Dani's To-Do List:
- get her and Jason out (relatively) alive
Distantly, Dani is glad she doesn't transform. The watch definitely wouldn't be able to disguise that, and as it is, she's not sure it's even still working.
Ectoplasm sears through her veins, filling her with energy and strength. Her senses sharpen, and she can just tell that her eyes have changed to toxic, glowing green. Her body is so light she feels as though her feet are just brushing the ground. She's so angry she could scream. She wants to bundle all the soldiers surrounding them in a little ball, stamp it down with her foot, and then throw it over the ocean like a frisbee so she can shoot at it with the gun Jason gave her.
She doesn't do any of those things. She shoves the gun in her hoodie pocket and rushes to Jason's side to help him sit up. His shirt has been vaporized where the blast hit, the skin underneath bright red and covered with blisters.
Jason swears like a sailor, grabbing his fallen weapon.
"Under Ecto-Act 12-62-285, section 4, all ectoplasmic entities are to be contained and quarantined from public areas," booms a voice from one of the blockades. Dani glances over at them, noticing the megaphone in one soldier's hands. "Citizen, you will step aside or be detained as an accomplice."
"Step back, With-an-i," Jason grunts, but Dani shoves him down by the shoulders and steps in front of him to shield him, giving the agents a full view of her shining eyes.
"Citizen is overshadowed," concludes one of the GIW. He's not using a megaphone, but Dani's senses are so fine right now she can hear each of their heartbeats; their voices are loud by comparison. "Why didn't our sensors–"
"Fire!" another GIW commands, and Dani lifts up her hands to catch the blast of ectoplasm sent right at her. Ectoplasm glows around her hands – around all of her skin, like it does when she's in ghost form – and they catch the shot aimed at her like a catcher's mitt would a baseball.
Pain runs up her arms like an electric shock, and her ectoplasm flares in response. With a growl of both pain and rage, Dani squeezes the energy in her hand like she's making a snowball, commandeering the energy as her own. She rears back her arm and hurls the ecto-ball like she's a pitcher, right into her shooter's chest.
The force of the blow sends the soldier a meter or so back, slamming into the side of the van with a wheeze.
"All units, focus attacks on the two hostiles!"
"Let's move!" Jason orders, standing from his crouch and grabbing Dani's arm. He jerks her backward, over the fallen motorcycle and back towards the alleyway where they came. There are only two there, and Dani can understand why he'd want to go there. But she can also feel the crackle of an ecto-shield and knows it isn't a valid option.
"Blocked," Dani hisses, pulling back. She's much stronger than him on a normal day, but like this, it's almost laughable how easily she breaks his hold. "We stand." She hefts the gun he gave her from the makeshift holster of her pocket and aims it at one-half of the soldiers. Without checking to see if he's doing the same, she fires.
It's different from the Fenton's weapons. More backlash, more noise. But the mechanics are the same – point and shoot. Dani's influx of ectoplasmic energy into the device warps the bullets into something similar to an ectogun's blast, and the bullet that exits the chamber leaves a trail of green light in the air behind it, like a faint afterimage.
Dani's not the best shot, but she has played around with Danny's guns often enough before to land her shots. They're stagnant targets less than thirty meters from her – it's not that hard. Of the four shots she gets off, two hit in her original shooter, one on the guy with the megaphone, and the other on a third soldier in between them. Their armor is bullet-resistant, so as far as Dani can tell, the bullets don't puncture, but the force is enough to throw all of them to the ground.
The explosion of sound is enough to leave Dani's sensitive ears ringing, but she ignores it, swinging her gun around to aim at another soldier that has started to creep into her blind spot. Unfortunately, she misses that shot, but it's still enough of a scare to throw the guy sideways.
Jason is faring better, but only slightly. His aim is impeccable, but the GIW are just as armored on his side as hers, and he doesn't have the advantage of imbuing his bullets with ecto.
Okay, Dani. They won't go down with guns. If they don't go down with guns, you have to find another way to shut them down.
Dani tosses the gun in the direction of the motorcycle and then charges in. Jason shouts after her, probably trying to stop her, but Dani's a bit too focused to comprehend language at the moment.
The ecto in her body makes her strong, but it also makes her fast. It's not as noticeable as the strength, but she covers the ground between her and the soldiers in half the time than either party expected.
