Chapter Text
Danny Phantom passed out on live television. Had he eaten in three days? No- but he’d spent most of that as a ghost, so it hadn’t exactly been at the forefront of his mind.
He was also running on 4 hours of sleep, thanks Junior year AP science fucking bullshit-
Oh, and he had a concussion.
It was the convergence of all of these things that caused Danny Fenton to fall three stories and land in a broken mess on the recycled-rubber topping of Amity Park’s elementary school playground. He didn’t know that was what happened, frankly, and wouldn’t until he saw the footage. How Amity’s resident vigilante turned into a regular sixteen year-old and plummeted.
It was his exact brand of Luck that instead of Vlad, or his Parents, that the GIW got to him first. They were the ones he’d been fighting, so maybe it wasn’t the universe conspiring against him. Maybe he really should’ve just... Stayed at home that day. Studied.
Still televised, they peeled him off the ground like a fried egg, barely giving him the dignity of a stretcher, all wrapped up in an ecto-bag, and they were speeding off within two minutes. If someone else tried to get him after that, well-
At least someone told them to cut the cameras. Probably Sam (Danny misses Sam). Or maybe Tucker had cut them for him. Who knows.
Not Danny.
Danny Fenton died that day- more so than he ever did when he was 14- it didn’t matter if he could cling to the vestiges of his humanity. Danny was a ghost, and his family were the Fentons, so that was all there was to it. Even if he made it away from the GIW alive, they would never take him back.
000
Tim Drake doesn’t particularly dislike being kidnapped, for all of its inconveniences. It’s kind of like a vacation, a few hours where he’s not expected to be Red Robin or a Great Student or the Genius Businessman. And he’s never really in danger, if you think about it. As much as the low level thugs, or cultists, or political extremists like to believe since they’re the ones who kidnapped him, that they’re in charge, it’s never really true.
Like right now, for example, he can untie his wrists at any moment, take out the two people they’d left to guard him, funnel the rest into a hallway for some quick one-on-ones, and then be on his merry way. He just doesn’t.
Tim glances at the camera mounted in the corner of the room. It looks cheap, so it’s probably just a live stream, but he didn’t know who was watching, first of all, and second, if it was backing up footage onto something else, it wasn’t worth the risk. So he rocks the metal folding chair back, a little bored, and places bets in his head as to who’s going to come get him.
Ideally it’ll be B himself- he’ll make the least drama of it, and he’d probably noticed that Tim hadn’t gotten on the bus home that evening.
Most likely it’ll be Dick- he’ll tease Tim about it for the next few weeks, and he’ll let everyone else know Very Loudly that Red Robin got kidnapped, again , but he’ll do the job quickly and efficiently, and Tim can’t fault him for that.
Worst case scenario is Jason- Tim hasn’t the faintest where they’d taken him, they’re in some grimy basement that smarts of formaldehyde, and windows are high, barred, and dark. It might be Crime Alley- Jason was just as likely to leave Tim to rot as he was to slit the throats of the people running on his turf. He didn’t like Bats there either.
It wasn’t like it was Tim’s fault. He’d just been trying to get home from school!
And there was that minor incident of trying to get him killed, that one time. Or the fact that he wasn’t totally sure whether or not Jason even knew his name.
He swallows back some spit behind the gag- at least it doesn’t smell terrible. Once, kidnappers had gagged him with a dirty sock. He went through so much mouthwash it almost made him drunk.
There were other options for his rescuer, of course- Damian would get the job done efficiently, although being rescued by a nine-year old was humiliating. Cass would poke fun, but she wouldn’t be as loud about it as Dick might. Steph- maybe Steph? Tim tries to remember the schedule for patrols that day, but he never memoriszes them- just checks them day of.
Honestly, they’re probably pulling straws to see who had to. It’s such a chore, and given that they just yoinked him off the street, there’s not much detective work to be done.
Tim teases with the ropes, glancing at the camera again, the red light beeping in the corner. Recording. He winks.
His captors are wearing white- all white- in a kind of paramilitary way, and they’ve got sunglasses and black gloves on. Tim doesn’t recognize them as any of the gangs, frankly, they look too clean for Gotham.
