Page 64 of Lovesick Titan (Lovesick #2)

Danny gasped as he came to. Everything hurt at once, as if his body had waited for him to come to full awareness before it assaulted him with the reality of the wounds he’d sustained.

He remembered the glass, how Ludgate hadn’t been wrong—the mirror world had imploded, taking the fun house with it and impaling Danny from every angle. The pain had been excruciating for one long moment before he caught sight of Mal…and then faded into darkness.

“Danny!”

Groaning as Lynn and Andre rushed up on either side of him, Danny saw that he was in the med room on the hospital bed, covered in tubes and bandages and—oh god, his arms , his chest .

It was all he could see of himself, his lower half covered in a blanket, but the top half, what wasn’t bandaged or hooking him up to machines, was a mess of angry, crisscrossed scar tissue.

“You’re okay,” Lynn said, a gentle hand coming to rest on his bandaged wrist.

“You just look like Edward Scissorhands.”

“ Andre ,” Lynn hissed. Her kind, patient eyes turned to Danny with a warm smile. “You’re healing. The scars will fade. Just relax.”

Easier said than done, since Danny’s healing factor meant he ran through pain meds faster than he could enjoy them and used up IVs like an entire burn ward even when he wasn’t near death. He barely believed he’d survived so many wounds. The trauma alone…

“Hang in there, Danny,” Lynn said. “Just rest. You’re going to be okay. ”

She was giving him something, feeding meds into the IV that was— wow , strong, even almost enough to dull the pain, making his head feel fuzzy and eyes flutter with the urge to close.

Lynn had perfected her cocktail for treating him, probably filling him with enough…

whatever it was to knock out a dinosaur.

But no, wait! Danny didn’t want to sleep.

“… Mal …” he croaked, hand flailing out toward Andre, who caught it, squeezed gently, and met his fading gaze only to lose his smile, looking pinched and sad before Danny drifted into darkness again.

R

The next time Danny awoke, the pain was more manageable.

Hours, maybe longer, had passed. The lighting was dimmer in the med room now.

His depth perception extended farther than just the bed, and he could see Lynn and Andre mulling about in the main room through the large window, see Stella and Joey huddled together in separate chairs beyond the stretch of his feet, dozing against each other’s shoulders. And he could see his—

“ Dad ,” Danny squawked in equal excitement and relief as he saw John making a quick dart across the room. His father’s hands grasped one of his in both palms, warm and comforting.

“They told me everything I missed,” John said, taking a seat next to the bed. “I’m so sorry Ludgate used me like that, Danny.”

Danny squeezed his dad’s hand, happy he had enough strength back to manage.

“I’m just glad you’re okay. Hermes got you out?

” John nodded, and Danny’s eyes drifted to his bare arms and chest again.

The scars were fainter now but still jarring.

“All that glass…I must look like something out of a Halloween store.”

John huffed. “You look fine to me, kiddo. Getting all that glass out of you…I don’t know how Cho and the others managed.”

Cho…

“Mal!” Danny sat up abruptly as he recalled Andre’s expression. “Where is he?! ”

“Danny, calm down.” John tried to push him back to the bed, but Danny fought against him, desperate for answers.

“Where is he?! Is he okay?!”

Stella and Joey stirred, then Lynn and Andre ran in from the other room, but Danny didn’t want to be surrounded and gushed over, happy as he was that everyone seemed to be safe. He had to know about Mal. His father, just like Andre, looked so crestfallen.

“Please…please tell me he’s okay,” Danny said, finally giving in to his father’s attempts to lay him down. He felt so weak, dazed from whatever Lynn had been giving him, or maybe it really was so much damage his body was trying to heal from that it was too tired to fight.

John hushed him as the others encircled the bed, Stella placing a hand on his ankle through the blanket, while Lynn checked his vitals.

None of them would meet his eyes, but Danny couldn’t accept the truth he saw coming, didn’t want to believe that it had all been for nothing, that somehow Ludgate had still won.

“No… no , please…”

“Danny,” Stella said, that sad, sympathetic look burning through her smile, preparing him for the worst, when instead she said, “he’s alive . He just…won’t wake up.”

“ Hasn’t woken up,” Andre reiterated, almost like a challenge, not to Stella, but to the fates leading their lives down darker and darker paths.

“We don’t understand what’s happening to him, Danny, but he’s alive.

