Johnny hits Jason with his bike ("we were supposed to go through him babe!" "But we didnt!") which knocks Jason unconscious. Kitty sees he's a ghost and is like "its a baby!" gif and refuses to leave him there.
Jason wakes up to the weirdest coddling experience of his (after)life. After many many tries he cannot successfully escape the growing group of concerned ghosts who are doing the coddling
Two days later Batman issues a search for his missing son, becoming more and more distressed when the batfam finds no leads
i do love the idea of the Justice League finding out Batman’s identity and the fact that he’s actually just a tired vigilante dad and immediately discrediting his spooky-scary-intimidating reputation, and Bruce just being devastated about it. he worked so hard on that reputation, on that respect, and it’s all down the drain just like that. nobody flinches away from his glare anymore, because they’ve seen him glare at Red Hood and get a spoonful of mashed potato flung into his face for the effort. nobody cares about his threats anymore, because he tried to threaten Red Robin to go home and rest one time and Tim just giggled at him deliriously before mocking his tone and stealing his coffee. they’ve seen him pick a splinter out of a whining Nightwing’s finger mid-meeting. Damian once called him a condomless harlot to his face when he told him not to bring his swords onto the watchtower. he’s lost control.
he decides he wants the fear factor back and in all his brilliant genius, he decides the best way to go about that is to invite the league round for a fancy dinner party, specifically so he can use all his ‘brucie wayne’ acting skills to channel the essence of every creepy-rich-guy-in-haunted-manor movie he has ever seen in his life. it is the only time his kids have been fully onboard and willing to contribute to one of his plans without any complaints. they almost seemed more eager to pull it off than he was.
they spend the entire day making the manor look old and slightly abandoned, much to Alfred’s displeasure, and ensure that the only lighting is a fuck ton of candles, just enough to light the halls while leaving the corners and edges shadowy and ominous. Damian is allowed to have some of his more ‘skittery’ pets roam the manor freely for the night, causing occasional scritches and scratches to come from the ceilings. all of the kids dress in their best funeral attire, apart from Jason who gleefully pulls on an old white shirt stained with blood from when Tim crashed through his window with a stab wound, requesting a medkit.
when the league arrive they’re greeted by all the kids lined up on the staircase, staring at them blankly and ominously, while Bruce gives them all a large grin and ushers them into the creepy looking dining room. the league are somewhat nervous.
during the dinner the kids act completely different than the league have seen them in-mask. polite, cordial, and refusing to show an ounce of emotion. they pick at their food and only speak in vague sentences that refer to various horrific events of their past. Bruce has never been prouder.
the first close call they have to breaking character is when Bruce presents a bottle of red wine without any kind of label. as he pours a slightly disturbed Diana a glass, she asks where he got it from. Bruce happily gestures to Jason as says ‘my second eldest procured it especially for you, earlier today.’
Diana looks across the table at where Jason is grinning eerily at her by candlelight, still visibly stained with blood, eyes glowing slightly green. she pales, and Tim knows he can’t watch her shakily lift the glass to her lips without bursting out laughing. he refuses to be the one who fucks up first, so he dramatically stands up and declares he must ‘go feed the experiments’ before storming out the room. ‘the experiments’ are in reference to the pen of rabbits outside that glow in the dark because Damian rescued them from a testing facility, but given the environmental context it sounds much more sinister.
