Disclaimer: Don't own DP.
I got a lot of feedback on my last chapter, so I was inspired to expand "Karma" with a sequel! Thanks to Xand'r Coldhearted, Crystalmoon39, Cookieplzandthnx, Invader Johnny, Tacolady22, Above the Winter Moonlight, AmethystFlare3, WithAnAngel, lightshadow101, MsFrizzle, and Zanza Flux for reviewing! You are all amazing.
Karma Part 2: A broken Phantom rests in the resistance's cellar after being defeated by Pariah Dark. Valerie struggles with doing the right thing. Hurt!Dan. Genre: Hurt/Comfort/Friendship. Rating: T.
Deliverance
Shot 8: Karma Part 2
Two hours after Pariah Dark left Amity Park, Phantom was sitting on a wall-side bench in the resistance's cellar, surrounded by a ghost barrier. The resistance had kept his hands tied out of paranoia.
On a small table before him, they had placed a bowl of pure ectoplasm—energy to bring his levels up just enough to interrogate him. But he did not touch it or even acknowledge its presence. He leaned against the stone wall, his broken body trembling to even maintain his sitting position. His red eyes were still wide and unfocused.
One of the leaders, Vlad Masters, stared at Phantom from beyond the barrier, pressing his hand against the green energy that swirled strong. "What did you do this time?" he whispered, voice churning with numerous emotions. The older man—truly old now, worn and tired—stared at the being that he had once thought could be his protégé. Perhaps in many ways, he was. All that talk about world conquest and ruling, and now here they were, dominated by their own madness, surrounded by the debris.
Phantom did not respond or acknowledge his presence. His breaths were uneven and wheezing as he closed his eyes.
"Do you even know your name?" Vlad asked, trying to keep his voice level.
When Phantom did not respond again, the older man exhaled softly in a sigh and a groan. He walked through the ghost barrier with little effort, his steps a bit hesitant. He carried no weapons with him, no armor. For the first time in ten years, he stood in the same room with Dan without an intent to fight.
Obviously, Dan was in no condition to fight back.
He pulled a small chair over to the table, placing himself face-to-face with Phantom. "You know," Vlad said with a suffering wince as he settled into the chair, his hands resting against his kneecaps, "it appears we've both seen better days. These old knees don't work as well anymore. You've given me quite a few gray hairs too."
Only the table rested between them now.
Phantom's eyes slid towards Vlad. His gaze remained empty and soulless, reacting only to the physical movement before him. He sat up slightly, the lines of his broad shoulders stooping forward in an attempt to bare more of his back than his stomach. Vlad realized it was a defensive move—designed to protect softer flesh from punishment.
Something about that hopeless acceptance of abuse left a strange taste of worry and pity in Vlad's mouth. He stared at Phantom, taking inventory of the several scrapes and bruises that ravaged his body. "Do you know me, Daniel?"
No reaction. Phantom simply stared down.
"Do you remember what happened to you—how you got here?"
Again, nothing. The exhale of Phantom's harsh breaths filled the silence, echoing in the small cellar.
Pity wormed into Vlad's gaze as he stared at the broken ghost. "You're no use to us like this, you know." He glanced down at the bowl of ectoplasm and grabbed the spoon beside it, holding it out to Phantom. "Come on," he coaxed, "we need you to regain a little energy so that you don't fade out. We need to ask you some questions."
Dan only looked at the bowl of ectoplasm, its shadows and lights dancing across his empty face. His still-tied hands hung uselessly in his lap.
Vlad tried a different tactic. "Do you understand that I'm trying to help you? You have nothing to fear here. I need you to wake up from this…shock state."
When Dan again did nothing, the old man realized something. "Maybe," he mused, "you are too weak to do it yourself."
He scooped some of the ectoplasm up with the spoon, sighing. "I suppose I could…" His voice trailed off in hesitancy as he raised the spoon and gently tilted it against Dan's lips. The ghost's locked jaws did not pry open. Vlad quickly pulled away, but damage was already done. Ectoplasm ran against Dan's teeth, and it slipped from his mouth to dribble down his chin, then onto his chest, running in trails down his bare, blue skin. Nothing, not even anger or embarrassment, registered in his face.
Vlad stared, eyes wide. He set the spoon down, disturbed by the strange display of resistance despite Phantom's catatonia. Was this some sort of tantrum? A childish streak of pride? A sign of how far Phantom had already faded? He rubbed his temples, some hopeless humor tilting his lips. "You just have to make things difficult, don't you."
Again, silence.
