Chapter Text
Bruce looked awkward, completely out of place in Jason’s small apartment. Even though he’d worn plain, understated clothes, the quality of them made his kitchen look shabby in comparison. His sharp, deep blue eyes flicked around the apartment, taking in the details.
“You had guests,” Bruce observed, eyes lingering on the dishes in the sink and the serving dishes still on the table. “It… wasn’t my intention to interrupt.” He sounded uncharacteristically hesitant. Careful. Like he was watching his step, like he couldn’t trust Jason to hold it together for one fucking conversation. Like every word was a step across hot coals that were ready to set him on fire.
Jason’s jaw clenched involuntarily. “They left before you got here.” He couldn't didn’t bother to hide his clipped tone; Jason figured it would remind Bruce to mind his fucking business. “Where’d you leave the bike?”
“The garage under the building,” Bruce pulled a mangled hunk of metal out of his coat pocket and held it out.
“You aren’t supposed to know that’s there,” Jason’s hands threatened to shake as he took it.
It was his Jericho. He’d known it didn’t survive… whatever it was he did, but the extent of the damage was still surprising. The outline of his hand was perfectly recreated in the half-melted grip. Scorched lines danced around the slide stop up to the start of the barrel, where all that remained was a charred, jagged edge. Just looking at it sent an uneasy ripple across Jason’s nerve endings, starting with the back of his neck and ending with a distant ache in the joints of his hands.
Had he done this? And if so… how?
“What happened tonight?” Bruce asked.
“I really don’t have it in me to do this right now, Bruce,” Jason said flatly, focusing all his energy on keeping his voice level. “I wasn’t working with you when I ran into Grundy. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t need to give you a report.”
“No, that’s–” Bruce stopped. The corners of his lips turned down slightly. “You could have died.” It was suddenly difficult to speak around the profound discomfort crawling up Jason’s throat.
“I’m fine,” he said, and then, because he just couldn’t help himself, “Nothing compared to getting blown up.” Bruce’s expression shuttered, face going blank, and some distant part of Jason felt guilty about the way the air between them went heavy. Not guilty enough to take it back, though. “Was there something else you wanted?”
Bruce’s eyes flicking to the ruined pistol again. “Can you at least tell me what caused that kind of damage? I find it hard to believe you would be improperly using your weapons to the extent that an obstruction–”
“No,” Jason interrupted, crossing his arms. “It’s nothing that’ll impact you. It’s something I’ve been working on and it didn’t quite go the way I thought it would.”
“It looks like the explosion started in your hand, Jason. I want to help with whatever is going on, but I can’t do that if you won’t talk to me.”
The mask was fully back up, Bruce giving way to make room for Batman. Whenever things got difficult, or unexpected, or even a little out of the ordinary, there he was. Batman, leaving no space for anything else. It made Jason’s spine tingle and his mouth flood with the bitter smoke of resentment. You’re not being fair, the logical part of his brain whispered. “If I wanted to talk to you about it, I would have.”
“The individual who picked you up. Are they connected?” Jason clenched his fists and took a deep breath, closing his eyes as he did so. “They don’t appear on any of the surveillance footage, or the pictures taken by civilians. The corruption is similar to that found at known sightings of the so-called ghost in the bowery. It isn’t my desire to push you, but you told me you would inform me if something changed, and this is a pretty dramatic change.”
“No,” Jason snarled, losing his grip on his temper. He felt the pit rise up inside of him, climbing his ribs like a ladder, begging to surface. “I told you that if things changed and he turned out to be a threat , I would let you know. That has not changed. I asked you to drop it .” He opened his eyes, looking directly into Bruce’s. Green tinged the edges of his vision. He ignored it. “Respect what I’m telling you, for once. ”
Bruce tensed at Jason’s outburst, muscles coiled and ready to strike at the slightest hint of violence.
A challenge, the thing in Jason’s chest whispered. Answer .
No, he thought back at it. Not a challenge. A willingness to fight when necessary. The thing in his chest writhed against his grip, riled by the perceived threat and Jason’s own irritation, before settling. Just as quickly as it had come, the green was gone, leaving bone-deep exhaustion and pain in its wake. Jason’s head ached, and the persistent stabbing of his ribs and splinted fingers was starting to be too much to ignore.
He was just so tired. He could tell Bruce everything now, and let him take this off of his plate. Let him take the lead, reach out to his contacts, and he’d have answers probably twice as fast as Jason would on his own, even with Tim, Babs, and Damian.
Jason clenched his eyes shut and pictured Danny, standing in Batman’s shadow as defiantly as he’d stood before Jason earlier in the night. Combative. Ready to give as good as he got.
