Author's Note: I was going to set a Friday release schedule for this, but some things have come up and I'm not sure I'll be able to update this Friday. So I did my best to quickly grind down the rough edges of this chapter and get it out there at a decent level of quality.

Side notes for this chapter: the twins' conditions are not ones that co-exist with each other in real life. However, since ghost DNA is involved, I'm going to ask you to go with it since science is already being treated as a suggestion in canon. I hope the fandom's hostility to OCs won't extend to Tucker's girlfriend despite her and Tucker fiddling with legal loopholes; they mean well.

Finally, thank you so much for the overwhelming response to the first chapter. I never expected to get so many reviews or have so many people put this story on alerts and even, somehow, in their favorites just based on a single chapter. I'm truly touched by the community's quick acceptance of a story premise I was unsure held appeal and the continued support of the fandom. As always, comments, critiques, suggestions, questions, and other feedback are all welcome.

Pamela Manson was trying her best.

All her life, she'd struggled to be a good mother to Sam when it felt like Sam didn't want anything to do with her. She had tried to talk to her dozens of times, only to get silence or sarcasm in response, so she'd tried to be there financially, if nothing else. She'd paid for Sam's degree in investigative journalism, she'd hired all the best staff available to make Sam's wedding a tasteful gothic art noveau affair, and when Sam had been uncharacteristically exhausted during her pregnancy, Pamela Manson personally called up Sam's boss to explain exactly how she would retaliate if her daughter didn't get extended maternity leave. Pamela was an imperfect mother. She knew that. She knew she had made a lot of mistakes when Sam was growing up – she should have been more open-minded, less focused on herself, and spent more time with her.

She wasn't going to make the same mistake with her grandchildren. Danny wanted to make sure the twins had a stable place to live and saw his parents' house as the best option; the apartment he and Sam had wasn't big enough for two babies, but the Fenton's house had more than enough spare rooms. More than that, he was admirably close with his parents, something Pam actually liked about him. He wanted his children to be connected to their grandparents, seeing as all four of his grandparents had died before he was ten. They were going to have what he didn't have. Danny was a good boy who turned into a good man, and Pam was determined to be a decent mother-in-law to him and spoil the twins rotten. She had a second chance at being close to her family.

Before she could even seize that chance, it had shattered.

The twins arrived a month early, amid screaming pain from Sam and eerie green discharge mixed in when her water broke. That was the first warning sign, terrifying because it was simply so foreign. Pamela had always thrown money at her daughter's problems. In the operating room, holding her hand as the doctors debated an emergency C-section, it was clear that she couldn't, this time. Sam shook, coated in cold sweat, with the effort of staying awake to see her children delivered. She was so strong, much stronger than Pamela herself had ever been, but even she froze when they cut the cord on Alan and quickly cleaned him before placing him in a ventilator. He was too pale, too unmoving, Lilith even smaller, and while neither woman said it, the ventilators looked like tiny tombs to them. Each child weighed less than five pounds. Their heartbeats, erratic, were the only sign they were alive besides the desperate gasps they took for air, as if they couldn't get enough no matter how hard they tried.

Sam had named them before dropping off into a sleep that couldn't possibly have been peaceful. Pamela had to explain things to Danny, which was hardly something she was equipped to do. She didn't know him that well, not really, but with his parents at work and still en route to the hospital, the job unceremoniously fell to her. Danny had looked inhumanly still, shocked beyond words, as he stared at his too-small children. He seemed too young, suddenly, to be a father. Pam had pulled him into a gentle hug he hadn't returned, hadn't seemed to know how to return. His blue eyes were fixed on his children, clouded with a mixture of emotions and tears he didn't let fall.

"This is all my fault," he'd muttered, too low for her to have been meant to hear it.

And damn it all, it wasn't, it was his parent's fault. Pamela thought back to the green glow and their work with ghosts and she knew what was the real cause. She also knew that if she said it, Sam would never speak to her. Danny would be broken by it. So she did what she always did: she threw money at the problem. Her husband went to the synagogue to pray, her mother made food for Sam and Danny while they alternated staying at the hospital and sleeping at home, and Pamela started looking into doctors. There were a lot of specialists in all sorts of birth defects, but finding one even willing to touch a ghost-related case was tricky. Doctors didn't want to breech medical ethics by fiddling with what they didn't understand. Getting the right staff was a marathon effort of phone calls, emails and repeated interviews and reviews of credentials.

