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xysidhequeen · 2 years ago

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The King and his Red Knight

Part 2

Jason snuck glances out of his peripherals at the strange...man? Teen? Alien? Hero? Villain? Demon? Eldritch abomination here to consume his soul? As he devoured his sixth chili dog. Luckily the... Danny had gotten enough chili dogs to feed a small army because apparently coming back from the goddamn dead worked up an appetite. Danny was matching his pace for eating, soon they'd put a speedster to shame with the sheer amount of calories they were intaking. Jason didn't care, he'd just been dead he'd eat himself into a food coma if he liked, fuck you very much.

This night had been...weird. On a scale from 'Dick dancing in his undies down the hall to I Need A Hero' to 'Gotham assuming it was just a natural eventuality for Batman to become a cannibal' this was definitely at 'Alfred dancing to the macarena because it was Jason's first birthday at the manor and he begged' which was to say, weird as shit but oddly enough not the weirdest thing to happen to him. Which really said something about life as a teenage vigilante when dying and coming back to life and being saved? By an eldritch demon teenager wasn't his #1 weirdest thing to happen to him. Top 5 though, for damn sure.

Danny hadn't said much in way of an explanation for... anything at all since the cemetary when he'd filled Jason with that glowing green shit. It couldn't be bad though, because Jason had never felt better. He definitely didn't feel like he'd just been dead, even if he knew his heart was beating far too slowly to be healthy and breathing suddenly felt optional. But 10/10 would let a strange eldritch being give him a shot of green soul expresso again.

Once Jason had agreed to 'talk' to Danny the older teen had grabbed him, again, and really did the other boy have no concept of personal space? Jason had been ready to, forcibly, introduce him to the idea when Danny had picked him up, as if he weighed absolutely fucking nothing, and then zipped off into the night. Jason had been too stunned, and secretly amazed, by the experience to complain at that point.

It wasn't the first time he'd flown by super-proxy, but never before had he felt like gravity...simply didn't apply. He'd been shaken from his shock by Danny asking him the directions to the best chilidog stand in 'this starless smog ridden city', which, accurate, but rude. This was Jason's starless smog ridden city and it might be a shithole but it was his shithole thank you very fucking much. But Jason had to play GPS for whatever odd definitely not human being had decided to inprint on him and hadn't had a chance to say that.

Jason knew, intellectually, that he should be far more wary of Danny than he was. His Bat training should've had him sucker punching the man as soon as his guard lowered and getting the hell away. But while he knew he should, Jason really didnt... want to. Danny, despite being a complete unknown felt... safe to Jason. In a way few people ever did.

Even Bruce didn't radiate the same Calm/Safe/Protected feeling Danny did. And for a kid who had spent the majority of his life feeling anything but those things, Jason would admit he didn't want to let go of the sensation any time soon. Danny had also saved him from having to dig himself out of his own grave and quite probably saved his life, so sucker punching him would be a poor way to repay him and Alfred had taught him better than that.

There was also the issue of... Jason didn't have anywhere else to go, if he ran from Danny. The thought of returning to the manor, to Bruce, to the man who had looked at him and seen a killer rather than believing the words of the son he claimed to love, who had taken Robin from him, who had left him to die. Who hadn't saved him. It... he couldn't. Not now. Not when the memories of how he had ended up in the coffin were too fresh. Maybe... one day, when the very thought of the man he'd called dad didn't make something twist and ache and burn inside of him.

"So." Danny spoke up as he finished what was probably his tenth chili dog, both of them having eaten their way through the entire supply Danny had bought during Jason's musings. Which had been an experience as Jason hadn't realized demon eldritch teens kept Earth currency on them, but hey, you learn new shit every day.

Jason turned his head to look at the man, his savior. They were sitting on a rooftop for lack of any other private area to talk and eat this late at night. Though Jason was the only one sitting on the rooftop, Danny was just floating above it, occasionally flipping upside down, truly as if gravity meant nothing to him.

