DPxDC

He opened his eyes and was eventually able to focus them to see two kids with black hair with their faces inches from his. He tried to raise his head to get a look at his surroundings past the kids but it felt like it weighed a hundred pounds.

"Is my helmet still on?" He slurred the words out, but the two kids, one boy and one girl seemed to be able to understand him.

"Yeah, I wanted to play with your helmet, but Daddy says its fucked to brim with explosives." The girl said, and he could hear her tapping on his helmet which did nothing good for his helmet.

"Hey, language."

"Seriously? Aren't you a crime lord?" The boy gave him the most condescending look Hood had ever experienced. Why the hell did a kid have the ability to give a dirty look like that?

"Just because I'm a crime lord doesn't mean I wasn't raised right." Hood said as he tried to sit up. Neither of the kids were very helpful as the boy continued to sit on his chest as he flailed and the girl kept grabbing his arms and moving them around like she was dancing with him.

"You know, I think you being a crime lord exactly means you weren't raised right." A new, older voice said. "Look at you, people who have good childhoods don't dress like you do."

The new person walked into Jason's field of view, and revealed himself to be the mysterious, yet helpful Danny. A new person in Crime Alley who had made a name for himself by helping people out. Giving kids a place to stay and a warm meal, protecting the working girls, repairing just about any broken appliance he could get his hands on. Hood was keeping an eye on him to make sure he wasn't a rogue in the making, and to ensure that if he was just a good guy, that he stayed safe.

"Hey, I'll have you know that exactly one person tried to raise me as an upstanding gentleman and I will be back in my grave before I let his lessons go to waste." Jason said.

Danny lifted his kids off Jason's chest and he was finally able to sit up and look around at the apartment he was in. He could feel heavy bandages on his torso and arms and vaguely remembered one of his guys pulling him out of some rubble and saying they were going to bring to someone who could help. He had kind of expected to wake up in Leslie's clinic, but maybe Danny was closer.

"Yes, yes, I'm sure he's very proud of you. Now you pretty haggard when you were brought in, but I think I've fixed everything that can be fixed. You'll still need a couple days of rest before you hit the streets or rooftops in your case."

"Thanks kid. What do I owe you?" Jason asked. Now that he could see clearly he could see that Danny was at least 4 years younger that Jason was. This kid really is a teen dad out here in Crime Alley taking care of his neighbors. Gods above Jason hoped this kid would make it to adult hood.

"There's no need for repayment-"

"Shut it daddy!" The girl said pressing herself into Jason's space followed by her brother.

"You can make sure The Bastard can't hurt daddy anymore!" The boy said, the meanest glare ever on his face. The kid could give Batman a run for his money with that glare.

"Now, Dan, Ellie, we don't need-"

"The last time The Bastard took daddy he tied him up and made him scream!" The girl, Ellie said. Tears flooded her eyes as she grabbed Hood's shoulder and weakly shook him. "Please Mr. Hood, you gotta stop him from hurting my daddy!"

Jason stood with difficulty without shaking the girl off. Oh he had heard rumors of "The Bastard." The other parent of the two little mites, some fucking piece of shit who knocked up a teen transman.

"Don't worry kiddos, if this fuckwit shows his face in My Alley, it will be the last thing he ever does. You have my word on that."

Yes, he knows he's meant to be a hero, he knows he's meant to be helping these people escape, but come on! He's also an overworked high school student with several deadlines and a dwindling amount of detentions he can get before exclusion, so what choice does he really have?

The ghost doesn't even feel all that powerful, maybe on par with Boxy? He's got a sense for these things now—an annoyance metre, rather than his normal ghost sense—and from the weak pulse of ectoplasm surrounding him, the cheesy Sigmund Freud-looking therapist getup, and the very fact that he's still monologuing, Danny just knows. More annoying to deal with than an actual oh-shit-the-world-is-ending kind of problem. He could take this guy in his sleep.

Or, more accurately, he could take this guy on close to three hours of snatched sleep for the entire week.

So, sue him. He's using this time as independent study. He's doing his homework and there's nothing this smarmy, two-bit Doctor Phil ghost can do to stop him.

Actually, please don't sue him, Danny has this all in hand, he promises. As soon as he hears the other hostages make a sound, he'll abandon his homework and he'll soup the guy. Just let him do most of it first, please!

Decision made, Danny settles down and cracks open his textbook. Math time!

Hey, so turns out, math fucking sucks.

It's not long before Danny thinks this whole thing was a stupid idea and he kinda wishes he would just get expelled. Give him something broken and he’ll fix it. Give him a lab and some scrap metal and he’s pretty sure he can build whatever, just like his parents. 

Getting these numbers into the right answer, however? Impossible! How in the name of all that is dead is he meant to do this?

He's sitting cross-legged on the floor of his cage, textbook split open and the pages from his packet scattered messily around him, head in his hands, when he hears a knock on his cage. A shiver rolls through him as a rush of ectoplasm powers through the walls, lighting it up in a pale glowing green.

“What? What do you want?” he grumbles, not even looking up. “Because if it’s not an easy explanation for the quadratic formula, I don’t wanna know.”

“Are you doing your homework?” The ghost’s voice is incredulous and Danny can feel him swoop down to the floor to get a closer look, but whatever, he still doesn’t look up. Instead, he focuses on trying to put the numbers into some semblance of order. “You should be concentrating on my game!”

“Oh, man, ordinarily I’d be so into blowing off my homework for whatever game you’ve got cooking, but if I get one more detention I’m pretty sure Mom will actually succeed in killing me and I don’t fancy going through that again, you feel?”

“Excuse me? I don’t think you understand the kind of position you’re putting your—”

“You have to do brackets before multiplication, right? But you’ve got to make it balance on both sides of the equation, so that means I’ve got to… Wait, no, balancing equations is something different, isn't it? Ancients, this is so fucked, where’s my calculator…”

The cage rocks back with the force of the ghost’s fists and Danny has to scramble to keep all of his scraps of paper in some sort of order.

“Dude! What the hell?” 

“Answer my question so we can carry on with the game.” The ghost hisses, his face pressed up against the glass walls of the cage.

Danny rolls his eyes. He’s trying to answer his own questions, thank you very much! Perhaps he should just bust out, end this quickly and get back home. At least there he’d have access to the internet—and more importantly, Tucker’s answers. To compare, not to cheat, of course. 

“Fine, what’s your question?”

“You weren’t listening? Do you even care about this at all?”

“All I care about right now is finishing my homework and getting back home at least an hour before my alarm goes off. So unless you can promise me that, I'm going to fight you now and finish off my homework in peace."

“Fight me? At least threatening bodily harm is something you all have in common. Please, you’re all stuck in there until this game ends, whether you like it or not.” The ghost sneers against the cage in what he probably thinks is an intimidating display of teeth, but instead just has Danny realising that he’s not brushed his own in two days. He's been so tired, he's not had time. It's still gross, though. “Answer the questions and you’ll be able to go home lickety-split.”

