Damian's Pet Pit Demon, ch2.p3
masterpost oh look, my flight has wifi >:)
Sinking into the green is a relief. Something in Danny loosens the further that he submerges himself. Something calls like home.
It would be easy to lose himself in it.
He had, before.
How long had it been?
Focus.
Dami.
Damian needs him to focus.
Damian is waiting for him to come… not home. Danny doesn’t have a home anymore, not since— but Damian is important to Danny and he needs Danny to protect him. He needs Danny’s help. He needs Danny’s care.
Danny blinks into the green. It swirls into focus around him, or as in focus as the green ever gets. The blur between the ever shifting shades never truly settles, but it’s easier to pick out the objects floating in the void. The stones. The doors. The bones.
It’s too much. Danny isn’t sure if he can navigate it anymore. That part of him that was meant to be a normal ghost… never mind. The present mattered more than the past. Damian mattered more than the past. The broken bird too. Apparently his name was Robin.
A Robin from Gotham.
Danny had never been to Gotham. He had heard of it, of course he had, who hadn’t? But he never traveled much while he was alive. As a half ghost it had been easier, but never just because he wanted to. His world had been Amity Park, Aunt Alicia’s homestead, Vlad’s mansion, and the haunted places in between.
It is fortunate for Danny that Gotham has quite a presence in the green, as certain cities do. After taking a deep breath that does nothing for him here, Danny lets his senses extend into the green. The pool he came from swirls just above his senses. Further there is Paris with its mound of carefully stacked bones. London and its tunnels. Stonehenge. The vast, deep sea, still so out of reach by humans.
Gotham.
The city sits heavily in the green. Chunks of gothic architecture pierce through the veil like ribs through skin. After the blood red of Paris and the kaleidoscope of Barcelona, Gotham’s aura is startling dark. It hangs like a heavy shadow, the sort that that gently wraps one up as night settles. Jagged lines of curses cut though the dark like lightning.
He’ll have to take care not to get struck by one.
Danny sinks into the dark. His eyes hang around him, keeping careful watch on as Danny digs claws into footholds. The dark shifts around him, defensive and resistant like a dog with its fangs bared. Danny tries to say he means no harm, but oh how Gotham wails!
A son lost.
A protector untethered.
Oh how Gotham tried!
Oh how Gotham gave so that the son could live!
But it moved the pieces too early. The son, so vibrant with new life, moved too early. Gotham hadn’t the time to make him whole. To give him back his spark!
And then the son had been taken.
Gotham roiled, the darkness frothing around Danny. No!, he soothed, The son yet lives. He is without his spark but he lives! Danny has seen him, touched him, felt where the soul is missing like a weeping wound. But Danny needs to understand what happened to know what he should do.
Gotham’s moods shift swiftly between anguish and hope, pain and joy, anger. Gotham bristles. The dark becomes different—menacing shadows that stretch across a midnight street. The shadows close in, oppressively tight.
Danny lets his powers flair. Not fully, no, never, but just enough. Just enough to let Gotham know he is no pup to be threatened like that. He is Phantom! He has been broken and remade by the green itself time and time again! He has been fused with it! Saved by it! Doomed by it.
He is not to be threatened.
Gotham flairs. Its grip eases. Its wary now, but still stays on the aggressive despite what it must feel now from Danny. Danny can appreciate how dictated to its people Gotham is.
Explain it to me, Danny asks gently. Explain him to me. Your son. Your prince of a prince.
Gotham ripples: doubt, pain, acceptance. The desire to see its son safe and whole wins, and so it begins to explain to Danny about its Prince and those he made his sons. Gotham’s sons.
