Disclaimer: Standard not mine, blah blagh blub.
Notes: Helloo! I've never written for this fandom before, but I was rewatching Danny Phantom and this came from who knows where. It's been sitting on my computer for a year and I just rediscovered it, so I thought I'd go for it and post. Enjoy!
(PLEASE REVIEW FRANDS. COMMENTS AND ADVICE ARE VERY NICE AND I LOVE GETTING THEM.)
It was the noise he made. Sam will never forget the noise. They thought it was funny, or interesting — who knew what Tucker thought, but she thought it seemed like a good idea. Was there that feeling that it would never be the same? Did his smile seem somehow more meaningful than any other, his last as a human?
Of course not. She pulled off the appliqué. It seemed like a good idea. A smile is a smile, and that one was no different.
The noise, though. It was a scream or a yell and even with everything that has happened since, she still thinks it's the most afraid she's ever been.
That was the moment. That was when he went somewhere they couldn't go. He came back, of course, and sometimes even though she doesn't quite believe in God, she thanks something for that. Danny Fenton came back that day, even if he brought something else back with him.
She can remember grabbing him, even as she trembled, and Tucker was screaming. Something's wrong with Danny, he said, and kept saying. Something's wrong with Danny. Something's wrong. Tuck's never been one for swearing, but he swore then.
What the fuck. His hair is white.
White. Not black. White.
Shit shit shit.
Something's wrong with Danny.
She was only shaking him, trying to ignore Tucker. Danny, what's wrong. Danny Danny. Wake up. Danny Danny Danny Danny Danny; was he even breathing? He seemed so light, frail almost, and she thought that fourteen was so young, and it was all her fault, and she let go of his arm so her fingers could settle on his chest, waiting for the beat, that lovely thump everyone took advantage of until it was too late —
Nothing. For moments. Years.
Then it came, and she gasped, and a second later her hand slipped straight through his chest cavity. Sank right past it as if it weren't there.
She screamed too, and it was Tucker and her screaming, and Danny's parents could be home any minute, and something was very, very wrong with Danny.
They laid him down flat on the floor. They held hands. She's never told Danny this. Tucker and her have never talked about it, not in all these years. But with Danny's still body stretched out on the floor, the occasional shallow dip of his breath the only indication he was alive, Tucker's hand found hers, and they squeezed each other's fingers until their knuckles turned red and hurt.
Danny, she whispered. Danny. Wake up. They were both crying then. It didn't matter if his hair was white. Nothing mattered if he wouldn't wake up. Because his heart was only beating once every minute or so; Tucker started timing it.
He can't be alive, Tuck got out through the snottiest tears she ever did see. It's not beating enough. Not enough.
He must be, she choked from between sobs. Or else — or else it wouldn't beat at all.
They waited. And waited. Maybe it really was only ten minutes. Tucker was counting the beats. He probably knows how many still. There's not a chance he could forget something like that.
Then it came. His eyes flew open, and they were green, and Danny was alive.
Well. Part of him was.
"Sam? You still awake?"
She looks up from the quiet riot of flames. The fire's nearly dead. "Yeah."
Danny squints at her through the blackness. She never says anything, but it's gotten to the point where his eyes usually switch to green to see better when it's dark, without him even noticing. Their faint glow mingles with the orange of the coals. "Have a nightmare?"
"Nah, just thinking."
He yawns and rustles around in his sleeping bag. Tuck's snoring like a hibernating bear next to him, a dot of drool at the corner of his mouth. Both those boys drool a bit much for her tastes.
"About what?" Danny asks, shifting into a sitting position, looking more awake.
"Eh, you know. The day you got your powers."
"Oh yeah. Man." He blinks. "What a day."
She smiles, sort of. "What a month."
"What a year." He wiggles out and comes to sit next to her. In the chilly nighttime air, such a contrast to an insulated sleeping bag, he shivers, and she curls her arms around him. His lips brush her forehead, and she can feel his heartbeat, warm and insistent. It's so reliable when he's human. She does love a reliable heartbeat. "Do you ever think," he starts, "what would have happened if I died? Instead of becoming half-ghost?"
She shrugs. She doesn't remind him that she and Tucker spent the first little while of his new life thinking he was dead. It weirds him out, and she can understand why.
"It would have sucked," she decides.
He laughs. "Yeah."
They cuddle closer. The moon is nearly invisible above, blocked by trees and clouds. It's decent weather for camping, but it could certainly be warmer.
"You ever think," she begins, after a few minutes, "that you're alive and dead at the same time? I mean, it's one thing to be half-ghost and half-human. That's strange enough. But you're kinda sitting halfway between life and death."
He raises his eyebrows. "Uh. That's too deep for me, Sam."
She narrows her eyes thoughtfully at the last few glittering shards of embers. "Interesting, though."
He shrugs. His arms wrap tighter around her.
Danny Fenton doesn't like thinking about death. She knows it. In both of them is the question of what will happen when he dies — does only the human half go away? Will he come back as a complete ghost? Will he die as a normal person, go onto whatever comes next?
"Interesting," he repeats.
"Yeah," she says.
She knows, has known, ever since they realized what happened, that Danny is perched on a line, walking a thin string that separates one part of reality from another, and that at some point that string will run out. It can only unwind so far.
But she doesn't like thinking about death either. She exhales, her breath freezing in the air, and Tucker lets out a monstrous snort. They both smile, roll their eyes. She's nice enough not to tell Danny he made a few noises like that too before he woke up.
She can tell he's getting sleepy again when his eyes blink back to blue. She's yawning as well, and they slip into their sleeping bags, murmuring drowsy goodnights. The last thing she remembers is him scooting to curve like a big kidney bean around her.
She dreams of thread rolling down a hill until only the spool remains, and that she's trying to give Danny CPR but her hands keep passing through his incorporeal chest.
But she wakes up, and everything is fine, and Danny Fenton and Phantom are one and the same, and seventeen is so very young to be worrying about anything.