Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The Infinite Realms hum when they breathe. That’s one of the first things Danny learns.

At fifteen, he’s been alive—and dead—long enough to stop being startled by the green glow that seeps into everything. What still gets him, though, is how loud it is now. Every wisp, every drifting echo, every forgotten ghost hums against his core like background static. The Realm never sleeps. And neither, it seems, does its new King.

The title still doesn’t feel real.

He hadn’t wanted the crown. Clockwork said it was inevitable—“The Realm answers to balance, Daniel. It chose you because you do not crave it.”

Frostbite had congratulated him in that booming, fatherly way, handing him a ceremonial pelt so heavy it nearly crushed him.

Even Ember wrote a song about it. (“King Chill,” she called it. He pretends not to like it, but secretly thinks the riff is pretty good.)

But most days, Danny feels less like a king and more like the world’s most exhausted janitor.

It isn’t much of a throne. More like a floating platform of crystallized ectoplasm, jagged and pulsing faintly. He doesn’t sit on it often; it feels wrong, like sitting in a live socket.

Ancient ghosts drift in and out to petition him for small things—a corridor that needs sealing, a restless spirit that refuses to stay dead, a territory dispute between Walker and some banshee clan. They all bow low and call him Majesty.

Danny hates it.

He tries to make rulings that sound regal but mostly end up as,

“Okay, nobody’s allowed to eat anyone else for, like, a week. Cool? Cool.”

The court murmurs approval. Frostbite beams.

And somewhere behind the veil of time, Clockwork’s faint chuckle rolls like thunder.

He doesn’t talk about it with Tucker or Sam anymore. They still text, but it’s hard to explain “infinite time loops” and “temporal echoes” over Snapchat.

Sometimes he hovers at the border between realms, half tempted to step through and just… go home.

But the crown hums against his chest, a solid weight made of light and ice. Every time he tries to leave for too long, the Realms tug him back.

He tells himself it’s fine. He’s fine. He can be both—half boy, half king, somewhere between the living and the dead.

Except sometimes he wakes in the Citadel’s silence and thinks he hears voices.

Faint human ones.

Crying.

Praying.

Begging for something—someone—to listen.

The dead never really stop talking.

It starts as a tremor in the Far Zones. Frostbite reports it first: a tear in reality where no tear should exist. The readings mimic Ecto energy—violent, unstable, earth-born.

Danny goes alone.

The rift flickers in the ruins of some ancient temple, the kind of place that reeks of both magic and arrogance. The air smells like smoke and salt. The portal shivers when he gets close, and something inside him pulls—like a tide dragging at his core.

“Easy, easy…” he mutters, raising a hand, his aura flaring. “You’re okay. Just breathe.”

He talks to rifts the way he talks to scared ghosts. It helps. Sometimes.

Ectoplasm streams into the breach, sealing its jagged edges. For a moment, he sees flashes through it—stone walls, torches, shadows moving like soldiers. And a small voice, sharp with command, shouting orders in a language he doesn’t know.

Then the ground gives way.

He catches the kid before the boy hits the ectoplasm.

Dark hair, sharp green eyes, and a blade gripped too tightly for someone that small. The portal snaps behind him, slicing away half the boy’s cloak. For a heartbeat, Danny thinks he’s looking at one of Vlad’s clones again—same intensity, same impossible precision—but no. This kid’s alive. Barely.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Danny says quickly, lowering them both to the ground. “You’re fine. You’re safe.”

The boy glares up at him, trembling.

“You are not Ra’s.”

“Uh… definitely not.”

Blood stains the boy’s side, dark against the eerie green light. Danny presses his hand over it, letting ectoplasm pulse through the wound. The kid flinches but doesn’t fight. There’s a flash—a flicker of light that leaps between their cores—and something snaps into place.

Danny’s not sure what he’s done until it’s already done.

The kid exhales a soft sound, like relief, and his eyes flicker between green and gold.

Later, when Frostbite checks him, he’ll explain:

“You shared part of your essence with the child, Great One. You have claimed him as kin in the eyes of the Realms.”

Danny: “I what?”

Frostbite: “It is a sacred bond. He is now connected to you until your essence fades.”

Danny stares at the sleeping boy wrapped in a spare cape.

He hadn’t meant to do that.

He just didn’t want the kid to die.

When the child wakes, he doesn’t cry. He doesn’t thank him either—just stares with wary curiosity, as if memorizing the shape of Danny’s face.

“Will I die now?” he asks.

“Not if I can help it,” Danny replies softly. “l got… a lot of life left in you.”

He doesn’t tell the kid his name. Doesn’t ask for his. It feels safer that way.

He sends him back through the portal once it stabilizes, watches the shadows swallow him whole.

The bond hums faintly under Danny’s ribs afterward, like a heartbeat that isn’t his.

For weeks, he pretends not to notice.

But when he passes through certain places in the Realms, he sees ghostly echoes of the boy’s silhouette, bright and burning and alive.

And somewhere in the mortal world, a young assassin begins to dream of a glowing boy who held him in the dark.

Chapter Text

Damian learns early that love is weakness.

Or, at least, that’s what Mother says.

He learns how to wield a sword before he learns how to read poetry.

He learns pressure points before lullabies.

He learns that mercy is a knife turned inward.

Still, when the compound goes quiet at night and the torches burn low, he finds himself listening—to the whispers that slither between stone walls, to the faint hum of something older than even Grandfather’s teachings.

The League worships death. They call it ascension. But none of them ever truly listen to it.

Damian does.

He’s only eight the first time Mother sends him out alone.

“You will locate the disturbance,” she says, tone clipped, eyes unreadable. “Report back what you find. Do not engage. Do you understand me?”

He nods, too proud to ask why she looks worried.

Talia al Ghul does not worry.

But even she can feel it—the wild, Lazarus-like surge that rippled through one of Ra’s ancient tombs two nights ago. The League’s instruments burned out trying to read it. The air itself hums with wrongness.

Damian doesn’t mind. He likes the quiet of missions. The cold. The certainty of being useful.

And somewhere, deep down, he’s curious.

If the Lazarus Pits can make the dead walk… what does it mean when something else calls to them?

The entrance is half-buried under desert stone. The air tastes metallic, like lightning and ash.

When Damian lights a torch, green light dances across the carvings—faces screaming, spirals twisting inward.

He whispers the old tongue under his breath.

The dead do not rest.

A vibration hums through the floor. The torch flickers.

“Mother?” he calls softly. No answer.

The deeper he goes, the stronger the hum becomes. His heartbeat syncs with it. It feels like—

breathing.

Then the world splits open.

It’s like standing inside a lightning strike.

A tear in the air itself, green and alive, pulses in the center of the tomb. It howls without sound, dragging sand and stone into its light.

Damian grips his sword tighter. His instincts scream danger, but something about it also feels… warm. Familiar. Like the stories whispered by dying assassins who claimed they saw the Beyond.

He steps closer.

Just one more step.

The floor collapses.

He falls.

And then—cold hands catch him.

The thing holding him, with eyes that glow an impossible green, twin galaxies of ice and grief. His clothes shimmer like frost.

He looks human, but wrongly so—like a drawing that forgot to dry.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,”

Damian doesn’t answer. He can’t breathe. The thing is glowing—really glowing—and the air around him hums like a heartbeat made of thunder.

“You’re fine. You’re safe.”

The stranger sets him down gently, muttering under his breath. The green light builds around his hand, sliding over Damian’s wound. It doesn’t burn. It feels like sinking into warm water.

No one has ever said that to Damian before…

When their hands touch, something snaps.

A spark—cold and hot all at once—rushes through Damian’s chest. The light flares bright enough to blind him. He yelps, clutching the things wrist, but the pain doesn’t come.

Only warmth.

Only stillness.

He can feel the things heartbeat echoing in his own.

Can hear a voice, soft and distant, whispering:

You won’t be alone again.

The green fades. The tomb goes silent.

Damian doesn’t remember what happened after that.

When Damian wakes, he’s back outside the tomb. The desert wind bites his face. His sword lies a few feet away, half-buried in sand.

Mother’s guards find him before nightfall. She looks relieved, though she hides it behind fury.

“What happened?” she demands.

“The tomb… it broke.”

“And you?”

“…I was saved.”

She doesn’t ask by whom. She only looks at the faint green burn that now circles his wrist like a scar, and her eyes narrow.

That night, Damian dreams of light.

Of cold hands and gentle voices.

Of someone smiling through sorrow.

He never speaks of it again.

But sometimes, when he’s bleeding or exhausted, he feels that warmth spark under his ribs—a pulse that isn’t his own—and hears a whisper he can’t quite remember the words to.

Just the tone.

Just the feeling.

Of being safe, for the first and only time in his life.

Chapter Text

Danny Nightingale had faced evil fruit loops, time-travel paradoxes, vengeful ghosts, eldritch cults, and teenage acne.

