Heart of a Hero

Don't Shake a Soda Bottle

It's a long, road
When you face the world alone
No one reaches out a hand
For you to hold

Mariah Carey - "Hero"

Danny Fenton would have woken up screaming.

He would have, I swear it, if he hadn't the sense to think ahead the night before— to cuff his arms to the bedposts and gag his mouth with some scrap fabric he had found ahead of time.

Danny had learned long ago that he couldn't sleep; not in the same way he grew so accustomed to throughout his childhood. He couldn't just lie down, take a swig of water and shut off the light—he had to work at it. Danny was forced to labor for his sleep, and even still, rest sparingly came to him. He couldn't recall the last time he had woken up without a thick sheen of cold sweat layering his forehead, his hair thrown about in a chaotic, slapdash mess, with the clothing and blankets ripped from his body and the sharp red impressions of his own nails raking down his shoulders to his abdomen.

At least the binds and the gag kept him from inadvertently destroying something and causing a disturbance with his bone-chilling screams.

You could say Danny had a severe case of night terrors or a sleeping disorder. It was what he told concerned onlookers as they observed his painful nightly endeavors every now and again. Danny claimed to be taking a medication, and every once and a while carried a small orange, white-capped bottle about to sell the idea that he was getting help.

But, if I were speaking quite frankly with you and you were just as apt to listen, I would tell you that no amount of medical help could have saved Danny's rest and prevented the state of which he woke up the morning our story begins.

There are ways to relax and sedate the mind, but there is no such treatment suitable to cure a deteriorating heart. It was all Danny could do to hope that the nightmares stay from the forefront of his mind and allow him to continue throughout his day in the robotic, monotonous way he usually does.

Until he was left alone in the dead of night, where the stars flickered dully like dying fireflies and leaving nothing but a vast black expanse in their place and he could lie alone and deal with what his life had wrought for him. It was as if the silence, the lack of daily melodrama and background noise, had shaken his bottled up emotions and removed the cap in his sleep.

And that's where the nightmares came.

Danny groaned aloud, cold sweat dripping into his eyes and down his back as he propped himself upright. His arms were twisted at uncomfortable angles as his chest heaved. He couldn't seem to get enough oxygen through his lungs and he coughed. He could still feel it, the smoke infiltrating his lungs and burning at his skin. He could still feel the combined weight of a hundred elephants sitting on his chest— if that weight were condensed into a single, baseball-sized point atop his heart that made it difficult to feel anything else.

Danny knew it was time to get up. He wouldn't be getting back to sleep anytime soon.

Concentrating, he allowed his arms to slip through the cuffs binding them to the bedposts, grateful for the umpteenth time that his body and subconscious mind had the sense to stay solid and fully tangible during his slumber.

Danny sat up fully in bed, swinging his legs over the side of the mattress and rising to his feet. Briefly, the thought crossed his mind that maybe Danny could take the day and do nothing but reminisce over the old photos he had managed to take from his old house before sprinting almost half way across the country. But he knew that he couldn't; his mind, however strong that craving of nostalgia was, couldn't take the memories and the sense of longing that accompanied them.

Danny had to act – had to take the day and make it useful. He had to keep his mind occupied and his hands moving. He had to recognize and remember that he had this same conversation with himself every morning, when the sun hadn't yet risen and when the cars on the streets below his apartment hadn't yet begun their morning commute. He had to remember that this day was nothing if not the same as any other day, and the sound of the waves crashing onto the beach outside of the apartment still sounded the same as they did the night, or morning, before.

He propelled himself to the small dresser in the corner of his room with conviction, shaking the remainder of sleep from his head with the sudden movements.

He didn't really pay attention to just what articles of clothing he had pulled from the drawers of the small, flimsy wooden dresser but he could guess they were dark in color, being that it made up the vast majority of his wardrobe.

Quite honestly, he didn't care. The only thing he cared about at this moment was the hot shower that awaited him through the solid bathroom door in the corner of his room. And, hopefully, the start of a rather not-unpleasant day ahead.

