Also Sixth, Because I Forgot To Mention It Before. Not Lighthearted, Really. If Your Here For Happy Ending

Also sixth, because I forgot to mention it before. Not lighthearted, really. If your here for happy ending maybe don't read it.

With the power suppressors I wanted to go similar route as the one shot "16 hours" (or something like that you can find it on tumblr, plot summary: League contains Danny, they put him in the suppressors and he just drpps there unresponsive in agonising pain. It takes 16 hours for Bats to arrive and Red Ribin to clock it almost immediately). Basically, because Danny died and came back via ghost portal, his ghost side, i.e. his powers, is what keeps him alive. So when put in power suppressors, he starts dying all over again. You know, typical lighthearted headcannons.

Here I think, normally one suppressors wouldn't do much, maybe just tire him out a little. However at this point he is absolutely exhausted from running away from GIW for days without a moment to catch breath, so one suppressor contains his powers enough for him not to run away but just a single one is not enough to kill him or cause real pain. Though the whole GIW asset (wrists, ankles, neck, maybe some sort of muzzle) probably feels like the worst moment of his death itself. The most painful. The most hopeless. The moment when he wanted to scream the loudest, but no sounds came out of his dead mouth. For days, as he still somehow feels the cuts scientists make. And it ads up, and for some reason, he can't just pass out. Just barely conscious. Barely alive.

Hope you're doing alright, have a great rest of your day

# 17

The Justice League try to threaten Danny saying that if he dose not start talking then they will have to hand him over to thr GIW when Danny does not talk they tell him that there going to connect the GIW when they leave his cell and go to the camera they had there heart drop when they see Danny pull out a little vile and what look like a red flower be eaten when they run un they hear him say " I would rather die a second death then go back to the table." before pasting out

I did a thing? It's not big bit I hope you like it.

***

Conner was absolutely exhausted. He and a few other members of the Young Justice team were free when Unknown sent a distress signal, so it was out of the question that they went to help. Really, they just sped to the closest stash with weapons to handle Unknown’s opponents and get to the battlefield.

It quickly escalated into involving various adult members including some from JLD who nearly never answered their calls. All because villains collaborated. ‘Cause, of course, they did. Life couldn’t be nice just this once.

The whole fight was kind of a blur if he was being honest with himself. He of course remembered pain, chaos, frantic attempts to protect everyone, and anger that these so-called ghosts just wouldn’t stay down. He hadn’t completely blacked out. But he had trouble recalling what exactly had happened. Who exactly he fought, who exactly he saved, where he moved, why his knuckles bleed, and why his ribs ached. He wasn’t too concerned. He was made to be a weapon, it happened sometimes. He wasn’t made to remember things.

Anyway, he somehow ended up only a few steps from Unknown who sat on the ground, taking heavy, labored breaths. They were facing the other way, supporting their forehead on their bent knee, face obscured by angle, hood, and long hair. Their heart was beating faster than he ever heard it (it was almost speedster fast and normally it was too slow to be healthy!) while the ever-present buzz from their chest sped so much it sounded almost even. They seemed to tremble. It was concerning, to say the least, so Conner fought his own fatigue and kneeled next to them. He cautiously touched their shoulder but retreated when they winced.

“Do me not doing what you need me to do put anyone in danger?” they rasped anxiously between too-shallow breaths.

“No, I just-”

“Alright, then give me a moment” they wheezed. Conner felt a little out of his depths. He had yet to actually learn how to help people in shock or any other psychological responses to distress. Don’t get him wrong, he was learning, he just wasn’t any good at this. He wished that anyone else was there to console Unknown properly but they were all busy with banishing villains or cleaning up the debris.

“You’re hyperventilating,” he stated instead.

“No shit Sherlock”

“Do you want me to coach you through some breathing exercises so you don’t pass out?”

“Nah”

“Okay”

So he just sat next to Unknown, adult competent hero, listening as they tried to even out their gasps. He saw how their fingers pressed on the meat of their arm. Whatever they were doing seemed counterproductive but he knew better than to interfere. You can’t help a person who doesn’t want it. So, he just kept taking deep, calm breaths, hoping they would follow his lead.

It was weird to console the adult hero but he guessed it happened.

“Okay, maybe a little help?” they whispered, audibly panicking. It came out almost as a squeal. Conner nodded even though they couldn’t see it and got to work. It didn’t take them all that long to collect themselves but even after their breaths had calmed and their heart had slowed down, they didn’t move.

“Do you feel better now?” he asked cautiously.

“Yeah,” their voice still was barely louder than a whisper. Gods bless Conner’s super hearing or else they wouldn’t be able to have this conversation. “Thank you. And sorry, I’m usually better at handling this.”

“It’s okay”

It really was. It wasn’t the first nor probably the last time when hero got overwhelmed by a big fight. It was admirable that Unknown managed to wait with his panic until everything was wrapped up. Even if it was still weird to console an adult. Conner once again tried to put a hand on their shoulder. They didn’t show any indication of discomfort so he didn’t take it back.

Flash stopped in front of them, leaving a cloud of dust in his wake.

“You guys alright?” he asked fast like always. Unknown raised their head to look at the older hero and-

Their mask must have fallen off somewhen during the fight.

Oh.

“Yeah, I kinda freaked out for a moment but Superboy helped me get over it.”

Oh.

Unknown wasn’t an adult.

They (he? They kind of looked like boy) couldn’t be older than Conner himself. Maybe even younger than Robin.

They looked weirdly familiar for someone he never saw before.

When none of the heroes answered just staring at them with shock, they curled in themselves a little more and started mumbling.

“I know panic is unprofessional, I promise I’ll do better next time, I usually do, I just really don’t like dragging other people into my fights and kinda spiraled ‘cause of it I-“

“You’re a kid” Flash interrupted, almost choking on his words. Unknown froze, then slowly raised their dirty hand to touch their naked face.

“Oh, no, no, no-” their heartbeat piqued again, as they hastily ran their fingers across their cheeks and forehead and nose and everything else as if they could somehow find their full face mask if they tried hard enough. They were mumbling again.

Conner squeezed their shoulder in what he hoped was a grounding gesture. Where did he see this face?

“Hey, it’s alright kid. We all just assumed you were a little older, that’s it. Nothing bad happened.” Flash tried but his words went unheard. Superboy squeezed their arm again, hoping it would be at least just a little grounding.

Where has Conner seen this face?

“Please don’t give me back to them. I’ll be useful, I promise.” They hadn’t stopped speaking but these specific words struck something in young Kryptonian.

He heard similar words before.

He remembered the white-haired, flying girl who he found pickpocketing some unsuspecting tourists, who later ate burgers with him, sitting on top of one of Metropolis’ skyscrapers, talking in hushed tones about labs and guilt of being created as a weapon. Who did her best to reassure him and herself as well that they were more than they were made for. That they were full people. The girl who knew how it was to be an imperfect copy of someone else.

The girl who had a loving template, who couldn’t take her in because of his living situation but did his best to prepare her, before letting her travel for safety and self-discovery.

The girl loved her template enough to show her fellow clone, who she knew for less than three hours, a photo.

“Danny?” he asked, even though he knew.

The boy fell silent before he choked quick, unfinished:

“How-”

“You’re a little different from a guy Dani told me about”

Danny gasped quiet “oh” and looked at nothing in front of him with a sad, broken smile. The kind of smile people often wore when they thought about mysterious before when life was better and happiness easier. Conner wasn’t old enough to have his own before. For now his before was Cadmus lab and he would rather get beaten up into a pulp than return to this place. But Danny seemed to have before and before he was thinking about was different than his before meaning the completely civilian life that Dani told him about. He seemed to think about a time when he was a hero and had Dani and see it as before. Conner was kind of curious about what changed.

“I was a little different guy back then.”

Unknown, the Wandering Hero

So! We all know the typical Vivisection AU, right? Danny is revealed to his parents and they take it in all the wrong ways. They capture him, Vivisect him, and eventually he manages to escape with the help of his friends.

But what about his Rouges?

Sure, we all like to think of some of the more friendly ones like Ember, or Sydney, or Johnny 13 and Kitty, but he has WAY more Evil Rouges than good ones.

Without Danny there to reign them in, the Rouges spread out across the world to fulfill their obsessions, unhampered by the Heroes and Villains of the world that have no means to fight them.

And Danny? He feels responsible. He was the one to open the Gate, he was the Sacrifice, the one to let them through. And when the going got tough he just up and left? No, that won't do.

His Obsession is Protection for a reason, and nothing has changed. All he needs to do is expand his area of focus a little.

Danny, after healing up, starts wandering the world in search of the Ghosts who have escaped into the Mortal Realm. He battles all of his old foes, as well as many new ones who he hadn't met before.

His travels take him far and wide.

He defeats Skulker in Metropolis, as he is trying to hunt down the Super Family for their pelts. They are the last of their race after all, so he is inclined to try and hunt them. Honestly dealing with Skulker was easy, dealing with the Rich Asshole who was funding him was a nightmare.

He chases down Spectra in Gotham as she tries to feed on the misery of an entire City. (Thanks to @impyssadobsessions for the idea, this Prompt specifically). She is actually a very tough fight, especially powered by both the Misery of an Entire City as well as his Own Misery, but he manages.

He defeats Technus is Central City, as he tries to Raid Star Labs for their advanced Tech. It actually took a while to beat him after he amped himself with all that Power, and he did need help from the Local Hero to deal with him. He's just thankful Technus is one of the more "Harmless" ones.

