Chapter Text
It's cold.
That was the first thing he thought when he began to stir from what felt like a death blow.
Why is it so cold?
The bed underneath him was painful, its unforgiving icy metal digging into his shoulder blades.
"—Ugh—" Danny let out a groan as his awareness crept back in, the ache in his abdomen returning with it. Each pulsing wave worse than the last till he was squeezing his eyes closed tighter against the green that flared behind them.
His unconscious attempt to wrap his arms around his stomach and roll to his side in an effort to self-soothe only served to pull at the muscles that were meticulously pinned open on display, the restraints keeping him entirely immobile.
As soon as it came, his awareness slipped away in a crashing blizzard of pain that slammed into him over and over mercilessly.
His grip on his intangibility shattered as something wrapped its electric claws around him his core and yanked. The lab's table phased through him, like one of those super heated knives through ice.
A white-hot jolt seared through the visible and raw flesh and organs of Danny's abdomen. There was just long enough for him to register the scream that ripped his throat to shreds before memory and reality lost all boundaries and sent him tumbling into yet another nightmare made true.
“Make it stop, Make it stop! Make It Stop!—MAKE IT STOP!—”
Danny's joints locked up. His muscles strained to move under the seizing shock that ran from his left hand, down and across to the ground under his right foot. The smell of his charred skin and the sound of snapping flooded his senses.
His heart stopped soon after, his blood having boiled from the heat of the electricity. The stillness an odd relief from the awful burn it had sent throbbing through him on every futile beat.
Mm-mum-Make it s-stop-p, Mommy. Please, m-make it st-stop! He begged silently to the void of nothing around him. His voice forever lost to the electrified blood and ectoplasm he choked on. Danny had never had a mother that would've responded even if she was there to hear it.
The reprieve of death didn’t last long, though. His damaged nerves and tissue sewing themselves back together too excruciatingly fast to even lose consciousness.
A pop bubbled in his ears as his vision swam and went black. Ectoplasmic blood filled cauterized veins like an acid melting through metal, unimaginably hot and seemingly endless.
He grit his teeth together against the searing pain. Choking again on his new ectoplasmic blood till he had to spit pieces of his tongue out with the bits of ground bone and charred flesh, only for the pieces to reform and be bitten off again.
Each second stretched. Icy cold slowly replaced the fire that consumed every nerve in a stuttering cycle of agony.
Danny's thoughts became an incoherent loop of jumbled up pleas and utter silence as matter in his brain juiced into hot ecto before reforming again.
A keen of pain ripped through Danny's throat and he curled the last of his energy around his core. The ground rushing up to meet him before everything went dark.
Like the fog that clung to the streets and allies of Gotham, the Lady drifted through old subway tunnels. Lured in by the wet tears on the young prince's cheeks. Her presence brought with it the calm stillness of the city's many long-abandoned streets.
Skeletal arms bent to circle the small, broken form. A whisper of quiet safety on her lips. The temperatures in the room rose and fell with the lullaby.
“Pfuh—!” A solid wave of pure terror and agony hit J'onn's mental shields so hard and unexpectedly there was no chance to reinforce them before it had slammed right through, shoving the air from his lungs in the same blow. His vision swam as his knees hit the rocky ground a few miles inland from Gotham. Icy pain lanced through his chest. His nerves lit up in freezing agony as the green blocked out his telepathy entirely.
j’o—
His head was pounding and, anxious, paranoia devoured him whole.
No, no, nononono please PLEASE—It’s just me! It’s me, Mommy—AHH! His voice cracked into a scream as the hands digging in his abdomen twisted deeper. The search for his core getting ever closer to victorious. More black rubber gloved hands fought his shoulders onto the metal table beneath him. It was warm with his blood.
Once down, the hands slid gruffly to his elbows, keeping him down as yet another set of hands tugged the bindings at his wrists tighter. He couldn’t phase through. He could hear his blood dribbling on the floor, taking all his warmth with it.
