1,318Disclaimer: I don't own DP.
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Special shoutouts to gabbigabz for leaving the most extensive reviews I've ever received, which also leave me squealing with the hilarious play-by-play breakdown of the disaster couple. And shoutouts as well to Pakrete for making Deliverance fanart! Y'all please go and support their work, which you can find by searching for "Pakrete" on Deviantart! 3
Shot Summary: Phantom is not the only threat to Amity Park in a post-apocalyptic world, and Valerie Gray is not its only savior. Sometimes, the lines blur between them in strange ways. Rated: T
Content Warnings: Character injury
Deliverance
Shot 83: Fault Line
After an apocalypse, there were no networks—no nation-wide forecasts or funded research teams. No meteorologists predicting weather patterns, save for the savvy few who knew dry grass in the morning and a sharp wind meant trouble. Unforeseen storms came and went, and the Shield shook with rain and thunder that no longer first announced itself from the mouth of a well-dressed reporter.
It was the small things, like an early morning weather forecast, that Valerie missed the most.
Especially when it meant life and death.
That morning, she lay in bed with a pounding headache, her old knee injury from slamming into a building acting up. Her bedsheets were a mussed twist around her as she groaned in misery. "The one time my radar is clear of Phantom," she whined to herself, rubbing her temples. "You gotta be kidding me."
But around 6:00, just as the sun was rising, the shaking began. It was a small tremor across the expanse, as if it were a shiver. A small warning.
And then the earth convulsed, heaving up the northern hemisphere across a full 150-mile fault zone, unstoppable.
By the full rise of the sun, all was silent, save for the occasional rumble of an aftershock and the sharp fluttering of Dan Phantom's cape.
He hovered above the earth, his powerful arms crossed tensely, as he stared at the plot of land that was once Amity Park. Its proud Shield had cracked like an egg, its towers tossed about in chunks of metal debris, just like the skyscrapers and the once-safe, little apartments. A massive chasm in the earth ran through the center of Amity Park, with debris crumbling in as the aftershocks continued. Explosions from unsettled gas lines and electrical overloads puffed black smoke into the sky—streaking across the remains of the old Fenton home's sign.
"How anticlimactic." Dan's eyebrow angled at the sight, his body tense with displeasure and an odd fear. Or was it mourning? "Amity Park was mine to destroy, and yet even the very Earth usurps my authority to destroy."
His glanced in each direction, increasingly disturbed. "Where is your protector, the Red Huntress?" he murmured to himself. "Surely, she would be the first to dig her self-righteous hands into the rubble and salvage whatever is left of this wretched city."
But she wasn't.
No one was digging through rubble. The entire city was as silent as death.
Dan breathed out something he could not say was worry, his blood-red eyes narrowing in increasing fear as he scanned for Valerie. He swooped down, flying over the ruins. "Where are you?"
Valerie's battle suit, having been updated by Technus, carried a tinge of an ectoplasmic signature. It was the slightest whisper to his senses, like one of Valerie's half-amused huffs echoing against the cliffsides in the Wastelands.
"Don't worry," she said. "You'll never defeat me. I can keep going and going." She cocked her gun. "And we'll see who wears out first."
"This was not part of the plan," he hissed to Valerie, knowing she could not hear him. "You are supposed to be invincible to Mother Nature as well as to me. And if you do not appear this instant, I will turn the Earth inside out to find you."
If he could just lock in on her signature, then—
There.
The resistance building had crumbled brick by brick, with its highly advanced energy systems little more than puffs of smoke and fire. Dan flew between half-standing beams, turning his eyes away from a body hanging from the bricks.
It was not Valerie.
"Come on," he hissed to himself, face twisting in pain. The small signature of her battle suit was faint and beginning to grow softer, as if the tech had been damaged. Dan rushed forward, targeting a particular mound of steel beams and bricks. He landed on the pile, his long hair flickering in fear as he pulled at the debris. "You would choose to be buried in the most—" he huffed as his hands slipped against an oil-coated steel beam—"difficult place." He got a good hold on the beam tossed it in his frustration. With his superhuman strength, it warped oddly through the air to crash in the distance.
He dug into the splintered wood, more metal beams and broken concrete in the way.
Valerie's signature sputtered out.
