Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Harley Quinn stumbled through the streets of Amity Park, newborn baby clutched to her chest as she furiously checked over her shoulder to make sure no one was following her. She had done it, she had finally gotten away from Mr. J for good just six months before. If he came lookin’ for her, she would be able to handle him on her own, especially with the help of Ives. But Danny wouldn’t be able to do jack shit against his crazed sperm donor. So, Harley was doin’ what she thought would be best. She was going to ask her step-brother and see if he and his wife could take him. 

If anyone would be able to protect her baby it would be Jack Fenton, her step-brother was a hulking giant of a man and while his aim may have been shit, his wife’s wasn’t. The two were scientists, ghost hunters if Harley remembered right and they would be just crazy enough to think Mr. J was a ghost if he showed his slimy face around Amity Park. 

“Don’t worry Danny, they’ll keep you safe, I promise. You’re never gonna have to worry about a crazy father tryin’ to kill you or use you for his own gain, I won’t ever let that happen,” Harley said quietly before pressing a soft kiss on her son’s head and knocked on the door of Fenton Works. 

His father was trying to kill him. Danny allowed his sister to drag him out of Fenton Works and to her car, head spinning, lungs burning for oxygen. Telling his parents about his ghost form had gone bad, it had gone so, so, so bad and now Jazz and Danny were running for their lives as Jack Fenton shot another ectoblast at the siblings.

“Jazz, where’re we going to go? What are we going to do? You destroyed the portal,” Danny gasped out once Jazz had shoved him into the backseat of her beat up, gray, ‘78 Volkswagen Beetle. He scrambled in just as Maddie shot in the spot he had just been occupying, his sister grunted as she took the shot. While she was liminal, she still had enough human in her that it was nothing more than feeling like she got an instant sunburn. 

Jazz slammed the door shut, ignoring the shouts from the Fentons behind her as she got around to the driver’s seat and sped off, tires spinning against the pavement. 

“We’re going to Aunt Harley’s,” Jazz said determinedly. 

“My mother?” Danny squawked from the backseat. “Didn’t Da-Jack say she was crazy?”

“Jack’s crazy Danny! He had you strapped to a table-” Jazz stopped herself as a guttural growl escaped her lips. “Whatever. Aunt Harley will be the best option. If anyone can keep us away from the Fentons it’ll be her.”

Danny slumped down in the backseat and finally looked down at the giant cut on his chest and let out a groan. His mother. Jack and Maddie had never hesitated to tell Danny where he had come from. Jack in particular boasted about how his poor, abused sister trusted him of all people to raise her baby and keep him safe from harm. 

Joke’s on him apparently considering he was the very person who had managed to hurt Danny the most. Danny wasn’t stupid, though, he had heard about Harley Quinn. The psychiatrist turned villain who was now in her own way a hero but remained the self titled Queen of Chaos. He knew that his mother was dangerous, each time she had come to visit with her pasty white, tattoo covered skin, chemically bleached hair, and slightly crazed look in her eyes, Danny knew. He knew that the reason Dan was a reality was because of his genes, because of where he came from. 

He had done everything he could to make sure he wouldn’t turn out like his mother. And if his suspicions were correct, he would do everything to make sure he didn’t turn out anything like his sperm donor. There was a reason Danny hated clowns and it wasn’t just because of Freakshow.

“Do you think she’s going to be happy seeing us at her house, though? Or Aunt Ivy? She’ll probably be annoyed that we dropped in unannounced,” Danny said before reaching down and grabbing the metal box that held his first aid kit. He used his powers to thread a needle with fishing wire and bit his lip hard as he forced the needle through his skin and started to sew up where his parents had started the vivisection. It would most likely scar but Danny didn’t want to think about that right now. Danny didn’t want to think about anything right now except for the fact that they were going to his mother’s house of all places. 

“Danny, your mom adores you. She didn’t drop you off at the Fenton’s to abandon you. She did it to protect you. Aunt Harley knew that she wasn’t capable of raising a baby and she did the most responsible thing she could think of. But she loves you, she’s loved you from the moment you were born,” Jazz told him, glancing in her rearview mirror to watch her baby brother sew himself up as she sped down the highway. 

“And how do you know that?” Danny asked, a hiss escaped from between his clenched teeth as he got to the worst part of the cut and continued with his sewing. 

“Because I was there the night she brought you home. And I see it in her eyes when she comes to visit us. She loves you Danny, she was just in a bad situation,” Jazz reasoned, knuckles white on the steering wheel as she sped onto the onramp to start their journey from Amity Park, Illinois to Gotham City, New Jersey. 

“And she’s just going to be happy to have her sixteen year old son randomly appear in her front door? She couldn’t take care of me then, what makes you so sure she can help us now?” Danny spat out as he finally finished his stitching and tied off the thread. He reached into the kit once more and grabbed a few of the antiseptic wipes that had been packed in and cleaned the ectoplasm-blood mixture off of his chest as best as he could before taping gauze to his chest. It wasn’t the best patch job and Frostbite would probably be horrified if he saw it, but it was the best Danny could do with a tiny first aid kit in the back of his sister's rickety car as she went well over a hundred miles per hour in a seventy. 

“I think so, yeah,” Jazz admitted after a few minutes of silence. Danny let out a huff of a laugh as he struggled to sit up. “There’s a shirt in this bag,” she said, tossing him the backpack that sat in the passenger seat, the go bag for if the worst had ever come to fruition. Which it definitely had. 

Danny dug through the bag and found the tried and true NASA shirt folded carefully within the bag and let out a sigh through nose as he carefully maneuvered around to get the shirt on without angering the stitches on his chest too much. Even if his mother wasn’t happy to see them or able to take care of them, she’d be able to help. She was a better option than any other. 

Vlad was completely out of the picture. Dani was ancients only knew where and she wouldn’t have been able to do much anyway. Sam and Tuck still didn’t even know what had happened and Danny hadn’t decided how he was going to deal with that. Aunt Alicia would most likely call mom-Maddie if she saw them on her doorstep. 

Aunt Harley was their only option now that the portal was destroyed and Danny certainly did not have the strength he would need to open a portal. Plus, Gotham had plenty of ambient ectoplasm according to Tuck’s research. 

When they had first made this plan, Tucker had looked into any place that came close to having the same amounts of ectoplasm as Amity Park and Gotham had been number one on the list. So at least Danny had that going for him. 

“I’m going to try to get a little bit of rest, getting cut open drains a guy,” Danny said with a chuckle, pressing the backpack into the car seat and carefully laid back down. “When I wake up, we can switch and I can drive for a bit. You need rest too.”

Jazz simply hummed in response and said nothing more as her little brother settled into the backseat and allowed sleep to take over. 

“I told you I could have helped drive here,” Danny muttered as Jazz pulled into a shady looking, nondescript building. 

“Danny, you had to sew yourself back up in my backseat. You needed the rest far more than I did, besides, no use in complaining, we’re here now,” Jazz said, glancing back at the tired, pouty look on her brother’s face and smiled. “Aren’t you excited to see your mom and Aunt Pam?”

“Is she technically my stepmom?” Danny asked once Jazz put the car in park and shut off the engine. She got out and went around to Danny’s door and helped her baby brother out of the car. 

“Technically?” Jazz said, crinkling her nose as she thought it out. Yeah, that would make the most sense anyway. “Are you okay?” She asked as Danny winced, pressing a hand to his chest as he climbed out of the small car and leaned heavily against Jazz’s side.

“Yeah, just hurting,” he murmured and shook his head as if that would get rid of the pain. “Let’s just go.”

Jazz gave her brother a concerned look but locked her car nonetheless and started to help the boy up the stairs before she rung the doorbell. 

The two tensed as they listened to footsteps stomp their way. 

“Look, I’m Jewish, I ain’t interested in that Jehovah’s Witness shit,” they heard Harley shout before the door swung open. 

Harley’s jaw fell open as she froze in place at the scene in front of her. The two teenagers were quite the sight. Harley had never seen the usually put together Jasmine look so frazzled as long as she had known her niece. Her son was in even worse states, if the eyebags on his face, the strange blood and green stains on his shirt, and panting told her anything. 

He looked up at her tiredly, the dark circles under his eyes even darker than she had initially noticed. “Hey mom,” he said with a huff, hanging from Jasmine’s shoulders. 

“Aw fuck, come in, come in,” Harley said wearily, ushering the two into the building. “Ives! I need your help!”

Harley carefully moved her niece out of the way before she quickly lifted her son into her arms and started down the hallway. “It’s okay Danny, Mama’s gotcha,” she murmured, cradling the sixteen year old boy to her chest as she carried him bridal style. Jazz followed her aunt as they made it to the living room just as Ivy came out of the bedroom looking confused. 

Her eyebrows shot up in surprise, though, as she spotted the three before her. “Shit, I’ll get the salves,” she stated before her eyes landed on Jazz. “Come help me?”

Jazz looked between her aunt and her brother before looking back at Ivy and gulped, nodding her head once before following the eco-terrorist back into the bedroom. 

“Oh sweetie,” Harley murmured, carefully setting Danny on the beat up couch. “Baby what happened to you?”

“Jack and Maddie happened,” he said with a hiss as his mother raised his shirt and took in the cuts that had been sloppily stitched up.

Harley’s eyes flicked between the incision that seeped red-green liquid and Danny’s pained face. “Jacky boy did this to you?”

Danny nodded, letting out a whimper. “It’s a long story,” he said as his mom traced a finger over the cuts, the pieces connecting in her brain. 

Harley Quinn was a lot of things but she was not stupid. She may not have gotten the chance to visit her son as often as she wanted but the last time she had seen him she had noticed something was different about him. She had been around Ivy long enough to know when someone had gained powers that they barely had control over. She had noticed the way her son’s eyes would flash a startling green whenever his emotions got out of hand. Noticed the way he was colder than before and how his shoulders looked as though they carried the entire world on them. 

She didn’t know what had happened to her son or what it had done to him, but she knew he was more than human now. She had seen that plenty of times before. And it looks like the Fentons had discovered this and decided that Danny was one of their new experiments. 

“You’re dead, aren’t you?” She asked bluntly, recognizing the toxic ectoplasm that seemed from between her son’s stitches. “Not all the way but somethin’ happened and they didn’t like it.”

“Yeah. I uh, I was fourteen, didn’t kill me all the way, just enough for me to be considered a ghost and you know how mom-Maddie and Jack are about ghosts,” Danny said just as Ivy and Jazz came back with towels, wet rags, and salves to cover the incisions. 

Harley raised her eyes from Danny’s wounds and looked her son in the eyes. “I’m gonna kill ‘em,” she snarled, snatching a wet rag from Ivy and started to better clean the wound. “I’m gonna murder them and then when they turn into ghosts I’ll give ‘em a taste of their own medicine,” she said, hands gentle as she cleaned around the wound. 

“You’re going to need to redo those stitches,” Ivy said softly, sitting beside Danny’s head and taking it in her lap as she ran her fingers through the black locks, trying to distract her wife’s son from the stinging pain he was likely feeling. 

“There’s no point, the wound will be closed by tomorrow,” Jazz said quietly and handed a warm, dry towel to Harley after she had finished cleaning the incisions and carefully patted the skin dry. She then took the salve and carefully coated it over her son’s chest. 

“Don’t kill them,” Danny said quietly, taking his mother’s hand in his and squeezed the pale hand in his. “Just, mom, just protect me. Please?” He asked, voice cracking slightly. 

Harley let out a sigh and squeezed her son’s hand tight. “Baby, I’ll always protect you,” she promised, still feeling her chest burn in anger at the fact that her step-brother, the one person on this earth she had trusted to take care of her son had caused him this much pain. Jack and Maddie Fenton would rue the day they hurt Harley Quinn’s baby.

Chapter Text

Harley sighed and crossed her arms over her chest as she stared down at her baby boy. Logically, she knew that this wasn’t her fault? How could it have been? She had thought that her step-brother would be the best person in the world to keep her baby safe. And he had been! Mr. J had never once suspected that they had a baby somewhere out in the world and Danny had been given a life that Harley woulda never been able to provide for the kid. 

He had been given love, attention, access to school and food, things that Harley wouldn’t’ve been able to provide considering her status in Gotham. Hell, even now she was walkin’ a tricky tightrope act where she tried to stay on Batsey’s good side, come up with schemes of her own, and help Ives anytime she decided it was time for a little eco terrorism. She wasn’t a good mom, she wasn’t meant to be a mother. Maybe before she had become Harley Quinn, when she was still Dr. Harleen Quinzel, fancy schmancy psychiatrist, she could have been a good mom. But not now. 

No, Harley Quinn wasn’t meant to be a mother, it was why despite how much it had hurt, she had given her baby to the only people she could trust. Only for them to turn around and be the thing that wound up hurtin’ her baby more than anything. She dug her nails into her biceps, watching Danny’s chest rise with abnormally slow breaths, his brows were furrowed even in sleep and for the millionth time that night, she plotted the Fenton’s murder. 

“What are you going to do?” Ivy asked quietly, stepping behind Harley, her hands placed over her girlfriend’s and carefully pulling the nails out of her skin. 

The villainous sighed. “I dunno, Ives. I thought I was doing what was best giving him up to Jacky to take care of and that turned out to be a mistake. Now I have a hurt sixteen year old in my house and a stressed out eighteen year old. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.”

Ivy wrapped her arms around her girlfriend and rested her chin on the blond’s shoulder as she stared down at the boy who was now occupying their bed. They had given the bed to Danny due to his injuries and made a bed for Jasmine on one of their couches. “You’re a good mom, babe. I’m sure you’ll know exactly what to do,” she murmured, pressing a kiss to Harley’s cheek. 

“Am I though? What kinda mom just gives up her baby? I did that to Danny, it’s my fault he’s in this mess,” Harley said softly, thinking about the large cuts that had marred her baby’s skin just hours before. It had taken everything in her power to not snap and lose her cool right then and there. 

“I think you did the best you could in the situation. I was there with you when you took Danny to the Fentons, I didn’t get a bad vibe off of them either. We both thought he’d be safe with them,” Ivy said quietly. “You got him out of Gotham and far away from Joker.”

“And now he’s in Gotham anyway. And it’s only a matter of time before Mr. J sees him and I don’t know what I’m gonna do if that happens,” Harley said, her voice cracked ever so slightly. Ivy just hugged her partner close to her chest.

“I think we both know what you need to do, Harles,” Ivy murmured before pulling Harley out of their bedroom. 

“I know, I need to talk to Batsy,” Harley said with a groan, banging her head against the wall. Since leaving Mr. J, Harley had done pretty alright for herself. She and Ivy had gotten together, had spent the last sixteen years happily dating with no plans of marriage in sight. She had started looking into possibly becoming a psychiatrist again, decided against it, had decided to just become her own free agent instead, helping whoever paid her the most, and went along with her business. Harley had been doing good for herself. She had made a name for herself outside of being known as Joker and Harley Quinn and was doin’ great. But her life hadn’t been one meant for a kid to grow up in. It had been hard, time spent in and out and in and out of jail as she struggled to figure out who she was. 

It was a question that she struggled with even after being out of Mr. J’s clutches for sixteen years. Harley didn’t know who she was. First she had been a psychiatrist, and she had loved what she had done. Then she had become whatever Mr. J had made her when she had jumped into that giant vat of toxic waste and become his harlequin, then she had gotten away and was briefly a mother, then she became just plain old Harley Quinn, not much special about her anymore. She sorta just existed in the world. She had done terrible, horrible things in her past in her desperate, brainwashed need to make Mr. J happy but had managed to move past that now. The only thing was that now she didn’t really have a thing. She didn’t know who she was or what she was meant to do. 

But, lookin’ at her baby laying in bed twitching with what she could only assume was a nightmare, Harley knew what she needed to do. She needed to protect her baby from anyone who would dare hurt him. And the first step to doing that would be to swallow her pride and ask the stupid Batman for help. She sighed and left the hallway and started out the door of the house, grabbing her bat from the corner on her way. He would probably already be suspicious anyway, Harley wasn’t stupid, she knew that Batsy had someone stalkin’ her at all hours of the night.

She dragged her bat behind her as she stalked down the streets before climbing up a fire escape and sitting on the roof, swinging her legs. 

“Who were those kids?” Batman asked behind her not even ten minutes later. 

Harley let out a sigh and patted the roof beside her. “It’s a long story, Batsy,” she said softly, staring out into the cityscape that was the Narrows. Batman let out a huff of annoyance but sat beside her nonetheless. 

“The boy is my son,” she said blandly. “The entire reason I managed to get away from Mistah J all those years ago. Motherhood changes a person, ya know?”

“He’s the Jokers-”

“He’s nothin’ to the Joker, you understand me?” Harley snapped, whipping her head to glare at the Bat. “J may have given his DNA to the kid but Danny is nothin’ like J and never will be. I got him away for a reason.”

Batman let out a sigh. “What happened, Harley?”

The harlequin wrapped her arms around herself and stared down at her pajama clad legs. “I took him to my step-brother after he was born. Thought maybe since they were so far away, they’d keep him safe. I was wrong.”

“Joker got him?”

She tore her eyes away from her legs and shook her head. “No. They gottem. Danny’s kinda like a meta, I think it’s my and Mistah J’s fault actually. You know, J had me jump into that vat of acid and it fucked me up, did all this weird shit to me and fucked my body and my brain up real good. Joker did the same thing to himself. Few years ago, Danny got into an accident in his adoptive parents lab, it electrocuted him. I think maybe because he has our genes it got all screwy because now he’s some kinda meta, has weird ghost powers and shit. His adoptive parents were ghost hunters,” she said quietly. 

“What happened, Harley?” Batman demanded. 

Harley’s eyes watered and she squeezed her hands into fists. “They cut my baby open and experimented on him,” she said with a sob. “A sixteen year old boy and now he’s got a fuckin’ autopsy scar on him and I don’t know what to do,” she said between heaving sobs. 

She wiped at her eyes and let out a sigh. “I don’t know what to do,” she said quietly. “I don’t trust my baby with anyone else. I don’t want him hurt anymore but I don’t know if I’m the best mom for the job. And now he’s got these, these government officials hunting him down and my step-brother and his wife are hunting him down. And their daughter ran away with Danny to try and protect him and it’s a whole entire mess and I don’t know what to do.”

“Do you want me to take him?” Batman asked her hesitantly. Harley smiled and shook her head. 

“No, I think I wanna keep him with me. He’s my responsibility, I want to take care of him,” she said and looked the batman over for a moment and sighed. “He told me not to kill the Fentons. He asked me to protect him. And I’m gonna do just that, I failed as a mother a helluva lot. And I’m not gonna do that no more. So, I’m askin’ you, help me protect my baby. I’ll do whatever you ask, be as cooperative as you need me, but I need help. I didn’t want him in Gotham because of Mistah J and now he’s here and Danny, he’s the perfect mix of me and what Joker looked like before he fell in that toxic waste. He would recognize him almost immediately.”

“You want us to help keep him safe?”

Harley shook her head. “My baby’s capable of fightin’ Joker if he has to and I’m gonna teach him everything I know. I need you to look into a few organizations for me. I don’t think they’re legal and your little Justice League bullshit will cream all over it.”

“The organization hunting Danny?”

“The Ghost Investigation Ward, Jack and Maddie Fenton were going to give Danny over to them once they were done experimenting on them. So, I need you to look into both of them. Jazz, their daughter, also mentioned somethin’ to me called the Anti Ecto Acts,” she said with a huff. “Makes my son illegal and declares him non-sentient. Please look into it for me, I’ll owe ya one.”

“Hn,” Batman said in agreement. Harley let out a squeal and hugged the vigilante tight. 

“Thank you,” she said. “I didn’t know what I was gonna do, Danny doesn’t approve of my methods of things.”

“Good, maybe your son will keep you in line, Harley,” Batman said with a small smile. Harley pulled away from the bat and ruffled her hair. 

“I gotta go, wanna be there when he wakes up so he’s not scared. Maybe I’ll let you meet him one day,” she said with a small smile before she jumped off of the roof and landed on the fire escape. 

“You have a soft spot for Harley,” Red Robin teased through the comms.

“Of course I do,” Batman said, staring off at the woman running back to her home. “She’s been trying ever since she got away from the Joker, that's all I could ever want from her.”

“I’m already looking into the information she gave you,” Oracle said quietly. “B, you’re not going to like this at all. Poor Harley, poor Danny,” she said sadly. 

“Send over everything you can find, I’ll be looking into it. Hood, if you could keep an eye on Harley and her son, I would be thankful.”

“The Jokers spawn?”

“From what I’m getting from Harley, I don’t think the son knows and would probably be horrified if he learned the truth,” Batman said quietly before he grappled from the building and back to the batmobile. “I need all hands on deck for this, can you imagine what would happen if Joker got a hold of his son who has powers? It wouldn’t be good.”

This situation was going to be a lot more complicated than any of them would imagine, that would be for sure. 

Danny awoke slowly, feeling arms wrapped around his waist. He felt his core purr in contentment as he snuggled closer to the warm body beside him. 

“Mornin’ baby,” Harley said softly. Suddenly the last forty eight hours came crashing down on Danny, his body stiffened slightly before he melted back in his mother’s embrace. 

“What am I going to do?” He whispered quietly, not wanting to open his eyes and fully face reality. 

Harley let out a hum and pet Danny’s hair softly. “It’ll be okay. I have some friends looking into that organization you told me about,” she said softly. “And I’ve been thinkin’ about what we can do to keep you safe.”

“I have powers, I can fight any of the rogues here who attack me, Mom,” he said, letting out a breath. It felt weird calling Harley mom rather than the aunt Harley he had referred to her his entire life. But it had also felt right. This was his mother. She had accepted Danny with open arms and jumped into action when Danny needed her. It was more than Danny had expected from the woman but it made his core feel fluttery and nice. 

“I know  you do. But, you’re not trained, you don’t know how to fight humans, just your ghosts folks,” Harley teased, poking her son in the ribs. “If you’re gonna live in Gotham you need to know how to properly throw a punch, how to be safe. And who better to teach you than the Queen of Crime herself?”

Danny snorted. “You’re reformed,” he shot back. “Aunt Ivy already told me you’ve turned into a boring old lady.”

Harley scoffed at that. “Excuse you,” she said, flicking her son’s nose. “I am not! I do things! I’m cool! I may not be workin’ with Mistah J anymore but I still like to go out and cause trouble and have fun. And you’re gonna be there with me doin’ the same thing.”

“Really?”

“Yes!” Harley shouted petulantly. “I mean Ivy said we also needta put you in school and we will but you, my little ghostie baby, you need to learn how to let loose and have some fun,” she said, wrapping Danny in her arms. 

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Anything.”

“Is Joker my dad?” Danny asked softly, resting his chin on Harley’s shoulder. 

“He’s your sperm donor, but he will never be your father,” Harley said with a snarl. “And we’re going to do everything in our power to keep you safe from him.”

Danny hummed and closed his eyes. He had his suspicions but nonetheless he felt something crack in his core. Dan was a reality for a reason and it was absolutely because of who his parents were. He would just do what he could to make sure Dan never happened and keep himself on the straight and narrow. Might be a little difficult with his mother’s skewed morals but he had time to figure it out later. Right now, he was just going to lay in bed with his mom and let her dote over him for a few hours and try not to think about what had happened to him.

Chapter Text

After laying in bed with his mother for another hour the two talking quietly to one another, Harley managed to drag her son out of bed and into the kitchen where Ivy and Jazz had already started on breakfast. 

“Good morning you two,” Jazz called, watching as Ivy flipped a pancake with ease. “Aunt Pam is making banana pancakes and I’ve got coffee brewing.”

Harley let out a squeal and ran towards the coffee pot and poured a large mug full of the stuff before she hopped onto the counter beside her girlfriend and swung her legs. 

“How are you feeling this morning, Danny?” Aunt Pam said, turning to look over the teenager. 

Danny grinned and lifted up his shirt to show that there was no trace of the incisions and the fishing wire was gone completely. “Completely healed over. Now the mental wounds? Those aren’t going away for a while,” he said, snagging his mom’s coffee and took a long drink. 

“Well, don’t you worry honey bee, I’m gettin you into therapy ASAP,” Harley said, booping her son’s nose and snatched her coffee back. “Now go get your own coffee you little monster.”

Danny stuck out his tongue and smiled when his sister poured him a cup. He murmured his thanks and took a long sip. “Do I have to go to therapy? Is that really necessary?”

“Yes,” the three women answered at once, causing the teenager to scowl in annoyance.

“Which reminds me,” Harley said, pointing a finger in the air. “As a responsible mother, we need to talk about a few things,” she sang happily. 

Danny took a seat at the kitchen table just as Ivy passed him a plate of pancakes. “What are we needing to talk about?” He asked, pouring copious amounts of syrup on his plate. Jazz wrinkled her nose in disgust as she sat beside her brother and poured a normal amount on her own. 

“The first thing on the list is school!” The blond said, swinging her feet. “Now, I know you’re goin’ through somethin’ traumatic and gettin’ cut open by your parents isn’t just something you can shrug off. Which is why we’re gonna look at some therapy options. This is for both of you, you have trauma, what you went through is a traumatic experience and we’re going to get it taken care of. But you also still need to go to school, both of you. Danny you’re sixteen, you should be enjoyin’ your junior year of high school without any worries. Jazzy-Kins, you were going to college online, is that right?”

“I was, yeah, it’s been easier so I could take care of Danny,” Jazz said softly. 

“Well, no more of that. You are relieved of your duties of taking care of Danny,” Harley told her seriously. “Not to get my responsible pants on but I’m his mother, Ivy is his step-mom. We can take care of him, okay? You’re nineteen years old, you should be able to live your life and be a silly nineteen year old. That’s what you’re going to do. Ivy is workin’ with some friends to get some new identities made up for you. Danny of course is taking my last name, and will be Daniel Quinzel. But I wanted to check with you, you’re unfortunately not my kid so it’s not the same. Do you want to be a Quinzel?"

Jazz was quiet for a few moments as she mulled over the question. Danny could practically see the gears turning in her head as she thought out all of her options and weight what would be the best decision. “I know that I’m not your biological daughter, and Danny isn’t my biological brother. But we’re siblings, and that isn’t ever going to change. If you’ll have me, I would be honored to be a Quinzel,” she said quietly.

“I would be honored to have you as one of my kiddos!” Harley exclaimed, a wide grin on her face as she swung her feet. “So, if you want, Gotham U has one of the best psychology programs in the country. We’ll get ya transferred over there and you can start classes again.”

Jazz frowned. “I don’t think I can afford that, Aunt Harley.”

“It’s a good thing you’re not payin’ for it then, huh?” She retorted before her eyes landed on Danny. “And you, you’re going back to high school sweetie, no son of mine is going to be a highschool dropout.”

Danny puffed out his cheeks in a pout. “Do I have to?”

“Yes you do,” Ivy said, ruffling his hair. “Harles and I are out all day and you need an education.”

“What do you guys do?” Jazz asked, looking between the girlfriends. 

“I run a plant sanctuary in the middle of Gotham. Harley helps me out most of the time and when she’s not she’s just being a general nuisance,” Ivy said with a shrug, crossing her arms across her chest. 

“I also take care of my hyenas! My babies Bud and Lou, they’re in their room right now but I take them on walks and make sure they’re happy and healthy. I’m still tryin’ to figure out what exactly I want to do with my life, ya know? I mean I’m forty years old and I don’t really know what I want to do anymore. Don’t wanna keep up that villain lifestyle but can’t really be a practicing psychiatrist when everyone thinks you’re insane.”

“But, aren’t you insane?” Danny asked hesitantly, giving his mom a curious look. 

The blond tilted her head as she thought about it. “At first? Absolutely. Mr. J had me dunked in that toxic waste shit and I lost my mind. But the last eight years? I’ve been pretty steady, takin’ meds and workin’ through a lot of the shit I’ve been dealing with. PTSD is a bitch but I think I’ve been doing good. Not insane, just a little wacky, I think,” Harley said with a hum. 

Danny grinned. “I’m happy for you, mom. Maybe we can figure out what we want to do together.”

“What do you mean?” Ivy asked, taking a seat beside the teenager. 

“Well, in Amity I was sorta a hero,” he said, staring down at his pancakes as his mother and stepmother stared at him in horror. “One of the things about becoming a ghost is you have an obsession. Mine is protection, I have to give in to my obsession or else I get sick. But, Gotham already has a lot of vigilantes taking care of things here and I don’t want to intrude on their territory.”

Harley let out a hum as she thought about it. “Can’t believe a son of mine was a hero,” she said with a shudder. “But, I think we can figure it out.”

“Can you explain more about the ghost thing?” Ivy asked, looking between the three. “Unlike you three, I’m not as familiar with the Fentons.”

“Jacky and Maddie study ghosts, otherwise known as ectoplasmic beings,” Harley said. “It’s been his obsession since we were kids. But the last ten years they got a little more obsessive and dangerous with it. Last time I visited, there were actual ghosts comin’ out of the portal they made.”

“Danny died in the portal when he was fourteen,” Jazz said softly. “The theory is that the mix of ectoplasm–what ghosts are made of and electricity killed him and then brought him back, effectively rearranging his molecules. When he woke up he was half ghost, half human. Half alive and half dead.”

“Think like schrodinger's cat,” Danny stated around a mouth full of pancakes. “It gave me powers like being able to transform between forms, I can walk through walls, disappear, and fly. Plus like a slew of other things. I need ectoplasm for my ghost side to survive and my human side is mostly adapted to my ghost side, so my heart beat is slower, I don’t need to breathe, it’s mostly out of habit. I’m mostly dead, even in this body, the only difference is that I am continuing to age rather than decompose.”

“So, do you require certain things as a ghost to survive aside from ectoplasm and taking care of your obsession?” Ivy asked him before taking a bite of her own breakfast. 

“Those are the biggest two, I can make portals when I’m at full strength so I can get as much ectoplasm as I need and hopefully we can figure out a way I can take care of my obsession without stepping on the bats toes.”

“Well, before we do anything, we’re going to make sure you get all the training you can get,” Harley told him. “Ivy and I are going to train you to the best of our ability to make sure you’re as safe as possible. We’re also going to start making plans.”

“Plans?” Danny asked, confused. 

At this, Harley’s face fell slightly. “Joker is going to find out about you eventually. He’s obsessive and crazy and he keeps an eye on me at all times. Especially if we have you goin’ by Daniel Quinzel, he’s going to know you’re mine.”

“So what’re we going to do about it?” Danny asked around a mouthful of food. 

“We’re going to make sure you can hold your own against him in your human form. And please, baby, never let him know about your ghost powers, he would do anything he can to use and manipulate you to help him,” Harley said, reaching across the table to cup her son’s face in a scarred and tattoo covered hand. “I have the bats keeping an eye on him too but I want to tell you something very important."

“What is it?” Danny said with a nervous swallow. He hadn’t really thought about what it meant that Joker was his biological father. Sure, it confirmed some things. Like, yeah, Dan happened because he had mixed with Vlad when he became a full ghost, but Danny was convinced that having Joker’s DNA had something to do with it too. But he hadn’t thought further than that, hadn’t really thought what it meant that he was the Joker’s son. It caused a shudder to race down his spine as he thought of the implications. 

“If Joker ever tries to approach you or touch you or even looks your way, kill him ,” Harley said with a snarl. “I don’t care what morals you have, Danny, if he tries to even look in your direction, you have full permission to murder him in cold blood.”

Danny nodded his head seriously. “I do hate clowns,” he said and tilted his head to the side, ignoring the look of horror from his sister. “If I see Joker and he recognizes me as your kid or tries to hurt me, I’ll kill him.”

An evil, familiar smile formed on his mother’s face and Danny was reminded that once upon his time, Harley was the Gotham Queen of Crime and her morals weren’t always black and white. But, maybe that was a good thing, Danny’s morals weren’t black and white either and maybe he could learn from his mother. She had experiences that Danny couldn’t even imagine going through, and as wacky as she might be, she was also a genius in that crazy brain of hers. If she wasn’t, she wouldn’t have gotten away with as much as she had since she had gone from being Dr. Harleen Quinzel to Harley Quinn. His mother was one of a kind and Danny was beyond ready to learn from both her and the famous Poison Ivy.

Chapter Text

Danny and Jazz had been living with Harley for four days now and Harley was in heaven having the kiddos living with her. Jazz had been officially enrolled in Gotham University and they had gone ahead and bought her everything she would need for the fall semester in a few months. Danny had been dragging his feet about school and had pouted when Harley had taken him back to school shopping. Unlike Jazz who wouldn’t be starting in the Fall, as soon as Harley managed to finish getting custody of Danny, he was starting school in the middle of the spring semester. 

Right now the three of them were gathered around in the living room floor painting nails and gossiping. Harley would have never realized just how much fun it would be to have two teenagers livin’ in her house but it was amazing. 

“So, what classes have you taken for psych so far?” She asked Jazz, watching as her son painstakingly painted Harley’s nails a bright neon green color, his little tongue stuck out the corner of his mouth as he concentrated on the task at hand. 

Jazz furrowed her brow as she finished painting her toenails a fun turquoise color that matched her eyes. “Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychology, Abnormal Psychology, Sex and Gender studies. The rest have all just been gen ed classes,” she stated before putting the brush back in the pot of nail polish. 

“I loved taking Abnormal Psychology!” Harley gushed, waving her hands around, earning her a glare from her son as he snatched her hand back. “It was actually the class that made me decide I wanted to focus on mental illness in the first place.”

“It was really interesting,” Jazz agreed. “I’ve been torn on what I want to focus on when I finish undergrad, part of me is really interested in child psychology specifically, but I’m also interested in focusing on trauma and how to handle it.”

“You still have time to figure it out. You’ve only completed your first year of college. Take some more psych classes and you’ll figure it out,” Harley assured just as her phone started ringing loudly. Danny let out a sigh and let go of his mother’s hand as she tackled her phone and answered quickly. 

“Harley Quinn speakin’ how can I help ya?” She sang, smiling when the kids snickered. 

“How are the kids settling in?” A familiar deep voice asked and Harley grinned. 

“Brucie!” She crooned. She had figured out Batman’s secret identity a few years before when she had first started helping the bats out after Harley went off the deep end for a little bit and worked with Jason Woodrue of all fuckin’ people. Turnin’ people into plant animal hybrids was definitely where Harley drew the line. She didn’t want to be some weirdo plant animal, she liked being human, thank you very much. “They’re doin’ great. Danny’s been paintin’ my nails this morning after we had breakfast and then later today we’re gonna go shopping for a new wardrobe,” she said happily. “Now, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I have all the paperwork to show that Danny is officially Daniel James Quinzel,” Bruce told him kindly. “I also wanted to offer assistance. Due to the situation with his biological father finding out about him, I was thinking he could go to school with Damian.”

Harley raised an eyebrow. “Gotham Academy? That’s a little bougie for my taste.”

“I’ll foot the bill but I think having someone else there to keep him safe from his biological father would be the safest bet,” Bruce told her. 

Harley let out a hum as she weighed her options. “I think that would be a good idea. And hey, I’m already payin’ for Jazzy-Kins tuition, you paying for Danny makes it a little cheaper for me.”

“Jasmine Quinzel managed to get a full ride scholarship to Gotham University, pays for everything, including room and board,” Bruce told her. Harley glanced at Jazz for a moment and smiled softly. 

“Thanks, Brucie,” she said quietly. “I owe ya one.”

“Just stay out of trouble,” he said before hanging up the phone. Harley set the phone down and smiled at her kids. Danny was pouting, Jazz looked beyond confused. 

