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faebriel · 1 year ago

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and you caused it: chapter 3

(click for more detail!)

In which Niki has a terrible secret, Puffy just wants to move on, Tommy sneaks into casino parties and Wilbur learns to deal with anger being justified. Or - the one thing they don't warn you of, when dropping nuclear warheads on old friends, is fallout.

in chapter three: a prisoner goes free, niki and tommy try (and miserably fail) to get along, and some breaking and entering is committed. just out of curiosity, y'know.

wc: 5.2k

wilbur watches from phil's verandah, old coffee mug in hand, as the remaining syndicate spills from their houses. the world is a dull grey before dawn, as if the sun is loitering beneath the horizon until everyone is all saddled-up and kitted out in their armour and weapons.

not wilbur, though. of course.

"Why didn't you tell me about all this?" he asks Phil, question just as poised as it is nonchalant, as he emerges from the house. Just about gives Phil a bloody heart attack, is what it does. He thought Wilbur would still be asleep. "Top secret," he says. "You know how Techno's like." "What, Techno put all this together, then?" Phil pauses. "How'd you find out, anyway?" "Niki told me." Phil's eyebrows raise, and despite how the man clearly wants to ask more than that - his mouth opens, then he looks at Wilbur like he's just a kid again, and closes it - he just descends down the porch steps with the quiet clink of armour against armour. "Didn't think she'd do that," he mutters - more to the snow than anyone else, barely caught by Wilbur, as he heads towards the stables. And then, thrown over his shoulder - "and get some proper fucking sleep!"

if that was the plan, he wouldn't have made himself a fucking coffee, would he. but he decides to mollify phil for once by returning to bed, even if he spends more of his time casting glances between the ceiling and his communicator than watching the backs of his eyelids.

---

a few more hours of crisp morning, and somehow niki finds herself waiting around the arctic again.

it's not comfortable. the place is full of too many memories for her not to miss it, and even if the syndicate is out on their little mission, the thought that she might run into wilbur again is stressful. wobbuffet can sense her anxiety, and it's making her apprehensive too.

fortunately, it's not too long before she spies a small group returning from the greater smp, just over the horizon.

"Niki," Dream heralds her, extending a hand to shake. She supplies hers primly, and he shakes it with the same amount of delicacy - an amused huff behind his mask, but nothing else. "Long time no see, huh?" Not long enough. "Something like that," she agrees. "I apologise, I couldn't make the recovery myself. Some things came up." Her eyes slide over to Techno's, stony. He looks away, but keeps his mouth shut. Good. "I understand entirely," Dream replies, with a kind of curl in his voice that makes it sound like he's grinning behind that dish-mask of his. It makes her stomach turn, angry and roiling like the seas. "Could always make it up with a pastry or two, right?" It's clearly meant to be a joke, and Phil supplies an awkward laugh, but Niki still finds her fingers forming fists in the sleeves of her jacket before she remembers to titter politely. They leave thumbprints of flour behind, white on coffee brown. "I'm sorry," she says, sugar-sweet. "I haven't baked anything for a while now." "Ah, a shame," Dream says abashedly. The falseness oozes from him like tar, sticky and ill, seeping into the bones of everything he touches and turning it sickly. It curdles his tone, makes her blood boil beneath her skin. It's a damn wonder Phil and Techno keep a straight face. It's a damn wonder she didn't fully see it a year ago. Something acrid rises at the back of her throat - an old feeling, the kind of feeling she would have welcomed last winter when she was cold and dark and angry and bitter and that she should cast off now that she knows better. It overwhelms her senses, fills her mouth with the taste of blood and clings there. Sticky and metallic, lining the insides of her throat. She can't let it go. The words thrum beneath her skin, and for better or for worse, they're the same thoughts she had before TNT rained down on L'Manberg - she will not die, she will not lose a life for Tommy's sake at the hands of this man. "Well, you'd best be getting on your way," Techno says, ever blunt - and even as he hands Dream the reins to a horse, his eyes jut cautiously over to hers. "There's your debt repaid." "Alright, alright, I know when I'm not wanted," Dream laughs. Always with the jokes, this one, although these words have an edge to them - a challenge that he isn't powerful enough to assert. Not right now, at least. "I'll see you around, Techno. Take care." Sounds more like a threat than a goodbye, but Techno still lifts a hand in farewell as Dream gallops off into the distance. Not in the direction of the city, for now. Good. Techno then turns to her. "Reconsiderin'?" Niki shakes her head. He tilts his head away from hers in response - if he weren't wearing the mask she'd be able to figure out what he's thinking from the expression alone, but he won't be taking it off until Dream's long disappeared over the horizon. She'll be gone by then, too.

