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Danny wakes up late, which is weird because it’s a school day.
Usually, Jason comes and wakes him up right on time and helps him zombie through the morning routine before breakfast.
But not today.
Danny only wakes up about twenty minutes late so it’s not a disaster or anything, but even in his sleepy zombie state, he knows it’s wrong because Jason should be there. He hovers out of bed, thankful that he doesn’t have to walk yet, and heads across the hall to Jason’s room. Ah, he’s still asleep too; well, that’s okay then, he just forgot his alarm. Danny drops onto the bed with a bounce. He crawls up to Jason’s side and gives him a good jostle.
“Wakey-wakey, Daddy, Thursday is scones day, Gramps makes ‘em fresh.”
Jason moans; he grimaces and seems like he wants to roll over but can’t really do it.
Wait, is – Is he okay?
Danny jostles him again. “Daddy, wake up! I need help with my tie.”
Jason’s breath wheezes weirdly. He shivers and pulls his covers closer around himself. Danny crawls up nearer to where his head rests.
Jason’s hair is tufted in black; it’s not just white at the front anymore but covers almost all his hair now, save for some uneven scattered spots that remain black as of yet. That’s not what worries Danny, though; the paleness of Jason’s skin and the tinge of blue in his lips is what scares him.
“Daddy?”
Danny touches Jason’s cheek but snatches his hand back quickly – Jason’s skin is as cold as Danny’s own.
Danny lifts off the bed and darts out of the room, down the hallway to Grampa’s room.
“Daddy’s sick!” he cries.
Grampa startles awake and almost falls out of his bed. “Wha- Danny? What? What’s wrong?”
He isn’t listening!
Danny grabs his wrist and pulls him out of bed; Grampa staggers to his feet but follows. “Honey, what’s happening? Are you okay?”
“Daddy’s sick!” he says again. “He’s cold and he won’t wake up!”
Grampa starts running.
They burst into Jason’s room together, both flocking to the man’s sides.
“Jason? Jaylad, can you hear me?” Grampa questions while trying to wake him. “Jesus, look at you...”
Jason moans again when Grampa rolls him up like a burrito in his covers.
“Danny, honey, I’m gonna take your daddy down to the med bay in the Cave,” Grampa goes on as he drags the Jason burrito into his arms to carry him. “I need you to go downstairs and find your Gramps, and tell him what’s going on, okay? He’ll know what to do. Can you do that for me, honey?”
Danny blinks away tears but hugs his teddy; yes, he can. He can do it. He can help. “I’ll do it, Grampa!”
He takes off again, leaving them behind for now.
Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry! Danny can’t cry right now, he needs to be brave and strong and tell Gramps everything!
His uncles Tim, Duke, and Damian, and Auntie Cass are already at the dining room table being served breakfast when Danny blows through on his way to the kitchen. Distantly, he knows the sound of them scrambling out of their seats to follow him, no doubt alarmed already.
“Gramps!” Danny cries as he throws himself into the man’s arms.
Alfred grunts, stumbling only momentarily when Danny collides with him but deftly positions Danny to more easily carry him. “Dear boy, whatever is the matter? Let’s dry those tears, shall we?”
Tears? Oh, no, he is crying!
No, no, that’s not important!
“Daddy’s sick! He’s really cold and pale and blue on the mouth and Grampa took him downstairs but he wouldn’t wake up at all! A-And Grampa said you- he said you’d know what to do, but- but I’m- I’m scared, Gramps!”
Danny gives up on forcing the tears to stay down and when they come, it feels like a whole flood of them.
A lot of stuff happens really fast but Danny has a hard time keeping track through the tears; they all hurry out of the kitchen then they’re running down the stairs into the Cave and oh, no, Jason’s laid out on a bed there and Grampa’s piling blankets on top of him and there’s wires and a tube all disappearing in under the blanket pile and an oxygen mask on his face.
