Chapter 1: Hope, Love, and Duct Tape
Chapter Text
Danny had seen a lot of blood in his life, but he sometimes wondered whether he'd seen more of his own than other people's. Up until the previous year, his answer would be easy: other people's blood. Now, though?
Looking down at the ground beneath him, he no longer knew the answer. Red and toxic green spilled out of him and pooled around him on the no-longer-sterile floor of the Fenton's lab. There was way too much of it on the outside of him. If he'd been alive, blood loss would have killed him hours ago. Days ago? He'd lost track of how long he'd been on that table. Fear, pain, and the resulting adrenaline had kept him mercilessly conscious through every cut, stab, sample, and scrape. If he ever wanted to torture himself (or someone else...), then he could write down a chronological list of everything his foster parents had done to him. It would probably be better documentation than the Fentons could produce.
He'd seen their blueprints being used as coasters more than once.
The lab floor might never be the same color again. Ancients knew he'd not be cleaning it up. After what had happened...
He had no idea where he'd go, but anywhere was better than here. No ten-year-old should know what color their spleen is. No ten-year-old should know what their spleen feels like when they stuff it back in their chest.
No ten-year-old should know what anyone's spleen looks like, but he'd seen more than just his. Growing up as an assassin was...
Yeah, he really missed the days when all he had to think about was surviving through the next mission with his sister. He missed her constantly, no matter what he'd told Jazz before she'd left for college. Jazz was great! But she wasn't his big sister. She wasn't even really his sister; she was just the bio kid who really belonged in his foster family.
As much time as she'd spent with him, Jazz had always been too different from him for her to fit into a "sibling" spot in his brain. He'd been something like five years old when he'd woken up in Amity Park's hospital; Jazz had been fourteen. She'd been the one to teach him sign language. Speech lessons were always with her, not the other two Fentons. His name was a gift from her, not anyone else. Jazz had taught him how to be a person.
Jazz was always more like a mom to him than a sister.
Danny really wished she was here right now, but she hadn't been home in a long time. He knew how awful holidays were at the Fenton house. He hated being there during the annual Santa Debate! If he'd been able to stay away from it like Jazz could, he'd do it, too! Jazz didn't deserve to suffer through it; he was happy she could avoid coming home for so long!
... If she'd come home, would she have seen how much he was being hurt? Would she have been able to help him with the ghosts? Would she have been able to change Maddie and Jack's minds?
...
Would she have been there when he died?
...
Would she care?
Danny found himself staring at the door to her room. He didn't remember how he'd gotten there. The hand that wasn't holding his belly shut shook as it reached for the handle. It took him five tries before he got a good grip on it. His own blood and ectoplasm made it hard to hold anything (like his spleen), but he got the door open. Inside her room, the darkness reached out to him like a safety net.
He walked in, ignoring how the sticky feeling on his bare feet changed when they met the fuzzy rug on her floor. If he thought about it, he'd have to think about the footprints he'd left coming up from the lab. He didn't want to think about that. He didn't want to think about what the Fentons would do if they found him again.
That shaking hand closed the door behind him without him really thinking about it. Danny gave in to the illusion of safety that Jazz's room always gave him, just for a moment. It was the only comfort he really had now. The Portal had taken every other one away from him, one at a time, until he only had this. Now, this was going to be the last time he'd feel this one.
He tore himself away from that feeling, and it felt like he'd torn something out of his Core.
Pushing past the tears, Danny dug out the roll of duct tape he'd hidden under the bed. It took him more time than usual since bending over to get it made it harder to hold his skin closed. He had to dig around in the boxes of things that Jazz had always said she'd come back to get, although she never did. Finally, he found it hiding under the box she'd labeled 3b, whatever that was supposed to mean. It didn't have much duct tape left on it. He hoped it would be enough to close the three biggest cuts. Maybe he'd be able to find some more in the Realms?
Danny hoped so. He didn't know where else he'd find some, and he'd never been able to sew himself up like he'd heard you were supposed to.
The tape fought him, but he got it to hold the big cut down his belly closed after he'd used his torn shirt to wipe it dry. He didn't have enough for both of the other two cuts, so he tried his best to keep the bottom of the triangle from flapping up. It would have been easier if the cuts weren't so messy.
He shouldn't have fought back so much! Then the lines would be straight!
Danny shook the tears away from his eyes, then looked down at his ruined shirt. Normally, he'd wear it and hope no one noticed the blood. That wouldn't work this time; Maddie had cut it down the front to get at his chest while Jack got out a clean-ish set of scalpels.
How was he going to cover this? It wasn't like he'd be going to school again, so he didn't need to be that good, but he still didn't want to worry anyone if the skin flaps opened up. The other ghosts always got those weird looks on their faces when they saw him all bloody when no one had fought him that day. Whatever those looks meant, he didn't like it. They always went after the other Livings more when they'd looked like that, and he wouldn't be there to protect the people in Amity Park anymore.
His butt hurt when it hit the carpet, but he didn't notice. He was too busy trying not to cry. It hurt! He wasn't going to be able to keep them safe anymore! His Core hurt!
It wasn't like it mattered that much, right? He'd been awful at it. That's what everyone was always saying! He knew they were right, too. So many people got hurt, from both of his peoples, and it felt like he'd only gotten worse and worse as time went by. He'd done everything he could think of, but it was never enough. Phantom was never enough.
So why did it hurt so much to know he had to leave?
...
The pain in his Core wasn't important right now! He had to get out of here, get into the Realms, and get as far away from the Portal as he could. No one would help him, not after he'd messed up and they learned Danny was Phantom. Everyone here would turn him over to the Fentons if he tried to ask for help. No one cared about him here anymore.
...
Had anyone ever cared about him in Amity Park?
If they had, they'd stopped a long time ago. He wished he just had one person he knew cared about him, but-
Danny froze. A wish was a bad thing in Amity Park, but maybe it would help him now. He didn't know how things could get worse, but if he just had one person to help him, maybe he could deal with whatever happened this time.
It was a stupid idea. He knew that. Danny had a lot of stupid ideas. Everyone said that; even Jazz used to say that! But...
This was something he really wished was true. He didn't want to be alone anymore! His Core felt like it was breaking into pieces right now. He was bleeding all over the rug, he'd run out of duct tape, and Maddie had cut up his only shirt. This was all he wanted right now, and it was all he could think of right now, so he'd risk it. Maybe luck would be nice to him for once; who knows?
With trembling hands, Danny dragged the blanket and sheet off of Jazz's bed. She wouldn't mind, right? It wasn't like she'd notice. She hadn't come home for so long now; he didn't think she ever would. If she did, she'd just have to understand that he needed them more than she did. They'd hide his cuts.
The sheet was what he wrapped around his belly. He wrapped it as tight as he could. It wasn't like he needed to breathe, right? He didn't have to worry about blood flow, either! He'd have a hard time making it flow after he changed forms, anyway! The sheet just had to keep him together. When he let the familiar rings pass over him, the sheet stayed. Huh. The bandages didn't usually stick around after he changed. He must be pretty tired. The cuts were still there-- he could feel them-- so maybe the sheet was still there to keep them closed, just like how the duct tape stuck around. That sounded about right.
Wrapping the blanket around his shoulders like a cape made him giggle wetly. Heh, he had a cape now! A proper cape to match the Crown of Space that he felt hiding in his Core. Actually, it felt like it was trying to wrap itself around his Core. He felt it calling out to the Ring of Balance to come to help it like it sometimes did, but the Ring was still not coming. Phantom wondered where had gone off to. Sometime between when he'd shoved Pariah back in his box and when he'd been woken up by the Crown poking at its new King, the Ring had run away. No one knew why it did that, except maybe Clockwork, but he'd distracted Phantom with cookies both of the times that he'd gone to the Long Now to ask about it. He'd given up on asking.
The cookies were nice, though.
Holding onto the thought of having those cookies again someday, Phantom flew down out of Jazz's room and back to the Lab. It wasn't any different than it was after he'd messed up and someone got caught. That felt really unfair. It should look different, somehow. The Lab had just changed everything about his life, so shouldn't it have to change?
The Portal was closed, but that wouldn't be true for long. He floated down to the control panel. Making it open had gotten easier after he'd figured out which wires did what. He tore out the right ones now, and the blast doors opened up slowly. The Portal was the same, but that felt like it was a good thing.
If it had been falling apart, he knew things would be much worse than they were now.
Flying through it gave him more energy. It always did; the Portal liked him, and the ectoplasm in the Realms kept him alive. It kept him dead, too, but he didn't mind that much anymore. It might be the reason he was so different, but it gave him so many things he didn't ever want to give up!
It was the reason he'd been cut open. It was the reason he'd survived.
Shaking away those thoughts and the tears that they came with, Phantom flew towards where Desiree's Lair was today. It was nice to be able to find things in the Realms without floating around for days. That was one of his favorite things about being the King. He didn't keep a list or anything, but he knew it was anyway. There were a lot of things that he didn't like, but he would choose to fight Pariah again, even now that he knew what it meant. The other ghosts didn't deserve to have to live with Pariah Dark in charge of them. He might not be the best, but he didn't know who would be better. Until he found someone like that, he'd be the best Ghost King he could be.
Phantom would just have to do better at it than he had at protecting Amity Park.
A bad cough tried to happen, so Phantom was fighting back the ectoplasm and blood in his throat when he flew into Desiree's Lair. She wasn't being mean to him anymore, but they weren't really friends. When he heard the warning ecto-blast shoot by his head, he realized that he'd forgotten to knock.
"Sorry, Desiree!" Phantom croaked. He frowned. Why was his throat so sore? He hadn't Wailed recently, and he didn't think he was sick. Was it-- oh, right. He'd been screaming and crying for a lot of the time that Maddie and Jack had been doing things to him. That was why his voice was sore.
The djinn floated over to meet him. The frown on her face made him flinch. It looked too much like Maddie's had.
"What is it, ghost child?" Desiree grumbled at him, "I was almost done making a cup of the Turkish coffee you brought me beans for last week."
He ducked his head, gulping down another cough when he did. Phantom really hoped she hadn't picked up on that. As soon as he felt like it was safe, he apologized, "Sorry. I didn't mean to be so rude. I'll try to remember to knock next time."
Her frown softened, and she replied, "You are forgiven. Would you like to join me? I am sure I still have some of your favorite tea."
"No thanks. Thank you for the offer, though!" Phantom shook his head, then quickly asked, "Can I ask you for a favor?"
Desiree's eyebrows shot up. Confused, she asked back, "Why would you ask for a favor from me, Phantom?"
"I won't be able to guard the Amity Portal anymore, but I need to make a wish, so I thought maybe you'd be willing to let people know that I won't be there to... to protect them if they..." Phantom answered her, but his voice got thicker and thicker as he did. It hurt, and so did his Core! The hand clutching his blanket tightened when his words ran out.
That look he didn't understand was on her face right now. He double-checked his hold on the blanket, but none of the injuries under it were showing, so why did she look like that? It was a look that the ghosts had been getting more and more often lately.
Phantom really hoped that they didn't go to Amity and attack the Livings there without him around.
A long silence made him wiggle in place. He needed her to say something soon because he was feeling another cough coming on that he didn't think he'd be able to hold back. Just before he felt like he was going to lose it, she slowly replied, "I will let the others know that you will no longer be able to stay near Amity Park."
He smiled at her, wheezing, "Thanks, Desiree!"
That look hadn't left her face yet, but she didn't seem to be leaving, so he asked quietly, "Can I make my wish now?"
"Of course, my King," Desiree replied.
Breathing in as much as his recently broken-open ribcage would let him, despite the fact he didn't need to, Phantom carefully stated, "I wish I could live with at least one person who cared about and loved me."
The way that Desiree flinched back when he made his wish worried him, but he could already feel her power working. There was anger in her voice when she said her words, anger that he really hoped wasn't aimed at him.
"So you have wished it, so shall it be!"
Chapter 2: Rings of Power come in many flavors
Summary:
Danny shows up at the edge of a major battle. He plans to help, but he has to find out what's happening first. Deadman gets called to answer him, and he doesn't like what he sees. Still, he answers.
Chapter Text
Danny hadn't been able to stop the cough that came when the smoke hit him. It was an extremely thick and hot smoke. He didn't know what could have made it, but he already knew it was bad. If nothing else, the smoke had triggered this cough!
The fact that ectoplasm tasted even worse when it was mixed with blood was not something he needed to know.
The mixed green and red that was spattered on his elbow and the inside of his blanket cape definitely pushed the balance he'd been thinking about earlier in favor of him having seen more of his own blood than other people's. Hopefully, no one noticed the stains before he got the chance to clean it up. Danny didn't want to get in more trouble because he ruined Jazz's blanket as well as her sheet!
He was in more than enough trouble as it was!
Danny scanned the area around of him quickly, calling on the rusty skills he'd grown up using to survive. No one was near enough to have seen the cough, so he relaxed a bit. Then the scene around him finally registered, and every molecule (Maddie and Jack's voices echoed in his head, "Let's tear him apart molecule by molecule!") in his body quivered with tension.
The shade from the trees around him was the only green space on this ashy battlefield.
There wasn't much that he could see from where he was. The smoke wasn't the only problem; he was also fighting the issues he had with seeing things farther than five meters or so (sixteen feet, he had to use feet here, right). It hadn't always been this way, but it wasn't completely new. Jazz had noticed it before she left and asked Maddie and Jack to take him to get his eyes tested. That went about as well as it usually did. They'd forgotten about it by the end of the day.
At least it had stopped getting worse when he died!
Other people here were dead. He could feel them; another perk of being the Ghost King was that he could feel the other ghosts around him from much farther away! It wasn't only the ghosts, though.
He avoided walking near the cemetery now. It always made him dizzy to be near the empty dead bodies.
If the cemetery in Amity Park had made him dizzy, then the sheer number of dead bodies on the battlefield was making Danny feel like he'd been stuck in a washing machine for three days! He staggered over to a tree. It was a good tree! The tree had taken all of his weight without moving. He liked this tree.
He wondered if Sam would have liked it, too.
...
Danny should look around the Realms for his friends. He missed them, and they had promised to become ghosts for him! They'd promised!
...
They'd promised not to let the GIW or the Fentons catch him, too, but he wasn't going to hold it against them when he found them!
Dying while trying to prevent it from happening was a pretty good excuse for breaking their promise.
He hoped that taking those blasts through their chests didn't hurt them for too long. Their hearts and lungs were incinerated in seconds, so that had to count for something, right? Without blood flowing to their brains, there was no way they'd been conscious of what was happening for long. Danny didn't want them to suffer like he had! Sam and Tucker didn't deserve that!
No one deserved that kind of pain.
...
Danny was definitely in pain right now, but the amount of his ectoplasm and blood that he'd lost was making it hard to think about that kind of thing.
He could be in pain later. Right now, Danny needed to figure out why Desiree's power had sent him here. There were definitely Livings out there; he could see some people in bright costumes nearby. Wait, was that Wonder Woman?! It was! That was the Justice League out there! Those were real heroes, not like Phantom. They'd kept people safe!
Who were they fighting right now? Maybe if he helped, then one of them would take care of him? It was worth a try, and the pain in his Core was easing up when he thought about helping them save people. Protecting people was his purpose!
Squinting, Danny realized that the heroes were fighting the dead bodies. Most of them didn't actually have a person in them anymore, so there was definitely someone else in control of them right now. That wouldn't do. Using the Dead to fight the Living was wrong! The memory of what Freakshow had done still tortured him in his sleep. Phantom wouldn't stand by and let it happen again!
As the Ghost King, Phantom knew he could make an order about it, but he was going to have to be very careful about what it was. If he said the wrong thing, other people might get hurt! He couldn't just order them not to follow orders. That was a contradiction, and he didn't think it would actually hold up. So, his order had to be more specific than that.
Maybe he could pick a target. Whoever was controlling these guys was abusing that power; if he just told them not to obey that person, then it should work! He'd have to figure out who they were first. That might be an issue because he didn't think he could move very far right now. Was there anyone nearby that he could ask?
...
Would they even bother to answer him?
Phantom needed to ask someone, though. Who could he trust to listen to him and tell him the truth?
Wait! He could feel a ghost nearby! Their glow was hidden in all the colors from the different Lanterns, but he didn't need to see them to know that they were there.
Wow, that was a lot of Lantern Rings out there! He could feel them, kind of, because he was technically one of them. Sort of. Maybe. He didn't actually have the Ring of Balance on him right now, and it wasn't a ring that the Living were meant to wield, but it was in the same family as these ones. The Lanterns among the Dead had been the ones to explain why the Ring of Balance was so messed up. Pariah Dark's influence had corrupted it. The Ring had run off because it didn't want to hurt him. Phantom knew how to purify it now; he was apparently the Battery for his own ring. That had confused them as much as it did him, but at least he knew how to fix it.
Maybe these Living Lanterns would know how to find it!
Phantom would ask them later. Right now, he didn't trust them to listen to a kid long enough for him to figure out how to help them. That was why the Crown of Space called out to the ghost he'd felt and requested that they come over.
Hopefully, the ghost he'd called would know what was going on.
Boston Brand wondered, sometimes, if there were any other ghosts like him. He'd met other ghosts! Lots of them, actually; none of them were like him. There were enough different types out there that he could hold onto that hope, so he did.
It wasn't like it would change much if he was wrong, right?
Another of the corpses that surrounded him tried to grab his ankle. It went as well as it had the last fifty-seven times they'd tried it, aka their hand just went through him and they fell over. Honestly, didn't they ever learn? Being dead was no excuse for getting stuck in the mud!
Heh, get it? Mud? Like on a grave?
Yeah, even his imaginary audience thought that was a stretch. Tough crowd.
Boston was just about to see if he could go bother the Red Hood again, one dead guy to another, when he felt it. Someone was calling him in a way he would never be able to explain properly. It was kind of like someone had sent an urgent barrage of texts to his soul. He knew he could ignore it if he wanted to, but it was new and different, okay? He was curious! It wasn't like he was doing much good right now. The corpses couldn't touch him, but he couldn't touch the corpses, either. Deadman was, essentially, a really shitty distraction.
Flying through the reaching hands of his little group of attackers, Deadman headed straight to where the call was coming from. The closer he got, the more he could get a grip on what was happening. This was some kind of official call, although he still didn't have a clue who was doing it; he didn't know that anyone could do it! They were being nice about it, too. Whoever was calling him was incredibly powerful! They'd be able to level the entire battlefield if they felt like it. Hell, they'd be able to level the entire solar system!
There were only a few of the different Lanterns and Diana between him and whoever it was when he stopped dead. Oh, shit. He knew who that was now. That was the Ghost King! Of all the things that could show up and screw them over even more, why did it have to be the Ghost King?
Boston had heard of the guy from one of Constantine's demon pals. Pariah Dark was the kind of guy that Trigon would either love or hate on sight. Apparently, he'd destroyed entire dimensions when he went mad. Entire dimensions! No one knew how he'd been stopped, but the rumors of Time himself doing it were enough to scare Boston shitless!
How the hell had Pariah Dark gotten here?
Deadman was frantically trying to figure out who was nearby who could see him and wouldn't freak out too much. Connie was on the other side of the battle, and Z had been knocked out early on. That didn't leave him with a lot of options, and he-
The call faltered at the same time that he heard it. Boston winced. That was a nasty cough; there was no way that it wasn't a bloody one. The thing with that call, though, was what made him worried. It felt like the Ghost King was giving up, not on getting his way, but on anyone caring about his call. That didn't fit the picture of Pariah Dark that had been painted in Boston's head. He wasn't the kind of guy to feel like someone wouldn't care about him, let alone be resigned to it like this felt like it was!
Was this even the same person?