she's made her appearance, established her alibi. should be enough. she doesn't have much business left in the arctic - she moved most of her things by ender chest the day before, and the rest was... destroyed. techno, still awkwardly distant and standoffish, doesn't encourage her to linger. funny - for as proficient as he is in combat, even he seems to find the newfound crevasse between them difficult to traverse. she waits til she's certain dream is gone, gone away before she climbs back onto wobbuffet and heads towards the nether circuit.

---

that is day one.

more days pass, and with every one the city seems to get smaller. niki is caught in a kind of (hah) limbo - avoiding the distant shapes of other players on the surface, but unable to steer away from tommy, tubbo and michael's constant clatter in her city. (day two, she gathers more supplies - but paranoia trips at the back of her mind, because she's alone again alone again even in the endless noise of her own base, hated and feels like the forest has eyes on her, asking why so much spruce, nihachu? they need the charcoal to keep the torches and furnaces burning, to keep a small room warm for michael to sleep in.)

both tubbo and tommy are far too outdoorsy for this kind of captivity. tubbo's set himself loose on her spare materials, chests and chests stacked with stone and ores and redstone dust - in half an attempt to mollify him, niki's given him free reign over some of the less-used parts of the city for "improvements", whatever that means.

(the other half of that is an attempt to get back on his good side - he's stopped glaring at her so openly, ever since they left snowchester, though his pointedly cordiality is almost as bad.)

she's overheard him mutter about building some kind of rail line - whatever wood-and-metal contraption that's engulfed half of her storage rooms and the library space doesn't look like a rail line, but niki supposes that she's not the expert. he's already rigged a headache-inducing network of redstone and lamps through their farms, spitting out double the amount of wheat and potatoes that niki had managed to put together on her own. at least they won't go hungry. tubbo always makes a point to ask her permission before shoving another set of iron beams across a walkway and carving redstone tracks into the walls (where did that mischievous kid from l'manberg go, wrecking mostly-well-meaning (or at least, fun) chaos through their houses and their gardens? you would be lucky if he mentioned his plans for utilising your base as a dreamon-beacon or something, let alone if he asked first), but once she's given the go-ahead, he single-mindedly settles into refining all things productive in niki's city to a knife-edge.

sometimes she walks through these parts of the city, counting each new rung of iron and stone set into her walls. she realises she's missed an opportunity to do this with tubbo not hating her - missed any opportunity she had to invite tubbo to her city under normal pretenses. now it's locked away beneath the earth forever, and she doubts her friendship with tubbo will ever see the light of day again, either.

she misses ponk. she misses hbomb. she misses enough things already - she can't waste time missing things that never even happened.

tommy, on the other hand, is still climbing the walls. he has his little hobbies - he does a bit of sewing, a bit of embroidery, has even taken to baking experimental breads, but it's all clearly time-killing. whenever she comes back to the city he's always waiting at the foot of the stairwell, arms out to help her unload supplies and a million questions on his tongue. who did she see? did they see her come home? did she say hello to them? did she see wilbur? did she see ranboo? did she see - and for this part his voice always goes hushed, as if he might summon the man's presence just by saying his name) - did she see dream?

she saw ponk and hannah, she sure hopes they didn't see her come home, and no she didn't say hello to them, avoiding the cult - she didn't see wilbur, she didn't see ranboo, and no, she didn't see dream.

it doesn't even do much to ease his nerves - he's just as twitchy when she returns as he is when she leaves. she thinks he just can't help himself from asking. she remembers how quiet the server went after tommy's death, paths decked out in flowers and monuments, and thinks - well, she can't really blame him. being away from the beating life of the server is, for tommy, probably about the same as being left without air or water.

doesn't mean she doesn't start getting testy about it all, though.

particularly when he asks after techno, or phil, or wilbur.

it's been just over a week when, sleepless, niki finds herself prowling the city corridors. her plan is to wait the morning out in the library, but when she passed the beehive nook, she finds tommy awake and fidgeting with the flowers.

