Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Why are you following me?” Jason pressed his arm against the stranger’s throat, pinning him to the alley wall.

Under the sodium glow of the streetlight Jason got his first good look at the guy. Tall, dark hair, maybe his age or a little younger. Not the type he typically saw in the Narrows- he lacked that certain air of despair. The stranger had been following Jason since he’d left his safe house. Maybe the guy thought Jason would be an easy mugging target. Wasn’t he in for a surprise.

The stranger lifted his face and smiled. His blue eyes glowed with a green ethereal light. “How long have you been dead?”

He said it with the casual nonchalance of talking about the weather. Jason tensed, pressing harder on his arm. How the hell did this guy know?

The guy didn’t flinch. He didn’t seem bothered at all. That could only mean one thing.

Jason steadied his breath. “Metas aren’t welcome in Gotham.”

“I’m not a meta. And neither are you. But that doesn’t mean we’re totally human either.” The stranger tilted his chin up, his smile broadened. Behind his lips he revealed a pair of fangs glinting, taunting.

From nowhere Memories of the pit stirred under Jason’s heart— rage and pain and fear. His pulse raced faster. His arm pressed harder.

As if responding to the pressure the guy’s face softened. “Oh. It’s worse than I thought.” He sounded genuinely concerned. “What the hell happened to you?”

“Shut up!” Somehow the pity stung worse than the taunts.

Jason pulled his fist back to punch the look off the guy’s face, but he didn’t get the chance to. The guy went translucent. He moved through Jason’s arm like a ghost but then suddenly his hands were solid against his chest, pushing with surprising force, sending him stumbling backward to the slimy concrete.

He fell prone and then the stranger was on top of him. Adrenaline flashed through him- too late. His breath clogged in his throat as cold clutch of power hit him. The strangers face twisted in concentration as he put a hand to and then through Jason’s chest.

The fury of the pit raged and roared, nearly as loud as it had when Jason had taken those first screaming breaths back alive. Jason fought, punching and clawing but the guy held form, unshakable. His ears rang and pain sang through his whole body and it felt like he was turning inside out and then—

Quiet.

Quiet, empty relief.

He breathed out. A cool weight sat heavy under his heart where previously there had been a nest of scorpions.

Jason’s mouth fell open. The guy pulled his hand back with a sigh and stood up.

“That should help I think.”

Jason looked down at his chest- unscathed. A thousand questions scrolled through his head. The one that made it out of his lips: “What the fuck?”

The guy shrugged as he stepped back. “Gotta look out for you. You’re one of mine.”

One of mine. Those words sent a shiver through Jason. This guy was obviously a dangerous meta. Jason had been embarrassingly helpless to stop him doing whatever it was he just did. Time for some answers.

Jason rolled up to a fighting crouch and pulled a handgun from his belt. He leveled its comforting weight at the not-meta meta. “I don’t belong to anybody.”

The stranger’s smile came back, and so did his fangs. Jason bit his tongue.

The guy pulled a scrap of paper out of his pocket and scrawled for a moment, completely nonplussed by the gun pointed at him. “Call me if it gets bad again?”

Jason didn’t move. He gripped the gun tighter. “Who are you?”

Still that smile. “I’m Danny.”

And then he vanished. Not a Batman fade-into-the-shadows type of vanish. One second he was there and the next- nothing but air. The paper he’d written on fluttered down to the ground in the place where he’d stood.

Jason lowered the gun. He got up to walk away, ready to chalk up the whole experience to some meta bullshit he didn’t want to think about again.

But a new weight sat heavy in his chest. The quiet lingered in his head. Whatever that guy did, it made him feel more calm, more in control of himself than he had in a long time. Halfway through that thought the wind picked up and threatened to blow the paper away. Jason’s stomach dropped as he scrambled to catch it. He closed his fist around it just as it reached the street.

He uncrumpled it between his fingers. A phone number, nothing else. On the other side— a receipt for bat burger. What the fuck.

Chapter Text

No way Jason was going to call that number. He was busy with Black Mask. So long as there was no trouble, he didn’t need to get involved in meta business. And he certainly didn’t need help from one. He was absolutely fine.

He could have told Bruce and the others to keep an eye out, but what would he have said? Be on the lookout for a generic dude who can tell if you died? Yeah, not worth ringing alarm bells. He went back to his work.

Days later when Jason shot a would-be robber in the leg, he was totally calm. Weeks later when he pushed a rival crime boss off the back of a moving truck— definitely still keeping it together. A month later when he held one of Joker’s pawns by the head and smashed his skull to the cement again and again and again and the rage roared like an ocean in his ears— okay maybe he was missing the easy peace he’d enjoyed those first few days after confronting that stranger in the alley. He’d gotten so used to the rage that he’d forgotten what it was like to live without it.

Back in his apartment that night Jason scrubbed the blood off his hands. He didn’t think about the crumpled receipt he’d stashed in a kitchen drawer a month ago and hadn’t dared look at since.

As he laid down to try to sleep he could still feel the new weight in his chest but now an old anger clawed at it again like a ravenous beast. Uncomfortably aware of it now, like when someone reminds you you’re breathing. What had that stranger done to him?

That doesn’t mean we’re totally human either.

We’re.

Jason felt different since coming back from the dead, that was obvious. But taking a dip in the Pit didn’t make people metas. Not like that guy. Jason couldn’t walk through walls or disappear. At least he didn’t think he could.

He thought of the stranger’s— of Danny’s easy cheeky smile. Totally unthreatened. Jason’s heart twisted with rage and something else.

He pushed himself out of bed and got suited up again. No use laying here with his blood on fire. The chill of the empty streets would have to serve as a balm.

Later he’d blame his carelessness on his frazzled state of mind. But regardless of the cause, Black Mask’s goons caught him in their trap with maddening ease. One minute he was following a mark on the street, the next he was jumped from behind, tied up, knocked out.

He came back to consciousness in a small windowless room, tied to a chair with a hefty amount of rope. The sharp tang of metal and the weight of sweat hung in the air. Three goons with guns hovered over him. They’d taken his helmet but left the domino mask. So considerate of them.

“We’ve got some questions for you,” the head goon said, smiling with stained teeth.

Jason’s vision went red. Rage, rage, rage. There was no room for thoughts in his head, only the loud wailing of his anger. These goons were dead, deader than dead. Except at this rate so would he.

He felt a gun to press into his temple. He bared his teeth. Anger howled within him. The guy was talking but Jason didn’t hear their questions, he just wanted to kill them.

Then suddenly the howling stopped. A familiar quietude settled beneath his heart. It took his eyes a moment to focus and then he saw him there, inexplicably also inside the safe room, standing behind the goons. The stranger from the alley. Danny.

“I was starting to think you’d never call.” Danny smiled, all sunshine. What the fuck. How was he here?

His captors turned with a variety of shouts, guns out and primed against the new intruder. Danny didn’t react. He didn’t take his eyes off Jason.

“I didn’t.” Jason breathed. It felt like his heart had stopped.

“You’re like me. I never expected you to.” Jason caught a flash of fangs under Danny’s lips and his pulse skipped. “Good thing I was in the area.”

Then a goon grabbed for Danny’s arm. Jason half-shouted a warning but Danny was quicker. He nailed his assailant with a fist to the chest that sent him smashing back into the wall. The second thug swung his gun around and got a shot off. Jason swore it hit Danny in the leg but Danny didn’t flinch. Instead grabbed the gun and kneed the guy in the stomach so hard it lifted him off the ground. Danny turned just as the head good aimed a shot right between his eyes. Gunfire. Jason braced for the blood splatter, but it didn’t come. Instead Danny grabbed the guy by the throat and slammed him to the floor. The goons didn’t move.

When Danny looked back up at Jason his eyes glowed with that same ethereal intensity he saw before. Jason felt a thrum of energy from deep within him like a second pulse. Like calling to like.

He stared mutely as Danny rose. He should have been dead twice over. A foreign reverence leapt to the forefront of Jason’s mind, he didn’t know from where. Who the hell was this guy?

“You wanna get out of here?” Danny asked.

“Uh, yeah.”

Danny didn’t hesitate. He touched Jason on the shoulder and the ropes fell off him with the same slippery feeling he had when Danny had put a hand through his chest. He lead him through the door (literally through it) and out onto the street where a motorcycle waited.

Danny tossed Jason the keys.

“See ya round?” Danny turned to walk off. Like he’d just run an errand and not shown up out of nowhere in the middle of the night and beaten half the life out of some of the Narrows’ meanest thugs.

“Wait.” Jason stopped him. “What the hell is up with the guardian angel act? Who the fuck are you? What did you do to me?”

Danny turned back and smiled. “You want to get something to eat?”

//

Danny didn’t start talking again until they were seated across from each other in a booth at a 24 hour diner, two steaming cups of coffee between them. Jason had begrudgingly acquiesced to the offer of food. He guessed it was somewhat better than having this conversation at gunpoint. Not like that would have worked anyway, judging by how it went last time. This, at least, might get him some answers

“So, you died right?” Danny began.

Jason’s grip tightened on the handle of his mug. “You are supposed to be the one answering questions.”

“And I will! But you’re going to have to help me understand a bit too. You’re a unique case.”

Jason didn’t know whether that was a good or bad thing. “Yeah I died," he huffed. "Didn’t stick though.”

“How?”

Jason raised an eyebrow. He half expected Danny to know all about his death, seeing as he seemed to know so much else about him.

“A clown with a crowbar turned my lights out. Lazarus Pit turned them back on.” At Danny’s confused look, he continued: “Lazarus pit. Glowing pool? Impossible healing waters?”

“Oh is that what you call those pools of rancid ectoplasm beneath the city? I suppose that would be just enough to do it.”

Rancid ectoplasm sounded like another can of worms but that would have to wait. “Do what?”

“Keep you half alive.”

“What do you mean half alive?”

Danny took a big sip of coffee. “When I was fourteen my parents built a portal in our basement. It led to what is basically the realm of the dead. It didn’t work at first, until I went in and accidentally turned it on. The portal opened on top of me, which wasn’t great for my overall health and well-being per se. It killed me but not all the way. Instead I became half ghost.”

“Ghost.” Jason half chuckled and waited for the punch line.

Danny looked straight at Jason with those intense blue eyes, completely serious. “Ghost, specter, phantom, whatever you want to call it. I’m part ghost and you are too.”

Jason blinked. “Bullshit.”

That made Danny laugh. “I usually am pretty secretive about my whole deal but maybe I can be more lax if that’s the reaction I’ll get.”

Jason grumbled. The waitress came by and put a steaming plate of hashbrowns on the table between them.

Danny leaned back in the booth. “Okay, well if you don’t believe me— since coming back have you been stronger than a normal human should be? Faster? Get hurt less bad and heal quicker when you do?”

Jason frowned. “Side effects from the Pit.”

Danny raised a knowing eyebrow. “Uh huh. If that’s what you want to call it.” He grabbed a hashbrown and took a bite, continuing to talk between chews. “The weird thing is you should be able to do so much more. But now that I know you were doused in corrupted ectoplasm it’s making more sense.”

Jason narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean more?”

Danny extended his hand intangibly through Jason’s coffee. He waggled his fingers for show.

“Intangibility. Invisibility. Flight. You should at least have basics like those.”

Basics huh. Dying didn’t magically make him able to fly, of that he was certain. Not that superpowers wouldn’t be convenient, they weren’t exactly Jason’s brand.

“But I think what the problem is is you’re running around with a half formed core. I did my best to stabilize it the last time we met but I’m not an expert in these things.”

“Core?” Why did every sentence out of Danny’s mouth have to make less sense than the one before?

Danny tapped his chest in the same spot Jason felt the now-comforting weight in his own. “Ghosts don’t have a heart. We have cores, which are metaphorically the same thing.

“Half ghost cores are weird in their own right. But yours feels especially weird. It’s like… spiky when it should be smooth. And soft when it should be hard. Does that make sense?”

Of course it didn’t. Jason wasn’t here for a supernatural biology lesson. But that wasn’t important. “And you— what you did— made it… quiet. How?”

Danny flipped his hand up on the table and suddenly a glowing green ball of energy hovered in his palm. “Pure ectoplasmic energy to cleanse out the corrupted stuff. But it’s temporary. It’s worn off since I last saw you. I think your core generates corrupted ectoplasm. And that I can’t fix by myself. At least not here.”

“Where then?”

Danny’s face turned sheepish. “You remember that realm of the dead I mentioned?” He closed his fist, extinguishing the light. Jason leaned back.

None of this seemed believable. Jason had died and come back to life, he accepted that impossibility. But all this even more impossible stuff about ghosts and ectoplasm and realms of the dead— that was pushing it.

None of it changed the fact that Danny knew too much about him, and worse, he seemed to have some kind of power that affected him. There was too much he wasn’t saying. And now he wanted to take him to a different dimension to fix something that Jason still wasn’t convinced actually existed. Yeah, no.

“Why do you even care? What do you want from me?”

Danny shrugged. “I just want to help.”

“Why?”

“Because I can. It’s hard for me to ignore someone like you. Someone like me.”

The worst part was that he seemed genuine. But Jason wasn’t so naive to think that even if Danny said he wanted nothing in return that there wouldn’t be some other strings attached down the line. He sat back in the booth and folded his arms.

“Nah I’m good.”

A hint of a frown flashed across Danny’s face as his response. He didn’t push any further and Jason felt a small relief. He didn’t want this to end in violence, not just because (for the first time in a long time) he wasn’t sure the violence would end in his favor.

“Thanks for the coffee,” said Jason. “I’m gonna head home.”

“You still have my number right? It’s an open offer.” Danny wasn’t great at hiding his disappointment. Jason almost felt a twinge of regret.

He pushed himself up from the booth and left.

Chapter Text

Jason didn’t go home. Instead, he melted into the shadows across the street from the diner and waited. A few minutes later Danny emerged and got on his motorbike. He revved the engine and began to speed away.

Jason would find out who the hell this guy was. (And if he was totally full of shit). He waited a moment before shooting a grapple line and pursuing.

Fifteen minutes later he found himself on a rooftop across the street from a simple apartment on the fourth floor of an old building. Using the binocular zoom on his helmet he watched Danny inside. He looked tired and utterly human as he went though the motions of getting ready for bed. As he took off his shirt Jason winced at the scars all across his body— most noticeably the Lichtenberg figure that cascaded up his arm and over his shoulder. The amount of electricity needed to leave that kind of mark— something like that should have killed him.

Maybe it had.

Minutes later Danny turned out the light and went to sleep. Jason didn’t leave. The pit was quiet. It stayed quiet all night.

In the morning Jason followed as Danny took the train across the city to Gotham University. Jason blended with the other students as he tailed him through the halls until Danny entered what appeared to be an upper level mechanical engineering lecture. Instead of following him in He headed back to Danny’s apartment.

He opted to pick the lock— better not to leave a trace. Inside he found a fairly typical college apartment. Sparse furnishings, a couple faded band posters tacked to the walls, game controllers strewn about. It was homey. Nice.

Jason found nothing out of the ordinary in the kitchen, nor the closets. No laptop or phone— must have taken them with him. Jason rifled through papers on the messy desk- lecture notes, sketched diagrams, grocery lists- and started to think that he really wan’t going to get anything good on this guy. Then he touched something that jolted him with an electric shock.

Jason pulled his hand away with a whispered curse while shuffling off the remaining papers, revealing some kind of metal belt. It had wires sticking out, chips exposed, clearly an unfinished project. What gave Jason pause was the faint strange glow about it, green with the same energy he saw in Danny’s palm and in his eyes.

He reached a hand toward it again. As soon as his fingers got close he felt the buzz of energy start to sharpen. The pit under his heart snarled. He pulled his hand back.

Mysterious gadgetry certainly was a little suspect, but by itself didn’t point to any nefarious intention. He thought about taking the belt to study it further, but doing proper diagnostics would require help from Tim, or worse, Bruce. No, thanks. Too many questions he didn’t want to answer.

He glanced at the papers again. He saw a full name there. Danny Fenton.

Danny Fenton. A powerful not-meta meta. Also, by the looks of it, just some average guy. That didn’t mean Jason would take his guard down. He knew that metas and monsters often hid in plain sight. And the ones that did it well were the most dangerous.

//

Jason went back to his apartment and slept through the rest of the day.

He woke up that night with a gun in his face.

A shadowed smile leered down at him. “So you are the new ghost boy. You’ll make a fine addition to my collection.”

A green blast split his bed down the middle as he leapt out of the way just in time. Who the fuck?

Jason grabbed the bat he kept next to his nightstand and took a wild swing at his assailant. As the sleep cleared from his eyes a seven foot tall robotic guy with a flaming green mohawk came into focus. His attacker stopped the bat in his hand with surprising strength.

“Ah good, you do have some fight in you.”

The robot guy punched Jason in the gut, launching him across the room. That hurt, way more than a hit from a common goon. What the hell was this guy made of?

Jason pulled himself up and grabbed a gun off the kitchen counter. He leveled it with easy precision. He planted one shot in the robot guy’s chest, the other between his eyes.

His aim was perfect.

Neither shot connected.

The bullets passed right through him. Jason’s mouth went dry.

“Hah, those puny weapons won’t work on me. Now this-“ what could only be described as a rocket launcher emerged from the robotics on the robot guy’s shoulder- “this is a real gun.”

The rockets fired, fueled again by that green energy. Jason bolted for the window and crashed out onto the fire escape, taking a hit to the side as he did. The blast burned but thankfully didn’t break the skin. Still hurt like a bitch though. The pit screamed, but the rage felt more focused now than it had before. Methodically he swung his way down to the street, landing bare-footed and in his sweats, unmasked and unarmed except for the useless gun in his hand. His attacker pursued, emerging through the wall and flying after him.

Jason gritted his teeth. The green energy, the familiar powers— it was too much to be just a coincidence. Ghost, he named his attacker in his head. Like Danny.

He ran.

The ghost caught up with him before he’d made it two buildings down. “Is that all you can do? Scurry around down there like a scared little mouse?”

More blasts assailed him from more varieties of guns. Jason dodged, but just barely. If he could just make it to his safehouse then— then what? He could shoot this guy with more guns that didn’t work? Hide behind walls that the ghost could walk right through?

He heard the next shot too late. A glowing rope wrapped itself around his ankles, sending him stumbling to the asphalt face first. Weak, he thought as he spit out gravel. He’d never felt so weak, not since coming back. For the first time since he emerged from the pit he no longer felt invincible.

His attacker landed with a metallic clank. Jason glowered as the ghost cracked a jagged smile. “That’s it? Your combat is weak. Your banter is lacking. Your head is hardly worth mounting above my mantle.”

Anger smoldered beneath Jason’s heart, pulling in on itself versus the usual explosion. His legs were bound but his hands were still free. He tightened his grip on his pistol.

With a roaring yell he heaved himself half up and swung the gun on the ghost again. He focused his anger, focused that pointed energy, and pulled the trigger.

A bullet shrouded in green flame exploded from the barrel. It connected with the ghost’s stomach, sending a shower of sparks spraying as it tore through the robotics.

The ghost looked down in shock.

Jason smiled in triumph. “How’s that for a real gun.”

Then Jason unloaded, pulling the trigger as fast as he could make it go. He kept shooting even when he should have run out of ammo, each shot a flaming green spark that took a chunk out of the robot ghost with every hit.

“What is this? Impossible!” The ghost took off yelling, retreating back down the street. Jason ripped the rope from his ankles and got on his feet to chase.

Ghost or not, this part Jason knew. Bad guy on the run, him in pursuit. He let his shaken nerves melt into a familiar resolve. The ghost shot back at him but Jason’s focus was unshakeable. His phantom bullets took the guns clean off the robot suit till it was covered in shredded metal.

Finally the ghost flew up, desperate to get out of range, defeated. “I underestimated you whelp. Until next time.”

With that the ghost activated his jet pack and flew away into the night. Jason kept shooting till he vanished over the rooftops.

//

That was not the last attack. They came nightly after that, some new kind of ghost would appear and stir up trouble. He’d notice them on patrol now- glowing vultures on the roofs or a green lion stalking in the park or translucent octopi floating down the streets. Had they always been there and he just hadn’t noticed? Or had they just showed up? The more he watched the more it seemed that other people didn’t see them.

Or maybe they just didn’t care. Just another one of those Gotham things.

Most ignored him entirely but caused trouble in different ways— lurking in sewers and tugging at people’s hems or floating through stores causing electronics to malfunction. Harmless mostly. But ever present. Those ones eventually noticed Jason watching and they’d always look back at him with surprise or curiosity or a sick kind of delight.

Sometimes Jason would pick the fight. He punched a ghost creep following a lady too closely as she walked down the street. Chased off a demonic possum that was oozing some kind of goo into the river. Other times the fight would pick him. He stared too long at a vulture and it swooped down on him, brandishing impossible teeth. A headless guy jumped him outside his safe house. He looked awfully similar to one of Gothams former gang bosses.

He was getting bette at harnessing that green energy and he could reliably shoot energy bullets from any of his guns. He also found that an old fashioned punch would also do the trick.

Once he saw an oily black creature at the edges of his vision, larger and more sinister than any of the other ghosts he’d encountered. A brawl in the street broke out a moment later so he didn’t get to investigate but somehow that one made him feel more unnerved than all the rest.