“Yeah, alright, whatever—as long as I get to answer my own questions, too. X doesn’t solve itself, you know.” As much as he wishes it did.

“Fine. I suppose this isn’t a test for you, anyway.”

Okay, well, at least it seems like Danny’s just a pawn and not an actual player in whatever kind of game this is. He’s not sure how he feels about that—actually, scratch that, yes he does. It’s really fucking nice to not be the one that’s one fuck up away from losing everything. 

Mind you, he’s still not off the hook for it, yet. Obviously, he’ll still be keeping an ear out for anything going wrong, but what’s the harm in letting it play out a little longer? At least he’ll get some more work done.

“Fine.” Danny parrots. “What’s your question?”

“What’s your name?”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“What’s your name?”

“You don’t know who I am?” 

Huh. It’s not often that happens anymore. Weird. 

Instead of giving him any answer, the ghost just whips around and cackles as he flies off towards the centre of the room. The glow of his cage dies down as the supply of ectoplasm dwindles and he finally takes a proper look around.

“Did you hear that? Did you hear the shock in his voice, did you see the betrayal in his eyes? You don’t know who he is!” 

The ghost is swirling around a podium in the middle of the room, mocking the person in a voice that pierces Danny’s eardrums and stabs directly into his brain. Great, he’s entered the blinding headache stage of tired. He squints and rubs his eyes, but the heavy, blurring tiredness doesn’t leave.

He gives up on trying to guess who the hulking figure in the middle is. All he can assume is that he’s the reason they’re all here, what with the five or six other cages surrounding placed facing him.

Look, it’s unreasonable to ask Danny to do maths and hero work, let him just pick one thing to focus on.

“That’s your first point lost, I’m afraid! Let’s keep going, shall we? The questions are going to get a little harder now, good luck…”

With that, the ghost flies over to the first cage and poses another question. “When is his birthday?”

There’s barely any hesitation from the man on the podium who gives his answer as “March 20th,” with a confident growl. It's pretty impressive, to be fair. Danny can’t remember what date his own birthday is half the time, let alone anyone else’s.

To be fair, Danny has two birthdays, so it's doubly hard.

He doesn't forget.

The first birthday, the one he celebrates, is the day he found the Fentons. He tells them he doesn't know his actual birthday and they believe him, so every April 3rd they celebrate the day he came into their lives. 

Or, at least, they do in theory. The Fentons aren't great at remembering birthdays either.

He reserves his true birthday for remembering where he came from. For mourning the life he left behind, the family, his brother. And when the day is over, he pushes it aside and carries on with his completely normal life as best he can.

Which is what he’s doing now. Carrying on with his life as best he can. Doing his homework. 

When this stupid game finally finishes, he’ll get transported back to his bedroom with his three sheets of (hopefully) correct answers and he’ll get some sleep. 

Then he’ll wake up, go to school, and do it all again.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watches as the ghost feeds enough ectoplasm through the first cage so that it lights up just like his did. Immediately, the man inside starts shouting, threatening the ghost with some very creative swearing to let them all go, but Danny just tunes him out because he’s doing what he does best. He's getting on with it.

He swallows and settles back down on the floor, trying to ignore the way his eyes are prickling. Cool. Entering into the “crying way too easily at just about anything” stage of tired. Lovely.

Right. Come on, you can do this. Take a deep breath. It’s just math. 

Solve 7x^2 - 25x + 2 = 0 using the quadratic formula. Give your answer to 2 decimal places. 

What the fuck.

He keeps an ear out as the ghost goes down the line asking the same question and receiving much the same results. Meanwhile, Danny’s getting nowhere fast. 

So, a = 7, right? Which means that b = 25 and c = 2, that’s good, okay, so plug that all into the quadratic formula—wait, shit, b = -25 instead! Does that make a difference?

Whatever, now he has to… fix all the numbers in the formula, so minus minus 25 which is… 0, right? Right. Then it’s all the brackets, so first he’s got to square -25 which is… fuck. Where’s his calculator, did he bring a calculator? How in the hell is he meant to do that in his head?

Danny’s halfway to pulling his hair out when he hears it. The ghost is laughing, congratulating the man on the podium for his three right answers even if it looks like he’s gotten this one wrong, judging by the reaction of the person inside the cage. Danny can’t quite make out what’s happening because all he can see is numbers and, having abandoned squaring -25, a square root that he doesn’t know how to deal with.

So it's understandable that the shout doesn’t quite register to begin with.

“—yal! Danyal!” 

But when it does, when the name finally makes it through, he freezes.

It can’t be real.

“Akhi, please!”

It’s not real.

His head whips up to the cage that’s glowing, but it’s too far away, too bright in the darkness, to really make out for certain that… It can’t be. He can’t be here, why would he be here?

Part of Danny really, really wishes he was paying attention to the monologuing.

“Danyal, please, answer me!” The voice is desperate, so, so desperate. Hoarse and wet and thick with tears, a far cry from the confident boy he used to know. The… the only time Danny’s heard his voice like that was when… But it can’t be him. “Let me go, let me see him! Danyal!”

“Answer my question, you little rat!” The ghost growls, face twisting in a snarling grimace that gets him nowhere. Of course it wouldn’t, there's no way that would scare him.

“Danyal! Please, akhi, please!”

It… Oh shit, is it really him?

Danny stands up, his pencil clattering to the floor, and he steps close enough to the glass wall of the cage so that he can reach out and touch it.

He hesitates.

What if it’s a trick? What if he’s in a nightmare dimension and the ghost is actually super powerful and this is all a trap? It’s not a game for the man on the podium, it’s a game made for torturing him—hell, it even had math in it! He hates math!

It can’t be real.

“Danyal, please, let it be you, please be alive, Danyal… Akhi, please.”

He lets his ectoplasm flood the cage, the walls blinding him as he pours in too much, far more than the ghost keeping them captive could ever hope to conjure. He wets his lips, regulates his ectoplasm to a trickle so that the light dims and he can finally see out again, and tries to say something. Anything. His heart is pounding and his mouth is dry.

“Dami?” he whispers, not daring to hope. Then louder, “Damian?”

“Danyal, is it really—”

“What are you doing?” The ghost snaps, taking his hand off of Damian’s cage so that the light dims and he can’t be heard, and shoots over towards him. “How are you doing that?”

Yeah, fuck this. That’s Damian in there, that’s really Damian, and Danny’s not staying in his cage for another second. He takes his hand off the wall and powers up an ectoblast, not even bothering to transform. He’s getting his little brother.

The glass of the cage shatters easily.

He steps out of the cage easily.

He… It’s not quite as easy to walk over to Damian.

It’s even harder to smash it open, so he just stands there, staring. Watching as Damian—and it is, it really is—stands there, too, his mouth moving as he's trying to call out to him but no sound is heard. Danny can read his lips well enough… 

Damian sniffs, wipes his eyes and nose on his sleeve, and smiles tentatively. It’s a small, fleeting thing. Unsure. Sad. Hopeful.