None of it prepared him for college paperwork.

Gotham University smelled like coffee, rain, and despair. A perfect mix for him, honestly. The place was old—ivy crawling up the stone walls, gargoyles that looked like they judged your GPA, and architecture that screamed we’ve definitely had a haunting or twelve.

Danny had come here to be normal. Or at least as normal as a half-dead, part-time ruler of a dimension full of screaming ghosts could be. He’d done his time as King of the Infinite Realms. He’d cleaned up after ancient entities, settled interdimensional disputes, stopped several wars, and attended one too many ghostly council meetings that devolved into someone trying to bite someone else.

So yeah. Physics sounded relaxing.

Or it would have, if Gotham’s patron spirit hadn’t decided to adopt him like a stray cat.

He was halfway through his second lecture of the day—thermodynamics, of all things—when the whisper started again.

“Your Majesty…”

Danny didn’t look up. He stared harder at his notes. Ignore her, he thought. She’ll get bored eventually.

“My King of Cold and Bone…”

He underlined a formula three times.

“My lovely undead tenant, your attendance pleases me.”

He dropped his pen. “Please stop calling me that,” he muttered.

His seatmate—a tired sophomore named Grant who smelled faintly like espresso and regret—gave him a concerned look. “You good, man?”

“Yeah,” Danny said quickly. “Just—uh—arguing with quantum mechanics.”

Grant nodded in sympathy. “Happens to the best of us.”

Lady Gotham’s laughter echoed faintly through the walls, rippling across the classroom lights. They flickered once, twice, just to make her point.

Danny sighed. “Real mature.”

“Do not pout, my King,” her voice purred, threading through the window reflection beside him. “I only wished to remind you of your duties.”

“My duty is to pass this midterm.”

“And to your kingdom.”

“I abdicated!”

“Temporarily,” she corrected. “The dead still whisper your name, you know.”

Danny rubbed at his eyes. “Yeah, and I’m trying to keep it that way. No ghost business in Gotham. I’m on vacation.”

“Vacation?” she echoed, amused. “In my city?”

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, Bat Grandma.”

The mirror on his laptop screen rippled as if offended.

“I am not old, Daniel.”

“You’re literally the embodied soul of a 300-year-old city.”

“A lady never tells her age.”

“Uh-huh.” He leaned back in his chair, muttering, “You sound like Clockwork when he pretends he’s not ancient.”

“We have tea together on Tuesdays.”

That startled him. “You—what?”

“He brings cookies. You are always invited, you know.”

Danny pinched the bridge of his nose. “I am not having tea with the sentient city and my cosmic babysitter. I have finals.”

“Ah yes, the mortal ritual of suffering.”

“Exactly.”

By the time the lecture ended, Lady Gotham had quieted down, but Danny could feel her watching through the puddles outside, the glass in the doors, the shimmer of heat off the pavement. She was everywhere here, humming in the bones of the city.

And the worst part? She liked him.

The streetlamps always flickered green when he walked by. Ghosts in alleyways would bow and whisper “Your Majesty” like they thought he was going to smite them if they didn’t. And when he once tripped over a manhole cover, the asphalt literally shifted to stop him from falling on his face.

It was both flattering and humiliating.

Danny ducked into the small café across from campus, ordering enough caffeine to kill a mortal. The barista didn’t even blink—this was Gotham, after all. He found a seat in the corner, slumped against the window, and tried to focus on his homework.

He lasted about three minutes before the reflection of the city skyline in the glass started whispering again.

“You know,” Lady Gotham drawled, “it’s terribly unbecoming for a king to hide.”

Danny blew on his coffee. “I’m not hiding. I’m studying.”

“You are sulking.”

“I’m studying while sulking, thank you.”

“And yet you chose to live in my walls, under my skies, walking among my dead.”

Danny sipped his drink. “It’s cheap rent.”

“It is mine.”

He blinked. “Wait. You own my apartment building?”

“Of course. I own all of Gotham.”

He groaned. “Fantastic. So my landlord is a sentient haunted city. I’m never getting my security deposit back, am I?”

The air in the café flickered with laughter that no one else could hear.

He stared at his half-finished assignment, a sigh building deep in his chest.

He had saved worlds. He had fought literal gods. And now, at twenty-three, he was losing an argument with a city.

It was a toss-up whether that meant his life had gone uphill or downhill.

Still… when Lady Gotham’s voice softened and she said,

“You walk among my shadows like one of my own. Welcome home, my King,”

he didn’t correct her.

He just whispered, “Thanks,” and went back to his homework.

After all, he was late on a physics problem set and two centuries behind on sleep.

Danny had learned a few important lessons about being the Ghost King.

Lesson one: never agree to meet with a demon who opens with “I just want to talk.”

Lesson two: don’t let the Box Ghost speak at council meetings. Ever.

Lesson three: if a sentient city starts a sentence with “One of my hatchlings…”

—you run.

It was almost midnight, and Danny was finally doing something productive for once: sleeping.

Or, more accurately, lying face-down in his pillow pretending that his pile of late assignments didn’t exist. The apartment creaked softly around him; a normal sound in a very abnormal city. He was just drifting into the good kind of dreamless sleep when the walls purred.

“One of my hatchlings hums with your power, my king.”

Danny jerked upright so fast he almost punched his ceiling fan.

“I—what?”

The room didn’t answer at first. The only light came from the eerie green glow of his alarm clock (which was not glowing that color five minutes ago, thank you very much).

“My little bird,” Lady Gotham crooned, her voice spilling from the shadows of the window. “The youngest of the flock. He hums with your song.”

Danny squinted. “You—you’re gonna have to be way more specific, Lady Skyscraper. I don’t own a bird.”

“Oh, but you do. One of my children has taken your spark into his bones.”

He blinked, still halfway tangled in his blanket. “Excuse me, my what now?”

“He is the baby of my baby birds,” she continued dramatically, as if they were on a stage and not in Danny’s apartment that definitely did not have the acoustics for this. “The one with the heartbeat that should have stilled long ago.”

Danny rubbed his face. “Okay. Okay. So you’ve either cursed a pigeon or resurrected a kid. I need more coffee for this.”

He stumbled into his kitchenette, tripping over a stack of ghost theory textbooks. The fridge flickered with her laughter as he poured milk into his mug.

“He walks in your shadow, my king.”

“Great,” Danny muttered. “That narrows it down to, what, all of Gotham? Half of them hang out in graveyards for fun.”

“He is small, fierce, feathered in darkness.”

“Lady, that could still be a pigeon.”

“And the dead love him.”

Danny froze mid-sip. “…Huh.”

That one hit different. Because if there was one thing Gotham had plenty of, it was dead people. And if the dead were playing favorites, that was his problem.

“You must look upon him,” she urged. “He hums the song of your realm. It tickles my bones.”

Danny sighed, setting his mug down. “You’re really not going to tell me who this is, are you?”

“Where would be the fun in that?”

He pointed a finger at the ceiling. “You are worse than Clockwork.”

“Flattery.”

By morning, Gotham herself seemed to vibrate under his feet. The pavement hummed faintly when he walked to class. Ghosts flickered at the edge of his vision, drawn to something nearby. The air had that thick, charged feeling—like right before a portal tore open.

He lasted twenty minutes in lecture.

The professor was mid-rant about particle decay when Danny’s pen started levitating on its own, glowing faintly green. He stared at it.

“Not again,” he whispered.

The students beside him didn’t even notice. Gotham was humming through the floor, singing softly in that same haunting tone.

“He is close, my king. The heartbeat that isn’t. The baby bird.”

Danny groaned and shoved his notes into his bag. “Fine! Fine! I’ll go check on your zombie pigeon child!”

The professor blinked as Danny stood up. “Mr. Night, are you—”

“Family emergency!” Danny called, bolting out the door.

Outside, the wind itself seemed to tug him down the street. Every shadow felt alive, every streetlight flickered green when he passed.

Lady Gotham whispered through the rustle of leaves, smug as ever.

“That’s better. I do so love when you take an interest in my little ones.”

“Don’t sound so pleased about it,” Danny muttered, pulling his hood up. “Last time you ‘loved’ something, it tried to drag me into a catacomb.”

“He is special.”

“They all say that.”

“No, truly. My baby bird carries your frost in his veins. I think I like him best.”

Danny stopped dead in his tracks. “Wait. What?”

The city lights pulsed green. Somewhere in the distance, a bell tolled.

“Find him, my king. You’ll see.”

“Lady Gotham—Lady—no, don’t you fade out on me, we are not done talking—!”

Her laughter echoed off the buildings, fading into the smoggy air.

Danny stared up at the skyline for a long moment, exhaled through his nose, and muttered, “I hate it here.”

Then he turned toward the direction where the hum was strongest.

He didn’t know who this “baby bird” was, but if the literal soul of Gotham thought he needed checking on…

well, he could at least skip one class to make sure the city wasn’t about to explode.

