A/N: I had to rewrite this. I liked it the way it was, but I knew I couldn't support another chapter story until the one I'm doing now is complete. In fact I deleted my other chapter story and have decided to just rewrite that one as well. Oh well, I hope you like this revised version just as much.
Note: I know Rafe is mean as hell in this but that only cause he's bitter and mad.
Disclaimer: I wish Pearl Harbor had never happened and the movie was just based off something that could have happened and not actual history, but it's not and I am way too young to even have been alive when it happen so, sadly, Danny, Danny Jr., Rafe and the others don't belong to me.
Ghostly Conversations10-year-old Danny McCawley crouched down by his parents' bedroom door. He held his breath, hoping they wouldn't notice him listening in on their argument. It never failed: no matter how stealthy he thought he was, they always knew if he was around. This time though, they didn't seem to notice.
Danny had been in his room, dreaming of flying his very own plane like his dad did, when he'd heard his name. He'd been surprised by the anger he heard put into it. Quietly he'd snuck out of his room and past his newborn sister's room to his parents' door.
He could see a sliver of light from the crack in the door and pressed his ear to it. Again he'd heard his name shouted and realized his dad was screaming at his mom. That had never happened before. At first, their voices had been too low for him to make out all of what they were saying, but, as they got more emotional, their voices got louder.
"Evelyn, Danny doesn't need to know shit about him! It won't do him no good to know about a dead man."
"Rafe!! He's your best friend! Sooner or later Danny's-!!"
"I wish you'd never name him after that bastard!"
"Danny needs to know!! And, if I recall correctly, you were the one who wanted to name him after your best friend!!"
"Yeah you would say that. As the boy's father-!"
"But you're not his real father!! Danny Walker is, and he should know that!! One day he'll find out, and if we don't tell him ourselves, who knows what he'll hear?!"
There was a pause in their screaming. Danny's eyes widened in shock. Danny Walker, that fighter pilot guy buried in the backyard, was his daddy?
"Well if you hadn't gone and fucked my best friend, I would be his real father, and maybe Danny would still be alive and there'd be no need to be talkin' about this!!"
"Rafe, we thought you were dead!! My relationship with Danny didn't start until 3 months after you 'died'!! He only wanted me to be happy since you were gone!"
"That's what you say. He never told me why he decided to seduce you. For all I know, you could have been seeing him way before I even left!!"
His mother gasped, hurt.
"Rafe, how can you still be so bitter? Danny would never have betrayed you like that. How can you act this way when you know he loved you?"
"I'll act how I want, and how can I be sure? If he loved me, he wouldn't have left me with you and his brat to take care of!!"
Danny couldn't take anymore. Quietly he ran from the old house and out to the backyard to the grave of the one who had started all this.
The nigh wind coolly kissed his tear streaked face and the grass (kept short around Danny's grave in respect to him) gently brushed against his bare feet. The full moon gave light enough for him to see the huge white stone, and he made his way toward it.
The moonlight gave the memorial an otherworldly appearance, and young Danny felt the presence of another. Frowning, he walked the entire circumference around the stone and saw no one. Shrugging the feeling off, he sat down in front of the stone.
Danny sat there staring at the name written on the stone. He could feel all his emotions swirling around inside him, making it impossible for him to know what he was feeling. He finally separated all his emotions and was mildly surprised to find that he was angry. No…not angry but furious. Yeah, he could feel the anger and resentment growing in him the longer he stared at the cenotaph.
Young Danny nodded to himself as he felt the feeling solidify in his heart and he saw red.
"I hate you." Danny was surprised to find that he had stood up and was speaking to the stone. He paused, but it felt right, and he began again.
"Yeah, you heard me. I hate you for what you've done. How could you do that to your best friend? It's all your fault that Dad said those mean things about me and Momma. If you hadn't taken her away from him…you should have known better, but all you could think about was yourself and this is what's happened because of you." Little Danny felt tears of anger running down his cheeks and his words came out thick and muffled, and the presence he felt seemed to grow.
"You done ruined my life. My daddy ain't my daddy. You are and you're dead and can't do nothing for me. I'm gonna have'ta live with the fact that the man in that house ain't my real daddy but is just pretendin' to be cause you made him promise. Why…why did you have'ta die an' leave Momma all alone?" Danny finally succumbed to the tears and sank to the ground sobbing brokenly.
