Disclaimer: Thanks to Lady Audentium, Invader Johnny, starwater09, SweetestChick, monsta, ZoneRobotnik, Noname, JadeliketheGem, and sharkyskadi for reviewing last time!
I've had a really hard end of the year, to be honest. My grandfather made it out of the hospital, but my grandmother didn't, and I'm just now getting back from her funeral. She was an amazing person who loved everyone, and her death hit me much harder than I ever imagined. I've been kinda in a daze about a lot, so I figured maybe writing some Deliverance would be a good distraction.
Series Summary: Dan is the rich playboy son of the mayor. Valerie is a poor waitress who hates him. Neither is sure who is the beauty and who is the beast. Human!AU. Genre: Humor/Drama/Romance.
Chapter Warnings: Language, Sexual innuendoes, and SMUT (please be warned)
Deliverance
Chapter 59: Caution, Hot: Part 4, Epilogue
Late that evening, Valerie returned to her run-down apartment complex with a smile on her face. She wore her now-dry jean shorts and baggy shirt, and her hair no longer bore their beautiful curls, or her face the expensive makeup—but a merriment had settled deep within her, mostly because she'd successfully converted the great Daniel Masters into a 1980s movie connoisseur, which meant that perhaps he was not such a lost cause.
He was damnably fun to be around when he wasn't being a jerk.
Her happiness was even enough to make her not groan at the sight of her home. The apartment building in Elmerton had dark green paint that was flaking off the cement walls. As Valerie walked up the stairwell, she carefully avoided a rotten apple core on the ground.
But as she pushed open the rusted door to the third floor, she noticed a strange man leaving with what looked to be an exact replica of her floor lamp. Her dark brows furrowed, but she continued on. And then her heart stopped.
Her door was open, with a few belongings strewn across the threshold, with various people milling around and grabbing things. Her eyes widened as she cried out, "What the hell is going on here?" No one turned around. "That's my stuff! That's my stuff—don't touch it!" She pushed aside an old woman who'd taken a blanket, and then she ripped it from the woman's hands, panicking. "Oh my god." The apartment had been completely cleared out. On the door was a note: Eviction for failed rent pay. "Oh shit."
Valerie stood in terror, every line of joy in her body sinking into a dark foreboding. Evicted. She'd been evicted. She'd missed the deadline to pay rent.
That's what she was supposed to do the night of the bachelor auction.
"No one touch anything," she demanded tersely. "Or I swear, I'll hunt you down!" Then she turned around and booked down the stairwell to the main office, heart pounding.
The main office was a small, old building in the center of the apartment grounds—but it was also after seven in the evening, with the office likely closed. And sure enough, it was.
"God dammit," she cried, voice tight. "Oh my god." She grabbed onto her hair with one hand, her breath coming in unnatural heaves. She'd been kicked out. All of her stuff had been carted out.
She began running back, in hopes of at least protecting her things. As she ran, she rummaged through her small purse for her old phone, calling up Paulina. The phone rang as her heart pounded. And then it rang again and again, until finally, "Hi, sorry I can't come to the phone right now—"
"—Dammit, Paulina," she breathed. She waited until the voicemail kicked in to say, "It's Valerie. I'm in deep shit now, oh my god, please please call me back when you get this. Okay?" Then she hung up. And she tried again.
Back up on the third floor, a few stupid souls had begun to ponder over her threadbare curtains. She cried out, "Get away from my stuff! That's mine!"
Valerie began to hyperventilate as she realized she had no safe place to hide her stuff—especially if Paulina didn't call back. She momentarily entertained what it would mean to cart her things to her dad's room at the hospital. But without a car, that meant she would have to take the city bus, which would limit her to only a single box. And even worse, if she showed up like this at her dad's room, he'd worry so hard—
Tears hit her eyes as she kneeled down beside her remaining belongings. Her garage sale loveseat was still there. She could probably stay on it for the night and keep watch over her things. Likely, the maintenance team at the complex had pulled out her stuff, and true eviction movers would be coming to take away her things to auction tomorrow.
She shakingly pulled a blanket off one of the cardboard boxes, searching for her only valuable. By some miracle, her mother's wedding ring still remained inside her coupon pouch. Tears slipped down her face as she pulled the ring closely to her heart, pressing her lips tightly together. Every part of her was damning her own stupidity.
This was the third time she'd not paid rent. And this time, it wasn't because she didn't have the money—it was because she'd simply forgotten. All because of Dan and his stupid bachelor auction.
Her fist clenched around the ring.
The next day, she was all business.
Dan was merrier than usual, waking up well before she'd arrived and handsomely cleaned up in tight jeans and a designer shirt. His red scars seemed less prominent on his face, as if he'd healed a bit more. He had a jaunt in his step. "Valerie dear," he greeted her, angling a brow as she roughly pulled the mop bucket from the laundry room closet. He leaned against the threshold of the door. "You're early. Good, more time for me to tease you that I found part of your shoe still in my pool."
"Fuck off," she snapped. She'd not slept well, clinging close to her cardboard box in fear that someone would steal it. She'd been woken up at seven sharp by eviction movers, who were large men with heavy muscles and leering eyes. The hair on the back of her neck and the skittish fear in her heart had still not settled down.
Dan looked taken aback, but then a demonic smile stretched his thin lips. "What's this, playing hard to get today?"
She threw the bucket at him. "I said, fuck off," she said shortly. "I've got even more work to do today, no thanks to you."
He held the bucket with a genuine surprise now. He began to curiously search her, his sharp eyes noting the frazzle in the lines of her body and the way she stiffened as she leaned over. "What's this?" he murmured. "A bad one-night stand?"
"No," she said defensively. She turned away.
"Ah, then it is your time of the month," he nodded to himself.
She turned to him and hissed, "It's not. Now get the fuck out of my way, and leave me alone."
He seemed surprised again. "Why? I thought we were getting along just fine this week."
"I don't want to get along with you," she snapped. "You're just a selfish, spoiled kid who's always ruining my life. Now, leave."
His blue eyes narrowed at the insult, a disbelief coming over him. "Well, fine." The joy left him. He dropped the bucket. "Forget it."
Valerie looked up at him, watching as he walked away, his lines as stiff as hers.
Her full lips thinned in frustration, and then pain. She grabbed the abused bucket from the floor, her eyes burning with tears as her heart flared with anger. It was all his fault. Everything was his fault—especially for making her forget that he financially owned her, flaunting a few thousand dollars for charity in the name of digging her into an even bigger hole.
She swallowed hard, blinking rapidly as she grabbed onto the floor mop. In that moment, the heavy wood handle was the only connection she had to reality. Her fingers shook. Her breath came unevenly. She was homeless.
This time, genuinely homeless, with most of her belongings to be sold to pay her debts to the apartment complex.
Valerie quickly tried to wipe away her tears, only for more to come as she stood in the silence of the grand laundry room. It would do her no good to wallow in self-pity. Now was the time for action—to dig herself out of the hole Dan had created.
In an attempt to cheer herself up, she decided to look up the addresses for the nearest shelters, in between her mopping. With her phone dead and no compatible charger around, she had to opt for looking through an old phone book, stuffed away in one of the cupboards.
She wiped the tears from her eyes and quietly used the extra telephone in the kitchen, praying that Dan would not walk in and see her asking about shelters.
"This is Open Wings Shelter, how can I help you?" said a pleasant female voice on the other end.
Valerie hesitated for a second, and then said, voice wavering, "Hi, I need a place to stay. I've been evicted, I don't have money to get a hotel, and I don't have anywhere to go. Can you take me in?"
The woman paused. "I'm sorry, dear. We're currently at capacity, and taking any more people would be against code. However, I have the numbers of a few other shelters in the area, if you're interested?"
Valerie haphazardly grabbed for a pen on the counter. "Give 'em to me."
The woman named off a few. "The Amity Park Missions might still be taking people. You'll also want to check the Home for Battered Women, The Masters Family Shelter, and the Sheltering Star Foundation."
But as Valerie discovered, they were all full too.
"I'm sorry, we've had so many people walk in that—"
"—just can't accept anyone else at this time, but—"
"—Did you try Open Wings Shelter?"
She hung up the phone, feeling even more nauseated than when she'd begun. "Oh my god," she whispered tightly. Amity Park was a city where the rich always got richer, and the poor always got poorer. She shouldn't have been surprised that all of the organizations were maxed out.
Her mind raced. This meant that likely, when she left for the evening, she would need to take some food with her because the soup lines would run out. She supposed she could still call her father and see if he could sneak her into his hospital room—but then she feared that if anyone discovered her, they might kick both her and him out. And calling Paulina was out—the woman skipped around to the houses of her various lovers, none of whom Valerie knew the location of.
Which left her with only one other option: To rough it out on her own.
By the time 5:00 in the evening rolled around, the sun was already setting, with an increasing late-fall chill settling in. Valerie still had not seen Dan since their brief altercation in the laundry room. She feared he'd simply left for the main office downtown, perhaps to just get away from her.
She patted her pocket with her mother's ring as she pulled her thread-worn jacket over her shoulders, preparing for the chauffeur to drive her back down to the Elmerton line. She usually walked or took a bus from there to avoid calling attention to herself. Now, she was thankful she'd never been driven fully home, because it meant no awkward conversations about being dropped off in a run-down park.
By 6:00 in the evening, Valerie found herself sitting in Elmerton park in a daze. On her lap was her muddied cardboard box that no one had disturbed beneath the heavy shrubs. A small mercy.
Her fingers chilled as her breath puffed out in a cloud into the cool air. She tried not to hyperventilate as tears ran down her face. The bench was hard and cold. "I'm ok," she said shakily. "I'm ok. I'll make it through. I always have."
