It was Jazz's turn to drive after lunch. Maddie appreciated just taking the time to think. One more college tour and then back home. One more tour, and she would get a chance to talk to Danny. To face her son. After…everything.

She couldn't avoid it any longer, really. She almost wished she could, but she couldn't. She felt horrible. The things she'd said, the things she'd done, the things she'd….

Actions spoke louder than words. She'd as good as tried to murder her son, her sweet baby boy. All because of her blindness. Her ignorance. Her refusal to contemplate what she'd thought an impossible option.

Danny Fenton and Danny Phantom were one and the same. He'd told her, but she hadn't believed him. She'd stood by what she'd thought she'd known: that all ghosts lie. That they tricked people into thinking they were harmless before taking advantage of them. That Phantom had managed to convince Danny of something so…so….

But Phantom, as he'd insisted, wasn't like the other ghosts. He was different. He wasn't a proper ghost at all. He was just…a half ghost.

As impossible as it was, as much as her mind opposed the mere thought of acceptance, she couldn't ignore her heart—or her gut—any longer.

"It was just an accident."

How could she have been so blind? How could she not have seen it, even when it was right in front of her? How long had she ignored what was right under her nose and been blind to the plight of her only son?

"Since I got the Fenton Portal working."

Too long. It had gone on for far too long. And she didn't even know how to address it. How to stop it. How to apologize.

Or how to crush that tiny voice in the back of her head that reminded her exactly how great an opportunity this was. A brilliant breakthrough, an amazing discovery.

It was almost a shame she had no intentions of telling anyone.

Only…Jack. She couldn't not tell Jack. But she couldn't tell him, either. It wasn't her place. Jazz had been right about that. It was Danny's secret to tell, not theirs. But they'd kept enough secrets in their family. This one could have torn it apart. If they had ever managed to catch Phantom off guard, to do even a tenth of the things they'd wanted to do….

Oh, God….

"I'm sorry, Mom."

How often had they cursed Danny Phantom for evading their grasp? How many times had they sworn to rip him apart molecule by molecule once they caught him? How many times had they cursed his existence, thinking him nothing more than scum, a filthy piece of ectoplasm? How many times had they cheerfully assured Danny and Jazz that all ghosts were emotionless, that they were all evil, that it didn't matter how much pain their inventions might cause, that they didn't even care about that?

How many times had they ignored their children whenever Danny or Jazz had tried to suggest otherwise?

Maddie closed her eyes and tried to figure out what she knew. Danny had, out of what he probably thought was necessity, kept a huge secret from them; an entire part of his life, in fact. Jazz had, by her own words, found out on her own, and that had, no doubt, spurred her own fierce protectiveness of Phantom. And if Danny's close association with Sam and Tucker was anything to go by, they knew, too. Probably from the very beginning. And now she did, because she'd forced the answer out of him, the reason for his actions.

"I can't do this, Mom. I just…. I can't."

She hadn't listened when she'd been asked to stop. She'd pushed him. She'd forced his secret from him. In her own bout of protectiveness, of concern for her youngest child, she'd stripped away all the excuses and the lies he'd set up to protect himself. She'd as good as handed him an ultimatum: fess up or have a harder time hiding, because she'd make his life miserable until she knew the truth.

"It's you. You're hunting me like a ghost."

He would know. She'd hunted him before, and she certainly hadn't regretted it at the time.

So many things had crossed her mind in this past week, ever since she'd found that accursed, lie-defying 'on' button on the inside of the portal, right where Danny—who she'd thought had been overshadowed by Phantom—had said it would be. Though she hadn't admitted it to herself right away, she'd known right then that this wasn't overshadowing.

It was what followed, however—the more objective, painstaking analysis of Phantom's actions—that convinced her that what she'd once thought was ludicrous and impossible was merely improbable.

In her earlier fervour that defined her search for answers, she hadn't wanted to accept what she was starting to believe without further proof. It had been absurdly more comforting to believe that Phantom was overtaking Danny, that Phantom was still the epitome of evil like the rest of the ghosts and his only good points were traits he'd siphoned off from his connection with Danny, that the two were still separate entities that merely coexisted more closely than they had any right to. All of those could still be fixed, she'd thought. It might be difficult, but as long as Danny and Phantom were separate, she could make sure there was always a distance kept between them.