It seemed unlikely that Bruce would like that one bit. He certainly hadn’t appreciated it from Jason. The scar on his throat felt suddenly tight, a phantom itch making itself known in the long-healed injury.
“Listen,” Jason’s voice was rough in his own ears. He opened his eyes, determined to meet Bruce’s firmly, despite how unsteady he felt at the moment. “Focus on Sionis and Crane. Once this mess is over, we’ll talk, okay? Just trust me to have it handled when I ask you to stay out of it until then.”
Bruce held his gaze for a long moment. Seemingly finding whatever it was he was looking for, he nodded sharply, then turned for the door. One hand on the knob, he stopped.
“If you need… anything, you know where to find me.”
And then he was gone, leaving Jason shaking and sore and wrestling with demons he could hardly comprehend until he fell into a fitful sleep.
~X~X~
One of the things Danny had done when he left was take all of the schematics for his parents’ ghost hunting inventions. He never thought he was going to have to use them, but he figured–well, better safe than sorry, right? You never knew what was going to happen in the crazy world they lived in, and it paid to be prepared.
Danny squinted at his father’s schematics for the ecto-converter on his laptop screen, then down at the notepad paper with the notes for altering the design. The ecto-converter had been designed to (painfully) break down the ectoplasm in ghosts, but he was pretty sure that he had worked out changes to turn the design into an ambient filtration system. Something like that wouldn’t work in most places, but there were so many currents of ectoplasm running through Gotham that Danny was positive it would go completely unnoticed.
He half-listened to the audiobook playing on his beat-up CD player as he assessed the dismantled appliances in front of him with a critical eye. He could make use of the broken air purifier for sure as part of the initial build, but he had to admit, he was going to need to really ponder what materials to make a new filter out of, and a way to refrigerate the storage tank itself until he could retrieve it. He could probably use his own ice for the refrigeration, at least temporarily, but getting materials for the filter…
“Pardon, your sign says that you’re open.”
Danny just about jumped out of his skin, nearly dropping the purifier. There was a teenager standing just outside the open garage door, his arms crossed in front of an absolutely (gorgeous) hideous orange coupe. He hadn’t even heard him pull up, so either the car ran a lot smoother than it looked like it did, or Danny had been far more focused than he’d thought. Plastering a polite smile on his face, he closed his laptop, hit pause on his audiobook, and turned to fully face the kid.
He was wiry and well dressed, with brown skin and black hair worn swept neatly back from his face. He had the kind of perfect posture, fresh-pressed aura that practically screamed “I have money,” despite the understated fashion of his outfit. The entire effect clashed absurdly with muscle car next to him. His narrow green eyes were sharp as he assessed Danny’s rumpled appearance in a way that made Danny uneasy.
“It sure does,” He kept his voice cheery. He didn’t know what a kid like this was doing in this part of town, but he wasn’t going to turn down a customer. “What can I do for you?”
“My brother gave me his first car for my birthday,” The boy said stiffly. He had a faint, liquid accent that Danny wasn’t quite worldly enough to recognize. “and it requires maintenance.”
“You don’t got mechanics over in fancy-pants town?”
The kid raised an eyebrow. “My brother has some… unique hobbies,” he sniffed. “He made alterations to the vehicle that might raise questions in a more reputable establishment. I heard from a friend that this is the place to go if you don’t want to deal with those kinds of inquiries.”
Danny supposed he could be right about that. His garage was out of the way, and while he didn’t get a lot of customers, the ones he had tended to come back. He’d certainly seen a few vehicles with some interesting modifications and hadn’t cared enough to ask about them. For all he knew, it was common in Gotham to customize your vehicles.
“I suppose,” he said, giving the car a visual once-over. “Well, go ahead and bring her in. Will you be waiting or do you want to leave me a number and have me give you a call when I’m finished?”
“I would prefer to stay,” This kid was pretty aggressively formal, wasn’t he? Weird. Was that a rich people thing? He couldn’t remember enough from being around Vlad to be able to say for sure. He’d had other things to worry about at the time. “I was hoping you would allow me to watch, so that I could learn to do it myself in the future.”
Well. That was unexpected. “Really?” Danny couldn’t keep the surprise from his voice. “I mean, no offense, but you’re obviously a rich kid. Why wouldn’t you just pay someone to do it?”
The kid sneered at that, radiating derision-fight me in a way that felt… oddly familiar. Danny brushed it off. So the kid was liminal. Of course he was. Eighty percent of this crazy-ass city was liminal.