But this was the first night she no longer believed herself.
Back on the rich side of Amity Park, Dan slept restlessly, his body covered in a cold sweat as his face and hands twitched. His dream was a collection of images—oddly enough of Valerie. But she seemed quite different, wearing some kind of strange, armored jumpsuit.
In his dream, he pulled away a gloved hand from his face. His fingers glowed with a green substance—like blood. "You bitch," he heard himself snarl.
The Valerie of his dreams cried as she clutched her side. He realized that some of the red on her was not the jumpsuit, but blood. Her voice was shaky, "You look better this way."
His fist clenched. "And you'd look better dead."
Dan's eyes snapped open as he sat up in bed, gasping oddly. He looked down at his skin, and for a brief minute, thought himself strangely colored. He sunk in on himself, squeezing his eyes shut. "What the—?" he whispered. His face hurt terribly—perhaps just as bad as the day Valerie had injured him.
Far across the mansion, in the drawer of Vlad's desk, another notch of the medallion darkened, sinking into a dull gray.
Dan held his face as he inhaled, his heart still pounding. Confusion overwhelmed him as he struggled to think of what this all meant. His dream had felt so real—Valerie looked so altered, older even. And bleeding out. The raw vehemence of his dream left him even more distant.
The clock on the wall said 1:00 in the morning, with the whole of his expansive room silent and cold. He swallowed hard as he wiped his face of tears in a daze. He tentatively laid back down, pulling his dark gray covers back over himself.
Dan did not believe in premonitions, but the sight of Valerie bleeding out was enough to rattle him. He could not simply write it off as just a strange nightmare. It felt too real. Too personal.
He grabbed his phone from beside his table and, thinking himself almost crazy, sent a text to Valerie. Are you okay?
The rich boy waited, sitting up in bed as the minutes passed. Valerie usually was good at checking her phone, mostly because she worried so much about her father in the hospital. But seconds turned to minutes, and minutes to an hour with no response.
"This is ridiculous," he murmured in irritation to himself. He turned bloodshot eyes to a clock that now said 3:00 in the morning. "She's trying to sleep—she's probably fine. I need sleep too."
But he never did fall back into sleep, instead feeling a great anxiety that something was genuinely wrong.
When Valerie arrived the next morning, she looked a bit frozen and even more exhausted than before. She smelled of leaves and pine and had dirt stains on the hem of her jeans.
"Valerie," Dan called to her, relieved at the sight of her.
She stiffly placed her jacket on the golden coat rack. Dark circles wore under her eyes. "What."
He paused as he eyed her, for a moment stumbling over himself. "I sent you a message last night—you didn't respond."
She glared at him. "Not everything revolves around you." And then the anger gave way to depression. "My phone's dead, and my charger's gone."
He followed her as she walked away. "You can use mine," he offered easily enough.
"I don't have a fancy phone like you do," she snapped. "Now just let me get my work done. Please."
"I feel like you're hiding something from me," he complained.
"I'm not," she lied. "Now go get your work done—or did you forget that you've got a job too?"
That evening, Valerie looked even more worried and skittish before she left, sneaking a few protein bars into her coat pocket when she believed Dan was not looking.
The rich boy began to worry that maybe a check hadn't gone through—that she was trying to hide going hungry. He waited until he knew she would be back home at her apartment, and then he pulled up her address on his phone and began to call her housing complex.
"Elmerton Edition," said the gruff man on the other end of the phone.
Dan said, "I need to speak with Valerie Gray."
"Valerie Gray? She's not here anymore."
"…What?"
"She was evicted the other day."
Dan nearly scoffed, unable to understand the concept. Valerie? Evicted? "That's absurd. Did she leave a forwarding address? "
"Nope."
His lip curled in disgust. "You're no help to me, then." And he hung up, this time his nagging worry beginning to erupt into genuine concern. Valerie's phone was dead. She was evicted with no forwarding address.
He called up Damon next and asked, "Do you know where Valerie currently lives?"
The old man coughed. "Why do you wanna know, young man?" he carried a deep suspicion in his voice.
Dan rolled his eyes. "Not for that reason, I assure you. No, she—uh, left her phone here. I want to return it to her."
The father hesitated, then gave him the address to Elmerton Edition. Dan's alarm began to increase. "You make sure that girl keeps her phone on her. That's not a good part of town."
"I am aware," he murmured. "Goodbye, Damon." And then he hung up and hissed, "Dammit. Valerie, what is going on?"
The problem was that now he had no way of tracking her. And it was already getting dark.
Never in his entire life did Daniel Masters expect to be worried for a girl. No woman had ever inspired his fear so much as Valerie Gray, whom he feared had disappeared off the face of the earth
He called up the security for the house next. "Nicolai," he said tersely. "Get off your damn gaming sites and pick up."
A grating, nasal voice answered. "I am Technus," he said, almost too loud for the receiver. "Master of all technology and—"
"—I have a side job for you," Dan interrupted with in a frantic, irritated tone. "I'll pay extra—I don't care what. And I want this off the books."
The old man hummed. He secured their line, encrypting it from any possible government officials. "Off the books, you say? My, my, what kind of trouble are we in, hmm?"
"I need you to track someone for me," Dan said as he grabbed for his leather coat, preparing to make a late-night road trip. "Can you track a woman named Valerie Gray? Who lives in Elmerton?"
"What?"
"Valerie Gray," Dan snarled in panic. "She left here, her phone is dead, and now I can't find her."
In the background was a crunching noise, as if the old man were eating something. His voice was muffled. "Dead phone, you say?"
"Yes."
"You know, tracking your playboy bunnies for you is not part of my job description," the technology guru said, voice conniving. "I do corporate espionage; I'm not a dispatcher."
"Dammit, you old coot, this is serious. She could be in trouble." His face twisted. "And she isn't some playboy bunny."
Typing sounds echoed in the background. "Valerie Gray, right?"
"Yes," Dan said tightly.
There was a pause. "Isn't that the name of the server girl who—?"
"—It is not your place to ask questions." Dan's hair almost seemed to lift at the incredible irritation that shook him. "Just find her."
In the headquarters of Masters Financial, the elderly tech genius sat in a large office. He had a somewhat skeletal appearance, with hair white as snow and eyes a color of brown that some dared to call red. "Well," he said, cracking his fingers and wiggling them over his keyboard, "it's been a while since you let me hack into government systems. I might be a bit rusty here."
"And what happened to your technological prowess, hm?" Dan snarled, not one bit amused.
"Oh, please—I'll take me, like, two minutes instead of thirty seconds." Technus rolled his eyes. "You're so touchy." As he could not track Valerie through a dead phone, he pulled up the city's traffic cameras and recordings, as well as an image of her (long expired) driver's license. "When did she leave today?"
"Around five," Dan said, running a frazzled hand through his hair. "The chauffeur usually drops her off at the corner of Main and Broadway. It would imagine it's about a twenty-minute drive. Can you find her?"
Technus wormed his way through the security recordings, rewinding to just past five and then fast-forwarding slowly. "What was she wearing?"
Dan's brows knitted. "Jeans? A red jacket?" He paused, then added, "Her hair was down too."
Soon enough, around the 5:25 mark, a familiar black car appeared at the curb, and a skittish-looking woman in jeans and a red jacket exited.
"I've got a visual," Technus said, fast-forwarding through the recording and switching to different cameras. "She headed down Broadway, and…took a left on Third street. Where did you say she lived again?"
"Elmerton Edition—those shitty apartments with the green paint. Or, at least she did until she was evicted."
"Then she's going the wrong way," Technus said dryly. He was getting into it now. "This girl was definitely not heading home." The lithe shadow that was Valerie Gray slipped through the rusted gates of a run-down park. Technus then fast-forwarded through the recording, the image blurry from the distant angle. His dark eyes slowly began to widen as he pieced Valerie's fate together. "Oh no," he gasped, leaning forward. He was perhaps a bit more dramatic than necessary.
"Oh, what?" Dan demanded tensely.
"Oh, this is bad. I mean, this is really bad—wow, this girl is definitely in some serious—"
"—What?" Dan gripped his phone with knuckles so tight that they were bloodless. A dozen fears swept through him. His dream with an injured Valerie. "Is she hurt?"
Technus gave him the address to the park and then added, straight-faced, "You better get there quick."
"What's wrong? Does she need an ambulance? Police?"
"I can't say," Technus said dramatically. "But it's bad—if you call police, you might just get her in trouble."
Dan ended the call immediately without another word.
Meanwhile, Technus sat back in his chair as he opened up a small bottle of orange soda. "Well, well, this is a surprise. That little son of a gun is chasing the homeless tail of the server girl who attacked him?" He cackled to himself. "Oh, this is just rich."
Rich enough, he wondered, that newspapers would pay a good deal of money for such an intimate scoop on the Masters family.
The genius paused for a bit. "Or I could use it to blackmail him for a higher salary." He nodded, pleased with himself. "Yeah, blackmail. Perfect."
"God dammit," Dan hissed as he grabbed the keys to his least-flashiest car—a BMW. "I should have told her to stay here. I should have asked what was wrong. What the fuck was she thinking, not telling me."
He sped out of the garage in a roar of the engine, turning on the bright LED headlights. The long acreage of the Masters mansion flew by into the high-end homes of other upper-class families. The houses irritated him now because none of them contained a safe and sound Valerie Gray.
"The dreams aren't real," he murmured apprehensively to himself, fearful that they in fact were, perhaps in some twisted way. Maybe Valerie had been caught by a gang—was doing something illegal to make extra money. Maybe they'd hurt her. "They can't be."
