AN:

I am really not sure about this one. This was really just a little warm up I did to prepare myself for updating some of my already existing stories. However if you like I will continue it. I would really appreciate feedback, so please review.

~VC

"This is the last one for today, little badger," the man in the driver's seat of the silver convertible they road said as he parked it in front of the newest house on their tour between two other, less luxurious cars.

Next to him, the boy, who was sitting amid a flurry of soda cans and fast food wrappers, turned his gaze from the window where he had been watching the city as they passed by to stare at the man next to him with eyes that were less than pleased. He hugged his arms closer to his chest as he spoke slowly, in a tone that rung out with hard annoyance, "I sure hope it is. If it isn't I'll walk back to the freaking hotel."

Vlad Masters gave him a reassuring look as he turned and patted the boy's knee, but regarded him with a rather amused smile as he said, "Oh, you won't have to walk—not unless you don't shake that grumpy attitude of yours."

Danny Fenton narrowed his eyes, staring down at the hand on his knee with a kind of muted disgust. "I'm not in a bad mood, Vlad. I just don't like getting dragged around from house to house day after day in these freaky neighborhoods when I could be home, sleeping in my bed."

Vlad patted his knee again as one of his classic, condescending smirks took up his face. "Oh but you sleep just fine on the road—in fact, you just demonstrated that."

"I'd sleep better in my bed!" Danny exclaimed, and Vlad, who had known Danny enough to realize when he was pushing his luck, dropped his smirk abruptly, so that his face was now shaped by a kind of concerned scowl.

"Now, Danny," he said softly, "relax. You've been such a good boy today, especially in giving me input about these houses, and I know that can be tedious. There's just one more left, so why don't we keep up the good attitude and try not to ruin today, okay?"

"I'm not ruining today," Danny said with a rather disbelieving and—slowly—rage-encompassed tone taking hold of his still adolescent voice.

"Of course you're not," Vlad said quickly, and his hand once again tightened on the boy's knee in an attempt to placate him. "I meant—let's try to end this on a positive note." He motioned to the house they were parked in front of. "Don't you think this one is beautiful enough to give a fair chance?"

Danny turned to look at the house, but he already knew it was beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful of all the houses they'd seen that day, which he had noted as they drove up. In fact, Danny, who had grown up in a bricked building and been surrounded by homes of the same nature, believed this street of homes just outside the city of St. Paul, Minnesota, was perhaps the nicest, and most expensive, he'd ever set foot in, although the homes they'd encountered in other cities and states were just as nice, but perhaps it was simply the multitude of beauty and quality here; here any of the houses would have suited the desires of his new guardian, Vlad Masters, while in other cities they'd seen there was perhaps one acceptable house amid a stew of poor and middle-class. And when it came to Vlad, who had, less than three weeks ago, become instilled with the desire to sell his castle in Wisconsin and find a place from the two of them where Danny would be able to interact with other people his age, that would not cut it.

At that time, Danny had only lived in the castle for a month short of a year, and as one might image was still struggling to overcome the tragedy that had sent him to the man in the first place. After all, the death of his family, two best friends, and favored teacher was no easy thing to swallow, but it was getting better as time dragged on if only minimally—that was to say, he still spent the days encompassed by the deepest of depression but he and Vlad had, at least, worked things out so that he could not use the ghost gauntlets to create the all-powerful Dan, against whom he had fought and lost. Vlad had destroyed one of the gloves while Danny watched, but when it was gone he motioned to Danny. "Go on," he's said, glaring at the device with a kind of hatred Danny had never seen take hold of his face before, "destroy it. Show him that you're stronger just as I have. I've done my part and now you must do yours." And so Danny destroyed the matching glove and had felt newly hopeful and empowered, but of course eliminating those horrid things was only part of the whole problematic equation, and perhaps the easiest part to expel, because while they could be eliminated with relative ease, so could not be said for the overarching pain of their deaths, and the therapy Vlad had paid countless amounts of money for him to have, as well as the countless amounts of attention and uncharacteristic affection, could only help him so much—after all, Vlad, no matter how affectionate, (almost loving), could never take the place of those lives lost months prior—although to Danny it felt as if it could have been just yesterday, even considering the months were not easy in least, encompassed by the painful emotions roused by the incident that revolved around all aspects of his new life—to the explosion of a greasy fast food restaurant.