"I'm sure you have a lot of questions for me. Sadly I left my 'Congratulations, you're part of a very exclusive race of beings, current population: 4. Here's what that means' PowerPoint at home. And truthfully, I've never had to explain to another halfa what it means to be a halfa before. So it might be easiest if you ask me questions and I answer." Danny said, smiling a bit bashfully as he rubbed a clawed hand at his neck with a shrug.

Jason took a moment to regard the other teen. Danny truly only looked a couple years older than him, probably Dick's age, and Jason suddenly had the feeling Danny was as lost and unsure as he was. It was comforting, and certainly helped tip the scales in Jason's mind away from 'probably a villain or evil entity' because Danny's appearance did not lend one towards thinking 'hero' at first glance. For all he wore a reinforced suit reminiscent of a hero costume complete with a stylized logo on it. His unearthly white hair that floated around his head as if he was underwater, his luminescent green eyes that looked poisonous, his claw tipped hands, fanged too-wide smile, sharply pointed ears and slightly green tinged skin all looked a little too menacing to make on assume 'yup thats a hero'.

"Why were you at the cemetary, at my grave?" Jason asked his first question, the one that had been rattling in his head since the panic and confusion had faded.

"Ah that's an easy one. My mentor, Clockwork, he likes to send me to places and times where I need to intervene to 'protect the timestream'. He dropped me off on top of your grave and told me to wait. So I did." Danny responded with a shrug and a 'what can you do?' smile, as if his answer didn't spawn more questions than it answered. Jason would get to those later.

"What did you do to me?" Jason asked next, keeping himself on track. Bruce had trained him for interrogations, and he'd make use of those skills now, when he was in desperate need of information with a source in front of him ready to spill.

"I saved your life. In a way, but I also sort of killed you?" Danny said, waving his hand in a 'so-so' motion as he grimaced. Jason raised his brow, because what the fuck. He knew that statement should send him into a panic but the longer he spent around Danny the harder it was to get upset, the calm the older teen radiated for him kept him relaxed, which was also a concern.

"Ah, yeah, that sounded bad, didn't it?" Danny asked with a wry chuckle.

"It really fucking did." Jason said, voice deadpan.

"So basically, you weren't really fully alive when you came back. I think you were in the process of becoming a ghost. Had you continued accumulating ambient ecotoplasm for about another year or so, you would've risen as one. But you didn't. For whatever reason, and however the fuck, you accumulated enough ectoplasm to fix your body and 'restart' it." Danny explained, leaning forward, green eyes sparkling as he fell into explaining something that made abso-fucking-lutely no sense to Jason. Ghosts? Ectoplasm? More questions for the ever growing list.

"But your body was dead, you were dead. And death does not like to release her hold on her children so easily to life. So when you came back prematurely and in your body to boot, your body was trying desperately to make a core. The only thing that can give the dead an existence. But cores need ectoplasm to form, and a lot of it to sustain a human body on top of it. There simply wasn't enough ambient ectoplasm around to fuel it and your body was eating itself to fuel the creation. It would've killed you in minutes, left you a vegetable, had you not gotten a massive dose of ectoplasm. So I gave you what you needed. You now have a core, which will sustain your human body and ghost half for as long as it remains whole. So you're now both alive, and dead. Or a halfa as we're referred to in the Infinite Realms." Danny said, doing little jazz hands and shooting off tiny blasts of green energy from his palms like mini fireworks.

"Congratulations on becoming effectively immortal!" Danny finished as Jason blinked owlishly at him. He was fairly certain he'd heard every word Danny said but he understood maybe... 65% of that speech.

"So let me see if I have this right." Jason said slowly as Danny nodded.

"I was dead." Jason stopped and looked at Danny for confirmation. The older teen seemed content with letting Jason parrot back his words and he smiled and nodded.

