vrowescrever

[vrowescrever]

[Fanfiction] Nacresis (Chapter 1)

Author’s Notes No longer sick! Also, constantly debated with myself about whether to upload it on Ao3 or not and I'm still undecided. If I ever do upload it, I'll edit this post with a link to it, however I do advise to not get your hopes up. I've been haunted by this fic for a while now, and it's very, very self-indulgent. Like, here are some of the inspirations for this fic: Fear and Hunger 2: Termina, Carrion (the game), and Knight Terrors (that DC event).

DC - Nacresis (Chapter 1) Rating: Mature (See: Body Horror and whatnot) Word Count: 2863 Warnings: Body Horror, some Graphic Violence, and gratuitous amount of Blood and Meat.

Summary. An incision of about 15 cm (6 inches) is then typically made through the lower abdomen.

“Shit,” Tim whispers and Cass is instantly awake, walking towards the airlock as if she hadn’t been napping on her perch for the past thirty minutes.

Tim’s hands move in autopilot while his focus remains on Bruce’s unconscious body, the cycling of the airlock is a background process in contrast to how the almost imagined movement evolves from involuntary twitching to convulsions to a violent seizure.

Bruce’s eyes, thankfully, remain shut as his back arches, arms and legs straining against the padded reinforced leather restraints, and the cut across his abdomen begins to bleed, the skin and muscles around the area swelling and distending. One of the sutures holding the cut closed snaps even before a thin, raw muscle claw tears the rest of them from the inside out, and shapes of something more ripple in Bruce’s abdomen right under his skin as the entity rips the cut wider, dragging itself out and glistening under the isolation cell’s sterile white light.

The entity this time isn’t a new one. Its spindly, spider-like legs are cautious to hold itself up without puncturing Bruce’s unconscious body, flashes of metal shine across limbs reminiscent of thin rods and electronic copper tracks underneath layers of blood and meat.

A tension within Tim eases minutely after so many hours. At least it’s not that damned condor.

Cass is inside the cell by the time the raw muscle and thin entity is fully out. Despite having no eyes on its metallic spinal column of an upper torso, it still shifts to face Cass, its two meter tall deformed body now above Bruce, and it shrills the sound of sharpening knives.

The threat display is obvious. Cass doesn’t even blink.

It’s over before it can do anything else. Cass already knows how to weave underneath it and where to hit. She already knows the speed and the minimum force required for a strike so efficient it barely makes a sound. Then, she removes her hand from where the spinal column and a spoke-like junction meet, having broken it clean with one hit, and steps back when the entity starts to wobble as it tries to keep itself up on unsteady, now unresponsive legs.

Once it begins to collapse, its shrill shifts from metal against stones to a distorted quiet chime. Bruce, thankfully, remains unconscious.

Bruce doesn’t shift as the entity falls in a cacophonous crash of metal and bone. He doesn’t twitch as its form melts into a nondescript blob of blood and flesh sprinkled with metal shavings. He doesn’t react as the blob crawls across the floor and up the medical bed to reach him, leaving a trail of bits of meat and a dark, oil-like liquid as it dips back inside the still bleeding, burst open cut.

Tim relaxes a bit further. The sedation is working perfectly.

The distended skin ripples once more before it deflates back to a normal flat abdomen, cut pried open and bleeding aside. Cass approaches the bed restraining Bruce and reaches underneath it for the supplies to clean and stitch the cut shut, again.

“The IV?” Tim asks, his focus remaining on Bruce's unconscious body for just a little while longer, just to make sure.

“Secured,” Cass replies. Tim nods at her answer. He observes her as she redoes the restraints on Bruce's arms and legs, testing their give and examining the rubbed raw skin. She reaches back down for the little tub of topical cream.

He makes a quick note to restock it the instant she unscrews the cap; it’s half empty by now and they’ll need something better anyway.

The sound of footsteps reach him, though Tim shifts his focus towards the monitors, passively reading Bruce’s vitals and data while typing out the report automatically. He already knows who’s coming, the footsteps are not too nimble and not too heavy, spaced more evenly than the gait of a growing child and at a pace far more considerate than most of them would be.

“Hey Duke,” Tim greets, still typing.

“You should’ve woken me two hours ago man,” Duke says as he approaches the main computer, words slightly slurred and rough. “How is he?”

Tim resizes the on-progress report, letting Duke read it at his rapidly waking leisure while Tim concludes the encounter with the added note to restock and revise the quality of the medical supplies for the increasingly possible long term. At the edge of his sight, one of the monitors dedicated to the secure quarantine’s feed shows Cass stepping in front of the airlock and he starts the cycling process to let her out.

Just as Tim finishes the report and starts a new one regarding the turn of shift, Duke’s sharp intake of breath changes Tim's attention from the screen to Duke's face, who's currently focused on the quarantine cell with a grimace.

“Shit,” Duke says, and Tim cancels the airlock cycling as Cass turns on her heel. “Something's coming. A bird.”

“Which one is it?” Tim asks, halfway to his feet with one hand hovering over an emergency override.

Duke's grimace darkens. “Condor.”

Cass lunges towards Bruce's unconscious body as the convulsions start and worsen at a rate faster than normal. She strikes into the suddenly swelling abdomen with both hands and yanks a gurgling mass of blood out, throwing it against the floor with such strength that the crunch of broken bones interrupts an enraged wet howl, following with a swift and vicious kick that sends the bloodied body skittering across the cell.

The body swells as it scrambles up to its quickly forming bird-like feet, slipping briefly on the trail of blood underneath it and the scouring screech of its metal claws against the tiles pierces Tim’s eardrums. Despite the concave deformation of its head from Cass's throw, the red avian skull is soon recognizable alongside its massive humanoid body underneath the white lights, and its beak opens.

Cass throws herself towards the bird-limbed creature like a missile, striking faster than Tim can perceive at its throat and yanking the skull downwards just in time that the first shot hits the floor with a sudden deafening bang. Tim’s eyes land on the bullet hole in the tiles, thankfully far from where Bruce lies, and looks back at Cass as she maneuvers swiftly onto its giant back and manages to close the beak shut in a tight hold, the creature's own shadow reaches up to bind the oddly shaped and mismatching limbs and reinforces Cass’s hold with several black loops tying it down.

“We got this,” Duke says with a faint strain, but Tim’s hand remains above the emergency override and his legs are ready to bolt.

The creature heaves against Duke and Cass's restraints, forcing its head up and beak opening by inches with each attempt followed by a more forceful hold, its snarls are muffled by their combined effort to keep its mouth shut.

Something in its bulk shifts and Cass jumps away from the creature, her dark uniform stained even darker with the blood still pouring from the avian reminiscent body, and without her support, the shadows binding the entity snap against a sudden shriek of broken malformed limbs and metallic spurs suddenly sprouting across its entire body and Tim presses down on the override button.

The quarantine cell’s lights shift to a blinking yellow, contrasting the red hued body and the skeleton-like limbs and spikes adorning it like exposed fractures and embedded shrapnel.

Cass advances once more in an instant, keeping low to the ground as she weaves closer and away with frequent strikes and constantly moving. Her blows aren’t heavy or focused enough to deal damage, merely taps in between the misshapen and jagged spurs, but it still works to keep its attention on her as the creature swivels around, tracking her with its open beak and an increasing rattling snarl.

Tim and Duke both rush into the cell, the hiss of the airlock's opening and their quiet steps are wholly overwhelmed by the creature’s loud and deep chested snarling, too focused on Cass to notice them slipping inside. The smell of blood hits Tim’s senses like a physical wall the moment he's past the threshold, the metallic scent made sharper against the traces of antiseptic and the controlled twenty-six Celsius. His stomach churns regardless of how much he wills it down, so he focuses on his hold on his staff, tightening.

They don't attack the hulking creature, instead they follow it silently as Cass lures it further away from the door. At the corner of his sight, Duke tenses and the yellow blinking lights flicker a fraction earlier than its constant rhythm, and Tim's own legs crouch slightly, ready to leap.

At Cass’s new salvo of jabs, the condor snaps forwards with its beak wide open and what would have been another light tap, Cass shifts into an immediate uppercut followed by the flash of a batarang in her other hand and two sets of flare bright lights wash the cell in brilliant yellow from inside the empty eye sockets of its red skull, and it's only due to the relentless training that Tim knows, even without looking, that Duke has bound the creature with his both body and powers, and Tim jumps, focused on the deformation of the avian creature's skull as his body prepares for the inevitable drawback of the heaviest blow this staff can endure.

He feels the impact in his hands followed by a blood chilling crack of metal against bone, and his body keeps moving, jumping away for distance and time to ready himself for his next strike. The instant he turns to leap forward again, Cass has already finished stabbing the now broken open skull with the batarang, the black metal quickly enveloped by a dim yellow coat of light. It's an unmistakable target whether from afar or up close and Tim lunges, a martial shout out of his throat as he swings his staff as hard as he can.

The strike connects with a thunderous crash, but rather than the familiar bounce of the training mannequin he's grown to expect, the resulting impact travels deep into his bones. The pain, however, is suddenly distant. Meager in contrast to the stillness in his chest.

What should have- What has destroyed the condor before wasn't even a third of the damage and violence they all did just now, and yet the creature is  bent sideways and whole. Whole, despite the cracked open skull. Despite the lacerating batarang struck deep. Despite its gray matter splattered outwards, coating the bo staff with an odd texture Tim can't identify.

It creaks. It's a small sound, like rusted hinges, but it echoes in the sudden vacuous silence inside the cell, then its head jerks in sudden, broken twitches as if it means to turn its head and yet is physically incapable of doing so. But it persists. It persists regardless of how much it has to shake its head, the restrained action dislodges more and more gray matter out of the hole in its skull, alongside bits of loose broken skull fragments that hit the tiles in strange sharp notes alongside the wet splatters, and the angle of its head twists from strained and straight to tilting sideways and unnaturally downwards with each twitch, managing little desperate degrees at the cost of something greater until it does turn with a sudden, revolting snap.

Tim takes a step back by instinct, clear of the splatter zone as the rest of the gray matter leaks all at once from the hole and hits the floor with terribly wet sounds and a muffled metallic clatter, a peak of black against gray. He takes another step when the creature's entire body trembles, and its upside down head shakes belatedly and offset from the rest of itself where it hangs loose by its limp neck.

It creaks, again. Somehow. The sound is even smaller.

The metallic spurs and broken limbs lose their definition, slowly and then rapidly melt into a darkening liquid that further cascades its breakdown. Near Tim's feet, the gray matter sizzles and boils into dry bloodstains and grime, releasing wisps of black smoke and an overwhelming smell of burnt meat.

His stomach churns worse this time, the heavy ball of nausea impossible to ignore in its slow trek up his throat. He grinds his teeth as he wills the nausea down, watching the creature melt down into a nondescript blob of still boiling blood and flesh. His eyes follow the blob as it crawls across the dirty floor with the speed of a roach, climbing up Bruce's bed with just as much proficiency and slipping inside the open and still bleeding cut across the man's swollen abdomen.

Bruce's skin ripples and the swelling goes down. The sight of the flat stomach gives Tim such intense relief that his sight swims and his body sags, exhausted beyond words and only expressible through a heaving breath.

“That was not good,” Tim says with another heaving breath, then he swallows down the nausea at the pervading and lingering smell of blood and smoke.

“Could it do that before or was that new?” Duke asks, stretching his arms.

Something about his long sleeves catches Tim's attention, and he shakes his head automatically as he puts away his bo staff. “I don't know,” Tim answers with a hand on his face, feeling each finger cramp as he tries to both block the smells and to massage his eyes. “Maybe it could, but it didn't do it before since it was too close to...”

The faint memories of their first encounter with the condor makes Tim shake his head even more, pressing his fingers over his eyelids a little harder.

“Considering how it acts, I really doubt that,” Duke mutters. “You two okay?”

Tim lets his hand fall from his face at the question, barely hearing Cass’s I'm okay as he glances about the quarantine cell.

Duke must have deactivated or shortened the yellow warning lights, as the room is illuminated again by sterile white. The white light causes the grime and dried or currently drying blood and bits of flesh to stand out even more, now resembling an abandoned slaughterhouse than a well kept quarantine medical cell. Tim looks at the floor and grimaces at the new scratches, dents, and bullet hole. The trail that the condor left is indistinguishable amongst the other trails practically painting the tiles at this point, one stroke of black amidst dozens of others. They urgently need to wash the floor again.

But the damage is nowhere near the medical bed and, by extension, Bruce. Who appears to still be unconscious, thankfully.

Tim's eyes flick to the IV connected to Bruce's restrained left arm and breathes slowly.

“I��m alright,” Tim says remarkably even despite the dull, pulsing pain in his arms.

He glances at Bruce's unconscious body again. With the man this well restrained, Tim can't tell if Bruce had moved unconsciously or not. He can't tell if Bruce had opened his eyes at any point. He'll have to review the footage, and the data on Bruce's condition, and the data of the entities and their resilience, and the time between their appearances, and the-

“C’mon,” Duke says, suddenly by Tim's side. “Shift’s changed two hours ago, Tim. You need the break, actual food and real sleep.”

“I just said I'm alright,” he grouses against the desire to yawn.

Duke sighs and shakes his head. “Sure. We could argue about that and go in circles for a moment, but you look too tired to start so let's skip to the part you're convinced about taking a break. What do you say, Cass?”

Cass, the traitor, nods and stares at Tim before she heads towards the medical bed, one arm already reaching for the supplies underneath it.

“Technically, she didn't say anything,” Tim points out just because, but he does start to move out of the cell cautiously so as to avoid the wetter looking trails.

“Technically, she didn't need to,” Duke replies easily as he walks ahead. At this distance and under the white lights, the holes and tears across his long sleeves are far more identifiable than before. Tim looks pointedly at his arms and then back at his face. Duke shrugs and rolls back one of the ruined sleeves, revealing an unscathed arm. “I forgot I didn't have my suit on and those quills got to my shirt before I managed to improvise. Now c’mon. He’s not going to go anywhere while you get something to eat and a nap.”

Duke pauses by the main computer, but he waves Tim off in half hearted gestures of chasing out a cat. Tim flips him off in response, although his eyes flick between the monitors and the slowly resetting quarantine cell where Bruce remains, unconscious and mostly unharmed. Gash now cleaned and stitched shut thanks to Cass.

“I’ll be back in thirty,” he says, focusing back on Duke. “If anything happens-”

“-report immediately, yeah, we know.”

With that, Tim nods. Each consequent step further away is a little harder than expected.

[vrowescrever]

[Fanfiction] Felled trees unheard

Author’s Notes Day 2 of Still Being Sick! Also not going to crosspost this one on Ao3, so Tumblr Exclusivity. While this piece isn't the first I've written of its type, it is one of the few I've actually completed. I have many, many thoughts about this specific aspect and, other than rambling like an absolute deranged loon, I don't feel capable of eloquently elaborating it besides through creation. So here it is.

DC - Felled trees unheard Rating: General Audiences Word Count: 1550 Warnings: None.

Summary. Kind of self-explanatory.

“I figured you’re just a man,” says Dahlia Burke when he steps out of the shadows. She takes a slow, deep drag of her cigarette, still facing the docks rather than look at him. Her next words wisps in the air like smoke. “Even before you arrived back then. It was just… hindsight, and overhearing his friends when they were over.”

He says nothing and waits for her to gather her words again. He knows more is coming, with this kind of start. She won’t give him the information until it’s all out.

“You know you were bleeding, right?” she asks suddenly, flicking off the ashes into an empty beer can. “When you got me out. You were bleeding, and I thought you didn’t notice because of how crazy everything was.”

He doesn’t respond, but he remembers that night clearly. He was bleeding, yes. It was hard not to know that after being thrown at a pile of rubble, with jagged and sharp metal lacerating his shoulder between armor plates.

“I didn’t remember that until a week later,” she continues. “During therapy. We were trying to figure out why I kept freaking out when my hands got dirty, and that’s when I remembered it. You were bleeding a lot when you carried me out, and I got your blood all over my hands when I held on to you.”

She takes another drag from her cigarette, and holds the smoke for two seconds before sighing it out, her posture going lax on the chair. She looks up at the cloudy night sky.

“I thought- I thought that was it. Batman is just a guy who bleeds like anyone else,” she says, voice carefully even. “I had the realization. My brain had processed the fact. I figured I wouldn’t feel that type of surprise again.”

He doesn’t say anything. He knows where this is going. A car alarm blares in the distance.

“Imagine my surprise,” she says, her voice straining. “Imagine my surprise when I saw that fucker with a bat on his chest.”

She grinds her cigarette against the plastic table, and shoves the stub inside the empty beer can with a restrained huff. Her eyes go down and remain resolutely on the docks, even as she reaches underneath the off-white plastic chair for another can. It takes her a moment. He waits where he is.

She yanks the tab and merely holds the can as the beer foams out. Drops of it drip down to her hand, connecting with her fingers. “I- I thought I was going crazy.” Her hand begins to shake. “I thought- I did get caught in the Scarecrow’s fear gas attack one day before. It could’ve been that. Sometimes those leave lasting effects because of med interaction, my psych told me that. It could’ve been that.”

He walks towards her at a calm and audible enough pace, and stops right beside the other cheap plastic chair. This close, it’s easier to see her eyes reddening and the shape of the gun hidden next to her thigh.

He doesn’t sit down. She takes a long, slow drink of her beer and sets it on the table with a sudden gentleness. Her hand still shakes.

“But then I saw it again,” she whispers, “and I realized that… you’re just a man.”

She examines her wet, shaking hand. The first sob, though quiet, feels like it echoes in the night, but his focus remains on her furrowing brows, her clenching jaw. The way she forces herself to breathe evenly, gathering herself again despite how her nose grows red.

Batman waits.

“He was an asshole,” she says after some seconds, voice strained. “A motherfucking asshole. A real piece of shit. The fucking worst. He robbed, he dealt drugs to anyone, and he- and-”

She folds forward, elbows on her knees and hands over her face, her fingers digging into her hair. “A-And he brought me my meds,” she mumbles. “Even when- Even when he didn’t need to- He brought them, every friday. Sometimes just to talk. He got me better locks. He made sure I had money, even after I screamed at him- He- The deposits. For me and dad.”

“He was still the- the absolute worst,” she says to herself. “I fucking hated his guts. I couldn’t believe he was- He’d-”

He tilts his head forwards, a suggestion of a bow. She swallows back a pained sound.

Her words are muffled, barely there, “he didn’t deserve to die.”

“I’m sorry,” he says.

A bitter, tired laugh rises and bursts from her, and she unfolds slowly. She tries to smile, but her lips twitch too much for the expression to be of anything but pain, and reaches for the can of beer.

“You didn’t shoot him,” she hisses into the can, holding it with her other hand. “You don’t kill. Everyone around these parts knows that.”

She drinks the beer, her back rests against the chair and she closes her eyes once she’s finished with it. The car alarm in the distance stops, replaced by barely discernible shouts and cursing. Her wet hand is still shaking, and she sniffs every once in a while.

“He was the worst. My brother-” her face crumbles, her eyes strained shut with a sudden shudder. “He- he was the worst, but that didn’t- I-”

She cuts herself off and lets go of the empty can. It falls onto the ground with a clatter, rolling off as she jerkily cleans her wet hand against her pants. With a shaking breath, she slowly reaches next to her thigh. She still doesn’t look at him.

“He gave me this,” her voice strains to be even, her eyes now on the gun in her hand. “For protection. When he didn’t hear from a… a work acquaintance for a few days. Right before…”

She trails off. He examines the gun as he waits. It’s a heavyweight, semi-automatic pistol of recent and modern design, one praised for accuracy and power despite the expense and touted as be the best of its kind for self-defense, even against heavily armored individuals.

He knows there’s merit to the design. The bruise near his ribs is enough proof of it, although that type of impact has never slowed him before.

Her eyes flick towards him for less than a second before she sets the firearm on the table, pushing it his way as she stares out into the night. The safety isn’t on.

“I… I know why you’re here,” she says, shoulders dropping. “They’re going to try to hit some Wayne Tech place soon. There’s a distraction planned in the Fashion District, but all they really talked about was the money they’ll get if they manage the hit. I don’t think they even know who hired them, but,” she shrugs, sniffs a bit wet. “They’re desperate and money is money.”

That lines up with what he had suspected, and the confirmation does change the scope of the situation to a better definition. Still, he remains standing. Waiting.

She takes a deep, slow breath, steeling herself.

“Can you get rid of it?” she asks.

He reaches over and starts disassembling the gun, letting the sound of the components unlatching and clattering against the plastic table talk for themselves. He puts away some of the important pieces to ascertain it won’t work even if it were put back together.

“Thanks,” she says. Although there’s a breath of relief, her body remains too tense. She clasps her hands together, eyes still bright with tears.

He waits. The indistinct shouting stops, replaced by a distant tire screech that fades like the lingering smell of smoke.

“Why him?” she asks.

He lowers his head. The cheap, flimsy plastic chair scrapes as if one of the legs were about to snap as she stands and turns, one arm clipping against the table which knocks the upright empty can over and scatters the gun parts onto the ground. Tears trail down from her eyes and she bares her teeth.

“Why him? Why- Why did he- He could’ve changed!” she shouts and gestures sharply to herself. “I’ve changed! He could’ve! He would’ve if-”

She grabs the knocked over can and throws it towards the docks, howling with a burst of frustration that ends just as sudden as it starts, and she slumps back in the chair. It tips over, but he steadies it with one hand.

“Fuck!” she screams into her palms, shaking intensely. “Fuck!”

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“Fuck you!” she shouts. “Fuck him! Fuck piece of shit fucker- Fuck that bat on his chest! Like that fixes anything now! Like he didn’t-”

She cuts herself off, mouth shut and trying to regain control of her breathing despite the badly repressed sobs. He waits for a moment longer before taking his hand off the chair.

“It’s not only me who’s just a man,” he says. “He’s just a man, too.”

She doesn’t respond, lips thinning and jaw clenched. She gets up on her feet again, facing away from him. Her body is still shaking.

“I need,” she starts, pausing to keep a shudder down. “I need to go. I can’t… be late. To grab my meds.”

He leaves before she can turn, already vaulting through the city into the night.

[vrowescrever]

[Fanfiction] Cans long expired

Author’s Notes GUESS WHO'S SICK AGAIN WHILE STILL IN THE WRITER'S TRAFFIC JAM? THAT'S RIGHT IT'S ME WOOO!!! Not going to crosspost this on Ao3. That's right! It's Tumblr Blog Exclusive! As likely will be the other stuff non-crossover/fandom fusion AUs I have actually finished, if I ever get around to upload them at all.

DC - Cans long expired Rating: Teen and Up (To be safe!) Word Count: 1215 Warnings: Implied Past Child Sexual Abuse

Summary. Barbara did not question her dad then, but she remembers the way she had considered the word. Awful.

The alarm shocks Barbara awake, a rapid, ear-piercing screech that is both alien and surreal in which it takes her several long, heart-thudding moments to remember her last thoughts and what that alarm in particular was tied to.

She readjusts her chair to lean even closer to her desk, the pain in her back a backdrop to a sudden urgency to shut the alarm off, even though the chances of anyone recognizing what it meant are absolute none.

Because that alarm theoretically doesn’t exist in her systems. There are no guides nor annotations which reference it, nothing written in paper or code that explains how it works by what measure within which parameters. Even the sound of the alarm is not from any free to use stock gallery. She made the sound herself out of glass and metal pipes.

She turns the alarm off. The silence isn’t of any comfort and her heart still races within her ribs, pounding heavier and heavier with each key press to unpack what should not be unpacked.

More accurately, as she stares at her primary monitor, what should not even exist.

The world can be a horrendous place.

Barbara takes a deep breath, then another. Then another. In the rhythm she was taught and proven true time and time again, and it proves true once more. With each cold breath, the hammering slows, the lasting unending ringing in her ears fade back to the normal sound of her fans and occasionally groaning structure that is her tower. The pain across her upper back from the impromptu nap aches with a vengeance, but it’s a pain she focuses on rather than stretching it out. It’s the pain she’d rather feel than the sudden hollowness of her chest.

Within her primary monitor, only one picture from the analyzed package is displayed. This picture was the one chosen by a program that has no maintenance manual nor user instructions, dictated by the same code that runs the alarm of metal scratching glass recorded with a poor quality microphone.

She feels no surprise, deep down. After all, the first data she had manually calibrated this specialized facial recognition software had been done on an unnameable impulse, while the rest were an afterthought.

The picture shows a boy she knows more from grand old canvases than photos, recognizable even without her program’s neat green square outlining pale features underlined with a 94% match. The boy’s empty eyes are the exact same as the man’s after terrible nights.

Clarity strikes her, sudden and distinct, of a time from long ago. Bonding with her father about cases and other interesting events in Gotham. Somehow, or perhaps eventually, the conversation became about the Waynes, about the son’s unfortunate habit of going missing that only worsened after his parents were gone.

“But one time,” her dad had said over a cup of stale coffee, “one time, we simply couldn’t find him. For eight months we couldn’t find him, and when we did...”

Back then, the look in her dad’s eyes was indecipherable.

“The kid looked awful,” he had said.

Barbara did not question her dad then, but she remembers the way she had considered the word. Awful.

With a press of a key, her program’s interface disappears and the rest of the picture becomes clearer without the protective blur, although it doesn’t improve the quality of the hastily taken photo itself.

The purpose of the photo is clear in how the focus lies on the boy’s face. Far in the background there is another pair of legs, clothed but missing one sneaker. She cannot see if the boy before her is missing footwear, and though he has a shirt, whatever ease it might have provided is nonexistent because of how ill-fitting it is. Too large. Too worn. It does not hide the dark bruise on the boy’s neck.

Acid churns in her stomach, bubbling up her chest with a corrosive energy that strains her throat. Her heart has begun to race again, and maintaining her steady breathing becomes a struggle.

Still, a struggle does not mean impossible and Barbara powers on. She commits to memory the factual data related to the package: the size of it, where it was found, whatever metadata there is from the files infuriatingly scrubbed clean, the encrypted information of who owned the drive, the exorbitant prices each single photo has been sold for and each individual buyer.

It's not a relief when she looks up most of the names and discovers they have passed from natural causes within recent years. It's not a relief when she digs deeper and finds several traces of others who may have a copy of one photo or more over several years. It's not a relief to recognize some of the names from a charity gala just two months ago.

The boy with desolation in his eyes hasn't stopped staring blankly at her, his pupils dilated wide despite the camera flash illuminating his features.

Barbara doesn't minimize the photo. She does place her hands over her face, eyes shut tight and forcing the nausea down alongside a scream at the cusp of her burning throat.

The protocol, her own protocol, states requesting assistance from at least one field operative for a more efficient search, tag, and takedown. There's only so much Oracle can do remotely in a reasonable time-frame.

Impulsively, Barbara considers deploying one of her worms through the net, unprotected WiFi connections and hotspots, only to dismiss the idea because of the sheer processing power it'll be to scan each machine and phone individually and the logistical mess it'd be to clean up afterwards, not to mention the sharply elevated power consumption and processing activity would catch Bruce's attention, who may then find out what she's discovered and the ensuing arguments would not be worth it.

Thus to avoid all of that and for the sake of efficient and clean work, she'll have to contact someone who knows how to get around him.

Which means, she sets aside her glasses, presses her palms against her eyes and breathes in sharply through her teeth, contacting either Dick or Tim.

Tim is a good, efficient choice, a perfect one if not for his unpredictability and tendency to go beyond what may be necessary, especially in matters that involve his friends or the family. He'd likely discover her technically nonexistent scanner and beef it up to ensure no copies of the material could ever remain, regardless of costs or being found out.

Dick, however, will know she's found something important about Bruce and will resent her if she does not share, even if - or rather especially when it's not his business. Somehow, he will find out. Somehow, he will insert himself in this case. Somehow, he will find a way to argue with Bruce about it.

