Author's Note:
These days I tend to write Maddie in not the most flattering light, but I actually really like her. So I decided to do this.

Glimpse
A fanfic by Pseudinymous

"I see you here every night."

Her voice had come almost out of nowhere, but for once in his life Danny didn't jump. Instead, he slid his eyes towards the source of the noise: Maddie Fenton, his mother. Except she wasn't his mother while he assumed this form — he was Phantom for the moment, the ghost who most definitely was not in any way, shape, or form, related to the Fenton son.

In fact, the thing that surprised him most about this approach was that her words seemed to carry no mallice nor discontent. Instead, they merely formed a statement, one that nagged for his attention, and even perhaps for a conversation.

"… That's because I am here every night," he replied back moodily, testing these strange waters. "What's with you? Shouldn't you have shot me by now? Torn me apart molecule-by-molecule?"

She flinched. Their eyes had met for a brief moment after Danny had thrown the words in her face, but she looked away from him soon after, and brought the rest of her body up through the hatch of the emergency ops centre. He watched her carefully as she did, but there still wasn't any sign she was about to attack, and instead she sat down next to him, feet dangling off the side of the roof as if there wasn't just thin air beneath them.

That… that was an awful lot of trust to place in a ghost you hated.

In the quiet of this night he could hear her every breath. But he suppressed his own, lest she notice such human habits. Couldn't have her pondering too much on his nature right now, after all. Not after all this time…

"Well?" he asked. "Somehow I doubt you're here just to admire the stars with me."

"You admire the stars?" she said, voice abrupt, as if her curiosity had been briefly spiked. But the moment passed too quickly, and she was soon looking back down over the cityscape that spread beneath her feet. "Anyway… you're right, I'm not here for that," she admitted. "I needed to… prove something to myself."

With a frown, Danny cast his own gaze out over the city. Still he sensed no danger, and so decided to keep his watchful eyes on the air above and below rather than on his dangerous mother. Perhaps… did she know more than she let on? If he really thought about it, he had avoided so many awkward run-ins with his parents as of late that it was starting to get suspicious. They'd even stopped screaming about dissecting ghosts in their lab. It had been a pleasant time, now that he'd stopped to notice it.

The idea of his secret being out swirled in his head, and he dwelled on that for some time. Perhaps he really could tell her. Would it really be so bad if she was already reacting to him like this? It made it seem like everything would be okay. … But still, he'd been in this game for far too long, and if she still somehow had no clue, he wasn't in any sort of rush to clear things up for her. A part of him enjoyed the secrecy of his hybrid status, and continuing to keep it away from his parents meant that although he was more trapped in some ways, he remained much freer in others.

"I needed to prove that you wouldn't attack me if I came up to you unarmed," she continued, jarringly, with quick words that stopped and started in unfortunate places. "And you haven't."

Danny gave her another look and shrugged. "I'm here to protect people, not attack them."

"That's your obsession?"

Why did he suddenly feel so comfortable to sit with her like this in ghost form? It was the strangest feeling, sitting here with barely a heartbeat and with lungs that did almost nothing at all, next to his mother the ghost hunter.

But on the other hand, her question was something that triggered a feeling bordering on discomfort. He shifted where he sat. "No. I don't have an obsession."

"Oh, really?" she asked. "Even with a hero complex like yours?"

"Believe me, if I could choose not to do this, I would."

Maddie's face curled with a curious frown. "You don't like it?"

Danny kicked the side of the ops centre gently with his boot. "I barely get any sleep. The only time I don't feel tense is like… now. But why would you care about that? Why the heck are you even up here talking to me?"

He could hear her swallowing, and he could feel her careful, studious eyes upon him. She'd even removed her goggles now, which would have cast a red glare over everything she looked at.

"… Because I wanted to apologise to you, Phantom."

Danny faltered. "A-apologise?"

Maddie's voice was reduced to a haunted whisper. "We… we recently discovered some evidence that we've been… wrong," she managed. Even Danny, who was nowhere near as good as Jazz at reading body language, could tell something was dreadfully wrong here, that the woman sitting beside him was wracked with guilt. She swallowed again. "We were wrong about ghosts. You're not just… mindless… obsessive… destroyers of…" and she trailed off there, shaking her head. "You tried to tell us so many times that you were on our side, but we kept shooting at you. We didn't think there was any way you could possibly be… a person, with real conscious thoughts and feelings. So — I'm so sorry. On behalf of Jack, too, I'm so, so sorry."

The small half-ghost almost didn't know how to process the information. She was… sorry? She had finally decided against her dogmatic rhetoric that ghosts were dangerous killing machines? And apparently Jack had decided this with her?

… So that explained the lack of being hunted down like game, lately. He could feel his muscles relaxing, and he stared back up at the sky, suppressing the stupidest, giddiest grin. Danny couldn't even begin to describe how free he felt in that very moment.

"… Phantom?"

"I—" he began, but then he laughed, and the grin broke loose in all its glory. "Thanks. Really. It means a lot."

She allowed him a curt nod.

"I can't believe I hunted you…" she told him, still trailing. "I mean, in a sense… you're my son, Phantom."

And this time he nearly fell off the roof. "I'm your what?!" he stammered. "So that means you know—"

"I do."

Danny drew a shaky breath, which was then content to rattle around in his lungs as he held it. "I can't… how'd you find out, Mum?"

"You even call me Mum…" she muttered. "… We've known for a long time. Just looking at you and Danny, it's obviously you're related, and you've even kept his first name. You have exactly the same face as him. I think it was maybe a year ago when I realised that our portal created you. I never told Danny about it because I didn't want to… you're his ghost, Phantom, I didn't want to scare him with something like that."

The silence was long, but it had begun with the slightest of chuckles, before the atmosphere turned serious. He regarded his mother with the straightest look he could manage, but eventually a smile spread across his face anyway.

"Mum," he said. "You got me."