Disclaimer: Don't own DP.

Oh my goodness, I love you all so much! That was the most reviews I've ever received for a chapter in this collection! Thanks to Above the Winter Moonlight, ShadowYashi, ZoneRobotnik, Crystalmoon39, Invader Johnny, Lilith Jae, KraZiiePyrozHavemoreFun, Darth Synkka, Cookieplzandthnx, mzscarlettstarlet, SweetestChick, Rama, Silverstone007, Rekiseria, too enigmatic 2 b urs, DarkFastLight, Guest, Domination of the World, Zanza Flux, The Fruit and the Loopy, kippers, trish, Bree, Lovesbugsalot, kcrb0202, noname (x15 reviews!), and an avid fan for reviewing last time! You all are so amazing with your in-depth analyses and your enthusiasm for this story collection. It's really helped to get me through some tough times recently, just to have something like your reviews to look forward to.

So that informal poll from last chapter was a close tie between the Valentine Thread and Karma. Since the Valentine Thread is currently at a nice break in time (I mean, they're asleep, so at least it's not a big cliffhanger), I'll wait to update it after I've properly updated Karma and Aftermath. I appreciated everyone's input on that poll, and I hope that you find my game plan satisfactory.

Karma miniseries summary: 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.

Karma Part 5 summary: Everybody has something to hide, but Valerie's broken prisoner Dan may be hiding more than what Pariah Dark did to break him.


Deliverance

Shot 23: Karma Part 5


"Penelope Spectra," Pariah Dark greeted coolly.

The beautiful woman looked a bit worn and aged in her human form, but she smiled back, teeth sharp. She bowed before him in a sweeping, graceful movement. "Hello, darling. I heard you wanted my help?"

The Ghost King gaze upon her with little interest. "I have an unruly prisoner," he said, "whose mind is still capable of resistance. I have heard of your abilities. I require your assistance to break him into submission entirely."

Spectra tapped her chin. "Misery and defeat are my specialties." Her smile was wicked and dark. "What do I get in return?"

"Your payment is that you may feed off the misery you create in him. Should you succeed."

She waved off his skepticism with humor. "Tell me, darling. Who's my victim—I mean, my patient?"

The Ghost King did not look almost amused by Spectra's arrogance. "You know him by the name of Dan Phantom."

Spectra blinked. "What?" Suddenly, her eyes tightened with great pleasure and vindictiveness. "Wait, wait. You mean the great Ravager of Worlds who depleted my youth? That Dan Phantom? Your majesty, it would be my utmost honor to break him in any way you want. I know his split mind. I understand the weaknesses he hides."

"Then destroy his mind," Pariah Dark said. "Take his hope. Show no mercy." He waved her off. "Return only when you have succeeded."


Dan leaned his head back on his pillow, looking up at the infirmary ceiling. Many of his thoughts still felt scattered from Valerie's visit. Most of him was still in awe of the small communicator device she'd given him as a means of protection—and the way she'd stroked his temples and brushed away his tears in some thoughtless, huffy manner. His face tinged green with a blush, for he'd longed to feel her touch again even though he knew she likely found him disgusting. Valerie's fingers were rough with callouses, warm. Slender and comforting.

He shakily ran his fingers down his face to mimic the memory, feeling the stitches around his eye that had yet to heal. He was still weak from the beating Dash and the others had given him, to the point where he suspected he would still need a few days to recover, even with that blessed and damned IV that itched his hand. Oh, did it itch.

Then he flinched at a memory from Pariah Dark's castle. "You ungrateful boy—you appreciate nothing, don't you?"

Dan squeezed his eyes shut and turned his face to hide in the soft material of his pillow. His breath grew unsteady as he unraveled at the memories. His hands shook. It was too much. He couldn't take it—even the glow from his ectoplasm supply was not enough to stave away the nightmares that plagued him in the silence.

In truth, the great and unbreakable Dan Phantom had been reduced to a submissive boy crying in the dirt, begging for annihilation with a voice distorted without his tongue. And now here he was, healing in a bed that Valerie had given him, worthless in every way. Ungrateful, because at some core of himself, he almost half-wished that Valerie would put him out of his misery.

It sounded like a dream. Valerie stomping towards him, turning his chin up to expose his neck—her beautiful, warm fingers against his skin—slitting his throat in some quick, clinical way. He knew she was capable of it, and maybe she still would do it after their deal was complete and he'd given her all the information he knew. Her judgments were sound; surely, she knew he deserved the deepest of deaths.

A part of him hoped that this deal of theirs would end for him in oblivion. Total annihilation. Anything to escape this destroyed body and scattered mind and the hatred of everyone. Valerie was merciful, so maybe she would do it out of pity.

Without her immediate warmth and presence, his thoughts grew darker and his hope died out until he drifted into half-asleep nightmares of himself hanging in chains, hearing the laughter—


Hours later, the sound of footsteps outside his door woke him up in a startle. His infirmary room was completely dark but for the slight glow from his own body and the machines about him. He glanced over at the clock, which stated 1:17 am. The whole of the resistance, already on lock-down, was supposed to be in bed at this hour. Was it Valerie? Was she coming to check on him?

