Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Vlad opens the folder for the current day, finding six videos inside - one for each camera. At first he'd watch it live, but as his duties increased after taking the office, he didn't really have the time for that, instead resorting to briefly checking in in the evening and breezing through the saved videos in search of anything unusual happening in the house. Checking the footage has become a ritual of sorts, the same way people read the news in the morning to be kept in the loop.

Vlad clicks on the kitchen first.

After fast forwarding through the night, he stops at about seven in the morning. Jack is fumbling with something at the stove. Maddie, beautiful as always, is working on a weapon of sorts, while her children are finishing their breakfast. It's a peaceful, almost idyllic picture.

Vlad's wistful thinking about him being there instead of Jack is interrupted by a sudden flurry of movement in the kitchen. The whole thing takes less than five seconds, but it feels much, much longer.

Daniel gets up to clean his plate. Maddie raises the finished gun to inspect her wield work. She either presses the trigger, or crosses the wires, or something, and the gun shoots. A beam of energy hits the top cabinet, millimeters above Daniel's head. His hair is probably singed. Daniel flinches, violently, and the plate falls in the sink, breaking into pieces. Jasmine slams her hands on the table and rises with enough force to send the chair flying on the floor; the audio explodes in a cacophony of screams as they yell at each other. Daniel is gripping the sink, his back to his family, staring at the shards.

Maddie didn't mean to shoot him, it was a simple mistake.

It was an accident.

An accident.

The word keeps repeating in Vlad's mind.

He opens the videos from the previous day, going through them with more scrutiny than usual. Nothing seems out of the ordinary, but he's still frowning as he watches the incident again.

8 hours 53 minutes later Daniel comes to the kitchen to look at the spot, and even with the less than ideal quality Vlad can see his hand shake as it traces the burnt edge.

Interlude 1

As he checks the foyer footage, unusual movements catch his eye, and he rewinds the video to the beginning.

Daniel walks in the foyer, carrying a full bag. This alone raises eyebrows. The Fentons do their groceries once a week, and so far Vlad hasn't seen the children doing any shopping.

Curiously, it's not food, but a large amount of small bottles. Even more curiously, Daniel grabs a few of them and starts wandering about the house - Vlad has to synchronize all six feeds to keep track of his movements. The bottles are stashed all over the place - in the kitchen cabinet behind the canned food, under the couch in the living room, behind a potted plant in the hallway, in the bathrooms.

The last thing in the bag is a much bigger bottle, and when Vlad pauses the video and leans in he can see it's an industrial size bottle of peroxide. When the video is resumed, Daniel carries it to his room and places it under the bed.

Vlad does quick googling, but peroxide can't be used as an explosive or a drug, so he is at a complete loss why else a teenage boy would need it, and in such amounts, no less.

Chapter Text

The entire household is full of weapons reacting to ectoactivity. The first time Vlad saw that he was begrudgingly impressed by the sheer scale of it, and then horrified when he realized what it meant for the ectoactive boy living in said household.

(Then again, they did build a portal in their own basement.)

He checks the feed.

Daniel, having returned from school, walks into the kitchen. A turret drops out of the wall and activates, sending a beam of ecto energy at Daniel's head.

The boy is quick, dropping on the floor with the grace of a trained marine, and rolls over until his back is pressed against the bottom cabinets. Vlad watches Daniel take a few shuddering gasps as the turret continues to fire uselessly at the floor less than a foot away from his stomach. The tiles are starting to char.

“Jazz!” The boy got lungs on him, because his sister is able to hear him all the way from the upper floor. Disturbing as it is, this seems to be a common occurrence, given how quickly Jasmine shows up downstairs and how she doesn’t even pause to take in the scene before rushing to the turret. Almost as if she’d already anticipated the threat and planned for it. Credit where credit is due, Vlad did not expect the girl to have the strength to rip the turret out in one go.

Jasmine slams the turret’s remains in the trash bin, the camera picking up her quiet “I knew she didn't calibrate it right” as she does so. She rubs her eyes with her hand for a tired moment before turning to her brother, “Are you okay?”