"I came back to life but not exactly. I needed some ecto-bullshit but didn't have enough of it?" Jason continued.

"Ectoplasm. It's like blood, food, and coffee all in one for ghosts and the ghostly adjacent." Danny clarified, and Jason hummed in acknowledgment.

"You gave me a shot of the soul expresso, and turned me into a... lich?" Jason finished, voice distinctly high.

"Oh, Ancients no. We are not lichs. A halfa is half human, half ghost. The perfect balance between life and death, a child of both. No decaying bodies and penchants for raising skeletal armies here." Danny hastened to correct, hands waving in front of him as he obviously sought to calm Jason.

"Well... I mean unless you're Vlad but he's a fruit loop." Danny muttered, frowning slightly before shaking his head, "but we won't talk about him right now." He finished and Jason... was going to leave that the fuck alone.

"And you're... like me?" Jason asked, voice returning to a normal register as the calm Danny radiated soothed the panic he'd experienced over possibly being a lich.

"Yeah, all it took was enough electricity to short out a city block and a portal to another realm opening through me and boom! Instant halfa!" Danny said with a grin as he raised his left arm, the white glove on it vanishing to reveal a clawed hand covered in glowing green lichtenburg scars that disappeared under the black of his suit. Jason wondered how far they went.

The glove rematerialized as Danny put his hand down, still grinning as if he hadn't just described a painful and torturous way to die. Was a lackadaisical attitude towards one's own death a Ghost thing or a Danny thing? Then again, Jason had no idea how long Danny had been a halfa, for all he looked barely legal. Jason didn't know how many years it would take for him to joke about his death. He pushed memories of bones breaking, maniacal laughter and burning pain with a last thought of 'he didn't come' down.

"What...do I do now?" Jason asked, the words coming out as a surprise to him. Perhaps spurred by thoughts of his own death. Jason had so many other questions he wanted to ask, but none felt as important as that one. What was he going to do with this second chance? Where would he go?

"Well," Danny started, grin fading and face going solemn as he lowered his floating body closer to the roof and closer to Jason, but not within his personal space. So he did know the meaning of it.

"You can come with me, back to the Infinite Realms. Me and my mentors and court can help you get used to your new abilities, your new existence, safely. Being a halfa, it's not easy. Especially if you do it on your own. But you don't have to be alone, if you don't want to be. If you want to stay here, that's fine. I can check in on you and help you adjust. But in the Infinity Realms, you'll be surrounded by people who understand what you're going through, who can guide and train you. And once you have a handle on your new existence, we can help you do whatever you want." Danny offered, voice infinitely gentle and soft as he looked at Jason with green eyes that seemed to gaze into his very soul and saw something in it that resonated with him. Something that made Danny smile a soft, kind, understanding smile that spoke of a deep empathy, of a knowing. As if he'd been right where Jason was. Confused, his world suddenly turned upside down and leaving him lost at sea. Danny stretched out a hand, an offering of guidance, of companionship, of aid and judgment free acceptance, of a home where he would belong.

For a moment Jason was reminded of a night not unlike this one where a street rat crouched by the tires of a superheroes car and was offered a similar choice, a similar chance.

Jason had a feeling this offer would be different though. He had a feeling if he took Danny's hand there would be no judgement darkening those viridian eyes. No doubt marring the promises he spoke. No backs callously turned on him when he needed a warm embrace the most. Somehow, he knew with a bone deep certainty that resonated in some new part of him, that once Danny decided someone was 'his' there was no power in this world or the next that could ever change that or shake his faith.

He had a feeling if he took Danny's hand there would never again be a 'too late' or 'he didn't come'. He'd never be allowed to fall if he took the hand held out to him, his wings clipped too early.

The choice was an easy one to make. The choice between solitude and loneliness, stuck in a city, in a world that had left him to die, alone, broken and bleeding. Or to take the offer of freely given aid and belonging. Even without the feeling inside of him pushing, begging him to grasp onto Danny and follow him wherever he led.