But there was no denying Vlad's affection, and how much he appreciated it, even if it had not been easy to walk into the man's home, that of his arch enemy, and instill his trust within him, and even now he found he still struggled to do so. But over the last year Vlad Masters had given him nothing but unrivaled affection and attention, and though he could be incredibly overprotective and overbearing, restricting him in ways his parents never had, Danny took comfort in knowing that someone cared—even if they were feigning it, a thought which still burned in the back of his mind even now—enough to direct so much time and effort into his being cared for. And even if he had not perhaps cared for Vlad the way he was now coming to, he was not so broken by the tragedy that he would abandon his morals—that was, if Vlad could make an effort (or again, at least pretend, although Danny was coming to expel this thought from his mind more easily with each day that passed and he spent more time with Vlad) to get along with him, and go to such extents to make him feel comfortable and welcome in his new life, then he could too. Still, there was no forgetting the past, and even now, when he could affirm that he really did care for Vlad Masters, he still could not fully forgive him for his actions before these terrible circumstances—really, he didn't think he ever would, but again, it became easier to simply be with every day that came and went in the presence of Vlad, even if they were often on varied pages.

So was true with the matter of selling the castle.

Of course, Danny knew what Vlad's intent was with this project—like everything else, it was centered around the desire that he be comfortable in his new lifestyle in every aspect it might include, and the boy realized that Vlad perhaps believed the castle, in its isolated region of Madison, was not the best place for him to spend the rest of his childhood; after all, here there were no other kids of his age in sight, and as a result he had taken to spending the time he was not being homeschooled by Vlad curled up in his new, grand bed sleeping, or sitting in a room where the only light was that of his television, on which he wasted the hours away watching cartoons or crude animated adult comedies (nothing too deep, which would cause him to think). But even though he knew that this behavior, the pure isolation, had been a great scare to Vlad—of course, such behavior might be associated with words like self-harm and suicide, which were especially sensitive areas of thought for the two of them because of the enemy they'd tried to banish—he'd seen no reason they should simply pack up everything and leave when they had a perfectly good home…and really, if he was being frank, when he didn't like people in the first place—at least, not anymore. So it was probable that if he was not too keen to socialize now, he wouldn't if they moved, no matter how many friendly faces they encountered. Really, that wasn't Danny Fenton any longer. Not since the accident, but Vlad insisted that he could not sulk in his bedroom forever and needed to mingle with others.

"The pain won't last forever, Danny," he'd said one day after entering the boy's room, where he'd drawn the blinds so that the sun did not touch him and so that the only source of light in the bedroom was the glow of the flickering television. "You know that. But if you remain in your bedroom any longer, it will. You have to let others in before it can leave, and it seems that it will take more than just me to satisfy that. You know that too."

But when he still refused to leave his bedroom, Vlad pleaded, again, sounding more desperate than ever, that he at least open the windows and turn off the television, and he would—but he spent the remainder of his unoccupied time shopping online with money that was not his own. And when this had not particularly boded well with his new guardian, it seemed he'd made up his mind about moving.

"That's it," he'd said, snatching the computer away from Danny, using which he'd almost purchased a set of incense sticks, which he'd heard were supposed to be very tranquilizing, and a burner, shaped like a tree in which there was carved a face. "If being here with me prevents you from leaving your bedroom for more than fifteen minutes, then we'll go. Your therapist thought moving into a more populated area would be best for you, and now I believe her."

