A lot of the Narilamb scenes we see are just Narinder kabedon-ing Lamb. I’m all for it
yeah its kinda crazy like why tf does he keep doing that. wild. anyway
The author
After all the otherworldly experiences he'd been through, Danny was tired, being King of the Infinite Realms didn't make up for that fact, Jazz had talked to him about it at some point, something about processing the trauma now that he was in a safe place.
He tried to ask his mentor for advice on how to get that weight off his chest but Clockwork told him that it was not the time yet and offered him some cookies, which frankly were delicious but did not help with his current problem.
In the end it was Ghostwriter who found a solution, when Danny went to his library looking for information on what to do, he ended up meeting the ghost, Ghostwriter gave him some strange but useful advice, probably unintentionally "You could censor what happened a bit and write a book about it, it's a good story."
And as stupid as it sounded, he did it, he wrote a whole saga of books about his experiences, recounting everything as if it were a fairy tale in an invented world. It helped more than he thought at first and made him feel a little lighter at the end of the day.
Sneaking into the human realm as Danny Fenton he published his books under a Phantom-like nickname, and his saga became strangely popular, to the point where it reached Jason Todd.
Jason for his part was in love with the story, there were some scenarios that were familiar to him, but it didn't really matter, he was strangely excited when he found out that the author would have a book signing in Gotham; no matter how many times Dick called him a book nerd he wasn't going to miss that damn signing.
And if the author and the crime lord fell in love when they saw each other at the signing, that was information for Clockwork to know.
Trod Bad End doodles from last night + older ones I'm posting so I can delete the files
Uncle Scarecrow AU!
So Jonathan is either Maddie's Half brother or Cousin and was really close with the Fenton family until he went a little crazy.
His obsession with fear is driven partially by the idea that ghosts feed on fear and partially since he's ecto contaminated and also feeds on fear to some extent.
Eventually word gets out to a few people that Danny is Phantom and the GIW managed to destabilize him in a way that he doesn't look as human and needs a large amount of fear and ecto to look even somewhat normal.
Maddie and Jack send him off to his Uncle Jon knowing that Gotham has ecto and fear in abundance. Jon digs deeper into his fear gas and figures out that it can work as a stabilizer for Danny if he inhales, drinks, or gets it injected into him.
The Bats get suspicious when Scarecrow breaks out of Arkham and just isn't seen for weeks. They manage to track him down and see him with his mask off in a lab with Danny and Bruce, Tim, and Cass listen in:
"Are you sure this will work, Uncle Jon?" A boy with white hair and Lazarus green eyes asks looking just a bit too inhuman to be comfortable. ("Uncle Jon?)
Crane spins around
"It has to work, Danny and I'll keep working until it does." He approaches Danny with a syringe full of fear serum. The Bats get ready to intervene but the boy doesn't seem scared
"So this chemically causes fear and hallucinations. Right?"
"Exactly. Since you're half human I'm unsure how much fear you're supposed to ingest to stay healthy but we're going to figure it out. Your parents entrusted you to me so I'm going to make sure you're okay." The boy sighs and gestures for the needle. As the Bats shift, this child has to feed on fear to stay healthy?
"I'm pretty sure they sent me to you because of ecto levels in the city and the amount of fear I'd be able to consume naturally Uncle Jon." He states as he jams the needle into himself. Above him Bruce and Tim want to intervene but Cass stops them
"Not hurting him." She states. Danny shivers for a moment before shifting into a much more human form with black hair and blue eyes as they watch on.
"How human do I look?" Scarecrow grins widely
"You look great kiddo. How stable do you feel? What effects are there? How is it interacting with your biology?" Danny thinks for a moment
"I feel like I watched a horror movie in theatre and absorbed enough fear to last a few days." Scarecrow takes note of that.
"Eventually we'll find something that'll work more permanently." Crane vows
"How much fear do you need to eat weekly?" (The Bats listen closer if one of their rogues literally has to feed on fear that rewrites several prior assumptions about him)
"Not as much as you. I'm still mostly human and I tend to stock up on a bunch at once. I'm thinking about making a weak strain to inject myself with so I won't have to go out as much." His Nephew seemed surprised
"Really? Family tradition means that we need at least one Supervillain a generation and my parents have stopped doing vivisections in their basement so really it's just you?"