“Well, you’ll be gettin’ a fun letter in the mail soon Jazz!” Harley said cheerfully before her eyes landed on Danny. “Why are you poutin’ like a little baby?”

Danny crossed his arms and let out a huff. “I don’t need protection, Mom. I can take care of myself.”

“I know you can,” Harley said patiently, praying for patience. “But, a little extra help isn’t a bad thing.”

“You don’t get it,” Danny said with a scoff, rolling his eyes. “It’s not about help, it’s about the fact that this is my business and I don’t need someone who isn’t meant to be involved knowing anything about me. I don’t know who the fuck Damian is, but I don’t need his help. Joker’s my issue to deal with, not some random guy’s.”

“Danny,” Jazz warned, only for Harley to give her a look. 

“I understand that you don’t want it but Damian would be able to help keep you safe and that’s something you need right now, I know you think you can handle this shit on your own but you gotta remember somethin’ Danny, you’re in Gotham now. Shit isn’t the same as it is in Amity Park, these people are human, they aren’t ghosts and they are insane. They don’t care about how much they hurt you, Mistah J won’t give a shit about you beyond using and abusing you, I’m not lettin him hurt you.”

“And he won’t, believe it or not, I can take care of myself! I’ve been doing it ever since you abandoned me with people who killed me!” Danny snapped, feeling anger well up in his chest. Who was Harley to decide what Danny could and couldn’t handle? She only ever came to visit him once a year! She didn’t know shit about Danny or what he could handle. His heart dropped, though as Harley’s face fell. “Mom-I uh, I’m so-” Danny just cut himself off and disappeared from the room quickly, unable to look at the heartbroken expression on his mother’s face or the look of disapproval on Jazz’s. He was still angry and if he stayed, the argument would only get worse. 

Danny flew through the skies of Gotham before he landed on a building roof and let out an annoyed groan, turning back to human and fell onto his back as he let out a breath. He fucked up. 

He knew that, he was already more than aware that what he had said was screwed up. He shouldn’t have thrown that in his mom’s face. She didn’t know that the Fenton’s would be the reason Danny died and came back. She was just trying to protect her son as best as she could. 

But still.

Danny couldn’t help but be bitter in some way. He wondered what his life would have been like if his mother had kept him. 

“Probably an utter shit show,” a voice said. Danny opened his eyes and found a red mask staring down at him. “What are you doing up here, kid?”

“I said that out loud?” He asked. 

“You did, now answer my question,” the man said, waiting on Danny’s response. Danny sat up and took in the appearance of the person in front of him. He wore a black leather jacket, a red helmet and kevlar. 

Red Hood. 

Another one of the bats. 

“Let me guess, my mom has you babysitting me too,” he said bitterly. 

“Didn’t answer my question, Kid,” Red Hood said, crossing his arms as he waited. 

“We got into an argument about my safety,” Danny muttered. He moved so that his legs were swinging out on the side of the roof. Red Hood took a seat next to him hesitantly. “I’m going to take a shot in the dark and assume that you already know everything about me.”

Danny didn’t wait for Red Hood to respond before he went on. “I’ve always known that Harley Quinn was my mom and I’ve always had a sinking suspicion that Joker was my biological father. Which sucks by the way? The kid with a clown phobia born to a fucking clown and harlequin. I’m just relieved mom doesn’t dress like she used to,” he said with a humorless laugh. “She confirmed that he’s my dad and she’s terrified he’s going to get a hold of me. But, I don’t think she gets it.”

“What doesn’t she get?”

Danny looked at the vigilante, a frown on his face. “I hate him, Red Hood. I hate Joker more than anyone will ever understand. It’s his fault my life is even like this and he ruined my mother’s life. He’s the reason my mom had to abandon me, the reason my mom is the way she is. He’s a shitty person who has hurt so many people and I know it sounds crazy but I know that if I ever snapped, I would turn out a lot like him in some ways and that terrifies me. Do you have any idea what it’s like to have to constantly be worried that you’re going to turn out just like your parents? To live in constant terror that you’re going to be Joker Junior? Or the guilt that I feel about the fact that my father hurt so many fucking people? That my mom did? I mean I know she’s reformed and a lot of it was because of Joker’s brainwashing but she still hurt people.”

“Shit kid, that’s a lot,” Red Hood said with a breath. 

“And that’s not even the worst of it! I have to live with the knowledge that if Joker ever found me, he would immediately want to use me for his stupid schemes or whatever and it’s bullshit. I shouldn’t be stuck worrying that some crazed fucking clown finding out he has a son in the world. And now I have all these fucking babysitters to protect me from him and it’s bullshit. I’m not a murderer and in most circumstances I would never be able to kill someone. But Joker? I want to put him six feet under just so that once he dies I can give him the punishment he deserves,” Danny said with a snarl. “People think death is the easy way out but in death? They have to deal with me most of the time and Joker’s on my fucking shit list.”

Jason thanked his lucky stars that Danny couldn’t see him behind his helmet. He had been wary, especially when he saw the similarities between the two. Danny had Joker’s jawline, he had his build, his smile was the same–which holy hell that was jarring. But that was where the similarities ended. He had Harley’s nose and her blue eyes. He sounded more like Harley. But most importantly, Danny was his own person and that was something he needed to remember.  He had been hesitant to keep an eye on Harley’s kid, especially once he learned he was the son of Joker of all fucking people but now? Now he was elated. This was perfect. Danny probably hated Joker just as much as he did and together? They could destroy that fucking clown with ease. 

He hadn’t expected the kid to hate the clown as much as he did but now it all made sense, especially when for once since Jason had come back from the dead, the pits weren’t clouding his judgment. If anything, the pits were screaming at him to protect this kid, to do anything he could to take care of him and protect him at all costs. 

“I don’t want to drag other people into my problems. Joker is my responsibility,” Danny whispered softly, a familiar glint in his eyes that Jason knew all too well. 

“He is definitely not your responsibility. As his son-”

“I’m not his son,” Danny snarled, his eyes flashed green in a way that was all too familiar. Maybe he and Danny were more alike than he had thought. “He’s my sperm donor and nothing more.”

“Either way, it isn’t your fault or your responsibility,” Jason told him seriously, taking his helmet off to better look Danny in his eye. “You did not ask to be born to Joker and Harley, you didn’t ask for any of this shit but it happened anyway. All that you can do is strive to be a better person, every fucking day of your life. You don’t have to atone for the sins of your parents, their decisions aren’t yours.

Danny stared at Jason for a moment before his eyes started to water and he looked away from the vigilante who stared down at him with the most intense gaze.  “I’m scared that one day I’m going to look in the mirror and all I’m going to see is the Joker,” Danny whispered, staring out at the city unseeing. 

“That’ll never happen,” a familiar voice said from behind them. “Danny, baby, even before Mistah J became Joker he was evil,” Harley said, walking forward. Jason gave her a nod and watched warily as the ex-rogue took a seat on the other side of Danny.  She let out a breath. “Before he became Joker he was Jack Napier, he was emotionally unstable from a very young age. But, he was highly intelligent, he was amazing at art, science, and chemistry. But, he wasn’t stable, when he was fifteen, he committed his first crime. He was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon.”

“Then I’m already like him,” Danny murmured. “I love science and chemistry.”

“Baby, that isn’t the same. Jack was rotten from the very start, you’ve never been rotten,” Harley said, cupping Danny’s face in her hands. “I’m sorry I’m bein’ overprotective it’s just-”

“He hurt you a lot,” Danny said quietly, pressing his hand to the hand rest on his cheek. “You just don’t want to see the same thing happen to me. I understand, and I’m sorry, mom. You didn’t abandon me. You gave me a chance that I wouldn’t have had any other way.”

Jason coughed, gaining the attention of both Quinzels. “If I’m not interrupting,” he said slowly. “You’re worried about Danny’s safety, right Harles?”

Harley nodded once, a stern look in her eyes. “He’s never hurting my boy.”

“Let him be my sidekick. He’ll get the training he needs, and I’ll be there protecting him. Kid’s also going to school with Damian, right? He’ll be in good hands between the two. And if anyone understand having anger towards that fucking clown, it’s me.”

Harley gave the man a calculating look, tilting her head to the side. “Danny, how’d you like being the sidekick to a crime lord vigilante? You’ll still be gettin’ some trainin’ from me and Ivy but maybe you can learn a thing or two from Red Hood.”

Danny gave the two a wide grin, one that while seemed familiar to a different smile, gave a completely different reaction. Joker’s smile was terrifying and unsettling, the same smile on Danny’s face was pure and unadulterated joy. Jason smiled back, feeling the pits flutter inside of him. Maybe this would help both of them get over their clown trauma.

Chapter Text

Danny sighed as he followed his mother up the steps of the large manor. Rich people always gave him the ick after dealing with Vlad and the Manson’s for so long, but his mother swore that Bruce Wayne was different compared to any rich person Danny had ever met before. Which Danny found hard to believe but he trusted his mother. She pulled him up the steps and knocked on the door, three hard raps before the large, mahogany door swung open and an older man stared down at the two curiously. 

“Ah, Ms. Harley, Bruce said we were expecting you,” the older man said in a posh British accent, Danny had to refrain from sniggering, he just sounded to fancy. 

“Alfie! Good to see ya, this is my son, Danny,” she said, throwing a tattooed arm around Danny’s shoulders. 

Alfred smiled at the teenager and held out a hand. “It is nice to meet you, Mr. Daniel, my name is Alfred Pennyworth, I am the butler for the Wayne family.”

Danny hesitantly shook the man’s hand. “Danny is fine,” he said awkwardly. “It’s nice to meet you too.”

Alfred gave him a polite smile before he led the mother and son into the manor. “Master Bruce decided that in the best interest of everyone involved you all meet in the cave so that you had the ultimate level of privacy.

Harley let out a harsh laugh. “I figured as much, Batsy doesn’t let me use that entrance anymore, though. Too many pranks from me and Barb,” she said with a snicker and pulled Danny along. 

“Rich people always have a secret lair,” Danny muttered, shaking his head in dismay before the dots finally connected. “Wait, mom, you’re telling me that Bruce Wayne , is Batman? I thought the guy was an idiot?”

“He is,” a familiar voice said from behind them as Alfred led them to the entrance of the Batcave. Danny spun around and grinned. 

“Jason!” He exclaimed. After his breakdown in front of Red Hood and the conversation about taking Danny has his sidekick, Jason had revealed his secret identity, saying that it was important that Danny knew who he would be working with. The two had another conversation that they would be holding today after Danny met the rest of the Wayne family. “What are you doing here?”

Jason made a face as the teenager hugged him tight. “I’m one of Bruce’s charity cases,” he said, patting Danny’s back before the sixteen year old pulled away. “Figured I better show up while Harles briefed the bats on the new situation and support my new sidekick.”

Danny grinned up at the older man and nodded. “Thanks, I’ve been kinda nervous. All mom said was that we were going to talk to Bruce Wayne about my situation with my adoptive parents and nothing else.

Jason glanced over at Harley who just grinned deviously as she rocked on her heels. “I think she also just wanted to surprise you,” Jason said as Alfred opened the clock entrance and they all stepped through. Once they made it to the cave Danny let out a gasp as he took in the appearance of what was Batman’s headquarters. 

“This is so cool!” He exclaimed, looking around at everything in amazement before his eyes landed on the Batcomputer. “Ancients, she’s beautiful, can I touch it?”

“No can do sweetie pie, Batsy doesn’t trust us rogues to touch his precious computer,” Harley said, wrapping her arm around her son. “Even if I am reformed,” she said with an eye roll. 

Jason snorted. “You’re not allowed to touch the Batcomputer because the last time you were down here you put a virus on it that took Oracle and Red Robin weeks to get rid of.”

Harley snickered. “Oracle deserved it for canceling girl’s night.”

“I didn’t cancel! Your ex boyfriend tried to cause trouble and I had to help,” a red head who looked way too similar to Jazz argued, exclaimed as she rolled over to meet Danny and Harley. She smiled at Danny. “The name’s Oracle, or when I’m not behind the computer it’s Barbara Gordon. Your mom and I have been best friends for a long time.”

Danny looked between the two in surprise. Barbara looked so put together compared to his mom. How did she deal with Harley?

Harley simply rolled her eyes. “We have not been best friends for a long time. Back when Oracle was still just Batgirl she drove me absolutely insane demanding that we become friends.”

“I was the one who got Harley to stop being a criminal,” Barbara said smugly. “And then she helped me form the Birds of Prey, which she’s an honorary member of.”

“No I’m not,” Harley hissed, glaring at the woman who just casually hit her in the leg with her wheelchair. 

“She is,” Barbara said with a smile. “Now come on, everyone is waiting for us in the debriefing room. Everyone’s out of costume still so Danny can get to know everyone better.”

The mother and son nodded before following the two vigilantes back into a closed off room, inside was a large conference table with a screen behind it, a projector hung from the ceiling. 

Danny’s steps faltered as he took in all the people waiting for them, he felt a hand clasp his shoulder and looked up to find Jason giving him a supportive smile. The teenager steeled himself and walked in ready to get this over with. Bruce Wayne stood up at the front and gave Danny a polite smile. 

“Danny, my name’s Bruce Wayne, your mother has told me a lot about you,” he said, holding out a hand for Danny to shake. 

“Yeah, my mom hasn’t said a word about you,” Danny grumbled, shaking the man’s hand. “Didn’t even bother telling me that we were meeting the bats.”

“Sounds about right,” Bruce said dryly, giving Harley a look as the woman sat beside Barbara and swung her feet, happily talking to the vigilante about Ancients only knew what. “I’ll fill you in. We’re here so that you can give us any information we need on the Ghost Investigation Ward, the Fentons, and the Anti-Ecto acts so we can better help get rid of them. Everyone here is wanting to help to the best of our ability, we just need any information you’re willing to give us."

Danny nodded and looked around the room warily. 

“How ‘bout I tell you who everyone is first, kiddo,” Jason said beside him. “Everyone, this is Danny Quinzel, my new sidekick. I’m going to be training him and working with him in Crime Alley. Danny, the first guy who looks like he’s going to pass out any second is Tim, he’s also the vigilante Red Robin. Super genius when it comes to detective work, complete idiot otherwise. Can’t take care of himself for shit.”

“Hey!” Tim squawked from his seat as Danny snickered. 

“Next is Dick Grayson, his day job is being a pig for the Bludhaven police department, but at night he goes as Nightwing, the most annoying one of all of us,” Jason said, pointing to the next guy. Dick just glared and flipped Jason off. 

“I’m a cop,” he muttered. 

“Same difference, right?” Danny asked nervously, causing Jason to let out a loud laugh beside him. 

“Next is Stephanie Brown, she’s actually pretty cool, I think the two of you will get along. She thinks your mom is the shit. She’s also known as Spoiler.”

“Harley Quinn is probably the coolest person ever,” Stephanie defended before giving Danny a smile. “If you’re as chaotic as your mom, we’ll get along just fine. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Next is Cass, she’s our sister. She’s probably the best one out of all of us but she’s also an absolute menace, don’t let her sweet smile fool you. She’s also known as Orphan,” Jason said as Cass gave them a bright smile and signed something rather quickly. 

Danny quickly signed back, smiling at the way Cass’ face lit up even more. 

“Adopting him,” Cass said happily. 

Jason let out a gasp. “Too late, I already did! Danny’s mine!” He exclaimed, pulling Danny to his chest. Danny blushed and pushed away from his new mentor. 

“Stop it,” he muttered, feeling embarrassed. 

Jason just chuckled. “Next is Duke, he’s probably the most normal out of all of us and he’s a meta. His powers let him see things differently than we do,” he said and looked over at the young man who was staring at Danny in horror. “What do you see?”

“Danny, man, you’re probably cool as hell but you’re terrifying. Your aura is huge and green and you have this monster like hanging over you.”

Danny brightened at that. “Oh, that’s not a monster! That’s just me,” he said. “I’ll explain later. You’re Signal, right?”

Duke nodded his head once, his eyes still wide in fright. 

“And last but not least, the Demon Brat. Damian is our youngest sibling, he’s the one you’ll be going to school with and the most current Robin,” Jason explained. “He’s a little stabby but overall I think you’ll get along with him.”

Danny looked over and nearly melted as his eyes landed on Damian. He was, well he was beautiful. It was the only way Danny could even bother to describe the boy. He had piercing green eyes that Danny felt like were looking right through him, black hair that was pushed back out of his face and a slight scowl on his lips. He was absolutely built but not in the same way as Jason who was a fucking tank, more lithe, like he had the body of someone who could get around completely unnoticed. He had what looked to be a swimmers build with long, muscle-y arms, broad shoulders and from what Danny could tell through Damian’s shirt, a defined torso.

If this was who his mom had babysitting Danny at school, he wasn’t sure if he would survive. The gay panic was already hitting him hard.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Quinzel,” Damian said and oh Ancients, his voice. The slight tilt of an accent that danced on Damian’s tongue had Danny ready to melt in place. So proper, so pretty. 

“And you already know me and Babs, as well as Bruce otherwise known as Batman,” Jason said. “Now it’s your turn,” he said, shoving Danny forward. 

“Oh right,” he murmured. “Hi, I’m Danny and I’m dead,” he said awkwardly, still unable to pull his eyes away from Damian. His mother snickered beside him. “Oh shit sorry. I’m half-dead,” he clarified. 

“Can you explain that a little better?” Bruce asked patiently, not noticing the fact that Danny was absolutely dying in the presence of his youngest son.

Alright focus, Quinzel, he could do this. He could stop lusting over Damian for five minutes and explain everything to the people in front of him. They were here to help and he needed that. 

“Sorry,” he said with a cough and finally pulled his eyes away from Damian who was smiling at him in amusement. “So, as you know, I’m Harley’s son. Uh, she gave me to her step brother when I was born so that he could take care of me. The Fentons are scientists who study ecto-biology and the existence of ghosts. What mom didn’t realize was that they weren’t actually the safest people to leave me with. And uh, when I was fourteen I was messing around in their lab and my friends dared me to go into one of my parents inventions. I’m telling this all wrong but basically, they were building a portal to a new world, one full of ghosts and other beings that were unlike anything they had ever seen. But it didn’t work. I thought it was completely safe to go in so I suited up in a hazmat suit and went inside. I uh, I tripped. Hit a button, the portal turned on with me inside and killed me,” he said. 

Danny scanned over the faces of everyone sitting in front of him, each one a different level of shock or horror. He sighed and quickly two rings of light wrapped around him and he changed forms. “It didn’t kill me correctly, though. We think that the electricity and ectoplasm killed me and brought me back simultaneously and turned me into this. A half. Half dead, half alive, a ghost and a human. When the portal opened,” Danny said before he floated up and sat cross legged. “It also started to release ghosts. I thought it was my responsibility to capture them and send them back any time they caused trouble since I was the one who opened the portal in the first place. I became a vigilante named Phantom.”

Jason and Harley snickered at his hero name, eliciting a glare from Danny who shot at his mother with a small ectoblast, making the woman shriek and fall out of her chair. 

“For two years I captured any ghost that caused trouble, managed to defeat the former king of the Infinite Realms, and become the Prince of the Infinite Realms. I’ll become king when I turn eighteen but I still have a while before that happens. Um. My friends helped me make a powerpoint if I ever had to show the Justice League or anything,” he said awkwardly before Bruce turned on the projector and the powerpoint started. 

“This is a lot to go over and I feel like I’m about to like, completely bombard you guys with information,” he said nervously. 

Tim waved his hand. “We’re used to this, it’s fine. Tell us what we need to know.”

Danny nodded before he started sharing everything that he knew about the Infinite Realms, what being a ghost was like, who the GIW were, why his adoptive parents were hunting him. He went over everything, trying to stay calm as he met his mother’s fiery gaze. She was ready to burn the world down for Danny, he could even see it now. The guilt that burned in her eyes for ever allowing her baby to live with the Fentons in the first place. 

Finally, Danny finished his presentation and took a long drink from the water that Alfred had set in front of him at some point. 

He looked in the eyes of each vigilante and sighed. “I know that this is a lot to take in. It’s hard to imagine and it’s scary to think about, especially considering how powerful I am,” he said and closed his eyes for a moment. “I know that most, if not all of you are worried about my parentage. And I really don’t blame you; I’m the son of Harley Quinn and the Joker. Two of the craziest, most violent villains–no offense mom.”

“None taken Sweetie Pie! I’m reformed now!” She exclaimed happily, waving at her son.

Danny just chuckled. “But, I want to assure all of you; I know what happens if I snap and I”ve seen that future and it’s something that I’m doing everything to avoid. I have contingencies in place for if that ever happens and I fully plan on giving them to Batman. Mom and Aunt Pam already know them and Aunt Pam even knows how to create them to stop me. I don’t want to turn out like the Joker did and I am never going to let that happen to me,” he said seriously, glaring out at the vigilantes. “He may share the same DNA as me, but I am not my father and I never will be. So get that thought out of your head now.”

Damian Wayne stared at the being in front of him in absolute awe. After Quinzel had finished his presentation, explaining the issues he had dealt with, the powers that he held and all that he had gone through, Damian was amazed. He had already found the teenager beyond attractive when Bruce had first shown him a picture of Quinzel and told him that he would be helping protect Danny in the event that this Ghost Investigation Ward or the Fentons showed up. 

But now it was more than just a base level petty attraction. Daniel Quinzel was amazing and Damian wanted him all for himself. How could he not? Daniel had gone through many things that Damian himself struggled with. Parents who cast a shadow upon him that caused others to make opinions about him before they even truly knew who he was? Parents who had tried to murder him simply for not turning out how they expected?

Daniel Quinzel even had a clone created after him. Damian had automatically felt a strong kinship to the boy in front of him and he knew that the more time they spent together, the more that would grow. 

Daniel was strong and had survived more than his fair share of trials and tribulations. It certainly did not help that he was immeasurably beautiful. He had the clearest, most piercing crystal blue eyes Damian had ever seen. A strong jawline and sharp smile that had captured Damian from the first chuckle that the sixteen year old had released. He had a lean physique, perfect for Damian to simply throw the teenager over his shoulder and carry him wherever he wished. He was the perfect size for Damian to hold in his arms and protect. His fingers itched for a pencil or a piece of charcoal so that he could draw even just an outline of the beautiful creature in front of him. 

Daniel looked out at the vigilantes before him, his mouth set in a firm scowl as he waited for anyone to say anything against what he had just said. Damian felt his very being ache at the tired, world weary look in the other teenager’s eyes. It was a look that Damian had seen quite a few times when he himself would look in the mirror. His hands clenched at his sides as he felt the desire to hold the boy close and protect him, to make sure that no one would ever hurt him again. 

“Does anyone have any questions?” He asked, eyes scanning over each and every person. 

Damian’s hand rose without his permission. “You said that you will be Red Hood’s sidekick, correct?” 

Daniel nodded once in response. “Yeah, I think Red Hood hates my dad just as much as I do so it kinda made sense. I’ve been doing the hero gig for two years and don’t particularly want to stop. He’s going to train me a little first since I’m mostly used to fighting ghosts and humans are unfortunately a little more breakable.”

Damian nodded before he looked at Bruce. “Father, I would like to request that I assist Red Hood in training Daniel. It is only fitting since I will be the one attending school with him and assisting him if any of these threats come to our school.”

Bruce nodded and looked at Jason who looked between Damian and Danny, an evil grin on his face. “Is that alright with you?”

“Oh, I think it will be perfectly alright,” Jason crooned, causing Damian to glare at his brother in response. 

Bruce nodded and looked around. “Alright, now that you all know what we’re up against. I want everyone to keep an eye out for the Fentons and the Ghost Investigation Ward. The usual protocol for Joker is still in place, if word comes out that he has escaped Arkham we will patrol in groups. We will also alert Harley and Danny as soon as possible so that measures are put in place. There is a very high chance that as soon as Joker learns about Daniel Quinzel his interest will be piqued and he will go after him. While Danny has been given his own instructions on what to do by his mother, you all will need to do everything you can from keeping him from Danny. I don’t want to even imagine what would happen if Joker somehow managed to get his hands on the powers that Danny holds,” Bruce said seriously, all of his children nodded in response. 

Damian merely glanced back at Daniel, surprised to see the pretty crystal eyes already on him. He simply gave Danny a small, reassuring smile. This would be the most interesting mission of Damian’s life, he was sure of it.

Danny watched as the room cleared of the vigilantes, each one giving Danny a kind, supportive smile on their way out. 

Damian stepped forward and gave him a pretty, polite smile. “I look forward to getting to know you better, Daniel Quinzel,” he murmured before he took Danny’s hand and kissed the back of his softly, a small piece of paper pressed into the palm of Danny’s hand. “Until next time,” the vigilante murmured before leaving the room, leaving Danny to sputter in shock. 

Harley cackled beside him, patting her son’s back harshly. “It seems you have a little admirer honey bunches of oats,” she teased. 

“He’s so pretty,” Danny whined, going to cover his face with his hands before he remembered the piece of paper that had been placed against his palm. He unfolded it and let out another whine. “He gave me his number.”

“Didn’t realize the little demon had it in him,” Jason said with a chuckle. “Alright kid, meeting part two.”

Danny nodded and looked around, realizing only the three of them remained. “Meeting part two,” he said faintly before focusing on the strange feeling he had gotten from Jason last time they met. “You’ve died before, haven’t you?” he asked, tilting his head to the side. 

Jason arched an eyebrow. “Yeah, I did,” he said slowly. “How’d you know?”

“I’m the Ghost Prince, I can tell these things,” Danny said with his brow furrowed. Frostbite had taught him about it in one of their lessons, of people who were forcibly brought back to life after a brutal death. They typically came back full of rage and a desire to get revenge on whomever had wronged them. He had said that they were usually fed by ectoplasm that had become corrupted in some form, and that the only way to fix it would to be given clean, healthy ectoplasm to clear out the bad stuff. “You’re what we call a revenant. Someone who died in a pretty rough way and came back for revenge.”

Danny watched as Jason stiffened slightly and gave Harley a nervous look. Slowly he put the pieces together. “It was Joker, wasn’t it? That’s why you hate him so much. He killed you,” he said, his voice laced with surprise. “I’m surprised you don’t hate me.”

“I did, at first. When I learned you were Joker’s kid, but then I met you,” Jason admitted. “You’re nothing like him, and I can’t blame you for what he did.”

The halfa gave his mentor a small nod, core aching at the idea that Jason was one of Joker’s victims. “Do you feel angry a lot? Like an overwhelming amount of anger that just won’t go away no matter how hard you try to push it down?”

Jason nodded slowly. “I call it my pit rage.”

Danny hummed in response. “When we both have some time, I would like you to meet my doctor. He’s a yeti,” Danny stated. “I think he can fix your anger if you want.”

“Really?” Jason asked, looking surprised. 

“Yeah, he can help get rid of it. I would try but I don’t want to fuck anything up. Besides, it’s been a long day and mom promised she’d get me my own hyena if I told my tragic backstory to everyone. I think I’m gonna name him Jason,” he said with a sharp smile that still just slightly unnerved Jason. 

He knew that Danny didn’t try to. But any time he had that specific, playful smile he looked exactly like Joker did. It was jarring and only slightly unnerving, he knew he wasn’t the only one who thought so when he saw the look on Harley’s face that appeared then disappeared in a matter of seconds before Danny could even notice. 

“I think that’s the perfect name for a hyena,” Jason said smoothly before he stood up. “I gotta get back to Crime Alley, our first training session is tomorrow at one. Meet me here,” he said before ruffling Danny’s hair. Alfred stepped into the room and led Harley and Danny out of the manor and back to Harley’s terrifying corvette that she drove with no regard to the safety of literally anyone. 

“So, you gonna call him?” Harley asked, speeding down the winding roads that led from the manor. Danny held onto the oh shit handle tight, thanking his lucky stars that he was already dead and his mother couldn’t actually kill him any further if she wrecked. 

“I don’t know yet. I don’t know what to say, he is really pretty, though,” Danny admitted. “I think I might text him tonight after talking to Jazz about it and getting her advice.”

“I think you guys would make the cutest couple. And if you got married?” Harley said, voice laced with excitement. “Brucie and I would be inlaws! Wouldn’t that be great? Did you know we went to college together a million years ago? We shared English class together, ya know,” Harley blabbered on. Danny let his mothers rambling flood his ears as he stared down at the piece of paper. 

Just a collection of numbers and a name written out in beautiful script. 

Damian Wayne. 

Chapter Text

Danny laid out on his bed as he scrolled through his phone, reading through the most recent texts from Sam and Tucker. Thankfully the both had taken it pretty well when Danny had told them what had happened and where they were. Sam was jealous that Danny’s stepmother was Poison Ivy and had already demanded that once things settled down they could come over to meet his mom and stepmother. 

He wasn’t sure when it had happened but he had started referring to Ivy as his stepmom but he had and thankfully she took it better than he thought. She had actually almost teared up the first time that Danny had called her Ma. 

Gothica: Fentons looked like they were packing up the GAV today, keep your eyes peeled Danny.

Too Fine Tuck: I’ve already got the trackers set up to keep an eye on where they go. We’ll give you updates.

Danny frowned at the most recent texts and let out a sigh, dropping his phone. Ancients, was he ready for things to calm down again. It had only been two weeks but he was already tired of everything going on. Tomorrow would be his first day at school and at least then he would have a start at some semblance of normalcy once again. And he had already made plans with Jazz to go to the Ghost Zone that weekend to check in with everyone and let them know what was going on in his life and to also get checked by Frostbite. Sure the vivisection cut had healed, but he still wanted to make sure that everything was okay.

“Hey Baby, can we come in?” His mom asked through the door, knocking on it lightly. 

“Yeah, come in!” he called, moving to sit up. They had also managed to finally get Danny and Jazz’s bedrooms set up over the last week with a generous donation from Bruce who had said if he didn’t pay for it, he knew Harley would just steal the things. 

Danny honestly didn’t mind either way. He was just happy to have his own bedroom again. 

Harley and Ivy walked into the room both carrying giant baskets full of wrapped gifts. 

“What’s all this?” Danny asked with a frown, tilting his head to the side in curiosity. 

“Sixteen years worth of birthday presence and Hanukkah gifts!” Harley exclaimed, dropping the gifts on Danny’s bed with a sigh. “I was goin’ through my things and then I remembered all the gifts I got you. I thought that since tomorrow is your first day of school, I could give you some happy’s!”

Danny smiled and crossed a leg underneath him as he took a gift from Ivy. “Thanks Ma,” he murmured, turning the small box over in his hands. 

“I remember being pregnant with you, Honey Bunches, it was the worst time of my life,” Harley said with a coo. “I had just gotten away from Mista J and Ives was lettin’ me crash on her couch. You made my ankles so swollen and I couldn’t stop pukin’! It was like an every day thing and I thought I was dyin! Ivy was constantly getting me medicine and food to satisfy the cravings. And the labor! It was so rough,” Harley said with a groan, throwing her head out in dismay. 

“Yeah, she gave birth to you on my kitchen floor. I had to help her,” Ivy said, crinkling her nose in disgust. “You were an ugly baby.”

Harley let out a noise of offense. “He was not! Don’t say that about our son,” she said, grabbing Danny’s head and clutching it to her chest, rubbing Danny’s head softly. “You were not an ugly baby, you were beautiful. Came out with a full head of hair, which let me tell you, gave me the worst heartburn.”

“You were an ugly baby, Danny. You had a weird cone shaped head, c section babies are much prettier, their heads don’t look like that,” Ivy said with a chuckle.

“I saw pictures of myself, I was pretty ugly,” Danny said with a soft chuckle, smiling softly at his mothers. 

“You were not ugly, I don’t make ugly babies. And now look at you, absolutely and totally handsome and lovely,” Harley said, petting Danny’s hair softly. “Now, open your presents,” she said with a small, excited smile. 

Danny grinned but did as his mother said and unwrapped the first gift before he looked up at his mom. “A pacifier?”

“You were a year old! I didn’t know what to buy a one year old!” Harley exclaimed. “But now you can have it anytime you’re stressed out.”

“Or to practice on next time you see Damian Wayne,” Ivy teased. 

Danny scrunched his nose in disgust and threw it at his stepmom. “Stop it.”

“Yeah, I doubt it’s that small,” Harley teased, wiggling her eyebrows.

“Guys! No, no conversations about that,” Danny said, shaking his head in disgust. He grabbed the next present and laughed when he saw a small dreidel.

“You know, every year on your birthday, I tried to celebrate as best as I could. I would go to an orphanage and help make food, bring a big ole’ birthday cake and presents for everyone,” she said with a small smile. “Ivy would even willingly help me rob a Toys R Us just for the event.”

Danny smiled. “You always came to see me once a year, why not bring them then?” Danny asked, turning the dreidel around in his hand. 

Harley shrugged her shoulders. “If felt wrong, felt like I was oversteppin’. I lost my title as your mom the moment I gave up my rights,” she said quietly. 

Danny smiled at his mother and set the gift to the side and reached over to give the woman a tight hug around the waist. “You’ll always be my mom,” he murmured quietly. Harley smiled and ran her fingers through Danny’s hair and just held him close to her chest. She may not have been there for the beginning, but she was there when Danny needed her most and that’s all that really mattered to the teenager.

Harley and Ivy had welcomed Danny and Jazz into their home with open arms and had immediately stepped up to be the parents they both desperately needed. Harley had even gone the extra step and started to make sure that Danny’s life was safe and that there were contingencies for if the Fentons or the GIW started hunting him down. 

“Alright, lets get the rest of these opened and then you need to go to bed, you have school in the morning,” Ivy told him as the two pulled apart. 

Danny helped onto the straps of his backpack, as he walked down the halls of Gotham Academy to grab his schedule for his classes. It was his first day and he was nervous as hell. 

Danny: Where is the office? I’m lost .-. 

Damian <3 : where are you at now? I shall come and fetch you.

Danny frowned and looked around before he sent a picture of where he was to the teenager. He had just met Damian three days before and the two of them had hit it off almost instantly. They hadn’t seen one another in person since that meeting, but Danny had definitely been blowing up Damian’s phone with nonsensical texts, he would have worried that Damian regretted giving his number to Danny if it hadn’t been for all the cat pictures Damian sent him throughout the day.

A few moments later, Danny found a familiar head of dark hair walking his way and smiled in relief. 

“Damian,” he breathed out. Damian gave him a small smile. 

“Hello, Daniel, let’s get your class schedule. Although, I think that my father made sure your schedule matches mine so that we have all of our classes together. I hope that is okay with you,” he said before leading Danny down the hall. 

“Dami, you can just call me Danny, you know?” Danny said with an awkward chuckle. 

Damian looked at him in surprise. “Dami?”

“Sorry, Damian,” Danny corrected before the small smile on Damian’s face grew. 

“No, I think I like it. Dami and Danny, it is cute, is it not?” He asked, tilting his head to the side. 

“Cute, yeah,” Danny stammered, his cheeks heating up in embarrassment. He followed Damian down the long winding halls of Gotham Academy like a lost puppy until they got to the main office and Danny approached the front desk. 

“Hi, uhm, I’m needing my school schedule,” Danny said nervously, squeezing his backpack straps tight. 

“Name?” The secretary, Julie, according to her nametag asked. 

“Oh right, Daniel Quinzel,” he said quietly, shoulders up to his ears as he waited for her response. 

She looked over her computer at him and leered. “Quinzel?” She demanded, eyes narrowed into slits.

“Uh, yeah?” he said, frowning. Damian took a step beside him and narrowed his own eyes at Julie. 

“Is there a problem, Ms. Blanton?” Damian asked, tilting his head to the side in curiosity. 

