she's not wrong either, per say. His smart mouth is what landed him in this situation — with blood blossom extract running through his veins, and cannibalizing the ectoplasm in his bloodstream. Thanks Vlad.

The man grunts at him; a short, curt "hm" that shouldn't make Danny smile, but he does because he's somewhat delirious and poisoned. The man keeps some kind of distance, sinking towards the shadows of Gotham's alleyway like he dares to melt right into it.

If it's supposed to scare Danny, it doesn't work. Danny's never been afraid of the dark; quite the opposite, actually. It’s hard to be afraid of the thing you always hide in. He blinks slowly at the mass of shadows.

"You look hurt." The shadows says, the barely-there silhouette blurring around the edges. Danny squints, and licks his lips to get the blood dripping down his chin off. Ugh, he hates the taste of blood.

"I am." He says matter-of-factly, what’s the point in denying the obvious? "My godfather poisoned me. M'dying." The agony of the blood blossom eating him alive from the inside out looped back around to numbing a while ago, turning him into a half-conscious zombie as a result.

"Hey," Danny stumbles forward towards the man, a bloodied hand reaching out to him. "You— you're a hero, right?” He was dressed in dark colors and was wearing a weird costume, like most of Danny’s friends do. “You're not attacking me; which is more than I can say for most people I've met." And he said he looked hurt — that was like, some semblance of concern, right?

Maybe not the best bar to judge someone at, but Danny’s head is full of cotton and gauze, and some of the first things he ever taught himself as a kid was to never be afraid of the dark. The man before him was dripping in it, bleeding into it like he ought to make it home. That— that had to mean something, right?

The man makes no change in expression, but Danny realizes blearily that he wouldn’t be able to tell if he had anyways — hard to tell with the shadows on his face. He stays still long enough for Danny to latch onto the cape — stretchy, but strangely soft under his wet and red fingers.

He looks up into the whites of the man's eyes. "Can you help me? I don't— I don't wanna die." Again. He doesn't wanna die again. He blinks slow and lizard-like. "I mean— I'll probably get to see mom and dad again, but I told them I'd at least try and make it to adulthood."

There's a clatter down the street, and Danny's ghost sense chills up his spine and leaves a bitter, ashy taste in his mouth. He immediately knows who it belongs to even before the deceptively gentle, saccharine; "Daniel?" echoes down the way.

"Daniel? Quit your games, badger, Gotham is dangerous for children."

Icy hot panic shoots from his head to his toes, his heart jumpstarting into the fifth gear. In his rush of fear, Danny’s vision swims nauseatingly fast.

His eyes widen, his mouth pulls back, and blood spills against his tongue. "Please." Danny rasps, desperate. He grabs onto the shadow's cape with both hands. "Please. He's going to kill me. PLEASE—"

"Daniel? Is that you?"

His lips part, dragging in air to plead with the darkness again. He doesn't need to, the whites of the man’s eyes narrow. The cape whirls around him before Danny can blink; and swaddled in shadows, the Night lifts him up, and steals him away.

The world blurs into a mess of oil smears as Danny's stolen away into Gotham's smog-smudged skies and sickly city lights. He clings onto the shadow of a man he met like a lifeline. He is a lifeline for all he cares, as they get further and further away from Vlad. The taste of ash and cinders sitting thick in his throat grows fainter and fainter.

Half his face is smudged into the man's body armor, and Danny's only partly aware of the blood he's smearing onto the... fabric? The material — on his shoulder. He's got half a mind to apologize. He doesn't.

Instead, through the loud whistling of the wind, Danny mutters a string of slurry, delirious "thank you's" on a repetitive loop. He's not even sure if he can be heard, but the terror in his heart turns into pained relief anyways.

Flying always makes him feel better — the chill, the pressure, the weightlessness — and it feels even better now, with the heat of the blossoms and his own body desperately fighting against the infection being forcibly cooled. For a feverish moment, he can forget that Vlad stuck blood blossoms into his veins. He sighs out, eyes closing, and almost regrets it when blood coats his teeth.

His reprieve is broken a cruel, few moments later when they land on a rooftop with a sharp — at least to him — drop. His stomach jumps, and coils inwards in revenge. The hand splaying against his back shakes him sharply.

"Hey," The shadows whisper. Danny blinks his eyes sluggishly open, and suppresses a startled flinch when he meets the stark blue gaze of the man’s eyes. "Keep your eyes open."

"Sorry." He murmurs, nose scrunching up as nausea roils unpleasantly in his gut. He licks his lips again, his blood is beginning to dry, and it feels like scratchy paint sticking onto his skin. It's uncomfortable. "Th’ wind f'lt nice."

The man begins running across the rooftop, the jostling movement only makes Danny feel worse. But the shadows said to keep his eyes open, and Danny figures that's a pretty smart idea considering his predicament. But he's going to vomit if he keeps looking at the world spinning around him…

He doesn’t really wanna see what his vomit looks like — he’s afraid it’ll come up blood, and he doesn’t want to get it all over the shadow man either.

He makes a mental compromise and buries his face into the crook of the man's neck, clawing at his shoulders to try and keep purchase. He latches his fingers onto the cape and despite his trembling arms, refuses to let go.

Danny only turns his head when there's a sharp pain in his lungs. He presses his forehead into the man’s shoulder and coughs blood over his pauldron.... oops. "Sorry," he repeats, voice hoarse, "'m gettin' blood on you..."

"Hn. It'll come off." He's told, and Danny blinks lazily again, nodding curtly. The man's voice sounds nice, as raspy and soft as it is. But before he can tell him that, they're in the air again, the wind whistling in his ears.

Danny relishes in it, but keeps the thought in the back of his mind. Up until they land again, and as another wave of sickly nausea and pins-needles pain washes over him like the tide, he blurts out; "I like y'voice."

...He doesn't get a response back.

Danny drifts in and out of consciousness, with the Night jolting him awake every so often with a sharp, quiet reminder to keep with him. Danny doesn't bother deigning a real verbal response to that beyond wordless grumbles and mumbles. A few times he stops to cough up his lungs — and for a worrying moment after a particularly sharp landing, gags on air, his stomach lurching angrily. Nothing comes out, and Danny is more embarrassed and exhausted than he is anything else. He wants to vomit, but he's terrified of what might come out if he does.

The man picks up greater speed after that.

Eventually they leave the roof to the stars — as hidden as they are amongst the smogly clouds — and drop down into an even darker alleyway than the one Danny found the horned man in. They land on something with a metal thunk, and the man slides them off onto the ground.

There's a gentle hissing sound, and Danny opens his eyes just as the man places him in a leather seat and straps him in. "Wh're w'goin?" He asks, lolling his head to the side to peer up tiredly.

"Somewhere I can help you."

Danny already knows that. The man wouldn’t have listened to Danny’s hysterical pleading and gotten him away from Vlad otherwise. But, hearing it being said aloud only confirms it in his cotton-filled mind, and something about hearing it said aloud makes Danny’s eyes sting with tears. They bead up on his lashes, threatening to pool over his face and drip down his bloodied cheeks.

With it comes a lump accustomed to crying, one that Danny forces himself to swallow down silently with a mouthful of iron. His lips wobble, and he presses them together before trying to manage a smile. It feels pathetic, but oh does he hope.

Just as it was in the air, the drive to wherever they're going is a mess of orange-streetlight smeared blurs and rapid-passing buildings. Danny keeps his head rested against the door, forehead pressing against the cold window, and breathing slowly through his mouth.

From his unfocused peripherals, the man — of which with the help of the passing lights, Danny finally realizes is dressed as... some kind of bat? Honestly, not the weirdest thing he's ever seen — routinely keeps glancing over at him. Danny’s never seen someone grip a steering wheel so tightly.

"Do you know what your godfather poisoned you with?" The man eventually asks, his voice still as soft and raspy as it was earlier, if not a little firmer.

It takes Danny a moment to realize he spoke at all. His brain sluggishly catching up to his ears. "Hrm?" He blinks, lifting his head. Danny regrets it immediately, his vision tilts dangerously on its axis and muddies. He rests his head again. "Oh. Yeh. A flow'r called blood bloss'm."

They pass a streetlight, shining just bright enough that Danny sees the Bat-Man's lips purse. Danny's mouth opens, but he makes no sound, his mind trying to find the words he's looking for. "I'z- it's extinct."

The man snaps his head to look at him, so fast that Danny’s feverish mind forces a harsh, huff laugh out of his lungs. He regrets it quickly; a sharp stab of pain jabs a needle into his side, turning the laugh into a harsh coughing fit instead. Regardless, he manages to put it on hold long enough to weakly raise his hands and waggle his fingers, deliriously attempting a lousy pair of jazz hands. Danny slurs; "Shcience."

The coughing fit overtakes him then, and without the adrenaline of flying and running away from Vlad to distract him, the ache and burn of consistently coughing returns. Searing him down to the tissue, threatening to leave him with everlasting scars.

Gritting his teeth, Danny unsuccessfully bites back the low, pained whimper leaking through his throat, and turns to curl up into the corner of his seat. His arms box over his head, pressing down against his ears and temples as if that will make him hurt less. Tears spring into his eyes, and he tries to use the feeling of breathing to distract himself from the sting.

If he's still breathing, everything will be okay.

Wherever they're going, he hopes they get there fast.

("You're a hero, right?" The boy asks, but the way he says it makes it sound like he was only asking as a formality. That of course Bruce was a hero, it was obvious.)

(He didn't know how to tell him that no, he wasn't. And then he wasn’t able to.)

Bruce's hands would be shaking if it weren't for the knuckle-white grip on the car's steering wheel. Every time he tries to focus on the road in front of him, his eyes are drawn back towards the boy coiled in a ball in the passenger seat.

He can't tell if it's rage or fear that's making his arms tremble.

The boy — Daniel, if the voice of his godfather was to be believed — is small. Bruce could wrap his thumb and forefinger around his wrist, and he's positive they would touch. A waifish, slip of a thing, and Bruce thought he'd been small as a child. His clothes — simple, unremarkable; a hoodie that hangs off his shoulders and a band shirt he doesn't recognize — look too big on him, and Bruce wonders if Daniel even knows he's shivering.

(He was hard pressed to say no, he didn’t. From the moment Daniel had stopped him in the alleyway to now, he looked as if part of him was somewhere far, far away. It was either a miracle, or a testament to the boy’s sheer willpower, that he’d even been able to stay cognizant long enough to ask him for help. Especially considering his immediate deterioration and rapid onset hysteria at the mere sound of his godfather’s voice.)

This was not how Bruce thought his night would be going — he was following a lead on Falcone and his people. Now he was rushing back to the cave with a boy who couldn't be any older than fifteen; a boy who was dying of poison because of his godfather.

Hurt and fury bubbles beneath his ribs.

(Who does this to a kid?)

He glances at Daniel again. Messy, sweat-slicked black hair clings to his forehead, and gathers around his ears. It looks like it hasn't been cut in months. He's unnaturally pale, and Bruce wasn’t sure if his paleness is from the poison, or his natural color. It highlights the dark circles beneath glassy blue eyes, peering unfocused and teary out from lidded eyes.

The blood dripping off his chin is damning and stark against his skin, and almost black where it gathers the thickest. Some of it half-dried against his cheek, but most is a horrifying dark red and wet, staining down his throat and into his shirt. Every time the boy coughs, Bruce fears that blood will spill from his mouth next.

He breathes in shakily, and swerves around a left corner. The boy jerks, unable to catch himself, and begins veering to the side towards him. Bruce throws his arm out to catch him, and pins him to the seat. Daniel grunts quietly, and sluggishly curls a hand around the door handle to pull himself back.

Guilt turns the back of Bruce's neck red. That, and embarrassment. "...Apologies." He murmurs, retracting his hand quickly. Daniel blinks slowly, Bruce nervously keeps an eye on the unsteady rise and fall of his chest.

He's pulled away from his staring when, much to his surprise, the boy smiles. It's weak, barely even there, and trembling like the rest of him, but glazed in fondness — or perhaps, more accurately, drowned in nostalgia. "S'ok'y." Daniel mumbles, blood sticking to his mouth as he slumps back into the corner. "M'dad drove the same way."

...There were a lot of questions there. But the hurting, discomforting squeeze of Bruce's heart turns his tongue to lead. His throat swells shut, grows a cancerous lump, and keeps his lungs thick. "..Hh."

(What does he say to that?)

A silence, one that is ugly and unsure, falls over them again for a few minutes more. Bruce should keep the boy talking — it's confirmation that Daniel was still alive; still breathing, Bruce hasn't failed, yet — and yet, he can't think of a single thing to say.

They're coming close up on the cemetery. Bruce turns down the road leading to it. His eyes flick to Daniel again. The boy is staring at him, the sickly yellow streetlights catching shadows on his face, leaving a glow lingering in his eyes.

(In his lazy eye, his mind tricks him into seeing a corpse. Bruce suppresses a flinch, and looks over again.)

(Daniel is still breathing. Good. Good. Good.)

He breathes in shakily, something dark and angry rearing its head once again. Who does this? Who does this? He grits his teeth, biting back the scowl pulling on his face.

("You're a hero, right?")

(No, but for now he can pretend to be.)

They end up in a tunnel somewhere. Danny's not quite sure where, but the road gets bumpy and the uncomfortable, rough jostling forces a wet groan out from his lungs. His eyes pound in their sockets, daring to pop out from where they sit as the discomfort ricochets around his temples and circles back around to the back of his head.

His head lolls, and Danny shoves it back against the seat with a thud, ignoring the dull pain it rings through his skull. "’re w'there yet?" He asks, blood spilling into his mouth that he tiredly tries to spit out. He's done with drinking it instead.

The numbness in his bones that he'd been so graciously left with was starting to fade now. Returning back to a burning, rhythmic soreness spreading through his limbs. It clusters up around his joints, pins and needles pricking through his fingers and down his spine, while a low, pounding, throbbing ache crawls through his sinew and muscle in a malicious attempt to sever and devour him whole. There was no way to describe it beyond feeling like something was, little by little, chewing him up, chipping him off, and chiseling him out.

Bat-man guy grunts shortly, shifts the gearshift into a new position, and glances over to him for the nth time that night. "Almost."

Almost. Almost was... good? Probably. Hopefully. Danny doesn't give a response, just nods mutely.

The car comes to a stop some minutes later, parked in a wide open space, with LED lights spread erratically through the floor.

Bat-Man barely has the car at a rolling stop before he forces it to park, not even waiting for the recoil to stop before he's flying out of his seat. If Danny didn't know better, he'd have thought the man had phased right through the metal. That's not what happened though, and he watches the guy zip around the front of the car to the passenger side.

The door jerks open in moments, and despite knowing it was going to happen, Danny still jolts involuntarily, an incoherent squeak peeping through his teeth at an embarrassing pitch. He sits, uncomprehending and lame, as Bat-Man reaches over him and unbuckles the car seat, before wrapping his arms around him and pulling him out of the car.

The lights are painfully bright in Danny's eyes as Bat-Man pulls him out, and he whines involuntarily, tilting his face inward to hide it against the armor-weave.

"—sleep at a reasonable— dear god. What on Earth happened?"

Oh, forget the lights. Danny turns his head and braces against the brightness — and his tilting, whorling sight — to see who else was here. That was a whole British accent he heard, and he spots an older man with a cane standing near one of the tables.

"His godfather poisoned him." Bat-Man growls. Danny nods heavily, immediately regretting it when his vision pounds. "I need my antidote kit. Alfred, I need you to stay by him; make sure he doesn't start choking if he throws up."

The older man -- Alfred? Scoffs, and when Bat-Man passes by he follows after him. "As if you need to ask me. But where, exactly, do you plan on putting him?"

Without answering, Bat-Man shifts Danny until he's being held in one arm, and then approaches a metal table covered in nuts, bolts, and half-finished gadgets and gizmos. He doesn’t even waste a breath, and uses his free arm to shove it all off the table with a crashing, clattering, banging clang.

Then he delicately lays Danny down.

The metal is freezing, sinking through the fabric of his jacket and shirt, and Danny turns his head to watch Bat-Man. He catches a glimpse at Alfred's expression in the process, and barks a wet, harsh laugh at the dirty look he’s burning into Bat-Man’s back.

Bat-Man's hands still from where they're tilting him onto his side, and Danny manages to cover his mouth with his hand to stifle his puddling giggles. "Sorry." He says, half-dried and sticky blood clinging to his palm as he tries to catch his breath. "Th'look on ‘is face w’s funny."

The Alfred man sends another look at the Bat-Man when he glances at him; one eyebrow arched judgmentally, before stepping over as Bat-Man gets Danny full on his side. Then he disappears down somewhere, heavy, booted footsteps echoing through the room.

"I hope he knows that he'll be the one picking all of this up when we're done, because I will certainly not." Alfred says stiffly, shooting another dirty look to the ground where all the junk was pushed onto, before procuring a pristine handkerchief out of thin air. One of those nice looking ones, that are probably made of, like, butterfly silk.

Danny almost smiles, but Alfred starts reaching for his face, and his smile is forgotten in lieu of a flinch instead. Vlad never hit him in the months Danny’s lived with him — not yet, at least. Danny thinks that if he stayed any longer he would have eventually — but he developed a love of grabbing his jaw bruisingly tight, and forcing him to look at him whenever he could. There's a pause, before Alfred's hand glides over his cheek. Despite the callous padding on his palm, his touch is resoundingly gentle.

He cups Danny's jaw, featherlight and not the least bit forceful, and starts wiping the blood from his face.

...Oh.

Danny blinks uncomprehendingly up at him. He hasn't felt an actual affectionate touch in months . Vlad tried to be whenever he wasn’t grabbing him, but every touch to Danny's person felt oily. Danny wanted to peel his skin back and scrub it raw every time he pulled away.

So in comparison, this was like warm sunlight on his face, and he hums low and pleasantly. "Tha'feels nice." He mumbles, relaxing unconsciously.

"I would hope so, young man." Alfred-guy says, folding his already blood-stained handkerchief in half for a cleaner square and moving to clean the blood from his throat. "All this blood can’t feel all that pleasant."

No, no, Danny thinks sluggishly, not that part.

"May I ask for a name?" Alfred asks before Danny can correct him. "It's not every night that the young master brings someone back with him."

Danny stares. "Danny." He says, "Mnh... jus’ Danny. M'godfath'r calls me Daniel, an' he poison’ me."

Alfred nods, the skin around his eyes tightening almost imperceptibly, and pulls his handkerchief away. It was stained right through with blood, dripping out of the fabric and smearing along Alfred’s palm. Danny has enough sense to cringe with shame. That probably won't come out, and he kinda wishes he’d stopped the man from doing it in the first place. "I wish we were meeting in better circ*mstances, Mister Danny.” Alfred says calmly, folding the handkerchief delicately. “It's a pleasure to meet you."

His good midwestern manners kicks in, and Danny nods curtly. His head spins vengefully for it. "Y'too, sir."

Bat-Man reappears in that moment, clearing off a space on the table across from them with a kit of various bottles and vials and other doodads that Danny's too incoherent to recognize.

He watches him yank off the vambraces wrapped around his arms, and then the gloves on both his hands. Alfred brushes the hair off his forehead, gathering Danny's attention again.

"If you don't mind an old man’s pondering, but, how did you meet?" He asks, Bat-Man glances over his shoulder at them both, but says nothing. There's a clattering of bottles before he bounds off again down a tunnel. Danny takes that as his sign to explain instead.

"All'y." He slurs, shifting when the pressure on his shoulder grows too uncomfortable. His stomach flips, and he freezes in place to breathe in slow. He swallows blood dripping from his nostrils into his mouth when the nausea passes. "Mm— I w'z runnin' from Vlad, an' I saw him in one 'f the alleyways."

