Warning: Lots of angst and depression here. Please consider before reading. But it's still very definitely a 'T' rating. ;)

Lo siento for the delay… among the other harsh things happening in my life at the moment, I hated the middle of the chapter, so I deleted it… and then was stuck having to rewrite it. And I had problems. Still don't like it, but I'll stop messing with it. Maybe I'll rewrite it when I have nothing better to do... but it's good for now… even thought it's shorter than I wanted it to be.

In The Way
A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

Chapter 3 – End Game
Three Days before the Prologue

Danny

"Honey," Mom said at breakfast the next morning, "you're going to work in the lab with us today."

I opened my mouth to talk, but she beat me to it.

"Now, I know you don't like all this ghost stuff, but we're worried about you spending so much time locked in your room by yourself. It's not healthy."

Silently, I stared down at my waffles, wondering. I didn't really want to work down in the lab, but a tiny corner of the hollowness retreated at the thought of actually doing something with my parents. Me doing something… not Phantom.

"We've got a great experiment all set up," she went on, apparently not noticing the strange expression on my face as I grappled with the odd desire to actually run to the lab and work next to them. "We've been doing some work with cellular ectoplasm, and we need to find out if it is a viable alternative to the electrically energized ectoplasm with use in our weapons." She turned and sent me a sharp look with one raised eyebrow. "By the way, you don't have an option. You are going to come down with us today."

"Alright," I muttered, trying my hardest not to sound slightly excited about the idea of spending the day with my parents. As the thought settled into my mind, the darkness retreated a bit more, and the smallest of smiles filtered through the tiredness in my mind and settled onto my face.

She smiled at me. "Finish your breakfast and meet us downstairs, okay sweetie?"

I nodded as she dropped her plate into the sink and headed downstairs to join Dad. I pushed my partly-eaten waffles around my syrupy plate for a few moments before standing up and dumping them into the trash. I really wasn't hungry. Setting my plate into the kitchen sink, I stared out into the summer day.

For a quiet moment, I leaned against the counter and watched the people strolling by on the street in the sunlight. Their contented looks seemed almost alien to me. To them, most likely, this was a wonderful summer. Nobody had tried to take over the world, kidnap anybody, or go on an obsessive rampage through town.

They were happy.

I shook my head, finally turning around to stare at the door that led into the Fenton laboratory. It was an absolutely beautiful summer day with no ghosts on the horizon and no worries. But I couldn't muster up even a small smile that felt anywhere near real.

Finally, with a shrug, I pushed away from the counter and headed downstairs. For the first time ever, Danny Fenton was going to do an experiment with his parents.

Danny

I sat down in my normal chair without even thinking about it, glancing up at Dad. He looked at me weirdly for a long few seconds before shrugging and grinning. "You ready, Danny?"

"What are we doing?" I asked, even though I knew very well what we were doing. By this point, I could probably have run the experiment by myself.

"We're going to run some tests on these spectral mitochondrial samples. If our theory holds true, then we should be able to charge them with energy and then be able to harvest it back again after a few minutes." Dad pushed a pair of gloves over towards me and dropping into his own chair. "Should be easy."

I nodded vaguely, my eyes flickering over the samples Dad had carted over. In this weird, hollow state, I felt kind of detached from the world. Yanking on my gloves, I tapped my finger on the tabletop and waited.

He set one of the samples in front of me and dropped the basket of nine-volt batteries between us. "Watch, Danny, and be amazed." He grabbed two small wires, stripped the plastic sheathes off the ends, and then fished a battery out of the basket. Carefully he held an end of each wire to the battery and stuck the other two ends into the goop.

Nothing happened.

I quietly raised an eyebrow, not really surprised. Ectoplasm is a wonderful conductor of spectral energy… but acted like a horrible electrical conductor. We'd figured that out weeks ago. I grabbed two wires of my own and stripped them, holding the ends to the terminals of the small battery. The only difference was that I twisted the other ends of the wires together, completing the circuit. I then stuck the end of the triangle-shape the wires made into the ectoplasm. Volts raced through the wires, the greenish goo drawing in the power and starting to glow.

"Danny…" my dad trailed off, looking at me with that weird expression on his face. "Where'd you learn to do that?"

Shrugging, I pulled the wires back out of the ectoplasm and dropped the battery onto the table. If I'd been feeling more like myself, I might have grown pale at the thought of giving away this big of a clue to my identity. As it was, I just crossed my arms, set them on the table, and rested my chin on them, staring at the glowing dish of goop.

"Um…" He seemed really off balance, glancing from me to the experiment a number of times. "Now we need to… we need to time it." He thrust a stopwatch at me. "Five minutes, okay?"

I blinked down at the stopwatch expressionlessly. "Okay."