But the gait sounded all wrong, the footsteps too light. The fluorescent lights outside the door hid even the person's shadow as he heard the footsteps stop before the door.

Dan watched the door handle turn, and his nerves twisted in fear. This wasn't Valerie. She always knocked twice in a persistent I'm-coming-in-whether-you-want-me-to-or-not sort of way, and whoever this was, they were likely coming to beat him again. His fingers tightened in the bedsheets. On instinct, his pained muscles began to tense, as if to prepare for harsh blows and sharp metal.

Was it better to submit and beg for mercy, even if they were not his superior? Or, since Valerie herself had not approved of their actions, did he have a right to resist? Dan unclenched his fists, his red eyes remaining on the door. If anyone were to attack him now, he'd be too weak to fight them off. But he did have Valerie's comm. It still solidly hung from his neck. He knew it would give his attackers 90 seconds or less to attack before she came to his rescue.

Perhaps, he thought, he could stall by terrifying them back. He could bare his teeth and growl. Maybe it would make them think twice. Maybe they'd think he wasn't so powerless anymore, and then Valerie would get there just in time before they realized the truth…

But the door handle stopped turning, as if it were stuck. The knob jockeyed a bit as the door's mechanical locks whined at the strain. Then the handle stopped shaking, and a small pound hit the door, as if a foot kicked it. Whoever they were, the door was built solidly enough to keep them out.

All fell silent. A flicker of a shadow reflected off of the floor outside the door. Then the person walked away, and Dan nearly collapsed back into his pillows, breathing hard in relief.

Safe for now safe for now—

But just for now—

As time passed and the threat of the intruder gave way beneath the ticking of hours, he could not fall back asleep. Now, every creak in the resistance building was another person out to get him. The flicker of lights was an intimidation tactic. The voices he heard were people conspiring to beat him again.


A few hours later in the darkness of the early morning, Valerie knocked twice and unlocked the door to Dan's room, then strode in and flicked on the lights with all of her steel-nerved, battle-suited glory. She made it two steps before she stepped on a piece of paper, and she looked down in surprise. "What the—?"

Valerie leaned down to pick it up, and she stared at its contents for a few long seconds. Her face gave away deep concern, her eyebrows furrowing in puzzlement. But instead of showing it to him, she carefully folded up the mysterious paper and tucked it away in her arm pocket.

A tired and dread-filled Dan was watching her, his intelligent eyes honing in on the paper. She looked up at him and then said, "…It's nothing." Her unwillingness to share suggested that the paper had been silently shoved under the door by his early morning guest, which meant it was nothing good.

But perhaps it was best that Valerie would not show it to him. He already knew his place well enough. He did not need further death threats, reiterations of his sins…

"Nobody got in here, did they?" The Red Huntress approached his bed with tentative steps, eyeing his dark bruises and stitches for any new injuries. "You're not trying to cover for anyone, are you?"

He shook his head.

With little warning, she lightly grabbed his chin and forced him to turn his face towards the light. Though she knew he was mostly trustworthy, she worried that perhaps he would try to hide a beating, if only because he was broken enough to accept it. She peered closely at him, measuring up his health and the innocent shade in his eyes. His vitals looked much stronger on the readouts of the machines, but he appeared haggard and worn. "Well, you still look awful. Your bruises are turning some funky colors. Did you sleep at all last night?"

Her fingers slipped from his skin. He grew disappointed at the lack of her touch, but he said and did nothing, for he knew his opinion did not matter. It was his superior's prerogative on whether to touch him, and he felt a flicker of shame in reaction to her. Valerie seemed unhappy with his progress. His own worry had inhibited his rest and healing.

Worthless. Stupid.

As if to prove himself worthy of her presence, he struggled to sit up in the bed. The bed sheets fell to his waist, revealing the heavy scar down his side and the various scabs and bruises from his beating.

Valerie tried to look away, but she could not. Even with the ectoplasm IV, Dan's body still carried the markings of great abuse—from his bowed shoulders down to the sharp lines of his waist and the hint of his ribs that marked starvation. As she stared, she realized again that Dan was inherently a physical being. The solidness of his body, the heavy weight of his muscles, the white hair that dusted down his navel reminded her just how similar he was to a human.

She blushed and looked away, slightly horrified to catch herself looking at a ghost in such a manner.

Dan himself had caught Valerie's eyes upon his body. He feared for a second that she was perhaps reveling in his broken body, but he realized she had not gazed at him in vindictive triumph. He blinked. He did not know why she would blush or look at him with such…awareness?

He stared down at himself, trying to hide a grimace. His body was wrecked, his muscles diminished from weeks of abuse and malnutrition. Surely there was nothing of himself that would inspire a positive thought. He guessed Valerie's strange gaze was simply one of curiosity. Perhaps a measurement of the damage.

Yes, that was it.

