Chapter Text

Chapter One –

Jason Todd was tired and just wanted this night to end. He wanted to go home, peel off his armor and collapse into his bed and not wake up for the next two weeks. That was how bone dead tired he was.

His night hadn’t started off too bad, he would even say it had been a decent start to his night. He had only had to run off one bat from his territory… and they hadn’t actually crossed the invisible line separating Jason’s territory and that of the birds and bats of Gotham this time. He knew that his family was just worried about him, that the reason they came so close to his territory, provoking him into interacting with them… it was their way of making sure that he was still there… still alive…

He had stalked his territory, protecting everyone. Keeping the children safe from the demons that wanted to use them, to harm them, to take their life from them. Watched over all of the working girls, making sure that no one hurt them, that no one forced them to do anything they didn’t want to. Kept the drunks from hurting themselves or hurting other people.

And right now Jason was roaming the warehouses that littered his territory, making sure that no new gangs had taken to them. He had cleaned his territory of most of those annoying cockroaches, he did not need more. If he found a new nest, he would make sure to destroy it before they could fester.

He narrowed his eyes as a bright flash of light escaped the window of the last warehouse of the district. And quickly made his way to it. It would seem he had unwanted guests that he had to take care of.

Jason quietly slipped through a broken window at the top of the last warehouse, balancing on the beams of the ceiling with practiced ease. He had spent many nights as not only Red Hood, but also Robin sneaking and crawling along beams as he reconned an area. This was something he could do without thinking, it was almost instinctual at this point. And he didn’t know if he should be thanking Bruce or cursing the old man’s name.

His eyes narrowed as he caught sight of 15 people, all of them wearing dark cloaks with their hoods covering their faces. Only one of them had a bone white mask in the form of an animal skull. It was hard to tell from this distance if it was an actual animal skull or not. But it was clear who they were: Cultists.

In Jason’s personal and professional opinion: Cultists were worse than gangs.

The group of cultists were standing in a circle staring intently at something that was laying in the middle of the chalk circle and lit candles that they had set up. Their leader held a silver dagger dripping with blood in their hand. Jason shifted to get a better look of the thing in the center of the circle.

His blood ran cold before it ran hot with rage.

There was a fucking child…

There was a fucking child that was bleeding…

There was a fucking child that was no older than four that was bleeding…

These fucking cultists were trying to fucking sacrifice a fucking child no older than four fucking years old! And that fucking child was bleeding on the fucking floor of a random fucking warehouse in Crime Alley. In Jason’s fucking territory! Where everyone knew to not fuck with the children. Where it was known that if you touched a fucking child then you signed your life away to Red Hood!

The last thing that Jason remembered before his vision turned green was the sound of his gun being cocked.

-.-.-.-.-.-

All Danny could feel was pain.

It was every where around him… inside him.

He wanted to scream, to cry, to plead and beg for the pain to leave him and never return. He wanted to ask what he had done to have so much pain inflicted upon him. Why did the world seem to be so angry with him? To hate him so much to allow him to be in so much pain?

He had tried to do good. Tried to help everyone. He had taken responsibility of his mistake. Had taken to making sure that no one got hurt, that no one died. He would be the only one to be hurt. He was the one to open the portal. He was the one to unleash the dead upon the living. So he had to be the one to keep everyone safe. To return the dead back to their realm. To keep the living from attacking the dead in fear. And to keep the dead from breaking the living beings and their fragile bodies.

Danny had been the one to help the dead when he had allowed Vlad to enter the realm of the dead and release Pariah Dark. He had made sure that Pariah Dark didn’t hurt anyone. Didn’t take over the world. He had been willing to sacrifice himself to put Pariah Dark back in the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep so that he could never hurt anyone ever again.

Danny had given up his dreams of traveling the stars so that he could protect everyone.

And now as Danny laid on that cold metal table in his parents… in Jack and Maddie’s lab in the basement of their home. With their hands inside of him, pulling and poking and cutting… He wanted to scream, to cry, to plead and beg them to stop. He wanted to scream at them that he was alive! He wanted to cry that he was their son. Plead for them to stop hurting him. Beg for them to see that he was right there. That he was in pain. That they were hurting their son. That he wasn’t dead!

But he couldn’t.

The moment that he had begun speaking to them they had shoved a ball gag in his mouth to silence him. They refused to listen to him. They refused to see him. They refused to accept the truth in front of them.

And no one was there to save him.

Jazz had moved out and gone to her dream college in the UK. Though she called and checked up on him whenever she could, she was gone. She had left him. Left him to deal with their parents… to deal with Jack and Maddie alone. But he didn’t blame her. If he could escape from this hell, then he would.

Sam and Tucker had slowly been drifting from him since the two of them had realized that they loved each other. And Danny was happy for them. They deserved to find the happiness that they gave each other. He would never deprive them of that.

