I’ve Read A Lot And I Mean A Lot Of Peter In Gotham Fics And I’ve Read The Ones Where Dick Is Richard

At first he'd been overjoyed that the cloning had worked. Then, as the weeks went by, he realized just how messed up of a thing he had done. Tim still remembered the faces of everyone after he told them. There were mixes of shock, horror and disappointment. He'd been unable to face both Bruce and Clark for a while after that.

Now Tim sat in a rocking chair within the newly decorated nursery. He looked down at the baby in his lap, who returned his gaze with a blank one of his own.

He sighed as he turned to peer out the window. It was a full moon tonight. "They're mad at me, I know," he finally spoke. "I can't really blame them either. It wasn't fair to Conner. To his memory."

Tim turned to look at the baby once more. He stared into the baby's eyes. Those painfully familiar eyes that were at the same time new and foreign.

"It wasn't fair to you either."

Tim reached down and brushed a bang out of the baby's eyes. "But I swear I'm going to make it up," he continued. "Starting by giving you your own proper name."

Until now, that baby had been referred to as just that. Baby. If not that it was the clone, the child or Conner's clone. But now that Tim had firmly decided he was raising the baby, the kid needed a proper name.

"Hmm," Tim pondered. "What about.... Kevin?"

He received yet another blank look.

"Okay... how about Alex, Wes, Kyle? Timothy Jr?"

Blank stare.

"You could be Douglas. Doug for short."

At that the baby seemed to almost quirk up his eyebrow. As if to say, "Are you serious?" Though that was probably Tim's mind playing tricks on him.

"Yeah," he said with a soft chuckle. "I wasn't really feeling that one either."

Tim closed his eyes and tilted his head to the side. "Mark, Luke, Ezekiel, Thomas, Elijah..." Great, now he was just listing off Bible names.

"Daniel..." he muttered absently.

Suddenly, Tim heard a giggle. He looked back down at the baby to see him cooing softly.

"Wait, you like that? Daniel?"

The baby giggled again. This time reaching up towards Tim. Hesitantly, he raised his hand towards the child. He couldn't help the soft gasp that escaped him as the child grabbed onto his pointer finger.

"Ok, Daniel it is."

Except for something still didn't feel right. Tim leaned back and stared at the ceiling as his tried to pinpoint the feeling of wrongness. Then it hit him. He hated whenever people used his full name. It always felt stuffy and formal. It reminded him too much of disappointed looks. Of hands gripping his shoulders or pulling at his ears, telling him to behave.

"Say," he murmured. "Mind if I give you a nickname buddy? How about Dan?"

Daniel scrunched up his eyebrows. "Ok ok, you don't like that one. I get it. Then how about Danny?"

Daniel seemed to appreciate that nickname a whole lot more as him went back to cooing contently. Tim couldn't help as a smile of his own crept onto his face. "It's settled then," he grinned, holding his child up in the air. "Welcome to the family Danny Drake-Wayne!"

He then pulled Danny close into an embrace, closing his eyes as he took in the scent of baby powder and formula. "I promise, you'll have a better childhood than either I or Kon did. I'll make sure of it."

Edit: original prompt for anyone interested

A little snippet based off this post

Tim and Stephanie would both like to preface they know what they're doing is a bad idea. They do not need Duke, who is also listening in, to repeatedly tell them how terrible of an idea this is. He still does anyway, just to make sure he can rub it in when this all backfires later, but really, Tim and Stephanie already know.

They have both just decided to ignore that silly little fact in the name of information gathering.

So here sits Steph and Duke, huddled up in Duke's bedroom in front of Tim's laptop. Tim, meanwhile, is disguised as some random blonde haired, brown eyed kid. His fake backstory is vaguely based off one socialite or another, because even though he can change his tone or his accent, he just can't seem to hide the wealthy sounding lit in his voice.

In the back of his head, Jason and Stephanie's voices overlap. Once a rich boy always a rich boy, they say. Tim shivers.

"The Baby Bird has landed in The Nest." Duke sighs over Tim's com. "I still don't understand why the codenames are necessary."

"You know why they're necessary."

"Ow!"

Tim may not be in the same room as them, but it's not hard to figure out that Stephanie gave Duke a good punch on the arm. If Tim was there himself, he would've done it too. Duke knows that saying Peter's name within a miles range of the manor will cause the entire family to appear.

