An Alliance of Blood and Sci-Fi

What-- what had happened?

Where was he?

What was he?

Something-- something--

He just wanted to sleep.

He. Just. Wanted. To sleep.

Danny hated being woken early.

Jazz...

With her voice, her visage, the faint, flashing image of teal. Her teal eye...

A razor of agony shoots down his throat and straight to his sternum, ripping his organs apart.

A needle, beating, beating hard as if it were a hammer to stitch him back.

Stitch him...

No!

No!

All wrong!

He was all wrong! All wrong! His parts were all wrong!

It hurt.

It all hurt.

Remembering that day.

The green and the pain.

What he had thought for a brief moment was an angel.

Heaven.

Until the screaming started.

He hadn't liked screaming.

It happened a lot. Mom... Mom...

That thought carved all his... human things... out. And left only a hollow.

So much yelling. It was so unfair.

Sam.

Sam.

She hurt less.

She'd been there.

Oh right. She'd urged him inside, insisted he go inside. Camera in hand. And he had listened.

The green button. A trip.

And then pain beyond understanding.

The angel. No angel at all. Not a devil either. The protector had saved his life. From the portal, from those ghosts.

Rage set aflame to blue slammed into his self, circulating through his blood and swelling the thought of his brain.

**************************

He didn't know whether it was bad human form to meander through human boy's-- Danny Fenton's-- house unchecked and unchallanged. No more than another visitor who had bore witness to a horrific accident.

Who'd done nothing to explain it, clarify it.

Done nothing but simply stand and watch.

It made his throat constrain as if a noose were digging at his ghostly skin. Turned whiter than that Raf something fellow from the Grimm timeline.

Appropriate.

Right now he did feel very much Evil.

Vaguely aware that in no way did he have the right to be doing this.

Gliding into his room, watch his breath heave in and out of his body through a mask.

Consider messing with the array of wires in his chest and arm.

A machine steadily recorded his heartbeat. A uniform, static beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

He positioned his butt and upper body into some kind of sitting pose.

He was a bit over the boy but that was fine he figured.

Just spool out his arm a little.

Limbs always liked to stretch and fly free for a moment. Though with a smile he did reign it in into an acceptable apposable thumbed arm.

One that let him take the human hand of breathing flesh.

So...

Warm.

Danny was warm.

And before he quite knew, or could even rationalize the why, Dei was close enough to touch his nose. Staring into closed lids that he knew to be an iridescent sweet blue.

"Hi," he breathed, breathing life to this boy.

His hair cascaded now a chalky ochre. Nooo. Don't bother him while he slept or whatever it was humans did when like this.

The intrinsic part of him raised and fed on death knew it wasn't sleep.

But that was scary. So, Dei wouldn't think about it.

Hair shorter he silently introduced himself.

Quite quick he found his insides crawling with sliming ants, his body demanding he move.

So he did a bit of fiddling.

First with the lights glaring gold before he put the glass bowl back.

The wrong way.

Of which it shattered to dangerous, shimmering fractals.

And then knocked over the heart machine.

"AHHHH!"

"Oh my, oh my... Dark! Dark! Dark!"

Dei scrambled and panicked and screamed some more.

Only breathing when a woman all clad in white burst in.

"Shit!"

The machine was righted.

She checked his eyes, scrutinized his hands, put a hand to his hair, and then gave his chest a listen for good measure with a silver string snake thing.

All in just fifteen counts.

Amazing!

So, he could smile, knowing that at least Danny was getting only the best care.

***************************

In many ways seeing Danny broke Dei's heart. And besides it was scary.

It also made him feel ugly and worthless to not.

See him that is.

For one, ghosts were cunning and heeded his warning. But there was a reason the Infinite Realms was an expanse of nothing and temporal anomaly.

When ghosts were ghosts, and he couldn't condemn that he had tried, things caught fire. They grew legs.

They made soup! Very bad soup.

People were getting hurt.

They ate up attention from Danny.

They came in droves.

And maybe for himself too, he didn't want Danny to see it.

He got used to the fact that Danny was 'in a coma.' Scary words.

Not so scary to see. Once one built up the nerve.

And Dei was if nothing worthy or tolerable, audacious.

He did all the things coma families did.

Talked to him about everything and nothing. Mentioned how nice he looked, and only once cut off a lock of black human hair, because why did it grow to only his neck? Why was it so-- so flat? And why was it also warm if it didn't have blood through it?

He'd seen from some of the grainy, awful quality TV shows that people in hospital got candy and flowers.

So he'd done that. Also learned, don't shove the whole bouquet to his nose. Otherwise they couldn't breathe.

