#superpham au

[such-expensive-mistakes]

Superpham AU (part 4)

Original prompt + parts 1-3

Masterpost

-----

It's not the most awkward dinner Lois has ever had, but only because she's dined with literal supervillains before.  

Danny is poking at his Mongolian beef with his fork more than he's actually eating it.  Lois can hardly blame him; it’s been a difficult few days for her and she’s not the one who just landed in a different dimension from the one she grew up in.  But Danny certainly isn’t up to keeping conversation going.

Jon is making a valiant effort, but he seems distracted.  He keeps shooting looks at Lois and Clark when he thinks they’re not looking, and while he recounts everything he and Damian got up to (not too much trouble, thankfully, although that wasn’t saying much), he’s less enthusiastic than he would normally be.  

Clark keeps shooting Jon worried looks when he thinks Jon isn’t looking.  Lois will have to ask him how that conversation went; it seems like it was rough on both of them. 

Eventually, even Jon runs out of things to say, and the four of them sit around the table, eating their Chinese takeout in silence.  

“So, Danny,” Lois finally says.  “I don’t know how the dimension you grew up in differs from this one, but if you have any questions about anything, please ask one of us.”

“It’s not that different,” Danny says.  “I mean, it is in some ways, but it’s still Earth, you know?”

Lois isn’t entirely certain she does, but this doesn’t seem to be the time to ask.  Maybe when things are less fresh.

Jon has no such compunctions.  “What’s the biggest difference?” 

Danny looks thoughtful.  “You guys have a lot of superheroes here,” he finally says.

“What kind of superheroes did your other world have?” Jon asks eagerly.  

“We mostly didn’t,” Danny says.  “I mean, I guess Phantom kind of counts.  But that’s it.”

“That’s it?” Jon is clearly flabbergasted by this.  Lois fights a smile, and she can see Clark doing the same thing.  Jon has never known a world without the Justice League, but she and Clark can both remember when superheroes were much, much rarer.

“Most people probably wouldn’t even count Phantom,” Danny says.  “The kids mostly did, but a lot of adults didn’t trust him because he was… because he wasn’t exactly human.”

Combined with what Danny said before about that interdimensional portal, this is painting a picture Lois really doesn’t like.

“There are folks like that everywhere, unfortunately,” Clark says.  “And you can’t always change their minds. But I believe most people are better than that."

Judging by Danny's expression, he wasn't entirely convinced of that. Lois couldn't blame him; she has enough trouble seeing the good in people the way Clark did, and the other dimension sounds worse than hers in this regard.  

Danny doesn’t seem inclined to talk about it any further.  Silence lingers for just a beat too long before he speaks.  “Oh, the sun’s yellow here.  That’s different, too.”

-----

The front door slams, shaking the house, and Jon scrambles into the kitchen.  

“Where’s Ma and Pa?” he demands.

Kon mentally says goodbye to his tentative plans for the day.  Not that he minds hanging out with Jon, but he’s clearly upset about something.  Kon’s good at a lot of things, but emotional conversations is not one of them.

“They’re in town for the day,” Kon says.  “You’re lucky they didn’t hear you slam the door like that.”

“Did you know about Danny?” Jon demands.

“Who?”

“Dan-El.”

Clark texted a couple of days ago, telling Kon to call when he had time.  Kon has been putting it off, knowing that Clark has better ways of getting in touch with him if there’s a real emergency.  That’s starting to seem like a mistake.

He doesn’t answer Jon right away, which Jon seems to take as its own answer.  

“Did everyone know but me?” Jon demands.

The thing is, Kon is pretty sure he's not supposed to know about Dan-El. Lois and Clark have never breathed a word about him in Kon's hearing.

He only knows because he spent an afternoon helping Ma go through some old boxes up in the attic and found a box of photos-- mostly of Clark as a kid, but some of Ma and Pa when they were younger.

"Oh goodness," Ma had said, when she'd notices what Kon was looking at. "I keep telling myself I'm going to organize those and put them in an album, but I never get around to it."

She'd sat down next to Kon and looked through the pictures with him, pointing out her favorites and telling stories to accompany them. ("And that one was from just after Clark's tenth birthday-- we had to get a new door because his strength was just coming in and he broke the old one.")

Then Kon had pulled out a photo of a toddler, sitting on the front porch with Pa. He'd thought it was a picture of Clark at first, but Pa's hair was considerably more gray than it was in the pictures from Clark's childhood, and Ma had just told him that the porch had been rebuilt and expanded after Clark broke the old one in tenth grade.

"Oh, that's Daniel," Ma said. She'd gently taken the photo from Kon's hand and ran a finger over not-Clark's face. "He was our first grandson-- Lois and Clark's oldest." She'd gone on to tell him the whole sad story.

There's a small headstone for Daniel Kent in the Smallville cemetery, right next to Pa's parents. Kon thinks it must have been Ma or Pa's idea; there was no body to bury and as far as he knows, Lois and Clark never visit it.

“I don’t think that’s it,” Kon says.  “I think it’s just not something they talk about.”  Jon doesn’t look convinced, so he adds, “They told you now, right?”

“Only after he showed up!” 

“Wait, what?”  Kon is starting to think he really should have replied to that message from Clark.

-----

Not for the first time, Clark wishes there was a handbook for this sort of thing.  But oddly enough, parenting manuals generally don’t cover how to talk to your long-lost son about his alien heritage.  He’s put this off long enough already; Danny had spent most of the previous day out with Lois, picking up all the necessities he didn’t have.

“So…” Danny says, kicking his feet a little.  He’s sitting next to Clark on this skyscraper, his feet dangling over the edge.  It makes Clark a little nervous, seeing how Danny can’t fly yet, but he also knows he’s fast enough to catch Danny if he were to fall.

"Lois said you're an alien?" The words are softened by the blatant curiosity in Danny's tone, and Clark remembers Lois recounting how excited Danny was to meet J'onn and to see space from the Watchtower. 

It's a sentiment Clark can understand. He's traveled through space and met aliens both hostile and friendly. He regularly meets with his colleagues on an orbiting space station. And yet, seeing his adopted planet from space still fills him with awe.

"When I was born, my parents— my birth parents— already knew our planet, Krypton, was dying," Clark begins. It's not an easy story to tell, but the grief is old. Not gone, but distant. It's a place and a people he will never know except through stories and the archives in the Fortress— but those, at least, he can share. He tells Danny this, too, and promises to take him to the Fortress soon. It would be easier if Danny could fly, but he'll make it work. 

"You should talk to Kara, too," Clark adds. 

"Who's Kara?"

"My cousin. Right now she's in space, on a Justice League mission, but you'll meet her when she gets back. She was a teenager when Krypton was destroyed; she has firsthand memories."  He’ll save explaining the part where she got caught in suspended animation for later; he’s dumped a lot of information on Danny already.

“You said something the other night about yellow sun radiation?” Danny asks.

“It’s what gives Kryptonians our power, here on Earth,” Clark says.  

“And what powers are those, exactly?” Danny seems more hesitant than Clark would usually expect of a teenager finding out he’s going to develop superpowers— but then, they already know Danny grew up in a world where that sort of thing was feared and looked down upon.  

“Enhanced sense, enhanced strength and speed, flight, invulnerability— there are others, but those are the main ones to expect.”

Danny nods thoughtfully.

[halfblackwolfdemon]

This is so fucking gorgeous, aaah!

EVERYONE, LOOK AT THIS PERFECTION!