Eventually, Valerie broke their silence. "You should lie back down," she said, voice rough. She sat down in the chair beside his bed, the metal gears of her suit making a clunk noise in the silence. Her faint scent of exotic flowers and summer sand surrounded him. And then Valerie frowned, almost irritated. "You're still weak. Like, you shouldn't even be trying to sit up yet."

Truly, his limbs were shaking with the effort of keeping himself sitting up. He huffed, frustration mounting. He had already wasted so much of her time.

Valerie seemed to understand his silent argument. "I'd like to start collecting more information on Pariah Dark soon too. But I need a source who's not just hallucinating stuff out of tiredness. So sleep for now, and we'll start our deal again soon."

He blinked, surprised again at the level of mercy Valerie offered. Instead of growing irritated at his failure to heal quickly, she simply accepted it. It left him feeling raw. His red eyes focused on her, wide and vulnerable.

"Oh, don't do the kicked puppy thing again," she complained, looking away in discomfort. Staring Dan in the eye was a hard thing to do, because she could almost feel the pain and self-hatred he carried within. "Seriously, dude. Healing you was part of our deal. Don't think too hard on this."

He nodded slowly. Then he winced as he lowered himself back onto the bed, collapsing against the pillows in a tired sigh. His every action was a defeated acceptance—of Valerie's commands, of her ambivalent interests regarding his well-being, of his own limitations. The fight in him, despite his healing, was gone.

Valerie rubbed her temples. "Geez," she muttered, her heart pulling hard in a way that made her paranoid about the softness she carried for this prisoner of hers. "Even when I don't look at you, I still get kicked puppy vibes."

Dan's lips twitched in some kind of tired humor as he stared at her, neck craned against the pillow, his white hair a tangled halo. A kicked puppy, huh?

Valerie spun around, her eyes dark. Her voice was strangled between true irritation and wry amusement. "Stop making me feel bad for you. Seriously. Is this all just a ploy of yours, huh? To make me feel bad for you?"

He quickly averted his gaze and closed his eyes. His entire body began to tense instinctively to prepare for a beating, and then he realized he had tensed up, and then he began to worry that perhaps he had angered Valerie—

"—Okay, okay." Dan heard her sigh. The sound was loud enough to cut through the all-powerful whip of his memory. She seemed tired in a strange way. "I see you living inside that head of yours. And I don't know exactly what you're thinking, but I can guess."

He opened his eyes guiltily.

"Go to sleep for real," she told him. Her rough and raspy voice was softer in ways he'd never heard. "Nothing's gonna get you while I'm here. Your afterlife is mine."

The tension slipped from his bones as he stared at her. He felt a spark of hope—Valerie claimed sole ownership of his future—and that settled many of his worries. (Strange, his desperation to reach death and oblivion was…less in her presence? Why was that?)

Valerie grabbed one of Kwan's clipboards off the bedside table, as if to appear apathetic to the blatant emotion that wavered off the broken man on the bed. She seemed excessively interested in trying to decipher the doctor's horrific handwriting—her own way of hiding her emotions.

Dan did not wish to make her feel uneasy, for he knew how Valerie disliked emotional displays, and he so closed his eyes and gave himself over to his exhaustion, falling into a deep, dreamless sleep. The stress upon his bruised face slackened. And as he slept, Valerie watched the ectoplasmic IV feed more energy into him at a greater pace.

For a time, Valerie's face was pulled into a puzzlement of sorts, as if she were trying to decipher the mystery that was this new and broken Dan Phantom. What in the world was she going to do with him after all of this was over? He seemed damn near suicidal. Most people were still itching to exact punishment for his crimes against humanity. She had a deep fear that, after they all managed to defeat Pariah Dark, Phantom would simply be a mute slave to her. People would likely take advantage of that status quo to ensure he never regrew an ounce of personality or dignity—which would potentially make him lash out one day. And she herself would be caught between protecting him and risking the ire of her own people.

Which reminded her…That paper she'd found pushed under the door…

She looked down at the metal technology encasing her arm and sighed. She pushed a few buttons, and a small LCD screen brightened to life. A face had popped into her mind as the potential culprit, but she could not remember the name attached to it. So she activated her holographic interface and began to scroll through the census logs of the resistance, searching for that familiar face.

Something about that paper's contents…

Meanwhile, Dan's face was softened in sleep, his cares completely gone. The soft glow about him began to grow stronger, and his breath rose and fell in an easy, lazy rhythm.

Strange that her heart felt satisfaction at the sight.


Soon enough, Kwan returned. "I'm starting to run some diagnostics on his blood, but I need some more samples." He nodded towards Dan, noting that the stitches down his face were beginning to heal a bit. The sight was almost welcome after witnessing the pain the ghost had been in. "How's he doing?"

"You tell me," Valerie said dryly, not looking up from her work. She was typing in a name on her holographic keyboard. "You're the doctor."

Her old friend was not fazed by her taciturnity. "And you're the one watching his every move."

She snorted, but then she lightly kicked one of the legs of the hospital bed with her foot. The small jolt woke up its inhabitant. Dan's red eyes opened in a slow, lazy way, and he looked peacefully disoriented as he stared at her.

