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He didn't really mean to do it.
They didn't really mean to do what they did either.
The swear words that flew from his mouth as he stormed away from them weren't really what he meant.
He didn't really mean to leave them standing there, staring, with their mouths dangling open, their guns dropping from their limp hands, with the universe unraveling around them.
When he never came back, he didn't really mean it.
But that's what he did anyways.
Too bad it came back to haunt him.
Forgiveness is the Start of Life
A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria
Danny Phantom. A strange creature that appeared right around the turn of the millennium. It hung around Amity Park for a few years, then disappeared again.
Some thought it an evil spirit. There was never any direct proof that the creature itself was evil, but there is a definite up-tick in evil activity in the area during the years it existed in Amity Park.
Others thought it was a good spirit, something of an angel, there to fight the evil. When the evil went away, so did the good spirit.
"Blah, blah, blah," Danny muttered, scrolling quickly through the seemingly endless dictionary entry on his computer, simply scanning the rest. Almost all the information in there was either completely made-up or completely wrong. "What a waste of time."
"It's not a waste of time," came the sour voice of his companion.
Danny looked up with a sigh. He ran his fingers through his white hair and settled on a cross look. His mouth opened with a snappy comeback, but the younger man sitting next to him at the café spoke first.
"It's the first real clue we've had in days. Sure, this stuff is boring and whatever, but we need to follow it." The young man had deceptively soft, cow-like brown eyes. He turned them on Danny, pleading with him. "Come on, you said I could take the lead on this case."
Lips tightening, Danny closed his eyes for a moment, then nodded. "Fine. Sure. I just don't understand how you can believe that guy. He's old-"
"Old doesn't make him wrong," the other man countered.
Danny nodded in agreement. "But he mentioned the FBI spying on him every other sentence…" Danny trailed off, waiting for the retort, but his friend simply shrugged a bit. "…and he wrote 'June' on his check when he made it out-"
"It's hard to keep the months straight." There was no conviction in those words, however, because the raging blizzard outside took that moment to loudly rattle the windows. The young man had the politeness to flush a little and hunch his shoulders before looking up at Danny with a bit of a sparkle to his eye. "How did you notice something like that?"
Danny shrugged and set his elbows on the table, cradling his hands around a steaming cup of hot chocolate. "I just don't get it, Jerrod. How is a two-hundred-years dead spirit going to solve this case?"
The hunched shoulders hunched a bit farther, the young man tapping desolately at his keyboard. "I… don't know, Danny. It's just… he gave the right description…"
"So could I," Danny answered, gesturing at the picture on the screen. "And I certainly haven't seen this Phantom thing."
"Then what do we do next?" Jerrod's voice was soft and unsure.
Danny glanced over at his young friend, noting the way Jerrod was staring down at his keyboard, and took a sip of his hot chocolate. The corner of his nose twitched at the taste. It wasn't quite right. But then, nobody made hot chocolate just right anymore.
Nobody had made him a good cup of hot chocolate since…
Danny shook his head, jarring the thought from his brain. He really needed to stop drinking hot chocolate. That, along with the whole 'Phantom' topic they were on, was causing his thoughts to veer a bit too heavily down memory lane. Setting down the cup with a bit more force than he meant to, he answered Jerrod's question the only way a mentor should. "Don't know. You're the one on lead. Maybe you should find a clue."
Jerrod's eyes cut to him and narrowed but – as always – the cow-like look to them completely ruined the 'angry' effect. "Danny," the young man snapped.
Laughing a little, Danny turned to his computer and started to scroll through the information on the screen. "Or maybe," Danny mussed, barely loud enough for his companion to hear him, "you should grow a backbone and follow your hunch." As the young man buried his face in his hands, Danny went back to scanning some of the information being displayed in front of him. He couldn't help the small shake of his head at some of the more ludicrous bits of knowledge.
"Just… do what I asked you do," Jerrod finally muttered. "Please, Danny."
"Alright," Danny agreed. "You the boss."
