Page 48 of Lovesick Titan

Andre repeated Mal’s words to him, “Don’t ever do something like that again, Danny. Please.”

“I won’t.”

It was late. They all needed to get home. Sleep. Danny texted his dad before he left the morgue, using a burner phone he’d gotten for emergencies, and told him he was fine and that half of the loot had been recovered and returned to the museum by Zeus. He was on his way home.

When he arrived, he didn’t let John see his face. He said he was tired, moved swiftly for his room, and locked the door behind him. Taking two of his pills immediately, he just wanted to sleep, not even caring if they made him feel anything while he sat on his bed staring at the bottle. He hadn’t changed out of the jeans and shirt he’d been wearing since he peeled off the Zeus suit.

“Giving up already, Danny? You really arepathetic.”

Danny barely flinched at hearing his own voice coming from the mirrors across the room. Andre hadn’t finished a version of the Miasma Maker for the house yet. By tomorrow, Wednesday at the latest, he’d said. Maybe Andre would have pushed harder if Danny had told anyone he was being haunted by his reflection.

“Go away, Ludgate. Aren’t you getting enough of what you want? You could steal anything that suited you and I couldn’t lift a finger. If you’re not going to kill me, then just go away.” He wondered if he could fight back if Ludgate attacked him. He didn’t seem to have the energy to even raise his head.

“Looking to take the easy way out? Figures. Everything that makes you worth something you’ve already ruined. Better to get out clean now before you drag anyone else through the mud, right?”

Danny’s hand clenched tighter around the pill bottle. He dragged himself up from the bed and glared at his reflection, hating it—which was only too easy these days. “What do you even want from me?” hehissed, afraid to yell and bring John or Joey running. “You’ve already won. Even if we catch you someday, you won. You’re a better thief than Prometheus, and you’ve proven Zeus can’t stop you. Sowhat do you want?”

The smug smirk on his reflection’s face made him want to punch it, but he knew that wouldn’t do any good. Even the half-healed burns that made Danny’s skin feel tight and sore while speaking didn’t seem to bother his reflection. But of course they wouldn’t botherhim. The reflection wasn’t really Danny.

“It’s funny, you know,” the man in the mirror said. The pill bottle wasn’t in his hand; he didn’t need it. He seemed to walk closer to Danny, filling the mirror, which made Danny step closer too. “Funny that you think I’m Ludgate,” he said and then vanished just as Danny heard a whisper at his ear, “and not just in your head.”

Danny whipped around, heart in his throat, pulse skyrocketing as he turned…and nothing was there. He turned back to the mirror, but it was just him, just his normal reflection copying his movements. If Ludgate was in the room somehow, Danny couldn’t fight him. If he wasn’t, then Danny was losing his mind.

He couldn’t take this. He couldn’t stay in the house tonight. He had to get out of there.

Grabbing the burner phone but not thinking to take anything else, he lightning jumped to the morgue. Only after he arrived did he realize that while the phone was in his right hand, the pill bottle was still in his left. Were the pills to blame for the visions he’d been seeing? Similar medications made people hallucinate, and Danny had been taking so many…

He’d jumped to the hallways instead of to the main room. Andre’s Miasma Maker touched even here, making everything dull without reflective surfaces. Sitting at the end of the hall, Danny pulled his knees up and rested his arms atop them, suspending what he held in front of his face.

The phone.

The pills.

It was like some awful microcosm for his life. Everything he’d tried to fix but lost. A way to reach out but no one to call. What he should do…and what he wanted. His lifelines were making him worse because he wasn’t using them the way he should. Deep down, he was just a mess with superpowers, just a lightning fast disaster no one saw coming until it was too late.

The last time he’d felt like this in the morgue, he’d chucked his phone at the wall and nearly busted it. This time, he knew what he had to do instead, or he’d never leave the morgue again.

He reared back and threw the bottle as far as he could, where it landed hard and burst open, spilling pills all over the floor. Clutching the phone in both hands, Danny pulled his knees closer and sobbed. He didn’t want to give up; he wanted to be saved like Mal had saved him, like so many others had tried.

“Danny?”

Gasping at the sound of Lynn’s voice, Danny looked up to find her already walking toward him down the hall, face drawn in concern. She ignored the pills, focused solely on him, and didn’t say anything until she sat with her legs tucked to the side and pulled him against her.

He sobbed harder as he pressed his face to her shoulder.

“What do you need?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” Danny shook his head. “I thought you’d gone home.”

“Seemed there was more to do tonight,” she said as she squeezed him tighter.

Danny chuckled through his sobs. But he still cried. And clung to her. And was so thankful for his friend.

After a few moments of dampening Lynn’s shoulder, Danny pulled away, and she touched his face gently along the burns. By tomorrow they’d barely be noticeable, which seemed too unfair.

“I can bleed...and bruise...andburn,” Danny said, staring at the tear stains left on Lynn’s dress. “I can cut myself so deep, someone else wouldn’t survive it, and I just heal like it was never there.” Flicking his eyes up to meet hers, the affection he found in her expression burned him all over again. “But I still feel it. All of it. Every pain, inside and out. It looks like it heals, but it never goes away.

“Everyone thinks I’m so lucky,” he snorted bitterly. “Did you ever stop to think what I’d look like if you could see everything I’ve healed? If it was still marked across my skin? You wouldn’t recognize me. I don’t. Because that’s all I see when I look in the mirror. Nothing but damage.”

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