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wolfjackle-creates · 4 months

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Bring Me Home Arc 3 Part 2

Happy WIP Wednesday. Bring Me Home won last week's poll. But it was a close one! If you want a say in what I post next week, be sure to vote in this week's poll. ^.^

Story Summary: Danny's parents find out his secret. It doesn't go well. But he's not alone. His friend Tim Drake, better known as Red Robin, and the Young Justice will not let him suffer.

We switch to Tim's POV for this part.

Warnings: Aftermath of torture

Arc 1: AO3

Arc 2: First, Last

Word Count: 1.7k

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The instant Kon got the door to the lab open, Tim sprinted down the stairs. The first thing he saw was Jack and Maddie standing over a table, green ectoplasm, blood covering everything.

Then his eyes fixed on Danny. Danny, cut open and bleeding with a muzzle on while his parents looked at his insides.

He rushed forward, tackling Maddie and tearing her away from Danny. She screamed and fought back, landing one punch before Tim kicked her back a step. Then he pulled out his staff and landed a hard blow across her chest, forcing her further back.

Next to him, Cassie was taking care of Jack. He exchanged a quick glance with her and the two began herding the pair towards the wall. Away from Danny.

Behind him, Tim could hear Sam call out for Kon then a cry of pain.

“He’s still alive!” called out Kon. “I can hear both his core and heart.”

Tim couldn’t relax. Alive didn’t mean much. He put more force on his next swing of his staff, aiming for Maddie’s shoulder. But she ducked and twisted just right to get under the swing and move closer.

She slashed back with a scalpel, one still covered in Danny’s blood. Tim growled as he blocked it with his arm, the armor of his suit preventing it from reaching skin. He swung his staff again, getting her in the side hard then jerking up to hit her in the armpit.

He smiled in satisfaction when he dislocated her shoulder, causing her to drop the scalpel.

“You’ve got this all wrong!” she protested as she held her shoulder. “Jack and I are the good guys here. The ghosts, they’re all evil!”

Tim snarled. “The only evil I see here are the two so-called scientists who were torturing their own son!”

Maddie tensed at his words. “Don’t you dare say that. I’m trying to save my son from the monster that took his body.”

Tim swung again, aiming for her feet. Already distracted by the pain in her shoulder, the hit landed and she fell. He hit again and he felt her ankle break. Good, she wouldn’t be getting away.

“Why don’t you just shut the fuck up,” growled Tim.

Jack landed on the ground next to his wife, taken out by a punch from Cassie. Tim took the time to swing at him, too.

Again and again and again, he brought his staff down on them. Not stopping as they cried out in pain or as he felt more bones break under his blows. Until the time when he tried to swing down, but his staff refused to move.

He spun around, scowling, to come face to face with Cassie who had his staff firmly in her own grip.

“That’s enough, Rob. They’re down and they won’t be moving. Impulse and I will make sure of it. You need to go with the others.”

Behind her, Tim could see Sam fussing over Danny, still on the table. Bart and Tucker were at the computers trying to download as much information as they could. And Kon was staring right at him.

“Transport?” asked Tim.

Kon pulled out his phone to check. “Just arrived. Let’s go, Rob.”

Tim nodded. “Fine.” To Cassie, he said, “I want them in custody.”

She nodded. “Obviously. We all do. Impulse, Tucker, and I will take care of things here.”

“Then let’s go.” Tim stalked away from Jack and Maddie, refusing to look back. He wasn’t sure he could stop a second time.

Someone must have found a blanket and gotten it under Danny. All Kon had to do was touch the blanket, and it lifted up. Danny was held completely straight in the make-shift stretcher as Kon single-handedly used his TTK to carry him, Sam leading the way out of the lab.

The doors opened for them on the way out, Kon’s TTK again. And sure enough there by the curb was a nondescript van, engine still running.

Jazz got out the driver’s seat the instant Kon appeared in the doorway to open the back of the van.

“Bring him in here! I’ve got a bed set up,” she said.

Kon, of course, went first. But Tim and Sam were only steps behind him. Inside the van, the bench on one side had been fitted with a futon mattress to form a makeshift bed. Overhead, lights had been fitted to make sure the area was bright enough to see. Kon carefully laid Danny down then backed up so Sam and Jazz could move in.

“Keys are in the ignition,” said Jazz. “Get us away from the house, then let Sam and I patch him up.”

