#with his parents leering over him and his organs in jars nestled by his head and he wants to get out help him help him get out please

[hailsatanacab]

@ailithnight behold, my thoughts:

Depending on who you ask, Danny's been with the Waynes for anywhere from four years to three to what he knows is the truth. Two months.

It's a delicate question, really, so Danny tries to avoid it when he can, along with anything relating to his past with and without them. Best to keep them all in the dark for a little longer—just until he can say he's repaid some of the help they've given him.

Deep down, he knows it won't ever be enough.

But he's doing well! He's pretty much healed now, aside from the odd twinge whenever he stretches himself and his powers, and while he feels so incredibly guilty over this whole situation... It was for the best. 

He can't—he won't—regret it.

That's what he thought, anyway, until Bruce Wayne had come to sit on his bed one morning, eyebrows drawn in a concerned, confused, look.

"Danny..." he says, reaching his hand over as if he's going to lay it on Danny's knee before pulling it back with a breath. "Danny, we need to talk."

Well. Shit.

Look, Danny's under no illusions here, he's been living the good life. He’s been coasting and it's been more than good for him. Resting has done more than heal his wounds and honestly, despite the lies, he feels... Happy, here.

That happiness plummets in his stomach quicker than a stone sinking to the bottom of a lake.

“B?” His voice sounds tiny in the open space of his bedroom, far bigger than any room the Fentons had. It had been weird to get used to, at first. It didn’t take long for it to feel like home.

“Danny… Do you remember when you came here?”

There it is. The question he’s been trying so hard not to ask everyone, only now flipped on its head and pointing back at him. 

He doesn’t know how to answer it, so he doesn’t.

“What do you mean?”

Bruce sighs, his shoulders deflating. If Danny strains his ears, he can hear the rest of the family outside, the shuffling of their feet muddling with their dissonant whispers.

“I’m sorry, Danny, I’m so sorry, but…”

Danny’s heart stops.

See, there’s always a catch with Desiree’s wishes. They always come toppling down, one way or another.

He should have expected this, really, shouldn’t he? They’re the world’s greatest detectives, of course they would figure it out! It was only a matter of time. He just wishes—no, he had hoped—he’d be able to tell them first.

Bruce takes a deep breath and everything goes quiet. Danny’s chest feels like it’s going to explode. What are they going to do to him?

“Danny, I don’t think you’re real.”

Wait, what?

“What?” Danny asks, fingers clenching and unclenching in a futile effort to get them to stop shaking. “You don’t think I’m real?”

Is that… is this better or worse than realising Danny’s invaded their lives? That Danny’s infiltrated their minds?

“I’m sorry, that probably wasn’t the best way to phrase it,” Bruce says, looking away. He keeps his hands folded together in front of him. “What I meant to say is, I don’t think you existed before you fell into my lap two months ago.”

Is that any better? Marginally, Danny supposes. To them, he may as well not have existed until two months ago.

Danny doesn’t say anything—because really, what can he say to that?—and Bruce, who is back to watching him carefully, takes it as permission to carry on.

“I also believe that it’s my fault you’re here now.”

Okay, so, in hindsight, this is where Danny should have said something. Right now. If he comes clean, they might still like him. There’s still a chance that—if he just stopped lying to them right this second—they might still want him when this is over. 

But when he opens his mouth, nothing comes out. 

There’s a lump in his throat that hurts everytime he tries to swallow around it and his eyes burn and he can’t say anything because saying something means that this is all going to end, but—but… but it’s all going to end anyway, isn’t it?

“There’s a lot of evidence.” Bruce continues, looking back down at his hands. “We all have different memories regarding your first appearance, or how you were adopted, and why you were injured that night. Some things are the same, like how any memory of you is… distorted, somehow. Faded, barely there. As if it’s not there at all. Alfred had to make you a new room!”

“W-what…” Danny’s voice breaks as he desperately tries to think of how to salvage this situation. “What are you saying?”

“More damningly, there’s no security footage of you in the manor at all, not until the last two months when you fell right into my lap.”

Here, Bruce pauses, and Danny has to scramble to grab his hand and hold on. Bruce looks up at him, finally, and Danny’s startled to see red rimming his eyes.

“Danny, just moments before that, I had wished to have a child who would return my hugs.” Bruce offers him a small smile even as Danny’s heart swells into a painful lump in his chest. “I don’t know how it happened, or why it came true, but… I’m sorry, Danny.”

“Bruce—”

“It’s my fault. I couldn’t go on with the idea that all of this was because of my selfish wish now that you’re a fully realised person. You deserve autonomy, you deserve the choice.”

“Bruce, please—”

“You deserve to know the truth so you can decide what to do, I know that—”

“Listen to me, Bruce—”

“No, Danny, I know that you believe you’re part of this family—and you are—but you also need to know what happened, so you can—”

“It was my wish, Bruce!”

