The white-haired boy was weeping into the man's soft chest, his hands gripping the black coat he wore in a hungry, dejected manner, the unmanicured nails digging unconsciously into the fabric and the skin beneath, and despite how agonizing this was, Vlad Masters did not care. Rather, the new life he found in Danny Phantom seemed like an endorphin—numbing the pain that shot out from each finger like the roots of a tree, for he had, of course, previously thought the boy for dead.
It had never been that superstitious type of reassurance, in which one knows that they will succeed in the end but fear that they might instill poor luck in themselves if they go about believing this, and so they will tell themselves otherwise; it had been a very earnest belief, one that was not skewed by the childish comfort that everything would be okay, because when it came to the man by the name of Vlad Masters, nothing ever turned out okay, as he'd come to learn throughout the pathetic amble through a confusing tangle of dark woods that was his life.
And while he'd thought his struggle between worlds to be entirely futile, he felt he could not live with himself knowing he'd let the boy who'd finally turned to him for guidance as he'd always dreamed die without at least trying to save him. When the boy died, Vlad had silently realized, he would look down at him from whatever region beyond the world of the living lie and feel betrayed, as though he'd been right all along in his assumption that Vlad Plasmius was an enemy he could not trust, or perhaps the boy would sit there wishing he'd turned elsewhere for help. Whatever he did, Daniel would not be pleased with him, and Vlad was intent on avoiding this, even if he might never see the boy again after he passed away and wouldn't, in reality, ever know his reflections of that fateful night years ago when he submitted to him for assistance only to be turned away.
But he hadn't died, and Vlad was thankful to have dodged that unsettling mindset that the dead is overly disappointed, so much so that they cannot rest, and the fault lies solely on the person who is left alive. He was so gracious that he would not have to sit and ponder endlessly, "What could I have done to save them?" or "What can I do to appease them now?"
Instead, Vlad Masters was left with the rather pleasant sensation that is achieved when one receives news of something wondrous but truly unexpected, or is rewarded when they are convinced they will be punished. The feeling was new, and rather unsettling, but he could not deny how satisfying it really was.
"Shhhh," the man managed, but he had never felt so completely out of his element. For the first time in his life—or so he liked to believe, because convincing one's self of its strength is enough to keep one going in times of hardship, and hardship his life had been—he was unable to control the emotions that painted his face brightly, that tugged at his eyes and mouth in an attempt to draw dastardly tears, for laying eyes on Daniel now was perhaps one of the most truly difficult things he'd had to witness, next to the sight of his father as he'd lain in his extra-large coffin, surrounded by wreaths of dark flowers. Unlike his father's funeral, however, there was not that feeling of resentment, and the childish ha has that came with it in victory. Of course, nine-year-old Vlad Masters had loved his father, but he could not help but feeling free as he stared at the man as he lay in his coffin, peacefully resting. It had so bizarrely crossed his mind several times that he'd won something against the man, as it must one after they've defeated their greatest enemy in a long, seemingly-endless battle and stand over the remains in triumph…but all the while admiring the dead for their courage, or something of that nature. And perhaps this quote, unquote hatred for the man made the funeral in all its glory so unbelievably sad, because he was torn, really…but compared to this, this feeling of pure agony—not a trace of bitterness in the least—for the crying boy curled in his lap, his father's funeral may as well have been a day at the football game—a game in which the Packers won this or that to zero against the Vikings. In fact, Vlad Masters did not think he'd ever felt such pain for someone other than himself, not even his abused mother, who cooked and cleaned and stripped herself for his father but was still beaten daily by his favorite strip of leather. But perhaps this was understandable, because understand he could, for the man knew the meaning of betrayal all too well—it seemed that was, in all truth, the definition of his life.
On the day of that fateful accident in the lab with Maddie and Jack, a young Vlad Masters had torn out of the room and across the campus of the university, his face in his hands. Though none of them knew what the reason for his hasty retreat, his classmates found it amusing. One of them, a football player who did not particularly care for the scraggly little fool who paraded around the campus spewing talk of a ghost portal without cease, stuck out his foot and tripped him. He fell, and his hands dropped from the smoking entanglement of flesh that was his face. Like something of a nightmare, they surrounded him and laughed; weak then, he pulled his knees to his chest and backed into a corner in that classic pose of the traumatized until they seemed to tire of laughing at him and assaulting him with their cruel remarks—"Looks like that portal didn't go too well after all!"—and left.
He'd made his way to his car, taking extreme care to stay hidden, and had driven to his mother's house about twenty minutes away, cringing away from the accusing faces glaring in through the windows of his car when he stopped at the stoplights, drenched in untold amounts of perspiration, the pain in his face so incredible he thought he would faint. When he arrived, she was sitting at the retro-table she'd taken from their old house in New York after her husband had died, painting, as she did in order to support herself because her frail condition would not allow her to work manually. When she looked up and saw him, her eyes widened.
