Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom.
Summary: Faulty memories are sure to lead to some mistakes...
Mistaken
The boy wandered the abandoned streets in a daze.
Thunder boomed in the sky, while the heavens emptied their entire store of rain onto the lonely figure.
Tired eyes scanned the slick, wet roads and aimlessly followed signs into more dark neighborhoods. Stumbling up to one of the houses, the boy grabbed at the door and struggled desperately with the doorknob, but it remained stubbornly locked like the one before... and the one before that.
The boy sighed and moved away from the door. He shook his dripping hair out of his eyes, but then hissed when the sudden movement caused the wound on his head to send sharp pains shooting through his skull.
Bringing up both arms to clutch at his aching head, the boy desperately wished that he could remembered where he had gotten the wound.
The boy looked around the dark, deserted, and scarily unfamiliar street and made a quick amendment. Maybe remembering who he was and where he was a little more important.
Forcing himself to move again, the boy trudged on through the hostile winds and rain until he stumbled onto another street.
The boy looked up and furrowed his brows. He'd seen this street before... No, he knew this street. A weary grin forced itself on the drawn face and the boy changed directions toward the street he vaguely remembered. For the first time since waking up facedown in the mud with blood streaming from his forehead, the boy felt a small, yet warm sense of familiarity.
Stumbling quickly turned to a slow jog and then a full out run as the boy raced down the sidewalk.
Relief soaked into his bones as the feeling of being lost started to melt away.
Turning the corner, the boy almost whooped aloud when he saw the house.
It was his he was sure!
Pounding up the stairs, the boy tried the doorknob only to find it locked like all the others.
The boy frowned. This was his house he was sure of it.
The throbbing pain in his head started to return as the brief bout of adrenaline slowly faded.
This had to be his house. The boy stared desperately at the brick building.
A light shown in the corner upstairs room and the boy smiled despite his headache. Someone inside could let him in!
He started pounding on the door for all he was worth.
He was almost home and certainly was not going to let a door stop him.
A silhouette moved behind the drawn curtain and only moments later the boy heard the door being unlocked.
The door swung upon to reveal a red-haired woman in a bathrobe and a puzzled expression that said that she definitely was not expecting visitors at this late hour.
The fuzzy mind of the boy released another memory from its confines and he instinctively knew this woman.
"Mom," the boy choked out as he rushed to embrace the woman.
His tiredness and pain evaporated into feelings of solace and belonging and even his incomplete memory could not keep him from drinking in the woman's presence like ambrosia.
Underneath the wet embrace, the woman stiffened, but her detached reaction went unnoticed by the boy.
The woman's initial response had been to lunge for the nearest ectogun, but it had died somewhere in between the time the boy had called him his mother and his unexpected hug.
Still tightly trapped in the arms of her declared enemy, the woman looked down at the battered head of white hair and the wound that still oozed a green and red substance.
And for the first time in her life, Madeline Fenton had no idea about what to do with the clearly mistaken ghost.
For all you readers in USA, Happy Thanksgiving!
~Bluesky21543