Valerie didn't look up from her work. "Kwan's gotta take some blood," she said. "Don't freak out, okay?"

Dan seemed as if he couldn't care less. He closed his eyes again and burrowed his face into his pillow, bordering back on the fringe of unconsciousness. Truly, it was the most restful, painless sleep he'd had in a long time.

And for a short while, he drifted in the simplicity of the black. He barely felt Kwan's gloved hands adjust his arm or wipe a spot above his elbow with alcohol. But then the small pain of the needle suddenly ravaged through his every nerve, reverting him back to weeks. Attacked. He was being attacked. And all of the pain pain pain came back to him and

Suddenly, his red eyes snapped open and darkened. He bared his fangs and hissed, his entire face twisting into hatred. His muscles clenched as swung his hand up to swipe, and Kwan stumbled back.

In a split second, Valerie jumped up from her chair, eyes wide. "What the—?" With her free hand, she pulled a blaster from a thigh holster, and she leveled the barrel at his head. Then she quickly grabbed onto his chin and forced him to look at her, fear pounding into her at the baring of his fangs. "You stand down right now! You hear me?!"

He blinked, and his defensive snarl faltered as he recognized her. Suddenly, his full senses returned. In his confusion, he realized that Valerie had pointed a weapon at his head, and the doctor who had previously aided him was quivering against the cabinets. The ghost still had a needle sticking out of his arm, which he realized was simply an empty needle to collect blood. There were no tormentors, no lead pipes, no Pariah Dark.

Only a wide-eyed and defensive Valerie Gray.

Great shame overcame him, then great fear, and Dan shrunk, lowering his gaze. He shut his mouth tight to hide his elongated fangs. In a show of submission, he pressed his forehead against the barrel of her blaster, squeezing his eyes shut. He did not know if her blaster was powerful enough to end his existence, but her sharp reaction meant he likely deserved punishment.

Valerie tentatively retracted her blaster, although she tightened her grip on his chin. "What the hell was that?" she asked, eyes hard with suspicion. "Look at me."

The demand made him wince, but he opened his eyes and gazed into her face, which was tight with anger and suspicion.

She demanded, "Why did you snap at Kwan?"

Dan could not hold Valerie's gaze for long, and he looked down at his bedsheets, a green blush rising on his face in shame. He had assumed Kwan was just another person coming to beat him. Another resistance member that had shamed Valerie. It'd been…instinctive. A poor reaction to being startled out of painless sleep.

But he had not the tongue to explain. And so he remained silent, painfully afraid that he had just lost all of her trust. His insides felt as sharp, biting ice. I was wrong to defend myself—

Valerie released his chin, almost harshly. "So what made you snap?" she demanded, eyes piercing. "You got too much energy? Do you feel like you need to kill? Kwan trigger a memory or something?"

The silence stretched far between them, with only Kwan's uneasy gasps to break the seconds. Valerie simply stood there, one hand on her blaster. "Kwan's been good to you, you know," she said. "He patched you up. He gave you this room. He's been refilling your ecto-IV. The least you can do is be nice and give him some of your blood so he can understand how to help you."

Dan remained silent for a time, mulling over her words. Valerie was not demanding that he be punished. Rather, she seemed interested in understanding his motivations for lashing out. She was suspicious, but not entirely betrayed. And so he did not look up as he slowly held out his arm, as if to suggest he would accept fulfilling Kwan's need. An apology of sorts.

A show of submission.

Valerie glanced over at Kwan, who still looked quite terrified. His shaking hands ran down the front of his white coat, and he swallowed hard and said, "Is…is he saying that he's okay with this now?"

The woman was irritated and confused. "I guess. This would be easier if he could freakin' talk." She turned to Dan. "Nod if you're okay with Kwan taking some blood."

He still did not look up, but he gave a small nod, his body still tense.

Slightly more at ease, knowing that Valerie had power over whatever monster was left in Dan, Kwan stepped forward. "I, uh, didn't meant to scare you. I just noticed some things in your blood. I wanted to take a closer look and make sure you were healing okay."

Dan's expression darkened, but he said nothing.

"Uh…well, I'll, uh, try this again?"

The ghost's face twitched when Kwan tentatively reinserted the collection needle, and his breath hitched between anger and fear, feeling someone take more of himself. But he held himself still, per Valerie's command. He tried not to think of Pariah Dark or anything else. He tried to blank his mind and remind himself that the spark of pain he felt was for his own good.

And then it was over. "Thanks," Kwan said, voice wavering as he stuck a bandage on Dan's small wound. The needle Kwan held now glowed a bright, and he capped it off, removing the sharp needle. "I'll make this one count, I promise."

Dan nodded, but he still did not look up. The silence and tension coming off of Valerie was enough to keep him unresponsive, his mind curled tight in preparation for her typical verbal massacres.

Kwan looked over at Valerie, who was still staring down Dan with her arms crossed and mouth in a tight, grim line. He said, "I'll, uh, go now. Let me know if you need anything." He grabbed his notes and vial of Dan's blood with shaky hands.