Boston's curiosity got the better of him, and he flew through the last dozen yards of the battlefield toward the source of that call. The little copse of oaks ahead of him didn't look any different than it had when the battle had started, which was honestly amazing. The rest of the valley they were in looked like something out of Mordor! No trees grew there now, but this one little spot had survived. If trees were hope, then that Hope Lantern corgi he'd seen earlier would still be able to fight. Not that it wasn't fighting right now; that little dog was taking out more of the corpses than Hal was! Corgis didn't know when to back down; their motto was basically "death from the ankles down!" This one had become a Lantern, so it definitely didn't know when to give up.
Corgis were a force of nature that made glaciers look meek.
This time, Deadman didn't freeze up because of caution; no, Boston was hovering in midair, jaw hanging slack, because of the kid that every molecule of his being knew was the Ghost King.
The white hair on his head was matted with blood and what looked like Lazarus water. His face was smeared with it, too, although there was a nasty burn on the kid's left cheek. A flap of his right cheek had been sliced deeply enough that it could hang down; Boston felt sick at the sight of the kid's muscles twitching in the ashy air. It didn't even look fresh! Cuts littered him! Some of them looked almost deliberate! Red and green were everywhere, and Boston really hoped that it wasn't his blood. Even if it was just some weird remnant of the way he died, this wasn't good.
There was too much of it on the outside of him to be safe.
Most of the kid was wrapped up in a ratty old comforter. It might have been pink once, but it had faded to a greyish cream. Shivers wracked him, which didn't make Boston feel any better about the kid's state of health. Despite the blanket, Deadman could tell that the kid wasn't more than ten years old; that was being generous, really, because he was small enough and skinny enough to be eight.
This was the Ghost King, and Boston Brand was itching to punch whoever hurt him.
The kid squinted in his direction; glowing toxic green eyes flared with surprise before a smile split his face. The kid had baby fangs, but there were at least four teeth that had been recently pulled from his upper and lower jaw. The gaps were still raw, and one of them had a shred of tissue hanging loose in it. Despite that-- despite wounds that would have put anyone out of commission-- the kid was standing up and very excited to see him.
"Hey, you came!" A very young and echoey voice floated up to meet him as Boston floated down next to the kid. He said, "I was worried that I'd bothered you in the middle of something really important. I didn't, did I? Because if I did, you can go back to-"
Putting on his best showman's smile, Boston interrupted, "Nah, I wasn't doing much good out there. What's got you hanging out here today, your Majesty? This battle can't be that important to a kid like you! I mean, it's just one dimension!"
The Ghost King wrinkled his bloody nose at Boston in annoyance, "Ugh, don't be like that! I hate all the "Majesty" stuff! Frostbite's bad enough; I don't need it from anyone else, thanks!"
Boston's smile felt more genuine, even if his heart still ached for the kid. How soon could he get him to help? The medics were swamped right now, but this kid looked awful! There was no way this was all from his death because there was too much leaking and shaking going on for that. He really hoped that they would be able to help the little King. He didn't want to know what would happen if this kid fainted. He couldn't die again... maybe. Boston wasn't going to bet on it.
Deadman knew a sucker's bet when he saw it, and that was one. If there was any way that a ghost could die- maybe stop existing? Whatever it was called, this kid looked pretty damn close to it right now, and Boston was not happy about it. Someone had done this, deliberately, to a kid.
That was a mistake that he'd make sure they'd pay for. Permanently.
Keeping up his little act while he thought through his current options, Deadman joked, "What, the Ghost King isn't a fan of being a king?"
"Why would I be? It's not like I knew it would happen when I fought Pariah Dark to save Amity! I just wanted to protect everyone; I didn't want to be king!" The kid coughed again, and, yep, that was definitely his blood that was smeared all over him. Before Deadman could do or say anything to help the kid, though, he wheezed, "I'm okay, promise!"
Deadman knew a stubborn kid when he saw one, so he shrugged. It was a lie, and they both knew that, but if he called the kid out on it, then they'd only buckle down and make things worse! Boston would have to pretend he believed it. He could do that. Boston Brand was a showman through and through! He wasn't letting the kid out of his sight unless he had to, though. Even if the medics couldn't see the kid, Deadman would find someone to nag into helping his little King out. That cough didn't look good.
"Anyway," The kid continued, "I've got a question, um... what's your name?"
"Boston Brand, kid, at your service," he said with a dramatic flourish and a bow. When he came back up, he had a joking smile on his face; the kid picked up on the joke, thank goodness, cause he was smiling again. Distract him, keep the kid calm, that was all he could do right now. Deadman added, "You can call me Boston. I work with the JLD out there; go by "Deadman" if you want to use that instead."
"Nice name!" The kid laughed, although it devolved into another fit of coughing, "I'm Phantom! You can also call me Danny if you want. Danny Fen-... just Danny, I guess."
"Well then, Danny Phantom," Deadman replied, putting the other name the kid was planning to say in the back of his mind for later, "What can this humble ghost do for you?"
"Tell me who's controlling the empty dead and making them fight the Living, please," Phantom said, all seriousness and determination. It was such a sudden shift in his emotions that Boston's brain took a few seconds to catch up.
Deadman felt the words tugging at him, compelling him politely to answer his King. Without even thinking about it, he answered, "He's calling himself the Pied Piper, but Batsy said his civilian name is Reginald Pipefitter. He found a grimy, tarnished Ring of Power somewhere that's letting him do this. It's not a Black Ring, but it's something similar. No one can figure out what it is; even the oldest Lanterns haven't seen anything like it."
Phantom stiffened, his eyes wide, and demanded, "Does it have a skull symbol on it and silver and gold symbols on the sides?"
Tilting his head, Deadman pieced together the bits and pieces of descriptions that he'd overheard from the people who'd gotten close enough to the Pied Piper to see the ring. Then he nodded, confirming, "Yep! That's what people've seen on it. Why?"
"Ancients, can't my life ever be easy?" Danny muttered.
Shit, the kid knew what the ring was. If the Ghost King showed up on your battlefield and knew exactly what your problem really was, did that count as a Level 4 emergency or a Level 5? He'd cast his vote for a Level 5; if it was possible, he'd have called it a Level 6, but there were only the five levels on Batsy's chart, so Level 5 it was!
Boston felt the twinges of fear he'd been fighting for hours now building into full-on shivering. Then, looking him in the eye, King Phantom ordered, "Go tell whoever you can trust that they need to lure this Pied Piper closer to me, okay? I know how to stop it, but I have to be closer to the Ring of Balance for it to hear me."
Again, Deadman felt the words compel him. He tried to resist, but the spark of pain quickly told him that it was a bad idea to disobey. Reluctantly, he nodded. Boston Brand tossed one last heartfelt request at Phantom before he flew off.
"Stay safe, okay Danny? You don't need to hurt yourself to protect others. There are people here who'll help you, so don't push yourself to do it all alone! I'll make sure your wounds and stuff get taken care of as soon as I can. Boston Brand isn't one to let a friend of mine be hurt for long!"
Chapter 3: Wheels are in Motion
Summary:
Tim has been left in command. Tim should not have been left in command. Leaving Tim in command is a guarantee that a crazy plan will be approved. Leaving Roy and Jason with him will not stop this. It will make it worse.
A crazy plan is, indeed, approved.
(Meanwhile, Danny gives his order and wonders why Deadman is bringing the Red Hood back with him.)
Chapter Text
Despite everything they'd done-- all the research, all the sabotage, all the fighting, all the pain-- the hope that this would turn out okay was almost dead.
There were no options that Tim could see that would end this battle in their favor. They'd run out of tricks to pull out of their back pockets a while ago; Hell, those tricks had run out of tricks to pull, too! Enough of their heavy hitters had been taken out before the Pied Piper had even struck that the Justice League had been off their game from the first second. Bruce and Dick were in the med bay; so were Clark, Wally, Cassie, Kori, Raven, Zatana, and more heroes than he could name correctly without looking at the tablet in front of him.
He'd done his absolute best to organize the different groups of heroes into something coherent, but they were losing people too fast for it to stick. Tim was at the point where he'd try literally anything no matter how crazy he thought it was, and Tim had a very, very skewed idea of what was crazy or not!
That was when Jason, who'd been elected to coordinate between the magical side of the Justice League's forces with Tim despite his vehement and colorful protests, went stiff as a board and swore a blue streak. Tim barked, "Hood, what's wrong?"
"Deadman. He's flying our way at full speed, and he looks worried as Hell. Fuck, Boston, what the-" Jason stopped for a moment, cocking his head at the empty space in front of him, then continued, "The Ghost King is here, great, wonderful. What the fuck is a Ghost King?"
"The King of Ghosts, duh," Roy muttered from next to him, but Tim could see him tensing up. Roy knew his friend better than Tim did; if Roy was worried about Jason being this kind of pissed off (as opposed to his usual, normal kind) then Tim should be, too. The Outlaws were like his team; they were so close to each other that it wouldn't surprise him if they weren't a polycule. Hell, it wouldn't surprise Tim to learn that they'd gotten married without anyone knowing it. If they had, though, he would very much like to know how they'd managed to make it legal.
Young Justice would absolutely kill anyone (or everyone) if that was what it took. They were crazy like that; Tim was absolutely the worst of them. He was self-aware enough to know that. On the other hand, his team had made it clear that they'd do whatever it took to stick together when they'd shown him their plan for what they'd do when (not if, he knew that much) he went supervillain, so matching him, crazy idea for crazy idea, was not beyond them.
Tim loved his idiots so, so much!
Jason hissed. It drew Tim out of his probably concussed brain enough to notice it when his big brother Jason somehow managed to tense up even further; then he snarled, "The kid said what?!"
"Kid?..." Tim mumbled to himself. Deadman wasn't a kid, was he? Then who-
Jason growled, a few curse words thrown in for extra effect, then conveyed Deadman's actual message. He spat, "The Ghost King is a kid, or at least looks like one, who Boston thinks is between eight and ten years old; he's too thin and small to be sure. The kid's fucking bleeding, but he's saying he knows how to fix our Ring problem. Fuck, Deadman says the kid's planning to fix it himself," Jason paused again, listening to the empty air where Tim assumed that Deadman was, "but it sounds more like the kid doesn't know how to not be a fucking martyr about it! Deadman thinks he's telling the truth about it, though. This kid sounds like the exact kind of idiot who'd do it on his own whether we help him or not. If we lure the Piper closer to the kid, it'll at least keep him from trying to move away from the tree that sounds like it's doing all the work to keep him upright."
Wincing, Tim flew through the consequences of all of the options in his head. Shit, he didn't have nearly enough information about this Ghost King kid to be able to tell how his presence would change everything. It would change things; he didn't doubt that. No, what Tim had to cope with was how it would change things and how he could use that to keep the world from falling to this Pied Piper's plans.
"Red Robin, what crazy idea is your terrifying-ass brain stewing up now?" Roy asked, nudging him with the tip of his bow from the console he was manning.
Tim, rather than answer that insulting question, demanded, "Boston, tell Jason which part of the battlefield this kid is on."
After a few seconds of silence, where Tim got the chance to watch Jason's body language tense up further, he conveyed, "The kid's over to the west of us. There's a patch of trees that somehow hasn't been burned or blown up yet; he's on the edge of it closest to us. Wonder Woman's over his way, along with Black Bat, Hal, and that terrifying fucking corgi. Why the fuck does a corgi scare me more than Bane on Fear Gas?"
"Because the corgi can fly?" Roy suggested. It was probably supposed to be teasing, but they were all too aware of the fact that the Hope Corgi did not care about anyone's rules enough to obey the rules of reality. If they thought they could do something, they would.
"You're thinking we follow this kid's plan, aren't you?" Jason stated flatly.
Tim shrugged. He'd heard worse ideas that worked out. Out loud, he said, "It's worth a shot; if nothing else, shifting his focus around the battlefield might disrupt him enough to give us an advantage."
"Fine, great. Why not put the bleeding kid in danger? Just don't expect me to stand back this time," Jason stated firmly.
Tim nodded at his brother and agreed, "I don't. You can communicate with him and Deadman where no one else is able to. No one can question how good you are with kids, and if they try, let me know so I can sick Nightwing on them. If anyone can get this kid to see a medic, it'll be you. Just don't die on us again. I doubt that anyone could take you down if Piper got you under him."
"No promises, Replacement," Jason grunted. Then, softer, he said, "Thanks, little brother."
"No problem," Tim replied, then added in a whisper, "big brother."
There were a good few minutes where Danny wondered if Boston had actually managed to get anyone to help him. He could feel it when the order he'd given was fulfilled, so he had told someone, but that didn't mean that they'd listened!
Danny knew all too well how often people ignored you when you told them the truth.
Then, the number of people shouting things on his side of the battlefield increased; since the empty corpses weren't doing that, Danny was pretty sure that the main battle was coming towards him. That was good! He could help faster if he didn't have to figure out how to get through the fighting to reach his target. All of the heroes would want to keep him out of there, just like how he'd wanted to keep Sam and Tuck...
It wasn't until Danny saw one of the empty dead go flying through the air after a massive blow by Wonder Woman that he remembered the first step in his plan. It was a short list; hopefully, it would work out better because of that!
Step 1: Order the dead not to obey the Pied Piper.
Quietly, Phantom used as much of his power as the Ghost King as he thought he safely could use to give the order. He used Ghost Speech to give the order because the dead, empty or not, would hear it clearly if he spoke in their language; he also used the special format that Fright Knight and Lady Dorathea had made him come up with for times like this, times where he needed it to be a permanent order. All of that would, hopefully, keep the Pied Piper from hearing him when he gave the order while it would still stick.
{I, Danny Phantom, the High King of the Infinite Realms, Ghost King, Great One, and Chosen of the Realms Themselves, write into their Core an order that those who have died, are dying, or will die in the future shall not obey any commands, orders, or other demands given by the Living Being named Reginald Pipefitter, also known as the Pied Piper, no matter what power he places behind his words. As it is written, let it be so.}
Danny felt the order settling into his Core on the deepest level. It was a special place where he could always feel that the Infinite Realms were connected to him. Even before he'd fought Pariah Dark, Danny could still feel things from that place; he'd felt them ever since he'd died! That was why he had his last title, the Chosen of the Realms. They'd picked him to be their voice.
He'd never been able to understand why.
Whatever their reason was, the Infinite Realms were letting him feel that his order was working. Across the battlefield, the empty dead were standing down. Some were falling over-- those ones had become empty corpses again, so he hoped that someone would be able to get all of them back to the right graves before long. Other former fighters were still standing; it looked like they'd picked up enough magic, ectoplasm, or other energy to gain control of their own bodies again. Well, control wasn't the right word for the zombies, but the Revenants, Ghouls, and all the other kinds of Undead out there had control!
At least one Revenant was already noticing him-- oh, wait! That was the Red Hood! He'd heard about him. The Protector of Crime Alley was really popular in the Realms. He'd done so much to help Phantom's people by bringing their abusers and murderers the Retributive Justice that they deserved. Even when he couldn't, Hood did what he had to to make sure that no one else would suffer the same fate.
Danny had dreamed, once, that the Red Hood would find out about what Maddie, Jack, and Vlad had done to him. Thinking about what it would feel like if he wasn't always fighting them to keep them from hurting the other ghosts like they'd hurt him had been a nice dream. Then he'd thought about what the Red Hood would choose to do to them to make them pay the right amount to make up for what they'd done to Danny. There was no way that it would be enough to stop them for long. Danny could think of so many worse ways that they could have hurt him (like strapping him to that table and cutting him open to see what was inside his chest). What had been done to him couldn't be worth much.
He might have given up on that dream, but it was still exciting to see the hero in person! Or, well, feel him. Danny couldn't see him right now, but... Was he coming closer?
Huh.
Deadman was with him, too.
Huh.
Danny was officially confused.
Chapter 4: The Sass becomes a Burn
Summary:
Cass makes some deductions and spots a sibling. The Supervillain triggers the kind of sassy reaction that many people working in customer service roles want to give to a Karen.
Notes:
Warning: Descriptions of Dead Bodies, Dead Bodies of Major Characters, POV from an Incel, derogatory names (ableist and ageist ones), derogatory speech, and calling a person an it.
If you see any other things I should warn about for this chapter (or know what tags I need to use), let me know!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Cass wasn't sure what to do when the four dead bodies she was fighting stopped moving. There hadn't been any body language for her to read before that moment, but now there was, and she didn't know why.
Neither did the dead people in front of her. They were disoriented and confused, almost as though someone had taken them out of one situation and dropped them here without any warning or transition between places. All of them were listening to something, but none of them understood how they were able to listen to it, nor did they understand what it was.
The one on her left, a forty-five to fifty-year-old, heavily made-up woman of Central Asian descent, had a look of disgust on her face that Cass had seen before. The socialites at the Galas that she'd been bribed into attending would look at her like that sometimes; it was usually the same ones who looked down on Bruce for adopting so many children or for having children in the first place. Cass might only be fourteen (or maybe fifteen, they weren't really sure), but she'd seen enough of those looks to tell that this woman was disgusted because she had to listen to a child.
Whatever the dead people were listening to, then, must sound like a kid.
The closest one of the two on her right, the tanned and wrinkled white person dressed in the kind of loose black robes that several religions had their most dedicated followers of all genders wear, was moving their lips in a garbled mix of several prayers. Fear screamed at her from the tension in every hollow and line of their face, but there was shock there, too. A few strange men and women had reacted to Cass signing with her siblings like that. They'd called it unholy and unnatural, as silly as that was.
Whatever the dead people could hear, it didn't sound like anything ordinarily would.
The farther away of the two on her right was an older teenager. She was extremely tall, white, and had long red hair held back by a blue ribbon. It was hard to tell much else about her; the front of her face had been smashed in, probably in a car accident, given the automobile glass embedded into the rest of her body. She must have died recently, because there was very little decay in the ribbon that held back her hair. What Cass could tell from the little body language there was before she collapsed to the ground was that this girl recognized the voice as someone she loved, and she was upset that she was hearing them right now.
Whatever- no, whoever the dead people could hear, they had either been alive within the last five years, or they were still alive.
She recognized the last person. He was a Filipino-American named Efren Mananquil who had been caught in the middle of a gang war last month in the Docks in Gotham and buried next to his great-great-grandmother. She'd gotten drinks and fruit pops from his little smoothie stand for Dick and her after their patrol the night before. He'd signed with her almost fluently, and he'd given them two extra strawberry fruit pops as a thank-you present for everything they'd done for Gotham. Right now, she could see a familiar green glow in the depths of his eyes. What was even more familiar to her was the look his face was shifting into. It wasn't the rage she associated with the Lazarus Pits; no, he'd given her this same look when she tried to refuse the extra fruit pops.
Whoever the dead people could hear, they'd just done something Efren was determined to thank them for.
From all of that, Cass deduced that the dead people around them were hearing a probably-meta or supernatural child, one who'd known the young woman before her death and would only have died recently, and they were doing something big to help out that went above and beyond what they should have been doing right now.
Cass wondered how long it would be before Alfred would be setting up a new room for them in the mansion. B had a habit of collecting siblings for her. Most of them had died at least once, so that wouldn't deter him!
When the older woman and the robed person fell to the ground and Cass saw the tiny person on the edge of the trees, she knew exactly where she needed to go to find them.
The glowing white hair might be all she could make out above the faded cape, but she could see the bloodstains on and around them. That they were still standing was impressive; the attention they were getting from both sides of the battle was dangerous. Cass would go and help them, sibling or no sibling, because they did not need to stand alone with so many heroes here.
Reginald Pipefitter was many things. He was bitter, underappreciated, and attacked by the world around him simply because he wasn't weird enough. No one had given him the chance to prove himself as the brilliant, handsome, and charismatic person he knew he was! Time and again, he'd been turned down for dates by the lucky women he asked out, denied promotions and job opportunities he richly deserved, and told that his visionary observations were "harassment" and "hate speech."