"Family tradition?" Tim questions but Bruce is almost as confused. He'll need to look into Jonathan Cranes background more after this if it's a family tradition. He's also concerned about the vivisections the boy mentioned.
Scarecrow let's out a bit of a laugh below them.
"Who will be the villain from your gen then?" He mused
"Any one of us really," Danny laughed "According to the Government I'm breaking the law by existing. Ellie is half raised by Uncle Vlad and he's enough of a villainous fruit loop, Dan is on probation for murder, and Jazz wants to be a psychologist." He explained.
"Jazz I'm sure." He smirks as the Bats take notes
Jack and Maddie Fenton, after college and prior to having their first child, were highly-effective super villains. Mad scientists the likes of which Luthor could only dream of achieving.
They were so fucking frightening that this is what drove Vlad away. He wasn't biding his time, he was goddamn hiding from his ex-best friends so that they wouldn't dissect him.
Shit man, they'd nearly done it to him when he'd been fully human. If they found out he'd become part of their obsession?
So yeah Vlad went to ground.
No financial backing, no morals, only science. Everything was a science experiment, full stop.
Then they had a daughter, and like...huh. This. This wasn't an experiment. This was perfection? A mix of both Jack and Maddie, in one tiny perfect body. She was adorable.
And the government, knowing that if these crackpots were dangerous before, holy fuck they'd be unstoppable now cuz protective parent mode go, offers them a deal.
Stop attacking people, stop experimenting on people, stop being villains, make weapons for the government. Do this, and the government will set them up in a house, let them continue experiments that do not infringe on human rights, and the kid gets a full ride scholarship to whatever college she wants, however many times she wants to go.
The Fentons took it; shit man a free scholarship is nothing to laugh at, they'd been to college. That debt was the driving force to them turning to villainy in the first place.
By the time they had Danny they'd fully acclimatized to being strange, ghost-obsessed parents.
The accident happens, Jack and Maddie don't know, shit goes down, and the GIW find out before they do. Then Danny goes missing, after his last known location was being shot down by the GIW.
Now Jack and Maddie, their kids are perfect. Small, cute perfect little kids. Theirs and theirs alone. If one of them managed to become half of the thing they were obsessing over, then they would learn to live with that, because he was their son.
The GIW had hurt their son.
So they made sure Jazzy-pants was secure, protected, and safe; and then proceeded to get all of their old super-villain gear back, decimate the GIW, and commit multiple war crimes.
The government, thinking that they've gone back for no reason, freaks and calls the Justice League. The Justice League who had never had to fight the Fentons, as they'd retired just before the League formation. The older heroes that had fought them are either dead or in retirement.
They know Superman's weakness, they know how to deal with Flash, they can even handle Wonder Woman. Whatever hero the Justice League throws at them, they know exactly what to do.
They are Batman levels of insanely prepared, but with the insanity to be just unpredictable enough that Batman can't tell his friends how to work around the Fenton's plans.
Meanwhile, Jack and Maddie have managed to find out that their baby boy is not being held by the GIW. In fact, it looks like he's gone to ground, smart boy that he is.
They track him to his last known location.
Gotham.
In Gotham, Jason snaps at the street kid he'd taken in to hold the fuck still, since stitches were hard. Danny tries, but stitches feel weird and he's ticklish.
In Wayne Manor, Jazz stares down Bruce Wayne; conclusive evidence in front of her to prove he is Batman. She demands he finds her brother before her parents tear the world apart.
In the Bat Cave, Sam stares down Damian, and Tucker gets stared down by Alfred. They just wanted to find their friend, and what better way than a tracker on the BatMobile?
Okay, so, Brain Dead rejected soulmate AU but Danny is the one who rejected Tim.
Let's say in this world that there are many types of soul bonds.
You've got your standard and fairly common First Words and Skin Art.
Then you've got less common things like Shared Dreams, Colorblind Until You Meet, and Red String.
And then you've got the very rare Telepathic Bond and Empathic Bond.
Finally, there's the ultra rare, one in a million, Shared Pain* soul bonds. It helps that the flip side of this particular bond means Shared Comforts**, but still, it is not the kind of bond people hope for.
Naturally, Fenton luck dictates that this is what Danny (and by extension, his soulmate) gets stuck with.
