Author's Note: FYI: Dan Phantom thinks of himself as Danny. Our Danny, the good guy we know and love, is, in Dan's mind, some altered version of himself from his past. (Try saying that three times fast.) This story is from Dan's perspective, thus every time "Danny" does or thinks something below, I am referring to Dan Phantom.

End of the Tunnel

Danny only had an instant to acknowledge the hand on his wrist before everything shifted.

He had been facing his younger self, only a moment away from attacking, melting down, running away, or…

He didn't know. It didn't matter. Now he was floating in the Ghost Zone, facing the time manipulator known as Clockwork.

And his jailer for the last two years…

Danny's fractured thoughts coalesced, and the tortured emotions which had held him back from attacking his younger self were replaced with a single, vicious urge to destroy. He exploded forward, fists filled with ecto energy.

Clockwork disappeared, and Danny swerved instantly to find him again. The need to beat this ghost senseless was so strong it overrode everything else…

There!

Danny teleported, malicious anticipation running through him when he managed to reappear just behind the time ghost.

Got you…!

But Clockwork disappeared again, somehow anticipating the attack, and Danny instinctively twisted around to find him a second time.

He floated some distance away, watching him.

Danny felt a brief pang of surprise as he stared at Clockwork; he had never exhibited this kind of speed before.

Rage buried the confusion, and he catapulted forward. "STOP RUNNING AWAY, YOU FREAK!" He would catch him, and when he did…

A deadly game of tag followed. Danny teleported again and again, only to have Clockwork melt away from his attacks.

Twist, lunge, punch...!

Teleport, hit him...ARRG!

Rage at his failure pushed Danny to try over and over to catch the time ghost. The need to attack was the only thing in his mind.

I'll rip you to shreds!

Lunge, twist and...!

Gone.

Anger kept Danny going for some time, but eventually he began to grow tired. His initial rage weakened, along with the intensity of his attacks. And as that mindless rage slowly fell away, a subtle fear steadily grew.

Lunge, feint, lunge again, and...!

Damn it...!

Clockwork had changed. Or had he, Danny, grown weaker in the last two years while trapped in the thermos…?

Suddenly, full fledged terror rose up, as he took yet another swipe that inexplicably missed its target. Danny had guessed his fate was to be hunted and trapped again, and had harbored a subtle, fatalistic dread ever since he escaped the thermos a few days ago…

No, that wasn't right.

The fear had started a little while later. After he…

-Sam's dark, beautiful eyelashes, filled with tears, framed her sad eyes.-

A brief, white hot pain seared through Danny's mind at the thought of her. Then it was gone, replaced with uncontrolled rage.

"YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING TO PUT ME AWAY AGAIN! RAAAH!" Danny charged at Clockwork, secretly splitting his form as he did so. To hell with getting caught! It was time to get more creative, so he could finally get his hands around that neck…!

The time master finally retaliated.

Danny never saw the attack. One moment he and his invisible double were charging forward, the next he was spinning out of control, a searing pain in the back of his skull. Danny managed to stop himself after a moment, and quickly turned to find Clockwork again.

A chill to ran through him.

Clockwork had also struck Danny's double. Simultaneously.

Danny floated silently, facing the time lord some distance away, as he recovered from the blow. His double, still invisible, merged back with him. Clockwork simply watched, making no move to attack. He appeared completely unfazed, as if he hadn't lifted a finger.

Danny tensed slightly, barely managing to conceal a double take. Maybe there was someone else here…? No. Impossible! His ghost sense would have been triggered.

This was...entirely Clockwork.

Danny continued tensing gradually, until his body was like a spring stretched to the point of breaking. He was furious and humiliated, and the terror he felt earlier was growing in his stomach.

The truth was, he had been attacking this ghost full out…and had yet to land a punch!

Danny let out a low growl, followed by a brief scream of frustration. Then he let loose a slew of ecto blasts, just to hit him with something…

Suddenly Danny was sent careening through space again, reeling from a hit to his temple. This time it took him several long moments to slow down and stop, and longer for his head to stop spinning. When he finally looked around again, Clockwork was waiting a few dozen feet away. Closer than before.

Danny was struck by the ghost's expression and posture; it was closed off, his face stoic and arms crossed.

He realized that it hadn't changed the entire time.

The dread rose up again, and this time a wave of desperation followed.

No no no no NO NO…

"WAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Danny poured all of his energy into the ghostly wail, making it last longer, longer…never stop, blow him away! But he was finally forced to end it, his body completely spent, and hovered, bent forward, with his hands on his knees. After a long moment, he gathered the courage to look up.

And there Clockwork remained. Untouched. Danny's most powerful attack could have been a mirage, for all it had accomplished. Except that now Danny was completely spent, so that even the possibility of escape was likely...gone.

He had just guaranteed his own capture.

The only thing Danny had left now was his anger, his old stand by. And even that- the same fury through the years that had always demanded an outlet, craved destruction, a fight, a battle- it was twisting and writhing inside him, battling now with the fear in his gut.

It was transforming into something else.

Danny had once believed certain emotions were gone forever, but the truth, made painfully clear over the last two years, was that those emotions were only deeply buried. And now the dark thoughts from his past were surfacing again, as they sometimes had before, taunting him with a deep pain he loathed, haunting him with ghosts…

But that was the irony. They weren't dead. They really weren't dead.

The explosion had never happened. He...some version of him lived a normal life right now, surrounded by everyone he had lost before...

…and where does that leave me?

Clockwork suddenly started toward him, jolting Danny's morbid, borderline schizophrenic thoughts to a halt. Danny flinched back several feet, hands held in fists.

He panicked. "Don't come near me!"

