Alley Drunk! Danny AU- Part 1
[Pt.2] [Pt.3] [Pt.4]
To not turn into a giant raging asshole hell bent on murdering people and destroying the world after everyone he loved died, Danny had ran from Amity with his chosen vice.
A bottle. That’s right. Even after Jazz’s talks about alcoholism as a poor coping mechanism as a form of self harm, he still chose alcohol. Or maybe that’s why he picked it, because it reminded him of her, right before the booze took the sting of grief off of her memory. He was never really all that good at listening to Jazz.
And now she’s gone, so it’s moot point. Danny really hated Nasty Burger.
Danny made it all the way to Gotham, bottle constantly glued to his hand. It’s better than Vlad’s creep-o-self looming over him all of the time. He bummed out on the streets, fitting into crime alley like a native. Danny learned to pickpocket. Not much, just enough for a bottle when his ran out. He stayed human. At first he tried to convince himself that it was because he didn’t want to be perceived as a meta in a city where Batman notoriously disliked metas. Then, as he sunk deeper, he admitted to himself in a shameful curl of a whisper that it was really because alcohol affected his human side much easier.
Ghosts need an ungodly amount of alcohol to even get slightly buzzed. Danny’s human side? Only one full bottle the shittiest tequila he could find could even hope to be more than buzzed. It sucked.
He’s spent two years being an alcoholic that didn’t actually get that drunk. Technically, underage drinking was a crime. But then again, so was being a vigilante ghost. So, whatever. He does what he can to dull the grief. Mostly, he slept on covered and hidden nooks on top of Crime Alley’s roofs. Gotham city had taken pity on him and cleared her smog clouds when he was awake at night. Stargazing helped, at least. It gave him a little hope. It gave him a little wish to change and better and live like he wants. But then the night ends and when the day comes, Jazz isn’t there. Sam isn’t there. Tucker isn’t there. His mom and dad are not there.
Danny always went back to the bottle, in the end. Not that it did much.
Which was why, when he saw three looming figures over a tiny child, Danny’s saving people thing flared with a vengeance and his surprised ectoplasm burned what little buzz he had achieved by downing most of the bottle away, leaving him stone cold sober and pissed.
Danny sighed, dumping the rest of the nasty tasting liquid out. There’s no point drinking that little.
He approached the trio, who were beating up an actual child. Ancients, he hated Crime Alley sometimes.
“Give me your shit, you little punk!” Asshole 1 decided to say like a typical mugger, raising his leg to kick the curled up kid below. Danny doesn’t let him land the kick, smashing the bottle on the asshole’s head before any of them clocked his presence. He pivots, pushing a bit of that extra strength he normally keeps on a tight leash into his hands, and punched the other two in a quick fashion, knocking them out.
With that taken care of, Danny turned back to the kid who was still curled up. Danny sighed again, the trembles in small shoulders plucking on his heartstrings.
“You okay, kid?”
The kid uncurls, and Danny stared. Holy shit, is he looking into a mirror? Blue eyes, black hair, and tanned skin. Holy shit, he’s even got similar jaws to Danny.
“Huh.”
The kid flinched.
“Y-y’er the drunk,” the kid flinched again, eyes darting to the broken bottle still clenched in Danny’s hand. “I- I ain’t got money, honest. Please-”
Danny blinked down at the kid, brain connecting the dots after so long without actual interaction. He’s panicking and staring at the bottle in Danny’s hand like it’ll kill him. Danny raised the bottle and the kid closed his mouth with a click, terror worming its way into the kid’s eyes.
“I wasn’t going to mug you myself, kid.”
“But- y’er the- the Alley drunk.”
Danny blinked. Did he get a reputation without knowing again? Goddammit.
“I guess. Am I famous or somethin’?”
“Nobody- nobody fucks wit’ ya.”
“I also don’t hurt kids.”
“…”
The kid stared at him dubiously and with a sinking feeling, Danny realized that maybe the kid already had some terrible experiences with a heavy drunken hand. He promptly chucks the bottle further into the alley.
“I drink, yes. But I’m also not the kind of scum that would lay hands on a kid, let alone anyone that didn’t provoke it first.”
“Oh.” The kid uncurled more, looking at Danny warily, more at ease now that the bottle has left the chat.
“Yeah. I’m Danny. Stone cold sober, right now.”
“…”
Danny waited.
“Peters.”
“Okay. Peters, do you wanna take their shit?” Danny pointed a thumb at the knocked out would-be-muggers behind him.
“Y… yeah, sure. What’s my cut?”
“All of it.”
Peters stared.
Danny shrugged and started looting.
"Y'er so fuckin' weird."
