I am loudly pushing the batdad agenda i am loudly pushing the— DPxDC Prompt
“Woah. You look like shit."
Granted, that’s probably not the first thing Danny should be saying to the guy that just bit the curb, but in his defense; he’s not running on 100% right now either.
The man -- tall, towering, and broader than Danny is tall -- whips around on his heel, black frayed cape flaring out impressively. Danny would've whistled in appreciation, but he takes the time instead to wipe the back of his hand across his mouth, smearing the blood running from his nose across his cheek.
"Sorry." He blinks widely, not even flinching as the man with the horns zeroes in on him. "That was rude of me. I have a really bad brain-to-mouth filter; Sam says its what always gets me into trouble."
And she's not wrong either, per say. His smart mouth is what landed him in this situation -- with blood blossom extract running through his veins and cannibalizing the ectoplasm in his bloodstream. Thanks Vlad.
The man grunts at him; a short, curt "hm" that shouldn't make Danny smile, but he does because he's somewhat delirious and probably concussed. The man keeps some kind of distance, sinking towards the shadows of Gotham's alleyway like he dares to melt right into it.
If it's supposed to scare Danny, it doesn't work. Danny's never been afraid of the dark; he's always been able to hide himself in it. He blinks slowly at the mass of shadows.
"You look hurt." The shadows says, blurring together around the edges. Danny squints, and licks his lips to get the blood dripping down his chin off. Ugh, he hates the taste of blood.
"I am." He says, "My godfather poisoned me. M'dying." The agony of the blood blossom eating him from the inside out looped back around to numbing a while ago, so all he feels is half-awake and dazed.
"Hey," Danny stumbles forward towards the man, a bloodied hand reaching out to him. "You-- you're a hero, right? You're not attacking me; which is more than I can say for most costumed people I've met." Maybe it's a poor bar to judge someone at, but he's already established that Danny's not in his right mind.
The man makes no change in expression, but Danny realizes blearily that it's hard to tell with the shadows on his face. He stays still long enough for Danny to latch onto the cape -- stretchy, but almost soft under his fingers.
He looks up blearily into the whites of the man's eyes. "Can you help me? I don't-- I don't wanna die." Again. He doesn't wanna die again. He blinks slow and lizard-like. "I mean- I'll probably get to see mom and dad again, but I told them I'd at least try and make it to adulthood."
There's a clatter down the street, and Danny's ghost sense chills up his spine and leaves a bitter, ashy taste in his mouth. He immediately knows who it belongs to even before the deceptively gentle; "Daniel?" echoes down the way.
"Daniel? Quit your games, badger, Gotham is dangerous for children."
Danny's mouth pulls back, and blood spills against his tongue. "Please." He rasps, and grabs onto the shadow's cape with both hands. "Please. He's going to kill me. Please--"
"Daniel? Is that you?"
His lips part, dragging in air to plead with the darkness again. He doesn't need to, the whites of his eyes narrow, and the cape whirls around him before Danny can blink. Soon swaddled in shadows, the Night lifts him up, and steals him away.
"Dying stunted his growth"?
Or ...
Immortal/Forever 14 Danny
Danny who's ectoplasm keeps his human body "healed" to the moment before his death (perhaps barring an emotionally charged mark or 2, such as his death scars) because that is the only healthy human form it knows. And although Danny can gain more experience over the years, in many ways he never quite grows up. Never really matures; physically, mentally, emotionally; beyond a barely 14 prepubescent boy.
Perhaps it takes years and years and even decades for Bruce to find a cure. They manage a treatment, perhaps by treating the blood blossoms as an extreme allergy or other autoimmune disorder. But finding a cure takes a while.
In the mean time, Danny stays sickly. Not dying, but sickly. Especially if they have to suppress his immune system and/or ghostly nature so it doesn't kill him. And while it probably doesn't stop Danny from being a hero, it definitely changes how he does his heroing. He's no longer the OP heavy hitter he used to be. If Danny wants to stay in the game, he's going to have to learn how to Hero like a Bat.
And he also stays 14.
A couple years after Bruce takes Danny in, Alfred coerces convinces Bruce to indulge in a normal father/son bonding activity. There's a famous circus in town. Perhaps that would be fun?
They come home with Dick, 9 years old and full of vengeful rage.
Suddenly, Dick is growing up with a big brother. A sickly big brother, but a big brother nonetheless. Who loves him and supports him and trains with him and acts as his safety net and is always there to talk to or vent to or cry on when he needs it.