The address Nicolai had provided was deep within the heart of the Elmerton slums. Not even he had ever ventured into such an unstable part of town. Legend had it that if the living didn't kill someone, then the ghosts of their victims would finish the job.
It took twenty grueling minutes to arrive near the run-down park. Dan grimaced as he peered through the windshield, leaning forward as he drove on a massively unmaintained road. The temperature reading on his dashboard read just above freezing outside. "Jesus," he breathed. The rusted gates had trash stuck to them in odd places, with a few bodies lying around that he assumed to be other homeless people sleeping—or the latest murder victims of gangs. He narrowed his eyes apprehensively, looking for Valerie. "What the fuck was she thinking, running here."
And it was there he found her. He saw a familiar body sitting in the dark under an interstate bridge. The woman was sitting cross-legged with a cardboard box in her lap, her head resting on the top of it.
"Valerie?" he breathed. He pulled his car over by the bridge, shutting it down. He haphazardly raced out of his car, running toward her while looking over his shoulder. The cold wind bit deep into his bones.
She looked up, and then her dark face began to pale into a waxen color. "Oh no," she said. She swallowed hard. "Oh shit." She stood up and began to straighten her spine, not willing to look weak in front of him. She wiped the tears from her eyes but still missed a few streaks. Her hands were shaking too hard from the cold.
As he approached, he hissed quietly at her, "What the hell are you doing out here? Do you have any idea how dangerous staying out here is?" He looked at loss as he neared, unable to understand the concept of no alternatives. "God dammit, Valerie—you got evicted?"
She inhaled shakily and glared at him darkly. "It's your fault," she cried. "Or mine. I don't know—the stupid bachelor auction made me miss my payment deadline." Her breath hitched. "So they kicked me out."
Dan, noting Valerie's chilled body, pulled off his own jacket and wrapped it around her. Something about him looked overwhelmed. "I don't care what the reason is, you should've told me." He looked around at the rot and mold along the underside of the bridge. "This is crazy."
Valerie tightened her fingers into his jacket, which was hot with his body warmth. "No," she snapped shakily. "This is what happens when you get screwed over by everyone." Her eyes watered. "Why the hell are you here—how did you even find me?"
"I know people," he said indignantly, "lucky for you. Now come on, you are not staying here."
"But I don't have anywhere else to go," she argued.
"Yes, you do. You're going home with me." He pushed her toward his car and added, "Is this your box?"
The cold had stolen some of her will away, leaving her tired and worn. She nodded.
He grabbed onto it and easily lifted it onto his broad shoulder. "Is this everything?"
"Everything that wasn't taken for auction," she admitted quietly.
Dan's face hardened even further in unhappiness. He opened up the door to the passenger side of his car and gave her a look. "Now get in."
She crossed her arms as she sat down in his expensive BMW, feeling like a child. "I don't need you to help me," she said.
He rolled his eyes as he handed her the muddied cardboard box of things. "Because let me guess, you had it under control back there?"
Before she could respond, he shut the door, his face dark in worry and anxiety.
He walked over to the driver's side and opened the door. As he climbed in, Valerie stared at him, looking almost fearful. "A rich guy like you always wants favors for stuff like this," she complained.
His lips tightened as he locked the doors and turned on the car. "Did it ever occur to you that perhaps I just want your friendship?"
"Yeah?" she challenged. "You can't buy that either."
His hands tightened on the steering wheel, and he said, "And do you honestly think I could live with myself if I just…let you freeze or get mugged or worse out here?"
"Oh, you mean like you do for everyone else?" she said, waving her hand. "There's at least a dozen people begging around here each day, and I bet my whole box of stuff that you never even looked at one."
Dan's face burned with angry embarrassment. "So I have to be some kind of saint or martyr to reach your level of moral superiority, then."
"No," she said, eyes hard. "It's just, wow, you chose to help the girl you loved to harass over the old man who hasn't showered in a week or the half-dead prostitute with AIDs. You're probably just thinking this was a good way to get in my pants."
He slammed on the brakes, their seatbelts kicking in. Valerie's eyes widened as she grabbed for her box in panic.
Dan turned to her, his face not far from her own. "You know, what?" he hissed. "Fine. I'm selectively an asshole. I'm helping you because for some ungodly reason, I'm worried about you. I don't know how the half-dead prostitute ended up where she is, but I know how you did. And I know it was my fault."
Valerie stared back at him with wide eyes.
He seemed to realize then what he was doing, and he sat back in fury, pressing his lips tightly together. "Now," he said firmly, "I'm driving you to my home. I'm going to offer you whatever room you want—not because I'm trying to buy my way into your pants, or whatever." He waved his hand. "And when we get there, you can say no and go right back to sleeping outside. But at least you'd be sleeping on safer ground than where I found you, with at least a tent or something of ours. And that would be enough for me."
She gripped her small box of things tighter and tighter. She said nothing for a long time, and an awkward stretch of silence hung over the car as Dan fell silent as well. Then, softly, she said, "Ok."
The rich man exhaled in a partially frustrated way as he pulled back onto the street. "I'll put in a call with your landlord tomorrow as well—I can probably track the auction house they sent your stuff to. If nothing else, we can put it in storage until you find another place."
Valerie pressed her lips tightly together to hide the fact that she was on the brink of tears once more. "I can probably buy it back myself—"
He waved her off. "Forget it," he said shortly. A part of him was irritated with himself—another part irritated with her for not even thinking to ask for help. It meant that she didn't trust him enough to say anything. And that, oddly, hurt. "Your belongings are what, a thousand dollars total? If that? Did they take all of your clothes too?"
She tapped the box in her lap and looked shamed. "I saved some."
In that moment, the great Daniel Masters looked tired. "Jesus, Valerie," he said, almost in disbelief. He felt great cognitive dissonance at the reality that she was living out of a box. "And they can just take everything like that?"
Valerie turned her face to look out the window, watching the slums slip away into nicer neighborhoods and late-night diners. "It's in the contract," she said, voice wavering. "It was the only way I could get an apartment with how bad my credit is."
Dan grimaced, his face flushing again in embarrassment. Her credit was partially his own fault. "Well. You'll stay at my house tonight. We'll…figure out the rest later."
"And you're sure your dad won't mind?"
"Trust me," he said dryly, "I've brought home much stranger things than a homeless woman. Knowing how much he adores you, I'm sure he'll be thrilled." Something in his face darkened. "And it's my house anyway."
It was nearing 8:00 in the evening as the sharp BMW cut through the higher-end of downtown to the newly paved roads leading to the rich suburbs.
"Dan?" Valerie called out.
He briefly flickered his eyes her way.
She was tightly holding her box, looking for all the world much younger. "Thank you."
His eyes softened.
That night, after Valerie had chosen a guest bedroom at the front of the west wing, Dan went to bed—and suffered another odd nightmare.
Valerie's armored fingers sunk into his arm as she gasped. He was choking her.
"It's so much fun to see you struggle," he murmured in her ear. "To watch you panic."
Her full lips wrenched open as her dark face reddened from lack of air.
"Say goodbye, Valerie." His sight flickered to a pile of rotting, dead bodies in the distance. "Just like the rest of your kind."
He woke up in a cold sweat, feeling outside of himself, tangled weirdly in his sheets. He gasped for breath and grabbed onto his own throat, swallowing hard. The dream was so real—it was almost as if he could feel the hot skin of Valerie's neck and the erratic pulse of her heart as something like bone crunched—and then the bodies—
Dan felt a great nausea overwhelm him. He clasped his hand over his mouth as he stumbled out of bed. He barely made it to his connected bathroom in time, vomiting into the toilet in a daze. He held onto the porcelain for dear life, confused and horrified as his stomach churned. Tears rose to his eyes. It felt so real. Everything felt so real.
His strong muscles trembled as he sat back on the tiles, feeling disgusted with himself—and genuinely afraid.
It had been Valerie. He'd been choking her (had it been him? Who was it?).
"What the hell," he breathed out loud, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Why would I dream that."
It all felt similar to his first dream, from the night before. It was the same setting, the same strange skyline in the distance, the same weird clothes—almost as if the dreams were connected. Perhaps this was simply guilt. Guilt for driving Valerie into poverty, manifesting itself as some strange image to jolt him into action.
Dan decided he would immediately attempt to forget it. But something deep down told him he couldn't, no matter how hard he tried.
At 5:00 the next morning, Valerie—normally an early riser for work—woke up. She was initially disoriented at the sight of an unfamiliar ceiling and at how big and comfortable her bed was. It took her several minutes to remember that she was back in the house of Daniel Masters.
She sat up in bed, the expensive sheets falling off her body. Parts of her curly hair were still damp from showering the night before. She smelled like Dan's shampoo now and was wearing one of his long shirts to sleep in, and everything about that made her whole body blush.
"What have I gotten myself into," she whispered. Thinking back on his worried face from the night before made her heart pound and her fingers curl tight into the comforter.
Dan, it seemed, cared for her in the oddest of ways. And she had no idea now where that put her in relation to him, because it seemed the more time they spent together, the harder and harder it was to not feel something.
She could still feel the heat from his jacket goose-bumping her skin.
"This is bad," she whispered to herself. "The jerk's actually growing on me."
Upon dressing, she tentatively trudged into the kitchen, surprised to find Dan there. He looked as if he had recently showered, his long hair still curled straggles down his face. He was nursing a cup of coffee in his hand, with an untouched muffin in front of him.
She said curiously, "You're up early."
"Couldn't sleep," came his simple reply. When he flickered his blue eyes up to hers, she noticed that they were bloodshot, with his skin pale and haggard. "How about you."
