Stories!

The defeat of the wizard who made people choose how they’d be to be executed

The woman who raised the changeling alongside her biological child

Cinderella finding Araura (and falling in love)

The God of Arepo (graphic novel 1 / 2 / 3) (ebook)

The Monster of Sentan

The Witch’s Cat

Raise Both Children

Stabby the Roomba (honorable mention)

Cinderella Marries the Prince (comic)

My Arch Nemesis Cynthia

Pirates and Mermaid

Eindred and the Witch

The Demon King

The Cornerwitch

Grandmother Beetroot

Apocalypse Daycare Worker

Grandmother Accidentally Summons a Demon

New Year Saga

A Story About Changelings

Ranger in the King’s Forest

The Difference Between a Hare and a Rabbit

If you recognize the prompt, please send it btw.

In one of the Reblogs they mentioned Waller recruiting the Doctors so....

Nightwing makes a face behind the gag like he wants to say something but Danny turns away, a pulse of ghostly control through the computers ensuring that the vaunted oracle and cyborb will be locked out until Danny lets them in.

It had been surprisingly easy to figure out how to connect to the computers while human. Danny had always been adaptable.

Dick calls out fruitlessly, trying to get Fenton's attention. The bot offers a bite sized piece of sandwich, letting out a whirring noise that almost sounds questioning.

By the time he's finished his food and water, about to get regagged, a frazzled looking Fenton leads a group of bots carrying two bodies into the cell across from him.

Wally is encased from feet to mouth in some sort of flexible silver shell, twitching from the aftershocks of whatever defense mechanism he was trapped by. Fenton directs the bots to suspend the unconscious speedster in the appropriate restraints.

Garfield is locked down in a full meta suppressor set, being restrained in another cell.

Alfred Pennyworth has experienced many things at the infamous Wayne Gala's. He's found front page affairs in the bathroom, watched Master Dick swing from the million-dollar chandelier, and personally pulled out a shotgun at the Joker.

He has not, in fact, had one of the suspiciously young looking busser ask him if he's a captive to his employer and pseudo-son.

New opportunities every day, Alfred supposes.

"I believe you will have to elaborate, young man." He replied, crisply. It wasn't the most peculiar thing he had been asked, not even this month, but it certainly got his attention.

"You know. The thread between you and him. If he's holding you hostage or something, I can help you." The boy— yes, now that the man had gotten a closer inspection, it was certainly more child than man— gestured vaguely to something only they could see.

It took a moment to surmise his meaning, before Alfred's eyes narrowed.

Alfred was, although unnoticeable to the mortal eye, magical. He had been raised such, learned from gentle corrections and yellowed tomes of spells. When he had raised Bruce, still small and irate at the world, he had formed what one would call a bond. It bound himself to the boy, strengthening over the years, until he couldn't hide its existence like the others without concentration.

An untrained mind could easily mistake a cord into a chain. Heroic of the lad to ask, if unplaced and a touch dangerous.

"I am quite alright." He assured after a moment, and the relief that panned across the boy's face made him reevaluate his appearance. Short, skinnier than Alfred would prefer, and twitchy eyes and hair that had not been cut, leaving it stringy, hung over eyes too bright of blue to be normal. "Are you, lad?"

He looked uncared for in the way that raised the hairs on the older man's neck. A light probing for the busboy's tethers— whether to family, guardians or something else— came back with naught. His frown deepened.

It was imperative that children, until their brains fully developed and abilities settled, had something to anchor their magic. Families and organizations were remarkably protective of their young; for good reason: untended minors were easy pickings for cults and even more ill intents.

"Me?" His laugh did not strike as genuine when it came out. "Mister, I'm fine. I better get back to work though. Don't need them yelling at me, y'know?" A jerk of his thumb back towards the industrial kitchen areas beside the banquet hall.

"I understand, young man." Alfred did not in this situation; where were his guardians? "If I may— can I inquire your name?"

The boy's hand came to lift to the back of his neck. He did not need to be magical to read the mild anxiety radiating off of him.

"It's Daniel, er, Danny. Danny Nightingale." Was what the lad said, before pivoting and fleeing back to his work without another second.

Alfred supposed he had plenty of room if Master Bruce— doubtfully— wasn't fancying another addition to their ever-growing family.

Phantom is the ghost king, and he still looks the same as the day he died. Danny, does not, he's an adult finishing college and has change quite a lot through the years.

Now, for one reason or another, the Justice League Dark just now notice there's been a change in ruler. Pretty old news if you ask Danny but whatever.

Steph just burst out laughing as Danny floated above her.

" So you just let them try and find you."

"Well they are looking for a teenager not a,"

" A 22 year old built like superman?"

"Yeah."

Steph smiled up at Danny.

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Jason goes attends a gala undercover to try and catch Vlad Masters red handed in his crimes.

While mingling with the crowd he met Danny, a lovely and everything Jason wants in a partner, so it was love at first sight. Through small talk, Jason finds he's a Fenton (another family that is under watch by the JL).

The problem? Vlad does not aprove of this and manipulate the Fentons (even Jazz, who's knows what the fruitloop is like) into not approving the possible relationship.

Vlad knows that Danny values his parents opinions and will cave in to their wishes, it's only a matter of time. And it's and perfect way to convince force Danny in becoming his son, and no way will Daniel marry someone he doesn't aprove of.

So now we have a bunch of misunderstandings happening and getting in the way and making the Waynes and Fentons hate each other, Jason and Danny trying the best they can to get together, and the internet watching this.

The best part? Some random dude saying in a post that Danny and Jason are so Romeo-and-Juliet coded it not even funny anymore. It spiraled from there and ended up with everyone thinking that they're the reincarnation of Romeo and Juliet.

#Things in Threes - my first ever Danyal Al Ghul Au! This is the "danny is five years older than damian" au where he fakes his death and leaves the league for the safety of Damian. Otherwise known as the Danyal with the facial scar.

#Yaelokre Danyal - an au initially inspired by Things In Threes but with an amnesiac twist! Instead of sabotaging his relationship with Damian, Danny remains close with Damian. On a mission with Talia and Damian, Danny "fell" off a train and was presumed dead. He has amnesia.

#Fem Danyal Al Ghul - right on the tin, this tag hosts my general posts about a fem!danyal al ghul. Usually based off of Things in Threes.

#Mother of Monsters Danny - this tag is technically for a Fem!Dark Danny version that I call Layal. But there's an additional post where its Fem Danyal that is a 'mother of monsters'.

#Pit Beast Danyal - inspired by Epic's "Scylla" an au where Danny is Damian's younger brother who died during the typical 'death duel' trope and became a vengeful ghost haunting an old LOA base. The au itself is inspired to be like a video game with three endings.

#Stillborn? No, still born - an au based off the old plot where Bruce knew about Talia's pregnancy and was ecstatic to be a father. Talia, worried that Bruce would stop being Batman in his desire to be a father, ends up giving the baby up for adoption and telling Bruce that the baby was stillborn. That baby, initially Damian, is now Danny! He's had it rough.

#the art of masks - demon twins au where Danny ending up with the Fentons was him getting the short end of the stick between him and Damian. Because it turns out dumping an assassin child into a civilian family that don't know his background and thus can't support him, doesn't actually help him.

i say "2.0" because TECHNICALLY 'mother of monsters danyal' is an au I made back in June for Dark fem!Danyal (who I promptly named Layal). However, I haven't posted much for her yet, and I like the "mother of monsters" premise too much to leave it only to Layal. Plus Danyal in that au was going to become the mother of monsters anyway, just with significantly less world domination and mass extinction.

'Animal whisperer' Danny has been something I've been thinking about since my latest DP 'wolfpack au' post and it's! So fun to think about, and who no better to assign the idea to than Danyal Al Ghul? Who comes from a family infamously known for their love of animals and nature?

Fem Danyal is just purely self-indulgent. *gestures wildly at her* i just lomvb,,, her,,,, I've only really mentioned her in context of the 'Things in Threes' au/my first Danyal al Ghul au with the facial scar, but she's!!! I love her. She deserves her own au <33

So kill three birds with one stone! Make a post about it.

Anyways, Danny has a large lair. Similar to cult leader danyal, her lair is a giant mountain region resembling nanda parbat with a big temple/palace-like area built into the mountain. It's large, it's overflowing with natural flora, with its own mini-floating islands hovering over some areas, and it's also completely empty.

Danny takes one look at her lair upon first meeting, -- noting that it looked relatively smaller from the outside -- and promptly, with the elegance of an Al Ghul, goes "What the hell??" Because yes, while she does enjoy her own solitude and privacy, this is a bit ridiculous.

For heaven's sake, there's even a massive lake in there! What's she going to do with all this space? Can she make it any smaller? Why is it so big in the first place? This looks borderline like one of the mega-islands!

She finds out later that apparently, the amount of ectoplasm a ghost has can have an effect on the size of their lair. And since she has such a large core, her lair reflects that. Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff, it's bigger on the inside so it doesn't take up "too much space" on the outside. Don't worry about it too much.

Danyal isn't totally opposed to having such a large lair, she's just... a bit baffled by it. It feels like so much wasted space is all. All this flora and no fauna to enjoy it with. It's practically eerie.

She decorates her temple-palace area, transforming rooms to match her needs as she sees fit. In the center of the inner gardens is a massive tree that she likes to climb, with twisting, winding branches. Sam and Tucker have honorary rooms, even if they can't safely leave the specter speeder for long periods of time, even with proper safety equipment. So does Jazz. Ali (Dani) has one too, but he can actually use that one, and Danny brought him to her lair so he could decorate it himself.

She has a personal garden, but for the most part she lets the flora exist as it is. Too much space to cultivate it en masse anyways.

Skip to a few weeks later, on her next visit to Clockwork. She developed a habit of going to see him semi-regularly just because. She enjoys his wisdom, and he has a lot of stories to tell, and when he's not being the cryptic and esoteric timekeeper, he's a bit goofy.

(pushing my dadwork agenda here,,, i think Danny deserves to go 'hey, Lord Clockwork, do you want me to buy you something' while she's at walmart, only to receive a singular glowing sticky note that says 'cucumber gatorade'.)

(She insists on referring to him with his proper titles even for the most mundane of things because it's proper, but Clockwork sees a future where she eventually calls him "Cee" and by all things in existence is he determined to get there. Anyways,,,)

On her next visit to Clockwork, just as she is about to leave, Clockwork stops her and goes; "Ah, I have something for you. Hold out your hands."

Danny does as such, and Clockwork doesn't give out things often, so her curiosity has spiked to the highest levels. He turns away from her for a moment, using his staff to summon whatever it is he needs, and when he turns around.

He drops a fish into her hands. Granted, a fish in a small glass tank. But a fish nonetheless. A small one, roughly about the size of her finger, with a blue-black, eel-shaped body and four sets of glowing eyes. She can see thin, almost translucent, but spiny fins down its back and the start of bioluminescent markings. It's swimming around in circles in its small container.

"Lord Clockwork." Danyal says all too calmly.

"Yes, Danyal?"

"What is this?"

"That is an adolescent leviathan, Danyal." She’s transfixed onto the tank, but she doesn’t need to see Clockwork’s face to hear the smile he’s stifling.

The myriad of emotions that runs through her all at once threatens to overwhelm her, and she can’t tell if the feelings are negative or positive. So she carefully closes her eyes to breathe in through her nose.

“Clockwork.”

“Ah, I see you’ve dropped formalities.”

She ignores that.

“Why have you given me an adolescent leviathan?”

She's expecting the trickster to look amused when she opens her eyes. Instead, he just looks endeared. "I know you're fond of animals," he says, "and you always look amazed when you come across an animal of the realms. So I thought you might enjoy taking care of the young beast, it's mother is dead so it has no one to care for it."

Oh.

"But, if you don't like it," Clockwork's hands reach out for the tank, "I can simply take it back--"

Danyal shifts the tank out from his reach and hugs it possessively. "I never said that. How do I care for it?"

And so clockwork gives her a list, and when Danyal returns to her lair, she sets up a large tank in her room for the leviathan to swim in -- it's much too small for the lake right now, she thinks. She'll feel better if it's somewhere she can find it. She names him Suhā.

Suhā grows quickly, and by the end of the mortal month she transforms one of the rooms into a large pond for him to swim around in. He's a very loyal beast, recognizing her as it's mother of some kind. Danyal takes great care ensuring that her beastie gets quality care, and Suhā swims to the surface to see her when he senses her in the room.

It spirals from there. Somehow, Pandora catches wind that Clockwork gave her a leviathan, and so the next time Danyal visits the Greater Athens, she gives her a baby chimera. It's eyes are still sealed shut, Danyal can't bring herself to say no. She names the little beastie Firas.

Frostbite hears about it too, and not to be outdone, gives her an animal she's never even heard of. Infinite-realms born, apparently. A fox-like creature with two small horns like an impala, four eyes, and tall legs. The name isn't something she's quite sure how to write down, and she's positive that her friends won't be able to comprehend it. She names her Eira.

Getting the three of them used to each other was... interesting. Suhā tried to eat Firas when Danyal first introduced the two, and they've hated each other ever since. Firas and Eira are seemingly getting along. Her island already feels full enough with the three of them on it.

Of course, that's not the end of it. With her luck, she begins stumbling across other monsters. Realms-borne or otherwise. An injured hydra in the Grecian islands that, through lots of trial and error, Danyal is able to rehabilitate and heal. It routinely comes to visit her afterwards.

A griffin with a broken wing that she moves permanently to the island that likes to keep to itself, but tends to come down when she's near. It gets along best with Firas.

A panther-like monster from the Shades Woods that had six legs and three tails, with ends that reminded her of a venus flytrap. It stuck around the heavy foliage and she can only make out where it was when she saw its golden eyes reflect.

She befriends a young indrik with its leg injured, and much like the hydra it follows her back to her island, and stays there in the mountains. It comes out when she's alone, much like her other beasts.

