Author's Note: Well, that went over significantly better than I was expecting. In all honesty I thought at least a few readers would bail out of this at the end of this chapter, so it's kind of bizarre that instead it seems to have attracted… more reviews? And readers. This reaffirms my suspicion this fandom is absurdly supportive and nice and I thank you for it, both those who review and those who show their support by following or favoriting. Even if you don't say anything, it's still support and it's helping me build confidence in what I'm doing and I'm grateful for that. (And I know what it's like to feel too shy to review things, so hey, I can't throw stones, here.)
First order of business: there is now a fanfic in the works to show what Danny and Tucker's lives would be like without the Phantom part of Danny's life. It'll be posted once this chapter goes up.
Secondly: Yes, I have been to Alaska. Once. About six years ago, to boot. My family is part of the Inupiaq tribe on my maternal grandmother's side, so there's some extended family for me up there. I butcher some Inupiaq with my family, but it's pretty bad, and I had to consult my Inupiaq dictionary for a lot of spellings in the fanfic and finally decided to cut any Inupiaq-only dialogue altogether for the sake of pacing and reading. But for the most part I've lived my life in the Rocky Mountains of the United States, and as such have a great deal of experience with snow and cold. There was snow last night when I started writing this chapter that only melted this morning.
Now, on with the show! And one final thanks to all my readers for their encouragement, feedback and general support. Feel free to leave any questions, comments, ideas, criticisms or things you've noticed as reviews. I will never take anything as a flame, promise. Yes, even actual flames, because they can still contain nuggets of solid feedback.
Also I swear to God we'll get out of the tiny town and into the Alaskan wilderness next chapter. I'm sorry, I didn't mean for it to take this long for us to get to this point. Apologies for flaws in my pacing.
Sam stared with the eyes of the disbelieving as Alaqaa transformed.
It was simple, really, a white parka with black fur trim that had tinges of gray in it, white pants, black fur trimmed boots that were white, but she'd spent enough time with Danny to identify a ghostly glow. There was a faint eerie grayness to him like Danny's faint blue, Alaqaa's black hair going white as his eyes opened to reveal deep royal purple that sucked in the light. Without a word of explanation he flew through the house's walls, probably to take the fight outside. After all, up here, there wasn't exactly a construction company to call. Sam's da- Pamna was pretty much the guy people came to to get things patched up, including roofs and walls, and so a fight here would be months of collateral damage. In these conditions, if anyone got hurt, they'd probably be weeks from a good hospital, too, so Sam running out the door after Alaqaa was really more a habit from being Danny's friend than anything based in common sense or logic.
The ghost wasn't one she was familiar with – fair enough, distance considered. Danny could go over 100mph but did the average ghost? Did they need to? Her head spun as she watched Alaqaa slam into the faceless, hysterically laughing black-skinned ghost with its' tattered amauti and ash stained body and realized with a sickening twist in her stomach that the ghost had no legs. The pant legs suggested this had not once been the case in life given they were blacked and burnt. It was fast, moving like it had no bones, and it was like fighting a twisting swirl of smoke, which prompted Alaqaa to sweep his white-gloved hands in wide area attacks of dark purple energy that he was good enough, but not great, at aiming. Good enough was not good enough with this thing, though, as the hysterical laughter was choked with sobs and it threw a wave of fire at him. He phased through it without half a second to spare and slammed into it again because that was the only way to actually hit this thing and have those hits land repeatedly. Once he got his hands locked around the neck, under the hood, he let loose enough purple energy to make the world flash a sickly dark violet and Sam shut her eyes on instinct.
There was a thud as the ghost hit the ground, still conscious but powerless. It sobbed. Alaqaa grabbed it under the shoulders and hoisted it up, noticing Sam's presence with a flicker of unease on his face. "I'll explain later. Right now, I need to get this piifixaaq back where she spawned from. Portals don't stay open long."
And then he was gone, a blur of white dragging a load of gray.
Sam had consumed enough sleep inducing tea she should have been out like a light.
Instead, she waited by the door. Alaqaa returned looking like his human self, albeit more exhausted. His constant blank expression fought the tiredness and it was anyone's guess which was winning at the moment, but his face tended to trend towards a third emotion when Sam looked at him, and that was nervousness. The nervousness was but the tip of the iceberg; underneath it lay an anxiety he had not known in years, one so deep that he had to keep moving, speaking, acting and planning because if he paused for even a second the fear inside him of losing Sam, of becoming a freak to one of the only people alive who didn't view him as such, was enough to make breathing impossible. Neither of them were shy or subtle people, but he lingered timidly outside in the cold.
"I can expla-"
She latched onto him tightly and hugged him hard. He froze, his breath hitching as fear dropped away, leaving him positively light headed as she murmured, "It's okay. It doesn't matter as long as you're safe."
She would have said and done the same thing to any halfa out there, but she'd never exactly had the chance sans Vlad, who deserved no sympathy. When she pulled away from Alaqaa, for the first time since she'd met him he looked at a total loss. His cheeks were tinged a little red, flustered, and yet relief radiated off of him even in his confusion. In his current state he might stand there in a stupor all day, so she pulled him inside and shut the door. Pamna watched the exchange with a mixture of emotions. Sam was still Sam, understanding, welcoming, kind, open to the insanity that was Alaqaa's status as an ieuqun despite not knowing what that even meant or that it was a thing. Gently, she tugged him over to the well worn couch, where he sank into it gratefully, placing his hands in his head and looking at the map still on the floor, temporarily forgotten. He swallowed thickly and shut his eyes, tired.
"You can stay here for the night," Pamna offered. "We'll leave first thing tomorrow. But you need to get some food in you before you sleep. Like I told you before, if I wouldn't let Sam do it, I won't let you do it."
