Chapter Text
So.
The good news: Danny had caught Tim again.
The bad news: Tim had fallen through another portal and in the process had taken a not-insignificant portion of Gotham River with him.
This time, he'd been leaping from an exploding building (thank you Council of Spiders Splinter Cell: Reboot Attempt Number Five) into Gotham River when, mid-ascent, a portal opened above him, pulling him and the aforementioned river through.
It was the middle of the day, too, which meant someone had probably captured his big splash on camera.
Bruce et al were probably freaking out—
Tim was never going to live this down. Maybe he should just stay in this dimension. If he didn't die from falling out of a portal in the sky for the third time in his life—
“We have got to stop meeting like this,” said Danny, catching Tim in one arm and using an ecto-shield to block an ecto-blast with the other.
Staying in this dimension forever wouldn't be so bad at all.
Danny gripped Tim tightly as he flew in a loop-de-loop. That was the reason Tim’s stomach flip-flopped and definitely no other reason.
“Believe me, if we could meet any other way, I’d take it,” Tim said, grumpy because, again, he was wet. His hair did not look good when wet, and now he was gonna be stuck here for a few hours, looking pathetic and miserable.
He only realized what he’d actually said when Danny shot him a shit-eating grin and replied, “Oh yeah? What’ve you got in mind?”
Fortunately, Tim was saved from having to scramble and come up with an answer that preserved what was left of his dignity.
Unfortunately, someone launched another explosive something-or-other at them—which Danny evaded deftly, because of course he did, but "someone trying to kill us" wasn't exactly his favorite way to escape a minorly embarrassing conversation.
“Welcome back to this dimension," Danny said, graciously moving ahead in the conversation Tim had accidentally started and then failed to pick up on. "Sorry that you got yoinked here again. In the middle of a fight, no less."
“Considering what you've told me about the frequency of ghost attacks, I’m pretty sure I’m always at risk of showing up mid ghost-fight.”
“Sad, but true.”
Tim scanned the perimeter for the perpetrator. He didn't see anyone, but that didn't mean much when said perpetrator was (probably) a ghost and could (presumably) turn invisible at will.
Wherever the rogue was, Danny couldn’t fight effectively while holding Tim like a wet ferret.
So. Tim pulled out a grapple and launched himself to safety.
Not a moment too soon, either; another blast of something hit Danny’s hastily thrown-up shield again, exploding loudly. Whoever was shooting at them, they were getting closer.
“Who are we fighting? Skulker again?”
“If only. It’s Youngblood.”
Tim accessed his wrist computer, quickly scrolling through the database until he found the file labeled [Youngblood]. He certainly looked young; elementary school. His age was listed as ‘unknown’. Tim hadn’t had the chance to go through his case files yet, but he seemed less destructive than the other ghosts he and Danny had fought previously. That was a good thing, right?
Weaknesses: shortsightedness; commitment to the bit.
Known attributes: picks a new theme often; can’t be seen by adults or people who think they’re adults. What did that mean?
“A new theme…”
Danny was staring at Tim with a gobsmacked expression. “Where did you get that information?”
“I downloaded it from your computer. I’ve been analyzing your data on the ghosts you’ve fought, but I rated this one low priority.”
Danny grabbed Tim and phased him through the park bench, hiding in the bushes.
“Normally I’d agree with you, but he’s…tricky today.”
“Define ‘tricky’.”
“His theme this time is dinosaurs.”
“Dinosaurs?”
The ground shook as something large crashed into it.
Tim scanned through the Youngblood docket one more time.
Youngblood’s assistant (name unknown) is a skeleton ghost that shapeshifts to match Youngblood's theme. Known animal types: horse; parrot;
The ground shook again. Tim had a bad feeling this wasn’t a horse or a parrot.
“Danny, is Youngblood’s Skeleton Assistant a dinosaur, by any chance?”
Danny turned to look at him in horror. “You have to ask? Don’t tell me…you can’t see him? How old are you?”
“Legally?" Tim scrunched, trying to remember his last birthday. "Seventeen.”
“You’re like Jazz then.”
“Your sister?”
Danny picked him up and pulled him away as a crater the size of a tractor wheel slammed into the ground.
“Yeah, my sister. Jazz hasn't ever been able to see Youngblood because she’s always thought of herself as an adult."
Well. That explained the note in Youngblood’s file, then.
"Maybe it's just a quirk of me being from a different dimension?"
"Or, let me guess: You were given too much responsibility at a young age or forced to grow up or told ‘you’re so mature for someone so young’ and you like, internalized it?”
Tim grimaced. “Well—”
“You don’t have to answer that. It just makes things more complicated.” He took a deep breath, shaking his hair out.
"Do I need to see him to help you fight?"
"I guess not, though if you embrace your inner child for like, ten minutes, you'd probably be able to."
Tim did not particularly want to embrace his 'inner child'.
"He's searching for us on the other side of the park now," Danny said, "so we can catch our breath and. Figure something out, I guess. Never fought a dinosaur before..."
Now that Tim had a moment to check Danny out—professionally, of course—he saw that Danny didn’t look so good.
“Hey, are you hurt?”
Danny made a so-so motion with his hand.
“Before you got here, Youngblood hit me with some weird beam gun. I feel kind of…off. I think it’s interfering with my powers.”
