Part SEVEN of "Clone Danny"
Red Robin, Danny recognizes, steps away from him as he sits up. "My name is Phantom," he signs, blinking the exhaustion out of his eyes. (From Red Robin's perspective, it looks like he has no eyes. There lacks his signature green glow.) "I'm not a gang member, just an out-of-town vigilante."
Red Robin frowns at him, an uncertain grip on the bō in his other hand. "Phantom?" He repeats, no lacking amount of suspicion in his voice. "How can I believe that?"
Right. Yeah, okay, that's fair. Danny shrugs at him, and slumps against the wall. "Google search?" He gestures, he's been out in the daytime before and he's seen the news articles about him.
Red's eyes narrow at him and Danny simply draws his knees up and faceplants into them, half-listening to Red's murmurs into his comm while also trying to get some extra-shut eye.
("Oracle, can you pull up anything on a vigilante named Phantom? The guy here is claiming to be one." Tim says.
"On it."
"Is this Phantom wearing a white mask?" Bruce asks, his voice gruff like an aftershock. "There's a vigilante who shares the same name, but he resides in Illinois."
"Is this guy from that Amity city you visited ages ago?" Says Tim, before shaking his head. "Don't answer that. Yes, he's wearing some freaky mask. I said it reminded me of Hood's helmet for a reason."
"I've got something," Oracle interrupts, "Bats' right. as usual. The Phantom of Amity Park, not much stuff of this guy but he's only been out for over a year. Apparently, his rogues' gallery consists of ghosts."
"Oh great.")
"Look tell the Batman that I'm sorry for trespassing on his turf," He signs irritably when Red Robin eventually starts talking to (re: interrogating) him again. "It's not like I want to be here."
"How did you get in Gotham anyways?" Red Robin questions, batman was on his way to help deal with the situation but Tim doubted he wouldn't get caught up on the way with dealing with petty crime. "Your turf is nearly a thousand miles away from here."
"Two words." Danny deadpans, "Teleport ghost." (Red Robin winces sympathetically.) "I'm keeping this bastard in the thermos for a month for this alone."
(Danny was ignoring the slow-choking anxiety growing in his lungs over how he was gonna get home. He never takes his phone when he goes out, the risk of breaking it was too high. He had no way of contacting anyone to get him home.)
(He swallows the growing lump in his throat, and buries the feeling in the back of his mind.)
"Thermos?"
Danny unclips his Fenton Phantom Thermos off from his belt loop and shows it to Red Robin. "My ghost-catching device," He says with one hand, tilting it carefully for Red to inspect. "I wish I could say I made it, but its a FentonWorks invention."
(He wasn't sure if it was a smart idea to say who it belonged to, but saying it wasn't his probably loosened up any tracks on him, right?)
"Do you work with these Fentons, then?" Red asks, and something dark and shadowy flickers from the corner of Danny's eye. He glances over, and sees nothing, and his hackles raise.
(Either that was Batman, or a ghost, or Danny's mind playing tricks on him. He couldn't feel his ghost sense building in his throat, so he decided it was either the latter of the former.)
Danny snorts, quiet and gruff. "No." He clips his thermos to his belt again, stifling a smile on his face. "The Fentons hate me actually, I prevent them from catching ghosts themselves. Their son gives me their tech."
He had a cover story, so he might as well stick with it, right?
Batman shows up at that moment, appearing atop the little roof where the door is, and giving Danny a heart attack when he speaks in his low, rumbly voice like thunder rolling in, "Why would they hate you for that?"
Danny shoots up to his feet with a startled yell in his throat, clutching his chest as he whirls around and looks up. He nearly runs into Red Robin, and signs a few choice swears at the Bat.
"wow you're scarier in person, asshole."
"you didn't answer my question."
"Of course I didn't, you scared me." and Danny takes a trembling step back when the Batman jumps down and lands on the roof in front of him. He's faced ghosts before, but somehow the living is always scarier.