He didn’t understand where they were coming from or why they were here. He knew someone who probably would.

During daylight hours he gathered intel on Danny Fenton- or at least he attempted to. It was like the kid didn’t exist before he showed up as a student at Gotham University. The internet was shockingly clean of any records or photos.

Jason was beginning to think Danny Fenton was just a pseudonym until finally he got a relevant hit. He found an article published in a now-discredited scientific journal by Dr.s Jack and Madeline Fenton, detailing their paranormal research. The paper theorized about a separate dimension of post-concious beings. Suggested ways to make a portal there. It was too similar to what Danny described to be coincidence. Those were his parents, that was the portal that killed him. Maybe it was all true.

But Jason didn’t find any evidence that they had successfully created the portal. The paper talked about it in theory, not practice. The only evidence of them making it real was Danny himself. If he even believed Danny’s story.

Using a trick he stole from Tim he searched the housing records database and found a property under their names in Amity Park, Illinois. Satellite imaging showed a house that looked like a ufo had crashed landed on top of it. He chuckled to himself. That must be the place.

He was out grabbing a bite of dinner and considering a little field trip to Illinois to investigate further when the next ghost attack happened.

One second he was biting into his sandwich, the next three giant glowing green rats, just like the nasty ones that roamed Gotham’s sewers except 10 times bigger, burst out of the kitchen of the restaurant and out into the street.

Jason abandoned the sandwich and chased them out the door, pulling out his gun as they ran down an alley.

“Quit causing trouble on my turf,” Jason growled as he loosed a few blasts in their direction.

The rats stopped and turned back toward him halfway down the alley. The biggest one sat up and looked at him with sharp eyes. “Your turf? You got it twisted buddy. This here is our turf.”

Out of nowhere a fourth rat tackled him from behind. It’s boxy teeth clamped down on his shoulder with a sickening crunch. Jason yelled as he was thrown to the ground and suddenly all of them were on him, clawing and biting.

Jason clawed and bit back. He carried a gun even in his civvies (obviously) but couldn’t reach it in the thick of it.

He was truly starting to get pissed when suddenly the temperature dropped ten degrees. A voice came from down the alley.

“Hey.”

The rats froze. As a group they all looked toward the voice. At the mouth of the alley, plastic bodega bag in hand, face stern, stood Danny.

“What the hell is this?”

The head rat spoke up. “This is our turf. Tell the new guy he needs to buzz off before we make him.”

Danny folded his arms. His face was stoic but his voice had an icy edge. “I think you should be a bit more friendly to your neighbor.”

The rats reacted immediately, untangling themselves from Jason. “Jeez your majesty we were only joking. Mi casa es su casa and all that.”

“Good. Now scram.”

They scrambled away down the alley with a skittering of claws, running like they had hellfire under their asses.

Jason let out a long breath. Danny looked at him with complete recognition even though he was bare faced and in street clothes. Of course he could clock him out of costume. Why didn’t that surprise him?

Jason propped himself up on one arm. “Your majesty?”

“They don’t mean it as a compliment.” Danny huffed as he knelt down next to Jason, reaching out a gentle hand to inspect his wounds.

Danny’s jaw tightened as he ran a thumb over a gash in Jason’s arm. Jason pulled back.

“I’m fine.”

Danny reluctantly sat back. “There has been more ghost activity lately. Sorry I didn’t catch these guys quicker.”

“It’s okay. I dealt with the rest just fine.”

Danny tensed. “The rest?”

“I’ve been dealing with them since we got coffee. Nearly every night.“

Real anger flashed in Danny’s eyes for just a moment. It surprised Jason, and reminded him how much Danny wasn’t telling him.

“Why didn’t you call me?” Danny looked at Jason with such bare concern it made his heart feel sticky.

Jason grumbled. “I had it handled.”

“How??” Danny whined.

Jason pulled out his gun, pointed upward. Danny frowned, skeptical, until Jason pulled the trigger. A green blast shot into the sky. He shouldn’t have gotten so much satisfaction from surprise on Danny’s face.

“Oh,” Danny said. “Neat trick. That’s new?”

Jason nodded.

Danny sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Okay. Despite that, there’s no way I’m letting you deal with these ghosts on your own.”

“Let me?” Jason scoffed. “I don’t need your help.”

Danny raised an eyebrow. “So you were planning on being rat food just now?”

“I almost had them.”

Danny chuckled. Jason didn’t waver. Then Danny got that glint in his eye.

“Okay. Then prove it.”

“What?”

“Show me you can actually handle a ghost attack and I’ll leave you alone.”

Jason wanted that, right? To not have to think about Danny Fenton popping up randomly in his life again? He ignored the twist of confusion in his gut.

“How? There’s no ghosts.”

Danny stood up and gestured to himself with a smirk.

“You’re joking.” Jason deadpanned.

“Try me.”

Guess that was always how this was gonna shake out. Sure, why not. Stone-faced and without hesitation Jason pulled a second pistol out of his belt and shot a green blast directly at Danny with a sizzling crack. Danny took the hit on the shoulder with barely a flinch. He glanced down at the burn hole on his shirt. The skin beneath was unbroken.

Danny’s smile widened, and there were those fangs again. “That it?”

Jason clenched his teeth and sprang into action. He launched to his feet as he brandished both guns in front of himself, shooting rapid fire.

Danny moved like a practiced fighter, ducking and weaving around the shots. A handful hit him but they didn’t break his focus or his stride. Jason stepped back to keep distance but Danny was quicker. Suddenly he was close enough that Jason felt the coolness of his breath.

His fist came quick. Jason threw up his arm to block. He barely managed to keep his feet under him. The next punch connected with his gut and sent him shuffling backwards, but still upright. He used the space to pull up his guns again and fired.

Danny jumped and suddenly he was lighter than air, floating and flipping over Jason’s head. Jason tracked him with the guns and spun as Danny landed, again too close.

Jason holstered the guns and opted to grab Danny by the front of his shirt with both hands. He turned and slammed Danny into the alley wall.

“You are strong I’ll give you that,” Danny said, the amused grin on his lips mere inches from Jason’s, “But ghosts have tricks.”

Suddenly Jason was holding nothing but air. His fingers clenched into fists.

Barely a breath later Jason felt a cheek next to his, behind him.

“Boo.” Danny said directly in Jason’s ear. Jason elbowed backward reflexively, connecting with Danny’s gut. Danny let out a satisfying oof before slipping out of reach.

It fell into the rhythm of a brawl then as they traded blows. But even with the bits of ghostly flair Danny threw in, it felt off. Danny wasn’t fighting like the other ghosts he’d faced. He was fighting like a human. He was holding back.

Jason ground his teeth together as his anger bubbled to a boil. Stepping back to steal enough distance, he pulled out his pistols. He let the anger swirl and coalesce under his heart. He focused and pulled both triggers at once.

A massive green fireball exploded from the combined gun barrels, hurtling toward Danny.

There was no time for Danny to dodge. Jason relished the surprise on his face. But right before the fireball collided, Danny extended a palm and a translucent green shield appeared, covering him. The fireball dissipated on impact.

Jason groaned in frustration. Another power he didn’t know about? How was that fair?

“Why are you holding back?” he demanded.

“I don’t want to hurt you.” Danny’s shield disappeared. “But I could ask you the same question.”

“What?” Jason was barely keeping up as is.

“I think you can do better than this.” Danny challenged.

Jason tightened his grip on his guns. Danny relaxed his fighting stance. “Can’t you go toe to toe with Batman? Even my sister would at least be making me sweat.”

Again that roiling focused anger under his heart, swirling like a supernova. Danny just looked at him with that shit-eating grin. He let the fire of anger burn hotter to cover the rising of something else underneath.

“Be serious.” Jason growled.

“Make me.”

With a roar Jason blasted another huge fireball and the fight was back on.

Jason actually wanted to hurt Danny now. He wanted to prove to himself that he could. He moved faster, punched harder, let out more of that fire with each shot.

The next time Danny got up close and Jason swapped to his fists, Jason noticed a green fiery glow had formed around his hands. Danny did too, when he winced for the first time after a punch connected. The pit under his heart hummed in triumph.

After that it was less easy for Danny to slip away into intangibility, more easy for Jason to press the offensive. Finally Jason swept Danny’s legs from under him and pinned him to the ground, a mirror of the first night they met.

Jason’s breath came in pants. He gripped Danny’s shirt tight in his fist.

“Not bad.” Danny flashed his fangs.

Jason lifted a fist to punch that stupid smile off his jaw but Danny threw up a hand and caught his fist, inches before it hit, stopping it with unshakeable strength.

“Believe me now when I say I’ve got it handled myself?” Jason kept his tone even.

Danny eyed Jason’s still-glowing fist. “More now than before, yeah. But-“ Danny pushed Jason’s fist aside with infuriating ease. He pulled his legs out from underneath Jason with intangibility and floated smoothly to his feet.

“I’m still going to help you.”

“That wasn’t the deal. You said if I-“

A blast of green energy to his stomach cut him off, stronger and faster than any of the punches they’d traded. Danny grabbed Jason by the jacket and they flew, up to the top of the twelve story building. Danny looked at him with empty eyes. And dropped him.

Jason didn’t scream. He scrambled for his grapple gun. He was falling too fast. He got a hand on it, too late- but it didn’t matter. Danny swooped down and pushed him intangibly through the ground at the moment of impact. He felt himself being dragged up through darkness until-

He was stuck in the alley pavement up to his waist. Danny crouched next to him.

“I promise this is a warning not a threat. I didn’t realize that patching up your core would put you over the threshold to get ghostly attention. They won’t stop bothering you. And they won’t all be small fry. If you won’t let me take care of them for you, at least let me give you a fighting chance.”

Jason glowered up at him. “You’re not going to let me out of here unless I say yes.”

Danny smiled, the most brilliant thing in the dark street. “Bingo.”

Chapter Text

Jason ended up at Danny’s place for a second time. After picking up his dropped bodega snacks (Takis and a six pack of Dr. Pepper) Danny pulled Jason out of the pavement and ushered him up the block and into the apartment Jason already knew was his.

Jason sat on the worn out sofa, hands folded. Danny appraised him from the kitchen, mouth full of Takis. “So what you’re gonna need most is some gear.”

Danny leaned over to a side wall and stuck his hand through it. He must have triggered a switch of some kind because a moment later an armory panel flipped around, revealing a rack of strange gadgetry haphazardly stacked on top of one another. Most of it looked similar in design to the belt Jason had found on Danny’s desk.

Danny rummaged for a second before he pulled out a canister and tossed it to Jason. Jason caught it and turned it over in his hands. “A thermos?”

“Your most important tool in ghost hunting. You use this to capture ghosts.”

Jason scoffed. “Why would I want to capture them?”

“You have any luck killing them?” Danny gave him a sideways glance.

Jason pursed his lips. Obviously he hadn’t. All his fights had ended in some variation of mutual retreat.

“Thought not. So— thermos. I trap them in there till I release them back in the Ghost Zone.”

“Ghost Zone?”

“The Infinite Realms. Aforementioned realm of the dead, if we’re being reductive. Where they live. Or after-live. Same thing.” Danny cracked a soda and held it out to Jason, offering. Jason shook his head, and Danny continued, “Since you don’t have a portal, you can drop your full thermoses off with me.”

“You do have a portal?”

Danny tilted his head for a moment, considering. “Not exactly. Next up— weapons.”

Not exactly. Another half answer. Jason swallowed any notions of follow up questions, and not just because he could still feel bruises forming on his skin from where Danny’s hits had landed (seriously when was the last time someone had actually left a mark on him?)

“All of this stuff was designed to work against ghosts, even for regular humans using it.” Danny gestured to the makeshift armory. “But the way you shoot ecto blasts out of your regular guns has me wondering— you might be able to enhance some of this stuff too.”

Danny pulled out a pair of clunky metal bracelets. “Take these for example. In theory these were designed to imitate a ghosts power of invisibility. They do a decent job of optic camouflage but it’s hardly the real thing.” He tossed them over and Jason snatched them out of the air. “I bet if you try them it will work all the way.”

Jason clicked the cuffs around his wrists, wary. Nothing happened. “Now what?”

“Do what you do when you use your guns.”

Jason concentrated a moment, clenching his muscles and feeling stupid. He must have been making a weird face because Danny chuckled.

Jason glowered at him. “This is dumb. I don’t have superpowers.”

“You do have ghost powers though. I think you’re trying too hard. Being invisible isn’t like firing something out, it’s like pulling something back, if that makes sense.”

“Not at all,” Jason grumbled.

Danny snorted. “I’m not a poet, cut me some slack. Just try again.”

Jason looked up to give Danny another glare, but he was surprised again at the casual intensity with which Danny looked back at him. Jason hadn’t noticed that he’d been avoiding looking Danny in the eyes and now he remembered why. He felt small under those eyes. Cornered like a feral cat. He wanted to-

“Oh!” Danny exclaimed as his eyes lost their direct focus. Jason looked down at himself and was met with a shifting shimmer of nothingness. Invisible. He felt a soft hum of energy from the cuffs that matched the hum of energy within him. He kept his concentration a moment longer before releasing it like a held breath.

“It works!” Danny smiled triumphantly.

Jason grunted in the affirmative, twisting the cuff on his wrist.

“Did you make all these?” Jason gestured to the cuffs and other gadgets.

“Oh, yeah. Some are based on my parents’ designs, but everything here I built.”

“Why? Why make all this?”

Danny shrugged. “Old habits. I’ll pack you a goodie bag of anything that might be useful. Most of it is pretty self explanatory.”

Old habits. Another dodge but Danny turned and started digging through the closet before Jason could ask more. Who has a habit of building weapons when you clearly don’t need them?

A minute later Danny dropped a duffel bag brimming with all sorts of odds and ends on the coffee table in front of Jason. It must have been hundreds of dollars worth of gear. It felt like some kind of con, or a trick. This kind of assistance didn’t come for free.

“Why are you helping me?” Jason asked it like an accusation.

“I told you. Because I can.”

Jason stared with narrowed eyes, unsatisfied.

Danny paused. Rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “It was coincidence that I sensed you that first night. When you got up closer I realized you were like me. We’re a pretty rare thing, and it’s not an easy life. Half life. Whatever.”

“But why help me. Half ghost or not, what if I was a serial killer? Or a pedo?”

“Or a crime lord?” Danny raised a pointed eyebrow. Jason kept his face at a trained neutral. “I’ve been in Gotham long enough to know the Red Hood’s reputation.”

Jason didn’t know whether or not he felt relieved by that.

Danny sat down on the couch next to Jason. Didn’t look at him. He fiddled with his fingers for a moment before he let them curl into a fist.

“For people like us… I know sometimes you don’t get the luxury of being the good guy. Sometimes you have to be exactly the monster they think you are.”

Jason stared at Danny’s hands. He’d seen a peek of the monster Danny could be. And playing with these so-called powers that Danny was teasing out of him felt like walking a tightrope across the Lazarus pit. But hearing Danny admit that he wasn’t some saint, he could accept that Danny really was trying to help him.

Jason picked up a pair of what looked like gaudy high-tech earrings from the duffel. “So with these I can make the ghosts stop attacking me?”

Danny was about to answer when the room went cold. Jason saw Danny’s breath. His smile fell.

“Shit.” Danny’s eyes snapped to Jason, serious now. “Ready for a crash course? Strap up. They’re here.”

Danny scanned the room like a predator. Jason saw nothing.

“Who’s here?” he said, grabbing miscellany from the bag (was that just a baseball bat painted green?) and clipping whatever would fit in his holsters. Goosebumps rose on Jason’s arms as the chill settled deeper. What’s here may have been a better question.

Danny didn’t look back at him, still scanning corners. “Okay short version: Gotham is super cursed right? A curse like this only happens to places when ghosts stick around too long. The ghost and the place become part of each other, kinda. They’re a different flavor than ghosts like those rats who come and go. As you can imagine the curse ghosts here have dug their heels in pretty deep. And I uh… asked them to leave.”

The lights flickered and went dark. Jason didn’t dare breathe. “And how did that go?” he whispered.

“Not great.”

Then an abomination unlike any of the ghosts Jason had faced yet phased through the living room wall. It had way too many legs and a mouth that opened too wide and a hulking animalistic form that seemed to ooze inky darkness.

“Super rude of you to crash my place when I have company over,” Danny quipped toward the beast.

Then a beam of green light pelted the thing in its side. An instant later Danny had vaulted the couch and jumped at it fists blazing.

Guess they were doing this.

Danny’s fighting style shifted completely from before. When he’d fought Jason it had been full of flourish, more dodging than attack, a cat playing with its prey. Now he was like a wolf, vicious and decisive, aiming directly for weak spots.

A blast of green energy from Danny’s palm to what Jason assumed was the creature’s head sent a glob of goop splatting to the wall behind it.

“Aw man that’s definitely going to leave a stain,” Danny huffed as the creature lashed back with a slippery-sharp leg-appendage.

The creature swung in a wide arc. Jason ducked and rolled, ending up behind it. He reached into the duffel if ghost gear for something that would work against it and pulled out… some kind of metallic medieval looking whip? What the shit was he supposed to do with this?

The curse ghost let out a gurgling roar as Danny punched what must have been its jaw. Heck. Jason might as well try. He flailed the flail at one of the thing’s rear legs. The ends of the whip immediately got stuck in the thick goop of it. The ghost didn’t even seem to notice as it tossed Danny to the ceiling.

Screw that. He abandoned the whip and pulled a pistol out, focusing his energy and letting a blast rip. It stung a hole in the curse ghost’s side. It spun around, attention shifted. Maybe that wasn’t a good thing.

Quicker than a pile of angry goo had any right to be it whipped its tail around and this time Jason didn’t duck fast enough. It caught him in the side and sent him crashing through the coffee table. Worse, his pistol went flying.

“Quit wrecking my house!” Danny shouted as he launched off the ceiling, elbow down on the ghost like a pro wrestler. They tumbled into the desk with a squelch. It gave Jason enough of a breath to notice the sword under the couch. Sure, why not.

He grabbed it by the hilt and reflexively focused his energy through it. The sword responded as he pulled it out from under the couch, glowing with energy that flickered like wicked green flames. He cracked a smile. Okay now they were getting somewhere.

He scrambled to his feet. Danny wrestled with the beast on the other side of the couch.

“Hey black licorice how do you like this?” He swung the sword two handed through the same leg that had eaten the whip. It cut clean through with a satisfying schlick. That chunk of goo slopped to the floor.

“Nice!” Danny beamed as he kicked the thing off of him with both feet. Jason swelled with golden pride.

He fell into muscle memory, relying on his old training. He didn’t let himself think too hard about the origins of the techniques and instead just relishing the feeling of the blade cutting through the ghost monster, slowly backing it into a corner with the aid of Danny’s blasts.

As if the beast sensed the jaws of the snare closing it lashed out one final time. It swatted Danny from the air and pinned him under a massive paw, nearly swallowing him whole. Jason froze, a shot of ice cold panic in his veins. The sword was cool and all but If Danny went down for real he was royally fucked.

“Thermos!” Danny croaked out from beneath the mound of goo.

Jason fumbled for the canister. He wasted precious moments fiddling with the cap and looking for an on switch.

“How the hell do I work this?” He barked back at Danny.

“Just hit the button!!”

His thumb found the switch then he barely managed to keep his grip as a beam of light shot out of the canister, hit the beast and sucked it up like a vacuum in the span of three seconds flat.

The lights flickered back on. Danny got up, brushed the lingering goo off his shirt, and flopped down on the torn up couch.

“Good job.”

What the hell.

Jason sat down on the couch next to Danny. “These things-“ he started, taking a moment to flick the black goo off his sword and calm the tremor in his hand, “They’re just running around Gotham attacking people?”

“Not directly. The curse ghosts aren’t like regular ghosts. They don’t attack humans. They don’t need to. These guys cause malice and chaos just with their rancid vibes alone, and then they feed off of the misery they cause. They’ve been in crime alley since before it was crime alley. In a way they are crime alley.”

“But they attack you,” Jason pressed him with a look.

“I shot first,” Danny sighed, “But I couldn’t just let them be.”

“Why not?” Jason pressed further. Danny wasn’t from here. He had no connection to Gotham, no reason to risk himself to protect it.

Danny hesitated. “It’s what I do. Ever since the accident. I protect people from ghosts.”

Jason supposed that reasoning made just about the same amount of sense as any of the justifications he’d heard from the other spandex-wearing dumbasses he knew. Himself included. Which now posed him with a dilemma.

It seemed so obvious that Gotham was cursed. Jason could swallow the supernatural explanation with ease. But that meant he had been fighting a losing battle this whole time. And not just him— Bruce and the rest too. Even if he ignored the curse ghosts and went back to fighting his own battles, he’d do it with the knowledge that he’d be treating a symptom, not the cause.

Dealing with ghosts night after night had been a nuisance but they hadn’t caused real damage. Not like what Danny described these curse ghosts doing, and not like what he’d just seen. He though of the dark shadows he’d seen in his peripherals ever since he’d started noticing the ghosts. They felt the same as the beast they’d just fought. He couldn’t ignore them now, the same way he couldn’t ignore the regular ghosts. Dammit.

“I want in.”