“You’ve got it,” said Kon who took his spot behind the wheel.

Tim shut the doors to the van and stood against the opposite side of the van. This was his first good look at Danny.

His friend was still in his Phantom form, but his jumpsuit had been torn and peeled away from his body. His chest was covered in so much blood he could barely see the wound, but the tell-tale y-incision was unmistakable.

Jazz and Sam were carefully wiping away the blood as best they could, using towels that had been neatly stacked in a box next to the cot.

Tim looked around until he saw an empty bucket. He pushed it towards the two girls. “Put the dirty ones in here.”

Kon pulled away from the Fenton house, aiming for their local out-of-town-limits rendezvous spot. “I can keep Danny from being jostled by the road. Don’t know if I can do the same for the rest of you if you’re moving, though.”

“Let’s not test it right now,” said Tim. “But we will be practicing that later. Never know when we might need it again.”

Jazz dropped her first towel and grabbed another. Her hands were shaking.

Tim knelt by her side and placed a hand on her wrist. “Let me. Right now we’re just trying to hold him together and I can do that as well as you can. He’s going to be just fine, I’ll make sure of it.”

“But I’m the one who trained with Frostbite.” Her voice cracked on a sob.

Tim grabbed the towel from her hands and used it to put pressure on Danny’s wound. “And I don’t need specialized training for this part of it.”

Jazz hesitated a moment longer, but with a last look at her brother, she spun and ran to the other side of the van. Tim listened to her muffled cries as he held the towel to Danny’s chest.

Sam shifted until their shoulders were pressed together and he leaned slightly into the touch. Neither said anything.

Soon enough, Kon was pulling off the road and the van came to a stop. The instant it did, Jazz was pushing her way into his place, two boxes in her hand. She opened one to reveal a large first aid kit, as well stocked as anything he had in his most-used safe house.

Tim took up a position at the foot of the bench and pulled out a small camera he had in his belt. He took careful pictures of all the visible wounds. Kon came up besides him and put an arm around his shoulder.

Jazz opened the second case, letting out a hiss of cold air and frost. Without hesitating, she put on two heavy duty gloves and lifted out what looked to be an ice cube.

Sam, meanwhile, was measuring out enough glowing green thread to cover Danny’s wound. Tim took another picture.

Jazz placed four ice cubes into the injury—one at the end of each cut and one where the lines intersected. Then Sam laid the thread over the wound. She muttered something and it phased into Danny’s skin without the use of a needle and pulled the injury together.

The glow faded slightly and if he didn’t know better, Tim would’ve thought they were regular stitches.

From there, they focused on cleaning off the remaining blood. The van was mostly silent—Sam and Jazz only communicating the bare minimum necessary to care for Danny. Even Tim’s camera was entirely silent, designed as it was for stealth.

As Danny was wiped clean, more and more injuries were revealed. Only years of bat training kept Tim standing and taking pictures. But his grip on the camera was much tighter than it needed to be. Kon’s fingers were digging into his shoulder almost painfully, but Tim didn’t say anything. Sam and Jazz were forcibly holding themselves together, but the odd hitch in their breath or tremble in their fingers gave them away, too.

A nasty burn spanning Danny’s left side was revealed. Tim clicked the camera, and Sam applied an ectoplasm-based ointment to it. Then Jazz covered the injury with a bandage.

The process was repeated time and again for each injury they discovered. But eventually, all the wounds were tended to. Once Jazz did a final look, she nodded with grim satisfaction.

“Superboy, could you use your powers to wrap his chest?”

“Of course!” Kon left Tim’s side to grab a roll of gauze and took up his own place at Danny’s side. All he had to do, though, was place the roll on the bed and his powers took care of everything else.

Tim wished he could do something half so useful. Next time Danny managed to get to the Realms, he was so joining him and getting his own lessons directly from Frostbite.

“Just one more thing to do,” said Jazz. She reached into the first aid kit and pulled out a small box. Inside sat a syringe filled with ectoplasm. She jammed it into Danny’s thigh and pressed the plunger.

Danny’s eyes flew opened and he let out a yell as his back arched off the bed.

Sam was already hovering over him. “Danny? How are you feeling?”

Danny panted for breath, but looked at her with a wry smile. “Pretty much the worse I’ve ever felt.” He looked from Sam to Jazz to Kon before meeting Tim’s eyes. “You came.”

“I always will,” said Tim.