“What do beam guns have to do with dinosaurs?”
“I think he watched a bootlegged version of Triassic Park.”
“You mean Jurassic Park?”
Danny looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “Why would they call it Jurassic park? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Triassic Park doesn’t make sense either! Cretaceous Park doesn’t sound very good though—”
“Okay, but only like three dinosaurs in the movie are cretaceous.”
“Well, the first one, maybe, but what about the others?”
“They made more? In your dimension? They only made one here!”
“Be glad. They do not improve.”
Danny winced as another shot hit the ecto-shield. “It gets worse every time he shoots it. It doesn’t seem to matter if he hits me directly or not.”
Tim wished Bruce’s disdain for magic hadn’t deprived Tim of the know-how for fixing ghost illnesses. “Is there anything I can do?”
“I doubt it.” Danny closed his eyes, wincing. He shook his head, as if clearing an unpleasant thought. "Here's what I know."
Danny ran through what he knew of Youngblood’s purpose for being here, which wasn’t much, because what it boiled down to was: Danny wasn’t sure, but Youngblood was probably just bored.
“I’m turning 18 soon," he said, as an afterthought, "so I guess he wants to play while we still can.”
“You still count your birthdays?” Tim said, like an idiot. “Sorry, that was rude.”
Danny didn’t respond to that; he froze, eyes squeezed shut.
“Ah, beans, I think I figured out what the beam does.” He opened his eyes again, pinning Tim with the toxic green. “Uh…don’t freak out?”
“Why would I freak out?” asked Tim, internally suppressing the panic. Don’t freak out was only something people said if something…well. Freaky were about to happen.
Danny winced again as white rings formed at his abdomen and traveled along his body until—
A normal guy was left sitting there. Black hair, blue eyes. Jeans and a hoodie.
Tim blinked at him.
“What’s up?” Danny said, voice the same as ever. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Thank god Danny was terrible at jokes. Nothing like it to shock Tim out of a stupor. “What was that? A magical girl transformation?”
Danny groaned. “Don’t call it that, I just got Tucker to stop.”
Tim understood now the instruction not to panic. He was definitely not panicking. He didn’t know what he was doing, exactly, but he could stay calm in a crisis. This wasn’t even a crisis, really. The opposite, really.
“I thought you were a ghost.”
“Half-ghost.” He gestured to himself. “This is the other half.”
"But you said you were dead!"
“I did die,” Danny said, like that was the point. He ran a hand through his hair. "Look, maybe I should have told you, but a lot of people think it's…weird. What I am. And…I guess it never gets easier. Telling people.”
"Telling people you're dead, or telling them you're alive?"
"Telling them I'm me."
Tim could relate, on some level. Not the dead part, but the identity part...
He wasn't upset Danny had kept it a secret. He didn't know what he was feeling, exactly, but it was far from bad.
He shook his head, wet hair slapping his face. This was not the time to think about all his not-so-bad feelings.
“Honestly I'm just glad you're not dead. Dead dead, I mean.”
“Well, the day's not over yet,” Danny mumbled, scanning the horizon. “Where’s Val when you need her…”
“Val?”
“Her gear can detect ghosts even when invisible.” He jerked his chin towards Tim’s wrist. “Look up Vendetta.”
Tim did. He couldn't say he was sorry not to meet her—apparently she was a) Danny’s ex and b) had a grudge against his ghost alias and was as likely to help as attack him.
“Danny—”
“Quiet, I'm listening for dino-sounds,” Danny hissed.
"You can't see Youngblood any more?"
Danny grimaced. "So remember what I said about being given too much responsibility at a young age or forced to grow up—"
"So, you can't see him when you're alive and not a ghost, then."
"Oops?"
Tim sighed.
“You’re taking all this surprisingly well,” Danny noted.
“Not the first time someone I thought was dead wasn’t so dead after all.”
Yes, Danny wasn’t dead. This was good news.
The bad news: they now had to fight a ghost neither of them could see.
“So Youngblood’s beam interrupts your ghost powers. That’s not going to kill you for real, is it?”
“No? I mean, I’ve lost access to my powers before, for various reasons. I’m pretty hard to kill now.”
“Worrying that you know that,” Tim said. “Any speculation on why he’s doing this to you now?”
“Because I can get away with stealing Sue for my permanent collection!” said a young, playful voice, right behind them.
Instincts took over and Tim used his bo to launch himself in the air and taking Danny with him, reaching inside his pouch to throw down smoke pellets, grabbing Danny’s hand and running.
“Who is Sue?”
He asked as they ran.
“Best preserved T-Rex skeleton ever found. They’re at the Field Museum in Chicago.”
“Good to see Rogues really aren't that different across dimensions, after all.”
“You have a dinosaur stealing rogue back home?”
Tim thought of the robo-rex sitting in the bat cave. “Sort of.”
Danny was oddly quiet as they ran along, but perhaps he understood the importance of silence during stealth and subterfuge maneuvers.
“Okay,” Tim said once they were a decent distance away, “how did he sneak up on us?”
“He might look like a kid, but he’s been a ghost for a long time.”
Tim wanted to just stare at him, marvel at how alive he looked when he wasn’t. Well. A ghost.
Time for that later, Tim. Focus.