"I'll go with you." Jason said, grasping on to Danny's clawed hand tightly, with all the desperation of a child who'd been abandoned far too many times. Danny smiled at him, all sharp teeth and a bit too wide for comfort but so filled with happiness, and relief and understanding and belonging that Jason couldn't help returning the smile.

"Let's go home then." Danny said and reached out his free hand, dragging a claw through the air and leaving a swirling portal of green in its wake. Jason barely had time to take a breath before Danny tugged him through, and they left Gotham behind, nothing but a fading memory of green light and abandoned chilidog containers to mark their passing.

~~~~~

@alinmenttreasure tagged so you can find the second post

"Go here, Danny. Go then, Danny. Go to a random cemetery in the middle of the night for no reason, Danny." A voice grumbled, accompanied by the sound of sneakers rhythmically tapping stone.

Danny Fenton, currently Phantom, sat on a gravestone, his white hair a beacon in the dark night. There were no stars in the sky for him to gaze upon, their light hidden behind swaths of smog and neon lights playing off the gray clouds.

Clockwork had dumped him here, with no explanation for why. Not that he ever really explained much when he sent Danny off on his tasks. He supposed he should be grateful, at least he was in the same when rather than being transported a thousand years into the past.

"Wait here King Phantom. You will understand in time." Danny mimicked his mentor's voice as he let himself float off the grave he'd been dumped on after Clockwork shoved him out of a portal. His body floated higher until he could flip around, his legs crossing. He sat upside down, his chin in his palm as he glared petulantly at the assembled gravestones surrounding him, his toxic green eyes glowing.

"So far all I've seen is a concerning amount of ecotplasm for a city without a ghost portal and some blob ghosts! How long am I supposed to wait here?" Danny asked the air, and the aforementioned blob ghosts who were hanging off his body, soaking in the ambient ecotoplasm he radiated at all times now.

Neither provided him with an answer to his question and Danny let out a frustrated groan as he lowered his still flipped body to look once more on the gravestone he'd been tasked with waiting on.

Jason Todd, the name read. The dates, too close together, made something in Danny squeeze painfully. He'd been young, barely older than Danny when he stepped into the portal. Only for this teenager there had been no ectoplasm to bind to his dying body and repair the damage of death and force him back into a semblance of life.

"Who were you and why did Clockwork send me to you?" Danny asked the gravestone, one clawed finger tracing the words before he pulled back with a sigh when the gravestone gave him no explanation. The dead didn't always speak, not even to their king.

Turning his body Danny looked over the rest of the cemetery. It was empty, as most usually were this time of night, of the living. There were a few shades wandering around, circling closer to him, drawn by his presence. No full ghosts though, but oddly enough there rarely were in cemeteries. This was where the dead came to rest. To remember, if they wanted to. Cemeteries were sacred spaces to the dead, much as a temple or a church would be for the living who were religious. Ghosts who still clung to life, to their obsessions, did not frequent cemeteries, did not dare trespass and disturb those who had already found their peace.

Danny himself was an oddity. He had never shied from cemeteries, enjoying the peace he found in them, the guarantee of safety offered. And perhaps, he mourned that he himself would never have a gravestone for the living to place their flowers and their tears at. Who would make a grave for someone who was both alive and dead? There would never be a body to bury for him. His human half would continue to live on so long as his ghost core remained and could fuel it.

Maybe that was why he found peace in cemeteries, for all his whining that Clockwork had dumped him here. Cemeteries were for the living and the dead, one of the only places both existed in harmony naturally. For someone who was as much dead as he was alive such a place held a certain degree of belonging for him.

Danny straightened out in the air, letting his body lie above the grave as he folded his arms behind his head and looked up at the covered sky. He complained and whined about this task, but he was secretly glad that Clockwork had given him something to do. Even if it was just 'hang out in a random cemetary'.

