Chapter Text
Waking up slowly, much like Danny had before him, Vlad winced as the light hit his eyes; Even through the lids, the brightness hurt him, his entire body tensing in response.
A gentle hand on his arm relaxed him slightly, the scents of a hospital hitting his nose and making his nose wrinkle in distaste. The hand stayed where it was, a blur of noise trickling into his range of hearing as something cool was pressed against his forehead. "Mhnm..." he tried to speak, tried to ask what was happening, but the hand moved down to cover his mouth for a moment.
The voices sounded again, this time much clearer. "Damn it Vlad, you're supposed to act more selfish than that." said one of them, the hand growing slightly colder as it pressed back against his forehead.
His throat felt like it was on fire, his core reacting wildly to the exhaustion that still threatened to drag him back down into it's clutches, but he managed to speak in return. "Daniel..." he coughed once, managing to force his eyes open slightly. "That would not have gone nearly as well if I had been."
Daniel had his arm pressed carefully to his side, the spots of bruising on his face making him look fragile for the first time in a long while. "You could have died, Vlad. The doctors were saying stuff about you possibly not waking up, and the fact that your left eye had something weird going on? I only heard bits of it..."
"That is an odd I have beaten before." Vlad muttered.
The younger Halfa pulled his hand back and pressed it against his own face, grumbling something and shaking his head. "Not the point, Frootloop." he jammed the heel of his palm into his forehead, grinding it into the skin for a moment. "I'm not sure how well I would have handled it if you had died. I'm not even sure how well Dan and Danielle would have handled it." he gestured at the door, clearing his throat. "Your uncle is standing outside, so I'm not going to hit you like I really want to, but there is going to come a day when I manage to smack some sense into you about how much you actually mean to people."
"What-"
"My dad, Vlad Masters." Danny leaned into the older Halfa's space. "Your uncle, his spousal person, my mom now that you aren't hitting on her every minute. Danielle and Dan, even, because now you're not as much of an asshole and they want you around. Every person I just listed would like to see you happy one day, and they want you alive and well to feel that.
"...Besides," Daniel continued quietly, curling a protective hand around his injured arm. "That's something I want for you too."
A knock on the door stopped Vlad from saying anything to the younger Halfa, an odd sensation of butterflies in his stomach as he watched Daniel slink towards his bed and slide back under the covers before the door opened. A woman with long brown hair pulled back into a braid 'tsk'ed' at him, raising an eyebrow, her hands clasped around the clipboard she carried. "As if I'm going to believe you actually were behaving, Mister Fenton." she scolded, a wavering hint of stress to her voice, the barely-there circles and obvious exhaustion not changing her demeanor at all.
Ruffling the hair on the back of his head, Daniel grinned at her. "So what do the x-rays say? Do I need a cast or a sling?"
"You need a sling, but I suspect that'll change soon enough, probably before we can get you one." she motioned back out the door. "We've got enough people who don't have supernatural healing abilities, you're kind of the least damaged patients in this place right now."
Daniel sighed, then nodded. "Can I ask how many people got hurt? Ballpark figure."
"Well," she flipped a page on her clipboard, then bit her lip, staring intently at the paper for a moment. "There's over a hundred people who got hurt during this particular thing, and I don't think that there's a single person left in Amity Park who can deny the existence of ghosts now." she gestured out the door again, letting her arm fall to her side, the clipboard dangling precariously from her fingers. "Everyone in this hospital saw that ghost controlling the storm, and the one that was walking around and creating monsters and danger out of nowhere."
"I think we should just be grateful it wasn't worse..." Danny's uninjured arm curled up and around his neck, fingers gripping at the back of it, worrying the skin. "Those particular ghosts weren't doing that of their own free will, by the way. From what I've heard of them, they wouldn't even think about attacking people directly."
She shrugged, then jammed her hand into her pocket. "I'm just hoping that weird group doesn't come into town again...Last time there was a ghost attack anywhere near this magnitude, those guys in white suits closed us down with our patients still inside the building."
"Pretty sure that those guys got scared off a while back." Danny grinned at her. "I don't think they'll come back in a large group ever again, defeat doesn't give them a free reign of Amity when their boss gets angry at them for it." his grin turned sheepish. "I might have had something to do with that. In my defense, they were trying to lock me in a cage and do experiments on me one of the first times we met, and they were also trying to do things to this city. I couldn't stand by and watch it happen."
