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renvy-art · 10 months ago

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bechdel test failed (aka your only friend is your enemy)

happy truce @renvy-art!! of course i’m that bitch about valerie so of course of course i had to go with prompt 3: “sam and valerie talk after valerie finds out about danny.” so here it is, and i hope you enjoy it!!

six hours in a robot fursuit would be enough to stoke the homicidal tendencies in anyone, but valerie gray ran hot to begin with. even so, she hadn’t meant to do this to danny. well. not to this danny.

[cross-posted to ao3]

she’d got him fucking good, for what it was worth. he wasn’t dead, any more than was apparently his usual, but his breathing skipped and stuttered like a scraped-up cd. his heartbeat was uneven, and he dripped thick and blackening blood across the mercifully vacant pavement.

the trip across town gave her time to look at danny, at the gentle and boyish look his pale face held when he wasn’t at school shrinking away from bullies or in the streets punning at ghosts. it gave her time to wish she hadn’t beamed him with a sniper blast in the open wound. or that she’d recognized that zigzag path as his lurching escape from the aftermath of a battle that he – heroically – had resolved. or that she’d gotten closer before she hit him – or that she’d talked to him before she targeted him – or that she’d looked into those green eyes and recognized how the curve of phantom’s lids belonged to the same boy who’d been her ill-received crush in chemistry class a year ago…

the trip across town gave her time to realize, truly and acutely in the depth of her soul, that there was no world in which this would have ended any differently.

fucking fenton.

valeries’s fists slammed against the panes of manson’s window. she was setting up some macabre display in veneration of the dead, which seemed to valerie like overki – like a stupid thing to do in a town where literal ghosts made merry in the streets. heavy metal blared all the way to the neighbors’, a good distance since the mansons’ property was immense. valerie extended her metallic suit over her elbow and smacked it against the glass – wham wham wham wham wham until sam looked up.

to her credit, it took only a second of widening eyes for sam to jump up, cursing in pantomime, and throw the window open. “pass him in.” valerie slid her hoverboard, danny dangling across it, through the window and climbed in herself.

she was prepared for cacophony, but she realized immediately that sam’s public disturbance speakers were focused outward, not just soundproofing the room from sam’s parents but providing an alibi. valerie could hear every syllable sam muttered under her breath as she whipped the tablecloth off her desk, her goth trinkets wrapped inside it.

it turned out sam’s desk doubled as an operating table, and beneath that desk were six first-aid kits labeled in ghost script. while valerie manhandled danny onto the table and cut his shirt off him, sam laid the six containers out on a side table and clicked opened each in succession. a stethoscope. trauma shears. a set of awkward asymmetrical needles, no two identical, and thread that looked like fishing line. bandages whose dyed-black tint didn’t mask their glow. a defibrilator. each tool was so acid green they almost triggered valerie’s automatic gun mechanism. and in the penultimate case, jar upon jar of differing viscosities of glittering ectoplasm.

sam snapped on latex gloves and valerie let herself be jostled out of the way so doctor manson could take a look. sam prodded gently at the leaking wound, opening it wider while antiseptic light beamed from a carefully disguised desk lamp.

valerie felt like her body was grounded in place. she could not take her eyes off this wound. penetrative trauma on his right side, twelve centimeters deep, piercing straight through his liver. to top it off, third-degree burns in a radius of six centimeters wide and some four centimeters deep at the same point of incision; his entire side was charred and exposed and sloughing sooty viscera. she’d done that, that last part. that one was from her. sam prodded it at the injuries with her gloved fingers and a silvery tongue depressor and valerie stayed out of her light.

a moment later, sam sighed. she tossed her head to throw her fringe out of her eyes. “oh, danny,” she muttered to herself, tracing one press-on nail over her first-aid kits and selecting items with crisp precision. “this was not what i meant when i said you should get a stick-and-poke.”

valerie’s eyes slid to the girl at her left, incredulous.

sam didn’t seem to notice her simmering, humming along with her music and inspecting danny’s wound. she snorted.