Jason joins him by the pen to also start wheeze-crying in private about 20 minutes later, because apparently after Oliver Queen had finished with his bbq rib, Damian had leaned over and without blinking stared into his eyes to blankly state ‘i would love to feed your bones to my animal friends, if you don’t need them anymore.’ and from the other end of the table Jason had snorted wine up his nose from how hard he was trying not to break.
amazingly, they never break character, although it came pretty close when after hearing another skitter from somewhere above, Stephanie climbed up from the table into the crystal chandelier and deftly returned to present the table with a large tarantula cradled in her hands, to which Damian stood up and declared, ‘ah, dessert! i will help pennyworth prepare it.’ before taking the animal and leaving to put his beloved spider back in it’s enclosure. the league genuinely seemed to be under the impression they were about to be served a tarantula-based desert, and upon seeing their faces at this realisation Dick had to pretend he’d dropped a fork on the ground so he could duck by Bruce’s chair and stuff a napkin in his mouth while he got his laughter under control. Bruce pats his shaking son’s back below the table cloth, determinedly staring at their guests with that same creepy-grin he’d kept up the entire night.
every member of the league makes their excuses to leave early, much to Bruce’s exaggerated disappointment. the second the last of them is out the door Alfred turns to face the family and says ‘mission accomplished. now get this manor back to it’s proper state.’ and they have the spend the rest of the night cleaning.
totally worth it, in Bruce’s mind. none of the JL will look him in the eye for weeks afterwards, and it was honestly the most successful attempt at family bonding they’d ever had. he wonders if they should make it a monthly thing. It’s also how they find out Damian’s a fucking theatre kid with a gift for the arts which is another revelation in of itself
So, Danny is Dick's younger brother. He was given up because he was born premature and had health issues. Dick didn't know or thought the baby didn't make it.
Fast forward, Dick is now Nightwing and Danny is Phantom. Danny is in Gotham, for whatever reason, and comes across someone who echos ectoplasm back at him, like a half formed core. It's familiar in a way he can't name.
That chemical that is used to make Talons, Dionesium, is a stabilizing force for halfas. Dick has trace amount in his system.
Danny, in trying to find this guy, keeps finding Talons, who are all ectoplasm starved halfas with injured cores. Danny quickly learns to be careful about them, so when Nightwing shows up, echoing ectoplasm, Danny treats him like a Feral cat.
Red Hood thinks this is hilarious until Danny does it to him too. (Per DC, the Lazarus Pits are impure Dionesium. Per fanon, the Lazarus Pits are rotten ectoplasm.) Danny doesn't know about that yet. All he knows, is he just found out he's not as alone as he thought and these two are even nice! Even if the one with a clearer core is very obviously sick with some kind of contamination.
Ok, so I've seen a few things that say Bruce Wayne and Sam Manson are Jewish. And I've seen a couple of things about Jewish traditions that say that they leave small stones on graves of loved ones, something about anchoing souls. And there's this one fic, I can't remember what it was or who wrote it, that had Sam placing small stones on Danny sometimes, just because.
I had this thought. Since Danny and Jason aren't dead, what if their loved ones made them weighted blankets, with those stones instead of beads/rice/what-have-you in regular weighted blankets.
Those blankets quickly become their favorite. It's soothing on an instinctual level. Sleeping with those blankets is the best sleep they've ever had. No nightmares. Just happy, sleeping, ghost purrs. Because those blankets are full of love and recognition of loss and ghosts appreciate that recognition of loss from the living, need it.
It's why Ember wants to hear her name, why Skulker and Technus shout their names and titles. They want to be recognized.
Just imagine, movie night at the manor. Some poor soul tries to playfully steal Jason's weighted blanket. Jason's eyes haven't been so bright since he emerged from the Lazarus Pits and he's snarling and growling to impress a dragon. Message received: don't touch the blanket.
Something to note about the weighted blanket, the pebbles have to come from the person's grave or have been given to the individual directly, otherwise it's just a rock. So these blankets take a while to make, because the rocks need to mean something.
When Sam started putting pebbles on Danny, it was more for her piece of mind than anything. It quickly became something important to both of them. Tucker also did it sometimes, and Jazz after she found out, but it was mostly something between them.
It was also a little game for Sam: which ones would he like best? Sam ordered little geodes that Danny would display in his room, but his favorites were ones that were picked up off the side of the road with him in mind.