But as he contemplated what to do to convince Phantom to eat, he heard noise from beyond the barrier. "Vlad, what the hell are you doing down here?" called a female voice, rough with concern. Footsteps echoed against the walls. Valerie soon appeared, and she put a hand on her hip, eyes hard. "We've been looking for you everywhere. Get out of there."
The older man did not turn to look at Valerie, simply out of the instinctive belief that Dan could still lash out at any second. "I am simply experimenting," he said, somewhat distant as he held the spoon in disappointment. "With little success, I'm afraid."
Valerie looked at Dan with a critical eye. "What's he done now?" she asked wearily, pacing at the edge of the barrier with her hand on the hilt of a blaster attached to her hip. "Is he…frothing at the mouth or something? What the hell is that on his face?"
"He would not eat, so I thought to give him a hand," Vlad tried to explain with a grimace. "He's in shock, practically catatonic."
Valerie gave Vlad a strange, suspicious look. "And why are you trying to help him? You're not on another 'I-found-a-pawn' kick are you?"
Vlad had the grace to be embarrassed. "You did say we may be able to use him for information," he said hesitantly. "And I thought that maybe… if we train him properly, we could employ him to help take down Pariah Dark."
"You're kidding," Valerie deadpanned. "Dammit, Vlad. He's not some lost puppy. He's a psychotic murderer with world destruction on his resume! If he's fading out, then just…let him fade. It'll be less problems for us."
Vlad leaned down and grabbed an old blanket from the ground. "He's too valuable for that, and you know it." He stood and roughly tried to wipe the ectoplasm from Dan's face and chest. The ghost did not resist Vlad, but he flinched, red eyes widening. His breaths came more harshly—whether in pain or fear, Vlad did not know.
Valerie's nose scrunched in worry. "I'd get out of there. This has bad idea written all over it."
"Well," the old man said, a strain of irritation in his voice, "you said it yourself, he barely registers on your radar. I for one will not allow him to fade out in the name of pride. He knows too many things we could use, at the very least."
Before Valerie could protest further, Vlad's eyes began to glint with a new idea, and he turned to Valerie. "Why don't you try it? We need him to cooperate with us. Maybe he'd react to you with more compliance. He bowed to you before Pariah, after all."
"Wait, you want me to what?" she said, eyebrows raised in suspicion.
"He needs to eat, but I can't get him to."
She repeated dumbly, "And you want me to feed him?"
"Yes. At least try it. "
Valerie stared at Phantom in disbelief. "I've wanted him dead for ten years, and now you want me to nurse him back to health? No way. He can fade out for all I care." She turned around to hide her conflicted expression. She crossed her arms, biting her lip. "He's not worth it."
The ghost's face twitched in pain, but he did not look up or say anything.
"Valerie, this could be to our advantage. Don't squander this. I know you didn't kill him when you had a chance."
"It wasn't so that I could force-feed him!" she huffed, teal eyes flashing. "I've got a hell of a lot better things to do. And so do you. My dad's still waiting for you upstairs."
"Then Phantom will fade out," Vlad said, standing up to his full height. Although his physique had stooped a bit from age, he was still impressively tall—a dark shadow. He dropped the crumpled blanket, glowing with streaks of ectoplasm, back on the ground. "If he fades, then we will have lost our only chance to gain information. You know we can't afford this. Not now. Not with Pariah Dark on the loose." Vlad's clouded blue eyes were predatory, searing into Valerie. "Now help me out here. I will go to your father if you take my place and try to get him to eat."
Her nostrils flared, knowing that the business her father wished to discuss with Vlad was worth his cooperation. How annoying. "You and your deals," she muttered angrily.
"Just try. Please."
She hesitated for second or two, weighing her options. She knew Vlad was right—and she did want to interrogate Phantom. It was just that her pride bristled at the thought that she would have do something as mundane as feed the ghost. Eventually, she set her jaw with her signature stubbornness, her spine straightening in defiance. "Fine, I'll do it in the interest of the resistance. But you get your butt back upstairs now, okay?"
Some kind of relief softened Vlad's face. "Thank you, Valerie. You are truly honorable." He walked out from beyond the barrier, leaving Phantom and the bowl of ectoplasm to sit in waiting for her. "I'll check back in when I can. I do hope you have more luck than me."
"Yeah, yeah," the ghost hunter snapped, passing through the barrier with a paranoid expression. "You're not welcome."
"And don't push him too much!" Vlad called back as he exited up the stairs, leaving Valerie alone with Phantom and humming barrier.
She was stone-silent as she sat down in front of Dan. She grabbed onto the spoon with a clenched fist. Yeah, right. Like she wasn't going to waste a perfectly good opportunity to push Dan.
