Work Text:
Stars.
For almost as long as he could remember, Danny had loved the stars.
Ever since he was a child, space was a fascinating and incredible thing, but stars…stars had always been more special.
And yet now-
A door could be heard opening, followed by the clack of heels on the floor.
Danny was woken from his “slumber”, if it could even be called that. It had been so long since he had actually slept, instead of just having bouts of involuntary unconsciousness. Although even that was preferable to his waking moments.
He jolted lightly at the sound of a click, a button being pressed.
No, no, no, no, no-!
“Stars, shining bright above me-” the doctor sang the beginning of that damned song that plagued Danny’s mind now while putting on her gloves.
He had heard that song before- before. Of course he had, who hadn’t? But where before it was simply a romantic song he would hear in movies or on the odd day his parents decided to dance in the living room instead of being down at the lab, it was now the soundtrack of his nightmares.
Danny did not know how long he had been here. He did not know how often the doctor came in. He did not, could not, really feel the passage of time.
But every time he awoke, every time the doctor came in, she would click on the radio and play that song.
“Good morning, Little Star, how are you doing today?” she asked while sipping from her mug.
There was sure to be something to be said about conditioning, about the way this song would get his missing heart racing, his muscles painfully attempting to tense, his brain messing.
Of course, with the beginning of the song and uptick in brain activity from the fear linked to it came the pain of electroshock, the rods Danny knew couldn’t forget were sticking into his brain sending out low but still incredibly painful amounts of electricity. He did not know what for.
But then again, he did not know why the doctor put him through anything that she did.
[Dr Barbara Hartman sipped from her newly poured cup of coffee with a smile. She never told her subject why she did any of what she did. Why would she, after all? It did not need to know. The only thing it needed to do was speak. The currently active rods were one of the first things she had done to the ghost, taking care to avoid its Wernicke area, instead going for its somatic sensory association area.
She needed it to understand her questions to be able to answer, after all. Coupling the playing of the song with a bit of direct electroshock had worked wonders in keeping the subject pliant and terrified. The fact that that area also processed pain and therefore sent pain signals through the rest of its body without her actually having to physically damage it was just a bonus.
It had been so feisty at first, but her little intervention had fixed it right up.
She sipped from her cup again.]
The electricity messed with the synaptic transmissions his brain had going on, sending pain shooting throughout his body and making everything cramp up, in turn pulling on the hooks, clips, wires and chains holding him propped up and making them tear painfully into him.
He let out painful uneven whimpers, incapable at the moment to control even his voice output. Danny wanted so badly to clench his eyes closed and pretend he was anywhere but the lab, but he couldn’t.
The doctor had started working on a new area recently: his eye.
She had been so careful with it too. To start with, she had plucked each of his eyelashes and eyebrow hairs off one by one, putting every single hair in a little jar. To the doctor, he was no more than a specimen, and the only value he had was in what his body could provide.
Then, she had carefully made incisions in his skin, never so deep so as to damage what lay underneath, using her gloved fingers and curved Kelly pliers to slowly separate his skin from the adipose tissue underneath.
Afterwards, the underlying adipose tissue had been painstakingly and painfully cleaned off the area, as his tormentor had cheerfully let him know every time she found a nerve, or a blood or lymphatic vessel, pulling on it and taking it away from its natural resting place.
She was careful with separating each muscle fiber, taking him apart bit by bit as she vivisected downwards from the open hole on his skull where his brain was exposed all the way down to his jaw and the side of his neck.
Danny had felt every pass of the Iris scissors as they scraped off the parenchyma off his facial bones, once everything else had been cut and taken off, collected in glass jars filled with formaldehyde to keep them in a good enough state to be properly studied later.
The doctor always praised Danny for every sample she took from him, being almost caring, as if Danny were a dog who had successfully fetched a ball.
And although she never explained why she did what she did, she always told him in exact detail what she was doing as she did it. She told him what she found as it presented itself the more pieces she took off him, and also let him know the names of every tool she made use of.
Sometimes, naming the tool being currently used was the only thing Danny could do to try and stay even the least bit sane as he was tortured. He used to think of the stars, but…
“Aww, feeling a bit down today, Little Star? Not to worry, I will have you feeling better in no time,” the calm, always mockingly calm, voice of the doctor said as the electricity to his exposed brain finally stopped. The song did not.
Danny didn’t think he liked the stars anymore.
Had he been able to cry still, had he had the energy, the will, to do so, Danny would have started bawling.
Stars used to be such an important part of his life.
There had been glow-in-the-dark stars all over his room, carefully positioned to form his favourite constellations. His bed covers had had stars on them, as had some of his clothes. For one of his birthdays, Danny’s parents had helped him build a telescope, bringing him much closer to that which he so loved.
And now? Now he had lost the stars completely.
