Chapter Text
Valerie wasn’t to sure what to think when she got a call from the Fenton parents to come over. That they had a capture to show her and that they’d ‘love’ to offer a sample or two to a fellow hunter fighting the good fight, or have a helping hand with their samples. She was going to go over there of course, no way she couldn’t. Not just because of her own curiosity, wanting to know if they discovered anything that might actually be useful and just plain old wanting to know who they actually managed to catch, but also because she wasn’t as naive as she used to be. Valerie knows Jack and Maddie Fenton landed firmly in the ‘mad scientist’ lane. They often went a little too far into the unethical category, especially with ghosts. Even Valerie knew these days that ghosts weren’t unfeeling evil things, the Fenton’s were literally the only ones who hadn’t seemed to figure that out yet.
Or they had and just didn’t care.
And honestly? If it’s the Box Ghost they caught, she’d actually just feel bad letting them experiment on the weak pathetic ghost. Not to mention she did not want to have to deal with the guys toddler being pissed off. That toddler has caused way too much of a mess.
Opening the Fenton Works front door just sets off her alarm bells fully, the harsh citric acidic white chocolate scent of ectoplasm basically assaulting her face even with the helmet on. Forcing herself inside felt almost robotic, not trying to possibly let on that she… doesn’t like this. Physically cringing when she opens the lab door, she can see a fine green mist in the air; air born bled ectoplasm. How could these people not realize this kind of thing was horrifically fucked up? Shaking herself off as she heads down.
She wished she hadn’t.
It’s good she did… but… goddamnit she liked Danny, and he never deserved any of the shit that happened to him. Least of all this.
Did he scream for a god to listen, while he was forced to stay alive?
Her feet hitting the ground at the bottom of the stairs sounds too loud to her ears.
The room is thick with green mist, almost sparkling as it dances throughout the air and swirls like mocking smiles. The smiles she was so used to seeing on Danny, Fenton’s and Phantom’s, dumb face. Even if she could see his face she doubts he’d be smiling. There’s metal tools, all green and glowing with their ectophobic coatings, strewn all around almost haphazardly; the Fenton’s were never ones to keep things tidy, no… that was always Danny’s job. The ground is littered with green and red goop and mounds, she doesn’t want to even guess at what it all is, but it looks all too much like dog food. The liquid ectoplasm splatters on the walls and floors are less concerning, if only due to their familiarity. Everything in Amity got splattered green eventually, its hunters the most.
Jack and Maddie were absolutely soaked.
Maddie turns to her, rubbing a hand across her goggles, smearing away the green glowing mess that had likely been partially obscuring her vision for some time, “oh you made it! Come on over”, looking back to the… subject on the table, grin showing through her face mask, “we finally caught It, and we were right, this one is incredibly strange”.
Jack laughing, “yup! There’s so much to learn! And it’s so curious how well It mimics humans! Who knew they’d evolve so much just to terrorize us!”.
Valerie just stares in horror at Maddie for a bit before creaking her head toward Danny’s prone form. He looked like there was no sign there’s a light on. He didn’t move as Maddie effectively inspected and played with a flap of exposed skin… what little of that there was. So much of him was… wrapped in bandaging like a mummy, she… doesn’t want to ask but… “why… why the, uh, bandages”; her voice doesn’t have the firm strong confidence she’d like it to.
Jack scratches his head, leaving another streak of green across his jumpsuit hood, “funny thing, it was almost like the thing was going into some sort of shock from all the exposed air on Its insides, and we couldn’t having our best prize go and fade away on us!”.
Oh god…
Maddie nodding, looking at Valerie with a piece of… organ in her hand, “just like with that bizarre breathing trick It does, sometimes that seemed to stop so we had to make sure that kept happening. Can’t lose such a curious thing right? It actually seems to have lungs, can you believe?”, waving her free hand to wave Valerie over, “come look”, and then she starts moving to snip at some of the bandaging and… pulls out one of Danny’s lungs; it’s a sickly pale green, and she can’t tell if that’s how it’s supposed to look or not.