"Yes, well..." she turned to Vlad, gesturing at him with the clipboard. "It's good to see you awake, Mister Masters, I'm glad for it. Maybe you can keep him in his bed for once, I keep having to shoo him back here when he sneaks out to check on other patients."
"I will do my best in that endeavor, but I can promise nothing." Vlad found himself saying, curling his fingers in the edge of his blanket, staring fixedly at one of his knees under the fabric. "From what I have heard, he is an impossible patient, refusing to lie still even when under the charming influence of a temperature in the hundreds."
"That was once!" Danny protested, a grin still plastered on his face.
"Hmmm..." the doctor narrowed her eyes at him, one brow raised as she pulled a penlight from her pocket and approached Vlad. "Here, while I'm here I might as well take a look at that eye. Open?"
As she shined the light in his face, Vlad frowned.
"Your left eye isn't reacting. No dilation, no constriction..." her face pinched with worry, she sat back a bit and made a note on the chart. "What can you tell me about what you see?"
"It seems like it should be normal." Vlad's frown grew deeper. "But looking at the light was as if I was seeing it on a screen. Something removed and not a part of my life, certainly not something I saw. There's a small field of grey, off to my left and partially above my head, but other than those two things, nothing seems any different."
Danny watched closely, looking as if he might leap up from his bed and float across the room to sit at Vlad's side and see it for himself. "I have a theory as to why nothing looks different from the outside view." he spoke quietly.
"And why is that?" both Vlad and the doctor spoke at the same time.
With a guilty look at her, Danny slipped back out from under the covers, padding across the tiled floor barefoot, then sat down on the edge of the bed. He extended a hand, waiting for Vlad to take it in his own and smiling when the man did. "It's what we were talking about the other day, before the fighting happened. You've kept it up for so long that it's second nature by now, and you've got yourself trained to wear it over whatever injuries you might have, even if hiding them does more damage to you than good."
The older Halfa almost protested, then took a deep breath and nodded. "You have a very good point, Daniel."
"So," Danny shook their clasped hands for a moment, like he was greeting the man. "Ta-da."
The doctor drew in a breath, almost a gasp, as she looked between the two of them. "I knew from fixing him up that he was like you, Mister Fenton, but I hadn't expected this! He looks-"
"And if you could please keep it quiet, that'd be great." Danny said softly, not even turning away from Vlad as he addressed her. "Vlad, this is Emily Singhred. Ever since I told my parents about who I am, she's the doctor I've been going to, and she runs a little clinic just North of town, about an hour away. Anything that's wrong with me that I can't fix or my parents can't fix, I go to her. She took up studying ghosts when she was seventeen."
Doctor Singhred nodded, giving a reassuring smile as she pulled her penlight back up and gestured towards his eye. "Can I look again?"
Stunned into silence, Vlad nodded as well, following her soft instructions. "I am still getting distortions in my vision," he informed her, a little more comfortable now that he had been given more information about her. The hand he still held probably helped a little as well, and he clutched it a little tighter as she tutted. "Is something the matter?"
"Well," she pulled back and tucked the pen away, a frown twisting her lips. "What you're describing is inconsistent with what I'm seeing, but Danny here has never had eye damage like this, so I don't know if it's internal damage or something else." she sighed, then picked her clipboard back up. "There's some corneal abrasion, a series of scratches, almost like small claw marks, across the cornea of your eye. One of the scratches looks as if it may have gone quite a bit deeper than the others, and it may be the cause of the change in your vision."
Danny's hand tightened around Vlad's and the younger Halfa listened intently to the doctor's words as she explained that she'd like them to take notes on it and make sure that it didn't get any worse before she picked herself up and swept out the door. "...Vlad?"
"Yes Daniel?"
"Are you going to be okay?"
Vlad considered the question for a moment, then nodded slowly. "I think so." he sighed, then nodded again. "I may very well be alright at some point in the future. You would not happen to know a therapist as well as a doctor, would you?"
It was a quiet question, almost as if he had not meant for it to be heard, but Danny smiled and answered it anyways. "Her name is Yannak, and I researched her thoroughly and completely before I even set a foot in her office. She's not human either, but she puts her supernatural connection to good use to drum up clients in the human, ghost, supernatural creatures and other worlds."