Again.

Chapter Text

Danny didn’t find the “baby bird.”

He found five mugging attempts, two spontaneous hauntings, one man selling “cursed pigeons” in an alley (jury’s still out on whether that was legit), and what he was pretty sure was Poison Ivy yelling at a cop car.

But no baby bird.

By the time he trudged back toward his apartment, the Gotham skyline was bleeding orange into black. The city was quiet in that Gotham kind of way—which meant the screams were just a little farther away than usual.

Danny’s boots scuffed against the cracked sidewalk, his backpack slung lazily over one shoulder. He’d changed out of his hoodie hours ago, trading it for a jacket that might have been bulletproof. (Technically ghostproof, but close enough.)

The streetlight above him buzzed, flickering green for half a second.

“Don’t start,” Danny warned it. “I already chased your weird kid-shaped anomaly all over the city. Not my fault Gotham’s full of dead people with issues.”

The light hummed once, then went still.

He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. You’re all mouth until someone threatens to unplug you.”

He was exhausted—not physically, not really. Ghosts didn’t get tired in the human way anymore. But there was something about this city that drained him. Like Gotham had too many ghosts per square mile and they all wanted to be his problem.

He pushed open the door to his apartment building, stepping into the familiar scent of burnt coffee and floor cleaner. The ghostly night clerk, an older lady with rollers in her hair, looked up from her tiny TV.

“Evenin’, sugar. You look like you wrestled a tornado.”

“Yeah,” Danny muttered, forcing a smile. “You could say that.”

He took the elevator to the fourth floor. The flickering bulb above the door blinked twice in greeting—he’d long since given up trying to fix it. It wasn’t broken. It was haunted.

Inside, the apartment greeted him like a tired sigh.

The air was cool, tinted faintly green, and his reflection in the darkened window glowed faintly around the edges.

“Home sweet haunt,” he said to no one.

No reply.

Which was weird.

Usually, Lady Gotham didn’t know how to shut up.

She was the type to whisper poetry in the pipes, hum lullabies through the vents, and startle him awake by breathing “my king” in the middle of the night like a supernatural Alexa.

Now? Nothing.

Danny set his bag down and frowned at the silence.

“Hey, city lady? You good? You haven’t monologued at me for—what, three hours? That’s a new record.”

No answer.

The radiator hissed in what could have been passive-aggressive disapproval.

“Oh, don’t you start. You’re not her.”

Still nothing.

He walked to the window, glancing out over the distant skyline. Somewhere out there, he knew Gotham’s little vigilante family was starting their nightly rooftop chaos—her birds, as she called them.

He could feel her presence hovering over the city like a fog. Faint. Distracted.

“She’s watching them again,” Danny muttered. “Of course she is.”

He sighed and leaned his forehead against the glass.

“Can’t even be mad. I’d babysit the flying trauma squad too.”

The reflection in the window flickered faintly, and for a second, he thought she might answer. Instead, the only sound was the low, constant hum of the city’s pulse.

Somewhere below, tires screeched. A gunshot. Then laughter. Gotham’s lullaby.

Danny flopped onto his couch with a groan.

“Alright, fine. Don’t talk to me. I didn’t wanna gossip about your undead bird children anyway.”

He stared up at the ceiling, the light from the street drifting over his face. His core thrummed quietly in his chest, uneasy. Whatever had caught Gotham’s attention wasn’t gone—it was just… dormant.

And he hated that.

His phone buzzed. Tucker.

Danny groaned and answered.

“Dude,” Tucker’s voice crackled through. “You sound like you got hit by a truck.”

“Close,” Danny said. “I got hit by Gotham.”

Tucker laughed. “How’s that city treating you, King Spooky?”

Danny squinted at the wall. “She’s mad at me.”

“The city is mad at you?”

“Yup.”

“…I don’t even know how to respond to that.”

“Don’t. Just accept it.”

“Right.” A pause. “You still looking for the ecto anomaly thing?”

Danny sighed. “Yeah, but I think it found me first.”

The call ended after a few more minutes of banter, but Danny didn’t move. He stayed sprawled on the couch, staring at the cracked ceiling.

Outside, Gotham murmured softly to itself—alive and dead and heavy with secrets.

He could almost hear her voice, faint but fond.

Rest, my king. My birds have need of me tonight.

Danny smiled tiredly. “Yeah, yeah. Go make sure they don’t fall off any roofs.”

The hum faded again.

He closed his eyes. For a long while, there was only quiet.

Then, from somewhere in the city, a spark of ectoplasm pulsed—soft, steady, familiar.

The baby bird’s hum.

Danny groaned into his pillow. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

Danny had just started to drift.

Not sleep—he didn’t really sleep anymore—but that nice, floaty state where the world stopped being loud for five seconds.

Then something went CRASH! outside his window.

He jerked upright, heart (core?) skipping a beat. The sound came from directly below his apartment—right under the fire escape, in the alley where raccoons and bad decisions went to die.

For a second, he thought it was just Gotham being Gotham. Maybe a mugger, or one of the local ghosts trying to get his attention.

Then he felt it.

That hum.

Low. Electric. Wrong.

The kind of frequency that made the ghost half of him sit bolt upright and hiss. It wasn’t just death. It was his kind of death. Cold. Clean. Ectoplasmic.

And beneath it—like a heartbeat underwater—

was the same hum Lady Gotham had been cooing about for days.

The baby bird.

“…oh, come on,” Danny muttered, dragging a hand down his face. “Can I go one night without supernatural nonsense under my window?”

He shuffled over to the blinds and peeked out. The alley below was a smear of shadow and trash. One flickering light buzzed above the dumpster.

Something moved down there.

Something alive.

Or… close enough.

Danny squinted. “No way.”

There was someone in the dumpster.

Not moving much. Just a limp figure half-buried in black trash bags, glowing faintly around the edges. And not like the normal, “radioactive Gotham” kind of glow. No—this was ecto-light. Pure and uncut.

Danny’s stomach dropped. “…That’s my signature.”

He wasn’t even kidding. He could feel it—his own energy woven through whoever was down there.

His power, his realm, his mark.

Guess lady Gotham wasn’t lying…

“Oh, that’s not creepy at all,” he muttered, unlatching the window. “Cool. Love that for me. Definitely not gonna regret this.”

The Gotham night hit him like a wet towel—cold, damp, and smelling faintly of cigarettes and existential dread.

Danny swung himself out the window and climbed down the fire escape, metal creaking beneath his boots.

The closer he got, the stronger the hum became. It wasn’t just ambient anymore. It was alive, resonating in his chest like a tuning fork. His ghost core practically purred in response.

“Yeah, that’s not weird or anything,” he grumbled, crouching near the edge of the last step. “I’m not freaked out. You’re freaked out.”

When he hit the ground, the temperature dropped five degrees.

His breath fogged out in faint green tendrils. The air itself thrummed with recognition.

He approached the dumpster cautiously. “Hey, uh… if you’re a zombie or a cursed raccoon, now’s the time to speak up.”

Nothing. Just a faint drip of water and the buzzing streetlight.

Danny sighed and grabbed the lid.

“Please don’t be a corpse, please don’t be a corpse…”

He lifted it.

And blinked.

Inside was a boy—maybe twelve or thirteen, dressed in dark tactical fabric and a torn cape that had seen better nights. He was bleeding from a shallow cut on his temple, his knuckles scuffed, but what made Danny’s breath catch was the green shimmer seeping from his veins.

Faint. Familiar.

Ectoplasm.

“…You’ve got to be kidding me.”

He stared for a long second, then glanced upward.

“Lady Gotham?” he hissed. “You did not just throw a child in my garbage.”

No answer. The wind rustled mockingly.

“Oh, perfect. She ghosts me now.”

He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Alright, dumpster kid. Let’s see what the hell you are.”

Danny climbed halfway in (because apparently boundaries were optional now) and checked for a pulse.

There was one—but faint, erratic, half-frozen.

The ectoplasmic resonance was worse up close. It felt like static against his skin, a broken rhythm that tugged on his core every few seconds.

It was his. His energy. His spark.

He realized, slowly, what that meant.

“Oh. Oh no.”

This wasn’t just some random Gotham kid.

This was the hum Lady Gotham had been talking about.

This was the baby bird.

And somehow, against all logic, this kid was carrying his ghost signature.

Danny sat back on his heels, staring down at the unconscious boy.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “I can explain this. I just… don’t know how.”

He glanced around the alley, like the bricks might offer suggestions.

“Step one: don’t panic. Step two: figure out why a child has your ectoplasm. Step three: definitely don’t tell anyone you found him in a dumpster.”

The kid stirred faintly, murmuring something in his sleep. Danny froze. The voice was small but sharp, like a blade dulled with exhaustion.

He said one word.

“…Mother.”

