To Play Pretend

o/ <- person waving

o7 <- person saluting

ol <- person raising hand

o1 <- person scratching head

\o> <- person stretching

After moving to Gotham and having to deal with a stressful job, Danny has started taking walks around the city as a way to destress.

Since he knows that he could get mugged, he just becomes intangible and invisible while listening to some loud music on his phone.

Unfortunately for him, his control on his Invisibility keeps slipping when he gets lost in his music, and the people of Gotham keep seeing a semi-translucent ghost man walking around at night aimlessly.

Some thugs think it’s just a meta with invisibility and try to mug him, but pass right through and he disappears completely. This convinces them that he is a ghost, since having both invisibility, and intangibility would be too big a coincidence. Not to mention he never reacts to them whatsoever.

The Bat’s get word that a Ghost has been stalking the streets of Gotham, and he looks scarily like Bruce Wayne from the little they have been able to see from him. Now Batman thinks his dad may have come back as a ghost.

Danny is oblivious to all of this. He just likes his nightly strolls.

Got inspired by a Danny is Bruce's clone post I saw but my mind went in a totally different direction from almost every part of it (including: Danny's parents don't Vivisection Suck and he was always fully aware he was a clone, because there's Shenanigans leading up to his creation and beyond). Anyway. Tally-ho onto fic...

--

There's a teenager by the bat-signal.

Taken alone, this fact was not worthy of notice. Many pre-teens, teenagers, and adults of varying ages have stood by the bat-signal over the years. These days it fell into something of a mild disuse. Their comms were secure enough that if Gordon needed them urgently, he'd reach out that way and if the bats needed him, they'd drop silently behind him and wait for him to notice and then deny they'd startled him on purpose. The bat-signal was, in this new era, more of a symbol.

Which meant they still couldn't ignore it when it turned on, though Tim heeded Gordon's warning that it had not been him. That much would have been obvious at a glance. Perpetrator was a lone humanoid, possibly male-identifying based on the cut of clothes, tentatively classified as young (body build, clothes, a general Stressed Teens Recognize Stressed Teens energy Tim would deny using as part of his deduction) though unconfirmed with the hood pulled up, pacing besides the large bulb with the blocked-out bat. It took Tim mere seconds to make these observations, his grappling hook still raising him to the exposed steel beams of the abandoned construction site.

In that same second, when the hook's rope sunk almost silently back into place, the teenager stopped pacing and looked straight at him.

Superhuman hearing range, Tim noted down, because he had not been spotted just like that. Still, spotted he had been, so he swung down to the same platform the suspicious teenager and the bat-signal were in. They sized each other up.

"You're too short to be Batman," was the first thing the suspicious teenager said to him.

"You're barely any taller than I am," said Tim. "I'm Red Robin, one of Batman's associates."

The teenager clicked his tongue against his teeth. In the shadow of the bat-signal, his face was all darkness. "You guys come color-coded now?"

"That joke isn't as original as you think it is," said Tim, because the bats did indeed come color-coded these days.

"Whatever," the teenager pushed his hands into his hoodie pockets. "I need to speak with Batman."

"Even more original," Tim replied drily. "Whatever you need to tell him you can tell me."

"I really can't," said the teenager. "It's... personal."

"What, your mother tell you she had a one night stand with the bat and you're his secret love child?" The teenager made an odd, surprised noise, and then the silence grew awkward - something about the angle of his shoulders - "Oh my god, she did, didn't she?"

"No!" said the teenager, at the same time the comms in Tim's ear exploded with crackling laughter and digs at B for being such a slut. The man himself was stoically silently throughout it.

Ignoring the laughter, Tim turned on 'Red Robin comforting a civilian' mode. "Listen," said Tim, soothingly. "You aren't the first to be told this, or to come here claiming it - "

"He's not my dad!" The teenager's voice cracked and he spent a single, humiliated moment staring over Gotham in embarrassed despair. "I'm his clone, okay?"

