Chapter Text
Danny was in Tim’s sitting room waiting for him to get back from his dive through the pantry for some snacks and another pot of coffee. Danny didn't know anyone who drank as much coffee as Tim, not even himself, and he was half-dead already.
Fidgeting with one of his parent’s inventions–he brought over a bunch for Tim to tinker with again–he overheard some voices coming from the lower floor. Was Tim talking to someone? He probably shouldn’t use his powers to snoop…but he’d already crossed that line a long time ago. His curiosity got the better of him as he passed through the floor to sink into what seemed to be the kitchen, enabling him to overhear the conversation.
Tim and his brother were sitting around the island in the middle of the room, and–oh yum, was that Hawaiian pizza? Danny really hoped that Tim would bring up some for him.
He floated down and hovered behind Duke, listening from afar. Tim seemed to be asking Duke about some ghost stuff, but why would he?
“-question, cause Danny said something about cores being made out of light, so can you see them with your powers? Though, I don’t know if you’ve met Phantom before.” Danny startled at the use of his other name.
“Yeah, um, I have.” What? Duke met Phantom before? And why would he be able to see Danny's core? “I've met him but–”
“So, can you see a core in him?”
Duke scratched the back of his head. “Well, uh, I can't really tell?”
Tim put most of the pizza on paper plates as he looked up at his brother. “What do you mean? You don't see a small glowing orb in him?”
“Small? Are you sure–?” Danny flew behind Tim, trying to see Duke’s reaction to the questions, but he suddenly averted his gaze towards the floor.
“What?”
“Um. It's nothing.”
Following his gaze, Danny tried to float around the kitchen again, but Duke looked away from Danny again.
Wait.
He was invisible right now.
Or at least he should have been.
Panicking, he checked Tim's reaction, but there was nothing out of the ordinary except for looking at Duke weirdly. What was it Tim said earlier? Duke could see his core for some reason?
No matter the reason, that meant that Duke would know that Danny had been eavesdropping.
Uh.
He rushed back to a nearby stair and made himself visible. He walked into the kitchen, as much as he wanted to go faster, and loudly announced, “Uhhhh, Tim, can I talk to your brother for a second?”
“I guess? Why?”
He hadn’t gotten that far yet.
Before Danny could splutter trying to come up with a lame excuse, Duke answered for him. “I ran into him last time and found out we both play Minecraft, so I wanted to show him my account.”
“Oh. Okay. I’ll just be checking out the inventions in my room.” Usually Tim would've pried, but Danny brought a few particularly tantalizing inventions that he was sure Tim couldn't wait to get his hands on.
Giving a thumbs-up, Danny replied, “Sounds good!”
Duke walked in front of him, and Danny followed him up the stairs and through the hallways to what he assumed was Duke's room.
Looking around the hallways, Duke carefully closed the door and turned to him. “You want to talk to me about the ghost stuff, right?”
Danny tensed, not used to discussing his ghostly nature as Danny with anyone other than a close friend or family member. Well, it was better to get to the point. “Earlier, you were looking away from me, weren’t you?”
“Yeah. I can apparently see ghost cores. Though the description Tim gave is a bit…”
“But how?” Danny inspected the air in front of him as he tested an exhale. “You’re not a ghost, are you?”
“No. I’m a meta.”
That was weird. Danny swore he remembered some people at the Justice League complaining about the “no metas in Gotham” rule. “But I thought–”
“The no metas rule? Yeah, I have something worked out with Batman.” He chuckled.
“What? Are you a vigilante?”
Hesitating, Duke tensed. “Yeah. I…I have light powers.”
“What–?” Wait a minute. He didn’t know much about Gotham vigilantes, but he remembered Batman once explaining in a meeting about how Gotham’s daylight vigilante took down a certain villain for strategy purposes… What was the name again–?
No way.
Signal? The same guy who was being rude to him just for being a ghost? Oh no. Oh no, no, no. He could not trust this guy with his secret identity. “Have you told anyone who I am?!”
“What? That you’re a ghost? Well, no, but isn’t it kind of obvi–”
“Are you sure? For someone who hates me you have a surprising amount of integrity.”
“What? I don't hate you!”
“Yeah, sure. You won't even look at me. You said so yourself.”
“What–? When did I say that?”
“You forgot? During the alien invasion!”
“No, I said that to Phantom, not you–”
Danny froze. Oh no.
“You–” Duke pointed. “You’re Phantom? You know I’m Signal?”
Alright, that was a stupid move, but he really thought that a living human that looked exactly like Phantom having a ghost core would be a dead giveaway. Heh. “Fine, yes. I thought you figured it out.”