she can't just ignore him, and hopes a polite greeting will suffice - but when tommy looks up at her, startled by her approach, there's pure anxiety in his grey eyes. part of her still wants to turn her back - clamouring for time to herself, which feels so sparse when the city is live and awake with activity - but there's a more responsible, more nostalgic part of her that insists she stay.

niki resigns herself to a night amidst the flowers.

even she doesn't really know what she plans to achieve. back in l'manberg they all had night terrors from the war, she remembers that, but tommy almost always took them directly to wilbur, if tubbo even let him leave their bunks (clingy, tommy would joke, as if he wasn't just as bad). fundy was the one who would come to her, sometimes tubbo. wilbur had only deigned to tell her that he shared their nightmares at all in the last few months.

is this what all those awkward conversations of rehearsal was for? some shitty, third-act twist? somehow, she still feels unprepared. she still feels like she doesn't know her lines. she doesn't feel like talking, like breaking the nighttime peace that is so fucking rare these days. it's precious. she doesn't want to hand it over. haven't I handed over enough, some part of her thinks, whines - but if that were true she wouldn't be the only person sitting here, and she wouldn't have no one to comm as she waited awkwardly to see if Tommy will find his voice, and she might even have slept through the night. she would still have techno and wilbur and phil and ranboo and puffy and god, who else? so she tosses the thought out.

finally, tommy speaks.

“He’ll kill you, y’know,” Tommy says. There’s a grim, grey look on his face - not frowning, not spitting and cursing, just resigned. Limp. Playing dead. “If he finds out you let me stay here. He’ll kill you.” Niki huffs, absent-mindedly blowing a thick chunk of pink-blonde out of her face. Dream is - Dream is formidable, terrifying, powerful, and she knows that. She has seen him in battle, and it’s only ever been on the opposing side. But only from afar. Dream has never spared her a second glance - not even purposely overlooked, like Eret or Fundy, just passed over - and Niki doesn’t hate him for him, really, she hates him for the axes he holds and the TNT he palms off to her friends and that hollowed-out, horrible bliss in Wilbur’s eyes when he said Dream was his only friend. It could be anyone behind that mask, and to Niki, it wouldn’t particularly matter. The hatred she feels for him is direct, almost mechanical with how it just makes sense - she doesn’t burn with anger at him like she has at Wilbur. At Tommy. Well. She hasn’t. Tommy is trembling now, and Wilbur is somewhere out there with gunpowder on his hands again and that lost, empty look in his eyes that burns her up inside like kindling and makes her stomach turn. She tries not to let it show. “Tommy,” she says. She’s trying to be careful. “Dream doesn’t care about me. He wouldn’t track me down like that. He doesn’t care.” And to think, that’s a benefit for once? “Yeah, I know that,” Tommy says immediately, barrelling immediately past the implication that probably would offend a lot of people, and probably would offend Niki if it referred to anyone else - but Tommy stares dead ahead, unblinking. “He’ll kill you to teach me a lesson. Because I let you help me. Because of me.”

niki is a lot of things, but afraid of dream is not one of them - she struggles to comprehend tommy's fear. or, at least, the fear on her behalf. she can defend herself, no matter what tommy keeps babbling about revenge and consequences, and from across the broad crevasse of misunderstanding, his concern looks more like condescension. the more frustrated niki gets, the more stubborn she becomes - she rebuts tommy's warnings, half in an attempt to console him, and half because she simply doesn't believe they can be true. and on tommy's part, yet another instance of being brushed off about dream when he knows he is right the guy is just as infuriating - though god forbid either of them actually explain why they frustrate the other so fiercely. they don't fight outright, but the conversation sours into tired, bitter jabs.