It… it’s a miracle Valerie doesn’t vomit instantly. It’s like each time he tried to breathe his last, they brought him back to die all over again. She… forces herself to take a step closer but flinches violently when Danny’s head actually moves to look at her. His face is wrapped in grimy stained bandages like everything else, some parts of exposed area reveal muscle and bone and veins underneath, one eye staring at her, neon green piercing her heart, with half its pupil missing and actively bubbling. She can’t see any sign of emotion, of even a cry for help. His eye just stares and shakes. He doesn’t even have an eyelid for fucks sake.
She swallows and forces her feet to take her the rest of the way over, and she gets greeted with how the rest of him looks. His eye following, his head following, slowly, all the while.
No arms, no legs.
Gods, half of his left leg was gone beneath the knee, his right was gone entirely with strings of stretched green veining and ectoplasm stretching from hip to what must be the end of a leg sticking out of a boiling bubbling pot; what’s exposed of the leg looks… burnt.
Both his hands are gone, maybe he struggled? Tried to free himself perhaps. One arm stump looks burnt past the lazy ‘attempt’ at bandaging, while the other has cords clamped onto bone and muscle; there’s a small dangerous looking sparking occasionally. Could he… feel that. She hopes not. And maybe he really couldn’t, not past all the seemingly burnt flesh frying his nerves.
Valerie has to jerk her arms and hands up when Maddie practically tosses Danny’s lung at her, leaving Valerie stiffly holding it in her arms like a disturbing baby bundle. What would have happened if she’d failed to catch it? Would it have splattered to the ground, strings of green sinew snapping away from what remained of Danny and finally snuffing out his breath? Freeing him from everything.
Maddie prodding the lung in Valerie’s arms, “you can even see some of the alveoli here, I could never have imagined a ghost copying humans this well”.
Jack nodding, “it’s only too bad we couldn’t get a good look at Its throat since we had to crush that”, actually laughing, “that wail is just too destructive. Would have wrecked the lab”.
To them, this was fun.
Valerie tears her eyes away from the lung to look at Danny’s neck, flinching a little from making eye contact with him, his staring, it almost felt like he was expecting her to just… go along with this, with them. Like he expected her not to help him. Not to stop them. God that was an awful feeling. Still, she manages to look to his neck, it looked like it had been crushed in with a bowling ball. Would he, could he, ever speak again? Everyone- she loved his way with words, his laugh. And his wail, even if she was being purely pragmatic, was their saving grace against tougher ghosts more than once. What if he survived this and picked a bad fight and couldn’t fall back on that?
She manages to find her voice, “why? Why would you- Phantom helps the… town so much”. How can she even begin to fix this? How does she get them to just stop? To get them to finally goddamn see that their actions can be grave?
Can lead others to their graves.
Maddie waves her off, moving to grab some painfully bright green tool, “oh don’t be silly, dear. It’s far more useful for what we can learn from It”. Jack nodding eagerly, “plus! The town’s way better off being protected by humans, not some ectoplasmic filth! Especially one that pretends to be so much like us”.
“Right you are, Jack dear”.
She… she’s not going to be able to get through to them, is she? Nothing she says will matter in the face of ‘science’ and ‘advancing hunting’ and ‘curiosity’.
Except maybe- Something beeps loudly, interrupting her thoughts. Jack jumping a little and rushing off, “oop! Looks like the things pseudo heart is trying to give out again!”. Maddie grabbing a fistful of the lung and just dragging it roughly out of Valerie’s aching but almost limp arms, tossing it back on Danny’s torso haphazardly before pushing Valerie back a bit. Jack rubbing defibrillator paddles together before violently smashing them down on Danny, his ribs cracking and breaking like thunder, one paddle breaking through bandaging and flesh, imbedding itself in Danny’s torso.
Valerie wants to cry.
Jack jumping back immediately, rubbing his neck and laughing, “ah oops”. Danny’s back still arches from the shocks, but eventually the beeping sound stops and Jack turns the machine off. Carefully removing the pads, leaving behind only a sucking chest wound as proof of his carelessness. Maddie shaking her head at her husband, arms on her hips, “well it’s a good thing you probably only mashed up one pseudo lung, Jack”.