She bit her lip. "I slept really good. Almost didn't want to get up."
Her response inspired a tired but genuine smile upon his face, lifting some of the anxiety from him. "Good."
They fell silent at that, with Valerie awkwardly trying not to seem like a mooch as she grabbed a banana from the nearby fruit bowl. She sat down opposite of him at the large table, watching him as he stared at his muffin without eating it. "Are you sure you're okay?"
"I'm fine," he said shortly. He seemed to shake out of his daze and eyed her. "Did you get a hold of your father?"
She gave him a look. Her newly charged phone (thanks to Dan once again covering her ass and buying a compatible charger) had shown fifteen missed calls from Paulina and several from her father, and some oddly concerning texts from Dan himself. "Yeah, but I haven't told him yet. He's gonna flip when he finds out I got evicted from Elmerton. And he'll flip again if he finds out I'm spending the night here."
Dan eyed her. "I could go with you," he offered. "If you need to hunt for a new place."
In that moment, her face burned with embarrassment. "I already had the worst credit score ever. If people see I've got two evictions on my record, they're not gonna let me in."
He paused, then said hesitantly, "I could…cosign for you. And pay your deposit. They would not think twice on it, if you had my backing."
That made her seem even more frail. "I don't want any more charity," she snapped, her anger more of a depression. "I don't want to be even more in your debt than I already am."
A part of her burned in shame that she would even need a cosigner.
Dan rubbed his temple, almost absentmindedly. "You're so difficult to please…I have a final idea, but I'm not sure you'll like it."
She warned, "If it involves sex with you, the answer's no."
His thin lips twitched in a tired humor. "No, I mean I have a legitimate idea that does not involve prostitution."
"Praise god," she said flatly. "What is it?"
"Just….stay here," he said. "If it offends your sense of honor, you can work more hours in the day. But I've no reason to charge you rent, and I have many rooms."
She looked up, almost fearful. "I don't think that's a good idea."
"Why not?" he asked. "It is a brilliant idea. You will no longer waste money on bus tickets, will be able to save up for a time, and…" He shrugged. "The house will be far more interesting with you in it."
She narrowed her eyes. "The last part's what I'm afraid of," she deadpanned.
Most individuals would have jumped at the change to spend his money. And here this woman was fearful of spending any more of it than she had to. He hesitated, then said, "Please stay. I owe you a debt for causing not only your first eviction, but your second. And I hate being in debt to anyone. I would like to…work off my debts as well."
In that moment, he seemed vulnerable, as if afraid he had revealed too much.
She paused, feeling that awkward sense of attraction for him rise back up.
Then she said tentatively, "…Well, I guess it's not a bad trade-off. I'll have more time to clean up around this dump if I do."
"You do still have part of a flip-flop by the pool," he reminded her, a renewed merriment in him.
The mention inspired a much-needed, weak smile on her face. "Oh, right. How could I forget."
Valerie found being at the mansion a steady and comforting foundation in her otherwise crazed life. Cleaning there had become almost a second nature, with the grounds as familiar to her as the back of her hand.
By that afternoon, she'd managed to tackle most of the heavy lifting and now was working toward cleaning out old cupboards—specifically the TV stand. She pulled out the disastrous mountain of DVDs and home recordings to arrange them in alphabetical order and fit the discs back into their original jackets.
In doing so, she noticed something strange. Hidden deep in the back was an unmarked DVD, with the exception of a scrawled phrase, Dark Gray.
"What the?" Valerie murmured to herself. She spun the DVD over and then, for the hell of it, loaded it into the player, curious of what old movie it could be.
The TV blinked a few times, and then brightened into an image of a dark room with electric green lights. A music video from a few years ago began to show up—
The white text at the bottom said EMBER – Dark Gray.
And then recognition hit her. "Oh," she said. The popular music video, she remembered, had inspired numerous conspiracy theories regarding Dan. Several people had accused one of the male actors as being him, although she could recall him denying it on television.
Ember, as the female sex idol of the decade, had music videos full of fan service for her groupies. Within the video, she wore very little but armor and scraps of black leather as she sang seductively into the ear of a man, who was chained to a chair.
The man's form was familiar despite the blindfold over his eyes.
And then Valerie burst out laughing. "Oh my god," she said. "It is you. Haha!"
At that time, a tired Dan was crossing from the kitchen back to his office to work. "What?" And then Dan looked up at the TV and paled. He nearly dropped the lunch in his hands as his eyes widened—in horror. "Turn that off. Right now!"
"Oh, no," Valerie giggled. "This is hilarious."
He set down his sandwich on the coffee table and desperately reached forward for the remote control. Valerie swiped it out of his reach, still giggling as the music video played.
In the video, the attractive Ember pulled Dan's head back by his hair. "Can't you see what you've done," she sang softly in his ear. As the song began to bridge into a climax, her hands disappeared down the front of his shirt slowly pushing it down his shoulders to reveal his naked torso. "I hate this monster you've become."
"Dammit, Valerie," he hissed in panic, reaching farther. His fingers scraped against the curls of her hair, and then she scooted away again in delight of his embarrassment. "Fucking turn it off!"
In the video, Ember had sat on him, her long legs straddling his hips. "But in the darkness of the night," as she sang against his lips, her velvet voice turning with a weak ache. "I still want you."
Valerie began to blush, even as she giggled. "Holy shit, she is actually undressing you—"
"—You're the dark gray in my—"
He pushed the power button to the TV and gave her a look. "—I am destroying this thing," he declared in a frenzy, pulling out the DVD and with a snap of his hands, breaking it in half. "You didn't see anything, got it? I spent way too much trying to keep this all a secret."
"Oh, really?" Valerie crossed her arms in amusement, enjoying his reddened face. "And why the hell do you have a DVD of it in the first place?"
"I don't know—I thought I'd gotten rid of all the copies." He looked at the broken disc in disgust, casting it to the coffee table. "Likely a backup my father kept just to embarrass me later, I'm sure."
The woman leaned forward. "So why be in the video if you're such a baby about it?"
He waved it off, face still in a flush. "I was drunk and thought she was hot. That's it." Barring the odd flashes he had of sex with Ember, the majority of the night had been entirely lost in alcoholic stupor. He'd received significant amounts of royalties from that video and several calls from Ember herself, which he had never responded to—mostly out of a desire to keep himself as far away from the situation as possible. He did, of all things, remember the curves of Ember's body but found himself nauseated to think about her clingy nature.
Valerie bit her lip to hide a laugh, standing up to throw away the DVD pieces. "This explains why she kept bidding on you at the bachelor auction—because she was missing her some of that bondage love, huh."
His face flushed, and he leaned against the wall beside her. "That woman was a terror," he muttered. "As if I know what love is anyway. Surely, it's not that."
She turned to him, face in a curious twist. "…If that video was any indication, probably not."
He looked up at her. His dark blue eyes carried a strange mix of vulnerability and haughtiness. "What do you think it is?"
"What…what is?"
"Love. I'm assuming you'd know, given that you think yourself my wholesome, auxiliary conscience."
"Well, that's easy," she huffed. "Love is, uh…." And then she blinked. Although she understood love at some instinctive level, descriptive words failed her.
Dan pressed, "Because I know I've never quite loved anyone." Even his own father saw their relationship as more of a profitable asset than a genuine bond. "But now I must know how to differentiate it from lust. It's very important that I know."
"And why's that?" she asked, trying to buy herself time.
"For research purposes," he said simply. "As you well know, I despise submission to anything or anyone. But I find myself flirting with the idea."
A sudden, unexpected hot jealousy reared its head in her. "For who?" she asked.
He waved it off. "Irrelevant for now."
"For the Ember girl?"
"I said, it is irrelevant." He gave her a pointed look. "Now grace me with your knowledge, oh moral one."
"…Love is, uh, harder to explain in full," she said, looking nervous. "I'm probably not the best person to tell you either."
"And why is that?" he hummed. "I thought you knew everything."
She blushed and said, "Because I don't. And I've not really loved anyone ever either."
He narrowed his eyes playfully at her. "How can that be so? You are attractive enough to have whomever you wanted."
The compliment made her blush more and feel even more shamed that she felt attraction to him, of all people. "Look, don't make fun."
"I can't make that promise."
"I work so much and spent most of my time taking care of my dad," she said, "I've hardly even dated."
He paused in deep curiosity. "Have you ever had sex?"
She pressed her lips together and nodded. His name had been Kwan. It'd been the night of their junior prom, and all she'd wanted to do was something selfish for once. Kwan had seemed to enjoy himself, but the experience had left her wondering what all of the fuss was about. He'd left her for some girl named Donna a few weeks later when he realized she just wasn't that into him.
She expected Dan to laugh in a terrible amusement and tease her. But instead, he seemed to overlook it entirely. "Do you equivocate love with sex?" he asked, searching her eyes. "I've quite the history, as you know, but I never felt for any of them half of what have felt as of late."
Valerie's mind raced to get ahead of where he was going. The problem with thinking was being aware of how terribly jealous she felt—an ache that she'd come to expect Dan's full attention, and now here he was, thinking of another woman. Maybe it really was Ember.
She looked away, her full lips in an uncomfortable line. Damn that he was growing on her. "Love isn't just about sex, you know."
He leaned against the wall. Like this, his body was inches from her own, and she could almost feel the electricity of his presence. "Do tell me what else love includes, then."
Valerie paused. "You know, like caring for the other person, but not caring what they look like. Helping them out when they need help. Being there when they need you."