“geez, valerie. couldn’t you have shot him somewhere other than where skulker got his hooks in?”

“sam, don’t fucking start with me.”

fuck. fuck, okay. she hadn’t meant to go there, right, not while danny was losing his guts on manson’s worktop. but also fuck it. valerie’s subconscious knew her better than she did, and it knew that there was shit that needed to be aired out. if danny was going to be okay, and sam’s demeanor communicated that he was, then why hold onto ‘till tomorrow what you could blow the lid off today.

sam seemed to be of the same mind. she huffed an irritated breath and threw a look in valerie’s direction. “and what is that supposed to mean?”

valerie pointed to the ashen boy on the table. “it means that this boy let me chase him up and down the city for who remember how long. and he never ain’t told me he was human? and somebody i know? someone i thought i was friends with – ”

“oh, so you’re mad at danny when you’re the one who just tried to kill him. when he is bleeding out on my desk – ”

“how’s i supposed to know i could have killed him when he ain’t never told me he was alive?”

“how was he supposed to tell you when you’re constantly trying to kill him?”

“he’s a ghost! – ” valerie strangled her own voice and dug her nails into her palm. “he’s a ghost. i’m a ghost hunter. what else did he think he was gone get?”

“oh, sure,” sam scoffed, rolling her eyes so hard her whole head rolled with them. “it’s always ‘shoot first, ask questions later.’”

zero to one hundred on a gas-burning stove. valerie stalked toward sam’s open closet. “hey, what are you – ”

valerie had clocked the awkwardly-stashed pastel givenchy as a hiding place for something the moment she’d stepped in the room, and soon as she’d shoved it to the side, sure enough, a false wall revealed itself. she yanked on the panel and out spilled a veritable trove of ectoweapons, bright and bold and garish in fentonworks green. sam’s protests died on her lips as valerie fixed her with a pointed stare, lips pursed hard enough to bruise.

sam’s expression morphed from startled, to ever-so-briefly shamed, to sardonic. “point taken, valerie,” she drawled. “now could you please put my stuff back.”

valerie returned the ectoweapons to the crawl space. hand-blasters and net-slingers and things she couldn’t quite parse that she set aside to take back home with her. these were models from some years ago, made well out of date in a relatively sort time. these must have been stolen from the fentons – who wouldn’t think twice about something being there one day and gone the next – one at a time over the course of years.

sam had kept at her steady work putting danny back together, even while she and valerie had thrown those few jibes. she’d wiped his torso with a damp towel first, then several antiseptic wipes; now she cleaned it out with what was probably distilled water, if it wasn’t some sort of ghost zone ghost water or something the like. with the last of the blood washed away, the chunk taken out of danny’s torso was charred and vivid and exposed. valerie cringed.

sam appeared unbothered, squinting at the wound with intention, but numb to the gore of it. how many times had she stitched him up like this? valerie could picture it easily – the two of them phasing into sam’s room through the wall, danny easing onto her desk, making some dumb joke to cover up a wince. now that it had been exposed to her, it was all too easy to imagine danny’s jokes in phantom’s voice, deployed as a way to distance himself from the pain he was in. to play the hero. how many times had it been one of her blasts that had sent him here?

sam replaced her gloves, tossing the old ones into a biohazard bucket by her feet. she extracted a jar of ectoplasm from first aid kit number four; with the lid unscrewed, the green glow lit her face from the chin. she applied it thickly onto danny’s injury and there was a chilling suck as the ectoplasm moved on its own, burrowing deep inside that gaping hole within him. excess fluid leaked away from the site, turned a watery and rancid pickle color. sam dabbed it away and valerie glimpsed the pink flesh of one of danny’s inner organs, wholly restored. sam trickled water into danny’s mouth and waited while he reflexively swallowed it.

“y’all could have told me,” valerie said quietly. “danny’s my friend. and y’all made me the villain of the week.”

sam paused, for the first time. she remarked valerie with a look that contained some measure of shame beneath its frosty surface. “for what it’s worth,” she said in a low voice, “he doesn’t tell anybody. if tucker and i hadn’t been there during the accident, i doubt he’d have even told us.”

