Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tim was tired. His little body sagged under the weight of the day, but his thoughts buzzed too loud to let him rest. He missed his parents.

Mrs. Martha had told him — again — that they were away on a “ten-month dig.” Ten months. It sounded like forever. He didn’t even know what a dig really was, except that it was more important than him. Still… he told himself if he was good, if he listened and minded his manners, they would come back for him. That was what good boys got. He would be the best boy for Mrs. Martha. Then maybe they would come home sooner.

That evening, after the sun dipped low and painted the tall buildings gold, Mrs. Martha tucked him into bed. But Tim couldn’t sleep. Not yet.

He climbed carefully onto the wide windowsill, knees pulled to his chest as he pressed his forehead to the cold glass. Outside, Gotham sparkled in its strange, dangerous way. Somewhere out there, Batman and Robin were gliding between shadows, protecting the city. Tim smiled, small and hopeful. As long as they were out there, he was safe. Even if Mrs. Martha said the windowsill was too dangerous, Batman would catch him if he fell. He was sure of it.

The old door creaked behind him, and Tim stiffened.

“Timothy.” Mrs. Martha’s sigh was half exasperation, half fondness. She padded across the room and scooped him gently into her arms. “How many times must I tell you? The window sill is no place to sit. You’ll break your neck.”

Her scolding was soft, her warmth undeniable as she tucked him back into bed. Tim sank into the oversized sheets, the scent of starch and laundry powder sharp in his nose.

 

“Now go to sleep. I’ll see you in the morning,” she promised with a smile before easing the door shut.

Tim curled tighter beneath the covers, the room suddenly too big and too cold without her presence. He missed his mother’s perfume, his father’s laugh. He squeezed his eyes shut and daydreamed they were there with him, smiling, telling him he’d done well.

He imagined their arms around him, even though the bed was empty.

Even though they hadn’t written in months.

 

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ε=ε=ε=┏(゜ロ゜;)┛

Janet rubbed her belly absently, more out of habit than affection. The swell was small but undeniable, tight beneath her dusty blouse. The heat of the dig pressed down mercilessly, sun baking the desert sand into pale fire. Sweat clung to her temples, her neck, her back — and somewhere, miles away, little Tim should’ve been tucked into bed, safe in Gotham.

The doctors had warned her against this. “Extreme conditions, stress, poor for the child’s health.” But what did they know? She had worked too hard, too long, to step back because of something so inconvenient. Ambition didn’t pause for motherhood.

Another child. She had thought, at first, it might give Tim a playmate. But even as the idea had formed, she’d dismissed it. Tim was already a handful, and two running wild would be chaos. They didn’t need two heirs. One was enough. One was manageable.

One was all they truly needed.

Her hand stilled against her belly as a couple approached the excavation site — loud, enthusiastic, speaking of ecto-science and signatures in the ground. Their eyes lit when they noticed her stomach. They cooed, spoke wistfully of children, of wanting another chance at family.

And then Janet had the idea.

She let herself sigh dramatically, brushing her hand against her rounded stomach. She complained about the timing, about how another child would only burden them, distract them from their work, weigh them down with a future they couldn’t afford to divide. She said the words easily, with a smile practiced enough to look weary rather than cruel.

The couple’s eagerness was immediate, desperate hope flashing in their eyes. Could they—would they—take the child?

Janet confirmed it with relief, too quickly, too smoothly. Jack, standing nearby, didn’t even look up from his notes. He offered only a shrug, the barest grunt of indifference. He already had Tim. One son to mold, to sharpen, to inherit everything they built. Why bother with another leech?

And when the baby came, there was no joy. No celebration. No pride. No name.

The infant was wrapped in a blanket, handed over without ceremony, passed off like an unwanted trinket.

By the time the Drakes boarded the plane home, it was as if nothing had happened at all.

The child was erased before he was ever allowed to exist.

 

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Maddie Fenton had always wanted another child. The longing had lingered for years, tucked away behind calculations and weapon schematics, buried under ectoplasmic research and endless hunts for proof of what others swore didn’t exist. But the radiation that seeped into her body from years in the lab had stolen that future from her. Jazz had been a miracle already. There would be no more children, no matter how hard she wished.

So she threw herself into the work, into Jack’s booming laughter and their shared obsession with ghosts, with Jazz tagging along at their sides. Discoveries, blueprints, prototypes — knowledge filled the void, but never satisfied it.

Until that day on the dig.

They had been chasing a rumor of ancient ectoplasmic resonance when they crossed paths with the couple. The woman’s belly was swollen, ready to burst, her skin glistening under the desert heat. Maddie’s heart clenched at the sight. She had leaned in, cooed gently, unable to help herself.

The response had been shocking in its ease. The mother smiled, soft and dismissive, and admitted she didn’t want the child. The father hadn’t even looked up, his indifference palpable.

And in that moment, Maddie saw what she thought could never be hers.

She and Jack offered without hesitation, words tumbling out in a rush of desperate hope. The couple agreed just as quickly, their voices firm. No registration. No ties. If anyone asked, Maddie and Jack had found the child abandoned. A miracle laid at their feet.

It was all Maddie needed.

A chance. A son. A piece of the future she thought had been stolen. No waiting lists, no bureaucracy, no explanations. Just an unspoken pact of silence and acceptance.

By the time the Drakes departed, the infant was already in Maddie’s arms. Jack puffed up with pride, his massive hands cradling the tiny bundle as though he were forged of glass and starlight.

“Daniel,” Maddie whispered, pressing her cheek to the baby’s soft skin. Tears stung her eyes. “Daniel is a beautiful name.”

Jack’s grin split wide. “Yes! Daniel Fenton. Our boy!” He boomed it loud enough to shake the air, already calling him son, as if the word itself could rewrite destiny.

Daniel Fenton. Their pride. Their joy.

And from that day forward, the world forgot he had ever been anyone else.

 

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ʕ； •`ᴥ•´ʔ

Jazz had been at her nanny’s house when her parents came to pick her up. She clambered into the back seat, red hair bouncing as she buckled herself in. That’s when she saw it — the car seat.

Her eyes widened, and she leaned forward, nose nearly pressed to the edge of the seat.
“A baby!” she squealed, voice bright with wonder.

Her parents chuckled at her excitement. “Be gentle,” Mommy warned, though there was laughter in her voice.

Jazz couldn’t stop staring. She cooed over the baby, tiny and wrinkled, his hands flexing in restless little fists. Every twitch seemed like magic. The car ride was short, but to her it felt like forever, every second spent stealing glances at her new sibling.

“Where did you get him?” she asked breathlessly.

Her mother smiled. “A magical place.”

“Where do babies come from?”

“Storks.”

Jazz frowned, narrowing her eyes. “…You didn’t steal him, did you?”

Her father’s booming laugh filled the car. “No, sweet pea.”

“Then what’s his name?”

“Daniel,” Mommy said softly.

Her heart fluttered. Daniel. Her brother.

 

When they reached the house, Jazz hopped out quickly, racing around to watch her daddy lift the baby carefully from the car. She squealed, bouncing in place. She had a sibling! A little brother! Imagine all the games they would play, the adventures they’d share.

Wrapped snug in a blanket, Daniel looked impossibly small. Too small. Jazz followed them into the house, puffing up proudly as she held the door open.

Inside, Mommy sat on the couch, cooing over the baby. Jazz scrambled up beside her, eyes wide, mouth stretched into a smile so big her cheeks ached. Daniel squirmed, his tiny face scrunching, his little fists opening and closing.

Her chest swelled with something fierce and new. Protective. She didn’t have a word for it, but she knew one thing with absolute certainty: she would love her baby brother with all her might.

Her arms twitched with the need to hold him. To feel those small, chubby fingers pull at her hair. To have him close.

Mommy noticed, her laugh warm. “Now, now,” she teased.

Jazz puffed her cheeks in protest.

“Sit properly before you hold him,” Mommy said gently.

Jazz obeyed immediately, plopping into place and swinging her legs nervously. She pressed her palms together to stop their shaking as her mother bent forward. Carefully, carefully, Daniel was lowered into her waiting arms.

 

The weight startled her. He was so light — but so heavy with responsibility. She held her breath as he stirred, a tiny sound bubbling up from his lips. His little hand flailed, brushing against her chin.

Her heart felt like it might burst.

“Hi,” she whispered softly, cooing just like Mommy, rocking him as gently as she could. The world faded. Her parents’ voices became a hum in the background. All that mattered was the baby in her arms.

Her brother. Her Daniel.

Chapter Text

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Danny had always been an outcast in the city. His parents had made sure of it.

FentonWorks wasn’t a home so much as a looming fortress, patched together with metal plates, reinforced windows, and blinking towers of antennae that hummed and sparked against the skyline. Compared to the neat brick houses and freshly-painted porches of Amity Park, their house looked like an eyesore — a mad scientist’s castle stuck in the middle of suburbia.

It painted a target on his back. The whispers followed him down school hallways like shadows. The weird Fenton kid. Don’t go near him. His parents are crazy. His house is haunted. Kids gave him a wide berth, their eyes flicking toward him with curiosity edged in fear.

Danny pretended it didn’t bother him. He didn’t need them. He had Sam, Tucker, and Jazz. With them, he didn’t have to pretend. He didn’t have to explain why his life was strange — they already knew what it was like to stand apart. Together, they made being different feel almost… normal.

But home was harder to ignore.

What had once been a quirky hobby had twisted into full-blown obsession. His parents lived in the lab now, chasing ghosts that no one else believed in. Every spare moment — mornings, nights, even mealtimes — went into blueprints, wiring, soldering, machines that whirred and clanked like angry animals beneath their floors.

The house always smelled faintly of burning chemicals, the sharp tang of ozone mixed with scorched plastic. At night, the constant hum of generators and the stuttering whine of drills bled through the walls, rattling picture frames. Sometimes, an explosion would shake the whole house, smoke pouring into the kitchen as if the basement itself were a restless beast.

 

The laughter was worse. Once, it had been bright, goofy — Dad’s booming chuckles, Mom’s easy giggles. But now it sounded different. Sharper. Too long. Desperate. The kind of laughter you used to fill silence so you didn’t have to admit the silence was there.

Danny never understood it. Ghosts weren’t real. They were campfire stories, shadows in closets, bedtime dares. Why chase after nothing? Why tear your life apart for fairy tales? He was tired of it. Tired of the stares at school. Tired of eating half-charred meals because the stove was full of parts for a prototype. Tired of bandaging Jazz’s cuts and bruises after another invention blew up in their faces.

CPS had been called so many times he lost count. At first, neighbors muttered angrily about the noise, the danger, the safety of the kids upstairs. But eventually, people just gave up. That’s the Fentons. Nothing changes.

Jazz tried. God, she always tried. She reminded him to do his homework when Mom and Dad forgot. She coaxed them to eat, shoved toast into their hands as they scribbled equations. She made sure Danny got to school on time, even if it meant missing her own ride. Her hugs were warm, steady, grounding — the only thing holding him together when everything else felt like it was coming apart.

But Jazz wasn’t a sister anymore. Not really. She was a child carrying the weight of parents who weren’t parents. A girl forced into a role too heavy for her small shoulders.

Some nights, when the basement roared with another explosion and smoke curled through the vents, Danny buried himself under his pillow. The mattress trembled beneath him, the acrid taste of melted wires in the air. He would press his eyes shut, heart hammering, and whisper to himself.

Just once. Just one night, let them see him. Let them see Jazz. Let them be Mom and Dad, even if it’s only for a little while.

The machines kept rattling. The laughter kept rising. And Danny kept waiting.

 

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Then, a day came that changed everything.

He shouldn’t have stepped into that damn portal. Shouldn’t have let Sam convince him to pose for a picture in it. His parents had said it was useless, defective, nothing more than a failure taking up space in the lab. He should have believed them.

Still, with a sigh, he tugged on the heavy hazmat suit. The fabric was stiff, rubbing uncomfortably against his skin, and it carried the faint, sharp smell of chemicals. The helmet’s visor fogged each time he exhaled, his own breath hot against his face. The portal loomed before him, a dead machine, its dark metal mouth yawning open into nothing.

It was colder inside than he expected. Not the stale chill of concrete labs, but a biting cold that sank into his bones, clawing at him even through the thick suit. The air was unnervingly still, humming faintly with static, though the portal was silent, dormant.

“See? Nothing to see here!” Danny forced a grin for Sam and Tucker, spreading his arms in mock triumph.

The wires beneath his boots shifted. Loose, sparking, dangling like veins. He shouldn’t have ignored them.

His foot caught. He stumbled, panic rising in his chest as he tried to steady himself. The tug of the cable pulled him sideways, and his hand shot out blindly—fingers slamming against the panel.

The switch clicked down.

The world exploded.

Light roared to life all around him, a deafening hum that vibrated through the floor and into his chest. He saw Sam’s camera slip from her hands, Tucker’s eyes widen in horror. And then green swallowed everything.

It burned. God, it burned. Not like fire—worse. The tearing of flesh, bones unraveling, every molecule ripped apart, then forced together again. Again and again. An endless loop of slaughter and rebirth, each stitch sewn with raw electricity. His limbs convulsed, jerking violently, his body spasming as the portal ripped open the fabric of reality itself.

He screamed, but the sound was lost under the roar of the machine. The Ghost Zone reached through the breach, clawing at him, fusing itself into him. Life and death tangled in his veins until he was nothing but static, green, and pain.

And then he was spat out.

He hit the floor hard, chest unmoving, limbs twitching in erratic spasms. Cold seeped into him as his body lay limp and useless.

“Danny!” Sam’s voice broke with panic. She dropped beside him, shaking his shoulders. Tucker’s hands trembled as he pressed against Danny’s chest, begging. “Come on, breathe, please breathe—”

He didn’t. Not at first.

And then—suddenly, violently—he did.

Danny’s eyes shot open, vision blurry, chest heaving. His gaze darted to the reflective glass on the control panel, and the breath froze in his lungs.

A stranger stared back at him.

White hair fell around a face too pale, skin tinged with the faint blue of death. His eyes glowed an unnatural green, burning with power. Energy leaked from him, shimmering faintly like mist, curling off his body as if he couldn’t contain it.

He reached out, trembling fingers brushing the glass. A monster’s reflection touched him back.

He shouldn’t have stepped into that portal.

 

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Danny never, ever forgot that day. How could he? It was the day everything ended for him. The day he died at fourteen.

Two years. Two years he’d spent running — from his parents, from the GIW, from Vlad, from the very people he’d sworn to protect. Two years of fights, of ambushes in the dark, of blood and green light spilling across streets no one else remembered. He was tired. God, he was so tired.

But that morning… that morning was almost normal.

The school smelled like it always did — sharp pencil shavings, ink, floor wax, and something sour from the cafeteria trays. The hum of voices filled the halls, laughter mixing with the clang of lockers and the squeak of sneakers on polished tile. Teachers called out reminders over the din, and Danny had slipped through it all with his head down, just another student lost in the shuffle.

No ghosts. No alarms. No emergencies.

For a moment, he could pretend.

“Danny!” Tucker’s voice cut through the noise, bright and familiar. Danny turned, grinning despite the heavy bags shadowing his eyes.

“Hey, Tuck! I am so ready to kick your ass in Super Mario after school,” he teased, laughter bubbling out of him like it hadn’t in weeks.

“Boys and their video games,” Sam muttered with an exaggerated roll of her eyes, though her smirk betrayed her amusement.

Tucker clutched his chest in mock outrage. “Hey! Not all of us are rich like you, Miss ‘bowling alley in the third-floor dining room.’”

Danny’s laugh barked out of him, sharp and real, cracking through the heaviness in his chest. For a fleeting moment, under the sunlight spilling across the school steps, they were just three friends again. Just kids.

And then everything went wrong.

Sam gasped. It wasn’t small — it was sharp and strangled, a sound that cut through the chatter around them. Her hand clutched her stomach, eyes wide with shock, before her knees buckled. The concrete scraped as she hit the ground.

“Sam?!” Danny’s voice cracked, panic searing through his throat.

He lurched forward, but Tucker was already dropping. His best friend’s eyes rolled back as his body crumpled beside Sam’s.

“No—” Danny spun, horror clawing at his chest, reaching out—

The impact came before he could move again. Not pain exactly, but pressure. Heavy, crushing, like metal dipped in ectoplasm driving itself between his eyes. It sank deep, burrowing into his skull, humming with a frequency that drowned out his thoughts.

His body hit the ground hard, the air forced from his lungs. The world spun. The taste of copper filled his mouth, sharp and metallic. Screams erupted around him — high, panicked, distant, as though he was already slipping underwater.

The last thing he saw was Tucker’s face beside him. His eyes — bright and always so alive — now glassy, staring past him, lifeless.

And then everything went black.

 

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ཥ•̫͡•ཤ
Was he dead? He had to be, right? No. Not fully. Not yet. His ghost half clung to life, repairing wounds that should have ended him, so long as his core was intact.

Sound returned slowly, fractured, like he was underwater. A cold, endless drowning. Voices swam around his head, distant and cruel.

“This one is still alive.”

 

“Of course it was the Fenton kid. Always a pain in the ass.”

The words warped and bent in his ears, but he caught enough. They were talking about him. Why? What happened? Where were Sam and Tucker?

Another voice cut through the fog — one he knew, one that froze his blood and twisted his stomach into knots.

“Our sweet Danno — can’t even die and pass in peace… but it’s okay. We’ll rip that parasite out of him so he can rest.”

Dad. Dad.

Danny’s eyes fluttered open sluggishly, his vision blurred. His head pounded, each heartbeat like glass cracking in his skull. He was still sprawled across the school courtyard. The screaming that had once filled the air was gone. Silence pressed in, heavy and suffocating.

Tucker was beside him. Still. Too still. His skin pale, his eyes glassy and lifeless. Danny’s breath hitched, a choked gasp clawing its way from his throat.

“Quick, before it gets away!” someone barked.

A heavy weight crashed over him. A net, its weave buzzing and burning, ecto-ranium crackling against his skin. His body spasmed, writhing under its sting.

“Get him back to FentonWorks. We need to research it,” another voice ordered. Cold, authoritative. Agent O. GIW.

Danny’s vision swam as he was dragged across the courtyard. His father’s boots crunched against broken glass, each step steady, merciless. Danny’s body scraped over pavement and grass, the net biting into him as he left a trail behind — green and crimson pooling, painting the earth.

Faces passed in his blurred vision. Bodies. Neighbors slumped over porches, hands hanging loose from chairs. Children collapsed in their treehouses. Families torn open in their homes. Blood stained the streets, smeared across walls, seeping into the ground.

Everyone. Everyone was dead.

The realization slammed into him, sharp and brutal. His body convulsed as he coughed, blood splattering his lips, hot and metallic. Tears blurred his sight, streaming unchecked.

Then the world tilted, and he was hauled down familiar basement stairs. The impact of the landing jolted pain through every nerve, rattling his bones.

He forced his head up, sluggish and weak.

And froze.

His parents stood above him. Hazmat suits streaked with gore, visors splattered in red. Their gloves dripped, slick and wet. They looked down at him not as rescuers, not even as scientists. Executioners.

“Why…” Danny’s voice rasped, raw and broken. A whisper, but it cut the silence like shattered glass.

 

Maddie crouched down. Her voice softened into that lilting tone she once used to tuck him into bed, to kiss his forehead goodnight. Sweet. Gentle. So wrong.

