Disclaimer: Don't own DP.

Thanks to Cookieplzandthnx, Above the Winter Moonlight, ZoneRobotnik, too enigmatic 2 b urs, Invader Johnny, Guest, MsFrizzle, eraso, doeaks, Silverstone007, Plosek, aiksi, Zanza Flux, Guest, Domination of the World, and Bree for reviewing last time! As always, I really appreciate you guys and those of you who continuously come back for more chapters. :)

Special thanks to the anonymous Guest who reviewed nearly every single chapter since I last updated! Whoever you are, thank you! Also, several people requested that an update to Aftermath be next; I will therefore update this collection with Aftermath Part 5 next.

Overall Miniseries Summary for Karma: Dan challenges Pariah Dark for the position of Ghost King and loses badly. As a result, Pariah Dark rips out Dan's power core, cuts out his tongue, and tortures him to make him an example for other enemies. He then throws a broken Dan to the resistance before claiming the human world as part of his empire. Valerie struggles with what to do regarding their strange prisoner and how to stop Pariah Dark before he destroys them all. Hurt!Dan.

Summary Karma Part 4: Dan begins to heal from the unsanctioned beating the Resistance gave him. Valerie starts to realize just how emotionally invested she's become in her prisoner. Hurt!Dan.


Deliverance

Shot 18: Karma Part 4


As Dan Phantom slept off the injuries Dash had carved into his skin, Kwan kept a close eye on the ghost's vitals. The IV appeared to be working well—what could have been a week of healing for a human had already worked its magic on the mending of Phantom's bones. The swelling of his arms and fingers had faded back into normal lines. The bruises that stormed down his face in ugly splotches had darkened in color, a sign that his body had already begun to mop up the blood that festered under his skin. The cuts around one eye had begun to stitch up.

For as broken as he appeared, he was truly resilient. Kwan almost marveled at him.

So the medical student took blood samples from one of Dan's limp arms, curious to understand more about his ghost physiology. Dan Phantom appeared far more human-like than he had imagined. He even appeared to have the same internal organs, but with some minor adjustments regarding the use of ectoplasm and placement of a power core. It made Kwan wonder to what extent ghosts truly were different than humans. Perhaps there was very little difference.

As Kwan capped the vials of Dan's blood, he heard a soft knock at the door. Then a familiar figure in red trudged in.

"Valerie," he greeted. "What are you doing here?"

The young commander looked worn and tired. "I just got back from Dad's," she said. "We interrogated Dash. It was a nightmare."

The med student puzzled, "Why interrogate Dash? He confessed to everything already, didn't he?"

With a sigh, Valerie stole the chair to the right of Dan's bed. "Yeah, but he tried to turn dad against me. He told dad I was hand-feeding Phantom like a lost puppy before I could explain my side." She leaned her elbows on the bed, teal eyes fearful. "But I was alone that whole time. Vlad was the only one who knew, and he put me up to it after he failed to make Phantom eat. When I asked Dash for more info, he only told me, 'In this place, someone's always watching.'" She groaned, hiding her face to keep Kwan from seeing her rising blush of embarrassment and anger. "He had someone spying on me; that's how he knew when Phantom was alone and when to strike."

"You're not…in trouble, are you?"

"No," Valerie huffed, "but now dad's worried I'm getting attached to a war criminal, and I've got a freakin' spy to worry about." She suddenly looked at Kwan, eyes hardening. "It's not you, is it? This wasn't all some weird mad scientist ploy to experiment on Phantom, was it?"

The med student's eyes widened, hands pausing on the vials of Phantom's blood. "Uh. I like understanding things. But that's just creepy, Val."

Then Valerie bit her lip, looking away. "You're right; it couldn't have been you," she grumbled. "You can't lie worth a damn." She hit her fist on the edge of the bed. "But how did Dash know? And how did he even get a mob into the cellar? I could have sworn I was alone. I could have sworn I locked the cellar with high security protocols."

Kwan began to grow concerned. "Val," he said slowly, "why does it even matter? Phantom's probably going to be okay. We've stabilized him."

She looked up. For a time, she appeared haunted. "It's what they did that matters," she whispered. For the first time since she entered the room, she looked straight at the sleeping Dan Phantom on the bed. Although most of him was covered by sheets, she could spy the heavy bandages wrapped around his bare torso. His face was splotched with dark bruises. She could see the scabs from sharp pipes down his blue shoulders. "Look at him. Our friends did this. Phantom might not even have a brain left."

