Hey, y'all! Sorry for my absence, I completely forgot about this account for a bit while I was working on another archive fic. Hopefully the new chapter will be posted this weekend (as well as on here).

This series is technically a bunch of one shots sort of connected with one another. on ao3, I have it as separate parts, I figured I'd jsut post it as a multichapter fic here to make things easier.

It's an AU where... I'm not really sure how to explain it? Like, it's mostly canon, but with old headcanons of mine (that have, over time, evolved, but I'm not gonna go back and change them now so this is what you get) of what had really happened in the portal. It's angst bc y'all know I like to make my boy suffer

Enjoy!

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He was sinking.

Danny moved his arms around in the water, eyes stinging a bit from the chlorine - he hadn't gone swimming in ages - but no matter how hard he flailed his limbs around, he couldn't float.

Sure, he could propel himself upwards. And he most definitely could still swim. But it felt like he was dragging himself through cement; something was making him sink, like an anchor was permanently tied to his chest. To his heart.

The there was the matter with his lungs. They didn't hurt. They didn't grow tired. Actually, Danny had forgotten he was supposed to hold his breath... because he didn't feel the need to breathe anyway.

This is weird, he thought as he sat on the pool floor.

He allowed his eyes to close for a moment, smiling a bit at the blissful silence. He couldn't remember the last time it had been this quiet. As his hair tickled his cheek, floating around in the water, he wondered why he didn't do this more often.

Then he wondered how long it had been, and if he had won.

As soon as that thought registered, arms grabbed his and pulled him others. He flew upwards with no protest, not even letting lose bubbles as he neared the surface.

Danny felt cold air reach his face, and he blinked, still confused as to why he hadn't breathed in yet. He experimentally sucked in some air, but that's all it felt like: sucking in air.

A hand slapped his bare back, and Danny turned around to see Tucker's pale, terrified face.

"Danny," he breathed. "What the fuck, man."

"Did I win?" Danny asked, clueless as always.

Tuck's eyes flashed in anger, and he hit Danny's arm again. "Win?" he demanded. "Win? Dude, I thought you had drowned!"

Danny frowned and pushed some wet hair back from his face. A little kid splashed some water in their direction, and he shielded his face. "How long was I down there?"

"Four minutes," Tucker answered. His eyes were still wide as saucers.

Danny's eyebrows shot up. "Huh," he said after failing to come up with an appropriate response. "That's new."

DDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

Two weeks.

He made it two weeks without breathing.

He could've gone on longer, too, if he hadn't woken up from that nightmare. In the dream, he had been a full ghost, except he was intangible and invisible all of the time. He had no voice, and tried to communicate with his family and friends, but no one knew he was there.

The worst part? He couldn't breathe.

So Danny had woken up in a cold sweat, shaking and afraid, checking to see if he was visible and tangible; and he noticed how he hadn't even gasped once, not when he woke up and felt a horrible pressure in his throat; not when he knew he had to.

Repulsion and fear racked his body, and he sucked in a lungful of air, the first in two weeks. But at the horrible empty feeling in his chest when doing so made a lump rise in his throat, then he was breathing faster - except he wasn't breathing, only sucking in oxygen that seemed to have no effect on him whatsoever. He began to panic, clutching his chest and rocking back and forth, whimpering and trying desperately to breathe.

Danny called Sam and told her he hadn't been able to take the experiment anymore. It was three o'clock in the morning, but he needed to make sure everyone knew he still existed. Not like in the nightmare.

"Two weeks is still pretty sick," Tuck said the next day at school.

"I feel sick," Danny answered, who had been desperately sucking in air all day. "Something's wrong..."

"We'll figure it out," Sam promised and squeezed his shoulder.

DDDDDDDDDDDDD

Sam bit her lip and shuffled around awkwardly. This wasn't like her. Normally she just spit everything out, usually in sarcastic, blunt remarks. She didn't try to dance around the point.

But this time was different.

"Danny," she started hesitantly, not looking the boy in his eyes. The boy with the icy blue eyes that seemed to be both cold and hard and soft and warm all at the same time. The boy who had such a hopeful expression that it killed her to say her next words. "I... I think you're not as alive as we thought."

Tucker furrowed his brows. He was leaning against a table in the lab, keeping one eye on the portal in case some nasties decided to show up. "Sam, he's not dead. He still has a body."

