Chapter Text
The 'room' was made of bare stone that glowed ever-so-slightly green. The floor was about four feet by four feet. The ceiling was six feet up, but felt lower. There were no windows. Neither were there any doors. The only good thing about it was that it was scrupulously clean. Although, that was because the stones apparently drank blood.
Danny was curled into a corner, wedged into it as tightly as possible, not moving, not breathing. Breathing offended his captors. Then again, everything about Danny offended his captors. Especially the more human parts of him. After the last time they had 'corrected' him, Danny had tried his hardest to do nothing. To remain as perfectly still and inoffensive as possible. To not even let his green eyes blink. To not even think, because when he fell too deeply into his thoughts, he tended to forget that he wasn't supposed to move.
Danny wanted very badly to go home, but at this point he would settle for somewhere he knew, with someone he knew. He'd take Walker's prison over this. Walker's Rules might be beyond obsessive and edging into impossible to follow, but at least they were understandable. At least Walker treated him like a person. For that matter, he'd take Skulker and his island over this. Skulker might always be literally trying to kill him, but they had this weird mutual respect thing going on.
Something screamed horribly elsewhere in the building, and Danny suppressed a flinch. Nothing should make that kind of noise. Nothing should sound so lonely, so hurt, so scared. He wondered if Jazz would say that he was projecting.
At that thought, Danny did flinch. He had been trying very hard not to think of his family and friends. But now that they had crossed his mind, he couldn't stop. Did they know he was missing? Were they looking for him? Were they able to handle all the ghosts? There were so many who came through on a regular basis, even though only a fraction of them were properly sentient. He wasn't too worried about his parents. They rarely showed up to ghost fights on time. But Sam and Tucker? Jazz? What if they got hurt? And... what about Vlad? Would he take this opportunity to actually kill Jack?
Maybe his parents were in more danger than he had first thought. Even if they were all fine (please, please let them be fine) what about the rest of Amity? It wasn't an exaggeration for Danny to say that he saved lives daily. Even on those rare days when there wasn't a ghost attack, he often pulled people out of car wrecks, or burning buildings. If someone was hurt (or worse) because he wasn't there, he would never be able to forgive himself.
But he couldn't escape. He had tried. The little room was phase-proof, both to his ghost form, and his human form, blast-proof, freeze-proof, even scream-proof, and the things that they had done to him when he tried to escape...
He was distracted by the taste of something salty in his mouth, and he blinked, despite telling himself that that was one of the things that he wasn't going to do. Had he bitten through his lip or something? No, ectoplasm had more flavor than that. So what..? He caught sight of a few translucent, faintly luminous droplets on his folded arms, and he raised a shaking hand to his face. It was wet. He was crying.
Oh no. No, this couldn't be happening. If he was crying, then-
As if on cue, a ghost phased through the wall. (Danny had no idea how they did that, he had tried and tried and tried, and he hadn't been able to get through at all). The ghost wasn't tall, but it still towered over Danny, who tried futilely to avoid the ghost's grasp. The ghost had green skin, one huge, staring bloodshot eyes, and no neck to speak of. It's clothes looked flamboyant, white and gold robes, black and red cape, high collar, jewelry, but Danny had seen so many of the ghost's fellows that he knew that this was just a kind of uniform.
Despite Danny's best efforts, the ghost's clawed hand buried itself in his hair, and the ghost, who still had not deigned to speak to Danny, pulled him through the wall. Danny struggled. Despite the pain he knew was waiting for him, pain he knew would only be worse if he fought, he also knew that this would be his best, possibly only, chance to escape for quite some time. But Danny was still weak from the last time they had done this; the ghost barely even noticed, and when it did, it's response was to shock Danny and simply drag him down the hall.
When Danny regained enough control of his limbs to stumble along behind the ghost once more, he no longer fought.
(If there had been someone to fight for, someone else, he would never have stopped. But he was alone. He was hurt. He was scared. The only one to protect was himself, and he was doing a very poor job of that.)
The ghost stopped abruptly, and Danny tripped over himself, falling hard on the floor in an attempt not to crash into the ghost. He tried to look up, see what had caused the ghost to stop so soon, but the ghost's grip on his hair tightened painfully, and forced his gaze to the floor. Was that ticking that Danny could overhear?
"What do you think you're doing here?" the ghost demanded in a deep, echoing voice. So the ghost was male. Probably.
"I could ask the same thing."
Danny gasped, earning him a shake from the irate ghost. He knew that voice. But it couldn't be Clockwork, could it?
"It is none of your business. Now get out of my way."
"The Council of Observants made it my business."
"We told you to take care of him," sneered the Observant. "You didn't."
"I fully intend to take care of him," said Clockwork, coldly. His tail drifted into Danny's field of vision. There was no doubt as to his identity now. "You told me that I was responsible for him. When referring to a child ghost, that only means one thing."
"He's not a ghost, he's an abomination."
"He is a child." Clockwork's voice had become low and threatening. "Release him."
"May I remind you who you are speaking to?" asked the Observant in a poisonous tone. "We own you, for all your pretension. Get out of my way, and take your ludicrous demands with you."
"No."
Danny felt the tingle of energized ectoplasm fill the air and realized, with horror, that the Observant was going to shoot Clockwork. He was going to hurt Clockwork, who had come to help Danny, and it was all Danny's fault for not being stronger, for not getting away by himself, for getting captured in the first place, never mind that he had been alone against dozens of older ghosts.
(So much of Danny could be traced to that last moment of lucidity in the portal, when he had thought, with relief, At least I'm the only one being hurt. No one else has to feel this. So much of what he was could be traced to the minutes directly after that, when he could no longer remember if he was alone in his suffering, could no longer tell if the screams he heard belonged only to him.)
With the last of his strength and all of his weight, Danny threw himself against the Observant, hoping to throw off his aim, not caring about the hair ripped from his scalp. Not noticing the way the Observant's other hand, glowing almost white with gathered ectoplasm, turned towards him as the Observant stumbled.
Danny knew agony, and then nothing else.