Chapter Text
“Woah. You look like sh*t."
Granted, that’s probably not the first thing Danny should be saying to the guy that just bit the curb, but in his defense; he’s not running on 100% right now either.
The man — tall, towering, and broader than Danny is tall — whips around on his heel, black frayed cape flaring out impressively. Danny would've whistled in appreciation, but he takes the time instead to wipe the back of his hand across his mouth, smearing the blood running from his nose across his cheek.
"Sorry." He blinks widely, not even flinching as the man with the horns zeroes in on him. "That was rude of me. I have a really bad brain-to-mouth filter; Sam says it's what always gets me into trouble."
And she's not wrong either, per say. His smart mouth is what landed him in this situation — with blood blossom extract running through his veins, and cannibalizing the ectoplasm in his bloodstream. Thanks Vlad.
The man grunts at him; a short, curt "hm" that shouldn't make Danny smile, but he does because he's somewhat delirious and poisoned. The man keeps some kind of distance, sinking towards the shadows of Gotham's alleyway like he dares to melt right into it.
If it's supposed to scare Danny, it doesn't work. Danny's never been afraid of the dark; quite the opposite, actually. It’s hard to be afraid of the thing you always hide in. He blinks slowly at the mass of shadows.
"You look hurt." The shadows says, the barely-there silhouette blurring around the edges. Danny squints, and licks his lips to get the blood dripping down his chin off. Ugh, he hates the taste of blood.
"I am." He says matter-of-factly, what’s the point in denying the obvious? "My godfather poisoned me. M'dying." The agony of the blood blossom eating him alive from the inside out looped back around to numbing a while ago, turning him into a half-conscious zombie as a result.
"Hey," Danny stumbles forward towards the man, a bloodied hand reaching out to him. "You— you're a hero, right?” He was dressed in dark colors and was wearing a weird costume, like most of Danny’s friends do. “You're not attacking me; which is more than I can say for most people I've met." And he said he looked hurt — that was like, some semblance of concern, right?
Maybe not the best bar to judge someone at, but Danny’s head is full of cotton and gauze, and some of the first things he ever taught himself as a kid was to never be afraid of the dark. The man before him was dripping in it, bleeding into it like he ought to make it home. That— that had to mean something, right?
The man makes no change in expression, but Danny realizes blearily that he wouldn’t be able to tell if he had anyways — hard to tell with the shadows on his face. He stays still long enough for Danny to latch onto the cape — stretchy, but strangely soft under his wet and red fingers.
He looks up into the whites of the man's eyes. "Can you help me? I don't— I don't wanna die." Again. He doesn't wanna die again. He blinks slow and lizard-like. "I mean— I'll probably get to see mom and dad again, but I told them I'd at least try and make it to adulthood."
There's a clatter down the street, and Danny's ghost sense chills up his spine and leaves a bitter, ashy taste in his mouth. He immediately knows who it belongs to even before the deceptively gentle, saccharine; "Daniel?" echoes down the way.
"Daniel? Quit your games, badger, Gotham is dangerous for children."
Icy hot panic shoots from his head to his toes, his heart jumpstarting into the fifth gear. In his rush of fear, Danny’s vision swims nauseatingly fast.
His eyes widen, his mouth pulls back, and blood spills against his tongue. "Please." Danny rasps, desperate. He grabs onto the shadow's cape with both hands. "Please. He's going to kill me. PLEASE—"
"Daniel? Is that you?"
His lips part, dragging in air to plead with the darkness again. He doesn't need to, the whites of the man’s eyes narrow. The cape whirls around him before Danny can blink; and swaddled in shadows, the Night lifts him up, and steals him away.
The world blurs into a mess of oil smears as Danny's stolen away into Gotham's smog-smudged skies and sickly city lights. He clings onto the shadow of a man he met like a lifeline. He is a lifeline for all he cares, as they get further and further away from Vlad. The taste of ash and cinders sitting thick in his throat grows fainter and fainter.
Half his face is smudged into the man's body armor, and Danny's only partly aware of the blood he's smearing onto the... fabric? The material — on his shoulder. He's got half a mind to apologize. He doesn't.
Instead, through the loud whistling of the wind, Danny mutters a string of slurry, delirious "thank you's" on a repetitive loop. He's not even sure if he can be heard, but the terror in his heart turns into pained relief anyways.
Flying always makes him feel better — the chill, the pressure, the weightlessness — and it feels even better now, with the heat of the blossoms and his own body desperately fighting against the infection being forcibly cooled. For a feverish moment, he can forget that Vlad stuck blood blossoms into his veins. He sighs out, eyes closing, and almost regrets it when blood coats his teeth.
