Clockways Writes

In the caves with Dami, it doesn’t hurt so much. The pain was still there, of course it was, it was something that he could never let go of, but in the caves it was muted by the rough stone and the pool of green. Here there is none of that. Here Danny is truly alive. Or as alive as he has ever been since the…

Danny shakes his head. It feels like his brain is sloshing against the inside of his skull. Bones, they were overrated, really. At least he (or Gotham) had the forethought to make sure that Danny came out clothed. He smooths his hands over the lapels of the coat and the vest under it. Definitely Gotham’s doing. Danny didn’t think he had ever worn anything so fancy in his life.

Well, half-life.

The alleyway that he steps out of may have been next to a theater, but by the boarded up windows and smell of piss, it has obviously seen better days. He stands under the unlit marquee, looking up at the graffiti and fallen letters. There’s something beautiful about the decay of it, as much as the space is steeped in tragedy.

Danny tucks his hands in his pockets and starts off. Where? He isn’t sure, really. Danny trusts that Gotham will keep him moving in the right direction as long as he listens to it. And Gotham hums with information. Stepping onto its streets is like stepping into a bee hive. Danny follows the energy as it ebbs and flows, leads and warns. He trusts it.

Which is why it’s extra insulting for Danny to end up with a knife pointed at his throat and his hands raised.

“I told you, I really don’t have anything on me,” Danny says calmly.

“Bullshit! Who the fuck doesn’t carry at least their phone anymore?” The knife waves with the words. “Hand it the fuck over!”

“Cursing won’t make something magically appear,” Danny says. He probably should get an identity again. What year was it?

“Or I say what I fucking want to and fucking gut you so I can loot your body!”

“This body really isn’t worth that much effort,” Danny says, with as much of a shrug as he can do with his hands raised.

“Fuck y—”

Before the thug an even lunge, a mass of shadow drops between them and Danny. Fora moment, Danny is convinced that it’s Gotham, for all that Gotham is the one who led him there. It feels like Gotham, with the same deep love for the city and the same chasm where the little bird once was but… this one is alive.

Danny takes in the caped figure with no small amount of wounder. They feel like the honored dead, but they clearly live and breathe and ache. Their fist pulls back, ready to strike the cowering thug. Danny rests his hand on the arm. “I think making them piss themselves with fear is enough.”

Both the thug and whatever this creature is turn to incredulously look at Danny. He just offers a smile and a shrug. He plucks the knife delicately from the thug’s hand and flips it closed. “Now, maybe you should promise not to do this again since you’ve gotten to keep your face intact.”

“Y-yeah! S-s-shur! I, um, I’m s-sorry mister Batman, sir! I just… things have been really tight and my brother is still sick from the last fear gas—yeah. I, um, will just be going!” The thug says, jutting a thumb behind themselves. When neither Danny nor ‘Batman’ move, they turn tail and run.

After watching them disappear behind a corner, Danny turned and smiled at the looming specter. (He tucks the knife into his pocket.) “Thank you, Batman, for your gallant rescue.”

“Hn,” the Batman utters. He pauses a long time before saying, “You shouldn’t be out here this late.”

“Absolutely not. I believe I will be heading right home,” Danny says. The Batman looks at Danny’s hand, pale and slender against the dark, still on his arm. Danny holds up his hands and steps back. As the Batman aims some sort of gadget at the grungy architecture, Danny adds, “and I am sorry for your loss.”

There’s another long look before the Batman flees like the hounds of hell are on their heels, rather than just standing on a random street corner in Gotham. Danny watches until they vanish and then slip into the shadows himself.

He has a great deal to talk with Gotham about. He hadn’t understood that this about a little specterling. That changed things. Complicated them. Made them clearer.

John throws the sheets off and sits up. His long limbs feel endless for a moment as he stretches before he snaps back into his aching, (mostly) mortal body. The smell of the room, of endless visitors and days, has him craving a cigarette. Sometimes he’s lucky enough that there’s a pack on the bedside table. Today is one of them. He peels the seal open and taps out a fag from the pack. The first inhale makes him wistful; this brand went out of business twenty years ago.

He sits there long enough that he has to tap a solid bit of ash into the soot stained ashtray. He wants to stay longer. Schrodinger’s cat and all that.

Maybe he should just go look.

He grabs the pack and the room key from the bedside. The key has a battered plastic tag that feels right in his hand. He thinks the room is number twenty-one, but it hurts to look too long at it. The key itself is different with each glance.

The cigarette is just balanced between John’s lips, stuck there so that he can toss on the robe over the boxer briefs that he has on. He wears it mostly to have a pocket to stash things in. It also helps stave off the chill of the halls.

Every door looks exactly the same—yellowed oak wood set into even more yellow wallpaper. There’s no decoration other than the hall sconces. The way the light pours out of them is fragmented and shifting. Every so often a door is cracked open, held tight by the chain. There’s something there behind those doors. Other ones too, sometimes, when John knows he’s being watched from behind a peephole. John’s careful to never look back.

He just smokes his cigarette, lighting the next off the old butt of the last, and keeps walking down the hall. He’ll get to where he’s going eventually, wherever that may be.

There’s one place he’s hoping for more than the other.

He just keeps walking.

