#he’s basically just evolved from chaotic evil to more true neutral/adjacently neutral evil

[living-on-borrowed-time]

Oh boy this got out of hand way faster than I anticipated. Also fair warning I’m posting this from mobile so I have no clue how the formatting is going to turn out. Plus, shout out to @hadrian-pendragons for being amazing and helping me organise my thoughts <3

—————

Watching Phantom Fade is one of the most agonising things Bruce thinks he’s ever forced himself to witness.

The stillness. The total lack of movement. The way that sound and light seem to warp around him ever so slightly. The discomforting way the ghost child’s vibrancy seems to leak from him and ooze into the world around him, eventually dissipating like soft clouds of smoke from a burning stick of incense.

The way there’s nothing for him to fight here.

Constantine’s subduedly awed comment marking the significance of Phantom’s presence still, despite it all, does not help ease his guilt and frustration with…

With everything.

His dwindling hope that things might get better cutting at him like fractured glass sinking deeper into him with each passing second.

He had checked the records in the Watchtower, digging through their archived call data, when they had finally sequestered Phantom into a crudely rigged up ghost containment cell from a cleared out conference room on the Watchtower. The results weren’t pretty; in fact, they were more than damning. Then when Phantom laughed them off with that broken, hollow laughter and reminded them that the Anti-Ecto Laws existed, Bruce was so angry with himself he could barely keep himself present for the rest of the… conversation. If one could really call it that.

Bruce had first caught wind of the hidden laws not too long after they were enacted, and dismissed them due to their irrelevance to the at-the-time near-apocalyptic crisis, and left the matter be- having only briefly skimmed a published paper or two on the matter, authored by doctors Madeline and Jack Fenton. It had seemed absurd, in the moment after reading a few paragraphs here and there, that any of the ‘scientific research’ referenced and expanded on was feasibly plausible without the resources and researchers that any other organisation like Star Labs could have. So for these two scientists to have “punctured a hole through dimensions to gain access to a place known as the Ghost Zone” was beyond anything he could allow himself to seriously believe. Therefore there was some kind of nut job in the government that he would have to keep an eye on, and that’d be that.

Clearly he had been beyond incorrect in his assumptions, and now 70,000 people had died, with one more on his way to never be able to meet them in whatever came after a second death, according to Constantine. One near twice dead child that he could not allow himself to walk away from to Fade alone.

A petty penance, his own self-flagellation in the wake of a protector spirit’s Haunt being blown off the map and entire family killed.

Just as Bruce is about to check the time, there’s a slight blur, and something appears in the room with them, on Phantom’s side of the glass. Something that shouldn’t be possible, seeing as that entire half of the room is completely sealed off and the larger wall at the back of it only greets space on the other side.

And yet, there’s a floating humanoid in there, with an appearance similar to Phantom in uniform, but in physique startlingly different. The being pays him no mind, crouching down and laying a hand on Phantom’s back—somehow—with a sigh. “Is this the way you wanna go out, kid?”

Something about Phantom’s entire form twitches- no, spasms, and Bruce is shocked into standing. Before he can get a word out edgewise, however, Phantom finally speaks for the first time in hours.

“Either End me or fuck off, Dan.”

There’s an echoing, ringing static accompanying his words which wasn’t there the last time he had spared words for anyone in the Watchtower.

‘Dan’ hums. “Kind of pathetic to End someone who’s already Fading.”

“Then fuck off.”

“Can’t do that squirt.”

“Why are you even here? Come to gloat?” The more Phantom talks, the more Bruce is coming to realise that perhaps listening to the boy like this, with his unnatural and degrading vocalisations, is going to melt his mind.

“As if I could gloat,” Dan sighs and shifts, leaning back against the same wall that Phantom is facing, still entirely unmoving. “I only had… them die. You lost everyone and had your entire haunt fucking nuked, yet you still didn’t do like me. I’m—unfortunately—sure that means you win, pipsqueak. So, I’m asking, is this how you want to Go?”

There is blessed silence for a long moment, and Bruce’s vision has gotten fuzzy. Apparently, both Phantom and this Dan character’s speech is actively detrimental to his health and potential continued existence.

He can’t gather the wits he needs to make himself leave.

Phantom’s voice, distorted as it is, has a distinctly wet aspect to it now, as if he were crying while swimming underwater. “Shit way to prove a point. And it’s not like a measurement of how pathetic a person in front of you is has stopped you before.”