Danny blinked. “Oh no. He has parents. Of course he has parents.”

He looked skyward again. “Lady Gotham, I swear, if you set me up with an angry parent questline I will salt your gargoyles.”

A soft chuckle brushed through the wind, unmistakably smug.

He is yours as much as mine, my king.

Danny’s jaw dropped. “I—WHAT?!”

But she was gone again, fading back into the hum of the city.

He sat there for a long time, staring at the unconscious, glowing kid in his trash.

“Okay,” Danny muttered finally, exhaling. “You know what? Fine. Add this to the list.”

He stood, hoisted the kid’s limp body carefully out of the dumpster, and muttered, “Guess I’m ghost-dad again.”

The alley pulsed faintly green as he carried the boy inside.

Chapter Text

Damian woke to the smell of antiseptic and something faintly metallic. For one disorienting second, he thought he was back in the League infirmary—buried under the sting of Lazarus fumes and the sound of distant chanting. His heart kicked in his chest, and his hand twitched toward the dagger usually hidden beneath his pillow.

But there was no dagger.

No stone walls, no cold marble floors, no shadows whispering Ra’s al Ghul’s name.

This wasn’t Nanda Parbat.

He blinked rapidly, the fog clearing from his mind, and sat up slowly. Pain bloomed like fire in his ribs and shoulder, sharp and immediate, forcing a hiss from his throat. Someone had wrapped him up with care—tight, clean bandages wound around his torso and upper arm, gauze taped neatly over the deeper cuts.

He wasn’t home either.

Wayne Manor was silent but alive, filled with warmth and sound—the subtle hum of power through old circuits, the faint barking of Titus outside, Alfred’s footsteps in the hall, Father’s low, steady voice somewhere near the study.

This place was… still.

Not dead. Just quiet.

The walls were gray, cracked in some places. The air smelled faintly of coffee and rain. A small fan buzzed in the corner, rattling every few seconds. The ceiling paint was peeling in uneven patches, and a half-drawn curtain let in pale slivers of Gotham’s streetlight glow.

His body felt heavy. Weak. His muscles protested every movement, but instinct overrode pain. He needed to know where he was. Who had treated him. Why he was still alive.

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed—someone’s old, creaky twin bed with faded sheets that smelled faintly like soap and ozone. A gray T-shirt hung loosely from his shoulders, clearly not his own, and his usual armored pants and boots were still on. His domino mask was still secured to his face, though slightly askew.

A weapon caught his eye.

His katana lay propped against the end of the bed, cleaned and polished. His undersuit shirt was folded beside it. Whoever had done this knew enough to respect his tools—and that detail made his chest tighten with both caution and reluctant appreciation.

He reached for the sword slowly, hissing as his ribs flared in protest. His grip steadied as the familiar weight settled into his hand. The metal sang faintly when he moved it, comfortingly sharp.

The air shifted.

Somewhere in the apartment—just beyond the closed door—there was movement. Light footsteps, careful but not silent. The sound of someone alive. Breathing.

He froze, listening. A drawer opened, something clinked—ceramic, maybe glass. Then the unmistakable sound of someone muttering softly under their breath.

A male voice. Young.

Not League. Too casual, too… human.

Damian’s pulse quickened. His mind cataloged the surroundings automatically: one window to the left, curtains partially drawn, exit to the right through the hall, no visible cameras or guards. Whoever had him wasn’t trying to contain him. That, somehow, was worse.

He took a slow, deliberate breath, grounding himself.

Then, sword in hand, he stood.

His vision swam for a second—blood loss, dehydration—but he pushed through it. He’d been in worse shape before.

He adjusted his grip, rolled his shoulders, and started toward the door. The soft gray light followed him across the floor.

Wherever he was, whoever had him, they were about to answer for it.

He reached for the handle—silent, efficient, every motion muscle memory.

And paused.

The faint hum in the air—the one he hadn’t noticed at first—pressed closer. It felt alive. Not hostile, not exactly. Just… watching. Like the shadows were breathing with him.

Something about it was familiar. He couldn’t place it.

A memory stirred—half-forgotten, buried deep in the haze of childhood.

A shadow.

A glow.

Sad eyes.

Damian frowned behind his mask, grip tightening on the hilt.

This wasn’t home.

But it wasn’t the League either.

And, for the first time in a long while… he didn’t know which was more dangerous.

He eased the door open, silent as a ghost.

And stepped out into the dim, humming apartment.

The floorboards creaked under Damian’s feet as he crept down the hallway, katana steady in his grip. The apartment was dimly lit, the gray light from the window spilling just far enough to cast long, uncertain shadows along the walls. Every step was measured—silent. Controlled. His pulse was a quiet thunder in his ears.

He’d been trained to expect ambushes, to listen for the shift of breath, the click of a safety, the whisper of steel leaving its sheath. But what he heard instead was… humming.

Not the low hum of danger, but an actual human humming.

Soft. Off-key. Almost cheerful.

He froze just before the hallway opened into what looked like a small kitchen.

The man had his back turned.

Dark hair pulled loosely into a messy knot at the nape of his neck, faint white streaks glinting in the low light. A black NASA hoodie with stains and holes, sleeves pushed up to his elbows. That hoodie has definitely seen better days. He moved with casual ease, tapping a spoon against a mug as if this were the most normal morning in the world.

Damian’s eyes narrowed. Civilian, maybe. Or someone playing at being one.

He shifted his weight slightly, taking a better stance—half crouched, blade tilted forward, every sense tuned in.

Then he saw the man’s reflection in the small window above the sink.

Blue eyes. Bright, clear—and yet… wrong.

There was a faint green shimmer beneath the surface, pulsing faintly with every breath.

Damian’s grip tightened.

He recognized that color.

Lazarus.

Or… something close to it.

The man didn’t seem to notice him. He had a pair of bulky, half-broken headphones over his ears and was mumbling quietly under his breath, his voice low and oddly smooth.

“Welcome to a show about death…”

Damian blinked.

Was this guy singing?

He tilted his head, trying to make sense of the bizarre sight.

Who the hell hums musical numbers while making coffee?

The realization hit him a moment later.

Beetlejuice.

He’d seen that one.

Jason had insisted on it one night, claiming Damian “needed culture.” Damian had complained through the entire film… but secretly, he’d found a few songs tolerable. Maybe even—though he’d never admit it—good.

Now, standing here in an unfamiliar apartment, bruised, bandaged, and aching, he was listening to a stranger mumble lyrics from a musical about death, ghosts and teenage angst.

It was almost surreal.

The man poured his coffee, oblivious. Steam curled around his hands. The faint green hue around him shimmered again—gentle, steady, like the air itself bent toward him. It wasn’t Lazarus madness. It wasn’t even wrong.

It was calm.

Alive.

But dead at the same time.

Damian didn’t know what to make of it.

He hesitated at the edge of the kitchen. Fight or flee.

Neither option felt right.

If this man was connected to the League, he would have already been restrained or disarmed. If he was an enemy, why leave Damian’s sword beside him? Why tend his wounds?

The smell of coffee drifted through the room—rich, bitter. The man yawned quietly, one hand rubbing the back of his neck as he hummed a different tune, this time under his breath.

“Will these actions haunt my days? Every man I’ve slain…”

Something in his tone—soft, worn, like he’d sung it too many times—made Damian’s chest twist with an unfamiliar pang.

He hated that feeling.

Like he’d forgotten something.

He didn’t lower his blade, but his stance faltered for half a breath.

The man turned slightly, still not looking at him, and Damian saw the faint scars on the side of his neck—thin, lightning-like markings that glowed the same green for just a moment before fading again. They weren’t wounds. They were something else entirely.

Something old.

Something powerful.

Damian’s pulse skipped.

Who the hell is this?

The coffeemaker beeped, a sharp crack in the silence.

The man took off his headphones, finally breaking the illusion of peace.

Damian tensed, sword ready. Every muscle screamed at him to move—attack, defend, something.

But the man just sighed, set his mug down, and muttered, “Okay, Gotham, I hear you. I get it, you don’t like musicals. You don’t have to blow up the power grid to get my attention.”

His voice was calm. Tired. The kind of voice used to talking to things that didn’t answer back.

Then he turned.

Their eyes met.

For one impossible second, Damian forgot how to breathe.

The man’s expression was startled but not afraid. His eyes flickered green again—warm, familiar. The same glow from that half-memory buried deep in Damian’s mind.

The glowing boy.

The one with sad eyes.

And before Damian could process why he felt like he’d just remembered something he’d forgotten or why the hum of the room synced perfectly with his heartbeat—

The man smiled, faintly, and said,

“…You really shouldn’t be up yet, kid.”

Chapter Text

Danny had just started to say something—something calm and reassuring, something definitely not “please don’t stab me in my own kitchen”—when a sound like a gunshot cracked through the night.

