Batman opened the door, catching the falling body that had come out of the tube. Glowing green Lazarus water flowed around his feet, but he didn’t care. He gently laid the boy onto the ground, listening for breathing sounds. But he wasn’t even sure if his species could breathe. The boy was no older than Tim, with stark-white hair, and pale green skin. The boy wasn’t human, that was for sure, but as to what species he was, Batman had no clue. The teenager hadn’t even opened his eyes since being removed from the tube.
The Lazarus water didn’t smell quite like the pits he was used to. The water smelled cleaner, stronger. Less like battery acid and more like a strong-scented cleaner that he couldn’t give a name to.
He grasped the boy by the shoulders as he picked him up bridal style. He needed to take the boy to the cave, and figure out if he was even alive. A regular hospital wouldn’t be able to do anything for him.
“Batman, we’ve apprehended the last of the men in white suits.” Red Robin said over the comms.
“Good,” His voice was gruff, “Make sure they don’t escape before police arrive.”
Tim didn’t bother saying anything else to him. Neither of them were in the mood for jokes. Not after what they had seen tonight. They had stumbled across a lab in Gotham in an abandoned warehouse. They had thought that it was a Joker hideout when they first arrived, but they had quickly found out that wasn’t the case. After they had began to investigate, they had found corpses of many people that had been thrown into a pit. The bodies had evidence of vivisection, torture, and experimentation. The bodies had ranged from children to adults, but the results were all the same. They were all dead.
They had found tubes like the ones used at Cadmus. They held a few humanoid-species, but most of them looked like they were in varying stages of death. The only tube that looked like it held someone living had been the teenage boy he now held in his arms.
The worst thing about all of this were that they had no idea what this place was, what they were doing, or why they were in Gotham. They had stumbled in by mistake.
He had a lot of work to do.
“No survivors.” Nightwing’s voice sounded. Not even Dick was in a good mood anymore, and he had been joking around for the last few hours.
Batman looked down at the boy in his arms. The boy hadn’t stirred once, hadn’t moved, and hadn’t breathed. He might be carrying a corpse for all he knew.
“And the files?” He prompted.
“Downloading.” Red Robin’s voice was grim. “You’re not going to like it.”
He didn’t like anything about this situation already. How could it get any worse?
“From what I can tell from skimming through the files,” Red Robin continued, “They were experimenting with people’s souls. They killed all of these people because they wanted to catch their ghost.”
“Hrrn.” He looked away from the teenager in his arms. Maybe he didn’t have a corpse in his arms—but a ghost. A ghost of a teenager he failed to save.
What if it had been Tim lying in his arms? Dick? Jason? Damian? Did this teenager have parents before he died, or were his parents in the pit?
The boy stirred, whipping Bruce’s attention back to him. The boy moaned in pain, starting to writhe in his arms.
“You’re safe now.” He said to the boy. “You’re saved.”
“Nnnngh.” The boy opened Lazarus green eyes to look at him. The eyes were hazy, as if exhaustion plagued them. “Batman?”
“They won’t hurt you ever again.” He promised.
“Where is my sister?” The boy asked. “They took her.”
Dick’s words played on repeat in his mind. No survivors. But the boy didn’t need to know that. Not yet.
“We’re still searching the base. She’ll be here somewhere.” He lied.
The boy closed his eyes, letting out a deep sigh. But even with Bruce watching him, the boy did not breathe. Maybe he didn’t need to anymore. Tears leaked down the boy’s cheeks, as if he knew Bruce’s lie.
bnha animatic wip 27 8 20
@gentrychild
hadnt had time to finish before my flight but here’s what ive done so far uwu
I’m going to try to write a fic like this bc wtf do you mean “That’s it”???? 😭😭 Your mind has created the most heartbreaking and tragic story known to man and I am so here for it!!!
:’D
This came to me in a dream so bare with me people
Bruce gets a boyfriend/girlfriend or whatever just to keep the media at bay or something along those lines. But then… he actually kinda likes them??
