Was looking for inspiration, and found this wistful battle song sung in Italy primarily during WWII, about invaders who overthrow the government and destroy the rebellious protestors.

Anyhoodle, Domination is Nimrod the Writer's. Definitely not mine. :) This piece was actually very tricky to write-much trickier than I thought it'd be, because I had a conversation with NTW that really made me re-examine Vlad's character. (Very insightful author!) This story got extended, (Mine have a funny way of doing that) and the song doesn't truly make much sense until you listen to Danny's account. Originally, the plan was just to make Danny an absolutely insane killing machine who's learned to associate pain with the heart of love, but that seemed juuusssttt a little too creepy for me at 1 in the morning. I've got no idea how this story is going to go down, folks, though I've put in foreshadowing of what I THINK could happen...of what psychology would probably dictate on a person after this much trauma. I also took a creative liberty with a scene in the last chapter in Danny's account, which you'll see in part 2, and is mentioned briefly in part 1.

Hope you all enjoy.

La vita è inferno ... O tu che in seno agli angeli!

"Life is a hell to those who are unhappy...Oh, my beloved, risen among the angels!"

Prologue: Vlad, Part I of II

"For every time you refuse a command, for every time you even think about escape, for every time you so much as make a grade lower than an A+, someone will die."

People were fragile. People broke. And could not be put back together once again. It was the simplistic nature of things that even a child could understand. Daniel had certainly understood it, judging from the terror and horror in his eyes when Vlad had cheerfully sent Kwan to an early and bloody grave. All it had taken was a careless wave of his hand to send an electric bolt enough to clock a god's heart, and that boy's blood across the walls,and across the frozen younger half ghost's trembling hands.

But it had been so very lovingly done-had been one of the man's tenderer acts in years. An act of charity, if you would.

Una mattina mi son svegliato
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao
Una mattina mi son svegliato
Eo ho trovato l'invasor

One morning I woke up
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao
One morning I woke up
And I found the invader

Wait just a moment. The murder itself had been a sweet act?

Absolutely not, though in the long run, it was most likely done for the best. Countless of idiotic teenagers had protested the rise of Vlad's glorious new empire, thinking themselves immortal; invincible. Invariably, they had all met the same fate as that stupid, quivering old schoolmate of Danny's, albeit in droves. Qwan's death had meant as little to the man as squashing a rather irksome fly that had the misfortune of existing in your vicinity at the wrong place at the wrong time. The boy had simply been a disposable piece of flesh, one of millions littering this world-his world-like insects. If one-or thousands, for that matter-happened to disappear from the hive, so be it. It was his will. And from being bitterly denied all these years, he'd been granted the unparallel strength to enforce his will nationwide. He was better than a King; far, far better than any normal human. Would any mortal be able to concoct such a wonderful new world, where the foul and stupid were being expunged for the cowards they were? Petty dictators who had sent their own people to death camps had squealed and screamed for mercy like pathetic little piglets before they'd been executed in front of the people they'd loved to torment, in the name of Vlad's new rule.

To many of the poverty-stricken and the ignorant, Vlad was an angel. He had long since ceased caring about his image, but that was simply the way it was. He was a great, psychotic, and terrible one-but an angel nonetheless, who brought great cities down crumbling to burning pieces. Flaunt a bit of your power here and there, and suddenly, thousands and thousands of people turned to you after worshipping something or someone else for generations.

O partigiano porta mi via
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao
O partigiano porta mi via
Che mi sento di morir

Oh partisan, carry me away,
O goodbye beauty, goodbye beauty, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye beauty
Oh partisan, carry me away,
For I feel I'm dying

Again, that did not matter. He scorned them, and would occasionally send a metropolis in flames after receiving a nasty message from one of its occupants. Everyone had to know the price of disobedience, and, while not overtly bloodthirsty, knew no mercy. There was only one equal to him, one whom he could afford patience for, (Occasionally) for he was ignorant, and the tyrant could forgive him, as he could never so many others.

Which was one of the many, many reasons why Danny belonged to him, now, and would so for the rest of his life.

Danny had marvelous potential he was so ignorant of, and power that the man craved. Albeit, he already had enough power to make lunatic whims laws, but Daniel's was a rare beauty that the world had scarcely ever seen before. It belonged to one who understood the agony of having a beating heart, while having a body that was part corpse, with a remorseless sense of obsession burning in a silent breast. Raw obsession for something, be it murder or cardboard boxes, was what kept ghosts, in their shadowy, ectoplasmic forms existing, though they were but sad fragments of what had once been, fueled only by extreme emotion. Their spirits meant nothing. They couldn't mean anything.

