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He would never get used to the feeling of gauze wrapping around him. It was something about the texture that bothered him more than anything, the cottony, almost too soft feeling. The way it brushed and shifted against his skin with every miniscule movement.
Danny was no stranger to injuries, what with all the ghost fighting the past two years. Everything from scrapes to burns to electric shocks, broken ribs, fractured skull, he's done it all. This though? Slim tendons straining to hold his right arm, weighed down and taunt with burns fanning out from the line of separation and blood leaking steadily down his side. His left arm was pulled tight around his stomach, holding himself together, phantom flames creeping up his neck. It was… a lot.
Trying to do an effective wrap on your own shoulder was also a lot. Danny was using a combination of awkward arm rotations and levitation to accomplish this task but the rotation was pulling at the tears on his stomach and making the blood flow a little quicker and he was panicking-
“Danny? Danny are you down here?”
Danny whipped toward the stairs, a glowing palm outstretched and eyes bright green.
“Danny,” Jazz took a few halting steps down, “Oh my gosh, Danny- I... are you okay?” She followed this question with slow steps down the stairs, hands raised placatingly. Danny’s hand followed her for a few steps, glowing menacingly. He blinked away his fear anger and dropped his arm, air stuttering from his lips.
She rushed the last few steps toward him, hands hovering slightly above his skin.
“Danny... What did you do to yourself?” Danny’s entire frame hunched forward, like that was going to hide anything.
Knowing that no answer was forthcoming, she stooped to grab the fallen gauze, rerolling it before continuing with the wrap.
Danny let his eyes flutter shut as Jazz did what she’d always done: take care of him. She was almost motherly in her presence and mannerisms after all these years. He liked to pretend that he didn’t notice the absence of his parents in his life since they’d really started working on the portal again. That was more than five years ago now. And most of the time he didn’t notice, because Jazz filled that gap seamlessly. At times like these it was hard to ignore it. Especially here, two years into being Phantom, with the worst injury he’d ever gotten.
A hot flash of pain shot through him as she readjusted his arm.
“I was saving mom,” Danny said. Jazz paused briefly in her care to acknowledge the words.
“She was- Wulf had her. He was holding her by the arm and he was, he was burning her...” His eyes were focused in the distance, skirting the edges of her gaze, eyebrows pulled down in unhappy lines. The vacancy and disbelief in his voice echoed in the silence, haunting against the metal of the lab. “So I shot at him, a few times, and I tried to pry his hands off her, but he wouldn’t stop and he gave me this,” Danny’s left hand moved to rest protectively over his stomach.
“And then I broke his wrist or I tried to, I don’t- I don’t know… But well, he let her go.” The corners of his mouth tipped up, yet he fluttered his eyelashes as if fighting back tears, self deprecating humor wrapped in his words. Jazz ached for him.
“And then he almost tore my arm from my body, but, you know. And then- then Vlad... of all people, flew up and helped me finish him off.”
“Yeah, he uh- Vlad called me,” Jazz said, and Danny’s eyebrows disappeared into his bangs. Jazz gave a small smile at that. “Yeah, he told me to check on you.”
She pressed the wound severed limb closed, causing Danny to flinch violently and sway on the spot. Jazz steadied him for a moment, trying very hard not to think too hard. She hurried to finish.
Danny took a few harsh breaths through the nose before saying, “I was- I almost lost my ghost form in front of them. Mom and Dad. I was kind of...flickering,” his brow scrunched in confusion and pain. “Vlad brought me back here and I was human by the time we appeared. He pulled down the med kit and ecto-dejectoed me but had to leave and talk fricking press . They were calling for him during the fight too. And then, I guess he called you?”
Danny was grateful for Vlad, though uncertainty lingered. He’d been ruthless in finishing off Wulf, letting Jack tend to Maddie. And then gentle and protective of Danny quickly after, wrapping his cape around them, a warm reprieve from the crowd where Danny was feeling ever colder. He told himself it was probably the ectoplasm pooling around him and cooling on his skin rather than the light leaving him.
Vlad looked torn between truly, devastatingly, pissed and so so sorry.
Then he’d teleported them here. Danny shouldn’t have been as surprised as he was, they had a truce after all, but it was still so hard to reconcile the Vlad he knew with one presented to him now.
Jazz continued to move around him with the ease that her knowledge brought her, securing the shoulder as best as possible. They were both hoping his healing would do the rest. Maybe he'd only have to pop it back in place in a day or two; the focus for now was the muscles and skin and oh my god this is really bad.
