New Twin?

ok so we know Bruce got lost in the time stream right?

And Tim saved him bla bla bla...

Ok so I'm reading a fanfic rn and it's giving me an idea for a dpxdc crossover.

Its 'TWINcognito mode' by nerdpoe

Ok so I'm thinking it's not safe for Danny in his world so clockwork pulls some strings and sets everything up for Danny to be Tim's non identical twin (theyre similar enough to pass) and he just appears in wayne manor right after Bruce gets out of the time stream.

Like I'm talking he has a room that's 'been lived in for years', he has memories of them and growing up with tim, he's acting like nothings new ect.

So he's all like "dad your back!" And they're all looking between tim and his double like "tim??? NOT tim????" And they come to the conclusion that Bruce fucked with the time stream and he spawned in.

They all feel guilty that they 'forgot' him even though they never knew him. Especially Tim, he would feel so bad if there was someone that went through what he did with their parents neglect and they only had each other, but Tim doesn't remember who this is.

He could be fully aware and is pretending so he's safe OR clockwork thought this would be for the best so he altered Danny's memories so he genuinely believes he's Tim's twin.

For the second option I like the ideas that he doesn't remember anything/he doesn't have access to his ghost half (either he has to heal from something his parents did or he can't handle the full power that comes with being ghost king) and he won't unlock his memories/powers till he dies again.

Which if he genuinely believed they were his family, and then they tell him he wasn't real a few days ago, that would probably fuck with his mind.

Okay but even if he genuinely remembers living with the Batfam

Fenton or Wayne, “so weird multiversal time shenanigans happened”… isn’t weird for either of Danny’s potential families

And even if he doesn’t actually remember any ghostliness, the potential of Danny just

Immediately being chill with it

Would fuck everyone else up so much worse

Tim awkwardly explaining that as far as he knew, he never had a twin brother…

Danny blinks, cocks his head, has the vague urge to punch a clock for no real reason, then just nods. Yeah, that tracks for his life

Tim, who has reason to believe he and Danny shoulda had a pretty fucking similar life: ??????????????

This convinces all bats immediately that Danny is one of them, despite his near total lack of bat training

Y’know what Danny is though?

Danny’s “lucky”

(Subconsciously using ghost powers he doesn’t know he has only at completely deniable moments/in great peril)

Danny’s attempts at actual stealth? Fucking laughable. Might as well be wearing neon paint.

But then it’s 3am and Cass is hanging out in the ballet room and spins right fucking into Danny who was not there a second ago and he’s just as confused as she is, cuz he was just sleepwalking and didn’t see her either

Danny’s aim with the grapnel? Pretty good actually, better than average even if not bat-level, it’s like watching their baby days swing around the gym

And then he nearly falls off the top of the wall by accident and you could swear he actually flew for a second as he swung to safety

Danny’s combat skills? Pathetically below bat average (not bad for random dude) but he’s just… weirdly hard to hit once training gets intense

He’s clearly civilian trained at best, a mass of bruises after gentle sparring, but the one time Damian gets pissed and decides to teach Danny a lesson after one flippant comment too many… suddenly not a single hit lands

No one believes Damian, they just assume he was tired/crankier than he thought and threw himself off… until Tim decides to go a little harder. Just to see

And the second he actually wants to bruise his brother, it’s like Danny knows exactly where he’s going to hit. Or… like Danny can move through him

Cass is persuaded to go for an “affectionate” family sneak attack and 10000% dives straight through his torso one night

Danny struggles to lift a 30lb weight around until he and Duke are caught in a rogue attack and Danny you just caught a fucking car

Danny, meanwhile, assumes this just means all this training they clearly think he has is kicking in, they already want him to do some impossible shit, maybe the time stream has left him jet lagged?