Behind his mask, Tim blinked. "Okay?"

The teenager muttered a muffled curse, then pushed back his hood. The first thing Tim focused on was the bruise around the left zygomatic, green and purple, made stark by the bat-signal's sickly yellow light. Then the blue eyes, staring warily at him, the bowed lips pursed together, the chin tucked in defensively. There was leftover baby fat in his cheeks, and a shock of white in his messy hair, but Tim spent far too long stalking the Wayne Family to not recognize a teenage Bruce standing in front of him.

"Damn, he actually looks the part," said Oracle, watching through his mask camera. Her shock faded into business. "Running analysis now."

The teen's lips pursed further. Superhuman hearing, Tim remembered. He might be able to hear the comms. What exactly had they blended Bruce - Batman? - with?

"You see why I need to talk with him," said the maybe-clone, scowling Bruce's youthful face at him.

"I really don't," said Tim, mouth working a step ahead of his brain. He earned a contemptful look for this, but forged on ahead. "Lets say I believe you. What would you want? Child support? To murder and replace him? Sorry to tell you but you're too young to pass as him."

"Why would I want to kill him?" Pure bewilderment. If someone had trained the guy to be a weapon, they'd never taught him to control his emotions properly. "And I don't want to be him," there was disgust there, some complexity Tim could not instinctively pin down, but which would corroborate the clone angle. Almost reluctantly, the teen forced out, "I need his help."

"With what?"

"I told you. It's personal."

"Oh, you're going to be a delight to deal with, aren't you?"

"Like you're any better," said the teen. He crossed his arms. "Are you going to help me or not?"

Damian gets it from Bruce, Tim realized and sighed. "Yeah, sure, whatever. Do you have a name so I can stop calling you Batclone in my head?"

The maybe-clone made a face. "It's Danny. Don't ever call me... bat clone... again."

Tim was an asshole on purpose when he wasn't an asshole on accident. He made no promises. "Well, Danny, let's see if we can actually help you."

And if this turned to be a ridiculous hoax or murder plot... well, it wouldn't be the first time. Tim doubted it would be the last.

~~

"I wouldn't be here if I didn't need to," said Danny. They were sitting on a rooftop with burgers and fries. Danny swirled the straw of his milkshake and didn't take a sip.

"Promising," said Red Robin, who did take a sip of his shake. He'd been eating Jokerized Fries (a suspicious meal item Danny did not order) without a care in the world, like stalling a guy claiming to be a clone from meeting Batman was an average Tuesday for him.

Maybe it was. Danny couldn't actually judge, on account of his everything.

"You should eat the burger before it gets cold," said Red Robin, who had paid for the food while they 'waited for B to show up'. If Danny tried to actually eat he'd probably throw up.

Danny's senses strained, but the chatter on Red Robin's comms had been silent since the guy sent them a text that resulted in a 'What, is he half Kryptonian too?' before the entire line went dead. Danny, who was disappointingly not half-Kryptonian (his parents could do it, but they had zero interest in aliens), had glared at the skyline and wondered what gave away that he could hear everything they were saying. All he had now was silence, the anxious ballet of his stomach, and Red fucking Robin crunching fries between his molars.

"Is Batman going to actually come?" Danny bit out. "I'm kind of on a time limit here."

"You didn't say that earlier," said Red Robin.

"I thought you'd actually take me to him instead of buying me dinner," said Danny.

"That's what they all say," Red Robin swallowed his fries and rubbed finger grease onto a napkin. "But see, you are not the first time we've ran into someone claiming to be B's kid. The clone angle isn't new either, though you admittedly don't fit the profile of the usual crowd. If we indulged every lunatic and opportunist, we'd never get any actual work done. B's not gonna come running just for that, and until you actually tell me what you're after we're stuck here. Might as well eat."

"Can't you just run my DNA as proof?" Danny asked, exasperated. "You've got to have the tech for it."

Red Robin smiled a slimy bureaucrat's smile. "Well, if you're offering..."