“What?” Danny asked, a note of surprise in his voice, and also a hint of delight. Jason ground his teeth together. He hoped he wouldn’t regret this.

“This is my home. These guys are fucking with it. I’m not about to just let them carry on.”

“So you’re not going to go after them alone?”

Jason shook his head no. Danny smiled.

“And you’ll let me give you the tools you’ll need?”

Jason nodded. Danny smiled wider.

“And you’ll actually call me if you run into trouble?”

Jason wasn’t stupid. The half-destroyed apartment was enough proof that he’d be toast if he tried to take down even one of those curse ghosts alone. Plus now he could begrudgingly and with absolute certainty admit that fighting with Danny was much better than fighting against him.

Jason sighed, loudly. “Yes, dammit.”

Danny beamed. “You’re hired.”

Chapter Text

The night after the brawl in Danny’s apartment Jason was out as Red Hood scouting a possible arms deal when he spotted it— a Curse Ghost, vaguely beastly and oozing black goo, just as ugly and unsettling as the one from Danny’s place. Jason texted him.

Found one.

So you didnʼt lose my number after all. Iʼll be right there.

Jason sent him the location- a rusted sewer grate at the edge of crime alley that he’d seen a curse ghost vanish into. Danny arrived minutes later in jeans and a jacket, same as always. Not like Jason had been expecting any different, but he had gotten used to working with the Bat. Capes and masks came standard. Danny was anything but standard.

“You bring the gear?” Danny asked as he stepped up toward the sewer gate Jason stood beside.

Jason opened his jacket to reveal he had strapped all kinds of whips and tasers and lasers and launchers to his holsters. He even wore the cuffs. And the sword.

Danny grinned. “I also brought something extra I think youʼll like.” He reached into his own jacket and pulled out, with great panache, a pair of plain white gym socks.

Jason scowled. “A selection from your laundry pile?” Still, he took them as Danny handed them over.

“If by laundry pile you mean my pile of genius inventions, then yes.”

“Iʼll pass.”

“Suit yourself.” Danny shrugged. “If getting sewer water in your shoes is your thing I won’t stop you.”

Jason frowned.

And then he found himself wearing Dannyʼs socks (back in his boots, mind you), hunting the curse down the drain tunnel, hovering inches above the water instead of sludging through it.

“Real flight just wasnʼt doable with the tech, but these still have their uses.” Danny commented from ahead, his voice echoing down the tunnel completely careless of stealth. He also hovered, simple as if gravity had just turned off for him, none of the wobbles or wavers in balance that Jason was currently trying to hide. Forty feet into the darkness of the sewer and Jason was relying on the night vision in his helmet. Meanwhile Danny seemed just fine.

As they approached a junction in the pipe, Danny slowed. “Its here,” he whispered. Jason sensed it too, somehow. The air was colder and more alive somehow, the colors more warped and saturated.

They peeked silently around the corner and there it was, lounging half submerged like an overstuffed crocodile. Black ooze seeped into the water all around it, making it hard to tell where the beast itself began.

Danny threw him a look, anticipation dancing in his Lazarus green eyes. And then without further warning he pounced.

Hopes of keeping their socks dry vanished. Danny was quickly sopping, no thanks to his outfit choice. Still he fought like a terror, ducking out of the way of massive dripping jaws that threatened to halve him as he returned blows and blasts in kind. Jason watched with trained curiosity. Heʼd been so preoccupied with not dying last time he hadnʼt learned much. This time he bit down his fear enough to make sense of how the curse ghost moved- like water and like a rockslide- and how Danny countered- like mist and lightning.

The curse ghost turned toward Jason and like a firecracker hid anger ignited and lost any inclination he had to stay on the sidelines. He instinctively reached for his guns but then thought better of it in close quarters. Instead he pulled the sword off his back. He swung with stiff determination, slicing through black crocodile hide. He felt a grim thrill as the beast roared.

Jason fought with less caution this time. More rhythm. In the end they overpowered it, beating it down deeper into the sludge until Danny sucked it up with the thermos, neat and tidy.

Danny smiled at him. “Nice work.”

Jason kneeled where it had fallen. Traces of black goo remained on the walls. He ran his fingers through it and it stuck to his gloves like slimy tar. “What the hell are these guys made of?”

Danny kneeled next to him, also inspecting the sludge remains. He pursed his lips. “It’s corrupted ectoplasm.”

Like Jason’s, Danny didn’t say. Didn’t need to.

“These guys are more solid than regular ghosts. It didn’t just phase out of here. It splashed in the water.” Danny rubbed the goo between his fingers before shaking it off.

“You said they’re Gotham’s curse, right? Makes sense that they’d be solid here, more than the regular ghosts.”

Danny looked at him, studying his face as if his mask wasn’t there. “Yeah. I think you’re right.”

Why did he feel such a surge of glowing pride at Danny’s acknowledgement? Like passing another test. Earning his way into this world.

He caught himself. What the hell did he need to prove? He knew he was a great detective- and he could do it all without all the fancy tools and access that Bruce and his flock had.

But solving the curse ghosts was one thing. Solving Danny was what he really cared about. And to do that he needed Danny to trust him.

//

During the days that followed he tried to tend to his other cases, and he thought about Danny.

Mid stakeout of an upstart drug trafficker his mind wandered. Danny, going to class like some normal college kid. Eating lunch. Making friends. Did he have friends? Jason considered tailing him again to find out, but he thought better of it. If Danny caught him snooping now it wouldn’t be easy to explain it away, and he’d lose the burgeoning trust between them. Or burgeoning friendship. Were they friends?

Jason had made allies for less before, but with Danny he couldn’t let his guard down, not completely. Jason remembered how he took down four thugs like it was nothing. He remembered how Danny looked at him with icy eyes right before he’d dropped him off a building. Every instinct reminded him Danny was dangerous.

The back alley door he’d been watching opened and it took him two seconds longer than it should have for him to react. The men nearly saw him as he ducked his head behind the corner and out of sight.

He eavesdropped on the drug deal, mentally filing away details on where the money was going. He watched as the men got in a black car, noted the license plate. It all felt a bit pedestrian compared to the Lovecraftian beasts he now knew to be lurking in the shadows.

He’d dealt with his fate share of meta weirdness and science experiments gone wrong in Gotham. But he wondered if this was how Bruce felt after coming back from dealing with Justice Leage level business. How was he supposed to focus on small time drug trade when a supernatural threat loomed large over his city?

Amity Park continued to yield no answers, even when he deepened his search. Going out of his way to delve into Gotham library archives wielded no new leads. Newspapers, business reports, even government documents- all missing or, more worrisome, heavily redacted.

When he looked again for the scientific paper by the Drs. Fenton, it had also disappeared from the net. Good thing he’d made a backup when he first discovered it, but it meant someone wasn’t taking too kindly to him poking around.

None of what he found explained what Danny was. Or, maybe more importantly, what kind of person he was.

He remembered something Alfred had once told Bruce after long nights of fruitless research. Some things you can’t solve while holed up in your cave. Some you have to do personally.

He didnʼt remember agreeing to it but he found himself meeting up with Danny nearly every night. Even if he tried to work on his other cases, inevitably a curse ghost would show up and derail his evening plans.

Danny speculated that they sought out Jason more now because he’d proved himself a threat, the same way they came after Danny. “Now that they know your ecto signature-“ whatever the hell that was- they’ll come looking. Territorial bastards.”

“Easier than hunting them down I guess.”

“I like the positive attitude.”

“Don’t get used to it.”

They established a meeting place on the roof old hotel that sat in the heart of crime alley. There had been texts exchanged at first but as the weeks went on they became unnecessary. Jason knew that when he swung up on to the roof each night that Danny would be there waiting for him.

That particular night he landed on the roof with barely a sound. Dannyʼs eyes still flicked over immediately. He sat where he typically did on the roofs edge, and his lips turned up in a half smile as soon as he saw Jason. Excitement buzzed in Jasonʼs skin like neon. Adrenaline. Just the anticipation for the upcoming hunt, he told himself. Certainly nothing else.

They weren’t waiting long before sirens and burglar alarms rang like beacons a few streets over.

“Shall we?” Jason cracked his knuckles.

“After you.”

Jason tipped himself forward off the building, diving in a short free fall. As he neared the street he didn’t reach for his grapple gun, instead he pulled on that energy under his heart, focused on his socks and hovered the last few feet to the ground. Danny followed behind in lazy twists and curls like a leaf in the wind.

They caught up with the curse ghost on the next block over. It ran through the street, a mangy goopy dog, as tall as a truck with too-sharp teeth. As it passed lights in doorways flickered and went dark, cars honked in the streets as drivers cut each other off, the cops on the corner stopped a group of teens with hands itching at their hips.
Jason felt it too, the way that whisky burns down your throat, riling you at your core.

“Ooh it’s a real nasty one,” Danny quipped. Was it Jason’s imagination or were his teeth even sharper than usual?

So far Jason had only encountered the beasts in places already filled with death and fear and aggression. It made his skin crawl to see the effect work the other way. The beast crashed through the street like an invisible wave, spreading misfortune, inciting aggression. He tasted acid at the back of his throat.

Danny had told him the curse caused suffering and then fed on it, a cycle that perpetuated ending with it getting stronger and stronger. All at the expense of Gotham. It struck Jason as blunt as a crowbar to the side. No matter what he did as Red Hood, no matter what any of the bats did— peace in Gotham had less than a snowball’s chance in hell. Not with these beasts running wild.

He ran after it wordlessly, Danny by his side. They followed the trail of misfortune through the streets of crime alley and then into downtown proper. Jason had half a though about truces and territories made with Batman in where he could and could not operate, but any qualms blew past him as his vision tunneled on the beast.

Heat churned under his skin and he felt a swell of rage despite the fact that Danny still kept pace beside him. This rage wasn’t sharp and bright like the rage he intimately knew, instead it burned oily and black.

They rounded a corner and real heat smacked him in the face. Ahead of them a building burned vigorously, flames eating their way out windows on every floor. He watched as the curse ghost dove through the open front door into the inferno.

“Shit,” Danny hissed beside him. “I’m going in.”
Without further warning Danny disappeared, presumably diving in after the beast.

The rage still burning in his gut egged Jason on to follow. Then, a cry from above. In the window, two kids framed by an orange inferno. Below on the street other people covered in soot pointed up, desperation in their voices.

Sense snapped back to him like an ice bath, priorities set. He strode toward the building and launched a grapple line, zipping up to the window.

“Grab on tight.” He hoisted two little girls off the windowsill and they followed his instruction, clinging to his midsection. He lowered them all down just as a loud crack came from the building above as the beams began to burst.

As he set the girls on the ground the older one spoke up, her voice barely a squeak. “Our brother-“

Fuck. Jason looked back up. The window frame was nearly devoured in flame. Fuck.

The wail of sirens echoed steadily closer, but not fast enough. He couldn’t just rush in unscathed like Danny had, he wasn’t wearing the jacket that made him intangible (supposedly, he hadn’t yet made it work all the way). But he still had to do something. He gripped his grapple gun and steeled himself.

And then Danny shot out of the second story window like a comet, landing haphazardly beside Jason. Around his neck, wrapped safely within his arms, was a little boy.

The sisters cried out with joy and Danny passed the boy to them, dazed and soot covered but still breathing. Danny smiled up at Jason, ashes tangled in the mess of his black hair.

“Red Hood?”

Shit. He would recognize that voice even if he were still dead.

“Batman.” Jason turned and saw his former mentor illuminated in firelight.

Fire trucks and EMTs arrived moments later, tending to the civilians and doing what they could against the blaze. Out of the corner of his eye Jason saw a flash of the iconic red and yellow on the roof. Robin was deploying some kind of fire extinguishing smoke bombs from above.

“What happened here?” Batman was never one to mince words. Still, Jason didn’t appreciate the accusatory undertone.

“Isn’t a guy allowed to save a few kids from a burning building once in a while?” He retorted.

“You’re outside of Crime Alley. Any particular reason?”

“W—“ he glanced over his shoulder. Danny was nowhere to be seen. Good. “I was just passing through. Helped how I could. But now it seems like you and Gotham’s finest have got it handled so I’ll be on my way.”

“Wait—“

Jason in fact did not wait. He shouldered his way past running firemen and slipped deeper into the shadows behind the crowd. He remembered the invisibility cuffs and with a bit of focus he made extra certain Batman couldn’t follow.

He waited till he was safely back inside the streets of crime alley (he chuckled to himself that anyone could think of these streets as safe) before he dropped the invisibility.

He found Danny waiting for him on top of their hotel.

“You okay?” Danny asked as Jason sat next to him on the edge of the roof.

“Fine.”

“Sorry I bailed so quickly, I-“

“Batman can not find out about you,” Jason interrupted. Meta or not, Batman wouldn’t be pleased if anyone as powerful as Danny was roaming around Gotham unchecked. If Bruce saw him, if he got any sense of his capabilities, he’d certainly confront him, or worse.

“Yeah, exactly, way ahead of you,” Danny breathed. “The Dark Knight is not on the list of heroes I’d like to meet.”

Jason hummed in the affirmative, satisfied.

“You get the curse ghost?”

“What? Oh, no. Forgot about him as soon as I saw there were still people. in the building. I think I got them all out before the B man showed up.”

“You’re a hero then. Or vigilante.”

“Was. I’m retired.”

“You don’t seem retired to me.”

“It’s complicated.”

In truth Jason had been relieved when Danny flew out of the building with that kid. Relieved for the kid of course, but equally relieved that Danny had chosen the civilians over the curse ghost. It meant that maybe he was just as altruistic as he claimed to be.

“So are these ghosts better or worse than the ones in Amity Park?” Jason ventured, pushing what trust he’d built.

Danny stiffened at the mention of Amity Park.
“I never mentioned Amity.” A hint of dangerous green glinted behind his eyes. Jason swallowed.

“I know. I was curious.” He replied, as breezy as possible. Like he hadn’t spent hours scouring through old records and obscure blogs to even get this scrap of information.

Danny pressed his lips together. “I haven’t been back in a long time.”

“Not even to see your parents?” Jason was getting reckless now.

“No.” Hard and cold as stone. “They’re not there anymore.”

Noted. Fenton parents were a subject to avoid with Danny. And a subject he would need to redouble his research on.

“And yeah. All ghosts are similar everywhere. Aside from the Curse Ghosts.” Danny offered, the chill fading from the air.

Getting info off of him was easy if Jason asked the right questions. Figuring out the questions was the hard part.

“How did they even get here then? The Curse Ghosts.” Jason asked. “Is there a portal close by?” Portal like the one the Fentons may or may not have created, like the one that supposedly killed Danny.

“No, they’re special. They form here in Gotham, no portal necessary,” came Danny’s unguarded reply. His gaze was far off, down into the streets like he could see them there.

“Actually,” Danny got that conspiratorial look as he turned to Jason, “Come with me.”

//

“Iʼve been trying to find a pattern for where the curse ghosts show up.” Danny sat at the messy desk in his apartment. Jason leaned over his shoulder as he pointed to a map on an outdated monitor.

It was Gotham, with red points dotting various locations. Jason recognized a few as locations theyʼd fought Curse Ghosts together but there were dozens more spots that Jason hadnʼt been at.

“Crime Alley is one obvious hot spot. Plenty of misery here to feed off of. But also— here by the docks, in the business district, by city hall, at Arkham.”

“So, anywhere.” Jason deadpanned.

Danny shot him a look. He clicked a key and another layer of dots showed up on the map.

“News stories of note- strange deaths, corruption, theft. Thereʼs always a surge after a beast shows up.”

“Seems obvious. And unhelpful.”

Danny huffed. “Yeah, well, usually one of your seventeen resident vigilantes shows up and restores order before things get too bad. Starves ‘em out a bit, unlike the big fish we were after tonight. But this is still helpful to get a bead on those to avoid real disasters.”

Jason studied the map layered with articles. “There has to be a way to predict where they’ll form.”

Danny hit a few keys and tossed him a thumb drive. “Knock yourself out.”

Danny leaned back in his chair. He looked tired.

Jason changed the subject. “So what do you study?”

“Huh?”

He gestured to the GU hoodie and various homework-esque bits around the room.

“Oh. Mechanical Engineering,” Danny replied with limited enthusiasm. “What about you? You go to school?”

“Not since I died.” Jason replied. Danny winced. “But itʼs okay. Not really my scene.”

“Oh cmon. There must be something youʼd want to study.”

“Maybe- no. Itʼs stupid.” Jason sat down on the arm of the sofa- the one that was still mostly intact.

“They have all sorts of weird degrees you can do now. You could do Crimonogy. Physicology. Extreme weightlifting with a minor in anthropology.”

“Or Literature.”

“What?” The corners of Danny’s mouth quirked up as he turned toward Jason.

“You know- the classics. Novels. The poets. That kind of stuff.”

Dannyʼs face curled into a smile. “Didnʼt peg you for the type.”

“You donʼt know me.” Jason was thankful the helmet hid the heat rising to his face.

“Touché.”

“Why mechanical engineering?” Jason countered.

“My grades were so shit in high school it was kind of a fall back.” Jason raised a doubting eyebrow.

“No really,” Danny continued, “I grew up around my parents tinkering. I couldnʼt help but pick it up. Much easier than studying Literature.”

“But do you actually like it?”

He shrugged. “Iʼm good at it. Isn’t that basically the same thing?”

Jason snorted. “Not at all. You still get to choose.”

Danny turned away, hiding his face. The silence stretched on for a long moment. Then, “So why are you a crime lord instead of a literature professor?”

Jason considered the question. Truthfully it hadn’t considered doing anything but what he did. This life he lived felt a bit inevitable. On his worst days maybe he’d considered giving up, but then his anger would always come snarling back. Anger at Bruce, anger at the Joker, anger at Gotham itself. Fighting was his only reprieve.

Or so he thought, before he met Danny. Before the irrationality of his rage had been doused completely for the first time since his death. For the first time it felt like he had room to consider. Room to choose.

“Gotham needs someone like me. As soon as it doesn’t you can catch me in the lecture hall teaching Jane Eyre.”

Danny considered him with a hint of a smile. “I’ll be sure to register for that credit when you do.”

Chapter Text

“Gargoyles,” Danny proclaimed one night after theyʼd successfully captured a curse ghost.

Jason replied with an eloquent, “Huh?”

“Thatʼs what they kinda remind me of,” Danny spun the thermos in his hands. “The curse ghosts. They're like really messed up gargoyles.”

Jason thought about it and he was right. The curse ghosts were like if the gargoyles on Gothamʼs buildings had 20% more limbs and teeth and were made of goo instead of stone. Fitting really, for the embodiment of a curse on Gotham.

They perched on the roof of a building not far from an old tire shop where the curse ghost had reared its ugly head. A few gargoyles perched with them, thankfully all stone and completely motionless and definitely not cursed. Shadows crawled across them as occasional car headlights passed in the street below.

“The real question is if they're less nasty or more nasty than other curses you've fought?” Jason didnʼt know if Danny even had fought curse ghosts specifically before, but it seemed likely all things considered.

Danny paused, contemplating. “Every city has ghosts that haunt it. But none as bad as this, at least that I’ve seen. None that have such a distinct form. And none that have had such a strong effect on the living.”

“Arenʼt we special,” Jason grumbled.

Danny chuckled. “Very.”

“Good thing you came here to stop them.”

Danny frowned. “Well. Not exactly. If Stanford had accepted me Iʼd be bumping heads with the ghoulies under Alcatraz, but GU was my next choice.”

Jason’s train of thought came to a skittering halt. Danny wasn’t here to fight these ghosts specifically? He made it seem like taming the curse was the only way to keep Gotham from eating itself inside out. And it was clear that he was the only one actually trying to do something about it. Maybe the only one that could.

“Wait. Fixing the worst curse ever is just what you do in your free time between lectures?” Jason folded his arms.

Danny sighed. “Iʼm not a hero, remember? And I’m trying not to do ghost stuff full time. To do that I need to do human things. Like get a degree.”

“Who says you need a degree?” Jason’s voice pitched up, betraying his incredulity.

“NASA, definitely.” Danny wasn’t looking at him anymore. Instead he tilted his head up to the sky, toward the few stars that dared to poke through the fog.

Jason bit back a laugh. He couldn’t be serious. Crime fighting- ghost hunting- whatever, it wasn’t something that you just did on the side. If there’s one thing Bruce taught him it was that civilian life was an afterthought, a persona that they had to play. Their real life, the life that mattered, was what happened once they donned their masks. And after Jason died he’d been freed from the responsibility of being a civilian at all.

Yet looking at the melancholy on Danny’s face he knew he was being sincere. It struck Jason that Danny had dreams, like real dreams, ones that didn’t involve stopping crime and saving cities and meting out justice.

It twisted something in his stomach. Dreams were a luxury Jason hadnʼt ever been able to afford. Not when he was young and fighting and stealing his way through the streets of Crime Alley. Not when he was fighting beside Bruce, desperately eager to fill the mantle of Robin. Not now, especially not now, when there was only the work of purging the rot from this city. The work that sent him back to the gutters and the alleys night after night, always looking down.

And there Danny was beside him, just as capable of fixing Gotham (or even more capable, he did begrudgingly admit), and it hadnʼt completely consumed him. He was still selfish enough to dream.

He was still looking up at the sky.

