Gender is an illusion

Now, Danny knows better than to just repress his powers, he doesn't want a repeat of the freezing incident. Less now that he's alone. Solution: casual use of his powers within his house. But maybe he got a little too used to that, because he kept slipping when having people over. But that's okay, he'll just play dumb and gaslight everyone into believing it didn't happen or Danny has nothing to do with it. After all, powers are not normal, and Danny is a completely normal human boy. 

Or at least Danny thought he was playing normal pretty well until his friend from school just created a shadow sphere out of nowhere and started talking about metas and Danny doesn't really hear what else, because his blood is rising in his ear. Is this normal to humans here? Has he been playing human wrong? Shit, how does he ask about what his friend clearly sees to be normal information without giving out he’s from another dimension?

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Duke knows his friend from school is a meta, he’s seen Danny slip with his powers multiple times, and honestly the excuses Danny gives him are getting a little ridiculous at this point. He wants to be able to bond with his friend over the meta experience. So after much thought, he decides to reveal his meta status without revealing the whole extent of his powers. Just to give Bruce some peace about his decision. 

But instead of the opening up he had been hoping for, Danny looks completely lost. Did he come on too strong?

"Um, Duke, can everyone just… do that?" Danny asks confused.

"What?"

"I mean, I know growing up in a cult kinda cuts you off from some basic information, but I would have thought we would have at least been told if humans develop the ability to do… that."

"You what?"

All it took was one shot in his direction and Danny knew this would be the night everything changed. It wasn’t something simpler to avoid like the Fenton Ghost Fisher or even a more challenging one like the Jack O’ Nine Tails he’d dealt with a few times. It seemed like his parents and the GIW had grown tired of low powered machinery designed to subdue to allow for containment. They had swapped gears and were now dealing with enough energy to exterminate with one blow, or at least that is what the crumbling remains of the warehouse he’d been standing near gave him the impression of.

He’d done his best to evade and escape, but he wasn’t prepared for his parents to have already produced multiple of the model and dispersed them to the GIW as well. All it took was one dodge in the wrong direction and he was blasted through the air by what felt like a cannonball ripping through his side as a GIW agent managed to get a clean shot from the opposite direction.

Danny went down hard, cracking the cement sidewalk that had rushed far too quickly to meet him. With the wind knocked out of him, he had struggled to reorient himself to the danger that was quickly closing in. All he could feel was the consuming and obliterating pain eating his torso and radiating through his whole body.  But he knew that if he stopped moving now there would be no hope of escaping this time.

He was dizzy and nauseous and barely breathing when he pushed himself to stand, clawing at the ground to get traction to push himself upright. He poured all the energy he had left into maintaining his ghost form, knowing the amount of damage he would be facing in his human form would likely knock him out or worse if he didn’t heal some first.

With blood and ectoplasm seeping from what was left of his side, Danny staggered around to face his parents with the understanding that this time would be the last. That his parents had finally gone too far. That the GIW had finally crossed one line too many. That the last resort contingency plans that he and his friends had made during their sleepovers or after other near-disastrous encounters or when they whispered their what ifs about their dreams for the future would finally be enacted tonight.

With this knowledge, Danny looked into the eyes of the parents he loved even though they hurt him, who he trusted even though they tore his existence apart, and forced himself to use what remaining shreds of strength he had to whisper, “I love you,” before vanishing from their sight.

Danny had flown as fast as he could to Sam’s, knowing that his pre-packed go bag was tucked into the back of her closet. He hadn’t stopped moving until he flew through her open window into her bedroom, his form flickering into visibility with the erratic beating of his heart, all he could hear was blood rushing through his head. He felt hands on him as he collapsed to her bedroom floor and then the world dissolved into silence and nothing.

When he woke up he was in Frostbite’s hut, sore and disoriented but with the immediate knowledge and sadness that came with his location of safety. He stayed with Frostbite until the majority of his wounds had healed before Clockwork had appeared and asked if he was ready to start over. Danny knew what this meant, leaving behind his friends, his sister, and Amity Park, but he knew that if he went back his parents and the GIW would never stop hunting him to finish the job, so he just nodded and followed Clockwork back to his tower.

