Phantom Parenthood

by Lilly_oncefull

Summary:

Daniella Adeline Fenton only wanted to start her sophomore year without any life-changing drama. But normal was never meant for her. Within just forty hours, she discovers she’s adopted, becomes a virgin mother, and loses her parents. It seems the living world has made her its target.

Notes:

Inspired by in Which Danny Really Wishes There Was A Guide To Half-Ghost Pregnancy
and The Joys of Parenthood, AKA: What Should I Do When My Unknown Teenager (Dead?) Son Is A Parent Himself? Ps: is it murder if the other parent of my grandchild is technically dead? Waiting a reply ASAP

Chapter 1: 1

Daniella Adeline Fenton was twelve when her world took on a green tint.

She, Sam, and Tucker had just been playing around when the brilliantly stupid idea came up, to actually go through with a dare. A dare she could have easily refused without consequence. A dare that both ruined and fixed her life.

Since she was young, ever since watching the Winter Olympics, she had dreamed of joining those beautiful women on the ice. She could imagine herself in a dark blue dress scattered with constellations, a merging of her two favourite passions. But reality had other plans, she was born slickly built and easily winded, the speed needed for jumps and spins would have rendered her unconscious at best. Still, she studied the theory, the physics of figure skating, and it improved her grades. Her parents were proud she was finally taking science more seriously.

With one dream dead, she turned to another: the stars. Her wish had always been to see the galaxy, to explore the endless potential beyond Earth. Skating was interesting, sure, but space? Space was infinite. And with the confirmed discovery of other life-bearing planets, the universe seemed closer than ever. It was no shock her favourite member of the Justice League was Martian Manhunter. People teased her endlessly for it, most claiming Superman was superior. But Superman was an alien raised on Earth, a stranger to his people’s culture and history. He had no true connection to his home planet other than the blood that ran through his veins, not to be rude. Martian Manhunter carried his people’s legacy in full. But anyway, that was her digressing. Space was her truest passion. Other hobbies came and went, but nothing rivalled the stars.

She had told her story countless times: her death and resurrection by the portal. The pain, the screaming, the desperate wish for it all to end, the begging for death. What lasted only seconds on the outside was a century of torment inside. It wasn’t something she’d wish on her most hated foe.

And then, becoming a ghost in a house of ghost hunters? That was worse. Danny had hoped the pain would end once she got out of the portal, but living in a house that was constantly trying to kill you tested patience and resolve like nothing else. It forced her to learn complex math and college-level engineering just to stay one step ahead and avoid being discovered.

The ghosts she fought in those early days left much to be desired. But now, at fifteen, she had reached something like an agreement with her rogue’s gallery. Most of them were friends, or at least frenemies. Only a few still wanted her gone. Sophomore year loomed ahead, and Danny knew she had to buckle down after her abysmal grades last few years.

The world-ending stuff was, thankfully, behind her. Pariah Dark was asleep again, hopefully forever. The GIW had mostly been dismantled once the Justice League learned of them, apparently because they violated the Meta Protection Act. Since then life had only gotten worse, she was a two time gold medallist from local competitions. She had plans to register herself as a meta after she finished high school, a little lie but it would take her where she wanted to go, NASA training collage, with the rise of meta humans they have added some prerequisite courses that would allow her to become an astronaut. Most of her problems were solved. 

Except three.

First, Vlad. Not much needed to be said there, though he had mellowed out, he still pestered her about becoming his daughter.

Second, Daniel now goes by Dante. Her clone, her cousin, her son, whatever the relationship called for. Danny only wished he’d stay with her full-time. It tugged at her core to have him so far away, though he did call regularly.

And third, Ella. Out of all of them, Ella was the hardest to deal with. The relationship with her future self was strained at best and hostile at worst. Danny wished things could have been different, that they could have been friends, but too much had happened for that privilege.

But for the first time in years, life was looking up.

Until it wasn’t.

Chapter 2

To have your phone ring with that obnoxious tone your parents programmed before you could even set foot past the school gates wasn’t the worst thing Danny had ever had to deal with. She had lived through pain, screaming, ghosts, villains, and world-ending battles. But this? This was different.

It wasn’t the ringtone. It was the words in the text that followed:

“We found two ghosts in your room, but don’t worry, sweetie, we’ve taken care of it. Have a good day at school!”

Those words alone were enough to send Danny spiralling. Who could they have caught? Most of her rogues had long since agreed to leave her civilian life alone. Kitty and Johnny? No, last she checked, they were cruising across the Zone on some never-ending road trip. Ember was on tour, her schedule was plastered all over the Ghost Zone. Vlad? The fruitloop would’ve made sure she knew immediately if he had been caught, plus he’d bugged her room ages ago, she was so used to it at this point she didn't even bother taking them down anymore. The fact he was silent meant it wasn’t him.

