Disclaimer: Don't own DP.
Thanks to KraZiiePyrozHavemoreFun, Invader Johnny, Chrysanthemum9484, Iblamepie, mocha1424, Dp-Marvel94, Kanameshaoran, Gerren, Hope, JadeliketheGem, Asj Johnson, KaezerZilla, and jackdanielmoni for reviewing last time! Much appreciated!
Apologies for the long wait on this chapter. Karma is winding down to an end (maybe one more chapter after this?), and endings are always the hardest to land, guh.
Overall Miniseries Summary for Karma: Dan challenges Pariah Dark for the position of Ghost King and loses badly. As a result, Pariah Dark rips out Dan's power core and tortures him to make him an example for other enemies. He then throws a broken Dan to the resistance before claiming the human world as part of his empire. Valerie struggles with what to do regarding their strange prisoner and how to stop Pariah Dark before he destroys them all. Hurt!Dan.
Karma Part 14: With his power core excised of insanity, a clear-minded Dan Phantom now reigns as the Ghost King, with great power he can offer to the Red Huntress, if she accepts it. Overall Thread Genre: Horror/Drama. Rating: M.
Content Warnings: Brief mentions of previous torture. Some scenes of bullying.
Deliverance
Shot 80: Karma Part 14
An uneasy tension hung over Amity Park, as news of Dan Phantom's offer slipped through the grapevines of gossip.
"—stormed the war room—!"
"But did he really offer to make Valerie a queen? Because—"
"What kind of power is he offering to give up anyway? It could be a trap."
Valerie paced outside near the trees, her red armor glimmering in the sunset with a strength she had not exuded for days. "I can't believe you," she complained. She ran a frazzled hand through her hair. "I can't believe you'd spring something like that on me in front of an entire crowd."
Nearby, Dan hovered cross-legged in the air, face disgruntled. The edges of his cape flickered with his restlessness within. "You should be pleased by my offer of power."
She turned around, face hot. Like this, they were nearly eye to eye, and she poked his chest. "You could have at least told me what you were thinking ahead of time."
"Why?" he demanded. "I do not owe you insight into my every thought."
Valerie whined, pulling away. "It's my life! I want the right to say yes or no to you injecting my suit with ghost power and calling me a Queen when I'm not." Her voice caught. "Now, everyone else is trying to tell me to say yes or no."
The ghost quirked an eyebrow. "Your opinion is the only one that matters. It is not for any other to decide."
"Tell that to Amity Park," she retorted, and then she stopped herself, face-palming. "Oh my god, what am I saying. No, don't tell that to Amity Park—you'll just scare them."
He leaned his elbow on his knee, his black gloves sparking with power. "I could certainly…reinforce that the decision rests with you alone."
"No." Her expression crumpled as she wrung her hands together. "Besides, would you really upgrade my suit, just like that? With power equal to your own?"
It fell silent between them, a soft wind blowing through. Dan's long, flickering hair spun in tendrils along his shoulders, and he slid into a stand, his boots hitting the pavement with a solid thump. For a second, vulnerability crossed his face. "When Pariah Dark excised my power core…"
His voice trailed off.
Valerie's eyes landed on him with wariness and curiosity.
Dan's face shadowed as he pressed his lips together and clenched his fist. "I thought he was the strongest being across two worlds, and that if I could not defeat him, then no one could."
A silence stretched between them as she waited for him to continue.
"But we did it," he said, voice halted. "Together."
"Yes?"
He gave her an irritated look. "By that, I mean we must stay together for survival purposes. You and I are unstoppable against all other forces, all other enemies. This power is meant for us."
Valerie's eyebrows flew up, and then a half-amused, sly grin stretched her face. "Is that a proposal?"
She expected him to sputter and roll his eyes, as sarcastic jests were not alien to their banter. But instead, he stood ramrod straight, eyeing her hard.
"Yes," he said. "It is."
The confession echoed between them, the wind ruffling against them, such that her curls and his cape flickered closer together briefly, their bodies belying the unspoken ache between them.
Valerie swallowed hard, her cheeks heating hard. The memory of Dan holding her in bed, comforting away her tears and worries before the battle, came to mind, along with his ease in leaning into her touch.