Danny teleported back as far as he could, reappearing at least a quarter of a mile away.

He couldn't stop the brief, terrified yell when Clockwork was still in his face.

He…he knows what I'm going to do before I do it…!

"Get the hell away from me! " Danny's voice was hoarse, desperate. The pressure was mounting in his mind, the fear of living the rest of his afterlife in a dark, cramped space, with everything he might've had just slipping away as time ticked by...and no one would even care…

"Feeling powerless? Afraid?" Clockwork advanced as he spoke, forcing Danny to continually back up…

Then Clockwork disappeared, and a blade was suddenly resting across Danny's throat.

A voice was in his ear, almost gentle. "Maybe if you beg…I'll have mercy?" Danny let out something between a gasp and a groan, and teleported again.

It didn't free him. The scythe was still at his throat, only now Clockwork's left arm was hooked under Danny's own, pulling him back, trapping him between the scythe and Clockwork's body.

No, no, no, no, NO, NO, NO, NO…!

Danny went insane. He could only think of escape; getting away. Getting cut by the scythe didn't even occur to him. He twisted, turned, punched, kicked, threw ecto blasts, tried to bite and scratch his way out. He attempted a ghostly wail, but it wouldn't come a second time. And all the while Clockwork stayed with him, moving and twisting with him, controlling him, thwarting his attempts to escape.

Eventually Danny sagged, and a low, desperate sound escaped his throat. It wasn't a sob. It was guttural, filled with despair, and a hint of insanity.

He was trapped, completely powerless. And now, as he gave in, images from the last few days started spilling through his mind. His younger self, the city he once knew, still unharmed…

And Sam, struggling underneath him. She had been powerless, and afraid…

"Aaaaagh!" Danny twisted again, bringing his free hand to his face in an irrational attempt to shield himself from the memory.

He sobbed. Clockwork held firm, the scythe still at his throat. Still trapping him.

Danny was doomed to be alone with his thoughts, for eternity, inside a machine constructed by his own parents…

…and right now, he knew he deserved it.

His sobs turned into an insane chuckle, as the ironies in his life rose around him, almost tangible. Cheating on that ridiculous test, the explosion, and all the pain that followed; then his attempt ten years later to re-create that same explosion which, in his mind, was an intrinsic, unalterable part of his past...

Only to be defeated by his younger self.

Then Danny had endured two endless years of being trapped in a space the size of his fist...

And when he finally escaped, what did he do? He damned himself further, for a dream he'd almost forgotten, a past he had never experienced...for the briefest taste of what he could've had, what his other self did have, while he rotted...

But at what cost? At what cost to her, you monster!

The irony was, of course, that what he did the other day had destroyed any chance, any remote possibility of, of…

As if they would have ever let you in.

As if you have a place in their world!

Danny's demented chuckling slowly grew, until he was laughing as hard as he could, laughing at the pain and misery he'd gone through and inflicted…

-the tears made her violet eyes glitter like jewels-

Danny grew quiet as even the energy needed for laughing drained away. It hadn't been laughter anyway- it had never been laughter. The mask had finally cracked, to reveal the truth to him.

He had never stopped mourning. For himself. For his family and friends.

In that moment, Danny became completely still. He merely existed. For the first time ever, his feelings, blessedly, were truly absent. He was only aware of the scythe against his neck, the iron grip on his arm holding him down.

Then the moment was gone, and dread slowly settled over him. Danny's last seconds before eternal damnation were trickling by right now...

Clockwork's voice sounded in his ear again, calm and quiet.

"Pleasant thoughts?" Danny's throat caught.

"Listen to me, Danny. I'm willing…to give you your freedom."

His mind froze.

I'm willing to give you your freedom.

Suddenly, Clockwork's grip was gone. Danny blinked, stunned, and tried to focus on the ghost calmly floating several feet away. He had to be an illusion. His mind was playing tricks.

I don't understand.

But there he was. Clockwork was facing him again, arms crossed like before. The scythe had disappeared.

Danny stared. The feel of hard metal still lingered on his neck, though somehow he hadn't been cut. He couldn't speak, as he grappled with yet another twist in his reality. With what Clockwork appeared to be offering.

My...freedom..?

Danny finally found his voice; it lurched out, a cross between a croak and a whisper.

"What…," he swallowed, "do you mean?" His hands, clenched into fists, trembled.

"I mean what I said. I'm willing to give you your freedom, Danny."

Clockwork continued. He explained how things would have to be. How Danny would have to be. The ironclad rules he would have to follow. And the Time Master made perfectly clear that he knew everything -everything- Danny had done over the last few days.

In the instant that Danny realized he knew, his stomach had dropped out. Given every other horrible thing he had done, somehow nothing could compare to that one sin, that unforgivable act...

But, for some unfathomable reason, Clockwork was giving him a second chance. And Danny, shamed as he was, and humiliated…

…and filled with a guilt he hadn't known he could hold…

He was going to take that chance.

Author's Note: First...please review? (Let me rephrase that: pweeaaase?)

Second, to readers of Catalyst: you guessed it! This is a missing/revamped scene from that story. (It goes just before Dan's remembered conversation with Clockwork back in chapter five...wow. That was forever ago!) I guess this is in part an answer to some reviews I've gotten about Dan's character early on. A partial fix, perhaps? I'm posting this as a one shot, because I figured this scene would never see the light of day if I stuck it waaay back in chapter five. (Maybe I'll go back and make it work when the entire story is written...) And yup, this isn't a perfect fit- there's some overlapping of lines and actions. Forgive me. :)

(I'm mostly done with the next Catalyst chapter, by the way. I know it's been forever. The chapter itself is a hard one- you'll probably see why it's taken a while. (Even with procrastination and school aside, of course.))