“Sorry, hon”.
Maddie sighs, “it’s fine, just give me the bandages before It fakes shock again”.
Valerie just stands there while the two go about wrapping the wound. His arms don’t move to help them or to try and stop them. He’s… he’s given up.
It’s on her to not do that. To not give up on him. She has to stop this right? But how? How how how!?! There’s no telling how much damage she’d do if she just grabbed him off of the table and ran. She doesn’t even know if they’ve injected him with anything! For all she knows they put an explosive in him so he’d explode if he did manage to escape; then they could scrape up whatever was left and examine that. God that was so fucked up.
She… she has to convince them to stop.
Maddie looks back to her, tilting her head, “what are you doing just standing there? We’re going to take apart and look at the pseudo spine now. A third set of hands would be lovely”, looking back down at Danny quizzically, seeing the thing but not the person, “based on what we’ve seen so far It should have something resembling spinal fluid, and I’d love to get a good sample of that”.
Jack then poking Danny’s head, which just lols over, “we’d love to check out the pseudo brain too, but that’ll have to be last just in case the spook has a nasty reaction to that like when we tried to bag the pseudo heart”. Then moving to push Danny on his side, the way his chest squishes down, like a plushie, is deeply disturbing; and his right arm merely flops around with no fight to give.
She can’t let them do this. But what can she even DO! She… if she just… helped them could she try to just… make him as comfortable as possible? Make it hurt as little a possible? Would that be kind? Would that be kinder than trying to free him at this point? Sabotage things so he does die, or fade, however it worked for a halfa. Put him out of his misery. She’d live with it forever, but could anyone come back from this? Was it even worth coming back from?
…
She’s… she’s not sure she’d come back from doing that to him. Not if there was even a chance he could survive this.
She pushes her self forward, putting a hand on his shoulder and… and trying to subtly tap out sos Morse code. Try to get his input, try to see if he was even there enough to give it.
He… he fucking laughs. Maddie and Jack and her all jumping from the rough hoarse wheezing dry sound of it as it rattles off the walls. He laughs like he’s mocking her, mocking everything. Not in the way a hero does. Not in the way a child having fun does. No, he laughs like a nightmare villain laughing down at heroes dying left and right on a battlefield, mocking their attempt to survive, to help others survive, to save anyone. He laughs like a sadist who just slaughtered a child and is now leaning over the parent crying and cradling their battered young. He laughs like a monster who just forced a man to sit in chair reupholstered with his babies flesh. It’s… it’s disturbing.
But…
But he moves his arms to ‘grab’ at hers. Maddie shakes her head, seemingly disappointed, “is the thing really going to start trying to put up a fight again?”. Jack shaking himself off, “think It would have learned by now, but it’s not like ghosts are intelligent, I’ll get the paralytic again”.
Valerie’s not paying any attention to them, all she’s hearing is the way he gives her arms a squeeze with his stumps, green eye staring up at her helmet, knowing who’s beneath. How much can he even see? With how mangled it is? Something in there squirms, twitches. Like maggots in a cow brain.
Jack knocks something over, “oops”, and that jerks her out of her head.
She chooses violence.
They took his innocence, now she’ll take theirs.
She’ll be destroying this family if she tells them but… but she can’t break what’s already been broken.
Dropping her hand from his shoulder and her tasers are out in a second, arms raising by the second, aiming like second nature. Because it was second nature now, to shot things. Just… for the first time she was shooting humans.
She fires.
“What are you-!”.
Maddie goes down instantly, Valerie’s weapons were made for creatures with a high durability so the Fenton suits meant little. But she has to step forward firing twice more to get Jack down on the ground, wheezing.
“I- I won’t let you- you do this. What the fuck is wrong- wrong with you!”. They groan and she doesn’t care. “He has literally never done anything wrong! But! But you’re so far- far down your bullshit! You sh-should know by now that- that you’re not the goddamn sun, the truth does- doesn’t revolve around you!”.