“so it’s just y’all two that know?”

“and jazz,” sam said, “and one other person.” sam’s tone was guarded, and valerie acquiesced. she’d poke at it someday, but for now it didn’t matter. probably. as sam spread a lotiony ectoplasm over danny, she added, “both of them found out by accident, too.”

“so he just let me beat up on him for months. i could have killed that idiot.” she had the feeling she was repeating herself, and she had the feeling it wouldn’t be the last time.

“val, join the club,” sam said, unimpressed. “every ghost and every ghost hunter in the world beats up on danny. and you hate phantom more than any of them. if danny was going to reveal his identity to anyone, he definitely wouldn’t start with you.”

“fuck you,” valerie said quietly. sam’s head snapped up so quick you could hear the ice in her veins crackle.

“wh – fuck me?” sam asked, aghast.

why did valerie always lash out when she felt hurt? and then, despite a moment’s shame – that was, a moment’s regret, why was it so easy to justify herself to herself and to settle into righteous anger like a second skin?

“fuck you,” sam was sputtering. “what gives you the right to be self-righteous when you’re the reason he’s in this condition in the first – ”

valerie shook her head. “no. no, if i’m the reason, you’s the reason. you think ‘phantom’ saves this town – ”

“danny.” sam was rigid, and holding that wonky ghost needle in her hand. valerie grimaced; she’d heard the reflexive derision in her own voice at the ghost boy’s name but fuck the details for now because she knew what she was about. something had become clear to her in an instant, and as the notion dropped into her mind, fully formed as though whispered into her ear, she voiced it. she stepped up to sam, stopping just shy of getting in her face.

“i save this town.” sam scowled down her nose, disgust and distaste wrinkling her skin. “i’m the reason amity park ain’t a smoking crater. i clean this shit up by myself, but danny brings his ass around to every fight ‘cause he’s got a hero complex and he thinks he’s responsible for every ghost that come through here. and you,” and valerie clenched her hand into a fist to keep from smacking it against the center of sam’s chest. “you like that you’re the only one he trust with his secrets. because it makes you special.”

“oh, fuck you, valerie,” sam intoned, rolling her eyes and shoulders and body. but valerie didn’t need to see her cheeks color to know that sam knew that valerie knew the truth behind her words.

“you could have told me who he really was. but you, you, sam manson, you’d rather let me hunt him down like he’s just another ghost ‘cause you like the drama. you said it’s my fault danny got hurt today. right? but now that i know who he is, you think we gonna fight tomorrow? and if you’d told me the truth last year, you think we’d still be fighting today? of course not. so what’s what with that? whose fault is it we in this situation?”

sam’s expression was almost wonderingly disgusted. she scoffed, building up some dismissal, seconds away from claiming that she didn’t even know what valerie was talking about. but valerie’s life was making sense for the first time in a long time. truths were uncovering more truths. everything was slotting into place. she could feel her rage at the world, so long unchecked, coalescing into heat like a forge. where the fire wasn’t the weapon but the thing you used to cast the weapons. and sam’s frost was cracking melting under it.

“you fucked up, manson,” valerie hissed. “how the fuck does it help danny for y’all to leave me in the dark? so i have to watch him fall a hundred feet out the sky to know that he could even die? to know he’s a human and that he’s my friend?”

“get the fuck over yourself,” sam breathed. “you don’t know what ‘helps danny.’ you were trying to kill him.”

“manson, i was trying to kill him,” valerie repeated and gripped sam by the hands, startling her with her ferocity. “y’all three is playing with his luck. i – just imagine if i’d actually – ”

valerie flinched so hard it rocked her entire body, and sam’s, too, held in her grip. her suit, even dormant, automatically tried to check her vitals and she cursed it. that moment when she’d hit him – it had been a triumph that felt so cruel now painted over by the snap of horror from when he’d dropped and kept dropping. that flash of light she’d never seen before but that she knew was bad, bad, bad, and she was rocketing toward his lifeless body before she knew what she was doing. she had just managed to catch him before he’d collided with the ground. it had been so fucking close to being so much worse than bad.

grief hit her like a shock, and she staggered toward table and the boy laying across it. reflexively, sam steadied her.

stretched out, pale, skinny, and barely shakily breathing, danny looked so fragile. so fragile. valerie loved this boy, whatever that meant, and she had caused him so. much. pain. by the way that she had lived and the malice she’d held in her heart. the circumstances had been what they had been. and she had made the choices she had made.