There are five soldiers on her side—Megaphone, Middleguy, Shooter, and Blindspot, from left to right. Then there's a driver, still in the van, probably manipulating tech.
Dani gathers ectoplasm in her fist, rears back, and lands a devastating blow right in Middleguy's stupid face. He gives a yell from behind the visor, which cracks and splinters under the force.
The momentum throws Middleguy into Shooter, throwing off the aiming gun and sending the resulting shot wide.
"Die, ghost!" cries a female, and Dani hisses in pain as an electrified baton glances off her shoulder and sends fire down her arm. Apparently, Blindspot is a woman (and also, very very fond of Dani's blindspot).
Against what should be better judgement, Dani grabs the baton. It sends sparks of pain up her arm — like willingly holding on to an electric fence — but she doesn't let go, instead yanking it right from the GIW's hand.
The woman looks absolutely baffled, as if she never considered Dani could just… take her weapon.
"Die?" Dani echoes, mocking her opponent to distract her from the pain. "Can ghosts even do that?" Then she grits her teeth, grabs hold of the baton with her other hand, and snaps it in half over her knee. The electricity stops flowing up her arms, and Dani is glad to be rid of both halves of the baton in the form of throwing them back in the wielder's face.
Then she lands another great punch to another stupidly durable visor, throwing Blindspot a few meters into the brick wall of the nearest building. Dani doesn't wait to see her land, instead pivoting on her foot to face her next opponent. She turns just in time to catch a shot to her stomach, which burns away her sweatshirt and shirt to corrode her skin underneath. It burns, in a way that reminds her of acid reflux and the taste of metal. The force throws her back, and she's suddenly glad she was still wearing the helmet from their motorcycle ride. Even with the protection, her vision blurs from the impact of her head on the road.
"With-an-i!" yells Jason, and she can hear him running towards her, only to grunt in pain as another shot lands on him. Dani sits up, blinking away stars. She sees the weapon they shot her with… was that a freaking bazooka? Yeah, she feels less bad about herself for taking that so hard. Bazooka shot? Warrants a moment to recover.
Unfortunately, they also used said bazooka on Jason, who is significantly less durable.
Like the first time Jason was shot, something lights up in Dani at the sight of him going down.
There's blood on the road, gunpowder in her nose, and fire in her veins that can't entirely be attributed to the burn on her stomach. Her vision turns green. With all the forethought of a reckless teenager, Dani decides the best way to take out the entire second half is to throw something big at them.
So she does. Luckily, there's a fairly big object blocking their escape out of here, perfect for throwing.
Dani grabs the van blocking the road by the bottom supports, lifts it into the air with a shriek of metal, and swings it around like a pillow, letting it fly. She makes sure to aim high enough to miss Jason, who's still half-unconscious on the street.
The GIW agents scream and try to dodge, but their own trap prevents them from getting away. One agent, funnily enough, tries to shoot the van. Shoot it. Dani wonders what his thought process was with that one.
The thrown van crashes into the parked one in a deafening crash, screaming agents sandwiched between them. Dani can't tell what's louder – it's all just noise. She turns to the men barricading with shields, but they take one look at the slightly glowing, enraged teenager that just threw a car at their peers and decided eh, y'know, it's not worth the overtime, and hightail it in the opposite direction. Dani sprints over to Jason, scooping up her discarded firearm as she passes it, and then helping the slowly waking Jason sit up.
"You threw a car at them?" he asks, both confused and impressed. "You threw a car."
"Get up," Dani orders, but she doesn't wait for him to comply. She yanks him to his feet, then grabs the motorcycle and yanks that up too, shoving the gun back into the bag near the front. "How do you start this thing?" Dani jams the button to start the engine, but it doesn't work. Is she pushing it wrong? How do you push a button wrong?
"Let me," Jason says, half-falling onto the motorcycle trying to reach the button. The engine turns over immediately after he pushes the ignition (just like Dani did, how was what they did different, seriously). "I don't know – I don't think I can drive us."
