Dani's To-Do List
- scare the ever-living daylights out of some... questionable humans
- meet Robin again!
- take Sara through the veil
A cage that once held five terrified children, about to be sold off to some unknown evil, now only has a single occupant. Where there was once no furniture, there was now a single wooden chair, occupying a very very angry half-ghost.
Dani's dress billows out around her, the ends soaking in the damp blood of her spirit companion that hadn't quite dried. She held her lacy black parasol over her shoulder, twirling it idly as she waits for her prey. Those people… they were expecting children, weren't they? Wouldn't it be rude of Dani to disappoint them? They would get a child.
She's just not so easily subdued.
"Can't you get Red Hood?" Sara frets from behind her, wringing her incorporeal hands as she paces the small cage, having seemingly forgotten her ability to phase through it. "This is his territory. He'll take care of it –"
"Sara," Dani chides, voice still soft to avoid detection. "You don't have to worry about me. You can go stay with the other children, make sure they're getting treated."
"I… I don't know what I want," Sara whispers brokenly. "I'm scared, Dani."
"I'll be here with you every step of the way," Dani assures her. "Go see your friends. I'll keep you tethered until we're done here, and then I'll help you over. I won't let you do this alone, okay?"
Sara's eyes glisten with tears. She bites her lip, as if to stop herself from saying something, and then ducks her head in a nod. With several glances back that Dani has to constantly return with a confident nod, Sara floats off to find Dr. Leslie's clinic.
Dani twirls her parasol. Honestly, this will be easier without Sara, where Dani would constantly be worrying about the other girl and her reactions. Now, she can focus on her task. Dani listens in on the conversations happening outside the little prison where she sits.
It's horrifying. Even though Dani has traveled the world, she consciously avoids auras as vile as these men's, and so, avoids a lot of the worst this world has to offer. Listening to people talk about other humans – children – like livestock, like they're goods with features and flaws instead of complex beings with thoughts and emotions and needs that are just as important as their own.
Dani wonders what their eternity will look like. Souls as black as theirs aren't permitted to become ghosts. Dani isn't sure how they're picked or who does the picking (given she knows it's not Danny, and that's really her best guess), but she's glad for it. No matter how unfair life is, death makes sure all the scales are balanced.
The traffickers are talking about Sara now. Dani wants nothing more than to stop listening, but she's worried if she does, they'll say something important, like "oh yeah, there's another warehouse full of children" or something.
So Dani keeps listening, growing more sick to her stomach with every word.
It's almost twenty minutes later that they finally make their way over to the cell.
Dani steadies her breathing, steeling herself as the lock clunks and the door opens with the scream of hinges. "And here they are–" Light floods the room as the speaker flicks the switch, followed by silence as the man and his three companions just… stare at her.
"Where are the kids?" demands one of them, switching his glare between the light-switcher and Dani. "You said there were four!"
"There are," the other guy stutters. He looks like a wannabe mob boss, with a semi-clean suit, yellow teeth, and an overly forceful sales personality. Right now, his skin is starting to shine with sweat. Good. He scares easy. "There's no way out of the room."
Dani remains still and quiet, on full display before the men. The "buyers" are more sharply dressed, part of an actual mob, maybe? From what Dani overheard, they are buying the children and transporting them overseas for whatever reason. Dani doesn't think it's a good one, but she's afraid of the answer, so she'll try to avoid finding out.
"Where are the others?" the salesman demands, withdrawing a pistol and pointing it at her. Dani turns herself intangible, just in case, but otherwise doesn't respond.
"It's not a Bat," one of the "buyers" observes, looking at Dani thoughtfully. "Did you dress one of them up?"
"No," salesguy growls, still focused on Dani. "And this one is too big to be any of the others." He jerks his gun at Dani, but she doesn't flinch. "Stand up! You're going to answer every one of our questions, understand?"
Dani slowly tilts her head.
She can feel how unnerved that makes salesguy. "Get up!"
"Relax, it's just a kid," one of the "buyers" says. "Unlock the cage."
"This feels like a trap," one of the other "buyers" mutters. The first guy glares at him in warning.
Salesguy puts his gun away as the others pull their own out so the cage can be unlocked. Emboldened by the backup, salesguy comes closer, then shouts at her as he grabs the hat and veil and yanks. "Let's see you, you little –" His insult ends in a choked gasp.
Dani had gone invisible, and all they can see is empty air beneath the clothes she wears.
