Hi there, people of the internet. I'm continuing my other stories, don't worry. I just have many plot bunnies, and some of them I consider publishable. Kind of. Well, this is an AU, and the extents of the difference will be explored. I will say for now that there is no Phantom Planet, no Dani, the Dan thing goes a lot differently, and Danny is going to be very OOC. Although, he's been tortured brutally, so hey. For the Avengers side of the AU, nothing past the first movie. Sorry, all you fans of Bucky (I am too), but I'm not a fan of Civil War (Sorry) because I simply want them all to get along. So no members other than the first ones, and there will be an ease in tension between them all. I'll warn you now, I don't plan to have ships with Danny, and not really any with the Avengers, although I'll include many familial moments. Maybe some things for ships other than with Danny. If you squint really, really hard, that kind of thing. I'll try. Romance isn't my forte. Anyway! Hope you all like the story, and no, I don't own Avengers or Danny Phantom. If I owned Avengers, there would be a daily life TV show for them. And Danny Phantom would have a realistic remake, maybe. If they did it really, really well.
Onwards!
Amity Park had been destroyed years ago. A random boiler explosion had sparked a more massive explosion throughout the town and surrounding areas, leaving no survivors. Except one, and he wasn't really surviving. In fact, he was more than half dead. Danny Fenton had miraculously survived the explosion with minimal injury, due to his ghost half, Phantom. However, the explosion and loss of everyone he had ever known and cared about, even Vlad, who had been in town, and beyond those who were in the ghost zone, had stunned him. As he lay in the rubble, the Men in White had found him. -He wasn't even sure what he thought, though. A few months back, he might have cared more about their deaths, although he still did, but after what he had been through-. And he made no moves to escape their capture.
It had been a long time, Danny knew, but he hadn't aged. Not physically. Mentally, he hadn't except for the horrors he had put through. He wasn't thinking straight after the first time they took a scalpel to him and cutandcutandcut his chest open- the y line he knew was there, on his chest, they were opening his chest and digging out his lungs and heart and everything and putting it back in and oh god he couldn't nononononono, he couldn't think about that even though they were testing choking him right now, hands rough against his neck. He didn't need to breathe thank god but they left bruises and scars they had put razors against his neck too but it didn't work and all he wanted was to die properly.
He knew something was wrong, too, and while the hands just clenched tighter and tighter around his neck, cloaked in gloves but all he could think about was that his access to his human form had lapsed since the first few times he had transformed here in the labs, and they hadn't cared at all, just all the more cutting and sawing and muttering about how they loved an interesting specimen… they knew he was at least part human, but they seemed to only hate him more and slice and dice, and they were getting the whip out now, not satisfied with his reaction to the choking. Sadists. He would've sassily said something, but held it in cause he just couldn't really do that, not anymore, too horrified really and traumatised, and he had come to expect the worst when he even moved at the wrong time, let alone spoke, and besides, his accelerated healing was too busy with restoring the arm they had cut off and nonono don't think about the buzz saw cuttingcuttingcutting straight through his arm, but it had already regrown to his elbow in not long, surely not a half hour, and it had happened so many times to all of him no painkillers just their smiles and his screams that they enjoyed he knew that they knew he could feel it he knew he knew he knew and they didn't care.
They were hitting him with the whip now, but his mind had drifted back to his earlier thoughts, ignoring the vile remarks and threats and filth spewing from their mouths. He knew he still had the smallest living portion left inside him, he knew because of the experiment in which they had used a new plasmius maximus that had cut him off from that human side for days hours who knew how long who cared how long it stayed the same always and he screamed but no he didn't his throat was too damaged so it wasn't him, someone else but it wasn't, because there was no one that would scream for him because he was a filthy little piece of trash wasn't he- no, that was just the people in white's words eating away at him, he couldn't give in- he already had though. He didn't care. He hadn't for a long time now. The more his human side had slipped away the less he cared, the more he died over and over and over too much. He knew he was still Danny Fenton, he could feel it, but he couldn't turn back, and his heart didn't beat and he would catch himself not breathing, he didn't age either, and he knew his body temperature was far too low from the few times he had actually had human touch.
