Health and Hybrids (XXVI)👽👻💚
[I can't remember the original prompt posters for the life of me but here's a mashup between a cryptid!Danny, presumed-alien!Danny, dp x dc, and the prompt made the one body horror meat grinder fic.]
🖤Chapter navigation can be found here🖤 Click to browse previous updates.
💚 Ao3 Is here for all parts 💚 (now featuring mediocre mouseover translations, only available on a computer)
Where we last left off... Danny has another hashtag breakdown! Diana helps mediate. Stinky Dad and the Alien Guy observe.
Trigger warnings for this story: body horror | gore | post-dissection fic | dehumanization (probably) | my nonexistent attempts at following DC canon. On with the show.
💚👻👽👻💚
“His control over his emotions slipped during the interview,” J’onn sighs, hovering alongside Bruce as they carry down the hall.
Bruce grunts. He isn’t quite capable of complicated speech yet. The teenage alien crying, too scared to let even the internationally-favorite, universally beloved Wonder Woman hold him without screaming…a person he already knew would take care of him…
J’onn continues, nevertheless. The thin privacy of his mind aside, Bruce has always appreciated the Martian’s understanding of Bruce’s oft-shifting moods. “His memories of his home and his family were tied up with extensive pain. I would continue under the assumption that his human family turned on him after discovering his nature—there may have even been collateral damage to others around them at the time.”
Bruce breathes in. Bruce breathes out.
“He thought himself akin enough to humans to be betrayed when he was seen as an 'other'. He knows that he is far from home, he knows that he has been targeted for his non-human traits and abilities, and he has reasons to think that he may not return again—what they are, I could not tell, but the sentiment was clear. This escape was purposeful, as was commandeering the vehicle he used to do so. He is alone. He is scared.”
“Known or unknown threat?” Bruce growls, not quite up to elongating his bite into a full sentence. J’onn is more than skilled enough to skim lightly over the words, and match them to Batman’s pointed fury.
“Our patient is familiar with the threat. I could not recognize the insignia or acronym from his memories, but they had enough resources to keep him captive and alive—without food or water. Likely, for a lengthy amount of time.”
Bruce’s near-running stride slows to a stop. J’onn, ever-patient, floats to a standstill beside him.
“No food,” Bruce confirms, just to make sure he heard correctly.
J’onn nods.
“No water.”
“There was an alternative method used to keep him alive, although the details weren’t significant to him in his flashback. The method may have been possible due to his minor healing ability, or something unique to his species.”
No food, Bruce thinks. No water. Kept alive as a function. Worried that he’s meant to be used as a weapon, kept in isolation, afraid of what humans in uniform might require of him for help.
This isn’t just torture. It is, specifically targeting a half-human entity, entirely purposeful dehumanization.
Of a child.
Of a child.
Bruce inhales. Bruce exhales.
This is not something that will be solved short-term. He has to keep an eye on the long-term goals for this teen—safety, recovery, reassurance, and reintegration.
Doable. All he has to do is break larger goals down into reasonable steps.
“Update the pediatric psychiatrist that Dr. Martin referred him to on the details.” Bruce’s demand comes out as flat as it gets. It is hard, when he’s stressed, to make his words hit with any intonation. Everything he forces out is precise. To the point.
J’onn nods. “I will.”
“This is personal medical information, to be accessed only on a need to know basis.”
J’onn floats slightly higher, something relaxed in his face. This is a significant gesture, meant to remind everyone involved that this is a child, not a resource, and not a mission to be solved. This is a patient. “Understood.”
“If you pass this on to Diana, do it in person. Minimizing documentation…” Bruce falters. There isn’t a strong, authoritarian way to phrase how he feels about being someone to store clinically cold information about a boy who had likely been imprisoned, if not actively experimented on, if not actively tortured. How he needed to minimize behaviors that would exactly model what was done to the boy by his captors.
A smile flickers over J’onn’s expression. It’s suitably fleeting, but it comes and it goes—and it’s extremely polite of him to emote so visibly for Bruce’s sake. He makes sure to project his appreciation as best he knows how—blindly, without a telepathic sense to know what J’onn will and will not see.
“Understood, Batman.”
Bruce grunts.
They split at the end of the hallway, each dedicated to their own tasks.
J’onn will inform the medical team of what triggers may affect their patient’s long-term recovery and the quality of their stay. He is a thorough and patient coworker, and Bruce is grateful to have him on his side.
Bruce, in the meantime, has a favor to ask of Alfred and Dick on their way back into Gotham; more importantly, this is a favor he has to ask of Alfred’s employment-provided Costco card.
*
There’s something new in Danny’s room.