And Bruce is confused as everyone else is about it but he isn’t gonna look a gift horse in the mouth (or whatever that saying is) and he starts genuinely going out with him
His kids and everyone who knows his secret identity are rightfully cautious about it. I mean, Bruce doesn’t have the best track record with relationships, but as long as the man is happy. They just hope there won’t be too much push back when Bruce inevitably blows it up 
They love Bruce but literally no one has any faith in him to keep the relationship for long. They’re are very obviously doubting him and it makes Bruce feel discouraged but he tries not to show it
And then one day, Bruce is having a jolly good time at a gala (at least pretending to) and he gets called by his partner. He’s talking to the cameras and suddenly his partner calls him. His face lights up and the press kinda pressure him to put the call on speaker.
Everyone’s seen his partner, in fact, they seem to soak up the media presence like a sponge. Bruce logically doesn’t think they’ll mind, but just in case he wants to tell them immediately
He accepts the call and before he can get a word out, his partner is saying the most vile and ridiculous things to him.
Dude talks about how he’s disappointed that Bruce hasn’t had sex with him yet and how he never expected the Brucie Wayne to be such a prude and stop his advances. He’s says that the only reason why he put up with Bruce was to get into his pants and since they’ve been dating for five months with no action, it wasn’t worth it anymore. Dudes already been getting action from someone else and he hangs up without letting Bruce say a thing
Bruce’s entire face falls and he’s genuinely devastated. The gala goes quiet and Bruce excuses himself, embarrassed and heartbroken.
He’s trying to stop himself from crying but he just experienced his first real heartbreak in a long time that absolutely wasn’t his fault
His family say is not his fault but Bruce doesn’t believe them because he’s conditioned himself to believe that everything is his fault and he knows that didn’t believe in him in the first place
That’s it
Something I've seen in fics a few times but not for comedic effect is the idea that Constantine selling his soul so many times makes him look/feel Wrong to ghosts.
Like I love various Danny ghost shenanigans giving Constantine a heart attack in stories but just imagine that Constantine is like deeply, deeply unsettling for Ghosts & Liminals to be around.
To the point of whenever he and Danny meet for the first time at the Watchtower after Danny's joined the League, Constantine just walks in and upon turning to look at who just walked in Danny just shrieks like a small child and throws a chair at him out of reflex, diving behind Captain Marvel to use him as a magical human meat shield while screeching "WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT???! WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!" At the top of his lungs and doesn't stop until Batman makes Constantine leave.
Even after Zantanna explains Constantine's whole deal and Danny explains to the Justice League how totally fucked up that looks/feels like to him ("Dude, Ghosts are their core, for us you see that before you see the shape of whoever you're talking to. Like, imagine someone walks up to you with a face that looks like it's made out of a shattered plate and the pieces are bleeding"
Or like, imagine instead it's a thing were Jason and Jazz are dating and Jazz, Danny & Elle are invited over for a nice meet the family brunch - "Brunch is fun and casual!" Dick insisted, "Way less intimidating than if we had them over for dinner!") and Constantine pops in to talk to Bruce about a case.
And the second he walks into the room all three just shriek like they're from an episode of Scooby Doo.
Elle takes one look at Constantine and just nopes out of there so hard she doesn't even gk intangible as she throws herself out the window and starts flying for the hills. Danny screeches like a cat whose tail has been stepped on and jumps onto the ceiling and scrambles away. Jazz screams like a house wife from an old Looney Tunes cartoon and starts climbing Jason like a tree - which is a bit of a problem since she's half a foot taller than Jay and throwing his center of balance off a bit and now half of the plates are smashed on the floor.
Jason doesn't even notice though because he also is losing his shit over what the fuck that thing is and unlike Elle is far more interested in Fight rather than Flight and pulls out a gun - "Why'd you bring a gun to brunch?! Guns aren't fun or casual!" - and just starts unloading on Constantine (who is very lucky Jason has switched to non lethal rounds and that he's quick enough with his spells to largely keep most of the rubber bullets from hitting him) also while screaming at the top of his lungs.
And well, turns out Jason's new girlfriend is the older sister of that ghost hero the League's been looking to recruit and Bruce is gonna take advantage of that - Phantom has been hard to pin down, which is fair, bad history with government agencies trying to kill him and all - to talk to him about a place with JL, though first he's going to have to get him down from the ceiling and that'd be a lot easier if Constantine would just leave already, they are supposed to be having a family brunch this is his one day off!
