Warning: This chapter DOES contain quite a bit of angst, sorrow, and depressing situations. Please consider before reading. It's not bad though. Not anything like the next chapter.
In The Way
A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria
Chapter 2 – Experiments
Two Weeks before the Prologue
--Danny
Every day for the next two weeks, I showed up in FentonWorks as Phantom to talk. It had taken hours of explaining to Mom to get her to stop asking me questions about things that had happened around town over the past year. Then I had been 'introduced' to Dad. He had, of course, spent the first three days with an ectogun in his hand… but he never shot at me. He trusted Mom's opinion of me.
It quickly became apparent that although my parents were at various degrees of trusting me, they were thrilled with all the new information they had at their disposal. During that first week, I think they asked me every question that they had ever wondered. More often than not, my response was a shrug and an 'I don't know'. I'm not a very good source for all things ghostly, even though I knew a lot more than they did.
By the second week of talking, the questions had fallen off. Out of pure lack of other stuff to do, I kept showing up. I hadn't seen a hint of a ghost since that hippie ghost, and it wasn't like I had a lot of friends to make plans with. I usually found an out-of-the-way place and watched what they were doing. Dad, for some reason, took this as a sign that I was interested in what he was doing rather than the fact that I was bored with nothing better to do.
"Unlike most people think, ectoplasm is more like human cells than blood," he commented, holding out a small dish of green goop for my inspection. "If you look at it through a microscope, you can actually see individual cells with the spectral equivalent of nucleuses, mitochondria, ribosomes… everything. Ghosts even have a form of DNA, which is what gives you a specific ectosignature."
I nodded, hoping that I looked a little interested and not as confused as I felt. This sounded too much like that biology class I almost flunked out of.
He kept talking, not looked up at me. "It's the mitochondria that we're really interested in right now. In human cells, mitochondria produce adenosine triphosphate… the human form of energy. We figure that a ghost's version of mitochondria does about the same kind of thing. Except their job is to refine ambient emotional energy into a version of spectral energy your body can use to stay stable."
"Why do you care?" I asked. I hooked my feet around the legs of the bar stool I was perched on and leaned over to study the slimy goo. Apparently, goop is a lot more complicated than I had figured it was.
"Batteries," Dad smiled. "We've got equipment that runs on spectral energy, but now we need a way to power it that's better than using electricity. If we could create a battery made up of ectoplasmic mitochondria…" he trailed off, raising an eyebrow.
I grinned, nodding, actually following his line of thought. "Then you'd have something that could naturally create energy and recharge itself without having to plug anything in. You'd have a ghost battery." I shook my head in surprise. "That's actually really smart."
He was quiet for a moment, studying the sample through the microscope. "Can you go get the centrifuge, Ghost?"
"What?" I tilted my head in confusion, tamping down on a small smile. Dad steadfastly refused to call me 'Phantom'.
"The thing that whirls around in circles with test tubes in it." He twirled his finger around in circles. "Can you bring it over here and plug it in? We need to separate this and get some samples."
I slipped off the chair and flew over to the other side of the lab, picking up the machine and dragging it over to Dad. "This it?" I asked him, holding it awkwardly in my arms. It was big and it was heavy. He nodded, so I set it on the table and plugged it in.
I was heading back to my chair when Dad captured my arm. "Now," he said, "we need some test tubes."
"Wait… you want me to help?" I stared at him. Dad never asked for people to help him actually do an experiment. There was the random 'hold something' or 'fetch something'… but never actually doing anything with the experiment. Dad liked to be able to claim complete ownership of anything that went right. I glanced over my shoulder at Mom, who was looking at Dad with the same dumbstruck expression.
"You don't want to help?" he asked, sounding a little hurt. "I thought you were interested."
For a second, I just blinked at him. "Okay…" I said. "Test tubes?"
A huge grin split his face. "The tall, silver cabinet. Top shelf. We're going to need some pipettes too."
--Danny
I drummed my fingers against the arm of the chair that night, watching my parents out of the corner of my eye. They had spent the entire day down in the lab with Phantom and they were now flipping through the TV channels, trying to settle on something to watch. I couldn't figure out what was up, and it was driving me nuts.
Now, on top of the 'where are the ghosts' mystery, I had the 'why are my parents being so nice to Phantom' mystery. Did they know who I really was? If so, why hadn't they said anything? And why had Dad let me help out with his experiment? Why were they so calm about the whole idea of a ghost being in their lab?
Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?
And then there was the question of if they didn't know who I was, should I tell them? They'd apparently accepted Phantom as a good ghost. I don't really have any reason to not tell them. I sighed softly, sinking into the chair, letting my eyes drift back to the screen. Dad had settled on (surprise, surprise) 'Ghost Hunters'.
Thoughts flickered wildly through my head as my parents watched the show. These past few days had been really strange. On top of the fact that my parents were actually accepting Phantom into their lab, there was the fact that I hadn't really had any contact with them as Danny Fenton. We sat together at meals, and sometimes we channel surfed together. But other than that… I felt odd talking to them more as Phantom than as Fenton. I don't think I even said two words to them today as Fenton.