His reprieve is broken a cruel, few moments later when they land on a rooftop with a sharp — at least to him — drop. His stomach jumps, and coils inwards in revenge. The hand splaying against his back shakes him sharply.
"Hey," The shadows whisper. Danny blinks his eyes sluggishly open, and suppresses a startled flinch when he meets the stark blue gaze of the man’s eyes. "Keep your eyes open."
"Sorry." He murmurs, nose scrunching up as nausea roils unpleasantly in his gut. He licks his lips again, his blood is beginning to dry, and it feels like scratchy paint sticking onto his skin. It's uncomfortable. "Th’ wind f'lt nice."
The man begins running across the rooftop, the jostling movement only makes Danny feel worse. But the shadows said to keep his eyes open, and Danny figures that's a pretty smart idea considering his predicament. But he's going to vomit if he keeps looking at the world spinning around him…
He doesn’t really wanna see what his vomit looks like — he’s afraid it’ll come up blood, and he doesn’t want to get it all over the shadow man either.
He makes a mental compromise and buries his face into the crook of the man's neck, clawing at his shoulders to try and keep purchase. He latches his fingers onto the cape and despite his trembling arms, refuses to let go.
Danny only turns his head when there's a sharp pain in his lungs. He presses his forehead into the man’s shoulder and coughs blood over his pauldron.... oops. "Sorry," he repeats, voice hoarse, "'m gettin' blood on you..."
"Hn. It'll come off." He's told, and Danny blinks lazily again, nodding curtly. The man's voice sounds nice, as raspy and soft as it is. But before he can tell him that, they're in the air again, the wind whistling in his ears.
Danny relishes in it, but keeps the thought in the back of his mind. Up until they land again, and as another wave of sickly nausea and pins-needles pain washes over him like the tide, he blurts out; "I like y'voice."
...He doesn't get a response back.
Danny drifts in and out of consciousness, with the Night jolting him awake every so often with a sharp, quiet reminder to keep with him. Danny doesn't bother deigning a real verbal response to that beyond wordless grumbles and mumbles. A few times he stops to cough up his lungs — and for a worrying moment after a particularly sharp landing, gags on air, his stomach lurching angrily. Nothing comes out, and Danny is more embarrassed and exhausted than he is anything else. He wants to vomit, but he's terrified of what might come out if he does.
The man picks up greater speed after that.
Eventually they leave the roof to the stars — as hidden as they are amongst the smogly clouds — and drop down into an even darker alleyway than the one Danny found the horned man in. They land on something with a metal thunk, and the man slides them off onto the ground.
There's a gentle hissing sound, and Danny opens his eyes just as the man places him in a leather seat and straps him in. "Wh're w'goin?" He asks, lolling his head to the side to peer up tiredly.
"Somewhere I can help you."
Danny already knows that. The man wouldn’t have listened to Danny’s hysterical pleading and gotten him away from Vlad otherwise. But, hearing it being said aloud only confirms it in his cotton-filled mind, and something about hearing it said aloud makes Danny’s eyes sting with tears. They bead up on his lashes, threatening to pool over his face and drip down his bloodied cheeks.
With it comes a lump accustomed to crying, one that Danny forces himself to swallow down silently with a mouthful of iron. His lips wobble, and he presses them together before trying to manage a smile. It feels pathetic, but oh does he hope.
Just as it was in the air, the drive to wherever they're going is a mess of orange-streetlight smeared blurs and rapid-passing buildings. Danny keeps his head rested against the door, forehead pressing against the cold window, and breathing slowly through his mouth.
From his unfocused peripherals, the man — of which with the help of the passing lights, Danny finally realizes is dressed as... some kind of bat? Honestly, not the weirdest thing he's ever seen — routinely keeps glancing over at him. Danny’s never seen someone grip a steering wheel so tightly.
"Do you know what your godfather poisoned you with?" The man eventually asks, his voice still as soft and raspy as it was earlier, if not a little firmer.
It takes Danny a moment to realize he spoke at all. His brain sluggishly catching up to his ears. "Hrm?" He blinks, lifting his head. Danny regrets it immediately, his vision tilts dangerously on its axis and muddies. He rests his head again. "Oh. Yeh. A flow'r called blood bloss'm."
They pass a streetlight, shining just bright enough that Danny sees the Bat-Man's lips purse. Danny's mouth opens, but he makes no sound, his mind trying to find the words he's looking for. "I'z- it's extinct."