After every Victory, he sends them back to the Realms using the Banishing Spell that Sam taught him a while back (the only bit of magic he ever really managed to master).

He knows they'll eventually find their way back out, but it's all he can do anymore. It's his eternal Punishment for unleashing them out into the World in the first place. He was the Catalyst for this Situation, now he was tasked with Fixing it, no matter how long it took.

...

The Justice League is caught in a tricky situation a the moment.

In the past few months, they have been encountering more and more of these Extra Dimensional Beings known as Realms Ghosts across the World.

Justice League Dark has had some success in battling them, but even they are getting tired of having to deal with every single incident alone.

They did get approached by a Government Agency known as the Ghostly Investigation Ward that seemed to want to help, but it didn't take long to realize that their main Aim was to Genocide the entire Race. The JLA had quickly cut ties after realizing that, and took what little Tech and Information they had been able to gather.

Still, it wasn't easy to deal with these Entities.

Thankfully, they have had some outside help. An Unknown Being has been routinely showing up whenever a Realms Ghost appears and defeating them, before using a (as described by Constantine) "Rudimentary Banishing Spell held together by willpower and luck" to send them back to their home Dimension. There's honestly no way it should be functional, but he did make it work either way.

They don't know much about this Unknown, aside from the fact that he seems to be the only one able to consistently damage the Realms Ghosts. His Powerset leads them to belive he may be from the same Dimension, or at least drawing his power from the same Source, but as he actively avoids the League and takes every opportunity to not talk to them, they know they aren't getting any answers any time soon.

Over the past few months, they had affectionately started referring to him as Unknown, creative they know, because they could never get his Real Name. Sure, some of the Realms Ghosts seemed to recognize him, but they always called him stuff like "Whelp" and "Punk" and "Usurper", which were not very good names to use when referring to him. Although the last one was a bit concerning.

They had only managed to trade a few quick words with Unknown in the past few months, but it was enough to get the Gist of it. He was just doing his job, sending the Realms Ghosts back where they belonged. There was apparently a Tear in Reality letting them through, but he seemed hesitant to reveal what he knew about it.

After a few months of sparse interactions, they eventually managed to convince him to at least take an Emergency Communicator. Just in case. They even let him take it apart to look for any Tracking Devices, which earned them a small bit of trust. They took whatever wins they could.

Fortunately, it seemed he never did need it. In fact he was getting more and more efficient with every battle, defeating his foes in half the time it would have taken before.

Unfortunately, it didn't last forever. One day, the Communicator went off, a distorted voice quickly saying, "Need backup, some of them decide to Team Up" before cutting out.

They quickly rushed to his location, finding an active battlefield with no less that a dozen Ghosts battling Unknown. And he seemed to be on the ropes.

With their arrival, the combined force of the Justice League and Unknown eventually managed to defeat the Group of Ghosts. Justice League Dark volunteered to work on the Banishing Spells while the others cleaned up the damage from the Battle.

One of them approached Unknown to make sure he was ok, and froze.

During the battle, Unknown's Mask had been Torn off, and they could finally see the face of the Hero they had been working with for the past few months.

And he was a Child.

Yes, thank you. I thought about it too, but I had no idea how to put it in words

Party Crasher

Another prompt, more Justice League than bat, though.

It was just another boring Justice league gala, unfortunately required to assuage any world leaders fear of the Justice league going rogue, when all the sudden, a flipping vampire shows up, then some floating, glowing boy. The vampire disappears, then the entire JUSTICE LEAGUE start attacking said glowing boy, and the boy’s winning???

Meanwhile Danny’s freaking out, because, even if they were overshadowed, he just fought the Justice league!! And now they’re going to be hunting him!!!

The League however, immediately clocks that there was foul play. Considering they can’t remember the last few minutes of the party, they all reportedly had red eyes, and the glowing kid was apologizing the entire time.

So I finally did a thing. Or two things? One and a half? I wrote one story with two endings. One sad and one happy, obviously. Happy one is still angst, obviously. We need to keep balance, like Danny, y'know.

My only source of knowledge about both dc and dp are fanfics from # dp x dc, so chances of ooc things happening are quite high. I hope against hope it didn't happened, but you know, proceed with caution.

Anyway between *********** is a sad version with some description of Danny being in pain and dyin so if it's not fo you, don't read it, your mental well-being needs to be taken care of too, and between *********** Is a happy one.

Hope you'll like it @lizz-blizt and op. May my English keep englishing correctly through this journey.

***********

Barry Allen, more commonly known as a hero Flash, usually hated being stuck at monitor duty. It was the most boring type of job he could imagine he would do as superhero but unfortunately as the fastest man alive he had to do it pretty often. After all, if he sees something bad happening he has the biggest chance to get here on time. Plus his rogues weren't absolute assholes and sometimes he managed to ask them not to pull God only knows which crazy scheme when he wasn't around. He was able to attend the majority of his protégés parent-teacher meetings. ON TIME!

Nevermind. Though, this time monitor duty it was a little better. Mostly because he legally could do something more than looking at multiple camera feeds from everywhere all at once. To be more specific, Flash had to go through some research papers they got with they current person of interest. Papers described ghosts/ecto-entities which made him snort with amusement (he wasn't sure which term was actually correct and it was at least a little annoying). However, at first he was just surprised that he, well know sceptic, was chosen to do this job. Turned out his teammates just thought he will understand the most from this scientific splatter. The more he read, the more he felt like word scientific shouldn't be in this sentence without prefix pseudo. Other than obvious problems (ghosts aren't real) something in these articles just rubbed him the wrong way. Especially when he learned that it was just tip of the iceberg. Batman and his flock found it after a bit of hacking. They needed some more time to actually gain access to forbidden files but just the fact that GIW had something to hide was enough to raise suspicions.

He finished document written in some sad parody of scientific language and looked at the camera feed from interrogation room. One of the friendliest ones.

Daniel Fenton, age 14, was found fighting some (alleged) government agents on the outskirts of Fawcett City. When heroes arrived at the scene, half of the agents had already been unconscious or badly injured. Rest was doing their best to contain teenager, who fought like a feral animal, bitting, scratching, screaming, tossing himself from place to place, without any technic or plan. He was just desperate to not be caught again. When Wonder Woman used her lasso on him, he kept struggling until agents in white were out of sight. They were surprised that lasso worked. Apparently, as agents told them, boy wasn't human but dangerous, powerful ghost disgusting as one. When asked if the ghost possessed the boy, agents denied. Heroes had even more suspicions after this statement. They knew some ghosts. They weren't capable of making human disguises.

Boy was probably a meta. That was the reason heroes refused to let him go with alleged agents and took him to one of Justice League's secret bases. Still, he could be dangerous, so they locked one of power suppressors, as agents gave them four, on boy's ankle. When they tried putting more, he reacted like he was in pain. They didn't want to torture him, just make sure he didn't lash out at them using whatever powers he had. Bruises on his wrists, ankles and neck clearly showed that his previous captors had different priorities.

At the moment, League knew Daniel was meta that, as they were told, run away from highly restricted prison. They weren't to keen on giving him back but also didn't know what he did to end up in such place. Maybe it was justified. They needed answers.

That's why young Fenton sat on uncomfortable chair, in fresh clothes from one of teenage heroes, with one power suppressor on his ankle, interrogated by Superman and Wonder Woman. J'onn was on some mission and couldn't assist with his mind reading abilities. They didn't want to bring M'gnn into it yet.

Boy sat still like a marble statue, probably dissociating. He was like this since he had been taken away from dudes in white. All they knew about him they learned either from alleged agents or from his documents that Batman managed quickly to access when he had successfully run facial recognition scan on him. Heroes weren't going to question how he did that. They didn't want to know and had more important things on their plate. The boy himself.

Sometimes Flash wasn't sure if he was even breathing.

"If you don't answer we will have to return you to the GIW. Please tell us what happened. Why were you there?" Diana asked calmly but firmly. It was fake, hollow threat. Whoever they were, dudes in white were far too suspicions to give them boy back. Not that the boy knew about it. Daniel winced at the mention of organisation but it was so brief, even speedster doubted he really saw it.

No, he knew, he saw it.

Boy heard them and understood what they were talking about but still remained silent.

They didn't cuff him to the chair or something. He probably wasn't criminal. Just some unlucky kid.

"If you were held there unjustly, we will help you, just tell us what happened."

Boy still refused to talk, staring blankly at some point on a wall in front of him.

Barry opened new file to read. He had felt he wasn't going to like this one.

He didn't.

Apparently ghosts couldn't feel pain. That was clearly a lie, even if heroes hadn't known any ghosts, they had heard how boy screamed when one lucky laser beam got him. They had seen how he hugged injured arm to his chest, quickly wiped tears of pain flowing down his face. He didn't use this arm through rest of the battle. He was punching, kicking, bitting but his left arm wasn't used once. When he accidentally or purposely moved it too harshly, his face always winced in pain.

Ghost also didn't have feelings. They were great at mimicking them to appeal to humans but weren't capable of them on their own.

That was also big fat lie if Flash ever read one.

He wasn't there, but he saw the fight on camera feed from Batman's cowl and few city cams. He saw how terrified boy was.

Daniel was capable of feeling pain. He was capable of being scared. Whatever dudes in white had told them was now under big question mark but at the moment only Barry knew about it.

He once again looked at the view from interrogation room.

Clark and Diana already left. Their attempts to get boy to speak were fruitless.

