Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom.

Thanks to Invader Johnny, NoSignalBlueScreen, Above the Winter Moonlight, Zighana, Margot-Eve, Puppy von Wolfenstein, JoojooBrother, ZoneRobotnik, Silverstone007, African vintage, KraZiiePyrozHavemoreFun, Dareeen, KimiruMai, and Guest for reviewing last time!

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 for Karma Part 6: Valerie discovers her prisoner's dark secret. Hurt!Dan.

Okay, I'm super nervous about moving this collection to M. I really hope I didn't lose anyone!


Deliverance

Shot 33: Karma Part 6


One weary Dan Phantom was propped up against pillows on his infirmary bed. Valerie had been gone for nearly an hour, and in the silence, he began focusing on his cut-out tongue—the mild pain at swallowing, the feeling of unnatural space in his mouth. The image of Pariah Dark staring down at him, face twisted in sadistic pleasure as the knife cut deep—

Dan squeezed his eyes shut. He tried to shut the doors of pain, sights, sounds, but there were so many doors now. He was losing count. Shutting one simply opened another.

A flash of a memory appeared—of himself laughing above the flaming destruction of a human city, of shooting Valerie off of her jet sled—and shame overwhelmed him. He wanted to forget everything. "Mmh," he moaned, grabbing onto his hair. The baritone of his voice vibrated his lips. Only silence responded.

And it was then that he chilled.

It started at the back of his neck, then crept down his spine and spread out across his ribs. Dan's eyes opened again at the feeling. It did not feel natural. Rather, it was as if something were coursing through him, goose-bumping his skin deep.

He covered his mouth at the sound of his teeth chattering, his fingers shaking from the odd chill. What the—?

Suddenly, the door to his infirmary room unlocked, and a worried, frantic Valerie walked in. Her movements were brisk, in that typical no-nonsense way. But something about her seemed off. Her sharp eyes caught onto his pained expression. "Hey, you okay?"

Not wanting to worry her further, he withdrew his hand from his mouth silently and then nodded.

The chill began to fade away, the goosebumps upon his skin disappearing.

Valerie gave him a quick look-over, as if not believing him, and then decided he must have been telling the truth. She sat down next to his bed and said tiredly, "We need to talk."

Those four words sounded ominous, coming from her. Dan nodded again tentatively.

The woman lifted her eyes to his. "Kwan's picked up some strange markers in your blood," she said point-blank. "It looks like the constant ectoplasm is helping your cells to store energy. You might be able to regenerate a power core, with enough exposure."

His eyebrows flew up, cautious hope.

Valerie tried to explain, "But there's some problems with letting that happen right now. We're going to go ahead and take you off the IV. We can't afford your power core to rebuild so fast because we don't want Pariah Dark to sense you're here. He might tears us apart to find you, and then everything you've told us will be for nothing because we'd all die. Do you understand?"

He nodded in a daze. He did not want to return to Pariah Dark, nor could he entertain the thought of Pariah Dark killing Valerie, the master who had cared for him in every way. The very thought of her death brought forth a chill of a different kind. But a power core—rebuilt—!

Dan must have shown the conflict on his face, because Valerie spoke up again.

"This isn't punishment for anything you've done," she added, voice hesitant. "I…just wanted you to know that. This is the best option for both of us, to keep you safe and to make sure we can plan an attack against Pariah Dark."

He stared at her, searching for a lie. Was she genuinely thinking of his safety? If he were truly such a threat, why did she not simply cast him out? He'd already given her the majority of what he knew.

Surely, his worth was running out.

"I know, I know," she waved her hand, rolling her eyes. "Me coming in here and telling you that we need to pull your IV is not the best thing ever. But I need you to trust me. I'm trying to keep you and everyone else alive here." And then her face twisted. "Or you back to your normal-dead health and everyone else alive."

A thin, worn smile twitched his lips. He almost dared to believe that Valerie thought him worth the same as everyone else.

"So. Do you trust me? Can I take that IV out?"

Curiosity lit his eyes. You? He turned his gaze to the locked door. But what about the doctor?

Valerie seemed to understand his unspoken question. She said dryly, "Don't worry, I can take an IV out. God knows I got a lot of practice with that. And you kinda scared Kwan, so he's trying to avoid you as much as he can."

Dan swallowed a bit nervously at that, recalling his manic slipup with the doctor—how Valerie had so quickly reacted to stop his fit of madness. And then he nodded slowly to accept her help.