Dan moved faster on instinct, his face tensing. He feared she was crushed—or even worse, in pieces, just as the building itself.
"I am Amity Park," she hissed. "You can't separate us."
As he continued to dig, pulling aside what was once the main internal support beam of the Shield, he found her. It started with a dim glimmer of red—dirtied, buckled armor. He pulled up on a steel beam…
…and as the bricks crumbled away, there was the body of Valerie Gray, curled up.
Dan's breath hitched as he cast the beam aside, his anxiety spiking. "Valerie." She lay on her side, her armor crushed with dents and one arm twisted the wrong way behind her. A heavy crack streaked down her helmet, as if she'd been flying up and had been struck by heavy debris. The glass cut into her cheek, the visor red with hot blood.
Her jet sled was nowhere to be found.
"Damn," he said, voice rough as he hesitated to touch her.
They did not touch.
It was the unspoken rule of their battles—to blast and to blade, but to never breach the distance of inches. Whether it was a sign of respect or cowardice, neither knew. The last time they had touched, it was when the world was kinder, and he was still of human blood, and they were so very young. Curious of touch, of the differences between their hands.
Now, his hands were drenched in the blood of millions, hardened with power, while hers were carved with the scars of his violence.
But if he did not touch her now, she would certainly die.
His long, gloved fingers hooked tentatively into her helmet, where he knew from watching that a release existed. The helmet slipped off of her, and sweaty curls fell into her bloody face. He swept them back with trepidation, his fingers tangling in the strands.
Valerie's cracked lips quivered with unnatural, hitched breaths.
His power core stalled.
She was alive.
"Oh, you little cockroach," he murmured to her in satisfaction, his too-wide lips twitching up. But when he pushed her onto her back, he discovered the rocks beneath her were coated a hot red—and not just from her head wound. It glistened in rivers off her damaged battle suit. There, impaled through her stomach, was a steel rod.
Dan froze, then gnashed a fang into lip as his joy faltered. Valerie had likely been knocked off her jet sled from a great height and at great speed, for the rod to have gone through her near-impenetrable armor.
Her teal eyes stared up to the heavens, feverish and unfocused.
Did she even know who kneeled at her side?
"This is almost poetic," he murmured to her roughly, his pleasure melting into deep irritation and fear. "You, speared by your own monster of a Shield. How lucky for you that it did not burst through your heart, providing you even have one."
His fingers shakily hovered over the rod. He knew if he pulled it, she would seize in pain and then bleed out. And die.
Forever.
"You will not die like this," he snarled, face tight. "You will die only when I say."
And then he slid his hands beneath her form, her blood sinking hot against his jumpsuit and weaving into the threads. For all the coiled power within her, she was light in his arms, her head easy to tuck under his chin.
It bothered him, how easy it was to hold her after ten years without touch.
He disappeared in a wisp, taking her with him.
Valerie eventually came to, her bruised eye struggling to open. Through her blurry vision, she caught sight of an unending green glow. The air was cold.
For a time, she stared up at the strange, shifting ceiling in a daze, unable to think past the steady inhale and exhale of her own shallow breath—and how the green glow above her curled in on itself and then stretched out, like ocean waves.
"Ngh," she strangled out, attempting to twitch fingers.
A large, cold hand pressed a wet cloth against her cheek, the material soft and glowing. But then her side burned in pain, the cool biting deep into wounds.
The hand hesitated, another moving to steady her chin. "Do not struggle," came a worried, deep voice. "You are badly wounded."
His voice—echoing, familiar—was a soft lull in her ear, a cool breath puffing against her hot skin. But her ears began to ring, the pain spreading up her side, to her collarbone and jaw. Air caught in her lungs as if it were black smoke. She choked, and then came an odd, bloody gurgle from her throat.
Her lips dampened with blood.
The hand and wet cloth lifted from her face. "Not again," came the panicked breath of the voice. Exhausted.
Something slipped off of her—blankets?—exposing her fully to the cold air. And then the large, cold hand pressed firmly against her stomach. "Human bodies are far more taxing to heal," he complained. "So many layers, even if the skin appears whole."
Valerie arched off the bed, an agonized cry ripping from her, her sightless eyes snapping wide open. He was touching a gaping wound, his long fingers cradling her as a great, white power emanated through her vision.
