I'm Still Here
A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

Chapter Two

Danny dropped heavily onto the bench at the cemetery, staring up the hill towards his family's graves. Really there was no point to coming back here, but he didn't have any other ideas on what to do or where to go. Tucking his legs up to his chest, he sat and watched the sun start to set on his first full day in the year 2078.

He sighed. This wasn't something that you could plan for… suddenly being thrust into a different life. There wasn't a handbook on what to do if you're lost in a different time period. He couldn't go to the police – they'd throw him in the loony bin. And if on some chance his fingerprints were in the system and they came back saying he was Danny Fenton from seventy years previously, they'd call in the government and he'd get thrown in a government lab. If there were still government labs, anyways.

He couldn't turn to his family either. His parents were dead and his sister was lost in the mists of time. No doubt married and moved far away from this crazy city, it would take a lot of work to track her down. His friends had probably scattered to the wind; there were no Foleys or Mansons left in the phone book. Even the ghosts were gone. He was all alone.

A runaway who couldn't ever go home again.

He needed to take this world one step at a time: find a spot to spend the night tonight. Sleeping on the ground by his parents' headstones again was a depressingly morbid and painful thought. His body was still aching from last night. Maybe he could find an empty room in a hotel and sneak in – an actual bed sounded really nice. Making that his plan, he stretched his arms over his head and listened to his back pop, letting out a breath and trying to relax. It would be a couple of hours before he could find a hotel. He might as well find something to do.

Movement caught his eye before he could really think much about it and he looked up, surprised to see the old woman from this morning, sans granddaughter, walking down the path. Why was she still at the cemetery? She was walking slowly, not seeming to be paying attention to what was going on around her.

When she came up equal with the bench Danny was sitting on, she hesitated, looking over at him. Her eyes roved over his dirty clothes and his deadpan expression before speaking. "What are you still doing here?"

Danny shrugged, answering truthfully, "I don't know where else to be."

"Did you get something to eat?"

Nodding, Danny watched her for a moment. "Thanks for that, I was hungry."

She smiled. "You're welcome. Can I sit?" she asked with a gesture towards the bench. Danny scooted to the side a bit and the old woman sat down heavily next to him. "Waiting for my daughter, Sarah, to come and pick me up. It's a family remembrance day," she said, "I come here every July 19th to remember everyone I've lost. It's quite a list by this point." Her grin faded for a moment.

"My family is buried here too," Danny whispered into the silence when he realized she wasn't going to say anymore, looking away into the sunset to hide his watering eyes. "Kind of stuck as to what to do about it."

"Time will pass," she answered softly. "Life goes on."

Danny snorted – he already knew that. Life definitely went on. Get locked in a Thermos for seventy years as the whole world moves on without you and then talk to him about it.

"You've got a place to stay tonight?"

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, wondering why she bothered to ask. Then he nodded. "Yeah." Not a complete lie; he did have a plan for the night. "Why do you care?" he asked after a moment.

"Have you looked in a mirror lately?" The old woman chuckled. "You look like you've been through a blender. I used to have a little brother that came home regularly looking just like you – it got my protective side going. Besides, I'm old; it's my job to be worried about all the crazy kids of the world."

The grin that flickered on Danny's face was one of his first real smiles in a long while. "My grandmother used to say that," he said softly.

"Mine too," the old woman agreed with a smile, "I probably picked it up from her."

They sat in silence for a long few minutes, watching the sun set and the cars roll past on the road below them. One of the cars, a dingy blue vehicle, pulled to a stop by the side of the road. "That's my ride," the lady said as the back door opened and three kids piled out. One was the girl from that morning – the one that had been holding the flowers – the other two were boys.

Boys that, Danny realized with a start, he recognized. They were the two that had opened the Thermos the day before, setting him free.

"Gramma!" the little girl yelped as she tore up the hill, her brothers a step behind. "Mama made s'getti for supper! I gotta help!"

Danny smiled faintly, watching the family and wishing that he could go home too. Looking away, he shook his head softly and sighed. There was a dream he should put out of his head for now – he wasn't going home. He was going to a hotel. And then… He bit his lip uncomfortably. There was no 'and then' to his plan.

"Gramma Jazz," one of the boys panted, "look at what we found."

Gramma Jazz? Danny wondered, glancing back. The boy who had spoken was holding out the rusted, dirty Thermos Danny had spent the past seventy years inside of. Could it be?

The other boy glanced at Danny, his blue eyes glittering in the deepening shadows, before turning to his grandmother and speaking. "You told us to dig around in the backyard, remember? We actually found something!"

The old woman, Gramma Jazz, picked the Thermos out of the boy's hand and examined it. "It's a thermos," she said with surprise, and a bit of sadness coloring her voice. "A Fenton Thermos, they were called. They used to catch ghosts."

"There was one inside," the first boy bubbled. "We opened it and there was a bright flash of light and a real ghost appeared!"

"A ghost?" Gramma Jazz asked sharply, her knuckles whitening as her fingers tightened around the Thermos. "What did it look like?"