Dani scans him critically. His wound spans his entire chest, the center deep and weeping and gradually growing less severe towards his shoulders. Another shot to his abdomen is an angry red, thankfully not bleeding but still covered in blisters. He should still be able to hold on, but if he doesn't think he can ride, she can do it. With a determined nod to herself, she sits Jason up on the cycle and swings up in front of him, grabbing the handlebars with her unfortunately burned hands.
It hurts so bad, but Dani decides to ignore it. Her hands don't hurt. They're fine. Nothing wrong with a little acid searing through every nerve in the evening, right?
"Can you hold on?" Dani asks in a sharp voice, tight with pain and stress as the first GIW agent starts rousing themself from where she put them down.
"Wait – I can call for backup –" Jason mutters, but she knows he sees the urgency too by how fast he drops the issue. He wraps his arms around her waist, trying to keep his chest from pressing up against her back. Dani hopes it doesn't compromise his ability to hold on. "Location four," he adds, but that doesn't mean a darn thing to Dani. She just twists the accelerator (ow ow ow), the bike lurching into action beneath her.
The tires screech as they search for traction in the sudden acceleration, skidding on the road and filling the air with burning rubber. Then the bike finds a grip on the asphalt, and the bike lurches forward with a burst of power.
Dani jerks the handlebars to avoid her little road bumps, but she still manages to run over one of the agent's arms.
Well, she hopes it broke. She was really just worried about upending the tenuous control she had over the bike beneath her. There's no love lost between her and the GIW — they're exactly as awful as Danny described, and what's a few broken bones between enemies?
Once they pass where the barricade was, the bike jerks to the left, and Dani struggles against it for a moment before letting it lead her to a different street. It corrects her unsteady attempt to get in the lanes, and Dani realizes the bike is mostly driving itself. Did Jason turn on the autopilot? Was the bike following set directions?
… Dani would be offended in the lack of trust for her driving skill if it wasn't 100% warranted.
Moments after leaving the barricaded streets, white vans begin popping up in her peripherals. (How many vans do these guys have?)
Dani increases the speed with a twist of her wrist, the vehicle beneath her obliging her demand. She can hardly do the same car chase maneuvers Jason pulled off less than twenty minutes ago, so she'll need to find another way to gain distance from the vans. She can only go so fast in the city streets, with the odd car or pedestrian randomly popping up.
Hm. Well, flight is limited, so what about fight?
Dani makes sure Jason's position is secure before reaching into Jason's saddlebag and grabbing the gun she'd shoved in there minutes before. She hadn't wanted to leave one of Jason's guns on the street, and she blesses her uncharacteristic foresight. This would come in real handy.
She can't turn and aim with Jason in the way, so she just kind of shoves the gun around him to point at the pursuing vans.
She doesn't shoot — she's not that dumb. Without visibility, she could end up hitting some random bystander. But the threat is clear, and one of the vans swerves in panic at the sudden appearance of the weapon. Dani wants to cover her ears at the sound of one van crashing into another; metal shrieking as it tears, glass shattering, people shouting.
Instead, she whips back to face forward, letting her hand with the gun rest on the handlebar. The effort of gripping the gun is ridiculously painful, but at least it's dulled by the adrenaline shooting through her system.
The bike makes another turn, and before long, there's another white van pulling up beside them.
Now able to aim, Dani shoots right into their window. The van immediately loses control and swerves out, slamming into a lamp post and then a fire hydrant, sending a geyser of water into the air.
Dani grins and pushes the bike a little faster.
She could feel the weight of the gun steadily decreasing with each bullet, and worries that her ammo is running low. This is confirmed by her next round with another van, where she only gets off two shots (one in the window that they actually ignore, unlike the others) and another in the tire, which blows out and spins yet another van out of control and into another inanimate object (this time a parked, booted car).
She doesn't know how to reload a gun, so she just brandishes it threateningly and hopes the other vans don't suddenly wise up and notice she's out.
She needn't have bothered; in the next moment the bike hits a downward slant into a lower street, headed straight for a sewer grate. Dani swallows her fear and prepares to turn the motorcycle and Jason intangible, stomach fluttering in indecision, but her fears are quickly assuaged when the grate suddenly swings open, allowing them passage and casting the world into calm silence.
