[ V. a lesson in obedience ]

Three Years Ago…

Danny's beginning to think he's made a mistake.

Well, no, he's always thought that. From the day Sam convinced him to pose inside the ghost portal to the moment he shook hands with Ra's al Ghul, the voice in his head that sounded a little bit like Jazz would wag its proverbial finger at him. Danny would reason with himself that he had no other option except to join Ra's al Ghul. That man was his grandfather and his parents' benefactors. He's wealthy, or at least powerful enough that Vlad would have a hard time pressuring Ra's to give up Danny.

Danny would be safe here. The whole world would be safe if Danny were here. Free from that terrible future of bleak gray skies and ruins upon ruins. Of Amity being a bright, shining city of the future—the only city of the future— and the wasteland beyond its borders.

Staying in Amity Park would have trapped him to that destiny— Danny knew it. His future was written in stone, or else why would the goddamn Master of Time try to kill him specifically? Danny had to leave. Had a duty to do everything in his power to divert the world from that catastrophic timeline. He owed it to his friends, his family.

(There is another voice, one that sounds like Sam, saying that in many Greek myths, the ones who try to avert a prophecy only end up hastening it instead.)

Or maybe there was no mistake. There was no mistake because there was no alternative outcome. That no matter where he decided to go after Amity, no matter what he does, the seed of that dreaded future had already been planted and he was only prolonging the inevitable.

So why not trust the al Ghuls? Why not trust the only family he had left in this world, the ones who took him in and helped him when he needed it most? Danny will give them all his secrets, his scant bit of knowledge, his weaknesses, so that when the future finally catches up with him, at least his family will be prepared to take him down.

(He refused to kill them again.)

Whatever becomes of him in the future, Danny's family will live. He will make sure of it. And the first step of his self-appointed mission was to tell his family exactly what the future held in store for them.

Ra's al Ghul— "Grandfather", the man would correct— listened to Danny's sorry tale with an inscrutable expression, fingers steepled in front of him. "Well," he said, leaning back into his office chair "This is certainly an interesting situation we've found ourselves in."

Interesting, he said. As if he didn't just find out that the boy he let live under his roof was a veritable nuke with a ticking timer.

"I did say it was complicated," Danny tittered. His legs were getting stiff from standing like this for so long; his spine straight, shoulders rolled back, calling upon whatever bit or 'proper etiquette' he remembered from looking at Mr. Manson.

Ra's quirked an eyebrow, as if sensing Danny's distress. "Your feet are too close together. Place them shoulder length apart and you'll feel much better."

Sheepish, Danny did so.

"Now, I will agree that your situation is rather 'complicated' as you put it, but I'm quite certain that it's not the worst that the League has dealt with." And what did that mean? "Regardless, I believe that the solution is quite simple."

"And that is?"

"From the Fentons' research—corroborated with your own information—ghosts are an extremely emotional breed of creatures. What drove the alternate you to the brink was not just grief, but the lack of control over that grief. The solution, then, is to train you to have more control over your own emotions, over your own mental faculties."

Well…the theory looked sound enough. But it seemed simple. Too simple. "And how would we do that?"

Ra's al Ghul gave a wry grin. "I have some ideas."

The next thing Danny knew, he was being shipped from the mountainous cradle of Nanda Parbat to Infinity Island, located…in some ocean somewhere. He didn't really know, and it wasn't like anyone would tell him anyway. It's been over a month since he was unceremoniously dropped off here by masked men, with nothing to his name but a set of clothes thrown in his direction. Like any sane person, Danny assumed that there must've been some mix-up and went to find Dusan—Mentor, that is the name by which you call me here— to get this all straightened out.

The grin Dusan—no, Mentor—gave made the hairs on the back of Danny's neck rise. Dusan explained that no, there was no mix-up. Ra's al Ghul sent direct orders for Danny to be placed under his tutelage. It was for Danny's own good, Dusan said.

Infinity Island, among other things, functioned as some kind of boot camp for the League. (League of what, Danny didn't know.) Danny was shoved in the most recently formed cohort—a group of twenty people between seventeen and twenty-five years old—who were already three weeks into their training. Which meant that the entire cohort had to repeat three weeks of training just so Danny could catch up.