And then the pain stopped completely, and she was left gasping in his arms. In relief, she stared up at the green ceiling and took comfort in the movement of the swirls. All was bright, as if the world were glowing—
The man's long fingers twitched upon her skin with a tremble, before they slid away. "There."
A coolness in her body circulated into every vein and artery, her mind cradled by the relief. She turned her cheek on the pillow, rasping for breath.
Her strange companion was a blur of light. White locks flickered down to a blurry outline of powerful shoulders. "You've bled all over me and my bed," he grumped, carding a hand through his loose hair. "But your healing should hold now."
Valerie sat up shakily, her fingers sinking into bloodied sheets as her sweaty curls swung down bare shoulders. "What the…" Her breath hitched. "Fuck?"
She touched her healed, smooth side as she stared at Dan Phantom in shock.
He turned away. "Welcome back to the living."
Her scarred, healed fingers clenched into the bedsheets to pull them over her exposed body, face heating that she wore only a bloodied bra and underwear. She attempted to activate her armor, but no nanotech particles responded.
On the side of the bed was a pile of her dented armor.
They both knew the nanoparticles in her blood would regenerate her battle suit eventually.
Valerie's voice was hoarse. "What are you doing?"
Dan levitated cross-legged in the air, opening his hands. "Creating." A span of glowing white surged from his fingertips, and from them weaved a ghostly cloth—not unlike the material of his cape. The power spun into a loose robe.
Valerie remained silent, swallowing hard as she watched her enemy. It was unheard of for Dan Phantom to create anything.
To save anything.
Especially her.
"I don't understand," she called to him, voice halted.
With a grump, he said, ignoring her underlying question, "I healed your body of months of damage in four hours. And now I am making you a covering."
It slowly hit her that she really was in his bed. The room around them was a sparse and simple place—a lair in the Ghost Zone.
Her face ticked as she brushed her hair behind her ear. And then memory slammed back into her.
The earthquake.
Valerie exhaled in a hitch, her lips dropping open.
Without looking back at her, Dan offered a glowing white robe with a tie. "Here, take it. Your clothes beneath your armor were obstructing me from healing the hole in your side. But I will not touch you again."
She reached out, her fingers accidentally brushing against his before she snatched the material away. Her muscles were a smooth, quick coil—perfectly healed. "The earthquake," she pressed. Her voice broke. "What the hell. What happened?"
The instant he heard the tie of the sash, he turned to her, his face gaunt from expending much energy on her behalf. "Amity Park has fallen."
His eyes remained unreadable as he watched her eyes well with tears.
Valerie's ears began to ring again, her breaths unsteady. Her mouth went numb. "The…the others," she demanded. "My father?"
Dan frowned delicately. "You are the only one I deemed worthy to pull from the debris. The others may rot where they fell in the quake."
"Ngh." She squeezed her eyes shut as tears streaked down her cheeks. The sleeves of the robe slipped down her arms, revealing several old scars upon her dark skin. "Dammit."
A few tendrils of red armor sparked upon her fingers, only to cut out and sink back into her blood.
Administrator alert.
Suit offline.
Suit offline.
"Dammit," she breathed again, panic overwhelming her. "Oh my god. Oh my God. My dad—my friends. Everyone?"
The ghost waved his hand. His fingers, bare for healing, carried scars similar to her own. "It's not so bad, being alone," he murmured in an odd attempt to comfort her. "You get used to it, especially once you realize death is inevitable. They were all going to die one day or another."
Valerie looked up. "No," she retorted, voice rough. She slammed her hand on the blood-splattered bedsheets, breaking. "No, I will not give up on them. I have to—" She tried to pull herself off the bed, the robe swinging around her.
The world spun, and she fell back.
He huffed at her, baring a fang in irritation. "Have to what? Undo my great work? I have saved you against my better judgment, to preserve the way of things. But I will not save you a second time if you choose to wander the Ghost Zone without your armor."
Valerie breathed unsteadily on the bed, the robe streaking with the pool of her own blood beneath her. Her mind raced.
"Then," she eventually said, "...how about a deal?"
Dan, being a lonely and intelligent creature, carried a streak of curiosity that could sometimes be manipulated. He raised an eyebrow. "What do you have to offer?"