Daniel wasn't sitting anymore. Instead, he was searching the room, clearly panicking, looking for ways to get out. His moves were barely controlled as if he was too tired to do it but did anyway. Boy was hyperventilating, his limbs were shaking. Even if there was a mundane way to break out of the room, he wouldn't be able to escape. If there even was lock to pick or something, and he somehow had tools to do it, he wouldn't be able to. It was surprising, his legs were even able to support his weight. Too low to be healthy for a boy his height and age as if there was not enough concerning thing about the boy. He was running arm first into the door, as if trying to forcefully break out.

Barry wasn't scared that Daniel would somehow escape from the room. Each one of them had been thoroughly tested by every hero associated with League before it was put into use. Superman with his strength couldn't even dent its walls, Martian Manhunter couldn't phase out, no magical nor mundane ways worked to escape. Every single one of them tried. Each bat, each arrow, each Flash, each Supes, Captain Marvel, Auquaman, Aqualad, Wonder Woman, Black Canary, every JLD member, literally everyone played escape-room-but-with-super-powers-magic-and-sick-ass-tech and failed for at least two hours before they used it to contain anyone.

Hero observed as Fenton slowly realised it too and sunk on the floor. He hadn't once looked at the hidden camera, so it was safe to assume he didn't know about his audience. Even if Flash believed GIW earlier, he would stop then. There was no one to put up show for. Boy clearly felt caged, endangered, terrified and couldn't hide it anymore.

Barry saw how boy pulled his hair so hard he probably nearly torn them out. He saw how the kid (dear gods it was just a kid) slowly, barely regained control over his too fast, too shallow breathing, wiped his face from fat tears still flowing from his eyes and pulled himself to sit on chair again. He winced in pain when he accidentally put too much weight on his still injured but now bandaged arm. For some time, he just sat there, taking deep breaths, as if he was gaining courage to do something. Once again, Barry felt he wasn't going to like that.

"Hey Jazz, Sam, Tuck" boy said gently to the empty room, his voice harsh from previous screaming. It was the first time Flash heard him actually talking. From what little they learned about him before bats focused on hacking GIW, Jazz was probably his older sister, Jasmine, Sam and Tuck, were his only friends, Samantha Manson and Tucker Foley. They all died in some accident few months prior.

"Do you think dead ghosts go to the same place as the people who moved on?"

This question got Flash to jump on his feet.

"Maybe I will meet Ellie again"

Boy tucking something out of his pocket, something he quickly recognised as blood blossom, one of ghosts weakness, got hero to run.

He nearly fell from the whiplash when he stopped in front of the interrogation room. His hands moved too fast to be seen when he was going through all safety procedures to open the door. He bounced, waiting for it to slide apart wide enough to get inside. Too slow, it was way too slow.

Boy looked him in the eyes with a smirk, holding flower in front of his face. Nothing other than his mouth was backing this cheerful expression.

"I would rather die second death than go back to this table" he announced.

And then he pressed it to release a red vapour.

His face flinched in pain.

Doors finally opened. Flash run to the boy.

It was one of the few times, when Fastest Man Alive was too slow.

He was inches away when boy had put flower in his mouth and swallowed it.

When hero hit his chest to make him spit, it was too late.

Burning flower already started to affect him, full realisation of what he had done, showing at his face as he started to cough. Boy was choking on his own blood, flowing from burnt lungs, burnt stomach and ignited throat.

Flash tried using some first aid techniques used in normal choking cases but it was useless now. Blood blossom had caught its victim and it wasn't giving it up.

Boy was crying again.

"I don't want to die again." he begged quietly between coughs." Please."

And all Barry could do was to look at this pleading child, so scared of death yet horrified of life they promised even more.

He screamed over his comm for someone to prepare place in med bay and medical team as he caught the boy and flipped him over his shoulder to make it easier to for him to choke as hero run as fast as he could to the med bay.

The moment he arrived, the moment doctor looked, and they locked his eyes on Barry's face they knew it was too late.

All they could do was to observe child dying in agonising pain, wailing between coughs, until he felt silent, tears flowing, body trembling violently, burning lungs fighting for every breath, holding hero's hand in loosening grip, as if it was last thing connecting him to the life.

Before he died he managed to whisper "Please give me a grave." and then after a moment:

"I just wanted to see stars once more" before his eyes couldn't see ever again. Before he couldn't fight for next shallow breath ever again. Before his body gone numb and wouldn't move ever again.

And they all just stayed there looking at this too small, fragile, tortured body of a child who was scared to live more than he feared Death herself.

Nobody moved for almost five minutes.

Doctor gently closed his eyes and filled death report.

That's when his commes erupted.

"We got hold on hidden GIW files" Batman announced, his voice dark as always.

"You won't gonna like it. I only briefly looked at summaries but there is some fucking horrifying shit." It would be surprising that Dick's voice matched tone of his mentor if they were in any other circumstances.

"Language"

"B. If there is ever time and place for language, it's right fucking now." Protégé bickered back.

"Daniel Fenton committed suicide via poisoning" Flash interrupted, fighting words coming out of his mouth and commes returned to blissful silence for a moment. "I wasn't fast enough to stop him or get him necessary help."

Boy's body slowly turned into ashes. After all blood blossom burned.

Whole League was mourning child their failed even though he was so close to them.

And then they started to read and learn things. About GIW experiments. About Anti-Ecto Acts. About Fentons. About Amity Park as a whole. About Phantom. Dear Gods, this was child hero, alone against his struggles, who for his work, sweat and blood got nothing but hell.

He would fit right into team of teen heroes. He could grow so much with them. They could grow so much with him.

Instead, he was treated like a frog in biology classes.

Dick was right. It was some fucking horrifying shit.

They give boy proper burial in secret hero cemetery. They looked for the place with the best view on the night sky. They dismantled GIW and laws that backed these sick people up. They acknowledge young undead hero and put up memorial for him. Memorial like ones Flash remembered from alternative timelines, put up for the greatest of them all.

But it was too late.

Few inches too late.

***********

Don't worry, Danny got to again meet Ellie, who destabilised, and Jazz, Sam and Tucker who died in crossfire during ghost vs GIW confrontation.

Or maybe not. Maybe memories are all that remained after them :)

***********

Barry Allen, more commonly known as a hero Flash, usually hated being stuck at monitor duty. It was the most boring type of job he could imagine he would do as superhero but unfortunately as the fastest man alive he had to do it pretty often. After all, if he sees something bad happening he has the biggest chance to get here on time. Plus his rogues weren't absolute assholes and sometimes he managed to ask them not to pull God only knows which crazy scheme when he wasn't around. He was able to attend the majority of his protégés parent-teacher meetings. ON TIME!

Nevermind. Though, this time monitor duty it was a little better. Mostly because he legally could do something more than looking at multiple camera feeds from everywhere all at once. To be more specific, Flash had to go through some research papers they got with they current person of interest. Papers described ghosts/ecto-entities which made him snort with amusement (he wasn't sure which term was actually correct and it was at least a little annoying). However, at first he was just surprised that he, well know sceptic, was chosen to do this job. Turned out his teammates just thought he will understand the most from this scientific splatter. The more he read, the more he felt like word scientific shouldn't be in this sentence without prefix pseudo. Other than obvious problems (ghosts aren't real) something in these articles just rubbed him the wrong way. Especially when he learned that it was just tip of the iceberg. Batman and his flock found it after a bit of hacking. They needed some more time to actually gain access to forbidden files but just the fact that GIW had something to hide was enough to raise suspicions.

He finished document written in some sad parody of scientific language and looked at the camera feed from interrogation room. One of the friendliest ones.

Daniel Fenton, age 14, was found fighting some (alleged) government agents on the outskirts of Fawcett City. When heroes arrived at the scene, half of the agents had already been unconscious or badly injured. Rest was doing their best to contain teenager, who fought like a feral animal, bitting, scratching, screaming, tossing himself from place to place, without any technic or plan. He was just desperate to not be caught again. When Wonder Woman used her lasso on him, he kept struggling until agents in white were out of sight. They were surprised that lasso worked. Apparently, as agents told them, boy wasn't human but dangerous, powerful ghost disgusting as one. When asked if the ghost possessed the boy, agents denied. Heroes had even more suspicions after this statement. They knew some ghosts. They weren't capable of making human disguises.

Boy was probably a meta. That was the reason heroes refused to let him go with alleged agents and took him to one of Justice League's secret bases. Still, he could be dangerous, so they locked one of power suppressors, as agents gave them four, on boy's ankle. When they tried putting more, he reacted like he was in pain. They didn't want to torture him, just make sure he didn't lash out at them using whatever powers he had. Bruises on his wrists, ankles and neck clearly showed that his previous captors had different priorities.

At the moment, League knew Daniel was meta that, as they were told, run away from highly restricted prison. They weren't to keen on giving him back but also didn't know what he did to end up in such place. Maybe it was justified. They needed answers.

That's why young Fenton sat on uncomfortable chair, in fresh clothes from one of teenage heroes, with one power suppressor on his ankle, interrogated by Superman and Wonder Woman. J'onn was on some mission and couldn't assist with his mind reading abilities. They didn't want to bring M'gnn into it yet.

Boy sat still like a marble statue, probably dissociating. He was like this since he had been taken away from dudes in white. All they knew about him they learned either from alleged agents or from his documents that Batman managed quickly to access when he had successfully run facial recognition scan on him. Heroes weren't going to question how he did that. They didn't want to know and had more important things on their plate. The boy himself.