The headlights flicker on as they enter the dark tunnel, illuminating the yawning stretch before them. It's pretty spooky, and that only grows more true as they swerve into a passage the wall makes that takes them into an elaborate cave system. Dani wonders how she hadn't found this, as they zoom over clean paths through wide caverns. It's huge. The longer they ride, the more immense the place appears.
Did these tunnels run under all of Gotham? If they had left the city, Dani is sure she would've felt the absence of Lady Gotham, so they must still be within the borders. Still, they're going so fast, and the path is straight. They must have traveled over fifty kilometers by now, with no end in sight.
"Jason, where are we going?" Dani asks, but he doesn't seem to hear her. She prods his emotions with her senses to find that he's struggling with pain and anger so intense he doesn't seem to be aware of anything else. She hopes that once they can clean the synthetic ectoplasm out he'll start to feel better. His own won't be able to purify it (even hers was having a rough go of it, so it would be impossible for him).
So she just settles in and trusts him, despite the unease of not knowing their destination. Normally, she'd be excited for the surprise, but she's got an injured fraidmate in her care. She doesn't know how many more surprises she can take.
They approach a dead end, but Dani has a bit more faith in the cycle this time around. She doesn't panic at the sight of it fast approaching, even if she does ready her intangibility for just in case. As she suspected, though, the wall retracts into the ceiling to allow them entry into a large cavern.
An occupied large cavern.
The motorcycle slows down abruptly, drawing Dani's attention to keeping her and Jason upright on the seat at the sudden change in momentum, coming to a halt along a row of other bikes. It automatically puts down the kickstand, and Dani stumbles a bit to put her feet back on solid ground.
There's a sharp inhale that grates along her hypersensitive hearing, drawing her attention as she settles Jason's arms around her shoulders so she can haul him off the bike. Dani looks up sharply, her eyes flashing green in warning.
The cave they entered appears to be the BatCave – from what Dani can see, the natural rock formation has been thoroughly filled with all kinds of furniture, tech, and gear. She can't focus too much on it, the concern for Jason stealing her interest and forcing her to assess the possible threat in front of her.
See, she knows it's the BatCave because that's Red Robin standing there, mouth agape as he takes in the scene before him, a tablet hanging limply in one of his hands. Behind him is Robin, suited up but hood down, mask fixed on his face.
Without hesitation, Dani shifts her hold of Jason into her empty hand and lifting the gun to train on the heroes in front of her. She has no idea where the relationship between Red Hood and the other Bats stand. She has no idea if they are trustworthy, and her nerves are far too raw to trust strangers with an injured brother right now. So even though she knows it probably isn't smart, and that she'd probably accomplish nothing if they did attack and she had the ammo and aim to land a shot on them, she holds the gun aloft and fixes her toxic-green stare on them.
"Don't. Move." Dani bites out the end of each word, trying to hold back the instinctive growl that her core wants to make to further warn off her opponents.
"Wait –" Red Robin starts, seeming unsure, but faltering when Dani swings the gun to him.
Robin approaches from behind Red Robin, regarding her with a tilt of his head, his face expressionless. Dani turns the gun to him, panic starting to claw its way up her spine. Did they know she was out of bullets? Were they confident that they could dodge literal gunfire? Her threat to shoot won't do much once they figure out it's as empty as the gun's chamber, and then where will she be? Back at resorting to her fists?
As if she could beat the Bats in a fistfight, even with her powers.
Robin doesn't take another step forward, though. He holds out his hand to stop Red Robin, who seemed to have rallied and was about to start talking again. Then he reaches up to his face.
Dani stops breathing as Robin peels away his domino mask, the skin red from whatever adhesive keeps it affixed to his face. Red Robin seems equally shocked, letting out a hissed "Robin!" once he sees what his comrade is doing.
Robin doesn't acknowledge him at all.
No.
Damian doesn't acknowledge him at all, the boy's sharp jade eyes examining Dani and Jason critically with his mouth drawn into a firm line. "Danishara," he greets shortly. "Stop this nonsense and carry Todd over to the medbay."
Dani blinks in shock, mind completely blank.
She does as he says without a word.
Damian doesn't trust easily.
He was raised in blood and betrayal, every sentiment viewed a weakness and actively used against him. When he was four, he was forced to kill his favorite nursemaid. His mother handed him the knife he was to use, pointed out her neck, and gave him three minutes to choose whether she died by his hand or hers.
