Warnings: Disturbing descriptions of gore.

He screamed.

It was a horrible, primeval sound, carrying with it every trace of fear of a mortal man. But with no need for air, it went on without interruption.

"Oh, stop it," Maddie scowled, but her tone was one of someone shaken. The sound only ceased when the scalpel had been drawn away, but he was panting and moaning, blinking rapidly in an attempt to gather some degree of control over himself.

"Oh, god, oh god, it hurts, please—" Skin was peeled back, exposing Vlad's thoracic cavity, and he shrieked again, thumping his head back against the table over and over. He didn't care how pathetic his display was. He didn't even care that the whole neighborhood could probably hear his howling cries of pain. He just wanted it to stop - he would have done anything to make it stop.

"Amazing! It's anatomy mimics humans! Do you think it unconsciously constructed itself that way?"

"Probably. Could you hand me the shears?"

"Here you go."

There was a snap of bone. His ribs, he vaguely realized before the fresh wave of pain brought forth a choked cry. He couldn't repress the tears that came to rim his eyes, nor could he repress the violent shivering that ran from his crown to his toes. The pain was unbearable. Burning, blistering agony, each affliction merging and becoming indistinguishable from the last. He barely even realized there were fingers deep in his chest, prodding around his insides with no regard for their well-being until a section of his ribs was pulled free and examined before his eyes.

He screamed so loud and hard at the sight that he might have damaged his voice box had he been in human form. Pleading words broke though the ragged sound; broken syllables, unintelligible, but fighting for coherency. He blubbered like a frightened child, tears finally spilling, sliding down his cheeks and to his neck, meeting the pink that had splashed up to his collarbone.

He was dying. Slowly, painfully, at the hands of his former friends. His entire world had been compressed to this moment, the singular feeling of pain, and he found himself wishing desperately for death to end his suffering.

Words finally took coherent form, "P-please, it's too much! Stop!" But it was a stuttering cry that went ignored.

"Look, Maddie; the ribs reattached themselves!"

There was momentary relief before muscle was forcefully split, followed by Jack's excited squeal. Vlad arched off the table and shook his head from side to side, sobbing uncontrollably, breath catching in the back of his throat. He felt the need to draw in air despite his lack of respiratory system and he panicked when he couldn't, making low gargling sounds, like someone smothered.

"Jack, is he…? It looks like he's trying to breathe."

"But he can't breathe, he's a ghost."

"I didn't think ghosts could cry either, but…"

The fingers were back inside in chest, pressing at his lungs. "They're expanding." The fingers moved, tearing through soft tissue, leaving lacerations in their wake. His consciousness was wavering, blurring around the edges, perilously close to unveiling his secret and taking with it his life. All he had to do was release the tenuous grip he had on it.

So he did.

"What's that light—"

Organs pulsated, raw and exposed and warm with life. Blood rivulet down his chest in red streams. Before he could take in the horror-struck expressions of his captors, his eyelids fell shut as consciousness rapidly ebbed away from him. He could hear the thump, thump, thump of the pipes, and then a scream.

And it wasn't him who screamed this time.

He stirred, eyelids twitching.

"Vlad?"

Slow blinking. A cream ceiling came into view, lit up by a growing yellow bulb. That there was someone beside him, calling his name, took his hazy mind several minutes to register, and then he turned his head towards it, taking in the sight of Daniel leaning over the side of his bed. No — not his bed at all. It was too small, too white. Daniel's bed. And he was in Daniel's bed because…

It was fortunate he was turned towards Daniel because he promptly rolled the rest of the way over and vomited. It was a thick stream of blood, stomach acid, and gunk, before he collapsed back onto the bed and curled in his limbs, moaning feebly, uncaring of Daniel being privy to his moment of weakness.

The boy disregarded the vomit on his floor and dabbed his mouth with a damp cloth that smelt faintly of blood. It must have been used to clean his wounds - which hadn't been fatal, evidently. He could only hope they hadn't caused any permanent damage, either.

"Geeze, you look terrible. I mean, obviously you would look terrible, after…" There was shaky inhale. "I'm really sorry, Vlad. I - I tried to get in, I really did. I spent ages banging at the walls and trying to get in through the door, but the shield didn't allow anything with an ectoplasmic signature to pass and I…"

Hopefully he wasn't going to start crying as children were prone to. He wouldn't know what to do if Daniel started crying.

"I went to find Jazz to help and everything, but when I got back you were already being carried up the stairs a-and-"

He desperately wanted to tell Daniel to shut up, that everything was fine. But it wasn't, and they both knew it. Nothing was going to be fine now. Jack knew his secret, and more importantly, Maddie knew. And she must loathe him for what he was, for what he had done. He'd put up a strong, confident front just to be reduced to a begging weeping mess that had relinquished its control within the hour. He felt sick with anger and fear, and to some degree, self-loathing; how could he have let this happen to himself? He was Vlad masters, his might was impenetrable, unstoppable - or it was supposed to be, anyway. He'd let himself be irrevocably violated and lose the love of his life in the process. He had nothing, now. No ambitions, no hope for the life he rightfully deserved.