"I'll only give it to him," said Danny. "As far as I know, you might not even actually be one of his 'associates' but a delusional LARPer who's really into method acting."

Red Robin's smile dropped. It was hard to tell with the mask covering most of his face, but he looked briefly insulted. Good.

"I'm serious, I have a really good reason to ask after him. Life or death. I will be out of your city when I'm done." Danny swirled his milkshake once more and then grabbed the bag with his burger, because why waste free food? He'd eat it later, after he found his gene template. "So, thanks for the food and no thanks for wasting my time - " he turned and ran straight into a solid wall of black. "Fucking- " Danny stumbled back, almost slipped off the edge of the roof, but the solid wall of black grabbed his jacket and stabilized him. Danny looked up past the armored pectorals to a chiseled jaw and - yeah, that was Batman.

"How did you sneak up on me?" Danny blurted out.

"...Practice," said the Batman (holy shit), dropping his grip on Danny. The deep gravel of his voice nearly sent Danny in another dizzy twirl off the roof because that - that did not sound like Danny. That sounded like a chain smoker who hadn't quit after twenty years. Was the Batman a chain smoker? Did Danny have a hitherto unknown predilection for smoking? That was so unhealthy. He absolutely refused.

"You shouldn't have doubted me," said Red Robin, reminding Danny the guy existed.

"...Are you really Batman?" Danny squinted up at him. At least this provided an estimate end result to the growing pains.

"What proof could I offer?" said Batman. Danny shuffled a few more steps away and to the side, leaving the bats on one end of the roof and himself on the other.

"I - I didn't think that far," Danny admitted. What had he expected? To look at the bat and see himself, just like with the unstable clones? To instantly recognize each other as the same person? That hadn't happened with Dani. And yet, somehow, this total disconnect - this pure, simple understanding that this was an utter stranger - was not what he'd planned for.

Where was Jazz when he actually wanted some psychoanalysis?

Batman studied him. Red Robin did the same, for all the guy hid it behind greasy fast food and quips. Danny's shoulders threatened to hunch and he forced them back; chin up. Impossible to meet Batman's eyes, but the mask lenses were good enough.

When the silence stretched long, Danny bit his cheek. "So, will you help me? Once you're done with the whole suspicious identity verification or whatever you've been up to this past hour."

"I need a sample of your DNA first," said Batman, bluntly, that deep voice like rocks tumbling down a river.

"How funny," said Danny, crossing his arms. "That's exactly what I need from you too."

The menacing observation sputtered out at his easy admission.

"Seriously?" Red Robin crushed his greasy food wrapper into a ball and stood. The wrapper sailed over the edge of the roof and dunked perfectly into a trash can. Danny's ears focused on it so intently that when the wrapper settled, the background noise of the city slammed back in and forced him to reorient.

"I told you I'd tell Batman," said Danny, and despite his stomach foregoing ballet to do extreme sports, smirked. "Shouldn't have doubted me."

Red Robin scowled at him.

Batman's statuesque stillness only became noticeable when he started moving again. It set Danny's instincts on edge, senses telling him that's a human when only ghosts were so quiet and frozen. At least it gave credence to this actually being The Batman (Danny's gene donor The Batman, holy shit) instead of a LARPer in an armored suit.

"Why do you want my DNA?" asked Batman.

Here came the tricky and awkward part. "I... do you want to do this here?"

Batman grunted an affirmative. Danny was both disgusted and intrigued by this simple action.

"Okay," said Danny. "I... am not the only clone of you. I mean I am. But I'm also not." Great, fantastic explanation Mr. Fenton. Real A+ material.

Batman and Red Robin just kept patiently waiting for more. What even was the relationship here? Red Robin wasn't his sidekick, that was Colorless Ordinary Robin (currently on iteration like, five or something, if the forum threads could be trusted). The silent grew vaguely incredulous as they processed Danny's babbling. Danny should have come in a mask so no one could see his cheeks pink beneath the bruising.