He flinched, spinning toward the window. The hairs on his arms prickled with static as the glass rattled in its frame. Outside, a streetlamp flickered violently, buzzed once, and exploded in a shower of sparks. The metal pole split clean down the middle like it had been struck by lightning.

Danny blinked. “…Did Gotham just sneeze and blow up a light post?”

A faint green mist drifted up from the wreckage, dispersing into the night. His ghost sense flared for a half second—pure reflex. There was no danger, not directly, just a pulse of leftover energy. Gotham’s energy.

He groaned and muttered under his breath, “Lady, if this is about me using the last of the good coffee—”

Behind him, the soft scuff of boots went unnoticed.

Damian had been watching the strange man—the man—like a cornered cat, muscles coiled and eyes sharp. The sudden shatter of glass and light outside was all the distraction he needed.

He moved.

Silent, fast, efficient.

The open window across the small living room was his escape route. He crossed the distance before Danny could turn back around, every instinct screaming go. He didn’t know what this man was, didn’t know what this place was—but it wasn’t the manor, and it wasn’t safe. Not for him.

The oversized gray T-shirt hung loose around his shoulders, catching slightly on the window frame as he slipped through. His boots hit the fire escape with a dull clang. He didn’t look back.

The air outside was cold, biting, and smelled faintly of rain and ozone. Gotham’s hum pulsed all around him—alive, almost approving. His ribs protested every breath, but he didn’t stop.

Down the fire escape, to the alley. One hand gripping his katana, the other steadying himself on the railing. The metal bit into his palm, grounding him.

He landed in a crouch, hissed through his teeth at the flare of pain, and straightened. The city stretched around him like a dark ocean of noise and light.

He had no comms, no utility belt, no backup. Just his blade, his boots, and the strange borrowed shirt that smelled faintly like coffee and… something.

He didn’t know what direction to take, only that he had to move. Gotham was familiar terrain—she whispered to her birds, even the ones who weren’t listening. She would guide him home. Even if he didn’t know.

And so he vanished into the dark.

Danny turned back from the window, muttering, “Okay, seriously, if that was another portal flare, I’m calling Clockwork—”

He stopped mid-sentence.

The kitchen was empty.

“…Kid?”

No response. The mug of coffee still steamed faintly on the counter, and a faint draft snuck in through the open window across the room.

Danny blinked twice. “Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me.”

He hurried over, leaning out just in time to catch the faint clatter of a fire escape ladder swinging. The street below was empty. No glowing trail, no movement—just wet asphalt and the quiet hum of Gotham.

He dragged a hand down his face. “This is why I don’t do babysitting.”

Behind him, the apartment lights flickered once. Then again. Then again.

“Don’t start with me,” he warned the ceiling.

The microwave beeped in defiance.

“Seriously?”

It beeped again—long, sharp, judgmental.

The rest of the lights began to stutter like a heartbeat, pulsing green for a moment before fading to white again.

Danny exhaled slowly. “Alright, alright. I know that tone. Just say it.”

The air thickened. His reflection in the window rippled, and her voice poured through, rich with amusement and irritation both.

You let him go.

Danny crossed his arms. “He’s a child with a sword, and I wasn’t about to wrestle him in my kitchen.”

He is hurt.

“Yeah, I noticed.”

And yet, he slipped past you. My clever little bird, faster than my king.

Her laughter rang through the walls, deep and echoing, like the toll of faraway bells. The fridge door creaked open on its own.

Danny groaned. “Please don’t—”

I am proud of him.

There it was. The smug tone of a city that was way too invested in her vigilantes.

Danny pinched the bridge of his nose. “Lady Gotham, he literally climbed out a fourth-story window while bleeding. That’s not pride material, that’s—what’s the word—child endangerment.”

He is mine. He is yours. And he is resourceful.

“That’s… not comforting.”

He escaped the King of the Infinite Realms. You must admit, that is impressive.

The lamp in the corner flickered once, just enough to feel like she was smirking.

Danny stared up at the ceiling, deadpan. “Yeah, congratulations. Your baby bird out-sneaked me. Somebody get him a medal and a GPS tracker.”

The microwave beeped again. Twice. Like laughter.

He let his arms fall to his sides, sighed deeply, and muttered, “I need more coffee.”

You will find him again, my king. The dead always find their own.

Her voice faded, the hum of the city settling back to its usual restless pulse.

Danny stared out the open window, watching the fog roll through the alley below.

“Yeah,” he murmured quietly, rubbing at the faint green scar on his wrist. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

He shut the window, the city still whispering faintly through the glass.

Outside, the wind carried the faint sound of boots hitting stone. Somewhere above the smog and neon, a boy in an oversized NASA t-shirt vanished into Gotham’s endless dark—one bird flying free, unaware that the Ghost King of the Infinite Realms brewed another cup of coffee, wondering when exactly he’d become the universe’s worst accidental babysitter.

The night air bit into Damian’s skin as he tore across Gotham’s rooftops, the hem of the gray shirt whipping behind him like the tail of some ghostly creature. His breath came sharp and steady, measured the way he’d been trained—but every exhale burned against the cold. Beneath the fabric, his bandages tugged, sticky where they’d already bled through.

He ignored it. Pain was nothing new. Pain meant alive.

The streets below stretched like veins of shadow and light, the faint orange of streetlamps bleeding through the smog. Somewhere behind him, a siren wailed, then cut short. Gotham sang her usual symphony—broken glass, sirens, and whispers in the fog.

He didn’t look back.

Every time he blinked, he saw flashes of the apartment again: the faint hum of something wrong, the warmth he’d felt when he’d woken up, and those eyes—blue, but with that unnatural green glow hiding just beneath. It wasn’t the same color as the Lazarus Pits, not that sickly, enraged green. This was softer. Brighter. Still alive.

And that was the problem.

He’d seen that light before. Not in memory exactly—something more instinctive, something deep and old. But he didn’t have time to question it. There was no room for ghosts in his head right now.

He leapt over a narrow alley, boots hitting the next ledge with precision, pain flaring through his side. His fingers brushed the wound beneath the bandages. The ghost—because that was what the man was—had done good work patching him up. Fast, efficient, careful. Not the rough, utilitarian stitching of the League.

Still. He didn’t like the idea of owing anyone. Especially not some strange man humming show tunes and brewing coffee while the city trembled around him.

He slowed only once, crouching low on the lip of an old clocktower. The shirt hung off him like a blanket. The faint NASA logo on the chest glowed dully under the moonlight.

For a moment, he thought about keeping it. He didn’t know why. It was warm, at least. But sentimentality was a weakness, and his mother had taught him to discard weakness.

He stood again and kept moving.

By the time he reached the upper districts, his limbs ached. He could feel the bruises beneath the bandages, the dull ache of exhaustion pressing in. The rooftops here were slick with rain, every leap sending droplets scattering behind him.

He stayed in the shadows, ducking under the faint light of a billboard and cutting down through an alley to the side of a theater—one of the entrances Bruce had shown him, just in case.

He didn’t have a comm, no way to contact anyone in the cave. Anyone in his home.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been running, but the sky was beginning to pale at the edges. Not sunrise yet—just the hint of it trying to break through Gotham’s smog.

When he reached the gated alley that led into the old passage, he hesitated. The gate loomed tall, the metal slick and cold. Behind it, the shadows were deeper, heavier.

He didn’t know why, but for a heartbeat, he thought he heard laughter—soft and low, like the city herself was whispering.

Damian’s grip tightened on his katana. “Not now,” he muttered, pushing through the gate.

The sound died as quickly as it came.

He moved through the hidden corridors with practiced ease, ignoring the growing sting of his injuries. The tunnels here were old, lined with brick and half-forgotten graffiti. His boots splashed faintly through puddles.

Every step closer to the Cave made his pulse ease. Home. The word still felt strange sometimes, but it was true enough. The Manor above was filled with noise, arguments, laughter he pretended not to like. Alfred’s tea. Grayson’s chaos. Todd’s reckless noise.

It was messy and loud and human.

It wasn’t the League.

He could live with that.

His vision blurred once as he reached the last corner before the final stretch. The pain in his side had gone from dull to sharp. He pressed his hand against it, muttering under his breath.

“Just a little further.”

He could already see it now—the faint glow of the Cave’s security scanners ahead, hidden behind the false rock wall. The familiar hum of machinery, faint even from this distance.

The lights flickered briefly, scanning the tunnel ahead. The system recognized him instantly.

“Welcome back, Robin,” came the calm, automated voice of the Batcomputer’s outer systems.

Damian didn’t answer. He was too busy catching his breath, one hand braced against the wall.

The shirt was soaked through now, clinging to him like a second skin. He felt heavy. Exhausted. Every step echoed through the stone passage, the hum of the Cave pulling him closer—toward safety, toward family.

Behind him, the city’s hum faded. But for a brief second, the air carried a faint echo of something else—something colder, quieter. A whisper that wasn’t the wind.