He wasn't sure how long he had spent mulling over his most trivial thoughts as the cold water ran seamlessly down his back, smoothing out the grooves and the tight beams of his corded arms and tense muscles. It could have been hours; it certainly felt like it.

Danny had always taken a liking to cold water. It seemed warm to him, it dripped down his neck in a rather unexpectedly soothing way and it seemed to wash away the fears of the night before... like how he knew a hot shower would do for anyone else. Hey, cold water saved him a hell of a lot of money on his heating bill, and it gave him some fairly entertaining looks when he ventured into Happy Harbor's local gym on occasion.

Danny stepped out of the shower, not by any sense of the word feeling like a new man, but feeling a lot cleaner and ready for whatever the hell this Monday had to throw at him.

He analyzed the outfit he had blindly picked from the dresser. It was alright, he guessed, nothing obscene or attention-grabbing, no matter what way you wanted to put it. A simple pair of worn black jeans and a gray long sleeved shirt. He pushed himself to put on the clothing and prepare for the day, despite the fact that he wanted nothing more than to not; to pull a reckless move and do something he hadn't done in far too long. Something so impossibly inhuman that he had no other way to describe it other than "his".

But he couldn't. Danny knew he couldn't. He couldn't fly until he deemed it okay to put his ass at risk of being found.

Which, I should unnecessarily add, he wasn't about to be "okay" with, any time soon. The risk was too high, and whether Danny wanted to admit it or not, he had enemies far above his caliber and match. In other words, he was on the wanted list by those so far beyond his pay grade as a small-town vigilante that it was somehow sickening yet comical at the same time to think about it.

Despite the slight prickling at the ends of his nerves; the inkling need to defy gravity against all of his logical reasoning, Danny forced himself to grab the faded purple backpack off of the armchair by his desk and sling it over his shoulder like a dumbbell.

He swung open the door of his bedroom and dragged himself listlessly through the darkened main room of his apartment, before snatching the keys off the hook by the front door and making his leave.

He locked the door behind him.

Danny shouldn't call his place of residence "his apartment," if I were speaking with any degree of honesty. It wasn't "his" to take ownership of. In fact, the roof he had over his head wasn't initially available for rent. It was quite literally a stroke of good luck and a halfway-decent Friday evening that landed him this apartment and enrollment into Happy Harbor's main public high school so soon after his arrival.

It was merely coincidence, to anyone with an outside perspective, or the work of fate that had Danny stumbling into the Nanjing Palace, late on a Friday evening about two weeks back.

It was perhaps the best luck Danny had experienced in a little over half a year that the owners of the Chinese restaurant, what he perceived as a kind yet severe old Chinese couple by the names of Wu and Mei, had taken pity on the poor, starving, ragamuffin kid that had stumbled into their restaurant with a ten dollar bill in hand, asking what he could buy with it.

They asked, first, where Danny's parents were. The question had thrown him for a loop because no one usually cared enough to ponder it. But he used his classic excuse, the one he had painstakingly practiced in front of a bathroom mirror in order to gain as much credibility for the lie as he possibly could. "I don't know. I'm an emancipated minor, we do not communicate."

It was always a variant of that and it was what Danny told the owners. The questions to follow were a blur of "Where's your home?", "Where do you have to stay?", "Are you in school?", and "Do you have any money?" and before Danny knew it, he was striking up a stellar deal with the both of them.

It was what led him to his situation now, as he left the relative safety of the apartment and strolled through the restaurant on the floor below.

If Danny could offer enough of his time for a part-time job as a worker at the Nanjing Palace, and spend the rest of his days in high school, Wu and Mei would allow him to rent out the unused apartment on the floor above, free of charge. His paychecks would allow him to get on his feet, Wu insisted. A diploma would help land him a job.

