DP X DC PROMPT #29
(#) = Notes at the end of post
✦
The Nasty Burger Explosion still happens, and Danny is left without his friends, family, and the only teacher who ever tried to help and encourage him in school. He manages to skirt around Vlad's custody by discovering a cousin of his Dad's he'd never heard about (1). He reached out to her, crying and begging for her to take him in. To not let Vlad anywhere near him.
Needless to say, after hearing a desperate teenager call her in tears and discover that besides Danny, her cousin Jack and his family had recently died in a horrible "accident," Lois nearly upends everything to go and get Danny from a middle of nowhere town in Illinois. After talking with Clark, of course. She didn't get one word in, however, cause he heard the entire phone call from the other room, though unintentionally.
After arranging for Mama Kent to watch over a still young Jon, they drove as fast as possible to meet this boy that already had their hearts in an iron grasp. When they first lay eyes on him, they immediately want to comfort him. His black hair is a tangled mess, his eyes bloodshot and red from crying. He sits in the corner of the school secretary's office, curled up in the small seat with an overstuffed backpack clutched tightly in a trembling, white-knuckled grip. A girl with dark skin and her hair held back by a headband sits with him, but she gets up and walks over as soon as she sees them enter the office. Danny doesn't seem to notice or even look up from where he's staring at the floor tiles.
"He's been hiding here for the last few days since he called you. He hasn't gone home once except to pack the bag he has with him." The girl explains. She holds out her hand to Lois for a handshake. "Valerie. You could say I'm a... friend of his (2). I'm assuming you're the cousin?"
Lois nods solemnly. "How's he been? He wouldn't tell me why he wouldn't go with his parent's first choice of custody. I've been worried."
Valerie grimaced and looked back at Danny before looking her directly in the eyes. "I can't say much without revealing anything i shouldn't. Let's just say Vlad has an unhealthy obsession with Danny, and it's unsafe to be around him. If he trusts you, he'll be the one to tell you the rest."
Clark and Lois share a look before they both nodded.
Valerie sees their acceptance and relaxes. She'd actually been tense the entire time she'd been talking with them.
"Well, with that said, I'll be going now." She rubbed the back of her neck and looked down with a sad expression. She looked back up at Lois with a deep sigh, and only then did Lois realize that Valerie looked to have been crying recently too. Looking between both adults, she made a quiet request. "Take care of him, will you?"
This time Clark is the one who finally speaks up. "You have our word he'll be safe and cared for."
Valerie's shoulders slump with a shuttering sigh of relief. "Thank you."
Once she left, Clark and Lois slowly approached Danny and sat to either side of him. Only then did he finally look up from the tiles and see them. His eyes ghosted over Lois but immediately locked onto Clark. He stared up at him, his eyes glassy with unshed tears.
Clark shrunk his broad form down a little, concerned his build might be intimidating for the young man. "Hi there, bud." He said in a soft tone. "I'm Clark and this is Lois. We're here to pick you up."
When introductions didn't seem to get a reaction from the teen, Clark's brow furrowed further. "Something wrong?"
Danny finally blinked and quickly ducked his head back down to look at the floor. "N-No." He croaked. "Sorry. For a moment there, I thought you were-" He choked on his words and seemed to have difficulty swallowing. He was shaking, his face hidden against his knees with one of his arms braced over his head to hide even further.
When he finally managed to finish his sentence, Clark's heart shattered completely.
"I th-thought you were my dad."
Clark looked at Lois with lost, watery eyes only to see she was in the same exact predicament. She couldn't stand seeing Danny so heartbroken any longer and leaned over to wrap him in a hug, Clark soon following. After a while of shushing and murmuring words of comfort, Lois gently spoke up.
"Why don't we get your things in the car and we can get on the road."
Extracting himself from their warm hold, Danny took a deep, shuttering breath before nodding.
"Okay."
"Is there anything else we need to get from the house? You have everything?"
Gripping his bag tightly to his chest, he nodded again. (3)
"Yeah. I do."
✦
Side Note:
(1) He found out through Tucker. He'd searched through Danny's family tree for any living relatives in case Vlad ever actually managed to kill Jack or something else happened to both his parents. He just never imagined it would be for this reason specifically.
(2) Yes, she knows Danny is Phantom now. She did not know before. She found out after she tried to pin the blame for Danny's friends and family on Phantom while Danny was in earshot, and he basically blew up at her and broke down. She's horrified and feels terrible, so don't be too hard on her. The confrontation also happened on school grounds with a bunch of other kids present, so a good majority of the student body knows now, too. If not from seeing it first hand, then by word of mouth. They're keeping it hush hush so nobody with bad intentions towards ghosts comes looking for Danny. Valerie will be the main defense against any ghosts that pop up, as well as a few other kids she trained.
(3) Before he left, Danny did disable and completely dismantle the ghost portal and translated all his parent's research into a code him, Sam, and Tucker came up with before destroying the originals as well as the entire lab itself. Natural ghost portals can still pop up in Amity Park tho, since the ghost portal kinda oversaturated the town with ectoplasm. Valerie and the kids she trained are just a precaution.
Haven't come up with a title for this one yet. I'll add it later when it pops into my head though.
Funny enough, this actually isn't what I planned to write for this prompt. It did involve Danny getting adopted into the Kent family, but there was going to be something entirely different happening. Apparently, the characters had other plans. Oh well, I'll save it for the next one, I guess. It might be a second part of this, actually. We'll see!
Enjoy the angst & hurt/comfort tho!
118 notes
·
View notes
Thank you to @intr0vrt3dextr0vert who gave me the suggestion "The S1 TMA crew (Sasha, Tim, Elias etc) going on a (regular lol) work bonding trip like going to the movies or something >:]"!
[Image ID: A digital drawing of the Season 1 Magnus Archives crew watching a movie in an empty theatre. On the left sits Elias, calmly steepling his fingers together and looking at the screen. An arrow points towards him with the text "secretly Watching the better movie next door." Next is Jon, who is sleeping and leaning his head against Martin who is seemingly watching the movie with a happy expression. The arrow pointing towards Jon has the text "bad sleeping habits finally caught up to him" while the arrow pointing to Martin says "*having an internal crisis rn*." Then comes Sasha who is mischievously looking at Jon and Martin while she hides her phone behind her bag of popcorn, implied to be taking a photo of the two. Her arrow and text reads "never a bad time for blackmail." Finally there's Tim who is staring intently at the screen while he leans over to take a bit of Sasha's popcorn as his container is empty. His arrow and text reads "actually paying attention to the damn movie." There is text at the bottom right corner of the image which says "POV: They're watching a bad movie" there is smaller text underneath it which says "(they bought out the whole house w/ institute money i guess?)" and another that goes "((or the movie really is just THAT bad)) ./.End ID]
The Ceaseless(?) Watchers
I have no idea what movie they're watching but Tim's invested anyway. I thought this was only going to take me a couple of minutes but it actually took a long while because
A. I forgot how hard it is to draw multiple characters in one scene
B. Low angle go brrr
But it was fun! The crew just hanging out and doing normal stuff for a change! Sure hope nothing happens to them ahahaha :)
1K notes
·
View notes