Her hands fall from her face, her blurry sight even blurrier from pressing her palms so deeply as if trying to contain a headache, and she settles her glasses back on her face with an exhale that feels longer than it should.

As her sight readjusts, the boy in her primary monitor remains frozen in time. His eyes transfixed at her.

With a deep breath, she minimizes the photo and reaches for her headset.

[vrowescrever]

[Fanfiction] Foregone repair

Author’s Notes Oh hey! I know it’s been... five months, roughly, and I’ve fallen off the Writing Wagon and I’m stuck in the Writer’s Traffic Jam. I have written some other stuff, but I’m not sick enough to post anything without worrying besides this thing that possessed me during the middle of the night. Enjoy!

DC - Foregone repair Rating: General Audiences Word Count: 303 Warnings: Angst, Hurt no Comfort

Summary. Instead of reality winding back like a film, something is caught in the mechanisms. A rock stuck between the gears, stalling the entire machine that was supposed to fix this crisis. This is, unfortunately, expected.

It works.

It works, but it's not perfect.

Instead of reality winding back like a film, something is caught in the mechanisms. A rock stuck between the gears, stalling the entire machine that was supposed to fix this crisis. This is, unfortunately, expected.

Things that are worth doing are rarely done easily, Bruce knows this better than most. Whether the reward lies in the effort or past the pain, it depends. Although in this circumstance, in this reality shattering event that threatens all of existence once again, he already knows the answer before the blockage becomes perceptible.

The machine reshapes itself around him in ways a human brain is barely capable of comprehending. It reshapes as the brilliant Moon looming towards the Earth, its shape fragmenting under the gravitational strain. It reshapes as an impossible planet across the stars, and its once radiant light collapses unto itself just as rockets careen outwards like scintillating comets. It reshapes as a familiar labyrinth of brickwork and smog and halogen lights, blanketed by storm clouds minutes from downpour.

It reshapes as that night, only Bruce is there.

He exists there, as he is. Not as his mind often brings him under mental sways, toxins or wayward dreams. The distinction is as sharp as the pain in his body, as noticeable as bullets cutting through the air, scintillating in the alleyway, somehow impossibly slow.

Nothing around the scene, as familiar as it is in his exacting memories, appears to be the blockage. Nothing is off-key, no one is around the streets to interrupt, and the pearls have already hit the ground.

Bruce examines the scene again, and it's the shining glint of the bullets that catch his mind like a stick in between the spokes of a wheel.

The bullets. Their trajectory.

They are going to miss.

[vrowescrever]

[Fanfiction] Subsuming Owl Songs (Chapter 1: Sundering solstices pt3)

Author’s Notes Oh god it’s already Friday and my NaNoWriMo word count is in shambles. Look at this. God. So while I’m uploading Part 3, don’t expect Part 4 to be complete next week, not only because recovering from Writer’s Block, but also because Part 4 is kicking my ass like it’s going out of style.

Without further ado, Part 3 of Subsuming Owl Songs, which is set in the Gloaming mournings ‘verse. Enjoy!

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3(You’re here!)

Danny Phantom x DC - Subsuming Owl Songs (Chapter 1: Sundering solstices pt3) Rating: Teen and Up Word Count: 10665 Warnings: Child Neglect, Abandonment Issues, Manipulation, Gaslighting.

Summary. Chapter 1: Sundering solstices. Part 3 - Company.

-things aren’t where they should be are where they shouldn’t be he isn’t imagining this he isn’t-

His Sunday starts strangely. He’s barely awake and his phone already has a number of messages.

He reads them, squinting and clumsily zooming in and out to read the letter between the cracks on his screen, as he’s brushing his teeth after breakfast.

‘Danny,’ the first of the messages starts with, ‘I know you said you wanted to spend your weekends at your place, but I thought you’d like to have a tour of the astronautics section of the company today.’

It might be because it’s early, or it might’ve been a throwaway comment of his, but Danny doesn’t actually remember mentioning how he wanted to spend his weekends. He had been expecting March to ask, but he never did. Even yesterday he didn’t mention anything at all.

‘The offer stands valid until mid afternoon, but it’d be definitely more convenient if you were to respond at ten or earlier,’ the message continues. Danny glances at the time. Nine am. ‘The company cafeteria has these great sandwiches and cupcakes during Sundays, although I can order some food delivery if none of them look appetizing.’

‘If you really want to spend your weekend at your apartment, feel free to not reply.’

Danny checks the time the messages were sent, six am, and responds with, ‘ok’

He finishes brushing his teeth and the three floating dots animation starts, pauses, then resumes as March types, deletes, and types a response again. This goes on for a handful of seconds, until finally, ‘Great. I’ll arrive to pick you up soon. You should bring your school supplies if you have homework to do.’

‘yeah i know chill out worrywart’ Danny’s thumbs type and he pauses the moment his brain registers what he’s just sent and to whom. ‘my bad,’ he types quickly. ‘i dont know why i said that sorry march’

He grips his phone tight as March takes his sweet time to type, delete, and retype his response, an anxious thrum growing louder in his chest with each passing second without a reply.

‘Hah,’ March types his single laugh like a rich weirdo. ‘It’s alright, Danny. I’m not offended. Your sister mentioned you do that. She didn’t look like she appreciated it, but I do find it funny. Not many people have the guts to snark at me, and it’s really refreshing and quite funny honestly.’

‘really,’ Danny asks, though his eyes flick between the words she didn’t and I do.

‘Yes, really,’ March responds surprisingly quickly. ‘If more people were this blunt or upfront during meetings and reports, then I’d have a lot more free time.’

For a moment Danny wants to ask again, more specifically this time. His thumbs hover over the digital keyboard, and yet he simply opens his direct messaging history with his sister. He scrolls over their recent messages, glances at her sparser and sparser responses. She hasn’t responded to his last question yet, the one he has sent Friday morning.

His phone vibrates with another message from March, breaking Danny’s focus on his sister’s bare replies.

‘I’m here. I’m waiting right outside.’

‘going,’ Danny sends, and grabs his backpack and other study books spread across his computer table, and he goes towards the front door. He pauses again after he takes out his keys, eyes fixated on the constellation keyring.

His grip on his key tightens, and he unlocks the front door.

-tired but he must work truck won’t drive by itself but his head tense sharp needs the edge off-

Arriving early at March Ventures is different than arriving after school hours.

The atmosphere is electric in the sense of activity, each moving body and incessant rush typing a rapid firing neuron connecting, conversing, and informing other individuals or group of people clustered together and discussing things too fast for Danny to comprehend. The smell of coffee is almost overbearing.

“I thought people took the weekends off from work,” Danny says after a second. March chuckles at his remark, and a part of him perks up at the genuine humor in the sound. “Are you all workaholics?”

“Some are, probably,” March says. “But know that March Ventures is somewhat unorthodox, and most people here today specifically asked or were needed. We make sure to take care of our employees.” His eyes track a person in specific. “Especially our workaholics. Cynthia, have you been here since yesterday? Go home.”

The person - Cynthia doesn’t drop her mug of steaming hot coffee, but she jumps ready to throw her laptop at March, and then she doesn’t relax, but her entire body eases and sags with raw physical exhaustion.

“Mister March, I- Look. I-I just need to finish this one project,” she stammers, and a group of coworkers behind her bursts into laughter. She spins on her heels to glare at them. “Shut up.”

One of her coworkers gasps dramatically. “Cynthia! There’s a kid in the room!”

“There is?” Cynthia spins around again, eyes that seem to be vibrating in her face scouring the room until she looks at him straight on. The weight of her stare is as intense as the shaking of the hand holding the mug. “Oh. Oh god, there is. I-I didn’t even-”

“It’s okay, Cynthia,” March says smoothly, one hand up as if he were comforting a frightened bird. “Just put the coffee down and go home for today, and maybe take tomorrow off too. Your wife is probably worried.”

She deflates at the word wife, like a sad vibrating balloon. She hands her mug of coffee to the first hand that reaches over, then drags her newly free hand over her eyes and the weight of her stare evaporates. “God. You’re right, Mister March. You’re right.”

“I’ll walk her out,” someone else from the group says and gently leads her to the elevator Danny and March just came from. March waves at the two as the door closes, and he glances at Danny with badly veiled relief.

“Please excuse her,” March says as they go towards another direction in the building. “We really try to send home the known workaholics, but unless they want to, they just don’t leave. And forcing them out, nine out of ten times, will cause a lot more problems than it should, so we’ve learned to leave them be before they snap.”

Danny’s guts writhe at March’s words, the undertone of long learned exhaustion grips his throat closed. He nods a little bit, though he doesn’t know if March saw it, too focused on leading the way to the astronautics section.

“Do… people snap much here?” Danny asks hesitantly.

“Fortunately for us, no,” March answers with an amused grin. “We’re not Wayne Enterprises, and we know how to keep an eye out for our colleagues and trust each other. We might not have as many benefits or higher salary, but we do what we can.”

“That’s a bit specific,” Danny mentions a bit carefully. “I mean, isn’t Wayne Enterprises one of the world’s biggest companies?”

“Maybe, but so is LexCorp. And you don’t hear how someone fired or mistreated by LexCorp became a villain bent on destroying the company,” March says, then he considers his own words carefully and adds, “Often. Not as often as we hear about Wayne Ent here at least.”

“Wait, does that happen more often than the news mentions?”

“What do you mean?” March asks, eyes flitting downwards in deep thought. His face brightens with a realization. “Oh- I forgot, you haven’t lived here in Gotham for that long yet. You are adjusting so well that I forgot you aren’t from here. As for your question, the answer is not as of late. Though that can always change.”

“It can change for Wayne Enterprises, but not for March Ventures?”

March nods. “The secret is the difference in leadership and employer relations, and better Human Resources, vetting processes, managers, supervisors. The list goes on.”

Danny nods back, although he doesn’t see the difference considering that Wayne Enterprises is famous for, amongst the several other things they’re famous about, their mind bogglingly investment in the same areas to ensure their employees health, safety, and economical security. He does know about it because Sam has researched thoroughly about it, and subsequently ranted at length about it.

For several days.

Her custom made Poison Ivy plush flashes in his mind briefly. He shakes his head out of that topic he’s yet to properly acknowledge in any meaningful way.

“About the, uh, aeronautics section,” Danny starts, latching onto that to guide both the conversation and his thoughts away, preparing a list of questions and follow-up questions about it. “Is it true that-”

His questions vanish once he sees two people walking towards them in the corridor.

He stops walking. March takes one single step before he stops as well, and even then he traces the step back to approach Danny with a confused look, until his eyes follow his gaze. Danny doesn’t know what March’s expression does right then, his eyes never leave the figures walking closer.

The two people walking towards them, looking so out of place with ordinary work clothes instead of the modified and patented lab-safe jumpsuits beneath thick lab coats, are his parents. They look good.

“Lincolnes!” his dad says with gusto. “Were you on your way to check out our lab?”

“I wasn’t, Doctor Fenton,” March says evenly. “Because, as I’ve explained before, I am not your designated supervisor-”

“Next time then!” his dad says, but his normal tone of voice, especially as work-ready as he is, is a few decibels short of yelling and Danny instantly spots other coworkers looking their way. One person’s eyes are wide, as if surprised at what they saw or heard.

March, however, takes it in stride. “I’ll keep your invitation in mind, but actually I am on my way to see-”

“The improved and upgraded space worthy telemetry prototypes?” his mom guesses. “It’s meh. Jack and I needed to deliver and receive some reports about the radiation shielding results for various materials, and we gave a look around in the meantime. It’s okay stuff, certainly not as interesting as how our lab is shaping up to.”

“Right,” March says, something in his voice strained as he tries not to drag the word out. “Danny and I-”

“Sorry L-Man,” his dad cuts in, figuratively and physically as he rushes past them. “I just remembered Monickins needed to speak with us about the climatic chambers! C’mon honey, we need to tell them the importance of the correct size and specifications while we can before they do it wrong again.”

“Oh no, they don’t. If I have to instruct them how to safely and properly reassemble our climatic chambers one more time-”

And off his parents go without looking back. Danny doesn’t move. He doesn’t even twitch as numerous heavy stares press him down, boxing him in alongside the hushed whispers and the brief concerned, pitiful looks he sees at the edge of his sight.

Danny glances down and just breathes. He ignores the deep hollowness in his bones and he focuses on the motion, how his lungs fill with AC temperature controlled air smelling of coffee, papers, and faint perfumes and colognes. In and out. Slowly. In. Out.

He notices another motion at the edge of his sight. March, who has stepped closer, is slowly and methodically readjusting his dress shirt cuffs. He takes off his cufflinks, readjusts the cloth sharply, and slowly puts the links on. He does that in a smooth, practiced way with both cuffs, repeating the process until he just sighs so softly Danny would’ve missed if a part of him didn’t know to expect it.

March shifts again, turning and observing Danny with an expression Danny has no name for. Danny, in turn, observes him with a clenched jaw.

“It’s alright to not be fine, Danny,” March starts, looking at him in the eyes with a soft concern Danny’s only seen in live action dramas. “You know that, right?”

He looks away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

March sighs. He expects to hear the familiar tongue clicking of disappointment, but there’s only a rustle of clothes and, as he looks back, March has crouched a bit to be on his eye level.

“It’s okay,” March says again, slower and clearer, eyebrows slightly furrowed. “I know what it’s like. To have a family that… lives like you don’t exist.”

Danny’s mouth presses into a thin line, ignoring a lump in his throat or how he feels his eyes widen and snap back to March’s.

“Yeah,” March sighs in a quieter tone like some sort of secret, and flashes him a brief sad, bitter grin. “I get it. They can be good people- great people, but. But they’re not a… a great family, you know? You try to reach out, and all you get is… their back.”

Danny keeps quiet because- because that doesn’t mean anything. He sniffs, eyes drifting towards the tiled floor, something burning in his throat. With March this close, Danny can see his hand hover closer, reaching but uncertain whether to complete the motion or not. Danny doesn’t move, and the hand falls back down.

He sniffs again, though this time with a deep sigh through his nose.

“How about this,” March says as he stands up. “What if we get some ice cream for now? There’s a place I really like near the Old Wayne Tower. It has about five hundred flavors.”

Danny tilts his head a bit to look at him, and finds he’s still looking at Danny with a small, tentative grin. His jaw unclenches,  and he swallows down the lump in his throat.

“Aren’t you really…” his words stumble haltingly, uncertain in his own ears. “Busy?”

“Maybe, but that’s why I have a dozen assistants,” March says easily with a shrug. “And a well paid secretary who’s willing to put up with my shenanigans.”

Why, Danny wants to ask, but at the same time a part of him doesn’t want to, because he knows he won’t be able to muffle the shaking, burning timbre in his throat. March is still waiting for his answer, patiently focused on him.

“Five hundred flavors?” Danny asks instead despite a slight catch in his voice, and March’s grin brightens. “What other flavors do they even have after, I don’t know, mint and chocolate chips?”

“I’ll have you know I didn’t want to spoil this, but,” March pauses dramatically, one step taken and yet waiting for him to follow. “They have cheese.”

Danny almost stumbles before he even takes his first step. “What.”

“They do,” March says, one hand suddenly closer as if he had been about to reach out if Danny did indeed fall. “It’s some sort of cheddar cheese concoction they got the idea from Filipino cuisine. I myself never felt adventurous enough to try it. I usually stick to strawberries.”

“The place says they have five hundred flavors, one of which is cheese, and you stick to strawberry?” Danny gapes. “Wow, you’re boring.”

March chuckles genuine humor and an overly dramatic mock offense, and Danny feels himself grin back. Just a little.

-he isn’t paranoid just need an edge off it’s been years just a sip won’t hurt just one glass-

The drive to the five hundred flavors ice cream place is a drag. Whatever Danny had thought about Gotham City traffic before doesn’t compare to how it grinds to a halt, one constantly chorused by various car horns in a likely headache inducing pitch deaf spiral of irritability. Now he understands the real reason for the windows of the car to be so thick, and he is secretly grateful for how it dampens the outside world to teeny muffles.

Danny is the one to point out a vacant parking spot once they get to it, the place is surprisingly packed combined with a confusing parking area with nonsensical guiding arrows. March’s exhausted, genuine thanks eases Danny’s frustration from waiting an eternity in traffic.

Soon enough, they enter the establishment on their own feet, the queue by the ordering area flowing far faster than Danny’s seen for an active food place, and a preview of the hundreds of flavors stuns him for a moment.

By the time it’s their turn, March orders first, and Danny goes second.

March doesn’t call him out on his hypocrite ass when he doesn’t pick the cheese ice cream, but he is plenty confused at his flavor of choice.

“Kumquat, really?” March asks, holding his large plastic cup with strawberry ice cream.

Danny nods, eager to try it as he watches the server scoop his chosen ice cream flavor. He’s still amazed they actually had that, and several other tastes more from both the temperature controlled display and the menus around the place.

“Yeah, I’ve heard it’s really good from a friend,” he says and thanks the server once he receives his plastic cup. “She mentioned she liked it because it’s a funny word, but then she actually got the chance to try it and she really liked it.”

They rush towards an empty booth, the establishment around them full and moving with customers and servers. The atmosphere feels light with the uplifted chatter in the pastels colors and soft interior design of the place.

“A friend from school?” March asks, holding the plastic spoon with a dollop of pink ice cream with actual strawberry bits in it.

“Yeah,” Danny says and specifies, “From Casper High, not Gotham High.”

March raises an eyebrow, leaning forward slightly. “Casper High was the school you went to, back in Amity Park?”

“Yeah, it’s,” he pauses, looking down at his orange and sweet smelling ice cream. He tries not to think too deeply about Casper High. “It’s fine.”

They eat their ice cream slowly. His kumquat ice cream is genuinely good, a balanced mix between citrus sweet and tangy sour.

“What about Gotham High?” March asks after a while. “Have you been getting along well with others there?”

“Sure,” Danny says off-handedly. “I’ve been doing fine. They give a lot more homework though.”

“It’s good to know you’re doing fine, but I asked you if you’ve been getting along well with your classmates,” March says lightly with slightly furrowed eyebrows. “You don’t need to go into detail if you don’t want to, okay?”

Danny sighs into his cup. His breath doesn’t make the ice cream melt faster.

Suddenly, he wants to pull out his phone and check for messages again. To re-read his direct message history with Jazz. She still hasn’t responded. Too busy.

Instead, he leans forward on the table, almost sprawling across it and tugging his plastic spoon in and out of the ice cream.

“Nobody bothers me,” he chooses eventually. “Nobody’s tried, and I don’t feel like it either.”

“That’s okay, Danny,” March says slowly to his surprise. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to. You’re still adjusting, and I’m guessing you still talk with that friend of yours?”

Danny eats a spoonful of sweet and sour ice cream, feeling it ease a faint burn in his throat. He nods.

“Then you don’t have to worry about it,” March continues with a small grin. “I didn’t worry about it when I was around your age, and that was before how interconnected the world became. Now you can find and talk with people you actually like, or keep talking with your friends from Amity Park.”

He nods again, slower. “Okay,” he says and, for some reason, he adds, “I also talk with Jazz.”

“You do?” March asks with a hint of surprise, and that catches Danny by surprise as well. “She’s been really terse and hasn’t really responded besides with how busy she is. She’s been really stressed from what I’ve seen, and getting really irritated because of that. But it’s good that she’s talking with you.”

Danny’s grip on his spoon tightens, an electric thrum builds in his chest, and the feeling of static underneath his skin worsens at how hopeful March’s face is.

“When she had mentioned the reason why she asked me to look after you, I was worried, you know?” March muses quietly, digging into his strawberry ice cream but not eating it yet. “I thought she was abandoning you, so it’s really relieving that I was wrong.”

Danny doesn’t move.

March takes one look at him and his face falls. His mouth opens, but he doesn’t say anything and slowly closes it. There’s a sharp glint to his eyes, a slight narrowing as he examines either Danny or his thoughts with how his eyes shift with precision, as if tracking something from the skies. The look softens, replaced by something somber.

“She hasn’t been talking with you, has she?” March asks carefully, his tone quiet and yet clear despite the ambient chatter around them.

“She’s- She’s just busy. She wouldn’t-” Danny cuts himself off with a spoonful of ice cream.

March sighs and resumes eating slowly.

Danny takes his time, because despite how the conversation turned out, the kumquat ice cream is still really good.

“Danny,” March starts, and Danny looks at him. He has a tentative grin in place, his fingers lightly drumming against the plastic spoon. “Would you be interested in accompanying me as a temporary intern assistant?”

“Uh?” he asks intelligently.

“You won’t have to do any work you don’t actually want to,” March elaborates. “Just check on people here and there for me, in my workplace. And if anyone tries to get cheeky, you just remind them you’re with me.”

He blinks a bit, processing the words. “Are you trying to offer me a job?”

March opens and closes his mouth without making any meaningful sound, so Danny continues on. “Are you really trying to offer me, a fourteen year old, a job? Isn’t that illegal?”

“Technically not illegal,” March says quickly, seemingly having found his proverbial footing. “As long as you’re only doing clerical and office work, and for a maximum of three hours during school days, it should be lawful. We can go over the details in a proper meeting, and you’ll be able to observe more closely the astronautics section.”

For a lack of any sort of response, Danny stares in utter silence.

March, on the other hand, waits patiently with steepled fingers and both elbows resting on the table, posture straight and leaning back in a picture perfect professional image. The tentative grin has evolved to an open and easy going one, waiting for a counter deal or further negotiation.

The man is a Gothamite, Danny realizes. A rich Gothamite. A corporate honcho rich Gothamite.

Danny wheezes a laugh with disbelief, smiling wide instead of gaping, and somehow strangles out, “What?”

“Hear me out. I think you’d be a perfect fit in March Ventures,” March says with a straight face, his tone clear with perfect pronunciation and speaking in a specific rhythm that reminds Danny of any voiced ad ever. “In March Ventures, at the age of fourteen, you can start a specific, limited, part time job as busywork first, but then you’ll soon climb to March Venture’s emerging astronautics branch with possible contracts with NASA.”

Danny’s eyes bug out and he chokes back another bewildered laugh, failing halfway through and resulting in a strange snort. March’s magazine perfect grin wavers to something crooked, but he holds on to the bit.

He opens his mouth to continue, but Danny reaches for a cheap napkin and quickly crumbles and throws it at the man to get him to stop before he starts to lose it. March raises both hands, and the face breaks into good natured humor with a satisfied glimmer in his eyes.

It takes Danny a minute for him to process what just happened.

“Oh gosh,” he says with sudden embarrassment, but no longer feeling the anxious electric thrum of his heart, a distinct relieving absence of static underneath his skin. He’s still smiling. “I’d like to actually enjoy hanging out while I can. So sorry, hard pass.”

March chuckles. “It was a good attempt,” he says, and winds down to the small brief grin. “We can go get more ice cream if you want?”

Danny glances back at his almost finished cup, then back up at March. He nods.

-helped it did just one glass and everything is back to normal he’s been too stressed only that-

After what probably most definitely is too much ice cream, Danny spends the rest of his Sunday in March Ventures’ employer’s lounge, doing his homework and studying while enjoying the really good sandwich and cupcake from the company cafeteria.

Time suddenly passes too fast whilst he’s in there, wandering around the company and not just staying in either the lounge or the entertainment room.

People don’t stare at him for too long, most are still busy with their own work, but they do offer him nods, waves, and brief greetings when they feel like it, which still are more people than he expects.

He tries to return said gestures, though he still keeps to himself until he gets a message from March and something in him wilts. Time to go back.

Danny still gets the shotgun seat, fiddling with the local radio stations on their way back, and then he holds his Noctua constellation keyring tight, even after he locks the front door once he’s back inside and walks straight to his room, settling his backpack on his computer table and removing his notebooks, his pencil case, his study books, and the packaged extra sandwiches and cupcakes from the company.

And the rest of his night feels like it goes by too quickly, which is about normal for how his weekends feel, only for the first time he doesn’t feel as tired in a non-physical way.

He still checks his notifications right before he falls asleep. Besides some good night messages from his friends, there’s nothing from Jazz.

She’s just busy, he thinks. Just busy.

-

-long endless songs distorting within labyrinthine echoes disorienting and confusing-

A blast of a sound shocks him awake, and he sits alert trying to locate the source.

-time flows between unnatural reflections constantly being tinted and painted repeatedly-

He falls back on his bed at the muffled joyous laughter from his parents outside his room.

-by half doubts half fears in between half hushed calls. Gotham sighs, and Danny listens-

-

Besides the familiar old chore of cleaning up shards of broken glass, exploded metal bits, burnt remnants of circuitry, and strange chemical stains that Danny never expected to encounter while in Gotham, his routine readjusts to accommodate for the too often morning surprises and whoopsies at the cost of breakfast time, which is fine. Old habits and all that.

Although he does enjoy a different new readjustment to the pattern of his life. Even if it’s odd, sometimes stilted, oftentimes a bit awkward, hanging out with March is a type of breath of fresh air after his first proper week of living in Gotham.

March is stable, in various ways to interpret the word.

He is stable as in reliable; always messaging Danny when he might be late, asking where he feels like eating this time, or what he feels about trying something else.

He is stable as in steady; his patience when it comes to Danny is seemingly never ending, he explains why he vetoes Danny’s suggestions sometimes, and even teaches him something interesting or useful. 

And he is stable as in secure; a constant solid presence, whether he’s physically nearby or just in the same building, or just one message away. At least in theory. Danny hasn’t pushed or tested the last bit yet, but it’s an impression he’s sure will be confirmed if he ever has to. Although even then…

Danny still checks Jazz’s messaging history. Her responses definitely feel terse, now that March has pointed it out. The hours he does receive a rare, clipped reply vary by strange hours. It confuses him for a moment, until March reminds him that she’s in Canada now. Different time zones, alongside her own tendencies to reply too late or too early.

She’s just busy.

As for his school life, it seems he’s already been shunted to the weirdo loner corner without a public spectacle of it. His peers don’t try to bother him or interact with him unless absolutely necessary, and he doesn’t try either.

It’s, against all of his expectations, a much better experience than Casper High.

He still stands by what he had mentioned about Gotham High’s sheer amount of homework, but that may have been the karmic price for his current stable school life. He deals with it.

And thus three days pass with this adjusted pattern.

Then, on the fourth day, Danny experiences a long due classic Gotham City bingo.

-he hasn’t fallen off the wagon despite the growing number of bottles he’s not going crazy-

He’s in the middle of class when it starts like a flash fever. A sudden rush to the atmosphere of feverish heat and anxiety, a cascading surge of near incomprehensible whispers of muted warnings and words of caution. A shaking, pitch deaf game of telephone about one rumored panicked pleading, of a desperate acquaintance begging a kid to not walk outside alone tonight.

Their English teacher, the actual one and not the substitute Danny’s known for around a week, addresses the restlessness of people’s stares at empty desks with a sigh.

“Alright class, let me remind you that there have been no breakouts from Arkham,” says Miss Novikov, slowly writing on the blackboard with a shaking hand. “And there have been no clown related rumors or sightings. Poison Ivy hasn’t been active in general either.”

“What about Bane?” A girl with an arm in a cast asks. Danny doesn’t remember her name.

“Bane is still locked up, as is Killer Croc,” Miss Novikoc continues without a pause in her slow, methodical and impeccable writing. “And no, Man-Bat isn’t around either, Mia. If there had been any proven reports about any of them, it wouldn’t have come from a school rumor. Now, class, focus on today’s topic. We still have a lot of material to cover.”

That works for the remainder of school hours, but people rush out faster today. It’s noticeable enough that March has a thoughtful look on his face, and traces of it persist even as he greets Danny with a grin.

“Are you still looking forward to genuine Italian cuisine today?” March asks once they’re both in the car. “It’s my favorite Italian place in this entire city, and it’s the only one that has Ancient Roman specials once a week. If we’re lucky enough, you’ll get to try out their modernized jusselle.”

