I Understand The Appeal Of Wanting Every Adult Hero To Instinctively Adopt Teenage Peter Parker, But

HELLO I AM HERE WITH FANART OF CONNER CARRYING HIS NEW BABY KITTEN who just wont stop trying to become a ghost :(

110% inspired by this AMAZING fic by @playedcrowd5610 about danny getting stuck in his human form with the team, and since everyone believes he's been miraculously revived they're being uber overprotective trying to prevent danny from dying again lolll

Do yall remember that thread about how someone can win in a fight against a geologist with an obsidian blade?

And also that one with how cool scythe look but aren't v good weapons?

(Me subtly combines the two for maximum Danny phantom and the batfam shenanigans)

Danny is doing some training with Tim, who is like "bro u need a weapon" and Danny is like "oh i have one check it out 😃 "

Danny pulls out a scythe(and it's the most fantasy looking bs that seems like a strong blow could shatter) and Tim, known melee weapons expert, is like "hoho a scythe, while aesthetically pleasing, actually has no real maneuverability and will more than likely-"

and danny just knocks them out with the Fenton Creep stick he had behind his back.

Tim is unconscious and Dick comes in and is like"why is Tim on the floor?" And Danny us like "😃 oh i was just showing of my skills with my scythe! Isn't it cool? It glows in the dark!" And Dick is like "That is indeed a v cool looking weapon but in all actuality it takes too much energy to use-"

danny again, knocks a robin unconscious. Jason comes in, sees Tim and Dick on the ground knocked out and is like "what the hell just happened??!!"

And danny, being the lil shit that he is, is like "yeah they didn't believe me when I said I had skills with my scythe so they both lost the fights"

Jason is like "bullshit u did this with a scythe, lemme see it! it must be magical or ghostly bs"

danny again, summons his scythe and shows it off, maybe does a few swings. Jason is like "there's no way u knocked out 2 robins with a scythe that just glows" and danny is like "wanna bet?"

Same thing happens, Jason gets knocked out with the fenton creep stick and at this point danny is like "damn this is slightly concerning"

but then Damian shows up. And Damian is suspicious bc he sees 3 former robins knocked out and pulled off to the side. Danny may actually have scythe skills. But Danny is pushing his luck trying to see if he could get a Robin bingo and is like "hey look at my cool scythe! It makes lightsaber noises when you swing it really fast!!"(and it does) and Damian is like "tsh, that scythe doesn't even look like it can cut through paper, it looks ridiculous and-"

Fenton creep stick again strikes true and danny has beaten all 4 former and current robins(not including Stephanie who was out of town at the time) in single combat without getting hurt once.

Danny makes some tshirts that has "scythe:4-robins:0"printed on them and puts them on everyone he won against while they r still knocked out.

Tim has noticed something odd, about the Demon Brat.

Sometimes, the Demon Brat would look to his left, as if to start a conversation, or as if anticipating someone saying something, only to freeze. Just for a moment, a half second, because nobody was there, before looking away with painful expression. 

Months later, Tim decided to stand there, just to see what would happen. The brat didn’t look at him once, and Tim found that curious, and odd.

Another odd thing about his new, murderous brother, is that he refuses to look into the mirror. That’s not true, exactly: he would look in the mirror for basics, for necessities. 

Tim realized, months of observations later, that the brat didn’t look himself in the eyes. 

Strange. 

Tim had asked him, once, why he didn’t. As expected, all he got was a “It’s none of your business Drake.”

But that didn’t stop Tim from wondering. Tim is, if nothing else, curious to a fault and persistent to an illegal degree. 

And so the strangeness would continue, and Tim would wonder.  

The brat would look to his left, pause, and then look away. He would deftly avoid mirrors, and when asked why he would sneer and avoid those questions, too. 

Until he didn’t. 

Until he came back to the Cave battered and beaten, some dreary autumn day, the Demon Brat unusually sullen and quiet and off his game. He had sat through the lecture Bruce had given him, and sat through the quiet reaching out from Dick, and sat through the cajoling teasing meant to rile him up, to get him to say or do anything per the norm, with an unusual aplomb.

The brat apologized, said he was fine, and ignored the rest. He told Bruce he wouldn’t patrol tomorrow, and would stay home from school, because clearly he wasn’t feeling well. 

 It was like Damian wasn’t there, fully. 

So when Tim saw that the brat’s door was open, the next day, he peeked in. 

Of course he did. 

And there the brat was, sitting in front of the full length mirror he usually had covered with a cloth when it wasn’t in use, reaching up and staring directly into his own reflection’s eyes. 

“Demon Brat?” Tim asked, stepping in and concerned about the look in the other’s face. There was no answer. 

“Damian. What’s wrong.” Tim stood behind the boy, watching as Damian touched the corner of his own reflection’s eye. 

“The color’s wrong, Drake.” Damian finally said, matter of fact and almost broken, absent-minded. 

“What?” Tim asked, trying to see what he was talking about. Nothing was wrong, nothing was changed. Damian met his eyes through the mirror for a long moment, but Tim didn’t understand. 

“The color.” Damian reiterated, looking at his own reflection again. 

