In honor of Father's Day and to help cure my writer's block for Stars on the Horizon, enjoy this pointless angstiness between Vlad and Danielle. This is a canon oneshot that takes place a few years after Phantom Planet.
Note: The writer's block thing worked, so expect an update for SotH within the week :)
Storm clouds gathered overhead, thunder rumbling in the distance as the rain prepared to batter Amity Park in its rampage across the state.
Leaning his back against a brick wall and momentarily protected from the elements by the overhanging roof, a tall, haggard looking man turned his blue-gray eyes up to scan the quickly darkening sky. The hood of his worn, gray zip-up hoodie was pulled up to hide his silvery white hair, a faux leather bomber jacket worn over the hoodie to keep him protected from the cold and somewhat disguise his muscular frame.
His jeans, once pristine, were now torn at the knees and stained with dirt after he had fallen while running from the Guys in White two weeks prior just on the outskirts of the city. His Timberland boots were also caked with dirt and the treads nearly worn down flat.
There was a pair of golden cufflinks in the right pocket of his bomber jacket, each worth many times the value of his entire outfit on their own. He slipped his hands into the pockets now, and he gently turned the cufflinks over in his palm, his eyes still trained on the churning black clouds in the sky. He cared little about the monetary value of the cufflinks; he would never sell them.
They were the only part of his outfit that had not been stolen in the dead of night from a department store. They were a tether, a connection to his past and what had once been.
… Just like the building standing before him, and everyone who lived in it. His eyes finally left the sky and drifted down to scan over the two-story brick house across the road with its massive metal Op Center on the roof. Three years ago, he would have been welcomed into that house as a guest. He would have been greeted with an ear-to-ear grin and a loud hello from his old college friend, and with a hesitant but warm smile from the love of his life.
Now, just standing within fifty feet of the building, he would be lucky to survive the night. The Guys in White knew that he was back on Earth, had known for two weeks now, and so surely they had warned the Fentons of his return. If they saw him here… he would be dead before he managed to get a word out.
Lightning cracked overhead, and the rain began in a steady drizzle that would soon become a torrential downpour. He took a long, steadying breath.
He should not be here, but for some reason he just could not make himself stay away.
Headlights shone over the hill to his left, a car slowly approaching the stretch of road before the Fenton household, and he quickly left the relative dryness of the overhanging roof above him to duck into the closest ally. Hidden in the shadows now, he was immediately soaked to the bone, but he dared not become intangible for fear of setting off one of the Fenton's many ghost alarms.
The car, an old white sedan, pulled up to the curb beside the Fentons' before slowing to a stop. The door opened, and a seventeen-year-old boy got out, a glowing green bubble suddenly forming over his head as he stepped into the rain. Over the sound of the car's engine and the windshield wipers working furiously against the rain, a pair of voices just managed to reach his ears.
"Thanks for the ride, Tuck," the boy said, bending over to look into the car with one hand on top of the car door.
"Yeah, yeah," the driver answered. "Shut the door, dude! You're getting the seat wet!"
"See you tomorrow," the boy responded with a laugh before he slammed the door shut.
As the car drove away, Vlad felt the corners of his mouth tug into a sad smile against his will. Daniel was much taller than he remembered—the child must have hit a growth spurt in the past three years—and just by the icy sensation gripping at his lungs right now, he could tell that the boy was strong. Daniel was setting off his ghost sense by projecting a simple shield.
Suddenly Daniel stopped on his way into his home, turning on the porch steps to look behind him, the rain coming down on his ghostly shield and pouring around him like a supernatural waterfall. Vlad immediately shrunk further back into the ally, his heart thumping like a bass drum as he waited for Daniel to stop looking at him. He can't see me, he reassured himself as he kept his eyes on the teenager. The boy was staring right into the ally in which he was standing, shading his eyes with one hand as though to get a better look past the nearly blinding downpour.
After an agonizingly long two minutes, the teenager finally dropped his hand to his side. He continued to gaze into the ally for a few seconds, but eventually he seemed to dismiss the notion that anyone was there and turned away, stepping intangibly through the front door of his home.
Vlad stood there for several long seconds, blood pumping loudly through his head and his hands shaking. That had been entirely too close. If Daniel had spotted him—if he had noticed that it was his archenemy standing in an ally just outside his home—the boy would have immediately assumed the worst and attacked. And really Vlad would not have blamed the boy for such a reaction, but the idea still shook him to his core.