“Damian?” He still can’t believe it, it has to be some sort of trick, surely. Still… even if it is, he’ll get to hold his brother again. Even if it’s not real. He smiles back at him and readies an ectoblast. “Stand back.”

And then that stupid ghost fires one straight at him instead.

Damian’s gaze flickers behind him, shouting a warning that he can’t hear, and he turns intangible on instinct. The bolt flies through him, but it’s not even strong enough to break Damian’s cage. Yeah, Danny was right. This guy's just annoying, not even worth the time it'll take to fight him.

“You’re ruining it, you’re ruining my game! You’re… you’re a ghost?”

There it is, there's the realisation, finally. He turns to face him, anger boiling in his veins. Fuck this guy.

“You’re an idiot?”

“Excuse me? How dare you?” The ghost blinks, then puffs himself up, ghostly flames licking up his stupid, ill-fitting suit, still not fully comprehending what’s going on. Not knowing the danger he’s in. “In my own lair, how dare you call me that?”

“I’m not a ghost.” Danny interrupts, ice beginning to creep out from his feet. He takes a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. “I’m Phantom.”

“Wh—Phantom?” Immediately, the ghost loses all of his fire and shrinks into himself. “Oh, Ancients, I’m… I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Your Majesty, I didn’t mean to—”

“And yet, you did. Is this a challenge?”

“Challenge? Cha—no, no, of course not, of course not, I wouldn’t be challenging you, not at all! Here, I’ll just, I’ll… I’ll let everyone out and then you can be on your way, I’m so sorry!”

Danny doesn’t even bother to answer, he just turns back to Damian with a roll of his eyes and—he’s still there, he keeps expecting him to have vanished, for this all to have been a dream, but he’s still there—and he readies another ectoblast.

“Stand back, okay?”

Damian nods and moves away, his eyes flicking between Danny and the ghost behind him with undisguised contempt.

The ectoplasmic glass shatters easily and then Damian is out of the cage and in front of him, just an arms length away.

They stand there for a long minute, watching, neither of them able to make the first move. Danny should probably start explaining some things, right? Ancients, there’s so much, but…

It’s been six years.

Six years without his brother.

Six years of only allowing himself to remember on one day, because otherwise he’d break down, otherwise he’d go back and…

Six years.

“Hey, Dami.” He tries to smile, tries to step forward, tries to do something other than stand there stupidly, but he just can’t.

“Are you… Danyal? Is it really you?”

“I feel like I should be asking you that,” he laughs, but it comes out weak and watery.

He’s definitely in the crying stage of tired now.

“Are you—” his eyes flicker over to the ghost again and Danny knows what he’s going to say with just as much certainty as he knows he’s not going to like hearing it. “Are you alive? Truly?”

He shrugs, puffs out some air in a sardonic grin, and spreads his arms wide. “Depends on how you define it, I guess. It’s… kind of a long story.”

It’s not comforting, from the look on Damian’s face, but then he hadn’t really expected it to be. He couldn’t lie to him, there was never any lying to Damian. Even when they were children together, he always saw through him.

Damian brings his arm up, towards him, but falters before they actually touch. Danny can feel his core twist and he so desperately wants to reach out and bridge the gap, but… 

“Can I? Danyal, can—”

Ah, screw this, Danny hugs him. 

He hugs him and the solid warmth of his presence, the familiar scent, the feeling of weight, of rightness, of home makes everything truly click for him.

It’s real.

It’s Damian.

Danny clings on tighter and a second later, he feels Damian’s arms circle around him, grabbing fistfuls of his hoodie and pulling it taut in his effort to hold on. Damian’s shoulders start to shake and he can’t help but laugh softly, his heart fluttering in his chest. At least he’s not the only one crying.

“Akhi, it’s really you, it’s really…”

“I’m here, Dami, I’m sorry, I won’t leave again.” He pushes his face into Damian’s shoulder, sniffing against the fabric. Yikes, he hopes Damian won’t be mad at the pretty obvious wet patch. “I promise.”

They stay there for a few minutes longer, clinging to each other, trying to breathe through it, when Danny feels a shifting in the ectoplasm around them. He groans, he just cannot catch a break! 

This guy really does not know when to stop, does he? It’s always the weaker ones, too, the ones that have absolutely no hope in defeating him that never know when to bow out gracefully. It’s annoying. If this ghost isn’t careful, Danny will have to update his annoying list and finally move Boxy out of first place. At least he knows when to make himself scarce.

With a sigh, he conjures up a shield just as the ghost lets the blast loose. If he was alone—he’s so glad he’s not alone—he wouldn’t have bothered with the shield at all, but it’s not like he’s going to let Dami get hit.

“You’re really starting to piss me off, you know that, right?”

“You ruined my game! I don’t care who you are, no one leaves until my game is finished!” The ghost—Danny doesn’t even feel bad about not knowing his name any more, this guy sucks—snarls and throws another ectoblast which Danny knocks away with one of his own.

With one last squeeze, he lets Damian go, already feeling the loss of it. Fuck this guy.

“Last chance, let everyone go and I’ll let you go. Call it a thank you for reuniting us.”

“I already told you,” he spits, both his hands glowing with ectoplasmic fire, “no one leaves until the game is finished!”

Danny pushes Damian behind him and pulls a thermos out of thin air, still not bothering to transform. He knocks the ghost back with a strong blast of ectoplasm and soups him before he can do anything but groan.

At least it was over quickly. 

He throws a smile over his shoulder at Damian and pops the thermos back in the pocket dimension it came from. The ghost can stew in there for a couple days, really think about what he did. It’s just rude.

Then he lifts both his arms up and shoots five ectoblasts in quick succession at each of the remaining cages, finally freeing the rest of the ghost’s hostages. Let them get themselves together while Danny can go back to giving Damian a hug.

It’s been so long.

He goes to grab Damian again, but stops when Damian hisses sharply and pulls his hand back.

“You’re hurt?” 

Oh, Ancients, he’s hurt! Did Danny do that? Is it bad, was it an ectoblast? What happened?

Before he can spiral too far, Damian lifts up his wrist to reveal a splint already protecting his injury.

“I sprained it a few days ago, it’s nothing terrible. That’s why I’m me and not, you know.” Damian shrugs and gestures, presumably, to the guy on the podium. Danny has no idea what that’s meant to mean.

“Not what?”

“Not patrolling as Robin. I have been benched until I’m sufficiently healed.”

“Yeah, sure, that makes sense—I’m sorry, wait, what—you’re Robin?” He follows Damian’s outstretched arm towards the guy on the podium and… “Holy shit, is that Batman?”

“Mother never told you?”

“Told me what?”

“He’s our father, Danyal.”

“That’s our… That’s our Batdad? Fatherman? Dadbat? Dad-Dad Bat… man? What?” He shakes his head a little, trying to make some of his thoughts actually connect because nothing is actually making any sense right now. “What the fuck?”