Starting the stopwatch and watching the seconds flicker past, I sighed. Was I happy right now? Sad? No words really seemed to apply. Apathetic, maybe, with a large dose of tired and a tiny bit of frustration. I glanced over at my mom – she was carefully studying a sample under a microscope. A satisfied grin was firmly fixed onto her face.

I really did want to get over this… whatever this was. I couldn't ever remember being this exhausted and uncaring, and it was draining. It was tiring being this hollow and it was frankly depressing watching my parents be worried about me all the time. Everything was so much better when they could just exist to run their experiments and trust that the world would turn without their involvement. I wished I could just wave a magic wand and get suddenly better.

"Time," I said softly when the stopwatch finally beeped at me, drawing me out of my silent reverie. Stifling a yawn, I let my eyes drift almost closed.

"Here," Dad mumbled and handed me a small meter with a bunch of wires sticking out. "See if you can draw out the energy, okay?" He flipped through the directions, not seeming to notice the confused look growing on my face. He pointed to a few dials and wires, quickly explaining the reason for them.

Setting the device down on the table, he turned around to get back to his own experiment. "Um… Dad?" I asked cautiously. He glanced over his shoulder at me. "Can you show me that again?"

"Which part?" He stood up and walked over to me, resting his arm on the back of my chair.

I picked up the strange device, fighting down another yawn. "All of it."

"You didn't get any of it?" He sounded almost hurt and he grabbed the wire-covered invention.

"I've never done this before," I whispered, feeling the faintest tinge of irritation growing in my stomach. "I don't know what I'm doing."

"Like this," he said, showing me how to do the experiment for a second time at full speed. My brain, struggling to stay awake and process just normal stuff, didn't have a chance to keep up. Before, I would have caught on to most of it. But today…

I shook my head, watching the frustration build on my dad's face. Of course, he was used to his little lab rat who picked things up right away. Yes, that lab rat was me, but I couldn't concentrate with this strange cold feeling inside of me.

Quietly, as I glanced up into Dad's eyes, I reached for that cold spot in my mind. It'd all be over in a split-second, I thought as I traced around it with a mental finger. I'd be Phantom and they'd… they'd… A million thoughts burst into my head. They'd accept me, they'd reject me, they'd love me anyways, they'd ask me a million questions, they'd ground me…

And all it would take would be one small thought. And all this would be over.

My whole body trembled for a second at that thought. This torturous hollowness could be over and done with.

"Pay attention, Danny," my father rumbled, grabbing the pieces one last time. "Phantom would have had this by now."

"Doubt it," I murmured, wondering at the strange feeling of tears prickling in my eyes. He'd shown me three times, and I didn't have the faintest clue what to do. But I fixed a fake smile on my face and nodded when he was done. I could figure out what to do on my own… probably.

He didn't look at all convinced, but he backed off, turning to his own experiment.

I grabbed the small device, studying it. Those had to be the input wires that got stuck into the charge ectoplasm to draw the energy out. That was the battery I was hopefully going to charge. This switch was… I blinked at it for a few moments. This switch was hopefully unimportant. Along with that wire attached to the side. And the small dial.

"Here goes nothing," I mouthed, dropping the two wires into the green goop. A small light on the device lit up, a soft humming sound filling the room. After a moment, my forehead started to wrinkle. The wires were starting to glow… the device was getting hot…

"Danny!" Dad said sharply, grabbing the device out of my hand and yanking the wires out of the charged goop. "You're going to blow a circuit! I told you to monitor the current so we don't fry the transducers. They're expensive."

I stared at him for a second blankly, going over his hurried instructions in my head. Yeah, he probably had mentioned something about amps and milliamps. "I'm trying, okay?"

"No, you're not." Dad pushed his hand through his hair, standing the short hairs on end. "You know how to do this, Ghost…" he broke off suddenly and shook his head. "Danny." Closing his eyes, he dropped into the chair next to me and sighed. "Danny, I'm sorry. I keep thinking you're that ghost. You sound so much like him and you look so much like him…" A weird look crossed his face and he shot me a glance. "I just keep thinking you should know what he does… does that make sense?"

Silently, I shook my head. My head was starting to hurt and I wanted to go upstairs and go back to sleep. Instead, I picked up the small device, quietly turning the dial to adjust for the stronger current, and stuck it back in the goop.

My mind drifted back to my dad's quick speech. He was putting things together, trying to figure out what was going on. He kept thinking I was Phantom… he kept treating me like I was Phantom… I wondered blandly how much longer before he put it together.

He was rather dense and oblivious, but he was really smart when he wanted to be. I've often overheard Mom talking about how he can make leaps of logic like nobody she'd ever met. He was really good at taking two and two and a mystery number and figuring out the answer was supposed to be seven.