Superman and Lois had a son before Jon. One that was ripped away from them far too soon in a scheme devised by Braniac. They tried desperately to get him back but by the time they had tracked Braniac down, their baby had already been sent away to somewhere unknown. This loss was devastating. So much in fact that they couldn't even bear to look at a picture of him or utter his name, convinced their son was lost forever.

Danny must flee his dimension as it's no longer safe for him. That's when Clockwork tells him it is time to return to his home world. Wait, what?

[halfagone]

Kryptonians and Ectoplasm

I have... SuperPham thoughts. I mentioned this on Discord the other day, and it went somewhere along the lines of this:

In an AU where Danny is biologically Lois and Clark's son, that means the radiation of the portal turning on, killing him, and bringing him back to life is likely a concentrated version of how Clark came back to life due to exposure to enough ultraviolet rays or ion radiation. He essentially has the ability to photosynthesize like a flower, and in this essay I will-

And well, that's all I had at the time. So here's the essay:

The Ghost Zone could very easily be translated to the Phantom Zone in the crossover. However, in many main forms of DC media, Kryptonians such as Dru-Zod and his allies were sent to the Phantom Zone as a punishment for their crimes, effectively cutting them off from their powers. Which means it's likely not ectoplasm that's substituting for the ultraviolet rays of a yellow star, but the process of opening the portal.

Even if looking beyond a half-Kryptonian Danny AU, there can be a lot of applications to this. And taking a look at Superman lore gives some clues to how we can further integrate this into DPxDC.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am not a scientist, be it physicist or biologist. This brain child was born from pure imagination and unlimited access to scientific articles.

For those that might be less familiar with this timeline, the period in which Superman dies and is seen replaced by four other Superman (one of which is Superboy, or Kon-El, the clone to Kal-El and Lex Luthor) is known as "Reign of the Supermen" and consists of a number of comics.

I won't get into the specifics of all these Supermen, but Clark comes back to life after roughly six months. [Taken from the DCAMU movie "Reign of the Supermen", in which the prologue reveals that the battle to the death between Superman and Doomsday was 6 months ago.]

So it took roughly 6 months for Clark to fully recover. Yet for Danny it took, probably, 5 seconds for the whole thing to be said and done. Which could possibly explain why he's so powerful, beyond the mixture of ectoplasm in his system for this AU.

On the other, other hand, there are many headcanons surrounding how ectoplasm functions on a more scientific standpoint. One of my personal headcanons is that ectoplasm feeds on the electromagnetic waves that humans emit through emotions. The stronger the emotion, the more ectoplasm pools together. Hence, when a person dies, all that ectoplasm pooling together and imprinting on said ectoplasm creates a ghost. [This headcanon is first discussed in chapter 28 of LL's Ascent.]

But we've already established that Kryptonians can be revived through ion radiation. So what is ion radiation? In simple terms, ion radiation is "a type of energy released by atoms that travels in the form of electromagnetic waves (gamma or X-rays) or particles (neutrons, beta or alpha)." But... didn't we just say that ectoplasm likely isn't the reason Superman came back to life? Especially since the Phantom Zone hampers Kryptonians' powers?

That is very true, and if you think about it, this would mean ectoplasm and Kryptonian biology exhibit a lot of the same characteristics. What would be the difference then? Ectoplasm retains the electromagnetic waves, hence how it maintains ghosts' personalities and memories.

However, hampering with these electromagnetic waves could explain why ghosts lose themselves over time, and might give headway to how anti-ecto weapons harm ghosts. But that is a topic that requires more research, and will have to be left for another day.

So ectoplasm retains electromagnetic waves, what about Kryptonians? They can't do the same. Once they are cut off from sunlight, or any form of ultraviolet rays, their powers go with it. Common headcanons for ghosts determine that they can go for some time without continually feeding on ectoplasm, although they gradually grow weaker the longer they go without a source.

But ectoplasm does not emit electromagnetic waves of their own. Perhaps ghosts could filter their ectoplasm and make this possible, maybe that's how they give people the creeps when they intrude on their territory. But otherwise, plain old ectoplasm won't do this. But do you know who does emit electromagnetic waves, according to this logic?

Kryptonians do.

Their emotions emit these waves, and when traveling to the Phantom/Ghost Zone, that would mean all the ectoplasm around them would feed on their emotions. Unfortunately, there is no source of sunlight in the Ghost Zone, which means not only are they cut off from a main source of nutrition, they are constantly being leeched off on from ectoplasm.

This could mean that going to the Ghost Zone, for a Kryptonian, might just be a death sentence. Which makes Dru-Zod's exile to the Phantom/Ghost Zone that much more grim and cruel. We know from the Flashpoint Paradox timeline that Kryptonians will slowly wither away and quite possibly die without any source of ultraviolet rays.

So what would this mean for a half-Kryptonian Danny AU? Well for one, it would explain why Danny is so powerful. His dual nature as half-Kryptonian and a halfa means that all the weaknesses he has from his Kryptonian biology is canceled out by his nature as a halfa, and vice versa.

This wouldn't entirely strip Danny of weaknesses. In some ways it could even compound his weaknesses depending on what's used against him.

Yet it's still something very interesting and tasty to think about. And provides a lot of possibilities for future plot points or alternate universes.

[numinous-scribe]

A Superpham idea in some flavor of TUE au (can be taken as either after the first loop, or after the second one but in the event Clockwork did not save his friends and family)

To Danny's surprise, his parents had, for once in their lives, done something responsible and set up a will in the events of something happening to them. To further it, they actually had a plan for who he and his sister was supposed to go to. Turns out that his dad did have family still who hadn't cut all contact with him. Some cousins by the name of Kent all the way out in Kansas. He'd call it strange that his dad never mentioned these cousins, but, well, his parents preferred to dwell on their work over gossip about extended family. (It took them 20 years to reconnect with their so called bestie from college, if that tells you anything .)

Danny doesn't know what to think when he's dropped off at a small farm, dust still settling from his and the social worker's arrival, but as a nice looking old couple and a young man stepped out to meet them, he decided this couldn't be worse than staying with Vlad.

[jaybirbie]

Krptonian Danny Au and Krptonite/ectoplasm au

What if, anytime Danny tries using his Kryptonian powers, his ghost half hurts him. His living form is very weak because if his unique biology. So, using those powers or being under the sun for too long makes him really ill. (Kinda like an alien/ghost autoimmune disease).

(And to the JL and superpham who don't know about ghosts. He's a dying kryptonian child who has kryptonite poisoning)

[robbed-ghost]

I can’t believe the Danny Wayne AU started like right as I started writing my Superpham AU. We could combine our brains, people! (AU where Danny is Lois’ distant nephew/cousin, and Jon is his age so naturally they visit each other and get along, and eventually Jon realizes oh shit this guy’s Not Normal. So he has the great idea of telling Danny to seek help from the Batfam if he ever needs to go somewhere to lay low…and Danny does.)

Jon expected Danny to communicate this to one of the Waynes should he choose to go to them. Problem is, Danny does not communicate well.

In two months time, Wayne Manor is haunted. It takes another two for Bruce to even notice.

[such-expensive-mistakes]

Superpham AU (part 6)

Masterpost

Lois prides herself at being good at rolling with the unexpected. Unfortunately, all of her experience with aliens and supervillains and magic has not prepared her for Danny.

Danny has a disconcerting habit of dropping disturbing or traumatizing information in an off-hand way, seeming to not even realize the implications of his own words. It started with what he said about the dimension he'd grown up in discriminating against people with powers, then with what he'd said about the red son and the lack of superheroes, but it just keeps happening.