"He appears very capable of regenerating; he may suffer from some amnesia regarding the actual event itself." Kwan shrugged. "But that's probably for the best."

As Valerie began to open her mouth to reply, she realized one of Dan's hands and fingers were twitching. Her eyes widened, thinking that her raised voice had perhaps alerted Dan to something. The various machines to which Phantom was hooked up began to beep. "…Speak of the devil; why is his hand twitching?"

Kwan set down the vials. "It's a sign of waking up," he said. He grabbed a hold of his stethoscope. "He could be very disoriented; maybe you should step back."

Valerie gave him a dry look. "If I can handle him actively killing me, I can probably handle him now."

The two cautiously leaned over beside the bed and waited as the beeping of the machines rose with an increased heartbeat. Valerie stood apprehensively, trying to gauge if there was anything left of her investment in Phantom.

Slowly, the ghost's face twitched in pain, and his red eyes cracked open. For one wild moment, no recognition or personality registered in his half-lidded gaze. Valerie leaned over the bed, searching him with increasing concern. "…Phantom? You in there?"

Then his entire body stiffened, and he began to tremble, eyes widening in awareness of great pain. A strangled moan escaped from his ruined mouth, and the sharp agony only heightened the shuddering breaths that shook him. He tried to move himself up. His broken and ravaged body struggled against him.

Valerie tried to talk him down. "Hey, don't move yet," she said, voice rough. But Phantom seemed entirely thoughtless but for his pain.

Kwan began to worry. "His stats are too high. We need to calm him down now before he hurts himself." He began looking for an anesthetic of sorts, but the resistance was already low, and he doubted he'd get approval to use more on Phantom. He grimaced.

Meanwhile, Dan's eyes swiveled wildly around the room without landing on any particular item. His once-broken hands reached out, blindly searching. The fragile scabs down his shoulders cracked open. He did not seem to realize it, nor did his eyes seem to be actively comprehending sight.

A strange panic overcame Valerie. "Shit. Can he not see anything?" she said. "Kwan, he's not focusing. Like, there's just…nothing."

Kwan turned around, grabbing a small light from his pockets. "Let me see." He looked a bit disturbed by the strange dilation in Dan's eyes as he shined the small light against them. He paused for a second, expression puzzling with thought. "It could just be an effect from the concussive force to that area." He turned the light off, and Dan blinked in fright. "I think he's probably able to see blurs and shapes right now, but nothing definite."

As she leaned over in morbid curiosity, one of Dan's shaking hands bumped against her arm. Before she could pull away, his hand deadlocked onto her arm. She nearly winced at the pressure, hiding it beneath a look of displeasure. "Okay, not cool."

Kwan swallowed hard in panic. "Uh, maybe I've got straps around here somewhere—hold on."

"Take your time," Valerie muttered with a falsely light voice, grimacing.

His fingers had dug deep into the material of her battle suit, and Dan knew that special fabric almost on an instinctive level. Through his muffled hearing, he could hear her voice too, which seemed to be coming from the same direction as the arm he was currently holding onto for dear life. He tried to reach out to her with his other hand, pushing through the pain to touch her.

The Red Huntress's resolve seemed to cave. "Dammit, Phantom," she whispered, realizing he was not mindlessly trying to hurt her, but simply searching for affirmation of some kind. She flickered a glance up at Kwan before she decided to hell with it, and she responded to Dan's silent plea by sitting down on the chair beside his bed. "Why you gotta be so difficult?"

And as Kwan turned around with the Velcro straps for unruly patients, he saw that Valerie had leaned forward and had placed her hand against the side of Dan's face. The ghost had grabbed hard onto her other arm, his fingers shaking as they dug deep. The strange tantrum of fear from Phantom had softened, his muffled groans melting away into gasping breaths.

"You feel me?" Valerie asked, a strangled pattern in her voice. "Can you hear me?"

Phantom's blind eyes tried to swivel her way. Something in his face was so strangely human and longing that Kwan could say nothing as he watched the ghost react to Valerie's touch. It was as if Valerie were flooding life back into Phantom, and he was soaking it up. Great relief overcame the ghost as he closed his weary eyes. Though pain still shook his body, he seemed to focus on the heat of Valerie's hand upon his face. He leaned into her touch.