So when her parents took her places outside of Amity Park, she started picking up little rocks and pebbles wherever they went. It made the awful boring trips bearable. She always liked bringing her friends souvenirs, and with this? Even if her parents stopped her from buying anything, she always got something for Danny.
After something happens at FentonWorks, Danny asks if he can store his 'rock collection' at their houses. Of course they agree. And Danny isn't getting sleep, between ghost attacks and nightmares, so they look up stuff that might help. And they find weighted blankets. And they look at the literal treasure chest (gifted by Princess Dora for precious things, that Danny also can't keep at his house) and decided, why not?
The final product is a clashing collection of ghosts and stars and plants and hieroglyphs and tech and puns and books and bats in square patches of cloth that looks like a godawful quilt. Danny cries when they give it to him (birthday, death day, or something to brighten up a bad day) because it settles something in his core that he didn't even realize was hurting.
This weighted blanket that his friends and sister made is the closest thing he has to a grave. If the ghosts come through the portal and find him sleeping with it, they just turn around and come back later. It really is the best sleep he's ever had.
Any way, at some point, Sam's parents bring her to Gotham for a gala. She obviously manages to slip away outside and starts picking up pebbles. Her Fraid has learned that picking up their own rocks means more than sharing or trading, but she has more chances to pick up different ones than they do, so she 'buys in bulk' so to speak when she leaves. Also, the whole thing is surprisingly grounding for liminals, too and Jazz has been very stressed lately.
Anyway, one of the Wayne's, dealers choice, but I'm thinking Tim or Damian, maybe Cass or Steph, sees her wandering around outside and picking something up, or digging around in the garden, gettingclose to securityfeatures. They go out to confront her about it and she just answers politely that she's picking up pebbles for her friends.
One of them died, and we've just started making them weighted blankets out of grave pebbles. They found it so comforting we decided to make at least one for each of us. Solidarity, you know? Oh yeah, Danny died, but he got better. He's just got a medical condition now. And she just goes on as she keeps going around, picking up pebbles.
I imagine if it was Tim or Dick, they start giving Jason pebbles, just as a joke. They see him taking a nap, drop a pebble on him. He's being annoying, throw a pebble at him. And as this goes on, they notice: he keeps those pebbles. They're displayed in his preferred safe houses, and kept in his pockets. His temper has mellowed out a bit. And the others notice. So they ask.
And eventually everyone starts doing it. Jason quickly gets used to waking up from naps at the Manor to a small pile of rocks somewhere on his person. He starts sorting them.
And this gets to be such a habit that everyone starts doing to each other too. Bruce loves this because it's an expression of love that he doesn't struggle with, and that is accepted by all of his kids. The first time was an accident, mistaking a half blanket buried Dick or Bruce as Jason, or a joke putting one on a Tim that has randomly passed out somewhere.
That first person who talked to Sam realizes that Jason's got a lot of those pebbles now. They remember that she was talking about weighted blankets. So, for a group project, the bats and birds steal some of the pebbles to make Jason a blanket. And at first he's pissed. And then he sits under it- and wow this is the best blanket ever, no you can't touch it unless you want to lose your fingers.
Ok, so I've seen a few things that say Bruce Wayne and Sam Manson are Jewish. And I've seen a couple of things about Jewish traditions that say that they leave small stones on graves of loved ones, something about anchoing souls. And there's this one fic, I can't remember what it was or who wrote it, that had Sam placing small stones on Danny sometimes, just because.
I had this thought. Since Danny and Jason aren't dead, what if their loved ones made them weighted blankets, with those stones instead of beads/rice/what-have-you in regular weighted blankets.
Those blankets quickly become their favorite. It's soothing on an instinctual level. Sleeping with those blankets is the best sleep they've ever had. No nightmares. Just happy, sleeping, ghost purrs. Because those blankets are full of love and recognition of loss and ghosts appreciate that recognition of loss from the living, need it.