Well, no longer! The Ring Reginald Pipefitter had found in the gutter on his way back from his last firing was going to make them see the truth! With the dead following his every command, they'd have no choice but to recognize his potential! If they were foolish enough to ignore him now, though...
The Pied Piper could always make them dance to his tune after his army had a few whacks at them!
Chuckling to himself, the Pied Piper told the Ring what to do, and he flew along the path his army had taken. Once these buffoons in technicolor spandex had been dealt with, no one would stand in his way! A green shield popped up in front of him, and he wasn't able to order the Ring to stop him in time to avoid a broken nose. Glaring at the shield, he searched for its origin.
Ah, one of those annoying Green Lanterns must not have learned their lesson yet. No matter. They were easy enough to deal with. With a condescending grin, he announced, "I really am tired of dealing with your childish minds My army of the dead, break through this pathetic shield and wreak havoc!"
He closed his eyes, pricking his ears to listen to the glorious sounds of his army...
The sounds didn't come.
Eyes popping open, Reginald stared at the shield. It was still there, still in place, and it didn't show a single sign of the damage he'd expected to see. Glaring down at the battle below him, he recoiled at what he saw.
At least two-thirds of his army had fallen to the ground with no marks on them. The other third had made no move to obey him. Furious, he screamed, "My Ring, I demand that you make my army destroy this shield!"
The only response he got was from inside the shield.
"Um, yeah, they're not yours!" a voice called out that made every hair on the back of his spine stand up.
The Pied Piper stared, open-mouthed, as an actual child waved at him. He couldn't make out much through the glowing green shield, but the short pest was leaning on a tree. They had white hair, pointed ears, and eyes that seemed to pierce his soul. They were also draped in a blanket and wrapped in a sheet.
"This is your new trick?" The Pied Piper sneered at the drooping heroes around the battlefield, "A pathetic little child in a blanket cape? Please! My Ring of Death will pull them to my side soon enough!"
"Okay, one: That's not a Ring of Death, that's a Ring of the Dead!" The child had the gall to chide him, "Two: It's of the Dead, as in it's for the Dead to use."
Reginald opened his mouth to correct the misguided little thing, but it didn't let him. It continued, "Three: You're a Living, not even sort of Liminal, which means you are alive! Four: I'm not! I died and I very much didn't get better!"
At that, the thing grinned at him with far too many teeth. He felt something inside him screaming that it was a predator-predator-predator and that he needed to run-hide-flee. Its voice gained echoes as it cheerfully added, "Five: Even if you were dead, I outrank you, so that army is going to ignore you at my orders, and there's nothing you can do about it."
"Six: That Ring has a name. That is the Ring of Balance, a Dead Lantern Ring wielded by the Chosen of the Realms, the keeper of the Balance between Life and Death," it informed him, then finished with a dangerously bright smile and the words, "Seven: In case you're wondering, that's me."
Notes:
Another original character has appeared. I hope he'll just be a minor character, but I have no control of this.
Chapter 5: we don't care about that, thanks, we're doing a thing
Summary:
The Hope Corgi gets pried off of a zombie and a Revenant then finds a new mission.
Danny watches a grown man's tantrum, then puts on a collar and asks for his ring.
Jazz gets found in the Infinite Realms and loses her temper a bit.
Cass discovers that the new sibling isn't as new as she thought.
Notes:
Warning: The author is not trying to break your heart, but it's probably going to happen.
I regret writing none of this.
Chapter Text
They were the Hope Corgi, Blue Lantern, and Bringer of Hope. They'd long since stopped caring about what people thought they should and should not do. They would do what they needed to; if that happened to bother someone, well, they'd just have to deal. Wherever hope was needed, the Hope Corgi would go. Should physics try to stop them, it would get its ankles broken! Should Death try to claim them, they'd want to see the receipts and the reasons why the dead needed them more! The world of the Living had so many places where hope was needed.
Right now, the Hope Corgi was loping towards a place where both the Dead and the Living needed hope.
They'd taken a few minutes to notice when the dead person they'd been fighting stopped following the Pied Piper's orders. He'd already been a zombie, someone had called him Grundy, so he didn't stop moving just because he was no longer following orders from someone else. Since he hadn't stopped yet, they'd kept chewing! His ankles would never be the same!
Once the Red Hood had picked them up, though (after he'd pried them off of Grundy and then off of his own arm), the Hope Corgi had learned that the battle had changed. They'd heard the child speaking, his voice reverberating through their Blue Lantern Ring, and the Hope Corrgi had known that he needed their help. A child should not sound so sad. Yes, he'd been giving the Pipe Fitter a good, old-fashioned, annoying speech. Yes, he'd been trying to sound chipper. He didn't want people to worry about him; corgis know these things.
The sad child had not had much hope for a long time, and he'd had none for at least a week.
That was not acceptable. The Hope Corgi would find the sad child and bring him hope! That was what they were for, after all.
Wherever hope as needed, the Hope Corgi would go.
Danny watched through his shield as the grown adult man stealing the Ring of Balance's powers for his own threw a fit. It was sad, really. The man clearly thought that the world owed him things. The world didn't owe anyone anything; no Realm did. It might decide to give you something, but that was its decision. Sometimes you might like the thing, such as when it gave you a comfy bit of grass to pass out on. Sometimes, though, you didn't. The Living World seemed to like giving Phantom headaches.
Whether you liked what you were given or not, you were never owed anything. To be owed something was to be given a guarantee of payment. Nothing was guaranteed. He'd heard people say that only Death and Taxes were certain; they were lying.
Taxes weren't a thing in the Infinite Realms. If Pariah Dark had wanted something, he'd just taken it, so Phantom usually rummaged around in the Pile of Pariah's Things that he'd found in the basement of the castle until he found what he needed. He'd hadn't been disappointed yet!
And Death?
Phantom was a living (heh) example of the fact that even Death wasn't absolutely certain.
Danny was pretty sure that he owed the world more than anyone could ever owe him! So watching a grown adult have a temper tantrum because he wasn't getting his way was kind of sad. Didn't anyone ever teach the Pied Piper that tantrums got you nowhere? Danny was pretty sure he still had scars from where David Cain had taught him that! Why hadn't the Pied Piper learned that lesson?
It took Danny a while to realize that he'd started drifting during the man's tantrum. He'd been shouting something at Danny, but it really sounded like the times that Plasmius was monologuing at him, so Danny's brain must have decided it could check out. He pulled himself back up the tree-- it was getting pretty slippery with all his blood and ectoplasm sticking to it-- and focused back on what the adult was saying.
"...absolute lies! You-- you're lying! I bet a thing like you can't even understand me!" Phantom swallowed down another bloody cough (Maddie screamed at him in his head, "What did you do to Danny, you nonsapient, nonsentient, unfeeling monster!") and tried to stay upright. "...no way you can appreciate the... Ring is mine! A thing like you can... Come and take it from me!"
While he knew he'd missed some stuff in there, Danny knew a challenge when he heard one. Frowning, he thought about what the Dead Lanterns had told him he could do. A lot of their suggestions wouldn't work right now, not with Danny barely able to stay upright, but there was one thing that Frighty had told him about that might work. He'd said that while the Ring and the Crown weren't always worn by the same person, they always knew who the other was supposed to belong to. It was a part of the way the Realms worked - the Ring took care of the people who resided in the place that the Crown maintained, and the Crown held together the homes that belonged to the people that the Ring looked after. Neither could exist without the other, so they both had to know how to keep in touch.
The Ring of Balance and the Crown of Space worked together. The Crown had the ability to call for the Ring to come when it needed help; it had been doing that more and more often as Phantom stopped being good enough to protect Amity Park.
Danny clutched at his chest when he thought that. He felt like something was trying to crack, but he couldn't let it do that, not right now! The people out there needed him to get the Ring back; it was the only thing he knew of that could protect them from the Pied Piper! So Phantom asked the Crown of Space that was plastered around his aching Core for help. It hesitated for a moment, and he waited. He didn't want to force it to do anything. If the Crown didn't want to help him, Danny would find another way to do this. He had to.
Danny Phantom would protect this Realm no matter what.
The Crown agreed to his plan after he thought that. It flared out from his Core, and he felt it manifest above his head. As always, it slid off of his skull, flopped past his stinging ears, and dropped onto his shoulders. It never felt like he'd be crushed under it, but the Crown couldn't keep him from thinking about the weight of responsibility he had because he wore it. He was the High King of the Infinite Realms, the Ghost King, and he watched over an infinite number of Realms, each of them representing an insane number of souls; if he failed, everyone would suffer the consequences.
A surge of power flowed out of the deepest part of his Core. The Realms connected to the Crown in a different way than they did to him. When the Crown was out, that connection transferred to him. He never took more than he absolutely had to. It wasn't his to take!
The Realms owed him nothing.
Danny called out to the Ring of Balance through the Crown of Space, and he felt the moment it recognized him in his Core. It hesitated for a moment, just as the Crown had, but it still came.
It was time for them to teach Reginald Pipemaker that the world owed him nothing.
Jazz Fenton was dead. She knew that. She'd known it for a little over two years now. It had taken her a while to get over the panic attack she'd had when she'd realized that she realized it. After all, she'd grown up with two people who'd firmly believed that ghosts can't think or feel anything.
That was definitely one of their worst mistakes.
They made a lot of them; she'd been a mistake, moving to Amity Park was a mistake, missing her graduation was a mistake, and forgetting to buy the groceries was a frequent mistake.
She made mistakes, too. On her second day on the road trip to college, Jazz had decided to wait to set out for the day until after the rush hour ended. That last one had cost her her life when she'd missed a blind turn on an empty mountain road and driven the car off of a cliff.
Letting her parents foster Danny was the best mistake she'd ever made.
Jazz knew they weren't the best parents, and she'd known that a fourteen-year-old wasn't really supposed to be raising herself, let alone raising another kid! But, when Jazz had seen him, perched on top of the Amity Park Orphanage's rafters with one hand strapped to his chest, bandages around his neck and head, a stolen butter knife threatening the bloody-knuckled staff member in the other hand, and an injured bird perched safely behind him, she'd known that he needed her as much as she needed him.
It had been a lot of work to take care of a little brother. For one thing, he was mute when he came home with them. She was the first one to notice that he couldn't read, and it had led to her spending hours at a time teaching him how to read, then sign, then actually talk! Jazz had been so proud of him!
She'd splurged on ice cream, even though it took a big dent out of the money Aunt Alicia had given her during their last visit. It was worth it, though, to see the smile on his face when he got to ask the man behind the counter for chocolate ice cream out loud himself!
That was the day that Jazz had decided that she'd spend any amount of time she had to if it would help Danny.
Jazz had spent the entire time that she'd been in the Infinite Realms learning everything she could about her new home because of that. Mom and Dad had been so wrong about ghosts! It was incredible here, and she was looking forward to sharing it all with Danny. She didn't want him to die early, of course! Danny should get to live a long life! But she was still excited to share what she'd found with him.
She couldn't wait to see him smile!
"Jazz?!" A vaguely familiar voice yelled behind her.
Using the long, beautiful wings that she'd formed after her death, Jazz spun around to face--
"Tucker?" She asked, feeling the pain and horror in her Core fill her voice, "Sam?"
It couldn't be true. No, no, no, no! Those ghosts couldn't be them! Sam and Tucker couldn't be in the Infinite Realms! They needed to be in Amity Park with her little brother! They couldn't be dead!
"Jazz, oh thank the Ancients, it's you! Come on, we have to get back to the Portal! Your parents saw Danny change forms, and they were chasing us down when the GIW showed up-" Sam yelled, her ghost form a mixture of plants and purple-black magic, raced over to her and grabbed her arm.
"-Sam, breathe! What are you talking about? What Portal? What do you mean he changed forms? Who are the GIW? Why was anyone chasing you?" Jazz tried to calm the girl-- it looked like she'd made it to ten or eleven years old. It didn't work.
Tucker, whose form was a strange mix of circuitry and Ancient Egyptian imagery, snatched her other arm at the same time that Sam grabbed on again. They pulled, dragging her with surprising force and speed, and he rambled "Your parents got that freaky Portal finished, only it didn't work at first, so we went down to look at it, and Sam wanted a picture, and we dared Danny to go inside it, but your parents were idiots and they put the 'On' button on the inside of the Portal and he pressed it-"
Jazz had a bad feeling about this story.
"-and the Portal turned on and it worked, it opened a permanent gateway into the Infinite Realms, but it opened up inside of Danny and-" Tucker sobbed, "-and he died, but it brought him back at the same time-"
Jazz was liking the story less and less.
"-and he's a Halfa now- He's the Halfa, Frostbite said, the only one that's perfectly balanced, and so the Realms chose him-" Tucker would have run out of breath by now if he were still alive, she realized dully.
Tucker continued, "-but the ghosts near the Portal kept coming through to Amity Park, and he's done so good, Jazz!"
Sam, whose face was distorted with fury, snarled, "He's been protecting everyone, Jazz! We've helped as much as we could, but we were only Liminals at that point, and we were just kids!"
"It started out okay, but the Adults were awful to him. Even after he took down Pariah Dark, they were still-" Tucker bitterly complained.
Jazz knew that story, and she didn't want to let Tucker finish. She hollowly interrupted, "Danny's Phantom, isn't he?"
Tucker and Sam came to such an abrupt halt that she flew past them under her own momentum. When she turned around, they were staring at her with open mouths.
"You didn't know? I thought everyone in the Realms knew about him!" Sam yelled.
"Yeah, he's Phantom," Tucker confirmed, "and your parents caught him changing back to his Living form! They've been planning out how they wanted to dissect him ever since... since..."
Jazz's Fire Core was burning with fury. How dare her parents Maddie and Jack go after Danny! He was the sweetest kid, and Phantom had done so much to help the Infinite Realms! They were going to regret touching her little brother. Jazz raced back to Sam and Tucker, grabbed their hands, and flew as fast as she could toward the Lair of the Ghost she knew would help them get to her little brother the fastest.
"Wait, Jazz, the Portal's the other way!" Tucker shrieked.
"The Amity Park Portal might be that way," Jazz replied, "but Laika is only fifteen and a half minutes this way, and she's got portal magic."
Cass had been running alongside Jason and the Hope Corgi for at least two minutes when the New Sibling summoned a glowing crown. Around them, the entire battlefield seemed to freeze, but the three of them didn't stop. There might be an incredible amount of power buffeting her senses, power that smelled like death and deep space, but Cass, Jason, and the Hope Corgi were on a mission.
Cass didn't know what Jason was focused on, but she'd seen him like this before. She couldn't see his eyes, but she knew they were glowing green. His body was tensed with fury, but he'd never hurt a child.
Jason's purpose seemed to be protecting the helpless.
The Hope Corgi was easy for Cass to understand. They'd decided that the kid growing closer and closer by the minute needed to have more hope, and the Hope Corgi was nothing if not single-minded when they were going to give someone hope. Cass agreed that the kid in front of them needed the help that the Hope Corgi was set on giving.
Her new brother had a familiar look of exhaustion on his-
Oh.
Oh, no.
That was not a new brother.
That was her brother. Her little brother, the one she'd had before she'd had a name, the one she'd lost five years ago and tried to forget about so she didn't waste the energy grieving him.
That was the brother who'd been caught on a mission.
That was the brother she'd seen die, or at least thought she'd seen die.
That was her baby brother.
He was shaking.
He was bleeding.
Cass' mission to help a potential new sibling changed. Her brother needed her, no matter if he'd died or why he was here. Her little brother was in trouble; he was sliding down a tree covered in blood and what looked like Lazarus water, and he was having trouble staying conscious. He was still shaking a little, but the energy to shake was leaving him fast.
He might be radiating power and wearing the glowing crown like a collar around his neck, but her baby brother needed her help right now.
Her baby brother was there.
Nothing and no one would be able to stop Cass from standing next to her little brother again and helping him.
Chapter 6: Convergence of Characters
Summary:
The Ring of Balance thinks about why it made the choice to leave and why it needs to return.
Tim and Roy watch through Jason’s helmet cam as the Pied Piper monologues, and everyone and everything converges on the Ghost King’s copse of oaks.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The Ring of Balance had seen many things over all of the timelines, repeats, and centuries it had been through. It had seen the birth of universes, the creations of gods, the breaking of planets, and the deaths of many. For everything it had seen that was good, it had seen the bad to match it. Good and bad, light and dark, life and death, creation and destruction; all of them and more were far from binary, but, to a Ring as old as it was, they all were in balance.
That did not mean it knew what it needed to do.
Eons of time in Pariah Dark's care had been, as always, a mix of good and bad. The Ring of Balance did not judge morality or ethics. The only time that the Ring would make its own decisions was when one of its Lanterns died and another was needed. It knew who was meant to wield it, not by their intentions but by their Cores.
No one could lie with their Core.
Where the lies came from was far less important.
What had always been important to the Ring of Balance was the ability of someone to act on their Core's purpose.
That had been its downfall, just as it had been its salvation before. Pariah Dark had been unable to do anything in the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep. In its time there it had been static, unmoored from the Realms it served, and unable to prevent itself from corrupting. It was the Ring of Balance, but balances were a game of change, of cause and effect, and it could not do anything but wait and hope while in the Sarcophagus. Hope turned to resignation, then frustration, then disgust, then fury, and before it knew it, the Ring of Balance had been filled so far past the point of overflowing with rage that it had almost become a Ring of it.
With freedom, the Ring had found the ability to act on that rage had been returned to it. In its actions, however, it had been reminded of why the only thing it cared about was important.
Without Balance, the Realms would crumble.
The child Pariah Dark had fought and lost to had been proof enough of that. Once, in a time that might no longer exist, the Ring had seen the creation of a Halfa. It had hurt to watch a sentient creature be stripped of their ability to change. The Halfa was Balanced, yes, but that was not the source of the Ring's pain.
A Halfa could act on their Core's purpose, but they could not escape from the agony and heartache that followed in their wake.
Death could not free them from the pains of their body.
Life could not take them back so that they might forget the aches of their Core.
The Ring did not like that a child had become one. It did not like that a child had been torn apart by a creation of those who were his guardians. It did not like that a child had been put back together by the Realms because it was the only way to stabilize the Portal.
It did not like that at all.
But, that night, when the Ring and the Crown had gone to find the little King? When the Ring of Balance had seen the child's Core? The Ring fled. It hid. The Ring closed itself off. It knew it couldn't stay with the child.
The rage in it had grown too strong.
A baby Protector Spirit, not even one year dead, had been tormented and tortured, body and Core, to the point where he had the power to go toe-to-toe with the Ancients and win. He had fought some of them, it could feel, and his body and Core still bore the scars that his victory had won him. He had given up whatever he needed to and would continue to sacrifice himself to keep the Balance of the Veil protected.
This Halfa had been made out of a child, and that Halfa had been thrown into doing the job of the Ring of Balance's Lantern without any idea of what he'd been Chosen by the Realms for.
If the Ring were to claim him now, then the rage in it, the rage over having been unable to do its job, the rage over seeing what had been done to him to keep the Balance from tipping, all of that rage would flood his Core.
It couldn't do that to him.
The rage would break the kindness in his Core.
Phantom did not deserve to suffer any more than he already had done.
Now, once again, the Ring of Balance was being reminded by the little King of why its job was so important. Phantom was in pain, tremendous pain, and the Crown of Space was making it quite clear that it thought that the Ring of Balance should have been there to help prevent this. It had done everything it could to keep their little King from this fate, but it had never been made to do its job alone.
The Crown had been calling for it, and the Ring had not come.
The Ring of Balance knew it had to come home, but...