She receives two more leviathan -- one from clockwork, and one she finds herself while exploring the deeper and darker recesses of the Ghost Zone. It was huddled against the carcass of its mother, and she managed to befriend and get close enough to it to bring it back to her island. Suhā is fully grown by then, with a head bigger than Danyal herself and he still likes to stick her head out of the water for nuzzles when she's near.

He's not very happy with his new siblings, but he's not trying to eat them when she's not looking. So she calls it a win in her book.

And it's not just large beasts either; smaller animals begin popping up when she's not looking. Bird-like creatures and small mammals, and she swears she saw a doe (or something resembling a doe) grazing in the forest while she was walking by.

She takes back with her a lone snake egg once, and it grows so big it wraps around her island and sleeps with its massive head on the mountain beside the temple, like some smaller breed of Jörmungandr.

And on and on it goes. Some of the beasts she comes across never step foot onto her island, some of them follow her back, while others she has to carry back. Not all of the ones that follow her stay, and Danny rehabilitates the injured and releases them when they're fully healed.

It's hectic, and busy, and frankly she loves it. Some of her rehabilitated beasts return to visit her, or to have their children somewhere on the island, or whatever it is they need to do.

She becomes a bit infamous for it. She goes to visit Dorathea once, and as she's walking through the streets she can hear some of the denizens whispering while she walks past.

"Is that her?"

"Her highness' friend? Yes--"

"--that's the one--"

"--Mother of monsters--"

Danny's not sure how to feel about that.

Although, she can't say she's opposed.

i've actually thought about Jason knowing about Danny in the League before! I made a little meme about it in one of my meme dump posts! Ultimately it's non-canon to the au and would have to be part of an offshoot branch or a variant of the au due to continuity reasons.

Meaning that if Jason knew about Danyal, I don't think Damian would have been able to keep his existence (and "death") a secret for long. Or at least long enough for it to be revealed that he was alive. Jason would have asked about Danny at some point, maybe even right away upon re-entering the family and seeing Damian there, depending on the context. I can see him asking whether in front of everyone and in private too, depending on that context as well.

Ooooo and! I just remembered this, but there's no guarantee that Danny and Jason would have even met while Jason was in the league too -- some depictions I've seen of this au have Jason around while Damian is still a baby, or as a young kid. The timelines are notoriously wonky. -- and Danyal "died" when Damian was five. Depending on the ages, the timeline, and all that jazz, Jason could have very well entered the League when Damian was five sometime after Danyal's death.

Or he could've been there to see Danyal, meet him, and eventually become close enough to him to figure out that Danyal deeply adored his little brother and everything he did was ultimately meant to be for his benefit -- in a twisted up way. Hey, we could even go a step further and say he was there the night Danny got his facial scar. It really would all depend.

But that would require me sitting down and recharting the timeline in order to fit that in without any significant plot holes; like deciding ages, how long Jason's with the League before splitting (ultimately he spent five years away from Gotham before returning. How many of those years am I willing to keep him in the au?), when he was there, etc.

Something I am simply not interested nor have the energy to do for this au this far in ashdgf. So for the sake of my own sanity and the continuity of the main au: Jason did not know nor know about Danyal in the League.

However its still a fun idea to think about! So some things I've thought about if Jason did know Danyal in the league:

- For the hispanic jason truthers: Jason sometimes called him diablito; 'little devil' since the whole 'grandson of the demon head' thing.

- Danyal had a habit of sitting right outside Damian's room at night to listen for intruders, something he's done since Damian was a baby after the initial attack that resulted in his scar. Jason would sometimes sit with him if he found him like that.

- If Jason was present -- both physically and mentally -- for the day Damian was born, he saw firsthand the way Danny was so happy to meet him. The light shining in Danyal's eyes as baby Damian latched onto his fingers is not something he could ever forget.

- This means he was also there the day Danyal got his scar a few days later. Bursting into the nursery with Talia and seeing Danny hovered in front of the crib, almost drenched in blood with his face split open, is not something he'll forget either.

- (fun fact, did you know that head injuries bleed the most even if it's a shallow cut? Danny's scar, which in order to still be prominent at 15, would be from his hairline to his jaw, would've been bleeding profusely. And scars shrink with age! This is not only because of healing, but because your body grows except the scar doesn't. This i know from personal experience -- i have a scar on my knee from 2nd grade that used to stretch horizontally from kneecap to kneecap and needed two large bandaids to cover. But now is barely any longer than the first joint of my pinkie. It has not faded.)

- Nor will he forget the thousand yard stare in Danny's little blue eyes as he looked up at Talia and, in a little voice, said; "They were gonna hurt Damian, momma."

- He and Talia both tried convincing Danny to use the lazarus pits to heal his face without a scar, Danny refused and kept refusing. It was proof he'd protected his brother and he wouldn't accept any of their reasoning. It hasn't impaired his sight or ability.

- Jason held his hand while the cut got stitched up. Danyal didn't cry once. He stared at the wall over the doctor's shoulder, and the only indication that Jason knew he was in pain was when his grip tightened in his hand.

- Jason left shortly after Damian turned three, so he was somewhat aware that Danny was going to begin distancing himself from Damian. Damian's memories of him in the League are fuzzy at best.

- When Damian joined the family and Jason was hanging around/reconciled with them, he asked Damian in the cave about Danyal. He said; "By the way, where's Danyal? I'm surprised he's not hovering by your side."

- He did not like the way Damian tensed up and refused to meet his eyes. When Damian finally revealed that Danyal was dead, he refused to believe it, and continued to refuse to believe it long afterward. Danyal? Gone? The little eldest demon was dead? That sounded completely unlike him. That boy was too stubborn and loved Damian too much to stay buried.

- They got into an argument about it right there in the cave. Jason thought Damian was lying to him, and Damian was not appreciating how much Jason cared nor him saying Damian was a liar.

- Jason has a few photos of him and Danyal and Damian in the league. All of them happened when Damian was too young to remember them. He has one or two photos of Danyal before he got his scar. He eventually shares these with Damian.

- I did have one idea where he found Danny in Amity Park once and had to be threatened by Danyal to not tell anyone.

okay that's all i've got for now. Onto the others!

"[or] would [he] turn invisible and spy on the batfam to check up on Damian from time to time so he knows things about them"

He wouldn't do this actually! Danyal is essentially in something like deep cover right now, and his whole reason for leaving the League is the belief that him being near Damian or the two of them being together is dangerous to Damian. That they will eventually be pitted against each other, and Danyal refuses to harm his brother in any sort of capacity.

The very last thing he would do is try and do anything that would indicate that he was alive -- including going invisible and flying over to Gotham to see Damian. The Waynes would figure out eventually that they were being spied on. They have experience with the paranormal and the weird due to Gotham shenanigans and basic hero craziness. They have incredible reflexes and intuition, you know how people can feel it when they're being stared at? That. That would happen, and when they can't shake the feeling of being watched, they'd get paranoid and seek out the cause of the feeling.

In some issues, afaik, Wayne Manor has protections against magical creatures. That place is more secure than Fort Knox; Danyal would not be able to get in or near it without triggering some sort of alarm.

And so, Danyal would do the opposite, and in fact would avoid Gotham like the plague -- in order to stay away from Damian, he has to stay away from Damia. And he'd probably avoid some of the cities where he knows his father's affiliates and allies lay, just to be safe. This is relatively easy to do since he's 15 and not leaving Amity Park any time soon.

If, for any reason, his foster family or school (for the 'visiting gotham' trope) made a plan to visit Gotham, Danyal would find a way to get out of it, by any means necessary.

It's just not a risk he's willing to take, and the 'deep cover' thing is something I mentioned in my Ellie and Damian Meeting oneshot (its in a reblog of my "danny and dani meeting" post). The only reason Damian hasn't immediately flown out to Danyal is because of two main reasons:

he has no idea where he is

Bruce forbade it for the time being because it could spook Danny off.

If Danny found out that Damian knew he was alive, knew where he was, and was going to come see him, there's no guarantee that Danny will just... stay. There's no guarantee that Danyal won't freak the fuck out and disappear off the radar, and then they'll be back to square one. Finding and meeting Danyal requires patience and proper planning, they can't dive headfirst into this.

Besides! Danny keeps tabs on Damian and his father (and eventually by extension his siblings) through news reports and articles about them! Sure not all of them are truthful, but the things reporting their actions, whereabouts, etc, he keeps and prints out and puts in a little shoebox/scrapbook in his room!

The folder on his father is huge because he started it a few months into moving in with the Fentons and it spans back decades. and Damian's is currently the smallest since he just recently appeared in public eye. Most of it is things like, Wayne Inc announcements for charities, galas, etc. Not tabloids or gossip. Positive publicity stuff.

He keeps them under his bed, and he pulls out his father's scrapbook to tell him about patrol whenever he comes back and needs to stitch himself up. It lets him pretend that he's actually telling his father about what he's done.

As for Danny interacting with the fam -- it'd be awkward but non-hostile! Danny's... not sure how to act with them, he'd be not unlike a skittish stray cat that you're trying to befriend who keeps running away. He only knows them from what he's parsed out from news articles written about them -- both civilian and hero -- and anything Talia's told him.

There's for sure a resemblance between him and Damian in more than just looks -- they both hold this sort of powerful or confident air around them that seems exclusive to the Al Ghul family -- and there's of course that pride in their abilities. They have similar speech patterns -- although Danny's more relaxed due to Sam and Tucker's influence. And they both share an intense care for animals and the environment that's also pretty standard for the Al Ghul family.

Overall though he's just... rather quiet. Snarky and witty, but quiet. Unsure and seemingly analyzing them, trying to figure them out. He's quietest around Bruce -- not because he's afraid of him or anything, but he's overwhelmed by him. He's wanted to meet Bruce since he was a child, and now he is and he doesn't know what to do. It's a strange feeling to have.

You can find him sitting in the same room Bruce is in and find him just, watching him. Watching him from various, obscure places. He seems content to just exist in his presence, and confused when Bruce speaks to him -- like he's not totally comprehended the fact that he's actually there in front of him.

Damian and Danny have perhaps the most awkward interactions with each other out of everyone -- they have old issues they need to sort out like Danny purposely distancing himself from Damian, and intentionally orchestrating their past interactions to result in Damian hating him, and Damian needs to figure out who his brother really is beyond what he led Damian into thinking.

Turns out, being placed in a civilian family who have no knowledge of your background is actually detrimental to the health and development of a child assassin due to lack of proper support! Surrounded by strangers in a foreign city, Danyal Al Ghul does as assassins do best. He hides. Espionage is one of many teachings one learns in the League, and it only takes half a day for Danyal to construct a new persona to hide behind: Daniel Fenton.

By the time dinner rolls around, Danyal al Ghul is safely and securely tucked behind the face of Danny Fenton; brand new adoptive child of the Fenton family who came from overseas. A shy, quiet little boy with a thick accent and curly hair, with brown skin and blue eyes, and an avid interest in the stars. The best fictions are always cobbled together in a little bit of truth, it's some of the only truth he ever lets through. He apologizes in a meek voice for his behavior early, he didn't mean to be rude, and he watches the three of them eat it up with coos.

Lies roll like silk against his lips, he struggles to meet their eyes and offers them his weakest, shyest smile. It's too easy. It's easy to go from there.

Danny Fenton, adoptive son, shy and awkward and unconfident but friendly. Who struggles in his classes and isn't the brightest, but tries his hardest. He makes bad jokes and has a quick tongue and a sarcastic mouth. He wants to be an astronaut. He's got the best aim in school, and is a terrifying dodgeball player. He's one of the least athletic kids in his grade.

It's like playing two truths and a lie, but there's only one truth, and the rest are lies. It's easy to pretend when he knows it's insincere.

Danyal Al Ghul, grandson to the Demon Head. Deadly, trained assassin. Has spilled blood, has had blood spilt from. Environmentalist, animal activist. He loves the stars. He owns a calligraphy set. A sharp tongue, an even sharper blade. He's clever, quick-witted, he would be top of his grade if he tried harder. He purposely doesn't.

He misses his family. He misses his mother, and he misses his brother. Mother visits a few times a year, so few times that he can count it on both hands. He cherishes every visit, as brief as they are. It helps remind him who he is.

Sam and Tucker are Danny's best friends. They've never met Danyal, but Danyal's met them.

It becomes routine to become Danny Fenton. As familiar and as easy as pulling on a shirt in the morning. Danyal wakes up and is always first to the bathroom in the mornings; stares at himself in the mirror until he can finally see Danny staring back at him. At night, he locks his door and sheds the mask.

Dying throws a wrench in his mask; splits a crack straight through the porcelain. He's able to smooth it over with sandpaper and liquid gold, but it's a little hard keeping his ghost form under wraps. It instinctively wants to shift to show his true self. Danyal can't have that, he's spent four years as Danny Fenton, he'll spend another four as him as well. Even if the feeling of the hazmat suit in his ghost form feels restrictive, like a too-small shirt suctioned to his skin that needs to be peeled off.

He'll live. Er-- well, you know what he means. It's frustrating however, trying to keep his Danny Fenton mask up even as Phantom - fighting in the air is something he needs to get used to, and the sudden propping of powers throws him off. But he is nothing if not adaptive, and he hates that he needs to slow his own skills down in order to keep pretenses up in front of Sam and Tucker.

The first time Danyal summons a sword when he's alone, is one of the few times Danyal gets to grin instead of Danny. He's fighting Skulker, and from an invisible hilt he draws a katana from thin air. It startles them both. Skulker takes a step back at the smile that spreads across his face.

They're both silent as Danyal examines his new sword.

"Do you know what people like me do to people like you, poacher?" Danyal finally asks him, the accent he began to hide a few months in slipping through. He drops all pretense, dragging the flat end of the blade slow and appreciatively against his palm. It's a good make, and when he cuts it through the air, it slices through like butter. He looks up at Skulker with a smile; "are you ready to find out?"

When Sam and Tucker ask about why Skulker seems so skittish around Danny now, Danny shrugs at them and says with a playful smile; "I don't know, I guess I kicked his butt too hard after our last fight." and he watches as Sam rolls her eyes exasperatedly, and Tucker snickers with his own joke.