“It is important to know how to care for the tools at your disposal,” the kid was saying. “I cannot count on always having a mechanic readily available should something go wrong. Therefore, it is only logical that I learn to do the work myself.”
Danny couldn’t help it. This kid was absolutely adorable for a mini- fruitloop–like a tiny, angry baby bird. “You’re absolutely right. Not a lot of people with money think that way. Can’t blame me for being curious.” He brushed his hands on his shirt to make sure they weren’t as dirty as they could have been, and held out a hand to shake. “You can call me Danny,” he said.
“I am Damian,” The kid–Damian–said, nose in the air. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Daniel.”
Danny wrinkled his nose. “Not Daniel. Danny.”
“That is too informal an address for a semi-professional relationship. Etiquette demands that I refer to you formally, as someone teaching me a skill. Using a diminutive would be rude at best, and disrespectful at worst.”
“Well, for one, my legal name is actually Danny, not Daniel, so it’s not a diminutive,” Danny argued, which seemed to dismay Damian. (It was something he’d done when he’d changed his last name to ‘Nightingale.’ Any excuse to never have anyone call him Daniel ever again.) “But if it makes you more comfortable, you can use my last name. It’s Nightingale.”
The distress on Damian’s face smoothed out. “That is a reasonable compromise, Nightingale. Shall I bring the car in?”
“You shall,” Danny smirked when Damian rolled his eyes at him.
Danny was nervous about showing a teenager how to do anything with a car, but Damian turned out to be a flawless student. He watched closely, asked clarifying questions regularly (a must for learning from someone as bad at explaining things as Danny was), and was endlessly, almost uncomfortably, polite.
“Why do you have so many of this size, specifically?” He asked, peering curiously at the pickle jar full of 10mm sockets Danny had pulled off the shelf.
“They know why,” he said darkly, glaring at the jar. Damian looked a little confused, but didn’t ask any further questions.
In the end, Danny had noticed a few odd changes to the car, but nothing that screamed anything about suspicious behavior on Damian’s brother’s part, at least not for Gotham. It was clear from the chassis locking clamps that the body shell was intended to be swapped out, and sure, it had been upgraded with a lot of high-end technology that was obviously in place to support some kind of armaments, but half of the cars he’d fixed since moving here had some kind of additional protection or offensive capabilities built in. He figured that was just Gotham.
Then again, Damian had said he’d heard that Danny didn’t ask questions, so… maybe that wasn’t normal. Maybe he should have been doing that.
Oh, well. Too late now.
When they finished, Damian wandered over to Danny’s work bench and nosed around a little bit while Danny put away his tools. He peered curiously at Danny’s notes for the ecto-condenser and Danny considered stopping him, but honestly, they wouldn’t make much sense without the original ecto-converter schematics for comparison, anyway. He kept his mouth shut and Damian moved on.
“Pride and Prejudice?”
“Hm?” Danny turned away from where he was straightening one of the workbench drawers to find him holding the case for the audiobook. “Oh… yeah.”
“I hope you won’t take this as an insult, but you don’t seem the type,” Damian’s eyebrows furrowed as he appraised Danny with a questioning eye.
Which… well, okay, he wasn’t wrong. Danny wasn’t the type. It’s not that he hadn’t been enjoying listening to it, when he managed to focus. It was just that he kept having to backtrack when he missed important information and found himself lost. By this point, the stupid thing was so overdue he’d decided to just never show his face at the library again, keep it, and save himself the embarrassment of having to pay the late fee.
“It was a recommendation from a friend,” he replied.
Damian hummed and set it back down next to the CD player. “What are you working on here?” he asked, peering at the dismantled air purifier.
“I just like tinkering,” he said blithely. “You would not believe the things people throw away. It’s fun to fix ‘em.”
“I see,” Damian said. He turned to face Danny head on. “You are an adequate tutor. May I come and shadow you again at another time?”
Danny blinked in surprise. “Sure, kid.” Damian held out his hand palm up, staring at Danny expectantly.
“Give me your phone,” he said. “We will exchange numbers.”
“Oh,” Danny said. “Sure.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled his phone from its place inside of his thigh, unlocked it, and held it out. Damian called himself from Danny’s phone before handing it back. “Save that number,” Damian ordered. “I will contact you to schedule another lesson. It was a pleasure to meet you, Nightingale, but continue to call me ‘kid,’ and I will ensure you never call anyone anything ever again.”
Danny tried, and almost certainly failed, to hide his grin. “Fair enough. It was nice to meet you too, Damian.”
The teen paid, including a generous tip, then drove off, leaving Danny to close the garage doors and flip his sign to closed. He would spend the last hour or so until sundown working on the extractor, then pay a visit to his newest friend before patrol.
