Work Text
The concept of “soulmates” was not an unfamiliar one to the Wayne family, nor the world at large. Typically, there were three types of soul bonds that people would enjoy: parental, romantic, and platonic. Some people had one parental bond, others had multiple or none, same with romantic and platonic. Normally, the soul bond that was focused on the most was the romantic bond, as it came with its own special mark. The name that your soulmate had, whether that was what was given at birth or taken as their own later on, written in their home language in a small script somewhere on the body.Familial and platonic bonds were less prominent and pronounced. It was less of a visible mark and more of a touch upon one’s soul— upon meeting those who would be called family or the closest of friends, a connection would be instantly formed. Unlike romantic soul bonds, which appeared physically on the body at the moment both parties were born, familial and platonic bonds could go unformed for years. That being said, soulmates were not unfamiliar to the Wayne extended family. Familial and platonic bonds connected them, and it was difficult, if not nearly impossible, to break those bonds, even through the trials and tribulations they suffered. ——The disappearance and death of one Jason Todd-Wayne did not go unnoticed by the city of Gotham. How could it, when Bruce Wayne took it so hard, retreating from the public eye to grieve. It seemed, for a while, that untimely death haunted the man— first, two of Bruce’s parents, then, his second eldest, all taken far too soon. The reappearance of Jason Todd-Wayne in public society came as a shock to the system for everyone. Rumors had swirled that a miracle had happened, that the now-middle-child (after the official adoption of one Timothy Drake-Wayne) had somehow come back to life. Gotham City had frankly seen weirder shit. A resurrection, while not entirely normal , was really just a normal Tuesday when you factored in the Joker. Allegedly, the family’s bonds had to be reestablished due to the time that Jason had spent dead. It was a somewhat easy fix. His romantic soul bond, known to a grand total of five people (on his side, at least), the writing on the inside of his wrist long since mangled and scarred from the explosion, did not. Danny Fenton had been, to put it lightly, Pissed as Fuck when his soul mark got all blotted and fucked up. The Accident, as they were calling it, had killed and resurrected Danny in turn, but had not left him without a visible mark; scarring dominated his left hand, Lichtenberg figures zigzagging across his fingertips and up through his arm, only tapering out close to his elbow. His soul mark was not spared, the scarring twisting the messy handwriting to an unreadable degree. If you really looked, you could, a little, make out a few of the letters, but not enough to make out a name. He took to wearing a compression glove on his left hand, after the accident. The scarring was off-putting, even more so when he explained what it had come from— an accident, an electric shock that caused continued heart problems. You would have to pry the truth out of his cold dead ghost hands. The truth, that Danny had accidentally killed himself and simultaneously been resurrected, creating a wholly unique being in a way Reality hadn’t seen before. A balance between Life and Death, a true Bridge between realms. At fourteen, he’d hated it— raging and screaming, desperately trying to get his powers under control, lashing out and misplacing his aggression (only to find out ghosts bonded over fighting), the whole nine yards. But now?A solid 5 years after the fact, Danny wouldn’t give up his powers for the world, not for anything. His parents didn’t see his powers as balance. His parents saw his ghost half, the flop side of his own coin, as possession. Evil. Scum. A post-mortem expression of hate. And yet, unable to feel, at the same time. Running away was blurry. His memory came in flashes, in pain in his chest and his blood boiling under his skin. It came in fleeing through the portal, distantly aware the emergency code he texted Tucker would remotely shut the place down and wipe everything from the Fenton servers. It came in the panicked expressions of Johnny and Kitty as he floated in a daze, not realizing he was bleeding out and on the verge of being Ended. It came in two weeks radio silence from the other side before Sam and Tucker managed to text back. Amity was a walking hazard city for him; even Vlad had retreated to Wisconsin. It came in hearing that his parents buried an empty casket and swore to take revenge on Phantom, no matter what it cost. It came in months of recovery, in learning his injuries would scar over regardless of form, as it was such a traumatic event it burned into his form. It came in Clockwork, ever observing and advising, guiding him to a new city where the ambient ectoplasm would be enough to sustain him, where even the GIW wouldn’t touch. Gotham, New Jersey. Technically, officially, Danny had become an adult a year ago. His birthday had come and gone, and he’d been creeping up on his 18th when the ShitShow went down and he had to leave Amity. It went against everything he stood for, everything about him screaming to go back to his Haunt, to protect it, but that was no longer an option. The Guys in White had gone full “occupied territory” on the city, locking down the city borders until the “situation” was handled. It was… even now, a year later, it was still tense. Gotham City was a completely