I wondered if they ever wondered about me. They probably thought that I was holed up in my room all day, every day. Did they wonder if I was bored? Why didn't they ever ask me to come down and work in the lab? I wondered if they cared.
I gave a start of surprise at that thought. Of course they care, I chided myself. I'm their son. It's just that Phantom is a 'new' thing. My parents treat ghost stuff like little kids treat toys. After a few weeks, the newness will wear off and my parents will stop acting so strangely.
I blew a piece of hair out of my eyes. It was nothing to worry about. This whole thing was just my parents acting normal around a new experiment.
Right?
--Danny
A few days later, nothing had changed yet. Mom and Dad always sent me huge smiles when I showed up in the lab as Phantom. Sometimes they would take a few minutes to show me how to do something, or ask for my help. I was quickly becoming ensconced in all of their experiments. I even knew how to use the centrifuge.
Mostly, however, my parents were my parents. They got wrapped up in their experiments, pouring over their test results for hours on end. There were times when they would sit together, heads inches apart, talking about things and not paying any attention to me. I probably could have ransacked the lab without them noticing. All that was changing was the fact that I was, slowly but surely, starting to understand what they were saying.
Today happened to be 'scheduled maintenance day'. Dad was running the portal through a bunch of checks, Mom was testing out every other invention in the lab… and I had been regulated to cleaning ectoguns.
"You trust me with the ectoguns?" I had spluttered when they had given me my 'assignment' for the day. I'd gotten two odd looks in return. For a moment, I wasn't sure if they remembered that I'd been on the 'evil ghost' list just a few weeks earlier.
It turns out that taking ectoguns apart and cleaning them is relatively easy. I figured out how to do that part on my own. Putting them back together was proving to be a completely different story.
"Ouch," I hissed when I pinched my finger for the fifth time. I was sure this piece went here, but it was trying to prove me wrong. The pieces just didn't fit. I sighed, dropping the remains onto the table.
Suddenly two orange-clad arms appeared over my shoulders, black-gloved fingers picked up the pieces. "Like this." Dad's voice rumbled deep in his chest. He deftly snapped everything into place. I was amazed. I had taken my gloves off nearly twenty minutes ago, trying to blame them for being too bulky. But my dad's fingers were easily twice as big as my fingers had been in those gloves, and he wasn't having a problem. He took the gun back apart and set the pieces down. "Try again."
I bit my lip. Carefully, I slotted the pieces together. I was so focused on the ectogun that I didn't notice Mom coming over to watch. When I got the last piece in, I looked up and was startled to find her standing on the other side of the table. She smiled at me. It was a smile I hadn't seen in a long time. A quiet smile that was filled with pride. "You did it," she said quietly.
Dad ruffled my white hair roughly. "Good job, Ghost."
I smiled vaguely back at him, looking down at the ectogun in my hands. Phantom's fingers were so pale and thin. They shimmered with a translucency that seemed to glow softly. I twirled the gun in them for a few moments.
When I looked up, both of my parents were back on the other side of the lab, back to working on their tests. I sighed, trying to push the picture of my mother's smile out of my mind. But I couldn't. She had been so proud of Phantom for those few minutes. Not of me.
Startled at a cool feeling on my cheek, I reached up to brush away the wetness on my face. I set down the ectogun and stared at the pearlescent tear on my finger. Silently, I picked up my discarded gloves and vanished.
--Danny
That night, dinner was torture. My dad went on and on about the wonderful results he'd gotten with the portal's tests today. We were nearing desert before he stopped to take a breath and let someone else talk. Mom smiled happily. She looked up at me. "Phantom put together an ectogun today," she said slowly.
"So?" I muttered. I knew that. I had put together that stupid ectogun. Not that she knew that.
Mom was silent for a second. "Maybe you can…" she hesitated, then started over. "Danny, I know that you don't like this ghost stuff, but if you want you can come downstairs tomorrow and help."
"Maybe," I said.
"Our ghost would love to show you the ropes!" Dad interjected.
The ghost would show me the ropes. I narrowed my eyes and glared at him. I've only been living here for fifteen years. Phantom had only been here for one. I couldn't quite understand the feelings that were swirling around inside of me. Sadness, frustration, anger… My temper flared. "I'm not too sure Phantom and I would get along," I snarled.
Dad bit into his fudge. Mom watched me, her eyes sparkling oddly. Finally, she simply picked up her plate and walked over to put it in the dishwasher. "Sweetie…" she said.
"Drop it." I almost knocked my chair over in an attempt to get out of the kitchen as fast as I could. "I'm fine."
