Chapter 5

Danny had told himself that if Cho ever said he loved him, that would be the end of it, that would be the moment he broke the man’s heart. Then it happened. And Danny lost it. He ran—again.

He was such a fucking coward.

He’d had his con thrown back in his face, and instead of coming clean in that moment, Danny had left Cho naked and alone on his bed. He hadn’t slept at all that night. Now that it was morning, he didn’t want to get out of bed, even though he had promised to meet Andre at the precinct.

John called him for breakfast. Even Joey peeked his head in. But Danny said he wanted to be lazy today and sleep a little longer.

“Save me some breakfast, okay? Just been a long week.”

Bundled in his covers, he lay there staring at his reflection in his closet mirrors. He didn’t know how to fix this. His life was a joke. A shambled wreck. And he’d made the mess all on his own.

A flicker of black in Danny’s eyes made him jolt upright in bed. But as he stared harder at his reflection, he didn’t see it again. Either Ludgate was messing with him or he was losing his mind. Losing himself…

He clenched his eyes shut. “Reflections aren’t real. Ludgate is real. Just Ludgate. The rest is only in my head.”

“You so sure about that, Danny?”

A jolt of fear shot through Danny as his eyes sprung open. His reflection looked normal, but that had definitely been his voice.

Climbing off the bed, he walked slowly toward the mirrors with a fierce glare. “I know that’s you, Ludgate. Hades. You can’t fool me. You want to fight, then fight me. Kill me. But I won’t let you into my head again. I am not that reflection. I’m not.”

The only warning he got was the way his reflection suddenly smirked.

Danny surged backwards.

“Oh really?” his reflection said, dressed in the same underwear and T-shirt. “Well if you’re not like me, then how come you didn’t tell Cho the truth last night? Afraid it’ll tarnish your perfect image if your villain finds out you play dirtier than he does?”

Stomach twisting, Danny willed himself to be angry instead of afraid and stood his ground.

“You haven’t even confessed the truth to your friends and family,” his own voice from his own sneering face continued. “They all defend you because they don’t know how low you’ve sunk. Would Andre still pat you on the back and tell you you’re nothing like Thanatos if he knew the truth?”

“Shut up.” Danny clenched his fists tighter. “I know I was wrong about Cho. I know that. And I’m going to fix it.”

“Yes. You definitely seem to be leaping to the task, don’t you?” His reflection eyed him up and down. “You’re already a murderer, so what’s a little heartbreak compared to killing Thanatos in cold blood?”

“Shut up.”

“Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe your friends will band together to help you win Cho’s heart. Oh that’s right,” he grinned as he tilted his head at Danny, “you already won it. You just decided to crush it into the dirt.”

“Shut up!”

“Danny?”

Spinning toward the door, Danny was petrified to see John standing there when Ludgate could attack at any moment—

But when he swung back around to look in the mirror, his reflection was just him. No distortion or change. Just him.

“Everything okay?” John asked more seriously as he entered the room.

Danny honestly didn’t know. It had to be Ludgate. It had to be Ludgate. He wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t turning into his reflection. That he even needed to say that to himself sounded so insane. But if it was Ludgate and he knew everything about Danny’s plan against Cho and the truth about what happened with Thanatos…what was he going to do with that information? He had to be setting Danny up, but for what?

Danny needed to talk to Andre. He was the only other person who knew almost everything, the only one who would understand. He’d vouched for Cho. He’d know what to do.

“Danny…” John appeared in the reflection beside him and placed a hesitant hand on his shoulder.

Snapping to attention, Danny turned to face his father. “Sorry, Dad. I fell back asleep and had a bad dream. You know they’re always worse when you’re right on the edge of waking.” He smiled but didn’t try too hard to make it real. “I’m okay. Just trying to shake off the nightmare. Really. I should head out to meet Andre. We have to come up with a plan to take care of Ludgate.”

“If you’re sure, kiddo. But breakfast first, okay?” John pointed a parental finger at him as if Danny was still a teenager; sometimes, still living at home, he felt like one.