A pang of something like hatred smacked at the back of Jason’s teeth, ugly and hot. He couldn’t believe Danny’s selfishness. His naivety. Both incredibly stupid things to have in this line of work. And still Jason felt something else– a rumbling and an ache from the place under his heart. A pulling that tried to stretch across the space between them. He bit his tongue and shoved that feeling down.

//

Later that night when Jason couldn’t sleep he scoured the net for any more hits on Danny. He knew it would be easier if he just asked Tim for help. He bet that little creep could have the full dossier delivered within an hour, everything he wanted to know about Danny Fenton, but that would open Jason up to way more questions than he wanted to deal with. He still needed to keep this as far away from Bruce as possible for as long as possible.

His less than ideal search methods still yielded him a yearbook photo he hadn’t seen yet. The sister Danny mentioned– Jasmine Fenton. Turns out she was attending Stanford, psychology major. Stanford, where Danny could have been instead of Gotham. Fighting some other city’s ghosts. And Jason would have continued to be unaware of and unable to do anything about Gotham’s curse. Or his own.

He turned his attention to digging up anything he could on the Fenton parents. No real estate records, no taxes, not even driver’s licenses. But no death certificates either. Jason didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing. What he did know is that they were equally as erased as their son.

He found himself drifting away from Fenton research and on to the question that nagged at him in a different way– how to predict where the curse ghosts would show up. The data from Danny’s thumb drive was already on his computer and he dutifully logged the coordinates and relevant details from that night’s encounter, another dot among hundreds on the map of Gotham.

Jason had already whittled through all the possible easy connections. Haunted places, typical goon hide outs, historic sites, even fucking ley lines– none of them had enough correlation to be a valuable predictor. Or even a decent lead.

As much as he had practiced taming his frustration, another fruitless night with no answers had him sulking. He felt certain that figuring out the curse ghosts would also help him figure out Danny. And figure out himself. He couldn’t deny that he hadn’t felt even a hint of the Pit’s clawing rage since his nightly escapades with Danny became more frequent. He considered Danny’s offer– to make the fix permanent. And Jason believed him now, that he actually did want to help.

But he couldn’t accept that offer. He wouldn’t. Not until he was sure what it really meant. Maybe if and when they solved the curse problem for good, maybe then he would accept Danny’s help.

But not yet.

//

“Try something for me.”

Danny stopped mid patrol loop of known curse hotspots. Jason followed his gaze and saw a curse ghost rummaging through a demolition site where a condemned apartment once stood.

“Blast it-” Jason pulled a gun, finger ready at the trigger- “Wait!” Danny held up his hands to stop him. “First, see if you can hold the energy back before you release it.”

Danny held his palms out over one another and a ball of familiar green energy formed between them in demonstration. “Let it build up and grow.”

He focused for a moment and the ball grew larger, spun faster. He widened his palms as the ball grew, crackling with potential energy. He let it linger just a moment before— a twist of his wrist and it dissipated.

“I don’t think it works like that for me.”

“Just try it,” Danny cajoled. “I’d be a bad ghost mentor if I didn’t try to teach you how these powers work.”

Jason rolled his eyes. This felt like some kind of test, and the way Danny looked at him with rapt attention all but confirmed that. Did he truly want to help? Or Did he want to gauge how much Jason could push the limits of this power? Still, Jason’s own curiosity won out in the end.

He began by focusing on the feeling he got when he shot his usual energy bullets, allowing it to prickle through his chest and underneath his skin. Rather than let it out immediately, as he’d always done, he did as Danny instructed and held it back. He focused on his pistol. As he did, a small green sphere formed at the end of the gun.

Slowly he fed more energy to it. It grew, just as Danny’s had, spinning faster. His heart accelerated at the same pace, straining against the pull of the power. He gritted his teeth. His head felt hot, like it did when he let his rage get the better of him. Danny’s eyes glinted, reflecting the green glow with impish delight.

The sphere grew to baseball size, then basketball. Then it grew larger than that, so large he couldn’t even see the beast he was aiming at anymore. Danny said simply, “Now.”

Jason pulled the trigger. A massive green fireball exploded out of the end of his pistol, burning across the pile of wreckage. The ghost finally looked up just in time to take the blast directly to its side. It wailed in terrible unearthly tones as the green fire swallowed it.

Danny whooped in triumph. Meanwhile, Jason’s knees wobbled and he fell to all fours in the dirt. He felt suddenly cold, in that terrible clammy way right after a fever breaks.

Danny looked over as if to share the celebration but his face fell as he saw Jason.

“Shit,” he said, kneeling next to him. “You okay?”

“Yeah I— yeah.” Jason panted, swallowing a few dry breaths.

Every time he’d used this power before, he’d let it out instantly, through his guns or his gadgets. He’d never actually let it sit or take the time to feel it properly. Now he wished he hadn’t.

Using that power felt like his worst memories of the Pit, unnatural and cloying like he could still feel the waters dripping off of him. It tasted like grave dirt in his mouth.

But as he raised his head he saw the damage he’d done. There was a fucking crater the size of his living room blasted through the remains of a concrete foundation. No sign of the curse ghost. He did that.

He laughed, all shaky breath. Maybe he could get used to it. He’d have to. He didn’t have a choice but to use it against the curse ghosts. He’d be useless in fights against them otherwise.

“Let’s head back,” Danny offered.

“Yeah.” Jason ignored the small tremor in his hand as he holstered his pistol and started to get his feet back underneath himself.

Jason was halfway to standing when out of nowhere he took a hit. A force crashed into his gut from behind like a cannonball and he barely registered a curse ghost underneath him- it looked like a rhino with way way too many horns- before it flung him ten feet across the demo site and sent him careening into the rubble. He tumbled over broken concrete and snarled rebar, hard-trained muscle memory kicking in to relax his muscles enough to not take the worst of it anywhere he didn’t want to.

He blinked the dizziness from his eyes as he settled. Fuck that hurt. He felt a trickle of blood running down his face. The helmet was padded just enough to protect him from concussions. Didn’t help much with the biological nightmare that was the human nose though. He took the helmet off to keep the blood from pooling in his mouth, leaving him in just his domino mask.

“Jason?” He heard Danny shout.

“Mmfine,” was what he managed to reply as he pushed himself up. It took him a few tries to find his legs. They were still wobbly from the expenditure of power before.

Across the demo field Danny fought the new curse ghost with his usual evasive style. His mouth a hard set line as he ducked beneath swipes from many-angled horns and he responded with blasts of his own, cornering the ghost handily.

Then his gaze landed on Jason and he paused, eyes wide.

His stance went rigid. He snapped around unnaturally fast to face the curse ghost, a total shift from his flighty movements from a moment before. His gaze was sharp, cast in stark shadows from the streetlights, and impossibly, dangerously green. He raised a palm toward the ghost, slowly. And then a nuclear blast went off.

Or at least thatʼs what it felt like. Jason lifted an elbow to shield his eyes from the blinding green light. Surprisingly it wasn’t hot. Instead it felt like the air pressure had been turned up, as if the whole atmosphere was somehow heavier around them, pressing in from all sides, making it harder to breathe.

It lasted only a moment. When Jason lowered his shielding arm there was no sign of the curse ghost. No other damage from the blast either. Just scraps of shadow floating on the wind, dissipating as they rose up.

Danny lowered his hand. A bit of a glow still lingered around him like a halo, a silver outline that shimmered on top of his skin. Jason’s heart raced drunkenly as he stayed rooted to his spot. He wasn’t sure he trusted his legs to move. Danny still looked at the empty space where the ghost had been, his gaze still burning with an overwhelming power. One that Jason was very thankful to not have directed at him. Still, something stirred in his chest like a tug on a wire. The sweet sharp tang of adrenaline saturated his fear. He wasn’t sure if he could stomach that oppressive attention, but a reckless part of him craved it.

Then Danny shifted his stance again. He seemed to shrink back into himself, the glow dimming to a level that passed as human. He turned to Jason with something like guilt on his face, no hint of the commanding presence he held a moment earlier.

“Are you okay?” Danny spoke gently, but his fists were still clenched.

“Yeah. Yeah Iʼm fine,” Jason replied before he even really took stock of his injuries, but as he did he saw he hadn’t lied. The bleeding from his nose had mostly stopped. It hadnʼt been that bad in the first place.

“I think thatʼs enough for tonight.” Danny breathed, finally, releasing the last of his tension. He wouldnʼt meet Jasonʼs eyes.

It had been a while since anyone had saved him. He didn’t have anyone who watched his back, hadn’t for a long time. Strictly speaking, tonight he would have been fine even without the save. Probably.

While he was thankful that Danny covered his ass, it also annoyed him that he thought he had to.

“Thanks,” he grumbled, and then finally Danny looked at him with soft attention.

“You’re sure you’re okay? If it’s a concussion-“

“I’m fine,” Jason said, using his thumb to brush away the drying blood under his nose.

Danny just looked at him with naked concern, his fingers twitching like he didn’t know what to do with them, mouth pressed in a firm line. He took a breath as if to voice another worry but Jason cut him off with a resigned sigh.

“Look, if you're so worried why donʼt you come back to mine.” If it got Danny to stop nagging he didn’t mind burning a safehouse.

Danny nodded, mutely accepting the invite.

Jason led him back to his latest safehouse, a corner loft of an abandoned building, only accessible by rooftop. The walk there had proved that Jason wasn’t hurt bad, though Danny’s eyes kept going back to the blood on his face.

Once inside, Danny sat down on the couch. It was the only real piece of furniture in the house besides his half-broken bed. Jason felt less like a shitty host because truly it was equally as dingy as the one in Danny’s own apartment.

“Want a beer?” Jason asked from the kitchen, as he finished up rummaging his way through some makeshift first aid. The slapdash brace on his nose wasn’t his finest work, but eh. It would heal fine. It always did.

“You drink?” Danny seemed suspiciously surprised. “For me the accelerated healing makes any normal alcohol consumption pretty pointless.”

Jason froze with his hand on the fridge. “Oh. Huh.” That would explain why he had to down a whole handle and a half to feel anything. “No shit.”

Zombie-like he pulled a six pack out of the fridge. He set it down on the coffee table in front of Danny as he fell onto the couch next to him.

A part of him had still not fully believed the whole half ghost thing. Fighting ghosts was one thing. Being one was another. The tech helped maintain the illusion quite well- he had ghost power cuffs that made him invisible and ghost power socks that let him float. That explanation was easy to swallow.

But no gadget could explain why wounds that should take weeks to recover from only took him days. Couldn’t explain why he didn’t get drunk.

But there was a good explanation. A simple one too.

He wasnʼt fully human.

Shit.

Jason grabbed a beer from the coffee table, popped it with his thumb, and downed it in one long pull.

“Batman doesnʼt like metas in Gotham.” He didn’t look at Danny. He wasn’t really even talking to him. He tossed the beer bottle to the floor.

“Weʼre not metas,” Danny said, a gentle echo of what he’d said the first night they met.

“It doesn’t matter. Meta, supernatural, itʼs all the same. All are a dangerous liability in this city. You- we- count.” Jason opened another beer. Downed it. Waited to feel any hint of the alcohol hitting him. Nothing.

He could, however, feel Danny looking at him. “Iʼm not afraid of Batman.”

Jason didnʼt look back. He fiddled with the empty beer bottle, tossed it on the floor with the other one. Of course Danny wasnʼt afraid of Batman. Jason had no doubts which way that fight would go if it ever came to it.

That was an awful image to consider– Batman getting his ass handed to him by some nobody punk in jeans– and all the more reason that Bruce should never know about any of this. The curse ghosts, Danny, Jason’s own burgeoning ghost powers- more secrets he had to keep. More reasons to keep all the Bats at arm's length.

And if they ever did find out? No way their shaky truce could weather that. It’d be another war.

“Heʼs- well, they all are I guess- kind of my family. All Iʼve got left of one, anyway.” The words spilled out. He didn’t want a war with them. He never had.

Danny let out a long breath. “Oh. Family.” He laughed a sad laugh. “My parents tried to kill me. Multiple times actually. I donʼt blame them– theyʼre ghost hunters and well, they looked at me and saw a ghost.”

Danny reached for a beer. He pulled out two and handed one to Jason. He took it. “So at least it canʼt be as bad as that with yours?”

Jason grumbled. “Judging by how it went the first time I came back from the dead? It will be an absolute shitshow.”

Danny clinked his beer against Jasonʼs and took a long swig. “I dunno. I think Bruce might come around if you give him a chance.”

Jason straightened his spine, suddenly alert, alarm bells ringing in his head. “Bruce?”

Danny deflated, suddenly sheepish. “Ah. Whoops.”

That all but confirmed it. Jason groaned. Just when he thought it couldn’t get worse, Danny somehow knew one of Gotham’s most dangerous secrets. “How did you find out?”

“You can probably guess.” Danny rubbed the back of his neck. “It wasnʼt hard with a little ghostly snooping. It was one of the first things I did when I got to Gotham. I wanted to know just to double avoid him, honest.”

It wasnʼt hard to imagine any number of ways Danny could have uncovered Batman’s identity. Heʼd recognized Jason with and without his mask, but he figured that was because Danny had a sense for ghosts and, well, whatever he was. He hadnʼt considered how easy unmasking the Batman would be for him even without that trick.

“If he finds out you know, you’re dead.”

“I already am. Besides, I thought Batman had a strict no-kill policy?”

Ultimately this changed very little. Just another nail in the coffin of the strict Batman avoidance protocol. Still, he wished Danny would be a little less blase about the whole thing.

Fuck it. In for a penny, he couldn’t un-learn all the ghost shit that had turned his life upside down. He downed the beer. Danny was right the first time. It didnʼt matter what Bruce thought. He couldnʼt stop them from fighting curse ghosts. And it was truly none of his business. Danny sipped his beer with a grimace. Jasonʼs heart twisted.

“How do you stand the taste of this stuff?” Danny asked, a hint of a smile.

“It’s not about the taste. It's about the feeling.” Or lack of one. Jason thought maybe he felt the slightest tingle of tipsiness, but it could just be placebo.

Danny looked at him with that same casual intensity. He could tell his eyes lingered on his half-broken nose. Still worrying over him. Why? Why did he care if Jason got hurt? Jason stared back, trying to get a read on any of the real thoughts behind Danny’s eyes.

The silence stretched out, wide open.

Danny broke it first. “Sorry, uh. I guess I should get going.”

Jason took a beat and remembered how to breathe. “You good? Donʼt drink and fly.”

“I donʼt feel a thing,” Danny smirked. “Still, Iʼll walk.”

“You sure? You could always just crash here tonight.” The words spilled out of him before he could think better of it. He and Danny both froze, like the air has been sucked from the room. He stared at the empty six pack on the coffee table, swatting away any thoughts that dared surface, fighting the rising heat in his cheeks and desperately trying to keep his face blank.

“Itʼs okay,” Danny said finally, quietly releasing Jason from his turmoil. “Iʼll see you tomorrow?”
Jason dared a look at Danny then. Warmth in his half smile like a sweater, a glint in his eye that made him feel lightheaded.

Danny stood and left, closing the door gently behind himself. Jason breathed out into the empty apartment. It felt suddenly cavernous and dead without Danny in it.

It shouldn’t mean anything but it did. Friends crashed on each other’s couches regularly, didn’t they? Jason didn’t have much experience with friends, if that’s what he and Danny were. This invitation certainly crossed that threshold. But he’d been careless. All the unknowns were still dangerous. He couldn’t let this be more than a working relationship. A partnership of convenience.

He pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. Pain, tender and sharp, sprung up beneath them. He sighed at the comforting familiarity of it. Then he flopped face first onto his bed, alone.

Chapter Text

Some nights later Jason was wrapping up some Red Hood business outside a local pub when he noticed something off about the ghosts. But not the curse ghosts— the regular spirits around Gotham that he’d started to see after his first encounter with Danny. Ever since he’d started fighting the curse ghosts with Danny, the regular crowd had stopped actively causing him trouble, but it didn’t change the fact that seeing all manner of bizarre and terrifying creatures that no one else did could be incredibly distracting. Like it was right now.

Dozens of ghosts of all sorts were running (flying, jumping, what have you) down the streets, away from something. A look in that direction didn’t reveal anything obviously wrong, and there were no sirens ringing. Regular people on the street were still just going about their business, so it couldn’t be that bad, right? He didn’t know enough about ghosts to know what could spook them like this. Jason, perhaps noble and perhaps stupid, set off in the direction they came from, toward whatever had made them run.

He followed the trail of fleeing ghosts and the growing sense of unease in his stomach. It led him downtown, under one of Gotham’s many bridges– a wide interstate overpass that let large shadows pool underneath. The few streetlights that worked did very little against the darkness.The unsettling energy he’d followed was so strong here it made him want to turn tail like all the other ghosts had. Every instinct said it would be unwise to stick around.

Then he recognized Danny’s voice. The clipped tones of the conversation made it instantly apparent he wasn’t catching up with a friend. From this distance, stationed behind a graffiti-covered concrete pillar, Jason couldn’t make out exactly what was being said.

He risked getting closer, turning invisible and maneuvering to the next column in. It was enough to finally parse the words of a voice he didn’t recognize, with a formal accent he couldn’t place.

“How much longer are you going to play this silly game?”

“I have a good reason for being here. An entity like this can’t be allowed to stay topside unchecked. You’re the ones who pointed it out, remember?”

“Irrelevant! You are stalling. the lesser kings grow restless.”

“You know I don’t give two shits about what those uptight raisins-“

“You are well aware that there are more important matters that need your attention. Your duty is to—“

“I don’t work for you.” Danny’s tone gained a dangerous timbre that sent a shiver down Jason’s spine. He caught his breath behind his teeth.

The warning also shut up the other speaker. The silence hung for a long moment. Then Danny spoke again.

“I will make an appearance in the Zone when I get a chance. Until then get lost.”

Jason caught a whorl of green in his peripheral and assumed it meant the other speaker obeyed Danny’s command. He had to fight his own instincts to abscond as well. He was certain if the words had been directed toward him he wouldn’t have been able to resist either.

He still wanted to bolt. He wondered if Danny had sensed him lurking there. That was a conversation he certainly was not supposed to hear, and the smart thing to do would be to get out of there before he got caught. But some of the uneasiness had faded from the atmosphere when the other speaker left, and Jason reminded himself that this was Danny. Danny wouldn’t hurt him.

Probably.

He came out from around the corner before he could chicken out, striding over like he’d just walked up. Danny brightened as soon as he saw him, which made Jason’s gut do a funny little flip.

“The ghosts are acting weird. Everything okay?” Jason kept his voice even.

“Oh, yeah,” Danny replied breezily, “Nothing to worry about.”

Lies. But Jason didn’t press even as he burned with curiosity. Better not to raise suspicion. Danny didn’t seem interested in questioning what Jason was doing here either, equally avoiding having to talk about the previous conversation.

“So.” Danny got that familiar conspiratorial look. “Since we’re already out here. Let’s go hunt some curses.”

//

A curse ghost gnawed on a gaudy statue of a golden bull in the financial district. The ticker on the outside of a gleaming skyscraper scrolled, reading some headline about record stock prices. A man slept on the bumpy ledge beneath the statue. He shivered as black goo, invisible to him, dripped down onto his side. The curse ghost loomed over him, the same shape as the bull, as if it were its shadow.

Then, without warning, Danny was on top of it. He whooped as the bull bucked, but he rode it rodeo style, holding on to its neck with one hand like some sort of gothic cowboy. Jason stared mutely, aborted plans replaced by incredulous disbelief. Maybe this was how Bruce had felt when he jumped into fights as Robin.

“Where the hell did you learn to fight?” Jason pulled his sword, positioning himself to help corral the beast away from the buildings.

“Self taught, mostly. Can’t you tell?” Danny wielded a whip of green energy in his off hand, snapping it at the bull’s sides when it got too close to anything breakable.

Of course Danny had no formal training. Nobody who had any sense of self preservation would fight with such reckless abandon.

“But you know what they say about grabbing the bull by the horns.” Danny did just that. Jason rolled his eyes. But a moment later he felt a buzz of power in the air and Danny wasn’t smiling anymore. He was focused on his hands, on the bull, almost like this stupid stunt actually had a purpose.

Then the bull let out a piercing shriek, twisted in a horrible convulsion, and launched itself sideways like a cannonball.

It crashed into the side of Gotham Central Bank, taking Danny with it completely through the stone brick wall. Alarms immediately started ringing. Shit. Jason jumped through the hole in the wall after them. With the amount of times this place had been targeted by rogues, Batman had it at the top of their surveillance priority. They had a matter of minutes before one of them showed up.

“We gotta go!” Jason shouted through the dust of falling rubble. “Fast!”

Danny faced off against the bull in the middle of the lobby. “Going! As fast! As I can!” He punctuated each phrase with a blast at the bull. Jason felt the power behind each one in his throat.

The curse dodged a blast. Then, as if Danny were a matador flashing his red cape, the bull charged.

Jason reacted before any thought surfaced. He strode once, twice, then swung his sword in a wide arc. It sliced through the curse ghost’s side, knocking it away from Danny and sending it sprawling to the marble floor.

Danny recovered quick enough to whip out a thermos and zap it up. Jason’s heart thudded. He’d panicked for a moment. He’d panicked when he thought that thing would hurt Danny.