“The color? Of what?” Tim and Damian were never close, not really, but he was starting to feel like something was slipping away, in this moment. Damian dropped his hand, and finally looked away. 

Without answering, the boy got up and carefully draped a cloth over the mirror, ushering Tim out of his room silent as the dead. 

“Leave me be for today, Drake.” Tim reached, opened his mouth to try and say something, because something was wrong, but what? 

But Damian simply shut the door softly. 

The sound of the lock engaging felt strangely, and utterly, final in a Manor full of lockpicking detectives.

Tim laid a hand on the door, and mourned. 

Danny Is An Alternate Version Of Ra's Al Ghul And Flash Already Called Dibs On Adopting Him

Danny In All His Sleep Deprived Slightly Scuffed Up From A Fight Glory Is On His Way To Clockworks Tower To Hopefully Get A Nap And Maybe Some Homework Done When A Natural Portal Opens Up In Front Of Him And Proceeds To Unceremoniously Drop Him In The DC Verse Just Outside Of Central City Before Promptly Closing Leaving A Tired Danny Behind In A Run Down Abandoned Parking Lot.

It's Times Like This When Danny Regrets Putting Off Learning How To Make His Own Portals, Cause Now He Is Very Much Stuck For The Foreseeable Future And He Has No Idea Where Or When He Is. Luckily For Him However Central City Isn't Too Far Away, Unlucky For Him However Is That Once In The City He Realizes This Isn't His Dimension. He's Pretty Sure He'd Remember Something Called The Justice League.

So What Do You Do When Supernatural Bullshit Fails You? You Fall Back On Your Mad Scientist Roots And You Make A Portal Gun. So That's Exactly What Danny Plans To Do.

Unfortunately Staying Alive And Building Questionably Safe Portal Technology Requires Money And Supplies, So He Ends Up Wandering From City To City Doing Odd Jobs/Fixing Up Busted Tech For Cash Or Unwanted Electronics For His "Operation: Get Home" Needs. This Obviously Ends In A Few Superhero Encounter Shenanigans.

Though He Always Ends Up Back Near Central City, Both On The Off Chance The Natural Portal Will Open Up Again And Because Out Of All The Superheroes That Apparently Exist In This Universe The Speedsters Are His Favorite (Red Robin Is Solidly His Second Favorite Ever Since The Gotham Vigilante Gave Him A Large Coffee Filled With Enough Caffeine To Kill A Man).

Unbeknownst To Danny However Is That Every Hero/Vigilante He Has Encountered Has Come To At Least One Of The Following Conclusions; 1. Run Away Meta Who Is In Desperate Need Of A Good Meal/Adoption Bait. 2. Possibly Red Robin/Tim Drake Clone 3. A Good Kid But Could Possibly Be A Future Rouge If Left Unsupervised. 4. Did Bats Get A New Kid And Why Is He Here?

All Flash Knows Is That He Saw The Kid First And Therefore Has Dibs. Suck It Bruce.

Fast-forward A Few Months And Danny Gets Hurt During A Rogue Attack While Trying To Help Some Civilians Get To Safety (Old Hero Habits Die Hard (Ha Die Hard) And All That Jazz) And He Nopes Out Once Everyone Is Safe And When The Paramedics Are Busy With Other People Unaware He Left A Blood Sample Behind.

One DNA Test Brought To You By Paranoid Bat Concerns Of A Possible Red Robin Clone Later And They Find Out That Dannys DNA Matches One Ra's Al Ghul.

They Now Think Danny Is An Escaped Ra's Al Ghul Clone.

Memes For The Vibes:

i've mentioned in a few past posts about an au where Danny is a variant of Jason Todd. I haven't made a post about it yet because I need a good rhythm flowing however i've been listening to Gladiator by Jann and I have been having thoughts.

but first, let me set the au:

Danny Fenton is Jason Todd, or at least, a variant of him. A him from a universe separate to the major Batman timeline - but still Jason Todd, down to the structure of his face and his name itself. The only thing that changes, is who picks him up - and, that he follows old Batman canon, and was an orphan. Jason Todd steals the tires off the batmobile and wallops Batman with his tirejack, and then runs off. Shortly after, he gets picked up by the Fentons.

(Customary line break,,,,)

And his name changes from Jason Todd to Danny Fenton. He doesn't care much for the new name change, it stems from his mute refusal to share his name to the people that picked him up; an attempt to make him untraceable should he get away from them, and to keep something of his to himself. So they name him something new. He grows to like it enough as he acclimates to his new family.

(He hangs onto the name Jason Todd like a secret - he may be 'Danny Fenton' now, but he'll never forget his time on Gotham's streets. He'll always be Jason Todd.)

(Jazz is the only one who he tells his name to in the family - she affectionately calls him Jay whenever she wants.)

He becomes friends with Sam and Tucker and deals with Dash and his bullying. And when Danny steps in during a fight between Dash and another student, Dash gives him a bleeding nose and mockingly says, "Do you think you're Robin just because you're from Gotham, Fenton?"

Jason looks him in the eyes and he bares his teeth, "Why not?" he asks, spitting blood, "being Robin gives me magic."