The way he had stroked her hair in the silence…
Had begged for her human heat…
The sharp tip of an elfin ear peeked out from the thick locks of his hair. "I hear the pounding of your heart and the tight contraction of your breath, but I do not know if it is in anxiety…" his head tilted, his hair shifting, "or anticipation."
She blinked, her flush stretching over her whole front. "You mean it, then. The whole, actually Queen thing."
"Yes."
"Even though you're the Ghost King now and don't need me."
He waved at the world around them in a frustration. "And you are the Red Huntress. You had your choice of the ten thousand souls in Amity Park, and it was my shoulder upon which you wept before the battle with Pariah Dark, even though I was an injured prisoner."
The heat in her cheeks darkened further, but she did not deny him. "Of course, you'd remember that to rub it in my face."
Dan quirked a wry eyebrow, even as he grinned. He had a handsome grin now, his eyes no longer shadowed by insanity or sorrow. "I do enjoy being needed by you," he said. He stepped forward, his snow breath a pleasant cool against the heat of her cheek as he tilted his head. "I want to be needed by you."
Like this, the air between them carried a tension—the same one reminding Valerie that Dan was inherently a male and a good-looking one at that. That her body fit well within the lines of his own.
She rubbed her cheek, breath hitching. "I get the feeling this queen position is more than just a title, even though you told my father that's all it was."
"It is whatever you wish it," he said.
A vulnerable line tightened in her shoulders, even as she struggled for words. "After all that's happened, I know we're…more than just allies."
His blood-red eyes searched her gaze. His voice grew halted as he pressed his hand to his chest, where his regenerated power core thrummed—a core that she had rebuilt. "I exist for you now."
The words that he did not speak hung hard between them, for Dan's behavior indicated his obsessions had changed drastically since Pariah Dark had cut out his old power core, even if he could remember his old self.
Did it mean his new core, his new ghostly obsession, revolved around…her?
Valerie's breath hitched between them. In the silence, she reached out to touch his chest, feeling the deep, alien vibration of his core. "Is that the real reason you're offering power to me? To just sustain yourself, keep from fading out?"
His long fingers slipped over her own. "That's not what I meant," he said, voice halted as his fingers ticked against hers with a hesitance. A longing.
She could feel it, even as she did not dare to admit to the heat that bloomed in her cheeks at the thought of an even closer alliance with this healed Dan Phantom. Being queen to his king.
"Show me what you mean, then," she demanded.
His wine eyes leveled with her own, their breath mixing in the small space between them. "After sharing beds and healing each other, you should already know."
This close, she could see his pupils dilating—an involuntary human response to the sight of something treasured.
To her.
On instinct, he activated his intangibility, his power slipping over her as well to protect her from the cameras of any judging eyes.
Valerie held on tighter, her body tingling with the coldness of Dan's intangibility. She had never felt such a sensation before and realized it lit up the edges of her vision in a pure white. He flew them through bushes and walls and blurred to her room within the Resistance.
The instant they were alone, Dan dropped their intangibility and closed the gap between them. He kissed her fervently, and Valerie weaved her fingers into the long locks of Phantom's hair to hold him to her as the kiss deepened.
All the unspoken words between them manifested in how his hand stroked along her hip, how she opened her mouth in willingness for her tongue to slide against his. The glow from his body brightened, his power shining like a star above.
She pulled away, her own eyes dilated now. Her breath rasped in a ragged puff—heat against the snow of his own breath as she leaned back against the wall.
Her fingers had tightened into the material of his jumpsuit at his waist. "Oh," she whispered, a vulnerable line in her shoulders.
Oh, did she know. Every memory of secretly admiring his features—the sharp tension in her nerves as she'd helped to button up his flannel shirt days and days ago—
—the heat of her blush as he'd helped her to sit in bed, his hands a steady, solid presence through the weariness of pain and healing.
Valerie reached out and touched Dan's jaw, her bare fingers stroking the soft line of facial hair that expanded into a goatee at his chin. They'd become far too familiar with each other to return to the past now.
He accepted her touch as if it were his own, his gaze holding hers with hot intent.