Alfred raises a brow, his expression perfectly placid. “And you approached him?” The question was left unsaid, but certainly not unheard, and even Danny’s fog-gauzed mind can pick up on the ‘that was dangerous’ in Alfred’s tone. He’s heard it plenty of times from Jazz before.

…His heart hurts, and despite the ache Danny’s face still flushes with embarrassment. He wasn’t expecting to be chided. “S’not like he coul’b’ an’more dangerous than Vl’d.” Worst case scenario, Danny would’ve died in the alleyway faster than he would have under Vlad’s thumb.

Bat-Man reappears again then with more things, and starts messing around with his collection of bottles and tubes and whatever — probably to fix an antidote.

...Would he even be able to make one? f*ck, Danny hadn't thought of that. Blood Blossoms interact with him differently, his physiology was the only reason the poison even worked at all.

He forcibly keeps his breathing even, and zeroes in on Alfred. "I thou' he was a hero.” He mutters, feeling heat rise up to his ears. “N' I was right, he is."

Pain suddenly claws up his spine and burrows into the bottom of his skull, and Danny breathes in sharp. Blood bubbles up against his tongue, and he chokes. "He's— mine, at least." Even if all he does is get him away from Vlad.

Nausea hits Danny like a steamboat. Or maybe a train. Or one of Skulker's punches to the gut — either way, one moment he's laying on his side, half-conscious and trying to watch the Bat-Man putter about his little detox station as Alfred diligently kept Danny's sweat-soaked forehead dry and his face free of blood. Then the next, a sensation he can only describe as his stomach trying to wring itself inside out claws desperately through his gut.

In the way only the feeling of being about to vomit can bring, Danny has a moment of clarity, and he shoots up from the table as the back of his throat hollows open and he gags wordlessly. "Bucket." He retches, holding himself up on violently shaking arms as his vision begins to swim again. "B'cket, I n'd a buck't."

The man, Alfred, lurches off to the side, and Danny's not quite sure where but he manages to produce a tin bucket out from thin air. just in time for Danny to snag it from his hands and empty out the contents of his stomach into it.

(There was hardly anything in it but his own bile and what little food he'd eaten today — he hasn't had an appetite since he found his family dead in their beds, silent and peaceful as if all they'd done was go to sleep.)

(He knows not every death is created equal, some are simply clumsy, unremarkable. But still, it just felt f*cking cruel—)

When he's done, the little smoothie from hell he left behind is tinged red, and there's the distinct taste of iron on his tongue. It coats the back of his throat, and for a moment, Danny simply stares uncomprehendingly at it.

"Oh, " he mumbles, feeling only a little better as his nausea's hotflashing fades and takes with it what little clarity he had left. His grip weakens, and the bucket loosens in his grasp. "Tha's no good."

From the corner of his blurring eye, the Bat-Man stops what he's doing to turn and look at him. Danny sees the wide, shock-blue color of his eyes; they look alarmed.

It's okay, Danny thinks, instinctively trying to reassure. Blood-and-spit still coats his bottom lip, as cotton returns to blanket over his brain. His mouth refuses to move however, his jaw feeling too heavy to allow him to make a sound. Alfred takes the bucket from his hands, and only then does Danny realize his soft swaying.

He and the Bat-Man stare at each other, something akin to fear in the other man's eyes, before he breaks the prolonged eye contact and returns to his antidote-making with a renewed vigor.

Alfred comes back into view, and with a kind hand, pushes Danny to slowly lay back down on his side. Danny does so silently, his arms trembling terribly. Alfred's hand cups his cheek, protecting his head as Danny becomes more vertical, and Danny can't help but tilt his nose inwards and press into the meat of his palm.

His mind is all over the place, low rumbling pain is beginning to set back in again, but Alfred's hand is warm and Danny so desperately needs the gentle touch. It's been so, so long.

Despite making all of his own inventions, Vlad's hands were too soft, too well-maintained, and every saccharine hand he ever laid on Danny was too tight, too possessive, too much. Too thick; syrupy. it felt like a leash threatening to wrap around his throat and chain him to the floor. Danny’s only ever wanted to carve his own skin out from his body whenever Vlad tried to touch him.

Alfred's hands were rough and calloused like his parents' were; toughened from years of hard work and handling machinery. He noticed it before when he was cleaning the blood from his face, but he was noticing it again now, and it was like sleep to the insomnic. Or like a balm to the heartburn.

It's okay, Danny thinks deliriously, the reassurance he wanted to give the Bat-Man earlier washing over him instead. It's okay, he breathes carefully, it's going to be okay. I'm going to be okay.

When he’s finally laying fully back down, the hand on his cheek begins to pull away. The brief respite it gave to his muffled mind immediately combusts, his skin growing cold as his irrational peace crashes and burns at his feet.

His eyes — since when had they been shut? — shoot open.

No, no , no, wait, this is wrong.

An agonized whine slips past him, paining and hurting, terrified, and he latches out and leeches his hands around Alfred's wrist. "Don’t go.” Danny rasps, voice breaking in two. “Pl’se, ple’se, please. Don’t leave me. Pl’se don’ leave me.”

He claws at Alfred’s sleeve, trying to pull him closer with a low cry. Tears bubble and bleed onto his eyelashes, his core hums, and he can feel the ectoplasm beneath his skin begin to buzz. No, no, no, he was doing so good. He was doing so, so good.

Like sharks smelling blood in the water, Danny can practically feel the blood blossom in his veins thicken. Behind his eyes, his mind conjures the image of a wolf lunging at an injured rabbit, and just as its glistening maw snaps down on the animal’s neck, agony ricochets through his lungs.

A sob beats out of his chest, and flowering pain burns through him like wildfire. Clawing maliciously, hungrily, through his nerves and sinew and bone, down to the keratin of his fingernails, and swallowing his head whole. Blood spills down his nose, and Danny cracks out another sob.

“Please!” He cries. He chokes on his lungs, and coughs violent and wet. Iron coats his tongue, and begins dripping into his mouth. Panic fills his head with static, the ectoplasm buzzes louder in his ears. Danny gags on blood.

He manages to latch his fingers onto Alfred’s shirt, scrabbling for the fabric even as the man swoops forward once again and wraps his arms around him. Danny’s propped up, and he pushes his face into the man’s collarbone with hysteric tears burning down his face.

“Don’— don’ leave me. Pl’ase, ple’se, pl’se.” He babbles, voice thickened in grief. Through his tears and blurring lashes, he peers up at Alfred, and catches the stern tightening around his eyes. Terror spins his head this way and that, and Danny’s grip tightens. No, no , no, he’s sorry, he’s sorry. He’ll be good.

More blood fills his mouth, and Danny’s everything is alight in stabbing, terrible agony as the blood blossom toxin devours him whole in renewed fervor. His fear feeds the ectoplasm, and in turn feeds the blood blossom. With another sob, blood spills down his chin and stains down his throat. He chokes, and tries throwing his head back — he’s going— he’s going to get blood on him.

Alfred’s hand stops him, “None of that, Mister Danny.” He orders, sounding deceptively calm as he pushes Danny back against his shoulder. Danny tries to fight against it, but his strength has all but been consumed by the poison, and so he acquiesces with a high whine. “We're not going anywhere.”

Fingers find their way through his hair in an attempt to soothe; it does nothing to stop his snowballing terror, but it distracts Danny from the second bubble of blood pooling up his throat. “M’sorry.” He gurgles. Blood sputters from his lips, and joins the rest dribbling down his chin.

His tears block out his vision. “M’sorry, m’sorry, m’sorry, m’sorry, m’sorry.”

He should’ve— he should’ve known better than to think he could find a way out of this. Blood blossom is blood blossom, and it’s been extinct in the living realm for centuries. But he just- he just wanted to get away, he wanted to hope.But they're not going to find him a cure, he’s going to die here and the blossom will destroy his core and he’ll cease to exist forever.

Another sob tears out from him, leaving its claw marks in his lungs as it verges on the edge of a shriek. “I’m sorry!” Danny wails, creating divots into Alfred’s shirt. “I don’ wanna go, please, I don’ wanna go. I can b’ good, I prom'z'.”

Alfred’s grip on him tightens, and Danny barely hears the low growl vibrating out of his throat. “Master Bruce.”

“I’m almost done.”

He shouldn’t have bothered these people with his problems, he should’ve just— just found an alleyway to die in. Somewhere away from everyone else— but he didn’t, he had to be f*cking hopeful. And now he was going to die here in front of people who didn’t deserve to watch—

“I’ve got it.”

Danny’s vision dots and blacks as Alfred suddenly moves him, and his hands scrabble for him as he starts to pull away. “No no no—” He slurs, more blood spitting from his lips. Don’t leave him alone, please.

The Bat-Man appears to take him instead, a vortex mass of black that sweeps an arm behind his back and pulls him back close. Danny’s fingers, shaking, weak, aching, latch desperately onto what of his cape he can reach. “Don’ wanna die.” He cries, burrowing into Bat-Man’s shoulder. He’s scared, he’s so scared.

A new hand cradles the back of his neck, and Bat-Man’s voice rumbles low like an incoming storm. “You’re not going to.”

There’s a prick in Danny’s arm, cutting through the dying haze of his mind. He nearly misses it, it’s nearly drowned out by the prickling, burning pain consuming him, but he feels it for a brief, singular moment.

Relief sludges through him seconds after, dousing water over his bones and tissue and chasing away the blossom’s ravenous hunger. It spreads through his arm; down to his fingers and up to his shoulder, following along his collarbone and out to weave through his ribs and lungs and heart.

He did it. Danny thinks deliriously, feeling his lungs and sinew attempting to stitch themselves back together as the injection stifles the poison and spreads down to his legs. He barks out a laugh — it hurts, and he regrets it within seconds, but not enough as he probably should. He did it, he did it, he did it.

The Bat-Man carefully pulls the syringe out, and only now does Danny register the old-familiar sting of needle piercing skin. And when it’s placed at Danny’s feet, the Bat-Man raises his hand again and carefully presses his hand — rough and calloused more than Alfred’s — to his jaw. Danny freezes, silent as a mouse, and lets the man tilt his head and press his fingers to his pulse, before using what strength he’s got left in his arms to fling them around Bat-Man’s neck.

The Bat-Man makes a startled grunt, and Danny tries to say something, but it comes out slurred and incomprehensible even to his own ears. So Danny just pushes his face into Bat-Man’s shoulder, smearing blood against the armor weave. He’s too exhausted and happy to feel bad, and he’s shaking so much that it’s only because the Bat-Man tentatively wraps his arms around him in return that he doesn’t collapse.

'Thank you, thank you, thank you.' Is what he wants to say, but he can't find the strength in his tongue to move it. He ends up choking on some sort of half-there sob, hoping that this alone can properly convey the sheer gratitude he feels. The arms around him tighten minutely.

Bruce only loosens his hold when Danny's gone completely limp against his chest, and it's only so that he can shift the boy's weight onto one of his arms in order to check for his pulse again. His hand stays remarkably still despite the bone-deep trembling he can feel in his arms, and only when he feels the arrhythmic fluttering of a heartbeat against his skin does Bruce breathe out.

"He's alive." He murmurs, if only for the reassurance to himself. He was alive. Daniel was alive, for now. "Just unconscious." It was hard to say he looked alive. Danny became, somehow, even paler than when Bruce first laid eyes on him, and the blood soaking down his front didn't leave the mind to wander beyond the image of a corpse.

Bruce feels for a heartbeat again, just to be sure.

(He doesn't think he'll ever be able to wipe the image of Daniel wringing out a slur of apologies, thick red blood bubbling out of his mouth as he was actively dying, out of his mind. His hysteric sobs will haunt Bruce's dreams hand-in-hand with the rest of his nightmares. If he'd been a few minutes too late...)

Alfred makes a curt sound, dragging Bruce from an oncoming spiral, and appears with a new handkerchief — from where, he wasn't sure. "I'm not surprised he passed out." He mutters matter-of-factly, rounding around the table to Bruce and Danny's side. "Simply surprised by how long it took."

"Hn." Bruce plucks the handkerchief from Alfred's hand before he can clean Daniel's face, and begins doing it himself. They'll need to run some kind of DNA scan to figure out his identity, he hadn't given a last name. A blood test too. Danny said his godfather used blood blossom, an extinct flower, to poison him. Bruce wasn't sure if it was true, or just the delirious hallucination of a child trying to survive.

(And if it was true, then there was no telling whether the poison would have any long term effects on the boy. He'd been somewhat stable the entire time — barring the rapid deterioration at the start when he heard the sound of his godfather's voice — so this sudden, abrupt, decline had been both alarming and terrifying.)

Alfred arches an eyebrow at him, and plucks the syringe off the table to dispose of it. "May I ask what your next plan is, Master Bruce?" He asks anyways, expertly dismantling the syringe's needle and throwing it in the sharps container nearby. "I hope you don't plan on sending him on his merry way when he wakes up."

Bruce jerks, "What?" He looks up at Alfred, pausing from cleaning Danny's face to stare at him, quietly balking. He hasn't thought of what he was going to do yet, but that hadn't even crossed his mind. "No, I'm not." Not when he wasn't sure what the aftereffects of the poison were like. Not when the only person Danny could go to was his godfather — the very man who poisoned him.

(And the mere reminder of it forces the return of something hot and dark and angry to bubble underneath his skin, like a dark shadow skimming the surface of the water.)

No, no. Sending Daniel out when he woke up wasn't an option. Bruce would never sleep again if he chose that. But, then— well, what was? He couldn't keep him in the cave; Bruce spares one glance around the decrepit, abandoned train station, and doesn't even need to consider it.

But the only other option he could safely think of — one where Daniel would be left undisturbed and unfound by the rest of the world, somewhere no one would think to look, — was the Manor. Except, if he took him to the manor, how would he explain how he got there? Any and all excuses led to tying Bruce Wayne to Batman.

He looks down at Daniel. Most of the blood has been soaked in by the handkerchief. If he tried cleaning off anymore all he would be doing is smear it around. With the blood no longer being the sole point of his attention, he could finally take in the rest of the child's face.

There really wasn't much to look at beyond, well, just how young he was. Baby fat still clung around his cheeks, and blood was soaked on the dark hair curling at the nape of his neck. Bruce hadn't noticed it earlier, too distracted with trying to do something, anything to save him, but Daniel was as light as a feather. Lighter than he ought to be. Picking up his arm, Bruce silently wraps his fingers around his wrist, and presses his lips together when his fingers touch and then some.

(He hates that he was right.)

Was he really going to prioritize his secret identity over the safety of a kid?

"Well?" Alfred's voice breaks through the thoughts in Bruce's head, and he snaps his eyes back up to the man who raised him. Alfred's brow is perfectly arched, and he stares at Bruce expectantly, awaiting an answer. "What is your next step, Master Bruce?"

Chapter 2: and in my bones i feel a little pain

Chapter Text

Consciousness comes to him slowly; hazy and dreamlike, and thick like molasses. As if someone was leisurely walking through every room in the house and flicking each of the lights on. Or like the steady hum of a spaceship steadily waking up from its slumber.

His breathing is the first thing Danny becomes cognizant of. A familiar, comforting relief behind the action that even after dying he still takes for granted. The next thing he realizes is that even as air fills his lungs, there is a three pound weight in his chest attempting to stifle him. Or maybe more accurately it’s like there’s a cotton filter in his sternum. When he tries to push past it, his body shudders, and a teeny squeak still slips through his throat as his lungs protest in discomfort.

The noise fast-tracks his waking, and the rest of Danny’s body hums to life. The next thing he realizes is the ache in his bones; a thrumming burn through his tissue that reminds him far too much of the first time Sam dragged him and Tucker into working out with her, and the next morning he woke up with muscles so sore that his knees trembled when he sat down.

At least that time there was a strange pride that came with the ache, and it was enough to soothe him. This time, the only thing that soothes him is the fact that he hurts significantly less than before—

Before…

Like a final switch being flipped, everything rushes back to him at once. Vlad, the blood blossoms, the alleyway, the high ceiling room and the hero-man-bat-guy who saved him—

Holy f*ck.

Danny’s eyes shoot open, air rapidly rushing into his lungs as, with a burst of adrenaline, he pushes himself up. His head spins and black motes dot his vision, but he ignores his body’s protests. “I’m alive.” He breathes, disbelief dousing over him, the words slipping out before he’d even thought them in his head. His voice is raspy, scratchy like he’s got a cold. sh*t, that hurt.

Despite that, he laughs; loud and freely even when his lungs catch in his chest, stuttering, and a weak cough slips out. But there’s no blood in his throat, none coming up for him to spit out, so the weak fear that flutters in his heart at the sound just as quickly tapers away. It’s a cough because his lungs are sore, not because he’s dying.

He runs his hands through his hair, feeling the individual strands despite the sleep-tangled knots his fingers catch on. Slightly soft, but thick, the hair at his roots feels dirty and the hair hanging at his nape is stringy. When he looks at his palms, he can faintly see some of the oils shining on his fingertips.

More laughter bubbles out of him, tears springing to his eyes and dewing on his lashes. It kinda hurts to laugh the same way it hurts to breathe after running a mile, but Danny does it anyway. His recollection of last night was fuzzy at best, only growing more incomprehensible as it went on, but he remembers blearily the joy that starburst through him when the Bat-Man got him an antidote. It was coming back for another round.

He runs his hands through his hair again, less out of a need to touch it and more out of habit, and lets his palms rest around his throat. “He did it.” He croaks, grinning at absolutely nothing, “Haha! He did it!”

sh*t, he knows he went through this revelation last night but he was still so happy. He was alive, and man that felt so good to say. He loves being alive. Danny breathes in again, deep, and joy buzzes beneath his skin at the feeling of it. Everything still hurt, but it was all pale in comparison to the agony he was in last night. It was like choosing between a too-warm summer’s day, and the full concentrated power of the sun.

He pats his fingers against his throat, for a moment just appreciating the feeling of skin touching skin, before pressing his index and middle finger against his pulse. His throat grows thick, delight threatening to choke him out whole, at the slow, steady, thump—thump—thump beating against his skin. sh*t, sh*t, sh*t. Has he mentioned he loves being alive?

Another laugh escapes him, before Danny drops his hands, purposely letting them rub over his arms as they fall into his lap. Okay, he thinks, blinking and trying to focus on more than the feeling of being alive. Okay, okay, okay. He has to figure out where he is now.

Because wherever he was? Was not the room he passed out in. In fact, he’s not even sure he’s in the same building. Maybe. Probably. He wasn’t on that metal table anymore; instead he was in a massive canopy bed instead. It was huge, seriously. Two of his dads could lay in and there would still be room for his mom, him, and Jazz. And the mattress was so soft that Danny felt like he’d sink right into it like quicksand if he moved.

Jesus, he thinks, curling his fingers around the ‘Sam Manson’ purple duvet. His mirth over being alive steadily cooling down and turning over into disbelief. The room itself was— wow, even bigger than his bedroom in Vlad’s manor, and straight out of a gothic vampire novel. With a high ceiling and pointed arches and intricate tracery— Danny exhales out through his mouth.

Maybe he’s listened in on Sam’s rants about gothic architecture way too many times and it rubbed off on him, but he can’t help but admire it all. There was no way this was Vlad’s place — for multiple reasons that he doesn’t need to go over — but he still has no idea whose place he was in. Was it that Bat-Man guy? A friend of his?