(Elle screams her all the way to Metropolis and doesn't stop until she nearly knocks Superman out of the sky. He isn’t really sure what's going on, but he does manage to calm her down and takes her to go get some ice cream. When he pitches joining JL she tells him that she thinks he's kinda lame but that Superboy is cool so she's down. It's...honestly kinda devastating but Clark manages to get through it.
A note gets made when the two ghost heroes officially join the League that partnerships with Constantine should be kept at an absolute minimum.)
And lol yeah, just, Constantine being utterly terrifying to Danny and the Pham
Gentle reminder that they almost definitely planted evidence on Luigi and arrested him to distract from the fact that the real UHC shooter got away with killing a billionaire. One of us successfully killed a billionaire and one of us could successfully do it again
(edit: Thompson was a millionaire but my point still stands billionaires and millionaires who make money through killing thousands gotta go)
Dan: Oh crude! Hit the deck!
Danny: Why? What's happening?
Dan: It's the most dangerous adversary I ever faced. He was the closest to taking me out in the future and it was only through sheer dumb luck I survived. He also did all that without having any ghost weapons. I shudder to think what would have been left of my army if he did.
Danny: Who is this dangerous man?
Dan gravely: Tim
Danny: I'm sorry?
Dan: *Army crawling behind bookshelves* His name is Tim the Terrible. Quickly we have to escape before he-
Tim: Are you two alright?
Dan: *Screaming while skedaddle away*
Danny: ......
Tim:.....
Danny: Sorry about that he....um he's a self-proclaimed seer and apparently you're kind of scary in the future. Silly right?
Tim mentally thinking of his evil future self: Actually.....
I love it when there's choas that most associate with Dan, Dani, and Danny.
___
Dan, Dani and Danny just finished a meeting with the Justice League (with the YJL on the side lines just being nosey) to talk about alliances between the League and the Phantoms.
Superman: Phantom.
Dan, Dani and Danny: Yes.
Flash: Wait, you're all Phantom?
Dani: Yeah, it's our family name, duh.
Superman: We prefer to work with the eldest Phantom-
Danny, who still looks the same age he died but is actually 15: That would be me.
Everyone is shocked.
Dan, scoffed: We're ghosts, our physical age doesn't reflect our actual ages.
Kid Flash: Wait, how old are you guys?
Dan: 4 years old.
Dani: 6 months old.
Dan: Baby-
Dani just stuck out her tongue.
Danny: I'm 15.
Robin: But you show up throughout history?
Danny: I do odd jobs for the ghost of time.
Green Latern: We'll circle back to that later. So, how are you guys related?
Dan: We're the same person.
JL + YJL: Wha-?
Dan: Me and her are variations of that one.
Batman: Elaborate.
Dan: I'm from another timeline that doesn't exist anymore.
Dani: I'm his clone!
Danny: And I'm just Danny.
Flash: Didn't you call her your cousin? Wouldn't she be your daughter?
Danny: It's interchangeable, we change what we call each other everyday. Sometimes I'm their brother, cousin or parent. Which one depends on the day.
Dan: We honestly don't care.
Flash: Since you're from a destroyed timeline, wouldn't she also be your clone too?
Dan: Naw, it's a little more complex than that.
Dani: He's actually combined ghosts of Danny and Plasmius combined with Danny's memories. In hindsight, that makes him their child. Which means we're actually full siblings.
Danny: Which is weird since Plasmius is actually an old man with an unhealthy obsession with my mom and me. He was my parents' college friend and is my godfather and arch nemesis.
Kid Flash: ... There is so many things wrong with that statement.
Danny: And that's why we call him a fruitloop.
Aqualad: There seems to be an issue with archnemesises cloning their hero counterparts.
Dani, squealing: THERES ANOTHER CLONE!!
Superboy: Hi.
Dani, suddenly in Superboy's face: Mom, look! He can pass off as one of us.
Robin: That makes no sense, he has blue eyes and black hair, you have white hair and green eyes.