He was so frustrated he wanted to weep.

"Vlad? Say something. Please?"

If he spoke he knew his voice would crack. His throat bobbed, additional vomit threatening to spill from his lips. His stomach was aching enough as it was, he didn't need to irritate it further by vomiting up what little he had left in it, so he swallowed hard, throat bobbing. Danny was, thankfully, quiet. Once his lips were clean of vomit, he rolled away from Daniel and attempted to rise. He didn't get far; moving only exacerbated his condition. It was with a whimper that he fell back to the mattress and clutched his aching abdominals.

Daniel was quick to set his small hands on his shoulders and pull him back to the middle of the bed. As if whimpering hadn't been humiliating enough, now he was being manhandled back to safety by a teenager. He tried to push Danny away in protest, but what little pressure he managed was feeble at best. Downright 'wet kitten' pathetic at worst. Daniel gently lifted his upper body and shoved a pillow beneath his head and shoulders to make him more comfortable. His fingers were wet, nails stained pink. Clearly it had been Daniel himself to clean his wounds. But why would such a young boy subject himself to such gore, and why would his parents allow him to? Were they, perhaps, more affected by their actions than he was assuming? Maddie had always been the sensitive sort, and Jack forever forgiving of any sort of transgression, provided it was from a friend. It was possible that they were able to overlook his spectral identity during these extenuating circumstances, but later…

Daniel, too, would want him gone soon, he was sure.

"You're not going to want to move for a while," Daniel explained while dragging the quilt up to Vlad's middle. "Mom gave you something to numb the pain. You'll just fall over if you try."

So that was why he wasn't currently withering in agony.

He grasped the edge of the quilt and pulled it up until it obscured the thick bandages circling his chest and middle. They were dabbled with dried blood, but he otherwise seemed to have stopped bleeding at some point during his slumber. He didn't close his eyes to attempt to sleep, though he was in the position and mood to do so. He didn't think he would be able to sleep if he tried. He was hungry, thirsty, aching, and afraid of how he would feel when he woke up if he allowed himself to rest any longer.

Daniel continued to gaze at him with an expression of guilt, dotted with contemplation. His hands lingered on the quilt. Vlad made no attempt to remove them. He didn't acknowledge them, however, staring vacantly away from Daniel and at the pale blue of the surrounding walls. For someone so young, with relatively wealthy parents, it was a surprisingly spartan room. Very clean. Only a couple of posters on the walls, as far as he could tell, and few embellishments otherwise.

His attention was brought back to Daniel by the sound of the boy sighing softly. The pressure on the quilt increased, as if Danny was going to tug it down from his shoulders, and then abruptly decreased as Daniel stood. "Do you feel up to eating?" Apparently Daniel hadn't yet clued into the fact Vlad had no desire to speak. He remained silent.

"…Come on, Vlad. You'll have to talk eventually."

He exhaled exasperatedly. "Daniel," he finally said, conceding.

Daniel leaned in attentively. "Yeah?"

"Shut up and get out."

Looking relieved, Daniel did as Vlad requested, perhaps in gratitude for what little he had spoken.

He did end up falling asleep, and by the time he woke, the sullied floor had been cleaned, and a fresh bowl of soup sat on the bedside table. Made by none other than Maddie, Vlad was sure. And perhaps that was the only reason he sat up to begin spooning the creamy chicken soup into his mouth, filling his stomach until it ceased aching from hunger. When he looked to the window he noticed it was beginning to darken outside. It must have been late. Six to seven o'clock, perhaps. At some point Daniel would come upstairs to go to sleep… wouldn't he? Or would Vlad be occupying this bed until Jack and Maddie felt up to interrogating him? It was entirely possible for him to turn intangible, slip through the wall, and escape, but he wasn't sure how far he would get while in his current condition, and journeying to Wisconsin in human form would be perilous while so vulnerable. For the sake of his health, he would have to remain in Amity Park for the time being. Eventually he would move to a hotel room, when it was advisable to do so.

The intensity of the painkillers had receded enough that Vlad could feel his wounds throbbing sharply beneath the gauze. They prevented him moving the distance necessary to set the empty bowl on the bedside table, so he left it balancing on the headboard instead. Maddie would disapprove, he was sure, but it wasn't likely she would be visiting anytime soon. Realizing she had dissected a human being couldn't have been anything short of a traumatic experience for her.