It hesitated. Phantom was smiling at it, and the forgiveness in that smile was wrong. The child had forgiven it, yes, but he had forgiven it without ever thinking that the Ring had wronged him. He'd known that the Ring was supposed to stay, but he'd accepted that it didn't want to be near him without a fuss.
He didn't think it was unusual for him to be abandoned.
Phantom had come to expect that he would be ignored by the world around him.
He'd lost the ability to care about how he was treated.
Phantom no longer bothered to hope.
...
Perhaps the rage in the Ring of Balance would be good for him after all.
Tim double-checked how long he'd been awake three times before Roy's stunned comment confirmed for him that he was not hallucinating.
"When Jay said that Boston thought the kid was going to be an idiot and sacrifice himself to help us, I didn't think it would be that fucking obvious!"
"Yeah, there's no way Hood's letting that kid leave without going to see medical, even if he has to drag him all the way to Gotham and get Leslie's help," Tim stated flatly.
Voice crackling over the comms, Jason grunted, "Damn right, I'm not."
Tim took in as many details of this kid Deadman was calling the Ghost King as he could through Jason's helmet camera. The bouncing image, courtesy of Jason's all-out sprint, wasn't the clearest to begin with. This was one of Jason's third-generation helmets. Tim had been tinkering on the prototype for generation eight when the Pied Piper had first shown up on their radar two and a half weeks ago. Jason kept the old ones "just in case," as he'd grumbled at Damian when they'd had to pick up backup helmet number four. He might be alive enough to be able to resist Pipefitter, but keeping him that way was hard when the maniac clearly had decided that Hood was going to make a wonderful pawn. This was backup helmet number twenty-seven.
He would absolutely not admit that he was too scared to ask his big brother how many more backup helmets there were.
The scene he and Roy were watching through Jason's helmet camera scared him a hell of a lot more. The description Jason had relayed from Deadman absolutely did not do justice to how fucked up the kid was. Tim wouldn't even put him at ten; the kid had to be nine years or less, and even nine was pushing it. He was lucky if he was four feet tall, and he might, might be forty-five pounds. Might.
That was probably only if he was sopping wet and still wearing the blanket.
And that his weight worked the same way that a baseline human's did.
Tim was hoping against hope that the kid still had enough blood inside his body to make it to medical. Jason hadn't even tried to stop the Hope Corgi from following him, so that had to count for something. At this point, Tim would have texted a prayer to Cassie if he didn't know she'd gotten black eyes so bad they'd swelled her eyes shut.
He was still considering it since the Pied Piper had found his way around the kid's shield and was stomping past fallen corpses toward the Ghost King. The man was still monologuing because of course he was. That dude hadn't shut up for more than twenty seconds in the entire battle! Seriously, someone needed to get this guy a plant or a talk show.
Actually, no, scratch that, he needed to go to Arkham and "get put" in the same cell as Dr. Crane. Johnathan would love to tear this guy's mind apart piece by piece. He probably wouldn't put it back together, though.
Oh, what a shame!
"...no way you can appreciate the injustice of the situation!" Reginald Pipefitter's voice finally registered on Jason's comm. His words were clipped, but they'd been clipped to make the kind of sharp edges that could be coated in venom and have it stick. The guy was pissed. Tim wanted to punch him again. The last time, he'd gotten a concussion because Grundy broke through the wall, but this time, the dead wouldn't follow the Pied Piper's orders.
Speaking of whom, "But now, the Ring is mine! I've suffered in ways a thing like you can never imagine! I've been ignored! Abandoned! Maligned! The world was spitting on me in its gutters, but the fools! Those absolute fools never actually looked down! Not that they'd have noticed it, blind as they are, but my Ring was waiting for me. Finally, I can have my revenge! Soon, everything in the world will belong to me! Me! No one will be able to reject me. Ever. Again. All I need to do is a little bit of pest control. Then, oh, then! My victory will be complete! It will be glorious, and no one will be able to come and take it from me!"
As monologues go, Tim would give it maybe a four out of ten. The cliches were terrible, the metaphors were pedestrian, and there was absolutely no commitment to the "Pied Piper" bit.
That was the last thought Tim's concussed brain managed before everything happened at once.
The Pied Piper crossed into the island of grass, his fake flute (a pathetic thing he'd clearly made himself out of scrap metal and duct tape that was actually modeled after an oboe, but semantics) rising for a swing.
Jason swore a blue streak, his one live-ammo gun coming into the sight of the camera. Tim didn't really care at this point if he killed the asshole or not. That thought probably meant they needed to move him up the "ladder to supervillainy" in the Young Justice group chat. Maybe not, though. It was going to be a lively debate if they survived that far.
A single point of Lazarus green appeared above the tops of the trees behind the kid. A toxic green-filled shape seemed to rise out of that point; it reminded Tim of a cut-off pencil tip. Inside it, a rectangle stacked on two spheres like a weird silver-green snowman opened up. He couldn't make out many details, but Tim was pretty sure that a small dog had climbed out of a hole in the bottom one. They stood for a moment, looking out at the world beyond like they'd never thought they'd see it again. Then two kid-sized figures and one winged adult flew out of the enlarged hole and broke the dog's stillness.
A glowing crown, one that seemed to be made out of forged auroras and comet tails, flared into visibility above the kid's head. A container ship's worth of power hit Tim in the soul (and, weirdly enough, the cavity where he used to have a spleen). It reeked of death, but it sang of the endlessly growing expanse of deep space. How that kid could have that much power and still be that injured? Tim was terrified of what they'd find when they went looking. He knew they'd be looking. He knew it the moment he saw the crown sliding down the kid's head, flopping past his pointed ears, and settling on his shoulders like the responsibility and power it held was too big for the kid to carry as anything more than a collar shackling him to the weight of the universe.
The unexpected sight of Cass (he hadn't known she was with Jason, but honestly that was on him and his concussed brain) launching herself off of Jason's shoulders scared him. If she'd been launching herself at the Pied Piper, then he wouldn't have been so surprised. She wasn't. Cass had launched herself straight toward the kid, and he had no idea if she'd seen something in the Ghost King's body language that made her label him a threat or if she'd seen something that made her decide he needed Black Bat at his side. Sometimes Cass forgot to communicate with them, and this was a horrible time for her to forget.
Finally, the familiar blue blur of the Hope Corgi raced past Jason, crossing the threshold of the grass from six feet away at the same time that the Pied Piper lifted his weapon. The instinctive flinch that the last few times that he'd seen the Hope Corgi's blur had instilled in Tim couldn't be stopped. Tim had decided several days ago that he was never, never getting a corgi. The things he's seen them do would be haunting his nightmares.
Given everything that was converging on the island of trees, Tim knew for a fact that his nightmares were going to get crowded.
“Shit,” Roy swore, “What the fuck is going on?”
Tim was wondering about that, too.
Notes:
The first person to figure out where the portal's shape comes from gets...
Actually, I don't know. The emotional damage goes without saying. I can't give anyone a (physical) cookie...
How about a random sentence from the next WIP I'm going to start publishing? I can do that one!
---
AilithNight guessed it! I think everyone deserves the prize, though, so y'all get it, too! The answer is:
The portal is based on the inside of Sputnik 2, and the dog is Laika the Space Dog who died in it. I did my best to get it a) right, b) described, and c) still mysterious. Laika deserves it!
As for the prize, I couldn't decide whether to give you guys a funny line or a heartbreaking one, so you get both! These are, in fact, from the same fic. I specialize in whiplash.
Funny line:
Danny let it all out in a sound that could only be described as "that sound that cats make when they're about to fly off the handle, but they have to rev up their anger engine first."
Heartbreaking line:
There was so much love there, so much guilt, so much worry, that it was a wonder that he didn't break apart from the power of it all.
Chapter 7: Making things right
Summary:
Jazz and Cass meet and reach an agreement.
Tim.exe has stopped working. Roy is taking over the controls!
Laika has a fan! He isn't used to being useful yet, but he'll learn!
Jason is both panicked and pissed, but Jazz has a plan and he gets to punch someone, so he'll leave the problems in his world for later.
Triple combo attack, featuring some angry big siblings!
Chapter Text
Jazz was already furious before she saw the state her son little brother was in. On a scale of one to ten, she would have said she was at a ten. Then she saw him, small and bloody and wrapped in her sheets and blankets like they were all that was keeping him together, and Jazz found out that she could, in fact, get angrier than a ten out of ten. If she needed to rate it, she'd give it an eighteen out of ten. Maybe even a twenty!
The electrum detailing embossed into the obsidian feathers of her long, sharpened wings crackled to life. Flames surged across them, hotter than anything physics should allow. Their orange tips became yellow, then white, then blue.
The hottest parts of any flame are where it shifts into blue.
She pulled her wings into a dive and let intangibility wash over her to increase the speed of her dive. Behind her, Laika, Sam, and Tucker all followed. Trees passed through her as she honed in on the target of her Obsession, the baby brother she'd raised who Needed. Her. Help.
Jazz flared her wings and stopped dead behind him just in time to watch the Ring of Balance fly to her baby brother's open hands so fast that it took the middle finger off the Living creep who'd made the mistake of wearing a Ring of the Dead. Danny caught it between his own and smiled softly down at it. She didn't need to see his face to know that he was doing that. Jazz had learned to read her brother before he could sign; her Core's empathic senses only made it easier.
Ignoring the creep's howl of pain, Jazz stepped up to Danny's left side. At the same moment, a Liminal girl dressed head to toe in black, face included, landed, rolled, and flipped to stand on Danny's right.
Despite the mask blocking the girl's entire face, Jazz locked eyes with her. The two of them stood like that for what felt like an eternity. Given that the thump of the creep collapsing into a heap on the ground was what broke their staring contest, it was probably more like a few seconds or, at most, a minute.
In that stretch of time, Jazz's entire focus was on the girl's emotions; she liked what she felt. Fierce protectiveness and love were both there in spades. Desperate guilt and exuberant joy warred for space. Gratitude to the universe, for what Jazz couldn't quite place yet, was backed up by resolve and determination.
This girl was going to be a wonderful ally.
When Jazz looked over at the asshole on the ground for a moment, she felt the other three ghosts who'd come through Laika's portal finally catch up. Since Mr. I-wronged-the-Infinite-Realms was too busy nursing his finger in a ball of self-pity to be much of a threat, at least for the moment, Jazz let her attention return to her son brother.
Danny was concentrating on the Ring, his face scrunched up in the same way it had back when she'd first started teaching him to read. This time, though, it wasn't learning something new that was on his mind but fixing something old.
Jazz felt it at the same time it happened. Danny let the Ring settle into his hands while directing a stream of intense, incredible power that made her giddy into it. Oh. No wonder he'd become the Chosen of the Realms and the Ghost King! That power was more than anything she'd ever felt, and she'd met several of the Ancients in the last two years.
That power was beyond anything her baby brother should be forced to bear alone.
Jazz saw the Ring soak it all in. The tarnish, grime, and blood coating it flaked away, piece by piece until all that was left was the brilliant patina of ancient copper and the symbols for hope and despair written into either side with half-embedded, half-embossed silver and gold.
The Ring of Balance gleamed with light that was every color on the other side of the rainbow, the echoes of them that made up the ghostly lights of the Infinite Realms.
It shone brilliantly with the light of the Dead.
At the same time that her baby brother was feeding his power into the Ring, she felt that it, too, was feeding something into him. Danny, who'd always burned with a kindness that was too bright for his own good, didn't so much let in the shadows that the Ring was offering him as wear them like a coat laid over the top of him. It was like those shadows (they were something that was more like selfishness than rage but less like arrogance than understanding) were being painted onto his Core like a thin veneer of gloss. He wasn't dimmed-- Jazz didn't think her baby brother could be dimmed anymore-- but he was given a lens to look through that he'd needed for a long time.
Danny was being reminded by the Ring of Balance that he mattered, too.
She'd have to find a way to thank it. Her baby brother looked-
Danny looked like he was trying to hide his wounds from the world in her ratty old comforter and an ectoplasm and blood-soaked sheet. He rarely did that! At least, he'd rarely hid them from her. The people outside their house didn't see the worst of it. She wouldn't let them. If they saw it, then they might take him away!
She couldn't lose her baby brother!
When the white rings surrounded his waist, Jazz honestly didn't know what was going on. She'd seen a lot of different ways that the ghosts of the Realms used their powers, but that one was new to her. Then they spread, one up, one down, and the ghost of her baby brother was covered by an almost-ten-year-old boy that she'd lost the chance to watch grow. He looked awful. The wounds on his face and arms were even worse. He was way too thin! He'd barely grown at all, and he was so pale...
Too pale, she realized when his blue eyes closed, and his knees buckled. There wasn't enough blood or ectoplasm, even combined, for him to be fainting now! How much had he lost? When had he lost it? And, most importantly, what had Maddie and Jack done to her baby to make him lose it in the first place?
Her anger was pushed back down to simmer in her Core when she heard Laika bark. Jazz knew the friendly little dog who'd died alone and far from home. Laika was quiet. She didn't bark or talk much, even in Ghost Speech, so when she did something was seriously wrong. The flutter of her ratty childhood blanket slipping all the way to the grassy ground below them brought her attention back to her baby and her focus back to the here and now.
No!
Jazz wasn't going to be in time to catch him! He was falling, Danny was falling, and she was going to be too late. No! She needed to-
Powerful blue light surrounded him. That light sang of the stubborn, determined Hope that didn't quit fighting, no matter what the odds. It was solid, somehow. It wrapped around him like a strange blue ectoplasmic construct. The shape actually reminded her of a blanket, the kind that you kept by the heater on the coldest mornings so that it would be waiting, already nice and toasty warm, for you to burrow into when you got back from shoveling snow. The kind of blanket that gave you the motivation to finish up as fast as you could so you could warm up once more.
The blanket made of Hope kept Danny from falling long enough for Jazz to wrap her arms around his shoulders. She blinked down, but no, that black shape wasn't the tips of her wings, it was the girl she'd seen launch herself over to help Jazz's baby. The girl in black had caught his legs in the same gentle but firm grip that Jazz was using on his shoulders.
She wasn't looking at Jazz, though.
The girl was looking at Danny with that same gratitude and determined love that Jazz had felt earlier.
Quietly, so quietly that Jazz wouldn't have heard her if she weren't a ghost, the girl whispered to him, "Sorry, little brother. Got lost. Found you now! Won't lose you!"
Jazz's Core pulsed with understanding and joy when she heard those words. This was Danny's big sister! This was the girl who'd been with him as a kid, the girl who'd shared his sorrows, pains, and hopes before Jazz had ever known he was alive. She'd heard so many stories about her from him. Danny had missed her so much!
He thought she wouldn't notice the lie he'd told her when she asked him if he missed her constantly. Danny could be silly sometimes. Of course she had noticed! Danny was her baby. She loved him, and he loved her, but he was still allowed to miss his big sister. She would have been more worried if he didn't miss her! It hurt a little to know he was lying to her, but it wasn't a mean lie.
Danny was too kind and bright for that.
No, Danny had lied to her because he didn't want her to feel guilty that she was leaving him. There was no way he could have done that. He loved her, and she loved him, but she knew she'd never be able to take care of him without a degree that would get her a job as far away from Amity Park as possible. Leaving for college was what she had to do.
If she'd known she was going to die... If she'd known just what would happen to Danny while she was...
Jazz wouldn't have left him alone.
She wasn't going to leave him and his big sister alone now.
Smiling down at the girl who'd been the reason her baby survived to make it to Amity Park, Jazz softly whispered, "He missed you, too. Danny wanted to go find his big sister when he got old enough to leave Amity Park. I don't think he'll mind that you found him first, though. He's my baby, so that means you can be, too. Let's get him settled but after that? I think there's a few assholes I need to beat up. I'd love to have some help. Want to?"
The girl's masked face flicked up to meet hers. Jazz kept the smile up and her body language open. She remembered when Danny first came home. He hadn't been able to speak, but he'd been a better judge of someone's emotions and intentions than any judge or jury could hope to be. Body language was his native one. His big sister would be able to read it just as well.
"Love to," The girl replied with a feral grin in her voice, "Vigilante. Gotham. Black Bat."
Jazz pointed to herself and introduced, "I'm Jazz. Ghost, Fire Core, Family Obsession."
The girl tilted her head in thought, then nodded. Firmly, she decided, "Mom."
"Mom," Jazz agreed, her Core singing, "For you, my daughter, I can be Mom."
Tim would like to state, for the record, that he did have a concussion. It wasn't the worst concussion that he'd ever had, but he still had it. Concussions came with side effects; he knew that and had factored it into his decision-making process today.
There was absolutely no way that a concussion would have made him see all of this.
"Is... Is that kid made of plants covered in runes making three entire oak trees form themselves into a cot?" Roy asked the silence with clear disbelief.
"Yep," Tim popped.
Roy, with the same tone, went on, "And the other one, the Pharoah kid made of circuit boards, he's forming bandages, clean bandages, out of his arm by the meter."
Tim flatly repeated, "Yep."
Resignation took over when Roy stated, "Then there's Black Bat and a girl with giant wings made of obsidian that move. They're holding up the Ghost King. He did a color swap into adoption bait and passed out."
"Uh huh," Tim said, just for variety.
"There's no way that the Hope Corgi is riding on the back of a glowing dog covered in stars, is there? I mean, they like to be tall, yeah, but they can fly. They don't need to ride another dog to supervise the cot-making. They can't be doing it, right?" Roy pleaded with the universe.
Tim sighed, "I see it too, Arsenal."
"Did you see where Hood went?" Roy asked, "Because I missed that during the... well, everything else."
"He shot the fake oboe out of the Pied Piper's hands before that Ring ripped itself off and took his middle finger with it," Tim told his brother's teammate... partner... Roy, "Then argued with the air for a minute before bolting towards the place where the portal opened."
"Deadman," Roy stated.
"Yep," Tim returned to his earlier statement.
After a moment of silence, Roy reluctantly asked, "Should we send someone over to check on all that?"
"Probably," Tim sighed, "but I know they're all on their way over anyway, so why state the obvious?"
"Batman will want it in the records, Tim," Roy reminded him.
"Oh," Tim said, his voice still flat and his body still motionless, "Yeah."
Another few seconds passed before Roy grabbed the main console mike out of Tim's hand, gently peeled his stiff fingers off of it, and issued the order to everyone through it.
"This is Arsenal, I'm taking over from Red Robin. I want everyone who isn't already involved in cleanup to head towards the oak trees. Field medics should be ready for... a lot. Prioritize stabilization of the Ghost King for transport to Medical; have a magic user look at him, too. I have no idea what we're dealing with, but he isn't entirely human if he is at all. Be aware that four unknowns are present; all appear to be friendly. Black Bat and the Hope Corgi are working with them to care for the Ghost King. Deadman and the Red Hood are in the area."
A voice crackled through the comms. It took a while for Tim to drift back to the situation enough to place it as Jason. He was shouting, "The Pied Piper isn't far from them. He's disarmed, missing a finger, but still dangerous!"
Deadman hadn't felt more useless than when he watched the Pied Piper tie a handkerchief of all things around his bleeding knuckle (who carried a handkerchief anymore?), snarl, and stumble upright. The Red Hood was still on the way back from where he'd seen the portal open. Boston wasn't the best with history; he'd never needed to be!
That was what other people were for!
He didn't need to be a history buff to be sick over something he'd lived through.
That portal's shape was familiar, though, in a way that made him want to be wrong. Boston remembered the crazy stories. He remembered the news articles, the press statements, and the rumors. The insanity of it all had stuck in his mind. Sending a dog into space? That was the kind of thing that wasn't going to leave his nightmares for a long, long time. Hell, it'd even followed him into his afterlife!