“No? The light looks different. Kinda.”
Curiosity made Danny perk up. There was a difference in his core between forms? “What? How?” Danny got closer to Duke, and the latter placed a hand over his eyes.
“Can you back away? You are literally as bright as the sun–!”
“Okay, if this a jab at my personality then-”
“I. Cannot. See. You are a giant ball of light. Is that not what everyone else sees? Ugh. That excuse was so stupid–! You don't even have hands, how would you even play video games–?”
Danny blinked.
“I have hands.”
“What?”
“What?”
Silence.
Danny put up a hand. “Hold on, lemme get this straight. you can see light.”
A nod.
“Which means that you can see ghost cores.”
“Yes.”
“And you think I'm a giant ball of light. Not tiny like a core should be, but massive.”
“Um…I guess?”
Danny was skeptical, but…it made more sense than Tim and the Justice League being on good terms with a massive jerk, right? “Let me try something.”
He suppressed his power as much as he could. It shrunk into a compact area in his chest. It took him a bit of focus to compress it, but once he did it, it wasn’t that difficult to hold.
“Try looking around now,” Danny said.
Duke hesitantly opened his eyes for the first time since they entered the room, looked around warily, and saw Danny for what actually might have been the first time if what he said was true.
Danny gave a little wave. “Um. Hi?”
Duke's eyes widened dramatically “You're human.”
“Half ghost, actually, but-”
“Human-shaped, whatever, all this time–! I thought you were some sort of giant light orb floating everywhere that everyone was chill with, like, no offense, but–what the heck–I thought I was going insane cause no one even mentioned it!”
“Wait what? What’s it like?”
“I can’t even see if anyone's beside you. Even worse when you were Phantom. Also it was like having a flashlight shined straight into my eyes every time you walked by. You could have just done that the whole time?”
Danny threw up his arms indignantly. “Well, you never said anything!”
“I tried later on! I didn't want to offend you! What if it was rude? Also, I barely knew you! How was I supposed to bring it up?”
“Well, I thought you hated me, so that obviously didn't work! You completely ignored my handshake and said I looked weird when we first met, avoided being anywhere near me while we were fighting, glared at me–” Danny paused. “Wait, was that just you squinting?”
“Is that what it looked like? What am I saying? Of course that’s what it looked like!” Duke sighed. “The pizza downstairs was actually going to be my apology gift for the misunderstanding. I was going to explain everything to you earlier, but you kept avoiding me.”
“Oh.” Danny took a few seconds to really think about their past interactions in a new light. “Oh,” he repeated. He dragged a hand over his face and groaned. “That makes so much more sense.”
Flopping onto a nearby chair, Duke stared at the ground. “Honestly, it's my bad, I wouldn't have approached anyone who I thought hated me either.” He looked up at Danny. “But why did you keep stalking me? It was really freaking me out.”
“Stalking–?” Danny didn’t remember following Duke around. Maybe eavesdropping? But how would he know–? “Oh. Oh. I wasn't stalking you! I was just floating around the Watchtower. I do that sometimes.”
“Oh. I mean,” Duke muttered, “I guess we do the same thing in the vents.”
“We?”
“Well,” Duke put out his hand, “care to redo that handshake?”
He chuckled, glad that Duke wasn’t taking it badly, and it occurred to him that that could’ve gone so much worse. “Sure. Nice to meet you. Name's Danny, also known as Phantom.” He transformed, making sure to suppress his power even more now, since Duke mentioned something about that.
“Duke, and you already know I'm Signal.” He paused. “Wait, if the glowing thing doesn't happen in your human form, I'm assuming, does Tim know you're a ghost?”
“Somehow, despite him being one of the smartest people I know, nope.”
“But how? You look the exact same except you got put through a negative filter!”
“Somehow he believes that Phantom is my triplet.”
Duke sputtered and wheezed out a laugh. “What?”
“Yeah, I know! My ex-evil future self showing up definitely helped, even though I forgot to tell him why he needed to show up.”
“Okay, I don't know how we haven’t become friends, but we definitely need to fix that.”
“Oh, for sure, I can't believe I thought you were some species-ist guy.”
“No way, man. I have a starfish for a brother and more than a few non-human friends from…y’know. Though, I’m glad the light-induced headaches aren’t gonna stick around.”
“Oh, that would’ve sucked. Glad we cleared things up then.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.
Duke shrugged. “Well, want some pizza?” He pointed his thumb in the direction of the door.
Danny grinned in response. “Sure. But first, is that a ghast plushie I see?”