“Modernized what?” Danny asks as he puts on his seatbelt.

“A type of broth,” March explains, starting the car and driving smoothly across the city. “There’s the classic, and a richer version that feels like a consommé, which is also a type of rich and flavorful broth, but french.”

“What’s the difference if they’re all rich flavorful broths?”

“Ingredients, methods of preparation, place of origin, and the legitimacy of the establishment, but the last bit doesn’t matter as much as chefs want you to think,” March says cheekily.

Danny grins, but doesn’t chuckle. He looks out the windows, watching the skyscrapers and various Gotham buildings.

“Did something happen at school?” March asks with a quiet tone, and yet it shatters a silence Danny hasn’t realized settled in. He looks at March and sees him peeking glances towards Danny, eyebrows slightly furrowed with what Danny has been slowly understanding to be concern. “You don’t have to give me any details. It’s just that you haven’t touched the radio.”

Danny glances at the radio, suddenly aware of how heavy his cracked phone feels in his pockets, and he looks back outside. He thinks about the rumor instead of reminding himself that Jazz is just busy.

But thinking about the rumor doesn’t distract him as he’d like it to. It brings his eyes to the ground rather than the sky. At the other cars, the pedestrians, the entrance of buildings and the alleys between them, and the rare, crouched down and forgotten human shapes he catches glimpses of in the distant and darkened slots.

“Nothing,” Danny mumbles, and his eyes slide downwards to his lap as they stop at a red light. “Nothing happened, just…”

He trails off and feels March’s eyes on him, the feeling of being watched by him settles softly at the back of his neck. It propels something in him, in that instant. Something that makes him shake his head, shoulders dropping as his face closes for some unfathomable reason.

“It’s nothing,” he says, and the weight of March’s stare flutters away as the car moves again.

The rest of the drive occurs in not quite as heavy familiar silence, a type that would fit right in alongside the other heavy silences a week ago, and Danny feels displaced in it. Even though time only moves forward, it’s like he’s found a way to step backwards.

They get to the Italian food place and, as March’s grin falls, learn the Ancient Roman food thing got postponed for tomorrow due to the main chef calling in sick. Danny thinks about the rumor again, and wonders if he should say anything about it.

He doesn’t. He doesn’t know why he doesn’t.

The meal is still delicious. The pasta and sauces he tries are fulfilling and great as expected, the risotto is so flavorful it feels illegal and hurts his mouth from how he salivates with each bite, and he can’t stop eating the strange flat salty bread, with or without a spread.

March gets extra extra of the risotto to-go, and they also each get a panettone for some reason. The one Danny gets is filled with chocolate and peppered with chocolate chips, so he isn’t complaining.

Even though the Italian food place is very far away from the apartment, the Gotham traffic flows unsettlingly easier than any other day Danny has seen it, as if there simply aren’t as many cars out today. They somehow stop at every single red traffic light known to man, and yet it’s still an uninterrupted fast drive. The streets feel eerily empty.

The hushed, hastily whispered rumor haunts him as tingling static of dormant limbs within his veins, an infinitesimal increase of his pulse as if it were a dial instead of a human heart tempo.

And he still doesn’t say anything. He still doesn’t know why he doesn’t. The rumored location isn't anywhere near March Ventures.

It’s nothing. It has to be nothing. Usually it’s nothing and that’s that.

Except this is Gotham City. It eats people alive, hollows them out into wandering husks, creating ghosts from their former selves and apparitions from the memories of whom they once were. It’s haunting and haunted. It’s troubled, different, and despite it all mundane.

Danny looks at March with a buzz in his throat, watches him drive them to the apartment where Danny sleeps, just to put away the extra extra portion of risotto in the fridge so it doesn’t go bad by night time or tomorrow.

And suddenly they’re already parked next to said apartment, but Danny doesn’t exit immediately. He stays still, hands heavy on his lap, and his eyes drift towards the looming building.

“It’s okay for you to be upset with her,” March says, voice slow and clear with a soft, understanding tone. “She-”

“I’m not upset with Jazz,” Danny cuts in. “I’m not! She’s just busy and I get it. It’s fine, and it’s not like it’s the first time she’s-” He stops, hands closed into fists and throat uncomfortably tight.

“...that she’s forgotten about you?” March finishes anyway, whispered as a question out of consideration.

It happened once. Only once. But ever since then-

“She didn’t forget about me,” Danny hisses.

“I wasn’t going to say she forgot about you,” March emphasizes, and Danny feels the weight of his eyes on him light as a feather. “I was going to say it’s okay to be upset about the fact she left. To pursue her own goals, her own life, even if that has its costs.”

March’s words grip his heart tight enough to crush, and Danny thinks of her thick makeup around her eyes, barely concealing the puffy bags up close. The deafening sound of her tired sighs, the way her hand shook sometimes as she wrote something, fingertips worn with small calluses from doing too much or holding her favorite pen with the softest grip too tight. The way her breath was either coffee or peppermint mouthwash, and her meals more protein bars and sandwiches than anything else.

And he thinks of the way she was beaming during that visit to Arkham Asylum, and that memory feels distant, past an astronomical unit he has no scale for and he’s insignificantly small.

Danny breathes out quietly. The buzz in his throat suddenly potent and charged, zipping down his veins. At the edge of his sight, the car’s meters flick in a sudden disarray. March, patient and observant March, turns briefly to check and his eyebrows furrow past concern into unsettled confusion.

Danny’s hands move in electric snaps- seatbelt,  door lock, door handle- and he jolts out of the car.

“Danny!” March calls, but he’s already past the front doors of the building, rushing upstairs barely feeling each step with static overcharging his cells. The lights flicker on and off, crackling at dizzying volatile intensities attuned to the erratic current thrumming through his limbs.

He phases through the front door, his entire body tingling suddenly light with ephemeral static as he forces air in and out of his lungs. He focuses on how his feet settle on the floor, the drag of his clothes and strange lack of weight across his shoulders and back. The dry, faint dusty texture of air that still smells like new furniture. He puts both of his hands over his head, combing his hair quickly and pushing it back down to the hold of gravity and laws of physics.

It’s not fair.

Danny knows he’s not being fair to Jazz, that the built up static dissolving his organs into phantasmal suggestions isn’t her fault. She’s just busy. She legitimately is busy. She’s a genius with a clear path towards her future, one she jogged forwards despite all of the weights dragging her down. Despite all of them wearing her down.

He should be happy for her. His hands shouldn’t close, his jaw shouldn’t clench. He shouldn’t feel like he’s ten in a too quiet room, staring at a slow ticking clock, hearing a- 

-a distant bell going bong, bong, bong-

-His breath stutters in a visible mist. Amity Park doesn’t have a church with a functional bell.

He jolts fully awake and disoriented, a body consuming shock snaps his form back to human parameters, but the haunting bells still echo deeper than sound.

Looking around, he finds himself on his ass still inside the apartment, his back leaning against the front door and the echoing sound is still there, actually. Not echoing as bells, but repeating as knuckles against a reinforced apartment door.

“Danny?” March asks outside, voice still unerringly clear despite being filtered through the material. “Are you there?”

Danny quickly checks his clothes and hands to verify they’re in normal human colors, then he shuffles a bit, glancing around for his backpack. There’s a testing wiggle coming from the door.

“Danny, I know it must be hard to come to terms with…” March trails too softly for his words to parse, and yet something in them grips Danny’s chest tight. “Just keep in mind what we went over, okay? People can be great people, but… they’ll always be great people first, and great family…”

Danny shudders, the tightness fizzles into a voltaic thrum.

“I’ll leave your food here, okay? It’s right beside your things, and you can take your time alone so you can think about it,” March mutters, a soft sound of plastic bags settling faintly against the floor behind Danny. “But if you need anything, anything at all, I’m just a message away. Can you promise me you’ll remember that?”

At Danny’s prolonged silence, March adds, only a little bit tired, “Please, Danny?”

“...okay,” Danny says.

March knocks on the door twice, lightly. Somehow it manages to convey a grin perfectly. “Thanks, kid.”

-a sound at the edge of hearing of exhaustion hooting and taunting he’s being watched-

After he brings both of his backpack and the packaged food in, Danny doesn’t know for how long he haunts the apartment, strictly in the metaphorical sense, only that a phone notification tethers him back to reality and he almost throws his phone in his rush to retrieve it.

It’s Jazz. It has to be Jazz. He wants it to be Jazz so badly that he selects her icon out of all the others, and stares wide eyed at the double checkmark of being left on read.

Last message sent was his, several days ago.

His phone vibrates again, his notification displays a new message from March. Selecting it opens his direct message history with the COO, and the messages are numerous and short.

‘Danny. Kid. Are you ok?’ the first three messages read, and another stream just comes in, ‘Kid. Breaking News. Near your place. Are you ok? Answer me. Please.’

Danny isn’t sure how to reply and a blast of noise grabs his attention. It’s the echoing, distorted screams and crystalline ringing spill from the window facing the street, the one on the kitchen. Another sound bursts forth, distinct like glass but not quite as sharp, resonating with fading shrieks.

His phone vibrates in his hands, only Danny wanders towards the window, his eyes growing wider with each step.

The apartment building, the one just across the one he’s in, is a stupendous and eerily beautiful sight of vaguely blue ice devouring the building slowly, blooming impossibly large six point abstract flowers of snowflake patterns freezing it over.

One of the frozen sections, stark in the center in a contrast of blue and black, is a large hole where something either broke in or broke out, revealing the innards of an office area sparsely illuminated by unnatural blue rays shooting irregularly. Missing all of their shots.

It’s too distant for Danny to truly see the action, but he knows who that is. And he knows who he’s fighting against.

An excited grin grows across his face, only to drop alongside himself at a stray freeze ray coming towards his direction. It hits two floors above his, a sudden crackle of ice, glass and cement hissing in the sudden temperature drop and material shock.

Danny’s phone vibrates again. ‘Kid?’

‘im ok,’ Danny responds, uncertain whether he should start to try to watch or if he should run. ‘batman and freeze fighting in building across apartment’

He catches sight of another blur in the air and corrects, ‘batman and robin. kicking his ass’

The distinctly not Batman nor Robin shaped silhouette retreats towards the hole, and as Mister Freeze’s form nears the edge, white spotlights converge to his location from both ground and air.

Danny doesn’t approach the window, but he aims his phone’s camera at the commotion and starts to record, zooming in as much as his phone allows.

Mister Freeze’s cryo-suit is dented and scuffed, sparks of a sort spew from what must be exposed electrical cables near his hip. His helmet has significant cracks, but he doesn’t seem worried. His hold on his Freeze Gun remains steady, aiming at the distinct dark shapes staring him down.

The man is likely monologuing, even as he shifts back further and further. There’s a movement to his shoulders and how his head sways that reveals the intensity of what he must be going on about.

His phone keeps vibrating with new messages from March, but Danny’s focus is on the rogue inching back. A thought occurs to Danny that stutters his breathing. Is Mister Freeze-

Mister Freeze jumps off the building.

Danny rushes forward, a thrum of white noise wailing endlessly in his ears, but just as suddenly as it deafens him, the silence of his heart skipping rings an impossible pitch at a blinding blue ray cuts through the air towards the apartment. His body jolts, charged as a live wire about to snap between forms until a shadow intercepts the shot in a deep roar of engines that shakes his very spine.

Somehow the windows don’t break as the dark flying vehicle swerves midair, Danny’s eyes fixated at the glistening reflection of ice covering most of the exterior of the bat-aircraft, and he wonders who may be piloting it or if the rumors about Batman’s autopilot software are true.

He loses track of the bat-aircraft in its flight skywards, whether it has blended itself technologically or just in the dark is a mystery for the night.

The wonder fades as Danny’s eyes flit towards the building across the apartment again, the spotlights no longer aimed at the gutted hole, but somewhere on the streets. Danny looks at his phone and curses silently, his aim got way off the target.

Still, as his hands move to save the recording, he watches them shake with adrenaline amping him differently than how the phantasmal current rushes through him. This energy is warmer. Realer.

And so freaking awesome.

Danny’s face hurts from smiling, his hands practically vibrating. He glances at them again, and turns out the vibration is just his phone.

He breathes in sharply, smile falling right off at the number of notifications. Most are from March, though a recent handful are from Sam and Tucker, and his eyes stop. His gaze locked on his sister’s profile picture.

Another message from March. Nothing from his sister.

For some strange, surreal reason Danny re-checks his family group chat; nothing. He reads his last direct messages from his parents; nothing.

He accesses his last direct messages from Jazz.

Nothing.

‘Danny. Kid,’ a new notification pops up at the top of his cracked phone screen. ‘Tell me you evacuated that place. That you weren’t almost shot? That the apartment was empty? Without anyone inside?’

‘Anyone at all?’

His thumbs hover over the keyboard.

‘im ok,’ Danny types to March, feeling distant. Odd, like incompatible voltage cables strangely fitting into the wrong machines. ‘freeze got caught’

‘I can see that,’ is March’s instant reply. ‘Are you alright?’

Danny stares at the question, then scrolls up through his direct message history with March. From the current even exchange of words, to the tentative questions and small talk attempts, to back to the first messages. He scrolls down, trying to locate the screenshots of March and Jazz's talk.

He finds the screenshots. Jazz's profile picture hasn't changed between then and now, and her lengthy bricks of a message are still there.

The basic gist he still reads, zooming in and out to read between the crack on his screen, is still the same. Jazz asks the person she’s talking with to look out for Danny, and then she corrects herself with a rephrasing to ask them to hire someone to look out for Danny, and nothing else.

He reads it again, a strange feeling in him convinced he's missed something somehow. But the screenshots are just screenshots, and there are no edit notes in March's messages.

Danny scrolls all the way back down, to their most recent conversations. One in particular is about Greek food, with March trying to type the exact name of the dishes, but failing because of the auto-correct. He doesn't edit his messages and just sends the correct spelling as a separate line, even as the auto-correct keeps betraying him.

This conversation is the lengthiest one by the sheer amount of times March had to send the correct spelling outside of his grammar perfect messages, which was both weird and funny at the time for Danny.

He remembers, and finds his own messages, asking March why he doesn't just edit the messages afterwards. March's response is the same.

'I don't like the way this app handles edited messages,' it read. 'It doesn't show what has been edited, only leaving a minor note which you have to tap to see when the edit occurred. This can be very dangerous for someone in a position like mine.'

'how,' Danny asked.

'It can be a type of insidious manipulation,' March explained. 'Send a message, get a response, edit the original message to say something else. Without a way of comparing the edits to the original message, this can serve as ammunition for scams or blackmail attempts, or even to sow distrust against the person who edited an innocent typo at the time.'

'that sounds convoluted'

'Yes, but never underestimate the lengths people can go for their own goals.'

The conversation went back to comparing food and food places after that, something he didn't pay much attention to at the time and still doesn't now. His phone vibrates again, and his screen automatically goes all the way down to show March's latest message nestling right under the 'Are you alright?'

'Danny, can you open the door?'

Danny steps away from the window, heading towards the entrance. Even before he gets closer, he sees a dark shape in between the door and floor gap, two shoes silhouetted by the outside hallway light.

His hand grabs his key by the keychain in his pocket before he remembers to check the peephole first, even though he has a feeling he won't need to see who's standing right outside.

But then he remembers that it's smart to double check, so he checks.

In the fisheye perspective, March is still easily recognizable for him. He glances at the door and a phone in his hand, mouth pressed closed with strained eyes and furrowed eyebrows. One hand touches the cuffs and then drifts over to the door, shifting to knock but doesn't, and back to holding the cuffs it goes.

Danny looks at the door knob and takes a deep breath.

“Did you really come here just to check on me?” he asks the second he unlocks and opens the door, focused on March’s face and how it goes from relief to surprise and to careful thoughtfulness.

“I did,” March answers with a nod, and he waits there.

“What about calling my phone?”

March regards him with the same careful thoughtfulness, though his eyebrows furrow a bit more. “I didn’t want to risk interrupting if you were in one, or to keep you from another call.”

His cracked phone feels heavier than lead at that, but Danny doesn’t move from the door. With another deep, steadying breath, he finally asks, “Why?”

March goes from thoughtful to confused, and his eyes shift from Danny to inside of the apartment and back to him.

“Why… what?” he asks with a careful, though open and patient tone.

“Why are you here?” Danny asks, and a dozen other questions buzz in his throat. “Why didn’t you just leave an audio message or something? Why didn’t just hire someone to check or- Why did you- Why do you ask me about my day? Why do you take me out to eat and not just order takeout? Aren’t you really busy?”

“Maybe,” March says. “But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t check on you because of it. It doesn’t mean I shouldn’t see if you’re alright after your first encounter with Gotham’s darkness, especially one that happened right across the street.”

“So what?” Danny says, and he doesn’t know why. “My floor wasn’t hit. I’m doing just fine.”

“Your floor wasn’t,” March points out, his voice still even and clear. “But I saw the damage it did two floors above, and there was another shot that looked like it was going to but didn’t. Mister Freeze isn’t reliant on gas or chemical attacks, but the damage his cryogenic technology can do is appalling. Even if you weren’t hit.”

“But why? Why are you here?”

March opens his mouth to answer, but stops. His eyes widen slightly as if realizing something, and he sighs, feet shifting where he stands. Eventually, his shoulders set and there’s a firm, though fallen look to his eyes that Danny suddenly can’t stand, and Danny looks down at the floor, at March’s shadow near his feet.

He doesn’t brace himself. He already knows what he’s about to hear.

“Because there’s no one else here, Danny.”

The words, the simple truth in them, still grip his chest tight enough to crush.

“And, to be frank, you also remind me of someone,” March says, quieter. Danny still doesn’t look up. “Someone who could’ve used one person to come by every once in a while. May I come in?”

Danny shuffles away from the door and March nods as he enters, looking around the apartment while Danny closes the door. March shivers suddenly, and he rubs his arms as he glances about.

“Mister Freeze must’ve upgraded his Freeze Gun, Jesus,” March mumbles and the feather light weight of his stare settles on Danny. “Aren’t you cold, Danny?”

Danny shrugs. “Nah, I think it got cold so gradually I didn’t even notice.”

“Like a reverse frog in a boiling pot?” March asks, somewhat incredulous and more to himself. “Well, who knows what goes on in Freeze’s mind these days. Either way, Danny, I… About earlier today…”

Danny tenses, the image of the car’s meters and readings jumping across numbers flash in his mind, and he holds his breath at the sudden thrum in his chest.

March isn’t Danny’s parents, distracted by work to a point of him being overlooked. He isn’t Danny’s sister, who tries but fails because of her own focus on her life. He must have seen it, even if he didn’t then, he must have noticed the lights fluctuating as he went up to the apartment door when he left the packaged lunch.

Agitated as Danny was at the time, he knows the effects linger for longer than he expects. He still remembers Tucker’s pointed glares every time each of his devices glitched after that one freak out, hours after it had happened.

Will March ask about that? Does Danny want him to know? March hasn’t said anything about what his parents do, hasn’t offered any opinion at all, but he also hasn’t said anything about metas.

That thought exhumes a topic Danny had insulated and buried it deep in his mind. Is he even considered a meta?

“I’m sorry.”

The two words effectively derail the disastrous train of thought, and Danny turns sharply to look at March, who is looking at his own hands, fiddling with his cuffs and cufflinks.

“What?” Danny mumbles with a gasp, his mind coming up empty to fit those words in any context.

March sighs. “I’m sorry. I know you’ve been agitated about… you know? It sucks, and I was trying to help, but clearly I didn’t do a good job at it.”

It takes a few seconds for Danny to recall the context those words fit in, maybe. He doesn’t think he’s been agitated about something recently or for long, at least other than his sister or his parents. It has to be one of the two, except Danny doesn’t know which. And he doesn’t know which one he even wants this to be.

His sister is just busy, and it’s not fair that- He’s practically lived his whole life with his parents like this, so he doesn’t understand why it still bothers-

And now March clearly thinks he’s screwed up something, when all he’s done is be the most stable adult figure Danny has ever had ever since he moved into Gotham City.

“It’s not your fault,” Danny says, because that’s true for either situation. “You’re kind of weird, but you’re cool, and… and it does suck, but I’m fine. I’m fine. I am. It’s just…”

He trails off, uncertain where he was even trying to go. His words still must have worked, because March gives him a sad, though bright grin.

“You’re a really good kid, Danny,” he says, and then corrects himself with something a bit cheeky. “A really good fourteen year old, not a kid. And I’m really glad that you’re alright. When I saw the breaking news and heard the location, I was… I thought of the worst. Mister Freeze’s attacks are vicious in their own right.”

March shivers again, though probably not from the apparent supernatural cold that Danny pinned on Freeze. “I sort of dropped my coffee on the way here. Would you mind if I were to prepare a cup?”

Danny shakes his head, and follows March as he moves to the kitchen.

“Would you want something warm, too?” March asks as he reaches for the coffee filters inside a cabinet. “I know how to prepare a really good cup of hot chocolate.”

Danny tries to remember the last time he’s had a cup of hot chocolate, and nods wordlessly when he inevitably fails.

March grins, and as he moves through the kitchen, he passes by the dinner table and he stops. His eyes are fixed on something on it, and it takes Danny a minute to realize what he’s looking at.

A note, hastily written.

Danny walks over to it, trying to recall which type of note it is and a part of him cringes once he sees it’s the ‘later than usual’ type of note. In an instant, he desperately wonders whether March can or can’t read his parents’ medical doctor scrawls.

“On second thought,” March says, which is all the answer Danny needs for that question. “How about-”

March’s phone rings and something in Danny wilts at the sound. March fishes it out of his pockets, glances at the screen and his face twists with something for a brief second before he looks at Danny and turns off his phone.

Danny stares, eyes wide with a sudden lightness to his chest like he’s just learned how to breathe.

“How about this,” March says easily, like his phone never rang in the first place. “I’ll stay here, and maybe make you something warm to eat, for a couple of hours or until your parents call in to check on you. You can help me out in the kitchen to help time pass, if you want. How does that sound?”

Danny nods a bit, then he nods again, firmer this time. “I mean,” he says, just a little disinterested despite the smile wanting to break through his face. “It’s cool, as long as you don’t make that fish soup you tried to make me eat.”

“Hah,” March laughs once, a hoot of a sound. “Noted, Danny. What about burgers? Have you ever had handmade burgers before?”

“Like frozen patties?” Danny asks as he locks the front door, setting his key back in his pocket.

“Ah, no. I mean with handmade patties. It’s a bit messy, but it means you can mix the meat and fat as you want. I know this really good recipe…”

Danny follows March around the kitchen, and he talks about the differences in pre-made patties and handmade ones, the way certain meats can change the taste and texture and how fats are basically the magical secret ingredient for them. March minces the meat by himself, and he teaches Danny how to hold a knife and how to set the onion on the cutting board.

It’s the onion, truly, that makes Danny’s eyes sting as the apartment around him is filled with the sound of casual chatter, the warm hum of the electric stove accentuated by sizzling meat with a delicious smell, somehow better than all the food places he’s been to.

-can’t sleep bright eyes peering at him through the dark he’s being hunted he needs to relax-

March ends up staying for longer than Danny expected him to, or rather, longer than both of them expected in general.

His prolonged presence within the apartment is odd at first, but between the fantastically delicious hamburgers, despite not having as many spices or the specific cuts of meats March goes on about during the cooking process, and the strange anecdote between here and there as he cleans the dishes, Danny genuinely enjoys him being there.

It’s slightly different than hanging out for lunch, or the conversations in the car drives or smartphone apps. It’s different in a way that reminds Danny of that grocery shopping trip, of moments where he had watched other people around him or seen depicted in series and movies, of wondering what having attentive parents feel like. What normal parents are like.

All of those moments that were collected throughout fourteen years even before his accident. Moments that were now even stranger, set even further away, past the outer limit of a solar system of a possibility.

And instead of envy or empty bitterness, Danny feels… alright.

He wonders if this is what normal feels like.

If it’s about how March asks about his day. How March asks about what he thinks of Gotham so far. About his school life, about his friends from Casper High, and about what he’s been watching or playing recently.

All while offering his own anecdotes here and there, answering Danny’s questions and giving him free explanations when he notices Danny’s confusion every now and then, and reminding Danny of his offer about his cracked phone screen. About having better options.

And then it’s about a tangential example about better options, and Danny’s own enthusiastic explanation about a specific series only briefly mentioned, and putting the DVD of the first season in the DVD player, because while the series can be watched on that one streaming service, his TV isn’t a smart TV and so old methods it is.

And Danny wonders, laughing at the man’s face, if it’s about how he commits to memory the way that March becomes devastated at how Danny says DVDs and DVD players to be old.

And the night goes on despite Gotham’s distant gunshots, sirens, and the way the neighbor downstairs curses at something Danny doesn’t comprehend, stomping about the place until they go to the door and bangs it in a thunderous noise.

March leaves an hour before Danny usually goes to sleep, because after a certain point in the night, even driving can be too risky sometimes.

But before he leaves, he bids Danny a good night with a warm hand on his shoulder and a reassuring light squeeze that he’ll see him tomorrow.

By the time Danny falls asleep and wakes up to a new day, all he finds around the apartment are new dishes to be washed, trash to be taken out, and a broken glass beaker surrounded by a dry chemical spill. And on the table, a new note.

Son, the note reads, your mother and I will stay at work until late today, so the takeout money is under the TV remote as always. I wouldn’t mind more of those burgers as a suggestion. They were fantastic.

Love, Dad.

P.S: We've also run out of coffee. Please buy more.

-

-lengthening shadows cast from above shapes circling around one-

Danny blinks awake and stumbles back from his bedroom window. Another false start.

-looking around unable to see figures once so close and now lost to the dark-

He falls back on his bed, and doesn’t think what will happen without his friends to watch him.

-veils settling over a young pair of eyes. Gotham whispers, and Danny…-

-

[vrowescrever]

Hello! My name is Vrow, and welcome to my writing blog. I recently realized that navigating my writing blog is a nightmare, hence this pinned post to help folks out. It’ll be updated as needed.

Inbox status: Open. Prompts/Requests may or may not be processed, it depends on how much social energy I’ll have for them.

Below are the organized tags I’ve used for various things. Last updated: 23.11.2022

General tags

Written Work - Tag for any written work.

Smudged Graphite - Original works only.

Glitter pen - Fanfiction only.

Replying - The asks tag.

Rambling - Text posts that aren’t written stuff related, like this one.

Fandom tags (Alphabetical order)

Danny Phantom

DC - DC stuff in general.

Dead Space - I know I only wrote one fandom fusion with Madness Combat, but hey.

Madness Combat

Mob Psycho 100

JJBA - JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.

Specific tags (crossovers/fusions, AUs, requests, prompts, etc)

DP x DC - Danny Phantom and DC crossovers.

[vrowescrever]

[Fanfiction] Upon quiet devastation

Author’s Notes DAY 7 YEEEEEEAAAAHGHGUHHH

Awesome shout-out to Avaritia-Apotheosis (I know I can @ people but I don’t like doing it), for this great prompt event week! Even though 85% of the things I wrote were drabbles, I did not expect that 4k piece from Day 3 to burst out of me like a chestburster, which is incredible considering how I’ve been whining about Writer’s Block this entire week.

Ao3 version here.

DP/DC Week 2022 - Day 7: Upon quiet devastation Rating: General Audiences Word Count: 100 Warnings: Minor Hurt No Comfort. (This piece is a bit of a downer)

Summary. “It’ll be repaired,” he says. It’s not what the kid’s asked. “Life keeps on going, despite everything.”

DP/DC Week 2022 Day 7 Security Breach | It was supposed to be their day off

“Does it ever get better?”

Although he’d expected it, the question still hits Dick’s guts with something cold. He looks at the kid hugging his knees, floating mid-air and staring listlessly at his devastated town.

