This chapter deals with some incredibly heavy topics (drugs, self-harm). While I haven't exactly been shy about how dark this fic is going to get when asked on Tumblr, for those who only follow me on ffn, I'll say it here too: this fic is going to deal with topics that may be triggering to some. This chapter in particular is quite dark, but the themes introduced here are not going to stay contained to just this chapter.
With that out of the way, please enjoy the update!
Muffled voices pulled him from the comfort of unconsciousness, shaking his mind awake despite his feeble attempts to brush them off. For a moment, he thought about trying to tell the voices to keep it down, but that would have been too much effort, and he was so comfortable in this blanket and pillow…
…
…
...the voices rose in volume, this time gaining clarity, shape. Almost words. Close, but not quite. Not yet. Danny wasn't ready. Five more minutes, he was so tired…
"...Danny…"
Wait.
What was that?
His eyes fluttered open, and he immediately took stock of his unfamiliar surroundings. He was...not in his bedroom. He was in his living room, on the couch where he must have fallen asleep after his almost mental breakdown over a glass of water.
How embarrassing. Danny hoped that no one spotted the water glass on the rug. Or, if they had, they hadn't thought anything about it. Hadn't figured out that it was on the floor because Danny tried to get water from the sink without using his wheelchair.
Maybe they wouldn't connect the dots. Honestly, the thought of seeing that pitying expression on their faces as they watched him fail to do a stupidly simple task made him want to fall into a coma.
Oh well. He was awake now. Might as well go get something to eat to make his family and therapists proud.
Just as he was about to toss the blanket off his body, Jazz's quiet voice sounded from the kitchen. "You can't keep the truth from him forever."
"We can, at least for now," his dad said.
"It's not going to work."
Danny froze, the last of his fatigue zapped from his brain.
What truth? What were they talking about? What was going on in there?
He debated standing up and announcing his presence, but the blossoming sense of dread in his gut kept him still.
Whatever was going on, he had a sinking feeling that it was about him.
His mother spoke up. "We have to. It's for his own safety."
"It's wrong," Jazz countered. "It's wrong to keep secrets like this."
"I know, Jazz. But if we told Danny, he…"
His eyes widened, his breath catching in his throat.
Tell him what?
"Jazz, you have to understand. With Danny in the position that he's in right now, there are just certain limitations that we need in this house in order to stay on top of his recovery," Jack explained.
"But cutting him off from his core?"
It was as if he were punched in the gut. He clenched the blanket, balling the edges in his fists. His instincts were screaming at him to jump up and demand the truth, but he buried that part of him back down inside his mind.
They would never tell him. They didn't trust him enough. He wasn't human enough.
But they always trusted Jazz. They favored her. She was the ideal child with her perfect grades, perfect ambitions, perfect brain.
Even if they wouldn't tell him, of course they would tell her.
"We have to do it, honey. We have no choice," Maddie said.
"You see how he's reacting to this though, right? He's not himself."
"We know, but it's what needs to be done. He can't be given access to his core, not right now."
Why though, Dad? Tell me why...
"This is cruel," Jazz said.
There was a brief pause, each second like a knife in Danny's chest. He wanted so badly to snap, but he forced himself to stay still. To stay silent.
To listen.
There was a sigh, and Maddie broke the silence. "You have no idea how much it hurts us to see him like this. We know it isn't right to keep a ghost from its core but...at the school that day. Jazz, I've never seen him like that. And it terrified me."
Danny felt his blood drain from his face. His body turned ice cold.
He knew what they were talking about, and he assumed that that day was a distant memory in the past, something that would never be talked about again. And yet, here his parents were, digging up the most humiliating moment in Danny's life, throwing it at his face like a weapon of why he couldn't possibly be allowed his ghost half, why he needed to be shut off from himself.
"He's come a long way since then."
"Not long enough."
They didn't know. They didn't understand what it was like. They weren't there, they weren't the ones who were cut open, who were beaten, who spent all day in and out looking at white walls, white floors, white suits, white ceilings, white equipment.
He hadn't been himself that day at the school. He'd just come home from the hospital, he was coming off of a cocktail of heavy pain medication, he was physically exhausted from the PT and mentally exhausted from everything else.