Still, panic clawed at her chest. School was starting in ten minutes, but every instinct in her screamed to screw it and bolt home. One ghost in her room was bad enough. Two? And are her parents involved? That spelled disaster in neon letters.

She fired off a quick text to Sam, emergency, cover for me , then ducked into an alley. The moment she was alone, she went ghost.

Her transformation had shifted lately, subtle changes creeping in as puberty reared its head. The once ambiguous physique had started making way for more feminine features. A blessing and a curse, depending on how you looked at it. But right now, she doesn't have time to think about that. She shot into the sky, flying hard and fast toward home, praying she wasn’t already too late.

Danny had little faith in stopping any irrevocable damage. Her parents had an entire lab of ghost-killing tech at their disposal. If they’d managed to corner someone in her room , then it was already bad. Very bad.

When she slipped into the house and phased carefully down into the lab, her worst fears solidified.

On one of the metal tables, contained inside reinforced glass, sat two glowing spheres. Two cores.

Daniel.

Ella.

Her knees almost buckled, rage and grief knotting in her throat. Her parents, her parents , had captured them. Not just captured them, but used some new invention that was designed to destabilize ectoplasm. She could feel the wrongness radiating from the cores, like their very essence had been rattled loose.

Her mind raced. She couldn’t let her parents know the truth, not now, not ever. They thought they were protecting her, but they’d taken her family. Why was her core hurting, it hurt so much.

It hurt.

It hurt. 

IT HURT. 

Danny forced herself to stay hidden, to wait. Every second felt like an hour as she crouched in the shadows of the lab, eyes locked on those fragile glowing orbs. Finally, her parents got an alert, another ghost sighting in town. They scrambled into their gear, muttering about “double-checking containment protocols” before heading out. The lab door slammed shut behind them, and Danny let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

The second they were gone, she phased through the glass and scooped the cores into her hands. They pulsed weakly, flickering with unstable energy, like faint heartbeats struggling to hold on. Yet she could feel them, the way her ectoplasm reconsider there's. 

Her jaw clenched. “Hang on. Both of you. Just hang on.”

She had only one option. She had to get them to Frostbite. If anyone could stabilize the cores, it was him.

Clutching them tight against her chest, Danny turned, eyes blazing green as she launched herself toward the Ghost Zone. She couldn’t lose them. Not Daniel. Not Ella. Not like this.

Chapter 3

Danny always forgot how beautiful the Infinity Realm was.

Its endless, swirling green sky. The rivers of light that twisted through the horizon. The way the air hummed with ambient energy, so alive it pressed against her skin. There were days she thought she felt more at home here than in the mortal realm. Here, her power didn’t feel like a mistake or a curse. Here, it felt whole.

But not today.

Every stretch of glowing horizon that once calmed her now only sharpened the ache in her chest. Flying faster than she thought possible, she cut through winding paths and shattered shortcuts, ignoring the risk of crossing into other ghosts’ haunts. She didn’t care. Let them come at her. Let them try. All that mattered was reaching the Far Frozen. All that mattered was fixing them.

Fixing Daniel . 

Fixing Ella .

Her hands shook around the dim, flickering cores pressed to her chest. They pulsed so faintly, she couldn’t even be sure she hadn’t imagined it.

She had to fix them.

By the time the spires of the Far Frozen rose against the horizon, Danny was trembling from exhaustion and fear. The ice city glittered, sharp and clean, like crystal. She landed hard outside the great hall, her breath fogging in the frozen air, and staggered toward the clinic.

Frostbite was already waiting, as though he’d sensed her arrival. He bowed his head low. “Great One.”

She didn’t care for titles now. “Please-” her voice cracked, the word raw. She uncurled her hands to show him the two dim cores, glowing weakly against the icy light. “They need help. You can fix them, right? Please, Frostbite, tell me you can fix them.”

The Yeti leader’s expression softened with a grief that told her the answer before he even spoke. He reached out, large careful hands cradling the cores as though they were newborn stars.

“I can stabilize most of my citizens with the treatments we have developed,” he said, voice heavy. “But these two… they are not like the others. Their halfa state, neither fully ghost nor fully human, prevents the usual methods from taking hold. My healing chambers, my stabilizers… none will keep them tethered.”

Danny’s breath hitched, panic clawing at her throat. “No. No, you’re wrong. You have to be wrong. There has to be something, you always find something-”

“There is… one way.” His ice-blue eyes met hers, pity and weight in them. “But it is not without cost.”

Her stomach turned, but she forced herself to ask. “What?”

“They would need to be incubated in a compatible human host,” Frostbite said quietly. “To anchor their half-human essence. To give them a body to rebuild within. It is… the only way.”

Frostbite was not so versed in human biology and physiology, but the books that Jasmine Fenton had left him, as Great Ones personal doctor, told him the struggle of pregnancy on grown female humans. Lady Phantom was not grown by either human or ghostly standards which would result in increased danger.   