Damian, still so young, didn't understand the magnitude of his choice. He didn't want to do it. He stubbornly set the knife down and crossed his arms, unwilling.
His mother took over from there. He was forced to endure an hour of watching his surrogate mother undergoing extreme torture, screaming and writhing in her constraints as the Demon's Daughter utilized every skill she'd accumulated as an assassin to maximize the woman's pain. Damian was restrained in one of her lackey's laps, unable to turn away his head or cover his ears.
When the hour was up, Talia turned to him and held out the knife again. She said he could end it here or she would continue.
With shaking hands, Damian took the knife. His mother showed him the delicate skin holding back the woman's lifeblood. He had to stand on his tiptoes to reach. The knife was so sharp it sliced through her skin at the slightest pressure – he'd had no chance to pull back and undo the action. It was a clean cut, but shallow and off-target.
The woman cried in pain. Damian wanted to end it, but his mother told him that this was another lesson: assassins must only strike once. He had made his mark, and he must live with the consequences of a slow death when he so desperately wished to make it fast and painless.
(Damian has wondered, all these years later, if his mother was so cruel because he was fond of the nursemaid. It was impossible to know; his mother was cruel often, and he'd never managed to discern the commonalities between her targets.)
Damian was punished, afterward, for not completing the task immediately.
It was not his first lesson in the dangers of trust, but it was the most impactful.
He learned that day that he could trust no one. Trusting his nursemaid ended in blood. Trusting his mother ended in betrayal.
Trust was a weakness, and Damian learned very quickly that he could not survive with weaknesses.
Living in Gotham had been horrifying. Where there was once punishment and pain, he was then met with kindness and patience. It was the most anxiety-inducing time of Damian's life. He did not know what was expected of him. He did not know how to act, how to secure his position, how to survive.
Damian fell back on his training, which had never failed him before.
He met Bruce Wayne with a blade to the Bat's neck, his mother's supercilious smile at his back as her son carried out her bidding. In return, his father gave him a room, a soft bed, comfortable clothes and full, appetizing meals.
He met Alfred Pennyworth in a scream of vulgar language, words specifically chosen to rile up the proper gentleman. Alfred's response was to help him unpack, learn his preferences, and stock him emergency food and medical supplies in his room where he could easily reach them.
Damian fought against them both, but they were patient.
He met Timothy Drake in a spray of blood made by knuckle claws meeting the soft skin of his face. To prove himself worthy to stay with Father, he had to eliminate his competition. He had done it before. He had been rewarded for it before. This time, his only saving grace was that Drake was too stubborn to die. Father might have really left him if he had killed Drake then.
Drake was less patient. Wary, paranoid, rightfully combatant against letting Damian stay. But he never failed to come to Damian's aid when he was in need of it. Never failed to have his back when it was turned to unknown dangers.
Richard, Todd, Gordon, Brown. All were met with satiric words and thrown blades. And then they had moved on.
Assassins only strike once. He had failed to win with each strike. Why had they not punished him? Why had he not received retribution? Damian had become overwhelmingly paranoid waiting for his consequences.
As the Al Guhl slowly transitioned to a Wayne, the anxiety lessened. The bite of each lesson that had been beaten into him lost its edge, and he began to bend the rules that had held him so rigid throughout his young life. He did not kill everyone that wronged him. He did not shy away from hobbies and interests. He agreed to pets, when before he had been terrified that any animal that received his affection would be brutally murdered before his eyes.
And he did learn to trust again.
He did not do so easily or completely. He would be devastated by betrayals from his adoptive family, but it would not shock him if they did. There was still a deep, traumatized part of him that could not bear to let down his guard completely, that insisted he stay alert. He assumed full trust would eventually come, with much much more time.
There were a few that got close to complete trust. He trusted Father. Alfred. Richard. More recently, he'd managed to trust Jonathan, despite the imbecile's juvenile immaturity.
And Danishara.
He did not know why, exactly, he trusted her so easily. In truth, that he did worried him. But the more he tried to be suspicious of her, the less sense it made.
She hid so many secrets from them. So much of her past was unknown, despite the best detectives in the world combing through birth certificates and adoption papers and passport records trying to find a hint of her. They had not even managed to discover her last name. That they knew so little was astounding… and deeply concerning.