Danny’s hands tremble as he tries pushing himself back, and he makes it less than a foot before his arms nearly give out — and, oh. He should probably check on himself before anything else too. He’s shaking, not violently, but shaking. Right, yeah, he probably should’ve expected that. Blood blossoms. Cannibalistic flowers but only to ghosts. It’d been chewing on him like a tiger with a slab of meat for a while before he found Bat-Man. He’s weak.

His legs— do his legs work? He tries to lift his left leg, and for the most part there’s a small burn in his thigh and calf up until his knee starts to bend — then the burn sharpens, his muscles tighten, and a sharp pain shoots down his knee. f*ck, Danny hisses out involuntarily, lurching over as his leg drops and spasms. When he tries it with the right, he gets the same result.

Fumbling to push off the blanket, Danny gets most of it shoved off before he wraps his hands around the meat of his thigh and starts trying to massage the pain away. Ow, that hurt. That hurt a lot. He probably should’ve expected something like that, ow. Ow, ow, ow.

On the brighter side of things, he can feel his legs! He can move them. Danny just needs a little healing. Maybe, um, not with his ectoplasm. Not for now, just to be safe. Natural healing, unfortunately. Living, natural healing, that is. He’s alive. He can do that.

Breathing, as stifled as it feels right now, is so nice. Danny continues massaging his thigh for another few seconds, before moving down to his calf, and then alternating to his other leg. The worst of the ache fades away, and Danny carefully lifts his leg and moves it until he’s sitting criss-cross.

…With plenty of breaks in between, from both the soreness in his muscles, and how weak his arms are right now. It’s also while he’s doing this that Danny realizes that he’s not wearing his Humpty Dumpty band tee. Which is an embarrassing amount of time to realize considering the shirt he was in now was borderline comically big on him. It was a faded AC/DC shirt that made him feel even scrawnier than he already was — something he was never sure the reason for; dying at eleven, or simply unlucky genes — and while it wasn’t falling off him, it was absolutely not his size.

He was still wearing his jeans from last night though — they still fit him, and there was blood stained black in the denim. Splatter and smeared, probably from his hands. Danny silently pulls the covers back to check if he got any stained on the bedding. He did not. Cool, one less thing to feel bad about.

Tugging on the edge of the shirt, pulling it forward to look at the writing and watching incredulously as the fabric wings out, Danny’s brows furrow together. “Whose shirt is this?” He mutters, and again, where the f*ck was he?

“It’s one of mine.”

Danny clamps down viciously on the shriek that lunges into his throat, he gasps sharply, sounding too much like a zipper being shut, with a full-body flinch. His fingers let go of the shirt, and he instinctively twists towards the noise, hunching up defensively even as he chokes on a mote of dust. “You—!” He wheezes, throat swelling at the opening to cough. “—f*ck—”

Sitting in the corner is a f*cking dude. A whole ass man. How the f*ck— Danny has fought ghosts for the last three years, and he likes to think that he’s gotten pretty damn good at not getting snuck up on regardless of his ghost sense. He likes to think he’s got some pretty good situational awareness, so how the f*ck—

He loses the fight with his lungs and descends into a coughing fit. Tears spring to the corner of his eyes and Danny fluctuates between rubbing them away and keeping an eye on the f*cking guy that’s been there for who the hell knows how long. Laughing hurt, but coughing hurts even more, like someone was raking their nails down the inner tissue and then using it as their own personal slime ASMR.

The man who’d spoken practically materializes at his side, having crossed the shadowy corner he was lurking in within the length it took Danny to blink twice. He hovers beside Danny for a few moments, hands flailing in reservation at his side, and Danny’s not sure himself if he should move away from the stranger or focus on coughing.

The bed then dips, and Danny drops his arm to catch his weight before he falls over. As he does, a heavy hand awkwardly splays between his shoulder blades while the other pushes on his arm, helping him stay up. Danny forces one, watering eye to open and stare at the man, and through the blur of his tears and his eyelashes, he sees the man uncomfortably, pointedly looking away from him.

The hand on his back starts gently patting his spine, it doesn’t really do anything to help with his coughing, but the attempt is kinda sweet, and it’s soft enough that it’s not obstructing him either. “Sorry.” The man murmurs, his voice low. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” The words come out slightly stilted, consonants bleeding together despite the stiffness.

Wait a minute. Danny jerks slightly, familiarity hitting him like a shot to the head, and still covering his mouth with his arm, he turns to try and look at the man fully. His mind flashes to last night and the few times he can remember the Bat-Man speaking. His voice wasn’t as raspy as before, but the intonation… there was no denying that it was the same person.

That’s… actually a little comforting to know. He felt a little better now knowing that there was at least someone familiar with him. Even if the Bat-Man was as familiar as a street sign. He saved Danny’s life, he could trust him — at least a little bit — for now.

His coughing manages to subside enough for Danny to find his tongue, and he drops his arm in order to breathe in deep, “It’s—” he wheezes, “it’s fihh— fine.” Another few short coughs squeeze out of him, but Danny pounds a fist against his rattling chest and they finally dissipate. His lungs burn, and he forces himself to sit up. “W’s just startled.”

The man says nothing, and as Danny rubs the hack-caused tears from his eyes he finally tries to get a look at him. None of the lights were on, and most of the windows had these big, heavy ornate curtains drawn closed around them, but the ones that didn’t had gray sunlight peeping through the glass, leaving just enough light for Danny to see most of the room. But leaving enough darkness for, apparently, a grown man to hide in it. Okay— well, that sounds creepy when he puts it that way.

Point is, there was enough light in the room that Danny could see the man’s face. His hair was black like Danny’s, although neither quite as long — not surprising, he hasn’t cut his hair since his family’s funeral a few months ago, and he’s gonna put a glass box around that thought before his grief can overwhelm him — or as messy, and sat flat on his head. He was pale as a ghost; Danny’s tempted to put his arm next to his and see who was whiter — the man or the literal dead kid.

(He shelves the thought for now.)

He can’t exactly call him gaunt, quite the opposite actually, but the sharp cut face of his face and the weight carving lines in his skin casts an optical illusion that Danny almost doesn’t see through. The circles under his eyes certainly don’t help.

It’s his eyes themselves, however, that make Danny’s heart jump and his throat catch unexpectedly. They’re as blue as glaciers, and as equally piercing, but it’s not the color that makes Danny’s heart pound uncomfortably. It’s the fact that looking into them, Danny can see his own. He didn’t notice that last night. He was dying last night.

Danny swallows dryly. His fingers curl in his lap, digging into the soft duvet. “Um, I’m uh, Danny.” He forces himself to look away and scan the room again, “Where am I?” Get that question out of the way first and foremost, then he can ask the others. Like how long has he been unconscious, what he should call the man, and how long, exactly, had he just been lurking there in the corner of the room.

(Because if the answer was ‘the whole time’ Danny was going to die of embarrassment and shame. That’s at least a nicer second way to go than being eaten alive by a parasitic anti-ghost flower.)

The man is silent again, remaining so for a few seconds too long before finally answering. “You’re in my house.” He says, his voice still murmuring soft. Danny already guessed that, but still, surprise jumps in his chest like the crack of an egg being dropped on the floor. He wasn’t really expecting him to readily admit that. “I brought you here after you passed out.”

His surprise turns into an uncomfortable guilt, shame curling around the shell of his ears and weighting at the nape of his neck. At what, he wasn’t quite sure — whether it be from the fact that he passed out, or because it was now beginning to dawn on him that the man had given up his secret identity for him. Even though he didn’t know his name, Danny still knew his face, and from one hero to another, he was beginning to feel bad.

(Even if the idea of calling himself a hero was uncomfortable at best, and skin-crawling at worst. He was just doing what he had to in Amity Park. He couldn’t leave the living to the ghosts, and he couldn’t leave the ghosts to the living. There was no one else but him who could do it.)

Danny’s fingers release the duvet, only to grip it again. The joints in his fingers were starting to ache from use, and he ignores the pain to knead at the blanket. “Oh. Thanks, you didn’t have to do that.” He would’ve been fine waking up in that big room with the lights just fine too, would’ve felt less bad about it.

From his peripherals, the man’s mouth purses. “Hn.” With Danny no longer looking at him directly, the man was now looking at him instead. “The cave wasn’t a good place to keep you.”

Ah. Cool. Great. Danny’s not sure how to respond to that, so he nods mutely. It’s almost fascinating — perhaps even worth studying — how quickly things had shifted to being uncomfortable and stifled, with the air thick with their conjoined awkwardness to create an atmosphere thicker than Gotham’s polluted sky.

sh*t, there were a lot of things Danny should ask about. Like the man’s name, where exactly was his house in Gotham — because from the size of this bedroom alone he had to wonder how big the whole house was and where that would fit with the rest of the city. — and most importantly, what’s going to happen now? Danny’s fixed — he thinks, he hopes, — and well, just, what now? Is he going to be kicked out? How long until the man’s hospitality runs dry and he asks him to leave? Will he let Danny heal some more or is he going to fend for himself by the day’s end?

His words stick themselves in the back of his throat, and Danny feels ill at the idea. He really, really doesn’t want to leave immediately. He can barely move his legs and there’s no telling whether or not Vlad is prowling the streets for him right now, he can already imagine what kind of fuss he’s kicking up right about now. Is he going to involve the local authorities? Gotham’s police aren’t worth a penny of salt but Vlad’s a billionaire and when you’re rich, anything is possible.

With all these thoughts running a mile a minute in his head, Danny only notices Bat-Man pulling his hands away from him — he totally forgot about them even being on him, — because the chill blanketing over his skin snaps him out of it. That is, snaps him out of it too fast. Panic lodges in his chest like a steamhammer and Danny gives himself whiplash with how quickly he rubberbands around, snagging his hands around the man’s wrist like a bear trap locking around a rabbit.

“Please don’t go.” He begs, heart pounding loudly in his ears. The words don’t even pass through his mind before they’re already tumbling past his lips, not even allowing Danny the grace of thinking it through before he just does. The man stills, freezing like a statue as his eyes widen in surprise.

Danny stares at him, eyes equally as wide and desperate, and then his mind syncs back up to the world around it. Oh, he thinks, mortification rapidly burning through his face. sh*t. He has no idea why he did that. It’s — sh*t, why did he do that?

He releases the man from his iron grasp, his hands trembling and that was either from exertion or his own horror. Danny was going to pretend it was the former, for his own sake. His face felt like it was on fire, and he probably matched the red blooms of the blood blossoms with what was undoubtedly a blush. Danny stammers; “I’m— uh, sorry.” He says, “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that. You— uh, sorry.”

He was being clingy, why was he being clingy? It was the same thing as last night when that Alfred guy pulled his hand away from him. At least this time his core didn’t react so negatively with him, it was still as dormant as it has been for months. He shouldn’t be clingy. He barely knows this guy.

Bat-Man unmasked again remains silent, simply just staring at him like a deer caught in headlights. Danny shrinks away from him out of sheer embarrassment, the feeling fisting around his ribcage and rattling them like jail cell bars. He hides his face behind his hands with a nervous little laugh-whine building in his throat. “I just— I’m sorry. That’s so embarrassing.” He forces himself to laugh, it sounds painful and it feels painful.

He can’t get the panic to go away, can’t shake away the trembling, terrified little voice telling him that the man was going to go away now. It clings on him like tar, and his only reprieve is the fact that it’s not triggering the electric buzz of his core.

“I just— Vlad hasn’t let me leave his mansion at all since my mom and my dad and my sister’s funeral, and— and it was only ever me and him in that house and I hhhh—” Danny’s voice disgustingly breaks. His tongue thickens in his mouth, and more tears pop up into his vision, hot and burning and bleeding out again.

Danny presses the meat of his palm into his mouth to muffle whatever ugly noise he might make, biting into the skin with just enough force that his fangs don’t break through and cause a bleed. He’s tasted enough blood to last him a lifetime, thank you.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Danny shivers down his spine, and fumbles for his voice again. “I hhhh-ate him. I hate him so much.” He wishes so badly that Aunt Alicia had gotten custody of him like she fought to do, because even if he’d be in Arkansas he wouldn’t be with Vlad, and he loves his Aunt Alicia and he knows she loves him. And if he was in Arkansas on her little ranch he wouldn’t have gotten poisoned.

But instead he was forced to live with Vlad, and he no longer believes that future version of him he met that told him that it was Danny who chose to rip out his own ghost. Everything he wants to say hooks itself at the base of his tongue and sticks in his throat, forcing him instead to swallow it down and try and speak again. The bubble of tears in his eyes pop and stream down his face.

He’s been so alone since his family died. He hasn’t been able to talk to Sam and Tucker because Vlad stole his phone when he wasn’t looking, too encased in grief to notice anything past his own nose, and he misses them so much. He wouldn’t give him back the phone no matter how many times Danny pleaded and threatened and cried, and every day felt like torture in that house.

“I just— I just don’t want— don’t want him to find me.” Danny gasps, his chest caving in with a cut off sob. He scrubs his knuckles, worn and rough from years of fighting, against his eyes as he sucks in a breath. “I— please don’t let him find me. Please. I’m sorry for grabbing you, please don’t go.”

His chest shudders with every breath he takes, and Danny shoves his hands into his face to scrub away his desperate crying. He doesn’t know why he’s crying so much, he doesn’t know why he’s so upset, and the man stays silent the whole time. Danny can’t tell if that’s somehow better, or worse.

There isn’t long to wonder about it. The man lifts his hand hesitantly, lets it hang in the air for a few, long moments, his eyes wide and unsure, before dropping it down again. “I won’t, Danny.” He finally says, and Danny heaves with a relief that he could vomit up. “And your godfather won’t find you, I won’t let him. I—” The man’s mouth presses together, “…I promise.”

Danny’s not a kid, hasn’t felt like one since he was eleven and dead, so he doesn’t believe in promises. But he’ll hinge on this one for the time being.

When he’s finally calmed down again, Danny is exhausted. His chest hurts, his eyes ache, and he’s sore all over, his shoulders ache from moving his arms so much and it still feels better than he did last night. But the man sits with him the whole time, silent as a rock and about as still as a gargoyle. It’s no wonder Danny didn’t notice him earlier, if it weren’t because he could see him, he would’ve forgotten he was even there.

But when he can finally find his voice again, and use it without it breaking, Danny uses it to ask his next important question; “What do I call you?” He’s tired of calling him ‘the man’ and ‘bat-man’ in his head.

The man stiffens almost imperceptibly, and if it weren’t because Danny’s spent the last three years fighting ghosts — who, by the way, use a lot of their body language to communicate — he probably wouldn’t have noticed it at all. An apology is already building up on the tip of Danny’s tongue, you don’t have to tell me, he’s going to say. You’ve already shown me your face, and let me into your house and secret base, and lent me a shirt.

He watches as his face twitches and ink-presses into discomfort, (and the longer Danny watches him the more he is reminded of those little dogs that look like they’ve gone through Vietnam with the big, unseeing blue eyes) before the man clears his throat. “My name is Bruce.”

Danny blinks; once, twice. “Bruce?” He repeats. Huh. It’s not a name he was expecting, but it’s not like he was expecting any kind of name from him. It suits him. The man, now named Bruce, nods curtly, looking as if he swallowed a lemon. Danny’s midwestern manners comes and kicks him right in the head right then and there, and he adds; “It’s nice to meet you.”

Bruce stares at him, and then only nods again with a tiny exhale and a noise Danny can’t quite call a grunt, but is the closest description to it. He makes a short noise in his throat that’s too deep to be a squeak, but is about as short as one.

But they both fall into a silence again after, with Danny staring at Bruce and Bruce staring at Danny. Danny’s got more questions he’d like to ask, but they kinda just… linger in his head and don’t bother to travel down to his throat to be spoken. His fingers curl in his lap, and he’s the first to look away and lose their silent unspoken staring contest.

Which is, apparently, exactly what Bruce needs. He shifts, shoulders rolling back, and starts moving off the bed — for a brief, terrifying moment, that horrid earlier panic recoils back in Danny’s chest and he almost, almost, lunges to grab onto him. ‘You said you wouldn’t leave!’ He nearly yells, and catches his voice by the skin of his teeth.

His eyes glue onto him with terrifying intensity instead, and he acutely becomes aware of his own breathing and forces it to remain steady. Danny thought he hid it well, but Bruce notices something, because he freezes, and settles back down onto the bed. It creaks quietly under the weight.

“Are you hungry?” He asks.

Danny balks. What? “What?”

“Are you hungry?” Bruce repeats, “I can have Alfred make you something.”

Alfred. Danny’s mind procures a mental image of the older man he saw last night. The one with the cane and the handkerchief that he got all bloody. Embarrassment coils in his chest, burning hot like iron. Danny breathes it out. “I— sure, yeah. Can I come with?” He doesn’t want to be alone.

Immediately Bruce frowns, his brows threading together with an expression Danny can’t read. His heart skips a beat, and Danny’s mouth runs dry. Or not, he thinks, digging his nails into his palms and feeling like he just made a mistake, he could also just stay here. That works too.

(It doesn’t, not really. Panic is still thrumming like a hummingbird beneath his heart.)

Danny breathes, his mind stumbling, and he opens his mouth to say just that— only for Bruce to drop his ice eyes down to the bed and frown even deeper. “What about your legs?”

His—? Danny looks down at his legs, most of which are still covered by the duvet and sheet, and suddenly remembers earlier when he tried to move them and the white hot, pin-sharp burn that shot through them when he tried. Realization settles down around his head, releasing his flutter-heart from the panicked claws surrounding it. Oh, that’s why, he thinks, tension draining from his shoulders. He was just worried about Danny’s legs.

…Wait, he saw that?

(That reminds him again that Danny needs to ask how long Bruce had been sitting there.)

“They don’t hurt that bad.” Danny lies, something that’s far too familiar to him. From a technical standpoint, he’s not even wrong. They didn’t hurt that bad in comparison to some of the other injuries he’s gotten over the years. He keeps his eyes locked on Bruce, and watches as the man’s eyes twitch around the corners, just barely squinting. “I can walk.”

Danny stares at him easily, despite the hammering returning to his chest.

Bruce looks at him for a few long seconds, before reluctantly, he backs off, and raises to his feet. “Okay.” He says, and stands up fully. Danny jerks, and triumph blooms up and outwards through the space between his eyes, and down to his sternum. “I’ll take you to the kitchen.”

Yes. Yes! He wasn't staying in the bedroom, he was heading down to the kitchen with Bruce. Danny doesn’t bother quelling the giddiness swirling around like a flurry of snow inside him, pushing the blankets off him as far as he could and instinctively raising one of his legs —

Only for the same, sharp sore pain to rocket from the back of his calves, around his knee, and through his thigh. Danny freezes on instinct, his teeth sinking down into the back of his bottom lip as air rapidly fills his lungs. f*ck. He thought some of it would have subsided by now.

Bruce stands by the side of the bed with his brows still creased, the corners of his eyes still tight, and something in the way he stands just tells Danny that Bruce already knew he was lying. Well, the stubborn part of him that had gotten him through countless fights, through Pariah Dark and his own evil future self, rears its head at the unspoken challenge.

Gritting his teeth and focusing on his breathing — focusing on his breathing always helps distract him from most of the pain — Danny digs his hands into the mattress, and starts pulling himself back to the headboard. As he’s doing that, he forces his legs to move towards the edge of the bed. Starburst shots stab through the sinew and tissue, aching up to his hips, and Danny, in response, grinds his teeth down harder.

I’ve sewn my own head back on before, he thinks with a tight breath in. Many times, actually. He can handle a little leg pain. He doesn’t really want to, but he’s going to. From the corner of his eye, Bruce’s eyebrows climb up his forehead.

