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.]
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💚 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.
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“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.
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Some more Keith & Branch as brother headcannons!
These ones are set after Branches colors return
- The first thing Keith does when Branch gets his colors back, is excitedly point out that Branches hair matches his own.
- With Branch trying to reintegrate back into the village, he’s not spending all his time in the woods anymore and instead spends a lot of time with the Snackpack. This does not stop Keith from following Branch around, nor does Branch stop him. He likes their little schedule they have going on, even if what they're doing has changed.
- The Snackpack takes this in stride, and each of them absolutely adore Keith (Plus, slight trauma bond from their small time being captured by Chef)
- Sometimes when they’re explaining certain holidays to Branch, they’ll pretend they're explaining it to just Keith, to make Branch feel better.
- Out of the rest of the snackpack, Keith probably ends up being the closest to Smidge, with Smidge following around & helping Poppy, Keith following & hanging around Branch, and Branch & Poppy hanging out together too. Plus, the two can be seen as intense in their own ways, so I can see them getting along.
- Because CJ and Keith become friends, DJ and Branch end up hanging out a lot more too. The two totally tease each other a bunch
- Since he’s a young kid with a very active (And morbid) imagination, Keith often gets horrible nightmares from being captured by the Bergens and then witnessing Creek being ‘eaten’.
- He’s a little embarrassed by them at first, and refuses to bring it up to anyone. His parents know, because they hear him screaming at night, but this is one of the only things he doesn’t tell Branch. However, his parents struggle a bit, not knowing how to help Keith, so his mom, Tulip, would start asking around to see if anyone knows how to deal with constant night terrors and would be willing to help. She eventually asks Branch (She knows she should have just gone to him first, but she also didn’t want to assume that, just because he was grey for so long meant he got regular night terrors), who has a whole list of things that could help. The list ranges from ways to help Keith go back to sleep, to things that could help him get into a more relaxed/deep sleep from the beginning.
- Keith also copes through his stories. They get darker, and less of them have happy endings for a while.
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