All three Phantoms, with an inhumanly large and toothy grin, turned human: You sure 'bout that?
Batman: You have human disguises?
Danny: Sure, we'll go with that.
Dani, on Superboy's back: Can we keep him?
Dan: He'll fit right in.
Danny: Superman is his dad-
Superman, bristling: Its not my son.
The Phantoms just stare at him:...
Danny: No.
JL: ??
Dan: I won't make a mess.
JL, confused: ??
Dani: I'll help with clean up.
JL, concerned: !?!?
Danny: No, now help me convince Superboy to join our fraid.
Danny, outed to the government as a ghostly entity, is not only wanted by the government but unable to find work because of that.
Sam gave him money to help him escape, but an unfortunate run in with more than one gang of meta traffickers blew through that in an instant.
He needs a job. He needs to find a place to sleep.
He decides to answer an ad in a newspaper, for a personal chef for an unnamed person. Is it sketchy? Yes. Is it very likely to be under the table with no government checks? Also yes.
Besides, if it turns out to be someone bad, he can just go invisible and disappear for a bit. It'll be...unfortunate, cuz he'll have to steal what he needs, but it's doable.
He arrives at the meeting place, and there's a car waiting to pick him up.
Okay.
He gets in the car. Secondary location, here he comes.
It drives to a mansion.
Oh no.
It's Oliver Queen.
Oliver Queen put up that ad.
Oliver Queen takes one look at him, hums, and says that Danny is absolutely what he was looking for. That Danny just looks like how a chef should look.
Five minutes later, Danny finds himself in a kitchen larger than his old house, internally panicking and scrolling as fast as he can through cooking lessons on youtube.
Turns out, Danny's got a knack for cooking.
Like, he's actually pretty phenomenal at it.
If the food isn't trying to come back to life and eat him, once he's got the basics down, it's pretty easy to throw together a meal.
~~~~~~
Oliver, sleep deprived and injured, meant to ask Stan to make him something to eat.
Somehow he failed step one of just texting the man, and ended up reaching out to and placing an ad in a local newspaper for a personal chef.
Naturally, when someone answers it, he decides to get them over to his place so he can apologize for his stupidity and pay them the money they lost wasting time going to him.
Except that's a kid.
A dirty, unkempt, homeless teenager.
And...fuck.
Look, Oliver isn't a complete and total jackass, and it's not like the kid can mess up much if he's in the kitchen, of all places.
So he pretends like the ad is legit. Throws the kid in the kitchen.
Accidentally finds out that the kid wasn't fucking lying about being a good chef that was out of practice, holy shit? This food is so good????
Looks into the kid's background, quietly.
...
And in true Green Arrow fashion, uncovers a government conspiracy.
Alley Drunk! Danny AU- Part 1
[Pt.2] [Pt.3] [Pt.4]
To not turn into a giant raging asshole hell bent on murdering people and destroying the world after everyone he loved died, Danny had ran from Amity with his chosen vice.
A bottle. That’s right. Even after Jazz’s talks about alcoholism as a poor coping mechanism as a form of self harm, he still chose alcohol. Or maybe that’s why he picked it, because it reminded him of her, right before the booze took the sting of grief off of her memory. He was never really all that good at listening to Jazz.
And now she’s gone, so it’s moot point. Danny really hated Nasty Burger.
Danny made it all the way to Gotham, bottle constantly glued to his hand. It’s better than Vlad’s creep-o-self looming over him all of the time. He bummed out on the streets, fitting into crime alley like a native. Danny learned to pickpocket. Not much, just enough for a bottle when his ran out. He stayed human. At first he tried to convince himself that it was because he didn’t want to be perceived as a meta in a city where Batman notoriously disliked metas. Then, as he sunk deeper, he admitted to himself in a shameful curl of a whisper that it was really because alcohol affected his human side much easier.
Ghosts need an ungodly amount of alcohol to even get slightly buzzed. Danny’s human side? Only one full bottle the shittiest tequila he could find could even hope to be more than buzzed. It sucked.