It just doesn’t make any sense.” He turned his head to look behind him, and it was only then that Danny realized he’d always been looking down past his feet or to his left.

He hadn’t yet taken in the room at his right.

Lynn’s hand brushed along his forehead, seemingly satisfied with the readings she was getting before she stepped back, giving Danny a clear view to the other side of the room.

Mal was laid out on another bed, resting on his side facing Danny, eyes closed and breathing steady.

Dom sat in a chair against the far wall, awake, with Lucy draped across her from how she slouched out of her own chair, still sleeping.

Dom nodded to Danny grimly. Her eyes were heavy.

They must have been awake for so long, watching over Mal.

Without any bruises or cuts Danny could see, Mal looked peaceful somehow, only familiar scars revealed on his bare chest .

“Ludgate must have gotten in a lucky shot,” Lynn said. “The stab wound in his back went deep. The truth is, Danny…he shouldn’t be alive. The wound, how long he went untreated, how much he aggravated it, how much blood he lost…”

“But he’s stable?” Danny said, relaxing since he could see Mal clearly from where he lay.

“That’s where the weird comes in,” Andre said. “Cho doesn’t have a healing factor, but when he kept hanging on against the odds, we looked at his blood and…”

“And what?”

“There are traces of Lightning DNA instead of just Ice,” Lynn said.

“ What ?” Danny looked at each of them in turn. “How is that possible?”

“Whatever you did, Danny,” Stella said, “when you shorted out Ludgate’s belt, some of that energy went into Mal.”

“I can’t believe something like that could happen from just one moment of exposure,” Lynn shook her head. “Unless there have been other times he was in contact with your lightning directly? Not from an offensive attack, but…around you, sparking from your body like in the mirror world?”

Danny remembered more than once during their love making when he’d sparked strongly, eyes glowing, with the hair on Mal’s arms standing on end, especially the night before they faced Ludgate when their powers entwined.

“Yeah…a few times,” he said, not wanting to explain the truth in front of everyone .

“Multiple exposures could have something to do with it,” Lynn said, “but it’s still a one in a million chance that it wouldn’t do more harm than good, or nothing at all. Whatever the answer, because of that connection, however small, his cells have been regenerating. Not as fast as you—”

“He’s healing?”

“ Partially . But it’s been slowing down. We don’t know if it’s enough. He’s stable, but…”

“He won’t wake up,” Danny said, the dull ache of failure mingling with his stubborn hope. Mal was alive. He was alive . There was still a chance. “What about Ludgate? ”

“Where he belongs,” John said. “Infirmary for now while he heals his burns and…well, Cho gave him a hell of a beating when it was over. Once he’s healthy enough to make it to the courthouse, there’ll be a hearing, not that it’ll take much to get him in jail with a full trial pending.

Everyone in Olympus City saw what he tried to do to you. ”

Danny had almost forgotten. Ludgate had been broadcasting the fight. He wondered just how much the city had seen. But instead he asked, “My lightning…Ludgate didn’t—”

“Nothing like what’s happening with Cho,” Andre assured him. “No change to his blood, we checked, and he’s healing nice and slow.”

Danny refrained from saying, “ Good ,” despite how knowledge of the man’s discomfort soothed him, as long as he still lived to pay for his crimes the right way.

“You need to rest, Danny,” Stella patted his ankle again.

“Yes,” Lynn said sternly, “you do. By the time you’re able to get out of this bed, I’m sure Malcolm will open his eyes, and we can really celebrate, alright? In the meantime—”

“Everyone else is fine, right?”

“All present and accounted for,” John said. “Captain Shan, Hephaestus and Hermes, Carla and the kids…”

Danny smiled at that.

“Michael really wants a visit, Zeus ,” Lucy called from across the room, groggy but loud enough to catch Danny’s attention.

She hadn’t moved off of Dom, but she smiled as she roused from her much needed slumber.

“Hurry up and get better so your mug doesn’t scare him too badly, and we’ll bring him in to help you and Mickey recover, okay? ”

Danny chuckled as he met her eyes. “Sounds like a deal.”

The melancholy in the room was palpable, but they hadn’t given up hope yet that Mal would wake up. If becoming an Elemental at twenty-eight had taught Danny anything, it was that miracles could happen in the strangest of ways.

“Glad to have you back,” Joey said, big smile beaming from beside Stella.

Even with Mal still asleep, still healing, Danny felt warm and at peace with his extended family around him. “Thank you.”