Author's Saving Throw: There will be lots of era-relevant terms in this fic that may be offense by modern standards. For instance, "colored" was a polite term at that point in time, and I'm fairly sure modern women will be annoyed with the treatment of women in that era. But it is only there for the sake of historical accuracy; any racism and/or sexism present isn't mine, it's there because that's how that era was. And personally, I find that ignoring the struggles minorities went through in the past is far more annoying than bringing them up in-fic.
Daniel Fenton was different, and Samantha Manson like different.
He was part of a respected and mocked family, people who were both kind and scorned for their work. Spiritualists, Samantha's mother would say with the same awful shudder she reserved for swear words. That was a fancy word designed to avoid the actual subject matter: the Fentons hunted ghosts. The Fentons excised them, chased them, saved people from their wrath. They were a family everyone would enjoy a quick gossip session about and they were fun to mock relentlessly. They were also very vital to Amity surviving the spike in ghosts and creatures of the night that had begun appearing in ever growing numbers throughout the city. America in the 1920's was a strange place filled to the brim with contradictions, especially a town like Amity. Big enough to have trouble and fun, too little to be of any consequence to the richer folks of the Earth, it was both drenched in old history and brimming with new discoveries. The rich inhabited the eastern half of town, the poor the west, and the Fentons were on the cusp in the middle of it. In a time where science was pushing forward while old superstitions still hung thick in the air like a smog, they were happy, wealthy, hard working and completely oblivious to the standards of the world around them. They were oddballs, wealthy but uncaring about their status in society, white and unprejudiced, devoted to their work yet uncaring about any religious implications being a ghost hunter might hold.
No one of them was more singularly odd than Danny Fenton, who wore his hair longer than a clean cut man ought to and insisted on informality with all those he knew. None of that "Ms. Manson" nonsense her mother insisted on ever left his mouth. She was always Sam to him, sometimes Samma when he was feeling affectionate, and she was almost a brother to him. She liked that just fine. When Sam wasn't dressing like an outright flapper she was never in what the rest of the world donned appropriate clothes. She was, to her parent's disgrace, more boy than girl, and she was damn proud. She liked being talked to without any of the stuffiness of the upper class. Danny talked to her like he would anyone else, full of jokes, sarcasm and more than a touch of self deprecation. He was easy to be with. All his friends thought so, though he had only a small circle of friends to call his own. Being part of the resident clan of lunatics didn't do much to help him in terms of popularity. He knew fully that his friendship with Tucker was what kept him from being accepted in the upper class parts of Amity. Tucker, a boy with eyes as bright as the turqoise ring Sam's mother owned, was rumored to be mixed, and while Amity was North enough not to kill him for it, they weren't North enough not to case. Sam thought Tucker was fairly wonderful, quite frankly; he was smart, honest and endearingly optimistic, the kind of boy she wished she could've had as a brother.
Of all Danny's myriad oddities, his circle of friends was not one she cared much about. They were all kind enough people for her tastes, and that was all that Sam felt really mattered. He cared little of their skin tone, and she knew enough to know such a thing was destined to go the way of pioneer wagons. What drew her to him was his altruism, his desperately determined and earnest selflessness. The ghosts of Amity Park had to be drawn here by something, didn't they? There had to be a reason for this hotbed of activity that had been in place since before his parents' time. He was convinced that if only he could find out why they were being drawn in he could stop it. Danny had spent a long, cool late spring afternoon explaining to his two best friends how that most spirits he'd found had died in gruesome ways and needed rest, needed justice of some kind. A girl ghost named Amber Marie (Ember, to her friends) had been murdered by her friend at the behest of her father for the insurance money. She'd loved him and he'd killed her, and then to find out that her father was behind it too had driven her mad with rage. There was, Danny and his sister Jasmine were convinced, a science to this. If they could find the causes of ghosts, that would help bring criminals to justice. If they could find out why the ghosts were drawn here, they could learn how to draw them to a specific spot and help them. Danny was in tears with frustration after the Amber case; to think that she had died and no one had ever batted an eye or taken a second look at the case made him furious. Didn't anyone care?