Jazz had said he should make some local allies, after all. And really, his sister was bound to be right about things sometimes.
~X~X~
Jason woke with an itching in his bones that begged him to get up and do something, anything, hunt-fight-win. He was used to it-usually it was much stronger, actually, but after how calm he’d been lately despite everything going on, he was surprised by the ferocity of it. Despite the relatively major injuries of the night before, Jason was feeling surprisingly good, even with the restless energy coursing through him. He checked in on his rental properties, did all of his paperwork and went over the books, and checked in with his lieutenants. When he ran out of work to do (faster than he’d hoped, curse his efficient delegation), Jason steeled himself and went down to the garage to look at his bike, instead.
It was probably going to need to be completely rebuilt, he realized as he looked mournfully over the trashed remains. Danny would probably be thrilled.
After their argument the night before, though, Jason thought that maybe visiting Danny immediately with a request to rebuild his bike from scratch wouldn’t be the best course of action, so instead, he turned his thoughts towards the other issue that had been on his mind all day: Solomon Grundy. Babs had checked on the list of locations following Jason’s request and sure enough, every one had a manhole cover leading down to the sewer system that was tucked on a backstreet or alley, out of the view of cameras, in neighborhoods with minimal law-enforcement. Bruce had used the rest of his patrol the previous night following up on Oracle’s information, but hadn’t been successful in tracking down either the zombie or evidence of Sionis or Crane’s goons in the tunnels yet.
Jason thought he might have a better chance of finding the zombie than anyone else; there had been a moment, right before he nearly crashed into Grundy, where he’d sensed something new. It hadn’t felt exactly the same as the way Danny pinged his new senses when he passed through the Bowery, but the way it crept from that place deep behind his ribcage and up into his throat was undoubtedly similar. Logical reasoning concluded that if he went into the sewers, where Grundy spent most of his time, chances were that he’d be able to narrow down on his location using that sense to his advantage.
If Leslie or Alfred caught wind of him going out, he’d catch hell for sure, but what they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them and they didn’t have any say in what he did anyway, so nightfall found Jason opening up a manhole cover on an empty side street in crime alley when his comms kicked on.
“Jason,” It was Tim, because of course it was. “Why are you out?”
“None of your business,” Jason said without any real heat behind it as he slipped through the manhole and onto the ladder below, pulling the cover over it again as he began his descent. “You’re not my supervisor.”
“You have fractured ribs and are recovering from a grade three concussion, you had better not be doing what I think you’re doing.” Tim’s reedy tenor dipped into something that was probably as close to a growl as he could get.
“That entirely depends on what you think I’m doing.”
“Jason.”
Jason rolled his eyes. “I’m not patrolling, okay? I’m just going to talk to someone.”
“Fully suited up in the sewers? You really expect me to believe that?”
Jason paused halfway down the ladder. “...are you watching me?”
“That’s for me to know and you to wonder about. Tell me what you’re up to or I’m calling Alfred.”
“That’s cheating.” He was met with silence from Tim. Jason sighed. “Solomon Grundy can use ghost speak. I want to talk to him. In and out, no fighting, just a quick chat.”
Tim’s response came instantaneously. “That seems like a bad idea.”
“I disagree.” Jason jumped off the ladder and landed with a solid thud on the concrete. The second his feet made contact, a hot wind brushed down his spine, wet like a heavy breath on the back of his neck. He cursed in surprised and spun around to face whatever was behind him, only to be met with… nothing. He exhaled in relief, only to find his own breath tasted… odd. Earthy, spicy, heavy on his tongue like curry and petrichor all at once. “I think it’s a good opportunity to practice, and I think I can find him more easily than any of you can. If I’m wrong, no harm done. If I’m right, then I can stick a tracker on him and we’ll have a reliable way to check in on him until Crane is back in Arkham.”
There was a pull, come here-this way-over here , leading Jason into the maze of tunnels. He drew his Jericho after a moment of hesitation, then followed it. He pretended to listen to Tim’s list of reasons that he was being impulsive and making a terrible decision as he travelled (because Tim had room to talk), following the tunnels with a confusing mix of trepidation and determination simmering in gut.
He hadn’t been travelling long when Tim’s voice went staticky around the edges. He cringed at the sudden extra noise in his ear, and opened his mouth to ask Tim if there was something interfering with the signal, when the vague taste of earth was supplanted by the sharpness of mint and an overpowering iciness that was exhaled into his helmet, clouding his vision.