Ever since he'd graduated high-school, revealed himself to his parents and discovered how deep prejudice and hate could run, and he'd run away to the Infinite Realms for sanctuary while his friends moved forward with their lives, he'd felt unmoored. A ghost with no haunt. Bored was too light a word for the gaping emptiness he felt in his chest, for the loneliness clawing at him. Clockwork, Wulf, Pandora they could help chip at the ache inside of him but not banish it. Not now that his family, his friends, were spread so far apart and so distant from him.

Not that he resented their choices, their distance, in fact he'd fought for them to do just that, to get out of Amity Park, to go to college, to become more than overworked teen superheroes. Still he missed them, even if he could visit them whenever he wanted. It was becoming clear as time moved forward that the world they belonged to and the one he did were two different things.

Danny Fenton couldn't go to college when his parents had declared him dead. Danny Fenton didn't exist as far as the government was concerned. Danny Phantom couldn't return to Amity when those same parents were waiting to capture him and tear him apart 'molecule by molecule'. Danny Phantom couldn't go back when the GIW were crawling over the town like ants.

So neither Danny Fenton or Danny Phantom returned to Amity after that day. And he made sure they couldnt follow him when he ensured the portal that took his life to function never opened again. He didn't need the portal any longer to get in and out of the Infinite Realms, and it was safer for the ghosts, his subjects, if the temptation of the Fenton portal was gone.

The world of the living was not yet ready to accept that the dead didn't always stay dead. And Danny would keep his people safe until they were.

Danny jolted from his lazing state of reverie when a pulse of emotion rocked through him, the strength of it stealing his breath if he had any to take.

Fear/Trapped/Dark/Fear/Help/HELP pounded into him and Danny frantically flipped around, head swiveling, poisonous green eyes wide as he triedf to locate the source. The emotions, the plea for help, burned his core, his Obsession screamed at him.

Help/SomeonePlease/Dark/Trapped/CANTBREATHE/HELP another wave of messages, of emotions pushed themselves at Danny and this time underneath the onslaught he could hear a rhythmic thudding. Danny looked down, horror filling him when he realized the thudding was coming from under the ground. From the grave he'd been hovering over for an hour now.

Danny flew down, sending back a wave of I'mHere/HelpIsComing/I'mComing to the boy trapped in his own coffin, feeling the intense wave of relief and hope sent back before he dived into the earth as if it wasn't there. Danny paused for a moment when he passed the thick wooden coffin, seeing a boy in the dark with wide, panicked blue eyes and fingers tipped with shredded nails and fresh blood.

"Hey, I'm going to get you out of here, okay?" Danny told the boy, keeping his voice gentle, soft. The boy jolted, fixating on the only source of light, Danny's growing green eyes. Danny hoped his smile came off as calming instead of 'freaky AF' as Tucker liked to call it. He grabbed the boy, Jason, as carefully as he could and then let his intangibility wash over the terrified teen as he lifted them both out of the coffin.

When they emerged from the coffin and the ground Danny set the teen down, leaning him against the gravestone, his own gravestone, and pulled back a bit. The boy was gasping in air as if the fetid, polluted air was the sweetest thing he'd ever tasted.

Danny tilted his head as he watched the boy ground himself. Now that the emotions were leveling out and his Obsession was purring in contentment rather than growling in a frenzy, Danny could feel something off about the boy.

Disregarding the fact that he'd just come back from the dead, of course. But that wasn't the oddest thing Danny had seen in his afterlife. No the boy felt... not like a normal, living human. Not even like an Amity Park resident, who all felt more than slightly liminal. No this boy, this Jason Todd, felt closer to liminal than even Jazz, Tucker or Sam, who were three of the most liminal humans Danny had ever been around.