He refocused and realized he was still holding Danny’s hand. Right. Probably should…let go. Of Danny’s hand. Which was warm, and solid. Because he wasn't dead.
“Why would he want to steal a T-Rex skeleton?”
“I don’t know, the whims of childhood? I did weird things when I was a kid, didn’t you?”
Tim thought of a hidden vault with SD cards full of vigilante pictures he’d taken on his nightly escapades.
“I was a pretty normal kid up until I wasn’t.”
“Sure, Jan,” Danny mumbled, narrowing his eyes in thought. “If only I had the Fenton Weasel with me, I could fix this up easily…I left all my weapons in my locker.”
“Your locker?”
“Yeah, at school.”
Right, school. Where Danny went. Because he was alive, and had dreams to go to CU and study astronomy and work for NASA and go to space and—
“Hold on, so why can’t you go to college again?”
Danny rolled his eyes. “Can we focus? I get enough of that from my parents.”
“Your parents who are ghost hunters and hunt you.”
“Tim.” Danny placed a hand on Tim’s shoulder. “Loving the support, so great, but we have bigger problems right now than my future and home life.”
“If you say so,” Tim grumbled, but he did try to refocus. “What about your team? Team Phantom? Could they bring us some gear?”
Danny shook his head. “I’m sure they’re already working on getting here, and they’ll bring their own weapons. I don’t know when they’ll show up, though. If they’ll show up. It’s always kind of dicey during school. Which is probably why ghosts usually attack during school,” he added, brow furrowed.
Danny’s breath frosted in front of him. His eyes narrowed and he held a finger up to his mouth and pulled Tim under a bush.
A moment later, the ground shook again with the force of a huge, invisible dinosaur ghost strolling past.
“Phantom! Come out, come out, wherever you are! I need directions to the museum!”
Danny’s eyes glowed green as he glared—apparently, all his ghost powers weren’t gone, after all.
Or, more likely, just because his ghost powers were inaccessible didn’t change the fact that he was part-ghost.
Tim was gonna have a good long think about the broader implications of all that later.
“He expects you to tell him where the dinosaur he’s trying to steal is?”
“I never said he was my smartest rogue. I don’t suppose you ever had a dinosaur phase in your youth?”
“No, I was more focused on…archaeology.” Against his will, really, but that was neither here nor there.
Tim pulled up the Youngblood files again, hoping some new information would miraculously appear.
“Okay, seriously, where did you get that much information?” Danny asked, leaning over Tim's shoulder to peer more closely at the display. "I know half of that isn't included in my Youngblood files."
“I put it together after the last time I was here,” Tim said, trying not to get distracted by Danny's warm breath on his neck.
Danny, oblivious, leaned closer. “Why would you make a ghost database when you didn't even know whether you'd end up here again?”
Scrolling through information had never been so challenging.
“I was bored. Your Rogues are pretty interesting.”
Tim gave up the pretense of focus and turned to look at Danny.
Danny was already looking at him, attention undivided.
Which on one hand: flattering.
On the other hand: invisible ghost dinosaur.
Tim cleared his throat. "I noticed your power ranking system was...unorthodox."
"what, 'annoying', 'super annoying', 'LOL' and 'proto-fruitloop' wasn't clear enough?"
Tim pointed to Youngblood. "You put a shrug emoji for Youngblood."
"His goals aren't domination and destruction. Usually he just wants to have fun.” Danny pinched his lips thoughtfully, which really did not help Tim focus. "You kind of just have to fight him until you can get him souped or convince him to go back to the Ghost Zone."
"He can be reasoned with?"
"As much as any eight year old with a sugar high before bedtime."
Tim sighed. “What about his assistant? Is he clever?”
“More than Youngblood, but that’s not saying much. Besides, he does whatever Youngblood wants in the end, so even if he is smart, it doesn’t make a difference.”
Tim pulled out some of the ghost devices Danny had given him during his last trip to this dimension. He’d tested them to the best of his ability back home, but he hadn’t yet had a chance to see them in action with an actual ghost.
And since they had at least one very large, dangerous ghost here…
“In that case…I think I might have a plan.”
Within ten minutes, Danny had Youngblood’s assistant secured in his Thermos with Youngblood convinced he’d ‘been abducted by aliens’.
Sometimes, it really was that easy.
Tim didn’t exactly feel good about it, though. Youngblood was crying, after all, and from the wet patches on Danny’s sleeves, clinging very hard.
“You can only see me half the time now, an-and you never play with me anymore unless I threaten to do something bad!”
“I’m sorry,” Danny said gently. “I’ll come see you more in the zone, I promise. You know where it is, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Youngblood said quietly.
“There’s a beanbag chair with your name on it, okay?”
“But now Gerard got abducted by aliens!”
”Uh,” Danny said, shooting Tim a helpless glance, “good thing I know a lot about space then, huh?”
“I know stuff about aliens,” Tim offer, guilt winding its way through his gut. “We’ll get your friend back.”
With that, it was easy enough to send Youngblood on his way. Or so Tim assumed—he still couldn’t see him.
“I can’t believe the assistant’s name is Gerard,” Danny said at length.
"You didn't know?"
“Almost four years I've known him and it never came up! Still, thanks for the assist. That was way easier than normal. I'd’ve never thought to use the Fenton glow sticks that way.”
Tim wondered if he'd get any points for admitting the idea came from Dragons and Dungeons...probably not.