Valerie looked satisfied. "Good." She stood up. Then she rummaged through Kwan's materials on the bedside table and pulled on some of the gloves over her slim, scarred hands. "It'll just take a second. It'll probably make you tired, so we'll still keep you here while you heal." Her teal eyes landed on a band-aid that was yellow with a smiley face, and something mischievous struck her. She plucked the band-aid from the pile as if she'd thought nothing of it.

She turned to him and gently touched his arm. "Come on, let's get this over with."

Dan tentatively offered her arm, knowing that this would likely not feel good. Except for Valerie's warm. Her willing touch him was about the only plus.

The instant Valerie withdrew the IV and then pressed a gauze pad against the inside of his elbow, Dan immediately felt pressures settle on him. His limbs felt heavier, his bruises felt more tender, and his scabbed lacerations began to pull. His breath quickened under the strain, and he nearly groaned, feeling nauseated. A sheen of cold sweat began to cover him.

Valerie smoothed the smiley-face band-aid over his skin, holding pressure out of habit. "For the record," she said, voice a little more distant, "did you know you were rebuilding a core?"

He exhaled out sharply, struggling to focus on her question. He gave her a wild-eyed look. He'd felt better over the last few days, but he had assumed it had nothing to do with a power core and more to do with a steady IV.

The woman's lips pursed, almost in guilt. The Phantom before her didn't even look capable of orchestrating a minor protest, much less a hostile takeover. "Well. I guess even if you did know, it's not like wanting to heal is a crime…" She pulled back, throwing away the trash in a can and stuffing the dirtied needle and gloves in the red can beside it. "So the quicker you help me end Pariah Dark, the faster you'll be allowed to regenerate. Got it?"

He closed his eyes, his mouth set in a pained line. Then he nodded.

"Good." She ran her hands under the water of the small counter sink, grabbing a paper towel afterward. "I have to update administration, and then I'll be back with a pen and paper. I wanna know more about Dark's allies because we're got about two weeks, maybe, to nail down an attack."

Dan turned his gaunt and bruised face away to hide his anxiety at the name ofDark. He did not want to think about Pariah Dark or his allies or the impending attack. He did not want to think about anything.

Valerie narrowed her eyes in concern, catching onto the small, skittish twitch. "You okay?"

No. He nodded, not raising his eyes.

The woman almost huffed at him. "You're a shitty liar," she said blatantly. "You know that?" Then she began to walk away, thinking that if he did not want to be honest, then she'd let him stew in his own silence for a while. At least until she returned for more information.

The door locked solidly behind her.

Dan leaned back on his pillows, groaning as his body protested every breath and pump of ectoplasmic blood. His fingers shook. No matter what Valerie said, it was punishment. Everything was punishment. His existence was punishment. It was only fitting that he continue to suffer for his mistakes—for without him, Pariah Dark would have never escaped in the first place.

He tried to sink into the bed and pretend he didn't exist.


The next day, Dan was shaking from chills, his red eyes sightless. His fingers were trembling. The cold pulse he'd felt before had now crept down his limbs and made his nerves tingle. By some miracle, he'd managed to press Valerie's emergency comm button, which was still strung around his neck. And then his sight blanked out into white, and his energy fled from him entirely...

Within 90 seconds, Valerie flew into the room. Her face wavered worriedly over him. Her full lips were moving. Dan could hardly even focus on her in the blur of white.

Soon enough, Kwan arrived.

"Kwan?" Valerie demanded immediately, calling over her shoulder, "tell me what the hell is going on. Phantom's not even responding. He pushed the button, and it's…I dunno, like a seizure or something. Do your magic here."

The frazzled doctor held a small scanner out, pressing several buttons to turn it on and calibrate to analyze Phantom's cellular structure. "Uh, one second."

"Is he fading out?" Valerie asked, almost afraid to speak it in front of Dan. She had not put in so much energy to heal him only to lose his valuable information.

Kwan hummed nervously, "I don't think so. I'm not sure what this is." He hovered the scanner over Dan, and it clicked as it analyzed and began to read out data on the screen. "It looks like his cells are…restructuring somehow. His temperature's dropped to forty degrees Fahrenheit."

"Ghosts normally run at fifty to sixty degrees," Valerie said, voice tight. "That can't be good."

Dan's gaunt, bruised face turned to the side, his red eyes dully staring out in a mist. His breath became more labored.