Okay, so he snapped in the locker room. He'd been pushed back into school, pushed into being around people, pushed into acting normal, like nothing was wrong, and the world was warping around him and he just fell apart. He freaked out, he broke a mirror, Dash and Kwan found him, and he paid the consequences for it.
"I don't think he'd do that again."
"You don't know that, Jazz."
"But his Obsession—"
"It's protection. Phantom will make him do whatever it can in order to protect itself. Even if that means…"
It.
The word echoed in Danny's head.
You're an it.
Something inside him cracked.
His vision glazed over, and suddenly the two students in Casper he'd hoped to never cross paths with again were standing over him, approaching cautiously, as if he were a wounded animal.
"Give me the glass, Danny," Dash had said. "You don't need it. Just give it to me, I'll hang onto it for you. I'll keep it safe."
He looked down, and blood trickled through his fingers, splattering onto the white tile.
It was red. Why was it red?
Crack.
Maddie's voice faded back into his consciousness. "We just can't risk it."
"So what, your genius idea is to keep lying to him about why you won't take the chip out? Feed him some bullshit excuse about the lab? Danny's a human but he's also a ghost! You can't keep him from his core and expect him to turn out okay!"
"We know that."
"No, you clearly don't!"
"Keep your voice down, hun. He's asleep."
"Then stop lying to him. Tell him the real reason why you won't give him Phantom back."
Danny couldn't breathe.
His parents. The people who had gone to court for him, who fought so hard to get him home, who assured him that they'd go to the moon and back if it meant keeping him safe.
He trusted them.
And they...they just…
Crack.
"You know we can't do that," his father said. "You said it yourself, Danny's just as much human as he is ghost. Ghosts don't have the capacity to think rationally about something like that."
They just…
"Kwan, get Lancer."
He didn't understand. Why were those two here?
"Please, give me the mirror, Danny."
No, they didn't get it. He needed this. This was the only thing he could do, it was the only way out. He couldn't let Operative O take his body again.
"Danny..."
They were afraid, he realized. They thought he was going to hurt them. He was a rabid animal, wasn't he? And they thought he would attack them?
Another drop of blood splashed onto the tile.
Crack.
Jazz scoffed. "I cannot believe you would just—"
"He's fragile, Jazz!" Maddie protested. "Whatever happened in the government facility changed him. He's not the same boy he used to be, something inside him is fundamentally different now. Frankly, we have no idea how that has affected his Obsession."
His head spun.
They lied to him.
"What, so the better option is to just cut him off from his core altogether and force him to play human all day? Great plan, Mom."
"If that's what we need to do to keep him safe, then yes, that is the better option."
The mirror shattered, the pieces raining down, echoing as they bounced against the tiles. He watched with unfocused eyes as everything around him crumbled.
His heart pounded in his ears, drowning out the arguing voices in the kitchen. He fell to the floor and clutched a broken shard.
He needed...he needed to...
Protect.
Danny saw red.
His lips moved before he could stop them. "I thought you'd accepted me."
The argument from the kitchen came to a screeching halt.
"Danny! I didn't—"
"No!" Danny pushed himself to a seated position.
They kept him from his core on purpose.
His parents, after all those painstaking hours in family therapy, all that talk about how they were a team and how they needed to work together, had lied to him.
They weren't a team. They had never been a team. Danny was just…
He was just a ghost to them.
An irrational, stupid, ectoplasmic creature.
They scrambled from the kitchen, moving into the living room with fear strewn across their faces.
They hate ghosts. You know this, Fenturd. They hate you.
"We do accept you, Danno. We love you."
They didn't love him.
"We were just trying to protect you. Please understand, Danny," Maddie begged.
They're scared of you. They don't know what it means to protect. They're lying.
"Danny, you need to understand—"
"SHUT UP!" Danny gripped his hair with his hands, covering his ears to quiet the hurricane of emotions devastating his mind. "Shut up, shut up!"
He didn't know whether to laugh, scream, or cry. After all this talk, his parents had never accepted him as a ghost at all.
"I'm so sorry, son," Jack said.
"I can't—I can't!" Danny spat out. He had a thousand different responses swirling through his brain, so many things he wanted to say, but he couldn't. His brain wasn't working, his voice wasn't working, and everything he saw was painted in blood.
They lied to him.