Instead, he elected to stare for a moment longer at Danny, who was distracted enough rehashing the battle highlights that he didn't seem to notice Tim's gaze.
Can I call you every time he shows up?” Danny grinned, giving Tim’s arm a friendly punch.
Right. Real problems. They had ‘em. Focus Tim.
“I can’t predict when the portals’ll show up, so probably not. But if you figure out how to call a portal at will, then sure, I'm your huckleberry.”
Danny laughed, even though Tim didn't really think what he'd said was that funny. “Sure, I'll get right on that. What were you in the middle of doing this time?”
“Falling in a river, I guess.”
“Oh yeah. You’re all…wet." Danny tilted his head. "Hm. We can’t have that. Let's get you out of that and into something dry.”
“What about school?”
“Without my flight, there’s no way I’d be able to get back before school ends, let alone getting back inside undetected. There’s only one and a half periods left, anyway. It’s fine.”
Well. Tim didn’t have a leg to stand on when it came to ditching school.
“Back to Fenton Works it is, then?”
"Home sweet home."
Rather than going through the front door this time, Danny took him around to the side.
“Can you grapple us up to that window there?” he said, pointing to the second story. “I’d fly us up, but, you know. Powers are still a no-go.”
“Oh, uh. Yeah. I can do that.” Tim was not blushing as Danny stepped into the circle of his arms. He wasn’t. “Isn’t the window locked, though?”
“Nah, I never lock it. Sometimes my friends need to break in while I’m fighting ghosts.”
Tim decided not to question that too much.
As Danny said, the window was unlocked. It was just an ordinary bedroom, if a bit more space-centric than Tim’s own. It wasn’t too messy, but it wasn’t clean either. The bed wasn’t made, and most of the clothes seemed to be in the general area of the hamper if not inside. It looked lived in, not to put too fine a point on it.
Danny immediately went to his closet and started rummaging through it.
“We’re about the same size, yeah? I don’t have a lot of clean stuff, sorry,” he said, emerging and tossing Tim a black and white sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. “Laundry day is Saturday.”
Tim caught it and looked at the sweatshirt, smirking. “Is this what I think it is?”
Danny rubbed the back of his neck. “A really cool sweatshirt?”
What it was, was a Phantom sweatshirt, complete with the symbol and everything.
The fact that Danny was pulling it out of his closet could only mean one thing.
“You wear your own merch? Isn’t that kind of risky?”
“I don’t wear it outside,” Danny said defensively.
“If you don’t wear it outside, where do you wear it?”
“I, uh. Sleep in it.” He cleared his throat, cheeks flushed. “Anyway, even if I did wear it to school or whatever, no one would make the connection that I’m Phantom. I mean, no one expects a ghost to have a secret identity. Especially not as a living person. Especially not me."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Danny shrugged. "I'm the quiet, nerdy, son of the town's crazy ghost hunters. Why would anyone think I'm a ghost vigilante?"
Before Tim could say anything about that, Danny pressed on ahead. “Do you need any, um. Boxers or anything…?”
“I have a backup in my belt. Each compartment is a dry bag.”
“You have back-up boxers in your utility belt? Why?”
“This isn’t the first time I’ve fallen in a river.”
“You know what, fair.” Danny jerked his thumb towards the door. “Bathroom is down the hall, but my parents might be home, so try to be quiet.”
As he slipped out the door, Tim heard nothing but the constant hum of electricity coursing through the walls, pulsing like a live wire. He'd thought, last time, that it would be contained to the lab, but Danny had explained the whole house was basically armed to the teeth.
He wondered what it would be like to live in a house designed to kill you, but he'd lived with Damian, so he kind of knew.
At least it looked like an encounter with the Drs Fenton wasn't in the cards today, which he was quietly relieved about.
He tip-toed down the hall and opened the bathroom door silently—the well-oiled hinges were likely Danny's work—and changed quickly, glad to be dry again. He stared at himself in the mirror, debating whether to take off the domino mask or not. There really wasn’t a reason to preserve his secret identity here. No one knew him here, as Tim Drake-Wayne or Red Robin. Well, except for Danny.
He took off the mask.
It was oddly…freeing. He could just be himself.
When he got back to the room, Danny was texting someone furiously while spinning around his desk chair, brow furrowed.
He looked up when Tim entered, eyebrows raised in surprise. “Oh. uh. Hi. Nice face. So, um! Does everything fit okay?”
Tim coughed, tugging the sleeves down. “It fits fine, yeah.”
“Cool, cool, cool.”
Silence stretched between them in what some might call an awkward way.
“It suits you,” Danny said, nodding to the sweatshirt.
“Uh, thanks?” Tim ran a hand through his hair, dreading the frizzy mess it was gonna be from all the everything left in Gotham River. “Is it weird seeing people wearing the thing you died in?”
“Maybe it would be if I were actually dead dead, but I’m not, so.” Danny shrugged. "You’re much better than the people who usually wear my merch."
Tim sat down on the beanbag, since the only other alternative was the bed. “There’s official merch to buy?”
“I mean…technically it’s just Tucker selling it. He got some deal with a clothing company. Not sure how—not sure I want to know.” Danny smiled ruefully. “Gotta fund those PDAs somehow.”