Lois tries not to call attention to it, because she prefers it to the alternative, which is Danny shutting himself up in his room and refusing to talk to any of them.

Lex Luthor is on the nightly news-- as he so often is-- and Lois has to explain the man's many crimes to Danny. (No, Jon, it is not a rant.)

"Oh," Danny says. "He sounds like Vlad."

"Vlad?" Lois asks.

"Yeah, Vlad Masters. He's my godfather. He's a total fruitloop who wanted to marry my mom and make me his son."

Lois carefully does not react. She wants Danny to tell her things. She wants to know what his life was like when she wasn't in it. "That sounds..."

"Yeah, he tried to clone me. Well, I guess he succeeded, but none of them were stable except for Ellie, and she wasn't really that stable to begin with."

"Ellie?"

"Yeah, short for Danielle. She went by Dani-with-an-I for a while, but she decided she wanted her own name."

That is not the part Lois was looking for clarification on. She goes with it anyway. "Tell me about her," Lois says, and tries not to be concerned about Danny’s descriptions of a teenage girl who apparently lives and travels on her own because she doesn't like to be stuck in one place. Ellie doesn't even get the full benefit of being quarter Kryptonian, living in a world with a red sun.

The four of them are sitting down to dinner-- pizza again; one of them should probably cook sometime this week, but Lois and Clark are both on deadlines-- when Clark asks Danny more about his adoptive family, the ones he grew up with.

He looks sad, the way he always does whenever his adoptive parents come up.   Lois can hardly blame him, when he lost them in such a sudden and traumatic way.  

"They're scientists," Danny says.  "Or they were.  They studied, um, the Ghost Zone and the things that live there.  They didn't really understand it at first-- they thought all the-- um, everything from there was evil and needed to be killed, but they learned they were wrong eventually."

Lois meets Clark's eyes and knows he is as concerned about what happened before that 'eventually' as she is.  Still, neither of them comment, not wanting Danny to clam up again..

Jon, however, has no such reservations.  "That's really messed up."

Danny shrugs.  "Yeah, kind of.  They came around, though.  And I think they blamed themselves for how bad the GIW got because they were the ones who designed the weapons."

"The GIW?" Lois asks, instead of what she really wants to know, which is: Your adoptive parents designed weapons to be used against beings from another dimension??? Did they know what you were? 

"Guys in White," Danny says.  "I don't think that was their real name, but they were from the government."

"Your parents built weapons for them?" Clark asks, his tone deceptively light.  "I thought they were scientists."

"They dabbled in a lot of things.  But they were fantastic engineers."  Danny segues into a story about some of the modifications his adoptive parents made to their car, which is a topic only slightly better for Lois's heart.

Later that night, Lois is sitting in bed, checking her emails on her phone, when Clark sits down next to her and turns on the white noise machine they keep on the nightstand.  (It's the only way to have private conversations when your child-- children-- have super-hearing.)

"I'm concerned about Danny," he says.

"No shit."  The more Danny tells them about the dimension he grew up in, the more Lois hates it.  "But there's nothing we can do now except be there for him."

"I know people who have traveled across dimensions, you know," Clark says.  "I could always ask for a favor."

"You won't," Lois says.  "Because if you do, I'm going to end up committing felonies in another dimension."  

Clark smiles humorlessly. "What makes you think I wouldn't be there with you?"

"Because you're a better person than I am."  Clark never believes her when she says that, but it's true.  Clark is a fundamentally good person.  Lois tries to be a good person, but there's a reason she's not a superhero.  

-----

Kon intended to stop by Metropolis several days ago.  Or at least call Clark back.  But he’d gotten sidetracked by an earthquake in Southeast Asia, and then by Dr Light causing problems in California.  

He gets a few hours of sleep back in Smallville, then remembers that he’d planned on dropping by Metropolis and meeting Danny days before.  He walks the last few blocks to Lois and Clark’s house— flying would be way too noticeable in their neighborhood— and lets himself in.  He walks up to the living room and spots Lois there, furiously typing on her laptop.  

Kon is man enough to admit, at least within his own head, that Lois kind of intimidates him. Sure, Clark is physically stronger, but there’s an intensity to Lois that Clark lacks.  She glances up at Kon, and even though she’s smiling, he still feels pinned under her gaze.  

Kon shifts uncomfortably, reminds himself that unless he turns into a corrupt businessman or something, he’s not actually in danger from Lois Lane.  

“You here to see Danny?” she asks.

“Yeah.”  Kon shoves his hands in his jacket pockets.  “I figured I should probably meet him.”

“He’s in his room,” Lois says.  “He’s not… It’s not a good day, but maybe he’ll talk to you.  He hasn’t exactly gotten the chance to be around anyone his own age since he showed up.”

Kon knocks on the door to Danny’s room.  

“Come in,” a voice calls from inside.

Kon’s first thought is that he looks more like Clark than Danny does.  Stupid; of course he does.  He’s Clark’s clone.  But then, Jon resembles Clark almost as strongly as Kon does, so maybe it wasn’t a completely stupid thought.

Danny is sprawled on his stomach across his bed, phone in his hand.  There’s a video playing on it— someone talking about the history of the Justice League— but he’s ignoring it, watching Kon with a wary expression.  The room is still as bland as it ever was; other than the clothes tossed haphazardly on the floor, there’s no sign a teenage boy lives here.

“I’m guessing you’re Kon?” 

“That’s me.”  They stare at each other awkwardly for a moment.  

“Have you actually seen any of Metropolis, or have you just been hanging out in here?” Kon asks.

“Lois took me shopping for some stuff,” Danny says.

“Okay, no,” Kon says.  “You have got to get out of this house.”  

“You don’t even live in Metropolis,” Danny says.  

Kon shrugs. “Doesn’t matter; I’ve spent more time here than you.” There’s an old-school arcade he’s been to a handful of times, and a couple of places to eat.  Anything has got to be better than Danny hanging out and brooding in this sad bedroom by himself.

It's a warm day outside.  The sun shines down on the two of them as they walk in near-silence toward downtown.  The awkward silence doesn't quite break until they're at the arcade, competing on an old racing game.  

"I don't think we have this one in my dimension.  The other dimension.  Whatever."  Danny says.

"Yeah?"  Kon speeds ahead of Danny in the game, just in time to cross the finish line.  Danny groans.

"Yeah, but this world doesn't seem to have Doomed, either," Danny says as they start another race.  "There's a lot of little differences like that."

"That's gotta be weird," Kon says.  

"Yeah, Clark kind of freaked out when I told him the sun there was red."

Yeah, Kon can see why.  They talk more as they play more video games, and Danny tells Kon about his friends and what they'd do when they were hanging out in his hometown of Amity Park.  The main people he talks about are his best friends, Sam and Tucker, and his older sister, Jazz, but he mentions a few others.  

"Wait, who is Ellie again?" Kon asks, after Danny shares a story about a prank she pulled on another kid at Danny's school.  They've left the arcade, and are hanging out at the diner a few blocks away.  It's not the coolest place-- in fact, it looks like a grandmother decorated it-- but Clark introduced Kon to it, and it has great food.

"Oh, I didn't tell you?" Danny asks.  "She's my clone."

Kon chokes a little on his soda.  "You have a clone?"

-----

Danny is probably being paranoid.

Scratch that, he's definitely being paranoid. Lois and Clark have been nothing but nice, and they're clearly used to weird things happening. Like, even aside from the whole alien superhero thing, Lois just saw a kid fall out of a portal and decided to help?  Plus, Clark is an actual superhero.  