“Aww, honey,” she crooned, brushing a gloved hand over his cheek. The smear it left behind was sticky, warm, and wet. “You were all infected. Amity needed to go. Everyone here was too far gone.”

Her smile was tender. Her hand lingered like comfort.

“It’s time to rest in peace.”

Danny’s mind reeled, split in two. The warmth in her voice clashed violently with the blood dripping from her suit. He couldn’t reconcile it. He couldn’t breathe.

They killed everyone. Sam. Tucker. His classmates. The neighbors.

Everyone.

His chest heaved, vision fracturing with tears. He wanted to scream, but all that came out was a hoarse sob.

He wanted Jazz. Oh god, Jazz. His big sister who always tried, who always held them together. She was gone. She was gone too.

The weight crushed him until there was nothing left.

And in that moment, Danny finally understood what it meant to be utterly, completely alone.

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ཥ•̫͡•ཤ
The straps cut into his wrists, biting deep, leather grinding his skin raw. He tried to thrash, to pull free, but his body refused him — every nerve on fire, every limb trembling and weak. Blood matted in his hair, crusting sticky and thick against his scalp, the smell of iron clinging sharp in his nose. The table beneath him was cold, metal leeching the warmth from his skin until it felt like ice was seared into his back.

He had felt true coldness before — the bite of the Ghost Zone, the kind that seeped into marrow — but nothing compared to the dead chill of that table.

Above him, his parents loomed. Jack’s massive hands clumsy but determined as he fumbled with clamps and tubes, his visor catching the reflection of Danny’s pale, sweat-slicked face. Maddie’s gloves were already stained as she prepared instruments, each one gleaming sharp beneath the lab lights. On the tray, scalpels and saws lay in neat rows, waiting.

Behind them, the portal hummed, its low vibration rattling through the walls. The air was heavy with ozone, scorched metal, and blood. Footsteps creaked above him, GIW agents moving through his home as though it belonged to them. Two stood nearby, rifles strapped across their chests. Agent O’s gaze never wavered, pinning Danny with cold, unyielding hatred.

There was no pity. No warmth. Just the promise of death.

“Shhh… it’s okay, Danno,” Maddie crooned, her voice gentle as honey. She brushed his hair back with her bloodstained gloves, the motion so tender it twisted his stomach. “We’ll fix you. We’ll make it all better.”

Danny’s chest hitched, a sob tearing loose. “Mom… Dad… please—”

Jack’s booming voice cut through, loud and falsely cheerful, as though they were at the dinner table and not hovering over him with knives. “It’ll be quick, champ! Just hold still, and we’ll get that nasty ghost parasite right outta ya!”

“Hurry this up,” Agent O snapped, voice edged like steel. “We need to cover this mess.”

Then the pain came.

Cold instruments pierced his skin, sharp and merciless. They didn’t cut with care. They hacked. They ripped. Each incision tore through muscle and bone as though they were ransacking him for buried treasure. Every slice jolted his body upward, the straps straining and groaning with the force of his convulsions.

“Don’t fight it, sweetie,” Maddie soothed. Her tone was soft, motherly, but her hand drove the blade deeper, flesh parting under the pressure. “The sooner we get it out, the sooner you can rest.”

What did that mean? Rest? They were killing him! Hurting him! Mommy, Daddy—stop!

His vision blurred, swimming as the pain swallowed everything. His blood spilled across the metal, red threaded with glowing green specks, dripping and pooling beneath the table. The coppery tang filled the room. Their smiles never faltered.

Time stretched into an endless nightmare. Minutes, hours, he didn’t know. Only the sound of metal scraping bone, of liquid hitting trays, of muffled laughter echoing in the lab.

Then Maddie’s voice broke through, sharp with triumph. “Jack — I think I found it.”

Danny’s heart stuttered. He could feel it, the sick, slippery shift of his insides as her gloved hand pushed deeper, parting ribs, brushing against the very core of what he was.

No… no, please, not that. Please don’t—

His mind screamed, his body arched, but the straps held fast. Terror gripped him as the glow in his chest flared weakly against her touch.

His core. His soul.

“Gotcha,” she whispered.

The world went dark.

Jack’s laugh boomed through the lab, echoing like thunder. “Knew we could do it, Mads! Our boy’s finally free!”

Maddie smirked behind her visor, holding the glowing orb aloft. She set it delicately onto the sterile tray, as though it were nothing more than another specimen. The core pulsed faintly, its light flickering like a dying star, fighting to stay alive.

“There it is,” she breathed, reverence in her tone. “The key to everything.”

And behind them, their son’s body lay still, cold, unmoving. Forgotten.

They turned their backs without hesitation — more fascinated by the glowing prize on the tray than the boy they had just killed.

 

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૮₍ ´˶• ᴥ •˶` ₎ა

Frostbite sat in his den, watching the ghostlings tumble across the frozen halls, their laughter like chimes in the wind. Normally, the sound filled him with warmth, but tonight it gnawed at him instead.

It had been a week since the Great One last visited. A week since Danny had promised to come and play with the little ones, to tell them stories of the living world. He was never this late.

Frostbite tried to be patient. The Great One was still young, still learning to balance the fragile ties between life and death. Sometimes his duties in the living world delayed him. But something in Frostbite’s chest—his core itself—hummed with unease. The sensation was sharp, like a glacier splitting in two.

He watched the clan preparing for last meal, the firelight reflecting across their icy armor, but his worry only grew. Danny had not been examined in too long. The healers needed to scan his core, to ensure it remained stable. Frostbite had meant to remind him, and now… now it was too late.

His claws flexed restlessly. He could not ignore the pull any longer.

“Guard the halls,” he rumbled to one of his sentries as he began to pack a satchel. His voice was heavy with command. “I will return with the Great One at my side.”

The journey through the Realms was long and silent. Frostbite cut through drifting islands and jagged doors of fractured realities, the mists clinging to his fur. His breath hung in frosty clouds, curling through the green air until at last he saw it — the Fenton portal.

The unnatural machine churned and sparked at the threshold between worlds. He hated it. The portal was jagged, hungry, a man-made scar carved through the Realms. And yet… it was the path Danny had always taken.

He crouched low as he approached, pressing one enormous clawed hand to the swirling green energy. He expected the sting of ecto-energy. Instead, something else hit him.

Rot.

Not the clean, sterile chill of ectoplasm. Not the metallic tang of ghost-metal. But rot. The stench of human flesh left too long. Sour. Foul. It clawed its way into his throat and made his stomach twist.

A growl rose low in his chest.

He forced his massive frame through the opening. His icy breath misted the air of the human basement. Shadows clung to the corners, faint light flickering from discarded machinery. And then his eyes fell on the table.

He froze.

A body lay there, limp and pale. Strapped down by leather as if discarded after use.

Frostbite approached, each step reverberating like thunder against the concrete. His claws trembled as he reached forward and brushed a frozen fingertip against the boy’s cheek. Cold. Lifeless.

It was him. The Great One.

 

Danny’s chest was split open, flayed cruelly, wounds jagged and unclean. His ribs were cracked like splintered ice, organs left torn and ruined, veins blackened with creeping rot. The straps had bitten deep into his wrists, carving welts into skin that would never heal.

Frostbite’s vision swam.

His gaze jerked to the side. There — on a tray littered with clamps and bloodied instruments — pulsed the Great One’s core.

The light inside it flickered weakly, like a candle guttering in the wind. Surrounded by metal claws and broken tools, the orb still resisted. No crack had marred its surface yet. Luck, or perhaps willpower, had spared it. But not for long.

“No…” Frostbite’s voice broke, echoing through the chamber like a glacier splitting. “No. Great One…”

Grief tore through him, but it was fury that anchored his shaking hands. How dare they? How dare these mortals desecrate the chosen heir of the Realms, their savior, their child?

He moved swiftly, cradling the corpse with a gentleness that belied his massive frame. He pressed Danny’s ruined body against his chest, his fur soaking in the blood. With his other hand, he gathered the core, cradling it as one would cradle a heart.

He did not dare linger. Not with the stench of death thick in the air, not with the echo of footsteps above.

A guttural snarl thundered through the lab as Frostbite stepped back into the portal. The green light swallowed him, and the human world was left behind.

He could feel it in the flicker of the orb, faint but present. A tremor. A pulse.

Hope.

The humans would not have him. Not their scalpels. Not their nets. Not their cruelty.

The Great One belonged to the Realms. To his people.

And Frostbite swore on his core — he would not let him be forgotten.

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The moment Frostbite crossed the threshold of the portal, the realm itself seemed to react. Snow and frost curled outward from his massive frame in rippling waves, sweeping across the shimmering void around him. The ozone thickened with the sharp scent of raw ectoplasm, cold and biting in his lungs.

He pulled the Great One’s body away from his chest. The Great One’s small form floated weightlessly in the green currents of the Ghost Zone, pale skin nearly blending into the swirling mist. His chest was still torn open, ribs imperfectly sealed with Frostbite’s hasty patchwork of ice.

In Frostbite’s other hand pulsed the boy’s core — dim, flickering, its glow sputtering like a candle guttering in a storm. Its once steady rhythm was now shallow, unsteady, as though each beat could be the last.

“Stay with me, Great One,” Frostbite growled, his voice a low, rumbling quake that reverberated through the void.

He pressed the glowing orb gently into the cavity of The Great One’s chest. The body shuddered faintly, skin mottled with the blue-grey pallor of death. The core resisted, sputtering weakly against the pull of nothingness, fighting for purchase within a body that was already trying to unravel.

Frostbite’s eyes narrowed. He placed one massive palm flat against the boy’s sternum, claws spanning nearly from shoulder to shoulder. He closed his eyes, summoning the ancient magic buried deep within his own core.

A bitter chill spread from his palm. Ice blossomed in fractal patterns across The Great One’s chest, knitting skin to bone, cradling the fragile core within a sheath of frost. His breath came heavy, misting the air in great white clouds that froze to the boy’s skin, layering him in protective rime.

Ancient words slipped from Frostbite’s tusked mouth, whispered prayers of his people — invocations older than memory. Each word wove power into the flickering light beneath his hand. The core steadied, only just, its dim glow flickering into something fragile but persistent.

But Frostbite knew it would not be enough. Alone, his strength would fail.

He gathered the Great One’s limp body into his arms again, cradling him close as if to shield him from the void itself. With a beat of power, Frostbite surged upward, cutting through the mists of the Infinite Realms.

The Great One’s core trembled against his chest, each pulse shallow, fragile as glass. Time was running out.

At last, the Far Frozen came into view. Spires of ice rose like mountains from the swirling emerald ether, glittering towers suspended in the endless sky. Their peaks caught the faint green glow of the Ghost Zone, scattering it like starlight.

The tribe saw him first. Calls echoed across the halls of frost:
“The Great One!” one voice cried.
“Prepare the sanctum!” bellowed another.

Ghostlings scattered, their small feet crunching over frozen bridges. Healers rushed forward, their paws already glowing with pale-blue light.

Frostbite landed heavily within the central hall, his claws gouging into the crystalline floor. Gasps rippled from the gathered crowd as he laid The Great One’s body onto a bed of crystalized snow, the frozen cradle shaping itself gently to every joint and limb.

The Great One’s skin was pale as frost, tinged with the bluish hues of death. His chest, barely sealed, glowed faintly with the core’s uneven flicker.

“He is unraveling,” Frostbite rumbled, his voice breaking on the words.

The healers surrounded the boy, their claws weaving arcs of cold, pale light into the air. The chamber filled with the hum of ancient chants, voices low and steady. Ectoplasmic energy rose in currents, laced with ice and green fire, and flowed into The Great One’s broken frame.

Crystals embedded in the chamber walls flared to life, pulsing in rhythm with the healers’ work.

The Great One’s body convulsed violently, his back arching against the frozen bed. The core flared, blinding green, spilling ghostlight across the chamber like a star being born.

For one terrible moment, they all thought he would shatter — that his essence would collapse into dust and scatter into the abyss.

Then, slowly, the light steadied. The glow dimmed, but it held. The frost that sealed his chest was consumed, absorbed into the boy’s body as his ice core began to feed, pulling hungrily at the magic surrounding him. Shards of ice swirled into the cavity, weaving themselves into him, knitting new veins of ectoplasm.

It would not stop. Not for days, perhaps not for weeks. His body demanded more to rebuild itself.

One healer pressed a paw against Frostbite’s shoulder, their voice low and grave. “He will live. But he will never again be what he was.”

Relief broke through the grief in Frostbite’s chest. He bowed his head, tusks glinting in the frost-light.

He reached down, brushing one claw gently across the boy’s forehead, sweeping away a lock of white hair.

“Rest now, Great One,” Frostbite murmured, voice a low rumble that shook the chamber. “You are safe here.

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His eyes fluttered open. Shapes bled together into formless smudges, the light muted as though filtered through frosted glass. He tried to lift his arm, to twitch a finger, but every part of him was sluggish — as if his whole body had been dipped into syrup.

For a breathless second, he thought he was drowning. Something pressed in from all sides, not water but a heavy coldness, wet but not wet. Suffocating. Crushing.

Instinct clawed at him, panic driving a desperate breath. Ice-laced air filled his lungs, cutting sharp and thin as though frost itself was being filtered into him. But he wasn’t drowning. He was breathing. Barely.

Each breath dulled the pain by a fraction — but the pain was still there. Waiting. Coiled like a snake.

Why was he in pain?

His chest throbbed, no—not throbbed. It screamed, every beat an agonized pulse that seemed to tear at him from the inside. His ribs felt cracked, his skin stretched too tight. He wanted to cry out, to beg for it to stop, but his throat refused him.

Sluggishly, he forced his eyes to scan the world beyond the haze. Tubes. Wires. They coiled around him, slick and cold, snaking across his arms, chest, legs. They tugged with each faint shift of his weight, anchoring him to the chamber. He realized his feet weren’t touching anything at all. His body floated, slack and limp, suspended like a puppet left to hang.

Every nerve screamed, yet nothing moved. His body would not obey him.

He exhaled a shuddering breath, mask fogging with condensation. On the other side of the glass, small crystals glittered, suspended in the air like stars. They drifted closer when he inhaled, as though drawn to the rhythm of his lungs. They pressed cool frost down his throat with each breath, softening the ache, numbing it just enough to make the next moment survivable.

They were so beautiful. Tiny shards of frozen starlight, breaking off from the walls of his prison, dancing with each breath he took. His eyes tracked them sluggishly, fixating on their glow.

Where was he?

The realization slotted into place like a knife in the gut. A stasis tube. He’d seen his parents build similar ones before, only crueler. His pulse stuttered.

The pretty stars tried to keep him calm. Tried to hold his attention. But the memories tore through him before he could look away.

Sam’s strangled gasp.

 

Tucker’s body hitting the ground.

 

The burning sting between his eyes.

 

The schoolyard painted in crimson and green.

 

Hands—his mother’s hands—strapping him down.

 

Blades carving him open with a voice that crooned lullabies.

 

His father’s laughter booming as his core was torn from his chest.

Danny’s breath caught, ragged and uneven, the mask fogging with each frantic exhale.

His body shook, trembling in small violent spasms that made the tubes shudder with him. He tried to move, tried to thrash, tried to do anything, but he remained frozen in place. The only movement left to him were the tremors rippling through his limbs, weak and useless.

Panic seared through him, clawing at his chest and choking his throat. His own body felt foreign, heavy, as though it no longer belonged to him.

He felt alone.

The word struck harder than any blade.

He would never hear Tucker’s easy grin-laced jokes again. Never roll his eyes at Sam’s stubborn laugh. Jazz would never storm into the kitchen, threatening to strangle the hotdogs for “rising from the dead” again. Mr. Lancer would never scold him for missing homework with that mix of sternness and quiet affection.

His chest heaved, sharp and shallow, each sob-like breath filtered back into his lungs through the frost. Ice crystals swirled faster, pressing closer to the mask, trying to calm him, trying to soothe the unraveling storm inside.

But the hole in him remained, yawning and endless.
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When Frostbite stepped into the healing sanctum, the cold pressed deeper than usual, curling into the marrow of his bones. It wasn’t just the natural chill of the Far Frozen. It was something older, heavier, like the breath of the Realms themselves had sunk into this chamber.

The air shimmered faintly with movement. Tiny ice crystals drifted across the room in slow, graceful arcs, their pale light glinting like stars torn from the sky. They swayed in rhythm with the Great One’s shallow breaths, pulled inexorably toward him with each fragile inhale. With every exhale, they retreated only to gather again, dancing closer to the stasis tube. The magic within them cracked softly as they split from the very walls of ice, sacrificing themselves piece by piece to help mend him.

The chamber was quiet save for their faint chiming as they collided midair, and the ancient hum of the machine. The stasis tube churned with a slow, rhythmic pulse, bubbles of ectoplasm floating lazily upward, breaking the stillness with hushed sighs.

It had been three months. Three months since Frostbite had found the boy’s body discarded like refuse on that blood-soaked table. Three months since he had carried him here, his chest split, his essence flickering, his core nearly extinguished.

And still, the Great One fought.

Frostbite’s heavy steps brought him closer to the tube. He stopped, his keen healer’s eyes narrowing as they scanned the pale, suspended body. The Great One floated in the thick green ectoplasm, wires crisscrossing his chest, limbs slack and unmoving. The chest cavity, once torn open, was fully sealed now — smooth skin marred only by faint tracings of glowing frost that pulsed faintly with each breath.

Then he saw it.

A flicker.

The boy’s eyelids twitched, then cracked open by the smallest fraction. The light of the chamber reflected across them, glazed and unfocused. No strength, no recognition — only the empty haze of un-life. But to Frostbite, it was a miracle.

The healer froze, his great bulk rooted to the spot as if the sight had pinned him. Slowly, reverently, he stepped closer. He plucked a crystal lantern from the wall, the pale-blue glow spreading across the chamber. He raised it, angling the light to fall over the boy’s face.

The Great One’s eyes reflected the glow, but no awareness followed. No tracking. Just drifting. Endless.

A weight pressed against Frostbite’s chest, heavier than mountains. He swallowed against it, tusks clicking as his throat worked. His clawed hand rose, drawing a slow rune of protection across the glass — an old, sacred mark. The ice flared softly before fading, its magic settling deep into the tube’s surface.

He rested his palm against the glass. The frost beneath his claws bloomed outward, tracing delicate spirals of crystalline ice across the surface.

“Oh, Great One…” Frostbite’s voice was low, reverent, carrying the weight of a vow. The sound rumbled through the chamber like the cracking of a glacier. “Do not fret. You are not alone. Not here. Not ever.”

The boy floated on, bubbles rising around him. The tubes tethered him to existence, lines of glowing energy keeping him bound to this plane. Frostbite’s gaze swept over them with the practiced sharpness of a healer, ensuring none had slipped, none had weakened.

Then his eyes returned to the boy’s face — to the faint tremble of his lashes, to the small streaks of white.

Tears.

Tiny drops had broken free, drifting upward into the ectoplasm. They glimmered stark and pure against the green fluid, shining like scattered stars in the void.

Frostbite’s heart clenched, sharp and aching.

He lowered his head until his massive brow pressed lightly against the glass. The cold bit into his skin, but he welcomed it. His voice dropped to a whisper, meant for no one but the boy inside.

“I will guard you.” His tusks scraped faintly as he tightened his jaw. “Until you rise again, we will keep you safe. You are not forgotten.”

