my heart in a picture

Aquaman Jackson Hyde by Joshua Swaby

Less screentime for the main team but Zatanna is there again and was cute. She and Kaldur combined their magic! That was really cool :) and the trogowogs are gremlins!

YJ/DP Crossover 1(Revised)

To Curate A Ghost - 1

Oh my gosh, y’know what I just realized? I never posted the full, rewritten first chapter to here. This is mostly so I can link it from future chapters within giving away the major spoilers that were in the drabble idea I originally posted that became the first chapter:

The team has been together for a while now, and they’d thought they’d finally figured out how to live together.

That was, apparently, not the case.

At first it’s small things, a moved object or a TV left on even when everyone swears they turned it off.

Then, they start forgetting to call out their shots. Batman gives them extra training, it makes them more efficient, everyone works even better together.

And yet somehow… Robin will still turn around and find an enemy knocked out behind him that nobody will admit to taking down.

Like, he’s glad they’re watching each other’s backs, but let a guy know when he’s getting snuck up on, I mean, really!

Then the pranks start. Well… they start getting bolder.

Robin has his money on Wally doing it, if only because he can never catch them on camera. Next on the suspect list is M’gann, maybe she thinks it’s an earth thing, but there was no other way to get into his room without phasing through it.

Of course, everyone else thinks it’s him. And yes, Robin has pulled his fair share of bat pranks, but why would he purposefully freeze the water heater? It makes no sense, but nobody’s fessing up to any of it.

And despite their mentors best efforts, the relentless pranking starts to turn the team against each other. Somebody has to take responsibility, even Aqualad is sick of the extra training.

The last straw is apparently when Artemis’ entire quiver gets filled with sand and mud. Wally laughs at the sight of Artemis stomping into the main room covered in drying mud cement.

Her eyes zero in on him, “This was you wasn’t it, Kid Mouth?!” Artemis shouts as she shakes the dirty quiver at him.

“Hey! That’s beach sand, so maybe you should ask Fishboy before you start pointing fingers at me!” Wally points harshly as Aqualad enters the room.

“I told you before Wally, I was not the one to soak your suit with saltwater!” Aqualad says with a scoff, obviously sick of repeating it.

“Oh yeah, then who did? Some other water controlling teammate?”

“Perhaps you should ask your own best friend, after all, Robin still hasn’t apologized for-“

“I told you I didn’t do it, Kaldur! Just like I didn’t hack the training bots or the oven just to burn M’gann’s cookies!”

M’gann raises her head from behind the couch indignantly, “Nobody else could’ve done it, Robin! You’re the only one with computer skills-“

“Oh, and you’re the only one who could’ve phased into my room and rearranged everything but you don’t see me coming after you for that, M’gann!”

“Anymore! You blamed me for the flying stuff too!”

The team devolved into arguing, everybody blaming everybody else for increasing ridiculous ‘pranks.’

The shouts are interrupted by an echo of ominous laughter through the cave.

“Robin, quit being creepy!”

“It’s not me this time, I swear!” Robin says with his hands up.

The laughter continued.

Now able to tell that Robin was definitely not the one doing it, the team makes eye contact with each other.

Someoneelse was doing it.

Someone was in the cave.

More laughter echoes through the cave, and the team members are quick to arm themselves, gathering into a tight circle, back to back.

“Who’s there!”

Robin discreetly sends a distress beacon to Batman. One word: Intruder.

“Show yourself!”

More laughter, mixed in with the echos,

“BOO!” Something appears and shouts into Robins face.

He leaps back, brandishing a batarang at the… boy?

The boy in question just rocks backward in the air, laughing. He points at Robin, “You should’ve seen your face!!” He laughs.

He seems to ignore or not notice the several weapons pointed at him.

“Who are you!? How did you get in here!?”

The boy sobered instantly, “Who am I? Who am I!?” His voice grows louder as his eyes glow and he rises higher off the ground, his white hair whipping in an imaginary wind, “I am the Spectral Spectator! The preternatural prankster! I am… Phantom!” His words boom across the room from where he looks down on them. Then suddenly he drops right back in front of team, “Sup guys, the name’s Phantom, I’m a ghost and I’ve been pranking you for the last 3 months,” He laughs again, holding his middle and cackling.

“That was you?!” They shout incredulously.

“Of course! What? I thought we bonded when I painted all your masks pink. Or did you think that just happened naturally?” He flips upside down with that stupid smile still on his face.

[Batman - 02]

The whole room freezes as the team turns to the zeta tubes.

Batman appears, already in a battle stance, though pauses when he sees nobody fighting.

“Robin! Why did you call me?!” He shouts, an edge to his tone.

Robin’s brow furrows, “Because of-“ he looks behind him, only to see an empty space, “Where’d he go?!”

The rest of the team whips their heads around, equally surprised to see the empty space behind them.

Robin looks back to Batman, who’s gotten closer.

He spots a shimmer of light behind Batman as Phantom flickers into view.

“Phantom don’t-!” He reaches out to stop him-

It’s too late, Phantom taps Batman on the shoulder with a grin, only to get his hand yanked when Batman throws him over his shoulder.

Instead of hitting the ground though, he goes through, disappearing.

“Who was that?” Batman barks at the team.

“Phantom. He’s… a ghost? We don’t really know.” Robin answers carefully.

Wally scoffs and rolls his eyes, “Ghosts don’t exist, Rob. They’re not real.”