But on Monday, after a day and a half of feverish study, her instinct was already arguing with her logic. She'd rummaged around Jazz's room, found the scrapbook, and read it, cover to cover. Every newspaper clipping of Phantom, every magazine article, every personal note. She'd studied snapshots. Records of his growth. The lists Jazz had made, a timeline of Phantom's heroic acts and his blacker moments, though those had scribbled explanations beneath them. In Danny's handwriting, she remembered. Framed. Hypnotized. Misjudgements or overreactions or mistakes, blown out of proportion before a chance to correct them had arisen.

She'd compared it to her own notes about Phantom. The abnormally quick growth for a ghost, which she'd always attributed to him being younger than the others whose powers had already been established. But that explanation had never quite sat well with her, for if Phantom were a young ghost, his powers should not be coming so quickly, and if they did, he should be less skilled in using them. The fact that he tried to protect Amity Park had been curious, too, as was the fact that he did his best to protect all of the people in it.

Nothing quite made sense when she and Jack had tried to pinpoint Phantom's obsession. Whenever they thought they had it figured out, Phantom would do something that would surprise them. He had never followed any of the rules of ghosts like she'd expected. He'd always been an anomaly. He'd always been different, yet she'd stubbornly grouped him with the rest of the ghosts.

She'd never realized that her confusion stemmed simply the fact that she was seeing human qualities shining through in a ghost.

It wasn't just an amalgamation of human and ghost, she now knew. It was a fusion. Something that, once created, should not be separated.

"Danny and Phantom are more than just connected, Mom. You can't split them apart, so don't try."

That's all she'd done, though: split them apart. She'd thought she was decontaminating Danny, expelling all the excess ectoplasm that had accumulated in his system, dispelling all residual traces of Phantom's ecto-signature. She hadn't expected to break him into two pieces, to end up with two halves of the same whole.

Of course, between what Jazz had said and Danny had told her, she suspected it wasn't the first time it had happened, which was perhaps why it hadn't taken Danny very long to get back to normal.

Normal.

Normal had never been part of the Fenton family, and she'd always been happy to defy it. That was part of the reason she was drawn to Jack, and a large part of the reason she studied the paranormal. She'd never thought normal existed, personally. She'd always thought it was nothing more than an illusion, a fabrication.

She hadn't realized she'd been living her own illusion of normalcy until it had shattered.

My son is Danny Phantom.

She should have confronted him earlier this week, but she hadn't. She'd kept putting it off. Like Danny probably had, if he'd ever contemplated telling them. He had probably thought, until she'd pushed him to it, that it was too late to tell them. That he'd kept the secret too long. That he'd have to admit to more than just the fact that he was, somehow, impossibly, part ghost.

She couldn't really blame him, given some of the things they'd said.

Maddie sighed and opened her eyes. She'd have to talk to Danny. She knew that. She just didn't want to. She didn't know what to say. What could she say? For all she knew, he still thought she didn't suspect anything. Given her reaction to the truth, that wouldn't be surprising, either.

There was a sign coming up, and Maddie strained to catch a glimpse of it. She never had paid attention to where they were going next, and she wasn't sure how far it was.

AMITY PARK, the sign read. 48.

They were less than an hour away.

"Jazz?" Maddie said, rousing herself from her stupor. "Where are we going?"

"Home," Jazz answered, her gaze not wavering from the road.

Home? Already? That didn't make sense. "What about the last tour?"

"I cancelled it," Jazz explained. "This morning. After breakfast. I said I wasn't feeling well, and I apologized and rescheduled for next weekend. I would have cancelled the one this morning, too, if I hadn't thought it was too short of notice."

"You're sick?" Did she miss everything that happened to her children?

"I'm fine," Jazz said.

"Then why—?"

"You need to talk to Danny."

"Jazz—"

"Don't argue, Mom. You need to talk to him."

Jazz was right; she did pay attention. "I don't know what I should say," Maddie admitted.

"Tell him the truth," Jazz said matter-of-factly. "Tell him how you feel."