The even worse thing about the conversation was that, as she spoke, she hesitantly began to recall her memories of Dan pulling her out from that interstate bridge, offering her a bed, handing her clean clothes…
"Hnn," he murmured. "And if I've done those things?"
She swallowed hard. "Then, I don't know, you might be in love."
His blue eyes seemed to bore into her, causing her heart to skip a beat. "And if I felt these things for you, what would you call it?"
Her face tinged a bit red. "Oh—w-well, I mean, I guess we're kinda friends, but—"
Their faces were inches away, and his face had begun to tinge with a light blush. "Valerie," he breathed, "I don't usually desire to kiss my friends."
She blinked, her heart pounding. "You want to kiss me? After all the shit we've pulled on each other?"
"Especially because of that," he whispered. "But I wanted to let you know ahead of time so you can tell me no, if you want."
A great pause stretched between them as she weighed her options. Against her better judgment, she wanted to know what this version of Dan was like. "Do it," she challenged softly, staring up at him with vulnerable eyes.
"And…you will not slap me in the face?" he murmured in merriment.
"Depends how good it is," she teased.
With that, he rolled his eyes and gently pressed his lips against hers. Instantly, the full barrel of his attraction to her returned. He felt it in the core of his spine, fizzing throughout every inch of his body. Valerie's lips were soft and full and kissable in a terribly familiar way—as if his body knew her already.
He pulled away with great reluctance. "That's what I feel," he said, voice strained. "Whatever it is."
She was breathing unevenly, her eyes dazed. "Oh," she said.
In that moment, he wanted nothing more than to make that pleased look of hers stay. Things were different between them now. They had history. Movie nights and slappy fights.
He kissed her again, this time deeper. The neurons in his mind lit hard in delight of her as he stretched open her mouth. Her strong hands—calloused, scarred, so unlike the hands of any other woman he knew—weaved into his dark hair. She pulled him closer, and his large hands settled at her waist. Unable to help himself, he moaned in delight into her mouth.
Their kiss became more desperate, their heart beats erratic. They broke away only to kiss again. Valerie's hands swept from his hair down to his back, feeling the hard twitch of his muscles beneath his thin shirt. Dan dared to let his hands wander lower in awe of her body and the swell of her hips.
As his fingers lightly trailed along her hips, Valerie couldn't help her own moan of need, her thoughts shutting down. Dan tasted like winter—cold and biting, as if he'd chewed some kind of mint gum earlier. She pulled away to catch her breath, eyes dilated, mouth burning with the flavor of him.
His hot breath puffed against her face as they searched each other's eyes.
Valerie dared to lick her lips. "Wow," she whispered.
Dan had focused on the sight of her pink tongue and the wet of her lips, suddenly in such need that he nearly groaned. "Yes," he said breathlessly. "Wow."
Her hands had trailed from his back to his muscled chest. His hands had swept up, teasing the hem of her shirt as he ran his thumb over the bare skin of her stomach.
Valerie swallowed hard and whispered, "We're a bad idea."
At that second, she realized that Dan had pinned her between himself and a wall. He continued to caress her bare skin, fixated on the feel of her heat. He did not argue with her. Everything about this was wrong. Everything about them was wrong.
And so right.
"Valerie," he murmured her name in an aching way. He desired nothing more in that moment than to take her to his bed—to sink into her—
She closed her eyes, pressing her bruised lips tightly together. She hadn't felt pleasure in so long—
His hands swept up beneath her shirt, daring to touch more of her. Her full lips opened in a gasp of need, arching against his touch. She complained weakly, squeezing her eyes closed even tighter, "We have to—I can't—"
"Why?" he murmured to her, even as he paused, allowing his hands to rest at her waist beneath her shirt.
"I don't w-want to," she whispered shakily. "With you." She opened miserable eyes, even as she squished down her desire to feel his hands on other places of her body.
The man blinked, stunned. If she had slapped him in the face or burned him again, he did not think he could have been more surprised. "What?"
"I mean, I do." She swallowed hard. Her voice wavered as her body ached in desire for his touch. She was attracted him—dear god, was she attracted to him. "It's just…"
He slipped his hands from her, and she nearly whined at the loss of his touch. They stood there in silence, both breathing unevenly, faces flushed. Dan searched her eyes. His baritone voice was a husked murmur between them as he dared to say, "Do you still dislike me?"
Valerie tentatively readjusted her clothing. There was an imperceptible shake in her hands as she realized he was speaking metaphorically. "No," she said. "But—it's the principle of the thing. Of what we are."
The handsome man brushed his nose against hers. "Ridiculous," he murmured. He trailed his lips against hers.
The next thing they both knew, they were locked at the mouth as he deepened their kiss. Valerie's fingers tentatively dug into the loose material of his shirt. An odd, amused defeat came over her as her body lit with the feeling of his tongue.
When his hands came back to rest at her waist, his long fingers trailed against her curves in a light caress. Valerie's skin goose-bumped hard, with desire dropping deep into her. It inspired a damningly weak noise of want from the back of her throat.
When he broke away, Dan looked dazed himself, his thin lips reddened. For the first time in his love life, he felt out of control. "Valerie," he breathed, her name a moan on his lips. Even her name sent a flood of pleasure through him. He wanted her to feel a flood of pleasure too.
"We can't do this," she whispered, pained. "I'm—in debt, and you—your scars—"
He trailed one hand up to her face to stroke her soft, full lips, which gaped open with shaky breaths. This was usually the point in time where he would manipulate his target with sweet nothings—watch them bend to his will with just the right compliment. He'd taken such dark delight in dominating the female spirit for years, and now all of his slick words seemed to leave him in the presence of Valerie, for whom he wanted nothing more than perfection. "We can stop," he whispered back, pained, "if you want."
They were still standing in the living room, but Valerie had seemed to forget everything about their surroundings. Never in her life had she felt a level of emotion as was in Dan's touch.
Her voice was soft as she stared up at him. "We just hurt each other," she whispered.
The words seemed to trigger something within him. His eyes shadowed in a strange fear—as if remembering something important. "You're right." His knuckles had swept back to stroke her cheek, to capture a final feeling of intimacy with her. "Of course, you're right."
He pulled away from her then, his heart cracking.
Valerie and Dan maintained an odd tension between them for the next four days, teetering between civility and awkward realization of the taste of each other. Valerie mostly avoided Dan, and Dan lost even more sleep. He mostly drove into the city to manage his father's empires from the Masters Foundation building—a tall skyscraper in the heart of downtown. The distance helped to keep his mind off of her.
The problem was that something else was happening.
Smartly dressed in his Armani business suit, the rich heir sat at what was once his father's desk. His blue eyes stared out at the wall, almost unfocused. He felt as if he were having a nightmare again. But instead of being images, he felt disconnected.
This wasn't his job. This wasn't his world.
Daniel Masters wasn't his name.
"Mr. Masters?" called his secretary from the door.
He blinked, coming out of his daze. "What?" he snapped in a distracted irritation as he paranoidly grabbed for an investment profile to make him look normal.
The woman at the door chomped her gum as she twisted a finger into her green-dyed hair—a nervous habit. "You got a call on Line 1? I've been trying to get a hold of you for like, three minutes?"
His handsome face twisted. He looked up at her with cold eyes. "I'm busy," he pressed, "trying to fix a multimillion-dollar mistake. I told you to hold my calls."
"Yeah, but this one seems kinda important, you—"
"—Kitty, just tell them to go away." Even her name irritated him. About the only reason he kept her around was her undying loyalty to her dead-beat boyfriend, which meant she didn't hit on him like most other girls and had a genuine motivation to work since her boyfriend didn't.
She huffed. "It's Amity General Hospital. Something about your health? This lady's not taking no for an answer." She peered at her boss's scarred face and dark circles beneath his eyes curiously. "You better take it."
Dan's sharp, blue eyes narrowed.
"This is Masters," he bit out tersely as he looked over the papers.
Instantly, he recognized the voice. It was that nurse, Karma Jones. "You're late," she said. She sounded displeased. "You had an appointment at noon today, and you did not show."
A cold water lightly stormed down his spine as his face flushed. "Then bill me for the slot, and reschedule me for tomorrow."
"I'm afraid I can't just do that. You see, today was your consultancy with the plastic surgeon to lighten your scars?" The nurse's tone was flat. "It'll be another three weeks before we can get you in again."
He paused. "What?"
"Three weeks," she repeated shortly. "I'll have you know, there are other people with legitimate health issues who could've used your appointment today if you'd just cancelled ahead of time."
The proud man ground his teeth at the verbal lashing. "Oh, please," he snapped. "I'm sure they're all my father's girlfriends—as if he needs another plastic play doll." He slammed down a file onto the desk, feeling odd.
"On the contrary," the nurse deadpanned, "not everything revolves around you Masters of the universe. Your face hardly needs the help compared to many other patients, who've been in terrible accidents."
When he did not respond with a stereotypically biting response, an awkward pause stretched between them.
The nurse hesitantly asked, "Hello, did I lose you?"
"…No, I'm still here."
"Is something wrong?"
He felt a headache bloom behind his eyes. He sat down, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Yes," he admitted.
Another stretch of silence fell between them.
Dan pressed his lips together and said, "Something's…happening. With me."
"And what is it?"
His tired eyes slid in paranoia to the door. "I can't say here. I don't trust anyone else with this."
Later that day, he arrived back at the hospital. The great and handsome Daniel Masters seemed muted in a strange way as he sat in the chair beside the examination table. His eyes were shifty, face haggard with exhaustion. "I haven't slept in six days," he admitted reluctantly, not able to look in nurse Karma's eyes. "I keep having nightmares."
Karma's intelligent gaze softened as she sat down opposite of the man. "Nightmares?"