Julie looked between Danny and Damian and sneered. “Of course not, Mr. Wayne. Mr. Quinzel, here is your schedule and your locker information,” she said, practically shoving the paperwork at Danny. Danny frowned and humbled with the folder before Damian simply plucked it out of his hands and guided his new friend out of the office. 

“I guess she recognized the name, huh?” Danny muttered, following Damian down the hallway. 

“Tt, who cares what she recognizes. It is just a name. And as you have already said, you are not your parents. It is their fault if they are unable to see that,” Damian stated before he took Danny’s hand and led him down yet another hallway. “It seems that Father made sure that your locker is beside mine. That will be good for the both of us. I do wish to warn you, Danny, I have a not so stellar reputation at the school and it may tarnish your reputation as well.”

“Damian,” Danny said with an amused smile. “I’m the son of two of Gotham’s biggest villains. As soon as they hear my name, my rep is tarnished. I don’t think you’re going to make it any worse.”

“Tt, if you say so, Danny,” Damian said with a hum and opened Danny’s locker for him. “Now, let us get your locker situated and then we will need to head to our first class of the day.”

Danny nodded and followed Damian’s lead, reminding himself of the words his mother had told him just this morning. “I am a Quinzel, and Quinzel’s hold their head up high,” he whispered to himself before he allowed Damian to take his hand and lead him down to their first class of the day. He hoped and prayed that his experience at Gotham Academy would be much better than the one he had at Casper High.

Chapter Text

Danny and Damian walked into their homeroom, pinkies interlocked, Danny’s chest frozen in fear as they stepped through the threshold. 

“Come on, you can sit in the desk besides me, I’m sure Clarence wouldn’t mind,” Damian stated before setting his things down. Danny frowned and looked at the teenager, Clarence? The boy quickly scrambled out of his seat as Damian glared at him.

“You don’t have to move,” Danny rushed out. “I can just sit somewhere else, it’s okay.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” the guy muttered before moving to a different desk. 

“Damian,” Danny hissed. “The goal is for people to see me as nice ,” he whispered. 

“You are nice, Danny, nothing to worry about,” Damian said, clasping his hands together on the top of his desk. 

The bell rung a few moments later and their homeroom teacher walked in. 

“Good morning everyone,” she said with a small smile. “We have a new student starting today, Daniel Quinzel,” she said, causing Danny to slink down in his seat in horror. “Would you like to stand and say a few things about yourself?” She asked as students around the classroom started whispering to one another. 

Danny let out a huff of air before he stood up. “Um, the name’s Daniel Quinzel, but you can just call me Danny-”

“Danny Quinn,” someone said with a snicker. 

“Yeah,” Danny said sharply, glaring at the kid who thought they were a jokester. “My mom’s Harley Quinn, make all the fuckin’ jokes you want, you’re all Jokers,” Danny said with a roll of his eyes. “I just recently moved back in with mom and I’m new to Gotham City,” he said before falling into his seat with a huff. 

“Well,” the teacher said, clasping her hands together. Danny looked down at his schedule. Ms. Mora. “It’s a pleasure to have you in class,” she said with a small smile. Danny scowled and crossed his arms over his chest, slumping down in his seat and ignoring the concerned look from Damian. 

Danny stared down at the smooth, glossy wood of his desktop as he let the voice of Ms. Mora fade to the background. Before he knew it, Damian shook his shoulder lightly. 

“Come along, Danny, the bell rang,” Damian said softly. Danny nodded and collected his things before he followed his friend out of the classroom and down the hallway. Danny stumbled, though when he felt a shoulder ram into his own, knocking him into a locker.

Dany looked up from where his things had scattered on the ground to find one of the guys in his class glaring at him.

“The Joker killed my aunt, you know. I bet you’re just like your dear old Daddy. Everyone knows that Harley has always been Joker’s little whore.” 

Another guy shoved Danny into the locker once again.  “Who’re you more like, your crazy ass Dad or your whore mother?” The other guy asked, hitting Danny in the shoulder. Danny scowled, ready to retort when Damian yanked both of the boys away from Danny and looked between the two, a scowl present on his face.

“I suggest you both leave my friend alone or else you will have to deal with me,” Damian said looking at the two boys in utter disdain. “Charles, Oliver, you are both children who know absolutely nothing about anything. This is your only opportunity to turn and leave Danny alone. If I see either of you bothering him again, you will understand why I have to see the school counselor three times a week."

“Shut the fuck up Wayne, you should hate Quinn just as much as we do with all the shit Joker’s done to your family,” Charles or Oliver shot off before tearing his arm from Damian’s grip. 

“Do not say I did not warn you,” Damian said before kicking one of the boy’s knees hard, knowing him to the ground. He grabbed the other and threw him into the lockers hard. 

“We should go,” Damian said, kicking one of the boys hard in the ribs before he helped Danny grab his things and led Danny away from the slowly growing crowd. Damian led him down the winding hallways until they found themselves in an old courtyard that had clearly not been touched in months. 

“Why did you allow them to hurt you like that? I know that you are strong enough to take up for yourself, Danny,” Damian said quietly, pulling Danny down to sit beside him on the bench. 

Danny sighed. “I know, I heard them coming. But, I don’t want to be compared to them, I don’t want to be seen as insane or violent. I shouldn’t have even reacted the way I did in homeroom earlier,” he said, slumping down and squeezed Damian’s hand tight. 

Damian let out a hum and held Danny’s hand in both of his, squeezing it tight. “There is a difference between allowing them to think you are crazy or violent and standing up for yourself when you are being bullied,” he said quietly. 

“I just don’t want to get any attention on myself, Damian. I just want to finish school and move on. I mean I’m going to spend the rest of my life being compared to mom and Joker and on top of that, I’ve got the Fentons and the GIW hunting me down and my friends said they saw the Fentons packing up their car and I’m not ready to deal with that yet,” Danny bursted out. 

“Danny,” Damian said, giving his friend a concerned look. “Have you gotten the chance to talk about all of this with anyone? It seems as though you are holding a lot in.”

“I talked to Jason about it a little,” he admitted. 

Damian stood up and pulled Danny with him. “Can you turn both of us invisible? That is a part of your power set, correct?”

“Uh, yeah?” Danny said, looking at his friend confused. 

“How about the two of us leave school for the rest of the day? I think that you were not quite ready to start school yet,” Damian stated. Danny nodded and turned the two of them invisible before he held Damian close to him before he took to the air and started to fly. 

“Where do you want to go?” Danny asked, arms wrapped around Damian, trying his bed to not get overly flustered by the idea of Damian being in his arms. Damian smiled at him and wrapped his arms tight around Danny’s waist, relishing in the coolness that emitted from the ghost boy.

“Can you fly us to the park?” Damian asked, craning his head back to look at Dany’s face.

“I think I can do that,” he murmured before shooting towards the closest park, he only remembered it from his other sleepless nights where he flew through the air. The two softly landed behind a large willow tree and Damian slowly let go of his friend before he pulled him under the weeping leaves and carefully took a seat on the ground and pulled Danny down to sit beside him. 

“You are scared of being seen as your parents, I understand,” Damian said, watching the limbs of the tree sway in the wind, feeling Danny’s hand slip back into his, winding their fingers together. 

“You do?” Danny asked in a small voice. 

“Of course, Danny. My mother is an assassin, my grandfather is the Demon’s Head for an assassin’s cult called the League of Assassins. I spent the first ten years of my life being raised to take his place before Mother brought me to live with Father. They have both murdered hundreds if not thousands of innocent people in the name of peace and justice. Richard says that Mother baby trapped Father with me, whatever that means. She then had me believing that I was meant to be Batman’s heir. So when I came to live with Father, I actually attempted to kill Timothy for thinking that he was trying to take my spot as Father’s heir.”

“You tried to murder Tim?” Danny asked incredulously, letting out a loud laugh. Damian chuckled and shook his head in amusement. Danny slapped a hand over his mouth. 

“Why did you cover your mouth?” Damian asked, carefully pulling Danny’s hand away from his mouth. 

“I realized recently that my laugh sounds like Jokers if I laugh too hard. I’ve noticed it since I moved in with my mom, it makes my mom uncomfortable and I just kinda connected the dots.

“It is not Joker’s laugh,” Damian told him seriously. “It is yours, Danny and it is beautiful.”

Danny gave his friend a watery smile. “Thanks, I uh. I’m really struggling right now, Dami and I don’t know what to do,” he whispered. 

“I do not either but I will be here with you every step of the way. That is what friends do, correct?”

He nodded and squeezed Damian’s hand. “Yeah, yeah it is,” he murmured, staring into beautiful green eyes and feeling as though he were melting.

Chapter Text

“Oh Danny,” Harley sang as soon as Danny walked through the front door of their townhome. He winced but followed the sound of his mother’s evil giggling and sighed when he found her and his stepmother sitting on the couch giving him twin looks of amusement. 

Jazz, on the other hand, sat in her newfound favorite rocking chair giving Danny a look of disappointment. 

“You’ll never believe who just called me!” Harley gushed, grinning at her son. 

“Uh who?” He offered, trying not to cower in front of Jazz’s disapproving glare. 

“Your principal! He said you got in a fight on your first day and skipped class! Honey, I’m so proud of you,” Harley gushed, getting out of her seat to hug her son tight. “Day one and you’re already bein’ a little shithead, look at you go.”

“Harley,” Ivy reminded behind him. 

“Oh right,” she said and gave Danny a very serious look as she pulled away. “You can’t be gettin’ into fights on your first day of school. At least wait a few weeks before you start messin’ with those rich snobs.”

“ Harley. ” 

Danny scratched the back of his neck and looked between his two mothers, still ignoring Jazz’s glare as best as she could. “What fight?”

At this, both Harley and Ivy gave him looks of confusion, Harley took a seat on the couch and patted the spot between them. Danny slowly took a seat beside them, setting his backpack on the ground.

“Principal Malcovich called Ives today at work and said you slammed two kids into the lockers and kicked them. Also said you cursed out your homeroom teacher and ditched the rest of the day.”

“That’s not what happened at all!” Danny argued, feeling his heart sink in his chest. It was already starting. He had a feeling that as soon as he decided to take on his mom’s last name people would be treating him differently for being Harley Quinn’s son. And make the connection that it meant he was also the Joker’s son. 

One day in and he was already getting blamed for shit he didn’t do. 

“What did happen, sweetie?” Ivy asked, wrapping an arm around her son’s shoulders. 

“Teacher introduced me to the class, people started making jokes. I told them off. Then in the hallway, some jerks shoved me into the locker and started talking about how Joker killed his aunt. Damian got them both away from me but he saw I was upset and suggested me just leave for the day,” he said, clenching his fists at his side. “I didn’t touch them, Ma. I didn’t even try to fight back or anything.”

Harley tutted softly and wrapped her arms around her son’s waist. “Oh honey, we believe you,” she said quietly. “I shoulda known this would happen. I’ll call the school tomorrow, we’ll pull you out and do somethin’ else for school. Maybe homeschool! I don’t do anything most days anyway!”

Danny shrugged his mothers off of him and shook his head. “No, it’s fine. I’m not going to leave just because of a few assholes,” he said. “Just, have my back, okay?”

The two women nodded, looks of concern obvious in both of their eyes. Before either could say another word to him, Danny stood and left to hide out in his bedroom, patting Frank the plant on his head as he did. He let out a groan and fell onto his bed face first and focused on his breathing. He wasn’t going to cry. 

He was absolutely not going to cry. Danny had been doing so well at compartmentalizing everything that had been going on in his life lately and moving forward and he wasn’t going to stop now. Those guys were just pricks, that was it. He would move past it eventually and he’d be okay. Until then, he’d just have to suck it up and keep going. He knew his life wasn’t going to be easy when he agreed to move in with his mom. He knew what he was signing up for and now he just needed to accept it. 

Danny Quinn could roll with the punches, just like had done for years now. He breathed out slowly. Besides, he’d have Damian by his side, Dami wouldn’t let anything happen to Danny, he had already made that abundantly clear. Danny rolled over onto his back and slowly unbuttoned the buttons on his uniform shirt before he ran his finger along the spot where there should have been a scar.

It was probably the worst part about being a halfa. The only scar he had was his death scar, anything else faded away from the healing process his body went through. Regardless, he ran his fingers over the spot he had felt his mo-Maddie slice him open. His brain replaying the moment over and over as she ignored his screaming, his pleading for her to stop as the scalpel sliced through his skin like butter. 

The way she had carefully lifted his skin from his chest and peeled back the tissue to get a better look at what was on the inside. It had been two days before Jazz had found him down there. She had gone on a trip with a few of her friends for the weekend. Danny had been the one to tell her to go, to let her hair down just for a little bit, that he would be okay with the Fentons for two days. Everything after being cut open had been a blur, Danny had done everything he could to keep his sanity, to keep from losing his mind as they chopped and hacked at him only for limbs and skin to grow back. He instead had focused on his core, on keeping it hidden inside of him so that the Fenton’s couldn’t find it. 

As long as he kept it safe, he would be okay. 

He had repeated that mantra over and over in his mind for those forty eight hours of torture until finally, finally Jazz had come home. She had come down to the lab looking for their pare-The Fentons and had been horrified at what she saw. It was all a blur in Danny’s mind, he had been so far out of it, so focused on not succumbing to the pain that he hadn’t even realized his sister had gotten past the Fentons until she had unclasped his restraints to the table and like the Amazonian queen that is Jazz Quinzel, threw Danny over her shoulder and ran out of the lab, grabbing her keys and the go bag on the way out.

Things had been moving so fast ever since. Danny had made it home to his mother, his wounds had healed as always. He met the bats, he had been given the opportunity to become a sidekick to keep feeding his obsession, he was already enrolled in school again. It hadn’t even been a month! Everything was just going and going and going and Danny couldn’t breathe anymore. He just needed everything to stop. 

A knock sounded on his door, knocking Danny from his spiral. “Just a second,” he called, throwing his button up shirt off and onto the ground before he scooped up the t-shirt he had slept in the night prior and changed into a pair of sweats. Danny padded to the door and opened it to find Jazz standing at his door. 

“Hey,” she said quietly. 

“Hey.”

“Can I come in?” His sister asked, tilting her head to the side as she waited for an answer. Danny swallowed and nodded his head once, stepping back to allow the ginger into his room. He watched as she looked around his bedroom in amusement, taking in all of the baby and children’s toys his mothers had given him as make up presents from his childhood sitting in a corner. She sighed before falling into Danny’s dark blue papasan chair and gave her brother a look. 

“How are you?”

Danny shrugged and climbed onto his bed, sitting cross legged as he clutched a pillow to his chest. “Fine.”

“Danny,” Jazz sighed. “We both know that isn’t true.”

The halfa shook his head. “I don’t wanna talk about it. I want to sit here and act like a normal sixteen year old boy catching up with his sister after a long day of school.”

Jazz gave him a look, showing that she was clearly not convinced.

“Please,” he said, his voice cracking. “I need some normalcy right now. Just ten minutes of being a normal brother and sister again. No ghosts, no crazy scientists, no anything. Just sibling shit.”

His sister looked at the boy for a moment, her blue eyes sharp and scrutinizing before her shoulders drooped in defeat. “Fine,” she said before giving her brother a sly smile. “So, Damian Wayne, huh?”

Danny fell back onto his back as he held the pillow tight to his chest. “Damian Wayne,” he said with a lovestruck sigh. 

“He is very pretty,” Jazz admitted, sounding amused. 

“He’s more than just pretty,” Danny argued. “He’s amazing. He told me today that he thought my smile was beautiful and that he liked my laugh.”

“It’s a fun laugh,” Jazz assured him, already having figured out her brother’s newfound insecurities regarding his similarities to his sperm donor. She smiled, though, as she listened to her baby brother start gushing about his newfound crush. Nodding and trying to respond when she thought appropriate, her mind elsewhere as she thought about the situation at hand. 

Danny wasn’t wanting to talk about what had happened. He was closing it all off and refusing to talk to anyone. Anytime she had tried to broach the subject, Danny had simply shut down, refusing to go further in the conversation. Harley and Ivy both tried to ask him about his experiences from those two days in the lab only to be met with the same results. Harley had even tried to do it from the therapist route instead of the mother route just to try and get something from Danny. 

Instead they all just watched as he shut down in front of them. Watched as he put a wall around any thoughts that were too much for him and plastered this fake small smile on his face. Jazz had noticed it after the second day of living with Harley and Ivy. Danny had laughed just a little too hard at something Frank had said and he had seen the look at his Harley’s face for just a millisecond before it disappeared. His laugh had died on his lips that very second as Jazz watched him mentally connect the dots. 

Honestly, for as long as she had known Danny, she had loved his laugh. Loved the way that his smile lit up a room with how wide it was. Loved how his laugh became infectious when he would laugh just a little too hard a joke or a funny moment. He was so filled with joy and love. And now he was scared to show it. He had realized that the very same smile came from a man who had hurt his mother. 

His wide beaming smile turned into a small upturn of the lips. His raucous guffaws turned into quiet chuckles. It was as though Danny was trying his absolute best to turn invisible without the use of his powers and Jazz was powerless to stop it from happening.

“Oh shoot! Is it really already eight?” Danny exclaimed, some time later, bringing Jazz back to the conversation. “I’ve gotta get going. Tonight’s my first night training with Jason and Damian!”

“Have fun baby brother, and please be safe,” Jazz said, getting out of the comfortable chair to pull her brother into a hug. 

“I will be! I’m always safe,” Danny told her, giving her that new smile of his that she had come to hate. She smiled and pulled away, wrapping her arms around her midsection as she watched her brother transform and fly out of the townhome. The red head sighed and shook her head before going back out to where her new adoptive mothers sat curled up on the couch together. 

“How’s he doin’?” Harley asked, giving her daughter a curious look. 

“Wouldn’t talk about it,” she said, falling back into her new favorite rocking chair. The motions were soothing as she rocked back and forth, gnawing at her bottom lip as she thought about how she could help her baby brother. “He’s very scared he’s going to turn into Joker.”

Harley frowned and moved from where she had been laying her head in Ivy’s lap. “Why would he think he would turn into that monster?”

“I think he’s noticed that his laugh and smile are a little similar to Joker’s and it has him…unsettled,” Jazz said softly. 

“It’s my fault, huh?” Her mother said softly. “I’m over that jerkwad, but I see Danny and I see that smile and I hear that laugh and it just, it takes me to a different time ya know? I know it’s different. My baby will never turn out like Joker, I would die before I let that happen. But it’s just, it’s-”

“It’s still a trigger for you,” Jazz said quietly. “You didn’t just give Danny up because you didn’t think you were fit to raise him. You gave him up because you still have trauma and knowing that you would have to be around someone who looked like your abuser would be hard.”

“He’s my baby,” Harley argued. “I love him more than anything, I carried him for nine fuckin’ months and loved him and talked to him.”

Ivy rested her hand on Harley’s thigh. “This isn’t a bad thing, Harles. You have all people should know that. You are still working through that trauma that Joker left you with and for the first few days, seeing Danny’s smile and hearing his laugh was jarring. It was even jarring for me and I don’t even have the same trauma as you do. You’ll be able to move past this, once you’re more comfortable.”

“Have you spoken to anyone about your PTSD?” Jazz asked, frowning at her mother. 

Harley shrugged. “Here and there. Not really a fan of gettin’ psychoanalyzed, believe it or not,” she muttered. “I didn’t realize my response hurt my baby, though. I gotta fix it.”

Jazz shook her head. “Just try to remember that he isn’t Joker. Danny is kind and thoughtful. He’s a little shithead sometimes but he has a passion for helping others, for protecting others. He isn’t like the Joker.”

“He’s not, he’s amazing. He’s an amazing kid and I’m so lucky I’m gettin’ the chance to raise him,” Harley said and wiped at her eyes as Ivy pulled her close. 

“That reminds me, though, Jazz,” Ivy said quietly, holding her girlfriend in her arms. 

“Yeah?”

“There was a conversation we had before you guys went to meet with the Bats. Danny asked if I knew how to make blood blossoms,” she said. “He said it was a contingency for if he ever happened but he never said more about it.”

Jazz nodded sadly and let out a breath before she launched into the story of Dan and how he had come about. She explained the evils he had done, the world he had destroyed, the people he had killed. 

“Danny has a theory that this didn’t just happen because he had absorbed Vlad’s evilness when he had fused with him. He thinks that he had already snapped before that and all Vlad did was increase the craziness he already had inside of him. He thinks he’s one snap away from turning into Joker, one bad day from it happening. And if Danny ever did turn out anything like Joker,” Jazz said quietly, a haunted look in her eyes. “No one would ever be able to stop him. He’d raze this entire realm to the ground.”

“He’s never going to snap like that, though. He’s a good boy,” Harley argued, stamping her foot into the ground. “He’s a good boy and he would never allow that to happen to himself.”

“I know that. But the way Danny sees it is that it happened before, what would stop it from happening again? He keeps himself on a very tight leash and has created as many contingencies as he can because of it.”

Harley just let out a breath and closed her eyes. “It won’t happen.”

“No, it won’t,” Ivy said and looked between the psychiatrist and the psychiatrist in the making. “And instead of psychoanalyzing my son, we’re going to give him love and attention and hope that ones he’s comfortable he’ll open up to us. Right?”

Both women nodded their heads in agreement. 

“Yeah, besides, he sees Brucie’s therapist tomorrow,” Harley told them. “Maybe it’ll help.”

Jazz just nodded her head, worrying her lip between her teeth once more. She hoped to anyone that would listen that therapy would help her brother.

A chill went down Danny’s spine, causing him to lower the gun in his hands. “Did you guys feel that?” He asked Robin and Red Hood who had both paused in their own fighting. 

“No? What is it?” Robin asked, hitting a goon over the head with the hilt of his sword. 

Danny just shook his head. “Nothing, think I’m just going crazy,” he said with a wide smile.

Chapter Text

Damian stood in front of Danny with his hands clasped behind his back. It was his and Jason’s first day of training Danny to become a vigilante and they were going to start by doing what Jason had called choosing Danny’s vibe.

According to Jason, they all had one whether they liked it or not. Nightwing was the ditzy acrobat, Red Robin was the one who was one step away from turning into the next super villain, Signal was Gotham’s Sweetheart, Spoiler was the chaotic one, Orphan was the one that everyone was terrified of. Red Hood was the crime lord and apparently Robin was known as the stabby one. Damian did not know how much he trusted Jason’s assessment of this but he supposed he was right. Danny did need to have a brand of his own. 

“Okay, so before I was just Phantom, the ghost that everyone loved to hate. I mean I saved everyone but they still hated me,” Danny said, floating in the air cross legged as he thought about what he wanted. 

“I think that you should lean more into your insecurities,” Damian told him, rocking on his heels as Jason circled Danny. 

Jason looked up and tilted his head as he stared at Damian through the slits of his helmet. “What do you mean by that?”

Damian shrugged his shoulders. “Danny does not like his smile because it is far too similar to Joker’s for his liking, the same can be said for his laugh. But, in your Phantom form with your fangs, I’m sure that you would be terrifying,” Damian stated, looking Danny up and down. 

Danny frowned. “I don’t want to scare people.”

“You will be working with Red Hood, you will have to be intimidating most of the time. Red Hood is known for scaring the life out of rogues and criminals but he has also been known to be a safe place for the working girls in Crime Alley and the children in the neighborhood.”

Jason let out a hum as he thought about it. “I like it,” he said approvingly. “Phantom, give me your scariest smile.”

“Are you sure? I don’t-”

Jason stared the teenager dead in the eye. “I know where you’re going with that sentence. You are not Joker, you will never remind me of him,” he said seriously. “I need you to trust me.”

Danny nodded once before he gave them a wide smile, showing far too many teeth to be considered normal, each tooth razor sharp, looking as though he could easily rip someone’s throat out. His eyes glowed just a little more. Danny looked like a thing out of nightmares. He was beautiful. 

Damian grinned. “It’s perfect,” he said softly before he took Danny’s hand and squeezed it lightly. “Even if you are trying to scare me, you have such a lovely smile,” he said softly, causing Danny’s skin to turn to a light green.

“You could even lean into the creepiness of being a ghost,” Jason said. “Now, give me a smile that you would use on someone you’re trying to calm down.”

Danny’s terrifying smile immediately dropped into one that was closer to the one that Damian was in love with. He beamed at Jason.

“How’s that?”

“I mean, I feel assured,” Jason said with a shrug of his shoulders. “I think when you’re trying to scare or intimidate someone you should lean more into the insane act ya know? You’re insecure about it and it makes you uncomfortable. This might make it easier for you to grow comfortable with it. And when you’re being comforting, embrace that smile and laugh of yours.”

“I agree. We all lean more into our insecurities in our vigilante identities. Todd relies more on his pit rage, I rely more on my training from my time with the assassins. Lean into those traits you got from your biological father,” Damian instructed. “I think it might even do you some good.”

Danny smiled wide and nodded his head. “I can do that,” he said excitedly. 

Damian returned the boy’s beautiful smile with a small one of his own. 

“And now, so we can better train you, we need to see how you fight. What’s your choice of weapon?” Jason asked.

Danny just held out a hand and shot an ectoblast. “They’re useless on humans, though. I’m pretty good with a gun, but Batman-”

“Hell yeah!” Jason shouted before he pulled out one of his pistols and tossed it to Danny. “Now, let’s go looking for trouble.”

With that, Damian and Jason jumped off of the roof of the building, grappling down to the ground, Danny smiled and jumped down to land beside them. This was his first night training with the two vigilantes and after the weird day he had from his horrible interactions at school to spending the day at the park with Damian and then having to deal with the fact that the school had lied about him, this was a nice way for him to release some of the stress. Especially considering he had been spiraling so bad just a few hours before. 

“Alright, think you can keep up, Ghost Boy,” Robin said, giving Danny a cocky smile. 

“Bet,” Danny responded with a wide grin of his own, feeling comfortable to flash his regular smile in front of two. Damian simply smirked and winked at him before he hopped on his bike and took off down the street, Jason and Danny following close behind. 

Halfway through the patrol Danny was reeling with how much fun he as having. Fighting ghosts was one thing, they were able to go all out in the fight and all that which was fun, but it never really felt like he was saving anyone or helping others considering the ghosts just came to fight him most of the time. 

In Crime Alley, though? Stopping muggings from happening, interrupting drug deals? It was a different ball game and it sent a thrill down Danny’s spine. It was an adrenaline rush unlike any other and his core was singing at the fact that he was protecting people. Halfway through the night Damian had to leave to work with Spoiler on a case that they had been focusing on lately. 

Danny soon found himself sitting on top of a roof with Jason the two watching out for anything suspicious in a location that Jason said was known for being a hot spot for muggers. 

“So, you like my baby brother,” Jason said bluntly. 

Danny whipped his head over to look at his mentor in surprise. “What?”

“You have a crush on Robin,” he said with a shrug. “I noticed you making eyes at him earlier and at the meeting. Don’t worry, he absolutely has a crush on you too.”

“He does?” Danny asked in a small voice, looking up at the hulking tank of a man.

Jason scoffed. “Of course he does. He has never willingly used someone’s nickname before. He still calls Dick Richard and Tim Timothy. Kid also ditched school for you, that’s something he would have never done otherwise.”

“Really? I uh, I really like him too, he’s just, he’s amazing,” Danny said with a small smile. 

“You should ask him out,” Jason advised him. “He will never do it himself, he would be too worried that he was pushing you into it because of everything you’re going through.”

Danny smiled down at his hands. “He’s sweet. I don’t know what it is but I feel connected to him, like I could talk to him about anything ya know? And I know that no matter what I’ll tell him, he would never judge me. I love my friends and my sister but they’ve never been like that. I could tell Dami that I killed a man and he’d just help me hide the body. I’m pretty sure he’s more than happy to help me if I decided to kill Joker.”

“Fuck, I’d help you kill Joker too,” Jason said with a snort. “I will say, Damian is very fierce for those he cares about and he falls hard. If you hurt him, I will have to kill you all the way. I hope you know that. But also, don’t feel pressured to ask him out right away. You’re going through a lot right now with everything that’s happening. I also know from my first conversation with you that you’re really struggling with being related with that clown bastard.”

Danny let out a stuttering sigh, clenching his fists tight. “You have no idea.”

“Embrace it, Danny. Don’t run away from that shit,” Jason told him seriously. “You aren’t Joker, you’re you and from what I can tell your goals and your desires are to protect others. I don’t think you could hurt an innocent person even if you wanted to. But embrace that shit instead of running from it. Lean into that creepy side that you get from him if you have it, let your smile be as wide as you want. Who gives a fuck if it scares them? When I first came back from the dead, I let the pit rage absolutely control me and everything I did. And then I became terrified of it. Now, I use it. I accepted that the pit rage is a part of me and that I can use the rage it gives me to fight for justice and help others. I’m not some murderous monster just because I feel these urges inside of me, or because of the things I’ve done in the past,” Jason said as he swung his feet in the air and looked down at Danny. “It’s really hard and you can’t do it overnight but accepting the parts of yourself that scare you makes everything so much easier, it makes… loving yourself easier, you know?”

Danny nodded. “I do,” he said softly. And deep down, he did know that it was important to do that. It was just hard. It was hard to accept that part of yourself when you’ve seen what levels you can go to, the power that you can hold that can destroy the entire world. “I saw a timeline of myself that I hated. My family died in an explosion and I was grieving so bad that I had my godfather rip out my human side so I wouldn’t feel anymore. My ghost side took over him as well and he became-he became a monster. He had managed to destroy the entire world except for Amity. Hood, he killed the Justice League. I have that inside of me, I have that capability inside of me.”

“And now you know what happens if you let it out,” Jason said solidly. “Just like I know that if I let the pits take complete control, I go on murderous rampages. Fuck, there was a point where I even tried to kill my own brother all because I thought B had replaced me. I had beheaded mobsters and shoved their heads into a duffel bag, I did shit I wasn’t proud of.”

“How do you stand it?” Danny asked, swallowing hard as he thought about Dan and everything he had done, the people he had hurt. 

Jason looked around before he pulled off his helmet and looked Danny dead in the eye. “You own that shit. You own that shit and you take control of it and you do every fucking thing in your power to make sure you never do it again. You find different outlets and learn how to cope with those feelings inside of you and you do what you can to make it work. If you have those feelings Danny, any kind of feeling that scares you or makes you feel like you’re turning into Joker or Harley, you fucking own that shit and do what you can to make sure you don’t turn out like that. You understand?”

Danny frowned and shook his head. “So, I accept that part of me but also don’t? I don’t get it, I don’t- I don’t feel insane. I just,” he tilted his head back and stared at the stars as he tried to think of how to put words to his feelings. “I’ve been dead for two years now, okay?”

“Okay.”

“In those two years of being this half dead freak, I’ve noticed myself changing. Even when I’m in my human form, I’m starting to show bits of my deadness. I wake up from sleeping to feeling stiff like rigor mortis is setting in. I feel more ghostly, my friends have told me I’ve become more unsettling, that I just give off this deadly vibe, ya know? Sometimes I even feel like a ghost.”

At this Jason frowned, furrowing his brow. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that I just don’t feel alive very much anymore, even in my living form. I’ve been noticing the changes, my heart rate is way too slow now. I don’t need to breathe unless I want to, my eyes turn reflective sometimes. Like the list goes on, not only that but it just feels like I’m losing touch with my humanity, the things that make me, me.”

“I’m no therapist,” Jason started. “But that last part, about losing touch with your humanity, what does that feel like? Like you’re angry all the time or constantly on the verge of tears? Like you’re ready to fight anyone who even looks at you wrong?”

Danny nodded. “How’d you know?”

Jason let out a sigh and wrapped his arm around Danny’s shoulder. “Because that, kiddo, is depression. And when you really think about it, it makes a lot of sense that you’re struggling with it. You died Danny. Have you ever just sat down with someone and talked about how that made you feel? How you feel now knowing that you’re dead?”

Danny shook his head.

“Exactly. I know they’re making you see a therapist soon. Dinah,” Jason said and chuckled. “She’s good people. I saw her for a while, you can trust her. Open up to her and talk, she might have some good insight for you.”

“You think it’ll help?” Danny asked, looking up at the man once more. Jason just let out a sigh and nodded his head in response. “Mom and Jazz both really want me to go. Ma’s just been telling me to do what I think feels right and that it’s completely okay if I’m not ready to start therapy.”

“Ivy’s a pretty smart woman,” Jason said with a chuckle. “Your mom and sister see it from a therapist’s standpoint. Ivy’s lookin’ at it from a patient’s standpoint. And she’s right. You don’t have to dive into the deep stuff on your first day. Fuck, my first three months of counseling we just stared at each other for the whole hour. Got really fuckin’ awkward. But start small, talk about how you want to ask Damian out and go from there.”

Danny snickered at that. “I don’t know if I’m ready to be in a relationship yet, I really don’t know if it’d be smart when I’m feeling so crazy up here right now,” he said before knocking a gloved hand against the side of his head. 

“Sometimes it can also help. Damian’s smart enough to know how to handle himself, and so do you. I doubt you guys would become some toxic codependent couple like Joker and Harley were. But, if you’re not ready, you’re not ready. If that’s the case, you should at least have that conversation with him so that he knows you aren’t stringing him along.”

“I couldn’t hurt Dami even if I wanted to,” Danny said and smiled. “He’s probably the kindest person I know.”

At that Jason let out a loud guffaw of a laugh. “Yeah and I’m the queen of fuckin’ England kid. Come on, let’s do one more round before I take you home.”

Danny grinned widely at the vigilante as he shoved his helmet on. The two jumped off of the roof and quickly disappeared into the night.

Chapter Text

Danny trudged behind his mother as they walked into a small nondescript building. It was his first day of therapy and he was trying his best to be optimistic about it but he just didn’t want to be here. Sure, Jason had said that he could trust Dinah and he had been assured that she was trustworthy; he just didn’t want to talk about this with some random lady. 

He talked about it with Jason and Damian because they felt safe for him. Jason felt ghost adjacent enough that he at least somewhat understood where Danny was coming from. And Damian had done nothing but provide Danny with understanding and support since the moment they met.

Dinah was some random lady that helped vigilantes and his mom apparently worked with her enough that she trusted Dinah to help Danny but that didn’t mean anything to Danny. She was probably just expecting Danny to dump all of his problems on her and to let her fix everything for him but he didn’t want that. 

These were his problems, he could fix them on his own. 

Besides, he didn’t exactly have the best track record when it came to counselors and what if Dinah did something that hurt Danny? He didn’t know how he would ever be able to move past something like that. 

Harley took his face in her hands and squeezed his cheeks together and she looked at him. The two were the same height and it annoyed his mom to no end that she couldn’t just look down at him like he was still a little baby. She always whined that her little baby had grown into a man before her very eyes, successfully embarrassing Danny everytime since he was a measly five seven whereas Jazz was a giant who stood at five foot fucking eleven and towered over him. 

“Baby,” she said softly, staring into his blue eyes with her own crystal blues. “I know you’re nervous about this. But just remember, therapy is meant to help. Jazzy told me about that quack Spectra but that’s not what this is gonna be like, okay? Dinah just wants to help. What happens between you guys stays between you guys. You can trust her, okay?”

Danny nodded his head once, his face still smushed between his mom’s hands. He smiled as he looked his mother over. Her chemical bleached blond hair hung in two ponytails, tips dyed bright pink and blue, she had her signature bright red lipstick, she even looked almost relatively normal in her high waisted shorts and her baggy t-shirt. He smiled at all of her crazy and nonsensical tattoos and let out a breath. This was his mom. She was insane beyond words but she had come so far. 