Her old enemy inhaled a shaky breath.
"So I don't know what your deal is," she told him, eyeing him. "And I don't really care what happened to you. But if we're gonna waste resources on getting you better, and if I have to be a part of this, then you'll repay the favor. You hear me?"
Phantom did not look up at her, his eyes distant, his shoulders bowed forward.
Valerie frowned. This nonreactive husk was her once-dreaded enemy? With a sudden growl of irritation, she slammed the bowl back on the table. Ectoplasm sloshed alongside the sides. "Look at me!" she demanded. "Talk! Do something!"
He did not move. She grabbed his chin and forced it up up. He winced, her fingers digging into a fading bruise along his jaw. "Do you know who I am?" she asked roughly, eyeing him straight. "Do you recognize me?" His own gaze did not align with hers, instead staring out hopelessly beyond her right shoulder, to the walls. Valerie snapped, "Look at me."
He looked at her. His red eyes were still clouded over in some kind of subconscious ignorance of himself and his surroundings, but something dully sparked in his eyes. Recognition. For the first time since the Ghost King had thrown him at her feet, he was aware of something. A dawning horror tightened his face and further locked the lines of his body. She could feel him swallow hard beneath her hand.
Valerie gave him no slack. "Talk to me," she said, voice hard. "I want to hear you fess up. It's your fault Pariah Dark's out, isn't it?"
The ghost's lips trembled, but he said nothing. He stared at her helplessly, his eyes sweeping over her face the way one would stare at caskets or ruined cities.
"Why won't you talk to me?" Valerie demanded.
Reluctance overcame him, but then his eyes squeezed shut. He slowly forced his mending jaw to open. Valerie stared at him in confusion when she realize he wasn't trying to speak. Then she saw it, the ooze of ectoplasmic blood, the shredded edges.
His tongue was cut out.
She released his chin as if it were on fire, grabbing her hand. "Holy shit," she breathed, disgusted. "That's—I mean…"
Power gone, language gone, Dan could only look down as he struggled to close his mouth. A muffled sound from the back of his throat. It sounded like a cry, but Valerie wasn't sure.
For the second time that day, Valerie found herself hesitating in Phantom's presence—and not in hatred or fear. Instead, she felt some kind of strange nausea when she stared at him. It wasn't pity, she tried to tell herself.
She swallowed hard to confirm her own tongue was still whole and perfectly attached, disturbed by the visual of his empty mouth. She tried convince herself that nothing she felt was in relation to how much of an injustice Pariah had done against Phantom, for the sight before her was one of strange hopelessness from which she could gain no enjoyment. The Phantom before her could not even speak for himself. Of course she felt no pity for him. Of course she felt no sudden need to tell him that she'd kick Pariah Dark's ass for what he had done.
Of course not.
"Why didn't Pariah just end you?" she whispered, teal eyes stormy with several emotions.
Phantom looked away, unable to hold her gaze.
The silence was painful, his strange vulnerability even more so. Valerie sat down at the table and eyed him. "Well, this explains why you won't eat." She bit her lip. "Can you regenerate at all?"
He shrugged noncommittally, eyes dead.
In reply, she grabbed the spoon off the table and stared in disgust at the swimming ectoplasm in the bowl. It looked about as appetizing as dirt, a foreshadowing of the only life it could lend Phantom. She was beginning to realize the true weight of the responsibility with which Vlad had charged her. This was not only a battle to keep Phantom in existence. This was also a battle to wake him up from the weird worthlessness with which he saw himself.
"Look, I won't…laugh or anything." She stared at him uncertainly for the first time. "But you're fading out. If you want to stay in existence, you need to eat this."
He lifted miserable eyes to her. Why? He seemed to ask. His face pulled back in pain, lips curling into a strange grimace, as if he would laugh or cry.
Valerie struggled to understand exactly what he was asking from her. "Because I can't just let you fade out if you know stuff about Pariah Dark." Dan flinched even at the name. "We need your help to defeat him now."
Fear and hopelessness overtook him, stooping his once-powerful shoulders. He shook his head, a strangled noise coming from his throat.
"We need you," Valerie repeated, eyes hard. But she wasn't angry with him. She held her gaze with his determinedly. "Do you understand? We need you. Everything you've got."
His tied hands shook with the effort to press against a strange scar on his stomach, where Valerie could guess Pariah had forcibly removed Phantom's power core. It was a messy, shredded patch of uneven skin that stretched over emaciated ribs and stormed down his right side. "I'm not talking about that," she said. "Although if you regenerate, maybe that would be helpful. I'm talking about what you know."