Kwan's open gaping didn't go unnoticed. The Velcro straps in his hands dropped from his loose fingers onto the floor.

Valerie looked up. "Do not tell anyone about this," she demanded to Kwan, voice low. "Got it?"

The med student blinked. Then, slowly, he nodded, and he leaned against the counter behind him. "Sure. But…why does he react like this to you?"

Phantom had grown nearly silent at her confirmed touch, almost as a sign of total submission, and Valerie felt uncomfortable with it in the sight of Kwan. Her face grew heated. "I dunno. He knows I'm not going to hurt him. He knows me better than anyone else."

"So, he trusts you?"

She realized that she had begun to stroke the matted strands of hair at Dan's temple, and she snatched her hand away, as if fearful that he had subconsciously bewitched her. "I guess," Valerie whispered.

The instant that Valerie broke away, the ghost seemed to grow more agitated. His blind eyes opened, and he tried to focus on her, triangulating her voice with the blurred shape he could barely manage to see.

"You're fine, okay?" Valerie told him, voice strangled with odd patterns. Kwan watched on in interest. "I'm here. Just—go back to sleep for now. You need to conserve energy."

Though he seemed only half-way cognizant and hardly self-aware, Phantom accepted her order, if not with great confusion. He still shuddered with pain, but he shut his eyes and forced his breath to even out. Twitches of pain still crossed his face.

Eventually, he began to relax again, pure exhaustion slacking through his limbs. Valerie did not dare to move until she knew that he had fallen back into unconsciousness. Then she leaned back on the chair, crossing her arms to hide the shake in her hands. "Yeah," she said gruffly to Kwan, "don't get used to this. Once he starts healing up, he'll probably cop an attitude and go back to being a total bastard."

But the ghost slayer did not even convince herself, as she knew that Phantom had been significantly altered before his beating. She did not know what was truly left of him now.


As Phantom fell back into deep sleep, his dreams were but fragments of past pain.

.

His back slammed into the wall, and he cried out as he fell hard onto the dirty, stone floor.

"I do not understand," Pariah Dark said, voice rumbling the ground. "I have removed your ability to produce power, and yet still you disobey me."

Dan curled up on himself on the cold floor, hands wrapping about his tender wound. His face was streaked with tears of pain. "F-fuck you," he breathed. His voice was harsh with agony. The residual energy in his ecto-blood had been enough to clot his wound and minimally heal it, but with every passing hour, his remaining power was fading out. He knew he needed immediate access to an energy source to regenerate. He just had to survive until then.

The Ghost King grumped. "Perhaps it is not only strength in body from which you draw your spirit." He leaned down to eye the smaller ghost trembling on the floor.

"Y-you," Dan whispered, voice cracking in pain, "have n-no idea what I'm capable of." He felt nauseated as he tried to maintain his pride before his tormentor.

"I know your limitations; you are the one who does not." The Ghost King mused, staring at him in dark calculation. "Even in your position, you think that silver tongue of yours can save you, don't you, boy? Perhaps…I must also remove that from you as well."

With no warning, Pariah Dark slammed Dan's head against the wall, and the younger ghost fell limp, dazed in a crumple, his poorly healed scab over his side cracking open. As he lay on the floor, gasping, his shaking hands moved to cover his wound.

In the blur of pain, he felt large, thick fingers drag down his jaw and jam his mouth open. A glowing knife appeared at his lips. Fear overwhelmed him.

And then Pariah cut deep.

.

Later, Pariah Dark threw Dan's convulsing body onto the floor of the great hall. Several ghosts stopped in fright. Strangled noises, like muffled, gurgling screams, tore from Phantom.

The King sat upon his throne. "I show no mercy to my enemies," he said carelessly.

Dan forced himself to his hands and knees, crying and dazed. Blood ran from his lips down his chin and bare chest to mix with the seeping blood from his power-core wound. His eyes were feverish and unfocused. The pride in his strong body had begun to falter.

For a time, none of the other ghosts said or moved. They all stared at Dan Phantom as one would an explosion. They felt shock and surprise at seeing his trembling body bleed out on Pariah Dark's throne room floor. His proud jumpsuit was gone; his hair but matted locks. His bare skin bore the testimony of beatings. They watched Dan cry and were startled at how distorted it sounded with his cut-out tongue.