Diagnosis after diagnosis was proposed and found incomplete. Marfan Syndrome, Adie Syndrome, sleep apnea, malformed heart valves, Primary Juvenile Glaucoma, heart palpitations – and that was just what could be diagnosed. Alan's constant overheating was as inexplicable as Lilith's inability to stay warm. Both had struggled to breathe for the first week of their lives. Pamela spent a lot of time trying to focus on getting help and not on being angry with Danny's parents. God knew Maddie looked just as devastated as Pamela did. Jack seemed to be actively trying to be in denial, the shock had hit him so badly. They hadn't hurt the children out of active malice. She knew that.

But they had let their son be exposed to ectoplasmic radiation for four years of his life without ever thinking to question the health side effects, and that was hard to take when the consequences were so dire.

Pamela was more than happy to babysit when her daughter and son-in-law asked. Unlike the Fentons, she could afford a nurse to be on hand to assess the twins' developmental progress, which was touch and go. They were very responsive to visual and audio stimuli, if less so visual than audio, and they certainly weren't averse to people, which were good signs for their cognitive development. Alan's lack of cones in his eyes meant he was effectively monochromatic colorblind, but Lilith could identify and point to colors. Hilariously and adorably, Alan would watch Lilith's actions when asked to point to something red or blue or yellow and mimic her. On the other hand, words came slowly to them, and they tired easily sometimes. Pamela got used to putting them in bed more than she ever had Sam, swallowing back her anger as Alan in particular slept for entire eighteen hour stints sometimes. The Fentons rarely spoke about the children's health to her, which couldn't mean anything good for when the kids were over at their house. They did this, she'd thought, again and again, and again and again she had to remind herself that they probably knew that and that yelling at them wouldn't fix anything.

Then she overheard Danny arguing on his phone one night on the porch as he came to pick up the kids. "No, Dad, I don't really want to help with the Ghost Portal 3.0. I'm – I'm busy, okay?" The strain in his voice was startling. He sounded close to snapping at his father, which was wholly out of character for him. That was when it hit her.

The Ghost Portal, the thing that had done this to her grandchildren, was somehow important enough to Jack Fenton that he was remaking it rather than shutting the project down for good.

She spent the night putting together her legal team and a month building her case.

These people were dangerous to children. Someone had to stop them.

That didn't mean she enjoyed being the one who did it.

Danny showed up to pick up his kids looking, Maddie thought, about as tired as she felt.

Lilith bolted over on wildly shaky legs to him, having never known fear, while Alan walked over, tiny brow furrowed in concentration. They were both behind on their balancing skills – crawling was still easier for them than standing or walking, though Lilith would try if it meant she could hug her parents or grandparents. Alan had fallen hard once in his haste to try to get outside into the cool air and hadn't tried running since. Bruises took a month to heal on him, while the hesitance the experience instilled in him was taking longer than that to wear off. Scooping him up from the floor, Maddie brought him over to Danny as he picked up Lilith, grinning when she poked his nose and laughing when she giggled.

"Hey, Princess," he cooed, adoring as ever. "Did you let your grandparents sleep in today?"

"Yeah!" Lilith cheered.

"No," Alan said, more truthfully, getting a snort out Danny, who leaned down to kiss him on the head.

Maddie couldn't muster up a smile, looking between them. "Sweetie, is Sam in the car? I need to talk to her. To both of you, actually."

He blinked. "Um, yeah, but why? Is something wrong? You, uh, you look a little…" Danny faltered, unable to find the right words. Something must have showed on her face, because his expression grew serious. "Hold on, I'll go get her."

Alan tilted his head, squinting after his father and sister. Was it paranoia, or was his gaze a little more unfocused? One more thing to ask the optometrist about at the next consultation, Maddie thought worriedly. The twins had recovered from eye surgery as best as they were going to. If their vision faded further, that was something they'd have to address when they came to it. Right now, she had bigger problems on her hands. Pamela Manson wasn't looking for money in damages, she wanted the Fenton's rights to have children in their household revoked permanently, and that-

That hurt most because Maddie couldn't disagree with it, really. She let Alan lean against her shoulder tiredly while the sounds of Jack making breakfast filled the house. Although she'd only just gotten up, she felt as if today had gone on forever, and she was relieved to smell fresh coffee brewing. They'd need a lot of it to get through this. In a way, his actions reminded her of when the twins had been born. He'd made her comfort food day and night, rubbing her back while she cried, holding her close when words failed her. But Jack couldn't fix this with pancakes and love, or it would've been fixed a long time ago.