Jerrod looked up, his shoulders straightening. Danny bit back a smile at the thought of how easily it was to mess with the young man's ego. How long had it been since he'd been that gullible? "That's right, I'm the boss," Jerrod parroted happily, settling his fingers back on the keyboard.
"Doesn't mean it's not a waste of time."
.
.
Danny Caliber. That's what his current name was, or at least what his driver's license said. There were times that he forgot. Like now, watching the lady at the supermarket examine his signature.
"Um…" the woman said, blinking uncertainly and squinting in an unflattering way.
Danny tensed a little, waiting for her to scream for a manager and then have to spend an hour spinning lies for the store as to why he'd written 'Danny Bergerson' on the screen. But the lady simply shrugged, okayed the transaction, and smiled at him. "Have a nice night," she chirped.
"I will." Danny grabbed his small bag of groceries and walked out into the night. A car slurped past in the snow as Danny pulled his jacket closer to his body and set off towards his house. The next time the wind howled down the street, nearly taking a older couple off their feet, it blew right through Danny's body.
Not that anyone noticed. It was one of the things Danny liked most about the human race, and especially about the humans that lived in the bigger cities. Nobody ever seemed to notice the little things.
He shivered slightly, picking up the pace. He stomach was starting to complain about the lack of an actual lunch and he knew there was a hot supper waiting for him in his apartment.
He paused for a moment outside one of the more run-down apartments on his block, glancing up towards a window on the third floor. He could see the silhouette of his "apprentice" pacing back and forth in the window.
Jerrod Manson. He'd allowed the young man into his office for the stupid reason that his face had seemed somewhat familiar and the kid had been completely lost. Generally he ran from anything that was even remotely recognizable. He'd found himself neatly talked into having a shadow within a few minutes, long before he'd known the man's last name.
The wind howled, blowing Danny's jacket around and forcing a handful of snow down his jacket. He shivered and shook his head, hunching his shoulders and hurrying down the sidewalk towards the safety of his home.
The kid was more helpful then not. And perhaps Danny was allowing him to stick around because he felt like he owed something to the family. Perhaps not, because Danny hadn't quite decided, but perhaps. But any way it shook out, Danny was getting used to having a regular source of company again.
Danny made it the requisite number of doors and pushed his way inside, stomping the snow off his boots before making his way upstairs. "Hi," he said to an old lady sitting on the steps near the third floor. She didn't answer.
Sticking his key in the door of the second apartment on the forth floor, Danny set down the bag of groceries and glanced around. He pressed his hand to the door and muttered something under his breath. A slight green glow swirled out from around his fingers, forming strange, alien-like symbols on the door.
The he turned the key, grabbed his groceries, and stepped inside. Inside was a whole new world.
Every other apartment was a small, one-bedroom, run-down thing with bugs and half-broken appliances. Danny vaguely remembered that his 'real' apartment looked like that too. Fortunately for him, one of the first things he'd done after signing the lease as to change the apartment door to a portal. Danny's apartment door was in the human world, his home in the ghost zone.
The groceries went into the kitchen, simply being dropped on the counter while Danny stretched and felt his back pop and settle. There was nothing in there that would spoil if left for a few hours. It was time to relax.
"The human world's still a mess, boy," he muttered, tapping a finger against a small bird cage. The glowing creature inside picked up its head and ruffled a few ghostly feathers before going back to sleep. "But I'm kinda liking it. Think I should hang around this time?"
With no answer coming from the sleeping bird, Danny shucked off his coat and boots, slumped into the living room, and dropped onto his couch. Two hundred years of living in this house had allowed the couch to form perfectly to his wants and desires. It was just the right amount of soft. He relaxed against the cushions, closing his eyes.
Not for long, though. His latest case was spread out across the coffee table and it called to him. It was something new and different. Generally, he survived off the scrabble of spying on cheating wives and delivering notices to the undesirable. Occasionally finding a run-away teen the parents didn't really want back in the first place. Perhaps a few lost items here and there. Nothing like this.
