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meowmeowmeowmeow4x · 1 day

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Dark Blue Moon and the Suffering Sun Chapter 24

MEGA WARNING FOR VLAD BEING A CREEP, HUMAN EXPERIMENTATION, NEEDLES, NUDITY, MORE CREEPINESS AND DANNY GETTING SHOT

big thanks to @impyssadobsessions as well as @faerplay for their help with the first scene owo

MASTAPOST

Hazy fog closes around his mind. Danny turns in fits in his sleeping position. The water is cold, the ocean is eerily quiet. His mind is dragged back to a cold room at the bottom of the ocean, even as he claws the ground, unable to remain in the present.

Danny struggles, but his hands are stuck. His legs are tied together. He screams. Nothing comes out. He begs for help. Nobody hears. He cries for his parents to come save him. Nobody comes. Danny is trapped there for a thousand years and will never see the light of day again.

Nobody comes to save him when kind eyes and tender hands enter the room. The voice is sweet, and light, like a fairy god-uncle come to save him. Nobody comes to save him when the hands burned his skin with their touch. Danny’s fins rattle, shooting up straight like goosebumps.

Nobody protects him. Nothing protects him. His bare skin shivers in the cold air of the lab. His skin burns hot. Hot from shame, from disgust and violation. The kind eyes are not kind at all – they stare in hunger as bare and uncovered as his own body. It burns when needles plunge into his skin. It burns when the sigils are carved into his back, only to heal and then be carved again. It burns when the hands caress his cheek and the voice tells him it will be alright.

The voice is lying. It will always be lying.

Danny begs for the scene to go away. He has seen this all before. The room shifts. Red hair sways in the wind. Gunshots fire. Danny runs, but he cannot. He has no legs. He crawls back underneath glaring hatred. The eyes zeroed in on his heart grow. They grow and multiply and there are hundreds now. Hundreds of faces. Some in white suits. Some in brilliant Amani. Some in jumpsuits. Some in child-sized hoodies and jeans.

Danny’s vision shifts between the waking and the dreaming world. Details blend into each other like melting portraits. His lateral line senses Damian a million miles away and also right behind him and inside his guts with a sword. His ears register fictional water rushing, and very real vitriolic words spat out by fifty voices overlapping.

Danny’s eyes were thick with pearlescent slime when the real became fake again and the fake was revealed as the truth. The voices faded away into the background. The quiet of the ocean came back. Nothing like the clinical silence that drove him to tears in…

Danny jumped back. His scales shivered like rats under a microscope. He rubbed his body all over, the brushed it, then ground against his scales. Anything to get rid of the phantom fingers on his body, to get rid of the ghost touches that lingered even months later.

‘You need to ground yourself. Something to anchor your mind to the here and now. Let’s try a grounding exercise together, ok?’ Jazz said, once, when she caught him stumbling around the house at three am, skin matted in cold sweat and eyes wild like a cornered rat.

He saw himself. He saw his white scales and the bones underneath and the millions of nerves and blood vessels that you could only see if you squinted just close enough. And he saw Sam, smiling as she told him it was the most beautiful sight she’d seen in her entire life.

The supplies that he and Damian plundered from the Atlanteans, a chaotic and exciting fight that left him smiling on the inside even as he questioned the kid’s sanity.

He saw Damian inside his makeshift sleeping bag, the boy who had gone through so much pain, and will be forever changed, like Danny. He would not be able to shift like Danny’s half-human body could, nor talk or hide his siren traits perfectly and blend in plain sight. And the tears started again, so Danny forced himself to move on.

He couldn’t say if the grounding technique solved anything. Jazz told him as much. At least he felt alone again. Better than feeling the company of the evillest man he’d ever met.

Danny wiped away the last of the tears. The pearls that beaded up on the floor were swept away into the open ocean, never to be seen again. Better that Damian didn’t have more things to worry about than his failed rescuer failing even further.