And Valarie… well she, as the Red Huntress, would be right along with his parents… with Jack and Maddie. She would help them in their pulling and poking and cutting. Help them in trying to find his core… to end him forever.

Danny could feel his core tiring at constantly hiding itself and making sure that his parents… that Jack and Maddie didn’t find it. He had grown worried, terrified, as he felt his core weakening… terrified that it would flicker into existence and that his parents… that Jack and Maddie would see it. And he had sent out a thankful thought to the universe when his parents… when Jack and Maddie had finished for the night and hastily sown him back up, not caring if his chest was fully closed or not… why should they care if the thing pretending to be their son was completely closed or not… they would just be cutting the stitches back open in the morning…

Danny had wanted to let his core relax. Wanted to change back into his human form and allow his core to rest and heal as much as it could until the morning came. But he couldn’t. The restraints holding him down to the table weren’t just keeping him from phasing out of them, but they had also locked him into his ghost form. And Danny feared that come morning, when his parents… when Jack and Maddie came back down and opened him up once more, that they would find his core and end him for good…

And as Danny laid there in the lab that was empty except for him, and the lights turned off from the lack of movement after 15 minutes, he silently cried. He cried for the loss of what he had always viewed as his loving parents. Sure, the parents that had raised him since childbirth could be very scatter brained. Sure, Jazz and Danny used to have to remind them every few weeks that they did in fact have children…

But he knew that those parents, the ones that would tuck him in and read him about the stars in the sky and all their mythos, the ones that celebrated every ‘A’ that him and Jazz got, the ones that would go out of their way to drive half way across the continent just so that their son could have the best view of the meteor shower or solar eclipse… He knew that those parents loved him and would do anything for him… would kill for him…

But he had realized that he had lost those loving parents four years ago when he stepped into that portal. He lost the loving mother that would kiss his boo-boos and make his ouchies all better… He lost the father that would gather him into his arms and hug all his worries and fears away… He lost all of that the moment his foot had caught on that loose wire… The moment his hand hit that emergency on switch… The moment his heart stopped before the ectoplasm of the now active portal brought him back to life… only wrong…

Drs. Jack and Madeline Fenton had stopped being his parents the second he had become Phantom…

Danny continued to cry. He wanted his mother to wipe away his tears and promise that nothing would harm him ever again, that she would protect him and keep all of the monsters away from him. He wanted his father to sweep into the room and scare all of the demons from the shadows that threatened to drag him into their hellscape, to wrap him into the protective cocoon that was his arms. He wanted them to tell him that he was safe, that they were there and that nothing would get past them to be able to harm him ever again.

He cried for the loss of the life that Daniel James Fenton could have had had he not been so stupid and reckless. Had he not told his friends all about the ‘failed’ portal in his basement. Had he not been so eager to impress his friends. Had he just locked the door to the basement after his parents had left their lab to rest before they brainstormed to figure out what had gone wrong. If he had just listened to his gut to just leave the portal alone…

Danny wanted to go back in time and stop himself from tripping. To stop himself from walking into the dark portal. To stop himself from slipping on that hazmat suit. To stop him and his friends from walking down the stairs towards the lab in the basement. To stop himself from telling his friends about the ‘failed’ portal…

He wanted to go back to a time where he was still normal… still fully alive…

He wanted to go back to when he was little, to when he could crawl into his parents bed after a terrible nightmare…

He wanted this to just be a terrible nightmare!

Danny gasped out a choked sob as he felt his tired core lurch as something pulled on it. He knew this pull. Had had it happen a few times since he had beaten Pariah Dark. Had learned how to ignore the pull. To deny the pull. But he couldn’t this time. Ignoring the pull, denying it, took energy… energy that he did not have.

And then the world around him changed from the darkened lab in Drs. Jack and Madeline Fenton’s basement, to a dark and scary building. And his mind was too fuzzy, he didn’t know who exactly he was, where exactly he was, what exactly he had been doing just moments before. All he knew was that he was hurt and scared and wanted his daddy… and there were scary tall people staring at him… and there was the smell of blood in the air. Danny let out a small sob as his body shifted to curl in on himself to hide as much as he could…

And then the world exploded in a flurry of loud sounds as something fell from the ceiling.

-.-.-.-.-.-

When Jason’s vision finally cleared of the violent green that had blinded him, he had found himself standing over the bloody corpse of the cultist leader with all the other cultist lying dead all around the warehouse. The leader’s bone mask (that was actually a skull of some kind of canine, the sick fucker) laid on the ground, shattered. The man’s body was already riddled with bullet holes. A small, painfilled whimper came from the tiny child that still laid curled up in the middle of the chalk circle and lit candles… and a small puddle of blood that was slowly growing…

Shit!

