"I thought it was impossible to have a funeral and a celebration in the same place at the same time." Her fists were clenched so tight her nails dug deep into the flesh of her palms. She was glaring ferociously, turning the wrath of her stare first on the mourners, then on the celebrants, then on the mourners again. Tucker was afraid she was going to explode. Any second now.

"I thought it was too," he said, rather shakily. It was like a paradox, an oxymoron for those that knew the truth – two groups of people were gathered there, on the same day, mourning and celebrating the loss of the same person. And they were ignorant enough not to have realized it.

Sam took a shaky, angry breath in through her teeth. Her muscles were so taut Tucker could see her shaking.

Consciously not thinking about what else was going on, Tucker concentrated his whole attention on Sam. "Sam, calm down, come on …" He coaxed her away from the other people, into the foyer of the church where they were not as likely to be overheard.

She turned on him, blazing fury and regret and denial and grief in her eyes. He was sure she was going to start snarling at him – any minute now.

"This is not okay! I can't calm down, Tucker! Look what they're doing in there! Look!" Her voice cracked with the force of her fury. "They've killed him and they're celebrating! Celebrating, Tucker!"

"I know. Stop yelling, do you want to draw attention?" He didn't follow the path of her pointing finger with his eyes, because he felt the exact same way. This was wrong.

"This is wrong," Sam spoke up.

"But what can we do about it?"

She ignored him, stomping her foot like a child and shouting, "This is wrong! All of this is wrong!" He muffled her mouth with his hand. She bit his palm, forcing him to let go again.

"I know! Come on, let's go outside. You can yell all you want there."

Part of Tucker didn't want to leave just yet – he felt like if he left, something even worse would happen. Like the memory of his friend could be degraded any more than it had been already. A slight, cynical chuckle escaped as he towed Sam out of the building.

As soon as they were out, the overwrought girl began her tirade all over again, screaming and waving her arms, voice cracking on every other word with the force of her fury. He towed her down the street, heading for her own house, feeling her words strike the barely-scabbed places in his heart that could not afford to be broken open again so soon.

They were, though. One by one, Sam's words broke the scabs, letting the blood flow again. By the time the two friends reached Sam's house, Sam had lowered herself to cursing and Tucker was seriously considering going back and seeing what damage he could do to the people who were treading the memory of his friend into the dust.

They entered the Manson household, Sam still cursing a blue streak and Tucker frowning deeply behind her. Her parents weren't home, as far as he could see.

The minute they entered her room and she'd slammed the door (he was sure she'd cracked the frame), Sam dropped onto the bed, apparently exhausted.

Tucker dared to sit beside her, quiet for once, lost in his own disturbing, violent, PG-16-rated thoughts.

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"What are we going to do?" Sam's voice was hoarse from all the yelling she had just accomplished.

"What can we do? Nothing. Nothing now, anyway."

Sam stood up, and Tucker could almost see the fury lighting up behind her eyes again. In doing so though, she knocked several objects to the floor. There was the tinkle of breaking glass – a water glass, perhaps.

Sam stared down at the broken pieces, then yelled, picked one up and hurled it against the far wall. She did the same thing, again and again, breaking every piece she could get her fingers on. When they were barely more than glass sand, she turned her fury on the rest of the contents of her room. Tucker crouched beside the bed, hands over his head.

Sam spat a word she shouldn't have said and threw herself onto the bed again. The screaming turned suddenly and without warning into hysterical tears, smearing makeup on the pillow. Every other sob was a curse word, but they were still genuine tears.

At any other time, Tucker would have milked this situation for all it was worth. Now, he couldn't bring himself to do so. He dropped down on the bed beside her, burying his face in his arms that laid atop the coverings, listening to her crying and wondering how humanity could be so incredibly dense.

Danny Fenton. Danny Phantom. Both died on the same day. Nearly the same time, as far as other people could tell. Even the same place! But even now, no one realized it. They had rid themselves of a troublesome ghost, and they had lost a poor child in the fight. How could they not tell that their casualty of war and their ghost were one and the same?

It was hard to find optimism in such a situation; extremely so. The only good point tucker could find – and this doubled as one of his greatest guilts as well – was that he had not actually been there when Danny had fallen. He had been behind the scenes, working the technology.

Sam had been there. For the first time, Tucker reflected how awful that must have been. But he couldn't think about that in detail, because he had enough on his own plate as it was.

--

Nobody noticed the goth with the red-rimmed eyes and the techno-geek with the deep frown walk silently back into the church. Sam was shaking a little, but not too much. Tucker tried to give her as much comfort as he could without speaking to her, invading her personal space or in any way disturbing her. His self-preservation instincts told him quite clearly that defenseless geeks and riled-up goths did not mix well.

They entered the dining hall again to find the celebration still going on, even when the funeral was wrapping up. Sam let her shoulders slump a little and marched resolutely toward the mourners. She hadn't bothered to fix her makeup; she looked a mess.

Tucker stood for a moment, uncertain. He wanted to go over there too, to where he could at least think about Danny without people's excited gabble in his ears.

But then he looked over at the small-scale party and felt a surge of anger on behalf of Danny Phantom. Not one friendly or unhappy face among them. Danny Fenton's memory was being treated with care. Danny Phantom deserved just as much, if not more.

Tucker's was the only somber face on that side of the room; he rested his elbows on one of the tables, staring off into the distance, refusing to acknowledge the way Danny Phantom's work, all the times he'd saved the city, all the times he'd risked his life, was being ignored.

Like it could help, like it would right this bizarrely wrong situation, Tucker painstakingly brought to mind everything he could remember about his friend's attempts, successes, and failures to save the city.

He found himself feeling a stinging at the back of his eyes, and rubbed at them as if there was a speck of dust there.

But it was finally starting to set in – Danny was gone. He was sitting, the only mourner, at Danny Phantom's funeral of sorts. Just on the other side of the room, people grieved for Danny Fenton.

Sam was right; this was wrong.

Tucker stood up, abandoning his table, and dragging a chair across the floor until it was more-or-less in between the two halves of the room. He reclined, suddenly so worn-out, so drained.

The scrape of a chair beside him made him look up. A disheveled Sam plopped down beside him. Neither of them said anything; they just sat there in reverential silence.

It was nigh on five minutes later that Jazz, tearstained and rumpled, came to sit beside them too. Tucker didn't usually believe in supernatural stuff like coincidences or fate, but somehow this felt right.

After all, if you thought about it, Sam, Jazz and Tucker were the only ones who had a right to sit here, in between the celebration and the ending funeral. They were the only ones who could say that they had known – really known – and loved – really loved – both of those that had died today. Many people knew of Danny Phantom, the terrorizer. A fair few knew of Danny Fenton, the terrorized. There was a line that separated the two groups, like Phantom and his human counterpart were different beings altogether.

And none but Jazz, Tucker and Sam had walked on both sides of that line.