Everyone wants to be Tim Drakes favorite, but not for the reasons you might think.
It’s not about Tim’s intelligence or his quick wit, though those things are undeniably impressive. It’s not about the way he somehow manages to hold the entire Bat-family together, even as they fray at the seams. It’s not even about the quiet warmth he offers, the small moments where he lets his guard down just enough to remind everyone that he’s human, too.
No.
They want to be his favorite because Tim gives and gives and gives—until there’s nothing left of him to take.
———
Bruce wants to be Tim’s favorite because it’s easier than admitting how badly he’s failed him.
Tim is a reminder of every mistake Bruce has made as a father, every time he turned his back or let Tim fall through the cracks. He wasn’t there when Tim needed him most, when Joker turned him into something unrecognizable, when Tim clawed his way back to himself alone. Bruce thinks if he could just be Tim’s favorite, maybe it would make up for all the times he wasn’t enough.
But it doesn’t.
It won’t.
And Bruce knows it.
———
Dick wants to be Tim’s favorite because he doesn’t know how to fix the distance between them.
It wasn’t always like this. Once upon a time, Dick was Tim’s hero, the person he looked up to more than anyone else. But things changed, and the closeness they shared shattered under the weight of misunderstandings and unspoken words. Dick misses the boy who idolized him, who trusted him without question.
He wants to be Tim’s favorite because he doesn’t know how to be his brother anymore.
———
Jason wants to be Tim’s favorite because he sees too much of himself in him.
He knows what it’s like to be the one everyone forgets, the one who carries the family’s burdens without complaint, even as the cracks start to show. Jason doesn’t want Tim to end up like him—bitter, angry, consumed by the feeling of being unwanted.
But Jason doesn’t know how to show that. So instead, he fights for Tim’s attention, picking at him, challenging him, pushing him away even as he tries to pull him closer.
He wants to be Tim’s favorite because it would mean Tim still has room in his heart for someone like him.
———-
Steph wants to be Tim’s favorite because he’s the one she always chooses.
She loves him. God, she loves him so much it hurts sometimes. But Steph also knows Tim has walls he doesn’t let anyone past—not even her. He hides himself behind his work, behind his role as Red Robin, behind the pieces of himself he’s convinced no one else will ever understand.
She wants to be Tim’s favorite because she doesn’t know if he’s capable of letting her be anything more.
———
Cass wants to be Tim’s favorite because she sees what the others don’t.
Tim is tired. So tired he’s cracking beneath the surface, even if he’s too stubborn to show it. Cass sees the way he pushes himself, the way he gives and gives and gives until there’s nothing left. She wants to shield him from it, from the weight he insists on carrying alone.
But Tim doesn’t let her.
He doesn’t let anyone.
Cass wants to be his favorite because maybe then he’d let her take some of the weight.
———
Duke wants to be Tim’s favorite because Tim makes him feel like he belongs.
Duke is still finding his place in the Bat-family, still figuring out where he fits in this patchwork of broken people trying to make something whole. But Tim? Tim treats him like he’s always been part of it, like he’s not someone on the outside trying to find his way in.
He wants to be Tim’s favorite because Tim makes him feel seen in a way no one else does. And maybe, just maybe, being his favorite would mean Duke could give that feeling back to him.
———
Damian wants to be Tim’s favorite because he doesn’t know how else to be a brother.
It’s not like he’ll ever admit it. Not out loud. But there’s a part of Damian that craves Tim’s approval, that wants to hear Tim say he’s proud of him, that he trusts him.
But Tim is cautious around Damian, careful in a way that feels like distance. And Damian hates it—hates that no matter how much he’s changed, no matter how hard he tries, there’s still something fractured between them.
He wants to be Tim’s favorite because he doesn’t know how else to prove that he cares.
———
The truth is, everyone wants to be Tim Drake’s favorite because they know they aren’t.
Tim doesn’t play favorites.
He’s too careful for that, too afraid of what it might mean, what it might cost. He keeps himself at arm’s length, even from the people who love him most.
They want to be Tim’s favorite because maybe then he’d stop being so afraid to let them in.
But Tim doesn’t know how to do that.
And maybe he never will.
