Work Text:
Danny didn't open his eyes immediately when he woke up. His back was on a hard surface, and his hands and legs were tied to it. It wasn't like similar things hadn't happened before, Skulker had pulled crap like this once before. Luckily, Ember had been pissed at him at the time and let Danny out purely out of spite.
Downside, though, the background noise sounded a lot more like a lab than a lair.
Danny slowly opened his eyes. He wasn't in just any lab. He was in his parents' lab. At least he was Phantom at the moment. Had he been strapped to a dissection table while in his human form, he didn't think he could take it. He had to believe his parents would still love him if he was a ghost. He just had to.
He heard the loud footsteps of his father coming down the steps. His mother wasn't far behind.
"The spook's awake!" He said.
His mother had a calculating look on her face. "So you finally decided to stop pretending to sleep."
Danny just stared at her. Too afraid to even try to defend himself. Ghosts did sleep, they just needed far less than humans. He tried fazing through the restraints, only to let out a strangled cry at the jolt of electricity.
"You won't get away that easily," Maddie walked to a small table and rolled it over, her and Jack sharing cruel smiles. Danny had seen all the tools before. Scalpels, pins, forceps, scissors...
Ancients, they were going to cut him open! They were really going to dissect him!
Danny tugged at the restraints. He couldn't faze through them, but maybe he could break them.
His parents just watched him with a detached interest for a while, before Jack moved to hold him down.
"W— wait! I can tell you way more about ghosts than what ever you think you'll learn by doing this!" Danny wasn't afraid of the pain necessarily, after all he was routinely slammed against buildings, but he knew what his parents were about to do weren't going to stop with a dissection.
He also had no clue how long he'd be stuck down in the lab. No set amount of time to stall them. Jazz was visiting colleges that weekend. Danny really wished he'd taken up his sister's offer to go with her and leave the town in Valerie, Sam, and Tucker's hands for a few days. They wouldn't start looking for him unless he didn't respond to one of their messages for at least six to twelve hours, depending on other factors.
"And what would that be?" Maddie asked.
"What do you want to know?"
"How you function."
"Oh!" Danny said, a glimmer of hope blooming in his chest. "Like our politics. I— I'm not great at them yet, but—"
Jack let out a laugh. "Ghost politics! Did you hear that, Mads? Ghosts wouldn't be able to have a government."
She nodded in agreement. "You're nothing more than human emotions imprinted on ectoplasm. You wouldn't have a complex enough brain for such."
Danny's heart sunk. He should have known better than to even try with them.
Jack and Maddie began to unwrap their tools, offhandedly making notes on how well he was "mimicking" the human emotion of fear.
Maddie began the Y incision, indifferent to Danny's pleas, and sobs. For a moment, he considered turning back to his human form, but something told him they would never believe it wasn't a trick. And even if they did, who was to say they would care at all as long as he was nothing more than non sentient ectoplasm.
"Fascinating, it's almost like real clothes," Maddie said, pulling back Danny's suit from his flayed skin.
"He has fake organs too," Jack said, "but they're green."
"Look, where a human's heart would be." Maddie pointed to his core. His glowing core, that was already working overtime between his panic and his large wound. She poked at it, pulling back her instrument almost immediately due to the frost snaking up it towards her hand.
Danny's voice had completely caught in his throat. Touching someone's cores was one of the largest invasions of privacy for a ghost. It was like... well, Danny wasn't able to put it into words, but the closest he could compare it too was touching, interfering with, a soul. It was something you didn't do. Not without express permission. Not unless both ghosts fully trusted each other with all their pain and memories.
Jack and Maddie moved to look at it again, and Danny didn't dare try and beg them not to touch it. To take out literally anything but his core. It would only make them more curious. Make them prod at it longer.
Danny could have sobbed in relief when he heard the sound of the doorbell chime. Only for him to want to sob in horror when Jack spoke.
"V-Man must be here! I'm sure he'll be thrilled to help us rip you apart molecule by molecule."
Jack was probably right. Vlad had no reason to help him, if anything, it could benefit him for Danny to die. Be erased for existence? What happened when a ghost died?
His parents came back down the stairs a few minutes later with Vlad in tow. He had an odd look that Danny couldn't quite place, but it certainly wasn't glee at his misfortune.
"Madeline, Jack," Vlad said. "Shouldn't you have a camera to record such momentous work?"
"We have the security cameras," Maddie said.
"Yes, of course, but that's not going to be nearly enough to study at a later date."
"We do have that nice camera in the closet upstairs," Jack said.
"Was it? I could've sworn Jazz had moved it to the attic."
"Regardless," Vlad interrupted. "I think you should go retrieve it. Why you wouldn't want to miss something now would you?"
Jack and Maddie both nodded.
"We'll be back in no time, V-Man!"
"By all means, take your time," Vlad said, making direct eye contact with Danny the whole time. He stood there until Jack and Maddie had shut the door behind them, dread pooling in Danny's very open at the moment, gut. Vlad picked up a needle and thread, Quickly, but neatly, working on closing the Y-incision.
"What are you—"
"Getting you out of here. Buttered biscuits, Daniel. How did you manage to get yourself in this position."
"I don't— I don't know. I just woke up here."
"Do they know?"
Danny shook his head. "They didn't say anything."
Vlad started to work on the restraints. "I'm sure you have a way to wipe the camera footage."
"Ectoblast to the box. Takes out everything till you put in a new tape."
Vlad unlatched the last restraint, and fired a blast at the box. "Go through the portal."
"Wha—?"
"You heard me. Then get to my lab. Why your sister or friends let you stay with these incompetent fools alone is beyond me."
Danny didn't need to be told twice. He took off, leaving Vlad in his parent's lab.
~*~
Danny didn't know why he actually went where Vlad told him to. It wasn't something he'd usually peg as a good idea, but it was the most secure place he could think of. His parents wouldn't be able to get to him while he was in Vlad's lab.
He didn't know how long he was there before a disheveled Vlad sunk through the ceiling.
"Daniel, are you okay?"
Danny took a shuttering breath and shook his head. "No. They— they—" He pressed his hand above his core. Taking some semblance of comfort at the vibration he still felt coming from it. "Why did you save me?" Danny asked instead, barely above a whisper.
Vlad was quiet. Danny wondered if he had heard him for a minute, but Vlad sighed and said, "You don't deserve to be tortured. And no one deserves..." He trailed off, vaguely motioning towards his own core. "Besides, if they found out about you being a Halfa it would put me at risk as well."
"Right. Thank you."
Vlad just let out a noncommittal noise, and patted a table. "Here, let me do those stiches better."