(Part of this post with older brother danyal al ghul)
...Okay, look. Sam knows she's staring. She knows very well that she is staring. And that if she doesn't stop staring it's gonna draw her unwanted attention, and that will only have to make her explain why she's staring. Which she doesn't want to do.
She's trying not to stare, which she thinks she should get brownie points for. She tries to look away, to find a spot on the wall to stare lifelessly at, maybe she can burn holes into some of these annoying socialites' heads. But eventually her eyes drift, and suddenly she's back to staring again.
Can you blame her though? Damian Wayne looks like a very close mini-me of her fucking best friend. Seriously, it's like looking into a mirror to the past. If that mirror to the past had green eyes rather than blue and a distinctive lack of a facial scar.
The first time she sees him when her parents drag her over to Bruce Wayne to butter up to him she has to do a doubletake. Then a triple take. Then a quadruple take, just for good measure that she was seeing what she was actually seeing. She was sure she looked like one of those stress toys that when squeezed had their eyes pop out comically like a Saturday morning cartoon, that's what she certainly felt like anyways.
Look, Danny's come a decent way from being that scowl-y, jerkish little ten year old she first met when he arrived like the wind to Amity Park five years ago (even if he was still occasionally scowl-y and jerkish), but one thing that's stayed the same is how reserved he is about his home life prior to being taken in by the Fentons.
He doesn't talk about it much, and Sam's come to know that he's very good at changing the subject when it gets brought up. Even after being friends for nearly four years, the only thing she and Tuck know for certain is that he has a little brother that he refers to as 'starlight', whom he cares a lot about but left on really bad terms with. And that he's never met his father, but wants to and knows who he is.
He's never told her or Tucker who he was though, and glancing at Bruce Wayne, Sam is realizing why. She can begrudgingly acknowledge all the good he's done for Gotham, but... well, if Danny told her that Bruce Wayne was his dad, she wouldn't have believed him at all.
But she's starting to see the resemblance, as subtle as it is.
And she sees the resemblance to Damian Wayne, her eyes dropping back down to him as he wears a very Danny-like scowl on his face, arms crossed behind his back as his eyes swept around the ballroom. He was five years younger than Danny, and god it was so, so weird.
His eyes turned on to her, and they locked gazes for a moment.
Involuntarily, Sam makes a startled noise and looks away. Fingers tap against her purse, black and purple and unfortunately a clutch that only held her phone and her wallet in it. She would have kept a knife on her, but her parents put their foot down and there was a security detail at the door. Only in Gotham.
Silently, she was hoping that the little Danny-me didn't say anything. Or at least, he hadn't noticed her staring. Which was a tall order if she ever heard one -- and unfortunately, her silent prayers went unanswered as her mother's eyes dropped down onto her.
"Did you say something, Samantha?" She asks in a sickeningly sweet voice, a sound that makes Sam's skin crawl. Her dad and Bruce Wayne's attention also turns onto her, and she glowers at her mom from the corner of her eye.
"I didn't say anything." Sam says, barely keeping her tone polite as she turned her head away. Her mother clucks her tongue, disapproving, but from her peripherals doesn't pester her more
Bruce Wayne, the bastard, takes that time to turn to Sam and grace her with his dime-a-dozen billboard smiles. "I've been talking with your parents this whole time, Miss Manson, you must be terribly bored. How is your schooling going?"
Sam eyes him up and down. On one hand, she immediately wants to be snarky. It's none of his business what her school life is like, she doesn't care for his fucking small talk.
On the other hand, this was Danny's whole father. Someone who she knows that Danny has wanted to meet for, what she's assuming, his whole life. He's never brought it up much, but she remembers that very quiet, solemn conversation she and Tucker had with him where he admits to having never met his dad. But god does he want to.
And... wait. Sam's eyes narrow, and she meets Bruce Wayne's eyes. Does this man even know Danny exists? She drops her gaze down to Damian, who was staring at her suspiciously, and then back up to Bruce, and she alternates between them.
Why was Damian living with Bruce, but not Danny? Why hasn't Bruce done anything to reach out to him - what was going on with Danny's biological family that Danny had to be separated from them, but not Damian? Danny's always been kinda mysterious, but now things weren't adding up.
Was Danny given up? Does Bruce just not want Danny, but wanted Damian? Why the fuck does Bruce Wayne know about Damian but not her best friend -- or does he know and just not care? He's fought for custody for his adoptive kids before, does he just not want to fight for his other biological son? Does he think Danny's not worth it?
She's never cared much about the Wayne family before, other than to hear about the advancements on WE's eco-friendly tech, but Sam thinks she's gonna have to look into why Damian Wayne was living with the Waynes.