Even his— the Fentons came around on the whole “ghost powers” thing.  Eventually.  But he’s gotten used to hiding, to trying to blend in.  

(And what had them accepting him done for them in the end?  They’re dead, the GIW killed them.)

He’d rather hide than suddenly discover that Lois and Clark aren’t cool with their long-lost son being half dead.

Some of his powers he can pass off as Kryptonian— super strength, flight, enhanced senses.  He knows Lois saw his ghost form, and though she hasn’t asked about it, he’s pretty sure it’s just a matter of time.  

These thoughts circle through his mind over and over, only leaving him temporarily when he’s hanging out with the Lane-Kents.  

His bio family.  

That’s not much better, though; there’s a sadness in Lois and Clark’s eyes whenever they look at him, although they try to hide it.  Jon just a kid, and clearly doesn’t know what to make of the whole situation.  Lois keeps saying they are going to introduce him to more people, especially people his own age, but Danny shies away from that.  He doesn’t want to meet more people.  He doesn’t want to get comfortable here.

Still, he’s glad he came out with Kon.  An afternoon of videogames and greasy food hasn’t solved any of his problems, but it’s a nice break, and Kon has already promised to introduce Danny to his friends— a whole team of teenage superheroes.

“I can’t get over how many heroes there are here,” Danny says.  “Like, why do you even need that many?”  Sure, it would have been nice to have some more backup when he was Phantom, but in this world there seems to be at least one superhero for every major city, plus some extra.

Kon shrugs. “Natural disasters, alien invasions, supervillains, street crime… No one can handle all of it.”

Out of all the things he’s encountered so far in this dimension, this might be Danny’s favorite.  Even more than the proven existence of aliens.  Back home, Amity Park needed Phantom, even if they hated him.  But the world here doesn’t need Phantom.  

It’s kind of freeing, and Danny hates it.  He doesn’t want to like anything about this dimension more than his own.  

Would it really be that bad?  You might be stuck here forever, a little voice inside his head whispers.  

He ignores it.

[such-expensive-mistakes]

Superpham AU (part 7)

Masterpost

A short one today, but I thought this section was funny (until it got sad again).

-----

It’s a quiet evening in the Lane-Kent household: Lois is trying to turn her notes into an article, Clark is going over Jon’s math homework, and Jon is watching a show Lois is only half-following.  It features lots of gunfire and explosions, though Lois’s— unfortunately extensive— experience with witnessing real violence makes the version on TV look cartoonish.  She suspects that is part of the show’s appeal.

Danny is paying about as much attention to the TV as Lois is, engrossed in something on his phone.  At least he’s in the same room as the rest of them, instead of sequestering himself away.

“Hey Lois?” Danny suddenly asks.

Lois looks up from her work.  “What’s up?”

“Did you know the internet thinks you’re Superman’s girlfriend?”

Lois knows that if she looks at Clark, he’ll be turning red, the way he always does whenever this particular subject comes up.  Lois herself is barely holding back a laugh.  Jon’s wrinkling his nose, looking thoroughly embarrassed by his parents.

“Well, I am,” she says, barely keeping herself composed.

“No, I mean—” Danny begins.

“You mean people say that I’m dating Superman and married to Clark?”  Lois glances at Clark, who is now hiding his face in his hands.  “Someone forgot to check for cameras after rescuing me a few years back, and we got caught kissing on film.  It was let people think Superman is a homewrecker or let them think I’m in a polyamorous relationship with my husband and his alter ego.”  

“That’s… really weird.”  Danny is giving her the kind of judgmental look only teenagers can give.  

Lois does laugh at that.  “It is, a bit.  But it helps protect Clark’s secret identity, so I don’t mind.”

“Don’t listen to her,” Clark finally says.  “There were other ways to handle that situation; she just thinks this is funny.”

“Even your parents think it’s funny,” Lois says.  Clark just sighs, faux-aggrieved.  

“It’s not even the weirdest thing on the internet about Superman,” Danny says.  “It’s just the weirdest thing everyone agrees is true.”

“Please do not tell me what else you’ve found,” Clark says.  

“You can tell me,” Lois says.  “We can just make Clark leave for a bit.”  Reading conspiracy theories about Superman is her guilty pleasure, though if anyone asks, she does it to keep tabs on anyone who might have a viable way of hurting him.  

Danny just laughs, and something in Lois’s chest seizes up.  Is this the first time she’s heard him laugh since he came back?  She thinks it might be.

She doesn’t want to call attention to it; like as not, that would just make him pull away again.  Instead she says, “Superman doesn’t even get the best conspiracy theories.  Those are all Batman.”  That’s because Bruce purposefully cultivates them, of course, but that’s not important.

“Which one is he, again?” Danny asks.  

It’s not that Lois ever forgets that Danny has spent most of his life in another dimension.  But little offhand comments like that… they really drive it home.  There are plenty of superheroes, even Justice League members, that most of the general public has never heard of— but Batman is not one of them.

She's saved from answering by Clark.

"You'll meet him eventually," Clark says.  "He's a good friend of mine.  And Jon and Kon are close to his two youngest sons, Robin and Red Robin."

Danny nods thoughtfully.  "Right.  I think Red Robin's in the group chat Kon added me to."

Lois reminds herself to thank Kon next time she sees him.  He and Danny seem to have connected, and Kon seems to have made it his personal mission to keep Danny from slipping too far into one of his funks again.

"Speaking of Kon," Clark begins.  "Ma and Pa want to know when we'll be able to make it to Smallville to visit."

They've been trying not to overwhelm Danny by introducing him to too many new people at once, but maybe that was the wrong choice.  Maybe they should be pushing him to get out more, to connect with this dimension.  Besides, Kon spends most of his time in Smallville, and they already know that he and Danny get along.

Lois re-evaluates the article she’s been working on.  Perry would probably appreciate it sooner rather than later, but if she turns in a smaller article this week, she can probably swing a weekend off.  If not, she can always work on it from Kansas.

“This weekend should work,” Lois says.  “If that’s alright with you, Danny.”

Danny looks a little surprised to be consulted.  “I— yeah, that works.  Not like I have anywhere else to be.”  He laughs a little, but the joke falls flat, and Lois resolves to double down on helping Danny connect with more people here in this dimension.

[such-expensive-mistakes]

Superpham AU (part 5)

Masterpost

-----

This is more of an interlude, but I figured I would get it posted for WIP Wednesday. Enjoy!

-----

Ellie lost her phone somewhere between San Diego and Vancouver. Normally, that's not a big deal; she loses or breaks a phone every few months, and each time she just gets another of those cheap pay-as-you-go phones to replace it. She has Danny's number memorized, and that's the important one.

Except that Danny hasn't answered his phone for the past week.

For the first few days, she assumed he'd broken it in a ghost fight and Tucker hadn't got around to fixing it yet. But it's day six and Danny still hasn't answered. At first, Ellie planned to go to Amity Park, but before she's halfway there she thinks better of it. Danny's stronger than her, and if something bad happened to him, she wants to be prepared.

So instead, she's invisibly flying around the campus of UPenn, looking for Jazz and kicking herself for not memorizing which dorm the older girl is living in. There are a lot of people, and a surprising amount of them are tall redheads.

Eventually, she spots Jazz leaving one of the lecture halls. There are dark circles under the other girl's eyes, and she seems to be ignoring all the people around her.

Ellie slips around a corner to a spot no one is watching and lands, turning visible. Then she runs to catch up.

"Jazz!" she calls.

Jazz whirls around, eyes wide. "Ellie? What are you doing here?"