Daniel laughs, if a bit shakily, as he gets up from the floor. “At least now we know the whole batch is uncalibrated. Guess I'll be avoiding the top floor for a few days.”

Jasmine voices Vlad's thoughts, “you shouldn't have to be avoiding anything in your own home, Danny.”

She then adds with a sigh, “I'll tell mom the turret activated on me, maybe they'll take them down this time.”

The fact that the weapon reacted to Daniel while he was in his human form bothers Vlad immensely. On one hand, anything that Jack produces is doomed to fail (his children being a notable exception), so that's not surprising.

But Maddie?

Jasmine’s words prove Vlad isn't mistaken - he saw her work on the very same turret a few days ago. She was the one to install it.

Surely she had checked everything was in order?

Interlude 2

He sets the feed right at the beginning of some juicy drama - he hasn't seen any of the teachers coming to the Fentonworks before.

His mild curiosity quickly turns into mounting outrage on Daniel's behalf.

The boy is clearly struggling, and he doesn't sleep enough, which would be obvious had they cared to look at him for more than two seconds. Not that Daniel would admit the problem if asked, but, as it looks like, no-one is bothered enough to ask in the first place.

“Fentons always get As,” Maddie says, and Vlad can't help but raise his eyebrows at that. He honestly doesn't remember their school grades, but in college the three of them didn't have enough time for the intense cramming required for straight As. Most of their days and nights were spent exploring old buildings in search of ghosts, or researching how to get grants, preferring to focus on the more practical side of their studies. After all, field experience counted more than perfect grades in their line of work.

Maddie isn't even a Fenton, for crying out loud, and Jack sure as hell isn't an example of a stellar student. That would be Jasmine, and one person out of four hardly constitutes for all Fentons.

The broken phone is the metaphorical cherry on top. Vlad wonders idly if Daniel would accept a gift from him, if only out of sheer necessity.

Daniel slouches even more, and for the first time since their meeting Vlad feels something vaguely resembling sympathy.

Chapter Text

After the turret incident Vlad takes to checking the cameras during the day - if their weapons reacted to him even in his human form, then the boy was in constant danger. The realization Daniel could've died any moment in his own home left him with cold dread mixed with deep annoyance - had Daniel taken his offer, he would've been safe in his mansion, free to exist in both forms as he's meant to be.

He is at his office, enjoying the quietness of a Saturday morning that allows him to work in peace. The feed is running in the background on his personal laptop, with only the elder Fentons being awake this early, but Vlad's not particularly interested in watching them having breakfast.

Finally, a movement catches his eye when Daniel comes down the stairs, still in the shirt and shorts he slept in during warmer seasons. The angle is a bit awkward so Vlad can't see what set the sensor off, but what he does see is one of contraptions falling out of the ceiling, shooting him under the knee. The tendons had to be damaged, if not severed entirely.

The eerie thing is how quiet Daniel is.

The second the blast hits he falls to one knee and swiftly rolls away from the line of view from the kitchen where his parents are, leaving blood smears behind.

Vlad stares at the screen, feeling rather helpless; all of his supplies are in the lab. His best bet is to teleport there, grab Daniel and then get back home. Nevertheless, it seems Daniel has the situation under control.

On the screen, Daniel hobbles to the bathroom, leaving the door open and conveniently in the camera angle; he silently bandages the wound - sloppily, in Vlad's opinion, but the stab will heal quickly even without the stitches. Once he's not bleeding anymore, he grabs peroxide and a generous wad of toilet paper. Just as silently he creeps to the spot he's been shot at and crouches down, careful not to be seen. His blood sizzles up, leaving behind ectoplasm in small curdled chunks. Daniel wipes everything up and then flushes all the evidence down the toilet, before hopping his way up the stairs.

Everything Daniel has done was surprisingly efficient. Practiced. Vlad checks the time - the whole thing took less than four minutes. When he opens the kitchen feed, he finds the elder Fentons blissfully unaware of what has just happened a few feet away from them.

In his room, Daniel is curling up on his bed, trying to work around the injured leg.

After coming home from work, Vlad sets out on compiling two first aid kits - one to leave at home and the other for the office.