The nickname sticks. It's supposed to be an insult; Daniel Fenton is not Robin, he'll never be Robin. Not now, not in a million years. Jason Todd has always wanted to be Robin, so he takes the insult and wears it proudly. He buys a school varsity jacket and painstakingly undos the stitching of all the school's motif on it. On the breast of it, he embroiders in a black circle with the Boy Wonder "R" on it instead. It's not good stitching, but the next day Danny wears it down to breakfast and into school.

In normal au canon, Daniel Jason Todd-Fenton (its a mouthful, just call him Danny) only meets the Waynes after he becomes Phantom - an event that leans more towards Daniel Fenton's accident than Jason Todd's death, but traumatizes him all the same. (Is it too much to want to be mourned? His best friends like to deny that he died - and Danny - Jason? - wishes they wouldn't, even if he did come back.)

(The accident embitters him, even more when his parents don't seem to pick up on it. He stops calling himself Danny Fenton - he's always been Jason Todd. It shows itself in his ghostly form. He doesn't want to wear the thing he died in, not in something that belongs to the Fentons, and his suit reflects that.)

In this timeline, Daniel Jason Todd-Fenton, aged 13, meets Dick Grayson and Bruce Wayne after a mishap with magic on the other end of the reality sends the three of them careening through time and space, and spat back out on the other end, in a world not their own. And together.

Danny is paired with a very confused Bruce Wayne and Richard Grayson. Luckily, there's a few heroes there to help them. Danny can hardly comprehend the idea that he's in another universe - he doesn't know why Dick Grayson and Bruce Wayne are seemingly handling it well.

On their way to a secondary base with the heroes, Danny turns to Bruce Wayne and asks, "So, is it part of rich-person training that you're just totally chill with being sent into another universe, or are you just weird?"

Bruce Wayne huffs at him, rather than get offended, and he smiles that dumb lopsided billionaire smile that Danny's seen on every vogue magazine he's been in. "I'm not so worried with these skilled heroes here to help us get home."

Danny silently concludes that he's just weird. At least Dick Grayson is biting back a smile behind him. "Riiiight..." He says, dragging the vowel out dryly.

When they get to that secondary location -- a safehouse that one of the heroes had set up -- the three of them are sat in a living room-like room while one hero, Zatanna, goes and calls someone from the Justice League. The other two heroes stay with the three of them.

Within a few hours, Danny is face to face with Batman - someone who he hasn't seen since he whacked him in the stomach with a tire iron - and Nightwing. For a moment, Danny swears that the both of them look almost spooked by him.

Batman stares at him for a moment when he enters, and then he goes to speak with Bruce Wayne. Danny doesn't care enough to hear what they're talking about, he pulls out his phone as Nightwing goes to speak with Dick Grayson.

"Are you a fan of Robin, little man?" Someone says, and when Danny looks up he locks eyes with Dick Grayson -- who is leaning around Nightwing to talk to him, the both of them are smiling. And considering who Nightwing was, Danny finds himself turning pink to the ears.

But he will not hide his jacket. He forces a grin through his embarrassment, "Hell yeah, man, Robin's cool." He says, and pushes his arms down to pull out the hem of his letterman, showing off the emblem. "I made it m'self out of a school varsity after the A-Listers started callin' me Robin."

"A-Listers?"

"Popular kids," Danny corrects, loosing his hold on the hem and brushing invisible wrinkles out of the embroidery. "They didn't like that I kept stepping in when they were bullying. Dash asked me if i thought I was Robin because I was from Gotham."

Dick Grayson looks intrigued -- and concerned, and he leans forward onto his knees and raises an eyebrow. "What did you say?"

And Danny grins a shark-like thing, straightening back his shoulders with a burning sort of smug pride and all the sharpness of broken glass left in Crime Alley. "I told him being Robin gave me magic, and then I punched him."

Dick Grayson's smile widens, splitting into showing teeth as he leans back into his seat. Danny isn't sure why he's so delighted - but Nightwing looks incredibly amused, and he suddenly remembers that the Robin himself was there in front of him.

Danny's face burns anew and his arms fold themselves in front of him once again.

"I don't think I ever caught your name, Robin." Dick Grayson goes, his voice thick with laughter, and Nightwing steps off to the side as Batman and Bruce Wayne walk over to join them both. They're just close enough that Danny can see Bruce Wayne raise an eyebrow at them both.

"It's Jason." Danny says before he can think about it, and barely stops himself from frowning at himself for the slip. He amends himself, glancing over at Batman and Bruce as they get closer. "But everyone calls me Danny."

Dick Grayson's head recoils slightly, and he looks a little surprised. "Why Danny?" He asks.

"Why Dick?" He shoots back, and Bruce and Dick both smile at him, with Dick Grayson shrugging with an expression that looks like 'you've got a point.'

In the end, the three of them - yes, three - get sent to this world's Wayne Manor, and Danny is bewildered by that decision to include himself -- he's not a Wayne. Why not just send him to the Fentons?