“Deal,” Danny said.

He held his smile until the moment John left, then frowned as he looked at his reflection again. No motion he made or whispered word he threw at it caused the imposter to resurface. Danny resigned himself to getting dressed and heading out to meet the day.

Before going downstairs, he reached for his bottle of pills. He held three in his hand for a solid minute before he finally put the third one back and took only two.

R

After downing a hasty breakfast, Danny lightning jumped to the alley behind the precinct so he could stop at his office before heading to the basement. Food and his pills had him feeling marginally better. If he explained things to Andre, maybe that would make confessing to Cho that much easier. Maybe Andre would have some insight on how to do it.

Maybe Andre would never want to look at him again after finding out what a low and dirty bastard Danny had been these past several weeks. Killing Thanatos had been an act of passion, they often told him. What was his excuse now? Maybe he’d just been showing his true colors...

Slowing his steps, Danny occupied himself with smoothing down his sweater and avoiding meeting gazes with any of the officers he passed. Looking down was easier than looking around him. Every so often along the hallways there was a window or surface that held a little too much reflection. Sometimes he thought he saw a flicker of shadow. Sometimes he was certain it was just his imagination. Sometimes he felt like he was being watched. And the worst part was he didn’t know which feelings were the truth. Ludgate had power over him whether he was really there or not.

“Hey, Danny, you’re late,” Andre’s voice startled Danny as he reached his office only to find Andre there instead of down in the morgue. He sat at Danny’s desk with coffee and a grin on his face. But as Danny opened his mouth to respond, Andre raised a hand. “Hold that thought.”

After pressing a button on Danny’s computer, every reflective surface, every bit of glass, every window, fogged over like they’d been frosted or covered in paint. Danny stared at the small window in his door in awe. Nothing. No reflection.

“Andre…”

“Don’t get too excited. It’s not a device you can take anywhere you want—not yet. But I could definitely set up something like this in the morgue, maybe your house, and anywhere else we might need, and if we decide to build something to lure Ludgate out—”

“This is fantastic, Andre. Amazing.” Danny never realized how much relief he could feel just from no longer seeing his reflection. “How did you create something like this?”

“Hours of working on The Invisible Man with technochromes and harnessing light, that’s how. All I needed was a smaller room to test out my theory, but give me the weekend and I’ll have the whole morgue locked down.” Rolling his chair back a couple of inches, Andre spread his arms wide. “Give me some love. Who’s the best?”

“You are the best, Andre,” Danny said unabashedly. “Thank you.”

Andre shrugged with mock modesty and grabbed his coffee as he vacated Danny’s chair. “So. What’s with the late arrival? You didn’t do patrol last night, so I figured…Cho?”

Danny’s nausea returned full force.

“Whoa, dude, relax.” Instantly, Andre’s smile vanished. “I am so not belittling your romance. It’s just you said you hadn’t broken things off yet, so I thought maybe you changed your mind. Not that I’m trying to side with Cho here, it’s your decision, your love life—”

“Andre.” Danny didn’t mean for his voice to crack, but every time he thought he had a handle on things, the worst of it rushed to the forefront of his mind again and he felt like he was drowning.

“Danny…what? Tell me.”

The words flooded out of Danny like a wave, “He told me he loved me.” He hadn’t known where to begin, but apparently that was it.

“He…seriously? He said the words? Prometheus said ‘I love you’?”

Danny nodded numbly.

“Mazel tov?” Andre shrugged. “Danny, why does being told he loves you make you look like he killed your cat?”

“Because,” Danny said, steeling himself for what he’d planned to confess when he headed there that morning, “I’ve been lying to him since day one.”

R

Parking his bike in an alley a couple blocks from the downtown OCPD precinct, Mal wore his glasses and had his hair tucked into his hat—but not a ball cap today. He had a police hat and uniform on that he kept handy for moments just like this. Not that he snuck into precincts regularly, but a convincing costume was useful when he needed to blend in as a wolf among sheep.