----
See, the thing is, Danny hadn't anticipated saving Peters- "'s actually Jason"- would result in having a duckling following him around. The kid, Jason, glared at everyone who even looked at them wrong. But that's not the problem, because Danny could take anyone who took issue with Jason's looks, it's more like there's a child following him around now and Danny doesn't want to be the reason Jason turns into an alcoholic. It's- well, it made him cut down on the drinking. He even got jobs- legitimate jobs that sucks out his his poor ectoplasmic soul.
Why? Because Jason's apparently homeless. While that's something Danny's okay with for himself, he can't ever condone that for an actual child. Jason's walking around in threadbare clothes and thin soled shoes in the middle of Fall, for Ancient's sake.
Danny grumbles as he piled a bunch of clothes into the shopping bag as he checked out. Gotham's Walmart is a different kind of hell, but Danny feels right at home.
Sure, the work might suck out his soul and he might hate being sober, but Jason's face every time he comes home to an actual place to live, warm clothes, and food was worth everything.
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Dp x dc AU where Dick adopts teenage Danny into his family with Kor’i and Mar’i
Mar’i had always wanted a sibling, all seven years of her life in fact!! Toys and play times with friends couldnt possibly compare to having a brother or a sister, and she knew this as a fact from some of her school mates.
So when her dad brings home a kid that was all cut up and bruised, and her mom patches him up because something about his “biology” was weird- Mar’i sees this as an opportunity in the making!
Danny is healing up slowly but surely in Nightwings house, and he feels like a total intrusion. He’s now seen their faces and it feels like so much trust has been placed in him with no way for him to repay it. So he’s moping a bit, hanging in his room reading a book based on his video game series when a small child walks in, her arms filled with board games and toys.
“Hello, will you be my big brother?” Is all she asks him with a straight face, her eyes incredibly serious for someone so small.
“Er, im just here until-“
“Want to play a game?” Mar’i changes the subject favoring a specific board game in her hands. Rule number one of negotiation is to never let them say no- her uncle Damian taught her that.
“…yeah, sure.” Danny accepts because honestly? He could at least repay Nightwing and Starfire by babysitting right? They play a few games and then dinner gets brought in and for once, Danny feels like he’s having a normal family meal.
Next time she comes into his room, he’s focused on healing one of his larger wounds from the power in his core- he’s floating and his eyes are green. Mar’i is ECSTATIC. He fits in PERFECTLY.
“WILL YOU PLEASE BE MY BIG BROTHER?!?” Mar’i persistently asks every single day. Danny laughs and smiles and pats her head.
Once he’s feeling better, he starts patrolling with Nightwing, just to pay him back. Not that he’s having fun bashing goons and getting solid hero advice for the first time in his life.
Then he goes to Tameran with Kor’i for a diplomatic mission (his royal ambdassadorship/ king titles tbd) to discuss the Infinite Realms and why they absolutely need to abandon their attempts to use ghost artifacts. Kor’i explains how proud she is of him as they fly home.
He gets invited to all their family outings now, and he is overwhelmed by how accepted he is. How much the Bats all seem to leave him space for boundaries but invite him to do things very much to his interests (they are detectives after all). Once its safe, Jazz comes every now and then from her Ivy League college to hang out with them all and spend time with Danny. She gives him the advice he needed to hear about accepting good things into his life and deserving happiness.
One day Mar’i has a bad day at school, and when Danny gets home from his own community college classes- he brings her into a big hug, makes her a cup of tea from her mom’s home planet and once she’s comforted and happy again he says “hey, what are big brothers for?”
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Dragon!Azula is my beloved (especially in this AU).
In this AU she joins the Gaang and is NOT pleased by the fellow Fire Nation royals hunting them. Sure, Zuko's never that much of a threat (Azula is way more worried about what Iroh can do), but he keeps her on edge. Even before Azula officially claims the Gaang, they're already hers from the moment they are like "oh, nice dragon, you're our friend now".
It's pretty simple to understand why Ursa leaves Zuko for Azula: dragon lizard brain. In the moment a claimed one is in danger, nothing else matters. Azula is in immediate danger, Zuko is in potential danger, a dragon's brain will always focus on immediate danger.
So Ursa's need to protect Azula overrides everything else.
(I'm writing a oneshot about it, it's taking a while because the series so far is mostly in Katara's POV and I never wrote Ursa's POV.)
- Ash 🔥🍌
Thanks for this, Ash!
Even before Azula officially claims the Gaang, they're already hers from the moment they are like "oh, nice dragon, you're our friend now".
They are so cute! I think it's cool how everyone claims each other as their own.
Azula is in immediate danger, Zuko is in potential danger, a dragon's brain will always focus on immediate danger.
Yeah, that makes sense, although it seems weird to me because she left Zuko.
So Ursa's need to protect Azula overrides everything else.
He should have killed Azulon and Ozai, but desperate situations require desperate decisions.
I'm writing a oneshot about it.
I know! I will read it later if I have time.
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