Finally, Bruce stops, and looks up at Danny.

“It was… Bruce, it was my wish,” Danny confesses, his words strangled by his heart pounding in his throat. His lungs burn as he breathes in far too fast, short, sharp and uneven. “I mean, it was my wish that caused it. Desiree—I was… I had to, because—Bruce, if I hadn’t done it, if I hadn’t wished for it, they would—they were going to—Bruce, please…”

Danny scrambles forward in the bed, his legs tangling in the covers, to get to Bruce. He’s going to miss this, he realises with a sob as he all but falls into his arms, he’s going to miss feeling safe in Bruce’s hugs. He’ll miss the happiness, the trust, the warmth, that security brings.

“Shh, Danny, it’s okay,” Bruce whispers as he combs his fingers through Danny’s hair, just like his mom used to do before she—before… It feels nice. It feels really nice. “Can you tell me what you mean?”

Danny takes in a deep, shuddering breath, and Bruce presses his lips against his forehead. Immediately, Danny softens, his core soothing in his chest, and he takes a moment to just breathe.

“I was real. Before the wish, I was real. I… I lived in the midwest, with my mom, my dad, and my sister. We were happy, mostly.” Danny presses his face tight against Bruce’s chest and he tries to keep the wobble out of his voice. “And then I died and I became Phantom and everything went to shit.”

“You were a vigilante, with your… previous family, too?”

Bruce doesn’t stop stroking his hair and Danny takes a moment to just enjoy it. He tries not to think about how it’ll be the last time.

Danny hums an affirmative and lets it sit there, for a second, as he basks in the warmth before it inevitably ends.

“My parents were… are… ghost hunters.”

Bruce stops.

Gently, he peels Danny off of him, and tries to look him in the eyes, but Danny scoots back and away to the other side of the bed. The bedspread is awash with stars, full of constellations. Dick got it for him when they realised he hadn’t anything of his own.

“Danny, what do you mean?”

“They hate ghosts. Call them evil, unsentient, no better than animals. They… They’re scientists, too. They study ecto-biology and—”

Danny hears a gasp from behind the door and he wraps his arms around his stomach. His wounds have closed now. He’s fine. He’s fine, he’s fine, he’s fine.

“When I… When I told them—I had to tell them, you know? The secret, it, it was eating me alive, they had to know, I had to let them know, they needed to know, right? Bruce, they had to know—I had to know, I had to tell them, because I knew they would love me. I was their son and they loved me, right? They love me, Bruce, they—they—Bruce, they loved me, I’m sure they—”

“It’s okay, Danny, it’s okay, come here,” Bruce says, holding his arms out for Danny to crawl into. Danny’s strong, but he’s not strong enough to resist his dad asking for a hug, not like this.

Bruce’s hands tangle in his hair again and he shivers as he relaxes.

“There’s a ghost in the Zone called Desiree.” Danny explains as soon as he’s settled. “She grants wishes. Everyone knows not to wish for things, now. They come true, but never how you expect them to. Always wrong. Always twisted.”

Bruce stops stroking Danny’s hair.

“You wished for this?” He asks, voice carefully devoid of any emotion.

“I wished…” Danny sits up to look at Bruce, wanting him to see, to believe him when he says it was the only way. “I was so desperate, Bruce. I had to do something and I know I shouldn’t have, but… I just wanted them to love me. I didn’t want to be on that table anymore. It hurt so much, Bruce, I had to, I had to wish.”

“Danny…” Bruce is staring at him with wide eyes, horror clear on his face. His gaze drifts down to Danny’s stomach, no doubt remembering his injuries and whatever fake memory Desiree conjured up to explain them.

“I wished that my family would accept me for who I am. I think,” Danny sniffs, pushing the heels of his palms into his eyes to try and stem the tears, “I think you wished at the exact same time and it crossed Desiree’s wires up and she sent me to you instead of making my mom and dad actually—actually love me.”

Danny chuckles humourlessly, finally realising the main reason she probably sent him away. “It also probably helps that we’re hundreds of miles away from Amity, so I’m not there to ruin her fun.”

Bruce doesn’t join in his laugh. Doesn’t even crack a smile. He just sits there, perched on the edge of his bed, with his face creased in that sorrowful way it does when he’s down in the Batcave and thinking about a particularly tough case with too many victims.

Danny’s breath hitches in his throat and he forces himself to scoot back a bit, to let Bruce have some space. He probably doesn’t want to be near Danny too much right now, not after finding out that Danny’s been lying to them all this time.