The man snaps his head to look at him, so fast that Danny’s feverish mind forces a harsh, huff laugh out of his lungs. He regrets it quickly; a sharp stab of pain jabs a needle into his side, turning the laugh into a harsh coughing fit instead. Regardless, he manages to put it on hold long enough to weakly raise his hands and waggle his fingers, deliriously attempting a lousy pair of jazz hands. Danny slurs; "Shcience."
The coughing fit overtakes him then, and without the adrenaline of flying and running away from Vlad to distract him, the ache and burn of consistently coughing returns. Searing him down to the tissue, threatening to leave him with everlasting scars.
Gritting his teeth, Danny unsuccessfully bites back the low, pained whimper leaking through his throat, and turns to curl up into the corner of his seat. His arms box over his head, pressing down against his ears and temples as if that will make him hurt less. Tears spring into his eyes, and he tries to use the feeling of breathing to distract himself from the sting.
If he's still breathing, everything will be okay.
Wherever they're going, he hopes they get there fast.
("You're a hero, right?" The boy asks, but the way he says it makes it sound like he was only asking as a formality. That of course Bruce was a hero, it was obvious.)
(He didn't know how to tell him that no, he wasn't. And then he wasn’t able to.)
Bruce's hands would be shaking if it weren't for the knuckle-white grip on the car's steering wheel. Every time he tries to focus on the road in front of him, his eyes are drawn back towards the boy coiled in a ball in the passenger seat.
He can't tell if it's rage or fear that's making his arms tremble.
The boy — Daniel, if the voice of his godfather was to be believed — is small. Bruce could wrap his thumb and forefinger around his wrist, and he's positive they would touch. A waifish, slip of a thing, and Bruce thought he'd been small as a child. His clothes — simple, unremarkable; a hoodie that hangs off his shoulders and a band shirt he doesn't recognize — look too big on him, and Bruce wonders if Daniel even knows he's shivering.
(He was hard pressed to say no, he didn’t. From the moment Daniel had stopped him in the alleyway to now, he looked as if part of him was somewhere far, far away. It was either a miracle, or a testament to the boy’s sheer willpower, that he’d even been able to stay cognizant long enough to ask him for help. Especially considering his immediate deterioration and rapid onset hysteria at the mere sound of his godfather’s voice.)
This was not how Bruce thought his night would be going — he was following a lead on Falcone and his people. Now he was rushing back to the cave with a boy who couldn't be any older than fifteen; a boy who was dying of poison because of his godfather.
Hurt and fury bubbles beneath his ribs.
(Who does this to a kid?)
He glances at Daniel again. Messy, sweat-slicked black hair clings to his forehead, and gathers around his ears. It looks like it hasn't been cut in months. He's unnaturally pale, and Bruce wasn’t sure if his paleness is from the poison, or his natural color. It highlights the dark circles beneath glassy blue eyes, peering unfocused and teary out from lidded eyes.
The blood dripping off his chin is damning and stark against his skin, and almost black where it gathers the thickest. Some of it half-dried against his cheek, but most is a horrifying dark red and wet, staining down his throat and into his shirt. Every time the boy coughs, Bruce fears that blood will spill from his mouth next.
He breathes in shakily, and swerves around a left corner. The boy jerks, unable to catch himself, and begins veering to the side towards him. Bruce throws his arm out to catch him, and pins him to the seat. Daniel grunts quietly, and sluggishly curls a hand around the door handle to pull himself back.
Guilt turns the back of Bruce's neck red. That, and embarrassment. "...Apologies." He murmurs, retracting his hand quickly. Daniel blinks slowly, Bruce nervously keeps an eye on the unsteady rise and fall of his chest.
He's pulled away from his staring when, much to his surprise, the boy smiles. It's weak, barely even there, and trembling like the rest of him, but glazed in fondness — or perhaps, more accurately, drowned in nostalgia. "S'ok'y." Daniel mumbles, blood sticking to his mouth as he slumps back into the corner. "M'dad drove the same way."
...There were a lot of questions there. But the hurting, discomforting squeeze of Bruce's heart turns his tongue to lead. His throat swells shut, grows a cancerous lump, and keeps his lungs thick. "..Hh."
(What does he say to that?)
A silence, one that is ugly and unsure, falls over them again for a few minutes more. Bruce should keep the boy talking — it's confirmation that Daniel was still alive; still breathing, Bruce hasn't failed, yet — and yet, he can't think of a single thing to say.