Valerie looked down at the radar on her battle suited arm. Dan was barely a blip and did not even acknowledge a signature. "Please tell me I didn't kill him," Valerie whispered, feeling a streak of anxiety warp through her. "I just…It was just the IV—!"

"—Which should have given him enough energy to stabilize," Kwan said, eyebrows furrowed. "It shouldn't have done this."

"I don't know what to do," she admitted. "If we give him more ectoplasm, his signature could spike."

"And if we don't, he's gonna fade out," Kwan warned. "Is that what you want?"

And then Dan's labored breath began to still, and Valerie panicked more. "Oh my god," she said. "Oh my god." She grabbed onto Dan's half-slack jaw, still dark from abuse and colder than she'd ever felt, and she gently turned his face to her. Half-lidded eyes stared back. "Whatever's wrong, don't you dare back out now. You hear me? That's an order." Her voice strained with an emotion that went beyond a simple exchange. "That's an order, dammit."

For a second, nothing. And then those blood-red eyes blinked slowly. The air around them suddenly dropped hard in temperature. Dan's bare chest shuddered, and his arms began to tremble.

From his shaking fingertips suddenly came a sharp frost, hardening the white blanket with icy patterns.

Valerie's eyes widened. "…Wait. What is—?"

The ghost moaned, confused and out of his mind. He leaned in a bit closer to Valerie's warm hand, which was still tight on his jaw. All he knew was that he needed warmth. Everything was too cold, too blue, too dark—

"That's it!" Kwan said suddenly, pulling away. "Phantom has ice powers, right? He could be regaining them."

"But how?" Valerie demanded. "Look at my radar. Not a signature in sight. He doesn't have a power core yet."

"M-maybe these are some kind of…of power-core calibration?" Kwan offered feebly. "The dip in his body temperature, his reaction—it must be his ice powers trying to activate again. Somehow."

The woman paled. "We can't afford that, and neither can he. Can we stop it?"

The doctor sputtered at her, "What, do I look like an expert about ghost powers? I'm just guessing here!"

Her eyes narrowed tightly. "Dammit, we have to try," she hissed. Her mind was racing. "Okay, so Phantom's temperature is dropping maybe because of his ice powers. We need to get his temperature up to stop it, probably." Her face tightened. "Heat. That would help. Got a heating blanket anywhere?"

"Maybe?" the doctor wailed, turning around to rummage through his storage closet. "Give me a minute."

"Thirty seconds," Valerie snapped.

Kwan, by some miracle, discovered the heating blanket waddled up in the back of his storage closet. He grabbed onto it quickly, then unraveled it and plugged its cord to the outlet. "I can't believe we're doing this," he whispered.

Valerie worked to spread the blanket out. "You and me both," she breathed quickly. Dan did nto seem to notice the additional weight—or the flutter of Valerie's hands as she tucked the edges against him.

"Just hold on," she said to him, voice tight. "Okay? Try to control this."

Dan closed his eyes, still shivering as frost patterns began to drip from his temples and down his cheekbones. He moaned softly, hearing only the sense of urgency in Valerie's voice. His fragmented mind struggled to understand what was happening. And then slowly, he began to feel it. The heating blanket began to grow warm. His shivers died down to trembles, his limbs relaxing in exhaustion. The all-encompassing heat around him was a welcome fire.

And he could feel slim fingers touching his face, a raspy, female voice saying, "You're gonna be fine. We'll work through this."

He tiredly leaned his head toward her touch. Valerie…

And then he fell into a deep sleep, lulled by the heat.


When Dan awoke, he still felt warm. Pleasantly so. He almost thought for a moment that it was a decade in the past, back when he was human…

And then a narrow-eyed Valerie came into view, one of her ringlet curls having fallen out of her ponytail to bounce off her shoulder. "That was not funny," she told him. Something about her looked frazzled. "Don't you ever do that again, you hear me? Or at least warn me or something. Jesus."

He blinked at her. And then bits and pieces came back, and it hit him that he'd felt ice. Ice. Confusion and surprise came over him. He wrestled with the warmth—ah, a blanket—to pull out his hands and stare at them.

Same, ghostly blue, with green bruises peppering the knuckles and down his arm. It had been a long time since he'd felt the growing pains attached to a new power. But when he tried to cognitively activate his ice powers, Valerie smacked his hands down like a disapproving mother. She snapped, "I'm trying to heal you and keep you safe. Don't do that."

