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little-pondhead · 1 year ago

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Damian was once reminded of a quote.

God gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers.

The saying held no meaning for him, but it slipped out of his mouth once when his mind was wandering and hazy, and his self-control was null.

The boy sitting beside him huffed, a flicker of amusement flashing across his face. The most emotion either of them has been able to express for a while now.

"That line is bullshit," the boy whispered. His voice was hoarse and raw. Damian had to strain to hear him. "I've met many gods, and they would rather sacrifice their soldiers if it meant their own survival."

Damian's head lolled to one side, contemplating his words. "Indeed," he croaked. "I've met my fair share of gods as well. They were, how do you put it..."

"Wimpy? Disappointing? Underwhelming?" The boy offered. The conversation wasn't the most cheery subject to talk about, but it served to fight off the medicine that was attacking their minds.

"Soft-bodied bitches." Damian let out an uncharacteristic snicker. The boy broke out into giggles, that soon transformed into violent coughs. Thick blood was spat onto the ground, and the temporary joy dissipated from the air.

No jokes could cover up the fact that they were trapped.

Well, not trapped. They'd been captured. And caged. Like fucking animals. It was humiliating and terrifying at the same time.

When Damian first landed in this dimension, he immediately knew something was off. He paid no mind to the empty streets of a half-destroyed town nor the strange graffiti and green fog that reminded him of Fear Gas. Blast marks made his footsteps dirty, but he barely even noticed. What was truly unsettling to him was the immediate pull he felt toward a certain direction. His very soul was crying out desperately for something, and it was all Damian could do to follow the urge.

He walked for what felt like hours. Glowing eyes peeked at him from the shadows, scattering when he approached. The fog got thicker, dragging at his bones and making his heartbeat feel slower. The silence was mind-numbing, and he didn't dare make a peep.

As he got to (what he assumed) the center of town, Damian noticed a thick, rotting stench replacing the fog within the span of a few blocks. Glowing red flowers lined the sidewalks and streets, sometimes sitting in piles in the mouth of alleyways or arranged in a line across the doorway of a shop. Like how one would salt their home to ward off evil. When he tried to get a closer look and possibly a sample, his body physically recoiled from the flowers as if stung. The mere presence of them made him feel sick.

So he ignored them for now. Damian continued to trudge along in a straight line, following his instincts. As the fog lifted even more, sound returned to the world as well. The town was truly abandoned, then. No sirens or car horns were going off. No one was running through the streets, panicked about the fight that had obviously taken place.

What Damian did hear was two voices raised in anger, a third in fear, and the sound of concentrated explosions happening nearby. He broke into a run. The fight that brought him here had done some decent damage to his outfit and person. His mask was barely clinging on, his armor was digging into his skin strangely, and he'd lost his weapons, but as soon as Damian had heard that third voice, he just had to run.

Damian knew he was going against all his training by rushing into the situation. Logically, he should have backed out as soon as he heard the commotion. Maybe retreated completely or at least snuck around to assess the situation first. But no, here he was, barely keeping his secret identity intact, bolting towards a group of unknowns like his life depended on it. His mind screamed at him that it did.

He finally rounded a corner and nearly tripped on the excessive rubble. He'd made it to the town square. There were more red flowers and blast marks. A pair of adults, one impossibly large man and a smaller, lithe woman in hazmat suits, were standing back to back, glowing guns raised as they searched the sky and ground around them. He stepped behind a chunk of concrete to hide himself better.

"Show yourself, Phantom!" The woman screamed. She was so full of rage. "There are blood blossoms surrounding this whole area; I know you can't leave!"

There was a slight shift in the rubble to Damian's right. Without hesitation, the man spun around and shot the pile. Damian didn't have time to move, so he just crouched and covered his head while a blast of green light destroyed the pile and surrounding debris. When the light cleared, Damian was distantly horrified to find that his cover had taken on the brunt of the rebound blast and had been reduced to pebbles. His cover was gone.

The man immediately noticed him.

"Oh, look, Mads! Another one!"

The woman whipped around to study his tiny figure, still curled up to protect himself. Damian knew these were dangerous people. Why couldn't he get up and run? The woman grinned awfully and hiked up her gun-more like a bazooka-to aim at Damian.

"How wonderful, Jack!" She crowed. "Phantom would never leave one of his kind behind. And this one is so human-shaped! It looks just like Danny."

"Using the pest as bait? I'm so glad I married you, Maddie." The man gushed, slipping his goggles and hood off to gaze lovingly at his wife.

Damian's heart stopped. He couldn't take his eyes off the evil, terrible look on the man's face.

"Father?" He mouthed.