"You don't listen," he scowls. "None of you fucking listen to me." Frustration crawls up Niki's throat, pulls fire into her tone. "I have listened to you, Tommy! For a long time! I listened well enough - before doomsday - " "Exactly!" He cuts her off, arms tightening around his knees. "What happened at doomsday? Exactly, eck-fucking-zactly what I said would happen - " "Do you honestly think that's what I cared about at the time, Tommy," Niki spits, righteous. "Do you think I just didn't know what I was doing? Just because I didn't like what you had to say, that doesn't mean I didn't listen to you." He doesn't say anything to that - instead, his face twists into a fierce, grumpy pout, and he angles his shoulder pointedly away from hers as he curses her out under his breath to a nearby bumblebee.

they part, after that - niki stalks off to the library to sulk, frustrated that tommy refuses to ever take her seriously. tommy refuses to budge from the bee nook, frustrated that niki refuses to ever take him seriously. and no one listens, and no one learns, and they keep spiraling down into bitter nosedives governed entirely by their own senses of guilt and burden and frustration, goodnight, the end.

well. not quite.

there's still a server running hot that exists outside the confines of the underground city, after all.

---

more days pass.

---

it has been just over three weeks since the casino exploded, and wilbur is starting to think that - once again - he might be losing his mind.

that's the clean way to name the incident, isn't it? it's been just over three weeks since the casino exploded, which means it's been just over three weeks since phil and techno broke dream out of prison, which means it's been just over three weeks since wilbur has spoken to niki or tommy or, fuck, even like, tubbo. even ranbus has buggered off to god-knows-where. his mind is an endless tumble-skip of well, you deserve it and god, so angry and why niki?

why niki?

the question grates at him. for the longest time, wilbur has taken niki's gentle trust as a fact of the universe - the sun rises and falls on a timer, unless an admin wills it so; water flows to the lowest point of land; witches never spawn in mushroom fields; niki is levelheaded and trustworthy and all the things wilbur is not.

it appears he may have made that last bit up.

it's disconcerting, upsetting, like the plane of land beneath his feet tipping on its side and his stomach twisting as he tries to get used to this new sense of gravity. for the long, broken line of his life, wilbur has trusted niki's judgement as so-called second to god. he built that pedestal so naturally that he didn't even recognise its existence. that even now, when its smashed so thoroughly into pieces, he struggles to pair the niki in his mind's eye to the woman raving excuses in the casino before its implosion, to the shaky woman spitting insults back at him over l'manberg's corpse. for the first time he sees himself in niki - unstable, pathetic and deranged all at once - and it is uncomfortable.

but even then -

niki fought beside him to reclaim manberg. they had shared that.

and though he paid it little attention at the time (the thing about limbo - plenty of free time to turn every living memory over in one's mind, like searching for bugs beneath upturned stones...) he recalls whispers of the plan she and eret had while the lot of them were split between manberg and pogtopia. TNT. it's a brutish and imprecise tool.

and he thinks of her fierceness. her determination, her drive, how she burns with feeling and lets it power her in a way that others can't bear the vulnerability to pull off - all things that he had basked in the glow of, and all things that can burn and scald and tear up the object of their hatred. the dim awareness that he had been that object, once - but it was niki, so of course that fire was righteous. he had accepted the blame without trouble.

but pointed towards something more valuable...

oh, niki.

Niki is... a loose canon. He rolls the sentence around in his head, lets it acclimate uncomfortably to its surroundings. It's the kind of thing Wilbur didn't really recognise, when he was alive - or at least, not without rose-tinted glasses. Niki is confident, but not brash. Emotional, but not violent. Perhaps she had seen him through that rosy gaze too, before his death. Now he knows better.

idly, he finds himself venturing towards niki's abandoned cabin - he's still living with phil at the moment, as quackity refuses to have him on las nevadas land (really refuses this time, makes their fun little playfights look like a fucking olive branch in hindsight), though he still gets a chill down his spine when he ventures further than the porch. anxiety, or something. in any case, neither phil or techno could bear to do anything with the cabin, and now it just sits there unused and unlit like a stark reminder against the glow-white of snowdrifts marking out the horizon.

(techno absolutely refuses to discuss whatever argument they had, actually, which means phil is not saying shit because of privacy. the two of them are as bad as each other when it comes to gossip - all too happy to listen in when it's someone else's turn on the rumour mill, and all too happy to keep their mouths clamped shut when it's theirs. when it's something either of them care about, at least. which says all it needed to about niki and techno before... well. he knew they were close, not best buds close.)

the door is unlocked. is that a surprise? he mulls the thought over as he enters, taking in the destruction. glass and flour and tipped-over flowerpots line the ground, forming an awful kind of texture beneath his boots. the place is doused in cold, as if someone had layered it in a thick, cool blanket. dust hangs in the air like snowflakes.

