DPxDC Prompt
Because Bruce is a emergency foster sometimes he temporarily takes in kids with no place to go, all the birds know the drill when that happens, no vigilante talk in the manor and Bruce's office is off limits (as the entrance to the Batcave is behind the grandfather clock within) So while few and far between, it isn't unusual for a kid to stay for a few months before moving on.
What wasn't expected was for a very visibly meta teenager with bright white hair, glowing green eyes and a very obvious meta suppression anklet on his left ankle.
Danny was forced to take refuge in another dimension after a reveal gone wrong, it is only until his friends and the rest of Amity park finish driving out the GIW so he can return. Staying in ghost form was just more convenient here, apparently something called metahumans were a thing here and they were protected by law! He could take advantage of his ghost's forms decreased need for food, sleep and warmth, without getting hunted down for being so visibly inhuman.
What he didn't expect was getting caught by CPS.
Escaping them wasn't a problem, he can just phase away the second they aren't looking, easy. What was a problem is when they determined him a flight risk and slapped a high tech cuff on his ankle that somehow suppressed his powers and prevented him from returning to human form!
This was fine, the Wayne guy seems pretty absentminded slipping out the old fashioned way shouldn't be too hard!
WHY DO GOTHAM'S VIGILANTE'S KEEP DRAGGING HIM BACK!?
Okay but like, what if in ghost form he needs his powers to speak? It's pretty common thing in media for it to be impossible to hear or understand ghosts without some kind of intervention.
Because if Danny could speak he could clear things up with a "hey, this ankle bracelet is killing me," it wouldn't be too far fetched for him to tell them that. He's under the impression that the Wayne's are dumb and very very rich they wouldn't want a stain like that on their reputation. The bats wouldn't chance something like this even if they thought Danny was lying. None of them would want to be responsible for the death of a child in their care. Danny's desperate attempts at escape would just convince them farther that they're telling the truth.
If we go the angst route with Danny's halfa status things can be dragged in a totally different direction.
Danny being stuck in his ghost form doesn't bode to well for him. I'd like to think both halves work with eachother even when one is being used but the ankle bracelet...
The ankle bracelet cuts him off from not only his powers but his human half. He can't speak, no sound comes out. He can't properly breath, he can't eat/ process the nutrients he needs, he can barely sleep because he can feel his human half dieing! Nothing is working as it's supposed to and Danny realizes his situation is growing more and more dire with every moment that passes.
It's like tying off a limb with rubber bands and slowly watching it die. The panic for him would be immeasurable.
Better yet if his human half actually dies the cuff stops working and Danny turns to a batfam member and says the first words he's ever spoken to them.
"You've killed me," Before collapsing in his human form dead. His ghost core too busy trying to regenerate a new human form too keep form because his core has been specifically designed to be integrated with a human form.
(this is kind of a ramble, I'm sorry lol)
We can go with Danny's core being super weird too!
Like, the crucial part is wrapped around his heart and that's all normal. But thin, root like strand spreading out from it. Integrating with his entire body, intertwined with his nervous and circulatory sytems.
Our cells can just up and collectively decide that "hey, this sucks I don't wanna do this let's do something else" and then we have cancer or something. Hell, some diseases are only as fatal as they are because they use our immune systems tactics against us! I think Malaria goes full on Ennard and hides inside the carcasses of cells it kills.
A ghost core integrated properly is ruthlessly efficient with both physical injuries and disease immunity in general. It has all the information our brain has and is like
"this is extremely counterproductive why are useless organs taking up space? They can explode!??? Why don't we regrow teeth," this goes on for months until the core just sighs and goes. "Hold on let me fix this, you don't need to cook us alive to kill infections just- let me do something real quick,"
Ghost cores fucking optimize, but they can only do so much.
I'm Imagining the batfam doing an autopsy and finding blueish green vines overgrown filling every empty space of his body. His core's desperate attempts to feed his human half and keep it alive.
The batfam can see the vines that didn't die directly after Danny did, attempting to fix damage and it's heart breaking because it's trying so hard to fix it.