“Boo,” a familiar voice breathed into his ear. Jason swung without thinking, only to see his fist pass directly though Danny’s face. Danny cackled gleefully as he rolled back in midair, out of Jason’s personal space.
“What is it?” Tim hissed in his ear.
“Danny,” Jason growled. “Don’t do that. I could have hurt you.”
Danny scoffed, still giggling, as Tim perked up in Jason’s earpiece. “Nightingale is there? What’s he doing in the sewers?”
“What are you doing down here,” Jason grumbled–because he was curious, not because Tim had asked. “It’s not safe.”
“Not for most people, maybe,” Danny yawned, his mouth stretching just a little too wide. His nose seemed almost healed-there was no evidence of the break from the night before beyond some yellowing across the bridge and under his eyes, leftover from the bruising. His wrist was still wrapped tightly in ace bandages, but it didn’t seem to be bothering him much. He floated in the air, legs crossed as he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as easily as if he sat on the ground. There was something unsettling about it-he didn’t float in the way Biz or Kori did. There was always a sense of control to how they flew, so clearly under their own power. Danny drifted, less like a person and more like a balloon, tugged slightly this way and that by the draft in the tunnels. Even his hair floated around his head, almost like he was underwater instead of flying. “What are you doing down here?”
“Hood, your mask footage is corrupted,” Tim cut in through his comms, voice increasingly fuzzy and muffled, like they had a bad connection. Jason held up one finger to Danny, then turned away from him. “And now it’s back. What the fuck is with this guy and surveillance?”
“Red, I’m going offline. I’ll check in with you in…” he glanced back at Danny, “Two hours.”
“What? But–”
Jason rapped the side of his helmet, cutting the connection, then looked Danny up and down. Danny raised one eyebrow at him.
“Well?” Danny tilted his head, not unlike a curious puppy.
“Well, what?”
“What are you doing down here?”
“Investigating.”
“Ooooh, what are we investigating?” Danny’s eyes sparkled with interest.. His head tilted further and his body followed, until he was upside down with his legs still crossed, still resting with his arms on his knees. It was as if gravity had no impact on him at all.
“I’m investigating. I don’t know what you’re doing,” Jason looked pointedly at the space between the top of Danny’s head and the ground. “Guess you’re not hiding anymore, then?”
Danny shrugged his shoulders, the nonchalant gesture at odds with his obvious discomfort at the question. “I don’t wanna touch the gross sewer ground. Cat’s out of the bag, anyway. Why, does it make you uncomfortable?”
“Nah. I’ve been on teams with people who could fly. Do whatever you gotta do.”
“Oh yeah?” Danny righted himself, turning playful. He rested his chin on his hand and kicked his feet up behind him, looking up at Jason through his lashes. “Did any of them ever take you flying?” His icy blue eyes sparkled with mischief.
Oh, Jason was in trouble trouble.
“I… uh, once or twice,” he admitted. Keep it together, idiot. “Not for fun, though, usually.” Despite Roy’s glee over the propeller arrow, flying was not exactly Jason’s idea of a good time.
Danny drifted closer, grinning at him with that lopsided smirk. “Do you wanna change that sometime? I’ve seen some gorgeous views since I moved here, it’d be nice to share them with someone.”
“Gorgeous views? In Gotham? You sure you’re thinking of the right place?”
“I can think of a few, yeah,” Danny’s eyes flicked down, lingering on Jason’s shoulders, biting his lip.
Jesus. Maybe Jason’s read on this entire situation was all wrong. Danny didn’t seem like he had any lingering bad feelings at all leftover from their argument. It knocked Jason off-balance. No one ever just… let anything go that quickly. It was hard to really believe, but in the same token, Danny’s laid-back attitude seemed genuine. “Why are you being so relaxed with me? We fought and you’re acting like it didn’t even happen.”
“Is that a problem?” Danny rolled over, stretching casually. His shirt lifted, exposing a dark trail of hair up to his navel and prominent hip bones that drew Jason’s eyes down. He forced himself to look forward and started walking again. Danny followed, drifting alongside him. “Arguments are just part of any friendship, right? You fight, you work it out, and then you move on. Or you don’t, I guess, depending on the relationship, but I always… that’s never been my style.”
“We didn’t work anything out at all,” Jason pointed out.
“No,” Danny admitted. “But we also aren’t close enough that our decisions will massively impact the other person, are we?”
“Hm,” Jason was… confused. Danny’s emotions were an odd mix of flippant disregard and a profound, bitter displeasure, so maybe it was less Danny ‘letting it go,’ and more ‘avoiding the subject.’