Triumphantly, Danny manages to sit up to the edge of the bed. His legs are trembling, pulsing and throbbing with pins-and-needles in his knees, and his arms are shaking from holding himself up, but he did it. He’s only just now realizing that his shoes are missing and he’s barefoot. His eyes catch them sitting at the foot of the nightstand right next to the bed. Cool, there’s that mystery solved.

Bruce hasn’t said anything the whole time Danny was getting himself to the edge of the bed, only moving to give him the space to sit while still remaining within an arm’s length. Danny’s a little grateful, it allowed him to focus on moving rather than responding to anything he might say.

Although whatever that was, he wasn’t sure. He was starting to learn that the man wasn’t a sparkling conversationalist.

Staring at the ground, Danny breathes out slow and braces his hands against the bed. Now for the hard part, and moment of truth — he might be able to move his legs, but could he stand? Well, he was about to find out.

Counting down from three, Danny breathes in, breathes out, and ignores the sharpening burn through his calves as he tenses his legs up and pushes himself up to his feet. Hot, white pain screws itself from his soles and upwards, and Danny bites his lip down hard as his arms pinwheel from the elbow down to keep himself from falling over.

f*ck, he exhales shakily, stumbling two feet forward before stopping. sh*t that hurts a lot, like a combination of trying to walk when his feet are asleep, and muscle strain. From his peripherals, Bruce’s hands drop from his side and reach out for him like he’s about to catch him, his face twisted in concern.

Danny’s half tempted to take his arm, but before that, he needs to see if he can walk — or at least shuffle — on his own. His legs are trembling despite his attempts to stop them, and the idea of his knees knocking together would almost be funny if it weren’t for his situation right now. Keeping his eyes glued to the floor, Danny threads his brows together and slowly, slothfully, takes one step towards Bruce.

And then another. And another. He alternates between looking at his feet and glancing up to where Bruce is, until finally he can reach out and, tentatively, curl a hand around his arm and hold onto him. Bruce lets him. When he does, Danny looks up, slightly out of breath and his legs still shivering, and gives him his best co*cky grin.

It slants uncomfortable and awkward on his face, stiff from months of disuse, but it exists. “See?” He says, triumphant, “I told you I can walk. Lead the way.”

Chapter 3: they squeeze and ache, maybe things will be okay

Chapter Text

Gawking at the ceiling makes ignoring the pain in his legs easier. Which feels obvious; Danny’s had three years to refine and perfect the art of ‘distracting oneself from one’s own pain because mortal painkillers don’t work’. But, still, sometimes it catches him on his blindside just how effective it is. And man, effective it is. His legs have been shivering something fierce for the last few something feet, but that’s been naught but a distant thought — because look at those arches!

Intricate stonework curving over his head with stone spines jutting down, a technique Danny can’t name but admires nonetheless. The rib vaults — he thinks those are the right words — would have Sam foaming at the mouth, and not for the first time, he’s upset that Vlad confiscated his phone a week after gaining custody of him. He wants to take pictures of the ceiling and send them to Sam, if only to watch her seethe with envy.

He and Bruce haven’t said a word to each other since they left the bedroom, where Bruce told him that they were heading to the kitchen because that’s where Alfred was likely to be. Danny has no idea what time it was when he found Bruce last night, but it was currently early morning. The pale gray sunlight coming through the windows — the tall, arched windows with heavy drapery hanging around the edges and more tracery around the frames, it’s just—

The awe itself is one hell of a painkiller, Danny’s pretty sure his mouth has been agape since the moment he stepped foot outside the bedroom. He couldn’t help it, this— uh, manor? Castle? Whatever! — was gorgeous. He’s almost giddy with it. They haven’t said a word to each other this whole time, but Danny was going to have to break the streak just to comment on the architecture. Vlad can eat his f*cking heart out, this is how you do ornate masonry and mansion design.

(Also, just how rich was Bruce? This was insane.)

What was he thinking about again? Right, that they were heading down to the kitchen to find Alfred, because it’s early morning and that’s likely where he’ll be. It’s sunrise, even. The sunlight streaming through the windows lights up the hallway they’re passing down, and wherever they were, they were clearly not in Gotham anymore because when Danny looked out the window when he left the bedroom, he only saw an open field and forest nearby.

Which is strange — and honestly a little more than nerve-wracking considering Vlad’s castle was also out in the middle of nowhere, sequestered away in the hills west of Madison — but that probably means they’re somewhere near the city. Because how else would Bruce be able to travel from this place to the city if it wasn’t at least somewhere nearby. His memory of last night might be shoddy, but he can still vaguely piece together the fact that the car he’d been put in was so totally not street legal.

All in all, he’s still not sure where he is. He doesn’t know the area that well; the only reason he and Vlad were even in Gotham at all was because Vlad wanted to try and set up a meeting at Wayne Enterprises with Mr. Wayne, and he didn’t trust Danny to stay back in Wisconsin. Which is, of course, just fancy-talk for ‘Vlad’s going to poach the company right out from under Mr. Wayne’s nose and leave him bankrupt’. The only reason he hasn’t done it sooner was because, apparently, Mr. Wayne’s an even worse recluse than Vlad is, and only recently returned to Gotham and started making semi-regular appearances and decisions in Wayne Enterprises.

He kinda feels bad for the guy, Vlad’s going to rob him blind and—

Oh, wait.

Danny’s gaze snaps from the ceiling down to Bruce instead. A small reprieve for his neck, because a small crick has been steadily developing there from his head being angled up constantly, uncomfortably, and also decidedly not a relief because not only is Danny eye level with Bruce’s just, the sensitivity of his muscles everywhere seems to trigger his brain into remembering that he was supposed to be in pain. The same pain he’s been so dutifully trying to ignore.

As the ache and burn in his legs begin to creep back to the forefront of his mind, Danny keeps his eyes on Bruce. Because, of course, he briefly forgot that Bruce was a hero.

He can just… ask him to watch out for Mr. Wayne… Maybe. Maybe? The idea wraps skinny fingers made of dread around his throat, and a spot between his lungs hollow out nervously. Bruce seems like a nice enough guy — he saved Danny’s life, he brought him to his house, he revealed his identity to him — he’ll probably listen to Danny if he tells him to warn Mr. Wayne about Vlad.

…Although that means he’ll have to explain why Mr. Wayne needs to be warned, and then he’ll have to figure out a way to explain what Vlad can do, and decide whether it’s worth it or not to reveal Vlad’s secret, and tell this stranger about Liminalities. And is it really worth it to reveal something like that, even if it’s Vlad? The only reason they kept each other’s secret was because of mutually assured destruction, but Vlad tied Danny to a sinking ship the moment he injected f*cking blood blossoms into his veins, and—

He’ll probably have to tell Bruce that he was a Liminal too, and what if he reacts badly? He’s a total anomaly. A freak. A monster. Bruce could react badly and then Danny will probably get kicked out, and—

The next breath — lovingly, refreshingly, — is slow, steady, and still stifled by the feeling of a cotton-wad filter stuffed in his lungs. He’s pretty sure the discomfort will fade with time, just as the pain in his legs will, which is still eating at his mind like a parasite, but the doubt and fear remains.

Danny grits his teeth down, and takes another breath. He can cook up an explanation or an excuse that’s close to the truth that he can tell Bruce. He’s good at lying — he thinks he is at least. Nobody parsed out that he was Phantom for three years. He can come up with something. He’s sure of it.

The fear begins to withdraw back into its shell, taking with it on sticky fingers the doubt and anxiety swirling around his head. Danny forces his eyes away from Bruce — who he’s hoping didn’t notice his staring, but he’s pretty sure knows anyways because it’s not like Danny was being secretive about it — and in front of him.

There’s still an unknown ways to go until they reach the kitchen, and he can feel the bones in his knees grinding against the cartilage, creaking in his ears and painfully rooting up his thighs. He’d prefer to stave off a second panic attack until after he’s sitting down somewhere.

They make it to a set of semi-spiral stairs, and the immediate sight of it lurches nausea straight up into Danny’s throat, accompanied oh-so- kindly with a stomach-turning hot flash that fills his vision full of spots. Oh, f*ck that. He thinks, viscerally and full of prejudice as his legs stiffen into boards and fixate to the rug. Bruce stops with him.

By this point, Danny’s face has gone all tingly and numb with discomfort. His hips hurt as if Skulker had buried one of his bowie knives there, and then decided to leave it in, and he can feel every individual bone in his feet rubbing together like cricket legs. Hell, even the joints in his arms were beginning to ache again and he hasn’t even been using them beyond his one arm hooking with Bruce’s.

And, speaking of hooking onto him, guilt gnaws a little bit in his already churning belly over it. Because Bruce has been nice enough to act as anchor and cane for him this whole time, and Danny’s pretty sure he’s left crescent moon-shaped divets on his skin in return, having completely boa constricted around his arm unconsciously. He forces himself to loosen up his grip, and an embarrassed apology lodges itself behind his teeth. He can’t seem to loosen it up enough to get it out.

(At least with his core dormant, his super strength is too.)

But, back to the matter at hand. There’s no way he’s going to make it down those stairs, not when he’s pretty sure the blood blossom ate whatever was left of his muscles, sinew, and blood supply — well, at least the stuff he didn’t already cough, bleed, or vomit out. The mere idea of it makes his head pound like a concussion, and Danny wants to make a point of being able to walk, that he was okay and didn’t need help, but—

But something’s going to give, he knows it. Whether that be his own mental fortitude or his actual legs, he really doesn’t know. He kinda really doesn’t want to find out.

Maybe he should just turn around. Maybe he can just swallow his stubborn pride and admit defeat and return to the bedroom, let Bruce go down to the kitchen without him—

And what, be alone?

…Okay, yeah. Scratch that idea. Danny’s heart immediately jackhammers against his ribcage at the thought, and a sardonic huff of a laugh catches itself with it. That wasn’t an option. He doesn’t know why, but the idea of being alone terrifies him down to the core. He’d rather just cope with the pain instead.

Man, he f*cking hates blood blossoms.

There’s movement in the corner of his eye, and Danny instinctually whips his head over, and looks up to see Bruce staring at him. They make eye contact for a moment, before Bruce averts his eyes and looks at something next to him. “We’re on the second floor,” he murmurs. Danny’s heart stops for a horrifying moment. “If you want, I can carry you down.”

Oh.

Danny exhales out on the breath he’d been holding. Oh. He— he thought Bruce was going to ask if he wanted to turn around. But he— it wasn’t that. He was just offering to carry him down the steps instead. That— that was— An uneasy smile timidly ghosts across his mouth, inching at the corner for a brief moment. It hovers over his face as he tries to remember how to speak.

Yes, please, that’d be fantastic, he thinks. It’d save him so much trouble, and he wouldn’t have to go back and be alone. But— he can’t seem to find a way to say it though. The words are turned to stone in his mind, and his voice won’t work. Doubt creeps back in, wreathing through his hair with — infuriatingly enough, — embarrassment holding its hand.

(What if he’s bothering him?)

(He’s already done so much, Danny can’t possibly ask for more—)

(It’s fine. Danny’s gone through worse. He doesn’t need help. He’s never had needed it before.)

The idea of Bruce helping has him instinctively wanting to hide, even though he wants it. He’s grateful, and he can’t even express it properly. This is ridiculous, he had no trouble asking for help last night—

Danny’s turn to avert his gaze, his smile fading, and he looks over to the staircase. Shame drapes over his shoulders like an overly saccharine lover, “You— uh, you don’t have to do that.” He says, sounding mortifyingly small for such a simple sentence. “I can— uh…” His jaw screws shut, his fangs clacking against his teeth.

Reluctantly, he forces himself to slip his arm out of Bruce’s hold, and pointedly ignores the immediate frown it generates. Danny’s legs wobble precariously without the support, he can feel every individual ligament in his legs tremble, and ignores it desperately to come up with a new solution.

What can he do? Think, think, think. What’s something he can do? He can actually reach the stairs, first, actually. Danny forces his feet to shuffle forward, but his legs lag beneath the order to move. He stumbles over his ankle, and takes a handful of tripping, precarious steps forward fast enough that, from the corner of his eye, Bruce lunges forward ready to catch him should he fall.

Danny does not fall, he latches onto the railing, brows furrowing. His feet feel on fire, and it’s much harder to ignore the pain he’s in while he’s brainstorming. If this is how the Evil Queen felt when Snow White forced her to wear burning hot iron shoes, then he kinda feels bad for her.

Bruce quickly strides up to his side, concern etched through the lines on his face and evident in his ice-like eyes. Danny ignores it even as more embarrassment heats up on the back of his neck. He grips onto the railing, clawing into the stone like a cat latched onto the curtains. His teeth grind together, “I can just…” Danny limps forward to the first step.

Hm. Those look a lot steeper when he’s actually standing at the base of them. The pounding in his head returns with a panicked vengeance, and his mind damn near shuts down with nausea. Danny rapidly blinks the feeling away, chasing it away and breathing deep. Bruce hovers beside him.

He looks down at the carpet. Maroon red with geometric patterns and frayed edges. They go all the way down the stairs too, covering most of the stone other than a few inches from the wall and railing. Danny drags his foot against it, cringing slightly at the slightly rough feeling against his skin. It pierces through the burning soreness his legs are in order to let him know that it was an unpleasant sensation. Easily ignorable when he’s not dragging his skin against it.

It’s got good friction though, and an old, old memory immediately dredges up from the abyss of his mind and holds it up at the forefront. When they were kids, him and— and Jazz would take their sleeping bags and slide down the stairs in them. Sometimes at the same time, sometimes one at a time so that they’d crash into each other like bowling pins at the bottom. They’d slide down on their bellies because that’s the only reason mom and dad allowed them to do it.

It’s not the same — Danny doesn’t have a sleeping bag, or Jazz, and he still can’t think that without dying a little inside, — but the concept is there. And he’s in jeans. Gross, blood-crusted jeans, but jeans nonetheless, the denim should protect him from rug burn. The stairs are steep and narrow enough that if he gets the right momentum and angle, he could just push himself forward and slide down until the next landing — which he could see.

He already knows it’s gonna hurt like a bitch, but it’s less nauseating to think about than walking the whole way down. Trying to carefully lower himself down to the ground is out of the question, that he knows immediately, so like a puppet getting its strings cut, Danny drops to the floor.

Bruce makes a sound that Danny can only describe as a verbal exclamation point, his eyes widening in alarm as he flinches forward to catch him. But Danny presses away from him, arching away and into the railing as he catches himself before he can hit the ground too hard. Although his body loudly and achingly protests him doing so.

His hand releases from the railing, his muscles tremoring, and Danny looks up with a burst of assurance to smile at Bruce. He’s huffing a little, mildly out of breath. “I can just do this.” He says, and gestures to the ground. Where he is now currently sitting. His legs somewhat hanging off the side of the stairs.

Bruce stares at him, eyes still wide and piercing through the strands of black hair hanging over his face. His mouth parts for a moment, opening and closing like a fish, before it then screws shut and he nods sharply. The alarm on his face steadily melting away, until its only lingering concern settled in the wrinkle between his eyes.

“You’re going to slide the way down?” He asks, there’s not an ounce of judgment in his voice, only curiosity.

Saying it out loud though, does not stop Danny’s face from instantly flaring up with heat and dyeing his cheeks pink. His smile freezes on his face. “Hah! Uh— yeah, um, I’ll admit, I don’t think I’m going to make it down the stairs like this. Not yet.” Which is still embarrassing at best to admit, and shameful at worst. “But, uh, I can slide down them.”

It kinda feels stupid now that he’s looking up at Bruce like this, and Danny finds himself bowing his head to hide his face as a voice that sounds suspiciously like Vlad chides him harshly. What was he thinking? This is childish— he shouldn’t be doing this. Especially in such a nice house. Especially when he can still technically use his legs. He should just get up and walk instead, it’s only one flight—

There's a quiet thud, and Bruce is sitting down next to him, his legs sticking out just like Danny’s is.

Danny stares at him.

Bruce stares back.

Danny’s brows furrow. His brain lags. Wh— what? “What are you doing?” What is he doing? Why’s he sitting down— Danny’s the only one who has to sit down and drag himself down the stairs—

“You said you were going to slide down the stairs.” Bruce says, slow and carefully. It takes Danny a moment to realize he’s not saying it to be condescending — it’s just stilted, unsure, like when they were talking in the bedroom. Danny fills in the blank by himself. ‘So I’m going to slide down with you.’

Oh, oh he hates how quickly his eyes burn and bubble up with tears over that silly, simple act of kindness. He blinks rapidly, trying to chase away the sting, and Danny presses his lips into a line to prevent them from wobbling. “Okay.” He says, voice quiet so it doesn’t break, even if there’s an annoying lump in his throat that wants it to.

Danny pointedly looks away so he can swipe his nail thumb over his eyelashes and flick away the water pooling up on them. He breathes in quietly, plants both hands onto the edge of the stairs when he’s done, and pushes himself down.

Bruce is quickly realizing that Danny’s a lot like a book with ink stains smothering some of the pages. There are some parts of him that are easy to read, like just right now, when he curled into himself like a wilted flower after telling Bruce he was going to slide down the stairs, embarrassment and shame so evident in the hunch of his shoulders that it practically wafted off him. There are some parts that have ink drops covering some of the words, preventing him from figuring out what was about to happen, like earlier when Danny had dropped to the ground suddenly, like a rock, to sit on the floor.

And then there were some pages that had ink spilled entirely across the page, only allowing him to read some of the words at the top and bottom that hadn’t been covered. Like even earlier, when Danny was staring at the ceiling, only to begin staring at Bruce instead. He’d been thinking about something, something that had spooked him apparently. What that was, Bruce hasn’t figured out.

There’s a lot to figure out about Danny, some of the pages aren’t just blocked out, but glued together entirely by the dry ink. Pages that need to be carefully separated rather than forced open, something that takes precision and time.

They make it down the stairs probably faster than if they’d simply walked — Danny’s not too sure, and he doesn’t really care enough to think about it for too long. Halfway down he stops to massage his legs, which, as he expected, did not appreciate the rough jostling that came with sliding down stone stairs with only a rug to soften the worst of it. Neither did his back actually, which had been relatively unnoticeable in terms of aches and sores in comparison to his legs.

But they make it down, and Danny grips tight onto one of the bars as he carefully bends his legs to get up. Bruce slides down beside him moments later, and gets up with an envying amount of ease — Danny can’t help but halfheartedly mutter ‘showoff’ under his breath, still trying to move his legs.

Whether or not Bruce hears him, he doesn’t know, but the man immediately turns to hover over him just a foot or two off to the side. Danny can feel his eyes boring into him, like a gargoyle. When he finally gets his legs propped up, Danny turns to the railing and hooks his hands around the flat top, mentally steeling himself for the effort it’s going to take for him to stand.

Okay, he thinks, flexing his fingers and breathing quickly. He can do this. He can do this, he can do this, he can do this. They’re on the ground floor now, the finish line is close, he can feel it. He’s no idea where the kitchen is, but it’s on the ground floor so it counts. They’re close.

A short puff of air escapes past him, and quickly counting down from three, Danny hoists himself up onto his feet. His arms and legs, expectedly, burn and ache in protest, and the joints in his knees and ankles quiver dangerously. Danny ignores the pain to the best of his ability — although the rapid onset headrush is a lot less easy to ignore, and he closes his eyes as vertigo swims through him.

sh*t, he’s going to be so mad if he vomits. Eugh, he’ll throw every ghostly cuss in the book that he knows out into the open, Bruce hearing him be damned. Please, just, don’t vomit.

For a few seconds there’s nothing but silence and the black of his own eyelids, he groans unpleasantly from the back of his throat. Then, as the nausea fades, Danny blinks his eyes open and finally turns to look at Bruce, who is now one step closer than he was before, a crinkle in his eyes.

