Dark Blue Moon and the Suffering Sun
Contento warning: violencia and blood and mild cannibalismo
Distant search horns shook Danny's ear fins, but he kept his eyes on the sun over the horizon, where mountain peeks emerged. He had to move quickly. Danny thrust forth with all his fins and gripped the still, small body in his arms. Stupid rich kids and their stupid ignorance about Amity Island. Danny cut through the water, and didn't bother to slow down upon reaching the shore. Crashing and tumbling through the sand, Danny recovered in seconds, and sat up in his arms. The kid's shirt gave way to Danny's claws, and he pressed his palms upon the kid's chest, and pumped like his life depended on it.
This innocent kid's life did.
He, Sam and Tucker had trained for hours on mannequins and real people out in the field, but who knows how long Damian had been underwater, how long he had been calling for help. Salty seawater gurgled out of the kid's mouth, but no more movement was to be found. Danny pressed his lips upon Damian's and exhaled. He pressed down on Damian's chest with just enough strength to avoid cracking every rib. Kiss of life. Press. Press. Kiss of life.
Most people would've been woken up by now. The crashing waves and wind over the lifeless body roared like a death toll. Six months as Phantom, dozens of attacks, and Danny was able to save everyone, everyone. He had to.
His arms, trained and honed from hundreds of hours in the water, burned as if stabbed by hot knives. His body was beginning to dry off, pearlescent white scales fading into pink skin. Glasslike flesh filling and hiding away internal organs and bones. Fins receding into bone. Tail snapping into and bones resetting. A human teenage boy kneeled over a child, tears rolling down his eyes. Why wasn't it working?
A rib cracked thunderous, and Danny hesitated for a brief second, but Damian stirred not. Danny continued. He could barely see his own arms, couldn't tell if the rhythm was even right. Despite arms growing wearier and wearier, strained and more strained. How could he ever look anyone in the face again, knowing Damian was right here, right now, and yet-
crack, another rib broke. He had to keep going. So many people were counting on him, even if they didn't know it. From Sam's parent's gossip, this kid apparently had a dozen and a half siblings, and a father who'd already lost his own parents.
Danny collapsed on the sand, naked and shivering. His fingertips felt numb. His toes felt numb. His body felt numb and his heart felt like it was harpooned and his brain was erratically screaming into the walls of his skull. There was no denying, no more.
Even if- Even if he could magically restart Damian's heart, and get his lungs pumping again, there was no human on earth who would not suffer irrevocable brain damage. The kid would be a vegetable for his entire life.
Not like it matters.
Danny wrenched a sob. He grabbed a handful of sand and throw it into the ocean. He slammed his fit into a rock and didn't even care when it came back bloody.
How could he return to Amity now? And tell Bruce Wayne to his face what he let happen.
Danny fell to the sand, numb again. It was his death, his drowning. He vowed it would be the last one, the last in Amity, and now...
And now...
Danny shot up. He leaned over Damian's corpse. Lightning fired off in his mind, and new anxiety gripped him, but above all, hope.
"I'm sorry." He said.
Danny dipped his hand into a tide pool, letting scales and webbing over take it. He opened his claws, and and sank them into damian's arm. Blood seeped out and coated the white scales. Twisting the claws he carved out a chunk of human flesh, and brought it to his mouth. Danny swallowed it in one gulp.
Next, he brought the claws to his own shoulders. In as swift a motion and much shriller a pained scream, strings of fresh siren meat were produced.
"Please forgive me." Danny prayed, to whatever unfeeling god was listening. He opened Damian's move, and shoved the bloody strips down the hatch.
The effect was instantaneous. Danny had to work quickly. Painful memories tied up in a cave resurface. The urge to push them down was ignored; now they had to be studied. He tore off the remainder of Damian's clothing, and carried him closer to the water line. Green scales emerged from Damian's belly like blades unearthed from a long-forgotten battle. Danny sank his claws into the gaps of Damian's ribs and tore long gashes in them. The scales climbed up Damian's chest. Danny rolled the child's body on its side as they swept over his back. Bones cracked and snapped and broke, as spikes pushed out from underneath his spinal column, slimy thin webbing already connecting them.
Beneath, Damian's toes elongated as if stretched by a black hole. Bones shattered into dust underneath, all to be more malleable for the final product. The skin wasn't much better off either. As it stretched to its paper-thin limits and tore, more and more scales came forth to cover the damage.
Danny felt green in the gills. He couldn't bear the strain of those memories, and erupted with bile, hunched over. He couldn't bare to spectate as Damian twisted and bended like putty anymore. He'd already failed and violated the kid enough.