They traveled in pensive silence, and were turning down another dark tunnel when Jason realized that neither of them had said aloud where they were going, or who they were visiting. Turning slightly so he could look at Danny out of the corner of his eye, he took a gamble, then asked, “So… you can sense him, too?”
“Too?” A rush of excitement rolled off of Danny in one massive wave and he rocked up into a more upright position. “You can sense him? Can you sense me?”
“Yeah,” Jason said, “A little bit. It’s stronger when I’m in the Bowery, though. I couldn’t sense you until you were right up on me just now.”
Danny’s ice blue eyes were huge as he floated backwards, considering Jason with new interest. “I call it my ‘ghost sense.’ It works best in my own haunt, but I can tell when ghosts are around no matter where I am. Other types of undead, too, but I haven’t interacted with too many others. Unless you count the skeletons, I guess,” he added after a moment of thought.
“Skeletons?”
“Don’t worry about the skeletons, that doesn’t happen often. I haven’t even seen one in years. They barely ping my sense unless there’s a lot of them.”
Jason reached out and wrapped a hand around Danny’s wrist. It was bony, and cool to the touch. He’s too skinny for how tall he is, Jason thought to himself. Is that part of the mutation? Or is he not getting proper nutrition? He pulled lightly. Danny bobbed a little in the air like a balloon, then steadied, floating closer. “Why is it that every time you open your mouth, you say something that either adds a whole new layer of mystery about who you were or makes me violently concerned for your safety?”
Danny’s feet touched lightly to the ground just in front of Jason, sneakers brushing against the steel toes of his boots. “I don’t know,” he said, twisting his wrist in Jason’s loose grip to grab his hand. “I’m not doing either of those things on purpose, if that helps.”
“I think that makes it worse, actually.”
Danny opened his mouth to respond, face scrunched up in denial, when he whipped his head to look down the tunnel. His face split into a grin, and then he was off, flitting away into the darkness. Cursing to himself, Jason rushed to follow only to have the overpowering sensation of wet earth and spice flood his senses. A wave of greeting tinged with curiosity followed, muted and distant, as the hulking form of Solomon Grundy trudged around the corner.
“Ghost boy,” he rumbled, low in his chest. Danny looked absolutely tiny, despite not actually being that small of a man, framed by Grundy’s broad form. The way his legs bent with the slight curve of his body as he floated in the air made him look even smaller. Jason bit down hard on the rush of fear when Grundy reached out and snatched Danny out of the air. He let him do that , Jason reminded himself firmly, forcing himself to focus on the memory of Danny’s wrist passing through his grip the night before. If he didn’t want to be grabbed, he wouldn’t be .
It didn’t help much , but it helped enough to keep the green bubbling in his gut at bay. Even still, he moved closer, ready to interfere at the slightest sign of aggression, even if he wasn’t sure how effective he’d be. Keeping in mind his original plan, he subtly palmed a tracker.
“New face,” Grundy intoned, bringing Danny close to his eyes to inspect him more thoroughly.
“Not new,” Danny laughed. “Just my casual wear. I came with a friend!” He gestured back at Jason.
Grundy’s attention shifted slowly. His irises looked almost pink, with the milky white film that covered his eyes. They appraised Jason with more comprehension than he’d thought was possible from Grundy-not that he’d seen Grundy much in general, but it was more than he’d expected considering how single-minded he seemed to be in fights. Jason forced himself to stay calm and breathe as Grundy took a few lumbering steps closer, till he was standing directly in front of him. Taking his opportunity, Jason shifted a little, as if he were nervous (which, no he wasn’t, shut up) and stuck it to the bottom edge of Grundy’s jacket.
“Little death,” at this short distance, Grundy’s low voice rumbled in Jason’s ribcage. It tickled the fractures in his ribs like a cat’s purr. “Same,” Grundy said, thumping a massive hand against his chest, “But different.”
Jason felt a rush of familiarity flood his senses and instinctually, unable to stop himself, found himself reaching back. The deep seated fear he’d kicked out of his conscious thought process resurfaced with a vengeance, tinged with panic.
What if I'm still dead?
A nostalgic sort of affection, like tea with turmeric and ginger, washed over him as Danny vibrated with barely restrained interest.
“Still young,” Grundy grunted, placing a massive, heavy hand on Jason’s shoulder. “No fear. This passes.”
“What do you mean,” Jason asked, agitated. “Same, but different?”
“Same,” Grundy repeated firmly, bowing his head as much as his thick neck seemed to allow in confirmation. “But different.”