For a moment, the sanctum was utterly still. And though the boy gave no sign, Frostbite swore he saw it — the faintest shimmer of light rippling through the core embedded in his chest.

As if it had heard. As if it believed.
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At first, there was only stillness.

Frostbite sat vigil as he always did, his hulking frame folded into a crouch beside the glowing tube. The Great One floated within, swaying in the green current, his limbs limp and unresponsive. His eyes were dull and unfocused, lids cracked just enough to give the illusion of life without the spark of it.

The core within his chest burned faintly, a guttering ember struggling against the dark. It fused and knit the body together at a glacial pace, expending everything just to hold the fragile line between existence and dissolution.

Frostbite kept his vigil. Even when his claws were stained with ink from tests, or when his desk overflowed with reports and diagnostics, he always returned to the stasis chamber. Always sat before the glass.

And he spoke.

Sometimes it was promises — that the Far Frozen would protect him, that he would never be abandoned again. Sometimes lessons — old wisdom about cores and balance, teachings whispered in the cadence of their healers. At other times, stories — of the ghostlings and their games, of the clan’s victories against storms, of the old battles of the Realms.

He knew the Great One could not hear. But silence was crueler than anything, and Frostbite would not let The Great One’s healing be consumed by it.

Weeks passed.

One morning, mid-story, Frostbite’s voice faltered. He leaned closer, keen eyes catching the faintest motion: a tremor in the boy’s fingers. Barely a twitch, but it rippled through the ectoplasm like a pebble disturbing water.

“Yes…” Frostbite’s voice rumbled low, steady. “Yes, that’s it, Great One. Do not stop now.”

The tremor did not return that day. Nor the next. But the hope it sparked burned steady in Frostbite’s chest, carrying him through.

More weeks passed.

The healers began to whisper among themselves as they made their rounds, claws pressed to the tube, feeling the faint hum of the core beneath their hands. What was once silent now flickered now and again, faint pulses of energy fluttering like the wings of a trapped bird. Small, fragile — but there.

Frostbite noticed the boy’s eyelids, too. At first, they fluttered, cracking open the barest sliver. Then again. For a heartbeat, he swore The Great Ones’s gaze lingered on the lantern-light. Another time, he thought the boy’s hazy eyes tracked his towering silhouette as he shifted. Always fleeting. Always uncertain. But enough to make Frostbite’s chest swell with pride, enough to keep him rooted at the glass with a healer’s patience.

Another month slipped by. The healers reported more — faint vibrations when they touched the stasis tube, as though the Great One’s core recognized their presence. Frostbite saw it too. Sometimes, when he leaned close and whispered his reassurances, the ice core glowed faintly, as if struggling to answer him.

Small signs. Almost too small. But real.

“Piece by piece,” Frostbite murmured one night, his claws pressed to the frost-flecked glass, his tusks casting shadows across the boy’s face. “You are finding your way back to us.”

He did not expect miracles. Healing was like ice — slow, patient, layers upon layers. So he remained, keeping his vigil, documenting every flicker, every twitch, every faint hum of progress.

Others came and went.

Blizzardheart entered often, soft-footed, bearing trays of glowing herbs to replenish the chamber. She lingered at the glass longer than her duties required, her gaze tender on the boy’s face before she quietly slipped away.

Elder Korynn came with relics of protection, pressing runes into the walls, chanting words that had not been spoken in centuries. He placed them near the tube, leaving them to hum quietly in the cold.

Even the ghostlings sometimes padded in, their little claws clicking against the crystal floors. They pressed their tiny hands to the glass, whispering questions, telling the Great One about their games and their victories. Their breath fogged the surface before Frostbite ushered them gently away.

And always, Frostbite was there.

The crystals had begun to lessen. At first they had swarmed the boy in great clusters, clattering as they broke free from the walls to join his healing. Now they drifted fewer, slower. The clamor of their chiming faded, the chamber growing quieter. The Great One no longer needed their sacrifice in such abundance. His core had grown stronger, drawing more from the tube itself, less from the surroundings.

But still they danced. A few always lingered, circling like watchful stars, faithful until the very end.

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He wanted to sleep forever. To drift until centuries passed him by, weightless and numb. His limbs hung heavy, as though gravity itself had sunk its claws into his bones. His chest rose and fell in sluggish rhythm, each rasping breath filtered through the mask strapped firmly across his face. It kept him tethered, kept him breathing, even when his body begged to surrender.

His eyelids dragged open with the effort of mountains. The world came to him warped and green-tinted, cast through the thick liquid that held him. Shards of glowing crystal drifted outside the glass, spinning lazily like constellations caught in slow orbit. They shimmered with every faint movement, fragments of ice refracting the pale glow into stars.

Oh… right.

A stasis tube.

But not one of his parents’ designs. Those were crude, jagged things with metal joints that screeched and cracked under strain, filled with recycled air that stank of chemicals. This was different. Clean. Seamless. A tube that breathed with him. The mask cooled his throat with every inhale, crisp as snow, and the fluid that held him wasn’t suffocating. No, this was ectoplasm, thick and dense, cradling him like a cocoon.

He felt stable. For the first time in… he didn’t even know how long. Stable.

And somehow, he knew where he was. The Far Frozen. He couldn’t explain why, only that the realization rested in his chest with certainty, as though his core itself whispered the answer.

 

His fingers twitched. Trembled. He remembered something Frostbite had told him once, in passing, as if preparing him for this very moment: Every tube has a release lever. A choice. So the patient is never trapped.

He fumbled along the rim of the seat, fingers brushing cold metal. The lever.

With all the strength his hands could summon, he curled his fingers around it and pulled. Slowly, agonizingly, the handle gave.

The tube began to drain.

Thick ectoplasm sloshed downward, funneled away with a sound like a rushing tide. It peeled from his skin in sluggish waves, leaving him clammy and shivering in the cold that crept across his bones. The platform beneath him shifted, gears grinding as it began to lower him. The world tilted as he sank, slowly, steadily, until the hiss of locks releasing filled his ears.

His body felt like wet sand, too heavy to hold itself together. With weak, shaky hands he tugged at the mask, the suction snapping away in faint pops. Wires peeled from his chest and arms, leaving raw, stinging patches in their wake. He slumped forward, bracing against the glass as it rose away with a hiss.

The room was quiet. His ragged breaths and the distant hum of machines were the only sounds.

He tried to step forward. His knees buckled instantly, forcing him into a stumbling crawl. His arms strained, muscles screaming, but he didn’t stop. His body burned with every inch he dragged himself, sweat prickling his skin even as frost licked at his breath.

A medical cot sat just a few feet away, draped in white furs layered thick over frost. Close. So close.

His arms trembled violently, threatening to give. His chest flared with heat, pain digging into his ribs with every breath. But he reached. He clawed forward inch by inch, refusing to collapse back onto the icy floor.

The cot was a breath away. A sanctuary he might not reach.

Still, Danny dragged himself onward
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….

Blizzardheart’s steps were slow as she wandered through the medical chambers, the silence broken only by the faint crunch of her claws against the frost-hardened floor. The air was cool here, sharper than the halls outside, thick with the scent of ice and old ectoplasm. The walls pulsed faintly with their own glow, veins of frozen energy etched through the crystalline stone like arteries of light.

She told herself she should be elsewhere — the ghostlings had been unruly of late, scampering about the halls with laughter far too loud for this sacred place. But her heart ached with a different duty. The Great One called to her, not with words, but with something deeper, a pull she could not resist.

Reaching the chamber, she brushed aside the curtain of frost hanging across the doorway, shards tinkling like glass as they broke loose and fell to the floor.

She froze.

The stasis tube stood open, its once-steady glow guttered. Green-tinted mist curled lazily upward, swirling like ghostly breath into the chamber air. The fluid had drained, leaving the glass walls glistening with trails of frost and condensation. The machine hummed faintly, hollow and quiet — like a body exhaling its final breath.

Her gaze fell downward.

On the floor, pale against the crystalline ground, lay the Great One.

Alive.

His skin gleamed damp with ectoplasm and sweat, his white hair plastered across his face. Tremors rippled through his limbs, arms quivering as he dragged himself inch by inch across the floor. Each breath rattled through him, fogging the air in weak bursts of frost. His eyes, glazed and unfocused, blinked slowly, as though each movement cost him the strength of a mountain.

Blizzardheart’s breath caught, sharp and high in her throat. The sound echoed through the chamber, bouncing against the ice walls like a crack of thunder in the silence.

The boy stilled. Slowly — with the effort of centuries pressing against his small frame — his head turned. His cheek scraped against the frost, leaving a streak of condensation behind. His glassy eyes met hers.

For a moment, they simply stared at one another: she, wide-eyed and frozen, him, trembling, broken, yet undeniably alive.

The Great One’s lips parted, and though no words came, the faintest rasp of breath carried, a fragile ghost of sound that made her core ache.

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ཥ•̫͡•ཤ
Cold hands slid beneath him — not the clammy touch of steel restraints, not the searing grip of those who tore him apart — but cold, blessedly cold, and steady. The frost of them seeped into his fevered skin, chasing away the burning ache that had gnawed through his chest and limbs. His core pulsed in response, a weak but grateful thrum, as though sighing in relief.

He knew that cold. He knew that presence. The essence of the Far Frozen wrapped around him, familiar and grounding.

“Frsbt…?” he slurred, the word mangled and broken, more exhale than voice.

“No,” came a reply — gentle, low, reverent. “It is I, Blizzardheart. Rest, Great One. Let us get you to a cot.”

Her strength belied her careful touch. With effortless ease, she lifted his trembling body from the floor, cradling him against her chest. Her fur brushed against his damp skin, thick and cool, and it steadied the erratic flickers of his core. He sagged into her hold, every muscle too exhausted to resist, his head lolling weakly against her arm.

The journey to the cot was only a handful of steps, but to Danny it felt like being carried across entire worlds. Each motion swayed him gently, like being rocked in the arms of something vast and kind.

Then the furs met his back.

The bed was layered thick with frost and snow-white pelts, cool and soft against his bare skin. The surface molded around his frame, cradling him joint by joint, muscle by muscle. Every knot of tension unraveled beneath the cold, each fiery ache soothed as if the frost itself drank away the heat.

His breathing slowed. His eyes fluttered, lids growing heavier as the exhaustion seeped into his very bones. For the first time in years — or perhaps ever — he let himself stop fighting.

Above him, the chamber glowed faintly as the ice crystals drifted closer. They circled his cot in slow, deliberate orbits, their light steady and patient. One by one, they pressed into him, seeping through his skin, their cool energy stitching at his wounds, reinforcing his trembling core.

The sensation was almost peaceful. A lullaby sung in frost and light.

His lips parted in a faint sigh. The last of his tension bled away.

And then he slept.
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….
Blizzardheart lingered only long enough to be certain the Great One did not collapse again. Her gaze fixed on the slight rise and fall of his chest beneath the thick pelts, each breath fragile but steady. The sight stole a weight from her shoulders she hadn’t realized she carried, though her own core fluttered in relief.

Still, relief was not enough. Someone else needed to know. He lives. He breathes. He stirs. Chief Frostbite had to be told.

She stood swiftly, her breath frosting in the chilled air. Her claws clicked sharply against the crystalline floor as she padded from the healing chamber. The walls hummed faintly around her, veins of ice pulsing with pale light that seemed to echo the heartbeat she’d just left behind.

Her pace quickened, until she was running. The frosted halls of the Far Frozen stretched before her, shimmering in shades of teal and silver. Snow dust scattered underfoot, her passage stirring the silent halls into hushed whispers. The cold nipped at her fur, burned in her throat as she panted, each exhale streaming into thick plumes of mist.

She burst through the heavy frost-curtained door of the healers’ wing. The frozen hide cracked and rattled as it swung aside, sending shards scattering across the floor.

“Chief Frostbite!” she cried, her voice sharper than she intended. It cracked under the weight of her urgency, trembling despite her effort to steady it. “The Great One wakes!”

The words struck like a thunderclap.

Every healer in the chamber froze mid-step. Conversations died on lips, claws stilled over scrolls and relics, glowing salves left half-stirred in crystal bowls. The air itself seemed to suspend in silence, as if the walls of ice and snow leaned in to listen.

Frostbite, massive and steady as the mountains, straightened where he sat. His tusks glinted in the lantern light as his head lifted sharply. The scroll he had been holding fell from his claws, forgotten, drifting into the snow-dusted floor.

His glowing eyes locked on her, wide, unguarded, filled with something fierce and raw.

“What did you say?” His voice was low, rumbling, but it shook with the power of a glacier shifting in spring thaw.

Blizzardheart swallowed hard, her claws curling against the frozen floor as she stood straighter. “The Great One wakes,” she repeated, softer this time, reverent. Her voice carried the awe she had tried and failed to suppress.

The chamber erupted.

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For a breath, Frostbite sat frozen in the healers’ chamber, unable to move. Hope was a dangerous thing — cruel when it faltered, devastating when it proved false. Yet Blizzardheart’s eyes, wide and shimmering with awe, left no room for denial.

He rose swiftly. The air vibrated with the force of his motion, scrolls fluttering as healers erupted into whispers behind him. His massive frame moved through the hall like a storm given flesh, claws striking sparks of frost as he surged forward. The very ground trembled beneath his strides.

The heavy doors of the healing chamber groaned as he forced them open. A rush of frigid air spilled out, curling around his tusks.

Inside, the Great One stirred.

The sound of Frostbite’s entrance rippled through the silence, and the boy’s body responded with a faint shift, eyelids fluttering beneath lashes clumped with frost. His skin gleamed pallid against the snowy furs, his chest rising in shallow, halting breaths.

Frostbite crossed the room in a heartbeat, his massive form lowering with unexpected gentleness. He leaned over the fragile figure. A small, broken groan escaped The Great Ones’ lips as he tried to lift his head, but it dropped heavily back into the furs, the effort too much.

“…Sam?” The name slipped from his mouth, barely formed, as if spoken from a dream.

Frostbite’s frown deepened, his tusks catching the glow of the lantern light. He knew the haze of recovery often muddled minds, but it pained him all the same.

“…Tuck?” Another name, weak, searching.

The healer knelt fully, bracing himself with claws pressed to the frozen floor. His towering presence loomed, but his voice was a rumble of snow sliding softly down a mountainside.

“No, Great One,” he said gently. “It is I.”

The Great One’s unfocused eyes shifted, sluggishly tracking the enormous figure above him. Frostbite reached forward with care, brushing frost-stiff bangs from the boy’s face. The strands clung briefly to his claws before falling aside.

“Dead… m’ dead…” The words tumbled out, barely a whisper, heavy with despair.

Frostbite’s chest clenched as though ice had lodged within his ribs. He lowered one claw, just the tip, and pressed it lightly against the boy’s trembling shoulder. The gesture was delicate, reverent, a vow carried in touch.

“Hush,” he whispered, his breath frosting the air between them. “You are safe now. You are not alone.”

The boy shivered at the contact, his body curling faintly. Beneath the fragile ribs, his core pulsed once — soft, unsteady, but warm with recognition.

Frostbite closed his eyes and let out a slow sigh, the mist curling upward like a prayer.

The Great One’s body slackened, the fight draining from him, eyelids drooping as delirium pulled him back under. His breathing steadied, shallow but rhythmic.

Frostbite bowed his massive head, pressing his forehead lightly against the cot’s icy edge. The chill bit into his skin, but he welcomed it. His sigh spilled into the air, a sound of gratitude and grief interwoven.

The Great One lived.

Broken. Delirious. Haunted. But alive.

And Frostbite swore, as the boy slipped once more into fragile sleep, that he would never leave his side again.
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The days that followed were a trial of endurance for the Far Frozen.

The Great One’s body burned with fever, a heat so unnatural Frostbite had not believed such fire could live within one touched by the Infinite. Each time he pressed a claw gently to the boy’s brow, it scalded him. His breaths rattled with fever, ragged and shallow, punctuated by sudden gasps that sent the healers surging forward in alarm. At times his chest rose so faintly that Frostbite leaned close, tusks brushing the cot’s edge, listening desperately for the fragile rhythm of un-life.

The healers rotated tirelessly. Day and night blurred into one unbroken vigil. They carried chilled vials filled with frozen herbs and glowing ectoplasm, crystal salves that shimmered like starlight, relics designed to draw heat away from fragile cores. Their chants whispered through the chamber, low and steady, a constant murmur like glaciers shifting beneath the earth. Pale blue light spilled from their paws as they pressed runestones and cooling crystals against The Great One’s chest, praying their touch would soothe the inferno burning within.

The ghostlings could not be kept away. Tiny shapes peeked through the frost-curtained doorway at all hours. Some crept inside long enough to leave offerings: carved ice charms, snow-lilies plucked from the outer caverns, trinkets of crystal shaped into little stars. They arranged them carefully at the cot’s edge, their bright eyes wide with awe, before scurrying away in reverent silence.

 

Through it all, Frostbite remained. Sleep was a mortal necessity, not his, and so he stayed by the boy’s side without pause. He kept a cold cloth pressed to The Great One’s forehead when his fever spiked so high the furs dampened with sweat. He steadied flailing arms when delirium struck without warning, pinning the boy gently but firmly until the tremors subsided. He whispered words of comfort — promises of safety, of belonging, of never being alone again — hoping they would reach past the haze and anchor him.

For weeks, it was the same.

The Great One drifted in and out of half-consciousness, his voice broken and raw. He whispered names — Sam… Tucker… Jazz — each one a dagger twisted into Frostbite’s chest. At times his voice cracked into accusations, shouting at figures only he could see, reliving horrors too cruel for dreams. Each time Frostbite whispered back, his rumbling voice a blanket of snow meant to smother the fire of grief. But nothing eased the ache in his own chest as he watched the boy writhe against ghosts of memory.

Then, one morning, the chamber changed.

Frostbite leaned close to adjust a vial pulsing faintly against The Great One’s sternum. His claws stilled mid-motion. The boy’s skin — cool. Not scalding, not burning, but blessedly cool. His breathing, though still heavy, was steady, filling his lungs in deep pulls that no longer ended in desperate gasps.

Frostbite’s tusks glinted as he bent low, brushing frost-stiff hair from The Great One’s damp forehead. Slowly, impossibly, two eyes blinked open.

Green.

Clear.

Focused.

Alive.

Frostbite froze, his own chest tightening until it felt bound in iron bands.

“…Great One?” he whispered, his voice low, reverent, trembling as though the moment itself were a fragile shard of ice that might shatter.

The boy blinked again. His lips parted, cracked and dry, words rasping from a throat unused for months. “…Frost…bite?”

Recognition.

The sound cracked through him like sunlight splitting a glacier. Relief tore down his spine in waves so fierce he nearly collapsed where he knelt. He bowed his head low, his breath spilling frost in trembling plumes.

“Yes,” he whispered, voice breaking with awe. “It is I. You have returned to us.”

The Great One’s eyes shimmered, tears collecting, blurring their green light. His hand rose, slow and shaking, trembling with the effort of reaching.

Frostbite moved swiftly, his massive claws opening wide, half-meeting him halfway. He curled his palm carefully around the boy’s fragile fingers, enveloping them in the gentlest cradle.

He held them as though they were the most precious thing in the realms.

And for the first time since the Great One had been torn from the world of the living, Frostbite knew — he was finally, truly awake.

____________________________________________________________________________

૮₍ ´˶• ᴥ •˶` ₎ა

 

The Great One did not speak for a full month.