Starry over here making more aus. ^^

But yeah I feel like this needs to be addressed more. Like, I’ve only seen maybe two or three other posts that truly show just how deep he buried Danyal, but none that actually address the matter.

But here’s a better question. Do they even want to help? Sure Damian might, but he remembers the Danyal he grew up with, so he knows exactly how much of himself Danyal buried away under Danny. But the others? To the rest of the family, Danny is a normal child. He smiles easy, laughs at jokes, plays pranks, and knows how to have fun and make friends. He cares deeply about his family and would never hurt a fly. He is easygoing and approachable, can seamlessly slide into society as if he was always there. He is the very definition of “that one quiet kid” who always smiles and waves if anyone approaches them. He is everyone’s dream boy and is a picture perfect son almost 24/7.

Danny is everything they want Damien to be.

Why throw that all away to dig up someone they think is already gone? Someone they don’t realize is there? I’m sure that some members of the fam would recognize the mask due to Brucie, but I don’t think they would recognize that’s it’s really there. At least not in the beginning when Danny is all they see.

I think it would take a long time for Danny to let his guard down enough for Danyal to want to take off the mask. For Danny to let him out long enough to see how they react. Damian would be happy if he did, but what of the others?

Oftentimes, when all a person gets to see is the carefully painted mask their “friend” wears, seeing a glimpse of what’s beneath will almost always result in either shock or confusion.

Danny lets out a bit of attitude when someone is being rude? He’s acting out to get attention.

Danny does his homework in calligraphy? Teased relentlessly by sibling and peers (sans Damian who knows that Danyal used to fill out reports in perfect calligraphy).

Danny is getting perfect scores on purpose? Sudden spotlight and countless eyes.

More often than not, when someone wears a mask long enough, it can be hard to take it off. Especially when all the premeditated responses they would normally predict with the mask are no longer there. The mask stops being a tool and starts being a safety net. Now he has to have it on lest he gain any sort of negative response.

They won’t want to fix him, because they think he’s already fixed. He won’t want to be fixed, because he doesn’t think he needs to be fixed. As far as both parties are concerned, there is nothing wrong, and thus no need to pay any mind to it.

The greatest appeal in Danyal Al Ghul aus (to me) will forever and always be the effects of growing up in a league will do to Danny. I think I've only got one DAG au where Danny didn't grow up in the League -- my stillborn Danyal au -- and he's got so many issues.

But yes!! I agree with everything you've said here -- especially on the whole 'when someone wears a mask all the time, it's hard to take off' thing! I was thinking that same thing too, I just didn't get into it on my post since it was like, midnight when I posted it.

I def think the batfam would be prepared for something with Danny when they first meet him -- they're thinking that they might run into a carbon copy of Damian when they finally meet Danny. Only to find out that's.. not... the case? Like oh yeah, they definitely think something's up, nobody who grew up in the League of Assassins comes out THAT well-adjusted -- Damian's still pretty prickly on his best of days -- but it quickly rounds out to them assuming that Danny's mild cynicism and sarcasm is just him lowering pretenses. He's like a declawed version of Damian.

I can picture very mild, brief jokes about hey maybe they should've had Damian go live with civilians for a little bit too, before saying that nah, it would've ended up in disaster. Not thinking about how it ended up in disaster for Danny too; look at him. He's too acclimated to civilian life. The true self is hidden behind the false.

I'm also thinking about how like, Damian is the only person Danny feels truly comfortable around enough with to let pretenses drop. And even then, it takes weeeks of Damian slowly chipping away at Danny's mask when they're alone for him to finally start, willingly, loosing his hold on the persona.

"I don't want to talk to Danny," Damian tells him bluntly, harshly, every day when no one's around, "let me talk to Danyal. Where's my brother."

"I'm right here." Danny lies, and Damian can see right through him.

"No, you're not."

Until eventually Danyal starts peeking through, and Damian is so relieved. He's been peeling layer after layer back to find him, and now he's standing right in front of him. Still hiding, but now with proof he's there. It's like coaxing out a feral animal out from under the porch. When Danyal gets too exhausted with keeping up his lies and masking, he goes to Damian's room and locks, double locks, triple locks the door and draws the curtains, and heaves a shaky sigh.

"يوم طويل؟" Damian asks him where he's reading a book from his bed, watching his brother cocoon himself worse than their father does. It makes his heart hurt a little, to see him hide so much. ("Long day?")

His brother groans, ragged and drawn out, and drags his fingers through his hair. Inadvertently, symbolically, pulling it out of its normal 'danny' style. He looks exhausted. "طويل جدًا." ("Too long.")

He's still hiding chunks of himself away, the both of them sit in Damian's room and it's like watching a broken TV glitch between channels. He can see Danyal fluctuate between masks even when it's just the two of them. Instinctively hiding before realizing belatedly that he doesn't need to.

Damian keeps trying to encourage Danyal to come out of his mask more, and each time it blows up in his face. He's incredibly frustrated by it, and Danyal keeps brushing it off and insisting that it's for the best. He doesn't need fixing, they don't think he needs to be fixed.

Don't get me started on Danny's morals either. I firmly believe they should be messed up. Like sure, Danny doesn't believe in killing and thinks it's wrong and all that jazz, but Danny is just a mask. Danyal thinks you just shouldn't be foolish enough to get caught. He never actually deconstructed those League ideals, he's just pretending he did.

By 14, I think Damian would still make bodily threats of harm against people, but he's less likely to actually go through with it than he was when he was 10, especially if the more graphic they are. Meanwhile, if Danyal wasn't wearing his Danny mask, he'd actually go through with it and then tell you to walk it off. Damian, by 14, would warn before stabbing, Danny would stab as warning.

because, as my delightful best friend @the-navistar-carol put it last night when I was ranting to her about this au/idea: "once he carves out the mask of Danny, he has no reason to take the world at face value as Danyal". Danyal is not outright more vocally violent -- largely in part of trying to keep his mask in place as Danny, even as Phantom since Phantom is Danny's alter ego, not Danyal's -- but I firmly imagine him being more ruthless than Damian. Because he's just, not gone through any deprogramming in the last four years. Not anything significant at least.

They're back to square one with Danny and they don't even know it because he's not showing it.

There's a lot of nuance here that's easier to show in writing than it is to explain it. But TL:DR: Damian is, funnily enough? The kinder brother between the two of them.

And I imagine that when it's finally revealed that Danny's been acting this entire time, it's when something or someone directly puts Damian in significant harm's way. The life-threatening, 'he can't get out of this on his own and needs rescue' kind.

You know Antinous' song excerpt from Jorge Rivera-Herrans' musical "Epic"? The "hold him down while I slowly break his pride, his trust, his faith, and his bones." line? Danyal's energy right there when Damian's life is endangered. All bets are off, the gloves are off. He's saving his brother by any means necessary.

Tim comes over to see Danyal reading a book, one that would be otherwise considered out of "Danny's" range. My heart that yearns to make Danny the artistic/musician/the arts member of the Fenton family says it's a non-scientific book. He's reading A Midsummer Night's Dream, something that Danny, known disliker of English and all it's forms, wouldn't be caught dead reading.

Tim walks over and manages to sneak up on Danyal enough to recognize the title -- which he does a significant distance away -- before Danyal realizes someone is there, and he watches like the rusty pull of a lever as Danyal tenses up and sinks into his chair. Pretends to furrow his brows and purse his lips together like he's struggling to understand the text, pulling the book up closer to his face. A stark difference to the easy, relaxed expression he was wearing just earlier.

By the time he reaches the armchair, "Danny" jumps like he's been startled and snaps his head up, and an easy, fake smile spreads across his face. "Timmy!" He says, playful, and quickly, rapidly snaps his book closed. "Man, you startled me! I didn't even hear you walk over."

With the book closed, he casually leans over and places it on the coffee table a few feet in front of him with the cover facing down, he's still smiling; embarrassed and just slightly bashful. Tim has to hand it to him, it's a really good mask. "Some assassin I am, huh? Didn't even realize."

It's a blatant lie; Danyal had noticed Tim walking up to him before he'd even seen him.

Tim offers back a friendly smile, and leans around him to look at the book. "Must've been some book you were reading then, if you were that engrossed in it."

Danny makes the 'aw no' face, curled lip and propped open mouth, arched eyebrow and everything. He waves Tim off with self-deprecating ease. "Aw, no. More like barely understanding it, it's some... Shakespeare book I was assigned for class. Dami's better at this kinda stuff."

He's not sure why, but he'd been almost hoping Danyal would've told him the truth. But a mask does what a mask must do, and that is hide the one wearing it. He decides to take a risk. "I'm sure that's not true, Danyal."

A handful of times eavesdropping on Damian and Danyal in order to confirm his theory has taught him that, when Danny isn't wearing mask, he prefers to go by Danyal.

The effect is more immediate than he was expecting; for a split, fleeting moment, Danny's smile falters on his face, his brows genuinely wrinkle, and his eyes flash with a depth unseen. Then it's gone, like the blink of a firefly. Danny laughs low and hollowly.

Now that Tim knows he's been faking, it's easier to hear the emptiness in it.

"You don't have to call me Danyal, Tim." He tells him, sitting up slightly. Danny tilts his head like a confused puppy. "Danny works just fine."

"Isn't that your name though?" Tim mimics him, and tilts his head the same way. "Danyal?"

He takes a gamble.

"That's who I'm talking to, right?"

And it works.

Danyal's eyes narrow, just a smidge, and his smile fades until it's merely a turn at the corner. Searching, questioning... Hopeful. All under a guise of mischievously playful. "...Perhaps." Whenever they've spoken, Danny's always talked in a near-perfect Midwestern American accent, with very slight tonal changes. Here, Tim can clearly hear the same lilt of an accent that Damian has.

Danyal is testing him, seeing if Tim is actually asking for him, and not just trying to get a rise out of Danny.

Score. He smiles wider. Tim leans casually against the nearest chair, and tilts his head the other way. "Then, Can I ask again what you're reading, Danyal?"

Danyal's smile returns, and slants up slightly. Rather than Danny's teeth-bared grins, this one is closed mouth and far more sincere despite being much fainter. "It's 'A Midsummer's Night'. Have you read it?"

Victory. Hello, Danyal.

But all of this gets me wondering how Damian finds out that Tim talked to Danyal though. I imagine this happens, as I mentioned earlier, after Damian has succeeded in talking to Danyal and not Danny so Danyal is more open to being himself around the Batfan.

So did Danyal tell Damian himself? Does Tim bring it up? Does Damian find Tim talking to what he can clearly identify as his brother Danyal and not Danny?

And even after he finds out I wonder how it affects Tim and Damian’s relationship. Does Damian become jealous of Tim managing to talk to Danyal in only one attempt despite it taking him so many to break through Danny to get to Danyal? Does it bring them closer as Damian and Tim hang out with Danyal? Do they team up to get Danyal to discard Danny?

Do Tim and Danyal grow closer as they discuss their different masks and the people in their lives being unable to identify when they fall into them? Does Tim try and help Danyal break out of the Leagues conditioning? Does Tim invite Danyal to his apartment to be himself and spar or just hang out? Does Danyal listen to Tim? Does he respect Tim? Does he view Tim differently to the rest of the batfam for wanting to meet Danyal and not just Danny?

Do the rest of the Batfam notice Tim and Danyal getting closer? Do they make jokes? Comparisons to how Damian and Tim were when Damian first came to the Manor?

Does Tim introduce Danyal to the Titans? Have they already met Danny? Does Tim inform the rest of the batclan or does he keep it to himself?

(I HC that he prefers to speak in Arabic out of an old habit he developed, it helps him drop masking easier and during the times he went undercover in the League it was usually in a different language. So now it's just a habit he never really bothered to correct. He's just more comfortable speaking in Arabic, .English and any other language have always been used when he's 'hiding'.)

I think Danyal should bring it up, he goes to see Damian later that day and tells him that he was right, and that Drake is very intelligent and observant. He noticed Danyal's masking and essentially called him out on it today. He tells him about the interaction with Tim.

Damian takes it better than expected. He does rather respect Drake even if he doesn't outwardly show it to his face, and he was encouraging Danyal to try and open up more. He pretends to be all huffy about the fact that it had to be Tim that figured it out first, but in reality he's just pleased someone realized at all.

It do think it does bring them closer once Danyal begins actually opening up to Tim. Tim finds himself being hunted down by Damian and then dragged to one of their rooms to hang out because Damian needs to gang up on Danyal for something -- although this only happens when Damian finds Tim alone Because despite his encouragement, he doesn't want to force Danyal into dropping all of his masks when he's not ready because that will just result in Danyal shutting him out.

they do absolutely team up to convince Danyal to discard Danny! With two against one it makes for an easier argument, but Danyal is an Al Ghul and a Wayne, so he's twice the stubborn ass.

Yes to all of that about Tim and Danyal. Once Tim realizes Danyal hasn't broken out of the league conditioning, he teams up with Damian to help dismantle it. He's older, so it's harder because a lot of that has been cemented into him, but he trusts Damian and he's starting to trust Tim, so he's willing to listen. Whether he takes it to heart is a different story, but it can happen. Danyal does like sparring with Tim, and likes that the apartment/houseboat is a safe place he can go to be himself.

And yes, I think it'd be funny (and kinda angsty) if the rest of the family commented on the fact that Tim and Danny seemed to get along better than Damian and Tim did when they first arrived. It has this weird effect of causing Danyal to turtleshell into himself more, something Tim and Damian both notice whenever these comparisons happen. So neither of them like it when the family makes these jokes.

Tim def does eventually introduce the Teen Titans/YJ to Danyal eventually, i think. And Tim absolutely keeps the fact that Danny is a mask to himself for similar reasons as to why Damian doesn't just outright expose it. Danyal should come out when he's ready, and the family themselves need to figure it out on their own too.

Telling a family of a paranoids that Damian's twin has been faking being all nice and polite and self-actualized this whole time before they themselves realized it? That could most certainly end in disaster. Whether it be the rest of the family believing him and reacting badly, or them not believing him and only doubling down on the validity of Danny --further pushing Danyal back into his shell.

Ok, so I loved all of that.