He was not opposed to dying, not by any means, but he certainly did not want his end to come at the hands of his teenage rival.
His pulse was just beginning to slow to its normal pace when a voice spoke up behind him.
"What are you doing here?"
His heart all but leapt out of his chest, and he whirled around, his hands flying out of his pockets and his eyes wide and panicked in search of his attacker.
It had not been Daniel who had spoken, and it was definitely not Daniel standing before him. He staggered back a step, his hands dropping to his sides.
"Danielle," he breathed, his voice barely audible and full of disbelief.
She was standing just ten feet in front of him, in her ghost form, with her feet planted firmly on the ground and her hands tensed at her sides. Along with an ecto-shield just like Daniel's hanging over her head, there was an emerald spark of ghostly energy dancing across her fingertips, poised on the brink of an all-out attack.
Even though the rain obscured his view of her to an extent, he could make out her bright green eyes glaring daggers at him, plain as day.
"I said: What are you doing here?" she demanded again.
Even with her unspoken threat hanging between them, Vlad still took several seconds to collect himself enough to open his mouth. And even then, his throat was so raw from disuse that it took him a while to actually form words.
"I…" he began, but his voice cut off. He swallowed heavily and continued, "I don't know."
"Bull," she immediately countered, and the green energy jumped from her fingertips to her palms.
"How…" he tried to ask, but again his voice refused to allow him to speak in complete sentences on the first try. He tried again. "How did you know I was here?"
"My ghost sense," she answered curtly. "I've been training it. Now I can tell the difference between different ghosts, and believe me, most of all I can tell when it's you."
She spat that last word like it left a foul taste on her tongue, and her eyes traveled down to his feet and back up to his face. "I've been staying with Danny's family here in Amity Park. I sensed you in town two weeks ago, and until now I just assumed that maybe you could leave us alone."
Her glare had softened a bit as she spoke, but it hardened right back up when she scowled at him and added, "But you just can't do that, can you?"
"Danielle," he began, "I am not here to cause harm to any of you. I simply—"
"I swear to God, Plasmius, if you don't tell me the truth," she interrupted and raised her right palm in an obvious threat, "I will prove to you that I am not nearly as weak as you always thought I was. Do you understand me? Now, why are you here?"
It was difficult to determine through all the rain, but Vlad was almost certain he could see her eyes welling up with tears.
… And somehow it came as a shock when he realized that it was all because of him.
She was crying because of him, and really, he could not remember a time he had ever brought someone—anyone—to tears. He licked his suddenly dry lips and broke eye contact with her, and his next words came without him really meaning to say them out loud.
"I'm sorry."
He flinched at the sound of his own voice, such a pathetic and barely recognizable whisper, and there was a pause in which he steadfastly refused to look up and meet her gaze. When he finally did, he saw that the light in her hands had died out. She was standing there, still protected by her ecto-shield while Vlad stood ten feet away steadily getting more and more soaked, with her hands at her sides and a look of absolute shock on her face.
"You're…" she began, but her voice trailed off. Vlad tried to read her face, but all he saw was confusion. "You're… sorry?"
He hesitated, but then slowly nodded.
"You're sorry?" she exploded, her face suddenly contorting with rage as she shot a blast of ghostly energy into the ground beside her feet. She let out a humorless laugh and continued, "You're sorry! Oh, that's just great!"
She charged forward until she had halved the distance between them and shot an ecto-blast at his chest. It collided solidly with its target and sent him stumbling backward until he fell on his butt on the concrete. She ranted, "You total inconsiderate prick, I trusted you! And what did you do? You betrayed me, tried to kill me, and then tried to take over the entire goddamned world! And then—and then you left! You have been gone for three years… and you say you're sorry?"
"I am," he insisted, and those two words were all he could manage to choke out past the quickly growing knot in his throat.
They were the truest words he had ever spoken, though, and he knew he could never convince the heartbroken girl standing before him.
"Well, guess what?" she cried. "'Sorry' is not good enough! 'Sorry' is something you say when you accidentally spill your soda on someone else's shirt, not when you ruin their entire life! I'm a monster, Vlad! I'm a monster with absolutely nowhere on this planet where I belong, and you made me this way! You could have stayed, and you could have treated me like I… like I mattered! I would have had a home, and I would have had a father!