Finally, suddenly, he’s come to a set of brass and glass doors. The thick fog of condensataion on the doors make it impossible to see through. It doesn’t matter, John knows what will greet him as he pushed both doors open. A smile plays on his lips and in his voice. “Hello, handsome, how’s the water?”

“Just about the same as always. Too fucking green and weirdly warm.”

John eyes the pool as he walks around the outside of it. His steps sound sacrilegiously loud against the tiles, but what is his whole fucking life but being sacrilegiously loud?

“It is very green,” John settles for saying.

The other makes a noise that manages to sound sarcastic as he sets his book aside. “Green is sorta its most defining trait.”

“Hum… nah, mate,” John says. He braces his arms on either side of the plastic pool chair as he leans down. “I would go with other worldly first.”

“Everything is other worldly here, Hellblazer.” Those sea-glass green eyes meet John’s steadily. “Including you and me.”

“Yet you won’t tell me your secrets,” John points out. The words are a whisper and nearly cut off by the kiss that follows. It’s as much a kiss John starts as one that John meets in the middle. He lets himself enjoy the taste of it before he pulls back just enough to get a look. “What are your secrets, Dan?”

Dan rolls his eyes, but it’s mostly an excuse to look away. “I’ve told you, you really don’t want to know.”

“Oh but I do, lovely. I’m curious,” John cajoles as he straddles the chair and Dan. Dan is likewise in a robe, but only with swim trunks on underneath.

Tiny, yellow swim trunks.

Dan runs his hands up under John’s robes. He has the calloused hands of of a craftsman, and his thumbs are rough where they rub against John’s hip bones.

“Curiosity killed the cat,” Dan says.

“But boredom killed it quicker,” John sings back.

“Oh, well, if boredom is what you wanted to avoid…” Dan purrs. His grip tightens, keeping John held down as he arches up.

John hums happily. He would rather understand what Dan is, but ever visit he learns a little more. What’s so wrong about having some fun at the same time? “I’ll learn your secrets.”

“Not if you want me to keep fucking you.”

Bruce doesn’t sigh, but there’s the implied sigh in his words. “You don’t read minds, Flash.”

“I don’t need to be able to read minds to know what you’re thinking right now,” Barry argues. “The little guys are traumatized! They were just stuck waiting to be made into paste.”

Bruce stares back silently from behind is cowl, judging.

“Can we not?” Wally snaps. He clutches his own blob ghost tight enough that it squeaks and quickly relaxes his grip. Well, not his, blob ghost, just the one that has found its way to him. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have…”

“Hey, it’s alright,” Barry says, voice carefully softened. His comforting victims voice.

It rankles.

“Is it?! Because I think what it is, is that they’ve got part of our family here in a fucking tube to keep experimenting on! What I think it is, is that he never really made it out!”

The noise in the room quiets at his out burst. Dick is looking from across the room with worry in every line of his body. Barry isn’t looking at him at all.

“Flash,” Bruce says, voice firm.

Wally hunches his shoulders. “That was unprofessional, I know.”

“You don’t have to stay in this room,” Bruce offers instead of ripping into Wally’s outburst. “If you wish to stay on site but away from here, there is a boardroom.”

“I… yeah. I’ll go—I can get some waters and stuff for it too for everyone. Maybe these little guys will settle in too,” Wally says. He has to stumble through the words, but it’s better to have something to do. “And I’ll stay out of the way until I calm down.”

“Flash. Both of you,” Bruce says. They look to him, of course they both do. Bruce just commands attention. “This is understandably hard. It will be for your whole family. Focus on making sure your family is alright. If we need your expertise, we will ask, I promise you that.”

After a moment, Barry nods. “I’ll try to settle the blobs in the boardroom so that they’re out of the way.”

“That would help,” Bruce agrees.

“And I’ll try to keep the younguns away,” Barry says with a sigh, because that was a whole thing.

“Keep them to the boardroom if they don’t stay away. All of them,” Bruce advises. “Wonder Woman and Zatanna are speaking with some of the ghosts, and Constantine is making sure that the building is safe from realm bleed. Until we know matters are secure, Young Justice need to stay out of the way and as a group. I am counting Afterimage as part of that group.”

Barry nods. “We’ll make sure they know that.”

Wally thinks they’re both was more confident in keeping the kids contained than they should be, but doesn’t open his mouth. (He’s still feeling a little hysterical.)

“Boardroom is this way,” Barry says and zips off. The little ghosts hang on easily for the whole walk, even through the super speed. In fact, the ghosts seem happier after the trip.

Wally sets the ghost he had been holding down on the table. It’s sleek and dangerously black in the bright, white room. Wally hates it. He hates this whole place. “I, um, saw some paper boxes in a copy room. They might be good for these little guys. I’ll just—”

He leaves before Barry can say anything back.

The copy room is empty. There’s a pile of papers that have been briefly lit on fire that still stink of smoke, but no one is trying to deal with looking through them yet. It lets Wally sit down. His head down drops down between his knees and his hands wrap behind his neck. He breaths in.

There was another Danny.

He breaths out.

They still didn’t know if there was a consciousness there.

He breaths on.

If there was, had Danny know anything outside of this torment?

He breaths out a long, slow breath.

One piece at a time.

One piece at a time and backed by their family: by Barry and Iris and Bart. But they’re also by their extended family of heroes: by Bats and Supes and the Amazonians and everyone else. This would be hard, but they would handle it together.