Sometimes Flash wasn't sure if he was even breathing.

"If you don't answer we will have to return you to the GIW. Please tell us what happened. Why were you there?" Diana asked calmly but firmly. It was fake, hollow threat. Whoever they were, dudes in white were far too suspicions to give them boy back. Not that the boy knew about it. Daniel winced at the mention of organisation but it was so brief, even speedster doubted he really saw it.

No, he knew, he saw it.

Boy heard them and understood what they were talking about but still remained silent.

They didn't cuff him to the chair or something. He probably wasn't criminal. Just some unlucky kid.

"If you were held there unjustly, we will help you, just tell us what happened."

Boy still refused to talk, staring blankly at some point on a wall in front of him.

Barry opened new file to read. He had felt he wasn't going to like this one.

He didn't.

Apparently ghosts couldn't feel pain. That was clearly a lie, even if heroes hadn't known any ghosts, they had heard how boy screamed when one lucky laser beam got him. They had seen how he hugged injured arm to his chest, quickly wiped tears of pain flowing down his face. He didn't use this arm through rest of the battle. He was punching, kicking, bitting but his left arm wasn't used once. When he accidentally or purposely moved it too harshly, his face always winced in pain.

Ghost also didn't have feelings. They were great at mimicking them to appeal to humans but weren't capable of them on their own.

That was also big fat lie if Flash ever read one.

He wasn't there, but he saw the fight on camera feed from Batman's cowl and few city cams. He saw how terrified boy was.

Daniel was capable of feeling pain. He was capable of being scared. Whatever dudes in white had told them was now under big question mark but at the moment only Barry knew about it.

He once again looked at the view from interrogation room.

Clark and Diana already left. Their attempts to get boy to speak were fruitless.

Daniel wasn't sitting anymore. Instead, he was searching the room, clearly panicking, looking for ways to get out. His moves were barely controlled as if he was too tired to do it but did anyway. Boy was hyperventilating, his limbs were shaking. Even if there was a mundane way to break out of the room, he wouldn't be able to escape. If there even was lock to pick or something, and he somehow had tools to do it, he wouldn't be able to. It was surprising, his legs were even able to support his weight. Too low to be healthy for a boy his height and age as if there was not enough concerning thing about the boy. He was running arm first into the door, as if trying to forcefully break out.

Barry wasn't scared that Daniel would somehow escape from the room. Each one of them had been thoroughly tested by every hero associated with League before it was put into use. Superman with his strength couldn't even dent its walls, Martian Manhunter couldn't phase out, no magical nor mundane ways worked to escape. Every single one of them tried. Each bat, each arrow, each Flash, each Supes, Captain Marvel, Auquaman, Aqualad, Wonder Woman, Black Canary, every JLD member, literally everyone played escape-room-but-with-super-powers-magic-and-sick-ass-tech and failed for at least two hours before they used it to contain anyone.

Hero observed as Fenton slowly realised it too and sunk on the floor. He hadn't once looked at the hidden camera, so it was safe to assume he didn't know about his audience. Even if Flash believed GIW earlier, he would stop then. There was no one to put up show for. Boy clearly felt caged, endangered, terrified and couldn't hide it anymore.

Barry saw how boy pulled his hair so hard he probably nearly torn them out. He saw how the kid (dear gods it was just a kid) slowly, barely regained control over his too fast, too shallow breathing, wiped his face from fat tears still flowing from his eyes and pulled himself to sit on chair again. He winced in pain when he accidentally put too much weight on his still injured but now bandaged arm. For some time, he just sat there, taking deep breaths, as if he was gaining courage to do something. Once again, Barry felt he wasn't going to like that.

"Hey Jazz, Sam, Tuck" boy said gently to the empty room, his voice harsh from previous screaming. It was the first time Flash heard him actually talking. From what little they learned about him before bats focused on hacking GIW, Jazz was probably his older sister, Jasmine, Sam and Tuck, were his only friends, Samantha Manson and Tucker Foley. They all died in some accident few months prior.

"Do you think dead ghosts go to the same place as the people who moved on?"

This question got Flash to jump on his feet.

"Maybe I will meet Ellie again"

Boy tucking something out of his pocket, something he quickly recognised as blood blossom, one of ghosts weakness, got hero to run.

He nearly fell from the whiplash when he stopped in front of the interrogation room. His hands moved too fast to be seen when he was going through all safety procedures to open the door. He bounced, waiting for it to slide apart wide enough to get inside. Too slow, it was way too slow.

Boy looked him in the eyes with a smirk, holding flower in front of his face. Nothing other than his mouth was backing this cheerful expression.

"I would rather die second death than go back to this table" he announced.

And then he pressed it to release a red vapour.

His face flinched in pain.

Doors finally opened. Flash run to the boy.

It was in times like this when Flash was thankful for his accident. Times when thanks to his speed he saved life hanging on a single hair. Times when he yanked red, smelly flower out of hands of desperate teenage ghost's hands just before he could do something else with it.

For a moment Daniel just stared in shock at his now empty hand. Then he stared at the hero in front of him, barely keeping himself from hugging this wronged child. Then back at his hands. And finally his eyes locked at the flower itself now laying sadly at the opposite side of the room. As far, as it could be.

Daniel let out stuttered breath.

"Why did you stop me?" he whispered, unable to say anything louder. Flash didn't known if he was accusing him or just curious "I wouldn't change my mind. I prefer to vanish forever in horrible agony than to return to them. It at least would last shorter."

"We won't give you back to them." He explained. They didn't actually talk about it, but he was sure after this, every single member of the Justice League would agree with him.

"Wonder Woman said something else. And I don't know she seems to have a lot of authority."

"We won't give you back to them." Hero repeated. "I'm sure she will back me up on this. She is after justice. Whatever happened to you, wasn't just and shouldn't happen to anyone let alone a child."

Boy laughed broken, cheerless cackle.

"Yet, it did. And now I'm here. As a villain, who fought against a good government. As a mindless, manipulative ghost disguised as Daniel Jack Fenton, age 14, son of two well known and respected ectobiologists and engineers and failing brother of a wonderful older sister, who could change a world if not for ghost attack that took her too early." Boy was rightfully hurt and bitter.

"I'm a freak, a spook, a rare speciment, a nuisance. A menace, a creepy little boy with creepy little powers. A boy whose dog destroyed a life of a wonderful girl who from wealth fallen so hard she had to start to work in fast food joint. A failure. An unknown. A threat." He continued. Flash flashed (pun intended) him warm smile.

"We hadn't seen you like that." Hero started gently." All we had seen a terrified, injured boy running away and fighting with people who held him captive. We saw boy who was constantly dehumanised same way few of our colleagues were in the past. We saw suspicious dudes shooting at the boy who was dead on his feet but kept fighting, desperate to live. We saw someone who needed our help, and we tried to provide it. And I saw boy so scared of life he lived, he was ready to choose death over it."

"And that's the reason you cuffed me? A scared little boy?"

"We couldn't let you run away, and we knew you would do it ASAP."

"Can you blame me?"

"No. Can you blame us?"

"We successful got hold on GIW hidden files." Batman interrupted.

"Kinda" boy said, none wiser to mile stone Bat just reached with his flock.

"You won't gonna like it. I only briefly looked at summaries but there is some fucking horrifying shit." It was surprising that Dick's voice matched typical tone of his mentor. It was really serious.

"Language"

"If there is ever time and place for language, it's right fucking now." Protégé bickered back.

"I mean, you threatened me to toss me back to the worst part of my life, and I am an ectiplasmic ghost, we don't appear after nice deaths. And my parents are..." Daniel cleared his throat "... were devoted ghost hunters."

"Daniel was held under other name, Phantom. We're looking what we can find under this name."

"Okay, I get it." Barry laughed light heartedly, rescheduling freak out about this kids apparent death fo later maybe never, but stopped as soon as Daniel started coughing. Right, blood blossom fumes were still around. He swept the boy to carry him like a back pack and took him out of the room, closing doors behind them.

He walked slowly. He didn't have to run anymore.

"Excuse me, mister Flash sir, what are you doing?" boy asked surprised. Oh, so when shocked, Daniel became extremely polite, interesting.

"Taking you out of there. It's not healthy to be in one room for so long. Especially when you turn it into gas chamber using deathly poison."

"Take him to one of the bedrooms." Bat commanded.

"Like anyone even cares about it." Daniel grunted, barely audibly.

"I do. I'm a hero, it's my duty to take care of civilians well-being."

"I don't think I count as a civilian anymore. For a year know I think. I'm not sure what day it is today though."

Gods, wasn't it horrible thing to just admit with a little shrug as all acknowledged.

"He is right. He was hero back in his home town. Amity Park, Illinois. Looking into that right now."

"Fellow hero then. We take care of each other too, you know? That's one of the reasons Justice League exists in the first place."

"Apparently he was self thought too." Dick admitted, slightly amazed."He did pretty great job for a kid without any proper training."

"I'm not really a hero. I was local menace, boy in over his head, a spook. Only biased people like my friends and sister ever called me that. And, as you probably know, I did pretty shitty job protecting them."

"Yeah, looking at the way news had portraited him, I can see why he thinks like that. Barry, tell him something nice ASAP."

"Names."

"Batman called you a hero too." Flash added offhandedly.

"WHAT?!" Daniel sprung like a clown in box toy, throwing out their centre of balance. Only years of training and practice allowed them not to fall. It was a close call though. Boy's yell still rang in his hurting ears." Oh, sorry." He corrected himself sheepishly." But seriously, what?"