His fingers moved towards the photograph, picking it up. There was no mistaking the identity of the person standing there, holding a blood knife, standing over a brutally murdered family of five that had been walking home from a movie. A mom, a dad, and three kids. One little girl with thick, red hair was still clutching a small teddy bear. No fuzzy pictures or static-filled video stills in the twenty-third century.
It was him. There was nothing else to it. Danny Phantom.
Danny could barely take his eyes off the ghostly form long enough to take in the tortured expressions on the family's faces. The ghost in the picture had even been nice enough to look up at the camera, almost like he'd been posing for the picture.
The only problem was that Danny knew for sure Phantom hadn't been anywhere near the scene. He was Phantom, after all. And, to be quite honest, Phantom didn't look anything like the ghost in the picture anymore.
His fingers brushed over the messy white hair, the glowing green eyes, and the odd-looking turn-of-the-millennium 'super hero' costume. The ghost looked to be a teenager, sixteen at the most, with all the bravado and physique that came with it. Two hundred years ago, Danny and the ghost could have been mistaken as twins.
Danny glanced up into his television, studying his reflection. His white hair was considerably shorter, almost tamed. His green eyes held a glow that was really only visible in the dark. And, although he still preferred the black and white color combination, the skin-tight look was long gone. Of course, he wasn't a teenager anymore either. He looked twenty-something.
He ran his tongue over his teeth and picked up the picture again. The options as to how this could have happened were endless. Only, every thought was neatly wrapped up with a 'nope'. It wasn't photo manipulation. It wasn't a hologram. It wasn't some sort of clone. Danny was almost positive it wasn't a ghost. He was a little less positive about the idea that it was himself from the past, come with some message from Clockwork, but still very positive it wasn't.
Long moments passed as he stared at the picture, tapping his fingers against it now and then. The bird in the cage slept. A clock on the mantle ticked forwards a few seconds, then backwards for a minute, then skipped ahead an hour. The groceries on the counter mysteriously put themselves away.
Then Danny's stomach growled and he remembered that he was hungry. Just at that moment the microwave dinged. Supper was ready.
.
.
"I found a clue."
Danny looked up from the desk at his office, blinking at his young friend. The door to the office clicked shut and Jerrod dropped into the free chair. Danny arched a dubious eyebrow. "Finally. What is it?"
Jerrod grinned and held up a crinkled envelope. It smelled dank and moldy. It was ancient, brown with age, and actually had a postage stamp stuck to it. No date, though. It hadn't ever been sent. "It's a letter."
"A letter." Danny let annoyance flit into his voice. "How old is it?"
"'Bout two hundred years." Jerrod carefully set it on the desk, pushing it slowly towards Danny. "I found it at the scene of the crime last night. See who it's addressed to? But better yet, see what the return address says?"
Danny didn't bother to glance down. "So… you broke into the scene of a mass murder took evidence as to the identity of the murderer. That'll go down well."
As Jerrod mouthed a few times, sitting back in his chair and blinking, Danny reached out and grabbed the envelope, twisting it around and reading the label. He froze.
"It can't really mean anything to the police, right?" Jerrod said uncertainly. "I mean, it's two hundred years old, right? The police wouldn't want it… right?"
Danny stared down at the neat handwriting, the careful printing, and the strange spider-ish symbol instead of the 'O'. In two hundred years, he'd only seen one person who'd written just like that. But there was no way…
"Danny?"
Danny looked up at his white-faced friend. "I'm sure you're fine," Danny said distractedly. "It's just a letter, right?" He picked up the envelope and ran his fingers over the address. Then he flipped it over and pulled out the letter tucked inside. The letter was creased and bent and smudged. It had obviously been fondled and read a hundred times.
"Did you see who wrote it?" Jerrod asked. "Samantha Manson. I looked her up. Did you know she was one of my more-famous ancestors?"
"I saw," Danny said softly, unfolding the letter.
It was short.
Danny –
It wasn't your fault. Come home.