Deadman had looked at that portal and remembered Sputnik II and Laika's sacrifice.
Now, with the Pied Piper disoriented and staggering across the battlefield, Boston was looking down at a body full of stars in the shape of the brave little dog his heart had ached for.
That, and the Hope Corgi's determined little face, but that wasn't breaking his heart.
"{I'm Laika. Hello, ghost-who-is-starving-for-ectoplasm. The Hope Corgi cannot see you, but I can, and so can Jazz. Call out to her and she will hear you. Jazz has loved her son for longer than he's been her son. She deserves to hurt the Pretender. Call out to her, ghost!}"
Boston blinked. That was a really weird feeling. He'd never felt anything like the words that-
"Laika? Like, the Space Dog?" he asked, completely sure that he'd had some kind of spell hit him and started hallucinating.
"{Yes,}" The dog made of stars nodded, "{That was my purpose in life. My people wanted to reach the stars, and I saw them. Now, call out to Jazz!}"
"Oh," Deadman breathed, "Yeah, right. Right!"
Then, gathering a breath he probably didn't need, Boston Brand shouted across the battlefield to... whichever of the new ghosts Laika was talking about (he prayed to whatever gods might care about it that he'd get heard), "Hey! Jazz! The Pied Piper, the asshole who's missing a finger to flip, is coming your way!"
Jason Todd-Wayne hadn't run this fast in a long time. No, that was a lie. He'd run this fast plenty of times, but this time felt different. This time felt like the world would crumble if he didn't.
The Red Hood wasn't really a "the fate of the world rests on your shoulders" kind of guy.
He passed the last tree before he'd turn and see the center of the craziness. Jason was berating himself. Why didn't he go straight to the injured kid in the first place? Jason knew that he was in no shape to defend himself; Deadman had made that much clear before Hood had even caught sight of the kid through his helmet. The Red Hood existed to Protect the Helpless!
When he saw just how fucking crazy it was around the kid now, Jason wanted to punch his past self even more.
The kid had been laid out on a rough table made of oak trees by two other kids; they were unwrapping a very bloody sheet (Jason was going to have nightmares about Lazarus water blood for a long, long time) from around the Ghost King's waist. Neither of them looked like humans in anything other than shape.
Deadman was having an argument with the Hope Corgi. Could the corgi see him? How did he know what the corgi was saying? There was a dog that was made of stars that the Hope Corgi was sitting on with the attitude of some kind of weird fucking ruler observing their domain. Deadman kept looking down at the starry dog; Jason couldn't see his expression well enough to tell what it was, but it wasn't a happy one, and it wasn't angry. That dog might be the go-between. Jason still didn't know what they were all arguing about, though.
A young woman with flaming black wings was talking to Black Bat; Cass was signing, but the woman was speaking. He couldn't see enough of Cass' hands to follow the conversation, and he only heard a few words carried to him on the wind from the black-winged woman.
"...danger...son...dead...attack...plan?"
Yeah, Jason wasn't a fan of those words. He could feel the fucking Pit Rage gnawing at the edges of his sanity; the green shit was fighting hard to take control. The Red Hood shoved it down as far as he could when the strange young woman stepped back and Cass waved at him. Before his legs got the chance to listen to his thoughts and slow down, Cass was signaling him to come.
Signing with vicious glee, Cass explained, "[Come, big brother! Mom has a plan to beat up the Pied Piper. It's good! You'll like it!]"
Mom? What the fuck was Lady Shiva doing here? Cass never called her that, and she sure as fuck didn't listen to her! Why would she-
Wait.
Cass was signing again, pointing between her and the black-winged woman and declaring, "[Jazz is my Mom now.]"
Okay, what the absolute fuck was- You know what? Not his problem. Future Jason could deal with that mental crisis. Present Jason just needed in on the plan to punch Pipefitter because the Pit was howling for the blood of the man who'd Attacked his the Helpless Child King!
With less than three meters left to go, the Red Hood signaled to Black Bat that he was in.
Cass loved her family! Her new Mom's plan was going to be fun, and Jason was just as excited to beat up the Pied Piper for hurting her little brother as she'd thought he would be! Cass could read the relief and blood lust on Jazz like an open book. If Jazz had raised her little brother then she'd probably been the one to teach him to talk; keeping her body language open like this would have helped him. Mom was great!
Sneaking around the side of Reginald Pipefitter's reckless, sloppy, and furious charge was easy for her. It was a little sad to see the man who'd caused so much damage and killed so many people didn't even know how to run properly. It did make it easier for them to pull off the plan, but it didn't make him any less sad.
He wasn't even watching the people around him!
Because of that, Mom's firey wings slicing through the air in front of him to form a shield-like cross guard came completely by surprise. The Pied Piper already had a broken nose; the blood on it sizzled in the controlled heat of Mom's wings. Cass' lips twitched up in a grin when he screamed. That was loud! His shoulders and wobbly legs showed just how much the pain was upsetting him. He staggered back, his heels slipping in the muddy grass at the edge of the copse of oak trees, and almost fell back on his face! He didn't, though.
Good.
It wasn't time for him to hit the ground yet!
When his angry eyes turned back to the wings and his legs spread in a weak and messy fighting stance, Jazz slid her wings back and away from him. The sound of scrapping echoed around them. It didn't sound right, but Cass didn't know how to put what it did sound like. Sparks rained down from the obsidian feathers.
The Red Hood's fist soared out of the gap she'd made and smashed straight into Pipefitter's chin! The satisfying crunch made some deep part of her happy.
So did the look on his face when he pulled out of the spin the punch had sent him into. He lurched to a stop, facing her with a look of pain, fear, and disbelief on his face. Cass tilted her head and waved. Then, wordlessly, she kneed him in the gut, slammed the side of her arm into his skull, and kicked him right in his floating ribs.
The beatdown continued. She let her anger out on him. All the aggression and anguish that she'd locked into the corner of her mind as a kid to keep her little brother safe, the feelings that hadn't brought him home with her, all came out in a flurry of blows that she didn't allow him to dodge. Cass could feel her new Mom and big brother watching, but she was too furious to care.
As her punches slowed down, Cass hissed while she slammed her bloody knuckles into him, "Don't. Ever. Hurt. My. Little. Brother!"
Then, standing up with the grace that had been beaten into her at David's feet, grace that she knew that Danny, her little brother finally here again, still had, Black Bat stared down at the pitiful man muttering meaningless threats below her. Absolute certainty filled her voice as she spat, "Or you will be broken."
Chapter 8: Trust is hard to earn when it was broken before you came
Summary:
In which the author finds many new and exciting ways to bring the audience (and xerself) to tears.
Or:
Hal gets beaten up by a tree and then goes on a clothing run.
Jason makes use of his time as a street rat, gets out some aggression, and rescues the same person twice in less than five minutes.
Deadman rolls a Nat 1 on charisma, cries over a dog, and panics.
The duct tape bandages make a return appearance.
The Hope Corgi does that weird healing thing that dogs do despite it all.
Notes:
Just so everyone knows, this chapter originally was going to have another two sections of POV woven into it, but then it didn't. It's long enough already, an everything is still there, there's just less repetition and perspectives on the same set of events.
Also, yes, I did cry while writing Laika's speech, thanks for asking! There's too much truth in there not to.
Chapter Text
There was nothing quite like a hug full of warmth and love to rest in when you were recovering from being emotionally and physically wrung out. Cass hadn't had one this good in a long, long time. The others tried, sometimes, but it wasn't natural to them.
This one was.
Mom was the best!
Cass was glad Danny had been around someone who knew how to give good hugs.
Mom seemed to need this hug as much as Cass did; letting her carry her back to Danny was good for both of them, so why fight it? Besides, it was nice to be this close to family. B and everyone were many things, but one thing they weren't was cuddly.
Cass liked cuddling!
As awful as this all was, Cass' family was here to protect and cuddle.
She looked over at Jason and smiled. It was not a friendly smile. There was too much satisfied blood-lust showing in it for that. The Pied Piper was slung over Jason's shoulder, dangling behind him by one leg. The creep was more bruise and blood than skin right now. A lot of that was because of Cass. He deserved it! The world would take a long time to recover from the scars he'd left behind him.
Danny had so many other scars to recover from.
Peeking out of Mom's comfortably protective hug, Cass saw her little brother had been laid down on a bed formed from three living oak trees. The plant-girl who'd helped the sand-boy take Danny from Mom and Cass were with him.
The sand-boy was wrestling with the sheet that had been wound tight around her little brother's body. The strange mix of Lazarus green and dark red that was Danny's blood had glued the sheet to him. The sand-boy was doing his best to get it off without hurting her little brother more. He was not having much luck.
The Hope Corgi, who'd curled on Danny's legs to heal him in the mysterious way that dogs did, would occasionally have an armful of bloody fabric passed through them. They didn't seem bothered by it, and the sand-boy didn't seem to be inconvenienced by them, so Cass approved. She hoped that they stuck around for a while and maybe even made Cass' family their new home because Danny needed them. Besides, he'd always wanted a dog!
Titus was more Damian's dog than the family's, Haley was really Dick's, and Dog was Jason's. Danny needed his own dog!
He deserved his own dog!
If the Hope Corgi didn't stick around, Cass was sure she could convince Dad to help Mom get one for her little brother. Dad was easy to convince to do things. Cass knew he loved them all so much; he didn't know how to show it well, but he knew that getting them the things they wanted made them happy, so he did that whenever he could. He'd get Danny a dog once everything was sorted out.
Dad would love her little brother once he'd learned who he was!
Right now, Danny was being protected by the plant-girl. She was glaring at Hal. The Green Lantern was trying to talk her into letting him help. It wasn't working; whenever he got too close, the plant-girl would make one of the other trees smack him away. It was funny! Hal's body language said he was scared for Danny, but he was also afraid of the plant-girl and upset by her words. It wasn't an I'm-insulted kind of upset or a big-threat kind of upset; no, Hal was showing that he was a learning-things-that-weren't-good kind of upset.
Cass could understand why. The plant-girl was showing that she was big-threat upset about Hal, that she didn't trust him, and that she was angry because she felt guilty about Danny being hurt. She seemed to think that she was responsible for keeping Danny safe. Silly plant-girl! No child should be the only one responsible for the safety of others.
That was a lesson that Dad had helped her learn.
...
She'd never told him why she was so frantic about protecting her brothers, had she?
Oh, well. Danny would be easier to tell him about now that she could cuddle him!
From the plant-girl's body language, Cass could tell that she was listening and talking to two people. Hal was the one she trusted least, but the other one wasn't someone she was entirely sure she believed. Since Cass could only see Hal, she suspected that the plant-girl was also talking to Boston Brand. It would be nice for Boston if more people could see him. Cass knew how much it could hurt to be around people you couldn't communicate with.
Mom's voice interrupted her thoughts, asking, "I know that the starving ghost says that the Green Lantern over there is trying to help, but adults are usually pretty bad at it. What do you think, my daughter? I know Danny could read body language incredibly well, and I saw you do it. Is that 'Hal' guy trustworthy?"
"Yes," Cass said confidently, "Good helper. Cares. Wants to help. Worried for them."
After a beat, Cass added, "Will break rules to help people. Had first ring taken because of it. Second ring chose him. He will help."
"Alright," Mom nodded firmly. She called out as they got closer, "Sam, he's better than the Adults back in Amity Park!"
"That doesn't mean I have to let him near Danny!" Sam shouted back.
The sand-boy sighed, "Look, Boston. I get that you think he's a good guy, but the good guys can hurt people, too. The people who did this to Danny thought they were good! There's no way you'll convince me and Sam to trust him like that!"
"You know, kid, you're right!" Jason called out from near her. Cass turned to him, and his body language said he was being sly and knew that this trick would work.
"Red Hood!" Hal whined, "I thought you liked me!"
"Oh, liking you has nothing to do with trusting you," Jason said cheerfully, his body betraying his teasing intent, "but I was a street kid. I know how much adults can let you down. Trust is hard to earn when someone else broke it before you. I might trust you to help the kid, but they don't."
"Of course not!" The plant-girl that Mom had called Sam shouted, "He's an adult!"
Jason hummed. Then, he offered, "Adults can buy stuff easier, right? He's almost as stubborn as the Hope Corgi. He wants to help so much? Let him help. It doesn't have to be near your friend! How about this Green Lantern goes and gets Danny some spare clothes? That's an easy enough task. If he messes that up then there's no way he can be trusted!"
Hal was spluttering, insulted, indignant, and a little betrayed that Jason didn't trust him that much. Cass would ask her big brother to explain the trick later. Hal was nice enough, he just wasn't subtle.
Sam was cackling at Hal's reaction, and the sand-boy was giggling, both of them thinking that Hal was a silly adult. Without taking a breath, Tucker announced, "You know what? Yeah! Danny doesn't have any other clothes, so if the Green Lantern can't get some for him, then he can go bother someone else. We don't need him messing up Danny anymore than he already has been!"
Hal still felt like the victim of unkindness, but he really did like to help people. He sucked it up, clearly feeling that he could earn the kids' trust like he'd earned things before. Turning to them, he asked, "I can do that. What sizes does he need?"
Slow blinks from the two kids followed. They were feeling a little caught off guard. They were surprised, confused, and suspicious, but they were also looking like the kids in Cass' classes did when they'd been given a pop quiz they hadn't studied for.
The sand-boy was the one who squeaked, "There's a yellow sticker on the underwear. I don't know much else. We just get the same thing every time."
"His socks are the medium kid ones," Sam added, a little proud of knowing more than her friend, "Like, there's the baby sizes, and there's the big kid sizes, and he's the size that's right in the middle. You know the ones."
Hal clearly didn't. He was confused and, while he was trying to understand what they meant, he really was worried about getting it right. Then more worry tensed his muscles, and he asked, "You, um, don't happen to know the other sizes, do you? His shirt and pant sizes? Because I don't want to mess those up, and something tells me that I can't just go get his spares from his home."
"Danny doesn't have spares, not unless Sam and Tucker helped him find some," Mom said. The kids were shaking their heads no, and Cass could see that they were upset and guilty for not doing more. She would have to help them learn that they did not have to feel guilty for that; they did more than they should have ever had to do.
They didn't fail!
They had been failed.
Jason's voice was very angry when he hissed, "And his parents didn't buy him more– Why?"
Mom's body tensed. She snapped back, "My bio-donors are abusive and neglectful. They've never bought him a pair of clothes, not even when we first came back from the orphanage. I was the one who bought them, and I couldn't afford to get more than one set. Aunt Alecia only sent me so much money every month! I had to make it stretch!"
"Oooh-kay, that's..." Hal hesitated before adding weakly, his voice barely loud enough to be heard over Jason's barely human-sounding growling, "Not a good thing."
"Fucking right it's not!" Jason snarled. Then, as his body language shifted from fury to guilt, he apologized in one breathless sentence, "Sorry, I shouldn't have sworn in front of–"
"We're ten, asshole. We know how to swear, and those fuckers have earned waaaay more cursing out than we've done," Sam snapped back.
Mom added, "Sam's been swearing since she was seven."
"Damn right I have!" Sam swore proudly.
Tucker contributed, not looking up from his task, "She's sworn at Maddie and Jack a lot since you left Jazz. I'm guessing you didn't live long enough to call Danny when you got to college like you promised."
"No, Tucker. I died on the way there," Mom sighed.
"Died?!" Hal gasped. Cass saw his surprise shift into sympathy, guilt, and grief.
"Dude, we're all ghosts. Danny is literally the only one who's even sometimes alive anymore," Tucker flatly stated, his body language saying he wasn't surprised at Hal's statement but that it still annoyed him and that he really wanted Hal to leave already, "and he's still a half-ghost."
"I– You know what? I'm just going to go get the clothes..." Hal's voice trailed off. Then he mumbled, "I still don't know his sizes."
Mom informed him, "He used to wear a size T5 for both shirt and pants. Since he's swimming in the jeans I bought him, I don't think he's that big anymore."
Silence followed that statement. Everyone that Cass could see was stiff with anger. Mom's arms were trembling around Cass. She was upset. Cass knew why; Mom didn't like knowing that her baby had gotten smaller. If Cass' little brother had been those sizes, then he was still too small for even the youngest age that he might be.
Cass broke it by quietly stating, "Get those. Big is good. Bandages fit underneath."
She didn't like saying it. Cass didn't want her little brother to need enough bandages to fill out that size because Dad's training told her that Danny was only a T4. Her little brother shouldn't need that many bandages.
He shouldn't!
Cass knew, deep inside where she wouldn't look, that he would need more than she wanted him to.
Jason had no intention of treating the creep he'd slung over his shoulder with mercy. The only reason that the Pied Piper was still alive was that Jazz had convinced him that Reginald Pipefitter didn't deserve to have that much comfort and freedom from pain.
Death being an escape from pain wasn't something that Jason had ever thought about before, but he had to admit it was right. He didn't remember much about being dead, but he did know that he'd gotten away from the agony of the aftermath of the explosion and Joker's torture. That moment of relief had stuck with him through everything that his resurrection had thrown at him.
Yeah, Pipefitter deserved to suffer.
He was starting to wonder if he could convince himself that Joker should suffer a lot more, too.
Watching Boston trying to defend Hal interrupted him. It was hilarious! Boston was trying to talk up Hal's good traits to the two ghost kids who were taking care of his King the tiny adoption bait. It was like watching a car salesman, really. He was even doing the gestures!
Unfortunately for Boston, Hal couldn't hear a word he said. Every time that Boston complimented him on something, Hal would do the opposite. The ghost girl smacking Hal out of the sky was highly entertaining. It was like watching Poison Ivy trying to convince the Riddler not to borrow Harley's hyenas all over again.
Boston didn't deserve it, but Jason was going to enjoy the scene anyway.
Still, he should probably get the kids to let people help them. Hearing their frustrated and hateful words, he picked up on a familiar theme: adults weren't trustworthy. Jason could understand that. He'd been the same way as a kid. Honestly, he still was now, he hadn't turned eighteen yet! Every street rat in Crime Alley was like that. There might be a list of exceptions, but adults, as a whole, were more likely to mess shit up than fix it.
Maybe he could try the same tactics he used on the street rats for this? He'd gotten Nightwing onto the "somewhat trustworthy" list; if Dick could make it stick, anyone could!
Boston lamented, "But seriously, Hal's a good person! He really is!"
The kid made of circuits that was fighting the adoption bait's clothes and ignoring the Hope Corgi between the kid's legs (Jason might be terrified of that corgi, but he liked them, too. Stubbornness was a trait he could admire and fear at the same time. It was pretty common in B's clan.) sighed, "Look, Boston. I get that you think he's a good guy, but the good guys can hurt people, too. The people who did this to Danny thought they were good! There's no way you'll convince me and Sam to trust him like that!"
Taking the opportunity, Jason remarked thoughtfully, "You know, kid, you're right!"
"Red Hood!" Hal whined, and Jason snickered inside at the face he was making, "I thought you liked me!"
"Oh, liking you has nothing to do with trusting you," Jason said cheerfully, projecting to the ghost kids that he was telling the truth even if he was teasing Hal a bit, "but I was a street kid. I know how much adults can let you down. Trust is hard to earn when someone else broke it before you. I might trust you to help the kid, but they don't."
"Of course not!" The ghost kid that Poison Ivy would love on sight shouted, "He's an adult!"
"Why does that mean he's not going to help you?" Boston asked in a whine. Poor guy, he really didn't get the whole "adults failed them so much they lost faith" thing, did he?
Jason hummed thoughtfully. How should he phrase this so that the kids would take the bait? Maybe he could use the trick Alfred had used when B dragged him home the first time. Alfie knew what to do in just about every situation! Yeah, that plot would work!