I stormed up to my room and locked the door. It was stress, I told myself. Stress from not knowing what my ghostly enemies are planning, stress from being around my parents without them learning who I was, stress from being… well, bored. Who would have ever thought that I would long for everybody that had ever known me to pick up the nearest gun and point it at my head? I had to be frustrated and angry because I was stressed. I was not feeling like this because I was starting to feel a little jealous…
Stomping down on that thought, I turned on my computer and opened the game that was growing into my least-favorite pastime. Hours upon hours of playing 'Doomed!' with nothing else to do had left me feeling rather ambivalent towards the game. But as I sat, watching it load, I knew it would be incredibly helpful right now. I dredged up every angry thought I could find and prepared to blast the other players into digital dust.
Boom. Dad takes time out of his tests to help Phantom.
Blam. Never me. What, am I not worth it?
Zap. And then, they can't not talk about it at dinner.
Zoom! Don't they notice that it bugs me? On that note…
BANG! Why haven't they noticed that I'm Phantom?
Boom. They spend enough time around him.
Ba-Bang! Maybe they aren't spending enough time with me.
Zap! Don't they even care? Can't they put aside their stupid ghost obsession for ten minutes to do something with me?
Whap. Maybe Phantom should be their son, not me.
Bang. Maybe then they'd be happy.
Ka-Boom. …maybe then I'd be happy…
With a snarl, I snapped the computer off without bothering to log out of the game first. Enough of that. I stalked over to my bed and collapsed onto the covers, curling up into a tiny ball.
Blowing everything up was supposed to make me feel better.
Why is it that I feel worse?
That was when I made my pledge. No more Phantom. I wasn't going to go down to the lab. If my parents didn't have Phantom, they would go back to normal. Normal wasn't perfect, but it had to be better than this messed-up situation.
Without Phantom, they'd just go back to normal.
They had to.
--Maddie
"Jack," I said quietly as he helped me pick up the dishes after dinner, "I'm worried about Danny."
My husband nodded and set a handful of plates into the dishwasher. "He seems angry."
I smiled a little. "He's a bit more than angry, Jack. He'd been so quiet lately, locking himself in his room and never coming out, sleeping a lot, refusing to be part of the family…" I shook my head dismally. Jazz might be the psychologist of the family, but I'd taken a few courses in college as well. I knew the classics signs of depression when I saw them. I'd been keeping a close eye on him, hoping it was just something he'd snap out of… but I was slowly getting very worried for my only son.
"It's probably just a phase."
"Jack, we need to do something with Danny. He's obviously bored. I don't want him to get into something bad because he's got nothing else to do." I set the cups on the counter. "We should set up some kind of family outing. Maybe we can do a vacation."
Jack glanced over at me. "But we can't leave the experiments right now."
"I was going to spend time with him a few weeks ago, but then Phantom showed up and I got so busy. But it shouldn't matter if we're busy… Danny needs someone to talk to. A friend," I persisted.
"Our friendly ghost?" Jack said with a raised eyebrow and a quiet grin.
"Do you trust him with our son?" I stared down at the dirty cups, slowly rearranging them on the counter so I didn't have to look up. This was a topic I wasn't sure I wanted to talk about yet. There was no way I could explain why I already trusted the ghost as surely as I did. He was quickly becoming indistinguishable from Sam or Tucker: more family than anything else.
"Mads," he muttered, coming over to wrap his arms around me. "What's wrong?"
"For someone who's usually really dense, you're too observant sometimes." I shot him a look.
"I'm just easily distracted," he said with a wink. "What's wrong?"
"Do you trust Phantom?"
Jack was silent for a moment. "For some reason, I think so." He sighed.
"Do you think it's because he looks so much like our son?" I leaned back against him, letting his warm bulk hold me up.
"He looks like Danny?" Jack's tone was laced with true surprise. For a few seconds, I could almost hear his mind working as he pictured the two of them together. Then he laughed. "You're right, Mads. They look almost identical. Strange."
"I wonder why."
Jack shrugged, his whole body shifting against mine. "There could be a million reasons."
I ran a hand through my hair. "They're just so alike. They look the same, they sound the same… they even act the same sometimes. If I didn't know better, I'd say they were the same person."
Jack chuckled. "Mads, that's ridiculous. Danny's not a ghost. We just saw him at dinner."
"I know." I stood up, letting Jack get back to washing dishes. As I wandered around the kitchen, I kept glancing up the stairs. I couldn't worry about Phantom right now – deep in my soul I knew that there was something wrong with my son. Now I just needed to figure out what to do about it.
--Danny
The first day of my pledge wasn't so bad. I sulked in my room quite effectively for the entire day. Mom and Dad didn't bother me, except for around noon when she knocked on my door saying that lunch was ready.
The second day was impossible. I kept catching myself at the top of the stairs, wanting to go down and see what was going on. My fingers itched to be doing something useful. But I couldn't. Danny 'Fenton' was afraid of ghosts and didn't go into the lab. Danny 'Phantom' wasn't going to be making an appearance. I had made that decision. Which meant I couldn't go down to the lab.
It took all of my willpower to stay out of the basement that day.
That third day didn't go nearly as well.
I was in the lab by ten o'clock. As Phantom.