Ellie is taken aback at her sharp tone. "Just leaving, I guess."

"No, wait!" Jazz grabs her wrist before Ellie can slip away. And sure, she can always go intangible to escape, but she doesn't need to just yet.

"It's not safe for you here," Jazz says. "Let's go back to my room."

She's quiet as she leads Ellie back to her dorm. They get stopped in the hallway by a few other students, but Jazz extricates herself from the conversation by introducing Ellie as her "little cousin" and saying she's going to show Ellie around.

Finally, they arrive in Jazz's dorm room. It's roughly the size of a closet, and with two beds, two dressers and two desks, there's hardly any room left to stand in. It's easy to tell which side belongs to Jazz; it's the one that's actually organized.

Oh, and the picture of Jazz and Danny taped to the wall are also a dead giveaway.

"My roommate has class til four," Jazz says. "So that gives us some time." She sits on her bed, and Ellie perches on the nearby desk.

"Danny isn't answering his phone," Ellie says.

"Danny is missing."

The fear that Ellie has been trying to ignore sets in.

"Missing, like…" she trails off. Maybe "missing" just means he's dealing with Vlad, or with something in the Ghost Zone.

"Mom and Dad are dead. Their portal was destroyed. Sam and Tucker said it was the GIW. And no one has seen Danny since." Jazz sounds close to tears. "The GIW is still looking for Phantom, so we don't think they have him, but I don't know where he is. Tucker thinks he might have made it through the portal, but we don't have a way to check."

"I can check," Ellie says. "I can use Vlad's portal."

"Are you sure?" Jazz's voice is gentle, like she thinks Ellie might break. And yeah, Ellie hates Vlad and his stupid lab and his stupid house, but anything is better than sitting around and waiting for answers.

"I'm sure."

[such-expensive-mistakes]

Superpham AU Masterpost

The original post is getting a little unwieldy, but if you would like to be sure to see updates to this AU, please go ahead and subscribe to this post. Or just follow me. All future parts of this will be tagged with #superpham au, so you can also follow the tag.

(I will probably put a polished version on AO3 eventually but for now, it's tumblr only.)

Original prompt:

Superman and Lois had a son before Jon. One that was ripped away from them far too soon in a scheme devised by Braniac. They tried desperately to get him back but by the time they had tracked Braniac down, their baby had already been sent away to somewhere unknown. This loss was devastating. So much in fact that they couldn't even bear to look at a picture of him or utter his name, convinced their son was lost forever. Danny must flee his dimension as it's no longer safe for him. That's when Clockwork tells him it is time to return to his home world. Wait, what?

Prompt post + parts 1-3

Part 4, Part 5

Part 6, Part 7

[such-expensive-mistakes]

halfa!Steph AU (part 1)

I'm still working on the Superpham AU but I couldn't stop thinking about this idea.

-----

Once upon a time, there was a girl who thought she could be a hero. And then she died. She died slowly and painfully and steeped in guilt over having accidentally set off a gang war that destroyed the city. It's a neat little story about hubris and knowing your place and why Batman is always right.

Except she didn't. Die, that is. She flatlined on the operating table and Leslie faked her death. And when that girl came back, she put on a costume again and became the third Batgirl. It's a heartwarming story about stubbornness and learning to rely on others and proving Batman wrong.

The truth, Stephanie thinks, is somewhere in between.

When she talks about having died, people treat as— not as a joke, the pain is still too raw for that, but as an exaggeration. Dramatic license.

Sometimes Steph thinks that's all it is.  But she feels like she died.  She dreams about it sometimes.  Not just Black Mask, although he does haunt far too many of her dreams, but something else.  Something in-between.

It's probably just the trauma.  That's what Leslie says, when Stephanie finally asks her.

Stephanie doesn't ask Leslie about her newfound strength, or about how sharp her senses have become.  

You can't go through something like Stephanie did and come out unchanged.  That's what Babs says, and she would know.  Steph doesn't think they're thinking about the same kind of changes, though.

-----

Stephanie lands on a rooftop and looks down at the white van parked below.  It's not a particularly notable vehicle, except for the occupants.  

"What are they doing?" Steph asks.

"I don't know."  Babs sounds frustrated, and no wonder.  There aren't many people who can keep Oracle out of their systems, and Steph wouldn't have judged these guys to be among their ranks.  "I'll keep trying to get through their firewalls, but I'm flying blind here.  Keep an eye on them, but be careful."

"You know me," Steph says.  "Careful is my middle name."

Babs doesn't even bother to muster up a sarcastic response to that, which is how Steph knows she's preoccupied.

These guys have been running all over Gotham for the past few weeks.  They're dressed in immaculate white suits and carrying unfamiliar weapons, and they seem to be taking some kind of readings on unfamiliar instruments.  None of that is a crime, but it's suspicious, and Oracle's inability to find out any more about them is even more suspicious.

And that means they're officially Steph's problem.

The men are doing the same thing they've been doing the last few times Steph has watched them.  It's not particularly exciting.  

"Batgirl," Oracle says.

"Please tell me there's a robbery or something that needs my attention," Steph replies.  "These guys are so boring."

"Sorry.  Do you think you can get one of their gadgets for me?  I want a better look."

"Can do, boss."  

Stephanie carefully climbs down to street level, staying out of sight.  She's gotten a lot sneakier since her not-death.  She tells herself it's all of her training and practice, finally paying off, but regardless of the cause, the guys in white have no chance of spotting her.  

They're standing near the front of the van, arguing about something.

"The apparition was spotted here last night," one says.

"That doesn't mean it's going to return!" another responds. 

Sounds like they're looking for something in particular.  Which Steph and Babs had already guessed, but it's nice to have confirmation.

Steph slips toward the back of the van, which is wide open.  Not smart, especially in Gotham, but she's got a feeling these guys aren't from Gotham.  

The inside of their van reminds her of a sci-fi movie; everything is blindingly white and chrome, with glowing green accents.  And lots and lots of those weapons.  Whoever they are, they clearly have a nice sized budget.

Steph grabs one of the guns and a handheld instrument like the one the guys outside are waving around, but as soon as she does, all the instruments the guys in front of the van are holding start going wild.  

"There it is!" one of them yells.  They all start shooting at her, which is how Steph learns that they're using some kind of fancy laser guns.  Because regular guns just aren't space age enough for these guys.

That's Steph's cue to get out.  She grapples back to the rooftop, just barely avoiding getting hit by the laser guns.

It’s easy enough to lose them from the rooftops.  At Oracle’s direction, she makes her way back to Firewall.  She tugs her mask off and hands the stolen tech over to Babs.

“The’re looking for something,” she says.  “An apparition.”

Babs hums in acknowledgment.  “Hopefully these will have some answers.”  She switches on the— scanner?  Steph’s pretty sure that’s its function, anyway.  It starts beeping wildly.

Steph jumps back, startled.  The beeping stops.

“Well,” Babs says.  “I think we have an idea what they were looking for.”

[halfagone]

Hemlo! ✨🤗✨ What's three dpxdc tropes that you like but is supremely underused?

Hello! ヾ(≧▽≦*)o

Hmm, now that's a hard question. But if I had to choose just three...

Playing With Danny's Time Travel Adventures.

I know a lot of people use these as alibis for Danny, to cover up how young he looks and make it seem like he's been around for thousands of years, but I enjoy the extra layer of complication this adds to the equation instead. I know some people use those adventures to turn Danny into a form of deity, and I've used this concept before in bloodlines. But there are actually a decent number of immortal characters in DC.