In reference to the tags I do find it funny that Jason would be the last to find out only because he is the one who I think Danyal would share the most in common with so Danny is accentuated around him to stop Danyal from ever coming out to debate Shakespeare and other classic literature together!

I agree that Dick would notice after tim but I’m having a hard time deciding between Cass(could find out in a way similar to Tim, aka. through Danyal’s change in body language) or Alfred(by being Alfred) being the one to notice after him… though after them I think would be Barbara(noticing the changes in the way everyone is treating him ala trying to get Danyal to drop his mask(she would probably be ticked off to it through the way dick talks to her about him switching from using Danny to Danyal to refer to him)), then Steph and Duke(likely found out while discussing the changes in Danny’s behavior and interests after their siblings started hanging out with him more(also tipped off by them referring to him as Danyal and not Danny(could have sparked the conversation in the first place due to them not understanding why everyone else stopped using Danny’s supposed preferred name))), then Bruce(I mean… he is a good detective and would eventually catch on(was honestly probably already aware and just trying to ignore it in hopes that one of his children would be some semblance of normal)), and then lastly Jason(doesn’t spend enough time at the manor and neither Danyal or Danny go to the cave often I’d imagine).

But yeah I think that in a darker route the only people Danyal would open up to would be Damian and maybe partially Tim so he would be attached to them but not really Gotham and eventually leave them to rejoin the league. In this route since most of the fam still believe that Danyal is Danny they probably jump to him being forced to go back or kidnapped and trying to get Danny back/save him. In this route I don’t see Tim or Damian stopping the rest of the fam honestly I think they’d probably be the most motivated to bring him back as they are aware of how Danyal has yet to unlearn League doctrine. This route probably leads to a standoff between the batfam and Danyal which acts as the first meeting between most of them and Danyal.

There are two main branches I can think of happening in this case:

1. They manage to bring Danyal back with them after beating him or 2. They almost manage to beat him but he either retreats before they can retrieve him or reinforcements arrive forcing them to retreat.

In the first end I can see the fam second guessing everything they thought they knew about Danny and creating distance between them due to it.

In the second the fam still second guesses what they know about Danny but they force Tim and Damian to spill what’s going on because Danny was clearly not acting like “himself”.

be diagnosed with ADHD, boom profit dljfhk. Happy to engage! I like talking about aus with people.

I was gonna try and like, at least mention one of the other parts of the post so i could ease into it, but-- no, fdjsgh. No i'm just gonna bite the bullet it and say it: I absolutely do not see Bruce ignoring the fact that Danyal's masking just so he can pretend to have a normal kid. Aaabsolutely not. Mr. Paranoia Himself? Mr. 'Couldn't Mind His Own Business If It Shot him In The Foot'? The Blueprint for the rest of the family's paranoid tendencies? Especially with Danyal's background. I don't see him burying his head in the sand if he noticed that his other raised-by-assassins-child was hiding something or masking. Like noo way, not happening, Danyal is the last person he would do this. That's being addressed asap -- for multiple reasons beyond like the standard distrustful stuff (like a genuine want to actually help Danyal and get to know him). And that's not just bias talking! Even if I wasn't a chronic Bruce Enjoyer (when he's not being abusive, naturally) I'd probably still point this out.

Okay, whew, rant over. Sorry, that's like, the one thing I'm not gonna get over if I don't address it directly ajlshf. I would’ve imploded. Moving on!

What IS bias is me bumping Bruce up from being second to last (which I KNEW you were gonna do, i fucking CALLED IT lmao. Before I went to bed last night I thought “if I didn’t say Jason was last to know, it would’ve been Bruce”) and putting him after Dick for the aforementioned reasons above, and have him be the first to actually apologize for not realizing sooner that Danyal didn’t feel comfortable or safe enough to unmask in the house. That’s my bias speaking lol.

(I also think, personally, that Bruce is even kinda relieved the moment he realizes Danny was an act. Like that makes a ton more sense than the strangely self-actualized, almost suspiciously average child he met. Danny was almost too normal — like there were signs of being raised by the league, like of course his martial arts training and some other stuff. But it felt too… downplayed? Almost? Like Danny was below Damian in terms of ability. It was hard to believe he was raised in the League sometimes like Damian was.)

(But no, in reality Danyal was just playing them all for fiddles. I can’t help but imagine he walks into his study, closes the door, and then just goes “Oh thank god. He was just faking it.”)

(I imagine the whole family was kinda like this too. They were just, secretly, a tad relieved that Danny was an act. And then they have to help break Danyal’s league conditioning.)

I think after Bruce is Cass, then Alfred! Then everyone else lol. Yeah, if Danny’s not an active Bat then he probably stays out of the cave for the most part, unless he decides to help with comms or med or other Cave Work that isn’t Fieldwork. I’m torn between whether or not they know about his powers as Danny — Damian absolutely knows — but the rest? I don’t know if Danyal tells them as Danny or a long time after dropping the mask. It feels like something he’d also keep hidden (probably out of habit).

I’m not sure what to say about the family reacting to Danny returning to the league other than it feels a lot of the times that the fandom forgets that the batfam are ultimately meant to be kind people? At the end of the day, I struggle to imagine that they’d outright refuse to believe that Danny was faking it the whole time in that second option. Especially if they make Tim and Damian spill.

They’re all incredibly intelligent people and fabulous detectives, if the facts are right in front of them and there’s proof of it (Danny leaving and dropping his act), then they seem like the type to push past their shock and try and solve the problem. That’s not to say they don’t struggle with coming to terms with the fact that Danny was an act, but the idea they outright refuse to believe it? That sounds like standard DPXDC fanon mischaracterization.

Guuuhhh I’m writing this on mobile and the scrunched text makes it hard to follow my train of thought so I’m putting a pin in the whole “Danny returning to the league” thing for the time being, jfhs. If it’s alright with you, I can come back to it later today and go over it because its not like I disagree with the whole thing. I’m just struggling to get the words out with my phone.

But back to the fam fully meeting Danyal and other such adjacent ideas — this Danyal to me isn’t so much a sword user as he dual wields knives. Fantastic knife thrower over here, him and Damian spar for the first time in nearly half a decade and Damian knows immediately that his brother is going to beeline for the daggers — and he does. Damian gets this little smug look on his face.

Things like knives, small weapons, war fans, those are Danyal’s chosen poison, and as a “welcome home” gift, Damian gets in contact with Lucius and asks him to order a custom made rope dart — a weapon he knew his brother had been aching to get his little fingers on since their youth. It took some convincing to get Lucius to keep quiet about it, and Damian smuggled it in through the inventory they keep on all equipment under the blade section.

Damian ingrains Danyal’s stunned expression when he opened the gift to memory so he can sketch it out later in his notebook. Same with the touched, itty bitty smile he wore seconds later. He put it in the back so on the off-chance that someone goes through it, they would be less likely to find it. Danyal practices with it at night while everyone is on patrol, that way little to no one can find him using it. Danny doesn’t use weaponry after all. He’s a vicious storm of metal with it.

HAH when Danyal finally introduces the family to Cujo, he takes them out to the field in front of the manor, sticks his fingers in his mouth, and blows a piercing whistle — burning off some ectoplasm while doing it to alert Cujo better — through the air. Before bellowing a loud, echoing; “CUJO!”

There’s silence, his family looking between each other in various levels of concern, before the ground shakes, a hellish howl rattles the air, and Cujo bursts out the ground snarling and barking. I’ve only seen his first appearance and in that one he didn’t like literally anyone but Danny, and I think that’s hilarious so I’m keeping it. Cujo snarls and growls up until he spots Danyal, and then immediately reverts into a puppy and pounces on him. Hey, Damian has Goliath, Danyal has a St. Bernard hellhound the size of a school bus :]

Turns out, being placed in a civilian family who have no knowledge of your background is actually detrimental to the health and development of a child assassin due to lack of proper support! Surrounded by strangers in a foreign city, Danyal Al Ghul does as assassins do best. He hides. Espionage is one of many teachings one learns in the League, and it only takes half a day for Danyal to construct a new persona to hide behind: Daniel Fenton.

By the time dinner rolls around, Danyal al Ghul is safely and securely tucked behind the face of Danny Fenton; brand new adoptive child of the Fenton family who came from overseas. A shy, quiet little boy with a thick accent and curly hair, with brown skin and blue eyes, and an avid interest in the stars. The best fictions are always cobbled together in a little bit of truth, it's some of the only truth he ever lets through. He apologizes in a meek voice for his behavior early, he didn't mean to be rude, and he watches the three of them eat it up with coos.

Lies roll like silk against his lips, he struggles to meet their eyes and offers them his weakest, shyest smile. It's too easy. It's easy to go from there.

Danny Fenton, adoptive son, shy and awkward and unconfident but friendly. Who struggles in his classes and isn't the brightest, but tries his hardest. He makes bad jokes and has a quick tongue and a sarcastic mouth. He wants to be an astronaut. He's got the best aim in school, and is a terrifying dodgeball player. He's one of the least athletic kids in his grade.

It's like playing two truths and a lie, but there's only one truth, and the rest are lies. It's easy to pretend when he knows it's insincere.

Danyal Al Ghul, grandson to the Demon Head. Deadly, trained assassin. Has spilled blood, has had blood spilt from. Environmentalist, animal activist. He loves the stars. He owns a calligraphy set. A sharp tongue, an even sharper blade. He's clever, quick-witted, he would be top of his grade if he tried harder. He purposely doesn't.

He misses his family. He misses his mother, and he misses his brother. Mother visits a few times a year, so few times that he can count it on both hands. He cherishes every visit, as brief as they are. It helps remind him who he is.

Sam and Tucker are Danny's best friends. They've never met Danyal, but Danyal's met them.

It becomes routine to become Danny Fenton. As familiar and as easy as pulling on a shirt in the morning. Danyal wakes up and is always first to the bathroom in the mornings; stares at himself in the mirror until he can finally see Danny staring back at him. At night, he locks his door and sheds the mask.

Dying throws a wrench in his mask; splits a crack straight through the porcelain. He's able to smooth it over with sandpaper and liquid gold, but it's a little hard keeping his ghost form under wraps. It instinctively wants to shift to show his true self. Danyal can't have that, he's spent four years as Danny Fenton, he'll spend another four as him as well. Even if the feeling of the hazmat suit in his ghost form feels restrictive, like a too-small shirt suctioned to his skin that needs to be peeled off.

He'll live. Er-- well, you know what he means. It's frustrating however, trying to keep his Danny Fenton mask up even as Phantom - fighting in the air is something he needs to get used to, and the sudden propping of powers throws him off. But he is nothing if not adaptive, and he hates that he needs to slow his own skills down in order to keep pretenses up in front of Sam and Tucker.

The first time Danyal summons a sword when he's alone, is one of the few times Danyal gets to grin instead of Danny. He's fighting Skulker, and from an invisible hilt he draws a katana from thin air. It startles them both. Skulker takes a step back at the smile that spreads across his face.

They're both silent as Danyal examines his new sword.

"Do you know what people like me do to people like you, poacher?" Danyal finally asks him, the accent he began to hide a few months in slipping through. He drops all pretense, dragging the flat end of the blade slow and appreciatively against his palm. It's a good make, and when he cuts it through the air, it slices through like butter. He looks up at Skulker with a smile; "are you ready to find out?"

When Sam and Tucker ask about why Skulker seems so skittish around Danny now, Danny shrugs at them and says with a playful smile; "I don't know, I guess I kicked his butt too hard after our last fight." and he watches as Sam rolls her eyes exasperatedly, and Tucker snickers with his own joke.

Starry over here making more aus. ^^

But yeah I feel like this needs to be addressed more. Like, I’ve only seen maybe two or three other posts that truly show just how deep he buried Danyal, but none that actually address the matter.

But here’s a better question. Do they even want to help? Sure Damian might, but he remembers the Danyal he grew up with, so he knows exactly how much of himself Danyal buried away under Danny. But the others? To the rest of the family, Danny is a normal child. He smiles easy, laughs at jokes, plays pranks, and knows how to have fun and make friends. He cares deeply about his family and would never hurt a fly. He is easygoing and approachable, can seamlessly slide into society as if he was always there. He is the very definition of “that one quiet kid” who always smiles and waves if anyone approaches them. He is everyone’s dream boy and is a picture perfect son almost 24/7.

Danny is everything they want Damien to be.

Why throw that all away to dig up someone they think is already gone? Someone they don’t realize is there? I’m sure that some members of the fam would recognize the mask due to Brucie, but I don’t think they would recognize that’s it’s really there. At least not in the beginning when Danny is all they see.

I think it would take a long time for Danny to let his guard down enough for Danyal to want to take off the mask. For Danny to let him out long enough to see how they react. Damian would be happy if he did, but what of the others?

Oftentimes, when all a person gets to see is the carefully painted mask their “friend” wears, seeing a glimpse of what’s beneath will almost always result in either shock or confusion.

Danny lets out a bit of attitude when someone is being rude? He’s acting out to get attention.

Danny does his homework in calligraphy? Teased relentlessly by sibling and peers (sans Damian who knows that Danyal used to fill out reports in perfect calligraphy).

Danny is getting perfect scores on purpose? Sudden spotlight and countless eyes.

More often than not, when someone wears a mask long enough, it can be hard to take it off. Especially when all the premeditated responses they would normally predict with the mask are no longer there. The mask stops being a tool and starts being a safety net. Now he has to have it on lest he gain any sort of negative response.

They won’t want to fix him, because they think he’s already fixed. He won’t want to be fixed, because he doesn’t think he needs to be fixed. As far as both parties are concerned, there is nothing wrong, and thus no need to pay any mind to it.

The greatest appeal in Danyal Al Ghul aus (to me) will forever and always be the effects of growing up in a league will do to Danny. I think I've only got one DAG au where Danny didn't grow up in the League -- my stillborn Danyal au -- and he's got so many issues.

But yes!! I agree with everything you've said here -- especially on the whole 'when someone wears a mask all the time, it's hard to take off' thing! I was thinking that same thing too, I just didn't get into it on my post since it was like, midnight when I posted it.