There’s… something concerning about that, but Bruce’s mind is a bit too mushy to really grasp what and why those words are so worrisome.

Dan’s deep voice is lowered and gentled the next he speaks. “Apparently your influence has more of a lasting affect than we’d thought. I’ve had a bit of a change of heart.”

“What are you really here for, Dan.”

“Well, since you won’t answer my question, I guess I’ll rephrase for you. I’m here to make you an offer.”

That’s the last he hears before a pair of strong arms yank him out of the room and everything goes black.

————

Dan has mixed feeling about this whole… ordeal.

Being released from soup-themed prison by Clockwork a good while ago came with a lot of conditions. Conditions he had agreed to, because near constant isolation was definitely getting to him the longer it went on. Considering he was in the master of time’s domain didn’t help, it just meant that no matter what amount of time he was alone to ‘think over his actions’ according to Danny… well, any span of time alone could have been only two minutes or two years, and he had no way of knowing one way or the other.

Of course he took conditional escape over that psychological hell.

Now, years later to him, he watches with Clockwork as his alternate self’s life comes crashing down around him. It’s… much worse than Dan’s ever was, and he starts to wonder why the Ancient beside him hasn’t wiped this timeline from existence yet. Is he waiting to show Dan a different way to go insane? Did the old bastard free him as he did so that he could make Dan take down a Danny gone dark since the Timekeeper couldn’t bring himself to do it?

No matter the reasoning, Dan can’t help but be mildly impressed at the restraint this version of Danny has to losing everything and then barely a few days later hearing someone talk about it like that? He would have just squished the offender like an ant. Though, he can appreciate the chaos and irony of possessing and puppetting a person who doesn’t believe either of those things can be done. And a speedster at that. Comedic, considering where the guy thinks he’s getting his power from.

“So was there a point to calling me here to watch this, or are you just getting your old man kicks out of being a vague and cryptic asshole again?”

Clockwork hums in what might be a laugh but has equal chances of being some ponderous noise. “This is the main timeline.”

Dan pauses at that, and swallows roughly. Amity hasn’t been his haunt in a long time, but it was once, and witnessing it be destroyed even like this doesn’t make it any easier to stomach. “And you’re not doing anything about it?” He watches, now unable to look away from the viewing mirror, as the magician Constantine manages to pin Danny in a spirit trap, effectively letting the speedster run out and stopping Danny in place like running into a wall of glass.

“Perhaps I could. But many of those timelines have poorer endings than even this. I have explained before that your timeline occurred because the Observants wanted to End Danny before he could gain more power and consider overthrowing them. You served as a warning to them, as well as a lesson to Phantom that the stakes aren’t always what they first appear. Obviously, there’s more to it than that, but it is what’s relevant currently. Look.”

Dan ignores the repetitive lecture of the purpose of his failed timeline, you hear it once you’ve heard it about a million times, and watches in confusion when Danny doesn’t try to fight containment and transfer to the Watchtower. He can’t see what Clockwork wants him to notice here, and Danny’s longterm plan here seems like biding his time to get optimised revenge to him. He’s already given his usual fighting buddies free reign to cause havoc and get into shenanigans wherever they like, seems like a divide and conquer strategy which is subtler then he has gone with but it’s not a bad one to lead with.

Until his alternate self dives off the script that Dan thought he was following.

“What do you want.” Danny sounds unsettlingly… empty. “To harvest my core? End my existence? Pick me apart? Send me to the GIW so they can see what makes me tick? All of the above?”

If he hadn’t sounded like he had given up, Dan would have thought that his following lecture on the law outlawing his very existence in the United States was a very good psychological attack. Use the truth to it’s most brutal extent, and make your enemies squirm and break themselves over it.

Then, “sounds like a you problem.”

And, “I don’t care.”

It dawns on him that Danny is genuinely Fading when the boy willingly brings up his own death to total strangers. Truth or not, that is almost never a good sign. His core creaks as he absently listens to the magician lay out in simple terms what’s happening to Danny and what all he lost. Haunt, community, loved ones, kin.

Fuck.

“Clockwork, you have to be joking. What kind of timeline can have this as an acceptable event?” He gestures to the scene playing out in front of them. “Amity’s obliteration is Ending Danny and all of those deaths only strengthened the Fenton portal. Danny is the only one with the ability to manually close it at this point, and if he’s gone then not only does it create a permanent location for the Realms to be accessed from, but bigger and badder entities are going to catch word that it’s undefended and the bleed over is going to destabilise everything. How is this even remotely better than my timeline?”