"Kiss me again," Valerie said, voice catching hard.
Dan obeyed, capturing her lips again and closing his eyes in worship. His long fingers curled into the ringlets of her hair, angling her up. From the window, the sunset dipped beneath the horizon, her armor and the glow of his body catching with deep purples and blues.
And then he leaned his forehead against hers, staring into her dilated eyes. "That is what I mean," he said, voice ragged. "What we could be."
Between them, her legs trembled, spreading on instinct against the hard lines of his thighs. She said breathlessly, "You make a…solid point."
His gloved thumb stroked the back of her neck, where a scar from the battle with Pariah Dark remained despite all of Dan's power to heal her.
And then he stopped, his elfin ear perking in alarm, as his entire body tensed.
She paused as well as her armored back clicked against the wall. "What is it?"
Dan's fingers slipped from her waist, and he pulled away with a great reluctance, a strange expression on his face. "Nina," he said. Lust drained from his eyes, replacing instead with worry and a dark, protective instinct. "She is in trouble."
In the outside playground for the Youth Ward, Nina collapsed in the dirt, crying, holding the shreds of the silk ribbon in her bruised and broken fingers. "No," she sobbed. "No, no, no."
Around her, the footprints of the bullies who hurt her remained, their steps having thoroughly disrupted the fractal design in the ground she had been creating with a twig. In her distress, she did not hear the sharp wisp of wind, and with one eye partially swollen, she did not see the bright glow of Dan Phantom until his combat boots appeared to her right.
In the silence, Dan kneeled beside her, tilting up her chin to inspect her injuries.
She allowed him to, her big brown eyes wide and bubbled with tears as her lips quivered. Around her eye bloomed an ever-swelling bruise from a fist, small like hers but no less damaging to her slight frame.
A silent communication echoed in their eyes as his grip on her chin slacked.
"Nina," he murmured, voice darkening with concern, "can you speak?"
Her hot tears slid down to his gloved fingers as she cried, words blubbering out of her, "I want my mommy and daddy. I wanna go home. I hate this place. I hate it."
Dan's face twitched with pain—a version of himself had killed Nina's parents in the destruction of the city. But instead of lashing out against him, she launched forward and wrapped her little arms around his neck, sobbing into his shoulder.
He embraced her, pulling her into his arms as he stood. "I cannot return your parents," he said, voice halted, "or your old home."
Nina's stiff curls scratched against his chin as she shuddered out sobs.
He leaned his head against hers. "But I can offer you a new home away from this orphanage, where you could draw all day, and collect all the silk sashes you want." As he held her, his gloved fingers sparked green with a healing energy. "And no one will hurt you again."
The bruise around her eye healed over as she stared out at the playground, her sobs quieting into a dull exhaustion. Her bruised fingers tightened into the collar of his jumpsuit. "New home?"
"New home," he said.
Dan's healing energy wore out her little body as her bruises disappeared, her swollen fingers sinking back into their normal shape. Her voice was a hesitant, fearfully hopeful vibration against his shoulder. "Would you be there?"
"Of course," he said. "As I am now the Ghost King, I have inherited a castle and several other lairs."
Nina's tired, watery eyes widened briefly. "A castle?"
"It's…" His face twitched, "…in need of reconstruction first."
The little girl sniffled, closing her eyes. "I could help," she said, her words slurring in exhaustion.
"Yes, but there are some changes that must happen before you draw on the walls," he said wryly.
She relaxed fully in Dan's arms, falling asleep with filaments of the ruined silk sash hanging from her healed fingers. "Nh."
He turned around, his wine eyes lighting orange in irritation at the abandoned playground. "Now," he murmured under his breath, "as for the insects who dared to lay a hand on you." He raised his hand and blasted the playground swing set until it crumpled into melted bars on the dirt.
With a sniff of satisfaction, he dematerialized, taking the sleepy Nina with him to Valerie.
Back in her room, Valerie had recalled her armor, reviewing reports on her bed tensely as she awaited Dan's return. It hit her in doing so that she trusted him, not to follow him on his sudden retreat to out in the human world.