Tim found himself curious. He’d heard a lot about Sam and Tucker, but he still hadn’t met them. “What kind of merch does he sell?”
Danny laughed. “Well. Hoodies, hats, t-shirts, stickers. He used to sell thermoses, but he kept mixing them up with the real ones. Can’t catch a ghost with a normal thermos, so.”
He shrugged, as if to say ‘what can you do’. He looked careful. Relaxed. Alive.
Danny was alive. That changed things. Tim wasn’t gonna think too much about what it changed, not yet, but he could feel the wheels turning in the back of his mind.
Speaking of wheels.
"Is that a skateboard?"
Danny half-laughed, half-grimaced. "Well, it used to be. Now it's the Fenton Fender 5000."
Tim looked at it skeptically. "It looks like a skateboard. What makes it a Fenton Fender?"
"Supposedly, you can ride it through the Ghost Zone, but I'm pretty sure my dad made the trucks himself and they are whack. Not to mention that I can't find any grip tape that'll actually stick to the deck, and ectoplasm makes polyurethane sticky, so overall it's just a bad experience."
Tim smiled. "You're a skater."
"I was. I kind of…stopped after the accident. I mean, when you can fly, why use a skateboard?"
Tim could tell he didn't really believe it by the wistful way he looked at the former board.
"When I stopped riding, my dad thought it was because of ghosts, so he ghost-proofed my board. So even if I wanted to…" he shrugged.
"Hm."
“My thoughts exactly,” Danny said dryly, spinning around on his chair.
“So, what now?”
“Well, if you’re good to go, now we go back the way we came and enter through the front door.”
"You know," Tim began, the bare bones of one of those ideas he got sometimes forming both too fast and not fast enough, "last time I visited your dimension, I was promised a tour when I came back."
Danny grinned wide. “You want to play hookie with me?”
“I have a get out of this dimension free card." Tim held out his hand. "If you’re scared though…”
“Scared? Please. I never get to ditch school for fun reasons.”
“What can I say? I’m a bad influence.”
Danny just cackled, a carefree sound that wasn’t really attractive but only made it all the more likable.
Tim was firmly of the opinion that if you'd been to one mid-sized town Mall in America, you'd been to them all. He wasn't disappointed when he innocently asked to see the local variety, grabbed a surreptious glance at the map, and saw this mall, like most, contained a skate shop.
He managed to pull another laugh from Danny once he realized where Tim was taking them.
It was a sound Tim could easily get used to.
"I thought I was the one leading this tour, but I guess not. Man, I haven't been here in ages," Danny marveled, picking up a deck with some sort of skeleton on it.
"Let me get you a new board," said Tim. "As a thank you. For catching me."
Danny raised an eyebrow at him, which was not the reaction Tim was hoping for.
"You don't have any money from this dimension."
"Well…pick out what you would buy, then, and I'll find something back home that's similar.”
"Wow, a skateboard from another dimension? As a thank you gift?"
"compared to saving my life, it's a small thing. So, first things first: assembled or unassembled?"
Danny squinted.
"You're a skater too?"
Tim shrugged. "Guilty as charged."
Danny rolled his eyes, but they went into the shop.
Some brands were familiar, others less so. But it was fun to look, and Tim got an idea about what Danny liked from observing him.
They did get distracted watching the Roxy Women’s Longboard Team Film, but that could happen to anyone.
"There's only one thing to do after going to Skate World," Danny declared. "Nasty Burger."
"With a name like that, it has to be good."
"It almost blew up and nearly killed my whole family once and I still eat there." He paused and added, "actually, technically it almost killed everyone I love twice."
"Um."
"They don't remember it, it's chill. Clockwork reversed time and I got to avoid becoming the worst, most evil version of myself."
"Ah, gotcha. Hate it when the evil version of yourself from the future tries to wreck your life to ensure their own creation."
"So annoying," Danny agreed.
Tim’s face must have been doing something stupid and feelings-related, because Danny asked him, "What is it?"
"Sorry, you're just…really cool?"
Danny snorted. "Was that an ice pun?"
"What? No. Well, not on purpose—let me start over." Tim took a deep breath, in and out. "You're protecting this whole town, this whole dimension, all by yourself. You don't have to. You don't have a tragic backstory or extreme training or a vendetta."
"Technically, I do have a Vendetta. Her name is Val."
Tim smiled. "Okay, you have a rogue-slash-ex girlfriend named Vendetta, I'll give you that. But my point is, you just…got powers and decided to do something good with them. But you're so normal about it?"
"I can't tell if that's an insult or a compliment," Danny said dryly. "What was I supposed to do with ghost powers? Steal stuff?"
"Lots of people would be selfish."
"I mean, I'm not perfect…" he shrugged.
“I'm the one who got the portal working, so everything that comes out of it is my responsibility."
"Including me?"
"You came out of a random portal, that's totally different."
“How?”
“I don’t have to take responsibility. I just want to.”
Danny kicked a rock down the street, a somewhat immature move that didn't fail to be charming.
"Look, I'd be lying if I said it isn't nice to be appreciated, but I've done some less-than-heroic things with my abilities. I try not to, but I'm only human. Half, anyway."
Rather than address the many landmines in that statement, Tim said, "Less than heroic?"
"I might have pranked some bullies. A few times.”
“Did they deserve it? Better yet, do you regret it?”
