Where Skeletons Fear To Tread

~*~

Oneshot for Pearl84's Checkmate. Niane muses about the nature of things on her lonely midnight vigil.

Quote:

"There is something about a closet that makes a skeleton terribly restless..."

~*~

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

The hour is quiet, and all is still, save for the continuous tick-tick-ticking of my Master's antique, redwood grandfather clock solemnly marking each and every passing second in his study nearby. Soon, the Victorian device will loudly begin to chime the hours upon reaching midnight, much as it always does. So little and so much changes about this Hall-the occupants included.

Remembering what had befallen the two spectral hybrids in this house just hours ago-something I had been desperately trying with all mine heart to forget-my heart sinks, and I can feel my face crumple.

I anxiously glance about myself in the dark hall, and, if my heart still beat within the confines of my chest cavity, I'm fairly certain it would be pounding by this point. I can't allow any of my co-workers to see me break down once again. Martha and Patricia had seen me at my absolute worst when they requested I take a tray of tea and cookies to Vlad and Mas...Danny just a few days ago. I'd broken down into tears, much to my sisters' astonishment, and hurriedly made my escape, leaving the two alone in the parlor.

But I couldn't have taken the tray in. I knew what Vlad was doing in that room; something the man had not done for years on end. After all, if it only weren't for the lingering threads of sentimental value that he still gave towards the dusty volumes, those books would have been sent hurling into the flames for the fire to lick at their pages, photos dimmed with time being slowly consumed by the ravenous embers.

I couldn't have taken in the tray, and seen...and heard what the two had been talking about. I wouldn't be able to bite back a flood of tears in, much to Vlad and Danny's bewilderment. Vlad would possibly be wondering if I had finally gone daft, and Danny...would have wanted to know what was wrong. I know his type well; if he saw me in tears, he'd attempt to garner why.

Sweet, sweet child.

A glowing, opaque tear trickles down my chin, and falls onto the back of my tightly clenched palm. But at the very least, a small smile finds its way to my face now. But it disappears like a candle flame in the midst of a gale when Danny brushes again into my thoughts.

I glance up at a nearby mirror as I slowly float down the dark passage, the enormous looking-glass reflecting nothing but darkness. Nothing but darkness and this haunting sprite's gloomy, illuminated aura while she passes. I notice the sadness from just this afternoon has not yet faded from my mirroid me's complexion, and I make a mental note as to bury it from my co-workers' detection. George is a dear, and knows me too well after fourteen years of service under our mutual employer to ask too many questions, though he never does hesitate to press his concern when he sees me in more of my...vulnerable aspects.

George was a kind soul. As were the rest of my co-workers, pardoning that abominable leech, Dazzler. I scowl as I cross another corner, and attempt to shake off the memory of that power-hungry, diseased rat. My employer has made more then a series of mistakes in his lifetime, but allowing Dazzler into his service as been one of those the man actually regretted.

For now. In the terrible, terrible future that so heavily hinted to haunt Vladimir Masters' footsteps-not the one that was promised to the man should Danny become the cruel sadist that was and is Dan Phantom, concealed in Clockwork's hall...

I shiver, though there is no veritable chill in the air.

This is a dangerous topic, and I still need to clear my mind. My thoughts hastily flicker back to the Ghost Chef for lieu of a warmer subject.

He is like Danny, in some regards. I believe...I will miss him, when the time comes, and my mission is complete. Or as complete as it CAN become, as there is only so much I can do, in the end.

I CAN do a great many things, even frozen in this falsetto form as a teenage girl. But I'll have to take a page from the boy's group, and well agree that while I can very well do things...does not necessarily mean I will, or should, even when the 'truce' of sorts that my Master and Danny had...

...finally broke, today. I knew it would eventually, as Danny was all too correct in the woods just a few weeks ago: Neither one of them would be content to live this way forever.

Well...perhaps Vlad might very well be...but...

I suppress a moan before miserably turning an enormous portrait of Vlad Master standing outside his enormous home, a somewhat gaunt smile on his face. Tentatively, I quietly glide forwards, and place my hand on the portrait's face, my eyes streaming before I wipe away at the stray tears with my sleeve.

"Why?" I whisper faintly, to this dear fool. This dear, blind, suffering, fool. My pale, cold hand slowly tightens into a fist, and I feel control beginning to slide from underneath my fingertips. I scrabble for it, but the urge to break something, tear something, ruin something or make anything feel a portion of the twisting, writhing pain I feel on the inside. Scarlet energy begins to spark at my wrists, and I know my eyes have flashed a brilliant red.

I struggle to calm down, just a little surprised at myself. I so very rarely lose control. But now, nearing the end of the tightrope, when there was still so much to lose, when all may have been lost already...!