He sat quietly on the cot, staring forward at nothing, as if his gaze could pierce the frost-lined walls and see some other world. His eyes were hollow, rimmed red, glazed with memories no child should ever hold. When food was placed before him, he ate slowly, mechanically. When water or chilled draughts were pressed into his hands, he drank, guided more by habit than will. But his lips never parted for speech. His body rarely stirred.

The healers tried. They spoke in gentle tones, offering reassurances and small comforts, but nothing broke through. Blizzardheart left flowers carved from snow-ice, tokens of crystal polished until they glittered like stars, piles of blankets stitched from thick furs. Nothing. Young-lings tiptoed into the doorway to whisper greetings, pressing sugared treats into the cot’s edge before hurrying away. Still, nothing.

Frostbite never pressed him.

He remained instead, day and night, a quiet sentinel at the boy’s side. He did not fill the silence with empty comforts, nor demand answers from a soul still raw with grief. Instead, he spoke of other things — the stories of old hunts, of battles long won and lost, of the time when the Far Frozen was young. Legends of constellations trapped in ice, of rivers that froze into bridges across realms. He offered the boy something else to focus on, even if Danny never seemed to hear.

But Frostbite saw. He bore witness to the silent grief that tore through him in the dark. The tears that fell when he thought himself unobserved, streaking pale cheeks until the furs beneath dampened. The way his small hands curled into fists whenever laughter drifted in from the halls, as though joy itself were a cruel reminder of what he had lost.

He bore witness to the nightmares. To the sharp gasps of names that would never again answer him. To the trembling shoulders, muffled cries, the quiet way he folded in on himself as memory after memory drowned him deeper.

And he bore witness as those tears slowed. As the hollow silence sharpened into something else — something darker.

One night, the northern lights shimmered faintly through the frost-crystals embedded in the chamber walls. Ghostly ribbons of green and blue curved above, their light refracting into the chamber like spilled jewels. The Great One, long un-moving, finally turned his head.

His voice was hoarse, cracked from disuse, but each word struck like iron on ice.
“I’m going to end them all.”

The chamber seemed to still. Frostbite watched him quietly, studying the trembling of his small frame. Not the tremor of fear, but of rage burning so hot it made the air itself heavy.

Danny’s eyes met his, wide and desperate, pleading silently for something Frostbite could not give — permission, understanding, affirmation. For a long moment, Frostbite said nothing.

Then, softly, he smiled.

“Then you should prepare, yes?”

The boy’s gaze did not waver. Slowly, firmly, he nodded once. The northern lights shimmered over him, painting his hollow face in shades of green and silver.

The vow had been spoken.

____________________________________________________________________________

Chapter Text

ཥ•̫͡•ཤ

 

Blood.

It was all he could smell. Thick, cloying, metallic — it soaked into the air, into his lungs, until every breath was suffocating with it. The floors were painted with it, slick and glistening, rivers running into dark puddles that spread beneath his boots. The walls wept it in slow rivulets, dripping like the seconds of a clock counting down to silence.

Danny stood over the corpses.

Jack’s face, once split wide with that booming laugh, was slack now, a rictus of surprise frozen into place. Pride, joy, all the bluster — gone. His eyes stared upward, glazed and empty. Maddie slumped beside him, her body hunched awkwardly against the wall, a gun still cradled weakly in her limp hand. Her visor was cracked, her mouth half-open, as if she had been about to speak.

Dead. Both of them.

He had done it. He had killed them.

Revenge — the promise he’d clung to like lifeblood for over a year — fulfilled. So why did he feel nothing but the echo of hollowness in his chest? Why didn’t it ease the crushing weight on his ribs?

His fists clenched until his claws bit into his palms. His teeth dug into his lip hard enough to taste copper. The silence around him pressed in, thick and heavy, smothering.

Death wasn’t enough.

Not for them.

They had taken everything from him — Jazz’s laughter, Tucker’s sarcasm, Sam’s stubborn warmth. His teachers, his neighbors, even the kids he never spoke to in the hallways. Every single life in Amity Park, erased. They had taken his own life, too, cutting him open while crooning lullabies, whispering reassurances as they carved him apart like a specimen.

To let them rest now was mercy. Mercy they had never shown him.

He stepped over Jack’s corpse, his boots squelching in the blood that pooled beneath it. His cloak whispered against the floor as he crossed to the GIW’s terminal. His hands moved automatically, downloading everything — every file, every scrap of data. He would burn their secrets into the world, make sure they could never be erased again.

When the transfer began, he turned back. His gaze fell on the bodies. Coldness numbed into resolve. Slowly, he dragged Jack across the floor, the sound of flesh scraping metal grating in the silence. He laid him beside Maddie. Husband and wife, together even in death.

Then he pulled his blades.

Precision. Not fury — not anymore. His motions were clinical, steady, like an artist working clay. Flesh parted beneath his knives, ligaments snapping wetly, bones groaning and cracking as he bent them against nature. He severed arms, legs, fingers, stripping sinew to string together.

Blood sprayed his hands, his cloak, flecking his mask. He ignored it.

He pulled Maddie’s body apart piece by piece, arranging her parts with Jack’s. Fingers laced into jagged letters, ribs bent into arcs, sinew stretched tight into curves. His spectral chains tightened them together, sewing the pieces into shapes.

Letter by letter. Word by word. His message was carved from their bodies.

By the time he was finished, his cloak clung wet to his back, the air rank with iron and bile. The numbness in his chest had sharpened into something almost light, almost bearable.

He smirked.

The Hall of Justice wasn’t far.

Night had fallen, shadows deep and undisturbed. Perfect.

He wrapped the grisly sculpture in chains, hauling it with him as he phased through the walls and rose into the dark sky. His arrival was silent, unseen. No guards patrolled the great monument to the so-called protectors of Earth. They had grown complacent, too confident in their powers. Too blind to hear the screams of a forgotten town.

He strung the bodies up at the entrance, anchoring them to stone and steel. Slowly, methodically, he stretched them into the word he wanted.

MURDERERS.

The letters sprawled across the Hall’s gleaming walls like a banner of blood, sinew dripping crimson down the marble steps. The stink of rot clung to it, suffocating.

Danny stepped back, breathing hard. For the first time in so long, his chest eased. Not healed, not whole — but eased. The world would see this. They would know. Maybe not the details, not the truth of Amity Park. But they would understand what the heroes had failed to.

They had let this happen. They had ignored every cry.

Now they would wear the guilt carved in flesh.

His cloak rippled as he melted into the shadows, silver eyes flickering once in the dark before vanishing.
____________________________________________________________________________
ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ

The Hall of Justice loomed as dawn broke, its marble pillars gleaming like ivory spears in the rising light. The great bronze doors, designed to welcome all, stood unguarded. It should have been a symbol of hope. Instead, it was silent. Too silent.

The crowd that had gathered pressed tight against police barricades, their voices a cacophony of panic and revulsion. Reporters shoved microphones forward, cameras flashed, children cried. Words rippled through the mass like sparks through dry grass: murder, bodies, message.

Then the sky split with a crimson streak. Superman descended, cape snapping in the wind like a banner of judgment. The crowd fell into hushed awe. His boots touched stone just shy of the dark pools spreading across the plaza. His eyes widened, his face drawn tight, but his voice was steady.

 

“Get these people out of here.”

Officers scrambled, moving the civilians back, their own faces pale as they avoided looking directly at the grisly spectacle.

The air thickened, oppressive. The stench of blood, coppery and raw, clung to every breath.

A whisper of steel cut through the stillness. Diana landed beside him, her sandals striking marble with a controlled grace. Her hand curled instinctively around her sword hilt as her gaze swept upward. Her expression hardened, eyes narrowing at the grotesque display strung across their sanctuary’s entrance.

 

“By the gods…” Her voice was low, sharp with fury. “What is this?”

Superman swallowed bile. Even he, hardened against horrors, fought the urge to retch.

The growl of engines followed — the Batplane cutting a sleek shadow against the brightening sky. Batman emerged from the shadows it cast, a silhouette of black steel against white marble. His steps were slow, measured, his cowl lenses narrowing as they tracked every curve of bone, every stretched line of sinew. Unlike the others, he didn’t flinch. He had seen bodies twisted into messages before, but this… this was different.

He raised his gauntlet, activating a wrist-mounted device. A small drone slipped free, buzzing into the air. It began scanning, lights flickering against gore-slick walls.
“The bodies are fresh. Less than twelve hours.” His voice was clinical, clipped.

“Arranged by hand…” Diana muttered, her lips curling in disgust. “This is no simple execution. It’s… ritualistic.”

Batman’s HUD flashed data across his vision. He followed the drone’s trajectory, mapping the letters carved from flesh. His silence drew weight.

Superman’s fists tightened, the muscles in his jaw standing out. “Whoever did this wanted to stain us. They displayed it here, in front of the world. To make their accusation clear.” His gaze swept the plaza where reporters were already trying to sneak back into view. “And they succeeded.”

The drone beeped, chirping with a confirmation. Batman froze. His jaw clenched.
“Facial recognition hit confirmed.”

Diana’s head snapped toward him. “Who?”

His voice dropped lower, heavier.
“Jack and Madeline Fenton. Eccentric inventors out of Amity Park. Publicly, they were dismissed as fringe ghost hunters.”

Diana blinked. “Ghosts?”

Batman continued, his tone as sharp as the word carved into their walls. “Privately, they were connected to the Ghost Investigation Ward. A covert agency. Government-funded. Black budget. Records show it was disbanded years ago. But—” his gaze flicked back to the message written in flesh, “—someone hasn’t forgotten.”

Superman processed it slowly, the tension in his shoulders rising. “If this assassin is targeting people connected to that program… why drag us into it? Why call us murderers?”

Batman didn’t answer immediately. His silence pressed against them harder than the blood in the air. He stared at the letters, at the precise cruelty of the display.

Diana’s voice cut through, quiet but firm. “Maybe not dragging you in. Maybe blaming you. For ignoring them.” Her sword hand twitched, the implication bitter.

Batman’s response was a low growl. “Then this isn’t just vengeance. It’s retribution. He’s misguided. And dangerous.”

Above them, clouds shifted, parting for the morning sun. Hidden within, a shadow lingered. His cloak rippled with the shimmer of stars, moons and rhinestones catching the light before melting back into the void. Silver lenses glinted beneath a wide-brim hat, fixed coldly on the League below.

They did not know his name. They did not know his pain.

But they would.

____________________________________________________________________________

ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ

The removal of the bodies was as brutal as the message itself. Cleanup crews worked in silence, the air heavy with the copper stench of blood that clung no matter how much bleach hissed across stone. Spectral chains resisted being severed, humming as though alive, as though reluctant to surrender the remains they bound. Each cut of sinew, each wet snap of tendon echoed obscenely through the empty plaza, a grisly rhythm of violation.

The black tarps swallowed what was left. Flesh. Bone. Faces once known now reduced to wreckage that would be stitched together for burial. Even the Lantern rings that tried to scan the remains recoiled, their light clinging to the gore as though reluctant to part. The Hall of Justice had been defaced before — graffiti, bombings, even invasions — but never like this. Not with a message spelled in blood, bone, and grief.

By the time the council chamber filled, silence had grown thick enough to choke.

The round table gleamed, polished like a mirror beneath the vaulted ceiling, but its shine only reflected unease. Superman stood rigid at one end, cape pulled tight around his shoulders as though shielding himself from the cold that had settled into the room. Diana stood tall beside him, her blade strapped across her back, every motion deliberate, carved from purpose.

 

A blur of red and gold streaked into the chamber — Wally West, the emblem of Flamebird stamped across his chest. No grin. No banter. Just silence as he slid into a seat, his gaze lowered.

Nightwing arrived moments later, shadows clinging to him even in the light. His entrance was smooth, practiced, but his eyes softened as they fell on Wally. He sat without hesitation, their hands brushing beneath the table, a wordless tether. Batman’s gaze snapped to them from the head of the table. The cowl’s lenses narrowed, and when Wally felt the weight of it, his cheeks flushed hot. He shifted, uncomfortable, until Nightwing’s hand pressed his, firm, grounding.

Green Lantern entered with Aquaman at his side. Their faces were carved from stone, grim as a storm front. Aqualad followed, expression steady but his eyes sharp, measuring. One by one the chamber filled — Shazam, Black Canary, Zatanna, Hawkman, Martian Manhunter. Titans and veterans alike. The air grew heavier with every body that sat, the silence fraying with each passing second.

Batman’s voice broke it, low, cutting through like a blade.
“Let’s begin.”

The murmurs started immediately, bouncing like sparks across dry tinder.

“Who were they?” Green Lantern asked first, his ring flickering to life. Ghostly holograms of the mutilated faces hovered over the table, bloodless but no less grotesque. “Civilians? Terrorists?”

“Jack and Madeline Fenton,” Batman answered, clipped. “Eccentric inventors on the surface. Privately tied to a covert branch called the Ghost Investigation Ward. Government-funded, black budget. Disbanded. Officially.”

“Then why this?” Diana’s voice was sharp, her fist curling tight. “Why carve them apart and nail them to our gates like trophies?”

“Because the message wasn’t meant for them.” Superman’s voice cracked through the chamber, taut with restrained fury. He gestured to the bloodstained floor, the memory of the word etched there as though carved into their minds.
MURDERERS.

“It was meant for us.”

The silence that followed was suffocating.

“They think we ignored something,” Diana said at last, her words heavy with the weight of truth. “Something catastrophic.”

Batman’s jaw clenched. His search had turned up nothing but ghosts — erased files, scrubbed trails, data bled into void. A shadow war waged in silence, and only one survivor carried its truth.

“There is no known information of the GIW beyond a name and fragments,” Batman said. “Even the highest databases are wiped. Someone wanted it gone. And whoever left that message… wants to remind us.”

Aquaman’s voice rumbled low. “That kind of rage won’t fade. It festers. And it spreads.”

“Which makes them dangerous,” Diana countered. “Not just for their skill. But for their desperation. Desperation breaks restraint.”

Wally’s foot tapped under the table, faster than most could see. He glanced at Nightwing, lips pressed thin. His voice was tight when it came. “So we’re dealing with an assassin. Someone brutal enough to gut scientists and hang them like banners. Someone who thinks we are the problem. And we don’t even know why.”

Batman’s silence was heavy. He hated the gaps, the blind spots. Someone had erased an entire city’s screams, buried the blood of hundreds — and left him with nothing but shadows and the echo of vengeance.

Whoever this assassin was, Batman knew he wouldn’t stop. Not until the truth was carved into their walls.

The holograms stuttered and shimmered in the vaulted light, faces resolving from the ghostly projections like something recalled from a fever dream. Madeline’s cheekbones caught the sickly green wash; Jack’s jaw threw sharp shadows across the table. The chamber filled with that thin, antiseptic glow as the images hovered, rotating slowly above the polished surface.

“So this is targeted,” Hal said, leaning forward until the ring’s light painted his knuckles. His voice had the hard edge of someone trying to make a risky theory sound like fact. “Anyone connected to this… GIW will most likely be hunted down. There’s no way this is random. There has to be an escalation that leads up to — this.”

Dick’s fingers danced across his wrist-pad, the clack barely audible beneath the low murmur. “There have been mutilated bodies reported in several countries,” he said, voice flat, “but none strung up like this. Maybe these two were… personal. An escalation, yes — but one with meaning attached.”

Superman’s eyes narrowed until they were pale slits. He leaned back, the cape rustling like dry leaves, and looked at the faces in the hologram as if trying to will more answers from them. “If there are any other GIW agents still alive, they’re running. How would we even begin to find this person?”

“It’s clearly someone with assassin-level tradecraft,” Aquaman said, arms folded, every word carrying the weight of judgment. “Metahuman maybe — or an ex-agent who knows how to move in and out of systems. Someone who enjoys theater.”

“Not just theatrics,” Diana replied, voice clipped, eyes never leaving the projected visages. “This is condemnation. Whoever did this believes the GIW committed atrocities. MURDERERS is an accusation carved for spectacle. It’s intimate — it screams that something very personal was taken from the killer.”

Wally perched on the edge of his chair, elbows on knees, brow drawn. “But nobody outside certain government channels even knew what the GIW was. Half this room didn’t recognize the acronym. So how does an assassin know where to find them?”

“Inside knowledge,” Batman supplied, precise as a scalpel. His fingers tapped a few commands and a blank map flickered up, then dissolved into another projection. “Maybe a former agent. A whistleblower. Someone who lost everything because of GIW operations.” His voice was low, the cowl swallowing most of the inflection. “Or a metahuman experiment gone wrong,” Hal muttered, tapping his ring against the table like he could rouse the answer from it.

Dick’s tone dropped quieter, more clinical. “Every strike we’ve recorded has been surgical. Quick. No survivors. No evidence left behind. Always finding those hiding in the dark, no matter how well hidden.”

Diana’s gaze sharpened into a spear. “Then this isn’t mere vengeance — it’s slaughter. Methodical. Intentional. And it’s designed to shame and to force a reckoning.”

Superman’s jaw set, the steel of his resolve visible. “And they’re not stopping.”

A small, reluctant sound — a cough, a shuffle — rose from the table as Batman’s HUD chirped. He glanced at the feed, then, without preamble, spoke in a tone that made the chamber go even colder.

“They’ve erased something.”

All eyes swung to him.
“What do you mean?” Aquaman demanded.

Batman brought up a new projection: a faded map of the Midwest, a pin blinking briefly in Illinois. He let the silence sit for a beat, then continued. “Amity Park. A town in Illinois. Population — roughly three thousand. Two years ago, it ceased to exist on record. No census entries, no news archives, almost nothing. I had to dig through fragmented caches. Whatever traces remain are corrupted or overwritten.” He shut the projection down; the table hummed in the vacuum left behind. “It’s as if the town was scrubbed.”

“Wiped off the map?” Diana repeated, incredulous. “You’re saying an entire city was… erased?”

Batman’s reply was a look — a hardness in his jaw that needed no words. “Possibly a media blackout, possibly classified government intervention. Waller would never hesitate to bury something for ‘the greater good.’ But burying it doesn’t absolve the pain left behind.”

Wally’s face flushed with indignation. “If an entire city — people — vanished, and none of us knew… how could we have stopped it?” His voice rose, quick and hurt. “None of us had a chance to do anything because we weren’t even aware.”

Diana’s eyes were cold as polished steel. “Do you think they’ll care about that distinction?”

Batman’s gloved hands folded together, a coiled thing of control. “No. They won’t.”

The gravity of the accusation — MURDERERS — hung like a verdict in the carved-acoustic room. It reverberated far louder than any raised voice.

Superman inhaled slowly, options tightening in his expression. “Whoever this is, they’ve made their intent clear. They’ll continue until every GIW name is erased, and they want the world to watch.”

 

“They’re doing it in a way that shames us all,” Diana said. “This was meant to force our hand — to make us respond under the glaring accusation that we ignored a crime.”

“Whether or not we knew about it is now moot,” Aquaman growled. “The public sees the word strung across our Hall. That stain does not wash off with explanation.”

Green Lantern’s ring projected heat-mapped trails and budget lines across the table. “We can pull what’s left of the GIW financial trails, track surviving personnel, and start placing them under protection. At minimum, we can predict likely next targets.”

Batman’s lenses narrowed until the optics were almost slits. “Protection won’t stop a ghost that phases through steel and moves like wind. Every strike has been flawless. No surveillance left intact. Whoever this killer is, they plan for everything.”