Whipping away from them and all but stomping over to their computers, grabbing a rag and two-handed swiping aggressively across the screen to clear it; turning around, balling up the fabric, and tossing it at Maddie’s face. Spinning back around to the computer as she fishes a jump drive out of her pocket, Danny gave it to her to ‘hold on to’, gods she should have known how he meant that! How he knew how unsafe he was but would never say because of his stupid stupid STUPID! self-sacrificial ways! Damn him!
But she… she doesn’t have any deniability in this. She’s responsible for this too. She could have gotten him out of that house. Or checked in on him more often. Or just told them sooner, Danny’s objections be damned. She rams the jump drive in, clicks open folders, and sets the video to play.
The video of that day. The day Danny died. Thanks to them, and their stupid creation.
Spinning back around to face the groaning two, “sit back and, and just, fucking watch, you pieces of shit. And try- goddman try to just take responsibility for one- once in your damn lives! Take responsibility, it’s the least you can do. You- you’ll never have to pay the price- god, the price he did for your stupid scientific blindness!“.
“Red Hunt-“.
Valerie balling her fist, leaning forwards and screaming, “SHUT UP!”, loud enough that her throat hurts from it. Gods what did Danny’s wail feel like to him? Did it tear his throat up every time? She hopes not.
Moving to him and putting her hands on either side of his face, mentally commanding her face shield to open up as she goes, “D-Danny. I… gods I’m- I’m so so sorry”. And his recorded dying screams begin to echo out throughout the room, her lowering her forehead to his; she doesn’t want him to be a star that turns gray and fades away.
“What no- that doesn’t- it’s not- how?!”.
“Danny? It can’t? I?”.
Valerie doesn’t move her head when she shouts again, she doesn’t give a shit about their shock. Their shock doesn’t goddamn matter. What matters is Danny, she doesn’t know if he can survive this. She doesn’t goddamn know! They might. They have to! “Just! Just shut up and fix him!”. She knows she’s crying at this point and she doesn’t care.
“Your voice- no! Oh Danny! I how-”
“Shut. Up. Please”.
At least Jack moves, actually does something. She barely makes herself look at Jack, she doesn’t give a shit about her identity any more, he’s staring at her and Danny in horror. Fuck him. Fuck him so damn much. Her wheezing, “at least now you know that- that in hell, the devil will keep you employed”, swallowing harshly and forcing herself to lift her head, push her self up and away from Danny’s delimbed body, “do- do whatever you have to so, so I can get him away from here. You’ve- you fuckers have done a goddamn nough. Touch- if you touch him more than you absolutely must I will- I’ll flay you alive”.
Maddie all but scrambling up, “we- we have more training, we can-”.
“I don’t care! You- god you think he’d want you t-touching him!?! After you ripped him apart!”. Valerie is glad when the woman flinches back violently, before hanging her head and moving to grab things. To grab parts of Danny.
Hands pinned down in a case and partly flayed open, go in a box.
The right leg, boiled and burnt and oozing and twitching, goes in the box.
Jars and jars and jars and vails and vials and vails of green goo and green-black bone and green globs, go in the box.
A pill bottle of nails and teeth, goes in the box.
Microscope slides of slices of eye layers, go in the box.
A… cut up ectoplasm and blood splattered biohazard suit, goes in the box.
Maddie speaking weakly, “the… the ears Jack”.
“Oh. Right”.
A bag with mangled clearly dissected ears is fished out of the garbage can… it goes in the box.
The defibrillator goes in the box too… she hopes he doesn’t need that.
She moves him to cradle in her arms, his head thumping against her chest… like he doesn’t really care what happens to him. Like he’s just going along with this, whatever may be. She summons out her board and glares at the parents, both of whom are crying now, “on the board. The box, not you”. They both flinch but obey, and… and she leaves. Gets him out of that hell hole. She doesn’t give a shit if those two rot down there. No shut eye, no empathy, a pair of goddamn monsters.