"I—you—"
"Danny, you need to breathe," Jazz said, but Danny could recognize that tone. That was the same voice she used when trying to calm down the neighbor's hyperactive dog that had a bad habit of finding ways out of its fence.
Danny ripped his head out of his arms, swiveling up to meet the concerned gazes of his family. "Shut up! I'm not a fucking dog!"
"Danny, I never—"
"Stop treating me like a fucking animal! I'm not—I'm not!" Danny attempted to grip the coffee table to push himself up, but he only succeeded in falling back onto the couch. He cursed and blinked away the mist that clouded his vision because he was not crying right now. His parents did not get to see that.
Maddie jumped forward. "Careful!"
"No, shut the fuck up!" Danny yelled. "You don't get to—to be concerned! You don't get that!"
Maddie stepped back, looking as if someone slapped her across the face.
"Danny, please, calm down," Jack tried.
If anything, the red lining in his vision only deepened. "No! I won't, and you don't—don't—ah!" Danny hit his forehead with his hand, frustration clawing at his throat.
There was so much he wanted to say, but he physically couldn't get it out. He couldn't stand, he couldn't talk, he could only sit here drowning in rage.
His body was betraying him.
His parents could fix this right now if they wanted to. They could take him down to the lab, remove the chip, give Danny any semblance of freedom back. They could do that.
But they stood there doing nothing.
They like you like this. Helpless. Grounded. Easy to control.
"You lied to me! You knew—you fucking—my core isn't even damaged, is it?"
Jack wrapped his arm around Maddie, who hadn't even bothered to wipe away the tears that had spilled on her cheeks.
Because of him.
They hate you.
"Is it?" Danny pressed, but he didn't need a response. He knew the answer. He knew the truth.
It was written all over his parents' faces.
"Was my core ever damaged? At all?"
"It was, but—"
Danny shook his head in disbelief. "Cores are self-re—self-regenerating. I—I knew that. I knew that! It—it was healed before I left the hospital, right?"
His parents refused to meet his eyes.
"You lied to me. All this time, and—and you...you just…" Danny tried to stand up again, but failed. "I'm so fucking sick of this!"
"Danny, please understand. We only did it because we needed to protect you."
"Protect me?" He let out a sardonic laugh. "You thought—you seriously thought you were—you were fucking protecting me? Do you not...even see? I can't—I can't even fucking stand up! I can't stand! I can't do anything! And you thought you were protecting me? Are you serious?"
Jack's lips thinned. "Danny, do you not realize how close we were to losing you? And I don't mean to the government. You blasted a school mirror and then tried to use one of the pieces to kill yourself! I mean, come on, son!"
Danny lurched back, stunned. "I wasn't trying to kill myself!"
"Then what were you trying to do, huh?" Jack shouted back. "Because not even a few hours after we dropped you off back at school, we get a call from Mr. Lancer saying a few students found you in the locker room threatening suicide because you thought you were back with the government! What do you expect us to think, Danny? We're your parents."
"Shut up!" Danny squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the flashes of memory that threatened to surface.
"Jack—"
"No, Maddie—"
They hate you.
His throat burned. "Shut up!"
It wasn't fair. His parents weren't being fair. That incident—that was a fluke. An anomaly. And yet they were punishing Danny for something that happened weeks ago, before he went through the painstaking ordeal of inpatient and psychiatry and the PHP and the whole other host of therapies he'd been forced into.
"What was the point in sending me to—to inpatient then? If you were just going to keep treating me like a stupid animal?"
"Danny, we're not treating you like an animal."
"You sure as hell got me caged up like one!"
"Don't talk to your mother that way!"
"Jack, honey—"
"Everyone, please calm down!"
"Stay out of this, Jazz!"
"Danny, I think—"
"I don't care what you think!"
"Guys—"
"I NEED MY CORE!" Danny screamed, the sob finally tearing its way out of his throat.
His family fell into a deafening silence, and Danny could feel their stares as ugly sobs overtook him, ripping down any semblance of an emotional wall he'd managed to construct over these weeks.
His tears boiled on his skin, and he dug his hands in his hair in a desperate attempt to ground himself. But it didn't matter, his body shook uncontrollably, his emotions burning through his throat leaving him gasping for air.
All while his parents stood there ten feet away from him. Frozen, unwilling to approach. Because he was a halfa, a monster, broken, unstable, trapped, feared. He was the demon that parents warned their children about, the thing that his parents had dedicated their careers to developing weapons against, a creature so dangerous that the government had funded an entire group to research and exterminate.