Nightwing folded his hands, leaning in. “Then we have to think like them. If they were targeting the GIW, where would we go to find the skeletons — old test sites, contractors, black-budgets? The places that were excised from public memory?”

Wally muttered, voice low and bitter, “Every agent is looking over their shoulder tonight, waiting for the stars to fall.”

Batman glanced at him, noting the phrase without comment.

Superman straightened, the room quivering around his resolve. “We go proactive. Split into teams. One group tears into whatever records and contacts remain from the GIW. The other follows the deaths backward — every corpse leaves a trace, no matter how carefully it’s hidden.”

Diana’s question was a blade. “If we find them — do we arrest them, or do we treat them like a victim who became an enemy?”

Even Superman hesitated.

The brutality of the killings left little room for sentiment, yet the fury behind the displayed word suggested more than simple malice — it suggested a wound. A wound that had festered until it became teeth.

Batman’s response was final, iron-clad. “Hostile until proven otherwise. Dangerous until neutralized. We proceed with force and with caution.”

No one argued. The resolve in the room settled like armor.

Superman let out a measured breath and looked around the table, meeting each set of eyes in turn. “Then it’s decided. We move tonight.”

Heads dipped in unison. The world’s greatest heroes rose from the council as one, the room emptying with the swift, certain purpose of a hunt already begun.

Chapter Text

ཥ•̫͡•ཤ
He knew he was being hunted. Every shadow, every flicker of movement on the edge of his vision reminded him of it. The Justice League’s eyes were everywhere—he had forced their gaze onto him the moment he nailed Jack and Maddie Fenton’s corpses to the Hall of Justice like grotesque trophies. He didn’t regret it. Not for a second. The sight of their lifeless bodies, twisted and displayed under that sickly green glow, had sent a message louder than any threat could. Maybe they didn’t know who he was yet, but they knew what he could do. Something unforgettable. Something that would scar their memories.

And still, they couldn’t touch him. He slipped through their nets with ease, moving faster, thinking sharper. He hunted while they chased shadows. Their exhaustion bled through in every near-miss. The League was tired, and he was merciless. By the time they arrived to “save” someone, his target was already dead—swift, efficient, and silent. Each strike kept his core aching, but that ache was bearable. Necessary. It was proof he was fulfilling the mission.

The flashdrive was his bible. Every GIW file, every classified document—scanned, burned, rewritten in his own hand. He was the final scribe of their sins, the one rewriting history so their lies couldn’t outlive them. He sat in his temporary hideouts, cold blue light of computer screens flickering across his face, watching as another file turned to ash in the bin beside him. When he wasn’t erasing their existence, he was learning. Always learning. The news became his second pulse, the anchor that let him anticipate where the League would send their forces next.

Superman’s calm, authoritative voice droned from the television of a cramped Gotham café, promising the world that the Justice League was “doing everything they could” to hunt the killer. Danny smirked at the hypocrisy, lips curling as he set his coffee cup down on the table. They didn’t understand. Couldn’t. Every GIW agent he carved out of existence was one less monster in the world. He was doing what they should be doing, but were too bound by rules and codes to carry through.

The contractor who had found him in Gotham had been careful, skittish. Testing the waters with a simple request. Danny almost laughed when he heard the name—some mafia hitman who’d left bodies scattered in alleys. Trash. He confirmed it, researched it, and then ended the man before dawn. His core had shuddered in relief at the kill, a faint soothing balm to the raw ache in his chest. He told himself he was saving lives. Cleaning up the filth. And every contract that overlapped with the GIW’s network only made it easier to justify.

Now he sat in the corner booth of the café, steam curling from his drink—his favorite poison. A venti Death Wish with six extra shots of espresso. Bitter enough to make most people gag, but it kept him sharp. Awake. Alive. He sipped it slowly, pale eyes fixed on the screen. He needed to lay low, if only for a day or two. The League’s pressure was suffocating lately, their net drawing closer. He was nearly through the last scraps of GIW’s hierarchy, but there were still too many names on his list. Still too many to hunt.

Patience was his greatest weapon. He could adapt, shift tactics, and while he waited, the contracts kept him busy. They gave him an outlet, a way to bleed off the restless energy. His rules were spreading through the underworld, whispered warnings in smoke-filled rooms. No children. No innocents. Any client who tried to bend those rules died before they could retract the offer. He left their bodies behind as reminders, strung up in silent sermons. They started calling him Nocturne’s Nebula. A phantom in the assassin’s ocean of sharks.

And he wore the name well. Corrupt businessmen who laundered blood money, politicians fattened on suffering, predators who thought they were untouchable—all of them fell. Even a Red Lantern once, his ring crushed between Danny’s fingers until it cracked and died. Every kill left a mark, a grotesque display echoing his parents’ fate. The world was rotting, and he was pruning it piece by piece. His core hurt less when he imagined it that way. A twisted kind of healing.

In the quiet of the café, he allowed himself to imagine his record. One hundred percent success rate. Every strike perfect. Cleaner than Shiva, swifter than Slade. He remembered the way Ra’s al Ghul had once stood across a room from him, watching, calculating—and done nothing as Danny slit one of his own men’s throats before fading into the night. If the League of Shadows knew his name, then every assassin worth a blade knew it too.

And after he stole a kill from Deathstroke himself? The underground erupted. Whispers painted him as a reaper, contracts doubled overnight, syndicates scrambled to place him on their boards. Let them whisper. Let them guess. He didn’t care. The GIW was still out there, and once he finished with them, Nocturne’s Nebula would disappear. Retire. Maybe then… maybe he could become king early, like they had promised. Or maybe he’d finally just rest.

The door chimed. Danny’s eyes flicked up instantly. The boy from Metropolis. The one he’d noticed before. He looked wrecked—dark circles smudged under his eyes, suit pressed but worn, every line of his body screaming exhaustion. Yet his eyes… those were awake. Sharp. Alert. The kind of alert that reminded Danny painfully of Sam, of Tucker. Of faces he couldn’t save.

Guilt slammed into him like a blade between the ribs. He should have saved them. Should have protected them. Should have—

The boy leaned against the wall, close but casual. A heavy sigh escaped him before he said, “Hey—me and you got the same drink.” His smile was perfect, rehearsed, something out of a magazine cover. Danny didn’t return it. He just nodded, lips pressed into a thin line.

“Cool,” he rasped, voice cracked and rough like gravel. But still, the boy kept smiling. Like nothing touched him.

Danny turned back to the TV, forcing his attention to Superman’s hollow words.

“Crazy what’s going on, huh?” the boy pressed, shifting his phone in one hand. His fingers moved quick, typing like a man who lived on coded messages. Danny glanced at him. The suit was expensive, tailored. The phone—top-end tech. This wasn’t some random stranger. He filed it away, suspicion simmering low in his chest.

“You from her—?” the boy started, but Danny was already on his feet, gathering his things with mechanical efficiency. He didn’t want this conversation. He didn’t want connections. He didn’t want another face burned into his memory.

Without a word, he slipped out, the café’s bell chiming softly in his wake.

____________________________________________________________________________
ཥ•̫͡•ཤ
Danny was patient. Patience was the spine of the hunt. Stalking was an art, one perfected only by those willing to wait until the world itself held its breath. His heartbeat remained steady, measured against the rhythm of the night, while his eyes locked onto his prey. The silence before the strike was always sacred—like a prayer whispered to the void. Tonight was no different.

The contract had caught his attention the moment it pinged his encrypted line. He almost dismissed it at first, until the target’s name filled his vision: Timothy Drake. Danny froze. His jaw clenched. The boy from the café.

He had already been watching him out of curiosity, shadows curling in office corners while Tim typed away at a desk high above Gotham’s restless streets. The research yielded nothing that would justify the hit. No blood on his hands. No sins staining his name. Instead, Danny found charities, outreach programs, millions poured into Gotham’s most broken neighborhoods. A CEO with clean hands in a city where no one’s hands were ever truly clean.

That decided it. The contractor had signed their own death warrant. Still, Danny didn’t look away from the boy. He watched the faint glow of monitors reflect across Tim’s sharp features, watched fingers moving in a blur over the keys. He smirked faintly, an idea already forming. If they wanted him to test Nocturne’s Nebula against someone like this, they’d learn quickly what happened when they tried to use him.

With that thought, Danny sank into the shadows, letting the dark swallow him whole.

 

ཥ•̫͡•ཤ

The night shifted. Gotham was alive in a way no other city was. The pulse of electricity through tangled wires overhead, the deep rush of water through corroded pipes beneath his boots, the chorus of voices—arguments, laughter, whispers—spilling from every alley and apartment. Danny’s senses stretched into it all, feeling the city breathe around him. His boots whispered soundlessly across rooftop gravel as he pursued.

The man moved below, weaving through the crowded streets like a rat trying not to be seen. Danny matched him stride for stride from above, his cloak trailing behind him like a wraith’s tail. His body thrummed with something dangerous—his core weakening with every GIW eradication, then struggling back to life with every corrupt soul he cut down. He was decaying faster than he could heal, his ghost half crying for rest, for balance.

Should he stop? Should he give himself time to recover? The thought tempted him for only a second before rage answered. No. Rest was for those who had finished the work. His wasn’t done. Not yet.

His green lenses flared, casting a faint glow across his mask as he crouched low on the edge of a ledge. Below, his target paused on a bench, pretending to relax, shoulders loose. But Danny could see it. The shallow breaths. The twitch of fingers. The rapid flicker of eyes. Fear clung to the man like oil.

Danny felt the shift before it happened. Prey always knew when the predator’s gaze became too heavy to ignore. The man’s eyes snapped up, locking on Danny’s glowing silhouette above. Terror shattered the disguise, and then he bolted.

Danny dropped like a guillotine. Cloak flaring, chains rattling, he slammed into the man’s back with brutal precision, sending both of them skidding across the pavement. The man screamed, limbs thrashing uselessly beneath Danny’s weight.

“Please! Please—I beg you!” the man sobbed, his voice cracked and shrill.

Danny leaned down, spectral chains tightening across his hands as a low growl rumbled from his throat. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out you sent me after an innocent?” His voice dripped with venom, his eyes burning Lazarus-green.

The man stammered, choking on his terror. “P-please, I—I didn’t—”

Danny’s head turned sharply to the side, every sense screaming at once. A presence. Steady, sharp, unyielding. He saw it then—movement in the dark.

A shadow detached from the rooftop across the street, landing with grace. Cloak swirled, steel glinted, and the edge of a sword caught the streetlight like a warning. Robin.

Danny rose to his full height in one fluid motion, letting the man he’d pinned scramble backward like a beaten dog. The air between them grew taut, thrumming with the weight of recognition.

“Robin,” Danny said, voice flat, calm. His scythes shimmered into his hands, blades glinting with spectral light.

Robin’s stance was firm, sword unsheathed, his green eyes locked like crosshairs. “Nocturne’s Nebula.” His voice was low, edged with certainty.

The world seemed to still. Even the city’s noise faded, replaced by the deafening silence of two predators circling.

And then—the fight exploded. Robin lunged forward, sword slicing through the air with the deadly precision of years of training. Danny’s chains rattled as his spectral scythes met the blade with a crack of steel against ectoplasm. Sparks danced between them.

Robin pressed forward, relentless, every strike flowing into the next like a storm, but Danny met each blow in kind. His chains twisted, snaring the sword in a violent whip, forcing it down toward the concrete. Robin wrenched back with strength that belied his size, flipping to regain leverage.

Danny’s eyes narrowed, lips curling into the faintest of smirks. So this was the game Gotham wanted to play tonight.

Robin’s blade hissed through the air, every strike deliberate, testing. He wasn’t just attacking—he was reading Danny, watching for any slip, any twitch of movement that might reveal something.

“You’re killing contractors now?” Robin’s voice was sharp, words slicing in between blows. His blade carved arcs of steel light against the night. “Or is this about something bigger? Who are you working for?”

Danny didn’t answer. His scythes flashed, spectral chains lashing out to catch the edge of Robin’s sword, sparks spitting as metal and ectoplasm screeched against each other. His silence was heavier than words, eyes glowing faintly beneath the hood.

Robin twisted his blade free with a grunt, sliding low and slashing upward in a blur. “The League knows your name. Deathstroke, Shiva—they all want a piece of you. What’s your angle, Nebula? Money? Blood?”

Still nothing. Danny moved with a patience that unnerved, blocking each strike without overcommitting, letting Robin tire himself out. His cloak whispered around him as he shifted just out of reach, only to step back in and clash again. Every movement spoke of control. Of someone who could end this any moment but simply… chose not to.

Robin’s frustration bled into his tone, his strikes snapping harder. “You don’t leave patterns. You erase everything. But that stunt with the Hall of Justice—” He ducked, barely avoiding a chain that whipped past his head. “That was personal. Who were they to you?”

Danny’s eyes narrowed, but no sound came. He simply tilted his head, as if judging the boy’s persistence. His silence was the cruelest taunt of all.

Robin gritted his teeth. “You can’t keep running. Gotham remembers its monsters.”

 

Danny finally shifted, sighing as though the game had grown dull. With a sudden burst, his chains flared wide, scythes spinning in a blur of green light. Robin’s sword was caught, yanked hard to the side, throwing his balance off. Before he could recover, Danny’s boot struck his chest, sending him skidding across the pavement.

The assassin stood tall, chains rattling as they curled back into his hands. For a breath, he looked down at Robin—silent, calculating. Then, with a flick of his cloak, he turned away.

The contractor had scrambled into the crowd, thinking the fight would buy him freedom. Danny’s lenses flared as he vanished into the shadows in pursuit, Robin’s curses echoing faintly behind him.

The hunt wasn’t over.

Danny found the man. He had walked boldly up to Wayne Enterprises, swiping a keycard like he belonged there. The guards didn’t blink, didn’t question him, letting him through as if nothing was wrong.

Shit.

Danny slipped into intangibility, vanishing into invisibility with practiced ease. He stalked after the man, his form brushing through walls and metal detectors like smoke. His grip tightened on the chain at his belt, the faint gleam of his blade catching even his invisible gaze. His core pulsed once, low and aching, whispering a warning.

Something told him this hunt wasn’t going to end the way he expected.

He drifted into the corner of the high office, folding himself into shadows like a native-born creature of them. His cloak rippled faintly, then stilled. One shimmer, and he was gone—silent, weightless, the perfect predator.

Timothy Drake sat at his desk, eyes narrowed at the glow of his monitors, fingers flying over keys with a sharp efficiency. The sterile office light sharpened the planes of his face, made the blue of his eyes glitter like ice. He didn’t notice the predator lurking just beyond the edge of sight.

There was a knock at the door.

Danny stayed perfectly still.

The door opened. The contractor entered. His shoulders sagged under fear, and his hand twitched around something hidden.

“Yes, what is it?” Drake asked, tone even, eyes still fixed on the computer. He didn’t look up.

The man’s breath was ragged, frantic. “I’m sorry… but it’s gotta be done.”

Drake finally paused, gaze lifting, assessing with sharpness that cut deeper than words. “What is it?” His tone didn’t waver. He even had the gall to sound annoyed. “Hasn’t Mr. Wayne told you not to stay so late here? Work-life balance and all that?”

The contractor stepped closer, knife flashing as he slipped it from his sleeve. Danny’s fingers tightened on his chain.

Drake stood smoothly, hand brushing under the desk for the barest moment—gun, alarm, panic button. Always prepared. He squared his shoulders. “You need to leave. Now.” His voice was steady, but tension thrummed beneath it.

The man cracked. His composure shattered as terror poured out. He stumbled forward, knife trembling in his hand. “You don’t get it! He’ll find me! That thing will find me!”

Danny’s lips curled beneath his mask. He’s right.

Drake’s eyes narrowed, confusion flickering but never breaking into fear. “Who?”

The man’s voice cracked, volume rising. “Nocturne’s Nebula! It’s your fault! I sent him after you and he came back for me! I know you’re corrupt! I know! Nocturne just didn’t watch long enough!”

Tim’s face drained of color. The sharpness was still there, but it paled beneath the weight of those words.

Danny’s hand flexed against his chain, already picturing the words he’d carve into the man’s bones. But then—

The air shifted.

A shadow darker than his own cut across the room. Silent. Certain. Predatory. Danny’s core thrummed, recognition and rage twisting through it like a knife.

Batman had arrived.

 

He stepped out of the corner like he’d always been there, his cape trailing like a living shadow, his white lenses narrowing on the scene. The weight of his presence hit the room without a sound—like gravity itself had turned to watch.

Danny didn’t breathe. Didn’t move. His heart pounded with something he hadn’t felt in years: the cold grip of fear.

The agent collapsed, his knife clattering against the tile. He shrank back into the chair, trembling like a man facing death itself. His eyes darted from Drake to the Bat, desperate.

“Why send an assassin known for killing his own contractors after Mr. Drake?” Batman’s voice cut through the air, low and sharp. It wasn’t a question. It was a demand.

The man flinched. “N-no, you don’t understand—”

“Answer.”

Tim folded his arms, standing stiff at Batman’s side. His eyes were narrowed, fury simmering under ice. “He admitted it. He sent Nocturne after me. Just get him out of here.” His words were clipped, but Danny could see the tension in his shoulders. Fear, buried deep under discipline.

Batman’s gaze shifted briefly toward Drake, then pinned the agent again. “Where is he now? He’s after you, isn’t he?”

“I—I don’t know! I swear!”

Batman leaned closer, his cape brushing the floor, his silence crushing. “Why Timothy Drake?”

The man cracked like glass under a hammer. “There’s a list! I made it! Wayne was next! I—I know they’re corrupted!” Sweat streamed down his face.

“What proof?” Batman’s tone never wavered.

The man stammered, words dissolving into terrified silence.

Danny’s eyes slid toward the boy. Tim Drake stood tall beside Batman, jaw set, eyes cold, unflinching even under the weight of a killer’s rant. His presence anchored the room almost as much as the Bat’s. Danny’s throat tightened. Blue eyes, black hair. Too much like Jazz when she demanded answers.

Drake leaned forward, his voice cutting like steel. “Why Wayne Enterprises? Why me?”

The man’s mouth opened, broke. He couldn’t speak.

Danny’s lenses flared green in the dark.

And for the first time in over a year, crouched invisible in the corner of a room, Danny hesitated.

The GIW was his prey. But this—this wasn’t just another hunt. The Bats weren’t prey. They were something else entirely.

Danny moved.

Like falling snow, he slipped from his corner, cloak trailing soundlessly across tile. He crouched low behind the trembling man, invisible but near enough for the cold of his presence to seep into the agent’s skin.

The rhinestone chains on his hat brushed softly, a delicate chime like faraway bells.

The man froze. His breathing caught, his eyes bulged wide. Slowly, shakily, he looked over his shoulder.

Empty.

Empty to Batman. Empty to Drake.

But not to him.

Danny leaned close, chain-handled blade loose in his grip, his cold breath whispering over the man’s ear.

The agent’s voice cracked into the silence. “H-he’s here…”

Batman’s eyes narrowed instantly.

The man convulsed, terror boiling over. “He’s here!” he screamed, “Nocturne!”

Drake startled, his sharp eyes sweeping the shadows. Batman stayed still, reading the panic with surgical precision.

And inches away, invisible and smiling coldly, Danny thought: Yes. I’m here.

____________________________________________________________________________

/🅾＼_・)

This situation was fucked.