I def think the batfam would be prepared for something with Danny when they first meet him -- they're thinking that they might run into a carbon copy of Damian when they finally meet Danny. Only to find out that's.. not... the case? Like oh yeah, they definitely think something's up, nobody who grew up in the League of Assassins comes out THAT well-adjusted -- Damian's still pretty prickly on his best of days -- but it quickly rounds out to them assuming that Danny's mild cynicism and sarcasm is just him lowering pretenses. He's like a declawed version of Damian.

I can picture very mild, brief jokes about hey maybe they should've had Damian go live with civilians for a little bit too, before saying that nah, it would've ended up in disaster. Not thinking about how it ended up in disaster for Danny too; look at him. He's too acclimated to civilian life. The true self is hidden behind the false.

I'm also thinking about how like, Damian is the only person Danny feels truly comfortable around enough with to let pretenses drop. And even then, it takes weeeks of Damian slowly chipping away at Danny's mask when they're alone for him to finally start, willingly, loosing his hold on the persona.

"I don't want to talk to Danny," Damian tells him bluntly, harshly, every day when no one's around, "let me talk to Danyal. Where's my brother."

"I'm right here." Danny lies, and Damian can see right through him.

"No, you're not."

Until eventually Danyal starts peeking through, and Damian is so relieved. He's been peeling layer after layer back to find him, and now he's standing right in front of him. Still hiding, but now with proof he's there. It's like coaxing out a feral animal out from under the porch. When Danyal gets too exhausted with keeping up his lies and masking, he goes to Damian's room and locks, double locks, triple locks the door and draws the curtains, and heaves a shaky sigh.

"يوم طويل؟" Damian asks him where he's reading a book from his bed, watching his brother cocoon himself worse than their father does. It makes his heart hurt a little, to see him hide so much. ("Long day?")

His brother groans, ragged and drawn out, and drags his fingers through his hair. Inadvertently, symbolically, pulling it out of its normal 'danny' style. He looks exhausted. "طويل جدًا." ("Too long.")

He's still hiding chunks of himself away, the both of them sit in Damian's room and it's like watching a broken TV glitch between channels. He can see Danyal fluctuate between masks even when it's just the two of them. Instinctively hiding before realizing belatedly that he doesn't need to.

Damian keeps trying to encourage Danyal to come out of his mask more, and each time it blows up in his face. He's incredibly frustrated by it, and Danyal keeps brushing it off and insisting that it's for the best. He doesn't need fixing, they don't think he needs to be fixed.

Don't get me started on Danny's morals either. I firmly believe they should be messed up. Like sure, Danny doesn't believe in killing and thinks it's wrong and all that jazz, but Danny is just a mask. Danyal thinks you just shouldn't be foolish enough to get caught. He never actually deconstructed those League ideals, he's just pretending he did.

By 14, I think Damian would still make bodily threats of harm against people, but he's less likely to actually go through with it than he was when he was 10, especially if the more graphic they are. Meanwhile, if Danyal wasn't wearing his Danny mask, he'd actually go through with it and then tell you to walk it off. Damian, by 14, would warn before stabbing, Danny would stab as warning.

because, as my delightful best friend @the-navistar-carol put it last night when I was ranting to her about this au/idea: "once he carves out the mask of Danny, he has no reason to take the world at face value as Danyal". Danyal is not outright more vocally violent -- largely in part of trying to keep his mask in place as Danny, even as Phantom since Phantom is Danny's alter ego, not Danyal's -- but I firmly imagine him being more ruthless than Damian. Because he's just, not gone through any deprogramming in the last four years. Not anything significant at least.

They're back to square one with Danny and they don't even know it because he's not showing it.

There's a lot of nuance here that's easier to show in writing than it is to explain it. But TL:DR: Damian is, funnily enough? The kinder brother between the two of them.

And I imagine that when it's finally revealed that Danny's been acting this entire time, it's when something or someone directly puts Damian in significant harm's way. The life-threatening, 'he can't get out of this on his own and needs rescue' kind.

You know Antinous' song excerpt from Jorge Rivera-Herrans' musical "Epic"? The "hold him down while I slowly break his pride, his trust, his faith, and his bones." line? Danyal's energy right there when Damian's life is endangered. All bets are off, the gloves are off. He's saving his brother by any means necessary.

Tim comes over to see Danyal reading a book, one that would be otherwise considered out of "Danny's" range. My heart that yearns to make Danny the artistic/musician/the arts member of the Fenton family says it's a non-scientific book. He's reading A Midsummer Night's Dream, something that Danny, known disliker of English and all it's forms, wouldn't be caught dead reading.

Tim walks over and manages to sneak up on Danyal enough to recognize the title -- which he does a significant distance away -- before Danyal realizes someone is there, and he watches like the rusty pull of a lever as Danyal tenses up and sinks into his chair. Pretends to furrow his brows and purse his lips together like he's struggling to understand the text, pulling the book up closer to his face. A stark difference to the easy, relaxed expression he was wearing just earlier.

By the time he reaches the armchair, "Danny" jumps like he's been startled and snaps his head up, and an easy, fake smile spreads across his face. "Timmy!" He says, playful, and quickly, rapidly snaps his book closed. "Man, you startled me! I didn't even hear you walk over."

With the book closed, he casually leans over and places it on the coffee table a few feet in front of him with the cover facing down, he's still smiling; embarrassed and just slightly bashful. Tim has to hand it to him, it's a really good mask. "Some assassin I am, huh? Didn't even realize."

It's a blatant lie; Danyal had noticed Tim walking up to him before he'd even seen him.

Tim offers back a friendly smile, and leans around him to look at the book. "Must've been some book you were reading then, if you were that engrossed in it."

Danny makes the 'aw no' face, curled lip and propped open mouth, arched eyebrow and everything. He waves Tim off with self-deprecating ease. "Aw, no. More like barely understanding it, it's some... Shakespeare book I was assigned for class. Dami's better at this kinda stuff."

He's not sure why, but he'd been almost hoping Danyal would've told him the truth. But a mask does what a mask must do, and that is hide the one wearing it. He decides to take a risk. "I'm sure that's not true, Danyal."

A handful of times eavesdropping on Damian and Danyal in order to confirm his theory has taught him that, when Danny isn't wearing mask, he prefers to go by Danyal.

The effect is more immediate than he was expecting; for a split, fleeting moment, Danny's smile falters on his face, his brows genuinely wrinkle, and his eyes flash with a depth unseen. Then it's gone, like the blink of a firefly. Danny laughs low and hollowly.

Now that Tim knows he's been faking, it's easier to hear the emptiness in it.

"You don't have to call me Danyal, Tim." He tells him, sitting up slightly. Danny tilts his head like a confused puppy. "Danny works just fine."

"Isn't that your name though?" Tim mimics him, and tilts his head the same way. "Danyal?"

He takes a gamble.

"That's who I'm talking to, right?"

And it works.

Danyal's eyes narrow, just a smidge, and his smile fades until it's merely a turn at the corner. Searching, questioning... Hopeful. All under a guise of mischievously playful. "...Perhaps." Whenever they've spoken, Danny's always talked in a near-perfect Midwestern American accent, with very slight tonal changes. Here, Tim can clearly hear the same lilt of an accent that Damian has.

Danyal is testing him, seeing if Tim is actually asking for him, and not just trying to get a rise out of Danny.

Score. He smiles wider. Tim leans casually against the nearest chair, and tilts his head the other way. "Then, Can I ask again what you're reading, Danyal?"

Danyal's smile returns, and slants up slightly. Rather than Danny's teeth-bared grins, this one is closed mouth and far more sincere despite being much fainter. "It's 'A Midsummer's Night'. Have you read it?"

Victory. Hello, Danyal.

But all of this gets me wondering how Damian finds out that Tim talked to Danyal though. I imagine this happens, as I mentioned earlier, after Damian has succeeded in talking to Danyal and not Danny so Danyal is more open to being himself around the Batfan.

So did Danyal tell Damian himself? Does Tim bring it up? Does Damian find Tim talking to what he can clearly identify as his brother Danyal and not Danny?

And even after he finds out I wonder how it affects Tim and Damian’s relationship. Does Damian become jealous of Tim managing to talk to Danyal in only one attempt despite it taking him so many to break through Danny to get to Danyal? Does it bring them closer as Damian and Tim hang out with Danyal? Do they team up to get Danyal to discard Danny?

Do Tim and Danyal grow closer as they discuss their different masks and the people in their lives being unable to identify when they fall into them? Does Tim try and help Danyal break out of the Leagues conditioning? Does Tim invite Danyal to his apartment to be himself and spar or just hang out? Does Danyal listen to Tim? Does he respect Tim? Does he view Tim differently to the rest of the batfam for wanting to meet Danyal and not just Danny?

Do the rest of the Batfam notice Tim and Danyal getting closer? Do they make jokes? Comparisons to how Damian and Tim were when Damian first came to the Manor?

Does Tim introduce Danyal to the Titans? Have they already met Danny? Does Tim inform the rest of the batclan or does he keep it to himself?

(I HC that he prefers to speak in Arabic out of an old habit he developed, it helps him drop masking easier and during the times he went undercover in the League it was usually in a different language. So now it's just a habit he never really bothered to correct. He's just more comfortable speaking in Arabic, .English and any other language have always been used when he's 'hiding'.)

I think Danyal should bring it up, he goes to see Damian later that day and tells him that he was right, and that Drake is very intelligent and observant. He noticed Danyal's masking and essentially called him out on it today. He tells him about the interaction with Tim.

Damian takes it better than expected. He does rather respect Drake even if he doesn't outwardly show it to his face, and he was encouraging Danyal to try and open up more. He pretends to be all huffy about the fact that it had to be Tim that figured it out first, but in reality he's just pleased someone realized at all.

It do think it does bring them closer once Danyal begins actually opening up to Tim. Tim finds himself being hunted down by Damian and then dragged to one of their rooms to hang out because Damian needs to gang up on Danyal for something -- although this only happens when Damian finds Tim alone Because despite his encouragement, he doesn't want to force Danyal into dropping all of his masks when he's not ready because that will just result in Danyal shutting him out.

they do absolutely team up to convince Danyal to discard Danny! With two against one it makes for an easier argument, but Danyal is an Al Ghul and a Wayne, so he's twice the stubborn ass.

Yes to all of that about Tim and Danyal. Once Tim realizes Danyal hasn't broken out of the league conditioning, he teams up with Damian to help dismantle it. He's older, so it's harder because a lot of that has been cemented into him, but he trusts Damian and he's starting to trust Tim, so he's willing to listen. Whether he takes it to heart is a different story, but it can happen. Danyal does like sparring with Tim, and likes that the apartment/houseboat is a safe place he can go to be himself.

And yes, I think it'd be funny (and kinda angsty) if the rest of the family commented on the fact that Tim and Danny seemed to get along better than Damian and Tim did when they first arrived. It has this weird effect of causing Danyal to turtleshell into himself more, something Tim and Damian both notice whenever these comparisons happen. So neither of them like it when the family makes these jokes.

Tim def does eventually introduce the Teen Titans/YJ to Danyal eventually, i think. And Tim absolutely keeps the fact that Danny is a mask to himself for similar reasons as to why Damian doesn't just outright expose it. Danyal should come out when he's ready, and the family themselves need to figure it out on their own too.

Telling a family of a paranoids that Damian's twin has been faking being all nice and polite and self-actualized this whole time before they themselves realized it? That could most certainly end in disaster. Whether it be the rest of the family believing him and reacting badly, or them not believing him and only doubling down on the validity of Danny --further pushing Danyal back into his shell.

Turns out, being placed in a civilian family who have no knowledge of your background is actually detrimental to the health and development of a child assassin due to lack of proper support! Surrounded by strangers in a foreign city, Danyal Al Ghul does as assassins do best. He hides. Espionage is one of many teachings one learns in the League, and it only takes half a day for Danyal to construct a new persona to hide behind: Daniel Fenton.

By the time dinner rolls around, Danyal al Ghul is safely and securely tucked behind the face of Danny Fenton; brand new adoptive child of the Fenton family who came from overseas. A shy, quiet little boy with a thick accent and curly hair, with brown skin and blue eyes, and an avid interest in the stars. The best fictions are always cobbled together in a little bit of truth, it's some of the only truth he ever lets through. He apologizes in a meek voice for his behavior early, he didn't mean to be rude, and he watches the three of them eat it up with coos.

Lies roll like silk against his lips, he struggles to meet their eyes and offers them his weakest, shyest smile. It's too easy. It's easy to go from there.

Danny Fenton, adoptive son, shy and awkward and unconfident but friendly. Who struggles in his classes and isn't the brightest, but tries his hardest. He makes bad jokes and has a quick tongue and a sarcastic mouth. He wants to be an astronaut. He's got the best aim in school, and is a terrifying dodgeball player. He's one of the least athletic kids in his grade.

It's like playing two truths and a lie, but there's only one truth, and the rest are lies. It's easy to pretend when he knows it's insincere.

Danyal Al Ghul, grandson to the Demon Head. Deadly, trained assassin. Has spilled blood, has had blood spilt from. Environmentalist, animal activist. He loves the stars. He owns a calligraphy set. A sharp tongue, an even sharper blade. He's clever, quick-witted, he would be top of his grade if he tried harder. He purposely doesn't.

He misses his family. He misses his mother, and he misses his brother. Mother visits a few times a year, so few times that he can count it on both hands. He cherishes every visit, as brief as they are. It helps remind him who he is.

Sam and Tucker are Danny's best friends. They've never met Danyal, but Danyal's met them.

It becomes routine to become Danny Fenton. As familiar and as easy as pulling on a shirt in the morning. Danyal wakes up and is always first to the bathroom in the mornings; stares at himself in the mirror until he can finally see Danny staring back at him. At night, he locks his door and sheds the mask.

Dying throws a wrench in his mask; splits a crack straight through the porcelain. He's able to smooth it over with sandpaper and liquid gold, but it's a little hard keeping his ghost form under wraps. It instinctively wants to shift to show his true self. Danyal can't have that, he's spent four years as Danny Fenton, he'll spend another four as him as well. Even if the feeling of the hazmat suit in his ghost form feels restrictive, like a too-small shirt suctioned to his skin that needs to be peeled off.