I take a couple of deep breaths-none of which I really need, considering my lungs are hardly even operational. Human habit, I guess.

It takes a few moments, but the crimson energy bubbling to froth at my hands is finally dying down to a light, dim rusty-red aura. But I don't take much notice before lightly knocking my fist into the wall, just inches away from Vlad's portrait, my eyes glaring holes into the ground as, almost against my will, my lips move to speak softly to the silent and lifeless portrait in front of me.

"Why is it...that you ALWAYS have to destroy your own chances of happiness, Vlad?" I ask wretchedly.

No one answers me. It takes me awhile yet before I can continue my silent vigil down the hall.

~*~

I pass a flight of stairs, and I can still see him there. I glide faster, as to depart the empty place.

I can still remember Vlad silently walking up that flight of steps after I had told him Sup was ready. My voice had trembled, however-and I knew what his reaction would be.

The man had been staring at the steps, where Danny had just disappeared after the billionaire had implored him not to go, in fear of losing everything the two had labored over for so many weeks; so many months.

But the boy had been at his own breaking point, and he dared not look back before departing, leaving the man alone in the hall, with a horrified me just beside him.

But that didn't last very long. The man had ignored my words, and silently went upstairs to his own chambers, footsteps slow and labored.

I didn't see his face; I didn't need to know what I would find on it. But would the awkward smile Vlad saved for the teen he regarded as a son return? I didn't know. I don't know. Their differences had been reawakened, a series of wounds that had been never been healed reopened to bleed afresh.

Their bond...had not been severed completely. The two were still linked, whether they liked it, or not.

But something between them broke. Was it trust? Danny is positive he cannot open up what's locked beneath his own heart: A painful burden and secret he's not willing to share with anyone to lighten his load. Nor is he willing to disband the fear, in fear of carelessness leading to his becoming evil.

Vlad was crushed when the boy could not confide in him this terrible secret. Perhaps neither trusts the other now-perhaps that is what has been broken.

I glide around a suit of armor, far from caring where I am going, even if it's in hapless circles. My eyes are dimmed, I know, and the ghostly glow from my countenance has faded somewhat.

But something tells me that trust has not been the only thing shattered today.

And, oh...oh, how I only wish that the mirror Vlad destroyed this evening had been the worst of it.

~*~*~

I heard the shouts, much as I wished they wouldn't come. I heard the insults, and the pained anger and despair in each halfa's words, even though I threw my arms over my head, and wish that I could not from where I dusted in the foyer near the hall where the two were arguing.

I knew this day would come. But did it have to come so soon?

~*~*~

"No, you want to help me, right? How CAN you, Vlad? How can you help me when you're so focused on helping YOURSELF? All you have EVER done is made things worse for me! Thanks to you, I'm stuck in a similar situation that led me to something I promised never to become! And all you can do is talk down to me because I'm trying hard-so hard- to stay AWAY from that! Well, you know what? Even if all I get back for all the good I do is misery, I will never stop doing what's RIGHT! And I'd rather be miserable for the REST OF MY LIFE if it means that everyone else won't be! You could NEVER understand me! Because you don't know what it's like to sacrifice and suffer for others! All you can do is take AWAY from others! You take away, not caring how it affects them!"

"If all that you have said is true, Daniel… Then I believe that makes me Jack Fenton."

The air had grown so thick, it was tangible enough to slice away. One could hear a pin drop in the deafening silence as Danny whipped around, cold fury inscribed in every line of his features at my employer's angry and bitter words, each one endowed with hatred.

"You think giving your life for others is the 'ultimate sacrifice?' Why don't YOU try being a living sacrifice for over twenty years! I did NOTHING to deserve what your father did to me! And to add insult to injury, he had the GALL to invite me to his wedding when I was still in the hospital! While your father ended up with a beautiful wife and two good kids, I ended up with NOTHING! Your father sacrificed me for his happy little existence! So, you have no right to turn me into the 'bad guy!' You have no right to tell me I am selfish! For once in your life why don't you open your eyes and take a good look around? I am who I am thanks to YOUR FATHER! My misery is thanks to your father. And here is your biggest punch line, Daniel: Your misery is ALSO thanks to your father! FACE IT! You wouldn't be HERE if it wasn't for what your 'father' has done! You wouldn't HAVE all the pressures you do if it wasn't for HIS mistakes! And you wouldn't have to live in fear as you do if it wasn't for the fact that Jack has ONCE AGAIN sacrificed someone for his own gain. Look at me, Daniel! I'm not the villain! YOUR FATHER IS!"

~*~

I glanced out of a bay window, drinking in the cool, fresh night air. The air here in the castle is still thick with the stench of anguish, and, considering the screaming match the two are soon to have when they met again, it would only become worse.