Batman tells him that the Fentons don't exist in this world, and Danny falls silent. "Oh." He says quietly, a pit growing in his stomach with an ill-kind of dread. He can't keep Batman's gaze, looking away with unease.

No Fentons in this world. No Fentons. Where was he then, in the grand scheme of things? Where was he in this world? What happened to Jason Todd? Was he even alive? He can't keep the worry off his face, and he jumps when a hand lands on his shoulder. When he looks up, Dick Grayson squeezes him gently.

Dick Grayson is steadily beginning to remind him of his sister.

-

They end up driving back in the Batmobile. It's such a shock to Danny that he momentarily forgets the lack of Fentons. He makes a laugh sound, actually, and immediately he covers his hand with his mouth and stares at the car -- tank? with his teeth sunk into his lower lip.

"Jason?" Dick says, and hearing his name being spoken feels like someone touched him with a livewire. It's weird, it's foreign - he hates, in some way, that it's foreign - and it's so nice. Yes, that's me.

He drops his hand immediately. "Sorry." He says, realizing he'd stopped in his tracks, "I -uh, was just surprised."

"It's not every day someone sees the Batmobile." Dick agrees. Nightwing has his back to them but Danny swears he sees his shoulders shaking a little.

"Yeah," Danny nods slowly, dragging his eyes over the batmobile as Batman opens the driver's side and gets in. He thinks for a moment, of what he should say next - whether to admit that he's seen it before, or to pretend that he's seeing it for the first time. Snd as Nightwing opens the door for him, Bruce, and Dick, he chooses the funnier option; "The last time I saw it, I was stealing its tires."

To his surprise and unsurprise, Danny only gets two pairs of eyes on him. Nightwing gets into the passenger seat as both Bruce and Dick turn their gaze onto him; Dick's eyes big like they were going to bulge out of his head.

"You what!?"

So Danny tells an amazed Dick Grayson that he hit Batman with a tire iron after he stole his tires - something he is very proud about and also incredibly embarrassed about when he retells what happened in the backseat of the batmobile, with Batman and Nightwing listening in from the front seat.

(Bruce Wayne doesn't ever tell Dick shit, he's going to lord this over Bruce's head the moment they are alone.)

"Please tell me this didn't happen in this world." Danny groans behind his palms as he sinks into his seat. Dick Grayson is killing himself laughing on his left, and he saw Bruce Wayne stifling a smile before he obscured his vision with his hands.

Much to his luck, its Batman himself who speaks next, (Danny was being mostly rhetorical). "It did." He says, and his voice sounds like the rumble of the earth before a stampede. It will never not throw Danny off every time he hears it. "It takes quite a lot of spunk to steal the tires off the batmobile."

He can't believe it. Batman is making fun of him. Fucking, Batman.

He wants to die with embarrassment. He groans even louder as Dick Grayson's laughter crescendoes. Danny risks a peak through his fingers, he doesn't know whether to regret it or not because he can just barely see Batman smirk very faintly from his position in the middle.

(His world axis tilts five degree leftways seeing it; like someone dunked a bucket of ice water on him.)

"He ended up being adopted by the Bruce Wayne of this world."

Danny's hands drop with his jaw into his lap. Dick Grayson on his left chokes on his laughter and careens into a coughing fit. Bruce Wayne on his right chokes on air, and quickly recovers himself with a cough behind a closed fist.

"What?" Danny croaks.

-

Apparently, Bruce Wayne's family is much larger in this world than it is in his. Danny can barely wrap his head around the idea that he ends up adopted by the man, but now he has to learn that Wayne had several children in this world?

He's still not wrapped his head around it when the three of them wind up at Wayne Manor, finally, or even when he's standing in front of him himself. For his effort, Bruce Wayne does a good job at looking unruffled by it.

God, he's weird. Danny's starting to quite like it, actually. How human of him.

He still can't wrap his head around it when he meets the rest of Bruce Wayne's children, all of whom are already aware of the three of them. Danny thinks that someone from the Justice League might've alerted them before they got here.

It makes sense, he supposes.

It helps that they are just as weirded out as he is. A boy named Tim Drake sees him for the first time and blurts out; "Oh wow, you're tiny." In a tone like he's just seen a two-headed snake burst out of the ground.

Danny is still offended. He's still growing. It's not his fault he spent twelve years of his life malnourished. "I'm gonna be taller than you," he tells him seriously, "and when I do I'm gonna kick your ass."

Tim snorts at him.

The other Bruce Wayne -- Mr. Wayne's -- youngest looks at him up and down with a face of carefully controlled judgement. His name is Damian, he's Bruce Wayne's only biological son. Danny can't believe that there's only one.

If anything, Bruce Wayne himself looks surprised too.

"Todd, yes?" Damian says, his green eyes narrowed at him.

Danny feels like the specimen under his parents' microscope, he feels like he's standing on a platform that's being slowly spun by scientists. He looks over at Bruce Wayne in confusion, and then back at Damian. "I- yes?"

Damian Wayne nods, and then leaves.