how strange to think that a few short weeks ago, he had laid upon this couch - warm and noisy as the two of them chatted away over baking and brewing. it's all gone cold and silent, now.

he takes in every abandoned detail that he can, soaks himself in this empty shell. the weapons rack against the back wall, littered with dull knives - the cheap, brittle ones, obviously, the ones that weren't worth taking. the kitchen bench, now cold and dusty. dying flowerbeds. glass carpeting the floor, crunching under his feet with every step. the bed is the worst part of it all, somehow - it's the least-destroyed thing in the room, quilts left stacked and forgotten. they look handmade.

it draws him over. he runs a hand over the weight of the quilt sitting at the top of the stack - it's heavy, good-quality wool, rich with colour. crocheted. someone put a lot of fucking time into it. when his hand trails the edge of it, he recognises the repeating pattern - teal and cream frame ringed-round eyes of ender, framing patches woven with pink, with green, with reds and blacks and whites and gold. he's seen the matching coats the four of them wear.

the syndicate, woven into something warm to sleep with. now it sits empty, abandoned, in the dust and debris of niki's cabin.

it's a distant, strange, uncomfortable. like watching a tragedy unfold before him - one that doesn't really concern him, for once, but is still faintly distressing. he snatches his hand back as if it's been burned, goes to walk past the bed, until his boot catches on some limp thing half-spilled across the floor and he deigns (big mistake) to look downward.

he doesn't recognise it, at first. funny. it was his first, after all.

the worn leather is cold and smooth beneath his fingers - picking the thing up feels like walking over his own grave, and it's only then that he sees the deep slashes in the back of the thing, and realises that really, he is. he reaches blindly into his memory, and come to think of it - he remembers niki wearing a coat like this, not that he'd thought much of it at the time. it must have just been similar was a simple refrain. and even then, if he pushes his memory further, there's a distant memory of a woman who could be niki amidst falling fire and rubble, tearing down a wooden path...

but that memory isn't his to recall, anyway.

she had this, the entire time. ever since - ever since i died. now abandoned too.

the sheer wave of feeling that overcomes wilbur is difficult to discern. there's sadness, even grief, nestled right next to that familiar, burning anger. there's the sense that he's fucked up something important again, although that's a thought he's simply deemed permanent for now, and then a part of him that screams righteous that he was right, he was right, traitors get what traitors deserve. there's something that could be a faint cousin of - impossibly - nostalgia, even staring down at the evidence of something so miserable.

and he misses niki.

perhaps he is of weak character. if he wasn't, he might not feel so compelled to reminisce.

his circling thoughts are cut off by the sound of his name, phil calling him from somewhere outside - wilbur sticks his head out of niki's doorframe to see him blustering through the snow. there's some hubbub in the distance as techno negotiates armour with carl.

you good? wilbur asks him.

for a moment, phil's eyes skirt knowingly past wilbur's, into niki's empty house - for fuck's sake, old man, he's not here to be picked apart - but fortunately, phil breezes past it.

did you get a comm from tommy? he asks instead.

no? no. is this a trend, now? is the rest of the SMP in some group comm that wilbur has not been invited to? he swallows the bitter feeling, although it still tastes like poison as it passes his gullet, and informs phil as much. phil looks less surprised, less knowing at that, but his expression doesn't lose any of its gravity.

alright, phil tells him. i'll tell you, 'cause i think you oughtta know, but you can't take this one all personally, wil - tommy's calling us for help, for some reason. and if he's doing that, then -

something must have happened.

(to call on phil and techno, of all people - no offence to them, but wilbur knows his brother, and he's a hell of a lot more observant than too many people refuse to give him credit for - )

something must be wrong.