They're coming close up on the cemetery. Bruce turns down the road leading to it. His eyes flick to Daniel again. The boy is staring at him, the sickly yellow streetlights catching shadows on his face, leaving a glow lingering in his eyes.
(In his lazy eye, his mind tricks him into seeing a corpse. Bruce suppresses a flinch, and looks over again.)
(Daniel is still breathing. Good. Good. Good.)
He breathes in shakily, something dark and angry rearing its head once again. Who does this? Who does this? He grits his teeth, biting back the scowl pulling on his face.
("You're a hero, right?")
(No, but for now he can pretend to be.)
They end up in a tunnel somewhere. Danny's not quite sure where, but the road gets bumpy and the uncomfortable, rough jostling forces a wet groan out from his lungs. His eyes pound in their sockets, daring to pop out from where they sit as the discomfort ricochets around his temples and circles back around to the back of his head.
His head lolls, and Danny shoves it back against the seat with a thud, ignoring the dull pain it rings through his skull. "’re w'there yet?" He asks, blood spilling into his mouth that he tiredly tries to spit out. He's done with drinking it instead.
The numbness in his bones that he'd been so graciously left with was starting to fade now. Returning back to a burning, rhythmic soreness spreading through his limbs. It clusters up around his joints, pins and needles pricking through his fingers and down his spine, while a low, pounding, throbbing ache crawls through his sinew and muscle in a malicious attempt to sever and devour him whole. There was no way to describe it beyond feeling like something was, little by little, chewing him up, chipping him off, and chiseling him out.
Bat-man guy grunts shortly, shifts the gearshift into a new position, and glances over to him for the nth time that night. "Almost."
Almost. Almost was... good? Probably. Hopefully. Danny doesn't give a response, just nods mutely.
The car comes to a stop some minutes later, parked in a wide open space, with LED lights spread erratically through the floor.
Bat-Man barely has the car at a rolling stop before he forces it to park, not even waiting for the recoil to stop before he's flying out of his seat. If Danny didn't know better, he'd have thought the man had phased right through the metal. That's not what happened though, and he watches the guy zip around the front of the car to the passenger side.
The door jerks open in moments, and despite knowing it was going to happen, Danny still jolts involuntarily, an incoherent squeak peeping through his teeth at an embarrassing pitch. He sits, uncomprehending and lame, as Bat-Man reaches over him and unbuckles the car seat, before wrapping his arms around him and pulling him out of the car.
The lights are painfully bright in Danny's eyes as Bat-Man pulls him out, and he whines involuntarily, tilting his face inward to hide it against the armor-weave.
"—sleep at a reasonable— dear god. What on Earth happened?"
Oh, forget the lights. Danny turns his head and braces against the brightness — and his tilting, whorling sight — to see who else was here. That was a whole British accent he heard, and he spots an older man with a cane standing near one of the tables.
"His godfather poisoned him." Bat-Man growls. Danny nods heavily, immediately regretting it when his vision pounds. "I need my antidote kit. Alfred, I need you to stay by him; make sure he doesn't start choking if he throws up."
The older man -- Alfred? Scoffs, and when Bat-Man passes by he follows after him. "As if you need to ask me. But where, exactly, do you plan on putting him?"
Without answering, Bat-Man shifts Danny until he's being held in one arm, and then approaches a metal table covered in nuts, bolts, and half-finished gadgets and gizmos. He doesn’t even waste a breath, and uses his free arm to shove it all off the table with a crashing, clattering, banging clang.
Then he delicately lays Danny down.
The metal is freezing, sinking through the fabric of his jacket and shirt, and Danny turns his head to watch Bat-Man. He catches a glimpse at Alfred's expression in the process, and barks a wet, harsh laugh at the dirty look he’s burning into Bat-Man’s back.
Bat-Man's hands still from where they're tilting him onto his side, and Danny manages to cover his mouth with his hand to stifle his puddling giggles. "Sorry." He says, half-dried and sticky blood clinging to his palm as he tries to catch his breath. "Th'look on ‘is face w’s funny."
The Alfred man sends another look at the Bat-Man when he glances at him; one eyebrow arched judgmentally, before stepping over as Bat-Man gets Danny full on his side. Then he disappears down somewhere, heavy, booted footsteps echoing through the room.
"I hope he knows that he'll be the one picking all of this up when we're done, because I will certainly not." Alfred says stiffly, shooting another dirty look to the ground where all the junk was pushed onto, before procuring a pristine handkerchief out of thin air. One of those nice looking ones, that are probably made of, like, butterfly silk.