Danny does not once see himself. That is unsettling in and of itself - surely Jason Todd would have been told about another version of himself in this world, wouldn't he? How old is he here? An adult, probably. Danny doesn't know if he wants to see him. What does he look like when he's grown up? He pulls his Robin jacket around him a little tighter, like a cocoon, like a shield.

"It's weird to hear them call me Jason Todd." He says aloud to himself, and it leaves a weight behind in his chest that shouldn't hurt the way it does. It shouldn't be weird to be called your name. It shouldn't cobweb up your throat to hear your name being said. It was his name. It was his.

-

Danny acclimates to the manor slowly. The house is big, massive. He's never been in a house so large before, he feels like a stray cat being taken in for the first time, again. He and Bruce and Dick Grayson are all given their own separate rooms - one of many inside this mansion - and the sheer size of his bedroom is bigger than his living room and kitchen combined.

it's daunting. Danny sits outside on the balcony and stares at the stars he can see - Wayne Manor is far enough away from Gotham that its light pollution doesn't obscure the sky here like it did in the heart of it.

Danny finds the constellations he can find and wishes he had his books with him. He finds the library the next day and buries himself in the back, curling up into a comfy armchair next and inhaling each book he can get his hands on.

Tim Drake wanders past him at some point, Danny would have missed him if it weren't for the fact that Drake stared at him strangely when he saw him. He walks away when he realizes Danny was staring back.

It's a rinse and repeat for the next few days. Danny doesn't go to meals, he sneaks food from the kitchen afterwards, and then buries himself in hundreds of books in the library.

Dick Grayson, the one from his world, goes and finds him three days later. Danny's eyes hurt with strain by then, but he is furiously halfway through a Jane Austen novel when Dick sits down across from him.

"Have you been here all day?" Dick asks, he drapes himself across the side of his chair, contorting himself into a position that Danny doesn't think is comfortable when he looks up at him.

Not that he looks up at him long - he hums absently and goes back to reading. Frowning when he realizes he lost his place on the page.

Dick Grayson raises an eyebrow, "Have you at least eaten anything?"

Danny hums. No, he hasn't, and he hadn't thought about eating all day. Until now that is, his frown ever deepening as his stomach pangs with a deep hunger.

"That's not healthy."

"Mhm."

"Are you going to eat something?"

"Mhhh."

And this gets Dick to frown. He straightens himself up, propping onto his elbows to stare at Danny. "Jason." He says strongly. And it's that that gets Danny to finally look up from his page, jumping like he'd again been poked with a live wire as he stares at Dick with wide eyes.

"Yes?"

"Put the book down." Dick orders, gesturing towards the side table next to Danny with a nod. "And come eat something." There's very little room for argument in his voice, he sounds like Jazz when she's trying to parent him, but instead he actually sounds authoritative. Not bossy.

Danny still frowns at him. "You're not the boss of me." He says, sinking back into his chair with a thumb bookmarking his page.

Dick gives him a look and makes a decisive noise, swaggling his head side to side while he does. "I'm pretty sure that for as long as we're here, me and B actually are the boss of you."

He's never really liked authority figures, not ones that tried to boss him around, that is. Danny doubles down, his lips curling into a shadow of a scowl. "Just because you're my brother in another world doesn't mean you can act like it."

"That's not what I mean and you know it."

"I don't want to go eat."

"It's not good for you to skip meals."

"Quit talking like Jazz."

"Danny."

Danny sinks his teeth into his lip and scowls darkly at him, shrinking into the back of his armchair in hopes that it'll swallow him whole. The idea of going into that large fucking dining room fills him with a dread that makes him completely forget his appetite.

"Your fucking- dining room is- it's too big." He grits out, finally closing his book and hugging it tightly to his chest.

Dick blinks at him. "What?"

"You heard me! It's too big. This whole place is too big. It's- what do you even do with this much space? I don't know how this- other me ever lived here."

Dick Grayson surprises him, and his expression softens. "Oh," he says, "I get it."

"You do?" The tension bleeds slowly out of Danny's shoulders

"Yeah, I felt the same way when I first moved in with Bruce. I lived with the circus for most of my life, but I slept in a trailer." He says. And he talks more.

The end result of their conversation ends with Dick Grayson offering to let Danny sit across or next to him during mealtimes, and that he can talk to him if he starts getting uneasy. But he can't keep skipping meals - it was making them all worried.

Danny agrees, and Dick takes him down to the kitchens for food.

"They look at me weirdly too." He grumbles as they leave the library, Danny's book returned to the shelf where it belonged. When Dick looks at him curiously, he scrunches his nose up. "The - your other siblings. They look at me like I'm- I'm someone else. S'weird."

"Isn't that a good thing?" Dick asks, "You are someone else."

Dany shrugs, staring at the ground with a heavy frown. "I don't know."

-

Danny seeks out Dick more after that. And vice versa. Dick reminds Danny of Jazz, and he latches onto the familiarity like a leech. If Dick is bothered by it, he doesn't show it, whether he's talking to his other world's self, to the Bruce's, or to one of the other Wayne kids.

Damian Wayne seems particularly keen to seek him out, Danny finds. He thinks it means that they're close in this world, and that Damian wants to see more of what a young Dick is like. That's what he would do, at least.