Robin opens his mouth with a retort, Aqualad steps forward to cut off the argument, “Either way, it does not seem to wish us harm… but it did admit to pranking us throughout these last few months.”

Superboy growls, “Which we got extra training because of,”

“Team. If this entity is responsible for the pranks, how long has it been following you and known about the cave? Are other locations compromised?”

The team stays silent, aside from a covered snicker from Robin and KF. Their eyes glued to the space in air above Batman.

He looks up to find the entity- Phantom- floating above him with a grin and mimicking his cowl with two fingers on his head.

Phantom grins, “Are any other locations compromised,” he says with a over-deepened voice and a fake, mocking scowl, “I’m Batman, I eat gravel for breakfast and have never experienced human joy,” he bobs his head back and forth with the joke.

He finally breaks character, falling back in the air laughing.

Batman throws a batarang-net at him, surprised as it goes through and falls to the floor harmlessly.

This could be more dangerous than expected.

“Dude, that was kind of rude! I’m just having fun!”

“Did he just call Batman dude???“ Artemis whispers incredulously to M’gann.

She shrugs helplessly but flys up to meet Phantom in the air regardless.

“Miss Martian, get back, he could be dangerous!”

The figure laughs, “I mean, I’m killer with a water balloon but don’t give me too much credit,” he grins and waves at M’gann as she gets close.

“Hello…” She hesitantly waves back, “Are you.. going to try to hurt us?”

Phantoms smile drops, and confusion replacing his mirth, “Why would I? I mean, I’ve been protecting you just as much as I prank you, why would I try to hurt anybody?” He says it as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him at all. As if, even though he’d basically broken into a secure and secret base, he’d never even considered using the opportunity to do anything but harmless pranks.

“Wait,you’ve been protecting us? Are you the one taking the snipe shots that no one calls out on missions?!” Artemis shouts with realization.

“The very one,” the kid preens with a smile.

“Why?” Batman asks, though it sounds like an order even with only one word.

Phantom rolls his eyes and lowers himself closer to the ground, “Gah, so serious, you need a laugh bat guy. I dunno,” Phantom shrugs, “Just felt right. I saw them in danger, and I didn’t want anybody to get hurt, so I protected them.”

Batman raises an eyebrow that makes Phantom shrink under its scrutiny.

“It felt right and it helps me remember, well a little bit, at least now I know I was a hero before,”

“Before? What do you mean, remember?” Batman asks, interrogation in his tone.

Phantom looks at Batman like he’s asked an obviously stupid question, “Yeah, I mean, I’m a ghost, but it’s not like I remember who I was before I died.”

–

Despite his unorthodox introduction, Phantom settles into the team with incredible ease.

On missions, he’s the first line of infiltration, with invisibility and intangibility that outrank even Robin’s skills. Nothing they’ve come across seems to be able to stop him.

That alone should be worrying, if it wasn’t so overshadowed by his steadfast persistence to protect everyone he can.

Civilians, teammates, senior heroes even.

When a mission- inevitably- goes wrong, Phantom is usually found flying above, taking shots that cover a teammate’s blind spot or protecting them from behind.

They do have to have a couple talks with him about self-sacrificing, but the reaction to jump in front of danger for his friends, it’s almost instinctual.

At least, that’s what he tells Black Canary. Even after several sessions with her, he can’t remember anything new. The team could almost believe that he’ll never remember more.

Almost.

It was just…

Sometimes Robin would hack into something particularly hard, and Phantom will reflexively say, “good one Tucker!,” or, “nice job, Tuck!” as if standing on the tip of a new memory.

They assume Tuck and Tucker are the same person, but no one on the team is really sure, none of them know a Tucker. And when asked about it, neither does Phantom. He just looks confused for a second and then moves on like they’d said nothing at all.

Unbeknownst to everyone but himself and Batman, Robin keeps a record of these instances. Along with a collection of times Phantom’s started an enthusiastic story about a ‘Jazz’, or even occasionally his parents, before suddenly losing his focus and moving on.

Once, during a lull in available missions, Phantom had followed Meghan to school.

He’d seen some goth kid in the hallway and started to yell something starting with S, then vanished.

They didn’t see him for a few days that time.

And when he came back, he wasn’t… completely.. there.

That’s something else the team’s learned about Phantom’s habits.

Sometimes they’ll find him just floating around the cave, vaguely fading from room to room, or pacing high in the air above the main room.

M’gann tried to reach him once like that, early in their friendship.

Her hand went right through him, like he wasn’t there at all.

Occasionally, and only at its worst, he’ll mutter something under his breath.

“I wasn’t fast enough.”

“I shouldn’t have cheated.”

“I can’t be late for school, not again.”

“I want to be an astronaut when I’m older.”

It reminds them all what Phantom really is. Just a dead kid. A dead civilian kid at that. A failure of what they’re trying to protect.

And it’s because of this that Robin keeps a record of everything Phantom says.

Because maybe, if they write everything down, they’ll be able to find a pattern, maybe, if they write everything down, they’ll be able to find who Phantom was, maybe they’ll be able to find what killed him. Maybe they can help him move on.

Maybe.

Here’s Part 2:

https://snaileer.tumblr.com/post/667835604019593216/yjdp-crossover-part-2

YJ/DP Crossover Part 2

Zehra Fazal reposted my art to her story and I literally cannot deal???

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