Sam was too fond of him to tell him that, in her own experience, no one cared much about any problem that wasn't their own.
The pains of the human race were his. He didn't care about race, about gender, or about age. For all his flaws - a strange sense of humor, a gawky awkward quality he couldn't seem to shake, and a stubborn streak that outshone Sam's own - Danny Fenton seemed to be possessed of an uncommon kind of love that enveloped the world around him unendingly. Sam knew from the first time she talked to him that he was destined to do something great. He would change the world. She knew he would. He was good, deep down on a level that most people were not. There was no money in it for him to help Ember cross over. There was nothing for him to gain by doing that; if anything, there was plenty to lose had her family realized he was creating a strong case against them in court. Her trial had shook the town of Amity and placed the bulk of the population against this loudmouth young man who wouldn't let the past stay the past. In that moment, however, there were many people who had seen the side of the story that had never been told. Some people recognized a good man when they saw one. Sam and Tucker were among those people who were proud to call him their friend. In an uncaring world devoid of compassion there were some naieve optimists with a child's belief in justice. Perhaps that made Danny Fenton an idiot.
But perhaps that made him a hero, also.
Sixteen was a rough age to be for all of them. He was old enough for the law to be harsh on him, and young enough to be ignored by the adults around him, always dismissed as a stupid child. So when they investigated the Walker case, it was just the three of them.
Nicodemus Walker had once been a prison warden who, in the Civil War, had opened up an unorthodox kind of business. He had taken in fleeing slaves and freed colored people on what appeared to be the goodness of his heart. Then he'd killed them and, since they were both refugees and secretive, no one had caught on for years. The poor desperate people came to him with all they owned, which meant selling off anything of value they might have was always good for a boost in his own personal fortune. Only when he'd died and the new owners of his house had noticed the foul smell did anyone realize what had happened. Of course, he'd died a very rich man from a series of insurance scams he'd pulled that also involved the timely deaths of his wife and children. Under Danny's theory about ghosts and trauma the man should have just moved on. Instead the ghost moved into the nearest state prison and began ruining the lives of anyone unfortunate enough to be stuck there. While Sam might have just passed the whole debacle over, as anyone who did anything bad enough to go to prison surely deserved a little haunting, Danny was on this case like Tucker on a meat pasty.
Firstly, he reminded her with anger in his voice that was so intense it had to be heard to be believed, there were many women and colored people in that prison who had done tiny, minor things, had they done anything at all to earn their stay. Secondly, even those that had committed crimes could change. He didn't think that anyone deserved to be murdered in front of their cellmate by an unseen force when they had only days left on their sentence. They'd done their time, they had a right to live. Sometimes the pessimistic and cynical side of Sam's personality clashed with his. For whatever it was worth, she at least agreed after a pause that he'd had a point. Tucker was more than willing to go if only to test out his newest ghost fighting technology. While Jack and Madeline Fenton were more focused on physical fights and destruction of the ghost, Danny was devoted more to capture and understanding; thus, Tucker had done some research into the less violent methods of ghost fighting. Based on traditions and superstitions, he'd come up with some ideas that wouldn't aim to kill the dead, so to speak. Sam was impressed with his ingenuity.
"You should teach the Science class at my school, Tucker. Degree or not, your inventions are actually interesting," she told him with that mixture of sincerity and disdain that was uniquely Sam. "Where were you all these years when I was sleeping through class?"
"Creating alcohol out of flowers," Danny said, grinning devillishly as Tucker rounded on him.
"ONE TIME! One time, Danny, and you're never going to let it go, are you?" He threw up his hands defensively. "It was a gift for my parents, you know. I don't drink!"
