Orbits of Glass

[sqweakie]

 

Chapter Four

“The wharf is the best place to find explosives and cheap information. You need to watch your back. There is a reason the information is cheap.”

The dot continued to blink even after his teacher stopped his narrative. He was only ten or eleven at the time, sitting in that stiff chair for hours. There were other things that he would rather be doing like learning that double flip or practicing with batarangs. Instead, he was trapped in his chair and learning pointless, nitpicky details about the cities around Gotham City.

Fingers flew across the keyboards and a new city lit up on the overhead map. On the left-side screen large warnings flashed next to the city’s name. He read the warnings as he impatiently waited for his mentor to start lecturing on about this city. Batman stayed silent so he took a chance.

“Amity Park…” Robin read out loud, waiting for the adult to start another monotonous dialogue.

“The one place we will never travel to while on a case,” he finally said. “It’s completely off limits.”

“What about the bad guys there?” Robin asked. As Batman explained about each city he noted the local villains that they might encounter in each area.

“There are no supervillains residing there. It doesn’t exist in our world.”

“I don’t understand…”

“No superhero can go into that city,” he said while looking at his young sidekick. “Batman can’t go there. Robin can’t go there. No one with powers lives there. Amity Park is even avoided by the bad guys. It is a place where the struggle between good and evil doesn’t exist. We don’t exist to them.” The older man paused, debating on how to word the next part.

“But, if you’re desperate and you have nowhere else you can go, it’s a haven. Robin can’t go there, like I said, but Dick Grayson can. You can blend completely and no one would ever find you there.”

“But you said that superheroes couldn’t go there?” he asked, confused since Batman just warned him that he couldn’t go there.

“If you don’t tell anyone there that you are Robin, there is no way to prove it. You have no special powers or genetic changes. You are completely human and you can disappear there, completely.”

“Have you ever been there?” The young hero looked away from the computer monitors to see his mentor’s response.

Batman’s eyes lost focus and he took his time before answering. “Twice. Both times were emergencies and I was Bruce each time.”

“Why can’t superheroes go to Amity Park?”

“You don’t need to know,” the Bat said, ending their conversation. “Just remember…”

If remembering were only that easy. He had been wracking his brain, trying to remember where he had heard the name Amity Park. It took a lot out of him just to remember that one conversation. He felt exhausted and he hadn’t moved all morning. The plus side was that it was easy to fake sleep and had overheard his hosts talking over breakfast.

He stared at the ceiling and mentally went over the facts. So far all he was sure of was that he was in Amity Park, in an apartment and he was injured. He remembered Gotham and everything that had transpired before he stole the motorcycle. His last clear memory was pulling onto ninety-one heading north. Everything after that blended into one long nightmare that masked the truth. Old fears mixed with the real things that occurred. His memories were filled with moving shadows and a phantom Slade. He half saw a fight where people flew and a boy spoke to him. The truth of last night laid buried beneath a concussion, blood loss and a mile of history from his past that clouded everything.

Early morning ended the confusing nightmare. He had woken up bandaged and damaged, but alive. He was pretty sure that Danny was the boy from his nightmare memories; his voice matched that of his rescuer. His present memory may have been clear, but that didn’t mean that anything made sense. If a quarter of what he remembered was true Danny had been part of the fight against the shade of a woman. It was unusual for a normal, human teenager to stand up against the abnormalities that plagued the earth. He thought the shadow woman was real but she was no villain that Robin had ever heard of. It was like she was a …ghost.

‘Amity Park…The Spiritual Capital of the Planet,’ Danny had said. At the time Robin thought he was referring to a bunch of religious nut jobs that infested the city. Maybe he wasn’t referring to religion but to the spirits or whatever you wanted to call them... ghosts. But the logical part of him insisted that it couldn’t be true. The dead didn’t come back to haunt the living.

‘Yeah, and demons and aliens don’t exist either.’ If that were true then Starfire, Raven, and a quarter of the Justice League were figments of his imagination. He tapped his fingers against his leg, leaving that mental tangent alone and continued the recap.

He had heard two new voices after the second time he woke up. One was a girl or a woman, impossible to tell until he saw her face to face. The other voice belonged to an older man. They only checked on him once and he faked sleep so they left the superhero alone. It gave him the perfect opportunity to listen in on their conversations and try to figure out if they were friend or foe.