He takes up on Dick's offer of seating near him during dinner, and finds an open spot across from him. Unless he has something to show him, then he sits next to him.

("You can call me Jason." He tells him one day when they're in the Wayne's massive, fuck-off gym and they're both climbing over the jungle gym. Dick's showing him how to be more flexible. It's the most Danny's worked out ever, he likes the burn it gives him.

Dick looks at him in surprise, "Really?" he's doing a handstand on the bars and Danny's more than a little jealous at his balance.

"Yeah, dipshit," he says, rolling his eyes, "I'll even let you call me Jay, it's my nickname."

Dick happily takes him up on that offer, and much to Danny's embarrassment, starts calling him Jaybird. All because of his stupid Robin jacket.)

Danny has yet to meet his other self still, it's scaring him a little. Where was he? And matter of fact, how long until he could go back to his home dimension? The three of them hadn't gotten any updates since they arrived.

Speaking of, he was starting to talk to Bruce more, it was just... strange. Even stranger than talking to Dick. Bruce Wayne in another life would have been his adoptive father, Danny can't wrap his head around it for the life of him.

Whatever did Bruce Wayne see in Jason Todd that made him worth adopting? He's too afraid of the answer to ask. They start talking more after they run into each other late at night. Danny had been hit with a bout of insomnia and was going to the library.

He ran into Bruce on the way. He was just.. staring, out the window, with a faraway look in his eye. He didn't even look startled to see Danny standing there.

Danny asks him if he wants to go to the library with him. It was out of panic. He isn't expecting Bruce Wayne to agree, and they walk there in suffocating silence. Danny keeps looking at him from the corner of his eye.

("You're staring?" Bruce doesn't sound upset, Danny jumps anyway.

"Yeah, sorry." his voice sounds stilted, "it's just..." his jaw wires itself shut for a spell, "...you looked like you were about to disappear."

"Ah.")

When they reach the library, Danny leads Bruce Wayne into the science section and takes out books upon books about stars. He leads him over to the armchair and fire and they both sit down on the ground.

"When I lived in Gotham I would stargaze." Danny says, it's the first thing he can think of. Bruce Wayne looks at him quizzically. "Well, I would try to. The sky's too polluted for that. Mostly I would just watch the skyline and try and spot Batman and Robin, was the same thing."

That cracks a smile out of Bruce. It's a small one, barely there. "I hardly think the two are comparable."

Danny is still serious. "Not to me."

He goes on, talking about how after he was adopted he got his hands on every star book he could find. He loves english and he loves to read, but something about the stars drew him in like a song. He rambles about every star fact he knows with Bruce Wayne.

Bruce Wayne surprises him by telling him facts he didn't know. Danny soaks it up like a sponge, listening intently to him speak. And when they run out of star books to talk about, Danny tells Bruce that it was his turn to find something for them to talk about.

Bruce Wayne smiles again at him, a sly little thing like Danny's challenged him, and gets up. He comes back with a stack of film books, and they spend the next few hours going through them. Bruce Wayne rattles off every single movie fun fact he knows, and there is so much that he knows.

Danny is in awe, and moves to press against Bruce's side to see the stuff he points at in his books.

"You're smarter than people give you credit for." He says at some point, when his eyes hurt from being open for too long and his head leans against Bruce's arm for support. It follows with a jaw-cracking yawn that he tries and fails to stifle.

"Thank you, Danny." Bruce says, his voice soft and soothing and not helping with Danny's weighing exhaustion. His eyes drift, and then jerk open. "Do you want to go back to your room? You look tired, chum."

He bites back a smile at the nickname, and fails to keep it bitten. "No, no, I'm awake." He mumbles, shaking his head slowly. "I wanna hear-" he yawns again, "-hear you talking."

Danny swears he can hear the smile in Bruce's voice as he speaks; "Alright. Now, where was I?"

In the end, Danny falls asleep on the floor of the library next to Bruce Wayne. He doesn't even realize it until he wakes up the next morning. But it's not to worry, Bruce Wayne fell asleep too, an arm thrown around Danny protectively like he was his own kid.

This becomes a thing for them soon enough. When neither of them can sleep, they go to the library and talk and talk about whatever comes to mind.

There comes the dreaded night after they've finished whatever book they were looking at when Bruce, the little shit, turns to Danny and goes; "You never mentioned what happened after you hit Batman with a tire iron."

Danny groans, big and dramatic, burying his head in his arms, and ignores the low chuckle. "I thought he was gonna chase me down for sure." He complains, his voice muffled by his arms.

"Why did you hit him with a tire iron?"

The look Bruce gets is one of pure disbelief. "If Mothman suddenly showed up behind you while you were taking the wheels off his ride, you'd hit him too!"

"Last time I checked, Mothman isn't real." Bruce told him amusedly, and Danny flops over onto his back to stare him down. His arms sprawl out like a starfish, intentionally hitting Bruce in the shoulder.

"You don't know that, Batman's a cryptid and he's real."

Bruce roars with laughter, and Danny preens like a bird.