"But no," she continued, her hysterical voice dropping dangerously low but still thick with tears. "You decided that I wasn't worth one second of your precious time. I was not your daughter; I never was. What was it you said to me? … That I exist to serve you?"
That comment stung every bit as much as she had clearly hoped it would, and Vlad once again could not bring himself to look her in the eye as he slowly repositioned himself so that he was sitting on his knees. He rested his tightly clenched fists on his lap.
"If I could… take that all back," he began, but she interrupted him again.
"You can't."
He flinched, and slowly he looked back up to meet her gaze, just now realizing that she had grown several inches in the last three years. From this position, she was taller than him.
"I know," he insisted. "Danielle, I have had three years to reflect on my actions, and I regret so much of my life… But there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that I regret more than how I treated you."
She scoffed, sending him a skeptical look. She then brought her hand up to cover her mouth, stubbornly trying to stifle her tears and looked away, shaking her head over and over again as they continued to stream unabated down her cheeks.
"I realize that it may be the last thing you want to hear, least of all from me," he admitted, "but please believe me when I say that I am so, so sorry. I am so deeply sorry, and I wish that I could take everything back. I honestly do."
He kept his eyes on her, waiting for her reaction. He was not foolish enough to think that she might actually forgive him, but would she at least accept his apology? Would she even believe him?
She turned to glare at him then, tears still glistening on her cheeks and her eyes rimmed with red. She opened her mouth to say something, but apparently the words were not making it past her lips. Instead she clenched her right hand into a fist and took a step toward him, reeling her fist back as her forearm glowed with ghostly energy. Vlad felt the quiver of disappointment deep in his chest for only a second before he tensed and turned his head to the side, eyes squeezed shut in preparation for the inevitably painful punch that would surely either kill him or leave him within an inch of his life.
It happened in slow motion. He heard her boot step forward and sensed the sizzle of ghostly energy coursing through the air as she came closer. He could feel the heat radiating from her arm as it came hurtling toward him, one foot away, now six inches, now three inches and surely it would collide soon—
—and he suddenly felt a pair of thin, warm arms wrap around his shoulders. He opened his eyes in shock and let out the breath he had been holding, barely noticing when Danielle's ghostly shield moved to cover the two of them and the rain abruptly stopped. Her arms were quickly spreading warmth through his shaking shoulders and she had buried her face into his neck, now crying relentlessly as she held onto him, clinging desperately to his jacket as though he might disappear otherwise.
White rings appeared around her waist, bathing the two of them in its light for exactly one second before it left her in her human form. The shield flickered above them for a moment, letting the rain in and dampening her hair and clothes as she lost her concentration, but Vlad's own magenta force field immediately appeared in its place.
"P-please," she stammered in between sobs, and Vlad could barely make out the words as they were muffled by his own neck. "Don't—don't leave again, Dad, please."
Her words pierced through his chest, and God help him, it hurt worse than any punch ever could. That lump in his throat had never left, and now it was swelling with every passing second. He wrapped his arms around her waist, bringing one hand up to hold the back of her head as he pressed his face against her shoulder. A sob escaped him, and he promised her, "I won't. I won't, I swear."
Vlad sat there with his arms around his daughter, spilling silent tears of his own while he tried to comfort her. The thought occurred to him that she was trying to comfort him, too, but he dismissed the idea altogether. He did not deserve her comfort, but she deserved his and so much more. Keeping the shield intact above them (after all, if Danielle had not set off the Fentons' alarms then surely this wouldn't either), he kept his arms around her and made them both intangible for a split second. The rainwater spilled away from the two of them and splashed onto the concrete below, spilling away from them in all directions.
He stays there with her, mostly in silence, but he occasionally mutters another promise to her that he won't leave, not again, not as long as she wants him to stay.
Because he won't leave. For the first time in twenty years there is actually someone on this planet who wants him here. He may not have his castle in Wisconsin, or his state-of-the-art laboratory, or his gigantic cabin in the Rocky Mountains, or his fancy mayoral mansion in Amity Park. He may have only a pair of priceless cufflinks to remind him of all the riches and houses he once owned.
… But for the first time in twenty years, Vlad Masters feels like he has a home.
Because DARN IT, I love teary hugs.