The younger siren woke up soon after, shivering violently. He hoped Damian had better dreams. Danny passed another satchel for warmth, but Damian refused to even look at him, or take the thing. They had breakfast together in silence, as Damian rubbed his scales to stave off the cold.

They departed without a hitch. Danny’s cheeks continued to burn white hot, this time with guilt.

Jazz Fenton chanted in her head. ‘Go faster little brother. Please. Don’t stop.’

But it was futile. The radar showed him going too slow. The SAV would catch up to him today. Then they would capture him, and then-

Jazz pulled out all the stops. Every coping technique she could apply, she applied. She clutched Bearbert to her chest like a lifeline, like he was Danny’s lifeline. She took deep breaths and counted to them. She counted things she could see, hear, touch, smell and taste.

There had to be a way out of this.

Jazz turned around only to bump into the massive body of Bruce Wayne. If she didn’t know better she would’ve thought that she’d run into a brick wall.

A hand grabbed hers just as she lost her balance. “Steady there, Jasmine!” Bruce Wayne said.

Shit. The one person she didn’t want to talk to right now.

Jazz schooled her features into polite embarrassment. “Oh, s-sorry Mr Wayne! I didn’t realise you were there!”

For such a large guy, Bruce Wayne was stupidly stealthy. The man waved off her concerns. “There’s no trouble, Jasmine. You look worried. Is something wrong?”

Everything was wrong. Jazz went for a half-truth, something that can misdirect him away from her true feelings. “We’re so close to catching up to Phantom. I just… I want my brother back.”

She did not avert her eyes, but she did maintain eye contact up until the last word, upon which she turned away, and looked out into the window. Excessive eye contact was a tell for liars. Avoidance would make her suspicious. She had to maintain a balance.

Bruce Wayne leaned out the window beside her, and she almost screamed. Goddammit! Take a hint and fuck off already!

He took a deep long sigh. “So do I.”

Jazz counted the seconds until it was polite enough to leave. However, part of her was curious. “What was your disagreement with mom and dad about last night?” She said carefully.

Bruce Wayne rubbed the back of his neck. She had a gut feeling it was fake, but couldn’t prove it. “Well, as your mother said, we were just having a… discussion about Phantom’s fate.”

Jazz tightly grasped her tone and timbre, not letting her voice betray anything. “And what do you think we should do with him?”

The man sighed. “In all honesty, I don’t know. He needs to face justice for his actions, but how that will be conducted, I don’t know.”

Jazz’s chest heaved. For all his talk, Bruce Wayne was only less blood thirsty than her parents. That he was sympathetic to the sirens had no evidence. She was foolish to even think so last night.

But maybe he can be swayed, just as he swayed her parents?

“It’s not like you can put him in jail.” Jazz muttered.

“There are plenty of metahumans and other supernatural species in prisons. I should know. I helped fund their rehab programs.” Bruce Wayne’s tone was also even, like he was testing her.

“The GiW doesn’t have jurisdiction over metahumans and other supernatural creatures.”

“You’re afraid for him.”

Jazz’s heart rate spiked. No, no, she had to keep a handle on the situation. Do not catastrophise. Do not catastrophise. “You believe in rehabilitation, don’t you?”

“It’s all I ever dream of, for my city.”

“Is vivisection included in your plans for bringing criminals back into society?”

Bruce Wayne’s expression hardened by a fraction, something she only noticed from intensely studying his face as she spoke. “It isn’t.”

“What do us normal people do when the bodies trusted to dispense justice misuse their powers?” Jazz’s voice sharpened. “After capturing Phantom, and getting Danny and Damian back, what kind of justice can be dispensed that doesn’t involve humans performing the most inhuman punishments imaginable?”

Bruce Wayne’s eyes narrowed. Jazz felt seen through. Shit. She spoke too much.

“You don’t agree with your parents on sirens, do you?”

Jazz straightened her back, using her father’s genes to stand only a head shorter than the towering man. She stared straight up at his eyes, unwavering. “That was always clear. The real question is: do you?”