That next morning when Bruce passes by him for breakfast, he reaches over and ruffles his hair. It's the same thing he does for Dick every morning. It's the first of many, and it gets many stares from the surrounding family.

Bruce has a newspaper tucked under his arm, and when he sits down Danny stands up and skedaddles over to him, leaning over the side of his chair to peer at the paper.

"Any cryptids spotted, Buzz?" He asks, getting a startled laugh out of Bruce, who looks up at him.

"Buzz?"

"Well, yeah," and Danny states it as matter-of-fact. He gestures his head at Dick Grayson. "Dick calls you 'B', and B is for bees, and I can't just call you Bees, that's dumb. So; Buzz."

He grins triumphantly when Bruce laughs quietly, his shoulders shaking imperceptibly. "I know," he tilts his head up proudly, "I'm a genius."

Now he's actually laughing, dropping his head into one of his hands and trying to quiet himself as much as possible. Danny is positively beaming, ignoring the stares of the other Waynes as he flounces back to his seat just as the other Mister Wayne enters the room.

-

When Jason Daniel Fenton Todd meets Jason Todd for the first time, they both just stare at each other.

Danny recognizes himself immediately in the library, and he freezes up. His tongue ties to the roof of his mouth, and he's unsure of what to say.

He doesn't need to say anything at all, because when Jason Todd looks up and they lock eyes, they both just stare. And stare. Jason Todd is a large, hulk of a man, built like a brick shithouse, with a tired, traumatized look in his eyes and a white streak in his black curls. The same black curls that Danny himself has.

He has no idea what to say. Or if he should turn back around and leave.

Jason Todd sighs at him, "I know they told me you and another world's Bruce and Dickie were here," he says, but it sounds like he's talking to himself. Even moreso when he mutters half-heartedly, "-but I was hoping I wouldn't run into you."

Danny feels small next to him. He doesn't know why. "Sorry." He says lamely, his one foot skips back, "I can leave if you want." It's unlike him to be meek, he thinks. Not after years of Gotham living and dealing with the likes of Dash and his Jerk Jocks.

But this also isn't the streets, and this isn't other kids being dicks. Jason Todd shakes his head, and gestures with one large arm for Danny to come over. "You don't need to do that, you were coming to read, right?"

He nods, and tentatively makes his way over. When Jason looks at him, he sees him cast his eyes over his Robin jacket - he wears it everyday. Danny sees him narrow his eyes, just slightly. But he says nothing.

It's... a strange conversation. Interaction. Jason Todd doesn't talk to him much, and if he does it's stilted and awkward, like he doesn't know how to treat him. Like he's holding him at arm's length.

Jason's getting tired of being treated like a ghost.

They talk about their books. They compare lives. Jason Todd was picked up a few days after he stole the wheels of the batmobile. He wasn't an orphan, he lived with his mom and his stepdad before he lived with Bruce. They both like to read, only Danny has an interest in the stars.

("What do your adoptive parents do?" Jason Todd asks him, one arm slung over the back of the armchair, he looks relaxed. He looks tense. Danny feels like he's back in Crime Alley again.

"They're 'ectologists'." He says, making air quotes over the word. He rolls his eyes, "Ghost hunters. They study the dead and all things afterlife."

Jason Todd makes a dry laugh huff, a sarcastic half-smile on his face. He doesn't explain why he does, Danny doesn't ask why. It doesn't seem like his business.)

Danny wants to ask him where he got that white streak in his hair. It doesn't feel right. It feels like his parents' lab, and that isn't right. Nothing ever feels like his parents' lab.

Jason Todd leaves first after giving him a few book recommendations. Danny isn't sure how to rate the experience. Being in Jason Todd's presence was like standing in a liminal space. An empty parking lot at night. When he leaves it feels like much the same thing.

He struggles to read his books afterwards, unable to shake the feeling of being haunted.

There's something falling from the sky, and Clark, Kon, and Kara are all off planet. Martha prepares as best as she can.

Because it looks like it's making a beeline for her fields.

She has no idea what makes her fields such a magnet for this, but she's certain it's not an asteroid. She couldn't say how she knows, just that she does.

It looks like a ship of some sort, with blinking lights and reflective surfaces.

She's debating on whether or not to sound the alarm and call one of Clark's friends, since she doesn't know if this alien will be friendly or not, when she notices something.

That ship isn't coming in smooth.

It is, in fact, tearing itself apart the lower it gets.

Then, with a final, ear piercing boom, it completely shatters.

Martha's eye is drawn to a rather round piece that broke off and shot towards the very edge of her property.

She doesn't call one of Clark's friends.

