Make Me Real
Disclaimer.
It'd been noon, bright high summer noon. The clouds were scudding past, cornrowed clouds across a blue field, sun bright and blinding.
It'd been black, shadowy behind the radio tower. The sun casting twisting silhouettes across the metal frames, darkness hiding darkness.
Sam was there, looking up at the tower, hearing the far off sounds of battle and attacks and echoing quips, seeing in her mind's eye flashes of green, of blue or red, colliding and struggling, winning and losing. Her hands, white knuckles pale, gripped her Thermos as she waited for Danny to finish his battle with some new ghost who had broken out of the Ghost Zone, waiting for Danny to weaken it enough that he could suck it up with his own Thermos. Just waiting for him.
He'd been strange lately. He refused to go intangible, refused to be invisible - taking the punishment when Dash stuffed him into a locker, taking the fall when he tripped on a loose rock. Even bleeding, he'd smiled, expression in ecstasy for just a quick second before a facade came down and he lost all expression. He'd closed his eyes, periodically, and laid hands on, really, anything he could touch - walls, lockers, benches, the fountain, anything, grasping it as if he were grasping at life.
The sounds, screams of triumph and victory and laughs blazing with obsessive insanity, abruptly ceased. The silence of clouds passing over Amity Park seemed oppressive, just for a second before the birds started their twittering again. At any moment now, Danny would be coming back. Coming back to friends, coming back to people who cared about him. And, waiting behind the radio tower faithfully, where he had told her to stay - Sam would call up Tucker and the three of them would go to the Nasty Burger together and, with Tucker's help, perhaps Sam could find out why Danny was acting so...odd.
"Sam."
The sound of his voice behind her, sepulchral (sable over a DP argent), shocked her; her Thermos clattered out of her hands and onto the cracked concrete. She spun around, checking her rotation on his shoulder, staring at the empty green eyes that didn't seem like Danny.
"Danny?"
His gaze didn't change from where they were locked, jade to velvet. His voice didn't change from its echo, said the only words that he would say.
"Hurt me."
"What?" Her shocked gaze quivered as she looked at him, looked at him truly. His eyes weren't the glowing emerald counterpart of her best friend Danny's still sea sapphire; they were transparent, the sluggish emotions almost oozing through.
"Hurt me."
Suited arms hanging limp, no hint of ectoplasm hovering around the edges. Voice dim, eyes dim, hair lifeless. No hint of her best friend; nothing.
"Hurt me."
"Danny, why?"
Expression changes, empty void to desperation.
"Please, Sammy, please - just hurt me. Kick me, slap me, scratch me, whatever, just...hurt me."
Hating herself, Sam raised her hand, deep lavender-painted nails sharp contrast against pale skin. Watching his expression, reading his eyes, she placed her hand to his cheek (cold and dead, skin rotting) and drew sharp nails down his cheek. He never expressed pain, dim eyes staring straight ahead, past her.
Black-painted nails against dead skin, green-red blood oozing out from within it. Without a heart, the blood did not pump. Without platelets, the blood did not clot, oozing out indefinitely.
Down his cheek, four trails of razor cuts sliced themselves toward his jawline, where Sam's hand rested, unable to hurt her closest friend any more.
She withdrew her hand, shaking away the last of his blood, even as he raised his own gloved hand and touched his cheek. His eyes rolled up in pain and he staggered, slumping to his knees, clutching aimlessly at the ground - his gloves, verdant with his blood, stained the cracks.
"Danny! Why? Why are you doing this to yourself? Why are you making me hurt you?!"
The sun's position changed, the shadow of the radio tower incrementally streaming a little north of them.
"I...need to feel pain. I need to know that I'm human, that I'm not just a ghost pretending to be human. I need to know that I'm not a figment of imagination dreamt up by either side of me. And I need you to hurt me because you're real, Sam. You and Tucker. You're real to me; if either of you hurt me then it guarantees that I'm real. Hurt me, Sam. Physically, emotionally, mentally, verbally, whatever. Just...hurt me. Please."
Grasp of a dying man, drowning in his own pool of spirals, endlessly impossible counters throwing a curveball every time.
Rise of tears, Sam looks at Danny, half-dead, half-alive, all reaching for something just a little beyond him - and turns away, walking off without a word, teeth gritted, fighting to keep calm for her sake. She'd have to call Tucker -
Small noise, a half-groan of pain, sends her spinning around again for the second time that day; rotation arrested, this time, by tears in unborn eyes. Three strides sends her back to Square One, close to her Danny and she just looks at him.
"Are we done yet, Danny?"
He reaches up from where he kneels, rising a little to his feet so as to get to where he so desperately needs, cupping her cheek. "Do you feel anything, Sam?"
Reassurance needed, dull eyes flickering with just the littlest glimmer of hope. Her eyes meet his again.
"Yes."
He changes then, bright blue circles hovering up and down his body, skin flushed with blood again, green ooze on his cheek transmuting into red semi-liquid; twice as much an amount. His hand, no longer gloved, is still cupping her jaw, her skin warm on his hand, solid and real. As much real as anything in his imagination. His cheek is sore, stinging from its cuts, but Danny doesn't begrudge the pain - it's evidence that's he real, and he's not just a figment of imagination and that the real Danny's not hiding somewhere in an asylum because all his friends are dead...
They stand there, eyes flaring, steel blue on flowery violet, Danny's hand warm and human against her warm and human cheek, and the moment, captured forever, should've been taken in the pouring rain; should've been taken under rolling thunder and roaring lightning; should've been taken as a symptom of hope amidst some sort of darkness - a reincarnation of Pariah Dark over the horizon, perhaps - but it's not, and they're standing under a cheerfully blue sky, corona-white sun burning them with cooking heat.
It's a long while before they speak. And when they do, Danny talks first.
"Sam? Thank you. You make me feel real."
Scribere jussit amor.
--korel.c.--