Dick was laughing.

"He is listening to us over the commes. He just said you were a hero. I think we can trust his judgment."

He barely heard breathy "Yeah."

They remanded silent after that. Adrenaline from all the crazy things Daniel had been through the day was finally wearing off. At the time when Flash opened a door to one of the spare bedrooms for when exhausting mission ended to late, boy was sleeping, head laying on hero's shoulder. It was good, he clearly needed it.

As he was tucking young hero under thick blanket, he briefly hoped that he sleep would be restful, not disturbed by any nightmares.

Unfortunately he couldn't do anything about that, especially since Bat called him back on monitor duty. Though he also praised him for handling this whole Daniel's mess well. Barry was going to live on a high for a next two days or so.

With documentation of all the crazy things GIW had done, dismantling organisation and laws backing it up was quite easy and surprisingly quick. People didn't like grumpy but adorable teen walking around with vivisection scar and no amount of propaganda could change it.

Later Danny joined teen heroes team. As expected, everyone flourished thanks to this acquaintance. At the start it was kind of funny to as they exchanged stories, absolutely shocking each other.

If one of Vlad's labs got mysteriously destroyed somewhen around Danny's birthday, nobody was any wiser.

When same thing happened to remaining Cadmus lab around Connor's birthday, nobody commented on it too.

Things weren't good in Danny's life before, but they looked promising in the future.

***********

Some finishing thoughts

First things first, I really appreciate that you made it this far, I feel loved and rn thanks to you. If I lost myself in a maze of English grammar (why so many tenses? Why), please show me a proper way. If you have some writing tips, you can share them too. I'm not picky.

Second of all, I think they're not in Watchtower. Since some of the leaguers (majority of them, I think) can't just go out and chill in space, bringing unknown, potentially hostile and powerful, entity there is kinda stupid if I may say so myself. So it's some on-Earth base, but I know nothing about dc, so don't ask me which one.

Third of all, for the same reason, I have no idea in which teen hero team Phantom ends up, and that's the only reason why Dick isn't once referred to by his hero name. I just don't know if it would be Robin or Nightwing. If it's Young Justice with Tim, he is sleeping now, Alfred finally put him to bed after three all nighters, nobody even dares to think about waking him up.

Fourth of all, I sometimes (often) struggle with writing and conveying feelings even when my hands aren't tied up by foreign language and these stories are supposed to work mostly on feelings, so tell me how I did maybe? If you have time?

Fifth of all, thank you again and have a great day sunshine

# 17

The Justice League try to threaten Danny saying that if he dose not start talking then they will have to hand him over to thr GIW when Danny does not talk they tell him that there going to connect the GIW when they leave his cell and go to the camera they had there heart drop when they see Danny pull out a little vile and what look like a red flower be eaten when they run un they hear him say " I would rather die a second death then go back to the table." before pasting out

Duke had ambiguous relationship with being one of the two, up until recently only, Gotham’s daytime hero. On one hand it felt amazing to fill this niche, to see all this thankful people still not used to the fact that there is a name they can call upon for help before sunset. It was great to just sleep at night because he did his part, to be recognized and loved. On the other hand it was a little scary. Until Danny joined them, he was the one with least training or experience and Gotham’s criminal side didn’t go to sleep when sun was on the sky. It was a little calmer since obscuring shadows always stayed crime’s favored home, even despite being haunted by evergrowing colony of vigilantes. But it was still Gotham and one Signal, even when joined by Lar, didn’t felt like enough. It was only so much ground he could cover, only so much pleas he could hear over noises of the city, only so much he could know without Oracle’s omniscient eyes because Babs had a normal job and also had to sleep. He wasn’t mad, he knew she was more needed at night but he still wished there was someone coordinating from behind the screen. It would be encouraging and he would fell less out of place when his family was sometimes talking in half-words because apparently anyone other than Duke knew that case and no further explanation was necessary.

At least he had Danny now. Danny, who choose to shadow him during his training before Bruce even finished his question. Danny who always joined him, even if he had spent previous night tailing others during their shifts. Danny who was meta too, was open to play with their powers and who had superhearing that pointed them to places where they were needed. Danny who was reluctant to fight humans because he was afraid of hurting them (after watching some of his fights on hacked Amity Park’s city cameras, yeah it was valid concern) but never hesitated to do whatever was necessary to protect civilians and other vigilantes equally.

Danny who hated his powers but used them daily to help. Danny who joked whenever he was scared or concerned or overwhelmed but didn’t want anyone to know. Danny who joked a lot.

Danny who just challenged him for a race.

“Oh, you’re gonna lose so hard. I’m in”

“We’ll see, Shiny guy” Fenton smirked, shooting his grappling hook. He could, in fact, fly and even seemed to like it, but Bruce insisted he learned grappling and parkour too. Duke because of sheer experience was much better at both. Still, it was nice when younger boy came up with the ways to spend their patrols between crimes. It took some time but his newest brother was opening to him more and more.

Duke grappled with wide smile on his face.

It was always amazing when he wasn’t on his way to the next crime scene. Fall, shot let the momentum carry you, release the hook, fall, repeat. Let the wind against your body and sounds of the life beneath you be only things that affect you. Fly as if you managed to overcome human’s bound to the ground.

It was nice and liberating.

He outrun Danny few cycles before. When they finish he should tell boy what mistakes he noticed.

He made a few steps after landing on the final building and turned to observe as Lar shoot last time to join him.

“You’re learning worryingly fast” Duke started which wasn’t objectively true, but was given circumstances. Danny was doing wonders for someone running on sheer caffeine, felling of responsibility and misplaced guilt. “Try shot farther from you and release hook soon after crossing point of balance. It’s faster that way.”

“Okay” halfa nodded “Let’s try again. To the puking gargoyle!” He once again tried to cheat by starting without warning but Duke was way too used to fell for that.

Gargoyle Lar was talking about probably wasn’t meant to puke. It was located on top of one of Gotham’s most luxurious hotels and from any civilian reachable perspective it was average sculpture, like many other in this gothic city (Danny said once his friend Sam would love it and then shut down for the rest of the day) but when examined closer it looked like it was doing its best to release its stomach contents back to the world. Rooftop it was on was often used as meeting spot for various vigilantes, partially because it was quite secluded, partially because nobody lived on the top floor to complain about disturbance (or eardrop) and partially (mainly) because puking gargoyle was iconic. Jason called it Bill sometimes.

Although, before they made it there, Duke heard three knocks in his comm. Danny heard trouble. Halfa still wasn’t confident in his grappling abilities enough to try briefing while doing it. It was okay, Duke didn’t like it either. He landed on the nearest roof, other boy hot on his heels.

“Mugging on… ten, up to four streets away” He had announced before he took of flying.

Yeah, it was a little problematic how he couldn’t give more specific direction. Signal couldn’t blame him though, it was power Lar developed while in Gotham, it would be unfair to expect him to had it perfected already. Especially since they learned about his hatred towards his abilities. It was kind of disturbing when he thought about it for too long, so he didn’t. They had mugging to stop and snack break to take relatively soon.

His comm. Picked up muffled “Fuck, they’re talking back” followed after few seconds by “they’re stalling” with few more curses. Dick would probably yell at Jason for being bad role model if he heard that.

Thankfully they made it on time and soon Signal was tying up unconscious criminal while Lar run damage control with the victim., also scolding them for antagonizing his attacker. Victim, androgynous university student called Sage, was surprisingly calm and while Danny was lecturing, they just smiled and without any warning loudly clapped few inches away from young vigilante’s ear, making him visibly flinch.

“I knew gossip about your super hearing was true.” They announced with proud grin “I was making sure you knew where I was… Plus, this asshole deserved it.”

Boy just rubbed his ears with pained expression.

“Never ever do that again. Even people with normal hearing don’t like it and this shit hurts a lot”

“Sorry”

“And! I would know where you were if you were asking if you could take out your ID from your wallet or if you tapped your feet. We’re not always around and not always we can make it on time. Don’t risk so much please. I want to get my high school diploma and I can’t when I hear idiots making armed muggers angry when I take a test. I’ll leave and come to the rescue, you know? And it’s easiest way to fail the test. So please, don’t do it.” Danny pleaded. He was in fact homeschooled and for all Duke knew he hadn’t had problem like that yet, but maybe he talked from experience from his hometown. That tracked for all Duke knew.

Sage nodded and after moment of consideration they asked for pen and piece of paper. They scribbled something as soon as yellow vigilante offered it to them before giving a note to younger boy.

“If any of you two ever have trouble with biology, give me a call. I’m veterinary student, I know thing or two.” They shrugged. “Thank you for saving me but I gotta go, there is only so much prof’ll excuse, y’know?” Then they spun around, little metal pieces on their pants chimming gently “Bye~” they added with joking tone as they walked down the alley.

Signal glanced at his partner who just kept starring at the number before he shrugged and hid it in ne of multiple pockets in his suit.

“Batman is gonna run me to the ground at situational awareness training if he founds out” he said with grimace, once again rubbing his ear back online.

“It wasn’t so bad.” His reassurance was met with unimpressed look (it was amazing how expressive vigilantes could be while covering majority of their faces) “Alright, yeah, you’re in trouble buddy”

Danny sighed dramatically.