He'll live. Er-- well, you know what he means. It's frustrating however, trying to keep his Danny Fenton mask up even as Phantom - fighting in the air is something he needs to get used to, and the sudden propping of powers throws him off. But he is nothing if not adaptive, and he hates that he needs to slow his own skills down in order to keep pretenses up in front of Sam and Tucker.

The first time Danyal summons a sword when he's alone, is one of the few times Danyal gets to grin instead of Danny. He's fighting Skulker, and from an invisible hilt he draws a katana from thin air. It startles them both. Skulker takes a step back at the smile that spreads across his face.

They're both silent as Danyal examines his new sword.

"Do you know what people like me do to people like you, poacher?" Danyal finally asks him, the accent he began to hide a few months in slipping through. He drops all pretense, dragging the flat end of the blade slow and appreciatively against his palm. It's a good make, and when he cuts it through the air, it slices through like butter. He looks up at Skulker with a smile; "are you ready to find out?"

When Sam and Tucker ask about why Skulker seems so skittish around Danny now, Danny shrugs at them and says with a playful smile; "I don't know, I guess I kicked his butt too hard after our last fight." and he watches as Sam rolls her eyes exasperatedly, and Tucker snickers with his own joke.

Starry over here making more aus. ^^

But yeah I feel like this needs to be addressed more. Like, I’ve only seen maybe two or three other posts that truly show just how deep he buried Danyal, but none that actually address the matter.

But here’s a better question. Do they even want to help? Sure Damian might, but he remembers the Danyal he grew up with, so he knows exactly how much of himself Danyal buried away under Danny. But the others? To the rest of the family, Danny is a normal child. He smiles easy, laughs at jokes, plays pranks, and knows how to have fun and make friends. He cares deeply about his family and would never hurt a fly. He is easygoing and approachable, can seamlessly slide into society as if he was always there. He is the very definition of “that one quiet kid” who always smiles and waves if anyone approaches them. He is everyone’s dream boy and is a picture perfect son almost 24/7.

Danny is everything they want Damien to be.

Why throw that all away to dig up someone they think is already gone? Someone they don’t realize is there? I’m sure that some members of the fam would recognize the mask due to Brucie, but I don’t think they would recognize that’s it’s really there. At least not in the beginning when Danny is all they see.

I think it would take a long time for Danny to let his guard down enough for Danyal to want to take off the mask. For Danny to let him out long enough to see how they react. Damian would be happy if he did, but what of the others?

Oftentimes, when all a person gets to see is the carefully painted mask their “friend” wears, seeing a glimpse of what’s beneath will almost always result in either shock or confusion.

Danny lets out a bit of attitude when someone is being rude? He’s acting out to get attention.

Danny does his homework in calligraphy? Teased relentlessly by sibling and peers (sans Damian who knows that Danyal used to fill out reports in perfect calligraphy).

Danny is getting perfect scores on purpose? Sudden spotlight and countless eyes.

More often than not, when someone wears a mask long enough, it can be hard to take it off. Especially when all the premeditated responses they would normally predict with the mask are no longer there. The mask stops being a tool and starts being a safety net. Now he has to have it on lest he gain any sort of negative response.

They won’t want to fix him, because they think he’s already fixed. He won’t want to be fixed, because he doesn’t think he needs to be fixed. As far as both parties are concerned, there is nothing wrong, and thus no need to pay any mind to it.

The greatest appeal in Danyal Al Ghul aus (to me) will forever and always be the effects of growing up in a league will do to Danny. I think I've only got one DAG au where Danny didn't grow up in the League -- my stillborn Danyal au -- and he's got so many issues.

But yes!! I agree with everything you've said here -- especially on the whole 'when someone wears a mask all the time, it's hard to take off' thing! I was thinking that same thing too, I just didn't get into it on my post since it was like, midnight when I posted it.

I def think the batfam would be prepared for something with Danny when they first meet him -- they're thinking that they might run into a carbon copy of Damian when they finally meet Danny. Only to find out that's.. not... the case? Like oh yeah, they definitely think something's up, nobody who grew up in the League of Assassins comes out THAT well-adjusted -- Damian's still pretty prickly on his best of days -- but it quickly rounds out to them assuming that Danny's mild cynicism and sarcasm is just him lowering pretenses. He's like a declawed version of Damian.

I can picture very mild, brief jokes about hey maybe they should've had Damian go live with civilians for a little bit too, before saying that nah, it would've ended up in disaster. Not thinking about how it ended up in disaster for Danny too; look at him. He's too acclimated to civilian life. The true self is hidden behind the false.

I'm also thinking about how like, Damian is the only person Danny feels truly comfortable around enough with to let pretenses drop. And even then, it takes weeeks of Damian slowly chipping away at Danny's mask when they're alone for him to finally start, willingly, loosing his hold on the persona.

"I don't want to talk to Danny," Damian tells him bluntly, harshly, every day when no one's around, "let me talk to Danyal. Where's my brother."

"I'm right here." Danny lies, and Damian can see right through him.

"No, you're not."

Until eventually Danyal starts peeking through, and Damian is so relieved. He's been peeling layer after layer back to find him, and now he's standing right in front of him. Still hiding, but now with proof he's there. It's like coaxing out a feral animal out from under the porch. When Danyal gets too exhausted with keeping up his lies and masking, he goes to Damian's room and locks, double locks, triple locks the door and draws the curtains, and heaves a shaky sigh.

"يوم طويل؟" Damian asks him where he's reading a book from his bed, watching his brother cocoon himself worse than their father does. It makes his heart hurt a little, to see him hide so much. ("Long day?")

His brother groans, ragged and drawn out, and drags his fingers through his hair. Inadvertently, symbolically, pulling it out of its normal 'danny' style. He looks exhausted. "طويل جدًا." ("Too long.")

He's still hiding chunks of himself away, the both of them sit in Damian's room and it's like watching a broken TV glitch between channels. He can see Danyal fluctuate between masks even when it's just the two of them. Instinctively hiding before realizing belatedly that he doesn't need to.

Damian keeps trying to encourage Danyal to come out of his mask more, and each time it blows up in his face. He's incredibly frustrated by it, and Danyal keeps brushing it off and insisting that it's for the best. He doesn't need fixing, they don't think he needs to be fixed.

Don't get me started on Danny's morals either. I firmly believe they should be messed up. Like sure, Danny doesn't believe in killing and thinks it's wrong and all that jazz, but Danny is just a mask. Danyal thinks you just shouldn't be foolish enough to get caught. He never actually deconstructed those League ideals, he's just pretending he did.

By 14, I think Damian would still make bodily threats of harm against people, but he's less likely to actually go through with it than he was when he was 10, especially if the more graphic they are. Meanwhile, if Danyal wasn't wearing his Danny mask, he'd actually go through with it and then tell you to walk it off. Damian, by 14, would warn before stabbing, Danny would stab as warning.

because, as my delightful best friend @the-navistar-carol put it last night when I was ranting to her about this au/idea: "once he carves out the mask of Danny, he has no reason to take the world at face value as Danyal". Danyal is not outright more vocally violent -- largely in part of trying to keep his mask in place as Danny, even as Phantom since Phantom is Danny's alter ego, not Danyal's -- but I firmly imagine him being more ruthless than Damian. Because he's just, not gone through any deprogramming in the last four years. Not anything significant at least.

They're back to square one with Danny and they don't even know it because he's not showing it.

There's a lot of nuance here that's easier to show in writing than it is to explain it. But TL:DR: Damian is, funnily enough? The kinder brother between the two of them.

And I imagine that when it's finally revealed that Danny's been acting this entire time, it's when something or someone directly puts Damian in significant harm's way. The life-threatening, 'he can't get out of this on his own and needs rescue' kind.

You know Antinous' song excerpt from Jorge Rivera-Herrans' musical "Epic"? The "hold him down while I slowly break his pride, his trust, his faith, and his bones." line? Danyal's energy right there when Damian's life is endangered. All bets are off, the gloves are off. He's saving his brother by any means necessary.

Tim comes over to see Danyal reading a book, one that would be otherwise considered out of "Danny's" range. My heart that yearns to make Danny the artistic/musician/the arts member of the Fenton family says it's a non-scientific book. He's reading A Midsummer Night's Dream, something that Danny, known disliker of English and all it's forms, wouldn't be caught dead reading.

Tim walks over and manages to sneak up on Danyal enough to recognize the title -- which he does a significant distance away -- before Danyal realizes someone is there, and he watches like the rusty pull of a lever as Danyal tenses up and sinks into his chair. Pretends to furrow his brows and purse his lips together like he's struggling to understand the text, pulling the book up closer to his face. A stark difference to the easy, relaxed expression he was wearing just earlier.

By the time he reaches the armchair, "Danny" jumps like he's been startled and snaps his head up, and an easy, fake smile spreads across his face. "Timmy!" He says, playful, and quickly, rapidly snaps his book closed. "Man, you startled me! I didn't even hear you walk over."

With the book closed, he casually leans over and places it on the coffee table a few feet in front of him with the cover facing down, he's still smiling; embarrassed and just slightly bashful. Tim has to hand it to him, it's a really good mask. "Some assassin I am, huh? Didn't even realize."

It's a blatant lie; Danyal had noticed Tim walking up to him before he'd even seen him.

Tim offers back a friendly smile, and leans around him to look at the book. "Must've been some book you were reading then, if you were that engrossed in it."

Danny makes the 'aw no' face, curled lip and propped open mouth, arched eyebrow and everything. He waves Tim off with self-deprecating ease. "Aw, no. More like barely understanding it, it's some... Shakespeare book I was assigned for class. Dami's better at this kinda stuff."

He's not sure why, but he'd been almost hoping Danyal would've told him the truth. But a mask does what a mask must do, and that is hide the one wearing it. He decides to take a risk. "I'm sure that's not true, Danyal."

A handful of times eavesdropping on Damian and Danyal in order to confirm his theory has taught him that, when Danny isn't wearing mask, he prefers to go by Danyal.

The effect is more immediate than he was expecting; for a split, fleeting moment, Danny's smile falters on his face, his brows genuinely wrinkle, and his eyes flash with a depth unseen. Then it's gone, like the blink of a firefly. Danny laughs low and hollowly.

Now that Tim knows he's been faking, it's easier to hear the emptiness in it.

"You don't have to call me Danyal, Tim." He tells him, sitting up slightly. Danny tilts his head like a confused puppy. "Danny works just fine."

"Isn't that your name though?" Tim mimics him, and tilts his head the same way. "Danyal?"

He takes a gamble.

"That's who I'm talking to, right?"

And it works.

Danyal's eyes narrow, just a smidge, and his smile fades until it's merely a turn at the corner. Searching, questioning... Hopeful. All under a guise of mischievously playful. "...Perhaps." Whenever they've spoken, Danny's always talked in a near-perfect Midwestern American accent, with very slight tonal changes. Here, Tim can clearly hear the same lilt of an accent that Damian has.

Danyal is testing him, seeing if Tim is actually asking for him, and not just trying to get a rise out of Danny.

Score. He smiles wider. Tim leans casually against the nearest chair, and tilts his head the other way. "Then, Can I ask again what you're reading, Danyal?"

Danyal's smile returns, and slants up slightly. Rather than Danny's teeth-bared grins, this one is closed mouth and far more sincere despite being much fainter. "It's 'A Midsummer's Night'. Have you read it?"

Victory. Hello, Danyal.

“Oh an Al Ghul! I do so love your family. Such friends of nature you all are.”

He can sense the ectoplasm radiating off it, and immediately pings it as some kind of zone flower. Not safe for mortal exposure, so he carefully digs it up with practiced hands and brings it home with him to put back in the Zone.

Except… he feels compelled… not to? It really is a lovely flower, it looks like some kind of lily variety. With reddish-pink petals like the xenian flower. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to keep it around a little longer to study it?

By the time he reaches Fentonworks, he’s entirely reluctant to return the flower. It’s unlike him, but he ends up leaving the pot he put it in on his desk. He can… return it later. Yeah, later.

It takes a full week before the possession is complete, but during the week Danny’s behavior grows steadily stranger and stranger. Sam and Tucker are used to his strange quirks, but this is bizarre even for him. Above all though, he looks exhausted, like he hasn’t been sleeping properly. They assume it’s ghosts again, so they don’t pester him too much.

Danyal grows steadily more agitated the longer he’s away from the flower, and he gets these awful headaches that get worse the longer the week goes on until by Thursday or so he can barely pay attention to class. Lancer sends him to the nurse’s office in the middle of class because he looks dazed and ill, Danny doesn’t bother protesting. He quietly mumbles an okay and leaves - which is how Lancer and everyone else knows he must be really out of it, because normally he detests the nurse’s office.

While all of this is happening, more of those flowers keep popping up around the city. If you pull one out, two more take its place. Like a hydra. It’s becoming a concern, but when Sam and Tucker bring it up to Danny he brushes it off.

“I don’t see a problem with it, they’re very pretty.”

“Danny, what if it’s a ghost? This is really weird.”

“It’s not, drop it.”

“But—“

“I said drop it!”

Danny hasn’t let anyone into his room since Tuesday. He found the flower on Sunday. He doesn’t show up to school on Friday, and Jazz says he hasn’t left his room at all since he was sent home by the nurse.

Sam and Tucker go to see him after school, and he refuses to let them in. But when Sam threatens to break in, he opens the door just enough to pop out and very rudely tell them to fuck off, he doesn’t want to talk to them. Sam stomps off with Tucker and says that he can call them when he’s ready to stop being an ass.

design notes:

- his cape is made of moss

- that flower on his chest is the same flower that he found that later on possessed him

- his sclera is green. when danny's mostly in control his iris are blue, when undergrowth is controlling him, his iris is green and pupils are white.