Clockwork explained the basics: a new dimension, a new identity, a home, decades worth of technological advancements beyond what he was familiar with, a scholarship to help cover his academics as well as get him on his feet financially, a reminder of the need to use his powers to avoid overloading himself, and an explanation to use if somebody questions his delays or lack of adjustment. Danny thought it would be hard to convince anybody that he was raised in a cult that lacked access to all modern technology and media but he trusted Clockwork to know what was necessary to get him to safety.

And that was it. Clockwork opened a portal directly into the apartment he had set up for Danny somehow. Danny Fenton no longer existed, and Danny Nightengale was the newest student to walk the halls of Gotham Academy. He did his best to adjust quickly to the advancements in the world, but he was still playing catch up with a lot of things. He’d fallen into a pretty decent rhythm with his studies as well as his own personal pursuits outside of school. He’d even managed to make some friends. He’d also gotten used to using his powers in the safety of his personal apartment.

One of the first things he had done when he settled into Gotham was start researching the city. Knowing the community around oneself is vital to blending in, after all. It was in these searches that he came across Batman and the Robins, regular humans with technological advancements to aid them as they pursued the roster of rogues plaguing the town. He hadn’t bumped into any of them, mostly because he kept to himself and only went to school and the grocery store if he could help it.

From what he could tell, nobody else he had been around had powers. He’d monitored everybody he could from his classrooms and when walking the streets of Gotham. He’d checked out as many of the rogues as he could and they all seemed to have chemically enhanced themselves or used technology to enact their plans.

So, Danny hid his powers publicly, but, in private, he used them as often as he could so that he could avoid building up too much energy and losing control.  It had been a few months of this: walking through doors in his apartment rather than opening them, cooling down his food with his cryokinesis, telekinesis to grab things just out of reach, or duplication to work on homework while he finished cooking his dinner. At first, it was difficult, he’d worry about somebody walking in or his parents finding out. That especially had been a harsh pill to swallow, acknowledging that he had been unable to fully be himself in his own home out of fear. But over time, he got used to doing it in his own space.

He had gotten so used to it, in fact, that he’d started slipping up and using powers in front of his friends once he felt secure enough to start having them come over.

The first time he’d messed up, it had been Tim Drake over to work on a school project. Tim had been sitting at the table, back to the kitchen working on building their scale model when he asked Danny to give him a hand holding a piece down. Danny had been quickly making the two of them something to eat when Tim had made his request and had, without thinking, duplicated himself so the duplicate could keep making dinner while he went to assist Tim. When Tim asked a question while Danny 1 was holding the paper and Danny 2’s voice answered from not right beside Tim, Tim had startled vocally. Danny immediately realized and pulled the duplicate back into himself before Tim could turn around and see double. Danny had said the acoustics in the apartment could be weird sometimes and had acted nonchalantly enough that Tim seemed to drop it.

Another time, he had been playing video games with his neighbor Jason, a nicer college-aged guy who lived in the apartment down the hall and had started checking on Danny when he realized he was living alone. Danny had been a little put off at first, but over time Jason had been good for odd things, like knowing how to fix the leaky pipe under the bathroom sink and how to hook up a generator for heating up food when the power grid goes down from a rogue attack.

Danny and Jason had been playing video games when Danny had gotten cold. He’d stood up, walked to his bedroom to retrieve a jacket, and walked straight through the bedroom door instead of opening it. Jason was focused on his phone and only saw it happen out of the corner of his eye, but Danny had quickly just said the door was cracked and it no longer squeaked since Jason had fixed the hinges so he didn’t hear him push it open. Danny wasn’t sure if Jason believed him but he went back to playing video games with no argument so Danny thought it was a victory.

There had been a few other close calls, but Danny had explained them away as best he could when he caught them and they seemed to believe him.

It was the times he hadn’t been catching what he was doing that were the problem.

It was Duke who confirmed it first that Danny definitely had some type of powers. He had really liked hanging out with Danny at school when he started halfway through the semester, and they had quickly gotten pretty close. Not close enough for Duke to reveal his vigilante alter-ego, but close enough that they hung out multiple days a week on average. What was easily explained by Danny as tricks of the light or acoustics had been a little believable at first, but over time the excuses became flimsy and then outright laughable.

Duke wanted Danny to be comfortable though, he didn’t want him to feel forced to talk about his powers or to feel shamed about them. Duke knew the stress of being a meta and how it could paint a target on your back. He didn’t want Danny to think that having powers would change their friendship, and, more importantly, he didn’t want Danny to feel alone.