“That’s one way of saying it… Let’s keep going, I want to stop at least ne more crime before snack break”

In the end there was no other crime to stop before Duke strong armed his brother for a snack break. He was hungry and he couldn’t leave younger boy to run by himself. As a way of making amends, he dropped to convenience store to get them food alone. Normally he would get BatBurger but Danny was strongly against it. He liked fast food, he was normal teen, but joints made him anxious (understandable, his whole support system died in explosion of such place). He didn’t let any of them inside , Drive Thru being as far as he could let them.

Well, convenience store snacks were cool too. Danny clearly agreed, sitting on the edge of the roof of highest building around and eating his sandwich like it was purest ambrosia.

Duke used this time to share some of his school gossip and stories of what his civilian friends were up to. He wanted younger boy to feel included (and it felt funny to talk abut such mundane things while in hero suit six stories above the ground). Danny chocked on his soda and laughed few times (it felt genuine!!!), commenting when it fitted. When he mentioned some petty argument one of his friends had with Izzy, younger boy almost fell of the building and muttered

“It’s like vegan vs meat fight all over again.”

“What?” Duke asked, trying not to snort. Though he was curious. Danny rarely shared stories from before Gotham.

“My friend Sam is an ultra vegan and once she changed cafeteria menu to match it. My other frien Tucker is me-” he froze “was. Tucker was meatlover and Sam was vegan.” He finished in hurt tone. “Somehow they organized opposing protests in the second they of their conflict. Like full on two crowds of random people with banners and shouting and insulting each other, all on the school grounds” it didn’t took to be a detective to hear tears in his voice. Duke wasn’t quite sure what he should do.

“Damn, that’s crazy.”

“And I haven’t gotten to Lunch Lady part yet” why did it sounded like a threat?! What did that woman do to one up two opposing protests? “Changing menu enraged a ghost of a woman that worked on it and she came back to punish whoever did that.” Alright, that was certainly a way to be weirder that two opposing protests “She was first ghost I have fought, y’know? I had no idea what was happening, my power were acting up ‘cause I had them for like month or something, it was a mess. At some point she created mecha suit out of meat and destroyed school yard” Danny let out watery laugh “It was still me who got detention because of course. It was so fucking weird back then and now I wouldn’t even bat an eye. None of my friends would. But –ah” He gasped then raised his mask to dry tears that collected under the lenses. “Sorry for bringing the mood down”

“It’s okay. Thank you for sharing this”

In his defense, Duke felt greatly out of his depth. Danny practically never shared stories from his live before, which wasn’t all that weird, but regardless, left him underprepared for sudden openness. They sat in hopefully comforting silence when younger boy was slowly collecting himself back together. Then they awkwardly ate their sandwiches until Lar tensed, halfway through the bite. He gulped quickly and shared what got him so alarmed.

“There is a robbery this way… three streets away.” He stood up and flew, continuing over the comm. Duke grappled right after him. There was no time to hang out on random roof “Jewelry store… six, seven, eight… approximately eight hostages, one is a child, at least two armed robbers” he stopped speaking, listening to something “They just shot someone” he added with clear strain in his voice. He sped up, checking his pockets for medical equipment. Signal checked what most likely was their destination and called an ambulance there.

As much as he would like to, they didn’t rush inside the moment they got there. Lar’s hearing was great but he couldn’t run all the reckon.

For example he hadn’t heard anything about the fucking bomb. It was cliché bomb with timer, red numbers counting down. When he checked, they still got fifteen minutes. They exchanged grim glances of mutual understanding before vanishing from the sight.

Photokinesis rules, especially when it let him vaguely see his patrol partner while he was invisible.

They slipped inside thanks to shared intangibility and then went their separate ways. Danny flew towards middle-aged man sitting against counter in growing puddle of blood. Duke prepared to knock out at least one robber with element of surprise. It was the one who previously showed around a remote with cartoon-like big red button, so he counted it would prevent any premature explosions. He sprung to the action when injured men disappeared from mundane sight, causing both robbers to shout and shot. They missed miserably (not weird since they didn’t saw their target) and he quickly knocked out one with purple helmet, kicking gun out of pink’s hands. He dropped hi invisibility so they didn’t shot blindly and hurt any hostage. Second one didn’t go down as easily as their partner. Hero and criminal exchanged blows, not giving each other moment to think. Duke was cautious. Bomb was still there. Until he wasn’t, blinded as ghost of light from exploding bomb. Person he was fighting used this little break to press something n their chest pocket.

“You knew what’ll happen if you try to stop us.” Feminine voice from under the helmet was maniac. Signal met enough bad people to know what it mean. He jumped behind the counter for the cover while yelling:

“Lar, the bomb!”

Sounds exploded.

God bless Danny and his construct abilities. Small, transparent, neon green shield arose at the same time as explosion, that couldn’t affect anything outside ectoplasmic dome. And people’s ears.

With that of the table, fight resolved quickly, even despite the fact criminal got their gun back and tried to shot both vigilantes, with Lar’s back often turned because he kept evacuating civilians. Well, on Signal’s watch nobody got shot, thank you very much.

He managed to knock out his opponent soon after last person was evacuated and younger boy returned to check how else he could help. They quickly zip tied both unconscious criminals and got out to drink some water and resume on their patrol.

“Ambulance already took that man that got shot. They said he was stable. Nobody else had any injuries, few were in shock. I gave them shock blankets and tried to calm them a little before I had to go back to get the rest out. They’re under GCPD care now” Danny reported as they stood on the roof on the opposite side of the street. Signal took big sip to ease his thirst and nodded.

“Good job Lar.”

Younger boy smiled widely and brightened up so much, Duke would be surprised if normal people hadn’t seen some of it too.

It was nice to see him like this.

They sat to rest a little before resuming on running around this cursed city.

Unfortunately peace didn’t last for long. Before they finished drinking, Danny paled, almost dropping his bottle. Whatever shocked younger boy so much, was really, really bad sign. Like, disastrous level of bad sign. Rogue is attacking level of bad. Especially when he pressed his hands against his ears with pained expression and tears in his eyes. He took few breaths to help him collect himself. When he raised his head again Duke whispered:

“What’s wrong?”

“People are screaming. Loudly. They’re terrified. It’s chaos and it’s deafening. I- uh, this way” teen’s voice was a little shaky. He flew, even faster than he usually did. Whatever he heard- “I think it’s Scarecrow”

Well shit. It was full family, The Ultimate Panic Button press, too much to handle alone type of emergency. Duke grappled right after Danny, sending emergency signal.

It was objectively worst thing about daytime patrolling.

When there is issue you can’t handle alone, you’re on your own for a lot longer than night shift. After all, you have to wait until someone gets from whatever they’re doing as civilians, then they make their way to the Cave, then suit up and only then drive or grapple to wherever emergency happened. It obviously takes significantly more time than just getting from different patrolling area.

His intestines were twisted in dread. They had to handle Scarecrow and panicking, gas affected crowd on their own. They weren’t ready. They so fucking much weren’t ready.

“It’s okay Duke” Danny whispered over comm. “I know it’s a lot for you but we will handle this. It’ll be okay. I promise” They won’t, Duke knew that they weren’t enough to make it alright. It was fear gas attack. How many people even were affected? How many victims already? Even if by some unimaginable miracle nobody died on them, even if nobody’s heart gave out after beating too fast for too long, even if nobody’s lungs had lost battle with suffocating gas, even if somehow everyone made it out alive, how many people would be lost in their heads full of nightmares for the rest of their lives. How many people will join his parents? How-

“Duke” Oh, Danny was in front of him, hands on his arms. When did they stop on this roof? “I know it’s scary, horrifying even but I need you to breathe, okay? In, two, three, four, out, two, three, four, five, six, seven. In, two, three, four, out, two, three, four, five, six, seven.”

Oh, he was spiraling. Maybe even panicking.

He was panicking and his younger brother had to handle this. He tried to follow exercise and get himself back together as fast as possible. It was emergency, he could freak out after it’s wrapped up. Was it unhealthy? Maybe, but it was on brand with how heroes had to deal with their emotions. Just calm down for now. Calm down. Calm down! CALM DOWN!

“It’s okay Duke. I know it’s hard” Danny was surprisingly peaceful despite horrified screams probably ringing in his ears. “If you don’t think you can do it, you can stay somewhere safe, on a rooftop or something and tell me where you see people that need my help. You know, like Oracle.” His voice was so soft, his offer so tempting–

No! It wasn’t type of situation where he could stay on the sidelines. Especially not when that left only one, fourteen-year-old, person to handle this shit. Thank that Duke himself was fifteen didn’t mean he should take responsibility.

“I can do this. Let’s go” he announced a little sharper than he wanted. Boy nodded with sad smile and let his hands drop to his sides. Then he spun around and took of flying.

“Tell me if it’s too much at any point.” He added already over comm.

Duke stood for few seconds before he shook whatever got to him and run to catch up to his patrol buddy. He could handle himself.

They got to the place of emergency without further interruptions. Duke’s breath didn’t hitched when he saw streets filled with suffocating, dense gas, it didn’t. He heard screams some time before but actually seeing it made him freeze for a moment.

“Are you sure you can-”

Signal jumped down to the street instead of answering. If he stayed up there any longer, there was no say he could force himself to move. He almost got run over by car that crashed into the wall mere seconds later. There were at least two people inside. Two that were lucid enough to cry. He tried to open the door but they were too crumpled. Window was too small to get in or out. He didn’t have tools to get them safely out. To get them at all. He-

Danny yanked him back and pushed him towards teen girl curled few steps away. They didn’t need to talk, they both understood. Signal handled girl, Lar handled car.