And then they laughed.

They laughed so hard that their laughs echoed everywhere, bouncing off the walls, searing deep into Dan's half-spent mind. He looked up in a daze, staring for any face with which to ally himself. But all were hardened against him, mindless in their joy of his destruction.

To his horror, they began to surround him. A few shoved him about happily, watching the crippled ghost curl in on himself to protect his injuries. The others stood and watched.

"Hahaha!" one cried. "Do you feel it?! His powers—they're gone! He's like a human now!"

They stared at the wide wound carved into Dan's side. A few kicked him to the floor and forced him to bear the naked wound to their eyes. Their inhale of his crippling injury was unending, their interest not unlike a scientist watching a mouse die.

"Ooh, look at it," another breathed. "The King took everything!"

Dan's eyes squeezed shut, and tears streamed harder down his face. He could barely focus beyond the pain and agony of his ruined body.

"Aww, look we're making him cry!"

"Well, you know what they say about ghosts with no power core," one of female ghosts giggled.

"Why doesn't he speak up?" called out. "Come on, silvertongue! Dazzle us with fear!"

"Oh, but wait; he doesn't have a tongue anymore!"

A strangled moan escaped from his lips as he forced himself back to his hands and knees. The weight of his own body sparked pain everywhere. His limbs shook. Blood from his ruined mouth dripped onto the expensive tiles beneath him.

Pariah Dark frowned. "He is infecting my castle with his filth. Make him clean it up."

They laughed again and obeyed their King's order. A ghost courtier grabbed a scrubbing brush and bucket from one of the skeleton servants working along the front of the throne room. The courtier laughed manically as he flew back.

Dan breathed to recalibrate himself as the attention momentarily moved away from him. But time moved too fast, and before he knew it, cold, dirty water crashed over him, stinging deep into his wounds and mouth. His gurgling gasps of pain made the crowds laugh. They threw the cleaning brush and bucket at his head. And slowly, the last line of pride extinguished from his body as he collapsed.

Pariah Dark and all the ghosts delighted in the way Dan crumpled in on himself, his body trembling with shuddering sobs.

The mutilated ghost tried to collect his thoughts. He just needed to survive. He just need to survive…

.

Phantom re-awoke several hours later. The IV in his wrist vein had sustained him with more energy, even though he remained in great pain. He grimaced at the stinging of his nerves.

"—antom?" called out a female voice. It was a bit raspy and familiar, uncertain. "Come on, you trying to wake up or not?"

Painful light and blurry shapes came into focus, and he found himself staring up at Valerie.

She looked irritated and worried. She snapped her fingers above his head, and he almost flinched at the sound. "You hear that okay?" she asked. Slowly, he nodded, confused. "And can you see me?"

His eyes still looked a bit dilated, but he nodded again. Understanding began to waver into his mind. She was testing him.

"And you know me, right? You know who I am still?"

His pale and crackled lips twitched a bit, as if he would speak. Then he remembered the pained, empty space of his mouth. He nodded again with a bit more depression. More and more came back to him.

He did not remember exactly how he ended up in an infirmary, or how he had sustained such extensive injuries after beginning to heal from Pariah Dark—there was pain, a flash of something metal, a blurry sight of many dark combat boots—but he did remember that Valerie had previously warned him she would double-check his written information about Pariah Dark's location and strongholds. Perhaps he'd been mistaken. Perhaps they discovered he was wrong about something, even though he could have sworn it was right.

He turned his face away to hide his pain and confusion, but it only made the harsh, fluorescent lights shine on the dark bruises upon his face. There could be only one reason for a beating—he had failed her. His information had been wrong somehow. And as his new master, she exacted punishment.

At least she was still willing to offer him rest.

Valerie grimaced at the sight of Phantom as his will left him again, leaving hardly more than a reactive shell. She worried that perhaps the worst was true—that this awakening Phantom would be less able or willing to help her. "Hey, space cadet—come on." Valerie looked pained. "Look at me. Do you remember what happened to you?"

He slowly nodded. He knew enough.

"You remember why?"