"Ghost!" Dad bellowed when I shimmered into view next to him.
I smiled vaguely. "What's up?"
He pulled me over to the rack of lab tests and began to spout off a long stream of babble about what had been happening the past few days. I didn't understand a word of it. But I couldn't help the small bubble of happiness that was brewing in my stomach. It was a traitorous feeling – I didn't want to enjoy this. I wanted to be mad at them for ignoring me. Well… part of me.
Dad kept his arm around me, one hand on my shoulder, leaning close so that I could feel his bulk next to me. "So we're redoing test fourteen, see if we can't clear up the results a little bit," he concluded. I looked at me, waiting for my response.
"I didn't understand a word of that," I replied.
He broke into bellows of laughter. "At least you're honest, son. Too bad Danny's not down here too."
Dad walked away, but I was standing shock still, going over his words, an odd feeling squirming in my stomach. After a few seconds of total silence, I ran. I soared over the city. My hair slicked back, my eyes burned from the wind, and my ears rang. But however fast I pushed myself, I could still hear his words.
That was the day that Phantom had officially replaced Danny as the Fenton's son.
--Danny
That whole next week, I avoided them as Danny Fenton whenever possible. When I was human, I spent most of it locked in my room, playing video games on my own. I only snuck down for food during the night. My parents spent their time in the lab. They didn't bother me, I didn't bother them.
All throughout the week, my nervousness over where all the ghosts were was growing. For a long time, worries about them had settled into a cold finger in the pit of my stomach. Now, for some reason, they were growing again. I kept finding myself flitting out of the house for random patrols of the scarily quiet town. I was glancing over my shoulder at shadows. I almost – almost – talked myself into going into the Ghost Zone alone to search for them.
Thankfully, I'm not that stupid or suicidal. The ghosts had to planning something and they were all in the Ghost Zone. Going there was a twelve on the idiotic scale of one to ten.
And no, I'm not paranoid.
Of course, I couldn't stay away my parents completely during this time. Every day, I wandered into the lab to help them out with their experiments as Phantom. Every day I watched my parents happily work away in the lab for an hour or two. Every day, this weird, cold, boiling feeling in my stomach grew slightly when they talked to me… but not to me.
Why didn't they storm upstairs and demand that I come out of my room and act like a human being? Did they really not care?
"Maddie," I asked one day, "can you answer a question for me?" I twirled the chair I was sitting on as fast as I could. Mom's blue jumpsuit whipped past over and over.
"You're making me dizzy," she murmured. "Stop the spinning and I'll answer anything you'd like."
My feet skidded on the floor as I let the chair slow. "Why isn't Danny ever down here?" I glanced up at her, looking into her startled eyes for a moment before I sent the chair spinning again. I couldn't look at her while she answered.
For a long moment, I didn't think she had heard me. I stopped the chair to see her gazing at the ceiling with an odd look in her eye. "Danny…" she trailed off, then her eyes turned towards me. "Danny's been having a tough summer."
I nodded, swiveling the chair aimlessly from side to side and staring down at my feet. "Maybe he's bored."
She watched me before quietly setting down the invention she was working on and turning to look at me. "Have you ever talked to my son?"
I shook my head. I technically talk to myself all the time, but I figured that didn't count.
"I'm worried about him," she said softly. "He won't come out of his room, he's always so angry lately, he doesn't want to do anything... I'm not sure what to do with him right now." She glanced up at me before flickering a sad smile in my direction. "But it's not your problem. We'll get it all figured out."
"Maybe you should make him do something. Get him out of his room?" I didn't take my eyes off of my shoes. I had no idea where these words were coming from. I had no idea why they struck a chord so deeply down inside of me. More than anything, I wanted her to do just what I was suggesting.
Mom fiddled with the invention sitting on the table, a painful expression on her face. "I don't…" I risked a glance up at her, wincing away from the frustrated tears in her eyes. There was an almost hopeful tinge to her voice when she spoke next. "You might be right… he's probably lonely. Maybe you could go talk to him for awhile?"
A cold feeling boiled up inside of me. That was not the answer I wanted to hear. I didn't know for sure what I wanted her to say, but I knew that wasn't it. "I don't think he'd listen to me."
"Oh," she whispered, turning back to her experiment. I watched her for bit as she stared down into the gelatinous mess, not really doing anything with it. Her mind seemed to be off in some other world.
I thought about telling her to go upstairs and yell at me. I contemplated just turning human and getting the whole thing over with. I pondered screaming at her to stop ignoring me and do something.
But I didn't.
I just faded away.
--Danny
The next day I walked quietly down the steps. As a human.
I silently sat down on the bottom step and watched my parents work. By this point, having been down in the lab every day for nearly a month, I knew exactly what they were doing. Dad was running some tests for that ghost battery idea of his – not that it was working any better than it ever had before. Mom was putting some finishing touches on the latest ghost invention (one I'd helped develop): a tiny ghost-detecting robotic fly. My idea was to make dozens of them and scatter then around Amity Park, that way we'd have some sort of amorphous ghost-detection grid.
