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plainclothesdisaster · 8 months

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Red Knight - Chapter 2

DP x DC | Dead on Main

Jason Todd encounters one Danny Fenton in the streets of Gotham and suddenly he's thrown into a world of ghosts and monsters. Will he embrace this life? Or will it just end up with him dead again?

Read on AO3 | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

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No way Jason was going to call that number. He was busy with Black Mask. So long as there was no trouble, he didn’t need to get involved in meta business. And he certainly didn’t need help from one. He was absolutely fine.

He could have told Bruce and the others to keep an eye out, but what would he have said? Be on the lookout for a generic dude who can tell if you died? Yeah, not worth ringing alarm bells. He went back to his work.

Days later when Jason shot a would-be robber in the leg, he was totally calm. Weeks later when he pushed a rival crime boss off the back of a moving truck— definitely still keeping it together. A month later when he held one of Joker’s pawns by the head and smashed his skull to the cement again and again and again and the rage roared like an ocean in his ears— okay maybe he was missing the easy peace he’d enjoyed those first few days after confronting that stranger in the alley. He’d gotten so used to the rage that he’d forgotten what it was like to live without it.

Back in his apartment that night Jason scrubbed the blood off his hands. He didn’t think about the crumpled receipt he’d stashed in a kitchen drawer a month ago and hadn’t dared look at since.

As he laid down to try to sleep he could still feel the new weight in his chest but now an old anger clawed at it again like a ravenous beast. Uncomfortably aware of it now, like when someone reminds you you’re breathing. What had that stranger done to him?

That doesn’t mean we’re totally human either.

We’re.

Jason felt different since coming back from the dead, that was obvious. But taking a dip in the Pit didn’t make people metas. Not like that guy. Jason couldn’t walk through walls or disappear. At least he didn’t think he could.

He thought of the stranger’s— of Danny’s easy cheeky smile. Totally unthreatened. Jason’s heart twisted with rage and something else.

He pushed himself out of bed and got suited up again. No use laying here with his blood on fire. The chill of the empty streets would have to serve as a balm.

Later he’d blame his carelessness on his frazzled state of mind. But regardless of the cause, Black Mask’s goons caught him in their trap with maddening ease. One minute he was following a mark on the street, the next he was jumped from behind, tied up, knocked out.

He came back to consciousness in a small windowless room, tied to a chair with a hefty amount of rope. The sharp tang of metal and the weight of sweat hung in the air. Three goons with guns hovered over him. They’d taken his helmet but left the domino mask. So considerate of them.

“We’ve got some questions for you,” the head goon said, smiling with stained teeth.

Jason’s vision went red. Rage, rage, rage. There was no room for thoughts in his head, only the loud wailing of his anger. These goons were dead, deader than dead. Except at this rate so would he.

He felt a gun to press into his temple. He bared his teeth. Anger howled within him. The guy was talking but Jason didn’t hear their questions, he just wanted to kill them.

Then suddenly the howling stopped. A familiar quietude settled beneath his heart. It took his eyes a moment to focus and then he saw him there, inexplicably also inside the safe room, standing behind the goons. The stranger from the alley. Danny.

“I was starting to think you’d never call.” Danny smiled, all sunshine. What the fuck. How was he here?

His captors turned with a variety of shouts, guns out and primed against the new intruder. Danny didn’t react. He didn’t take his eyes off Jason.

“I didn’t.” Jason breathed. It felt like his heart had stopped.

“You’re like me. I never expected you to.” Jason caught a flash of fangs under Danny’s lips and his pulse skipped. “Good thing I was in the area.”

Then a goon grabbed for Danny’s arm. Jason half-shouted a warning but Danny was quicker. He nailed his assailant with a fist to the chest that sent him smashing back into the wall. The second thug swung his gun around and got a shot off. Jason swore it hit Danny in the leg but Danny didn’t flinch. Instead grabbed the gun and kneed the guy in the stomach so hard it lifted him off the ground. Danny turned just as the head good aimed a shot right between his eyes. Gunfire. Jason braced for the blood splatter, but it didn’t come. Instead Danny grabbed the guy by the throat and slammed him to the floor. The goons didn’t move.

When Danny looked back up at Jason his eyes glowed with that same ethereal intensity he saw before. Jason felt a thrum of energy from deep within him like a second pulse. Like calling to like.

He stared mutely as Danny rose. He should have been dead twice over. A foreign reverence leapt to the forefront of Jason’s mind, he didn’t know from where. Who the hell was this guy?

“You wanna get out of here?” Danny asked.

“Uh, yeah.”

Danny didn’t hesitate. He touched Jason on the shoulder and the ropes fell off him with the same slippery feeling he had when Danny had put a hand through his chest. He lead him through the door (literally through it) and out onto the street where a motorcycle waited.

Danny tossed Jason the keys.

“See ya round?” Danny turned to walk off. Like he’d just run an errand and not shown up out of nowhere in the middle of the night and beaten half the life out of some of the Narrows’ meanest thugs.

“Wait.” Jason stopped him. “What the hell is up with the guardian angel act? Who the fuck are you? What did you do to me?”

Danny turned back and smiled. “You want to get something to eat?”