Commissioner Gordon was ostracized within the Gotham Police department. He knew this was because of his ties to the Bat, his late hours, constant overtime. He knew that even the good officers, while he couldn't tell too much who was who, didn't mean to ostracize him. It happened on accident, he's sure. He picked up some clues from the world's greatest detective. Rumors went around, running rampant about him. He just couldn't care so much about them.
Everyone knew that Commissioner Gordon always took his late dinner at 9:37 at night. Everyone cleared from the break room. Gordon opened the door, taking a heavy breath. He was still expecting the empty room. It felt empty, in a way Gordon had picked up from The Bat. He pulled his burrito out of the fridge, opening the styrofoam container and eating a bite. "You're not going to heat it up?" Gordon barely manages to catch his burrito, his whole soul leaving his body.
"Jesus Christ, kid, you scared me." Gordon lets out a heavy breath, seeing the new detective sitting at a table in the corner. He's eating... Something indescribable. He looks tired, his long black hair bulled back into a high ponytail. His face seems disproportionate, large prominent features. A crooked nose, a wide, thin mouth, large eyes accompanied by large bags. His skin was pale, dusted with faded freckles and litchenburg scarring. The young man- still a boy, practically, shrugged at Gordon's words, eating another bite of the odd food. "No one warned you I'd be in here?" Gordon decided to sit with him.
"No, they warned me. But the past couple of days they've been... Avoiding me." Dr. Fenton, Gordon remembers his file passing over his desk. He could never be a cop- he was a detective-by-hire because of some medical condition. Gordon feels a pang at the emotionless words.
"Ah, they avoid me too." Gordon takes another bite of his cold burrito. "So, how have you been enjoying working here?"
"Well, it's been alright, I guess." Fenton took a drink from his thermos- which has a straw in it. It goes unsaid that this was the only job Fenton could really get. Close to the force, anyways. His medical condition refrained him from being a proper officer, so he wasn't officially a Gotham PD detective. He was an out-contract detective, receiving the same work, pay, and hours as the regular detectives.
"Getting around the town well enough?"
"Well enough, I suppose. Almost got robbed." Fenton held three doctorates- criminology, psychology, and natural sciences. All at the young age of 22.
"Almost?" Gordon snorts a bit at that. "Scared them off with your badge?"
"I don't have a badge. And I don't have a gun, if that's what you're thinking. I guess they just thought I was too pathetic to have much cash." Danny shrugged.
"Oh come on, you're not pathetic." Gordon is a bit taken aback that the boy doesn't carry any weapons. He makes a mental note to get him a badge.
"I looked pathetic enough not to rob."
Gordon feels like he missed something there, because Gotham robbers would rob a kindergartner if they were unattended. Regardless, he and Fenton sat in silence for a good couple of minutes. "What are you eating?" Fenton asks eventually.
"A burrito from the Mexican stand on Westwood."
"Why are you eating it cold?"
"Because if I reheat it, then the sauce becomes a solid liquid and everything gets soggy. What are you eating?"
"It was supposed to be stir fry?" Danny stared down at the leftovers container. "I'm not good at cooking. No videos ever make sense, so they don't turn out right."
"Your parents didn't teach you?" Gordon asks.
"No, they weren't the best chefs. They did pass on the family fudge recipe though. I can make some killer fudge." He laughs a little bit at that.
"I'll bring you lunch in from now on." Gordon says. "Until we can get your cooking sorted out, anyhow. Normally my daughter and I spend Tuesday nights fixing dinner together, so you'll get the best meals Wednesday."
"You don't have to do that." Danny seems a little caught off guard by the kindness.
"I can't have one of my youngest detectives going hungry!" Gordon smiles. "Besides, you're the first person in the precinct to eat dinner with me in nearly twenty years. You keep eating with me, it'll be no problem. I enjoy the company." Danny smiles at him and Gordon is reminded of someone, but he can't remember who.
Over the next couple of weeks, Gordon and Danny get well acquainted in their overlapping shifts. Danny works the nights and sometimes early mornings, similar to what Gordon does. Gordon finds himself feeling fatherly to the young man, who's working and picking up significant overtime to pay off his student loans. He learns that Danny moved here from Illinois- it was the only PD he could work at. He had no formal fighting training, but apparently his mom had taught him some moves. They had yet to overlap in the field, and it was easy for Gordon to forget that the boy was really a detective.