Danny dived into the water. The least he could do was make sure he didn't wake up hungry.
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Dark Blue Moon and the Suffering Sun Chapter 16
MASTAPOST
tell me what u like about the chapter :D guess where the story's going, anything! gimme fuel qwq
Damian lay on his belly on Phantom’s chest as the boy floated just underneath the surface. It was night time, and the Atlantean town they’d sacked was far behind them now. Here they only had the stars to accompany them, wobbling and swaying over the distortion of the water.
They were so close… Damian pushed himself up with his arms. His head breached the surface, water washing over his face like a veil. His eyes widened as he took in the beauty of the night sky, much more comfortable without the blinding sunlight when he’d first tried this.
There was something comforting about the stars, something beautiful outside this world that would be there no matter what, even in his most miserable nights with the League. It was something he missed when he moved the Manor underneath Gotham’s smog-filled skies.
Damian pushed himself further, balancing himself on his tail and hip fins instead of his arms. The gentle sea breeze prickled at his wet scales, causing him to shiver. It brushed against his ear fins and gave a sense of immeasurable calm. Just him, Danny, the stars and the whistle in the wind.
And a feeling of suffocation.
Damian’s lungs demanded air. Or was it water? He inhaled deeply, taking in the smell of the sea from above it rather than underneath, but it didn’t help. He inhaled again, but the pressure remained.
What- What was this madness?! Sirens could breathe over water. This was indisputable. Danny had been able to breathe and talk over water the night Damian was transformed. Damian was able to breathe air and talk then. Damian sucked in more and more air, desperately trying to sate the need for oxygen. Why couldn’t he breathe?!
Damian’s vision twisted. His head spun. His chest felt like knives being stabbed into it.
Hands grabbed him. Danny pulled him back under, where the water provided sweet relief. Damian clutched his chest, as if any moment now he would drown again.
“Are you ok Damian?” Danny’s hands hovered over him, like he was fragile china. Damian scowled.
“Why couldn’t I breathe? What has happened to me?” Damian asked, demanded, heavy with accusation.
“Dude, your lungs are water balloons right now. You gotta empty ‘em out before you can breathe air.” Danny said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Damian’s cheeks burned. He turned his back on Danny and crossed his arms.
“I was aware. I was merely testing you.”
Danny poked him in the sail, the sensitive touch causing Damian to hiss instinctively. “I mean if you’re the siren expert, then by all means!”
Damian did not dignify him with a response. Instead, he surfaced again, determined. Instead of inhaling in panic, trying to pump air into lungs at full capacity, Damian focused on exhaling, on pushing the water out.
His throat cramped with pain. The young siren gargled and gasped. His throat clamped and throbbed, like he was pushing a jagged boulder up. He barely managed to spit out a meagre drop of water before Danny dragged him under again.
The older boy pulled him to his chest, stroking his back as Damian coughed and hacked.
“Ok that was my bad, are you ok?” Danny said, ear fins drooping. Damian wheezed, his eyes closing as the pain abated.
“Do you go through this every time you surface?” Damian shuddered. What would happen to him once he got home? He wouldn’t be able to walk, and now couldn’t even breathe without immense pain.
“Hehe, no.” Danny deadpanned. “You’re supposed to use your gills.”
Danny tapped on his own gills. Instinctively, Damian moved his elbows to cover his. Lately he had been keeping sane by not thinking too much about the creepy feeling of having water flow through the slits in his chest, how exposed and vulnerable it made him feel. How it gave him a glaring weakness that could be easily exploited.
“Just open up your gills, and let the water drain out. It’s that simple.”
Damian sputtered. “What did you say?”
Danny shrugged, like he was explaining grade school mathematics to a two-year-old. “Like this.”
Danny’s gills flapped open. It was only from years of stoic training that Damian did not gag at the sight of Danny’s pale flesh revealed underneath his aquatic breathing apparatus. His eyes trailed to his own set of gills.
“Is there another way?” Damian was not avoiding this issue, nor was he ‘procrastinating’ as Richard would insipidly suggest. He was merely searching for a more optimal alternative.
“We’re sea creatures, Damian. I consider myself lucky for being able to not drown in air at all.”
Damian swallowed the lump in his throat. He was the son of Batman and Talia Al Ghul. He could face this. Being unable to breathe above water would make him a liability on this journey. He had to push through.
Damian prepared to resurface, gathering his nerves.
“Just relax. You can do it, Damian. It’ll be as easy as breathing.”
