Author's Note: So, this is a weird debut into the fandom, isn't it? I've always thought that there was more to the shallow jock and popular characters than what we were shown. Rightly so - it's a show titled Danny Phantom, it's going to focus on Danny, not on a whole cast equally. But this is fanfic, and we can delve a little into what makes people tick...
Happiness is beneficial for the body but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind. – Marcel Proust
Dash walked alone in the thick snow of winter, having nothing but his thoughts to keep him company. The night's silence was broken by the distant noises of his victorious team.
He really ought to be out there celebrating the big game. He really should be back there with his friends at some after party, getting drunk and doing stupid things with the rest of the team. None of them knew why he slipped away on occasion like this. Even he wasn't sure what was going on with him lately. He'd cover for himself later, say it was his dad being strict again, and if his voice wavered on the word dad, they never picked up on it. Dash had developed a litany of excuses in case they ever called him out on one. They never did. No one was that observant. No one seemed to care. Even Paulina, who was one of few friends that didn't ditch out on him over the years, seemed more distant lately. Their once strong connection was fading. They used to be so close that they didn't so much start dating as they just recognized they always had been. Lately it felt like he had to try to cross the ocean to get a moment of her attention.
Or maybe he was the one more distant. Maybe all these years of keeping quiet were beginning to weigh on him. She had tried to drag him to the mall and movies, and he'd turned her down more and more lately. The spark between them was fading in typical high school style, and this time, when they broke up he knew it would be for good. That should bother him, but it all felt a million miles away. Everything ended eventually. People faded out of life. There was no reason to get all emo about it. He just couldn't keep up the smiling and quips anymore when he didn't feel like it and if she couldn't deal with that, then he couldn't deal with her. It was a beautiful October night, his team was on top on the world, his grades were holding strong thanks to the efforts of his tutor, Jazz Fenton, even if it was awkward to be around her sometimes with his longstanding 'thing' with Danny. Even he couldn't remember quite how that started anymore. He used to remember it. He had a reason. He had reasons for lots of things. But lately it was getting harder and harder to remember life before he was in middle school. He wasn't sure why.
He wasn't sure why he had gotten so lame lately. The effort to be cool seemed like it wasn't worth it anymore. Dash spent less and less time with his friends and more time in his room nowadays than he ever had before, and it wasn't even prime soap opera season - all the series were in reruns. He practiced football religiously, keeping in shape, jogging around his neighborhood, and yet something seemed incredibly off. He felt like something was missing. There was something inherently wrong with him, something that was slowly starting to break him down bit by bit. He didn't even bully Danny or the other geeks anymore. Some days he felt like it was a miracle he was even able to get through classes at all, let alone keep up with extracurricular activities. There was something eating at him, at the edges of his awareness. Sometimes when he ran as hard as he could for as long as he could he got fleeting images of something, and he didn't feel so alone, but it was gone the second he stopped. A few days ago he had laid back in his bed and even though the alarm clock was screaming in his ears, he had stared at the ceiling for what felt like hours before he pulled himself out of bed. He had to talk himself into going to school that day. He had to look at the calendar to remember there was school that day.
He couldn't quit football, though, or forget about it. When he thought about it, he heard a voice in his head, gentle and half-teasing, telling him, 'now don't you quit football, Dashie. You promised you'd make it to the NFL one day.' If he focused hard, shut his eyes and bit down on the inside of his cheek, he could feel hands on his shoulders, feel more than see a soft smile, just a little quirk of the lips with warmth behind it. As soon as he opened his eyes it was all gone, and he was painfully alone. The total emptiness drained him of everything short of the ability to walk. He walked until little pieces of something flickered through his mind, gray shoelaces and a Mid-Atlantic accent and a shattered glass Christmas ornament haunting his mind. The blonde couldn't make sense of it, couldn't tell Paulina or his father without them thinking he was crazy, so he was going to have to work through it alone. He'd had little glimpses or moments like this since he could remember, every winter, but this winter it was nearly daily. It was like there was something missing from his mind, and now it was banging on the door, trying to get let in, but he couldn't find the door, let alone the key or the doorknob and he hated metaphors because even when they made sense they didn't help. Why did they even exist in the first place? Mr. Lancer had complimented Dash's increased writing abilities lately - which were only increasing because Jazz gave him a book that explained how that stuff worked in pretty clear cut, normal words - but it was just tangling things up even further.