Duke himself wasn't even originally part of the plan! The only reason he's here is because Steph said Peter's name while they were talking, and then Duke just happened to wander one of the empty rooms in the manor! Seriously, what business did he even have in there?!

"Landing in the nest." Tim whispers. "Muting now."

"Roger that."

He mutes their side of the com, so they can hear everything he hears, but he can't hear them. It can be overridden by the two still at the manor if the need be, but Tim has faith that he at least won't fuck up that bad. Not bad enough for any help Steph can offer to be useful, at least.

He steps inside the coffee shop Peter frequents, oddly enough, it's actually called The Nest, and Tim's favorite cafe. It's the only place he can get their liquid death special, and he's pretty sure the only reason they keep it around is because he always tips at least $200 when he comes.

It makes sense that Peter would also frequent the place since he's his future nephew. Though, it's probably because Tim passed down his coffee habits. A fact that he will elect to keep from Dick so the man doesn't kill him before Peter's born.

Speaking of Peter, he just sat down in the far corner booth. The one that still has ink stained in the old wood, from that time he got a little too frustrated working on a case here. The one that has Dick's lightly carved initials in the side of the table, because when he wants to spend one on one time with Tim he likes to bring him here, knowing he can't say no to their coffee.

It makes him warm, knowing they probably continued the tradition with Peter when he was old enough.

Currently, Peter is tinkering with a futuristic looking watch. His coffee sits a good distance away, an obviously learned behavior, because Tim does the same thing after many many many drinks lost to an unrefined sweep of his arm. He's pulling other pieces out of a good sized black backpack next to him, quickly covering the whole booth in random looking machinery, completely engrossed in his project.

So Tim does what any other self respecting uncle whose nephew doesn't know he's his uncle, would do. He buys his favorite coffee, adjusts the blonde wig by running a seemingly innocuous hand through it, tips the barista, and sits across from his nephew with a smile.

He calls it a win when Peter wearily returns it.

"Sorry if I'm intruding." Tim starts, throwing a little rasp in his voice for the sake of his cover. "I was just curious about what you're... Working on... Looks complicated."

"Oh, it's a uh-- personal project. For my mentor. I'm under strict NDAs."

Tim nods. He wonders if Peter's telling the truth, and if he is, he's sure the NDAs are from WE, it's just a question on who he's referring to as a mentor.

"Ah, that's too bad. Do you mind if I just sit and watch? For curiosity's sake, I mean."

Even to his own ears that sounded suspicious, but he's never been good at improv. That's more Jason and Dick's thing.

Peter, at the very least, doesn't seem to care. He just shrugs and sips his coffee.

In that case, whatever he's working on probably can't be replicated at this point in time. There's probably some big discovery that hasn't been made yet, which makes Tim wonder who made the discovery. He'd bet $50 on himself or Bruce.

Conversation doesn't continue after that, so Tim just sits and observes.

Peter is clearly skilled. He moves with an assured elegance only to be competed with by himself and Jason, since both of them are the most skilled engineers of the family, though in two different fields. It's especially impressive with the eyebags that pull heavily on Peter's face, which he's sure he got from Bruce and not him no siree. Peter did not learn to overwork himself to death from him, that would be unacceptable.

The exhaustion leaks into his whole body. Low shoulders, slow movements, heavy slouching, small periods of zoning out and coming back to himself. He looks a little bit like shit, if Tim were to be fully honest.

At least it will be easier to get information out of him this way. The quicker they get information, the quicker they can send him home, the quicker his family can bundle him up and let him sleep for a week.

"So," Tim cannot help but break the silence. He's an anxious talker. "Your mentor? Is he cool?"

Peter pauses, his eyes slowly dragging up to meet Tim's brown contacts. "He's the best. I spend basically all my time with him nowadays."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. He's kinda hard on me, but it's just cuz he cares, y'know? He thinks he's this like- manipulative genius that has somehow fooled me into liking him, but honestly, he's giving himself too much credit. He just doesn't want to accept the fact that he's a good person, or that he's gone soft."

Peter rambles and Tim listens, nodding along as he talks. He's sure Duke and Stephanie are tuned in as well. Between the three of them there's no way they don't at least get some information on how to help him.

"I'm sure your parents are thrilled about that." Tim puts implication in his tone. He's not sure what he's apparently implying, but insinuation tends to make people defensive, and getting defensive makes people talk.

Peter does not get defensive.

"I wouldn't know." He shrugs. "They're not here for me to ask."

"Oh, where are they?" Tim asks, like an idiot.