Glancing up at the few stars outside-it's a little hard to see very many tonight-I can recognize the North Star, Polaris. Danny taught me that one in that star simulation chamber. Another I can find is Orion, or the 'Heavenly Shepherd.'

At the irony of that, my brow unfurrows just a little bit, though I still feel far too sad to smile.

For awhile, I merely sit there, noticing a brilliant twinkle race across the sky. I blink, and the light is soon gone when I open my eyes. A shooting star, perhaps?

Feeling a bit foolish, but knowing it can't possibly hurt, I make my wish, and sit in the stone window seat for a good while, watching the heavens for another shooting star.

But I can't find another. I had my wish. And now...I would have to live with that, and pray that my one came true. That would be happiness enough-happiness I have been denied since my demise years and years ago.

I perch there for a good while, and, at last, I glide up from my position. Perhaps wishing is all I really CAN do, in the end.

But as I glide away, I know that this is not so. I can stand in the shadows, watch-and, very occasionally, I admit-step into the thick of things to interfere, such as when Danny's sister, friends, and pet came to 'visit.'

I'd done what I had to that day. Call me selfish. Call me a liar. But it had to be done. I have no obstinate regrets over my own actions, nor do I need to justify them to anyone.

I glance at my palms, wondering faintly whatever happened to the vigor I'd possessed when I faced down Dazzler, and the two of us locked one another in a heated stalemate. I was willing to get my hands as filthy as necessary to accomplish what needed to be done. What I had been commissioned to do.

...what I failed to do when I was still alive.

My lip trembles slightly at that, and I have to remind myself not to be silly as I glide past a Ming vase that Martha had just finishing cleaning a few hours ago. I wonder where my gossiping 'sisters' of sorts are now?

"Probably in the lounge," I murmur absentmindedly to myself, just for the sake of ridding myself of the continuous silence ringing perpetually in my ears.

Ah, yes...Martha and Patricia. A smile tugs its reluctant way to the corners of my mouth, in spite of myself.

My two bickering, gossiping, sisters-in-arms, as it were. Leaving them when the time came was going to be difficult. Those two truly had a habit of growing on you, even if they terrify small animals into believing that they were soon to receive a bath...or have a vacuum race over their fur. I shudder at the memory. Eech.

I turn around in the darkness, facing another series of vases. But I disregard them.

"I wonder where that little cat is, anyhow..."

I muse, pondering the small visitor that the boy had taken pity on, and brought to this house. I remember Jasper and Bernie had had a sort of bet on whether or not it would last a week here-after all, Mr. Masters seemed more then...very, very unlikely to allow the white kitten to stay here.

But Jasper had won that bet-it had been several weeks, and the cat still remained in the Masters Estate. By now, the little creature was probably asleep on the corner of Danny's bed, or, curiously slinking around Vlad's room once again, as the feline took a benign interest to the man, much to Vlad's annoyance.

The thought makes me laugh, in spite of my trembling nerves, but it doesn't seem like I'll be able to rely on twenty-three years of hiding my emotions. A poker face is so much harder to maintain these days...especially in...current circumstances.

A knot of sadness lying recently unchecked in my stomach tightens; and I wince at it as I reach the East Wing of the Manor's first floor set of steps to the second level of the house. I sink down upon the third step, chin in my hands.

Twenty-three years of chaining regret and pain, and confining it to a small room barely more then a few meters wide. Twenty-three years of listening to that skeleton beat against the door I've held my back to for all these years, listening to the creature moan, and pound viciously against the wood, bony hands rasping against the frame as it fought for freedom that I could not give it.

Twenty years since I opened the door a crack, and sent another skeleton stumbling in, only to have it scream for release alongside its twin.

Fourteen years. Fourteen years since I've came to this lonely house, fourteen years since I had requested Vlad for a job interview, since I flung more bony secrets into the darkness to hide. And now, the closet was full to the brim with the despairing dead, all fighting to get out, get out, get out, get out, get out...!

I bury my face in my hands, but not in time to stop a fresh wave of tears.

He'd been astonished to see me once again after our...encounter, of sorts, in the Ghost Zone. I had been nervous-deathly nervous-at the idea of his rejecting my proposal: That I come and reside under his roof as his newest employee.

But thankfully, for me, the bemused man had seen that my references (All dead) had checked out, and, in any case, after I had more or less saved his life, he wasn't in a position that he could very well refuse.

Vlad knew of...some of my...talents, as it were, and offered me a position not unlike Skulker's. But I rejected it. It would only get me into too many...undesirable situations, as I would have eventually been sent to 'deal with' the young ghost teen Danny Phantom Vlad had had his eye on ever since he met the boy at the reunion.