Slowly, with a protective anger beginning to burn in her gut and crawl up her throat, a scowl slowly curls at the corner of her lip as she redirects her glare from her mother onto Bruce. "It's going fine," She says curtly, jutting her chin out defiantly. "Me and my friend Danny started a petition to fix the leaky faucets in the girls and boys' bathrooms in order to conserve more water for the rest of the city."
She eyes his face, waiting to see if anything like recognition flashes through it. And- and nothing. Sam breathes in slowly through her nose, trying to quell the red that's blurring the edge of her vision -- does he just, not know where Danny is?
Her parents however, make vaguely displeased expressions. "Our Samantha is... quite passionate about her pet projects." Her dad says, laughing low and nervously, "she's very vocal about silly things like that."
"Her friend Daniel is perhaps even worse than she is sometimes." Her mother adds on, fanning her face with her perfectly manicured hands with a sigh. "I swear, he's the one that keeps dragging her into these things."
Sam's anger turns on its head, and she whirls on her heel like a fire-breathing dragon. "It's Danyal." It rolls out like instinct. Danny's told them both that he hates the Americanized pronunciation of his name, but in a rare moment of restraint, puts up with it for reasons unknown to her. "And Danny doesn't make me do anything, it was my idea."
The name, Danyal, seems to ring some kind of bell in Brucie Wayne's head, because she sees him and Damian quietly perk up like two cats pricking up their ears. Her eyes flick onto him immediately, something dangerous rearing its head. So Bruce Wayne knows about Danny. And he's not reaching out to him. Is he? She's not sure.
She does know that she's gonna rip his throat out if she finds out that he's known about Danny this entire time and has been ignoring him while favoring his little brother. She'll hunt down Aragon herself and steal his dragon-shifting amulet and wreck house on Bruce Wayne if that's the case. Batman and his league of vigilantes be damned. Her parents don't notice her slowly turning head towards Bruce.
But Bruce does, and she makes direct eye contact with him. His smile doesn't falter, he just tilts his head like a curious puppy and looks at Sam's parents. She hopes Bruce can read minds, she hopes he can hear her threatening him.
"Danyal?" He asks, and Sam doesn't know if she hates the fact that he said it correctly or not. She just continues burning holes into him and hoping he might spontaneously combust.
Her mother waves her hand dismissively, tilting her nose up poshly into the air. "Our dear Samantha's little... foster friend from school," she says, not even bothering to hide her disdain, "a creepy little boy with the most garish scar on his face. He's a rude little thing, not good for polite company."
Scratch that, Sam mentally alternates between ripping into her parents and Bruce. She whirls on them. "Do not talk about Danny that way." She all but snarls, and they all but ignore her.
(She's tearing up the upholstery when she gets home. She's going to paint over the fine china. She's going to do something to make them pay for this.)
"Oh yes, he was taken in by that freaky Fenton family a few years ago." Her dad continues in lieu of her mom, and they both shake their heads disapprovingly. "It's just what our city needs, another menace."
"Danny is not a menace." Sam continues, raising her voice while her hands shake with rage. Her parents finally look at her, but she can already tell that they're going to scold her for raising her voice. She bulldozes over them and jabs her black-painted finger at them. "He's got a bigger heart than the both of you combined."
"Samantha, please." her mom says, exasperated. They both give her disapproving looks, Sam thinks about grabbing champagne off the tray of a nearby waiter and throwing it in their faces. "You defend that boy far too much. What do you actually know about him and his family?"
Sam sets her jaw, puffing herself up like a dragon protecting its hoard. She steps into her mom's space. "I know that he loves the stars; you can ask him anything about astronomy and he could give you an entire lecture on the formation, class types, and various gasses that stars are made up of. He can tell you how the Earth was formed, he can tell you about the visible light spectrum and about light curves, and a whole ton of other stuff that I don't really understand. But Danny loves talking about it."
Her face twists and scowls, "I know he cares a ton about the environment and about fixing light pollution, and preserving the forests and natural habitats of animals." She nearly jabs her finger into her mom's chest, "I know he loves dogs, and that there's one he feeds every day on the way to school that he calls Cujo, its a St. Bernard puppy and Danny carries him around whenever he sees him after school, and is in the middle of training him."
It's not a total lie, but it's not the whole truth either. Cujo doesn't need food, but Danny gives him it anyways. "I know he likes spicy food and loves movies but specifically only sci-fi and horror, and he hates most martial arts movies. His favorite superhero is the Martian Manhunter, but Batman comes in at a close second." For reasons to her that were pretty unknown, but it didn't matter.