I tried one last time, rather unsuccessfully, to convince myself that this was in no way influenced by my steadily growing paranoia over where the hell all the ghosts had vanished to and what they were going to do when they reappeared.
For the first time in weeks, Sam and Tucker crossed my mind. They would be a definite help in the solution to the vanishing ghosts mystery. A small smile crossed my face as I thought about their reaction when I told them that I was helping my parents invent ghost weapons. They hadn't been able to get in contact with me for a few weeks, which was depressing, but I kind of understood. They had lives too… I wasn't the center of the universe.
"Danny?"
I glanced over at Mom. She was looking at me with a rather weird expression on her face. Probably the last place she'd ever expected to see me was in the lab. I smiled at her.
"What's up?" she asked, coming over to sit next to me. "Something wrong?"
I shrugged. "I was just bored."
She reached up and ruffled my hair a bit. "I'm glad you're here, Danny. We've missed you."
"Yeah, I bet," I whispered under my breath. If they missed me so much, why hadn't they said anything up until now? Silently, I chided myself for thinking that. My parents weren't ignoring me on purpose. They were just overly involved in whatever they were doing. "What are you working on?"
"A new spin on our ghost detectors," she said with a smile, "that way we can track ghosts all over Amity Park." She hesitated. "Phantom actually did a lot of the design. He's a lot smarter than I figured he'd be."
I sighed, feeling that cold, bubbling feeling in my stomach clench a fist around my heart. Yet another compliment that wasn't really directed towards me. "Really?"
She nodded. "He's actually nice once you get to know him. He's a good kid." She was gazing down at her fingers, flicking glances in my direction. "Maybe you could talk to him, keep him company some day."
I fought to keep my eyes from rolling. She had suggested the same thing to Phantom yesterday. "Maybe."
There was an awkward silence between us. It was obvious Mom didn't know what to say to me. I had no real idea of what I wanted to say to her either. We were sitting so close together, actually touching, but there was a brick wall separating us. Impossibly high, impossibly thick, and growing more and more impossible to break down with each passing second.
Mom tapped her fingers against her knees, searching for something to say. "Phantom…"
"I don't want to talk about him," I interrupted sourly. Just hearing that name… my name… was sending weird trickles of emotion through me. I didn't want to hear my mother ever say that name again. She was my mother – not Phantom's.
"Gah," I sighed, rubbing my temples as I finally understood these feelings. It really was jealousy. I was jealous of my ghost half and frustrated that my parents couldn't see it. I was angry that they hadn't figured out the connection between us. Add that to the top of being stressed over the lack of ghosts and the long hours of having nothing to do, I was about ready to snap.
"All right," she whispered, rubbing my back in small circles. "Your head hurts?"
I shot her a small smile. "Not really. I just thought of something."
"Everything's going to be fine, Danny. You'll see." She smiled at me, trying to get me to smile back. "Sam and Tucker will be home in a few weeks and everything will go back to normal."
I contemplated that. Sam and Tucker would be home soon. For some reason, that didn't bring any sort of happiness into my head. Any good thoughts of them were hidden beneath the veil of emotions that was clouding my mind. I wondered what they would think when they found out that I was jealous of myself. I wondered how much screaming they would do when they learned how much time I was spending in the lab as a ghost.
At that moment, having Sam and Tucker come home didn't sound like an entirely wonderful idea.
I closed my eyes and tried to keep myself from bashing my head against the wall for thinking that. I wanted my friends to come home. My parents really did care about me. Why were those darker thoughts flooding into my mind?
"Danny?" she asked quietly.
I looked over at her, my vision blurry. I blinked a few times, startled to be clearing tears out of my eyes. What was wrong with me? Why was I having those horrible thoughts and why were my emotions playing these weird games with me? I went from being jealous to frustrated to crying? Why?
"Danny!" my father bellowed from just a few feet away. I practically levitated in surprise. Mom had been speaking so quietly…
"Jack," Mom admonished, snaking her arm around my shoulders and giving me a half-hug.
"Sorry," he said – still louder than he needed to, but a lot quieter. "You've got to come see this." Without further ado, he grabbed my wrist and practically dragged me across the lab to his workstation. On the microscope's screen, the small globs that were supposedly some sort of spectral mitochondria were shivering and shifting.
"Phantom," I shivered a little when he said that name, "and I have been working on this experiment to create a ghost battery. Look!" He tapped the screen with one of his huge fingers. "It's been nearly two days, and the things are still alive! Phantom," at the name I shifted a little away from him, my wrist still firmly caught in his grasp, "didn't think we were ever going to pull it off. He said that we wouldn't ever be able to keep something dead, well, alive." My eyes narrowed and a little cold bubble burst in my chest – I had said that.