Interlude 3

The thermos is cramped, and Vlad can't believe the audacity of the little shits. Phantom is on top of him, squeezed between the wall of the thermos and his chest; the situation is deeply unpleasant for all parties present.

When the brat starts to flail Vlad grabs him, hands covering the majority of his back, and then-

“The hell are you doing? Quit groping me!” Phantom blushes heavily, enough that it glows a little in the darkness of the thermos.

Vlad ignores him.

Under his hands he can distinctly feel each rib, and when he slides his fingers up, the vertebrae stand out, each one distinct and sharp.

In his day to day, Daniel wears baggy clothes. Phantom's skintight suit is black, and if he's honest with himself, before today Vlad has never looked too closely, focusing on the main silhouette and not the details.

(When he was a boy, Vlad's mother let him hold a European robin that had gotten caught in their window. To this day, he remembers the feeling of the tiny claws scratching his hand, and the rapid, motor-like heartbeat under his fingers.)

Phantom's core thumps against his chest, so fast the beats flow into one another until it's hard to count each separate one.

Ancients, this is what he's been fighting?

“Do they even feed you?” he hears himself ask, not even trying to guess the answer. With the things he's seen he doesn't know what to assume anymore.

“Are you crazy? Of course they do!”

The silence that stretches between them is uncomfortable, Phantom's green face twisted with defensive anger. Vlad lets him stew in it, watching an intense thinking process taking place, until Phantom huffs heatedly, much like a real badger.

“Well, the fridge is always full, anyway,” he says, an unhappy frown settling on his face.

At least now Vlad knows how he's going to spend the weekend - thoroughly checking the kitchen's feed for the past month is going to be illuminating, he can already tell.

With comedically tragic timing, Phantom’s stomach lets out a long growl, deep enough that Vlad can even feel it where they’re pressed together. A brief, pregnant silence follows, and then Phantom says with a bit too much shame to be firm, “Not a word.”

Vlad takes a deep breath, ready to fuss, but then he feels how tense Phantom’s skinny frame has gone, muscles tight as if he’s prepared to take a blow. It’s infuriating, because obviously the boy knows that things shouldn’t be this way, but he’s too stubborn to admit it, and too self-righteous to come to Vlad for help he so readily offered.

Instead of arguing, Vlad exhales.

After some more awkward silence Phantom rests on his chest, and only sighs when Vlad's hand comes to gently stroke his hair.

Chapter Text

One of the curious things Daniel did was the way he traversed the hall between his room and the stairs. At some unmarked point in the middle of the hall he would lower his head, as if ducking, and raise his feet at the top of the stairs, as if stepping over something. One eventful evening Vlad found out why.

Daniel goes out of his room, like he does hundreds of times during the day, leaning down as he walks down the hall. The camera doesn't pick up the sound, but it looks like he's gotten a message, pulling out his phone as he reaches the stairs.

Right until his foot catches on something, the taut wire glowing bright ectogreen as it comes in contact with Daniel's skin.

Daniel falls down, bad enough Vlad's breath catches with the force of the impact. He manages to grab the railing on his way down, body going in a somersault with the fall inertia until he's lying flat on the stairs close to the ground floor.

For a few long, horrible moments he stays still. One of the things Vlad has to commend him for is that Phantom can take a brutal hit and still force himself off the ground, continuing the fight until he physically cannot. When he doesn't immediately get up, for a second Vlad panics that the boy has finally managed to snap his neck.

When he leans closer to the screen, he sees Daniel's chest fall and rise in rapid, deep breaths, and then the camera picks up a high pitched whine. Now that Jack and Maddie are absent, in the privacy of his home Daniel allows himself a moment of self pity.

The deep gash on his ankle is dripping blood and ectoplasm on the stairs, slow but steady. He has half a thought to grab his first aid kit and teleport to the Fentonworks, but then the sound attracts Jasmine, so Vlad sits back and watches as she runs past the wires completely unharmed and rushes down to help.

He carefully doesn't think about what could have happened if Daniel had forgotten about the upper wire.

Interlude 4

Later that night Vlad is on the defensive, smacking the shots away with a lazy hand. The attack is not very spirited anyway - a fall like that doesn't heal in the scarce hours of rest Daniel might have gotten before going on a nightly patrol.