For Nightwing, this level of urban destruction is somewhat mild for Gotham. For the kid, though…

“It’ll be repaired,” he says. It’s not what the kid’s asked. “Life keeps on going, despite everything.”

Dick reaches over slowly, and his heart clenches as his hand passes harmlessly through the kid, grasping on nothing instead of a shoulder. The kid doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t comment either.

[vrowescrever]

[Fanfiction] Years adrift

Author’s Notes DAY 6 OUT OF 7 WOOO OH MY GOD THIS IS WORKING. I’m finally managing to freaking edit Subsuming Owl Songs and write a little bit, even if it’s just. Smidges of words in contrast of how my writing pace was at the start of the month.

Ao3 version here.

DP/DC Week 2022 - Day 6: Years adrift Rating: General Audiences Word Count: 100 Warnings: None.

Summary. “Actually,” she says. “There’s a place we’d like to visit, if that’s alright?”

DP/DC Week 2022 Day 6 Families Found | Wulf teaches Danny how to open portals. It does not go to plan.

“Thank you, young man,” she says as she pinches Danny’s cheek. The touch is surprisingly soft and light instead of painful, so he tolerates it after several portal hops. “It’s been an awful nightmare being lost here.”

Danny grins once she lets go and clasps her husband’s arm. “Not a problem ma’am,” Danny says. “This place can be really disorienting. Will you two be okay for now?”

“Actually,” she says. “There’s a place we’d like to visit, if that’s alright?”

Danny raises an arm. “Sure. Where to?”

The ghost smiles, her pearls glinting in the Ghost Zone’s ambient green light.

[vrowescrever]

[Fanfiction] Time’s out

Author’s Notes I don’t know how long I’ve spent staring at these prompts until I just. Looked at the first thing within my visual range and grabbed onto the first thought that appeared.

Ao3 version here.

DP/DC Week 2022 - Day 5: Time’s out Rating: General Audiences Word Count: 100 Warnings: None.

Summary. “It’s alright, old friend,” Clockwork says, smiling. “From what we’ve both seen, we’ve brought them as much time as we could.”

DP/DC Week 2022 Day 5 A Royal Problem | Someone’s bound to notice all the weird things in Amity

“I’m sorry, Clockwork,” Rip Hunter says, holding the delicate ghost quartz mainspring still beating dutifully in-time even outside of Clockwork’s case. “I’m so sorry. I wish it wouldn’t have come to this”

“It’s alright, old friend,” Clockwork says, smiling. “From what we’ve both seen, we’ve brought them as much time as we could.”

It barely takes anything to crush the mechanism in his palm, and something ticks throughout the Multiverse. A sleepy town in Illinois fades into awareness within the minds of the rest of the world, as if it had never truly left in the tick, tock.

Tick. Tock.

[vrowescrever]

[Fanfiction] Subsuming Owl Songs (Chapter 1: Sundering solstices pt2)

Author’s Notes Here’s part 2, when things start to get interesting. I have finished Part 3, but with the recent Writer’s Block, Part 4 is still practically nothing. But the DP/DC Week 2022 thing I’ve been doing recently has been working to get me back to writing anything, and I should be back on my bullshit by Sunday. Maybe.

Also, this will be the first and only time I’ll emphasize this, but you see the Warnings section? It’s there for a reason, even if it doesn’t look like it. This is turning out a slower slowburn than I had expected. With that in mind, please, enjoy the ride.

Part 1. Part 2(You’re here!). Part 3.

Danny Phantom x DC - Submusing Owl Songs (Chapter 1: Sundering solstices pt2) Rating: Teen and Up Word Count: 9928 Warnings: Child Neglect, Manipulation, Gaslighting.

Summary. Chapter 1: Sundering solstices. Part 2 - Meeting.

The rest of his week goes like this.

Danny wakes up, thanks his lucky stars he isn’t in any pain and finishes unpacking his things. He doesn’t get the time to set his things, because he’s soon busy unpacking the normal, everyday items a household should have while his parents check, double check, triple check the portable lab equipment they brought into the apartment.

All by himself, the process takes a long time and it’s not finished by dinner time. Jazz, still with a friend, orders him takeout delivery online. His favorite food, but not from his favorite place. So it tastes off. He doesn’t eat much.

The next day is much the same. Awaken, feel lucky, and go unpack and put things where they probably should be put.

Kitchen stuff in the cleaner, sleeker kitchen area with a lot more cabinets and a bigger pantry. The stove is completely electrical, and Tucker is marveled by it when Danny sends him a photo, sleek, technological and yet simple. Sam approves, but doesn’t seem as impressed.

The living room is at odds with the lack of their wide TV screen, which will be delivered over the weekend alongside most of the heavier normal furniture. His parents won’t be in the apartment, as they’ll be helping with dismantling the rest of the lab and overseeing that none of the equipment, normal, modified, or completely custom, isn’t damaged in any way shape or form. Danny puts up the sparse photo frames on the bland, solid color walls and already separates the various books, DVDs, and whatnots for when the shelves are assembled.

Bathroom supplies are separated by what he uses versus what his parents use, since it turns out they also have a bathroom with an actual bathtub beside the master bedroom. He doesn’t know if the master bedroom is already set. Maybe. Their bed is set enough.

He eats the leftover takeout food in his bedroom, only he stumbles on absolutely nothing and spills most of his food on the floor, more specifically the rug that was already there. When he frantically tries to clean it, it still leaves a stain.

A stain that, despite his best attempts, doesn’t wash off.

He falls asleep on his bed. He wakes on his bed. No cramps, no aches. Maybe that week a month or so ago was just a freak occurrence, although he isn’t one to tempt fate and just accepts it.

He’s in the middle of actually setting up his room when someone knocks on the door, and using the peephole for its intended purpose for the first time is delightful enough that he momentarily forgets where he lives, and is briefly confused when he tries to open the door and fails because of the chain latch.

The men from the moving service aren’t bothered. They also don’t ask questions as they bring the furniture in, checking a tablet with pictures of a blueprint with several handwritten notes and putting stuff down as noted.

From the brief glimpse he catches of the screen, he recognizes his sister’s writing peppering the blueprint with minor diagrams and the occasional doodle here and there.

They don’t make small talk, and Danny isn’t inclined to do so either. He still watches them bring stuff in, maneuvering boxes or still assembled furniture with an impressive amount of proficiency and professionalism. It takes surprisingly long, even more so as they put together shelves, moving drawers, tables, and chairs all over the place.

When they leave, Danny prepares a cup of instant noodles, grabs a bag of chips, and goes to his bedroom to not only eat, but also unplug and actually put his computer on his newly assembled table.

By the time he finishes doing that, he almost doesn’t sleep as distant gunshots go off from somewhere down the street, constant and yet disordered like a cluster of fireworks until the shrieking sirens overtake the soundscape they occupied once they stop.

In the next morning, he checks how much he has on him and decides to see if he remembers where that chili dog stand is. It still is much to his rejoicing for proper food.

Afterwards, he goes back and finishes decorating his room. He’s about to spend the rest of the day hanging with his friends online when someone knocks on the door again, and this time it’s package delivery. He has no idea what it is until the delivery person says it’s for Daniel Fenton, from March Ventures.

The package is a bundle of new school supplies for Gotham City High. Really high quality stuff, too. A new, sturdy backpack, new blank notebooks, new study books, new pencil case and pencil set, and two keychains.

One of the keychains is a stylized logo of March Ventures, which he promptly sets aside and forgets about it, but the other he holds gently in his hands, examining it slowly.

It’s a round, slightly bulky keychain that depicts a constellation he doesn’t recognize. He knows it’s supposed to be a constellation with the brilliant dots against the black material, but the positions of these stars aren’t from any he remembers committing to memory.

A short trip through the internet later, and he has the answer. It’s no wonder he didn’t recognize it, since this constellation isn’t recognized by the International Astronomical Union.

Which means this keychain must also be custom made, and Danny doesn’t know how to handle this information. And for some reason, he tries to remember the last time he’s received any custom or handmade gifts.

Several minutes pass and he sighs. Still, looking at the keychain does make him grin a little.

So he fishes out his copy of the front door key and attaches it to the Noctua keychain.

-cannot see well in extreme dark and yet their eyes never left such a sight to behold-

Danny’s Monday starts with familiar news.

Despite how unfamiliar everything else is, the room is wrong, his bed mattress isn’t the same, there are no sounds of insects from the backyard, only the blaring of stray alarms and distant early traffic and car horns, even the air feels thinner and drier in a way reminiscent of smoke and dust, his routine has remained the same.

He wakes up, barely, stumbles into the furniture he’s not yet used to on his way to the kitchen, prepares instant noodles because he can, and finds a note on the dinner table.

Sam has once told him his parents’ writing, when it comes to anything else but their work, looks like a medical doctor’s scrawl. Danny can see the resemblance, but the difference is that he can actually read his parents’ writing. He still remembers her words every time hence though.

Either way. Familiar news. His parents won’t be home until really, really late today and they’ve left him enough money to eat out or order takeout under the TV remote.

And that’s where the familiarity ends.

Danny holds the paper with his parents’ hastily written note in his hand, sitting alone by the dinner table and eating salty, vaguely chicken broth tasting instant noodles for breakfast.

His downstairs neighbor curses at something, their words are muffled, yet loud enough to register through the walls, and their stomps go from here to there accentuated by a thunderous door bang, distinct enough to make Danny flinch and for his instant noodle cup to fly out of his hands and spill onto the tiled floor.

At least he’s eaten most of it. He cleans what he can and half-hazardly throws the cup into the trash bin. The plastic cup lands strangely in a way that makes it really visible, and he doesn’t feel like shoving it in.

Then it’s a very brief shower, teeth brushing, and putting himself in a bland and generic white shirt with red hems and blue jeans. He’s already going to be a point of attraction at his new school, best postpone the fact he’s a nerd or the son of the new resident nutjobs.

With that, he pulls out his phone and tries to memorize the route to Gotham City High.

-wings flapping unheard for those who cannot listen flying closer and closer-

Surprisingly, Danny’s arrival didn’t seem to have rippled through the school’s societal hierarchy or social environment much, besides the unsettling weight of curious stares tracking his every move.

It might be because everyone around him feels tired. From physical exhaustion, to emotional fatigue, to psychological lethargy. He almost doesn’t get it, until some of the whispers he accidentally hears aren’t about him. Some are, but most aren’t.

Most are about crimes that have happened lately, about whose family got hit by what from whom, or casual quips about someone’s therapy progress or recovery, physical or psychological. Like his English teacher is still out of commission from a mugging gone wrong, and the teacher he’s met is actually a substitute from out of town. There’s a constant buzz about which rogue has escaped, and where they were reportedly last seen by. Some release a ghost of a breath, others breathe sharply with anecdotes of desperate acquaintances suddenly going silent.

Anxious. The atmosphere around school is of an infrasound tone of anxiety, and his sister’s voice haunts him with ramblings regarding mental exhaustion, and the physical signs of it. He doesn’t remember enough to see those, but he still sees something almost ghastly filtered through the rare sunrays.

At the end of the school hours, Danny realizes that Gotham City High is similar to Casper High. It may not be haunted in the literal sense, and while there are no actual ghosts within the halls, the missing presence of a student here and there is still felt.

He’s in such a hurry to get away from those strange absent spots that he looks through the crowd of walking students, trying to spot a familiar red beanie or a distinct half shaved and dyed head of hair.

Nausea hits him, mouth going dry with the fluctuating weight of stares prickling his neck. His heart thrums a familiar, anxious tune as if resonating with the very city-smog filled air.

Not for the first time, Danny looks around in a crowd filled with people, and feels the most alone he’s ever been in his life.

A sensation breaks through the sudden bout of dizziness. It comes from his pocket. His phone. A notification.

Danny pulls it out and squints at the cracked screen, unlocking his phone to properly read the message. It’s someone from March Ventures according to the profile picture, but he doesn’t recognize the number.

Still, they recognize him by how their message reads, ‘Danny, kid, where are you? Sorry I’m late, got caught up with something on the way and the traffic is killer today.’

He instantly thinks of Jazz. He remembers how many times he’s read a variation of that message before, though he has no idea who the heck this person is.

‘who are you,’ he types in, having to retype you a couple of times because of his shaking thumbs, ‘how do you know me’

Three dots appear on the screen as the person types out their reply, except the floating animation pauses as they delete their message and then continues again. This goes on for a couple of minutes, enough that Danny just sits down somewhere in front of the school building.

‘I know your sister, Jazz. Jasmine Fenton. She’s a brilliant young lady and asked me if I could look out for you,’ the stream of messages comes eventually. ‘I thought she told you about me?’

‘she didnt’

The three dots, pause, float cycle happens again. It doesn’t take as long for a reply this time, ‘She must’ve forgotten.’ Danny’s eyes linger on that text, jaw clenching slightly. ‘I can send you screenshots of our messages as proof?’

‘ok’

The screenshots appear on his screen almost instantly in comparison to how long it takes for this person to type, and what they say is true. He recognizes Jazz’s profile picture, alongside her lengthy text messages that feel like a brick to read through.

The basic gist from what he can read, after much zooming in and out to read between the cracks on his screen, is exactly that. Jazz asks the person she’s talking with to look out for Danny, and then she corrects herself with a rephrasing to ask them to hire someone to look out for Danny, or allow him into the company’s premises until he can make friends at school.

The person’s replies are positive, and new messages come up in the time it’s taken him to read the screenshots.

‘Smart to double check. I’m here to pick you up and get you something to eat. I wouldn’t wish Gotham High lunch on anyone.’

Danny briefly remembers the one look he gave to the food, and his subsequent unwavering decision to just get something from the overpriced vending machines. Still, he considers the message.

‘what if i want to go straight home’

‘Then I’ll take you straight home,’ they answer relatively quickly. ‘But I won’t be able to look after you there. There are still things that need my attention where I work, and it might be more interesting in checking my workplace out. More people too.’

He looks back at the screenshots with Jazz, then at the person’s latest message. His stomach grumbles right then, reminding him of his recent bad eating habits.

‘ok,’ he finally types. ‘food first’

‘Great. Now where are you? I’m next to a tree, and I’ve been squinting around for some minutes.’

With this many people and being this new, Danny doesn’t try to track the possible source of a stare and instead gets up and looks around himself. He thinks he finds the person after an initial look. While there are three or four people next to a three, only one of them is standing upright. The person is… familiar.

A white man, tall, wearing dark dress pants, baby blue long sleeved button-up with a dark blazer on top. Black hair cut short, and a large pair of sunglasses covering his eyes. He waves at Danny upon noticing him looking, and his phone vibrates in his hand.

‘I see you! I’m the guy who, according to my secretary, looks like just left an interview appointment.’

One of Danny’s eyebrows goes up at the message, but shrugs and approaches the man. He smiles as Danny approaches, wide and jovial so much like his dad that something in his memories stir.

For some reason, Danny expects something bad to happen with each step closer to the man.

But nothing happens.

“You must be Danny,” the man says, his voice is deep and clear, as if used to making speeches often and Danny knows this man. This close, the man is easily over six feet tall, and one hand reaches up to his sunglasses and Danny knows the color of his eyes to be blue before he takes them off. “I’m Lincoln March. I’ll be looking out after you for a while.”

“You don’t look like you just left an interview,” Danny says at a lack of something to say.

March’s smile shifts to an intrigued grin, one eyebrow quirks up. “Is that so? What do I look like, then?”

“You look like you just conducted an interview,” he says and his words aren’t as thrown together as he thought they’d be. There’s something in how March stands, set and self-assured, that it’s hard to imagine him not being in control of an interview. “Or something. I don’t know.”

March exhales with a humorous tone, muffling a chuckle. “I wish I could’ve just conducted interviews today,” the man admits in good nature, “instead of a bunch of things that nearly bored me to tears. Anyway, I don’t want to bore you with it. What do you feel like eating this afternoon?”

Danny shrugs.

“What about some pizza?” March asks at his non-choice, and Danny looks at him somewhat puzzled. “There’s this really good place my colleagues swear by, and it has a drive through.”

“A pizza drive through?” Danny repeats his words, and yet it doesn’t feel like a valid sentence in his mind.

March nods and waves for Danny to follow. “My car is close by, and yes,” he says, “a pizza drive through. I think the first one that had this innovative idea in Gotham, and it’s consistently good if my colleagues are to be believed.”

Danny follows March to his car and it’s surprisingly more covert than expected, far more common wage for someone he recalls to be a COO of a company. Danny gets to the backseat without a problem, and the interior of the car is nice. The seats are comfortable, it smells as if recently cleaned, and everything feels spotless but in an odd way.

March, who’s just got into the front seat, digs through the dashboard for something.

“There it is,” he says with a note of success, and twists around to offer Danny a pamphlet. “The pizza place’s menu. Probably not out of date, and it’ll be a while to get there with how the traffic is, so you’ll have plenty of time to decide.”

Danny takes the pamphlet, and March readjusts himself properly in the front seat and starts the car.

The reality of the situation hits him, then. That the COO of March Ventures, his parents’ new employers, is driving him to a pizza drive through place to get him something to eat, because his sister, who isn’t in Gotham, had asked the man to do so and the man had apparently accepted.

Aren’t you really busy, the question is a lump in his throat, and yet he can’t push it out. So he doesn’t, and just reads his choices in the pamphlet menu.

The car ride continues in relative silence, the windows seemingly reinforced enough that the outside world's heavy city traffic and car horns barely breach in. March eventually turns on the radio, set to a news frequency that goes on about recent world events, and then goes on about recent local events, and then about weather reports, and Danny tunes it out.

He looks around the car again. It’s oddly claustrophobic and yet not. It’s clean, but there’s no sharp smell of antiseptic or a tang of bitter acridness. He leans close to the door, briefly trying to find hidden latches he knows exist in his parents van. But it’s just a car. A well kept, medium-upper class car.

He isn’t entirely sure what he expected.

By the time they drive up to the queue, March looks at him via the rearview mirror.

“So Danny, kid,” he begins, “have you decided what to order? I’m picking two large slices of pepperoni. You can never go wrong with pepperoni.”

“Uh,” Danny mumbles, eyes flicking between March’s on the mirror to the pamphlet in his hands. “Medium sized Margherita with stuffed crust.”

“One slice or two slices?”

“Oh, uh. An entire pizza,” Danny says a bit quieter.

“An entire pizza?” March repeats with a grin, looking at Danny again. “With your size, I didn’t think you’d eat that much. Not that it’s bad, just unexpected.”

“It’s,” Danny starts haltingly. “It’s not- It’s for to go, for later.”

The grin flutters away, and the man seems confused as he considers Danny’s words. He seems to remember something and the confusion devolves to a quiet conclusion. “Oh.”

Danny looks elsewhere outside, at the Gotham City landscape of skyscrapers, odd modern and gothic architecture, and the traffic. And though he doesn’t look at March, the heavy silence doesn’t budge even after the man tells the intercom their order.

Danny glances at the door handle and very, very briefly considers yanking it open and making a run for it.

March has to open the door to maneuver an entire pizza box in the car, it’s sort of a mess to watch him and the delivery person try to find the perfect logistics to get the pizza in the rather cramped corridor space, and Danny considers yet again just making a run for it at how his order ended up causing that awkward mess of a situation.

But March seems to find it all more hilarious than awkward, and suddenly the fact that he is a COO of a company feels jarring for Danny. His preconception of rich, big company people is challenged by how the man laughs it off with genuine amusement.

He finally manages to hand Danny the pizza box, quickly readjusting himself in the front seat to unclog the drive through queue.

“Well, that was something-”

“I’m sorry, Mister March,” the words jump out of his mouth in a rush, cutting the man off by accident. “I mean, I’m sorry, I-”

“Danny,” March says, his voice still stifling a chuckle. “Danny, it’s okay. Things like that just happen, if anything they’ll probably have to reconsider the corridor size for future buildings. And please, don’t call me Mister. It makes me feel older than I already am.”

He doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he doesn’t and looks at the pizza box set next to him.

“Would you want to go home and put the pizza away first?” March asks. “We’ll be able to eat properly and not make as much of a mess, for one of my assistant’s sake if anything.”

“Okay,” Danny mumbles with a nod, and tells him the apartment’s address.

The drive goes by faster, though still in an odd silence Danny doesn’t pay attention to and March doesn’t disturb again. He finds a good place to park the car, helps Danny out and carries the pizza box and his individual pizza box slices as Danny leads him through the building.

Once they reach the front door, Danny takes out his keys and March gasps.

“You liked it?” he asks with an audible smile, and Danny glances at him looking at the constellation keychain.

His eyes flicker between the keychain and the man. “Yeah? Wait, did you make it?”

“I had it custom ordered,” March says. “Your sister, Jazz, mentioned your interest in astrology and astrophysics, so I thought that keychain would be a more welcoming gift to Gotham than the company’s logo.”

“Oh,” Danny says. He looks at the Noctua constellation keychain again, and back at March. “Thanks. I… I really liked it.”

He opens the door before March can say anything else, hurrying inside.

March doesn’t look around much as he walks in from what Danny sees. He follows Danny towards the kitchen and sets the boxes on the dinner table. He does examine the kitchen for a bit, and Danny sees the instant noodle cup still visible and out in the open and he sees March’s own blue eyes land on it.

The man’s mouth opens slightly, then closes and he glances at Danny as though he hadn’t seen it. “Right,” he says, walking towards the fridge. “Pizza without soda just isn’t the same.”

He opens the fridge and Danny can’t decipher the look that flits through his face, eyes scouring the interior even though the soda cans are located by the door storage. He grabs two cans and closes the fridge, then moves to grab two plates and cutlery, his face back to a slightly positive though neutral default expression.

They eat their slices in relative, oddly heavy silence. The brief sounds of cutlery against plates echo sharply across the entire apartment, louder than Danny ever thought possible. He thinks he would’ve enjoyed the Margherita pizza more if he could taste it, but his mind feels too tired to register taste and his hollow limbs move as automatons rather than thought.

“So,” March starts easily, and the grin he wears wouldn’t be too far off from a political ad. “I received a message that you and your parents arrived on Saturday?”

“Wednesday,” Danny corrects with a mouthful of pizza. “Wednesday night.”

“Right,” March drags out the word and nods slowly. “Right, sorry. Mondays, you’ll know how they are.”

The mention of the current day causes the pizza to sit off-puttingly in his stomach. Danny continues eating anyway. He finishes two slices.

March places the dishes into the sink after he finishes eating as well, washing them thoroughly.

“Would you still want to come to my workplace?” the man asks, voice clear and yet quiet after drying his hands. “If not, I can just leave.”

“Yeah,” Danny’s mouth spouts before he can think. “I mean- Yeah, if it’s not going to be a bother.”

“It won’t, kid,” March says with that same wide, jovial smile aiming at him. “There’ll be plenty of stuff to pass the time with, or just look at. I’ll bring you back before it gets too late.”

He nods at that, suddenly charged by the chance of not staying a minute longer in that place than he needs.

Danny puts away the leftover pizza in the fridge, leads March out and locks the front door, and with that, off they go back to March’s oddly common car and drive off to March’s workplace, most commonly known as the primary company building for March Ventures.

The drive is smooth and quick, the traffic flows as easy as Danny’s breathing is at the moment. He still stares out the windows, not because of some weighted silence, but for the simple pleasure of sight seeing.

They reach a tall Gotham skyscraper, one that blends amongst the other Gotham skyscrapers. Maybe there’s something about it that makes it distinct for trained architectural eyes, but for Danny it’s just a building they approach. They go past a brief checkpoint, and then go to an underground parking lot with bright lights and actual naming plaques set onto each parking place.

March parks the car with a smoothness that Danny doesn’t realize they’ve stopped until the engine goes silent, and he glances at Danny briefly before he exits the car and waits for him to get out as well.

For some reason, Danny stays inside a little longer than he normally would’ve. March looks around the parking lot, waiting.

Once Danny does exit the car, March nods at him and gestures for him to follow.

“It might not be the most chic company building,” March says as they head towards an elevator. “But it should be plenty comfortable. Sometimes, other workers bring their kids too if their usual people are indisposed.”

Inside the elevator is a lot more comfortable than Danny had expected. The walls are painted in warm tones, set with handrails, and plenty of space with a wide set of doors. The button panel is set a little lower, and the numbers themselves have dots protruding and reflecting the lights. March presses a button without looking, and places his hands inside his pockets.

“Would you want to check out the employer’s lounge first, or the entertainment room?” March asks. “Both places should be interesting enough, though I’ll only ask you to be mindful of the people napping in the lounge. While we try to accommodate the workload, the work itself is still taxing. Even without Gotham’s charm.”

“Sure,” Danny says. “Entertainment room, I guess.”

There’s a twitch to March’s mouth, a small reflexive grin before his face changes to one of professionalism. It reminds Danny of how his sister’s face shutters from Jazz, to Jasmine Alicia Fenton, up-and-coming nerd and genius psychologist.

He stands up straighter the moment the elevator stops moving, and the metal doors open with a distinct ding.

Warmth registers first to Danny’s senses, followed by the unintelligible flutter of chatter, typing, and muffled negotiations alongside the smell of coffee, neutral, bland cleaning products and something faintly floral.

There’s the fluctuating weight of eyes on him, from both people in front of the elevator doors to those in the background, though they never stay on him too long. It’s a quick flit as light and hurried as some people move from here and there, eyes on their laptops, computers, tablets, or phone screens in various states of ruffled.

March leads him out, and people flash him brief grins of their own or merely nod their heads as they continue with their own afternoon. Some wave distractedly, others greet him verbally, and March reflects them the same gestures or vocal responses.

They stop by a room next to a flight of stairs, and March opens the wide door to reveal a type of an arcade game room meshed with an entertainment center. There’s an actual pool table, air hockey, and foosball table by one side, some arcade machines peppering the corner, while the other has the widest screen Danny has ever seen, with a low shelf filled with what must be DVD cases before comfy sofas and bean bag chairs.

Or a mix of DVD cases and books, Danny internally corrects himself as his eyes land on a worn man with thick, sound-canceling headsets covering his ears as he naps on one of the bean chairs, a splayed open book resting on his chest.

“If you need anything just send me a message, okay Danny?” March asks. “I’ll fetch you in a couple of hours. It’s best to leave early before the night traffic becomes a nightmare.”

“Okay. Thanks, Mister March,” he says, and March’s face twists briefly. In a sudden, unexplainable impulse, he says, “March,” and the name is odd to his ears. “Thanks March.”

March smiles and nods, though he hesitates for a moment before he leaves. Whatever words he considers saying, he merely nods again and takes his leave.

For one long, unbroken minute, Danny doesn’t move.

The muscles in his neck creak as he looks at the arcade machines, at the tables, at the TV screen with impossibly-many K’s of definition, and finds he feels hollow. His energy levels overdrawn in a way only Mondays can do, made worse by the absence of the static-y thrum and it unsettles him, and he’s unsettled that he’s unsettled.

An unnameable exhaustion clings to his eyes and he lets it. He focuses on the tiredness, on how he shambles towards one of the bean bags and flops.

It holds him comfortably. Very comfortably, regardless of the plastic and musty. In the surging yarn and drowsiness, he remembers he didn’t nap during class. It felt like an accomplishment at the time, and now he feels dumb that he didn’t.

Still much like then, he doesn’t sleep now. Even if his nights haven’t caused any episodes, he doesn’t want to take any chances for a nap to turn into a disaster. Once was enough, and he doesn’t want to know the company equivalent to a school lab glassware ban.

He blinks. He blinks. He blinks, and March enters the room and Danny jolts back to reality.

“Hey Danny, kid,” March starts as he approaches, dress shoes landing softly on the carpet across the tiled floor. “I know these bags are unfairly comfortable, but it’s time to go.”

“Why do you keep calling me that?” Danny asks as he gets up, resisting the need to yawn.

