(tw: potentially disturbing)
Danny blinked sweat from his eyes as he made a mad dash across Vlad Master's front lawn. Ectoplasmic bombs exploded left and right, grazing his shoulder, his leg, and dousing his whole body in wave after wave of caustic heat. The air, several hundred degrees hot and sapped of moisture, hurt to even breathe; it clung to and clawed at his throat with each wheezing gasp.
"Danielle!" he screamed. Danny shut his mouth, breathing violently through his nostrils to try to quiet the sound of his own panting. Nothing—he heard nothing, and his mouth burst open to suck in gulps of searing air. "Danielle!" he tried again, but still her voice didn't call back.
She made it out. She's gone. She's fine.
Danny landed hard on his ankle, changing paths just in time to side-step a mound of raised grass. He felt his heart skip a beat at the realization that he almost landed right on top of a mine; the idea chilled him to the bone. The thought of taking to the air, of flying above the minefield, passed weakly through his mind, but the throbbing ache of his ectoplasmic core refused him. He didn't have that kind of energy; he'd wrung himself dry.
His whole world shifted to a violent slant. Something hit him square in the back with enough force to send him tumbling into the hot turf. He cracked his nose on a jutting rock, rolled onto his back, and cupped his gloves over the gushing green seeping from his nostrils. He tried to cry out in pain, but the moan got caught in his dried throat. Through tear-stained eyes, Danny could only watch as his pursuer caught up. The man loomed above him; the ground burned hot on his back.
"Plasmius, I can explain," Danny wheezed through his parched mouth. He tasted salty sweat on his lips.
Vlad didn't miss a beat while Danny pleaded. He stepped closer, raised his right hand until the gloved appendage blocked out the sun. Something close to joy crossed the older man's his face, and a bright red ball of ectoplasmic fire charged in his palm.
Danny rolled onto his stomach, heart pounding out of control, and spotted a lump of earth to his right—a swollen patch of grass, bloated with an unseen ectobomb, the kind he'd been trying so hard to not set off.
"What are you—?" came Vlad's distant voice, now drowned in the permanent ring resounding through Danny's ears. "Daniel, stop!"
Too late, and he slammed his open hand into the dirt.
…
Seven months passed since the mid-summer rescue of his cousin. Danny took a cruel, but still rather unpleasant joy in watching from above as Vlad Master's landscapers labored day in and day out to repair the scorched front yard. As he understood it, Vlad explained the destruction away as the result of a few teenagers who'd bypassed security and set off fireworks on his lawn. It didn't do much to explain the periodic patches of dug-up dirt where Vlad had removed each remaining landmine, but Danny could only assume the billionaire had an excuse cooked up for those too.
Landmines. Landmines of all things.
Thinking back to the day raised phantom aches and pains in his body Danny would much rather forget. He rubbed absently at the tingle it left in his palms and was thankful for just a moment to have a distraction from the headache pounding behind his eyes.
Puffy dark bags underlined his eyes, his skin a shade paler than average, and Danny fantasized about collapsing on his bed the second he got home. Eyes to the clock: 10:34 AM—February second, third period, 10:34 AM, and still a half hour to go until lunch.
The tingle came back to his palms, his right thumb absently kneading the rivets between finger joints.
He yawned, flexed his hands, and moved to rubbing his temples. The headache was definitely getting worse. He could sense patches of his sight winking out of existence. They didn't turn to black—they just became blind spots, non-existent until he shifted his eyes ever so slightly.
The sharp rap of a pencil on his desk caught his attention.
"You okay?" Tucker mouthed, eyes flickering between Danny and Lancer.
"Fine. Sick," Danny mouthed back.
"For like the tenth time this year."
"I'm fine." Danny insisted again, and this time he turned his head forward, effectively cutting Tucker out of his vision.
His veins turned to ice when he accidentally locked eyes with Lancer. From the veiled annoyance on his teacher's face, Danny knew without a doubt Lancer had caught the silent exchange.
"Mr. Fenton thank you for volunteering." He held out the chalk, pinched loosely between thumb and index finger. "Rewrite the sentence in subjunctive."
Danny grumbled inwardly. He strained his eyes to focus on the board, but the words came back fuzzy, gaps cropping up between letters. He could feel his tired heart pounding in his neck. He wanted so bad to sleep.
Too many ghost hunts. Too much homework. Too much hanging around sick people. Danny resolved to start bathing in disinfectant as he rose from his seat.
"Mr. Lancer I don't think that's a good idea," Tucker balked. He stood before Danny had the chance to fully rise from his seat.
