we dumped tea into the harbor for less
I like to headcanon that Jason is afraid of dating due to his anger issues that came from the Lazarus waters, so he acts out the persona of a serious landlord who tries his best to play the part of being hard to get (his doing a shit job at it, he has read too many romantic books). And Danny who ran away from Amity Park, because he got nothing to lose, is just looking at him with hearts for eyes and flirts with him at every opportunity.
Danny: I think I just figured something out. I got to go. Jason: Aren't you forgetting something? Danny: Uuh…hesitantly kisses Jason's forehead before running out. Jason: No, pay your bill! Damn, who raised you?
Danny : Jason is playing hard to get. Danny : Little do they know, I'm a master at playing hard to get rid of.
Danny : This date is boring! Jason: This isn't a date. I said I was going to the store. Danny : Then why did you invite me? Jason: I didnt, I specifically said "don't come with me," then you said, "fuck you Jason I'll do whatever I want!
Danny : Crushes are the worst. Whenever I’m near mine, I start acting stupid. Jason: You always act stupid. Jason: Jason: Wait…
Danny : How do I tell Jason that I want them to yell at me like they're Gordon Ramsay and I'm a poor little chef who just ruined a crème brûlée? Jason, who was about to enter the entrance of the lobby: ....
Danny : I want to be with you for the rest of my life. Jason: Damn, that sounds like a marriage proposal. Danny , getting down on one knee: That's 'cause it is.
Jason: Are you trying to seduce me? Danny : Why, are you seducible?
Danny : Are we fighting or flirting? Jason: I'm pinning you against a wall with my hand around your neck- Danny : Your point?
Jason: I feel like doing something stupid. Danny : I’m stupid, do me.
Danny, trying to flirt with Jason: I think both of our families suck.
(If u want to do something with it, feel free)
So this is set a looooooong time after the show. Sam and Tucker r now ghost (they do look like teenagers but wether that’s bc that’s how they want to look or if they died young is up to u) and while Danny is still a halfa he spends more time dead than alive these days since everyone he cares about is long dead.
Anyway, after several centuries they finally manage to get through the mountain of back logged paper work from pariah’s time as king (and yes, technically Danny, as the king, was the only one who had to do that but he guilt tripped the others into helping) and they decided they deserved a vacation!
More than that they deserve to have fun!
So they come up with a bet,
All three of them would each choose a villain to be the sidekick of. Which villain they choose is up to them but it has to be in the same city. The goal? Get ur boss arrested without blowing ur cover!!
The rules:
The villain can not suspect ur working against them
The Heroes can not suspect ur helping them
Avoid civilian casualties as much as possible (their morals r a bit skewed after being dead for centuries but they would like to avoid a pissed off ghost is they can)
Ur time start as soon as they split to find their new bosses and ends so soon as the villain is caught.
U r allowed to escape from jail/police custody/the heroes if ur boss isn’t caught yet
Once the villain is caught u have to hand urself in and wait for everyone else to be done
The first person to get their boss caught get bragging rights
The last person to get their boss caught has to explain any time line fuck ups they might have caused by doing this to clockwork
With the rules set they just have to find the right city and hey would u look at that, there’s a mass brake out in Arkham right now. Gotham is really the best place for the game bc not only does it have a lot of villains it also has a lot of heroes so it’s more even since they will all have at least one hero gunning for their boss at all times.
Starting the clock the three set off. Sam, immediately, chooses Poison Ivy, for obvious reasons. Tucker chooses Riddler, he knows tech to well it would be easy for him to sabotage any death traps without it looking like sabotage. Danny on the other hand is torn. He was originally thinking to go with Dr Freeze bc ice core but he kinda sympathises with the guy. He just trying to save his wife and as a protector spirit, he can respect that and would feel awful to sabotage him. He than thinks maybe two face because he is also a guy with two faces but comes across a similar problem of sympathising with the guy (again, morals have been skewed after being dead for so long)
But there is one villain he has no sympathy for. One villain that isn’t just no matter ur morals and to boot, his whole shtick is something Danny hates with a burning passion.
That’s right, Danny picks Joker.
With bosses picked and sidekick roles achieved. The game is on!!!
Later that night sees shenanigans a penalty, a couple jail brakes on Danny’s parts (Joker stops thinking it’s funny after seeing his incompetant new sidekick cheerily runs up to him after the third jail brake) and the bats slowly loading their fucking minds wondering who the hell these kids r, where they came from and how tf does the Joker kid keep escaping????
You already know Danny absolutely takes every chance he can to embarrass Vlad. Every single one.
They’re attending a Gala and Danny does everything in his power to ensure everybody thinks they’re vampires. Hisses at people, loudly talks about 1800’s events as if he were there, and recoils when he sees a woman’s cross necklace. Everything he can to perpetuate rumors. Vlad is exasperated. His name and pale skin, along with the fact nobody in high society has ever seen him in the day, does not help this rumor.
They’re visiting metropolis to take a tour of LexCorp because Vlad has to sign some type of business agreement. Danny is there because Maddie thought it would be nice for him to get out of Amity every once in a while. The business agreement is out the window the moment Danny walks in the room and loudly proclaims, “oh! So you’re the ‘bald idiot’ my godfather keeps mentioning.”
Vlad knows no peace, even in amity park. He has to give a speech as its mayor? Danny is either in the crowd, asking him the stupidest questions, or he’s trying to convince the town, as phantom, that Vlad was his killer when he was alive.