Danny almost smiles, but Alfred starts reaching for his face, and his smile is forgotten in lieu of a flinch instead. Vlad never hit him in the months Danny’s lived with him — not yet, at least. Danny thinks that if he stayed any longer he would have eventually — but he developed a love of grabbing his jaw bruisingly tight, and forcing him to look at him whenever he could. There's a pause, before Alfred's hand glides over his cheek. Despite the callous padding on his palm, his touch is resoundingly gentle.
He cups Danny's jaw, featherlight and not the least bit forceful, and starts wiping the blood from his face.
...Oh.
Danny blinks uncomprehendingly up at him. He hasn't felt an actual affectionate touch in months . Vlad tried to be whenever he wasn’t grabbing him, but every touch to Danny's person felt oily. Danny wanted to peel his skin back and scrub it raw every time he pulled away.
So in comparison, this was like warm sunlight on his face, and he hums low and pleasantly. "Tha'feels nice." He mumbles, relaxing unconsciously.
"I would hope so, young man." Alfred-guy says, folding his already blood-stained handkerchief in half for a cleaner square and moving to clean the blood from his throat. "All this blood can’t feel all that pleasant."
No, no, Danny thinks sluggishly, not that part.
"May I ask for a name?" Alfred asks before Danny can correct him. "It's not every night that the young master brings someone back with him."
Danny stares. "Danny." He says, "Mnh... jus’ Danny. M'godfath'r calls me Daniel, an' he poison’ me."
Alfred nods, the skin around his eyes tightening almost imperceptibly, and pulls his handkerchief away. It was stained right through with blood, dripping out of the fabric and smearing along Alfred’s palm. Danny has enough sense to cringe with shame. That probably won't come out, and he kinda wishes he’d stopped the man from doing it in the first place. "I wish we were meeting in better circ*mstances, Mister Danny.” Alfred says calmly, folding the handkerchief delicately. “It's a pleasure to meet you."
His good midwestern manners kicks in, and Danny nods curtly. His head spins vengefully for it. "Y'too, sir."
Bat-Man reappears in that moment, clearing off a space on the table across from them with a kit of various bottles and vials and other doodads that Danny's too incoherent to recognize.
He watches him yank off the vambraces wrapped around his arms, and then the gloves on both his hands. Alfred brushes the hair off his forehead, gathering Danny's attention again.
"If you don't mind an old man’s pondering, but, how did you meet?" He asks, Bat-Man glances over his shoulder at them both, but says nothing. There's a clattering of bottles before he bounds off again down a tunnel. Danny takes that as his sign to explain instead.
"All'y." He slurs, shifting when the pressure on his shoulder grows too uncomfortable. His stomach flips, and he freezes in place to breathe in slow. He swallows blood dripping from his nostrils into his mouth when the nausea passes. "Mm— I w'z runnin' from Vlad, an' I saw him in one 'f the alleyways."
Alfred raises a brow, his expression perfectly placid. “And you approached him?” The question was left unsaid, but certainly not unheard, and even Danny’s fog-gauzed mind can pick up on the ‘that was dangerous’ in Alfred’s tone. He’s heard it plenty of times from Jazz before.
…His heart hurts, and despite the ache Danny’s face still flushes with embarrassment. He wasn’t expecting to be chided. “S’not like he coul’b’ an’more dangerous than Vl’d.” Worst case scenario, Danny would’ve died in the alleyway faster than he would have under Vlad’s thumb.
Bat-Man reappears again then with more things, and starts messing around with his collection of bottles and tubes and whatever — probably to fix an antidote.
...Would he even be able to make one? f*ck, Danny hadn't thought of that. Blood Blossoms interact with him differently, his physiology was the only reason the poison even worked at all.
He forcibly keeps his breathing even, and zeroes in on Alfred. "I thou' he was a hero.” He mutters, feeling heat rise up to his ears. “N' I was right, he is."
Pain suddenly claws up his spine and burrows into the bottom of his skull, and Danny breathes in sharp. Blood bubbles up against his tongue, and he chokes. "He's— mine, at least." Even if all he does is get him away from Vlad.
Nausea hits Danny like a steamboat. Or maybe a train. Or one of Skulker's punches to the gut — either way, one moment he's laying on his side, half-conscious and trying to watch the Bat-Man putter about his little detox station as Alfred diligently kept Danny's sweat-soaked forehead dry and his face free of blood. Then the next, a sensation he can only describe as his stomach trying to wring itself inside out claws desperately through his gut.