Seemingly picking up on Jason’s growing panic, Danny spoke up. “Hey buddy, do you remember where you saw the skinny man you told me about?” Grundy responded with a low grunt of assent, accompanied by a torrent of annoyance. “Can you show us?”
With another wordless grunt, the zombie began to amble slowly back into the maze of tunnels. Danny drifted into a position alongside Jason and grabbed his wrist. He was so cold Jason could feel it through the leather of his gloves.
“Okay?” he asked softly, radiating concern as he gently pulled Jason along down the tunnel behind Grundy.
“Fine,” Jason lied. “What’re we going to look at?”
“There was a ‘skinny man,’” Danny said, making air quotes as he eyed Jason dubiously. “He sprayed Grundy in the face with something that made him go nuts last night.”
Jason grimaced under the helmet. He hated being right. “Scarecrow.”
Danny twisted in the air, flinching slightly with the sudden movement. “I thought Scarecrow was in Arkham?”
“He broke out,” Jason said, studying him carefully behind the eyes of his helmet. Maybe Danny wasn’t quite as healed as he looked, if that small of a movement made him flinch. “They put out a warning to the public, didn’t you see it?”
“I guess I haven’t been paying attention,” Danny had the decency to look a little ashamed of himself. “Maybe I should get that app my sister was telling me about, with the warnings and sightings or whatever.”
“Batwatch,” Jason said. “Yeah, you probably should. It’s a good resource. Gotham isn’t a place you want to be caught off guard.”
“It didn’t seem like something I would need to worry about.” Danny admitted, looking a little ashamed of himself.
As he well should. What a stupid line of thinking. “Relying on powers alone is never a good strategy in Gotham. The rogues here are unpredictable, and they’re smart. They’re always coming up with something new and half of them work with shit that messes with your head. Honestly, having powers probably makes it more dangerous to not be informed,” Jason added bitterly. “There’s nothing they love more than exploiting someone who might bring them more power. Being uninformed is the quickest way to get people killed.”
Danny looked thoughtful at that, but not at all concerned. Jason resolved to keep a closer eye on him in the future. “Is that why you started working with the other vigilantes? To keep informed?”
“I started working with the vigilantes because you can’t get anything done in this goddamn city without Big Bad Bat’s stamp of approval.”
"Oof. Sounds personal.”
Jason laughed without humor. "You could say that.”
Danny opened his mouth to respond, but before he could say anything else about it, Grundy stopped dead ahead of them. “Here,” he grunted, simmering with indignation. The tunnel was dark and damp, with a rank breeze blowing through that hinted at an exit somewhere nearby. A section of wall was partially caved in, broken brick and dirt piling on the floor. It was recent-it hadn’t rained enough yet to wash away into the fetid water flowing below the walkway.
“Grundy chase skinny man, lost him.” The words were accompanied by a flood of displeasure as the zombie bared his teeth. “Next time Grundy see, Grundy crush.”
Jason felt sick at the thought. The idea of a Grundy rampage mixed with the kind of psychological damage Scarecrow could do… God, the recovery would be a mess. There was more housing in the works, but structural damage would set them back financially a lot more than they could reasonably manage right now.
Danny quirked a small smile at Grundy. “Yeah, buddy. Crush.” Grundy nodded in satisfaction, humming his agreement.
Jason found himself wishing he could block out Danny’s amusement. There had to be a way to block your senses from ‘hearing’ ghost speak. (Hearing? Was that the right word?) “Yeah,” he said flatly. “Cause that’s what Gotham needs right now.”
“Good point,” Danny muttered, already drifting away to inspect the damaged section of wall. He ran a hand down the cracked brick, frowning. “This needs to be repaired.”
“Probably,” Jason said. The area was large, several feet wide and extending most of the way up the wall to the curved roof. “Getting people to do repairs down here is always a struggle. The sewers are dangerous in Gotham.” he glanced at Grundy, who was already ambling disinterestedly in another direction.
“I understand that.” Frustration turned the damp air brisk, making Jason shiver in his reinforced leather jacket. “Look here,” Danny touched a crumbling brick right in the center. A sliver of it clattered to the ground, a small amount of dirt trickling through the space. “When it rains, or if there’s enough of a disturbance on the surface in this area, this runoff is going to get worse. Whatever is directly above us could collapse in if this goes on for too long, and that will be an even bigger problem for everybody involved than a little altercation with Killer Croc or Grundy.”
A little altercation. Jason blinked at Danny from under the helmet. The flippancy with which he regarded the threat Gotham’s supervillains presented belied the seriousness with which he assessed the structural damage and potential future consequences.
“You’re right,” Jason said after a beat.
“I am?” Danny asked, surprised.