When Danny and Sam were situated around the kitchen table, a twin in each of their laps, Maddie sat down to the large breakfast Jack always made when stressed. He'd always tried to comfort her and others through food, but the only ones able to eat were the children as the adults sipped coffee and tried to find a place to begin. Jack's hair had more white in it than it had a few years ago. The thought hit Maddie that for all she knew, ghostly radiation could be affecting his health, too, albeit on a delayed timescale. She tried not to shudder. Now wasn't the time. She straightened up, looked Danny and then Sam in the eyes and began speaking.

"Mr. and Mrs. Manson have decided to sue us to take our temporary custody privileges away and place a restraining order on us to keep us from having them here."

Sam's response was instant. "Bull-" she glanced down at Lilith and changed words mid-syllable, "-crap! On what grounds?"

Jack and Maddie shared guilty looks. He put his hand over his wife's, lovingly. "Child endangerment," he said quietly, unable to keep up his usual good cheer. "Retroactive child negligence isn't a legal charge they can hit us with, but it's enough to revoke our rights to keep them here overnight from now on or have them visit."

"I don't understand," Danny muttered, brow furrowing. "You didn't do anything wrong."

"I did, son," Jack corrected him gently, glancing down as Alan sucked on water from his sippy cup loudly. "I did. I've been doing it for years."

"We have," Maddie corrected him, firmly. "You didn't build the Ghost Portal alone, Jack."

Danny held up a hand. "Will somebody please tell us what's going on?"

His mother couldn't look at him. She watched her reflection in her coffee instead, letting the steam coil around her face. "Pamela had a doctor do genetic testing and determine that ectoplasm is in the DNA of both children, which doctors are reasonably sure is what caused their… problems." She was always careful with her words in front of the children. The last thing she wanted was for them to think she thought they were broken or bad in any way. "The flaws in their genetic code are similar to what happens when someone is around a source of radiation, and the Ghost Portal puts out ectoplasmic radiation at a higher level than we were aware of. A higher level, Danny, that you lived around for four years. That's more than enough time to damage your DNA, and that's why… that's why Alan and Lilith are…"

Dying, she thought, irrationally, but didn't say. She leaned against her husband and watched Danny and Sam, waiting for a reaction. Sam was biting her lip hard, thinking, gaze directed at Alan and then at Danny. She seemed to be waiting for him to say something, for him to make some kind of decision, and instead he just ran his fingers through Lilith's long hair soothingly as he tried to control his breathing. A restraining order, child negligence charges, child endangerment charges – they'd want to check the house for that, right? They'd get one good rating off of the Ghost Portal and have an ironclad case. He rubbed Lilith's cheek as she yawned, nuzzling up to him. They'd need an expert, though, to do the testing. That'd take time. I still have time to fix this if I tell them. If.

The silence was deafening.

A long time ago, before they'd gotten married, Danny and Sam had this conversation, this when-is-it-okay-to-tell-your-parents conversation. They'd agreed a long time ago that barring the law getting involved, there was no need to tell Danny's parents what he was. The knowledge he'd been lying to them for years would break their hearts without factoring in their prejudice towards ghosts, however much that had mellowed over the years. Besides that, while ghost attacks were at an all-time low, any ghost who knew Danny's human identity could come after his parents and sister and the fewer people who knew Danny Fenton was Danny Phantom, the safer everyone would be. That need for safety only increased when Sam found out she was pregnant. Connecting the two identities would put his children in danger on top of his wife and he flat-out couldn't do that to her. Sam had been there for him every step of the way in this superhero gig. His children were as innocent as Sam was loyal. They never asked to be born.