"It's a meta!" one of the buyers realizes. "Step aside!" Salesguy, who'd already stumbled back, jerks to the left to avoid the sudden barrage of bullets. It's defeaning in the small room, but Dani doesn't dare cover her ears. Instead, she lets the bullets tear through her gown, her body still mostly intangible (but just corporeal enough to hold up the gown). She feels the bullets move through her gut, and it's a strange sensation, but it doesn't hurt.
At her obvious lack of injury, salesguy scrambles back even more. Dani stands, receiving another bullet where her head is. Strange they would waste it. She already proved she can walk right through it.
Dani steps up to her abandoned hat and veil, picks it up, and gently readjusts it on her head. The four men are staring at her in a mix of horror and warning. The two at the back slowly step towards the door, still brandishing their guns.
"That ain't right," one of them mutters. "Shut the door."
The salesguy shoves the cell door closed, the lock engaging. Dani slowly approaches the bars, the men still watching her dumbly.
Dani, intangible, steps through the bars. She gets a few more bullets for her trouble.
"I'm out," one of the "buyers" says suddenly. "We're leaving."
Dani pulses a bit of ectoplasm into the air around her, and the light flickers off. Dani goes invisible as it turns dark, then shoots over to the door to slam it shut so harshly she can feel the frame groan. Salesguy lets out a bit of an undignified shriek, and more bullets ring out. There's a shout of pain as one of the men is hit, but Dani ignores them. It's not as though they worried about the children's pain, or that they didn't cause it themselves. The light flickers back on, and Dani is now the one standing between the cell and the door, two of the men brandishing guns at her, two on the ground.
"What are you?!"
Dani tilts her head again, then slowly lifts her arm, pointing at the blood stain on the ground.
"The girl…?"
"Shut up, that's not possible–"
Dani grows tired of listening to them. She slowly approaches, watching them stumble back as if she's some kind of horrible monster.
This must be what the children looked like. Just as terrified. Just as helpless before a being much more powerful than them.
The difference is their innocence.
Dani drags each man into the cell with her impressive strength, phasing through the bars as she goes. To salesguy, she digs his face into Sara's undrying lifeblood with the heel of her boots.
Then, Dani takes the lock of the cage into her hands and uses a mix of strength and ectoplasm to mangle it beyond recognition.
Now, she has some other guests to attend to.
Damian, dressed as his alter ego, keeps an eye on his helmet display as he races through the streets. Every tracker hidden on Danishara's person throughout the night had failed, but Damian had expected this outcome. In addition to the trackers, he'd hidden a radio transmitter within the rod of Danishara's parasol.
Danishara scrambles radio transmission as inexplicably as she does electrical signals. However, Damian planted a transmitter that constantly emits a powerful radio frequency. Although it is tampered with, the "noise" created by the scrambling can be tracked. It's not an exact science, since the signal can't be pinpointed exactly, but he's narrowed it down to three blocks.
When Dr. Thompkins alerted Richard about the obviously-kidnapped children that turned up on her doorstep in the same general area as Danishara's signal, Damian knows immediately that Danishara was involved. She likely rescued the children. The question is, who came to her for help? Danishara was talking to someone in the Academy bathroom, but Damian hadn't heard another voice. Was it one of the children that had escaped? But then, Damian would have heard the child or found traces of them in the cameras that he checked on his way back to the Cave.
The mystery of Danishara continues to grow more complex. Damian feels as though the more he uncovers, the more he realizes how little they all know about the girl.
For the past hour that Damian has been searching for the warehouse the children were rescued in, the signal from the parasol had grown increasingly erratic. Damian checked the electric grid of the city to find multiple disturbances in the same area, particularly in a set of metal-working warehouses.
Damian is certain that is where he'll find the ever-wayward Danishara.
When he arrives in the general area, Damian shoots his grappling hook towards one of the nearby buildings, engages the autopilot program on his cycle, and launches himself into the air. The ex-assassin makes quick work of infiltrating the building through a ventilation shaft. Once inside, he scales the brick wall to the ceiling and takes to the rafters above the lights. It's pure muscle-memory born of years of training and honing instinct that allows him to slink across the unfamiliar warehouse in near darkness. He hardly has to divert any of his attention to his stealth or balance.
This ends up being a very good thing. Almost all of his attention is immediately stolen by the bizarre scene happening below.
The lights flicker erratically, emphasizing the chaos below. Several men (Damian counts twelve, cataloguing every position they're in and how many weapons are on them) are shouting orders, screaming, there are guns out, but there's no one shooting. There are two men that appear to have been shot, bleeding from their wounds, slowly crawling towards the doors. The doors do not appear to be opening, if the desperate shoves against the exits are anything to go by.