He gave her a helpless look again, moving his jaws. A small strand of pride hit him—he could still speak, but having a cut-out tongue would severely distort his speech. She rolled her eyes. "Geez, I'm not stupid. I'll get you a pen and paper. Just as soon as I know you won't fade out."
Phantom exhaled heavily, giving her a worn and tired look.
"I know, I know. I'm such a slave driver." Valerie huffed a bit. "Now let's get this done. I don't feel like forcing this down your throat, so work with me. Can you eat by yourself?"
He was barely strong enough to sit up on his own. He tried to raised his bound hands to reach for the spoon, but his arms shook with the effort. The action required too much. Something, like defeat and shame and total worthlessness, overcame him. He slumped, breathing hard, his eyes darting to the floor.
Valerie could see the raw agony on his face at the realization that he could not even lift his own arms. It made him look like a kicked puppy or a child worn too hard by hardship.
Some sense of decency spurned her forward. She lifted the spoon, filling halfway with ectoplasm. "Look," she sighed, speaking both to him and herself, "I'll help you this time, okay? I just…won't tell anyone if you won't."
His pained look deepened, and she realized how poorly she had phrased her statement. She squelched her sudden need to apologize and only raised the spoon up to Dan's lips, awkwardly silent.
He hesitated for a moment, as if questioning whether the Valerie before him was simply a hallucination, or some mocking scheme. Then he squeezed his red eyes shut, and a small noise—like a moan—rumbled from his throat. He slowly unhinged his jaw with a wince and leaned forward. He tentatively bit down on the spoon before him.
Neither were quite prepared for what happened next.
Dan flinched as the ectoplasm hit the burning nerve endings of his cut-out tongue. He moaned a strangled note that raised into a cry, pressing his bloodless lips together in an attempt to keep himself from wailing. Ectoplasm slipped between his lips. His eyes brightened with tears as he breathed hard, his nostrils flaring in pain.
Valerie almost winced for him as she watched him swallow hard, unable to laugh or sneer at the pathetic display.
The fact that he could barely even perform the simple act of eating had stolen away any remaining pride from him. He exhaled a shaky breath, fearful of the bowl before him and unable to look at Valerie straight in the eye.
"Okay," she said, nodding hard. It was as close to positive feedback as she could get. "Okay, you got it." She looked down at the bowl of ectoplasm, still mostly full. She grimaced. They had a long way to go if it hurt Dan that much. "Now let's do it again."
If she looked closely, she could see the bruises on Dan's face lighten just a bit, reacting to the immediate source of energy. But he was already exhausted, as though he had just been wrung through the worst of tortures. He gave her a worn look.
She simply raised a brow in return. "Don't give me that. You deserve this. You deserve a lot worse for what you've done."
His red eyes were still a bit empty of self-awareness, but a twinge of pain entered them. I know, he seemed to say from every line in his body. He slumped a bit more, the hope bleeding out of him. He looked as if he were waiting for her to lash out at him, to show just what he really deserved.
But whether he truly remembered his misdeeds, or whether he was reacting simply out of recent habit, Valerie did not know. It bothered her, that she did not know how much of the Phantom before her remembered their past. At least he did seem to know her on an instinctive level.
She moved the spoon through the thick ectoplasm, mind spinning. This was all horribly intimate, between her feeding him and him being so openly vulnerable. She almost felt awe when she thought about it. Was this reality? Was she really hand-feeding what remained of her worst enemy?
And was he really cooperating?
Dan had not willingly eaten for Vlad, but he would for her. That he would endure undignified pain for her—it left her feeling confused and hesitant, because something about that was sacred. So she raised the spoon again with the weight of a great responsibility.
He looked at the spoon with great suspicion, eyes flickering back to hers in a silent plea.
"Come on, cowboy up," she told him, but her words were without true fire. "You know you can do this."
He looked at her brokenly, and Valerie huffed, not sure how to respond. "What, you think this is fun for me? I'm not a total bitch, no matter what you think. I want this over as much as you do. If we get it done now, you'll heal up and we don't have to do it again."
He inhaled shakily, and a suspicious hope shined in his eyes like that of a beaten dog's.
She tilted the spoon against his mouth, trying to help him from making more movements than necessary. She prayed no one walked down the steps to the cellar to see what she was doing. "Come on, Phantom."
Something about her own hesitancy and her setting aside of pride forced Dan forward. He bit down again on the spoon and tried to quickly swallow this time around, shuddering. His eyes watered, then tears slipped down his blue cheeks silently as he fought not to gag the substance up in pain. Ectoplasm bubbled and dripped down his chin as it squeezed out from between his shaking lips. A soft moan wheezed in time with his breaths.