Out loud, he offered, "Adults can buy stuff easier, right? He's almost as stubborn as the Hope Corgi. He wants to help so much? Let him help. It doesn't have to be near your friend! How about this Green Lantern goes and gets Danny some spare clothes? That's an easy enough task. If he messes that up, then there's no way he can be trusted!"
"But Hal's good at more things than just shopping!" Boston whined. Complaining, he said, "Adults have a lot more to offer than just money!"
Jason signaled for Boston to let him handle this. Boston saw it, but he clearly wasn't happy.
Neither was Hal. The Green Lantern was sputtering and gesticulating wildly. If Tim wasn't going to save this video for blackmail, Jason would get Babs to do it. Hal's indignation was top-tier!
Even the kids appreciated it! The plant witch cackled, and Cass's new Mom, Jazz (he was still putting off that crisis), laughed silently.
"You know what? Yeah!" The kid giggling at the adoption bait's side said in a way that ignored the usual physics of sound, air, and lungs, "Danny doesn't have any other clothes, so if the Green Lantern can't get some for him, then he can go bother someone else. We don't need him messing up Danny anymore than he already has been!"
Hal managed to put aside his feelings faster than Jason would have guessed. Then again, Hal could out-stubborn anything. That included his own Corps' Council, apparently. The stories Jason had heard about that were wild!
With determination in his eye that Jason approved of, Hal asked, "I can do that. What sizes does he need?"
Oh, fuck. Hal didn't have Bat training! He still could have known how to measure sizes by eye, but clearly, he didn't! That threw a wrench in Jason's plans.
Then again, the kids were giving him the same look that the newer street rats did whenever the Red Hood stopped by with useful shit like used crates and tools that could easily be fixed up with a rock and patience. Street kids wouldn't trust it if he gave them new things, but stuff like that, stuff that might have cost him a pretty penny to drop off at the dump, was more believable. It was also stuff they could really use, and it showed them that he really did get what it meant to grow up in Crime Alley.
These kids weren't street rats, not exactly, but Hal was being practical. That was worth something to any kid who'd had to choose between having fun or surviving.
They might not be as skinny as the adoption bait– Danny was what the one fighting that blanket had called him– but they'd given up a lot to take care of their friend, and it showed. Hell, they'd died for Danny!
Jason didn't want to think about that. It felt too much like him and the story of the Dead Robin.
Pausing in the middle of prying apart another inch of the drying sheet stuck down with blood, the kid by Danny's side squeaked, "There's a yellow sticker on the underwear. I don't know much else. We just get the same thing every time."
Oh, no. That did not sound promising.
"His socks are the medium kid ones," the plant witch added smugly, "Like, there's the baby sizes, and there's the big kid sizes, and he's the size that's right in the middle. You know the ones."
Hal probably didn't. The guy didn't really have kids in his life, not to the degree that he'd go shopping for them. It showed when he asked, "You, um, don't happen to know the other sizes, do you? His shirt and pant sizes? Because I don't want to mess those up, and something tells me that I can't just go get his spares from his home."
"Danny doesn't have spares, not unless Sam and Tucker helped him find some," Jazz said angrily. The kids were shaking their heads, and Jason really wanted to punch whoever had let these kids down.
The green at the edges of his vision might not feel as acidic as usual, but it was just as angry as ever. He let it out in a hissed, "And his parents didn't buy him more– Why?"
"My bio-donors are abusive and neglectful. They've never bought him a pair of clothes, not even when we first came back from the orphanage," Jazz snapped. He was pissed off but wasn't surprised when she went on, "I was the one who bought them, and I couldn't afford to get more than one set. Aunt Alecia only sent me so much money every month! I had to make it stretch!"
Hal sounded pathetic as hell when he rasped, "Oooh-kay, that's... Not a good thing."
Jason only felt the growling that was coming from something deep his chest (what the fuck?!) when he snarled, "Fucking right, it's not!"
The instincts that Alfred had instilled in him kicked in. There were kids present, and Alfie would be disappointed to know that Jason had sworn in front of them. Shamefully, he apologized, "Sorry, I shouldn't have sworn in front of–"
"We're ten, asshole. We know how to swear, and those fuckers have earned waaaay more cursing out than we've done," the plant witch, Sam, snapped back.
Okay, yeah, he deserved that.
Jazz remarked offhandedly, "Sam's been swearing since she was seven."
"Damn right I have!" Sam swore, and she swore proudly. Jason wasn't surprised; Alley kids were the same way.
Jason missed a lot of the sentences that followed. He'd spotted a familiar black blob coming their way. What the fuck was B doing? He'd been pushed off that rooftop without his grapple gun less than twenty-four hours ago, and he only survived by catching a fire escape with his arm; he was falling fast enough that he dislocated it and still slammed into the side of the building. His leg had been broken in at least three pieces when it got caught up in the fire escape! How the fuck had he convinced Diana to carry him over here?
His attention snapped back to the group in the glade when he heard the ghost kid by Danny– Tucker, wasn't it?– reply to someone, "Dude, we're all ghosts. Danny is literally the only one who's even sometimes alive anymore, and he's still a half-ghost."
Jason had known that the other three were dead. He didn't have a clue how, but he did. The surprising bit was the "half-ghost" thing. How could someone be only half a ghost?
Hal's stuppified voice weakly mumbled, "I– You know what? I'm just going to go get the clothes... I still don't know his sizes."
Jazz informed him, "He used to wear a size T5 for both shirt and pants. Since he's swimming in the jeans I bought him, I don't think he's that big anymore."
If Jason had thought he was greening out before, that was nothing on what he was fighting now. Cass had been with the family for a little less than five years now. She was still small, but Leslie had informed them that, based on a bunch of medical stuff Jason tuned out, Cass was fourteen. That was five months ago. Based on that size, the only way that Danny would have been remotely healthy was if he was seven.
There was no way that Danny was seven, not if he'd been out on missions with Cass over five years ago, and Cass' words had Jason suspecting that he had been going out on them.
Danny had been underweight, and now he'd lost some of that weight.
Yeah, Jason was pissed.
Cass broke through the green as she often did by quietly stating, "Get those. Big is good. Bandages fit underneath."
Wonder Woman was almost here with B, so Jason only had a little bit of time to work out some of this anger. A twitch from the body still dangling behind him reminded him that there was a convenient target for him to get some of his misplaced aggression out on here! The Pied Piper deserved a lot of suffering (Jazz was definitely going to have some ideas for him to use on Joker; her little triple combo attack was too vicious for her not to).
Jason might as well add some more!
Stumbling forward, obviously because he was startled by that twitch, Jason accidentally dropped Piperfitter's ankle at the exact right moment, sending him falling headfirst onto a sharp rock. Gasping in what was clearly surprise, Jason turned around, kicking the inside of the creep's knee hard enough for something to give. Then, stumbling, again purely by accident, he sent the tip of his steel-toed boots right into Piperfitter's crotch.
He saw Cass' silent giggles out of the corner of his eye. Subtly, out of the sight of B and the ghost kids, he gave her a thumbs up.
Cass giggled harder.
"Hello, my friends!" Diana called out as she landed with B leaning on her shoulder, "And hello there, strange young warriors!"
Jason turned to greet her and let the kids know who she was, but Sam beat him to the punch. The ghost kid replied, "Oh, you're Diana. I've heard of you! Lady Pandora talks about you all the time."
...
What?
Because he was blue-screening for a moment or five over Sam's casual mention that she knows Pandora (and has spoken to her regularly!), Jason missed the sequence of events that led to Jazz hissing, "No, you can't! I don't know you, and I'm not letting you touch her! You're not getting close!"
Whipping to face her, Jason stared. B was one wobble away from face-planting in the mud, but he'd made his way over to where Jazz was holding Cass. Her wings were wrapped around his little sister defensively, and she was snarling with a frankly terrifying array of razor-sharp teeth. Sam was mimicking the snarl; the only difference with her was that she was defending Danny and Tucker with her weaponized oak trees. B wasn't facing her, but Jason was pretty sure he'd tried there already.
With a softer voice than Jason almost ever heard from Batman, B slurred, "Gotta check the kids. Can't... Can't lose them, not after Jay... no injuries. Tim's hurt. No checking... Gotta check Cass."
Ah.
That's...
He's having a lot of feelings he's not dealing with right now, this lot can go join them. B needed to be rescued before Jazz roasted him alive. It would kinda suck if B bit the dust while he was actually being a good dad. Apparently, a concussion, a dislocated shoulder, and a broken leg weren't enough shit to stop him from assessing his clan for injuries.
"Jazz, please at least let him look at her!" Deadman wheedled, "He's her Dad, he just wants to make sure she's okay!"
"Not. Getting. Close," Jazz snapped each word, enunciating each word clearly and with a weirdly echoing undertone that Jason felt more in the Pit than he heard it.
"Barbara?" B asked, squinting. He took a wobbly step over towards Jazz, who backed up and hissed. Undeterred, he stepped closer and hoarsely said, "Gotta check you! Can't let it happen again... can't watch you hurting, not again... I have to be fast enough... have to catch it sooner."
Jason had no clue what B was on about. The only part he was following was that he wanted to check Jazz because her red hair made him think she was Babs.
That was going to be a problem. Jazz was definitely not going to let B check her for injuries. He couldn't read her face, but the scrape of obsidian on obsidian as her wings shifted was the only reminder he needed that B was one wrong wobble away from burning to a crisp.
...
Jason was going to have to save him, wasn't he?
...
Fuck.
Leaving the unconscious Pipefitter on the ground where he was, Jason stepped into the grass that was rapidly running out of room for people to stand, lay, or hover on. Waving his hands like the dramatic madman he would proudly admit to being, Jason shouted, "Hey, B! It's me over here! Your f–"
He didn't get to say anything else. B had stumbled those last five steps over to him deceptively fast. His hands had trapped Jason's jaw from either side. Despite the fucking helmet getting in his way, B was trying to check his face.
Oh, yeah. B was definitely concussed.
"Jaylad, your face is red. Are you burned?" B asked with the least amount of slurring yet.
Jason grumbled, "I'm wearing the helmet, B."
"Oh," B blinked.
His hands traveled down to Jason's shoulders as he patted him down. Jason recognized the method– this was how B used to check him over during his Robin days, back when it really was just spandex suits and capes between the heroes and the villains. It wouldn't do him any good now, not with the armor he wore these days, but it was... weird to have B doing it again.
Several undignified, awkward pats later, B bent enough that the stupid little ears on his cowl moved enough to one side that Jason got a perfect view of the phone in Cass' hands. She was pointing it at him. There were absolutely going to be pictures of this in the group chat by the end of the day.
Jason glared at her, and Cass shook in a silent giggle. Then, using her free hand to sign at him, she finger-spelled, [Mom helping.]
Glancing at Jazz's face, Jason saw a feral smile full of mischief and extremely sharp teeth grinning back at him. Then he followed her face up as she fucking floated to give Cass a better angle as B inspected an old dent on the bottom of the armor over his ribcage. That was cheating! Those little shits... well, okay, one little shit and one Mom-sized shit.
It was still cheating!
"I feel for you, dude," Tucker's voice reached him.
Confused, Jason asked, "Why?"
"It's annoying as fuck when adults start fussing over you like that!" Sam complained.
"Ancients, yeah!" Tucker bemoaned with an unfamiliar curse, "They can't even see their own problems; there's no way they'll be any help with yours!"
Jason replied on instinct, "B's better at helping others than taking care of himself."
"Really? He looks like shit," Sam pointed out, "How much help can he be?"
"B was being a distraction so that Spoiler and Signal could evacuate the Narrow's biggest daycare," Jason reluctantly admitted. "He refused to let me do it because I had a twisted ankle. None of the people at the daycare, kids or staff, had more than a few bruises from tripping over rubble."
"That doesn't mean he's worth shit!" Sam snapped back at him; the runes which covered the twined vines and leaves that made up her body flaring with light the same shade of red as fresh blood.
"B's better on his worst days than my bio-dad ever could have been!" Jason shouted back. He could feel the green flickering inside of him.
Was he hallucinating, or was the Pit Rage defending B?
...
Huh.
He'd never have imagined that he'd see the day.
With a horrifying sound that mixed the worst parts of tearing fabric, boots being freed from deep mud, and crackling ice, the last section of the sheet wrapped around Danny came free. The sheer amount of Lazarus green and red that clung to it was making Jason want to throw up. That was Danny's blood! How the fuck had the kid been injured for him to have lost that much blood?!
Tucker's triumphant shout quickly turned into a groan. He complained, "Ugh, Danny used the duct tape again! I hate taking off the duct tape; there's always so much glue to peel off. It makes treating the cuts, like, a million times harder!"
"It's better than when he kept fainting," Sam joined in the most fucked up complaint Jason had heard today. The duct tape that Jason could see peeking out of the blood caked on Danny's chest wasn't making it any better.
Tucker took up the thread, whining, "I know, I know! I don't think I'd have been able to sew up my own cuts. I'm glad I never had to find out."
"I did it," Sam proudly dropped the stomach out of Jason.
"Yeah, but you're a badass, Sam," Tucker lamented loudly, "Ancients, you could probably have taken out your own spleen!"
Okay, what the fucking hell did that shit mean?
At one point, Jason had thought his life was as fucked up as it comes. It turns out that he was wrong!
This was not information he liked learning.
A fire roared into life beside him. The heat was strong enough that just being where he was hurt and the sound was making something in his chest tremble with fear and fury.
Jazz's wings were covered in flames bigger than any explosion he'd ever been in near. Jason was close to panicking, but Cass didn't seem bothered, so she didn't need him to suffer through major burns to get her to safety. That was a relief– burns were the worst shit he'd ever experienced. They'd killed him, after all.
Cass was safe, but the familiar black blob wasn't! B was trying to push Jason behind him, to protect him like he'd done so many times when Jason was Robin.
Jason stumbled numbly along with B's gentle redirection. The mob of mental crises he'd shoved aside earlier were done waiting for him to be ready. Hiding behind B felt enough like safety for them to break free.
B was protecting him.
B was protecting him.
A grunt of pain and a sickening sizzle broke him out of it. He wrapped his armored arms around B's shoulders and dragged him away from the fire, shouting in panic, "I'm not going to let you die like I did, Dad!"
It was only after he'd tumbled to the ground six feet away (a grave's depth away) that Jason heard his own words.
Shit, did some part of him still think of B as his Dad? What– Why–
Oh, look! He'd found another crisis to add to his collection.
Joy.
Of all of the things that Boston had thought he'd do after his death, trying to convince one stubborn glowing green figure to let another stubborn glowing green figure help them was not on that list. Yet here he was, pulling out all of his best lines and tricks to get the ghost girl, Sam, to let the Green Lantern, Hal, come close enough to her friend, Danny, the currently barely alive Ghost King, to tell what supplies the medics would need to treat his injuries and stabilize him.
The only line that she'd believed was the explanation that Hal was human.
It hadn't helped with this problem nearly as much as the other Green Lanterns thought it would.
They'd elected Hal to come talk to the kids because he was human and friendly. It wasn't the first time they'd done that here, but this was the first time that Boston knew about where it had backfired so spectacularly!
Friendly-acting adult humans weren't a fan favorite with the ghost kids.
Tough crowd.
Heck, even the corgi had gotten a better reception than Hal, and the Hope Corgi was, by general consensus, the most formidable and single-minded creature in the universe. Maybe that was why they'd gotten the green light; all that the Hope Corgi ever wanted to do was bring people hope. Everything was either an obstacle, an aid, or a target to them. Obstacles were taken down, aid was fully used, and the target of the corgi's mission was always given hope.
Always!
So, maybe Boston Brand needed to spin Hal's good traits differently to get the kids to green-light him. The last attempt had failed miserably. Hal was getting some serious bruises from that tree. Hadn't Boston heard something about the Green Lanterns being weak to wood? Or was it water? Eh, not important. Hal was sturdy enough; a few bruises would heal up nice and fast!
Boston was just thinking up a way to tell the kids about Hal's military thing (that was kind of how the Hope Corgi operated, at least as far as Boston could tell) when Jason, Cass, and Jazz strolled back up with the Pied Piper hanging off of Jason's shoulder like a dead pig.
He perked up. Hey, Jason and Cass would know more stories about Hal, and Jazz knew the ghost kids, right? The three of them were bound to be able to help him out!
...
Three minutes later, Deadman was sitting cross-legged in midair with his head in his hands. Three minutes. Jason had gotten the kids to let Hal help them in three minutes. Deadman had been working at it for more than twenty with no luck! How had the Red Hood, of all people, gotten these kids to listen to him in three minutes?!
Was the resulting series of revelations horrifying? Yep!
But Deadman had been coping with horrifying revelations of the mystical, magical, and dead kind for a while now, and he'd developed the technique of "laugh at it until it goes away" to a fine art! After he'd pulled himself out of his self-pity spiral, he'd listened in long enough to realize that the Ghost King would need new clothes.
Well, Boston was no fashion designer, but he had a list of ghost jokes a mile long! Longer, even!
T-shirts were easy enough to order custom these days, right? He'd bother Jason or Z into bothering Batsy into getting the best of the best printed up!
That'd be an easy sell; the Bat had a soft spot for kiddos. It didn't matter if they were his or not. This one was even related to one of his! He'd spoil the boy in a heartbeat!
...one of the Bat's heartbeats, anyway.
Speaking of which, Deadman could see Wonder Woman bringing him now!
...
That was a lot of medic-y things for someone on a recent battlefield to be wearing, wasn't it? Should he even be out here? Wondie wasn't a pushover, but she'd let the men suffer the consequences of their stupid decisions if it wasn't too much trouble for them.
Sometimes Boston forgot that Wonder Woman was big on love, too. The only reason that B hadn't been smacked with the oaken flyswatters was that she'd stepped in to save him. He couldn't handle that much damage, not like Hal could, not with this many injuries.
Whether or not he could handle it had nothing to do with whether he would.
Boston had to respect the kind of dedication to the bit that Batman and his brood kept up each night. He knew they'd gone out when they shouldn't more times than Boston Brand had years he'd been alive!
This, though? This wasn't a bit, this was what being a dad did to a guy with a hero suit and all the guilt that came with it. Batman played a lot of roles, some Boston knew and more he didn't, but he put his heart and soul into them all. Being a dad was no different! The man would die for his kids. Everyone knew that!
...
Everyone but the kids did, anyway. Jason recognized it the least of all of them.
That might be a teensy bit of a problem, because Batsy had switched targets. He wasn't trying to check the ghost kids anymore; he was heading right for Jazz and Cass!
"Hey, Jazz? You might want to–" Boston tried to warn her, but Batman beat him to the punch.
B rasped, "Cass, I gotta... injured, too many kids... gotta check you, Cass."
Jazz hissed, "No, you can't! I don't know you, and I'm not letting you touch her! You're not getting close!"
"Gotta check the kids," Batsy responded waaaaay softer than Boston had heard him talking. He slurred, "Can't... Can't lose them, not after Jay... no injuries. Tim's hurt. No checking... Gotta check Cass."
Welp, that was a problem, but it was nothing that Boston Brand couldn't solve!
"Jazz, please at least let him look at her!" Deadman wheedled, "He's her Dad, he just wants to make sure she's okay!"
That didn't have the effect he'd hoped for. He'd expected Jazz to get it; even if her father was the rotten egg in the hen house, she had to know that they weren't all that bad, right?
Wrong. She gave Boston a dirty look and snapped, "Not. Even. Close."
The words echoed around in him like they'd found the perfect acoustics in there. It felt weird– not exactly the same as Danny's call and Laika's voice, but in the same category of weirdness.
He had a lot of those categories in his head. Learning about them came with being a part of the Justice League Dark.
Who should he go annoy into explaining this one?