But back to the act of love. You hadn't forgotten about Kwan too, had you?

Danny had so poorly spent his time as a half-ghost that he needed all the discipline in his catch-up work as Vlad could and would "Shove down my throat" as Danny had so eloquently put it. His irritating sense of 'nobility' had not yet allowed him to turn in one incorrect equation, and had grudgingly worked at improving his awful handwriting till his hand had turned purple and started cramping.

It was, at the very least, he appraisingly supposed, a start in the right direction. Daniel was growing exhausted under his mounting pile of schoolwork, but it did him well; he so scarcely argued anymore.

…..which, in lieu of the present circumstances, was perhaps not a wonderful thing, but all would be well soon enough. The faint, nagging sense of unease would at last stop tormenting him, and he could resume focusing on his newfound career and on Daniel once again: the two things in life that truly mattered.

He hadn't craved the former so badly as he had HIM. Which was precisely why he'd sent the world up in smoke after agreeing to rescue it from the disasteroid.

Because whatever was happening-or was beginning to happen-left the ruler feeling deeply uneasy now, though he'd tried to dismiss the thought. After all, what was happening was wonderful; everything he had desired for too long, and had deserved. He was picking Danny apart at the edges with a pickaxe to shape and refine his heart, his ghostly form, everything and anything about him until the gem glowed with splendid beauty, and shone as magnificently as Vlad believed it could.

He hadn't chipped that much away. The boy would be fine, and, like the rest of the world, would come out better because of it. He knew best.

And he knew, besting everyone in that pathetic little Resistance group who still could draw a gasping breath, that he loved Daniel best. The boy did not yet understand this, but someday, he would, and would adore Vlad's very shadow.

And perhaps one day, they could go into simple solitude, in peace somewhere off the coast of Greece, where Danny would cease to look so stricken and cease his annoying, recent habit of crying out at night for his parents. If he wanted so desperately to be held, as the way he clung to Vlad like a koala in bed suggested, he could learn by his own merits that his arms always had been open for him. Danny needn't fear the so-called 'darkness,' because Vlad had already forced him into the room with it, had the door deadlocked, and leaned up against it while it ravished his petrified, screaming form.

All in the name of helping Daniel become more powerful, of helping him understand his potential. Life was no fairy tale with a guaranteed 'happily ever after' unless you carved it out with precise detail and design, and had the means to deliver out your ends.

All this in the name of love.

"I own you. You will belong to me for the rest of your life, so I suppose this is a type of gloating. You see, I can afford to sit here and wait, because I know I have all the time in the world to make you mine anyways."

It had been all too satisfying, being able to carry out Danny's body from the burning wreckage of Fenton works, hearing shrill, albeit muffled, screams of terror from those still trapped on the inside. Whether Madeline lived or died now meant little to him; the passion that had fueled him for her sake had been little more than a means to restore broken dreams, and to destroy Jack from the inside out.

Twenty years ago, his heart had been consumed by jealousy and betrayal-and most terrifyingly of all, anguish-he'd been obsessed with thoughts both of Armageddon and tender affection. Maddie was the portrait of all of his lost youth, who had haunted him while he'd laid hideous and disfigured under bandages, writhing in agony. Sheer spite had kept him from dying a number of times, even while enduring the horrifying and bewildering experience of watching his own body disappear before his very eyes, and from insanity.

Once he'd reconciled himself with the terrible and glorious truth that Danny's face haunted his thoughts rather than dear Madeline's when Vlad woke up making love to a wall, the answer had at last drifted to him one evening so suddenly, and yet so lightly and sweetly, like a fragile snowflake.

He was glad the cloning experiments had ended in failure, after all. If it had been successful, it would have just left another mess for Vlad to clean up while he pursued his true prize, the one and only Daniel Fenton, whom he'd loved, whom had dared to betray his affections one too many times.

All he'd wanted, after he'd come out of the hospital horribly disfigured and had people flee from the very sight of his HUMAN form, yearned for, was love. He hadn't been a wicked person in college-he'd been an innocent enough young man hopelessly in love.