Clockwork, as ever, continues to look entirely impassive. “There is too much to explain, and you have previously stated your loathing of having the knowledge of timelines placed directly into your mind, so I will refrain from doing so. However, if you really think this is so impossible of a maintainable future, then consider that your sulking does nothing for any of us.”

“What,” he says sarcastically even as he tries to curb his anger’s sharply rising, “you want me to break the rules so that you can punish me to take your irritation out on me?”

“Even if I did,” the bastard replies evenly, “I’m afraid I am much too busy trying to keep this timeline stable to act on it for a long while yet.”

Dan scoffs, anger building at the dismissive tone and even some on behalf of the steadily Fading Danny of this timeline. “Fuck you, you’re not even doing anything,” he snarls and storms out before he can attempt to do something he will regret being locked up in isolation again for.

He leaves, and therefore can’t see when Clockwork smiles ever so slightly, a sad but triumphant expression. “No, I’m not. I’ve done all that’s needed for you to take care of it.”

——

Dan doesn’t even bother being subtle about stealing an artefact from Long Now and getting through the ‘containment’ half of the set up the Justice Failures have Danny in. Now that he’s here in person he can feel how close the boy is to falling apart at the seams. The only thing making it take so long are his ties to humanity as a halfa, and once his core is far enough gone his human body will be the only thing left. Not quite dead, but never to be truly alive ever again.

Danny wouldn’t last long, were his consciousness to somehow remain intact after that kind of trauma.

With a soft sigh, Dan kneels down and rests a hand on Danny’s back. “Is this the way you wanna go out, kid?”

The reply is both flatter than he was hoping for, and more horrifying for the way he can hear the way it scrapes across Danny’s fracturing core to produce. “Either End me or fuck off, Dan.”

Not even a response to his being free from the soup container huh? Yikes, he’d been hoping that maybe his presence would get Danny’s attention as a threat to attempt to wrangle. He’s further to Fading then Dan had initially thought.

He hums, barely trying to mask his concern considering that Danny probably can’t even pick out subtle differences in conversation with where he’s at right now. “Kind of pathetic to End someone who’s already Fading.”

“Then fuck off.”

“Can’t do that, squirt.”

“Why are you even here? Come to gloat?”

Oh, kid. “As if I could gloat.” He sighs and shifts so he can sit with his back to the wall that Danny is facing. “I only had… them die. You lost everyone and had your entire haunt fucking nuked, yet you still didn’t do like me. I’m—somewhat unfortunately—sure that means you win, pipsqueak. So, I’m asking, is this how you want to Go?”

There’s a long, drawn out silence from Danny that Dan doesn’t even consider breaking, so he sits with him and tries to think what the hell he’s even doing here. He wants to help, but what help can he be to someone he tried very hard to kill in the past and has zero good report with? Telling the kid about the portal issue isn’t going to help any, and now that he thinks about it he might be able to close it, having been Danny once. That has nothing to do with what he’s doing here though, so mentioning the 70,000 deaths now super powering the Fenton portal is definitively out.

Dan is probably strong enough to force Danny’s core to stabilise for long enough to get him to Frostbite? But if Danny just wants it all to be over then… maybe it’d be kinder to End him before his core shatters and he’s trapped in a body that hates existing.

Ancients, that’s so fucked up. He used to want to kill Danny. Want to End him for having everything he no longer did and for reminding him of everything he was before shit hit the fan. And now the thought of doing so as a mercy? It’s- he’ll do it. If that’s what Danny wants then he’ll do it, but Dan can’t imagine doing anything but hating himself for the rest of his existence. Hells, what could possibly make any of that better? As a ghost, what would Danny possibly accept from Dan that could make his Fading or Ending any better?

He… he could get revenge. Claim penance from those who never listened long enough to heed pleas for help. That is something he knows he can do. Could probably do it before Clockwork notices. Well, eh. Maybe. Probably not. And even if the ass decides that his doing so isn’t for the “good of the timeline,” then Dan will at least have the memories of justly killing half the Justice League on Danny’s behalf.

Okay. Yeah that’s something he can offer.