"I can't believe this," she whispered. "I can't believe me." She picked at the hem of her shirt, moaning. "Just letting him roam free, even if it's for Nina. What is the world coming to?"
Precious moments passed as she deliberated, and then decided that she couldn't hear the sound of screaming or destruction, and that perhaps she could trust Dan out of sight.
The ghost soon reappeared and set the sleeping Nina down upon Valerie's bed, his face tight. "The other children attacked Nina on the playground," he said. His voice strained with rage as his fingers sparked with power. "Because of her attachment to me."
Valerie surged off the bed in concern, expression hardening. "Is she hurt?"
"Not anymore. To ensure she remains so, I will take her back with me to the Ghost Zone." He swept dust and grim off his arm with a tight movement. "My assumption that she is safe here was clearly wrong."
Valerie gave him a bewildered look. "You can't just take her away," she said.
"Why not? You're the one who suggested she follow me around."
Valerie covered Nina with a blanket. "Yes, here in Amity Park. But no one's going to let you take a child from here—especially not one whose parents are on your red list."
The red list had become code in the last week for the names of the humans he'd killed in his fits of madness, which all seemed lifetimes away.
His face shadowed, and he pointed at Nina's torn clothes. "They abused her for having an intelligent mind," he spat. "For accepting me. I would not allow such things to her person, and I cannot believe your administrators would find the dumb anguish she lives in more acceptable than the castle of a King."
Valerie rubbed her temples as she sat cross-legged on her bed, breathing in and out. "Okay," she said. "You're having an emotional reaction to injustice, and that part is good. You want to help her, which is, like, actually sweet…" She swallowed hard, looking up. "You really wanna saddle yourself with a kid to that extent? She's not a toy you can just forget about after a while."
"I know that," he retorted, crossing his arms with a huff. He leaned against the wall, his long hair a flicker against his muscled arms. "I know how people are with orphans."
Valerie searched his face, where a vulnerable tick—a deep haunt—remained.
It fell silent between them as Nina slept through the tension.
Dan raised his hand and split the air into a small dimensional rift, which glowed green with the light of the Ghost Zone. "Besides," he said, voice hardening, "her family is on my red list. I owe her a debt."
She raised an eyebrow, unperturbed by the rift in her own bedroom. "And so, you're going to make the castle of the Ghost King her new home? In the middle of a different dimension, where Pariah Dark and his goons did…all that bad stuff?"
He grimaced. "I intend to destroy the current castle and rebuild another entirely. That will allow me to remove any items a human child should not touch." He ran a frazzled hand through his hair. "And that I wish to never see again."
Valerie gave him a concerned look. She looked down at Nina, her expression softening. "She needs more than the darkness and isolation of the Ghost Zone, you know. It's not a good place for kids. Or, like, anyone."
He glanced at her. "Then I will bring her with me every time I visit. And she will appear to Amity Park as no less than royalty."
Her eyebrows flew up. "Royalty?"
"I am the Ghost King," he declared. "If am to care for her, then she will be a princess." His wine eyes held Valerie's gaze. "Just as if you accept my proposal, you will be Queen."
She felt it again then, the tension between them as she searched his gaze, which carried no shame or hesitance. Her scarred fingers tightened into the bedsheets, and she became intimately aware of the thin material of her sleeping shorts and tank top. Her heart skipped a beat.
She knew he could hear it.
In the time since his imprisonment, his form had hardened with lithe muscle, his jumpsuit following attractive lines from the broadness of his shoulders down to the hard cut of his waist—
Valerie squeezed her eyes shut, forcing herself to remember that Nina was asleep on the bed. "We'll talk about that later."
Dan's mouth tightened into a grim line. "Why do you stall in accepting?"
Her cheeks heated hard as she sputtered at him. "It's just that…you know—"
"I do not know," he said in irritation. "I have no shame before you, but you feel it in your own attractions to me."
Her mouth ran dry as she stared at him.
Some aspect of his visage grew vulnerable. "Is it because you know what they did when I hung in chains? That you think me stained by them?"
Valerie swallowed hard, this time the heat in her cheeks surging with indignation. "It's not that."
"But you fear being with me in any official capacity," he said, voice halted. "For whatever reason, it is based in fear, and I see it in your eyes. I know you better than I know myself."