She was trying so hard to be a good mom to him, he knew that. He could see her trying her best to be good for him, to provide him with the things that moms typically provided their kids. She was doing more for him than Maddie ever had, that was for sure. Her tattoo may say that she was rotten, but Harley Quinn was anything but. He hadn’t managed to say it out loud, but his mom really had saved his life by letting him stay with her. 

He pulled her hands off of his face and quickly wrapped her up tight in a hug. “I love you,” he whispered quietly, faced buried in her shoulder. Harley froze for a moment before she rested her arms around him and pressed her face to the top of his head, standing on the tip toes of her converse. 

“I love you too, Sugar Bear. Always will, I’m proud of you, you’re gonna go so far in life, I just know it,” Harley said, racking her fingers through Danny’s dark black hair. 

Danny just smiled and hugged his mom tight. “Will you come in with me?” He asked quietly. 

Harley’s hand stopped. “What?”

“I-I don’t want to go alone and I’d really like it if my mom came with me,” he said before he pulled away and gave his mom a nervous look. “Unless you don’t want to or I’m crossing the line or something,” he mumbled.

Harley gave him a wide grin as she held her son’s face once again. “I would be honored,” she said and took Danny’s hand to lead him to the therapist’s office. 

“Hi Dinah! Oh, I love what you’ve done with your hair,” she cooed, going over and giving the woman a hug. “This is my son Danny. He asked me to come sit in with him.”

Dinah smiled. “That’s completely fine, and it’s good seeing you again as well, Harley,” she said before looking at Danny. “It’s also nice to meet you, I’ve been super excited to meet Harley’s son. You look so much like her!”

“Cut the shit, I look just like Joker and we all know it,” Danny said blandly before he fell onto the overstuffed couch with a huff. Harley scowled and smacked Danny’s head. 

“You have my nose and my eyebrows you little twerp! And my eyes!” She said before plopping down next to her son.

Dinah just gave him an amused smile. “You do bear a remarkable resemblance to your biological father. How do you feel about that?”

He snorted. “Wow, just jump right in, don’t you?” He asked, crossing his arms over his chest as he slumped down. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

The therapist just gave him a small smile and leaned her forearms against her knees as she leaned forward. “Well, let’s have a talk about how this will go, shall we?” She suggested, tilting her head to the side. “Therapy is the time for you to tell me about how you’re feeling, it’s a time for the two of us to then work through those feelings and see what we can do about those feelings.”

“That’s a lot of feelings,” Danny muttered. “How’re you feeling?”

“I’m feeling great, Danny, thank you for asking. How are you feeling?” She asked with a polite smile. 

“I’m dead, I don’t feel much anymore,” Danny lied, still staring the therapist down. He wasn’t just going to give in to therapy, she was going to have to work for it if she wanted Danny to open up. Especially after he dealt with Spectra and the issues she caused. He didn’t care what his mom said, he wasn’t just going to give in and trust Dinah just because Jason and his mom told him he could. 

“You’re dead?” Dinah asked in surprise. 

Danny looked between his mom and the therapist in surprise. “No one told you about that?” He asked. 

Dinah coughed and shook her head. “No, I don’t believe that was mentioned. What do you mean you’re dead?”

Danny felt a mischievous smile grow on his face but at the look on Dinah’s face, he let it fall. “Oh yeah, I killed myself,” Danny said joyfully. “I mean, I didn’t purposefully kill myself but I did kill myself either way.”

“How about we start with that, I think that’s a good thing to talk about first,” she said, pen poised over her notepad. Danny stared down at the notepad for a moment before he looked back up at the woman. 

“I died, my adoptive parents had a portal that didn’t work. I went in, pressed a button and it killed me,” he said blandly. “Common knowledge at this point,” he said and shifted to his ghost form. 

Dinah looked between Harley and Danny for a moment before Danny shifted back to his human form.  “I see, so what is that like for you?” She asked, giving him an interested look. 

Danny shrugged. “I’ve been dead for two years now, for the most part I’ve accepted it. But, as the time goes on, the more things change. I wake up now feeling like rigor mortis started setting in while I was asleep so I sleep less. I don’t really need it anymore anyways. My heart beat has been getting slower each year from what I’ve noticed, I don’t need to breathe anymore. When I first died, I still needed it. But now, I don’t. I’ve noticed I don’t need to blink, I don’t need to do the things that normal, living humans need to do,” Danny said slowly, staring Dinah down, hoping he was freaking her out so she didn’t realize that he was also telling her the truth, admitting his biggest fears, admitting that his body was dying and he couldn’t stop it. “I’m colder, my skin’s harder, it doesn’t give the same way a living person’s does. I haven’t had my blood drawn in a while but when the Fenton’s vivisected me, there wasn’t very much blood, mostly just ectoplasm.”

“Danny,” Harley whispered beside him, a look of horror on her face. 

“And it’s weird because I’m still growing,” Danny said, unable to stop himself. “How does that happen? I’m still growing, my hair gets longer, my nails keep growing, I haven’t even stopped getting taller. I’ve even started growing facial hair. So why the hell is my body acting like it’s dead?” he asked hysterically.

“Danny,” Harley snapped, voice a little shriller. “You’re hurting yourself,” she said, reaching over and ripping Danny’s right hand away from where he had been squeezing his left hand, little half moon cuts showed in his skin where his nails dug into him. 

“You wanna know what’s wrong with me, Dinah? I’m a freak, I’m the son of a fucking mad man, I’m half dead, my adoptive parents tried to fucking vivisect me and experiment on my body without my goddamn consent and no one knows what the hell is wrong with me,” he snarled. 

Dinah and Harley looked at one another for a moment before Dinah looked back at the teenager. 

“Harley, Danny, I think it would be wise for you to meet with Dr. Thompkins about this,” she said softly. “Danny, how long has this been happening?”

Danny shrugged. “Started noticing it when the Fentons experimented on me, didn’t really have all of this happening before then,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest once more. 

“We should also talk to your ghost doctor about this,” Harley said, looking at her son in his concern. Danny shrugged his shoulders. 

“Probably,” he mumbled. He sighed as he realized he hadn’t managed to freak the damn therapist out, all he had done was cause concern for both her and his mother.

Chapter Text

As soon as therapy ended, Danny had a second appointment made with Dinah and an appointment made with a Dr. Leslie Thompkins to have a physical done. The mother and son then slipped out onto the sidewalk and Harley immediately engulfed her son in a hug. 

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, holding him close. Danny sighed, his arms hung limply at his sides. 

“It’s fine, mom, really. I’ll get over it eventually,” he mumbled, resting his head on her shoulder, his nose flooded with the scent of her cheap bath and body works knock off perfume. Harley just pet his head for a few moments before she pulled away and cupped his face in her hands. 

“When you’re ready to go, we’re goin’ to see that ghost doctor of yours to find out why your body is actin’ like this, you understand me, Danny?” She said in the most serious voice Danny had ever heard from his mom. 

He nodded. “I understand,” he said quietly. “We can go soon.”

“Good, now go out and get some air, I know you’re itchin’ to fly,” she said with a small smile. 

“How’d you know that?” Danny asked, furrowing his brow. Harley just smiled and brushed his hair out of his face. 

“You’re a lot more like your old mom than you give yourself credit for,” she said. “I’m a runner, Danny. Always have been, as soon as things get hard, I wanna run off and lick my wounds. It ain’t a bad thing by far to feel the need to run off for a while and take care of yourself. But it is important to remember you got people in your corner when you come back.”

Danny nodded and hugged his mother one more time before he turned invisible and changed forms to take to the skies. As soon as he was far above the city, Danny allowed his shoulders to finally slump down. He had shared more than he meant. He had only meant to scare Dinah but it ended with him getting hysterical and trauma dumping, wasn’t his best move, that was for sure. 

He didn’t want to admit it, but it had felt nice to let it all out, to finally voice his fears. The fact that his body was dying was something he had noticed when he had shown his mothers the vivisection wound and there hadn’t been as much blood as he had expected. There was some but it wasn’t a lot for his level of wound and it wasn’t flowing very fast at all. He had started paying attention then, started noticing his body slowly change. The first morning in Gotham when he had awoken, it was to what he had thought was sleep paralysis, only once he was able to start to move, he noticed it was still difficult, like he was having to force his body to do so, his joints cracked and protested at the movements. It had turned into a regular occurrence now in the month he had been in Gotham. That was when he decided to look up rigor mortis, just to see and he had been horrified with what he had learned. Rigor mortis happened because of a lack of blood supply to the muscles due to the absence of circulation after death. 

His heart wasn’t beating when he was asleep and his body took that to mean it needed to shut down. His muscles stopped working correctly, his joints seized up. It was terrifying and Danny didn’t know what this would mean for him. Was he permanently losing his mortal body? What would happen if the body died? Would he just become separated from it and become a full blown ghost? Or would he die, die? Was he just going to move on to the lands of the dead? He had questions but he was terrified of what the answer was going to be.

He floated through the air as he thought about it. He knew he needed to go to Frostbite and see what was wrong, he knew it was the best course of action but the possible answer terrified him to no end.

He wasn’t ready to die. 

Letting out a breath Danny took off, going towards the only person his core seemed to want comfort from.

He soon made it to Wayne manor and listened intently for the familiar calm beating of Damian’s heart before following the sound. He soon landed on a balcony and knocked on the window softly. Damian looked up from the painting he was working on and smiled when he saw Danny floating in his ghost form only for it to drop when he took in his expression.

He immediately crossed his bedroom to open the balcony doors. “Danny? What is wrong?” He asked, immediately taking Danny’s hands in his. 

“Had therapy today,” he said softly. “I think I’m dying.”

Damian’s brow furrowed. “How about the two of us take Titus to the dog park and talk?” He suggested with a small smile. Danny nodded roughly before he followed Damian silently as the vigilante started to gather his things for a day at the dog park. The two eventually got Titus loaded up in Damian’s car and took off.  Upon arrive Danny smiled and looked around. 

“I think I have a friend for Titus to meet,” he said before letting out a high pitched whistle. Not even seconds later a portal opened up and a large dog came bounding out. “Damian, meet my ghost dog, Cujo, Cujo, meet Damian,” he said with a small smile. Cujo bound over and immediately shrank small enough to jump into Danny’s arms and licked the teenager’s face excitedly.

“A ghost dog?” Damian asked, looking at Cujo with a heartbroken expression. 

“Yeah, I’m not sure when or how he died but I’ve been his since I was fourteen,” he said, watching as Damian lifted a hand to carefully pet the glowing green dog. Once Cujo got his fill on love and cuddles he jumped down and immediately took off to play with Titus. Damian spread out a blanket on the ground before he pulled Danny down with him. 

“So, would you prefer to talk about therapy or the dying thing that you mentioned?” Damian asked once Danny was laying back comfortably, his head in Damian’s lap. Damian ran his fingers through the black locks, carefully untangling the knots that had somehow accumulated in his friend’s hair.

“Therapy first,” Danny said with a sigh, his eyes fluttered shut as Damian started to lightly scratch his scalp. “I know Jason and Mom and Jazz all think it’s important that I go to therapy to figure out my problems but I don’t know if I’m ready to have some random lady listen to the shit that’s in my head. It’s a lot and I still haven’t been able to sort through it all myself.”

Damian smiled. “It is a difficult thing to do, I will admit. It is why I have been resistant to going to therapy myself,” he said quietly, focused on soothing his friend. “I think they want you to go, though, because it can be beneficial to have someone sort through your thoughts with you. Maybe Black Canary just is not the right therapist for you.”

“And who would be?” Danny said with a scoff. 

“Richard has a former teammate Miss Martian, she has dealt with a long history of struggles of her own. Now she tries to help others sort through their thoughts to understand them better,” Damian murmured, eyes on Danny’s freckled face, smiling as he realized that the smatter of freckles on Danny’s left cheek were reminiscent of Corona Borealis the way it made a small U shape on the boy’s cheek. It was adorable.

Danny opened a single eye to stare up at Damian. “A martian?” he asked, wide grin splitting onto his face that made Damian chuckle. 

“She is a martian, she is a white martian actually but I believe she takes on the colorings of a green martian for the most part,” Damian told him. “I can ask Richard and see if she would be willing to meet with you. Maybe being able to see your thoughts and walk through them with someone will be better than just trying to sift through them and talk them out.”

“I would like that,” Danny admitted. Damian just ran his hand over Danny’s hair once and nodded. 

“Also, please know that you are more than welcome to sift through your thoughts with me as well. I do not have telepathy powers but I am not some random woman staring you down in an office,” Damian said. 

Danny smiled and closed his eye once more. “Yeah, that’s why you’re getting to hear all this in the first place. I trust you more than just about anyone. And it’s scary because we’ve only known each other for a month but my core, it sings for you, like it’s telling me that you are someone I can go to for anything.

“Well, I am honored that your core thinks so highly of me,” Damian said quietly. “Now, why do you think that you are dying? I was under the belief that you were already half dead.”

“I think I’m dying all the way,” Danny whispered and took Damian’s hand and pressed his pointer finger and middle finger against his pulse point. “What do you feel?”

Damian sat there for a minute counting Danny’s heart beat a frown prominent on his face. “Danny, that was ten beats for a minute.”

“After I died, it usually stayed around fifty, just a little under the national average. Now, I’m lucky if it’s ten. I keep waking up with rigor mortis, I don’t need to breathe, I don’t know what’s happening Dami but I think my body’s shutting down.”

“Have you spoken to any of the ghosts you know? Do they know if this is a normal occurrence for halfas such as yourself?”

“I haven’t asked, I’m too scared to,” Danny said and squeezed his eyes shut tight for a moment before he looked up at Damian. “What if my human body is just dying? Like I got two extra years to live after the accident and that’s it? I’m done?”

“I do not think that is the case, Danny. We will find answers,” Damian said seriously. “Let us gather the dogs and we will start looking into it now, together.”

“What?”

Damian carefully moved Danny’s head off of his lap and whistled for Titus to come as he stood up. “You are not going to continue worrying about this, Danny. I refuse to let you,” he said just as Titus and Cujo came bounding towards them. “And I will not allow you to do it alone. So we shall be taking a trip to the Infinite Realms so that you can talk to someone who would know better than we do.”

Danny stood up and held Cujo in his arms as he gave Damian a small smile. “You’d do that? For me?”

“Of course I would, I care about you a lot, Danny. Do you not realize that, yet?”

The halfa just smiled and before he could stop himself, leaned forward and pressed a soft, awkward kiss to Damian’s lips, Cujo wiggled between them but Danny didn’t care, Damian was kissing him back just as soft, with a level of tenderness that Damian himself did not realize that he had. He carefully raised a hand and cupped Danny’s face, deepening the kiss just slightly before Cujo let out a bark and caused the two to jump apart.

“I care about you a lot too,” Danny said quietly, staring at Damian with a small smile that said more words than Damian ever thought a smile could say. The halfa turned away from Damian and focused for a moment before opening a portal directly to the manor and pulled Damian and Titus through. 

“What about my car?” Damian asked. 

“We’ll get it when we’re done. I wanna go ahead and get this over with,” Danny said as Damian put Titus’ things away. Once Titus was put up and Damian had dressed in warmer clothes (upon Danny’s advice), the two teenagers and Cujo stepped through another portal, this time directly in the Far Frozen. Cujo let out a whine and jumped out of Danny’s arms and took off running, causing the ghost to laugh.

“Cujo hates the cold,” he said with a snicker as he led Damian to a large building. “Welcome to Far Frozen, the yetis here are the best doctors in the entire Infinite Realms.”

A loud boisterous laugh surrounded them as a large Yeti came clambering towards them. “You flatter us, Great One!” he boomed out before pulling Danny into a tight hug. “What brings you to the Far Frozen, and with a new human, I see?”

Danny pulled away and grabbed Damian’s hand. “Frostbite, meet Damian, he’s my-” Danny stopped and looked at Damian with a small smile. “He’s someone very important to me. We came because I think there’s something wrong with my human form.”

Frostbite frowned. “That is interesting indeed. Let us go take a look,” he said before leading the teenagers back to a doctor’s office type room. 

Once arriving, Frostbite had Danny take a seat on a large patient bed and looked him over. “Tell me what is going on?”

“I think my body’s dying,” Danny said before he explained the symptoms and what had been happening to him. Damian stood close, keeping his hand in Danny’s the entire time. 

“I see,” Frostbite said quietly. “And Great One, have there been any changes recently in your human life?”

Danny nodded. “I told my parents I was Phantom. They didn’t take it well, they uh, they experimented on me. Tried to find my core, vivisected me,” he said quietly. “Jazz got me away, we’re living with my biological mother now and that’s just been opening some new wounds too. My biological father is a villain who’s killed hundreds and is insane. He reminds me of Dan,” he whispered softly. 

“I see, and how have you been coping with all of this?” Frostbite asked, pressing a stethoscope to Danny’s heart. 

“I haven’t been,” Danny said honestly. 

“Are you able to produce your core so that I may check it? If you are more comfortable we can have Mr. Damian step out,” Frostbite stated. Danny shook his head. 

“It’s fine,”  he said and closed his eyes and shifted into his Phantom form before he let out a breath. Slowly a small hole opened in the boy’s chest before a round orb floated out. Damian stared at it in amazement, it was unlike anything he had ever seen in his life. It was like staring into the galaxy itself, stars and planets were smattered about and when Damian focused enough, he even managed to see the Milky Way galaxy amongst others. 

“This is your core?” He asked in reverence. 

Frostbite smiled. “Yes, the Great One is a rare ghost indeed, he has the only space core I have ever seen in my existence,” he answered before he took the core in clawed hands and carefully examined it when his smile fell. “I see the problem.”

Danny opened his eyes. “What is it?”

“In humans, when the body cannot handle emotional overload, it simply begins to shut down. And that is often manifested for them by a sense of extreme tiredness or fatigue. In ghosts, though, our very core starts to crack under the pressure of those extreme emotions, if you take a look,” Frostbite held the small orb out for Danny to see and pointed to a long, jagged crack that went down half of the sphere. “Yours is cracking from the stress of it all. Great One, this is a serious problem.”

“What do I do?” Danny asked, holding his core close, hugging it to his chest.

“You must find a way to manage these emotions and this stress Great One or else it will result in a core break.”

“But how is this affecting his human body?” Damian asked, squeezing Danny’s arm tight in reassurance, for whom? He was not sure. 

“Because he died the way he did, King Phantom’s core took over sustaining him with life, it is what has continued to power his heart and his other bodily functions to keep the body alive, the two are in a way, fused together. But, because his core is dealing with this crack, it is causing his core to focus more on taking care of itself, rather than the human body, meaning his human half is starting to die. It will continue to do so until the core is healed and able to resume keeping his human half alive.”

“So I need to do therapy,” Danny said with a huff, before having his core go back inside of him once more. “Great.”

“I think that having someone to talk to and work through this stress and these emotions would be greatly beneficial to healing your core,” Frostbite told him before he pulled Danny into a hug. “I am so sorry this is happening to you. I will be consulting the council to let them know of the situation with the Fentons. We were all wondering what had happened to the man made portal.”

“Jazz destroyed it,” Danny said with a humorless chuckle. “But, alright, that’s fine. I’ll try to focus on getting my stress and emotions under control so I don’t accidentally kill myself a second time.”

“Great One,” Frostbite said disapprovingly. Danny just cracked him a small smile and opened a portal before jumping off of the bed. 

He took Damian’s hand once more and led him through the portal after telling Frostbite goodbye. Once they made it through, Damian found that they were back in the park once more. Immediately Danny fell into his arms and let out a stuttering sigh. 

“Fuck,” he muttered. 

“At least you are not dying,” Damian offered, rubbing Danny’s back softly as he kissed the top of the boy’s head. 

“No, I’m just killing myself because of my extreme emotions,” Danny responded sardonically. 

Damian just chuckled. “But, it is something we can fix. And while I am absolutely going to have you meet with Ms. Martian now, I think that I have another idea to lift your spirits.”

“What’s that?” Danny asked, pulling away to give Damian a curious look. Damian smiled and pushed Danny’s hair out of his face. 

“Would you like to go on a date with me, tomorrow evening? No vigilante talk, no traumatic past conversation, just two teenage boys who are infatuated with one another on a date.”

A giant grin split open on Danny’s face, his eyes lit up in a way that Damian had never before seen. “I would love that,” he said excitedly and pulled away from Damian’s embrace, the vigilante immediately missed the comfort of Danny’s cold body pressed against him. “Are you sure that you want to possibly get into a relationship with someone with a shit ton of baggage?”

Damian smiled and cupped Danny’s face. “We all have unsavory baggage, and I think that I would like to be here with you every step of the way while you heal.” He ran a thumb along the Corona Borealis on Danny’s cheek. “If you will let me, that is.”

“I would love to have you by my side,” Danny said, that beautiful, wide smile still on his face. “I know I didn’t really ask for permission last time but, can I kiss you?”

“I would like nothing more,” Damian told him before slowly closing the distance between the two.

Chapter Text

Damian smiled as Danny swung their intertwined hands between them as they walked through the doors of Gotham Academy together. The vigilante was still marveling over the weekend the two had spent together. Danny had gone to Damian for comfort, something that no one truly did. Not even Jon came to him for comfort when he was upset. But Danny? He chose Damian to come to when he was upset. It had Damian feeling a way that he had no words to describe. Not only had Danny gone to him for comfort, he had also taken Damian with him to the Infinite Realms and trusted Damian of all people to see his core. A part of his body that Damian had learned was the equivalent of a human’s entire system of organs as well as his very soul itself. He had trusted Damian to see that. Not Jason who had become like a mentor to Danny, not even his own mother had been trusted to see that. 

But he showed Damian. 

He trusted Damian so implicitly and Damian was not about to break that trust. 

“Was the rest of your weekend better than Friday?” Damian asked, remembering the situation that had unfolded with their classmates. Danny had also told him that they had called his parents and spun a completely untrue story to make it seem as though it was Danny’s fault. Damian was going to do everything he could to get that issue nipped in the bud. He was not about to allow the school administration to treat Danny poorly due to his parentage. 

“It was better, Mom and I went shopping and got some new clothes. I don’t know where she gets all of her money from and I’m too scared to ask,” Danny said with a snicker. “Then Ma decided that I was going to help her work in her garden. Yesterday they decided I needed to start training with them too so we trained for hours on end and now I can successfully do a front flip without hurting myself,” Danny said proudly. 

Damian chuckled and gave his boyfriend? Friend? Love interest? An amused smile. “A front flip?”

“Yeah. Mom was like an Olympic level gymnast and acrobat when she was younger and she decided that this means I need to learn too. I think she’s going to drag your brother in on it to help teach me too,” Danny laughed, shaking his head in amusement. “She said it’ll help me in my fighting if I’m able to do all these jumps and twists. I think she forgets that I can fly and turn intangible.”

“So are you just going to humor her, then?” Damian asked and Danny shrugged his shoulders. 

“Why not? Doesn’t hurt to have some extra skills, I might even be able to successfully use those skills if for whatever reason I can’t change,” Danny said as Damian pushed the doors to the school open for them. 

“That is true, you never know when those skills will become beneficial to you. Better to have them and never find a need to use them, than to not have them and find a need for it later,” Damian said.

The two make their way through the hallway to their lockers when Damian’s hand is wrenched away from Danny who gets slammed into a wall, arms of some disgusting ruffian cornered his beloved, blocking his way to get away. 

“We aren’t finished with our conversation Joker Jr,” Oliver Savage said, getting in Danny’s face. Damian looked between the pathetic attempts of bullying from Oliver and the sullen, annoyed look on Danny’s face and let out a sigh. Danny was not going to fight the boy back, or even push him away. He was far too worried about getting blamed for something he did not do. It had already happened once before. 

But Damian was not about to allow someone that was his to get hurt by the likes of Oliver Savage of all people. He ignored whatever the hell Oliver was saying as he stepped forward and ripped Oliver away from Danny and shoved him to the floor. 

“I would appreciate it if you would stop trying to intimidate my boyfriend,” Damian said, staring down at the cowardly senior who stared up at him in horror. He looked around the hallway at the students who had stopped to stare at the small ruckus and shoved his hands into the pockets of his slacks. “Let this be a warning to all of you, anyone who messes with, tries to harm, or even looks at Danny wrong, I will ensure that it will be the last thing you do. Leave him alone,” he ground out before he took Danny’s hand and pulled him away from the wall and continued down the hallway to their lockers.

“Boyfriend, huh?” Danny said with a shaky voice, glancing over at Damian with a small smile. 

“I would assume that after our lip to lip copulation and you asking me out on a date that we were in an amorous relationship,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders, causing Danny to trip over his feet and give Damian a surprised look. 

“Amorous relationship?” He breathed. “You uh, you desire me… sexually?”

Damian looked at Danny in amusement, the corners of his lips curled up in a small smile. “Of course I do, Danny. You are very attractive physically and I am a sixteen year old teenager. I have hormones that are as Richard said, raging and need to be sated. I am interested in you for other reasons, but your body and your looks are definitely a factor as well.”

Danny blushed and looked away only for Damian to take his face and give him a soft kiss. “Do you not enjoy performing in lip to lip copulation with me?”

“Damian, Pyxis, Matok, please just call it kissing, I’m begging you,” Danny said, pulling Damian close to kiss him again. “And uh, maybe not something to talk about in the hallway but, I don’t think an amorous relationship is something I’m super into. I haven’t thought about it, but I think I might be ace? Is that okay?”

Damian smiled and cupped Danny’s face in his hands, ignoring the students walking around them. “Yes, My Star, that is more than okay with me.”

“Wayne, Quinzell! Principal’s office!” A teacher shouted. Damian gave his boyfriend an exasperated look and pulled away from Danny, taking his hand once more.

“Let us go find out what we did to warrant a visit to the principal’s office,” Damian said with an amused huff. Danny sighed and followed his boyfriend down the hall to the principal’s office. Soon the couple made it to the office where both Bruce and Harley were already waiting on them. Danny held back a smile as he took in his mother’s appearance. 

She just… didn’t give mom vibes off whatsoever. Here sat his mother who was in her forties, mind you, sitting in booty shorts, a bright pink bra with some fishnet shirt hanging over it with her hair pulled back in space buns, converse covered feet tucked underneath her as she and Bruce spoke to one another. Danny couldn’t help but smile, though, it didn’t even matter that his mother was in her forties, apparently when her and Ivy had first met, Ivy had given her some kind of toxin that made her immortal adjacent just like Ivy was, which was honestly pretty great considering Danny was well, also immortal adjacent depending how you looked at it. They still weren’t sure what would happen to Danny’s human form later in life, they were just watching and waiting to figure it out.

It also just made it funny considering Bruce and her had gone to school together and Bruce definitely looked like he was in his late forties. 

“Oh! Sugar pie! You’re here,” Harley said when she caught Danny in her peripheral. Bruce turned around as well and gave Damian a disapproving look. 

“What are you guys doing here?” Danny asked with a frown as Bruce’s eyes fell on the boy’s interlocked hands.

“Well, we both got a call about the two of you fighting some students in the hallway,” Bruce said, looking between the two curiously. 

“Well, they called Ives, apparently she’s less scary than I am,” Harley said, crinkling her nose in annoyance. “Either way, Danny is this the same kinda situation as last time?”

Danny bit his lip and hesitated for just a moment before he nodded his head in confirmation. “Yeah, same thing, same kid,” he said softly. “Dami was just pulling him away from me.”

“And told the entire student body that if they thought that they could get away with bullying my boyfriend, they had another thing coming,” Damian said in a haughty tone. 

“Boyfriend?” the parents asked simultaneously before Harley let out a squeal and jumped out of her seat to hug her son and Damian tight. “You two are so precious!”

“Harley,” Bruce reminded. Harley sighed and pulled away from the boys just as the principal walked into the office. 

“Mr. Wayne, Ms. er, Quinzell-”

“Dr. Quinzell, they may have taken my license away but I still have that doctorate!” Harley said with a wide grin, forcing Danny to hold back his snickers. Damian and Danny both took seats between their parents and tried their best to stay professional. 

“Right, Dr. Quinzell,” the principal said slowly. “I called you both here to talk about the behavior of your sons. Mr. Quinzell managed to curse out his homeroom teacher on his first day, started a fight with a few of our students from the Football team on his first day and then ditched class. Today these two managed to get into a fight with a student who had been involved last week and Mr. Wayne threatened the student body on Mr. Quinzell’s behalf. I normally do not do things like this, but Mr. Wayne, I am worried that Daniel may be manipulating your son,” Principal Nolen said, giving the billionaire a concerned look. 

Harley and Danny both stiffened in their seats as a cool look passed over both Bruce and Damian’s faces. 

“And why would you suspect something like that?” Bruce questioned, folding a leg over his knee. 

“Well,” Principal Nolen said with a slight chuckle. “The apple unfortunately does not fall far from the tree. And Dr. Quinzell, if I recall, Daniel’s father is a master mani-”

“I’m gonna stop you right there, Sweetheart,” Harley said with a polite smile. “Danny doesn’t have a dad. He has two mothers, and as far as I know, Ivy is more of an actions person, she’s never manipulated anyone to get what she wants. And I am quite the manipulator but, as you may know, I am mostly reformed.”

“I’m not-” Danny started, only to get interrupted by his mother.

“Danny, baby, mommy’s talkin’ right now,” Harley said, her Jersey accent growing thicker as she stared the principal down. “Now, if you’re talkin’ about Danny’s sperm donor, Joker, then yes, he is a master manipulator. But Danny has never even met Joker and did not know until very recently where half of his DNA came from. Before I got custody of my son back, Danny was raised by loving parents who never taught him how to be manipulative. Unless you Mr. Nolen give into the idea of nature over nurture than you have no basis for your belief that Danny is manipulative in any way whatsoever. I would like to assume that an educator such as yourself would be more interested in the nurture aspect as most educators believe in humanism and behaviorism. Or is that different for you, Mr. Nolen and you do not subscribe to most common teachings that educators learn in schools? You know, how most teachers believe that the human mind is a tabula rasa and is gradually filled as a result of experience?”

Mr. Nolen gave Harley a confused look but she ignored him. “It’s a shame, too because nativists like you are biased people who seem to think that all psychological characteristics are wired in before the baby is even born. Such a small minded view on things,” Harley said with a tsk. “To think that humans are nothin’ more than their biology and have no capability to be more.”

Damian squeezed Danny’s hand lightly as the teenager stared at his mother in awe. Was this what Harley had been like before Joker had ruined her mind? Smart, intimidating, amazing? 

“Harley,” Bruce said with a chuckle before he looked back at Principal Nolen. “While Harley is correct in her statements, I think we’re missing the main issue at hand. You just accused a sixteen year old child of being manipulative. If you have not realized since Damian first started attending Gotham Academy, my son is rather hard headed and strong willed. I cannot imagine he would allow anyone to manipulate him.”

“It is rather offensive that you would even think so,” Damian spat, crossing his arms over his chest, still holding onto Danny’s hand as he did so. 

“Furthermore,” Bruce said with a chuckle. “I think we both know that Damian has had a history of threatening people prior to Danny starting school here. Especially when it comes to bullies. Do you by any chance have the CCTV feed for the incidents you are talking about? I know for a fact that Wayne Enterprises provided Gotham Academy a rather large and extensive security system just last year. I would like to see the video of these instances.”

“Well, you see-”

“No excuses, show us a video of the incidents you’ve mentioned to us today. I for one am very interested in seeing how Danny managed to attack two large football players who I assume are much bigger and taller than he is,” he said, ignoring Danny’s offended squawk. 

“It’s okay, honey, you have your mom’s build,” Harley said soothingly, patting Danny’s leg. Damian shot his boyfriend an amused smile as his father managed to strongarm the principal into showing them the video of the incident that had occurred that morning.

The four watched as Oliver Savage slammed Danny against the wall completely unprovoked and Damian wrenching him from his boyfriend and throwing him to the ground. 

“So, where is that young man and his parents?” Bruce asked, raising an eyebrow. 

“Well, you see-”

Bruce put his hand up, silencing the principal. “I see that it was a mistake to recommend that Mr. Quinzell attend Gotham Academy to complete his schooling. I had initially recommended this school for my good friend and her son because I thought of all schools in Gotham City this school would be least likely to be biased. That the educators here would understand that Harley was Joker’s biggest victim and had spent the last sixteen years working on herself and her own mental health so that she could regain custody of her son and provide him with what he needed. It seems that I was wrong,” Bruce said and gave Principal Nolen a polite smile. “I think after this issue, I will be un-enrolling my son from your school as well as revoking my sponsorship of the school.”

“I think I’ll be doing the same,” Harley said with a sniff and stood up, motioning for her son to follow suit. “Kindly go fuck yourself, Mr. Nolen.”

Danny gave his boyfriend a surprised look as the two rushed to follow their parents out of the school. 

“Father,” Damian hissed, following his father close. “What was that? I thought that you did not want me going anywhere else?”

Bruce just gave him a small smile. “As much as I enjoy the education you can get here, Damian, I don’t think I approve of my son being at a school that treats him and his boyfriend so poorly for standing up for one another.” He set a hand on Damian’s shoulder. “I’m proud of you, Chum. Even if you didn’t tell me that the two of you were in a relationship.”

Harley let out a loud squeal and looped her arms around Bruce’s shoulders. “We’re in laws now Brucie! Oh I’m so excited,” she said and looked back at the boys. “When did it happen? Tell us everything?”

“My Star, are you able to get us out of here?” Damian murmured to his beloved. Danny snickered and nodded. 

“It happened this morning, now, bye!” Danny said before he turned the couple invisible and took off in the sky so that the couple could get away and talk about everything that had happened.

Chapter Text

Danny laughed as he held Damian to him, the couple floating miles above in the sky. “They’re going to kill us when we go home,” he said, running his fingers through Damian’s hair.

Damian hummed and rested his head on Danny’s chest, enjoying the feeling of being completely weightless, just floating along in the sky, just the two of them. 

“They will probably be upset, yes. But I was not interested in being questioned, were you?”

“Not after everything that happened, no,” Danny said and let out a sigh. “I’m tired, Dami. I’m so tired of everything and all the uncertainty. I just want to be a sixteen year old kid.”

“Life does not always work like we want,” Damian said quietly. “But, we will not be attending school at Gotham Academy any longer and we will be much happier. Perhaps we can talk our parents into allowing us to go to online together.”

“Yeah, we can try that,” he said with a sigh. “I think I’m going to go to the Infinite Realms to catch my council up on everything going on.”

“May I go with you? I do not want to go home quite yet,” Damian said, glancing at Danny. 

“Of course Matok, we can go now and then be back home to face our parents about our relationship,” Danny said and gave Damian a soft kiss.

“What does Matok mean?” Damian asked just as Danny opened a portal and flew the couple through.

“Means sweetie in Hebrew, Mom’s Jewish so I’ve been trying to learn more terms and I saw that one in a quick google search and then I decided that you’re my sweetie.”

Damian hummed and started to walk beside Danny as the two made their way through his castle. Damian did his best to remain calm and now freak out over the fact that his boyfriend was a prince of an entire realm. It was quite a lot to wrap his mind around. He was dating royalty, which if Damian was going to be honest with himself, it was meant to be. Of course he would end up in a relationship with royalty, it only made sense. 

“What is pyxis you also called me that,” Damian said as Danny led him through the halls of the castle. 

“Pyxis is a constellation in the sky, it’s a compass. Since I met you, Damian, you’ve been my own personal compass. If I feel lost or confused, I just look to you and you guide me to where I need to be,” Danny said quietly, squeezing Damian’s hand tight. “Fright Knight!” He called loudly. 