"Not like a child's nightmares, okay?" he said shortly, his face flushing in embarrassment. "And since I've not been sleeping, I…zone out? It's weird, and I just need something to make me sleep. That's it."
"Pills can't solve everything," she said, gently raising a brow. "Is this the first time you've had trouble sleeping for six days?"
He nodded.
She bit her lip. "You said you haven't slept, but then you say you have nightmares. So I assume you are in fact sleeping, but you don't…stay that way after these episodes?"
He pressed his lips together tightly and nodded again.
"Are they reoccurring dreams? Of the same event?"
He shook his head no.
Karma hummed and began to write some things down on her clipboard. "You've been under a lot of different stressors lately. This could be some of that stress and anxiety bubbling up, which means that simply writing you a sleep aid might help temporarily, but ultimately—"
"—No, you don't understand," he said. He lowered his voice, looking frazzled. "They're not…normal dreams of normal things. Okay? I was fine until six days ago. And then…" He swallowed hard, running a hand through his hair. "I just need something to sleep."
The nurse set down her pen, giving him a concerned stare. "Can you tell me what you're dreaming?"
For the longest time, Dan said nothing. "You'll think I'm crazy," he said tightly.
"If you're reaching out for help, you're not crazy." She gave him a gentle smile. "Now come on, you know you can trust me. This is just between us."
He pressed his lips tightly together. "It's Valerie." When he blinked, his eyes suddenly shined unnaturally, as if burning with barely withheld tears. "Or my dad. Or hell, even my old friends. And they're all dying. Because—I don't know—it's like, it's me that's killing them."
In the drawer of Vlad's desk back home, another notch in the medallion began to darken.
The trouble with letting Valerie live in the mansion was that Dan could always feel her presence. He'd tried his damnedest to return excessively late in the evening so that she would be asleep. He did not want her to see him in such a state. He feared he would have an episode with her right in the room and make himself seem even more unattractive in the worst of ways. The possibilities made him paranoid and desperate for any kind of medication to work.
He found himself sitting at the kitchen table at 2:30 in the morning, afraid to sleep. "I don't want to see it," he whispered to himself, in hopes that consciousness could protect him. "Just…stay awake. Stay awake."
But to his horror, one tired and sleepless Vlad turned on the lights to the kitchen. His bleary eyes landed on Dan, and then the orange prescription bottle in his hand, and the sleep in his eyes drained away in deep concern. "Daniel?"
The boy sat up quickly, looking frightened. "Father." He stuffed the bottle in the pocket of his pajama pants.
"What's wrong, my boy?" the older man asked, hesitantly moving forward.
"Nothing," Dan said quickly. "Just—go back to sleep."
Vlad remained standing. "You've been avoiding both myself and Valerie for days now," he pressed. "And then I find you like this? What happened? What are those pills you're hiding from me?"
Dan said nothing.
Vlad stepped forward again, peering at his son's face. "Come now, you look exhausted. Please tell me."
"I can't sleep," the boy managed to say, voice tight. It had been a long time since he'd heard genuine fatherly concern from Vlad. It made his already shattered mind even more unsteady.
"And why can you not sleep?" the father asked gently.
Running on such little sleep, hopeless, the once Sexiest Man Alive blinked at his father. And when he did so, his eyes began to burn like he was a child all over again. He did not dare to think how far he'd fallen—how ugly the world would think him if they could see into his nightmares. He felt truly ugly. "I can't say," he whispered.
Vlad inhaled deeply, a worried knit in his brow. Dan usually grew moody and violent when disturbed—not since he was a child had the boy's eyes burned with tears. "My son, you can tell me—I will not judge. Are you ill? Is that why you're hiding from us?"
It was as truthful of an excuse as any. Dan gave a tight, imperceptible nod.
Without any second thought, Vlad reached forward and pulled him into an embrace. Dan inhaled shakily. For the first time in years, he seemed to break down into a boy, leaning his head upon his father's shoulders as he embraced him back tightly. He could not remember the last time he'd hugged his father—only that the very action seemed to yank his tears further.
"Oh, my son," Vlad said, leaning his head against Dan's. "Don't worry. Whatever it is, we can fix it. There is nothing to be ashamed of."
"Yes, there is," he said, voice hoarse. He pulled away, dug into his pocket, and shoved the bottle into his father's hands.
But instead of an antibiotic or a steroid, as Vlad imagined, the bottle was a prescription for an anti-psychotic. He blinked at that, his mind slowly processing the information. It wasn't the first time doctors had prescribed behavior-altering drugs for Dan's off-kilter moods. But this was the first time, it seemed, that Dan had willingly sought them out on his own.
Vlad sat down. "What is this for?" he asked softly. "I know you've had…moments of weakness, but you've had your anger under control for years."
Dan paused. His voice was tight. "I can't sleep. I have nightmares and these moments where—I don't know who I am or where I'm at." His voice then broke. "I can't run a company like this. I can't even breathe like this."
"Forget about the company," the father said, looking up at him and searching his eyes. "Alright? You are more important than the company. Perhaps you've had too much stress lately. That can…trigger various things, I know." Vlad hesitated. "Is it just anxiety?"
The boy ran a shaky hand through his tangled hair. "Maybe."
Thinking himself somehow cursed for making Valerie get evicted twice, Dan raided his own savings account, actively writing off the debt of hundreds of people in the Amity Park slums, buying up their loans and paying them off himself. Among them were Valerie and Damon Gray—but that did not stop his nightmares or odd episodes of mood swings and dissociation. When he failed to take his pill the next night, he dreamt of himself leaning over a lake.
His reflection was that of a demon, with red eyes and fangs and a skin color like death—but with his own face. It left him dizzy and distant and afraid. It made him fear that this was simply a new him to fit right along with his scarred face and antisocial behavior—a final nail in the coffin of whatever reputation he had left. With his looks disturbed and mind disturbed, the only thing left would be his money. And after missing so many days of work and making several mistakes, he feared the company board did not see him as fit to lead the company.
The worst part of all was carrying around a medication like a crutch, feeling inadequate every twelve hours when he had to take it, or risk the consequences of a losing battle with his own mind. His father had said there was nothing to be ashamed about, but Dan struggled to believe him.
Just then, there was a knock at his bedroom door. It jarred him out of his thoughts.
"Hey," Valerie's voice was muffled, hesitant. "Can I come in?"
Dan's fists clenched in nervousness, then he tightened his belt on his robe. Surely by now, she knew something was genuinely wrong. She'd have to find out eventually. "Yes."
She opened the door and stepped in. She looked at his disheveled appearance and hesitated. "Vlad told me what's going on," she said softly. "I thought I'd really pissed you off after…how we left things. I thought you wanted me to go away or something."
He looked up at her with bloodshot eyes. Upon his bedside table was his medication, some of the pills still spread out on the expensive wood. "But you should leave," he said, waving a hopeless hand around his room. "I'm obviously unwell, and I don't—" his voice caught oddly— "I don't want you to see."
She sat down beside him on the bed, searching his eyes curiously. "There's nothing wrong with needing help," she said softly. "We all need help in some way or another. You taught me that."
Dan gave her a miserable look, raw in that moment. "You sound like a brochure," he muttered.
"And you sound like this is all new to you," she poked him. "Come on—remember when you trashed your awards room, and I saw the damage? I totally thought you were already on, like, anger meds to help you."
He huffed at her and then looked away, a tinge of a blush on his face.
She gently grabbed onto his chin and forced him to look at her. "And seeing that didn't scare me away," she added softly.
Her fingers were warm, as if she were spreading sunlight into his skin. He grabbed onto her elbow to feel more of her, but she scooted closer on his bed and wrapped her arms around him. He embraced her tightly, hiding his face in her warm shoulder. He needed human contact, so much more than he ever thought possible. He marveled that Valerie seemed to understand that without even a single word.
"This is worse than anger," he admitted, voice muffled against her shirt. "You should go."
She rolled her eyes. "Oh, please, you big baby. You were harder to handle when you were a stupid jerk who harassed me all the time."
He paused. "Not a stupid jerk," he muttered into her shirt.
Valerie stroked her fingers through his dark hair. "And you should know, the house has been super quiet with you gone or hiding back here," she complained. "I don't have anyone else to fight with. It's so boring—I don't even think the house is haunted without you wandering around. I actually get work done."
His lips twitched, and an amused huff of breath puffed against her shoulder. Then he pulled away, still a bit skittish with being so vulnerable, even around Valerie. "Don't tell me you miss my pathetic attempts to flirt with you."
Valerie pursed her lips, looking vulnerable herself. "I do," she admitted. "You've gotten better at it lately. And I miss fighting with you, watching stupid movies…"
He stared at her in hopeful suspicion.
She swallowed hard. "Do you ever think of that night?" she asked hesitantly. "When we…you know…?"
"Kissed?" His voice was rough and weary. "And then you said you didn't want me?"
Valerie hesitated for a minute. "I guess that wasn't really a nice way to say I was scared, huh."
"Maybe not, but you were right to be suspicious of me," he muttered, clenching his fist—feeling the blood rush in his veins—then letting it go. "Everything bad in your life leads back to me."
The woman's gaze softened. "Yeah," she said. "You're a jerk, and I hate you."
His heart stopped. "…What?"
And then she leaned forward and pressed her lips against his. His eyes widened. Immediately, the battering ram of their attraction lit a fire within them. She was a hot warmth against his cold body, his skin goose-bumping at the feel of her.
He eased into the kiss the way a drowning man would cling to a rope—desperate. This Valerie before him was strong and beautiful and alive. So viciously alive. Her tongue slid against his in a way that sent sparks down his spine.