"Is she any good?"
"Yeah. I had a series of panic attacks a couple of years ago, and she's the one who coached me through them and the after effects. When we get out of here, I'll get you her card and tell her you're considering coming in." Danny's other hand raised up, looking for a moment like he was considering brushing the hair out of Vlad's face, only to pause at the last second and bury itself in his own hair. "She'd take you on as a client, no doubt about it."
"What sort of creature is she?" Vlad's knees were pulled up to his chest now, most of him curled into a ball. "The last person whose powers involved- Well, you know the story of myself and Spectra by now." his hand was still holding Danny's, the one point of connection between him and the rest of the world.
"She's a misery-eater and a werewolf." Danny answered promptly. "She feeds off of misery, but in a way that removes it instead of draining the person she's feeding off of. She almost scared me off when I found that out, but she's turned out to be really good for me."
Suddenly feeling exhausted, Vlad smiled. "I hope she will help me as well." he closed his eyes, leaning back against the head of the bed and sighing deeply.
"Hey Frootloop?"
"Hmm?"
Something cool and soft pressed against his cheek for a moment, Daniel's fingers squeezing his once more before slipping away as the other stepped back over to his bed. "I'm glad you're not- I mean..." a frustrated noise. "I'm glad you chose to help us instead of being like you used to."
Using his now freed fingers to brush over the spot he was certain had been kissed, Vlad smiled, his eyes still closed. "I am too, Badger."
XxXxX
Several weeks later, Vlad walked out of the office of Doctor Yannak, dressed in something that he would never be recognized in.
His hair was down, a wave of silver across his shoulders that was partially obscured by a slouching beanie in dark blue. The purple-grey shirt he wore would have looked at home in any twenty-something's wardrobe, as would the black jeans that followed. On his feet were a pair of hightops that matched the hat, gifted to him by Daniel.
Dark-blue eyes were framed by glasses as he looked around carefully before transforming and jolting up into the air, opening a portal about sixty feet up and slipping through, landing carefully on the roof to his house.
"If you aren't too busy now that you've come back, there is dinner ready." came the voice of his uncle from a few feet away. William smiled at his nephew, gesturing towards the door that lead into the house. "I have yet to roust Wilson from his experiments, but he is aware enough of what goes on around him still that it will be a simple enough task."
Vlad smiled back, the rings of his transformation sliding back over him and making him look human again. "That sounds lovely, actually."
He pulled off his hat and tied his hair back, following William into the house at a sedate pace. The moment he walked through the door, he could smell the meal that waited for them, stomach reacting quickly. "As far as business and busy goes, I have a video conference later, but that's still a few hours off.
"Wonderful." William's smile was warmer now. "I shall bring Wilson up from the depths of the lab."
As he walked off, Vlad frowned at his back. "Okay, now I know you're just messing with me by sounding extremely British-polite in mockery." he crossed his arms over his chest, raising an eyebrow when his uncle's shoulders started shaking with laughter. "I knew it! Admit it already!"
"I will admit to nothing!" he called back, his pace speeding up until he was practically running out of the room.
Rolling his eyes, Vlad paused as a wave of hot air rushed over his lips, waiting to see who was arriving this time. When a head of dark hair popped up through the floor, followed by a set of dark blue eyes, he smiled and held out a hand. "Hello Danielle." he pulled her to her feet, "How was practice today?"
"It was good." she grinned at him, then nudged the toes of her shoes together. "Uh, actually, I have to talk to you about that." one of her hands still in his, she flipped it over so that her palm was facing up. "I seem to be producing firey-ice. It looks like fire, moves like it, but it's- It's frozen when you actually touch it. When I was trying to recreate it to show Dan, it switched to the other way around." she waggled her fingers, staring at the tips of them in concentration.
Sure enough, what looked like a coating of ice swallowed her hand, revealed to be fire when he ran his own fingers through it.
Swallowing, Vlad's eyebrows arched upwards. "Well then." he managed, blinking a couple of times. He took her hand in both of his, watching as the fire reacted to his core, rising up off of her skin in slow, small waves. When it arched around his wrist, plucking briefly at the sleeve of his shirt, he shook it off, still watching in fascination. "What did Daniel think of this?"