Tim’s heart pounded hard enough that he could hear it in his ears. He scanned the room again, eyes darting from corner to corner. Nothing. There was nothing. Nowhere to hide without being seen, no shadows deep enough to explain the man’s terror. Still, his instincts screamed at him. Something was there.

The contractor’s eyes bulged grotesquely, pupils darting like trapped insects. He looked like a man searching for a ghost—and maybe he was. His frantic gaze swept the room until, suddenly, he broke.

With a strangled cry, the man stumbled forward, legs barely working. He tripped over himself, hitting the floor with a grunt before clawing his way across the tile. He collapsed at Batman’s boots, clutching at his cape with trembling, sweaty hands.

“Protect me!” His voice was raw, cracking into a high pitch that scraped at Tim’s nerves. “You don’t understand—he’s here!”

Tim’s stomach knotted. He swept the room again with practiced eyes, sharp, deliberate, cataloging every line, every shadow. Still nothing. Empty.

But the hair on his arms prickled, his skin crawling with cold. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

He was vulnerable—no suit, no staff, no comm. Just jeans, sneakers, a jacket. Civilian. Exposed. So he shifted, subtle and quiet, taking a half-step behind Batman. To an outsider, it was casual. To Batman, it was a signal. His hand brushed the edge of the cape, grounding himself in the one presence that felt immovable.

Batman didn’t flinch. Didn’t move. He stood solid as a wall, every ounce of his calm radiating outward. His composure anchored Tim, but it didn’t quiet the chill crawling down his spine.

The man scrambled up, trying to wedge himself behind Tim as well. Tim’s lip curled. Gross.

Then it came.

The laugh slithered through the room like frostbite creeping down bone. Cold, detached—not mocking, not mad, but broken. A sound hollowed out by years of pain.

“A grown man…” The voice rasped, each word dragged like claws across rusted metal. “…cowering behind a child?”

Tim’s body locked. His throat tightened. The voice struck something in him—familiarity, recognition. He thought of Cass, her silence, the rasp she carried when words came rarely. This voice carried that same rasp, only poisoned. Venom soaked every syllable.

Why did he know this voice?

Batman moved instantly. Cape flared wide, sweeping Tim back into the cover of its armored fabric. His voice cracked through the silence, sharp as a blade:

“Show yourself.”

 

Silence. Heavy. Suffocating. The kind of silence where every heartbeat seemed too loud.

Then—

A squeak. The faintest squeal of leather soles against tile, right behind Tim.

Tim spun, unarmed, every muscle snapping taut—

And froze.

The man was suspended midair, body jerking like a puppet. Spectral chains wound around his throat, arms, and legs, glowing faintly green, tightening with each strangled gasp. His face darkened purple as he writhed. No words came now—only the sick, wet rattle of a dying man.

The shadows rippled.

And then he stepped out.

Nocturne’s Nebula revealed himself.

The cloak unfurled first—stitched from the night sky itself, galaxies and stars shifting faintly across its folds. The wide-brim hat tilted down, rhinestone chains swaying from its rim, tiny moons and stars chiming together with an eerie music.

His uniform gleamed like spilled oil, black but alive with nebular shimmer under the office lights. Constellations were threaded into it—silver and Lazarus-green lines mapping across his chest and arms, glowing faintly like wounds that never healed. Meteorite-like shards jagged across his shoulders, light fracturing in their cracks.

His forearms glowed with fissures in his bracers, ectoplasmic light bleeding through like starlight cracking stone. Chains clinked faintly at his belt, blades shaped like broken comets swaying in time with his steps.

But it was his face that froze Tim’s blood.

A mask swirled with galaxy spirals, pulling the eye into depths that weren’t natural. Above it, lenses burned first silver—cold moons hanging in void—and then flared sickly green as his head tilted their way.

Danny—Nocturne’s Nebula—stood before them. Not rumor. Not ghost story. Flesh and blood and nightmare.

Tim couldn’t breathe.

Batman moved. Always first.

He lunged, cape snapping like a whip, gauntlets striking with brutal speed—precise, honed to kill if he ever chose. But every strike passed through. The figure didn’t parry. Didn’t dodge. He simply let Batman hit air, standing there like nothing in the world could touch him. Watching. Always watching.

Tim’s mind scrambled for answers. Martian? No—J’onn would’ve known. A metahuman phaser? Some new breed of assassin? His thoughts crashed into dead ends as panic clawed at his ribs.

The contractor’s body jerked violently, eyes bulging, foam gathering at his lips. His death rattle clawed its way out of his throat. Tim’s chest constricted. He’s dying—

The blade was just there. One moment empty, the next a gleam of starlit metal. It slid into the man’s chest with surgical ease.

The sound of it—wet, obscene—filled the room.

Blood spattered outward, warm, metallic, splattering Batman’s gauntlet, Tim’s jacket. The chains slackened, and the body hit the tile with a heavy, final thud.

Nocturne didn’t gloat. Didn’t even breathe heavy. He simply turned, cloak flowing behind him, and walked toward the window like he’d just punctuated a sentence.

His voice rasped low, weighted with something broken:
“I used to believe in heroes. Fighting the boogeyman under beds. Monsters in the closet.”

Batman’s arm shot out, dragging Tim tight against his chest, shielding him beneath the cape’s armored folds. Tim’s pulse thundered, his mind screaming impossible.

The figure turned his head, just slightly.

Tim didn’t flinch fast enough. A hiss of metal cut across his cheek, hot pain blossoming. He gasped, hand flying to his face, coming away wet with blood.

The assassin twirled the blade delicately between his fingers, Tim’s blood gleaming crimson under green light.

“I used to believe in coincidences as well,” he murmured, almost tired. “Not anymore.”

Batman stepped forward, voice sharp, commanding, cutting through the air like steel:
“Why? Why do all this? Answer me!”

He lunged—

And Nocturne was gone.

No smoke, no sound. No shimmer of movement. Just gone, like he had never been there.

The only proof: the corpse cooling on the floor. The blood drying on Tim’s cheek.

 

Tim pressed his hand harder against his cheek, as though pressure alone could erase the shallow sting. The cut wasn’t deep—barely more than a graze—but the trembling in his hand betrayed him. His blood smeared warm across his palm, tacky already. He couldn’t shake the thought: that blade could’ve gone deeper. It could’ve been my throat, my heart.

His eyes darted toward Batman. Wide. Shaken. His mind couldn’t stop looping the truth—that man had been sent after him. Him. Not Wayne, not Bruce, not the cowl. Tim Drake.

If he’d slipped. If he’d hesitated. If he’d acted wrong even once—Batman wouldn’t have been able to save him. Batman couldn’t do anything.

The silence in the office pressed down like a weight. Only the steady drip… drip… drip of blood broke it, pooling beneath the corpse sprawled across the floor. The metallic stench thickened the air, coating Tim’s tongue until it made him want to gag.

 

His breathing came shallow, ragged, as though he couldn’t quite fill his lungs. The sting of the cut burned worse with each passing second, not from pain, but from what it represented: a reminder of how close the blade had come.

Batman crouched by the body, movements deliberate, gauntlets slicked red. His cowl lenses flicked, scanning what remained of the man. No movement. No life. Another witness silenced. Another lead carved away. Bruce’s jaw tightened, frustration leaking through the cracks in his otherwise unbreakable composure.

Tim finally forced sound past the tightness in his throat. “He… he just—” His voice broke, and he swallowed hard, pushing past it. “He killed him right in front of us. Like we weren’t even—”

“—there,” Batman finished. His voice was iron, flat. He rose slowly, cape dragging crimson arcs through the blood. “Yes.”

Tim’s head snapped up, eyes burning. “What was that? He didn’t dodge. He didn’t block. You couldn’t touch him.”

Silence. Batman’s silence was never empty—it was weight, sharp and suffocating. His lenses narrowed, the shift subtle but loaded. Tim could feel the calculations behind it. Finally, Batman spoke. “Phasing. Intangible. Technology… or something else.”

Tim let out a short, disbelieving laugh that cracked halfway through. “That wasn’t tech, Bruce. That was—” He cut himself off before the word impossible could leave his lips. His chest rose and fell sharply, adrenaline still clawing at his ribs. He thought of the whispers, the forums, the rumors that had spread like wildfire. The name hissed through his mind. Nocturne’s Nebula.

His stomach twisted into a knot. “I could’ve died—would’ve died if—”

 

Batman moved before the words could spiral further. Two steps. Close. Gloved hands firm but careful as they tilted Tim’s chin upward. Tim stiffened instinctively, but didn’t pull away. The cowl’s blank lenses hovered inches from his face as Bruce examined the cut.

“Shallow,” Batman murmured. His voice was flat, clinical, but there was an edge underneath. “You’ll scar if it’s not treated. But it wasn’t meant to kill.”

Tim’s breath hitched. The implication crawled down his spine. The assassin hadn’t wanted him dead.

“Why?” Tim whispered, tearing his gaze away, staring at the blood smeared across the tiles. His throat felt tight. “Why not finish it?”

Batman didn’t answer. Not immediately. His hand fell away, gauntlet brushing crimson against his cape. His gaze flicked once to the corpse sprawled in a pool of blood, then back to the window—still cracked open, the night yawning beyond it.

Where Nocturne’s Nebula had vanished.

The silence that followed was louder than any words.

 

____________________________________________________________________________

The night swallowed him whole. He slipped into it like smoke, rooftops blurring beneath his feet as he cut across Gotham’s skyline. Intangible, invisible, little more than a whisper on the wind. In his hand, the blade gleamed faintly under the city lights, Tim Drake’s blood dried along the edge in a thin, dark crust.

He didn’t stop moving until he reached an old laboratory on the city’s outskirts, a building long since abandoned. Windows cracked, walls peeling with mold, vines choking the brickwork. But the locks on the doors meant nothing to him. He phased straight through the glass and into silence.

The air inside was sharp, sterile, preserved like the ghost of experiments long finished. Dust clung to the counters, cobwebs draped like gauze across forgotten microscopes. The hum of old refrigeration units lingered faintly, powered by backup lines no one had ever shut down. It was perfect. Dead enough to hide him. Alive enough to be useful.

Danny moved with the care of ritual. He laid the blade across the counter, then pulled open drawers, finding exactly what he needed: swab kits, slides, centrifuge tubes, even a working filtration system humming in the corner. He worked with clinical precision, snapping open wrappers, aligning tools, arranging everything in a neat row like a surgeon preparing for the knife.

The swab brushed along the blade’s edge, careful, deliberate, pulling every fleck of dried blood into its cotton tip. Then he scraped, dragging the steel clean, collecting what little clung to it in a sterile loop. He sealed both into containers, labeling them not with words but with symbols only he would understand.

He powered on the machines, the soft hum filling the room, and slotted the samples into place. His fingers danced across the keyboard of a scavenged laptop, connecting the system to a private server buried under layers of encryption. Numbers scrolled across the screen as the equipment warmed to life.

Then came the second step. The personal one.

Danny pulled another blade from his belt, its edge still sharp from a previous hunt. He turned it in his hand, then nicked the tip of his finger with a practiced flick. A bead of blood welled up, bright red under the harsh lab lights—red, but threaded faintly with something that shimmered. He let it drip onto a slide, staining the glass with a tiny, deliberate mark.

Now he had two samples. Two truths waiting to be uncovered.

He sealed his own blood away beside the other, then slotted it into the machine. The lab whirred around him, lights blinking to life, pumps sighing as they drew the samples in. The sterile air prickled against his skin, every sound amplified by the stillness of the space.

Danny leaned back against the counter, arms folded, watching the readouts begin their climb. The machines were working. The tests were running.

All that remained was to wait.

The machine hummed softly, its rhythm steady as a heartbeat. Green light flickered across the slab of the workstation, washing Danny’s face in sickly color. He stood utterly still, every muscle locked as his eyes tracked the cascading strings of data. Numbers fell into place, algorithms churned, strands of code unraveled into something sharper, something undeniable.

And then—

Familial Match.

The words pulsed on the screen, glowing, final.

Danny blinked. Once. Twice. His throat clicked as he swallowed. The text didn’t vanish. The readout didn’t shift. It stayed, unwavering, searing itself into him.

Family?

The thought didn’t fit. It rattled against the inside of his skull, bouncing uselessly from wall to wall until it blurred into static. His mind hissed with the same white noise as his core when it ached too long.

“No…” His voice rasped low, hoarse. “No, that’s not—”

It couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible. He didn’t have a brother. That was a truth carved into him as cleanly as the scars on his soul. He was Daniel Fenton. He was the mistake. The accident. The child his parents regretted the moment they realized he couldn’t feed their obsession, couldn’t be twisted into the weapon they wanted.

They hadn’t given him siblings. They’d traded him instead. Traded him for power, for science, for their endless hunt for ghosts. He had been their offering to the abyss.

And yet the screen glowed back at him, relentless in its simplicity.

Familial Match.

Danny’s hand tightened around the edge of the counter, knuckles whitening. The metal groaned faintly beneath his grip, cracks spiderwebbing where ectoplasm leaked unbidden into his touch. His other hand curled over his chest, pressing against his core as though he could smother the storm rising inside.

Family.

Timothy Drake.

The boy from the café. The one he had nearly killed. The one whose blood was still warm on his blade.

His breath stuttered, his chest rising too quickly, like he couldn’t pull in enough air. His vision doubled for a heartbeat, the lab tilting sideways.

“No,” he whispered again, though the word trembled. “No, not him. Not—”

But the machine didn’t lie.

The truth stared back, green letters flickering steady as constellations.

Family.

The machine’s hum filled the sterile lab like a heartbeat that wasn’t his. Familial Match. The words glared from the monitor, green light branding them into his skull.

Danny staggered back a half step, as though distance could change what he saw. His breath hitched, shallow and uneven, pulling too fast, too loud in the silence.

No. No, it’s wrong.

The word looped in his head, every repetition sharper, jagged like glass cutting deeper each time. He gripped the counter with trembling hands, nails scraping metal, the surface groaning under his tightening grasp. His vision blurred, doubled, static crawling across his mind until all he saw was green.

He laughed once—short, hollow, broken. It scraped out of his throat like something dying. “I don’t—no. I don’t have family. I don’t. I don’t!”

The echo of his own voice mocked him in the lab’s emptiness.

He slammed a fist against the counter. Cracks webbed outward where ectoplasm bled into the steel, fissures glowing faintly green before winking out. His core thrummed painfully, rattling against his ribs like it wanted out, like it knew.

He squeezed his eyes shut, but the word burned against the inside of his lids. Family.

His thoughts clawed back, desperate, latching onto truths he had built his entire existence on:

He was Daniel Fenton. The only son. The mistake. The failed experiment. The child who had been abandoned, betrayed, discarded. His parents had chosen ghosts over him, always ghosts, until they put a bullet in his chest and never looked back.

So how—how—could there be someone else?

Images blurred through his head, unwelcome and sharp.

Timothy Drake, leaning against a café wall, flashing that practiced smile like nothing in the world could touch him. Blue eyes sharp, fingers dancing across a phone screen. Calm. Alert. Alive. The cut across his cheek, bright blood gleaming under green lenses. His blood.

Danny’s stomach twisted violently. He pressed a hand to his chest, fingers digging hard enough to bruise. His breathing stuttered into shallow gasps, his throat tight as if invisible chains coiled around it.

I almost killed him.

The thought split him open. He had stalked him, marked him, pressed close enough to taste the fear in the room. He had bloodied him—his own brother.

Brother.

Danny’s laugh fractured into a sob before he could stop it. The sound echoed raw in the sterile space, jagged, unrecognizable. His knees nearly buckled, and he braced himself against the counter, shoulders shaking.

The static in his head roared louder, memories clawing up from the depths: Sam’s scream. Tucker’s hand slipping from his. Jazz’s face twisted in terror as fire swallowed the world. He had failed all of them. Everyone. And now—now he had turned his blade against blood.

Family.

His breath came in ragged bursts. His mask felt suffocating, the rhinestone chains brushing against his shoulder like accusations. He tore it off with a sharp motion, slamming it against the counter. His hands shook so violently the blade in his grip clattered to the floor, ringing shrill against the tile.

He pressed both hands over his face, dragging them down, smearing cold sweat across his skin. “No,” he whispered, voice cracking apart. “No, I can’t—I can’t do this again. I can’t lose another. Not—” His voice broke. “Not family.”

The word hollowed him out.

The monitor still glowed steady behind him, humming. Unchanging.

Familial Match.

Danny slid down the counter until he was crouched on the floor, shoulders hunched, cloak pooling around him like a shroud. His breath hitched, uneven, broken. His fingers curled into his hair, pulling tight as if pain could ground him.

For the first time since the night Amity Park burned, Nocturne’s Nebula trembled.

And Daniel Fenton cried.

The thought wouldn’t leave. It clawed and hooked deeper with every breath, dragging him down. His chest clenched so tight it hurt, like his ribs were a cage squeezing in. Hadn’t he always wondered? Why his eyes never mirrored Maddie’s, why his jawline and hair seemed to belong to no one at the dinner table? Why Jazz—perfect, brilliant Jazz—looked like them in ways he never could? He’d buried those doubts beneath schoolwork, beneath ghost fights, beneath the constant noise of survival. But now… the silence screamed with the answer.

Danny dropped onto the lab stool, the metal groaning under the sudden weight of him. His cloak spilled around him in a star-dappled puddle, constellations stitched across fabric that suddenly felt like a cruel joke. His hands shook as he reached for the vial again, staring at the thin streak of blood inside. Tim’s blood.

Timothy Drake. Blue-eyed. Sharp. Alive in a way Danny hadn’t been in years.

A brother.

The word hollowed him. His throat cinched shut, every swallow scraping raw. Slowly, deliberately, he erased the data from the machine. His fingers flew, deleting, wiping, burying the evidence until the screen blinked black. Gone. But not gone enough. Because the result burned behind his eyelids, branded in the dark: Familial Match.

He sat hunched forward, clutching the vial so tightly the glass creaked, his shoulders trembling under the weight of it. The word echoed like a curse. Family.

It hurt to even think it. His breath stuttered, uneven, pulled ragged from his chest. He forced himself to stare at the blank screen, but the truth wouldn’t leave. It pressed against him like chains he couldn’t cut through.

“No…” The whisper scraped out, low, hoarse, fragile. “No. It’s wrong. It has to be.”

But deep down, in the marrow of him, he knew.

It explained everything. Why Maddie and Jack’s smiles had never reached him the way they did with Jazz. Why every hug had felt stiff, awkward, like they were trying to convince themselves as much as him. He had told himself for years it was their obsession. That they were too blinded by science, too fixated on ghosts to love him the way they should.

But what if it wasn’t blindness? What if it had never been love to begin with?

The vial nearly slipped from his hand. He caught it in a panicked clutch, fingers tightening until his knuckles whitened. His chest heaved, lungs scraping for air that didn’t feel like it wanted him.

“I don’t—” The words broke, cracking open. “I don’t have a brother. I don’t. I can’t.”

His mind spat memories at him like knives. Jazz’s laugh echoing in the hallways. Sam’s smirk when she teased him. Tucker’s grin as he adjusted his PDA. All of them—dead, gone, ashes in the wind. And yet this stranger, this boy who lived in Gotham shadows, carried his blood.

Tears welled, hot and stinging, spilling before he could stop them. They slid down his cheeks, burning tracks under his mask. He ripped it off in one violent motion, slamming it onto the table, the sound sharp in the sterile quiet. His breathing grew harsher, ragged, loud enough to drown the hum of the machines.