“Did you break anything?” Vlad can't help but ask after a few minutes of this half-hearted fight. Jasmine was careful not to move him much as she bandaged his ankle right on the stairs, helping Daniel up only after she'd finished. For all he knows, the boy in front of him is internally bleeding somewhere.

“What?” Phantom stops his barrage of ectoblasts, wary and ready to attack again at a moment's notice, a light blush coming high on his cheekbones.

“That was a rather nasty fall you had today,” Vlad tells him, unable to stand aside anymore. The longer that foolish boy stays in that house, the higher are the chances he's going to go full ghost sooner or later. If he even can. Vlad doesn’t truly know what happens if a halfa dies, and isn’t keen to find out.

Phantom's face freezes for a moment, then contorts with fury, cheeks glowing brilliant green.

“I told you to deactivate them!”

Vlad shrugs, not particularly bothered.

“My offer still stands, you know. At the very least, you're always welcome to stay the night.” When Phantom doesn't react, Vlad presses on, “Daniel, I'm serious. At least at my home you won't be shot at.”

“Right, I'll be experimented on,” Phantom snarls and in a flash he's gone. Vlad doesn't give chase.

Chapter Text

The Fenton lab alarm, set in case three people are present at once, goes off, sending Vlad flying to the computer. To his relief, Daniel is in his human form, trudging after his idiot parents. Obviously it wasn't enough that they had the teen cleaning up the lab, now he had to assist in their asinine experiments.

Vlad watches as they start assembling another weapon, by the looks of it. Daniel is wearing a black t-shirt with dark pants, and for once he's sporting protective goggles, fully matching his parents’ appearances.

Everything seems calm, so Vlad decides to brew himself a cup of coffee. The moment his back is to the screen he hears an explosion.

The smoke blocks the view, before the ventilation system kicks in and the air clears up a little, but whatever audio there is lost among the whir of the fans.

Maddie is checking a few minor cuts on Jack's face, her own cheek welling up with blood. Daniel is crouched behind the lab table, clutching at his side. When he pulls his hand away to take a look it's covered in blood, which he hastily wipes on the dry part of his t-shirt.

Vlad deeply dislikes things he doesn't understand, and at the moment he can't understand how on earth these two manage to not notice their son is bleeding out right next to them. For crying out loud, if they can't see it, they should at least smell it, with the amounts Daniel is losing.

Daniel, apparently, makes an excuse and is waved off without a second thought. Vlad watches him traverse the house to his room, where he pulls out a sizable medical kit from under his bed. Once everything is ready, Daniel takes off his shirt, using the last dry parts of it to wipe off the glowing blood still dripping down his side.

Daniel has gotten a bit taller recently, and even thinner for it; spine, hipbones, and ribs clearly visible.The gash right under them isn't too long but it is deep, enough that a normal human would need stitches. Vlad, confused, takes in the items Daniel is pulling out of the kit. Surely he isn't going to-

He is.

Vlad watches in stunned silence as Daniel sews himself up, the stitches coming along rather neatly despite his shaking hands. He himself applied stitches only when it was necessary to hold his organs inside, or when his powers had been so depleted the healing factor was compromised. He knows for a fact Daniel hasn't been fighting anyone that day; what the hell happened to his core?

In the meantime, Daniel is setting the needle aside; he dabs everything with peroxide again and then rips open the pack of bandages. After he's finished wrapping the bandages, he ties the ends and tucks them in. Daniel sits for a moment, motionless, before sighing and staring to clean up.

“Hope you're enjoying the show, Fruitloop,” he mutters with bone deep exhaustion in his voice, hands busy with peroxide and wipes.

The screen is drowned in red, until Vlad blinks it out of his eyes and decidedly does not enjoy.

Interlude 5

The following night finds Vlad flying to the Fentonworks, since he rightfully suspects the stitches are not going to stop Daniel from going on his self assigned patrol. To his displeasure, he's late; they cross paths a few blocks away from Daniel's home, Phantom freezing midflight when he comes face to face with Vlad.

“Vlad?”

