Chapter Text
“These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which as they kiss consume. The sweetest honey
Is loathsome in his own deliciousness
And in the taste confounds the appetite.
Therefore love moderately; long love doth so;
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Danny Fenton never gave it much thought as to how he would die. But dying in the place of someone he loved, it seemed like a good way to go.
Too bad for him, he decided to half die trying to impress his friends at just fourteen.
Three years later and somehow he found himself in an entirely new city with his parents locked up for child abuse and tax fraud. Federal prison would likely be the thing that drove Jack and Maddie Fenton to insanity.
He stared down at his shoes as he listened to the doorbell ring and waited for his godfather to answer the door. His social worker stood beside him, her nose wrinkled as if she didn’t like the smell.
Danny couldn’t blame her. It was Gotham City, the smell was absolutely horrible. He still couldn’t figure out why the hell Vlad Masters had decided to move to Gotham City of all places.
Tiffany let out a huff, her suede heel started tapping impatiently as they waited for Vlad to answer the door. After Vlad had seemingly decided to reform a few years prior due to the unfortunate death of Dani, he had moved to Gotham and seemingly cleaned up his act. He ran Dalv Co and he kept his nose out of other’s business. It was enough for the eyes of the government and Jazz to agree that he would be the best one to have custody of Danny for the next year until he turned eighteen and would be thrown on his ass.
In all honesty, Danny thought it was all a joke. Vlad reformed? Yeah, when pigs started to fly maybe. But it was just a year. Just a year of living with that narcissistic megalomaniac and then he would be free. Finally the door swung open to show Vlad standing in the doorway with a tired look on his face.
“My apologies, I was just finishing up Daniel’s room,” he said as soon as he opened the door. “Please come in.”
Danny looked at the man over warily. He was dressed far more casually than Danny had ever seen him in just a tshirt, jeans, and sneakers. His hair wasn’t pulled back in his usual pony tail, instead it hung freely around his face. This was a Vlad that Danny had never seen before.
The put together asshole was long gone and Danny had some questions in all honesty. Did Dani’s death really fuck him up this much? Had he actually become a better person because of it? Danny wasn’t sure he believed it and different looks wasn’t enough to change his mind from that to be honest.
Danny and the social worker, Tiffany walked in together. Danny’s heavy bag hung over his shoulder like nothing as he took in the large brownstone that Vlad now owned. It wasn’t fancy like his mansion had been but it was still rather large, still beautiful and exquisite.
“Mr. Masters, it’s so good to see you again,” Tiffany crooned and Danny wanted to gag when he saw the heart eyes she was giving his godfather.
“Likewise, Ms. Wong,” Vlad purred, giving Tiffany a smarmy look that the old ass must have thought was flirty. Danny refrained from rolling his eyes.
“Where’s my room?” He asked, wanting to just cut to the chase and hide out, far away from Vlad as he could.
“Daniel,” Tiffany chided and Vlad let out a soft chuckle. As if he were used to Danny’s rude behavior. He probably was after knowing Danny for so long.
“He’s likely ready to settle in, I imagine Daniel has gone through quite a bit of trauma these last few months what with the trial and having to bounce around for a while,” Vlad said and rested his meaty palm on Danny’s shoulder, making the young halfa cringe ever so slightly.
“I’ll show you up to your room and Tiffany and I can iron out the last of the details,” Vlad said before he led Danny up the stairs.
“I do hope that things will go smoothly for us, Daniel. I was quite devastated when I learned about your parents arrest, I had,” Vlad let out a soft breath. “I had hoped that after the death of Danielle, Jack and Madeline would understand the importance of protecting one’s child. That they would have learned from my mistakes.”
Danny let out a scoff. “You know how they are,” he muttered, clutching the handle of his bag tight. “They only ever cared about work.”
“And it has cost them greatly,” Vlad sighed. Danny side eyed the man, looking him up and down for a moment. It had been two years since Dani’s death and it had affected everyone differently. At the time, Jack and Maddie knew about Danny’s halfa status and had even accepted Dani as a niece of sorts. Vlad and Dani’s relationship wasn’t perfect, hell it was far from it. But they were working on it, as far as Danny knew.
Then Dani died.
No one knew what happened. One minute she was off exploring, the next she was on the Fenton’s doorstep crying as she turned to goo. Danny refrained from a shudder as he remembered that night, of holding her close.
Vlad had been beside himself after her death. He blamed himself, for not requiring her to live with him rather than explore the world like she was. From what Dany knew –overheard when the man cried to Jack and Maddie about it– he regretted not providing Dani with more structure. Maybe if he had, she wouldn’t have died. If he was there to watch over her, protect her, keep an eye on her condition, she would still be alive.
Danny was inclined to agree.
Yet now he found himself in a similar situation.
“Unpack, get comfortable. I will speak with Ms. Wong and then order take out, how does Chinese sound?” Vlad asked and Danny shrugged his shoulders.
“S’fine,” he mumbled, pushing the door open to his room. It was larger than his bedroom at FentonWorks. But rather plain.
A large bed was tucked into the far corner with a wooden headboard and foot board. A desk sat in the opposite corner lined with two large bookshelves on either side. A TV sat across from the bed on a large dresser and the corner held a large, plush chair that Danny could already see himself curling up in after long days.
He glanced over at Vlad who was giving him a sorrowful look and gave him a small smile.