Mentor insisted. He wanted to assess his students' progress for himself, now that he was stepping in to take the place of their instructor.

And while the cohort expressed their gratitudes at being personally trained by an al Ghul…well, let's just say that Danny doesn't expect to be making friends anytime soon.

Endurance training—or as Danny liked to call it, 'Coach Testlaff's P.E. Class from Hell on steroids'—would definitely rank in Danny's Top 10 Worst Experiences Ever. Which was saying quite a lot considering part of that list was being mind controlled, getting electrocuted in a portal to hell, and seeing everyone he cared about blow up.

(Smoke. Rubble digging into his palm. The smell of burning fle—)

Though unlike P.E. class, there isn't a bell to tell Mentor when their training is up for the day. More often than not, they'll be working late into the night. Given just enough time afterwards to drag themselves to their cots and pass out, only to be woken up just a few hours past dawn.

Danny dreams.

He seemed to be dreaming a lot these days.

He dreams that he is amidst the rubble of the Nasty Burger, hands welded to the boiler. The rumbling machine slowly tick-tick-ticking away at his life.

He dreams of waking up at his house, the entire explosion a hyper-realistic nightmare. Of running down the stairs to see his parents in the kitchen. Of hugging them, loving them, and raising his eyes up to see their burned and melted faces. Their charred hands cradled his cheek, and their gurgled voices ask him why.

He dreams that he is in the Ghost Zone. Trapped on a barren rock floating endlessly into the void with nothing but himself and the empty vacuum of eternity.

He dreams of floating above a world gone mad. His skin is a frostbitten blue, his hair a fiery mane. Two contrary states that pull on his insides and make him want to scream. He is twenty-four and fifty-five. Young and old. Phantom and Plasmius. Both and simultaneously neither at all. Either way he is grieving and grieving and the hurt won't stop, their screaming will never stop, not until you make them.

He dreams of a world in ruin, of fire licking the skies and bones crushed underfoot. He dreams of heroes falling and villains scrambling to find a place in this fractured world.

He dreams of a woman— familiar but not—who fights him with the ferocity of a thousand infernos to buy time for her son to escape.

He dreams of crushing her throat. The bones snapped so easily in his hands.

He felt nothing.

(Cold-cold-cold.)

He wakes up with a pillow thrown at his head.

"Will you shut up," said the person in the next cot over in lightly accented english. "Some of us are trying to sleep here."

Danny placed his hands on the pillow over his face and debated screaming into it out of spite.

Instead he mumbles a hoarse sorry through cracked lips and tosses the pillow back. The person—starts with an H, Danny couldn't remember—simply glared at him before folding the pillow in half and sleeping the other way.

Danny pulled his blanket higher over his shoulder.

He cannot sleep. Refused to despite knowing that they will be woken up in a few hours and worked until their bones are jelly and their muscles sore and the moon high in the sky.

A pair of bare feet came into his vision. "Oh mon dieu, you're not crying are you?"

The figure—Danny still couldn't remember his name—crouched in front of Danny. He was one of the older teens in Danny's cohort, probably just a few years older than Jazz. He even had red hair, too, though it was shades darker and closer to a dark auburn than ginger.

Danny glared at him. "Not crying," he insisted. Though as his hand came up to touch his cheek, he discovered that it was wet.

"Yeah," drawled the other. "Not crying."

Danny's arm shot out to try and jab the guy in the chest and knock him over.

His fist was blocked. The man looked at him with a raised brow, amused.

"What do you want?" Danny spat.

"What I wanted was to sleep, but since someone couldn't keep their nightmares the fuck down—"

"I said sorry."

"'Sorry' isn't going to give me those precious minutes back, are they?" He said, throwing Danny's arm back. "So I figured I'd come over here and find something interesting to keep myself occupied with. What's your name, kid?"

Danny, he wanted to say. My name is Danny Fenton. "I go by Danyal."

"Hm." He sat himself down onto the cold concrete, legs crossed in front of him, and held out an open hand. "Name's Henri."

Apprehensively, Danny shook it.

"Well," Henri said, "now that the pleasantries are out of the way, tell me something about yourself."

"What?"

