Danyal Al Ghul had died long ago. Not even the Pits could ressurect the fallen heir, and therefore Damian Al Ghul inherited the title.
Damian had never seemed to effected by his beloved brothers death, and Ra's had seen that as an advantage, seen Damian as stronger, as unemotional. Damian became the perfect child, and Danyal was left to be forgotten.
Except for the fact Danyal's ghost floated behind Damian all the time, like intangible and invisible, but unable to turn human.
The reason Damian was never effected was because his brother stuck by his side constantly, even after death, helping him, comforting him, as a ghost.
Damain never told anyone, he didn't have any evidence beside his word, which would be taken as the words of a mad man and not a becoming heir to the Demon Head.
So, Bruce never learned. He never knew about his second son, one who had died long ago, and one who had stuck by Damian's side through all of his adventures.
Soon enough, Danyal starts to manifest his usual gallery of powers, and it stars to alert the family.
"Why is there a hole in the wall?" Bruce would ask.
Damian would scramble for an excuse as quick as he humanly can, knowing his brother's powers as Danyal sulked next to him, "I was painting."
"WHY IS MY ENTIRE ROOM FROZEN SOILD?!" Jason would yell.
"Your window was left open, Todd."
"IT'S MAY!"
"What the-- why is my skateboard stuck in the wall?!" Tim.
Danyal buried his head in his hands.
"an art project."
Idea came from a comment @ourrechte-blog made on This post
So, back when Ellie was traveling the world, she saw quite a few things that she really didn't like. War Crimes, Humans Rights Violations, Poverty, etc.
And she really wanted to draw some attention to those problems, but she knew that as some random kid those stories would never receive the press they deserved. So she decided to Become the press instead.
She went back to Danny, who was also on the run, and they both got new Identities. Danny became Sam "Daniel" Lane, and Ellie became Lois "Ellie" Lane. (Also she reverted to her true age, so the ages matched up)
Ellie, now Lois, began to go to School so she could establish her new identity. Eventually, she managed to get to College, Graduated, and got a Job at the biggest newpaper she could, the Daily Planet.
She was now living her best life. She was a credited reporter, her dad was a Military General, and she was spreading the word about all the problems in the world that often got overlooked.
Then, one day, Lois met a really nice guy named Clark Kent. He was such a sweetheart, and had such a kind personality. She was immediately smitten.
Even Danny liked him, and Danny barely liked anyone for fear of them hurting his daughter.
And it got even better when she figured out that he was Superman, a Superhero just like her dad used to be. She proved it when she jumped off of the roof of the Daily Planet and he caught her. (She was never in danger, she can fly too. But she did decide that even if he wasn't superman, she trusted him enough to tell him that she had powers)
They got married, and one day Clark came home looking disturbed about something.
Apparently he just found out that a company called Cadmus had tried to Clone him.
She was not happy when he told her that he didn't want to accept the kid.
"Clark. So help me Ancients, if you left that poor boy alone and rejected him after he did nothing wrong I am going to string you up by your toenails and let my Uncle Fright go to town on you with his Magic Sword!"
"I-I know what I did was wrong honey, but why are you so angry about it?!"
"Clark, I'm also a Clone! You know I don't have a Mom, how did you never ask my dad or me about that!?"
"I thought he was dead or something! I'm sorry!"
"We'll talk about this later, let's go talk to that poor kid."
"Yes ma'am."
Demon twins AU where everyone in the league thinks Danny is dead (as usual) but Danny got amnesia after arriving at the Fentons and then years later, the Justice league discovers and interacts with Phantom. (Naturally, Danny isn’t just going to reveal his half ghost status when he’s kept it a secret from his own parents, so the JL fully believe he’s a full ghost) and then Damian starts realizing there are familiar things about him. Soon, he realizes Phantom is the ghost of his dead brother, (the bats likely being aware of said dead brother’s existence at this point, maybe even having made a grave for him at the manor) but it appears Phantom didn’t recognize the bats or even the Wayne’s (which they tested by mentioning them and showing pictures, in case their disguises were good and Danyal just didn’t realize it was them. Yet Danyal knew Batman was their father. He should have known who Batman and the current Robin were.) and the JL know that some ghosts don’t remember their past (likely informed by Boston and Constantine. Some ghosts remember, some don’t) so the bats don’t tell Phantom that they know who he was because they don’t:t want to force him into an uncomfortable situation. Yet they are still trying to subtly get to know him.