- Sam
"Do you think one of my ancestors knew Danny Phantom?" Jerrod asked. "I mean, the letter is addressed to him, right? And she wrote it."
Danny wasn't really listening. It wasn't like Sam to write such a short note when so much needed to be said. She never talked a lot, but when she had a soap-box to stand on, God help anyone within earshot.
No, there was more to this letter than that.
"Go home, Jerrod."
There was startled bit of silence, then a soft, "What?"
Danny looked up from the letter, his eyes hard. "Go home." Danny carefully slotted the letter back into the envelope and gently put it into his pocket. He pulled on his jacket and headed towards the door.
Jerrod stumbled to his feet. "Why? Danny, this is a clue…"
"Yes, it is." Danny held open the door and waited.
"I'm on lead." Jerrod folded his arms and glared at him. "Something's wrong and you have to tell me."
Danny's teeth clenched. He'd spent so much time with ghosts over the past century that he'd forgotten how stubborn and stupid humans could be. "I'm done playing games with you." Danny let go of the door and stalked off. His hands went into his pocket, his fingers playing with the letter.
Behind him, the door to his office banged open. "Hey! I'm the one that found that letter!"
Danny had long since given up completely returning to his human side. It hurt too much, after what happened. So he found it easy to step around a corner and simply disappear.
A letter in his pocket, the sky to his back, and a mystery waiting for him at home.
.
.
There were two problems with unraveling the secret to the letter. The first was its age. The paper was brittle and tore easily with even the slightest wrong movement. The second was the hundred different ways Sam could have hidden a message on the paper. Because of this, Danny spent about an hour sitting on his couch, staring at the envelope.
When he finally started working, Danny carefully spread the paper out on his coffee table, pushing the case he'd been working off to the side for a moment. The case meant nothing, deserving of being a pile of paper on the floor. He ran his eyes over the words in the letter, searching for a hidden meaning. Could it be some sort of CSI-type riddle? Or maybe invisible ink. Or possibly…
The door rattled. Danny closed his eyes and sighed. "Go away," he called. Normally, sounds didn't pass through the portal into the human world. But this time, they did.
"No. I want to see what's on that letter."
Danny buried his face in his hands, pressing the palms of his hands hard against his eyelids. Sparks burst into life. "I don't have time for this," he breathed. He sat back and stared up at the vaulted ceiling of his apartment, gazing up at the ghostly facsimile of the stars.
The door rattled again. "Danny!" came a furious call. "I thought we were friends!"
That last word cut deep, especially with the letter from Sam sitting on the coffee table. It was the problem with going back to the human world: relationships. Ties of friendship. Visible cords that grew around his neck and pulled him towards the human world, choking him when he tried to flee.
He'd managed to cut those cords once. He reached up and felt for the vine around his neck, tying him to the descendent of his long-dead best friend. It was thicker than Danny remembered.
"Fine, fine," Danny muttered, getting to his feet. As he walked toward the door, the apartment changed and vanished. The clean, updated grandeur was gone, replaced with garage-sale furniture and half-broken appliances. A few cobwebs grew in the corner. His ghostly pet turned red and looked something like a parrot. He opened the door.
Jerrod stood in the doorway, his shoulder leaning against the door jam, a look for fury on his face. "You can't just leave me out of this," he demanded.
"Yes, I can. This is personal."
Jerrod arched an eyebrow. "A two hundred-year-old letter is personal?" His scowl grew. "I'm coming in."
"No, you're not."
"I'm older and more experienced than you."
Danny rolled his eyes at that comment, but took a step to the side. "What ever you say," Danny said softly. Sure, the young man was in his thirties, but Danny was in his two-hundreds. Not that anyone knew that. That didn't need to be said.
The kid brushed past him and looked around the apartment. "Nice place."
Danny hummed and closed the door, stalking back over towards the coffee table. He hated company. He'd chased ghosts out of his home for a hundred years and more, now he was inviting a human in. Company and human beings were all well-and-good in the human world, but not here. This was his place.
