Rated:T (Adult Situations, Language)

Author's Notes:

This is my frst story posted here, and though its possibly lame and trite, hey, its still a start. This story is set in the same word as TUE, though there are a few changes. In true Alternate Reality style, this world has continued because in its past, Danny still became Dan. Dan Phantom is still captured by Clockwork, and the Ghost zone and the human world are still pretty much destroyed. Everyone, humans and Ghosts, are trying to pick up the pieces and continue with life. There is the God Awful OC, but I hope the writing doesn't make her seem like too much a mary sue.

Danny and all other related characters belong to Nick and Butch Hartman.

---

The Wasteland

Prolouge

She stood looking at the destruction of her former home. The once mighty skyscrapers were gone, the houses rubble, and the public buildings nothing more than dust. The highways, the roads, even the smallest path were decimated. There were no survivors, no bodies. There was just the unending wasteland landscape. Her heart bled for the loss of life she felt here. There would be more than one ghost to haunt this place. Kneeling in the debris, she almost cried. She had been missing for so long… and now the home that had kept her sane in her captivity was gone, all at his hand.

A keening cry broke the deathly silence, and she quickly moved her child to a more comfortable position in her arms. He was a small, pale bundle in her arms, and she loved him with all her heart. He was her little payment, her retribution for all the years spent in imprisonment. But he looked so much like his father… his dreaded, hated, and powerful father. But he was to all the worlds dead. And she had their son.

He looked into her eyes, and she saw her past washed away in the innocence she found there. His dark brown hair had streaks of black, what was there anyway. The boy was only a few months old. His eyes were a pale grey, but the whites… weren't white. They were a pastel, almost glowing green. And his skin was ashen and pale, instead of rosy and sweet. Oh, why did he look so like his father? His eyes, his nose, all were like. She raised her head from his now sleeping face. He was all she had, and all she could ever have if she wanted to live. His father was hated, and not just by her. He had broken many to become as powerful as he once was. And his son was sure to be thought of with even less love. For the baby they could kill.

"We are hunted, baby-mine, and we will have to find a safe little hole to crawl into." Her soft voice drifted away, carrying across the decrepit city. Using her slight sixth sense, she checked if any had heard the sound. None living or dead was near enough to cause her worry.

Oh, and that was another of her faults! That was why she carried a baby at all. He had known, but not understood. If not for her near death experiences as a child, if not for her powerful view into the unseen, If not for his own rages and technology, she would have just been a plaything, a toy to be used and thrown away. And there would have been no child of that unholy union, no proof that she had once loved him. But she was what she was, and he had once been human. But no longer was he human or Ghost, for he was, thank the fates, as good as dead!

"Gods damn you to eternal anguish, my one time love." She said with affection. Petting their baby's hair, she sat cross-legged on the ground, a sweet smile of memory creeping across her lips. "I used to be so in love. I followed you around, and hung out with your little friends, and even wished for you to have my competitor, for she would be better suited to you. But she died, they all died, and you went away… to the very one you called enemy. And I picked up the pieces of my shattered life and moved on." Her smile became more pained and bitter sweet.

"And here, even while I mourned, the people tittered with rumors and poisons about me. For years, this went on, until finally they told me that I was to be banished. I was the last true link from them to you, my love, and they wanted me gone. So I left the confines of this city, and went into the chaotic, degraded Ghost Town. There I met more of your enemies, found in them the horror of what you had become, heard the atrocities you had committed." She laughed quietly, at herself, uncaring that if stirred her baby.

"And then you came back. First you attacked the city, destroying the only people who could have warned me, had they been so inclined. But to this day, I don't see why it was I you chose to be your concubine and consort. I am not beautiful, nor could I ever help you." She stood, and caressed her child cheek. "The only explanation that occurs to me is that you knew I loved you. And that you either wanted to love me, or wanted to cause me betrayal and pain beyond reckoning. And still, somewhere deep down, I loved you." She wept silently, speaking to none but herself and her uncomprehending baby.

"And that love will always haunt me." She looked down upon her baby's gentle sleeping face.

---

End of part one... now read on! Review, too, please!