Not only could he not see the stars from inside this lab, wherever it was—it sometimes felt like it wasn’t even real—even the stars in his mind were now poisoned.
A few months ago Danny would have found solace in imagining that this awful little room was gliding gently through space, stars and other marvels surrounding him from every side. Now, the thought only made him shiver.
Because of that awful song why was it still playing, make it stop and the pain he now associated it with, even the thought of stars made him nauseous.
Now, when he thought of stars, he didn’t imagine wonder-filled nights sitting on top of the ops center with Jazz, rambling her ear off about the stars they could see. He didn’t picture Sam’s and Tucker’s smiles as they proudly presented Danny with a hand-painted hoodie with a star-filled sky.
He didn’t think of his parents, smiling, helping him build one of his most prized possessions.
Stars now meant pain. They meant another period of time passed, a new one coming just to take take take from him again.
They meant picturing the deaths of those he loved the most. Brutally murdered before his very eyes, before he was taken away to a place that made him wish he had fully died as well.
His beloved stars had been taken from him in every way, turned against him in a cruel twist.
He flinched when he felt a gloved hand cup his face.
“There, there, Little Star. We’re going to do something quite delicate today, so you need to be a good little pet and cooperate, ok? Remember, this can stop at any time, if only you tell me what’s on your mind,” the doctor said.
Danny was sure the only reason he wasn’t continually trembling was because his body simply lacked the energy.
The last time she had said she would do something delicate it hadn’t been good.
Dr Hartman was always delicate with every part of Danny she broke. But when she told him she would be?
She had once vivisected all of the fat off of his intestines and his mesentery, being careful to keep all of his nerves and vessels intact. She had taken them all out once they’d been clean, had taken pictures, had made him see. And then, once she’d had her fill with `the absolute beauty´ she had grabbed the surgical scissors and started hacking away.
Danny’s mangled intestines, what was left inside of him, still hung out of his abdomen, dripping into a tray she had set underneath him after cutting off his legs.
“To avoid making a mess dear. I know you can’t help it, and it’s my responsibility to take care of you, Little Star. That includes cleaning up after you,” she had said. As if it was Danny’s fault he now constantly dripped all over the place.
She always made the things she said sound so caring, so loving and kind, despite being anything but, and it hurt Danny to hear. It hurt that he even almost looked forward to it, the only bit of kindness, no matter how fake, that he had access to in this place.
He knew the tray underneath him was not just to avoid messes. It probably wasn’t there to avoid messes at all. The doctor willingly touching his insides and letting all manners of tissues and fluids out proved she did not care about messes, as long as they got her results.
Instead, the tray collected all of Danny’s dripping ectoplasm, collecting it in a tube that led to a machine. He didn’t know exactly how it worked, but he knew it did something to his ectoplasm, before leading it through another tube back into him.
Danny hated it. Danny loved it.
The treated ectoplasm took the edge of the pain off, if only a little bit, and he could not help but look forward to it. It was not nearly enough to help him heal, much less regrow organs like he knew he could, but it also kept him alive.
Barely, hurt, in bad condition, but alive. Or as alive as he ever was these days.
If he had to draw a comparison, Danny would say the machine was like a hemodialysis machine. The thought was not comforting.
And thinking of blood and circulation, Danny was reminded of another time the doctor said she would be gentle and had instead given Danny more pain.
She had cleaned off the adipose tissue and pericardium surrounding his heart, revealing his coronary vessels one by one. Those had also gotten hacked off eventually. Then his heart had also been taken out. As this had been done through the ribs, without breaking his thoracic cage bones, it had been specially arduous and painful.
Actually, most of his internal organs were not inside anymore. The ectoplasm-filtering box and the fact his core still remained inside his body were probably the only reasons he had not yet passed on.
Point being, he was more worried about what the doctor would do to him today than most other days.
Something wet touched his face, and Danny involuntarily reared back, pulling on aching muscles and overstretched skin. Focusing on where the sensation had come from, he could see it was a cotton pad, presumably coated in either alcohol or formaldehyde. It stung.
“Oh, Star, did I scare you, sweety?” the doctor asked in that sickeningly caring tone that Danny hated and loved and hated that he loved.
“It’s ok, love, I’m just making sure the area is clean before we start. Wouldn’t want any nasty infections, would we?” she continued. As if that was Danny’s biggest concern. As if she cared about him and not just her specimen getting dirty.
Seeing the cotton pad make its way directly towards his exposed eye, Danny reared back instinctively. The fight had long since left him, both in spirit and mind, but, almost mockingly, his body, one of the most violated parts of his being, was outside of his control.
It made him want to scream sometimes, before he remembered pain brought on by non-compliance and he slumped again, hanging from his tortuous perch.
Seeing his instinctual flinch, the doctor brought her hand back towards herself, a look of concern on her face that would have fooled Danny had he not been her lab rat for however long he had been.