"Danny?" Jim paused, having finally made his way to the crime scene. Danny was crouched over a dead body, using his gloved hands to inspect the wound- the word Joker carved using some sort of knife.
"Gordon?" Despite all insistence, the boy still used his last name.
Jim has to stop himself from asking him why he's here. Danny's eyes shift to a spot behind him and James sighs. "What happened?" Batman's voice startled the last officer in the room, who quickly stuttered an excuse and left.
"The Joker broke in, tortured her, and left." Jim says. "We just have to figure out why."
"No, we don't." Danny looked back at the body, his eyes unfocused. "It was political. Do you see the swelling here on the neck? No lacerations, and no bruising. Allergy, I suppose, or a poison that reacts similarly. No clawing at the neck or face, but heavy rope burns on the wrists and ankles. The cuts were sloppy, and from the bleeding, it was done after she had died. Maybe five, ten minutes after? The window wasn't fully closed when it was broken into, do you see how the glass fractured there at the top?"
Jim blinked, and Danny continued. "It doesn't fit the motive of a mad-man like the Joker to do this. Who you're looking for is a woman, younger than the victim, maybe around twenty or thirty?" His eyes unfocused again. "Hmmm." He snaps back, looking around. He stands, his hands shaking a little. He looks around, eyes landing on the shelf. He scans it, using gentle hands to lift the potted plant. He pulls out a camera, unplugging it. "A Direct Link- model E47C." He sets the camera in an evidence bag.
Batman gives a grunt- and if Jim isn't mistaken it was one of approval? Danny held the camera out to Jim. "That was some fine detective work today, kid." Jim sets his hand on Danny's shoulder. Danny glances off to the side nervously. He locks eyes with Batman. "Danny, this is Batman. Batman, this is Dr. Daniel Fenton, the newest detective on the force."
Batman holds a hand out. "I look forward to working with you." Danny pulls off one of the disposable gloves, reaching out to shake his hand. "You're shaking a little, are you alright?"
"Medical condition." Danny answers. "You're taller than I expected."
"It's the ears." Jim represses a smile. "You go ahead and get your deductions filed. I brought pasta." Jim watches Danny leave. He turns to Batman, who's staring him down with that signature I-know-everything™ face. "What?"
"When are you going to let him know that you're mentoring him?" He says it like a sentence, and was that amusement in his tone?
"I'm not." Jim turns to the window.
"You brought him pasta."
"He never learned to cook."
"So you're teaching him." There was definitely amusement in his tone now.
Jim huffed. "We're getting old." He finally sighs. "We both have full grown kids. Crime and corruption are still thick in this city." Batman is standing next to him with a swoosh in his cape. "Retirement... I could see myself with it. Sipping cocktails on the beach. A beach with sunshine and no broken down carnivals."
Batman is silent for a moment, as if considering this. "So you see Fenton taking your place?"
"Like you see your Robin." Jim admits.
It started, as these things often did, with Clockwork showing up at 3:07 AM in Danny’s bedroom and dragging him out of bed by the ankle like a disappointed father dealing with a child who had failed Algebra. Again.
“Wha—Clockwork?!” Danny shouted, flailing in his space-themed pajama pants as he was unceremoniously yanked into a swirling portal of green and purple time goop. “I have school in four hours!”
“You won’t need it where you’re going,” Clockwork said with the kind of deadpan that made you suspect he hadn’t laughed in several centuries.
“That sounds like a threat.”
“It is.”
Next thing Danny knew, he was falling face-first onto a Persian rug that smelled faintly of incense, ancient secrets, and emotional trauma. He groaned and looked up just as a swirling portal closed behind him, revealing a tall, caped man sipping tea with the patience of a man who had seen God, mocked Him, and been promptly smacked in the face for it.
“Stephen Strange,” Clockwork said, materializing again because apparently he didn’t believe in exits, “meet Daniel Fenton. You’re going to teach him how to not accidentally vaporize the concept of space.”
“I what?” Danny blinked.
“Wait—this is the child you were talking about?” Strange said with a distinct expression of “I expected someone taller and more eldritch.”
Danny raised a hand. “Hi. Still in my pajamas. Please explain.”
Clockwork gave him a look. “You’ve been randomly tearing holes in the multiverse with your emotions. If you continue, you’ll accidentally delete the timeline where pizza was invented.”
Danny went pale. “That’s my favorite timeline!”