She leaves that building to the sound of sobbing, rubber biohazard material slapping onto the ground, and a video being replayed.
She lays him down on a roof, having not gone far but far enough she feels. She can’t, won’t, trust Vlad enough to seek his aid. Danny would go to bat for him, that he’d help now, but she’ll be damned if she trusts another one of Danny’s attempted parental figures.
But she doesn’t know how to fix him. She needs him to be able to talk to her.
She digs in the box, grabbing the pill bottle of nails and teeth, hands shaking as she dumps it out, putting all the… the nails back in. She can try shoving his teeth back in their sockets.
She’ll make him better.
She moves to him, tearing away some of the bandages covering some of his mouth, “sorry, sorry”; he doesn’t fight her, doesn’t even try, when she shakily shoves them in where they seem to fit. Molars in back, two big front teeth in front, incisors, canines. His tongue is split into long quarters… she, stitches what she can.
How can she… maybe… maybe if she shoves a pipe down his throat -this is so awful- she can get it open again. She looks around, there’s… there’s part of broken window that will work, it’s square but… it’ll have to do. So she pushes herself up and walks cautiously over to it, “please work”, it takes some doing to free it from the window but it breaks eventually.
Muttering another, “I’m sorry”, sitting on his chest, knees holding his head still and that eye of his staring at her face, then ramming the square pole down. The sound it makes is horrific. The squelching and cracking, he gurgles and some bloody green and red bubbles come out of his mouth.
Yanking the pole out and throwing it away, it clanging loudly on the roof top and leaving a smear as it bounces away, “I-I’m so so sorry, I… I need you to speak. Please. Tell me what to do. T-tell me what to do, Danny”. She puts her hands beside his head and stares down at his face, willing him the speak.
He gurgles and sputters, a tooth or two comes loose and she has to fish them out of his throat when he chokes a little. But… “‘on’t, know ‘ow, I, las’ed-”.
“How- how do I fix you”.
He gurgles and wheezes some more. Gods it must hurt so much. He takes a shuddering breath, she can feel part of his one exposed lung inflate under her, “lost, ’ot, no’ enough, self, ec’o, ouh heal”, wheezing again, and again that lung inflates, his ribs creak with it as he tries for more air, “blood, too. ‘eed, blood”.
She… she doesn’t just carry blood and ectoplasm packs on her! What can she- oh. Deactivating her suit, sitting up a bit but careful not to put pressure on his chest, and shoving her arm sleeve up to her elbow, “will mine work, Danny, will mine work?!?”.
His eye shakes, “‘on’t-”.
“Shut up. Will. It. Work”.
He stares at her, for the first time it looks like there’s emotion there. Emotion asking her not to do this to herself. But she’s made up her mind and that look tells her all she needs to know. So she bends back down and shoves her arm in his mouth, using her other hand to force him to bite down, he doesn’t have the strength to fight her, “I don’t have the tools so damnit just fucking drink and use it that way. I- I’ll knock you out if- if I have to”.
He stares at her, eye darting around her face like he’s trying to find any sign from her that she doesn’t want him to basically drink her blood, she pushes her arm into his mouth a bit more and glares violently; as violently as she can with the tears she can feel in her eyes. He swallows.
She’s not worried about herself. She has no reason to. Her nanobots will heal her, and she knows he knows that. Hopefully his body will just destroy whatever of those he gets in him from her blood, she’s fairly sure he will. She can only hope.
She nods at him, sitting up slightly, not enough to move her arm away from his mouth, and looks to the box; pointedly ignoring the faint occasional gulp. That boxes contents were the only source of ectoplasm they had right now. She… she kinda of hates that he’ll probably be more alright with eating his own body parts than just drinking some of her blood.
God why did the world have to be so cruel to such a good good person?
Why did the kind always have to suffer?
The… the organs would probably be best right? But the leg had more mass… And he might need those organs put back in later, the intact ones anyways, when he’s okay enough to handle being reopened; sticking organs in the open chest wound probably wouldn’t do him any good, since that’s where he needs to remake a lung. Okay okay okay, she’ll… she’ll figure out what ones are intact, set those aside, and just feed him the obliterated ones.