His friends continued to snicker as they made their way through the old building. There were basement levels here, designed as a holding cell for the most violent and terrible among the prisoners. This was also where all the murders had been happening. The prisoners had been moved up into the courtyard while the Fenton Investigation Team looked around. To say that the warden was unhappy with having children do this job was an understatement. But he needed them to stop this before his job security went into question, so he had begrudgingly let them in. Sam had dressed as a boy for this particular venture, if only so word wouldn't get back to her parents. It didn't help matters, though. Tucker's presence would always earn Danny glares and double takes, and Danny would always glare back as if daring them to do something. There was no one else for miles to go to. Danny would be damned if he was going to let anyone break up his core team of three.
Danny's eyes flickered to the right, and he turned. "Did you see...?"
"See what?" Sam asked, but he'd already begun sprinting after something. "Tucker, come on!"
Though deceptively light and thin, Danny took after his mother's side of the family. He was a quick runner, he could jump fairly well, and he was apt when it came to climbing. None of these things had saved him in the fights he'd gotten into at school over the years. When it came to tag, however, or the grown up version of it, Danny was an outright nuisance. He was onto a crate and through a large opening in the stone walls before his friends had even turned the corner. The rough stone scraped at his clothes, leaving a tear in his jacket, but he made it through with admirable speed. Ahead of him, a flickering, shadowy thing gestured with its hand. Or at least, he thought it was a hand. In the cool gray stone and dust of the little room the only light was a small window at the top of the wall that led to the outside. Everything was dim and dark. Danny squinted and thought that he might have seen the shadow creature's eyes as it gestured for him to come closer.
"What is it?" he asked gently, in what he hoped was a soothing voice despite his breath still being fast from the chase. "Do you need something?"
"Danny?" the thing said softly, a barely audible whisper. The voice was low and quiet. "Are you Danny Fenton?"
"Yes, I am." He knelt down to look it in the eyes. "I investigate ghosts. I've been working on a theory that spirits need something from the world, probably justice or to give a message to someone." He smiled warmly. "Whatever it is, I'm here to help, I promise. Just tell me what you need and I promise if it's within my power I'll do it."
The shadows whirled around him menacingly. Before he knew what had happened the darkness had blocked out absolutely everything. He looked around, seeing flickers of voices and faces all around him. They were flooding him with questions and images, places and people he didn't recognize. He saw Amber screaming as she was smothered to death, witnessed a kindly looking cook shoved into her oven by a thief who laughed as he ransacked the place, experienced the horror of a man jumping to his death rather than face his life after the death of his wife. Their pain coursed through him like white hot lightning, a current of emotions and torrid thoughts he could barely process. But, a voice warned him, not all that are ghosts are victims of circumstance. Walker was a given. On top of that there were images Danny had little context for that he was still horrified by; a man with silver hair who beat his son and wife until the boy finally, tearfully, turned a gun on him to save his mother came back to haunt and hurt his family, this time without end. There was a woman with olive skin and beautiful eyes like chunks of aquamarine whose family lived under constant threat of some kind of sickly, demonic looking yellow thing until she finally left and drew its attention solely onto herself. There were spirits who had never left the Earth who roamed in search of victims and targets, their malice unchecked now that they had no limitations. With nothing to fear from the law or the humans, they were unstoppable.
Danny felt hot tears well up. "I- I can stop them. I'll figure it out. My parents will. Tucker will. Together, we can do it. You can't talk me out of this, whatever you are. I refuse to back down off of my calling for a broken chimney's spewings with eyes, so step aside or I'll make you!"
You misunderstand us, Daniel Fenton, the voice whispered back. We are not on the attack. To you, since your resolve is true, we give you a blessing of sorts: the power to truly fight ghosts on their own level. It has been a long time since someone has taken on this grim task, but your heart is in the right place. In you, we feel we can trust.
There were a flashes of light, all shades of green lightning dancing around him, and Danny fell to the ground, out cold.