Work Text:
“All you wanted was to make the hurt go away,” Vlad lamented. Sadness overwhelmed his voice as he remembered what he had been, what he had done. What had become of him and all that once was. “I honored your wishes. No more painful human emotions to drag you down. Sadly, that freed you up to rip the ghost out of me.”
Wide green eyes watched him as he told the story of Phantom's downfall, green eyes he'd not seen in ten years. If the boy turned human they'd be the most beautiful shade of sky blue. If only...
“And when my evil ghost half mixed with yours,” Vlad continued. “And my evil side overwhelmed you...” He paused, unable to continue.
“What happened to my human self?” Danny asked.
So innocent, so curious, so sweet. Vlad couldn't bear to break that down. “Some things, my boy, are better left unsaid,” he whispered.
Vlad closed his eyes and sighed. A whisper tickled the back of his mind. That's not how it happened...
*****
No, that wasn't what happened to us.
All we wanted was to end his pain. We wanted it so badly that we were prepared to be alone again. Let him give up his charade of humanity and everything it required of him. Let him let go and simply be a ghost. He'd possessed his own dead body for far too long. It was time to give in, time to come home.
Unfortunately his ghost didn't see things that way. And it attacked.
I remember the bite of the steel claws. They stabbed into me, caught lines of the contract in their grip. I remember...
You were being dragged away from me, or maybe me from you; it doesn't matter anymore. I reached for you, grabbed you, wouldn't let you go. The contract stretched between us, a pink ribbon of spectral parchment that began to tear...
I wouldn't let go. You wouldn't let go, either. Not even as the contract began to unravel one line at a time. And then those grasping, seeking claws found what they were looking for.
They ripped my core away from us, leaving us with barely enough power to work a sugar cane field.
You wrapped the torn contract around us both as the boy's ghost consumed my power, fed off of it, swallowed it. A revenant consuming the power of a ge rouge loa. It's no wonder the boy's inherent instability morphed into malice. And then the ghost consumed its human body, sucking down what life-force remained in the corpse.
It wasn't our evil, my horse. No, you're as evil as the day I forced you to sign this contract. The boy's evil... was always his own.
*****
Vlad pulled the heavy metal gauntlets onto his hands. Their weight was agonizing, pulling him down and reminding him of how... human he was now. “So you're saying there's a medallion lodged within you, keeping you rooted in this time period?”
“Yes! And I can't reach it.” Danny pressed the palm of his hand against his chest where his evil future self had shoved the medallion. He swore he could feel it pressing against his diaphragm, giving him the constant urge to hiccup. “But I'm guessing if you could reach into me and rip out my humanity, which, by the way, sounds totally gross, you can get the medallion out, too! Then I'll pop back to my present like Tucker and Sam did.”
“Or I could just destroy you now and prevent this future,” Vlad mused.
Don't kill him.
Vlad's ear twitched as he wiggled his fingers, summoning what scant power he still had to extend the claws. Tell me, my horse, he thought.
The monster will take everything from him. It already has. Allow the boy his vengeance. He deserves it.
You still feel for him, don't you.
Of course I do. I wouldn't be human if I didn't. He deserves this chance, Ge Rouge. If he fails we will deal the killing blow to his abomination.
Vlad giggled, a maddened laughter born of two fractured minds trapped inside one head. He turned on Danny, teeth bared in a demented grin. “Didn't think of that, did you?” he asked. He lunged forward and tore his claws through the spectral form that stood before him. So trusting, so earnest.
Green eyes shot wide with agony before the whole form dissolved in a wisp of time.
Vlad sighed. The medallion fell to the floor. He let the gauntlets follow. “I see you're awake, Vladimir,” he said to the empty room, to the voice in his head. “Welcome home. It's been a long time since you last whispered in my ear. Years, hasn't it?”
Yes, well...
“And if the boy fails? If your habit of indulging his whims backfires again?”
Then we're still here. But this time I'm not letting that abomination lull me to sleep. This time we will put him down.
Vlad nodded. His hand moved without his permission, controlled by the whisper in his ear. That hand reached up to scratch at his beard, to run fingers through his hair, to tug at his clothing. We look terrible.
Vlad chuckled. “If we have to put him down we should be ready for him,” he said. “I suppose that might involve a shave.”
And a haircut.
“Let's not get hasty.”
*****
Wiry white hairs fell in clumps, shorn from the snarl that lived on his face. A long hour with the comb untangled the nest on his head. The grime of far too long without a shower washed away, taking scent and stains with it. Vlad reveled in the cascade of water as it restored some sense of civilization even if it wasn't one he'd been born into.
A fresh pair of pants. No shoes, no shoes left anymore. The shirt discarded, far too used, replaced with a silk-lined waistcoat worn directly on the skin. The jacket over it. And finally his most precious garment.
Despite the loss of his core he was still capable of some small feats of power. This was one such feat, a snowy white cloak lined in blood red satin. Vlad threw it over his shoulders, fastening the fine iron chain around his neck.
He lifted the great battleaxe from the wall. A mere decoration for far too long, it would finally have the chance to carry out the Task it was created for nearly a decade ago. He settled down in his chair and pulled out the honing blade, lovingly drawing it along the edge of the axe. “The creature is our responsibility,” Vlad whispered.
It is. We allowed its creation.
“We will be the one to put it down.”
The creature will die by our axe.
Long strokes of the blade awoke the enchantment, leaving a faint pink glow along the edge. It was the last great feat left within him before he fully lost his power. Before he was rendered nothing more than a zombie, a loa mounted a horse assigned to a Task. Before he lost the ability to hear the voice of his human half trapped deep within the recesses of their mind.
The blade hummed, pink runes of enchantment sparking along the shaft. Vlad hoisted the weapon and let his eyes glow red. The human's voice faded away for the last time as the loa surveyed its surroundings, this burrow dug out among the debris of a collapsed castle.
But suddenly there was no Task. Everything began to shift, to change. Reality warbled as the universe detached from the timeline and this future began to dissolve.
The loa smiled. Vengeance had been taken. The world crumbled, leaving nothing but wonder.