Gramps makes Danny sit with Uncle Damian on another bed then gets on the phone with someone while Tim, Duke, and Cass all run around the med bay doing this and that under Grampa’s orders. Danny clings to Damian.
“I-Is Daddy gon- gonna be okay?”
Damian pets his head and hugs Danny real tight. “He’s strong. He will be alright. Your grandfather will see to it.”
Danny nods. Cass flits by to deposit a box of tissues for Danny and gives him a long kiss on the head, before hurrying back to work. Damian helps Danny blow his nose and dries his cheeks a little.
“God, his temp is 91.6 degrees,” Grampa comments from Jason’s bedside.
“That’s bad, right?” Danny whispers to Damian. “Cold is bad?”
Damian nods and looks reluctant about it. “Hypothermia can be bad, yes, but they’re working to warm him back up. See what your grandfather is doing? Those bags of liquid have been warmed. He’s placing them between the blankets so the heat gets trapped close to Jason’s body and warms him up. It’s going to be alright.”
Gramps ends his phone call and claps his hands, raptly taking command of the room. “Miss Cassandra, take your bike and fetch Doctor Thompkins at her home. She will be ready for you. Master Tim, full blood panel and organ function,” Gramps delegates, easily doling out tasks. Danny doesn’t listen much until Gramps turns directly to him. “Master Danny, things may get frightening for you from here, but you have my word, everything we do, we do to help your father. Master Damian will stay with you the whole time. I will call the school and inform them that neither of you will be in today.”
Gramps’ steady calmness is nice. Everything feels better when Gramps is calm. Things couldn’t possibly be bad if Gramps can be calm through them, right? If he’s calm, things are still okay.
Outside, Cass’ motorcycle revs and speeds away; Tim draws several tubes of blood from Jason’s arm; Gramps steps away to make his call to the school while Duke and Grampa stay with Jason.
“It’s working, slow and steady,” Duke says, thermometer gun in hand. “He’s hitting 92.”
Grampa nods. “It’s a start. Keep checking. I’ll get more saline in the heater.”
Danny wants to be closer, he wants to be right next to his dad and hold his hand the whole time, this must be really scary for him too, but he knows this is how it needs to be; Grampa and everyone, they need the space to work and help Jason, and that’ll just be harder if Danny’s in the middle of it all. He doesn’t like it in the least but he knows it’s for the best. Instead, he hangs on tight to Damian’s side, and to Kelvin, as his uncle wraps an arm over his shoulders.
It feels like forever and ever before Auntie Cass returns with Doctor Leslie; Danny still doesn’t like Leslie, but he has at least learned to accept her presence. The fact that his family trusts her helped a lot, with that. They wouldn’t trust her if she was bad. Either way, Danny doesn’t care who she is right now, as long as she can help his dad.
Gramps relinquishes command and Leslie takes it over with ease. There’s so much happening and none of it makes sense to Danny. Tim takes more blood, Duke takes Jason’s temperature over and over, Grampa hangs a new bag to feed into Jason’s arm, Cass helps Tim in the lab, Gramps assists Leslie, everyone is doing stuff and Danny’s doing nothing and he wishes so badly that he could just help his dad!
“Dammit, temp’s sinking again,” Leslie swears after Duke’s latest update. “Bruce, if he hits 90, I will be taking him to a hospital.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll drive him there in the Batmobile myself if he gets that far,” Grampa responds curtly and slams a cabinet door shut a little too hard.
Leslie pries one of Jason’s eyes open, flickering a small flashlight back and forth at him. “Jason? Jason, can you hear me? Squeeze Alfred’s hand if you can hear me, Jason.”
She glances at Gramps, standing on the opposite side of the bed, and he shakes his head. She swears again.
“Slow pupillary response. I think, at least. That damn green glow isn’t making it easy to tell.”
Green glow?
Wait!
Oh, no, is Jason’s little baby core sick?! Danny’s been trading ecto with him now and then and everything seemed fine, but now he’s sick and maybe it’s Danny’s fault! No, no, no! It can’t be Danny’s fault, he’d never hurt Jason, he’d never make him sick like this!