You shouldn’t have run, little bird.

He spun, blade raised, but there was nothing there. Only darkness and the faint drip of water.

He stood there for a moment, chest heaving, trying to decide whether it had been real. But before he could, the rock door ahead hissed open, spilling pale blue light across the tunnel floor.

Damian turned back toward it, squaring his shoulders. Whatever that voice had been—it didn’t matter now. He was home.

He stepped forward into the light of the Batcave, the weight of Gotham’s whispers fading behind him.

“Damian!”

Chapter Text

The Cave was alive when Damian stumbled through the blast doors—humming, flickering, glowing in the dim blue light that filled its enormous belly. The hum of computers met him first, then the sound of footsteps—rapid, echoing, coming straight toward him.

He hadn’t realized he was limping until Dick’s voice broke through the ringing in his ears.

“Damian!”

The sound cracked through the air like a whip.

His head came up too fast, and his vision swam for a second. He blinked it away. The shirt clung to him, heavy with rain and blood, the NASA logo on the chest now darker, sticky red seeping through the gray fabric. He could feel the pull in his side where the stitches had torn open, but it didn’t matter. He was home.

Before he could take another step, three figures closed in on him at once.

Dick got there first, dropping down from the upper platform in a fluid motion. He grabbed Damian’s shoulders with both hands, scanning him quickly for injuries. His gloves came away tacky with blood.

“Jesus, Dami—what happened? You were gone fourteen hours! Your tracker was dead, your comms were fried—where were you?”

“I told you I don’t need—” Damian started, his voice rough, but Tim cut him off sharply.

“Don’t start with that right now.” Tim was already pulling out his phone, thumbs moving at lightning speed. “Babs, he’s here. Yeah. He just walked in. Bleeding through his shirt, so—get everyone back. Now.”

A pause, then he sighed. “She’s calling Bruce.”

Damian rolled his eyes, which only made his head pound harder. “Wonderful.”

Cass didn’t say a word. She just stepped forward, moving around him quietly. Her eyes flicked over his side, then up to his face. Her brow furrowed, and she reached out gently, pressing her hand just above the wound—firm but careful. Her silent disapproval said everything.

“I’m fine,” Damian muttered automatically.

Dick gave him the look. The one that meant “don’t even try it.”

“You’re bleeding through a NASA T-shirt, that I know isn’t yours,” he said, exasperated. “And limping.”

“I was not limping,” Damian snapped, trying to straighten up. His knee almost buckled.

“Sure,” Tim muttered. “You’re just… walking dramatically.”

“Drake.”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

“Welcome home to you too, little demon.”

“Drake.”

Dick ran a hand over his face. “Okay, enough, both of you. Tim, get the med kit. Cass, call Alfred.”

Cass was already moving. Tim, muttering something about blood stains and “NASA of all things,” darted off toward the supply cabinets.

Damian stood there, jaw tight, trying to hold himself together under the weight of his siblings’ stares. He hated being fussed over. He hated the pity in their eyes, even when they tried to hide it.

When Alfred finally came down the lift, Damian nearly sagged in relief—not that he’d admit it. The old man’s calm presence filled the room instantly.

“Good heavens,” Alfred murmured, setting down the medical case. “Master Damian, you’ve made quite the dramatic return, I see.”

“It was not intentional,” Damian said stiffly.

“I should hope not,” Alfred replied, already snapping on gloves. “Now, shirt off, please.”

Damian huffed. “I’m fine-”

“Off.” Alfred’s tone brooked no argument.

The younger Robin sighed, pulling at the hem of the soaked shirt. The blood stuck, tugging at the torn stitches beneath. Dick winced for him. Cass took the shirt when he peeled it off, setting it aside in a biohazard bin. The wound underneath wasn’t awful, but it was bad enough—stitched cleanly, but two had split open, leaking sluggishly down his ribs.

Alfred clucked his tongue. “Whoever did this work did a fine job,” he said as he cleaned around the wound. “Not my style, but clean and efficient. Field medic, perhaps?”

Damian hesitated. “…I don’t know,” he admitted finally.

Dick frowned. “What do you mean you don’t know? You didn’t patch yourself up?”

He shook his head. “When I woke, it was already done.”

That made all three of them freeze. Even Tim paused mid-note on his tablet.

“Wait,” Tim said slowly, “what do you mean, when you woke up?”

Damian sighed and closed his eyes briefly. “I was pursuing a rogue. I took him down, but he wasn’t alone. After the fight, I sensed something—off. Similar to the Lazarus Pits but not identical. It was… cleaner. Colder. I went to check it out.”

He paused, jaw tightening. “Something hit me. From behind. I fell. When I woke up, I was in an apartment.”

Tim arched an eyebrow. “You’re kidding.”

“Do I look like I am?” Damian shot back.

“No,” Dick said quickly, stepping in before it could turn into another round of verbal sparring. “Go on, Dami. What happened next?”

“There was a man,” Damian continued. “Black hair, streaked with white. Blue eyes—almost glowing green under certain light. He was… singing.”

Tim blinked. “Singing?”

“Beetlejucie,’” Damian said grimly. “I recognized the song. Todd made me watch it.”

Tim made a choked sound somewhere between laughter and disbelief. “Of course he did.”

“He didn’t attack me,” Damian continued, ignoring him. “He’d changed my shirt, cleaned and re-stitched my wounds, left my weapon within reach and mask on. I don’t think he meant me harm.”

Cass tilted her head, studying him. “But you ran.”

Damian hesitated. “…Yes.”

“Why?” she asked softly.

He frowned, gaze dropping to the floor. “Because I didn’t trust him.”

That, at least, everyone seemed to understand. Gotham wasn’t kind to those who trusted strangers.

Alfred finished the last stitch, his movements efficient. “Well, whoever this mysterious medic was,” he said, “they saved you quite a bit of trouble. Still, fourteen hours missing is quite enough excitement for one evening.”

Dick clapped Damian gently on the shoulder once Alfred taped the last bandage. “You scared us, kid,” he said quietly. “You can’t just vanish like that. Not here. Not in Gotham.”

“I didn’t intend to vanish,” Damian muttered, though the guilt bled through the edges of his words. “The blackout wasn’t planned.”

Tim snorted softly. “Yeah, well, next time your comms die, send a carrier pigeon or something.”

“Drake.”

“Right, right. Shutting up.”

Cass smiled faintly. “You’re home,” she said, voice barely above a whisper.

Damian looked at her for a long moment before giving a small, stiff nod. “…Yes. I suppose I am.”

The Cave’s hum seemed to settle around them, quieter now. Somewhere deep in the stone walls, Gotham herself exhaled. The monitors flickered, a faint static pulse rippling across one of the feeds—green, then gone.

Damian didn’t notice.

He was too busy trying not to sway under the exhaustion finally catching up to him, his siblings close, Alfred muttering something about soup, and the faint echo of a voice in the back of his mind.

Soft. Familiar.

You made it home, little bird.

But when he blinked and looked up, there was no one there. Only the faint hum of the Cave—and the sound of his family moving around him, steady and alive.

The elevator doors hissed open with a rush of air and the faint metallic groan of overworked hydraulics. The Cave’s alarms had gone silent a few minutes ago, but the tension still clung to the air like fog before dawn. The hum of the computers was constant, steady, but beneath it there was a pulse—a living rhythm that only the family could feel when something big was about to happen.

This was one of those moments.

Damian sat on the medical cot, half-dressed, half-dazed. The bandages on his side were fresh, a strip of white against bruised skin. He’d been ordered—ordered—by Alfred to sit still, drink water, and stop glowering at everyone like they’d personally offended him.

He was trying.

The others were milling around the cave—Cass perched on a railing above him, silent and watchful; Dick leaning against the table with his arms folded, the weight of older brother worry heavy in his eyes; Tim typing something furiously into the Batcomputer, muttering about signal dead zones and satellite interference.

It was too quiet. Too waiting.

Then came the sound of boots.

Heavy, fast, multiple.

The elevator opened again, and the flood began.

Jason was first. Red Helmet under one arm, hair an absolute disaster, eyes scanning the room like he was ready to kill someone—or hug them. It was hard to tell with Todd.

“Where is he?” Jason barked before anyone could say a word. “Tim said he was back—if this is another tracker glitch, I swear I’m gonna—”

“Over here.” Damian’s voice cut across the Cave, steady but quiet.

Jason froze, mid-step. For a moment, he didn’t say anything. Then he crossed the distance between them in three strides, grabbed Damian’s shoulder, and looked him over.

“Jesus,” Jason breathed out, running a hand through his hair. “Fourteen hours, you little gremlin. You had everyone losing their minds. You okay?”

Damian blinked at him, unimpressed. “I am not a gremlin.”

Jason stared at him for a second, then barked a short laugh and pulled him into a one-armed hug that Damian stiffened at but didn’t quite pull away from.