And then the door shut behind him, and the silence gaped.

For a time, Valerie stared at Dan hard, remembering the fear and shame that had ravaged across his face after he'd looked her in the eye. "… So you'll let me push you around, but you'll flip your shit if someone else touches you," she said, voice conflicted. "What the hell, Phantom? Kwan's done more to heal you up than I have."

His lips twitched down, and his face grow pained. He seemed to almost curl further in on himself under Valerie's sharp glare.

Her angry heart stalled at the sight, and she turned away to hide her face. "Look. I know you're messed up and scared. But if you react like that to everybody helping you, it's gonna make your afterlife miserable here. You understand me?"

He did not react.

"I'll go talk to Kwan and make sure he understands not to do medical stuff to you when you're half-coherent. And as soon as you can, you're gonna write him a formal apology with a promise that you won't try to attack him again. I need to know we're on the same page here."

It sounded fair. Valerie seemed to acknowledge that his reaction had been mindless. He nodded in agreement to her terms.

"Good." Then she turned back to him, mouth still set in a strange line. Now that Phantom was beginning to grow stronger, it was important that she set the correct foundations. "I'm not trying to punish you for defending yourself. But we can't afford missteps, and I need you to be aware of what you're doing."

Despite Valerie's words, he gave another listless nod, whatever spark of his true self that remained slowly dying away into a mechanical response. His eyes were bare of tears or emotions—there was simply dull acceptance, some kind of belief that perhaps his fate would be to endure the fruits of his own mistakes forever.

She tilted her head at him, her full lips turning into a frown. "Look, I told you I'm not trying to punish you, okay? If Kwan were really attacking you, I'd understand you gotta defend yourself."

Dan pressed his lips together. It seemed he could do nothing right.

"Do you think I'm just gonna leave you hanging? You think if someone really attacks you, I'll make you stand down and take it?"

Silence.

In response, she pulled the folded paper out of her arm pocket and began to unravel it. "This paper under your door earlier…It's a drawing from someone who was there that night. I kept looking at it while you slept, and the more I think about it, the more I think you should see it." She held out the paper for him.

He reached up and grabbed onto the paper with tentative fingers. Then he pulled it to him and looked down, puzzled.

It was not a death threat, as he had expected, but instead a fairly well-drawn picture done with pencil.

He gripped the picture tighter, staring at it in confusion. It was a drawing of the cellar. His own body was lying flat on its stomach. And standing over him was Valerie, one hand solidly gripping a pipe that Dash was bearing down upon her, the other hand raised out against the faceless crowd.

He wondered if it had truly ended this way, as his memories were mostly gone of the event. He had imagined that Valerie had simply dragged him away out of some duty to keep him existent. Not that she would do something so…personally endangering? The picture, with a surprised Dash and a faceless crowd, was hopeful. Valerie's side profile in it was fierce, as if truly angered against Dash.

This was not some drawing to be cruel. Instead, its focus was on Valerie, at the moment she had jumped in to protect him. And yet whoever had drawn it had attempted to…give it to him by breaking into his room at night?

He blinked hard at it. He wanted this picture to be true.

"That's how it happened," Valerie said, voice short to hide the strange emotional patterns in her voice. "I stopped them like that. The person who drew this wanted you to know something about it."

For a while, he did not know what to think or say. He kept staring at the drawing of Valerie protecting him.

"You're not alone in this," she said, voice wry. "And for what it's worth, it looks like I'm not the only person who believes in protecting you."

She could almost see the curiosity bleeding off of him. But who else does?


After a short talk with Kwan—the man had thankfully recalibrated from Dan nearly attacking him and was working on analyzing the blood sample in the lab—Valerie found herself down one of the newer wings of the resistance building. It was the Youth Ward, which housed orphans from infancy all the way to teenagers. The suspected supporter of Dan who had left the strange drawing still lived here, for the face she had vaguely remembered aligned with the name of a young girl.

Valerie had never ventured to the Youth Ward of the resistance. It brought up memories of her long-dead mother and her own deep fear that she'd one day lose her father too, like so many of the children who had been displaced by Dan Phantom's destruction. But she worried that if she did not confront this now, this young supporter would get into serious trouble.

"Here goes nothing," she muttered under her breath, and she approached Dorm 1402, which housed the strange culprit. Then she knocked on the door and stood back, waiting.

A little black girl—the citizen log said she was no more than eight, but she looked much smaller—tentatively stepped out. The moment she saw Valerie, her back stiffened, and her eyes widened. "Commander Valerie!" she cried out, awkwardly attempting a salute in both awe and anxiety.

"At ease, kid," Valerie humored her, raising a brow.

The ragged and skinny child remained tense. "W-what can I do for you, officer?" the girl said, voice cracking in nervousness. She tried to run her grubby hands through her hair, as if to appear more presentable. Her shirt was inside out, and she looked disheveled and terrified. "The morning bell's not rung yet. I promise I'm not sleeping in."