Damian surveys the scene with a calculating eye. This much chaos screams Danishara, but he does not see her anywhere.
And then the lights flicker again, but in unison. When they come back on, Damian can see Danishara, in her ridiculous 'city ghost' costume, standing in the center of the room. Three guns simultaneously aim at her, and before Damian can catch up with his own instincts, three blades leave his hands, two lodging themselves in the guns themselves, the force throwing off the aim, and the other in one of the hands brandishing the third gun.
It's the moment after that Damian realizes the guns are out of bullets, with three identical clicks indicating empty chambers ringing out into the surrounding space.
Now that his cover has been blown, Damian leaps from the rafters and swings down onto the ground, landing a few meters from where Danishara is. Her recklessness would have to be thoroughly berated at a later time, though Damian suspected she knew the guns were empty and she was in little danger of being shot. Regardless, one can never behave such a way without the proper training.
"It's Robin –" one of the men starts, and another starts crying pathetically, signing the cross over his chest and then clasping his hands together as if in prayer.
"Save us! It's a demon!" sobs another, dropping his gun and pointing at Danishara. Damian doesn't pay her any mind, focusing on their movements.
Danishara glides past his peripheral vision towards the group of cowards, and Damian takes a step forward. She turns to him, tilts her head, and then continues forward. Damian wonders briefly at her silence, but understands the nonverbal command for him to stand back. He watches every one of the cowards' movements for any sign of attack, but they all seem more preoccupied with plastering themselves against the wall trying to get away from the leisurely approaching Danishara.
What had Danishara been doing? Damian rarely saw this kind of fear in criminals outside of patroling with Father. Yes, this terror is remarkably similar to the reaction of criminals when faced with the Bat. Perhaps she had played to their senses of superstition as well? She had declared her costume was that of "Lady Gotham", ostensibly some spirit of the city.
Danishara bends down, achingly slow, next to one of the men. She bends in close and whispers something in his ear. The man grows even paler and nods rapidly. Danishara stands up, turns, and walks to Robin.
"They're all yours," she says as she walks by, voice little louder than a breath. The lights flicker off again as she passes him, and he whirls to keep eyes on her. Even with his night vision in the lens of his domino mask, he can't see how she disappears.
Damian, frustrated, turns back to the men.
For one of the first times since his debut as the 'violent' Robin, the criminals look relieved that it's just him.
They wouldn't be for long.
Dani watches invisibly from the shadows as Robin arrests the traffickers. She'd threatened them that if they didn't confess, she would come back to haunt them. A few times that one hesitates to answer Robin's forceful interrogation, she breathes on their neck, or runs a finger along their throat, or even just glimmers slightly into the visible range, and they talk pretty quickly after that.
She can tell Robin is angry from the way he over tightens the handcuffs. He collects evidence from the proffered phones and from the safe he's directed to that Dani opened while she waited for the men to finish their confessions. Listen, she gets bored, okay? Besides, picking locks and opening safes is one of her favorite pastimes. He also finds the cage room, staring at the men with a tight expression before he uses a laser to cut through the destroyed lock and drags the terrified men back to the main room with the others.
Despite her boredom and anxiety to get back to Sara, Dani still watches from the shadows. Until Sara's body is found, she won't leave.
When the police begin to arrive, Dani feels her chance for the body to be found slipping away. She steps to the salesguy, who's shaky and paranoid, and lets her veil brush across his ear. He jerks up, hastily whispering out a prayer about casting out devils.
Dani likes to think that a man like him deserves to be tormented by devils.
"Where's my body?" Dani breathes into the shell of his ear, still pretending to be Sara's vengeful spirit. He shrieks like she'd stabbed him, and Robin appears before him like an avenging angel.
"There's– there's a body –" the man stutters through tears, and Robin fists his shirt and slams him against the wall.
"Where?" the boy growls.
"It's – oh, God, please forgive my sins –"
"Where."
"In the car… the silver one, the trunk, oh, please, Father, rebuke Satan's power…"
Robin drops him into a miserable pile, stalking off to the car, which was parked near the end of the warehouse next to the garage doors. There are a few, but Dani had ripped out some important-looking wires in each of them during her haunt and none of them would be able to start. The men would know, given their desperate attempt to escape in them, only to be met with engines that failed to turn over.
Dani trails behind the teen hero closely, holding her breath as he unlocks the trunk and opens it to reveal…
Sara.