@noxcheshire you've got it my friend. Angst you shall receive.
Imagine the fighting, the absolute anguish the family would feel knowing that they played a part in killing this child. Knowing that this child had likely been in so much agony as he slowly died due to their unknowing negligence.
Jason standing over his own grave staring down at the dirt knowing damn well he had unintentionally helped torture a child to death. It had to be painful, there were vines growing everywhere, dead and gnarled where they gave all their energy in a futile attempt to save the poor kid. Danny hadn't done anything wrong he rightfully didn't want to live with someone who didn't know what he needed.
Everyone knows it's the ankle bracelet that killed him or at least they theorized it did. Nobody wanted to be at fault not completely that is. They'd beat themselves up about it cursing that they didn't see the signs and take the damn thing off him. Even when Danny attempted to saw his leg off they'd been too scared he'd run before they could help him that they had become the catalyst to his death.
They have Danny's corpse and it's rotting, foul and a reminder of what they did. The rock nestled in the childs chest kept glowing though the only living vines forcing his lungs to suck in air; squeezing and pushing blood through veins as if trying to coax the child back to the realm of the living.
Lmao!! My bad! Donât worry Dannyâs not perma dead.
Damian was an older foster brother for a mere 37 days. It feels like a failure to him that Danny died of something so preventable. It was a failure on their part for not realizing there was another reason for Dannyâs desperate escape attempts. Maybe if it werenât for the Chaos of a recent Arkham breakout they wouldâve been more attentive? They sure as hell were attentive now that itâs seemingly too late.
The body is rotting but Damianâs the first to notice the core isnât as dead as the body despite the withered vines crumbling in his maggot infested chest. Thereâs a dim glow hidden by the human looking heart it engulfed. New vines hadnât grown and old ones had died off leading to the hope crushing despair of their family who desperately wished to take things back. He gets grounded when he tries to pull it out.
Tim agrees with Damian on the sheer basis of a theory. He was morbidly curious the integration with the nervous system was so intricate. Itâs by sheer coincidence that he discovered the core was producing something similar to brainwaves.
Itâs attempting to connect and send information back and forth with the corpse. Trying to send out more vines but they canât fight the decomposition the body is too broken, too weak. Itâs when Jason says he can feel an overwhelming agony radiating off the rock does Tim decidechi to do something. He does the obvious thing anyone would do. He cuts the rock free slicing away the veins still attached. Within a few hours, the core is attempting to create new blood but there nowhere for it to go so now they have a rock that may or may not have the consciousness of a child in it thatâs slowly oozing blood.
Tim decides to make a clone (as one does when your foster brother is dead) not just any clone. Really itâs just a corpse, a husk, a damaged one at that. Tim figures that the core canât create a new body by itself and if it could it would use a detremental amount of energy doing it but shoving the core into his chest and hoping things go well seems like bad idea. He made sure the husk was missing non vital organs as the coreâs response to coming in contact with itâs own DNA is to attempt to share information with the nervous system and fix problems with the physical body.
It takes a year for the core to properly intergrate with husk properly.
Danny wakes up in cave in pain with an overwhelming sensation that everything is new despite remembering everything. The bats surround him, heâs confused why theyâre so relieved by Dannyâs safety. They arenât his family. Danny didnât have a family. They helped kill him.
(Iâll add some comfort for all this hurt later :/
The fluff is good but I don't think we talked enough about the horror that is living inside a dying body.
A body dont just shut down, it's a progress, a painfull one, one that is stretch further than it ever shoud because of Danny funky anatomy
First there is a cut in the oxygen intake, this causes pain the chest area, some among of dizziness and lower energy levels. Than the pain increases, the muscle becomes more and more rigid, the energy level drops even more as food becomes harder do eat and digest, second problem emerge from the multiple deficiencies. The pain increases. Thinking is hard and hallucinations may start to happen because of the lack of nutrients, air and function as the brain, too, start to die.