Valerie kneeled before her to gaze eye-to-eye, and she said tiredly, "Nina, I know you like drawing, and I know how good you are. I've seen you putting your drawings up on a lot of bulletin boards around. So I want to know why you stuck a drawing under Phantom's door last night and tried to break into his room with it."

The girl began to back away. Her dark skin began to redden with guilt and fear. "I, uh…" Her own inability to lie well gave her away. "Um…"

"I know it was your drawing, so don't make excuses." Valerie's head tilted, eyes narrowed. "And how did you know to draw that night the way it really happened, huh? Youth Ward's still got curfew, and I know you must have witnessed Phantom's beating. That means you've broken curfew twice over this."

Nina's lips and chin quivered, fearful of Valerie's wrath and of the memories she'd been trying to fight off for days. She looked as if she would try to deny her own actions.

Valerie was known for her brutal honesty and her impatience for people who tried hide information. "I'm serious, Nina. Tell me the truth. You broke curfew to watch a beating, and then you tried to reach out to my prisoner. I want to know why, because this sure as hell isn't stuff for kids like you."

The little girl's breath hitched. Then words tumbled out of her mouth in a sob. "I didn't—I wanted to—to see him get hurt." Her hands began to shake. "He killed mom and dad. And now—it's my fault if Phantom won't help you. All my fault."

Valerie's eyes narrowed in growing concern. "What are you talking about?"

Nina ran back into her room, and Valerie feared for a second that she'd terrified the child too much. But then she heard the rummaging of drawers and then Nina's quick pattering back to the door. In the little girl's hands was a strange mass of wadded up, green paper.

It was a fairly significant amount of cash. At least a hundred dollars.

"Take it," she pleaded with Valerie, now openly crying. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Valerie hesitantly grabbed the money from the orphan's hands, a strange, cold feeling overcoming her. Her eyes hardened. "Where did you get this?"

The small girl stuttered, "Lieutenant Dash? H-he gave it to me, t-to find out what you were doing and when Phantom would be alone, cause I'm good at hiding and finding out stuff." She was in misery now, voice hitching. "But is what you said true? Are we gonna die now cause of Pariah Dark? Is it my fault? Will Phantom not help us anymore?"

Valerie's face twisted. She was never good with words, and she really didn't like small children.

So. She'd found Dash's elusive spy.

"You mean to tell me that you're the one who figured out the cellar's security lock and led Dash to Phantom?"

Nina nodded.

"And then you stayed behind and watched what happened?"

She nodded hesitantly, her brown eyes blurred with tears, haunted. "I didn't want people to see me, so I hid in the rafters. And when Lieutenant Dash swung that pipe up, it got stuff on me." She pulled up her shirt a bit, to show the true outside of it. Messy, green splotches marred the thick material. Valerie's eyes hardened in pain. It looked like stains from ectoplasmic blood. She guessed if she looked up at the cellar ceiling, she'd be able to see similar splotches in a trajectory line from Dash flinging the pipe around.

"Good grief," Valerie muttered under her breath, eyeing the small girl for signs of trauma. Damn Dash and all of his stupidity—roping in little children to do spy work. She was going to kick his ass after all of this.

Nina self-consciously pulled her shirt hem down, then looked around in paranoia. Her small mouth was set in a strange line, and she held on tight to the hem of her shirt, her hands shaking. "Phantom's blood got all over me. And it was cold." She began to cry again. "And Lieutenant Dash didn't stop. H-he didn't stop. I had to wash my hair three times. I feel it everywhere. I s-still f-feel it."

Valerie set her hands on the girl's shoulders to steady her. She knew a thing or two about what it felt like to have blood on her hands. It made her heart grow indignant to think that this child had seen such brutality, and that Dash had encouraged her to be a part of making it happen. "So that's why you drew that picture and tried to give it to Phantom?"

The scrawny slip of a girl looked down, and her coiled hair hid her eyes. "I wanted to say sorry," she whispered. "We might all be dead cause of me, so I wanna make him help you again." Her sobs hitched her shoulders. "I'm sorry."

Valerie thought back to how Dan had reacted to Kwan, and then she realized how potentially bad it could have been had Nina accessed his room in the middle of the night. Her voice hardened. "Nina, you could have been hurt. Phantom's weak, but he's still dangerous."

The girl's feverish energy heightened. "No, he wouldn't hurt me," she said, voice breaking. "He saw me that night."

At some point, his eyes had lifted to heaven, and those red irises had landed upon her shadow in the rafters, glowing with splatters of his own blood. Nina had begun to cry at that point, horrified at the sight of Phantom's beating. For a short second, the two of them had stared at each other. And then Dash slammed the pipe down again and tore open Dan's side in a river of green.

"He doesn't remember much from that night," Valerie said dryly. "Odds are he wouldn't remember you either. And if he did, I don't think he'd associate good memories with you."

Nina nodded, the energy of her body slipping into some kind of depression. Her conscience had pulled her so hard for days, she was exhausted under the weight. Her voice was small. "I just wanna make it better."

Valerie stared at her, lips pursed as her mind raced. "You really want to help me out?"

Nina nodded again, wiping her nose on her inside-out sleeve.