And the woman he'd loved married his best friend. Vlad had been burned to the point of dying with supernatural-akin agony, and been left behind, again, and again, and again. He'd built up his multi-billion dollar empire as a means to secure a better lifestyle and a better cover-up for Vlad Plasmius, who was then debuting in the Ghost Zone underworld.

And he believed, rather smugly, that it would woo Maddie to his side almost at once.

But even when he'd finally sprung up his brilliant plans into action, there had been the most unexpected setback, pardoning Madeline's offended rejections: the birth of another hybrid. Daniel. Again and again, Vlad had extended the hand of friendship, and, defiantly protecting his Father to the end, Daniel rejected Vlad's more than generous offers for the sake of a moronic oaf who was probably going to be the cause of his entire family's floating face-down in a puddle of ectoplasm someday.

He had sneered, and allowed the boy's jibs to slide off, but he'd been more tormented than ever.

How undesirable must you be if not even the teenage son of the man who ruined your life wants
nothing to do with you? Was he truly that much of a monster?

When Jack was hailed as an angel, despite the fact that he'd left his best friend for dead?

He'd heard the child's screams and tearful pleadings for mercy beneath him, but did not listen; the thrill of joining his body with the other hybrid's, non-mutually or not, had been paramount, breathtakingly glorious, akin to a religious experience….if Vlad had believed in any power higher than his own in his new empire.

As he'd told Danny, dominating the world and setting a new order just wouldn't have been the same without him in Vlad's enormous bed.

E se io muoio da partigiano
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao
E se io muoio da partigiano
Tu mi devi seppellir

And if I die as a partisan
O goodbye beauty, goodbye beauty, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye beauty
And if I die as a partisan
You have to bury me

It had been years since he'd allowed himself to relive himself of testosterone, since every one-night stand left him disgusted with himself, regardless of how pretty or how shapely the giggling girl beside him in the morning was.

In fact, the greater their often superficial beauty, the worse it was. His desire for what was determinedly held from him for so many accursed years nearly broke his mind, brilliant though it was. It consumed him, tortured him, and became all the more intolerable once he'd finally realized his infatuation for the fiery young hybrid. While he still desperately wanted an heir to follow in his footsteps, he saw no reason why he couldn't have Daniel be both lover and companion. The boy, sickened as he'd been to admit it just weeks ago, was beautiful. Intoxicatingly innocent. And he was, unknowingly or not, was exquisitely intoxicating, and he'd all but gotten drunk on the teen that night. Danny's screams rung in his ears, but they'd only added to the high. Here at last, Vlad was reaping his revenge on Jack and Maddie both, and for Daniel, for being an insufferable pain in his side for too long, and for the unforgivable act of not returning his love.

Yet, of course.

But as though he'd been toasting a glass of champagne, he'd taken the boy, and his lust had scarcely been sated ever since. It was like a bear crawling out of hibernation, always famished, always starving.

But it was as he said: He ruled the world, now. Why shouldn't he reap the benefits?

Thankfully, however, he spent as much time as possible with Danny as he could, so there was always a decent bed/couch/desk/polished floor in reach. He'd be doing something so simple as reviewing paperwork while glancing up at Daniel, who was somewhere on his favorite sofa, (Vlad's as well, ironically enough) tip of his eraser between his lips while he scanned one of the latest treaties he was forcing himself to understand.

And, without another word, Vlad would find himself striding over to Danny, ripping his and the startled boy's clothes off intangibly, and proceed to make the boy holler out his name while always, always, shuddering the release that shamed him so.

It was a beautiful time to be Vlad.

The want to be wanted had never left him. And the desire to be needed was just, if not more so, potent. When Danny had frantically rejected his foursome attempt-a darkly seductive term of affection that he'd been positive would have made anyone else swoon-he'd felt the same sense of disbelief when he'd received the invitation. When Daniel rejected his offer again. That after weeks of being by Vlad's side, and by repeating this ritual again and again and again, he couldn't yet understand that Vlad did it out of must have been pure, raw affection, and an urge to pleasure someone.

And then, as always, came the fury.

Yes, he'd supposed gone too far, assaulting the boy with two clones while another held him down while all three tormented him. Danny's hysteric fit after that and the way he'd looked with those large, terrified eyes and that revulsion and that horror and that great, consuming sadness when Vlad had turned him over in his embrace had chilled him slightly.

