The Ultimate Enemy alternate timeline.

Rain of Tears

September 25, 2012

.

Danny ambled down the hall and numbly pushed open the door to the room that Vlad had set aside for his personal use for as long as he needed it. He looked around the large space blankly, hazy eyes not even taking in the obvious effort the man had gone through to make the space look livable and cozy and just a bit familiar to the boy.

He walked in, letting the door close behind him with a sound he ignored, and stopped. Blinked. Wandered over to the bed. Sat down. Looked at the listless hands in his lap.

The weight of it all came crashing down.

He had been able to hold it off until now. Convince himself that somehow it wasn't real. They weren't really dead. It was just a dream and he would wake soon. Or it was a huge elaborate prank. The universe ganging up on him. The fruitloop trying one more time to make him his son.

But now they were buried in the ground. There had been a ceremony and there were shining black marble tombstones. There was a statue.

There were no more ways to convince himself it wasn't real. He had run out of options.

And so he collapsed on the bed, a sudden wave of everything he had been forcing himself not to think about rising to the fore and threatening to drown out his very existence.

The tears started streaming down his cheeks without his even realizing he had opened the floodgate.

His mind wandered from face to face to face even while it remained frighteningly black.

Dad.

The tears ran down his face in rivulets, hot and salty rivers that flowed into his mouth every time he drew in a huge, shuddering gasp of air which whistled deep in the back of his throat. He forcefully hissed it back out.

Mom.

Raw sobs wracked his frame, making his shoulders heave with every intake of breath. The sounds grated on his ear as they reverberated off of the walls, ceiling, and headboard, but the thought of trying to muffle or stop only made it that much louder until they became screams that he was sure Vlad could hear on the other side of the mansion. Not that he cared.

Jazz.

Lying in the fetal position, clenching fistfuls of sheets, Danny curled up on himself and tried to will it all to go away with a set jaw and breathing so intense that it bordered upon hyperventilating. The heels of his hands buried themselves into his eye sockets, pressing until the pain finally registered and then switching to uselessly claw his hands down his face.

Tucker.

Head buried in one of the huge fluffy pillows on the bed, he punched it again and again, channeling all the rage he couldn't let out without destroying the house, not stopping until his arms shook and collapsed beneath him. Betraying his primal need to continue until the world stopped because how could it continue.

Sam.

Danny buried his face as much as he could while still getting the air he needed to wail at the top of his vocal range. He forced the noise out, stomach contracting, stopping only when he needed to take another breath in order to continue. The sound was thin, watery, fragile, and wavered into a sort of twisted humming when he finally lost the energy to fully keen.

Lancer.

Danny rocked back and forth, swaying almost, whispering "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no" with a fervor that could convince him of anything but the truth of what he said. His hands pulled at his hair, desperately tugging and pressing and trying to block out reality.

No, no, no.

He had never imagined that there would be so many different ways to cry.

They were gone. They were all gone. He was supposed to have protected them but he failed. It was his fault. It was all his fault. His stupid mistake. From one tiny decision, for it all to spiral out of control. For it to come to this.

He would have given anything—everything—to go back and change it. He would never have considered cheating, would never shirk from studying again. Never complain about schoolwork or protest another detention slip. He would never have stopped acting like the hero he was supposed to be. Never again.

But no matter how much he wished and how much he tried, he couldn't change the way things were. Couldn't change the fact that one moment they had been there and the next they had been snuffed out of existence. That everyone was dead and he had been left alone. All alone in the world. With no one to lean on for comfort except the man who had always wanted his father dead.

And even though he knew that it wouldn't help, and that eventually he would have to stop in order to face the world again, he let the tears fall hot and wet onto the silken covers.

He cried until his stomach rebelled. And after recovering on the tiled floor in the bathroom, when his stomach was settled enough to continue, he began to quietly sob again, resting his head against the cold, unfeeling white ceramic. The liquid running down his face didn't dry to form red, salty streaks until hours after he had fallen into a fitful sleep, haunted by the faces of the people who were gone.

.

Angst like nobody's business. Needed to write it. Official Danny Day of Angst is October 1 if you're interested. And I'm going to be gone for a while. Funeral...