Before Damian could even attempt to form a response to that endearing sentence, a ghost appeared in front of the two of them. He was a large knight that loomed over the two teenagers with his black suit of armor and purple flames. 

“Yes, my liege?”

“Can you please gather the council, I need to catch them up on everything happening,” Danny said with a smile. The knight bowed deeply before popping out of existence.

Danny pulled Damian into a room where two thrones sat in front of a large conference table and gave Damian a peck on the cheek before he took his seat in the larger throne. “Sit beside me, Pyxis,” he asked, looking up at Damian. 

The vigilante flushed but nodded and took the seat beside his star and waited patiently in his seat as one by one ghosts appeared in different seats. First appeared Frostbite who smiled widely at the couple and waved happily at the two. Next was a large woman dressed as an Amazon warrior with two sets of arms. Another was what looked to be a medieval princess, another looked like a baby that floated in the air regally, and last to appear was a rather plain looking man with round glasses, black hair and pointed ears, he looked slightly out of place compared to the others at the table. 

“Thanks everyone for showing up at such short notice. So I wanted to brief you on everything that happened, but first, I would like to introduce you all to my boyfriend, Damian,” he said with a small smile. “Dami, you already know Frostbite, but this is Pandora, the Greek goddess, Dorathea, she is the princess of one of one of the realms, the baby is Clockwork, my mentor and surrogate grandpa, don’t let the baby form fool you. And lastly is Ghostwriter, we’re mortal enemies but I trust him more than most ghosts he has proven to be my most trustworthy assistant and manages the minutes for all of my meetings.”

“It is nice to meet you all, thank you for taking care of My Star,” Damian said with a polite smile and a bow of his head. 

“Now, to brief you all. The Fentons learned about my status as a halfa and managed to capture and experiment on me for two days before Jazz got me out. I’m back with my birth mother but it won’t be long before the Fentons and the GIW find me,” Danny said quietly, taking Damian’s hand and squeezing it tight. “We are doing everything we can to take care of it, but I wanted to let you know.”

“The Great One left out an important piece of information,” Frostbite said with a frown on his face, holding a hand up when Danny’s mouth opened to argue. “The stress and emotional turmoil that our king has gone through has caused a crack in his core, it is killing his human side. He must not do too much, his young consort is already aware of the situation and will be working to take care of our king for us, isn’t that correct, Consort?”

Damian stiffed in the smaller throne, his eyebrows shooting up in surprise. “Yes, I will do everything that I can to take care of Danny and help him heal.”

“Phantom, your core?” Dorothea whispered in horror. 

“It’s okay, Dora, really-”

“It is not okay. Your human body has been going through rigor mortis each night when you go to sleep. Your heart is not pumping enough blood through your veins and your skin is hard as though you are in the beginning stages of death. You are not okay, My Star,” Damian said harshly, giving his boyfriend a look of annoyance before he looked out at the council before him. “I will do everything in my power to take care of Danny and ensure that he is able to heal from the egregious acts done to him so that the crack in his core will recede.”

Ghostwriter let out a hum. “Majesty, if you would allow us, we can buy some time for you to prepare to deal with them so that you can better heal. I assume that you are in the process of getting the threat taken care of anyway,” he said.

Danny nodded. “I am, I’m currently working with some vigilantes to get the situation taken care of. They’re looking into some things for me and I’m just trying to-”

“To heal,” Clockwork said quietly, shifting to his young adult form. “Worry about yourself, Phantom. We will do what we can to slow them from finding you,” he said, giving Danny a small smile. 

“Thanks Clocky,” he said softly. “If you need me, I’m in the same dimension, I’m just in Gotham City,” he said. He smiled at his council as he leaned back in his throne, his core feeling at peace here with his council, those that he trusted more than anyone in the world. 

“Everything is going to be okay, your majesty, we will never allow the Fentons nor the Ghost Investigation Ward to hurt you like that again,” Pandora said, giving her king a look of sympathy. 

“We will all do what we can to protect Prince Phantom and allow him to heal his core,” Damian said with a small smile. “Prince Phantom will be good as new before we know it.”

Danny squeezed his boyfriend’s hand tight, feeling his core swell in his being. This was what he meant when he had said that Damian was like his compass. From the moment he had laid eyes on Damian, his core had sang for the human. Something had told him that Damian was meant for him, that he was the missing piece that Danny hadn’t even realized that he was missing. Damian was like a mountain in the middle of a hurricane. He didn’t bow, he didn’t waver, no matter what came his way. He was the strength that Danny didn’t have, the strength that he desperately needed in his life. 

In a time in Danny’s life where nothing felt certain, where he didn’t even know who he was as a person, he knew one thing for sure. No matter what would happen Damian would be by his side. 

“Well,” Harley said, staring at the spot that their sons had just disappeared from. “They’re gonna be gone for a while, huh?”

“Knowing our sons? Most likely,” Bruce said with a sigh as the two started walking once more. 

“So, Brucie, what’re we gonna do?” Harley asked, swinging her arms at her sides as they walked to where Alfred was waiting with the car. Harley had been just down the street when Ives had gotten the call but now she had things to figure out with her best friend. Especially since the two of them had decided pull their kids out of school without any real plan. “They’re sixteen, we can’t just let ‘em be truant. I’m tryin’ to mostly stay on the right side of the law.”

“I was thinking we can get them enrolled in online classes. Perhaps it was too soon to put Danny in class so soon after he went through such traumatic events,” Bruce said and opened the backdoor of the Lincoln for Harley. The former rogue nodded her head as she slid in and said a quick hello to Alfred.

“Yeah, I’ve been thinkin’ the same thing really. I was so worried about him missing out on that sense of normalcy that school gives kids that I didn’t think about his mental health. Some mental health professional I am,” Harley said with a snort. 

Bruce gave his friend a comforting look. “I thought it would be good for him as well. I completely forgot about what it had been like for Damian when we first put him in school. He had been very against it and it took a long time for him to get comfortable with it. It’s been six years and he still struggles with it, to be honest. Maybe online schooling would be good for both of them.”

Harley nodded her head. “Danny’s a smart kid, he hasn’t been interested in talkin’ about it but Jazz has been telling me that before he died he was a straight A student and had a passion for science and math classes. I would like to see him get to that point in life again where he loves learning,” Harley said wistfully, a small frown on her face as she thought about her boy. He just wasn’t doin’ well and had already asked her that he not go back to Dinah for therapy. “He didn’t like therapy with Dinah. He asked that he not go back but I don’t know what to do. He’s not talkin’ to be about it really, not very much. He said a little to Jazz and a little to Ives but I didn’t even know my baby was dyin’ every night until he had a break down in therapy,” Harley said hysterically. 

“What do you mean dying every night?” Bruce asked, furrowing his brow. 

“He said that he wakes up every morning experiencing rigor mortis,” Harley said quietly, looking at scarred and tattooed hands. “Said that since the Fentons experimented on him, he’s noticed his human body is dying on him. Heart doesn’t beat as fast anymore, doesn’t need to breathe like he used to, he said his skin feels dead and I’ve noticed when I hold him, he’s cold and his skin is hard. He’s dying all over again and I don’t know what to do about it.”

“Have you spoken to him about it since he said that in therapy?” Bruce asked, the blond just squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. 

“No. I’m selfish, I-I’m too scared to ask, and I know it’s bad and I’m his mother and I’m supposed to be here for him. But I already learned my baby died once because I couldn’t save him and now he’s dying again and there’s nothin’ I can do to stop it,” she said, tears now running down her face. 

Bruce reached over and squeezed his friend’s hand tight. “We can talk to him about it together, if you want, I can ask Damian about it first and gauge what he knows. From there, we can talk to Danny about it and see what we can do to help.”

Harley squeezed Bruce’s hand tight and let out a stuttering breath. “How many times am I gonna have to grieve for my own son? I grieved him when I gave him up, I grieved him when he told me he died the first time, and now I feel like I’m grievin’ him all over again watching him die before my eyes.”

“It’s going to be okay, Harley. We will find a way to help Danny. And if I may say, it seems my son has been doing pretty good helping him so far,” Bruce said with a small smile. 

The psychiatrist huffed out a laugh and shook her head. “Can’t believe they’re already datin’. Ives and I were thinkin’ it’d take at least a little longer before they got to that point but they surprised us.”

“I didn’t think Damian had it in him,” Bruce said with a chuckle. “It took him so long to warm up to Clark’s son Jon that I was very surprised to see how fast those two got along.”

“I think they’re just what each other needs. Damian is strong enough to shoulder Danny’s struggles,” Harley said with a small smile. 

“And Danny’s just what Damian needs, he can make Damian lighten up in a way I’ve never seen. He’s also smiled more since he’s met Danny,” Bruce said with a small smile. 

Harley’s smile widened into a grin. “We got some pretty good kids.”

Bruce chuckled and leaned back. “Yeah we do, and that’s why it’s going to be so much fun giving them a hard time for what has happened today.”

The rogue snickered behind her hand and shook her head. “I can’t wait for that little brat to get home tonight so I can give him a hard time. The buttnugget deserves it.”

“Buttnugget?” Bruce asked with a laugh. 

“Nicer way to call him a little shit,” she said with a cackle and slumped down in her seat just as Alfred pulled in front of her building. “Come on in you two. I need a fuckin’ drink and Jazz has been stress making fudge for like three days now, I’m gettin’ sick of it.”

Alfred let out a chuckle from the front seat. “I think that would be a wonderful idea Ms. Harley, I have not seen Pamela in quite some time and I wanted to ask her a few questions for my garden.”

Harley beamed and led the two inside once Alfred parked the car. She was still amazed sometimes how her life had turned out. Here she was, forty five years old with an amazing girlfriend, two kids that she never expected to have in her love but she adored nonetheless, and she was best friends with Batman of all fuckin’ people. It wasn’t what she was expecting but it was amazing.  Sure, things weren’t perfect, but when would they ever be? Life wasn’t perfect. Danny was still scared to trust her and she couldn’t blame him, he had never had an adult in his life that he could confide in. He trusted Red Hood, sure, but Harley was sure it was because of the dead thing. The only person he seemed to feel comfortable with was Damian and maybe one day, Harley would be able to get Danny to open up to her as well. 

She was going to prove to her baby that she would be someone he could rely on. She had already made an appointment with her therapist. Sure, she met with her therapist once a month but they had never sat down and talked about the PTSD Harley had from her time with Joker, from the manipulation she had dealt with or the abuse. She had never felt ready for that kind of thing. Hadn’t wanted to approach that issue with a ten foot pole. 

But, if it would make it easier for her to navigate her son’s complex PTSD and the things he was going through, then she would do it. She would do everything in her power to work on separating Joker from her baby. Never again would she flinch at her son’s smile or his laugh.

People always say you have to get better for yourself, you can’t get better for others and it’s true. But others can give you a push. Seeing her son struggle the way he was, well it was enough to give Harley the push she needed to get better, to confront her fears and grow as a person and a mother. 

Chapter Text

Dr. Harleen Quinzel took a deep breath as she sat down on the couch in front of her therapist and squeezed Ivy’s hand tight. 

“Alright, Doc, I’m ready to talk about it,” she said softly, staring at the woman before her. 

Her therapist smiled, pen poised to paper over her crossed legs. “Really? Harley, what brought this on?”

Harley smiled. “I wanna get past it-no I need to get past it. My son is back in my life and I want to be the best mother I can be for him. He deserves a mom who can help him, who won’t just look at him and see his dad. And I need to do this, not just for him, but for me. It’s been sixteen years  and I’m ready to move on,” Harley said, smiling as Ivy placed a comforting hand on her thigh. She wasn’t alone, Ives was here with her, she would be here to pull Harley out if she spiraled too far, if she went too deep. 

“I am very proud of you, Harley,” Dr. Bennett said with a small smile. “Where would you like to start?”

“Let’s go to the beginning, it’s where all stories are meant to be told,” Harley said and looked up at the ceiling. “I was a model student ya know. Got super good grades in college, was a gymnast, got a scholarship to Gotham City University. I think that’s when it all went down hill, ya know? Took abnormal psychology during my doctorate and became obsessed with learning about the rogues in Arkham. When I got the chance to get a job there as soon as I got my Psy.D. I was elated, I had all these dreams about how I was gonna help the people of Arkham Asylum. Then I met Mr. J-no we ain’t calling him that. When I met Mr. Jack Napier. I became fascinated with him. I wanted to analyze him, understand what exactly happened to him. I begged the other doctors at Arkham for three months before they finally let me treat him,” she said sadly squeezing Ivy’s hand tight as she went to a place she hadn’t gone in a long time. 

“So, Mr. Napier,” Harleen had said, smiling at her newest patient.

“Please,” the green haired man purred. “Call me Joker, all of my friends do.”

Harleen smiled. “Joker.”

“He gained my sympathy. Told me about how he had started out as a chauffeur and hitman for the mobsters Salvatore, Buzz, and CHuckie. Told me about how he had to go to Europe to kill this man Carl Beaumont, he had told me how he hadn’t wanted to do that. Hadn’t wanted to kill someone in cold blood like that and I felt so bad for him.”

Harley stared off into the distance, remembering when Joker had told her how he had become Joker in the first place. 

“He had struck out on his own and made his own gang, ya know? And they broke into the ACE Chemical Plant where he ran into Batsy. When they were fighting he fell off of the catwalk and into a drainage vat of chemicals. Said Batsy pushed him, I’ve talked to Bat and he said that Joker had fallen. But I believed him, and I felt bad for him. His entire life changed that day, ya know? I mean he was washed out into the bay and the chemicals had changed him forever. He had bleached, chalk white skin, his hair had gone from pitch black to bright green and his lips had somehow turned red and stuck in this permanent rictus smile. He told me it hurt, that it physically pained him to smile so much. But it had changed him and he had even told me that falling into the vat had turned him insane and he told me it scared him,” Harley croaked out, taking a tissue just to twist it in her hands. 

“He told me that it was the moment that he decided that Batman would be his biggest enemy, that he’d get revenge on the man who ruined his life. And, I was young, Doc, I was twenty four years old and should have never fuckin’ been allowed in the same room as Jack. But I believed him, and-and I was angry for him that Batman would do that to him and-and ruin his life. Once he realized that I was growing sympathetic for him, he started to seduce me. Would tell me how beautiful I am, and how smart I am and-” Harley cut off with a watery laugh. “I had never had that before. My dad ran off on me and my mom when I was a girl, and my step-dad really didn’t pay all that much attention to me. Neither did my step-brother. Jacky was good, he was nice but he was more obsessed with his science than anything and my mom and step-dad were so busy trying to make ends meet that no matter what I did, it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that I was on my way to becomin’ an olympic gymnast, it didn’t matter that I had gotten a full ride scholarship. That wasn’t goin’ to help them, ya know? But Jack? He thought I was brilliant and beautiful and talented and I fell so hard, I fell in love faster than you could eva imagine falling in love with someone.”

“It’s okay,” Ivy whispered, taking Harley’s hand in hers and pulling her nails from her palms, wiping the little drops of blood from her hands. 

“Then he asked me for help to escape and I didn’t even think about it, I helped him and got myself a nice little cell with my own name on it. When I broke out, I found Jack and he asked me all these questions, did I love him? Would I die for him? Would I live for him? And like an idiot I told him yes and he pushed me into the same vat of chemicals he was in. It fucked me up. My skin got bleached, my hair got bleached, and my mind broke.”

“Harley,” Dr. Bennett said quietly watching as she started to scratch at her arms until Ivy stopped her, she hadn’t even realized she had been doing that to herself. “We can stop. We don’t have to tackle everything in the first session.”

“We haven’t even gotten to the worst of it, Doc, this shit’s mild. I thought he loved me, there was camaraderie between the two of us, we had times where everything was so much fun, and crazy and he would sweep me off my feet,” Harley said with a wistful tone, remembering the times where Mr. J would hold her in his arms and sway in whatever hideout they were stayin’ in. How he would dance with her and twist her around in circles.  How he would just treat her like she was his queen. “And then he would hurt me. I lost my virginity to him, ya know? I thought the way we had sex was normal ‘till I got with Ives and realized that it wasn’t supposed to be like that. It wasn’t supposed to hurt . But I just didn’t care either, I don’t think. I mean, I was the only person who he managed to be intimate with for long periods of time and I could see that it scared him. The first time he realized it also happened to be the first time he tried to kill me,” Harley said, her chest heaving, her heart beating faster in her chest. Why was it so hard for her to breathe? 

Why did she feel like she was going to explode if she didn’t get enough air in her lungs?  The edges of her vision started to turn black, she felt her mouth numb up, more saliva forming than usual as a prickling burning feeling hit behind her ears.

Arms wrapped around her and she jumped away, shoving at whoever was touching her. “No, please,” she shouted before coming to and realizing it was just Ivy. She gave Harley a stricken look before Harley collapsed into her arms, letting out a heaving sob. 

“It’s okay Honey, he’s not here,” Ivy whispered, running her hand up and down her back as Harley tucked her head under Ivy’s chin and sobbed. “You’re here with me, and I am never going to hurt you, Babe. Never,” she said as the therapist left the room to give the two some space. 

“I’m sorry,” Harley whispered, finally gaining her composure once more. 

“Harley, don’t apologize. This has been incredibly hard for you and I am so proud of you for talking about as much as you did. You did amazing,” Ivy said, smoothing the stray blond hairs out of her girlfriend’s face. “Now, I think you’ve talked enough today about everything. How about we go home, we can cuddle up with Lou and Bud and eat a lot of fudge and drink some wine together?”

Harley sniffed and nodded her head once before Ivy picked her girlfriend up and carried her out of the office, prepared to remind the woman just what love was supposed to look like. 

Danny gulped as he knocked on the door of Wayne manor and rocked on his heels as he waited for someone to answer. 

The door swung open barely a moment later to show a ruffled looking Dick Grayson with a wide grin on his face and a bloody nose. 

Danny frowned. “Are you okay?”

“Richard Grayson!” His boyfriend shouted furiously behind Dick. 

“I’m fine, I’m fine! I just wanted to see who Damian was going on a date with! He’s been so cagey about it,” he said with a crinkle of his nose before he winced and held a hand to it. “Dang, he got me good. Anyway, what are your intentions with my baby brother?” He demanded just as Damian stormed forward and ripped Dick away from the door.

“Go spend time with your wife and quit being a menace to others,” Damian said, glaring up at his brother. 

Dick just laughed and ruffled Damian’s hair before he looked at Danny, “Well?”

“I mean, we’re just going to a museum,” Danny said awkwardly, staring up at Dick nervously. “I don’t have any particularly bad intentions with him.”

“Just remember to practice safe, sane, and consensual sex,” Dick said before Damian shoved past him and punched him in the stomach. 

“It is our first date, Grayson! Leave us alone!” Damian said with a huff before he took Danny’s hand and tugged him away from the door. “I apologize about him, My Star. I did not think that he would try to give you the talk on our first date.”

Danny smiled and squeezed Damian’s hand lightly. “It’s okay, Matok, that’s just how siblings are. Now, are you ready for our super fun date?” Danny asked with a wide grin. 

Damian nodded. “Yes, I do rather enjoy the museums here in Gotham, which one shall we be going to?”

“None,” Danny said, rocking on his heels once again. “We’re going to an art museum in the Infinite Realms. Leonardo Divinci and a few others started it a few hundred years ago and I think you’ll really enjoy seeing some of the never before seen art,” Danny said, holding back a smile as Damian’s face lit up in surprise, his eyes sparkling with a joy that Danny had never seen before in his boyfriend. 

“I would love to see that,” Damian whispered. Danny smiled and gave Damian a quick kiss before he sliced a hand though the air and opened a portal. 

“Damian,” Danny said softly once they stepped through. “Welcome to the Infinite Realms Art Museum.”

Damian stared at the art with wide eyes as he looked around, taking in the paintings that scattered the walls, sculptures and creations covering the large open space. He smiled as he spotted paintings from the Baroque period, medieval, renaissance, neoclassicism, it was all here and beautiful and amazing. He recognized Pisano, Cimabue, Raphael, Botticelli, and so many more just from looking around. 

He grinned and started to drag Danny to the closest painting. “Is this set up in any certain way?” He asked. 

Danny shrugged. “This is the display room but as far as I remember, each room is dedicated to a different era in art. So, we can start wherever you would like.”

“Danny, this is the best date I have ever been on in my life. It is my first date but I do not think anything will ever top this ever,” Damian breathed out as the two stared at a never before seen painting from Botticelli himself. 

Having a ghost prince for a boyfriend? The best decision that Damian had ever made in his life.

“Is there any art from Artemisia Genelischi here?” Damian asked. Danny let out a hum before he looked around for a moment. 

“I don’t know, one second,” Danny hummed before he shouted a name and a few words in a language that Damian did not recognize. A ghost suddenly appeared before them. 

“Will you fetch Artemisia for me?” Danny asked the ghost in English. The being nodded and bowed lowly before they disappeared. 

“You-You’re getting Artemisia for me?” Damian stammered, looking at his boyfriend in surprise. 

“Yeah, she’s your favorite artist, right? I remember you telling me that once, who better to show you her work than the artist herself?”

“Danny,” Damian said seriously as he cupped his boyfriend’s face. “I think you are my soulmate.”

Danny just smiled and leaned forward to kiss his boyfriend. “I’m glad I can make you happy, Pyxis. You deserve it after everything I put you through,” he said just as the ghost and Artemisia appeared in front of them. 

Damian stared at the woman starstruck as she introduced herself before he managed to regain his composure and the couple followed her down to her art gallery and studio so that Damian could learn everything possible about her.

If Danny was being honest, he didn’t care that much about art. He thought the work was pretty but he didn’t care about technique or what brush they used. But he did care about Damian, and he knew that this would be something that Damian would adore. So, he was happy to do it. He was happy to follow his boyfriend around even after they finished speaking with Artimisia just so that he could listen to his boyfriend tell him about each and every art piece. Damian even had things to say about pieces he had never seen before. And sure, Danny overall didn’t care about that stuff, but Damian did and it was actually interesting to listen to his boyfriend tell him about all of it. 

He had never realized that the type of canvas an artist used mattered so much before! Damian had even taken the time to answer all of Danny’s stupid questions as he asked about what different brushes did or what was the difference between oil paints and acrlyics. He had never once made Danny feel stupid for not knowing any of it, instead Damian’s eyes lit up as he explained everything to his boyfriend, walking him through each step. 

Danny did his best to keep up, trying to keep everything seperate as he listened to what his boyfriend told him. He nodded along, making mental notes when he noticed Damian talking about his favorite art platforms or his favorite types of paints to use. 

It was good information for the future. Danny’s love language was gift giving and spending time with one another and this was perfect. He was learning more about what his boyfriend enjoyed and he was also learning about what kind of things he could get his partner in the future. Sure, Damian was the son of a fucking billionaire and had money to blow, but Danny knew it was different when it was something that someone else went out of their way to get you. So he just made mental catalogues, hoping he got everything right before following Damian like a lost little duckling. Before he knew it, though, they had made it through the entire art gallery, having met multiple artists and snickering as Damian tried to keep his cool in front of them. 

They were now in Danny’s room in his castle laying in bed together and simply talking. 

“Father said our online schooling shall start next week,” Damian said with a sigh. “It took more convincing than I had expected but he did ultimately agree to allow us to take the classes together. I told him that it would allow us to still get some aspect of the social bonding that is required when attending school and he gave into my demands much faster that I expected.”

Danny smiled and rolled over on the bed to face his boyfriend. “Yeah, mom was pretty okay with it from the get go. She did say that she was also going to take the two of us on field trips at least once a months and I’m not gonna lie, I’m kinda nervous. As much as I love her, she’s a little chaotic.”

Damian gave his boyfriend a look and snorted. “Just a little?” He asked, arching a single eyebrow as he tucked an arm under his head to gain a better look at the teenager in front of him. 

Danny just laughed. “Okay, she’s a lot of chaotic. But I love her for it,” he said quietly. He furrowed his brow as he rolled onto his back to stare at the canopy that draped over his bed. “She’s not doing too well, I don’t think.”

The vigilante reached over and took Danny’s hand in his, a frown now sitting on his perfect face. “What makes you think that?”

“I came home from your place yesterday and her eyes were all puffy like she had been crying and Ma was taking care of her but, she flinched when she saw me. She hasn’t done that since I first moved in. I don’t know if it’s a good idea to spend all day at home with her, and I don’t want to cause her more stress.”

Damian let out a breath and pulled Danny close to him. Danny let him, burying his face in Damian’s chest as he let his thoughts rush through his mind. He dind’t know what to do about Harley reacting like she did around him. It wasn’t like he could just change his looks. Maybe if he stayed in his phantom form it would be a little easier for her? He wouldn’t have dark black hair like Joker if he did and that could take away some of the uneasiness. Maybe if he just kept his smiles and laughs locked up tight, that could help too. He knew he didn’t sound like Joker, thank the ancients and he knew that those were the main characteristics he got from the man but it was just, he didn’t like it. 

He didn’t like that he looked anything like the man and he truly hated that he seemed to trigger his mom. 

“I think I need to move out of the house,” Danny said after a few moments. “I’ve been thinking about it for a little bit now and while the last two months getting to be with mom have been great, I’m not doing good things for her mental health and with my own mental health being all funky, it might not be good for us, you know? Maybe I could just move in to the infinite realms for a while and just take some time here to just chill and give her some space. I don’t want to hurt my mom,” he whispered quietly.

Damian frowned and brushed the hair out of his beloved’s face. “Have you spoken to your mother about any of this?” Danny shook his head, letting out a breath, already knowing where his boyfriend was going to go with this conversation and he knew he didn’t like it already. “Whenever we choose to leave the realms, we are going to have a talk with your mothers. They deserve to know how you are feeling and you do not deserve to have to feel like you need to leave your own home for their comfort. They are adults, you are still a teenager and you need the support of your family during these difficult times.”

Danny just let out a whine and draped his arm and leg over Damian’s body. “Why do you have to make so much sense? Why are you the reasonable one?” he whined, as Damian just rested his hand on Danny’s thigh to hold him in place. 

“If I was not the reasonable one, you would be living in a state of anxiety at all times, my Sun. And I simply cannot allow that to happen to you with everything that is happening as of right now in your life. You need someone that you can rely on,” Damian said only for Danny to pull his head back to give his boyfriend a serious look. 

“You know that you don’t have to, right? You don’t have to put up with all of my baggage and bullshit. It isn’t your job to deal with my issues, you didn’t sign up for that,” he said with a frown, searching for something in Damian’s emerald green eyes that told him he was uncomfortable or unwilling to spend so much mental energy on Danny and his problems. 

Damian simply smiled at his beloved and cupped his face in his hand. “I am aware that it is not my job. But I care about you, Danny and I want to see you happy. You make me so unbelievably happy at all times and I would like to make sure that I do the same for you,” he said quietly. “And I am in a place mentally and emotionally where I can help alleviate some of the weight of this baggage that you are dealing with. If I did not want to do it, I would not do it. But I do and I am,” he said quietly, running his thumb along the constellations that littered his boyfriend’s cheek.

Damian pressed Danny’s face to his chest. “Besides, you had to listen to me blather on about art for five hours today, My Moon, you give just as much as you take. You set up all of this for me simply because you knew that I would enjoy it. And I had such an amazing time and being able to speak with all of these amazing artists was extraordinary. You did not even complain when you had to be the translator. Which, you never mentioned that you knew so many languages,” Damian admonished, lightly pinching Danny’s side and making him giggle. 

“Only the dead ones,” he clarified. “Don’t know anything else. Which it works, all ghosts form knowing how to speak in ghostspeak so if I didn’t know their native tongue, we just used that,” Danny told him with a chuckle. 

“Did you know that when you use ghost speak that it sounds like a symphony? I do not know how else to explain it but the words are like music but in a format that I have never heard before, it could lull me to sleep if I allowed it,” Damian admitted, moving his hand back to rubbing up and down Danny’s back softly. 

“No one has ever told me that before,” Danny admitted quietly, hand bunching the back of Damian’s t-shirt up slightly as he laid there, listening to the steady beat of Damian’s heart, feeling the slow rise and fall of his chest. “I had a really good time today. It was more fun than I was expecting, in all honesty.”

“I had a wonderful time too. If this is just how you planned our first date, I am beyond excited to see how it shall go from here.”

Danny smiled and tilted his head back to kiss Damian’s jaw softly. “Me too,” he murmured before he nipped at his boyfriend’s skin. 

Damian just let out a scoff and pushed Danny back before straddling him, holding his arms down. “Did you just bite me, Daniel Quinzel?”

“Maybe,” Danny said with a sly grin, eyes dancing with mischief. “What’re you going to do about it, bird boy?”

“Oh you will regret those words my Star,” Damian said with an evil grin before his fingers descended on Danny’s sides, eliciting the most beautiful sound from his boyfriend.

He leaned down and gave Danny a deep kiss, unable to stop himself after hearing the sound of pure joy escape the other’s lips. He felt Danny’s arms wrap around his waist as he deepened the kiss, letting out a soft moan beneath Damian. The other smiled to himself, happy to know that he was able to bring the halfa such joy and happiness simply by being around him. 

“Ma, Mom, I really need to talk to you guys,” Danny said quietly, sitting on the couch opposite of his mothers. Harley still looked rough, as though she had gone through something even worse than the day before. 

“What is it, honey?” Ivy asked, giving the teenagers concerned looks. 

“I uh, I just don’t think it’s working out, me being here,” Danny said slowly, looking down at where Damian held Danny’s hand in his lap. He couldn’t look at his moms right now, he was scared of what he would see if he did.

“What do you mean?” Harley asked softly and Danny winced, he could already hear the heartbreak in her voice. 

“I think I’m doing more harm than good by being here,” he whispered, his voice rasping slightly as he forced the tears back. “I don’t think I’m good for you, mom. I don’t think me being here with my baggage and looking like Joker is good for you and I don’t want to make it worse for you. And I don’t want to make you have to deal with my problems either. I think maybe i should just stay in the Ghost Zone at my castle and I can just do school there and-”

“Absolutely not,” Ivy said, interrupting her step-son. “I’m sorry Danny but that is the stupidest shit that has come out of your mouth since you’ve moved in with us. You’re not going anywhere, this is your fucking home.”

“I’m hurting my mom,” he said, looking up at his stepmother, the tears finally falling down his cheeks. “I don’t want to keep hurting her like this.”

“Danny,” Harley said softly before she got up from the couch and crouched down in front of her son, taking his hands in hers after she wiped the tears from his face. “Baby, you aren’t hurtin’ me so get that thought out of your head.”

“You’ve just been so upset and-”

“And I’m talkin’ about some really heavy shit in therapy right now and it’s kicking my ass. It isn’t you, baby. And I winced yesterday because the door slammed and it scared me. I didn’t wince because of you or because of what you look like,” she said, rubbing her thumb along the back of his hand. “You are my beautiful, beautiful boy and I will love you more than you'll ever know. You do not trigger me honey, you are what gets me up in the morning, you’re what gives me the will to keep going.”

“I’m not hurting you,” Danny asked, sniffing slightly. 

Harley smiled and shook her head. “Never,” she whispered before pulling her son into a tight hug and holding him close. “I’m sorry you ever thought you did. But you have done nothin’ wrong and I’m sorry you thought that you needed to leave to take care of me. But you don’t have to,” she said quietly. 

Danny just nodded, burying his face in his mom’s neck as he hugged her tight. “We found out what’s wrong with me,” he said quietly. “I haven’t been comfortable talking about it but you deserve to know,” he murmured. Harley pulled away and sat down criss cross in front of her son, holding his hand as he told her about his core, how the stress and anxiety were getting to him and how his core had cracked, causing his body to die in response. 

“I’m not really dying, I just can’t seem to get better and it’s making me worse,” Danny said quietly. “But Damian is going to help me meet with Ms. Martian and do some kind of EMDR therapy or something that’s kinda like it where we go into my mind together to talk about things. I think it’ll be better for me. But we’re going to wait, I don’t think I’m ready for therapy yet. Right now, I just want to focus on my family and my boyfriend and me,” he said softly. “I’m not ready to talk to someone about what happened.”

“And that’s totally okay,” Harley said with a nod of her head. “You don’t have to be ready yet. I was tellin’ Ives and Brucie that I think we rushed you into things too fast and it wasn’t for the best. Take your time, the Bats are on the look out for the GIW and the Fentons, I’m gettin’ my shit together. Ives is just being Ivy and is keeping this family together. Jazz has been actually going out and having fun. Her and Steph seem to be hittin’ it off real good they’ve become really good friends. I think she’s even helpin’ your sister learn how to be a teenager,” Harley said with a snort.

Danny snickered. “That’s where she’s been? I’ve been wondering where’s she’s been disappearing to lately,” he said with a laugh. 

“Yeah, Ives and I have a bet on when they’re gonna start dating. I think if they do, we can become a gay cult, gay moms, gay daughter, gay son? It’ll be perfect.”

Danny and Damian both laughed at that. 

“That reminds me, Ms. Quinn, my father told me to tell you about a possible job opportunity he had for you. It won’t start for another few months but he thought you would be perfect for it,” Damian spoke up, looking down at where his boyfriend’s mother still sat. 

She arched an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“It’s for the Martha Wayne Women’s Home. It’s for women and children fleeing domestic violence. He is needing someone to run it and thought that maybe with your experience as a psychiatrist and your own history with experiencing domestic violence that you would be perfect for the job. He is willing to hold it until you feel like you are ready to handle it,” Damian said with a small smile. 

Harley gave him a dazzling one in return. “Tell him to give me like a month and a half to work through some things in therapy and then I’ll give him an answer.”

“If anyone could do it, it’d be you Mom,” Danny said with a small smile. “I think you’d give them a lot of hope. I mean, if you can escape Joker then they can get away from their abusers and be happy too.”

Harley just smiled and shook her head. “Shut up, squirt,” she said and stood up. “Are we okay, baby?”

Danny nodded his head and pulled his mom in for a hug. “Yeah, we are.”

“Please, I need you to know you can talk to me,” she said quietly. “I know I have my moments still where I’m a little fucked up and all over the place, but I’m getting better. They don’t happen nearly as often and I’m doing good okay? Please talk to me about anything, I want to be here for you. Will you let me?”

Danny nodded again and let go of his mom. “Yeah, I will. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to be a normal teenage boy and I’m gonna drag Damian into my room and kiss him senseless for making me have this conversation,” Danny announced before pulling Damian up with him. 

“Daniel,” Damian scolded before Harley shouted at him to lock the door so she didn’t walk in on anything she’d need to talk about in therapy. 

Jazz grinned as she fell back into the flower patch she had found with Steph and the others and looked up at the sky. “This is nice,” she breathed as Duke passed her the joint and she took a deep hit off of it. 

“It really is,” Steph said, cuddling up to the other girl and resting her head on her hand so she was looking down at Jazz as she arranged the flowers in her pretty red hair. 

“I still can’t believe you made that guy at the mall cry,” Tim laughed, laying with his head in Bernard’s lap. The five nineteen year olds had spent the last two hours at the mall shopping and hanging out before Steph had declared that they needed to go out and be one with nature. Jazz had happily agreed, saying that she needed to get some sunlight.

The two months she had been in Gotham City had probably been some of the best days of her entire life. For the first time she didn’t feel like she had to take care of Danny. Don’t get her wrong, she loved her baby brother more than anything in the world but she was a teenager, it wasn’t supposed to be her job to make sure that he was taken care of. Now, though, she felt that she didn’t have to. 

