Page 63 of Lovesick Titan (Lovesick #2)

“Danny!” Mal screamed as he tumbled out of the mirror world like being whipped around in a whirlwind. His breath caught at the sharp jolt left behind from Danny’s discharge of power, like he’d felt only briefly before when touching Danny while thrumming with his lightning.

It wasn’t a simple thud or tumble when Mal landed on the other side, but a crash and desperate roll with the screech of metal and glass and a great, terrible implosion following after them.

Mal ignored the awful pain that ratcheted through his body from the wound in his back and pushed Ludgate away from him as he turned toward where the mirror trap had been, but now…

Everything was vanishing into a swirling mass of broken glass.

Lurching to his feet, Mal stared in horror at the tornado of carnage, at the spinning and spinning pieces of glass, as several voices screamed behind him, before it all ended in a snap and crunch and powerful shock of light.

When it was over, only a single, solitary figure remained at the center of the destruction—so red. Red instead of white and gold from the wounds of countless shards speared through his body like some morbid pin cushion.

“Danny…” Mal gasped, numb and unable to move.

Danny’s mask was half torn from his face, revealing his eyes and part of his nose and mouth.

He teetered in the aftermath, in the sudden quiet after the implosion that was soon broken by fresh screams. His eyes blinked, tearing up from pain Mal couldn’t imagine, but they still sought him out to meet his and dared to look happy before they dimmed .

“Danny!” Mal howled, racing toward him, blind to the state of his own body and the chill wracking through his limbs.

Danny’s knees gave way and he toppled, the renewed crunch nauseating and made all the worse when he fell onto his side, limp, bloody, and barely recognizable.

All other traces of glass, of the trap, were gone, what little remained stabbed through Danny’s body, covering nearly every inch of him in jagged edges.

Mal blocked out the voices of the others behind him and dropped beside the broken boy, trembling as he reached for a piece of glass in Danny’s face.

His eyes were closed now, his chest still, but none of that registered.

“You’ll be okay…” Mal said, a hushed whisper, as he gripped the edge of the shard through Danny’s cheek and wrenched it free. He tossed it aside and reached for another. “You’ll be okay. You’ll heal. You always heal.”

He tore out another piece of glass and another, kept grabbing them and ripping them free, until finally he was able to pull what remained of the cowl from Danny’s face. The skin looked torn, mangled, but it was still Danny, it was still Danny , he had to survive this.

“Danny…” Mal’s eyes stung and it grew difficult to see, his vision blurred by tears he didn’t have time to shed.

His hands ached from the sharpness of the glass cutting into his skin, but he couldn’t stop.

He kept pulling out pieces, freeing them from Danny’s flesh and tossing them away, like that night in his apartment when he’d cleaned Danny’s hand of shards over his kitchen sink.

This would be like then. Danny would heal and leave nothing behind, not even a scar to show what he’d been through. But Mal would know. Mal would always know about the scars buried deep inside of Danny that no one else got to see.

“You’ll heal. You’ll heal…”

He refused to believe that maybe this was what Danny wanted. That he’d hoped for this, for a martyr’s end, anything to stop the pain he’d been struggling through.

No …no, Danny had promised him. He swore he’d never… He swore he’d stay, that he’d fight . One good day at a time, just one good day.

“Come on, Sparky…don’t keep me waiting,” he said, ignoring the biting of the glass into his bleeding hands as he continued to pull mo re and more shards free, faster, faster , though it never seemed to be enough. “Wake up now… wake up .”

“Cho…” a voice broke into the small, shallow world Mal was in, picking glass out of Danny’s skin, out of the suit and torn sinew. “Cho, stop .”

A hand landed on his shoulder, but he shook it off. “We have to get the glass out so he heals.”

“Mickey…” It was Lucy’s voice now.

“Malcolm,” and Lynn.

“He’ll heal . Help me!” Mal cried. He wouldn’t look at them. He wouldn’t stop. Danny was not gone.

The quiet was too much, broken only by soft whimpers. Mal reached for another piece of glass. He couldn’t have been certain how much time passed, but eventually someone joined him.

It was Joey who dropped to his knees on Danny’s other side to help. Mal paused a moment, shivering, before he forced himself to be still and nodded.

They kept on, piece by piece, until Stella was there too, and Andre. There wasn’t room for any of the others, but the four of them were enough, shard by shard pulled free, none of them ever in too deep, which gave Mal hope that Danny really could survive this. He had to.

Mal had so much blood covering his hands soon that he didn’t know how much was his own.

The others were slower, more careful in their work, but they weathered their own cuts with quiet resolve.

The fewer shards remained in Danny, the more Mal ached for the kid to move, to breathe , to open his eyes.

But as the minutes stretched on, he didn’t.

“It’s not working…” Andre sniffled back a sob.

“He’ll heal,” Mal said again. “He’ll heal .”

A gentler hand rested on Mal’s shoulder. He assumed it was Lucy, but when he glanced up, it was Lynn, her other arm still in a cast, though she stood vigil to help however she could.

“Let someone else take your place. Let me check you over. You…” She trailed as her hand smoothed down his back only to pull away. She lifted it and stared at the red smeared across her palm, too dark to have easily seen against the navy of Mal’s duster. “Oh my god… ”

That was the moment Mal heard it— laughter . Cruel and loud and carefree. Fire burned inside of him where he could no longer feel the pain of his wounds.

“ Malcolm ,” Lynn said, returning to pull at his duster, which he shrugged off uncaringly as he sprang to his feet, swaying only slightly before he stormed away from the limp form of Danny to reach Ludgate.

“Wait!” she called after him, gasping when she saw the damage more clearly through his bodysuit.

