Never The Same

Please

He backed away from her, flashbacks of hours of torture running through his head. He scooted so far back until he couldn't anymore, his back hitting the wall, but he still continued to push his feet frontward as if trying to push through the wall, thinking if he could just push hard enough he would be given more room away from them. He looked like a scared creature, who's only thought was to escape but couldn't.

"Danny, please," Maddie urged, trying to get her baby boy to come to her so that she could comfort him. Her hand was still out, coaxing him to come to her, but the boy only winced away, instead of a comforting hand, he saw one that was holding a scalpel.

Maddie let the tears fall freely down her face, she tried to bite back the sobs but she couldn't. Her hand felt raw, just stranded there in the air. "Please, Danny," she sobbed.

Danny only winced, scrunching his eyes in fear as if he was expecting pain. The same pain that came from the previous hours.

She did this. She did this to her baby boy. She tortured him, shocked him, verbally assaulted him, until he finally had no other choice than to turn back. She was so focused on finding out why Phantom was different: why he had emotions, needed to breathe, had a heartbeat...that she missed all of the signs. She hurt her baby. Her son. And, now, he was afraid... Afraid of his own mother.

"P-please," Danny sobbed, tears streaming down his face. "P-please don't hurt me. It hurts. It hurts."

Maddie drew closer to him, but ever so slowly, trying not to scare the boy even more. "Danny, please, I'm not going to hurt you. I would never-" She stopped, realizing that what she was about to say was a lie. She already did hurt him. Hurt him so many times, even before she captured and tortured him. She choked out a sob, her chest tightening in pain. Her eyes filling with more tears, making her vision blurry. "Please, Danny," she begged, "I-I didn't know! Please forgive me. I didn't know it was you; I would have never done this. Please forgive, please come here."

She stared at him desperately, finally building up the courage to place a shaking hand on her son's cheek, cupping it so gently and with as much caution as if he was made of glass.

He winced, half his face pressing hard into the wall behind him, his eyes scrunching even tighter until he opened them to look at her. Pure fear was the only thing that was in them. Maddie sobbed, realizing that that fear was directed towards her, making her world crash and break into a million pieces.

"Please," he whispered, panic in his voice, "please don't hurt me."

She sobbed as she stared at the haunted terror in his eyes. And, then Maddie knew, that she would never see Danny, her Danny, look at her in any other way ever again.

A/N: Just thought it would be cool to see what would happen if Maddie found out after she basically tortured Danny. I think that he would be too traumatized to ever really see her the way she is again. I probably will come back a edit (maybe) because I wanted to play around a lot more with the way Danny was seeing her and how every gesture just reminded him about what happened.