The world around him was a blur, and his pulse thundered in his ears as he came to. The sterile, antiseptic smell of the hospital hit him first. The faint murmur of voices and the rhythmic beep of a heart monitor brought his senses into focus, and he opened his eyes. Everything felt wrong. He looked down at his hands—large, calloused hands.
These weren't his. His heart raced, and his breathing quickened. He had been sitting in his bedroom, scrolling through some fanfic about Worm, of all things, and now…now he was here. In Danny Herbert's body. His mind reeled. He tried to focus on the sounds around him, tried to ground himself, but it only made things worse.
The room was stark, oppressive. A sense of dread weighed on his chest as he realized where he was, better yet who he was, it took a few minutes, Taylor was in the hospital. The locker incident. That horrible moment that set her on the path to becoming Skitter. His throat tightened. This was impossible. Worm was fictional. A story. He shouldn't be here. He shouldn't be Danny Herbert.
"Oh, God," he muttered, his voice hoarse, unfamiliar, and distinctly older than it should have been. Panic clawed at him. He was a teenager, just a kid barely figuring life out, and now, somehow, he was in the body of a middle-aged man with a daughter. His thoughts spiraled, his breath coming in shallow gasps. He stumbled to his feet, gripping his knees for support but he ultimately sat back down, he got a few strange looks from people who glanced his way. He had to get a grip. Freaking out wouldn't help Taylor. But the thought of her. Taylor was his daughter now, he supposed, but the thought of that only added to the pressure building in his chest.
He was in a situation so far out of his depth it was almost laughable, but this wasn't a game. This was real. "Okay, okay," he whispered to himself, his voice shaking. "Calm down. Deep breaths. You've read enough fanfiction to know what happens when people lose it in moments like this." He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, and exhaled slowly, forcing himself to focus on the basics.
Grounding techniques, he thought. Focus on what's real. Five things you can see. The stark white hospital walls, the chipped paint on the walls, the faint glow of the fluorescent lights, the IV bag hanging from a pole attached to someone, the clipboard on the counter of the table. Four things you can touch. The coarse fabric of the clothes he was wearing, the hard wood of the chair he was sitting on, the sticky sweat on his palms, the rough texture of the calloused hands he now owned. Three things you can hear. The sound of shoes slapping against the floor, the sound of a couple nearby talking, and a woman crying in a room down the hall. Two things you can smell. Aseptic, all hospitals smelled like them, and funny enough death, one would be surprised that death could take many forms of smells. One thing you can taste. The saliva going down his throat because of how many times he's swallowed it in the moment because he had been panicking. It helped, if only a little.
The panic ebbed enough for him to think. He couldn't afford to lose it. Not now. Not with Taylor involved. Footsteps, another reason to comprehend that this is all too real for him, he saw the shoes before he saw the person, he blinked, looking up to see who it was in front of him and it was someone he dreaded the most when he was currently trying not to panic about being an old man while suddenly having a child now. A nurse, giving him a polite nod before checking the bilboard clip in her hand for a brief moment.
"Mr. Herbert, the doctors said you can see your daughter soon. She's stable, but understandably shaken." He nodded automatically, his throat dry. "Thank you," he managed to say, his voice still unfamiliar to his own ears. The nurse left, and he found himself still sitting down in the chair. You're Danny Herbert now, he told himself. You have a daughter. Taylor. You know this story. You know what she's been through, what she'll go through. You can't mess this up. But it was the thought of talking to her, of having to be a father when he had no idea how, made his chest tighten again. He was just a kid himself, well, he had been. He didn't know the first thing about being a parent. His own parents weren't exactly the best role models.
His mind latched onto something—a memory of all those found-family fanfics he'd read. The ones where broken characters found solace in someone who understood them, who didn't push but also didn't abandon them. The Kakashi approach, he thought wryly. Calm, steady, a little distant but always present when it mattered. Not that cannon Kakashi was the best at that, fanfic Kakashi, not so much on cannon him but maybe he could try that. Maybe.
When he was finally allowed into Taylor's room, his heart broke a little. She looked so small, so fragile, lying there in the hospital bed. Her face was pale, her eyes hollow, and he could see the faint tremor in her hands as she clutched the blanket. This was the moment everything changed for her. The trauma from the locker, the isolation, the despair, it was written all over her.
She looked up at him, her expression guarded. "Hi, Dad," she said, her voice quiet. He swallowed hard, trying to push down the surge of emotions threatening to overwhelm him. "Hey, kiddo," he said softly, moving to sit in the chair beside her bed.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. He didn't know what to say. What could he say? That he knew what she'd been through? That he understood how broken she felt? That wasn't his place, not yet, at least. "You, uh... you scared me," he said finally, his voice awkward. "When I got the call, I thought…" He trailed off, running a hand through his hair. "I'm just glad you're okay."
She gave him a faint, brittle smile. "Okay. Sure." He didn't push. He just sat there, letting the silence stretch between them. He knew enough to know that forcing her to talk wouldn't help. If she wanted to open up, she would.
"You don't have to talk about it," he said after a while, his tone calm. "But I'm here. If you need me. Whenever you're ready." Taylor looked at him, her eyes searching his face. For a moment, he wondered if she could tell that something was off, that he wasn't really her father. But then she looked away, her expression unreadable.
"Thanks," she said quietly. He leaned back in the chair, letting out a slow breath. This wasn't going to be easy. But if there was one thing he knew, it was that Taylor deserved better than what she got in the story. If he had to be Danny Herbert to give her that, then so be it.
For now, he'd take it one step at a time. And now, sitting in the chair he realized that he was now going to have to be the responsible one, well, this is going to be a disaster.
So I have decided to post this chapter or one-shot, well, whatever but anyways I have decided that I'll just post all the chapters, chapter one basically, to all the fanfic ideas that I have so the previously mentioned fanfics are going to be getting a chapter written for them and I'm also going to update Blades and Shards, I haven't forgotten about it so there's that. So, yeah, that's it.