"Dead."

Tim's whole world may have just crumbled before his eyes. He feels like somebody just crushed his lungs with their barehands, and then stuck them back in, sideways.

The first thought that comes to him is he cannot tell Dick. Under no circumstances can Dick find out. Hell, Tim kinda wishes he hadn't found out.

"I'm sorry for your loss." His throat is dry, the coffee isn't helping.

"Nah, it's alright. They died when I was little, so I don't have a lot of memories of them anyway."

"I-It's still unfortunate." Tim coughs. "So who raised you then? If you don't mind me asking."

A smile overtakes Peter's face. It's warm, loving, and wistful. It makes Peter look five years younger, and that makes Tim's heart clench.

"My uncle and aunt did."

"You look very fond of them."

Peter looks more awake than has this whole time, just the slightest bit bashful. "I am. They're the best."

Tim is having a hard time grasping how utterly crushed he feels, he can only hope it doesn't show on his face as he talks. Maybe he can play it off as being overly sympathetic.

"So it was just you guys then? No other family?"

"Nope." Peter shakes his head. "My uncle didn't really get along with any of them, and after he took me in, my aunt went no contact like he did."

So it was probably Jason who took him in then, which is somehow exactly something he would do and nothing like him at the same time. Tim has to wonder where Bruce was, or himself. And which aunt? Tim bets on Stephanie, but it could've been Cass.

"It sounds like you've lived an interesting life."

"Yeah. I wouldn't trade it for the world though." The truth in those words aches Tim's chest, he feels so winded... Lost, maybe. He almost forgets to listen when Peter continues reminiscing. "My aunt definitely did her fair share to make it interesting. She's basically the fiery redhead stereotype, but she cares a lot about everyone..."

Whatever Peter says next gets lost as Tim sinks into his own thoughts. The aunt is not Cass or Steph, unless one of them has been repeatedly dying their hair for years. Steph might still be on the table, maybe. More likely is Barbara, or possibly even Kori, maybe Roy is trans and hasn't told anyone yet. He'll have to ask Jason when he gets the chance.

Tim regrets his coffee, he thinks he's gonna be sick.

"Are you okay?"

Clearly, Tim is doing a bad job at hiding it.

"Yeah, sorry I need to get back home now, but thanks for keeping me company."

He could have stayed. Probably should have, even. But Tim doesn't think he can stand another moment with that old ink stain in eyesight.

"Oh yeah, it's no problem. I didn't mean to ramble to you like that."

Peter rubs his hand on the back of his neck, his eyes trailing off in the distance. He's embarrassed, he knows it for sure because Dick makes that exact same expression.

Tim walks out, and the chime of the bell above the coffee shop door sounds more far away than it should.

He can distantly hear Stephanie's voice in his ear say, "Well. Fuck."

Tim couldn't have put it better himself

I wrote this at 1am and it's barely proofread so don't @ me if there are mistakes. Who would've thought this would be my first piece of writing posted on this blog, huh

1) the watch. It's the universe hopping watch from spiderverse, figured that'd be a good explanation for how he got here and for what he's doing at the coffee shop

2) complete coincidence that it was that coffee shop fyi, he just needed a place to work

3) he chose that booth bc it's the booth that overlooks the entire cafe. It's vigilante 101 about seating choices.

4) thank you to @magicpiano for the original post. I have so many more thoughts about it but I doubt I'll write another piece... Maybe <(͡⁠°⁠‿⁠ ͡⁠°⁠)>

Send me an ask, if you want /⁠ᐠ⁠｡⁠ꞈ⁠｡⁠ᐟ⁠\

Dreams and dead kids

I went through @starry-bi-sky's shorter dpxdc au's the other day, and fell too deep in love with too many of them. Here's something inspired by their Danny Fenton is Jason Todd au whose spooky elements and universe crossover gave me so many brainworms

He doesn't start talking about the nightmares. Dick never does - he starts with something light, something interesting, something warm. But they always come up. "Free since Thursday," Danny rasps into the phone. It's Sunday. He can still feel the dreams in the back of his throat and against the curve of his ribs, tar thick and heavy. He doesn't think it will ever go away, not anymore. It's as much a part of him as his blood, the real thing not stained on green gloves and a yellow cape, as his ears and mouth and teeth, as the dark circles under his eyes.

Danny picks up Dick's phone call without looking. The ringtone is set for him specifically - everyone in his contacts have a personalized ringtone, so he doesn't need to blink the blood out of his eyes to know if one of his people is calling.