He’d spent several weeks thinking about how he would bring up the subject with Danny when, one weekend as they were working on homework at Danny’s place, Duke had knocked a pencil off the table on accident. Before he could even begin to lean over and grab it, the pencil floated back up onto the table and set itself down by his elbow. When Duke looked at Danny, he hadn’t even seemed to have broken concentration on the math problem he was doing. Duke was excited, maybe this meant that Danny was comfortable enough with Duke to start using his powers openly around him. Maybe this was the right time for him to bring it up.

Once they’d finished their worksheets and Danny had started making lunch for them, Duke pulled from the shadows making a ball the size of a baseball that he could manipulate. He started tossing it back and forth between his hands, essentially giving himself a fidget toy, as he started talking about how cool some of the meta’s he had seen on the news lately were. He was so absorbed in catching the shadow ball that he missed the way Danny had turned around, question on his lips (he was going to ask what a meta was), and froze.

Duke had continued talking for a couple of minutes, tossing the ball up in to the air and catching it in rhythm. When he paused to wait for feedback on the question he had asked: “Who’s your favorite hero?”, he finally glanced over to Danny and quickly the shadow ball disappeared from the air where he’d just tossed it.

Danny was staring at him, mouth hanging open. He looked like he’d seen a ghost.

“Danny, you okay?” Duke was starting to get nervous. He hadn’t meant to come on so fast with the topic and scare Danny. He thought the pencil thing earlier meant that Danny was ready to be more open about his powers. He really hated the thought that he may have just scared one of his friends away.

“You’re scaring me a little, man. What’s going on?” Duke questioned, pushing Danny to just say something, anything.

Danny closed his mouth and took a couple of deep breaths before slowly walking over and sitting down on the couch next to Duke, leaving as much space as he could between the two.

“Um, Duke, can everyone just… do that?” Danny finally whispered, fear and wonder glinting in his eyes when he finally looked over to Duke directly.

“What do you mean? Do what?” Duke wasn’t sure he understood what Danny meant.

“I mean, I know I grew up in a cult and was cut off from a lot of basic information and all. But I just mean, like, wouldn’t I have known if humans had the ability to just do all that?” Danny slumped back into the cushions looking up at the ceiling.

Now it was Duke’s turn to gape at his friend. A cult? Danny had never mentioned that before, at least not to Duke or Tim, who had already been running his theories of Danny being a meta by him and Jason pretty regularly. He feels like Tim would have mentioned a cult to him if Danny had said something before.

“Danny, literally how have you never mentioned growing up in a cult before?” Duke was trying not to sound accusatory; he really was. But he could feel the puzzle pieces falling into place about how behind Danny was about a lot of things: tech, slang, celebrities, history, and media being just the tip of the iceberg.

“Oh, yeah. I guess I don’t really talk about it much, or I try not to. I didn’t… have access to a lot of information outside of the cult’s teachings, but I just felt like there was more out there than what they were telling us. And, like, you just had a ball made of shadows in your hand, dude. And you were fidgeting with it like you weren’t even thinking about it?” Danny twisted on the couch to face his friend. He no longer looked timid, he looked intrigued.

“Yeah, shadow manipulation is part of my powers. I’m a meta who can, long story short, manipulate light and dark. It’s pretty neat, and it’s gotten a lot stronger as I’ve worked on it and gotten older.”

“What’s a meta?” Danny asked, head tilted but with a gleam of wonder and curiosity in his gaze.

“What’s a-? You don’t?” Duke rubbed his palms over his face, leaning his weight down to where his elbows rested on his knees where he sat.

Danny stayed silent, waiting for Duke to pull his thoughts together. It took a minute.

“Danny, I have a serious question here. You don’t have to tell me, but I need to know how much you do or don’t know to know where to start explaining stuff to you, okay?” Duke glanced over at Danny, who immediately nodded. “What did the cult teach you about powers? Better yet, what did the cult teach you in general?”

Danny looked a little sheepish at that. He drew his hand up, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Well… It’s… I mean, it’s kind of hard to explain. We didn’t really talk about powers on a human level? Like, conceptually, I guess, the cult taught that we were more powerful in death than in life and that those who lived successfully would be rewarded after death with the opportunity to walk the earth again as ectoplasmic entities. Those entities would be rewarded with powers, but the abilities were equated to their interests in life. So, like, if you lead a good and successful life where you gain a lot of power or influence you are more likely to become an ectoplasmic entity that has significant power or influence… does… does that make sense?” Danny looked embarrassed.