Encouraged by the prospect of not hearing any more puns, Damian pushed his upper half over the surface. Accordingly, Danny also pushed closer. This high over the water, Damian wobbled as his body adjusted to his weight in the air.
The pressure started to mount on his chest. Damian focused on the slits between his ribs, on the alien feeling of wind blowing into them and hitting exposed flesh. He squinted his eyes and tried to push the water out through his gills. He flexed and contracted his arms and stomach, searching for the unconscious switch in his brain that could activate the write muscles.
It was too much. He went under again.
“This is proving more difficult than I had anticipated.” Damian huffed, chest heaving from strain.
“I can tell.” At Damian’s glare, the older boy raised his hands in defense. “Hey, you looked legit constipated up there. I was starting to worry you’d actually make a mess of yourself. Now, like I said, all you need to do is-”
Damian hissed at the older boy’s mockery. “I can take care of myself. I need no advice to do something as simple as breathing. Thank you.”
Damian glared at the surface, the invisible barrier between this world and the old one, and redoubled his efforts. The pressure came back. Damian twisted his body and nerves, but he couldn’t get a single gasp of air in. He sank. He re-emerged, he suffocated again. Each time Damian pushed himself further, only to be met with the same difficulty. Each time left him sorer, more cramped.
Until after many an attempt, Damian slumped against Danny’s chest, scaled skin warm despite the cold, deep-sea looking appearance. His muscles turned to jelly, even as he feebly pushed against the older boy’s scales for another attempt.
The young siren felt soft hands wrap around his waist. Damian tried to push away, to wiggle out. Danny’s chest vibrated with a low him, and it was like his strings were cut, and Damian’s resistance ceased. All he could do was mutter weakly.
“What are you doing?”
Danny surfaced, arms keeping Damian under, until they began to pull him up too. Damian’s heart accelerated. He could not stop the frightened chitters forcing their way out. His fins went rigid. Was this it? Did Phantom finally lose his patience, and decide Damian was no longer worth the effort? This was bad. He needed to escape and he needed to escape yesterday.
But as Damian began to struggle, the rumbling vibrations from the elder’s chest intensified, and the small boy went limp again. His muscles, sore from exertion and rendered even weaker by the strange biological signal, refused to move. All he could do was tilt his head away, trying to delay the inevitable. Helplessly, he watched the surface creep closer and closer, until he went over.
Damian waited for his death. In his prayers, he apologised to Father, to Richard, even to Drake, for everything. In this moment, as tears pricked his eyes as he was helpless but to drown in fresh, oxygen-rich air, Damian resigned himself.
The pressure did not come.
His chest tingled. Pinpricks poked the skin and outer scales, and along the lining of his gills. Water ran down his chest and over his abdomen. Damian blinked, and looked down.
His gills were open, fully open, gaping wide and exposing his insides for the world to see, but they were open. And water flowed out of them, emptying his lungs. Damian gasped, and felt sweet relief as cold, burning, fresh air finally filtered into his body. His body wracked from the sweet release, chest struggling to accommodate the big greedy gulps he took.
“And now you shut them, keep the air going out the other way.”
Damian nodded glumly. That he could manage. A swift motion, and the flaps of scales and skin shut tightly, leaving only thin lines on his body to suggest that he ever had gills in the first place.
For a moment, he felt human. Even as he actively commanded his breaths, he felt more like a normal human again than he had in the last 48 hours.
“T-thank you.” Damian said, cursing the weakness in his voice. Not to mention how it sounded completely different now, travelling through water instead of air. It was unnerving, but he couldn’t place why. He felt too tired for more riddles about his body. “You have saved me a great inconvenience.”
Danny quietly chuckled. “It was literally what I told you. You need to loosen your muscles to get the water out. This whole time you’ve been all tight and wound up like a spring lock. Dude I think you even sleep all locked up too. That can’t be healthy.”
Sleep was when you were at your most vulnerable. Any threat could walk by and do with you whatever they pleased. In his life, there would be danger at every turn. It was a sentiment he’d expressed to the others in his family when they too voiced the same concerns.
He would never be safe in this life.
A finger poked his cheek. Damian snapped his teeth at the infantilizing gesture, only for it to retreat back just as quickly. He turned around and looked up, muscles no longer rendered limp by the subjugating vibrations.
Danny pointed to the sky, a soft smile on his face.
“It’s a good night to stargaze, isn’t it?” A comet whizzed by in the night, a streak of white trailing behind it, like an artist’s brush across a canvas. Now that he could breathe again, Damian felt an overwhelming sense of calm again, treading water and watching the stars shine.
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