Chapter 7

Danny didn’t remember much about the walk home. He didn’t once lightning jump. He couldn’t find the strength. It wasn’t from the cold field or the blasts of ice, though those had hurt—so much. But as always, Danny healed, wiping away any trace that he’d been hurt except for the pain so potent and deep inside of him he could barely breathe.

It was all his fault. Mal was right about everything. His reflection was right. He was a monster, the same as Thanatos. Andre, all the others, they just told Danny what he wanted to hear because they didn’t want to believe he could be as cruel as the villain they’d once faced. But even when Danny made his plan against Mal, he’d thought of Thanatos, how he’d hurt Danny; how Danny wanted to hurt someone else the same way.

Now, he’d tried to make it right, but he couldn’t. Some things couldn’t be fixed after they were broken. He couldn’t save his mother. He couldn’t save Rick. He couldn’t hold back from taking a life he could have spared. He couldn’t even show kindness to someone who loved him.

“Hey, Danny, back from the station already?” Joey asked when Danny entered the house, studying at the table in the living room.

Danny smiled—and it should have been the hardest smile he’d ever mustered, but he was so numb, he didn’t even feel the strain. “Yeah. We’re gonna regroup tomorrow. Lots for me to think about. I’ll just be up in my room, okay? Call me down for dinner later?”

“Sure.” Joey nodded but scrunched his nose as he looked at Danny. “Do you need anything? Maybe I can help brainstorm about Hades.”

“Thanks, Joey. I appreciate it, but…maybe tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay…”

When Danny got up the stairs, he locked his door, took off his jacket, then his clothes down to his underwear, and crawled under the covers. He set his phone on the nightstand, and after a few minutes, it blinked at him.

Checking the message, he saw that it was from Andre.

Hey, man. How’d it go?

Danny didn’t realize half an hour passed while he stared at his phone until it buzzed again.

I’m gonna take your silence for either very bad news or very good. And if it’s the latter, I definitely don’t need details.

He would have appreciated Andre’s try for humor any other day. Any other time. Or maybe he wouldn’t have. Lately, there wasn’t ‘any other’ anything, there was just this. This emptiness that was sometimes anger, and sometimes sadness, and always like he was hollowed out from the inside because something was wrong with him. Something was missing that should have been there, some fundamental part of being human that he used to have, used to understand, but it was gone now and he didn’t know how to get it back.

He’d thought hurting someone would help. What more proof did he need to know he was broken? Later, as he started to fall for Mal, he’d thought maybe his nemesis could help him fit the pieces back together. Danny couldn’t even blame Ludgate for how everything ended. He’d had his chance with Mal, and he’d ruined it all on his own.

His phone buzzed again.

Danny?

A few more minutes passed before it buzzed one more time.

Let me know if you need anything, okay?

Setting his phone back on the nightstand, Danny played over in his head again and again how things had gone at Mal’s apartment, tried to think if there was anything different he could have said, but all the practice he and Andre had gone through hadn’t prepared him for Mal already knowing the awful truth. There was no way to defend himself because there was nothing to defend.

He’d realized he loved Mal just in time to lose him.

Danny stared at the mirrors in his room for hours. At his cell phone on the nightstand. At his bottle of pills next to that. What bullshit. How could they work when he kept doing things worth feeling terrible about? It would be easier to take them all…

“Dinner, Danny! You in there?” came a knock at the door.

Somehow the whole day had gone by. Danny didn’t want to move, but he knew if he tried to hide, his family would just try harder to help him. And he loved them for that, but he didn’t want that tonight. He didn’t deserve any help.

So he called out, “Just finishing something, Dad! I’ll be right there!”

He dressed in comfortable clothes, pulled on a smile, and passed the rest of the evening as if he wasn’t empty and screaming inside. They even watched a movie after dinner, something Danny couldn’t recall the name of afterward, though he’d laughed along whenever John and Joey did.

When it ended, he headed up to bed early, told them he had to get back to work thinking up ways to bring in Ludgate and disrupt his abilities. It was easy to lie when he could use Andre’s trick with fogging the mirrors as an excuse.

“Yeah, he’s testing something and was gonna call me later. We just need to work out a few kinks. I’ll probably head to the precinct again tomorrow.”

“Okay, Danny. Have a good night.”

“Night, Dad. Joey.”