“That’s why you’re here.”
And that’s how Danny ended up training at the Sanctum Sanctorum instead of going to college like a normal eighteen-year-old. Not that Danny was ever normal. Or functional. Or even consistently corporeal at this point.
“Why is there a ghost teenager eating cold Pop-Tarts in my artifact room?” Wong asked the next morning, frozen mid-step with the sling ring still on his fingers.
“I live here now,” Danny said through a mouthful of Strawberry Frosted. “Clock Daddy said so.”
Wong stared at Strange. “We don’t even let you eat in here.”
“He’s technically a spectral demi-being empowered by quantum echoes,” Strange muttered. “I’m not sure he can be stopped.”
Danny quickly became the Sanctum’s chaos gremlin. The Cloak of Levitation hated him, loved him, used him as a chew toy, and then dragged him into a corner and cuddled him while he tried to watch anime at 2AM. Danny responded by naming it “Blanky.” The Cloak permitted this. Wong did not.
There was one particular week when Danny got stuck halfway between dimensions because he got emotional watching a Pixar movie. “I JUST—THEY FORGOT ABOUT BING BONG, STRANGE, THEY FORGOT—”
“Kid, I swear to the Vishanti, if you collapse another nexus realm because of children’s media—”
“HE SACRIFICED HIMSELF FOR JOY, OKAY?”
Training with Strange was like being punched in the brain repeatedly with Shakespearean insults and quantum theory. Danny tried. He did. But he was more of a vibes-based learner, while Strange was a “recite this 900-word incantation backwards while dodging metaphysical arrows” type of teacher.
“I can just blast it, though?” Danny argued, half-asleep, floating upside-down above the kitchen one night.
“No. No blasting. No phasing. No yelling ghostly wail and reducing my library to ash.”
“But I’m good at those!”
“You also set the Time Fractal on fire.”
“It had a face. It looked at me first.”
Clockwork would appear now and then, mostly to drop Danny cryptic warnings like “Avoid the one with the metal arm,” or “Never trust a raccoon with a gun,” or “Don’t play Uno with Loki. He cheats.”
“I don’t even know a Loki,” Danny protested.
“You will.”
Danny’s powers kept getting weirder. One time he coughed and spat up ectoplasm that turned into a sentient clone of himself, but with an Australian accent and a nicotine addiction. They had to banish him to the Mirror Dimension after he started flirting with Strange.
“Who made you like this?” Strange hissed, trying to undo the spell with rapidly twitching fingers.
“I think I made myself like this,” Danny whispered.
Somehow, the multiverse noticed. A portal opened on a Tuesday—because of course it did—and dropped in Peter Parker mid-panic with a half-dead demon strapped to his back and a terrified expression.
“HELP! I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M DOING!”
Danny stared, eating a microwaved burrito. “Are you a spider?”
“Are you a ghost?!”
“Do you want a burrito?”
“Yes?!”
And that’s how Danny accidentally made a new best friend. Peter and Danny had exactly the same amount of brain cell(s), which meant Strange had to install magical barriers to keep them from combining into a singularity of disaster.
“Stop bringing the Spider-Child into my Sanctum!”
“He brought himself! Through a hole! In the air! Like me!”
“Oh god, there are two of them now,” Wong muttered, lighting incense aggressively.
The Sanctum slowly became a hub for the weird and unstable. Kamala Khan stopped by and declared Danny her new weird older cousin. America Chavez tried to punch him once and fell into his thermos. Loki found him and said, “Ah. You’re one of those,” and walked away very quickly.
One particularly cursed day, Tony Stark walked in, saw Danny floating above a bowl of ramen while casually moving furniture with his mind, and said, “Nope,” before immediately walking out.
Danny’s magic was…unconventional. When Strange taught him how to summon a shield, Danny ended up with a glowing neon green circle that said “NOPE” in ghostly cursive. When told to summon a blade, Danny pulled out a glowing halberd shaped like a Fenton Thermos with an axe edge.
“I call her ‘Big Suck.’”
“I hate you,” Strange said.
“I love me.”
Then came the Incident. Danny got bored, which, to be clear, is always the beginning of the apocalypse. He found a cursed artifact that looked like a snow globe with a tiny screaming soul inside and thought, this seems fun.
It was not fun.