Besides, he was kidding himself if he thought either of them wouldn't be easy targets for any ghost. They were nearly blind, had poor reflexes, and were predisposed to heart problems. Even when they got older, they'd always be the easiest targets. Their lives were so easily snuffed out if someone wanted them out of the picture that it was terrifying. Danny had woken up in a cold sweat more than once after having nightmares Vlad had come after them. The nightmares were preposterous, of course; Vlad knew that Danny would probably outright murder him if he tried anything, and Danny had scared himself with the way his eyes went to a red glow reminiscent of Dan's telling Vlad as much. Yet, for all the nightmares he had of the kids having a medical emergency or being taken out by a ghost or being stolen away from him, he'd never contemplated Sam's parents turning on him. They liked him, and he sort of liked them, despite their corny ways. They were overly wholesome but they meant well.

That sucked. He couldn't entirely get mad at them over this when they were trying to protect the kids. They weren't bad people for wanting to keep them away from the Ghost Portal. Danny himself had insisted on stricter security around the Ghost Portal when Sam got pregnant. Of course the Mansons were worried. His parents were worried, too. He could see that in their eyes. They're blaming themselves because they don't know. Sam's parents don't know. Nobody knows. That's my fault. Danny watched Lilith put her fingers in her mouth and corrected himself, all of this is my fault. I'm not stupid. I know basic stuff about genetics. I should have gotten genetic testing– I could have asked Clockwork beforehand–

But I didn't. So I know what I have to do.

"Sam, could you take the kids up for their nap? There's something I've gotta tell them."

To her credit, she gave his shoulder a supportive squeeze but didn't argue. If she could have feasibly talked her mother out of this without having to have Danny reveal his secret, she would have. Her quick response told him that wasn't an option. This was what they were left with: the reveal he'd spent so much of his life praying he'd never have to make. He wished Jazz were here to soften the blow or tell him how to approach this better. He wished he'd done this earlier so they'd never have ended up in this situation to begin with. Danny winced internally at the realization most of this was entirely his fault.

His parents were giving him the strangest, most concerned looks of their lives. He found that now he was the one who couldn't look at them directly. The seconds of silence stretched on like a chain of infinities, and when he spoke, it took incredible effort. Each word was like a boulder he was struggling to push uphill as his stomach twisted into knots at the thought of what he was doing. Clockwork had told him once that half-ghosts were rarely genetically compatible with humans and almost never had kids. If he ever had to rewind time to before the twins were born, they probably wouldn't be born again, nor would he and Sam likely ever have any other kids. There were no do-overs. Faced with that kind of pressure, he found himself bouncing his knee under the table, nervous energy making his heartbeat loud as a drum.

"When I was fourteen," he started, picking his words as carefully as possible, "I activated the Ghost Portal. You know that. What I didn't tell you, because I didn't want you to worry at the time – and I'm really, really sorry, I mean it – was that when I did that, I was inside it."

Maddie locked up. Jack's mouth opened, but no words came out.

Danny pushed on before he could lose his nerve. "I died. A little. I mean, my heart stopped and I quit breathing, but I'm fine now," he added quickly, trying to do damage control, "I just, uh, some things changed that I didn't really let you know about… Mom, Mom please don't cry…"

A half-scream of a sob tore out of Maddie's throat. Jack had to hastily grab her to keep her from collapsing on the spot even though she was sitting down. Tears spilled down her cheeks, her breathing coming fast. "Pam was right," she whispered. "I – I – Danny I'm so, so sorry, I didn't – I should have known, I'm a scientist, you're my son, how did I not notice-"

"Mom!" He jumped up to try to put a hand on her shoulder, pull her in for a hug, snap her out of it, but with the same kind of zero-to-sixty speed Lilith could sometimes have, his mother fled the room, a bolt of light blue robes and pajamas and red-brown hair in the cold, unrelenting light of morning. Danny stood there for a moment, too stunned to process what he should do next.

His father held up a hand, standing up. "You're – you're gonna have to give your mother a moment, Danny, okay? I think…" He inhaled deeply, evenly, and let it out slowly. Danny had never seen his father look so old, so weary, and it was hard to take. "I think you and Sam should take the kids and go over to your new apartment. You two are almost completely moved in, right?" He forced a smile so fragile it cut through Danny's heart like a knife.

"Dad…" Danny said softly, but his father was already retreating, blinking back tears, and then Danny was alone in the kitchen with all the untouched food his father had made and his thoughts.