"Why not?"
"Danny was just telling me how he's not feeling well," Tucker answered truthfully.
Mr. Lancer cocked his head, surveying Danny with different eyes. A little bit of the color seemed to drain from his old face.
"Danny, do you need to go to the nurse?"
Danny blinked, looking up at Lancer without really seeing him. After two shuffling steps he paused. Confusion racked his brain as, for a moment, he forgot why he had stood. His heart startled at the sudden exertion of energy and beat frantically in his ears to compensate. It drowned his thoughts, it ate up his vision, it made his knees buckle.
He didn't even feel his head connect with the tiled floor.
"Danny?"
Lancer's voice, was it?
He couldn't tell over the gush of blood pulsing inside his head. The frantic beating of his heart hurt, it killed in fact, it drowned out their voices,
and then it stopped all together.
…
Danny sat up in his hospital bed, dull-eyed, remote in hand, anxiety eating out his insides. He clicked absently through the channels, one to the next, on the 12x12 tv screwed into the top-right corner. He'd been given his own room, a privilege according to the doctor, with a bay window on the right side (blinds pulled), an adjustable bed (which we wasn't allowed to control), and his own closet (as though he had a need for it). Danny didn't have the time to enjoy any of it.
His mind was focused on the the puzzled looks that dominated the nurses' faces, on the hushed conversations they had with the doctors, on their eyes shifting nervously in his direction. His hands smoothed over the silky gown they'd given him, off-white with a faint pattern of blue balloons down the front and sleeves, as an anxious tick every time he thought too hard about it.
It terrified him to imagine what they found; it terrified him more to think what they'd already confided in his parents. Would they think he was a ghost masquerading as their son? Would they even give him the chance to explain?
"We're right here protecting you, you know. No matter what," Sam offered into the silence, as though she had read Danny's thoughts. She balled her hands in her short skirt. Danny took notice of the goose-bumps raised up and down her legs.
"You gonna protect me when my heart gives out again?" Danny asked coldly. Flip. Flip. Channel 45. Channel 46. News. Car commercial. Infomercial.
"It's not gonna happen again," Tucker croaked. His head was turned, eyes trained intensely on the television. His whole body shook subtly. "G-go back. I think that was Friends."
"Just take a break from ghost fighting for a couple weeks, okay? We've got it—Jazz, Tucker, and me."
Danny nodded and nothing more. He was afraid to speak again, afraid of betraying just how shaken up he felt.
A nurse saved him from giving an actual answer. Her curly-haired head popped into the doorway, body still in the hall, and whispered in a voice just loud enough for Danny to hear, "Why don't you kids get some coffee and a snack? We're trying to let him rest."
Sam nodded, Tucker tried to, and both rose rigidly from their seats. Tucker's pale face shimmered with sweat.
"We'll be back in a bit, okay Danny?"
He lowered the remote, set his eyes on their nervous faces, and tried for a smile. "Yeah. And you're right—I'll be fine in a bit. Just…go get some fresh air and I'll see you around school."
They smiled in response and walked backwards out the door—Tucker first, then Sam. In the same beat, the curly-haired nurse entered with a near-empty cart trailing behind her.
She offered him a thin, warm smile, tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, and grabbed two small wires off the cart. The ends connected to two adhesive circles, both of which she smoothed onto Danny's temple. Another motherly smile, and the faint buzz of electricity hummed from both sides of his head.
"C-can I ask you? If you guys uh…if you find anything unusual, do you tell me first? Or do you tell my parents?" Danny balled his hands up in his sheets. "J-just curious."
Her wide gray eyes locked on his, gentle and kind. "Keeping secrets?" she asked in a voice lower than Danny had expected.
"S-sorta. I could explain to the doctor what I…W-well it's a bit complicated, but it'll make sense in the end I promise."
"You can try explaining it to me, sweetheart. Drugs maybe? We won't get you in trouble."
"Not drugs…it's something else."
"Oh, is it the malfunctioning ghostly core sitting where your heart should be? A real weight on your chest, making your heart pump blood through that fetid thing. I guess that's what happens to irritating little ghost boys."
His mouth tasted like sand, blood thrumming through his ears again as his heart-rate quickened.
"W-what do you…? How'd you…? W-who—?"
"Oh don't blubber; it's embarrassing to us both."
The voice resonated crystal clear in Danny's head.
"G-get out of her!" He nearly shouted. His hoarse voice cracked at the effort. With a burst of clarity, Danny yanked the wires from his head. "What are these?!" he demanded as he shook them in front of the nurse's face.