He dropped onto the couch and turned back to the letter, determined not to let the intrusion break his task. Sam always used to write him hidden messages, and she used to have a way of showing how she hid it. If only he could remember…
"These your parents?"
Danny glanced up, looking where Jerrod was standing. His eyes narrowed a little, then he said, "Yup."
"Is this your sister?"
Danny froze, closing his eyes. Around them, the apartment changed. Pictures vanished from walls and shelves. "Yeah," he said softly. Blood splattered behind his eyelids.
"You okay?"
Eyes flickering open, Danny gave Jerrod a level look and wiped any emotion from his face. "I'm fine," Danny said levelly. "We playing twenty questions?"
The young man arched an eyebrow in confusion and settled onto the couch next to Danny, moving a pillow out of his way and leaning forwards over the coffee table. His cow-dumb eyes flickered over the letter. "So what's up with this letter?"
Danny sighed and set his elbow on his knee, his chin on his fist. "I think it's got a secret message."
"Like, a holo-message?"
Danny shook his head. "No. Like invisible ink or something. We-" he cut off, his teeth clicking together sharply. He wasn't quite used to having to keep secrets again. "Like… lemon juice."
Jerrod narrowed his eyes, staring closely at the letter. "I don't get it," he said slowly. "Why would someone send a ghost a letter with invisible ink?"
"You-" Danny stopped, his eyes widening. "You wouldn't." He looked down at the letter, staring at the letter. "You wouldn't, would you?" His forehead wrinkled. "You want something to drink?"
"What?" Jerrod's voice was startled.
"Thirsty?" Danny looked up at the young man, waiting patiently, seemingly unconcerned about the sudden twist in the conversation.
Jerrod nodded after a moment. Danny nodded as well and stood up, scooping the letter along with him. "Be back," he said, heading towards the kitchen. "Stay." Behind him came the soft sound of grumbling.
Danny's real apartment had a sort of open concept, where you could see everything from the kitchen. This strange new arrangement had a kitchen door. The door swung open with a squeal, the thunked shut loudly behind him. He stopped and studied the mess of a kitchen his apartment and turned into and wrinkled his nose. The odor and semi-rotting food vanished.
Glancing once back at the door, Danny held up the paper and squinted at it, carefully holding the paper by his fingertips. He stared at the writing, almost longingly, almost in fear of never seeing it again, before biting his lip. Energy flared around his fingertips, soft and gentle, and began to spread across the page.
The results were instantaneous. Swirling letters of brilliant green appeared on the page, neatly obscuring the physical writing.
Danny, I hope I can get this to you someday. I'd mail it, but I don't know where you are…
You have to know that what happened wasn't your fault. It was an accident. Nobody holds you responsible… except for yourself, of course. I'm sure you're beating yourself up over what happened.
Your parents want you to come home so badly. We told them, you know, after the accident. They kind of already knew, but we filled in the blanks. I think we really hurt them when we told them everything. There were lots of tears… But they know it wasn't your fault.
The funeral was really nice. I thought you were there for awhile. Tucker had to keep squeezing my hand to keep me from looking around. Everyone got up and had such nice stories to tell. I know she would have liked how it ended up. Very polished and inside the lines. Even Vlad was nice. I think he misses you, in his own twisted way.
Danny… I never really told you how much you meant, you know. Not just to the town and to your family and things, but to me. I know it's been over a year since you disappeared, but I still miss you. I wake up at night thinking you're sitting next to me. It's hard to think without you here.
Please come home, Danny. I don't care what you've done or where you've gone or how long it took you to read this… please come home.
I love you.
-Sam
The vines around his neck tightened and Danny closed his eyes, letting the energy die and his hands drop to his sides. The paper fluttered to the floor. Slowly, Danny followed, sinking to the ground and pulling his knees up to his chest.
It was absolutely pathetic for someone who was as old and experienced as he to be sitting on the floor like a child. But there he was, wishing his mother was still around to comfort him. Unfortunately, she was a hundred and forty years dead. He'd been to her funeral.