Harley and Ivy were beyond capable parents and they had been helping Danny so much along with his boyfriend that Jazz just didn’t feel like she needed to step in as much. At first it had left her feeling lost and uncertain as to what she should do. She had spent so long taking care of Danny and protecting him. 

But now he had their moms, Damian, and Jason all there to help support him. It gave Jazz the opportunity to be able to just be a big sister to Danny and help like that. Which gave her more time to hang out with others.

She had been surprised when she had run into Duke and Steph when she went to enroll in classes at Gotham University, and even more surprised when they invited her to lunch. Since then, though, the two had adopted her into their group of friends with Tim and his boyfriend Bernard and Tim’s older sister Cass. The group had been hanging out ever since.

“It’s a shame Cass had ballet practice, she would have loved to see it happen,” Steph said with a snicker. Jazz smiled up at the blond, feeling her cheeks heat up slightly. That was the other thing about being part of this group of friends and siblings. She had gotten the chance to get to know Steph better and wow. 

Stephenie Brown. 

She was amazing. 

Jazz had never met someone who had been able to help her just have fun and relax before. But Steph? She absolutely did just that. Jazz took another hit off of the joint before she passed it on to Tim. Steph was beautiful and amazing and she was funny. Jazz had found herself looking forward to hanging out with the girl more and more. Especially after she had spent the night with Steph and the two had talked about their childhoods and their parents. And well, Steph understood Jazz in a way a lot of people didn’t. Her dad was a rogue, and at the rate the Fentons were going, they were too at this point. 

It had been nice to be able to talk to someone about her problems and have them listen to her and lift her up the way Steph had. And if there had been some kisses interspersed in there, well, the only ones who had to know were them. And if Jazz had allowed Stephenie to lead her to the blonds bed where they did more than kiss? No one needed to know but them. Jazz had been told by her mothers to go be a teenager, to be wild and let her hair down. And Stephenie Brown was the person helping her do just that.

Chapter Text

Danny sat curled up on the couch working on some of his homework with Bud and Lou curled up on either side of him as Frank gave a running commentary about how hard it was to be a sentient plant. 

His mothers were currently in the kitchen working on dinner and Jazz was meant to be home any minute now. It was honestly a nice and chill time in the house. As soon as Danny finished eating and his homework he would be flying above Crime Alley doing patrols with Red Hood which was always a nice time. 

Being a vigilante in Gotham was much different than his hero stint in Amity Park had been. For some reason none of his ghosts actually ever came to bother him here and also he was mostly for support since Jason didn’t want him to actually hurt anyone. Not until he was finished training on holding back his strength at least. They were working on it. Jason was starting to think he might have to have Superman or someone come and try to train with Danny after he had nearly broken Jason’s helmet the last time they sparred. 

Danny glanced up as the front door opened and gave his sister a shit eating grin as his eyes landed on a hickey sitting just above her shirt collar. 

“Damian likes hickeys too,” Danny said with a snort. Jazz slapped a hand over her neck and let out a growl. 

“Shut up!” Jazz shouted, jumping on one foot as she took off her sneaker and threw it at Danny. “Shut up!”

Lou and Bud let out low growls of displeasure and jumped off the couch leaving Danny defenseless. 

“You know, I’ve always wanted to see what a hickey was like,” Frank said, waving a leaf around. “But it’s just never happened. No one wants to make out with a plant. Not even Ivy,” he said sadly before looking back at Jazz. “Who gave you a hickey? We already know Danny’s a simp for his little Robin, but I didn’t know you had someone you were fuckin’ around with too Jazzy Girl!”

Danny fell on his side as he let out a loud cackle, his sister’s face turned bright red. 

“Don’t worry about it!” Jazz shouted before marching over to Danny and grabbing one of throw pillows on the couch. 

“Was it Stephanie,” Danny asked in a sing song tone. “Did whittle Jazzy Kins finally pop her cherry- OW!” he shouted as a pillow smacked into his face as his sister started beating him with him. 

“Quit it! Don’t ask about my sex life you little creep!” Jazz shouted, hitting Danny over and over again as he screeched with laughter beneath him. 

“Jazz and Stephanie sittin’ in a tree!” Danny howled, finally getting the pillow away from his sister before he took off running down the hall. “K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”

Harley smiled in the kitchen as she stopped cutting the veggies that Ivy had laid out in front of her. “It’s nice to hear that laugh,” she said quietly. 

“Not as triggering?” Ivy asked, looking over at her girlfriend in curiosity. Harley simply shook her head, her pigtails bouncing with her.

“It’s so full of joy, I wanna hear it all the time,” she said with a small smile before she went back to chopping the zucchini. 

Danny phased through his bedroom door and locked it, cackling as Jazz started to bang on the door, demanding that he let her in right that instant. Instead he just grinned and popped his head through once more. 

“I’m happy for you,” he said genuinely. “You’ve been needing to let loose and have some fun. I’m glad Steph is helping you do that.”

Jazz gave her baby brother a glare and flicked his nose. “If you ever in your miserable half life ask me about my sex life again, I’ll make sure you’re all the way dead,” she snarled before stomping to her own room. 

“Not as scary as you think!” Danny called only for his sister to flip him off. He snickered and fell onto his bed, homework forgotten as he waited for his moms to call him for dinner. 

Danny flew through the air besides Red Hood when the comms crackled to life in their ears. 

“Hey Hood, I got that information for you regarding that mob boss,” Red Robin said through the communications device. 

“Got it, send it over and I’ll go check it out. Can you come do patrols with Phantom? Robin’s out with B and I’ve got strict instructions from Harley to not leave him alone,” Jason said back causing Danny to huff and land on the roof beside Jason, his arms crossed over his chest. 

“I apologize I am not there, My Moon, but hopefully Red Robin will be adequate company,” Robin said in Danny’s ear, making the halfa laugh. 

“It’s fine Robin, I just don’t need to be babysat,” Danny responded with a grumble. 

“Er, maybe I’m not the best one-”

Jason cut Tim off. “Just get over here and babysit the kid. His mom will have my balls if I leave him unattended. So will Robin,” he said with a sigh. 

“It is true. Phantom is a wonderful partner but he has the attention span of a chipmunk and the impulse control of a child, he needs someone to keep him from being stupid,” Damian responded, resulting in his boyfriend squawking in offense. 

“I can’t believe you would say that Robin! To your own boyfriend!” Danny fell into the sky and sprawled out his limbs only for Jason to punch him in the side. 

“Quit acting like a baby,” Jason scolded, giving his sidekick an annoyed look from under his helmet. “Your mother would murder me if I let you patrol Crime Alley alone,” he said. Danny just pushed out his lips in a pout. 

“You hate me,” he decided. 

“Do you just not want to patrol with Red Robin?”

“No, Red Robin’s fine, I just wanna prove I don’t need someone to babysit me,” Danny said with a sigh. He was responsible, more than responsible! He had been a hero for two years now, he didn’t need someone to come watch over him. He had been in Gotham for two and a half months now!

He had even made a name for himself in Gotham as Crime Alley’s Friendly Neighborhood Phantom!

Sure, he got a little distracted when Jason made him do stakeouts but those were just so boring! He hated sitting there and watching the same thing for hours. Phantom was a being of action, he punched first and asked questions later. He was full of quips and fun little puns when he fought the rogues. 

And sure, maybe he threw a few shitty guys into walls after seeing them mess with kids. But that didn’t mean he had bad impulse control! It just meant he didn’t like seeing people being mean to kids. 

“What’s he doing?” A new voice asked as Danny felt someone walk close to him. 

“He’s pouting, he does this,” Jason said with a sigh and shoved Danny, making him stand upright. “Be good for Red Robin,” he said sternly. “You know what you’re supposed to be doing tonight and Red’s gonna be there with you.”

“What are we doing exactly?”

Danny let out a whine. “A stakeout at an old warehouse,” he grumbled. “There’s a suspected new gang about to move some drugs soon from this warehouse and Hood and I are keeping an eye out to see who’s behind the operation,” he said with a sigh. “Which is why a I need a babysitter.”

“Oh! I love stakeouts!” Red Robin said happily. Danny looked the vigilante up and down and groaned. 

“Of course you do,” he muttered. “Let’s go.”

Danny and Tim soon made their way across town to the warehouse in question and set up across from it in an old abandoned car, Danny made sure the two of them stayed invisible the entire time.

“So, what’s it like dating the demon brat?” Tim asked as he stared through his binoculars at the warehouse. 

The halfa shrugged his shoulders. “Robin’s great. Hood calls him that too but I don’t get it. Robin’s so loving and caring like all the time and he’s always there for me when I need him. If anything I’m the shitty one in our relationship, I don’t do nearly as much for him,” he said, leaning his elbows on his knees and resting his chin in his hands as he stared at the warehouse bored. 

“Really? The reason I ask is because he’s not like that at all around us. Whenever he first came home, he tried to kill me, like a lot,” Tim said with a surprised laugh. 

Danny winced. “Yeah, we’ve talked about it. He feels really guilty about it, don’t give him too hard of a time, though, he was brainwashed by that weird ass cult he grew up in. He’s a little emotionally stunted and doesn’t know how to express his regret but he does feel bad,” the halfa said with a small smile. “We’ve talked about it a few times when we’re not talking about me.”

“I’m glad he has someone he can talk to about that stuff. We always worry about him,” Tim said quietly. 

“He’s doing okay,” Danny said with a small smile. 

“And you? I know we’re not very close compared to your friendship with Jay and Dami but are you doing okay?” Tim asked, glancing over at him. 

Danny swallowed and nodded his head. “I will be,” he answered after a few minutes of thinking about it.

“Yeah? And the Joker thing?”

At this, the halfa furrowed his eyebrows and let out a breath of air. “I am absolutely terrified of turning into him somehow,” he whispered quietly, staring out at the warehouse. “Mom says the whole nature vs nurture idea is bullshit and I shouldn’t put any credence into it because I decide who I’m going to be. But what if I snapped one day? What if I get pushed too far and next thing you know, I’m fucking Joker Junior,” he said with a slight chuckle. 

Tim flinched and let out a huff. “As the former Joker Junior, it isn’t easy,” he said quietly. Danny glanced at him with a frown. 

“What?”

Tim’s jaw clenched as he stared ahead, he took his comm out and turned it off. Danny followed suit, doing the same. 

“It was when I was still Robin. I had been patrolling alone when I saved this woman from two thugs only it was trap that Joker had set. He took me to the old Arkham building and tortured me for three weeks. Gave me serums and put me through shock therapy before I knew it, my mind was completely broken. I told him so many secrets unable to stop myself and in return, Joker turned me into a miniature version of him with plans to kill B. I got past the brainwashing and got out of it, even almost killed Joker,” he said and let out a harsh laugh. “But it took years to get rehabilitated, to feel better. Harley and I actually talked a lot after it all happened because she had just gotten away from him a few years before. She knew what I was going through and helped me move on from it.” 

Tim looked away from the warehouse and looked down at his hands as he flexed them inside of his gloves, clenching them and then unclenching them. “I know what it’s like to be scared to be pushed over the edge and snap. I’ve done it, Danny, it isn’t pretty and it’s hard to come back from. But you can come back from it, you can come back from it and there’ll be people here to love you and help you get better when it happens.” He gave Danny a small smile and ruffled his own hair, pushing it out of his face. “There’s a reason my siblings make the joke that I’m most likely to turn into a villain. Not just because I’m slightly unhinged and willing to go a little further in terms of getting what I want. It’s because I’ve done it before, and that part of me is still in there. Joker Jr. will always be a part of me and I’m always just one step away from turning into him again.”

Danny frowned. “I’m really sorry he did that to you,” Danny whispered quietly. “Someone just needs to get rid of him eventually. I know that Batman has a no killing rule, but if my father ever becomes one of my citizens? The punishment he’s going to get is going to be unlike anything he will ever experience in the world of the living,” Danny said venomously. 

Tim let out a startled laugh. “I forget that you’re the prince of the dead,” he said, shaking his head. 

“If I ever see Joker, he’s dead on sight,” Danny told him truthfully. “He’s hurt so many people and I won’t stand for it. And, honestly, I don’t get how you all are so nice to me. He’s hurt so many of you guys-”

“And you aren’t Joker,” Tim said seriously. “You aren’t Joker and you never will be. You’re far too kind to ever let yourself snap like that.”

“I’ve done it before. A future version of myself killed the entire Justice League. I know what I’m capable of, Tim. I could destroy the entire world if I wanted to.”

Tim smiled. “So could I,” he said and turned to fully face Danny. “We can be scary, unhinged Joker Jr.’s together, got it?”

Danny smiled back. “You keep me in check and I keep you in check?”

“Exactly,” Tim said with a wide grin that was just bordering on the edge of creepy. Danny returned it with one of his own. Two smiles that were far too similar to the smile of a man who haunted both of their dreams at night.

Chapter Text

Harley ran her hand over Bud’s head softly as she waited for her kids to arrive home. The two had decided they needed a sibling day for just the two of them to hang out and relax and while Harley was proud of her kiddos for taking time out of their weekends to spend time together, she also had a bone to pick with both of them. 

They were due home any second now and as soon as they walked through that door, they were gettin’ the ultimate lecture from Harley. One that was a long time comin’ that she shoulda done ages ago. 

It was time she had the talk.

Soon the front door opened and the siblings walked in laughing with one another. They stopped short when they saw Harley sitting in front of them, sitting with her legs crossed, feet adorned in her favorite bunny slippers. 

“Children,” she said, petting Bud slowly as she stared down her son and daughter. 

“Hey Mom,” Danny said, frowning as he took in his mother’s appearance. “What’re you doing?”

“Take a seat, please,” she instructed, looking between the two teenagers. The siblings gave one another nervous looks but after Lou came and growled at them, the two slowly took seats in front of Harley on the opposite of their mother. 

“What’s this about?” Jazz asked slowly.

“I think it’s about time that we had the talk,” she said calmly. “As two queer kids, you need to understand that sex is different than it is in straight relationships. Jazz, have you been utilizing dental dams when you are going down on Stephanie-”

“Stop!” Jazz whined, covering her ears. “Mom, it’s fine. I know how to have safe sex, I don’t need this talk.”

Harley pursed her lips before deciding to ignore her eldest and continued on. “Also, if you’re using sex toys such as dildos and vibrators you need to ensure that you are keeping them clean in between uses. Now, Danny,” Harley said, casting her eyes on her son. “Stretching is very important-”

“I’m asexual! I don’t need to hear this conversation! No sex any time soon mom! I don’t know if there will ever be any sex, ever. Damian respects that and I don’t need to worry about it happening. So… we’re good. But Jazz? Jazz is a harlot if anyone needs a talk it’s her,” Danny said, turning intangible when Jaz punched him. 

Harley squinted her eyes as she looked at the two. “I want them both over for dinner tomorrow night . I need to have talks with both of them,” Harley said seriously, looking at her kids. 

“Is that, really a good idea? I don’t know if what Steph and I have is really a relationship? I think it’s more like a casual thing?” Jazz said, wringing her hands together nervously. “Is it really necessary?”

“Absolutely!” Harley insisted. “And you’re going to bring her over tomorrow night so that I can talk to her. And Danny, you’re bringin’ Damian, you understand me?”

Jazz and Danny looked at one another in horror before they slumped in their seats in defeat. “Yes ma’am,” they mumbled under the glare at the reformed crazy harlequin. 

…

Danny laid sprawled out on Damian’s bed watching as his boyfriend got ready for dinner at Danny’s house. “You don’t have to dress nice,” he said, watching as Damian looked between two fancy button up shirts.  “And if I were you, I’d dress comfy. My mom forgets that I have super hearing and I overheard her telling Ma that’s she’s going to put you and Steph through a test.”

Damian turned to look at his boyfriend curiously. “What do you mean a test?”

…

Steph stopped walking and looked at Jazz. “What do you mean she’s going to put us through a test?”

Jazz sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose tiredly. “A test. She’s going to put you and Damian through a test and I think it’s something to do with proving you can keep us safe which I think’s pretty dumb considering Danny and I are more than capable of taking care of ourselves.”

“But what is the test?” She asked, following Jazz down the sidewalk to the brownstone Jazz now resided in with her family. 

The red head shrugged her shoulders. “No clue, that’s all Danny hearts before my mom remembered that Danny has super hearing.”

The blond let out a whine of dismay before letting Jazz open the door for her. Thankfully Damian and Danny were already sitting at the table whispering to one another as Harley and Ivy flirted in the kitchen.

“Have you found out what they’re up to?” Jazz hissed in Danny’s ear. 

“No,” Danny grumbled. “I think we’re going to be kidnapped during dinner but they wouldn’t actually do that, would they?”

Damian snorted and glanced in the kitchen. “My Star, your mothers are reformed supervillains, they absolutely would.”

Danny let out a miserable sigh and pushed his lips out in a pout. “You’re right.”

“I am always right,” Damian said before he looked over at Jazz and Steph as they took their seats across from the younger couple. “Stephanie,” he murmured. 

“Damian,” she said with a grin. “Fancy seeing you here.”

Damian’s lip curled in distaste and looked back at Danny before the two started talking lowly with one another and their theories about what was about to happen.

Harley and Ivy soon walked in with twin smiles before they took their seats on either ends of the table. 

“Damian, Stephanie, it’s a pleasure to meet you both,” Harley said as Ivy set the giant bowl of spaghetti on the table.

“We’ve been looking forward to having you visit for us to get to know you both for quite a while now,” Ivy said with a smile. “Imagine my surprise when Jazz came home covered in hickies the other night!?” She exclaimed, causing the blond to slowly sink in her seat as Jazz let out a huff and piled spaghetti onto her girlfriend’s plate. 

“Danny, Damian? Aren’t you gonna get any?” Harley asked, noticing that neither boy attempted to make their plates of food.

Danny narrowed his eyes at his mom. “I think you forget, Mommy Dearest,” he said slowly just as Jazz took a bite of her food, Steph set her untouched food down to look between the teenagers and Harley. “I have an amazingly good sense of smell.”

“Fuck,” Harley cursed, scowling at her own empty plate. “Ives! Plan B!”

Ivy sighed and leaned forward, pointing her finger at her son’s face before a small flower grew and a red powder burst into his face. Danny sneezed and glared at his mom. 

“Really?” He asked, his words slowly starting to slur. “You’re knockin’ us out?” He asked, slumping down in his seat slowly just as Jazz’s head slumped forward. 

Once Harley was certain both of her children were out cold she looked at the two vigilantes. “Listen to me you little fuckin’ twerps,” she said seriously. “My kids have been through a fuckton. They’ve been hurt, they’ve been neglected and you two better not fuckin’ hurt them. You understand me?” She held up a hand before either vigilante could speak. “Jazz deserves a normal life. It’s what she’s wanted since she was a little girl and it’s what she deserves. She made it very clear to both Ivy and I that she ain’t interested in the costumed life and just wants to live her life in peace. I’m trustin’ you, Spoiler to not drag her into this shit. She deserves to be happy and carefree and a fuckin’ teenager without any goddamn stress on her shoulders. She’s nineteen for christ’s sake and she deserves it. She doesn’t need to have to worry about risking her life to help you out in case anything goes wrong. And if somehow my baby gets hurt and I find out you’re the reason, you’ll learn exactly why I’m still known as the Crime Queen of Gotham even afta bein’ reformed. You got me, blondie?”

Stephanie gulped once and nodded her head quickly. “Yes ma’am. I understand. I really need you to know that I care about Jazz a lot and I just want her to be happy and healthy. I will do everything I can to protect her from this life. I know she knows about it already, but I’ll do everything I can to protect her.”

Harley squinted at her but nodded her head nonetheless before she looked at Damian. “And you, you little Demon Brat Danny doesn’t take care of himself. You’ve been doin’ a good job at makin sure he’s doin’ okay. But also remember it ain’t your fuckin’ job to take care of him. We’re his moms, it’s our job and honor to get to shoulder his burdens. I know he trusts you and feel comfortable with you but you don’t have to carry that shit. You get me kiddo? You’re sixteen, live your life, have fun, be a dumb teenager. Danny’s got a lot of shit on his shoulders right now and as nice as it is that you’re helpin’ him lighten that load, you gotta make sure you’re takin’ care of yourself too. It isn’t your job to fix everything in Danny’s life. Just be there for him, hold him, show him you care and maybe get him out of the house to have fun. You both were given way too much responsibility at too young of an age and you deserve to have fun. You don’t have to always be tiny little heroes runnin’ around fixin everything. Help him relax. Got it?”

Damian nodded his head. “I can do that,” he said softly. “I care about Danny very much, and you are right. I do take on more than I should when taking care of him, I will work on it.”

“Good,” Ivy said, looking at the two vigialntes. “Both of you also need to remember you’re their significant others, not their caretakers. It means a lot to me that you both want to take care of my kids. But I need you both to remember that you’re kids yourselves and that you do not have to shoulder all of their burdens. They don’t need heroes to fix everything for them or to treat them like projects that need to be taken care of. They need significant others who can hold them when they are hurting and care about them and help them let loose. They deserve the chance to be kids, just like you do. If their burdens become too much talk to them about it, if you don’t feel comfortable doing that, come to us. They are our children and we are more than capable of taking care of them.”

The two nodded quietly and Harley grinned before she pulled out a large binder. “Now, wanna see some embarrassin’ pictures of the two? These are pictures I got through the years from when I’d go visit them and then I also managed to get a friend to break into the Fenton house for me and steal all the pictures of my kiddos that I could.”

Steph leaned forward slightly, a mischievous gleam in her eye. “Are there baby pictures in there?”

Damian crossed his arms. “It would be uncouth of me to look at the photos without Danny’s permission.”

Ivy grinned. “He’s gonna be out for another two hours, they both will be,” she said just as Harley skipped away to get the untainted spaghetti. 

The vigilante’s resolve snapped in two. “He must never know,” he threatened, glaring at all three woman before audibly cooing at a picture of a naked, newborn Danny.

Harley grinned evilly as she watched her two children get some much needed rest and her two new babies looking over the pictures of her babies.

Chapter Text

Harley’s shoulders raised up to her ears as she and Ivy listened to the rant from Danny and Jazz. She had fucked up. Oh she had fucked up big time and she was in trouble. Major trouble. 

“And another thing,” Jazz said, arms crossed as she glared at her mothers. “I understand that this is something you think is okay because you’ve done it in the past and you had good intentions this time but it’s not! It’s toxic and not healthy and all it does is cause trauma!”

“Yeah!” Danny cheered from behind his sister, making Harleys heart sink even more. 

“We already had strange relationships with food because of the Fentons and you thought it was a good idea to drug our food!? Just to have a conversation with our partners?” Jazz seethed, now pacing in front of the couple. 

“We-“

“Don’t wanna hear it Ivy!” Jazz snapped. “We are your children! You could have just told us you wanted to talk to Steph and Damian alone, we would have let you!”

“But-“

“Can it Harley,” Jazz snapped before she stopped pacing and looked at both of them. “What you both did was fucked. It was fucked and I think I speak for both of us when I say you’re going to have to regain some of our trust after doing this.”

“Yeah,” Danny spoke up, moving to step by his sister. “I love you guys, but you handled that horribly. There are so many other ways that dinner could have gone. Now I have Damian talking about checking all of my food to make sure it’s okay. Your hearts were in the right place, and I understand that maybe to you that was the only way you could think of to talk to them. We’re talking about this in therapy next week, Harley. You can’t just drug your kids just because you want to talk to their boyfriend or girlfriend. All it did was leave me feeling icky and uncomfortable. And I dunno how you’re going to be able to build that trust back up if you’re just going to drug us every time you don’t want us to be a part of the conversation.”

Jazz gave the two women a look of annoyance as she crossed her arms over her chest. “You may talk now,” she said before Ivy burst. 

“It was my idea,” she said, burying her face in her hands. “Harley was wanting to talk to them but she was worried you guys would get mad. And so I was like well what if I use some of my powers to knock them out for a little bit so you can talk to them? And Harley had initially said no and said it was a bad idea but I talked her into it because I wanted to talk to them too. And I didn’t really think about all of the repercussions of it and Harley thought it was a bad idea and I convinced her anyway,” Ivy rambled, throwing her hands out as she did. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you guys in any way, I just wanted to protect my saplings and make sure they cared about you and-“

Danny sighed. “Ivy it’s fine,” he said, ignoring the annoyed  grunt from Jazz. “Well not really fine, I don’t like the fact that you drugged me and I’m not going to lie it kinda hurt that you did, especially considering that you know what our history is like both with food being contaminated and me being incapacitated before the Fentons experimented on me. Your heart was in the right place but this was a little fucked. I know you’ve done this kind of thing before in the past when trying to talk to people about things that are important to you. But you don’t do it to your kids. Ever. It’s harmful and scary. And Harley is at just as much at fault here as you because she still agreed to let it happen and helped facilitate it. If you want us to trust you to talk to you about things, you have to trust us too and let us make the decisions when it comes to our partners. Damian was practically having a heart attack the entire time and I’m sure Steph was too. He’s already talking about trying to get me to move in with him just so I’m not at risk of being drugged in my own home. I'm sure Jazz can agree that you’re both going to have to earn some trust back from us. But it’s okay, we all fuck up.”

Jazz sighed and took a seat across from her adoptive mothers. “Your hearts were in the right place. It was just a bad execution on how you did it. You both disregarded our trauma and hurt us. It’s not something that’s totally unforgivable and in time we can move past it. But until then, I think I need some space from you two. I trusted you guys more than I’ve trusted any adult before in my life and this just, it really sucked,” Jazz said, her voice cracking slightly as she held back tears. 

Danny smiled at the two softly. “Give us a little time and maybe a bit of space for a little bit and we can see what happens. I know you have therapy next week Mom,” Danny said, making Harleys heart stutter. Maybe all wasn’t lost, he called her mom again, that had to mean something, right? “But I think it’d be a good idea if all four of us went to talk about what happened.”

Jazz nodded. “Danny’s right. It may have been sixteen years but Harley, you’re still deprogramming some of the ideas Joker put in your head, and Ivy you’re still considered an eco-terrorist despite not going as far as you used to. You both have some flawed logic when it comes to certain things but it’s nothing we can’t fix together.”

“You’re still figuring this out,” Danny said, giving them a small smile. “Just like we are. Jazz and I are learning to lay boundaries and you guys are learning that some lines you do not cross. I love you guys and I know you both know you fucked up but it’ll be a little bit before I feel comfortable around you again.”

“I’m so sorry,” Harley said quietly, her shoulders still hunched up slightly. “I didn’t-I didn’t think about it. S’not an excuse but I still struggle with that one track mind stuff. I get an idea or someone gives me an idea and it’s all I can think about, it’s all I want to do,” Harley looked up at her kids, a determined gleam in her eyes. “We’ll do better, we’ll work on this and nothing like this will ever happen again.”

“In our defense, Bruce said it was a good idea when we asked him,” Ivy mumbled, making both of the kids groan in tandem. 

“Because Bruce Wayne is just as crazy as you two!” Jazz exclaimed. 

Danny frowned. “Maybe I won’t stay at his house tonight,” he mumbled. 

“You’re leaving?” Harley asked, her eyes wide in fear. 

“Just a few nights to get some space. Jazz is going to stay with Steph, I was going to stay with Damian but if Bruce knew and told you to do it, I might go stay at Jason’s for a little bit. It’s hard to feel safe at home when you get drugged there,” he said with a tired smile. “We’ll be back eventually but just let us have some space, okay?”

His moms both nodded their heads, faces stricken as it truly sunk in for both of them. They had screwed up majorly and this wasn’t the kind of thing an apology could just fix and make better. Their so called genius idea according to Bruce had blown up in their faces and caused more harm than the intended good they were going for. It would be something they would need to work on, they would have to find some way outside of just a therapy appointment with Harley’s therapist to prove that this would never happen again. 

They were going to have to figure out just how you gain someone’s trust back after fucking up so majorly bad in the first place. This wasn’t just some silly thing they had done, it was like the kids had both said: their hearts were in the right place, just terrible execution. No wonder Damian and Stephanie had seemed so horrified at dinner. 

It was normal to be protective of your kids. It was villain behavior, though, to go so far as to drugging your kids just to have a talk with their partners. 

Ivy felt horrible for even coming up with the idea. She felt just like those cringy conservative fathers that would bring out a gun when their daughters introduced their boyfriends. She had used her powers in a bad way and made both of her kids not trust her or Harley because of it. They could fix this, though, they could figure out a way to make it up to them. They just couldn’t be drastic about it. 

Fuck, no one had ever said it would be so hard to be a villain and a parent at the same time. Maybe in the future they could run their ideas by Alfred instead, he was a lot more level headed than Bruce tended to be. Ivy watched her kids as they grabbed their bags and each gave Harley a hug. Maybe next time they could just run their ideas by their kids first just to make sure it was okay. 

Both gave her a small, tense hug before pulling away. 

“We’ll be back,” Danny assured them once more. “We both just need some space to figure out how we want to move on from this and I think you guys need to re-evaluate a few things as well.” 

And with that, both of them were out the door and Harley and Ivy were alone. 

“Man, you guys fucked up big time,” Frank said with a low whistle. “I told you it was a bad idea, but no one ever listens to the plant.”

“Shut up Frank!” 

Chapter Text

Jason leaned on his forearms as he sat on the couch across from Danny who was currently sitting on the other couch pouting. 

“So, let me get this straight. Your moms knocked both you and your sister out to give my brother and Steph the shovel talk?” He asked, pressing his hands to his lips as he thought about that. “And now you’re crashing here for a few nights because you’re mad and need space?”

“Pretty much,” Danny mumbled, already feeling bad for the conversation he had with Harley and Ivy. Sure, his mom’s needed to know that what they did had him upset, but at the same time, they were misguided and didn’t mean to upset Danny and Jazz, they had been doing in their best interest. 

“And you’re saying it’s not okay to knock people out without their consent?” Jason asked, tilting his head to the side. “It’s not normal? Because that’s pretty common with Bruce and Alfred. They drug us all the time if they think we haven’t gotten enough sleep.”

“No! It’s not normal, and it’s not okay to just-just roofie someone for whatever reason you’ve come up with in your head. People don’t do that, Jason,” Danny stressed, giving the man a look of complete disbelief. “It’s not normal!”

“Huh, someone should probably tell that to Bruce and Alfred, but you’re more than welcome to stay for a few days,” Jason said with a chuckle and ruffled Danny’s hair as he got up and headed to his room to get changed for patrols when someone pounded on the door. 

“Got it!” Danny called and went to answer only for Damian to barge into the house and check Danny up and down before he set his bag on the ground. “Pyxis? What are you doing here?”

“I do not want you stay here alone with Todd, I do not trust him,” Damian said, walking into the apartment as he looked around in distaste. “I am here to make sure that you are taken care of. Als I have realized that it is morally reprehensible to drug people without their consent and it seems my father and grandfather are the ones who gave Harley and Ivy the idea in the first place.”

Danny smiled and cupped Damian’s face in his hands. “Did it make you uncomfortable seeing me like that?”

“I was murderous,” Damian whispered quietly, his jaw clenched slightly in annoyance. 

The halfa smiled and leaned on his tip toes to give the teenager a soft kiss. “My knight in shining armor,” he murmured, nibbling at his lip. 

“What the fuck is this? I’m not hosting two horny teenagers in my fucking apartment,” Jason said, walking back in the room, helmet already secured on his head. 

“Danny is asexual, Todd, you will not be dealing with anything of the sort,” Damian answered blandly. “I am just staying here with Danny until he feels comfortable with going home once more.”

Jason looked between the two before he started grumbling underneath his breath, too low for Damian to hear and Danny wasn’t all that interested in hearing the complaints from his mentor. Instead he just grinned and dragged Damian with him to Jason’s spare room, having the bag float behind them. As soon as the door was shut, Danny pushed his boyfriend onto the bed and fell onto it beside him, curling up against his boyfriend. 

“I’m not a bad son, am I?” Danny asked, resting his head on Damian’s chest as the two laid curled up together. 

“No, why would you be?” Damian asked, running his hand up and down Danny’s side softly. 

“Because I got mad at them and they were just trying to take care of me and make sure you were okay,” Danny said with a sigh. “And I know, I know I’m not a bad son but I don’t like disappointing people or making people feel upset and that’s what it feels like right now because I know they’re both upset and feel bad and it’s my fault.”

Damian let out a sigh and kissed the top of Danny’s head. “My Star, you set boundaries, it is okay to do so, they are adults, they will get over it.” Damian tilted Danny’s head up to look up him. He smiled and kissed him softly. “How about we not think about any of those things right now?”

Danny smiled and moved to straddle his boyfriend. He let out a soft hum. “You’re right,” he murmured and kissed Damian softly. “Besides, I have a super cute boyfriend who deserves kisses for being so good to me,” he said and deepened the kiss, nibbling at Damian’s lip as he did. Damian’s eyes flew open in surprise before he relaxed in his boyfriend’s grip and wrapped his arms around the boy’s waist.

Danny let out a purr as Damian’s hands flew up to his hair and tugged at it softly just as the bedroom door slammed open and a click of a gun sounded. 

“I will kill both of you right now,” Jason snarled through the mask. “Get up and get dressed. You are not using my fucking house as a whore house.”

Danny pulled away from Damian and gave Jason an innocent smile, letting his eyes flash toxic green. “Can’t kill what’s already dead,” he sang before he kissed Damian once more and hopped off of his boyfriend. “Come on Matok, we have patrols to do with Mr. Grumpy Pants,” he said before leaving his boyfriend laying dazed on the bed as he changed into his ghost form. 

“I shall meet up with you in a moment,” Damian breathed out, staring up at the ceiling. 

“Phantom, did you break my brother?” Jason asked, looking between the two. 

Danny grinned a sharp tooth smile and flew through the ceiling and onto the roof to wait for the other two to be ready for patrols. He took a seat on the edge of the building, crossing his legs under him as he looked out over the cityscape in front of him. 

Three months in Gotham and he was loving every single moment of it. Sure, there were some hiccups like what was going on with his moms right now and the whole Gotham Academy thing was a mess. But overall? Much better than his time in Amity Park. He missed Sam and Tuck more than anything but they were all doing their own things now. The two were busier than ever in Amity Park what with it being their senior year and from what Tucker had told him last time they spoke, he and Sam finally started dating and were obnoxiously in love. 

He hadn’t told them about Damian yet, he really hadn’t told them much about Gotham in general. It felt wrong telling them about his life here. He didn’t know why, exactly but it just wasn’t something he felt comfortable sharing with them.

Gotham felt like it was his . This was his haunt, his home, and his safe haven. As much as he loved Sam and Tucker, this just wasn’t something he wanted to share with them. Not yet at least. He had even made sure that none of the ghosts came to check on him strictly because he wanted to keep this as his place right now. 

Something stirred in his core, though as he stared out at the city. Something had made its way into his haunt, something he didn’t want to be there and he wasn’t sure who it was but he wasn’t here for it, that was for sure. 

“What’s the frown? You just kissed Robin senseless, you should be feeling a lot better right now,” Jason joked as he and Damian appeared on either side of him. 

“Something’s wrong,” he said with a frown as he floated up beside the two. “I can’t tell you what, I’m not sure, but I can show you. Someone who’s not meant to be in my haunt is here,” he said in a snarl, his eyes glowing crystal blue. 

Robin and Jason looked at one another behind Danny before giving him the go ahead to lead the way. 