They got separated after that. Duke was in some sort of haze. Find panicking person. Get them out. Give them antidote. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. One woman, nurse, asked if she could help so he gave her spare gas mask and handful of syringes. Find panicking person. Get them out. Give them antidote. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Ignore still bodies that you won’t be able to help. Shove them in one place out of the way and go back to living. Repeat. Find panicking person. Get them out. Give them antidote. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Rest of the Bats gradually joined them, but they haven’t saw each other. B fought Scarecrow himself. Find panicking person. Get them out. Give them antidote. Repeat. Repeat. Re- He run out of antidote. He run out. He- He had to take people to the nearest clinic that has them. It wasn’t that far. Farer than he would like but not really that far. Ok, change of plans. Find panicking person. Take them to clinic. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Re-

“Signal, do you hear us?” Batman’s voice finally broke to him. He blinked few times before answering.

“Yeah, sorry. What did you say?”

“Everyone is accounted for. Everyone go back to the Cave.” Oh, okay. They made it. “Good job Signal.” It didn’t felt like it.

“Are you alright Duke?” Tim was next to him, looking at him with concern. He shrugged. He wasn’t but there was nothing anyone could do at the moment. He just needed a moment to process everything. And probably cry or scream. Or both.

“Oracle, are you sure there is no one else?” Danny interrupted with undertone he couldn’t quite place at the moment.

“Positive. This is area with really high amount of cameras and I see no one, no one also walked into blind spot and haven’t returned.” Babs was calm and collected although slightly annoyed.

“But I-” there were noises as if boy was fiercely rubbing his ears without turning his comm off “I swear I can hear so-” with every word Danny sounded more and more desperate “Oh. Oh shit. Oooh shit.”

Something bad was happening.

“Lar, what’s wrong?” Duke asked looking over at Tim, who was already checking their brother’s location.

He got ignored, like anyone who tried to ask Danny for his wellbeing.

“Lar, where is your mask?!” Babs sounded exasperated and concerned at once “You’re in the middle of the cloud!”

They froze. Then Signal raced towards Danny. Whatever the fuck happened, younger boy needed his help. He was probably too horrified to get out or inject himself with antidote. It was surprising that he was still so lucid.

“You know how I don’t need to breath, right? I gave it to one dude that asked how he can help.” Danny latched onto distraction from his fear like it was lifebelt for his sanity, which it probably was.

“You always carry at least one spare” B pointed out in his harsh Batman tone “and you need to breath when you’re talking.” He added with more concerned, ‘I would lecture you but you’re not in shape for that’ undertone in his voice.

“Yeah” was more sigh than word “There was two of them so I didn’t have spare and I had to fight Scarecrow for a moment and I accidentally breathed during that. Since I didn’t fall in mindless panic right then and there I thought- I thought it wasn’t working” his false confidence morphed into whisper that was oh, so small and scared “I thought it wasn’t working but it works, it wo-”

He screamed so loudly Duke stopped in his tracks.

“Lar, whatever you are seeing, it is not real” Damian called with dread clear in his voice

“I know, I know” he sounded desperate, he knew it on intellectual level but it could only take him so far. He knew but couldn’t believe it. Duke could understand that. “I know. After all, they are dead and they loved me. They wouldn’t be like that.” Finally, he found Danny standing, pressed in the corner of some dead end, shaking like a twig, with hood of his head, holding one hand to his chest like he was injured.

“Knowing doesn’t help.”

All yellow vigilante wanted to do was to drop from the rooftop, hug him and get him as far as possible from whatever he was seeing. But before he moved, Danny’s aura grew and strengthen and green energy blast hit wall one store beneath him. Then there was deafening, broken yell full of rage and sorrow.

“NO, I WON’T”

Next blast fired into nothingness.

“I think it’s safe to say we lost him. I’m turning his comm off so we don’t lost our hearing. Signal’s comm should handle it.” Oracle said with forced calmness.

Duke stayed at the roof, still like salt pillar, when Danny kept screaming and attacking whoever he saw, after he turned to his ghost form. It was first time when Duke saw him like that outside of photo. B wanted to know what was happening. Signal wasn’t sure what words left his mouth. He couldn’t d anything again. He didn’t have any antidotes, he wasn’t strong enough to force crazed boy out of poisonous cloud that was slowly killing his mind. He was useless.

It took him longer than he would like to realize and even longer to get his body to work enough to make a report that Danny seemed to be able to physically interact with his hallucinations.

“The fuck that means Narrows?!” Jason yelled and Duke really had enough for this day and he would love if it finally ended thank you very much.

“It means that his arm suddenly started bleeding and his hair unnaturally raised before he yanked his head into wall with enough strength to give normal person severe concussion.” He snapped. “If someone has an idea how to stop it, get here right fucking now and do it.”

On the street below boy kept doing his thing, flying and causing serious property damage like rabid Luthor’s mecha suit. He kept yelling, pleading for his parents to believe that he was still Danny, screaming at Vlad that he won’t become his son and at someone else that he (Danny) won’t destroy world again. Whatever that meant, because world was very clearly still not destroyed.

Suddenly boy fell to the ground back to his human form as if his powers just stopped working. Duke wanted to jump down and do something, anything, to help but before he could Phantom stood up again and returned to his fight.

“I won’t lose this and even if I do it’s not the same. They’re ready for you.”

After moment long enough for hallucination to reply he added.

“I know. I’m you. You’re me. They’re ready for us.” He announced weakly, once again pressing himself into corner. Something moved in deepening shadows. Gas almost fully dissolved or got blew away by wind. “You’re lying! They wouldn’t!” he yelled in desperate denial to whatever he heard or saw.

Now that he was staying still, Cass jumped from somewhere and quickly inserted syringe into Danny’s bloody arm. She quickly retreated, properly assuming that just like gas, antidote won’t work right away. Boy froze for a moment. His aura shifted in a way that usually preceded something truly powerful.

Then he wailed.

It was absolutely deafening, terrified, barely human sound of most basic, almost animalistic fear and grief. It was like thunder, like tsunami hitting shore, like explosion, like avalanche and like death of star itself all at once but somehow clear and distinguishable. He could almost see these images moving along sound waves.

So strong, it alone caused similar destruction as previous, imaginary fight.

Duke hoped it wasn’t sign of crossing the point of no return as he pressed hands against his ears to protect his hearing. He was so glad he wasn’t in direction halfa send it because he knew there wouldn’t be getting away with his life, let alone hearing.

Danny fell on a ground, barely catching himself on a wall to stay at least sitting, clearly drained from whatever sonic attack he just used (no, they did not know about this power, Duke read whole Danny’s contingencies to try to learn what haunted his brother so much he deemed them necessary, this one was not mentioned). He whimpered, shaking like leaf on a strong wind, with eyes locked on point somewhere in front of him. As wrong as it sounded, this more familiar reaction to fear gas was reassuring. Boy suddenly started franticly looking around before he slumped, his body so slack Duke was scared he passed out. His aura dimmed to almost non-existent, normal human level.

After a moment, Cass came up to him again, giving everyone else a sign that it was safe. Multiple vigilantes appeared out of their hidings and jumped down inside the alley, getting closer to barely lucid teenager without making him feel cornered. Duke pushed them out of his way and crouched few feet away from Danny, far enough to no make him uncomfortable but close enough to catch or hug him if needed.

He was the one to comfort his patrol buddy and nobody could even think to stop him.

“Danny are you back with us?” he asked in as soft voice as he could manage. He repeated after a minute of silence. He almost missed breathy affirmation hiding between hastily taken gasps “That’s great. Can you try to breathe a little slower? I’ll help you, ok?”

Duke knew how to handle it, he sometime helped in emergency hotlines for a reason. He got it.

Danny clutched on him like his life depended on it. He needed a moment to reboot, before continuing to go with procedure, on his knees, with hands wrapped around younger boy just as tightly.

After time that could both be minutes or hours he got Danny to breathe properly and calm down a little. Younger boy was still shaken, only vaguely cognizant from fear, stress and exhaustion and in all honesty, Duke wasn’t too far from similar state but he had enough training to postpone it until he was back in his room.

Boy seemed to need inhuman strength to just raise his head and look at others. His unfocused eyes swam over all of them, but Signal doubted he actually comprehend what images light tried to paint in his brain. He tried to smile too but it turned out as pitiful grimace at best. His eyes still shone with tears. He whispered something, but it was so quiet it sounded more like silent sigh.

“Can you repeat, please? I didn’t hear you properly” Duke tried, as calm and soothing as he could manage.

“I’m sorry Duke”

It was so quiet he was almost sure he imagined it. It also didn’t make any sense and most certainly wasn’t what younger boy said before (it was too short for it).

“Why?” he whispered, even though he logically knew there was nothing to apologize for and he shouldn’t even suggest it but he was too bewildered to proceed properly.

“I know you’re scared. Your heart gives you away. I’m sorry”

Well, it simultaneously explained everything and nothing at all.

“Don’t be. You have right to be scared too.”

Danny didn’t answer. They just sat in silence, still in each other’s arms barely holding on their false calmness, surrounded by family of vigilante detectives who for once respected their space.

“Signal, Lar, are you ready to go back to the Batcave?” Bruce interrupted, but there was concern clear in his voice. Or at least clear for anyone who learned batlanguage during their training. Danny shifted a little, as if he just realized they weren’t actually alone.

“Yeah, sorry for that. Are you ready Duke?”