Naturally, Danny couldn't turn down the offer. The couple was old, maybe in their late-seventies, early-eighties. They, although fairly outspoken people and fabulous cooks, still needed help and with the economy the way it was, workers were scarce. Skilled workers, with the ability to handle an overflowing restaurant without batting an eye (which Wu had been astonished to see Danny do single-handedly a week ago, during a particularly jam-packed Saturday afternoon lunch-hour), were even more so.

Danny's conscious absolutely would not allow him to turn down the offer, despite the fact that he had every intention of making no ties to Happy Harbor; of in no way binding himself here or creating any traceable connections whatsoever. He didn't want to risk his identity being discovered, or, worse, Phantom accidentally being exposed to the public eye.

But, being the fact that he was now walking down 21st street, past a local bank and a closed coffee shop with a bag slung over his shoulder and the somber look of exhaustion glinting in his eyes as he trudged his way towards Happy Harbor High for his first day of school, it's safe to say that his final decision was painfully obvious.

It was a brisk morning. The sun had only just broken over the September horizon and the increasing winds echoed eerily throughout the city as Danny made his way down the sidewalk.

He, luckily, had some idea of where he was going. Danny had made a rather incognito trip to Happy Harbor High the Friday before, just to get an idea of where it was in relation to his place of residence. The school, as it turns out, was large and proud, yet somewhat hidden to the public eye, in a location that was rather difficult to gain access to unless the person already knew their way around.

It was almost purposeful in its position, and Danny had come to the conclusion that the architects had some strategy when they designed this part of town. It was a maze to navigate, all street names had neither rhyme nor reason and every block was a mishmash of confusing buildings and one-way streets, all lined with greenery that all looked the same and drenched with a rather dizzyingly optimistic aura.

It was like the school was placed, purposefully, in the hardest-to-reach area of town.

Briefly, Danny wondered why. But he didn't own a car and didn't have the money for a cab, so it held no concern to him.

By the time he had reached the school, it was a quarter after seven.

It was a fairly nice campus, with a rather large courtyard, a distinctive patch of grass and a decent-sized blacktop basketball court. Picnic tables littered the courtyard and large trees created a canopy of leaves above the common areas. Danny wondered how they got they managed to persuade the vegetation to thrive like it had.

More, he wondered if anyone appreciated it. Danny clenched his fists as his heart gave a pang. He did know. He couldn't think about it.

He sucked in a breath of the crisp, humid Rhode Island air as he pushed his way through the courtyard and into the glass double doors of the school without another thought.

And, immediately, he was hit with a nearly overwhelming feeling of stress and posh superficiality. It was everywhere in this school, reeking like a physical odor down the halls and leaking through the lockers like a poisonous gas. Granted, it wasn't an actual smell or an actual feeling that Danny was gaining from being here; it had something to do with the familiarity of the interior and the ache of nostalgia in his gut.

Happy Harbor High School, altogether, looked rather close to Casper High. It was as if the architects had been buddies in college and did a joint project, half a country apart. It was as if his old school had been strapped to the end of a semi and hauled all the way to the east coast.

Despite the unsolicited fight or flight instinct that came to rise in Danny's mind, he fought to keep the smile off his face at the distinctive familiarity.

Perhaps today wouldn't be quite as bad as he had thought. Perhaps, even, the familiar normalcy could be a distraction from everything he had yet to come to terms with, and a way to negate the hopelessness that plagued him.

A/N: I think I forgot a disclaimer in the last chapter. If so, here it is. Disclaimer: I do not own either show mentioned, nor any familiar characters, scenes, ideas, products, items, or materials of any kind. However, I do own any original characters, landmarks, ideas, concepts, and the overall plot of this fan fiction.

Thanks for reading! Please leave your comments in the reviews!

I took some liberties with the settings, hope you don't mind.

Also, please note that I haven't finished Young Justice as a series, which is why it's set in early season 1 (also it's better for the story's purposes) so I apologize in advance if I screw up a character or a description or two. Or state something that is proven to be untrue in the second season. Or make a rookie mistake (hey, hence the username, right?). Love you all!

Peace

-Rookey