And at first it's fine. Like, bumps and scrapes happen but it's no big deal. Then the bullying starts and Danny feels a bit guilty that his soulmate has to deal with it by proxy.
But, Danny learns how to minimize damage. And the way Danny can feel his soulmate gentle nursing the pains when he can't, indulging in extra comforts for the both of them, makes Danny think that maybe it's okay.
After all, if it was really to much, Danny's soulmate would have already rejected him.
And when Danny's soulmate starts getting a bit more roughed up when they're 13, naturally Danny returns the favor; never wishing to sever the bond, only wishing he could prevent the pain all together.
Then Danny turns 14.
Then Danny dies. But survives.
He cries that night, his soulmate desperately trying to push comfort through their bond while all Danny can think about is how he shouldn't have gone in that portal. He shouldn't have been so reckless. He should have PROTECTED them.
And to top it all off, suddenly he's not just Dash's personal punching bag. No, there's a whole host of ghostly rogues that like to come bother Danny. And maybe it was still okay when it was just ectopusses or Lunch Lady or Boxy.
But as more and more powerful ghosts come through, as the fights get harder and Danny takes more damage, the guilt over what he's subjecting his soulmate to eats at him.
And after Danny meets Vlad, the first enemy he faces that he really can't beat, he makes the decision. This isn't going to end. These fights, these pains...
Someday he's going to face an enemy that is going to grind him into the dirt. That's going to kill him again, probably slowly and unpleasantly, and Danny already subjected his soulmate to one death, he refuses to put him through another.
So Danny mentally reaches deep inside himself, real hands placing themselves above his heart.
Feeling around for the source of that gentle warmth his soulmate is pushing through their bond.
He finds it, grasping with imaginary hands while his real ones clench the fabric of his shirt.
Feels the way the warmth stutters. The sharp jolt of pain on his elbow as his soulmate probably knocks it when he realizes what Danny is doing.
Danny pays it no mind. He holds the bond between then tightly; tears welling up in his eyes as phantom arms wrap around himself, his soulmate's desperate plea for Danny not to do what he's about to.
Danny yanks, physical hands all but tearing the shirt off his chest as mental ones rip the bond from his and his soulmate's hearts.
The last pain they'll ever share comes crashing into him, the distinct Rejection scar crackling across his chest not unlike the Lichtenburg on his arm.
It hurts, but less than dying had.
Then the pain is gone. Or rather, that pain is gone.
The dull aches from the fight with Plasmius throb and a part Danny finds himself missing the soothing comforts his soulmate had provided him, emptiness filling the space they used to occupy.
But another part of Danny, the part that is more ghost than human, swells with pride knowing he has protected his soulmate from Danny's own inevitable fate.
As Danny inspects Rejection spidering out from his heart, a strange hollow giddiness settles in his stomach. It makes him giggle.
His brain notes that if Dash ever sees this, he'll assume he finally succeeded in making Danny's soulmate reject him.
Danny giggles harder.
Not that Danny will correct him. Or his friends or his sister when they find out for that matter. They worry enough about him as is. They don't need to know just how far Danny is willing to go to protect the people he loves.
He's stifling laughter now, trying not to wake the neighbors.
Sitting alone on the roof of Fentonworks at 3 in the morning, Danny laughs until he sobs, then laughs and sobs until he can't breathe, then laughs and sobs and struggles to breathe until a light blue mist comes gasping past he lips.
His hysterics taper of and he lets the now familiar cold feeling of his ghost form spread across his body, pausing only for a second when he notices the new spiderwebbing across the chest of his hazmat suit, just a shade darker than the rest of the black material.
Oh well. It's not too noticeable and if some sees it he can just pretend it was always there. Just like he's going to pretend the emptiness in his heart was always there. Where it belongs.
~~~
Tim is at the Bat Computer desperately searching for any kind of clue who and where his soulmate is.
Of course, Tim had searched before, been searching basically since grade school when it became clear his soulmate was dealing with either bullying or an abusive home.
But Tim's efforts had tripled lately. Ever since that fateful day 4 months ago when he'd practically had a seizure in the middle of family dinner.
It had felt like he was dying, the echos of electric shocks up his arm and into his heart coming through his soul bonds. Followed soon after by the sense of something terrifying and foreign opening up in his chest and forcing its way into every molecule of his body.
