Chapter 11

Pain.

It was the first thing Danny was aware of as he hit the table, gasping.

In the minutia of space in his mind that wasn't consumed by the scorching, biting pain, Danny recognized the sensation he associated with being released from a Fenton thermos after Jazz tried to help fight a ghost.

Unlike those times, he didn't immediately start floating and complaining, and he definitely didn't experience any form of relief.

This felt more like the thermos spit him out after digesting half of him. His back slapped metal with a painful thwack, and the pain there spiked as if he'd just been run over. Though his spine arched and his face contorted in agony, he couldn't scream; his throat was dry, crumbly stone, and his lungs were on fire.

Then he was being grabbed. Hands, hands on his hands, hands on his feet. Each point of contact was a rake to his wounds, each finger a gouge in his abused skin.

They've got me, they've got me, they're tying me up!

He tried desperately to scream. The pain, the pain and the fear were choking him, smothering him. His body wanted to writhe, find some relief from the burning, but everything he touched was part of the inferno.

Most pressing was the pain in his chest. Crowding, suffocating, blazing, a misshapen ball the size of a fist throbbed erratically in the center of his chest. He longed for it to go away, for it to stop, to rip it out. In his mind's eye he saw himself crack open his ribcage and tear out the offending object, and at the moment it seemed like the only available mode of escape, despite the physical impossibility.

Thus he struggled against the hands. Though every movement felt like rubbing shards of broken glass in an open wound, he kicked violently, clawed at the air, and contorted his torso painfully into a dozen different angles, but the hands had already locked him into what was undoubtedly some form of anti-phasing cuffs.

Alarm bells were going off in his head like crazy; every cell in his body was rebelling, was retching, pleading with his brain to do something about it please.

A flash of light.

A steep drop in fervor. New pain. Crippling pain. He couldn't move, he couldn't struggle, he couldn't scream. All he could do was bear it, and he didn't even have a choice in that. His teeth might have gnashed, there might have been tears, he couldn't know. All he could hear was ringing and he had yet to dare open his eyes, for they burned too.

They've got me… They've got me.

It was his worst nightmare tenfold. He couldn't remember how many times he'd woken up in a cold sweat those nights after a close call with his parents left him shaken. He couldn't remember how many times he'd flinched a little at the dinner table while hiding an mark from one of their ectoblasts under his shirt.

All those times his parents had come in talking about a new weapon. All those mornings he'd spent eating breakfast with them as they discussed new ways to kill him and those like him. When he was young at first it was terrifying. Then, once they'd proven their incompetence, it had become simply annoying, because he was invincible. As he'd gotten older, as the scrapes added up, as the stakes became higher with each technological breakthrough, as he became a little less stupid, he'd started to worry again.

But this time, this time it was too late.

He caught himself feeling sorry for himself, and a wave of rage washed over him. He had no right to feel sorry for himself, no right to complain about the pain or wish for it to be over. He had no claim to weeping or screaming, because he deserved it. He deserved everything his mad scientist parents could throw at him and more for what he'd done.

Wait….aren't I human now?

If he'd had enough air to breathe, he'd have said that the thought knocked the wind out of him. Since his lungs were flailing in search of sustainability as much as the rest of him, the metaphor was hardly fitting. He had no wind to give, yet a giant boulder had been dropped on his chest all the same. It was as if his ribs had cracked, his sternum shattered, and his very heart been smashed to pieces.

If he were human now, they shouldn't still be touching him.

If he were human now, they must've figured out everything.

They would know he was their son.

They would know what he had done.

And they were still touching him, he could vaguely feel forces from the outer world through the pain. Every touch was like the pressure of a burning cigarette to his skin, but white hot and sharp, he knew it was happening even if he could hardly keep track of it in the cloudy mess that was his brain.

If they knew that he, the boy lying helplessly on a table in their lab, was their son, if they knew that and they were still being their regular scientist selves, then that was it. They had condemned him. Condemned him to the deepest pits of hell for his sins, denounced him as their son, completely disregarded his personhood.

If this was happening, then there was no hope.

They'd kill him. They'd have their way dissecting him, and he would die. If he could die. He was human at the moment, so didn't that mean he could die? He certainly wasn't getting enough oxygen, and soon they'd start opening him up. There'd be lots of blood, red, human-looking blood. He'd suffocate, he'd bleed out, surely something.