He broke it open trying to use it as a nightlight and released an ancient chaos entity named The Unfathomable Carl. Carl had a god complex, seventeen mouths, and a Twitter account within four minutes of escaping.
“HOW DID HE EVEN GET A PHONE?!” Strange screamed while fending off a barrage of cursed pigeons.
“HE FOLLOWED ME ON INSTAGRAM!” Danny shouted from behind a sofa.
It took three Avengers, a packet of Mentos, and Danny screaming “YOU’RE NOT EVEN THAT SCARY, CARL!” to trap him back in the snow globe. Clockwork appeared mid-chaos, sipping ecto-tea.
“This was necessary for your growth,” he said calmly.
Danny hurled a shoe at him.
Eventually, Strange came to a horrifying realization: Danny wasn’t learning magic in the traditional sense. He was absorbing it. He was like a sponge that had been dunked in eldritch Kool-Aid and now radiated unpredictable power every time he sneezed.
“Do not, under any circumstance, let him near the Time Stone,” Strange told Wong.
“He already touched it.”
“WHAT?!”
“He said it ‘smelled like cosmic fruit roll-up’ and tried to lick it.”
“I HATE THIS CHILD.”
Danny was currently learning how to open a rift without screaming “YOLO” at the top of his lungs. Progress was…questionable.
“Did you just use Ebonic incantation slang to fold space?”
Danny grinned. “Magic, but make it ✨feral✨.”
“You’re going to give me an aneurysm.”
“I already gave Wong one.”
“You what—?”
At some point, Nick Fury showed up, stared directly into Danny’s glowing green eyes, and immediately called for backup.
“He’s a threat to national security.”
“I’m seventeen!”
“You’ve destroyed seven timelines.”
“Okay but they were minor timelines! Who needs a universe made of talking cats, anyway?”
“…I did.”
Even the Watcher started side-eyeing Danny like a nervous babysitter. Carol Danvers tried to spar with him once and ended up in a ghost trap he made out of duct tape and ambition. “I respect you,” she told him from inside the glowing cube. “But I hate you.”
“Get in line.”
By the time Danny hit six months of training, he’d accidentally absorbed a minor chaos god, reinvented ice magic as a form of dance-fighting, made friends with Mephisto (“He’s not that bad once you get past the brimstone”), and turned his hair permanently silver-blue from temporal exposure.
Strange sat in his chair, robes scorched, tea long gone cold.
“Wong,” he said softly. “I think the child is the apocalypse.”
Wong nodded solemnly. “And yet…I fear I love him.”
Danny phased through the wall with sunglasses and a churro. “Hey! Want to help me prank Odin?”
Strange sighed like a man whose karma had caught up with him.
“I’ll get the goat.”
And so it continued. Danny Phantom: Ghost Kid, Sorcerer-In-Training, Time-Space Menace, and unofficial emotional support chaos goblin of the multiverse. He may not have understood quantum geometry, astral projection, or taxes—but damn it, he had style.
And, apparently, a date with the Living Tribunal next Tuesday.
“I hear he’s into jazz,” Danny said. “Think I should bring cookies?”
“You’re going to destroy everything.”
“Yeah, but like—charmingly?”
btw important clarification: Duke chose the morning shift himself. the sentiment that bruce needed someone to patrol in the morning is straight up untrue, duke's early training was right beside batman solving crimes and chasing criminals at night but as he was figuring out his place in the Gotham vigilante scene working at night just did not work for him. Eventually he chose to work during the daytime specifically because of his mother's ideology, that it's easier to recognize truth in the light, and because it allows him better direct access to the people of Gotham.
Duke is a very community centered character. He is big on his beliefs about it and redemption. Saying Bruce chose the day for him removes Duke's agency as a character and is a fundamental misunderstanding of him. He was Gothams robin (not batman's) for a reason. he was going to do his "protect and uplift the community by any means" thing no matter what, he was doing it before he even met bruce and it was the reason they met in the first place. he works in the morning because it's where the people are and it's the best way to see them in all their truths and complexities and for them to see him and know that everything is going to be okay
redraw of that meme going around. i know danny would do this shit
Batfamily - 530*160
Artist : Lan.C
It all started with a ghost. A very loud, very neon, very annoying ghost that thought it was a great idea to haunt Stark Tower. Danny Fenton—part-time student, full-time accidental hero, and perpetually exhausted teen—was just trying to track the damn thing through the Manhattan skyline when his portal malfunctioned (again), exploded in his face (again), and slingshotted him across the sky, straight through a window that turned out to be reinforced vibranium glass.
