This is actually my first story in a long time. I just stopped for a while, and I'm not quite sure why. I wrote this up though, so that's good. Reviews are appreciated though not mandatory.
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters.
XxXxX
Things happen fast. Like in the car insurance commercials. One minute, things were fine. Life was normal. I had an amazing boyfriend and a future in the distance. Unfortunately, things weren't as perfect as I thought they were. My mother was out the door, all the fortune we had had was gone with her.
I was sixteen. My dad started drinking and really did nothing more than that. I was forced to quit school to keep our new (very small) house above our heads and fund his addiction. My boyfriend and I started growing more distant. I mean, when your boyfriend is a half-ghost superhero, spending time alone together is hard enough. It got too much after I started working two full time jobs. A few months of that and we ended it on mutual terms.
Two years later I was still working two jobs and he was off to an Ivy League school. For a while we still talked. Texted each other when we had the time. He was both grateful and disappointed by the lack of ghosts he had encountered. He missed Amity Park, and how it had been when they were younger. I missed those days too, and for a while I found myself missing him. But even that came to an end. One day, we stopped texting each other, and that was the last I heard from Danny Fenton.
XxXxX
Dad died when I was twenty. It was a small ceremony. Mom and her new husband were there, along with a young child I had no idea existed. I silently cut her out of my life for good, but she had already cut me out of hers. After that, I didn't know what to do. College was out of the picture, I hadn't even finished high school. I guess I could have always went to get a GED, but I think I thought that was out of the question too. I kept working, and life sucked.
Things changed when a blast from my past walked up to my register at the convenience store. Dash Baxter. He had been the quarterback when I was still in high school. Extremely popular. Huge douche. I hated him. And he didn't remember who I was.
"I haven't seen you in a while." I said, and he looked at me oddly before it clicked.
"Manson, I almost didn't recognize you without your goth thing going on." He replied. I hadn't thought about the goth thing in years. My hair had grown in red since then, its natural color. I wore hardly any makeup at all. Too expensive.
"Grew out of it." I said. And that was the beginning. He gave me his number and a few dates later, we were dating.
His family had lost their fortune a year after he graduated. Invested in some bad stocks and the crash, then they were broke. Since then he'd been working as a mechanic at a garage in town and repairing an old car.
The car. I loved that car. Flying through town at top speed. For a few minutes I could think about escaping the town of Amity Park, and for a few minutes it seemed possible.
Sometimes I think I married Dash just for that car. Then he'd put his arm around me and it felt safe. Safe. My relationship and marriage with Dash had always been safe. It took years before I realized that's not what I wanted.
XxXxX
We had two kids together. Jamie and Elle. Twins. Life got harder with them in the house. We both worked, and it was hard to spend as much time as we wanted to with them. But we did. Of course, things changed again. Dash left his job at the garage. 'To spend more time with the twins'. That was a load of crap. I kept a roof above our heads while Dash went to the bar. Always the bar. If it wasn't the bar, he was out with friends. I wanted a better life for my kids than that. Dash was my husband though, I didn't want to leave him like my mother had left dad.
It was absolute torture and finally we did end up ending things. I was twenty-nine years old.
XxXxX
On one of the rare days I had off, I took Jamie and Elle to the park. I sat down on the bench to watch them play.
"Beautiful children. Are they yours?" A voice asked from behind me. That moment, for just a second, I broke. Knowing that voice, knowing the face that belonged to the voice… I turned around.
"Danny." I said quietly, my voice a little bit more thick than I would have preferred.
"Hey Sam, can I?" He asked just as quiet, motioning to the seat beside me. I nodded and he sat down. Years of emotion came flooding back. Things I spent years trying to forget. "They look just like you." He said, watching the blond children running around the playground. I almost started crying right there, remembering the future we had planned together. Then, I was happy. It was a weird feeling at first, and I have to say it was something I hadn't truly felt in a long time.
"You're back," I smiled and pulled him into a hug. Though he was surprised at first, it was short lived, and we were hugging, and I don't think either of us wanted to let go.
Finally he pulled away. "I've missed you." He said, and there were tears brimming in the corner of his eyes.
"I missed you too." And it was true. Seeing him in front of me helped me realize, I had missed him every single day since we had broken up all those years ago.
"How are things?" He asked and I looked at my children. How were things?
"Things have been dull without you." I answered and he nodded in agreement.
A few hours and a dinner later, we decided to try things again.
XxXxX
Jazz was the first to offer to babysit the kids and they loved her.
Our first date was spent flying around the city, and that was the first time I had felt truly alive in years.
The second was spent at the Nasty Burger, which was spent remembering the past and hoping for a future.
The third was in the ghost zone, something always changing but also constant.
He kissed me for the first time in forever on the fourth date, and on the fifth date I kissed him.
We had been dating for seven months when he proposed and I said yes.
Danny and I got married in the spring, a year after we had been reunited.
Clara was born a year later.
And that was that.