“Lack of foresight on the part of officials in this city causes enough problems,” Jason said. He was already picking up the slack as far as the housing situation in East End was concerned; what was a little sewer repair on top of it? “But there’s always a way around the official channels.”
“If anyone can find ways around official channels, it’s definitely you,” Danny teased. He crouched, curiosity spiking, and shifted some of the rubble to uncover something small and white. He held it up, revealing a skull about the size of his palm. “What do you think this is?”
“One of Scarecrow’s handheld aerosol sprayers. He uses it to administer fear toxin at short range,” Jason held out a hand. “Probably what he got Grundy with. It should be disposed of properly. Don’t want anybody getting their hands on whatever’s left in the canister.” Danny bit his lip nervously and looked down at it instead of handing it over.
“I know this is going to make me sound incredibly sketchy,” he started, staring at it intently rather than looking at Jason.
“Oh, yeah. That's promising.” A little bit of Jason’s amusement slipped out before he bit down on it.
“Oh, shut up,” Danny rolled his eyes, fighting a small half-smile before he turned serious again. “Do you think I could keep it?”
That… was not what Jason expected. He barely registered the question before his brain started running down the list of nefarious reasons Danny might want a discarded fear toxin canister, even one as small as the handheld version nestled inside the fist-sized skull. Forcing himself to shift that to the background, Jason kept his voice neutral and asked cautiously, “What for?”
Danny took his time answering, staring pensively at the brick wall behind Jason, one sharp canine cutting into his lower lip as he chewed it in thought.
(It wasn’t distracting. It wasn’t.)
“I’d like to test some of the residue,” he said finally. Danny was anxious, bordering on afraid, like he didn’t want to ask, but his resolve was hardening as he spoke. “I need to see how it interacts with ectoplasm, for a start. I won't know for sure what other tests to run until I do that.” Danny turned it over in his hands, inspecting the back of the device.
Tim would kill him. Babs would kill him. He couldn’t let an unknown out of here with a sample of fear toxin, that would be… unlike him, for starters.
Was Danny really an unknown, though? He wore his heart on his sleeve, literally projecting his emotions out for the world to feel right along with him, if they cared to pay attention. Sure, he was a little oblivious and didn’t seem like the best at making choices sometimes, but he was clearly smart as hell, and he really seemed to care about the part of the city that he’d moved into. Jason would be lying if he said he wasn’t intrigued by the idea of what Danny could find.
“Why do you need to test how it interacts with ectoplasm?”
“Because I don’t know how it’s going to impact my system,” Danny admitted, tilting it to look at the seam along the side. “I don’t know what kind of reaction I’ll have to it. Seeing how it interacts with ectoplasm is the best way to do that without just testing it on myself directly.”
“Do not test it on yourself directly” Jason felt his panic at the idea slip out, not fully believing he just had to actually tell someone out loud not to use fear toxin on themselves. He took a deep breath to ground himself.
He had to take a different approach here and make sure that Danny ran the tests he needed to run without running any… unnecessary experiments.
“I’ll make you a deal,” Jason leaned in, resting one elbow on the cracked brick to box Danny’s lithe form between his own body and the wall. Danny’s eyes widened. He couldn’t tell for sure in the dark, through the lenses of his helmet, but he’d bet anything that Danny was blushing. Danny’s empathic aura had gone quiet-something that had only happened when he was obviously turned on and trying not to expose Jason to that. Taking full advantage, he leaned in a little further, until Danny’s face was close enough to the helmet that he had to look back and forth to maintain eye contact. “I take it with me, and you work on it in my facilities, with my equipment. Keep me in the loop on every step. Prove to me that I can trust you with this.”
Danny swallowed hard. “Yeah,” he squeaked out. “Sure. No problem.”
“Perfect,” Jason said, snatching the skull from Danny’s relaxed grip and straightening back up, taking a full step back out of Danny’s space, giving him a moment to relax. Danny blinked up at him, disoriented by the sudden shift in tone. “I have something I want you to take a look at, anyway. We should get out of the sewer, it fucking reeks down here.”
“Don’t you have filters in the helmet?”
“Sure I do, doesn’t mean I want the smell to set into my clothes. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get the smell of sewage out of leather?”
“Fair enough,” Danny said, shaking himself. He paused, then looked up at Jason through his lashes, oozing mischief even without the ghost speech. “Should we take a look at what’s above us, then?”
“...What?”
“Race you,” Danny shot Jason a feral, sharp toothed grin and shot up through the ceiling.
“Oh, you little…” Jason cursed under his breath and hauled himself up the ladder to the manhole cover as quickly as he could.