The Vampire Aesthetic
Ok so Danny knows two billionaires personally and they really couldn’t be more different. Yet they had one thing in common. A vampire aesthetic. Sam is fully into goth. Spiderwebs, bats, the color black. She enjoys fangs and fake blood and the darkness of her soul. Meanwhile, Vlad is Vlad. If his name wasn’t enough, the dark clothing, pale skin, and flying around with a cape and fangs with coffins in his mansion really sells it.
Danny doesn’t know many rich people so he thinks this might be some kind of trend. (If Paulina is rich, her family likes the chupacabra) So he just thinks that all rich people have some kind of vampire thing going on.
Cue Danny somehow ending in the Wayne household. Maybe he was brought over as a friend of one of the bats, maybe rescued from a field trip/vacation gone wrong, maybe some other situation. But he is there in civilian form with civilian Waynes and Danny just takes a good long look around the inside of the mansion.
“So where’s the vampire aesthetic?
Everyone freezes.
Danny just starts looking around, checking behind paintings and feeling the walls for secret levers. Used to secret passages with Vlad and possibly Sam. The Fentons definitely had them when they were temporarily rich.
“Come on, I know you guys are hiding it.”
Cue the entire batfamily thinking that this is another Tim and that he is fully aware that these people are the batfamily. Danny hangs around the mansion more and the bats just start dropping their disguises and not even bothering to hide stuff around Danny because they assume he already knows. (Possibly even trying to recruit him to be a new bat) Meanwhile, Danny, who does not know these people are batman and his birds, just does not pick up on any of it.
He grew up in a health violation with a giant ballon observatory lab above his head and a portal to the afterlife in his basement. He is a half dead teenager who has tea with the god of time and his godfather is the other parent to his clone child. He’s used to death lazers being scattered across his home and mysterious stains on clothing.
People are weird! He doesn’t judge!
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“So,” Grian says, “this is awkward.”
Scar says nothing. Scar had said nothing for quite a while, honestly, sitting cross-legged in the void and playing with the hem of his cloak. Or with the flower stems woven through the hem of his cloak, as it were. Lilacs and poppies. Grian had thought it painfully ironic the first time he saw them. Scar hadn’t. Not until now.
“So,” Grian says, again, “I can explain? I think?”
He can hear stifled giggles behind him, Scott and Pearl discussing the last moments of the fight. He feels Martyn’s heated glare between his shoulder blades too, knows that he’ll be getting an earful about taking his final life whenever the fourth winner can get his hands on him, but at least Martyn’s been kind enough to leave him at the mercy of the fifth for now. Or not kind enough, as it were. Whether or not Scar has any mercy for him is an open question.
“Explain what,” Scar says. It’s not a question, which is just as well, since Grian doesn’t really have an answer.
Can he explain?
“Well,” he says, “there’s these death games.”
The death games he technically started, and then technically couldn’t stop. The death games that weren’t meant to be blood sacrifices, but probably count as happening on somebody’s altar. The death games that no one ever wins, but technically–
“Technically, the people who win them get to keep their memories.” He scrunches up his nose. “Or, uh, recover their memories of the previous ones, I suppose. Which is what’s happening to you. And Martyn, and Pearl, and Scott, and I was the first, so–”
“One heck of a headache, right?” Pearl yells behind them. “Was even for me, and you’ve got four whole timelines to deal with!” She flops backwards onto the floor, which is the void, pressing the back of the palm to her forehead theatrically even as she peers up at Scar through parted fingers. Scott rolls his eyes and grabs her hand.
“Give them a moment, Pearl,” Grian hears him whisper. “I know you weren’t there for Third Life, but I’ve explained it to you a dozen times, so–“
“So,” Scar says. “Third Life was real.”
It’s a strange way of putting it for someone who hadn’t remembered it at all until now.
“That’s a strange way of putting it for someone who hadn’t remembered it at all until now,” Grian says, because he’s always loose-tongued after dying. Scar stares at him, unblinking.
“That’s a strange way of thinking for someone who declared the first ever game a double victory,” he says. His head is tilted to the side.
Grian stares back.
“That didn’t count.”
“It didn’t not.”
“You didn’t remember until now.”
“I didn’t not.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Doesn’t it?” Scar shrugs. He plucks a flower from between the dark threads. It’s a poppy. “No less than the rest of it. No less sense than me waking up with sand between my toes, or burns on my arms, or bamboo in my pockets. No less than the dreams. Those didn’t make sense either.”
“It’s not like you ever asked me to explain.”
“Would you have?”
“Not the point.”
“Isn’t it?”
Pearl is still giggling. Martyn is still staring. Scott is quiet.
“Maybe it is,” Grian admits, quietly. It’s not an apology. It never will be.
Nor is it forgiveness, when Scar leans forward to tuck the poppy behind his ear. Nor will it ever be.
Sure feels like it sometimes though.
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