Alaqaa nodded and looked over at the lilac eyed girl in question. "So, now it's my turn to say this: you are taking this far too well."
"…I think if I explained you'd think I'm crazy. Well, crazier," she amended thoughtfully, looking at him with unasked questions bouncing around her head. "I know I could've asked Pamna while you were gone but it's a personal thing. So just. I don't know. Tell me when you're ready?"
Neither male mentioned this was how Sam had phrased it when the issue had come up originally. It would have been too awkward. Instead, Alaqaa yawned and laid back against the couch, shutting his eyes. Pamna cooked in relative silence, the static-filled radio creating barely understandable music to fill the void, and Sam looked over the list Alaqaa had made and decided to begin to pack before anything else unexpected happened to derail what few plans they had managed to come up with. As she went to her room, she was hit with the strangest sense of having done something like this before. It had to be from all the things she'd done with Danny, though. She'd helped him in and out of all kinds of situations. But it wasn't the packing or planning that made her feel like the past was bleeding over. It was the strangest feeling, this familiarity involving strangers, and she wasn't sure if she liked or disliked it. The world was nothing if not unstable, even back home, but here it was amped up to eleven, and so she went about her business until she decided to get to sleep, which was a time picked in an absolutely arbitrary manner, given it was mostly done to escape her worried pseudo-father and the friend she didn't remember who looked at her with eyes as hypnotic as the moon.
As if to rub salt in the mental wounds, her subconscious dug out a dream for her. A memory, of something that never was but had been…
Alaqaa's body was too thin, but bruised thoroughly, and she hadn't realized it until now. He sat on her bed, face so lost in despair he couldn't have found a shred of the mask he normally wore to put on, in nothing but a black T-shirt and pants, hair a mess, eyes so vulnerable she thought breathing too loudly might break him.
"It's supposed to be a myth, a monster story," he whispered, looking scared. "That's why I didn't tell you. I – I'm a monster-"
She pulled him close and they fell back onto the bed together, his body seeking shelter in pressing against hers. "No, you're not," she whispered to him. One her hands found his hair. "You're my best friend. You're a good guy. And I think you could be a hero, if you wanted to be."
He snorted, dismissing the idea, but the slight shaking in his body lessened as he buried his head against her shoulder, as if one good friend could save him from the world. "Superheroes need sidekicks."
"I can't do that. Too patriarchal and stereotypical," Sam thoughtfully replied, adding with a smile, "But I'll be your manager. First consultation is free."
"And your advice as my manager is?" he retorted, a smile trying to break across his face even as he tried to look composed.
"Just know you're never alone. You've got me."
Sam awoke to the most awkward family breakfast ever, in large part because Jessica had bailed already and Alaqaa was there in her place, dutifully detailing multiple map routes.
She sat down beside him on the couch as her father made breakfast, noting the coffee cup beside Alaqaa. On impulse she reached over and took a sip from it, setting it back down like nothing had happened. It was only when he paused and looked up from the maps spread out across the coffee table it hit her: she had done that before. Or it felt like she had; it felt like she had sat beside him many a morning, stealing his coffee, talking about class, listening to the news on the radio and snarking at it. Whatever had protected her from the effects of Desiree's wish granting powers might be fading, and that was a terrifying thought. She could lose herself entirely, lose Danny without ever even getting a chance to see if they were meant to be friends or more, never see Tucker graduate with top honors and go to MIT, forever forget her parents' warm embraces and the Hanukahs spent with extended family milling around, her cousin Seth telling her that her blacks didn't match and she'd have to go change-
"I need stronger coffee than that today," she announced to the room, shoving down the growing anxiety. She'd already wasted a week crying, a week of very valuable time where she hadn't realized her ability to recall things was fading, and the sense of urgency descended upon her like an Arctic goose upon a fisherman's unguarded catch. "Good on you for drinking girly drinks, though. Gender roles must die."
He fist bumped her when she offered up a fist. "You always say that."
"When it stops being true, I'll stop saying it," she shot back, even as her stomach twisted at the thought of how well he thought he knew her.
He thought she was his friend and they had always been like this, and her response was to lead him on and ultimately take that friendship away. She was using him – only because she needed to get back home, to her parents and friends and family, but what about him? He would still be a halfa without her presence, without the friendship they had, which meant without Pamna's support and it dawned on her then that at no point in planning a two day trip had anyone mentioned Alaqaa's parents or family. Her throat tightened as she realized she might be all that he had. The dream, the memory, flashed back to her in a haze and she recalled bruises and shaking limbs. And Pamna chose that moment to hand her a plate and fork.
Pamna. Pamna, who waited a week for her, who held vigil for her, prayed for her, held her when she cried… she was using him, too, as a way to get back home. She would leave a hole in his life, a world without a daughter, only an alcoholic wife to look after, his lack of family made harsher by the closely knit community. It would be a long and lonely existence she would make for him. He was throwing into this trip money and resources he really couldn't spare for his daughter so she could stop being his daughter. She looked at him, his kind eyes, gentle voice, always so ready to help anyone with anything, and wondered why. Why were they helping her? Alaqaa might think she was insane. Pamna might think she was insane. That didn't explain why they would help her knowing full well that there was a strong possibility that they would lose her forever. What they were about to do today was insane.
'And my love be the height of insanity; it is as boundless as the ocean and as deep,' Mr. Lancer had read to a bored class, Dash muttering something about girly stuff being useless and Paulina texting on her phone as the English teacher continued. 'For true love is to give knowing it shall not be returned, and so you may have my wife with my blessing, as her happiness must be as steady as the waves upon the shore.'
Tears filled Sam's eyes, splashing onto the plate, and she couldn't explain why.