And Danny loves being a big brother and watching Dick grow from a rage filled 9 year old out for the blood of his parent's murderer, into a strong young hero and role model and a leader to other young heros. Danny loves watching Dick grow up.
Even though Danny stays 14 and sickly.
And eventually Dick realizes it. Realizes that his big brother doesn't look so big anymore. Was he always that small? That fragile? That young? Danny is still technically older, he has more years of experience, but that doesn't make him more mature.
As Dick's problems steadily shift from those of a boy to those of a man, he finds himself turning to Danny less and less; finding the 14 year old's perspective less helpful, less profound. Never useless, mind you. Danny is still brilliant and knowledgeable and has such a unique perspective on just about everything. But there are these gaps now. Or rather, Dick thinks, the gaps were always there but Dick was too young to see them. Gaps where for all his knowledge and training, Danny's mindset still remains 14.
The day it really sinks in is the day Danny comes to him, fidgeting and uncertain, and asks for Dick's insight on a problem that Danny doesn't know, can't find the right perspective to figure out, how to deal with.
Some part of Dick will always recognize Danny as his big brother. But the bizarre reality is, somehow, Dick outgrew him.
Okay first off the first thing I realized like, 30 seconds after I made this comment was: Bruce and Danny had to realize themselves too that Danny wasn't aging. Which was a really bad night for the both of them, especially for Danny, who was basically inconsolable the whole night and got himself really sick in the morning as a result.
And Yes! The blood blossom extract just like, feeds off the ectoplasm Danny's body naturally produces. Which makes it impossible to just 'wait until it out of his system' because there is no 'system' for it to escape from! The blood blossom feeds on his ectoplasm, his ecto-levels get really low, the blossom extract then starts to "fade" away (for lack of better terms), which lets his ectoplasm regenerate, only for the poison to revive and latch onto it again.
It creates a vicious cycle of Danny getting really badly ill for a week or two, him recovering for a few months, and then when he's at a high, he crashes and burns again. It's really painful to watch and it's painful to experience. It gets a lot more manageable when Danny and Bruce create some "suppressor" bracelets for Danny to wear that helps manage his ecto-levels, so he crashes and burns significantly less often.
Which also means, yeah, absolutely he learns to be more like a bat in order to stay in the game. He can't -- well, more accurately he shouldn't -- use his ghost form or access his ghost powers. It causes the blood blossom in his system to just, surge, and the few times he has used his ghost powers, he's gotten terribly ill afterwards.
aaaa Danny just being an older brother to Dick. No notes other than Danny is both so jealous, so happy, and so sad when Dick turns fourteen. Then fifteen. Then sixteen. And suddenly Dick is the older brother now, and Danny is still fourteen.
Dick, even when he was nine, always having a sliver of doubt about his brother going out as vigilantes with them. But Danny is just as much of an unstoppable force as him and Bruce, and if he wants to help or go out, nothing except his own illness will stop him. He has a terrible habit of biting off more than he can chew, something they all have in common but it always seems the most prevalent in Danny; or at least the most noticeable.
It's not until he's sixteen, being sat down and having his brother and Bruce explain to him about Danny's lack of aging and the extent of Danny's illness does he find out why. What little video footage he can find on the Phantom of Amity Park reveals a powerhouse; a shooting star in his own right. His brother used to be larger than life, going toe-to-toe with beings on the same level as Superman and winning.
It's both very hard and laughably easy to see the similarities in supergiant star Phantom and the neutron star Nightingale. There's one thing that hasn't changed though; they both smile the same way. Looking at his brother feels like looking at a living tragedy now. He starts helping Bruce find a cure -- if this Vlad Masters guy can get his hands on blood blossoms in order to poison his godson, they can find it to make an antidote.
(which is another thing. Vlad Masters is a despised name amongst the Wayne Family.)
Once Dick knows the full truth, Danny lets him in on inside jokes once previously kept between him and Bruce. Little jokes from his time as Phantom and quips about his illness that wouldn't make sense without full context given. Danny one day nudges his elbow against Dick's side after a long patrol, and with an impish grin tells him; "I would take this over fighting Skulker any day."
"One of your old rogues?"
"Oh yeah. He was the Ghost Zone's "greatest bounty hunter", some bounty hunter he was. He routinely got his ass kicked by an untrained kid. He wanted my skin on his wall."
"What?"