There's Ra's al Ghul, there's Vandal Savage, we have reason to believe that Duke's father, Gnomon, is immortal as well. In Off With [the Demon's] Head, I explored what might have happened if Danny and Ra's had met each other in the past. We also have other characters that have traveled through time, like Bruce or even Booster Gold. I have a WIP idea where Danny met "Mordecai Wayne" while in the past and ends up meeting Bruce in the present and realizes they're the same guy. There's so much you can do with the idea and I hope some day I can play with it some more.

Danny Joins the Superfam.

Now this one's more self-indulgent. The Superfam might not be as angsty as the Batfam, but I just know in my heart that Danny would just fit in so well into the Kent family and he would be the best big brother to Jon and my heart is just so full. 〒▽〒 I have so many SuperPham fics planned but can I write them??? Apparently not because the muse demands I write one-shots.

Exploring Different DC Continuities.

Now I know what you're probably thinking. Who cares about canon when we're just gonna do whatever we want with it anyways? But I raise you: different continuities means different shenanigans. There is honestly so much you can do with canon, even if you get rid of all the things you don't like. I loved writing Danny stumbling into the Flashpoint Paradox world. I loved writing the Danny Phantom show set into the Justice Lords universe.

There's the DCAMU, there's the animated shows, there's the live action ones, video game universes anyone?? Arkhamverse games??? We can even go with fan universes; I've mentioned the Reverse Robin AU in LL's Ascent, you can explore that too. I would love to see more stories where things are a little off-kilter from the norm.

All in all, there's so much you can do with DPxDC crossovers and I will always have a great time exploring them.

[such-expensive-mistakes]

Hey guys, just so you know, I don't know if I'm going to finish the superpham au. I'm hoping to eventually, but idk.

Without getting too deep into details, I was really enthusiastic about making friends in this fandom, but instead the community I found left me feeling pretty alienated. Maybe it was just me and my personality-- not every space is a good fit for everyone-- but the experience ended up sapping all of my motivation to finish this. I'm hoping to get some of that motivation back after a break from the fandom, but no promises.

[halfblackwolfdemon]

I'm so excited for Danny to just drop the bomb he's dead, it's going to he so delicious

Superpham AU (part 4)

Original prompt + parts 1-3

Masterpost

-----

It's not the most awkward dinner Lois has ever had, but only because she's dined with literal supervillains before.  

Danny is poking at his Mongolian beef with his fork more than he's actually eating it.  Lois can hardly blame him; it’s been a difficult few days for her and she’s not the one who just landed in a different dimension from the one she grew up in.  But Danny certainly isn’t up to keeping conversation going.

Jon is making a valiant effort, but he seems distracted.  He keeps shooting looks at Lois and Clark when he thinks they’re not looking, and while he recounts everything he and Damian got up to (not too much trouble, thankfully, although that wasn’t saying much), he’s less enthusiastic than he would normally be.  

Clark keeps shooting Jon worried looks when he thinks Jon isn’t looking.  Lois will have to ask him how that conversation went; it seems like it was rough on both of them. 

Eventually, even Jon runs out of things to say, and the four of them sit around the table, eating their Chinese takeout in silence.  

“So, Danny,” Lois finally says.  “I don’t know how the dimension you grew up in differs from this one, but if you have any questions about anything, please ask one of us.”

“It’s not that different,” Danny says.  “I mean, it is in some ways, but it’s still Earth, you know?”

Lois isn’t entirely certain she does, but this doesn’t seem to be the time to ask.  Maybe when things are less fresh.

Jon has no such compunctions.  “What’s the biggest difference?” 

Danny looks thoughtful.  “You guys have a lot of superheroes here,” he finally says.

“What kind of superheroes did your other world have?” Jon asks eagerly.  

“We mostly didn’t,” Danny says.  “I mean, I guess Phantom kind of counts.  But that’s it.”

“That’s it?” Jon is clearly flabbergasted by this.  Lois fights a smile, and she can see Clark doing the same thing.  Jon has never known a world without the Justice League, but she and Clark can both remember when superheroes were much, much rarer.

“Most people probably wouldn’t even count Phantom,” Danny says.  “The kids mostly did, but a lot of adults didn’t trust him because he was… because he wasn’t exactly human.”

Combined with what Danny said before about that interdimensional portal, this is painting a picture Lois really doesn’t like.

“There are folks like that everywhere, unfortunately,” Clark says.  “And you can’t always change their minds. But I believe most people are better than that."

Judging by Danny's expression, he wasn't entirely convinced of that. Lois couldn't blame him; she has enough trouble seeing the good in people the way Clark did, and the other dimension sounds worse than hers in this regard.  

Danny doesn’t seem inclined to talk about it any further.  Silence lingers for just a beat too long before he speaks.  “Oh, the sun’s yellow here.  That’s different, too.”

-----

The front door slams, shaking the house, and Jon scrambles into the kitchen.  

“Where’s Ma and Pa?” he demands.

Kon mentally says goodbye to his tentative plans for the day.  Not that he minds hanging out with Jon, but he’s clearly upset about something.  Kon’s good at a lot of things, but emotional conversations is not one of them.

“They’re in town for the day,” Kon says.  “You’re lucky they didn’t hear you slam the door like that.”

“Did you know about Danny?” Jon demands.

“Who?”

“Dan-El.”

Clark texted a couple of days ago, telling Kon to call when he had time.  Kon has been putting it off, knowing that Clark has better ways of getting in touch with him if there’s a real emergency.  That’s starting to seem like a mistake.

He doesn’t answer Jon right away, which Jon seems to take as its own answer.  

“Did everyone know but me?” Jon demands.

The thing is, Kon is pretty sure he's not supposed to know about Dan-El. Lois and Clark have never breathed a word about him in Kon's hearing.

He only knows because he spent an afternoon helping Ma go through some old boxes up in the attic and found a box of photos-- mostly of Clark as a kid, but some of Ma and Pa when they were younger.

"Oh goodness," Ma had said, when she'd notices what Kon was looking at. "I keep telling myself I'm going to organize those and put them in an album, but I never get around to it."

She'd sat down next to Kon and looked through the pictures with him, pointing out her favorites and telling stories to accompany them. ("And that one was from just after Clark's tenth birthday-- we had to get a new door because his strength was just coming in and he broke the old one.")

Then Kon had pulled out a photo of a toddler, sitting on the front porch with Pa. He'd thought it was a picture of Clark at first, but Pa's hair was considerably more gray than it was in the pictures from Clark's childhood, and Ma had just told him that the porch had been rebuilt and expanded after Clark broke the old one in tenth grade.

"Oh, that's Daniel," Ma said. She'd gently taken the photo from Kon's hand and ran a finger over not-Clark's face. "He was our first grandson-- Lois and Clark's oldest." She'd gone on to tell him the whole sad story.

There's a small headstone for Daniel Kent in the Smallville cemetery, right next to Pa's parents. Kon thinks it must have been Ma or Pa's idea; there was no body to bury and as far as he knows, Lois and Clark never visit it.

“I don’t think that’s it,” Kon says.  “I think it’s just not something they talk about.”  Jon doesn’t look convinced, so he adds, “They told you now, right?”

“Only after he showed up!” 

“Wait, what?”  Kon is starting to think he really should have replied to that message from Clark.

-----

Not for the first time, Clark wishes there was a handbook for this sort of thing.  But oddly enough, parenting manuals generally don’t cover how to talk to your long-lost son about his alien heritage.  He’s put this off long enough already; Danny had spent most of the previous day out with Lois, picking up all the necessities he didn’t have.