"That's the thing..." she groaned, rubbing her temples. "He has a body, and he's obviously not a full ghost. He's still alive, because his brain is still working and he isn't decomposing."

"If you're bringing back the theory that Phantom is my spirit that haunts my corpse," Danny interjected, "I'm going to say right now that that's definitely wrong. Overshadowing someone feels like you're wearing their skin, or, or wrapped around them - I feel like myself."

"That theory was dropped," Sam said. She groaned again. "Okay. So basically, this is what's happening. When you turned on the portal, you got shocked by thousands of volts of electricity, which almost certainly would have killed you... if it wasn't in a ghost portal with ectoplasm fused into the very metal."

Tucker's eyes widened. "Holy shit."

"Tuck's caught on," Danny said, "but I haven't. What are you talking about?" He wrung his hands, then pressed two fingers underneath his thumb. "There's a pulse."

"But it's not a heartbeat," Sam said helplessly.

"I've got it." Tucker's green eyes were shining excitedly. "The accident, it... it saved you. It fused with you, with your very being, and it covered your DNA and organs and turned your heart..."

"It encased your heart, which had stopped beating, and became your core," Sam finished. Danny was staring at her in disbelief. "Your organs are still there, you're still here because that ectoplasm fused with you."

"The ectoplasm created Phantom," Danny realized. "He's not my soul, he's not even me, he's the ectoplasm that came from the lightning and fused with me."

"Phantom is a part of you, Danny," Sam continued. "He always will be. But if it this were a normal explosion... you would have died."

A somber silence seemed to befall the group, the words weighing heavy on their minds - then Danny spoke up with a quiet, shaking voice, "But I'm not alive, am I?"

"I've got this, Sam," Tucker said gently to the girl who seemed to be struggling with her words for the first time in forever. "Danny, you breathed at first when you came out of the portal because your body's natural response was to do that, even if you didn't need to. It mimicked... everything. Breathing. Sleeping and eating, too, I'd bet... we should totally try that-"

"Tucker."

"Right, sorry. Anyway, that pulse isn't a heartbeat, it's your core. Where Phantom comes from. You don't have any life energy, but your ghost energy is keeping you alive."

"How does that even work?" Danny looked like he was about to hyperventilate, already sucking in air (they didn't use the term breathing anymore), unaware of the fact that wouldn't work. "When we split me apart with the Ghost Catcher, I didn't die."

"Because you split the ghost apart from you, meaning your powers," Tucker elaborated. Granted, these were all theories, but theories could turn out to be correct. "And those powers have the manifestation of Phantom, which is why I'm guessing you can't use as many of your powers as Fenton. But the ectoplasm is fused with your very being, and you can't get rid of that unless you undo the accident. It's like the Gauntlets, too - they ripped your ghost half out, but not your energy."

Danny winced a bit at the mention of the alternate timeline. "Okay... but how can I run on ghost energy without being a full ghost?"

"You've walked the line between life and death, Danny," Sam said with a hoarse voice. "You're not dead, but you're not alive - you're a ghost with the form of a human."

He didn't sleep at all that night; whether it was beause he couldn't or simply didn't have to, Danny didn't want to find out.

He couldn't breathe.

He didn't breathe.

And he hated it.

Monster, whispered his mind. Freak. Dead. Ghost.

Stop it, Danny told himself.

But he still didn't breathe.

He stopped eating, and lost weight... but he didn't get as hungry as he would be if he stopped eating for a few days.

Weirdo. Dead. You're dead, Danny, a ghost. A monster.

He forced himself to eat again after getting tired of looking at his bruised ribs each night.

The ghosts seemed to notice something was off, because they have him a little bit of space (not the Box Ghost, obviously; and Skulker liked his moments of weakness, so he stayed, too) - but kept an eye on him, too. Danny could feel them watching, and whenever they fought, they shot him concerned glances, almost as if they cared.

And he still didn't breathe.

He didn't breathe when his father offered him fudge. He didn't breathe when his mother hugged him. He didn't breathe when he was called on in class, or when he was shoved into a locker; he didn't breathe, and he hated it.

He didn't breathe when he lay awake at night, staring at the ceiling, not knowing whether he would die in his sleep because of it. But was he even alive now?

He didn't breathe as tears slipped down his cheeks, as words floated around in his head.

Monster. Freak. Loser. Monster. Weirdo. Monster. Dead. Ghost. Dead. Monster.

He didn't breathe because there was no need to.

DDDDDDDDDDDD

edgy