"Danny?"
The sound of the door slowly opening behind him caused Danny to glance down at the letter, but it was simply back to normal. He reached down and picked up the letter, brushing at the wetness on his cheeks. "What?"
"You okay?"
Danny got to his feet. "Yes." The letter went into his pocket. Danny watched his hand move it there, unable to tear his eyes away.
Jerrod was standing near the door, looking uncertain and shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "Does it help?"
"With what?" Danny felt a bit lost, his mind blown up like a balloon and floating feet over his head.
"The case?"
Danny looked over at him. The young man's cow-like brown eyes were gazing at him in concern. Danny suddenly wondered if his eyes were red. His hand went back into his pocket, carefully feeling the creases in the letter. The vine around his neck tightened painfully. "No." The word came out choked and painful. Straitening his shoulders, he brushed past Jerrod's shoulder, back into the living room.
Jerrod followed. "You want me to go?"
The papers of the case were scattered on the floor, more than one of them being marked with a careless footprint. Danny slowly knelt down and started to pick them up, ignoring his friend, organizing them back into their piles on the table. Pictures flashed in front of his eyes like a slideshow. He barely paid them any attention.
A Phantom. A ghost. Certainly not the right one, not him. But one none-the-less.
He didn't really care much. There was too much else to think about, too many thoughts racing in his head. The letter from Sam…
Only how did it…
And what was the name of the girl that was murdered?
"Yes." Danny looked up at Jerrod. "I want you to go. But I'm coming with you."
.
.
It was the forth time Danny had stepped onto the scene of the crime. The first was when he'd been called in for his 'expertise' in the strange – although how he'd ended up in the police rola-dex for 'help with strange murders' he had no clue. The second time when he'd brought Jerrod through. A third when he'd snuck on the premises to see if he could find the slightest hint of a ghost that had been there.
Now this time. The forth time.
Danny's hand was in his pocket, slowly fingering the letter as he hunched his shoulders against the cold. The blizzard had let up, but the snow was still coming down in small, soft flakes. And it was cold. Very cold.
"You were right, you know," Danny said as he shut the door to Jerrod's car and started towards the house. He ducked under the 'do not cross' tape and pushed open the door, ignoring the fact that it had just been locked. "It's a good clue."
Jerrod ducked in after him, looking around uncertainly as Danny flicked on a light. "I've got no idea what you're talking about."
"Shush," Danny muttered. "This is the best part of those murder-mystery TV shows. I get to talk and you get to shut up while I tell you what happened." He glanced back at his companion, who was edging around the bloody stain on the carpet.
Danny walked up to the edge and touched the stuffed bear a little girl had been clutching. "Her name was Jasmine, you know." He picked it up carefully, touching its cold nose, his fingers moving to its ear. A shiny spider earring was tucked inside. The world went blurry and he had to blink a few times to clear it. "She loved this bear more than anything. She named it Bearbert Einstein, and she brought it everywhere with her, despite how much her brothers teased her."
"How do you know what she called the bear?" Jerrod asked quietly. "That wasn't in the files."
Danny smiled sadly, removing the earring and setting the bear back down. "The name of the bear doesn't matter, I guess. It's the point. A sister named Jasmine with a teddy bear, murdered by Danny Phantom." He pulled out the letter and the picture of the murder scene, holding out the picture for Jerrod to take. "See anything?"
Silence passed for a few moments. "Nothing I haven't seen before. What do you see?"
"An earring." Danny touched his ear unconsciously. "Phantom never had earrings. Sam tried to get him to get one, but she always failed."
"Is that a spider?"
Danny looked up at Jerrod's tone, nodding. "Sam wore spider earrings." Closing his eyes, Danny reached out with his senses to the house. Not for the first time, he got nothing back. So he got to his feet, turned around, and headed out of the house. Just thinking about what had happened in this room was making his stomach churn. "Murder's over. Mystery solved."
"What?" There was the sound of feet moving quickly behind him. "How does that solve anything?"
