#dumping-ground | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

deadsetobsessions · 11 months ago

Text

AU of my Gotham/Tim Drake! Danny where Danny doesn’t know any knowledge beforehand about the DC universe.

Danny doesn’t know how he got here, but the fact that he now shares something in common with Vlad other than their technical halfa status disgusts him

His new name is Timothy Jackson Drake. It’s so far removed from Danny that his parents had him examined for deafness because he didn’t respond to it. He got better at it, at putting on the mask Janet and Jack Drake wanted to see. So they took him to the circus.

He meets Dick Grayson. Danny thinks the kid is adorable, even if Danny himself is technically younger. He sees the flying Graysons fall. The buzzing in his head doesn’t go away.

He’s five, when the fading spirit of Gotham reaches out and pleads her King to protect her city in her stead. She is fading. He says yes, because she’s one of his. The buzzing in his head settles and oh because that’s what’s been missing this entire time. Danny didn’t have a haunt and Gotham gave him one.

He grieves when she dies, the new title settling around small shoulders, and the city grieves with him. In the city proper, Batman and Robin are having the worst night of their lives in the sudden storm.

He’s nine. Robin is Dick Grayson. Dick Grayson, in turn, is an idiot. Batman… well, he’s at least mentoring and protecting the child vigilante, which is more than Danny ever had. He grows fond of them. How could he not, when they tried their hardest to help his city? To help him?

He shows himself, to the duo, in his Phantom form. It’s still him, still modeled after Danny Fenton’s face instead of Tim Drake’s. Ghosts are a reflection of the soul, after all.

“Who are you,” Batman demands, shielding Robin with half a step.

“Gotham.” He replies. Danny wills the city to affirm his claim and the city wraps its arms around the vigilantes. Batman and Robin understands, a deep well of pure knowledge being tapped into in ways they weren’t truly meant to understand.

“…How?”

“Magic,” Phantom says, dry. He tells them of city spirits, and that they can call him in times of dire need.

Dick calls him to help with Two Face. Two Face learns the pain of unmelting ice to the balls.

His core aches when the Bats fight, but Danny knows now that it is inevitable. They’re part of his haunt, his ‘fraid. He knows these things far before they come into fruition.

Dick moves to a sister city. Phantom expands his haunt to Bludhaven because he doesn’t, won’t, ever leave his Robins to themselves.

Nightwing is hopeful, is pleasantly surprised, and very suspicious when he shows up during patrol.

“Gotham…? What are you doing here…? This isn’t, well, Gotham?”

“Satellite City. It is an extension of myself. You were Robin, yes. You’re Nightwing, now. But that doesn’t mean I won’t protect you when I can.”

Phantom goes back, and finds a kid trying to steal tires to make a living. He guides his Knight to him. The starved features, the bones Danny could see, it tugs at his core. It feels like the Ancient of Fate themselves were pulling him along.

“How’d you know I was taking the wheels?”

“Gotham.”

“Are you… high on shrooms or something?”

Bruce sighs. Batman asks Gotham to meet the new Robin, and chuckles when Jason is surprised by the glowing green figure.

Phantom hides this Robin just as much as the last one. He curls shadows around his vigilantes, sometimes at the same time, and softens what little sounds they made while stalking through his city for crime.

He makes small jokes with Jason. Danny forgets, a little, the crushing loneliness of being Timothy Drake.

“I didn’t kill Garzona!”

“You-”

Batman stops as a chill he’s never had experienced directed at him weaves around his neck. An angry Gotham.

“He didn’t kill him.” Danny slides a cold hand on Jason’s shoulders.

But the damage had been done and the next day, Batman is begging Danny to tell him any clues of where Jason had gone.

“Ethiopia.”

He clears the way for Batman to get to Robin. He clears the way for Bruce to get to Jason.

He’d fallen into the trap of believing that Batman would handle everything when in the end, he’s just a man in a mantle that demands more than he ever thought he’d have to pay.

Robin is dead and Danny grieves. The skies crack open and pours a torrent of smogged rain water upon the streets of Gotham. Despite that, Crime Alley is untouched by flood. They say the second Robin was protecting his home.

In a way, it’s not wrong.

Gotham fishes Batman from the bay, carelessly tossing the broken Joker against a shipping container.

“You can’t keep doing this. You’ll die.”

