Disclaimer: These are not my characters—I just borrowed them for awhile.
Unexpected Revelation
It was nearly midnight when he dragged himself through his window, preceeded by an odd flash of pale light. There were no lights, but he was able to maneuver himself over the sill and around the piles of books and clothes on the floor with an experience that belied the irreproachable air his pale eyes and gentle features seemed to give him. His movements were stilted as he pulled off his shirt and leaned against the wall by his bed. As the cloth slipped from his fingers and to the floor with a heavy sound he closed his eyes and, for a long moment, just seemed to be concentrating on breathing.
"Danny?"
The dark haired boy's shoulders jerked once at the name, but beyond that he was almost unnaturally still. His desk light flicked on and he flinched sharply—less at the unwelcome brightness then at the sharp gasp that accompanied it. He didn't open his eyes.
"Danny, what...?"
For a brief moment his eyes closed tighter, as though he was hoping that by shutting out the world it would cease to exist. When he opened his eyes, they were old.
"Mom, what are you doing awake? It's late..."
"What happened to you?"
He looked down at his chest, and his mouth quirked downward. "Must've run into something. I just got up for a drink of water, but I was half asleep. Makes you clumsy."
The red-haired woman in his computer chair got shakily to her feet and took a step forward. How many lies did a boy have to tell before they rolled off his tongue as quickly and easily as that one had?
"When did you start going to the kitchen through your bedroom window?" she asked.
"Told you, I was half asleep...I didn't realize what I was doing. I...thought I was going down the stairs...that's probably why I got bruised..."
"And the windowsill leaves handprints?"
"Heh, must've hit it creatively..."
"And the claw marks?"
"Claw marks?"
Maddie Fenton crossed the room, grabbed her son by the shoulders and moved him to a seat on his bed. "My God, they go all the way across your back..."
"Tree branches, I guess," he said, but his face was paler than his eyes and she could feel him trembling under her touch.
"Bathroom, now," she said, helping him up and half-pushing him into the darkened hallway. Once in the bathroom, she sat him on the sink counter and began scrubbing him front and back with antiseptic. The fact that he sat tight lipped and bore it without a sound only made the knots in her stomach tighten. The cuts and gashes decorating his back and right shoulder weren't very deep, but they also hadn't been clean cuts, and she knew the burning from the antiseptic had to be setting half of his nerve system on fire.
"Danny, what happened?"
"I told you..."
"Do not lie to me again, young man!" she snapped, and his fingers clenched hard around the cold porcelain of the counter.
"Mom, please..."
Maddie paused for a moment at the blatant fear in his son's voice. He was afraid...
"Please," he said again, and his voice nearly broke.
"Danny...you know you can tell me anything, right?"
"Not this, Mom," he whispered. "Please, not this..."
She looked away from him for a moment, busying herself with a roll of gauze and some tape. When she looked at his face again, he seemed to be using every ounce of energy left in his body to avoid her eyes.
"I walked in your room when you left. I was waiting for you for two hours."
The trembling beneath her hands grew more pronounced, and she had to fight the desire to scoop him up in her arms and tell him that everything was okay and it didn't matter. Because it did matter. It mattered more than anything had ever mattered to her before in her life. This was her son, her baby boy. And somehow he was in trouble. Mortal trouble, from the looks of his injuries. She grabbed his shoulders for the second time that night, and bent until he could no longer avoid her gaze. It took all of her mothers' willpower to keep from crumbling at the terrified, cornered expression in his eyes.
"Daniel, what are you afraid of?"
"You," he said, and she could see the horror that flashed through him as he said it. She released his shoulders and stepped back, sitting shakily on the edge of the bathtub.
"Mom, I didn't mean..."
"Yes you did," she said softly. "I'm your mother, I'd have to be blind and deaf not to see it..."
"But..."
"What did I do?"
Some of the fear left Danny's face, and he slowly let himself down from the sink to reach for her. "Mom, you didn't do anything...I just..."