It should’ve stopped him. It didn’t.
Cue the alarms. Cue the dozens of defense drones locking onto his energy signature. Cue a 19-year-old Danny dangling upside down in the penthouse, surrounded by billion-dollar murder bots, trying to explain to a very confused AI that he was not, in fact, an alien invader.
But before FRIDAY could blast him into oblivion, a small voice piped up from behind a couch. “Are you a fairy?”
Danny blinked. Dangling upside down. Singed suit. Ectoplasm dripping from his hair. “Uh. Sure.”
The voice belonged to a tiny, curly-haired gremlin wearing a tutu, light-up sneakers, and what looked like Tony Stark’s old Iron Man helmet—three sizes too big and twice as chaotic. This was Morgan Stark. Age: five. Chaos level: eldritch god. She approached him like a cat approaches a new toy: equal parts curiosity and threat assessment.
“Can you do sparkles?” she asked.
Danny shot a tiny beam of ecto-energy at the ceiling light, which exploded into fireworks.
Morgan gasped. “OH MY GOD, YOU ARE A FAIRY.”
And that was how Danny Fenton became Morgan Stark’s official babysitter.
It wasn’t like he volunteered. Or got paid. Or even agreed. Tony Stark had been out of the country—something about a diplomatic mess in Wakanda and a golf game with T’Challa. Pepper had begged Steve Rogers to watch Morgan, but Steve’s idea of babysitting was forcing a child to recite the Constitution. So Pepper, desperate and very, very sleep-deprived, walked into her penthouse to find a teenage boy hovering in midair while her daughter screamed “FAIRY GODBRO” at him and decided, “Yeah. Sure. This’ll do.”
“Can you keep her alive?” Pepper asked, not even blinking at the glowing green eyes.
Danny shrugged. “Uh. I guess?”
“You get dental.”
Danny had no idea what that meant but was too scared to argue.
By Day Three, he was in hell. Not the Ghost Zone. Not some apocalyptic alternate timeline. Actual hell. Or what felt like it. Morgan had no concept of mortality. She once duct-taped kitchen knives to her arms and yelled “I’M WOLVERINE NOW.” Another time, she tried to feed their Roomba peanut butter and sobbed when it wouldn’t eat.
Danny tried to keep up. He really did.
Unfortunately, he was also being hunted by an interdimensional ghost warlord named Balthazar the Undying who decided Stark Tower was a great place to stage his declaration of conquest. So in between coloring pages and singing “Let It Go” for the 57th time (because Morgan said if he didn’t, she’d tell everyone he “pees ectoplasm”), Danny was banishing ancient horrors to the Shadow Realm.
“Why does the air taste like sadness?” Morgan asked one morning, sipping chocolate milk while a spectral hand clawed its way out of the floor behind her.
Danny shot it with a laser without looking. “That’s just the trauma, kid.”
She nodded like that made sense.
By Day Five, things got weirder.
Bruce Banner came over to “assess the babysitter.” What he found was a 19-year-old ghost hybrid making chicken nuggets with one hand while performing an exorcism on a sentient blender with the other. Bruce blinked. “You’re multitasking.”
Danny, dead-eyed and covered in slime: “You’re not my real dad.”
Bruce left after Morgan bit him.
Then Peter Parker dropped by. He took one look at Danny—haggard, twitching, wearing a tiara—and whispered, “Oh my god, he is a hot mess.”
“Shut up,” Danny snapped, using his foot to hold down a haunted Roomba. “Help me tie up the possessed dolls.”
Peter did not help. He just filmed everything for TikTok. The video went viral under the title “Me when I leave a random ghost fairy babysitter with Tony Stark’s child and come back to find him summoning the underworld during snack time.”
Nick Fury saw the video and sent a S.W.O.R.D. strike team to investigate.
Morgan beat them with a plastic lightsaber.
On Day Seven, Danny woke up to find Morgan riding a flying toaster around the living room like it was a dragon.
“WHERE DID YOU GET THAT?”
“I summoned it,” she said proudly.
“HOW.”
