DCXDP fanfic idea: A Thousand Masks
Alfred Pennyworth is a man of secrets. He was made up of so many of them, more so than the master he serves, even though Bruce and his children dressed up every night to fight crime, that he often wondered what a secret was and what the truth was. The problem with secrets is that they often don't stay hidden.
And Alfred's biggest secret?
His name isn't Alfred Pennyworth. It's Danny Fenton, and the face he currently wears? It was a corpse Danny had found, in some broken-down bar alley in England, during one of the coldest winters in human history.
Yes, Pennyworth has long been dead. Likely drown himself in his liquor after his service. Soldiers rarely came back from the battlefield well, and Pennyworth had served in one of the most brutal wars of the century, World War II. That man had not been well, and even though every part of his body screamed for him to stop, he drank, and he drank until he slipped and fell to the cold, icy floor. He never got up again.
Danny had long been dead by then, killed mistakenly by his parents, who had not known the ghost they shot at was only half dead.
Upon his human side dying, Danny had broken at the seams and woken in the Ghost Zone. It took years to find a way back to the human world he once called home. Long enough to know his parents had died of old age, and his elder sister was now a great-grandfather. Unable to bear a world that lived without him, Danny had flown back into the Ghost Zone and found a new Earth.
He was desperate to feel alive again, so he snatched the first fresh corpse he found. Pennyworth must have been dead for at least an hour, and his limbs had been frozen from the winter cold, but Danny forced it to move. To stand. To breathe.
Then, like the thief he was, he boarded a boat and left for America that very night. Pennyworth had family, a wife, and a daughter, that much Danny could gather from the few memories still trapped in his half-dead brain, but he didn't care. They would wake to Pennyworth gone. And they would never know why.
They would never know he was dead.
Danny's original goal was to make it to his old home, but he got sidetracked at the very first dock his ship landed on. The distraction came in the form of an overly charming, overly lively Thomas Wayne. He was dancing on the ports, dazzling the crowd as if though he wasn't the richest man in the city, but depended on the coins they threw at his feet.
A band was playing next to him, filling the air with near-forgotten jazz, and somehow Thomas looked more alive than anyone in the world at that moment.
It didn't take long for Danny to realize this world was far behind his, and that included homosexuality. He knew better than to voice his thoughts, for prison and body mutation were a very real threat here, but he stayed by Thomas' side for years. Watching the man with eyes bright with Ghostly Obsession, and though they dimmed a little when Martha popped up, Danny could not stay away.
Then Thomas was killed along with Martha, and Danny's soul ached. His body nearly rotted around him, as his Obsession had vanished and his anchor to this world slowly slipped. Then Master Bruce, once seen as a mere accessory to Thomas, grew under his care, and the corpse snapped back into place. He gained a new Obsession. He doesn't love the boy, can't even say he cares for him, but Bruce is the last living thing of Thomas, and that is the man Danny's Obsession wanted. It's easy to turn him into an extension of Thomas.
Despite the years, Danny hardly allowed his corpse to age, fearful of the effect of time on the dead. This was fine as no one questioned it. No one in the Waynes batted an eye at Alfred's everything, because that's just who Alfred has always been.
Until this turd walked into his house.
"What are you?" John Constantine hissed, having slammed Danny against the wall with magic. "Whose skin are you wearing?"
"What are you doing?!" Master Bruce hissed, "Release him at once!"
"Not a chance. Body snatchers are one of the worst types of gouls out there and Batsy? This one is definitely a high level one"
Danny frowns, fighting to keep his skin from falling off. Pennyworth has always felt like a comfortable coat, but now? Now it felt like it was overheating, cooking him alive. Likely the magic user's fault.
"I'm Alfred Pennyworth," He says calmly, wincing as the magic flares.
"That was a lie," Constantine growls, then twists his fingers until magic settles on Danny's tongue like a hot iron. "What happened to the real Pennyworth? "
A sick twisted smile pulls at his lips against his will. One that is definitely inhumane. At the sight, Master Bruce and Jason- the young lad, having heard the commotion, came running from the other room- froze, staring at him in horror. Danny fights with all his will, but the truth is forced out of him nonetheless.