Danny didn’t start talking again until they were seated across from each other in a booth at a 24 hour diner, two steaming cups of coffee between them. Jason had begrudgingly acquiesced to the offer of food. He guessed it was somewhat better than having this conversation at gunpoint. Not like that would have worked anyway, judging by how it went last time. This, at least, might get him some answers

“So, you died right?” Danny began.

Jason’s grip tightened on the handle of his mug. “You are supposed to be the one answering questions.”

“And I will! But you’re going to have to help me understand a bit too. You’re a unique case.”

Jason didn’t know whether that was a good or bad thing. “Yeah I died," he huffed. "Didn’t stick though.”

“How?”

Jason raised an eyebrow. He half expected Danny to know all about his death, seeing as he seemed to know so much else about him.

“A clown with a crowbar turned my lights out. Lazarus Pit turned them back on.” At Danny’s confused look, he continued: “Lazarus pit. Glowing pool? Impossible healing waters?”

“Oh is that what you call those pools of rancid ectoplasm beneath the city? I suppose that would be just enough to do it.”

Rancid ectoplasm sounded like another can of worms but that would have to wait. “Do what?”

“Keep you half alive.”

“What do you mean half alive?”

Danny took a big sip of coffee. “When I was fourteen my parents built a portal in our basement. It led to what is basically the realm of the dead. It didn’t work at first, until I went in and accidentally turned it on. The portal opened on top of me, which wasn’t great for my overall health and well-being per se. It killed me but not all the way. Instead I became half ghost.”

“Ghost.” Jason half chuckled and waited for the punch line.

Danny looked straight at Jason with those intense blue eyes, completely serious. “Ghost, specter, phantom, whatever you want to call it. I’m part ghost and you are too.”

Jason blinked. “Bullshit.”

That made Danny laugh. “I usually am pretty secretive about my whole deal but maybe I can be more lax if that’s the reaction I’ll get.”

Jason grumbled. The waitress came by and put a steaming plate of hashbrowns on the table between them.

Danny leaned back in the booth. “Okay, well if you don’t believe me— since coming back have you been stronger than a normal human should be? Faster? Get hurt less bad and heal quicker when you do?”

Jason frowned. “Side effects from the Pit.”

Danny raised a knowing eyebrow. “Uh huh. If that’s what you want to call it.” He grabbed a hashbrown and took a bite, continuing to talk between chews. “The weird thing is you should be able to do so much more. But now that I know you were doused in corrupted ectoplasm it’s making more sense.”

Jason narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean more?”

Danny extended his hand intangibly through Jason’s coffee. He waggled his fingers for show.

“Intangibility. Invisibility. Flight. You should at least have basics like those.”

Basics huh. Dying didn’t magically make him able to fly, of that he was certain. Not that superpowers wouldn’t be convenient, they weren’t exactly Jason’s brand.

“But I think what the problem is is you’re running around with a half formed core. I did my best to stabilize it the last time we met but I’m not an expert in these things.”

“Core?” Why did every sentence out of Danny’s mouth have to make less sense than the one before?

Danny tapped his chest in the same spot Jason felt the now-comforting weight in his own. “Ghosts don’t have a heart. We have cores, which are metaphorically the same thing.

“Half ghost cores are weird in their own right. But yours feels especially weird. It’s like… spiky when it should be smooth. And soft when it should be hard. Does that make sense?”

Of course it didn’t. Jason wasn’t here for a supernatural biology lesson. But that wasn’t important. “And you— what you did— made it… quiet. How?”

Danny flipped his hand up on the table and suddenly a glowing green ball of energy hovered in his palm. “Pure ectoplasmic energy to cleanse out the corrupted stuff. But it’s temporary. It’s worn off since I last saw you. I think your core generates corrupted ectoplasm. And that I can’t fix by myself. At least not here.”

“Where then?”

Danny’s face turned sheepish. “You remember that realm of the dead I mentioned?” He closed his fist, extinguishing the light. Jason leaned back.

None of this seemed believable. Jason had died and come back to life, he accepted that impossibility. But all this even more impossible stuff about ghosts and ectoplasm and realms of the dead— that was pushing it.

None of it changed the fact that Danny knew too much about him, and worse, he seemed to have some kind of power that affected him. There was too much he wasn’t saying. And now he wanted to take him to a different dimension to fix something that Jason still wasn’t convinced actually existed. Yeah, no.

“Why do you even care? What do you want from me?”

Danny shrugged. “I just want to help.”

“Why?”

“Because I can. It’s hard for me to ignore someone like you. Someone like me.”

The worst part was that he seemed genuine. But Jason wasn’t so naive to think that even if Danny said he wanted nothing in return that there wouldn’t be some other strings attached down the line. He sat back in the booth and folded his arms.

“Nah I’m good.”

A hint of a frown flashed across Danny’s face as his response. He didn’t push any further and Jason felt a small relief. He didn’t want this to end in violence, not just because (for the first time in a long time) he wasn’t sure the violence would end in his favor.

“Thanks for the coffee,” said Jason. “I’m gonna head home.”

“You still have my number right? It’s an open offer.” Danny wasn’t great at hiding his disappointment. Jason almost felt a twinge of regret.

He pushed himself up from the booth and left.

#dpxdc #dp x dc crossover #dcxdp #red knight fic #dead on main #dead on main ship #danny x jason #forgot to post ch 2 here but ao3 readers will know I also just put up ch 3 #danny phantom #jason todd

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