Snapping her head back to him when his tongue starts shoving weakly against her arm, she stares at him and he stares back, “you- you better have had enough and- god, and not just- just being dumb”. The eye rolls somewhat rather weakly, so she moves her arm out of his mouth and lets some of her suit cover that arm, containing the bleeding and helping speed along healing… she wishes she could just stick him in a suit and heal him.
Pushing herself up and off of his chest fully, she stares at the box a bit before moving to it, bending down and digging through the jars. Some she can identify. Liver and stomach are easy, both being shades of green or not. Liver’s intact… stomach not so much. The stomach seems sliced into pieces, they’re small… they should work. This was so fucked up. The intestines are all cut up too, longer thicker pieces but still. She grabs it, gingerly, and gets up again, her legs shaking a little as she moves back over and empties the jars onto his bandaged stomach. Pausing and eyeing her hands, her bare hands, she summons her suit out over both arms and hands now. Looking at Danny’s face, his eye staring at the organs… he doesn’t look confused.
“This- it’s- I don’t just- I don’t carry ectoplasm on me, and I… I’m not made of it. I can’t- can’t think of anything else. Sorry”.
His eye flicks to her, she knows he isn’t judging her, he’s resigned, she hates that so much. So very much. “O-okay. ’s, okay. Wark”.
She stares at him a bit more, he was just so… so quick to just accept this, biting her lip, “have… have you, done this, before?”. He stares back, and it feels like years before he looks away and nods slowly, mouth twitching into a hint of a frown. Like he was embarrassed. There was so very much wrong with this world and his life. Gods.
“Do… do you have a… preference”.
His eye snaps back to her, “… no”.
She blinks harshly at him, “I- that’s good, Danny”, looking away from him and at the mess she’s made on his stomach, “that’s good”. Her grabbing a fist full, cringing as it squelches around in her grip, and moving her hand to his mouth. She hates that he just… opens up, no fight, no struggle, not a word of rejection. Just opening up like a baby chic awaiting food to be shoved down its throat from its mother.
And she… she obliges.
Fingering the bits, the expertly well cut chunks meant for examination, into his mouth; and he swallows without chewing. She wouldn’t want to chew that either. But grabbing a length of intestines… there’s really no way anyone could get out of chewing this. He glances his eye to the side, she glances her eyes to the other side, as she fingers an end of that too into his mouth, and he bites down. The squelching is loud and she can swear she can hear the gushing from the ectoplasm and flesh tearing and exploding into tiny swallowable chunks and strips in his mouth. It’s violently disgusting.
Yet it goes down all the same.
He coughs and it shakes him violently, but at least he doesn’t throw up. Which… is probably a result of experience.
…
Actually.
She wishes he had throw up instead then. She doesn’t like what the lack of vomit tells her. Hates it even.
It takes her a bit to look back at him, he’s staring at her with that eye. She swallows, the least she can do is not encourage him to feel shame, to not feel like a disgusting freak of nature. For what just happened. For what he did. For what she made him do. What had to be done. “There’s- the rest is, intact, I think. I… I know you can, just, put stuff back in”.
He shudders a little, head moving side to side slowly before stopping and eyeing her again, “‘ore”.
Oh, okay. She was hoping that wouldn’t be the case. Nodding she gets up and grabs the vials she can tell for sure haven’t had anything added to them and moves back over, she should have done this first, pouring those in his mouth is a lot less disturbing, outside of the gulping sounds. She doesn’t need to ask if this won’t be enough this time though, there wasn’t much in those. Swallowing again, “the… ears were in the, uh, garbage, bad idea”, glancing back at the box then back to him, “only… one leg and that’s, somewhat still attached to you”. The, fucking eye slides wouldn’t be worth the effort, and the hands… the hands would take time to unpin and were much much smaller.
“‘east, ‘s cooke’”.