He bit his lip and looked away. Maddie dropped her face into her hands and tried to force her mind out of the horrified blankness it had sunken into. What could possibly happen to a fourteen year old boy that would send him out his window in the middle of the night, injure him so badly, and make him frightened of his own mother? The injuries hadn't bothered him nearly as much as her presence had. In fact, the injuries hadn't seemed to bother him at all. When she watched him crawl into his room, he looked tired and sore, but there was no trace of the fear he was displaying now. There was no sense that something out of the ordinary had happened. How long had he been sneaking out in the night and returning home cut and beaten?
The blank fog evaporated as suddenly as it had settled, and she only dimly felt her son's hand on her shoulder. His grades had always been above average until this year. He had never been tardy for class or in any kind of trouble until this year. He had always loved waking up early and he'd never been ill...until this year.
She raised her head and looked at her son, studying his face as she might a stranger. She'd noticed him pulling away from his father and herself in the last few months, but she'd assumed it was part of being a teenager. All teenagers pulled away from their parents for awhile at some point or another, after all. But the time frame was too coincidental...
"What happened to you this year, Danny?" she asked in a whisper.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"I have all the pieces to the puzzle," she told him. "This isn't the first time you've come home wounded. This isn't the first time you've snuck out. I'd be able to tell if it were. You've been different...and not normal "teenager" different, either. Something's changed, and I haven't put the pieces together because I never realized they were connected, but something..."
She cut herself off abruptly and Danny backed up at the sudden intensity in her gaze. "The accident."
"What accident?" he asked, backing up farther.
"The accident! Oh my God, how could I be so stupid? What kind of mother am I?"
"Mom...you're scaring me..."
"What did it do to you, Danny? I need to know now."
"I..."
"The portal, Daniel! What did it do to you?"
Danny's had never seen his mother like this before. Maddie Fenton had always been the calmest member of the family. She had always taken everything in stride, from broken legs to ghost attacks, and even in light of her chosen field of study she was strong, level-headed and practical.
The woman sitting before him now, slightly shaking and on the verge of tears, was beginning to scare him more than losing his secret. He was terrified of what she might do when she found out...but he couldn't stand seeing her as she was. His gut instinct at this point was to lock himself in his room until morning, and he fostered a brief hope that maybe if he did she'd just let it all drop.
Reality wouldn't let him linger there long, however. Slowly he pulled his shoulders back and set his jaw in an expression his mother had seen on his father a thousand times.
"I...I love you, Mom," Danny said hesitantly. "I just want you to know that. I wouldn't ever do anything to hurt you. Or anyone."
Maddie had to fight the maternal instinct to gather her son into her arms at the tone of his voice. "Of course you wouldn't, Danny. But what does that have to do..."
"It's important," Danny interrupted. "Because you might not..."
His voice broke and she stayed still, somehow sensing that if she reached to him he might not be able to find the strength to tell her what she needed to know. He was silent for a long time, obviously fighting with himself over something. When he spoke again it was in short syllables, and every word seemed forced through clenched teeth.
"You might never want to hear it again," he said quietly, and his eyes were serious. "It's why I never told you before. The accident...the accident changed a lot. It...it changed me..."
"How?"
Danny gave her an infinitely sad smile, closed his blue eyes and...changed.
Maddie jumped to her feet as a ring of white light circled her son's abdomen, split in two, and traveled slowly over his body. His clothing turned into a black jumpsuit suspiciously similar to the ones hanging in the basement. His skin paled. His hair turned white. When he opened his eyes again...they were green. They glowed.
"Inviso-Bill," she gasped sharply.
Despite the knotted feeling in his stomach, Danny's face grew almost comically annoyed at the name. "Danny Phantom," he corrected tartly.
Maddie blinked in shock, as though she had not realized that this specter was her son until he had spoken. "Danny?"
Danny seemed to remember that he was supposed to be terrified, and he flinched back at her voice.
She reached out to touch his cheek. "Of course," she whispered. "It makes sense now. The inventions, the bruises..." she let her hand fall to her side and took a heavy seat on the edge of the bath tub again. "I've been hunting my own baby."
The horrified expression on Maddie's face hit Danny like an anvil. "Mom, it's okay. You never really hurt me or anything, and there's no way you could've known..."