(Danny wonders for just a brief, brief moment, if looking perpetually worried was just Bruce’s natural resting face. Then he remembers a few minutes ago when they were walking down the hallway, and Bruce looked completely impassive. So it’s not that he naturally looks worried — he’s just worried about Danny.)

(Right. Yeah. That’s totally normal, actually.)

There’s a moment where they just stare at each other, and then Danny straightens up, his legs still f*cking shivering, and runs a hand through his gross hair. The tips are all crunchy with dried blood — something he forgot to notice earlier when he woke up. He really wants a shower.

“Sorry,” he says, “headrush.” He reluctantly slips his hand off the banister and steps towards Bruce. Bruce does this little head nod, and without saying a word, steps forward with his arm out for Danny to take.

Danny latches onto his arm easily, and then hooks their elbows together tightly — which he still feels bad about, but they’re in the last leg of their walk and Danny can’t afford to collapse now. Bruce stands there, watching him get his legs steady, and then begins leading him down one of the hallways.

Within minutes they’re turning a corner, Danny marveling at more of the architecture, and taking one quick trip down another corridor before the sounds of music begin filtering through the hall. Delicate, classical music bouncing off the masonry all muffled but pretty, and behind the music, if Danny cranes his ears, he can hear someone moving around.

He glances up to Bruce, and faintly sees a smile ghosting over the man’s face. Barely there, but emanating fondness. Danny looks back forward.

They make it down the hall to an open door where the music is loudest. There’s a short corridor, barely three feet long, and then three steps down leading into a large, open kitchen. There was one big window on the far end wall where the morning sun was spilling through, rendering the use of the electrical lights useless, and counters and cabinets lining the rest. There were two — two! — ovens, and a large kitchen island at the center, with a few stools up against the side.

Inside, of course, was Alfred. Standing at one of the ovens making something — Danny’s nose tells him eggs, and the smell of food makes him both terribly hungry and terribly ill — and doesn’t seem to notice their entrance, a cane leans within arm’s reach against the counter. The music isn’t that loud, and as they enter the kitchen, Bruce slips out from Danny’s grasp — momentarily making his heart leap into his throat with an irrational fear — only to grab his hands and walk backwards down the stairs.

“Good morning, Master Bruce.” Alfred says, not even turning away from the oven or looking at them. Danny’s shoulders jump, tamping back a startled gasp that leaps onto his tongue, but Bruce barely so much as flinches. Lucky. Danny forces his eyes away from Alfred to stare at the stairs, and his legs shake violently as he carefully moves down them, gripping tight onto Bruce’s hands like a lifeline. “I see you’ve finally decided to remove yourself from Mister Danny’s side—”

Now Alfred turns, Danny’s made it down one step. He freezes like a deer in headlights when Alfred’s eyes land on him, and the both of them stare at one another for a breath-holding second. Then Alfred sighs, soft and not at all exasperated, but Danny still cringes a little anyway. “—and I suppose never mind.”

Bruce doesn’t even turn around; just keeps an intense focus on Danny.

A sheepish smile stretches Danny’s face, and if he wasn’t currently holding onto Bruce like his life depended on it, he would’ve given Alfred a little wave. He settles for a meek nod instead, and takes another cautious step down the stairs. “Good morning, Mister Alfred.” He says quietly, an old shyness rearing its head at him. He thinks for something else to add, and his mouth switches to autopilot. “How- uh, how are you?”

Oh, eugh, small talk.

(Look, he was already on an emotional high when Bruce revealed himself earlier, and he was so shocked by his sudden appearance that Danny didn’t have the time or attention to feel shy. But now that he was awake, not riding an ecstasy high over being alive, or being scared into the second half of his grave, his years long bashfulness was popping up.)

Alfred doesn’t outright smile, but there’s a faint crinkle in his brows and a softness around his eyes that Danny can see, indicating some kind of amusem*nt. And then he raises a singular arched eyebrow at him, and Danny feels reprimanded. The back of his neck heats up instinctually. “I’m quite well, Mister Danny,” Alfred says, turning back to the oven to continue cooking. “But what about you? How are you feeling?”

Danny takes the final step down the stairs, and lets Bruce usher him into one of the stools. He needs a little help getting into it, which is embarrassing and annoying, but the relief it brings to his aching legs is — well, not quite instant, but there. He leans over to massage his burning calves as Bruce takes a seat beside him.

“I’m not actively dying anymore.” He says in regard to Alfred’s question, and immediately regrets saying it, because despite his brain running on autopilot, ‘being a smartass’ is a built-in and active feature. Darnit.

He may as well run with it, and adds as he switches to his other calf; “So I’m pretty peachy.” Awkwardness sits like a duck on a pond in his chest; still, uncomfortably big, and distracting.

There’s not much of a response. Bruce just stares at him with an unreadable expression, and Alfred briefly glances at him with the same arched eyebrow, no longer amused but not outright disapproving either. Danny wants to curl into a ball and die inside, the heat on his neck creeps up to his ears and burns over his cheeks.

Maybe there’s something wrong with his delivery— he remembers that at least getting him some kind of response from Sam and Tucker and Jazz, whether that be overdramatic groans or deadpan looks or a comment of some kind. But also Bruce and Alfred are adults and most people don’t really like jokes about dying. The adult ghosts he’s talked to notwithstanding.

So, quick! Topic change.

“I- uh—” He looks over to Bruce, his mouth runs again; “thanks for that, I mean. For saving me.” This is a terrible topic change, his cheeks burn redder and embarrassment lumps up in his throat. “You— you didn’t have to do that.”

Bad response. This just went from bad to worse.

He gets a response this time, but it’s one that results in Bruce’s brows threading together and a frown carving downward on his face. Alfred stops what he’s doing to look at him too, and if Clockwork had an ounce of mercy in his heart he’d rewind time for Danny so he could redo this conversation from the start.

(But of course he’s not going to do that; time can’t be abused like that. If Clockwork would rewind time for Danny to redo this conversation, then Danny wouldn't be here, because Clockwork would have rewound time the first time around when Danny hysterically begged on his knees for him to so he could save his family. Yet here he is, time untouched, and his family six feet under.)

“I wanted to.” Bruce tells him, brows still furrowed, and— and—

And, oh.

So that’s what it’s like looking in a mirror.

So that’s what it feels like to have that thrown back at you. That’s what that feels like. He’s lost count of how many times he’s said that to someone as Phantom. Whether it be a fellow ghost or a fellow human, he’s had dozens of them turn and ask him why. And without fail, always, his answer is the same. Because he wanted to. Even when being Phantom weighed down on him worse than any kind of chain and it felt less like a want and more like a have to, his answer never changed, and was never not true.

‘You didn’t have to do that.’

‘I wanted to.’

So that’s what it’s like to be on the receiving end of it. He could never understand why it silenced people, but now he does. His eyes sting again, and this would be the second time today he’s nearly cried, and if he can’t reel it back in time it’ll be the second time today he’s cried at all. He doesn’t understand why either. He hasn’t had the energy to cry since the funerals, he’s been dry of tears in place of misery for months. His heart hurts in a way only something that feels missing does, and Danny swallows down a sob in favor of a choked off sound.

“Okay.” He says. It’s the only thing he can parse up right about now, and again he brings his hands up to scrub the tears from his eyes. It works, but it doesn’t banish the heavy, strangling feeling in his throat. “I’m Danny Fenton.” There, a proper introduction with his full name.

Bruce nods, “Bruce.” He repeats.

Alfred is looking over at them, a gentle expression on his face, far softer than before. “Alfred Pennyworth, Mister Danny.” He tells him, “Are you hungry?”

Oh, that’s a good topic change. Far better than the one that led to this, Danny should take notes. As for the question— “I’m not sure.” He says honestly, his voice still a little thick, “I don’t think I can keep anything down.”

Alfred’s mouth purses into a line, and Danny has half a mind to apologize for the inconvenience. “How does a smoothie sound, then?” Alfred asks, turning the burner off and taking the pan off the stove. He shuffles over to a pair of plates beside the counter and slides one egg onto each, right next to two slices of toast with jam on them. It was a very standard, stereotypical American breakfast.

It was so… normal. Gosh it was so normal, so painfully regular that after months with Vlad, it felt practically abnormal. It was strangely domestic to watch, and Danny is vividly reminded of watching his mom and dad bustle around the kitchen on the weekends making him and Jazz breakfast. The only difference here, is that at least the eggs weren’t coming to life to try and Gaston down someone’s throat.

“I could try that.” Danny says. He’s not sure if he can drink all of it, but the idea sounds a lot less nauseating than actually trying to chew something. Alfred nods, and picks up both plates and passes one over to Bruce, who has yet to stop staring at Danny.

Danny decides to just stare at him back, only for the guy to immediately break gaze to look down at the plate in front of him with a frown. The nerve! Danny almost scoffs at him, and decides to just do it in his head. He does, however, narrow his eyes at him in offense.

Bruce does not address him. Instead he just turns to look at Alfred, who has already left the other plate on the island, and grabbed his cane to walk around the kitchen to the fridge. “I’m not hungry, Alfred.”

“No.” Is all that Alfred replies, his voice stern and without room for argument. He doesn’t even look behind him or at Bruce, simply reaching the fridge and opening the freezer door to grab an expensive-looking bag of frozen berries from the shelves. When the door shuts, that is when he turns to level Bruce with an unimpressed stare. “You have been awake all night, if you’re going to make it through the day you are going to eat something.”

He sounds like a parent scolding a child, and Bruce looks so properly chagrined that Danny can’t help but grin out of pure amusem*nt, laughter bubbling up all frothy-like in his lungs. And, also— “That answers that question.” He says to nobody but himself, and innocently stares at a wall when Bruce turns to look at him.

(Which, okay, is still really embarrassing because it does mean that Bruce saw his little mini-celebration-of-being-alive, but— that— he’s not gonna think about that, or otherwise he’s going to turn into a cherry tomato.)

Bruce makes a low exhaling noise and slumps in presumed defeat, “Hm.” He grumbles, and reaches for the nearby fork. Danny watches Alfred make an exasperated face, and fails at tamping down on the creeping, widening of his smile.

“So, Mister Fenton, where are you from?” Alfred asks, putting the frozen bag down next to the blender before ambling over to the sink.

“It’s just Danny, Mister Pennyworth,” Danny tells him, his eyes following him across the room. “And I was born and raised in Amity Park, but I’ve been living in Wisconsin near Madison since my godfather took me in.” Which isn’t bad, but all they know how to do in that state is eat cheese, be German, and drink beer.

He’s never going to forget the one time they were driving through rural Wisconsin to get to Vlad’s castle and they stopped at a four-way stop sign in the middle of nowhere, and he saw, no joke, a house on one corner, a house on the other, a house on the third, and then an open bar on the fourth with six cars parked in the front.

“It’s just Alfred, Mister Fenton.” Alfred retorts, his sleeves already rolled up for him to wash his hands. The water’s running when he glances over his shoulder to Danny, “Is that far from Wisconsin?”

Immediately Danny’s face scrunches up and he shakes his head, humming out a ‘eh, nah’ sound in the back of his throat. He shakes his hand. “Amity Park’s up in Illinois,” he tells him, “that’s barely three hours. So not really, I guess.” It’s also ‘the most haunted city in America’. And he makes sure to put that thought in quotation marks with an internal eye roll for good measure.

Which yeah, okay, it’s not like the statement is wrong — he should know, he was part of said haunting — but it’s way too easy to make fun of the fact that the city decided to make it their whole slogan. Whatever makes the tourists come in, he supposes. They never even paid him any royalties.

He watches Alfred idly, and sees the man tilt his head faintly to the side, his hands stilling for a brief moment. Bruce doesn't give much of a reaction, other than a faint scrunch between his brows that smooth out seconds later.

“I suppose compared to traveling to Gotham, three hours isn’t that long.” Alfred says, turning the water off and reaching for an olive green hand towel hanging off a towel ring. Danny watches him dry his hands, and contemplates whether or not he should just bite the bullet and tell them about Amity being terribly haunted for the last three years and that their slogan was, in fact, not a gimmick and very much a real thing. That ghosts were real and they were haunting Amity Park — re: terrorizing — and that it’s exactly why Amity changed their slogan.

…Danny thinks about it a little longer, and in the end just shrugs quietly. Bruce is watching him again, and Danny turns his eyes away to lock with Bruce’s. Staring contest two-point-oh — or is it three-point-oh now? He wasn’t keeping track with the staring. But Bruce doesn’t look away this time, so Danny’s determined to win. From his peripherals, Alfred hangs the towel back onto the rack and then turns back to the fridge.

Thinking about Amity Park hadn’t been a good idea, because now memories of the ghosts and ghost fights are creeping back up on him, and with it comes memories of the lab and the portal. That awful, stupid portal. He tore it apart one night with his bare hands, just days before the Guys In White could swoop in and commandeer the lab and confiscate mom and dad’s tech. Anything he couldn’t smuggle into his lair was destroyed.

He’d shouted, and screamed, and would’ve razed the whole place to the ground in his grief. He burned their copies of the portal’s blueprints into ashes, all of their copies he ensured were nothing more but char and cinder. The original copies went to his observatory, a place where the GIW would never be able to reach.

By the time he’d finished, it was as if a hurricane had hit the place. Ectoplasm samples were splattered across the ground, glass was smashed and scattered throughout the room. The frame of the portal was warped and bent beyond repair, with wires ripped from the wall and torn to ribbons. The blast doors were unable to open and close ever again because he’d bent them straight out of their frame, and torn panels out of the tunnel. The button that had killed him, that stupid faulty safety lock, he’d dug his fingers straight into the crevices and wrenched it straight out of its socket. He’d smashed it straight into the ground until it resembled nothing more than a crushed soda can.

It took him all night to demolish the lab. It probably would have been faster if he’d just stayed as Phantom, but he didn’t want to be. He didn’t want to be dead. His hands were all torn and bloody by the end of the night, his arms and legs and lungs aching.

Then he sat on the floor in the center of the room, surrounded by the carnage, and sobbed until his voice gave out. Wailed and wailed until his vocal chords buckled and collapsed under the weight of his grief, and then he cried more.

No more would ghosts haunt Amity Park. No more was he “the ghost hero; the Phantom”. That day, and ever since then, he was just… Phantom; Danny Fenton. A dead-alive kid with a broken heart, and no family.

Yeah, thinking about Amity Park hadn’t been a good idea. He refocuses back onto Bruce so he doesn’t have to think about it any longer.

Bruce stares back at him, and then tilts his head at him. Danny mimics him, tilts his head too in the same direction without thinking. The corner of Bruce’s mouth twitches, quickly enough that Danny nearly misses it, and then it smoothes back over like it’d never been there at all.

There’s the sound of the blender turning on, the gargling roar of the blades drowns out the music still playing throughout the room. Him and Bruce are still locked in on each other, even when the blender dies down and there’s quiet bustling of Alfred opening one of the cupboards to grab a cup.

But in the end, Danny regretfully is the first to turn away when Alfred walks over and hands him the cup. “Thanks, Mister Pennyworth.” He says, fingers curling around the glass. There’s a chill against his skin that he doesn’t quite feel, and there’s a single white straw stuck right through the smoothie.

Danny takes a sip. It tastes better than anything he’s had in weeks.

Danny drinks half of it before he loses his appetite, which sucks because Alfred didn’t even give him a whole lot to begin with, and guilt chews at his insides for wasting the food. He only gets down enough to chase away the sharp blade of hunger before he can’t anymore, and Danny quietly pushes the glass away.

Bruce got his phone out while the two of them were eating — Alfred snagging the other plate he’d made when they came in — and Danny usually doesn’t like watching over people’s shoulders, — it makes him feel like a creep, — but he finds himself watching Bruce scroll through the news app and slowly skim over articles with bold black font and eye-catching titles.

One catches both of their attention, and while Bruce straightens up, Danny’s heart leaps into his throat with a white-hot flash of terror.

“Billionaire Vlad Masters demands for Gotham PD to conduct a city-wide search after disappearance of godson and ward, Daniel Fenton.”

That—!

It was barely even sunrise, and yet he’s already flocked to the media. Danny’s hands shake fearfully furiously.

“That f*cker.” Danny snarls, the words slipping past his filter before he can catch it with his teeth. Alfred instantly frowns at him, and Danny would apologize if he wasn’t currently trembling. He just barely refrains from snagging the phone from Bruce’s hand and furiously scrolling through the article himself. His shoulders hunch up to his ears, muscles tensing up like a coil on a spring. “It hasn’t even been a day.”

Bruce ‘hms’ low, rumbling and deep, and taps the link to read the full article, his glacial eyes crinkle sharply. Danny shuffles halfway off his seat to stick one foot on the ground, — ignoring the way lightning hot pain stabs straight through his bones, — digs his nails into the cushions, and drags himself into Bruce’s personal space to read the article with him.

Which he almost immediately regrets, because it makes his already boiling blood boil hotter. It’s strange to be so terrified and so angry at the same time.

The article is full of a bunch of horsey, croc-o-tears baloney with Vlad playing the terrified guardian card concerned over his missing, delinquent ward. It’s all words, but Danny can picture so clearly Vlad’s cloying voice utterly dripping with ‘woe is me’ sentimentality, wiping away fake tears as he tells the interviewer — and where he found one so quickly in order to get this published is beyond him — about how Danny ran off last night, and how he was so worried, Gotham is so dangerous he could be dead or kidnapped or worse— and he can’t believe this could happen.

Danny wants to reach through the screen and strangle Vlad with his own bare hands. He can’t breathe. He knew this would happen, but he didn’t think it’d be so quick.

The article goes on with Vlad telling lies about who Danny is as a person. That he hasn’t been the same since he found his family dead in their home — which may be the only ounce of truth, but how dare he air that out like it was nothing more than the morning weather — and that he’s become so unpredictable with grief. That Vlad was hoping that taking him with him to Gotham would do him some good, because he hasn’t left the house since the funeral, but instead he ran away. He makes Danny sound like an unstable teenager unaware of his own actions.

He can’t breathe.

He hasn’t left the house because Vlad never let him. He put locks on all the doors and windows and anti-ghost barriers around the property, even though Danny hasn’t been Phantom since he destroyed the lab. He took his phone, he locked him in his room, he never let him leave.

Why is Vlad even doing this— he knows that he injected Danny with blood blossom. He knows what that does to ghosts, he knows that Danny wouldn’t have survived the night. Why does he still think Danny is alive— why couldn’t he just assume he was dead.

(He knows why. It’s because Vlad didn’t find his corpse last night. It’s because Vlad’s crazy and Danny’s memory is fuzzy, but he remembers very clearly the moment he heard Vlad’s voice and begged Bruce to help him. Because it was after that moment that everything began to blur together. He knows Vlad knew that Danny was in that alleyway.)

(They’ve been archenemies for three years. Vlad knows Danny just as well as Danny knows him. He knows how hard Danny is to kill, he knows that Danny can get out of practically anything. He knows that if he doesn’t see it with his own two eyes, then there’s a chance that Danny was still alive.)

(He really hates that Vlad’s right.)

His next breath comes in ragged, like he’s trying to claw in air. Danny is. That cotton-wad filter in his lungs has thickened and spun cobwebs up into his throat, and his chest hurts. He tears his eyes off the phone and onto Bruce, wild and frantic. Doubt slams into him like a freight train, and horrifyingly, he wonders if Bruce might change his mind and believe the article instead. Because Vlad’s a really good manipulator when he wants to be, and what if—

(Irrationality is one hell of a thing, and it loves fear like one loves to raise a child.)