He turned away to hide the disgruntled shame in his expression, which he was sure would have irritated Valerie more. He did not want to irritate her, even unintentionally. He was being selfish and illogical. He knew it would only hurt him to try using powers—and it was possible that his healing power core would then begin to emit a signature, which Pariah Dark would be able to sense.

Old habits died hard.

Valerie demanded, "You gonna do this again anytime soon? You know, the weird shakes and cold chills while your power grows back?"

The concept was daunting, but if his power core were truly growing back, he imagined that it would continue. He nodded tiredly.

"Does the blanket…help?"

At the sound of concern in her voice, he turned back to face her, holding onto the blanket edges tighter. There was a vulnerable sort of suspicion in him—a sudden fear that Valerie would take the blanket away upon knowing that it gave him comfort.

But then he reminded himself that Valerie was not Pariah Dark.

She was a better master.

He nodded again, feeling the pain of his cut-out tongue and the words of which he'd been robbed. But then he did not even know what to say in reaction to her care of him.

Dan shivered suddenly. And then his red eyes widened.

It was back. He felt the cold suddenly seep into his veins like a poison, goose-bumping his skin once more. Knowing how painful the process was, and knowing that Valerie disapproved of his powers, he began to panic.

He leaned hard on his elbows, grimacing as he forced his worn body to sit up. He knew he needed to wrap himself closer into the blanket to conserve its heat.

Valerie grabbed onto his arm to assist, careful of the tender scabs still storming down his shoulders. She could feel him tremble. "You trying to sit up?" she asked helplessly.

Dan made a huffy noise of desperation, wincing as he pulled his legs toward him. His trembles began to grow more violent. Valerie blinked, nearly freezing in surprise. Dan's loose pants had slipped a few inches, revealing several lines of raised scars down his lower back, shadowing out beneath the pants hem. Odd—she'd never seen those, even though she'd asked for a full debrief on his injuries.

She'd have to ask Kwan about them, as he would have logged the injury in Dan's report.

In the meantime, she tried to hide her discomfort and worked to pull the fallen blanket up around Dan's shoulders, twisting it so it rested across his broad back almost as a cape. That freed him to move a bit more, and he groaned as he managed to cross his legs. He curled up on the bed, burrowing into the blanket and shivering harder.

A moan escaped his pale lips as his vision began to whiten again, and spindly patterns of frost began to raise against his skin. His fingertips became bloodless and icy.

And then an awkward sort of huff came from Valerie. "Oh my god, everything has to be difficult with you, doesn't it." She held out her hand, activating her armored gloves and her battle suit's heating system. Suddenly, her entire body radiated a powerful warmth. "If you need more heat…"

Dan stared at her open hand, feeling the barest hint of the heat from her.

Then his long, bruised fingers tentatively wrapped around hers. And he held onto her for dear life, the high heat of her battle suit's systems even stronger than the blanket. He pulled her hand to his face and leaned his cheek against it in relief.

Valerie looked uncomfortable, especially as the minutes wore on and she began to feel sweat tingle at her temples. But Dan stopped shivering soon enough, until he was simply holding her hand against his relaxed face.


Sometime later, Valerie was in Kwan's personal office alone, having left Dan upon finding a second heating blanket. He'd been fairly content at the find—or at least content enough to let her go without whining in that silent, pouty way.

Now, she was on a mission. One mission was to forget the memory of Dan touching her, mostly because there seemed to be too much of Dan and touching lately. Her second mission was to find out more about the odd scars she'd seen down his low back—because she knew a pipe could not have not done that, and for an older injury from Pariah Dark, they seemed different from the other fading scars on his body. Stranger still, Kwan had not told her about them, even though she'd requested a full debrief on Dan's condition.

Valerie stared at Kwan's report listlessly, skimming over the notes. It seemed he'd been logging information every day, including a sentence in big block letters that Patient does not like needles! Her full lips twitched in a humorless huff, recalling Dan's startled, hissy reaction to Kwan drawing blood.

It seemed there were very little references to the odd marks until she came across the night of Dan's beating. She read through the detailed list, then came across a little paragraph. The writing was slanted harder, almost as if Kwan were trying to write faster than usual.

She read the paragraph. Then she blinked in disbelief.

She read it again, her heart dropping out of her in a cold, distant way. "Ohmigod," she breathed.