He would make sure to remember. Humans. Had. To breathe.

And the nurses weren't doing everything. After all, people woke up all the time by sounds. And, and he had heard a local school girl, smart looking too, how she was thinking of sending her also hospitalized brother music to "stimulate his brain, let him know someone is waiting."

So he turned on the TV for him.

But there wasn't all that much good stuff.

Just the other sappy hospital shows. Sappy love shows and sappy bondage shows.

These hot, tuxedoed guys really had a thing for tying people up. What was that?

Hm, better watch out for them in the future.

"Right Danny?"

Weellll, silence wasn't a no.

"Boys like action stuff though right?"

He soon found a loud, exploding flick.

Really loud.

And the fancy shiny car! WHY!

And in all the noise he almost didn't hear it.

But there, clear as day-- the growl of a dog! From the-- from Danny.

"Not action, okay."

He turned to a much more muted show with jewelry.

Could one call some ad a show? He decided no.

**************************

At first it had been scary.

Floating in some weird in between.

Some moments afraid his parents would rip him apart themselves for what he had surely done. Because how else could he explain the marshmallow mush his head had become except with drugs.

How time just simply, didn't compute. Ran fluid as water past him, inside him.

Never there for more than a moment.

Now he got more used to it.

His hands still went adios from his body; Oregon or Canada maybe, from how cold they came back. Other times he was too hot at his center and other times he could almost hear voices.

Men and a woman. Women and a man. Mid-aged or old people.

One very cold and the other soothing.

"Demon!"

Was said in his presence a lot.

Yeah, way to make a guy feel confident about himself.

Well whatever.

For whatever idiot, holier-than-thou pain he had the absolute joy of Danny was human.

Danny knew people couldn't just say that about him.

The whisper of warm breath touched Danny somewhere.

His heart ached. He wanted to shoot up from this stupid invisible restraint or straitjacket whatever! Mom!

"When you wake up let's talk about who we have crushes on."

This voice.

Not Mom.

It was safe.

Danny did his damnedest to drown back in the dark sleep and timelessness of his color music mind.

For all he liked the idea of someone being here just for him and almost happy to be something deep, deep in his soul told him he had a lot of explaining to do.

So, Danny was quite annoyed at all the other chatter if he wasn't going to fess up or answer.

"I'll put on Classical for you this time."

***************************

Ha! Suck it freaky vulture things that had called him "v'one annov'ing idiot." Transylvania.

Pick a theme feather dusters!

All the stuff on that rinky hospital thing was trash.

As he was finding a lot of this stuff to be.

Finicky, creaky wood, weird smelling bedsheets, and peeing in a pan!

Barbaric! Though okay maybe that was more a-- can't get up to use the potty thing.

But still, couldn't at least use something other than the burning chemical scent.

It seriously smelled like a dead rat tank in that school place. Not that he was stalking the human's friends.

Just, making sure they were safe and not in enough peril to not see him.

And, while not in peril, they were very sad.

He couldn't do much about that as he had resolved not to touch a thing possibly keeping human alive.

Buuut, what he could do was leap in that TV box and find something decent.

And lo and behold sci-fi!

And better yet, he was seeing signs of life.

Dare he say, sometimes he almost woke up.

But this he only knew from the nurses checking in.

The ferocious burrow of a fiery purple dagger near made his vision go black.

He couldn't see his friend this way.

The hospital play center had become something of a den for him. Somewhere to rest and heal whenever hunters or the ghost visitors got a bit too overeager.

Why had he ever thought talking would work?

If there was one thing those Fentons got right--

"Auuughhhhhh."

On the floor he got down to one knee.

'Don't bleed, don't bleed' he willed.

Ice exited from his mouth.

A blast of purple lit up the windows nearby.

It didn't help that ghosts were beginning to circle too. Newly dead suddenly finding fonts of explosive power.

Even now, as he hid from the noise and cacophony of undead hell-raising, bare feet stomped the floors in perfect rhythm and unity. A children's parade through the hospital halls for more inductions.

***************************

Light hurt.

He went back to sleep.

They barely fed him.

Seriously.

What was this?

Danny may have been, well not a genius? Expendable? But he knew that had to be illegal!

Where was his cafeteria menu with slightly overdone pancakes and weird watery syrup.

(Still much better than the actual plastic at Casper High)

Heh. Maybe he'd missed the year.

A guy could dream.

Shivers and shingles gripped him one night.

Uber, uber late.

Dark and grim in his room so he'd feel like an absolute burden pushing that button.

He was sure the nurses had better to do anyway.

Treat some poor aching schmuck who hadn't brought all this on themselves.

His vision turned green again and his chest thrummed with cold fire.