Her daughter, the budding psychologist. "It's not that simple, honey."

"It is that simple," Jazz countered. "It's just not necessarily easy to do."

"Jazz, you don't—"

"Danny will hear you out, Mom, whether you think he will or not. Just don't bring any weapons."

It was advice Jazz had given her before. This time, Maddie wouldn't dream of disregarding it. "How did you know?" Maddie asked after a moment.

"How did I know what?"

"That I…figured it out."

Jazz glanced over at her before turning back to face the road. "You figured it out a while ago, Mom," she said quietly. "After Danny told you, I knew it wouldn't take much. But I wasn't sure that you'd accepted it until you started asking me questions."

"But you didn't tell me. You kept pretending."

"I needed to be sure," Jazz replied. "Danny's been guarding his secret for a long time. I wasn't going to tell you unless I had to."

"Unless we caught him?"

Jazz didn't answer.

"Jazz," Maddie said, "last week, if I'd…. I nearly…. What if I had taken Phantom down to the lab once I had him, before I even knew Danny was missing, that he wasn't going to turn up after his English class was over? What if your father and I had…. We could've…."

"You didn't."

"But I would've."

"But you didn't," Jazz repeated. "Did you ever ask yourself why? You've been hunting the ghost boy since he turned up. Danny Phantom was the first ghost we saw. I mean, I wasn't much better than you back then. I was still refusing to see what I didn't believe in. I didn't even notice any of the strange going-ons surrounding the Lunch Lady's appearance because I was too wrapped up in my own thing. I didn't want to see it either, Mom, because I didn't want to believe. And then I opened my eyes. Just like you have now." She paused. "But something stopped you from dissecting Phantom the moment you caught him, Mom. What was it?"

"I thought he was connected to Danny," Maddie said after a moment. "I didn't want to risk it."

"That wouldn't stop you from studying him, from telling Dad you caught Danny Phantom. And it wasn't like you didn't later threaten to try to sever the connection between Phantom and Danny anyway. So what stopped you from taking that thermos down to the lab and opening it and studying the ghost that had eluded you for months?"

"I don't know," Maddie said. "I just…. I don't know." Jazz gave her another sidelong look before turning her attention back to the road, and Maddie knew why. Jazz didn't believe her.

Jazz was right, though. Something had stopped her. Something had made her keep Phantom's capture a secret, stopped her from telling Jack, to whom she normally told everything, and stopped her from doing what she'd wanted to do for months on end: study the ghost boy. Inviso-Bill. Danny Phantom. The ghost that didn't quite fit the mould, that ignored the usual criteria of a ghost, that belied her expectations.

Maddie knew what Jazz was getting at. Her first thought was to deny it, but she wasn't sure. She didn't know.

But whatever it was, it had stopped her from making the worst mistake of her life.

Danny had meant to get to bed early. He really had. But life had conspired against him, and it hadn't happened. Danny had had to run out on his dad once, when his ghost sense had gone off, but it had only been the Box Ghost and he hadn't been gone long. Actually, he wasn't even sure his dad had noticed.

Given that he'd fought ghosts in front of his dad before, while he was busy giving a lecture about ghosts and his inventions, that wasn't too surprising. Jack Fenton wasn't the most attentive person in the world.

That was probably why Danny had been so surprised his dad had practically cornered him and given him a speech he would've expected from his mother. Really, from Jack Fenton, that was surprising, given that it wasn't about ghosts.

But by midnight, Jack had finally caught Danny failing to stifle a yawn, and he'd admitted that it was perhaps best if they called it a night. Danny had dutifully said good night before carrying on with his usual bedtime routine, but he hadn't been in bed for five minutes before his ghost sense had gone off again. The culprit this time had been Technus, after some fancy new electronics, which had turned out to be older electronics to Danny.

Danny had tuned out Technus's latest plan after he'd heard something about 'world domination' and 'hip, new compact disc players, called CD players', figuring Technus's plan had been doomed before he'd even started.

It had still taken him a while to stuff Technus in the thermos, though. He was getting pretty good at using electronic equipment as a shield, and Danny always had better luck fighting him when he had Sam and Tucker as backup. Especially Tucker, when it came to Technus. But Technus, alone and easy to catch off guard while shouting out his plans, wasn't even close to the hardest ghost Danny had ever fought, and he could handle him without help.