He feels his mask slip- figuratively and literally as he answers the wizard's question.
"He's dead"
"How long ago did you switch places with him? How long have you been wearing his face?"
The smile turns sharper, stretching longer than humanly possible. "Before Master Thomas even met his wife."
The wizard's eyes blaze with intense hate "Did you kill the Waynes?"
"No," the word gets punched out of him in a hiss that would have made Danny uneasy if he were in the right state of mind. Right now, he is nearly blinded by rage that the turd would even suggest that.
"Ah" Constantine's lips twist in a mocking smile "You were in love with one of them and decided to kill a human close to them"
"No. This man was dead long before I met Thomas"
Constantine blinks, then slowly turns to Bruce, who looks deathly pale and sick with horrified betrayal. Danny stares back at him in an almost detached way. Oddly enough, even though the boy is part of his Obsession, he can't help but think he falls short of Thomas.
"Did you know your dad had a lover from the other side?"
"No." Bruce breaths as if his lungs can't get enough air. As if he were drowning. Pity the boy never quite had his father's whimsy. "No."
"Then you don't mind if I expell him?"
Danny waits for Bruce to defend him, but the long stretch of silence is answer enough. Danny scowls, then smooths out his face. "Do what you will. Thousands die within Gotham. I'll have a new body and be back in time for Master Jason's play."
The boy in question whimpers like Danny has struck him. Odd.
Constantine doesn't reply, just waves his hands, and Danny is forced out of his corpse. It falls, the ground rotting away to its proper age, and then he finds himself thrown through a portal back to the Ghost Zone.
He cracks his neck, checks his hands, unused to seeing such youthful fingers, and takes off on a fast flight. He knows the way home. He doubts the wizard knew that about him, but Danny knows which door to go look for.
_______________________________________
The next morning, Bruce wakes to the smell of pancakes. He creeps into his kitchen, half expecting Alfred, but only finds a young girl in purple, humming his old caregiver's favorite song. She turns and sends him an oddly familiar smile on an unfamiliar face.
"Good morning Master Bruce" She chirps and something goes cold in Bruce's chest "Im Stephanie Brown, Alfred's replacement"
"Who- who are you wearing?" He breaths the cold air, burning in his chest, and his knees are shaking.
She pauses, tilts her head almost innocently, like she really is a young little girl. She can't be older than nine before her eyes light up with the same otherworldly light Alfred once wore. Bruce used to think it was because his butler was wise. Now he knows.
It means that what stands before him isn't human.
"Her father beat her to death. Funny isnt it? The frequency of people dying here? More corpse then a war. Fresh too. Anyway, would you like chocolate syrup with your pancakes?"
No matter how many times Bruce has expelled it through various magic users, the body snatcher keeps coming back. It won't leave him alone.
It wears thousands of faces, but it can only see Thomas Wayne in Bruce's and, what's worse, now that he's not blinded by childish hero worship of the man who raised him, Bruce can see it doesn't particularly care for him. It just cares he's Thomas's son.
It's like it's waiting for Thomas to replace Bruce. The worst is when it snatches Jason's face, after his son gets killed by the Joker and it only grins when he wails, cleaning the manor like it has always done.
Bruce thinks it was sent to make him mad.
What's worse is that it's working. He barely reacts when Tim Drake pops up at his house, knowing things he shouldn't know, and only because the body snatcher struts by in some unknown street kid's body does he even realize the boy is actually alive.
Dick begs him to leave Gotham, as many magic ussers claim the body snatcher has unintentionally anchored itself to Gotham so it can not follow him out of the city. But he doesn't understand.
Gotham needs a Batman.
The body snatcher knows this, and it smiles every time someone suggests Bruce leaves. It knows that he can't.
It cleans the graves Bruce made for the bodies it grown bored of. It seems oddly fond of the one it wore the longest. It leaves flowers on Alfred Pennyworth's grave like it's painting a picture. Bruce feels like he's dying.