But what if he did?
What if Jason wasn’t ready for so much ecto? This whole dimension is kind of in an ecto-drought and Jason was circulating the bad ecto for who knows how long, so maybe his body couldn’t handle the clean stuff and the more he got, the sicker it made him!
Danny channels ecto into his voice, at the same time pulling on the strings of Vlad’s servitude contract. “Vlad!”
The whole med bay rattles when a toxic green tear in reality opens out of nothing. Vlad falls out and the tear snaps shut again with a noise like clapping thunder. He lands on the floor with a groan.
Danny pushes away from Damian; he darts over Jason’s bed and to the other side of the bay where Vlad ended up.
“Vlad! Vlad, I think it’s happening! I think his core’s matured!”
The man struggles to his knees. He blinks. He looks around. “Daniel. A pleasure to see you again. How did you do that?”
Danny grabs his arm, easily dragging Vlad to his feet. “Forget that! Jason’s sick! He needs help!”
As if only then truly registering what’s happening around them, Vlad jumps to action. He shrugs off his blazer and gets his tie off, rolling his sleeves up as he marches across the bay.
“Update, please,” he requests as he comes to Jason’s bedside.
He takes the penlight away from Leslie and repeats what she did, shining it in either of Jason’s eyes.
“Update,” he requests again.
Grampa clears his throat. “Danny found him. He’s hypothermic, temp has been fluctuating. Blood panel looks good so far. We’ve been trying to warm him up but we have no idea what’s going on. Leslie’s our family doctor.”
Vlad nods. He presses lots of buttons on the heart monitor then rolls Jason’s blankets down and steals Leslie’s stethoscope. He listens closely to the patient’s chest. Danny waits with bated breath as he floats back over to Damian’s side. He hangs on tight to his uncle’s hand.
“Good core pulse, steady energy flow,” Vlad comments, hanging the stethoscope around his neck. “Get this off him.”
Grampa rushes Jason’s side too, grabbing Vlad’s arm when he tries to remove the blanket. “What is going on? What the hell makes you qualified to make any kind of medical decisions for my son?”
Vlad sigh. A moment’s intangibility has Grampa’s hand slipping right through his arm. “Look, your son is not hypothermic, or even sick in a way any of you, or a human doctor, can understand. His core has finished its development cycle and now it’s adjusting his body to match it. The process of becoming a halfa should be instant. At the moment of death, one is flooded with death energy and forms a core, at which the body changes instantly to the most optimal environment necessary to sustain said core. It happened to me, it happened to Daniel, it happened to Ellie. But Jason was not so lucky. His development was severely delayed, and just like how his core was formed very slowly, his body is changing very slowly. This will happen, whether you like it or not, and I only wish to assist in making the transition smoother. Now, Daniel called for me because he believes I can help, but I will not stay where I am not wanted, Mister Wayne. Thus, you must make a choice. Either you allow me to help, or I shall be leaving as I do have other things to do. Go on, then.”
Grampa grits his teeth – he’s not very happy at all – but he does take a step back.
“Doctor, if you would, please,” Vlad says as he turns back to the patient. “The blankets.”
Leslie helps him gather up the blankets and all the heated water bags, and she hands the pile off to Gramps who deals with it swiftly.
“Blood draw, please,” Vlad orders as he strides over to the cabinets and begins rifling through them.
Uncle Timmy hurries up and pulls another little bottle of blood from the needle still in Jason’s arms. “What tests do you want? Regular panel?”
“No, just hold onto it for now,” Vlad says, an instrument in hand.
He comes to lean over Jason again, using the device to look even closer at either of his eyes.
“Good steady glow, nice color,” he comments. “Doctor, push pain relief, four times his normal dose. He’ll be in significant pain but too weak to show it and his changing biology will eat through the medication at an increased rate.”