"But, um, the reason is a bit.. complicated, I guess." He says, fingers beginning to shake as his adrenaline wears off. God is he tired. He wants to go home. "The Fentons are the local ghost hunters and local crazies. I don't know if I can call them mad scientists because they're harmless to the living."
"But they're extremely anti-ghost. I've heard from their son multiple times the very unethical things they would do to ghosts if they got their hands on one."
Danny 'talks' a little more before calling it quits, even telling Batman that he can't tell him more without putting his identity at risk.
Plus, its getting harder and harder to hide his bone-deep exhaustion and his growing fear of being stranded in the most dangerous city in America with no way home.
"I would love to tell you more, believe me I'm dying to." Danny signs, shaky sarcasm dripping from his fingers. His hands are visibly trembling and he's withholding a slowly growing panic attack. "But I would like nothing more than to figure out a way to get home."
"Do you have no one to contact?"
"Sort of. But only one of them could probably come get me and get me back to Amity by sunrise. And I have no phone."
That one person being Ellie.
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Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 4.5 (Dani interlude) Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 7.5 (Dan Interlude) Part 8
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Every once in a while I have thoughts abt Nova Summerfield and I cry a little. The sheer amounts of loss this man has undergone through his life and the way it shapes his character is so heartbreaking.
His carefree, pathetic-man act is sometimes all people see so im making this post for him because i want people to know he's such a good character, so well written and so nuanced.
like he's naturally an affectionate person, very touchy, very loving. He talks affectionately of his dad, and the silly little experiments he'd do, and the way his parents loved one another implies he grew up in a good family. After the death of Oswald, that place of love became void. In that void he filled in Marion. Marion made him feel needed, gave him a reason to wake up in the morning and just be a human being. This boy, this baby, was one of the last experiments Oswald left behind. I think at first he probably took care of him purely out of necessity, maybe a little out of the sentimentality for him being left behind by Oswald, but somewhere in there, his genuine love for the boy grew. Watching Marion grow up, seeing his little milestones and achievements, seeing him grow into a person, an individual, instead of being just "the experiment left behind", along with the love he received from him gave him back the warmth he felt he lost upon Oswald's passing. So he chose to stay strong, chose to move forward for his sake as well.
His carefree attitude towards most things makes it so people tend to leave him alone to his thoughts when it comes to his emotions, and it seems like he prefers it being that way, as shown by his preference for avoiding confrontation with victor, and by his choosing not to confide these emotions in his other loved ones, like Marion. In some ways, I think there are times he prefers to be dismissed for the big things, for fear of being an actual liability onto others, and so he chooses to complain over the small things like taking a shower and making himself presentable so he can cover up those other feelings of self hatred.
Eventually, as time passes, he grows new love, through Shion. We're only given little glimpses of their relationship from the story but it's clear how much he loved her. From the way he, Ren, and Marion talk about her you could piece in little bits of her character. She was feisty, but caring, loving, and remained positive despite her precarious position within the research department at times. When you think about how their relationship dynamic probably worked, Shion probably got him to open up about his wounds, helped him heal beyond just "staying strong", facing the guilt and grief and fighting it head on. Their engagement was probably one of the first commitments Nova made for himself, not out of necessity like with Marion, but for himself.
His research held him up on that day, 6 years ago. He was supposed to meet with her family, but because of him, they moved it another day, and that's when tragedy struck. Her eventual death on that day inevitably shattered him again. Gone was the new love he'd found, and he closed himself off, drowning in what-ifs in a spiral of self-blame. "If I had just met her on the day they originally planned for, would they all have lived?", he questions himself, and To This Day, he still visits church to confess his sins, fully believing he's at fault for what happened.
When Ren entered helios, it probably felt like opening an old wound. Familiar habits, familiar face, familiar memories. When Ren confronted him about Shion's killer, confronted him about how Nova probabky moved on, he was definitely deeply hurt, but instead of focusing on his own emotions, he worried for Ren's own vengeance crusade, worried for how it's hurt him in the events that lead to their meeting in the church. Shion loved Ren; as her little brother, she would talk on and on about him, watching him grow, and he probably felt some kind of responsibility and connection to him, not just because they look alike but because he is essentially the last loved one Shion left behind.