“I plead the fifth," Danny said slyly. Then, as he'd done several times now, he changed the subject. "Enough about me, though. What about you? You don't have powers at all. You one hundred percent just decided to train yourself to be a genius ninja hacker—just 'cause—and you regularly face off against aliens and metas and the like."
"It wasn’t 'just 'cause'. Someone needed to step up, so I did. My city was dying, and my da—my city’s hero was killing himself. I couldn’t stand by and let it happen."
"Most people would. But I guess we're cut from the same cloth, eh?" Danny grinned.
Tim didn’t really know what to say to that. Better to just move on.
“How do you feel? Are your powers back yet?”
Danny scrunched his nose. “Not quite. It’s like…you know when you go to the dentist and they numb your teeth and you can’t feel half your face? It’s like that. I know my powers are there, but I can’t feel them.”
“They’ll come back though?”
“Yeah, eventually. Probably.”
Unfortunately they never made it to Nasty Burger, as their fun outing that wasn’t a date but was maybe date-adjacent came to an end, abruptly, with a text that had Danny grimacing a “I need to get back to my house like, now.”
"Parents?"
"Yeah, they heard about the ghost attack..."
Danny was quiet as they hurried back to the monstrosity of a house he called home.
Tim had noticed the extreme amount of surveillance at the front door the last time he'd been there (it wasn't exactly what anyone would call "hidden"), but he hadn't noticed what he could confidently now identify as an ecto-scanner.
He pointed to it wordlessly.
Danny smiled, though it was small compared to the others Tim had seen from him.
"Don't worry about that, it doesn't work on me. I made sure of it."
With that worrying declaration, he opened the front door.
“Mom! I’m home!”
“Young man, where on earth have you been?" called a voice from the kitchen.
“I've been with friends! The school let us leave early because of the ghost attack!” Danny called back.
Tim shot him a look. That was a lie. Not even a very good one.
“Danny, come in here,” said the voice, tone not quite judgemental, but maybe edging close to something like that.
Danny grimaced.
“Follow my lead,” he said quietly to Tim, jerking his head towards the kitchen.
Tim followed.
He nearly wished he hadn’t, given that the woman in a teal jumpsuit who looked about two facial expressions away from being a new villain.
It wasn't that he'd forgotten that the people who’d been shooting at Danny the first time Tim had fallen through a portal were Danny's parents; he'd thought about it at length since Danny revealed the Fentons were his family and didn't know who Phantom was.
But that had been before he'd known Danny was, technically, alive.
He'd thought it was complicated and sad for Danny to haunt his home with his ghost hunter parents who didn't know he was still around (and probably wouldn't appreciate it).
Now that he knew Danny had to go out there, be shot at by them, and come home and act like everything was fine...
Complicated didn't even begin to cover it.
“You know you're supposed to call us if there's a ghost attack," said Danny's mom, ghost hunter extraordinaire. "And who’s your new friend?”
“He’s a nighttime vigilante from another dimension,” Danny said, reaching into the pantry and pulling out a bag of chips.
“Danny,” his mom said in a warning tone.
“I’m kidding. He just transferred to Casper. Since I missed class last Friday, we’ve been assigned lab partners.”
He grabbed two sodas with the worrying name Purple Drink.
“And what about the ghost?” she prompted, somewhat impatient. “Your father and I didn’t get any alerts, and since you didn't call us—”
“Relax, it was a false alarm." Danny rolled his eyes. "Freshmen, you know how they are.”
Danny's mom pursed her lips.
“Perhaps your father and I need to return to make another presentation on the real threat ghosts pose and why it’s important not to joke…”
“That’s definitely not necessary,” Danny said. “If anything, they’re too vigilant. They think everything is a ghost. Cold breeze? It’s a ghost. Weird sound? Ghost. Test coming up that you didn’t study for? Well. If it gets interrupted because of a ghost…”
“Well, if you’re sure…”
“I’m sure.” He smiled. “Anyway, we’ll be working upstairs.”
“Make sure DOOMED doesn’t somehow get turned on before you finish your work, Danny!” she called after him.
Tim watched the whole exchange with fascination and a hint of concern.
When they were in Danny’s room, he asked, “do you always lie to your parents that easily?”
“Well, you can see how telling the truth went,” he replied, chip in his mouth as he booted up the computer. He held the bag out to Tim.
Wuffles have waves! It declared.
That was less worrying than the fact that the flavor was, notably, Ranch 2.
Well. Potato chips were potato chips. Tim had eaten stranger things.
“They have a portal to another dimension in their basement. Their son is a ghost-vigilante—”
“Half-ghost,” Danny corrected, “And I'm really more of a ghost catcher than a vigilante. Also, they don’t know any of that.”
Tim had guessed as much, but it still made him feel some sort of way to hear it. “You didn’t tell them?”
“I did try,” he said. “But it got hard to keep working up the nerve to explain, especially when they spend their days shooting at me and their nights telling me how evil all ghosts are. When every conversation is peppered with ‘I want to rip them apart molecule by molecule’ or ‘I want to pin Phantom down and study him like a bug’, well… being honest seems a lot less important.”
Tim took a bite of the chip. Ranch 2, as a flavor, was...indescribable.
“You don’t think they’d accept you.”