"Seems they really are becoming less frequent," Dick hums from the other end of the country, soft and warm and comforting. "Good, that's good. I'm still looking into medication. I've found one that might work for you."

Danny leans his head against his phone. His body feels like one at war, stuck between night terrors and the fear-born insomnia that attempts to stay away from them. "We'll see," he mutters, low and tired.

"If it doesn't, I'll keep looking, Jay," Dick says Danny's name like it's the most natural thing in the world. "I'll get you sleeping again if it's the last thing I do."

In a little city in Illinois, with two adoptive parents working on a portal to the other side in his basement, Danny huffs a laugh.

"My hero."

-

Danny has an accident.

That phrase is so juvenile. Like he's a child that wet the bed. 

Danny had an accident. Danny was in an accident. Danny messed up.

He doesn't know what to call it, but he needs to find out. Tucker called it the incident, once. It's carried with a tone that implies something big, but in the bathos way, were you're pretty sure it hides an embarrassing joke. Sam calls it june, like it's 9/11 and only the date is needed to explain it. Jazz calls it neglect. Their parents call it an oversight.

Death, Danny can't call it. He can barely bring himself to joke about it. He told the doctor that surveyed his lichtenberg scars that his heart probably stopped and started, like a natural defibrillator. The doctor doesn't take it as the joke he had hoped it was.

The day I died, his lips form the words without sound, the portal, the pain, the waking nightmare.

The one good thing about dying is that his dreams have stopped carrying the same weight. There's little to fear from the pressure on his ribs and blood in his mouth when he's already felt his body break open and mold itself into something new. His vision breaks red in the low morning sunlight. With the memory of death seeped into his mind, he no longer wakes up heaving or choking, crying or with ribs breaking in on him. He no longer wakes up breathing at all.

He thinks his heartbeat hurts more than it helps these days. It's a pain to get it going again each morning. With the echo of ticking clocks in his ears and blood still staining unfamiliar gloves to the vision of mangled hands, with the reflection of a shock and mind melting heat and eyes covering every inch of the portal, with the memory of death, both foreign and too close to home, Danny wakes as the living corpse he's become.

I'm not dead lingers in the back of his throat. It's a lie. The doctor said a mantra could help to wake up from his nightmares, but that one doesn't work anymore.

"I'm alive," his hoarse voice whispers into his too dead and too alive bedroom instead, because that one is true.

Danny's reflection in the window looks at him with five glowing eyes, overlapping and breaking of his face. He'd joke that the house is haunted, but it's just him.

He starts breathing again.

This is just another shitpost, a copy and paste from what I spammed my friend at like 5pm- ish Jason or Red-Hood who's known for having 'information from the dead/graves' but his boyfriend is Danny 'phantom' Fenton and will just yap to his boyfriend over ghost gossip and not even realize that he's sharing new/unheard of information to Jason over crimes and other things happening around Gotham or in crime alley

People gossip but the dead talk, and Danny is all too happy to have someone to listen to all the ghost drama with him that the man will yap to Jason for hours. (Jason has timed it before, it got to hour 5 before he called it a day)

No one can figure out how why or when Jason started becoming two or three steps ahead of every villain/gang/goon/whatever, calling 'anonymous' tips into the batfam/police/whoever tf, days or even weeks before anything happened.

Jason who somehow ends up scaring the shit out of the bad guys because they 'changed their plans three times already to lose Red-hood' but yet, somehow, he's waiting for them by the time they arrive to where ever they were meeting up to do their illegal business with a coffee in hand and the police already called and arriving in 5 minutes.

Danny goes to a convention dressed in a very accurate Red Robin cosplay thanks to lowkey stalking/haunting him for a while and having materials to make it in his parents lab.

The problem is that its too accurate and thier body types are far too similar...

DPxDC Prompt

Danny needed a new focus after fleeing his dimension. Unfortunately due to the lack of ecto in this dimension it couldn't be just any place, he had to find an unclaimed temple or alter of sorts that was still receiving offerings he could convert into ectoplasm.

He found it in the form of an alter in a mansion's attic where the scrawniest child he has ever seen spent enough time exploring his own parents finds to uncover an abandoned alter in which he has built a routine of leaving offerings to near daily.

At first he only visited to collect power from the offerings, spending the rest of his time exploring the city he now knows as Gotham. But as he hears more and more of the kids prayers, he can't help but get attached enough to watch over him. It's not like his parents are watching over him he soon finds!