Danielle shrugged. "Said it must have something to do with how you made me." she frowned. "He seemed to think that there was something- Vlad? Are you alright?" leaning in close, she put a hand on his face. "You're shaking and you kind of went a little pale."
"I never told you." Vlad muttered, pulling his hands away from hers and nearly jamming the heel of one palm into his teeth as the other hand tangled in the ends of his hair. "Dan knows, Daniel knows, how is it that you don't?" he looked at her, his eyes wide as he swallowed nervously. "When I was creating you, the process was unstable, damaged, practically impossible."
"I know that." she frowned. "What are you trying to say?"
Vlad took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. "The shape of your nose is not accounted for in the genetics of Daniel's family. If the color of your eyes were several shades lighter, they would match his but they don't." a slow breath this time, drawn through his nose. "Daniel's core is ice, my dear." he flexed his hands, avoiding her gaze as flame rippled to life around them. "Mine is fire."
It was Danielle's turn to blink in confusion. "What?"
"Like I said, the process was unstable and-" he shook his head, tears welling up in the corners of his eyes. "It was easier to start with an established science rather than pioneering a new one. Cloning a sample of genetics and creating a new life, that was simple enough." Vlad looked at her, a helpless expression on his face. "Creating an identically aged clone out of a sample that small? Problematic and insanity to even try."
"...Wait, you're saying- What are you saying?" Danielle stepped closer, eyes widening in alarm when he stumbled backwards. "Vlad?"
"When I created the first version of you, she failed after only a matter of days." he admitted. "When I tried again and created you, the version that has survived, it was with the addition of my own DNA in the mixture."
Danielle nodded as he said this, her hands still in the air where he had left them. "So you're saying that I'm..." she took a deep breath, smoothing her hair back from her face, revealing a hairline that was basically identical to his. "I'm yours and his? Is that what I'm hearing here? I have two dads."
"You-" Vlad went stiff, watching as the expression on her face shifted to a grin.
"...Look, you might not have ever been the best dad, but you were kind of all I got." she explained, finally dropping her hands down, twisting her fingers together. "You were kind of an ass and you never seemed to really care for me until you needed me to do something for you." she nodded, then continued. "But I only got one dad, and he was the one I had even if I hated him for a long while.
"Danny tried to act like a brother to me, but it never really worked. At first, I think he figured out that it must have been something in his brain that just saw me as a kid..." she laughed. "I mean, that makes no sense! What am I even saying? But he would just start acting like I was his kid." her hands dropped to her sides. "I got confused for a while. I actually started to miss you, even when you were busy doing your stupid villain thing."
"...If it helps, I am no longer doing my 'stupid villain thing'." he said softly, hands tangling together behind his back.
Danielle nodded. "It helps a lot."
They stared at each other for a moment before she grinned and pressed herself against his front, her arms wrapping tightly around him as she jammed her face into his shoulder. "Danielle?" Vlad asked nervously, eyes wide as he stared down at the back of her head. "What-"
"If you're okay with it, I kind of want to call you Dad." she said, the words muffled.
A second of stunned silence passed before Vlad's shock-pale face warmed and he nodded, one hand rising to the back of her head and petting carefully at her hair. "I would like that. No more insane plots to get a child, just my daughter and myself." he paused, making a face. "Perhaps another in the family, but that is a hope that has yet to come true."
Pulling away to see his face, Danielle laughed, a few tears streaming down her cheeks. "Considering what I've heard from Danny and from Clockwork, I have some hopes for how that's gonna go."
Rolling his eyes, Vlad turned away, offering her a hand as he went. "There is dinner ready if you would like."
She wrapped her hand around his, practically skipping as they walked towards the dining room together. "I haven't been in here for a long while." she muttered, helping him push open the doors. Her jaw dropped when they opened enough to allow them in, her eyes almost wide enough to fall out of their sockets.
Instead of the table that had taken up most of the length of the room before, there was one that would seat a group of eight.
It was made of dark grey wood, silver details pressed into the grain of the legs and sides, and it was surrounded by comfortable looking chairs. Sitting in one of them was Wilson, a book propped on the edge of the table, his hand moving across the page at a furious pace, his brow furrowed as he mouthed the words he was writing. "There may have been some changes..." Vlad shrugged when Danielle looked up at him. "I suppose that growing pains are not all bad."