Danny latches his fingers around the fabric of Bruce’s sleeve, and grips him tight. “He’s lying.” He hisses, he’s still shaking. He might just fall out of his seat, his heart beats wildly out of its place. “He’s lying, Bruce, please.”

Please, please, please.

“I know.” Bruce murmurs, and a thing to know about irrationality is that it can be knocked over like a jenga tower balancing on a single block. Relief rushes over him, and Danny wheezes out a pained breath. Miraculously, he hasn't coughed the whole walk down to the kitchen, but this is like tripping on a piece of gravel on the sidewalk, and he tilts over into a fit.

His fingers tighten on Bruce even more, clawing into him like a kitten caught stuck on the curtains. Guilt bites at him for a moment, but his coughing pulls him away from the feeling. His eyes squeeze shut on instinct, and Danny forces one hand to loosen and let go so he can cover his mouth.

It’s so stupid how scared Vlad has made Danny of him. He wasn’t even this afraid of him yesterday. Sure he’s been slowly growing more wary around him since the funeral, Vlad’s been steadily declining and it was like watching a live frog sit in slowly boiling water, but this— this is just so sudden. They’ve been fighting each other for years, he’s never been afraid of him even then.

And now, unexplainably, the idea of somehow being next to or around Vlad terrifies him. Danny can’t chase away the idea that Vlad might just kill him the next time they’re behind closed doors — if he’s crazy enough to fill his bloodstream with the extract of a f*cking parasitoid anti-ghost flower, then who knows what he might do.

He wants his mom and he wants dad and he wants Jazz, and not for the first time, he wants these last four months to be nothing but an awful nightmare that he’s going to wake up from any moment. And he’s gonna wake up in his bedroom at FentonWorks, where there’s glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling and a shelf full of mini model motorcycles, and his posters are all up on the wall with peel-off tape and his fountain pens are all lined nicely in their places in his desk.

But that’s not gonna happen because they’re gone, and not all deaths are created equal. Some are clumsy; unremarkable, and sometimes all it takes is a broken water heater and a well-meaning dad and carbon monoxide poison to ruin everything.

(He can’t even remember what the last thing he said to them were.)

His lungs burn from his coughing, and Danny tries his damn hardest to stop it early, but all it does is cause him to choke on air and cough harder. Bruce moves his arm — the same one that Danny is clinging desperately onto, and curls his fingers around Danny’s upper arm, keeping him from toppling right over onto the ground.

(Which is another stupid, stupid, thing and Danny’s really starting to hate his body right now. He shouldn’t be so fragile and weak. Yesterday he could run and jump, today he can hardly move.)

Alfred has water for him when the coughing finally subsides, and Bruce quickly lets go when Danny finally regains himself and straightens up. Danny does the same, murmuring guilty apologies in his head when he sees the divots left in the fabric from his nails.

“We know he’s lying, Mister Fenton. There’s nothing Mister Masters can say that will convince us otherwise.” Alfred repeats quietly, as if Danny needs the extra reassurance, and Danny can feel shame tarring up in his ribs over thinking otherwise. Of course they do, they saw what Vlad did to him last night. He just— he wasn’t thinking.

Danny nods mutely, his tongue thick in his mouth.

All of this could have been avoided if Aunt Alicia had just gotten custody of him like she was supposed to. He was supposed to be staying with Auntie. She fought so hard for him when Vlad challenged her legal guardianship. She’d gotten the best lawyer her money could buy and that wasn’t enough, it should’ve been, but it wasn’t. It wouldn’t have mattered who she hired, who the judge was, because Vlad was always going to overshadow them and rule in his favor.

He should be in Arkansas with Auntie right now, not here. Not with Vlad. He should be at her cabin growing rhubarb, helping with her horses, helping her fix that leaky pipe in the barn that’s never going to stay fixed.

After the ruling Danny had stood with her outside the courtroom and clung to her like a leech, wracked in grief and sobbing, unwilling to let go. She’d gone and bought a new dress so she could look presentable, and she was wearing Grandma Mae’s pearls, but she still smelled like woodsmoke and rhubarb, and even that wasn’t enough to hide the sorrow bruising beneath her eyes.

They needed four people to pry him off her, and he shrieked and fought the whole time as they dragged him away. He hasn’t seen her since.

Bruce stares at him silently, a hard line in his eyes. He looks upset, and when he realizes Danny’s looking at him, he looks away and to his phone. “We can start building a case for you.” He mutters, Danny watches him leave the news app and open the notes. “Get you out of your godfather’s custody.”

“It’s not going to work.” Danny rasps instantly, and feels his stomach drop immediately afterwards. It’s true and he hates that it’s true, but now he’s going to have to explain why— Bruce stills, and his eyes are back on him.

He’s silent for a moment, something searching, before he says; “It will, I’ll make sure of it.” That sounds mildly ominous. “Do you have any living relatives? We can get into contact with them. Get you into their care.”

“My Aunt Alicia.” He says. And his dad’s family, but dad’s been estranged from the Fenton family since he married mom, so the only time Danny ever met them was at the funeral. “But it doesn’t matter, because it’s not going to work.”

“If you’re worried about the money, Mister Fenton, we have plenty.” Alfred says, and Danny already figured that considering the house they lived in, but that’s not what he means. Frustration pops up in his sternum and splashes scalding hot against his ribs. “If Mister Masters wants to drag out a custody battle, we are more than capable of following suit.”

“It’s not the money.” Danny stresses, “It’s— He—” His jaw clicks shut automatically, his voice and the words on his tongue drying up like a lake in a desert. It’s not the money and it’s not whatever Bruce is thinking, and he appreciates that they’re willing to do this for him but it’s not going to work.

Now they’re both staring at him expectantly, and Danny stammers over himself. He doesn’t owe Vlad privacy, his mind whispers, hissy and sharp. Not anymore. He doesn’t owe him secrets, doesn’t owe him safety. He poisoned him, he tried to destroy him.

He needs to tell them something because if he doesn’t, they’re going to waste their time trying to protect him. If he doesn’t tell them something, they’re going to go forward as they are, and Danny is going to end up back with Vlad again anyways.

(And what about being Liminal?)

He’s just going to have to take a leap of faith.

The thought of going back to Vlad is enough to get his mouth moving. “He has powers.” Danny says, rushing it all out in one breath, watching as Bruce and Alfred’s eyebrows raise up to the sky. He keeps going even with the blood pumping in his ears. “I— I know it sounds super crazy, but it’s true, I swear. He— he can possess and control people, and it’s how he got custody of me because he possessed the judge into ruling in his favor, and that’s why I’m not with Auntie when I should be.”

Danny drags a hand through his hair, tugging through the knots and at the end strands in distress. “It’s also how he got so rich — he possessed other tycoons and forced them into signing away ownership of their companies to him so he could assimilate them into Vlad.Co, and that’s why we’re here in Gotham in the first place because he’s been wanting to sink his claws into Mr. Wayne’s company for years now—” Bruce’s eyes tighten around the corners, and Danny thinks he sees a shadow of a scowl go across his face. “—and the only reason he hadn’t sooner is because Mr. Wayne’s an even worse hermit than Vlad so he hasn’t been able to find a plausible reason for them to interact without looking suspicious, up until now.”

“And I know it sounds crazy and unbelievable, but I swear, I promise it’s the complete and utter truth.” He sounds so totally crazy; he sounds off his rocker. Danny can’t tell if they believe him or not, it’s like he’s staring at two brick walls. His heart is in his throat. His voice breaks. “And that’s why it doesn’t matter what you do legally, because all Vlad needs to do is possess the judge and make them rule in his favor and everything you did would be for nothing.”

Rant over. Danny glues his mouth shut, strangle-fig in his ribs, and forces himself to not look away from Bruce or Alfred. He needs them to believe him for their own good, but he also desperately wants them to not to. He doesn’t want to know what their opinions on people who aren’t normal or human are like, he wants to live in ignorance and believe that they’re fine with the strange and abnormal. He doesn’t want the other shoe to drop, but he’s always going to have to be the one to fell it from his fingers.

He threads his hands together, holds his breath, and waits.

Bruce is the first to do something — even if that something is as small as him simply frowning and furrowing his brows. Agonizing silence passes, — and only now does Danny realize that Alfred had turned the music off at some point, — before finally; “He has… powers?”

It’s not denial, but it’s not acceptance either. Danny nods quickly, and regrets the vertigo it gives him. “There was an accident when he was in college with my parents, they were working on an invention and it malfunctioned and blasted him in the face.” He rambles, because maybe if he explains it it’ll make a little more sense. “He was hospitalized for years, but it gave him powers. He never forgave my dad for it.”

Bruce does not say anything. His eyebrows just furrow deeper together while a short, light, ‘hm’ slips out of him. Danny’s not sure what that’s supposed to mean — whether or not he believes him, or if Bruce just thinks he’s crazy.

Alfred finally reacts, looking mildly bewildered; “He blamed your father for his accident, and yet agreed to be your godfather?”

That also wasn’t denial, but it still wasn’t acceptance. Danny sucks in air through his teeth, the strangling feeling receding a little. “My parents named him godfather without telling him, they thought they were still friends. And Vlad was madly in love with mom, he wanted to try and steal her away from dad and make me his son.”

Well, Vlad finally got his wish — a third of it, at least. And yet it hadn’t been enough.

Both Alfred and Bruce look at him, appalled.

Yeah. Yeah. That about sums up his life. It’s sardonic, isn’t it?

Like a puppet with its strings cut, his strangle-fig anxiety suddenly drops away into nothingness. In its place bleeds in just pure hopeless exhaustion.

Danny sighs through his nose, slumping in on himself. He’s gone through every range of emotion on the spectrum, and he’s only been awake for what— an hour? Hour and a half? “I know it’s crazy,” He says tiredly, “I know it sounds unbelievable. But it’s my reality, and- and it’s gonna be yours if you still wanna help me. There’s still enough time to back out now.”

There’s your out, he thinks, feeling like Atlas with the weight of the world on his shoulders. It might not be everyone’s, but it’s his, and he’s used to carrying it on his own. He wants them to believe him, but if they don’t then he’s all prepared to leave the moment he can — he can plan his next steps on his own. All he needs to do is wait until he’s eighteen, and then he’s no longer within Vlad’s custody. That was four years away. Three years and eight months if he wants to be specific.

(Spending his fourteenth birthday alone was… terrible, honestly. Vlad had tried to do something to celebrate, but Danny’s grief was barely one month young and so bleeding raw it was still breathing. He sat at the table and stared at Vlad without a word, disconnected from the world around him until Vlad finally dismissed him.)

Bruce’s mouth purses together, and he looks at Danny, his glacier eyes piercing. Danny watches as something steeles behind them. “I promised to keep your godfather away from you,” he says, voice murmuring soft, “if that means avoiding the courts, then we’ll avoid the courts.”

Hope is not something that comes to Danny easily or often, and when it does it’s often usually desperate and wild; wide-eyed and keening, frantic like a bleeding rabbit. It’s something that Danny needs to take both hands and sink his claws into, wrestling it to the ground to try and keep it in his hands long enough to get what he needs to do done. Otherwise if he doesn’t, it will slip straight from his grasp and skitter into the underbrush. When it shows up, it’s often because the other choice scares him too much to accept, and so it borders delusion.

Danny breathes in softly. The air sends soothingly warm relief burrowing through his bones and tissue. It’s still not acceptance, but it’s definitely not denial, and the fact that Bruce was willing to take Danny’s word for it over this was— …it was great. There’s no other word for it, no beating around the bush. It made him hopeful. The lingering kind that settles over his skin like a blanket of sunshine.

(And he didn’t even have to tell him about Liminality.)

“You said you have an aunt, Mister Fenton?” Alfred asks, speaking carefully, as if he’s trying not to disrupt the air. When Danny nods, his mouth slants up to the side, “Would you like to give her a call now?”

Danny’s answer is immediate, punching out of him; “Yes.”

Chapter 4: he just needs to hold out

Chapter Text

Mom and Auntie used to talk a lot more often when Danny was little — especially before Auntie divorced Hudson. Although his memories before that time were fuzzy at best, he still has some recollection of phone calls on and off during the week for Mom to pick up. Phone calls full of Auntie telling Mom all about how Hudson was driving her up a wall, and that one day soon she was going to go out and feed him to the neighbor’s pigs when no one’s looking.

He doesn’t remember every single issue she ever had with that man, but he knows that sometimes she’d call because he’d dug up her rhubarb again. Other times it was because he hadn’t fixed the pasture gate like he was supposed to — and said he would — and one of her foals escaped, leading to a manhunt between her and some of her neighbors in order to find the thing before the coyotes did. Then it was because he was out drinking again, hanging out with his buddies rather than helping Auntie like he’d said.

There were a lot of issues, Danny knows, that ultimately led to their divorce, but those were the ones he remembers being some of the most repeating. Mom hated Hudson with a passion, perhaps even more than Auntie did at times, and while she never voiced her disdain — not while he and Jazz were in earshot, anyways, — Danny could see it in the tight corners around her eyes and the displeased purse of her lips whenever Auntie called.

She always had this very specific frown that she reserved for people she didn’t like — people like Hudson and Vlad and Mr. Lancer. Danny remembers very clearly the day Auntie called her to let her know she was finally divorcing him. It was an early morning on the weekend, Mom was making breakfast for him and Jazz, Dad was upstairs in the shower.

The phone rang, Mom picked it up without missing a beat and trapped it between her ear and shoulder and barely got out her customary ‘hello?’ before she was shrieking louder than Danny’s ever heard her. It cut through the house, scaring both him and Jazz so much they screamed with her out of shock. Dad came barreling down the stairs like a bear not even a minute later in nothing but a towel. He was soaking wet and holding a small ectoray gun in his hand.

It was chaos and confusion, but Mom was glowing, talking rapidly to Auntie through the phone about how happy she was for her.

The moment the separation was filed and official, Mom drove them all down to Arkansas to celebrate. There was no choice in the matter, but it was fine, it was the middle of June so it’s not like Jazz was missing any school for it. They were down there for a week before they finally had to leave, and ever since then they’ve been visiting her regularly.

It takes only a few seconds after the air punches out of him for Danny to remember something important about his Aunt:

She has one phone, and one phone only.

Shoot.

And that one phone only was a landline. An off-white one installed in the wall in her kitchen-dining area, one she put in there so she and Mom could call each other whenever they wanted. And that, like all landlines — and phones in general, — it was prone to scams, polls, and surveys. For that reason, Auntie Alicia keeps a sticky note plastered on the wall beside it with the FentonWorks home line — and Mom and Dad’s cells — written on it. That way, when they call, she knows who it is.

(She has the numbers memorized, but she says it doesn’t hurt to have it posted there anyways, just in case.)

If she didn’t know the number, there was a chance she’d simply just ignore it. Sometimes she’d answer, listen for a few seconds, and then hang up with a few choice words depending on what was said. He and Jazz learned their first swears that way. Mom and Dad hadn’t been happy. (They were even less happy when Danny brought those words home with him.)

With that in mind, the breathless excitement slamming him in the chest at the prospect of hearing her voice again quickly withers into uncertainty. His lungs twist up, and he tries not to let it show on his face as Alfred picks up his phone, turns off the music, and then passes it off to him with the keypad open.

His hands tremble, just a little, with the weight in his palms.

“You can use my phone for the time being, Mister Fenton.” Alfred says, “If you’d like, Master Bruce and I could leave so that you may have some privacy with your aunt.”

Priva—? Danny jerks unwittingly; he stops himself from making a startled noise, but can’t prevent the wide-eyed look he sends Alfred’s way. A small tilt of a frown crosses Bruce’s face, and his brows flinch a sinking moment downwards, then his expression clears.

“You don’t have to do that, Mister Pennyworth.” Danny says without thinking, his mouth running dry. The idea of being alone hadn’t even crossed his mind, and the idea of them leaving — even if it was just to let him talk in private with Auntie — makes his throat swell up. “It’s fine, you and Bruce can stay here.” Please.

(Oh gosh, there’s something wrong with him, isn’t there? Jazz would know what it is.)

Alfred’s expression flickers, as fast as a hummingbird, before he nods and concedes. Danny’s shoulders relax — he hadn’t noticed they’d tightened up. “Alright.”

Bruce says nothing, just keeps watching him. Danny tamps down the urge — and somewhat instinct — to stare back.

Cool, cool, cool. They were staying. That’s- good! Good. Danny breathes out through his nose and turns back to the phone in his hands. Now he just needs to… call Auntie. Easy-peasy. Playing fetch with Cujo is harder than that.

His hands stall over the buttons. His mind runs blank.

It’s not that he doesn’t know her number — he does! Mom had them memorize it to heart in case they ever needed to call her for something. It’s just… something in him hesitates. A lump that stretches from his throat to his collarbone that makes it hard to think, and even harder to act. A mental block that refuses to send the signals from his brain down to his fingers.

He just needs to type it in. And hit the call button. Easy as pie. He can do that. It’s just a set of numbers. It’s just talking to Auntie.

His hands still stall.

The fear sets in. The hesitation clouds over.

…What if she doesn’t pick up? That’s a strong possibility, he’s seen her do it before, and if it does happen he knows he can just call again. But what if he keeps trying to call and she refuses to pick up each one? What then? What will he do? He’ll have to give up and then suffer the burn of humiliation in front of Bruce and Alfred, and then what? What if they can’t get into contact with her, what if somehow Vlad manages to hack the phone lines and figure out where he’s calling from and finds him?

Static fills his ears at the thought, a deep nausea roots through his chest. That doesn’t really make sense at all but it sounds just so out there that it’s crazy enough for Vlad to try it. What if he’s already flown over to Arkansas to see if Danny went there—

“Danny?”

Danny’s eyes tear away from the phone towards Bruce, breathing in sharp and deep enough that it sounds a little bit too much like a gasp and it makes the expanding of his lungs burn. His lower lip curls inward unwittingly, leaving a taste that feels too much like horror in his mouth. Bruce was leaning forward a little, his elbows resting on his knees as he stares at Danny with a little less concealed concern.

(“I won’t let him find you. I promise.”)

His head clears a little, and he wheezes out a pained sound, soft and with the coarse edges of his exhale. “Sorry.” He says, voice slightly rasp. He means it. He looks back to the phone.

Typing in Auntie’s number is a little easier, but his hands are still shivering with lingering dread still withering in his lungs. He has to force himself not to think about it when he hits the call button and shoves the receiver up to his ear.

The phone rings for a beat, then two, and the air grows heavier as he waits. It quickly becomes suffocating, the nausea thickening. Then finally, click—

“Hello?”

Danny almost bursts into tears right there, his heart explodes in his chest, gagging him on the relief that floods his sternum. “Aunt Alicia.” He gasps out, choking on his own lungs that constrict with relieved laughter. It stammers out of him. “Aunt Alicia!”

For a split, terrifying moment, he thinks that Aunt Alicia might not recognize his voice. Might not recognize him. It’s only been four months and yet it still feels like a lifetime. He’s ready to beg, plead, do anything to convince her that it was really him.

That is not what happens.

Instead, he gets a shrieking earful of a cry on the other end of the line. So loud that he flinches away from the speaker and his poor ear rings. His aunt collapses into sobs on the other end of the line, and it feels wrong to, but a smile yanks across Danny’s face as he returns the speaker to his ear.

It’s fine, because the almost-tears he nearly shed start spilling down his face to match her. His lung-choking relief teetering out of him in hiccupping giggles. His aunt blubbers on the other end — he’s never heard her so out of sorts before, not in this way at least.