Jazz paused to wipe up the blood beginning to stain his skin a sickening mockery of Christmas, before moving into the task of stitching up his stomach. And his arm. And maybe his jaw.
“Wulf?” Her voice was thick and heavy. Danny glanced up from under his bangs, watching her in the green of the lab. Her brow was furrowed, her hands were frantic but steady, but she kept scrunching her nose. Was she...crying?
A heavy pit formed in his stomach at the thought. His fingers twitched, the urge to comfort her like a tidal wave through his being.
He couldn't do it.
Instead, Danny's left hand gestured vaguely to the countertop of full thermoses, “Wulf's here.”
Each thermos had someone he knew trapped within. The last week or so had been… enlightening. He’d taken to keeping them trapped rather than returning them to the Ghost Zone once he’d realized how serious this was becoming.
Jazz moved with her usual efficiency but Danny could see her fear in the tense line of her shoulders. This short time had put immense strain on their relationship. On his relationships with everyone. It was gradually building, more secrets everyday, and more lies, and it was becoming pretty fucking stressful to keep hiding his injuries from everyone.
She could see them now. All of them. Painful patterns she didn't recognize dancing neon green across his skin.
“...Thank you.”
Jazz fumbled for a moment. The thanks were unexpected, but not unwelcome. Her words were whispered back just as low, “I’m here for you Danny.”
The faint hum of the portal was a comforting presence as Jazz followed up the stitches with more gauze and some ace bandages. They were pretty sure he’d fractured some ribs. Danny could hardly expand his lungs.
“I’m almost done, just the burns. Anything to say about these?”
Danny hesitated, “There was… a civilian. A ghost caught someone and I had a hard time getting them away.” There was a stark handprint across his collarbones, the lines of the burn creeping up his neck as a testament to that statement. “I think the ones on my shoulder are just from Wulf physically prying my arm from my body,” Danny’s words were tinged with dark, heavy mirth, and, finally, tears had built in his eyes.
More and more often he was having to be rougher than he usually would to get out of situations. But there was also the unacknowledged possibility of Danny losing his shit like these other ghosts, so it was difficult to talk about. His parents had remarked a couple times already that they were ‘Just waiting for Phantom to slip up’. That it was inevitable. They accepted Phantom’s help and didn’t actively hunt him due to the town’s overwhelming approval, but it was a thin veil over their dislike of him. It took almost two years to get this level of acceptance and it would only take one slip up to lose it all.
Danny left out the part where he’d blasted a hole straight through that ghost. The way righteous anger had ripped through him. The way the ghost had faded fully out of view, out of existence maybe, and how Danny felt like he might have accidentally killed-
Shit shit shit! I killed- !
Shit. Just...
breathe.
take a breath and-
He didn’t know how he’d handle it if his own sister was scared of him.
Jazz glanced up at his face before focusing again on her work. She finished applying the last of the burn cream to his neck before saying, “The ones on your shoulder, they’re too close to open skin so I’m not gonna put anything on there.”
Danny nodded wearily in response.
She met his eyes for a moment before turning away, grabbing one of the sweatshirts their dad had left on the table. She was wringing the fabric in her hands ceaselessly.
“I’m really worried about this Danny. About everything. About you. Please, please let me know if you need any help," Jazz said. "I want to help you,” Jazz said.
Her offer hung in the air for a few moments, but upon realizing no response was forthcoming she smoothed the sweatshirt out and helped him put it on. “Don’t exacerbate them. Try to restrain yourself from anything stupid for a few days, okay?”
He nodded. Danny knew he looked absolutely pitiful, draped in the giant orange sweater, sleeves hanging past his fingertips by an arm’s length. He felt pitiful too, so any assumptions were justified. Wrapping both arms around his stomach, he felt very much like he was trying to hold himself together.
Maybe he was. Maybe this was the only way he knew how to stop the aching burning hollow feelings from escaping his skin.
She gathered up what was left of the med kit, doing her best to hide evidence of its use and hung it back on the wall, her back to Danny, hesitating. There was something about returning to business as usual that just seemed wrong in this moment.
Ask for help. You want to. She wants you to ask for help just do it ask her ask-
As she moved toward the stairs, Danny could feel his window of opportunity closing.
Could feel the distance growing between them, further and further, and there was just so much to say. So much he wanted to say. So much he couldn't.
And yet-
Her hand was just closing around the knob when Danny blurted, “Jazz, I- Can you, can you stay, with me, just for a bit? Just hang out?” His voice was small, bits of honesty creeping past his grip. They both heard the unspoken meaning.
I don’t want to be alone.
Jazz gave him a soft smile, arms outstretched as she moved to help him up the stairs.