Getting out of bed hurts
It's getting even harder to breath as movement lower every passing day. Eating, moving, brathing and anything that pulls a muscle becomes harder and harder, more and more painful. It fells like you drowning. But drowning is better, because at lest there are no vivid hallucinations playing before your eyes, in your ears, on your skin. remembering things also become impossible as your brain slowly loses the ability to create memories, and those that are created are filled with horrors and pain.
You lost what days is weeks ago, you don't know the hour either.
Maybe, if you're lucky, by the time you only have a few days left, your nervous system is so deteriorated that you won't be able to feel any pain anymore, that your brain has turned so much into mush that it can't register anything anymore, that most part of the body is so deeply necrotic that theres simplicity nothing more to fell
But seeing that Danny could still speak be the end of it I don't think he had such luck.
Oh Danny was absolutely mentally present the entire time. I was listening to a vid about locked-in syndrome when I first added to the post. Because being aware as youâre slowly approaching your death is one thing. But not being able to tell anyone? Being trapped in your own body like that? Itâs terrifying to think that it can actually happen in real life.
I feel like the symptoms Dannyâs experiencing make this so much worse. Because itâs possible for the batfam to see whatâs happening to Danny. They are watching him slowly deteriorate, hallucinating and walking around like a zombie. But they donât take the ankle monitor off. They know Dannyâs never hurt anyone with his powers but they still havenât taken it off. Were they so worried about their secret identities that theyâd slowly watch a child die just to keep him from escaping? They might not be able to see whatâs happening to his human half but anyone with a brain could tell something was going on with Danny.
Imagine being brutally tortured to death because cps decided you were a âflight risk,â And your foster family were either to dumb or too cruel to save him.
I canât say Danny would be too happy to hear the accomplices to his murder had the audacity to mourn him. To give him a tombstone but keep his rotting carcass in their basement to poke and prod at for weeks. Danny wouldnât go all supervillain about it (Dan trauma) but heâs definitely not going to be a part of this pity party. Heâs not going to give them âclosureâ for their stupidity and heâs definitely not going to play happy family with them. He never wants to see these people again.
They: Oh, let's give comfort đ¤đĽş
Also them: Let's make it worse đĽşđ
Them: Why are you sooo mad?𼺠It was a mistake weâre so so verry sowwy. uwu how would you like to risk your life with us as a vigilante??
YALL ARE FORGETTING!!! HE WAS ONLY MEANT TO BE THERE TEMPORARILY! HE WAS MEANT TO GO BACK TO HJS FRIENDS AND FAMILY AND HIS TOWN, BUT THEY KEPT HIM THERE AS HE DIED AND SHUT DOWN AND WATCHED AS HIS CORE DESPERATELY TRIED TO HEAL HIS DEAD BODY!
Back to the ankle bracelet thing, it probably would be like the perfect storm kind of thing. If Danny hadn't been in his ghost form when they put it on, it wouldn't affect him that much. Not just talking about his health but also his powers. He wouldn't be able to transform but his core would have adapted to give him small bursts of power when he needed them. On that note, he wouldn't have let them place anything on him if he weren't so confident of his powered half and its untouchability. Sure, they waited until he was asleep and it was after they caught him running around town lost. Specifically near Ivy's preferred park, since she seemed liminal enough to hide him, which would've been a good plan if it weren't for the small blooms of blood blossoms she had growing in one of the corners. One that Danny hadn't noticed until it was too late and he was close enough to it to get poisoned. Extra effect, considering he didn't have his alive half helping his core fight back against it.
So already weakened, poisoned, in Ghost form, and a little too cocky about the dimension not having anti-ghost tech, and he ends up with a cuff that weakens his core enough that it's struggling to keep him alive, let alone give him access to his powers. It would have probably been fine, for his relative health anyway, if it hadn't been for the blood blossoms already poisoning him and the fact that his core kept trying to push them out with all its strength and kept falling slightly short each time, weakening him more and more, taking away the energy he would need to turn back to his other form.