In the way only the feeling of being about to vomit can bring, Danny has a moment of clarity, and he shoots up from the table as the back of his throat hollows open and he gags wordlessly. "Bucket." He retches, holding himself up on violently shaking arms as his vision begins to swim again. "B'cket, I n'd a buck't."
The man, Alfred, lurches off to the side, and Danny's not quite sure where but he manages to produce a tin bucket out from thin air. just in time for Danny to snag it from his hands and empty out the contents of his stomach into it.
(There was hardly anything in it but his own bile and what little food he'd eaten today — he hasn't had an appetite since he found his family dead in their beds, silent and peaceful as if all they'd done was go to sleep.)
(He knows not every death is created equal, some are simply clumsy, unremarkable. But still, it just felt f*cking cruel—)
When he's done, the little smoothie from hell he left behind is tinged red, and there's the distinct taste of iron on his tongue. It coats the back of his throat, and for a moment, Danny simply stares uncomprehendingly at it.
"Oh, " he mumbles, feeling only a little better as his nausea's hotflashing fades and takes with it what little clarity he had left. His grip weakens, and the bucket loosens in his grasp. "Tha's no good."
From the corner of his blurring eye, the Bat-Man stops what he's doing to turn and look at him. Danny sees the wide, shock-blue color of his eyes; they look alarmed.
It's okay, Danny thinks, instinctively trying to reassure. Blood-and-spit still coats his bottom lip, as cotton returns to blanket over his brain. His mouth refuses to move however, his jaw feeling too heavy to allow him to make a sound. Alfred takes the bucket from his hands, and only then does Danny realize his soft swaying.
He and the Bat-Man stare at each other, something akin to fear in the other man's eyes, before he breaks the prolonged eye contact and returns to his antidote-making with a renewed vigor.
Alfred comes back into view, and with a kind hand, pushes Danny to slowly lay back down on his side. Danny does so silently, his arms trembling terribly. Alfred's hand cups his cheek, protecting his head as Danny becomes more vertical, and Danny can't help but tilt his nose inwards and press into the meat of his palm.
His mind is all over the place, low rumbling pain is beginning to set back in again, but Alfred's hand is warm and Danny so desperately needs the gentle touch. It's been so, so long.
Despite making all of his own inventions, Vlad's hands were too soft, too well-maintained, and every saccharine hand he ever laid on Danny was too tight, too possessive, too much. Too thick; syrupy. it felt like a leash threatening to wrap around his throat and chain him to the floor. Danny’s only ever wanted to carve his own skin out from his body whenever Vlad tried to touch him.
Alfred's hands were rough and calloused like his parents' were; toughened from years of hard work and handling machinery. He noticed it before when he was cleaning the blood from his face, but he was noticing it again now, and it was like sleep to the insomnic. Or like a balm to the heartburn.
It's okay, Danny thinks deliriously, the reassurance he wanted to give the Bat-Man earlier washing over him instead. It's okay, he breathes carefully, it's going to be okay. I'm going to be okay.
When he’s finally laying fully back down, the hand on his cheek begins to pull away. The brief respite it gave to his muffled mind immediately combusts, his skin growing cold as his irrational peace crashes and burns at his feet.
His eyes — since when had they been shut? — shoot open.
No, no , no, wait, this is wrong.
An agonized whine slips past him, paining and hurting, terrified, and he latches out and leeches his hands around Alfred's wrist. "Don’t go.” Danny rasps, voice breaking in two. “Pl’se, ple’se, please. Don’t leave me. Pl’se don’ leave me.”
He claws at Alfred’s sleeve, trying to pull him closer with a low cry. Tears bubble and bleed onto his eyelashes, his core hums, and he can feel the ectoplasm beneath his skin begin to buzz. No, no, no, he was doing so good. He was doing so, so good.
Like sharks smelling blood in the water, Danny can practically feel the blood blossom in his veins thicken. Behind his eyes, his mind conjures the image of a wolf lunging at an injured rabbit, and just as its glistening maw snaps down on the animal’s neck, agony ricochets through his lungs.
A sob beats out of his chest, and flowering pain burns through him like wildfire. Clawing maliciously, hungrily, through his nerves and sinew and bone, down to the keratin of his fingernails, and swallowing his head whole. Blood spills down his nose, and Danny cracks out another sob.
“Please!” He cries. He chokes on his lungs, and coughs violent and wet. Iron coats his tongue, and begins dripping into his mouth. Panic fills his head with static, the ectoplasm buzzes louder in his ears. Danny gags on blood.