“I’m sorry, Bruce,” Danny whispers, “I know it was wrong. I should have told you straight away, but… But I didn’t want you to hate me. I told myself that as soon as I was better, I would repay everything you did for me—and I’ve tried! It’s not enough, I know it’s not, but I-I infused the Bat-computer with ectoplasm so it’s way more intuitive now! And I made all those ecto-weapons for you, just in case you ever had to fight a ghost! And, and, and, I haven’t done it yet, but I was planning on updating the wards around the manor because—while they’re good—they’re not perfect and there’s some glaring holes that ghosts can exploit and it wasn’t like I was just going to leave them like that, I was going to fix it, I just don’t have all the strength for it yet and—”

“Danny,” Bruce says, cutting through Danny’s rambling. He places a gentle hand over Danny’s trembling one. “Danny, it’s okay.”

“What?”

“It’s okay.” Bruce repeats, a small, sad smile on his face. “I’m glad we found out what happened, and I’m so, so sorry that you went through that, but it’s okay. You’re here with us now, you—”

“No! No, Bruce, aren’t you listening? None of this is real, it’s my fault that—”

“Danny,” Bruce interrupts, taking Danny’s hand in his own now and smooths his skin in calming circles, “listen. The reason I wanted you to know about my wish was so that you could have the choice about whether or not you wanted to be here. Now that I know the truth, I’ve made my choice, too. You’re a part of this family, Danny, no matter how you came to be here. These past two months, I—”

“No!” Danny snatches his hand back, not entirely sure what he's doing or why he’s doing it. Isn’t this what he wanted? Why is his chest about to cave in when finally, finally, Bruce knows the truth and still wants him? Still accepts him, still loves—that’s it. 

A flash of ice lights down his spine as he realises what’s wrong.

"I promise, Bruce.” Danny says, eyes wide and voice trembling. “I'm going find Desiree and have her reverse the wish. I'll set everything back to the way it was. It'll be okay. I'm sorry."

For a moment, Bruce looks confused. He opens his mouth and takes in a sharp breath as if he’s ready to argue his point, but stops, nods briefly, and closes his eyes. Does this mean he understands, too?

They’re the Bats and the Birds. Gotham’s vigilantes and respected members of the Justice League. The greatest minds in the world. There’s no way he doesn’t understand that this has to happen. It needs to be done. 

They can't have something affecting their minds like this. Better to rid themselves of this magic and go back to normal.

There’s a brief moment of silence. Danny wonders what the others are thinking outside as he wipes the tears from his face, more determined now than he’s ever been.

"Promise me this, too, Danny," Bruce says, unable to stop himself. His fingers bleed white where they ball into fists. "Promise me that you’ll come back and find us when you're done. No matter how you came to be here, you're a part of this family. We will always accept you as you are, ghostly powers or not. You're family now."

"Yeah," Danny whispers, voice choking on the thought. His chin trembles and his mouth downturns and when he squeezes his eyes closed, tears roll down his cheeks. He hunches himself up, hugging his knees, as small as he can make himself.

"I mean it, Danny. You're one of us and we want you to stay." Bruce tries to rest a comforting hand on his leg, but Danny snatches it away, unable to bear the touch.

"I know." Danny says, with a watery laugh as he smiles at Bruce. "I know you do. You have to. Because of the wish."

And then Danny tucks his head back into his arms and sobs. 

Bruce can't stand it, he hates it when his children cry—and that's what Danny is, he's his child, no matter what circumstances brought him here. He knows his mind, he knows himself, and he knows that he'd never turn away a child like Danny. He never has and he never will, because, at his core, that's who Bruce Wayne is.

He reaches over to pull Danny into a hug, and, after a tense second where Bruce thinks he’s going to pull away again, Danny latches on tightly and squeezes him hard, as if he's worried he's going to lose him forever.

Bruce hugs Danny and Danny hugs him back and neither of them acknowledge that it’s because of the wish.

The bats have so many folks around, even if they aren't always working together. Enough that folks like to joke/write about Danny just kinda showing up acting like he already lives there. He just kinda blends in.

I'd love to see more magic motivated versions of this. Some kind of spell that affects the bat's perceptions of the past and present, making them actually miss that this boy wasn't with their family too long ago. Maybe it changes their understanding like it's a time line shift, maybe it fogs their mind just a tad and makes them glaze past something like it wasn't even there. I like the second if only because I feel like that would make it more likely for the bats to realize a spell was a foot.

Imagining this from Danny's side, hes terrified this whole time of getting found out. He knows how and when he showed up here and maybe even how flimsy whatever magic is in place is. Imagining a Desiree wish that was either very carefully worded or Not so carefully worded. Maybe he placed himself with the Wayne family with the expectation that he would quietly mooch of some rich idiot until he was ready to be on his own. Or maybe he wished himself to be a part of the batclan, taking up a mask and patroling with them as a bird that Doesn't Exist.

Ofc eventually the spell has to be broken, leaving the bats confused worried scared angry probably even amused, and a billion other things. WHY did this teenager decide to adopt himself into the Wayne/bat family? Who the hell is he and where did he come from. Someone call Zatanna, there is some magic Fuckery going on.