Bruce Wayne said nothing.

The day passed by without Danny even noticing. The sun began to sink into the horizon. It was probably about four pm or something now. Thankfully, the ocean’s surface wasn’t as populated with obstacles as your average road, or else Danny would’ve crashed many times already. He fought to keep his eyes open. After all that had happened, he felt so, so tired.

He looked to the moon for guidance. Apparently lots of more isolated tribes worshipped the moon. He could see why. It was vital for its role in creating the tides.

He always dreamed of walking on the moon. Fat chance of that happening now. Would it even listen to him if he prayed?

Danny nudged Damian with his shoulder. “You know, I’ve been told there are lots of sirens that worship the moon. Ain’t that neat?”

Damian buried his face into the crook of his green-scaled arm.

“Maybe we should say a prayer. I’m not a very religious guy, but maybe someone will listen?”

Danny tried a few more times to get a response out of Damian, but he was stone-walled out each time.

“D-Damian. Please. I know what’s happening to you is horrible, and I’m sorry I haven’t been helping as much as I should. But I genuinely didn’t know about your voice. You have to believe me. I-I-I was raised alone. I’ve barely known any other sirens in my life.”

Damian sniffed. Was he crying?

“Damian?”

Engines sounded in the distance. Danny’s blood went coat.

He turned around, and his worst fears were confirmed. His heart rate spiked. On the horizon, two jets skis closed in. Their speed and power blasted water into the air in their wake. He could recognise his mother’s red hair anywhere, but his heart spiked when he spotted Bruce Wayne on the other speeder.

“Father.” Damian whispered.

Danny went full throttle. He pulled Damian to his chest, ignoring the boy writhing to get out of his grasp. No. He couldn’t let his parents get their hands on Damian. How could he have been so careless?! Of course Bruce Wayne would talk to the ‘siren experts’ in town.

Hydroplasm rays pierced the surface of the water. Danny swerved to the side as one sailed where his head had just been. He jumped out of the water as another two almost hit their mark. Shit. All this dodging was slowing him down, and his pursuers got ever closer.

“What are you doing?! My father is right there!” Damian shouted, the loudest he’d been in over 24 hours. “Release me right this moment!”

“He’s with the Fentons!” Danny yelled back. A shot struck him in the back. Danny screamed. Tears formed in his eyes. “He won’t recognise you!”

“I must try! I can communicate with him in writing!” Damian redoubled his efforts to escape Danny’s hold.

“Are you insane!? The Fentons will put you on a dissection table before you can try such a thing.”

“Father would never allow it!”

“They’ll kill you!”

“Phantom!” Came Bruce Wayne’s voice booming through a megaphone. “Stand down now, and we can do this the easy way!”

“See?! My father is not a violent man!”

“It’s not your father I’m worried about!” It just came slipping out.

His mom’s voice came next. “You get back here Phantom and you will tell me what you did to my baby boy Danny or I will rip you apart. Molecule by fucking molecule!”

Danny’s blood froze again. Damian ripped himself out of Danny’s arms. The boy emerged from the water, arms raised in a sign of surrender. “Damian!” He shouted. Shit. Shit shit shit. His mother aimed a gun right at Damian’s heart. Damian’s eyes widened. He turned around in an instant. Danny never swam faster in his life.

Seconds dragged into minutes. His mom pulled the trigger. Bruce Wayne yelled. “Maddie! Stop!”

Danny snatched Damian away. A weighted net launched at dizzying speeds. Danny just barely avoided its trajectory. One of the weights slammed into his tailfin and pain shot up.

The distraction rewarded him with a shot to the arm. With one arm clutching Damian and the other in pain, he could barely swim. The speedboats surrounded them. Danny’s breath hitched. He tried to flip himself and descend, but he only managed half a meter before another net ensnared his body.

He felt a prick on his neck, and Danny’s vision went dark. The last thing he saw was his beloved mother’s cold, calculating eyes.

His skin burnt. He felt naked again.

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