The couple didn't notice. The woman just took aim, and for the life of him, Damian couldn't force himself to move.

That was his father. That was Bruce Wayne in a hazmat suit, shooting up a city without regard for human life. That was Batman, who was pointing a gun at his face, no recognition showing in his eyes whatsoever.

The bazooka went off first.

"NO!" Someone cried, coming out of nowhere and slamming into Damian's frozen form. His head bounced off the ground, and the last thing he saw was his own eyes staring back at him.

---

Damian came back to himself slowly. It was unnaturally bright where ever he was. His limbs were stretched far straighter than he would have liked them, and the feeling of dried glue on his face told him that someone had captured him, stripped him, and tied him to a table.

This time, though, his training did kick in. As soon as he was aware of himself, he regulated his breathing so it would appear he was still asleep. The air still smelled of rot and concrete dust, but there was a sharp tinge of chemicals in there, too. It was chilly despite no nearby AC vent going. A lab? Underground, perhaps? He dared not open his eyes, but he could feel something familiar laying on his left.

A door hissed open, and the voices of the couple from earlier entered, arguing with a third party.

"-said we got to start the dissections first!" The woman, Maddie, demanded. "That was our deal! If we handed Phantom and any other specimens over to you, the lab would let us have the first go for the experiments!"

"Yeah!" Added in Bru-Jack's voice. "We could learn so much from a powerful specimen like Phantom, and he's been a pest to us much longer than he has been to the GIW. We can put him back together for the rest of your scientists if you really want."

The third-party spoke, sounding irritated and exhausted from arguing. "Listen," they stressed, flipping through papers. "I'm not saying you can't partake in the agreed-upon experiments. I'm saying that you failed to fulfill a crucial part of the contract and cannot even look at a scalpel until you complete your part of the job!"

"WHAT?!" Maddie screeched. There was a flurry of paper sounds, so Damian assumed she'd snatched a pile of them from the third person's hands. There was a moment of silence while she read, and then, "Oh, fudge cake! Jack, the contract states we have to provide a minimum number of specimens plus Phantom in order to be let into the labs. We'll have to go out and round up as many as we can before we start dissecting."

Jack grumbled. "Fudgin' lawyers and their tricky tongues."

The third person tsked them and snatched the papers back. "No lawyer trickery was used here, Mr. Fenton. We prepared this document in good faith, seeing as we're already business partners. It's not our fault you signed before reading. Now, I heard that the Manson house has been a well-known haunting spot ever since the family moved out. Perhaps you should start there?"

Jack and Maddie grumbled some more but agreed and left the room, with the third person sighing and following them. The door locked shut with a click that echoed in Damian's ears. He waited for a breath. Then two. Once he was sure the party was gone, he cracked open his eyes and looked to his left, where his soul was still trying to reach.

There was a boy staring back at him.

Strapped to a table, just like Damian, a thin and lanky boy around his own age seemed just as surprised as him when they locked eyes and something clicked in their brains. Damian realized that while the boy was obviously not human, with his floating white hair and dim green eyes, he did share the exact same face with Damian, if not extremely paler. In fact, the boy's skin was deathly, almost taking on a mottled blue-green tinge he'd seen dead bodies develop.

The boy got over his surprise first. He grinned at Damian, clearly exhausted but obviously trying to make the situation seem less dire than it actually was. "Why, hello, stranger," he quipped. "What a good looking face you have there."

"Of course you would say that." Damian snapped automatically.

The boy just chuckled, unfazed by his attitude. "Chill out, my guy, I'm just joking. If I had to guess, you're from another dimension, right?"

Damian stiffened up, straining against his restraints. "How did you know that?" He hissed, glaring.

The boy sighed. He suddenly looked much older than either of them had any right to be. "You reek of the Deep Zone, dude. It's not something humans can smell easily, but with a little practice, you should pick it up quick."

"What makes you say I'm not human? And why-"

"Why did you feel a connection?" The boy turned his head back to the ceiling, eyes unfocused. He looked and sounded very sad. "I'm pretty sure we're alternate versions of each other, my dude. I've met a few other versions of myself, mostly from other timelines, but you're the first one who is so obviously different and so similar at the same time. It's weird."

Damian's heart dropped.

"...Alternate versions of each other?"

The boy nodded. He was refusing to look at Damian's reaction. Scared of rejection. "Yeah. And every version of me has died and come back in some way at least once, so by the time we're a preteen, we no longer identify as strictly human. Although," his voice grew bitter. "We do get pretty good at blending in, according to others."