They broke for air. Valerie confessed, a bit breathless, "I can be a heartless bitch sometimes. Like, really bad."
"I'm out of control sometimes," he said hoarsely.
"I've got this temper—"
"—I do too—"
"—and I don't want this to be about debts—"
He leaned, in need of tasting her again. "I don't want this to be about pity," he whispered against her lips, his eyes staring into hers.
"It's not," she whispered. She raised her hands to his hair, brushing it back. "I like that you've got struggles too. Makes you human."
His lips twitched against hers in a miserable humor. He kissed her again. This time, his hand ran down the length of her body. Everything about her being on his bed made his nerves tingle.
She shifted on the bed to kiss him more soundly. He leaned back, his spine hitting the pillows. His long fingers locked in behind her neck, coaxing her back with him. He needed this. She needed this.
Valerie moved along with him, straddling him on her knees. He groaned in pleasure at the weight of her hips jamming against his. She deepened their kiss as he grabbed for her hips to pull her even closer, the friction between them lighting a fire. He kneaded his fingers into her leggings.
They broke again for air, eyeing each other. Dan was fully breathless and aroused. "I've lost a lot of money lately," he said. "The board's trying to vote me out of my job."
The woman closed her eyes, her face pinched with need. "I don't care about money." Her jaw dropped open a bit as she grinded against him. Her voice weakened. "Oh, I don't care."
At the pleasure on her face, Dan grabbed onto her and rolled them so that she lay beneath him, wide-eyed and face flushed. Her clothed legs were spread open, and he sunk against her, kissing her hard as he grinded into her.
Her shaking fingertips pulled at the robe around his shoulders, sweeping it off him. His bare shoulders were broad and heavily muscled, blocking what little light streamed through the closed blinds. Her hot hands scratched down his naked sides.
He groaned hard against her mouth. He'd never felt such all-encompassing desire as he did with Valerie. It made him nearly light-headed. He wanted her to feel light-headed too.
"I think," he said breathlessly, staring into her eyes as he pulled down the hem of her leggings and her underwear with it, "I love you."
She swallowed hard. Her hair was in a halo around her as her bruised lips gaped upon for breath. "You do?"
His heart burned with it. He ran his fingers down her bare legs.
Valerie struggled to form words, her brain stuck on the fact that Dan was actively stripping her down—and that his hands were on her hips. She gave him a dazed look. "I might love you," she said hoarsely. She closed her eyes tight as she felt cold air hit her bare thighs. "In a hate sort of way."
Her soft confession inspired an amused smile upon his face—the first one in nearly a week. "Yes," he murmured, "of course. Hate." He leaned down and placed a kiss on the inside of her thigh.
She inhaled sharply at the feeling of his soft lips on her skin. Instinctively, she grabbed for the pillows around her, a whine of need escaping her as her hips arched of their own accord. He dragged her leggings off completely.
Dan let his robe slip from his arms before he readjusted himself on the bed, leaning over her. Now all he had were his boxers and sweatpants. His body was beginning to tremble in need, but his heart was soaring. For the first time in days, it felt as if the sun were bursting from his skin. "I love you," he said again, the words making his heart light. Valerie was the only girl in his entire existence who had seen him at his ugliest and most vulnerable—and still cared. "I love you."
Valerie gave a hum of pleasure as his hand slowly slid down between her legs, her teal eyes struggling to focus on him. Her bare toes curled as her hips arched again, his long and calloused fingers sliding softly against her wet bundle of nerves between her legs. His eyes steadily held her own, desperate to replace his violent nightmares with a memory of Valerie in joy.
His hand, wet with her own desire, slid up her body beneath her shirt, and he sunk between her legs with a moan of pleasure. He grabbed onto one of her breasts, desperate to strip off her shirt as well.
Valerie exhaled shakily at the all-encompassing feel of one Dan Masters touching her. She closed her eyes, allowing herself to simply enjoy the moment—there was no returning from this. "You probably tell all the girls you love them," she whispered in amusement. She almost didn't care but couldn't help ruffling his feathers.
He snapped her bra in the front. He murmured hotly, "I tell them how much I want to fuck them." He swept off her shirt and pulled her bra cups to the side. Some part of him felt dazed that he had Valerie Gray naked on his bed, her curls haloed on his own pillow. He ran his calloused thumbs over the swell of her full breasts, marveling as she hummed in delight and arched into his touch. He swallowed hard. In that moment, he feared that perhaps this was all a fluke—that Valerie would regret this, and then she'd leave him forever—
She opened her eyes, and they were dilated with lust. Her voice was hesitant. "And if I wanted you to fuck me, while saying you love me?" Her hot, calloused fingers stroked down his face.
That did it. His hands slipped from her breasts to steady himself over her. "Anything you want."
Sweat began to trail from his temples and from hers as they stared at each other, stealing kisses between their gasping breaths. Her hands wrenched his boxers down—and then there was nothing else between them. The tension, slowly burning hotter, began to overwhelm them as he grabbed onto her toned thighs.
And on the other side of the house, in his father's desk, the medallion stamped with a CW began to change. The last notch had begun to flicker out, but now it strengthened in its glow, until slowly the medallion began to regain its full luster.
Dan awoke alone on his stomach, his naked body twisted in the sheets. For a moment, he felt a pleasant sort of disorientation. And then he realized that Valerie was not with him.
His eyes cleared of sleep. In their place were apprehension and confusion. Never once in his life after bedding a woman had he woken up alone. Usually, he woke up to them cuddling against him, clinging close for another round.
He sat up, his relaxed muscles tensing. The other side of the bed had the sheets pulled away. Her hair tie and clothes were gone. The bathroom door was open, the lights dark with emptiness. "Valerie?" he murmured hesitantly.
The man began to wonder if perhaps something were truly wrong. He pulled off the blankets, running a hand through his hair—still heavily tangled from Valerie's fingers.
Had he pissed her off somehow? Disappointed her?
Had she just used him for a good time and left, now that she knew he was a liability? His anxiety deepened as his open heart began to crack in fear. He did not want to disappoint her. For the first time in his life, he cared. He cared that she would feel good—and that she would stay.
He looked for his clothes on the floor, realizing that his own body was stiff from their love making. He grimaced as he leaned down to grab his boxers, then his robe.
Perhaps he'd been kidding himself. Perhaps she'd just been looking for a good fuck—maybe she'd been reeling him in all along, knowing that he could wipe away all of her debts and fall in love and be easily manipulated, saying I love you like some fucking idiot—
He smacked his head against the bedside table as he stood up, and he hissed in pain. "Fuck." Instinctive tears watered his eyes from the pain of it, scrambling his thoughts as he haphazardly dressed himself. He felt clumsy and fearful.
Rubbing his abused skull, he struggled into his boxers and pulled on his robe, quickly exiting his room.
Soon enough, he found Valerie standing in the living room, staring down at her phone, as if reading something. Her long tunic and leggings were still wrinkled—her hair an uncombed pile down her back.
"Valerie?" he called, trying not to sound needy.
She looked up. Her eyes were red with tears, her cheeks and the tip of her nose reddened as well. She'd been crying. Her voice was watery. "Did you do this?"
Dan, afraid that she'd found something terrible, hesitated. "Do what?"
The beautiful woman swallowed hard as she stared at him. When she blinked, more tears ran down her face, and her breath hitched. "Pay off all my loans." She clenched her phone tighter, upon which an open tab showed her debt with Masters Financial as 0.00.
On a nearby table, an opened newspaper carried the title, In Unprecedented Act of Charity, Daniel Masters Pays $10M on Behalf of Broke Debtors.
He paused, feeling at a loss for words because she was crying, and he didn't think he'd ever seen her cry quite like this. Knowing Valerie, he'd probably still done something wrong in his attempt to do right. "Yes?"
She fell silent, save for her hitched breathing, and set down her phone. "You did this days ago," she accused. "You didn't tell me."
His face flushed as he crossed his arms, almost protectively. One of his small fears surfaced. "I figured you already knew when you came to my room last night, and that is why you—"
Valerie inhaled shakily. "—No," she said, her voice wavering into a laugh. "I didn't." More tears slipped down her face. "I didn't know."
Dan paused. A curious feeling bloomed within him again, which was that perhaps her love for him was genuine too. He faltered for words.
The woman watched him as something vulnerable came across his face. Without another word, she reached for him, bridging the gap between them and embracing him tightly. He embraced her back, wrapping his arms around her smaller frame, hiding his face in her hair that still faintly smelled of his own shampoo.
They said nothing for a time.
It was around that time Dan realized he'd not had one nightmare in the night—nor did he even remember what his past nightmares were. It was as if his memory had muddled, all of his violent visions like watercolors that had bled together into an incomprehensible image.
"Thank you," she whispered into his shoulder.
His hand trailed down her back, running down the strong, familiar bones of her spine. "You're welcome," he said, voice muffled by her hair.
She pulled back then to look at him, and she reached up and stroked her fingers down his rough cheek where stubble had begun to grow. Despite the exhaustion in his face, there was a clarity in his dark blue eyes that hadn't existed in days, as if a cloudy storm had cleared up within him.
Valerie stood on her tip-toes and pressed her lips against his. Dan returned the favor, leaning forward to kiss her more fully. He could taste her salty tears on her lips. He pulled away to kiss her cheek, following the trail of her tears down her jaw and her neck.
She closed her eyes as she leaned her neck sideways to give him better access, her lithe fingers digging into the expensive cloth of his robe. "I liked last night," she whispered, her breath already uneven once more. "A lot."