Skipping to him living with the bats, he would not be passive about it. Not if he'd tried to saw his leg off in hopes that it would help him get rid of the cuff. As that would have been a last resort, he would have first tried lock-picking it. It had not gone great. Meta cuffs usually account for that and won't come off with a normal key, much less with a lockpick, no matter how skilled Danny was with it. It would have probably been fine but well, Danny's luck rarely works in his favor. Desperation had made him move a little too fast and, when he heard a click (the false release mechanism specifically installed for those situations), he had gotten a little too excited and had tried to rip the cuff off his foot.
Not only did it not work but it made it malfunction in the worst possible way. It still blocked access to his core, more strictly now that it knew he was a flight risk and had tried to remove it without the key (protocol for criminals but I doubt they'd have a different one to use on kids they consider misbehaving, especially if they're already set on restraining them to that extent, which gross but yeah). But now it also started giving him shocks of increasing frequency and potency. Danny did not do well with electricity. Not since the portal. It strained his already tired core even more. Danny kept trying. Nothing worked. His jailors were a little too good at keeping him captive. Danny never stood a chance.
It would have still been fine, or like survivable. Danny's core was strong. Danny had experienced unmentionable horrors and still been able to go back to his life without being too affected by his trauma (no, Jazz, him not talking about it isn't a defense mechanism of repression, he's just vibing, ok?). He could've probably bounced back from the nightmare his life had become since the cuff. He would have taken a Vlad rescue at this point. But he was also in a new dimension with minimal access to ambient ecto (in this dimension, all the extra went directly to the Lazarus pits and was immediately contaminated by Ra's continued existence) and not enough access to his core to turn emotions into energy. All of it focusing on cutting the blood blossom and now enduring being continually electrocuted, which the bats somehow still did not notice...
It was only a matter of time. Maybe he could've lasted longer. Maybe he would've if he had gotten any sign, however small, that there was hope his torture would come to an end. There was nothing. No green notes appearing or size-changing dogs showing up to play. No gav or other Fenton related vehicles or communication devices making their way through the new dimension. No ectoplasm to absorb. Not even the ability to detect if it existed unless it was right in front of him, very close.
He had had a brief moment of hope when Jason had come to visit the manor the first time. He was highly liminal, his ecto was contaminated but still present. Maybe Danny could communicate with him through ghost speak despite it. He tried. Nothing. He tried again. Not even a twitch. Apparently the underdeveloped core wasn't able to catch much. Jason had left shortly after, feeling wildly uncomfortable âlike a pebble had been stuck on his shoe but somehow feeling it on the inside of his stomach,â without really being able to know the reason (he felt Danny's desperation and attempts of communication but didn't know what it was).
It was the last drop for Danny. He let his core go (ghosts are deeply driven by emotions, Danny giving up wouldn't be enough to kill him usually, even without access to his human side, but with a core that's barely hanging on? Yeah. That was enough). He felt another tiny sliver of hope when he felt his powers returning to him as his core gave up but it was short-lived. As soon as it started to restart, Danny felt the infernal cuff starting his torture again. He only had enough time to tell the closest person his last words: "you killed me", before he completely faded.
The torture didn't end there. Of course it wouldn't. Danny could never be so lucky. It continued when his senses returned to him as his body started rotting and his core went back to frantically trying to cure him, still completely unable to do anything about it. Or even talk. It went on as he felt every single cut. Every part of the dissection (did it count as vivisection if Danny was aware enough to feel every second of it? Danny thought it did). Every time they stuck their hands inside of him and moved his organs around. Every time they decided to cut one out and put it on the side, separate from his body but somehow still connected to his core and therefore still cognizant of each time they cut them into pieces to analyze and see if that has been the cause of death.
They didn't touch the vines left by the blood blossoms poisoning. Of course they wouldn't. Apparently they thought that was his core's weak attempt at healing instead of a parasite leeching off the little energy he had access to. They didn't remove the cuff either. Danny would've probably recovered if they had done either. Of course, that meant it didn't even occur to them. Even after he was dead they wouldn't grant him his freedom.
