Chapter Text
He felt like a dog.
A blind, beaten dog.
Danny had snapped his teeth and begged with his too-human voice one too many times, so a muzzle held his mouth shut. Danny had flinched away from a hand and let tears fall from his too-human eyes one too many times, so a cloth had been bound over his eyes like blinders. Danny had broken chains and worn through ropes with his too-human intelligence one too many times, so two-inch thick metal cuffs bound his arms together wrist to elbow- the green veins flowing in intricate lines across shiny iron kept his powers at bay.
There were two people on each side of him, practically dragging him by the grip they had on his arms, and somebody walked behind him. The person behind him talked, asking questions and receiving grunts from the thugs carrying Danny down the corridor.
Danny learned to tune out the person who walked behind him. In school, it was usually a conversation that had nothing to do with him, or it was actually about him, and ignoring bullies (while it might result in a more direct confrontation later) was ultimately the best course of action. In the GIW lab (or labs, he was never sure if he was ever moved between facilities when knocked out), if somebody was talking behind him, they were explaining what would happen to him once he was strapped to a table.
In here, wherever here was, Danny fell back on that old learned habit of getting lost in the drip of a far-off leaky faucet, the whirr of a fan in the other room, or the roar of the crowd forty-seven steps ahead of him. He paid attention when he was first brought here, but after a while (Days? Weeks? Months? It couldn't have been years, right?) He learned it was a pattern, and there was no point in listening
Sure, he would be given a heads up on who these people wanted him to tear into, but at the end of the day, he'd still bear his teeth, he'd still squint his eyes against the bright lights above the cage, he'd still dig his heels in the ground, and take whatever the newest monster had to give him.
He’s jerked to the side, shaking himself out of his head once they’ve stopped moving so he can finally notice that the band around his wrists had been separated into two and that something is pressed into the base of his neck while gloved hands untie the cloth covering his eyes.
Danny does not move, he does not blink, he does not breathe. If these people think he's going to attack or run, the cattle prod shoved against the vertebrae in his neck would bring him down before he got far.
“You will fight, and you will fight hard.” The man spoke from behind him, clearing his throat to signal the people standing by his sides to release Danny’s arms and step back.
“If you do not show results, the dogs will be killed, either in that ring or with a bullet later.”
Danny’s joints were locked in place, but the slightest force was applied to the back of his neck, and he nodded.
Ever the dog, following his master's orders.
“THE ROOKIE SENSATION, RETURNING FOR THE THIRD NIGHT IN A ROW, LET'S HEAR SOME NOISE FOR SPITFIRE!”
The booming voice is met with roars from the crowd, muted only slightly by the swinging door in front of him. Three nights means they’ve won four matches and were back to make it six. Either they are a meta, they are a trained fighter, or maybe both.
“AND FOR HER FIFTH MATCH, WE'VE DECIDED TO SWITCH SOME THINGS UP!”
Danny opens and closes his fists, bringing his hands to rest by his sides now that they weren't bound in front of him. Whoever chooses the matches has done this a few times: throwing in more players so it's two-on-two or two-on-one, sometimes gathering a few people to have an all-out brawl.
“LETS SEE IF SPITFIRE CAN SURVIVE BEING FED TO THE DOGS!”
Oh, the irony.
A cattle prod pressed to the small of his back shoves him forward; he only manages to avoid slamming his face into the door by pure instinct. Exiting the cold, musty tunnel and entering the hot, muggy room is always jarring. In addition, the sound of people begging for violence is almost enough for him to throw up.
Danny has speculated on the location of this place many times. He is escorted down a concrete tunnel on the way to this large room before every fight and escorted back the same way, so he never has a chance to explore. The only thing he can do is observe and draw conclusions from there.
From what he’s gathered, he has been able to guess that he is somewhere in New Jersey (He thought he was in New York at first; the accents are similar). Likely somewhere near Gotham if the guards and other captives are to be believed, and judging by the tunnel systems and concrete rooms, he is about seventy-five percent sure he is underground.
The room he has entered now has a raised square platform in the middle, like the kind boxers use. A figure stands on the platform, riling up the crowd surrounding them, jumping in time with the chant (SPITFIRE!SPITFIRE!SPITFIRE!) The crowd is held back from getting too close to the fight by burly guards with guns. Five tunnels lead to this room, placed evenly around the curved walls. Six dogs are herded from two doors towards the platform. They snapped and snarled at the feet that stepped too far into the path cleared for them.
Danny feels sick, but he honestly can’t remember the last time he didn’t. He’s been thrown in the ring and been expected to fight off dogs like these. He remembers how they snapped at him, tackling and gnawing, and then getting confused when he didn’t fight back. They had locked their jaws around his limbs, growling and whining when their stress grew until they had been taken out of the ring and Danny had been dragged off to his cell.
