Chapter Two
Consciousness.
Sensation.
Cold-no, freezing.
Eyes fluttered open, greeted by a grainy haze. Was that a rock floating above his head? Involuntarily, he coughed, and his head erupted into such pain he thought it might simply explode within his skull.
He tried to sit up, pushing his torso from the ground with his hand and using the other to grip the aching portion of his head. "Holy crap, what did I do?" He grumbled, a vague recollection now forming in his thoughts. "Vlad!" The realization hit him full force, causing Danny to stumble up from the ground and look around desperately for the man. He wasn't sure if he was relieved that there was no sign of his enemy, but let out a deep sigh nonetheless.
Absently, he kicked a rock that was on the ground near his foot. Wait, what was that? Was that his shoe? Danny blinked at the red and white sneaker, wondering when he'd managed to kick it off. He reached down to pick it up before grasping the fact that he was no longer in his human form. That was strange; he shouldn't have changed while he was knocked out, right?
Now he dared to turn around, to allow his eyes to follow the path created by the shoe and up to what was wearing it.
Screaming.
Disbelief.
Fear.
He was on the ground again, hands shaking, whole body shaking, reaching out, checking for a pulse, warmth, life. Movement. Sound.
Nothing.
Lifeless.
Dead.
How was this possible? He was lying there, or at least his human side was, a corpse, suffocated by the hands of Vlad Plasmius, and yet…
"I'm…alive?" He patted his chest just to make sure. "If…I'm alive then…" No, he wasn't alive. He was a ghost. If he'd had the want to do so he would have punched himself in the stomach for not remembering that. But even if his human half wasn't alive he at least still existed. That was the important thing, wasn't it?
The wave of all this washed over him, sending him falling back to the ground beneath him in sheer emotional exhaustion. His body felt numb and hollow as he began to desperately search within himself for that familiar human warmth that he touched when he would return to his normal teenaged self. No matter where he reached he couldn't find it; everywhere, everything within him was as cold as death itself.
It was at this point when he simply lost himself, drowning in a wave of tears, hyperventilating as he rolled over into a tight ball. What was he supposed to do now? He couldn't return back to his family, they still didn't know who he was, and now he had no way to prove that he was their son with his human half gone. Sure, Jazz, Sam, and Tucker would stick up for him, but where was the proof. His parents would never accept him without proof, let alone the rest of Amity Park.
You lost your chance, Danny.
They'll never know now.
He felt astoundingly stupid. Up until then he'd always expected to be able to wait, to find the right moment, the right day, time, place, to tell his parents who he really was, but he'd waited one day too long.
They'll think you killed their little boy.
They'll hate you.
They can't hate me for killing him if they don't know he's dead. Wait, was he now referring to his dead half in third person now?
His head still hurt like hell, and the mangled mess of antagonistic words and ideas wasn't helping any. He wanted to go back to sleep and wake up to find that all of yesterday (or however long ago his last day alive had been) had just been a nightmare. Maybe Fright Knight had gotten to him and he just couldn't remember, yeah, that had to be it.
If this was a nightmare then he had to figure out how to wake himself up.
It had to be a nightmare.
Doing his best to control his erratic breathing, Danny stood again and turned to his human body. Looking at himself was surreal, barely registering in his mind. Perhaps he should do something about it…
Drawing on his cryokinesis he held out his palm towards his old form. A steady stream of ice emerged, encasing his body in a frozen tomb, stopping only briefly to reflect on the strange appearance.
Now he was eager to just leave it behind, and he turned to fly as far as he could from the rock he'd woken up on. He had to find the portal back to the human world. If the Fright Knight was really behind this then that meant everyone was in danger, and he needed to act fast.
He'd gone through the Fenton Portal so many times that now it was almost second nature to him to find it. That mission accomplished, he began to look for any sign of the Fright Knight. Surely he'd have encountered something by now, and yet everything seemed calm. It was too calm for a nightmare, and too calm for being Amity Park in danger. In fact everything seemed entirely normal.
Maybe he should just find Sam and Tucker. If something weird was going on they would know. Yeah, he would look for them first. His mind was finally processing at least somewhat normally, to his slight appreciation, though he flew to Sam's without trying to think too much about whatever might be going on. Jumping to conclusions wasn't going to make him any saner than he already wasn't, after all.