---

the sun has just passed its noon peak when niki returns to her city. she loads her backpack with oak and iron ore and a few pumpkins she found wandering the overworld (a treat for michael, because god knows the kid deserves it and god knows the rest of them deserve a quiet night, for once), winds her way through the nether paths, steps out towards the winding staircase of her city.

immediately, she realises -

There is something wrong. It dawns on her, as she steps down the narrow staircase to the ravine - it’s dark, too dark. There is still a torch burning at the top of the staircase but the next is tipped over, kindling scattered over the floor, extinguished. The stone-carved steps descend into a thick darkness, the type of heavy black that she only finds deep, deep underground. Not in her city. (There are other signs, although she doesn’t notice them later - boot scuffs at the entryway, leaving marks in the grass that surrounds it, and a faint, clean smell of potions as she descends down the staircase.) Potions can't hide it all. Gunpowder pricks the space behind her nose, an arrow-bolt into Niki's heart - it ignites within seconds, propelling her flight down the tumbling staircase.

her city lies in ruins.

it is as if some grand, wild creature has torn through the place - entire walls of the city crumble, spilt into gravel and rubble and ash. gunpowder leaves scorch marks against the stone, marking out smudged, defiant bootprints. the beehive nook, the library, the bakery, her bedroom - she takes in the wreckage of the cavern with a heart that doesn't dare to beat and lungs that don't dare to take in breath.

the bridge is broken down before her feet, and numbly, she scrambles down to the well of the cavern - and from this new vantage point she can see her garden still smoldering, the flowers blackened and curling downwards towards kicked-open earth. the trees she so painfully grew beneath the dim torchlights are twisted and shelled-out, stark fingers that crumble to the ground without their leaves. her feet propel her forward without thought, and she rests a hand against its trunk - there's still scant flames licking at its insides, and she feels the heat grow beneath her palm. she can't move it, can't lift it away from the burning wood. she can't. it is as if she's frozen, shadows flickering beneath the flames and the broken lanterns and the kindling strewn carelessly across the floor, throat filled with the smell of gunpowder and sickly honey from the cracked-open beehives.

she can't breathe. she can't think. part of her can't believe what she's seeing even as the heat builds beneath her palm, even as she tastes gunpowder and blood on her tongue, even as she watches the blackened bark glow with embers.

another precious thing, gone. gone. every hour she poured into this place - making it safe, making it hers - is destroyed.

niki feels that she has been destroyed with it.

she should be angry. oh, she is angry - the feeling rushes in as soon as she puts a name to it, floods her veins with gasoline. she feels sickly and lit up with flames all at once, struggles to swallow around the ash in her throat. the silent screaming thrums through her blood, makes her skin itch. even so, it remains locked inside her mouth. she can't open it. she can't talk, because if she says a word, everything will spill - tar and fire and poison and blood.

tommy and tubbo emerge from the wreckage - tubbo pushing past niki to stand by the mouth of the staircase, a squalling michael shushed in his arms, as tommy and niki lock eyes.

this wasn't me, tommy says, immediate. niki, you - you have to believe me, it was dream - i swear, i swear on prime, on the discs, on tubbo, on fucking anything -

what happened, she asked. what - what happened here, tommy?

he tries to swallow, and almost chokes on his own spit - if niki thought she had seen tommy wound up before, well - she was naïve.

it was dream, he insists, dream found us, found this place, and he called to us and i heard the spark i heard the flint screech against the iron i heard the TNT ignite and -

“We hid,” his face falls into his hands, voice breaking into a hysterical laugh, “in the walls.”

niki is barely listening.

you humoured him, the voice in her head tells her. you stuck your neck out for tommy again, and now what? everything you fucking cared about is gone. everything is gone.

this is his fault. this has to be his fault.

the gasoline running alongside her blood shrieks for a match.

“Tommy,” she hears herself say. Her voice is tight. He flinches away, head bowed. “Please, just - go. Wait outside.” His face crumples. Something tugs distantly at her chest. “Niki, I - ” “I’m not - it’s not you, Tommy.” He needs to leave. She can’t hold onto her head for much longer. “I need to - I will catch up. Outside.” He doesn’t look convinced, still shying away from her like a spooked rabbit - but he leaves, he leaves, slinks off towards the staircase and leaves her alone in the wreckage.

niki waits until she hears their whispers fade, waits until the sound of their shoes scuffling against the staircase sinks into silence. she counts her breaths - in, out. in, out. each one deep, only mildly ragged.

it is only when she is entirely convinced that she is alone that she falls to her knees, like a puppet with its strings cut, and screams.

#my fics #and you caused it tag #my art #i dont really have much to say abt this one except fawking lord i am writing more of this from scratch than i expected i would have to #it's ok!! we are having fun!! i hope at least #oh yea and the syndicate have little matching capes if u go back to the character designs i drew like two yrs ago you can see they match lo #ive drawn niki in the same coat but havent ever posted her in it i think. sooo. launch ✨✨

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somnoir · 17 days ago

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Ghost KingConsort?