Dash was going to just going to walk until he felt numb and go home. He needed to clear his head. Hopefully his father would be asleep so Dash could crash in the guest room. His own room hurt somehow, now. The teddy bears, the piles of soap operas recorded and ready to be rewatched, the nagging sense something was missing were all adding up to night after night of splitting headaches and waiting, for what, he didn't know. The guest room had a different if equally unusual effect. He thought he remembered laying in the bed when he was little and wanted a nap. He wasn't sure, but it didn't really matter if that was real or not, so long as he could get a full night's sleep. He felt tired in a way that had nothing to do with football lately. He wanted to talk to someone, tell them something was wrong, but he didn't know who to go to. Paulina was riding high on a newfound wave of popularity now that she'd managed to get ahold of a cheerleading scholarship, Kwan was talking about nothing but his family's upcoming trip to California to have a Christmas party family reunion mash up, and Dash's father? All he ever talked about was how much he hated work, how Dash should be doing better in sports and school, and then it was beer and sports channels until he had to go to work again. They may have lived in the same house, but they were strangers. They had been for a long time.
Lately, only Jazz had asked him if he was alright. And that was weird. Maybe it was her background in psychological studies, maybe it was her age, maybe it was just how warm her eyes were, but sometimes he wanted to tell her everything even though she was just his tutor. Sometimes he wanted to try and explain the inexplicable, put words to this nagging loneliness that followed him wherever he went. He felt like he'd lost something important. If he told her, maybe she could help. Or maybe, given everything he'd done to Danny over the years, she'd call him a lunatic, make a diagnosis and get him kicked off the football team instead. His head wasn't clear enough for him to know who to trust.
You wanted to make a snowduck, right, Dashie? Dash clutched his head as the voice, the ghost of a memory, pierced through him. It was a young man's voice, a Mid-Atlantic accent changing the cadence of the words. We should get started before it gets too cold. I mean, I don't even know if we can make that. He shook his head, his eyes snapping open. Looking around him, there was nothing but snow and unfamiliar houses for as far as the eye could see. The noise had faded behind him, as had the stadium lights. He was alone, perfectly alone, so there was no voice. He hadn't heard anything. There wasn't anything out here. All he had to do now was go home. He could make hot chocolate and pretend that nothing ever happened and there was no such thing as a snowduck. (Which there actually wasn't, to the best of his knowledge.) He was well versed in pretending that this wasn't happening. He was the king of the jocks, most admired guy in school, football QB and handsome boyfriend of the prettiest girl in school. When things got to be too weird, he reminded himself how awesome he was and then watched soap operas about people whose lives were infinitely more complicated and screwed up than his. It helped him remember how to breathe again. Spring would come and this would pass.
Unfortunately, he'd gotten himself thoroughly lost. And the one car that was approaching looked the Fenton's freakish SUV. Oh, God, please let it not be them. A ride home with Danny would be a bucketful of awkward. On the other hand, even Dash Baxter wasn't so prideful he would walk home when it was snowing so hard now he could barely think. He wasn't that stupid. Still, the fact that his father had never, ever called him Dashie had his mind reeling, and when the car came closer he stared, dumfounded. Behind the wheel of the behemoth of a SUV was Jazz Fenton, eyes all concerned and forehead crinkled ever so slightly in worry.
"Dash? Are you okay?" she asked, and he was still suffering such a sudden pounding headache he just shook his head no. "Do you need a lift?"
"That'd be great, yeah." He climbed in, and they managed a few blocks in silence before he noticed something. "Why is your clock messed up?"
"It's not. You've been out there for a while. Your dad found my number in your room, thought you might be with me since he called Paulina and Kwan and you weren't with them."
"Did you cover for me?" he asked, a spike of anxiety rippling through him. "Oh man, I am going to be in so much trouble if you didn't…"
"I told him you were probably with one of the other players at their house. Then I looked for you. A week ago Danny saw you wandering around at four in the morning, so… I just sort of started searching streets." She bit her lip and looked away. "You're scaring a lot of people lately, you know."
"What do you mean?"
"You're just not yourself. And now you're losing track of time and walking alone at night, too. Dash, I know I'm not paid to be your therapist, nor do I have a degree, but I have to say those are worrying signs." Her professionalism was somehow soothing, in this context. "Are you okay?"
"…I don't know. I – I – Jazz, lately…" he tried to start. The words wouldn't come. He stared at her hopelessly for nearly a minute of silence before burying his head in his hands. Some part of him flashed to an old car, a hand running through his hair, bright sunlight, and then he was breathing hard and staring at the floor of the SUV, hands clenching his blonde locks to pull himself out of it.
Jazz pulled off to the side of the road, stopped and put it in park. Her hand on his shoulder made him jump as if he were stung. "Dash, please just tell me what's going on. You have to talk so I can help."
He turned to her, blue eyes hesitant, scared. "I think… I think I forgot someone. Someone important. And it's driving me insane. I'm…" Scared, he wanted to say.
She squeezed his shoulder. "Okay. That's a start. Look, I'm going to take you to my place, and we'll have hot cocoa and talk, alright? We'll figure this out. I promise you're not crazy. Memories resurfacing at this age is actually not uncommon. I've read about this, it happens all the time. It's gonna be alright. Okay?"
Everything will be okay, Dashie.
The blonde football star nodded weakly, trying to hide the fact his hands were shaking.