Sorry it's late; I didn't have any time yesterday to jump on the computer! This chapter lines up with chapter 29 of Invincible.
I stared down at my knees, my tongue feeling heavy in my mouth. I'd spent the last several fucking hours lying my ass off and now I was about to do it again. My parents were coming. Sam's parents were coming. I was going to have to look my mother in the eye and pretend – for the rest of my fucking life – that I wasn't the reason Jazz was dead. The fact that I was going to have to do that had only really occurred to me when I was in the middle of talking about Vlad's benefit and then I hadn't been able to think about anything else. I looked at the walls and the ceiling and then finally over at Sam, just wanting to distract myself.
"What did you tell me the police?"
"Just what we talked about," Sam said quickly, although that particular discussion was kind of fuzzy for me. "I don't think they wanted to push us too far today anyway."
"No," I said. What would they gain if they broke us?"What happened, though, when we got out? I just remember going to sleep there and waking up here."
It was my first chance to ask. Perhaps my last for a while.
"You won't believe it."
"Try me." I was half-ghost. I had to believe in a lot of shit.
"All right. I carried you out."
Well, if anything was going to make a skeptic out of me, it was going to be that particular statement. I tried to gauge how much weight I had lost in the cell and how small Sam was. It wasn't like she'd been bulking up in our down time. She looked like carrying herself around was going to break her. I didn't know how she'd managed to pick me up. And what about the restraints?
"Sam, you're really little. I know I dropped weight in there, but I just don't see how it's possible."
My disbelief made her smile.
"I did it though. Not entirely sure how. Maheen came down earlier and she explained that she found a route for me to take, one that would get me outside. Then she helped position you on my shoulders and off I went."
"Wow," I said, thinking of how I hadn't even liked Maheen in the beginning but she'd turned out to be a saviour. The route for us to take, the restraints, all of that must have been her. Sam glanced at me. "You saved my life."
She rolled her eyes, looking more fed up with me than she had in a while. "Well, if it hadn't been for your sorry ass, I wouldn't have needed to do any saving."
"That's true."
What else could I say to that? She'd never been in the wrong when she was bitter and angry. She'd never said anything that wasn't true. I knew I had to sit there and take it. I had put her through hell. She had a right to yell at me for it if that was what she wanted to do. I stared at her while she did everything but stare at me and then our door creaked open. My heart leapt into my throat but it wasn't Mom's face I saw, but Pamela Manson's. She rushed across the floor and Sam hugged her so tightly that it almost hurt me to watch, especially as her father walked in and hugged her too. Where was my mom? My dad?
The door squeaked again and I turned, trying to figure out how I could look at my mother's tears and not cry when it turned out not to be my mother that I saw. Someone that looked so much like my mother. Someone that couldn't possible be real but I knew from one look that she wasn't a ghost.
Jazz.
Jazz was real. Real and alive and, oh, fuck. I couldn't hold in my scream and didn't care that the IV ripped from my arm. I just had to get to her. Had to feel that she was warm and breathing and that her heartbeat was still there. She was sitting in a wheelchair and I fell to my knees in front of her, burying my head in her lap. She smelt like home and I burst into tears as she bent over me, covering me with her torso.
"Danny," she crooned. "Danny, it's okay."
"He told me you were dead!" I exclaimed and that was when I began to hyperventilate. "I saw you dead!"
"Not dead, not dead," Jazz said. "Danny, are you okay?"
I couldn't answer. I couldn't do anything but hide my head in her lap because, fuck, all of the mourning and all of the sobbing and all of the wondering how there could be life without Jazz and I shouldn't have had to consider that at all.
"Danny," Dad said and I jumped when the unexpected hand touched my back. "Oh, I'm sorry I –"
I had never known my father to sound so awkward and all my life, Dad hadn't been anything but awkward.
"Let's get you back to bed," Mom suggested and her voice made a whole new batch of tears well up into my eyes as I clung tighter to Jazz.
I wasn't letting go.
"Tucker?" I whispered against her side. Was it worth it to even ask?
"Okay. I'll tell you the whole story soon," Jazz murmured in my ear. "I didn't tell Mom and Dad anything, don't worry."
I wasn't. Jazz would keep my secrets. Jazz would protect me. Jazz would always have my back. And so did Tucker. And they were okay. And Vlad was a stupid son of a bitch. But he didn't belong in the moment with me now, not when Jazz was alive.
God. Jazz was alive.
Had I ever been more thankful for anything? Would I?
Probably not.
(-.-)
The room felt cold and the day felt surreal, now that visiting hours were over and our families were gone. I stared up at my ceiling, my mind on fire. Jazz and Tucker were alive, were fine. Vlad was a fucking nutcase of a liar and if he didn't think that I wasn't just going to set him on fire and watch him burn after this, he had another thing coming. Forget about turning into a villain. He deserved whatever was coming to him.