"Then you listen here. Phantom needs to know what good things are. As your punishment, you're going to draw him nice pictures every single day until I say you can stop."

The girl stood silent for all of a second before she began to cry again—this time in relief. She nodded hard, trying to stifle her tears before the well-worshipped Commander Valerie Gray.


Sometime later, Valerie returned to Phantom's infirmary room, feeling tired and worn from trying to calm a sobbing child. She found her wayward prisoner sitting up in bed, leaning heavily on pillows. The glow about him seemed to extend a little farther out than before. On his blanketed lap was that crazy drawing, which he was still staring at intently, as if it held the secrets of the universe.

"So I found our mysterious artist." Valerie sat down beside his bed, and she rested her elbows on her knees. "Her name is Nina. She's eight years old, and two years ago, you killed her parents. Dash paid her to crawl in the cellar rafters and find out when you were alone. Then Nina provided the information and watched them beat you."

Dan looked up, mouth set in a confused line. It figured that even a child would want revenge against him enough to spy and sell him out. But something triggered deep within him at the mention of cellar rafters. A flash of a memory—a shadow wavering in the blur of rafter grates and wooden beams. The outline of a child. He blinked, his red eyes narrowing in concentration. Perhaps it had just been a hallucination.

Or perhaps it hadn't?

"It took Nina ten hours to draw that picture," Valerie said, head tilting. "She wanted you to know that she's sorry for what she did to help Dash, and that she would have stopped it if she could. So you're going to stop her guilt by accepting these pictures and anything else she throws at you. Got it?"

For a time, Dan simply blinked. A little girl felt guilty about hurting him after he'd killed her parents? Truly, this…Nina had no logical reason for regretting her decision. But he nodded in acceptance of Valerie's terms.

"Good." Valerie leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms as she eyed him. She appeared to be measuring him for something, the gears in her mind churning.

In truth, she was wondering just how docile this new Phantom could be when he wasn't instinctively defending himself from a threat. His body still looked weak, but a new interest had strengthened the brightness of his eyes. Would it be good for him to interact with people other than just herself, like Nina? What about Vlad, who seemed to have a protective—almost fatherly— interest in Dan?

She needed to begin creating a network of sorts if she were going to rebuild the infamous Dan Phantom. It was not good for him to be so tethered to only her. But this whole deal was so tentative…It was possible that as he grew stronger, he would begin to question her more, show signs of more impatience and calculation…Become his old self.

The thought left her feeling uncomfortable and anxious. If she didn't make the right decisions, Phantom could turn against her. And even without his powers, he could become a horrific nuisance. A skeleton to hide in a closet.

But something shook her out of her thoughts. Kwan knocked on the door and popped his head in, looking stressed and terrified. "Valerie? Are you busy?"

She craned her neck, nearly wanting to groan at the sight of Kwan's face. Looked like she had yet another fire to stomp out. "What do you want?"

"Can I speak to you in private?"

Eyebrows furrowed, Valerie stood. Dan looked up from the picture tightly clasped in his hands. A half-worried expression overcame him, and so Valerie said, "I'll be back. Don't go anywhere."

For a second, a sort of frustration overcame him. I couldn't even if I wanted to, he seemed to say, a small huff escaping from his lips. But the worried look never left him, for his eyes had locked onto Kwan, who was trying as hard as he could to look everywhere but at Dan.

Something was very wrong, Dan realized—more so than even when the doctor had tried to take his blood. The normally good-natured man looked paranoid. Then the door clicked shut, and Dan was alone again, hyperaware that the doctor's concerns had something to do with him.


Kwan pulled Valerie aside, concerned and greatly fearful. "We need to get to my office," he said, voice low. "Right now."

A coldness dropped into the woman's stomach. "You gonna tell me what this is about?"

"It's about Phantom."

"What did he do?"

Kwan quickly guided her through the corridors back to his office. "It's not what he's doing," the medical student said. "It's what's happening to him."

The woman's face twisted in great irritation and worry. "And exactly what is that?" But the doctor remained tight-lipped until they reached his office. He punched in the code to unlock the door, and the security locks unlatched. He gently pushed her inside and quickly shut the door behind them.

"This could be very bad, Valerie," he said, voice strangling. "What I've learned—it could ruin our whole strategy for defeating Pariah Dark."

Valerie surveyed the office with sharp eyes. Several microscopes were set up along a long line of counters and cabinets. A few glowing wires intersected into a computer mainframe, where Kwan quickly moved to enter in his credentials. Data lists popped up on the screen. She didn't understand any of it, but if those numbers meant something catastrophic, she didn't like them. "You gonna start talking, or what?"

"I took ectoplasmic blood samples from Phantom a couple of times before," Kwan said hesitantly. "You know, while he was still in coma stage. And during that time, his cell's molecular structures were active, but their intercommunication wasn't—"

"—English, Kwan. English."

The doctor gave her a frustrated look. "Something's changed inside of him. His cells are no longer reacting to energy the way human cells do. He's reacting to the ectoplasm IV and building new cell structures beyond human ones." He pushed a button on his keyboard, and an image of something green and molecular popped up. "Look at this. See the ectoplasmic networks between the cells? That wasn't there three days ago."