He stared up at her, his eyes so vulnerable and pained that Valerie could barely stand to hold his gaze. She was learning to read the finite changes in his body language, the way his eyes were pointed at her, and she realized what he was thinking. Incredulity overcame her. "What, you think I did this to you?"

He blinked in confusion, the pain growing deeper. Did she want him to nod and beg her for mercy? Was this a test of his loyalty to her will?

She sat back and eyed him hard, pressing her lips together. "This wasn't me," she retorted. "Although I think you deserved a good knock in the head, I didn't order this. It was a group of people who were drunk and knew you'd be an easy target. They're all under probation right now for what they did."

Phantom stared at her. He tried to search the fragments of his memories again. He could remember Valerie's voice in the silence. He began to doubt himself and his few memories. Perhaps she hadn't beaten him.

"I didn't come here to hurt you," Valerie said shortly. "And no one else will either, I've made sure of it."

He turned his head away, as to say, Yeah, right. He squeezed his eyes shut and inhaled a shaky breath, realizing that even though Valerie had perhaps not done this to him, it in no way guaranteed that she didn't enjoy seeing him beaten by others. He deserved it, he knew. For everything he had done, and for everything he still was.

Valerie pressed her lips together. "You have to understand everyone here is messed up," she said. "Mostly because of you. You can't blame us for wanting revenge."

His face tightened, but he still did not turn to look at her.

"Do you know how many of my friends and family you've maimed or killed?" she asked, voice low with a strange emotion. It was strange mix between frustration and depression. "Do you understand what you've done? Do you remember it?"

He did not respond, instead choosing to focus on a wall. His passiveness irritated her.

"Phantom, I asked you a question. Answer it now."

Phantom nodded once, hesitant.

"And do you regret any of it? At all?"

He blinked. The deaths his former self had inflicted—before Pariah showed him who was truly king—were abstract to him. Unlike Valerie, he did not know them, and so he could not feel regret or mourn their death. They were just faces waiting to die anyways. He supposed they were not his lives to take—he was not the Ghost King, after all.

Dan tentatively shook his head no to Valerie's question, because he knew that valuing life did not stop how the world worked. All things died, even without him. He simply ensured those people's quick and painless deaths.

Valerie's expression hardened against him, thinking that he was still reveling in their death, and she turned to look away. "I should have guessed as much," she muttered. "Just cause you look harmless doesn't mean you really are." She pulled away from his bed.

Dan's face darkened a bit in frustration and pain at the loss of her presence. He wanted to tell her of his thoughts, but words caught on the ruined edges of his tongue. A soft huff slipped between his lips as he watched her grow more and more disappointed with him. He could not afford for her to abandon him. He needed her. He wondered quickly if the pain would be worth trying to get off the bed to bow to her on his hands and knees.

But in the end Valerie still sighed and chose not to interrogate or berate him further. She rubbed her temples, feeling a headache come on. Dammit, she wasn't dealing with a child or simpleton. This Dan Phantom was still the ashes of an evil being who had almost achieved world conquest. How could she assume that he would automatically become some suffering saint and renounce his old ways?

She looked back at him, feeling as if there was something greater at risk between them than just the sanctity of their deal for information. This was the ghost who had killed her friends and destroyed her life. A part of him still existed within this broken Phantom. But no matter his views on his past, his recent experiences made him…compliant. He looked upon her with trust. He wanted her approval.

Valerie could further tip the scales in her favor if she played her cards right.

She blew a few ringlet curls out of her face, trying to measure up her prisoner. Eventually, she managed to swallow her pride. "Now come on," she said. She tentatively propped her arm on the edge of his bed. "Squeeze my hand so I know if you're strong enough to write. We need to talk soon."

He gave her a weary look, an unexpected fear leaking into his red eyes. So Valerie wanted to maintain their deal, which was good. But he worried that perhaps his healing bones would not allow him to write—and then Valerie would have to punish him because he was failing their deal and then he would certainly be unable to heal, and then she would kick him out or kill him and—

"—Don't hurt yourself," Valerie cut in, voice dry. She could see him spiraling again. "Just…try, okay?"

He nodded tentatively. His shaking fingers reached for hers, and his cold, bruise-mottled skin felt like ice against hers. Though his hand was by far larger than hers, and the fingers long and tapering, Valerie felt little strength behind them. Without terror motivating him, his will was weak. His hand shook. He grimaced, forcing his mended fingers to squeeze together.