He was far more Phantom now, and he wouldn't have minded if he was out of the place, and he didn't care now anyways cause they didn't and who would no one cared no one not even the ones who liked him once his family his friends all betrayed him in the end they didn't care not even him he just couldn't.
The pain had stopped, he realized, and he looked up, through bangs of ethereal white hair, to see that the agents were preparing to place him in a chamber. He could see the handcuffs, as they carried it into the special room for him, and he could see the small IV- like tubes he knew held sedation. He had transferred before, and it had been a more pleasant experience than the normal day for him. He wouldn't feel a thing, although they would allow only his arm to heal before he went in- wait it had, and he was now flexing his regrown hand, complete with the scars and marks it had had before. They were careful, unlike usual, but they didn't want anything to get messed up. Even if the handcuffs and restraints were ghost proof, it was the time when he could get out. If he could.
He knew- they knew- that he was too feeble to go far, too disoriented from so long in torture and inside, and just too traumatized to think rationally. They all knew. But the sedatives were still fixed on him, and just because he hadn't resisted in the slightest for so long he jerked, just a little. He was whipped immediately, but for some reason the pain couldn't shove back the sudden, odd hope he could feel, from the remnants of his humanity. He hadn't felt anything like it in a long time, and maybe it was a grin on his face as they let the heavy chains attached to his ankles and wrists down, the handcuffs trapping them together. They inserted the drips into his veins in his legs and arms, and while he didn't flinch at the small bite of pain, he looked up as he suddenly stopped feeling the flow of the fluid into his veins, even though the lines were clearly still attached.
He didn't look up immediately, due to the haze of the anaesthetic that had made it into his body. His mind, too, was slow to process anything other than the flow stopping. But eventually, through the fog, he did glance up. And his eyes, still piercing and ectoplasmic green, focused on the newly arrived figure in front of him with some difficulty. The red eyes and implanted clock in the ever shifting form of his old mentor. It reminded him, for a split second, of the days before the torture and dissections, when he went around in a hazmat suit instead of the more normal outfit his ghost form had taken on now; a light, reinforced and tight fitting black shirt with long sleeves and the DP symbol on the chest and shoulders. His pants were looser and went past the tops of his boots, also black, with white markings going down, forming symbols and runes. The boots were sleek but versatile black as well, with silver soles. He had a cape, as well, white with a hood that could go over his face just enough to shadow it, showing only his spectral green eyes that seemed to leave behind trails when he moved.
He didn't look so amazing now, of course, but he was too busy staring at his old mentor, who had left him all these years to the awful experiences. He didn't know to blame him or not, and he couldn't call the ghost out on it, so he simply stared at the figure until Clockwork made his way forward towards him, eyes glinting sadly down at his old apprentice. "Danny…." Danny just stared. His head had jerked in response to the familiar name being called for the first time in so long, but beyond that he made no move to respond. "Do you hate me, Danny? I'm sure you think it's my fault somehow."
Danny stared at him, but after a long minute, he processed the words. And shook his head slowly back and forth, denying it. He had indeed once cursed the ghost's name, but after a while, he had begun to realize it wasn't his fault. It was only his own, and the following years was only the GIW's. Clockwork seemed surprised at first, but then a faint smile crossed his face as he regarded the young teen's tired eyes. "Danny, the Observants held me back from rescuing you. However, we made a deal. This transport, things will change."
Danny stared, the hope he had moments before slowly trickling back in, but all the torture from the years kept him from trusting those words and the feeling. "Good luck, young Phantom. And trust those new allies, no matter how odd they seem. It's time for a new chapter in your partial life." With that, time clicked back on, and Clockwork disappeared, leaving behind Danny Phantom, whose eyes began to close, leaving behind the waking world for the sleep not afforded him for a long, long time.
Should I make this M rated? I'm not sure. There's going to be gore. He's going to go through more shit, rescued or no. Memories, flashbacks, whatever. Intense story-telling. Yay.