Normally, at least, and this had counted as normally. Thankfully.

But it was still late enough, by the time Danny flew back to FentonWorks and changed back into Danny Fenton and collapsed into bed, that he didn't want to get up before ten the next day. Before noon, if he had any real choice.

Jack Fenton had had other plans.

At least he'd waited until nine before dragging Danny down to the lab.

"I think I've got it, Danny-boy!" Jack said excitedly. "I didn't want to reprogram the Booo-merang in case this doesn't work, but I isolated the ecto-signature reading that it picks up from you and fed it into the other machines…."

Danny yawned and desperately hoped this would work, tuning out his dad as he kept rattling on. He knew he should listen, but he knew the gist of what Jack was going to say anyway. Danny wasn't entirely sure when he'd scrapped the idea of building a grenade launcher (though he couldn't help but be thankful for that particular blessing) and built that phase-proof Fenton Spectre Binder instead, but he knew his father was smart, even if he didn't always show it. He also knew that, between the Booo-merang or Skulker's or Valerie's missiles that could track and target him, machines that reacted to specific ecto-signatures were possible.

He wasn't sure who had suggested it first, Tucker or Jazz or even Sam, but he knew his friends intended to come up with something that would neutralize the effects of his parents' weapons on him. Modify things so that they wouldn't target him or react to his ecto-signature. They'd intended to leave the Booo-merang as it was since, annoying though it may be, it had come in useful more than once. They also wouldn't be able to do anything about the Ghost Gabber. But dangerous things, like the Fenton Spectre Deflector, could be tweaked so they didn't react to him.

That was still an ongoing project for them. When he'd realized that he couldn't just avoid his dad at home and remembered all this, well, it made things easier for him.

Heck, if he was lucky, his dad might even be able to make it so that the Fenton Crammer didn't short out his powers if he was ever accidentally shrunk again. But the chances of that were minimal, anyway, after what his mother had said when she'd found out that an innocent bystander (though Danny wasn't sure innocent was a word that should ever be used to describe Dash Baxter) had been hit and affected. It was probably the one time Danny had been thankful for Dash's big mouth.

Jack's protests that he would have returned to normal size eventually, after twenty-four or forty-eight hours, depending on a number of factors Danny couldn't remember, had fallen on deaf ears. Maddie had pointed out that Jack hadn't tested that theory and was making an assumption that he should have confirmed before trying to use the weapon. He supposed he should be thankful that Dash had stuck up for Phantom, especially now that he knew he wouldn't be keeping his secret from his parents—or, at least, his mother—for much longer.

"Now, this shouldn't hurt a bit, son," Jack said, and the distant sound of metal mechanics reached Danny's ears.

That was when he realized his father was facing him with the Fenton Peeler. His eyes went wide. "Dad, no!" he hurriedly cried out. "That, uh, never affected me! Why not try the, er, Spectre Binder again? You know, just to be sure? Since we know you can get me out of that if it doesn't work?"

"Well, the Fenton Peeler doesn't harm humans, Danny-boy, so you shouldn't have anything to worry about."

"Yeah, Dad," Danny said, rubbing his neck, "but, you know, if it's not supposed to affect humans, and we don't know what effect it might have on me, and you think you've fixed it so it doesn't have an effect, why don't we just skip it altogether?"

Jack blinked. "If we think…." he repeated, frowning. He trailed off, mouthing a few of the words.

Danny didn't need to read his father's lips to know he'd gotten it backwards. "Let's just ignore the Fenton Peeler and try the Spectre Binder, okay?"

Jack sighed, looking incredibly disappointed, but to Danny's relief, he deactivated the Fenton Peeler and set it aside. He moved to the Spectre Binder, and Danny shut his eyes, anticipating the worst.

He cracked them open again when he heard the hum of machinery. "Hey," he said, grinning himself. "It's working! I'm not targeted!"

"Of course you're not, son!" Jack said, beaming at him. "I told you I could do it."