"I know he loves wordplay and making puns, which I would have never expected from him when we first met, but it's so unbelievably Danny-like that I can't imagine him not making puns." And she smiles a little to herself, she remembers the first time Danny intentionally made a pun once and it got startled laughs out of both her and Tucker.
Her smile suddenly falters, and she swallows. Her lips purse up, wobbling, and she very quickly glances over to Damian Wayne, of whom is watching her with a vaguely bewildered expression alongside Bruce.
She turns her eyes back onto her parents. "And I know that he worries a lot, even if he has a shit way of showing it. I know he had a little brother that he hasn't seen since he was adopted by the Fentons, and he doesn't talk about him often but when he does he he calls him 'starlight'." From the corner of her eye, she sees Damian jerk.
"So- so, so what if he's not 'good for polite company'." Sam's voice, embarrassingly, cracks down the middle. But she's so angry over Danny's behalf that she doesn't really care. "Or that he can be mean, and critical, and stubborn. He's learning, and he's becoming kinder by the day. That's more than I can say about you."
(She remembers when Danny finally admitted to her and Tucker being his 'closest friends'. It was sometime before the portal incident, and it felt like a milestone because beforehand he only really referred to them as his companions or allies.)
(At the time, he'd looked unsure of himself. Skittish like a stray in the back of an alleyway, almost shy in his own way. It had come out stilted, slow, like an infant taking its first steps, and it would have been endearing if it hadn't been heartbreaking.)
Her parents rear back like she'd struck them, and her mother holds a hand against her chest in aghast. Sam doesn't care, she blinks the sting out of her eyes. "Samantha." Her mother starts.
Sam cuts her off, "I don't care what you have to say, you-- you pricks." she snaps, around her, there are gasps. Belatedly, she realizes she's grown an audience, but again she doesn't care. "Danny might be an asshole, but he cares. And I'd rather be around someone whose mean but cares, than someone whose nice but doesn't."
With that, she whirls on her foot and turns on Bruce Wayne, who has been silent the entire time with a surprised expression on his face. He starts to shake out of it when Sam turns to him, but she doesn't give him the chance to speak. "Enjoy your party." She snarls, and then stalks away.
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Ghost!Robin Part 6
It's Wednesday, you know what that means! After spending so much time writing for Carry Your Heart this week, I wasn't sure if I'd be able to get a long enough segment of this completed to share. Especially since I had a busy weekend. But here we are with 1.3k more words!
Time for the explanations to start.
First, Previous
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Danny slapped his hand over his face. “Jazz!” he hissed. He looked over, hoping Robin could help him. Only to realize he had rushed over to Alfred to give him a hug. “Great,” he muttered. “Everything is fine!” Danny tried to assure the room as he let his transformation flow over him.
The shouted questions just got louder and Jazz shifted to more completely block Danny from view.
“Jazz!” Danny tried again. “Lower your weapon! They’re safe!”
“Mom and Dad were supposed to be safe, too!”
Danny sighed. Then he ducked under her arm, using a mix of martial arts training from Pandora and intangibility to prevent her from stopping him. Ignoring the Waynes, he turned his back to them to face his sister. Robin could explain things to them if he wanted. “Jazz, it’s okay. They’re in almost as much danger from the Guys in White as I am.” He put his hands over hers and found the button to disarm her staff.
At least one person behind him demanded he explain what he meant by that, but Danny just looked Jazz in the eyes as he removed the staff handle from her hands.
She let him take it an narrowed her eyes at him. “What do you mean.”
Danny gave her his biggest shit-eating grin. “Congrats on the second dead boyfriend. I like this one much more than the first. Goes well with the dead brother.”
“Second…” Jazz’s voice trailed off as she looked over the people behind him. It was getting harder to ignore their shouted questions and demands for explanations. “Jason was the second Robin.”
“Yep,” agreed Danny. “And something went wrong when he was brought back to life. He ended up split in two and haunted by his own ghost.”
“Why couldn’t I see him? Or sense him?”
“He was that weak. I gave him some of my ectoplasm to strengthen him which is why he’s visible now.”
“Okay. Okay. So, what next?”
“Now I apologize to Jason and petition a founding member of the Justice League for assistance for my people.” Before Jazz could ask the questions she clearly wanted to at the last half of his sentence, Danny turned around and faced the Waynes.
Nearly all of them were facing Danny and Jazz in fighting stances. Damian had gotten a sword from somewhere and looked like he was half a second from rushing them. Bruce’s expression was blank, but his fists were clenched and he was glaring at Danny. Though his eyes kept flicking to Robin who had stopped hugging Alfred and was settled on Barbara’s lap signing to Dick and Alfred. Cass was paying more attention to them than Danny and Jazz.