"I can't wait until Phantom comes back!" He was looking excitedly around the room, ignoring me. I was glowering at the small screen, more bubbles of frustration popping inside of me with his every word. "He and I have so many experiments that we need to do! I hope that Phantom…"
That was it; I couldn't take it any more. "I hate Phantom!" I suddenly yelled, ignoring the startled look in my father's eyes and yanking my hand out of his grasp. I knew I was acting childish, but I needed to get this frustrated rage out of me. I wanted to throw something, destroy things, terrorize… but I didn't. I settled for an inarticulate scream of fury. Everything they did was with Phantom, not with their own son. Why couldn't they see me for once?
"Danny!" Mom snapped, "Stop this right now."
"Why?" I seethed. "All I ever hear is ghosts, ghosts, ghosts, ghosts, and more ghosts. And now it's only Phantom. Why don't you go and adopt him."
She shook her head. "You are being ridiculous, Danny."
"You don't know the half of it," I muttered darkly.
I could see it in her eyes. She wanted to say something, anything. She wanted to make me feel better. I crossed my arms and backed away. I didn't want to feel better. I was miserable and lonely and that's exactly how I wanted to feel.
"Leave me alone!" I snarled when she took a step towards me, her hand raised.
She stopped, tears sparkling in her eyes. "Danny," she murmured.
I didn't want to listen. Wrapping myself in my frustrated anger, I turned and stormed out of the kitchen. "Just leave me alone," I said, not caring if she heard me or not.
Reaching my room, I sank onto my bed and glared at the door, daring it to open and for my blue jump-suited mother to walk through. I wanted her to stomp into the room and yell at me for acting like a five-year-old. I wanted her to open that door and hug me and tell me everything was going to be alright. I wanted her to leave me alone to wallow in my misery.
After a few minutes, my rock-like glare softened and my gaze fell to the hands sitting in my lap. Despite my best efforts, my anger was draining away, leaving something odd in its place. As tears trickled down my cheeks, the last of that heated emotion vanished. It left me with nothing inside. It was a dark, blank shadow that curled up in my gut and swirled around my heart. I could feel it inside of me; hollow and tiring.
It was scary, this lack of feeling. It made me wish for that hint of anger again… the frustrated loneliness that was swallowing me earlier. For a second, I tried to will up those emotions and that feeling of life. But in the end, I was too empty and tired to care.
So I just closed my eyes.
--Jack
I watched my son stomp his way up the stairs. I couldn't quite figure out why Danny had come down into the lab in the first place, but I had noticed the odd look that had been on his face when he'd first come down here. He'd glanced around at all the experiments almost like he knew what they were about. That was silly, of course, because Danny hadn't been down in the lab in weeks.
For a second I stared at the ceiling, wondering if I should go after him. He'd seemed really upset – a lot more than I'd put down as normal teenage behavior. I had the nagging feeling that the father-son bonding book I'd been trying to read would say I should go say something adult-ish. I've never been very good at being an adult, but I'd be willing to give it a try.
I glanced over at Maddie. She was biting her lip and watching the stairs with an anxious look in her eyes. It looked like she was about to cry. "Mads," I said softly. She looked up at me. "He'll be alright."
"Are you sure?" she asked. She walked up to me and wrapped her arms around me, leaning her cheek against my chest. "I feel so awful, Jack. I promised that I'd do something with him, a picnic or go to a movie or something, and I keep putting it off. He's probably so lonely… And I don't know what to do…"
Patting her on the back, I whispered, "We'll figure something out. We're good at figuring things out." I smiled down at her, fighting back a surprised flinch when I saw the tears in her eyes. I touched her chin, looking her in the eyes. "I promise."
A small smile touched her face. "I love you, Jack."
I hugged her tightly to me, my mind running around in circles. How in the world was I going to help my son? I had no idea what was wrong with him.
--Danny
I don't really remember the next few days. I spent it in a blur of dazed sleep and waking dreams. Nothing had color, nothing had life. I drifted from my computer to the TV to the bed and back to the computer. I didn't want to do anything. In the end, I think I may have settled for sitting by the window and staring at nothing.
The anger never came back. The hatred was gone for good. I couldn't feel anything. The desire to feel those harsh emotions was just a distant memory. It was better this way – this blank slate. I didn't have to think about anything.
I do remember one dinner. I had been dragged out of my room and made to sit at the kitchen table. Pushing my food around on my plate, I never said a word. I spent most of the dinner wondering when the last time I had eaten something was. I spent the rest of it deciding I didn't really care. I wasn't hungry.
Dad talked throughout most of dinner, as usual. He was worried about Phantom. Apparently Phantom hadn't been to the lab the past few days. I couldn't muster up the energy for either an eye roll or a sour glare in his direction.
Finally I was excused from dinner, even though I hadn't eaten anything. "Danny?" Mom said before I could get out of the chair.
I looked over in her direction. I tipped my head slightly to the side, waiting.
"Are you okay?"