“What, Danny?” March guesses. “Your sister told me you prefer to go by Danny.”

“Yeah, but I meant kid. I’m fourteen.”

March chuckles softly, trying to conceal a patronizing look, but Danny catches it and has his own expression go as flat as he can make it as he approaches the man.

“It’s because you look younger than that,” March says as they go back to the elevator. “And also because you’re a bit on the short side.”

“I’m not short. I’m perfectly average height for someone my age,” Danny says pointedly. “You’re also, what, six foot seven? Everyone must look short for you.”

“Six foot four,” March corrects. “And maybe, kid. Although I can drop it if you want?”

“Considering I’m not ten,” Danny huffs, looking more at the ground than anything else.

March doesn’t respond to his sharp remark besides a vague assenting hum, and the trek to the car, and subsequent ride back to the apartment continues in a silence Danny doesn’t care to pay attention to. He still off-handedly thanks the man for the ride, and doesn’t look back as he gets into the building.

Although he does pause for a moment with his key in his hands, the constellation keychain jingling softly.

He continues on into the apartment, locking the front door and remembering not to set the chain latch for his parents, although making sure the windows are all closed on his way to his bedroom after eating a slice of cold pizza.

-

-from avian throats strums a lovingly sung sundering song-

That night, awake by the sounds of sirens and tires, Danny examines the keychain.

-made beautiful in the unending echos of lengthed solstices-

The white brilliant dots composing the Noctua constellation remain visible. Even in the dark.

-of halcyon days underneath wide brilliant wings. Gotham murmurs, and Danny listens-

-

The following morning, Danny wanders towards the kitchen for a breakfast slice of pizza, lights automatically turning on by themselves, and he stops before he crosses the threshold from corridor to room.

Across the distance, the instant noodles cup remains visible, plastic reflecting the kitchen lights as a greeting.

Suddenly, all Danny can think of is his sister’s - Jazz’s - sad, tired face from the rare times she saw empty instant noodle cups so visible in the trash after really, really late nights. She always saw it the following morning, during breakfast, and always asked if he felt like going to a breakfast place to eat.

A part of him strains to hear the coffee maker’s hum and stream of liquid, the muffled sounds of crickets coming from the backyard. But all he gets is the distant Gotham traffic, accentuated by car horns and vague cursing.

Danny stumbles forward, and he notices something else. Something that causes his ears to ring, heart thrumming as a charged wire with static underneath his skin.

Besides the trash bin, thrown as if forgotten, is an empty pizza box.

On the dinner table, a note.

Familiarity has never cut so deep.

-a man sleeps uneasily stirring awake at the sound of claws scratching his windows-

In the end, school is still school regardless of differences or similarities. Danny isn’t sure for how long his novelty as a new outsider kid will last, but he tries to enjoy it before the social hierarchy tries to shunt him around.

He’s also too tired to disrupt the already established social environment when he knows no one, and socializing has always felt like failed launch procedures when he’s the active party trying to talk with his peers. There are only so many attempts one can make before realizing some prototypes just don’t work.

Besides, the rumor mill is already at work and he doesn’t need to know if his parents’ reputation is already haunting him or not, especially not on an empty stomach.

March messages him earlier today, right before school ends. He’s a bit further away this time, mentioning something about parking zones Danny has no real grasp of, and asks him what he feels like eating. Danny replies with burgers, because burgers have never failed him yet.

Although once he leaves the school, March is already waiting for him right outside and currently busy with a phone call. He has a smile that is odd in how perfect it looks, impeccably symmetrical with an exacting ratio of white teeth showing.

He ends the conversation as soon as Danny approaches, and the smile falls right off to reveal a grin that is significantly more human in contrast.

“Unfortunately, I’ll have to veto the burgers,” he says with a practiced apologetic expression. “It wouldn’t be exactly healthy for a growing fourteen year old who’s just had pizza for breakfast.”

The mention of the pizza causes Danny’s stomach to roil with a pain different from hunger, and before he can try to improvise a casual response, March’s expression shifts into something Danny has no name for.

“Could we just go eat?” he asks quickly before March can say anything. “If not burgers, then, I don’t know, tacos?”

“We have better options than tacos,” March says as they go to where he parked his car. “Are you allergic to seafood, Danny?”

That question catches Danny off-guard. “No. Why?”

“Then how do you feel about trying out Greek cuisine?” March asks with a tentative grin and excited glimmer in his eyes, his hand paused on the handle of the front door.

“Like salad and hummus?”

“More than just the salad, and hummus is Arabic. It’s really good and I don’t know about you, but I also haven’t eaten much today,” March says, still waiting for either Danny’s response or for him to get in the car first. “So a proper meal is in order. What do you say?”

“Is there even a Greek food place?” Danny asks instead, despite how his stomach clenches on itself at the prospect of a proper meal. He doesn’t know why.

March takes his question in stride and nods, still waiting. “Just one of my personal favorites. It’s Ancient Greek themed, the owners were immigrants from Greece and have been here for ages. They really know what they’re doing.”

The man still waits patiently, focused on Danny even as he drags out the seconds. Danny nods, just a little, and the grin grows a little wider.

Once that’s settled, they get into the car and out into the Gotham streets they go.

-remains awake at night windows scratch free and telling himself he's not being watched-

Danny is still cleaning fried squid crumbles from his face by the time they finish, walking out of the establishment with a satisfied grin after the delicious full, nutritious lunch. He still couldn’t believe grilled eggplants could be so good.

“Verdict?” March asks, starting the car.

“Passable,” Danny says with a practiced uninterested tone. “Could’ve used more grease.”

“Maybe,” March says cheekily to Danny’s surprise. “Just don’t say that in front of the chef. You’ll break her heart.”

“I thought you liked the food?”

“I do, but I also have my own personal food vices,” March says as he drives them out. His driving is smooth in a way Danny’s parents’ could never be, even in densely populated traffic areas. Danny glances at the colorful plastic bags with the packaged food situated beside him.

“Like ordering way too much?” he asks.

“You’d think so, but no actually,” March says. He looks at Danny via the rearview mirror as the car slows to a stop before a red traffic light. “You looked like you enjoyed the spinach pie, so I decided to get some extras. I’ve been told they can last for some days out of the fridge, and they’ll still taste just as delicious.”

Danny hums dismissively, though he looks at the plastic bags again. The Greek food place is successful enough to have custom made bags and to-go disposable food packages, their designs committing to the Ancient Greek theme. The style is reminiscent of the art on black and orange pottery, depicting some gods enjoying a meal rather than a war scene. Danny almost didn’t recognize the figures as gods, but Athena’s distinct helmet and an owl perched next to her is more than enough of a hint.

For the rest of the late afternoon, Danny does take his time to enjoy the entertainment room’s arcade machines and chat with his friends via his cracked phone. By the time night falls, March hands him both plastic bags before he goes back to the apartment.

He snacks on some of the spinach pie for dinner. Even at room temperature, they’re still delicious and a bit crumbly. But as he moves to put the leftovers in the fridge, Danny pauses.

He looks at the black and orange disposable containers, one with half a portion while the other is still full, and at the almost empty fridge shelves.

Danny places the package with the half eaten portion inside, closes the fridge, and takes the full one back to his bedroom. He sets it on his computer table, somewhat behind his backpack, and enjoys the rest of his night in Doomed with his friends.

By the time morning comes, he doesn’t even have to try to find the empty disposable container thrown near the trash bin. And March was right.

The spinach pie tastes just as delicious.

-exhausted and confused his chair wasn’t there and his laptop wasn’t on when he left for work-

The next couple of days stabilize the pattern of waking up on his bed, eating leftover food, going to school, eating lunch with March, either chilling out in March Ventures’ entertainment room or employer’s lounge, being brought back to the empty apartment with some to-go food, doing homework or playing games, and then going to sleep.

In the time between the routine, Danny still talks with Sam and Tucker when he can. He isn’t as exhausted with the meals that aren’t just fast food, and he keeps away from his peers during school as the rumors have started to be more and more accurate.

He still messages Jazz, sort of. Her answers have been getting shorter and shorter, the length of time between replies increasing alongside the mentions of how busy she’s been.

While he might not be as much of a genius as everyone else in their family, he knows how to take a hint.

The apartment is silent throughout the mornings and nights, besides the constant city soundscape from outside and the intermittent crash or gunfire or both, always accompanied by sirens in a distinct Gotham City way.

Even though he sees them less now, something he had once thought impossible to happen a very long time ago, he knows his parents still come by. Their presence is felt through more dishes in the sink in the morning, the trash bin by the kitchen more full with the disposable containers and leftovers, the way the front door chain latch is always unlocked, and a note hastily written left on the dinner table.

Sometimes, not even that.

The pattern breaks during Friday after lunch, when Danny throws a cheap napkin into a nearby trashcan after they leave Bat Burger and they reach March’s car.

“So, Danny,” March starts slowly, which makes Danny pause with his hand about to touch the door handle. “I’m unexpectedly free today, but I need to do some errands. Would you want to accompany me instead of being dropped off by my workplace?”

Danny’s eyebrows furrow in thought, nose wrinkling a bit. It’s hard to imagine March doing chores. “What kind of errands?”

“Just some grocery shopping. You can pick snacks for yourself too.”

“Wait, you need to buy groceries?” Danny asks, and the imaginary thought goes from hard to outright impossible to picture. “You actually buy them yourself?”

“I do, in fact, buy my own groceries which I do, in fact, also need to buy,” March says with an amused grin. “I’m running short on produce as an example, because contrary to what our lunches may imply, I do cook for myself here and there.”

Danny squints as he considers, rubbing his nose a bit. His fingers still smell like grease and jokerized seasoning.

“You can say no, and I’ll just drop you off by your apartment and leave you by yourself,” March says with a shrug. “But if you say yes, you’ll get to pick snacks and we can get something to-go afterwards. I’ll even let you pick a radio station, both on the way in and out.”

“Could I sync my phone’s playlist instead?” Danny asks and March grins, nodding. He walks over to the other side of the car, opening the front passenger door. Danny pauses for a moment, looking at March waiting for him patiently, and then he goes, rubbing his fingers against his shirt.

It’s different, sitting in the shotgun seat. Danny doesn’t know how to describe it other than different. He closes the door, looking around the car as if it was his first time inside as March walks over and enters through the driver’s side.

It’s still the same car, except now Danny has a better view of the dashboard, the windshield, and the compartments by the door and the changing gear stick. Everything is just as clean as the backseats, and there are no hidden buttons underneath the dashboard, no hidden latches near the compartments, no emergency buttons that do nothing half the time to accidentally press by the door handle.

It’s just the same, normal, middle-upper wage bracket car.

“Seatbelt first,” March says the moment he settles on the driver’s seat. He doesn’t turn the car on and drive off before Danny moves. He waits there, looking at Danny and gesturing to the seatbelt.

Danny slowly grabs and wears the seatbelt, connecting the buckle with a soft click. March nods and starts the car.

As March begins to drive, Danny takes out his cracked phone and learns over the control panels to sync his device’s song playlist to the car’s system, having to zoom in and out of his phone’s broken screen to navigate his bluetooth options.

“That’s one cracked phone,” March comments and Danny glances at him. His eyes are still focused on the road, although they do flicker towards Danny’s direction once or twice. “I’ve only seen a phone screen this broken after Killer Croc slapped it out of someone’s hand when they tried to record him, or during a high profile hostage situation where the gunmen knew to take and trash the phones.”

Danny pauses, trying to process what March has just said with, what he feels is, a healthy amount of confusion. Meanwhile March seemingly finds nothing odd about what he’s just said.

So Danny focuses on his cracked phone screen instead.

“It, uh,” Danny starts after another second. “It fell and broke.”

March grins lopsided, one eyebrow raising in a wry expression of obvious disbelief. “Sure,” he says, “And then it got run over by a truck for good measure, right?”

If one could call a berserk poltergeist’s emotion filled death shriek a truck, then yes. Danny nods very slowly. “Y-Yeah.”

March chuckles, shaking his head a bit, though not a strand of hair moves. The sound is swallowed by an odd silence. It’s not heavy, but there’s a distinct absence of something.

March’s expression shifts minimally, jaw working around words he seems to consider and discard at the same breath. Seeing it happen this close puts his impression of a politician at odds for Danny, and the image of a COO doesn’t seem to fit now.

His face settles on carefully neutral despite the slight furrow of his brows. “You know,” he says with a casual tone, “I could get it repaired if you wanted. It looks like you’ve been having problems with it.”

“It’s fine,” Danny says off-handedly, looking at the broken phone.

“It’s fine now, but it doesn’t mean it has to continue to be broken,” March says. “Not when you have better options.”

“Better options like a Wayne Tech phone? A S.T.A.R Labs phone?” Danny scoffs. “It’s fine. It doesn’t even bother me, it’s not a problem.”

“I didn’t say it as a replacement, Danny. Just that I’m offering you an option to repair what’s broken.”

One of Danny’s eyebrows rises. “Why? You must’ve seen, like, dozens of broken phone screens. Do you offer random people that too?”

"Danny, I'm offering you because unlike with other people, I don't have the opportunity to offer them, and…" March slows, both his words and the car as they stop in front of a red light. His fingers drum against the driving wheel softly. "And because looking after someone isn't just making sure they're in a safe place, or just keeping them fed, you know?"

Danny examines the various cracks across his phone screen vaguely reminiscent of a Lichtenberg figure, and his right hand shakes. The silence stretches on, growing heavier as it remains.

Someone in front of them blares their car horn, the dampened sound doesn’t break even as the traffic moves and barely disguises a ghost of a sigh, and doesn’t muffle the tired of course you don’t that March mumbles to himself.

The way to the grocery store continues on in relative silence, one that Danny doesn’t try to break with his synced playlist for some reason. It takes longer than he expects, the volatile Gotham traffic changing at the drop of a hat, but they do reach it. It’s one of the largest Green Market grocery stores in Gotham, and finding a parking spot doesn't take long in contrast.

As they stand on the escalator and go up, March goes through his pockets and produces a folded piece of paper. Unfolding it reveals a handwritten grocery list, and March looks at Danny.

“Have you ever been grocery shopping?” he asks.

Danny shrugs and nods. “Yeah, with Jazz.”

“Right. Do you know how to pick produce then?”

Danny’s eyebrows furrow, head tilting slightly with a wrinkled nose in concentration. It’s been a long time since he’s accompanied Jazz for grocery shopping, and all times were due to her own insistence that he goes. She might’ve tried to teach him, but…

“It’s alright, it’s not difficult,” March says eventually and gestures to a shopping cart across a hall. “It’s more time consuming than difficult, and maybe a little annoying. It depends on the day. Could you grab that, please?”

Danny goes and grabs a large shopping cart, pushing it along as the metal rackets and vibrates loudly from an unbalanced wheel. March nods as he returns with it, and they start walking down the aisles.

“I, personally, like to start with the cleaning supplies,” March says as they reach said aisle, the various smells of floral products itching Danny’s nose. “Just to make sure we’ll have a good place for them, so they remain as separate as possible from the food items.”

And so Danny receives an impromptu lesson on grocery shopping, by the COO of March Ventures, Lincoln March, who grumbles about the price hike on kitchen sponges and shows him how to check products inside deceitful packages, how to tell which fruits are good, which are mature, and which are going to go bad soon.

He shows him where to press on garlic heads to check if they’re good, the appropriate firmness on certain types of oranges and limes, the desired glossy texture of round green lemons.

Halfway through the lessons, as March cautiously digs through a line of vinegar bottles to show him the ones at the back have more recent facture dates, and therefore will last longer, Danny almost asks for the grocery list.

The request is right at the tip of his tongue, and feels as heavy as the cart is filled with so many groceries for only one person.

But then March goes, “There it is!” and brings out two bottles with a jovial grin, pointing at the dates near the top. “See? This is, unfortunately, very common for most products. So I’d recommend doing it only for the things that don’t get used as much.”

Danny nods and March places both bottles inside the cart, and so they continue.

People around them barely give them looks, all busy with their own groceries, alone or with a friend or a child, checking their own produce, looking for their own preferred supplies.

It’s not the same grocery store he had gone to with Jazz, but he feels at the cusp of thirteen again as he holds two small bags of peanuts, trying to check which one he should take and, just like then, he doesn’t know how. And he looks towards March, shows him both bags.

“It’s alright,” March says, and he doesn’t sigh tiredly, he doesn’t look exhausted and ragged, and the absence of regret is disorientating. “See how many dark shells there are? Just watch out for the ratio of those and the rest of the peanuts. Here, if you press one of them, you should be able to feel it’s different even through the plastic, see?”

Danny sees, and he puts the good bag in the cart.

And it feels so normal.

By the time they move towards the check-out line, March gives him a smile that is too symmetrical, perfectly showing white and well cared for teeth. The rest of his expression seems to mold itself to fit the smile rather than fully reach the genuine surprise it tries to pass off as.

“Shoot. Looks like I got carried away,” March says without missing a beat, a perfect, political ad grade delivery in the first try. “Might as well buy everything. It’d be a pain in the ass to go and return everything extra.”

“Isn’t that a bad investment decision for a COO?” Danny’s mouth spouts because he can’t help it.

Much to his surprise, March laughs once. “I’m not a COO all the time. Sometimes, I can even be really impulsive.”

Danny pointedly looks at the extra items in the shopping cart and makes no further comment.

The check-out itself is quick, with Danny helping to bag the items out of an ingrained need to get this done and over with as fast as humanly possible, and they’re already by the car before he knows it, now having to put the bags into the trunk. That doesn’t take long either.

Danny pauses before he gets into the car. He looks at the front passenger seat door, then at the backseat door. His hands, his feet, move to neither.

“You can still pick the radio,” March says simply. The driver’s door is open, but he’s waiting, standing outside while focused on Danny. “Or play your bluetooth playlist.”

“Right,” Danny mumbles to himself and gets into the shotgun seat again, and March finishes getting into the car.

“What do you feel like getting to-go today?” March asks and starts the car.

"Could we get pizza?" Danny asks, slowly taking out his phone.

"You already had burgers earlier today," March points out, but he hums with a thoughtful consideration, eyes shifting down as if examining the question from the sky. "Although you were incredibly helpful today, and you did great with putting the bags into the trunk and double checking the groceries. So, sure," he smiles, wide and jovial, "Greasy pizza it is for a job well done. Same pizza drive through or somewhere else?"

"The drive through," Danny says with a small mirroring grin of his own, and selects a playlist at random. March doesn't bob his head at the songs, but his fingers do twitch and tap to a brief rhythm every now and then through the drive.

Danny asks for a large meat lover this time, while March orders two large pepperoni slices again. It's less of a confused shuffle to get the large box inside, but it still happens despite March's best attempts.

The traffic isn't any better from earlier, but the drive goes by faster than Danny realizes until they're already parked in front of the apartment.

He wonders for about two seconds how many trips it'll take for the two of them to bring the bags inside, only for March to roll up his long sleeves up to his elbows, and he gathers every single bag in an evenly distribution between arms. He doesn't look to be straining against the weight, and Danny thinks the only reason he doesn't try to carry the pizza boxes is because it'd be physically impossible with his hands being so full.

So Danny carries the boxes, makes sure the trunk is locked, and hurries in front of March on their trek to his front door, his key in hand and constellation keychain jingling with each step.

He sets the pizza boxes on the dinner table once they're inside, and March marches through the kitchen in an unhurried manner, putting away the groceries in methodical bursts of movement after some minutes of consideration. Danny continues helping as he can, and soon the kitchen cabinets are properly filled, the fridge isn't bare, and the pantry feels more like a pantry than an oddly shaped storage room.

"Thanks for agreeing to keep the extra groceries, Danny," March says after they finish. "You've done a great job assisting me today."

“It was nothing,” Danny mutters, but March shakes his head.

“It was something,” he says, tone even and easy, and as he’s about to continue, a phone call goes off, ringing in a somewhat generic, soulless corporate tune, and the sound causes something in Danny to wilt.

March checks the caller ID and rolls his eyes as he picks up the call.

“It’s me, yes,” March says with a somewhat rigid, though unbothered voice. “Yes, that’s what I said. What do you mean? And this couldn’t have been an email why?”

March glances at Danny and offers him a slight grin, then points at his phone and makes an overly soured expression as he mouths what he’s hearing. Danny stares at him, somewhat befuddled.

“Right,” March says eventually, dragging out the word. “I’ll be there soon.”

With that, he finishes the call and refocuses on Danny. “It looks like the unexpectedly free day was too good to be true after all,” he says. “Shall we?”

And back to the pattern it is, despite the fact Danny only hangs out for two hours in March Ventures before he’s driven back to the apartment. There aren’t any new messages from Jazz, he hangs out with Sam and Tucker online as he either does his homework or plays some games.

Danny’s phone vibrates as he settles in his bed, a small notification requesting for his confirmation to manually restart for some core system updates.

Which is a bit weird. His Axion phone hasn’t needed a core system update in a while, but Tucker has mentioned smartphones getting them frequently due to zero day vulnerabilities or something. Danny doesn’t really remember his explanation, only that it had started as a frustrated question as to why his computer kept updating every single day some years back.

He accepts the manual restart and closes his eyes, trying to sleep despite the distant echoes of gunshots and distorted sirens.

-

-a call hastily muffled as hands slapped over a gagged mouth yearning to be heard-

Danny blinks half awake, hand against his window at the vibrating end of rumbling thunder.

-but not yet silence is precious dwindling and restful nights rare condolences gifts-

He shuffles back to bed, covering his ears with both hands. Outside, the downpour continues.

-of mourning of sorrow of regret holding off wings. Gotham hums, and Danny listens-

-

In the morning, Danny tries to enjoy a bowl of cereal and milk at his own pace, regardless of a heavy sickness churning in his stomach. He eats slowly in his bedroom, watching his computer boot up and ignoring the sunlight hitting him right in the eyes.

In the kitchen, a crumpled note lies in the trash bin. A corner of it is soggy with milk, but the ink doesn’t run. The scrawled words are distinctly eligible for those who can read them.

Hi sweetie, the note reads. Could you buy more fudge for your father? We’re already out.

Love, Mom.

[vrowescrever]

[Fanfiction] Contrast of flying and haunting

Author’s Notes And back to begging my brain for Words, even just 100 of them. Day 4 out of 7 though! Halfway there, and maybe by the end I’ll get back to my writing groove. Hopefully before Friday though.

Ao3 version here.

DP/DC Week 2022 - Day 4: Contrast of flying and haunting Rating: General Audiences Word Count: 100 Warnings: Implied Mind Control (very blink and miss though)

Summary. Dick has heard of their sister circus before, but actually seeing them close, near where Haly’s Circus is getting prepared themselves, is something else.

DP/DC Week 2022 Day 4 Time/Dimension Travel | There was something off about them…

Dick has heard of their sister circus before, but actually seeing them close, near where Haly’s Circus is getting prepared themselves, is something else.

In contrast to the bright and cheerful thematics of Haly’s, Circus Gothica is dark and strange like a macabre curiosity, a call of the void with the allure of a car crash. They feel right at home within Gotham, even though Dick knows they aren’t from here.

Especially the Grim Reaper boy, whose surreal red contacts almost glow as he looks straight where Dick is hiding.

Dick flinches and runs, back to safer and brighter lights.

[vrowescrever]

[Fanfiction] Vicarious grief

Author’s Notes Surprisingly not a drabble, but also more experimental as an “Outsider POV” adjacent piece. This is also the third story I write going off about Gotham City doing weird shit to Bruce (this one inspired by this post actually), but it’s the first one I actually upload.

Maybe once my brain learns how to Words Good again, I’ll be able to write more of those to my heart’s undying content for that type of fic, but for now: Enjoy?

Ao3 version here.

DP/DC Week 2022 - Day 3: Vicarious grief Rating: General Audiences Word Count: 4074 Warnings: Minor Body Horror.

Summary. Danny blinks harder, because he must have misheard. But as the headache eases, the thing veiled in shadows remains like a colorless wound in reality, edges rippling as it tries to retain a half-remembered shape.

DP/DC Week 2022 Day 3 Eldritch Entities | The worst person to put in charge of teens is another teenager.

“Okay, but why me and not that Hellblazer guy?” Danny asks his Official Justice League Communicator, his excited glee paused in favor of his confusion. “Or even Etrigan- His name is Etrigan, right?”

“Etrigan the Demon, yeah,” the Flash says. “But that’s the thing. Nightwing asked Zatanna, who asked John Constantine - the Hellblazer guy - who asked Etrigan, who said you would be the best person who can help with the supernatural situation in Gotham City.”

“And why me in specific and not that Deadman guy?” he asks with a touch of annoyance. “Just because it’s a supernatural thing, it doesn’t mean I’m the instant expert. And what even is the situation?”

“Etrigan was very insistent that you’d be the best person for this, kid- Erm. Phantom,” the Flash corrects himself, looking elsewhere for a moment. “And I’m not sure, details are scarce besides the situation being under control for now. Although Nightwing has been getting antsier. He doesn’t look like it, but it’s worrying him enough for me to notice.”

A supernatural situation where he has no idea what’s happening, and yet he’s the best person to solve it. A normal Thursday, then. Danny nods whilst repressing a tired sigh. “Got it. I’ll be in Gotham City in five minutes.”

“Thanks Phantom,” the Flash beams. “I’ll tell the Bats you’re heading there. Good luck!”

Danny pockets the communicator away and takes a deep breath. He has a feeling he’ll need it.

-

The exact moment Danny reaches the city, a dark shaped thing crashes into him with the force of a hissing, pissed off meteor.

It’s a confusing tangle of limbs, ectoblasts, and core shrieking panic as Danny tries not to get mauled by whatever this is.

The thing is fast, inhumanely so. For each swipe from something that he narrowly avoids, he senses an immediate following strike he barely dodges, his body amped by an unnatural instinct to not be caught. Despite his best efforts, all of his retaliative blasts somehow miss and his punches never connect, even when he swears his fist was about to hit against something solid, only to feel it pass through in a way different than intangibility.

After another swing goes wide, Danny flies skywards only for something to wrap against his leg and yank him down to a faceful of sidewalk.

The impact cracks both the ground and his head, and the world dims beyond disorientation, shadows growing in depth and in strange almost-shapes of black upon black smelling of suffocating smog and oily taint, of spoiled blood and bloated sewer corpses.

Danny shuts his eyes, fear and panic surging in electrifying charges of green-white energy-

“Batman!” someone shouts, and the world snaps back into alignment and the shadows are just shadows again. “Batman, stop!”

Swallowing down the nausea, Danny opens his eyes. The world around him slowly stops spinning, the oddly shaped afterimages of things fading with each confused and pained blink.

He groans, trying to sit up as the thing holding his leg lets go and slithers back to… Danny blinks harder. The strand of black reels back to… something hiding in the shadows of an alleyway, a suggestion of a shape barely discerned from dark against black.

“I am so sorry,” the same voice from before says, and his head lags behind the pain, taking a lot longer to connect the voice with the figure now crouched in his periphery. “Phantom, are you alright?”

“Nightwing?” Danny asks, finally managing to prop himself up on his elbows. “Wha- What just happened?”

Nightwing gives him a grimace as pained as Danny personally feels pounding in his head, and he glances at the alleyway with a strained grin. “Not one of Batman’s best welcome to the city greetings, but also surprisingly not one of his worst ones either.”

Danny blinks harder, because he must have misheard. But as the headache eases, the thing veiled in shadows remains like a colorless wound in reality, edges rippling as it tries to retain a half-remembered shape.

“Batman? The Batman?” Danny asks, trying to peer in the shadows, but his eyes slide off of the thing. “Did I just get mauled by Batman? Wait- What happened to him? Why is he like that?”

“According to Zatanna, it’s a ghost slash soul curse,” Nightwing says, looking back at Danny. “No idea who cursed him or how, but it’s connected to Gotham. We’re hoping you’d have a better time at figuring this out. Better than us, at least.”