“why didn’t y’all tell me? any of y’all?” valerie didn’t let go of sam’s hands.

“there was never a good time,” sam whispered. she didn’t pull away. “ghost attacks every day – i mean, you know what it’s like. and with school on top of it, and then there’s the way his family acts about ghosts, and – it felt like telling one person meant telling everyone, and…”

rambling and unclear and yet crystalline – it was all so familiar. to think that she and they had been walking on opposite sides of the same road for over a year, and that in that time all they’d managed to do was hurt each other from across that road.

“we didn’t know how you’d take it.” sam extricated one hand from valerie’s to rub the back of her neck. their expressions were complementary bitterness as sam admitted, “we didn’t know whether you could be reasoned with.”

so there it was. danny and his friends had thought, or at least they had worried – enough to let the cat-and-mouse game go on for eighteen months – that valerie hated phantom more than she cared for danny. that she hated ghosts more than she could honor another human being.

“sorry,” sam mumbled. valerie, stiff, nodded once.

“yeah. i’m sorry too.”

inadequate. all that needed to be said.

valerie surveyed the table. manson was a piles-on-the-floor type of girl, but she’d kept each item in its place here, a tidy, careful hospital in the center of chaos and gore. danny in the center of it, cared for, a simple pillow behind his head.

sam came up behind her and nodded toward the modifications to the table. “tucker designed those little caddies, and we built them in the fentons’ lab. but tuck is useless when it comes to actual medicine, so it always falls to me and jazz.”

and danny had been relying on half-complete half-human medicine administered by teenagers ever since his – accident. valerie knew the feeling.

valerie pulled on a pair of gloves. she held out her hand for the needle and thread; sam handed them to her automatically, compelled by the force of valerie’s will. though in truth, valerie hadn’t always been great around medicine herself, and to her surprise she found it harder to swallow her nerves in the face of someone else’s wounds than for her own.

“doin’ okay?” sam asked gently. valerie’s temper flashed – of course she was doing okay, and of course she wasn’t – but she quelled it.

“i’m fine. what’s a little blood between ghost hunters.” she mopped up a little of said blood with the sponge, and caught the glistening of ectoplasm in the fluids. this was real. this was danny.

she’d done her own first aid, right, stitches and bandages and serums mr. masters had delivered her that she didn’t have the energy to be skeptical of. but danny was different. he had ghostly attributes, ghostly needs that valerie’s experience didn’t equip her to accommodate – she had no idea where those other jars of ectoplasm came into the medical care, for instance.

she shifted her weight. exhaled her frustration. inhaled the acceptance that this was not going to just be the rest of her night, but the rest of her time in amity park. the rest of her time as a ghost hunter. collaborating with sam, and tucker, and jazz, and danny phantom, and with all the ghosts who’d become phantom’s allies whom valerie had pushed away. since she’d become a ghost hunter, she’d cultivated an animosity – her choices – that would take incredible work and attention to overcome. she would have to trust the others, and everything that they knew that she didn’t.

and in exchange, she’d get to share the load. she’d get to lay her grudges to rest, once danny woke up and the two of them hashed it out. she and danny could work together at school, coordinate it so that one of them could relax from time to time. they would get trust. neither of them would be alone anymore with the fate of the city. in exchange for her humility, valerie too might have sam manson’s careful hands to stitch her wounds.

“alright, manson. show me what to do.”

#WAAAAAAA this is so good !!!!!#i love seeing these two interact i love the girls of danny phantom and you did them soooo so good. waugh #thank you so so much this was such a nice read #holiday truce 2023 #danny phantom #not my art

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