"Same," he murmured against her dark skin, his voice a vibration against her pumping blood. He placed a kiss over her pulse, and he felt her weaken a bit in his grasp. He tightened his grip on her. He moaned when he felt her hands sweep into the folds of his robe to touch his naked sides—and trail lower to the hem of his boxers.
If they kept this up, he feared in great pleasure, they wouldn't make it back to a bedroom.
Valerie's eyes nearly rolled as she felt him grab her rear to jam their hips together. Her voice tightened in need. "Let's do it again." Her face still flushed at the feeling of his large hands touching her so intimately.
"Yes," he said roughly, his brain shutting down as he grew more aroused by her. He tore at her clothes. "Couch."
She hummed in agreement, the both of them stumbling backward, losing articles of clothing along the way, desperate to be close.
Later that day, Dan had another appointment back at the hospital to check in regarding the effectiveness of his medication. He seemed to almost glow in his relieved joy, not even caring that he carried a bottle of anti-psychotics in his pocket, or that his scars still prominently stood out on his skin in the light. Because none of that mattered to Valerie, whom he dared to think might genuinely love him back.
He burst through the door to the exam room nurse Karma Jones always met him in.
She gaze at him curiously, and then her scarred face lifted in a smile. "Hey, there—you look better today."
"I feel better today," he admitted, watching her closely. The door shut behind him. "I slept last night."
She peered a little closer, then rolled her eyes in a motherly amusement. "Sleeping around doesn't count as sleeping, you know."
"How would you know I slept with anyone?"
"Well," she said dryly, "you're walking around with sex hair, and you have hickies on your neck. That's usually a sign."
Dan pulled up the collar on his jacket, giving her a look. "I did sleep too, you know."
There was a stretch of silence. "….Was it Valerie?" she asked curiously.
The rich boy could not help the sudden stretch of his lips or the glimmer in his eyes. "It was."
"Hopefully not just a one-night stand."
"Perish the thought," he said, scandalized. "I told her I loved her and everything."
"Well, thank god," the nurse said. "When you find a girl like that, you gotta treat her right, you understand?"
He nodded. "I've learned my lesson," he said in a wry amusement, touching the scars on his face.
"Good." Karma grabbed onto her clipboard and sat opposite of him. "And that medication? How's it been working for you?"
His hand slipped from his face. Some part of him still felt strange about the whole thing. "I haven't had any more episodes," he said. "Being with Valerie—it's like I can't even remember what they were about."
The nurse wrote a few notes down and hummed. "That's good. If Valerie helps, then try to maximize that to keep yourself centered on the present."
Dan stroked his chin. "Oh, I intend to maximize my time with Valerie."
Karma's lips twitched. "And just Valerie? Not all of these other girls you've had?"
"Just Valerie."
Her twitch turned into a wide smile. "Good boy." She wheeled a bit closer to him and gazed at the now-pink scars down his right eye. She raised a gloved hand and gently patted the scars. "And your scars—you said they were hurting you some nights ago? Are they still?"
"It was just that once."
"That's good as well." She hummed. "It might be that those nightmares of yours are just…how you've been working out all this emotional stress. In which case, if you can get that under control, then I have a feeling you can decrease those times you feel dissociated from yourself."
He clung hard to that hope. "And not take medication?"
"The medication is designed to help retrain your brain," she said dryly. "You'll be on them for a while." In a somewhat motherly way, she patted his face, her thumb stroking against the red scar near his eye, as if to smooth it away. "But you're not a bad kid."
Dan, having admitted some of his darker secrets to this older woman, leaned into her touch. In some ways, she was the closest thing to a mother figure in his life. It meant something that she cared.
Her brown eyes were a little bright as she released him. "Now, I know you're dying to be attached at the hip to Valerie. I won't keep you here forever—I just…wanted to make sure you'd be okay."
The sentiment made him soften up to her more, and he hid it with a roll of his eyes. "Perhaps," he said indignantly, "I want to be attached to other things on Valerie."
Karma face-faulted. "Oh, come on, I do not need to hear that."
Moment broken, he stood up. "I know," he teased. "But…bad habits."
The nurse stood up as well with an enduring look. "Well, keep working on fixing yourself up, then. I won't see you again for a bit. And next time I do, I expect you to have become the well-mannered gentleman that I know is in there somewhere."
"You're giving me more homework?" he complained merrily.
"As I matter of fact, I am." She paused, then added before she could get emotional about it, "Now go on, get out of here—I got another patient coming in, and you're stealing their time."
As Dan left, he passed by the main nurse's station. In the spirit of his good mood, he decided that he quite liked nurse Karma Jones—and that perhaps, with the holidays coming up, he could send her a gift of some kind.
He leaned against the counter, where a nurse was working at a computer. She was a bit older and frail-looking, and she gazed up at him with almost surprise. "Daniel…Masters? Can I help you?"
"As a matter of fact," he said, "yes. I have…a friend of the family who works here. I should like to send something to her. Can you give me her office number?"
The older woman blinked. "Certainly. What's the name, dear?"
"Karma Jones."
At that, the woman blinked again—this time in surprise and consternation. "Karma Jones?"
As Dan greatly disliked repeating himself, the cheery expression on his face faulted, and he said, "Yes."
The nurse began to grow nervous. "I'm so sorry—maybe, uh, your family didn't hear, but…You see, Karma and I were great friends, back in the day. She died in a fire over twenty years ago."
And behind the woman, Dan's eye caught sight of nurse Karma Jones walking down the hall before she wisped away.
Far off in another dimension was a curious figure by the name of Clockwork, the Master of Time. He was an ancient and powerful soul, eyeing the human world from a multitude of various portals.
Especially one particular human world.
Suddenly, a facially scarred nurse materialized beside him, shedding her human appearance. Her brown hair streaked into a brilliant red that floated around her shoulders with an unnatural air. Although her facial scars remained, her white skin deepened into a dark purple.
"You're late," Clockwork said.
Karma leaned her head against the table and swiveled red eyes to her colleague. "I had important business," she said, straight-faced.
Clockwork hummed in disagreement. "I'm sure. Thanks to your extensive meddling, this incarnation of Dan is not only aware that ghosts are real, but he will suspicion that your poorly veiled disguise was somehow his dead mother."
She huffed. "And is that so bad, compared to the truth?" Karma pulled down one of the boxes of Clockwork's keepsakes. In it was a snapshot from a ruined timestream. Her full lips stretched softly as she stroked a purple finger down the photo. "I did not meddle to any degree as you have, old friend. De-aging the evilest ghost in one universe and converting him back into a human? Endangering another universe with his presence? Those are impressive acrobatics to save the soul of Dan Phantom."
"On the contrary, this was a valuable experiment to gauge the steps necessary for redeeming his core character." Clockwork tapped a medallion on his scepter.
Karma angled a sharp, white brow. "You nearly destroyed his mind with his own past."
"Ah, but it made him fear for the welfare of others, did it not?"
The female ghost planted the picture against Clockwork's chest. "I suppose," she said dryly. "But your actions wouldn't qualify you as father of the year, in any case."
The picture was a candid shot of Clockwork holding a baby—of the remains of Dan Phantom, swaddled in a blanket. Clockwork's fingers were stroking the babe's cheek, and the tiny soul, with big blue eyes and a tuft of black hair, was staring back up at him in a marveled daze.
Clockwork tucked the picture into his cloak, straight-faced. "I did not begin this experiment for my sake, but for his own."
Karma sighed as she leaned against a portal, where the human Dan had rushed home in a confused wonder. In the portal, he'd touched his face as well and had noticed that the scarring around his eye was gone. At that moment, a confused and nearly ecstatic Valerie was stroking his face, which no longer held the evidence of her ire against him. "It's so strange to see him weak," she murmured. "He's much cuter this way. He and Valerie are almost so cute that it's disgusting."
"Hn. The important thing is that we have neutralized a threat and proved that rehabilitation is possible."
"Will he continue to remain so?"
Clockwork's red eye grew distant, and he smiled, foreseeing Dan proudly tying himself to one Valerie Gray, merrily tormenting her father and Vlad, continuing to dig the poor out of debt on a whim—"Yes. In this world, he will."
The female ghost looked down at her hand. Upon her fingers was the dark outline of the scars that had once marred Dan's face. When she clenched her fist, the scars began to fade, disappearing as if they never existed at all. "But this version of Dan Phantom is not the only one you must control. Tell me, old friend—how fare the other worlds that you've meddled with?"
Clockwork gave her an enduring look. "…I'm still working on them, with various results."
And before them spanned hundreds of portals, different worlds. They contained the same people at various shades of good and evil, with different opportunities to redeem them all.
Karma flipped her red hair over her shoulder, gazing about in a bit of overwhelmed awe. It was rare for any ghost to see Clockwork's lair, much less his main control center. "Do you ever find it exhausting to play babysitter like this?"
"Absolutely. That is why I'll be requesting your help on occasion—to tip the odds, as you did here. Under disguise, of course."
For a time, the female ghost said nothing. And then Karma smiled, and her teeth shined white and sharp. "Of course."
A/N: And thus concludes the first human!AU miniseries, which is excessively more self-aware than I'd originally pegged it to be. I do hope you enjoyed the story as well as my pitiful attempts at writing smut, haha. Lady Audentium, thank you again for all of the fanart and comics for Deliverance—I hope this series was payment enough!
As promised, I will be pursuing a short Christmas sequel to the VALentine thread. I am hoping to update by Christmas, but I do have a final exam to get through beforehand. So keep an eye out!
Again, thank you all for continuing to read and review Deliverance. I really appreciate your support.
Please review with your thoughts, questions, constructive criticisms, or ideas! Thanks!