I contemplated that for a second. No, I decided. I wasn't okay. A small shiver of surprise traveled up my back at the lack of emotion this revelation caused. I wasn't okay… and I didn't care. I didn't care about me, I didn't care about the missing ghosts, and I really didn't care what my parents thought of my alter-ego. In the end, I just nodded to answer my mom's question. Explaining why I wasn't okay would take too much work. I wanted to go lie down in my bed.
She came over and looked me straight in the eyes. "You sure?" she asked softly.
I nodded again, standing up.
"I'm here. If you want to talk," she said.
I walked slowly back up the steps. Behind me, Mom was talking to Dad. She was telling him how she missed my smile. I hesitated in front of the mirror at the top of the steps. Gazing into its murky depths, I attempted to smile.
I sighed. I looked even worse with that fake smile than without it. Pushing my hands against my eyes, I decided that I needed to make a plan to get over this.
Later. For now I was going to go take a nap.
--Danny
I stepped out of the shadows of the lab and walked over to mom's side. She looked up, brightening when she saw me. "Phantom." She smiled.
I pulled the comforting blanket of that which is "Phantom" around me. I let his confident, powerful personality take over, but even that couldn't banish the pervasive emptiness completely. I smiled slightly at her. I knew that it didn't reach my eyes. "What's up?"
"Where have you been?"
"Busy." I looked around the lab.
Mom walked over a put a hand on my arm. She looked at me carefully. "Are you okay?"
I felt a cold finger travel down my neck. She had asked me the exact same question in the exact same tone last night at dinner. "I'm fine," I answered. Her eyes never left mine, as if she didn't quite believe me.
"Ghost!" Dad called enthusiastically as he tramped down the stairs. He grabbed my arm and yanked me across the lab. "The test results on the cellular ectoplasm are done!" Dad dumped me into a chair and yanked out a tray full of Petri dishes to shove under my nose.
Mustering up a smile, I gazed down at the goop in the trays. "Wonderful," I said, trying to sound excited. I must have failed miserably because Mom's hand dropped onto my shoulder.
"Are you sure you're okay?" she asked.
"I'm just tired, is all." I looked away from her, my breath catching in my throat. This is where she confronts me about lying, and demands to know what's wrong. She'll force me to tell her everything. Deep inside of me, the hollowness curled a bit deeper, waiting.
"Okay," she said softly, backing off. I glanced over my shoulder, eyes widening in surprise.
"That's it? Just okay?" The words slipped out of my mouth before I thought about it. I cringed, waiting for the answer.
She smiled at me. "You're not my son, if you say you're okay, then…" she trailed off, but her eyes conveyed the concern she felt for me. "But if you wanted to talk, I'm here for you."
As she turned away, another question flew out from between my lips. "What if I was your son?"
Mom hesitated, looking down at the invention in her hands. "You're not," she finally said. "And you won't ever be."
I spun around in the chair, letting the world spin crazily for a while. It's a real shame that ghosts can't get dizzy. It might have chased away the empty feeling for a few minutes. Besides, I thought harshly, that's not why I asked. I don't want you to adopt me. Would you just say 'okay' if you knew I was your son?
Suddenly, my spinning was stopped. Mom was standing right in front of me, staring into my emerald eyes, holding the chair firmly in her hands. "Phantom," she said softly, "you're a good kid. But you've got your own parents, and you're a ghost. You're not ever going to be part of my family."
I blinked up at her. "I know," I muttered darkly. The blackness in the pit of my stomach spread a bit farther. For some reason, the idea that she could never accept me as part of her family didn't hurt as much as I though it should have. Maybe it was that soul-eating shadow locked inside of me.
We gazed at each other for a moment. I could feel the crushing ache of her pronouncement like a distant bell against my brain. Her eyes glittered in the lights from the nearby Ghost Portal. "Are you going to be okay?" she asked quietly.
"Yeah," I whispered. I wrenched my eyes away from hers and studied my fingers instead. "I'm good."
She backed up a step. "I've got an experiment all ready to run, do you want to help?"
I glanced up at her for just a moment before staring down at my fingers again. Mom was smiling at me, wanting to make me feel better. I sighed. The tired, hollowness was creeping back through me – not even Phantom could hold it off forever. I didn't want to be down here anymore. "No, I have to go."
Her hand touched my shoulder. "Come back tomorrow when you're feeling better, alright?"
I nodded distantly, then vanished.
--Maddie
I couldn't really focus on my experiment after Phantom left. For decades I'd been under the impression that ghosts didn't really feel emotions; they just were echoes of life and felt just the faintest reverberations of our emotions. But then I'd looked into his eyes…
The small test tube slipped out of my fingers and rolled across the table. I grabbed for it before it could fall on the floor and carefully examined it for cracks as I mentally chastised myself. Why was I feeling this way about Phantom? Yes, there was no doubt that I'd come to see the young ghost as more than just a glob of post-human consciousness, but he was just a ghost. I shouldn't have any more connection to him than I had to one of Jazz's friends.
I'd only known him for a few weeks, I argued sourly and carefully measured out some saline acid solution. He couldn't have any hold over me. There was no way he'd worked his way into my heart in such a short time. I was a scientist and he was my subject – that was it.