Batman- It’s impossible for Danny to connect the name with the… thing at attention in the dark, like trying to believe the Earth is flat, it’s simply illogical in face of overwhelming evidence. The supposed Dark Knight writhes as its form sags out of proportion, less like a badly misunderstood suggestion of a humanoid and more of a shape that’s forgotten how to exist.

For some reason, it reminds Danny of his original attempts at shapeshifting. That had been a mess and a half, literally. He shudders at the memory.

“Don’t think too much about human shapes or anatomy,” he says to the shadows. “Just think of a good grounding sensation or memory. Hugs usually do the trick.”

Something ripples in the dark and Nightwing turns quickly at the alleyway, jaw going slack as the almost-never suggestions vaguely consolidate into a familiar silhouette infinitely more Batman shaped.

Nightwing’s face breaks into a relieved grin, a tension in his shoulders releasing with a small breath.

“B’s looking better already,” Nightwing mutters to himself, probably talking with the rest of his team. “Definitely a lot less brain breaking to look at now. Yeah, really. Mhm. Got it.”

“So, uh,” Danny pipes up and feels… roughly two pairs of eyes on him. “How long has he been like this, exactly?”

“No idea. He looked fine until some hours ago,” Nightwing says as he gets up, offering a hand to Danny. “But we suspect around one week, and that something may have triggered an abrupt change from Batman to… that. Zatanna said it was something related to the city.”

Danny takes the hand and gets easily pulled up on his own feet. Meanwhile, a pair of white eye slits, barely visible within the alleyway, narrow at the mention of Batman and the city. Although a faint movement catches Danny’s eyes, something near the Batman-shaped head.

Danny squints as he focuses just as Nightwing tenses. He doesn’t remember well, but something about the cowl’s ears doesn’t seem right.

“Shit. Oracle,” Nightwing says, and Danny’s eyes open wide with realization. “He’s doing it again.”

The ears of the cowl- They’re taller.

They’re moving.

The white eyes snap to the side and the thing in the dark vanishes.

The shadows in the alleway become flatter without the Batman-shaped thing hiding in them, suddenly so mundane that Danny feels displaced in between planes.

“Oracle’s trying to locate him again, but his presence does weird things to cameras,” Nightwing says. “I don’t know how long it’ll take until O can find him. Would you be able to sense where he went off to?”

“What am I, a ghost dog?” Danny asks pointedly.

“Hey, you were the one who said you could detect other supernatural stuff, and you did great so far.” Nightwing flashes him a friendly and encouraging grin. “Even if you can’t find him, you’ll probably get a better feel of Gotham and how it’s connected to this whole curse situation. Have you noticed anything weird so far?”

Danny shakes his head, but he begins to float. “I didn’t have the chance to tune in before I got attacked.” He takes a moment to hear himself and grimaces. “Christ. I can’t believe the first time I’ve ever been to Gotham, and I get attacked by Batman.”

Nightwing laughs and looks in a specific direction. “That’s way more common than you think. Oracle says Batman’s been sighted around Old Gotham. Will you be able to ‘tune in’ on the way?”

Danny nods and together, Nightwing on his motorcycle and Danny on air, they go.

-

By the time they find the supposed Batman, Danny has figured out three key things about Gotham City.

First: It’s incredibly haunted and haunting; Second: It’s definitely cursed; Third: It gives him the creeps.

While the third fact isn’t as relevant to the current situation, the first two are enough for him to form his own theories about the ghost-slash-soul curse. Rather, and more importantly, that Batman isn’t cursed.

Although hard to believe, Danny sees it. It’s in the way that the Batman-shaped thing moves within the city, how the shadows that cloak him behave like an extension of a limb rarely used, the way the buildings and streets veer near imperceptibly in a suggestion of directions. The way the lights, from streetposts to homes and passing cars, flicker as if expecting the thing’s direction rather than willed by it.

The city behaves like a lair displaced between dimensions, but instead of the ghost being the one who created it, something in Danny knows Gotham is the one who creates its own ghosts.

Unfortunately, Etrigan was absolutely right to say he’s the best person to handle this. Even more unfortunately, is that it’s going to suck.

“Batman!” Nightwing calls, and the material shadows that were reaching towards the armed thieves recede like otherworldly claws, pulling the cloying smell of rot alongside it, and the thing within the dark reshapes itself as cascading suggestions of roaches and maggots, an uncomfortable visual static of almost-vermin trying to organize itself into a vaguely humanoid shape again.

The traumatized thieves scramble off and no one even glances at them flee. The veiled thing opens three white eye slits, two slightly askew and the third situated where a mouth should be.

“Batman, remember what Phantom said about hugs?” Nightwing says with forced brevity, his body tensed to either fight or flight. He doesn’t relax even as the number and position of eyes corrects to those of a normal human. “Great. You’re doing great.”

“You’re not going to like this,” Danny warns, floating close to Nightwing. “But he isn’t cursed.”

Nightwing does a double take, his domino mask’s eyes wide open. “What? He looks absolutely cursed to me!”

“Exactly,” he says with a grimace. “He looks cursed to you, and to me, and to everyone else besides one. And to that one, he’s as much at home as home is him.”

“That doesn’t-” Nightwing pauses and, after a beat, he goes pale. “Did Gotham City curse him?”

The ears of the cowl perk at attention, and Nightwing stands straighter while Danny shifts back a little bit, still in mid-air.

“I don’t think it considers this as a curse?” Danny mutters, uncertain. “And cities usually don’t curse people.”

Cities also aren’t this heavy and hurting, haunting and haunted, cursed by a myriad of things from petty human corruption to likely centuries old promises unkept and bodies unburied, and maybe actual curses here and there. The more Danny tunes in with it, the more he becomes aware of its shape, its unfathomable depth like the ghost of something extinct.

Of something impossible, an amalgamation of the ghosts it breeds and the ghosts that become it. Gotham breathes slowly like an animal half asleep, yet fighting laboriously for each breath.

Danny glances at the city around him, at the smog blanketed night sky, the smell of pollution filled air, and decrepit buildings and streets in a state of eternal rinse and repair, and he wonders how beautiful it used to be.

“How do we undo this then?” Nightwing asks, eyes still on the Batman-shaped thing veiled in shadows. “If it’s not some sort of ghost curse to break or dispel, then how do we fix this?”

“We, uh…” Danny trails off, distracted by both Batman’s actual twitching Bat-Ears and an unnameable suffocatingly heavy cloak around the Dark Knight. “We could try to talk to the city? Or try to talk to Batman, try to get a lead on how this happened?”

Nightwing glances at Danny, who shrugs a bit helplessly.

“I, kind of, don’t think the city likes me,” Danny says with a grimace. “I mean, you know how people are about Gothamites, and how Gothamites are about outsiders.”

The still very much human vigilante mutters continuously in another language, which is fair. Sometimes muttering to yourself or your friends is the way to go through life, especially one as weird as theirs.

In hindsight, Nightwing is probably talking with the rest of the Bats, preparing questions, or a plan of approach for talking with their city that Danny probably shouldn’t hear anyway.

So Danny points towards the entrance of the alley and says, “If you, uh, need some privacy, I can go wait over there?”

That makes Nightwing trip on his words and the man flushes lightly with embarrassment.

“It’s alright, Phantom. Stay here just in case it goes pear shaped.”

And thus Danny stays with the older vigilante, keeping the same breadth of distance as Nightwing approaches the thing in the dark with both hands up.

“Batman, you’ve heard Phantom,” Nightwing starts, pointing at Danny with a thumb. “We need to know what happened, like we’ve been asking this entire night. Either that, or a way to talk to Gotham City.”

The ears perk again, and Nightwing’s face scrunches with something complicated and tense, as if both in deep thought and trying to reconcile impossible facts. It takes Danny a second to float a bit further inside the shadowed alley, his eyes still sliding off of the figure within.

“Gotham?” Danny tries, and the two white eye slits shift to look at him and his skin crawls at the attention.

Uh oh.

“Okay,” Danny says slowly, trying to keep himself calm and not charge ectoblasts as the air grows heavy and thick, just as Nightwing goes two shades paler with his own realization. Danny slaps on a friendly, though incredibly fragile and uneasy, grin and waves. “Hi Gotham.”

The thing in the dark - Not fully Batman, and Gotham City but not quite, Danny’s perception of the thing veiled in shadows shifts like the hues of an oil spill - slightly bows its head.

“Do you know you’re, uh…” Danny trails off, trying to search for a good word. It’s not overshadowing, and while possession fits it’s still not exactly the case. He gives up after another second of his brain coming in blank. “Y’know, humans aren’t meant to channel entities like you- Wait a minute-” he floats closer to Nightwing to whisper, “Batman is human, right? Not metahuman, just human?”

“Batman is human,” Nightwing confirms and Danny nods. Always good to confirm before shoving his foot in his mouth.

“Yeah, so, humans can’t really handle it?” Danny says to the dark with a hesitant tone. “Normal human ghosts already take a lot out of normal humans. While Batman is awesome, even he has his limits.”

His focus shifts from the general head area to the rest of the body, proportions crooked and at odds with itself. Danny doesn’t know when it became like this, and he has a feeling it doesn’t know that either, like the difference between natural and manual breathing, except its definition of natural is too skewed and unfitting for human parameters.

The white eye slits narrow by a fraction, and Danny stays where he floats as it regards him and his words. Danny tentatively continues at the lack of response, verbal or physical.

“Was Batman the one who channeled you?” Danny asks, and something in the alley shifts in a way reminiscent of a mournful head shake. “Did someone else force you to do this?”

An odd pause, then something in the air inside his lungs changes like burning smoke searing his throat from the inside out, traces of blood splattering at the back of his tongue. Danny coughs, feeling it clog his airways before it stops, and the air is just air.

“Phantom?” Nightwing asks, expression clear with concern despite the domino mask.

Danny shakes his head, breathing in lungfuls of normal air. “I’m alright. So, uh, nobody caused this, but I think he was hurt badly enough that the city tried to help.”

“Hurt? How badly hurt?”

“Uh,” Danny mumbles as he considers what he just felt. “Hard to breathe, smoke inhalation, and I could taste blood for a moment. Does that remind you of any recent injuries?”

“Not recent,” Nightwing says, eyes narrowing. “One week ago, there was a Firefly attack and Batman got caught by a collapsing burning building. He was fine afterwards and we thought he was just lucky, but ever since then he has been spacing out every now and then.”

The shadows shift, the pointy ears twitch towards something too distant for either of them to hear, only the movement stops as soon as it begins.

“The rest of the team will try to keep the area clear of encounters,” Nightwing informs Danny. “It should be enough to keep Batman here. Or Gotham, I guess. This is weird.”

“Oh buddy, you haven’t even scratched the surface of how weird things can get,” Danny says with a grin of his own, despite the fact that this is also making it to his top three weirdest supernatural encounters. He tries to glance at the dark again. “It’s good that you helped him, Gotham, but you gotta let him go.”

The night stills and Danny instantly realizes that might’ve not been his best choice of words.

The shadows gain a volume similar to the depths of hidden sinkholes, temperature dropping as the suffocatingly heavy cloak concentrates around the suggestion of a human shape as a tight grip. Something in the air shifts, suddenly thick with smog and faint traces of a gas leak.

Danny throws up both hands in a placating gesture. “H-Hey, hold on- I didn’t mean it like that,” except the part he did mean it like that. “You’ve healed Batman, you don’t need to stay in him like this.”

“Phantom,” Nightwing whispers, tensing against a terrible feeling Danny can’t imagine must feel for a normal human. “What’s happening?”

“It doesn’t want to let him go,” Danny whispers back, the hairs on his neck rising in response to the way the shadows grow dimmer. Darker. An empty soda can rattles from the mouth of the alley. “Or it doesn’t want to leave. Or it doesn’t want to stop. It’s hard to tell.”

“I understand ‘let him go’ and ‘leave’, but what do you mean ‘stop’? What is it doing?”

“Gotham, listen to me,” Danny says instead of answering, directed at the entity in the dark. “I know it sounds horrible, and it probably feels horrible, but you need to stop haunting him. People can’t handle that. You need to leave him for a little bit.”

He hears a car screech in the distance, the sound lengthens and changes as it travels between buildings carried by bristling winds. It becomes a low distorted growl, warning and displeased.

“I said a little bit! You don’t have to completely let go. You were with him for a week, and he was relatively normal until some hours ago,” he says, words hesitant despite Nightwing’s encouraging nod. “What happened that made you reach over like this?”

The can rattling stops, but in a strange way like it simply ceases to exist. Danny resists the urge to turn around and look, and pays attention to the slow, moving wind like an intake of air.

Then something changes in the shadows. Alongside the edges of shadows, rippling like raindrops. Something like wisps of smoke, early morning fog and the chill of a graveyard night. The smell in the air changes from a dangerous gas leak to something humid, wet and earthen, tinged with rust and freshly burnt gunpowder.

Danny feels his eyebrows furrow, his head pulses with confusion. “I don’t get it.”

Another odd pause, then the wall besides them rumbles as if affected by a localized earthquake. Pebbles and dirt become dislodged and something snaps, releasing a small metallic ball whose bounces sound both distant and too close, muffled and distinct, as if trying to convey a material different than steel.

The ball bounces outside the shadows, and in the moonlight the texture is odd. It doesn’t match itself, too clean and too white, shining as though dipped in a brilliant oily film.

Nightwing tenses at the sight, inhaling sharply at a conclusion that just flies by Danny’s head.

“What does that mean?” Danny asks the older vigilante, but he merely shakes his head.

“Sorry, Phantom,” Nightwing says. “All you need to know is that it’s not doing it out of malice. I can’t believe we forgot today’s date.”

The thing in the dark bows its head again, deeper this time, and Nightwing sighs. The comment about the date has Danny’s overworked head go into overdrive, headache be damned. The date. A date important to Gotham and apparently Nightwing, or just Batman if there hadn’t been an earlier realization once the city’s influence was mentioned.

“Is it grieving?” Danny asks softly. “Because today is…”

Nightwing hums, nodding. The shadows ease, becoming flatter just as the air returns back to slightly polluted night air, but the veiled shape is still tense in an odd way.

“Okay,” Danny says and it’s his turn to sigh. “Alright. Just, uh, don’t hold Batman like this for too long, but you probably already knew that. And I don’t know if you’ve realized it yet, but humans can’t withstand this type of haunting for long.”

He looks pointedly at how the suggestion of a humanoid is once again at odds with itself, length of limbs in clear discrepancy with each other. It doesn’t seem to notice or care about his stare.

“I mean it,” Danny stresses. “I know the deaths from your remaining founding family hurt, but that doesn’t mean you can just take over Batman like this. I’m surprised you didn’t take over Bruce Wayne, actually,” he wonders aloud, then quickly adds, “Not that you should haunt Bruce Wayne today, or any other day. Don’t haunt anyone, even. It’s bad for people.”

“Will he be okay?” Nightwing asks oddly stiff, though Danny doesn’t know who he’s asking. “There was a legitimate concern about this having lasting effects, until Zatanna explained it wouldn’t, but she also said this was a curse.”

“Like Magicians know everything about the supernatural,” Danny grouses quietly. “And Batman will be fine once all of Gotham’s influence leaves or gets kicked out of his body.”

“Which I’m assuming you can do, hence why it tried to attack you?”

Danny nods. “Yup. To be fair, I’d also kick a ghost’s teeth in if they suddenly crashed on my grieving day, so yeah don’t worry about it. I get it.” Not that he doesn’t already kick ghost teeth on any other day, but semantics. “Either way, all of Gotham’s influence needs to go at once, otherwise the traces will keep him weird for a couple of days. If he's not normal after tonight, just give me a call.”

The thing in the dark eases at his words, sensing that he won’t interrupt it for the rest of the night. Nightwing nods, and the smile he shows reveals a fraction of the relief he must feel.

“So it’s just babysitting and making sure it doesn’t traumatize anyone too badly?”

“You got it in one,” Danny says. “I know it doesn’t look like a fun ride, but these types of hauntings leave no recollection or harm in the person’s mind. The problem is always the body, so keep reminding it to remain people shaped and it should be okay for the night.”

Now Nightwing relaxes more, but not fully due to the proximity of the strange, misshapen thing in the dark. “Thanks, Phantom.”

“I’m happy to help, even if this place gives me the creeps,” Danny says, eyeing the alley as he begins to float skywards. “I gotta fly back though. If anything happens, you know who to call.”

With that, he wastes no time to fly away from the city at top speed. He’s heard more than enough from everyone within the Justice League to know he doesn’t want to be involved longer than absolutely necessary.

Amity Park is already a show of supernatural horrors of its own. He definitely doesn’t need Gotham City’s brand of evil following him home.

[vrowescrever]

[Fanfiction] Proof of life

Author’s Notes I swear to any god that listens that ONE DAY I will actually write a full fledged Danny and Damian twinsies idea. But by the same god that hears me, I also desperately need this Writer’s Block obliterated to be able to do that.

Ao3 version here.

DP/DC Week 2022 - Day 2: Proof of life Rating: General Audiences Word Count: 100 Warnings: None!

Summary. “Wayne, we have your kid,” is how Bruce’s Monday starts and he’s already so goddamn tired.

DP/DC Week 2022 Day 2 Mistaken Identity | It’s tough gaining respect from new League members when they find out one of their superiors is a 14-year-old

“Wayne, we have your kid,” is how Bruce’s Monday starts and he’s already so goddamn tired.

He begins tracing the call. No sounds of bodies hitting the floor, so it’s not Cassandra or Jason. Bruce asks, “Which one?”

“Mouthy fucker,” they say- Maybe Stephanie or Duke, “dark hair, blue eyes.”

Which leaves Dick or Tim, but neither of them are in Illinois. The photo he receives startles him onto his feet.

“Five hundred thousand,” they say as Bruce stares at a kid that could’ve been Damian if it weren’t for the terrified ice blue eyes. “Or your kid bites it.”

[vrowescrever]

[Fanfiction] Starving

Author’s Notes While I had something to post last friday, I got ran over by Writer’s Block like a generic isekai truck, so I just. Jumped into the DP/DC Week 2022 to see if it helps. I’ll be going for Drabbles as the absolute minimum, even if it’s the equivalent of yanking teeth.

Ao3 version here.

DP/DC Week 2022 - Day 1: Starving Rating: General Audiences Word Count: 100 Warnings: Surprisingly, none!

Summary. Except that’s not the right word. Not intoxicating, but appetizing. Delectable in an impossible way like the pull of magnets separated by hand, and Danny salivates at the lively warm glow of the green waters below.

DP/DC Week 2022 Day 1 Lazarus Pit | Worst Case Scenarios Only

It smells intoxicating.

Except that’s not the right word. Not intoxicating, but appetizing. Delectable in an impossible way like the pull of magnets separated by hand, and Danny salivates at the lively warm glow of the green waters below.

Something in his core desperately craves it, and he’s aware, suddenly, of the deathly cold hunger within him ever since the accident. Once easy to ignore, and now impossible to resist. Not when he’s this close and getting closer, starving for life ever since his death.

“Danny, don’t-” someone screams, voice unrecognizable as he leaps forward and plunges into the pit.

[vrowescrever]

[Fanfiction] Subsuming Owl Songs (Chapter 1: Sundering solstices pt1)

Author’s Notes Welcome one and welcome all to The Piece I’ve been dying to write. Set in the Gloaming mournings ‘verse, Subsuming Owl Songs is The Core Idea for the ‘verse and it’s also my NaNoWriMo writing project of this year 2022.

It will have 3 Chapters Total, though the chapters are turning to be gigantic considering I’m around 23k words for Chapter 1 and I’m still not close to finished. So to make sure I don’t lose my mind, I’ll post the Chapter Parts in this blog, while the actual Complete Chapter will be posted on Ao3. And considering my current total word count, you can see why.

Part 1 is very much mild, although for those who have followed the other one shots from this ‘verse, you’ll probably have a slight advantage as to what Subsuming Owl Songs will hold.

Mind the warnings and, please, enjoy the ride.

Part 1(You’re here!). Part 2. Part 3.

Danny Phantom x DC - Subsuming Owl Songs (Chapter 1: Sundering solstices pt1) Rating: Teen and Up (To be safe!) Word Count: 5847 Warnings: Child Neglect.

Summary. Chapter 1: Sundering solstices. Part 1 - Moving.

“We’re moving?”

His mom continues packing as if Danny hadn’t said anything, and maybe he didn’t, so he tries again. Louder, this time. With more confusion. “We’re moving?”

“Oh- Hi, sweetie,” his mom greets him, and passes the roll of packing tape and a pair of scissors to him. “You’re here, great. Help me move some of these things, mm?”

“So we are moving,” he says pointedly, but he does move along with gathering various tools and devices dumped onto the living room carpet.

On the coffee table separate from the whole mess on the floor are the series of glass flasks, beakers, cylinders, vials, pipettes, and other assorted laboratory glassware, all surprisingly clean if he ignores the faint green stains here and there. He wonders what they smell like now if he were to go near them. Probably acid. He knows some of those stains did not react at all to overnight soaking in common detergent.

That explains what Jazz had been so occupied with this morning. Danny groans, and looks around the living room for an empty box so he can shove stuff into.

What he finds are more things scattered about, an accumulative mess of tech components, screws and nails, entire toolsets, prototype devices, and whatever else he can’t bother to remember the name of at the moment. Practically everything has a stain or bit of grime of some kind.

“I thought I told you to clean these yesterday,” his mom says with a frown, examining a pair of forceps under the living room light.

She had asked him Friday. It’s already Tuesday.

“Sorry mom,” Danny says, holding the tape and scissors in one hand so he can take the forceps with the other. There’s a new black stain at the tips, and suddenly all he can think of is how much his hands and arms hurt from scrubbing that away.

His mom waves him off with a bit of disappointed tension. “It’s fine,” she says, and the words dig in his chest. “Nothing you can do now. We need to get this all packed up so we can be ready to move tomorrow.”

“We’re moving to where?” he asks, trying to adjust his shoulders. His backpack feels odd against his back.

“Your dad mentioned it during dinner yesterday,” she says, barely listening as she picks specific gizmos in a weird order. “Danny, where’s the box?”

He opens his mouth.

“It’s fine, there should be some in the kitchen,” she says without missing a beat, reaching over to take a handful of scalpel handles. There’s an oily green residue covering most of the handles, the exact type of stain he really dislikes cleaning. She tsks in disapproval.

Danny just goes to the kitchen, eyes heavy and with a sigh stuck in his throat. His eyes search the kitchen, and though he sees the cabinets open and empty, and the area near the sink spotless clean, he doesn’t find the spare boxes whether they’re folded or not. There’s nothing under the chairs and table, and there’s nothing in the ceiling cabinets or on top of the fridge.

Which means, he realizes with a tired sigh, that the spare boxes are downstairs in the lab. He places the tape, scissors, forceps, and his backpack on the dinner table before turning to the door that leads to the lab.

It’s already opened, with sounds of someone messing with things echoing over. He makes sure to not touch the handrail this time. While the bruises on his ribs are already healed, the area still pangs a phantom touch of pain at the memory of his right hand burning at the touch and him stumbling all the way down.

It was painful at the time, but he did learn he wouldn’t need ice or heating pads for bruises of that size and color. Except for the burn mark on his hand. He did need those for that one.

He takes the first step down, smelling the faint scent of sharp acridness and sterile antiseptics. Going down the lab is an experience he never gets used to, especially now two months after his accident.

The strange pressure around him is more distinct, where before it felt like the pressure of water around his body, it’s… well, still the pressure of water around his body, but a pressure that makes him breathe deeper by instinct, charged with ambient ectoplasm and energy, prickling at the hairs of his body in a way that makes him more attentive. More awake.

By the time he gets to the last step, his eyes instantly land on the yet to be folded cardboard boxes stacked on a table, and then they skim over to the source of the sounds he heard upstairs, landing on his dad.

His dad is in his modified and patented lab-safe orange jumpsuit, his hood is up and his teal goggles are deployed, working on another prototype Danny isn’t sure it’ll melt down or explode.

Danny stands there, observing his dad work. He looks up the staircase again and then back down. Just as the sounds carried over from the basement to the kitchen, the opposite has to be true.

“Dad,” Danny calls him. He doesn’t know why. “Where are we moving to?”

His dad reaches over for a tool on his right. Danny doesn’t know what he had expected.

He looks back at the table with the cardboard, and then around the lab again. Most of the portable equipment has been moved already, it seems. Their absence is noted in the pronounced contours of stains, grime, and whatever else in various shapes with a much cleaner surface on their insides.

Danny’s eyebrows go up at the difference in color. He had honestly forgotten the tables were a shiny metallic silver.

The rest of the equipment, the truly laboratory grade stuff usually built into the walls like the biosafety cabinet, climatic chamber, refrigerators and ultra low freezers, ectocubators and others, are either powered down or in low energy consumption mode.

It’s odd. Odder than the missing microscopes, centrifuges, shakers, and glassware. The lab has to be the most silent he’s ever heard it be. Even the bone deep low thrum of the portal is absent.

He looks at the portal at the thought of it and it, too, is off. The dim, yawning maw is gutted, interior panels off and the circuits and cables exposed.

Danny blinks. The portal remains off.

It’s really off.

He thought-

“Hey Dan-o!” his dad bellows, shocking Danny out of his thoughts. “Did you come here to see my latest prototype?”

His eyes flit to his dad. He’s turned more to the right, and he must’ve noticed Danny when he didn’t find the tool he was looking for. Maybe. It’s hard to tell if he’s looking at him with the goggles. Danny keeps his focus on his dad instead of the portal.

“Uh, sorry dad” he mumbles. “Actually, I wanted to ask you where we’re moving to?”

“I thought your mom mentioned it during dinner,” his dad says and his head turns slightly to the left. Danny is too old to feel overlooked. “Say, you wouldn’t have happened to see the portable ammeter? I swear I just put it down somewhere around here.”

Danny’s eyes land on his dad’s left side of the table. He opens his mouth.

“Found it!” his dad bellows and snatches the instrument with sudden glee, and turns just as quickly back to the prototype carcass.

“Sweetie?” his mom calls from upstairs, and Danny sighs somehow far more tired than words can describe.

He grabs what he feels to be enough yet to be folded cardboard boxes, and cautiously goes upstairs whilst trying not to touch the handrail.

The charged pressure around him eases with each step up, but he doesn’t breathe in as deeply. The air just doesn’t feel as… good.

“Sorry mom,” are the first words out of his mouth the moment he successfully maneuvers himself back to the living room, and his mom takes and expertly prepares a box and begins to place her selected gizmos inside.

“It’s fine,” she says only a bit pointedly, but it’s enough to poke at his chest and he just wants to sleep. “Go pack up your things, okay sweetie?”

Danny nods, taking two of the cardboard sheets before passing by the kitchen to grab his backpack before going upstairs to his room. The walk from the kitchen to his bedroom goes unperturbed, silent besides the occasional noise of tape, cardboard and objects clattering against themselves.

In his room, he lets go of the cardboard, backpack, and slumps against his bed.

He doesn’t know for how long he remains there, still as if time would stop ticking if only he doesn’t move. The sudden prospect of moving out is strange. Not only because he’s lived in Amity Park his entire life, but also because the prospect of his parents moving the lab is off. Almost impossible.

And yet he’s seen the current state of the lab with his own eyes.

Danny reaches into his pockets and takes out his cracked phone, going through all of his messages and notifications. Even the email he doesn’t really read. He re-checks his family group chat; nothing. He reads his last direct messages from his parents; nothing.

He checks his direct messages from Jazz. There are some audio messages with his own typed responses dated recently, but no new message today.

He taps onto the type bar and his thumbs hover over the keyboard.

With a frustrated groan, he taps the microphone icon instead.