His face burns as he hears the barely stifled laughter coming from pretty much every broken cage. He swivels his head around, eyes wide like an owl, and tries to place the names of the audience he’d forgotten about.

Nightwing—that’s the Nightwing—waves with a cheery grin as he makes his way over to them, and there’s Red Robin with his hand clamped over his mouth, nowhere near successful in silencing his laughter. Black Bat, Signal, Red—is that Red Hood, the crime boss, over there? Holy shit!—all wave at him, too, but mercifully they stay where they are.

Batman steps down from the podium.

“Sorry, I think I missed just about everything earlier. What the hell is going on here? What kind of game was this? ‘How Embarrassed Can We Make Danny?’ Because that’s what it feels like.”

“Nah, but if it's any consolation, you’d certainly be winning that game!” Nightwing laughs as he stops a few feet away from them.

“It was my fault,” Batman says, his voice low and gravelly. He gestures towards the thermos. “He wanted to test my ability as a father. My knowledge of my children.”

“Oh… How did you do?”

“I mean, not great,” Red Hood laughs from behind him. “He didn’t even know who you were.”

“Well, that’s fair, can’t really blame him for that. I’m meant to be dead.” Danny says cheerfully, nodding with a smile that he hopes is reassuring. “I mean, I am dead, but that’s unrelated. Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Red Robin asks.

“Don’t worry about it!” Danny waves him away and slings an arm around Damian, just like he used to do when they were young. He feels like he’s buzzing, his core vibrating happily out of his skin, and he’s pretty sure he’s got the goofiest grin on his face. “It’s all good!”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it,” Red Hood says as he picks his way towards them, cutting off whatever Batman was going to say, thank goodness. There’s no way he’s awake enough for a proper, actual conversation about his death(s) and everything that came after them, not at all. “We have bigger things to worry about, after all.”

All of them groan. Guess he’s not the only tired person here.

“What’s wrong now?” Red Robin asks, already pulling up a dope wrist computer that looks slick as hell but obviously isn’t going to work in the Ghost Zone.

Red Hood brandishes a load of papers and turns his head towards Danny. “Danyal here thinks adding 4 and 7 makes 10, which isn’t a great start, but you should actually be multiplying them there, and then multiplying all that by 2, not just… leaving the 2 out? I don’t know what you’ve done with half of this, but it definitely doesn’t make 10 though. I can also tell you that 25 squared is not whatever this squiggle is meant to be. Pretty cool picture of a horse, though, great job on that!”

Danny slumps and hides his face in his hands with a half-hearted sob. He’s so screwed. “It’s meant to be a cat.”

“Oh.” Red Hood turns the paper on its side, tilts his head, then turns the paper upside. “That’s a really crappy cat. Sorry.”

“Do you know how to get us out of here?” Batman asks gently, drawing Danny out of his shame spiral.

“Yeah, that’s not a problem, I can portal us out. At least I’ve got that down.” He rolls his eyes and rubs at the back of his neck with weak laughter. He’s really not making a good impression right now, is he?

“Let’s go, then. If you’d like, I can help you with your homework when we get back somewhere safe.” It’s so weird, Batman sounds so uncertain, not at all like the fearsome crusader he’s seen on the news. And then he smiles, soft and warm, and Danny can’t help but return it. “Damian can help you with the drawing.”

He groans as he’s interrupted with a knock on his cage, rolling his eyes.

“What?”

“How does it make you feel, hm?” asks the ghost, his grin widening in mocking sympathy. Great. Another Spectra type. “He doesn’t even recognise you. Failed at the first hurdle!”

“So?” Danny shrugs, not really knowing or caring what’s happening here. He had three questions left. Three! This is the most homework he’s done since freshman year, and yet again, here comes a ghost to ruin it. “I don’t recognise him either, so who cares.”

“Who cares?” The ghost blinks at him, twisting back to look incredulously at… holy shit, is that Batman? “Who cares?”

Danny just shrugs again. Perhaps he should put an end to this before things start to spiral any more out of hand… Who’s he kidding, that’s Batman. Things are already out of hand.

“Did you hear that, Batman? He doesn’t care if you know him or not. Does that hurt?”

Batman doesn’t answer, he just clenches his fists tightly and glares at Danny.

Danny wishes he’d been paying more attention because he has no idea what the fuck is going on now. The pages of his homework are scattered across the floor of his cage—he only had three problems left!—it makes a certain perverse sort of sense that just as he gets to grips with algebra, he’d be knocked off kilter in a ghost fight of all things. Great.

“Uh, what?”

But the ghost ignores him and swirls up in the air to float around Batman’s centre podium. Right. So this is all about Batman, then. Gotcha.

“Second question, Batman! Come on, you must know what it is by now, do I even have to ask?”

Batman remains stubbornly silent.

Looking around, Danny sees that he’s in the last of the cages, ringing around Batman in a semicircle. There’s a Gotham vigilante in each one—and also Red Hood, which is weird because Danny’s fairly certain he’s like a crime boss or something—Nightwing, Red Robin, Robin, that new daytime one, the one with the full face mask… Batgirl? Orphan? There are a lot of them and they all seem to change their names every few years, alright? It gets confusing.

Besides, Danny’s had a few other things on his plate lately. He doesn’t have time to memorise every single city’s heroes! It’s not like any of them know who he is anyway.

There’s a floating number behind Batman. 

79/134.

Danny hates fractions even more than algebra. This sucks.

“Fine, I’ll ask. How old is he?”

“My name’s Danny, and I’m 15.” he says, but no one looks his way. Huh. Are the cages soundproof unless the ghost wants to hear him?

It takes a second, but Batman growls out a low, “I don’t know.”

The ghost cackles, long and hard. 

Danny can’t help but roll his eyes as he floats over to him again. This time he can feel it, the rush of ectoplasm that floods through the cage as the ghost makes contact.

“How old are you?”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m asking you how old you are, so, how old are you?”

Okay, so infusing the cage with ectoplasm means he can be heard. Good to know.

“I’m 15.”

As soon as the words leave his lips, the number behind Batman ticks over.

79/135.

Right. So, Batman’s going through his own test. General knowledge on vigilantes? But then, why’s he here with the Gotham heroes? It doesn’t make sense!

“He’s 15, Batman. That’s 15 years of his life that you’ve missed out on, isn’t that something? You know, I’m starting to suspect that you don’t know them all perfectly like you said you did. I don’t think you know them at all.”

The ghost lets out another long laugh and leaves before Danny can even think of the right question to ask. Something other than “What the fuck?”

“When’s his birthday?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well?”

“Seriously, what’s happening? I don’t get it.”

“Answer the question. When’s your birthday?”

“April 3rd.”

79/136.

The questions keep coming—both from the ghost, and from Danny—but only the ghost gets his answered.

“What are his hobbies?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t know, fighting, I guess? Wait, no, engineering! You know, inventing shit, that sounds better than fighting.”

Yeah, this is still Batman, probably shouldn’t advertise his crime fighting. Wait, hang on, does the combination of fighting and inventing shit make him sound more like a villain? Fuck!