In return, she squeezed her hand around his, and he stared down at their intertwined fingers. Valerie, always the fiery one, had warm and calloused hands. He could almost feel the hot blood raging through her veins and the heartbeat that charged her whole life. He craved it, and he was in awe that she would willingly share something so valuable.

She allowed him to hold her hand for some time. Something about the action was so simple, so human at an instinctive level, that Dan could not understand why the warmth seemed to travel down his arm and through his entire body. He wondered if this was what life was supposed to feel like.

Perhaps, he wondered, he desired such warmth because her touch was unwarranted? That holding hands was a sign of care between friends and family and lovers? That, for some reason, she thought he deserved this despite her disappointment in him?

Valerie stared at him, her eyes unreadable. "You should know that I don't like you," she said, point-blank. "When I look at your face, I see the monster that's destroyed my life. I still see him in you."

He blinked, confused. He glanced down at their hands again.

"But I know that's not all you are."

Unspoken words passed between them as he stared at her, and she back at him with determination. His bruised face still shined with tear tracks that made him look less the shade of a murderer and more the soul of a broken child.

He did not dare to imagine Valerie as a friend, for that meant they were equals, and Pariah Dark taught him that he was lower than dirt and deserving of nothing. But he wanted to believe at least that Valerie saw some kind of value in him. She was letting him hold her hand—or really, she was holding his, as his strength had long worn out, but he was begging her to not let go. And for some reason, she kept holding on. That had to count for something.

Eventually, Valerie's own arm tired out. She did let go, and he felt the ice of the air around him return like an oppressive cloak. His hand fell over his stomach, where he tiredly allowed it to rest.

She swallowed hard. "Now listen up, cause I'm only going to say this once. You're my prisoner, and I should have known the minute that group went down to your cell. You have my word that I won't let them pull that kind of shit against you again. " She bit her lip, then grew a bit hesitant. "I'm…sorry I failed to protect you."

And she realized she truly meant it, still in shock that her own people could be just as vindictive as Dan himself. Perhaps if he were some unruly and wicked prisoner, she could justify it. But she'd seen a side of him that made him more human than human. Now, it was hard to see him as just another.

Dan's squeezed his eyes shut. He looked caught between disagreeing with her and desperately latching on for the hope in her words. Why would she tell him it was wrong to be punished for his wrong-doings? What did this mean?

He deserved it…right?

.

Pariah Dark's voice rang. "You insolent boy. You think yourself valuable? You believe yourself to be worthy of staring me in the eye?"

.

Valerie's warm fingers lightly turned his chin back. "Hey, don't look away from me. I'm trying to talk to you."

Dan looked up at her, tentatively. Again, he found himself surprised at the gentleness with which she touched him. Were she like Pariah Dark, she probably would've dragged him off the bed by his hair simply to test if he were listening. But she wasn't Pariah Dark. And she wanted him to look at her. And she was apologizing to him.

Valerie realized Dan was staring up at her in sudden gratefulness. "Don't look at me like I'm doing you a favor," she commanded, feeling uneasy. "This is basic law. The only time it's legal to kill someone is in the act of war or defense—and you weren't attacking anyone. Even though they didn't kill you, they almost did, and that's illegal too. It was wrong what they did."

He tried to hide his failing battle. He could not remember a time when someone had cared to enforce law for his benefit. It was a painful and raw feeling that tore at yearnings deep beneath his skin and burned his eyes. All he could see were the Ghost King and his courtiers, using his pain for court entertainment.

Valerie swallowed hard, afraid of her own reactions to his as she watched the streaks of tears that ran down his bruised and battered face. That he would respond like this just from an apology…The woman felt uncomfortable with the forward display of emotion. "Yeah, yeah," she said gruffly, looking away to hide vulnerability in her own eyes. "This isn't personal, you know. I'm just doing this because you're my responsibility, and I still need info from you."

He nodded, but it was halted with pain.

.

"Worthless! You are less valuable than even the dirt of the Human World. You deserve nothing but my disgust. Without your tongue and power, what are you good for?"

.