“You keep telling yourself that, demon brat.”

Before Damian could retort, more voices joined the chaos.

“Move it, Hood!” Steph’s voice carried across the cave before she even appeared. A moment later, she bounded off the elevator with Duke right behind her, one in street clothes from wherever she’d been called back from, and the other in Signal pajama pants with a hoodie on.

Steph’s blonde hair stuck out in every direction under her hood, and her gloves were still stained with oil from whatever she’d been fixing earlier. “Is he actually alive this time, or am I about to have to lecture another brother about communication skills?”

“Alive,” Duke said dryly, yawning mid-sentence. “But judging by the amount of blood, not by much.”

“I can hear you,” Damian muttered, glaring faintly.

“Good,” Steph shot back cheerfully. “Means you’re still functioning.”

Duke gave him a lopsided grin as he walked over. “You had Babs blowing up everyone’s phones, and I was asleep. Asleep. You know how rare that is for me?”

“I didn’t plan to be knocked unconscious,” Damian deadpanned.

“Yeah, well,” Duke said, patting his shoulder lightly. “Next time, plan better.”

The elevator chimed again. The air in the cave seemed to tighten, just slightly.

Because he was here now.

Bruce’s boots were slow and deliberate as he walked down the ramp, cape trailing behind him like a shadow of its own. Babs followed in her chair, her eyes sharp and assessing, tablet in hand as she scrolled through the data Tim had already pulled up.

The moment Bruce stepped into the light, the chatter died. Even Jason’s grin faded.

“Father,” Damian greeted, sitting up straighter automatically. His tone was formal, measured—somewhere between defiance and apology.

Bruce didn’t say anything for a long moment. He just looked at him. The kind of look that made the room hold its breath. The kind of look that could pin even the most stubborn of Robins in place.

Then Bruce exhaled. “Report.”

Damian launched into it immediately, posture straight, tone clipped and professional as if he were giving a mission debrief. He explained the rogue, the strange Lazarus-like surge, the fall, waking up in the apartment. He skipped nothing—except the part where he felt the hum of death that wasn’t his own, the part that had drawn him there in the first place. He wasn’t ready to talk about that yet.

When he finished, the silence stretched again.

Babs was the first to break it. “You said his eyes glowed?”

“Yes.”

“Like Lazarus green?” she pressed.

“No,” Damian said after a moment. “Not corrupted. It was… different. Calmer.”

Jason leaned back on the counter, crossing his arms. “So we’ve got some guy patching you up, singing show tunes, and possibly oozing Lazarus vibes. You sure you didn’t get hit harder than you thought?”

Steph snorted. “He was hit in the head.”

“Brown,” Damian warned.

“Hey, I’m just saying,” she said, hands up. “That’s not exactly a normal Tuesday-night rescue.”

Cass finally spoke, voice soft but certain. “Ghost.”

Everyone turned toward her.

“Ghost?” Tim repeated, brows furrowed. “You mean like—”

“Not metaphor,” Cass said, eyes flicking toward Damian. “Real.”

The word hung heavy in the air.

Jason rubbed the back of his neck. “Okay, now we’re talking actual ghosts? Like spooky Victorian boo ghosts?”

Babs sighed. “You’ve met Deadman, Jason.”

“Yeah, but he doesn’t patch up kids and hum musical numbers.”

Bruce didn’t react. Not outwardly. But his eyes narrowed, that analytical flicker of thought behind them shifting gears. “Whatever it was,” he said finally, “we’ll find out. You’re staying grounded until your wounds heal. No patrols. No training.”

Damian’s head snapped up. “Father, that’s unnecessary—”

“It’s not up for discussion.”

The cave went quiet again.

Then, Dick—ever the mediator—cleared his throat and placed a gentle hand on Damian’s back. “You scared us, Dami. Just… let us make sure you’re okay, yeah? We can figure out the weird glowing eye guy later.”

Damian wanted to argue. To insist he was fine. But the exhaustion pressed too heavily now—the pain in his side, the dull throb in his head, the faint ghost of that humming voice whispering through his thoughts.

He nodded once. “Very well.”

Alfred appeared again, silent as a shadow, holding a cup of tea in one hand. “A wise decision, Master Damian. Now, everyone, kindly refrain from crowding my patient—or I’ll sedate the lot of you.”

That earned a few chuckles, even from Jason.

The family began to settle—some perched on tables, others leaning against consoles. Cass quietly fetched a blanket for Damian without being asked. Duke snagged a protein bar from the supply drawer and tossed it to him. Steph started recounting how Jason had almost run three red lights on the way back, and Tim was already hacking through the satellite feed from Gotham Academy.

And Bruce… stood silently beside them all, a steady, grounding presence.

For the first time in hours, the Cave felt warm. Alive. Like home.

Damian sipped his tea and let his eyes drift half-shut. His family’s voices faded into a comforting hum, the kind of noise that made the shadows feel less lonely.

Far above, Gotham’s wind howled across the city. And if one listened closely, deep within the stone and the steel, it almost sounded like laughter—soft and knowing.

Lady Gotham was watching her birds again.

And she was very pleased with her king’s new problem.

Chapter Text

The Cave was quiet again, but it wasn’t peaceful. It was the kind of quiet that came when everyone’s mind was working too fast to talk. The hum of servers filled the space like a heartbeat, punctuated only by the clicking of keys and the faint whir of the Batcomputer’s data drives spinning.

Tim was at the main console, surrounded by holographic screens. His coffee sat forgotten next to him—cold, untouched, three hours old. Babs was on the upper monitor wall, remote-linking from the Clock Tower with her own screen filled with police reports, property records, and government registries.

Bruce stood behind them both, cape hanging heavy, eyes scanning every line of data that flashed by.

They were looking for a ghost.

Literally.

Damian had gone to bed hours ago in the med bay under Alfred’s watchful eye. But the rest of the family couldn’t sleep—not when the “man” who had dragged their youngest back from the edge of death might be some Lazarus-adjacent anomaly living in a condemned part of Gotham.

The first breakthrough came when Babs finally pulled up the address Damian had described.

“Building 23, Burnley District,” she said, voice sharp through the comms. “Officially condemned five years ago after a gas leak took out half the block. No utilities, no property taxes, no ownership transfers since. The whole area’s fenced off under city jurisdiction—no legal residents.”

“Then who’s been living there?” Tim murmured, eyes narrowing.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

A few keystrokes later, blueprints and city reports filled the central screen. Each floor plan flickered as Babs scanned through the resident logs.

“Most of the records stop after the evacuation notice. But…” She paused, zooming in. “There was one name that didn’t match the rest. A Daniel Nightingale. Listed as a tenant for a year before the shutdown. Rent payments made in full and on time until the month the building closed. After that—nothing.”

Dick leaned over Tim’s shoulder, squinting. “Nightingale? That sounds fake.”

“Probably an alias,” Jason said, arms crossed. “Who pays rent on time in Gotham? Red flag number one.”

Bruce’s voice cut through the chatter. “Run it.”

Babs was already doing it. “Cross-referencing all Daniel Nightingales in the Gotham, Metropolis, and Blüdhaven systems. Birth records, DMV, Social Security, education…” Her typing slowed. “Huh.”

“What?” Tim asked.

“There is a Daniel Nightingale in the system,” Babs said. “Six years old—well, six years ago he appeared. Registered Gotham citizen, twenty at the time. Photo’s clean but generic. Background check shows a single apartment lease, no job history, no school records, no emergency contacts. He didn’t exist before six years ago.”

Jason snorted. “So he popped into existence, paid rent, lived quietly for a year, and vanished. Totally normal.”

“Could be a fake ID,” Steph suggested from the other console. “People do that all the time.”

“Maybe,” Babs said. “But the ID’s good. Too good. Whoever made it used real state formatting, a valid license number that checks out, and matching biometrics. This isn’t some street forgery.”

Tim’s fingers flew across the secondary keyboard. “Running a facial recognition cross-match across GCPD archives, DMV, and federal databases.” He leaned forward as the results loaded. “Okay… nothing exact, but—wait. There’s a partial match.”

The Batcomputer chirped, and another ID popped up beside Nightingale’s.

Daniel Fenton.

“Who’s that?” Steph asked, frowning as she came down the ramp with a bag of chips in hand. “Looks like the same guy, just younger.”

Tim zoomed in on both images. Nightingale looked slightly older—shorter hair, faint scar on the chin, tired eyes—but the bone structure was identical.

“Facial match is ninety-eight percent,” Tim said. “Daniel Fenton, Amity Park, Illinois. Deceased.”

Jason froze mid-step. “Wait—deceased?”

“Yep,” Babs confirmed grimly. “Officially pronounced dead fourteen years ago. Cause of death listed as lab explosion. Parents were scientists. Entire event was filed under a government cleanup report. No remains recovered.”

“Then how does he have an ID six years ago?” Duke asked.