different beast. The Batman gallivanting around the city, beating up the mentally ill and criminals? Wild. Living in what was entirely technically gang territory but the rent was super cheap (kept down by the occasional magazine of bullets unloaded into the air)? Also super wild, but hey, it beat his other option, living awkwardly behind a dumpster. The City Ghost who somehow got him the apartment and was lowkey mothering him every chance she got, sending grocery deliveries and the like to his dilapidated apartment via “wrong addresses”?Well. He wasn’t going to complain. Regardless, Danny knew better than to question a gift horse, so he stayed in the apartment, cooked with the food, did the studying online in the correspondence courses to finish his GED. He graduated with A’s and B’s, so at least he had that under his belt, and was able to apply for college. The lack of need for food shopping, for money for bills, got him a good ways in, but eventually… well. At seventeen, his clothes had finally given out, his jeans in too much disrepair to be patched and stitched back up, the clothes he’d managed to grab were literally falling apart. Johnny, Kitty, and Ember had been invaluable with every-so-often clothes drops, apparently “ethically sourced” -- that is, stolen from the rich who would never have known the clothes were gone. Anything he didn’t keep was sold through one of those clothes-selling-apps and the money sent to domestic abuse shelters.Let it never be said that Danny wasn’t self-conscious. So, his wardrobe had been given a bit of an update recently. Jeans, typically a dark shirt, and a black-and-white customized leather jacket that Johnny’d given him for his seventeenth. It matched the vibes of the motorcycle that he’d built after his coronation as King, a project he’d worked on with some of the mechanic ghosts in the Realm (including Johnny and Shadow, who had pouted until they were allowed to pass tools back and forth) that was highly customized to himself. He kept it in a specific room in the Keep, where he could yank it in and out of reality as needed, but currently it was parked in the garage. As it was connected to his own ectosignature, it wouldn’t respond to anyone else. The bike was painted a base white with black accents, and reflective neon green accentuating certain points of it. They’d started with the frame of a Kawasaki Ninja 650, then absolutely tricked it out. It was his baby , and he loved it. It was only completed after his nineteenth.So when it got stolen? Danny, frankly, was about to lose his shit.Jason recognized that stealing a motorbike was probably not his best choice. Sure, yes, he was Red Hood, and he effectively owned and ran Crime Alley, but he tried to not make a habit of stealing random people’s motorcycles.But alas, his own bike had crashed two streets back and he was going to lose Scarecrow’s trail, so, theft it was. He’d pay the guy back.Probably.Hopefully.The green sticky note he’d left in its place had a burner number on it, so. Hopefully the owner would get in touch about replacing it.But uh.. Wow. K. This bike? He could almost feel the love that went into it, the work that was all but imbued in the machinery, how it responded under him. It was intuitive, it responded beautifully , like the bike itself knew what he was going to do before he did it.Part of him really wanted to keep the bike.But alas, it didn’t fit his aesthetic. So, once he’d run down the Scarecrow, knocked him around, made fun of him, and then kicked his tied-up ass out of his territory for B to deal with, he’d pulled out the associated burner phone to a litany of curses in an unreadable font that eventually turned back into English.
msg: you fucker give me back my bike or i will hunt you down and put your stupid fucking head on a pike like you are oliver fucking cromwell you son of a bitch
msg: you seem to have a lot of pent up rage
msg: your bike is fine by the way. Sorry for borrowing it, but i’ll have it brought back.
how the fuck did you even GET it to work for you??
Bikes like me?
not an answer but ok; you owe me for borrowing my bike.
meet me here and bring her if it has a scratch i will personally dismember your ass.
Cute.
You know who you’re messaging, I guess? Ballsy of you to threaten me.
you wear a metal helmet. its not intimidating.
[sent: coordinates]
Did you really just send me coordinates to the bermuda triangle?
I’ll have someone drop off your bike. Courtesy cleaning and all.
..thanks i guess.
just don’t break ‘er.
I would never.
Bike owner’s honor.
Yeah, that overrules the whole serial murderer thing.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Danny didn’t quite know what to expect when the Red Hood Himself said that he’d kidnapped - bikenapped? - his motorcycle. For one, the fact that he’d
somehow
managed to “borrow” (steal) it in the first place was… concerning. The thing was tied to his ectosignature, after all, and while it hadn’t been properly
tested
, it shouldn’t have run for anyone else.
Danny, in all his genius, chose to chalk it up to a fluke as he took it into the garage the next morning. A good look-over in the shop couldn’t hurt, and besides, she was due for a cleaning. So, first thing in the morning, he got up, got dressed, grabbed his keys, and headed down to his shop below the apartment. It was
painfully
quiet on his own, but hey, just ‘cause it was four am didn’t mean he didn’t need to start opening up for the day anyway. Some customers came in at weird times, and he wasn’t in the business of questioning them.