"Anyway," said Danny, "the other uh... clone... that shares your DNA... is not... stable. Like I am. And my DNA is - it wasn't enough to help. So I was hoping I could have a sample of yours?..." He trailed off awkwardly, because even though he'd been practicing this little speech the whole flight from Illinois it didn't actually get less painful when he actually said it.

Hey, dude, fun fact: you have a nonconsensual genetic copy out there! And he also has a nonconsensual genetic copy too! Funny how that happened! If it happens again its probably a curse tied to your ribosome!

The silence stretched on. If Danny could die again he'd probably expire out of sheer anxiety. Red Robin, after a moment, shifted his body to the side in a pretense of discretion and pulled his phone out. His fingers blurred with how fast he was texting. Unbelievable.

Danny refocused on Batman, once more as still as any ghost save for the steady beat of his breaths.

Their staring contest resumed.

Danny cracked first. "Please say something."

"...DNA test first," said the Batman. "And then you will expand on your story with more detail."

Danny's tight grip on the burger and milkshake loosened so much they almost slipped from his hand. A wave of relief made him dizzy. "Yeah, sure, okay that's." He swallowed. "Thank you for believing me. I know this is." Shitty and weird? Maybe Danny should ask after their nonconsensual clone protocols, they were handling this with much more aplomb than he felt. But. "...Thanks."

Batman, after a hesitant moment, said, "Even if you are not my clone and just do this to get our attention, we will still try to help when we can."

"I guess I can believe that," said Danny. "But it's not that simple. Trust me, I wish it was."

"Don't we all," said Red Robin, once again startling Danny with his existence. Seriously, what was it with the bats and fading out of his senses? "I've called the car. I'll drive us - clinic good? Or are we taking him to the cave?"

"Cave," said Batman.

Red Robin was obviously surprised about this, and yet not. His eyebrow ridge shifted above the mask. "Cave it is."

Danny looked between them. "Do I get a say in this?"

"No," said Red Robin, at the same time Batman said, "Yes."

"Forget I asked," said Danny. "As long as your cave isn't a creepy villain lair underneath a mansion I'll be fine."

The two bats stared at him for an awkward, paused moment. Red Robin coughed and diverted his attention back to his phone. Batman started looming a bit more ominously than before.

"Oh, jeez," said Danny. Of course his parents chose a gene template with Vlad-type fruitloop-ness, but he was in too deep and this was his last hope. "You better not be a weirdo about this."

"You're his clone secretly created without his consent asking for his DNA to save another clone secretly created without his consent," Red Robin pointed out. "How much weirder can it get?"

"Never ask that," said Danny and took a few sips of his milkshake to shut his mouth before he started accidentally deducing more of their secret Vlad-ness.

The Batman just sighed.

latest chapter of dark matter omggg i loved it >.<

Short DPXDC Prompts #468

Danny is a Chemistry teacher at Gotham Academy. His favorite student is Tim. He shocks the students by teaching and creating a Fear Antitoxin for the kids to learn as part of their curriculum.

god i love golden age clark so much. just this insane cryptid running around alternately terrifying and beating the shit out of objectively awful people. war profiteers. wifebeaters. corrupt politicians and greedy businessmen who exploit their workers. i can't emphasize enough that he barges in with NO preamble and just starts throwing people around. at one point he grabs a weapons manufacturer and straight up jumps off a building with him just to scare the guy into giving up the name of his employer. This is before they decided he could fly. batman WISHES he was this hardcore. i need him back so bad

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

Damians 12th birthday is coming up and Dick knows just what to get his stabby baby bat. Damian has been obsessed with Purple Back Gorillas for months, first because he learnt that the two last known members of the species were male thus dooming the species and then his interest exploded because it was discovered that one of the last gorillas was actually female. Dick was not the only member of the family to have to listen to Damians very, very long lectures about the gorillas.

Dick had not only organized a party at the elmerton zoo where the two gorillas were being held, but he got in contact with the teen who Damian had actually complimented for discovering the female gorilla was actually female.