“They might. Don’t really want to risk it. Plus, even if they accept the ‘ghost’ thing, I doubt they’d accept me going out and fighting them all the time. Not that I have much of a choice,” he added darkly.
“Wouldn’t it be better if they stopped shooting at you, though?”
“Sure, if they could hit me.” At Tim’s look of concern, he said, “I know they love me. It’s not me they hate, just ghosts in general.”
“But you are a ghost.”
“Yeah. I think their love is greater than their hate, though…I do kind of worry what their love might drive them to do. Half-ghosts aren’t exactly common knowledge. But in less than a year, I’ll be an adult, and then…”
“And then?”
“Well. I’ll either get into a school, or I won’t.” He shrugged, as if it were a done deal.
Speaking of which.
“About that.”
“Yeah. What about it?”
“Well, I didn’t think about it before, you know, because I thought you were dead, but—you graduate next year, don’t you? How are you going to fight ghosts here if you’re in school?”
Danny aggressively popped the can of his purple drink.
“You say that like I have any chance of getting into school.”
“Why wouldn’t you? With engineering skills like yours, any school would be desperate to have you.”
“Well, I don’t know what it’s like in your dimension, but here they care more about things like scores on standardized tests and grades than they do about" —Here, Danny grimaced, as though thinking of something particularly distasteful—"potential.”
Tim wondered if Danny had also heard the phrase 'you have so much potential if you only applied yourself' bandied about.
“Besides," Danny continued, "it’s not like I invented any of it. I just fix my parents' stuff.”
“You know more about the science of inter-dimensional travel than anyone I’ve ever met.”
“Yeah, and the government hides all proof of ghosts’ existence, so I can't use it to wow anyone. No one would care about what I’ve learned since as far as the world is concerned, it's fake science. Except for maybe UW, but no thanks. I do not want to be a badger."
Danny looked away, back at the computer, loading up what Tim was sure was the video game Danny's mom had mentioned.
Tim, however, was not ready to drop this conversation.
"Okay, but if you could go to school, what would you do?"
He busied himself with trying out the soda which, somehow, tasted like the concept of the color purple. Fascinating.
Danny chewed on his cheek while he thought through his answer. "I still think it's all unlikely to work out, but...if I could get into a school…I'd probably unplug the portal."
Tim hadn’t expected that. “Why?”
“Ghosts have messed up my school life enough. I’d plug it back in when I graduated or something, but…I don’t know. It's not like it needs to be open. There are other portals."
"I'm intimately aware," Tim deadpanned.
It had the desired effect: Danny chuckled.
"Anyway, all that is a big ‘if’. I'm hoping to get accepted to at least one school, but it's not looking great. A guy can dream, through."
Tim watched Danny select a character from the screen, while Tim thought over his next point carefully before deciding, fuck it. He didn’t have time to be careful.
"Have you thought about going to school in another dimension?"
Danny scoffed. "What?"
"In my dimension, we have laws against meta discrimination."
"Don’t you need to have a meta gene to be a Meta?”
“Maybe you do have a meta gene,” Tim pointed out. “Our dimensions are pretty close, right? Surely I can’t be the first person to hop between them.”
Tim shrugged. " Besides, Aliens count as metas, for the purposes of meta discrimination, so even if you don't have the gene, you'd be protected.”
Danny did look like he was considering it. Or maybe he was re-evaluating his character choice.
"How would I even get into school there? I don’t have an ID in your world, or school records they could verify. Besides, you’re the one who keeps getting tossed between our dimensions. I don’t even know where your dimension is."
Tim pulled out his wrist computer and pulled up the results he’d found from the equipment Danny had given him. He’d had a few weeks to figure out how to interface it and make sense of the data; Danny could probably make sense of it immediately.
“Would this information help you find it?”
Danny looked intrigued. “Does your wrist thing plug into computers?”
“That depends: does your dimension have a USB-C?”
Danny grinned. “It’s like carcinisation .”
“The C in USB-C stands for Crab.”
Danny laughed again. Tim was getting invested in hearing that laugh as much as possible.
Danny downloaded the information quickly; Tim was impressed by the OS. Apparently, Tucker had made it. It was ‘virtually unhackable’.
“I’ll have to go through the data later. You collected a lot. Thank you.”
Tim shrugged. “I like to be thorough. So, do you think you could find my dimension with this?”
“Eventually,” Danny said slowly. “Doesn’t mean I could go to school there easily, though. I mean, I'd still have to get in.”
"Well…the Justice League could help you? As long as you can pass the academic equivalence exams, there are tons of schools who'd be champing at the bit to have you. And it's not like you'd have to stay there all the time, right? You can come home when you want to."
If you want to, he didn't say.
“Would that really work?”
“I can look into it,” Tim offered. “Though I don’t know how I’d tell you about it unless I end up here again.”
“Well, I’ll look into that for you. Keep looking into it, really.” Danny blushed slightly. “Does NASA exist in your dimension?”
“Sort of? It depends on what you want to do. A lot of their research got absorbed by STAR labs, but these days NASA focuses on the history of our solar system specifically—”
Danny listened, enraptured, game completely abandoned as Tim explained the various space programs in his dimension. He almost looked like he had literal stars in his eyes.
“Your dimension sounds so cool,” he whispered.