“Everyone please pay attention to the communication devices, Phantom is feeling some sort of threat in the air, Red Hood, Phantom and I are going to investigate now,” Robin said before the two shot out their grappling hooks and followed after Danny as he took off in the sky. The three soon made their way to Upper East Side.

“Upper East Side?” Red Hood asked, tilting his head to the side curiously before Danny froze in place, his core taking over almost immediately. 

“Hood, you remember that thermos I gave you?” He whispered, eyes staring down the GAV that was driving through the neighborhood. His core roared inside of him, all instincts demanding he kill, destroy, end the threat to his core. 

“Yeah, why?”

“Soup me. Now,” he said, his hand raising without his consent, a large ectoblast starting to form. This was the dangerous part about a core being cracked. Whenever the threat returned, the core went on autopilot. Danny was now fighting as hard as he could to stop himself from killing the Fentons right then and there. His core would neutralize the threat soon.  It was taking all of the power in his entire being to hold back, to keep himself from making mistakes that he would thoroughly regret later in his half life. As much as he hated what they had done to him, still fought with nightmares and rigor mortis and his body dying more and more each day, he still didn't want to see them dead. But his core? His core screamed at him to kill, kill, kill those who had hurt him, who had dared to damage his very being. 

“What?” Jason questioned, looking at Danny in confusion as though he had no idea what was going on.

"Soup me," Danny begged throwing his hand in the air as the ectobeam finally went off, unfortunately showing his parents exactly where he was.

“Damnit Hood!” Robin shouted, grabbing the thermos from his brother and opening the lid, wincing as his boyfriend quickly got sucked in. His eyes landed on where his boyfriend had been staring. “The Fentons are here.”

Chapter Text

“Fuck,” Jason snarled, pulling his gun out, aiming for the back tire. “Let’s go down there and fucking get rid of them!” He exclaimed, shooting off a bullet that hit it’s mark with ease. 

“No,” Damian said with a frowned, his mind screaming at him to go down there and kill the people who hurt his beloved.

“What do you mean no?” Jason shouted, shooting another round at the GAV. 

Batman suddenly appeared beside them on the roof along with Red Robin and Spoiler. “He means no. Danny didn’t want for anyone to kill his parents, why do you think he had Damian put him in the thermos? He did not want to cause them any harm,” Batman said, taking the thermos from his son and looking out over at the GAV. 

“They tortured him,” Red Hood snarled. “Or did you forget that those are the same people who promised to love Phantom and then vivisected him like a goddamn animal?”

His adopted father gave him a disapproving look underneath his cowl that had Jason’s blood pumping harder in his veins, he was seeing green for the first time since he had met Danny and everything in his being was telling him to get revenge, to hurt the people who hurt his prince. 

“Stand down Hood,” Robin said with a soft sigh. “Phantom doesn’t want us to hurt them, we have to listen to his wishes. But that does not stop us from getting answers out of them.”

Robin turned to face their father, a frown prominent on his face to show his dissatisfaction with what was happening. 

“He just had an argument with his parents but I would presume that he would prefer being with Harley and Ivy when you let him out. Possibly Jasmine as well,” he said quietly, eyes on the thermos. “Spoiler, please take him to his family, give the thermos to his sister she should be able to release him with ease. Batman, Red Robin, assist us in getting answers from the Fentons as to why they are in our town.”

“Can do,” Spoiler said, a frown on her own face as she took the thermos from Batman and ran off to get back to Harley and Ivy, calling Jazz on her way. 

“Hey babe,” she said through her comms as soon as Jazz answered. 

“Hey sugar, what’s up?” Jazz asked with a hum, a small smile appeared on Stephanie’s face. Knowing her girlfriend she was probably doing something nerdy as hell like laying on her bed with her feet propped up in the air behind her, hair pulled back while she did a facemask and reading the fucking DSM-5 apparently it was her version of self care. 

Steph that it was adorable as hell even if it was a little nerdy. She was just happy Jazz was taking time for herself. 

“I know I’m not supposed to call you on the comms or involve you in my work but the Fentons are here and we had to soup Danny. I’m on my way to your house to give him to you. The others are about to confront the Fentons to see what they’re doing here,” she said, shooting her grappling gun to swing across the city and get to her girlfriend. 

She was sad she would be missing the action, she wanted nothing more than to pummel Maddie and Jack Fenton to the ground for hurting her girlfriend and Jazz’s brother. What they had done wasn’t just fucked, it wasn’t right. They had tortured a sixteen year old kid because of their delusions, they had shot their daughter for getting him away. 

Parents didn’t do that shit. Steph would know, she had experienced so many similar things with her own father and it had been a breath of fresh air getting away from him. But dealing with the trauma that was involved with it all? It was devastating. The grief of dealing with a criminal or a villain for a parent was like swimming out into the ocean without any safety gear. 

At first you think you’re okay, the waves are small but you just have to bounce along with them. Then suddenly a huge wave comes crashing down and no amount of preparation is there to keep you safe from the pain of dealing with the griedf. It knocks you under the waves, forcing salty seawater down your throat and into your nose, drowning you until you feel like you’ll never be able to breathe again. 

And then you surface, and you think you’re okay but you aren’t because the cycle happens over and over again and the grief and the pain never really goes away. 

Steph soon landed in front of Harley and Ivy’s brownstone and slipped in quickly, making sure no one saw her get close. 

“Here,” she said, handing the thermos to a waiting Jazz. Jazz bit her lip and carefully unscrewed the lid of the thermos, pointing it away from all of them. 

A ball of light slowly appeared out of the metal thermos. It was beautiful. It was as though Steph was staring at the very universe itself as starts and light swirled around the sphere before a bright light erupted and Danny formed in front of them. He lowered his shaking hand and immediately fell into Jazz’s arms with a sob. 

Steph stepped to the back, unsure what to do as Harley and Ivy stepped in to take care of Danny and make sure he was okay. She wasn’t leaving, someone had to be here for Jazz too while they fussed over Danny and she would. Steph would stay by her girlfriend’s side and provide all of love and support that she could. 

The bats swiftly jumped from the roof of the building they were currently residing on and landed in front of the GAV. Batman took the lead, stalking in front of the RV as it revved its engine. Behind him, his sons held up their weapons, prepared for whatever the Fentons threw their way. Jason held up a gun, one that Bruce was sure was laoded with actual bullets, not his usual rubber ones. Damian held his katana in steady hands, ready for the moment to strike as soon as the Fentons gave him a reason, Red Robin held his bowstaff out, ready for whatever was to happen. 

Batman simply shot his grappling gun at the door of the GAV and ripped it off, revealing Drs. Fenton who slipped out of the vehicle with their own guns drawn. Ecto guns if his information from Jasmine and Danny was correct. 

“Who are you and what are you doing in Gotham?” Brce demanded, glaring at the Fentons through his cowl as he finally took them in. 

Behind him Damian grit his teeth. Here they were, standing in front of his father without a care in the world. These were the people who had broken Danny, who had cracked his core, cut him open and treated him like a science experiment. They had no idea what they had done to his boyfriend, the pain and trauma that they had put the boy through. 

But Damian? He was going to make sure they understood just how much they hurt his beloved.

“You,” Madeline Fenton snarled, pointing her gun straight at Damian’s father, her stance nearly perfect. Behind her, Jack Fenton heft up his own large gun, pointing it at the others.  “Stand down, ghost we aren’t here for you this time. We’re here for Phantom.”

“Phantom is a beloved hero of this town and is under our protection,” Damian spat out. “What would you want with him?”

Jack let out a harsh laugh. “Phantom murdered our son and kidnapped our daughter. We only want to tear him apart molecule by molecule until there’s nothing left of him.”

“That won’t be happening,” Batman said, stepping forward and quickly knocking the weapon out of Madeline Fenton’s hands, just as a gunshot sounded from Red Hood’s gun and hit Jack Fenton in the hands, knocking his own gun away. “As Robin said, Phantom is under our protection, you will not hurt him while he is in Gotham City. You have forty eight hours to leave my city. If you do not leave in that time, then I will allow Red Hood to show you just how we handle intruders looking to cause problems in Gotham,” he said darkly, causing all three of his sons stiffen slightly. 

Did his father really mean that? Damian mused, an eyebrow raised as he glanced over at Red Hood who he knew had a surprised look on his face underneath his helmet. He knew his father was upset with the situation with Danny and his family but he hadn’t realized that his father was angry enough to allow Red Hood to go after them. All at once, the four vigilantes disappeared into the night and met up once more on the roof of a close by building. 

“Red Robin, I want you and Oracle to track every movement the Fentons make while they are in Gotham. If they are here any longer than two days Harley will go after them herself and I don’t think any of us want to see that. Red Hood, Robin, come with me to check on Phantom to make sure he’s okay. We need to meet with his mothers to see what they would like us to do from here on.” 

Red Robin nodded and quickly ran off into the night to track the Fenton’s once more. Damian listened as he corresponded with Oracle on the comms to get everything set up. 

“What is our plan for them being in Gotham?” Damian asked, crossing his arms over his chest. “I know that you and Oracle have been working with the Justice League to overturn the Anti Ecto Acts but you have not discussed with us what we will be doing regarding the Fentons and the GIW.”

“Which,” Red Hood picked up. “With the Fentons here, it’s only a matter of days before the Ghost Investigation Ward comes to town. Then we’ll have all these pieces of shit in one place,” he spat out, sounding angrier than even Damian had. 

“We will handle the Ghost Investigation Ward. The Fentons on the otherhand, is a family matter. One that we will discuss with Harley, Ivy and the children when we get there. This is not a matter that I want to take lightly and I am personally against murder. But as Phantom is the prince of the realms, we have to abide by the rules of his people since he is the victim of the situation.”

“So you’re going to let him do whatever the hell he wants?” Red Hood asked in disbelief. 

“No. We are going to follow the customs of his people and try to keep Harley and Ivy from murdering the Fentons before we can get this taken care of. Now let’s go, I’m sure you both want to make sure that Phantom is alright,” Bruce said before stalking away. 

Damian and Red Hood stared at one another in surprise before following their father to Harley and Ivy’s.

“It’s okay Danny,” Jazz said quietly, holding her little brother. “They’re not going to get us,” she said, brushing his hair. 

Danny groaned and tried to push his sister away. “Jazz! I’m fine, honestly, I’m just frustrated. My core kept yelling at me to kill them,” he said with a huff. “I’m upset with them but I don’t want them dead,” he said and looked around the room curiously.

“I do,” Harley muttered venomously from the spot she had been pacing. 

“Where’s Dami? He’s the one who souped me,” he said before Steph pushed off the wall and waved at him. 

“He gave you to me! They should all be here pretty soon, they’re dealing with the Fentons right now. B just told them to leave Gotham in forty eight hours or else he’s gonna sic Red Hood on them,” she said and then frowned. “I think they think Batman is a ghost? I’m not sure though.”

Danny frowned and nodded as he looked at his moms. Harley looked furious as she paced back and forth, Bud and Lou following her close behind while she grumbled obscenities to herself about what she was going to do to the Fentons once she got her hands on them. Ivy looked contemplative as she bit on her thumb nail, her other hand growing different poisonous plants like she was deciding which one she would use on Jack and Maddie if they crossed her path.

Suddenly Harley turned on her heel and she stared at Danny and Jazz, her eyes wide. “What do you want us to do about them?” She asked. Danny couldn’t help but smile. He knew how angry his moms were about the situation and sure, he still had some trouble with what they had done, but they were already trying to make it better. 

They weren’t demanding to go out right then and there to kill the Fentons, they were asking the kids what they wanted to happen. That had to be a step in the right direction, right?

“I don’t want them to die,” Jazz admitted, ringing her hands nervously. “They’ve done horrible things and they hurt both Danny and me but I don’t want them to die.  I want them to get help. Real help, not the crap they’d get at Arkham either, not unless it’s gotten a lot better.”

Danny nodded his head. “I want the same. No one deserves to die for their actions, I want them to get help. But I also want to talk to them, just to see if I can,” he said softly. “You guys are my moms and I love you both so much but they’re still my parents. They raised me for sixteen years and while they weren’t the best parents, I still love them and I want to see them be better. So no killing. Capture, yes. If they don’t leave by Batman’s forty eight hours rule, then you have permission to capture them and let me talk to them. But only then. And no killing or torturing or hurting them. Understand?”

His moms both nodded in confirmation, letting him know that they were listening and understood his request. 

“No killing,” Harley said with a salute. 

“No maiming,” Ivy grumbled, the plants rescind inside of her once more. 

“Thank you,” Danny said, grinning widely just as the door opened and Red Hood, Robin, and Batman all filed into the brownstone. Damian immediately made his way towards Danny and scooped him up into a hug. 

“Are you alright? Do we need to go back out there, I will help you murder them if you have changed your mind, My Moon,” Damian said, pulling away to check over Danny. “I felt so terrible putting you in the thermos. I know that you asked me to ubt it couldn’t be comfortable.”

Danny laughed and gave Damian a quick kiss. “I’m fine, Matok. Just a little frazzled, and I’ll tell you the same thing I just told Mom and Ma,” he said and looked between Red Hood and Robin, the two more likely to murder someone in Danny’s name if they decided whoever it was deserved it. “No murder. That’s not just a request, it’s an order as Prince of the Infinite Realms. My parents are to get help and receive a proper punishment in the eyes of the court of teh infinite realms. They are not to be hurt or murdered in that time. If they don’t leave in forty eight hours, capture them but no harming them. I want to get them actual help. Not that shit from Arkham, real help for their mental state and I want to talk to them. I know the chances of me being able to reason with them are low, but they’re my parents, I want to try.”

Red Hood grumbled under his voice, too low for his helmet to catch the words but Danny heard him clear enough and decided to ignore him. Batman simply nodded his head in agreement. 

“I think that is for the best. I think we should all sit down and talk about where we need to go from here. As Jason pointed out, now that the Fenton’s are here, it’s only a matter of time for the Ghost Investigation Ward to show up what-”

“Do whatever you want to them. They’ve hurt my people enough,” Danny cut off. “Kill them, arrest them, do whatever but never let them see the light of day again. Not after all the pain they’ve caused the citizens of the Infinite Realms.”

“Why are they any different from the Fentons?” Jason asked him curiously as he took off his helmet and fell onto the couch beside Danny once the boy sat down once more. 

“Because, the Fentons have only ever hurt me. The GIW have hurt my people. I can let my feelings get in the way with my parents because I’m the victim in that scenario. The GIW on the other hand, have hurt and destroyed too many of my people. As Prince it’s my duty to make sure that it never happens again and I will make sure they are gone for good to keep my citizens safe from their destructions.”

“Very well, we will arrange a Justice League meeting to happen this week to full get started on our case against the GIW. I think that Oracle and Red Robin have collected enough information for us to present to the Justice League,” Bruce said with a nod before he took off his cowl and gave Danny a concerned look. “But how are you feeling, Danny? From what it sounded like in the comms you were upset.”

“I’m okay,” Danny said honestly, mustering up a small smile. “They hurt me, I’m not going to lie and say they didn’t. But I was more scared that I was going to kill them. I’m not a killer, Bruce, and I don’t ever want to become one.”

Bruce gave him a genuine smile of his own. “Good, that kind of decision ways heavy on the mind, you don’t need to deal with something like that right now,” he said softly. 

Danny just smiled and leaned back as Damian pushed himself between Jason and Danny and held the teenager close. They would get this taken care of. Sure the storm had come in and it had come in raining hard, but there was always a rainbow after a storm and this was going to be okay.

Chapter Text

Damian ran his fingers through Danny’s hair as the two stayed holed up in Harley and Ivy’s house as the two villainess’ tracked the Fentons through town to see what they were up to. 

“I have a question,” Damian said quietly, twisting a strand of Danny’s dark hair around in his fingers deep in thought. 

“What is it, Pyxis?” Danny asked, opening his eyes to look up at Damian. The couple were sprawled out on the large, overstuffed couch in the living room. Lou and Bud slept on the floor by Damian’s feet, Danny’s head sat in his lap and Frank snoozed in the corner of the living room. 

“You said that the Fentons did not deserve to die for what they did. But then said to kill destroy or do whatever to the GIW. What is the difference?” Damian murmured. 

“The difference is that my people are everything,” Danny said softly. “As king, I have to make difficult decisions. If the GIW are not stopped they will destroy all of the Ghost Zone which will then destroy all of this world. They have the potential to destroy everything. While I don’t believe killing is the answer, if it means keeping my people safe, I’ll do it. The Fentons? They just hurt me, they’ve never managed to catch or hurt another ghost, they aren’t a threat.”

“They are a threat to you,” Damian said quietly, his hand stilling in Danny’s hair as he contemplated his boyfriend’s words. “They hurt you, they are the reason your body is still dying. I can feel it now, you know. The longer we lay here together, your skin is growing harder, it has less give, it is cold. Your cheeks no longer have a rosy tinge to them, they are pale and yellow like that of a freshly dead body. We have laid here for an hour and your body is already experiencing rigor mortis. Can you even move your arms right now?” Damian whispered, staring down at his boyfriend, his traitorous heart raced furiously in his chest. 

He was angry. He was beyond angry. Those monsters had done this to his Star, his boyfriend. They had cut him open who knows how many times in those few days they had him locked up. They had tortured him and broken him in a way that Danny still ahd not been able to fix. 

Danny’s core was still cracked. He still hadn’t felt comfortable to meet with M’gann yet. He was still struggling with the ectoplasm focusing more on healing his core than keeping his human body alive. This was the worst it had been. Danny had used to much of his energy to keep himself from shooting that blast of ecto at the Fentons that it had weakened his human form. Damian watched as Danny struggled to lift an arm and sighed. 

“Stiff,” he mumbled and Damian’s heart dropped. He had never truly seen the rigor mortis set in before. Danny had said it only happened after a full night’s sleep. But they hadn’t even laid here that long and it had already set in. Danny was dying right before Damian’s very eyes and he had no idea how he could stop it from getting worse. “Help me up?”

“They deserve the same fate,” Damian said darkly as he assisted Danny in sitting up. It was a difficult feat, Danny’s body had already gotten so stiff it was hard to move his body. 

There were four stages to rigor mortis. The first was autolysis. It was immediately after death where the circulation and respiratory exercises stopped. Damian could watch it happen now, the way the little rankles showed up on his skin, how the top layers started to relax as the body started to eat the cells that made itself up.

The second stage was bloating. Danny hadn’t reported this happening yet. It was when the enzymes produced different gasses, the skin blurred, and a foul smell started the process of putrification. 

Next was active decay where the body started to liquify.  Organs, muscles, skin, all liquified. All that would be left was hair, bones and cartilage.

The last step was skeletonization and Damian hoped to god that it would never happen.

If Danny did not get the help he needed, how long would it be to go from stage one to stage two? Would Danny be trapped in his human body as it died with his conciousness still there? Would he be able to separate himself from the body and take on his ghost form at some point?

Damian didn’t want this to happen. He wanted his boyfriend alive , or at least half-alive. He wanted him here with him, continuing to age and grow. As loathe as Damian was to admit it, the things happening to his boyfriend’s body were starting to scare him. 

And now here his boyfriend was, discounting what had happened to him, not realizing that his existence was just as precious as his citizens. 

Danny just let out a grunt once they got him sitting up again, his body cracking and creaking with every movement before he got up to pace, forcing the blood mixed with ectoplasm  in his body to start flowing once more. “They don’t deserve to die,” he said quietly. “It’s not the same, Dami.”

“How is it not the same? They tortured you, Danny. You wake up with nightmares and your body is dying and you say that what they did does  not matter? That it does not matter that your core is cracked ? That you could die because of what they did to you?”

Danny whirled on him and scowled. “Newsflash, Damian, I’m already dead,” Danny hissed, his eyes flashed a bright green. “I’m dead and there’s no coming back from that.”

“You aren’t fully dead,” Damian stressed. “You still have a human body and we are being forced to watch it die. I understand that you are not ready to start talking with M’Gann but you have to understand that what they did to you was wrong. Why was it so easy for you to punish Ivy and Harley for giving you sleeping drugs but you cannot seem to hold the Fenton’s accountable for vivisecting you ?” Damian demanded, standing up now to face his boyfriend. 

He felt his face heat in anger, skin burned as he glared at his boyfriend. Why? What was it about the Fentons that allowed them to get away with their actions?

“Because they raised me!” Danny shouted. “I can be mad at Harley and Ivy because sure, they’ve taken me in and become my mothers but what’s a few months of spending time with them compared to sixteen fucking years with the Fentons? Yeah they fucking cut me open and cut off my limbs and removed my organs! But you know what else they did? Mom would give me the softest hugs and hold me when I had nightmares. Dad would take me fishing and tell me stories about his own childhood. They loved me, they weren’t good parents and they were neglectful, especially when the ghosts started showing up but they were my mom and dad and they loved me and cared about me. They took me in when my own mom didn’t want me!” Danny shouted just as Harley and Ivy walked through the door but it didn’t fully matter. Danny was on a roll and he had not even noticed his mothers coming through the door. 

“Harley didn’t care about me! If she had, she would have kept me. Every fucking time she sees me, she sees Joker! To her, I was a fucking mistake that she needed to get rid of. To Ivy I’m just the unwanted kid of her fucking girlfriend. But my parents? They took me in and they loved me and they raised me,” Danny said, his tears running down his face. “How could I condemn them to death when they raised me when my own mom didn’t want to?”

Somewhere behind them, a gasp sounded through the room. Danny’s eyes finally left Damian to find Harley and Ivy standing in the doorway, Jason and Bruce standing behind them. Each one looked varying levels of concern. 

The anger in Danny’s face melted away to horror. 

“Danny,” Jazz said, pushing past the four only for Danny to turn intangible and fly out of the Brownstone.

Damian sighed. He knew that Danny had not been doing as well as he claimed. He had known that there was a deeper reason than what he had been told and hadn’t pushed it. He wanted to continue to trust his boyfriend, but maybe he should have pushed just a little more than he had. 

“Let him go,” Harley said quietly. “He needs some space,” she said. 

It was as though even her ponytails were drooping in defeat as she pushed away from Ivy and slowly walked towards her bedroom. Damian watched, feeling beyond lost. How could he fix this? 

“This isn’t your job to fix,” Bruce told him, walking into the room, concern in his eyes, his jaw set. “He’s hurting, Damian, more than we thought. Let him have some space.”

“I need to go find him,” Damian said. 

“Let me,” Ivy told him seriously as she stepped towards Damian and placed her hands on his shoulders. “I’m his mother, and this is a talk between us. Okay? I’ll have Danny call you later, Sweetie.”

Damian nodded and watched as Poison Ivy ran out of the house.

Danny found himself sitting on the pier at the harbor, staring out over the water. He had fucked up. He had been struggling with keeping those feelings in for so long, too scared to say anything that could hurt his mother. 

He knew what he had said wasn’t true. Harley gave him to the Fentons because she loved him. Because she knew that she couldn’t give him the life he deserved. But it didn’t take the hurt away, and it didn’t take away the anger. 

He didn’t get why this was all so hard to deal with. Why were his feelings all over the place?  Why couldn’t he just accept that the Fentons had hurt him and move on with his life? Why couldn’t he accept Harley and Ivy’s love without feeling like it was fake? 

What was wrong with him? Why was he so goddamn broken that he couldn’t just move on from everything that had happened. 

“Aye! Mr. J! I didn’t realize you busted out of Arkham! What’re you doing out here!?” Someone shouted, stumbling towards Danny on the pier. Danny looked up and frowned as he saw the blond man walking towards him. The man stopped in his tracks when Danny faced him and stood up. 

“You ain’t Mr. J?” Cluemaster said, once Danny had managed to identify the man. He and Jason had been tracking him for a while now. He would recognize him anywhere, unfortunately, his daughter looked pretty damn similar to him. 

Maybe Danny and Steph could make a support group for the kids of supervillains. 

“No,” Danny said, his eyes flashing as anger built inside of him. Maybe he wasn’t in the right mindset but he was angry and here was one of his dear old dad’s friends right in front of him. He flashed Cluemaster a wide smile with far too many teeth as his eyes started to glow ectoplasmic green. “I’m his son,” he snarled. He couldn’t kick Joker’s ass for himself, but maybe kicking his sister’s girlfriend’s dad’s ass would help him.

“Joker’s got a son, huh?” he asked as Danny stalked towards him, eyes glowing and smile wide. Cluemaster took a step back. “Well uh. Congrats? I guess?”

Danny tilted his head to the side. “I dunno about that, you know how shitty it is to have a criminal for a father? Kinda disappointing if you asked me, bet you’d know all about it. Your daughter must understand exactly how I’m feeling. Are you even trying to be better for her?”

“Steph? She uh, she and I don’t talk ya know-”

“Danny,” a voice snapped. Danny tore his gaze away from Cluemaster who took that as his cue to run away and found his ma staring him down. 

“Ma? What are you doing here?” Danny asked weakly as Ivy started towards him. She sighed and slung an arm around his shoulders as she led him back to the edge of the pier and took a seat, letting her shoes graze the water. Danny sat with her and let out a breath. 

“I didn’t mean it,” he said quietly, watching his shoelaces run across the water.

“I know. You’re angry,” Ivy said, staring out at the night sky. “Your situation sucks fucking ass kiddo. But I want you to know, letting you go was the most difficult situation Harley has ever made. I was the first person who she told when she found out that she was pregnant with you. I was the one who helped her get away from Joker, helped her get clean and sober all that. And then she realized one day that she couldn’t give you the life you deserved. You’d grow up being seen as Joker and Harley’s kid and that wasn’t fair. She didn’t want her mistakes to be cast onto you,” Ivy said quietly, her heart aching. “And then you were born and it was fucking gross and Harles screamed so goddamn much,” she laughed and shook her head in amusement. 

“Never want to see a live birth again,” she said with a harsh chuckle. “But we took one look at you and we were in love. I’ve never seen you as just Harley’s kid. I was there every step of the way, rubbing Harley’s swollen feet, I spoke to you through her stomach, told you about every plant known to man. Harley was convinced you’d turn out to be a horticulturist. And then after you were born, I held you for hours and then she took you to Amity and I couldn’t go. I knew if I went, I’d try to stop her. I knew it was for the best but I didn’t want you to be raised by anyone else. I’ve loved you from the moment I learned your mom was pregnant with you. I mean, you’re the reason we even got together.”

“Really?” Danny asked, looking over at his mom. “How?"

Ivy chuckled. “We’ve always been on and off in our relationship but you became our glue. We had so much fun watching Harley get bigger and bigger when she was pregnant and then when you were gone, we relied on each other. Grieved losing you together and it set in stone that we needed to stay together.” Ivy turned to face her son and cupped Danny’s face in her hands. “We love you Danny, I love you. You are always and will always be our son. Giving you up wasn’t an easy decision but we thought it was the best one we had. And we both regret it every single day now that we know how it ended. But also, we’ll always be grateful to the Fentons. They gave you what we couldn’t. They gave you stability that we couldn’t, they loved you and you got to be mostly normal.”

Tears welled up in Danny’s eyes. “They were good parents at the beginning,” he said quietly. “We had a lot of fun and I loved them a lot.”

His mom pulled him into a tight hug. “You’re having to make a very difficult decision. They hurt you really bad but they also raised you and loved you a lot and I bet you have a lot of great memories with them. I know this is hard for Jazz too. And Danny?”

“Yeah, Ma?”

She smiled and held Danny’s face once again, wiping a tear off of his cheek. “We will never replace your parents. We may be your moms now, but they were your mom and dad for sixteen years. But if you’ll let us, we can figure this out together, okay?”

Danny nodded. “I’d like that.”

“Me too, now let’s go talk to your mom. And call Damian because he thinks this is his fault for pushing you.”

Her son snorted and shook his head. “Damian needs to learn he’s not responsible for my mental health,” he said with a laugh as they stood up. “I’ll call him after I talk to mom.”

The green haired man leered as a lackey whispered in his ear. “A son you say? Oh Harley, Harley, Harley. So very sneaky to hide him from me,” he said and threw his head back as he cackled loudly. “Guess it’s time for Daddy to meet his baby boy!”

Chapter Text

Danny bit his lip as he looked at his boyfriend. The two were currently sprawled out in the livingroom of the manor as they worked on their homework together. They both sat on the floor, backs pressed against chairs as their legs sat tangled together. 

Damian looked so beautiful as he concentrated on whatever he was working on, the laptop’s screen shone lightly on his face illuminating his emerald green eyes. They had already talked about Danny’s breakdown and Danny had apologized to him for taking it out on his boyfriend. 

“Can we meet with Ms. Martian soon?” Danny asked quietly, going ahead and biting the bullet. “I’m tired of feeling like a crazy person.”

Damian looked up from his screen surprised before his face smoothed out into a small smile, pride shone in his eyes now. “We can go now, if you would like? I’m sure she would be more than happy to meet with you,” he said, closing his laptop and setting it on the coffee table beside him. He untangled their legs and held out a hand for Danny. Danny took it and followed him down to the batcave. 

“I don’t want to be an inconvenience,” Danny said hesitantly as he allowed Damian to take his hand and tug him through the zeta tube once Damian had changed into his Robin gear and Danny had shifted to his Phantom form. 

“You will not be an inconvenience,” Damian chided as they came out through the zeta tube and into the Watchtower. He smiled as Danny immediately pulled them to the closest window. 

“It’s beautiful,” Danny whispered, nose pressed against the window as he stared out at space. Damian smiled and ran his hand up and down Danny’s back. Before he just shrugged it off, ignoring space and it’s wide expanse. Now, though, it just made him think of Danny. Of how beautiful his core was the few times Damian had been able to see the beautiful orb. 

“We can come back to it, let us go talk to Ms. Martian, yes?” Damian whispered, pulling Danny away from the glass. They soon found Ms. Martian in one of the lounge rooms reading some novel when she looked up at smiled at the two. 

“Oh! Robin, is this your partner you were talking about?” She asked with a wide smile as she stood up. Danny stared at her with wide eyes and Damian held back a grin. He knew that it was just now clicking wih his star that M’Gann was a martian from Mars. 

“I-I I’m Phantom, Danny Phantom, oh my gods, Ms. Martian, I have so many questions for you! You’re a white martian, they’re so freaking cool and-”

“My Moon, you will overwhelm her if you do not slow down,” Damian murmured to his boyfriend. 

Danny nodded and blushed a bright blue. “Right, right. We can talk about that later. I’m Danny, um, Robin told me you could help with some issues I’m dealing with but I was wanting-um hoping to see if he could come with us,” he said softly. 

Ms. Martian smiled, her eyes lit up. “Of course! How about we go to a more private room and have you lie down?” She suggested before leading the two down the hall to a private room with a large couch. Once everything was situated and everyone was comfortable she took the time to explain. 

“So, if you would like Robin to join us, that is fine. What we will be doing is going into your mind so that you can walk through the trauma that is causing you grief or trouble right now and by approaching it, we can see what you will need to work on,” she explained. “Are you ready to begin?”

Danny nodded and a green hand pressed against his forehead soon the three were no longer in the Watchtower. Damian stared in surprise as they now stood in a small, middleclass home. Along the walls were pictures of both Danny and Jasmine as well as the Fentons. All over ghost weapons were strewn around. Danny sighed as he looked around and squeezed Damian’s house. 

“Danny? Is this your home?” M’gann asked, looking around in surprise. 

“Yeah, but it’s not what is up here that matters,” Danny mumbled and waved a hand. “C’mon,” he said quietly before leading them down to the lab where a younger Danny and his two friends stood. Damian watched quietly as Danny put on a familiar suit, only instead of being black with white accents, it was white with black accents. 

“It’ll be fine, guys. I’ll just take a few pictures of and then you’ll have your proof,” Danny said with a laugh. The older version of the teenager squeezed Damian’s hand tight as he watched younger Danny walk through the portal because that is what this was. Danny was walking into the portal that killed him. 

Damian and M’gann watched in horror beside Danny as they watched the fourteen year old trip and hit the button on the wall before the portal turned on with him inside. His scream rang through their ears and the smell of burnt flesh hit Damian’s nose, it took everything in him to not gag at the smell. Danny shuddered at his side, his hand flexed and released in Damian’s hand, the vigilante held tight, though, watching in horror as his boyfriend was killed and brought back. He watched as the two other teenagers, Samantha and Tucker ran towards Danny, tears streaming down their face as they desperately tried to resuscitate the poor boy. 

“I was dead for about ten minutes before I woke up as Phantom,” Danny whispered quietly, his voice horse with tears. He looked at M’gann. “I needed you to see this first so that you could understand the danger I was in,” he said before a series of memories played in front of them, the scenery changing each time as Danny desperately tried to get away from his parents each time they hunted him, not knowing it was their son. 

Suddenly things stopped and a sixteen year old Danny slipped out of the portal and changed into his human form. Damian watched in horror as suddenly two guns were pointed at Danny and he was knocked to the ground with a giant net, trapping him to the ground. 

They watched as Jack Fenton hefted the boy up and laid him on the table. 

“He’s been possessing our boy this entire time,” Madeline said angrily, pressing her gun against Danny’s temple. They watched as two days went by, mostly sped up as Danny showed them how they would carve him open, cut off his body parts, torture him over and over again as his ghost traits desperately tried to fix him and regrow limbs. They watched as the parents finally managed to dig far enough inside of Danny to show his core. Madeline Fenton pointed a weapon at the core when the door slammed open, Samantha, Tucker and Jasmine all barged into the lab, their own weapons raised as desperately fought to get Danny away from the Fentons. 

Samantha and Tucker trapped the couple in a net just as Jasmine got Danny off of the operating table and rushed out of the lab, helping Danny walk as his core slipped back inside of him. 

Danny turned and looked at M’Gann. “That’s why I’m fucked up,” he whispered before they left Danny’s mind and came back to the safety of the room. M’gann immediately launched herself at Danny and held him close as she whispered apologies to the boy. 

Damian sat frozen in his seat as he contemplated what he had just learned. Two years of being hunted like an animal, two full days of torture with nothing to allieve the pain. Two years of being told over and over again that Danny was non-sentient, not feeling and just a monster. He had spent two years having that hammered into his mind only to end up being absolutely tortured by his parents. 

He wanted to murder. Damian no longer cared about the rules his father had given him about death and murder being wrong. He didn’t care that Danny was struggling with his parents being deserving of death. Damian Al Ghul Wayne was ready to murder Jack and Madeline Fenton for their crimes against Danny. They had tortured him, destroyed him and ignored his screams over and over again. 

Damian would be haunted by those screams for the rest of his life. Yes, he had chosen to see what had happened but watching it play out had him feeling physically nauseous. He was just even more committed to making sure that nothing and no one ever hurt his beloved again. 

No one hurted the people Damian loved, not even the Fentons would get away with these atrocities. 

“I’m away from it all now,” Danny whispered once M’gann pulled away from him. The teenager pulled his knees to his chest as he let out a deep breath and looked at the alien. “It’s hard. It’s hard to try to talk about what happened when I don’t even have the proof. I went through some of the worst things ever and I don’t even have the scars to remind me that it happened. It’s just memories but how can I trust my own mind about it? I wake up with nightmares about it and check only there’s no scars, no reminders that it happened.”

Damian moved to sit beside his boyfriend as the teenager poured his soul out to M’gann, finally feeling comfortable enough to talk about the thing that had been hurting him for so long now. He watched in silence as Danny raged and sobbed and his shoulders grew lighter as he finally let it all out.

Chapter Text

Danny gave his boyfriend a soft kiss and smiled at him, excited for his genius idea. “Wanna go fly in space with me?” he asked softly, lips still pressed against Damian’s. The vigilante couldn’t help but smile against Danny’s lips. 