It's why Ember wants to hear her name, why Skulker and Technus shout their names and titles. They want to be recognized.
Just imagine, movie night at the manor. Some poor soul tries to playfully steal Jason's weighted blanket. Jason's eyes haven't been so bright since he emerged from the Lazarus Pits and he's snarling and growling to impress a dragon. Message received: don't touch the blanket.
Fenton parents make an invention to reverse a ghost's evil impulses!" It actually brings a ghost's instincts forward. The effects last about two weeks.
The Fentons are in Gotham when they get the chance to use it on Phantom.
Good news: it happens near the Bats, so he's quickly rescued.
Bad news: baby ghost instinct wants parents and turned human to get reassurance. That did not happen and now Red Hood has a crying, keening teenager shaped leech.
Thanks
Danny turned the knob on the door to the old janitor closet and stepped out only to pause.
This was not his high-school. Instead he was in a fancy office of some kind with a bunch of blueprints on a desk. Oh well, his portal powers were new and still developing so when he realized he would be late for school even if he flew he decided to use his new ability and aim for a closet he knew the cleaning crew only used sparingly.
At least he partially succeeded. It was a cleaning closet, just not the cleaning closet. He knew he should hurry and at least try to get to school on time but he also knew that it would be a waste of effort, besides those blueprints looked pretty interesting.
It only took a moment before Danny spotted something wrong with the first blueprint and out of habit of correcting his own parents blueprints so they don't explode and whatnot, he grabbed a red pen and began correcting mistakes and leaving little notes and helpful suggestions. He even drew up blueprints for new parts to make the energy consumption for one blueprint design functional.
"Wha-how did you get in here?!"
Danny jolted, dropping the pen and papers as a tall man stood in the doorway,probably Mr. Fox if the nameplate on the desk was anything to go by. Danny made a quick excuse about Narnia needing him before ducking back into the closet and flying out and away with his ghost powers...only to find out he's in another dimension and Amity park doesn't exist here and not one but two weird rich people want to adopt him.
He wonders if this red Hood guy would protect him from the horrors of adoption if he asked nicely.
Thank you @umbra95 and everyone who got me to 100 reblogs!
Soul mark au
Humans have soul marks, a picture on their skin representing the one person who compliments them, helps them grow, keeps them safe. Some people have multiple soul marks, some only one, and some not at all.
Ghosts have Fraid marks, images or features in their appearance that reflect the members of their Fright.
Danny has had his soul mates, Sam and Tucker, for years. Sometimes, he'll find an odd colored bruise that lingers and doesn't hurt, but he doesn't think much of it.
Then he dies. His ghost form only shows his face, all other skin hidden away. It takes a while before he can bring himself to check that his soul marks are still there. It takes longer still to learn about Fraid marks.
"Why does everyone here wear sashes anyway?" Danny asked one day, while stopping by the Far Frozen.
"We are a Fraid. We are all similar in many ways, so we manifested another way to show our inclusion in other Fraids," Frostbite responded easily.
"What do you mean?" Danny asked, confused.
"Our Fraid marks," Frostbite said, indicating his own, "Many beings of the Realms have their own way to show their marks, but we have no skin to show, and not all of us appreciate colored fur. This might be our Lair, but we have our own predators here if we aren't careful."
"What are Fraid marks?"
"Marks that show our allies and allegiances. Your human friends may even have their own marks."
"Sam and Tucker are my soul mates. I've had their marks forever. My sister, Jazz's too. But I haven't gotten new marks since I became a halfa."
"Didn't you notice?" Frostbite asked, amused. "You are a human ghost with fangs, pointed ears, and claws. You are here to check on other physical changes. Many of your friends in the Realms are not human, or have a very distinct non-humanoid form. Fraid marks are much more versatile than human, or even liminal, marks."
Santa is on strike due to global warming. All presents this year will be delivered by Sasha the Christmas Tiger. Milk and cookies may not be sufficient.