Tucker came over with a dozen vegan doughnuts and his legal briefcase.

As a lawyer, his specialty was laws regarding technology, so he could not, by law, give Danny and Sam legal counsel. But if he happened to stop by their apartment and the topic happened to come up, there was no law against him discussing it with them. This was the sort of technicality he normally hated when other people indulged in it, an irony that wasn't lost on him as he looked around their relatively new place of residence. They'd done an admirable job unpacking and decorating inbetween work and ghost hunting. Still, if Child Protective Services had any reason to look into this place, it wouldn't be hard to argue the kids were safer with Pamela and Jeremy. His girlfriend was a social worker. He'd told her the details as soon as Danny had called, and her grim expression spoke volumes about how little she expected the courts to rule in Jack and Maddie's favor. It didn't help that they didn't intend to press criminal charges, just bar the children from Fentonworks and all associated property; that relatively lighter set of demands was going to be much easier to get a judge to agree to than anything more intense.

"They're not doomed," Adalet told him firmly. He loved his girlfriend's refusal to be cynical, despite the circumstances. "I just think their legal options are going to be limited unless they can produce some really solid evidence the Ghost Portal's radiation hasn't changed Daniel's DNA, which would take DNA tests of him, Jazz for secondary evidence and compare-contrast, and possibly his parents. And that's a lot of money if the state chooses not to pay for it, which is possible."

"So they're basically doomed," he deadpanned, and he could hear her sigh over the phone. It sounded like a rush of static in his ears.

"Not if they can get the Mansons to drop it. In the meantime, I'll pull the Fenton's files, see if they've ever been charged with anything else the judge might take into consideration. Now get off the phone and drive safe, loser."

The good news was that so far, as Sam had confirmed after screaming at her mother over the phone for the better part of an hour, the Mansons weren't looking to take away Danny and Sam's right to custody. They were charging Jack and Maddie Fenton with child endangerment, possible criminal negligence, and a violation of state radiation safety standards. It was unneeded, really, in order to get them to relinquish custody, but it was enough to make the point that they were serious. Tucker had seen this sort of thing before in court; uncertain if a single charge would stick, some clients would throw a dozen at someone in order to make the message clear and get something on file, come hills or high water.

He felt a thwack to his shoe as he entered the Fenton's apartment and looked down to see Lilith, who giggled. "Booped!" she proclaimed, scuttling away out of reach on all fours swiftly. Tucker rolled his eyes at her fondly. Lilith had learned the word boop from a cartoon and adopted it with gusto. She was always poking things, usually her brother, who put up with it with admirable patience given her persistence. Maybe it was a twin thing, that they tolerated each other so well. As a single child, Tucker hardly had any basis for comparison.

Alan was asleep in Danny's arms, dark hair lying flat except for a single tuft in the back. "Aw, cute. He's got your bad hair," the nerd noted, earning a flat look from Danny. "Don't worry, man, he'll grow out of it. You did. Took you until college, but still."

"I think I've got their beds as set up as they're going to be," Sam announced, emerging from the smaller bedroom in the apartment looking haggard. "Not as comfy as their set up at Fentonworks, but it'll do. Are those doughnuts?"

"Yup," Tucker confirmed, watching out of the corner of his eye as Lilith yawned and stretched out on the floor, content to nap wherever she could still see her twin. Well, to whatever degree she can see, he thought, glancing away. "Have either of you had breakfast yet?" When they shook their heads, he groaned. "I swear, it's like college all over again. Put the kids to bed and I'll feed you two while you fill me in."

Their kitchenette was well-organized, probably due to how little they actually used it for cooking. The kids were still on baby foods and Sam was completely fine eating vegetables in various questionable states, while Danny rarely cooked beyond making himself a grilled cheese sandwich. Tucker got each of them a glass of water, knowing how they got when they were stressed, and quietly thanked God he wasn't in their shoes. Twins, in-laws, ghosts, none of it was anything he wanted to deal with in his own life, and he wasn't sure how he'd hold up under the same kind of pressure. While he'd contemplated asking Adalet to move in with him, he hadn't really considered the gravity of having kids or what could go wrong until Alan and Lilith were born. He still remembered rushing into the waiting room after Danny sent him a text that just read Tuck come quick I ruined everything oh God followed by a complete refusal to pick up the phone. Danny had been so shaken, so visibly a wreck, that Tucker hadn't dared to make a joke then to lighten the mood. The half-ghost was right on the brink of a breakdown then and frankly, he hadn't gotten much better in the intervening months.

