Moments after Danny watched the nurse leave the room, Vlad appeared in the doorway and regarded him with a small smile that Danny could not place with any certain emotion and eyes that were equally as unreadable. But soon enough, that wasn't so. His expression became one of smugness and condescension but somehow sympathy and concern all at the same moment.
Danny stared at him uneasily, unsure of what to do or say. He did not even know how he should look at Vlad, whether or not he should glare at him with cold eyes and snarled lips. Did he need to put his guard up in the hospital, he wondered? Would the people here protect him from Vlad if he were to attack? Should he try to get up incase he couldn't rely on the doctors and nurses that roamed the hospital? If he didn't get up and they failed to come to his rescue, what would Vlad do? But more importantly, why was Vlad here?
Of course, he was very suspicious of Vlad and it seemed almost natural that he should automatically expect a fight when in the man's presence. He thought that anyone who had the same relationship with Vlad as he-though he was aware that he was probably the only one who did-would feel similarly, and he did not blame himself feeling this way. Danny had visions which were not so implausible then as a result of these associations. He saw Vlad destroying him now and bribing or blackmailing the hospital to claim he had passed away due to the injuries caused by caused his father. A mental imaged followed. He saw his body laid out in a cold metal drawer, a meat freezer, a coffin which laid before his parents.
He sat up then and winced in pain as he did, and Vlad quickly approached his bed and placed his hands on Danny's chest, attempting to push him back down on the bed. Danny's eyes widened in fear as more images formed in his mind. There was a gaping, bloody hole in his chest and blood covering the white bed sheets. He started to thrash very weakly, as much as he could, considering the seriousness of his injuries and the subdued state his medications forced him into.
"Daniel," Vlad said, sounding extremely alarmed. "I'm not going to hurt you. Please, lay back down."
"Like hell you're not going to hurt me!" Danny gasped as he thrashed in Vlad's firm grip. "You're crushing my chest!"
Vlad quickly pulled his hands away and Danny collapsed back onto the bed, gripping his chest in agony.
"Daniel, I'm so sorry!" Vlad said, feeling genuinely guilty, and took a small step away from the bed with his hands raised in front of him in a defensive position, concerned he'd be in court by the end of the month for "assaulting" a defenseless child in the hospital. He'd be out millions, he figured, and he'd be out of office for sure. "Here, let me get the doctor," he said hastily, and spun around and started toward the door.
"No, don't get him! Please, just hand me those painkillers," Danny called out to him, and Vlad turned to see him pointing to a small plastic bottle laying on the tile floor that he'd knocked off his nightstand when he'd been struggling.
Vlad frowned. "Are you sure, Daniel?"
Danny nodded rapidly. "Yes, just get it!"
Vlad bent down and picked up the plastic bottle on command. He handed it to Danny who snatched it out of his hands and rapidly unscrewed the top. He dumped the bottles contents on the nightstand, took three pills and popped them in his mouth, and swallowed them with water he had sitting on the nightstand that had managed to avoid his flying limbs.
"Danny," Vlad tried quietly, "I didn't mean to hurt you. I didn't want you to sit up because I thought it would cause your injuries more pain."
"Well, great, now I have one more to add to them!" Danny cried sarcastically.
Vlad sighed deeply. "Daniel, I'm sorry. I really am, and you know I don't say that often."
After pausing for a moment to regard Vlad with cold and uncaring eyes, Danny questioned in an irritated tone, his voice threatening and low, "Why are you here, Vlad?"
"I'm here, Daniel, because your absence is apparent when you're the only thing protecting this town from ghosts. I ran into your friends Tucker and Samantha on the street while I was returning from City Hall, and when I asked them where you'd ran off to they told me you'd had an...accident that put you in the hospital."
For a moment, Danny paused in silence, his eyes drooping a bit-it seemed, to Vlad, as a result of sadness-and the snarl of his lips loosening, then said simply, "Oh."
Vlad was silent for a moment as he regarded Daniel, observing his truly weakened state. Then he spoke slowly, gently, "Daniel, what happened to you? Why are you here?"
Carefully and shyly, Danny very slowly raised his eyes and looked at Vlad, but quickly averted them again, his eyes darting nervously about the room. Vlad could easily see the pain and humiliation that came with the subject of his accident, so much so that he thought Daniel would refuse to tell him and he'd have to ask someone else to explain as to why he was in the hospital. But then, Danny said, quietly and timidly, "My...my dad was testing an invention of his," he said, sounding clearly ashamed.
"A ghost hunting weapon?" Vlad clarified, an eyebrow raised.
"Yeah, it was."
"What happened?"
"...He...well, he added some attachment to the assault vehicle...it...well, I guess it messed up the controls or something...and he...he...well...he ended up running me over," Danny said, his voice now barely above a whisper.
Vlad burst out laughing, though it was not at Daniel's pain, but rather Jack's stupidity and his tenancy to fail solely. But of course Daniel did not know that, and he looked up suddenly, his eyes shining with tears and his lips again twisted in a snarl. He clenched his fists as he cried, "Shut your fucking mouth!"
Vlad tried to force himself to stop laughing, but truthfully, he was not only enjoying the prospect of another of Jack's failures, but he was so overjoyed at the opportunity he now saw that controlling his happiness, expressed through his vile, malicious laughter, was nearly impossible. He laughed more heartily as he began to envision his newest plan in his mind and every last detail of it fell into place perfectly and Daniel became his. And his laughter increased, still.
Danny was in so much physical pain, and he was racked with so much emotional pain as well that he could not stop tears from rolling down his cheeks as Vlad's laughter seemed to have pushed him over the edge. "Get the hell out if you're just going to laugh at me!" he screeched, weeping, clenching his fists more tightly and grinding his teeth involuntarily.
Vlad stopped laughing then as it seemed to dawn on him that while now might be his one and only opportunity to win Daniel over, he could destroy it in an instant by expressing even the slightest amount of disrespect of anything Daniel valued (e.g. Jack) as he was now. While he would never and could never respect Jack even slightly, openly disrespecting him would not lull Daniel into obedience, which was, of course, his ultimate goal. Rather, it would do just the opposite. If he laughed now, even if it was not so much at Jack as it was out of blatant happiness, his opportunity would vanish and he would have lost Daniel, so to speak, in the blink of an eye. So, though he struggled to stop, he finally did and whispered very quietly, forcing himself to sound ashamed though he was not, "I'm sorry, Daniel."
Danny buried his face in his hands and said into them, muffling his words, "Just get out of here."
"Danny, I-"
"Go!" he screeched into his hands, weeping more violently.
Vlad sighed and did as he was told, for he knew he had already done enough damage. But he was not, by any means, finished with Daniel. When Daniel was calm, he'd go back in and work his magic. Oh yes, he would.