Previously unknown injuries discovered. Appearance would suggest injury origin during imprisonment under Pariah dark. Consistent with mutilation to limit physical mobility. Deep incisions along upper inner thighs and lower abdomen suggest intention was to limit walking. Scar tearing and disrupted healing patterns could be consistent with repeated sexual assault.

Valerie's jaw dropped the smallest fraction, her mind unable to comprehend the last few words. Her face flamed up in a strange way.

…What?

Her skin goose-bumped, and for a time, she felt a surreal sense of insurmountable injustice. Everything that was human about her balked against the paragraph.

And her heart squeezed hard.

Oh my god, she thought, clenching onto the file tighter. I bet Kwan's right. Phantom's whole behavior change—that's why he acts this way. I bet Kwan's right.

Valerie's sculpted eyebrows furrowed as she swallowed hard. Dan had not flinched away from her whenever she'd reached out to touch him. But that didn't mean something wasn't even more wrong with him—something that could put her whole strategy of rehabilitating him at risk.

She pushed her comm button and called Kwan's cell phone. After a few rings, he picked up, and before he could get a second syllable out, she cut in, eyes lit with fire. "—In your office. Now."

There was an uncomfortable, confused pause. Then Kwan's voice said, a bit strained, "What is it this time?"

"We need to talk about Phantom." And then she shut off the comm, sitting apprehensively, staring down at the report in half-disbelief. The silence seemed deafening around her as she waited.

Kwan soon enough appeared, holding a cup of coffee and looking haggard. "What's up?" he called out tiredly.

Valerie turned the report upside down so Kwan could read it, and she stared hard at him from the chair upon which she sat. She pointed to the paragraph and demanded, "Why didn't you tell me?"

His face twisted in confusion for a time. "Tell you what?" And then he leaned over a bit to read the paragraph she'd pointed out. And his fingers imperceptibly began to tighten on his coffee mug, and some part of his face grew pale. "Oh. That."

"Yeah," she said, voice flat. "That. You wrote this before my debrief with you, and you didn't say anything about it then."

The doctor looked helpless, pulling away. "Well, I…" His voice trailed. "It isn't the type of stuff you go around talking about to other people."

"I'm not just other people," Valerie stressed. "Phantom's not just other people—dammit, he's a psychotic basket case under my jurisdiction. This is serious, Kwan. I need to know everything that's happened to him because his powers are growing." Her voice strained. "If he hurts someone because he triggers, it's on me."

Kwan rubbed his temples. "Look, you'd have to talk to him to get a real idea of what happened. All I know is someone sliced him pretty intentionally on his back side and thighs, and that kind of injury and scar tissue can limit mobility. Whatever happened, it was designed to keep him from moving far without a lot of pain. The scar tissue would suggest he suffered some kind of further, repeated trauma. Given the location of the scars, it automatically classifies as sexual assault."

Valerie's jaw set. She fell silent for some time, her teal eyes dark. "So…they cut him. But you can't tell me for sure exactly what happened to him afterwards?"

Kwan shook his head. "It'd be impossible to say. Too much time's passed."

"So you don't know if they really…?"

"Really what?"

Her face flamed up again. "You know. If they did anything more than just scar him up and kick him down."

Kwan looked a little uncomfortable. "No, I wouldn't have a way of verifying that. You'd have to ask him, and honestly, I think he's blocked a lot. Maybe it'd be better not to drudge that up."

"Or maybe everything will go fine until one day he stops suppressing it and then kills everyone," Valerie deadpanned. "Do you really want to risk that? At least right now, he's totally reliant on us. If we figure out what happened, we can help him cope—and maybe, just maybe, keep him from going insane again. I can't afford a time bomb here."

The young doctor pressed his lips together, then asked softly, "Why do you care so much about helping him? He's a killer, Val. He probably deserved whatever happened."

Valerie's face hardened. "This is an investment in the future," she said, voice harsh. "He was a psychotic maniac. Maybe he doesn't have to be one again. But that means I have to build trust and help him through this. I have to give something back, or he'll be an even bigger nightmare later."

Kwan grew silent. He sipped on his coffee, looking suddenly more tired for it. "Well. Then I'll let you talk to him. Preferably when I'm not there."

"Yeah. Thanks."

"You're welcome."

"You got any guesses how he'll react?"

Kwan shrugged helplessly. "People cope in different ways. Maybe he'll try to deny it, or he'll clam up. Maybe he really doesn't remember. Or maybe it'll make him angry. I don't know. He's been all over the place on that spectrum."