The kid was bleeding out!

He had to get the kid to someone that could help them!

Jason rushed over to the child and fell to his knees beside the scared and hurt child. As he reached out to grab the child, he was able to see that the child was a young boy with messy black hair and wide, scared blue eyes… and dear fucking lord the child was awake! Jason’s eyes caught sight of the too big ball gag in the boy’s mouth and he quickly ripped the thing off him, allowing the boy to actually take a breath as he quickly assessed the boy’s wound…

Green threatened to over take his vision again as he saw that ‘Y’ shaped cut on the boy’s tiny chest. A ‘Y’ cut that had been hastily sown closed in a way that clearly showed that whoever sown him shut didn’t care if the cut was closed or not… He knew what that cut was… had his own ‘Y’ shaped scar on his chest…

And the boy was awake!

The boy had his chest carved open, hastily sown back together, and was fucking awake! He hadn’t passed the fuck out from pain or even blood loss…

But, as the boy’s eyes fluttered closed and open again, Jason panicked. Knowing that if the boy fell asleep then he might not ever wake up again.

“Hey, stay with me.” Jason whispered to the boy, carefully taking the child into his arms.

“Daddy…” The boy whined and didn’t that just hit Jason in the fucking heart. This scared little baby boy just wanted his daddy, wanted his daddy to protect him and keep him safe… And whenever Jason found the fucker that stole this child from his parents they would wish that Jason had killed them when he was through with them. “Daddy… it hurts… it hurts so bad…”

“I know baby, I know.” Jason found himself whispering to the boy as he cradled the baby boy in his arms. He would be the boy’s stand in dad until they could reunite the baby boy with his father… unless Jason found out that it was the boy’s own father that gave him to the cultist… unless his parents had been part of the cultists that had done this to him…

But right now Jason had to focus on the baby boy in his arms and get him to safety… get him to someone who could properly stitch that wound shut…

His mind raced as he tried to figure out what was closer: Dr. Leslie Thompkins’ office or the Batcave? From where he was now, even if he sped as fast as he could, Leslie’s office was nearly thirty minutes away… however the Batcave was only a 15 minute drive away… 8 if he sped and ignored the lights.

The decision made; Jason quickly called his bike to where he was as he ran from the warehouse with the baby boy cradled in his arms… making sure to shoot the cultist leader a few more times as he passed the man’s body… just to make sure the fucker was actually dead…

“Red Hood to the Batcave!” Jason all but yelled into his communicator as his bike parked itself in front of him.

“Batcave to Red Hood, do you require assistance?” Alfred’s voice came through the comm as Jason threw his leg over the side of his bike and held the baby boy close to his chest as his free hand gripped the handle.

“Prep the medical bay, I have a heavily injured civilian child in need of immediate care. And get Dr. Thompkins to the cave ASAP!” Jason informed the man as he shot off on his bike towards the Batcave.

“No, Daddy… please no white coats… please… I promise to be a good boy… please don’t give me to the white coats.” The boy cried, gripping on to Jason’s jacket.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart, no white coats will take you from me.” Jason whispered to the boy soothingly before turning his attention back to Alfred. “Tell Dr. Thompkins to not wear a white coat.”

“Understood, Red Hood.” Alfred told him.

“Red Hood, report.” Bruce’s worried voice cut in.

“Found some cultist in my territory trying to sacrifice a little boy that can’t be any older than four. He is in need of immediate medical attention.” Red Hood growled out, fighting back the urge to tell the old man that he was no longer one of his birds that he could order around.

“What is your ETA?” Tim suddenly asked as Jason practically laid his bike down as he turned a corner, pushing is bike to go faster than he had ever had it go before.

“Less than five minutes.” Red Hood informed the young man as the Batmobile suddenly slid around a corner in front of him and began to practically lead Jason to the Batcave, cutting a clearing for him. “Make that less than three minutes…” He updated Tim before whispering a “Thanks B…” Only to receive an acknowledging grunt from Bruce as the man continued to use the Batmobile to carve a clearing to the Batcave for Jason and the baby boy clinging to his chest.

It was in moments like this that Jason was truly reminded that the whispering voices of the pit inside his mind was wrong. That Bruce… that his father truly did love him and would do just about anything to help him…

Just not kill the Joker…

Jason ground his teeth as he tried to shove that dark voice to the back of his mind… He had heard what truly happened. Bruce had gone to kill the Joker for killing Jason… but it had been Superman that had stopped Bruce. It had been Superman that had kept Batman… kept Bruce from ending the monster that had forced the man to bury his son… forced Bruce to mourn the loss of the life Jason could have had…

Jason blinked as he flew into the Batcave seconds after the Batmobile and jumped off his bike, barely giving it time to stop. He didn’t care that the bike was still running, that the bike had slid across the cave and crashed into the back of the Batmobile. Jason quickly ripped his helmet off and threw it aside, not caring at the moment where it landed… Not when there was a child bleeding out in his arms. He ran to the medical bay where Alfred stood with his own domino mask on ready to try to stabilize the young boy until Leslie could get there. He barely blinked as the Batmobile roared once more before flying back out of the Batcave.