There are so many AU’s where Danny recognizes the Wayne’s/bats and hides his identity from them but I want the bats to recognize Danny/Phantom, and hide it from him while trying to get to know their dead brother’s ghost. The brother they never met. And the Brother Damian has so many regrets with. This is a chance to start over. Without factoring in how he treated his brother. I can even see Jon trying to help Damian bond with Phantom.
But their interactions with the ghost are rare since there aren’t that many ghost or supernatural situations that require his help. They treasure the times he is there though.
He’s walking alone. Despite how dark it is, he’s not particularly nervous, not like the couple of people hovering in an alley.
His shift at Batburger went a little long, not that he’s complaining, he needed the money.
Everything is fine. Splendid. Fantastic. A little quiet, enough to pretend it’s a nice stroll home like it was back in Amity. Of course that all kind of goes up in flames when a dark figure drops into a crouch right in front of him. About two arm lengths away is a guy who straightens to a little taller than Danny himself. From the flickering street light across the street he can spot red, crisscross yellow, and a dark cape.
Red Robin.
Danny shakes his head and turns around.
“Nope.”
A smaller body is already standing behind him, blocking his path. The little guy with a serious face folds his arms across his chest as if challenging Danny to try to get by him.
He’s had enough tussles with Danielle to know better than to test the kid.
Danny rubs at his eyes with a hand, purposefully keeping the other limp at his side. He turns back around.
“Okay. Fine. What? What do you want?”
“You sent in a folder of information to solve the Boothe case,” Red Robin states confidently like there wasn’t any doubt it was Danny who sent it in.
He frowns. It was sent in anonymously. As in they shouldn’t be able to know it was him. Then again they are detectives in their own right even if they dress weird.
“See? This is why no one helps out the police if they’re gonna get grilled for it later on,” he complains sourly.
“That case is connected to another string of crimes we’ve been investigating. I need to know where you got your information.”
Danny glares at him for a second, actually thinking about telling him, then he remembers how quickly these guys throw people into Arkham.
“Do you not get what anonymous means?”
“What is your source?” He asks, completely ignoring Danny’s concerns.
“What are gonna do? Dangle me over the side of a building to get me to talk like you do with the criminals you guys pick up? Go ahead. See where that gets you,” he shrugs indifferently.
“You’re a runaway.”
Danny’s eyes widen in surprise before narrowing into a warning as he turns to look at the pipsqueak that spoke.
“From your poorly made fake ID and the fact you don’t look close to eighteen, you must be a runaway minor. We could bring you in to the proper authorities if you prove to be… uncooperative.”
Danny sneers in annoyance.
“Seriously?” He turns back to Red Robin. Clearly the older of the two and the one leading this investigation. “This is what I get for trying to help? Blackmail?”
“Robin can be a bit… abrasive. I, on the other hand, can appreciate a different approach.”
Suddenly there’s a couple pieces of paper money in between his fingers. Danny couldn’t see how much it was from this far away, but it didn’t really change how he felt about the whole situation.
“Now bribery? Wow, you guys really got the whole good cop, bad cop thing down, don’t cha?”
“Then what do you want?”
“For you to stop wasting your time,” Danny answers with a snap.
Red Robin pauses.
“Our time,” he repeats calmly.
“Yea. Your time. This is a dead end and you should move on.”
“And why are you a dead end?” Presses Robin.