As he set a hand on his chest to check the state of the bandage, to see if they needed to be changed or not, it occurred to him that he'd recently had shears in his abdomen. His breath picked up, his heart beat accelerated. He closed his eyes, willing himself to calm down, because it was over now. He was okay. He was okay. He bit his lip and curled his fingers tight into the bandages, taking deep breaths, one after the other. The memories that flittered through his head weren't exactly vivid, terrified and unfocused as he had been at the time of the event, but the breathlessness, the piercing pain, the violation, the panic— those he could feel as if he were still spayed out on that silver table.

He set his head against his knees and pressed his eye sockets into the bone until the black was breached by flashes of white. His arms came to circle his legs. His fingers dug deep into his pant legs at the level of his thighs, scratching through the thin material and to the skin beneath, leaving small, burning welts. He was in enough pain as it was, he didn't need additional grievances, but he couldn't seem to will himself to cease scratching.

Having always been in control of his faculties, sans the accident that turned him half-ghost, this was an almost entirely foreign experience for him. He could draw on that faraway panic that had overcome him two decades ago, but that had given way to excitement fairly quickly. There was no upside to what had happened to him this time.

He bit his lip, shoulders quaking in distress. It was late, he was sore, but he desperately wanted to go home to the privacy and security of his master bedroom, where he could drop the curtains and take a few sleeping pills and sleep away this feeling of overwhelming panic. He didn't want to be in the house where he had been ripped open for scientific conquest. He briefly contemplating moving, but found himself unable to do more than press up against the headboard while his heart was beating so hard and fast. It was almost painful. It was as if he were having a heart attack, and that only made him panic even more.

The door creaked and soft steps approached the bed. He didn't raise his head to see who had entered. Merely curled up tighter, trying to steady his breathing while overly conscious of how pathetic he must look. A hand gently tried to peel an arm away from his legs, but he released a low whine and jerked it back to its original position.

"Vlad, are you okay?" asked the concerned voice of his host. Which, at the moment, was none other than Daniel Fenton.

Vlad hunched his back, pressing himself in even further. "I'm f-fine, Daniel. Leave me be," he manage to choke out. He sounded and looked anything but fine, so he wasn't surprised when he felt the mattress dip with Daniel's slighter weight.

"Yeah, you totally look 'fine'," he heard Daniel respond wryly. His small hands settled on his arms, trying to pry them away from his legs. "C'mon, those bandages need to be changed. Otherwise you'll get an infection."

"You're a brat," Vlad vaguely scowled, but he let one arm be pulled back so he could frown at Danny from between his legs.

"And you're a crazy old fruitloop," Daniel retorted as he curved at the waist to smile through the small gap he had created. Despite himself, Vlad could feel the panic gradually ebbing away. He exhaled slowly and lifted a hand to run his fingers through his matted hair. It would need some serious brushing once he'd had a shower — if he was able to have a shower at some point today. He would like one so he could wash away the remnants of yesterdays traumatic event.

"Are you okay?" Daniel repeated, unusually gentle in how he spoke.

Vlad managed a wary smile. "Improving." He slid the hand in his hair down to his chest, over his beating heart. It had almost returned to its regular pace. "Albeit slowly." The bandages felt uneven under his fingers. He must have loosened them with his earlier grabbing.

"Uh, good," Daniel awkwardly replied. He glanced to the bedside table and smiled, "You had the soup."

"It was… Maddie's, I imagine?" He tried not to sound as upset as he felt.

"Yeah. She made a big batch of it." Danny seemed to identify his upset at that moment and diverted his eyes. "She — she feels bad about what happened. She's not really sure what it all means, but… mom and dad…" He stuttered over the word. "They never… I mean…"

Vlad saved him from further making a spectacle of himself by saying, "You said something about changing my bandages?"

Danny was visibly relieved for the interruption. "To prevent infection and all." He gestured towards the bedside table drawer. "Do you want me to fix them or can you do it yourself?"

It didn't take him more than a moment to decide; he was weak, still reeling from a panic attack. If he attempted to wrap his own chest it was likely he would induce another one. "Your help would be much appreciated, dear boy."

Daniel crawled onto the mattress, over his legs, and retrieved some fresh gauze from the bedside table drawer. He set it down beside Vlad and slid himself off the bed.

"Daniel?" Vlad glanced down at his chest, and then back up at Daniel.

"Oh, don't worry," Danny raised both hands to prevent interruption. "I'll do that for you too. I'm going to get some stuff ready in the bathroom first. I've done this tons of times for my own injuries, so I know what I'm doing."

"Your own injuries…" A flinch crossed Vlad's features. How many of the boys aches and pains had he contributed to over the past year? It had never crossed his mind that Daniel suffered physical consequences for his heroics. Strange that a live dissection could bring out a degree of empathy he never knew he'd possessed.

"Comes with the whole 'ghost fighting' thing," Daniel needlessly explained. He approached his bedroom door. "I heal pretty quickly though. You must too, seeing as you're uh… alive…" There was an awkward pause, and then he stepped into the hallway.