The cold smile disappeared from her lips, eyes rolling back into her head as she fell. The imposing form of Vlad Plasmius congealed behind her, his hands dusting each other off.
"What'd you do to her?"
"She's fine, Daniel."
"Get out. Get out of here now. I'll scream. I'll scream and my parents will come in here with their weapons blazing!"
"And I will be long gone before that happens. Take a deep breath and collect yourself."
"Why should I? So you can…can finish me off while I can't fight back?" His eyes grew wide and scared. He huddled backwards on his sheets, painfully aware of how vulnerable a target he was "Did you do this to me? What did you do to me?"
This time Vlad actually laughed. He turned his attention to the computer that logged the information collected from the two wires that had been attached to Danny's head. He scanned it with a pocket-sized device he'd removed from under his cape. "What exactly do you think I've done to you?"
"Poisoned me, maybe. Tried to kill me. I won't let you do it. I won't let you ki—"
"Oh use your head for one second, Daniel!" Vlad countered. His crimson eyes turned on the boy, strangely offended. Their violent gleam softened as he smoothed a hand over his hair, composure quickly returning. "Tell me one good reason I would want to kill you."
"Because that's how arch enemies work?" Danny spat back as jammed his elbow into the soft linen, raising shakily on the lone support.
"You are not my arch enemy. I don't have an arch enemy, Daniel, I have nuisances—If it feeds your ego, you can be my arch nuisance."
"Fine then. Arch nuisance. That doesn't change anything. I'm always in your hair, aren't I? Always ruining your plans to…to date my mom or rule the town or the whole world o-or whatever you do. No one's gonna stop you if I'm dead, right?!"
Vlad met him with a level gaze. The usual vitriol was gone from his eyes, and something close to patience overtook his sickly blue face. Rings whisked out around his body, sweeping past with little acknowledgment from him and leaving the very human Vlad Masters in their wake.
"Let me explain to you some facts Daniel." He raised one, now-gloveless finger. "One, there is one thin defense keeping my identity a secret, and that is your own petty need to keep your identity a secret as well. If you die, your friends won't let your heroics go unsung. What then? What's to keep your friends and sister from spilling my secret to the world?"
Danny licked his lips, lost for words.
"If that were the case, I'd probably have to kill all three of them—" Danny shot forward in his bed, but Vlad met him with an open hand, palm out "—WHICH I don't care to do. Evil ghosts and child murderers do not do particularly well in popularity polls. I'd rather keep my hands as clean as possible so long as I'm trying to keep suspicion off my shoulders."
"I'd never let you—"
"I'm not going to kill them, Daniel. It was a hypothetical." Vlad let out a tense breath, quick to reassume his immaculate appearance. "Second," he started, raising another finger "you do a decent, if rather sloppy, job of cleaning up the ghosts in this town. Mayors running ghost infested cities ALSO don't rank too highly. You're my free maid at the moment, and I'd be a fool if I one day decided to kill you for the joy of it. I don't care to think about the kind of overtime I'd have to put in if ghost hunting were heaped on my plate."
Danny's teeth ground together. "Interesting…so if I were to stop fighting ghosts, you'd pick up the slack?"
Vlad's mouth curled into a smile. "What a useless, useless observation to make now." A third finger shot up. "Also, your death would likely damage Maddie in ways I cannot repair. As much as I'd like to imagine her in a position that requires the undivided emotional support of someone stronger than her bumbling husband, I'm not sure I could truly fix her. Your death could drive a wedge between her and Jack, but it could just as easily solder them together." He lowered his hand, eyes cold and serious. "Case in point, I have a vested interest in keeping you alive."
Danny glanced down warily at the two wires still clenched in his fist. "So then…are you here to help me?"
Vlad, following the same line of thought, snatched the wires back and stuck them in the bottom deck of the cart he'd wheeled in. "There is no 100% accurate answer to that. I'm going to go with 'yes.'"
Danny's pulse quickened under his skin. "Do you know what's wrong with me?"
"Yes."
"Can you cure it?"
"No."
He looked up, blinking surprise from his bleary eyes. "'No'…you don't know how to cure it?"
"I do not."
"My heart—"
"—is fighting through its last few beats."
Danny's head shook rhythmically, a short, clipped laugh bursting from his throat. "But you're going to fix it? All that stuff you said about how absolutely screwed you are if I die—you're here to fix me then."
"I can't fix it, Daniel. It's beyond fixing."