“I made a deal with your ghost friends.”
Danny’s left eye twitched so hard he saw the Ghost Zone.
Pepper walked in on him mid-breakdown. “You’ve been great with her,” she said, sipping her coffee. “We haven’t seen her this happy since… well, ever.”
Danny, clinging to the ceiling like a feral raccoon, wheezed, “I think she opened a portal to the Necroplane. There’s a demon named Craig living in the fridge.”
Pepper patted his arm. “All babysitters say that.”
Craig opened the fridge and waved. “Sup.”
By Week Two, Danny had stopped pretending to be normal. He phased through walls, levitated toys, vaporized anything that smelled like danger, and occasionally screamed “I’M TOO YOUNG TO BE HAVING A MID-LIFE CRISIS” into the void.
Tony finally came home. He blinked at the scene: Danny napping upside down like a bat while Morgan built a nuclear reactor out of old toaster parts and a Roomba named Kevin.
“Who the hell is that?” Tony asked.
Morgan didn’t even look up. “My fairy godbrother. He banished an evil frog ghost and helped me build an orbital laser.”
Tony stared. “Huh. Alright.”
And just like that, Danny Fenton became part of the Avengers.
He didn’t sign anything. He didn’t train. He didn’t even get a uniform. But every time something exploded or a portal opened or some ancient deity said “BEHOLD MY TRUE FORM,” Danny just floated into the air, cracked his back like an old man, and said, “Not in front of the child, you drama bitch.”
Morgan, from her juice box throne: “YEET HIM INTO THE VOID, DANNY.”
And he did.
It only got worse when the other Avengers got involved.
Natasha tried to teach Morgan how to do spy stuff. Morgan used the techniques to sneak into Tony’s wine cellar and replace the labels with glitter glue and threats.
Thor visited once. Morgan asked if she could ride his hammer. He said no. She cried. The hammer floated toward her on its own. Danny had to wrestle it away.
Clint brought over a bow and arrow set. Morgan hit Peter in the ass with a suction cup dart. Danny laughed so hard he choked on ectoplasm.
Wanda stared at Danny for a full ten minutes before whispering, “You’re not from this plane.”
Danny, deadpan: “Neither is your eyeliner.”
They became friends.
One night, Danny woke up to find Morgan drawing summoning circles on the walls in glitter glue.
“Whatcha doing, champ?”
“Trying to summon a unicorn for Auntie Yelena.”
Danny blinked. “Go back to bed.”
She glared. “You don’t support women in STEM.”
By Month One, SHIELD had officially labeled Danny as a “Class 7 Unexplainable Being with Babysitting Potential.” He had a badge. He had clearance. He had no idea what was happening anymore.
All he knew was that if Morgan Stark said “Danny, I wanna adopt a ghost puppy,” then by God, he was going to march into the Ghost Zone and wrestle a spectral hellhound into a leash.
And he did.
Its name is Toast.
Danny Fenton—ghost boy, half-dead teenager, babysitter of the year—accidentally became the most powerful figure in the universe. Not because of his powers. Not because of his knowledge. Not even because of his tragic backstory.
But because Morgan Stark liked him. And if you hurt Morgan Stark, you would be introduced to Craig, the fridge demon, and Kevin, the haunted Roomba, and Toast, the ghost puppy, and then, finally, the very angry, very tired, very over-it Danny Phantom who could—and would—yeet you into another dimension for interrupting nap time.
The Avengers knew better than to interfere.
Even Thanos came back to life once, took one look at Danny and Morgan, and said, “No thanks.”
He snapped himself back out of existence.
Danny didn’t even flinch.
Morgan dabbed.
And somewhere, in the vast multiverse of chaos and consequence, Tony Stark looked at his daughter, his haunted apartment, his glowing ghost babysitter eating fruit snacks while levitating a possessed microwave, and muttered to himself—
“Yeah. That tracks.”
Building trust is a long journey, and it starts with a single step...
I have some older art tips that I keep forgetting to post here. I'll add a few in the next few days, at least those that aren't too outdated!
This one is about giving an extra feel of weight to your characters.
Once more, have a prompt entirely in memes because I'm too lazy to properly write one right now lol.
deku doodles
Reblogger/Writer/ArtistAvid supporter of gay chaosMy safe haven for the ideas my brain comes up with
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