She swallowed hard, tempering the tremble in her fingers. "Me," she said hoarsely. As she blinked, tears slipped down her face. "If you go back to Amity Park and save all the living from the rubble, then you can do what you want with me. I know you just want me to die by your hand." Her voice hitched. "I won't fight it, if that's what you want."
His eyebrows flew up. "Your death, for all of their lives?" His eyes have widened a fraction in suspicion.
In intrigue.
Valerie clenched her jaw and nodded, eyes hardening. She reached out with her bare hand to him. "Every second counts right now. It's a yes or a no."
His wine eyes slid back to her outstretched hand, watching the slight tremble of fear. "Do you fear the death of others so much," he asked slowly, "that you would discount your own without hesitation?"
She raised her chin. "We don't have time for philosophy here," she snapped. Her voice broke. "Save my people before it's too late. I'll shake on it."
Dan stood up in a huff, his tall shadow towering over her. His shoulders had tightened with a mild fury. "You ask me to contradict my very purpose, for you."
"I am Amity Park," she retorted shakily. "You know I am." Deep within, she still tried to activate her battle suit.
Suit offline.
Estimated time to regeneration—120 hours.
Dan did not wear his cape, his form more lithe and dangerous for it as he paced, eyeing her. "Perhaps," he murmured, a demonic edge in him. "I suppose you could, by proxy, satisfy the need."
The need was his addiction to destroying Amity Park.
A cold water dripped down her spine. Valerie closed her eyes, steeling herself as his long, calloused fingers—cold with death—gripped her hand tightly before sliding away, absentmindedly stroking her palm with the tips of his fingers.
Curious of her callouses.
"Very well," he said. He leaned forward, tilting his head. His too-wide mouth split. "You have a deal, Valerie Gray. You will not struggle against the fate I bestow upon you for saving your people." He added with a brief petulance, "And for ruining my bed to preserve your life for our battles."
Her breath stalled. With great hesitation, she nodded.
And then he was gone.
Amity Park was once a thriving city of twenty thousand humans, but Dan could see that such numbers were greatly reduced. His unimpressed eyes surveyed from above again, his ears listening for heartbeats. Cries beneath the rubble.
"What a strange thing," he murmured, "for Valerie to value all but not herself."
He slammed down onto the ruined earth, his boots cratering the ground in irritation that Mother Nature was yet a formidable opponent. Perhaps, even, more formidable than himself.
"I don't understand it," he complained, ripping away beams. Beneath were still-beating hearts. Unconscious humans. "Why would Amity Park agree to the destruction of Amity Park?" He grabbed onto the back collar of an unconscious man he did not know and roughly slid him out. "She is an utter contradiction and knows damn well that the fun ends the instant she is dead."
Dan glanced over the human, inspecting the heavy cut on his arm, which would be painful upon awakening but not an immediate threat to life. With a sniff, he turned back, pulling out a small family from what was once their hard-won, little house.
And then he cloned himself with a groan, for Amity Park citizens were numerous and scattered every which-way.
In time, he found thousands of survivors—with anyone half-cognizant nearly fainting at the sight of him, then confused as he roughly dug them out and pulled them to safety, barking tight orders.
Among the survivors was Damon Gray.
The old man had been hit in the head by a falling beam before being buried under two full building levels, with electrical wires dangerously close to his remaining arm.
"And you," Dan complained. "She always mentions you separately, as if somehow a father is a more special bond to protect. What makes it special? Mine with my father certainly wasn't."
He fairly tossed the man over his shoulder, face tight in disgust at carrying Amity Park human away from their death.
With a brief trepidation, he paused until he felt the man's chest rise with a strong, steady breath. "Oh, you'll be fine," he murmured roughly. "You're even more of a cockroach than your daughter." As he dropped the man onto safe grass, a grin lit his face. "Who is mine to torment now, as I'm sure you'll just love."
Valerie, exhausted from the ordeal of healing quickly, was not able to keep her eyes open. She fell back onto the bed, her limbs sinking into the softness, a part of her hoping to never wake up in anticipation of a violent death or torture at the hands of Dan Phantom.
But when she eventually came to, she was no longer in the Ghost Zone at all, or laying upon Phantom's bed. She instead lay on the ground in the human world, still wrapped in the robe glowing with Phantom's power. Thin, feminine fingers stroked her matted curls as a terrified voice said, "You're okay, chica. We've got you now. It's going to be okay."