Bruce, Batman, lays on his back, eyes glazed and empty. “Maybe I want to.” He admits. And Danny can’t lose someone else. It’s already bad enough he feels the death of everyone in his city, he can’t lose him too. But Dick won’t come back. He already denied Gotham when Phantom had asked him to come back. Granted, Dick was nervous about denying him the entire time, but Danny realized that he’d lost a brother in the colors his parents chose for Dick. Danny- Phantom had cradled Dick in a swaddle of shadows and comfort.

“Alright.”

“Is it? Alright? I- I don’t want to fail you, Gotham.”

“It is. You’ve always made me proud. You will always make me proud. Whether it be by different name, it matters to me not. Stay. Heal.”

Like Dick was given permission, like he received a hint of peace, Dick Grayson crumpled to the floor and sobbed into Gotham’s shoulder.

(Later, long after Dick Grayson realized his little brother was also his city personified, he cries again into Tim’s shoulders after the later dropped a flower pot perfectly on top of Catalina Flores’ head.)

Gotham, Phantom, Danny makes a choice.

“Tomorrow, a child will show up at your door. You will let him in.”

“No- I can’t. I won’t.” He knows what Danny will ask of him.

“You will.” Danny doesn’t ever do it with his people, with his city, but dire times call for dire actions. It is an order. And Batman is Gotham’s knight. “You will. You will train him. You need a Robin to leash your brutality. I need a Robin, for Robin is my hope. The city’s hope. Our people’s hope. Do not forget the goal you have set out to accomplish in my city.”

Batman rages at him, until he falls unconscious from the wounds he’s gathered. Danny brings him home. He tells Alfred what to expect tomorrow. Bruce wakes up, eyes fixated on the crack that appeared on Danny’s neon green face. “Did. Did I do that?”

Danny nods slowly.

Batman crumples into Bruce Wayne. “Okay.” He says. “Alright. Tomorrow.”

Gotham watches him, unreadable. “Tomorrow.” He says, before fading away.

Tim Drake shows up at the door. Nightwing shows up not long after. Tim Drake adapts to Bruce Wayne’s cold looks and brutal training. Slowly, but surely, he leashes in Batman’s grief fueled brutality and less criminals go to prison with half of their lives beaten out of them.

Batman doesn’t see Gotham as much anymore. He feared that he’s angered his city, that he is no longer welcome.

When Tim figures it out… he allows the roads and the shadows to help Batman once more.

Batman stared intently at the extra coverage. “Thank you,” Tim hears him whisper. “I’m sorry.”

And when Jason Todd comes back to life and attacks Tim in the tower, Tim lets Hood beat him. Gotham had failed him, as Jason’s city. He deserves it. (He doesn’t but Danny had gone past the point of being healthy about his own physical wellbeing. Perhaps being a city spirit this long had affected him, even with the King’s title mitigating the worst of the damages.

“HE REPLACED ME!”

“Because I ordered him to.” Tim whispers, past the pain of a broken leg.

“You? Order Batman around? If you’re going to lie, make it a better one, Replacement.”

Tim catches Jason’s wrist, the one holding the knife to Tim’s throat.

“Robin,” he says simply, allowing Gotham to come out and peer at the child that is his.

Jason stares, disbelieving. Gotham had… Gotham had come by and approved of his plans to clean up Crime Alley. Gotham had extracted a promise not to damage the buildings.

“No.”

His city stares back and him and Jason stumbles away. Tim shifts into Danny, into Gotham.

“You…”

“I am Gotham. I- I did not want to wear these colors. They were yours and Dick’s. But Bruce was hurting the city, he was hurting me. So I made sure he stopped.”

Jason stares at the new cracks, the fresh ones he just caused and the old ones he does not remember being on Danny’s ghostly skin.

Jason swallows. “I’m sorry.”

“As am I. I am sorry I was not there to save you. I am sorry that you died.”

Jason stares at him. The Replacement is Gotham. Jason almost destroyed his city.

“I am glad that you’ve returned. That you’re alive, now.”

“…Really?”

“Always.”

Alternative Version of the above Tower Scene:

Jason slides the knife against the Replacement’s neck.

Danny sighs. “I can’t believe I’m dying again.”

Jason pauses. “What the fuck did you just say, Replacement?”

Danny rolls his eyes at him and Jason rethinks his decision of not offing the little fucker right away.

“You think you’re the first one to die in this household? Get a grip. I did it first, way before you did, jackass.”

Tim is 14. He’s a child. What the fuck is Jason doing?

“When…?”

“How do you think I became Gotham, little bird?”

Jason freezes. And then he’s scrambling backwards, the knife flung away in his horror.