79/139.

“What’s his favourite colour?”

“I don’t know.”

“Red.”

79/142.

“What’s his favourite movie?”

“I don’t know.”

“Undead Teacher II: The Bell Doesn’t Dismiss You, I Do. It’s really good, you should watch it.”

79/145.

“What’s his favourite game?”

“I don’t know.”

“Not fucking this one, I can tell you that. Seriously, what’s happening here? Why’s Batman meant to know all of these?”

“Answer the question.”

“Doomed.”

79/149.

And then they start getting into the harder questions. More personal. Stuff that Danny only really talks about with Jazz—and even then, only when he’s coerced or going through a rough patch.

Part of him wants to keep playing the game, see what he can learn, see why he’s been dragged into this.

“Who was his first love?”

“I don’t know.”

“Val. But don’t tell her I said that.”

79/154.

“With whom was his first kiss?”

“I don’t know.”

“Does a fake-out make-out count?”

“What?”

“It’s when you kiss someone so people think you were doing that instead of, you know, like, doing something you shouldn’t.”

“Yes, it counts. It’s still a kiss.”

“See, that’s what Tucker said, but I don’t think it does, I mean—alright, yeah, sure, it was with Sam, then, jeez.”

79/155.

Part of him wants to stop.

“What’s his greatest fear?”

“I don’t know.”

A huge part of him wants this to stop.

Batman’s still standing straight, but his hands—held tightly at his sides—are shaking. Why is this happening?

“Well? What’s your greatest fear? Don’t worry, this is a safe space, we won’t judge you. It’s not you we’re here to judge, after all.”

Danny licks his lips, forces himself to breath through his nose. His greatest fear?

“My parents.”

He, uh… he hadn’t meant to say that. He also hadn’t realised how true that was until it left him. There’s a pounding ache in his chest.

The ghost’s face splits into a wide grin, teeth sharp and glinting in the light, drinking in Danny’s hurt. The air crackles and he doesn’t know who’s causing it.

79/157.

“Why is he scared of his parents?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m… scared they’ll find out what I am and they’ll hurt me for it.” His voice is barely above a whisper, but it carries to everyone, magically amplified through the room. Danny just concentrates on breathing. He keeps his eyes on Batman. There’s no need to know what the others are doing.

Batman gasps, ragged and catching, and goes to take a step towards him before the platform he’s on lights up red. 

The ghost whips his head around to laugh.

“Careful now, Batman, you know what happens if you step out of that circle before the game is over. Boom.”

Batman steps back, but he never looks away from Danny, his scowl deepening.

Danny doesn’t know what it means.

79/158.

“We still have a few more questions, you can’t give up right before the end! What is he?”

The pause between the question and Batman’s answer is longer this time. Danny watches as his hands clench and unclench, as the muscles work in his jaw, until he finally gives up.

“I don’t know.”

It sounds hollow in the open space.

“Well?”

“Do you not know who I am?”

It does make him kind of like a douche to pull that card, but seriously, it feels like everyone in the Infinite Realms knows who he is at this point and he can feel the anger rising in him, no one should dare subject him to this, he—

“Did you hear that, Batman? Do you not know who he is? Look at him, look at your—”

“No, you. Do you not know who I am?”

The ghost takes his hand off the cage and squints at him, looking him up and down, before dismissing him with a smile. “What does it matter if I know who you are or not, what matters here is if he knows you.”

He swirls up around them until he’s floating in front of the giant numbers. They tick over again.

79/159.

“Evidently, he doesn't know you much.” He swoops down to curl his ghostly tail around Batman’s podium, smiling all the while. “Come on, Batman, you’re so close! I’ve only got one more question left, there’s still a chance you can win. Only half, that’s it, you just need to answer half of my questions correctly and then you can all leave perfectly safe and sound.

“So, without further ado, here is your final question. What’s his name?” The way the ghost’s voice echoes through the chambers, cruel and twisted, sends shivers up Danny’s spine. 

Batman’s mouth opens and closes, but no sound comes out. He raises a hand out towards Danny, goes to take a step, but pulls back at the last second. Only the bottom half of his face is visible, but the anguish on it is plain as day.

“It’s so simple, there’s no way you could get it wrong. Even the worst father knows their child’s name, surely. But, I suppose, you didn’t even know he existed before now, did you? How can you call yourself a father at all? How can you say you know your children?”

“I—”

“It’s Danny.”

The ghost’s cackling laughter is cut off abruptly as he snaps his neck towards Danny’s cage.

“How did you do that? How are you speaking, don’t ruin this!”

Yeah, screw this guy. Screw whatever twisted game he’s trying to play with Batman, Danny’s finished with it.

“My name is Danny. Danny Phantom.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“You can’t be Phantom, he’s—”

He transforms in a flash of bright light and the cage shatters with a, disappointingly, pretty weak bolt of ectoplasm. It’s not even going to be a good fight, he can tell. Honestly, after all of this emotional turmoil, he could really do with letting off some steam, but this guy’s too weak to even bother with.

He sighs and steps out of the ruins of his cage.

“Guess you should have done some research before kidnapping people, huh?”

“I don’t do research!”

“Yeah, that’s pretty obvious.” he says, with a roll of his eyes. He’s definitely not looking at Batman.

“No, I mean, the spell just does it all for me—it gathers everything it needs and brings it all here, including the subject’s children. It knows the answers to all the questions a father should know, it—”

“So Batman really is my father?”

“Yes. Without a doubt.”

Danny closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. The ache in his chest never fades, but after another couple of seconds, his eyes stop prickling.

“And everyone else here… they’re my brothers and sisters?”

“Yes, that’s right.” The ghost nods frantically, his perpetual grin looking more and more unsure. “The spell can’t be wrong.”

“And you were going to hurt them all if he didn’t win?”

The ghost stops nodding.

“I’m really gonna enjoy hitting you now.”

“But without me, you wouldn’t know! Surely that counts for something, surely—”

In the end, all it takes is one solid punch to knock the ghost out. Barely even worth it—certainly not the catharsis he was hoping for. 

With a sigh, Danny takes a thermos out of his chest and sucks up the unconscious ghost in a blaze of light. Perhaps he can go and needle Vlad or something when he makes it back home, finally get a release for some of this rage building in his chest.

Anything so he doesn’t have to deal with… whatever the hell is happening here now.

As soon as he caps the lid on the thermos, the stage setup vanishes and the air shimmers around them until even that fades and they find themselves on a rooftop in a dark, gloomy city that certainly isn’t Amity Park.

Danny has a guess as to where they are and he’s not exactly happy about it.

“B, what the hell was that?”

“You alright, Batman?”

“Father?”

Danny has his back to them all. He’s not looking. He has bigger things to worry about than… whatever the absolute fuck all of that was. He’s just going to block this from his mind forever, thanks.

They all fall into silence and Danny can practically feel their eyes burning into his back. Well… fuck. He floats down to stand on his own two feet and takes a deep breath, turning back into his human form before… before turning around to face them all.