TLDR Tim finds a dusty alter in his attic and leaves stuff on it as offerings while he speaks about his day and his plans for the night, Danny finds the alter has no entity attached to it and claims it as his own soon getting attached to Tim

Halloween prompt no. 31 (part 6)

Gotham Knights au where the bats crash at a safe house and hear noises coming from the cabinet above the stove. Sneaking up to it they fling it open to find a very startled child around 4 or 5 years of age eating cereal out of the box.

Dick recovered first,"So uh, whatcha doin' there?"

The kid hugged the box to his chest, almost as if he was afraid they'd take it away from him before giving a muttered, "...nothing..."

Tim got between Jason and the kid, blocking the view of the larger man and giving him the chance to put away the gun he had drawn without the kid noticing it. "Dont worry kid." He said softly, "We won't take it away. You must have been pretty hungry, huh? Is that why you broke in?"

"Kinda?"

It was Jason's turn to ask a question, "Well why are you in there then?"

"I wanted to see my daddy."

The three looked at eachother before Dick, barely holding back laughter asked, "Who's your daddy?"

The kid didn't think twice before pointing at Tim, "I'm Danny and I'm your clone!" Tim bluescreened in response.

Clark Kent is firmly in his civilian persona. This is a problem, given that the airplane he's on with Lois is about to collide with another plane on the runway.

He can see the other plane about to t-bone them, and is fully prepared to...somehow fumble his way through an explanation as to why he disappeared and superman took his place, but the meta kid sitting next to him has a different idea.

The meta kid let's out a strangled shriek, grips the armrests of the seat, and the entire plane goes intangible.

The other plane delicately just...glides through their plane, and everyone on their plane and everyone on the other plane just stare at each other as they pass by in horrified silence.

The people seated where the other planes engines are passing through harmlessly initially let out a few terrified screams, but they taper off when they realize that nothing is happening.

Then it's over.

The kid, hyperventilating, lets go of the armrests once the other plane has completely cleared them, and immediately goes for one of those little baggies to empty the contents of his stomach.

His nose is bleeding, his ears are bleeding, and he looks dazed. He clearly overdid it.

Clark is running a hand up and down his back, trying to get him comfortable, while the other passengers and crew stare at the kid in awe.

After all, there's only one person acting like this after something as insane as making every single person intangible. It has to be the kid. The kid has to be a meta, and that meta just saved all of them.

But the kid peeks up at Clark, eyes full of fear, and says something that makes his heart drop into his stomach.

"Please don't tell my parents."

Give me demon twins with a complicated relationship. no more Damian and Danny who have a semi-healthy relationship.

Give me younger brother Danny who is overshadowed by Damian.

Give me a Danny who doesn't know Bruce Wayne is his father because he could never meet his mother's expectations.

Give me Damian who refuses to tell him because Danny needs to earn it.

Give me a Damian who sees Danny as weak because he's more in tune with his emotions, and who absolutely hates him for it.

Give me a Damian who when tasked by grandfather to prune the weak branches of the bloodline he does so with no hesitation.

Give me a Danny who fucking fears Damian and knows that Damian will kill him on the orders of Ras.

Give me a Danny who doesn't fight back because he knows that he can never beat Damian, who accepts his fate.

Give me a Danny who's happy that it was Damian his older brother who gets to kill him.

Give me a Danny who tells Damian that "it had to be you."

Give me demon twins with a complicated relationship that even after Danny was put in the Lazarus pits and sent to bumbfuck Illinois and Damian was sent to his father. Danny still fears Damian, and Damian while no longer hating Danny for his preserved weakness resents him for not fighting back and just letting him kill him.

Give me a Danny who's relationship with Damian colors, or at least tint the relationship he has with Jazz.

Give me a Danny who does have a personality of his own and just does what is expected from him because he doesn't want the Fentons to throw him away as the Al Ghuls did.

Give me a Damian who realized that Danny was all the goodness in his family, that would have fit in better with father's side of the family better than him because Danny was the better person.

Give me a Damian who ends up idolizing the memory of Danny and who he could have been.

Give me demon twins with a complicated relationship that when they reunite, Danny freaks the fuck out and Damian just freezes.

Give me demon twins with a complicated relationship.

Me drawing these after getting petty over my TikTok comment section saying Dick would never blabla because they're usually referring to TT robin and it pissed me off at the unfair comparison that I drew slightly older Dick