“Because,” Danny emphasizes with a look over his shoulder, “the guy you’re really looking for, my source as you put it, is dead, okay? So you can’t go ask him questions. I sent in everything that was relevant. Find another lead.”
Red Robin’s expression remains blank as he mentally calculates his next move. Danny hopes he takes his advice and let him go home.
“His name?”
Danny folds his arms over his chest, a pathetic attempt to protect himself. He chews on his lip a minute. To tell him or not to tell him. It’s not really ratting the guy out since he’s, you know, dead. Although there is a large chance Danny’s missing something and it’s all going to lead back to him somehow.
“I didn’t kill him.”
“I never said you did,” the vigilante replies calmly, almost nonchalant.
Danny shifts his weight with nerves. He really wasn’t getting out of this without giving them something, huh?
“Greg,” he grinds out like it’s painful.
Silence for a few moments, then-
“As in Gregory Boothe?”
The victim of this whole conversation? Yes.
Danny’s silence is answer enough and the diverted gaze just solidified their suspicions.
“Gregory Boothe’s body turned up a month ago. Presumably he’d been dead for several weeks before that.”
Red lets that damning information hang in the air like Danny didn’t already know.
“So when did he talk to you? Last week?”
Danny jerks at the off handed joke, actually taking a step back and hitching his shoulders up to his ears. He grimaces at his knee jerk response, but can’t take it back. A glance toward the vigilante shows a calculating stunned expression from what he can see ignoring the mask. He looks away again finding a discarded soda can very interesting.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Demands Robin behind him.
Danny tried to resist the urge to curl even more into himself, but knows he failed without even having to look.
“You’re a medium,” Red Robin states. It’s not even a question.
Danny flinches and shoots the guy a scared glare.
“I am not one of those scam artists,” he hisses firmly.
“No,” Red agrees, “you’re not. You didn’t ask for money or attention.”
Danny stares like it’s his first time seeing him. The lack of aggression or accusations was new and a little disarming. He was genuinely confused as to why the guy wasn’t immediately going to denial or throwing him in Arkham.
“Hell of a city to hide in when you can see ghosts,” Red Robin says in a light tone like he was teasing him. The small tug to his lips just proves it.
Danny’s shoulders practically sag at the playful demeanor. A hand reaches up to rub the back of his neck self-consciously.
“Yea, well… no one was gonna look for me here.”
Which was only half the reason he chose Gotham, but it was still truthful.
“So… Greg?”
“Isn’t here right now.” Danny pauses and snorts at himself. “Please leave a message.”
The vigilante does have a sense of humor because he smirks in response to the joke.
“Is there another way to… make contact? Summoning maybe?”
Danny raises an eyebrow incredulously.
“Summoning is rude,” he says like it’s common sense.
Instead he turns to the nearest reliable ghost in the vicinity.
“Hey, Susan, can you go-“
The vigilantes can’t hear how she interrupts him because she was standing there the whole time and knows exactly what he was going to ask.
“Okay, thanks. Meet at mine.”
The ghost woman nods and flies off to go hunt down dear old Greg and Danny turns to Red Robin. He makes a casual move with his head to say ‘follow me’ and continues walking down the sidewalk past the guy and further into the old, decrepit buildings he’s been squatting in.
They already know he’s a runaway, being homeless shouldn’t come as a shock to them. Even with his two jobs, he can’t afford to rent an apartment. No wonder so many people are in poverty or in the slums.
He ducks into his rundown building, ignoring the rats scurrying away, and hops up the rickety stairs, avoiding the ones that were unstable. It was a nightmare figuring out which steps were faulty. Lots of injuries.
At the top he turns to see Red easily copying his movements up the stairs while Robin balances along the railing like a tight rope. When they reach the top at the same time Danny just stares at them for a moment before shaking his head in exasperation. Darn vigilantes. Why did Danny have to get caught up in this mess?
He turns, walking along the floor closest to the wall before getting to what he’s deemed his room.