He… he really can’t help making jokes can he? God she wants to beat him. How can he do that right now! But… but maybe this means he’ll be okay, at least even slightly. This is a nightmare and just so so awful and disgusting and it probably smells like burnt chicken. And no, yeah no, it’s too much. This is too much. That’s too much. Valerie fully turns away and just… throws up. At least her vomits not green.
“‘orry”.
She coughs and wipes her mouth, forcing herself to stand up, “shut up, Danny”. Then her com starts ringing, it’s the urgent tone, the one tied to the Fenton’s number; all that does is make her feel rage again. She summons out her helmet, takes the call and snaps, not interested in hearing their damn voices, “I’m fixing him, fuck off. I don’t care what you have to say”, and hangs up on them immediately. If it’s important they’ll call back, if they call again for any other reason she’ll take a baseball bat to their entire lab and them. She’s rougher than she wants to be when she grabs his leg out of the box and puts it on the roof top; it thunking down loudly and some of the green gooey strands twist themselves up in knots.
She has to separate it from him. Fully. So she… she fists up the strings of sinew connecting the limb to his mangled hip and, using the roof top as a cutting board, gets to work; cutting as close to his hip as she can. Steady measured swift cuts down on each squirming piece, like cutting up a live squid. Neither end stop moving immediately after… just like a squid or octopus. She’s not going to be able to eat fish for a while… or chicken, humans were supposed to taste like chicken she thinks. Or lemongrass chicken in this case…. God she needs therapy.
Danny needs it so so much more. So much.
She wishes she could wash away all the cruelties the world had shoved on him. Life’s not that nice though, and neither is death apparently.
Standing up and carrying the limb with her over to him, it’s gooey soft and crunchy all at once and she hates it a lot, “can you just… just eat it? Or…”, trialing off and lifting her knife a little, the question of if he needs it cut up is obvious.
He eyes the leg and simply opens his mouth, the motion was noticeably more fluid than it used to be, good. That… that was something. She made the right choice.
…
That’s not much of a comfort.
He holds his arms up a little, they shake slightly, asking her to just give the limb over but… no. She’s doing this for him, damnit. She shakes her head while moving to kneel down next to his head and just… sticks the thigh end in his mouth a bit, letting him bite and tear and chew off bits, moving it as needed. At least she doesn’t feel the need to vomit again. Whether that’s because her stomach is empty now or just because she got the desire to out of her system, she’s not sure and doesn’t care.
He stops around the ankle, moving his mouth away and wheezing, he squeezes his eye shut- he has an eyelid again! She’s not sure when that happened, him wheezing and squirming slightly, “b-ban’aging, ‘eed it off. Oo ‘ight”.
Valerie jerks a little before nodding, just kind of setting the foot and ankle to the side. “Everything”.
“Yes”. He wheezes a little again and his back arches a little, it’s… it’s clear he’s trying not to squirm or move too much. His skin must be trying to reform, or bones perhaps.
She gets to work quickly, at least her suit had scissors, cutting and pulling off strips of bandages, bandages that clearly weren’t applied with much care at all; just tossing it all off to the side. She has no clue if they coated that in anything, she’s not risking reusing that in the slightest.
His… his skin actually was reforming, his suit too with it. Right, she- she forgets about that sometimes. That his suit was his skin too. His ‘outer ectoplasmic layer’. It was easier to not think about that, since he could take it off. People shouldn’t be able to remove anything that can qualify as their skin. She wonders how he’s okay doing that, a ghost thing probably. Shaking her head and herself off, she’s distracting herself. Good for her psyche probably, but not good for helping Danny. He’s got a palm of a hand too, at least; even if all that’s attached to that palm is squirming green and tan goo.
He rolls away from her, onto his side, the side with nothing from the hip down, and curls in on himself a little, arms clutching around his stomach. She hasn’t gotten the bandaging off of his face yet, or his left leg- his half of a left leg. “I- I’m not done yet, Danny”. He just groans at her so she puts a hand on his back, where there’s suit or at least skin, and slowly gets to work on his leg bandaging, “is your, ah, stomach okay?”.