Henri gave him a look. "Listen, Danyal, I'm tired but sleeping now is a lost cause considering that any minute now Mentor is gonna burst through those doors to whoop our asses into shape. I'm bored. You're the only entertainment I've got." He propped up his chin on the back of his hand. "So, tell me about yourself."

"I…I don't really know what to say."

"I don't know— anything?" He gestured at Danny. "You're like, what, twelve?"

"Fourteen."

"Same difference. Your life must have been all sorts of fucked up to end up here."

Well, Danny thought, he isn't wrong. "Well, I'm from—"

Henri cut him off. "Nope. We don't share information about who we were before. That person's dead, remember?"

"Dead? How did you—"

"You had to fake your death too, didn't you? A lot of the recruits had to do that."
"Oh…I didn't know."

"It's 'cuz you're new."

"Well then how am I supposed to tell you about myself if I can't talk about myself?"

"...You have a point." Henri grimaced. "It'll probably just be easier to just ask questions, isn't it."

Danny shrugged. "Probably."

Henri and Danny talked for no more than an hour before it was time to train once again. The questions were neutral, mostly. Awkward ice breakers that one would expect on the first day of school. Yet somehow, in that small time, Danny thought that he might have found himself something like a friend.

(Friend, his core sang. Friend-yes-maybe? Friend-red-friend-warm.)

Training could consist of anything, though the majority of it dealt with physical fitness. Running laps around the island; push-ups, pull-ups, and sit-ups; swimming against the tides; obstacle courses; drown-proofing; etcetera, etcetera. When it wasn't any of those things, Mentor taught them how to eat, how to stand, how to sit, how to talk, and even how to breathe. Everything must be done with perfect intention. And if you failed, then you were met with a never ending tirade of insults shouted in your face and hours of extra training on your shoulders.

And if they weren't being yelled at, then they were being taught the purpose of the League. Of Ra's al Ghul, and how the League functioned as the hand that carried out his ambitions. He spoke with a low and steady cadence, expounding upon them the evils and horribleness of the world and the greatness of Ra's al Ghul's mission. "The world is beautiful, recruits," Mentor said. "But mankind pollutes it with its cruelty."

Danny thought of Vlad and his slow-burning rage. Thought of the GIW and their cruel zealotry. Thought of Freakshow and his need to control. Thought of Dash and the A-listers, their brutal fists and their sharp cut words; of Mr. Lancer and his willingness to turn a blind eye; of his parents, ridiculed and derided by Amity Park despite their genius. He thought of the story of a boy whose grief was so great he tore out his own humanity. And how his humanity transformed into a creature of red eyes and blue-tinted skin—turning on the boy and destroying the world.

(Danny…Danny didn't disagree with the idea.)

He learned as well that the best way to survive this place was to never disappoint. A task that was, in itself, difficult to achieve. There was never a clear set of expectations of what Mentor wanted them to do. Sometimes Danny would think he's done everything right only to be saddled with a dreaded night watch. The bar always moved. Always changed. And Danny was left scrambling to please, hoping that he didn't make a single mistake lest his training got any worse.

"Do not think," Mentor commanded. "Only do."

Do not think. Do not think. Danny could do that. Was willing to do that. Thinking was never his forte anyway. He would have done much better at school if it was. He wouldn't be here if it was. His family would still be in Amity if it was. His friends would be with their parents if it was. Danny would still be fully human if he was just able to think.

Thinking also had the rather awful side effects of introspection. Of memories. Of regrets. Things that kept him awake late into twilight dawn which would only lead to mistakes. And mistakes lead to disappointment. And disappointment led to—

(A bitter cold bloomed in his chest. Could feel the phantom touch of frost covering his palms. Quickly, before anyone could see, he tugged onto that thread of cold and stamped it down. Willed his entire being to just— stop.)

It was better not to think.

"Life in the League is simple," Mentor said to them. "All you have to do is obey."

"You look like shit," Henri said one night, subtly sliding his plate over towards Danny.

Danny made a garbled noise, mouth full of the salted dried fish and white rice. He was never a huge fan of fish before, but after eating salted fish every night during his entire stay at Infinity Island, it kind of grew on him. It beat the tasteless gruel they got for breakfast, anyway. He washed the food down with water. "Wha'd'you mean?"

"Have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately?"