It used to be an office from what he can tell. A desk pushed against the far wall and a ripped sofa he’s been using as a bed on the other wall. The floors were the most stable in this room which really won out.
Danny goes to the desk where all his papers are scattered over the surface. An organizational pattern only he understands as he shuffles through the pile he pulls from the cubby above the desk. It holds all the same information he sent into the police, just in its raw form with about twice the amount of useless information. Along with it is a few other ‘cases’ that sounds familiar that he just threw together into a pile. Maybe the genius detectives could decipher what he couldn’t.
“Here,” he says, holding out the stack. Red Robin doesn’t hesitate to take it off his hands.
There’s no chair for the desk anymore so he slides some papers out of the way to hop onto the desk to wait.
“No.”
The vigilantes look at him and he shakes his head and looks over to the side.
“No, Abby. I’m not wasting their time.”
Red Robin goes back to flipping through papers. Most of them were old business papers he had found in the office and just written on the back. Some were receipts or pamphlets or some other random scrap of paper he could get his hands on.
“Because yours was an accident. There’s nothing for them to solve.”
Robin watched him cautiously as if waiting for Danny to snap or suddenly turn violent. Instead he leans back on his hands in a vulnerable position which screamed ‘I don’t want to hurt anyone’.
“There is a lot more information here than what was submitted to the police,” Red Robin comments neutrally, purposefully ignoring Danny’s exasperated sigh and one-sided conversation.
Danny shrugs in defense, “Didn’t think all of it was relevant.”
The vigilante doesn’t respond.
Robin drifts closer as Danny gives a withering glare to the corner. He examines the mess of papers surrounding the teen in the low lighting.
“Are these all files of victims?”
Danny glances over them with a knowledgeable eye.
“Most.” He twists to point at the top left corner of the cubbies. “Those are accidents though… well, what sounds like accidents.”
“There should be more.”
Danny looks at the boy with a tilted head and raises brow.
“Not everyone sticks around,” he explains simply.
Then something draws his attention away across the room. Surprisingly his eyes don’t glaze over like someone with mental illness, instead they sharpen to see something they can’t. It resembled Constantine or Thomas.
“Greg, these guys wanna talk to you.”
What proceeds is a very awkward interaction with Danny as a middle man between victim and vigilante. Despite the need for a translator, Red Robin does in fact get a lead from the conversation.
“Thank you for your cooperation.”
Danny nods. “Sure, no problem. Just don’t rat me out to the police and I can help with any other case that pops up with a ghost attached.”
“You know we can help with your living situation,” Red Robin offers with a glance around the room.
“What, and put me in foster care? No thanks, I’ll pass.”
“There are other options,” Robin chimes in with nonchalance that implies he doesn’t actually care.
“You don’t pass for eighteen, but if you let me make you a new ID we could say you’re emancipated.”
Danny frowns.
“I’d have to be sixteen to be eligible for emancipation.”
“You could be sixteen.”
No, he really couldn’t. Maybe if you squint your eyes and tilt your head, but Danny is fourteen with all the baby fat and innocent face that comes with it. His license now is a clear fake to anyone who sees it, but in this city no one’s gonna question it to his face. They just raise a brow, look at him, then shrug it off and roll with the lie.
“What do you want?” He demands. All this good will and wanting to help him can’t be free.
“We want to help,” Red says too easily.
Danny stares for a second, eyes narrowed as he tries to block out the multiple voices around him.
Insurance. He wants Danny to owe him so he can keep coming back for more information.
“I just told you I would help. Why are you still trying to get leverage?” He demands with irritation.
“We want to help-“
“You want me in your back pocket.”
Red Robin doesn’t give that a response, his lips pressing together to make a hard line.
Instead of pushing, he surprisingly takes a step back and heads towards the door, papers still in hand. Danny doesn’t argue.
Robin ducks out first, blending into the shadows without even a glance over his shoulder. Red Robin pauses in the doorway.
“Don’t try to skip town,” he states like an order. Like if Danny did in fact try, he would be found and brought back.