“Oh, Daniel James? Is that really you?” She says, stammering over herself. She doesn’t sound nearly half as gruff as she normally does, it’s rare he’s ever heard her so soft. His smile grows so wide he can’t see through his tears. “Cause’ I swear if you’re not, and you’re some no good tomfool tryin’ to scam me—”

He barks out a laugh, and scrubs his eyes desperately in order to see. He’s so happy to hear her voice again. “It’s me! I promise it’s me, Auntie. It’s Danny. I’m so sorry I haven’t called.” His voice teeters haphazardly. “Vlad took my phone and I haven’t been able to use any of the landlines in his house, and it’s—”

It’s been hard. On top of Vlad taking his phone and everything else, Danny just never had the energy to call or to figure out a way to. The last four months have been nothing but a depressive haze to him, a blurred together smear of oil paint on a canvas with so many colors mixed together that he can barely pick one shape out from another.

Every day just felt the same; with Danny catatonic with grief, with Vlad desperately trying to get him to adhere to him and spend time with him and do what he wants. With Vlad trying to get him to use his powers. He hated the fact that Danny had forced his core and powers into a form of dormancy, he still can’t figure out the reason why — it meant Danny couldn’t access his powers or his ghost form until he forced it awake.

He slumps into himself, curls into the phone with a shivery sigh. “I’ve missed you, so much.”

Aunt Alicia sniffles, and makes a pained noise. “I’ve missed you too, Danny, like a damn limb. We’re all we got left of each other.” Her voice cracks, “You have no idea how much I’ve been fightin’ with that bastard to let me see you. It’s been worse than a pack of chickens with a rat. Is he with you? Are you safe?”

He shakes his head fervently, hates that it makes him feel sick and dizzy. He glances over at Bruce, and for a moment feels his wobbly smile ache to return. The corner of his mouth twitches. “I’m— I’m safe, Auntie. And no, I’m not with him.” His heart aches, then squeezes, and he bites the bullet so he can get the lead out of the way. “I ran away from him last night.”

“Oh my God.” Aunt Alicia breathes, and she doesn’t sound upset — not angry at least — but the shock that winds through her voice still results in Danny’s chest squeezing up and his breath skipping out of him. He nearly spills out an apology, it taffies to the roof of his mouth. “Where are you? Oh my God, Daniel James. What did he do to you? I’ll fly out there to Wisconsin right now and beat him within an inch of his life.”

The threat makes him both huff out a laugh — it stings in his sternum — and constrict with fear. Aunt Alicia is a force of nature to be reckoned with, it’s a trait that runs in the family, but he doesn’t want her going toe-to-toe with Vlad. He doesn’t know what he’d do to her — because if he was able to hurt Danny, Mom’s own son, then there’s no telling what he might not hesitate to do to her own sister. Especially with Mom gone. He can’t lose anyone else.

“I’m not in Wisconsin.” He quickly tells her, shifting in his seat — ow, ow ow ow ow, his legs bite him in revenge for the movement, — and leaning against the counter. The cold marble sinks into his elbows. “He took me on a business trip with him. That’s— that’s how I was able to get away from him.”

He can hear her frown over the line, and he’s so not ready to tell her where he actually is. He tenses up in preparation, like a ship preparing for a storm — or a crash against the rocks. “Where… are you then? I’ll fly out and get you, I’ve got some extra money squirreled away, it should be enough—”

The court fees probably already took a chunk out of Auntie’s savings, the last thing he wants is for her to spend more on a plane ticket of some kind and waste more of her money. Even if tickets flying to Gotham are probably really cheap.

He cuts her off with a nervous, wet titter, sucking in air behind his teeth like a hiss. It makes a little whistle sound between his fangs. “Please don’t, Auntie. Save your money, I’ll find a way to you, I promise.” He says, trying not to sound too pleading. “As for where I am? Uh— I’m in, uh—” his voice drops meekly; “Gotham?”

Danny barely has the time to shrivel into his shell like a turtle before his Aunt responds. He hears her sharp inhale from over the receiver, and manages to pull the speaker away just in time for her to cry; “Gotham!?”

“You’re in Gotham?! Masters took you to Gotham!? You’re alone in Gotham!?” She’s rapid fire like a gunshot, panic and indignancy square in her voice like a fireworks show. Danny winces, and embarrassment and guilt and a few other unnamed emotions pile in his chest. “That city’s worse than a brown bear— I’m coming to get you, now.”

Oh- oh no, no no. He just thought why that was a bad idea, why he doesn’t want her to do that. And worse— he scrambles over his tongue. “No, no, please don’t, Aunt Alicia. Do not come to Gotham. Vlad’s got the whole city looking for me, he could hear about you coming in. I promise I’m safe, I got found by a nice man and he got me away from Vlad. He’s the whole reason I’m able to call you.”

His aunt barks out a laugh, harsh and fierce and completely disbelieving. Danny’s heart begins to sink. He knew she was gonna react this way— “Safe!? The people in Gotham are about as safe as a well full of lead, Daniel James. You have no idea what this man could do to you—”

What he could do—?

Danny’s not an angry person. Really, he’s not. It’s the last emotion on his roster for him to feel when things don’t go his way. Upset? Yeah. Annoyed? All the time. Everything in between? Very much so. But angry? It’s not as often as one would think.

But he’s gone through every range of emotions on said roster in the span of like, an hour. His nerves are shot like a sparking livewire, fried to the high heavens and still kindling. Has he known Bruce for, in total, maybe two hours? Yes. But he saved his life. He saved his life. He got him away from four months of nothing but misery and isolation, and then he went and created a— a cure for a poison he didn’t even know about. From an extinct flower.

Then he risked his secret identity and brought Danny back to his house, let him stay in one of his guest rooms, lended him one of his shirts so that Danny didn’t sleep in his bloody Humpty Dumpty tee, and is letting him call his aunt so that he can let her know he’s okay. He let Danny try and walk down to the kitchen on his own and didn’t try to turn him around when they reached the stairs, instead he let Danny figure out a solution and, despite how silly it was, joined in with him so that he didn’t feel embarrassed.

Now his aunt is judging him without even meeting him or giving him a chance—

(Danny is immediately thrown back into the last three years of terrible PR as Phantom. The complete and utter lack of chance from almost everyone in Amity Park. He might be taking it too personally but—)

It’s hard not to feel incensed on Bruce’s behalf. Danny’s filter is shot through, his lips pull back and he hisses without thinking; “There’s nothing he could do that’s worse than what Vlad’s already done.” It comes out too much like a snarl for his liking, and guilt strikes him through like an arrow — he’ll feel bad when he’s not currently boiling.

Aunt Alicia falls silent. Danny pushes forward, his mouth running like a train without rails. “If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t even be calling you. If he was gonna do worse, he wouldn’t have even let me call you. I’ve been with him for hours now and he’s not done anything to hurt me, and I’ve been unconscious for most of it! If he really wanted to do something, he wouldn’t have waited for me to wake up.”

He’s not gonna stand for this injustice. He’s not, he’s not, he’s not. “There are good people in Gotham, Aunt Alicia,” he tells her fiercely, righteously, “good people who want to help. It is not that hard to believe.” Danny’s not talking about only Gotham anymore, and he knows it. But his Aunt, and Bruce, and Alfred don’t. There’s no need for them to know.

His blood simmers beneath his skin, and for a brief, clarifying moment, his core sparks a buzz in his chest. It pulses through him like a static shock, trailing behind a heartbeat of stinging through his veins, and on instinct he inhales and remembers to breathe. Then he squashes the sensation back into submission, like a foot stomping on the embers of a fire, and feels his core force itself into dormancy again.

The incension fades, and leaves him cold in its wake. The tension bleeds from out of his shoulders, iron pools weakly on the back of his tongue, and he swallows it down without thinking; distracted. Aunt Alicia is still silent, Danny can hear the room static through the other end.

“Do you wanna talk to him?” He asks softly, slumping in on himself; “He’s been with me this whole time.” Maybe that will soothe her worries — because that’s really all she is; worried.

Bruce’s eyebrows raise up his forehead, and from the corner of his eye Danny sees him briefly stiffen, and then carefully straighten up.

There’s a beat where Aunt Alicia still doesn’t say anything, and for a scary moment Danny wonders if she was going to hang up. That he pressed too much and was too harsh, and now she wasn’t gonna wanna talk to him anymore and he burned his bridge with the only family he was still in contact with—

“This whole time?” She repeats, sounding equally quiet as Danny and much less upset. There’s a question there; hesitance, one that he knows she’s gonna ask with a simple— “Why?”

Aunt Alicia still sounds wary, but there’s no outright accusation there. So Danny doesn't get upset — at least not in the fury way — and his face heats up, his chest burns like he just went through a coughing fit. Embarrassment floods through him, and he purposefully stares at the counter, his finger scratching his jaw. “I didn’t wanna be alone.” He mumbles, hoping that it wouldn’t catch on the ears of Bruce and Alfred, even if Bruce already knows he doesn’t like being on his own from his freak out earlier.

It’s just easier when he doesn’t have his heart on his sleeve.

There’s no sound on the other end, and then there is; a soft, uncertain sigh that terrifies him for a heartbeat. “Hand the phone over to him, songbird.” Aunt Alicia tells him, and there’s a hardy undernote beneath her voice, one he recognizes from all the times she struck the fear of Alicia Walker into his dad.

His face burns hotter, even if his heart swells with an overfilling fondness — he thought she’d forgotten all about that nickname. He hasn’t heard it in years. She’d started calling him that when he was six, and she found him sitting by the crik near her cabin with his feet in the water, singing to himself because he liked the sound his voice made when it echoed through the trees.

Danny nods mutely, and then twists himself over to Bruce and hands out the phone to him. Bruce stares at him, bright and piercing, and Danny quietly gestures his head to the phone.

A few more seconds of staring, and then he silently plucks it out of Danny’s hand, and holds it up to his ear. Danny’s heart hammers in his ears — yes, he knows Bruce is a vigilante… at least he’s pretty sure he is. Now that he’s thinking about it, he hasn't actually confirmed with him that he was a hero. He’d just assumed he was with the way he’d eaten sh*t in the alleyway.

Because, hah, haha, same. At the time, he’d thought there was no way he wasn’t some kind of hero — Danny’s done that same thing so many times over the years that it was practically customary. It has to be some kind of rite of passage.

But also, Danny’s knocked his own ghosts into alleyways an equal amount of times they have for him — so it’s really up in the air. Although they weren’t being pursued by anyone, so maybe his first assumption still stands—

Regardless, Aunt Alicia is still Aunt Alicia. So he’s got every right to be worried.

“Hello?” Bruce says, brows sinking low together. Danny can’t hear what Aunt Alicia is saying on the other line, so he swaps places with Bruce and stares at him intently instead. He watches as Bruce’s mouth purses for a moment, and then makes a ‘mh’ sound. “That would be me.”

And that’s how the conversation goes; with Bruce listening to Aunt Alicia and occasionally giving some form of answer — whether it be a grunt, or a verbal response, it varied. Danny tries to crane his ears to listen in, to see what Auntie’s saying, but the best he can get is inaudible mumbling from the other side.

Alfred had, at some point — probably while Danny was talking to Auntie — cleaned up all of the dirty dishes, and was now just sitting there on one of the stools with the two of them. He was reading a newspaper, procured from somewhere. Danny hadn’t seen where.

Bruce tells Aunt Alicia a handful of things. Danny learns that he’s an employee for Wayne Enterprises — Danny immediately concludes that he’s probably one of the shareholders, based on how large his house is. Or someone of an equally important role in the company. Which is great, he probably has a close in with Mr. Wayne, and can probably easier warn him about Vlad.

(Danny’s still gonna ask him to warn Mr. Wayne, just to make sure. He’s pretty sure Bruce is gonna do it anyways, but it doesn’t hurt to double check. He doesn’t want Vlad to get any more than he’s already stolen from others.)

He also tells Aunt Alicia a modified version of how they met. Which, fair, Danny wasn’t expecting him to go out and tell Auntie about being a masked vigilante — the idea didn’t even cross his mind. And he quietly adopts it to his own cover when Bruce tells Aunt Alicia that they met when Bruce was heading to his car after staying late at Wayne Enterprises.

“Danny ran up to me while I was getting to my car.” Bruce says, they’re both staring at each other. “He asked me for help, so I let him get in when I unlocked it. He’s currently staying with me for the time being.”

There’s a few minutes where Bruce does nothing but go, “Hm.” and very briefly, almost unnoticeably, nods to something Alicia says. Danny’s pretty sure during that time, his Auntie was threatening him within an inch of his life — which is both equally heartwarming and mortifying, since he just grilled her about how Bruce wasn’t a bad person. …As far as he’s admittedly aware.

Eventually, the phone gets handed back to Danny once Aunt Alicia is satisfied with her talk with Bruce, and Danny practically snatches the device from his hands so he can speak to her again. “I told you I was safe.” He rushes out, and gets a gruff huff in response.

“I suppose you did.” Aunt Alicia agrees, and silence follows on both ends — Danny has nothing more he wants to say, nothing he thinks is important enough to mention, but he doesn’t want to hang up. — for only a brief moment, and then she adds; “...I still don’t fully trust this Bruce, Daniel James. But there’s nothin’ I can really do about it right now, is there?”

Danny shakes his head, his mouth pressing together, spreading and stifling an almost smile — he’s not sure if it’s bitter or not. “Not really…” His voice trails off, and his eyes fall down to his legs and arms. He couldn’t stay with Aunt Alicia in the state that he’s in even if he wanted to.

His teeth sink into his bottom lip, chewing thoughtfully. “I—...” Danny hesitates, and despite the sinking, heavy feeling in his ribs telling him not to, pushes forward, “I’m not gonna lie to you, Auntie. I’ve been… hurt pretty bad.” Matching accents with her is an accident, but it’s an easy accident to slip into, “Nothin’ that can’t be fixed, and I’ll try and come see you when I can, but I don’t know when that will be.”

Aunt Alicia makes a soft, sighing sound, it sounds tinged with grief. He can imagine her closing her eyes, standing next to the phone, and his heart squeezes. “Take your time then, songbird. Don’t push yourself too hard, you’re just like your momma; the both of you hate sittin’ still even if it was for the betterment of your health. Call me once a week, you hear? Once. A. Week. I don’t care who's up there, if I don’t hear from you, I’ll storm up to Gotham and find you myself.”

A grin pulls across his face with all his teeth showing, wet laughter huffing in his lungs. “I will, I promise.” He usually doesn’t like making promises — the last three years have shown him that they’re far too difficult to keep in his line of work. But, Danny was no longer in that line of work, he feels confident that this is one he can feasibly keep.

“You better.” Auntie warns, and more silence falls between them for a few seconds more, neither of them wanting to hang up. “What number is this? I want to write it down so I know when you’re calling.”

Oh, oh sh*t.

Danny flusters, fumbles, and glances at Bruce and Alfred widely. “I- uh, this is actually a cellphone, not a landline, Auntie. I don’t know the number.” He quickly mouths at the two of them; ‘help!’

Bruce to the rescue, he nods and begins quietly relaying the landline number to him, and Danny quickly repeats it back to Aunt Alicia, who in turn begins writing it down. Danny thanks him when it’s over.

There’s nothing left to say now. The two of them sit in silence again over the line. Danny’s lungs tighten painfully, and his throat thickens up with grief. He doesn’t wanna hang up. He wants to sit and keep talking to Alicia and tell her anything he can think of — but, that’s the problem. There’s nothing to think of.

His time with Vlad has been nothing more than one long blank. Anything he can remember that wasn’t just him sleeping or sitting in his room, are things he doesn’t want to relive or retell. There’s no good news to tell her other than he escaped, and no mundane things to talk about.

He doesn’t wanna be the first to hang up. He really doesn’t.

Aunt Alicia takes the initiative then, and clears her throat — it sounds a little watery, cracked, and Danny purses his lips to prevent his eyes from stinging. “I should better go,” she says, voice weak, “my horses are gonna wonder where I’m at, and you sound exhausted. Get some rest.”

Danny slumps in on himself, he thought she couldn’t tell behind everything else. But nothing ever slips past her — nothing ever slipped past Mom either… most things that is — he’s not counting being Phantom. “I will. Take care of yourself.”

“I should be saying that to you,” Aunt Alicia retorts. He hears her take a breath over the line, and then sighs it out shakily. “I know I’m three months late, but happy birthday, songbird.”

That’s— that’s—

That’s not fair. Tears immediately bleed up into his eyes and refuse to disappear until they’re dripping off his lashes. Danny squeezes his eyes shut, feels them slide down his cheeks, and wills his heart not to break. “Thanks.” He croaks, and quickly hangs up before he can break up over it.

Too late. He quickly drops the phone back onto the counter and listens to it clatter against the marble, he probably— probably shouldn’t have done that. That’s not his phone, and while he’s scrubbing his eyes and trying to find his breath, Danny peeps out a miserly “sorry” to Alfred.

Alfred waves him off and plucks the phone off the counter, “None to worry about, Mister Fenton.”

Alfred asks Danny if he’d like to take a shower the moment he can finally recollect himself — something he automatically goes to decline, just out of pure exhaustion, before he stops himself. He’s emotionally spent, and the idea of going back upstairs to shower has him itching to sink to the floor and sit there for the rest of eternity. Just take him out back, hose him down, and call it a day.

He’s also not that confident he can even stand in a shower long enough to get clean. Sure, he was able to walk all the way down to the kitchen, but he was able to distract himself the whole time in order to make it bearable. But standing? There’s nothing to do to distract himself, and with how much he’s pushed himself to even get down to the kitchen, he really doubts his legs could handle a little bit more.

Even now, sitting in his stool, he eyes the ground warily. There’s a pulsing soreness in his legs that’s been steadily settling in since he snapped at Aunt Alicia, something he could dismiss earlier because he had other things to think about, but now no longer could. Even just trying to idly kick them sends a shooting pain up his sinew and bone, as if daring him to try and even stand.

How’s he going to get through the day like this? It was still morning. It was still morning, and he wants to curl up and go to sleep; make it tomorrow already. Let the hinges of last night’s nightmare disappear completely already, let him go back to normal now. He’s over this.

He pointedly avoids Alfred’s steady gaze and keeps his vision on the tile. Danny’s tongue roots around in his mouth, trying to find the right words to form, before finally he unsticks it from the back of his teeth; “I don’t know.”

Because on one hand, yes, a shower sounds terribly unfeasible right now, and borderline straight nauseating. But on the other hand, he feels so gross and the thought of being able to scrub it all away sounded fantastic. The top of his head feels plastered to his skull, the hair below his ears feels uniquely heavy and uncomfortable the only way loose and long hair can, and it was only made worse by the dried clumps of blood that keep itching the back of his neck.

There was also the option of a bath, but that either meant Danny uses a pail to wash his hair — not very effective, in his experience, — or dunking his head down into the water and scrubbing. Danny’s arms might not be in as bad of a state as his legs, but he wasn’t willing to test that theory and accidentally drown himself just because he overestimated the strength of his upper body.

Bruce was on his phone, doing something, and Danny manages to catch a glimpse at the screen before skittering his eyes away to look at something else.

“Are you worried about standing?” Alfred asks, and Danny very nearly scrunches his face up — was it really that obvious? He forces himself to nod, bashful embarrassment creeping up along his spine like a particularly malicious snake. No use trying to hide it, considering Alfred already clocked it. “If that’s the case, there is a shower chair I’m more than happy to lend until we can get you your own.”

Danny finally looks at him, and frowns. “Are you sure?”

Alfred nods at him, and some of Danny’s embarrassment tapers off a little at his complete unbothered-ment. “It’s no chip off my nose, Mister Fenton. It’s gathering dust in the back of my closet, you have more use for it than I do currently.”