"Dunno if you've noticed, but there aren't that many mirrors here," Danny replied. He looked down at his water cup, angling it slowly to try and get a good look at his distorted reflection. "I mean…I guess those eyebags aren't gonna go away for a while?"

Henri's mouth flattened into a grim line, brows furrowed. "You look like you haven't eaten in days, Danyal."

Danny frowned. That can't be true. The League makes sure everyone got at least two meals a day, and Danny's barely left anything on his plate. He pushed back Henri's plate. "I'm fine. I haven't skipped any meals or anything so you don't need to—"

Henri pushed the plate back. "I'm not hungry."

"Henri…"

"I'm not," he insisted. "If you're not gonna eat it, then I'll just throw it away."

Danny pursed his lips. That'd be such a waste. And…if he had to admit it to himself, he was still hungry….

"Just this once," Danny said. He switched his empty plate with Henri's and started to scarf down the food. They were never given a lot of time to eat. Mentor wanted them to be efficient in everything, and idle chit-chat just wasn't part of that.

Once became twice. Twice became thrice. Then more times after that. Henri never gave his entire meal to Danny again—the latter insisted—but he would always find ways to sneak portions of his food onto Danny's plate without him noticing.

Despite this, Danny's figure remained stick-thin. Gaunt. Paradoxically so, considering his strength and stamina remained stable. The situation became severe enough that Mentor took it upon himself to intervene.

"Tomorrow you will not train with the rest of your cohort," Dusan informed him privately. "I will be escorting you to the island's on-site physician for an examination."

Danny blinked. "Permission to speak, Mentor?"

"Permission granted."

"Why are you escorting me personally? Wouldn't it be more efficient to leave that to someone else so you can oversee the cohort's progress?"

Dusan raised an eyebrow. "Am I not allowed to be worried for my nephew?"

Startled by the admission, Danny's mouth hung open in a small 'O', head dropping sheepishly as he rubbed the back of his neck. "Thank you, sir. That's very kind of you."

Dusan al Ghul had never been blessed with children. He was not particularly disappointed with this; paternal instincts never called to him in particular, and he never saw the appeal of wasting his own time and resources on rearing tiny, squalling infants. But there was a certain appeal in the idea of parenthood. Of taking the primal and raw nature of life and shaping it to your own will.

Nurture triumphing over nature.

Immortality gained through the hearts and minds of the next generation.

(He could already see it in young Damian— Talia's cunning, Ra's al Ghul's strength, the Batman's stubborness. Each of them in some way leaving their mark on Damian. Living—existing— through him.)

(Is that not why the Dark Knight took so many under his wing? To have someone carry on his work when death finally takes a hold of him? It was why Ra's al Ghul had children; there would be no one else more trustworthy to carry on one's legacy other than one's own kin.)

Parenthood was something beyond his understanding, but teaching was the next best thing. Here, in the League, Ra's al Ghul gave him the honor of rearing each new line of assassins to serve his righteous cause. Above them, Dusan stood, a gardener of the shadows. At his discretion, recruits were assessed and trained, their limits found and tested to see which would break first— it or the recruit. The weak were weeded out, the strong cultivated. Arrogance was nipped at the bud, and loyalty, obedience, was sowed and reaped in abundance.

Danyal al Ghul was as soft as an unready mind. A seed that sprouted in substandard soil and yet, somehow, flourished into something more. But this sprout would not reach its fullest potential without his guidance.

And so he will give it. Carefully.

Danyal was, in some ways, like the others the League recruited. Those people were nobodies. Nothings. Orphans and drug addicts and homeless people on the run. People that no one would miss. Those who the world gave up, and who gave up on the world. Desperate people whose faces are gaunt with a hunger for something to believe in, some place to belong.

Those who had nothing left to lose and will cling to whatever is given to them.

And yet…Danyal was nothing like them. Superhuman strength, speed, and agility. Cryokinesis, intangibility, invisibility, energy manipulation, flight, telekinesis. The League had been keeping track of Danyal's growing list of abilities ever since they discovered that he and Phantom were one and the same being all those months ago. Unlike the regular recruits who, if they could not be trained, were trapped and disposed of, Danyal could not be contained.

