I don't really know how to describe this chapter, other than me ripping your heart out a little more. Hehe. :D

Bet y'all forgot about Tucker, huh?

I DIDN'T.

This chapter focuses on him. Be prepared.

And this story is farrr from over. Okay, maybe not far. But we still have a ways to go. Trust me. It's always darkest before the dawn. (:

I don't own Danny Phantom. Meh.

Enjoy (:


Darkness

Chapter Seven: Blinded

December 30, 2011


Danny had been laying there for two days before someone finally found him. Vlad had come home from a trip out of state, intending on depositing his briefcase in his lab before heading back upstairs to nap in his giant, king-sized bed when he found Danny curled in a ball in a corner. At first, Vlad thought the boy was dead, what with all the ghostly ectoplasm and human blood on the floors. But he quickly realized that some other beings had left the mess, that Daniel had found the mess, and that he had officially lost his mind.

The boy had retreated within himself. Vlad had to practically drag him out of the lab before the boy's eyes even registered life. He blinked, peered up at Vlad, and ducked his head down to his knees.

No amount of coaxing or pleading could get him to divulge what had happened in the lab. Vlad couldn't even get the boy to speak.

Overwhelming worry for the boy overrided Vlad's instinct to attack him; afterall, this was Maddie's son, his nephew of sorts. When Vlad realized that the boy would not speak, he raced to his phone. His fingers hovered over the numbers, however; should he call Daniel's parents? Maddie would accuse Vlad of hurting her son, which would do no good; he could call the goth girl, she seemed to be a constant fixture around the boy. He dialed her cell phone. No answer. He dialed her home phone. The butler said she was missing. Odd. Probably out searching for Daniel.

Who was left? Not Jasmine. She knew of Vlad's secret. She would surely accuse him. So that left...the technological one. He dialed the number, listened to the other line ring once, before a voice rang in his ear.

"Hello?" He sounded exhausted, strung out, desperate. Briefly, Vlad wondered when the last time this boy had seen Daniel had been. If that was why he sounded so frail and terrified.

"Mr. Foley?" Vlad said tenatively.

"Yes? Who is this?"

"This is Vlad Plasmius. I just found Daniel."

"Oh my God. Is he okay? Is Sam with him?" He sounded manic, like he would crawl through the phone line if he could.

"Daniel is...physically unharmed. And no, she's not with him. Mr. Foley, I found Daniel in my lab. Curled in the fetal position." Vlad went on to describe how he believed Danny to be dead until he realized that the blood and the ectoplasm did not belong to Danny. "Do you know who it does belong to?"

There was silence on the other end of the line. "The last time I saw Danny, it was just after the last time I saw Sam. Dan came back. He kidnapped Sam. Danny was chasing them. He sent me to the hospital, because Dan hurt me and Sam before he took Sam. Danny said he would meet me there. He never came." His voice was rough.

Dan. Of course. "Dan was not here when I found Daniel. Neither was Samantha."

At the sound of her name, Danny looked up. His hand reached, his fingers opening and closing in a "gimme" motion toward the phone. Wordlessly, Vlad handed the phone to him.

"She's gone," His voice was ragged, harsh, hollow. "She's dead. Dan killed her."

Vlad watched in shocked silence as the boy broke.


Tucker always envied machines. The way they worked without the flaw of emotions. No distractions. They were designed with a purpose, a single reason for existance. He had always nursed a crazy desire to be a machine. If he was a machine, he would never need to worry about getting hurt. Ever.

Not the way he was hurt now. If he was a machine, he would not feel himself shatter into a million pieces upon discovering that his best friend, his single link to the female universe, had been terminated. Obliterated. Wiped from the face of the earth.

Distantly, he heard Danny weeping on the other end of the line. He heard his broken sobs. He felt a primal urge to join him, to howl and wail and beg the heavens to return Sam to them, but his body was motionless. The tidal wave of emotions he felt remained locked tightly inside, tearing him apart.

He registered that Vlad was speaking to him. Assuring him that he would return Daniel safely. That he would make sure that Daniel got home, got to bed, got to a place where he would not hurt himself. And Tucker was glad. Glad that he would not have to see the broken remains of what was once his best friend, his hero.

He sat on his bed for an extended amount of time after Vlad hung up, just staring at a blank stretch of wall opposite him. Trying to wrap his mind around the idea that Sam was gone. That he would never see her again, never tease her for her ultra-recyclo vegeterianism. He would never feel a wave of appreciation every time she stood up to Dash and Paulina, because she would never be there to stand up to them again.

The tears came, but the sobs didn't. He merely sat in silence, allowing the tears to fall down his face slowly. No one would ever know the real reason she died, he knew. Because having to explain that she was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by a ghostly hybrid of Danny and Vlad that had escaped a future world that no longer existed would not go over well, even with the Fentons, who were accustomed to the most strange portions of the paranormal.

A sudden memory came to him. A sunny summer morning, one in which Tucker had trekked to Sam's house to wait for Danny to wake up and meet them there.

"Tucker, what would you want from me if I died?" She asked, picking at a spot on her comforter.

"What do you mean?" He asked slowly.

"I mean, if I died...what would you want from me? Like, would you want a letter, a video, a picture..." She studiously avoided his gaze.

"I don't know. I guess I would want a video. You know, that way I could see you and hear you."