“How much are you willing to bet your side is bleeding as we speak?” Vlad asks instead of greetings.

When he floats closer Phantom flinches away from him, hands coming up to hover over his injured side.

“What, you think that's the first time I stitched myself?” Phantom says, on defense already. “I'm fine.”

“Frankly, I'm very concerned you had to apply stitches in the first place.” Multiple times, by his own admission. How is that boy still alive? “If your core is that starved, you're not fine.”

“It's not- why do you even care?” The audacity of that brat.

“I've always cared, you idiot boy,” Vlad definitely does not yell at him, completely at the end of his rope by that point. “I've watched you for years, how do you expect me not to care?”

Phantom is startled into silence by his outburst, uneasy wariness clear on his face. Vlad sighs and rubs his temple; it's been a long week, and an even longer couple of years.

“If you're not going to let me check, at least get back home and rest. Please, Daniel.”

Phantom considers him for a few long moments, then turns and slowly flies in the direction of the Fentonworks.

Chapter Text

Full of gloomy foreboding, Vlad slips through space and pops back in in his study, going straight to his laptop to check the cameras.

For some reason, instead of going to his window Phantom phases through the front door, clutching his oozing side, and heads straight to the bathroom. The moment he passes the kitchen the accursed turret whirs to life and promptly snipes Phantom in the head.

Vlad teleports to him right as Phantom hits the floor, ectoplasm splashing a halo around his head, and Vlad wastes a few seconds to blast the turret out of existence. When he turns back he finds Phantom curled up tight, both hands clutching at his left eye. Ectoplasm flows freely in between clenched fingers, fast enough to create a puddle underneath his head that's slowly spreading.

Vlad grabs him by the back of his suit and teleports back to his lab.

Once on the lab table, Phantom starts to hyperventilate through clenched teeth, and Vlad isn't sure if it's a pain response or the setting - he's sure Daniel has lived through some less than pleasant experiences in labs, his own included. At the very least he's fairly sure he hasn't missed any vivisection attempts in the Fentonworks.

The first thing Vlad does is inject him with a healing serum; something he's created precisely for a moment like this, when the core is unable to mend the body on itself. Phantom either doesn't notice or doesn't react to the injection, deeply in shock. The ectoplasm is still flowing from the wound, dripping down Phantom's chin and neck and chest, going in rivulets down his forearms. It smears on Vlad's hands when he gently pushes them away from his face so he can assess the damage.

The eye is gone entirely, along with the parts of the temple bone - Phantom had managed to turn his head away at the last second so he didn't get his brains shot out. Terribly unpleasant, but far from fatal, in their case. When Vlad presses the folded gauze to his eye socket Phantom gives out a thin, warbling whine of pain that strikes him deep in the place he thinks his bits of soul are still left. He wraps the bandages around his head to keep the pressure on the wound, and then takes a moment to wipe the kid's face and neck clean.

Phantom is trembling now; the serum is not numbing the pain fast enough. Vlad barely contains a wince in sympathy, turning around to walk to the fridge and pull out a bag of refined ectoplasm. Phantom doesn't react when Vlad gives it to him, so Vlad wraps his trembling hands around it, carefully guiding it to his mouth, tilting it until he finally starts drinking.

“There we go, Badger, you need to replenish what you've lost, there we go-” he murmurs in praise, pleased when Phantom grabs the bag tighter so he can let go.

After the bag is half empty, Phantom looks a bit more coherent, suddenly aware of his surroundings. He focuses his only eye on Vlad, if with a bit of difficulty.

“What happened?” He isn't slurring his words, Vlad notices with not a small amount of relief.

“You got shot in your home. Again.”

Phantom doesn't say anything; not that there is much to say.

The rings start flickering around Phantom's waist, and Vlad rushes to stop him.

“Stay in the ghost form,” he orders. “You don't want that transferring on your human half.”

Phantom gives him a tiny nod, and the rings fade out.

“You're staying the night,” Vlad tells him, in case he has any other ideas. Even with the serum, the eye would take a good half a day to regenerate, and he's not letting Daniel out of his sight any time soon.

Phantom shakes his head, cautious not to move too much.