It felt as though he'd exposed a live wire in her, and her breath hitched, even as words failed her. The silence was her agreement—that deep down, she did feel fear. Worry.
"Why?" he demanded. His face broke with an emotion. "You have seen me at my worst, and I as well have held you as you sobbed tears. I fed you when your limbs could not obey your commands. I placed my relics of power at your feet in submission to your concepts of morality, and even now, I feel…different at my regenerated core. We kissed. Why do you still deny me?"
Valerie's eyes burned with tears as he plucked the live wire within her harder. "It's just…um." She bit the inside of her cheek, looking down. "It's not just about an alliance anymore with you, but the whole, um." She waved her had. "The whole queen thing and tying myself to you, with power I don't even understand."
Dan tilted his head, narrowing his eyes curiously. "You fear my power as Ghost King?"
Her face screwed up. "No, it's not that either." Words caught in her throat, as she was not used to being vulnerable. "This is big, what you're asking from me. Power is never just free, and neither is kissing you." Her voice grew halted. "Even if it's fun."
He turned, cape flickering with several frustrated emotions. "If you are so ambivalent, then I will give you several days to consider while I seek more protective housing for Nina. Look after her until I return," he said, before he dematerialized into the rift to the Ghost Zone.
The sparks of the portal collapsed in on themselves, and that left Valerie sitting tensely on her bed, face hot as her mind raced. She raised a hand to her own heart, which pounded. "Oh sure, run off and act like it's all so simple. Easy for you to toss power around when you're a ghost that can be torn apart and arrange yourself back together."
On the bed, Nina mumbled something about pancakes in her sleep, and Valerie snapped out of her thoughts, breath hitching. "Shit, right—the kid." She gently shook the child's shoulder. "Nina, we need to get you back to your bunk in the children's wing."
Nina's brown eyes opened blearily, only to shut again.
Valerie face-faulted. "Come on, Nina, you can't stay here."
The little girl grumped. "Wanna stay," she said blearily.
"But I have to go to bed too, you know."
Nina turned on her back, staring up at Valerie. In that moment, Valerie realized the girl's clothes were ripped at the sleeves and dirty from dried mud, with a little footprint of dirt still streaking her wrist. "I don't wanna go, Commander Gray," she said, her eyes brightening with tears. "I hate it there, and everyone is mean. Can I stay with you?"
Her heart pulled as she gently raised up Nina's hand to inspect the footprint. A vestige of Dan's power remained on her from a recent healing, and it was then that Valerie understood how damaging the attack had been. "They did a lot more than just push you in the dirt, didn't they?"
The little girl's breath hitched, and she nodded her head.
Valerie lowered Nina's hand, an odd maternal instinct rising in her as all her anxieties about romance and rulership with Dan took a back seat in interest of justice. "Then we need to report this," she said, softening her voice as she brushed back Nina's stiff curls. "So they don't get away with it."
Soon, Damon sat before a monitor, watching the playground security video with an unreadable expression. A group of children had rushed Nina, shredding her pretty ribbon and pulling her hair before stomping on her fingers and laughing on their way.
Valerie leaned forward, planting her hand on the computer desk. "These kids," she said, pointing to the screen, "are from families who died in the waves of Phantom's attacks. They may be targeting Nina because she's interacted positively with him."
As Nina lay sobbing on the ground, a great power briefly blitzed the camera. A light materialized beside her, hardening into the form of Dan Phantom.
Damon pressed his lips together, exhaling as he watched Phantom pick up the injured child with uncharacteristic care. In the video, the ghost leaned his head against hers, his hands sparking with the same healing energy that had returned Valerie from the brink of death. Nina clung to him as if he were her family. Phantom spiraled up into the sky with her cradled tight in his arms…and with the playground a smoking field.
Damon closed the security feed. "I've seen enough." And then he interlaced his fingers over his stomach, staring at the black monitor with a deep consternation.
In the adjacent conference room, Nina sat drawing a picture, only for her hands to tremble hard. She hid her face in her hands, her little shoulders shaking with a sob.
Her muffled cries echoed.