She nodded. He remained silent, waiting for her explination. "I've been thinking about it a lot lately. About what would happen if I died. I wouldn't want to leave you guys. Just like it would kill me if you guys died." She huffed for a moment before tearing her eyes away from the comforter and meeting his gaze. "If I die, I want you do to something for me."

He nodded, remaining silent. She turned to her bedside table, fished around in the drawer for a moment, before coming up with a CD with his name written across it in her tidy scrawl. "If I die, I need you to watch that. Just you. Understand?"

He understood. He took it home and stuffed it in a drawer in his desk. Hoping and praying that he would never have to watch it.

It was all he could do to keep himself from tearing across the room to the drawer. He ripped it open, dug for a moment, and found it settled at the bottom. Shining up at him. He took it gingerly in both hands, his eyes on his name. He brushed his thumb across it lightly, as if hoping that the surface would still hold some of the warmth her hand had given it as she wrote his name.

He didn't remember putting the CD in his computer, but the next thing he knew, he was settled in front of the screen, waiting as his DVD player picked up on the CD's presence. He couldn't help it; he lifted his hand to touch the screen when Sam's face appeared. She was smirking at the screen, her eyes downcast. He pressed play.

"Hey Tuck. If you're watching this, I'm dead. Or, I should be dead. If I'm not dead, and you're watching this, so help me God, I will murder you in your sleep. Understand?" She paused, her accusing eyes meeting his through the screen, before she softened. "Okay. If I really am dead, then I need you to do a favor for me. In my room, beside my bed, there's a loose floorboard. I need you to go to my room and open the floorboard. You'll know what to do when you get to that point. If my parents aren't letting you in, get Danny to help you. It's really important that you do this as soon as possible. Preferably before my funeral." She paused, her eyes sliding out of focus, as if the idea of having a funeral for herself was impossible, a far-fetched notion even in the most strange alternate universe. She shook her head. Her eyes refocused. "Please, Tucker. Hurry."

The screen went black. And Tucker was on his feet. He was sprinting from the house, down the sidewalk. Tearing to her house. His hands slammed into the gutter outside her room. He was climbing it faster than he ever had, his eyes trained on her window. It was still open.

He was met by no barriers as he crouched beside her bed, his fingers testing each floorboard, his breathing haggard. Finally, he found the loose floorboard, which he wrenched up. Inside, he found five CDs, quite like the one he had just watched. Written on each CDs were names: MOM AND DAD; GRAMMA; JAZZ; TUCKER; DANNY. A paper beneath the CDs caught Tucker's eye. He grabbed it, his eyes sliding across the message written in Sam's familiar scrawl.

Give each person their DVD. Please. Last gift to me. I love you so much. Thank you.

He held the CDs in his hands as if they were precious pieces of gold. He knew he couldn't give her parents or her grandmother their CDs yet; not until they realized that she wasn't coming home again. No, for now, he would allow them to believe her to be missing, to continue their fruitless search for the girl that had left their world. He would deliver Danny and Jazz's, before returning home to watch Sam's last gift to him.

He slid down the gutter slowly, carefully holding the CDs between his teeth. When his feet hit the pavement, he started a slow walk to the Fentons, not wanting to arrive before Danny. He knew Danny would be out, gone, dead to the world. He knew Danny wouldn't resurface for a while. He would need to go inside himself and find some portion of his soul that hadn't been shattered. He would have to rebuild himself around the idea that the girl that had been his light was gone. And Tucker would give him space and time. The two things Danny never seemed to have.

He arrived at the Fenton's front door twenty minutes later. Mrs. Fenton appeared a nervous wreck; she had heard about Sam's disappearence, noticed Danny's, and figured the worst had befallen the young couple. Danny was back, though. Not himself, but back. She allowed Tucker upstairs, hoping that his presence would snap Danny out of whatever trance he was in.

But it was not Danny Tucker came to see. It was Jazz's door that he knocked on softly. She opened the door a crack, her face creased with worry. Her blue eyes, so similar to Danny's, found his. Saw the pain rooted in his forest green irises. And in that moment, she knew. He watched as the realization hit her. She stared at the floor and tried to catch her breath. The one person in the trio that Jazz calculated had the best odds of survival was the first to go. Her future sister-in-law, gone. Impossible.

Wordlessly, Tucker stuffed the CDs bearing Jazz and Danny's names in her hands. He turned to leave, glancing at the firmly closed door of his best friend's room, when he heard it.

"I can't do this, but I'm doing it anyways." Sam had said it once, during a huge ghost attack. She had been on the roof of Fenton Works, hands firmly grasping the rails. Standing between Danny and Tucker. She had muttered it under her breath, her eyes on the advancing army. It had stuck with Tucker ever since, calming him on the nights he woke screaming from the nightmares brought on from years of ghost hunting and being hunted by ghosts. Jazz whispered it now. Tucker stopped, turned his head, met Jazz's gaze.

"It goes on," Another one of Sam's phrases. One she murmured to herself once after Paulina 'accidentally' dumped a vat of some sort of soup all over her in the cafeteria. "In three words, I can summon up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."

Tucker watched Jazz turn her face away, succumbing to tears. She knew. Tucker knew she would take care of Danny. She would make sure he slept, he ate, he continued surviving, until he was himself enough to do it on his own.

Now, if only there was someone else to do that for me, Tucker thought bitterly.


D':

SO SAD.

Bet you're curious now, aren't you? :D

You'll just have to wait.

HAHA.

I'm so evil! I LOVE IT!

:D

- Tori