It's a new story! Danny's never going to escape being tortured, even when he's not with the Militia...
Un-beta'ed, so quibble away!
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Turn the Whole Thing Upside Down
Somehow, they make it back to Chicago in record time. Danny doesn't know how, but he's grateful all the same. The area is familiar, and after so long, he aches for familiarity. His biological mother, Rachel, takes them to a warehouse on the outskirts of the city. She calls it the Fermilab, and says the name with quite a bit of reverence.
Danny collapses on the steps in the main lobby of the building, ready to just pass out and sleep for the next week. He hasn't taken baths near anyone in the group, not wanting them to see his injuries—his mother would pretend to be horrified, Charlie and Aaron would wrap him up in cotton batting, Nora would give him sympathy he didn't want, and Uncle Miles… Well, Danny wanted Uncle Miles to approve of him, to think of him as an adult, so he says nothing about the pain he's in—his leg hurts. (He doesn't know what Strausser did, but bending his right knee gets harder every day, and the pain is white-hot behind the joint and his eyes and he almost passes out, but he does his best to ride it out because that's what his uncle would do.)
Then he does pass out, just as the door opens in answer to Rachel's insistent beating.
The teen wakes up in a sterile-looking room. He's in a bed that's uncomfortable, for all that it's softer than anything he's had in the past two months. There's a white sheet covering his hips, and a second white blanket trapped under his shoulder and wrapping around his arm, trapping it there. Everything in the room is white or harsh white-blue. It hurts his eyes, and the room is freezing.
Something begins beeping as he sits up, and Danny rips the IV line out of his arm, falling out of bed as he tries to get away. For a second, he's back in that chair in the blue room in the Willow Grove power station, and Strausser is talking to him about the effects of Scopolamine as he shoves the needle into a pump in the back of his hand. Danny remembers the floating feeling and the absolute terror he felt as Strausser laughed… He tries to block the memories of his willing, eager compliance with every single one of Strausser's orders out, but can't.
Charlie's the one who rushes into the room as Danny begins screaming and clawing at a tiny, tiny round scar on the back of his left hand, trying to claw something out from under his skin that doesn't exist. The siblings sit together, pressed against the wall, for the rest of the day. Charlie shares some of her own personal horrors—the dream she used to escape Drexel, the beatings she took on the conscription ship, the interrogation by the rebels in West Chester. They're not what Danny went through, but the teen appreciates that she's not giving him false sympathy or pitying looks. They have their own set of horrors to work through.
Danny starts to recover from his shock after he learns what the beeping noise that woke him up was. His uncle tells him it monitors his heart rate, blood pressure, and if his lungs are working the way they should. A mechanical replacement for Charlie.
After the teen learns that he can be as physical as he wants, he begins exploring the building. He quickly takes advantage of the stores of factory-made clothing and bundles up in three flannel shirts, a t-shirt that (for whatever reason) says "Solid Brass Balls" and a leather coat, and sits up on the roof. He likes sitting up there in the open air, just looking towards the horizon, in any direction he wants. He feels, for the first time in his life, free.
Grace Beaumont, the woman who tried to save him when he'd collapsed on her farm, is there as well. She sits up on the roof with him after dark, bundled up in her own coats and shirts. She has a hat with earflaps on it. Sometimes, she brings cocoa up with her, and shares it with him. They rarely speak. When they do, it's the nights where she brings tea up to the roof, and lays on her back next to Danny, pointing out the constellations to him. She laughs as Danny makes up his own stories to replace the accepted myths.
It's all too good to be true, of course. Danny spends three weeks believing that, for the first time in nearly three months, he'll be safe and happy.
That's when he meets Randall Flynn, in person.
Randall is…disturbing. He and Strausser would have gotten along well. Danny can feel the man watching him across the dining room—dining hall, Uncle Miles calls it. The teen begins hiding under layers, and takes to wearing a hat as well. Nora rolls her eyes when she sees him wearing his favorite t-shirt with a flannel overshirt and a long-sleeved undershirt, along with a hat. She tells him that being cold is all on his head. (Danny's pretty sure she's the one who's taken to hiding his clothing so he can't hide everything from prying eyes.)
The former Secretary of Defense takes to teaching him about computers. Rachel smiles as she sees Danny sitting at a workstation with Randall leaning over her son's shoulder, patiently explaining something on the screen.
Danny takes advantage of the hot showers available and scrubs his shoulders until the skin peels off. He wishes erasing the memory of what Randall says to him would go away as easily as the layers of skin.
Randall leans over his shoulders and tells Danny about how the blackout project came to be. Danny's father was the genius behind the blackout. Grace created the coding the made the blackout spread to cover the world. But Danny's mother… Oh, Danny's mother is Randall's favorite. She sold her unborn child to be a sacrificial lamb, in exchange for a grant from the Department of Defense. Rachel sold her unborn son to get money for the project that destroyed the world.
"You. Belong. To. Me," Randall whispers in Danny's ear one night, tapping the teen's chest with one long finger, smirking as the teen's eyes go wide in fear. He rubs his hands possessively over the boy, and captures a kiss from the teen's unwilling lips.