WHICH IS WHY IT MATTERED SO MUCH WHEN THE DRUG INCIDENT HAPPENED. when vic's actions came to light, and of all the people vic had to experiment on, it had to be the two boys he was left with. The two boys his dear passed loved ones left to him to protect, to take care of, and he failed, they got hurt, not just by anyone, but by his own friend.
AND DESPITE THIS, he STILL wanted to believe in vic, that the work he was doing was for their sakes. He defended vic against those who called for his instant removal, against even Marion who wanted to report vic, because truthfully, Nova loved Victor, too. A different kind of love; where Ren and Marion were people he felt he had to protect, Victor was his equal. The only one in the world. He could never confide in Marion or Ren but he could in Vic, and Vic would be honest with him-- frank, dense, and cold sometimes, but honest and objective. and that MATTERED, to a man so tormented by his own feelings of self hatred that even he knows he's biased to his judgement of his personal situations, these opinions mattered.
Friend, lover, coworker, whatever you want to call it, he loved Victor. Of all people, he would know, Victor Valentine may not outwardly act as if he values human relationships, but he loves, too. He loves back, even if he doesn't know how to show it, and I could go on a whole OTHER essay about how Victor's warped sense of affection stemming from his grandmother's treatment and oswald's "enlightenment" has shaped the people who he's able to form relationships with but we're saving that for another day-- in any case, Victor does love. It's why he went out of his way to take care of Marion in the past, why he goes as far as to test his experiments on himself to reach Oswald's dream.
But as Vic talked in chapter 11, we saw how his success no longer brought him any joy, how it's led him so far that he's crossed into self-destruction, and Nova saw himself in Vic, saw the same absolute self-loathing that resided deep within him too. The same emotions he fears Ren will feel in the future if he continues on his justice crusade. This is where he decides he needs to stop it, he knows how this story ends and if he can save ren and victor from the same pain, he'll do what he must. The juxtaposition of his actions in relation to Shion's death compared to Vic's is, chefs kiss. And this is also when shit hits the fan.
This was why he hit a tipping point, why he broke down and confronted vic despite trying his best to defend him all those chapters before. He'd forgiven him for hurting his loved ones in the past, but he could no longer forgive it if he also started hurting himself. After all, what would've been the point, then? If Vic couldn't call it a success, then what was the point of all the hurt and danger he caused onto them?
Nova doesn't do this out of hate for what Vic did, he knows full well how important that experiment was to him, he does it for Vic's sake. Even as Victor doesn't, Nova apologizes to Jay & Gray for Vic's sake so he doesn't ruin the few relationships he has left in this goddamn organization.
They grow a little distanced after this, but even after Vic's gone off on his own, Nova still worries for him, asks Jay to help out and that's how the aquarium suggestion pops up. After that whole incident is resolved, it's that feeling of "equality" that feeling of being able to discuss anything with each other that draws them back (yes I know this is turning into a discussion of vicnova and it'll circle back I promise) when they meet up at the museum later and discuss Jay's substance issue, Nova apologizes and quickly goes back to their old dynamic. His natural inclination for peace and conflict avoidance makes him do so, but after the #/JayTherapySession over at the aquarium, seeing Nova like this, Vic also hits his own tipping point, he lets a little of himself show through this facade of "Oswald", and Nova helps him sort through the emotions he himself could not understand. This, I think, is a turning point in their relationship. Back in ch7, we got Nova asking Vic to start relying on him instead of the dead, and here we see fulfillment of it at long last. Vic, too, instead of normally being the one Nova whines to for help, Vic offers, and like two sneaky little high school girls breaking school rules, they decide to work on dissecting this particular substance together even though victor's activities are still technically restricted.
I love the way these chapters kind of hint at Nova's own growth and how he became how he is today. He cares and he loves and he's moved on in his own way and he wants the same for others. They really gave so much to his character even though he isn't even playable, my god.
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