She grabbed a paper tissue from the table beside the bed. "Geez, stop crying, okay?" With a bit of hesitance, she gently pressed the tissue against his bruised face, and she grimaced when he winced at the flare of pain. Then Phantom seemed to catch himself, and he leaned towards her hand again, desperate to please her. He knew his new master of his did not deserve to lower herself in such ways to dry his tears. That he would make her feel conscious of his pain was yet another strike against himself.

But it seemed that for every tear he tried to hold back, three more slid down his face. His master believed those who had beat him were unworthy of her approval or respect. They were unworthy, all of them—not him. And he wanted to feel her touch so badly—to feel his own worth in her care— for even the inadvertent pain she caused him was sweet against the agony of the hands of others.

.

They grabbed his hair and dragged him up to his hands and knees.

"Let us beat him!" they begged to Pariah Dark, laughing. "Let us break him!"

.

"Come on, Phantom," Valerie demanded, "stop making me feel like shit when I look at you. I've done you no favors." She tried to wipe away his tears again, this time carefully running the paper tissue beneath the rim of his bruised eye. She could feel his cold tears against her fingers. "The hell's going on in that brain of yours?"

But he could not answer her, unable to gather his memory or thoughts. All he could do was submissively nuzzle into her hand and focus on reining in his memories. He was not under the hand of Pariah Dark, and he could not contain his gratefulness for it.

Valerie grimaced a bit, feeling a blush rise to her own face as Dan slowly calmed, closing his eyes in contentment at the way she had begun to stroke his temples. Some other barrier was breaking down between them. She admitted, voice wavering, "This is getting weird, you know." She was beginning to wonder why he so desired her touch and why she seemed to respond so easily. Her fingers hooked into a few of the matted white strands at his temple, surprised at their softness. "You shouldn't…want me to do this."

And I shouldn't want to do this either.

With reluctant hesitance, she pulled away from him, her fingers slipping from his roughened cheek and soft hair. She needed to distract them both from their dangerous path.

The Red Hunter then cleared her throat awkwardly as she grabbed something from out of a pocket on her arm. It was a simple, black chain, upon which hung a small device. "I talked to some of our engineers while you were asleep," she said slowly, changing the subject to something more professional and distant. "I had them synchronize the frequency of this to my personal comm." She leaned in a bit, turning the small rectangle about so he could see it. "If for some reason anyone tries to attack you again, all you do is push this button. It'll trigger an alert for me, and I'll be able to trace your location and get there in 90 seconds."

His eyes blinked owlishly at her, as if to say, …This is for me?

"I'm trusting you to not abuse this," she warned, voice hard. "Don't call me for the hell of it. This is for emergencies only when you need my help. Got it?"

He nodded, a bit dazed.

"Good." She gently placed it over his head, turning the chain so the device rested upon his chest. The metal was still hot from Valerie's warmth. "Now don't lose it," she said firmly.

He winced as he moved his arm up and struggled to grip the device close to his chest. The comm tucked easily within the large expanse of his palm, and the chain of it would most likely hit him mid-chest if he were to sit up. He found himself in awe of Valerie again, that she would actively take such responsibility for him. This comm was a measure of safety. It was a small exercise of power for him, through which Valerie would drop everything to get to him. He held onto the comm as a lifeline, body shaking with the exertion.

I will not lose this. I will not abuse this trust.

In comparison to the justice he had endured under Pariah Dark, he suddenly felt willing to subject himself to any punishment Valerie eventually saw fit for him. If she demanded his enslavement to her forever, he would obey her command. He would do anything to serve this new master, who was kind in ways she did not even realize.

She was not like others. Valerie the Ghost Slayer was worthy of being served. And Dan began to wonder if Valerie, despite her humanity, were perhaps more worthy of rulership than even Pariah Dark.


A/N: So this was not quite as action-packed as previous Karma updates, but I felt it was necessary to focus on the relationship between Dan and Valerie specifically and the way their mindsets are changing as a result of each other's presence. I also tried to include some more background as to how Dan's mind became so shattered and willing to accept Valerie's rule. But now there's division within the resistance, Valerie is becoming emotionally compromised…and Pariah Dark is still at large. O_o Although I do enjoy Valerie's continuing nickname for Dan being "space cadet," which I find ironically appropriate, considering Danny Fenton's love of space.

Aftermath miniseries update, as requested, will be uploaded next! And then hopefully after that I will address some one-shot requests.

Please leave me with your thoughts, predictions, ideas, and requests! Thanks!