But Danny had not actually agreed to the move until Vlad voiced his concern that Dan may still be an issue, though the ghost gauntlets were no longer in existence. What had the boy scared so thoroughly was the idea that perhaps the isolation would lead him to kill himself, and in doing so he would have created the monster feared by even someone as practiced and—at least in the past—evil as Vlad Plasmius; the man had insisted, later that day as Danny struggled to once again gain access to his now-cherished technology, that if he were to wallow in his steadily growing depression any longer and commit himself into the earth, the only part of him, the good, wholesome part, that had kept Dan away in the first place, would be gone and the man would be free to reign terror upon the world. If he didn't care about himself, Vlad had said somberly, glaring down at the boy (but in a way that was only half-driven by true frustration and mostly weary), then he could at least do this for the sake of humanity.

When Danny had donned a look that could only be fitted with words like hopelessness and despair, Vlad's hard demeanor had softened. "You know I want to help you, and that I try to do what's best for you," Vlad had said, and in a moment of his own weakness, reached down a hand and caressed the one of the boy's warm red cheeks. "I know that the only way I can make you see that I am correct is to put the situation in terms like that, but the truth is, I couldn't care less about Dan—what I am really concerned about is you. Because, well, without you…" he paused to swallow the lump that had formed in his throat, and in a display that Danny could only describe as being completely sincere and driven by untold amounts of that one thing he'd lost with the explosion that took his family, Vlad's eyes began to cloud, and his lower lip began to quiver, as if he were trying to keep tears from flowing down his now equally flushed cheeks. "I don't know how I'd go on."

Of course, if the knowledge of the earth's conquering if he didn't pull himself together and trust Vlad on this one wasn't enough, the man's display of affection should be—and it was, even if he had not responded until the next morning, when he came downstairs and gave Vlad a shy hug, saying he would trust his decision. But the newly acquired knowledge, or the pledge of trust, did not change the fact that he was less than pleased about the whole ordeal itself, and even if he did not place the blame of this annoyance upon Vlad, he still often found himself directing his frustrations towards the man, especially when their searches for a new home turned up empty-handed. And it seemed that he had an excuse to do so, because Vlad Masters had adapted this very odd, passive demeanor ever since they'd begun the search, one that he'd never taken up during the prior months of having the child live with him. It was as if, for the first time, Vlad recognized that the whole matter was truly his fault, unlike in the past when Danny had placed blame upon him in search for some form of solace in this time of pain and suffering, and knew that he was in no position to correct him; when they talked, if the boy seemed to be tense or angered, Vlad's way of speaking became skittish, and it was apparent that he'd turned on a little switch inside him which censored any and all thoughts which wished to be voiced. So Danny saw that his emotions really did control how Vlad spoke to him, which he had found very useful, because if the guy was pissing him off he could whip out a heated glare and Vlad would be scraping for an explanation to justify whatever condescending thing he'd just said, just as he was now. And sometimes, if he had the desire to, he could push Vlad further, but this afternoon, after the man had sat through two hours of rap and rock music during the length of their journey from the hotel they currently resided (located in a central location to all the streets they planned to tour), and stopped the moment he voiced a desire to go to the bathroom or pick up a snack, Danny thought the man deserved a break. After all, even if it was still difficult to trust Vlad, especially when his ideas were comprised of him having to intermingle with people his age, he would never forget the other halfa's telling him that he would not be able to survive without him, and knew that the only reason Vlad was doing any of this was so that he could recover. And luckily, when his patience ran thin on their house-hunts, this thing that Vlad had given him three weeks ago made any place seem pretty enough to give a chance. It was the idea of a new life, a hopeful future, and when this memory came the coming years seemed so much nearer.

"Yes, okay," he said, and pushed the residual garbage of those stops off of his lap and used the toe of his black sneaker to clear that which crowded at his feet.

Vlad smiled at him. "Do you think this will be the one?"

"Depends," Danny said as he got out of the car. "We'll see how much I hate my room."