“Why now?” The rasp tore from him, jagged and raw. He hunched forward, pressing his face into his arms. “Why now, when I’ve already lost everything?”

The sobs came, shaking his frame, soundless but suffocating. The kind that left his lungs burning. For the first time in years, Daniel Fenton—not Nocturne’s Nebula, not the Phantom Assassin—cried like the boy he had once been.

But grief curdled quick, souring in his chest. His tears dried hot, leaving tracks of salt and fire. His hands curled into fists, nails carving crescents into his palms. His shoulders stiffened, and he raised his head slowly, strands of white hair sticking to damp cheeks.

If this was true—if Tim Drake was his brother—then Jack and Maddie hadn’t just stolen his life. They had stolen his identity. They had stolen family. They had looked him in the eye his entire childhood and lied. Lied until he believed the hollow shape of himself was all he would ever be.

Danny’s gaze sharpened, silver-green light burning in his eyes. His voice, when it came, was a whisper, cracked but steady.

“They lied to me. About everything.”

The vial caught the faint emergency glow, blood shimmering red in his trembling hand. He stared at it like it was both proof and curse.

And in that moment, for the first time since the night Amity Park burned, vengeance wasn’t the only thing in his chest.

Something new burned with it.

Something far more dangerous.

____________________________________________________________________________

He never approached. Not once.

From the shadows, he watched his brother move through Gotham like a ghost that didn’t know it was one. Tim’s stride was brisk, careful, his shoulders always tight, his eyes flicking toward every reflection in a shopfront, every angle of glass in a passing car. Paranoid. Understandably so. Nocturne's Nebula had nearly killed him just nights ago.
Danny followed silently, unseen. He saw the bandage plastered over Tim’s cheek, small and neat against pale skin. He saw the coffee clutched like lifeblood in his hand. He thought about how easily that blood could’ve been spilled completely. How close he’d come. And still… Tim walked on. Brave, or reckless, or both.

Days passed.

Days blurred into weeks.

Weeks bled into a month.

Danny learned him like a rhythm, like a song he couldn’t stop humming. He memorized the streets Tim favored, the corner café where he ordered the same bitter drink, the way he adjusted his tie absentmindedly before walking into Wayne Tower. He tracked the rooftops Red Robin preferred on patrol, the ledges he lingered on when he thought no one was looking.

Danny was always there. Never closer than the stretch of an alley, never farther than the swing of a blade.
Invisible. Silent. Watching.

At first, it wasn’t protection. He wouldn’t lie to himself. It was obsession — the gnawing ache in his chest he couldn’t kill no matter how many blades he sharpened. The word brother hung heavy on his tongue, sour and sweet all at once.

He wondered how it would feel — hearing his name spoken again. Danny. He hadn’t heard it in years. His parents never used it in those final days, their voices sharp with only failure and disappointment. The Fentons had buried it with their bullets. Frostbite, even with all his kindness, only called him Great One. The name that once anchored him had
become a relic, lost with Amity Park’s ashes.

But Tim…

Tim might say it. Might look at him with those sharp blue eyes and see more than a phantom, more than a killer. He might say it like it meant something again. Danny.
Every time Danny imagined stepping out of the shadows, his chest seized. His throat locked. Breath stuttered in his lungs until he thought he’d choke on it. What if Tim turned away? What if he called him a monster? What if the word Danny craved most — brother — was denied him?
So he stayed where he belonged: in the dark.

He perched on rooftops, his cloak rippling in the wind like a torn constellation as Tim passed beneath him, oblivious. He phased through steel and concrete to follow him into Wayne Tower, slipping past cameras, sensors, guards — nothing could stop him. He crouched on the beams above Tim’s office, watching him type furiously under the dim glow of monitors. He hovered outside windows at night, watching the pale wash of phone light across Tim’s exhausted face.

Always there. Never seen.

Some nights, when the loneliness ached too deeply, Danny whispered his own name inside the mask, imagining Tim’s voice saying it back. The syllables echoed hollow in the chamber of his helmet, fragile as glass.

Pathetic.

He knew it. And yet, the longing cut deeper than any blade ever had.

Nocturne’s Nebula was feared in every assassin’s den and whispered about across the underworld. He was the phantom that even shadows feared. Unmatched. Untouchable.

 

But here, in the silence between contracts, he was only Daniel Fenton — a boy waiting for a brother who didn’t know he existed.
And that hurt more than every wound, every betrayal, every scar left behind.

Chapter Text

/🅾＼_・)

Benched. Benched. Tim had been benched. The word itself tasted bitter, like ash on his tongue. They knew he hated it—hated being sidelined, caged, treated like porcelain when he was anything but. And now, just because Timothy Drake had been targeted by Nocturne’s Nebula? Bullshit. Absolute bullshit.

Bruce had spun the narrative perfectly for the media: Timothy Drake was “recovering” from a terrifying assassination attempt. The public lapped it up, murmurs of sympathy painting Tim as a survivor. But the truth? Bruce didn’t give a damn about recovery. He was terrified that Nebula might connect Tim Drake to Red Robin if he put the cape back on too soon. In case he comes back.

But that was the problem—Nebula wasn’t coming back. Not for him. In that twisted, cold mind of his, Tim had already been “judged innocent.” Bruce didn’t see it that way. Bruce never saw it Tim’s way.

Still, Bruce hadn’t said a word about casework.

So Tim walked into Jitters, the café he frequented like ritual. It was the only place in Gotham that served his caffeine poison of choice: the Venti Death Wisher, jet-black coffee cut with an extra kick strong enough to jolt a corpse awake. The bell over the door jingled as he stepped inside, the sharp tang of espresso beans and burnt sugar heavy in the air.

He ordered quickly, voice clipped, and slipped into a corner booth the second he was free. Strategic positioning: his back to the wall, line of sight on both exits, no cameras trained on his seat. Always control the field. Always.

Sliding his bag onto the table, he pulled out his laptop with the precision of a soldier drawing a weapon. The case files loaded instantly, the blue-white glow reflecting in his sharp, sleepless eyes. He had dressed down for the day—loose jeans and an old t-shirt borrowed from Dick’s drawer, the cotton soft and worn at the collar. Civilian. Invisible. Just another customer.

When his drink arrived—black, steaming, strong enough to peel paint—he barely looked up. He took one long sip, the bitterness grounding him, and then his fingers were already flying across the keys.

Benched or not, the work never stopped.

____________________________________________________________________________

ཥ•̫͡•ཤ
Danny watched his brother from across the café, tucked into the shadows of the opposite corner. The disguise was laughable at best: a flimsy paper mask pulled high over his face, cheap sunglasses hiding the glow of his lenses, a hood tugged low. He looked less like an ordinary customer and more like some bottom-rung paparazzi trying to catch a celebrity in the wild. To sell the illusion, he’d even set a small camera on his table, the lens pointed nowhere in particular.

The barista hadn’t blinked. People in Gotham wore stranger things to get coffee.

When the server called out his order, Danny collected his own poison: the Venti Death Wisher with six extra shots of espresso. The bitter brew scorched down his throat, hot enough to burn, sharp enough to keep his mind steady. It was a ritual now. A way to keep the exhaustion at bay.

But even as he drank, his eyes never left his brother.

Tim sat across the café, hunched over his laptop, the pale glow of the screen highlighting the hollows beneath his eyes. His fingers moved fast, precise, dragging data across the screen, case files layering into case files. His posture screamed restlessness—the kind of agitation that came with being benched. Danny recognized it all too well. The boy was suffocating in his own skin.

Danny’s chest tightened. He was glad—relieved—that he had already cleared the streets around this block. No muggers, no assassins, no opportunists left alive within two miles. He had slaughtered them all in the days leading up to this, one by one, leaving no chance for any of them to stumble close enough to lay a hand on his brother. Tim didn’t know it, but every sip of coffee, every keystroke typed in peace, had been bought in blood.

But God—he was fragile. Too fragile. Tim carried himself with steel, sure, but Danny could see it in the curve of his shoulders, the way his skin stretched thin over bone, the too-light grip he had on his cup. Too easy to break. Too easy to hurt.

Danny’s gaze lingered too long.

Tim paused mid-keystroke, frowning faintly. Slowly, deliberately, he raised his head. Blue eyes swept the café.

And landed on him.

Danny’s core jolted like ice water poured over flame. Panic clawed sharp and fast through his chest. He couldn’t be seen. Not like this. Not yet.

He tore his gaze away, fingers already snapping his laptop shut. His disguise rattled in his hurried movements as he grabbed his bag and slung it over his shoulder. His hood fell lower, paper mask tugged high, and he was already moving for the door.

Behind him, Tim’s gaze tracked his exit, cool and sharp. There was no alarm in it, only the faint crease of mild annoyance, like a man spotting yet another photographer who thought they were subtle.

The bell over the café door chimed once, and Danny slipped back into the safety of shadows, heart still pounding against his ribs.
____________________________________________________________________________

Danny had figured out Tim’s schedule with unsettling ease. Coffee in the morning, hours swallowed by work at Wayne Enterprises, and then back to the penthouse to collapse until it all repeated again. A cycle as rigid and predictable as clockwork. Some nights there was company — visitors who came and went — but not often. His brothers, Danny guessed. They seemed busy, too busy to linger.

He huffed quietly, the sound lost in the silence of the room. He stood in the corner of Tim’s penthouse bedroom, intangible and invisible, shadows clinging to him like a second skin. The boy lay sprawled on the bed, the blue glow of a phone screen washing his face pale. It was four in the morning, and he was still awake, thumb scrolling, eyes sharp despite the exhaustion lining them.

Danny’s gaze swept the room. It was neat, almost sterile. Too little food in the kitchen. Just scraps in the fridge and some instant meals in the cupboard. For someone with so much money, he didn’t seem to take care of himself at all.

Danny’s jaw tightened. He thought, fleetingly, about buying him groceries, about stocking the shelves with real food. Something warm, something filling. Something that would keep his brother from wasting away under the weight of exhaustion.

Maybe…

The thought clung, fragile and dangerous, even as he stood unseen in the dark.
____________________________________________________________________________

ཥ•̫͡•ཤ
Tim was a creature of rhythm and restlessness. His fingers flew furiously across the keyboard, the rapid-fire click of keys filling the room. Whenever an email from a stubborn employee popped up on screen, his foot would start tapping under the desk — a sharp, irritated staccato against the hardwood floor. He would mutter under his breath too, not loud enough for anyone else to hear, but Danny caught fragments: dry sarcasm, clipped curses, the kind of biting comments he would never say out loud to their faces.

Sleep came sparingly, like scraps tossed to a starving dog. More often than not, Tim would still be bent over his computer as dawn bled pale light through the blinds. Danny, unable to stand it, began intervening in the smallest ways. A touch to a coffee cup left just enough residue to dull the caffeine. A nudge of ectoplasm into the air to coax his brother’s body into fatigue. It was so subtle Tim never noticed. But by one in the morning, his phone would slip from his hand and his eyes would finally close, the weight of sleep pulling him down. Danny would watch, waiting for his breathing to steady, his chest rising and falling in the fragile peace he rarely let himself have.

In the gym, Tim moved like someone who had been trained but pushed himself harder than he should. Weights clinked steadily in his hands, but it was the self-defense drills that caught Danny’s attention. Sharp, efficient motions — jabs, kicks, disarms — practiced again and again until his shirt clung with sweat. He wasn’t flashy, but he was precise. And for one sharp second, Danny saw his mother in him. The way she used to hold herself, the way she squared her shoulders in a fight. He cut that thought off before it could dig too deep.

Sometimes, when exhaustion pulled Tim into stillness, Danny would see the cracks. The nervous flick of fingers against a mug, the way his jaw tensed when he stared too long at nothing. He chewed at his lip when he read, tapped his pen against his palm when thinking, rubbed at the bridge of his nose when the headache became too much. All small things, human things. All reminders that this boy wasn’t untouchable.

And then there were the searches.

Danny’s stomach coiled the first night he saw it: Tim typing Nocturne’s Nebula into his search bar, combing through articles, half-truths, rumors. The public knew almost nothing. Just bodies left behind. Chains. The name whispered in the underworld. Tim scrolled for hours, his face tight, blue eyes unreadable.

Danny stood invisible at his shoulder, staring at his own name reflected in the glow of the screen.

The boy was hunting a ghost, and didn’t even know the ghost was standing inches away.
____________________________________________________________________________

ཥ•̫͡•ཤ

When Tim eventually dozed off at Wayne Enterprises, head pillowed against his folded arms and the faint glow of his laptop still humming on the desk, Danny slipped into his routine. He drifted from the penthouse to the Manor, unseen and untouchable, and let his presence brush against Bruce Wayne like a cold draft. Not enough to reveal himself, but enough to nudge that hyper-trained paranoia. Bruce would stiffen, frown, and almost immediately start making rounds to check on the others. Eventually, when Tim didn’t respond to calls or texts, Bruce would track his location.

Danny lingered in the shadows, amused. It was almost too easy — like prodding a watchdog until it barked. Creepy, maybe. But billionaires were all weird, weren’t they? With a grim kind of consistency, Bruce would appear at Wayne Enterprises not long after, drive Tim back to the Manor, and scold him into resting properly.

It didn’t happen often. Once every couple of weeks at most. But it was enough for Danny to know the pattern, to know Bruce would always play his part if prompted.

Still, the world outside didn’t pause just because Danny had nudged the chessboard.

The first time a mugger cornered Tim, it had been almost laughable. The man stepped out of an alley, a cheap pistol shaking in his hands. But before he could even call out for money or react, the mugger’s body jerked, throat opened in a clean, soundless line. He collapsed before his brain registered the strike, blood pooling dark against the pavement. Tim walked past without a second glance, never knowing how close he had been.

Danny, cloaked in invisibility above, smiled faintly to himself. Too fragile. Too breakable. That was why he was here.

The assassins were different.

They moved like predators, coordinated, shadows within shadows. Too precise, too skilled to be simple thugs. Danny’s core pulsed with rage the second he saw them tailing Tim down the street, blades glinting faintly under the streetlights. He didn’t hesitate. The fight was quick, merciless. Chains of spectral green lashed out of the dark, wrapping throats and wrists, jerking bodies into the air. Their cries were muffled as steel clattered to the ground, silenced just as swiftly.

When Tim finally glanced back, all he saw was nothing, never seeing the corpses dangling grotesquely from fire escapes, spectral chains gleaming faintly in the night. His brow furrowed, his hand tightening around his coffee cup, but he kept walking.

From above, Danny hovered, eyes glowing faintly, his smile softer this time. Whoever sent those assassins would learn quickly. His brother was untouchable.

As long as he was there.
____________________________________________________________________________

/🅾＼_・)

He could feel it. The weight of eyes on him, a prickling at the back of his neck that never really went away. No, he wasn’t crazy—he had proof. Subtle, quiet things. He was falling asleep easier now, like his body had finally decided to cooperate with the idea of rest. That never happened on its own. And the city… it had been quiet. Too quiet. He hadn’t been snatched off the streets in weeks, hadn’t fought off another abduction attempt, hadn’t even stumbled into the usual nightly chaos. For Gotham, that was practically a miracle.

And then there was the food. At first, he chalked it up to his own forgetfulness. But no—there was more in his fridge. Stocked shelves where there hadn’t been before. Fresh fruit he didn’t remember buying, freezer meals he was positive hadn’t been there yesterday. Jason, maybe. It felt like something Jason would do—loudly deny it, but quietly shove a pack of groceries into his kitchen. Still, the frequency of it nagged at him.

But what nagged worse was the secrecy.

The others were keeping something from him. He could see it in the way conversations ended the moment he entered the room, in the looks passed between Dick and Bruce, in the way even Alfred hesitated before answering simple questions. It burned under his skin. Just because he wasn’t technically a legal adult—he was emancipated, damn it—that didn’t mean they could treat him like a child. And if Damian was in the loop when he wasn’t? That stung even more. He could practically hear Damian’s smug little voice every time the thought crossed his mind.

He sighed heavily, the fight bleeding out of him with the breath. His body felt like lead as he dropped onto the mattress, limbs sprawled carelessly. For once, exhaustion won before his mind could spiral too far. His eyelids sank shut, his phone slipping from his hand onto the blanket beside him.

Sleep came quickly—too quickly. And though he wouldn’t admit it aloud, a part of him wondered if that was proof enough. Something was happening around him, unseen. Something he wasn’t meant to notice.

And still… he drifted off with the thought echoing faintly in the back of his mind.
____________________________________________________________________________

He had a horrible feeling. It gnawed at him in the quiet hours, that sharp, instinctual dread he had learned never to ignore. Every time Tim left the Manor, or even his penthouse, bodies turned up. Always the same calling card. Always the same gruesome signature that screamed Nocturne’s Nebula.

Bruce had Jason tailing him, but even that did little to ease the tension. Jason was good at watching Tim’s back, but Jason couldn’t stop something intangible. Something that killed like a phantom. Bruce had seen what Nebula could do. He knew how impossible it was to defend against it.

Still, there were strange comforts. Jason had reported Tim was sleeping more, slipping into unconsciousness earlier in the night instead of grinding himself down until dawn. It was unusual—Tim rarely allowed himself that much reprieve—but Bruce hoped that, at the very least, it was a sign of something better. Maybe, after all this ended, the boy might hold on to the habit.

But first, Bruce had to do what he dreaded: tell Tim he was being grounded.

The deaths were becoming more frequent. Contractors, spies, burglars—every type of scum who dared cross Tim’s path wound up gutted or strung up in alleys. Nocturne’s Nebula was circling him. Why, Bruce still couldn’t determine. But he wasn’t about to risk finding out the hard way. He wouldn’t be late this time. Not like with Jason.

The door opened, and Tim stepped in, eyebrow already arched with suspicion. Jason trailed close behind, a half-smirk on his lips like he was enjoying this far too much. They hadn’t told Tim about the bodies—not yet. Bruce knew how Tim would twist that inward, shoulder the blame like it was his own fault. But maybe… maybe that was the card he’d have to play to make him stay put.

Tim crossed his arms loosely. “What’s up, B? You had me escorted like some kind of VIP—Jason, in civilian clothes, no less.”

Jason snorted and thudded into a chair, sprawling with casual arrogance. “Yeah, well, don’t get used to it, Replacement. Old man’s got something to tell you, and I wanted front row seats to see your face when he does.” He winked.

Bruce’s sigh came heavy, weighed down by everything he wasn’t saying yet. “Tim. Please sit.”

Tim dropped into the chair opposite, brows knitting tighter. “Alright, what’s up?” He wore sweatpants and a loose t-shirt—Duke’s, if Bruce wasn’t mistaken. He let his eyes linger there a moment, finding a small, bitter comfort in the way the Batfamily left pieces of themselves with each other. For a heartbeat, he almost smiled.

But reality was heavier.

“There’s been a pattern,” Bruce said carefully, his voice low, controlled. He leaned forward, steepling his fingers. “Every time you leave the Manor or your penthouse, bodies are found. Same method. Same signature. Nocturne’s Nebula.”

Tim blinked, once, slowly. Confusion furrowed his brow before it sharpened into disbelief. “You’re telling me… what, exactly? That Nebula’s following me around like some kind of—” he scoffed, shaking his head. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

Jason leaned back, boots propped on the table. “Makes enough sense when you look at the crime scenes. He’s cleaning house around you, kid. Contractors, spies, two-bit thieves—doesn’t matter. If they get too close? They’re meat.”