“So, that was weird.”

Yikes, not the greatest way to start a conversation with—with his biological dad? What does that mean about—oh, ew, he doesn’t even want to think about it, gross. Did Mom cheat? Does Dad know?

“Who are you?” Batman growls out, and you know what? Danny doesn’t feel bad about his conversation starter at all now, because that was shocking. He can’t help but flinch.

“Jesus, B, don’t scare him.” Nightwing rests a hand on Batman’s shoulder and gently manoeuvres himself in front of him. “My name’s Nightwing, you’re Danny, right?”

Danny nods, but doesn’t speak. Probably shouldn’t open his mouth any more, really. They already know he’s Phantom, he should keep the rest of what they know at a minimum, shouldn’t he? At least until he knows a bit more about them.

Does he want to know more about them?

“How about we take this back to the cave where we can get to know each other properly? Without all the masks, alright?”

Wait, what?

Danny cocks his head to the side, confused. Is Nightwing saying they’ll tell them their identities? They’d just trust him with that?

Looking at them all, it’s pretty hard to tell what they want. The masks do a really good job at hiding what they’re thinking—sidenote, should Danny get a mask?—and he’s… he’s only just met them. He wasn’t paying attention to any of their questions, he doesn’t know a thing about them! Meanwhile, they know everything about him—oh, Ancients, they know about Val, they know about his first kiss, they know about—

“Please,” Batman starts, and then stops again, looking more uncertain than he ever did earlier. “Please, I know… I know this must be difficult for you, but if that… thing—”

“Ghost.” Danny interrupts, immediately wishing he hadn’t. “He was a ghost.”

Batman nods. “But if that ghost is right, then… I don’t want to lose this opportunity to get to know you. I don’t know my children as well as I thought, and it almost cost them their lives. I… I don’t want that to happen again.”

What, so he’s just meant to tell Batman all his secrets, just in case they all get captured by another family therapy-oriented ghost? Not gonna happen, thanks, Batman.

They must have read something in his face (seriously, should he get a mask?) because Nightwing steps up again. “I think what B means to say is that we’d all like to get to know you better. No pressure, no strings, you don’t have to tell us anything you don’t want to.”

“I, uh, have a test tomorrow.” His voice is strangled, the words getting caught in his throat. He takes a step back and his heart pounds in his chest. “I should get going, it’s a long flight back.”

Batman follows him as he takes another step away, but Nightwing rests a hand on his shoulder and keeps him still. “Let him go, B, you can’t force him.”

When he bumps against the edge of the roof, he transforms and lifts into the air, not missing the quick flash of concern across Batman’s face. Whatever that means, he doesn’t know.

“Can you… can you not look me up? For obvious reasons, I’d rather my parents not find out about this.Them and… others, too. Even if you think your tech is good, when it comes to ghosts, theirs is better. Please don’t look me up.”

Red Robin is already furiously typing away on a screen on his wrist. 

“Come on, dude, seriously? I just asked you not to.”

“I’m not, I’m just—ow!”

Red Hood whacks him across the back of his head and then dodges quickly as Red Robin goes to jab him in the stomach.

“I really wasn’t, I was researching ghosts in general, fuck off!”

“Don’t do that either.” Danny laughs, watching as they dance across the rooftop, each failing to hit the other. They only come to an end when Black Bat? Orphan? Seriously, was she Batgirl, he really doesn’t know. Anyway, she ends the fight with a swift chop to both of their backs, which leaves them both grumbling on the floor.

“Seriously, you won’t get anything good searching on the internet, anyway. Any credible sources will trigger a trace and anything else is rubbish anyway. I’ll…” He takes in a deep breath that he doesn’t need and looks towards Batman. “I’ll tell you about it all when I come back, I promise. Saturday, same time, same place. Alright?”

There’s a tense silence as they all turn to see what Batman will say. Danny can’t help but let out a small sigh of relief when he finally nods.

Okay, so he’s got until Saturday. That’s plenty of time!

It’s two days. He’s got two days to figure out what he’s going to say. To ask his parents—ask Jazz, probably—if he’s, what, adopted? Or the product of a secret fling? Gross, does he even want to know?

There’s no way two days is enough time, oh, Ancient’s what’s he going to do?

He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly—he can panic on the way back, at least let him keep some kind of cool in front of Batman!

“I’ll, uh, see you on Saturday, then!” He waves, feeling a little stupid, and he turns to face the direction of Amity Park.

“Danny?” 

He turns back to find Batman looking up at him, uncertainty reading in every part of his frame.

“Yeah?” 

“Good luck on your test tomorrow.”

As much as he wants to, Danny can’t fight down the blinding grin that worms its way onto his face. No one apart from Jazz has wished him luck on a test in a long while. He must look like such a dork, but his core lifts in his chest and somehow it’s a little easier to breathe.

“Thanks! Bye!” 

He waves again, more cheerfully this time, and zooms off before they have a chance to call him back. The grin doesn’t leave his face until three hours later when he’s finally collapsed into his bed in Amity at Ancients-knows-what-time and the cold realisation that he left his homework back in the cage floods through him.

He groans as he’s interrupted with a knock on his cage, rolling his eyes.

“What?”

“How does it make you feel, hm?” asks the ghost, his grin widening in mocking sympathy. Great. Another Spectra type. “He doesn’t even recognise you. Failed at the first hurdle!”

“So?” Danny shrugs, not really knowing or caring what’s happening here. He had three questions left. Three! This is the most homework he’s done since freshman year, and yet again, here comes a ghost to ruin it. “I don’t recognise him either, so who cares.”

“Who cares?” The ghost blinks at him, twisting back to look incredulously at… holy shit, is that Batman? “Who cares?”

Danny just shrugs again. Perhaps he should put an end to this before things start to spiral any more out of hand… Who’s he kidding, that’s Batman. Things are already out of hand.

“Did you hear that, Batman? He doesn’t care if you know him or not. Does that hurt?”

Batman doesn’t answer, he just clenches his fists tightly and glares at Danny.

Danny wishes he’d been paying more attention because he has no idea what the fuck is going on now. The pages of his homework are scattered across the floor of his cage—he only had three problems left!—it makes a certain perverse sort of sense that just as he gets to grips with algebra, he’d be knocked off kilter in a ghost fight of all things. Great.

“Uh, what?”

But the ghost ignores him and swirls up in the air to float around Batman’s centre podium. Right. So this is all about Batman, then. Gotcha.

“Second question, Batman! Come on, you must know what it is by now, do I even have to ask?”

Batman remains stubbornly silent.

Looking around, Danny sees that he’s in the last of the cages, ringing around Batman in a semicircle. There’s a Gotham vigilante in each one—and also Red Hood, which is weird because Danny’s fairly certain he’s like a crime boss or something—Nightwing, Red Robin, Robin, that new daytime one, the one with the full face mask… Batgirl? Orphan? There are a lot of them and they all seem to change their names every few years, alright? It gets confusing.