Danny nodded to himself, noting her reaction with a small eye roll. He was the ghost inside the Thermos, not some crazed lunatic bent on world destruction. There wasn't much to fear. But the thought went out of his mind after only a second, his attention turning back on the old woman. Gramma Jazz… And she knew about Fenton Thermoses which, to his knowledge, wasn't something everyone knew. Could it be?

"The one you told us so much about," the second boy added. "White hair, green eyes, black clothes… he looked really scared when he saw us."

The first boy nodded, jumping in. "I think he was more scared of us than we were of him. He ran away so fast!"

Gramma Jazz had a hand pressed to her heart, her face pale, her eyes wide. "Are you sure?" she breathed.

"Are you okay, Gramma?" the girl asked nervously. "You don't look good." The two brothers had also rearranged their expressions into worried ones, the taller boy glancing back over his shoulder towards the car.

"I'm fine," the old lady answered slowly. "It's just that the ghost you saw… that was my brother."

Danny barely took in the expressions of disbelief on the three kids' faces. He was staring at the old woman who he knew was his sister. Jazz. She was still alive. She was still in Amity Park, of all places, even after all the promises to move to Iceland or some other far-off place. "Jazz…" he whispered.

Her head snapped around at his soft voice, her sharp eyes focusing on him instantly, understanding flooding into her expression as she, finally, recognized his voice. "Danny!"

Before Danny really knew what was going on, he'd been bundled into the blue car next to his sister, and was explaining to the woman driving the car who she'd picked up. The woman, who Danny picked up was Jazz's daughter Sarah, eyed him in the rear-view mirror and only seemed to be half listening to her mother's babbling. Danny didn't return her gaze, instead choosing to stare aimlessly out the window.

He'd found his sister, but something was wrong. He hadn't thought about the fact that she would have a family all of her own. Kids. And grandkids. The thought could barely process through his head – it was just too odd.

"Where did the blood come from?" Jazz asked a second time, having to poke Danny in the side to get him to listen.

Danny glanced down at his clothes, then up at his sister, still having a tough time reconciling the eighteen-year-old he remembered with this wrinkled old woman. The voice was the same, though, and the irritating twinkle in her eyes. "Dash," he said, "decided to chase me all over town. Cornered me behind the Nasty Burger."

With a nod, Jazz reached forwards to touch Danny's bruised eye. Danny ducked out the way, bumping in to one of the boys. "The Nasty Burger is gone," Jazz informed him, "it exploded about thirty years ago and killed a bunch of people." She studied him for a moment. "And Dash Baxter was mayor for awhile."

"Mayor?" Danny's head felt like it was going to explode with that thought. "Dash?"

"He did a good job, too," Jazz said. "Everyone wanted him to keep going, but he got out of it and, last I heard, he retired to some place in Florida." She fell silent and Danny went back to staring out the window. He felt very uncomfortable around these people that were supposedly his relatives. "Are you okay, Danny?" Jazz asked softly.

"I was locked in a Thermos for seventy years," Danny whispered. "My parents are dead, the ghost zone has been wiped out, and my sister has grandkids. Under the circumstances, I think I'm handling it pretty well."

"Are you really Gramma Jazz's brother?" one of the boys asked skeptically. "You're not much older than me."

Danny glanced at him. "I'm eighty-six."

The boy blinked, sitting back in his chair. "I'm twelve," he said softly.

"You're not eighty-six," Jazz said, "you're sixteen. You look just like you did the day you disappeared."

When Jazz brought up what had happened that horrible day seventy years ago, questions about what had (and hadn't) happened flooded into Danny's mind. He shifted on the chair, refusing to look at anyone, tired and hungry and more confused than ever. It all seemed massively unfair. Vlad had never gotten caught, Dash had become mayor and was now lounging around in Florida, and Danny, who had spent two years of his life protecting people and had lost so much already, had nothing. He didn't have much of a family, or friends, or any hope of his world righting itself again.

Danny fought back the question that was on the tip of his tongue, knowing it would come out sounding harsh, but it slipped out anyways. "Why didn't you free me?"

"I tried, I looked all over for the Thermos after our parents started bragging about catching you-" Jazz started, but Danny interrupted her.

"Why didn't you tell Mom and Dad who I was?" Danny's world was growing blurry, and he had to blink to clear the tears from his eyes. His fingers clenched into fists in his lap and his eyes burned as he stared, fixedly, at the floor of the car. "Why did I spend seventy years locked in a freaking Thermos?!"

Jazz didn't answer at first. Then, softly, she said, "I told them, Danny."

Those four words broke Danny's world into pieces. Tears leaking out of his eyes, Danny reached for his ghost form. Ignoring the startled gasps of the kids in the car, the surprised shriek of the driver, and his sister's calls to wait, he phased through the roof and into the sky.

She told them. And still he spent seventy years in a Thermos. Why hadn't they freed him? Why? Didn't they love him?

Danny settled onto a branch in the big pine tree, but held solidly to his ghost form. Phantom always felt a little less than Fenton did, and the sting of his parents' betrayal hurt a little less. The sun had long set and the moon had risen, staining the world around him in soothing tones of blue, grey, and black. Staring blankly at a city he couldn't understand, Danny tried not to think.