Danny barely makes it back to the white room he sleeps in before he throws up. He lies to Charlie when she comes in to see what's wrong, and tells her he must have eaten too much at dinner. Maybe he ate the wrong thing. She understands, and rubs his back while he finishes throwing up. It's too much food for them, after years of starving and half-starving.
Randall is possessive of Danny. Uncle Miles thinks it's because the man's decided to mentor the teen. Rachel thinks it's because Randall is setting himself up as a father figure, but doesn't care. Aaron is too busy talking with Grace and Rachel to notice. Grace, if she notices, says nothing. Charlie is, perhaps, the only one who suspects anything. She doesn't say anything, though, because she's too busy learning how to lead a rebellion from Nora, who doesn't notice anything.
Danny spends more and more time on the roof, learning how to spot things that are miniscule. His uncle starts teaching him how to use a scope on a sniper rifle to pick out specific targets from a distance. Danny begins learning how to do the math involved in a professional career as a sniper, and spends time reciting the formulas in his head as Randall visits him, surprises him in dark corridors, lets his touches linger far longer than is comfortable.
The teen has to admit that, for everything the Militia put him through, at least they were honest about the fact that they were torturing him, doing things that no person should have done. Sergeant Strausser, for all that he was a sadistic bully, was honest about the fact that he enjoyed torturing his prisoners. President Monroe was honest about the fact that he didn't care if Danny's mind broke, as long as Rachel did what she was ordered to.
Major Neville was honest about the fact that he thought Danny needed to be strong. He was honest, even when he was being brutal. Danny needs some of that sadistic honesty, the painful, cruel truths that Neville's beatings revealed. At least it's honest. At least those truths didn't leave him feeling ill and used and cheap, like a whore.
The Militia, at least, was honest about the fact that he was a bargaining chip to them, nothing more, nothing less.
Randall Flynn is…disturbing. He's possessive. He acts like Danny is his property. The man is jealous, sometimes irrationally so, if Danny doesn't spend as much time with him as he thinks the boy should. Danny gets better and better at figuring out how far away he has to be to shoot someone in the head for any and all conditions of the weather. It still doesn't erase the feeling of Randall Flynn's hands all over him, the whispered "you belong to me" in his ear as Flynn presses him against a wall in a dark corridor.
Danny confronts his mother about the circumstances surrounding his birth and first year of life. He learns, with growing horror, that he's only alive because of Randall Flynn, just like the man said. He learns that he spent six months in an infant ICU, on a respirator and sucking down drugs designed to keep him alive—all paid for courtesy of Randall Flynn and the Department of Defense. His horror stems from the fact that Randall seems to be right. He really does belong to the man.
He's just a bargaining chip. A tool. Not a child, not Rachel's child or Ben's. He's a sacrificial lamb, offered up in exchange for money and power. Danny sits on the roof after the conversation is over, legs dangling over the edge. His head is bowed, and even if anyone had come up, they wouldn't have seen the tears tracking down his cheeks. He's not even human to his mother. He's just some…some thing she received after selling out her husband.
Charlie finds him up on the roof the next morning, curled up next to the ledge, fast asleep. She drags him downstairs, strips him, and shoves him under the jets of hot water. Danny doesn't notice.
At least with the Militia, they were honest about the fact that he was less than nothing to them, honest about the fact that he was there as leverage against his mother, to force her to work. To…no, he still has to refer to the man as Major Neville—except in his own mind, where the man has become Tom, instead of Major Neville—Major Neville was honest about the beatings and mind games. He wanted to remake Danny in his own image, to mold the boy into something he wanted. At least he was honest about it.
Randall Flynn isn't honest. Rachel Matheson never was. Grace Beaumont is too secretive. Aaron didn't know him as a child. His uncle is distant, a stranger. His sister is too young to blame. Nora never knew him as a child. Danny withdraws into himself, and stops shaving his head so he looks like the Marines in the pictures his uncle showed him.
He doesn't deserve it. He's not a person anyways.
Danny, in the very darkest, most hidden corners of his mind, wishes he was back with the Militia.
The teen's shooting improves. He can hit any target, no matter how close or how far it is. His uncle doesn't stop praising Danny's abilities every nigh, doesn't even complain about the wasted ammunition from Danny's training. Rachel even manages a genuine smile as Miles gushes and raves about how Danny did every single calculation in three seconds before shooting something nearly a mile away.
He avoids Randall's gaze, and draws his hat—the one that looks like Grace's—low over his brow. He tells Charlie he's just cold. He's not. He's numb. He's not a person, so what does it matter if he's hot or cold? He was never a person—just a bargaining chip, from the moment he was…created.
Danny can barely keep himself from bursting into relieved tears when the Militia finds them and storms the compound. They can't decide who shot Randall Flynn. They don't know who injured Rachel Matheson.
Major Neville finds him on the roof, one leg dangling over the edge, the other drawn up to his chest. Danny's hat is lying next to him, the sniper rifle on the other side. The man holsters his gun and sits down next to the boy, careful not to get too close.
"Going to surrender?" he asks, watching the sun peek over the horizon.
Danny hands over the rifle and lets himself be cuffed.
Major Neville, at least, had never lied to him.
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So, what did you think? Good? Bad? Is Danny slightly more badass in this story than usual? Drop a line and let me know!
Author's note: Finals suck. Shoot me.