And that would have not done at all. No. I know my orders for my more...'official' position. My...other employer knows of my motives, that this job suits my needs as well as the rest of the world's, when the time of annihilation came, and there was only one defense left. It was then that Dan Phantom would be shed away forever, IF Danny could cross this tightrope before the inevitable happened, and all Ghost Zone breaks loose. When Jasmine Fenton discovers the truth...

...I had been in her shoes while I was still alive, I would be desperate to save my brother by any means necessary. But her wrath and anguish will be boiled up to pure, veritable guilt once she discovers that all Danny did and sacrificed...

I wipe my eyes again, and sigh at the thought.

...was for her. Was for her life, her sake, and their mutual parent's. As Danny's friend with the glasses, the small clone that idolized her 'cousin,' and the girl who loved Danny...

...when the time came, what would Vlad do in the end? It was the final tightrope, and the time when my door would break down. The skeletons, jubilant in their freedom, would come spilling out the splintered frame in a sea of miscellaneous bones, pouring out every...single...dark secret. Including the greatest one of all, that my mission was to-!

I stand up, and slowly glide back to Vlad's study, unable to suppress the longing anymore, dangerous though it was. If Vlad was awake, and found me...

I shudder. Vlad has already fallen into an uneasy sleep. And so, at last, has Danny, though, as I soberly watched him from the darkness, I noted that the poor boy more or less cried himself to unwilling respite.

'Courage,' I tell myself firmly, swallowing.

I glide into the man's study, making a beeline for a...certain chest was kept locked most of the time. Thank you, spectral ability to phase intangibly...

~*~*~

It was easy enough, getting into the box. What was harder? Opening the faded, leather-bound book inside, each page embossed with faded gold edges. At last, after several minutes of staring at the volume, I open it, with shaking fingertips.

My fingertip ghosts across the creamy page, making the slightest of whisping sounds as it does so.

There was Vlad and Stephanie at fifteen, Vlad looking extraordinarily nervous attempting to pin a corsage to a laughing young Steph's violet dress. I smile lightly, and move on to a much, much older picture.

This was Mr. Masters...my employer's father in his wedding day with Vlad's mother. Mr. Masters had not yet begun his own career in business, and so, as the young couple had fairly little money of which to speak of, the new Mrs. Masters had to wear a simple, only fairly lacy, white wedding gown.

But she looked very lovely next to the small cake, and there was Mr. Masters, beaming so brilliantly that it made my face hurt a little bit to see it. I flick a page. My throat tightens at the next photo.

Mrs. Masters, looking exhausted, but overjoyed, was holding a small blue bundle cradled in her arms from where the woman sat up in a hospital bed. No one could see the infant's face, but there was Mr. Masters on the edge of the bed next to his wife, looking joyous as he held a small pink bundle to his heart.

Twins. One little boy and a little girl named-

Suddenly, I freeze, sensing a presence. I slam the book shut, panic alighting in my body as something in the darkness makes its way over to me. But I can't see it.

Who is it? Who?

Terrified, my hand begins to glow red, but then-

"Meow!"

I start, and I look wildly around, holding my glowing hand on high to illuminate the entire room with a slightly eerie red glow. It is then I see my visitor, and surprise-as well as overwhelming relief-washes over me as a small, fluffy feline walks over to me, mewing again.

Oh.

It was the little cat that Danny had brought in-the one with no name. Allowing the red glow around my hands to dissipate, I blink, not at all certain of what to do from where I kneel on the floor next to the old chest. The small cat comes over, purring lightly as I hesitantly reach out, and begin to scratch it behind the ears.

Obviously, the little cat appreciates this; it purrs even noisier, and begins to rub the side of its head against my hand, obviously wanting more. I smile, using my other free hand to open the book once again.

"You gave me quite a scare there, little one..." I murmur softly, absentmindedly continuing to stroke the cat rolling on its stomach by this point as I turn back to the book.

I'm in no more mood to take chances tonight. I will not look at the rest of the photos. It's too risky. And...I've had more then enough tears for one night. The skeletons would simply have to cease their dance tonight. The secrets would have to be kept as such: secret. Just as to who or what I was, my intentions from after I was stationed here, and to the precious I knew that not a living soul on the face of this Earth could ever understand...

I will blockade the skeletal wraiths for just a bit longer before Danny and Vlad have to make the ultimate choices regarding their future. I only hope both make the right choices, in the end.

As for my part, well...

Still stroking the happy kitten beside me in the gloomy room, where moonlight was slowly streaming in from the windows, I can't help but glance down at the old birth certificates next to the twins' birth pictures. I scan down Vlad's, and trace down Viviane's, remembering her preferred name:

A-N-N-I-E.

I pause, switching the five letters around out of sheer habit.

N-I-A-N-E.