The only thing that was keeping him from figuring out that I was Phantom was the minor fact that I was human and Phantom was a ghost. When someone's looking for a connection between the two, it takes an inhuman leap of illogic to be able to come up with 'half-ghost, half-human superhero'.

It wasn't until the device in my hand actually began to sputter and smoke that I realized something was wrong. I dropped the rapidly heating device, listening to it skitter on the hard tabletop. "Danny?" my dad asked, reaching over to grab the tiny invention, staring down at it with frustration growing in his eyes. With the amount of smoke, I'd probably destroyed all the transducers. "You didn't listen to me about the current?"

I dropped my eyes to the table, fixing my gaze on the vaguely glowing goop. It wasn't so much that I hadn't listened, just that I had been so wrapped up in my own thoughts that I couldn't concentrate.

My dad sighed; a long, drawn-out, and heavy breath. "Danny…" I could hear him hesitate. He had no idea what to say to me.

My fingers curled on the tabletop and I dropped my chin back down onto arms, closing my eyes. I was tired, my head ached from all the thinking, and I really just wanted to be left alone. That, and I didn't want to look over at my father. I really didn't want to see the disappointment in his eyes.

"Danny," Dad sighed again, confusion sparkling in his eyes when he looked over at me sitting in Phantom's chair. "Danny," he continued, frustration evident in his voice. "Danny, you're not really helping. You're just getting in the way."

Even though the hollowness in my stomach was curled around my emotions, I couldn't help the small wince that went through me. Was that all I was? In the way?

Maybe if I was Phantom…

"You can go upstairs if you want, sweetie, you don't have to stay down here," Mom said distractedly, examining the results of her test.

You never would have said that if I was Phantom…

You'd love me if I was Phantom…

I sat there for a long moment. I swallowed hard, stood up, and walked over to the stairs. Stopping to look back, I saw that my mom was still busy at work, my dad staring down at the invention I had fried with an odd look on his face. "Alright," I whispered.

I don't know if they heard me.

Frankly, I don't know if they cared I was gone.

I do know that I didn't care if I was gone.

Jack

"Maddie?" I asked, my voice quiet.

"What?" She glanced up at me, pushing her goggles up onto her forehead at my confused look.

I had no idea how to phrase my thoughts. There was just that nagging something poking the back of my brain. The universe was trying to tell me I had just figured out something really important. I just wish I knew what.

"Danny…" I shook my head, starting over. "Did Danny seem a little strange to you?"

"How so?"

"He… he knew what we were doing." I grabbed a rag and quietly started to clean up the mess Danny had left on the floor, my mind racing. "It was like he'd done all this before…"

Maddie knelt down next to me, her hand dropping on top of mine. "How could he have, Jack? The only two people down here have been you and me. Danny hasn't been here."

"And Phantom," I whispered, calling the ghost by his real name for the first time. The enigmatic ghost that looked just like my son. I sighed, my brain refusing to put the pieces together into something that made sense.

"Danny's not a ghost, he's depressed." She wandered back across the lab, her normally smiling mouth twisted at the corners as she struggled to figure out what to do about our son. "We shouldn't have sent him back upstairs… Maybe we should go get him… Or should we leave him alone for a bit?"

Carefully dropping the remains of the beaker into the trash, I knew that the universe was probably laughing at me.

"Danny." I shook my head sourly. "Phantom. Danny. Phantom." A tiny little flutter slid through my stomach. I knew I was close, but the pieces just would not fit together.

I sincerely hoped whoever was laughing at me was having a really good time.

Danny

That had been three days ago. They hadn't talked to me since. Yeah, they said things in passing, but they didn't really talk. Their minds were always elsewhere.

Each time they walked past me, the darkness in my mind grew a little bit. I wasn't fighting it anymore. What was the point? I was just in the way.

I was sitting at the kitchen table, staring vacantly down at my plate of scrambled eggs. They were cold. Mom had made them hours earlier, and then hadn't bothered to wake me up to enjoy them when they were warm. She wouldn't have done that for Phantom, she cared about Phantom. She would have woken him up to eat breakfast as a family.

Never once did it cross my mind that my mom might have made me a homemade breakfast and then decided to let me sleep in, fighting my dad over the leftovers so that she could save some for me.

I stabbed down, scraping my fork across the plate. What use was I? I was just their son. Not their stupid lab partner. They didn't care about me. Maybe if I was Phantom…

"Morning, sweetie," Mom said as she came up the stairs. "I heard you get up."

I nodded. She walked over to the sink and started filling a glass of water, setting one of her stupid inventions on the counter. I felt words collecting in my throat, wanting to be said, a whole conversation of words. But I just sat there, silent, mushing my cold eggs around on my plate.