Valerie could not look away, even though a part of her felt that she should. She almost gave him words of encouragement, but she was horrible with words and didn't know what to say anyway without throwing in an insult to hide her own uncertainty. So she waited patiently for him to re-center himself, feeling more and more awkward as she watched him swallow hard and then gasp hard for air he didn't need. Then she started the whole process over again.
Eventually, they fell into some kind of silent rhythm, leaving their partnership and its undignified conditions as some unspoken truce. She tried to tilt the spoon in different ways in hopes that one way would make it easier for him.
By the time they finished nearly an hour later, Dan's lips and chin were glowing green from ectoplasm he still had gagged up. It ran down his throat and his heaving chest. But the slightest of glows had begun to form around him again as new energy began to circulate in his system.
Valerie did not want to admit she was satisfied by Phantom's progress. The tracker on her suit now registered his presence, which meant that he was unlikely to fade out now. Even if he were potentially on the verge of collapsing into unconsciousness. "Okay," she said tiredly, "we're done. You can relax now."
He closed his eyes, and excess tears streaked down his face from the pain that still radiated in his mouth. The lines in his body loosened in relief as he leaned back against the wall.
Valerie sighed, eyeing him and the sticky ectoplasm that now coated his entire front in splatters. "And…you're a total mess. Of course." She imagined this was not entirely unlike caring for a small child. Vlad would most likely tease her for being a horrible caretaker that took childish revenge on a helpless cripple, jabbing in that irritating way he always did. If she were lucky, maybe he would genuinely thank her later.
He better thank me, Valerie thought grimly. She never thought she'd have to stoop so low with her worst enemy, just to keep him alive.
Dan's face still ran with tears from the pain radiating in his mouth. His entire body shook with exhaustion. But he stared at Valerie with a strange gaze. Perhaps it was awe or gratefulness or embarrassment.
It looked odd on him, mostly because she had never seen him show such emotion.
"Yeah, yeah," she said to wave away his thoughts, standing up. She didn't want to think about what he was thinking. She picked up the dirty blanket off the floor and tried to find a place on it that wasn't already dirty. "You defeated the bowl of ghost soup. Now let's get you cleaned up before Vlad comes back and sees the mess I made."
She was hesitant to touch him, but she knew it had to be done. It wasn't right to leave him helplessly lying in sticky ectoplasm—she noticed no one had even bothered to provide him with a shirt. So she began to wipe off the excess ectoplasm from his face, trying to adhere to a higher code of honor than her own pride.
For a second, Valerie worried that perhaps she had infringed too far on his pride—that he would bare his fangs and try to bite her. But when he nuzzled into her hand, starving for positive attention, she blinked in surprise.
Dan closed his eyes and reveled in the way her fingers lightly pressed against his cheek and chin, soaking up his tear streaks. Only the thin blanket separated her skin from his, and he could feel her heat, which warmed his battered face. It felt good.
Valerie's hesitated in shock. She swallowed hard, her mind firing with too many thoughts and questions and fears that someone would walk down to the cellar and see this. Dan was obviously half out of his mind from the pain—he probably didn't even know what he was doing and would regret it later. "Come on, Phantom," she told him, trying to harden her voice against him. It came out a bit soft as she pulled away. "You're still a mess, and I can't have you falling asleep on me." She didn't know what else to call it. She didn't want to think about how affectionate his action actually was, or how strangely easy it would have been to stay that way.
He exhaled softly and nodded the slightest fraction, exhausted disappointment drooping his eyes. With his admission, Valerie swept the edge of the blanket down his neck to his collar bones, feeling the solidness of his presence and the small warmth that emanated from him. This was a person, she realized for the first time. Phantom was a person.
Dan's entire body relaxed under Valerie's calloused touch, and his open, wide red eyes lifted up to hers with an uncharacteristic vulnerability.
I won't tell anyone if you won't.
A/N: Hurt!Dan is fun to write. After watching TUE again, I'm convinced that it's canon for humanoid ghosts to have similar organ structure as a human. Most of the ghosts that Dan Phantom fought had been permanently injured in some way—paralysis, amputation, etc. Hence Dan's own karma coming back to haunt him with Pariah cutting out his tongue.
So I guess this update could be considered a positive one, since it ends more…positively? I mean, no one's killing anyone. Let me know if you want another installment. I've also got several requests I need to update this collection with. Keep an eye out for those, along with Aftermath Part 3!
Thanks for reading,
Lightning Streak
Please review! I take ideas and requests.