Her wild eyes landed on a dirt-smeared Paulina, whose hair was in a frizz, her clothes torn with blood.
A soul saved by the deal.
Valerie sat up in confusion, the robe nearly sliding down her shoulder. She pulled the lapel over herself, eyes wide. "What? What is—?"
Paulina's voice was hoarse from smoke inhalation, her eyes still carrying a skittishness that was alien to her usual, teasing self. Her voice lowered to a whisper. "It's okay. I don't think he did anything to you, but…he told me to give you this once you woke up."
Hesitantly, the woman pulled out a small note.
Valerie grabbed on, breath hitching.
Survival count is 10,194. I will come for you once you have seen the fruits of my labor.
Her lips quivered as she read the note, and then her breath caught again as she began to sob. All around her were the voices of her people. Dazed. Confused.
Alive.
So very wonderfully and beautifully alive.
"Valerie," Paulina pressed, worried, "I read the note, but I don't get it. He pulled me out, even looked over your papa. What's changed? Why is he acting like this?"
She stared out, lowering the note to her lap, the glowing robe around her still streaked with her own dried blood.
"I made a deal with the devil," she whispered.
Internally, her suit still whined at her.
Suit offline.
Suit offline.
True to form, Dan Phantom never quite behaved as others expected him to. He left her alone with her people for many hours to help gather and mourn, his signature far away from the makeshift encampment built out of the debris of the city. Which meant she had a little time left.
Valerie kneeled beside her father, shakily helping Kwan—another life Phantom had saved—to lay him upon a warm blanket. "Daddy's going to be okay, right?" she pleaded. "He'll wake up?"
Kwan had wrapped bandaging around his own head, his black hair in odd tufts between the gauze. His face was streaked with dirt and soot. "Yeah, he'll be alright. Got knocked out cold from whatever had hit him, but his heartbeat's strong. He's just gonna have to just sleep it off."
Her tears blurred her eyes again as she stroked her father's shoulder. "I can't lose him," she said. "Whatever happens next, I need him to live for me, okay?"
Her friend looked up at her with a worried gaze, one of his pupils still dilated from a concussion of his own. "Why do you say it like you're not gonna be here?"
Valerie looked away.
"I might not be," she whispered.
Kwan's fingers tightened on his few medical supplies and gave her a hard look. "You can't just drop something like that on me and expect me to not ask questions. Is this about Phantom? And...whatever it is he gave you to wear?"
Her full lips pressed together with a worried pout. "He tore off my armor to save me," she whispered for his ears alone, "and I kinda manipulated him into saving everyone else too. I don't know what the hell he's gonna demand in return, but I can't imagine it's gonna be pretty. For ten-thousand people? He's gotta be pissed."
Kwan did not speak for a time, exhausted and concussed, the earthquake still shaking in his hands as he worked to wrap Damon's injuries. "It's a pretty robe that he gave you, for being enemies." He glanced up with a hesitant hope, that wistful high school boy looking up at clouds still existing somewhere in his dilated eyes. "Maybe it won't be so bad?"
"How would you know?" she retorted in irritation. She swept back some of her matted curls, which still crunched in places from her own dried blood. "We haven't had a truce except for Christmas in like, three years, and the last time we had one, he nearly left me to die because I said his cape was stupid."
The man made a noise. "Then maybe don't insult his cape this time. I'm serious, Val. We don't exactly have any backup for you right now, and we can't signal other cities, if any others are even still standing."
She grabbed onto her father's bruised, dirtied hand, face cracking with grief. "I know."
"And whatever you do," Kwan said, "it could change if the rest of us get to stay alive, you know?"
"I know, Kwan. Oh my god." She squeezed her father's limp hand tightly. "I know I can't screw this up."
"So, don't insult the cape."
"I promise I won't insult the cape."
As people fell asleep, and as the murmurs and cries softened into the night, Valerie was one of the last still awake. She sat on her own designated blanket on the far edge, next to a fallen tree, apprehensively watching the sky and wondering if it would be the last time she would ever see the moon.
Soon, a soft, green light emanated from the corner of her eye, and she turned, heart stopping.
It was him.
