Trigger Warning for mentions of abusive relationships.
Okay, this one took forever because I had to start and restart this countless times, and I'm still not not happy with it. But I figured I should get it posted soon because I've been ignoring this series for a couple months.
The wishing ghost floats in an empty haunt.
"The ghost child," she murmurs in wonder, scarlet eyes tracing his flaming hair and bloody gaze. She tilts her head in confusion, watching from her perch, confident that he cannot see her.
The Sultan's Palace, it used to be called. Her place of dwelling, tucked into the Ghost Zone, proud and glittering. It is her prison now, for she cannot bear to leave it. She travels its abandoned halls alone.
"I know you're there," he says, and she inhales sharply as their eyes meet. His voice is deeper, his gaze harder, "You can't hide from me."
There's no point in pretending, so she reveals herself. She is curious, but she is careful. Her defenses are up, and her poise is cautious. He is different, she can tell, not just in appearance, but in his actions as well. It's apparent in the way he holds himself, the way his eyes bore into her as it never has before. His aura gleams differently, his ghostly core pulsing bright red where it used to be white.
No words are spoken for a long time as they take each other in. Desiree speaks first, "What has happened to you?" It's a simple, innocent question, but the returning smile is feral and deadly.
She laughs at the irony. The wishing ghost wishing for days past?
His irises glow, "I'm better now," he whispers. "I'm stronger. I'm not held down by weakness anymore."
He grins, teeth bare, "I'm free."
He is gone, and she is all that is left. She is what remains of a broken promise, and she is cursed by the weight that it brings.
"Free?" she questions. "How?"
He has abandoned her, and she is angry.
"It's gone,"
And that's all she needs to understand. A small smile lifts the corners of her mouth as she gazes down at him. "I see."
He has destroyed the passage into the human world, and any chance that she would ever feel him again, hear the baritone of his voice, see his muscles coil and move in a way she had never seen before on any being and would likely never see again.
"It's wonderful, isn't it?"
He nods, a small ray of his boyishness showing through, and she almost laughs. "It's amazing." He agrees. He is silent for a moment, weighing his words. "I killed him. Both of them." The way he says it shows the pride in his voice, and she shivers quietly.
She hates him irrevocably and unconditionally.
"I could kill you right now." He says, and his hands begin to glow. "I could blow that pretty head off your shoulders. You used to hurt me." He speaks as if he's surprised that people could ever beat him, ever cause him any pain.
She shrugs, "But that's not you anymore, is it? We understand each other now."
He grins, revealing his fangs, and the green in his palms die down, "Obviously."
The halls are empty and she is alone, yet she floats and she waits, waiting for the wish that would summon her back.
It is years later, and he has matched her in height. He traces the line of her jaw, and she leans into his hand, pressing her palm onto the symbol on his jumpsuit that once stood for justice and now stands for destruction.
His hand is on her waist, and her dark hair billows around them. They move in step, a silent waltz. The human world lies in waste around them, and she laughs quietly.
Wishes continue to alight on her from afar. 'I wish Phantom hadn't destroyed my home' and 'I wish Daddy would come back from the Ghost War'. Phantom, Phantom, Phantom. That's all anyone can talk about, can even think about.
"I wish that we could be together always." It is cliché, yet Desiree murmurs it anyway. Phantom shoots her quirking smile, but it quickly falls. She pays it no mind.
Her hands clench and unclench at her sides, unused energy bubbling in her throat and veins. She was a fool, a stupid fool, as much as a fool as she had been when she was human.
"I wish I could destroy that stupid town once and for all. I wish it could drown in its own blood. I wish that their screams to be heard from miles around. I wish I could burn it to ash, then burn it all again."
Desiree flinches slightly. She hates when Phantom gets like this. It's happening more and more often nowadays, always coinciding with his sudden and ever-lengthening disappearances. Nonetheless, she whispers, "So you have wished it, so it will be."
A corner of his mouth lifts up in a smirk, "Good."
Something makes her lift her head slowly. She can hear mental wishes as well as verbal ones, and one pushes itself into her mind.