“Morphine okay?” Leslie asks as she too starts searching, this time in the fridge.
“Oxycodone burns slower, for as of yet unknown reasons, but whatever’s on hand will do.”
Vlad fiddles with the heart monitor again. Danny trembles in Damian’s arms as the beeps of Jason’s heartbeat get slower. Next, Vlad presses and feels all over Jason’s stomach, looking displeased with whatever it is he's feeling.
“I need a bucket and plenty of tissues.”
Duke runs off to find the requested items.
“The blood.”
Tim hands the vial to Vlad. Vlad pops the top off of it and dips his pinky inside, then dabs a drop of blood on his tongue. He grimaces and frowns.
“Burn it. Burn all the samples you’ve taken today, and I mean all of them,” he orders as he caps the vial and gives it back. “That stuff is toxic. Next time you draw, rubber sleeves, triple gloves. If it gets on your skin, I will need to take your arm off before it eats your whole body.”
Tim winces at the thought but nods. He hurries back to the lab, no doubt to get to cleaning.
Leslie pushes a needle with medicine in Jason’s arm. Duke rejoins with a bucket in hand and a roll of paper towels, which he hands over to Leslie on Vlad’s orders. Vlad quickly removes the mask covering Jason’s mouth and nose.
“Daniel, please go outside for this. It won’t be pleasant to watch.”
Danny doesn’t care; even if he can’t do anything to help, he won’t leave Jason’s side. “I’m staying!”
Vlad sighs, but relents. He knows when Danny won’t let his mind be changed.
“No one freak out,” he tells the family, then to Leslie, “Don’t get any of it on you.”
Vlad’s eyes flash red; he dives into Jason’s chest. Overshadowing was always one of his sharpest skills.
Vlad-Jason wakes up gasping, sucking down big gulping breaths as his body twists and writhes in pain.
“I forgot how much this hurts,” Jason’s mouth grunts with Vlad’s voice. “Bucket!”
Leslie brings it closer. Vlad-Jason opens his mouth wide and sticks two fingers down his throat. He curls over the bucket retching.
“What the hell’re you doing?!” Grampa shouts.
He grabs Vlad again, though this time it’s Jason’s body, and tries to pull him away, push him to lie down again. Vlad doesn’t let himself be stopped. He sticks his fingers in his mouth; he retches into the bucket but nothing comes of it.
“Damn you, just throw up already!” he bites in frustration.
Again, he tries.
This time, he finally makes himself vomit. Noxious green sludge pours out of his mouth into the bucket in waves. It seems once he got it started, the rest decided to follow. He coughs and chokes and groans but vomits until there seems to be nothing left at all in Jason’s stomach. Finally, he lays back down.
“More drugs!” he rasps before giving way to a pained shout. “Tissues.”
The metal frame of the bed groans when it’s bent out of shape under Vlad-Jason’s clutching hands. Gramps gives another shot of medicine then hands over a wad of paper towels. Vlad wipes his face with sluggish motions and drops the tissues into the bucket when it’s offered by Leslie. Once Gramps has stepped back and made room, Vlad all but pours out of Jason, sliding out of his side and slumping to the floor. He trembles with every breath.
“What’s going on?” Grampa nearly pleads.
Vlad nods. He sucks in a deep breath. He uses Jason’s bed to pull himself up to his feet. He looks even more pale than before, a sheen of sweat on his face. “A core is formed through the suffering of unimaginable pain,” he explains as he replaces the mask on Jason’s face. “The change of the body is just as painful. When it’s instant, at least it’s over quickly. But for him? He suffers now, and he will continue to suffer until his body has completed its change.”
No one looks happy about that. Grampa looks completely shattered about it. “How long will it take?” he asks, his voice all raspy like it gets when he’s sad and worried.
