Chapter Text
The lab had always felt warm.
That was what Danny remembered most, later.
Not the machines.
Not the humming portal.
Not the weapons lining the walls.
The warmth.
His mother’s laugh echoing off metal.
His father rambling about spectral frequencies.
The way they used to ruffle his hair when they thought he’d done something brave.
Home was loud.
Home was chaotic.
Home was safe.
He stood in the center of it now with his heart trying to beat its way out of his ribs.
“Mom,” he said softly.
They didn’t look up at first.
That hurt more than he expected.
White light swallowed him.
The transformation felt wrong.
It was usually effortless like slipping between breaths. But tonight it dragged, caught, stuttered. Like something inside him knew this was a mistake.
His shoes hovered inches above the ground.
His reflection in the polished metal cabinets was pale and not entirely solid.
“Please don’t panic,” Danny said quickly.
His voice echoed strangely, layered with something not human. Something old.
His mother turned first.
Her eyes widened.
Not in recognition.
In fear.
She stepped back.
That small movement shattered something inside him.
His father’s hand went to a weapon automatically instinctively like he had been waiting for this moment.
“That’s not him,” his father whispered.
Danny’s stomach dropped.
“No,” he said immediately, shaking his head. “No, I am. I promise I am.”
The anti-ghost shield slammed down.
The impact felt like drowning in acid.
He hit the floor hard, the air leaving his lungs in a broken gasp.
“Contain it!” his father shouted.
It.
Danny tried to push up, but the suppression field crushed him back down. It pressed into his core like a vice tightening around his heart.
Metal restraints snapped around his wrists and ankles.
They burned.
He screamed.
“I’m still me!” he sobbed, voice cracking. “Dad, please—”
A dart pierced his neck.
The world tilted sideways.
His last clear thought before the darkness took him was not fear.
It was confusion.
Why didn’t they recognize him?
—
He woke to the sound of metal clinking against metal.
His body felt heavy.
Cold.
He couldn’t move.
Bright surgical lights flooded his vision.
He tried to swallow.
His throat felt raw.
“Vitals are stable,” his mother said quietly.
Stable.
Like he was an experiment.
Like he was never their son.
Danny’s head turned slightly.
He was strapped down.
His chest exposed.
The suppression field hummed louder than before so loud it vibrated in his bones.
“Mom?” he whispered.
She didn’t meet his eyes.
His father adjusted something above him.
“We’re going to fix this,” he said.
Fix.
Danny’s heart stuttered.
“I don’t need to be fixed,” he said weakly. “I just need you to listen.”
The scalpel touched his skin.
It passed through with a faint green shimmer.
Danny felt it not as a cut, but as something opening that should never be opened.
His core flickered into view beneath translucent flesh.
It glowed softly.
Fragile.
Alive.
He had never seen it fully exposed before.
It looked small.
Smaller than he imagined.
Like something that could break easily.
“Fascinating,” his father breathed.
The blade scraped it.
The sound was soft.
But Danny felt it like a star collapsing inside his chest.
The pain wasn’t sharp.
It was annihilating.
It was every bedtime story his mother ever told him turning into a lie.
It was every hug suddenly meaning nothing.
It was fourteen years of love being replaced with fear in a single second.
Danny’s scream began as a boy’s cry.
It did not stay that way.
The sound deepened.
Layered.
It echoed with something ancient something sovereign something wounded beyond reason.
It wasn’t just pain.
It was betrayal carved into existence.
The lab lights shattered.
The Ghost Portal shrieked like a dying thing.
Across Amity Park, windows cracked.
Dogs began howling.
The sky flickered green.
Danny arched against his restraints, eyes glowing violently.
The scalpel clattered to the floor.
His parents stumbled back, horror dawning too late.
The wail intensified.
It carried grief so vast it bent space.
The Ghost Portal ruptured.
Energy burst outward in a blinding wave.
Houses dissolved mid-laughter.
Cars froze and then disintegrated.
People vanished mid-step.
There were no screams.
There was no fire.
Just erasure.
Inside the lab, the suppression field shattered.
The walls collapsed.
Danny fell off the table onto broken concrete and ash.
The wail faded into a broken, hoarse sob.
Silence followed.
He pushed himself up slowly.
There was no town.
No skyline.
No street.
Just emptiness.
Green mist drifted through the air like ghosts of things that used to be.
He looked down at his shaking hands.
“I didn’t mean to,” he whispered.
His voice echoed across nothing.
His core flickered weakly cracked along its surface like fractured glass.
Something inside him understood before his mind did.
They were gone.
Everyone.
His parents.
His friends.
The bullies.
The teachers.
The strangers he never learned the names of.
Gone.
Because he had screamed.
He tried to stand.
He couldn’t.
His body gave out beneath the weight of what he had done.
“I’m sorry,” he choked.
There was no one left to hear it.
—
Time stopped.
The drifting ash froze mid-air.
The wind stilled.
Clockwork stepped into the ruin.
For once just once the ancient guardian did not look composed.
He looked tired.
He looked grieving.
He knelt beside the boy and placed a hand near his fractured core.
“Oh, child,” he whispered.
The Crown shimmered faintly above Danny’s broken body recognizing its King at last.
But it flickered.
Uncertain.
Clockwork had seen this future.
He had watched it approach like a storm he could not divert.
He had hoped foolishly that love would win.
It had not.
“You were never meant to awaken like this,” he murmured.
Danny stirred weakly.
Tears slid down his face.
“I didn’t mean to,” he whispered again though he could not see Clockwork.
The words pierced deeper than the wail had.
Clockwork closed his eyes.
Across the Infinite Realms, the balance trembled. Ghosts cried out. Ancient beings stirred in recognition and fear.
Their King had awakened in agony.
And his first act had been destruction.
Clockwork pressed his hand gently to Danny’s chest.
Temporal ice formed slowly — not harsh, not violent.
Careful.
Reverent.
“I cannot undo this,” Clockwork said softly, voice breaking in a way time itself had never heard.
“But I will not let you carry it alone.”
Danny’s breathing slowed as the ice encased him.
Not freezing.
Preserving.
Cradling.
Like a coffin and a sanctuary all at once.
Clockwork remained kneeling long after the ice sealed completely.
He placed his forehead briefly against the frozen surface.
An ancient being mourning a child.
“I am sorry,” he whispered.
Not to the town.
Not to the Realms.
To Danny.
The last flicker of green light faded beneath layers of earth as time resumed.
Wind swept across an empty crater.
Amity Park became a grave with no name.
And beneath the future foundations of Gotham, the Eternal King slept — not as a ruler, not as a god—
But as a fourteen-year-old boy who had only wanted his parents to say,
“We still love you.”