And yet, Damian could not bring himself to doubt her.
He grew up around secrets and lies, around truth twisted into deception, around ulterior motives hidden behind loud actions. He knew deception better than he knew truth, even with those he trusted. He lied easier than he told the truth, and it was much the same for his family. Lies were the foundation of Damian's world.
Danishara could not lie. Every so-called lie she tells is in jest, obvious to all those around her from her mischievous grin. She had never lied – at least, not that any of them could tell, and they could tell very very well. (Cass in particular vouched for her honesty, and that was no small thing.) Instead of lying, Danishara would simply choose not to answer. To redirect, to evade. She did not wish to divulge her secrets, but she did not lie to conceal them either.
Damian investigated. Of course he did; he is his father's son, after all.
All he'd come to know was that Dani kept her secrets to protect herself. It stung that she did not yet trust them, but Damian could hardly miss the hypocrisy of demanding her trust when they had not given her theirs.
She had died. She was like Todd in that she'd crossed the line between life and death. But unlike Damian and Father, who had also slipped past the veil keeping them from the afterlife, they did not come back all the way. Their death was, in a sense, truer than what he and Father experienced. Todd came back changed – or at least, that is what Damian has been told, as he did not know the Todd of Before.
Todd was stronger, but he was also angrier. It was harder for him to temper his emotions, and when they overwhelmed him, the green of the Pits would shine in his eyes and he would become volatile and reckless. He healed from injury faster and was gifted with immense stamina. But he suffered greatly, and for that, his boons did not seem a fair trade. Danishara, by contrast, did not seem to suffer the same drawbacks, but Damian also had yet to identify whether she shared the benefits.
He knew she could likely see things Damian could not – souls of the deceased, possibly? – and knew far more about what lay beyond death than Damian could fathom.
But the secrets didn't bother him.
He wanted to know, of course. Wanted to peel back every layer of Danishara and understand every decision she'd ever made and every thought she'd ever had. But despite how little he knew of or about her, he did not find her less trustworthy.
The thought of her betrayal is inconceivable. As improbable as Titus biting him, or BatCow trying to trample him. There was a simple, absolute loyalty about Danishara that he had not experienced outside of animals. She did not have the capacity to harbor potential for harming them; she simply could not comprehend it as an option. Damian knew comparing people to animals tended to offend them, so he kept his observations to himself. He trusted her implicitly, as he did the animals he tended to, and it was the parallels between them that allowed him to do so.
Danishara had earned Damian Al-Guhl Wayne's trust, where so few had before her, and with far less effort.
When the young girl rode into the Cave with a semi-conscious and injured Todd strewn across her back, eyes a blinding green and set in resolute determination as she wielded one of Todd's weapons against them as perceived threats, Damian's first instinct was not to attack nor defend. It was to alleviate her concerns for whom she protected, to assess and treat the injuries both she and Todd obviously suffered from. To do so, she must first be given a reason to trust them into setting down her weapon. And Damian knew exactly the way to do it.
For the first time in his three years as Robin, Damian willingly reveals his identity to a civilian.
He peeled off his mask, baring his face to her, and destroyed the wall of secrets the entire family had built to keep her out.
It was one of the easiest decisions he ever made.
Hey guys! Hehehe don't you just love that I barely resolved the cliffhanger at all and really just compounded it into an even bigger one?
... Yeah, me too :)
There are a couple of things to say about this chapter, starting with:
- she threw a car at them. Is that unrealistic? Absolutely. But I have something for that, so sit tight fam
- is it weird Damian trusts Dani so much? A little, but he's right. She's simplistic when it comes to loyalty. She won't betray one (or tell their secrets) just because she trusts another. It's black and white to her. Trusting her is a good call
- Bruce returns next chapter!
But Most Importantly:
My mom uploaded her first chapter of fanfiction. She is so CUTE my guys listen. Listen I need y'all to stan her, please. Even if you're not part of the fandom (Epic the Musical, I got her into it guys she's freaking adorable), go into this fic and leave a kudos. Or read it, it's so cute. My mom taught be how to write, guys, this fic wouldn't exist without her TT ( /works/62209678). I'm a simp for my mom, don't think too hard about it XD