“So…” Danny says, kicking his feet a little.  He’s sitting next to Clark on this skyscraper, his feet dangling over the edge.  It makes Clark a little nervous, seeing how Danny can’t fly yet, but he also knows he’s fast enough to catch Danny if he were to fall.

"Lois said you're an alien?" The words are softened by the blatant curiosity in Danny's tone, and Clark remembers Lois recounting how excited Danny was to meet J'onn and to see space from the Watchtower. 

It's a sentiment Clark can understand. He's traveled through space and met aliens both hostile and friendly. He regularly meets with his colleagues on an orbiting space station. And yet, seeing his adopted planet from space still fills him with awe.

"When I was born, my parents— my birth parents— already knew our planet, Krypton, was dying," Clark begins. It's not an easy story to tell, but the grief is old. Not gone, but distant. It's a place and a people he will never know except through stories and the archives in the Fortress— but those, at least, he can share. He tells Danny this, too, and promises to take him to the Fortress soon. It would be easier if Danny could fly, but he'll make it work. 

"You should talk to Kara, too," Clark adds. 

"Who's Kara?"

"My cousin. Right now she's in space, on a Justice League mission, but you'll meet her when she gets back. She was a teenager when Krypton was destroyed; she has firsthand memories."  He’ll save explaining the part where she got caught in suspended animation for later; he’s dumped a lot of information on Danny already.

“You said something the other night about yellow sun radiation?” Danny asks.

“It’s what gives Kryptonians our power, here on Earth,” Clark says.  

“And what powers are those, exactly?” Danny seems more hesitant than Clark would usually expect of a teenager finding out he’s going to develop superpowers— but then, they already know Danny grew up in a world where that sort of thing was feared and looked down upon.  

“Enhanced sense, enhanced strength and speed, flight, invulnerability— there are others, but those are the main ones to expect.”

Danny nods thoughtfully.

[halfblackwolfdemon]

Fuuuuuck, I love Ellie so much

Superpham AU (part 5)

Masterpost

-----

This is more of an interlude, but I figured I would get it posted for WIP Wednesday. Enjoy!

-----

Ellie lost her phone somewhere between San Diego and Vancouver. Normally, that's not a big deal; she loses or breaks a phone every few months, and each time she just gets another of those cheap pay-as-you-go phones to replace it. She has Danny's number memorized, and that's the important one.

Except that Danny hasn't answered his phone for the past week.

For the first few days, she assumed he'd broken it in a ghost fight and Tucker hadn't got around to fixing it yet. But it's day six and Danny still hasn't answered. At first, Ellie planned to go to Amity Park, but before she's halfway there she thinks better of it. Danny's stronger than her, and if something bad happened to him, she wants to be prepared.

So instead, she's invisibly flying around the campus of UPenn, looking for Jazz and kicking herself for not memorizing which dorm the older girl is living in. There are a lot of people, and a surprising amount of them are tall redheads.

Eventually, she spots Jazz leaving one of the lecture halls. There are dark circles under the other girl's eyes, and she seems to be ignoring all the people around her.

Ellie slips around a corner to a spot no one is watching and lands, turning visible. Then she runs to catch up.

"Jazz!" she calls.

Jazz whirls around, eyes wide. "Ellie? What are you doing here?"

Ellie is taken aback at her sharp tone. "Just leaving, I guess."

"No, wait!" Jazz grabs her wrist before Ellie can slip away. And sure, she can always go intangible to escape, but she doesn't need to just yet.

"It's not safe for you here," Jazz says. "Let's go back to my room."

She's quiet as she leads Ellie back to her dorm. They get stopped in the hallway by a few other students, but Jazz extricates herself from the conversation by introducing Ellie as her "little cousin" and saying she's going to show Ellie around.

Finally, they arrive in Jazz's dorm room. It's roughly the size of a closet, and with two beds, two dressers and two desks, there's hardly any room left to stand in. It's easy to tell which side belongs to Jazz; it's the one that's actually organized.

Oh, and the picture of Jazz and Danny taped to the wall are also a dead giveaway.

"My roommate has class til four," Jazz says. "So that gives us some time." She sits on her bed, and Ellie perches on the nearby desk.

"Danny isn't answering his phone," Ellie says.

"Danny is missing."

The fear that Ellie has been trying to ignore sets in.

"Missing, like…" she trails off. Maybe "missing" just means he's dealing with Vlad, or with something in the Ghost Zone.

"Mom and Dad are dead. Their portal was destroyed. Sam and Tucker said it was the GIW. And no one has seen Danny since." Jazz sounds close to tears. "The GIW is still looking for Phantom, so we don't think they have him, but I don't know where he is. Tucker thinks he might have made it through the portal, but we don't have a way to check."

"I can check," Ellie says. "I can use Vlad's portal."

"Are you sure?" Jazz's voice is gentle, like she thinks Ellie might break. And yeah, Ellie hates Vlad and his stupid lab and his stupid house, but anything is better than sitting around and waiting for answers.

"I'm sure."

[halfblackwolfdemon]

I'm so invested, ehehe!

Superpham AU (part 6)

Masterpost

Lois prides herself at being good at rolling with the unexpected. Unfortunately, all of her experience with aliens and supervillains and magic has not prepared her for Danny.

Danny has a disconcerting habit of dropping disturbing or traumatizing information in an off-hand way, seeming to not even realize the implications of his own words. It started with what he said about the dimension he'd grown up in discriminating against people with powers, then with what he'd said about the red son and the lack of superheroes, but it just keeps happening.

Lois tries not to call attention to it, because she prefers it to the alternative, which is Danny shutting himself up in his room and refusing to talk to any of them.

Lex Luthor is on the nightly news-- as he so often is-- and Lois has to explain the man's many crimes to Danny. (No, Jon, it is not a rant.)

"Oh," Danny says. "He sounds like Vlad."

"Vlad?" Lois asks.

"Yeah, Vlad Masters. He's my godfather. He's a total fruitloop who wanted to marry my mom and make me his son."

Lois carefully does not react. She wants Danny to tell her things. She wants to know what his life was like when she wasn't in it. "That sounds..."

"Yeah, he tried to clone me. Well, I guess he succeeded, but none of them were stable except for Ellie, and she wasn't really that stable to begin with."

"Ellie?"

"Yeah, short for Danielle. She went by Dani-with-an-I for a while, but she decided she wanted her own name."

That is not the part Lois was looking for clarification on. She goes with it anyway. "Tell me about her," Lois says, and tries not to be concerned about Danny’s descriptions of a teenage girl who apparently lives and travels on her own because she doesn't like to be stuck in one place. Ellie doesn't even get the full benefit of being quarter Kryptonian, living in a world with a red sun.

The four of them are sitting down to dinner-- pizza again; one of them should probably cook sometime this week, but Lois and Clark are both on deadlines-- when Clark asks Danny more about his adoptive family, the ones he grew up with.

He looks sad, the way he always does whenever his adoptive parents come up.   Lois can hardly blame him, when he lost them in such a sudden and traumatic way.  

"They're scientists," Danny says.  "Or they were.  They studied, um, the Ghost Zone and the things that live there.  They didn't really understand it at first-- they thought all the-- um, everything from there was evil and needed to be killed, but they learned they were wrong eventually."

Lois meets Clark's eyes and knows he is as concerned about what happened before that 'eventually' as she is.  Still, neither of them comment, not wanting Danny to clam up again..

Jon, however, has no such reservations.  "That's really messed up."