Vlad wipes the sweat from his face on his sleeve. “Only hours, hopefully. Not more than a day. I believe there may be a way to help speed the process but… If you’ll excuse me, I need a moment. I assure you, suffering through my own death was quite enough for me, and I will remind you I am doing all of this out of the kindness of my heart,” he snarks while taking a seat on the next bed over from Jason, placing him on the side opposite to Danny and Damian. He slumps back to lay down. “Oh, and…throw the whole bucket in the incinerator. If you don’t, well, death and what-have-you, and so on. And might I trouble you for a glass of water? I may have thrown up with someone else’s mouth, but the aftertaste I’m experiencing seems more psychosomatic than physical.”
Danny dries his teary cheeks. He floats away from Damian; he pauses at Jason’s side to press a kiss to his head. “You’ll be okay, Daddy,” he promises, then moves on to Vlad’s side, landing and kneeling squeezes in on the bed with him. “Are you okay? What was that stuff from his tummy?”
The man tries to smile. “I’ll be well. Just…exhausting. Your daddy’s body is struggling to direct the flow of energy his core is producing. His blood should be filled with the clean stuff, but it’s not. Somehow, it’s ending up in his stomach instead. I think his system’s just a bit confused. I had to purge it out. Reset the system, if you will. You can help me with the next step, but I’ll need a minute before then. Okay?”
Danny nods. “Okay. Are you hurting? Do you need medicine too?”
He shakes his head. “No, Daniel, I’m alright.” Vlad gives him a pat on the head and then pushes himself to sit up when Gramps comes over with the requested drink. The glass clinks with ice and mint leaves. Vlad takes a very long drink. Then, he tells Gramps, “You, are a scholar and a gentleman, my good sir, I could not imagine a better person to leave dear Daniel in the care of, you absolute saint among men. Would you entertain me in a conversation if it were to pertain to an employment offer? I could use a godsend like you.”
Gramps doesn’t smile – he never does in bad situations like this – but the twitch of his mouth suggests that he’s at least a little amused by the offer, even despite the situation. “My apologies, Mister Masters, I’m afraid I must decline your offers. I am quite at home here.”
Vlad finishes his drink. “Integrity. I knew I liked you for a reason.”
He hands the glass back and then gets up off the bed; Danny follows at a hover. Vlad orders him over to Jason’s other side. They each lay a hand on Jason’s chest, right near where his core sits, and then clasp their other hands together.
“Energy circulation. Push to me, pull from Jason. I’ll pull from you and push to him. I’ll guide his system in the proper flow, you act as the exhaust and take the excess. Yes?”
Danny nods. “Yes.”
Danny can do this; he can help Jason get better!
Jason feels like flaming hot garbage when he wakes up. Jesus Christ, did he go five rounds in the ring with Bane or something, why does everything hurt?
“Daddy?”
Danny? Jason wrenches his eyes open, squinting against the light. His son lies tucked in under his arm but has lifted his head to look up at Jason with his sweet cow-eyed gaze. Jason tries to speak but his throat feels all phlegmed up; all that comes out is a gurgling groan.
The sweetest, most hopeful smile takes over Danny’s little face. He takes off like a shot, zooming out of the med bay howling after his Grampa. Less than a minute later, the whole fucking clan rushes in through the door, with Bruce and that creep Masters taking point.
“Jason, can you hear me?” Masters asks when he comes to Jason’s bedside.
Bruce takes the other side; Jason sends him a questioning look, which gets a sharp nod in response. Alright, looks like they’re trusting this weirdo, for now. He looks back at Masters and makes a reedy grunting noise.
“Very good. Mind if I have a look at your eyes?”
Jason blinks his eyes open wider for him. He takes the hint. He takes a long look in either one with an ophthalmoscope, before having a listen to Jason’s chest with a stethoscope. Next, he palpates Jason’s stomach. Last of all, he draws blood from the I.V. port stuck onto Jason’s arm and – tastes it? What the fuck?
“So? Is he okay?” Bruce questions.
“He has completed his transition and his energy flow appears to have normalized,” Masters informs.
The whole room deflates with relief.
Danny breaks out into loud, snotty sobs.