Though… Danny as a halfa is pretty malleable, Fading or not. Maybe-

“Shit way to prove a point,” Danny’s voice cuts though the subdued quiet, even as it wobbles with a shrieking kind of agony and he speaks bitterly apathetic. “And it’s not like a measurement of how pathetic a person in front of you is has stopped you before.”

That’s not an unfair assumption on Danny’s part. He has no idea how humbling an experience it’s been, having a modicum of freedom in exchange for conditions that he cannot break or else risk being alone in his own mind again. Having so little to do that watching this kid’s life like a drama on tv was more interesting than getting up to anything in Long Now. That watching him go about life made Dan remember almost nostalgically what it had been like to be Danny and alive, and dealing with school and parents who barely gave a shit about him unless he was in trouble at school, and fighting ghosts because they kept fucking with his haunt and wouldn’t leave on their own.

Made him remember the time before Vlad had Dan back when he was still Danny malleable and willing to give up who he was and became part of who he is now.

So, it’s true. Dan used to be a person who did not give a shit who he killed when they were in his way, even just as a minor inconvenience. But he’s not that anymore. He’s not the same as he was before he became Dan, but he isn’t who that embodiment of grief fuelled rage and destruction that came after either. Not quite.

“Apparently,” his voice is softer than he had intended, since he hadn’t actually meant for his voice to soften with nostalgia or change at all, really, “your influence has more of a lasting affect than we’d thought. I’ve had a bit of a change of heart.”

“What are you really here for, Dan.”

Yeah, he wasn’t expecting Danny to believe him anyway. Maybe it’s time to change his approach.

“Well, since you won’t answer my question, I guess I’ll rephrase for you. I’m here to make you an offer.”

That gets the barest touch of real emotion he’s seen so far from Danny today. “You have an offer?” His dulled incredulity and active choice to turn on his back and look up at Dan nearly has him falling back through the wall behind him. “What are you now, some kind of crossroad demon?”

He chokes on a snort shocked out of him. “Nah, that’d be pretty funny though you have to admit. A crossroads demon.” He cackles. Shit, when did he stop being that funny without trying? Lost opportunities everywhere. He blames Vlad’s influence. “Man, imagine the downgrade from abomination incomplete-halfa to that. I’d never hear the end of it.” He huffs. “But that’s not the point. I’ve got four options off the top of my head here for you, pipsqueak. You listening?”

“Sure,” Danny closes his eyes, voice sounding worse than ever. “Whatever you want, crossroad demon.”

Dan rolls his eyes. “Alright, now I’ll repeat this as many times as you need, but I don’t know how much time you’ve got left like this so try not to tune me out.

“You can pick as many or as few of these ideas as you want. It’s your Fading, and I’m not going to step on your grave like that if you’re not asking me to. The catch is that you do have to choose what you want here. Following me so far?” Hopefully if he brushes over the point that Danny’s own deadline supersedes his incredibly flimsy threat, then he’ll forget about it or ideally not even notice it.

“Get to the point, Dan.”

Well, he’ll take that as a yes to his question. Who knows if noticed the motivational lie to choose at least something. Now for the hard part.

“The first is that I End you right here, right now. Mercy for you from me, after all that time you spent trying to get me to give it a try. A little ironic, I guess, but there you have it.

“The second is that I claim penance for you.”

“Penance.” One of Danny’s eyes squints open to look at him warily when he interrupts. “What’s that even supposed to mean?” A tiny flicker of liveliness. That’s a good sign.

“I was getting there, shortstack. I means I kill everyone who did you wrong and got you to Fade like this. I hunt the failure league, the GIW, hell I’ll fuck up the observants again for you. Give me a laundry list and I’ll get even for you on your behalf.”

Danny jerks his head back and opens his other eye to get a better look at him. “You mean that?”

“Absolutely, kid,” he growls out. “Honestly unless you ask me not to? I’ll be doing it anyway.”

“Oh,” Danny says quietly, voice steadier than it was a few moments ago, interestingly enough. Though still pretty painfully awful to listen to.

Dan gives him a few moments before continuing like they didn’t get emotional just then. “Third, I brute force your core back to stability long enough to get you to Frostbite. Allegedly. Honestly that one’s kind of fifty-fifty on whether or not I can pull it off.”

He pauses there, not really sure how to phrase his last idea. Danny catches his hesitance almost immediately.

“Changing your mind on option four? Or on patching me back together like some kind of zombie till you can threaten Frostbite.” He rasps.