And up until two months ago, it was legal for him to be vivisected, to be experimented on, to be tortured to the point of paralysis.
He rocked back and forth, struggling to piece himself back together. And when he could make it through a shuddering breath without breaking down again, all he could do was croak out, "Why…"
His parents remained unmoving, faces pale, arms by their sides. Tears streaked his mother's and sister's cheeks, and his father's unblinking gaze bore down on him.
But their silence wasn't good enough, their sorrow and tears weren't good enough. An invisible wall was growing between them with each passing second and they couldn't even see it.
They know. They're doing it on purpose. They don't care about you.
"Why?" Danny insisted. "How could—how could you...how could you do this to me? I'm...I just…"
"We had to, son," his father said. The moonlight cast a shadow over his face. "It was for your own safety."
No. Danny was done with the lies. Done with the excuses.
He was done.
Flaring his eyes, he bit back, "My safety, or yours?"
His parents flinched, and Danny couldn't find himself to care. They'd lied to him, they'd dug their hole, so now they had to live in it.
"Danny, please…" Jazz stepped forward. "Don't do this."
"No! You—don't you get it?" Danny pleaded. "I can't—Mom, Dad, I feel like a prisoner. I'm trapped in my body. I can't—I can't live like this anymore! I can't fucking do it! You have no idea...and you don't even care!"
"Of course we care, Danno."
"Then why? Tell me the truth! Please, tell me why because—" His voice broke, and his head fell back into his hands. "Please...tell me why…"
Jack sighed. "It was just the decision we felt we needed to make. It wasn't easy, it wasn't something we did because we wanted to hurt you. We love you, son. And we just wanted to know that you were safe."
"We love you so much, sweetie."
But they were blind because he wasn't safe. And he was never going to be safe again. There would always be someone out there who had power over him, who wanted to control and erase him.
If they loved you, they would have listened.
They're scared of you.
He glanced up to see Jack putting his arm around Maddie, pulling her in close. Jazz stood behind them, allowing their shadows to overtake her body.
Jazz said something, but Danny wasn't listening. He didn't care. He was trapped and completely alone. There would be no protests, no online petitions, and no jury on his side. No one to rescue him.
"Then give it—give me my core back."
Jack shook his head. "I'm sorry son. We've made our decision."
"I'll find a way," Danny insisted. "I know some ghosts. I'll get them to—to take it out. You can't...you—you can't stop me."
"Danny, I don't think even Frostbite could—"
"You don't know that, Jazz! He could—he could do it. He would figure it out if I asked."
His parents exchanged a look, one reminiscent of the exasperation when Danny would tell them that the detention hadn't been his fault, that he did try to do the homework assignment, that he would try harder next time.
They didn't believe him.
"He'll do it," he reiterated.
"Danny, we're not going to let any ghosts near you right now."
"Like that ever worked before," he retorted.
There was a pregnant pause, and Danny looked away. He felt nauseous, and anxiety speared through his chest.
"Please, I can't—I can't live like this. I can't…"
He knew how desperate he sounded, but for once he didn't care. His parents were going to kill him by keeping his core locked up.
Right now it was about self-preservation. If he couldn't protect himself, it was over.
"Graduate from the PHP program first," Maddie finally said. "Once you're back in school, then we can talk, alright? We'll talk about...about removing the chip."
Danny whipped his head up, his eyes searching for any signs that she was lying, that she was going to pull the rug out from under him again.
But her face betrayed nothing.
"Graduate?" Danny breathed. "I just have to...graduate?"
"Yes. Show us that you're okay enough to go back to school, and you can have your ghost half back."
"I…" He tugged at his hair. "But that's...that's weeks…'
Maddie crossed her arms. "Those are my terms."
Time slowed, and the distance between them only seemed to grow. He knew he was already behind leaving the PHP center that he was almost certain there was talk of shoving him back into inpatient.
But they didn't get it. It wasn't his fault, it was the government stalking him. It was Vlad. He had no choice, and he would never be able to graduate PHP. Not without his core.
"I—but—but, Mom. I need—"
"Son," his dad said sharply. "I understand how difficult this is for you, but you're not in a place where we can trust you right now. This is our compromise. Show us we can trust you, and you can have your freedom back."