If he could die. And maybe it would be better if he did.

All that eye for an eye stuff never made much sense to him. That "Ane eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" crap didn't make any sense either, though; one eye from each person in an argument would just make the eyepatch industry really happy.

Would his death make everything better? Could it be that magic fix that negated his crime, that cleared him of his stupid mistake? Would that be fair, an even zero-zero in an indisputably unfair world?

No. it could never be even zero-zero. Because that man….Mr. Baker, Baker, David, David Baker….that man was innocent. He didn't do anything wrong at all, all he wanted to do was help. Help him, help Danny, save Danny.

And look where that got him. No one could save Danny, bad things happened to people who wanted to save Danny.

He could feel tears on his face now. Wet streaks, like acid, creeping down his cheeks. His fruitless chokes had turned into desperate gasps, but even the black world behind his eyelids was spinning. It felt like he was rolling, flipping, dipping, rising, constantly, less like a leaf in the wind and more like a trashcan in a really bad storm. Banging, clanging, full of trash, and made worthless for its trouble. His stomach roiled, his blood boiled, he wanted to scream but couldn't.

Make it stop, make it stop, please...

Maybe it would stop. What was the point in debating the moral utility of his death when he clearly had no control over it? He couldn't move, could barely breathe, could hardly think.

You deserve this pain. Death is too good, you should suffer. You have to suffer.

The words repeated over and over again in his mind in a quick, hissing chorus. Have to suffer, have to suffer, have to suffer...

His stomach rebelled then. Whatever food he had eaten that day was coming up, and there wasn't anything he could do about it.

So he couldn't breathe again. He was choking, mostly on water and toast.

Definitely worst case scenario, he thought absentmindedly as he struggled, choking to death on soggy toast remains.

Automatically he tried to sit, but the moment he made any effort to raise that burnt up shell that was his skin into a new position he knew that wasn't going to happen without help. Then the hands were back, lifting his head up until he could spit most of it out on his own now bare wound of a chest.

He opened his eyes.

Sam!

Sam, Tucker, Jazz, even Vlad. He wasn't in his parents' lab at all, and no one was trying to pull him apart for science. They were trying to save him!

Maybe I don't have to die….

And despite his apprehension that thought was attractive. Despite all of his despair, all of his self-hatred, he didn't want to die; he wanted to live, he wanted to fight, he wanted to own up to his crap, and he wanted to make things right again. Even the slightest chance of that future existing, a future where he didn't have to burn in hell forever, was like a beacon in the dark, maybe a trick, maybe not.

It doesn't matter, another part of him said, It doesn't matter, things will never be right again. It's too late for that, you've screwed up everything. It's over either way.

But it wasn't over. As long as Danny was breathing (or whatever he did in ghost form—he wasn't sure), then it wasn't over. Couldn't be over, didn't feel over. He was in too much pain for anything to be over.

Shakily, nearly imperceptibly, his lips contorted into a small smile despite the physical agony that still buried him.

Isn't over for you. It's over for someone.

Smile gone.

It was getting harder to think. Whatever his friends and Vlad were doing was helping, he was pretty sure, but he still hadn't felt pain like this since the accident. And that was only for a couple of seconds; it had to have been several minutes of this torture by now at least.

Then, in his fuzzy, grainy brain he remembered. Bad things happen to people who try to save Danny Fenton.

He longed to stop them. He knew what he was capable of, he'd seen himself, a version of himself, a version that was a killer. He'd killed David Baker, maybe on accident, but that didn't matter. If he killed David Baker, he could kill again. Were his friends, the only people who knew him and cared about them in the world, next? He couldn't think, couldn't apply logic to the issue. All he could think was that he was dangerous and that they were in danger.

Get away, get away. Let me go, let me die.

When he tried to scream next, sound came out. It wasn't quite the shout of pure hellish misery that would have fit the situation better, but the raspy groan was definitely something.

What felt like heavy, heavy wool mixed with barbed wire raked across his chest, and red hot lights flashed before his eyes. A more shuddered blubber came from his throat, a pathetic sound, but he couldn't find it in himself to be embarrassed.

Are they trying to clean my wounds?

It seemed very ridiculous to him. Here he was, barely clinging to consciousness if not his life, and they were worried about infection.