"You kept your chef though." Wilson interrupted himself to say without looking up.
"I would consider her a necessity, if you realize how little the two of you eat without prompting." Vlad shot back, an eyebrow raised. "I am aware of some of what went on in the other world you survived in, and I understand some of the reactions, but you could stand to pay a little more attention to physical world things."
Wilson 'Hmm'd' and nodded slowly, pressing the end of his pen to his bottom lip. "And you could stand to pay a little more attention to the people around you, because there is something you seem to have overlooked."
"What is that?"
It sounded like a conversation that had occurred before, and Danielle looked between the two before hooking her foot in the bottom rung of a chair. She sat down with a grin on her face, balancing her chin in her hands, turning to look when the door behind them opened again.
William smiled at her, walking around his nephew and taking a seat next to Danielle. "Are they hissing at each other again?"
"They do this a lot?" she asked in return, an eyebrow raised.
"It is jesting, light-hearted and not intended as mockery or hatred." William explained quietly, raising a hand to pat gently at her shoulder. "Thus far, it seems to be a routine between the two of them, which is pleasing to me because it means that there is a settling of separate households into a singular family." he took a deep breath, looking up over the edge of his glasses. "Much like when a parent remarries and has to join together with another sort of chaos."
Nodding, Danielle laughed. "Is Wilson the step-parent in this case?"
"I believe he might be."
"Should we interrupt them to tell them that dinner's getting cold?" she asked quietly, feeling the gnawing sense of a sort of home edging in on her as she looked at the group around her. It only grew when William smiled at her, the small lines around his eyes crinkling even further with the motion, his hand slipping from her shoulder to reach for Wilson's hand. The scientist's skin was ink splattered, and he flushed a shade of pink before looking at William, a smile on his face as well.
"And if I am to be a step-parent," Wilson turned to Danielle as he spoke, "Then you are my step-granddaughter, and I will be at peace knowing that the two of you have come to an amount of peace in your lives."
Danielle nodded, leaning around William to meet his eyes. "I'm okay with that, I like having family beyond just Danny and Dan. They're good to have, and I don't think that anyone in the history of everything has ever had a more protective brother than Dan, but I kind of do want to have more people in my life that I can trust."
Vlad put a hand on her shoulder, a look of adoration mixed with surprise and happiness on his face. "We're working on it."
"I know."
The group of them started eating, threads of conversation picking up and dropping off as they ate, an air of calm and peace hanging over them.
XxXxX
Clockwork watched through a portal as the newly assembled family gathered together at the dinner table in Vlad's home.
"Are they doing okay?" came Dan's voice from behind him, a tone of worry in it.
"They're doing fine." he turned to look at the other, holding out a hand and beckoning for him to come closer. "They've sat down to eat and Danielle was told of her true family bloodlines and now we only have to worry about what happens next." he sighed, pressing his forehead to Dan's shoulder. "You've got a pulse today."
Dan's upper lip curled back, his posture shifting to match how uncomfortable he felt. "It seems to come and go, ever since Rewind messed with things." he paused, watching the scene of the family together. "Should we warn them that the others will be arriving?"
"Not yet."
They sat together in silence, Dan's hand stroking through Clockwork's hair as he pressed his nose into the ghost's neck. When he broke the quiet, it was with another question. "Should we at least warn Danny about Lancer?"
"Again, not yet." Clockwork turned to meet his eyes, a small but affectionate smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "While I am pleased with the shift in your attentions over the years, it's not our place to warn them. That will come, and it will come soon," he sighed, an affectation of life, then shifted so that he was pressed closer to Dan. "But until that time, we can only watch. Daniel and Vlad struggle to figure things out."
"I just wonder if they're going to figure it out before their hands are forced." Dan grumbled, lifting his head to watch the image of the small family eating together.
Clockwork smirked. "I have many doubts about that."
"Vlad hates himself too much, Danny'll be the one to approach the question first." Eyes filled with amusement caught the Master of Time's, a sly grin blooming beneath them. "Bet you anything."
Caressing the handle of his staff, Clockwork allowed himself to be pulled into the man's lap, curling one arm backwards, around his neck to hold him close. Around them, various portals, all filled with the images of life that they were required to watch over, glowed brilliantly green. The eerie light fell over them, illuminating the places where they touched.
"I am not taking that bet, Dan."