He transfers himself into the wheelchair to look at it, scrambling down the bed the way the physical therapist taught him to—the new thing isn't at bed height, but it is pretty low, and it has a door that he could probably reach from seated height or standing.
The square thing’s door swings open.
Inside are…little water bottles. Canned juices. Those mushy fruit-filled bars, and something so obviously wrapped in a yellow Fig Einstein wrapper that even the gibberish non-English is super clear.
There’s a bunch of things. Just. So many; and all in a few different types, too. The whole thing is filled with so many choices.
…Huh.
There are disposable straws in the door. Danny has to borrow a nurse’s ID card to open the can tab in the end, and his unwrapping of a straw is more than a little shaky, but Danny takes his medication with a mango-pineapple juice blend instead of his usual cup of water, and he’s perfectly fine with that.
264 notes
·
View notes
Reasons why I don't buy into "posh, aristocratic, and/or bigot Pharma" headcanons
Listed in no particular order, mostly prompted by a conversation with a mutual (that I've also had many times in the past with other mutuals)
For some reason people assume that being a flight frame is what would make Pharma so prideful and disdainful towards everyone else? But in IDW1 canon, flight frames are actually an oppressed class who were restricted by functionism to only be allowed to be soldiers or cargo lifters. The only flight frames who got to go outside of that mold were ones who got special exemptions (Jetfire) or ones who schemed and took advantage of politics (Starscream). If anything, being a flight frame would be a source of self-consciousness/annoyance for Pharma, since he would be seen as unusual and probably get constant "wow I didn't know flight frames could be doctors" type comments that single him out because of his body and not because of his actual skill or personality. It's possible that he might be proud of being a flight frame AND being a doctor, like being so good of a doctor that being a flight frame doesn't matter. But Pharma certainly wouldn't feel prideful or entitled to anything JUST for being a flight frame.
Re: bigoted and/or functionist Pharma: I think this headcanon comes from the fact that Pharma worked at the New Institute yes, but so did other characters such as Chromedome, Rung, and Brainstorm who are neither posh nor functionists. It seems rather unfair to assume that Pharma specifically must be a functionist or hate the lower class because he worked at the New Institute, when other characters who were in the exact same situation weren't presumed to be bigots just because they worked at a shitty place. Also as my point above states, why would Pharma be a functionist when functionism is the institution that would've kept him from being a doctor if he (presumably) wasn't forged with medic hands?
Speaking of bigotry, it's canon that Pharma and Ratchet were best friends since they worked at the DMF together, which was pre-war; how in the hell would it be in-character for Ratchet to be best friends with Pharma if he was an open bigot and a functionist? Ratchet would literally never. Plus, secondarily, Pharma is canonically in love with Ratchet, so if he were some sort of posh aristocrat, it'd be pretty odd for him to be best friends and shack up with a guy that's as down-to-earth and rude as Ratchet is. Not impossible, but for me personally, it counts as a mark against posh!Pharma because I think the fact that Pharma was best friends with Ratchet means that we can form a broad outline of his personality based on the type of person that Ratchet would like enough to be best friends with.
Pharma's diction and way of speaking isn't "high class" at all. He pretty much speaks like any other "normal" character in MTMTE does, but what's more, there are actually a couple of instances where he speaks in a much more casual and loose way. Little details where he says "coz" instead of "cause/because", uses words like "chap", that time he chainsaws someone and says "Feels rough, doesn't it?" I wouldn't say that Pharma is lower class or anything, but when looking for evidence that he's posh or stuck up, his diction/manner of speaking is a good place to start, but there's really no evidence of any poshness there at all. MAYBE that one time he talks to Ratchet talking about "instruments" and making an analogy between a surgeon and a musician, but in that case he was just using a metaphor to make a point to Ratchet.
In general, the only notable thing about Pharma that anyone talks about related to him (besides "going insane and killing patients") is the fact that he's a good doctor and all the various feats he's pulled off. One would think that if he was some sort of posh bigot, people would complain about it or bring it up when talking about their memories of Pharma, but no. Literally Pharma's primary trait is that he's a hella fucking good doctor. I GUESS you could argue that since a lot of doctors IRL are rich bc they get paid a huge amount of money, that means Pharma is also rich and sees himself as above everyone else, but that seems like a rather large leap to make from what little we know about Pharma. And everything we DO know about Pharma points to the fact that being a doctor was his entire life, and the only specific case where he wants to be seen as "superior" is with regards to Ratchet, another doctor who Pharma feels insecure in comparison to. So again, canon points us to the fact that Pharma really only cares about practicing medicine, and the only person he wants to feel superior to is Ratchet, because Ratchet is a better doctor than he is.
41 notes
·
View notes