"Then…then what? Does it just give out? Am I…going to be okay?"
Vlad suppressed a smile, amused. "Yes and no."
Eyes flitting between Vlad's steely gray ones, Danny clenched his jaw. "Better question: am I going to die?"
"Yes…and a little bit no."
"What do you mean 'yes and no'?" he demanded, rising weakly on one shaky hand. "If this is a half-ghost joke I swear—" The shallow fluttering pulse in his neck grew quick, weak, and an icy cold shiver shot through his whole body. For just a second, he swore he felt the sputtering muscle freeze.
"Did you….did you do this to me?" Danny whispered pathetically. Darkness encroached the edge of his vision, and he fought to slow his heart before it gave out with a final flutter.
"I really love hearing how you phrase these—I would say…no. I didn't do it to you; it was more of something I couldn't prevent. Ask it a different way, see what answer you get."
"So what? How are you gonna help me? How are you gonna fix me?"
"Daniel, do you know what you do with a toaster whose fuse has blown?"
"…You fix the fuse?"
"No, that's much too costly. Who's to say it will even work properly? Toasters get old, wear out. Their parts become unreliable." Vlad turned, eyes to the window, before cocking his head back to Danny. "Do you give up yet?"
"…Fine. What do you do?"
Vlad answered with a smile. "You buy a new one."
"A-a new one…" Danny shut his eyes, willing his brain to follow the conversation. "A new heart then? You're getting me a new heart then? Is that the riddle? My heart stops beating, so I die, but I keep living with a new one."
Vlad sucked air in through his teeth, condescending. "Ooh close. You're on the right track, but not quite there. Eventually I think you'll guess right." A dark gleam overtook his eyes and he reached for the empty back cart. "We're replacing the whole toaster, Daniel."
His hand made contact with something on the cart's surface. He locked his fist around it, and the veil of invisibility melted away in a shimmering sweep. There, unconscious on the table, lay a duplicate of Danny Fenton. Black hair, thin light arms, eyes closed in peaceful sleep.
Danny's mouth went dry. "You can't be serious. You…you're gonna replace me? Body snatcher style? Don't you realize how—how messed up that is?! Don't you think they'll notice?!"
The older man turned to survey the new body, teeth digging into his lower lip as he considered the boy's words. "Yes I suppose it is quite messed up, but it's my best option." He smiled. "And I'm willing to put down a fair share of money that says no one will notice the swap."
Danny lost all control of the fluttering, panicked, wispy beating in his chest. Numbness crawled through his left arm. Blackness bloomed in his eyes. "No…No this is all messed up. This is all kinds of messed up! You're insane. Insane. You think you can just dump a clone of me at my doorstep and get away with it?!"
"I do, actually." Vlad removed the little electronic device he'd used to scan the computer, clipped in the two wires he'd snatched back from Danny, and attached the adhesive ends to the clone's head. "Memory upload—give me a minute." He looked over at Danny with a grin. "You won't remember this conversation, a shame." As he turned to the clone, Vlad muttered something else just too quiet for Danny to hear.
"You're crazy. You're crazy. You're insane. You're crazy."
"Uh-huh…" Vlad answered, the smile clear in his voice.
"What am I…What did I…What's happening? What's happening to me? Why am I dying? What did I do? What did I—? What did I do?"
"You want to know what happened?" Vlad set the device down on the cart, eyes swinging around to the delirious boy on the bed. The joy had left his eyes. "You exploded, Daniel."
Danny looked down at his body, ignoring the numbness creeping through to his bones. His arms felt heavy, legs too, but through his shoddy vision he could still make out the shape of his own fully-formed body.
"No…No I—why am I going to explode?"
"No—" Vlad unclipped the adhesive wires from the clone and pointed one at Danny, "—you are going to die of heart failure."
"You said…I'd explode."
"That is not what I said."
"I heard you."
"You misheard me." Vlad ran a tongue over his lips, mouth pressing into a seam. "Perhaps…I should apologize. That failing heart inside your chest?" He walked over to Danny, bent down, and stared, eyebrows arched in sympathy. "I really thought I had gotten it right this time. Live and learn, I suppose."
Danny pressed a hand over his collar bone. He couldn't feel the touch of his cold fingers on his skin.
Vlad returned to his stance by the clone and laid a hand on the new boy's wrist. "I should also apologize for letting you run much too long. I thought I could wait this one out—perhaps you'd recover on your own." He shrugged, hand tightening around the unconscious clone. "Oh well—eighth time's the charm, I suppose."