The letter carefully came out of the pocket, but his feet never slowed on his way towards the door. "Sam never sent this. See? The envelope never got stamped. The stamp's still useable. So how'd it get here?"
"Who knows? It's been two hundred years. Maybe she used to live here. Maybe this family had it as some sort of heirloom. There's a million reasons." Jerrod grabbed Danny's shoulder, jerking him to a stop.
"Oh, come on. What's the chances of a two-hundred year gone ghost showing up as the same time this letter did? The ghost brought it." Danny shrugged off the hand, flipping off the light switch and leaving the two of them in darkness. His eyes glowed slightly, but he didn't care. Not right now. "And the ghost had to leave a message so the right person would come get it. Mail delivery for the dead."
Jerrod was slowly coming into focus in the dim glow of the streetlight outside. "Murdering five people?" he said dubiously. "That's…"
"Murdering one person," Danny corrected. "Just the little girl. The others were probably just in the way, collateral damage. A girl named Jasmine."
The two friends blinked at each other for a long moment before Jerrod shook his head. "I don't get it."
"You don't have to. I do," Danny said softly. Then he turned and made his way out into the snow. "I'll find my own ride home. See you later, Jerrod."
As soon as he was out of sight, Danny disappeared.
.
.
It wasn't snowing in Amity Park. The stars were glowing overhead, the moon a sliver of light. A beautiful layer of new snow blanketed the ground.
There weren't any footprints leading up the grave Danny was standing in front of, studying the name on the tombstone. He'd never actually been here before. "Got your letter," he said. His voice seemed dead in the empty night. "Little overkill, wasn't it?"
There wasn't an answer, but Danny didn't need one. "I know, I know," he muttered. "It's been two hundred years. You got desperate. But you didn't need to kill that little girl just to get my attention. I have enough blood on my hands."
"And yes, it was my fault. She died because of me. It wasn't an accident." Danny smiled, but it was an off, fake smile. "Now I have two Jasmines that died because of me."
Danny pushed his hands through his white hair. "What did you want me to do, huh Sam? I couldn't go back. Not after Jazz died. The ghost zone was…" his voice trailed off. "There's nothing in the ghost zone. No guilt, no worries, no time… I could just forget. I liked it."
He dropped his hands down, putting them back into his pockets, gazing down at the impressions of his shoes in the snow. "Still my fault, though. Two hundred years of hiding didn't change that. A letter from you doesn't change that."
His fingers grazed against the small spider earring. The ghost had been wearing it. Then it ended up in the teddy bear. Now it was his.
"I made a promise not to stay in the ghost zone anymore. To spend time in the human world. To allow time to age me…" He sighed. "Is that what you want? Or did you do this to make me go back to the ghosts?" His hand clenched around the earring, the tiny metal legs digging into his palms. "Is that why you did this?"
There wasn't an answer. Just silence.
Danny sighed and let his shoulders slump. "Two wrongs don't make a right, Sam. You used to know that." The earring came out of the pocket, glittering between his fingertips in the moonlight. "I'm keeping this. But I'll come back." He waggled his hand at the tombstone. "No killing people. If you want to talk to me, just say something. I know ghosts don't get the whole death thing, but humans take it personally."
"I loved you too." Danny smiled, his eyes damp. "And you got what you wanted. I came home. Now you can rest."
Danny turned around to leave, but he paused and looked over his shoulder, his eyes narrowing as he glared at the silent tombstone. "By the way, I just picked up on the 'mysteriously lost descendent shows up in my office and becomes my friend' thing. I don't believe in coincidences and you know it. Stop messing with my life."
The gravestone didn't reply, but the moon chose that moment to sparkle off the words inscribed on the front: Forgiveness is the start of life.
Danny might have read them. Then he was gone.
The next morning he had a small spider earring in his ear, a new pair of combat boots on his feet, and met Jerrod Manson for a cup of coffee to discuss the newest case. A teenager needed to be located and dragged back home, no doubt kicking, screaming, and half-drugged with something illegal.
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