"Vlad!" she cried, standing immediately with such haste that she spilled one of her jars of paint and it spilled onto the portrait of the man and his child who sat across from her in two matching chairs. They looked up, startled, and when their eyes fell upon Vlad Masters, the man gasped, grabbed his daughter, and fled so quickly that one of the chairs was overturned in the process. The sound of the front door being opened and closed resonated and the two were left in the kitchen, Vlad slumped over dejectedly, his mother's delicate but wrinkled hands held up slightly, as if in question whether to assist him or to defend against him.
"Vlad, what happened?" his mother gasped after a long, painful moment of regarding him with wide, fearful eyes, her pale lips agape.
"The portal…Jack…" was all the young man could manage to croak out, and weakly reached out to her for assistance.
As she went to take his hand, it disappeared, and the shriek that the small woman released could be described as being only slightly less painful than what she did next.
Pulling her hand back, she instead took the long wooden handle of a thick broom and held it out to him defensively as she began to shrink away, her body quivering with such violence that it would appear she were buried alive by snow.
"Stay back!" she had shrieked, swinging the broom at him once or twice in warning as he tried to approach her. "Don't come near me!"
"Mom!" he cried, ducking weakly to avoid the fury of the wooden weapon. "It's me! Your son!"
"You are not my son! You are an abomination!" she screeched at him, and hit him in the stomach with the broom with such force he could momentarily no longer breathe.
"Mom," he tried weakly, clutching his stomach in an attempt to ease the pain that came in one thick and long, burning line of disrupted flesh. At least, he remembered thinking, his face didn't feel so terrible then.
"Get OUT!" she hollered with a conviction he'd never heard possess her voice before that night, and began throwing the knick-knacks she kept nestled on a shelf conveniently hanging behind her at him. A small ceramic penguin collided with his ruptured forehead and shattered, and he shrieked in agony.
His hands—now both visible again—shot up to hold this area as he began to stagger away from her, but she continued tossing objects his way; a candle in a ceramic flowered holder, a china plate, and worst of all—what had been his mother's ultimate betrayal—a handprint he'd made her when he was in fifth grade and had given to her on Mother's Day. At this, the distraught young man tore from the room and out of the house.
Of course the pain he felt for Daniel was understandable; the boy had gone through the same excruciating process of being betrayed by those who had assured him time and time again they loved him as he. And at the memory of his mother—particularly the cement handprint flying at him—and the idea that this poor boy could have gone through that same emotional torment—and at such a young age—Vlad Masters began to weep softly, just as Danny, because he despite the fact he wanted to remain strong, his tears were stronger.
"Oh, Danny," Vlad said, pulling the boy closer, burying his head into the soft white tresses and nuzzling in what was perhaps the most affectionate gesture he'd given in over twenty-five years, observing distantly as his tears beaded on the greasy locks of hair. "Oh, Danny, it's all right. It's all right. I know how you feel."
The boy sobbed more loudly and drew himself closer in this, his all-time weakestmoment when it came to the expressing of emotions in the presence of Vlad Masters. His fingers tightened considerably as he moaned into the man's chest, "I'm sorry! I'm s-sorry, Vlad! I'm sorry!"
Vlad pulled back slightly and briefly touched his muzzle to the boy's face to quiet him, although somewhere inside him—although lost in sympathy—he was particularly pleased with the boy's desperate pleas, and resisting the urge to scream, "I told you so! I told you so!" despite the fact that he was relatively unsure what the boy was apologizing for, exactly, so he said instead, "Oh, little badger, it's all right. Of course it is."
"You were right!" the boy screamed, his body jerking slightly. "You've been right all along!"
Ah, there it is, that little devil piped inside him as it struggled to stay afloat in the lake of sympathy that had formed for Danny. I like that. Say it again.
"That doesn't matter, Danny," he said, although it did…or would, later during periods of reflection. "All that matters is that you're all right."
"But you were—"
"Quiet," Vlad said, his tears mercifully slowing as something else chimed in as well, and this thing was the little devil that longed for control of all situations in which it was involved, and it seemed to recognize that weeping hysterically was certainly not being in control. "All that matters is that you're safe."
"I'm sorry," the boy said again, as if these two words were some key that would unlock the room to comfort. "I'm sorry."
"Quiet," Vlad said sternly, his tears now evaporated to small pools in his eyes, but he was stroking the boy's hair soothingly. "You shouldn't be sorry. You had no reason to trust what I said—I understand that. But you need to trust now that I'm going to do what is best for you. Can you do that?"
The boy nodded silently against his chest, wanting to appease his command for silence.
That's what I like to see! Devil One said easily, grinning as it floated effortlessly now on the lake of his sympathy. He's finally seeing things our way!
And we're in control, Devil Two added. As we should be.
But the part of Vlad Masters that knew better replied, Oh, but it never is that easy.