“Thanks,” Danny tossed over his shoulder with an easy smile.

Jason nodded mutely.

He didn’t look after other people. Everyone was disposable and replaceable in this line of work. Bruce taught him that. He couldn’t start worrying after someone else’s life, not when they chose to risk it. Especially not someone who was practically a stranger.

But this wasn’t a stranger. This was Danny.

“We’ve got company,” Danny muttered, eyes toward the hole in the wall where they’d crashed in.

Spoiler stood in the gap, silhouetted by hazy moonlight. “You doing bank robberies now, Hood?”

He wouldn’t get any sympathy from Steph, but then again he hardly knew her. At least it wasn’t Tim. Or Bruce.

“Mind your business,” he snapped. “But no. You can check. Money’s all still there.”

“Right, right. And would he have anything to do with the giant hole in the wall?” She gestured to Danny, who gave a meek little wave. “Your new… partner?”

Danny choked on a chuckle at the same time as Jason barked, “Not my partner.”

Steph smirked. “Sure. Anyway, Batman is on his way, so you can explain it all to him.”

Danny froze, tension in every muscle. Jason shifted, angling himself in front of him.

“I’m actually gonna skip this session with Dr. Bats. So, if you’ll excuse us.”

Jason gestured to Danny with a tilt of his head, and Danny fell into step beside him as they bolted for the atrium stairs.

“Shit,” Steph hissed as she leapt after them. “Oracle, you tracking them?”

Fuck. Babs getting involved spelled signs of having their shit wrecked and on display for Batman to see before the sun rose. Jason lifted a hand to scan the frequencies on his helmet coms, hoping, halfheartedly, that he was still coded into their channel.

Batarangs whizzed past their heads as they careened up the stairs and burst out the doors onto a mid-level courtyard. They ran to a stone railing that looked over the street two stories below.

“This can be easy if you just answer our questions.” Steph appeared in the doorway as Jason turned. His eyes darted, scanning for options. Flat walls on either side of them. No good grapple point off the edge. They could go back the way they came- through Steph- but he wasn’t confident they could get past without having to hurt her, which. No, he wasn’t going to do that.

Beside him Danny practically bounced on his toes, his eyes doing the same dance. They had a lot more options for escape if they relied on Danny’s powers, but that meant outing him as meta-adjacent. That couldn’t happen— in that they both seemed to be in silent agreement.

“ETA 5.” Batman’s voice crackled through Jason’s helmet. They still used the old frequency after all.

“I have visual.” Oracle now. “Spoiler, keep him talking.”

“What are you doing here tonight, Hood?” Steph took a step closer, but she still maintained a healthy distance. She wouldn’t make a real move till backup arrived. Smart.

He just had to give Danny enough of a window to get out of sight. Then Danny could disappear for real, and Jason could deal with the Bats on his own. He just had to have hope that Danny had enough self preservation instincts to run when he had the chance.

“Who’s your friend?” Steph continued despite his silence.

“I’m Danny,” Danny replied, again with a chipper wave. Jason glared at him through his helmet.

“Danny, did Red Hood put you up to this?”

Danny snorted. “No. I mean, not really.”

Funny to think that Jason could make Danny do anything at all.

“It’s alright. We’ll make sure he doesn’t cause any more trouble.”

“That seems unlikely.” Danny threw him a glance.

“Shut up,” Jason hissed.

“We’ll take him from here.” Spoiler took another step forward. Batman would certainly swoop down at any second.

“Thanks for finally giving us an excuse to bring you to heel, Hood. I hear Arkham is real cozy this time of year.”

He shouldn’t be surprised, but he is. Of course he’d be treated like the other Gotham rogues. Foolish of him for expecting any better from the old man. He clenched a fist.

“Oh,” Danny stopped his fidgeting. The air around them went still. “Nah. I don’t think you will.”

Jason blanched. Danny couldn’t be stupid enough to use his powers now, could he?

“Losing visual.” Oracle’s voice crackled through static. “There’s– it’s some kind of interference.” Around them the landscaping lights in the courtyard flickered. Jason swallowed. Yes, it seemed, he could be that stupid.

“Danny, what–” Jason began, voice low, but before he could finish he felt a hand grab the back of his jacket. Suddenly he was invisible, and then suddenly he was weightless, and then suddenly he was flying. Spoiler shrunk beneath them as they crested the rooftops. Up he went over Gotham, dragged by Danny’s firm grip on his collar, streets whizzing past at dizzying speeds below.

Jason opened his mouth and a thousand things didn’t come out. He just gaped, strung along behind Danny like a fish on a line.

Cold wind pulled at Jason’s jacket as he glanced up at Danny. His face was a shadow, unreadable.

Danny didn’t slow down until he circled down onto their usual Crime Alley rooftop a few short minutes later. Jason felt gravity turn back on as Danny released him, gentle enough that he didn’t even stumble. Like he’d done this before.

“Fuck,” Jason half whispered.

“Sorry. Would have given you more warning, but it kinda would have defeated the purpose if she caught on to the escape plan.”

“No, that’s–” He rubbed a hand over his mask. “Now they know you’re a meta.”

“Not a meta.”

“Whatever. Now they know you’re someone they should know about. Once you are on the radar of the Bats you don’t just get off. They’re going to come after you.”

“They can try.”

Jason paced across the roof. “I’m serious. You should have gotten out when you could have. I could have dealt with them alone.”

“I couldn’t just leave you there.”

“It was stupid of you not to.”

Danny stood across from him, arms folded petulantly. “You cowing to their interrogation wasn’t a smart option either.”

“I would have been fine. I’m very good at lying. And if that was another bull pun I will strangle you.” Danny smiled sharply. Jason groaned. “And they wouldn’t really hurt me. Family, remember?”

Danny fixed him with a glare. “That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t hurt you.” The words were icy. Jason bit his cheek. From what he’d shared, Danny would know first hand how much family could actually hurt you.

“Whatever. I’m going home.” Jason turned to leave. Danny hmphed but didn’t press it. They exchanged curt goodbyes and parted ways.

Jason simmered with annoyance the whole way home. He could see it now, how it would pan out. Bruce would find out about the ghosts, about the curse. He’d swoop in and try to fix everything, and then he’d try to fix Jason. This was the crowbar that Bruce would use to pry open the door back into controlling Jason’s life.

And Danny— he tried to imagine a world where Bruce tolerated Danny. Removed from all the ghost weirdness, he was prime adoption bait, from the looks to the tragic backstory and the fraught familial relationships. But he was certain Danny would also react very poorly to Bruce trying to control him. And Bruce would absolutely try to control a powerful meta in his city.

None of this changed the fact that the city was still cursed. Nothing to do but keep fighting. Only now they’d have to always be looking over their shoulders.

//

The next morning he dressed as Jason and took his bike to Gotham University. He posted up outside the science and engineering building where he knew Danny had class. If Bruce had tracked Danny here, Jason wasn’t about to let him face Batman alone.

Maybe he was being paranoid— They only had Danny’s first name and his face, nothing else. It had been less than 24 hours since their encounter with Spoiler.

Yeah. No. He wasn’t going to underestimate them.

The towering oaks and manicured lawns of the campus felt foreign to him. It hardly felt like Gotham at all, not the real Gotham. The tall iron fences around the grass made sure to keep the real Gotham out. He scanned the doorways for campus security. Jason stuck out enough he wouldn’t put it past them to try to kick him out. He considered just aborting this pointless escapade and leaving when a stream of students began wafting out of the doors.

Danny appeared among the crowd. Jason’s feet froze to their spot. Danny smiled when he saw him, surprised.

Danny made his way over to, breaking off from the other students. “Isn't this a bit far from your radius?” He looked natural here, a bookbag slung casually over his shoulder, notebooks under his arm. Like he belonged.

“Gotta get some fresh air once in a while.”

The corner of Dannyʼs mouth quirked up and Jasonʼs stomach twisted.

Danny waited for Jason to, presumably, provide a reason for being there. “Making sure Batman doesn’t come after you” seemed like a crazy, unreasonable thing to say. Especially in that moment, as a sunbeam poked through the clouds and students chattered around them about homework and sports and parties.

As if reading his mental gymnastics, Danny offered a lifeline. “You want to join me for lunch?”

“Sure,” Jason replied almost too quickly, grateful for the excuse. He allowed himself to be led toward a cafe a few blocks away. He couldn’t help but scan the streets as they walked, looking for any hint of potential snoopers. The fact that there were so god damned many Bat-minions now made it more difficult to hone in on any one obvious tail.

Danny nudged him with an elbow, a questioning glance on his face. Was he being that obvious? Beside him Danny walked with the casual air of an ignorant civilian. More relaxed than a native Gothamite. Like he hadn’t just barely avoided a disastrous confrontation with the Batman. It only made Jason more paranoid.

They made it to the cafe without incident and found a table among the crowd of other University goers on their lunch break. As they ordered and settled in, small talk came as easily for them over pastrami on rye as it did between punches. Danny told him about the complex physics theories he was studying in class and Jason listened earnestly. Jason reminisced about his own schooling, non traditional as it were, and talked of the hours he spent in Bruce’s libraries.

His gaze wandered to a table by the window where a couple sat, laughing. First date, maybe. A next thought tried to follow that one but he strangled it like a firm hand around a throat.

“Itʼs not often I get to see your face in the outside world.” Danny pulled his attention back.

“Appreciate it while you can.”

“I am.” Danny smiled and Jason was suddenly acutely aware of his gaze focused only on him. “It’s unfair really. You get to admire these good looks all the time.” He gestured to himself and put on a false pout, hair flopping over his face.

Jason rolled his eyes playfully, but it stirred up a lingering concern. Oracle had caught Danny’s face on camera. That meant it was only a matter of time until she- and Bruce- found him. All that could have been avoided if Danny had a hero persona like the rest of them.

“Why donʼt you wear a mask?” Jason asked. “Itʼs like hero 101 shit.” He didn’t mean for it to sound as accusatory as it did.

Some of Dannyʼs brightness faded. “Iʼm not a hero.”

He raised an eyebrow. “So youʼre just a guy with superpowers fighting monsters every night. In jeans.”

That earned him a reluctant smile. “Pretty much.”

Jason lowered his voice and leaned closer. “Batman has your face now. He knows you have powers. He knows you work with Red Hood. Wouldn’t it be easier if you kept that separate from-“ he gestured to the books, the cafe, his life- “this?”

Danny sighed, leaning back and folding his arms. “There’s not really a point in keeping secrets. Batman can’t stop me. We’re careful. And it’s not like the ghosts are gonna talk to the tabloids.”
“Weʼre not that careful. One wrong move or stray camera could destroy your life.”

Danny laughed, dry and harsh. “Danny Fenton is dead. I donʼt have a life to destroy.”

Jason paused. He hadnʼt found anything in his searches to suggest that was true. And it made no sense. Danny Fenton had dreams. He wanted to finish his degree. He hoped to work for NASA. Jason hadn’t imagined that conversation. Something didn’t add up.

“How does a dead man register for college?”

“With some half-baked forgeries and an excellent hacker on speed dial.”

“And wouldnʼt it still be bad if the undead college studentʼs life got ruined?”

Danny looked away. “It doesnʼt matter.”

“It doesnʼt matter?“

“I’m here to fix a ghost problem.” His voice got tighter.

“You said you werenʼt trying to do ghost stuff full time.”

“Trying, yeah. Emphasis on trying.”

“Not very hard, I guess.”

Danny grabbed his bag and stood up from the table in one abrupt motion. He looked down at Jason with cold eyes. “At least I try.”

Jason flinched at the hint of malice behind the words. Danny wasn’t wrong. Jason Todd was dead, and he had no intention of changing that. He didnʼt need to. He had his mask and the kingdom he’d built with it. He didnʼt need to be Jason.

But Danny had dreams as Danny. Jason had seen the yearning determination in his eyes as heʼd looked at the sky. Danny was a good liar but not good enough to fake that.

“Where are you going?” Jason snapped.

“Why do you care?”

Danny turned and brushed past tables of other diners as he stormed out. Jason clamped his mouth shut to stop himself from snapping back. He didn’t move from his seat.
He fumed silently. Nothing that he’d found online had pointed to Dannyʼs death. No death certificate, a hospital stay, an obituary, a gravestone. Nothing.

He thought about going after Danny. A good friend probably would have. Instead he remembered snippets from that overheard conversation. Duty, the other person had said. Something about Danny’s duty. Nothing to do with fighting Gotham’s curse, from the way they said it. Some other thing entirely.

//

Danny didn’t show up that night. Jason waited on their roof (fuck it all, he’d started to think of it as theirs) but midnight came and went with no sign of him.

Jason tuned into the Bat coms after barely fifteen minutes of silent sulking. A pang of worry lingered in his gut. Batman could have found Danny, and— and what? He doubted they could lay a finger on Danny, let alone capture him. He’d already been in and out of Bruce’s security undetected.

Still. He listened on the coms for any mention of their escaped meta, but it was just a standard night of patrol. Tim and Cass out in the field, Oracle guiding them. Bruce must not have been listening in closely because they’re lax on chatter on the frequency. It’s like a personal radio drama just for him, except it’s a window into the life that was no longer his.

Still, Danny’s silence didn’t feel good. Jason remembered the hardness in his eyes from that afternoon, The apathetic bite of his tone. But Jason banished any hint of guilt that tried to squirm its way out of him. Fine by him if Danny wanted to ruin his own life. That clearly wasn’t his responsibility.

“Disturbance at Robinson Park. Destroyed property. Perp unclear.” Oracles voice came steady and clear over the coms.

“On our way. Is it Ivy?” Tim responded, businesslike.

“Negative. The path of destruction points to something large, animal-like. But I can’t spot it. It’s like it’s invisible.”

Jason’s ears perked up at that. That was a curse ghost, no way it could be anything else. And as much as he loved to imagine Tim getting his whole ass handed to him by an invisible monster, he really should go deal with it because the bats would be in way over their heads.

Well, except for the fact that Danny wasn’t there. He’d never fought a curse ghost alone. For as good as he’d gotten with the ghost weapons, he didn’t always come out of these fights unscathed, even with Danny’s backup.

He sent Danny a text with the location- curse ghost here. Maybe that would make him get over his sulking and get out here to help.

Minutes ticked by with no response. Tim and Cass sounded more harried on the coms. Danny would almost certainly tell him not to fight it solo if he were here. He gritted his teeth. Jason didn’t need Danny’s approval. Or his permission.

He checked the straps on his holsters and sword then took a running leap off the roof.

By the time he got there the park was already in chaos. Tim stood on the path and swung his staff at nothing. Cass crouched by the swing set which was sprawled in a half crumpled mess. Neither of them looked at the curse ghost, which gnawed on a corner of a park bench.

In an ideal scenario Jason could lure the curse ghost away to avoid explaining anything to them. Then Tim’s head snapped toward the bench, alerted by the crunching of old wood between invisible jaws. Cass also tensed, ready to pounce. Fuck.

Together they attacked. Predictably, Cass’s foot and Tim’s staff went right through the mass of oily shadow with no resistance. It took actually seeing it happen for Jason to fully appreciate just how screwed they were. Normal weapons couldn’t hurt it. They couldn’t even touch it.

Annoyed, the beast stopped snacking and with a massive clawed hand it took a swipe at Tim. Tim didn’t see it coming, obviously, so he took the hit hard to the side, sending him tumbling to the dirt.

“Red Robin!” Cass leapt after him only to catch a lazy swipe from the ghost's tail, knocking her down into the bushes.

“Backup heading your way, hold on,” Oracle's strained voice came through his helmet. More Bats wouldn’t solve this. It would only end up with more of them hurt. But they knew too much already without Jason exposing his ghost powered weapons too. He just needed the right opportunity.

The beast prowled toward where Tim was still righting himself. It cackled like a hyena, jaws wide and full of sharp teeth. It lunged.

Jason was faster. He took two bounding, half-floating steps, swung his sword and caught the ghost in the jaw. He shoved it back from Tim as it yowled.

God fucking dammit. So much for laying low. But he couldn’t just watch them get hurt.

“Hood?”

“Infrared.”

“What?“

“Use infrared vision.” He looked down at Tim as he found his feet, keeping the ghost in his peripheral. He remembered Danny calling out the infrared detectors as part of his arsenal of gadgets (“Helpful if you can’t already see them.”) and he didn’t want Tim and Cass flailing around totally blind.

“And stay out of my way.”

The ghost lunged again and he met it with his sword. They clashed, and for all Jason’s bravado, his arms shook as the beast parried his swing. He threw it off with a surge of effort. Thankfully Tim listened and had scattered to the edge of the lawn where Cass had resurfaced from the bushes, out of the radius of the fray. But looking to check on him had been a mistake— Jason felt a claw slash into his calf before he could dodge. He sucked a breath through his teeth. He’d had worse. But he was reminded again that he’d never faced the full ire of the curse ghosts alone. He’d always had Danny to trade blows with.

Now the ghost looked at him, only him, with hungry black eyes and that insufferable cackle dripping from its lips.

“I’ve got visual on infrared.” Oracle, still in his ear. “It’s showing up as a cold spot—some kind of giant wolf.” Hyena, Jason corrected mentally before barely dodging another swipe of its claws.

“Got it,” Red Robin chirped. Jason dared another look to see he had indeed donned infrared goggles from his kit. “Going back in.”

Jason’s heart clenched. “No,” he grunted over the coms he was definitely not supposed to have access to, “Stay out of it.”

The ghost took the opportunity to launch itself at him. Jason found himself pinned under its massive paws, staring up into that gaping, laughing mouth.

“Hood!” If he didn’t know better he’d think Tim actually sounded concerned. Which—fuck, that didn’t mean anything since he couldn’t do shit to help.

Jason found his pistol and wiggled himself just enough room to press it to the ghost’s belly. He pulled the trigger and green energy exploded into the shadow, tossing the ghost off of him and fully exposing Jason’s own ghost shit for Oracle and everyone to see.

“You can’t hurt it,” he barked at Tim as he rolled to his feet. “Stay the fuck back.” Tim didn’t protest. For once.

Now that the guns were out he gave up any attempt at subtlety. He got nasty with his blasts and pulled nothing from his punches, calling every ounce of that green energy to the surface. He must have looked like a glowing menace to Tim and Cass, but he had little room to care. The ghost fought back with eager viciousness. Jason ignored the snap in his wrist, the teeth grazing his side, drawing blood. He just had to beat it down enough to capture it.

After another round of traded blows finally, finally, the curse ghost started looking worse for wear. It panted heavily, long black tongue lolling out of its mouth, and it oozed black sludge where Jason’s sword had left the deepest marks. He holstered a gun long enough to pull the thermos instead, and as it lunged toward him one more time he sucked it up in a beam of light.

The silence that followed was beautiful. He bent over halfway to catch his breath. He did it. He fucking did it. He did it without Danny.

From the other side of the lawn, Cass whistled. Jason stood and turned to face them, intending to take a quick bow before exiting stage left, but— there was Bruce. Batman had arrived sometime during the brawl. He stood protectively in front of Tim and Cass.

“Red Hood. Report.”

Nice to see you too. He rolled his eyes and turned to leave.

Then Bruce tried a different angle.

“Where is your new partner?”

Jason bristled. Batman being suspicious of him was one thing, but bringing Danny into the equation made the pit under his heart roar in protest. He turned back before he could think better of it. “None of your business, old man. Stay out of it.”

He didn’t appreciate the thin press of Cass’s lips or the hint of Tim’s chuckle.

“Let us help you.” Batman extended a hand. And oh if Bruce didn’t sound just a bit soft, and the offer sounded almost genuine. It only made his hackles raise further.

“You can’t help,” he ground out. And it was true. If Bruce couldn’t help him before all the ghost stuff, he absolutely couldn’t help now.

Jason took off toward his bike. If he was fast they wouldn’t catch him. He hoped he wouldn’t have to dissuade them further.

“Jason!” Batman broke his own rule to call out his name, and it was almost enough to get him to stop and go back. Almost.

He slipped between the trees and ran deeper into the shadows.

//

Jason had two more nights of worrying. Of listening in on police scanners (since he hadn’t been able to reconnect to the coms since revealing he had access) for any hint of Danny. Nothing.

Maybe Danny got wise and skipped town. Jason went to Danny’s apartment to check if he’d left. When his knock went unanswered he phased himself in through the door. A quick glance around said all of Danny’s stuff was still there. No sign of a fight. Jason stood in the center of the tiny apartment feeling like an ass. Now that he’d been there with Danny’s permission it felt wrong to be breaking in unannounced. Danny wasn’t just a suspicious unknown meta anymore. He was— well, he was something. Still suspicious. But undeniably on his side.

Danny could be MIA for any reason. Something could have happened with his mysterious family maybe, though that thought did nothing to calm Jason’s nerves.

He let himself settle into the more likely possibility that maybe Danny simply didn’t want to see him. It wouldn’t be hard for him to avoid Jason, break ins aside. Danny could simply vanish anytime he sensed Jason nearby. Maybe he’d been stupid for pushing Danny to talk. Dumb of him to think that Danny owed him anything real.

He opened his phone like he was going to text Danny, but after typing and deleting various attempts at concern or apology or both he just shoved the phone back in his pocket, message unsent. Their text chain only pertained to the curse ghosts after all. It’s not like Danny owed him a response for anything else.