Dani feels her eyes burn as she looks at her new friend, crammed into a small space, eyes wide open in the horror of her final moments.
Robin gently closes her eyes, then picks her up bridal-style, holding her close. "The coroner?" he commands, walking briskly away from the car.
That's all Dani can bear to watch. She doesn't want to see Sara's body laid in a body bag and rolled away. She trusts Robin to get Sara out of here safely, to put each man behind bars and give the police enough evidence to keep them there.
She's emotionally wrung out, and the hardest part is still to come.
Dani leaves the warehouse and returns to Dr. Leslie's, where Sara is watching her friends sleep on the patient beds, fully treated, mostly clean, and finally safe. Dani takes off her hat and veil, stepping forward to draw the spirit's attention. When Sara sees her, she flinches.
Dani feels awful for that.
"Is it time for me to go?" Sara asks softly, eyes shimmering with tears.
Dani nods her head.
Sara nods back, the tears overflowing from her eyes and running paths down her cheeks. Slowly, she places an incorporeal kiss on each of her friends' foreheads. "Be safe," she whispers. Then she looks back up at Dani. "Here?"
Dani shakes her head and holds out her hand.
Haltingly, Sara takes it, and Dani pulls her out of the clinic, pretending not to notice her terrified sobs. She lets her invisibility go, seeing no reason to remain unseen, and walks with her companion a couple of blocks. Her feet guide her, which are in turn guided by a sympathetic Lady Gotham.
They end up in an alleyway a few blocks down, shrouded in shadow and devoid of all life.
"How does it work?" Sara asks, voice wavering.
"I'll help you cross over," Dani explains. "And you'll start your eternity."
"What's my eternity?"
Dani smiles softly. "That's for you to find out." She steps forward, towards the brick wall, and gently asks in Esperanto, "Lady Gotham. Would you permit us passage through the veil?"
Amusement – though not untouched by sadness – answers her, and Dani can feel a tug in her core, a slight drain that manifests as an opening void before her. Portals to the zone are usually bright and flashy, but they don't have to be. In Gotham, it's fitting that the portal would take the form of a shadow, albeit more all-consuming.
Dani fixes her hat and veil back on her head. "Come on," Dani invites Sara, holding out a hand. "I'll be with you the whole way."
Sara stares at her hand for a moment, still looking terrified, but she eventually bridges the gap with her own hand, grabbing Dani's glove like a lifeline.
"Let's go."
Dani steps towards the portal, but a sudden presence behind her halts her movement. She turns, feeling the rank ectoplasm that she's come to associate with Red Hood and Jason. Predictably, it's Red Hood, not Jason, given that she's far more likely to run into an anti-hero in Crime Alley on Halloween Night than some random guy.
"Sara," he says, in that horrible voice modulator that makes his voice sound all deep and robotic.
"Red Hood!" Sara exclaims, forgetting her fear in a moment of surprise. "You can see me!"
"Barely," he grunts out. "You wouldn't believe how badly pixelated my feed is right now." His red helmet is a screen? Wow, that must hurt his eyes so bad. No wonder he yanked the helmet off the first time he and Dani met. "What are you doing?"
"Uh," Sara looks down, wiping her tears away with one hand. "I kind of… died. I'm going to the afterlife."
"And you…?" Red Hood trails off, tilting his head in Dani's direction.
"She's taking me," Sara supplies. "I… I don't want to go alone." She squeezes Dani's hand tighter. "Can… can you come too?" She looks up at Dani, scared and hopeful.
Well, he is pretty dead. It should be okay for her to take him, law-wise. It might even help clean up his nasty ectoplasm a bit.
"You can come," Dani offers with a shrug.
"Come… where, exactly?"
"The afterlife," Dani repeats, tilting her head in Sara's direction.
"But what exactly is that?" he presses. "And how are we getting there?"
"Look, you can come or not, it doesn't really matter to me," Dani sighs, feeling a bit drained. It's been a long night, and she doesn't really want to sit here debating whether or not she should bend the rules of nature and let a semi-half-dead guy follow her into the Ghost Zone. She can feel her power draining by the second (which is really weird, but not her focus at the moment so she'll address it later) and she'd rather hurry it up. "It's safe, I'll be bringing us back, you're free to come, but you need to make your decision now."
"Please, Hood," Sara begs.
Dani can feel the moment Red Hood breaks, and it's a heartbeat after Sara asks him. Who knew the murderous vigilante was such a softy for kids?