Mom stopped the water and came over to the table, tipping her head as she examined me. I glared down at the plate of eggs. "Do you want to do something today?"

"Like what?" I asked.

"We have those big test results to go over today. You want to help?"

I froze. "No," I hissed. That was the last thing I wanted to do.

She sighed. "Okay." She was silent for a minute. "What's wrong, Danny?"

"Nothing."

"Something is wrong."

I looked up at her, the shadows that were trying to swallow me tearing at me heart. "Nothing is wrong. I'm just…" I trailed off. I couldn't say it. I couldn't say that I wanted them to love me again. I couldn't confess how much it hurt that they had abandoned me. All I wanted was for them to look at me. Pay attention to me.

"You're lonely," she finished softly.

I nodded mutely. I couldn't think of any better excuse.

"Mads!" Dad called from the lab, "The results are done!"

Mom, her love of science showing through to the end, glanced away from me. I followed her gaze to the lab door. She wanted to go. She was practically vibrating with the desire to know the answers to those stupid tests.

But she didn't go. "Sweetie," she said softly. She walked over to me and placed her arm around me, giving me a quick hug. "We haven't abandoned you."

I looked up at her, a small spark of hope building in my chest. I could feel it burning away the darkness that had swallowed me. This was it. This was the end of the pain.

"We'll go to the movies tonight, alright honey? Just us three." She smiled brilliantly.

Happiness chocking my throat, I couldn't speak. I just nodded. She was here, talking to me, wanting me. Things would be all right after all. They could help me.

She squeezed me tightly for a second. "Perfect. It's a plan." Then she stood up, reaching over to grab the invention she'd set on the counter.

And walked away to check those lab results.

And left me alone.

Again.

Pushing away from the table, I felt my heart finally shatter into a million pieces. I raced upstairs, knowing that, like poor Humpty Dumpty, my spirit would never be put back together again. It hurt.

Maddie

I sat down on the bottom stair, carefully turning on the invention I'd taken up into the kitchen with me. It was kind of like a camera… only it took a picture of spectral creatures. It was the only way that Jack and I got a look at some of the weaker ghosts.

Jack sank onto the stair next to me, leaning over as I flipped through the pictures on the tiny LCD screen. Finally, I reached the one that had just been taken. There was the kitchen, the table, the door, and even a blurry bit of myself. Danny was sitting at the kitchen table, looking grumpy and disheveled.

Seemingly transposed over his messy black hair and sad blue eyes was another image; one of a depressed teenager that looked exactly the same as our son, only with white hair and green eyes.

I couldn't move; I didn't know what to think. There was just no way… it wasn't possible… no… not my son… no… Jack was right. Phantom and Danny were connected somehow… that explained the way they looked so much alike, sounded so much alike, acted so much alike… They were like some twisted form of twins... they were probably laughing about it behind my back, snickering at the fact that I was unable to figure it out, joking about the idea that I was hunting the reflection of my own son...

I needed to ask them a million questions, I wanted to scream and shout at them, but I still couldn't move. My fingers were clenched around the camera, my knuckled beginning to turn white.

Jack quietly took the camera out of my hands and pulled me to my feet, lead me up the stairs and sat me down on a kitchen chair.

To be concluded…

After reading this, my beta reader drove over an hour and a half to my new apartment to knock on my door, punch me (I've got a nice bruise on my shoulder, thanks very much), and then demanded the epilogue. Since I never got any sort of other reaction out of her as to this chapter, I'm not ENTIRELY sure how to take it. Did she like it? Did she hate it?

Just the epilogue next. It will tie back in to the prologue. Anybody notice how chapter one was one month before the prologue, chapter two was two weeks before the prologue, and chapter three was three days before the prologue? I just noticed it and that's just hilarious. I didn't even know I did that. :D

Muchas gracias to the people that sent me reviews! Oatilabacam-FFCC27, The dark and Evil PHANTOM, pwykersotz, Nonasuki-chan, kdm13, Chaos Dragon, southernstarshadow, Majestic Moon, AvatarKatara38, Joelpuppy, Kinoshita Kristanite, dizappearingirl, Kjikulu, Wildkat137, katiesparks, Rakahn, Devianta, Emerald Cloud, paulinaph, Sparky the Wonder Weasle, Mystitat, uula, FreakLevel27, Arabic Blessing, Invader Johnny, New Ghost Girl, Annab3ll3 L33, Esme Kalie Phantom, Anne Camp aka Obi-quiet, mazrad, Silver Shadowbreeze and StarsOf Twilight rock!!!

Unfortunately, I can't give out previews (it's too short), but all readers get digital warm fuzzies, and the random flamer will get tossed to my rabid and deadly leopard gecko. :D

Thanks for reading!!

-Cori