Bruce’s chest tightened as he watched Tim process. He saw the flicker in his eyes, the way his jaw clenched, the way his hand flexed slightly against his knee. The boy was running calculations, turning theories over, but underneath it all, Bruce saw what he feared most: guilt.

Tim’s voice came out thinner than usual, threaded with anger trying to hold itself together. “So people are dying. Because of me.”

Bruce leaned forward, voice sharper now. “No. Because of him. Nebula. Not you. You are not responsible for what he does.”

Tim’s eyes snapped to his, blazing with that stubborn Drake defiance. “But if I wasn’t there—if I wasn’t me—they wouldn’t be dead, Bruce!”

Jason muttered, “Here we go,” but quieted when Bruce shot him a look.

Bruce let out a breath, slow and heavy. “That’s why you’re staying here. At the Manor. Until we know more. I won’t risk you being his excuse to slaughter half of Gotham’s underworld.”

Tim shoved back in his chair, teeth gritted, his hands curling into fists. “You can’t just cage me because you’re scared of what he might do.”

“Watch me,” Bruce said, voice like stone.

The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on. Tim’s glare burned hot, his shoulders shaking faintly, but Bruce held his gaze steady. Because beneath all the anger, all the defiance, he saw the boy’s fear. And the worst part—the part that made Bruce’s own chest ache—was knowing Tim wasn’t afraid of Nebula.

He was afraid of himself.

Bruce held Tim’s glare without flinching. He’d been here before—with Dick, with Jason, with Damian. The same look: the fury of a boy who wanted to be treated as an equal, colliding with the fear of a father who couldn’t risk losing him. But Tim was different. Tim wasn’t explosive like Jason or sharp like Damian. His anger ran quieter, tighter. The kind that ate a person alive from the inside.

Tim’s lips pressed thin, the muscles in his jaw twitching. Finally, his voice broke the silence, low but sharp. “So that’s it? I just… stay here while he circles me? While people keep dying?”

Bruce’s jaw tightened. “If you leave, more bodies will turn up. If you stay, we control the environment. We keep you safe. We keep Gotham safe.”

Tim barked out a laugh, humorless. “You mean you keep me on a leash. Do you even hear yourself?” His hands dragged through his hair, tugging at the strands. “You can’t just ground me out of this, Bruce. He’s out there, and he’s—he’s—”

Jason cut in, voice rough. “He’s watching you. That’s the point. It’s creepy as hell. He’s gutting anyone that sneezes near you. You don’t get how messed up this is?”

Tim turned his glare on Jason. “You think I don’t notice? You think I don’t feel it every time I walk into a room? I’m not an idiot. I know something’s off. Nobody even tries to touch me anymore, not a mugger, not an assassin, not even a scammer with a pen. It’s been weeks. You think that doesn’t make me paranoid?”

Bruce’s chest ached at the crack in his voice, the slip of exhaustion beneath the words.

Tim pushed back from the table, standing so fast the chair legs screeched against the floor. His hands shook as he braced them against the backrest, knuckles white. His shoulders rose and fell like he was trying to hold the whole world on them.

Bruce stood, slow, measured. “Tim.” His voice was softer now, less command, more plea. “I won’t lose you. Not to him. Not to this.”

Tim’s eyes flicked to him, wide, raw, anger and fear tangled together in the blue. For a moment, Bruce thought he might say something—something cutting, something that would break them both.

But instead, Tim just shook his head. “You already did,” he whispered, and walked out.

The room stayed quiet after the door shut.

Jason broke it with a low whistle. “That went about as well as expected.” He leaned forward, arms resting on his knees. “So, B. You gonna tell him the part where Nebula’s not just circling him? He’s… circling him.”

Bruce closed his eyes, the weight of Jason’s words pressing like stone. He could still see the way Tim’s hands had trembled. The boy thought he was being haunted. And maybe he was.

Not by Nebula the assassin.

But by someone else entirely.
____________________________________________________________________________

Danny watched. Always watched.

From the rooftops above Gotham, cloaked in night, he tracked the small figure standing on the ledge of a building too tall for anyone human to lean on so carelessly. Tim looked down at the city, restless, shoulders drawn tight. His eyes moved constantly, scanning the streets, cataloguing patterns no one else saw. To anyone else, he looked in control. But Danny saw the tension in the lines of his back, the way his hands flexed against the railing. His brother wasn’t just watching Gotham. He was carrying it.

Danny’s core ached. He wanted to whisper—you don’t have to. But the words froze in his throat every time.

Later, he followed him into the Manor. He drifted through walls and shadows, invisible in the grand library where voices rose like clashing steel. Tim paced in tight, furious loops, words sharp as knives as he argued with Bruce. His arms moved as he spoke, slicing the air, demanding to be heard, demanding to be treated as more than a boy. Bruce stood immovable, the stone wall Tim kept breaking himself against. Danny lingered in the corner, unseen, watching the raw hurt flicker in Tim’s expression when his words hit nothing but silence.

 

Danny’s fists clenched until the air hummed faintly green. He wanted to tear into Bruce, shake him, make him see the boy for what he was—sharp, brilliant, alive. Not fragile. Not weak. But still, he stayed. Because this wasn’t his war to fight. Not yet.

And then came the nights Danny lingered longest.

The penthouse windows glowed faintly against the Gotham dark. Danny phased through the glass without a sound, folding into the shadows. Inside, his brother had collapsed at his desk, cheek pressed to folded arms, phone buzzing unanswered at his elbow. His breath was steady in sleep, eyelashes brushing pale skin, strands of black hair falling across his forehead. The glow of the laptop screen painted him fragile, younger than he ever let himself seem awake.

Danny stood there for hours, unmoving, invisible at the window. Just breathing in the sight. Like oxygen. Like proof that Tim was real, alive, still here.

Every time Danny left, his chest hurt worse.

Because as much as he wanted to step forward, to speak, to claim that word he’d been denied all his life, he couldn’t. Not yet.

So he watched. Always watched.

Danny had learned restraint—or something close to it. He no longer left corpses strung up like grotesque warnings, not unless he had to. Now, his calling card was different: bloodied men, broken and battered but alive, groaning in alleys or chained to fire escapes. A message without finality. Mercy, though not much of it. But when a knife pressed too close to Tim’s ribs, when a bullet was chambered with his name behind it, Danny showed no hesitation. Those ones didn’t walk away. They didn’t deserve to.

The Bats noticed. Of course they did. His pattern was too precise, too close to Tim’s orbit. He could feel their suspicion thickening the air every time one of them shadowed the boy. But it didn’t matter. They could hate him, they could hunt him, they could damn him for every life he took. So long as Tim lived, Danny would bear the weight.

Tonight, the city was quiet.

Tim was slumped sideways in his bed, blanket twisted around his legs, his phone still buzzing faintly against the nightstand. Dark circles haunted his eyes even in sleep, lips parted slightly as he breathed slow, steady. He looked… human. Mortal. Fragile in a way Danny’s chest couldn’t stand.

For once, Danny let the veil slip. The invisibility, the intangibility—all of it melted away. He stood solid in the moonlight filtering through the window, his cloak pooling around him, chains whispering faintly in the silence.

Slowly, carefully, he moved closer. His gloved hand hovered for a moment, hesitation locking his joints. Then, with a breath that trembled in his chest, he reached out.

His fingers brushed Tim’s hair back from his forehead, strands soft against calloused skin. The boy didn’t stir. Danny’s touch lingered for the barest second, the ache in his chest twisting like a knife.

“Brother…” he whispered, the word lost to the quiet.

He sighed, the sound heavy with longing, with grief. Then his hand fell back, his body dissolving into the ether.

By the time Tim shifted in his sleep, the room was empty once more. Only the faint trace of cold air, like a ghost had passed, lingered behind.

Chapter Text

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Tim had been emboldened, it seemed. The body count had slowed, deaths reduced to only a few scattered across the city. Enough to draw whispers, but not the storm it had been. And Tim… Tim was having a good day. For once.

Danny crouched on a rooftop, high above the pulsing veins of Gotham. The skyline glittered faintly in the distance, fractured and jagged like a crown broken into shards. Neon signs bled color into the night, their glow crawling across glass and steel, a city alive in its sleepless hum. The air was cool against his skin, tugging gently at the edges of his cloak. The rhinestone chains dangling from his hat chimed faintly with each breeze, the sound delicate, almost peaceful.

For the first time in what felt like forever, he didn’t feel suffocated.

Below, Wayne Enterprises spilled out its tired employees into the night, but his eyes found only one. His brother walked down the steps, phone in hand, thumb flying furiously across the screen. Tim typed so fast Tucker would’ve been jealous. Danny sighed, the thought cutting sharper than he expected. His chest tightened at the memory, and just like that, the night’s fragile calm cracked. He forced the ache down, shoved the ghosts of Amity back where they belonged, and refocused on Tim.

Tim’s lips curved into a small, quiet smile at something on his phone. The expression was soft, unguarded, slipping past his usual sharp composure. Danny didn’t know if it was Bernard, or Kon, or someone else entirely who earned that smile — but whoever it was, they made his brother happy. And that was enough. More than enough.

Danny moved along the edge of the rooftop, silent and invisible, keeping pace above as Tim walked below. His eyes catalogued every detail: the way Tim’s shoulders eased after hours of tension, the slow release of a burden he carried too tightly; the faint hum of laughter he tried to swallow, slipping out anyway. Danny loved that sound. Fragile, rare, fleeting.

Tim looked so alive. So normal. Everything Danny wasn’t.

He couldn’t help it — the thought crept in like poison. Tim would never want me. Never love me. Not if he knew. Not if he saw what I’ve become. A monster draped in starlight and blood. A phantom that haunted instead of lived.

Danny’s chest ached with something sharp and unfamiliar. Longing, maybe. Or loss. Or both. His lips moved before he could stop them, his voice low and frayed, spilling into the empty dark.

“Stay happy, big brother.”

The word felt strange on his tongue, fragile, broken — but it fit. God, it fit.

For one trembling heartbeat, he let himself imagine it. Walking beside Tim instead of stalking from above. Hearing his own name spoken back, not spat as a curse, not as a false identity, but as family. Brother.

For a moment, the night felt almost kind.

But Gotham never allowed kindness for long.

Across the street, shadows shifted — too sharp, too deliberate. Danny’s lenses narrowed as he spotted them. The glint of a blade beneath a coat. The too-casual stride of men who didn’t belong.

The ache in his chest hardened, turning to ice. The peace of the night shattered.

Tim was being hunted again.

And monsters like Danny didn’t get to dream. They only got to kill.

Danny was sloppy that night. Too sloppy. His focus had lingered too long on the way Tim’s shoulders had finally relaxed, on the faint curve of a smile that softened his brother’s face. He hadn’t seen the way shadows spilled out of the alleys until it was almost too late — a tide of leather and greasepaint, boots scuffing against pavement, voices cracking with manic laughter.

Danny’s eyes narrowed, fury rising sharp in his chest. Faces smeared in grotesque grins, purple and green fabric clashing under the sickly glow of neon. Joker’s colors. Joker’s men.

Tim didn’t notice at first. His attention was glued to the phone in his hand, thumbs flying over the screen, his grin widening faintly at whatever reply had come through. Danny’s core jolted with panic. No. No, no, no, NO— That smile, that fragile slice of light, was about to be snuffed out.

“Drake!” one of the goons barked, his voice carrying ugly across the street.

Tim froze. His head snapped up, phone vanishing into his pocket with a smooth practiced motion. His posture shifted in an instant—shoulders squaring, feet planting, stance settling into the instinctive rhythm of combat. He wasn’t defenseless. He never was. But there were too many. Too close.

Danny moved.

He vaulted across the rooftop, cloak snapping like a storm cloud in the wind, chains chiming faintly with each stride. His eyes glowed beneath the brim of his hat, silver bleeding into venomous green, fury building with every step.

 

Below, the first goon lunged. Tim blocked the strike with his forearm, twisting the attacker’s wrist until it popped, then driving an elbow into the man’s ribs. Another swung a bat—Tim ducked, the weapon whistling past his ear. A third raised a knife. Too many angles. Too fast.

Danny didn’t think. He fell.

His cloak flared wide, trailing stars as he dropped into the fray. The night seemed to ripple around him as his boots hit pavement. Behind one thug, his blade already flashed. Silver-green light burned in his eyes as steel kissed flesh. The man crumpled, throat opening in a silent scream.

The others froze. Laughter cut off mid-breath, choked into silence.

Tim staggered back, wide-eyed. He knew that silhouette. Cloak stitched with constellations. Chains glinting. The galaxy mask catching neon light in impossible spirals. Rhinestone charms on the hat swaying with an eerie, delicate chime.

For the second time, Tim saw him.

Could Danny slaughter them all? Yes. He could end it in seconds. Less than a minute and the alley would run red, the bodies hung high as warnings for every lowlife in Gotham. He could. He wanted to.

But Tim was watching.

Did he want his brother to see that?

No.

Gunfire split the night, harsh cracks echoing like thunder between the concrete walls. Muzzles flared, bullets whistling hot through the dark.

Danny moved before the thought had even finished forming. Instinct and terror carried him.

He lunged, grabbing Tim, dragging him flush against his chest. His arms locked tight, unbreakable.

The cloak unfurled around them, wrapping them in a sphere of shadow and starlight. Galaxies twisted across its surface, constellations shifting in slow, hypnotic arcs. Bullets struck the fabric and vanished, swallowed whole like stones into deep water. Not even a ripple marked where they hit.

Inside the cocoon, the chaos dimmed. Gunfire dulled to distant echoes. The stink of smoke and blood muted into silence.

Tim stiffened, a gasp ripping from him, hands braced instinctively against Danny’s chest. His pulse hammered like a drum, panicked and alive.

Danny held tighter. The warmth of him bled into his cold armor, searing his ribs, his core, his very breath. Tim’s heart pounded against his own chest, fast but steady. Alive. So achingly alive.

Danny closed his eyes behind the glow of his lenses. His throat constricted, breath coming uneven. He didn’t want to let go. Not of this. Not of him.

Outside, Joker’s men cursed and stumbled back, their voices breaking with fear. Demon, they muttered. Devil. Boots scuffed against asphalt as they regrouped, trying to summon bravado.

 

Danny didn’t care. For one fragile heartbeat, he wasn’t Nocturne’s Nebula. He wasn’t the Phantom Assassin.

He was just a boy, clutching his big brother in the dark, terrified that if he let go, the universe would take him away too.
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The cloak stayed sealed around them, a living shroud of shadow and stars. Starlight rippled faintly across the fabric, constellations shifting in slow, hypnotic arcs that seemed to pulse with every heartbeat. Tim strained to see beyond it, but the dark pressed close, swallowing everything but the faint, terrible outline of glowing eyes—silver one moment, green the next, cold and bright all at once.

Then came the sound.

A hiss of steel, sharp and metallic. A rattle of chains, low and hungry.

The first scream split the night, muffled through the barrier but unmistakable. It was raw, desperate—and then cut short with a wet gurgle that ended in silence. A body hit the pavement outside with a sickening thud. Tim flinched, every muscle in his body tensing, but the figure only drew him tighter, a wall of solid strength between him and the unseen carnage.

More screams followed.

They rose and overlapped, bouncing off the concrete canyon of the alley. The clash of metal. The sickening crack of bones snapping. Voices shrieking in pain, begging, cursing. The sound of men dying, one after another. The chains rattled again and again, swift and merciless, each rattle punctuated by silence as another voice was extinguished.

Tim squeezed his eyes shut, but it didn’t stop the images from forming. His mind painted the horror behind the curtain of shadows: faces twisted in terror, bodies thrown aside like broken dolls, blood slicking the pavement. His stomach twisted violently, nausea clawing at the back of his throat. Whoever this was, whatever this was—they weren’t fighting. They weren’t defending.

They were slaughtering.

And yet… he wasn’t dead.

The cloak never wavered. Not once. No blade cut through. No bullet pierced. The cocoon of shadow held strong, wrapping him in warmth that seeped through the assassin’s armor. He could feel the faint rise and fall of a chest against his back, steady and unyielding. The grip around him was absolute, locking him into place, refusing to let him go.

For the killers outside, the chains spelled death. Methodical. Efficient. Merciless.

But for Tim, wrapped in shadow and starlight, it was something else entirely.

Protection.

The final scream cut through the night, shrill and panicked, then snapped off with the crunch of steel tightening around bone. Silence followed. Heavy. Absolute. The kind of silence that carried weight, pressing down against the ears, the chest, the heart.

The chains retracted slowly, clinking in faint satisfaction, like a predator licking its teeth.

The cloak did not open. Did not reveal the carnage outside. Tim’s breath came shallow, chest tight with dread. He opened his eyes, and there they were—those lenses glowing cold in the dark, fixed on him like he was the only thing in the world worth noticing.

He realized, with a jolt, that the man wasn’t taller than him. Slightly shorter, actually. Yet every attempt to move was useless. The arms that caged him were unrelenting, iron wrapped in shadow.

He pulled once, hard, testing. Nothing. The assassin didn’t even shift.

Tim’s pulse thundered, his mind racing. Not taller. Not older. Just stronger. Strong enough to pin me like I’m nothing.

The mask tilted down at him, expression unreadable, but the weight of that gaze was suffocating.

He felt arms coil tight around him, an iron embrace that crushed him close against a chest as cold and immovable as stone. Before he could even react, the world dropped out from under him.

Gravity ripped away.

His stomach lurched into his throat, nausea clawing up instantly as the ground vanished. The familiar solidity of pavement and city lights was replaced by a dizzying rush of weightlessness. Tim groaned, instinct clawing for survival, his fingers grabbing desperately at whatever he could—fabric, armor, anything solid in the whirl of dark. His hands clenched around the folds of that star-speckled cloak like a drowning man clutching driftwood.

“Let go!” The words tore from him in a raw, panicked bark.

The wind howled past his ears as they shot upward, fast enough to leave his stomach behind. Cold air tangled through his hair, whipped it across his forehead. He risked one look down and instantly regretted it—Gotham sprawled beneath him, skyscrapers shrinking to toys, streets blurring into tangled veins of neon and shadow.

Nocturne’s Nebula could fly. He could fucking fly.

And he was taking Tim with him.

Panic thundered through Tim’s chest. He didn’t dare thrash—not this high, not with nothing but air yawning open beneath him. Every instinct screamed that a single wrong move would end with him plummeting like dead weight. His pulse roared in his ears, breath coming shallow and too fast as he locked his arms tighter around the cloak, hating himself for how badly he needed the hold.

“Where are you taking me!?” His voice broke out, sharp and furious, trying to cover the tremor of fear. His free hand fumbled toward his pocket, searching for the hidden panic button sewn into the lining of his clothes. If he could just—

Nothing.

The only response was silence. Silence heavy enough to choke. The assassin didn’t flinch, didn’t speak, didn’t even acknowledge the question. The only sounds were the rush of the wind and the steady rattle of chains swaying with the motion.

Tim’s teeth clenched. His mind raced, cycling through possibilities—interrogation? Execution? Leverage? Every outcome ended badly. His fingers dug harder into the cloak, knuckles whitening. His heart hammered so violently it felt like it might break through his ribs.

And still, the only thing he could feel was the cold strength holding him fast, carrying him higher and higher into the dark.