Nope, not this ghost. He knew better than to ask stupid questions. Instead, he popped in his headphones and opened up the shop, keeping one earbud halfway out of his ear as he flicked on lights, got the coffee pot brewing, and got his papers out for the day.
Roger’s car was due to be finished up today-- a fender bender, but he’d been coming to Danny since he’d opened up the shop, and the man always paid well, so that should be a good little bit of pay… Ms. Mary’s bicycle had some fucked up gearing he’d promised to look at, even though they weren’t his
specialty
she’d promised him a pie in return and she made damn good pies…
Danny hummed as he set the papers and tickets down in order of work. Best to start with the absolute
monstrosity
that Red Hood had just. Left in place of his baby. It was a gorgeous bike, he could tell, even as he hauled it up into place. A more “classic” type than his own, the front fork was warped as
fuuuuck
, the tires popped and dented, the exhaust pipe was
shot
…
“Ancients, baby girl, what’d he
do
to you?” he murmured, running his hand over the metal of the black and red bike. “I’m gonna give him a piece of my mind, just for this. Well, shit, let’s start getting you back into riding shape, shall we?” Idly, Danny stretched, then tugged off his jacket and tossed it onto the table as he grabbed his workbelt, securing it into place around his waist.
It was almost funny, he thought, how he worked. Oh sure, most of it was straight engineering knowledge - he hadn’t been working on an apprenticeship since he’d made his way back to the Living Realm for nothing - but a
solid
quarter of his skill was actually ghost powers. Intangibility and invisibility made it pretty damn easy to find and fix little problems, and using his enhanced strength to bend shit back into place and reinforce it was almost child’s play. It made what would have been a weeks-long job take only a few
hours
… and in those hours, Danny felt his phone buzz. A lot. He, however, elected to ignore it, at least for a while-- right up until a pair of boots came into his field of view, about two hours after he’d gotten started.
He looked up, and honestly, he could hardly find it in himself to be shocked at what he saw.
Long,
strong
legs, criss-crossed by frankly unfair leather straps, followed up by a much-too-tight shirt that
had
to be armored because otherwise it was impractical, a dark brown leather jacket, and the signature red helmet staring down at him.
Danny, unfortunately, became suddenly
very
aware that he was kneeling on the floor, and swallowed. Hard. “Ah-hah. Hello.”
The Red Hood didn’t answer immediately, but he tipped his head to the side, his arms crossed across a broad
broad
chest. “...You’re fixing her?”
“Well… yeah.” Danny hummed. “She got pretty fucked up, but I’m almost done. Nothing that a bit of elbow grease can’t fix, and she should be road-worthy.”
Hood just stared. “You do realize that I’d written her off as totaled, right?”
“What, do you carry
insurance?
” Danny snarked, raising his eyebrow as he grabbed a wrench, then turned back to the bike. “Be glad she’s fixed, Mr. ‘I steal helpless bikes for fun.’”
“I didn’t
steal
--” Hood sighed, then shook his head. “You didn’t have to fix her.”
“Except I kind of did, you left her outside my shop and that’s, like, the rule,” Danny snickered as he flopped back onto the super scooter (neon green, because he knew his brand) and shuffled himself into place to work on the underside of the pipes. “Check the wall, man.”
Hood’s boots sounded heavily as he stepped away, then Danny heard him scoff. “
Drop your wreck off & come back in a few days, no questions asked?
That’s the worst business model I’ve ever heard of.”
“See, you’d think that,” Danny grunted, “but after that first fix where I work my miracles-- hey hand me that, the thing, that there, right, yep-- they come back. Loyalty’s more important than money, bud.”
Hood snorted. “How in hell have you lived this long in the Alley?”
“Define living.”
“Jesus fuck,” Hood laughed. “Okay, okay, you win this one, smartass.”
Danny, abruptly, was
yoinked
out as Hood bent down, snagging the handle of the SuperScooter(™) and pulled Danny back from the bike. “But I’m paying you for your hours.”
Danny wasn’t stupid. Okay? He knew, logically, that the Red Hood was a Very Bad Dude. He was a serial murderer, had stuffed a bunch of heads in a duffle bag to prove a point, was a mob boss at best, and was generally Terrifying.
Danny also was down
bad
for bad boys in leather jackets who rode motorcycles. He had a type, okay?
So. In his infinite wisdom, Danny just grinned up at the Red Hood, his too-sharp teeth on display as he beamed.
“Cash or card, bestie?”