It’s probably not Crime Alley, he assures himself, tipping the chair back again. Which means that it’s probably not going to be up to Jason to come get him.
All four feet of his chair hit the concrete floor with a dull clack when the door swings open. The hallway beyond it is dark, but echoes with faint screams. Tim tries to look scared. His two guards salute their superior, who strolls in, looking unimpressed. He takes off his sunglasses and tucks them into the lapel pocket by the temple.
“Take off his gag,” He says, with a nod to one of them.
“Please, I-”
“Idiots!” The superior snapps at the two men. “This is Drake!”
“You told us to get Wayne’s son from Gotham Academy-”
“His son , his son, the Al-Ghul boy!”
Tim stiffens. They’d have a much harder time with Damian than they did with him, but still- why would they want him instead? Tim is the one with the money. He’s the one with the social power, he was the one who got kidnapped. Not Damian.
“I am his son.” Tim says, losing the act to confusion.
The man holds a device beneath his chin, it looks like a taser, but all it does is hum his teeth. “Look at this- not a smidge of EMF! You’d get more of this just walking around Amity Park!”
“So I’m free to go?” Tim asks, a hesitant smile on his face.
“Go get the right one.” He says to the guards. Pff. As if. Unless Robin was on patrol tonight, he was tucked away in the most secure place in Gotham, and even if he weren’t, none of Gotham’s regular criminals were stupid enough to try and kidnap Damian Wayne. Which once again begs the question-
“Who are you?” He asks.
The man in white sucks on his teeth. “None of your concern.”
“Actually, seeing as you kidnapped me, I think-” The gag is back. Tim groans. How long until someone shows up? He should still have his tracker on him, even if he wasn’t in his suit. This time, when the superior leaves, the guards leave too.
Probably to fail at kidnapping Damian.
Just great.
Tim’s left alone for hours- at least he thinks he is. He’s getting a headache from caffeine withdrawal after not getting his post-school fix, and he’s given up attempting to study. It’s not like he has his school materials with him, he’s just going through facts in his head. After giving up on that endeavor, it’s onto counting numbers in the fibonacci sequence, then working through some math problems. Cars, moving at velocities, when they would cross, things like that.
He’ll even take Jason at this point. The first few hours had been fine, but now he was getting bored.
What, did B just think he’s hanging out in some warehouse basement for fun?
“Ugh,” He groans through the gag. He needs some coffee. He needs to take a piss. If they aren’t going to let him go until they get Damian, he supposes he should start to get comfortable. Metal folding chairs weren’t made to be comfortable, though, and the way they had his ankles tied to the legs meant he couldn’t slouch. “ Ugh ,” he repeats, as if that would change anything. They probably don’t have audio to the room, in any case.
He’s just beginning to drift off to an ill-advised nap when the room grows flash cold.
Tim’s eyes snap open. His breath clouds up in front of his face. It’s early May, and the nights were still cold, but not this cold. They’d had the last freeze a month ago. His arms pin close to his chest to try and conserve warmth. He’s still in his uniform jacket, but it’s not made for this kind of cold. The cold that leaches into your bones, that no amount of warm showers can make you part ways with, the cold that makes you desperate for a hug. The room temperature rises steadily, but the cold’s already gotten into Tim- if it weren’t more the gag, his teeth would be chattering.
If Tim dies of hypothermia in an urban center, he’d be ashamed.
His eyes dart around the room, checking for any ventilation, anything- if no one comes any time soon, he’s going to slip these ropes and get out himself, secret identity be damned.
The single fluorescent bulb that illuminates the room flickers. Tim stops his rocking and stares at it. It flickers again, this time with those same inhuman cries that Tim heard when the door was open, muffled by several layers of concrete. Dread seeps right in next to the cold, his stomach clenched dense like a rock. The room shakes, the light sways, and flickers again.
Tim stares at it.
The room goes dark.
As soon as it does, he has the ropes off of his wrists and the gag off of his mouth. The room was nothing more than a box, so Tim knocks into the door to open it. No sense in trying to wrestle with the iron barred window.