On the third night, out of nowhere, Danny sent him a text.

You up?

Jason nearly frisbeed his phone across the safehouse when he saw the notification. It was just barely 2 am- he had finished his rounds and called it a night early. He hurriedly tapped a reply.

Where have you been?

Meet u at roof.

Jason didn’t know whether to be mad or relieved. He ended up pulling his pants back on and rushing out while feeling a strange cocktail of both.

As soon as his feet hit the roof Jason could tell Danny was off. His shoulders sagged, his face looked less full, eyes filled with less light. Suddenly Jason was less certain his absence had anything to do with their fight and instead everything to do with whatever caused him to look like this.

“What happened to you?”

“What are you talking about. Iʼm great.”

Jason raised his eyebrows, asking for more. Danny sighed and changed the subject. “Sorry I didnʼt reply about the curse ghost the other night. Did it do any real damage?”

“Tried to eat the park benches.” Jason leaned up against the stairwell wall next to him. Danny grimaced, and Jason left out the part where it nearly wasted Tim and Cass. “But I handled it.”

A bit of sharpness snapped back into Dannyʼs eyes. “Wait, what?”

Jason tapped the thermos on his belt. “Added ‘em to the soup collection. What, didnʼt think I could do it on my own?”

Danny hmmed in reply, his usual enthusiasm still dimmed. But Jason could see wheels turning behind his eyes.

“No faith at all. I’m insulted.” Jason cracked a smile.

“Did you get hurt?”

“Do I look hurt?”

Danny tilted his head knowingly. Jason pulled his jacket closer.

“I’m fine. And Either way, it was probably a good thing to keep you off the Bats’ radar for a bit.”

It wasn’t, however, a good thing that Danny looked like he’d been chewed up and spat out. Jason bit his tongue to keep himself from prying.

“The Bats were there?”

“Tim and Cass. Couldn’t let them get their shit wrecked by an invisible ghoulie.” Then he added, quieter: “Or Bruce’s.”

Danny let out a huffed pained noise under his breath. Suffice to say that his opinion on Batman hadn’t changed.

“We have limited time till they get more involved.” Jason leaned closer, trying to catch Danny’s eye. “So I have to ask— Where is this all going? Weʼre bagging these things night after night, but that doesn’t stop them from appearing. There has to be an end.”

“There is.” Danny pressed his lips together.

“The curse is actually just one entity,” he continued, “These ghosts we’ve been fighting- they’re like offshoots of it. The root is like… the queen of the curse. She’s the oldest one here, the initial kernel that grew into something powerful enough to spawn all the others.”

Jason blinked. “Then why havenʼt we gone after her?”

“I have. When I first got here. It sucked.“ He pushed up off the wall they were leaning against and paced across the roof. “She’s dug her claws in real deep, and all the power her minions get feeds her too.”

Jason did not like the sound of a foe that even Danny had trouble facing.

“But we’ve been cleaning up curse ghosts left and right. That must be putting a dent in her, right?”

“That’s the hope, yeah. So that next time I face her, it shouldn’t be such a disaster.”

“We.”

“Huh?”

Jason got off the wall to follow him. “Next time we face her. No way I’d miss out on sending her packing after all this.”

Danny was quiet a moment. “Right. Yeah.”

The hesitation in his voice was certainly not a vote of confidence. Jason did his best to ignore it.

“Anyway.” Danny said, shaking off a bit of the funk hanging over him, “It’s been too long since I’ve bashed curse heads. You up for a little tête-à-tête?”

“Always.”

They tracked a curse ghost to an old office building at the edge of Crime Alley. It was a remnant of when this place used to be Park Row, an imposing tower adorned with art deco details, now crumbling with neglect. They followed Danny’s senses up to the executive floor, where large wooden desks and rows of retro office chairs sat fading.

For a couple of long minutes as they stalked the dark halls, Jason feared the trail had gone cold. Then, from the conference room in the corner, he heard a pale keening moan. Danny flashed him a look, and then they began their usual dance.

Danny took the opening, crashing in through a half-screened window. Jason followed, blocking off the door. The rhythm came easy, like a set of ping pong across the conference table with the curse as the ball. He matched Danny’s pace more easily than normal, and he felt a curl of warm smugness in his gut before he took a glance at Danny. He looked downright sluggish compared to normal, like gravity had turned against him for once. His limbs moved heavily through the air, and when he twisted too fast Jason caught a wince snarl through his features.

The beast hadn’t stopped keening, but it was slower to get back to its feet now. Just a few more good hits and then they could wrap this up and Jason would demand Danny tell him what was wrong.

Then something happened that Jason never thought heʼd see.

Danny went down, hard. A sudden whip from the beast's tail sent him plowing through the wall, then another, then deep into a stack of ancient metal file cabinets with a nasty crunch. He didnʼt get up.

A spike of fear shot down Jasonʼs spine. A flicker of his old rage laced the next few swings of his sword, but right then he was grateful for it. It was enough to give him an opening to pull out the thermos. He sucked the curse up before it got any closer to Danny.

Then Jason stopped thinking as his legs carried him to the divot in the cabinets where Danny laid unmoving.

“Danny?”

Danny groaned, still alive. Half alive. Whatever.

Jason didnʼt know what to do. He reached out his hands and they hovered over Dannyʼs crumpled torso. The white of his t-shirt revealed growing red stains. And also, worryingly, green.

This was the part where Danny would sit up and crack a joke. Where he would tease Jason for worrying. Where heʼd smile that infuriating smile. But he didnʼt. His breath came in shaky rattles. His eyes stayed closed.

“Fuck.” Jason stopped hesitating and put his arms under Danny, lifting him gingerly from the dust and debris.

“Wha-?” Danny mumbled.

“Iʼve got you.”

Danny relaxed into his arms, his head resting against his chest, and Jason felt his heart stutter. Danny was too cold in his grasp, too light. But Jason didnʼt have time to worry about that. He needed to get Danny somewhere safe.

In a daze, he made his way to Dannyʼs apartment. Danny didn’t wake throughout the trip, just let out little pained sounds whenever Jason jostled him too much. When they arrived at the apartment, Jason used his jacket to phase them through the door. Glancing at the unmade bed, he opted to lay Danny down on the torn up couch instead— better to not get blood all over the sheets.

Jason knew where the first aid kit was from when Danny used it on him, so he grabbed it from the kitchen. Then he took the hem of Dannyʼs torn shirt and pulled it over his head. Any qualms Jason had about the invasion of Danny’s privacy died when he saw the wound on his side.

Huge gashes raked across his abdomen in parallel, torn deep into the skin. Claw marks, Jasonʼs brain provided numbly, though these claws must have belonged to something even bigger and nastier than the curse ghosts. Something worse than anything Jason had seen.

What the hell did this?

“Jason-?” Dannyʼs eyes fluttered half open.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Jason admonished.

Danny blinked slowly, still out of it. “Didja get ‘em?”

He was still worried about the curse ghost? Jason nearly bit his tongue. “Yeah.”

Danny leaned back and closed his eyes again. “Good. Thanks.”

Fucking hell.

Jason turned off his brain and let his hands do the work of patching up Dannyʼs side in mental silence. Danny didnʼt stir as he disinfected the wounds, as he taped butterfly bandages over them, as he pulled a fresh shirt over Dannyʼs head. If it were anyone else Jason would have needed to do stitches, but with Danny he knew better. His accelerated healing would take care of it quicker than he could pull the stitches back out.

The pack of bandages had been nearly empty. Seems it wasn’t the first time he’d been hurt. Something ugly twisted in Jason’s stomach at that thought. So instead Jason looked at Dannyʼs face, free from worried creases in sleep. Danny looked so vulnerable, so peacefully human. Jason fidgeted with his hands.

“Not so invincible after all, are you?” he breathed.

The space between them felt smaller than it had before, all pretenses of keeping his distance shattered. What once had been a wide gulf, gaping like the wounds on Dannyʼs side, collapsed like an imploding star.

Jason couldnʼt stop himself. He reached out with a timid hand and closed the remaining distance. He pushed aside the lock of dark hair that had fallen in Dannyʼs closed eyes, his fingers brushing featherlight over Dannyʼs forehead. Reverent and tender. Danny shifted and sighed.

Jason froze. No. Nope. Nuh-uh. He couldnʼt do this. It was like holding an overripe strawberry in his palm— he didn’t trust himself not to crush it. He shut his mind off again as he fled for the door, leaving Danny to wake up alone.

//

Danny showed up on their rooftop the next night, no sign of the injuries from the night before, looking chipper as the day they met.

“Thanks.” Danny said, handing Jason a paper wrapped burger.

Jason took the gift without rising from where he sat. “For what?”

Danny responded by lifting his shirt to reveal the gashes in his side. They had sealed over in puckered pink scars. Fast, maybe even more so than Jason had expected.

“For the patch up.” Danny pulled a second burger out of the bag and sat on the ledge next to him.

Jason waited for him to say more. To offer an explanation for the wounds, or what gave them to him, or where he’d been. Danny just bit into his burger and chewed wordlessly. He looked off somewhere in the distance.

“I could have handled it.” Jason broke the silence. “You shouldn’t have been out fighting like that.”

“I’ve had worse. Plus, now I’m fine.”

“Not caring about getting hurt just because you heal fast isn’t a good battle strategy.”

“Who said I was good at strategy?” Danny had that damnable smirk on his face.

“Either way. You could have left it alone for another night. Gotham’s been cursed as long as I’ve been alive.”

“Longer than that.”

“So it can definitely survive one night without its blue-jeaned protector.” Danny scowled, but didn’t argue further.

Jason reminded himself he shouldn’t care. Danny didn’t owe him anything, and he liked it that way. Any more info on Danny’s life would just serve to entangle them more than they already were, which he very much didn’t need. The only answer he really needed at this point was how to stop the curse ghosts.

He still hadn’t had any luck in cracking the pattern though. Even with the added info about the heart of the curse- the queen- progress was slow going. He’d shifted his efforts to finding her specifically, but so far she’d proven incredibly elusive. There was just too much violence in Gotham to parse what was tied to the curse and what wasn’t.

They finished their meal in silence as sirens wailed in the distance.

Jason stood and stretched. “Almost can’t imagine this place without a curse, though. It’s part of the charm.”

Danny crumpled his burger wrapper and tossed it in the bag. “Once it’s gone you and the Bats will actually be able to change things for the better though. It won’t be such a Sisyphean fight anymore.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Sisyphus? Didn’t peg you for a mythology fan.”

“I’ve, uh, taken some practical mythology courses.” Danny blushed, which sent Jason’s stomach tumbling.

Jason honestly couldn’t picture a Gotham without all the corruption and violence and greed. What would that place even look like? Would that Gotham even need a Batman? Or a Red Hood?

Or a Danny?

“What about you?” Suddenly Jason had to know.

“What about me?”

“After the curse is gone. Will you stay?”

Danny’s lips turned down. Thoughts spun behind his eyes. Jason’s gut dropped and he regretted asking. He didn’t know which answer he wanted to hear. He didn’t know which would be worse.

Danny opened his mouth to reply. Then a curse ghost crashed onto the balcony below them, stealing his answer away.

//

Another week went by with no lead on the curse’s cause or its queen. Jason, for his part, had kept it professional when it came to Danny. They met nightly, hunted curses, then parted ways. Like following a script. He ignored, with great effort, the spike of worry he felt every time Danny took a hit, or the way his whole body clenched whenever he thought he saw the shape of a cowl following them in the shadows. He couldn’t let himself lose focus.

Find the queen. End the curse.

So far the bats hadn’t actually bothered them any further, which meant that either they had bigger fish to fry, or that he still had one scrap of good will left in Bruce’s eyes. But he wouldn’t bet on it. Which is why they needed to find the queen and finish this quickly. Then everything could go back to normal.

He’d go back to running the Crime Alley scene uninterrupted, and Danny would go back to… something else. College? Jason wanted to believe it, but after their conversation in the cafe, he couldn’t be sure.
He thought about never having to fight another curse ghost with Danny and it made his heart do an unpleasant twitch. He wanted the curse to be gone, he reminded himself. Wanted the bats to have no reason to be suspicious. Wanted to be done with all this ghost bullshit.

At least that’s what he told himself.

Jason had gone out scouting for leads on the queen when he found himself at the graveyard. The slant of the evening sun had turned the familiar stones a shade of pale golden even through the overcast sky. It wasn’t the first time he’d been back here.

He stopped walking at a particular knoll. The headstone at his feet read Jason Peter Todd. The grass had long regrown over where he’d dug his way out. He wondered if Danny had a grave, one that had been erased from the records.

Ghosts- regular ghosts, not curses- floated about, semi transparent. They must be pretty weak if they were only half visible even to him. Or at least he thought so, based on what little Danny had told him about how ghost biology worked. The ghost of a woman, older but not old, floated closer. She looked at him expectantly.

He gestured to the headstones around them. “One of these yours? I can, uh, clean it up a bit for you? If that helps?”

“I don’t- I can’t- remember—“

“I’ll read some names. Maybe it’ll come back to you.”

“Abigail? Chelsea? Lorraine?” He stopped at a grave with fresh soil. “Sarah?”

The light shifted as the sun slanted lower. He noticed her neck- deep purple bruises wrapped around her windpipe with the distinct outlines of fingers.

Anger twisted in his stomach. “Or maybe it would help more if I found who did that to you.”

The spirit’s eyes snapped to him, suddenly sharp.

“Hurt.“

The tone of her voice sent a spike of fear down his spine, gravely and staticy and filled with so much anger.

“Whoa, whoa. You okay?”

The ghost woman shuddered and changed in front of him. She warped into a heinous visage with sharp teeth and pointed fingers, her hair twitched at wrong angles in a writhing cocoon, her eyes turned to pools of inky black.

“Hurt. Hurt him. Kill him. Kill him. Kill him kill him kill him kill-”

Jason’s own rage leapt to a sudden, blinding boil. It felt like fire ants swarming under his skin, hot and sharp and bright. He felt the woman’s pain as if it were his own, and felt the need to cause pain ten fold in return. The beast under his heart roared, hungry for revenge.

He relished how familiar it felt, the clarity of purpose, the surrendering of will, the open bleeding wounds that could only be paid back with more blood. He thought about the relief he’d feel if he finally put a bullet through the Joker's brain. Better if he made Bruce do it. He’d hurt the other Robins as a motivator, kill them if he had to. He’d do whatever it took to make that bastard feel hopeless, to make him bend, to bleed, to make him suffer like he had—

Oh, fuck. Jason blinked away just enough of the green in his vision to stumble backwards. He needed— he needed to feel the crunch of bone under his hands, the taste of fear–. No—no. He needed to get away, needed distance between himself and the vengeful ghost. He ground his teeth as he fell to the earth. He dug his nails in the dirt as he clawed backwards, away.

He spat blood— he’d bit his tongue. He scraped at his holster, whipping his pistol out. Its weight steadied his hand as he trained it on the spirit.

“Knock if off,” he spat at the ghost, poisonous heat still raw in his voice.

The pressure of her pain didn’t relent, still clawing at his insides, scraping into the oldest parts of his anger with black heat. He pulled on his own energy in return, desperate. It leapt readily to his call, building at the tip of his gun.

“I said fuck off!”

He shot, and the cannonball of green energy barreled into the ghost. She wailed but she didn’t stand a chance. Her form dispersed in green flames. The claws around his heart vanished with her, leaving him feeling raw.

Easier to beat than a curse ghost. But the encounter left him feeling more than twice as rattled.

Then he rolled onto his knees and dry heaved over the grass. Flashes of what he’d wanted to do to his brothers, to Bruce, surfaced through the clearing haze in his mind. He could have done it. If he’d had any less awareness of the cause of those thoughts, he was certain he would have.

Cold sweat simmered over his skin. He curled his arms around his legs like it would make him warmer, or settle his stomach. It did neither.

He could have killed them.

Danny would have stopped him, he thought. The thought had no real backing in reality, but he believed it all the same. If Jason had actually gone after Bruce and the others, Danny wouldn’t have let him do it.

It provided enough hypothetical comfort to allow him to remember how to breathe.

He raised his eyes just enough to look at the empty air where the ghost had just been. He almost didn’t see it, but once he focused it was unmistakable. A wisp of black shadow, identical to what it looked like when Danny blasted apart a curse ghost. But she hadn’t been a curse ghost. Had she? She’d been completely harmless. Normal, until—

Jason leapt to his feet, wallowing forgotten. He had to get to his computer.

//

“I figured it out.” Jason had the patience to knock at Danny’s door when he got to his place instead of crashing through the window like he wanted to.

“Figured what—Huh?” Danny, in sweats, coffee mug in hand, allowed Jason to barge past him into the messy apartment.

“How the curse ghosts show up. The pattern. The cause.”

He pulled the thumb drive from his pocket, plugged it into Danny’s computer and sat down in the desk chair. “They’re connected to deaths.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“Shut up and let me finish. Not just any death.” He pulled up a map with an overlay with points for all Gotham deaths. They far outnumbered the curse ghosts.

“You said not everyone comes back as a ghost, right? What makes them more likely to?”

Danny leaned on the arm of the couch. “A death or a life that’s especially violent or unjust, usually. Combined with a strong sense of purpose unfulfilled. But the curse ghosts aren’t like that. They’re the kind that exist without consciousness. They are the abstract purpose of fear and suffering.”

“But what if they didn’t form like that from nothing?”

Danny tilted his head, bidding Jason to continue.

“What if the most violent, least just deaths-“ he pressed a key isolating those points on the map- “resulted in ghosts that somehow got turned into curses.” He clicked another key and brought up the layer of curse ghost sightings. It matched nearly perfectly.

Danny’s eyes widened. “It all tracks. Except for the fact that ghosts can’t just majorly change their nature like that.” He paused. “Unless…”

“Unless?”

“Something more powerful than them triggers it. Something else is actively changing them.”

Jason smiled. He could tell they already made the same conclusion. “The queen?”

Danny nodded, excited now. “The queen.”

“We just gotta find deaths that are likely targets for her. She’ll come out to change them, and then we zap her up.” Danny pulled out his phone and began tapping furiously. A moment later the familiar sounds of the police scanner came through the tinny speaker. ‘Retired’ vigilante his whole ass.

Jason was infinitely relieved that Danny didn’t ask him how he’d had this epiphany. He very much did not want to tell him about the ghost from the graveyard and what he’d almost done. Or the fact that the woman had warped into something like a curse ghost because of him, not the queen.

“How will we know which death she’ll use?” Jason pulled at a cuticle. Night had fallen since the graveyard, and the scanner was a constant buzz of chatter and codes.

“We’ll know.” Danny tapped his leg with restless energy. They waited and listened as the minutes turned into nearly an hour.

Eventually Danny broke the silence. “You don’t have to come,” he said quietly. Guiltily.

“Are you joking?”

“The queen- the true curse- I encountered her once. Before. She’s– she’s not like the others.”

“So?”

Danny fiddled with the half-finished belt on his desk. “This junk only does so much. You’re still fighting with a handicap.”

The unspoken offer was there- a cure, a fix, a permanent silencer for his rage. A fix which was tied up in his own power- if he could even really call it that. It still felt borrowed more than something of his own.

He folded his arms. “Almost everything I’ve ever fought has been stronger than me. Why would I stop now?”

“You sure I can’t talk you out of this?”

“I’m insulted you even tried.”

The chatter on the radio crescendoed, pulling their attention back.

“Killer Croc and Scarecrow reported at the North Docks. Batman spotted on scene, perps still on the loose. Two DOA.”

Jason jumped to his feet. “That’s gotta be it, right?” Danny stayed where he was on the couch a moment before he rolled to stand.

“You ready?”

“Always.”

“Let’s go.”

They rode their bikes side by side through the streets till the apartment blocks turned to squat warehouses at the harbor’s edge. They ditched the bikes when they spotted police cruisers, opting instead to weave their way between shipping containers on foot till they found the scene.

A handful of cops lingered around a shipping dock. Cameras flashed as they took photos of something near the water’s edge. No sign of Croc, Scarecrow, or Batman. Whatever confrontation had happened it was already long since. Danny led him to the top of a container where they waited and watched.

“I take it she won’t come out with Gotham’s finest hanging around?” Jason asked below his breath.

“Doubtful.”

Minutes ticked by as the crowd of cops began thinning. The energy in the air practically crackled. Danny had lost his usual nonplussed air- he shook out his fists and paced the length of the container.
They waited until the last of the cops drove away, leaving the dock in a deceptively peaceful sort of silence. Anticipation coiled in Jason’s stomach.

“Maybe I’m wrong. She might not show.” Jason crouched, unmoving.

“She will.” Danny spoke with zero doubt. Through all his impatient fidgeting his eyes never left a spot at the end of the docks. Where, Jason assumed, the man had drowned. He couldn’t see a body. But Danny had a sense for these things.

Suddenly Danny stilled, and Jason snapped to attention. He crouched beside him, looking out to the dark water. Nothing changed for a long moment.

Then the light shifted colder and dimmer, like the streetlights suddenly weren’t as effective at pushing back the dark. Their sodium yellow glow turned pale sickly gray. A thin layer of mist rolled across the water and over the shore.