Meanwhile Duke was trying so incredibly hard to not let his absolute incredulity show on his face because what Danny just said was difficult to comprehend. In his time as a vigilante, Duke had come across quite a few cults with very questionable belief systems, but… ectoplasmic entities?

“I know it’s weird and hard to believe. The cult was small and got raided right after I managed to leave so I don’t think they even exist anymore. But I never even thought about the possibility that power wasn’t just for after death and yet you are sitting in my house manipulating shadows? What else have I missed?” Danny pressed on, anxious over his friend’s silence.

“Okay,” Duke sighed, “we have to go over several things here. One, thanks for telling me about that, I know it probably isn’t the easiest thing to talk about.”

Danny blushed and shrugged.

“Two, meta’s are everywhere, man. Most of us don’t show our powers publicly in, like, big displays. Meta’s have the metagene that once activated provides the person with abilities, which is like the most basic explanation I can pull together for you right this second.”

Danny looked like he was hanging onto every word.

“Three, I don’t know how you’ve been in Gotham for this many months and not at least heard about a meta from the news or just people at school gossiping. I feel like I can’t go a day without hearing about a new person’s powers, so I don’t know whether to be impressed or astounded to be completely honest.”

Danny chuckled a little bit.

“It’s hard to believe. I mean… that’s just amazing that people, meta’s, can do all of that. I guess I just never got around to digging that far into it when doing my crash course on what a normal life looked like.”

Duke laughed lightly with Danny at that. Then a thought hit him, and his stomach plummeted. Danny was still talking about other people having powers, but hasn’t mentioned himself at all in relation to what Duke was telling him.

Duke resisted the urge to start fidgeting with the shadows again.

Tentatively, Duke said, “Danny, I want you to know that I trust you and I hope you trust me. I don’t showcase my powers a ton because I do still want to keep them pretty private, which is a perfectly fine thing to do, but that doesn’t mean you can’t.”

Danny just looked confused.

“Okay?”

“Danny, I don’t want you to talk about it if you aren’t ready to. I totally understand and respect if you aren’t, but you don’t have to pretend you don’t have powers with me if you don’t want to.”

“What?” Danny seemed a little bit shocked and he finished twisting around so he was facing Duke head on.

“I’ve seen you use some of your powers around your apartment. You excuse them away sometimes and those excuses were believable at first but you literally levitated a pencil from the ground back up to the table while we were doing homework earlier. Last week when you answered the door to let me into your apartment, I saw a clone of you standing at the kitchen sink drying dishes over your shoulder and they were gone by the time I had finished taking my shoes off by the door. You couldn’t find your keys the other day when we were heading to the library to study and I watched you push your hand through the couch cushion, not between them, and pull out your keys. I’m just saying, you haven’t been the most subtle about them around me, and want you to know that I don’t mind if you use your abilities around me if you want to.”

Duke was being so earnest. He was trying so hard to get Danny to understand that he was accepting and wouldn't be judging whatever abilities Danny had, which from Duke’s count seemed to be numerous at this point.

Danny looked lost in thought for a few minutes after Duke finished. Duke remained quiet, letting him. He’d laid out all of his cards on the table, it would be up to Danny to decide what to do at this point.

After a few minutes of the silence, Danny spoke.

“Duke. I am not a meta.”

Duke wanted to scream. Not at Danny, exactly, but he wanted to scream at whatever closed-minded but influential person had convinced Danny’s parents that it was more believable for powers to only be obtained after death than to be granted in life even when the world was constantly sprouting new meta’s left and right these days. He wanted to yell at whoever made Danny so blind to his own abilities, his own truth, that he was fully in the belief that he was not in possession of powers even when he used them daily. He also wanted to scream at Bruce a little too, because it was due to Bruce’s training that he knew how to tell when somebody was lying, and he could tell with absolute certainty that Danny was telling Duke what he thought was the truth.

Duke was absolutely lost on what to do with Danny from here. Did he push to try and convince Danny that he was using powers or was a meta? Did he let it go and hope Danny did research on his own and figured it out without help? Did he call in reinforcements to help him try and explain it all to Danny?

"You said Intangiblity?" Danny nodded before realizing they wouldn't be able to hear that and agreed in the coms instead. "Good. Get onboard. Find the main server room. We need to dismantle the ship's computer to stop it from-" Danny interrupted the Bat.