There weren't many inventions that Jack had successfully managed to transform to ignore his ecto-signature, but Danny wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. He could wear a Spectre Deflector. He was now undetectable by the Fenton Finder (well, the modified one, at any rate). His dad had even taken a stab at making a Jack-o'-Nine-Tails that didn't shock him when he was hit, on the off-chance that it normally did.

The Ghost Gabber still picked him up, but Danny was starting to think that that was a lost cause, anyway.

"It doesn't matter too much, anyway, does it? I mean, it's not going to kill me because it thinks I'm a ghost."

"…anyway, does it? Fear me. I mean, it's not going to kill me because it thinks I'm a ghost. Fear me."

"Danny," Jack said, overriding the words of the Fenton Ghost Gabber, "that's not the point. I should be able to get it to work."

"Maybe you shouldn't bother, Dad."

"…bother, Dad. I am a ghost. Fear me."

Stupid machine.

"I could find the Fenton Xtractor," Jack offered.

Danny made a face. "After what Jazz told me? No thanks, Dad. This is fine, okay?"

"…told me? Fear me. No thanks, Dad. Fear me. This is fine, okay? I am a ghost. Fear me."

Danny lunged for the Ghost Gabber and shut it off. He smiled sheepishly when Jack looked at him. "It was getting annoying," he admitted. Not to mention, if it kept it up, and Jack realized that he couldn't fix it, Danny was as good as sunk. No more secrets, no more lies. Ideal in one respect, but an absolute nightmare in another.

The lab was more cluttered than it normally was now. Jack had dug out most of their inventions to see if he could fix them, assuming he needed to. He had no idea that Danny would benefit from things like a modified Ecto-Stoppo-Power-ofier, too. Danny figured he was lucky his dad had gone so far as to try to make a selective Jack-o'-Nine-Tails.

"Well, I've got your signature saved, Danny-boy," Jack said. "I'll input it into any of our targeting inventions. I—whoops!" Jack, who had turned from the computer as he was speaking, stepped on a bit of anti-ghost goo that had fallen onto the floor and went sliding, trying to get his footing.

Danny jumped aside, trying to avoid colliding with his dad, and hit the Fenton Ghost Catcher.

Jack, to Danny's dismay, recovered just quickly enough from his own collision with the Spectre Speeder to look over and ask, "Son, are you okay?" as Danny was pulling his arm back through the 'merge' side.

"Yeah, Dad. Of course I am," Danny said.

But Jack was staring at him. "Danny," he said slowly, staring at Danny's hand (which was now safely through the 'merge' side of the Ghost Catcher), "did you know you'd picked up enough ectoplasm that it managed to take form?"

"What?"

"Stick your hand through the Fenton Ghost Catcher again," Jack said.

Aw, crud. "Uh, Dad? Isn't it more important to clean up the floor or something?"

Jack got to his feet and slowly walked over to Danny. Danny edged away from the Ghost Catcher but otherwise didn't bolt, despite his instincts telling him otherwise. "You have a real ecto-signature," he said, still sounding surprised. "Like a ghost."

"But that's just, uh, contamination, right? Residual stuff screwing with your instruments?"

"Something that weak wouldn't have form," Jack replied.

Crud. "It was probably just a, um, reflection of my body or something like that? You know, a fusion? Not a fusion, but a, uh, you know. Mould thing? Maybe?"

Jack reached a hand into the pocket of his jumpsuit and Danny cringed. This could not be good.

He pulled out a pair of phase-proof handcuffs, just for ghosts. "Let's try these, son," he said, his voice lacking all the enthusiasm and warmth it had held not two minutes earlier.

"But, uh, Dad?" Danny said, trying—and failing—to evade his father. Crud. "You know humans still can't get out of those, right?"

Jack chained Danny to one of the drawers of the cabinet in which he kept his emergency fudge supply. It was, Danny knew, phase proof as well. So none of the ghosts could swipe any of his supply.

This was bad.

It had been going so well, and now…it was not.

Crud.

He should've quit while he was ahead and hightailed it out of the lab after the test with the Spectre Deflector.

A/N: So, true to my word, a slight cliffhanger this time. Thanks to everyone who takes the time to leave a comment for me.