Ludgate was bookended by Priestly and Lucy. She had used her vines to tie him up, and Captain Shan chimed over the comms that backup was on its way, but Mal didn’t care. He descended on the laughing form of Ludgate and grabbed him by the burnt remains of his suit.

“You bastard!” Mal reared back and punched him clean across the jaw. Ludgate needed to be more unrecognizable—like Danny. He needed to have nothing left of him. So Mal punched him again, and though Ludgate coughed and sputtered and cringed, he still laughed.

“Go ahead…hahahaha…hit me!” he cackled. “I already won!”

“Shut up!” Mal shook him and slammed his head into the ground, dazing him enough to finally cease that grating laughter.

“He was just a kid . Just a sad, lonely kid, and you had to tear him down.” He punched him again, harder, almost wishing he could strike himself too, because he’d torn Danny down first.

Mal had been part of the problem in the beginning. He’d been a villain that pushed and prodded and whittled Danny down, like all the rest. Because it was fun. Because he’d been selfish and ignorant back then, but now he knew , and he didn’t want that life. He wanted more. He wanted to be more.

“ Cho ,” someone called to stop him, and this time Mal recognized the voice as John Grant, safe, free of the mirror world, with Oz hovering in the distance.

John placed his hands on Mal’s shoulders, but his voice betrayed his tears, his own fierce anger and grief. He didn’t try hard enough to pull Mal off of Ludgate, so Mal shook him away and hit Ludgate again. Again .

“Hold him!” Lynn yelled. “Look at his back !”

Mal’s vision grew hazier with every passing second, his breaths shallower, but none of that mattered. He coughed and spit blood as he laid into Ludgate, panting with every strike, but he wouldn’t stop, he couldn’t stop. He didn’t need his ice for this.

“Mickey!” Lucy was there, while Priestly backed away, unsure how to intervene.

Mal would have listened to them, would have cared that they all sounded so distraught for his sake if he could think clearly, but his head throbbed and his thoughts spun, leaving only his rage and the swing of his fist.

“Cho, please!”

“Mickey!”

Ludgate didn’t have any mirrors now, and even if he could find a reflection to slither into, his belt was shorted out. Finally, he was powerless, and Mal wanted to revel in that. He wanted to tear the bastard apart, blood for blood. But when the next voice called out to stop him, he froze.

“ Mal ,” Dom spoke gruffly—not a yell, just his name, sharp and firm.

Mal looked up, and Dom stood over him like a sentinel despite the way she held her ribs.

Slowly, Mal let his arm fall to the side as Lucy dropped next to him and clung, pleading with him to stop, while Dom looked on with that old expression, so familiar that it made Mal ache, because it was the first look she’d ever given him.

Just two dumb teenagers lost in the world with no hope and no prospects, over twenty years ago, when Dom first saved Mal’s life.

She hadn’t looked tough or smug that day, protecting Mal from a gaggle of bullies with a knife.

She’d looked at Mal like she was now, like she simply couldn’t bear to see some skinny kid get beaten down any further.

Why did Mal always have to be the one to get beaten? Why did Danny…?

“Enough now,” Dom said, summing everything up in only a few words like always. “You know this isn’t what he’d want.”

“You’re not a killer, Mickey,” Lucy said hushed beside his ear, holding his arm and shoulders, hugging him even as she was careful around his back.

“Zeus didn’t want to cross that line again.

He didn’t want you to either. Please…please, you’re hurt.

There’s so much blood…” She sniffed. Only then did Mal realize how bad it must be if Lucy was crying.

She would have held it together for Danny, but she always cried when she feared for Mal.

“Let me look at you,” Lynn said, cautious but insistent as she came closer.

Finally giving in, Mal let Ludgate fall to the pavement, barely breathing but alive, which was more than he deserved, but it was what Danny had asked of Mal.

Several hands descended to put pressure on Mal’s back, and he hissed at the sting of pain.

“You’re in shock. We have to stop the bleeding.” Lynn’s voice sounded far away now, though she was only just behind him, wasn’t she?

Ludgate gurgled for breath, trying to get out one more laugh as he clung to consciousness. “The mirror world…is a cosmic…construct,” he wheezed, muffled by his swollen face. “It’ll reform, it always…exists.”

“But you’ll never reach it again,” Stella said, appearing from behind Mal to crawl up next to Ludgate. When he tried once more to laugh, she pulled back one of her bloody fists and struck him as hard as Mal had, finally knocking him out cold.

He’d live, but Mal still felt satisfaction in his silence.

Andre had stopped picking at the glass again, quietly sobbing as he held Danny’s hand, the one small part of him untouched by shards. Joey kept on, pulling more pieces from Danny’s body, from his arms and legs like he was mesmerized by the task.

How was Danny’s family so strong, Mal wondered? Maybe because they were a family. Because they were what a family should be.

Mal hadn’t had that traditionally, but he had it now. He had Lucy. And Dom. And all these others. It just felt so hollow with Danny lying there…

“Mickey!”

Swaying forward, Mal couldn’t stop his momentum. He was just so tired . He didn’t even feel the impact when his cheek struck the ground. Facing Danny, watching his closed eyes and still chest, Mal saw Joey finally pull the last piece of glass free.

“Lay him out!” Lynn ordered. “We have to get his shirt off…stop the bleeding…get him back to the precinct…” but her voice drifted away as she continued to give commands .

Mal couldn’t feel the hands on his back anymore. He couldn’t feel anything.

Unless it’s life or death , he thought, tears filling his eyes one last time, as he looked at Danny’s broken face. He’d kept his promise, he’d let Ludgate live, but it wasn’t supposed to end like this.

As he drifted into unconsciousness only feet from where Danny lay, he could have sworn he saw the kid’s eyes flutter, but he knew it was only wishful thinking.