He kept his clothes on this time when he crawled into bed, wanting to be warmer. His mind couldn’t stop replaying how easily Mal had blasted him. How much he’d deserved that too. It made him shiver to remember and burrow under his covers all the more deeply.

When he lay there for hours again and couldn’t sleep, he snatched up his bottle of pills. He’d taken the others in the morning, but it was night now. It shouldn’t matter if he took another, right? Maybe if they made him feel even mildly better, he’d be able to sleep.

He took one.

Half an hour later, he took another.

Finally, around midnight, he fell asleep. He slept hard until his alarm went off and wondered if it was because of the extra pills. Of course he knew he shouldn’t take more than Lynn had told him, but at least he’d actually slept.

It wasn’t his alarm that had woken him though. He hadn’t set his alarm. His phone was ringing.

“H’lo?”

“Grant?”

Danny was instantly awake. “Captain Shan! Yes, sir…what is it?” The captain never called him at home, especially not on his cell phone, unless it was an emergency. Danny threw the covers back and sat up on the edge of his bed. It was 9:30.

“I need you to come in. This morning. Now.” His words were clipped, rough and commanding—which wasn’t unusual, but there was something tight at the edge of his tone.

“Captain?” It was Sunday. Not that Danny had never gone in on a Sunday, but something was definitely wrong. “Did something happen?”

“Can’t discuss it over the phone, Grant. Get in here, in my office, as soon as you can.” It started off with the usual impatience, but there was almost a note of pleading at the end, of trepidation.

“Of course, sir. I’ll be right there. Ten minutes.”

“Ten? You already on your way in?”

“Uhh…” Sometimes Danny forgot that a normal person would take at least a half an hour, if not more, to get across town. “Yeah! Had some work I wanted to check on. I’m only a few blocks away.”

“Good. See me in my office first thing.”

“Yes, sir—” Danny started, but Shan had already hung up.

Shit. What was that about? Maybe a break in the Ludgate case? Maybe Ludgate had robbed some other location while Danny sat moping at home all night.

He immediately checked his phone for other messages. Nothing about any cases, no Zeus SOS’s, just another text from Andre about twenty minutes ago.

Please tell me you’re alive.

Which was funny—but also not. Because with Danny’s night job, there always was that chance that not hearing from him meant he was in serious trouble. He texted Andre back, Alive. Not okay. Can’t talk now, have to see Shan. I’ll check in when I’m done.

Without waiting for Andre’s response, Danny took a five minute shower and dashed down the stairs, where John and Joey were eating breakfast.

“Hey, we were just about to wake you—”

“Sorry, Dad, gotta run to the station.”

“Already—”

“I’ll explain later.” Danny stole a few pieces of toast and a banana in a blur. “Sorry! Bye!” he called before lightning jumping out of the house.

He arrived as he usually did when having to sneak to the station with his powers, around the back where it was easy to collect himself, then walk out of the alley and in through the front doors like everybody else. Clutching his messenger bag and bypassing the few people in the station early on a Sunday morning, he headed straight for the captain’s office.

“Sir?” Danny knocked on the partially open door as he stuck his head inside.

Shan’s face was stony but also drawn with something like disappointment, unlike the usual way he looked at Danny when he was exasperated with him. “Close the door, Grant.”

Danny did so and moved to sit in one of the chairs in front of Shan’s desk. “You’re worrying me a little, Captain. Is everything okay?”

Shan didn’t crack even the barest smile. He held a manila folder in his hands. “I received an anonymous package this morning. Do you know what was in it?”

“No, sir,” Danny frowned. It was too early in the day for him to even guess.

A sigh slipped from Shan’s lips as he slapped the folder down in front of Danny. “This.”

Peering at it, Danny saw no markings. It wasn’t a case file. Understanding that he was expected to open it, he slowly did so and felt sick the moment he saw what was inside.

It was a photograph. A still from security footage. From inside Mal’s apartment.

If it had been any other shot, any other time, Danny would have thought it was Ludgate who sent the picture. But this was from yesterday. This was of the exact moment when Mal had Danny pinned to the door, holding him tight and kissing him roughly while Danny clung desperately to him in return.

Mal had sent the photo. He’d kissed Danny just for this moment—to capture proof of Danny Grant harboring a felon.

“You’re suspended,” Shan’s voice broke into the haze of Danny’s downward spiral. “Pending investigation.”