“Don’t apologize Lar.” Damian interrupted. “You were under influence of gas that causes many to lose their minds. It’s only appropriate that you take time to recover, especially since-” he stopped, looking for a way to phrase what he tried to say “since it looks like you were affected more than other people.”

Duke didn’t almost whine when Danny slipped from their hug and frantically looked around absolutely destroyed dead end, he didn’t. He was giving younger boy much needed comfort but it didn’t mean he couldn’t take it for himself too.

“I did this” he said with disbelief, pain and something else, that could only mean they were in trouble.

“Yeah, gotta admit I didn’t know you’ll take ‘fight your fears’ so literally, squrit.” even voice changer couldn’t help Jason to sell his false amusement as anything other than concern.

“You haven’t stop me.” Danny continued with furrowed brows and before anyone came up with excuse he added “I gave you tools to do it.”

He meant these damn contingencies. Ones that repeatedly appeared in database no matter how many times Tim or Babs deleted them. Ones that were step by step guide through perfect murder of already dead being.

“What tools?” Steph asked without curiosity. She knew it too, she wasn’t stupid, she just tried to force Danny to say it out loud.

“I know you read my contingency files, Tim literally cited it few times. Nearest stash with weapons that you could use to stop me before I almost leveled all these buildings is like, quarter of mile down the road.” He was angry, of all things. Angry and disappointed. Duke shifted to face other vigilantes and put arm on Danny’s shoulder to keep him calm (and down because he wouldn’t put it past younger boy to try getting up and he wasn’t in shape for it).

“Too strong.”

Danny let out surprised hum, asking Cass to continue.

“Tools: too strong. Hurt you badly.”

“I-”

“You do not deserve that.”

He sucked his breath through his teeth.

“You don’t know it”

Duke dropped his hand to rub circles on his back. He was a little too emotionally exhausted to participate in that conversation.

“We know enough.” Tim interrupted a little too harshly “You don’t have to be brutally murdered because you’re scared.”

“I am threat to people around me. You’re heroes. Your job is to take out threats. Why haven’t you stop me?”

Bruce sighed and crouched in front of them, seeing just how far gone Danny was.

“You aren’t a threat champ.”

“You’re too big goodie-two-shoes for that kid” Jason added “You haven’t even kill anyone. Almost everyone else in this family did, hell, I and Demon brat tried to murder Red Robin and they still refuse to hate us.”

Both Danny and Tim sucked breath trough their teeth but it seemed like they did so for two different reasons.

“I don’t want you to like me despite everything.” halfa’s voice was harsh and cold like frozen carbon dioxide “I want you to stop me when I become too dangerous to be left unsupervised or alive at all Red Hood. I’m not a threat you can afford to ignore because you think I’m good.”

“You aren’t a threat” Bruce repeated stubbornly, as if he hoped that if he says it enough times Danny will believe it.

“I will destroy whole world.” He spat in same tone.

Everyone loudly refused to believe it. Even Cass almost shouted.

“Yeah, I don’t like it too, but I know it’s inevitable. Inciting incident already happened and I failed to prevent it. I try to not go same path but it’s lost cause. I need you to stop me when I finally snap.”

“Or we can prevent you from snapping. It seems like more efficient way.” Damian said, eyeing him warily.

Danny laughed at that, hysteric, broken, joyless giggle that made Duke shudder.

And he laughed and laughed and laugh-

He stopped abruptly, dark expression on his face.

“Good luck with that. You failed already.”

In silence that fallen after this announcement sudden clap sounded like gunshot.

“I got it!” Tim almost yelled with delight in his voice. It gave Duke mental whiplash by just how out of place it seemed in this conversation.“You met an alternative evil future version of yourself!”

That gave everyone a pause. It- it made horrifying lot of sense. How could they miss for so long?

Danny sighed and went almost boneless under Duke’s arm. He quickly rearranged his hand to adjust to it.

Can he go to his room and have his well deserved breakdown already, please? This day was getting more and more overwhelming with every passing minute.

“It’s a lot of words to describe older me”

“What did he even do?” Damian asked which was highly inappropriate at the moment and really showed that his victim handling training was still lacking but nobody out right told him to shut up. They were curious.

“I’ll go mad from grief and turn whole world into wasteland in mere ten years.”

Yeah, if they knew it before he became part of the family (B spiritually and mentally adopted him weeks before he even stepped inside Batcave), they would go out of their way to learn ways to stop or fight and contain him.

Still, not this crazy murder plan Danny himself prepared. They all believed in second chances. Most of the time at least. Joker lost his second chance fifteen chances ago, they just still hadn’t come up with a way to get rid of this fucker without alarming B.

“You won’t” Red Robin assured quickly, earning loud groan.

“I literally just told yo-“

“You know what’s great about future? It’s not set in stone.”

“I literally time traveled back-”

“He time traveled.”

“Tim, we’re same person, why should I talk about myself in third person? Isn’t it sign of going crazy or something? Anyway I time traveled-”

“He.” few voices interrupted at the same time.

Duke would like to ask everyone to get it over with as soon as possible, please, he learned to much that day to stand it too much longer.

“He time traveled” Danny said with sigh “happy now?”

“No, but we won’t get any better now, so please continue” Tim said in this weirdass cheerily unhappy tone of his. The one he used on annoying reporters (Vicky Vale we’re looking at you), prying people at galas and overall when he wanted to choke someone but had to be civil.

“He time traveled to make sure thing that caused me to go rogue happened and I failed to prevent it. My family’s death is what created that timeline. I will be-

“He!”

“He will be so horrible some god damn ghost court sentenced me to full death, not even ghost remain, au revoire halfa boy, we’re glad to never see you again, cease to exist abomination scum sort of way. I don’t think there is much hope for me.”

“What I hear is, we have to get ready to fuck up ghost executors, got it. Beating up government dogs is my fucking favorite part of this cursed job” Jason said with a glee. B gave him side eye but nodded in agreement anyway. Damian and Tim were already looking around with weapons in their hands as if they expected ghost killers to jump at them right then and there (not unlikely with their luck but dear gods, please no), Steph giggled in a way that meant only trouble for poor lad that crossed her.

“I won’t let anyone steal my patrol buddy.” Duke tried to reassure. “Ghost court or self doubt alike”

Cass looked thoughtful.

Danny was just exasperated.

“You realize that ghosts are, like, really strong” he almost asked like he started to doubt their mental capabilities “ and anyone that managed to establish any sort of dominance over them is like, over the scale, god like or more level of strong? I don’t want you to try stop them from giving me well deserved punishment.” Duke was almost sure that Danny had tears in his eyes but couldn’t quite point what exactly could cause them.

“Not deserved. You did nothing bad yet” Cass visibly glared even though her mask covered her whole face. Amazing. “If they want to kill you, why still there?”

“Time controlling ghost decided I deserve to live, still not sure why. He was supposed to execute me I think. Erase me from the timeline probably.” His voice shook. He really was barely holding himself from crying, huh? Yeah, Duke too.

“Well, this means you have credit from father time himself, I think it leaves you pretty clean.”

“Spoiler is right. Someone who controls time is as good judge of crimes that haven’t happened yet as we can get. Also, don’t you think, that if he let you live, it means there is future with good Danny, champ?” Bruce added with warm smile. It was uncanny when he was still in full Batman suit, in public (because damn, they were still in public, thank god nobody really liked to walk in places that were recently gassed) but very much needed.

Danny laughed, tears flowing freely from his eyes. It wasn’t necessarily happy laugh, more of this ‘release the tension’ like in ancient theory of comedy, hysteric relief after near death situation or dam broke after holding back for too long type.

“You’re all nuts” he finally choked out, shaking his head and fruitlessly trying to dry his face “I just said I’m very likely to destroy a world, killing you in the process and you collectively decided to ignore that? Even got sorta mad at me for giving you tools to stop me? I- that’s- you-” he stuttered. He forced himself to breathe few times before continuing so quietly it could be mistaken for next gasp.

“I did nothing to deserve that”

“You don’t have to.” Duke answered in same hushed tone, outstretching his hands for next hug. Danny leaned into that without hesitation, shaking from silent sobs. It was okay. It had been hard day but it was okay now.

“Thank you”

His breath stuttered. Somebody else joined their hug. Tears started running under his helmet.

Yeah, no, Duke deserved to cry too.

*****

Yeah, so Duke's pov was supposed to be only fear gas attack and the talk but then I thought they deserve to just vibe a little, stop some normal crime and play around.

Lar (plural Lares) according to my 10 minutes Wikipedia research is type of Roman protection spirit. They could protect parts of estate, families or whole neighborhoods. Up to your interpretation if Danny wanted to be Wayne's protection spirit or more Gotham wide type of deal. He is running around in his human form btw. Damian designed his uniform. It's mostly ectoplasmic green because Danny tried really hard to leave Phantom in the past, color palette included.

Hope I didn't mess up too badly but English grammar is weird. If you have hidden teacher desires, get your red pen and indulge them. Show me where I made a mistake

Yeah, anyway I hope you liked it, drink water and try to sleep. Take care 💙

DC X DP Prompt #4

It turns out that one of the things Danny inherited from Bruce was his need to make contingency plans.

Or: Danny's family finds out that he has contingency plans for all of them, including if Danny turns evil and how to permanently stop him

Bruce feels a certain way when he finds out his son has a plan to basically commit suicide.

You should give yourself a profile picture because some people might think you’re a bot

Haven't thought about it, but you're absolutely right. Thank you very much