Danny shrugs.  "Yeah, kind of.  They came around, though.  And I think they blamed themselves for how bad the GIW got because they were the ones who designed the weapons."

"The GIW?" Lois asks, instead of what she really wants to know, which is: Your adoptive parents designed weapons to be used against beings from another dimension??? Did they know what you were? 

"Guys in White," Danny says.  "I don't think that was their real name, but they were from the government."

"Your parents built weapons for them?" Clark asks, his tone deceptively light.  "I thought they were scientists."

"They dabbled in a lot of things.  But they were fantastic engineers."  Danny segues into a story about some of the modifications his adoptive parents made to their car, which is a topic only slightly better for Lois's heart.

Later that night, Lois is sitting in bed, checking her emails on her phone, when Clark sits down next to her and turns on the white noise machine they keep on the nightstand.  (It's the only way to have private conversations when your child-- children-- have super-hearing.)

"I'm concerned about Danny," he says.

"No shit."  The more Danny tells them about the dimension he grew up in, the more Lois hates it.  "But there's nothing we can do now except be there for him."

"I know people who have traveled across dimensions, you know," Clark says.  "I could always ask for a favor."

"You won't," Lois says.  "Because if you do, I'm going to end up committing felonies in another dimension."  

Clark smiles humorlessly. "What makes you think I wouldn't be there with you?"

"Because you're a better person than I am."  Clark never believes her when she says that, but it's true.  Clark is a fundamentally good person.  Lois tries to be a good person, but there's a reason she's not a superhero.  

-----

Kon intended to stop by Metropolis several days ago.  Or at least call Clark back.  But he’d gotten sidetracked by an earthquake in Southeast Asia, and then by Dr Light causing problems in California.  

He gets a few hours of sleep back in Smallville, then remembers that he’d planned on dropping by Metropolis and meeting Danny days before.  He walks the last few blocks to Lois and Clark’s house— flying would be way too noticeable in their neighborhood— and lets himself in.  He walks up to the living room and spots Lois there, furiously typing on her laptop.  

Kon is man enough to admit, at least within his own head, that Lois kind of intimidates him. Sure, Clark is physically stronger, but there’s an intensity to Lois that Clark lacks.  She glances up at Kon, and even though she’s smiling, he still feels pinned under her gaze.  

Kon shifts uncomfortably, reminds himself that unless he turns into a corrupt businessman or something, he’s not actually in danger from Lois Lane.  

“You here to see Danny?” she asks.

“Yeah.”  Kon shoves his hands in his jacket pockets.  “I figured I should probably meet him.”

“He’s in his room,” Lois says.  “He’s not… It’s not a good day, but maybe he’ll talk to you.  He hasn’t exactly gotten the chance to be around anyone his own age since he showed up.”

Kon knocks on the door to Danny’s room.  

“Come in,” a voice calls from inside.

Kon’s first thought is that he looks more like Clark than Danny does.  Stupid; of course he does.  He’s Clark’s clone.  But then, Jon resembles Clark almost as strongly as Kon does, so maybe it wasn’t a completely stupid thought.

Danny is sprawled on his stomach across his bed, phone in his hand.  There’s a video playing on it— someone talking about the history of the Justice League— but he’s ignoring it, watching Kon with a wary expression.  The room is still as bland as it ever was; other than the clothes tossed haphazardly on the floor, there’s no sign a teenage boy lives here.

“I’m guessing you’re Kon?” 

“That’s me.”  They stare at each other awkwardly for a moment.  

“Have you actually seen any of Metropolis, or have you just been hanging out in here?” Kon asks.

“Lois took me shopping for some stuff,” Danny says.

“Okay, no,” Kon says.  “You have got to get out of this house.”  

“You don’t even live in Metropolis,” Danny says.  

Kon shrugs. “Doesn’t matter; I’ve spent more time here than you.” There’s an old-school arcade he’s been to a handful of times, and a couple of places to eat.  Anything has got to be better than Danny hanging out and brooding in this sad bedroom by himself.

It's a warm day outside.  The sun shines down on the two of them as they walk in near-silence toward downtown.  The awkward silence doesn't quite break until they're at the arcade, competing on an old racing game.  

"I don't think we have this one in my dimension.  The other dimension.  Whatever."  Danny says.

"Yeah?"  Kon speeds ahead of Danny in the game, just in time to cross the finish line.  Danny groans.

"Yeah, but this world doesn't seem to have Doomed, either," Danny says as they start another race.  "There's a lot of little differences like that."

"That's gotta be weird," Kon says.  

"Yeah, Clark kind of freaked out when I told him the sun there was red."

Yeah, Kon can see why.  They talk more as they play more video games, and Danny tells Kon about his friends and what they'd do when they were hanging out in his hometown of Amity Park.  The main people he talks about are his best friends, Sam and Tucker, and his older sister, Jazz, but he mentions a few others.  

"Wait, who is Ellie again?" Kon asks, after Danny shares a story about a prank she pulled on another kid at Danny's school.  They've left the arcade, and are hanging out at the diner a few blocks away.  It's not the coolest place-- in fact, it looks like a grandmother decorated it-- but Clark introduced Kon to it, and it has great food.

"Oh, I didn't tell you?" Danny asks.  "She's my clone."

Kon chokes a little on his soda.  "You have a clone?"

-----

Danny is probably being paranoid.

Scratch that, he's definitely being paranoid. Lois and Clark have been nothing but nice, and they're clearly used to weird things happening. Like, even aside from the whole alien superhero thing, Lois just saw a kid fall out of a portal and decided to help?  Plus, Clark is an actual superhero.  

Even his— the Fentons came around on the whole “ghost powers” thing.  Eventually.  But he’s gotten used to hiding, to trying to blend in.  

(And what had them accepting him done for them in the end?  They’re dead, the GIW killed them.)

He’d rather hide than suddenly discover that Lois and Clark aren’t cool with their long-lost son being half dead.

Some of his powers he can pass off as Kryptonian— super strength, flight, enhanced senses.  He knows Lois saw his ghost form, and though she hasn’t asked about it, he’s pretty sure it’s just a matter of time.  

These thoughts circle through his mind over and over, only leaving him temporarily when he’s hanging out with the Lane-Kents.  

His bio family.  

That’s not much better, though; there’s a sadness in Lois and Clark’s eyes whenever they look at him, although they try to hide it.  Jon just a kid, and clearly doesn’t know what to make of the whole situation.  Lois keeps saying they are going to introduce him to more people, especially people his own age, but Danny shies away from that.  He doesn’t want to meet more people.  He doesn’t want to get comfortable here.

Still, he’s glad he came out with Kon.  An afternoon of videogames and greasy food hasn’t solved any of his problems, but it’s a nice break, and Kon has already promised to introduce Danny to his friends— a whole team of teenage superheroes.

“I can’t get over how many heroes there are here,” Danny says.  “Like, why do you even need that many?”  Sure, it would have been nice to have some more backup when he was Phantom, but in this world there seems to be at least one superhero for every major city, plus some extra.

Kon shrugs. “Natural disasters, alien invasions, supervillains, street crime… No one can handle all of it.”

Out of all the things he’s encountered so far in this dimension, this might be Danny’s favorite.  Even more than the proven existence of aliens.  Back home, Amity Park needed Phantom, even if they hated him.  But the world here doesn’t need Phantom.  

It’s kind of freeing, and Danny hates it.  He doesn’t want to like anything about this dimension more than his own.  

Would it really be that bad?  You might be stuck here forever, a little voice inside his head whispers.  

He ignores it.