They had the Fenton ecto-weapon prototypes, yes, but there was a matter of the ectoplasm. While Ra's al Ghul did generously provide the Fentons with a sample of the Lazarus waters for their experiments, no one but the Drs. Fenton knew the exact methods of which to isolate the ectoplasm from the waters and purify it into an energy source. The majority of the prototype ecto-weapons the League had at their disposal, however, Danyal had already shown to be able to overcome. Either by outright tanking them, or nullifying their effects somewhat with Danyal's human half.

It was a moot point of discussion, at the end of it. Phantom was too powerful a weapon to be put down at the earliest signs of disobedience.

If they could not kill or contain Danyal, then they would simply give him no reason to leave. And no method by which to leave.

The Rosa disanthus was a rather elegant solution to their debacle. The flower in itself was harmless to humans— though its natural pungency was rather annoying, sweet and cloying like cheap perfume. But to ghosts, it was a natural repellant. One flower was enough to deter a ghost from approaching, but a whole bushel of flowers, arranged in a circle, were enough to entrap a ghost indefinitely. And, as Dusan realized, ingesting blood blossoms was enough to temporarily suppress Danyal's ghostly half.

A daily intake of blood blossom tea was instrumental to keeping Danyal as pliable as he was. With it, he was unable to subconsciously draw on his supernatural abilities that would allow him to breeze through the physical stress of League training. Danyal was instead reduced to his own mortal strength and endurance.

While Danyal's physical capabilities were rather embarrassingly weak and underdeveloped—especially considering his parentage— it was exactly what Dusan required. A tired body is a tired mind, and a tired mind is one that is able to easily accept Ra's al Ghul's teaching.

That there were side-effects were to be expected. That they took longer to manifest than Dusan anticipated was much more fascinating.

He pulled up in his off-road vehicle in front of the recruit mess hall. "Danyal," he greeted.

Danyal immediately stood at attention, his posture perfect. "Good morning, sir."

"A fine morning it is, nephew. Come on up, we have places to be."

The medical facilities were located on the northern side of the island. Not terribly far, but cumbersome to get to by on foot what with the dense jungle and sandy beach.

The physicians were perfunctory in their examinations; they took vitals, ran labs, and cross-referenced everything with the Fenton ghost files.

"You have been keeping with your diet regimen, yes?" Asked one of the physicians. He pressed his gloved fingers against Danyal's skin, brushing the ridges of knobs of his spine. Blooming across his back were large, faint scars. Fractals branching across his torso like the limbs of a gruesome tree. "You are still too thin."

"Fast metabolism," Danyal mumbled. He sat on his hands atop the examination table, black shirt neatly folded beside him. His figure, though not skeletal, per se, was gaunt. Ribs poked from his pallor skin, stomach still concave for a boy who ate double the portions than any other member of the League of Assassins. "I've had it since the accident, but it's never gotten this bad."

The physician hummed, jotting his notes down alongside the results of Danyal's vitals. "Do you happen to know why?"

He shrugged, expression wrinkled with skittishness. "Ectoplasm maybe? I'm not— I really don't know for sure but that's the best guess I can make. Before coming here, I've never been out of Amity for more than a couple weeks at most. And Amity—or at least FentonWorks—always had some kind of ambient ectoplasm around it."

Another physician joined the first. She handed him a tablet, pointing to a specific section on the screen. "Logic checks out if that's the case," She said, one hand tucked into her white coat. "In a…metaphysical sense, these ghosts are like any other creature; a psyche in control of a vessel. Though while most living creatures have a vessel of flesh and blood and bone, ghosts have this ectoplasm."

The first physician nodded, cupping his chin thoughtfully. "I see… In that sense, as humans need food and nutrients to keep our body working, ghosts use ectoplasm as their own source of energy." He looked up at Danyal. "Your ghost is hungry, recruit."

"If ectoplasm is what my ghost half needs then why…" Danyal gestured to himself.

"All things require energy to work," the second physician said. "If your ghost half cannot get the energy it needs from ectoplasm, it must get it from another source: you. It's difficult to confirm anything so this is all just conjecture, but it is my current hypothesis that your ghost is 'rerouting' your body's energy to sustain itself, while only leaving the barest minimum for your human body to keep up with your current training." She chuckled. "In more morbid terms, it's a very strange case of autocannibalism."