He’s spent two years being an alcoholic that didn’t actually get that drunk. Technically, underage drinking was a crime. But then again, so was being a vigilante ghost. So, whatever. He does what he can to dull the grief. Mostly, he slept on covered and hidden nooks on top of Crime Alley’s roofs. Gotham city had taken pity on him and cleared her smog clouds when he was awake at night. Stargazing helped, at least. It gave him a little hope. It gave him a little wish to change and better and live like he wants. But then the night ends and when the day comes, Jazz isn’t there. Sam isn’t there. Tucker isn’t there. His mom and dad are not there.
Danny always went back to the bottle, in the end. Not that it did much.
Which was why, when he saw three looming figures over a tiny child, Danny’s saving people thing flared with a vengeance and his surprised ectoplasm burned what little buzz he had achieved by downing most of the bottle away, leaving him stone cold sober and pissed.
Danny sighed, dumping the rest of the nasty tasting liquid out. There’s no point drinking that little.
He approached the trio, who were beating up an actual child. Ancients, he hated Crime Alley sometimes.
“Give me your shit, you little punk!” Asshole 1 decided to say like a typical mugger, raising his leg to kick the curled up kid below. Danny doesn’t let him land the kick, smashing the bottle on the asshole’s head before any of them clocked his presence. He pivots, pushing a bit of that extra strength he normally keeps on a tight leash into his hands, and punched the other two in a quick fashion, knocking them out.
With that taken care of, Danny turned back to the kid who was still curled up. Danny sighed again, the trembles in small shoulders plucking on his heartstrings.
“You okay, kid?”
The kid uncurls, and Danny stared. Holy shit, is he looking into a mirror? Blue eyes, black hair, and tanned skin. Holy shit, he’s even got similar jaws to Danny.
“Huh.”
The kid flinched.
“Y-y’er the drunk,” the kid flinched again, eyes darting to the broken bottle still clenched in Danny’s hand. “I- I ain’t got money, honest. Please-”
Danny blinked down at the kid, brain connecting the dots after so long without actual interaction. He’s panicking and staring at the bottle in Danny’s hand like it’ll kill him. Danny raised the bottle and the kid closed his mouth with a click, terror worming its way into the kid’s eyes.
“I wasn’t going to mug you myself, kid.”
“But- y’er the- the Alley drunk.”
Danny blinked. Did he get a reputation without knowing again? Goddammit.
“I guess. Am I famous or somethin’?”
“Nobody- nobody fucks wit’ ya.”
“I also don’t hurt kids.”
“…”
The kid stared at him dubiously and with a sinking feeling, Danny realized that maybe the kid already had some terrible experiences with a heavy drunken hand. He promptly chucks the bottle further into the alley.
“I drink, yes. But I’m also not the kind of scum that would lay hands on a kid, let alone anyone that didn’t provoke it first.”
“Oh.” The kid uncurled more, looking at Danny warily, more at ease now that the bottle has left the chat.
“Yeah. I’m Danny. Stone cold sober, right now.”
“…”
Danny waited.
“Peters.”
“Okay. Peters, do you wanna take their shit?” Danny pointed a thumb at the knocked out would-be-muggers behind him.
“Y… yeah, sure. What’s my cut?”
“All of it.”
Peters stared.
Danny shrugged and started looting.
"Y'er so fuckin' weird."
----
See, the thing is, Danny hadn't anticipated saving Peters- "'s actually Jason"- would result in having a duckling following him around. The kid, Jason, glared at everyone who even looked at them wrong. But that's not the problem, because Danny could take anyone who took issue with Jason's looks, it's more like there's a child following him around now and Danny doesn't want to be the reason Jason turns into an alcoholic. It's- well, it made him cut down on the drinking. He even got jobs- legitimate jobs that sucks out his his poor ectoplasmic soul.
Why? Because Jason's apparently homeless. While that's something Danny's okay with for himself, he can't ever condone that for an actual child. Jason's walking around in threadbare clothes and thin soled shoes in the middle of Fall, for Ancient's sake.
Danny grumbles as he piled a bunch of clothes into the shopping bag as he checked out. Gotham's Walmart is a different kind of hell, but Danny feels right at home.
Sure, the work might suck out his soul and he might hate being sober, but Jason's face every time he comes home to an actual place to live, warm clothes, and food was worth everything.