"Alright," he grunts, stepping forward. Dani can feel the sliver of apprehension in him, but he doesn't outwardly show it. "How does this work?"
"Step forward," Dani deadpans, and then follows her own command, lightly tugging on Sara's hand. With little resistance, the spirit and the half-ghost cross over the veil, closely followed by their resident vigilante.
Stepping into the Zone is a breath of fresh air. Gotham's energy is darker than most of the world, and Dani hadn't realized how much it was lingering until she felt the perfectly neutral energy of pure ectoplasm. She takes a single moment to sigh, feeling some of the stress wash away, letting go of the drain on her core. It had stopped completely, so it must've been from keeping Sara summoned.
The realm they step into is Gotham… but also not. The buildings are mostly the same, with a few downgrades that fits the style of forty-ish years ago. The streets are empty, and the mood somber. This must be Lady Gotham's view of her city. Still, she wonders why the city is frozen in this time period. Gotham is older than the… oh, late 1970s, early 1980s? Something important must have happened around this time. Maybe one day Dani will ask the city ghost for the whole story.
"What the—"
"This is the afterlife?" Sara breathes out in awe. "It's just… Gotham?"
Red Hood seems to be processing his shock with an extensive and passionate list of every swear word in the dictionary (and some that seem to be made up on the spot). Dani ignores him.
"It's not your afterlife," Dani says, thinking of ways to explain this. "It's just where we popped out." Anticipating her next question, Dani adds, "I don't know what your eternity will be. It's different for everyone."
"How will I get there?" Sara asks, still gazing at the landscape around her in wonder. Dani tries to see it through their eyes; green sky, floating objects, a quiet and expansive city they've only ever known violence and chaos in.
From down the street, Dani can see some figures approaching. Red Hood wouldn't be able to see them yet, and Sara seems to be focusing on taking in the scenery.
Since Dani has helped a few other people cross over the veil and into their eternities, she has a good idea of who's coming. "Someone you love will take you," Dani answers honestly.
"I thought you were taking me!" Sara cries out in alarm, shooting back to Dani's side and grabbing her hand that she'd absently let go of to explore. "You said you'd go with me! I don't want to go alone!"
"I'm not leaving," Dani soothes. "I'll go with you however far you need me to. But I just think you'll be in good hands. Look, someone's coming."
Sara, still looking terrified, looks where Dani points, her face falling slack in confusion. "Is that…?"
"Sara! Sara Ann!" calls a clear voice as the figures approach. It's a woman in a waitress's outfit, hair pulled back in a bun. She has a name tag that reads 'Marybeth' in bad cursive. "My baby, Sara Ann!"
"M… Mom?" Sara stutters, her eyes growing wide. "But she's…" She realizes what she's about to say, that it actually makes sense to run into her dead mother now that she's dead now, too. Dani doesn't feel the need to point it out. She just stays quite as the possibility seems to overtake the other girl. "Mom!"
Sara's suddenly a blur, and her mother the same, until they collide in a tangle of hugs and tears. Dani floats back, smiling under her veil. It's horribly sad, that they're meeting so soon into Sara's life, but Dani is infinitely glad that Sara will be back with her mother. Dani has no idea what happens in the eternity after she parts ways with the ghosts she brings over, but she knows it's good. She knows that they're back with the people they love, or that they find new people to love, or that they're happy and at peace.
The world can be so awful, Dani has started to learn. Death is a sweet reward for those who deserve it.
"Sara's mom died last summer," Red Hood says softly from behind Dani. He's no longer wearing that awful helmet that grated his voice like gravel in a blender. Instead, it's tucked under his arm and his hair is floating softly around his face, the white streak blinding in the light of the Zone. "It's how she ended up on the street."
"I'm glad she had someone to greet her," Dani replies. Hood's voice is kind of familiar, more so than from just their last meeting.
"What happens to them now?" he asks.
Dani gives him a slight shrug. "Eternity."
"What does that entail?"
"We don't get to know," Dani answers. "Not until we enter our own."
Hood hums, a bit in confusion, a bit in understanding. They may have died, but they still hadn't entered their eternity. That knowledge isn't something they get to have, not until they find it themselves. Dani is curious, obviously, but she also understands why she can't know on a molecular level that she figures ghosts just have.
"I failed her," Hood says softly, after they watch the reuniting mother and daughter a few minutes longer. "I swear I'll look out for the kids in Crime Alley, but—"
"Ugh, you protection spirits," Dani groans. "Always putting blame on yourself. It's not as though there was anything you could've done that you didn't."