“No, Daddy… Please don’t let them take me… please… I promise to be a good boy… I don’t want to go with the white coats… Don’t leave me Daddy!” The boy cried, clinging onto Jason’s coat even tighter.

“Shush, sweetheart, daddy’s right here. Daddy’s not gonna go anywhere, he’s gonna stay right here next to you. I promised that no white coats were gonna take you from me, and I meant it.” Jason whispered as he finally got the boy laid down on one of the medical beds.

“Dear lord.” He heard Alfred breathe out as he not only saw the ‘Y’ carved into the young boy’s chest and the hastily done stitches, but also the fact that the boy was fucking awake and talking!

“This nice man here is gonna make the ouchies go away, and I’m gonna be right here holding your hand, protecting you.” Jason promised as the young boy tightly gripped his hand. “That’s a tight grip you got there, sweetheart.” He whispered to the boy as he began to run a soothing hand through the boy’s sweat soaked hair.

“Young Master, might I ask what your name is?” Alfred asked as he quickly began to cut at the hastily sown stitches as Damian in his Robin outfit and Tim in his Red Robin outfit quickly worked together to get everything that both Alfred and Leslie would need once the woman got there.

“D-D-Danny?” The boy whispered (it coming out as more of a question as if he couldn’t quite remember his own name) his hand squeezing Jason’s hand with every stitch cut.

“Young Master Danny, I am going to do my very best to make all your ouchies go away.” Alfred promised as he finished cutting the last stitch.

“No white coats…” Danny whined.

“No white coats.” Alfred promised as he began to properly clean and inspect the cut on Danny’s chest. Both Alfred and Jason shared a look, anger in both of their eyes, as they noticed that it wasn’t just a cut in the shape of a ‘Y’ but an actual incision. Someone had vivisected this boy before the cultists had tried to sacrifice him. Jason’s vision began to bleed green once more…

And then the Batmobile crashed into the cave and Dr. Leslie Thompkins was racing over to them, her medical bag clutched in her hands. Thankfully no white doctor's coat in sight.

“Status report.” Leslie ordered the second she entered the medical bay.

“A young child, male, three incisions on his chest, clearly malnourished and dehydrated.” Alfred informed the woman as she quickly pulled on some gloves before taking over Alfred’s spot as the man quickly and expertly went about hooking Danny up to all the machines needed to keep track of his vitals.

“Vivisected. Clearly done by someone who at least understood the process but hadn’t actually done it before.” Leslie noted as Jason shifted to give Alfred enough room to start an I.V. in Danny’s arm. Earning a small whimper from the boy as the needle entered his arm. Leslie’s eyes flew over to lock with Danny’s scared blue eyes. “He’s awake.” She said, her voice dripping with worry. “Metahuman?” She asked them.

“I don’t know. I found and rescued him from a group of cultists that were in the middle of trying to sacrifice him.” Jason explained.

“Daddy…” Danny whined as his body tried to get away from the woman.

“Shush, it’s alright, sweetheart. She’s a family friend. She’s gonna help the nice man make all your ouchies go away.” Jason whispered to the terrified boy.

“Don’t let her take me away, Daddy… please… I’ll be a good boy…” Danny cried.

“It’s alright, little one…” Leslie started.

“Danny, his name is Danny.” Jason told her.

“It’s alright, Danny, I’m not going to take you away from your daddy. The only thing I’m going to take away is all your pain and ouchies.” Leslie promised and Danny’s watery eyes looked up at Jason, into the whited out eyes of the domino mask he always wore under his Red Hood mask. And, without much thought, Jason reached up and ripped the domino mask off so that this scared little boy could see his eyes and gain all the comfort he could from Jason.

“I won’t let her take you from me.” Jason promised and Danny relaxed a little and finally stopped trying to get away from Leslie and allowed her to touch him.

“Agent A, in my bag is a sedative strong enough for a metahuman. Start with the lowest dose and then raise it slowly if needed.” Leslie ordered as Jason focused on whispering reassurance to his… to the baby boy laying on the medical bed as Leslie and Alfred focused on properly closing the boy and making sure he wasn’t in pain. Slowly, ever so painfully slowly, Alfred finally found the correct dose of the sedative that had his baby… had the baby boy relax until he was unconscious. And even then, Jason never left his side.

He had promised his baby boy that he wouldn’t leave him.