Disclaimer: Me*I don't own DP, now can we get on with the story?
Disclaimer god*Fine.
Maddie Fenton was frustrated, and angry, and sad, and guilty, and confused, and worried, and a lot of other things that don't need to be listed here and now since you probably get the idea, but mostly she was frustrated. To be specific, she was frustrated about her son and daughter, and how they seemed to be getting more and more distant from each other. She and her daughter had never been super close, she absolutely loved ghosts while her daughter stayed as far away from them as possible, but she and her son had always been very close. That had started to change a few years ago, right after Danny mysteriously fixed that ghost portal, but she had just written that off as embarrassment about having a hand in one of his parents experiments, he had never really liked ghosts either. But both he and his sister had started getting more and more distant with both her and her husband over the last few months, since they had captured the ghost boy and almost been able to experiment on him. She knew both Danny and Jazz supported that putrid piece of ectoplasm, but they had to understand that he was evil! She narrowed her eyes at the thought of that, after the initial shock of waking up to find himself strapped to a dissection table, he had looked stuck between bored and angry, even when they had begun to interrogate him, all he had done was dodge their questions till he saw an opening to escape. She sighed and shook her head, willing those thoughts from her mind. She had come up here to relax and give her children some time to cool off and see reason, since they had just gotten into a big fight.
She turned the engine off and stepped out of the GAV, breathing in the late afternoon air, and was still early fall, so the air was warm and a jumpsuit was probably not the best idea, but it was to late to change that now. She looked up and smiled, this was the place she and Danny used to come to stargaze when he was little. She was so lost in her thoughts that she didn't notice the figure come up behind her, or maybe she didn't notice them because they were invisible.
Either way, she jumped when a cold, but all to familiar voice rang out behind her. "What are you doing here?" She turned around swiftly, only to be met with empty air. Then a figure shimmered into view, it was the ghost boy!
She quickly reached for one of her weapons only to realize she had left them at home, and he was in-between her and the GAV. "Relax, would you." He said, contempt ringing in his tone. "I'm not gonna hurt you, though you do deserve it after what you've done to me. What are you doing here anyway?"
"I could ask you the same question, ghost." She said coldly, and he said scornfully "It's a free country, and whether you believe it or not, I used to be one of it's citizens, so I think I have the right to visit a park." His tone was cold and disinterested, matching the core she knew he possessed, as he had said it himself multiple times.
"What do you want ghost?" She asked aggressively, and he just rolled his eyes and scoffed. "I said, what do you want?" She asked again, a little louder this time, and sneered and growled "What I want, Maddie Fenton" he spit out her name like a curse, "is for you and your precious little husband to leave me alone!" The growl turned to a yell, and his appearance seemed to flicker, letting her see glimpses of a cape, and what looked to be a ring on his finger. He took a deep breath and the flickering stopped. "Whatever, as I asked earlier, what are you doing here?" His tone was a bit calmer, and seemed genuinely curious rather than angry.
"Me and my family got in a bit of a squabble, I came here to calm down. This time I'll ask again, what are you doing here?" She responded, watching him out of the corner of her eye.
"Same as you, me and my mother got in a fight, I like to come here to calm down when I'm angry." Her eyes widened momentarily at the mention of the ghosts mother, but then she realized he must be lying, and mirroring her lie was easier than making up a whole new one.
"Oh please, ghosts can't have families, everyone knows that." She said dismissively, and Phantom turned his head toward her sharply, which looked like a very painful task as she was sitting slightly behind him. She cringed at this display of inhuman flexibility, but he seemed completely unbothered and asked skeptically "You're seriously telling a ghost what ghosts can and can't do? Are you really so arrogant that you think you know more about what I am than I do? That's like a dog telling a cat it's sharpening it's claws wrong." His eyebrows arched and she nearly gagged when his head turned even more, green eyes boring into hers, and she suddenly felt incredibly stupid. Thinking that even she knew more about ghosts than an actual ghost did? Ghosts might be lying, malicious, unfeeling blobs of ectoplasm and post-human consciousness, but she wasn't one, and even she had to admit that he was right, it was extremely arrogant of her. Still, she had her pride to protect, and she wasn't going to admit to a ghost that he was right, so instead she answered, in as confident a voice as she could muster "Yes, I am." He let out a snort and began to cackle, his laugh echoing unnaturally in the silence.
