Avoiding Past And Future

28

Danny was absolutely not having a fun time.

After miss Waller had left, she had left the remote to his collars in his cell. Now, a normal person would think she simply forgot it. But neither he nor Waller were normal. No, she left it there on purpose. They couldn't risk the wrong person having their hands on it. So now it was wholly Danny's responsibility to decide when to shut down his collars. Because that's just such a great idea in a superpowered prison. Danny couldn't blame her though. Rather he have it than that creeper Dr Strange.

Not even the day after Miss Waller was officially let go, the entire atmosphere in the penitentiary changed. Danny and the other isolation inmates were moved to gen pop, much to Danny's dismay. He got paired with that ice kid, Cameron, so that was incredibly awkward. But the teen didn't seem to recognize him at all so it wasn't all that bad. Plus his frosty nature kept their cell nice and cold which was a bonus in Danny's books.

Speaking of books, Dr Strange had confiscated all of them. Since he didn't have his own cell anymore, they were found pretty fast and taken away. If he wanted to read or study again, he'd be forced to go into these meetings with Strange. If Danny didn't know any better he'd think Spectra had possessed the man. His vibes were beyond rancid, which was rather impressive for a human but anything but good for him right now. Dr Stinky would try to have therapy sessions with him as well, try to figure out what got him in here and all that. At least he was sure Dr Stinky wasn't the trusted person Miss Waller had promised to give his file to. Unfortunately, that also meant that Danny became Dr Stinky's favorite person to harass into conversations. He was particularly hard to get rid of when Danny had a nightmare and woke up screaming in the middle of the night. No way in hell would he ever tell Dr Stinky how he kept having nightmares about his parents and Dick falling to their deaths.

At least Cameron wasn't all that bad to talk to. Apparently his previous cellmate was a snitch so the teen had some interesting stuff to share. He also never asked Danny about the nightmares, just stayed up with him and talked to keep his mind off of the images flashing before his eyes every time he blinked.

Danny didn't really like going out for social hours or to eat, truth be told. He enjoyed solitary because he was left alone there. It was quiet and peaceful, outside of some angry screaming and some shitty guards. Not that he didn't have shit guards now. Wilcox and the others were all on sick leave until they could recover from their injuries. That meant that half of the guards were transfers. And of course, with Danny's luck, they all hated him. They saw him as nothing more than a deranged child who must have messed up big time to land in adult prison.

Mess up he did indeed. On more than one occasion they almost caught sight of Cujo. The pup had been hanging out with Danny as much as he could but since his transfer, that was a horrible idea. Somehow, Cujo had found a batarang left behind from the fight with the heroes and decided it would be his new favorite chew toy. Danny was almost sure it wasn't one of the explosive kinds but it's not like that would hurt either of them. Still, after the attempted breakout, it wasn't safe for Cujo to be seen anymore. The guards knew Cujo was connected to him and they blamed Cujo for helping with the breakout. It just wasn't safe for him anymore so Danny had no choice but to send him away. Find a safe place to stay he said, as if there was still a safe place the pup would want to be at without Danny.

Cujo refused to leave, however. Danny promised they'd stay together after all. Danny would need him sooner or later and Cujo refused to not be there for him. Danny, of course, tried everything. Send him on a quest, send him on errands, even tried ignoring him once. That one was particularly painful because he wanted nothing more than to just cuddle with the pup until it all got better again. One day, after being forced to the mess by Cameron, Danny broke off a soda tab. Later when Cameron was out for leisure time, Danny used that stupid batarang and carved Cujo into the soda tab. With some struggles, he finally got it attached to his collar. At least now, Cujo finally had a tag again.