But, he stubbornly clung on to the belief that it had been Danny's fault for whimpering and moaning when he'd told him to under his touch. Perhaps the boy WAS a child, but there were certainly plenty his age who definitely were NOT virgins, and he'd been with Vlad enough times to know that Vlad would never try and cause him permanent damage.

Hadn't he?

He supposed he was going to have to take the boy again after lunch today and find out. While at first the ecstasy, satisfaction, and the wonderful, heavenly sense of unbridled domination led him to keep Danny marooned alone in his room, chained to the bed, he'd at last begun exercising some control, and slowing down for the boy's sake. At the very least, having a slower and more tender touch left the boy more charmingly confused and scared, and so much more likely to succumb to pleasure that he deemed an unthinkable sin.

But it was pleasing, having Danny submit to him in bed as he could never do in battle. He fought so hard to keep himself from making a sound that Vlad almost pitied him. Almost. But the teen had to learn eventually, and it was all the more brutal because it was a lesson that the child needed to learn a long time ago:

Life isn't fair. At last, it was 'unfair' in his favor-how quaint-but Danny was his to sculpt, and his to do with as he pleased. While he was as content in his position as a well-fed cat in front of the hearth, and his confidence in every single defense and foil-proof plan immaculate, as of late, he'd…..

He needed to stop thinking like this. Hopefully, an afternoon with Daniel training would distract him from useless, melancholy wonderings. He'd push Danny a little farther these next couple of weeks, and hopefully, by then he would have no choice but to relax in the rare evening the two had off together, and stop drowning in worry for his worthless family or self-pity. What else could it be, the way he looked out the window at his dead city?

The first time Danny had broken down with grief when Vlad had forced him to constrict himself with doubt, he'd wept with a broken heart in the man's arms for hours, while the man had only caressed and loved him unduly. He supposed he might tell the boy someday, but Danny had initially rejected his first confession of love that evening in the bath. It meant nothing to one who understood only a little now, but one day, the younger halfa would simply know. Vlad wouldn't have to tell him again, and face rejection (Though there would never again be any of that again in the future).

But the rare moments he did have when Danny unwillingly settled in his arms, or the three times that he'd hidden his face from the new, old world in Vlad's shoulder, were special. While the boy warranted a few electric shocks for his careless and inexcusable (And occasionally, just flippant) performance in training, and could usually only manage a few insults for normal conversation, those acts at the very least told Vlad that, once again, his plan was working flawlessly. A little more quickly than he had expected, but that had made it all the more perfect, he supposed. Danny had been forced to take hold of the grief Vlad had known for half of his life, and while it saddened Vlad slightly, it also gave him a savage sense of pleasure.

But that had given way immediately to a very different sort of answer when Danny, after he'd ventured two meek, weary questions, had petitioned that we turn in early. We. He was beginning to learn.

I had carried him off to bed-and back again when he'd become sick after a night terror, and a bout of hysterics before he'd run off to the bathroom, sick to his stomach.

If only he didn't have a test tomorrow, I'd give him a break from his studies….but what must be completed must be completed, and Danny knows lives DO hang in the balance in this equation. That's simply the way things are.

At the very least, gratifyingly enough, he allowed me to carry him back to bed once his spell had ended without protest. While I know his resolve will have hardened again by morning, all I need to do is keep hammering away, and let the chips fall where they may. Soon enough, Danny's will be crushed, his resolve unromantic and realistic, and his heart…

MINE.

As it always needed to be, as I had always needed it to be.

Mi seppellire lassù in montagna
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao
Mi seppellire lassù in montagna
Sotto l'ombra di un bel fiore

But bury me up in the mountain.

O goodbye beauty, goodbye beauty, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye beauty,
But bury me up in the mountain
Under the shadow of a beautiful flower

But something is coming, and I don't like it. Much at all. Call it premonition, but there's change in the air. Mostly concerning my protégé's destiny, though I scoff at whatever outcome might be. Daniel looks sick something's a little wrong it's a little frightening will be fine.

E le genti che passeranno
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao
E le genti che passeranno
Mi diranno: "Che bel fior!"

And the people who will pass by
O goodbye beauty, goodbye beauty, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye beauty,
And the people who will pass by
Will say to me: "what a beautiful flower!"

I welcome any challenge to my throne. Come what may. I will not lose.

È questo il fiore del partigiano
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao
È questo il fiore del partigiano
Morto per la libertà

This is the flower of the partisan
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao
This is the flower of the partisan
Who died for freedom

End of Part I: Next, Part II-Danny