"It's funnier than it sounds, trust me! He used to work with Vlad, but he cut all ties after he heard what he did to me. I guess there are lines even he won't cross."
A constant between all the kids is that they can get a little overprotective over Danny. It's a case of little siblings being protective over their older brother; general familial protectiveness; and Danny's illness. He, just like the rest of them, tends to neglect his health at times. They're all pots calling the other kettles black, but the consequences of Danny not taking care of himself feels a lot more real than with everyone else.
There's really not a sibling whose "worse" than the others, because it fluctuates. But Jason might be the worst if I had to pick; I wouldn't be surprised if he has illness trauma. When he was a kid living in Wayne manor he was Danny's little living shadow whenever his health took a minor dip. Danny spent a lot of time unsuccessfully convincing Jason that he wasn't going to drop over dead.
... i didn't go into it because i was distracted and i was originally just gonna leave it in the tags, but i think it deserves to be in post because I have more thoughts on it than I thought.
But i imagine it's like. genuinely terrifying whenever danny's health crashes and burns. Because before they got those bracelets (which look rather unassuming and cuff-like) Danny's crashes more often than not felt like someone cutting the strings on a puppet. Just. abrupt, scary plummets in his health because his ecto-levels quietly reached a point where the blood blossoms could kick back into full gear. There's few things more terrifying than Bruce watching his kid cough up blood, there's even less when he coughs up a blood clot the size of a golf ball.
They got those bracelets made shortly before or sometime after dick joined the family, but neither Bruce nor Dick will ever forget the awful dread of watching Danny slowly recover, be almost completely healthy and full of life, completely vibrant like a spring flower, only to collapse later and at random. It was easy to get caught up in Danny's charismatic magnetism, only to remember later that it was going to be nipped at the bud at any moment.
It's a lot like going on a rollercoaster and knowing when you'll reach the top, but never knowing when you'll drop. Just that it will soon.
One thing that stays the same, however, is Danny consistently bouncing back from it tho. Even while actively sick there's always an aura of hope around him, and how it's just a sick spell. He'll bounce back and be back on his feet in a week, he always is! It was either that or falling into a depressive hell.
Danny never got as badly sick after that until Jason's death. There have been a few scares where he got pretty sick after he was forced to use his powers, but he bounced back within a day or two. Beforehand it'd take a week at best, and then he was weak for a while afterward.
The rest of the family never knew how bad it got because Dick, Bruce, and Danny never talked about it. Dick and Bruce didn't because it was frankly just, terrifying and traumatizing. Neither of them like talking or thinking about it, and Danny doesn't bring it up because it sucked for him, and well... he never thought it was important to bring up. He saw no point in bringing it up because it felt like trying to garner pity points, there's never a good reason or time to bring up what life was like before his suppressors.
Which brings up a very angsty idea I've got that took this out of the tags, where Danny's bracelets break one day and he doesn't tell anyone -- just quietly alerts Lucius Fox that he'll need the parts to make new ones. And the thing about Danny's bracelets is that the way they 'suppress' him is by detecting when his ecto-levels reach a certain level, before then absorbing the ectoplasm he's producing until his ecto-levels have lowered to a safe level. The absorbed ectoplasm gets steadily released into the atmosphere with the rest of the ambient 'plasm in the air.
It's a rather elaborate piece of tech, and Danny's frankly a little scared of crashing before he can get those parts and make new ones. But it normally takes months for him to crash, and Lucius said the parts he'll need will be in by the end of the month at latest.
Murphy is very cruel -- or more accurately, my own entertainment is. Because of course Danny ends up aiding in a fight that hits all the check boxes of causing a crash: he's in a high-stress situation where he's tense up the wazoo, and forced to use his powers a few times -- intangibility being one of the worst offenders. Pair that with the physical exertion, and by the time they're done, Danny is trembling, nauseous, and in a lot of physical agony from the blood blossom extract.
"You alright?" One of his siblings asks, hovering, and Danny's mask is hiding his unfocused staring as he's hit with another hot flash, so he doesn't bother even looking at them to nod. He's staring over their shoulder trying to ignore the burn in his lungs.
"Yeah." He grits out, "peachy. Jus' took a lot out of me, y'know how it is." It's a lot of effort to not slur his words, and he ends up doing it anyways.
He manages to make it until Batman shows up before he finally collapses. Danny's lurking off in the corner, trying to keep an eye on things (somewhat unsuccessfully), but when he sees Batman an instinctive part of him relaxes, and that's when his body gives up on trying to keep itself together.