He huffs a little opening his eye and glancing at her, “I’m s’ill, somewha’ human, ‘al. Ain’ meant tah, ‘rink blood an’, eat ‘hat” , him swallowing before coughing a little and groaning; relaxing on his side and into the roof after though. A lot more of his skin and suit seems to reform very rapidly, enough that it makes her jump a little. He clears his throat roughly, “that’s- that’s a bit, better, ow”.
Valerie sighing a little, “glad you’re talking better”. It… it felt like ice water to hear, soothing ice water, but a system shock all the same.
He flops back over on to his back, she can see the smashed in part of his chest rising and refilling under the suit, “me too”, looking his one eye at her and staring, “are… are you okay”.
She stares at him, a bit dumbfounded, “no. No I’m not. I… I’m pissed”, and disgusted, but she doesn’t want him to… to worry about her or feel bad for putting her through this. She knows she made the right call when he sighs and seems to almost crumple into himself, lifting his head up and seemingly trying to move it to be on her lap, so she scooches closer and lets him rest his head on her lap while she starts on the facial bandages. She ignores the way he starts crying halfway through. He doesn’t move or make noise, just cries.
And there’s nothing she can do about that. No amount of improvised rescue plans or blood or auto cannibalism can help here. All she can do is finger her hands through his patchy snarled hair, and hope it’s more comforting than painful. His other eye is reforming, at least.
“They- they wouldn’t listen”.
She nods a little, “they didn’t… listen to me either. Not really”, shaking herself a little. Those two… only listened because she threw proof in their faces.
He wheezes a little, “hey, at least, the pain itself, won’t kill me now”, his face stretching in a mockery of a smile before it disappears just as quickly, “wanted it too. Ancients I- I really did”.
She couldn’t blame him for that. She still isn’t sure if saving him was the right option, the kinder option. He’s still here, so he isn’t free from the hell the world seems intent on putting him through. And now he has to deal with healing from that, mentally. So does she, but she couldn’t imagine healing from the act itself. She’d rather wash it all away, be gone, drown. Drown in pain, blood, alcohol; anything really. It would be easier to just stop breathing. Just rip out her heart just to stop feeling anything.
His breath is a rattle, “Hell compares to this”.
Yeah she bets it does. And they… they’re his parents, that’s his home. And… and they know now, about him. Even if they accept him, he shouldn’t go back there. They don’t deserve him. Shaking her head slightly, trying and failing at not crying again, “whoever says, you have to tough out tough times, is an ass”.
He huffs a laugh, head wiggling back and forth, “heh. Yeah”, swallowing, “I… I just, want a time I’m not, fighting for my right to a life, anymore”, wheezing, “and some, some sleep. A nice dream, for once”.
“I’ll tell Nocturne you said that”; she tries to wipe her eyes a little but it doesn’t really help, she’s just… she’s just so damn tired now. The adrenaline must be wearing off and she hates this. Hates that they did this to him.
“Please do”.
She’s not going to, obviously, but… if she did she doubts the ghost would take advantage of the request. The ghosts could be… weird about Danny. Nocturne would help, just this once. But she won’t go there. She’s not stupid; even if she feels it for ever trusting the Fenton’s with Danny. “you could sleep now, I- I got you”. She’s holding herself together with threads but she can be here for him. While he’s broken, and shattered, and hollow, and rotten. While he’s not strong.
“Blood and ectoplasm, is all I’ll see, if I close my, eyes. I… I don’t want, that”, he hiccups a little, tears flowing a little more, “I really, don’t”.
She pats his head looking up at the orange red pink sky, “okay, th-that’s- that’s okay”, she’s fully crying herself now and it’s stupid and it hurts and she doesn’t want it to and she feels stupid for not wanting to hurt because he’s hurting so much more.
Neither of them move, both crying and watching the sky as the stars start to come out, twinkling in the way that they always do, even if they seem a little less bright and a little more gray than white.
Spilling themselves empty until there’s nothing left of anyone to hurt.
This...
There was no coming back from this…
For anyone.