- the thorn vines wrapped around his arms are drawing blood and slowly killing him

- he's barefoot, the hem of his pants are all torn at mid-calf

- the tips of his fingers are green, and the green slowly grows more upward the longer he loses blood as a sort of visual indicator of his transformation into a full ghost

Because the people that like her yet acknowledge her glaring flaws do a far better job of bringing her to task when she's being unreasonable or hypocritical in a way that's fair than the supposedly professional storyboard writers.

Anyway, you mentioned that you don't like amethyst ocean and prefer gray ghost. Same here. (though I also like pink astronaut) Since then, I can't stop imagining Danyal/Danny with the "Damian experiencing his first crush" headcanon applied to him. The idea of him treating Valerie with suspicion under the assumption she somehow poisoned or hit him with some kind of hidden anti ghost tech that affects both his human and ghost side, when in reality it's simply him developing feelings for her is just absolute hilarity. To me if no one else.

FIRST OFF YOU ARE SO SWEET <33 the fact that you've read my post about Double Cross My Heart SEVERAL TIMES means I'm now morally obligated to die for you. I'll admit! I was a bit harsh on Sam a little in my original response, because I was irritated by some depictions of her in fanon painting her as someone who could do no wrong and had the only braincell in the group. So I was kinda picking on her a little bit. Would I change a thing? No, I love her character, I just love dissecting her flaws even more.

AND ALSO YOU'RE SO RIGHT ABOUT THE DANYAL THING. That's so cute and so funny, effective immediately it is now canon🧑‍⚖️ . He fought Red Huntress earlier that day and she got a lucky good hit on him, and it's literally that one Marina reaction image where the first panel she looks shocked, the next she looks into it. At least part of it. That's literally what happened, and the next time Danny runs into Valerie at school his heart flutters.

Danny puts up this whole conspiracy board because Valerie smiled at him and his heart went all flippy-floppy and what is this FEELING. He shows it to Sam and Tucker and they both are doing that hands folded prayer-style pressed against their mouths in concern thing, and they don't know whether they should laugh or cry.

Because on one hand: oh my GOD, Danny. But on the OTHER: on my god, Danny. He's never gonna live this one down but that's because if they don't tease him about it, they're gonna get all mopey and sad about it. Just another reminder of their best friend's tragic, mysterious background.

aaa. There are some headcanons I wanna go over (like how when they go on a date, Danny and Valerie have this cute heart to heart where Danny admits that he's not used to being open with people, but he wants to try to be with Valerie because she makes him really happy. He's so shy and almost flustered, and Valerie is so charmed by this side of Danyal Fenton that she's not used to.) but I REALLY wanna think about this in terms of episodic because it was super fun doing it last time, and I really enjoyed it.

If you remember (and you prolly do since you mentioned you read the last ask you sent me several times) I said in the Gregory post that I deleted a (frankly good chunk) of writing that included how i would change the Valerie episodes leading up to the Gregory one, but I deleted it because it was kinda irrelevant to the ask, and admittedly I was getting myself all twisted in knots about it.

But I kinda wanna do that now.

So. If you don't mind I am. Gonna do that. And luckily for me! I found the website I can do. that for free, and have it pulled up! It's the same one I used for the last post to chart out the gregory episode.

Turns out, being placed in a civilian family who have no knowledge of your background is actually detrimental to the health and development of a child assassin due to lack of proper support! Surrounded by strangers in a foreign city, Danyal Al Ghul does as assassins do best. He hides. Espionage is one of many teachings one learns in the League, and it only takes half a day for Danyal to construct a new persona to hide behind: Daniel Fenton.

By the time dinner rolls around, Danyal al Ghul is safely and securely tucked behind the face of Danny Fenton; brand new adoptive child of the Fenton family who came from overseas. A shy, quiet little boy with a thick accent and curly hair, with brown skin and blue eyes, and an avid interest in the stars. The best fictions are always cobbled together in a little bit of truth, it's some of the only truth he ever lets through. He apologizes in a meek voice for his behavior early, he didn't mean to be rude, and he watches the three of them eat it up with coos.

Lies roll like silk against his lips, he struggles to meet their eyes and offers them his weakest, shyest smile. It's too easy. It's easy to go from there.

Danny Fenton, adoptive son, shy and awkward and unconfident but friendly. Who struggles in his classes and isn't the brightest, but tries his hardest. He makes bad jokes and has a quick tongue and a sarcastic mouth. He wants to be an astronaut. He's got the best aim in school, and is a terrifying dodgeball player. He's one of the least athletic kids in his grade.

It's like playing two truths and a lie, but there's only one truth, and the rest are lies. It's easy to pretend when he knows it's insincere.

Danyal Al Ghul, grandson to the Demon Head. Deadly, trained assassin. Has spilled blood, has had blood spilt from. Environmentalist, animal activist. He loves the stars. He owns a calligraphy set. A sharp tongue, an even sharper blade. He's clever, quick-witted, he would be top of his grade if he tried harder. He purposely doesn't.

He misses his family. He misses his mother, and he misses his brother. Mother visits a few times a year, so few times that he can count it on both hands. He cherishes every visit, as brief as they are. It helps remind him who he is.

Sam and Tucker are Danny's best friends. They've never met Danyal, but Danyal's met them.

It becomes routine to become Danny Fenton. As familiar and as easy as pulling on a shirt in the morning. Danyal wakes up and is always first to the bathroom in the mornings; stares at himself in the mirror until he can finally see Danny staring back at him. At night, he locks his door and sheds the mask.

Dying throws a wrench in his mask; splits a crack straight through the porcelain. He's able to smooth it over with sandpaper and liquid gold, but it's a little hard keeping his ghost form under wraps. It instinctively wants to shift to show his true self. Danyal can't have that, he's spent four years as Danny Fenton, he'll spend another four as him as well. Even if the feeling of the hazmat suit in his ghost form feels restrictive, like a too-small shirt suctioned to his skin that needs to be peeled off.

He'll live. Er-- well, you know what he means. It's frustrating however, trying to keep his Danny Fenton mask up even as Phantom - fighting in the air is something he needs to get used to, and the sudden propping of powers throws him off. But he is nothing if not adaptive, and he hates that he needs to slow his own skills down in order to keep pretenses up in front of Sam and Tucker.

The first time Danyal summons a sword when he's alone, is one of the few times Danyal gets to grin instead of Danny. He's fighting Skulker, and from an invisible hilt he draws a katana from thin air. It startles them both. Skulker takes a step back at the smile that spreads across his face.

They're both silent as Danyal examines his new sword.

"Do you know what people like me do to people like you, poacher?" Danyal finally asks him, the accent he began to hide a few months in slipping through. He drops all pretense, dragging the flat end of the blade slow and appreciatively against his palm. It's a good make, and when he cuts it through the air, it slices through like butter. He looks up at Skulker with a smile; "are you ready to find out?"

When Sam and Tucker ask about why Skulker seems so skittish around Danny now, Danny shrugs at them and says with a playful smile; "I don't know, I guess I kicked his butt too hard after our last fight." and he watches as Sam rolls her eyes exasperatedly, and Tucker snickers with his own joke.

Turns out, being placed in a civilian family who have no knowledge of your background is actually detrimental to the health and development of a child assassin due to lack of proper support! Surrounded by strangers in a foreign city, Danyal Al Ghul does as assassins do best. He hides. Espionage is one of many teachings one learns in the League, and it only takes half a day for Danyal to construct a new persona to hide behind: Daniel Fenton.

By the time dinner rolls around, Danyal al Ghul is safely and securely tucked behind the face of Danny Fenton; brand new adoptive child of the Fenton family who came from overseas. A shy, quiet little boy with a thick accent and curly hair, with brown skin and blue eyes, and an avid interest in the stars. The best fictions are always cobbled together in a little bit of truth, it's some of the only truth he ever lets through. He apologizes in a meek voice for his behavior early, he didn't mean to be rude, and he watches the three of them eat it up with coos.

Lies roll like silk against his lips, he struggles to meet their eyes and offers them his weakest, shyest smile. It's too easy. It's easy to go from there.

Danny Fenton, adoptive son, shy and awkward and unconfident but friendly. Who struggles in his classes and isn't the brightest, but tries his hardest. He makes bad jokes and has a quick tongue and a sarcastic mouth. He wants to be an astronaut. He's got the best aim in school, and is a terrifying dodgeball player. He's one of the least athletic kids in his grade.

It's like playing two truths and a lie, but there's only one truth, and the rest are lies. It's easy to pretend when he knows it's insincere.

Danyal Al Ghul, grandson to the Demon Head. Deadly, trained assassin. Has spilled blood, has had blood spilt from. Environmentalist, animal activist. He loves the stars. He owns a calligraphy set. A sharp tongue, an even sharper blade. He's clever, quick-witted, he would be top of his grade if he tried harder. He purposely doesn't.

He misses his family. He misses his mother, and he misses his brother. Mother visits a few times a year, so few times that he can count it on both hands. He cherishes every visit, as brief as they are. It helps remind him who he is.

Sam and Tucker are Danny's best friends. They've never met Danyal, but Danyal's met them.

It becomes routine to become Danny Fenton. As familiar and as easy as pulling on a shirt in the morning. Danyal wakes up and is always first to the bathroom in the mornings; stares at himself in the mirror until he can finally see Danny staring back at him. At night, he locks his door and sheds the mask.

Dying throws a wrench in his mask; splits a crack straight through the porcelain. He's able to smooth it over with sandpaper and liquid gold, but it's a little hard keeping his ghost form under wraps. It instinctively wants to shift to show his true self. Danyal can't have that, he's spent four years as Danny Fenton, he'll spend another four as him as well. Even if the feeling of the hazmat suit in his ghost form feels restrictive, like a too-small shirt suctioned to his skin that needs to be peeled off.

He'll live. Er-- well, you know what he means. It's frustrating however, trying to keep his Danny Fenton mask up even as Phantom - fighting in the air is something he needs to get used to, and the sudden propping of powers throws him off. But he is nothing if not adaptive, and he hates that he needs to slow his own skills down in order to keep pretenses up in front of Sam and Tucker.

The first time Danyal summons a sword when he's alone, is one of the few times Danyal gets to grin instead of Danny. He's fighting Skulker, and from an invisible hilt he draws a katana from thin air. It startles them both. Skulker takes a step back at the smile that spreads across his face.

They're both silent as Danyal examines his new sword.

"Do you know what people like me do to people like you, poacher?" Danyal finally asks him, the accent he began to hide a few months in slipping through. He drops all pretense, dragging the flat end of the blade slow and appreciatively against his palm. It's a good make, and when he cuts it through the air, it slices through like butter. He looks up at Skulker with a smile; "are you ready to find out?"

When Sam and Tucker ask about why Skulker seems so skittish around Danny now, Danny shrugs at them and says with a playful smile; "I don't know, I guess I kicked his butt too hard after our last fight." and he watches as Sam rolls her eyes exasperatedly, and Tucker snickers with his own joke.

Starry over here making more aus. ^^

But yeah I feel like this needs to be addressed more. Like, I’ve only seen maybe two or three other posts that truly show just how deep he buried Danyal, but none that actually address the matter.

But here’s a better question. Do they even want to help? Sure Damian might, but he remembers the Danyal he grew up with, so he knows exactly how much of himself Danyal buried away under Danny. But the others? To the rest of the family, Danny is a normal child. He smiles easy, laughs at jokes, plays pranks, and knows how to have fun and make friends. He cares deeply about his family and would never hurt a fly. He is easygoing and approachable, can seamlessly slide into society as if he was always there. He is the very definition of “that one quiet kid” who always smiles and waves if anyone approaches them. He is everyone’s dream boy and is a picture perfect son almost 24/7.

Danny is everything they want Damien to be.

Why throw that all away to dig up someone they think is already gone? Someone they don’t realize is there? I’m sure that some members of the fam would recognize the mask due to Brucie, but I don’t think they would recognize that’s it’s really there. At least not in the beginning when Danny is all they see.

I think it would take a long time for Danny to let his guard down enough for Danyal to want to take off the mask. For Danny to let him out long enough to see how they react. Damian would be happy if he did, but what of the others?

Oftentimes, when all a person gets to see is the carefully painted mask their “friend” wears, seeing a glimpse of what’s beneath will almost always result in either shock or confusion.

Danny lets out a bit of attitude when someone is being rude? He’s acting out to get attention.

Danny does his homework in calligraphy? Teased relentlessly by sibling and peers (sans Damian who knows that Danyal used to fill out reports in perfect calligraphy).

Danny is getting perfect scores on purpose? Sudden spotlight and countless eyes.

More often than not, when someone wears a mask long enough, it can be hard to take it off. Especially when all the premeditated responses they would normally predict with the mask are no longer there. The mask stops being a tool and starts being a safety net. Now he has to have it on lest he gain any sort of negative response.

They won’t want to fix him, because they think he’s already fixed. He won’t want to be fixed, because he doesn’t think he needs to be fixed. As far as both parties are concerned, there is nothing wrong, and thus no need to pay any mind to it.

The greatest appeal in Danyal Al Ghul aus (to me) will forever and always be the effects of growing up in a league will do to Danny. I think I've only got one DAG au where Danny didn't grow up in the League -- my stillborn Danyal au -- and he's got so many issues.

But yes!! I agree with everything you've said here -- especially on the whole 'when someone wears a mask all the time, it's hard to take off' thing! I was thinking that same thing too, I just didn't get into it on my post since it was like, midnight when I posted it.

I def think the batfam would be prepared for something with Danny when they first meet him -- they're thinking that they might run into a carbon copy of Damian when they finally meet Danny. Only to find out that's.. not... the case? Like oh yeah, they definitely think something's up, nobody who grew up in the League of Assassins comes out THAT well-adjusted -- Damian's still pretty prickly on his best of days -- but it quickly rounds out to them assuming that Danny's mild cynicism and sarcasm is just him lowering pretenses. He's like a declawed version of Damian.

I can picture very mild, brief jokes about hey maybe they should've had Damian go live with civilians for a little bit too, before saying that nah, it would've ended up in disaster. Not thinking about how it ended up in disaster for Danny too; look at him. He's too acclimated to civilian life. The true self is hidden behind the false.