Valerie crossed her arms, tense in the silence. "If Phantom hadn't healed her, she would be in the intensive care unit tonight. She can't go back to the orphanage. She's barely keeping it together now."
He rubbed his temple, scratching at where his eye patch had worn a line into his skin. "I suppose you're right."
"And we can't let them get away with this," Valerie said, voice hard. "Nina's done nothing to them."
"She's accepted the killer, Valerie." Her father turned to her, face pulling in agony. "He may be…different now, but these kids remember what Phantom has done."
She huffed and then swallowed hard, conflicted. "That doesn't mean they have the right to commit battery against another person." A protective instinct rose in her. "I want social services on this, dammit. And Nina is staying with me until we figure this out."
The father turned to her, eyeing her with a question. He fell quiet for a time before saying, "It's a lot of work to keep an eye on a child that loves trouble." His single eye softened. "And spends more time with ghosts than her own people."
Valerie swallowed hard as she reached out. "I know something about that," she deadpanned weakly.
Her father clasped her hand, holding onto her tight. "I know, baby girl. I know."
Meanwhile, in the Ghost Zone, Dan floated before the lair of Pariah Dark, expression hard. In the back of his mind, he recalled the cut of chains tearing into his skin. The rough tiles that skinned his knees and palms. The laughter and the pain.
He crunched his fingers into a fist as his face darkened, his irises lighting orange. From his fist reverberated a great power that shook the entire dimension. The red bricks of the castle trembled. And then one by one, the towers—the old order—crumbled in a rush of debris.
Dan's form floated as a shadow within the dust, his flickering hair shining tendrils against his shoulders in a halo. With a snap of his ringed finger, the dust parted from him, and the red stones tipped off the edge of the lair. They fell into the endless abyss that was the Ghost Zone, disintegrating as the last of Pariah Dark's power left them.
All that remained was a flat layer, ripe for a stronghold to convey the reign of the new Ghost King.
Dan closed his eyes, the Crown of Fire and Ring of Rage far extending his senses across the dimension. Like this, he could feel the curious eyes of thousands, the whispers of fear—and the curious presence of another ghost.
To his right, a slim portal opened, its edges lighting up with the turn of a clock hand. From out of the portal stepped an ancient being, his purple cloak glowing bright.
Dan's face twitched, and he crossed his arms as he glanced over at the being. "Ugh. I do not wish to see you."
The Master of Time gazed upon him, his eternal soul lit within the clouded eyes of an old man. "Daniel," he greeted, voice a frail, elderly gravel.
"You will call me King," Dan hissed, his eyes narrowing to slits., "and you will bow to me."
The elderly ghost grinned, his ageless, perfect teeth revealing the lie of his current skin. "Ah, I fear these old knees of mine cannot bend, even to respect a king." He waved his hand.
A tense silence stretched between them as Dan's breath hitched, simultaneously furious and vulnerable. "I cried out to you," he snarled, irises lighting orange once more. "I begged for you to end my misery, and you turned your face from me. Why do you only now appear?"
A hesitance flickered across the old ghost's gaze, and he looked down, his swollen knuckles tightening upon his all-powerful scepter. "Oh, Daniel. I did turn my face from you in this timeline. It pained me to do so."
His breath—a vestige of his human life—caught in his chest. "What do you know of pain?" he demanded. "I've a permanent divot in my tongue from where Pariah Dark cut it out. My body yet bears scars that I cannot regenerate. I am forever marked."
"A decision," Clockwork said, voice rising in exhaustion, "that was your own. You chose to awaken the old King, and instead of stopping you, I merely allowed you to face the natural consequences of your actions."
Dan raised an eyebrow, expression tight. "Natural?" he echoed. His face burned with a shame as he turned away, unable to meet the old ghost's gaze. "You know what they did to me. You watched it in glee, that I would be so cut down."
Clockwork scratched his cheek, where his black mark beneath his eye wrinkled from the pull of a frown. "I do not enjoy the cycle of evil, and I turned my face from the depravity to which you were subjected."
His face twitched. He swallowed hard, then tried again, voice hoarse. "But you could have stopped it."
"Yes."
"Why didn't you?"