It’s giving Danny accidentally haunting the mansion, it’s giving the bats becoming increasingly concerned of what the hell they’ve let into their home, it’s giving eldritch horror on a drip feed… or it’s giving Scooby Doo 👀

Both is good

Bruce is going grey trying to figure out what is up with Danny. Bat paranoia is at an all time high. Is Danny actually Tim's twin? A clone with implanted memories? Something else taking advantage of the timeline confusion to infiltrate the family? What is he? Why is he here? What does he want?

And Danny...

Well.

It's not that he isn't hurt by all this. What feels to him like being forgotten, being unwanted, being untrusted by his family. It leaves this frozen ball of feeling deep in his chest, aching and pulsing with an undercurrent of betrayed betrayed betrayed betrayed betrayed.

So, yeah, safe to say it hurts pretty bad. Danny is not fine with it.

But he does understand it.

After all, Danny isn't sure he trusts himself either. He may not be up to Bat standard, but he's clearly had some training from somewhere. And that training, from wherever it may have come, tells him instinctually that something isn't adding up here. He knows something isn't right. Even as a grandfatherly voice in the back of his mind tries to soothe him that everything is as it should be.

Something weird is going on here. Something hinging on but separate from Bruce's misadventures through time. And as much as it sucks being the object of their scrutiny, Danny doesn't blame them. He can't. He gets it.

This is family after all. Bruce can't take risks with his family on the line. Danny doesn't want him to. Danny loves them too. So he'll tolerate the suckishness of the whole thing. He'll let the Bats poke and prod and test and experiment to their hearts' contents. And maybe once they have their answers, even if it's not what they're hoping for, if he's been good, maybe there'll still be a place for him upstairs when they're done.

Ok, let's add some more stuff to this glorious dumpster fire.

Danny was experimented on before. His parents/GIW didn't get to disecsion yet, just in case such a valuable specimen gets irreparably damaged after/during it. We also all remember how Vlad had done different experiments on him a few times. The boy has Trauma about the whole thing.

Anyway:

Danny knew something like this was coming. He didn't know why he knew. However, the harsh whisper at the back of his mind never ceased reminding him that he was different in one way or another.

And his Different never bore a good reaction. His Different was dangerous. It was painful. It was scary. It was riddled with unexplained night terrors and phantom feeling of wounds that were always absent on his skin when he woke up in panic and silent tears.

His Different was something he missed

It was something he feared

It was something he longed for

It was something he hated.

It was a forgotten part of him

Forgotten, just like he was by the family he had called his own and loved dearly.

His brothers looked with hidden mistrust.

His twin spoke with awkward, strained friendliness usually reserved for his slightly more delicate cases.

His sisters tried to hide their anxiety at his unnatural presence.

His father refused to spend much time together. He missed their stargazing night outs...

His family was a family of detectives. They searched. They tested. They pushed. He knew that. He, too, was picking up a lot more than he'd ever let on.

"Hey, wanna come down for a bit? I got a few things I wanted to look through. Bruce wanted your help."

That's why he was not at all surprised when Tim came to his room and, with faux cheerfulness, called him into the batcave. A flatter of hope that this was actually just an invite to the area he grew to love but was barred from recently died down the second it reared its head. No.

It just came to what his every cell dreaded.

Their normal searches were fruitless. They needed to take the look at the source of their headache.

"Sure."

The walk there was long and foggy. He did not remember most of it. He didn't know why he felt this way painpainpainpainpainpainpainpainpainpain but it was ok. He wanted his family to calm down. Besides, it wasn't like his family would hurt him. They loved him even if they forgot.

It's not like his first one

----

Tim led Danny into the Batcave, sending him another worried glance. Something happened when he called Danny into the cave. A switch was flipped and Tim didn't know what will come after. He wouldn't engage in a conversation. He hadn't blinked in 5 minutes. His stare was never focused but he never tripped.

"B, Danny has gone unresponsive..."

Bruce looked up from the files on his computer. They got some clues to what might've happened and were going to inform Danny about their findings. However, this lost child now stood in front of him like a soulless statue waiting to be guided somewhere.

"Danny?" The kid focused his gaze on him. "What happened?"

"....?" tilted his head questioningly.