But I knew that wasn't true. When I'd looked into his eyes just before he'd disappeared, my own heart had screamed at me to do something. I'd wanted to hold him and comfort him and take back everything I'd said that had made him look so defeated. That was no reaction a scientist would give a subject… it was even barely the reaction of a woman to a hurt child. The intensity of the emotion that had gripped on me was more like a mother to her son.
Was it possible that I'd started to see Phantom as one of my own children? He looked so much like Danny that maybe I was…
I shook my head sharply to get the thought out of my head. Focusing on the titration, I tried stop thinking about Phantom. I was not his mother and I needed to say what I'd said. He'd been hurt, but he'd get over it. Next time I saw him I'd make sure he was alright.
"Mads," Jack said softly, jerking me out of my musings. I looked down at the beaker and noted that it had lost its pinkish color long ago. I'd ruined it. Biting back a sigh, I glanced up at my husband. He was watching me with concern in his expressive eyes. "You okay?"
I nodded. "I'm fine, I was just thinking."
A grin flickered onto his face. "I've been thinking too!" he proclaimed as if it was a huge coincidence. "I think I've figured out what to do about Danny."
My head skittered in a new direction, causing my heart to skip a beat. Danny. My depressed and angry son. "What?"
"He should come down and help tomorrow, like Phantom's been doing."
I blinked at him in confusion. "How will that help? He hates being down here. He made that more than clear yesterday."
Jack nodded, his grin never fading. "I figure that Phantom always has fun down here, and you've got to admit that Phantom and Danny seem a lot alike, so Danny'll have fun down here too. We've just got to force him down here long enough for him to realize it."
I bit back a small smile at Jack's simple explanation. That was so like him – everything had uncomplicated reasoning and the simplest of solutions. What fixed one thing would fix another. Although he was right about the fact that Phantom and Danny having a lot in common, I wasn't too sure that Danny would find working in the lab nearly as interesting as Phantom did. "He's fifteen, Jack. We can't force him to come down here."
"Sure we can! I bet I can still pick him up and carry him down here. Besides, I've even got an experiment all set up for him to help with," Jack babbled on, "with those energized mitochondrial cells we created a few days ago. I think we can get them to hold charge this time."
"That sounds like fun." I picked up my beaker full of neutralized ectoplasmic alkalines and walked over to dump it into the sink. "Yeah, that sounds like it just might work," I whispered to myself. "At least it'll get Danny out of his room."
I brightened slightly. Danny wasn't going to talk to us, but there was a chance that Phantom would show up tomorrow. Maybe Danny would open up to someone his own age.
As I pulled a beaker of glowing liquid out of a warming drawer, a snort of pure disbelief made it out of me. Who would have believed that I'd want a ghost to be talking to my son?
--Danny
I wandered downstairs later that night, a half-thought to get something to eat crossing my mind. Curled up together on the couch in the living room, my parents were watching some movie. I hesitated in the doorway, watching them. Mom was leaning against Dad with a contented smile on her face, the lights from the TV making her eyes glitter.
I just stood there, gazing across a picture of the perfect family. They were happy with their lives. Their wonderfully human, normal lives. A life that would never accept a ghost.
Deep down, underneath the darkness invading my tired mind, I knew that it wasn't really true. If they knew that I was Phantom, they would accept me. But at the time, I couldn't fathom the difference. Mom had said that she never would let Phantom be part of her perfect family, and that pronouncement was still echoing through me head.
I closed my eyes, curling my arms around my stomach as I listened to animated sounds of the movie. For a brief heartbeat, the hollow feeling retreated, my mind churning back up to gear. The pain and the ache of everything that was happening slammed into my brain. Chocking back a small cry, I glanced back up at my parents.
Why can't you see my pain? Why didn't you follow me yesterday and force me to tell you want's wrong? Why won't you help me?
The room was silent except for the crashings of the movie and a brief chortle from my dad. Emotions roiled through me, thrilling and painful after the days of deadness. Why don't you care? Why don't you notice me, standing here?
My mouth opened to talk, wanting to spill all these emotions out. I wanted nothing more than to be done with this, to be back to my old self. I wanted to be happy again. I wanted to smile, I really did. My throat clogged up with the desire to feel again, to truly be alive.
For that moment, I was going to tell them everything. For that moment, I didn't care whether or not they would accept me; I just wanted to not feel so tired anymore. For that moment, the world stood still.
But then the emptiness was back, swirling in my mind. The depressing, heavy feeling returned, closing my mouth. The blackness invaded me more thoroughly then ever. Words died on my tongue.
I'm fifteen; I can handle it on my own. I don't need their help. Glancing once more over at the picture-perfect family that would never accept me, I turned away. I'll think of something. I'll get over this.
Behold the price of silence.
Chapter 3 - End Game up next.
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I hope you're really enjoying this twisted... mess. :D
Thanks for reading! Another update tomorrow!
-Cori