Tim is pretty sure he screamed.
It was several minutes before the sensations ended and a strange coldness filled his being. For a minute, Tim was terrified his soulmate had died, until the cold retreated to a place just beside his heart and phantom hands could be felt trying to comfort and soothe.
At the time, Tim thought that would be that. Some kind of terrible accident. A story his soulmate would tell him when they finally found each other.
But that wasn't that.
It started with that strange coldness never leaving the space beside his heart. Then sometimes the coldness would spread, filling his whole body for brief periods of time. Then those periods of time started to come with some kind of pain. A scrape, a bruise, sore muscles.
The kind of injuries Tim got on patrol as Robin.
Which was something he'd not been allowed to do near as much since the aftermath of that dinner when Bruce had learned what kind soul bond Tim had.
"Tim, you can't keep throwing yourself into the line of fire. It's bad enough when you get hurt, but for your soulmate to have to suffer too?"
Stupid Bruce and his stupid rules. Tim and his soulmate had been fine before, thank you very much. And it wasn't Robin that got struck by lightning or something. Tim really isn't sure what kind of accident would result in the things he had felt that night, but electrocution is at least part of it.
But since then, Tim's soulmate had been getting more and more injuries at any and all hours of the day. If Tim had been worried before distressed now. Something had happened and now Tim's soulmate who was already dealing with something before now seemed to be in constant danger. Tim needs to find them, needs to help them, make them safe.
He doesn't look, doesn't take his eyes off the news articles on the screen as a presence appears behind him. No 2 presences. And the elevator dings bringing a third. But Tim keeps scanning articles, looking for some clue about a kid getting electrocuted and a town gaining a young vigilante shortly after.
A heavy hand lands on his shoulder, gravelly voice speaking in gentle tones. "It's almost 4am son." Tim doesn't respond. Bruce sighs and spins the chair around. Dick and Alfred are both there looking concerned and stern respectively. "It's bed time."
"My soulmate is in trouble. They're not safe. I need to find them. And you're worried about my bed time?"
"You need some sleep, Master Tim. You won't know you've found anything if you're to tired to see straight." Bruce nods and Dick puts on his best big brother face.
"Get some rest, Tim. We can keep looking later."
Tim opens his mouth to argue, but pauses at the strange tugging sensation in his heart. He briefly wonders what trouble his soulmate is in now before he realizes what the almost feeling of hands on his soul bond means.
He gasps and jerks in the chair, knocking his elbow on the arm rest and the warm blanket he'd cocooned himself in to send comfort back to his soulmate off his shoulders.
Even Alfred's expression turns concerned when Tim wraps his arms around himself, trying to convey along the soul bond his plea for his soul mate not to do this.
"Tim?" Tim isn't sure which family member speaks. Can't focus on it as his soulmate yanks on the bond, ripping it and the strange comfortable coldness out.
Tim cries out, three sets of hands immediately moving in to comfort him. Sight and sound turn to static as Rejection burns across his chest not unlike the electrocution had crawled up his arm four months ago.
Then the pain vanishes.
And Tim looks up at Bruce, knows he's got tears rolling down his face, searching pitifully for a father's comfort.
"They Rejected me."
Bruce startles, but quickly stoops down to wrap Tim in a hug and Dick lays a comforting hand on Tim's head and Alfred retreats probably to make something comforting and Tim cries at the emptiness where the bond should be and the now too warm spot beside his heart.
And yet, deep in his mind where gears are still turning, Tim resolves to still find his soulmate, even without the bond, if only to ask them why.
.
This was supposed to be a prompt, maybe a premise, but I got carried away.
So now y'all can have this piece of pain I have no intention of continuing. Enjoy!
And since I don't plan on continuing, if some else wants to run with it, have at and have fun!
*Shared Pain in this AU just means soulmates feel the pain, not that they recieve the injuries. So if a soulmate breaks an arm, the other will feel the break, but their arm will be physically fine.
**Shared Comforts meaning that soulmates also share good feelings. So if one person is all wrapped up comfy cozy in a nice thick blanket, the other also feels that warmth. But like with the pain, it's a phantom feeling. Won't keep the soulmate not bundled up from hypothermia.