Prompt: Demon Twins AU where the ghost king is summoned and claims his appearance is that of his beloveds. Shenanigans of a vindictive dead twin.

Danyal Al Ghul escaped from the league. The Lazarus Pits were never merciful but for once, they were. The pits were merciful to him as the green swallowed him and spat him out miles away from that place.

Danny can't forget his first death, the sword in his gut as Damian cut through him. The title of heir was reserved for only one of them and the spare was no longer needed. He supposed it was yet another mercy upon him, knowing that the title of spare was not simple. He would have been Damian's spare—spare parts.

Danny remembers his second death. The electricity that killed him over and over again as the ectoplasm spilled from the artificial portal brought him back to life again and again. One second he was dead, the other he was being revived. It was torturous in every way possible.

It's been years since then. His parents were a difficult case, unable to accept that their darling child had died and continued to believe that Danny was being possessed by the menace Phantom. They hunted him, tried to rip him apart to 'free' their son. It took both himself and Jazz leaving with the help of Vlad (reluctantly accepted) for his parents to stop hunting. Their home that had already felt empty was even more empty now.

It's been almost four years since then. Danny had settled into his role as Ghost King, even when the crown of fire floated over his head then descended to be too big, too much—resting around his neck.

It's... Difficult...

CUT TO THE JUSTICE LEAGUE SUMMONING HIM!

Danny Fenton, nineteen and very much overworked from all the paperwork he had to sort through as Ghost King, finds a small tugging to his very being. A summoning he recognized, sighing loudly before he's answer to this visible desperation. Like it was a world ending issue.

And yes, it apparently was when the fabric of reality itself was tearing itself apart for some strange reason. As the ruler of the infinite realms—the king of the very domain that basically glued the multiverse—this was apparently the right call.

Dressed in all of his kingly regalia, Danny felt the crown of fire float up from his neck and burned over his head. His cape, cloak—whatever—was heavy and he blinked, green eyes boring into every soul present. He recognized the fractured soul of the laughing magician—one of his more irksome subjects that avoided taxes like it was the fucking plague. He really should tell Skulker to haunt his grandfather. Maybe even Youngblood would be suitable.

But aside from the laughing magician, his eyes settled upon a familiar soul, a familiar face. Danny blinks again.

Shit... He thought, staring at the masked yet horrified face of his own twin. Robin was nineteen as well by now, older, stronger—redeemed.

In the past, Danny would have cursed Damian to the seven hells and allowed the seven sins to have a bite. But Jazz was blessing. An older sister who made sure to heal him, to let him grow, to let him develop. He's forgiven Damian for his faults. They were children, brainwashed by a mad man. He's not too angry. Resentful and a bit vindictive? That was a given as he technically was the spirit of a murder victim. Of kinslaying.

"Hellblazer." The language spoken by the dead leaves his mouth easily. It can't be understood by the living, and it was barely understood who came back from death. But John Constantine was a different, more difficult case. One hell of a motherfucker that avoided death until the entity itself was ranting to both Clockwork and Danny about his escapes.

And John Constantine recognized his title regardless of the language.

The sad man in a trench coat stiffened, staring at Danny as he stiffly bowed. "High King Phantom." He greets, and attempt at respect. When there was suddenly movement, Constantine was quick to hiss at the others—glaring at Robin who looked ready lunge at them.

Oh, he can't help himself. This was funny. In the words of his own counterpart turned brother—He could make it worse. Jazz was going to nag him, true, but Danny was so. Utterly. BORED. Being Ghost King had a lot of entertainment, like how he got to fight people and basically hang out with people from the past. But it got... Repetitive. Normal Ghosts wouldn't mind with their eternal afterlife, but Danny was still half-alive. He was completely human—just a half dead one.

"Your majesty—" Constantine struggled to explain, "The universe... Do you know why portals have been opening, your majesty? Forgive my impudence but our world has been plagued by portals from different worlds, some even lead to the infinite realm."

"It's not uncommon for natural portals to the realms to open. Many of your dead like to visit." He smirked, "Many like to haunt those who've wronged them."

Constantine gulped, "Your majesty, would you, by any chance, be aware of why these portals are opening?"