He manages to latch his fingers onto Alfred’s shirt, scrabbling for the fabric even as the man swoops forward once again and wraps his arms around him. Danny’s propped up, and he pushes his face into the man’s collarbone with hysteric tears burning down his face.
“Don’— don’ leave me. Pl’ase, ple’se, pl’se.” He babbles, voice thickened in grief. Through his tears and blurring lashes, he peers up at Alfred, and catches the stern tightening around his eyes. Terror spins his head this way and that, and Danny’s grip tightens. No, no , no, he’s sorry, he’s sorry. He’ll be good.
More blood fills his mouth, and Danny’s everything is alight in stabbing, terrible agony as the blood blossom toxin devours him whole in renewed fervor. His fear feeds the ectoplasm, and in turn feeds the blood blossom. With another sob, blood spills down his chin and stains down his throat. He chokes, and tries throwing his head back — he’s going— he’s going to get blood on him.
Alfred’s hand stops him, “None of that, Mister Danny.” He orders, sounding deceptively calm as he pushes Danny back against his shoulder. Danny tries to fight against it, but his strength has all but been consumed by the poison, and so he acquiesces with a high whine. “We're not going anywhere.”
Fingers find their way through his hair in an attempt to soothe; it does nothing to stop his snowballing terror, but it distracts Danny from the second bubble of blood pooling up his throat. “M’sorry.” He gurgles. Blood sputters from his lips, and joins the rest dribbling down his chin.
His tears block out his vision. “M’sorry, m’sorry, m’sorry, m’sorry, m’sorry.”
He should’ve— he should’ve known better than to think he could find a way out of this. Blood blossom is blood blossom, and it’s been extinct in the living realm for centuries. But he just- he just wanted to get away, he wanted to hope . But they're not going to find him a cure, he’s going to die here and the blossom will destroy his core and he’ll cease to exist forever.
Another sob tears out from him, leaving its claw marks in his lungs as it verges on the edge of a shriek. “I’m sorry!” Danny wails, creating divots into Alfred’s shirt. “I don’ wanna go, please, I don’ wanna go. I can b’ good, I prom'z'.”
Alfred’s grip on him tightens, and Danny barely hears the low growl vibrating out of his throat. “Master Bruce.”
“I’m almost done.”
He shouldn’t have bothered these people with his problems, he should’ve just— just found an alleyway to die in. Somewhere away from everyone else— but he didn’t, he had to be f*cking hopeful. And now he was going to die here in front of people who didn’t deserve to watch—
“I’ve got it.”
Danny’s vision dots and blacks as Alfred suddenly moves him, and his hands scrabble for him as he starts to pull away. “No no no—” He slurs, more blood spitting from his lips. Don’t leave him alone, please.
The Bat-Man appears to take him instead, a vortex mass of black that sweeps an arm behind his back and pulls him back close. Danny’s fingers, shaking, weak, aching, latch desperately onto what of his cape he can reach. “Don’ wanna die.” He cries, burrowing into Bat-Man’s shoulder. He’s scared, he’s so scared.
A new hand cradles the back of his neck, and Bat-Man’s voice rumbles low like an incoming storm. “You’re not going to.”
There’s a prick in Danny’s arm, cutting through the dying haze of his mind. He nearly misses it, it’s nearly drowned out by the prickling, burning pain consuming him, but he feels it for a brief, singular moment.
Relief sludges through him seconds after, dousing water over his bones and tissue and chasing away the blossom’s ravenous hunger. It spreads through his arm; down to his fingers and up to his shoulder, following along his collarbone and out to weave through his ribs and lungs and heart.
He did it. Danny thinks deliriously, feeling his lungs and sinew attempting to stitch themselves back together as the injection stifles the poison and spreads down to his legs. He barks out a laugh — it hurts, and he regrets it within seconds, but not enough as he probably should. He did it, he did it, he did it.
The Bat-Man carefully pulls the syringe out, and only now does Danny register the old-familiar sting of needle piercing skin. And when it’s placed at Danny’s feet, the Bat-Man raises his hand again and carefully presses his hand — rough and calloused more than Alfred’s — to his jaw. Danny freezes, silent as a mouse, and lets the man tilt his head and press his fingers to his pulse, before using what strength he’s got left in his arms to fling them around Bat-Man’s neck.
The Bat-Man makes a startled grunt, and Danny tries to say something, but it comes out slurred and incomprehensible even to his own ears. So Danny just pushes his face into Bat-Man’s shoulder, smearing blood against the armor weave. He’s too exhausted and happy to feel bad, and he’s shaking so much that it’s only because the Bat-Man tentatively wraps his arms around him in return that he doesn’t collapse.