Not thinking wasn't as hard as he thought it might be. His brain was already on overload from everything he'd learned that day and he was exhausted. It was easy to just sit and stare, rocking slowly back and forth in the gentle breeze.

The sad truth of his world was that there was no escape from the onslaught of everything that was wrong. He couldn't go home and bury his head under a pillow. He couldn't run to his parents. He couldn't turn to his friends. He couldn't hide from the truth that he was in a world he didn't understand. What he wanted to do more than anything was to go home.

But he didn't have a home to go to.

Danny watched the stars twinkle overhead and traced the moon's slow path through the skies as the hours filtered blankly past him. He barely moved, waiting for everything to start making sense once again. No real thoughts entered his mind. He just sat and stared and waited.

It was nearly dawn before Danny moved. Shifting tiredly off of his perch, he stepped into the air and took a moment to stretch the kinks out of his muscles, then took off towards town. His mind was still mostly disconnected from his body, his emotions and his consciousness taking two giant steps away from each other.

First, something to wear that wasn't going to attract attention, his brain directed. Don't worry about what comes next or what will happen, just do the one thing. Get something to wear that blends in and isn't covered in your own blood.

He phased through the roof of the first department store he could find, blindly picking up a cheap t-shirt and jeans from one of the racks. He stared down at them for the longest time, standing invisibly in the store, fighting himself over taking them. It was stealing, but he couldn't find it in his heart to care. After everything that had happened to him, what was a pair of jeans and a shirt?

Sighing, he took to the air, his mind already directing him to his next task – a shower. A motel just down the street from the department store had a parking lot full of empty spaces. He stepped through the wall, glancing around the room he'd found himself in. Twin beds, ugly décor, unoccupied. Losing his ghost form in a flicker of light, he slipped into the bathroom and into the shower.

When he was clean, his stolen clothes on his body and his own clothes balled up to be thrown in a dumpster, Danny flashed back to his ghost form and once again into the air. Food was next: get something to eat. He'd only eaten one meal in the past seventy years or so. With only seven dollars and change in his pockets, he wasn't sure what kind of food he would be able to get.

Finding a nearby fast food place took just minutes. After tossing his bloody, dirty clothes in the dumpster behind the restaurant, Danny wandered in and spent all his remaining money on a small breakfast. Chewing it blankly, he stared through the window and watched the people walk past on their way through their morning routines.

Everything he did that morning was slow and emotionless. After breakfast, he walked around town, went through the mall, and finally ended up in the park by lunch. He didn't remember much of his morning, which kind of suited him because he wasn't much in a mood for remembering things. He sat on a bench at the park, watching a small fountain bubble. People moved around him like ocean waves, sweeping their way to lunch, then retreating back to their offices and leaving Danny alone.

Danny didn't really notice when he was alone in the park and he didn't quite care when the sun started to beat down on him and burn his skin. He just sat and stared. For hours, he was motionless on the bench.

When his brain informed him that he was hungry, Danny pushed himself to his feet and started to walk towards the cluster of food stores he'd noticed that morning. Turning invisible before he reached one of the largest grocery stores, Danny walked through the doors, grabbed a sandwich and a can of pop out of the deli, and left again. With no money, he was reduced to taking what he needed and, in his blank state, he didn't much care. He probably would later, but that was just a small thought that died as quickly as it appeared.

Back at the park he parked himself under a shady tree and snacked on his appropriated sandwich. People were filing back into the park – it must have been getting later in the day. The sun was starting to head towards the horizon once more. When his food was done, he tossed it into a nearby garbage can and settled down in his shady spot to wait until nightfall.

He felt a little proud of himself, actually. He'd gone the entire day without thinking about his family, his friends, or what was going on around him. He just existed in the moment, with no past and no future. It worked. He felt nothing, he needed nobody, and his world was what he made of it.

His blank blue eyes stared around the park, watching the movements of the people, until the sun had set and the moon had once again risen high into the sky. Making his way back to the deserted hotel on the outskirts of Amity Park, Danny located an empty room, dropped onto a bed, and fell into a dreamless sleep.

His second day didn't go nearly as well as the first. For starters, he woke up screaming, tears streaming out of his eyes, panic clutching at his heart. He'd barely gotten his screaming under control when the crushing blow of the emotions he'd held back all the previous day slammed into him like a ton of bricks. They would no longer be ignored.

"Why didn't they let me go?" he cried, filled with the torment of his parents abandoning him. They had locked him away in a thermos and then buried him in the back yard. "Why?" He tired to work up a good head of anger towards them, but his emotions failed him. There was no anger to be found in him, just an ocean of sorrow and pain.

Curled up in the hotel bed, lost in a time he didn't belong in, Danny buried his head under his blanket and allowed himself to cry. There was no one to come to his rescue. He was alone and he had to deal with everything by himself. At the moment, burying his face in the scratchy pillow and pulling the blankest over his head sounded like the best plan.

Finally, worn out by his tears, he fell back asleep.

To be continued.