“Thanks, Vlad,” he murmured. Vlad gave him a timid smile of his own before he turned and headed back downstairs to speak with Tiffany.
Danny let out a breath and dropped his bag on his bed before he ripped a finger down through the air and opened a portal. He carefully reached through and grabbed the boxes he had stashed there when he had first moved out of FentonWorks.
He climbed onto the large full size bed and tapped a finger on the box, watching it open itself before the contents of the box flew throughout the room. Books slid into spots on the bookshelves along with action figures, along with his lego space ship and other space dioramas as they found places for themselves.
The next box revealed his space posters and blankets, he smiled as he watched them press against the wall, ectoplasm oozing out to stick them to the walls and his blankets fell in a heap beside him.
He unzipped his bag and let the clothes start hanging themselves up or tucking themselves into the dresser.
The last few years, Danny had truly mastered a lot of his powers. They had become like an extension of himself now, just a thought sent them into action, a nod or a flick of his hand, it was all he needed to do.
He leaned back against the wall, his legs spread out in front of him as his mind started to wander. Things really had been going really good for Danny until they weren’t. He had parents who knew he was a halfa, Jazz was happy and had just moved to California to go to Stanford University of all places. The ghosts weren’t starting problems anymore, hell, they had finally come to an agreement even.
Things were perfect.
Until they weren’t.
Until suddenly the Fentons had thrown themselves into their work again after Jazz went off to college. Until their experiment had caused half of FentonWorks to get destroyed in an explosion that nearly killed them, that would have killed Danny if he hadn’t been able to shift to ghost form in time.
It had been the catalyst to what Danny dubbed four months of hell. Next thing he knew, the FBI was investigating, the IRS were now aware of Jack and Maddie Fenton and their years of non payment of their taxes. Child protective services were now taking all of the tips from Lancer and other teachers at Caspar high much more seriously.
Jazz was telling the officers about all of her worries and concerns for Danny’s safety, how they had been the ones to cause Danny’s half death in the first place.
He still hadn’t spoken to her since he learned about that little tid-bit.
Soon Danny found himself staying with the Foleys as investigations went underway. Then the trial started and Danny was required to talk about what happened to him and what life was like growing up with the Fentons.
Soon they were slapped with neglect charges as well as tax evasion and were sentenced to federal prison and Danny was required to live with a responsible guardian for the next year.
That meant he now had the pleasure of living with none other than Vlad himself. In Gotham City of all places.
Which was going to prove to be an annoying problem for Danny.
Sure Vlad was here because he was trying to get away from memories or whatever. But Vlad also very rarely shifted to his Plasmius form and didn’t really care about it all that much. But Danny? He loved shifting into Phantom, the freedom of getting to fly away whenever he was having a tough time, the freedom of just being Phantom in Amity Park was nice. But not attainable in Gotham.
So, Danny would just have to be boring old Danny Fenton.
Or, well Danny Masters since Vlad had legally adopted him and in a depressed haze, Danny had tiredly signed agreeing to the name change.
“I want you to be comfortable, Daniel,” Vlad said as they sat across from one another at the small kitchen table, both of them eating their Chinese food quietly.
“I know,” Danny murmured. “I am, I already decorated my room and got my backpack packed up for tomorrow for school.”
He glanced up to find Vlad giving him a sad, small smile.”I just want to make sure you’re ready. I can call the school and request that you start in a few weeks to make sure that you’re comfortable in Gotham first.”
Danny shook his head. No. No more waiting, no more sitting around. He was tired of the sitting and the waiting and the thinking. He was tired of thinking about how pissed he was at Jazz, how mad he was at his parents, how betrayed he felt that he couldn’t just stay with Sam or Tucker. He was tired of not having a distraction keeping him from paying attention to all of the anger that was stirring up inside of him.
“No, I want to go. I need,” Danny took a deep breath and looked up at Vlad who was still staring at him in concern. “I need a distraction. I need to just, move on and I can’t do that if I just keep thinking about everything that has been happening recently.”
Vlad gave him a small smile and let out a soft chuckle as he shook his head once. “I can understand that, Daniel. It was one of the reasons that I moved to Gotham of all places. I needed somewhere to go to just get away.”
Danny nodded. “I just want to move on,” he whispered in a broken voice, his eyes burned with tears that he refused to shed.
That was one of the things he had been thinking about a lot to be honest. Yeah, Gotham was going to be different. He wasn’t going to be able to freely be Phantom anymore and he was going to be in a new place and there was a lot of shit that he had on his back. But he was also not going to have to worry about Jack and Maddie and their hairbrained schemes.
He hadn’t thought about it since the trial when he had been all but forced to share out loud what the Fenton’s invention had been. But he wouldn’t have to worry about the Fenton’s guilt or their desire to fix him.
“Just remember, Daniel, Gotham is nothing like Amity, things are much different here and people are not nearly as nice,” Vlad said and Danny nodded. “And be careful about shifting here, I am unsure how they would react to Phantom.”
Danny pursed his lips and stirred his chopsticks around his noodles. “I know, I’m not planning on changing any time soon. If I need to get away, I’ll just go to the zone,” he muttered before eating a large mouthful of food. Vlad nodded and said nothing else as he continued to eat his own dinner.
The young halfa withheld a sigh as he continued with his own dinner. Maybe living in Gotham would be a much needed change. Maybe it would be exactly what Danny needed.