"If things go bad, he can't walk or fly away or something, can he?"

The doctor pushed his glasses up, face in a puzzle. "There's no way he's physically able to fly yet. As far as walking…I'm sure those scars have gone down since I saw them, considering his healing rate. But it could still be hard for him. And you have to worry about muscle atrophy too."

Valerie began to rub her temples. "Okay," she breathed. "Okay. I guess I'll…talk to him, then."


Soon enough, she returned to Dan's infirmary room, still holding the report in her hand tightly. She had it in her mind that she needed to confront him. There could not be secrets between them that would inhibit keeping Dan ultimately docile.

Dan looked up at her in curiosity, still sitting but propped up by pillows. The two blankets were woven around him, his white hair falling in straggles against the material. His vulnerable look carried a sense of, Back so soon?

She sat down beside his bed as always. There was a particular comfort level between them where she no longer scanned the room to ensure he hadn't set a trap. "You doing alright?" she asked.

The ghost tightened one of the blankets around him and nodded.

Silence wavered between them, with Dan staring at her in interest, waiting for her to speak. It was rare to see Valerie silent. Something was bothering her—but it was not normal.

"So," she said hesitantly. "I was looking over Kwan's notes. After the beating from Dash, Kwan reset all of your broken bones and checked you over." She grew more tentative, voice softening. "He wrote a note about strange marks he saw down your backside and your thighs."

He blinked.

"Phantom, we know that you got those scars from your time with Pariah Dark. But did he…do anything else besides cut you?"

For one moment, he simply stared at her, as if she'd asked him for the meaning of life.

Her face flamed up. "I m-mean, if he did th-things, like touch you weird or make you do something…uh, with him."

His head tilted, not unlike a dog's. He blinked again, eyes darkening.

Then the next, a wildness overwhelmed him and possessed his body with a demonic strength. With a snarl, he tore through the blankets and overturned the machinery beside the bed, and it crashed to the floor into pieces under his strength. He ripped the monitoring wires off of his body and cried in rage, eyes alit with orange.

Valerie barely missed the wreckage, instinctively swinging herself out of the way in an imbalanced stumble. "What the—?!"

Dan's hands ripped at one of the side rails of his bed, cracking the metal bars and tearing them off their foundations, only to swing them at the wall with a hysterical snarl. The bars clanged against the stone, falling apart at the screws.

"Phantom!" she cried out, throwing her arms up over her head to avoid the bounce of sharp nails around the room. A few hit the armor of her suit. "Stop it! You hear me?!"

Some kind of uncontrollable awareness was in his eyes, as if a part of his mind had been unlocked—a deep part that he'd erased from himself in order to survive. And now Valerie had triggered those memories, unleashing them back into the full swell of his mind.

He continued on with his rampage, throwing his pillow, tearing his blankets, his entire body tense with destructive energy. He seethed, smacking the empty IV drip by his bed so hard that it flew across the room and cracked deep into the drywall.

But he did not continue on a rampage for long. With nothing more in his reach to throw or tear apart, and with his energy failing him, he slowed down. His noise of rage turned into something with decidedly less force.

The crashes stopped.

She inhaled shakily, eyes wide, lowing her arm from her face. "…Phantom?" Valerie whispered hesitantly.

He began to cry. He'd bowed over, the bones of his spine sticking up sickly against his skin, his fingers tangled tightly into his hair. His eyes were squeezed shut as he rocked into himself. He seemed as if he were trying to pull out his hair, to tear himself apart. "Mmh," he sobbed, caught between a scream and a noise of disgust. He pressed his lips tight.

Valerie was frozen. "Ohmigod," she breathed, heart pounding. Dan Phantom was having a breakdown. She'd caused it. "Oh, shit. Okay."

Blood squeezed from between his fingers as he clenched his hair tighter, lips quivering in horror. He must have cut his palm when he'd shoved the machinery to the floor, but he did not seem to register his injury, even when a few trails of blood ran down his forearm. Instead, it appeared that his mind was on a loop, stuck on the memories that Valerie had unlocked.

Valerie stepped forward, horrified. "Phantom," she said. She tried to keep her voice smooth and calm, but it still wavered. "Come on, I need you to snap out of this."

He flinched, still hyperventilating in a strange way, his fingers shaking in his now-bloodied hair. He'd pushed himself against the headboard of the bed, as if to protect his back and curl up against something solid.

