#tim's conspiracy theories get weirder the longer he goes without sleep

[phoenixgrl1412]

DPxDC Idea - Parents and Dead on Main

This post is more setup/background info for what could be a larger story. If I ever write more of this, I'll link it back to this post.

For clarity, I do use the term 'human' to refer to those who are alive and don't live in the Infinite Realms. I am sorry there is so much worldbuilding and so very little Dead on Main

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Danielle (nicknamed Ellie because Dani would be way to confusing and she is her own person) starts to destabilize again, but the cure from before doesn't work. It's beyond what Danny can do on his own, so he takes Ellie to Frostbite.

Frostbite tells the duo that basically, Ellie's core formed incorrectly. Her core has been struggling to keep her alive until now, but it can't hang on any longer.

But! There is a solution! They can take Ellie's core and basically force it to revert to a pre-formation state. They'll then be able to artificially generate the conditions needed for Ellie's core to begin forming correctly on it's own. At that point, Ellie will be able to grow at a normal rate, but they won't be able to artificially age her up.

In simpler terms, they can de-age her to an itty bitty ghost egg (or whatever you want to call it, maybe embryo?), and then trigger the change that makes her an itty bitty baby halfa. She'll have to age normally after that.

It's to save her life, and without it she'll turn to goo and she's running out of time, so they do it. Ellie becomes a baby! A baby halfa!

It's important to note that a baby ghost is not the same as a human baby. The term "baby ghost" refers to two things. 1) newly formed ghosts and 2) child ghosts who may still "age" and alter their form to match that of an adults. When a new ghost's core is fully formed, that's when they stop being a baby ghost. The time it takes to be fully formed can vary from ghost to ghost.

Following this definition, after the de-aging, Ellie is a baby ghost. At the start of the show when the portal had just opened, Danny was a baby ghost. At some point, his core finished forming (more on that later, possibly in a separate post), so he isn't a baby ghost any longer. Box Lunch is a baby ghost because not only is she newly formed, but she will, presumably, age into an adult form. Youngblood is not a baby ghost, because even though he is a child, he has determined that he will NOT age and take on an adult form. Being child sized is his adult form.

When it comes to the question of who will raise Ellie, there are complications. Ordinarily, Frostbite and the Far Frozen would be happy to raise her, especially as a favor to Danny. However, Ellie is a halfa. She needs to be able to spend time in the human world and amongst living people, not just ghosts in the Infinite Realms. Vlad isn't an option for obvious reasons, so Danny is it.

It helps that, in the years since Ellie was created, he'd taken on a parental role towards Ellie. So, even if he wasn't the only option, he would have been the best option anyway.

So, Danny is a dad now. I'm imagining him at 20-23 years old, so he's going to have that I'm-a-new-dad-and-I-have-no-idea-what-I'm-doing energy like, all the time now.

But here's the thing about baby ghosts, and it's not any different for baby halfas. They form a bond with the ghosts around them, literally a bond between their cores. They rely on those bonds to know they're safe, as the baby ghost's core isn't developed enough to protect them. Baby ghosts feed on emotions until they can process ectoplasm, so they also rely on these bonds for nutritional reasons.

These bonds are familial in nature and will carry into adulthood. The bonds can always change, but it's a lot harder to change the bonds when a baby ghost is involved. Not only because a baby ghost may not be able to communicate very well, but also because changing a bond is stressful on cores that aren't fully developed.

It's also important for a baby ghost to have lots of bonds. The parental bonds they form will be the most important, but having other bonds is a key part to the development of a ghost. As they get older, these bonds can influence who the ghost becomes as an individual, much like how living children are influenced by those they spend a lot of time around. A baby ghost is most influenced by the ghosts they have parental bonds with.

A parental bond doesn't mean a biological parent, though it can be. Using Box Lunch as an example, she'd have parental bonds with Box Ghost and Lunch Lady. But, parental bonds can be formed with adoptive parents or mentors, and there can be more than two parental bonds. Ghosts tend to stop forming parental bonds once they reach adolescence, but it's not a firm rule or anything.

A ghost with only one parental bond, however, is going to be almost solely influenced by that parent ghost, especially if they are an actual baby like Ellie is. And in the case of a baby halfa whose only parental bond is the person whose DNA she's based off of? Yeah, she's going to end up to be almost identical to Danny, which isn't what anyone wants.

At first, Danny thinks it isn't a problem. Jazz, Tucker, and Sam are liminal enough that even if they don't have true cores, they can form the bonds that ghosts do. They are also living, so they'll be beneficial to the development of her human half. One of them can form a parental bond with Ellie, they're going to be big parts of her life anyway, problem solved!

Or not solved. When Ellie was de-aged, she kept the bonds she'd already formed. She's got a parental bond with Danny, but aunt/uncle/niece bonds with Jazz, Tucker, and Sam. And as previously mentioned, it's awfully difficult to change the type of bond a baby ghost has with someone.

And so, Danny needs to find another halfa, or someone human but liminal, to raise a child with. Danny has been living in Gotham, and the most liminal person he's met is a hot guy who makes death jokes and goes by the name of Jason Todd.

Is dating his co-parent required? No, but Danny is not going to pass on hitting that. Jason Todd is the most attractive person Danny has ever seen.

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Jason: *walks into the batcave, holding a tiny sleeping child in one arm*

Batfam: *stares*

Jason: *moves around as evenly as possible to not wake the kiddo*

Batfam: *stares some more* *realizes the kid has black hair and blue eyes*

Jason: *digs through a pile of old gear without a sound* *makes calming sounds when the kiddo shifts around* *does what he needs to and leaves with the sleeping kiddo*

Batfam:

Stephanie, probably: Damn, I bet on Dick. Who put money on Jason inheriting Bruce's adoption problem?

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Ellie falling asleep on Jason while he's Red Hood, and he can't do anything because cat rules apply for tiny, sleeping baby halfas.

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Jason showing up with baby Ellie around the batfam, who have no idea why he has a kid or where she came from. Jason isn't going to tell them shit, so he refuses to say anything about her and might have taken it too far.

Baby Ellie: *sneezes adorably* *accidentally shoots an ectoblast at the wall of Jason's safehouse because she can't control her powers*

Dick: I get that you don't want to talk about the kiddo, but can we talk about the fact that she has meta abilities and that you now have a hole in your wall that's still smoking?

Jason: what are you talking about? what hole?

Dick: The one right behind you?

Jason: oh, that? been there for weeks, keep meaning to fix it but haven't gotten to it yet

Dick:

Dick: I literally watched the kiddo shoot a green blast at the wall just now

Jason: *wiping Ellie's nose and then picking her up so she can rest her head on his shoulder* what kid?

Dick: *screams internally*

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Tim coming up with conspiracy theories as to why Jason has a kid that sometimes has Lazarus green eyes. His theories become more and more wild the longer he goes without sleep.

Tim's current theory is a mass, drug induced hallucination because Jason never confirms that there is even a child, even if he's holding her.

Jason comes home and tells Danny all of Tim's new theories, just to make him laugh. Not only is Danny's laugh one of the best sounds, but when Ellie hears him laughing, she starts laughing too even though she doesn't know why one of her dads is laughing. Jason would do anything to make sure his two favorite people always have a reason to laugh and be happy.