“B?” He calls, into the dark hallway. “Nightwing? Hood?” His steps echo down the hall, providing a beat to the wavering tone of those horrific cries. “Anyone?” He trails the tips of his finger on the damp walls, counting his steps. Up and out. Up and out. “Fuck.” Bats weren’t supposed to swear in uniform, but he wasn’t in uniform, was he? “Fuck. B? Anyone?”
His voice bounces back at him.
“I’m here...” He trails off, repressing another shiver.
Who were these people anyways, that it was taking everyone several hours to find him? Or to get to him? The last time they took too long to get to a Robin-
Well, it didn’t happen very much anymore, did it?
The hallway ends in a door.
“Please be stairs,” Tim says, breaking the handle with a swift kick. The wails don’t get any louder, but somehow the dark gets darker, and Tim’s chest grows tighter. He schools his breaths down to soft, shallow things, and when he tries to guide himself along the wall, his fingers come back sticky.
He can’t repress a shiver, trying to sling the goop off his fingers. “Anyone there?” The room is quiet- eerily quiet- the cries are behind him, but muffled in front, like the room sucked all the sound and light into it.
Eyes open- glowing eyes.
Tim freezes like a deer in headlights. They’re shaped like human eyes, but they glow- fluorescent green, with stark red pupils. The cold is back, making his bones ache.
The eyes blink. Paralyzed, all Tim can do is blink back.
“Is that you, Replacement?” Asks a gravelly voice.
“Hood?” Tim asks, moving forward. “Did you come... No... they got you too.”
“How...” Jason coughs. “How many....”
“Far as I can tell, just you and me,” Tim steps forward, his feet sticking like it was the soda-slick floor of a club. “They mentioned they were after the little guy, too.”
Jason breathes heavy, and Tim can hear the rattle in his lungs. “It’s been... days... Two, I think... I can’t get out of...”
Tim’s hands carefully skate along Jason’s sides, once he finds him in the space. It’s hard, because he isn’t radiating any heat, it’s almost like he’s barely there at all. He’s locked into the wall by two points on each limb, the restraints made of metal. “I don’t know if I can break these, man.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“I’m in civvies!” Tim said, checking his ankles- same thing.
“They got you in civvies? I thought-” He coughed- “I thought you were my rescue party.”
“Why would they send me?” He tried to feel out the rest of the room, but he didn’t want any more goop on his hands. “That’s a B mission. Or the OG.”
“You’re better than no one. Anyone come for you?”
Tim shakes his head before he realizes Jason probably can’t see it. “Nope. Been a couple hours.”
“Two days .” Jason repeats.
“That’s what you get for striking it on your own, no one knows when you go missing.” Tim says sharply, even though he knows it’ll hit a nerve. “If these were on an electronic server, they should've been released when the power went dead. Which means-” Tim finds a switch and flips it. There’s a metallic thunk, and Jason’s bodyweight falls onto him. “They’re manual. Great. Let’s see if we can find a way out of here, okay?”
Jason doesn’t seem to be able to argue. Tim props him up over his shoulder and pulls them up. Even if they are each other’s least favorite, they were both Robin, once. There’s brotherhood there that can’t be ignored.
“Are there any other doors in this room? I guess we have to backrack.” Tim muses to himself, hoping the building stays dark. The cries build in volume again as soon as they’re out of Jason’s cell, and whatever weight he was holding dropped, sending both of them falling. “Woah, man, are you okay?”
“He’s screaming,” Jason says, the words rocky and oddly spaced, like a skipping record. “He- fuck.” His hands are cupping his ears. “They’re killing him- I think they keep bringing him back.”
“Do we...” Jason can barely see the contours of the walls in the thick blackness, thanks to Jason’s glowing eyes. He’d been so focused on getting out that he hadn’t even stopped to consider that- nor its implications. “We don’t have any equipment. I’m in civvies , Hood.”
“So am I, so stop calling me that.”
“They got you in civvies? You?”
“I went to the seven-eleven at three am for taquitos.” Jason says. “I don’t think they know who I am- christ, we have to get to him-” The cries are definitely bugging him a lot more than they are Tim.