Besides, Danny’s had a few other things on his plate lately. He doesn’t have time to memorise every single city’s heroes! It’s not like any of them know who he is anyway.

There’s a floating number behind Batman. 

79/134.

Danny hates fractions even more than algebra. This sucks.

“Fine, I’ll ask. How old is he?”

“My name’s Danny, and I’m 15.” he says, but no one looks his way. Huh. Are the cages soundproof unless the ghost wants to hear him?

It takes a second, but Batman growls out a low, “I don’t know.”

The ghost cackles, long and hard. 

Danny can’t help but roll his eyes as he floats over to him again. This time he can feel it, the rush of ectoplasm that floods through the cage as the ghost makes contact.

“How old are you?”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m asking you how old you are, so, how old are you?”

Okay, so infusing the cage with ectoplasm means he can be heard. Good to know.

“I’m 15.”

As soon as the words leave his lips, the number behind Batman ticks over.

79/135.

Right. So, Batman’s going through his own test. General knowledge on vigilantes? But then, why’s he here with the Gotham heroes? It doesn’t make sense!

“He’s 15, Batman. That’s 15 years of his life that you’ve missed out on, isn’t that something? You know, I’m starting to suspect that you don’t know them all perfectly like you said you did. I don’t think you know them at all.”

The ghost lets out another long laugh and leaves before Danny can even think of the right question to ask. Something other than “What the fuck?”

“When’s his birthday?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well?”

“Seriously, what’s happening? I don’t get it.”

“Answer the question. When’s your birthday?”

“April 3rd.”

79/136.

The questions keep coming—both from the ghost, and from Danny—but only the ghost gets his answered.

“What are his hobbies?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t know, fighting, I guess? Wait, no, engineering! You know, inventing shit, that sounds better than fighting.”

Yeah, this is still Batman, probably shouldn’t advertise his crime fighting. Wait, hang on, does the combination of fighting and inventing shit make him sound more like a villain? Fuck!

79/139.

“What’s his favourite colour?”

“I don’t know.”

“Red.”

79/142.

“What’s his favourite movie?”

“I don’t know.”

“Undead Teacher II: The Bell Doesn’t Dismiss You, I Do. It’s really good, you should watch it.”

79/145.

“What’s his favourite game?”

“I don’t know.”

“Not fucking this one, I can tell you that. Seriously, what’s happening here? Why’s Batman meant to know all of these?”

“Answer the question.”

“Doomed.”

79/149.

And then they start getting into the harder questions. More personal. Stuff that Danny only really talks about with Jazz—and even then, only when he’s coerced or going through a rough patch.

Part of him wants to keep playing the game, see what he can learn, see why he’s been dragged into this.

“Who was his first love?”

“I don’t know.”

“Val. But don’t tell her I said that.”

79/154.

“With whom was his first kiss?”

“I don’t know.”

“Does a fake-out make-out count?”

“What?”

“It’s when you kiss someone so people think you were doing that instead of, you know, like, doing something you shouldn’t.”

“Yes, it counts. It’s still a kiss.”

“See, that’s what Tucker said, but I don’t think it does, I mean—alright, yeah, sure, it was with Sam, then, jeez.”

79/155.

Part of him wants to stop.

“What’s his greatest fear?”

“I don’t know.”

A huge part of him wants this to stop.

Batman’s still standing straight, but his hands—held tightly at his sides—are shaking. Why is this happening?

“Well? What’s your greatest fear? Don’t worry, this is a safe space, we won’t judge you. It’s not you we’re here to judge, after all.”

Danny licks his lips, forces himself to breath through his nose. His greatest fear?

“My parents.”

He, uh… he hadn’t meant to say that. He also hadn’t realised how true that was until it left him. There’s a pounding ache in his chest.

The ghost’s face splits into a wide grin, teeth sharp and glinting in the light, drinking in Danny’s hurt. The air crackles and he doesn’t know who’s causing it.

79/157.

“Why is he scared of his parents?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m… scared they’ll find out what I am and they’ll hurt me for it.” His voice is barely above a whisper, but it carries to everyone, magically amplified through the room. Danny just concentrates on breathing. He keeps his eyes on Batman. There’s no need to know what the others are doing.

Batman gasps, ragged and catching, and goes to take a step towards him before the platform he’s on lights up red. 

The ghost whips his head around to laugh.

“Careful now, Batman, you know what happens if you step out of that circle before the game is over. Boom.”

Batman steps back, but he never looks away from Danny, his scowl deepening.

Danny doesn’t know what it means.

79/158.

“We still have a few more questions, you can’t give up right before the end! What is he?”

The pause between the question and Batman’s answer is longer this time. Danny watches as his hands clench and unclench, as the muscles work in his jaw, until he finally gives up.

“I don’t know.”

It sounds hollow in the open space.

“Well?”

“Do you not know who I am?”

It does make him kind of like a douche to pull that card, but seriously, it feels like everyone in the Infinite Realms knows who he is at this point and he can feel the anger rising in him, no one should dare subject him to this, he—

“Did you hear that, Batman? Do you not know who he is? Look at him, look at your—”

“No, you. Do you not know who I am?”

The ghost takes his hand off the cage and squints at him, looking him up and down, before dismissing him with a smile. “What does it matter if I know who you are or not, what matters here is if he knows you.”

He swirls up around them until he’s floating in front of the giant numbers. They tick over again.

79/159.

“Evidently, he doesn't know you much.” He swoops down to curl his ghostly tail around Batman’s podium, smiling all the while. “Come on, Batman, you’re so close! I’ve only got one more question left, there’s still a chance you can win. Only half, that’s it, you just need to answer half of my questions correctly and then you can all leave perfectly safe and sound.

“So, without further ado, here is your final question. What’s his name?” The way the ghost’s voice echoes through the chambers, cruel and twisted, sends shivers up Danny’s spine. 

Batman’s mouth opens and closes, but no sound comes out. He raises a hand out towards Danny, goes to take a step, but pulls back at the last second. Only the bottom half of his face is visible, but the anguish on it is plain as day.

“It’s so simple, there’s no way you could get it wrong. Even the worst father knows their child’s name, surely. But, I suppose, you didn’t even know he existed before now, did you? How can you call yourself a father at all? How can you say you know your children?”

“I—”

“It’s Danny.”

The ghost’s cackling laughter is cut off abruptly as he snaps his neck towards Danny’s cage.

“How did you do that? How are you speaking, don’t ruin this!”

Yeah, screw this guy. Screw whatever twisted game he’s trying to play with Batman, Danny’s finished with it.

“My name is Danny. Danny Phantom.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“You can’t be Phantom, he’s—”

He transforms in a flash of bright light and the cage shatters with a, disappointingly, pretty weak bolt of ectoplasm. It’s not even going to be a good fight, he can tell. Honestly, after all of this emotional turmoil, he could really do with letting off some steam, but this guy’s too weak to even bother with.

He sighs and steps out of the ruins of his cage.

“Guess you should have done some research before kidnapping people, huh?”