Danny didn't think he could ever forgive them. He had experience with ambivalent feelings towards people. After all, his parents had loved one half of him while threatening to tear the other apart molecule by molecule. He knew how to compartmentalize. He refused to do that with them. Sure, they had been friendly enough and "nice" to him. They had also kept him captive and tortured him continuously with their ignorance, going so far as to keep going even when he no longer had a say in it. Of course they wouldn't let him rest in peace even when they thought he was fully dead. Even when he had gone as far as spelling it out for them that they had been the cause. His opinion never mattered to them to begin with so why would they start now that he wasn't able to communicate it anymore.
So Danny was not surprised. Disappointed, sure. Annoyed. Frustrated. Tempted to go all ghost king on their dimension and blacklist it from the Infinite Realms (not that he would, he acknowledged that most of the people in it shouldn't suffer for the choices of the few, it was still tempting). Not surprised. So Danny endured. It's what he did best. What he had been doing ever since the accident with the portal. Maybe even before that. It's not like he had a choice. Not as long as that cuff stayed connected to his core. Not when the blood blossoms were still there. Still alive. Still in effect. Keeping him a little more dead every time and making it harder for his core to make a come back somehow. Danny was low-key rooting on them to succeed. He just wanted it to end. Even the GIW would have been more tolerable than this. He still couldn't do anything.
He got a small reprieve when they decided to cut his core loose off his body. He hoped they would leave it alone for a while, just enough for it to recover a little bit of its strength. Enough so Danny could leave or at least turn it invisible and intangible until they gave up searching. He didn't have that kind of luck. They inserted it into another body. An incomplete one his core would have to work hard to heal. One that wouldn't give him a reprieve at all, even when it wasn't his. Even when he shouldn't have had to heal it just because it was forcefully connected to his core. Danny was perfectly capable of going without a body and having his core create a new one. It was actually better for him. Not that his opinion had ever mattered to them.
At least breathing didn't hurt that much anymore. Aside from the emptiness, it was the best he had felt since his encounter with the blood blossoms. Maybe even before. He could feel his strength returning to him and his core kick-starting his heart. He gave himself a moment to hope that it would be enough to get out of this nightmare dimension and back to at least the Infinite Realms. Frostbite would surely know how to help him.
The hope didn't last long. After all, the cuff was still there, ever present on the same ankle as his previous body. Of course it was. He wasn't sure if he preferred it when the blood blossoms were still in his system. At least they limited the time he would have to endure existing in this state. Now, with a still diminished core and new organs to regrow, because apparently they couldn't even do him the kindness of putting him in a complete body, he would be just as vulnerable before, except without the impending final death to look forward to. Just enough work to keep his core strained and busy so he still couldn't access his powers and a certainty that he wouldn't even be able to escape them with death.
He hoped Jazz got there soon. He wasn't sure even his sister would be able to get him out of this. He hoped she stayed far away from them. He didn't want her to be exposed to these monsters and didn't want to know what they would do to her. Either way, it wasn't up to him at all. He still couldn't communicate with them. Not that they'd listen even if he did.
And the cuff stayed on. Danny pretended to sleep. It didn't work for long. Maybe next time he'd be the one to cut himself open and cut his core loose. Surely that would get rid of the restrictions. If he timed it well. He could probably get away with hiding it somewhere in the house with them none the wiser.
Also what do you mean the foster kid you were keeping dies, his last words being 'you killed me' and your first thought is 'ah yeah, let's do an unofficial autopsy when we clearly have no clue of what's going on to see what killed him. Couldn't have been us' like no, don't cut open the child just because, especially when Danny probably had vivisection PTSD. That's so rude (and unfortunately kind of on beans for the bats in this situation)
Unrelated, did you know tumblr has a 30 tag limit? I sure didn't. On that note, writing this while on mobile was kind of a nightmare and whenever I started a new paragraph (or edited one in) it went back to the beginning of the post.