"That's funny, you're even stupider and more arrogant than I thought, aunt Pandora and Dora are right, humans are kind of pathetic." Maddie was shocked at this display of human emotion, he seemed genuinely amused, though she was upset that he was laughing at her expense. After a few minutes he calmed down, and looked up at the faint stars that had started to appear. His face lit up a little, and a small smile made it's way onto his lips.
"They're beautiful, aren't they?" He asked, turning toward her, all the anger gone from his eyes.
"Yes, they are." She responded grudgingly, scooting backwards a little and leaning against a tree.
"I used to want go up there you know, when I was, when I was alive I wanted to be an astronaut." He said softly.
"And, why don't you go now? Ghosts don't need oxygen, and I doubt the vacuum or hight would affect you." She found herself hoping he would answer, this was an easy way to get information out of him, and she was curious why he hadn't left as soon as he became a ghost.
"I have been up there, and it's amazing, but I count stay if I wanted to. I have friends, here on earth and in the ghost zone, besides, I have a town to protect, I couldn't stop doing that."
"Why do you protect Amity Park?" She asked, her tone anxious, she knew he could be making this all up, but something was telling her he wasn't, his tone was so genuine.
"It—it's my, obsession." He whispered quietly, and she sat there shell-shocked for a second, she had expected that he would say that it was his haunting ground or something, but for it to be his obsession? How could someone who had died at sixteen, possibly form an obsession to protect an entire town?
"Why?"
"Because, I, I don't really know. Maybe it's because I have people here that I need to protect, maybe it's because I died here and I don't want someone to destroy my, my grave, well, it's not really a grave, but, I don't know." His tone was so, sad, that she almost reached out to put a hand on his shoulder, but caught herself, she had more questions she wanted to ask.
"Do you remember how you died?" She asked, knowing she was treading in dangerous water, a ghosts death was a very sensitive subject, and if he snapped she didn't know what she could do, she had no weapons, and at this point unless it was specially designed for him, nothing seemed to leave a mark.
He stiffened but made no other move to change his position. After a few minutes he answered "Yeah, I do."
"How, how did it happen?" she asked softly.
"Electrocution." He answered shortly, and she gasped, she knew from working with technology all her life that electricity was painful, and had to be an awful way to die, especially at such a young age.
"Do you have a grave?" She asked, wondering about bringing her family there to pay their respects, she still didn't trust him completely, but this display of emotion had her questioning everything she thought she knew about him, and ghosts in general.
"No, my family doesn't even know I died." Her mouth dropped open in shock, how could his parents not realize their son had died?! "It's ok though, I'm the one who made sure they never found out I died, I didn't want them to be sad. As far as they're concerned I ran away."
"Oh my…" Here was a boy who had lost so much, and all she was trying to do was take more from him, he had been given a second chance at life, albeit in a twisted way, and had chosen to use the abilities he got from that to protect her and her town, and what did she do? Shoot at him and call him names. Yes, he had done some bad things, but those had been revealed as set-ups by other ghosts, and yet she and her husband still hunted him. "I'm so…" she couldn't finish her sentence, so he finished for her.
"Sorry? Don't worry about it, if it makes you feel any better, there are bad ghosts out there, but it's just like there are bad humans out there, there's a lot of both and a few in-between. So, maybe next time you don't assume things, and just keep and open mind?" He said, then turned intangible and slipped into the ground.
She shook herself out of her daze and walked over the GAV, she climbed in and started to drive home, thinking about everything she had learned in the past few hours.
By the time she got home she had decided that she would take Phantom's advice, and try to persuade Jack to do the same. But first things first, she had children to apologize to.
This is my first time writing a story where Danny and his mother actually get along, I usually write stories where he hates both his parents. What do you think?