It didn’t even cross Danny’s mind.
“Wasn’t planning on it,” he says tiredly, too fed up with the day to defend himself.
Red Robin watches him for a moment before nodding and disappearing out the room.
Danny slumps with a groan, finally sliding off the desk to shuffle to the couch, body flopping face first into the worn cushions.
It’s silent to everyone else but Danny.
“I know.”
…
“I know, Jack, but I don’t trust them. Even if he is your son.”
Danny never noticed the bug planted by Robin on the underside of the desk.
Throwback to when I took painkillers and woke up with Photoshop open on my computer to this image I had made
DP x DC Crossover where Danny gets de-aged more towards his ghost-age and got adopted.
But he didn't exactly get adopted by a batfamily member, or even any hero, or a villain.
Honestly this Talon who just found a literal toddler that surfaced in a runoff of the Lazarus Pit is rather confused. Like on one hand should they be killing it?? But the idea of killing the strange tiny talon-sibling seems so viscerally wrong???
Welcome to having the first mental breakdown of many funky golden-eyed man that Danny thinks might be more feral than he is. Oh well, at least this person isn't a fruitloop and speaks in sort-of ghost speak? And sometimes more gold-eyed people appear to help care for him? Like they obviously don't know how to do so, but they're trying their best and honestly he's pretty self-sufficient. Ish.
The Court of Owls have no fuckin' clue where a good third of their Talons have disappeared to or why they can't call them back.
An eight year old Bruce Wayne summons Danny (who is 14 at the time, mind you) in the Wayne family manors attic.
Danny: please don't be a cultist please don't be a cultist please don't be a-
Danny:
Danny: That's a child. Why is there a child?
Bruce who honestly didn't expect his great great great great nth grandparents weird ass spellbook bullshit to work: [squinting at Danny in scrutiny] I thought the King of the Dead would be…taller.
Danny: Oh great and now I'm being insulted by a six year old. It's like Young Blood all over again, just more posh. And alive.
After moving to Gotham and having to deal with a stressful job, Danny has started taking walks around the city as a way to destress.
Since he knows that he could get mugged, he just becomes intangible and invisible while listening to some loud music on his phone.
Unfortunately for him, his control on his Invisibility keeps slipping when he gets lost in his music, and the people of Gotham keep seeing a semi-translucent ghost man walking around at night aimlessly.
Some thugs think it’s just a meta with invisibility and try to mug him, but pass right through and he disappears completely. This convinces them that he is a ghost, since having both invisibility, and intangibility would be too big a coincidence. Not to mention he never reacts to them whatsoever.
The Bat’s get word that a Ghost has been stalking the streets of Gotham, and he looks scarily like Bruce Wayne from the little they have been able to see from him. Now Batman thinks his dad may have come back as a ghost.
Danny is oblivious to all of this. He just likes his nightly strolls.
-Slams DPxDC door open and tosses AU idea on table-
Tim's parents send home an artifact that is said to able to grant wishes! While being curious about it Tim messes with the artifact and when he 'solves' it, according to legend one must solve it to get a wish, he wishes he wasn't alone anymore.
The object glows bright and as he shields his eyes he can hear.
'So you have wished it, so it shall be!'
He gets his wish in the form of a recently reincarnated ghost!King (who entered the DC world for a reincarnated vaycay... he should had known something was going to happen because CW was encouraging the break) Danny whose just a baby/toddler right now.
Basically, big brother Tim and baby Danny adventures in Gotham after that.
DPxDC Prompt where when Damian has grown comfortable with the Waynes, settling into the household more firmly, he finally tells them about his late brother, Danyal.
With his family's help, he makes a proper grave for his twin on the Wayne Manor grounds, on a little hill with the best view of the night sky.
Hundreds of miles away in Amity Park, Illinois, Danny's core resonates, recognizing something he's lacked.
Im real I just don’t like talking or posting on anything. Also chronically frustrated when I forget to like something.
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