Instead of knocking on the front door like he usually would have, Danny simply flew up to Sam's window and knocked on the curtained pane. Much to his relief, the curtains were drawn back and a startled looking Sam started back at him for a moment before pulling the window up for him to float in.
"Danny! Where have you been? Tucker and I have been so worried about you; Jazz and your parents too!" She wrapped him in a tight hug, glad to know her friend was alright.
"Uh, how…how long have I been gone?" Danny pushed her away, and met her gaze with sincere confusion.
Sam blinked. "Three whole days. Wait, you should know that, you're the one who hasn't been here! Explain what happened, right now Danny." She demanded, pointing over to her bed for him to sit. He obliged, floating over and sitting on the edge of it.
"I uh…" He wasn't sure what to say. "Has there been anything weird happening? Like, ghost weird. Maybe the Fright Knight's kind of weird?"
"No, luckily. With you being nowhere to be found Tucker and I were worried we'd have to kick some ghost butt on our own. Anyway, you were going to explain where you've been? We haven't seen you since Tuesday night after we went home. You never called or messaged either of us."
"Yeah I…" Danny's mind blanked. No ghost activity, no Fright Knight, no nightmare… "Oh my…Sam.." He choked, clutching his stomach and fearing that he might release its contents all over his friend's carpet.
"Danny! Are you okay?" She rushed over and touched his shoulder, not sure what to do for her friend. "What happened?" She asked yet again, now desperate for an answer.
The ghost boy couldn't find the words; it was hard enough fighting back tears. After several minutes of awkward silence, broken only by his half-hysteric sobs, he finally managed a non-verbal response. He floated up, grabbed Sam under her arms and lifted her up and promptly turned then invisible and intangible before flying up and through the roof of her house.
Sam didn't protest, half-used to such things happening suddenly, although usually that was in the heat of a battle and Danny was saving her life yet again. "Danny, where are we going? …Danny?" She received silence in return; he didn't even look at her as they flew unseen across the sky towards the Fenton Works, and the portal that lay beneath it. "Danny!" She tried again just as he flew them through the green swirling passage and reappeared in the Ghost Zone.
"Damnit are you going to explain what's going on with you or not?" In retaliation for his silence she began to struggle as much as she could to make it difficult for him to continue on without readjusting his hold on her multiple times. Once he nearly dropped her, however, she gave up. Apparently she was going to have to be patient until they reached wherever he was taking them.
After what felt like ages, they reached it, a smallish rock floating aimlessly amidst several others. Danny let Sam down gently, and pointed to something that was about twenty feet away from them once her legs were willing to let her stand properly. "What, still not talking?" She followed his gesture, at first with her eyes, then with her feet.
"What…Danny…?" She stopped after she had circled around to the right side of the block of ice. Phantom floated over, stopping on the opposite side from her and avoiding looking at the object, the corpse, between them.
Sam didn't understand what she was looking at for several moments. She looked up at Danny Phantom, and looked down at Danny Fenton. Up, down, up down…
Suddenly her hands found their way up to clasp over her mouth, garbling a half strangled scream that was aching to escape her throat.
Coldness wrapped itself around her, Danny's arms…or at least his ghostly ones. Her face found its way to the crook of his neck and rested there, her tears soaking through the shoulder of his jumpsuit.
They stayed like this for several minutes, until Danny finally decided that they needed to leave, especially before any ghosts came along and found them. He leaned forward just enough to pull Sam into his arms, the back of her knees resting in the crook of his elbow and her face still buried into his shoulder as his other arm held her close.
The flight out of the Ghost Zone was shorter than the one in, and soon he was dropping Sam back at her house.
"Danny…?" Her voice cracked, tired from the crying.
"Yeah, Sam?" His was quiet.
"What are we going to do?" She asked the question that had been nagging at him for a while now.
"I…don't know."
A/N:
Fun fact- the font face I'm using for the titles of the chapters in Word is actually called Broken Ghost and was pretty much where I got the title from :D
Oh my gosh you guys, so many followers in less than a day how did this happen sdfkjsd/dies
Okay so uh..thanks so much everyone who's following and has reviewed or anything else xD I'm not really sure what else to say I'm so bad at author's notes and stuff OTL
I guess I might draw a cover for this thing sometime, maybe if I get into a writing blank. I duno ;_;
Anyway I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Don't be afraid to let me know what you think :33