…He reluctantly agrees, the draw of being clean outweighing his nerves and his own dread at having to walk all the way upstairs again. With that said, Alfred grabs his cane, stands up, and leaves the room first to grab it. Danny watches him go.

Then immediately turns to Bruce, who, he notices, has since discarded whatever it was he was doing earlier, and was now going through the news app again. For a moment, Danny hesitates — he’s fine with sitting in silence, if that means not bothering him, but he’s gotta ask;

“Is Mister Pennyworth your butler?”

Which feels like a stupid question to ask aloud, but he asks it anyway. Alfred calls him ‘Master Bruce’ which implies that Alfred works for him in some capacity, and the fact that he was doing servant-y duties and stuff has him really only drawing to one conclusion.

Bruce pulls away from his phone to look at him, “..Yes,” he says after a beat, Danny twists back around to lay his head on the counter. Bruce’s eyes follow him the whole time. “Alfred’s been with me since I was a kid.”

That explains the casualty Alfred regards Bruce with, then, and the way he was able to boss him around earlier. He blinks, and then frowns, his brows furrowing with steady realization. Alfred only made enough food for him and Bruce to have — meaning there’s no one else in this big house. Bruce looks pretty young, and Sam’s grandma lives with her and her parents, and the way he said that implied it was only him and Alfred.

So…

He bites the inside of his lip, and decides to shoot his question anyways; “What about your parents?”

The reaction is immediate, and Danny regrets it just as quickly. Bruce’s eyes shutter, he looks away, and there’s no physical movement, but Bruce seems to almost close off for a moment. “They passed away when I was young.”

“Sorry.” Danny mumbles, shriveling up a little inside with shame. It’s not enough to stop the passing, fleeting thought of; I guess you and I are in the same boat, but at least he has enough sense and self-control not to say it out loud. His filter was starting to shake off its rust, at last. It couldn’t have done that an hour ago?

Bruce ‘hms’ lowly, “You didn’t know.”

It’s very tempting to let the both of them fall into awkward silence, that’s what they’ve been doing all morning. Danny twiddles his thumbs, and decides to push through it. “Does he clean the whole house?”

“No.” Bruce says, instantaneous. “Only the rooms we use. The manor’s too big to clean on his own.” Curt, straight to the point, and slightly stilted. Bruce still doesn’t look back at him, and Danny feels kinda like he keeps running into a brick wall and knocking the wind out of himself.

New tactic: change the topic. Second time’s the charm, right?

He looks down at the AC/DC shirt hanging off him, the ends slightly pooling in his lap and the collar sagging just low enough that he could see his collarbones, and then looks back up to Bruce. “I like AC/DC too.” He says, trying and just falling short of sounding casual. He suppresses the heat growing on the back of his neck. “What other bands do you like?”

He can already guess that Bruce liked rock — for obvious reasons that he was wearing — but, just to make sure…

Bruce finally looks back at him, which Danny internally takes a success. His mouth twitches up for a moment, and then he just lets the smile spread weakly across his face. It’s covered slightly by his arms, his head is still laying on them, but he’s pretty sure Bruce sees it anyways.

He gets stared at for a moment, a contemplative look wrinkling around Bruce’s eyes and between his eyebrows. “...Nirvana,” he answers finally, “and Metallica, and others. I have some of their shirts too.”

The smile on Danny’s face grows into a grin, triumph fills up his lungs and winds around his ribs. Got you, he thinks, lifting his chin so he can rest it on his wrist. “Rock?” He asks, and when Bruce nods shortly, his grin only gets wider. He tilts his head forward. Some of his hair falls into his face, providing a perfect conspiratorial curtain over his eyes, and he asks, in an equally conspiratorial voice; “Have you ever heard of the band ‘Dumpty Humpty’?”

“That was the shirt you were wearing last night.” Bruce says. Danny nods with a short, airy, hum, and then straightens up completely. There’s his in!

He spins the stool seat around and knocks his knees against Bruce’s — it flares up a burning sensation in his legs, and Danny perfectly ignores it beyond a sharp inhale that he tries to stifle. “They’re a goth rock band.” He tells him, matter-of-fact and half-heartedly curbing some of his enthusiasm — for now. “Everyone in my school listens to them, I got to go to their live concert back in the Fall. It’s where I got my shirt.”

Speaking of his shirt, they better not have thrown that away. That cost him forty bucks out of his allowance and was the only belonging he still had from home — the rest was in his closet back at Vlad’s manor. At least he was able to keep them.

Bruce looks vaguely interested, and Danny jumps on it like a jaguar. He drums his hands against his thighs — it hurts a little, he ignores that too, and then nods to his phone. “Pull up YouTube, I gotta show you some of their songs.”

Much to his delight, Bruce does exactly that. Danny quickly dives into telling him every piece of trivia he knows about Dumpty Humpty — from their founding, to the members, the lore behind the name, and the officially known reason for being called an inverted version of a children’s nursery rhyme, — while Bruce searches the name of the band up in the search bar.

“Their ‘King’s Men’ album is, in my opinion, their best one yet.” He says, watching over Bruce’s arm as he taps on the little icon with ‘Dumpty Humpty’ next to it, and goes into their channel. “It’s one of their older ones too, right when they were beginning to start out. ‘Yolk Rot’ though? Absolute garbage, don’t listen to that one, it’s no good.”

He doesn’t care what Tucker says, ‘Yolk Rot’ is a laughingstock of an album and a complete disregard for the band’s whole genre. Nobody cares that the name is cool.

Danny gets a faint nod of acknowledgement, and Bruce enters the little playlist page. Before he can begin to scroll down though, Danny immediately stops him, shock dumping over him like a bucket of water. “Wait, wait, wait, wait.” He leans into Bruce far enough that he can see the screen closer, without falling right over.

His jaw would drop to the floor if it could, “They released a new album?!” His eyes don’t deceive him, he doesn’t recognize the cover art or the name — and he knows their entire discography by heart. When was that released? It has to have been while he was with Vlad, he didn’t have any access to the internet during that time.

As if Bruce was sensing his thoughts, he taps on that playlist instead, automatically playing the first video in the lineup. As an ad plays, he scrolls down to show him the timestamp. Yeah! Two months ago! Motherf*cker!

(He really needs to check everything the moment he has a chance — just how much has changed in the last four months? It’s a little daunting.)

They listen to that instead, and Danny practically vibrates in his seat the whole time, too excited about a new album to pay much attention to the apprehension of showing someone his music taste and hoping they liked it too. The fact he wasn’t able to listen to this with Sam and Tucker — they always make a listening party whenever a new album of one of their bands’ drops — is disappointing, but barely crosses his mind.

Even better, he catches Bruce faintly nodding along to the beat. So, Danny wants to fistbump the sky for his success. It’s always a hit-or-miss when trying to introduce music to people; songs he thought Sam and Tucker would like have sometimes completely gone over their heads. He was kinda preparing for something similar here.

They get through the first three songs before Bruce’s phone buzzes with a text from Alfred, letting him know that he could bring Danny over to one of the bathrooms on the first floor — which Danny does not audibly sigh with relief, but he does quietly. Thank anything, he doesn’t have to crawl the stairs.

Bruce looks over at him, turns his phone off, and pockets it as he stands up. “Think you can walk?” He asks, his hands briefly twitch, ready to bring them up for Danny to take, before dropping back down to his side.

Danny’s smile fades from his face, and he looks down at his legs. His legs, which have gone from a weak pulse of aching, are now a steady throbbing sensation. An unpleasant throbbing sensation, one sending an uncomfortable gnawing up his spine and rooting around beneath his shoulder blades.

His mouth begins to slant downwards, that gnawing creates an unease in his chest. He tries to move his legs again, and the spasming burn slams through them even worse than they did when he tried to get out of bed. His mouth pulls back and he hunches up, the embarrassment rapidly sets in. “No.”

Dammit. He was hoping to at least be able to walk there on his own, but— but no. His body wasn’t going to allow that, he’s already strained himself too hard today. It was still morning.

From the corner of his eye, Bruce nods, and then, in one big swoop, lifts Danny up like he weighs nothing, turns on his heel, and walks straight out of the kitchen. Danny’s going to go out and say it; he yelps. His fingers automatically dig into the front of Bruce’s shirt, wrinkling it under his fists, and he clings onto him like a tree.

Yes, he can remember that Bruce was carrying him last night. But, he was mostly delirious and largely incoherent through a fair chunk of it. And also trying not to vomit his own stomach out. He had bigger concerns than being embarrassed over being carried.

However, he was now no longer delirious and incoherent, and with the extra embarrassment of needing help in the first place sticking onto him like a leech, it’s no question that he feels rather shy. “Do I even weigh anything to you?” He peeps at Bruce, unable to stop himself from making a reference.

“No,” Bruce says automatically, and briefly looks down at him. Danny swears up and down that his mouth tilts very faintly upwards, into a little smirk. “It’s like holding a couple of grapes.”

Oh, well.

Mortification momentarily forgotten, Danny laughs so hard he teeters straight into a coughing fit.

“Did Mister Pennyworth make you clean up the stuff you knocked to the ground after I fell unconscious?” Danny asks at some point during their little journey to the bathroom that Alfred set up for him. He’d completely forgotten that up until now, and the memory strikes him randomly like a lightning bolt.

He’s still mildly embarrassed over needing to be carried — he feels like a little kid, and not in a good way — but the feeling has faded just enough that he’s comfortable enough to want to continue talking to Bruce.

Bruce’s brows thread together, “You still remember that?”

Danny makes an ‘eh’ sound, and frees his hand to shake it ‘so-so’. “It’s all fuzzy,” he admits, “everything got all… weird and incomprehensible after Vlad showed up. I do remember that, though, and you didn’t answer my question.”

“Hrm,” Bruce averts his eyes, he’s silent for a long moment. It’s incredibly damning. “...yes. He did.”

Danny grins widely, “Incredible.” The image of Bruce in that big bat, armor… thing… suit… picking up scrap and junk and putting it back on the table was incredibly amusing to him.

Oh, speaking of the bat… suit… thing… “What do I call you?” He asks, Bruce looks at him in confusion. “As in, hero-wise? Vigilante-wise? When-you’re-in-that-suit-wise? Because I’ve been calling you Bat-Man in my head, and I am… assuming that is not your name.”

The blank stare Bruce gives him is not instilling a lot of confidence in him, and Danny feels the back of his neck begin to heat up in embarrassment. Just like before, Bruce does not say anything for a long moment, and Danny is just about to ask him if he said something wrong.

“Batman.” Bruce says.

What.

“What.” He repeats.

No way. There’s no way he guessed correctly on the first try. It was not that simple. Danny was going to— to— …he was going to do something drastic if he was right. He’s not sure what, but it was going to be unprecedented and unhinged.

“Batman.” Bruce says again, and Danny’s jaw drops. Bruce looks away from him, “I am the Batman.”

“You’re pulling my leg.”

Bruce purses his lips. “Hn. No.”

Danny was going to do something unprecedented and unhinged.

“You’re going to warn Mr. Wayne about Vlad, right?” Danny says, his face crinkling inward as he frowns, finally remembering to ask about that. There’s a tittering little mouse chewing on his ribs, and it doesn’t really feel like his place to ask, but he has to and it’s gonna bother him until he makes sure to know that Bruce will do something about it. “Or- or at least find a way to convince him not to work with Vlad?”

His voice is too meek for his liking, uncertain; shy. This isn’t his city to worry about, isn’t his people to fuss over, but it is his archnemesis that’s going to be trying to screw them over. He doesn’t really know much about Mr. Wayne — he reappeared back in Gotham a few short months before Danny’s parents died, and he only knows about it because Sam was telling him all about it.

Apparently her parents were all abuzz about Mr. Wayne’s reappearance, and were trying to find a way to get into contact with him so that they could hopefully forge some kind of relationship with him. It was supposedly a bust, that man was a terrible hermit. Which should spell bad things for Vlad’s attempts — but, as Danny knows, Vlad can be very manipulative when he wants to be, and he doesn’t know how Mr. Wayne will react to that.

But, he doesn’t need to know the man — staunch billionaire or not — to know that nobody deserves to have the rug swept right from under their feet and stolen straight from their house. He watches for Bruce to look at him, and just as he expects, he does.

There’s an unreadable look lining around Bruce’s eyes, sinking them inward. Danny’s not really sure what it means, it’s different from the blank staring he was doing earlier. “Yes,” he says after a beat, and there it is again! That faint, ghost of a smile, crossing across his face. It’s gone before Danny’s even sure it’s there. “I’ll make sure Mr. Wayne knows, don’t worry.”

A very simple answer, very succinct. Danny slumps a little, as much as he can without slipping straight out of Bruce’s hold, and sighs out through his nose, “Cool. Good. Great, even.”

“By the way, where’s my Dumpty Humpty shirt?” He asks, “You guys didn’t throw it away, did you?” He’ll cry if they did, and that was a threat.

“Alfred’s washing it.”

Oh, good. He doesn’t need to weaponize his tears. Danny can’t wait to get it back.

Through a quick series of winding hallways both tall and short, they eventually make it to the bathroom Alfred sent them to. Alfred is by the door waiting for them, leaning against the wall with his cane clutched in his hand. He looks over as the two of them come down the hallway, and doesn’t even react to Danny being carried.

Danny, however, quickly remembers to be embarrassed, and his face begins to burn up. Bruce sets him down the moment they’re standing in front of the door, and keeps a hand on his back and his other arm in front of him for Danny to latch onto. Danny does so, tightly.

His legs immediately, viciously bite at him the moment he puts any weight on himself, and his knees threateningly buckle for a brief second, teetering Danny forward. If it weren’t for Bruce’s arm in front of him, he probably would’ve crashed into the door.

His face burns hotter, and he ducks his head down so that his hair will cover his face. “Sorry.” He mumbles, staring intensely at the ground as he tries to find the strength in his legs. That’s — well, he should’ve expected that. It doesn’t prevent the mortification from returning tenfold and swelling up in his throat, though.

Bruce doesn’t say anything, just keeps one hand on his back and his arm in front of him until Danny can finally stand on his own. Then all he does is remove the hand from his back. Danny wobbles, he teeters, and then straightens up shakily.

He only has one word: ow. This hurts, so much. He can’t compare it to the other injuries he sustained over the years as Phantom, because those ones weren’t lingering, stinging nettles of pain spreading throughout his muscles and tissue and bone. It was usually centralized to one spot — and they always had some kind of difference to them that he could focus on and then ignore. Being impaled hurts differently than being stabbed, and being stabbed hurts differently than being shot. His arm being cut hurts differently than it being cut off, and so on and so forth.

“There are towels on the sink for you, Mister Fenton.” Alfred tells him once Danny’s all settled and standing, looking at him. “As well as shampoo and conditioner for your hair inside the shower, you are free to use it as you wish. I will be nearby in case you need anything.”

Danny stares at him, processing everything he just said through the haze of his legs hurting. That was— really nice of him to do that. But he doesn’t have to stick around for Danny’s sake, and Danny doesn’t really know what to do with the information that he will. Is this just something that butler’s do? Or is this special treatment because Danny’s injured? He was so accommodating, it was strange.

With nothing to say, Danny nods shortly, “Okay, thank you.” Then he hurries — re: hobbles — as fast as his legs can take him into the bathroom, and closes the door behind him.

The bathroom is about as beautifully decorated as the rest of the manor, with the same gothic victorian style to match. However, instead of a tub, a modern shower — still trying to keep with the theme of the room — was up against the wall instead.

Just as Alfred told him, there were two towels folded on top of the sink. The shower chair was sitting inside the shower, and the hair supplies he mentioned were on one of the low shelves in the corner. There was also however, a small bag full of — Danny squints at the writing — shower steamers next to the towels.

What the hell are shower steamers? He’s never heard of them before.

His legs are shaking. He should sit down before he collapses.

Danny reaches for the curtains, tugs them closed, and turns on the water. Then he finds a seat on the toilet — he practically clings onto the sides, his legs violently trembling while he sits down, — and reaches for the bag of… shower steamers… on the sink.

The bag crinkles, his fingers curl around it, and Danny yanks it towards him without knocking the towels to the ground. He flips it around to the back, and searches for some kind of description for them. When he finds one, his eyes scan over it and— oh. They’re basically bath bombs for showers.

Jeez, that’s so bougie, Danny immediately smiles in disbelief. This couldn’t be Alfred’s, could it? He didn’t ring Danny as the kind of guy to need them — but to be frank, Danny hasn’t known Alfred long enough to make that kind of judgment call. He very well could be.

They were lavender scented.

Danny pops the bag open and is hit with the thick scent of lavender, pulls out a tablet — it fits in his palm very easily, they’re shaped like circles and slightly thicker than his thumb, — and leans over to toss it into the shower. The moment the water hits it, it begins to fizz and dissolve. He watches it in fascination for a few seconds, and decides that he should probably get into the shower and not just sit outside it.

Danny almost falls asleep; he can’t help it. He’s exhausted, his eyes are puffy and hurt from crying, and he’s so sore and tired that it’s like a lullaby to stick him under the hot water and expect him to stay awake. Especially since the pressure was really nice. He dozes off a total of five times before he finally rinses out all of the shampoo and conditioner in his hair, and he hasn’t gotten to scrubbing off all the grime and blood still sticking onto him.

The shower steamer absolutely did not help either, because he’s starting to remember from Sam trying to teach him how to garden that lavender and lavender oils were used specifically for stuff like joint pain and inflammation, discomfort — all that good stuff that Danny was currently in right now. And while medical pain relievers haven’t worked on Danny since his accident, the same could not be said for aromatherapy treatments.

Yeah, he has yet to figure out how that works.

He idly traces his nails over his sternum, an idle tick he picked up a few short weeks after his accident, because that’s where his death scar should be. If the lighting was just right, anyone would be able to see the faint outlines and the shimmer of scar tissue that wasn’t actually there. It was like a mirage. That was the only scar that did that; the rest were unseen.

It was one of the few lucky things he got as a Liminal: any injuries he sustained as a ghost wouldn’t scar his human form so long as he stayed a ghost until it healed. It meant he didn’t have to worry about cover stories for unexplainable scars — like the decapitation ones circling around his neck — or about uncomfortable assumptions about where he got them.

It was really convenient, even if it meant he had to be mindful about going to roller rinks or bowling alleys or anything with a blacklight, ever. That was a shocking revelation to come to — and fortunately, it happened when he was still newly Liminal.

Point is — what was his point? Oh, yeah. Point is; Danny was currently falling asleep, and that should probably be his sign to get out, and yet he was not taking it. He was very comfortable, thank you, and he still needs to scrub off any and all lingering bloodstains and dirt on him.

Most of his aches have gone away, sans the strange, gnawing feeling scrounging around behind his shoulder blades and spreading down his spine, and the pulsating cramping in his legs. The steam floating around wasn’t helping much with his stifled breathing, but it wasn’t actively making it worse either. But he was also not standing up, so it’s not like he was standing in the thick of it either.

The gnawing in his back was making him uncomfortable, actually. More than that, it was making him uneasy, it felt way too familiar to when the poison first set in for him to be anything but anxious over it. It felt rather… muffled, in comparison, and it was only around his shoulder blades — not rooting down his arms and through his fingers, and steadily making its way downwards — but it was still unsettling.

Bruce had found an antidote to the blood blossom, so it was probably just a side effect. A lingering soreness that would fade away with time with the rest of his pain. He watches tiredly as the blood on his legs slowly eroded away under the hands of the water, and swirled, rust-colored, down the drain.

It was nothing to worry about.