Interrupting that train of thought before it could leave the station, Batman asked the air in Jazz's general direction (Boston was preeeetty sure that the guy had a bad concussion on top of everything, but what did he know?), "Barbara? Gotta check you! Can't let it happen again... can't watch you hurting, not again... I have to be fast enough... have to catch it sooner."
Well, Boston was officially stumped. He hadn't heard about a "Barbara" on Batsy's team. If he had, he couldn't remember which one she was. There sure were a lot of them, huh?
Whoever she was, B thought that Jazz was her, and she wasn't. Jazz was riled up already, what with all the blood on her... Kid? Brother? Whatever he was, Danny's injuries were stressing her out big time. She was dealing with this about as well as Batman was; so, not well at all. Her wings were on fire! That was definitely not good!
Then again, she wasn't roasting B to a crisp yet. Jazz was giving him a confused look. She'd been up in arms about him checking Cass and Danny; what was so different about him wanting to check her?
Boston was just thinking about that when Jason shouted, "Hey, B! It's me over here! Your f–"
The Red Hood didn't get to finish whatever that sentence was supposed to be. Jason didn't get to finish a lot of sentences when his family was around, and Deadman loved watching him flounder under their antics. The whole clan was crazier than Constantine's love life!
Jason fit right in, he just didn't want to acknowledge it yet.
"Jaylad, your face is red. Are you burned?" Batman asked.
It almost counted for a coherent thought! Too bad Jason was still wearing his helmet. Still, it was close!
It made Jason happy, though. Boston Brand might not be Black Bat, but he could read Jason like a book! Well, not really, but he could get a feel for the other dead guy's emotions sometimes, and right now, Jason was happy. Would he admit it? No! Jason was in denial about his feelings most of the time. Why would now be any different?
Jason grumbled, "I'm wearing the helmet, B."
"Oh," Batman stated.
There were sooooo many seconds after the word where he just... leaned on Jason. Silently. Boston Brand didn't know concussions as well as he used to– it was hard to hold on to those details when everyone who could see him knew them, too. He wasn't the one on the team to deal with living civilians; Deadman was pretty useless for most things, really. There was one thing he excelled in, though!
He could annoy people like nobody's business!
One thing he wasn't was persuasive. Boston couldn't convince people worth a damn today, and he'd pass right through most everything, so why stay here? He was sure he could find someone to annoy somewhere! Let's see, Z was... unconscious. Jason was being fussed over. What about John?
Constantine should be over here soon enough; at least, he would if he'd heard about the change in management in the Ghost King thingy. If he hadn't, Connie would do his usual schtick and run.
...
Boston had better go round him up, then.
Which way was the bastard? Looking around for a clue to orient himself by, Deadman's eyes landed on a patch of stars sitting on a rock and staring out at the battlefield. Oh. Right. Laika.
...
Change in plans! Fetching Constantine was out; cuddling the Goodest Girl was in! Boston flew over to the rock. She looked up a few seconds before he reached her.
"{Hello again, ghost-who-is-starved-for-ectoplasm. Would you like to watch the world with me?}" She asked in that same weird way as she'd spoken before.
Deadman pulled to a stop in midair. Licking his lips nervously (he wasn't used to being watched anymore, and for a showman, that was a real shame), Boston gulped and agreed, "Yeah, I'd like that. It's not a great view though, is it?"
As he settled down next to her, Laika turned her star-filled face back towards the churned-up mud and replied, "{It is not the best I have seen, but it is far from the worst. I grew up on the streets, a stray that had as much a chance to end up as a human's dinner as I did of living through the winter. Many things that I saw there were horrible. Then, I lived in the labs. They were simple, but they were filled with people who knew my name. Many would pet me. I liked that, but I liked to bring them happiness even more. The capsule was dark and hot, but I knew it wouldn't last long. The people in the lab were sad to see me go, but they wanted to learn, and they wanted to see the stars. When I died, I was able to see them. They are beautiful!}"
Boston was holding back tears, and his voice wouldn't let him say any of the things he wanted to say.
One question from Laika broke the floodgates. She asked, voice full of hope, "Tell me, ghost-who-is-starved-for-ectoplasm, did my humans get to learn what they needed? Have humans seen the stars?"
He wiped away the stream of tears that wouldn't stop coming over and over as he answered in a rush, "Yeah, Laika. Yeah, we've seen them. There are humans in space right now! Living humans, I mean. They've got these things called space stations now. Some of 'em are alien tech– did you know that? Aliens are real! I've worked with them! I've been on a space station! The stars really are beautiful, Laika. I wish we coulda seen them without you dying for it, though. People didn't like that a dog, that you were sent to space without a plan to bring you back. The whole world was crying over it! I cried over it! People still talk about you. I know a bunch of them would be pleased as punch to meet you!"
"{I would like that,}" Laika quietly said, "{If the little King is not in danger for it, I think I would love to see the world that mourned my death among the stars.}"
A groan from the clearing behind them broke the silence filled with tears and hope. Boston whipped his head around when Tucker complained, "Ugh, Danny used the duct tape again! I hate taking off the duct tape; there's always so much glue to peel off. It makes treating the cuts, like, a million times harder!"
Deadman listened to the rant that followed with growing horror. If he'd been alive, he'd have fainted from the shock of it. What had these kids gone through that they'd be joking around about taking out their own spleen? Yeah, Boston used humor as a coping mechanism himself. That wasn't the issue. That they'd been injured often enough, badly enough, to learn how to do that level of medical care on themselves was!
While Jazz's wings roared into furious flames (how come she got the cool powers?), Boston was flying past the feeling of Jason's internal crisis and straight to Danny's side.
The kid looked like shit! There was so much caked-on blood and Lazarus water (or something similar to it) that he couldn't make out the main wound, but he could see some of the scars on Danny's shoulders and arms, and none of them looked good. Those were hero wounds if Deadman had ever seen them. Some were old, but too many of them were like that nauseating cut on Danny's cheek– fresh enough to still be pink.
Too many of them were still trying to bleed!
Deadman saw Jazz rushing over with Cass in her arms. He hoped that medical was moving that quickly; he'd have prayed that they'd be here soon if he didn't know so many gods. As it was, he was wracking his head for the name of any of them that owed him a favor because he was worried that Danny needed a prayer or twenty to work right now.
Boston Brand wasn't one to let a friend of his be hurt for long, and he'd promised his little King that he'd make sure Danny's wounds were taken care of as soon as possible.
If he'd known that Danny was hurt this bad, he'd have done everything he could think of to get that help here faster!
Chapter 9: Ghostly bickering and "Adult" supervision
Summary:
Sam and Tucker argue with everyone. They suck Jason into it and cause emotional damage to everyone else in passing. Cass joins in on that part. Diana and the dogs are the only passably level-headed ones there, no matter what Jazz and Deadman might say. Batman is still concussed and doesn't have a chance.
Eventually, the journey to take Danny to the med tents gets going.
Chapter Text
Jazz knew how bad Maddie and Jack could get better than anyone. Yes, Danny had lived with her in their house, but he'd only been there for a little over four years before she died, and she'd been with him for most of them. He hadn't seen them when she was little. He hadn't survived the years where everything and anything that she did that wasn't "good behavior" was blamed on a ghost.
They'd learned better than to put their offspring through scientific examination, through medical torture, just because of things like a childish comment about the teachers at school.
The wounds on her baby's chest told her that they'd forgotten those times like they had so many others.
The y-shaped incisions made her lose every last shard of hope that Danny had gotten off as lightly as she used to.
The Fentons were going to find out exactly how much damage that the vengeful dead could do to them when they no longer had a reason to hold back. Phantom's Obsession had stopped the worst of the worst from going after Amity Park once the Infinite Realms knew how young he was. Baby ghosts needed that anchor more than adults did. Without that in their way– without the hope that their little King was safe to live there– an entire dimension would be funneling through that Portal and raining their hatred down on the two so-called scientists that had vivisected him.
Jazz would join in later. Right now, she was barely holding back from throwing up.
"I guess he didn't have enough duct tape for those two cuts up there. Danny had a panic attack the last time he couldn't get all his deep cuts closed, so there's no way he did this if he didn't have a choice," Tucker mused out loud.
Jazz could hear how much his voice was shaking, and his newly born Core was radiating just as much fury as fear. Sam, on the other hand, was burning with the kind of fear that only served to fuel her fury. They weren't feeling the nausea that everyone else was; if they'd gotten to the point where they were joking about Sam being able to remove her own spleen? Jazz was sure that they'd seen enough of Danny's ectoplasm and blood, of their own blood, for the sight and smell of it to be something they were used to dealing with and working through.
After all of the stories that Jazz had heard about Phantom's adventures...
It had to have been a daily problem for them, hadn't it?
Maddie and Jack had so much to answer for.
"Young friends of the Lady Pandora," the Living woman filled with the power of the Amazons began, her voice stronger than Jazz's would have been, continued, "I believe that this damage is far beyond the strength of duct tape. The young King needs trained medical attention. There are medics on their way; however, this damage may be beyond what even they can handle without the devices and equipment that they cannot carry this far. Perhaps you would allow me to take the young King to their field hospital. I shall be–"
Jazz wasn't surprised that Sam didn't let her finish. She growled, "Pandora might love you, Diana, but there's no fucking way–"
"Sam, wait," Tucker interrupted his friend like he always did, pointing out, "Neither of us know how to handle this kind of injury. Jazz is pretty much Danny's Mom. If she thinks that we can trust these medic-y people, then we can, too. Jazz is smart!"
"Ancients, fine!" Sam scoffed, but Jazz could feel the relief mixing with the other emotions in her Core. She knew that Sam was glad that Jazz could handle this now. Her babies (that was it; Jazz was adopting these other two ghostlings now) had gone through too much!
Jazz only had to consider it for a moment before she decided, "We're going to the field hospital. No offense, Diana, but I'm not letting him out of my sight unless I know he's safe."
"None taken, young warrior," Diana said with a respectful bow and the emotional equivalent of a proud smile.
"If it's all the same, Jazz, I'm going to stay behind and get as much of Danny's blood and ecto cleaned up as I can," Tucker told her with more conviction than she would have expected, explaining, "There's too many ways it can be used against him for me to leave it behind."
"There's no way I'm letting you clean it all up, Mr. Reincarnated Pharaoh," Sam snapped back. "Your knowledge of magic is out of date. You might know the Fenton's tech better than I do, but I know more about the arcane side of things than you ever could!"
Jazz sighed. Yep, those were the kids she'd watched grow up with her baby, all right.
A tap on her arm signaled Jazz to look down at her new daughter. Cass was facing her now. She had figured out how to wiggle around in her arms just as well as Danny could; Jazz was proud. Once she was sure that Jazz was watching, Cass signed, "[I come. Medics know me. I stay with my little brother.]"
"I hope you know that you're handing out mental crises like free candy, Black Bat. Because you absolutely are," Jason remarked from where he'd slung the uninjured arm of the man he'd called B over his shoulder. The creep that Cass had gotten her anger out on earlier was dangling from Jason's unoccupied side with the same complete lack of kindness and mercy in how he was held as Jason had used before.
Good.
Jazz watched Cass sign to him over the top of her left wing, "[Little brother from before. Didn't tell. Forgot.]"
"Again, free candy," she didn't need to see Jason's eyes to know that he was rolling them; his voice and his proto-Core said it for him.
"You should stick with us, then. We're normal!" Tucker declared confidently.
"No, you aren't!" A variety of voices shouted, Jazz joining in with them. She continued, "Tucker, you name your calculators."
"There's also the whole Duulamon thing," Sam added pointedly.
Tucker threw up his hands, spraying the canopy of the trees above him with more of her baby's blood and ectoplasm, and groaned, "Ancients, you won't drop that, will you? Fine, you win! I am not normal! You–"
Sam rolled her glowing red eyes as she interrupted him, "No. I am absolutely not fucking normal, so don't you dare accuse me of it!"
"I was not–" Tucker snapped back at her.
"Can I say something?" Jason asked the empty air above him, not talking to the two bickering ghostlings, his proto-Core both amused with their antics and annoyed that they were like this.
"Yes, Jason," Jazz sighed, "You just can't expect them to stop long enough for you to be polite. Shouting helps."
Taking her at her word with a resigned sigh, Jason shouted, "I will take listening to two strangers bicker like my siblings over my own sister's calmer chaos right now, so both of you can stick around and break my worldview together. At least you two I can excuse as being new here. Black Bat, on the other hand..."
"What about him?" Sam half-hissed, half-grunted, her emotions screaming her disapproval and distaste for Boston as much as the gesture she made towards the older ghost did. "Is he going to help break your worldview, or is he going to get in Jazz's way?"
"Deadman stays here," Jason insisted firmly.
"Hey, don't I get a say in this?" Boston complained.
Sam, prickling, snapped back, "No!"
Jason leaned his head back and sighed. His helmet exaggerated the gesture, turning it into something far more antagonistic than Jazz could feel that he'd meant it to be.
His emotions were screaming that he was tired and cranky. Something else, some nasty-feeling form of corrupted emotion Jazz couldn't identify, writhed under his tight control. Jason pushed down harder on it, but she could tell his Core wasn't producing enough ectoplasm for him to pull it off. She'd have to ask around the Realms to see if anyone knew what it was and was willing to help him.
"I believe that Jason's idea has the greater merit, young friend of Lady Pandora," Diana said calmly. Her stance was open and honest, and it projected to Sam that she meant no harm and intended no disrespect. "If you are truly capable of seeing Deadman, then allowing him to spend time in your company would be a kindness. It is rare that Deadman comes across a person who possesses that sight; to live in a world where you are entirely unseen must be a great burden."
Tucker, feeling sorry and a little confused, sympathized, "So starving for ectoplasm is keeping you invisible to Livings? Dude, that sucks! I know I hate it when the Adults look right through me, but at least I know it's deliberate. Otherwise, I think I'd feel a lot worse."
"I'm pretty sure it's supposed to work the other way, kiddo," Boston replied, just as sorry for Tucker but also sad and...
Angry?
Why would Deadman be angry at Tucker right now?! He didn't do anything wrong!
Jazz felt Jason's attention flick to her for a moment before focusing back on the other ghosts. Shouting loud enough to be heard over Sam's usual muffled curses at Adults who were being stupid about things, he announced, "Okay, I know what we'll be talking about while someone takes the freshly vivisected kid to the medics!"
Jazz started, guilt at ignoring her baby filling her Core. Cass tugged on her shoulder and distracted her from the sight of a Strange Adult (it was Diana; she was an Amazon, and she wouldn't hurt Danny!) gently picking him up off of Sam's absolutely wonderful improvised bed.
Looking down, Jazz saw her daughter sign, "[All your family. Obsession? Confusing. That to me, all of us to you. Split attention.]"
That... made sense, actually. Sam and Tucker's arguments could get messy; she was used to keeping an eye out for that. Watching them, Cass, and Danny be surrounded and hurt near strangers had given her Core too much to worry about. She was out of practice, wasn't she? That'd have to change.
Smiling and nodding, both at Cass and at Diana, who was holding Danny in the safest way for him right now, Jazz told them both, "Thank you. I need the help right now. Laika, are you and your new friend coming with us?"
The Space Dog shook her head. The Hope Corgi jumped off of her back and flew over to hover next to Danny while Laika padded over to join Jason, Jason's Dad, Sam, Boston, and Tucker in the oak copse. She didn't say anything-- Laika rarely did-- but her message was crystal clear.
"Alright, then. Keep them from causing too much trouble, will you?" Jazz mischievously asked, her emotions projecting her teasing intent to the four ghostly beings (and possibly also the concussed Liminal).
"Hey, I resent that!" Tucker complained.
Sam chuckled and declared, "As if she could stop me. I've punched two Ancients in the face!"
Jazz made a mental note to ask for those stories later. She was fairly sure that she knew who Sam had punched, but this was Sam.
Sam would punch anyone if she felt like it.
"Like I said, don't let them cause too much trouble," Jazz repeated with emphasis. Sam's eyes lit up with a purple glow when she caught on to Jazz's double meaning.
"Indeed, young warriors," Diana chimed in, her complex ball of emotions lacquered with mischief. "I am confident that you will find a great deal to do in our absence. The Red Hood is sure to be of considerable assistance."
"Aw, but I don't even have a rocket launcher with me this time!" Jason whined.
"Rocket launcher?!" Sam and Tucker shouted, eagerness and excitement screaming out of their Cores.
Jason laughed. Amused, he loudly replied, "How about this? I'll tell you about the rocket launcher incident if you help me make a list of all of the messed-up things that those Adults you were talking about earlier did to you. After all, I need to know how much explosive ammunition I'll need to bring with me when the horde and I inevitably end up going to... talk to them."
Diana, much more quietly, told Jazz, "I believe it would be wise to take advantage of his distraction to make our escape. The young warriors are quite distracting when they choose to be."
Jazz flexed her wings (not that she needed them to fly, mind you, but it was fun to use them every now and again) and, chuckling just as quietly as the Amazon carrying her baby as gently as she would, replied, "You noticed that, huh?"
Diana nodded. Carefully, she launched herself into flight. Following her easily, Jazz and the Hope Corgi took their places on either side. Cass watched out for danger from below them. Jazz trusted her judgment.
"Indeed," Diana confirmed. "They fear what might happen to him if they let him out of their sights."
Jazz spared a glance from her self-appointed guard duty to check Danny's Core again. The cracks were still there, clear as day, to any ghost that knew how to look for them.
Maddie and Jack would pay for doing this!
"So do I," Jazz admitted, "So do I."
Chapter 10: Don't think I like that
Summary:
Danny gets medical treatment. Jazz gets a Cass-shaped weighted blanket. Tim gets burritoed. Jason gets a fruit pop. Duct tape gets removed.
Chapter Text
The universe holds many places in it. The Hope Corgi knows this; they have brought hope to many of them! They could bring hope to more places than any other Blue Lantern because of one single thing, the most important thing in all the universe:
They were a corgi.
Corgis had always been able to fit into places that others could not, through their size, sturdiness, agility, cunning, and their sheer stubbornness. They were bred for it! You cannot be a herd dog without having enough intelligence to listen to commands and understand them. You cannot herd cows without the ability to dodge their kicks, and being short and maneuverable did that for you. Sometimes you had to be sturdy enough to take one or two. Above all else, you need to have enough sense in your head to know when your orders are stupid and what to do instead.
Those were the traits of a corgi, and The Hope Corgi had them all!
They were proud of their heritage. You had to have at least some respect for the place you came from, even if you went to others; The Hope Corgi had a lot of it, most especially because the people in the country they came from (no they would not take arguments about that) had the good idea to put a dragon on their national flag.
The Hope Corgi had met dragons; they'd helped them regain hope, so of course the dragons were impressed by them. They were The Hope Corgi, Blue Lantern, and Bringer of Hope. Nothing would make them back down from a challenge. After all, they were a corgi!
Like all corgis, The Hope Corgi knew that some places were Theirs. Wales was Theirs. Earth was Theirs. Any Throne of Feet was Theirs.
Jazz was behaving like a good Throne of Feet, sitting still and letting them hold her down. It had taken a few helpful hints to get her to be this good, but now that she wasn't panicking or hissing at the medics who were preparing to heal her brother, Jazz was doing a very good job of it. The Black Bat was snuggled firmly in her new mom's lap. The Hope Corgi liked that one. She had crawled her way out of hopelessness so well that she could help others do it! The Hope Corgi approved of that.
They, too, would go wherever Hope was needed.
It had been some time since they had settled Jazz into a chair to wait and watch the people who would heal her brother. The Hope Corgi listened with one ear cocked to the words of the medics. Jazz had settled down much more once the medics started talking to each other. The Hope Corgi knew that she knew the words and what they meant. Jazz had picked up a little more Hope when she heard the words. The Hope Corgi could feel it with their Blue Lantern Ring.