The old ghost transformed into a youthful man, his jaw and face sharpening as the clouds slipped from his eyes. Like this, he still appeared a deal older than Dan, and yet far more dangerous. "Because as you hung in your chains, I saw you as I see you now. A king, with a power core fully excised of the insanity that drove you to destruction."
Dan pressed his hand to his torso, where beneath his jumpsuit lay a thick scar. A fury rose in him. "Ah, so once again, my suffering does not matter to you, so long as the end aligns with your agenda. No doubt, you wanted me and Valerie to defeat Pariah Dark for you."
"There were other ends for you out of the multitude of possibility," Clockwork said. "Among them, that you would finally fade out and know no suffering. It is by the Ghost Slayer's hand alone that you existed to defeat the Ghost King."
Dan's tongue rolled uneasily in his mouth, the snake-like edges slipping against the line of a strange scar. "Then why do you appear to me now if you otherwise employ apathy to me?"
Clockwork sighed, aging back into an old man. "Now that you are no longer controlled by violence, I can justify further meddling to my employers." He cleared his throat. "I will appear if you call to me for advice, for you will face many challenges as Ghost King."
He narrowed his eyes in suspicion. In the back of his mind, he recalled himself decimating an entire city in a single blast. The memory carried an unsettled distance to him, as if it were a past life entirely. "You likely seek to replace me, or to make me a puppet for your own aims."
"On the contrary, Daniel," he said, "many in the Ghost Zone covet your crown and seek to challenge you, but I am not among them." The old man's eyes carried a deep knowledge. "The timestream can withstand your reign as you are now, better than it could the rule of another."
"And you would help me freely."
The Master of Time said, "Within reason. I cannot undo the events that resulted in your rise as King, without significant threat to your own existence."
The question died in Dan's throat before he could even speak it, and then another took shape. "If you accept my rule, then tell me the names of Pariah Dark's vassals who disrespected me." His fingers lit with a threatening power. "I should like to end every vestige of them."
Clockwork hesitated before he opened his palm, and within it was a slim piece of paper—with the names of ghosts already prepared, for Clockwork had anticipated the question. "You will take no joy in snuffing their power cores," he said. "You already far outmatch their might."
His expression hardened as he stared at the paper, and then grabbed for it quickly. "It is not about power," he said, "but the justice due to me."
"And the blood you spilled in the human world?" Clockwork asked, raising an eyebrow. "Does it not also cry out for payment? What will you do to clear your own red list?"
He made a face, baring a fang in irritation—and a foreboding fear that Clockwork knew what he meant by red list. "The humans nearly beat me to a fade in the early days of my time in Amity Park. Was that not enough?"
Clockwork leveled his gaze, expression unreadable. "Nina and the soldiers of Amity Park are only a few humans out of thousands you have wronged." His voice softened. "What about all the others on your red list who are like you, longing for closure?"
Dan fell silent, mouth in a hard line.
With that, the Master of Time dematerialized away, the question an echo in Dan's ears as the cold winds of the Ghost Zone ruffled through, unsettling the debris of Pariah Dark's fallen castle.
A/N: Wahhh how is it October 2023? Where did time go? Y'all, I'm so unstuck in time, I feel like Danny in the latest graphic novel a;dsfjas (speaking of, who all here has read A Glitch in Time? I just read it the other week, and I'm DYING because I have so many thoughts to share. I might post some on my tumblr.)
In the meantime, the Dark Gray pit is still alive, my braincells continue to daydream about this disaster couple in my free time, and we're steadily closing in on an ending for the Karma thread! I think at this point, there's just the epilogue to go? This chapter was originally meant to be an epilogue, but it started getting long, and I wanted to get something out since it's been...a while since I last updated, oof. Apologies for the delay in updating this collection. I've been excited about The Exchange over on my AO3 account, but I've been having writer's block with this story. I think it's because a good!Dan is hard to write without making him feel out of character a;dfadjfas. But since we're almost done, I'd like to see Karma finished up before I start tackling new ideas for this collection! Since I have a good portion of the epilogue started, it shouldn't take as long to update again.
If you get a chance to, please review with your thoughts! Thank you so much for reading!