“Hey Jazz,” he says into his phone. “Did you know we’re going to move? Because mom and dad are- Well, mom is packing stuff, and most of the portable lab equipment is gone and the kitchen stuff is empty. Would you know where we’re going?”

He confirms the audio message and looks at his friends profile pictures. Tucker’s pic shows him posing with some cool sunglasses he had found against a black and green background, while Sam’s is the platinum border of her Doomed account avatar. Danny opens their group chat. His thumbs hover over the phone’s digital keyboard again, and he just stares.

A notification pops up on his screen. It’s from Jazz.

“Hey Danny,” Jazz greets, her voice reverberating weirdly. Probably in a bathroom. “Sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. I’ve been really busy that I forgot. But yeah, we’re going to move to Gotham City. I thought I told mom and dad to tell you since I’m going to be late today. Probably later than I thought, too.”

Another audio message appears just as he finishes hearing the first one. He taps to make it play.

“I’ve already packed most of the essentials. We won’t need to worry about furniture at the new place, so don’t worry too much when you start gathering your things. I-” her hesitance is more palpable with the reverb of her voice, and she takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. Will you want any specific takeout for tonight? I’ll even get dessert if you want some.”

He stares at Jazz’s profile picture. It’s a professional front face shot with a solid color background.

“Thanks Jazz,” he says in his audio reply. “It’d be better to skip the dessert, otherwise dad will be sad there isn’t any for him. You know how he gets. And why Gotham? Did something happen?”

After he sends the message, he waits around ten minutes until it’s clear Jazz is too busy to reply. He gets up from his bed to get to his computer, turning it on as he falls onto his chair. He probably should get a head start on his homework.

He opens his group chat on his desktop app instead.

Sam’s already waiting in a voice call, which he hops in while scrambling to put his headset on.

“Look who’s late,” Sam says. “I’ve already started a raid, my bad. My clan friends really need damned crystalized souls for the upcoming big content patch. I can stream it if you want?”

“It’s okay,” Danny says, opening Doomed. “Sorry I was late, too. I…”

He doesn’t breathe in too deeply as his microphone is known to crackle loudly whenever he does. Still, he considers his words.

“I’m going to move,” he says.

Sam’s webcam turns on instantly, a small screen with her face overlays the game’s UI at the top left corner. “What,” she asks, staring straight at him. Or just the camera lenses.

He turns on his webcam after some consideration, offering his friend a small, uneasy grin. “I’m going to move to Gotham.”

She opens and closes her mouth without saying anything for a couple of seconds, her focus shifts to her screen as she launches into rapid fire typing. “Daniel James Fenton, why on Earth are you moving?” she says, voice clear over her constant typing. “And why are you moving to Gotham City out of all places?”

“I don’t know,” he says, one hand rubbing his face while the other slowly types in his login and password. “I found out about it today. When I got home. I asked Jazz about it, but she’s too busy to answer right now, and she’ll be later than usual.”

“And that’s why you were late? Because you were packing?”

“My parents are packing. I didn’t even start. It’s just so sudden, I don’t think it’s really happening.”

“But?”

“But the lab is… it’s powered down,” Danny says, and his stomach churns. “And getting dismantled. Jazz apparently already packed the vital stuff earlier today. I thought she just got tasked with cleaning the glassware really early in the morning.”

“But how? Why?” Sam asks, trying to send pointed looks but unable to keep her focus from her screen for long. “What about school? Will you even need to do homework if you’re just going to move?”

Those are all good questions he also really wants answers to, only he won’t get them until later tonight.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I’ll need to ask Jazz. I… I still don’t believe it.”

“Yeah, I don’t either,” she says, finally looking back at him. “Considering your parents’ lab, I thought they’d be here for life.”

She pauses for a moment, eyes flicking between the webcam and her screen.

“Danny, do you want to… to hang out?” she asks, frowning lightly. “Like, I don’t know. Somewhere? Not in-game?”

The thought of leaving the near vicinity of his bed has him make a face.

“Sorry Sam, I’m really tired,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “Can I join the raid? I, uh, also sort of need damned crystalized souls.”

Sam smiles. It’s half goth styled happiness, and half smug grin of someone being right. “I told you you’d need them.”

Danny smiles back. “Yeah, yeah. Now invite me to your group. I want to show Tucker I know how to grind.”

~tonight will be quiet all residents are at rest you will be too~

Jazz’s messages, which come well past her normal ‘late’, are barely comprehensible through the sound of ambient chatter and footsteps. She talks at a varying audio levels, whether from her own tone of voice or her hold on her phone slipping.

It takes Danny a couple of repeats to fully understand her.

“Sorry for being late again, Danny,” she starts in her first message, “I’ll probably have to crash in a friend’s place for tonight, I don’t think I’ll make it home. Also, you forgot to tell me which takeout you wanted, so I’ll just order your favorite. And yeah, you’re right about dad, I forgot. And about the-” there’s a sudden burst of noise “-the move. Our parents finally got an offer, an interesting one, too. I think you’ll like it.”

Her second message starts with an unintelligible background chatter. It’s ten full seconds before she can say anything.

“It’s from a company called March Ventures,” she says. “I think you’ll like them. While they’re sort of new around tech, they do invest into some odd things here and there, like there’s an entire section dedicated to astrophysics. It’s recently gotten more funding too from what I found.”

He begins to listen through her third message about the same time the food delivery appears by their door.

The motorcyclist hauls him the bags of takeout food as fast as humanly possible, practically shoving them onto his arms and hightailing right out of there the subsecond the transaction is complete.

He sets the bags by the dinner table, trying to understand his sister’s words as he digs for the disposable plates and cutlery.

“If I remember correctly, we’re going to move to Gotham City for about one year,” she tells him. “That’s the plan, at least. Unless something happens and we’re back in Amity before that long. Either way, one year. And then mom and dad will decide whether you’ll stay permanently or go back. I, personally, wouldn’t worry too much, so you shouldn’t either, okay?”

Her fourth message is one he listens to in his bedroom, eating his takeout food by his computer desk.

“You know how they are about their…” She trails off, background noise increasing in volume as the microphone tries to balance sound levels. “So you don’t have to worry about being away from your friends, okay? It’s just for one year, probably less! I promise you won’t have to stay in Gotham if you don’t want to.”

“I’ve already talked to Principal Ishiyama, so don’t worry too much about school either,” she says, her voice stabilizing as the noise calms in the background. “March Ventures is also helping with the transfer process, but I won’t know which school they’re going to settle on. Last I heard the options were between Louis Grieve High, Gotham Heights High, and Gotham City High. My best guess is Gotham City High, though.”

He almost doesn’t want to listen to her last message, eyes glancing between the time on his cracked phone and back at the time it was sent. He doesn’t know why he’s hesitating.

With a deep breath, he presses play.

“-nitely going to be Gotham City High in retrospect,” Jazz says in a vaguely snobbish tone, the one she gets after she lays out every bit of detail about something and her reasoning about conclusions like a permanent academic mode, and he can’t help but grin. “Like I mentioned, it’s closer, it has a good reputation, security isn’t as bad as- Oh gosh darn it. It didn’t record? Ugh. Fine. Anyway, don’t worry too much. March Ventures is helping with the moving process too. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Danny taps the microphone icon on his phone. “Thanks Jazz,” he says, no longer fighting the exhaustion in his voice. “See you tomorrow.”

- ~where are you going~ In contrast to Gotham City, Amity Park quiet nights are ones he truly manages to sleep. ~why are you going~ He tries to enjoy it. A full year there with his night episodes is going to be… something. ~don't go~ -

Jazz wakes him up at five am sharp. The familiarity of it is good, like the way that orbits are predictable. Though Danny still grumbles irritably at it, and doesn’t look too deeply at her eyebags concealed in hastily put on layers of makeup.

The early morning is crisp and fresh and great to remain asleep in. So of course he has to get going.

Even though they don’t need to, Jazz still urges him to be as quiet as possible when they tip-toe from his bedroom towards the stairs, going down to actually pack what must be packed.

She’s already made a lot of progress with the kitchen stuff, and now they go through bathroom supplies, living room entertainment DVDs, books, and board games. They go through the storeroom underneath the staircase, and then back up through the guest bedroom and Jazz’s study room. Most of what she takes are the practical, the academical, and sentimental, in about the respective proportions of a lot, significant, and sparse.

Danny takes what is his, since his sister is already on a roll and seemingly just knows what to put away and what to leave behind. She likely has a mental checklist, and an actual checklist in her phone considering how she looks at it every now and then.

The only places they don’t look are the weapon caches. They already know those will be empty.

It doesn’t take as long as he had thought. Then again, he barely notices the missing photo frames on the walls.

“Let’s get you some breakfast,” Jazz whispers to him once they tape the last box closed, her breath smells of peppermint mouthwash without the bubble gum undertone of her favorite toothpaste. “Are you okay with cereal for now? Otherwise I can take you to a breakfast place after I get the coffee pot ready.”

“Cereal is okay,” he says, and walks over to the pantry to dig for a disposable bowl and spoon this time. His nose wrinkles when he finds it. The brand for the bowl is different from the plates, and it leaves a filmy plastic aftertaste on anything that touches the insides.

He still brings it out and sets it slowly on the dinner table, then he waits for his sister to come back from wherever she stashes the cereal.

His phone vibrates with a notification as he waits, and a brief check reveals new emails from school and from March Ventures. He doesn’t open any of them and puts his phone away. It’s too early for this.

Jazz returns eventually and, after a brief stop by the coffee maker, she passes him the box of sugared cornflakes with a carton of milk.

“Thanks Jazz,” he mumbles, voice rough as his eyes feel heavy. His sister sends him one of her morning grins, then retrieves her own phone and begins to speed read it.

Danny takes his time with his cereal. He puts enough cornflakes that he feels like eating, the sound of the cereal rustling far louder than he considers possible in a lazy morning, and then he pours in the chilled milk.

He cups one hand on the bowl, feels the liquid and flakes through the almost too thin layer of plastic composing the disposable dish and his mouth goes dry before he picks up the spoon.

And then he looks at Jazz.

She’s leaning over the table slightly, eyes flitting left and right as she holds her phone with one hand while the other rests near her face, fingers reaching up and then coiling before they touch her makeup. Her hair isn’t as prim as she likes it being, and she’s wearing the same clothes she had yesterday before she left.

He looks elsewhere, trying to ignore the nauseating texture of oily plastic, soggy cornflakes and lightly sweet milk as he eats slowly despite the intense desire to just swallow everything to bypass having to taste anything.

“Oh- Oh gosh,” Jazz says, breaking the familiar enough silence with a jolt. Her eyes snap towards him with strained urgency, her phone going down. “Will you even want to go to school today? I think I’ll have enough time to take you if you want. It’ll be tight timing, but I think we’ll make it if you wait in my car before I finish showering.”

His eyes flit between hers and how tense her hand is around her phone, and shakes his head with a spoonful of plastic and flakes.

Jazz nods, and her hand goes lax. Danny resumes slowly eating his cereal as she resumes reading and occasionally replying to something on her phone. The muffled sounds of a cricket comes from the backyard, barely louder than the stream of coffee filling the coffee pot.

The coffee maker beeps in a sing-song tune as it finishes, and Jazz immediately stands to pour herself a mug so full Danny’s eyes are captured by how the protruding surface tension bubble wobbles, but never spills.

“Okay, so,” she begins after a large gulp of coffee. “I did receive the confirmation you’ll be transferred to Gotham City High, and that March Ventures managed to find a reputable moving service for some of the furniture and lab equipment.”

Danny interjects with what he feels is due skepticism, “did they really?”

“If we were moving to any other city, I’d also be doubtful,” Jazz mutters dryly. “But if there’s one thing I learned in my double checking, it’s that Gotham City does have legitimate and professional moving services for a variety of dubious equipment. And they’re not from a LexCorp subsidiary, so I’ll take what I can get.”

He makes sure to slurp his sweet, plastic-y cereal milk as unconvinced as possible. His sister tries to keep a straight face, and yet her lips wobble just a little.

“Anyway,” she says. “I’ve also gotten an email from Casper High confirming the transfer, you probably should’ve received one too. Everything should be good to go by Monday, school-wise. Nothing will change much when it comes to mom and dad besides them not physically being in the same building, and considering how I’m going to be really busy this year, I…”

She trails off and stares down at her coffee, though her eyes still flick towards her phone with a brief flash of guilt. She breathes in, and Danny tenses at the sound. It’s her deep, through the nose where she’s bracing herself before saying something he really won’t like.

“I asked, very politely, if March Ventures could… send someone to look after you, or let you hang around the company building,” her voice is careful, like walking around broken beakers across the floor, “since I’m going to be away.”

Danny feels droplets of something wet splashing against his hand. “What?”

“I’m going to be away,” she repeats, firmer. “One of the places I’ve been talking with for an early internship finally responded, and I’ve been accepted. It’s… the one from Canada.”

“How long?”

She doesn’t look at him. “Two years minimum. Probably three. I’ll move out next week.”

“Oh,” Danny says, though he barely hears it. The tension in him has dissolved into a current of static louder than the distant cricket chirps, his hand twitching around where the disposable spoon should’ve been in his grasp. “Oh.”

“I’m sorry Danny,” his sister says, but she still doesn’t look at him. Her phone’s alarm goes off, a lyric-less version of Fireflies by Owl City, and she hastily drinks the rest of her coffee and hurries away.

Danny remains sitting on the chair, in the kitchen, as he hears the bathroom door close and the shower begins to hum. He pulls out his phone and checks the time. She’ll be late.

For the first time in a very long time, Danny doesn’t care. In fact, he hopes she’ll be late. He wants her to be late, that she doesn’t even make it and the current crackles inside of him like a live wire and the lights flicker and he stops.

He stops thinking. His fists are clenched tight to contain the electricity thrumming under his skin, one leg presses against the leg chair to keep himself still. He breathes in slowly, in and out.

There's a thin layer of ice covering his cereal and milk, and the lights stabilize like nothing ever happened. Another alarm goes off upstairs and Danny stops breathing, tense at the sound of the heavy thuds of racing feet against carpet, then floor tiles and stairs and his parents burst into the kitchen, silver guns at the ready.

“Ghost!” his dad bellows, the gun in his hand jerks around the kitchen and Danny keeps himself very still.

His mom’s finger doesn’t leave the trigger, but she does lower her own gun after a century-spanning second. She rubs her eyes with a disappointed sigh, though the smell of freshly brewed coffee perks her up.

“False alarm dear,” she says and walks straight towards the coffee pot. “But there’s coffee ready. Today’s going to be busy, but we should be able to squeeze in those updates to the ecto-voltaic cells blueprints and prototypes. I can’t believe we forgot about elevated levels of ambient ectoplasm and residue. No wonder those cells overloaded.”

“Our filtration samples were worthy of all the attention though,” his dad says with a wide grin. “After months, we finally managed to get the purity to only previously hypothesized levels - Ooh, cereal - and now we can refine the method so it only takes one month at most!”

“Speaking of refining, I should check on the ectocubator while we have the time. I want to see how the samples reacted with the purified compound before we finish putting everything else in the freezer.”

“Oh ho! I want to see them too, wait up!”

His dad closes the door to the basement after refilling his ghostbusters thermos, hurrying down with the cereal box.

Danny breathes in and out, fully shocked into wakefulness. He dumps the rest of his cereal into the sink, and doesn’t bother separating the disposable bowl properly. The shower hum stops, and he decides he’ll just hang around in his room today.

He manages to reach his bedroom before he hears the bathroom door’s creak open, and Jazz hurries out without stopping.

His phone vibrates with a new notification. It’s a message from Jazz.

It’s not an audio one, just words on his cracked phone screen. A reminder to double check if he has everything packed, and to get a proper meal before the moving service comes.

Danny looks at his bedroom. He’s already half-heartedly put away a portion of his things, but then gave up somewhere before he slept. With a slow sigh, he puts away his phone and gets back to packing. For real this time.

It doesn’t take long. It takes long enough.

~come back~

Danny stifles a yawn, trying to keep himself awake as he finishes plugging in his computer in his new bedroom. It’s the second thing he’s unpacked and prepared besides his bed, and he’ll worry about the rest of his things later in the morning. For now, he stretches his back slowly and readjusts his legs on the floor, waiting for the computer to turn on.

The instant it does, he instantly opens the desktop app of his group chat. Sam and Tucker are already in a voice call, though Sam is streaming her game.

“-and I warned him I’d kick him out of the clan if he kept using that exploit, and- Hey Danny,” Sam greets, her tone of voice shifting from irritated rant to casual happiness, and then she goes back to being irritated. “And he did, so I kicked him and now he’s been crying and lying his ass off about my clan in the forums.”

“Hi Danny,” Tucker greets. “I’m surprised he hasn’t been banned from the forums yet. The mods aren’t usually this lenient when handing out bans.”

“It’s because he’s a paying elite-tier subscriber,” Sam says with a tone drier than a desert. “Anyway, are you doing alright, Danny? Did you get to Gotham safely, or are you still in Amity?”

“Just got here,” he says, readjusting his headset. “It’s about as dreary as I remember it, but this new place is better than I thought. For example: there’s a bathroom attached right beside my bedroom. Like, a private one. It’s small, but it has only one door and it’s in my bedroom.”

Tucker makes an impressed Ooh, while Sam hums encouraging Danny to continue. So he does.

“No space for my parents’ lab though, and since we’re in an apartment now, that means no attic or basement for it,” he says, looking out the window at the night sky. “I think the lab is going to be somewhere else entirely, like an actual different location with proper ventilation and OSHA compliant or whatever.”

“And that place was provided by that new company that hired them?” Tucker asks.

“Yeah, that one and this apartment place,” Danny says. “I think the new lab is going to be close to their workplace, at least according to what Jazz told me.”

The mention of his sister reminds him the apartment only has three bedrooms. The master bedroom, his, and a guest room that is currently serving as a temporary cardboard box storage area.

“I wish your parents didn’t spring this up on you so suddenly,” Sam says over the sound of quick typing. “We could’ve hung out somewhere before you had to go, instead of being busy all day with packing.”

“Yeah, it’s going to be weird not seeing you at school, man. I don’t think anyone at school knows about it, besides the teachers and the principal.”

Danny considers that. “How long do you think it’ll take until they hear about it?”

“My personal guess,” Tucker starts first, “is one week. Probably four days until Dash asks about you.”

“I’m betting three days before one of Dash’s targets asks,” Sam says. “They’ll definitely notice your absence, especially after you purposefully put yourself in his way.”

The pointed jab makes Danny flinch a bit, and he’s glad he hasn’t connected his webcam yet. “Sam, c’mon,” he says. “We’ve talked about this. I can take it, and they don’t heal as fast as I do now. I don’t even feel it anymore.”

“I know,” she huffs. “But it still wasn’t fair for you or anyone else, and now everything is going to revert to how it was before your accident.”

“At least you won’t have to do it in your new school,” Tucker tries with tentative optimism. “At least according to what people say about Gotham Heights.”

“Gotham High,” Danny corrects with a grimace. “Not Heights. I’m being transferred to Gotham City High.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, but it probably won’t be as bad as Casper,” Danny says. “Kind of hard to imagine a school somehow worse than Casper.”

“Right, because of the…” Sam trails off. “Although you did say it’s going to be only for one year. We’ll definitely still be around here, and it’ll be like you never left.”

“Yup. And we’ll definitely make up for the lost time hanging out together. Online doesn’t count.”

Their words quieten the uneasy static underneath his skin, and Danny smiles.

“Thanks guys,” he says, and begins to open his game. “I should have some time before I need to continue unpacking. Tuck, did you complete that quest yesterday?”

“Ugh. I tried but without a cohesive party, it’s practically impossible. I keep getting stunlocked.”

And that’s how Danny’s first night goes.

- -hark solstice of sunder heralded by unheard long spanning wings- Surprisingly, the next couple of nights are quiet. -unstoppable in their flight towards young chimerical prey yet to molt- Maybe not Amity quiet, but Danny wakes up still on his bed. -to subsume within their calls of haunting owl songs. Gotham whispers, and Danny listens- -

[vrowescrever]

[Fanfiction] Evening Refractions

Author’s Notes I don’t even remember when, exactly, I finished this one because I’ve decided to participate in NaNoWriMo this year via starting the main dish of Gloaming mournings ‘verse, and because I also gave up on trying to write the Thursday Morning piece, so yeah And with this piece, the whole Danny and Tucker in Gotham City week is complete. The uploaded sequence is an absolute mess in this blog, while the slightly edited and cleaner versions in Ao3 aren’t all there yet since I’d rather not just dump everything at once.

11.11.2022 Edit: Lightly edited and crossposted on Ao3 here!

Danny Phantom x DC - Evening Refractions Rating: General Audiences Word Count: 5732 (Not counting the italics sentence or the drabble by the end) Warnings: Light Angst

Summary. As their final days of a week long trip come to a close, Danny surprisingly enjoys what he can despite the strange weirdness of that city. It can be different. It's certainly troubled, but Gotham City also is... ...nuts.

A whisper lost amidst the indiscernible muffled murmurs. A backtone of regret vaster than words. Danny cannot help, only listen.

-

“Tucker, I told you I have no idea how I did that.”

Tucker Foley, one of his best friends, tech enthusiast and geek extraordinaire, responds by shaking the empty soda can before setting it back down on the table.

“C’mon man, please?” Tucker asks. “Just so you don’t do it by accident? I mean, if you know how to do it on purpose, it means you won’t accidentally blast someone who managed to spook you.”

Danny looks around the park around them, silently cursing his friend for managing to find an empty place. It’s surprisingly desolate in contrast to the other areas they’ve been to in that city, quiet in a way that doesn’t feel displaced. His friend approaches him with wide steps, sticks breaking under his shoes on the way.

The can of soda previously knocked down by the wind stands tall. Danny glares at it. It doesn’t fall.

With a long, long sigh and pointed look at his friend, Danny extends a hand, palm open and aiming at the can.

He tries to remember last night, but frowns. His memories are too… “Run by me again, what happened?”

“You were having one of those night episodes,” Tucker begins and Danny nods. He never remembers them properly, but that sounds about right. “You kind of got possessed, but not really.”

Danny lets his arm fall and he glances at his friend. “Okay, what does that even mean?”

“Exactly that, man,” Tucker says. “You were kind of possessed, but not fully? Your eyes were doing the thing.”

“Doing the thing.”

“Yeah, like when Poindexter-”

“Okay my eyes were doing the thing,” Danny interrupts. The less said about Poindexter the better. “And what? Was my hair white or…?”

“And, uh… It was cold,” his friend says slowly, eyebrows furrowing and looking down in concentration. “Cold enough to frost my glasses. And everything felt sort of charged, like when we go down to your folks’ basement?”

Danny nods. He breathes in deeply to the humid, fresh air with traces of city pollution. “And?”

“And an owl got spooked and tried to attack you, and then you blasted it,” Tucker says, looking back up to see Danny’s confusion plain on his face. His friend elaborates, “you extended your arm and shot something green from your hand, and I think you missed, but it scared off the owl.”

The mention of the supposed owl makes Danny grimace. “We’re definitely not telling Sam I shot at an owl,” he says, “she’ll skin me alive if she knows.”

“Oh yeah, definitely. We’ll just say it was a plastic bag or something,” Tucker says with a nod. “But yeah, you shot at it and then you weren't possessed anymore.”

Danny nods again and looks back at the can. He extends his arm again, breathing deeply.

What Tucker says isn’t impossible, at least not according to his parents' research, but an energy blast like that is more on the theoretical side even for them. Although the odd ghost population within Amity Park isn't something they had even suspected to exist, or even many of their theories being proven wrong from one simple conversation with one of the residents.

But the number of theories they are absolutely right about is something he also keeps in mind.

Plus, according to his friend, the circumstances also align.

With one last deep breath, Danny narrows his eyes and concentrates.

His heart skips a beat and a thrum of static travels through his veins, raising the hairs on his neck. The world sharpens around him. Distant sounds become discernible into something more recognizable, the muffled birdsongs among treetops, the differences in car horns down the street.

The park in his sight gains an unerring contrast, as if he had removed a pair of sunglasses after wearing it for several hours, and he sees the small insects move around him. An ant has begun to climb the can on the table.

Even the smell of the grass and dirt and second hand smoke become more distinct, reminiscent of petrichor in stuffy warm days. His nose wrinkles at the pollution, now more overwhelming and present despite his acclimation over the week. There’s too much of too many things siffling the air, and he sniffs with a grimace.

Breathing in, Danny feels the static underneath his skin fester as it grows. The energy prickles him from inside out, the static of limbs without blood flow. He breathes out and sees his breath slowly become visible, fogging out in the morning air.

Besides him, he notices Tucker cling tighter to his jacket. Okay. So far so good.

Danny feels the static within him build up, amping his veins, his muscles, zapping underneath his skin through every cell as a conductor. He breathes in, trying to feel the same sensation of dormant limbs in his eyes.

Tucker’s expression beams with excitement, eyes wide with a grin growing slowly to a smile. Danny feels his own lips tug upwards. His eyes must be doing the thing successfully.

Breathing out, his focus goes back to the can of lime soda on the table just a few feet in front of him. The fact that it’s the brand he doesn’t like helps him focus the same strange, electric-like feeling into the palm of his extended arm. The veins on the back of his hand slowly become visible, glowing a dull green underneath his skin.

Which… isn’t what he wanted to do. He shakes his hand briefly, the motion dispelling the strange glow from his veins and arteries. One of Tucker’s eyebrows goes up, confusion replacing the excitement.

Danny chuckles uneasily. “Uh. Does the air feel charged?”

“I don’t know dude,” Tucker says. He hums briefly, looking around. After a bit, he shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”

Danny huffs. The air feeling charged is more of a sign than a requirement, another method to gauge the whatever-ecto-something levels or to be read as warning displays. Considering what Tucker said, it could have been either one. Or both.

Danny looks at the empty can again. He concentrates on the feeling of built up static at the edge of discharge, holding it within his skin at the center of his palm.

The feeling translates into an itch, prickling at his hand as a rough grit of electricity zapping his palm.

The sensation kicks his heart into a skipping rhythm, his lungs stutter as the air loses the traces of pollution and grass. It's suddenly too clean and sterile, tinged with a sharp, metallic acridness he never got used to. The hairs of his body rise, being held by the charged feeling around him, overwhelming his every sense differently than just being around the equipment, somehow worse than he could ever remember.

His sight tunnels. It's too dim- too quiet-

Too cold.

His heart skips a second too long. Two seconds too long. Three seconds- the world is too still and too dense and his legs- and Danny-

"-ny? Danny?" someone calls him, their voice distant and muffled by an unending pitch in his ears- "Danny, can you hear me? Danny?!"

Something touches his arm and the shock of warmth makes him yelp- and his throat isn't raw and his voice isn't hoarse and his skin isn't covered by that suit-

Danny reaches and grasps on whatever is touching him- his hands aren't gloved and the texture of skin and knuckles and warmth opens up his sight.

He isn't laying down. He isn't in the lab.

He isn't cold.

"Danny?" the voice- Tucker's voice calls him. Right. That's right. He isn't in Illinois. They aren't in Illinois. They are outside in a smaller park in an entirely different state, in a very different city, and it's just them. Just him and Tucker. "Danny, are you okay?"

"I'm-" Danny swallows nothing, suddenly aware of the sounds of the park, birdsongs, and distant traffic. The smell of dirt, grass and nose wrinkling pollution.

Danny breathes in deeply, observing his breaths fog out in the morning air. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm- I'm alright."

He glances at Tucker, who still has a hand on his shoulder in a tight grip. His eyes are wide open, eyebrows knit in concern.

"Your hair says otherwise," Tucker says with a strained urgency, "your eyes too- You're-"

Danny's eyes flit down at his clothes, and feels a brittle relief upon seeing normal colors instead of inverted ones. With a deep, shaken breath, he closes his eyes and concentrates on a specific type of static. One that snaps through his body in a strange, form defying shock and he feels Tucker's hand fly off his shoulder.