Tim shifts into Gotham and Jason bites back a cut of regret and bitterness.

He… no, what? What even is happening?

“Why is the Joker not dead? You… you told me that you loved me. That Gotham… that-”

“I’m cruel, little bird. The Joker would not suffer as much if he were dead.”

“He’s killing people! He’s killing your own!”

“So everyone thinks.”

“What?”

“I am Gotham, little bird. Mass hallucinogenic gasses are so within my reach to the point it is concerning. Perhaps you should help Ivy with the city clean up?”

“Huh?!”

2K notes · View notes

deadsetobsessions · 11 months ago

Text

Tim Drake, Danny’s human identity in this universe, is a boy trapped in an empty manor with absentee parents a low socialization.

Danny Phantom, on the other hand, is Gotham City himself. He could fly, he could interact, he could be the heart of his city like he needs to be. From the lowest of the lows to the highest of the highs, Danny loved the people that were his. Well, most of them. Child molesters often found themselves crossing paths with a vengeful, mostly recovered Robin.

He is the city, he is Gotham. And with his status came more changes, ones he welcomes more readily that the changes that came with his title of Ghost King.

Being a city couldn’t change him as much as it would have, had he gained the title before becoming King. But now, his shadows are dark, curling around his shoulders and curling away what little light he allowed into his city. His skin, having once glittered green with stars and galaxies and black holes, clouds over just a bit. It gives him a misty quality. His hands become sharper, stronger. Gargoyle-like. He wonders what he looked like to Batman, holding his broken son cradled safely to himself. He’s crueler, now, but that’s easily balanced by his years of being a vigilante himself.

He loves these changes. They are loved in a way changing into Dead Danny Phantom and Ghost King Danny Phantom will never be loved. And even though his human features are different in a way he never had to deal with as Danny Fenton, because it was his body that he died in, Danny finds himself enjoying the distinction. And he enjoys when they combine, because in the end, they’re just facets of who he is, now.

Gotham flies through his city, and enjoys it as a whole. A bigger picture.

Tim Drake walks through his city, and enjoys it as an individual. The smaller picture.

Being Gotham reminds him of what he had to protect as a whole. A duty he gladly bears.

Being Tim reminds him of the people he’s meant to help, the stories he doesn’t get as Danny. A connection he gladly encouraged.

Gotham is power. He is duty, he is fierce love. But for the good of the whole.

Tim is kindness. He is choice, he is gentle devotion. But for the good of the individual.

He’s both.

Danny. Danny Phantom.

Phantom glides through the smog.

The ebb and flow of people is his life blood, the thrumming of life and death and fear and hate and love and everything the city is sung through him and Danny sung back with everything he had. Danny is the gargoyles perched high, watching everything. He’s the stone curves of the sewers, sheltering his rats and mutant murderous crocodile man. The is no love comparable to a city’s mutant rats and their sewers. Ancients, he loves his city.

It would be nice, Danny thinks wryly, if they’d love me enough to stop blowing up buildings.

The sting of destruction to his city would hurt much more, had he not also been King. Regardless, every time there’s an explosion or general large scale property damage, he feels a stab of mild pain. Catching sight of his Bats, Danny stays invisible while following them. He wills the shadows to cradle them, to hide them further. He softens the stone, the mortar, the steel, just a hint. Their footsteps, silent and aided by the city himself. The wind steal away the noise of the grappling guns, so when Danny’s favorite vigilante duo (a fascination he shared with original text!Tim) broke into the building, not a single soul aside them are aware of the intrusion.

Batman skulks across the support beams, Robin following with an anticipatory grin. Danny floats, invisible, undetectable, besides them.

“C’mon!” A goon grunts beneath them. Danny tilts his head. A… Dresden Aberthy. Wow. That’s one hell of a name.

“Hurry it up! Boss said Batman’s going to get here soon!” Another goon- Robbert- said, waving around a gun like a moron at the terrified hostages. Danny could tell half of them were part of a tour bus, mostly because the other half were his Gothamites, bored and unfairly used to this kind of thing. The tourists… He’s fond of them, having kept track of their progress through his city. He doesn’t care for intruders on his haunt, but tourists like to appreciate his city and its doubtlessly Sam-approved architecture. Most of them. Rude tourists get pigeon shit on their heads and food stolen by his lovely rats.

He’ll have to make sure none of the bullets hit the tourists. He likes this group, even if he has enough awareness to question their sanity in choosing his city to sightsee. He knows it’s a mess. It’s Danny’s mess though, so whatever.