He headed toward the precinct like he belonged there and kept his head only slightly bowed. Mal couldn’t be sure if Danny was even at the station, but if not, Vaughn might be around at least. Maybe he’d feel generous and give Mal a line on Danny after their rapport the other night.

Mal had to confront this head on. Insist to Danny that they were going to talk. That’s all he’d ask for—that they talk. If the conclusion of their conversation was that Danny didn’t return Mal’s feelings, so be it. Mal could be the bigger man. He didn’t think he could be ‘friends’ with Danny after what they’d been through. Couldn’t go back to just screwing. Couldn’t continue as they were, always knowing that Danny didn’t want him as deeply as Mal did. But he wouldn’t leave Danny high and dry with Ludgate. That bastard deserved what he got.

Getting through the door and past the main array of desks was easy. Mal knew where Danny’s office was, tucked into the corner of the building, down several hallways, near the CSI lab. The station was buzzing, but those hallways were all but deserted as Mal made his way to Danny’s door.

As he neared the office, he could faintly hear Danny and Vaughn’s voices and decided to push onward faster so he wouldn’t get distracted. He’d interrupt whatever they were doing and—

An odd flicker of movement drew Mal’s attention, and he faltered in his steps. Glancing aside, his reflection was dimly displayed in a window along the wall. For a moment, he’d sworn it hadn’t been in step with him.

Mal waved his hand, just to be sure he hadn’t imagined things. His reflection moved with him.

Ludgate had him all kinds of paranoid.

Continuing at a slower pace, he listened to be sure Danny and Vaughn were alone. For the first time, he wanted to do right by someone. Sure, some of his motivations were still selfish, because he wanted Danny and everything they’d shared these past few weeks. But he also wanted it for Danny’s sake, to see the kid smile without darkness hiding in the depths of his eyes.

“Danny, why does being told he loves you make you look like he killed your cat?”

Mal came to a stop just outside the entrance. They were talking about him.

“Because,” Danny said, “I’ve been lying to him from day one.”

R

Hades had to commend Andre. His little trick was very unfortunate. He couldn’t get into any of the reflections in Zeus’s office while that projection was on. But he could still overhear things well enough from the hallway, enough that he had been able to stall Prometheus for just the right amount of time.

He had a clear view of Prometheus’s face as the man’s expression dropped at Zeus’s words. All Hades had to do now was sit back and enjoy the show.

R

“I set him up,” Danny said, causing Mal to train his ear closer. “When I overheard him and Lucy talking about me in Pronto, about him wanting me, I was so angry. All the feelings that had been rushing through me when I fought Camouflage surged up again, and I just wanted to…hurt someone. I figured, why did it have to be physical? Why not hurt someone like I’d been hurt? Thanatos used me for entertainment. Cho used me to get what he wanted but wasn’t there when I needed him. I just wanted someone I could use back.”

Falling against the wall of the hallway, Mal felt the blood drain from his face even as he told himself he wasn’t hearing this.

“Suddenly there was my opportunity. I needed release, something to distract me, to make me feel good, and Cho, well, he is easy on the eyes,” Danny gave a short, cruel laugh. “Now I knew he was interested. So I approached him, caught his attention, and all the while I had a plan. It was a game. To make him want me. Make him fall for me. Make him love me. So I could throw him away when I was done and make him feel used and betrayed like he’d done to me.”

The voice of Mal’s father echoed in his head. No one will ever love a waste of space like you.

“I wanted to hurt him. To break him. To teach him a lesson”—Mal shuddered—“And it was so easy. To act the right way. The way I thought he’d want. To say the right things. To give and take just enough to leave him wanting more. Make him hungry for it. Even beg me for it.”

“Danny…” Vaughn finally spoke, a disbelieving gasp of Danny’s name that startled Mal back to reality.

He was going to be sick all over the floor. He had to get out of there. He was such a fool, such a god damn fucking idiot.