Danny didn't know how long he lay there before he felt someone touch his shoulder gently. Jumping up, he looked around but saw no one.
"Who…who's there?" Danny was young, with a hyperactive imagination, and his mind was immediately filled with thoughts of monsters coming to eat his soul…or worse. He scooted closer to the memorial, feeling a sense of safety come over him when next to it, like someone was hugging him.
Searching the moonlight night frantically, he saw nothing. Feeling slightly alarmed, he huddled closer to the stone and closed his eyes, hopeful that whatever, or whoever, it was would go away.
Danny heard the sound of footsteps approaching the memorial and him and began to whimper. The footsteps kept coming and his whimpering became louder. Finally the terrible sound of walking stopped, though he didn't.
Again, he felt that touch on his shoulder but did not open his eyes.
"Hey. Don't be scared…it's gonna be alright." He stopped whimpering at the sound of the caring voice. He opened his eyes and gasped. The face in front of him was one he saw everyday. The dark hair and thoughtful eyes, the tanned skin (he assumed it was tan though he couldn't tell in the pictures), the sweet smile. He wasn't in the military uniform Danny saw in the pictures, but in a slightly tattered yellow hula shirt worn over a white muscle shirt, and, instead of those press iron military pants, he wore a pair of dark brown slacks (what he was wearing December 7th). It was the person his mother stared at longingly and his father spoke of proudly. It was the face of Danny Walker, his real father.
Little Danny pressed himself closer to the memorial. The man in front of him was slightly transparent letting Danny know he was a ghost, but what would the ghost of his father want with him?
"Wha-what do you want? You haven't come to steal my soul or turn me into a zombie have you?" The older-looking ghost Danny laughed at this and younger Danny noticed that his voice sounded as if it came from a great distance.
Sitting down next to Danny, the elder Danny smiled faintly. Danny could hear the slight jingle of dogtags. "Naw, I haven't come to steal your soul or turn you into a zombie. I come cause I wanted to talk to you. Wanted to explain some things to ya if I could."
Danny Jr. frowned. "What? Why? I mean…how come you ain't come before?"
"Couldn't." Danny Jr. frowned at the short, unhelpful answer.
"That don't help me none." Danny Sr. smiled but said nothing. It amazed him how similar they were. His son was just like him when he was ten.
They sat in silence then.
"So what are you doing out here so late crying on my grave?" Danny Sr. hadn't heard Danny's rant because he'd been wandering the farmland as he typically did on nights like this. This was one of many nights he had spent uselessly wandering the land of the living. For a while now he'd been thinking of moving on, but something kept him from doing it. Perhaps if he helped his son feel better, he could move on in peace.
Danny started, surprised at how easily he'd forgotten his loathing and bitterness, and glared at his father. Dimly, through the haze of anger, he wondered why he wasn't frightened by the fact that he was conversing with a ghost, but, all in all, he was too pissed to care.
"It's all your fault I'm out here, you know."
"…What do you mean?" Danny felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his ghostly stomach. He hoped it wasn't what he thought it was.
"How could you betray your best friend like that? Didn't you love him at all?" Danny watched his father hang his head in shame and felt a spark of guilt. Maybe it wasn't how his mom's husband had made it sound…
"How…how did you find out?" Danny hoped Rafe had kept his cool and not said anything too hateful, and he hoped double that he hadn't been drunk when he'd said it. He knew how mean a drunk Rafe had been and doubted that it had gotten any better.
"Momma and him were arguin' tonight and I heard. He…he called me a brat." Danny heard how indignant his son was at this and felt a twinge of annoyance at Rafe but at the same time was not surprised. He could imagine the things Rafe'd said before adolescent Danny had started listening in.
He sighed, sad for his son and Evelyn.
"I'm sorry you had to find out that way, but-…" Danny looked up at his father when he abruptly stopped and saw him staring at the ground embarrassment writ on his features. Danny looked at his father suspiciously.
"What?" Danny Sr. looked up and stared at him intently. Danny fidgeted under the ghost's gaze, but refused to be cowed and locked eyes with him. Danny Walker sighed at the baleful stare of his son and looked away again, this time forming the words that would either assuage the boy's hatred of him or increase it. He hoped it would be the former because he didn't think he could bare the thought of his son forever hating him. He had only one chance to do it because, come dawn, he would leave the living world forever and venture into the unknown afterlife that waited for him.