Danny froze. The words crashed into her, heavy and suffocating. Incubated. Human host. She didn’t need him to spell it out.

Her world felt like it tilted. She couldn’t even think, she didn’t want to think. Because if she did, she might break completely.

But her mouth moved faster than her brain. “Yes.”

The word fell out of her before she could stop it.

“Yes,” she said again, louder this time, holding herself together only by sheer force of will. “Do it. Whatever it takes. Just-just bring them back. Please. I don’t care what it costs me. Just don’t let them stay like this.”

Teen pregnancy wasn’t in her cards. Not this year, not any year. Not like this. She was supposed to be worrying about tests and grades, not carrying the lives of the two people she loved most inside her.

But losing them? Watching their cores dim and die in her hands? That wasn’t an option.

So she said yes.

Because better her body than their graves

Chapter 4

The procedure was fast. Too fast.

Frostbite had guided her into the clinic, his voice low and steady, but she couldn’t make sense of the words. They washed over her like water against glass, muffled and meaningless. He helped her onto a table, his massive hands surprisingly gentle, and she just lay there staring up at the cold ceiling.

Jazz would probably say she was dissociating. But Danny didn’t feel like that word fit. She wasn’t detached. She wasn’t floating. She was heavy, impossibly heavy, crushed by a decision she had made too quickly to take back.

Numb. That was it. She was just numb.

Doing this would shift everything. Her life, her future, her plans. The trajectory of who she thought she was supposed to be. All the work she had put in, all the dreams she held on to, no…they hadn’t vanished, not completely. She told herself she could still reach for them. She would still chase the stars. She would still carve out the life she wanted.

She would just have two extra passengers strapped in for the ride.

That was the thought that clung to her as Frostbite worked. That was the thought she repeated, over and over, until the ceiling blurred and the weight of exhaustion pulled her under.

When she stumbled back into the mortal realm, everything was a haze. She made it to her bed without remembering the walk. She collapsed onto the mattress, her body aching in ways she didn’t want to think about. The world swayed and tilted, then vanished altogether as sleep swallowed her whole.

She didn’t know how long she was out before the smell woke her.

Smoke. Burnt ectoplasm.

Her eyes fluttered open to see Vlad standing in her room, his usually perfect suit charred and ripped, his face pale beneath streaks of grime. His hair, normally immaculate, was wild and scorched at the edges.

For a moment, Danny thought she was dreaming. That had to be it. Why else would he be here, looking like a ghost dragged through fire?

But then he spoke. His voice was rough, strained. “Little badger… Daniella…”

Something in her gut clenched. “What happened?”

He swallowed, eyes shifting, unable to meet hers. “Your parents… there was an accident. One of their stupid gadgets failed during a hunt at the park. There was… an explosion.”

Her ears rang.

“They didn’t make it,” he continued, softer now. “Three others died as well. I–”

“No.” The word ripped out of her before she realized she was speaking. Her chest tightened, her throat closing. “No, you’re lying. You’re– ”

She shoved herself upright, stumbling toward him, fists trembling. “This isn’t funny, Fruitloop! Don’t… don’t joke like that!”

He tried to reach for her, but she smacked his hand away, her small fists weakly thudding against his chest instead. Over and over, she hit him, her voice cracking as the words tore out of her.

“Stop it! Stop lying! Tell me the truth! I want the truth Vlad.” Her voice hoarse from the shouting.  

Her punches landed with all the force of wet paper, but she didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. Each strike was a plea, each sob a desperate denial. Her vision blurred with tears, her breath hitching as she collapsed against him, still trying to hit, still trying to push him away even as her knees buckled.

“It’s not funny,” she whispered, broken now. “It’s not funny, Vlad… it’s not funny…”

But he didn’t correct her. He didn’t laugh. He just stood there, letting her fists fall until her strength gave out, and the silence that followed was more unbearable than anything else.

Because silence meant it was true.

Notes:

Don't know why this story is coming so easily, hopefully it will get me out of my little writing stump.

Chapter 5

Danny didn’t remember how long she cried. It could’ve been minutes. It could’ve been hours. The grief blurred time into one endless, choking moment.

When her sobs finally slowed into hiccups, she pulled back just enough to look up at Vlad. Her eyes were bloodshot, her face blotchy, and her throat burned from screaming, but none of it mattered compared to the question clawing at her chest.

“If they’re dead,” she rasped, voice hollow, “then why is my core still intact? Shouldn’t it have—” She pressed a trembling hand to her chest, feeling the steady thrum of ecto-energy beneath her palm. “Why didn’t it split? Or crack? Or something? They were my parents . I should’ve… I should’ve felt it.”

Vlad’s expression shifted, guilt and calculation warring on his smoke-streaked face. He didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he tilted his head, studying her the way he always did, as though weighing what she could handle versus what he wanted her to hear.