“My sunshine, I am not able to survive in space without a suit-”

“Dami,” Danny whispered, nipping at Damian’s lip before he pulled away and grinned widely. “I control space, if I want you in space, I can make it where you can survive,” he explained before he let his core come out of his chest. A small piece of ectoplasm attached to it floated off and pressed to Damian’s throat before it slipped through easily. Damian frowned, he didn’t feel any different than before but Danny was grinning wildly at him as he started to push his core back in only for Damian to stop him. 

“What’s wrong?” Danny asked as Damian cautiously reached forward and took Danny’s core in his hands, watching from his peripheral as Danny shuddered at the feeling. 

“Your crack is smaller,” Damian murmured, observing the crack that still sat in the orb. But where as before it was a long line that splintered and wrapped around the entire sphere, the splinters were gone and it only covered half of the core now. Damian looked up at Danny ands smiled. “It helped, then? Getting to watch what happened? To show Miss Martian and me what happened to you?”

Danny nodded and took the core from his boyfriend as he marvelled over the parts that were now smooth and unblemished once more. “I felt less crazy,” he whispered, not looking up at Damian. “Before I felt crazy, I didn’t have any proof that it happened and I was starting to doubt myself but to get to see it happen and have you guys there to see it too? It made me feel less crazy. And it helped me on my decision on what to do about my parents.”

“Oh?” Damian asked as Danny pushed his core inside of him once more. 

Danny nodded a second time. “They deserve the same punishment as the GIW, if not worse. Not only did they harm the Crown Prince of the Infinite Realms, they also harmed their son and if I wasn’t a halfa it would have murdered me.”

“I’m proud of you for making a decision on this,” Damian said and gave his boyfriend a kiss. “Now, you promise I will not die as soon as I go out to space with you?”

His boyfriend gave him a goofy grin. “Okay, this is gonna feel really weird,” he stated before he leaned forward and gave Damian a soft, open mouth kiss, Damian went to reciprocate when Danny suddenly started to blow in his mouth, the piece of ectoplasm that had sat in his throat suddenly sucked in the air, holding it comfortably. He didn’t understand the mechanics of what was happening at all, but Danny’s lips felt nice on his own. 

“There, now you’ll have an infinite amount of oxygen pumping into you and the ecotplasm will also keep you safe from freezing to death or anything like that. For the next few hours you’re completely immortal,” Danny said with a happy smile once he pulled away. Damian took a deep breath but found that, he didn’t really need to? It was the strangest feeling he had ever experienced but it wasn’t really unpleasant either.

Danny turned the two of them intangible and floated out of the window of the watchtower. Damian took a hesitant breath before he let out a startled laugh and looked at his boyfriend in surprise. Danny just gave him a devilish grin before he took off flying, his hand still gripping Damian’s as the full human held on for dear life. 

Elsewhere

“Batman, ten white vans have driven into Gotham and separated, they’re currently all driving down separate streets,” Oracle said. “Robin and Phantom are still currently in space. Last I checked in on them, they were having a picnic on the moon so at least Phantom is safe.”

“I’m sorry,” Nightwing said, voice sounding incredulous. “Did you say on the moon?”

“Yes,” Oracle said, looking at the cameras from the Watchtower. “They’re eating vegan pizza and are making moon dust castles?” She said, her voice laced with the same question Dick now had. 

What the fuck?

“Oracle, send us all routes to the different vans, everyone, split up and investigate,” Batman ordered seriously from his own comms device before he jumped onto his bike and followed the white van that had just driven past his stakeout point. 

“It looks like they’re all heading towards the same destination,” Oracle said with a frown as she watched them all on her maps of the city. “Red Hood, it looks like they’re heading towards you. Everyone, meet him there for backup. I’m not sure what they want with Hood but it can’t be pretty.”

“Probably can detect my ectoplasm,” Red Hood said gruffly as he started out of his safehouse and onto the streets. He made sure he was in a safe location before he leaned against the wall of an abandoned building, guns strapped to his legs, another in his hand and the all blade strapped to his back for easy access. 

Just in case. 

The vans all soon converged on him, men in white suits jumped out of their vehicles with their little ecto-guns drawn and pointed at him. Jason just smirked as he held up his own gun. 

“Alright, what the hell do you fuckers want?”

“Put your hands where I can see them ghost!” An agent shouted, gun drawn, ready to shoot. Jason just snickered under his helmet and lazily raised his hands just as a series of bats and birds appeared out of nowhere and knocked each agent unconscious swiftly and anticlimactically. 

“My heroes,” Jason said with a snort as he helped them tie the agents up. “I own the warehouse, we can question them in there once they all wake up,” he said, looking at Bruce. 

“What?” His dad said with an amused smile. “No insisting on killing them?”

“Nah, I wanna expose the government for the shit they pulled with these assholes,” Jason said, before kicking the agent in front of him in the ribs with a steel toed boot.

Bruce just snorted before he heft a man on his shoulder and walked towards the warehouse so that they could question the agents. 

“Is it just me or is he lightening up?” Red Robin said, dragging a man by his foot.

“No, it’s not just you,” Nightwing said, pulling a man by his arms. “I don’t know what his deal is but ever since Phantom fixed the pit rage in Hood he’s been less on edge, especially when it comes to Hood.”

“Old Man’s goin’ soft,” Jason mused before he grabbed an agent in either arm and carried them into the warehouse, Spoiler, Orphan, Signal, and the two idiots close behind.

Once the agents were tied up, Jason looked them over. “They look like Men in Black ripoffs,” he said with a snort. 

“I know, like these are the guys committing war crimes on an entire species?” Red Robin said incredulously. “How fuckin’ lame.”

“Language,” Nightwing chided before he chuckled. “They do look pretty ridiculous though.”

“Hn,” Batman said in agreement as Jason walked forward and slapped the one who had yelled him hard in the face, effectively waking him up.

On the opposite side of Gotham

“Harles, I found ‘em!” Ivy said through the phone’s speaker, sounding more dangerous than usual. 

“I knew they didn’t leave!” Harley exclaimed before running to their bedroom to change into her old Harley Quinn outfit. It was time to teach some fuckers a lesson. Who gave a shit if he was her step brother? He hurt her baby and she was going to murder the motherfuckers. 

Maybe slowly and painfully even. 

They deserved it after what they did to her boy. 

She couldn’t fix Danny’s mental health or take away his trauma, but she could get rid of the people who caused him his trauma in the first place. No , her voice or reason said in her mind. She scrunched up her nose in dissatisfaction at the chiding tone it took.

Danny asked us not to kill them. Harleen reminded her. That was what she called her conscience nowadays. Oh for the most part, Harley was very much sane again, especially after all the therapy. But she still hit some manic episodes every so often, like the current one she was in. But Dr. Harleen always made sure to butt her head in as a voice of reason, even during the mania. 

Fine, no killin’ them, she decided. But beating them up?

Oh buddy, that was definitely still on the goddamn table. Once she zipped up her suit, she grabbed her favorite bat and went on the prowl, like a mama hyena ready for the kill. She dragged her bat behind her once she had gotten close to the address Ivy had sent her. 

Her amazing, beautiful girlfriend had been opposed to Harley’s idea, but ever supportive she agreed to help her find Jack and Maddie Fenton, just to see if her hunch about them still being in gotham was right. She grinned evilly when her eyes landed on that god awful RV her step-brother had created before she swung her bat back and slammed it into the review mirror with all of her might. 

Somethin’ a lot of people didn’t know was that swim in the vat of acid? It gave her more than insanity. It boosted her up quite a bit. She was by far much stronger than the average human because of it, not as strong as Superman or Danny, sure, but she was strong as hell. 

A little faster and more agile too. 

Definitely made her life easier. She listened as foot steps scrambled inside before Jack and Maddie came out with guns drawn. 

Harley wagged a finger. “Ah, ah, ah Sweethearts,” she crooned.

Jack lowered his gun and frowned. “Harley?” He asked, raising his eyebrows in surprise as if he hadn’t been expecting to see hsi step sister in Gotham City of all places. “Are you hunting that blasted ghost that killed our boy too?”

“No, Jackie Poo, I’m hunting the monsters who killed him in the first place,” she snarled before leaping forward to attack. 

Meanwhile

Danny sprawled out in the moon dust and let out a breath. “Isn’t this nice?” He said, glancing over at Damian who was still running his fingers through the moon dust, marvelling over how soft and fine it was. 

“This is amazing, Danny. I have never in my life dreamed i would ever experience anything like this,” he murmured and looked up at Danny. “Can we do this more often?”

Danny just nodded and let out a sigh. This was just what he needed after all the stress he had been dealing with lately. 

Back at the Warehouse

“What brings you to Gotham?” Batman demanded, taking lead on the interrogation at hand. 

Jason watched as the old man got ans2wers out of the bigots. They unfortunately couldn’t have them arrested due to being government officials but, that didn’t stop them from getting answers. 

They were vigilantes afterall. They definitely weren’t ones to follow all the laws. 

The agents angrily confirmed that they had gotten a call from the Fentons about Phantom being here and had proclaimed that the sixteen year old was a national security threat and needed to be destroyed by any means necessary. They also accused Batman and the others of being ghosts, each one casting glares at Jason in particular, which led him to just holding up a middle finger in response to their glares. 

They had also so lovingly provided Red Robin and Oracle the information to all of their bases where ghosts were currently being detained and experimented on after Red Robin had managed to break into one of their phones and gather the needed information from it. 

It had been a while since Jason had gotten to destroy government property and now he was beyond excited to destroy multiple locations all over the country in the name of saving the ghosts! 

His revenant core inside of him trilled at the prospect of avenging the hurt and destroyed ghosts that these monsters had gotten their hands on. 

At the Quinezell-Isley Home 

Jazz walked in with her bag on her shoulder as she stared down at her phone, sending a sweet text to her girlfriend trying to set plans up for the next day. Sure, Steph was currently on patrol but she’d see it eventually. Jazz hadn’t been able to see her as much now that the Fentons were in Gotham and the vigilantes were really started to crack down on getting rid of the GIW but she decided that her and Steph deserved a fun little date. Maybe they’d even be able to get some flower from Tim and have a bit more fun later. 

“Jazzy Kins! Thank god you’re hear to save us!” A familiar deep voice shouted. 

Jazz stopped dead in her tracks and looked in front of her. There were her parents, tied to chairs in the middle of the kitchen looking like they had just gone ten rounds with Harley and a bat. 

She looked at her mothers and found Harley swinging a bat looking rather pleased with herself. 

“Are you kidding me!?”

Chapter Text

Danny and Damian walked out of the zeta tube with smiles on their faces as they walked into the Batcave once more. 

“That was a lot of fun, but I do have a question,” Damian said, looking at the glass full of moon dust that Danny had collected for him. 

“What is it Matok?” Danny asked, threading their hands together as they walked towards the Batcomputer to see what the others were doing. 

“How did the moon rock not cut me when we were playing in the moon sand?” He asked, looking at his perfectly unblemished gloves. 

Danny grinned and twinkled the fingers on his free hand. “Space magic,” he whispered before sirens sounded in the cave. Danny winced and looked around curiously as Damian stepped towards the batcomputer and frowned. 

“Robin to Oracle, we are back on planet. Where do we need to be?” he asked with a frown as Danny read the alert on the screen. 

Arkham Break-Out

Below the alert a list of patients ran through, Danny’s eyes zeroed in on the one name that mattered to him. 

“Robin, we are currently dealing with a GIW situation. Red Hood and Red Robin are currently wrapping that up. Your orders are to keep Phantom in the Batcave as far away from Joker as possible,” Batman said. Damian turned but only to find Danny was gone and let out a sigh. 

“I would but it would appear he has other plans. Please be on the look out for Phantom he is no longer in the Batcave,” Damian said before he raced to his batbike and sped out of the cave nowon the hunt for his boyfriend before he made a terrible decision. 

“Oh! Jazz! I thought you were staying the night with Stephenie,” Ivy said, looking surprised to find her daughter home. 

“I was but um, they managed to find the GIW so she went to help question them,” Jazz said, shaking her head before she looked at her biological parents in confusion. “What are they doing here?”

“Found ‘em sniffing around Danny’s old high school,” Harley said with a sigh. “Look, I’m sorry, we shouldn’t have brought them here-”

“Gimme the bat,” Jazz said with a frown, her heart pumped furiously in her chest. She was beyond pissed. Why couldn’t her fucking parents leave. them. alone? Why did they always have to show up and ruin things? First they nearly killed her brother, then they fucking shot her to try and get to Danny, their own fucking daughter!  What was wrong with them? And now they were here trying to hunt Danny down? Couldn’t they just leave Danny alone? 

Harley handed it to her daughter wordlessly just as sirens sounded loudly. Ivy and Harley looked at one another in surprise as the Fentons started yelling under their gags. 

“What is it? A tornado?” Jazz asked, looking around in confusion. 

“Arkham break out. Danny’s on patrol, we gotta go get him just in case-” Harley cut off before she raced to her room to grab a different weapon. Ivy looked at Jazz. 

“Are you okay with being here with them? I can take you to the clocktower with Oracle to be safe,” she said with a frown. 

Jazz shook her head. “No, we need to have a talk,” she said, looking at her biological parents. “Just get Danny home safe.”

Ivy nodded and kissed Jazz’s forehead just as Harley came barreling in with her giant hammer, kissed Jazz’s cheek and the two ran out into the night. 

Jazz just turned to stare at Maddie and Jack before she ripped off their gags. “Alright Mom and Dad, you’re going to tell me what the hell you’re doing here. And if I don’t like your answer? You’ll get to say hello to my new friend,” she said, swinging the bat around carefully, it felt just like the creepstick had felt once upon a time.

“But first, this is for shooting me in the shoulder,” she said with a snarl before hitting Maddie in the stomach with the bat. Relishing in the oomph the woman let out upon impact. Jazz just grinned, screw therapy, this was what she needed after what Jack and Maddie had put her and Danny through. 

Sure, Harley had tried to get her to agree to therapy for what had happened but Jazz had turned it down. She knew she needed it, knew it was important to talk through everything that had happened but for the last six months she had been so incredibly angry about everything. 

About how Jack and Maddie had screwed up as parents. How they had been the reason Danny had died in the first place. How they made her grow up too fast and raise her own goddamn brother instead of just being real fucking parents. She was angry beyond belief for what they had done to Danny, she would never get the images out of her head. Of the way Danny’s arm had been growing back, how he had been covered in cuts and a large vivisection incisicion. Jazz was angry, she was so unbelievably angry and now she was going to get some fucking anwers from the very bastards who had made her this way. 

Danny flew through the air, searching, scanning the ground to find his stupid sperm donor. This was his chance to finally get rid of him, to destroy the bastard before he could hurt another person Danny loved and cared about. He knew the bats would be hunting Joker down to arrest him. Danny would just have to find him first. 

He hadn’t thought far enough ahead to decide what he was going to do about Joker but he was going to do something. Maybe he had a little more of his dad in him than he thought if the murderous rage inside of him was saying anything. He rached through the streets, searching looking, not even aware that his bastard of a father had already managed to snatch both Ivy and Harley off of the streets. Finally, his eyes landed on one of the Joker’s stupid little henchmen in their stupid rubber masks. He landed and changed a ways away before he stalked towards one of the men and clenched and unclenched his fists, his core thrumming with rage unlike anything he had ever felt in his life. 

“You boys work for the Joker?” he asked, tilting his head to the side as he observed the goons. 

“Who’s askin?” One of the asked gruffly, turning to look at Danny. 

Danny just grinned. “His son.”

“Joker’s out there, you gotta let me go find Danny,” Jason rushed, ignoring the knocked out agents behind him as he glared at his father. 

Batman shook his head. “Stay here with Red Robin, we need someone to keep guard on them and you’re too close to the situation to go looking for Phantom. We will find him before it’s too late,” Batman said absolute. 

Jason just growled at his father before he stalked back towards the agents and kicked one of them harshly in the ribs as the others fanned out to start rounding up the Arkham escapees. 

Soon Robin appeared looking harried and stressed. “Has Phantom shown up?” he asked, looking around the warehouse desperately. 

“Haven’t seen him yet,” Tim said with a huff. “We were sidelined.”

Robin just huffed and turned to start his search once again. “I will kill him all over again for this,” he said with a snarl before he ran out once again to look for his idiot boyfriend. Damian took to the rooftops, running and jumping along the skyline to search for hsi boyfriend when he spotted one fo the idiotic clown goons wreaking havoc in the streets. Damian narrowed his eyes, maybe he could get some answers from them. 

“Oh Harley, Harley, Harley! How could you keep something like this from me?” Joker bemoaned, waving a knife in the air as he paced back and forth in front of his tie up ex. They were currently at the old Gotham Chemical Plant. Harley and Ivy were both currently tied up and suspended above a vat of chemicals reminiscent of the one she had allowed Joker to push her in so long ago. 

Ivy was unconscious after having taken a shot meant for Harley which left her awake and stuck listening to her idiot ex as he ranted and raved. 

“Ugh, why did I ever think you were hot?” She demanded as Joker continued to monologue how disappointed he was that he couldn’t meet his own son. “Do you really think you would have been a good dad!?” Harley demanded, spinning above the vat of chemicals slowly, hoping that Ivy would wake up and get the two of them out of this mess. Especially before Danny showed up because she knew her little twerp of a son was going to appear sooner or later to confront the asshole. “I wasn’t even a good enough mom to raise him! Why do you think I gave him up!?”

“And yet he still came back to you and you never even let me meet him! Tell me Harley, what’s our sweet son’s name?” Joker asked, stepping closer to the rope that held htem suspended above the chemicals. 

“Fuck off,” Harley snapped. “Drop me in the fucking acid all you want! I got better the first time, I can do it again,” she shouted just as the doors to the warehouse slammed open. 

“Oh boss! We have a present for you!” A goon crooned happily. Harley whipped her head over and glared at the asshole. 

“Aw come on Kevin! You’re better than this shit!” She snapped, causing the rope to swing slightly. 

“Mom!” Danny shouted, tearing away from the goon to come get his mom only to stop short upon seeing Joker in all of his ugly, pointy glory. “Oh, right. You,” he muttered before he turned and looked at his mother. “You really do have bad taste in men.”

“Not another step sweet son o’ mine,” Joker crooned, pressing his knife against the rope. “One more step and your mommy falls back in that super fun mix of chemicals! Oh and I wonder how your little step mommy will react especially with those meta powers of hers!” he cackled, throwing his head back with the laugh.

Harley just watched as Danny gave his father a scary similar grin, one that was far too similar to his for her tastes. She reminded herself, though, that he wasn’t Joker. He was something completely different. 

Danny was his own person. 

And right now she had to hope and pray to anyone who would listen that Danny would make a good decision. 

“Danny, just run!” Harley shouted, the rope let out a creak loudly above her. This was bad. This was so unbelievably bad. She couldn’t even imagine what her son would be thinking right now and that scared her more than anything. 

Danny ignored her, though, as he took a step towards Joker. “What’s stopping you? Dad?” He said in a voice unlike any that Harley had ever heard from her son before. He sounded angry, sounded otherworldly in a sense. “If you do, then we could be a big, happy clown family. Isn’t that what you want, father dearest?”

Harley scrunched her face, what was he talking’ about? A big happy family. “Danny please.”

Joker slowly lowered his knife, looking at Danny in surprise. “ What?” He asked, eyebrows shot up high. 

“Yeah, I mean that’s why I came to Gotham in the first place. To be with my real parents instead of those fakes that mom pawned me off to,” Danny said, his eyes glowing an otherworldly green. “Besides, mom hasn’t told you the best part! Because of the chemicals you guys jumped in, I came out like this,” he said, his teeth grew to sharp points, his finger nails grew into talons as he slowly grew into a giant eldritch horror. Fear gripped Harley’s heart as she watched her baby grab Joker in one hand and held him up. “Aren’t I everything you’ve ever wanted, Daddy Dearest? A giant, scary monster? Just like how you always wanted to be?” 

Joker just stared in wide eyed terror as Danny squeezed him tight. “You have hurt a lot of people I care about. My mom, my mentor, one of my friends! You won’t be hurting anyone ever again, Dad . Not if I have anything to do with it. You won’t be haunting my nightmares ever again,” he said with a wide, monstrous smile that had Harley shuddering. “Now, I’ll be haunting yours,” he crooned before he reached his other hand up and ripped Joker’s head off without another word. 

Chapter Text

Harley stared in horror as Danny slowly dropped Joker and let out a slow, rumbling growl as he looked around the warehouse. 

“Danny, baby,” Harley crooned from where she hung. “It’s mommy, can you get me and your mama down from here?” She asked, shaking slightly from what she had witnessed. Danny looked down at Joker’s broken body and severed head before he looked back at his mother, let out a low snarl before he reached up and took the rope that was holding her and Ivy up and ripped it from the ceiling before he lowered them to the ground. 

“Very good baby, now can you turn into your human form and untie us?” He asked her son, her heart racing furiously in her chest as she tried her best to stay calm and level headed. She couldn’t freak out, not right now. The doors to the warehouse burst open, though and there appeared Robin looking around the warehouse frantically before his eyes laid on the giant eldritch horror that was currently Danny.

“Danny?” he asked softly before he turned his head to find Joker dead on the ground. Harley shook her head slightly only for Damian to ignore her as he walked towards her son and patted his tail softly. “You did wonderful, Darling. You protected your moms from Joker. Can you come down here so I can make sure that you are okay?”

Danny nodded and slowly shifted back into his normal ghost form, the haze was still in his eyes and Damian realized his boyfriend was not fully cognizant. He doubted Danny even realized that Danny had killed the Joker. 

Damian didn’t think about that, though as he ran his fingers through Danny’s hair slowly and smiled at him. “You did such a good job My Star. You saved Harley and Ivy and now the Joker will never hurt htem again,” he said, rubbing his thumb along Danny’s cheek softly, talking to Danny the way he would a victim that was in shock. “Not only that, but now Joker is never going to hurt anyone again. He won’t hurt you or Jason or Tim or even me. You’ve done a great job my beloved,” he whispered, pressing his forehead against Danny’s.

He felt Danny shudder beneath him and smiled as Danny slowly started to come back to his senses. He continued to pet Danny’s hair softly, murmuring to him that he was safe, they were all safe and that his obsession had done its’ job. 

“I murdered him,” Danny finally rasped out, pulling away from Damian to stare at Joker’s body in horror. He spotted his mother still tied on the ground and ripped away from Damian completely to untie her and a still unconscious Ivy. 

He bit his lip and phased his mother’s from their bindings. Damina watched, though as Danny’s shoulders stayed stiff and his chest didn’t move, as though he weren’t even breathing. 

“Danny, I need you to let out a breath baby, can you breathe for Momma?” Harley whispered, pulling Danny into her arms. 

“The Fentons were right,” Danny said, finally letting out a sob. Damian knelt beside Ivy and checked her pulse before checking for any wounds, once he had decided she was okay; he looked at his sobbing boyfriend. “I’m a monster,” Danny sobbed loudly. 

“Honey, you are not a monster,” Harley said, crossing her legs before pulling Danny into her lap and brushed his hair out of his face. 

“I killed him,” Danny stammered, looking over at the deceased Joker, still hiccuping sobs. Damian came over and sat beside Harley and took Danny’s hand in his. 

“My Moon, I killed hundreds of people before I was even ten years old. Does that make me a monster?” Damian asked, running his thumb along the back of Danny’s hand. 

“No-no you didn’t have a choice in that,” Danny said softly. “You didn’t know any better.”

“What about me, huh?” Harley said quietly. “Am I monster? I killed a lot people too, you know. And I don’t regret most of ‘em either. I knew what I was doing and I liked it.”

“No! You were under Joker’s control, you’re not a monster either,” Danny argued. “Not like I am.”

Harley let out a harsh laugh and rubbed her son’s back softly. “Oh puddin, I was absolutely a monster. I killed because I was angry and I wanted to. You wanna know why you killed Joker?” She asked, petting Danny’s head softly. 

“Why?” he mumbled. “Because I”m a monster who’s out of control?”

“No, because you have an obsession with protecting others, remember?” She said softly. “You saw me and your ma over there tied up and your desire to protect us beat out anything else. You saved us honey.”

“I saved you?” he asked hesitantly before he looked at Damain. “I’m not a monster?”

Damian smiled and shook his head. “If you are a monster then so am I and so is Harley,” he said quietly, squeezing Danny’s hand tight. Soon Jason and Tim both burst into the warehouse. 

“Look, we left the idiots tied up and unable to get out. We’re here to…. Help?” Red Hood said slowly before his helmet landed in the same direction as where the Joker laid, broken and dead. 

Jason let out a surprised laugh as he looked at Joker. “Holy shit the bitch is dead?” He breathed, walking forward and kicked Joker in the ribs hard before another hysterical laugh escaped him.

“Oh my god,” Tim breathed, looking at Joker’s detached head and kicked it lightly, watching it roll across the ground. “How?” he asked, looking over at the two teenagers in surprise. 

“Um, oops?” Danny said awkwardly. “I got a little triggered seeing him hurt my moms,” he said softly. “I kinda lost control and well.”

“Phantom, you’re my hero,” Tim whispered, taking off his domino mask to wipe a tear from his face.

Danny laughed nervously and moved out of his mom’s lap to look over Joker’s body. “Thanks, I think?” He said, sounding slightly lost. Damian stood and took Danny’s hand in his. 

“What happens to him now?” Damian murmured, staring down at the body. 

“Walker has already been alerted that he’s dead. We decided during a council meeting that if Joker ever died, his soul would be grabbed immediately and given the ultimate punishment. I told him that I would haunt his dreams, that was not a joke. He will be tortured in the Nightmare Realms for the rest of eternity,” Danny said quietly.

“Are you alright?” Jason asked kicking Joker one more time before he stepped over the body to look Danny over. Danny shook his head and stared down at the body. 

“I feel like a monster for killing him. I feel like all I did was prove the Fenton’s right,” he said softly. 

Harley stiffened. “Oh fuck the Fentons!” She shouted before she scrambled towards Ivy and slapped her awake. “Ives! The Fentons!”

“What about the Fentons?” Damian asked, turning to look at the woman shaking her girlfriend awake. 

“It’s a long sotry but Jazz is home alone with the Fentons!” Harley exclaimed before she looked over at Joker and let out a groan and bounced from one foot to the other as she tried to figure out what the hell she was going to do.

“You left the Fentons at your house with Jazz?” Danny asked, looking at his mother in horror. “And what were you two talking about with GIW agents? What the hell did I miss?”

Jason let out a laugh and clapped Danny on the shoulder. “Oh buddy, you missed quite a bit if I’m being honest with you,” he said before he threw his arm around Danny’s shoulders as he led Danny away from the body while Tim started to take photos of Joker, quietly snickering as he did so. 

“So, here’s what we’re going to do,” Jason murmured to Danny. “Red Robin and I are gonna take care of the Joker and his body. We’ll just tell B that we did it. I dunno how we’re gonna explain the decapitated head but we’ll figure it out. You go home with Damian, take some time for yourself at the Manor if you gotta and let Harley and Ivy deal with the Fentons. We’ll figure it out with the GIW and Fentons and you just relax.”

Danny shook his head. “No, I can’t just hide from all of my problems. I’ll just go home and we can deal with the Fentons. You guys take care of Joker for me but you can definitely tell B it was me,” he said with a sigh before he ripped away and grabbed Damian’s hand just as Harley got Ivy off of the ground. 

“Can we go home?” He asked quietly, leading Damian over with him. Ivy immediately pulled Danny into a tight hug and rubbed his back softly 

“I’m so sorry, Honey,” Ivy whispered quietly. “Are you okay?”

“No,” Danny admitted. “Miss Martian is going to have her work cut out for her next week during therapy,” Danny said with an awkward laugh as he hugged his mom back. 

“I think we’re all gonna have to make an appointment to see a therapist soon,” Harley laughed, pulling the two into a tight hug. “Now, how about we go home and deal with this little Fenton situation?”

“Yeah, might as well,” Danny said with a sigh. 

….

The four walked into the Brownstone and Danny stopped in his tracks as he watched Jazz hit their father in the stomach with that bat. “And that’s for shooting me in the shoulder!” She screeched. 

“I am going to call Brown,” Damian said hesitantly, stepping away as Danny rushed to his parents and sister. 

“Jazz! What are you doing?” Danny demanded, fighting the bat out of his sisters hands as she continued to spew obscenities at their parents. 

“They’ve been sitting her talking shit about you and ghosts for the last two hours!” She shouted, fighting against Danny to do what Danny thought looked like claw their faces out. “They accused you of brainwashing me! Now give me the fucking bat!” She shouted only for Danny to hoist her up and throw his sister over his shoulder before he looked at their moms. “Can you call the cops or something? I dunno, but I don’t want to see them.”

“The cops?” His moms said in unison, noses scrunched up in disgust. 

“I don’t know! But if I have to listen to them I’m gonna give them the same treatment as Joker and my mental health just can’t handle that right now!” Danny said before carrying Jazz to her room just as Stephenie pushed through the window to pull Jazz from Danny and held her close. 

“What did I just walk into?” She asked hesitantly.

“Jazz was beating the Fentons with a bat,” Danny said with an awkward chuckle and watched as Steph managed to calm the kicking and screaming girl enough to get her to stop shouting obscenities at Danny for pulling her away from the Fentons. 

“Wait, you murdered the Joker?” She finally asked, calmed down enough to look at her brother curiously. 

“Yeah, I guess when I saw him hanging mom and ma over a vat of chemicals my core went into overdrive and all i could think was protect,” he mumbled, embarrassed and still slightly horrified for his actions. 

“And you killed him?” Jazz asked before she yanked Danny into her arms and held him close. 

“We’re gonna just give you guys a moment,” Steph said before dragging Damian out of the bedroom. The siblings shot them a thankful smile before they laid down on the bed together after kicking off their shoes. Danny used his powers to cut the lights as Jazz pulled the blankets over their heads. 

“I beat our parents with a bat,” Jazz whispered. “I was ready to kill them.”

“I did kill my parent. Well, I killed Joker but he’s my dad so ya know, same thing?” Danny suggested with a wince. “Wow, we’re fucked up.”

Jazz laughed and tucked an arm under her head. “Tell me about it,” she said with a snort. “What is wrong with us?”

“A lot. But you know, at least I’m in therapy, what’s your excuse?” Danny joked. 

“I kept saying I didn’t need it,” she said with a sigh. “But I think I’m ready to go. I have a lot of anger to work through apparently.”

“Apparently,” Danny mimicked with a chuckle. 

“We’re fucked up,” Jazz said with a laugh. The two just held one another tight as exhaustion from the day washed over the both of them. 

Outside of Jazz’s room, Steph and Damian watched in amusement as Batman scolded Ivy and Harley for kidnapping the Fentons and beating them within a half of an inch of their lives as they just took their punishment.

“First I have to deal with the Ghost Investigation Ward, then I find out that Jason and Tim left their posts to behead the Joker and now I learn that you two kidnapped civillians? Have I completely lost control of the situation?”

Ivy and Harley looked at one another before back at Bruce. “Yes,” they agreed before letting out twin laughs. 

“I suggest we just call Commissioner Gordon, explain the situation as best as we can just have them arrested for assault and battery on a couple of minors and then press charges for neglect and child abuse,” Damian offered, finally stepping forward. “Danny and Jasmine have had a difficult day with a very large amount of trauma and they need their rest. Let us just handle this quickly and efficiently so that they are no longer dragged through more unnecessary trauma,” he said. 

“I agree! Jazz needs a break!” Steph exclaimed. Bruce stared at the two vigilantes for a moment before he sighed and looked back at Harley and Ivy. 

“Very well, but we are not finished with this conversation you two,” he said seriosuyl before slipping out of the house to call Gordon. Damian just gave Stephenie a pleased smile before they started to cuff the Fentons, ignoring the fact that they were very clearly unconscious. 

Hopefully with the arrest of them, the capture of the GIW, and the death of Joker things were finally going to slow down around here and their significant others could finally get time to heal.

“Man this family is fucked up,” Frank muttered from his spot in the corner. 

“Shut up Frank!” Harley, Ivy, Steph, and Damian shouted at the plant.

Chapter Text

Six months later

Danny let out a sigh as he and Damian walked through the front door of the brownstone and dropped their bags by the door before they both fell onto the couch. 

“Mom! Ma! I’m home!” He called. The two had just gotten back from Danny’s most recent therapy session and he was exhausted. Now that they had tackled the big trauma issues in Danny’s life, they were focusing more on how to cope and adjust to everything that had happened to him and plan for what he was going to do next.

Overall things were finally starting to go well in Danny’s life. His parents were currently facing trial for their crimes. The Justice League had managed to get the ecto acts overturned and the GIW were disbanded and arrested for their crimes against an entire species. 

The four Quinzel-Isley members were attending family therapy once a week to actually learn about how to be a normal family and make sure they were communicating correctly. Which right now those meetings were crazy considering Jazz had gotten eloped and Danny had nearly had a heart attack when he found out. 

Jazz had fully and completely let loose which he was happy about but also now she just slightly terrified Danny. She was a little too much like their mother if you asked him.

Harley had opened up her own shelter for victims of domestic violence and used her own experiences to help others and inspire them as best as she could. Danny couldn’t be more proud of her.

Of course, the best part had been that Danny could finally breathe again and just be a stupid sixteen year old who moonlighted as a vigilante with his bestriend and boyfriend. 

“Oh! How did therapy go?” Ivy asked, coming in from her greenhouse on the patio, Frank followed behind. 

“It went really well, today was all about coping skills. Dami and I went on a date afterwards,” Danny said with a small smile, resting his head on Damian’s shoulder.

“Aw, where did you guys go?” Ivy asked, taking a seat across from the boys, a small smile on her face. 

“Danny took me to the moon again before he went and captured a piece of the sun for me,” Damian said with a smug smile before he showed the small vial with a dull light shinning from it. “He put magic on it so that it wouldn’t be blinding or hot,” he said before tucking it back into his shirt pocket. The teenager already had plans to put it on a chain and turn it into a necklace to keep with him at all times. 

“That sounds fun,” Ivy said, nodding her head . 

“Yeah, we’re gonna go work on some homework in my room but can you call us for dinner in a few hours?” Danny asked, getting off of the couch and pulling Damian along with him. 

“Of course, Jazz and Steph are coming over too, they’re finally back from their two month honeymoon,” Ivy said with a laugh. Danny snickered an spilled his boyfriend to his room. They fell onto the bed together and Danny soon found himself straddling the vigilante, holding his arms over his head. 

“Hey beautiful,” he said with a soft smile, staring down at those beautiful emerald green eyes.

“Hello my love,” Damian said softly. 

Danny let out a hum at that. It had only been a week since they had first those fun three letter words to one another and it made Danny’s core flutter every single time they said it. 

“I love you,” he said quietly, pressing a kiss to the corner of Damian’s mouth as the teenager ripped his arms free to wrap around Danny’s waist and hold him close. 

“I love you too, My Sun, forever and always,” he murmured, burying his face in Danny’s shoulder. Danny just smiled, it had taken longer than he had expected but he finally found his pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

I used to live in the darkness

Dress in black, act so heartless, but now

I see that colors are everything

Got kaleidoscopes in my hairdo

Got back the stars in my eyes, too, yeah now

I see the magic inside of me

Yeah, maybe my head's fucked up

But I'm falling right back in love with being alive

Dreaming in light, light, lights

Been lookin' for a star-sent sign that I'll be alright

Look to the skies

I've found a rainbow, rainbow, baby

Trust me, I know, life is scary

Rainbow by Kesha