This story is post-series, about a year after Thrill of the Chase. It's a format I don't often try to use, where the story is a series of fractured flashbacks in between interludes of present time.
This chapter is rated K+ for implications. The story is rated T for the same reasons.
This story is a work of fanfiction. I don't own Danny Phantom.
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Maddie trudged through the forest behind the mansion. Secluded, hidden, spooky, filled with bats and spiders, it was the perfect place for this. She followed the path trod into the undergrowth, coming to a small clearing on a tiny hill. An unmarked grave laid beneath the settling earth, the first hints of growth peeking up through the bare dirt. A single tree broke the clearing, its boughs gently shading the grave and its self-appointed keeper.
Maddie lifted her basket, offering its contents as sacrifice. Wine, bananas, cookies, and those little rum balls that the grave's keeper so enjoyed. A small bouquet of flowers for the sleeper below.
Red eyes blinked up at her. Their owner smiled and patted the grass next to him.
She laid the flowers down for the grave and sank to the ground next to its keeper. She offered him the basket.
"Where's Jack?" he asked. "He hasn't shown up once."
Maddie shrugged. "You know how he is," she said. "No matter how much time goes by I still think he's disturbed by the whole thing."
"Understandable."
She leaned back against the tree and took a good long look at the gravekeeper. His black suit was shredded at the wrists and ankles. He'd long since abandoned his pristine white shirt, instead tying his red silk ascot around his bare neck. His feet were bare and caked with dirt, his nails long and untended, his long white hair oily, unruly, and tangled. "Vlad, you look terrible," she said.
Vlad gave her a wry smile, his red eyes shining. He pulled a bottle of wine from the basket, peeling off the foil with his nails. "You would too if you were sitting here waiting for two months," he said.
"You know you don't have to," Maddie admonished. "I'm sure he'll be okay if you go back to your own house and get some sleep. And maybe a shower."
Vlad surreptitiously sniffed himself. He wasn't that bad... "I'd rather not," he said. "I woke up alone the first time. And every time since, now that I think about it. It was always... bad." He stabbed his nails into the wine cork, gently twisting and pulling until the cork popped free. "I don't want him to go through the same thing, Maddie. Daniel deserves better than I had."
Maddie looked down at the unmarked grave, the grave of her son. Somewhere down there, six feet under, laid a pine box. Within, nestled in among red silk and soft earth, her teenaged son slept fitfully, still trapped in his 14 year old body. For 4 years he'd been like this, always constant, never changing, never aging. Vlad had said this would help, that Danny would wake up changed, grown up, this was a gift, he'd said.
Vlad poured two glasses of wine, steel camping cups the best he could manage out here in the clearing. He handed one to Maddie. Steel clinked in a toast.
She still wasn't sure why.