He shuddered. The doctor never stopped, certainly not for Danny’s comfort.
“Starshine, it’s ok if you are scared. We don’t have to do this today,” she told him.
Danny didn’t have a heart anymore. Somehow, he still felt blood rushing in his ears and pressure in his chest. Or maybe that was just his fucked-up brain sending phantom signals he did not even have it in him to laugh at his own joke to his body.
What did she mean? She had never once stopped before.
The uncertainty and fear were almost as bad as the physical torture. The doctor really did work hard on breaking both his body and mind.
A small smile made its way into the doctor’s face.
“I could cut right through your pubic symphysis, and the surrounding tissue, instead, force your pelvis open. Of course, your penis and testicles would have to go first, but we could keep those nice and safe in a jar to explore later.” she said, voice sweet saccharine and with an undercurrent of poison.
Danny knew any option of reprieve could not be real.
“I would stick a spreader bar between your pubic bones, and then I could see the most wonderful lateral view of all of your lower abdomen and pelvic organs. Can you imagine?” she continued.
“Your bladder, your prostate, the trajectory of your urethra all the way down, the seminal vesicle and ejaculatory tract… Oh and then I could cut all of those down the middle too! It would look better than the pictures you see in anatomy books, don’t you think, Little Star?” she asked him enthusiastically.
Whatever blood and ectoplasm was still left in Danny rushed away from his brain, leaving him feeling faint and terrified, rapid whimpers leaving his slack mouth.
The doctor turned to look at him with her mouth in a straight line, giving him a fake sympathetic look.
“You’re right, maybe that’s too much for today, Star. Perhaps I could open up your back instead? Carefully separate your spinal cord from your vertebrae, take all the bones out one by one like slipping a ring off a finger. I think looking at all of those nerves, from your brainstem to the base of your back could be quite nice,” she offered as if it was a sensible alternative. As If any of them were sensible choices.
As if Danny even had a choice at all.
Despite his lack of guts, because he still had part of his stomach, if cut and sewn shut, and esophagus, he felt some bile rise up and come out of his mouth, staining his chin and his exposed facial bones. The acid burned his exposed tissues.
[Dr. Barbara Hartman thought it absolutely fascinating how, even lacking the necessary muscles to exert the force needed, the subject could still somehow vomit. It had been an accidental discovery, after she had taken the first of his legs. She had left him with part of his stomach just to get to see that incredible reaction again.]
The doctor tutted and shook her head, as if disappointed. Taking a soft cloth she wiped the bile and drool from his face lovingly. Softly.
“Oh, love, don’t worry. We won’t be doing that today. I have something less intense for you today, though no less delicate,” she told him, as if reassuring a child.
Danny hated that after the other options of what she wanted to do—and she would eventually do them, of that Danny had no doubt—he was calmed, if only marginally, by her words.
When the pad came for his eye again, he did not move away.
The feeling was terrible on his eyeball, but Danny didn’t have very many options of what to focus his attention on.
In the background, the same song was still playing.
It added to Danny’s time loss, never knowing when he came back after having disassociated if the part of the song he was hearing was of the same replay, or if it had already sounded a thousand times.
The thought of the stars didn’t help much either.
He screamed painfully in what would have been a wail had he had access to his powers when the doctor popped his eye out of its socket, carefully separating the extraocular muscles and catching it in her hands, admiring it. She raised what appeared to be a small hammock up to his face, letting the eyeball rest on it and then tying it around Danny’s head.
“We don’t want that just hanging, it would pull on your optic nerve and make our job harder!” she explained to him cheerfully.
Danny did not like where this was going. He never liked where anything was going.
The thought of his external genitals being cut off and his pelvis being cracked open kept him from giving even the feeblest of struggles.
The doctor went away for a second, before returning with what looked like a long, semi-malleable metallic rod. She held it up for him to see properly.
Danny did not want to see. He did anyway, having no choice.
“This is a nerve rod made of Bendoranium, a nifty little thing. It is firm but can bend upon encountering even slight resistance. I will use it to follow along the path of your optic nerve from the back of your eyeball to your occipital lobe, along the whole trajectory through your brain, decussations and all! Isn’t this exciting? It’s a kind of exploration you have never felt before,” she explained to him.
He would have been happy to have never been explored in this way at all. Or any way. Ever.
Knowing there was no escape, Danny did his best to disconnect himself from the situation.
“Oh! Almost forgot, I need you awake and alert for this, Starlight. Here, this will help,” she told him tenderly, as if she was offering to give him a blanket to keep him warm in chilly weather.
Instead, she turned on the box.
The influx of filtered ectoplasm kept Danny painfully aware of every micrometer of rod that traveled along his nerve.
He screamed, he whimpered, he puked, he shook. Danny wanted to pass out already, but the dialysis-like machine kept him awake and aware, just like the doctor wanted.
