It had taken fourteen years for Danny to get as far as he had, to build a life worth living. He had many more to go, to keep on going.
But it took less than a second for his life to be over. All over, gone up in a firestorm in a blisteringly-hot moment. The authorities needed to identify the charred corpses of his friends and family by their dental records.
And then he was alone, save for Phantom's voice in the back of his mind, barely imagined, which was scarcely any better than being alone for real.
He was alone, and it felt like emptiness.
It took him two weeks to finally break down, and go to Vlad. Fucking Vlad. He found he hated Vlad so much he wanted to die. His heart hurt so badly he felt as if it was going to stop where it lay and end his life. As if he needed his heart to keep beating in order to stay alive.
He hadn't wanted to do this. He hated the compassionate look on Vlad's face, and on the faces of all the social workers. He had sat invisibly at the side of the Fenton Ghost Portal for hours on hours on hours, waiting, and waiting, and waiting.
He didn't get what he was waiting for, and so with anguished, angry, wet eyes he came to Vlad Masters.
It took him two more weeks to explain what he held in the Fenton Thermos at his side.
"It was Jazz," he said.
"Ah," Vlad said simply.
"'Ah'? Is that really all you have to say?" Danny wanted to be angry with Vlad, but all he could feel was his sad hate hate hate. He was burned and guttered out.
"Would you have me pretend I cared about her, Daniel?"
"No," Danny said. "I just… want to understand."
"Tell me what happened," Vlad said, his voice promising something.
Danny stared blindly into the fireplace of Vlad's vaulting living room. "She was with Spectra. She was with Spectra! She tried…"
She had tried to hurt him.
"Are you surprised?" Vlad asked, light and curious.
"Yes! She was my sister!"
She hadn't recognized him.
"The ghost you encountered wasn't your sister," Vlad said, as gently as he could manage, which wasn't very. Icy hot anger flared in Danny's veins.
"How can you say that?" Danny whispered through his teeth.
"Your sister is dead."
Pain stabbed into his heart, pain pain pain hurt. "And now she's a ghost! "
Vlad's condescension swept away his pity and compassion, now. "Hah! You are such a child!" he laughed bitterly.
Danny felt himself transforming into his ghost form without thinking about it.
"Let me tell you a story, Daniel…" Vlad mused. "Once upon a time, a few decades ago, there was a humble dock-worker named Isaac Anders. He was a real family man, as the record shows; with a wife and a daughter and a son, the perfect nuclear family. His union loved him, and he worked hard, for his family, and for his men."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Danny hissed.
"Isaac died with blood in his throat, when a box of cargo tumbled open over him, and he was buried underneath. He died as he was crushed by sheet metal, in lightless dark. His wife grew old and withered and died without him, and his son grew old and died of cancer, and his daughter grew old and had children of her own.
"And then your parents built their Ghost Portal, and you opened it for them, and the ghost of Isaac Anders burst forth. Tell me, Daniel, do you really think that there was anything of that humble, caring family man left in that ghost? Do you really think that if there was anything left of Isaac, he would have run around calling himself the Box Ghost, rather than visiting the grave of his wife and son? Do you think that Isaac would turn up the chance to see his grandchildren, because he was too busy acting out?"
Danny felt very small. There was a tightness in his eyes, trailing down to his throat.
"I'm who I was before I went in the portal," he said. "And I called myself Danny Phantom."
"Don't make me laugh." Vlad sneered. "You played at being a superhero because you were fourteen years old and drunk on comic books and bored, and I played at being a supervillain because I was every bit as pathetic as you always thought I was. The Box Ghost acts out the last moments of Anders' life in the manner of a villain because he truly doesn't know how to be anything else. He doesn't remember who Anders was in life, and he doesn't care, because he knows he can't replace Anders, only play out the psychodrama in his head."
"You're wrong," Danny said, desperately, as if he was trying to convince himself. He stared at his thermos.
"All there is for him is a handful of a few dying moments, feeling trapped and breathless and angry and terrified at unfairness," Vlad said. "And, I imagine, all there is for that ghost in your jar is a fragmented copy of a story Jasmine told herself about the unfairness of the world where she would never grow up to be the psychologist she always wanted to be. Or maybe she was worried about what madness would grip you with her death. Or maybe, or maybe… who knows. But we both know that the thing in there is not your sister."
"You sound like my mother," Danny growled. He had never imagined that would become an unflattering comparison. "Jazz is still a person!"
"I suppose," Vlad said. "But she's not the person you were hoping for, is she?"
Danny couldn't look at Vlad.
For a time he had dared to imagine that maybe his life wasn't over. Why was he sad that his family and friends were dead, when he had known that there was an afterlife! For a time, he had imagined that he would be reunited with everyone he had lost, and he wouldn't have to say goodbye to them.
(As if he'd ever had the chance to say goodbye before they were torn away by fire.)
No. He had felt as if he had remembered a back door out of his own private tragedy, but he had been such a fool. He had always been such a fool. He should have known that his family was gone. The portal had been open for so long, and there hadn't been even one tearful reunion, only battles and battles and more battles. The eclectic ghosts of the Ghost Zone were happy to make their own families and societies in the dim-lit green, or to linger in loneliness, when they weren't happy to take out their incurable grievances on the real world.
Maybe not all ghosts were evil… but they never engaged with the world the way they did when they were alive.
He should have known that he wouldn't be reunited with the ghosts of his family. And now, in front of his most bitter enemy, he wept. And then he screamed, in heaving breaths.
"Why am I different?" he sobbed.
"We died in ectoplasm," Vlad said with a shrug. "You in one burst, I suppose. Me across weeks of rot. It was enough ectoplasm to make a deeper… impression in our ghosts, and let them form almost instantly."
Our ghosts.
"What does it really mean to be half-ghost?" Danny wanted to ask. But perhaps he already knew, and had known for a while.
A person being overshadowed could use ghost powers… or at least, the ghost overshadowing the victim could use their ghost powers. But there was nothing to make Danny think that it didn't go the other way around, if the overshadowing ghost wasn't actually trying to take control.
An overshadowed object could be manipulated even without working muscles. The faltering heart of a cooling corpse could be pumped and restarted by ectoplasm, rather than a defibrillator. Ghostly healing and shapeshifting could mend the flesh of the overshadowed victim. It normally took so long a time for a ghost to form that it wouldn't matter, but…
We died in ectoplasm.
He walked into a dangerous lab experiment, died, and was overshadowed by his own ghost until his body put itself back together.
Had Phantom done it consciously, trying to save the fading lights in his brain? Had Phantom tried to save Danny out of his own vicarious emptiness, or some sense of compassion? Or had Phantom or done it without thinking, his powers acting autonomically? Did it matter?
Danny screamed, and fired a beam of ectoplasm into the fireplace. It was reduced to coals and ash.
Vlad didn't try very hard to keep him from leaving.