“I mean, it’s not all great. We get a lot of alien invasions, but that’s par for the course when you’re on the intergalactic stage.”
Danny sighed wistfully. “I’m sure that’s stressful, but still. Aliens. So cool.”
“So says you, with inter-dimensional ghosts.”
“Ghosts stop being cool after Dumpty Humpty decided they were never coming here again.”
“Who is that?”
“Rock band. Now, do you want to sit here and talk about the depressing realities of my life, or do you want to do something fun? I bet this dimension has video games you’ve never even heard of before, let alone played.” Danny held out a controller. "You do like video games, right?"
“What about the portal? Normally you say we need to watch out for it.”
“I did some research since the last time you were here. I think the portal is tied to you. You’ve got an anchor in your home dimension, so the portal should show up wherever you are. Clearly the GZ doesn’t want to strand you here, it’s just…well, I’m not sure what it’s trying to do. The investigation is on-going, but we can relax a bit.”
He wiggled the controller. “So. Do you like video game, or do you definitely like video games?”
Tim laughed. “I guess I gotta represent my whole dimension’s honor or something.”
Danny grinned.
Eventually the return portal came, as it had both times before.
"Aw man, we didn't finish our fake science project," Danny joked, hopping out of his chair like he weighed nothing.
“I told you I’m a bad influence.” Before Danny could say anything else, he pressed ahead with,"Is it just me, or are these jaunts into your dimension getting longer each time?"
“It’s not just you,” Danny agreed. “"The first time was three hours, the second one was five, we're coming up on hour seven…I guess we'll know if it's incremental or exponential as time goes on."
"Assuming I come back here again."
"You have to," Danny said seriously. "You told me you were gonna give me a skateboard."
Tim chuckled. “I did say that. About the sweatshirt—”
“Keep it. I have one with me already, literally always.” Danny winked. “Bye Tim.”
“Bye, Danny. See you soon, I hope.”
Tim fell through the portal; it was almost a gentle sensation this time. Or maybe he was just getting used to it.
It dropped him off in the foyer at The Manor this time; fortunately it was empty this time of day.
He was going to have to think of a way he got here before anyone asked, specifically—
“Tim. Where have you been?”
Tim winced. “Hey Bruce.”
"Where have you been?"
"Did you miss me?"
“We saw you disappear into the river.”
Tim winced again.
“I’m a good swimmer,” he said, quickly trying to make an escape up the stairs.
“Tim, please." Bruce rubbed a hand down his face, shoulders tense. "Your tracker disappeared from the map, even Clark couldn't find you, Conner said your heartbeat was gone. Where did you go?”
Tim paused, hand on the rail. So they'd noticed his absence this time.
“You asked Conner to find me?”
Bruce pressed his lips firmly together before he, visibly, chose to relax his whole everything.
Maybe it was meant to lull Tim into a sharing mood. Maybe it would have worked on someone who wasn't Tim.
“He said you've been experimenting with involuntary dimension hopping. He didn’t seem overly worried, but even so. I couldn’t find you.”
Tim, knowing from personal experience what that was like, felt an ugly sort of shame rise up in him, which he was smart enough to recognize was a stupid reaction, not that it made the feelings go away. It wasn't like it was his fault he kept getting spirited away by a semi-sentient undead dimension.
But. Well. He could have told Bruce it had been happening.
On the other hand, he had told Kon about the portals, mostly so he wouldn't freak out if Tim’s heartbeat disappeared. Also, to avoid this situation precisely. Apparently, Kon wasn't up to lying to Bruce.
Guess it was time for the truth or something equally appalling.
“I got sucked through a paranormal wormhole in reality to another dimension where I played video games with my new friend, Danny. He’s a half-ghost half-human ghost catcher slash vigilante.”
Bruce stared at him for a long time before leaning his head back as if to ask the heavens for strength. As if the heavans had ever given them anything but rain.
“If you don’t want to tell me, you can just say ‘I don’t want to tell you’.”
“Yeah, but then you’d try and figure it out anyway,” Tim pointed out.
"Does this have anything to do with you hacking League communications to speak with Zatanna and Constantine and Deadman?"
Of course he'd known about that. Dammit.
"If I say yes and that I didn't ask you because I know you hate magic, will you let it go?"
"You can come to me with anything, Tim. I hope you know that."
"Even a sentient ghost dimension that's an unholy marriage of science and magic?"
Bruce, apparently, decided that was enough attempted interrogation for the day, since he just hummed and walked away, which was the closest to a concession Tim would probably get.
Actually, he probably decided he was just gonna figure it out on his own without dealing with Tim's whole Everything.
Fair.
"As long as you're being safe and using protection."
Ah, the rare dry Bruce humor.
"As safe as possible! No problems here."
Danny was right about one thing. Sometimes the truth was unbelievable.
"I like the sweatshirt," Bruce said, turning around and walking sleepily back into his office.
"B," Tim called back, "have you ever fallen for someone from another dimension?"
Bruce hesitated, expression thoughtful.
"Well, there was a situation with—"
Tim realized abruptly he didn't want to know about his dad’s love life.
He hurried up the stairs, definitely not running away, but also not not running.
"Nevermind, have a nice night."
Tim had a problem alright. He was falling for Danny.
And not in the ‘yeeted from a portal at 10,000 feet in the air’ way. Though it did kind of feel like that.