"You know the memorial service is tomorrow, don't you?" Vlad Masters questioned softly and with a certain slowness, that of a father who has left his child to in the presence of a diamond necklace he has bought his wife for their anniversary and is attempting to retrieve said necklace after the child has hidden it. His eyes were fixed on Danny's face carefully, the gaze gentle but also very calculating, like that of the best and most well-recommended physiatrist.

Danny nodded lightly, staring back at Vlad in the same fashion, his eyes soft but very serious. Though he was willing to allow Vlad to caress his calloused hands—and was, in truth, comforted by the gesture—he could not keep the fingers from twirling and twisting nervously in the man's soft grip. As if to hush these restless fingers, Vlad's own began to stroke slightly, producing the desired result. Danny's fingers became still, but not stiff with fear; rather, they relaxed in comfort.

"Yes," he said when the distraction that was his nervous hands had finally subsided. "I heard when I was out."

"I apologize for that, Danny," Vlad said sincerely, still stroking the hardened hands of the fifteen-year-old boy. "With the wildness of these last few days, I suppose it slipped my mind."

"I understand."

"Who told you?"

"Oh." He paused briefly, as if unsure whether or not this information was safe to disclose. But after a short moment, he said, "Just some kids from school."

"Who would they be, Danny?"

"Just some kids," he said quietly, and looked down at the cool metal surface of the table, unable to hold Vlad's soft and compassionate but oh-so-calculating gaze. However, he could not enjoy this tableside view for very long, because after a short pause, Vlad released Danny's hands and took the boy's face captive instead, cupping his thin cheeks in his hands and gently forcing him to look up and into his eyes. In that moment Danny was reminded vividly of their little episode beneath the tree during which Vlad had taken his face in his hands in a similar fashion, so intimately, a moment that seemed so long ago but was not, in reality, more than four days prior.

Just four days ago we were sitting beneath that tree and he was holding me and stroking my hair, Danny thought briefly in disbelief. How could so much have changed since then?

Unlike that day, when he'd kicked and screamed briefly when Vlad first took hold of him, Danny remained completely still and passive, comforted by the slightly moist palms pressed gently into his cheeks—or, for the sake of negativity, simply too tired to resist now, both physically and emotionally.

"What were their names, little badger?" Vlad asked softly but intently, feeling that this information would provide very crucial to the something of Danny, and placatingly began to stroke one of his cheeks with the side of his pointer finger in hopes of gaining it.

"Dash," Danny said without hesitation, staring sleepily at Vlad, as if in a trance, and although the man was not aware of it, he was, of sorts. Simply, like the actual length of time that had passed since he'd sat beneath the tree with Vlad, the last time he'd been touched so comfortingly seemed so dreadfully long ago, and now he could not help but indulge in it. Strangely—or not so strangely, to each his own—Vlad's touch felt so amazingly familiar to his mother's, or his sister's, and it was so consolingly familiar the words slipped easily from his mouth. "Dash and his friends."
Vlad's thick brow came together. "Dash? The boy I've seen picking on you?"

"Yes."

"What were you doing with him?" Vlad said, alarm ringing out in his voice like the toll of a fire-station bell when this or that has caught ablaze.

"Nothing," Danny said softly, paused, and then seemed to reconsider, but he looked very far-gone, an almost intoxicated quality about him. "Well, I was coming back from the mall and I saw them smoking behind the school."

Vlad's eyes grew very wide; his face paled considerably at the wounds of possibility this softly uttered statement gouged open. In that same serious tone, now mingled with rapidly increasing concern, he said slowly to the child, "What did they say to you?"

"They asked if I wanted one," he said gently, staring up into Vlad's widened eyes with shimmering wet ones of his own.

After a long, horror-struck pause—one that resembled a monster movie in which the hero knows the creature lurks behind him but is too terrified to turn around in order to confirm it—Vlad forced the lump that sat in his throat back down and said slowly, hardly able to formulate the words, sure his own lack of competence had gotten this child—the child he still loved with an undying passion even after the events of the last few days had unfolded and still played out in his mind—addicted to cigarettes, "And what did you say, Danny?"

"I said no," Danny said slowly, and nodded slightly as if he was very impressed by himself or his own actions.

The breath Vlad had been holding in released in a long sigh, one that follows a heart-stopping practical joke and the person who is pranked realizes what has happened. "Oh thank god," he said, and released Danny's face as he had his hands so he could hold his own chest now, as if unable to breathe.

"They said I should take one for tomorrow. They said I'd need it, and tried to give it to me, but I ran away before they could," Danny said with little emotional drive, watching Vlad as he sat across from him, looking winded.

Vlad regarded him for a long while, his mind racing frantically with all of those what ifs that invade a parent's mind when they learn something unspeakable has happened to their child. Rage, but not without prevailingly strong confusion, and a desire that was beginning to sprout from the seeds of these oh-so-human emotions, showed clearly on his pale face. It became apparent that he was not in fact observing the boy, but rather using the boy's face as a portal in which his mind could enter and get lost in a parade of hatred.

No, he was not there, and Danny stared at him, his head slightly tilted, eyes wide and beginning to flood with cold fear, for the warmth of Vlad's previous comfort was fading, and rapidly, drawing him back into the pathetic reality of his life in which there was no comfort and only undiluted pain.

A moment or so later, Vlad stood from his chair, his gaze having refocused as he returned to Danny's pigshit reality with a look of cool, hate-stirred determination plastered onto his face. He turned to stare at the frightened boy as a soft, almost psychotic smile began tugging at the corners of his lips when the pieces of the man's newest and most urgent—or so it seemed then, always would in the heat of the moment—intent fell neatly into the puzzle board that was his mind.

"Go up to your room, my sweet little badger, and lay down. I'm going to take care of things for you. For us," he said, his voice soft and distant, as if carried in from somewhere outside by a gentle breeze.

Danny's eyes widened further from the fear evoked swiftly by the eeriness this statement was so able to draw, his bottom lip quivering lightly. Is he going to…?

Vlad took Danny's face in his hands again and pressed a rough kiss squarely onto his forehead, causing the teenager's face to twist into a grimace and a soft grunt to escape his lips. The man took no notice as he pulled away and went to the front door.

"Go lay down, little badger. I'll be home soon, and then we'll talk. I promise."

With this, the now seemingly-deranged man left Fenton Works; Danny watched from the window as he transformed into Vlad Plasmius and took to the skies, off to who knew where to do who knew what.

A/N:

I hope you liked the chapter, and please review.

~DM/P or VC