I'm also thinking about how like, Damian is the only person Danny feels truly comfortable around enough with to let pretenses drop. And even then, it takes weeeks of Damian slowly chipping away at Danny's mask when they're alone for him to finally start, willingly, loosing his hold on the persona.

"I don't want to talk to Danny," Damian tells him bluntly, harshly, every day when no one's around, "let me talk to Danyal. Where's my brother."

"I'm right here." Danny lies, and Damian can see right through him.

"No, you're not."

Until eventually Danyal starts peeking through, and Damian is so relieved. He's been peeling layer after layer back to find him, and now he's standing right in front of him. Still hiding, but now with proof he's there. It's like coaxing out a feral animal out from under the porch. When Danyal gets too exhausted with keeping up his lies and masking, he goes to Damian's room and locks, double locks, triple locks the door and draws the curtains, and heaves a shaky sigh.

"يوم طويل؟" Damian asks him where he's reading a book from his bed, watching his brother cocoon himself worse than their father does. It makes his heart hurt a little, to see him hide so much. ("Long day?")

His brother groans, ragged and drawn out, and drags his fingers through his hair. Inadvertently, symbolically, pulling it out of its normal 'danny' style. He looks exhausted. "طويل جدًا." ("Too long.")

He's still hiding chunks of himself away, the both of them sit in Damian's room and it's like watching a broken TV glitch between channels. He can see Danyal fluctuate between masks even when it's just the two of them. Instinctively hiding before realizing belatedly that he doesn't need to.

Damian keeps trying to encourage Danyal to come out of his mask more, and each time it blows up in his face. He's incredibly frustrated by it, and Danyal keeps brushing it off and insisting that it's for the best. He doesn't need fixing, they don't think he needs to be fixed.

Don't get me started on Danny's morals either. I firmly believe they should be messed up. Like sure, Danny doesn't believe in killing and thinks it's wrong and all that jazz, but Danny is just a mask. Danyal thinks you just shouldn't be foolish enough to get caught. He never actually deconstructed those League ideals, he's just pretending he did.

By 14, I think Damian would still make bodily threats of harm against people, but he's less likely to actually go through with it than he was when he was 10, especially if the more graphic they are. Meanwhile, if Danyal wasn't wearing his Danny mask, he'd actually go through with it and then tell you to walk it off. Damian, by 14, would warn before stabbing, Danny would stab as warning.

because, as my delightful best friend @the-navistar-carol put it last night when I was ranting to her about this au/idea: "once he carves out the mask of Danny, he has no reason to take the world at face value as Danyal". Danyal is not outright more vocally violent -- largely in part of trying to keep his mask in place as Danny, even as Phantom since Phantom is Danny's alter ego, not Danyal's -- but I firmly imagine him being more ruthless than Damian. Because he's just, not gone through any deprogramming in the last four years. Not anything significant at least.

They're back to square one with Danny and they don't even know it because he's not showing it.

There's a lot of nuance here that's easier to show in writing than it is to explain it. But TL:DR: Damian is, funnily enough? The kinder brother between the two of them.

And I imagine that when it's finally revealed that Danny's been acting this entire time, it's when something or someone directly puts Damian in significant harm's way. The life-threatening, 'he can't get out of this on his own and needs rescue' kind.

You know Antinous' song excerpt from Jorge Rivera-Herrans' musical "Epic"? The "hold him down while I slowly break his pride, his trust, his faith, and his bones." line? Danyal's energy right there when Damian's life is endangered. All bets are off, the gloves are off. He's saving his brother by any means necessary.

Turns out, being placed in a civilian family who have no knowledge of your background is actually detrimental to the health and development of a child assassin due to lack of proper support! Surrounded by strangers in a foreign city, Danyal Al Ghul does as assassins do best. He hides. Espionage is one of many teachings one learns in the League, and it only takes half a day for Danyal to construct a new persona to hide behind: Daniel Fenton.

By the time dinner rolls around, Danyal al Ghul is safely and securely tucked behind the face of Danny Fenton; brand new adoptive child of the Fenton family who came from overseas. A shy, quiet little boy with a thick accent and curly hair, with brown skin and blue eyes, and an avid interest in the stars. The best fictions are always cobbled together in a little bit of truth, it's some of the only truth he ever lets through. He apologizes in a meek voice for his behavior early, he didn't mean to be rude, and he watches the three of them eat it up with coos.

Lies roll like silk against his lips, he struggles to meet their eyes and offers them his weakest, shyest smile. It's too easy. It's easy to go from there.

Danny Fenton, adoptive son, shy and awkward and unconfident but friendly. Who struggles in his classes and isn't the brightest, but tries his hardest. He makes bad jokes and has a quick tongue and a sarcastic mouth. He wants to be an astronaut. He's got the best aim in school, and is a terrifying dodgeball player. He's one of the least athletic kids in his grade.

It's like playing two truths and a lie, but there's only one truth, and the rest are lies. It's easy to pretend when he knows it's insincere.

Danyal Al Ghul, grandson to the Demon Head. Deadly, trained assassin. Has spilled blood, has had blood spilt from. Environmentalist, animal activist. He loves the stars. He owns a calligraphy set. A sharp tongue, an even sharper blade. He's clever, quick-witted, he would be top of his grade if he tried harder. He purposely doesn't.

He misses his family. He misses his mother, and he misses his brother. Mother visits a few times a year, so few times that he can count it on both hands. He cherishes every visit, as brief as they are. It helps remind him who he is.

Sam and Tucker are Danny's best friends. They've never met Danyal, but Danyal's met them.

It becomes routine to become Danny Fenton. As familiar and as easy as pulling on a shirt in the morning. Danyal wakes up and is always first to the bathroom in the mornings; stares at himself in the mirror until he can finally see Danny staring back at him. At night, he locks his door and sheds the mask.

Dying throws a wrench in his mask; splits a crack straight through the porcelain. He's able to smooth it over with sandpaper and liquid gold, but it's a little hard keeping his ghost form under wraps. It instinctively wants to shift to show his true self. Danyal can't have that, he's spent four years as Danny Fenton, he'll spend another four as him as well. Even if the feeling of the hazmat suit in his ghost form feels restrictive, like a too-small shirt suctioned to his skin that needs to be peeled off.

He'll live. Er-- well, you know what he means. It's frustrating however, trying to keep his Danny Fenton mask up even as Phantom - fighting in the air is something he needs to get used to, and the sudden propping of powers throws him off. But he is nothing if not adaptive, and he hates that he needs to slow his own skills down in order to keep pretenses up in front of Sam and Tucker.

The first time Danyal summons a sword when he's alone, is one of the few times Danyal gets to grin instead of Danny. He's fighting Skulker, and from an invisible hilt he draws a katana from thin air. It startles them both. Skulker takes a step back at the smile that spreads across his face.

They're both silent as Danyal examines his new sword.

"Do you know what people like me do to people like you, poacher?" Danyal finally asks him, the accent he began to hide a few months in slipping through. He drops all pretense, dragging the flat end of the blade slow and appreciatively against his palm. It's a good make, and when he cuts it through the air, it slices through like butter. He looks up at Skulker with a smile; "are you ready to find out?"

When Sam and Tucker ask about why Skulker seems so skittish around Danny now, Danny shrugs at them and says with a playful smile; "I don't know, I guess I kicked his butt too hard after our last fight." and he watches as Sam rolls her eyes exasperatedly, and Tucker snickers with his own joke.

Starry over here making more aus. ^^

But yeah I feel like this needs to be addressed more. Like, I’ve only seen maybe two or three other posts that truly show just how deep he buried Danyal, but none that actually address the matter.

But here’s a better question. Do they even want to help? Sure Damian might, but he remembers the Danyal he grew up with, so he knows exactly how much of himself Danyal buried away under Danny. But the others? To the rest of the family, Danny is a normal child. He smiles easy, laughs at jokes, plays pranks, and knows how to have fun and make friends. He cares deeply about his family and would never hurt a fly. He is easygoing and approachable, can seamlessly slide into society as if he was always there. He is the very definition of “that one quiet kid” who always smiles and waves if anyone approaches them. He is everyone’s dream boy and is a picture perfect son almost 24/7.

Danny is everything they want Damien to be.

Why throw that all away to dig up someone they think is already gone? Someone they don’t realize is there? I’m sure that some members of the fam would recognize the mask due to Brucie, but I don’t think they would recognize that’s it’s really there. At least not in the beginning when Danny is all they see.

I think it would take a long time for Danny to let his guard down enough for Danyal to want to take off the mask. For Danny to let him out long enough to see how they react. Damian would be happy if he did, but what of the others?

Oftentimes, when all a person gets to see is the carefully painted mask their “friend” wears, seeing a glimpse of what’s beneath will almost always result in either shock or confusion.

Danny lets out a bit of attitude when someone is being rude? He’s acting out to get attention.

Danny does his homework in calligraphy? Teased relentlessly by sibling and peers (sans Damian who knows that Danyal used to fill out reports in perfect calligraphy).

Danny is getting perfect scores on purpose? Sudden spotlight and countless eyes.

More often than not, when someone wears a mask long enough, it can be hard to take it off. Especially when all the premeditated responses they would normally predict with the mask are no longer there. The mask stops being a tool and starts being a safety net. Now he has to have it on lest he gain any sort of negative response.

They won’t want to fix him, because they think he’s already fixed. He won’t want to be fixed, because he doesn’t think he needs to be fixed. As far as both parties are concerned, there is nothing wrong, and thus no need to pay any mind to it.

The greatest appeal in Danyal Al Ghul aus (to me) will forever and always be the effects of growing up in a league will do to Danny. I think I've only got one DAG au where Danny didn't grow up in the League -- my stillborn Danyal au -- and he's got so many issues.

But yes!! I agree with everything you've said here -- especially on the whole 'when someone wears a mask all the time, it's hard to take off' thing! I was thinking that same thing too, I just didn't get into it on my post since it was like, midnight when I posted it.

I def think the batfam would be prepared for something with Danny when they first meet him -- they're thinking that they might run into a carbon copy of Damian when they finally meet Danny. Only to find out that's.. not... the case? Like oh yeah, they definitely think something's up, nobody who grew up in the League of Assassins comes out THAT well-adjusted -- Damian's still pretty prickly on his best of days -- but it quickly rounds out to them assuming that Danny's mild cynicism and sarcasm is just him lowering pretenses. He's like a declawed version of Damian.

I can picture very mild, brief jokes about hey maybe they should've had Damian go live with civilians for a little bit too, before saying that nah, it would've ended up in disaster. Not thinking about how it ended up in disaster for Danny too; look at him. He's too acclimated to civilian life. The true self is hidden behind the false.

I'm also thinking about how like, Damian is the only person Danny feels truly comfortable around enough with to let pretenses drop. And even then, it takes weeeks of Damian slowly chipping away at Danny's mask when they're alone for him to finally start, willingly, loosing his hold on the persona.

"I don't want to talk to Danny," Damian tells him bluntly, harshly, every day when no one's around, "let me talk to Danyal. Where's my brother."

"I'm right here." Danny lies, and Damian can see right through him.

"No, you're not."

Until eventually Danyal starts peeking through, and Damian is so relieved. He's been peeling layer after layer back to find him, and now he's standing right in front of him. Still hiding, but now with proof he's there. It's like coaxing out a feral animal out from under the porch. When Danyal gets too exhausted with keeping up his lies and masking, he goes to Damian's room and locks, double locks, triple locks the door and draws the curtains, and heaves a shaky sigh.

"يوم طويل؟" Damian asks him where he's reading a book from his bed, watching his brother cocoon himself worse than their father does. It makes his heart hurt a little, to see him hide so much. ("Long day?")

His brother groans, ragged and drawn out, and drags his fingers through his hair. Inadvertently, symbolically, pulling it out of its normal 'danny' style. He looks exhausted. "طويل جدًا." ("Too long.")

He's still hiding chunks of himself away, the both of them sit in Damian's room and it's like watching a broken TV glitch between channels. He can see Danyal fluctuate between masks even when it's just the two of them. Instinctively hiding before realizing belatedly that he doesn't need to.

Damian keeps trying to encourage Danyal to come out of his mask more, and each time it blows up in his face. He's incredibly frustrated by it, and Danyal keeps brushing it off and insisting that it's for the best. He doesn't need fixing, they don't think he needs to be fixed.

Don't get me started on Danny's morals either. I firmly believe they should be messed up. Like sure, Danny doesn't believe in killing and thinks it's wrong and all that jazz, but Danny is just a mask. Danyal thinks you just shouldn't be foolish enough to get caught. He never actually deconstructed those League ideals, he's just pretending he did.

By 14, I think Damian would still make bodily threats of harm against people, but he's less likely to actually go through with it than he was when he was 10, especially if the more graphic they are. Meanwhile, if Danyal wasn't wearing his Danny mask, he'd actually go through with it and then tell you to walk it off. Damian, by 14, would warn before stabbing, Danny would stab as warning.

because, as my delightful best friend @the-navistar-carol put it last night when I was ranting to her about this au/idea: "once he carves out the mask of Danny, he has no reason to take the world at face value as Danyal". Danyal is not outright more vocally violent -- largely in part of trying to keep his mask in place as Danny, even as Phantom since Phantom is Danny's alter ego, not Danyal's -- but I firmly imagine him being more ruthless than Damian. Because he's just, not gone through any deprogramming in the last four years. Not anything significant at least.

They're back to square one with Danny and they don't even know it because he's not showing it.

There's a lot of nuance here that's easier to show in writing than it is to explain it. But TL:DR: Damian is, funnily enough? The kinder brother between the two of them.

And I imagine that when it's finally revealed that Danny's been acting this entire time, it's when something or someone directly puts Damian in significant harm's way. The life-threatening, 'he can't get out of this on his own and needs rescue' kind.

You know Antinous' song excerpt from Jorge Rivera-Herrans' musical "Epic"? The "hold him down while I slowly break his pride, his trust, his faith, and his bones." line? Danyal's energy right there when Damian's life is endangered. All bets are off, the gloves are off. He's saving his brother by any means necessary.