"God, stop!" he wanted to scream, "Stop stop stop!" But he couldn't, and they didn't.

If he concentrated very hard, he could hear snippets of their conversation.

"He needs anesthesia, Vlad, look at him…"

"It'd be too much, he can't handle it yet, he's too fragile…"

"Just a little…"

"His heart…"

His heart. If he focused on it, tried to find the rhythm...there. There it was, and they were right to be scared. It was fast, then it was slow. Fast, slow, fast, slow...like an engine being revved up to the max but unable to fully run.

He was overheated. Below the burning, it felt like his insides were melting. Suddenly aware of the sensation, the swaying illusion returned. He recalled being very sick once as a child, having that burning fever. Feeling heavy, feeling tired, eyelids drooping….

No, he had to stay conscious. If he didn't stay conscious...well, he wasn't exactly sure what would happen but in movies and television it was always bad.

The memory of being sick came back to him. He remembered his nice, warm bed...too warm, he was too warm. Cold baths, he thought he'd had a few cold baths. His parents had insisted on them, because of his fever, he'd hated it. He'd felt cold already, then these were too cold, freezing cold, frozen fire consuming him. Teeth chattering, crying. He wanted to be cold now. Needed cold, too hot, needed cold, hot hot hot hot….

He remembered his parents. Always so caring, so sympathetic. Wanted to help him, ease the pain, would have borne it for him if they could. Held him in their arms, held his hand, surrounded him with anti-ghost trappings that were supposed to make him feel better. He remembered how loved he'd felt, how safe despite the chattering of teeth and the unending hacking. They hadn't cared when he coughed all over them or vomitted on their jumpsuits, they'd just wanted him to get better.

Now there was a different set of people hovering over his sick bed, and they were doing a hell of a lot more than cleaning up his used tissues or wiping up his sick, though he was sure that was involved..

He'd always loved that children's Motrin, the pink stuff.

Man, he'd kill for some ibuprofen now.

A drop in his now empty stomach. His head ached, near bursting. He could feel himself rounding the bend back to self-loathing and hopelessness, and some part of him knew that he wanted to make it through this he had to stay away from that corner, far away.

Die for some ibuprofen. Maybe he'd die for some ibuprofen.

But the monster in him was back and it was clawing at his insides.

Is this how it's going to be from now on? he wondered to himself, Constant back and forth between being able to live with myself and not so much?

The external pain was subsiding then. Maybe they'd given him the anesthesia, he wasn't listening any more.

It must have been...Wednesday morning. Hmm, Wednesday. Wed-nes-day. Weeeddd-neezzz-day. Only Wednesday. His life had only shattered late Sunday, and it was only Wednesday. It had taken him less than 72 hours to make the biggest mistake of his life and be completely destroyed. He worked fast.

Math was funny.

He was losing feeling. His fingers, his toes. Did he have fingers and toes? Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes….head, shoulders, knees and toes….

Funny. When he was a ghost, he didn't always have knees or toes. Where did they go?

The thought was very funny in that moment. His ghostly tail basically made him an air-mermaid! A ghostly, air-mermaid, wasn't that something?

He could feel himself slipping, but he was okay. He couldn't exactly remember how he'd gotten there anymore, but it didn't matter. It was sleepy time, and sleep sounded nice.

Very, very nice indeed.

…..

Tucker's gloved hands gripped the cool golden sink in Vlad Masters' bathroom like it was his only anchor to this earth. His hold was precarious, as his green and red coated fingers were constantly slipping around the brim as he tried to stop shaking.

He'd already emptied his stomach into the fanciest toilet he'd ever seen once in the last five minutes since he'd been in there, but he felt like doing it again. Just looking at himself in the ornate mirror which hung above the basin made him sick.

The mirror hung in an intricately decorated (with tiny footballs—really?), dark green frame. The entire bathroom screamed, "Packers! Packers!" The tiles were gold and green, the rug was gold and green, the hand towels were gold and green.

Tuck supposed he was lucky; this was Vlad's least offensive obsession to date. The bathroom could have been Maddie or Danny themed, or maybe even dead Jack Fenton themed. Yeah, definitely could've been worse.