One of the other people held in the cells told him the dogs were only aggressive because they were trained to be and that he'd have won as long as he didn't let the ringmasters break him to that point. She died a week later. That was back when he tried to count the days.
He knows getting mauled by dogs isn't what will happen to him. No, the scent on their tongues is not his.
In this fight, they are to be allies, and while their opponent could kill them, Danny understood if he were to refuse to fight again, these dogs’ fates would be much worse than anything ‘Spitfire’ could do to them.
The ghost boy climbs onto the platform, watching the dogs’ slow procession towards their doom.
“Hey, I’ve seen you around!”
Danny glances from the snarling canines to the snarling woman. She was unremarkable in that she looked like every other desperate fighter with a few wins under their belt. The only thing that stood out about her was her teeth. Her teeth were perfect rows of pearly white, utterly out of place in contrast to the grit and grime everywhere else he looked.
“Yeah, that's right, you’re that kid the ringmasters throw in here to get his shit rocked!” A sharp, gloved finger pokes into his shoulder, and the crowd’s roars grow louder.
“I think this is a little unfair; seven dogs against me?”
Danny wonders how she’d get her teeth like that. They were too white to be from cheap dollar store whitening strips, and he’d bet all he had (a single penny) that her teeth were straighter than Lex Luthor’s.
“How'd you even get here? Run away from home and get picked up by animal control? Or did Mom and Pop kick you out?”
Cruel laughter starts with the woman and echoes out into the crowd. Danny watches the dogs reach the edge of the ring. Their fate would be decided soon.
“It's rude to ignore your betters. Or did mommy and daddy not teach you tha-”
By the time he was finished, the dogs hadn’t even entered the ring, and the crowd was silent.
He knew what he had just done was playing right into the GIW’s hands, but at this point, he didn’t care. The way buzzing spotlights reflected off of red blood, the ache of knuckles split on perfect teeth, the rise and fall of his chest, the confused whines of the unharmed dogs, and the slow build of the crowd’s cheers. All of it satisfied something within him that had been slowly gnawing away at the meat of his ribs for too long.
Finally, the touch of a gun’s barrel against his temple. It pushed, and a hand in the collar around his neck hauled him off the bloodied mess of a woman. He’d done that. He didn't remember when her breaths became wheezes. He didn’t remember when her teeth shattered. He didn’t remember when that bone broke.
He didn’t remember when she stopped struggling.
He didn't remember the walk back to his cell, either. Nor did he remember how long he sat before the man who always escorted him to matches appeared on the other side of the door.
“You did well. We managed to collect a good amount of data.” The words of praise tasted rotten in the air between them, and Danny wanted to throw up.
“I hope you understand that our deal will carry over to all future fights, which are looking to continue for a while now that the ringleader’s attention has been grabbed.”
If there were no cloth over his eyes, he’d cry. If there were no muzzle pressing his jaw shut, he’d scream. If no cuffs were tethering him to the wall, he’d run.
“You’ll do good to keep his attention, too. Would hate for him to lose interest and have us find another use for you back in the labs.” The man tapped his knuckle against the metal door to Danny’s cell, momentarily covering the constant buzz of anti-ecto equipment with the soft sound of flesh against steel.
“We’ve already deemed you incapable of being used as an organ farm or a blood bank, and while your physiology is truly-” A long, shuddery breath, another tap of a knuckle against Danny’s door. “Fascinating, we’ve studied and documented you nonstop for over a year- and that doesn’t leave us with many unanswered questions.”
Danny’s head spins at that. It had been days, weeks, and months- over a year.
He hadn’t seen his friends or his family in over a year. Oh, Ancients, what if a year turned into two, and three, and four? What if the GIW kept him in labs and cells and new types of Hell until he died? What if his family was already dead?
The last thing he heard before he was taken was Jazz crying, and his Dad screaming, and Tucker pleading-’Please, stop! You don’t know wha-’
“You can’t even begin to grasp what a pleasure it has been working with you.” The man’s voice carries a smile, and Danny thinks maybe the worst part about this whole thing is that the smile sounds genuine.
To think that it has been a pleasure for these people to strip him of his family and his will is enough to make him snap.
His struggle is futile, but he does it anyway. He lurches against the chain and cuffs keeping him tethered to the wall, straining with all his might to charge at the presence behind the door. The man laughs, and through the cage of wire clamped around his jaw, Danny screams.
Footsteps and laughter echo down the hall, and other fighters bang their fists against their doors and shout at him to be quiet.
Danny doesn’t go quiet. He doesn’t stop tugging at his bounds and screaming through clenched teeth until no more sound tears through his throat and his wrists have been rubbed raw.
Danny won’t ever let himself go quiet again. No matter how much this hurts, it will always feel better than laying down and gritting his teeth and letting himself become a blind, beaten dog for the GIW.