—j’onn
It's funny how blood loss still made him cold even though his ice core typically made him immune to the lower temperatures. Not to mention how his blood would generally be considered "cold" to normal standards. The irony of it was not lost on him.
His muscles shook as his form shivered in and out, still trying to keep his core out of reach to mortal fingers. White hair stuck to his skin with sweat and ecto mixed blood.
“Nononono NO, get off! Let me GO!”
“J’ONN!” Wonder Woman’s voice broke through the cold fog.
J'onn shook, squeezing his eyes shut tight and gripping the sides of his head to force the breaches in his consciousness closed.
Rocks and dirt bit into his knees, grounding him back to his body.
What could be in so much agony and still be alive? Whatever it is, he need my help, he thought once he finally regained control of his telepathy.
The boy was in so much pain J'onn could still feel an ache in his ribs as though they had been the ones moved in that memory. Because a memory is what it had to be. His senses had been too out of reach and sharp to be anything else. Like one of the mirrors that Dick begged him to shift in front of at Haley's Circus.
J'onn reached out beyond his mental barrier, looking for any thread of consciousness from the child that would be quiet enough that he could carefully anchor it in his mind to follow without splitting his focus.
"I'm okay, I'm back..." J'onn reassured, staying on his knees for a moment longer. He let go of his head with one hand to pat comfortingly at Diana's hand on his bicep. The fingers of the other hand kneading his temple.
"J'onn, what happened?" Diana pushed.
"Diana, they’re in so much pain." He looked her in the eye as he spoke, his gaze intense and a little terrified. "We have to find them.”
J'onn stood, pulling himself from Diana’s grasp, and kicked off into the air towards the silent cries echoing across the distance. Wind whipped past, snapping the loose fabric of his waistcloth around his boots. He fought to keep his mind from instinctively reaching out and curling around whatever was weeping loud enough for him to hear even over the wind that rushed his senses. He wasn't far, he could tell.
I have to find him. The thought repeated in his head over and over as the miles were eaten up by the seconds.
Wonder Woman, true to form, kept pace beside him effortlessly. Her normal look of battle hard, righteous determination settled on her face despite not knowing the situation J'onn had her flying into. Whatever they were headed toward, leniency had clearly been taken off the table.
Just inside Gotham city limits, the mental thread J'onn had been following dipped sharply. It led to the old, abandoned outskirts, still in rubble from the many rogue battles that the city never quite recovered from. He hit the ground hard, almost tripping as the adrenaline kept him pushing to find the child as soon as possible.
Dust flew as he ran. Sweat dripped into his eyes and stung a little as he scanned the immediate area, searching for any more leads… He was starting to sound like Bruce— THERE!
A subway entrance a few feet away with soft snow dancing in the wind over the stairwell, the frost it came from creeping out along the ground. J'onn's feet were off the ground before he even fully registered what he was looking at. That has to be it.
Time seemed to stretch down in the darkness of the tunnel and J'onn's mental barrier struggled to keep the emotions that were heavy in the fog from consuming him whole again. The rusted and broken tracks ran endlessly into the mist just feet ahead of them. The deeper they got, the frost along the ground grew and took over the walls, even the ceiling, to form increasingly sharp stalactites and stalagmites.
Eventually the ice began to glow as though from within. It wasn't until they turned the corner that J'onn and Diana realized the glow was reflected from deeper in. The green light shining from a cavern ahead where the subway had been blown apart.
This must be why these tracks were abandoned. J'onn thought absentmindedly in the back of his head.
The opening broken between two neighboring tunnels was almost completely obstructed by the ice. J'onn had to phase Diana and himself to get past, and once through, it was abundantly clear something had used enormous power to protect itself.
It was like an ice fight had taken place underneath the city. The inside looked closer to what he imagined Kal's Fortress of Solitude looked like when defensive.
The pointed formations were fused to every surface like spikes directed outwards in every direction from the center of the "room". The light they had seen earlier was a dim, eerie green glow emanating from the ice itself inside the room.
The ice was thicker and taller along the edges where it fused to the walls, and shorter the closer to the center it got. Though still obviously sharp enough to take walking on the ground off the list of options.