Danny McCawley concentrated on the semi-transparent form of his father impatient to know the truth and angry that it had taken this to find out. The phantom seemed to sigh and lay back, supporting his weight on his elbows as he stared at the moon. The pale moonlight threw his almost see-through features in stark relief, and Danny could see the back of the house through the side of his father's handsome face. It fascinated and disturbed him in equal turns.
"No one plans on dying, Danny. I sure didn't." The 10 year old stared at the ghost, waiting for him to continue. After a slight pause, he did.
"I mean, why would I even think of dying? I had so much to come back to: your mother and, though I didn't know when we left, you. It's probably why she didn't tell me. She knew I either wouldn't go and feel like the worst kind of coward for refusing, or I would go, but my mind wouldn't be on what I was doing, and she knew that would be worse than me not going at all because I might have been killed." He gave a grimly amused smile. "She should have just told me seeing as how it didn't make any difference."
Danny felt his anger slowly dissipating as remorse leisurely unfurled in the pit of his stomach. Watching the moonlight play across his father's face and seeing that same moonlight shine as though undisturbed upon the ground where his father's shadow should have been, Danny realized that he had never actually heard how he had died, only that he had saved Rafe's life before he fell. Curiosity filled him, compelled him to know why his father had thrown his life away for a friend who, even now, seemed to hate him for stealing the woman he got to be with anyway.
"Why? I mean…how did you die?" Danny looked down and blushed, suddenly aware of how personal a question that was. The older Danny saw this a chuckled lowly in the back of his throat. His son stared up at him, surprise evident on his face. Danny sat up again and made a movement with his arm, as if to touch his son, then remembering that he couldn't he flopped down again and sighed.
"It's alright, Danny. I don't mind telling you what happened." Danny sighed with relief and lay back in the short grass in a position much like his father's. For the next hour, Danny retold the events that lead to his death, with some minor editing for the sake of his son's ten-year-old mind.
Young Danny lay next to the sad phantom of his father, brooding silently over what he had been told. There was no anger in him now, only a deep melancholy and an even deeper feeling of pride for his father. The courage it took to take bullets that had never been intended for you and go quietly to your death content in the fact that you had saved someone you loved even though they were pissed still at you staggered him.
"It's almost dawn now, Danny. You'd better go back in the house." Danny opened his eyes, unaware that he had closed them and turned to watch the lightening sky that shone through the spirit next to him.
"Okay. See you later, then." Danny stood and shook off his pajama bottoms. His father nodded morosely.
"Yeah, but let's hope we don't see each other for a long time, okay?" Danny stopped abruptly at this.
"What? Why? What do you mean, I mean?" The elder Danny grinned at the way he formed his question. The smile soon left his face, though the sadness did not return.
"This was my last night here. It's time for me to move on, Danny."
"'Move on'?" Danny felt a shooting pain go through his heart at the thought of losing his father after having just found him. He didn't understand.
His father nodded, the sorrow reclaiming his features once more.
"Yeah. I just wish I could have met you before now, but I guess that's not how it was supposed to work out." He grinned at Danny as he too stood. "I'm glad, though, that I met you. You've given me peace of mind and spirit, and I can go knowing you know the truth."
Danny felt tears forming at the edges of his eyes, and furiously blinked them away because 10-year-old men like him did not cry. Danny offered his father a weak smile.
"Oh. Okay. I guess I understand, then." The tears fell anyway; his heart unable to stem the grief that it felt over knowing it would never again see this man again. Danny tried to look away in order hide the tears, but it was too late.
His father knelt down and embraced him just as the sun topped the horizon. Danny was enveloped in that same warm protective embrace he had felt earlier that night. He could almost feel his father's arm holding him tightly, and his whispered words soothed his aching heart. As suddenly as he was there, Danny Walker was gone, having moved on secure in the knowledge that that everything would finally be okay.
Little Danny sniffled once more before slowly making his way back into the old house, the last words of his father echoing in his mind and heart.
"I love you, Danny, and no matter what you do, I'll always be proud of you."
Snuggling back into his blankets, Danny smiled at the brilliant sunrise.
"I love you too, Daddy."
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--- Finally! The rewritten version is complete. I hope you liked it as I worked really hard on it.