'Thank you, thank you, thank you.' Is what he wants to say, but he can't find the strength in his tongue to move it. He ends up choking on some sort of half-there sob, hoping that this alone can properly convey the sheer gratitude he feels. The arms around him tighten minutely.
Bruce only loosens his hold when Danny's gone completely limp against his chest, and it's only so that he can shift the boy's weight onto one of his arms in order to check for his pulse again. His hand stays remarkably still despite the bone-deep trembling he can feel in his arms, and only when he feels the arrhythmic fluttering of a heartbeat against his skin does Bruce breathe out.
"He's alive." He murmurs, if only for the reassurance to himself. He was alive. Daniel was alive, for now. "Just unconscious." It was hard to say he looked alive. Danny became, somehow, even paler than when Bruce first laid eyes on him, and the blood soaking down his front didn't leave the mind to wander beyond the image of a corpse.
Bruce feels for a heartbeat again, just to be sure.
(He doesn't think he'll ever be able to wipe the image of Daniel wringing out a slur of apologies, thick red blood bubbling out of his mouth as he was actively dying, out of his mind. His hysteric sobs will haunt Bruce's dreams hand-in-hand with the rest of his nightmares. If he'd been a few minutes too late...)
Alfred makes a curt sound, dragging Bruce from an oncoming spiral, and appears with a new handkerchief — from where, he wasn't sure. "I'm not surprised he passed out." He mutters matter-of-factly, rounding around the table to Bruce and Danny's side. "Simply surprised by how long it took."
"Hn." Bruce plucks the handkerchief from Alfred's hand before he can clean Daniel's face, and begins doing it himself. They'll need to run some kind of DNA scan to figure out his identity, he hadn't given a last name. A blood test too. Danny said his godfather used blood blossom, an extinct flower, to poison him. Bruce wasn't sure if it was true, or just the delirious hallucination of a child trying to survive.
(And if it was true, then there was no telling whether the poison would have any long term effects on the boy. He'd been somewhat stable the entire time — barring the rapid deterioration at the start when he heard the sound of his godfather's voice — so this sudden, abrupt, decline had been both alarming and terrifying.)
Alfred arches an eyebrow at him, and plucks the syringe off the table to dispose of it. "May I ask what your next plan is, Master Bruce?" He asks anyways, expertly dismantling the syringe's needle and throwing it in the sharps container nearby. "I hope you don't plan on sending him on his merry way when he wakes up."
Bruce jerks, "What?" He looks up at Alfred, pausing from cleaning Danny's face to stare at him, quietly balking. He hasn't thought of what he was going to do yet, but that hadn't even crossed his mind. "No, I'm not." Not when he wasn't sure what the aftereffects of the poison were like. Not when the only person Danny could go to was his godfather — the very man who poisoned him.
(And the mere reminder of it forces the return of something hot and dark and angry to bubble underneath his skin, like a dark shadow skimming the surface of the water.)
No, no. Sending Daniel out when he woke up wasn't an option. Bruce would never sleep again if he chose that. But, then— well, what was? He couldn't keep him in the cave; Bruce spares one glance around the decrepit, abandoned train station, and doesn't even need to consider it.
But the only other option he could safely think of — one where Daniel would be left undisturbed and unfound by the rest of the world, somewhere no one would think to look, — was the Manor. Except, if he took him to the manor, how would he explain how he got there? Any and all excuses led to tying Bruce Wayne to Batman.
He looks down at Daniel. Most of the blood has been soaked in by the handkerchief. If he tried cleaning off anymore all he would be doing is smear it around. With the blood no longer being the sole point of his attention, he could finally take in the rest of the child's face.
There really wasn't much to look at beyond, well, just how young he was. Baby fat still clung around his cheeks, and blood was soaked on the dark hair curling at the nape of his neck. Bruce hadn't noticed it earlier, too distracted with trying to do something, anything to save him, but Daniel was as light as a feather. Lighter than he ought to be. Picking up his arm, Bruce silently wraps his fingers around his wrist, and presses his lips together when his fingers touch and then some.
(He hates that he was right.)
Was he really going to prioritize his secret identity over the safety of a kid?
"Well?" Alfred's voice breaks through the thoughts in Bruce's head, and he snaps his eyes back up to the man who raised him. Alfred's brow is perfectly arched, and he stares at Bruce expectantly, awaiting an answer. "What is your next step, Master Bruce?"