"Still awake?" Sam asked and, truthfully, her voice made me jump. I hadn't realized she was awake.
"Yeah," I said, and then thought that I should make more of an effort. "You excited to go home in the morning?"
"More than you can imagine," Sam said, and then she seemed to reconsider. "Actually, you're probably the only person in the world who could imagine it."
I was going to go home and sleep in my bed, in a room alone, with Jazz sleeping across the hall from me. I wondered if it would surprise either of us if I crawled into bed with her, like I used to when I was little and I had nightmares but still thought of myself as too much of a grown up to go and bother my parents. But I couldn't say any of that aloud and so I settled on: "It's going to be so strange. I mean, even this feels surreal. Showers; real bathrooms; real fuckin' food. It's like a dream."
"And more than each other to converse with. Sometimes."
Sam was teasing and I smiled. New topics to discuss. New TV shows. Books. I'd never cared much for books. Maybe I'd try now.
"And Jazz is alive. And Tucker's alive." Alive, with deficits, as Jazz had furiously whispered to me in the few moments that my parents had left us alone. She hadn't had the time to give me much and so I really only half understood what it was that she had been trying to tell me. But that didn't really matter, did it, because I had all the time in the world now to listen to her.
"I didn't ask earlier, but Jazz's wheelchair?
"Scary looking, isn't it?" I asked, trying to make things sound light. It was easier, if things sounded light. If I could talk about them like they were nothing instead of a massive, looming worry. "When she was attacked, there was damage done to her legs. It's not irreparable, but it's a long journey back to walking. She said the doctors were confident that she'd be able to do it, and she's walking over 50% of the time now, I guess."
"Oh, that's good."
"And she said Tucker isn't 100% normal, either," I added, but that was the part that I hadn't really understood. I guessed I'd have to see Tucker in person to truly get it.
"But he's alive. The world is a much better place than we thought it was."
"It is." I still didn't know if I wanted to believe it but I couldn't disagree with her.
"So, what's going on with Tucker?" Sam asked.
"Uh, Jazz said some kind of amnesia. I can't remember the exact name. She says it's not that bad; that sometimes he blanks on random words or events, but it's good. It's all good," I said, trying to remember Jazz's exact words, even though I was just too distracted by the fact that she was alive and he was alive and that, for the most part, things were probably going to be just fine. Because I could confess things to Sam, I added, "I'm just glad they both survived. Not that their lives will make me go any easier on Vlad and Elliot, once I get my hands on them."
"What are you going to do to them?" she asked, her voice small, like she was really worried about what I was going to do.
"Haven't quite decided yet." It might be too hard to kill them. It would be unjust to not do anything. What did they deserve, besides eternal torment?
"Are you going to kill them?"
"I don't know." I hadn't really expected her to ask, either. I turned to face her, thinking that if anyone deserved to know, if there was anyone that I could talk about it with, it would be her. "If I let them live, Vlad will come after us again, do worse than he did last time. Letting them go also scares me because I don't know exactly what Vlad's master plan is. He's still working on that, and since we've been unconscious the past few days, I worry what he's gotten up to. And if I don't kill them, then what am I going to do with them?"
"I … I don't know. I'd just hate to see you with blood on your hands."
"Me too … I don't want to become anything like him." Which, ultimately, was my biggest fear. It meant that I would end up making someone else feel the way that I was right now.
"When you do whatever it is you do, will you come tell me? I need to know, for my peace of mind."
I nodded and then realized she might not be able to see it that well. I pushed myself on my elbow, thinking now was as good of a time as any to ask, "You want to see me, after?"
Sam hugged her knees to her chest, looking at me. It made me hopeful until she said, "I … just for that one thing."
"I … I can understand that." I had to. She'd been forced to spend months in my presence. I couldn't force her to do anything else. I added, "Whatever makes you happy."
After everything she'd gone through, Sam just deserved to be happy.
"Danny –" Sam said and I felt a smile that was probably too big for the situation come across my face. I knew I was grinning like a fucking idiot. "What?"
"That's the first time you've ever called me by my name."
Not Phantom, not Fenton, not Jack, not any of the insults that'd she come up with – as colourful and amusing as some of them were. I was Danny to her. I watched her face, waiting for her to say something, but she just seemed to curl in on herself and then she turned away from me. I laid back down on my own bed and crossed my hands behind my head.
Danny, huh? It might be nothing. It might be something. I toyed around with possibilities before reminding myself that it was time for me to let her go. There was no more playing around, no more thinking. She had a life to live and I had a villain to deal with.
It was just the way things were.
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~TLL~