He's hit with a coughing fit that results in his head swimming, and a blood clot the size of a tennis ball sitting in his hand. "Oh. Shit." He says, blood dripping down his chin. "That's no good."
Batman's shadow appears over him, and he looks up as Bruce grabs his shoulders tightly. "M- my- uh-- m'bracelets broke." he tells him, and watches his dad practically stop breathing. "Bu- s'-- it's- 's fine. ll'be fff'ne."
(He won't be. But he'll live.)
#thinking on like dialysis? like taking blood from danny which has blood blossom in it and then a clean blood transfusion#they cant do it fast enough to get rid of all of it i imagine theres a limit to how much Not Your Blood you can introduce before its bad#and the blood blossom 'reproduces' as well but it help manage his levels too
oooo, i can imagine they try that at first before they get the bracelets made! Bruce tries to reverse engineer the blood blossom in Danny's veins, but whatever Vlad did to make the stuff, Bruce just can't seem to get an effective antidote on Danny's bloodstream alone. So the both of them figure that they'll need an actual blood blossom to do it -- but those only grow in the ghost zone now, and the only portal to it is in Vlad's basement... and there's a lot of variables preventing them from trying to sneak into the basement to use it.
(Vlad himself, Danny's wellbeing, Bruce's wellbeing, improper and straight up lack of gear being the big main ones i can think of right now)
The other option is getting their hands on the toxin itself that Vlad used to poison Danny, and that has its own range of problems too that make it difficult.
(Vlad again, Danny and Bruce's wellbeing, whether or not Vlad even has leftover toxin itself or if he destroyed it, Vlad probably has security up the wazoo on his house and alarms especially on his lab)
#also how does a an unaging vigilante effect gotham?#like robin obviously changes. skin voice height changes#but danny doesnt....#and its p obvs that hes not aging bc hes a kid#idk#crytpid lore is an indulgence for me
oh it definitely doesn't go unnoticed, that's for sure! It's hard not to especially compared to Robin's own aging and growth. Full tilt cryptid lore has my vote, forever an always. Despite Danny's suppressing his ghost half, he's still got that general aura of spookiness/inhumanness due to generating his own ectoplasm. He can't exactly stop that.
Everyone knows there's something strange about that scrawny little Nightingale that follows the Bat around. When cryptid batman rumors were at its peak, people just assumed that Nightingale was some kind of mitosis-spawned extension of Batman himself. Same for Robin, and that they both embodied different beliefs. Vengeance/Justice, Hope, and Resilience.
If the Bat is the Night, and Robin is the Sunrise, then Nightingale is the Stars.
But to step away from the celestial poeticism; resilience is still scary! Its as frightening as hope is. Everyone knows there's something wrong with Nightingale, just in the way he moves, the way he speaks, and the way he gets back up. He creates an uncanny valley effect, and when he stands in the corner of the mind's lazy eye, there's a sense of tragedy that's already passed.
(Which reminds me that I need to come up with a plot for fey danny that isn't totally piggybacking off of tales of the passerine. I wanna make a post about him being a little menace.)
But yes! There's a lot of rumors about Nightingale, and they only get worse the more Robins there are. Unsurprisingly, one of the common theories is that he's the Bat's dead child.
(Danny also being un-aging means that he's practically non-existent in the public eye. If he's ever even in the public eye in the first place considering he ran away from Vlad, and the media firestorm that him living with Bruce Wayne would cause would be catastrophic. Depends on where the road takes me.)
#and theres no way some criminals dont catch danny coughing up blood and go ??? why the fuck does batman let this kid out#and theres a whole Protect Danny club but on the downlow bc theyll lose their job or die if theyre obvious about it
One goon gets the balls to ask Danny, "why the fuck are you even out here, you look like a stray breeze could knock you over" while waiting for the police, and Danny gets so offended that he verbally tears the man apart and make him cry.
People learn gradually -- or rapidly depending on speed of acquaintance -- that despite Nightingale's frail demeanor, he has, can, and will happily and enthusiastically goomba stomp a bitch, and then mock you for it. That boy is as light as feathers, he's using your head as his personal stepping stone. Watch your back.
He teaches all of his brothers and sisters how to do this. Rip to everyone else LMFAO
There is a silent solidarity 'protect nightingale' club because despite how much of a menace he is, he's honestly kinda sweet when he wants to be. It's more prevalent among civilians. There's also a general understanding that Batman does care about him and does actually like, have an opinion on Nightingale coming out with him. People have seen him fretting over Nightingale in his own broody, grumpy dad way.
