Chapter Text
Chapter 1:
White, white, white walls. Surgically sterile, with the overpowering smell of bleach and other cleaners. The sickly-sweet, almost toxic scent of ectoplasm still noticeable despite all the scrubbing that had to have happened to turn the previously green, green, green walls back to their original blinding, white.
Where were they, where were they, where were they? The monsters he used to call parents. How long before they came back? How long was the respite before the walls were once again painted green, green, green with the substance that kept him from fully dying. Pain, pain, pain from the crude stitches that kept their heart and lungs from falling out of their ribcage that had been forced open time and time again. They didn’t need to be pretty, the monsters had said, they’d be back to open him up again, so what was the point?
He couldn’t heal, all their strength going to protect his unborn from being discovered, keeping them safe from detection, hiding the organs that contained them so that they would not be poked and prodded and Ended. So that their ghostlings would never face the pain, pain, pain that was his existence since the monsters found him out.
A creak. Thundering footsteps belonging to a giant of a man. His dad Jack. The shuffling of hazmat suits as the monsters moved down the hall towards his table for another session of pain, pain, pain and green, green, green walls.
His breathing sped up, the white of the walls blurring and the buzzing of their core loud in his ears as he tried uselessly to escape the table he was connected to. Pain, pain, pain from the cuffs glowing red with technology designed to hold and hurt. The footsteps grew closer. Breathing sped up. Why was he hyperventilating? They didn’t need air in this form. Why couldn’t he calm down? He needed to think, so that he could escape. But they were getting closer, and he hurt, hurt, hurt so bad and he was scared, scared, scared. He had to get out. Why couldn’t they get out.
The door swung open. No.
Danny woke with a start, their breathing labored and the jacket he had wrapped around himself in some semblance of protection from the rest of the alley was coated with sweat and ectoplasm from where he had reopened wounds that still hadn’t fully healed, despite what was usually a supernaturally fast healing factor. Still, with how many times his injuries had been reopened and re-inflicted during his time with Vlad, on top of the lack of food and good rest, it was no wonder they had been taking so long to heal.
Danny shook his head gently, rubbing their arms in an attempt to rid themself of the last vestiges of the memory nightmare. Groggy from sleep, however unpleasant, and stomach turning with hunger, he worked to move from his place beneath a fire escape attached to one of the sketchier buildings in the Narrows of Gotham, New Jersey, where he had found himself a place to rest after days of travel and attempting to hide his trail.
Hopefully this wouldn’t be a forever thing, they had seen several ‘help wanted’ signs on his trek through the city, and with how…discrete, Gothamites are known for being, he might be able to get a job sans the papers, he doesn’t have, that prove him an actual person. Though, he had also heard that Gothamites weren’t terribly fond of outsiders, so that may work against him. He hadn’t had a problem so far in the day and a half that he had been here, though that could be because his ragged appearance fit rather closely to that of what he had heard called an ‘Alley Kid’. What exactly that meant, they had no clue, but he was sure that they’d figure it out eventually.
One of the places he’d passed the day previously had been a Mediterranean restaurant, and he hoped that he could wiggle his way in as a busboy or a dishwasher. If it was family owned he might have a higher chance because he spoke Greek. Pandora and Clockwork had been teaching him since he was eight after all. Even if they couldn’t spend much time in the mortal planes due to their ancient status, and they hadn’t been able to spend much time in the infinite realms due to his responsibilities to the living, they were still rather adept at most of what they had been teaching them since a bit after his accident.
So they hoped that would work in their favor when applying for a job there. If it didn’t work out, there were plenty of other places to apply to. And he didn’t mind sleeping outside until they saved enough money for an apartment. Food was currently his biggest concern, but he figured he could steal from the richer areas and chain stores if he was desperate. Well, and if his powers didn’t go all wacky with their hormones as he’d seen happen over the past couple weeks.
Crap, they really needed food. All his energy and ectoplasm were going towards keeping Ellie and Dan healthy and safe. Maybe there was a shelter nearby that served meals, that could get them at least one meal, if not a consistent source of food until he can sustain himself.
Okay, game plan: get up off his ass and head towards that Mediterranean place to apply for a job, track down the public library so they can familiarize themself with the maps of the city, and look for any non-profits and shelters in the area that he could hit up.
His body ached as he maneuvered his way out from under the rusted railings, pulling at his stitches and the cuff marks on his wrists and ankles. It’d been a week since Vlad’s vultures had busted him out, about a month in Vlad’s…care, three to four weeks of time blurring together and white, white, white walls and pain, pain, pain –
Danny shook their head. ‘In for four, hold for four, out for four,’ he slowed his breathing.
Three to four weeks…there, and two weeks since Ellie and Dan destabilized, and Danny had made the decision to carry their cores. That’s nine to ten weeks.
According to Frostbite, when Danny had rushed to him after he absorbed the two struggling cores, because of their halfa status, and them being born with hermaphroditism, it should follow the same or similar timeline to a human pregnancy. He’s going to need to find an OB-GYN.
They can’t go to a hospital because they’d run blood tests. Blood tests would ping the GIW because of the ectoplasm in his blood, not to mention Vlad and his stalkerish monitoring, so that’s a no go. He’d have to find someone discrete.
Fuck, why had they been born such a freak of nature? Non-human because of how liminal his parents Jack and Maddie were before they even got pregnant with him, constantly consuming contaminated food, and, of course, his eventual death and resurrection. He already had to deal with keeping the fact that he was other a secret while growing up, since his death it’s been nothing but punches one after the other. Not only were they not human, but they were only half-alive too. Ancients, he was so fucked up.
This world was so fucked up too. His existence was illegal. The Meta-Rights Act didn’t apply to them because they didn’t have the gene. He might have fallen under it like aliens and other non-humans did, but the Anti-Ecto Acts saw that he couldn’t be grouped with them. Fuck. Okay, no hospitals. Absolutely no hospitals. Surely there were clinics that took street kids? Ones that didn’t report to CPS or the government? Private practices? If they could find somewhere like that, he would be set. Right?