Danny wasnt sure why dick grayson was offering him an obscene amount of money to come to a kids birthday party but he wasnt about to say no. The guy had made it seem so easy, show up and hang out for an hour or two to talk to the kid about Delilah and her upcoming baby. He had even paid half up front, giving him more cash than he had ever seen in his life. Even Sam had been impressed.

So on the day of the party he flew over to the Elmerton Zoo and met Damian Wayne.

Five minutes in, and Danny knew Dick was underpaying him. The kid couldn't stop sneering if his life depended on it. He was snooty, snobby, snotty, you name it. Danny was questioned on everything to do with Delilah, and nothing he said met the rich kid's annoying standards. Danny was very tempted to literally ghost the brat.

At least until Damian literally judo flipped a guy who had attempted to pick pocket him.

Danny: you know how to fight?

Damian: Tcht, i have trained since i could walk.

Danny, who has only been fighting for a few months and would sort of like to stop getting his ass handed to him has an idea.

Danny: look, i have a deal for you.

Damian: What could you possibly offer me?

Danny: i can teach you the sign language delilah and her mate use. If you learn it fast enough i can introduce you to her and help you gain her trust. Maybe even in time to hold her baby when its born.

Damian, very very tempted: and how much money would you require for these lessons?

Danny: no money. I want to be able to do that. Teach me to fight and i'll teach you the ways of the purple back gorilla.

Damian: i will not be a gentle teacher. If you wish to learn i will expect perfection.

Danny: thats fine. Do we have a deal, Wayne?

Damian: we have a deal, Fenton.

For the next several months, Danny sees Damian every other saturday for a few hours. Damian was a brutal tutor in martial arts, insisting that danny train during his free time. Danny improves in his ghost fighting in leaps and bounds. In return Danny introduces Damian to Delilah and the teaches the guy how to talk to her.

Danny learns to sort of like Damian, even if he was still snobby. They're almost, but not quite, friends.

Its all going great until there is a ghost invasion in gotham and Danny has to leave Amity to save the day. He runs into Robin and helps him fight off some ghosts. Upon the both of them seeing each others suspiciously familiar fighting styles there is only one reasonable reaction:

WHY AM I CRYING OMGG

DPxDC prompt #15

Demon Twins Fic

But!

Okay, so something I've seen floated a time or 2 from DC is that when using the Lazarus Pits to revive, a person emerges completely healed of all previous injuries or illnesses. Including scars.

Now obviously fandom often plays fast and loose with this rule, given how we like to give Jason an autopsy scar and some folks also like to make him keep the J from the Joker. But let's lean into it a bit here and make it play nice with the DP side of things.

Let's say that it's the ectoplasm, even the rancid stuff in the pits, that heals all scars except Death Scars.

So if Danny was, say, revived in the Pits by Talia before she disappeared him away to an orphanage in Illinois? The Danny that shows up in Amity Park wouldn't be covered in scars from his time in the League. He'd only have the one, the Death Scar.

Similarly, the Danny that stumbles out of the portal wouldn't have any scars from his time in Amity Park. He'd only have 2, the original Death Scar and the new Lichtenberg Death Scars.

Now I've seen it done many times where the Bats/Damian realize that Danny isn't a clone because you can't clone scars. So if Danny doesn't have those scars, and if his DNA is too messed up from the ectoplasm in him to check for any "regular cloning markers"...

Danny, fresh from an autopsy table, runs to Gotham to hide. And because of his inability to walk away from someone in danger, gets found by the Bats. Whether or not they know about Damian's twin beforehand, they are quite confident that Danny is a clone. An exceptionally good clone with nearly perfect implanted memories, but a clone nonetheless. Damian is particularly enraged about this

And poor Danny, already all sorts of fucked up from growing up Damian's lesser, then Dash's punching bag, then an experiment; in the face of Bat certainty and lacking any tangible evidence to the contrary; Danny starts to believe them.

chino1moreno