“It has to do with the pits, doesn’t it?” Tim asks. That must be why they’re after Damian as well- but it’s not the guild. He can’t see, but Jason moves with a nod. “Well, shit, let’s go find this thing that’s screaming.”
000
Danny is screaming. He doesn’t really have any choice in the matter any more- he’s not sure if anyone can hear him, but he screams anyways. There are other ghosts nearby, but he can barely sense them at all, and they don’t seem familiar, but he screams regardless. It’s pain, and the screaming doesn’t lessen it, but wails are all that comes out when he opens his mouth.
It had been a gentle few days- in comparison to the past few months. Months? Years? Weeks? Danny doesn’t know. Time doesn’t mean anything in the vat.
He hates the vat. It’s watered down ectoplasm, just enough to keep him alive. Sometimes they would add stimulants to keep him up for days on end, and that was torture, or they’d pump him full of sedatives. The stimulant days were worse, because those were the days he’d be taken out. His heart beating half a normal pace, twice what it did regularly, and he’d be paralyzed on the table as they looked inside of him, cutting through his ribcage with their ecto-blades. And sometimes-
Sometimes-
Danny hates the vat.
But today- today, someone new is being trained. Today, someone forgets to note that they added his ectoplasm for the day to the medium. Today, someone adds it twice.
Today- Today when he screams, there is power behind it.
It takes everything in him to knock out the electricity, and when he does, he can’t make himself tangible enough to get out of the vat. If he tries to corporalise below his torso, radioactive green viscera pours out of him. Livers aren’t meant to be that color.
Sometimes he loses his concentration, like now, and it happens anyways. Some of his small intestine is looped up by his face.
If he goes human-
Well, he doesn’t know if the physical trauma would kill him first, or if he would drown. Painful either way.
So he screams.
And screams.
And screams.
He’s knocked out all the GIW in the room with him, all of them have stopped moving, and no one else has come in the door for a while.
Danny wonders how he doesn’t go evil in this timeline. He must not- Clockwork hasn’t shown up yet.
“I don’t like this, Todd,” Says a voice- Danny doesn’t recognize it, but it sounds like a kid. It’s not a GIW. Danny can’t stop screaming. “We should just leave. B’s probably shitting himself, and don’t get me started of Alfred-”
“I have to get to him,” Says another. Older. Torn up vocal cords. Danny wonders if he’s been screaming, too. “I have to, replacement.”
“If we get out of here alive, you have got to stop calling me that.”
“No chance.” Todd says. Danny screams-
He’s screaming for help.
It seems that Todd’s coming to help.
Two boys- men- appear in the doorway, colored green by the light of the ectoplasm bath. The smaller one is in a school uniform and the other is dead.
Or was. Danny can’t tell, and he stops screaming.
The older one is on one knee, head bowed, while the schoolboy stares at Danny in horror.
“Oh. My. God.” He says.
“He’s not down here,” Danny manages to choke out.
000
000
“Motherfucker,” Tim hisses, looking at the horror scene in front of him.
He can’t really describe it any better than that- the boy’s cut to slivers, floating in a thousand gallon glass vat of green liquid. A black and white hazmat suit sticks to what’s left of his skin, and his guts are floating around him, barely attached with strings of degrading viscera. He looks see-through. He looks younger than Tim. He looks-
It’s a horror scene, painted in lazarus green.
“It’s... lazarus water,” Jason says beside him, eyes wide with fear. The stench of formaldehyde and blood is overwhelming. “He can’t die. He can’t- death would be a blessing .”
“Should we... should we take him out?” If they took him out, he would die. Was he even alive?
“I’m going to,” Jason says, struggling to his feet, before searching the room for something- he picks up a metal folding chair, not unlike the one Tim had been strapped to an hour before.
“Todd- Jason wait -”
But Jason isn’t waiting. He hits the vat with everything in him, and the chair bounces back. Jason stumbles a few steps before running at it again. Fuck- he’s not going to stop. Tim looks around the room desperately- it does seem to be fully stocked, medically, which is good- maybe they could keep him stable? Sew him up? Oh, God.