Danny sighed. Well, he can't say he wasn't concerned. This was his world too after all, even when now. It was Jazz's world, where she still went to school, it was Sam and Tucker's world. It was his family's world. So yes, he is concerned.

"The portals to the realms are under my jurisdiction. They are natural and open in my places with thick and ambient ectoplasm." Danny drawls, "But these dimensional portals are strange. I'll check in with the Master of Time to see if someone is meddling with reality. It may not even be from your dimension."

He can only shrug at that, remembering how Dan had practically ripped through time with his madness and rage, tearing through the world to ensure his birth.

"I see, thank you for your understanding, your majesty." Constantine nervously says.

"Say, would you like to watch the battle royale for your soul?"

"Excuse me?"

"You're excused, magician." Danny rolls his eyes, "But you'd certainly enjoy watching people tear each other to shreds for your fucked up soul. I don't understand why people want it so much when the paperwork it comes with is a hell in itself."

"Your majesty," Constantine paled.

"I'm joking. I'll deal with this as quickly as possible." Danny paused, grinning as he made a show of offering his hand to the justice league. "I couldn't possible sit by and allow my beloved's world to crumble. He'd be devastated."

Constantine blinked. Everyone blinked. And then Danny turned to Damian and... Batman. Bruce Wayne. His father. At least he seemed to be treating Damian better than Jack did with Danny and Jazz.

"You must have recognized this face, yes?" Danny tilted his head. "You are his family."

"What have you done to my brother?" Robin—Damian immediately growled, like a feral cat as he unsheathed his katanas and aimed for Danny.

"Hm." Danny rolled his eyes, "He's well. Very much taken care of." Because yes, Danny was well fed and taken care of, especially as the Ghost King. "I've taken his form so I assumed you knew of him."

He dismissed Robin long before he could even speak, turning to Constantine once again. "Don't fret too much, John Constantine." The man in question flinched once his name was uttered in the language of the dead he could barely understand. "This will be fixed in a days time. If not, I will send someone to deal with it."

The Ghost King's appearance had been startling when they summoned him. A boy with a striking resemblance to Damian if not for his white hair. A twin? Bruce had sounded devastated at the implications. But Damian? He'd seen the ghost king and felt nauseous, unable to tear his eyes away from the eldritch being that wore his brother's face.

It took a lot of explaining once they were back in the cave. The duel, Danyal's death, the Lazarus taking him and he was never seen again. Everyone was... Well, they were devastated. Yes. Grieving a son and brother they never met. But the Ghost King has been summoned with a face similar to that of their father's, a face that was the exact same one to their brothers. The Ghost King who referred to the dead Danyal as his beloved.

It's the next day when they're back in the watchtower, anxiously waiting for any update. Constantine continues to curse under his breath, shaking his head before a portal rips through reality. Everyone stiffened, preparing for the worst.

A girl appears, a child. She's a spry little thing with glowing green eyes, flaming white hair, and a face that they immediately recognized.

"Sorry that I'm late! Times pretty bendy and we don't really keep up with it." The unknown laughs, "Well, short answer, Phantom has identified the problem and has attempted to apprehend it. Unfortunately, it's been a week on our end and the perp apparently fell into your world."

Time distortion—Constantine had mentioned it. But they stare at the girl who rambled about their supposed target until Batman cleared his throat, seemingly softer on the girl—someone who was visibly a child.

"Young lady, welcome to the Watchtower. Even id the greeting it late." Batman curtly yet gently says. "May I know your name?"

The girl blinked. "Oh! You can call me Specter, princess of the infinite realms! I'm Phantom and Danny's daughter."

It is then that the possibilities processes in their heads.

One. The Ghost King took the form of his beloved, aka the dead twin brother of one Damian Wayne.

Two. Damian's dead twin and Bruce's dead son might be the queen (consort?) of the infinite realms.

Three. Danyal and Phantom had a daughter. Damian and the rest of the Bar kids were uncles and aunts. Bruce was now officially a grandpa.

Damian faints on the spot.

#dpxdc #danny phantom #batfam #danny fenton #crossover #dc x dp #damian wayne #damian and danny are twins #nightwing #batman #Elle is going to fucking bother her uncle/brother as much as possible #Danny is a petty bastard #Batman might just kill himself #hes a GRANDPA ALFRED! A GRANDPA!

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