Jason felt almost...like a ghost. But not. Danny could feel the tickle in his throat that proceeded his ghost sense but the tell-tale mist never emerged. It was as if Jason was...like him. But Danny couldn't sense a core either. Even halfas had cores.

"Who are you?" Jason spoke, breaking Danny from his thoughts and examination. Jason was looking at him with a mix of gratitude and suspicion. Which, fair. Danny had just pulled him from his own coffin and there were so many questions that could stem from all of this, disregarding all the weirdness that was just Danny himself.

"I'm Danny, Danny Phantom. Or just Phantom. I go by either. And you're Jason, right?" Danny asked, smiling at the teen and oops, yeah that was definitely his scary smile based on the slight flinch there. It wasn't his fault his teeth were too sharp now and his lips split a bit too wide.

"How did you know that?" Jason asked, blue eyes narrowing. Danny nodded at the gravestone the boy was leaning against with a raised brow. Jason turned and almost toppled over from the movement. Danny frowned as the boy caught himself on his gravestone. His skin was still pale, too pale, and as Danny watched Jason swayed again.

"Shit. You're fading. You didn't form a core and your body isn't stabilizing." Danny cursed, moving towards the boy who scrambled back, only to be stopped by his grave.

"What the hell are you doing?" Jason asked, hands fisting as he tried to rise only to fall back to the ground when his legs refused to hold his weight.

"Saving your life. The dead aren't supposed to come back. There's always a price to pay, a balance that is struck. Currently, as you are, if I don't get enough ectoplasm in you to form your core, you'll fade and turn into a brain-dead husk." Danny told Jason, tone stern and no nonsense as he grabbed him. Jason made an effort to break free, but it was weak, and even at full strength, he wouldn’t have been able to break Danny's hold. Few in this realm could.

If they had the time, Danny would've approached this situation in a far different manner, but this close he could hear Jason's heartbeat, a weak flutter in his chest, skipping beats as it tried to fuel a body that was past saving. Jason didn't have the time for Danny to approach this gently and kindly, to coax trust out of the teen like he would a feral cat.

Jason had minutes left before his ectoplasm starved body consumed itself trying to make a core and failed because while wherever they were had more ambient ectoplasm than most places, it was far from enough to sustain the birth of a halfa. Maybe if Jason had stayed dead for another year, he'd have naturally formed a core and risen as a proper ghost. But that wasn't what happened, somehow he'd gathered enough to fix his body of whatever wounds or illness had put him in that coffin to begin with and come back to 'life' but without a core to sustain his body he'd be dead, again, in minutes. And Danny was not about to watch while a teenager, another teenager, died.

"How do I know I can trust you?" Jason hissed as Danny pushed his arms down and laid his clawed hands on Jason's chest.

"You don't. But you don't have another choice." Danny said with a shrug. "Now are you going to let me save your life or not?" Danny asked, not moving his hands. He'd save Jason either way but this would be easier if Jason worked with him.

"Fine." Jason spat and Danny smirked as his hands began to glow a toxic green that matched his eyes.

Ectoplasm pooled out of his hands and rushed into Jason, filling him until the boy glowed bright enough to rival the neon lights of the city around them. The green light flared around him like an aura, slowly shrinking but getting impossibly brighter as the glow centralized around his chest until a small glowing ball of green, like a trapped star, blazed from his chest.

Jason gasped, back arching as Danny pulled his hands away and the light vanished under Jason's skin. For a moment Jason's blue eyes burned green and his hair flashed snow white before returning to black, with one single lock of unearthly white left above his forehead. Jason collapsed back against his grave, chest heaving. Danny watched, eyes full of a sad understanding.

"What the fuck was that?" Jason panted out.

"Welcome to the world of the half alive, half dead." Danny said with a smile. "Want to get a burger and talk about it?" He asked, standing up and dusting off his hands.

"Make it a chili dog and you've got a deal."

~~~~~

Fixed some typos added some lines

Maybe I'll continue this AU. Maybe not. This scene was in my head for days and I wanted to share