Vlad watched his retreating back with some amusement. Once there was nothing left to watch but the blue of the hallway walls, he dropped his eyes back to his bandages and began very gently picking at them, hoping to dislodge whatever it was keeping them wound around his torso. There was probably a pin or something of that sort at the back, but he wouldn't be able to reach his with his injuries being as extensive as they were. Not without suffering a great deal of pain, anyway. It wasn't long before he abandoned the task and settled back to wait instead. Within fifteen minutes, Daniel had returned with a bowl of water, several hand towels, antiseptic, a bottle of water, and a small pill bottle. It was amazing that he managed to fit everything in those stick-thin arms. He gently lowered the bowl of water to the bedside table before doing anything else.

"Mom told me to give you these," he explained as he passed both the pill and water bottle to Vlad. After a brief glance at the ingredients of the pills (he didn't want to take something designed by Jack, after all), Vlad popped the lid and swallowed the recommended amount. They would make him drowsy, the bottle had said, but he hardly minded that in his current condition. Sleep would do him some good.

Was Maddie thinking of him? That was a nice thought. Guilt would be enough to make her care for at least a little while. He would try to enjoy that before he was made to resume the role of a target.

"Thank you, Daniel," he said as he leaned back into the headboard. "You can begin now," he added, because he knew Danny would be waiting for permission.

At his word, the boy crawled up to his side and gently reached behind his shoulder blades to undo and unravel the bandages. Vlad closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to see the damage beneath. The small hiss of sympathy Danny gave was indication enough that it looked painful. His eyes remained closed as Danny tugged the sullied bandages free and disposed of them, mumbling an apology as he did. "Hope that didn't hurt," he added in hushed tones, like he wasn't sure if it was appropriate to talk. Vlad's lips curved into a slight smile.

"Not at all," he reassured him. "Considering our usual relationship, you're being surprisingly gentle."

"My parents kicked your ass enough that I don't feel like I should," Danny offered jokingly. The dip in the bed receded as Danny returned to the bedside table. There was the sound of him soaking a cloth, wringing it out, and then he resumed kneeling at Vlad's side. The drips that reached his chest suggested he hadn't wrung it out quite enough, but Vlad wasn't going to complain. He spread his arms to accommodate the cloth that was tentatively pressed to the middle of his collarbone.

Eyes still closed, he murmured, "I imagine Maddie and Jack will be trying to speak to me sooner or later." He paused to see if Danny would respond, but he remained silent. "I'd… rather they didn't, honestly. Not for a while, at least."

"I know you think they hate you and everything, especially since they know you're the Wisconsin ghost now, but they don't," Danny replied. "They're just guilty that they nearly killed their best friend, no matter how much of an ass that best friend might see."

Vlad chuckled. "Were those their exact words?"

"Not exact, but… accurate."

The cloth reached a tender part of his injury and Vlad hissed, squirming. "They'll withdraw that soon, you know." He barely managed to expel the words while trying so hard to keep himself still. "They're aware of everything I've done and—"

"Stop squirming," Danny interrupted, scowling. He removed the cloth and threw it back into the bowl. "Honestly, Vlad, you can't know my parents that well if you think they'd feel anything but crap about doing this to someone they care about. I mean, yeah, dad's a bit oblivious sometimes — and don't you say a word, okay? Okay. And mom isn't hugely fond of you, but they're not psychopaths who'll completely disregard your suffering because of the things you've done. Give them some credit."

That did make him feel better, even if Danny was strongly implying he didn't understand Maddie. Sure he understood Maddie. He'd been obsessed with the woman for two decades! He knew more about Maddie than he did most paranormal subjects. But these weren't things he would admit to someone with a bottle of antiseptic on hand. He knew Daniel wouldn't be above splashing it on him if he pissed him off.

"Alright," he sighed. "I lack the energy to argue, so I'll take your word for it."

"Figures you'd want to argue." Danny snorted and removed the cloth from the bowl, squeezing it before he re-applied it to Vlad's chest. It wasn't as damp this time. "It's not like my dad isn't head over heels in love with you, because seriously, he is, and he'll forgive your crap no matter how intensely crappy it is if you stop being a diabolical villain for a little while."

"Because Jack's forgiveness is at the forefront of my mind," Vlad wryly replied.

"And my mom," Danny continued, rolling his eyes. "Well, it's probably going to be a pity thing, but restrain those weird urges you get to be a creep and you should be able to make some progress there too."

It was strange to hear Daniel exhibiting such maturity. He'd never known the boy to be capable. "You really think our relationship could 'progress' despite this setback…?"

"Not like that!" Danny exclaimed. "She won't hunt you if you don't give her a reason to hunt you is what I'm saying."

Vlad had selective hearing, so he only smiled wistfully.

"You're hopeless." Danny sighed and began patting him dry, other hand reaching for the clean bandages.