His eyes stung, and his throat was starting to squeeze shut.
No…
"Do we have a deal?"
This was impossible.
Even if Frostbite had a way of removing the chip, Danny had no way of finding him. Not without Clockwork's interference, who didn't seem to have any interest in contacting Danny as of late.
The thought of Clockwork left a sour taste in Danny's mouth. He hadn't thought of the ancient ghost since his nights in the government compound, his body splayed out like a rag doll, shivering from shock. He remembered staring into the pitch black abyss around him begging for Clockwork to come help him.
But his calls were never answered.
Danny knew Clockwork could have freed him whenever he wanted, government ghost shields be damned. But he didn't. And that made him just as guilty as everyone else.
And now Danny was alone, bound by his human physiology and his ghost hunter parents.
He had no choice.
"Okay. It's—it's a deal."
His body was cold, dead, with waves of trembling coming in and out in spurts. Every breath hurt, and he wasn't sure if it was because of the burning in his chest, the soreness in his throat, or the way the alien warmth in his core seemed more overbearing than ever.
He could feel it, the hand reaching between his ribs, gripping his core with its warm, gloved fingers. It was revolting, violating, how the hands invaded his body, tearing off his skin and ribs as if he were nothing but a rotting carcass.
He felt dizzy. Lightheaded. He put a hand on his chest, crinkling his shirt in his fist. It was his core, he needed to protect it.
But he was useless. Nothing. He was at the mercy of his parents who were all but holding a loaded gun to his head while telling him to trust them. Who lied to him that they accepted him, that they were there for him.
That they loved him.
He was stupid, so stupid. After all the months of hearing them enthusiastically discuss the ways they'd love to rip him apart, what made him think they'd love him just like that?
Their acceptance was conditional, and their conditions were impossible for him to meet. How the hell did they expect him to graduate from PHP and reenter society like a normal person while they were drowning his core like this? Did they not see how badly he was suffocating? How much he was screaming, thrashing in the ocean for air, desperately trying to fight the undertow pulling him further and further away from his sanity?
He wasn't going to make it. He was going to fail, he was going to drown. He couldn't do this.
But there's one way, a small voice in his head whispered. You've done it before and you were fine. It helped you.
His eyes trailed over to his nightstand with his old model rocket sitting proudly on top. He had never flushed the oxycodone.
Maybe…maybe…
It can help you again.
He just needed to graduate the PHP program and he would get his core back and then everything would be okay. He could work on his problems the right way later. The way he was supposed to be doing it, that he couldn't do right now because he was still missing half of himself.
Two weeks. That was all he needed. Just two weeks worth of medication, and then he'd be on his way.
You need this.
He pushed himself up as if he were a puppet on strings. Everything was bleak, gray-washed and oppressive. Nausea rolled over him in waves and a hand gripped his throat, pulling the oxygen from his body.
The nightstand glowed in the moonlight, and like a moth Danny felt himself drawn closer to it. Tunnel vision took over, and the world morphed into a series of photos in a time lapse. Snapshot after snapshot flickered past his eyes until a hand—his hand—was pulling the drawer open to reveal an orange bottle inside.
You're ready.
He couldn't live like this anymore.
The fear, the anxiety, his core. It was all so much easier before, back in the hospital. Back when the only thing he had to worry about was what constellation he was going to draw that day. Back before he had to face the public, his family, or Vlad. Back before he knew that the government had his phone tapped and was watching his every move.
Back before he knew that his freedom was only temporary.
He was a sitting duck, a kid trapped in no man's land with no weapon, no armor, nothing to keep him alive.
"Two weeks," he whispered. Two weeks and then he would be okay. He would graduate from PHP, he would get to go back to school, he would become a regular person again. He just needed to get there first.
He opened the bottle and shook out a small white pill into the palm of his hand.
Two weeks.
Tilting his head back, he tossed the pill into his mouth, took a sip of water, and swallowed.
There.
It was done.
Ooohhh boy, who's having a fun time? Any hands?
So yeah I actually drafted the majority of this chapter like three chapters ago, and then pretty much just finished/revamped it to what it is today. But I have been excited for like months to release this!
Thanks to imekitty for beta-ing my fic and for helping me organize my plot better!
Thanks for reading!