'I wish I could stop this. I need to stop this.'
Her breath catches.
It's the Ghost Boy.
The Ghost Zone is in shambles, and Desiree is in the middle of it. Phantom destroys haunts in waves, using that new power of his, the power that she helped him gain. He screams and the fabric of her world starts to unravel, leaving the Ghost Zone an empty wasteland.
He smiles emptily at her, pulling her into a kiss as he admires his handiwork. "Just like we wanted, isn't it?" he murmurs into her neck.
She shakes, "Get away from me."
For the first time in almost 2 human years, the wishing ghost leaves her haunt, and she feels like she leaves a piece of her dead soul behind with it. She steels herself, following the echoes of the wish. It isn't long before screams reach her, and she watches the scene from afar, eyes wide.
The Ghost Boy is suspended and tied up, eyes fearful and confused. "Wait! Wait! You have to listen to me!"
His cries go unheard of as the Box Ghost shoots him back towards Ember, who catches him in a deafening blast that makes her wince.
Between the tight ropes of his binding, she can see that faint edges of a hero's logo.
The Ghost Zone shakes, and she flees. She can feel a terrible and empty dread spread in her core. The entrance to the Human World is being shredded, never to be used again. Desiree ignores the ruins around her, and finds herself in her haunt. She leans against its familiar walls, chest heaving with the movements of gasps she has no need to take. She squeezes her eyes shut.
An odd feeling comes over her. It's Phantom, but not Phantom. This is the child who protected that little town as if it were his obsession. She recognizes him, even after all this time.
She knew the Ghost Boy was a bit of a dunce, but how exactly had he managed to misplace himself by ten years?
She continues to watch as the Ghost Bot unleashes that power again, that Ghostly Wail, Phantom had called it. Interesting, she was the one to have granted him that power in the first place, so how could he, little Danny Phantom, have gotten it?
Her former, deranged friends reel back and are scattered by the blow. The Ghost Boy takes a while to recover, reading something or the other that has floated into his path, before taking flight once more, freed from his bonds. Desiree begins to follow silently.
"We could have had everything," he growls, and she shudders, "We did have everything! Everything I did was for us!"
She shakes her head quietly, "No. Everything you did was for you. I just happened to be in the way."
His irises glow with anger, "Ungrateful witch."
She opens her eyes once more, and the illusion vanishes.
"You again?"
Desiree pauses at the disgusted voice, turning away from the Ghost Boy's quickly retreating back to face the angry woman. Blue fiery hair lashes in anger.
"You dare show your face again here? You dare show your face to me?!"
"Ember," Desiree begins, voice surprisingly calm.
"Oh don't you just 'Ember' me," Ember spits. "You did this to me!" She gestures to herself in disgust. "You did this to all of us! How stupid are you to come crawling back to us?"
Desiree clenches her fists in anger, trying to calm herself down. "I was a fool, Ember, but you have to understand-"
Ember laughs incredulously, "A fool? That's all? You think you can say, 'Forgive me, Ember, I made an oopsie,' and it'll all be okay?" Ember is visibly shaking with fury, "I TRUSTED YOU, DESIREE! I THOUGHT YOU WERE THE SISTER I NEVER HAD!" She takes a gasping breath. "I thought you were my friend."
Desiree flinches back. "Ember, I... I never... I didn't think..."
"Of course you didn't think," Ember replies bitterly, "You were too busy being a lovesick servant to think. By the way, how is he? Your boyfriend? Phant-?"
Desiree lunges before Ember can finish, energy crackling as she shoves Ember away, causing the overweight ghost to tumble backwards. "You think he didn't hurt me too?!" She asks, enraged. "You think that he didn't leave me for waste as soon as I proved not useful enough for him?"
Ember glares back at her, the smallest hint of a smirk playing at the corner her lips. "Of course he hurt you, Desiree. And you know what? You deserved it. You deserved all of it."
Desiree recoils in horror, but says nothing to retaliate.
Instead she shifts herself, relieved that can still see the Ghost Boy in the distance, disappearing behind a purple ball of some sort, from some human game.