Bruce’s eyes narrowed. “Someone wanted him to exist again.”

Tim was already digging. “There’s more. His parents, Jack and Madeline Fenton—still alive. Own and operate FentonWorks, a tech lab specializing in ectoplasmic research. Mostly dismissed as fringe science.”

“Ectoplasmic?” Steph repeated. “Like… ghost goop?”

Babs nodded slowly. “Yeah. They’re ghost hunters. Or, at least, they think they are.”

Jason made a face. “You’re telling me our mystery guy might be a ghost from a family of ghost hunters?”

“Would explain the eyes,” Tim muttered, typing faster. “And how he got Damian there without a trace.”

Bruce leaned closer to the monitor. “Pull satellite imagery from the night Damian disappeared.Focus on the Burnley district.”

Tim nodded. The Batcomputer’s main screen filled with dark aerial footage, heat maps overlaying the area. Everything looked normal—dead zone, no power, no thermal signatures. Then—

“There,” Babs said sharply. “Pause.”

A faint blue pulse shimmered at the edge of the frame, near the building Damian described. It flickered like a heartbeat before fading entirely.

Jason whistled low. “That’s not a gas leak. That’s something else.”

“Energy output doesn’t match anything in the city grid,” Tim said, scanning. “It’s not electricity. Or radiation. The signature’s… colder.”

“Cold energy,” Bruce repeated. His mind was already building patterns. “Like ectoplasm.”

Babs frowned. “I’m digging into the Fenton files, but most of their research is classified or redacted. Looks like the government shut down their funding after a containment incident about a decade ago.”

“So we have a dead scientist kid, reappears six years ago under a fake name, lives in a condemned building that’s supposedly empty, and gives off ghost energy,” Jason summarized. “Totally normal Gotham Tuesday.”

Steph crossed her arms. “And somehow this guy just happens to save Damian out of nowhere?”

Duke looked between the screens. “Maybe he wasn’t random. Maybe he was watching.”

That thought made the room go still.

Bruce’s expression hardened. “We need to know more.”

Tim nodded. “I can try to trace Nightingale’s last known power usage—see if he was tapping any city lines. Might give us a trail.”

“I’ll pull the old property footage from before the gas leak,” Babs said. “There might be movement records. Cameras weren’t great back then, but something’s better than nothing.”

Jason cracked his knuckles. “And I’ll check street contacts. The Burnley block’s supposed to be shut down, but people still sneak in there sometimes. Somebody might’ve seen a ‘ghost’ walking around.”

“Keep it quiet,” Bruce ordered. “No patrol interference. If this person could evade detection for six years, they know how to hide. If he’s dangerous, we don’t alert him before we understand what he is.”

Tim nodded once. “Got it.”

Bruce turned slightly toward the med bay door, where Damian was sleeping behind reinforced glass. “He saved my son’s life,” he said quietly. “That makes him worth finding.”

Babs’ voice softened through the comm. “Let’s hope he’s not another Gotham ghost story, Bruce.”

Bruce didn’t answer. His eyes lingered on the faint blue energy signature still flickering on the screen.

Because deep down, he already knew.

Whoever—or whatever—Daniel Nightingale was…

He wasn’t gone.

He was watching.

It was raining again.

Because of course it was.

In Gotham, rain wasn’t an event — it was a lifestyle choice. The sky had been gray for three days straight, the streets smelled like gasoline and bad coffee, and Danny’s hoodie hadn’t been fully dry since Monday. He sat on the edge of his small apartment’s fire escape, mug of reheated coffee in hand, staring down at the alley below like it might suddenly start doing tricks.

“Your Majesty,” purred a familiar voice, low and amused, echoing through the dripping pipes and the slick steel railing.

Danny didn’t even flinch. “Not now, Lady G. It’s too early for your drama.”

“It’s three in the afternoon.”

He took a slow sip. “Exactly.”

The spirit of Gotham didn’t manifest so much as bleed through the walls. She was part of the city — her voice rode on the hum of electricity, the groan of bricks shifting in the wind, the whisper of water in the pipes. And she had opinions. Loud ones.

Today, all those opinions were about how Danny had, apparently, “failed his duties as king” by letting a small, bleeding vigilante climb out his window and disappear into the night.

“You let him go,” Lady Gotham hissed, her tone a cross between a disapproving mother and a stage actress who thought she was in a Shakespeare play. “The baby bird was wounded! He bled in your domain, Your Majesty. Your duty—”

“—is to not kidnap minors,” Danny interrupted flatly. “Pretty sure that’s still illegal in the human world.”

“You are not human anymore.”

He groaned, dropping his head back against the cold metal of the railing. “Not this argument again…”

She was relentless. “He was one of mine — one of yours, too. His pulse thrums with ectoplasm, faint but present. Lazarus-stained. He hums with your realm’s energy, and you let him leave injured.”

“Yeah, because dragging a hurt teenager into my “ghost lair” like some dollar-store Dracula would’ve gone over great with the mortal authorities,” Danny muttered. “Also, I have assignments.”

The city spirit went quiet for a moment, like she was reconsidering whether she’d chosen the right king to attach herself to.

When she finally spoke again, her voice was cooler. “You mock your station, child.”

Danny gave a tired, crooked grin. “That’s King Child to you.”

The lights in his apartment flickered menacingly.

“Okay, okay! Sorry!”

The flickering stopped.

He sighed, finishing the rest of his now-lukewarm coffee and setting the mug down beside him. Life in Gotham was… weird, even by his standards. The city knew him — not just Lady Gotham, but the city itself. Streetlamps hummed when he walked by. Alley cats followed him for blocks. The shadows moved differently around him, slower, gentler, like they were waiting for him to notice.

It wasn’t that he was hiding from the Bats. He knew they were watching.

He felt them.

Every time one of them came near — a shift in the air, a ripple of the Zone that prickled down his spine. Death clung to them like perfume. Not the heavy, rotten kind that came from the truly lost, but the lingering chill of resurrection, of touching death and walking away from it.

Lady Gotham’s “Baby birds,” she’d called them.

Danny could feel each one like a different tune in the same symphony.

Bruce — the oldest echo, weighted with old grief and too many graves.

Dick — lighter, fractured but strong, the hum of someone who’d stood too close to death too many times and still smiled anyway.

Jason — loud, jagged, Lazarus-bright, his soul screaming in the same key as the Pits.

Tim — faint but sharp, like a knife’s whisper on glass.

Cass — still and quiet, the kind of silence that demanded respect.

Steph — loud and laughing, like Da- uh… anyways.

Duke — bright but quiet, the day and the night at the same time. 

Alfred — old. Very very old.

Damian — his pulse thrummed strongest. A bright green flare in Danny’s awareness, raw and half-stitched.

He’d know that signature anywhere.

Danny hadn’t seen him since last night, but the ghostly connection between them hadn’t disappeared. It was faint, fragile — a thread made of half-remembered energy and accidental care — but it was there. He could feel the kid’s emotions occasionally, like whispers through static. Confusion. Determination. The occasional spark of pain or anger.

Danny hated how much he worried about it.

“Stop pacing,” Lady Gotham chided, her voice echoing through the apartment vents.

“I’m thinking,” Danny said, glancing at his textbooks on the table. “About quantum resonance, and about how I’m probably being stalked by a family of nocturnal ninja corpses. Multitasking.”

“They watch you because they sense what you are,” she said simply. “They do not yet understand. Few do.”

“Yeah, well, if they find out the guy living in their dead district is literally dead, that’s gonna be an awkward conversation.”

Danny crossed to the tiny kitchenette and opened the fridge — mostly empty except for cold pizza, energy drinks, and a single unlabeled jar of glowing green, really old, ectoplasm. He squinted at it. “…Huh. Probably shouldn’t eat that.”

He ate it anyway.

It was probably toxic by now.

Lady Gotham’s laughter rolled through the walls — low and amused, like the rumble of subway trains.

“You amuse me, my king,” she murmured. “But you cannot hide from destiny. My hatchlings will find you soon enough.”

Danny groaned. “Please don’t make that sound creepy.”

A window creaked open without wind. The city spirit’s voice grew softer, closer. “You care for the boy, even if you will not admit it.”

Danny froze. His fingers tightened around the countertop. “He’s just a kid. He didn’t deserve to get hurt.”

“And yet,” she purred, “you left him.”

Danny winced. “Because I had to. He belongs to his world, not mine.”

For a long moment, only the rain answered her. Then, faintly, almost fondly, she whispered—

“We shall see.”

The lights flickered once, then steadied.

Danny sighed and rubbed his face, muttering, “I’m moving to Metropolis.”

But he didn’t move.

He stayed in Gotham.

Because every night, when he closed his eyes, he could still feel that tiny hum of ectoplasm somewhere out there in the city — small, fierce, alive.

And he knew, deep down, Lady Gotham was right.