***********************

"Hey!"

"...Look I get it I do, and whoever's fault it was--"

"Yours!" grumbled a bespectacled ghost, pulsating in his anger, teeth grit, scarf floating in the air as his fingers scritched and scratched at the threadbare coat.

"What will it get you to go back to the Zone?"

"Hmmm how about," the Ghost Writer pretended to hum, all the while a nasty grin grew, "my library!"

He pointed to the grandiose building of Greek design and infinite books.

Of which was either on fire or littered an intersection with near collisions and wrecked cars.

"Not sure I can-- hey!"

A blast caught his rank buttocks making him recoil several feet in the air.

The Writing Ghost was ever so helpful in making the Prince careen to the hunters' feet in a deluge of books.

The partly disassembled press only just missed his head.

Exploding in wood, parchment, and thick ink Dei found himself drenched as he hobbled off across the sky.

He didn't need to fly far to find another microcosm of ghost flora. Much more docile than the fauna.

A plant's corrosive fugue settled over his face melting off the shroud of thin human skin he wore on his day trips.

He grunted, quickly reforming his slimy, misshapen head into something a bit more robust, cheeks now puffered up with fat and a bile sac.

Of which released a sticky high power decomposing parasite.

Besides that the cooing plant resembled a blue and yellow spotted probiscus. Slightly folded four point petals and spidery thin feelers.

Danny would go gaga over it he was sure.

With great care he unburied it from the patch of moist Soil manufactured from a radio tower and it's standing station intent on finding a botanist.

This room felt... different.

Danny wasn't sure how or really in what way did his mind feel out of sorts with itself.

He knew very well he was in hospital. Remembered even through the staggering fugues of pain brief moments where he came to to several machines, a small mounted TV on one wall, and a loose garment that felt strong as paper even in his frail grip.

Could be in the quietness or aloneness. He could feel it. Feel it so intimately. There'd been two or three people here at any given time. That wasn't the case anymore.

"Jazz," he rasped, voice strained from unuse and some sickly acid scratching at the walls.

"Mom, Daaad."

It hurts. It hurts so bad.

Hot tears began to squeeze out of his eyes.

Where was his family! Where were they!

"Ssss?"

"Danny! Oh Thank Ancients!" yelped a voice he had never heard and yet knew.

Even so he shrieked hoarsely to the face that now craned above his head.

"Ah ah, oh shit. Don't-- you can't talk," the ghost warned, putting a sizeable and clawed hand over Danny's mouth.

He writhed for a bit before a pulse of something stopped him short.

"The Hell-- the Hell are... you?" he inquired venomously for he knew. He knew the answer already. This creature could only be a ghost.

For the moment he decided to ignore the possibility that he was here because he was dead.

His parents-- his parents would want nothing less than for their son to fight. To not be wrenched away from them so easily.

"Please-- i truly mean no-- here everyday. I have t-- doctor! Nurse, who di get?"

And in ashes the hospital faded, turning into a whirring ghost portal raring to go. The huge engine or whatever power cell roaring to calibration and...

FLASSH.

KRRRCK!

The electrifying punch. The cold mercilessness of it all as each nerve burned.

High, inhuman anguished screams.

Filling his ears, tearing his sensitive throat.

...

Seconds passed.

...

Hours...

...

Hands. Gloved hands.

Danny had been screaming.

Danny hurt.

He hurt so bad.

Slowly, cruelly the kind voices of understanding nurses disappeared. Disappeared in his labored, guided breathing. In and out. In and... out. Faster than falling asleep as they unknotted his tense muscles out of tearing themselves apart. Laid him down like a beloved, fragile baby.

Fluffed his pillows, asked his request for lunch-- he couldn't speak-- and with a small nod fluttered away no less taken than if handling droopy flowers.

Of which he had many. And chocolates too.

Much too far, he decided.

And of course...

He snarled low and baleful to the menace that appeared from nothing at his bedside. "Get out!" he hissed. "Get-- Let that go."

"Okay, okay," he agreed, "I'll go."

He tossed the remote onto his chest, allowing him to reach and watch TV at his leisure.

"My name is Dei," he finished as he sat at the window's sill.

A panoramic window view and yet still with fine, expensive looking curtains.

Danny strained for the nurse's button at his pillow.

"Yah don't do that!"

And with that plunged into the ground, flying off like some kind of green comet.

Danny glared to skies a dimmer blue than he remembered, or maybe it was one of the drugs from the IV. He could almost swear green twirled along like trails of pollen outside.

Yet another nurse, this one male, brought in a paper plate of strawberry oatmeal and a cheese croissant.

"Call if you need anything else at all sir."