“I hated him for abandoning me with Thanatos,” Danny said, just to further twist the knife, when Danny had said only last night that he understood, that he forgave him. “For what he was. What he represented. And it justified everything.”

Mal pushed from the wall with such force that he fell forward into the other side and slammed his already wounded and bandaged fist against it before he took off down the hallway.

R

A bang caused Danny to whip his head toward his door.

“Danny, dude, you—”

“Hang on.” Danny walked swiftly to the entrance of his office with a strange buzzing feeling in his gut that something was very, very wrong. He placed his hand on the doorframe, but when he peered around to look down the hallway, no one was there, just the blur of a uniformed officer hurrying around the corner.

“Danny?” Andre called after him.

He really was losing his mind. As he walked back to Andre, he looked down at his hands and realized how tightly he’d been clenching his fists, having left half-moon indents in his palms almost deep enough to draw blood.

“You did all that just to make Cho suffer?”

“Yes.”

“Shit, man, that’s…”

“Awful? Disgusting?”

“Not like you.”

Danny looked up and Andre’s repulsion might have been coated in pity, but it didn’t make anything better. “But it is like me. I wanted to hurt someone, Andre. Like what Thanatos did to me. I wanted to be the one in control, the one pulling someone else’s strings. God…I’m just like him.”

“You’re not—”

“But I am.” Danny clenched his fists again, uncaring to how much it hurt. “And Thanatos knew it. He knew he’d break me. And he did. He got exactly what he wanted when I killed him. He knew I’d end up bitter and angry and even worse than he was.”

“Danny, Thanatos was crazy—”

“And it’s somehow better that I’m not?” Danny snapped.

But Andre didn’t flinch or back down at yet again being cut off. “No, Danny. It’s awful, what you were going to do. It’s really awful. But you know that. And you stopped yourself before going through with it. It doesn’t make things better, it doesn’t make it okay, but it’s a start. You know you’ve been the bad guy and you hate yourself for it. You’ve been hating yourself this whole time. You ever stop to think that maybe the reason you’ve been so wrecked lately is because you’re acting out of character?”

Danny opened his mouth to speak but no words formed. He’d been feeling fractured and torn apart for months, and all he’d done since then was pull at his seams that much harder.

“Do you love Cho? Or do you just feel guilty for using him?”

Gentle hands touched Danny’s closed fists and he blinked at how close Andre was, his grey eyes looking up at Danny in concern. Slowly, Danny let his fists loosen. “Everything’s different now. I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with him back. But I…did. I do. I love him. What am I supposed to do now, Andre? I have to tell him the truth.”

Andre’s face scrunched in sympathy. “Okay. But if you love him, then you need to tell him that too. It’s not gonna be easy for him to hear this. You gotta put it the right way. But I think once you come clean, you’ll finally start feeling like yourself again. And then, I promise, things will get easier. You’ll see.” He smiled encouragingly. “Now come on, screw Ludgate for the rest of the morning. Let’s practice what you’re gonna say to Cho. Then you can go talk to him.”

Danny laughed in relief at how understanding his friend was being. “Thank you. You’re right. I don’t want to lose him. I love him.”

He loved Cho—Mal—and he was going to tell him. He was going to make this right.

R

Mal felt like he was slowly suffocating until he exited the precinct and breathed the outside air. He covered the few blocks to the alley where he’d parked his bike so quickly, he barely noticed his surroundings. Shaking and too hot and fighting for breath, he reared back and kicked his bike over with a crash.

He’d been conned. Duped. Taken for a fool. And he’d practically handed himself over on a platter, he’d been so easy to manipulate. All this time Mal had been so certain that Danny was some untouchable good in the world. But he was just like everybody else.

No one used Malcolm Cho. No one did this to him. No one made him feel like…

With a final sharp intake of breath, Mal cracked his neck to the side and let his fists relax. He picked up his bike, replaced the police hat for his helmet, and drove out of the alley, leaving everything about the past few weeks behind him.

He was going to be ready the next time Zeus came to see him, and he was going to make him pay.