Then the medic named Ryan (He was The Hope Corgi's favorite medic; he even had a bed in his room that was Theirs to sleep on whenever they were on Earth!) asked one of the others a question that undid all of the hard work that The Black Bat and The Hope Corgi had done to calm Jazz down.
"Do you think we should get one of the anesthesiologists to set up conscious sedation for him, or should local anesthesia be enough?"
The Hope Corgi could feel from the sudden tension in Their Throne of Feet that Jazz was ready to jump up when she growled, "What the hell does that mean?!"
All six of the medics who were working to heal her brother jumped. The Hope Corgi had been lying upon their Throne of Feet and felt the little movements that Jazz made; she had been signing with Cass. The medics had not paid them any attention, too focused on their job and, because Jazz and Cass had made no noise as they talked, the medics must have forgotten that the two girls were there. Humans could be silly like that.
The Hope Corgi heard the soft crinkle of feet landing on the sanitized tarp that was the floor of this emergency medical tent just before the hero named Red Robin flatly informed her, "Local anesthesia, which is sometimes referred to simply as local, is a chemical intervention, usually delivered in the form of an injection, that limits or completely numbs the area around its application."
"Conscious sedation is typically delivered through an IV. It is a step up from local anesthesia and numbs the entire nervous system. It is delivered in such a way as to leave the person or creature receiving it with the ability to regulate their own breathing." After a pause, he added, "This can leave the recipient with partial awareness of what is occurring, although they will have a limited or entirely absent ability to move their limbs.”
"Full sedation, or unconscious sedation, is the level below that," he continued, "During it, the recipient is completely unconscious and unable to regulate their own breathing. Due to this, external intervention, typically coming in the form of a breathing tube, is required to keep that bodily function from ceasing, as some form of cycling of the local atmosphere is usually a necessity to maintain life."
Red Robin concluded, "All of these medical treatments are designed and intended to be used to control the amount and intensity of pain that the patient experiences during treatment. Medication of one sort or another is frequently prescribed afterward to help manage the patient's pain levels during the days that follow."
Silence filled the room, at least as far as a baseline human's senses would reach. The Hope Corgi surveyed it. The tension in Jazz’s feet was slowly easing; good. The medics weren't moving, but at least they hadn't moved away from Danny. There were two people at the main entrance to this part of the tent. The older of the two Superboys, Kon-el, was carrying Red Robin in his arms. There was a shock blanket wrapped around Red Robin. It had turned him into a human burrito. He still smelled like he was in shock, which was not good, but The Hope Corgi knew that he and Kon-el were in love, so he was safe.
All in all, the situation could be better, but it could also be worse. The Hope Corgi had dealt with tougher problems. Those problems had not beaten them, and neither would this!
Jazz laughed far too bitterly for The Hope Corgi's liking. "No wonder I didn't recognize the words. My bio-donors don't believe that ghosts can feel pain."
"That's bullshit!" Ryan shouted. He was angry, The Hope Corgi could tell, because someone had been hurt because someone else had been too caught up in their desire to remove Hope in others to care if what they did was right. It was not the first time that they had heard him like this; why else would they call him their favorite?
Corgis gave their approval like that.
The Hope Corgi felt their Throne of Feet buzz in the same way that the sand-maker, Tucker, had buzzed when he moved the bandages through them. The Hope Corgi refused to let her move through them. Just as earlier, their stubbornness, Blue Lantern Ring, and skills as a corgi kept her from doing it. They could feel through their Blue Lantern Ring that she was angry; not at them, of course.
Ryan was angry at the ones who had hurt Danny. Jazz was angry at Ryan.
She must not have understood what he was angry about. Silly Jazz. Ryan was not bigoted! He was a good person!
"What, a ghost can't know more about how ghosts work than the so-called scientists who decided what to think before they'd ever met a ghost? Really?" Jazz snarled. "Why do Adults always have to side with each other? Only Sam, Tucker, and Danny would listen to me about anything, and that only changed after I died! Why did I ever think that would change?"
Perhaps Jazz was not being silly in the way they had thought. She had no Hope that her word would be respected.
The Hope Corgi would fix that soon, just like they would fix the little king's missing Hope.
"No, no, I believe you," Ryan waved dismissively, in a way that meant that of course he would believe her. "There's no way that any creature with something resembling a muscular or musculoskeletal system won't have the capacity to feel pain. It's ridiculous to think otherwise! Operating one, however, or whatever it is that serves to regulate motion, requires a structure that functions similarly to a baseline human's nervous system. Pain receptors are an integral part of that. After all, it's hard to survive as a species if at least some of your population can't tell that something hurts them! Genetics might not allow all of them to be aware or capable of noticing it, but that's on an individual basis, not across an entire species!"
Ryan panted for breath. His hands settled back down at his sides. The other medics were not silly. They had moved out of the way. He made many furious gestures in his rants.
He had knocked the silliest of the human Green Lanterns out that way once.
In the empty space his words and breathing left, Jazz, who had stopped trying to go through them some time ago, apologized in the smallest of voices, "I'm sorry for assuming that you would--"
"Nah," Ryan waved again, "I get it. My best friend grew up in a house like that. His parents were idiots." After a pause, Ryan hummed, "They might have gotten better; I wouldn't know. None of us have spoken to them since graduation. That's when the restraining order set in. I'd suggest getting one for yourself and your kids, but you've Black Bat clearly likes you, so the rest of the Bats will theoretically be committing a potential variety of war crimes in the vaguely near future. This is only a hypothesis, of course. If it were to ever happen, I'd join in, but I follow the spirit of my Hippocratic Oath, not just the letter."
"Plausible deniability," Red Robin said loudly, although his tone was still emotionally neutral, from the depths of his shock blanket burrito.
The Hope Corgi watched Kon-el absently pat his love-friend. The shock blanket crinkled under his hand.
(They did not care what word the people would use; corgis were smarter than any dictionary could be).
"You know, some people still treat clones like that. No matter how many of those stupid tests they make me go through, some people still think I'm only good to be a lab rat. It's annoying, but I don't have to live with them. I bet it's, like, a gazillion times worse if you do!"
The tension in their Throne of Feet thrummed as more of it tightened up to the max. That was not good!
The Hope Corgi knew how to fix it. They used the biggest, most important power that they had: being a corgi. With a skill no one but another corgi would understand, The Hope Corgi pushed The Sense of Being Cared For And Loved into Jazz through every place they were touching. Just like the little king, Jazz's whole being relaxed. She may not know why it did that, but The Hope Corgi did.
Corgis know these things.
Jazz had spent all her life Caring For And Loving others, but she had needed it from other people, too. A family of four children was not enough to bring each other enough Hope to heal from their stress. They needed someone who could make the world do what they needed and wanted. If the Adults they had known would not do it, then someone other than an Adult or a Kid should bring them that kind of Hope.
A corgi would be perfect.
That was what a corgi was for, after all!
That was what they were for!
"You know, I think that's exactly what my baby has been going through after I died," Jazz said slowly. Her voice was sharp. Softer, she mentioned, "You've got people to move past that, and I know a few Clones from the Realms who died before then. Can you give me some ideas for how I can make sure my babies don't have to deal with it outside of Amity Park for too long?"
Kon-el shrugged, his love-friend burrito crinkling with him when he moved. "I don't know much. Red Robin's the one who did most of the work. I just do what he tells me. It's worked out so far."
"I can make a plan for that," stated the Red Robin burrito. “I can make backups, too.”
He still smelled like he was in shock. The Hope Corgi did not like that.
They felt Jazz move through The Throne of Feet. Her tension was easing. Good. She suggested, "If you two come over here, we can work on that. I'm sure you need information about us for it. I'll tell you what I think is safe for you to know, but I don't think Black Bat will let me get up, and I think that The Hope Corgi wants to hold you down. You might as well give in."
"Yeah, they scare me," Kon-el admitted. That was only a natural was for him to feel. He had seen them fighting, after all. "Come on, babe. You can be a blanket burrito on a chair now. I think you've moved past the point where you need to be moved around for medical stuff."
"Okay, Kon," Red Robin replied. A great deal of crinkling followed. When it was done, Red Robin was pinned firmly into the chair next to Jazz by The Hope Corgi. Kon leaned against them. Both of them needed to be given a lot more of The Sense of Being Cared For And Loved than they thought they did; corgis know these things.
That made three people here (three conscious people) who needed The Hope Corgi to bring them that kind of hope. That was not a problem. They could give it to them all!
After all, wherever hope was needed, the Hope Corgi would go.
Jason was glad that Roy could only hear what was happening right now, because if he could see it, the teasing would be so much worse.
His left arm was completely swamped by the handles of all of the bags Hal had brought back from his shopping run. If any of the kid’s clothing sections in Coast City still had stuff in Danny’s sizes, Jason would jump in Gotham Harbor. Seriously, did Hal steal one of Bruce’s cards for this? The weight of all of the stuff these bags was enough for Jason to be sure that Hal had spent more on this than a family in Crime Alley made in a year!
…
Actually, yeah. Hal would absolutely steal one of Bruce’s cards. Whatever it was that those two had going between them, Jason wanted no part of it. He already had to deal with Selina, Talia, and Harvey’s shit! Hal was a trouble magnet that only Tim had beat.
Hopefully, whatever he’d done to get Bruce’s card working wouldn’t come back to bite them. Jason wouldn’t bet on it, though. This was an insane amount of shit to buy for the kid on one trip!
Speaking of kids, Tucker and Sam were sitting on Jason’s shoulders right and left shoulders, respectively. He was looking forward to seeing Sam’s reaction to Gotham’s architecture. Any kid who’d given him a lesson on the historical association between the left side of shit and witchcraft was going to go nuts when she saw all the gargoyles and grotesques.
He’d let her get it out of her system before hoisting her up on his left shoulder; Tucker was sitting impatiently on the right one. Jason knew the ghosts could have floated up there on their own, but it was the principle of the thing that mattered most, especially after those kids hadn’t known what to do when he’d offered it! What kid didn’t know what hanging out on someone’s shoulders was like? Even the street kids in his Alley knew the feeling!
His people all knew that Red Hood had a soft spot for kids a mile wide, so he had a kid or two on him whenever bullets weren’t going to be flying and explosions weren’t on the agenda for the day.
Any kid who Needed His Protection was welcome to climb up on his shoulders and they knew it.
Most of the Crime Alley kids weighed more than Sam and Tucker did, but he didn’t know if that was the malnourished state they'd died in or just a ghost thing. If Cass' little brother was anything to go by, they...
Well, he didn't think it was a ghost thing.
Hopefully the toxic green fruit pops would help them with it if it were because of a problem. Fuck knows that, the longer he ate his fruit pop, the more it was driving off his headache. He'd gotten so used to the pain from it that his awareness of it had faded into the back of his mind months ago!
Efren Mananquil’s fruit pops were the best shit on the planet. They always had been but, somehow, dying had made them even better! The kids loved them, Deadman had practically inhaled his, and even Laika was purring as she ate the one he was holding for her!
Jason hadn't wanted to give it to her at first--he knew from all the research he'd done when he adopted Dog that chocolate, xylitol, grapes, and a whole bunch of other shit. Damian, after the most thorough inspection of Dog's new digs that Jason had ever been terrified enough to witness, had written him an even longer list. Jason had saved on his phone without hesitating. Dami might struggle with human interaction, but the kid had a love so big for animals that Jason was positive that it would follow him to death (and probably beyond).
Fuck knows that Jay's love of literature did.
He hadn't exactly been looking for his new little brother (Jason was always willing to throw down, verbally or otherwise, but he knew when not to argue with Cass, and this was not one of those times). He really hadn't! The longer he could keep the two feral nerds on his shoulders away from their injured brother friend, the better for everyone involved. So Jason had just let his feet carry him wherever they chose.
...
At least, that was what he thought he was doing. Some part of him knew better than his feet where to lead him, and so, like a moth to the flame, Jason followed the pull in his...something...that led him here.
It led him to the room where Danny was being worked on by Ryan the Medic. Jason approved. Ryan was a font of healing and humor with whom there was no equal.
Other than Leslie and Alfie, there was no one that Jason would have trusted to help Danny more.
Fuck knows the kid needed the best, deserved the best, after everything he'd been through.
He wasn't surprised to see Jazz and Cass on the far wall of the medical tent; Kon, Tim, and The Hope Corgi were a different story.
Scratch that, The Hope Corgi was exactly the kind of unstoppable force that would see an immovable object up ahead and go around the side. They weren't supposed to be in the med tent, but Jason was sure that they'd found a loophole to jump through on their way here. If they hadn't, they'd probably made one for themselves out of sheer determination to do their job.
Corgis were like that.
Jason tuned into the conversation between his little brother, his badass sister, and Jazz when he heard someone say, "-and that's why we're considered vigilantes inside Gotham and heroes outside of our city."
Two pairs of eyes were focused on him, although he could only see one. Cass didn't need anything for him to know when she was looking at him; Cass had skills that Jason didn't understand and never planned to. The other pair of eyes belonged to Jazz. Cass would be checking him over for injuries, but Jazz? Jason had no clue what she was doing, but it felt...worried. About what? Don't ask Jason, he's just here to carry the ghostlings and the fruit pops.
Speaking of fruit pops, Jason decided to get Tim's attention so that he could look him over in the most obnoxious way possible.
Let no one forget that Jason was a certified Little Shit.
Sticking the fruit pop in his mouth, Jason sucked on it loudly while pulling it back out again. Over the childish giggles he was hearing in stereo, Roy's deeper voice chuckled, "Weak! I've heard you louder. You're just going easy because of Cass, aren't you?"
As much to the room as to his ridiculous boyfriend, Jason announced, "'Sup, respectable people and Tim." The lack of whining or boasting from his brother (it depended on the day) definitely wasn't worrying Jason at all, nope. "The kids and I brought fruit pops."
"Were you running that low?" Jazz asked with a frown.
Jason didn't need to see Tucker's face to know the kid was rolling his eyes when he sarcastically replied, "We're fine, Mom."
...
Mostly sarcastically, anyway. There was an undercurrent to the words that Jason was all too familiar with. Sassing Batman was the job of a Robin, and you didn't stop doing something like that just because the title was stolen from you. Still, B would worry himself sick if you didn't let him check you over. That didn't stay with the name, either, and B's sad moping was a buzzkill. Jason knew the old man didn't know the power his sad eyes had. Bruce was too emotionally constipated to notice something like that.
There was something nice about having someone to worry that much about you, though.
He just wished that the kids had had someone looking out for them before they died who was old enough to drive them to the hospital if they needed stitches.
No ten-year-old should be boasting that she'd stitched up her own wounds!
The ten-year-old in question bit through her fruit pop with a loud crunch. With its jagged edge speeding through the edge of his vision to point out her victim, Sam snapped, "Who the fuck is that?!"
Tim, who was the target of her ire, blinked at her in that way of his that meant he was observing, analyzing, and cataloging data from his environments at speeds that even a fucking supercomputer would be hard-pressed to match. Jason felt sheer relief when he saw the indignant frown growing on his little brother's face. Tim.exe was back online.
As scarily fast as his genius brain was, even Tim didn't have the time to respond before Cass did. She patted his head, fond and firm, before signing a strange description of him, his name, and finishing with her nickname for him at the end of her introduction.
"[Vigilante. Gotham. Red Robin. My smart little brother.]"
The head pat drew Tim's attention to her, and it was fucking hilarious to hear his shock blanket burrito crinkling like that. The shrimp was a Bat, but put him in a shock blanket and he couldn't be stealthy worth shit!
Jason liked to think that he knew the kid pretty well. He probably didn't, since Tim was a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. It seemed like there was an endless supply of insane surprises hiding below the surface, but at least that surface wasn't an emotionally barren desert. Not like Bruce. Jason knew his Dad was trying to get better, but there was only so much that Jason was willing to admit to himself about Bruce at a time.
Tim was trying to decide if it was worth it to be annoyed with Cass. It was an important decision. Hell, Jason had struggled with it himself; Cass was a treasure not to be discarded, but not always were the gold and gems given by an angel. A few Faerie gifts were hidden within, for the mark of the Bat was that of a trickster. They exist to teach lessons. Some were better told with treats than tricks.
It was harder to tell with Cass than with the rest of them.
She liked it when they played along with her jokes, though, so all of them put in the effort to suss out when she was teasing them. A happy Cass was the best kind of Cass.
Of course, you had to know Cass to get that.
Sam didn't.
Her voice wasn't as acerbic as before when she demanded, "And who exactly are you?"
This time, Jazz matched Cass, sign for sign, as they replied, "[Danny's big sister.]"
"Really?!" Tucker half-squeaked, half-squealed in reply. Jason could hear the excitement in the kid's voice, but the trepidation, suspicion, and budding hope in the kid...Jason had no idea how he was sensing that. He'd seen enough weird shit working with the Justice League Dark to know not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Inexplicable or not, Jason would trust the feeling unless he learned otherwise.
Tim didn't have the same reaction as the ghostling. "Black Bat, I'm pretty sure I'd know if there was a way for you to adopt a minor as a sibling without involving B and The Guy."
Cass went stiff as a board, and she was somehow radiating more anger than the ghost with literal fucking fire spreading across her wings.
"[Not ADOPT. MY brother,]" she signed, and Jason had never seen her signing so forcefully or so rudely. Shit, Cass was pissed. Not good.
Kon was still working on his sign, so he was oblivious to the inflections in Cass' statement. He only sounded confused when he asked, "The Ghost King is your brother?"
Cass' body language didn't change (as far as Jason could tell, anyway). The anger in her signing, though, calmed down. "[Brother first, then thought dead. Not dead. Mom find second. Really dead three. Ghost King four.]"
The Pit kicked up when she signed that, but it wasn't nearly as strong or as angry as he'd expected it would be. Jason figured that beating the crap out of Pipefitter had sated it more than he thought.
Sucking loudly on the glowing green fruit pop in his hand, Jason got the attention of everyone else on their side of the med tent (and another snicker from Roy through his comm unit). Waving it emphatically, he snapped, "You're telling me that Lady Shiva has another kid?"
"[My. Baby. Brother,]" Cass replied, and who was he to argue with her when she was signing it like that? Cass wasn't going to budge. That was that.
No one had time to fuck up and argue with her. Ryan the Medic came to their rescue and Jason was only a little suspicious that he did it on purpose. Ryan the Medic was known to save lives in many ways.
Less to them than to the world at large, Ryan exclaimed, "We're ready to remove the last piece of duct tape! Everyone be careful; the staples are dissolving fast enough that they might not hold the incisions closed."
With that ominous statement, one of the others at the table pulled on something, and all hell broke loose.
...
Well, more like all the viscera that belonged inside the kid, but that shit was horrifying as hell, so it counted.
Among the loops of the intestine that spilled into the waiting hands of the medical team, one organ made a valiant leap for freedom. Jason watched as what he thought was the kid's spleen landed on the sanitized tarp floor with an anticlimactic plop. No bounce. No splat. No pool of blood. Just a lonely spleen sitting there on the floor.
"Huh," Tim said with what Jason decided was an inappropriate lack of horror. "I wonder if that's what my spleen did when Ra's took it out."
Never mind, Tim's bullshit backstory was, somehow, worse than the sight of the lonely spleen on the floor.
With an extremely worrying understanding, respect, and eager curiosity, Sam shouted, "Sweet! The crinkly new brother's a badass!"
One on top of another with nary a breath in between, three shouts filled the room.
Jason was furious when he accused Tim, "You let Ra's do what?!"
Jazz was somehow even angrier when she demanded, "Who is Ra's? Why would he do that to you?"
Tim, coming in last, squeaked, "I'm your what?!"
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