Jason knew what the curse ghosts felt like. He’d felt it nearly every night for the last six weeks. This wasn’t that. Where the curse ghosts were hot fury and gunshots, this was a slow smooth knife of dread, cutting deep and settling in.

Danny sucked a sharp breath through his teeth. It sounded more like a hiss.

And then Gotham’s curse herself appeared.

A black cloaked figure glided across the water, barely distinguishable from the black of night around her. a circlet of shadows hovered over her head. As she moved Jason realized that it wasn’t just a cloak— the figure was shadow all the way down, writhing and shifting in the illusion of human form.

Around her a pack of curse ghosts followed at her heel like obedient hounds. The dripping goo of their bodies looked garish next to hers, all shimmering mist and elegance. As terrifying as she was, there was something deeply familiar to her. Both elusive and enticing.

Jason chanced a look at Danny. He’d stopped pacing. He had never seen such dangerous focus on his face before.

The queens entourage stopped at the dock Danny had been watching. Out of the water in front of her something blue and luminescent rose up— a ghost. The ghost they’d been waiting for.

Whispers filled the air in lower frequencies that thrummed through his body more than he actually heard them. He couldn’t parse words at this distance, but the meaning became clear enough. The queen extended a claw-like hand toward the fresh ghost. And, just like the one at the graveyard, it began to warp into something awful right before their eyes.

“Stay here,” Danny bit out below his breath. Jason recoiled at the thought of hanging back, but Danny shot him a look with such intensity that he choked on his retort.

Danny jumped down. He landed on his feet in the open cement of the shipping yard, fully visible under the glow of the desaturated street lamps.

“That’s enough.”

Danny’s voice shook with the same rumble as the whispers, cutting through them like ice. The curse queen and her entourage turned their attention to him instantly.

“Come out to play again little king?” The queen's voice was unexpectedly smooth, like cool silk down his spine. “I do find our games so enriching.”

“I find them rather dull personally,” Danny answered. His body language was nonchalant, but there was still an edge to his voice. He tilted his chin toward the warped ghost. “Neat trick.”

“You like it? Gotham’s restless dead truly thrive once I remake them in my image.”

“They’re not yours.”

The temperature dropped ten degrees in the span of a heartbeat. The queen’s pack of curse ghosts began lurking onto shore and positioned themselves in a wide circle around Danny. Jason tensed.
“This city is mine. Anyone who comes here is mine to keep.” She turned her attention back to the new ghost. “And mine to devour.”

The shadows around the queen flared and the new ghost convulsed with a horrible garbled cry. Black goo exploded from its eyes, its mouth until it was covered. It fell to the queen's feet, a heap of sludge that writhed like worms. She laughed, a haughty rumble that had Jason’s hair standing on end. When the ghost rose a moment later on shaky, inky legs, it took the form of a hound. Just like the others.

Around Danny the lights flickered and popped. The queen laughed again, this time a piercing cackle.

And then the hounds attacked.

In the analytical parts of Jason’s mind, he had accepted that he’d never seen Danny fight with his full strength in any of their brawls. He hadn’t truly understood what that meant until now.

Barely a week prior Jason had managed to scrape a win against just one curse ghost by the skin of his teeth. Now Danny fought seven. At once. The shipping yard turned into chaos as Danny blasted curse ghosts in rapid succession, throwing them into shipping containers with such force the containers bent and toppled. Swaths of black goo splattered across the dock every time Danny landed a hit. Flashes of green and shadow exploded against one another like toxic fireworks.

Danny spared no breath for his usual quips and banter. Instead, his lips pressed into a firm line, broken only sporadically by a flash of his fangs as he tore into the hounds with easy viciousness. Jason practically chewed through the inside of his cheek. He could barely keep up with the pace of the fray as Danny’s glowing form darted through the gauntlet of claws and ink. He gripped the hilt of his sword from his hiding place. He could help. He couldn’t just watch. But just being in the queen’s presence still felt like a skeletal hand around his throat.

Danny faced off against two hounds from the dock side. He didn’t see the one from behind. Fuck that. Jason jumped.

He swung the sword in a wide arc downward and, just as its jaws reached Danny, relieved the curse ghost of its head. Goo splattered to the dock with a satisfying thunk.

Danny whirled on him, palms alight with energy. His eyes went wide in a kind of panic. “What are you–”

“I’ve got your back.”

Before Danny could protest, Jason stepped for another swing of his sword, catching another hound in the side. No room for Danny to argue. They fell into the rhythm of battle.

This Jason knew how to do. Armed to the teeth with Danny’s gadgets and weeks of practice, the clawing fear became background noise to the rush of adrenaline. He slashed heads and unleashed blasts and zapped with the thermos. Sounds of metal slicking through muck rang out, alongside the pained grunts and roars of the curse ghosts and his own frenzied breathing. As the dock got covered in more and more goo, he found himself grinning. He’d gotten rather good at this.

He looked to Danny, hoping for one of those sharpened smiles. Instead, Danny looked back at him with that same strained panic.

Jason saw now that Danny was focusing on keeping the curse ghosts away from him, enough that he’d taken more than one nasty hit. It threw Jason’s rhythm, enough that a hound got its teeth into his arm. He hissed in pain. Danny was there an instant later, ripping the beast off of him by its neck and tossing it back into the harbor.

“Quit hovering. I’m fine.” Jason growled.

“I told you to stay back.”

“I came here to fight.”

“Just let me handle it.” Danny stepped in front of him, throwing up a green energy shield to push back another curse ghost.

Jason ground his teeth. He wouldn’t be scolded like a child. He’d had enough of that from Bruce.

They were down to just two hounds left. The queen watched from the end of the dock. Danny went for her, two bounding leaps and a green sun in his fist. The newest curse ghost— the one they’d just watched turn— leapt out from behind her. They clashed and tumbled back through the open large bay doors of a dry dock warehouse.

The queen stalked forward after them. Neither of them reappeared, but the sounds of crashing metal and breaking glass rang out from inside. Jason ran toward it.

He got inside the warehouse just as Danny subdued the new curse ghost, sucking it up into his thermos with a grimace. The queen stopped before him, her shadow wide and menacing like wings surrounding her.

“What I don’t understand is why you keep playing this little game?” Her voice filled with cloying sweetness as she bent closer to Danny. “Why not just end it? What are you waiting for?”

Dannyʼs eyes shifted across the room and found Jasonʼs. A mistake.

The queen whipped her head around with a crack. Her eyes- two black holes in her face, somehow darker than shadow- locked on him. His stomach dropped.

“Or should I have asked who?” The queen's full attention hit him like a flood. She had no mouth but Jason could hear her smile. Every nerve he had left was telling him to run. Every muscle in his body refused to move.

Her whole body twisted to face him, slow as dread. Jason gripped tighter on the sword in front of him. He swallowed a shallow breath.

“What do we have here? One of my wayward knights? So wonderful to finally meet.” The queen took one smoky step toward him.

Then every lightbulb in the warehouse exploded.

“He’s not yours.” A snarl ripped out of Danny like an earthquake. It cut through the sudden darkness, layered with unnatural echoes and tones that Jason felt under his skin. He tore his attention away from the queen to look back at him.

His eyes burned bright like a signal fire under heavy eyebrows, even more prominent with all the lights out. But that wasnʼt what made goosebumps rise across Jasonʼs skin. He’d never seen Danny angry. Heck, heʼd rarely even been more than annoyed. But now he was outright furious.

Sure, the weight of the queen's presence had struck a chord of fear in Jason, deep and instinctual. But that didnʼt hold a candle to what he felt now. He looked at Danny and his mind filled only with terror of the primal sort. Like a hare caught in the jaws of a wolf. Prey amongst a predator.

The queen threw back her head and laughed once more. It sounded like groaning metal and dissonant strings.

“Then stop me!” She screeched, and she lunged toward Jason.

As the swirling mass of shadows convulsed in his direction, Jasonʼs reflexes kicked in and he threw the sword up to block. It didnʼt matter. A shadowy talon sliced clean through it. The top half of the blade clattered to the ground unceremoniously.

Shit. Heʼd really started to like that sword.

Then he realized the sword wasnʼt the only thing the talon had cut.

He looked down. A thick spear of shadow extended through his stomach and out his back.

The queen laughed louder as she pulled it out of him with a wet schlick. He put a hand to the spot. Instantly his palm was drenched in red. Blood, so much blood. Warm and sticky and wet. Running out of him like a faucet.

Distantly he heard Danny yell out to him. He wanted to lift his broken sword to strike back, but his mind hadn’t caught up with what his body already knew- the fight was over. He’d lost. Embarrassing, really. After all his bravado he still wasn’t even in the same league as a real threat. Not even close.

A dull fuzzy feeling started overtaking the sharp bite of adrenaline in his system. That wasnʼt good. That felt like dying and he really didnʼt want to do that again. As his legs gave out and he fell to his knees, he realized he didnʼt really have a choice.

He looked up across the room again as his vision started to blur. Dannyʼs face was warped in absolute fury. The shadows around the edges of the room cowered back.
He blinked and there was a flash of blinding white light. Every nerve in his body iced over with terror.

His eyes wouldnʼt focus. The world turned into a slideshow, flashes of images and sounds that lingered on the back of his eyelids. He clung to them like a lifeline.

A flaming crown. A starburst of shadows. The pungent smell of gasoline and ozone and iron. Cold, so, so cold. Black being ripped from black, pained terrible screeching. Neon green, brighter than the sun. Cold, deep chasming cold, down to his bones.

He crumpled to the cement.

A howling wail that nearly broke his heart.

And then blissful oblivion.

Chapter Text

“Is this your new Knight?”

Deep in darkness, voices wafted through half-consciousness.

“No. I donʼt know. Heʼs… a friend.”

“Being your friend is dangerous, Great One.”

A long sigh. “Yeah. You could say that.”

“His core is severely irregular. Moreso than even yours, if I may be so bold. Healing it would require an extended stay in the Realms. At minimum.”

“I know.”

“And even then, I cannot say for certain what causes this affliction without further study.”

“I know.”

“So. Why haven’t you brought him?”

“It’s complicated.”

“This would have been a perfectly good reason.”

“I’m not about to kidnap a person to a different dimension.”

“Perhaps it would be easier if you more fully explained the situation to him?”

“It wouldn’t help. It’s bad enough he’s involved as much as he is.”

“You let your doubt guide you blindly. Have you considered that he wants to know? That he will still want to be a part of this when you show your full self? Don’t you want that as well?”

“What I want doesn’t matter.”

A soft grumble and a stretch of silence. “He nearly died. Perhaps you should have let him?”

“Whoa. Harsh.”

“No. What I mean is- a death of sorts may be needed to trigger core stability and unlock his ectoplasmic form. To reset whatever is keeping him in this state.”

“Seems… extreme.”

A warm chuckle. “When it comes to your affairs there are rarely half measures.”

“Ha ha.”

“You wish to help him, don’t you?”

”Of course.”

“Then help him. I trust you will know what’s right.”

A silence. Then, a sigh. “Thanks for making a house call.”

“As always, it is my honor.”

//

Jason, astonishingly, woke up. He blinked his eyes into focus and found himself in a place that felt comforting and homey and safe. Gentle sunlight beamed across a warm comforter. It wasn’t his apartment— it was Dannyʼs.

Danny sat at the desk next to the bed. He looked up from his computer as Jason stirred. His face was a stormcloud of relief and guilt. “Hey.” he breathed.

Then Jason remembered. His heart hammered as he pulled the bedsheets back. He put a frantic hand to his stomach to find—

Smooth skin. A still-pink scar the size of his palm.

He should be dead.

“What the hell,” he whispered.

“I brought you to your place first but your bed is half broken so-“

“How am I not dead?”

“I called in a favor.”

Jason remembered voices, but couldn’t pull any specifics from those moments of half-consciousness. He blinked, waiting for Danny to say more. He didn’t, of course. He just sat there, looking innocent and sleep deprived and disheveled. As if everyone had friends on call who could just stop certain death as a favor.

Jason moved to sit up further but Danny put out a hand in caution. “Careful— itʼs not magic. Just a boost to your accelerated healing. It’s still gonna take some more time.”

“How long was I out?”

“Day and a half maybe?”

“Maybe?”

Danny shrugged. Jason laid back into the pillows with a heavy sigh.

He felt fine. Better than fine, really. More well-rested than he’d been in ages. Absolutely zero buzz of anger in his blood.

But he remembered the curse queen's black hole eyes staring through him. Remembered the chill that had crawled up his fingertips as his blood spilled out between them. Remembered Dannyʼs overwhelming power, remembered him turning into something else, something bright and terrible.

He looked at the guy in sweats on the desk chair. He tried to make his mind reconcile the two Dannys as the same person- the scrawny kid and the force of nature. He couldnʼt do it. It didn’t make sense. His mouth tasted like ash.

“You get the queen?” He asked, gravel still in his voice.

Danny pressed his lips together. “She got away.” Tension strung tight in his voice, barely held in check. A rubber band about to snap.

Danny looked away, toward the window. It went unspoken that if Jason had been able to do anything but stand there and get skewered- hell, if he hadnʼt been there at all- the story would have had a different ending.

“Now what.” Jason said finally, looking at the ceiling instead of at Danny.

“Now you can go home. And rest. No ghost fights for at least a week.”

“You can’t bench me.” Jason snapped.

Danny glanced at him sideways. “I can and I will.”

“I’ll just go out anyway.”

“I’ll bring you back.”

Jason glared at him. Danny smiled like the little shit he was.

“Fine.”

If he was honest with himself he wasn’t exactly eager to get back out there. Dying- or coming damn near close to it- tended to put a damper on the whole crime fighting thing. He bristled at the idea of Danny getting any say in what he did or didn’t do though.

Then a different worry nagged. “You think we’ll be able to find her again?”

“Probably. I mean, it won’t be as easy as it was this time, but-“ He trailed off.

Great. Not only had Jason fucked up, he’d made it harder for them going forward. An unsaid apology tasted bitter in his mouth. What good would it do? He didn’t want Danny’s pity.

“Let me give you a ride back to your apartment, if you’re ready. We could go get a burger on the way. You gotta be hungry.”

Jason was starving, but something in him flinched at the idea. “It’s fine. I’ll just go. Iʼm still pretty tired. Gonna just go home and sleep some more.”

Danny looked like he might protest, but didn’t. “Okay. Yeah.”

Jason got up to leave. The muscles in his stomach strained a bit, but it felt stiff more than painful. He swallowed tightly. He’d only ever seen the Lazarus Pit heal wounds like this. Had that been what Danny had done? Filled him with more of that impossible green energy? He couldn’t bring himself to ask.

As he reached the door, Danny caught him with a searching look.

“Jason, I—“ Jason stopped, hand on the doorknob.

Danny’s eyes tightened, some internal debate waging behind them. In the end he let out a long breath, his momentary conviction flailing. “Just. Get some rest, okay?”

Jason nodded, tucked away his disappointment, and left.

//

He didn’t turn on the light in his own apartment. He went straight to the half broken bed and flopped down.

Heʼd dealt with metas before. Heʼd seen Superman and Wonder Woman fight, he knew the kind of destructive force they wielded. Danny was not like them. They didn’t make Jason’s heart want to crawl up out of his throat.

His helmet and armor were there on the armchair. Danny must have returned them while he was out. Next to them on the side table was his sword, or at least what was left of it. Just the hilt and a few inches of blade, severed at a clean angle.

He reached for it. As soon as he put his fingers to the hilt he felt the hum of familiar power came to life under his fingers. Power heʼd come to rely on. It felt like spiders in his skin.

Stupid broken sword. Why did Danny even bring it back here? He should have just left it in the warehouse to rust for all the good it could do now. He tossed it to the floor. The spider feeling stopped. It fell with an unceremonious clank.

He rolled over on his bed, the fresh scar on his midsection twinging uncomfortably as he curled up around it. This ghost stuff might just be another fight he couldn't win. After all, the clown was still breathing, and that was a mockery of everything he said he was. He couldnʼt even kill his own demons, how was he supposed to take on all of Gotham’s?

Turned out he couldnʼt. He laughed at the thought that he was ever really helping Danny. Heʼd only ever been slowing him down.

And Jason wasnʼt selfish enough anymore to insist on staying somewhere he wasn’t needed just to protect his own pride.

//

He shouldn’t have messaged Tim. It crossed a line, broke the careful tenuous separation he’d fought to keep between the bats and all this ghost shit. He hadn’t wanted to, really. But after the third night in a row of not sleeping, of watching the sun rise as his mind cycled through the warehouse fight on loop: a spear of shadow pierced through his gut again and again, the faceless smile of the curse queen on the back of his eyelids every time he closed his eyes—

He had stumbled out of bed and his shaking fingers typed a message before he could think better of it.

RH: Security footage of north docks warehouse 18 night of nov 10.

RR: Dude what.

Tim replied almost instantly despite it being just shy of 5 am.

RH: Can you pull the footage

RR: Not until you explain the park. And at the bank. And whatever this is.

RH: No. Can you do it?

RR: You’ve refused to talk to us for weeks and this is how you reach out?

RH: Can you do it?

RR: Why donʼt you?

RH: Reasons.

RR: If you think Iʼm going to do it with no explanation just because Iʼm curious you've got another thing coming.

Jason didn’t reply. Five minutes later his phone buzzed again.

RR: Okay fine I did it. But we have to meet up if you want to see it. Itʼs.. something.

RH: Fine.

//

Tim didn't look up from the Batcomputer when Jason entered the cave, the roar of his bike announcing his arrival.

Jason parked his bike, took off his helmet. Being back here, in the cave, it was never pleasant. He glanced at the stupid memorial display of his Robin uniform before he could stop himself, all lit up like an exhibit at a history museum. Or a crime scene.

“You could have just sent the footage.”

“Yeah.” Tim turned in his chair at the Batcomputer. He looked only slightly less tired than Jason felt, which wasn’t saying much. “But then I wouldnʼt have gotten any answers.”

Tim had unlocked the tunnel entrance. Jason realized, when he reached the second level of security, that he hadn’t needed to. He still had clearance. Bruce must have gotten lazy. Why else wouldn’t he have bothered to change the locks?

It didn’t change the fact that he regretted coming here almost as soon as he stepped foot inside. All that effort spent avoiding the Bats and here he was, delivering himself on a veritable platter. His hand hovered over the cold pit in his stomach.

He needed to know what actually happened that night. It didn’t make sense that he was still alive. Nothing with Danny made any sense. He needed someone not Danny to tell him if this was actually crazy. Someone who could be objective about it.

Dick would have codled him, told him what he wanted to hear and then blabbed it all back to Bruce. Steph would have just laughed at him, and Cass surely wouldn’t give him the time of day. Babs would have helped, but once she was in it she wouldn’t ever butt out. The demon brat was a non starter, despite his own brush with death.

Hence, Tim.

Tim took a long sip from a coffee mug as Jason leaned on the desk beside him. “So. You nearly died. Again. If you hadn’t been the one to text me, I would have assumed you did.”

“Yeah. You saw?”

“Not exactly. You should really just watch.”

Tim turned back to the computer, expanded a window, and hit play. A grainy high-angle shot of the docks filled the screen. Empty for just a moment before Danny dropped out of the shadows into frame. The picture got fuzzy around him, like a pale layer of static.

The fight went how Jason remembered it. The queen, the hounds, Danny holding back the horde of curse ghosts, Jason jumping into the fray to help.

Tim paused the video. “At first I thought maybe it was just you and this guy having the worlds shittiest duel but-“ Tim clicked a key and an infrared filter overlayed the image, clearly highlighting the ghosts as cold spots. “It’s the same as the park, isn’t it?”

Ah, right. Tim couldn’t see the ghosts, even on the footage. Jason just nodded and gestured for Tim to play the rest of the tape.

He looked at Danny. That same cold halo around the ghosts surrounded him. He looked at himself. He had it too, not as strong but still unmistakable.

The knot in Jason’s stomach wound tighter as the fight on screen went on. Tim switched to a camera inside the warehouse, following the movement of the action.

Then the rest happened quickly. The queen of the curse. The talon through his stomach. The broken sword. The blood. He gripped the spot above the fresh scar reflexively.

The light in the shot shifted, and it pulled Jasonʼs focus to Danny. The footage didnʼt show it, but Jason remembered the look of white hot fury on his face. The glow around Danny intensified until it distorted the image, casting rings of lens flare. When the image cleared it appeared that Danny himself had changed- his hair was white and whipping around in a non existent wind, a dark cape fell down from his shoulders, he looked taller, larger somehow. And there was the crown.

Jason thought maybe he imagined it, but the footage didnʼt lie- floating over Dannyʼs head was an onyx black crown shrouded in an ethereal green flame.

Then the building exploded.

For a second, his mind went white. His ears rang. He was back inside a different warehouse, as a different timer ticked down.

But this warehouse didn’t explode like that one, with fire and flames. Instead it was like it got struck by an invisible force from within, emanating from Danny as the epicenter. His mouth was open as if he were yelling. The silent image staticed and shook violently. For a minute it was only snippets of falling rubble. Then it went dark.

Tim hit a few keys and suddenly they were looking at a different angle- farther away, high above the warehouse, or at least what was left of it. As the massive cloud of dust settled, Jason’s face twisted in shock. Two thirds of the building was just gone. So were Jason and Danny.

Tim paused the footage. Swiveled his chair around. “So. Whoʼs your friend?”