To the soundtrack of Jason attacking the vat with the chair, Tim assembles a poorly first aid kit, with a sterile needle, threaded, nitrile gloves on and at the ready.
Death would be a blessing . Jason had said. The boy isn’t saying anything else, and he isn’t screaming anymore, his eyes open to slivers.
But breaking down that lazarus vat was as good as killing him . And whether or not Tim is on this... could he count this as a case? This Case, with the Red Hood, that was a line Robins weren’t supposed to cross.
“No-” Jason screamed, running at the vat again- “MORE!”
It broke open with a crash, flooding the room. Some splashed up on Tim’s shoes- fantastic, he’d just broken them in.
“Shit, shit,” Tim swears, bringing his makeshift surgery tray down with him as he kneels, the glowing pit water absorbing in bubbling puddles to the concrete. He grabs whatever organs are available and places them roughly where they ought to go. They feel too light, and deadly cold, and he really isn’t sure if this is right- he was much, much more comfortable with computers than people, especially when it comes to their innards.
“Hey,” Jason says roughly. “Hey, just leave it-”
How can he? The boy’s chest is still heaving deep, wretched breaths, pit water coughing out in sporadic bursts.
“He’s still alive, he’s still breathing-”
“Those are agonal gasps, kid-”
“No!” Tim shouts. Even though he’s losing light from the lazarus water, the boy himself is glowing, like it’s been infused into his skin. “We broke that vat, that was keeping him alive. If I don’t keep him... keep him alive, then we killed him.”
“Me. I did that.”
“And I let you.”
“Please, you couldn’t’ve stopped me if you tried.”
The boy’s fingers skitter, almost like they aren’t attached to the rest of him, dragging the weight of his arm with them. Tim is holding onto a kidney, and they tap on his calf.
“Oh, fuck ,” He says, flinching and dropping the organ back into his body cavity.
“Desk. Second drawer from the right,” The boy whispers, wetly.
“Jason!”
“On it,” Jason stutters, heading for the desk while Tim tries to puzzle the boy’s flesh back together.
“This is just more Lazarus water!” Jason calls. Tim barely has the time to identify the clinking of vibrating glass before six phials of the stuff fly out directly at him- or, rather, at the boy on the floor.
“Inject... Core...” The boy says, barely a breath, and Tim manages to draw up a full syringe even in the low light- it’s just the phials of lazarus water and the boy’s faint glow, now. His hand draws itself up to tap just below his xiphoid process.
The needle is three inches long and an IO gauge, and Tim stabs it straight down, before slowly pressing on the plunger. After he does, the boy’s breaths go more even, and... his legs dissolve.
“Oh. Seems I can’t...” The boy’s voice fades. “Can’t quite...”
Later.
Tim would process this later . Now, he was stitching the boy’s abdomen together along his midline, unable to muster up concern about the way the thread was being pulled through lazarus water on the way. Anything to keep him whole enough to transport.
When he’s no longer in danger of leaving pieces behind, Tim tries to lift him, but his hands pass straight through.
“What-”
“Let me.” Jason says, and for some reason, he can get a hold of his translucent form, and he cradles him. The boy is small, would be even without his legs trailing off into mist. “Let’s go.”
As if to punctuate his sentence, the lights turn on in the compound with a loud clunk.
“Shit,” Tim says.
“Shit,” Jason agrees, and with their heads ducked, they begin to run.
It’s much easier to find the stairs in the light, and neither vigilante has any qualms about breaking down doors, even though Tim was wearing a green-stained gotham academy uniform. It was dark when they exited the building through an alley, skirting around the men in white, all speaking into their little ear pieces. They’re far on the outskirts of Gotham- Tim’s rarely out here for any reason other than Joker traps and Riddler puzzles, and they haven’t had any of those in a while. It’s all abandoned warehouses, and it’s not even contested territory.
“We’re closer to mine,” Jason says, cradling the boy’s head into his shoulder as they run. Tim hopes they aren’t tearing out his shitty attempt at stitches.
“B would kill me if I wore civvies to crime alley,” Tim says.
“Well, I’ll take him. You get home... let them know. And make sure the little guy is okay, okay?”