Valerie's mind raced. "You mean…he's actually regenerating a power core?"

Kwan nodded.

"But how? He's still got bruises and everything." Valerie felt great fear. She'd thought he was likely not to regenerate—and even then, it was still way too early to even consider him capable of such a feat. "He can barely sit up in bed. He still looks like he got run over by a train."

Kwan shrugged helplessly. "He's been on a constant IV for days. It's possible that he's been diverting the energy to his most damaged areas."

"Consciously?" Valerie demanded. If so, then she had more to worry about than she thought. If Phantom were choosing to rebuild his power core first, it was possible he had ulterior motives that would endanger them all.

"The only way to know for sure would be to ask him," her friend said helplessly. "But if it's an unconscious process, it might be in our best interest to keep him in the dark."

Valerie said flatly, "Which doesn't help us at all to know what's really going on. " She stared at the data, now realizing that it was showing a rise of cellular activity. "Dammit, Kwan. You mean to tell me we're gonna have a full-powered Phantom flying around? Does a power core have a physical effect on the brain at all?"

"I don't know , but we still have some time to figure this out," the doctor said quickly. "I'm only seeing short rises in reconnection on a cellular level. But we started something, and now that he's got these reconnections, he'll be more able to independently convert energy into ectoplasmic resources. I don't know how to stop it. All we can do is slow it down by taking him off the IV."

Something about all of this left her feeling uncomfortable. "Dammit, providing he doesn't go insane—think Pariah Dark will know we've been harboring him?"

Kwan turned away. "That's what I'm afraid of."

Valerie bit her lip. Then she looked down at the Phantom Tracker on her arm. From just down the hall, it still registered nothing. "Even when Phantom was at full-strength, I had to be within a certain range of him to hone in on his signature. Can we hide him out of range somehow, or mask his signature as it rises?"

"Valerie, the physics of how ghosts transmit and emit energy is so much more complicated than what our instruments can measure. We've gotten better at sensing ghost energy, yes, but our technology doesn't come close to what ghosts can sense naturally."

"Explain."

"Before…all of this, remember how Phantom knew the exact location of every ghost across the continent, even when his ghost sense didn't trigger to alert him of an immediate threat? And how even lesser ghosts could sense Phantom? The level of power that Pariah Dark exhibits is far greater. He probably knows the location of ghosts across a good portion of the Zone, which we're a part of now." Kwan grew very serious. "Power cores emit long-wave energy in ways that ectoplasm by itself doesn't. If Phantom fully regenerates, then Pariah Dark may be able to sense his signature over a great distance. And if he senses it…"

"Can't ghosts mask their power core? I mean, isn't that what they do on their Christmas thing?"

Kwan gave her a helpless look. "By the time Phantom can manipulate that kind of ability, it'll be too late to use it. He may even begin to emit a recognizable ecto-signature before his power core is functional."

A very cold, creeping nausea began to slither through her. "…Shit," Valerie breathed. She sat down heavily in an empty chair, putting her head in her hands. "That means we gotta take down Pariah Dark before Phantom regenerates, or we'll lose everything."

Suddenly, Valerie had images of Dan Phantom turning back into a sick, twisted psychopath, only for them all to be annihilated in unspeakable ways. Her heart began to pound. "If we take him off the IV, how long do you think we'll have before his ecto-signature reactivates?"

"I'd have to do some calculations, but off the top of my head…a couple of weeks? If we're lucky?"

She began to hyperventilate. "We don't have nearly enough resources gathered for an attack in two weeks. Are you kidding me? Is this a joke?"

He shook his head, looking pained and afraid.

Valerie groaned. "You've gotta be kidding me." This new development would mean taking Phantom off the IV, going back to a far more painful version of energy intake and healing, and praying that he would still be willing to push himself to provide information—despite the fact that they were going to deny him his own power.

And if that wasn't enough, Amity Park's clandestine attack on Pariah Dark would have to happen before Phantom's ecto-signature resparked.

Kwan tried to smile weakly. "Well, look on the bright side. Phantom seems to like you."

But a certain condition remained unspoken through the air. For now.


A/N: Sorry about how super-late this update was. My work has me traveling cross-country now to meet clients, and I'm just exhausted all the time. This means my tendency to update on Fridays might change to whatever weekday I get the chapter done.

I was a bit nervous about this chapter because of the use of the young OC Nina. I usually try to avoid using OCs to such a large extent, but I thought it would be an interesting contrast to see how Dan would react to someone he had wronged, who had then wronged him. I'm not sure if Nina will be making further appearances in Karma, besides references to her drawings. Let me know your thoughts there.

And of course, it looks like I will likely be updating Aftermath next, and then I will return to finish off the Valentine thread (because…it's May and stuff…*weakly chuckles*). Again, thank you all so much for your support of this story collection. It's helped me to get through some tough days lately.

Please leave me a review with your thoughts, questions, ideas, and requests. Thank you!