"Protection spirit…?"
"I don't know for sure, obviously," Dani says, waving her hand. "But that's what it sounds like to me." Before he can continue the line of questioning, Sara breaks off from her mother and holds out her arms. A white and black pit bull launches itself into her arms, barking happily and licking her laughing face. "Oh, look, it's her puppers!"
"Is it actually?" Hood asks in surprise.
"Of course. All living things come to the Realms when they die. Even plants and animals."
"Microbes?" he challenges, because of course he does.
Dani rolls her eyes under her veil. "I dunno man, I'm no scientist."
"How do you know all this?" Hood wonders, gesturing around them. "And don't say it's because you've died. I've died, and I don't know anything about this. I never came here. I think I'd remember it."
"Everyone's experience is different," Dani replies off-handedly. "Sara only sees this because I helped her cross. If she went on her own, she probably would've just gone to her eternity without seeing any of this."
"What is this?"
"You're annoying," Dani huffs. "Stop interrogating me."
"I have so many questions," he argues.
"Then you best not annoy the person who has the answers."
"Hood! Hood!" Sara bounds over to them, grinning wide. The blood of her death seems to have started to fade, which is amazing to see. She's already moving on to happier times, and her form reflects it. "Come meet Boots! He's my dog! He's here, he's here!"
Red Hood can't resist the childlike glee, softening from his short argument with Dani. He smiles and bends down, offering his hand for the dog to sniff. "He's a beautiful dog," Red Hood compliments, petting along the dog's flank. "He's got a weird name, though."
Sara's chest puffs up at his tease. "It's the best name, thank you very much! When he was a puppy, he only ruined Mom's work boots. He was always chewing them up! We were going to name him Terry, but he was just so obsessed with boots! Mom always had to put them on a high shelf or he would leave bite marks on them."
"I see," Red Hood says seriously. "Then it's a very good name for the little munchkin." He rubs Boots' belly, which he had proudly presented for his new friend.
"I was really scared," Sara confesses to him, still smiling. "But now I have my mom, and Boots, and Mom says I finally get to meet my dad. I'll miss Tommy and Lily and Ben and Bailey, but they're safe now. And I'll miss you, too." Sara lunges forward and hugs Red Hood tight, burying her face in her shoulder. "Thank you for keeping me safe, Red Hood. Thank you for protecting all of us. Don't worry about me anymore. I'm going to be so happy here, I promise."
"I'm so sorry, kid," the man chokes out, holding her tight. "I'm so sorry."
"Don't worry. I kind of get it now, why I died now. It's so I could save the others. And I'm kind of sad, but I'm also really happy. Please don't be sad for me."
"I'll do my best," he grunts.
"Sara~" Marybeth calls, smiling. "Let's get home, let these mostly-living folks get back to where they belong."
Red Hood squeezes her tighter, almost like he's not planning on letting her go. Then, after a moment, he releases her, gently pulling off his domino mask. Dani sees it go off, but he's still faced away from him, so she can't see what the mask was hiding.
"Call me Jason, kid," Red Hood says. And Dani just kind of… blanks. "I hope you'll play a game of cards with me when I get here for good."
"I'll play a million with you," Sara promises. "Thank you, Jason." Sara steps back, grinning at them both broadly. "Thank you both!" She waves, and Dani waves back, feeling a little lost. "Goodbye! See you all later!" Without looking back, Sara flies over to her mother and slips grabs hold of the older woman's hand. Together, they fly off, Boots trotting after them with his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth.
"Jason…?" Dani repeats, mind whirling. "That's insane, you have the same name as…" Jason turns around and she gasps. "Jason!"
Jason Todd rolls his eyes, grinning. "Took you that long, huh?" He laughs a little to himself. "Nice to see you, With-an-i."
!
lol I was gonna write the whole scene out, but eh, this really needed a line break and I didn't want to change perspectives so. Next chapter it is. Plus, you guys could do with a little cliffhanger now and then, I think. I've been too nice, lol. Jkjk, I won't make too much of a habit out of it XD
I'm glad you all enjoyed the Christmas chapter! I enjoyed writing it! A lot of you were sad that it isn't canon, and for that, I apologize. But I promise the actual Christmas is sooooo good. Not fluffy, but, y'know. Oh well. It's got a good reveal in it.
As always, your support fills me with joy! I plan on responding to reviews sometime in the next few days, but we'll see lol. I gotta write the next chapter, after all. And oh boy, it's gonna be a good one. It's got ~bonding~~~