"Phantom." She began to walk forward slowly, hands up. He was exhibiting too many cornered animal behaviors to risk becoming his object of fury. She wanted him to know she meant him no harm. "I'm not here to hurt you. Come on. Look at me."

The calm wave of her distinct voice seemed to break through, and he inhaled a shaky, shuddering breath, blinking his eyes. He looked up at her, suddenly realizing what he had done, his hands falling limply to his lap.

The unfettered agony of his gaze made her own eyes burn the longer they held gazes. For a time, only Phantom's gasps of breathlessness and sobs intermixed with the sparking circuitry on the floor. His cut handed twitched limply on his leg, and he simply allowed the ecto-blood to flow from his torn palm onto the white sheets of his bed. Some of his blood had gotten in his hair and on his face from his tantrum.

Valerie inhaled shakily as she stared at him. "I'm sorry," she said, voice strangled. "I needed to know. I didn't want this to… come up later."

She had been expecting an adverse reaction—maybe Phantom refusing to speak with her, maybe total denial or confusion—but she had hoped against fury. She felt as if she were walking on eggshells around him, afraid to set him off into another half-coherent tantrum.

All she knew was that it was good he was confronting this now as a mostly powerless prisoner compared to a fully powered being who'd tried to bury it until it drove him insane again.

"I won't ask what all happened," she said. This time her voice was stronger. She knew it was bad enough without knowing the details, based off his reaction. "You don't have to tell me."

But the shame was deep within him now, and he could no longer look her in the eye. His fragmented mind simply replayed the memory—of hanging in chains, of his body pushed to its hand and knees on the stone floor—

He squeezed his eyes shut, shuddering.

Valerie's voice cut in, soft. "Can I look at your hand? Looks like you cut it pretty bad." When he said nothing, she stepped forward again, tentative. "You're bleeding. I can help you." Then she reached out her hand, careful to give him space. "If you give me your hand, I'll help you wrap it up, okay?"

He then moved his hand to touch his fingers against hers. But Phantom seemed to hardly care. His gaze was set in some kind of wide-eyed dullness, as if he'd suddenly lost the last shred of dignity within him.

Perhaps he had.

Valerie swallowed hard, and she gently cradled his twitching hand. "Kwan's probably gonna have to stitch this," she warned. She looked around, a bit frazzled at the destruction of the room. Afraid to let him go, she instead grabbed onto the side of a half-fallen bed sheet and then began to wrap its edge around his palm. She figured that ripped sheet was a lost cause anyway.

The human touch made his face twitch. His back began to slouch, and he crossed his legs again on the bed. Then he tiredly leaned sideways against her, having exhausted himself.

Valerie froze.

Her teal eyes widened at the feeling of Dan's temple against her chest, his shoulders and arm brushing against stomach. The weight of his body was solid, fully leaned against her as if she were the last thing in the universe. She was stiff at the sudden contact.

And then she realized that Dan was still crying. His body trembled hard.

Something about that put her whole face in a grimace. Her heart pulled. She tentatively began to run her fingers down his matted, sweaty strands of hair. For a time, she said nothing, for she knew there wasn't much to say.

Eventually, she told him, voice soft, "You're gonna be okay, space cadet. You're gonna be okay."

His breath was hardly above a shudder, tears streaming silently down his face. His tears slipped from his skin and down the slick metal of Valerie's warm battle suit.

He almost wanted to tell her exactly what had happened—that it hadn't actually been Pariah Dark, but Pariah Dark's courtiers looking to gain revenge in any way possible while he hung in chains—but he still could not speak words.

And so he allowed himself to simply stop thinking, and to breathe in her scent again and again—a rhythmic action that calmed down his nerves and memories into a muddied exhaustion. The repetitive stroke of her thumb against the back of his neck seemed to steal away his energy.

And they stayed that way for a long time.


A/N: So I'm really nervous about placing this in M because people took this series off their favorites and not as many reviewed last time. I chose to make the rating change because this series already uses heavy language and violence, and I discovered that rape references really belong as M. And there's officially two stories that include that topic. So…yeah. Better safe than sorry.

In other news, I discovered that my health is a major concern right now. Doctors are still testing my blood to figure out exactly what's wrong, but it doesn't look super good. I'm actually kind scared about this (I mean, I've been out of college only two years—I don't think I'm old enough to be worrying about organs failing). So I'll keep you guys updated as I find out more.

Anyway, please let me know your thoughts, questions, critiques, or ideas about this chapter!