But Danny didn’t really care about any of them. He sought out Jason who was pressed against the wall staring at Robin with wide eyes, a gun held loosely in his hand. “Jazz, feel free to share anything. Bruce is Batman. I’m gonna talk to your boyfriend for a moment.”
“How did you find that out?” demanded Bruce who moved to block Danny’s way.
At the same time, Jason fell into a defensive stance and held up the gun properly. “Don’t come closer!”
Danny cocked his head and looked at the gun. With barely a thought, he froze the trigger mechanism so it couldn’t shoot while sending out calm, safe, no harm pulses from his core. He trilled a I come in peace for good measure. To Bruce, he said, “Robin told me.” But then he realized there was more than one Robin present. “Not… Damian? The dead one.”
He realized that was an awful way to phrase it even as Jazz hissed his name in reproach. Even Robin facepalmed at his statement.
Bruce barely twitched. “Who are you?” he demanded, voice low and threatening.
“Right, okay, that’s a fair question. So I haven’t lied about who I am. Or much of anything tonight, really. I’m Danny. I was born Danny Fenton until my parents decided they were not okay having a half-dead son and tried to fix me. I escaped and now I respect their wishes by not using their last name. I did die when I was fourteen and became a vigilante in our home town keeping humans safe from ghosts and ghosts safe from humans. I was able to broker a semi-permanent peace on the ghostly side a few years ago and retired from vigilantism. But now I’m basically the liaison between the living realms and the Infinite Realms. Which means I need to talk to your son. So we’ll continue this after I do.”
“I will not allow you near Jason until you explain everything.” Bruce stood even taller and tried to loom over Danny.
“It’s his medical information. I’ll explain what I can to him and he can choose what to share with you. Besides, I’m a ghost. You really can’t stop me.” He strengthened the peace, no harm, calm vibes he was sending out. Bruce was liminal enough he should be able to feel them. “You know I’m telling the truth. You’ve died and there are no secrets among the dead.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Damian lower his sword.
“What are you doing?” demanded Bruce who didn’t relax at all.
“Later,” insisted Danny. This was pointless. He needed to talk to Jason and delaying wasn’t going to help any of them. Turning intangible, he walked around Bruce whose arms went right through him. As did Tim’s follow-up attacks.
“What are you doing?” yelled Tim as he tried to restrain Danny.
“Trying to talk to your brother,” replied Danny. “You should let me do it.” And then he was before Jason.
The calming pulses from his core had calmed his sister’s boyfriend down somewhat. The gun was now pointed at the ground and his hand wasn’t on the trigger anymore. Not that it would’ve fired anyway, but Jason didn’t know that.
“I’m sorry.” He heard Jazz yelling at Tim and Bruce and starting her own explanations and happily let her handle her boyfriend’s family. To Jason, he continued, “I knew Clockwork was hiding something from me about you and Jazz, but I let myself get distracted and put off visiting you. I don’t know everything that happened to you or how or why you’ve been split in two, but I can help. However you want. I promise to explain everything I do know tonight. Once we get somewhere private. Do you want Jazz there, too? I’d recommend it since she’s better at explaining things than me, but it’s your choice.”
“What are you? What is that?” Jason pointed to Robin with a shaking hand.
Danny smiled sadly. “You know who he is. He’s you. Whatever brought you back to life did a fucking awful job of it. Being split in two like this isn’t good for you and I say that from experience. Now, I can keep answering your questions here in full hearing of every single member of your family, or we can wait until later. I promise no more harm will come to you.”
“He’s been there the whole time?”
“He’s been there the whole time,” confirmed Danny. “Waiting a few hours won’t change a single thing.”
Jason nodded once and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath and as he did so seemed to stand up taller. When he opened his eyes again, he no longer looked to be on the verge of attack. He even clicked the safety of his gun back on and put it away. “Now, I do have one question,” he said.
“Anything.”
“What was that you meant about me being Jazz’s second dead boyfriend?”
Over his surprised laughter, he heard Jazz’s groan from across the hall. Yeah, he really did like Jason more than Johnny.
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Next
Danny is setting himself up to be interrogated by the entire batclan. He has no idea what he's about to face. I wanted to get more into everyone's reactions, but that'll come in the next parts.
Unrelated to this fic, I'm glad you all enjoyed I'll Carry Your Heart! I did feel a little guilty with the comments/tags on part 2 talking about how sweet and fluffy it was only to twist all of that in part 3. It was a lot of fun to write and I can't wait to get back to it.
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