Vlad had provided them with hazmat suits for the surgery, and Tucker's time in it could easily be put up there alongside the worst several hour periods of his life. Danny had passed out ten or so minutes in, which was probably for the best, but everyone else had to keep going.

He shuddered; the images wouldn't leave him alone. He'd always hated hospitals, but this wasn't a hospital. This was a fancy mansion with an underground laboratory where he'd been forced to simultaneously torture and save his greatest friend in the world from wounds inflicted upon him by said friend's own parents.

"How did we get here?" he muttered to himself as he held his hands under the faucet in an attempt to get rid of some of the blood before removing them. This couldn't be the most sanitary way to remove a jumpsuit like this, but he was no expert, and he had to get out of it. As quickly as possible, before his hands shook too much to do the job.

Nothing would be the same after what they'd just been through. Tucker, Sam, and even Jazz had all done some very dangerous things with Danny and seen him be pretty banged up before. But never like this.

There was no unseeing it. Especially when a grisly combo of dried blood and ectoplasm coated his person in this way, especially when it was so fresh in his mind, when it wasn't even over yet. Danny was barely stable, covered in bandages, could hardly breathe. His ghost powers should have kicked in by now, he should have been better already. Maybe not 100%, but better.

The goal going in had just been to keep him stable. Bandage him up, get a few scans in, let his powers do the rest of the work. But, for some reason, they mostly hadn't.

They'd cancelled school again that morning, not that it mattered. He wouldn't have gone, and he sure knew Sam wouldn't. Her parents were probably scouring the city for her, and the last place they'd look would be the basement of the mayor's mansion next to her blood splattered hooligan friend mere hours after the town hero/murderer had been blasted, some said to bits.

Though they were hardly less gory than they had been, he could no longer resist the urge to pull of his gloves. So they came off, and, disgusted, he flung them immediately into the nearby bathtub. The dark green ceramic suddenly became much more Christmas-y, between the red and the green, and the stark tastelessness of the situation punched him in the throat. That was his friend's blood, and it was awful.

Feeling the hysteria coming on quick, he began to tear desperately at the suit, wrangling it off his body as quickly (albeit as awkwardly) as possible, and sending it the same way as the gloves.

Street clothes revealed again, he took a deep breath and turned to reface the mirror.

His hands. He'd gotten it on his hands. Red with some green, maybe a little bit of skin. He hadn't realized it, but it made sense. Some of that must have come off too.

Barely falling to his knees in front of the toilet in time, he vomited once again and began to weep.

A soft knock interrupted his hysteria.

"Tucker?" Sam. "Tucker, can I come in?"

Feeling gross, he went to wipe off his mouth with one hand, but stopped it midway to his face when he remembered the blood. Blood, ectoplasm, and skin. He was breathing too quickly; the world was spinning.

"Come in," he breathed, hardly loud enough for her to hear.

The door creaked open a couple of inches, enough for her to peak in. He saw her tired, violet eyes and was able to breathe out again. He wasn't alone in this; none of them were.

She'd nixed her usual skirt and crop top look for the day, instead wearing just a plain black shirt and plain black yoga pants. Her hair, which she'd been growing out a bit over the past few months, was simply brushed and newly released from the ponytail which had contained it in the lab.

Upon seeing his distress, without hesitation, she crossed the small room and knelt on the floor beside him.

"It's on my hands," he sobbed, panicking, "Sam, it's on my hands!"

Without a word, she reached up to a hook on the wall, grabbed one of the 'P' embroidered towels, and ran the sink to get it wet. Tuck thought it was nice of her to ignore his blubbering; a Sam from another time might've tried to slap it out of him, but this Sam knew better.

She returned to her place on the tile in front of him and grabbed one of his now violently shaking hands. Softly, with a tenderness he hadn't known she possessed, she began to clean off the offending red and green splotches. By the time she had repeated the process on his left hand, he had fully transitioned from abject, terrified wailing to quiet sniffles.

"Thanks," he whispered, wrapping his arms around his legs and putting his head between his knees.

Sam mirrored his position, and they sat there for several more minutes, enjoying the companionable silence.

"I think we're going to be okay," Sam murmured absently, staring at the floor with droopy, tired eyes.

Tucker didn't respond.

AN: Hey, guys, here's another chapter, and it looks like we've hit the 40k word mark! Woo!

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Thanks for reading!