Just everything he can to make this man’s life more difficult.
If you had told Danny that joining the justice league would mean getting up at the ass crack of dawn to go to some stupid meeting, he never would have joined. Well that not fully true but he might have agreed to have a Zata tube installed in Amity. Even with how much he hates those things it still seems like a better idea now that he is flying through space trying to catch up with this stupid satellite. He was already late thanks to Skulker, which means he missed his perfectly times window to catch the watchtower in orbit so now he’s here playing catch up.
He didn’t even bother to slow down from his Mach 20 pace when he reached it. Just turned intangible and shot through the window into the meeting room. He was expecting to get scolded for being late. Or for his dramatic entrance but he was not expecting the other members to not notice him at all on account of them arguing.
Taking the golden opportunity to get out of a scolding, (he did not want to be the victim of another bat glare) he kept he’s mouth shut and floated down to Hal. Who seemed to be sulking off to the side of the fight. “Dude, what’s gonna on?”
“Batman,” the name was spat like a curse. “Had plans on how to take us all out.” Hal waved to the screen before him, inviting Danny to look.
“Really?” He floated to the screen, seeing files with each leaguer’s name. After a moment of hesitation, he clicked on his own.
“Yeah! Can you fucking believe this?” Hal growled out. “He planned on how to kill us all and is now acting like we’re the unreasonable ones.” Danny would normally be shaken by Hal’s anger. The guy so rarely got truly anger that it startled Danny every time. In that moment however he couldn’t bring his attention way from the screen. It was a decent plan. Risky, unlikely to work but decent. The fact Batman did this at all though. “You think you know a guy, right? Phantom?” Hal asked when he saw the ghost wasn’t responding to him.
Before he could continue his questioning Phantom shot off across the room. All leaguers that could keep up with the ghost speed braces from a fight when they saw him heading straight for Batman. They were anger with him yeah but they didn’t want him dead. They all knew Phantom was physically capable of doing that and had only seen him fly this fast in battle.
Their concern turned to confusion however when Danny stopped dead still just before the dark knight. Looking the man over before reaching to the side, Danny’s hand disappearing into a green vortex that appeared out of thin air. When he pulled back, a small metal box, no bigger than a watch box, laid in his hand as he presented it to Batman.
“This is a blood blossom.” The soft words cut through the tense silence. “It is one of, no it is the only thing that can kill me. For good.” Batman looked at the box, then at the boy. Determination sat on his brows despite the tired sadness that coloured his eyes. “If I…” His eyes broke away from the white lenses. “If I go bad. Please. I understand you don’t want to kill. So please, give this to someone who will kill me.”
No one moved for a moment as they processed the request. Emotions shifting wildly in them all. Superman’s landing on anger. “Why would you give him that?!” He stepped forward. “He already plans to kill us all why would you give him that?!”
“Because I’ve seen that future.” The conference was stated plainly. Melancholy waiting down on the boy as he turn to the others. “The realms are different than here.” His trembled. “Time works differently. You can walk into tomorrow and run into yesterday. Every possibly future exists within the realms.”
He scanned each heroes face as his voice harden. “I’ve seen what happens. I know what happens if I turn.” Danny took a deep breath as he met superman’s eyes. Gazing at him with eyes that saw more than what was in front of him. “I killed you first Clark.” It was stated as fact. Non of them could bring themselves to doubt him. “Then Diana. Then Hal. One by one each one of you were killed… by me.”
His breath came out frosted, his emotions making it hard to keep from freezing the watchtower as he turned back to Batman. “You survived the longest. Out of everyone here you got the closest to stopping me. In that reality however, you didn’t know about ghost. Didn’t know how to fight me.” He held out the box again. “Please, I can’t let that future happen.”
Everyone was stunned. Watching in silent shock as the horror of what Phantom said sunk in. Batman recovers quickest, slowly reaching out to grab that box which he now identified as being made of lead.
“Thank you Phantom.” There was more to those words than what it may appear. A silent reassess that the ghost picked up on.
Danny decided he needed a vacation. He had recently gotten shapeshifting powers in his ghost form, because ectoplasm could be molded and stretched. The only thing that needed to stay the same was his core. He decided to become a puppy, and live out a few years with a good family. Unfortunately, he got involved in a dog fighting ring, and to keep his cover, had to go along with it. But that didn’t stop him from sending messages to the local bats. He’s rescued along with all of the other pups, and Batman had taken a liking to him. He’s named Ace and brought home with Batman. Bruce quickly found out that Ace (Danny) was scarily good at reading people, and after Ace had broken out of a locked cage and saved Batman more than once, that he now had a sidekick that was his dog. Danny was having his best time being a crime fighting dog.
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.
bruce who thinks tim is his one good honest and reliable child and his best friend superman who knows full well that tim is full of shit but bruce will not hear a bad word against him and it drives him INSANE
clark watches tim lie through his fucking teeth about a mission that clark was THERE for and he can’t even hear his heart miss a beat. tim grins at him behind bruce’s back and it’s at this point that clark realises that tim can straight up control his heartbeat to the point that not even superman can tell. he usually just doesn’t bother because he knows bruce wont listen to a word clark says anyway so who gives a fuck.
clark is terrified of this child. jon befriends damian and the JLA are confused as to why he’s not even a little worried about his kid hanging out with the scary sword kid but he’s just so relieved bcs next to tim this is nothing.
then kon comes home to introduce his boyfriend and clark’s stood there like. FUCK NO PLEASE GOD