Damian examined the boy more closely. His outfit was falling apart from whatever he'd gone through, but it was very clearly an old hazmat suit with a logo on the chest. Scars, both new and old, littered his skin, some of them matching the scars on Damian's own body. His eyes weren't dim originally, it seemed. They had swirled and glowed brighter when the boy had spoken, and his whole demeanor screamed exhaustion. Thinking back on everything he learned since being dropped in the middle of the street, Damian put two and two together quite easily.

"You're a hero." Damian pointed out. "An undead hero." The boy flinched but nodded.

"Was. The key word there. Not many people enjoyed having a ghost around to save their asses, even when it was from other ghosts." He held no resentment in his voice, just genuinely upset and betrayed that the people he had protected for so long and loved so much had turned on him, and abandoned him in his time of need.

"And, these people don't think the undead are...human?"

"Not in the slightest. We're apparently unfeeling monsters with no sentience but are driven by a single goal to destroy anything living."

"So now we are to be dissected? For what? The ghosts I know don't have physical bodies. What use would this be?"

The boy scrunched his nose. "Damn, your universe must really be out in the sticks if your ghosts aren't solid." Somehow, Damian felt offended. "Don't give me that attitude; I can feel you judging me. Anyway, the ectoplasm here is much thicker than other universes, so most other ghosts can walk around and act just like humans if they want to. They just usually don't because we are technically a different species. It's like asking a dog to act like a cat."

"Hmm. I'm starting to understand."

"That's great!" The smile returned, and the boy turned his head a little too far to make proper eye contact once more. "By the way, I never got your name. Do we share the same one?"

"Perhaps. I go by Damian Wayne. What is your name?"

The boy gave him a shark-toothed grin, one that was barely familiar. It reminded Damian of his grandfather. "Oh, my ghost name is Phantom, but my living name is Danny Fenton."

---

[that's all I got in me, but anyone is free to take this and keep going. Like a baton race at track meets. Go win us gold!]

Ooooh I just came up with an idea

You know all of this fics where Danny is an alternate universe version of like Bruce or Jason? What if it was with Damian

There could be some kind of ritual that sends Damian into Danny’s universe only they both get caught by the GIW and Everything Goes Wrong

By that I mean both of them get vivisected. And the Fentons should do at least some of it, and that Jack looks just like Bruce for extra ✨trauma✨

They both go on the Road Trip of Hell while escaping and Danny’s just working on building a temporary portal to the Ghost Zone/Damian’s home dimension.

I want Danny to lean out of a car with like a mcguivered bazooka or something to try and drive off the GIW for a while with some kind of crazy/stressed smile back at Damian.

I want little moments where they’re bonding/teaching each other how to fight (Because Damian knows formal fighting, and if we go with Danny knowing some self defense from his mom he’s not completely horrible at it, but Danny knows how to fight like a feral raccoon. It’s effective and Damian DOES like animals right?)

I want them to finally get to Damian’s dimension and when they finally finally gets to the bats and Bruce reaches out to help his son Damian flinches

And then I want it to get into the fluff/healing/trauma dumping part where the newly dubbed twins (who get along scarily well and everyone is pretty sure are trauma bonded) are healing while simultaneously causing the other bats to become more and more distressed (it may or may not be on purpose)

It would also be pretty cool if their habits and mannerisms rubbed off on one another, so they can be uncannily similar one moment then completely different the next

I also had the idea of them being literally the same soul- like, the soul that originally formed was completely identical when they were babies but diverged due to different experiences, so it’s literally a ‘same soul two bodies’ thing. I just think it would be neat, even if it’s not even really mentioned, but just like, Implied you know?

#dpxdc #pondhead writes #bad fenton parents #long post #the image I had in my head was that Damian realizes the Dr Fentons are Danny’s parents #and that they think their son is dead dead but refuse to belive he could possible be phantom #then the other events happen as op describes and they get trauma #Damian is in for a surprise when Danny changes back the first time #maybe they pass it off as his blend in with humans ability #so the existence of halfas are still secret #if you throw in the others #Dani is thrilled to have another test tube baby in the family #and Dan becomes a bragging point for damian #about how actual HE would be the worst supervillain if he went batshit insane #sorry Tim you should step up your game #in terms of angst? holy shit the potential #let’s say time runs different cause their universes are so far apart #so Danny��s world goes faster #so they could be trapped in the GIW labs for months before they manage to breakout #and in dc is a few weeks max #granted they’re very stressed weeks for the Batfam #everyone has grey hairs and Ra’s has called a temporary truce to look for his heir #then his grandsons comes home with another version of himself how delightful #oh and he bites!#guess his grandson is now a twin aaaand Bruce snatched them up immediately #damn how will he train the spare now?#Bruce is #well #he’s just not having a good time #good dad bruce wayne all the way but he’s crying every night

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