It's just that Nightingale is an Unstoppable Force, and Batman is a pushover for his kids. So he gets away with it... for the most part.
#i wonder if poison ivy could like... call the blood blossom to her#have it travel to a specific spot in dannys body and bleed it out unless it counts as dead but it sounds like a flora bacteria in this#it eats ecto and reproduces and stuff#i dunno im tired and ouchy#this is good shit man pls keep going
I was actually thinking about poison ivy! Specifically about how she could make a blood blossom in order to help Danny -- but the bigger question isn't can she, but would she? And I don't think she'd have an incentive to help the people actively hindering her plans until years down the line when she's had that little quasi-redemption arc with Harley.
Plus, I imagine she needs to know more than just the name of the flower in order to grow it. Basic stuff at least like what family of flora its from, what it looks like, what it needs to grow. Etc.
That bloodstream thing though is really fascinating, and if she can do that, then Bruce prohibits Danny from fighting her with him. If she can move the blood blossom around, what's stopping her from trying to amplify it? She finds out that Batman's precious baby bird has some strange floral toxin in his bloodstream that she can control?
She'd for sure use that to her advantage, and it only takes one terrifying run in with Poison Ivy for Bruce to ban Danny indefinitely from fighting her. It's one of the few things Danny agrees on without arguing over it.
Ivy only has to make the mistake of manipulating the "floral toxin" in Nightingale once. Even if Bruce hadn't banned Danny from fighting her, even Poison Ivy knows there are some lines you do not ever cross. She learns very quickly that that is one of them.
Imagine Dick is also there at that point. Perhaps about Danny's age or even slightly older at that point. In the process of shifting from little to big brother. As if Batman's reaction wasn't bad enough, Robin's violent rage is a thing of horror stories. The full force of both of them at once? It's never happened before and every Rogue in Gotham prays it never happens again.
Also consider, Bruce doesn't even need to ban Danny from fighting Poison Ivy. From that point on, Danny himself avoids her like the plague. The trauma is too much. He can't. He just can't.
👀 👀 👀 >:]
while i know you meant jason, my immediate thought went to Danny which opens a angsty thought of Joker killing them both. I've got another reblog going into jason's death in the tags, but ooo another thought is that Danny shields Jason from the worst of the explosion. Jason survives, but Danny does not. Some food for thought.
yess, and I imagine even then Ivy feels a sliver of guilt when she sees the way Nightingale just immediately collapses. There's not a lot of time to though, because soon after she has to ward off the evading war cry of Nightingale's rageful little brother. Batman is tending over Danny, whose gagging on his own blood, among other things.
Poison Ivy... does not get out of this unscathed. Really quite rather injured beyond normal means. The fight is swift, but vicious. Robin does most of the heavy-hitting, while Batman gets Nightingale out of the line of fire and somewhere secure enough for him to leave. (Which he does so very reluctantly)
Bruce breaks about twice as many road laws getting the three of them back to the cave. Danny has a bucket, and is bleeding from the mouth and nose. Neither Dick nor Bruce leave his side* until he's stable, it takes almost all night.
Correction* Bruce leaves once, and only once. And that is to go out as Batman and threaten Ivy six ways to September to keep what she learned about Danny's illness to herself.
Ivy might've already been planning on keeping the floral toxin running through Nightingale's blood to herself. There are some lines you just don't cross. Her little visit from Batman only strengthens this resolve.
(Harley finds out about it years later when she questions Ives about what happened that night -- it's a big mystery to everyone. Ivy considers it, and then sits tells her that Batman's eldest bird has poison running through his veins.)
And yeah, Danny avoids Ivy like he avoids Vlad from that moment on. He's not risking that again - you don't need to tell him twice about avoiding her.
("Poison Ivy's out on ninth street.")
("Nightingale.")
("I've already turned tail the opposite direction of her, B. Someone else go mulch the garden.")
("On it. You go handle the robbery down in the Diamond District, Gale.")
I think Tim would have the convo about Danny's illness and past as Phantom pretty early, he followed them around and knew their identities for a while after all. He would be able to see real time how Dick grows but Danny doesn't. Maybe he already has theories about it, but I figure he'd ask about it as soon as he's settled and certain they won't get mad/throw him out because of the question.