——

All said and done, Batman whoops ass and Robin rescues the hostages just fine. Danny grins proudly as Robin knees a guy in the crotch and punches a lady’s throat in order to incapacitate them.

After they tied the goons up, and interrogated them for Two Face’s plans- explode a quarter of Gotham to distract the Bats from his diabolical plan to murder half of Gotham’s judges and lawyers that have been going after him and his people- the duo retreats to the rooftop.

“Didja think Gotham saw that?”

Batman goes to reply, but Danny beats him to it, coming back to visibility with a wind touched laugh.

“I did, little Robin.” Danny smiles, fangs and shadows on display as his vigilantes startles and whips around to face him. “You did well.”

Robin- Jason!- gapes at him.

“I see you’ve recovered, little bird.”

“Gotham! Oh. Wow. People always said Gotham was a lady, but you’re a guy!”

“It was a Lady,” Danny confirmed. “It’s complicated, little bird.”

“So, you’re really… you’re really Gotham? The city?”

Danny looks at Robin with the weight of the city behind his gaze.

“I think you know the answer to that. But yes, I am your city.”

“Constantine,” Batman starts. “He said that city spirits only appear in times of grave danger.”

There is deference in his words. Batman is Batman for Gotham, after all. Danny just wishes he could… well, be friendlier with his knights. May this is a good place to start.

Are you in danger? What threats do we need to handle? How can I help? How can I protect? Please, let me help.

His Knight always felt more than he ever says. Danny smiles.

“Was Robin’s wellbeing not in grave danger?” Danny floats closer. “I am your city. You protect me, it is only right that I protect you, no?”

“Thank you for saving me, Gotham!” Robin’s grin is a touch more sincere than usual.

“Of course, Robin. You are loved.”

“Is there… a reason you’ve shown yourself today? Gotham.”

Danny chuckles, understanding the awkwardness that was Batman addressing someone with deference.

“I wanted to tell you that you did well tonight. Those tourists weren’t harmed in the slightest. Well done.” Danny gave Robin a playful but sincere thumbs up.

“They weren’t a match for us!”

“No, they weren’t.” Danny ruffles Robin’s hair, noticing how still he grew at it. “Robin was too fast for them. That maneuver at the end was masterfully executed.”

Batman clears his throat and Danny resists the urge to laugh at him. It would be mean.

“Thank you, for the… praise.”

Fuck it. He’s played well behaved for too long.

“Yes. I read in child rearing books that positive reinforcement is necessary for healthy development. You did well, Batman.”

Despite trolling Batman- and somehow holding a straight (and hopefully wise face)- he meant every word.

Allowing a small smile to slip at Robin’s chortles and Batman’s quiet sputtering, Danny moves on.

“Where is Nightwing, Batman?”

“He’s still on a mission...”

“If it is awkward to refer to me as Gotham, Phantom will do.”

Batman dips his head once. “In space, with the Teen Titans.”

“I see. Please tell him I request his presence,” Danny barely waits for Batman’s oddly acquiescing agreement before summoning a pigeon.

“Follow her,” Danny instructs the duo. “She’ll lead you to the places with explosives. I will guide you through her, to Harvey Dent.”

Danny winces as another explosion rings out.

“Your face is cracking!” Robin exclaimed, worried. He surged forward to stare at the hairline cracks appearing on Danny’s jaw.

“That would be the explosives. Any damage to the city will be shown on me.”

“Well take care of it.” Batman growled, shoulders straightening once more into an imposing symbol.

“Yeah!”

“I know you will. Stay safe.” Danny disappears, spreading his awareness and directing his Birds to the explosives that will go off the fastest.

Batman and Robin share a glance and leaps off the roof, ready to save their city once more.

——

Tim Drake wanders around Crime Alley, and meets a blonde nine year old trying to throw hands at her absentee Riddler knockoff of a dad. He dodges the brick en route to his face and kicks the guy’s knees out.

“You okay?”

The girl blinks. She stares at her dad, groaning on the dirty street of crime alley, and flicks her gaze back up to Tim, who waits casually.

“Yep. I’m Stephanie. We’re gonna be friends now!”

She grins at him, a baby tooth missing, and Danny melts.

“Heck yeah. Tim!” He introduces himself for the first time in a long time.

Maybe with Stephanie around, he’ll finally use the name Tim? Maybe he’ll get used to it, finally!

2K notes · View notes