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I'm not an expert on emergency medicine, so I figured why not go the magical route?

Tim wishes he could help in a more hands-on way, but documenting injuries is important if you want to bring them up in court. No one knows yet if Danny will want that, but this way they have them in case they're necessary.

Tucker, Bart, and Cassie are remaining behind to bring the Fentons to JL holding cells. Tucker is the one who knows the Fenton computers best after Danny, after all.

All ready we can see some major changes from my original version. What else will change? And, more importantly, what will stay the same?

#dpxdc #danny fenton #tim drake #kon el #jazz fenton #sam manson #these poor kids #should not have to deal with situations like this #whatever adult heroes are on duty #when impulse and wonder girl come up #with some trussed up mad scientists #with a bunch of broken bones #crying about illegal experimentation on sapient creatures #are going to regret being on shift #they're not gonna be getting much sleep for the next #...#long while

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novelconcepts · 6 months

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In watching more interviews with Liv about Van and the escalation of Van's pragmatism to such dark degrees, I find myself genuinely baffled that anyone could ever think Van the bad guy. I mean, I'm perplexed at finding ANY of these girls The Bad Guy. The bad guy is the situation. It's being lost. It's freezing. It's starving. It's being scraped down to the barest bone of being alive. They make choices that might be snippy, or cruel, or hard-headed, sure--Shauna refusing to just hash it out with Jackie; Jackie being too stubborn to come inside; Taissa refusing to discuss her situation plainly; etc--but by the time we reach the end of season 2, it doesn't even matter. Petty bullshit doesn't matter. Jealousy doesn't matter. Those things are still going to be present and complicated, because--for all their choices, for all the distancing they're trying to do--these kids ARE still human beings. But it isn't the point.

The point is survival. Plain, simple, straightforward. Van's pragmatism is survival. It is the difference between living another day with blood on your teeth or dying pretty. It is the difference between fighting forward through the fire and the snow and the hell of it all, and laying down to die. Van knowing, in watching the ritual violence of Shauna beating Lottie nearly the death, that they will be killing and eating one another soon. Van coming up with the cards for the hunt. Van not blinking when the moment comes, Van choosing a weapon that doubles as a tool to bring the body back, Van refusing to apologize for staying alive--it's not evil. It's not Bad Guy behavior. It's purely about survival, because there is nothing else left to her--or to any of them. They can play the pretty little Sweet Angel Girl game and die, or they can get dirty, bloody, horrific and fight. Van chooses the fight. Van chooses to fight for herself, for her lover, for her team, even knowing not everyone is going to make it out...because the alternate path there is that no one makes it out. Van knew the baby wouldn't live. Van knows the rest of them won't, either. Not unless they start making the hard choices.

And, honestly, the fact that Van sees this narrative coming. Comes up with this plan. Brings out the cards. To me, that is the opposite of Bad Behavior. That is as close to justice as anyone can find in the wilderness. If someone else came up with an idea, maybe it would have come down to voting--but that would have had such a human element to it, with bitterness or hostility or whatever ultimately petty shit always comes of humans selecting who to Other. The cards don't leave room for that. It isn't fair, because the situation isn't fair, because Man vs. Nature isn't fair, but it's as close to a just system as they could possibly find. It's the kindest solution to an unwinnable game. Not to bring it back to American Gods again, but all I can think is "it's easy, there's a trick to it: you do it, or you die." Van gave them that.

#yellowjackets #yj meta #van palmer #i simply cannot ever accept people blindly hating ANY of the girls for their actions at the end of S2 #because by that point it's not about personality flaws or errors of judgement or teenage bullshit #it's survival. it's literally do or die.#be mad at the stuff they did the first few weeks out there. THAT was in their control.#but by the end of S2 it's 'do i want to live? cool. then this is the next step. there IS nothing else. we are eating belts.'#every once in a while on instagram or somewhere i see a hot take like 'oh this whole thing is THIS girl's fault'#and it's like no no. no--apart from misty busting the black box--NOTHING these girls do will change the fact of their situation #they might make it worse or make it more palatable but in the end #it's the purity of man vs. nature as a story #and any of them getting darker. more logical. more pragmatic. just means they're putting another day breathing first.#the human element of it comes in with the faith and the ritual and the acceptance of violence--but the violence was coming either way #'this place cannot be argued with. and that is how we survive: by giving into that.' exactly. liv hewson you genius. exactly.

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