After the morning conversation between the boy, the girl and the man, he didn’t decide either way… yet. At least he now knew why Amity Park didn’t exist in the real world. The story about the Heroes was pretty clear; no wonder the Bat never told him why the supers were exiled. This was probably the only place on earth that the Supers had been run out of with just ingenuity and skill. It would have been a complete embarrassment to the League.

Movement and noises behind him drew him out of his thoughts. A figure suddenly entered his field of vision too soon and he didn’t have time to pretend to be lost to oblivion. “You’re awake!” a female voice said in surprise. She kept moving until she was fully in view. She was a girl who had to be around his age and a little taller than him, he had to guess. She had dark skin and cool green eyes which were set off by her simple white shirt and jeans.

“Who are you?” he asked her. She blinked and sat down on the edge of the couch.

“I’m Valerie.” She spoke warily. “Who are you?”

“Robin,” he said honestly. He vaguely remembered the boy calling him that in the middle of the night and it was safer to stick with that instead of pulling out one of his many aliases.

“Just Robin?” she asked skeptically.

“Well, what’s your last name?” he asked in return.

“That is need to know information and you don’t need to know.”

He didn’t comment and after a couple of seconds she huffed. “Fine. Let’s make one thing clear, I don’t want you here. If you do anything you’ll be on the street faster than you can blink. I’m going to check your bandages now, so just hold still.”

He glared in return but nodded his acceptance, not liking the situation one bit. Her gaze didn’t soften as she pushed his blanket off his stomach. She poked and peaked under the gauze that covered his chest. He lay there quietly until she pulled his blanket past his knees. He actually sat up and made a futile grab at the blanket before the pain caught up to him.

“Stop being a baby and lay down,” Valerie ordered as she pushed him back down.

“But…” he trailed off as he looked down. He was pretty sure that last night he had only been in his boxers. He looked towards his toes to see he was wearing a pair of track pants. Confusion must have showed because the girl sighed.

“Danny put those on you sometime this morning so you would be decent.” He felt his cheeks heat in a blush and decided to change the subject quick.

“He mentioned that this was a friends’ apartment?” he asked, trying to watch her reaction as she pulled out a roll of tape and fasten the end on one of the bandages on his stomach..

“Me and my dad live here. Danny stays here a lot, too.” She added the last as an afterthought and her voice grew gentle. Robin didn’t dare comment on it. He wasn’t certain if this was an act or if she had actually calmed down. He had learned the hard way that girls were complicated and they never did what you thought they would.

She made a grab at the blanket again and this time he didn’t fight her. Without the cover he could see past his knees to his bare feet. He was surprised to see that his left ankle was wrapped in an ace bandage and propped up on a pillow. The surprise was because he hadn’t notice any pain before or the pillow under his leg. She unwrapped his foot and he winced when he saw how swollen it was.

“It’s not broken, is it?” he had to ask.

“We don’t think so,” she said. “Just a sprain.” She rolled the ace bandage into a ball and threw it on an end table. “If I grab the crutches, do you think you could make it to the bathroom?”

“Sure, no problem,” he said with confidence, actually wanting to get up and move around, if only to see more of the apartment. It was slow going to the bathroom. He was sore and it had been a long time since he had used crutches. After cleaning up the best that he could in the bathroom, Valerie led him back to the living room. Juice and a bowl of cereal were waiting for him on a rickety TV tray. He ate and tried to stay awake but his body betrayed him and drove him to sleep.

oOo

Val tapped her foot to an invisible beat as she waited for their ‘guest’ to fall asleep. She didn’t have to wait long to see his eyes drift shut. He was so pale and had been shaking by the time they made it back to the living room. She hoped he hadn’t lost too much blood because there was no way they could take him to the hospital. Once she was sure that the guy was asleep, she got out of her chair.

Time was inching towards noon and she wanted to check on Danny to see if he was feeling better after his nap. Concussions had never caused any long term problems in the half-ghost before but there was no sense in taking any chances. She reached the door to find that it was locked. That was no problem as she pulled out a key from under her shirt. She pulled the chain it was connected to over her head and quietly unlocked the door.