Ember follows her gaze. "Oh, him," she mutters, "Danny Phantom, back again. Heard he's tryin' to stop this reality from happening. Idiot."
Desiree doesn't look at her, "Stop... This?"
Ember only laughs, "Going to go stop him, eh? Get back on your boyfriend's good side? If he ever even had one."
Desiree is careful to keep her voice emotionless as she starts to speed off towards the lair Danny Phantom has disappeared into. "Goodbye, Ember McLain."
He terrorizes her dreams and her memories relentlessly. She sees their tender moments together overlaid with the destruction that he, (she), caused. She sees the betrayal and rage in those who she may once have considered friends, yet she does nothing to stop it.
It is during these times that she realizes that she only hates one thing above him.
When Desiree arrives, she almost fears she is too late.
The human Plasmius appears to be trying to kill the Ghost Child, eyes wild and deranged. Metal gloves encase his hands, (Ghost Gauntlets, she recalls), and he swipes them at the Ghost Child. One of the claws cut across the chest of the Ghost Boy's jumpsuit, slicing holes across his symbol, and he lets out a gut-wrenching scream, falling to one knee.
Plasmius stands over him, gaze gaunt and wrathful. Desiree didn't even realize he had been alive all this time, but now wasn't the place to think about these things.
Something steels in Desiree and she crashes into the former halfa, lifting him off his feet and slamming him back into the ground, creating a sizable dent. Blood trickles down his forehead into his beard, but his soft breathing assures her of his survival.
She turns back to the Ghost Boy, who is trying to struggle to his feet, leaning against the wall heavily for support. He watches her warily through his bangs, confusion flitting upon his features. "Desiree?"
He looks so damn familiar, she wants to hug him and slap him at the same time. Somehow, she refrains from doing both. "Danny," she says, more formally then she had intended.
He swallows thickly, grimacing slightly as Ectoplasm continues to drip freely from his wound, "You saved me." He states, bluntly.
"Yes. And you're still injured," she shakes her head slightly, "That won't do at all."
"Huh?" He asks, intelligently, before Desiree floats forward, placing her palm on the gash in his chest. "Hey! Get off me!"
"Trust me," she murmurs, "Now wish for me to heal you."
"What?"
"Just do it!" She hisses, "Time is not on your side."
He continues to stare quizzically at her, "Okay... I... Uh... I wish this stupid cut was gone so I can go destroy my alternate timeline psycho-loop self?"
Desiree gives a small smile and murmurs something under her breath, which quickly turns into a grimace as she feels a wound opening across the top of her bare stomach. Danny barely manages to catch her as she starts to sway. He gapes at her, "What? Did you... Did you just... Take my wound away and give it to yourself?"
She shakes her head, blinking black spots out of her eyes as she presses one green hand to her wound, "Exactly... You... You taught me how to do that..."
Danny flinches, guilt crossing his face, but she scowls at him. "This is nothing. Now get what you need and go!"
He hesitates slightly, before standing to identify various anti-ghost weaponry from where they're scattered around the cave and clipping them to his belt. It brings about such a wave of déjà vu that she almost laughs.
He seems to hesitate when he is done, first looking at Vlad's unconscious body, then at Desiree, then at the portal itself. He took a deep breath.
"Wait!" Desiree stops him, voice wavering due to Ectoplasm lost. She manages a small smile in his direction.
"Give him hell from me."
Danny nods, "I intend to."
Phantom glances in her direction, face twisted with pain and some other emotion Desiree cannot name.
"I'm sorry," his voice is quiet, ragged, and it sounds odd coming from him, someone she had always thought of as the definition of strength.
"For what?" She asks quietly, concerned.
Phantom slowly reaches over, and takes her hand, squeezing her fingers lightly. Her heart flutters.
"For this."
Desiree looks at him oddly, wondering if perhaps he's being overshadowed, before he leans over and murmurs two things in his ear in quick succession.
The small smile playing at her lips morphs into a pain ridden scream, and Phantom gives a quick sigh of relief.
His voice grows fainter in her mind, "There we go. No more stupid human emotions for me."