“No, not anything like that. A zombie? Really? Patching up your core like a field medic does not make you suddenly a ghost zombie.” He sighs, not able to release the tension in his mind over the fourth option. He lets his head tilt back until it taps the wall quietly to stare at the ceiling. “I… don’t know that either of us will like it, but I guess…”

“Spit it out already, Dan. I’m living on borrowed time here remember?”

Right.

“The fourth option is I assimilate you.”

After being ignored by the Justice League for years and thought of as a scam Phantom finally faces an opponent he didn't win against and his city is destroyed, killing everyone. The monster is heavily wounded by Phantom however as it was a brutal fight for both of them

Danny is heartbroken and in shock while the Justice League face off against this threat and also lose. Eventually they get thier second wind and rematch it and kill the thing, but just barely.

Later a small memorial was held for Amity Park and Phantom was enraged at how small it was. 70,000 people died and this was it? Most of the people hear weren't even mourners. They were press and fake ghost enthusiasts trying to catch internet points for thier viewer count. He hears some redhead say that the people of Amity were scammers and this whole ghost thing was fake. With tears in his eyes he screams, not as Fenton but as Phantom, "I'm fake?!" He grabbed the man by his throat and flew a few feet into the air, "You think I'm fake?! Here! Let's see how fake I am!" His words were dripping venom as he possessed the man and laughed as he used him as a puppet, attacking the people around him with ectoblasts and sending them running away screaming.

Bruce Wayne watched on as some unknown Elderich entity possessed Wally West and began attacking people. So Amity Parks pleas for help as well as the pleas from thier supposedly fake superhero were not just part of an elaborate tourist trap.

Green lantern had some explaining to do. Hopefully it wasn't too late to salvage the situation and save this child.

It was.

[thatrandomsarahchick]

Oooh, imagine if Clockwork led and this wasn't the main timeline. Or it was, but CW had no plans to actually leave it in shambles like that.

He lets it play out long enough for Dan to assimilate Danny, turning him into a proper halfa again and helping him stabilise his mentality so he's only 1/3 evil Vlad now.

When he pulls Dan back into his lair and winds back time to before the big attack, he allows certain key members of the JL to keep their memories. They're familiar with timeline changes due to the Flash family debriefing them on what changes they remember after they accidentally change time again, so there's protocols in place for this.

The timeline gets wound back far enough that they have a few hours to prepare for the big bad, and they're watching and waiting, ready to step in.

Amity Park still hates and distrusts the JL, but they're thankful that they finally get around to repealing the anti-ecto acts. Any outside hero is still treated with scorn and harassed until they leave the town borders, though. Amity already has their heroes, they don't need Outsiders.

Plus, maybe Dan sneaks Danny into a viewing room next time he comes to see CW and shows him some highlights of what could have happened. CW plays clueless about the whole sneaking thing, as he knows that this is necessary for the last bit of Dan's rehabilitation.

Tucker makes Dan and Dani official identities after Dan unofficially adopts her, and they travel the world on Vlad's dime.

After being ignored by the Justice League for years and thought of as a scam Phantom finally faces an opponent he didn't win against and his city is destroyed, killing everyone. The monster is heavily wounded by Phantom however as it was a brutal fight for both of them

Danny is heartbroken and in shock while the Justice League face off against this threat and also lose. Eventually they get thier second wind and rematch it and kill the thing, but just barely.

Later a small memorial was held for Amity Park and Phantom was enraged at how small it was. 70,000 people died and this was it? Most of the people hear weren't even mourners. They were press and fake ghost enthusiasts trying to catch internet points for thier viewer count. He hears some redhead say that the people of Amity were scammers and this whole ghost thing was fake. With tears in his eyes he screams, not as Fenton but as Phantom, "I'm fake?!" He grabbed the man by his throat and flew a few feet into the air, "You think I'm fake?! Here! Let's see how fake I am!" His words were dripping venom as he possessed the man and laughed as he used him as a puppet, attacking the people around him with ectoblasts and sending them running away screaming.

Bruce Wayne watched on as some unknown Elderich entity possessed Wally West and began attacking people. So Amity Parks pleas for help as well as the pleas from thier supposedly fake superhero were not just part of an elaborate tourist trap.

Green lantern had some explaining to do. Hopefully it wasn't too late to salvage the situation and save this child.

It was.