Danyal paled, squeamish.

Dusan cleared his throat. "What is to be done, then?"

She furrowed her brows. "If my hypothesis holds true, then the only permanent solution I can come up with is a return to Amity Park—"

"No," Danny said vehemently. His fingers curled across the edge of the table, knuckles bone white. "No. That's not an option."

She blinked, then nodded. "It would not be feasible in the long run, anyway. You would be on a timer every time you left the city which is a weakness that would be exploited. A temporary solution would be some kind of ectoplasm based supplement. The Fentons, however, did not leave notes on how they engineered their artificial ectoplasm, and even if we were able to obtain enough ambient ectoplasm to study, we may not be able to reverse engineer it in time to create a working supplement."

"So what you're saying is that I'm fucked."

"Perhaps not," said the first physician. "There is another option, however we would need…permission first before we can consider."

Dusan was easily able to discern the physician's meaning. What made Infinity Island a point of interest for Ra's al Ghul was the Lazarus Pit hidden within the base of its extinct volcano. If the Pit did contain some form of ectoplasm, it may yet be the key to Danyal's survival.

"I will authorize it," Dusan said. He turned towards Danyal, effusing an aura of warmth and concern. "Ra's al Ghul would agree. He wishes only the best for his grandson."

When Dusan explained what the Lazarus Pit was to him, Danny was certain it wouldn't work. A pit that brought people back to life? It sounded so impossible. Dead was dead; resurrection just went against the natural order of things.

Then what are you? Mind-Jazz asked.

The butt end of a Schrodinger's joke. But…touché I guess.

And besides, if the pit could bring the dead back to life, how would that work with Danny? Would he still keep his ghost half or would the pit half-revive him and he'd end up fully human?

"Does it matter?" Dusan asked.

Danny chewed the inside of his cheek. Frankly, it did. While getting rid of his ghost half would ensure that Dan's future would never come to pass, it would also mean that Danny would lose his one advantage. His one bargaining chip. "Before the accident, I wasn't anyone special. Without Phantom I'm just… plain ol' Danny."
"Without Phantom, you are still an al Ghul." Dusan laid a comforting hand on Danny's shoulder. "And you will always be an al Ghul."

Danny's core flooded with warmth.

"Yeah." he couldn't help the trembling smile on his face. "We're family."

Danny heard the Lazarus Pit before he saw it. A low and steady hum reminiscent of the ghost portal. But…different. Not necessarily fainter but garbled, like hearing someone speak underwater.

The room was a large, open space, with jagged obsidian walls framed by red wooden pillars. It was dim, lit only by the green glow of the pit that consumed the majority of the space; a pool of too-clear waters and toxic-looking steam rising from the surface.

"Oh."

(Oh, his core echoed.)

Danny stumbled towards it, half-dazed. The still waters seemed to shudder at his approach, small ripples gravitating towards him as if he were the moon, and they the tide.

(We-us-them-calls-sustain-sustain.)

Danny could feel it. Could feel the energy of the Infinite Realms swirling in the pit, however diluted, and it was calling to him though he couldn't understand the words. His knees hit the ground, one arm outstretched. He found himself lost in the green. In the call. If he just leaned forward a little bit more then—

Wait.

It seemed like an eternity before Danny could tear his gaze away from the pit.

He looked up and met Dusan's assessing gaze. "Requesting permission, sir?"

The corner of Dusan's mouth curled up, pleased. "Permission granted."

His core sang, pushing against the confines of Danny's chest and tumbling them over into oblivion.

A/N: Hello everyone! I'm sorry that I've been gone for like, two months. I spent May and June doing university classes and going on a road trip respectively. I published this chapter on AO3 about a week or two ago and meant to cross-post it here as well, but FFN wasn't loading for me for some reason and I ended up forgetting. To make up for it, I'm publishing both this chapter and the next chapter simultaneously 3

For anyone wondering: I don't have a strict upload schedule, though I do try to post a chapter at least once a month unless something comes up.

And for readers who want it, I have a (very rough) timeline of events of this fic posted on my tumblr avaritia-apotheosis. I won't make any promises to update it frequently, but it has the order of events up to this chapter. The link is here blog/view/avaritia-apotheosis/688419682801287168?source=share