"…Eighth?" Danny whispered with shallow breath.
Vlad skirted behind him, unplugging machines one by one. The steady, reassuring beep of the heart monitor disappeared. He winced at the faint pinches of IV lines being pulled from his arms. Finally, he felt Vlad's hand come down on his shoulder, and the familiar cold of invisibility bled through his body.
"Sleep tight, #7."
And then his shriveled, stretched, scarred heart squeezed through one last pathetic beat before coming to its final rest.
…
"Dude, what'd that nurse even give you after we left?" Tucker sat, legs crossed, on the floor of Danny's bedroom. He gripped an X-Box controller between both hands, thrashing wildly as he crushed the joystick under his locked thumb. "Not fair not fair! Sam's cheating."
"It was a powerup," she countered haughtily.
Danny only shook his head, strangely content with being in last place. "I don't know. The nurse came in, hooked up something to my head, and I fell asleep. Next thing I know the doctor's saying I got a clean bill of health."
"The wonders of ghost powers," Tucker mused, eyes still locked on the game. "It's better this way. No more icky hospitals from now on, okay?"
"A week of forced bedrest isn't much better."
"Beats being dead," Sam answered. Gloatingly, she set the controller down on the floor as her character cruised past the finish line. "First."
"Still not fair! I was in first for the first and second lap! Danny you saw!"
"Sore loser," Sam scoffed jokingly.
"Danny, be the judge!" Tucker whined, but he already knew it was a lost battle. He simply kicked his controller, mumbling about "powerups."
"You two go have a rematch then." Danny sat up, kicked back his blankets, and put both feet on the ground. He stood with his hands stretching toward the ceiling.
"What are you doing?" Sam asked. Tucker had already lunged for his remote, snatching up the best character.
"Getting some air," Danny answered, rings splitting his form. "I'll be back in ten minutes top."
"Okay. I'll be beating Sam when you return."
"I'll hold you to it," Danny answered with a flat laugh and phased through his roof.
February was chilly, but the cold melded well with his ghost self. It thrummed against his core, charging him up, and Danny took to doing somersaults through the sky. He felt better than he had in weeks.
He promised himself one quick fly-by through town. Over the Nasty Burger, past the school, with a few minutes to float and gloat over the mess that still dominated the Masters' front lawn.
Danny surveyed the property, mildly impressed with how well the landscapers had redone the right side of the lawn. Holes, scorch marks, and occasional mounds of dirt still littered the left side. He looked closer, and felt his heart jump at the sight of Vlad digging, alone, on the hidden side of a once-grassy, once-green hill. Uprooting another bomb probably, and the thought of watching it explode in Vlad's face made Danny feel giddy.
He lowered himself in time to watch Vlad grab…nothing…from the side of the freshly-dug hole and roll it in. The thud that followed betrayed that it wasn't, in fact, nothing, but an invisible something. He hung back, cautious, and watched Vlad heap the dirt back over the hole. The section of lawn wouldn't be visible from the house, or any of the neighbors' houses—only from this sky-high vantage point.
Ten minutes passed. Then twenty. Thirty—before Vlad had fully covered the hole. He vainly dusted off the dirt that had stained every inch of his outfit and retired—exhausted—inside.
Danny flew lower, careful not to touch down on the ground on the off-chance that any bombs remained from his July skirmish with Vlad, and observed the covered hole from above. His eyes drifted to the left, counting one, two, three, four, five, six other patches of disturbed earth in varying states of grassy regrowth—seven total.
He looked up, around, behind him, and with a chill noticed that this was the exact section of lawn on which Vlad had cornered him all those months ago. He thought hard—on the ground, Vlad behind him, grass hot on his back, he'd slammed the mine. It must have exploded, but he didn't remember.
Reckless. Stupid. Suicidal maybe, but it had worked. He'd woken up outside, on the ground, largely unscathed.
Absently, Danny let one foot touch the ground, and a gentle snap split the air. He startled before lifting his shoe and honing in on the tiny sliver of white that had split in two under the weight of his boot. One hand snatched it from the grass, and he brought it close to his eyes.
Hard, white, a sliver of bone. He turned it in his hands, rubbing at the dirt-covered end in hopes of cleaning it.
The stain didn't budge. As he pulled it closer to his eyes, Danny realized the stain wasn't brown—it was black, and seared into the bone.
He held it loosely between his fingers, eyes flitting up to the seven mounds of identical dirt, and wondered what sort of explosion could have charred this poor creature's bone so wholly black.