All around the room were huge pillars of ice almost assuredly too big around for J'onn to wrap his arms around. Each had a cloaked figure encapsulated in frozen execution. Most had at least one clearly fatal crack all the way through, but the ones to the opposite side of the room were broken in large pieces or shattered entirely.
"By Hera..." Diana breathed as she drew up short beside J'onn.
Their view was slightly obstructed by one of the cracked pillars, but from where there, they could still see the brutally ornate circle melted into the ice and concrete in the epicenter.
"Is that—?" she started, trailing off when she caught sight of the figure curled over the center. J'onn turned, bolting the moment he saw what she was talking about.
A young female human in a fetal position, lay bleeding and unconscious in a circle of warm blood mixing with the snow that cushioned her, creating a slush that squelched when his claws feet and knees hit the ground. From where he landed, the young human's back was facing him. He examined what he could without touching just yet, remembering Bruce's lessons on emergency aid. Once he determined nothing was broken and they could be moved without incurring more immediate damage he gently grasp their shoulder and rolled them gingerly onto their back to properly asses.
The massive open wound taking up their entire front nearly had him gagging in horror. He'd seen autopsies before. He knew what this was. This wasn't medical. This wasn't your every day sacrifice. This was torture. Torture he'd not seen since 1943.
Bruce's voice took over his thoughts and he focused on them, willing his mind not to think about it.
"First asses the damage. How bad is it? Is there anything that would prevent you from closing the wound immediately? While you deal with that, ensure back-up is on the way. You can get a lot done between now and then."
J'onn quickly scanned the opening. Hooks held the skin open, and shims kept it wedged up off the ribs beneath. He had to fight to keep hit fingers steady as he carefully checked that all their organs were, indeed, internal.
Come on, Little One, stay with me, he silently begged the small human.
By the time he spared a second to look around, Diana was already on the coms with the tower.
"Affirmative, and Dr. Fate—" She looked at J'onn for confirmation. "—is needed... No the situation seems to be otherwise under control... Understood," she signed off with a decisive nod.
With nothing else he could do for the child, J'onn shifted to lift them onto in an attempt to keep them warm while he kept pressure on as much of the wound as he could.
Just stay with me.
Even after the three years the League had used Zeta Tubes, J'onn had still never gotten used to the feeling. It wasn't like the milky feeling of his body shifting forms or phasing through something solid. The feeling of Zeta-ing reminded him of the static from putting your hand over old CRT television screens.
But Dr. Fate's portals were another experience entirely. Like pushing at cellophane till it finally gave and let you though. J'onn had never gone through one unconscious, but he wondered if this is what it was like.
Feeling his body as if in echo of his subconscious thoughts. His mind still several feet behind. Everything was both more and eerily less than normal. Like he was observing his surroundings through the cellophane.
Once the other heroes arrived to properly process the scene and escort the three of them back to the Watch-Tower, J'onn's grasp on the situation began to slip as a familiar dry fog settled over his mind. Old memories threatened to take over. Long gone black smoke he could still smell slowly obscured his vision. His hands, still sticky with a child's blood, remembered being anchored to the floor with heavy restraints.
He drifted along mindlessly behind the small throng of medical staff crowding around his charge. His feet unknowingly following the little spark of life that still clung stubbornly to such a sad form, brought him up short in front of a broad chest baring an emblem he knew like the back of his own hand. Gauntleted hands came up to gently clasp underneath his elbows, effectively holding him steady and preventing him from continuing any further.
His buttery smooth old Hollywood accent spoke soft reassurances and promises of safety.
"It's okay J'onn. She's in safe hands. Dr. Bates and the nurses will take care of her from here."
The hands at my elbows gave a gentle squeeze even as the voice paused in a way J'onn knew meant calculations were being made and plans formulated.
"J'onn, Mein Tayer, look at me.. Yeah, just like that. Take a deep breath for me—Uh-huh, good—four five six—and out." The emblem in front of him rose and fell with the words. "Let's get you some water while we wait for Dr. Bates to work."