She gets the first aid kit and gets in the truck.

~~~~~~

Dan is flying the Specter Speeder through the Infinite Realms, an unconscious Danny on the floor of it behind him.

The twerp's injured.

He can't treat him.

He has to outrun the GIW and their own Speeders.

In desperation, he does a hard turn right into a temporary portal. The kind that blinks out of existence almost as soon as they get made.

He appears in the exosphere of another Earth.

No GIW Speeder follows him, but he's got a new problem; this thing isn't meant for the force re-entering Earth's atmosphere will put on it.

He puts it on autopilot, ordering it to find an empty area with good Ley Lines, and turns to start arranging both himself and Danny into the escape pod.

He can't activate it, or it'll also be subjected to the forces currently tearing the Speeder apart.

He'll have to stay in the pod, shielding his clone/twin as best as he can, while they hurtle towards Earth.

The last thing he remembers is the pod breaking away from the Speeder and hitting the ground.

The next thing he knows, he's waking up on the floor of a farmhouse, covered in bandages.

Constantine and Zatanna accidentally ripped a brief hole into...something. It wasn't the Realm of the Dead, not really. But they'd done it long enough to see a teen hero in a mech suit go on a suicide mission to fight Pariah Dark.

Their portal flickered out before they could see the kid's death, or try to help.

They were left, instead, to wonder who that hero was. They'd only seen a brief flash of him, but it was only right to pay their respects.

They were a teenager. They were using advanced technology. The emblem was kinda pointy.

Like.

Like a sideways batarang.

Oh shit.

Had Batman lost another bird?

It wasn't much to go on, but it was all they had.

However, Batman didn't act any different. There were no reports of a Gotham hero disappearing (permanently). When they branched out, there were no reports of any other hero going missing that matched that criteria.

When Zatanna used a spell to recreate an exact drawing of the emblem, there was no hero that used it.

So they were left with an uncomfortable reality; they'd witnessed the death of a future hero.

But.

They hadn't seen the whole fight. Maybe the teen had won, against all odds?

They had to find them and prepare them. Give them as much of an edge as they could.

So they waited. And waited. And waited.

And no one using that emblem came.

Zatanna, frustrated, found herself doodling the emblem...right as Superman came up behind her.

"Oh, are you trying to find the Kryptonian House that belongs to?"

Zatanna froze.

No.

No way.

The teenager was a Kryptonian? There was another Kryptonian running around?

How the hell was she supposed to tell Superman that he wasn't the only one left, and that on top of that, she'd seen the future death of the other one?

wake up!!

idea belongs to:  @fisticuffsatapplebees ,  @im-totally-not-an-alien-2 and  @eihwaz-y-d

Haunting Memories

Danny is like a cockroach. No matter what happens he just keeps coming back.

Every Wayne has watched this kid die.

Every single Bat and Bird has failed to save him

They don't realize it's the same dude at first

They all just think they're having an absolute shit week.

He saved Damians life when he took that bullet

Jason watched him give his life for a kid when a bus was coming and the kid wouldn't get out of the way in time. Jason wasn't close enough (maybe they both would have lived if Jason had been closer. Faster. Better)

Cass saw the knife fly at him. She was too far. Couldn't tell to save him. She watched him fall in silence. He never made a sound.

He was at the top of a flight of stairs. Barbra watched him lose his balance. She was trapped by her chair and the daylight hours. She watched. Helpless as he tumbled to the ground, and lay, broken, before her.

Bruce was running late when it happened. His car stalled. Just as a boy, no older than his sons, ran (or flew or appeared) down the street. Out of breath. Covered in blood and bruises. Clothing torn. Bruce made to get out of the car as the boy turned and shouted. As if making his final stand. Bruce watches as the boy is gunned down by men in white. It's not until much later that he realizes the boy stopped where he, did, not because he was exhausted, but because they were running towards a crowd. That he had stopped running, had givens himself up, to protect the innocent.

Alfred held out a hand to a child. Too small and young and thin by far. He was just heading out to meet an old friend. He had no supplies, no emergency button no phone. No food to share or clean clothes to offer. Suddenly he found himself on the ground with the child on top of him, head oozing from what appeared to be a piece fallen from the building above them. The child has pushed him out of the way. His final act had been to save a stranger.

They're eating a meal in silence. All together for the first time in a long while. When there's a knock at the door. A case worker. Asking if Mr. Wayne were able to take in a child. Just for a short while. It was an emergency. He had no where else to go. They were desperate.

Bruce is tempted to say no. It's been a terrible couple of weeks. But who was he to turn away a child in need. Of course he has room. Let him tell Alfred. Just come through to the dining room when you're ready, you remember where it is of course? Excellent. We'll put extra places out for the both of you. Of course you're welcome to join us for dinner, it's awfully late and you must be starving.

Bruce goes back to let Alfred know they'll have dinner guests and is just settling in when the Boy They All Watched Die walks in closely tailing the social worker.

Chaos ensues

(reposting cuz someone wrote an awesome fic on AO3) Linking below. leave them some love if u like. they really took this snippet and ran with it!)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/51328789/chapters/129695641

"Cockroach (you can't kill me in any way that matters)" (in case the link breaks again)

Crossover Idea

DC x DP crossover where Danny runs not into the Batman and Robin of the living world, but the guardian spirits Gotham has created in the Infinite Realms Billionaire adopting him? No, he has the literal city spirits trying to adopt him as part of their family. 

Batman is a shadowy Creachur while Robin is a shapeshifter, taking aspects of the current and previous living robins, though has a bit more of Jason’s due to Jason having been well, dead for a bit. Perhaps why Jason was so mindless when he was revived, perhaps not, who knows.