Putting the key away a smile danced across her face. Danny was curled up on her bed hugging her pillow, apparently dead to the world. At the sound of the door closing he lifted his head. She couldn’t help but laugh at the clueless expression and the hair. He stuck out his tongue and retorted, “You don’t look so wonderful yourself when you wake up.”

She just blamed the sarcasm on the concussion. She sat down next to him as he buried his head under the pillow and groaned.

“I so don’t want to call them right now.” His voice was muffled but she wasn’t worried about him suffocating. What she worried about was another confrontation between him and his dad. At that moment she decided to take pity on him.

“Are you going to call them or do you want me to?” she asked.

“You would?” The pillow fell on the floor and his hopeful face was inches from her.

“Yes, it will be hard and painful, the worst torture in the world for me but I will suffer through it,” her tone and face expressionless as she tried not to laugh.

He smiled and gave her a quick hug of thanks before disappearing to check on the teen in her living room. She picked up the cordless laying on her nightstand and shut the door to give her some privacy. The hunter hit the speed dial and listened to the ringing.

‘Five…Six…Seven…’ she mentally counted the rings as she paced her room.

“Hello, Fenton Works,” a voice answered. She practically collapsed in relief.

“Hi, Mrs. Fenton. It’s Valerie.”

“Val,” Danny’s mom said in surprise. “It’s good to hear from you. Is Danny alright?”

“He’s fine,” she assured the woman on the other end. “We just wanted to let you know that he’ll be over here for a couple of weeks at least.”

“Oh,” Dan’s mom said in disappointment. “Will you try to get him to stop by sometime this week?”

“I’ll try but you know how he is.” There was silence and Val could hear pages being flipped over the line.

“Jazz and Jack are going to be in Baltimore from Thursday to Sunday afternoon. I’ll be here by myself or out on patrol. It would probably be easier to find me while patrolling.”

“I’ll pass it along,” the young hunter said. “I’ll talk to you later Mrs. Fenton.”

“Wait Valerie,” the older woman called out before she could hang up.

“Yes?”

“How is he really doing?” The worry was apparent even over the miles and the phone line.

“He was a little quiet earlier in the week, with Tucker visiting his Grandparents and Sam spending the month in Spain.” She decided to tell her. “We were busy yesterday so that helped keep him distracted.” She didn’t dare mention the kid they dragged home. No sense in making the woman worry more than she already did.

“Good. I’ll see you later. Call me if you guys need anything and say hi to your dad for me.”

“I will,” she promised. “Bye.”

“Bye Valerie.” She hit the end button and flopped back on her bed. She didn’t move when she felt a weight fall next to her on the bed and a cool shoulder pressed against hers.

“Most people lock the door for a reason,” she told the apparently empty room.

“It’s too much work to pick the lock when you can just walk right through the door.” She stuck out her tongue at a blank spot on her bed. The empty air laughed and Danny appeared right next to her. She rolled on top of the ghost to look him full in the face.

“Danny, I…” He leaned up and kissed her on the lips, silencing her.

“You are way too good at that.” She had to take a moment to catch her breath as he fell back to the bed.

“I know,” he said with a self-satisfied smirk.

“Your mom wants you to visit.” She pressed her hand over his mouth to stop him from rejecting the idea. “They’re leaving on Thursday and coming back Sunday. We can always catch her on patrol.”

It was the safest place to contact Dan’s mother. The Ghost Patrol had been set up to provide the best protection against ghosts twenty-four seven. It hadn’t been needed two years ago but when her, Phantom and the Fentons were all out of commission and out of the city at the same time, ghosts overran Amity Park. A lot of bad things happened that fall during their sophomore year. But, if they hadn’t happened, she and Danny wouldn’t be here now.

She was interrupted by another drawn out kiss.

“You were thinking. That’s dangerous,” her boyfriend told her with mock seriousness. She didn’t believe him for a second.

A predator’s grin spread across her face and Danny actually looked scared. It was probably the first time he noticed she had a huge advantage. She sat up on his stomach and cracked her knuckles. A small eep came out of his throat before she attacked. Laughter tore through the apartment as she ticked Danny mercilessly in revenge.

Chapter Five