Jason didnʼt look at him. Nothing he could say would begin to explain what they just watched.

“Has Bruce seen this?”

“Not yet. But itʼs only a matter of time till he catches wind. A suspiciously demolished warehouse wonʼt stay off his radar for long.” Tim paused. “Why have you been protecting this new meta?”

“Heʼs not a meta.”

Tim snorted. “Regular guys donʼt explode buildings with their minds.”

“I think it might have been his voice, not his mind. But either way heʼs not a meta. Heʼs like me.”

“So heʼs stubborn? Incapable of asking for help? Denser than Dickʼs attempts at baking cake?”

Jason finally looked Tim in the eyes. “Dead.”

“Oh. So… can you explode buildings with your mind now?”

Jason groaned out a sigh. “Heʼs not dangerous.”

Timʼs eyebrows shot up. Jason put up a defensive hand. “Heʼs powerful, but heʼs not causing problems. Heʼs been helping me.”

“Helping you? With what?”

Jason sighed again, pinching the bridge of nose. Explaining this made him sound like the crackpots on late night History Channel shows. But in for a penny, in for a whole supernatural pound.

“Ghosts.” He grumbled.

“Excuse me?”

“Ghosts. Weʼve been fighting ghosts.”

Tim narrowed his eyes. “Right.”

“Fucking—Donʼt look at me like- ugh. Fine.” Jason concentrated, focusing his power through Danny’s inventions, and a moment later he was hovering six inches off the ground. He folded his arms.

Timʼs jaw hung open. “Since when can you fly?”

“Since I got this new pair of socks. And itʼs more of a float, less of a fly. Itʼs a ghost power.”

“Explain.”

So Jason did. He sat down, and for the next hour he talked Tim through his last few months with Danny. Tim asked questions about why he couldnʼt see the ghosts, to which Jason had no good answer except for counting it a privilege of having died. He gave demonstrations of the ghost power tech. Even let Tim try it himself, though like Danny said, it didn’t work for him. Tim listened with steady patience, for which Jason was relieved and grateful though he wouldnʼt dare say it.

After a series of detail-gathering questions, Tim hit him with something out of left field.

“Why come to me with all this? Babs could have pulled the footage. Dick would have asked less questions.”

Of course Tim would be suspicious. The two of them werenʼt exactly on the best terms. Jason folded his hands together. He answered the question with another:

“Howʼs Bernard?”

Tim blanked for a moment as Jason watched deductions spin behind his eyes.

“Heʼs good.” Came the eventual measured reply. “Didnʼt think you cared.”

Jason hmphed.

“This guy- His name’s Danny, right?” Tim asked gently.

Jason’s stomach churned. Somehow Tim saying Danny’s name made it feel so much more real. He nodded.

The corner of Timʼs mouth twisted upward, smug like a cat. “Well, aside from nearly getting you killed again, he seems nice.”

Jason punched Tim’s arm. He measured his breath but it wasn’t enough to quell the heat in his face.

“But seriously. You almost died. Again. Is it really worth it?”

“I donʼt know.” Jason answered truthfully. “You canʼt tell Bruce.”

“Let me guess, you want to handle it yourself. And howʼs that going?”

“You were there at the park. You guys can’t fight these things. If Bruce gets involved this gets infinitely more complicated. Just… keep this on the down low. Please.” The fact that Tim was also the best (besides himself of course) at keeping secrets from Bruce had also factored in to his choice of confidant.

Tim held him with a long, calculating gaze. “Fine,” he finally relented. “I saw nothing. But you have to promise that youʼll call for backup if things go south again.”

Something like relief settled in Jason’s shoulders. He wanted to think it had all been calculated— that he’d let Tim in on just enough to get him off his ass. But he’d be lying to himself if it hadn’t felt nice to tell someone- anyone- about all this ghost bullshit.

“Thanks, Drake.” Jason stepped to his bike and straddled it.

“That wasnʼt a promise.”

“I owe you one!”

“Hey—Just because ghosts exist doesn’t give you permission to fucking die again—are you even-“

He revved the engine loud on his way out.

//

He took the long way back to his apartment, weaving his bike through the streets of Gotham without direction. He looked for trouble (as he always looked for trouble) but he also couldnʼt stop himself from looking for ghosts.

He thought heʼd gotten pretty good at ghost fighting. When he and Danny fought together he felt invincible. That illusion had been shattered. Turns out he couldn’t last a second when faced with a real monster. And Danny…

Danny had beaten that unbeatable monster in an instant.

Jason knew Danny wouldnʼt let him come to harm if he went back into the fight. Heʼd proven that decisively by bringing him back from a wound that should have killed him. But was Jason really helping? Or was he just some pawn in a game of kings?

He knew what it felt like. He tried to drown it out with the rev of the engine beneath him, the rush of smog-filled wind around him, the grimy stone and blue-black glass of buildings passing by.

This was Dannyʼs fight. Not his. No amount of tech or training could make him something he wasnʼt. Danny insisted he was like him. Jason didnʼt believe him. He never had.

And now, after seeing a glimpse of what Danny was, of what he could really do- Jason was certain.

He finally spotted a ghost- a lone green wolf prowling on a rooftop. He realized where he was. His aimless wandering had delivered him just a few blocks from Dannyʼs apartment.

He whispered a curse to himself.

He started to reach for the thermos on his belt but stopped. Why bother. Danny could handle it.

And Danny didnʼt need his help.

//

Danny texted him a week after, at the end of his ghost fighting probation.

D: New lead on the curse beasts if youʼre up for it.

And again two days later.

D: Another sighting. Just north of Crime Alley.

And again the next night.

D: You okay?

Jason slipped his phone back in his pocket, returning his focus to his stakeout of a potential new drug operations base in his territory. Fear like ice had wrapped around Jason’s throat each time Danny’s name lit up in his notifications. He barely saw the words. Instead, his mind was filled with images of the queen's black hole eyes. The destroyed warehouse. The look on Danny’s face before he went supernova.

Jason didn’t have a death wish. Dying, in fact, had made him more cautious. More calculated. He wasn’t afraid to play with fire (as a series of explosions across the city soon after his initial return to Gotham had proved), but what no one else ever saw was that he was always in control. He made moves with purpose. Fighting unwinnable fights was for suckers and fools.

He was aware of the kind of fights Batman got into when he worked with the Justice League. Jason wanted no part of them. What could he do, really, with his soft human body, against demi gods? He’d made his name by sticking to what he was good at, here with his feet firmly planted on the streets of Gotham, where he could make actual change.

His hand had found its way to rest over his stomach. He could still feel the blood, so much, so red, pouring through his fingers.

So, Jason ghosted him.

At first it was the accidental kind of ghosting, where maybe he meant to reply but never actually did. Then the days turned into weeks and eventually it had gone on so long it would be more weird to reply than not.

And that was okay, he told himself. Danny was better off without him. No more having to slow down for the sidekick.

It helped that the ghosts left Jason alone. That, or he got good at ignoring them. He didn’t try to stop the pack of ghost rats from raiding the corner store. He didn't draw the ire of any more ghostly hunters. And when he spotted a ghost goon lurking in the park? It wasn’t his problem. Instead, he monitored for Joker activity with new fervor. He focused on his dealings with Black Mask. He took care of his girls and his goons, the living breathing people of Gotham who he could actually help.

But a thought still lingered like a stain: as long as Gotham stayed cursed, nothing he did would ever be enough.

//

Tim found him during a rooftop patrol some days after his visit to the Batcave. Jason didn’t lower his binoculars when he heard him approach.

“Last I checked you still don’t have permission to operate in my territory.”

“I’m not here on business,” Tim raised placating hands. “Just wanted to check that everything’s …okay?”

“Just peachy.”

“No ghosts out tonight?” A smirk in his voice. Jason lowered his scope and saw Tim’s eyes on his empty wrists.

“You better be glad there’s not.” He grumbled. “Did Bats start snooping?”

“Still looking into your mystery meta from the bank. But it’s not priority since it’s not related to active cases other than, uh, you. He hasn’t made the connection to the warehouse yet.”

Jason let out a full sigh. Good. Despite everything, he still didn’t want the Bats going after Danny.

“Should it be priority?” Tim ventured. Jason flashed him a look. “You haven’t gone out patrolling with him in days.”

“How the fuck is that your business? You little creep.”

“Just because you banned Bruce from knowing doesn’t mean I can’t look into it.”

“Oh yeah? And what have you found?”

Tim frowned. “Daniel Fenton. Amity Park, Illinois. Getting that much wasn’t easy, which I’m sure you know. He’s been deliberately erased from the internet. Surely I don’t have to tell you how suspicious that is.”

Jason scoffed, but Tim pressed on. “Are you keeping an eye on him?”

“I’m handling it.”

“Where is he right now?”

“I said I’m handling it.”

Jason thought back to his conversation with Tim at the cave. Was it worth it? Ridding Gotham of its curse was worth Danny operating freely in Gotham, yeah. Then once the curse was gone Danny could leave. And then everything would be back to normal.

A bright purple butterfly the size of his head fluttered lazily between them. A ghost. Tim looked right through it.

Normal. Right.

Jason sighed. “If you find anything else on him let me know.”

“You’re the one who’s in contact with him. Why don’t you just ask him.”

“And why don’t you just shove it?” The words came out harsher than he intended. A familiar rage, sickly and green, twisted underneath his heart like an old friend. He swallowed the urge to vomit. He’d gotten so used to being around Danny he’d forgotten what his unchecked rage felt like.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Like you could fucking fix anything even if I wasn’t. Fuck off, little bird.”

“I’m only asking because if you’re not handling the case, someone has to.”

Jason whirled on him. “Oh, and daddy Bruce will make it all better? You think he’s going to act reasonably when he perceives a threat to his rule over the city?”

“If there’s a threat—“

He backed off slightly. “He’s- Danny’s not a threat.”

“Then why are you hiding from him?”

“I’m not hiding.” Except that was exactly what he was doing. Ever since he’d stashed all of the ghost gear back in the duffle bag and shoved it in the back of his closet. Since he’d changed his schedule to work daytimes as much as possible, changed his routes to avoid their hotel meeting place.

“You know the rules. He can’t operate in Gotham without our oversight. If you just bring him into the fold properly, we could work together, help him-“

“He doesn’t need help!” Rage roared under his heart, hot and ferocious. Tim flinched back. “And neither do I. Now fuck off. I won’t ask again.”

Tim looked like he had more to say, but he thought better of it.

As Tim grappled away, the purple butterfly ghost bloomed with black goo, oozing from its midsection till it was completely consumed in shadow.

//

It was past three am when he saw it, lurking in an alley, illuminated by a trash fire: a curse ghost. He felt it first, that familiar crawling feeling on the back of his neck. He turned his head to look at what he already knew was there. It looked like an unholy cross between a cockroach and a snake, eight feet long and writhing. It hissed and chittered at him, spattering gobs of black goo on the pavement.

By instinct his hand went to the hip where his sword used to be. He gripped at nothing and cursed. It wasn’t his problem, he reminded himself. The curse ghost wasn’t attacking him, it wasn’t actively causing harm. He should just ignore it, same as he did all the other ghosts now.

The curse ghost being here meant Danny hadn’t finished his job, though, and that sent a hundred other questions through his thoughts. Mainly, what the hell was taking him so long?

He should text Danny. Tell him to come take out his trash. But no, that was a stupid idea. The less he associated with Danny, the more he could separate himself from all of this bullshit.

Like it or not, this bullshit stated him down from the end of the alley, waiting, taunting. Red Hood, on principle, didn’t flinch first. It was part of his whole brand. He played chicken with his life on the line. It didn’t matter that he didn’t want to think about ghosts anymore, let alone fight them.

He reached for his gun.

Gunshots sounded from the building next door, followed by voices raised in distress. Saving people comes first, Bruce had always taught him. He didn’t subscribe to all of Bruce’s teachings, but that one stuck.

Shit.

He looked at the curse ghost for a moment longer, and though it had no lips, he could swear it was smirking at him.

He shoved aside his anger and ran for the building, crashing in and taking the stairs two at a time. He followed the sounds of ruckus till he came to an apartment door that had been busted in.

With the nose of his gun he pushed the door the rest of the way in. Broken glass and torn papers littered the floor- signs of a fight, but otherwise the apartment was still. He’d missed the aggressors.

Gun still out he crept further in, till he spotted a figure in the kitchen. Teenager, by the looks of it.

“Hey. Kid. You okay?” He holstered his gun. “You should probably get out of here.”

The kid was looking at something on the ground in the kitchen. He didn’t acknowledge Jason at all.

“You hear me? Time to—“

Oh, Fuck. The kid looked at him and the words died in his throat. Jason saw what was on the kitchen floor, the thing that he’d been so focused on. A body. His body. In a pool of drying blood. The kid was a ghost.

“Jesus, kid. I’m so sorry.”

Doing this job hinged on not getting caught up in ifs. If Jason had been quicker to react to the gunfire, if he’d actually fought the curse ghost, drawn it and its aura of misfortune away, if he hadn’t fucking frozen when he’d the chance to actually beat the source of Gotham’s rot- if, if, if—

His choices affected people. He assumed that responsibility every time he put on his mask. Sometimes the reminders of that fact were gentle. Other times they were this.

“It’s gonna be okay.”

The kid glared. “I’m dead.”

Well, at least he was taking it in stride.

“So am I, supposedly, but only just a little bit. It’s not so bad. I’ve met some pretty cool dead guys, honestly.”

The kid shook his head in annoyed disbelief. That tracked. Jason tried a different angle.

“You get a good look at who did it?”

“You some kind of cop?”

Jason snorted at that. “If it makes you feel any better, if you tell me who did this to you I will personally go guarantee that they can’t hurt anyone ever again.”

At that, the kid’s eyes sharpened. “You can really do that?”

“C’mon. Don’t tell me my reputation doesn’t speak for itself.”

“It was Penguin’s guys. My brother owes him money. He’s working the new club tonight and I didn’t give him up so…”

“Good kid. What’s your name?”

“Devon.”

“Well Devon, you can rest assured that those goons have very limited time left on Earth.” The rage under his heart coiled in delighted anticipation. He could still make things right even if he’d been too late to save this kid. His fingers clenched around the grip of his gun, which he must have gotten out at some point. Devon’s eyes flashed down at it.

“Wait- I-“ Devon frowned. “I don’t really care what happens to the goons. Not as much as what happens to my brother. Would you- would you just make sure he’s okay?”

Jason’s skin itched at the idea. Those assholes deserved to pay for killing a kid. The best way to make sure they couldn’t hurt again was to make them pay in blood. He’d hunt down every last one of them if it meant no more premature deaths, no more Devons.

Still, he nodded. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Okay. Thanks.” He nodded. And with that, Devon’s ghost faded.

Whether it was temporary invisibility or passing on to the next plane, Jason didn’t know. He still knew jack shit about most ghost stuff. But that quasi seance hadn’t gone poorly, especially considering the tenor of most of his other ghostly interactions for comparison.

So much for avoiding ghost stuff. At least he could blow off some steam by hunting some goons.

//

Sounds of breaking glass and gunshots come up from behind the basement door before Jason even kicks it in.

He clocked four aggressors immediately, interspersed between tables, their various firearms pointed at the grungy bar. And what do you know, they were drug runners he’d dealt with before and owed a little payback.

“Howdy boys. It’s your unlucky night.” The weapons snapped toward him as he sauntered down the stairs. He smiled behind his mask.

It was a satisfying little fight, quick but bloody. Two out of four went down in less than a minute with a shot to the knee and a knife to the gut respectively.

He got the third in a chokehold and lost himself for a moment in the buzz of delicious black-tinged violence simmering behind his ears, until he heard a different choking sound from across the room.

The last goon got behind the bar in the fray. He held the bartender in a tight headlock. The bartender, who looked a hell of a lot like the ghost kid Devon.

“Cool it, or else I snap his neck.”

He didn’t take his hands from around the neck of goon number 3. In fact, he squeezed tighter. These men killed that innocent kid. He’d make sure they all died. Didn’t matter what order. Didn’t even really matter if the brother lived or died. So long as he ended these scumbags, this night would be a win.

Then, out of nowhere, it felt like someone slid an ice cube down his spine. That burning black hum of rage fled him so fast he nearly gasped. He blinked his eyes back into focus, released the pressure of his fingers.

With cool clarity he whipped his gun to the goon behind the bar and fired a sure shot into his leg. He went down with a grunt, dropping his hold on Devon’s brother as he did.

Jason rounded the bar to get to him.

“You okay?”

Devon’s brother rubbed his neck between coughs. “What the hell man?”

Jason helped him up. The goons scattered, limping up the stairs in a hurry. Jason let them go, despite his stomach churning at his lost prey.

“Your’re lucky your brother is looking out for you.”

The brothers' eyes went wide. “What did they do to Devon?”

Jason wished he had his cigarettes on him. With a sigh, he pulled out a card and slipped it into Devon’s brother’s pocket. “Text me with info if those guys come after you again. Or don’t. You better get out of here.”

The brother was shaken enough that he didn’t take more convincing. Good thing too. Jason didn’t have it in him to deliver the news of Devon’s death, even if that would have been the kinder thing to do.

The basement door clinked shut behind the brother and a quiet settled over the ruined club. Green light reflected off the broken glass scattered across the floor, and the familiar quiet under Jason’s heart didn’t leave.

“I don’t need a fucking babysitter,” he hissed at the ceiling— at Danny, who almost certainly was here. There was no other explanation for how he didn’t end up killing those guys.

He waited, scanning the room, but Danny didn’t appear. He wasn’t sure if that made him more pissed than if Danny actually appeared and tried to explain himself. He didn’t want to see Danny, he reminded himself. He didn’t want anything to do with him.

So he sat down on the least-ruined bar stool and waited, silently, till the ice-cool feeling eventually faded.

Only then did he get up and leave. He walked home.

Jason could avoid Danny all he wanted, but Danny had a knack for finding him. He had since the night they met. Jason ground his teeth, chewing on the unfortunate realization that as long as Danny stayed in Gotham, he would be under his watch.

//

Jason had barely closed his eyes to sleep when a voice right next to his ear made his heart freeze in his chest.

"Hello, my lost little Robin."

He bristled at the name, but the words curled around his throat like a noose. His eyes flew open, but he couldn’t see her in his apartment so much as he felt her. A simmering malice in every shadow, a cold smile just outside his peripherals- the Queen of the curse.

“Dannyʼs not here,” he half-choked. That must be why she was here. Jason was no real threat to her.

"Iʼm not here for him, sweetheart. Iʼm here for you."

“You stabbed me.” Jason sat up and pulled his gun from under his pillow, palm sweaty.

"Nothing personal," she purred. "It wasnʼt about hurting you, it was about hurting him."

“He’ll catch you.” He swallowed. It was a juvenile declaration, a pitiful grasp at any upper hand in this situation. “If you hurt me now, he’ll end you.”

"Is that what you think? The Rego Senfina had every opportunity to claim you and yet he didn’t. You’re nothing to him. He doesn’t want you."

He felt his chest go hollow. He’d known it, known it since Danny had told him to stay back at the docks, since he’d taken him down in their mock fight. But to hear the queen confirm it shattered any delusions he’d been harboring. Whatever world Danny belonged to, Jason didn’t. Danny was confident and powerful and good. And Jason was just… broken. Down to his core.

"You and I are cut from the same cloth. We want the same things. We know, deep down, the heart of this city is oily and black. And a heart canʼt change. Not once itʼs set. And would you really want it to? A Gotham without a curse isnʼt a place that the Red Hood would belong."

He breathed out a long breath. Danny had talked about after. After the curse was defeated he’d move on to fight some other curse, save some other city. But where would that leave Jason? What would he do if he wasnʼt fighting Gothamʼs problems? What would he be if the city didnʼt need a vigilante crime lord? Bruce and the rest of them had personas outside of the mask. Jason Todd was dead.

"That imposter came to our city. Tried to make us be something we arenʼt. Tried to change us. He doesnʼt know Gotham like we do. Isnʼt it time to show him the door?"

“I canʼt.” Jason choked the words out. “I can’t beat him.”

“Not alone. But with my help you are capable of much more than you know.”

He didnʼt believe anything could beat Danny, but the curse queen was the only thing that had made him fight serious.

He gripped his shirt over his stomach. Truth was, he’d never felt so weak as he had since he’d started fighting ghosts. Not even when he wore the Robin costume, and he’d been one small kid against the world. He’d gotten a taste of impossible supernatural powers and it wasn’t enough.

"Take this token. Use it to call upon my power."

The shadows reached tendrils out to Jason’s broken sword, where it still lay discarded on the floor. They penetrated the pieces of the blade, bringing them together and stitching it whole again. What remained was an onyx black sword that hummed with a dark energy he could feel even without touching it.

Stupid. It would be incredibly stupid, and impulsive, and rash to take the sword. He’d seen the tragedy and chaos the curse caused, and he wanted no part of that. Except—

The curse was the only thing strong enough to stand against Danny. And he needed Danny to leave. He needed his Gotham back.

"Don’t fight what you know. You embraced my power long ago. You’re mine. You always have been."

He reached out and grabbed the sword.

“How do we get him out?”

The shadows twisted in a cheshire smile. "You simply ask him to leave."