Before he spoke, though, his lips curved in a humourless smirk. “Tell me, Daniella, why weren’t you at school today?”

She scoffed, the sound sharp despite her raw throat. “You’ve really stooped to stalking teenagers now? Fruitloop.” A tired sign left her feeling even more drained. 

But the edge in her voice crumbled quickly. She slumped back onto her bed, staring at the floor, the weight of the day pressing down harder than ever. She didn’t want to tell him. She didn’t want to tell anyone . But the words slipped out anyway, heavy and bitter.

“My parents caught two ghosts in my room,” she muttered. “Daniel and Ella. They used some new weapon on them.”

Vlad’s eyes narrowed. “And did your core hurt… when you realized your dear parents had nearly killed your clone… and your future self?” It was telling how Vlad could not muster any words about their wellbeing, not that Danny expected him too. 

Danny flinched. She hadn’t thought about it like that. She’d been too focused on saving them, too desperate to stop her parents from doing more damage. The memory of their fragile, dimming cores in her hands flashed behind her eyes, and for a second, she swore she felt her own chest tighten.

“What does that matter?” she shot back, more defensive than she intended. Her voice cracked on the last word.

Vlad leaned closer, his voice low and unsettlingly calm. “Because at that moment, Daniella, you didn’t just grieve for them. You feared their permanent end. And that fear, that crack in your bond…” His eyes glinted, sharp and knowing. “…was the moment you gave up on them.”

Danny’s breath caught.

The room spun, his words slicing through the fragile numbness she had built around herself. She wanted to deny it, to scream that he was wrong, that she hadn’t given up on them for even a second. But the memory of clutching those dying cores, the despair that had nearly drowned her, the instinctive thought— they’re gone, they’re gone, they’re gone —rose unbidden.

And for the first time since she’d woken in her room to the news, she had no words at all. All she could do was cry.

Notes:

Might rewrite this later, the main thing was that in her grief and anger over the treatment of her fraid she let go of her parental bonds therefore their death didn't have much ghostly impact on her.

Chapter 6

Unknown Location  

Talia al Ghul was a woman scorned one too many times. First by her siblings, who carved their own loyalties into the League while undermining hers. Then by her father, who loved her only as long as she was useful. And finally, by the man she had once called beloved.

Every betrayal left scars, but none cut as deep as the choices she had been forced to make for her children.

Her attempts at safeguarding them had always meant giving them away. First her daughter, Anastasia. Then her son. Both ripped from her arms by circumstance, by fear, by duty. Always duty.

Anastasia had been the first. Her beautiful, stubborn girl, so full of potential. Too much potential. Talia had known her father would never permit such a child to exist outside his grasp. So she did the only thing she could. She placed her into the care of another family, far from the League’s eyes. It was meant to be temporary, just until she had secured enough power to protect her outright. But years passed, and each message she intercepted, each whisper of the girl’s life, reminded her how much distance had grown between them.

Her son was different. With him, she had tried to keep him close, to raise him, pronounce him heir. But the Bat had stolen his heart, and to keep that tenuous bond, she let him stay. She told herself it was a strategy, that Damian would learn discipline under his father’s rigid code. But the truth was simpler. She could not bear to break the only material connection she still had to Bruce Wayne.

And now, Anastasia.

The news came quietly, slipped into her hand by one of her most trusted spies. A single sheet of parchment, encoded, but the words were unmistakable. Anastasia’s adoptive parents, dead. A public accident, no less, the kind her father’s agents would notice within days.

Talia’s blood ran cold. Her father could not know. Not yet. Not until she moved.

She had once dreamed of keeping both her children close. A foolish dream. She knew better now. Keeping them near her only painted a target on their backs.

The girl would be safer with him . The Bat had proven himself capable of protecting one child; he could protect another.

She pressed the parchment into her servant’s hand, her voice clipped but urgent. “Encrypt this and deliver it through the Wayne channels. No signature. Only the information he needs.”

The servant bowed low, vanishing into the night with the message that would change everything.

Anastasia was alive.

Anastasia needed to stay alive.

Talia stood alone in the chamber, her hands clenched at her sides. She had given away her daughter once to save her. And now, once again, she was forced to let her go.

But this time, it was not to strangers.

This time, it was to Bruce Wayne.

And if fate was merciful, a mercy it had rarely shown her, perhaps her daughter would forgive her one day.

Notes:

The reveal of Daniella birth name and one of my favourite DC characters; Anastasia Al Ghul

When this story first came into my head I played with the idea of creation a twin but my heart wanted to give Ana a proper childhood away from the league. Though that did mean some her her feature were changed, like the fact she had blue eyes instead of green (most of the time)

Notes:

I've had this idea in my head for a while so I though I would share, not sure how much I would write so enjoy.