"I should have known."
"I kind of did everything in my power to keep you from knowing," he reminded her.
Maddie shook her head hard. She didn't know what to think, what to say. She felt empty. Her children were supposed to feel like they were able to come to her with anything. They were supposed to trust her. Not think that she would shoot them.
Her son was hugging her, and she instinctively wrapped her arms around him and held him as close as she could. His sharp intake of breath reminded her of his injuries, however, and she loosened her grip and pulled back enough to look him in the eyes.
"Ghosts can cry?" she asked out loud without meaning to, and Danny sheepishly wiped a pale hand over his eyes and changed back to his human appearance.
"Half-ghosts can, I guess," he said. "I...I'm glad..."
"Glad I'm not going to throw you in the lab and shoot you?" she finished dryly.
Danny looked away, but the set of his lips told Maddie he'd been thinking along very similar lines.
"Oh, Danny," she said. "Let's get you to bed."
He looked at her with an unreadable expression on his face. "You don't want to...you know...talk?"
"It can wait until morning," she said, gently guiding him out of the bathroom and towards his door. "I only want you to answer two questions before you go to sleep."
"What's that?" Danny asked as she gently closed his door behind them.
"First...I trust you, Danny, but I have to ask. Did you do any of the things Inviso-Bill has been accused of?"
A look of disgust passed over his face, but whether it was from the atrocious nickname or the question Maddie couldn't tell.
"Not intentionally," he said. "Most of it was other ghosts trying to frame me, to make my life miserable as they could. The rest of it was me messing up while I was trying to catch other ghosts and send them back to the Ghost Zone."
"You fight ghosts?" Maddie asked in shock.
"Someone has to protect Amity," he said with a little shrug. "My powers and your inventions make it possible for me to do it."
He sat down on the edge of his bed and she knelt on the floor beside him. "My next question was going to be about how you got your injuries...but I think I've just been answered," she said.
"Yeah," Danny said, slightly embarrassed. "Tonight I was fighting a shape-shifting ghost...long story, but I wasn't quite as careful as I should've been. I've gotten worse though."
Maddie looked out the window with a troubled expression, and Danny shook his head. "It's nearly been a year, Mom. I've been doing this every day. I've gone up against the worst ghosts in existence...ones all the other ghosts fear. I'm not going to stop fighting just because you found out..."
"I know," she sighed. "But I'm your mother. I wish I could keep you safe."
Danny smiled. "It's good to hear you say that."
Maddie closed her eyes at the painful sincerity in his voice. A big part of him had really believed she would never say something like that again.
His hand on her shoulder brought her eyes back to his, and she could see in them the strangest combination of apprehension and relief that she'd ever witnessed.
"Mom, it's really okay. It's more than okay."
With a sound that was more a sob than a sigh, she pulled him into her arms again. "When did you get so grown up?"
"Mom..."
Maddie felt a smile touch her lips in spite of herself. "I'm not going to keep you up for another minute, Daniel," she said. "But we will talk first thing tomorrow."
"After school, you mean?"
"How about instead of school?"
Danny hesitated. "What about Dad?"
Maddie sighed. "If you don't want to tell him just yet, I'll make sure to send him out for the day. I think he's been wanting to take a ride out to Whitecrest for awhile now anyway..."
This time it was Danny who hugged her. "Thanks."
"Sweet dreams, Danny."
"You too, Mom."
As she switched off his light and closed his door softly behind her, Maddie shook her head slightly. She had a feeling that it was going to be a long sleepless night for her. There was too much going on in her mind...too many things that she needed to work out before she could face the harsh realities that would be revealed in the morning light. Her son was half ghost. A despised hero. A fourteen year old boy with a sense of responsibility and selflessness well beyond that of most adults in the world.
There was a lot to face before morning.
One thing she knew for sure, however...
She was proud of her boy. And she'd make sure that he was never isolated from his family again.
Author's Note: Revelation stories have always been my favorite sort, ever since I can remember. I have been wanting to do one for Danny Phantom for quite some time now...and this is what came out! Constructive criticism is always welcome.