"Why not just dismantle the ship?"

"Its a suicide mission. Their whole race is on this ship unwillingly. Families who want to go home in peace." Martian's voice was cool and calm, unaffected by the crackle of the coms. "I would be on the ship myself by now, but they came prepared for everything we've thrown at them, and I can't get in."

"Roger that." Danny flew through the ship's shield and walls undetected, searching for the server room. "Wait. Was that guy in my head!?"

A cacophony of voices shrieked in his ear to focus, and Danny flinched as he found the main computer room. Dropping a few bodies with his newfound superstrength, he contacted Batman for instructions as he sealed the door.

"Okay, computer room secure, what can I do?"

"Whatever you can to shut that computer down. You're the only one able to make it through the defenses, so shut those down first, and we should be able to help." Danny looked over the confusing alien computer interface as he listened to Batmans orders, and had an idea.

"I have no idea how to read this thing, soooo I'm going to drain the battery." Danny barely registered the "what" resonating from everyone's com before he put hands on the computer.

Something the halfa had learned over the year was that after the accident, he was very, very, prone to lightning strikes. In fact, any sort of circuit he was close to completing, he did, whether he wanted to or not. It was this talent, and nothing else, that came to mind when told to short out the computer. And so with hands on the weird alien screen, he started drawing in every ounce of electricity the ship had. Far off, he heard the cheers of Supermans teammates as they got through the shields. He kept going, tears forming in Supermans eyes. He knew the electricity was only being passed through the heroes body, and going straight into Dannys core. He was glad he was the only one to feel this pain, even if the man of steel was unconcious.

"Whatever you're doing, Dont Stop. We're almost to you." Danny couldn't waste the strength to reply, just trusting they would be able to handle things from here. That was until the power failure also opened all emergency doors. He couldn't help but cry out when enemies poured into the room firing at his back. He generated a temporary shield that pushed them all back but had to focus his energy on draining the ship. He thought he could handle both. He thought they'd make it in time.

He never stopped to consider the reason Superman had fallen out of the sky.

Searing pain like none other wrapped his body as one of the aliens fired off a shotgun shot of kryptonite into his back. The scream ripped out of him before he could stop himself.

He barely registered Batmans "hold on" as he used all his remaining strength, not Supermans, to hold onto the computer, drawing out more power. Danny hated the feeling of a current going through him. Coupling that with the pain and weakness he felt with kryptonite buried inside him was too much. He started seeing stars even though he was sure he was still inside the ship. Worse, he could tell Superman was waking up and starting to fight for control. Shit. He was so out of it at first that he didn't feel Batmans hand on his shoulder. When the dark knight pulled him away from the console, his hearing started to come back, the scream dying in Supermans raw throat. Danny fell to his knees trying to catch up with the supers' senses running wild.

"Please," he muttered under his breath, "I need to hold on a little longer. I need you safe big guy." Danny sighed as he felt Superman stop fighting and rest, before turning to a confused Batman.

"He's hurt. Shot, kryptonite, need it out now. I can't hold him much longer." Batman nodded and put his arm around his shoulder, helping carry the man of steel out as other supers flooded in, looking in a mix of wonder and horror at the glowing green eyes of not-quite-Superman. Danny wouldn't let go. Not until this throbbing, searing, draining pain was gone from the body he overshadowed.

---

An hour on the operating table. They carefully removed and disposed of the kryptonite. Danny had made himself intangible but visible to allow them to be able to carefully pull out the shrapnel along the path it made into the skin.

He did his best to stay silent, but he could tell heroes throughout the watchtower were growing more concerned with every unintentional whimper that slipped. At least the horrifying amount of things he could hear made it hard to focus on the pain. Heart rates getting faster in fear, tapping and pacing of nervous heros and whispers of what was really happening with Superman.

Danny was relieved when they finally decided the last of the kryptonite was removed, and he was able to pull himself in to release control to Superman. In fact, it was not near as cool as he'd hoped. After leaving his body and dropping the temperature of the room by about 30 degrees for a few seconds, he landed next to the operating table and showed himself. Only to immediately collapse.

Vision swimming, he was a bit confused as to why his head hadn't smacked clear onto the sterile floor. Looking up as much as he could, a loopy laugh spilled out of his mouth as he said hello to the Man of Steel himself, who had caught him just in time, before his vision went black.