Danny might not have said it out loud, but his best friend and his wife knew he blamed himself. He'd had a lot of time to make that blame seem rational in his own head. Tucker wasn't sure how to get him to see that he hadn't exactly chosen to get ghost powers. That might just make Sam mad at herself for asking Danny to check out the Ghost Portal to begin with and frankly blaming each other wasn't going to fix anything right now. They'd all collectively done enough of that for several lifetimes. Handing Sam and Danny a doughnut each, Tucker waited until they'd both taken a bite to start in on the questions he had.

"So, your parents know?" he asked Danny point-blank, who winced.

"Not exactly," he sighed, staring at his doughnut mournfully. "I got as far as explaining the accident and then my Mom freaked out. She thinks this is all her fault for making the Ghost Portal. I, uh, I don't think she's going to be ready to hear the rest for a while, Tuck."

Tucker gave him a sympathetic look. "Yeah. Makes sense; I think my mom would do the same in your mom's shoes. Sam, are you sure there's no way to get your parents to drop the charges? That's really the best option, here, by a pretty wide margin."

Sam forced herself to swallow a bite of food. She was too anxious to enjoy it, but she appreciated that Tucker had gotten them for her. If I have to go through this, she thought, I'm glad I've got him by my side. "My mom's afraid that being at Fentonworks will make the kids' conditions worsen and since ectoplasmic radiation isn't really well studied, I don't know how to convince her she's wrong. She's not trying to be awful, she's just – she doesn't want any other kids exposed to it, either. That's why she's doing this. I don't think she wants to throw Danny's parents in jail or anything."

"That's what's going to happen, though," her black friend informed her, unable to find a gentler way to put such a horrific truth. "I don't know if your mom understood how serious the charges she chose are, but they're looking at jail time if you don't get her to drop it. Child Protective Services doesn't mess around in Amity Park, guys. The city can't afford any more negative press than it already gets from being a ghost hotspot. Frankly, they might pursue charges even if Mrs. Manson dropped them. Anything ghost-related gets forwarded to the federal authorities around here. I'm having Adalet ask her boss at the courthouse to delay that until the paperwork's been properly reviewed, but we're looking at two, maybe three days to play with, here."

Danny snorted, a broken laugh threatening to bubble up out of him. "And they're not even charging the right person," he said joylessly, making Sam and Tucker look at each other in concern. "Not even close."

He sounded so much older than twenty-five, Tucker thought, and swallowed back his own mixed emotions. Danny was getting old before his time living like this, working and parenting and fighting ghosts. He was already running himself into the ground before all this happened. Now, the strain was finally starting to become too much. He could see it in how Danny couldn't bring himself to touch food, how his hands were clenched into fists, the way he stared off into the distance. There was a limit to how much Danny could take. Although he'd always brushed off his friends' concerns before, even though he'd told them he believed them when they said this wasn't his fault, he was lying. Of course he was; Danny would do almost anything to keep other people happy and get them to quit worrying about him. In the face of pending legal action, though, the charade fell apart entirely.

Standing up, Danny took a deep breath. "Right. I've gotta – look, I don't want to do this, but I need to go to the only person I know of who might have advice. Or help us lawyer up, if it comes to that."

Sam raised an eyebrow, clearly dubious. "Vlad? Danny, he doesn't have any kids. I doubt he's going to have much for you on that count."

"But he loves my mom," he reminded her tiredly. "He won't let her do jail time, and we can't afford a law team fit to go up against your mom's otherwise." Turning to Tucker, he asked uncomfortably, "Tuck, I know you're busy, but-"

"I can stay and help look after the kids." He pulled Danny into a quick, loose hug. "You don't even have to ask. Dude, you're like, my brother I never had. I got this."

Danny smiled thankfully at him. "I'll keep my phone on me. Text me if you need anything. I won't be gone long, guys."

And with that, he transformed and took to the skies before either of them could talk him out of it.