Danny opens his eyes and glances at his friend. Tucker slaps on an uneasy grin on his face, and examines him briefly. His hand shivers slightly as he gives him a thumbs up, and only then does Danny look at himself. His clothes are still the same, and his skin is the normal level of pale.

A gust of wind ruffles the various trees around them, and something a few feet away from them falls from somewhere.

They both glance at the source of the noise, and Danny frowns at the sight of the empty soda can rolling down and off the table. Tucker breathes in and sighs just as deeply.

"Alright, uh…" his friend starts, one hand rubbing his arm. "How about we just… think about the blasting thing once we're back home?"

Danny would rather not think about anything related to that at all, but he nods.

"There's a game store close over here," Tucker says. "Or we can go to that museum again?"

"Game store," Danny says a bit easier, his heart no longer a fluttering thrum in his veins. "Maybe they'll, uh… maybe they'll have Doomed crystal skull cards."

It's been getting harder to find places that still sell the physical game currency cards, but according to Sam they are still a much better deal than what the in-game shop offers. Tucker has been running low and none of them really have the patience to mess with the player markets.

Personally, Danny just likes the art on the cards.

Tucker nods. "Yeah, and maybe they'll have some other stuff too. We could also check out the mall later today."

A siren goes off in the distance, nearly unrecognizable due to the traffic much closer by the park. They leave in a relative hurry, both to get to said store early and to avoid whatever may be happening across the city.

-concoction burning them from inside out no escape latches hurt can you help them-

By the time the afternoon begins to wane, both of them are back in their hotel room with a plastic bag from an impromptu shopping chore.

One message to Sam had led to another and now they had a number of trinkets, small devices, and extra curious Gotham baubles acquired from gift shops and local stores. Danny had even managed to find an actual video cassette of an obscure series Val had mentioned once, and it’s not even cursed.

He sends a photo of it once they set the items down, putting aside the dreadful task of re-organizing their luggage to fit them in for the moment. The reply he gets is more typos than words, and he feels himself perk up at the incomprehensible excitement.

Danny swiftly puts away his phone and knocks the smile off his face before Tucker can see it, but the knowing smirk his friend has is enough to tell him he didn’t do a good enough job.

It’s whatever. Danny can and will weaponize Tucker’s crush on LeVar Burton if his friend tries to tease him on this trip, and considering how fast the smirk disappears, that must be clear on Danny’s face too.

“I can’t believe they have all of this junk,” he says, picking up a decorative bat shaped trinket that lights up in purple when the center is pressed. “And then Amity Park is the tourist trap.”

“I mean,” Tucker says with a one shoulder shrug, examining some sort of device he ran to buy the second they had seen it on a display. “Besides us three and your folks, I don’t think anyone really knows ghosts to be a thing. And you know what people think about…”

“Yeah,” Danny sighs and his body slouches, shoulders dropping with an unnameable ache beyond physical exertion in his bones. He glances at his bag, then at the bat shaped trinket in his hand. A sharp sickness kicks him in the stomach, and he’s suddenly aware how fast the week has gone by.

The ride from Illinois to New Jersey had felt eternal at the time, and now it feels it had been too short. Like weekends. The hours pass too quickly, and suddenly he’ll be barely awake at the stringent noise of his alarm next Monday morning with nausea in his throat.

Something acidic spikes within him, and the purple light from the trinket flickers.

Danny lets go of the bat trinket and it falls on the bed, the light stabilizing the farther away it gets. He breathes in, and slowly breathes out the pressure of pure static in his limbs.

His phone vibrates, and he takes it out of his pocket to look at the screen. A message from Jazz covers the lockscreen, asking them to confirm they’ve reached back the hotel again. Danny frowns a bit, and unlocks his phone to reply. He’s about to ask when Tucker brings his tablet over, showing him the screen.

“Yeesh,” Danny says at the breaking news going over the mall they had just left. “Did that just start?”

“I’m guessing around five minutes or so after we left,” Tucker mentions. “Looks like we were right to leave early because of those guys. I still don’t understand why some stayed though.”

Danny thinks back on that moment. Various heavy stares flitting over him back and forth, unsettling in their intensity and something in his guts urging them to leave. They had been mostly window shopping by that point, and the moment the first person left in a hurry, they had also walked away.

He couldn’t resist a brief glimpse at everyone else hanging around. The apathy and boredom, a type of spacing out that reminded him of Casper High clear as a photo.

“Probably a Gothamite pride thing,” Danny says with a forced shrug.

The news announces the first confirmed injury from within the mall, displaying a short video someone posted on Chirper. Danny looks away from the screen, humming to himself to tune out the audio.

Tucker pulls his tablet back, lowering the volume with a restrained frown. “Weird thing to be proud about though.”

“People from Amity can be weird too,” Danny says.

“Yeah, but that’s,” Tucker starts and pauses. Danny glances at him to see his friend fully consider and think about it, teal eyes drifting left and narrowing in concentration. “Okay, but-”

One of Danny’s eyebrows goes up.

“Hey man, I mean,” his friend falters. After a few more seconds of silence, Tucker gives up. “At least we’re not from Florida.”

Danny grins. “Only other state to rival New Jersey in weird headlines, although didn’t Mister Falluca use the Florida to New Jersey migration rates as an example of correlation and causation?”

“He did,” Tucker says. “That has to be one of his weirdest statistics rants I can remember.”

Danny feels confusion morph his face, eyebrows furrowing and head tilting slightly. That rant was mild in contrast to… “Oh right,” he says with sudden clarity. “You were sick and missed the one about Metropolis.”

“How come everyone mentions that, but no one ever tells me about it?”

The faintest memory of that day, although astronomically incredible that it lasted from the start to end of class, causes a type of psychological pain that Danny would rather never revisit in detail again. “It’s for the best, trust me.”

“That isn’t as reassuring as anyone in our math class thinks it is,” Tucker says dryly.

“Have you tried asking Nat about it? She’d tell, I think.”

His friend makes a pained face. “Are you kidding me? She hates my guts ever since I trashed her build and pointed out it was an exploit. Not my fault her account got shadowbanned.”

Their conversation trails along the night. It’s surprisingly normal considering how often the topic of school makes something in Danny tense. Although anytime it veers to places he’d rather not think of, he remembers the glimpse. The apathy. One he thought was unique only to Casper High.

One that was in a stranger’s hollowed out eyes, flicking towards that group of men and staying put anyway.

Danny thinks of Poindexter’s snorting laugh. Then he thinks of nothing at all.

- -city of transformation of terror of wonder of nightmares endless as unheard wings- Fortunately, their last night in that city is a quiet one. -claws only felt when snared tight to crush by parliaments of strumming echoing calls- Unfortunately, quiet nights for him mean staying half awake unmoving on his bed. -of solitude and sorrow for years to withstand. Gotham murmurs, and Danny listens- -

Danny sleeps for as long as he can get away with, or at least as long as Jazz allows before Tucker wakes him up with two aspirins and a can of soda.

“Where did you even get this?” Danny asks once the full body ache lessens enough for speech to be acceptable, shaking the half empty can in his hand. “I don’t remember us buying this, and Jazz definitely wouldn’t have wanted us to buy this.”

“Danny,” Tucker starts evenly. “I don’t know if you've noticed, but you’ve been asleep for several hours. It’s midday, and Sam wanted me to grab some stuff before we got back home.”

That catches his interest. He tries to stifle a yawn, but the pain in trying so makes it clear to be a bad idea.

“Really? What is it?” he asks mid-yawn, “I thought we had gotten everything?”

“Apparently not. Sam wanted some stuff from a local store. Something about a friend from her Doomed clan needing extra cash,” Tucker says, putting down his backpack to reach inside of it. “Turns out she makes plushies as a side thing, and since they’re Gotham themed, it’s right up Sam’s alley.”

He takes out a… rather stylized Batman plushie. It’s wearing all black with yellow outlining a bat on the chest, and the mask covers the face completely with a stitched up strange frown. Danny squints at it, then glances back at Tucker.

“And she told you to get that one in specific?”

Tucker shrugs and reaches back into his backpack. “She gave me a list, but most of the ones she asked were already sold out,” he says, “so her friend gave me these ones she called prototypes. When I took pics and told Sam, she told me to give her friend even more cash. I think she liked them.”

From the backpack, he produces some more plushies. One Poison Ivy, one Mister Freeze, one Harley Quinn in a black and red bodysuit with a matching jester’s hat, and a plushie that is more giant bat monster than human, although with a stitched mask over the eyes.

Danny looks at the ensemble, and then back at the black masked maybe-not-Batman plushie. “Sam’s clan friend only had those left and she liked them…?”

Tucker shrugs again, though this time with a complicated expression on his face that Danny feels himself mirroring.

Well. That’s one way for them to reconsider their ideas for Sam’s birthday presents.

“Anyway,” Tucker says as he begins to put the villain plushies back in his bag. “Want to go to a Bat Burger before we have to leave?”

The thought of having those jokerized fries makes Danny perk up. “Definitely. Let me get changed and we’ll go right over.”

-mouth foaming limbs seizing heart fluttering can’t focus can’t hear can you help her-

There’s something surreal about seeing Bruce Wayne walk into a Bat Burger at one in the afternoon.

Sure. It’s certainly surreal as the man, who Danny now truly understands is jacked, stumbles inside the establishment in a ruined pair of expensive dress pants and nothing else. At the corner of his sight, Tucker’s burger falls onto the table with a muted slap.

“Oh wow,” Tucker whispers. His hands remain in midair, holding nothing. “I know everyone said he was really built, but…”

“He could bench press my dad,” Danny whispers.

“He could bench press both of our dads.”

The weirdly built billionaire in question stumbles two extra steps before he collapses onto the floor. Under the cheap lights as well as the refracted late midday glare of the sun, Danny also truly understands Bruce Wayne to be as much of a disaster as everyone says he is, especially with so many scars.

Danny looks around briefly. The cashier in the terrible Batgirl costume has her phone in her hand, takes a photo and puts it away. On one table across the room sits another pair of older teens, both with their phones out, but only one aiming at the collapsed celebrity.

“Sandra, c’mon don’t do that,” one of them says to the other. “Don’t post that on Chirper yet. Man’s had a rough night with the paps yesterday.”

“Oh shit,” says Sandra, who puts down her phone. “Yeah, you’re right. My bad, Mister Wayne.”

Bruce Wayne raises one shaking hand and waves towards them, still faced down and splayed on the floor. There’s a strange hand shaped bruise on his wrist.

“It’s fine,” he says, somehow comprehensible despite not moving an inch, “just need a second…”

“Will you want your usual coffee, Mister Wayne?” the cashier asks, like this is a normal thing.

Bruce Wayne gives a thumbs up, and lets his arm fall back on the floor.

It takes a second for Danny to truly understand anything right now.

“Oh god,” Tucker mumbles. “Sam was right.”

“Really? That’s what you’re prioritizing?” Danny asks and glances back at the shirtless and shoeless billionaire. Even though he has just seen the man move, his body is eerily still. The bruise on his wrist looks worse by the second.

“Should we…” Danny mumbles, uncertain in the face of every other Gothamite not reacting to this, “should we call nine-one-one?”

That gets a shock out of the billionaire. His whole body twitches and he’s up faster than Danny ever thought possible. “I’m okay,” he says with a brilliant grin, but his eyes are blown out. “No worries.”

Tucker breathes in sharply at the sound of something cracking as the man gets up, and the jokerized fry Danny is holding just falls from his suddenly lax fingers, bouncing onto the floor.

“Here, Mister Wayne,” the cashier calls with the same exhausted tone as before. “You black coffee.”

“Thanks Jackie,” Bruce Wayne says, takes one step forward and falls back onto the floor, face first with a slap.

“Is he high?” Tucker asks, half hushed and half aghast. “Is he being high considered normal?”

“Maybe?” Danny replies. A part of him wonders if this behavior truly is normal, or if it’s some sort of strange rebound from that night at the start of the week. Considering the other people’s nonchalant reactions, it’s probably normal. He doesn’t know whether that’s better or worse.

Someone- Sandra’s friend, has brought over a large styrofoam cup with coffee next to Bruce Wayne, setting it within arm’s reach on the floor. After a second of deliberation, they place it closer to the man.

The billionaire makes some sort of noise, and the older teen nods and goes back to their table across the room.

With a type of childish fascination Danny thought he outgrew, he observes one of the richest men in the world crawl slightly towards the cup of coffee, reach into his ruined dress pants, and takes out a straw which he dainty puts in the cup and drinks from. All while remaining prone on the very dirty, very greasy Bat Burger floor.

The sight of it is surreal enough that Danny feels he’s an inch left of reality. This must be an elaborate joke. Some type of psyops made to torture out-of-towners. He doesn’t know where the camera people are hiding, but they must be somewhere.

He looks at the various empty chairs and tables with something akin to desperation. There must be people hiding. It must be a wicked joke of some kind. It must be, because otherwise-

“Oh god,” Danny says. “Sam was right.”

Gotham City is nuts.

Someone barges into the establishment, heaving and looking around with wild eyes until they land on Bruce Wayne. The person, tall, dark haired and blue eyed, exhales with their entire body, going from tense to exhausted in an instant.

Everyone else in the building turns to look at who appeared, and after a second they all return to whatever it is they’re doing. For the cashier, it’s taking another photo of Bruce Wayne.

The man, recognized as Richard Grayson now that Danny has taken his required second to digest the unfolding situation before him, approaches the billionaire with a strained grin slapped onto his face.

“Hey Bruce,” Richard Grayson says, crouching near the fallen shirtless and shoeless man. “What a strange coincidence to find you here.”

He leans closer and they begin exchanging rapid fire whispering, stopping a few moments here and there for Bruce Wayne to sip on his coffee via the straw.

Meanwhile, Danny slowly meets Tucker’s eyes. Their burgers are probably cold at this point.

What, Danny mouths, because talking while those two whisper doesn’t feel right, is going on.

I don’t know, Tucker mouths back with a shake of his head. I don’t know.

With that understanding between them, they look back at the two men. Bruce Wayne is still on the floor, but his dress pants pockets are turned inside out, and his coffee cup is nearly empty. Richard Grayson has a wallet in his hands as he stands, Danny doesn’t know whether it’s his or Mister Wayne’s, and is currently digging through some bills.

“How do you not have anything lower than a fifty?” Richard Grayson asks with due incredulity. The cashier tunes in back to the world and looks at Bruce Wayne with trepidation.

“What?” the billionaire on the floor asks with confusion. “I have other bills. There should be a ten or some fives.”

“There are only fifties and hundreds- Correction, there is only one fifty and the rest are hundreds.”

The man sputters on the floor and starts to get back on his feet, something in him cracking with the movement and Danny winces with sympathy. Tucker, on the other hand, goes a little pale and tight-lipped. Even the older teens across the room are staring with grimaces of their own.

“Let me see,” he says and takes his wallet back from his adopted son, rifling through it. “I swear I had them- wait, where are my cards?”

There’s another bout of whispering, and Bruce Wayne mumbles something with such a heavy exhaustion it becomes unintelligible at a distance. Richard Grayson begins to go through his own pockets.

“No no, it’s okay,” Bruce Wayne says and stumbles towards the cashier, somehow deftly maneuvering around the cup still on the floor with the straw. He places the fifty dollar bill on the counter with more force than he seems to intend, his hand and arm tensing as he tries to keep himself upright.

Across the room, both older teens are taking various photos of Bruce Wayne’s back.

“Keep the change,” the billionaire says, and careens backwards.

Richard Grayson catches him before he collapses onto the floor for the third time, and grins sheepishly. “Sorry for disturbing your lunch everybody,” he says, “we’ll be heading out now.”

Danny and Tucker observe with no small amount of wonder at how he manages to drag his weirdly built, scarred, and unconscious guardian out, offering more sheepish grins as he does. He doesn’t, however, manage to avoid the cup of coffee still on the floor. It spills the remaining liquid on the tiles, which is then smeared by Bruce Wayne’s limp and bare feet.

At the counter, the cashier groans.

“...bingo?” Tucker mumbles, and Danny leans back on his chair.

At this point, Danny can’t wait to get back home.

-suffocating hands on his throat unable to see unable to shout for help can you help him-

Tucker finishes drinking his soda, both of them having left the Bat Burger earlier than expected. Danny doesn’t recall if one of them had asked, or if it was a mutual understanding moment after that encounter. Likely the latter.

“What a week,” his friend says once they get back to their room, and goes to gather his things.

“Yeah,” Danny agrees. He looks out of the rackety window as he packs his own bags. “I can’t believe we didn’t get a proper Hashtag Only In Gotham bingo though.”

“Oh c’mon,” Tucker says. “That whole thing we just saw fills at least two squares.”

“Yeah, but we’re still missing out on the big ones.” Danny stops for a moment, considering what the big ones usually are from what he remembers. “Maybe for the better.”

Tucker nods. “I’m surprised nothing bad happened.”

They pack their things in relative silence, although Danny glances at the window every now and then. The city under the afternoon light looks the same just like at the start of the week, and it’ll remain the same after they leave. With a city this big and this old, they probably haven’t even experienced a fraction of what it holds.

“Do you think you’ll miss it?” Danny asks.

“Absolutely not,” Tucker answers immediately. “Between all that weirdness in one week, all without going through some elaborate scheme from one of the villains. I’ve already had my fill for this place for at least two years.”

“Only two? And that’s only because we weren’t caught up in some, I don’t know, Scarecrow attack?”

Danny zips closed his bags and turns to his friend. Tucker’s face is one of terrible, horrible pain similar to when they remember a project or homework they did not do. He shudders, probably thinking about Scarecrow. “Don’t even joke about that, dude.”

“Yeah, maybe not Scarecrow. What about…” Danny trails off, then picks the second major villain that comes to his mind, "Poison Ivy?"

He feels Tucker’s stare on him before his friend’s eyes actually land on him, heavy and judgmental like that one time Danny had asked why not just write ‘else if’ for everything in a code project if it worked.

“Okay,” Danny says slowly, suddenly hit by the wisdom of knowing to change the subject. “What do you think the jokerized seasoning is made out of?”

Tucker’s face scrunches in on itself in pure disgust. “Sadness and nightmares,” he says. “Probably English homework too.”

“Hey, it’s not that bad.”

“Of course you don’t think it’s that bad. You liked Sam’s topsoil sandwich.”

Danny sputters at the retort. “You- You saw me spit out the first one!”

“Yeah, the first one,” Tucker says. “But then you ate that other one a week and a half ago. You didn’t even pause.”

Danny stops. He doesn’t know whether he should tell Tucker that Sam told him it was made with graveyard dirt in her attempt at a prank, and the sense of wisdom tells him not to.

“I was tired, okay?” is what he ends up responding with. “You could’ve given me toast and I would’ve eaten it without noticing.”

His friend’s eyes narrow. “Were you sleep-tired, or, like, ghost-tired?”

“Sleep-tired.” Ghost-tired. A week and a half ago was- lectures. A lot of lectures. So many lectures disguised as ghost gossip and passive aggression. ‘Someone like Alicia wouldn’t know the difference between a shade and a shroud’ versus ‘only pretentious nerds like Sharon think there’s a difference at all’ ad nauseum. Remembering a trace of it is enough to make his eyes heavy. He shakes it off. “Definitely sleep-tired.”

Tucker’s suspicion grows further, only to ease after another second. “Too bad we couldn’t get a jokerized seasoning packet for Sam.”

“Yeah,” Danny says with a grin. He moves away from the window, walking towards the door. Tucker follows him shortly. “Do you think we could replicate it?”

“Probably. There might be a good matching recipe if it turns out to be like Nasty Burger’s patented sauce.”

The conversation trails off, evolving and devolving into various related topics as they make their way to the lobby, and then to the van.

By the time they get on the road, they somehow reach back around to hypotheticals about the differences in seasonings and sauces between the two fast food places. Although there’s a lull in the conversation. Danny’s replies take longer the closer they get to one of Gotham City’s bridges.

He doesn’t remember what he was about to say when they do reach it. The van feels strangely silent despite the electric motor hybrid humming, the sensation of the well paved road and the blares of various car horns echoing around them.

They’ve only been in that city for a week, certainly not enough to have known it by any significant fraction of any interpretation. And yet there’s something different in the way the prickling sensation of being watched tracks him, unbearably seen and followed millimeter by millimeter of his displacement in space.

It’s the same heavy gaze of ten thousand million eyes. The same impossible awareness of his every involuntary movement. Except the atmosphere around the stage is different. Not at the verge of laughter.

At the verge of something else. Like staring at looks he doesn’t see. The tired looks- The- The-

-sorrow the hurt the pain the regret the sadness the mourning the mourning the mourning-

-nothing past the bridge. He slips from underneath the invisible weight around him and Danny feels himself breathe, like a satisfying crack of joints after long hours spent unable to move.

He can’t help but turn his head back, to watch the city become smaller, and smaller, and smaller.

In the long hours of the trip back home, Danny falls into restful sleep.

-

The signal disappears again, but by now he isn’t worried. It’s understandable his equipment isn’t proper, and he’ll have the technology to amend that soon enough. The interference here and there still annoys him though.

He looks at the dismantled equipment he couldn’t resist snatching. It’s different from what the blueprints conveyed, likely due to the unique metal alloy those nutjobs managed to synthesize.

A notification distracts him, and he grins upon reading the confirmation. On another screen the dot reappears, location unchanged.

It’s early even for him, but everything lines up perfectly.

With a smile, he sends the email.

[vrowescrever]

[Original Work] Absent terre verte

Author’s Notes I know 95% of y’all are only here for Fanfic works, so feel free to absolutely ignore this one. I use the tag Smudged Graphite for original pieces, so you can blacklist that and y’all never see these again.

Recently, as in around 4 months ago, I completely renounced the RP place where my characters Neith, Ha-Yun, and some others were created because of Really Bad Creative Decisions I Profoundly Disagreed With. I was going to go on in a rant like it was an analytical academical essay (I was past 2 paragraphs in at the time), but then I realized that hadn’t been the first time that type of shit happened and when people had criticized then, they were told to, basically, go fuck themselves.

Those times were with lore that a lot more people had their beef with, which in contrast made the lore I liked feel niche in comparison, so there was no way in hell that anything would change so I just fucking left. And I was proven right one day or so later, when I was informed they doubled down on their Really Bad Creative Decisions I Profoundly Disagreed With.

If you somehow stumble into that place and like it; Congrats. I hope you enjoy it a lot more than I did. I’ll only ask you to not fucking bring it up with me, unless you’re fine with me subjecting people to some truly rabid ranting.

Anyway. Writer’s Block kicking my ass. Decided to be self-indulgent. Hence this.

Absent terre verte Rating: Teen and Up Word Count: 1014 Warnings: Implied/Referenced Alcoholism, Minor Emetophobia, Angst, Hurt No Comfort.

Summary. The sample. Does it even have anything, at all?

A thought comes to him and it feels important. It’s important enough that he considers it as well as he can in this state, even though the conclusion he reaches is the same conclusion he has about everything involving her.

Would he kill if she had asked?

The thought surges over him like the nausea rising in his throat, sickeningly sweet and burning bile. He swallows it down with another swig of the cherry liquor, and he keeps it down with a shudder.

It doesn’t matter where the thought comes from, only that it is. And that he has it. Trapped in his shaking hands, gripping onto the bottle like it will stop existing if he eases.

So he holds it in his mind, analyzes it like his samples. The most obvious and forefront answer he observes is No.

He wouldn’t.

Now he begins to dissect it. Truly observe it past initial appearances. He thinks he wouldn’t in accordance with his job, to do no harm, which implies an already specific preset of circumstances. That he has the same job, that he has grown the same way, that she’s here, that she’d ask him that. That she’d need to ask him that.

Where was this sample obtained from? The environment in which it was located, in which it was still alive? Is it still reacting? What of the tissue it was infecting?

He looks at the bottle in his hold, the way the red liquor inside ripples from each imperceptible tremble of his hands. It’s almost like liquid gemstones under the flickering light, a brilliance only made clear with a broken light and impaired sight. The acid in his gut churns.

He doesn’t think he would.

He who he is now is important. He, who he is, is the only person he could have become without her. The only option available. The most obvious solution.

The sample he peers into is distinct by its shape, its size, its behavior. It is what it is. It could never be anything else. But much like the cousin variants, the mutations of life, what could it have become if a vital aspect of it were different?

He doesn’t want to think he would.

Drinking this type of sweet liquor on an empty stomach is a bad idea, and the taste burns as intensely as the alcohol content. He doesn’t think he’ll figure out why she liked sweets so much this year. He drinks it anyway. The sweetness sticks to his teeth, to his nose. Thick. Cloying. He’s so fucking sick of cherries.

He banishes that thought as quickly as it comes. Gone. It’s gone. He drinks again and doesn’t think of the taste, holds the bottle against his slick forehead. The glass isn’t cold, barely a noticeable chill. The buzz of the alcohol makes him sick. Factually. Metaphorically.

The sample. Is it still in a petri dish, or on some tissue? Organic or not? Animal or plant based? How does it react to the solution? What does he pour?

In sufficient quantities, would pleconaril taste sweet?

He doesn’t think he would be capable.

A surge of something acidic shocks his body like a flash fever. It’s a bout of shivering cold and sweltering warmth sublimating his insides, tasting of cherry bile splashing against the back of his throat.

His hands close around the glass bottle with an intense need, driven by an impulse that feels nostalgic as it feels distantly familiar. Like the muted rumble of traffic, suddenly so inexplicably appealing and his feet twitching towards the sound.

The glass doesn’t break. He simply does not have the physical attributes to break this type of glass, of this shape and this design, with his bare hands. It’s a statistical impossibility unless it held a flaw, or a weakness was induced to it. The most efficient method for someone of his build to break this glass, to truly shatter it, would be to throw it.

He doesn't throw it. He doesn't throw it. He doesn’t throw it.

He presses the bottle against his chest, cradles it as something priceless. Because it is. Because he doesn’t throw it. He doesn’t. He holds it tightly against his sternum, the pressure helps trapping the nausea in his esophagus, yet it still spreads like chemical burns up his throat.

He shudders. His breath must be disgusting.

Is the sample a virus? A bacterium? Protozoan, prion, viroid, or fungus?

Does he have proper personal protective equipment? Is it airborne?

Or is it via direct contact with bodily fluids?

He drinks the cherry liquor, tastes how his body temperature warmth has made it a repulsive, rotten concoction of sweet, fermented flavored sludge that he keeps down. That he doesn’t throw. That he breathes heavily through his nose, jaw ground closed, in long repeated, buzzed rhythms of four, five, seven.

In what set of circumstances would she ever ask him to kill?

Would she even ask him to?

He doesn’t know.

His concentration escapes him like the bottle slips from his hands, and the sound of it hitting the bathtub is something vast, hollow. Absent. And so strangely cold.

If it spills, he doesn’t know. And it matters, suddenly. He has cleaned the bathroom dutifully, made it spotless as a clinical lab. It matters if the bottle spills. The spill can be the source of bacterial growth, of culture. A vector of transmission.

So he does his due diligence and checks. One wavering hand, nails tapping arrhythmically against the porcelain as he feels for any wet spots.

The only one he finds is at the mouth of the bottle. A single trail running down the neck.

But nothing on the bathtub itself.

The knowledge brings him no comfort.

The walls of the bathroom blurs, the colors flat in their hazed droops. The flickering light thins the hues with each blink, diluting the dimensions into a solid of no substance.

Even though he’s done his routine perfectly this year, as every year before, he knows there’s something missing. Much like the acidic emptiness which rises and churns and liquefies his insides, something is missing.

The sample. Does it even have anything, at all?

He brings the bottle to his mouth, tips it over. The dregs barely coats his tongue.

It tastes more of bile than liquor.