Doctor’s orders! He thought deliriously, giggling at his own joke, bile and saliva staining his chin.
“Oh, Starling, I am enjoying this too,” a soft voice told him. It was nice and gentle and feminine.
Danny turned his eyes to look at who had spoken, but only one of them moved. Actually, half of his vision was obscured, and there was pain spearing through his head like a lightning bolt.
The pain and the diminished field of vision made it hard to see.
He could just make out a kind face, soft hair. He could see a hand reaching towards his face before he felt pressure in his eye area and then a tingling sensation. The hand cupped the other side of his face. The feeling of not-skin was familiar. He had been held like this before, and had been talked to by this voice.
“All done Little Star. It’s all finished. In and out,” the voice he could now recognize said.
“With that done, you wanna tell me your secrets today?” his mom asked.
Secrets? What secrets? Hadn’t Danny already told her and dad about being half-ghost? They had been sitting in the living room. He had been nervous, but mom and dad had hugged him and apologized and promised to do better.
After that, they had-
After, they had-
Danny’s vision focused more, and he could see that his mom’s hair colour was wrong. Mom was a redhead, just like Jazz. So, who was this person with their hair brown and blonde?
Danny was brought back with a snap.
Died.
After Danny had told his parents, and after they had reacted well and hugged him and loved him, they had been-
Murdered.
The GIW had come in guns blazing, yelling at him to surrender. Mom and dad and Jazz had tried to protect him, and they had been killed for it.
He could still see his mother screaming for him, holding her guts from spilling out through a wound on her side. She had been shot in the head afterwards, like the rest of them. Nothing left to chance.
The blonde woman was Barbara Hartman. Doctor. Torturer. GIW Agent. Comfort. Now, and even then. She had held him as he was taken away, cooed at his screaming frame as he saw his families’ corpses for the last time.
Danny hated her. He hated craving her comfort. He hated himself.
He had clutched her back in his despair.
Upon not receiving an answer, she simply took another sip out of her coffee.
“No need to rush,” she said with a small smile. “We have all the time you could ever need.”
She tipped her cup, finishing her coffee. Without another word, she made her way towards the door, leaving Danny alone again.
It was only then that he remembered what had been done to him this session.
What had been done to his vision.
He found that his left eye could see almost nothing but black, with some slightly lighter shadows.
It was scary, but it was not as awful as what he noticed next.
Floating around in his field of vision were a myriad of tiny white lights. With the song still playing in the background he could not help but liken them to tiny stars, floating around in a dark night sky.
Stars, shining bright above me…
Danny felt like crying. First the stars were taken from him physically, since he could not see them. Then they were taken from him emotionally, their meaning warped for him and becoming a beacon of pain and helplessness. And now? Now it seemed he was forever forced to look at his very own fucked up night sky full of stars through his left eye, even if he had been able to close it.
What was once his ultimate dream was now nothing but a nightmare.
Night breezes seem to whisper “I love you”…
Even now, as he tried to remember his mother’s voice in an attempt to find some comfort in any way he could, her words and her voice were almost interchangeable with the doctor’s own. Both sweet and soft and loving, both gentle and kind.
But only one of them was honest, and only one of them was real.
Birds singing in the sycamore trees…
A powerless wail ripped itself from his already scream-shorn throat, pain and anguish overwhelming him.
His only answers were the echoes of his own screams.
Dream a little dream of me…
He was plagued with images of his family, happy moments of them all sitting on the roof just looking at the stars, the memories now tainted with the images of their dead bodies and filled with the pain the stars brought him.
Warm bodies were now only corpses.
Say “Night-ie night” and kiss me…
Shivers wracked his frame as he felt phantom touches on him, the rubber of his mother’s suit becoming mixed with the doctor's nitrile gloves. He cried, unable no matter how hard he tried to separate the feelings.
Both hands cupping his face, both mouths whispering care, both women giving him love.
Just hold me tight and tell me you'll miss me…
Danny wanted nothing more than his mother, he wanted nothing more than comfort. Between bouts of pain and desperation the face he saw in his mind was not Madeline Fenton, but Barbara Hartman. He tried to shake the image away, hurting himself, the tender face of the doctor being replaced with the pain-filled gaze of his mother as she screamed for him as he was violently taken from her. She had fought as fiercely and held onto him as tightly as she could, but it had all been for naught in the end. He would never see her again.
The doctor had held him tenderly as he was taken away.
While I’m alone and blue as can be…
With a sigh, Danny slumped, his whole body becoming limp, his mind becoming quiet. He was never going to escape this. He would die here, in this lab, by the doctor’s hand, eventually. Slowly, painfully, alone, with everything taken from him.
He closed his eyes.
Dream a little dream of me…
Imagining any other outcome was useless.