That was unnerving. During the while time Danny was with them, he was always full of emotion. He never hid them and was honest to a fault. Cass had confirmed so time and time again.

"Hey, what's wrong, Danny," Dick, already in costume ready for patrol, came up to the teen and placed his hand on instantly tensed shoulder.

"....m not Star.... not anymore" he heard a muffled whisper.

"What was that?" He prodded gently.

"Nothing. I'll be quiet. Sorry."

They were left in heavy silence filled with some kind of unspoken expectation radiating from the new family member.

Until eventually:

"When will you start experiments?"

"Huh?"

"...hn?"

"Will I be allowed to keep my clothes? Can move around the cell? Will I have a cell? Can-"

"Danny, what are you talking about? Why-" Tim tried to intergect into the increasingly frantic but soft questions.

"-I be sedated? Do I have to be conscious?"

Danny's breathing became erratic as many, many questions of the same kind poured out into the air directed at the increasingly more and more disturbed family.

----

Anyway idk what's next.

Danny continues to work himself further into a panic, seemingly oblivious to the mounting horror of the assembled Bats. As Danny's panic builds, a strange pressure builds in the cave and a sound on the absolute edge of human hearing builds with it; a static hum mixed with a mechanical whir mixed with a very distant, haunting scream that sounds suspiciously like a prepubescent Tim - a prepubescent Danny.

Finally, after a long moment of bluescreening, Tim reaches out for his. . . twin? Twin. However Danny may have come to them, he was Tim's twin now. Until Danny proved himself to have ill intent -a possibility that had already been deemed improbable even before bringing him down to the cave- Tim would continue to regard him as nothing less.

So Tim reaches out for his twin, intending to calm him first, then maybe try to ask what the hell spurned this. But as soon as Tim's hand makes contact with Danny's, Danny freezes. The pressure peaks and the sound crescendos and for one fraction of a fraction of a second there is a flash, a flicker of light around Danny's chest, centered on his heart. When the light vanishes, so does the pressure and the sound, though the space they leave behind is just as oppressive.

Tim looks his twin in the eye. He watches that hazy, dissociative fog deepen. Then Danny blinks. Once, twice, three times. And the cloud seems to lift. Danny's gaze darts around the cave, rapidly observing and analyzing in his first display of true Bat-standard behavior. Surprise, then confusion flashes across his face, making it apparent that he recalls nothing of the last several minutes. Tim can't decide at the moment if that's a blessing or a curse. Then, in a manner all of the Bat's have come to associate with Danny's bizarrely easy acceptance of every wicked curve ball life decides to throw at him, he shrugs it off.

"Sorry, I think I spaced out. What's up?"

For a long moment, no one answers. No one has answers. Just a lot more questions and several more extremely concerning theories.

Ohhh I can suddenly see them chalk up all the confusing actions of Danny to him being tortured, experimented on or something so now he's like that. Stuck with a mental block. Danny was also probably part of the night life but isn't anymore! Now that reality has been warped to give them Danny, they just don't remember what he's probably been through with them. And neither does he because his mind must have repressed all of it! It's probably why they had a lot of notes, that they don't remember taking, about making sure Danny attends therapy no matter what!

It would explain why he seems to suck and not know about anything relating to the vigilante business but it's like he has muscle memory of it! In their Perspective, he really doesn't remember!

It would explain why, in what Danny tells them of his memories, Tim has always been an overprotective big brother! Or how each of them didn't want him to fight crime with them "in the past"! Because something probably happened! But because they fucked up the timeline, they don't remember why either! (Honestly, CW probably set all of this up)

Idk if y'all get it lololol I'm bad at explaining, especially now since I have a huge headache

Do you know what very traumatic event linked to torture could be linked to Tim's brother Danny?

Junior joker

One of the ways to make Tim obey, joker was electrocuting Danny. This is where the scars come from (which makes the censored version of the final events very ironic where Jokers dies electrocuted by a wrong move on his part)

At least that's what the report says (report read late because no one wants to rethink junior joker)