“I'll heal by the morning, I'll just-”

Vlad forcefully exhales through his nose, willing himself to calm down; the boy won't start hearing him better if he starts to yell.

“You're healing right now because I've given you the serum,” he grits out. “Your core can't manage the healing on your own anymore.”

Phantom fidgets where he's sitting propped on the table's edge, the panicked guilt in his eye betraying it wasn't news to him. He's known.

“Why is this happening?” he asks in a way saying he doesn't really want to know the answer.

Vlad shrugs. With Daniel patched up a bit the adrenaline is ebbing away, leaving him drained; three teleportations in the span of less than ten minutes took a lot out of him. He suddenly realizes he's still a ghost and shifts back to human; the exhaustion worsens.

“Stress, I assume. You can't restore your energy if you never truly rest. Being in that house slowly kills you.”

Vlad doesn't know how to get it through his thick skull that his parents killed him, and they continue killing him, day after day by keeping him in constant risk. Not for the first time he considers how easy it would be to organize a lab destroying accident. Maybe even with casualties.

Decision made, he looks at Phantom, who is still clutching the ectoplasm bag as he's watching him.

“As soon as you're healed tomorrow, we're going to your parents and you're telling them the truth,” Vlad dryly informs him.

“What?” Phantom glances at him in panic before averting his eye. “No way, why would I even do th-”

Vlad grabs his chin, careful not to snag the bandages, and forces Phantom to look at him.

“Because otherwise I will be forced to ensure your safety in other ways,” he says ominously enough that Daniel catches his drift.

Phantom looks like he wants to be furious, but doesn't quite have the energy for it, staring at him with a mix of emotions Vlad's too tired to sort through.

“Finish your ectoplasm,” he says as he releases his face.

Phantom's eye squints at him, and before Vlad can do anything he drops the bag and yanks at the lapels of Vlad's suit with unexpected strength. Vlad lurches forward, between his spread thighs, until Phantom's bandaged forehead rests against his shoulder. His arms come up to rest on Phantom's bony back, pulling the boy closer to him. For a moment, the lab is quiet, save for his breathing and the hum of the lab equipment. He feels the first sob before he hears it, the sound muffled in his suit. Vlad stares at the wall unseeingly, one hand moving up and down Phantom's heaving back, mindful of the injury on his side, as the younger halfa cries into his chest. How could they do this to their own child?

The possible lab accident comes into his head again, but he shakes it off. Depending on how tomorrow goes - today, really - there would be either no need for that, or the police would get involved first. Vlad finds he's not sure which outcome he hopes for more. Best case scenario, in which Jack and Maddie accept their son and dismantle the entire weaponry system they've ridden the house with, is certainly possible. On the other hand, it is just as possible they will start to shoot the moment they suspect Daniel is not entirely human; the existence of the borderline state between life and death is hard to believe, and there is a good reason Daniel has kept his secret all these years instead of asking for his parents’ help. Either way, Vlad will be there to run damage control, be it confirming Daniel's story or filing for child abuse.

“Did you mean it?” Phantom whispers in his neck, once he's calmed down a bit, most of his weight resting on Vlad. He'd fall if Vlad moves away.

“Yes.” Vlad's not sure what exactly Daniel is asking about, but he hasn't said anything he doesn't mean this evening. His hand comes to cup Phantom's neck, right below the bandages, as he turns his head to press a light kiss to Phantom's good temple. He hopes he's guessed correctly. “No matter what happens tomorrow, you will always have me. I got you, Badger.”

Phantom nods and lets out a ragged breath, arms tightening around Vlad's midsection before he slowly pulls away to wipe at his green cheek. He looks like death warmed over, and Vlad doesn't feel much better either, despite not having taken a shot to the face.

“I'm going to assume you haven't had dinner,” he says, and sighs when Phantom nods sheepishly. “Come, then, I could use a snack as well.”

Phantom slides off the table and floats next to him, weary beyond his years. Vlad reaches out to pull him in a side hug again, just to remind himself they're both there and, mostly, alive. Phantom doesn't seem to mind, his arm coming to rest on Vlad's back.

“Everything is going to be okay,” Vlad tells him and, for a second, believes it himself.