"Hello, Valerie," he said again, his voice soft, coiled with danger. His red eyes glowed as a predator's in the sunset. "Have I fulfilled our contract in full?"
She stood, the glowing robe swaying around her. It lit the arches of her curls and the angle of her cheek as a light in the darkness. "Yes." Her fist clenched as she raised her chin.
Suit offline.
Dan's wide mouth split, revealing white fangs. He licked his bottom lip with his forked tongue in a mischief. "And will you fulfill your part, or will you run as prey?"
She eyed him wearily. "You know I don't run," she said, voice hard. "Least of all from you."
"Nh." He materialized out.
And then he reappeared immediately before her, their faces only inches apart, his presence a palpable wave of energy in her bones. "I know you do not run." His eyes searched hers. "Nor can you tonight, as your turtle shell has been…cracked."
Her breath puffed against his.
The inches.
She felt the inches between them.
Dan pulled away and readjusted his glove with a sniff. "In these past hours, I have contemplated 10,194 ways to make you suffer, as I have desired Amity Park to suffer. To watch it crumble in my hands and feel it break with a cry for mercy." His knuckles cracked. "After it abandoned me. Denied me."
Valerie's breath stalled as her heart rate spiked.
She did not want to admit it was fear.
His eyes slid to hers, and an irritation wavered through him. "But you are not Amity Park."
Her breath flew out from her. "What?"
The powerful ghost hesitated before he reached out, his long, gloved fingers calling from her shoulder a curly, dark lock. With a small, glowing blade, he slit the lock to her shoulder. "You have never abandoned me, despite all the torments I have leveled against you. And 10,194 insects do not equal the value of your life. Therefore, you are not entirely Amity Park, even if you often speak for it."
Valerie's unsteady breath puffed against him as he clenched the fallen lock before allowing the hair to fall to the ground, breaking apart into individual strands as his singular retribution against her as a citizen of Amity Park. A petty, little token he knew would bother her only later, like a mosquito bite.
His gaze slid down to her lips. Slipping the blade back into its holster, he raised his hand to her cheek. He did not touch her, but in the scant distance between them, hovering his fingers down the line of her jaw. "Rebuild the city. Return it to the past—down to every tower and column, so that I may destroy it by my hand, as it was meant to be destroyed."
Tears of relief streaked down her dirty face, and a sob escaped her lips.
Suit offline.
The concept that he would let her live, let her rebuild, began to sink in.
She stared at him in awe, narrowing her bloodshot eyes. "You're breaking the deal, then."
"I'm changing its conditions," he corrected. His wide mouth split with a mild mischief—a little hint of his old self who once held hands with her. "I put so much energy into sustaining your life, I would only punish myself at this point." He leaned in, voice hot in her hear. "You will also receive a bill for my bedsheets you ruined, and I would have you replace them, or else I will take your bed once you obtain one in this fallen world."
Dan Phantom turned away, his starlit hair a halo flickering down his shoulders in a halo.
Valerie remembered to breathe, realizing uncomfortably that the flush heating her cheeks was not horror. It was something more deeply unsettling.
She called back out to him in a whine, "But I don't have any money to buy bedsheets! I don't even have bedsheets! It's all under the rubble!"
As he materialized out, he retorted back, waving his hand, "Saving your possessions was not part of our deal." He tilted his head, his mouth splitting too far to be human, his form fading out. "But I'm sure you'll find a way to satisfy my request."
A/N: So, this was originally inspired by watching the movie San Andreas? And then we took a left at Albuquerque with the strange way Valerie and Dan are always wheelin' and dealin' in the apocalypse, oop. And it's DannyMay 2024! So we could say this is for the DannyMay prompt of "Healing" ahhhh
Speaking of, I'm really sorry it took me several months to update with something! I had a bad car accident a while back that shook me up and left me with some injuries of my own. But now that I'm towards the end of healing, I've been going a lil stir crazy and been getting back to writing! On my AO3 account, thelightningstreak, I've been updating my E-rated Dark Gray fic, The Exchange, slowly getting Karma reposted, and I also started a fic for an anime called Trigun (which has an angsty Dan-like analog character who also wears a questionable jumpsuit lol). But I wanted to get Deliverance updated too before I have to return to work!
I would love to hear from y'all if you're still around to read Dark Gray! Let me know what you think; thank you!