“I don’t do research!”

“Yeah, that’s pretty obvious.” he says, with a roll of his eyes. He’s definitely not looking at Batman.

“No, I mean, the spell just does it all for me—it gathers everything it needs and brings it all here, including the subject’s children. It knows the answers to all the questions a father should know, it—”

“So Batman really is my father?”

“Yes. Without a doubt.”

Danny closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. The ache in his chest never fades, but after another couple of seconds, his eyes stop prickling.

“And everyone else here… they’re my brothers and sisters?”

“Yes, that’s right.” The ghost nods frantically, his perpetual grin looking more and more unsure. “The spell can’t be wrong.”

“And you were going to hurt them all if he didn’t win?”

The ghost stops nodding.

“I’m really gonna enjoy hitting you now.”

“But without me, you wouldn’t know! Surely that counts for something, surely—”

In the end, all it takes is one solid punch to knock the ghost out. Barely even worth it—certainly not the catharsis he was hoping for. 

With a sigh, Danny takes a thermos out of his chest and sucks up the unconscious ghost in a blaze of light. Perhaps he can go and needle Vlad or something when he makes it back home, finally get a release for some of this rage building in his chest.

Anything so he doesn’t have to deal with… whatever the hell is happening here now.

As soon as he caps the lid on the thermos, the stage setup vanishes and the air shimmers around them until even that fades and they find themselves on a rooftop in a dark, gloomy city that certainly isn’t Amity Park.

Danny has a guess as to where they are and he’s not exactly happy about it.

“B, what the hell was that?”

“You alright, Batman?”

“Father?”

Danny has his back to them all. He’s not looking. He has bigger things to worry about than… whatever the absolute fuck all of that was. He’s just going to block this from his mind forever, thanks.

They all fall into silence and Danny can practically feel their eyes burning into his back. Well… fuck. He floats down to stand on his own two feet and takes a deep breath, turning back into his human form before… before turning around to face them all.

“So, that was weird.”

Yikes, not the greatest way to start a conversation with—with his biological dad? What does that mean about—oh, ew, he doesn’t even want to think about it, gross. Did Mom cheat? Does Dad know?

“Who are you?” Batman growls out, and you know what? Danny doesn’t feel bad about his conversation starter at all now, because that was shocking. He can’t help but flinch.

“Jesus, B, don’t scare him.” Nightwing rests a hand on Batman’s shoulder and gently manoeuvres himself in front of him. “My name’s Nightwing, you’re Danny, right?”

Danny nods, but doesn’t speak. Probably shouldn’t open his mouth any more, really. They already know he’s Phantom, he should keep the rest of what they know at a minimum, shouldn’t he? At least until he knows a bit more about them.

Does he want to know more about them?

“How about we take this back to the cave where we can get to know each other properly? Without all the masks, alright?”

Wait, what?

Danny cocks his head to the side, confused. Is Nightwing saying they’ll tell them their identities? They’d just trust him with that?

Looking at them all, it’s pretty hard to tell what they want. The masks do a really good job at hiding what they’re thinking—sidenote, should Danny get a mask?—and he’s… he’s only just met them. He wasn’t paying attention to any of their questions, he doesn’t know a thing about them! Meanwhile, they know everything about him—oh, Ancients, they know about Val, they know about his first kiss, they know about—

“Please,” Batman starts, and then stops again, looking more uncertain than he ever did earlier. “Please, I know… I know this must be difficult for you, but if that… thing—”

“Ghost.” Danny interrupts, immediately wishing he hadn’t. “He was a ghost.”

Batman nods. “But if that ghost is right, then… I don’t want to lose this opportunity to get to know you. I don’t know my children as well as I thought, and it almost cost them their lives. I… I don’t want that to happen again.”

What, so he’s just meant to tell Batman all his secrets, just in case they all get captured by another family therapy-oriented ghost? Not gonna happen, thanks, Batman.

They must have read something in his face (seriously, should he get a mask?) because Nightwing steps up again. “I think what B means to say is that we’d all like to get to know you better. No pressure, no strings, you don’t have to tell us anything you don’t want to.”

“I, uh, have a test tomorrow.” His voice is strangled, the words getting caught in his throat. He takes a step back and his heart pounds in his chest. “I should get going, it’s a long flight back.”

Batman follows him as he takes another step away, but Nightwing rests a hand on his shoulder and keeps him still. “Let him go, B, you can’t force him.”

When he bumps against the edge of the roof, he transforms and lifts into the air, not missing the quick flash of concern across Batman’s face. Whatever that means, he doesn’t know.

“Can you… can you not look me up? For obvious reasons, I’d rather my parents not find out about this.Them and… others, too. Even if you think your tech is good, when it comes to ghosts, theirs is better. Please don’t look me up.”

Red Robin is already furiously typing away on a screen on his wrist. 

“Come on, dude, seriously? I just asked you not to.”

“I’m not, I’m just—ow!”

Red Hood whacks him across the back of his head and then dodges quickly as Red Robin goes to jab him in the stomach.

“I really wasn’t, I was researching ghosts in general, fuck off!”

“Don’t do that either.” Danny laughs, watching as they dance across the rooftop, each failing to hit the other. They only come to an end when Black Bat? Orphan? Seriously, was she Batgirl, he really doesn’t know. Anyway, she ends the fight with a swift chop to both of their backs, which leaves them both grumbling on the floor.

“Seriously, you won’t get anything good searching on the internet, anyway. Any credible sources will trigger a trace and anything else is rubbish anyway. I’ll…” He takes in a deep breath that he doesn’t need and looks towards Batman. “I’ll tell you about it all when I come back, I promise. Saturday, same time, same place. Alright?”

There’s a tense silence as they all turn to see what Batman will say. Danny can’t help but let out a small sigh of relief when he finally nods.

Okay, so he’s got until Saturday. That’s plenty of time!

It’s two days. He’s got two days to figure out what he’s going to say. To ask his parents—ask Jazz, probably—if he’s, what, adopted? Or the product of a secret fling? Gross, does he even want to know?

There’s no way two days is enough time, oh, Ancient’s what’s he going to do?

He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly—he can panic on the way back, at least let him keep some kind of cool in front of Batman!

“I’ll, uh, see you on Saturday, then!” He waves, feeling a little stupid, and he turns to face the direction of Amity Park.

“Danny?” 

He turns back to find Batman looking up at him, uncertainty reading in every part of his frame.

“Yeah?” 

“Good luck on your test tomorrow.”

As much as he wants to, Danny can’t fight down the blinding grin that worms its way onto his face. No one apart from Jazz has wished him luck on a test in a long while. He must look like such a dork, but his core lifts in his chest and somehow it’s a little easier to breathe.

“Thanks! Bye!” 

He waves again, more cheerfully this time, and zooms off before they have a chance to call him back. The grin doesn’t leave his face until three hours later when he’s finally collapsed into his bed in Amity at Ancients-knows-what-time and the cold realisation that he left his homework back in the cage floods through him.