Sooooo hi. Remember how sorry I was before about being late? Yeah, well think of that times 100. That's how I feel now. But guys, this chapter kicked my butt. Like seriously. For weeks (as you probably noticed) I sat around wondering how the hell this story was going to end. The ending I'd originally jotted down no longer fit the overall feel of the piece and after all the emotions I put in the last chapter, I didn't know how to give Maddie any more. Long story short: I struggled, a lot.
But now (over a month later- yikes I'm sorry again), I have this chapter for you. I don't know what to call it. I'm not sure if it's good or bad or whatever. All I know is I think I finally found the right note to end on. Hope you find yourself in tune with that note.
The sun set, bright and slow, casting cavernous colors across the gentle sea. The steady disappearance of it summoned a simple calm to the area, as if the star was singing the Earth a hushed lullaby. It sang until the stars poked holes in the deep blanket of the sky. Even the seagulls, whose squawking and chatter had woken her each morning well before six, settled into a quiet hum consisting only of the occasional ruffling of feathers.
The peaceful scene would have calmed anyone else, but not Maddie.
She felt exhilarated and anxious and worried and ready all at the same time. Well, maybe not ready.
How could anyone be ready to reconcile the knowledge she gathered with the secret her son has kept so carefully hidden for so long? Ready definitely wasn't the right word.
She was resolute. Not necessarily ready to have her life changed, but determined to feel that forward motion. She couldn't stay stuck in the past. In a way, she'd already moved on from it. Already she couldn't ignore Danny's lies or Jazz's attempts to distract her. She was different and thus her life needed to reflect that change.
It was time for her to come clean.
Her sobs had already washed away all her annoyance and hatred. With each tear that fell, the prejudices she still held against ghosts—against Phantom specifically—dried up. Of course, after watching Phantom and overhearing Danny, there hadn't been many left when she started crying in the first place. But now they'd all completely vanished.
She wanted to talk to Danny alone, but the RV wasn't exactly a prime place for secret conversations. Living in such close quarters, she realized none of them were ever really alone. She'd been lucky to get the time to herself she had.
When she'd lied down to go to sleep she'd foolishly thought she could wait until morning to talk to Danny. But after half an hour had passed and her racing heart still hadn't slowed. Even the steady, thunderous snores coming from her husband beside her didn't ease the tension she held inside. She turned to face him.
Jack, her loving, exuberant husband.
She had to tell him. But first she had to talk to Danny. If she told Jack her discovery before confronting Danny... Well, she couldn't imagine things going very smoothly.
Reaching up, she gently ran a hand down his arm. She watched as he breathed in deeply, his snores softening. Whispered voices carried through the roof to Maddie's ears. Sighing, she sat up, her eyes focusing in on the ceiling. At least she wouldn't have to worry about waking her children up. It seemed they too were restless.
Kissing Jack softly on the cheek, she stood up and hopped out of the RV. The sea air welcomed her like an encouraging pat on the back. She was doing the right thing. She walked around to the back of the RV and began climbing the ladder to the roof. Poking her head up, she saw Danny and Jazz lying side by side on top of their sleeping bags.
"And there's Cancer," Danny was saying as he pointed to the night sky, "or some call it the crab."
"Where?" Jazz asked. "I don't see it."
"It's there." Danny pointed again. "It's a little harder to see, but those two stars side by side are part of it."
"I still don't see it," Jazz huffed.
"Danny? Jazz?" Maddie said, alerting her children to her presence.
Jazz sat up while Danny lifted his head.
"Mom?" Danny said. "We didn't know you were still up."
"Were we too loud?" Jazz asked, glancing back at her brother. "I told Danny to be quieter."
Maddie smiled sadly, knowing she was about to rupture this happy atmosphere.
"No, no," she said, "you're fine. I was just hoping to talk to Danny alone for a little while."
Once again, Jazz shot her brother a look, though this one held infinitely more meaning. It spoke of understanding, hope, fear, and a final push that to Maddie seemed indispensable to the night.
"Sure, Mom," Jazz said. She moved to get up, but not before nudging Danny in the shoulder and giving him a reassuring smile. After that, she climbed down the ladder. Maddie waited for the sound and shake of the RV door closing before she turned toward her son.
Where to begin?
With the scrap of fabric? With the lab accident? With Phantom? She'd learned so much more about ghosts over the past few days than she had her whole life. And she'd once promised to dedicate her life to the research of ghosts. Would this even be happening if she hadn't made such a promise? Probably not. But that didn't change the fact that she'd made that promise.
It wasn't often she got away from it. Or from Fenton works, Amity Park, ghosts. Of course, Maddie realized, she'd probably never get away from ghosts again. Not when her son had one. She'd made that promise and she was never going to escape it. And, despite the fear bouncing between Danny and herself, she was happy she'd made that promise. The promise might become the thread that stitches her and her son back together.
"Danny," she started, staring at him.
A cloud shifted and the moonlight hit the roof, illuminating them both.
It was so easy to see now that she knew to look for it. Her mind was able to swap black hair for white, a concerned gaze for a cocky smile, and those blue eyes. She loved his blue eyes. But behind her own eyes she could see the neon green of ectoplasm tainting that blue. Before she knew it, her image of Amity Park's most infamous ghost fit into the puzzle piece that was her son.
"Phantom."
Danny paled. A choked laugh escaped him before he threw his head back. His eyes danced across the sky, making a show of searching, but too many times did his gaze connect with hers to be convincing. Still, he plastered a fake smile onto his face.
"Danny Phantom's not here, Mom," he said, continuing to smile. "Actually, I think…Sam? Yeah, Sam! Sam said she saw him in Amity Park." He nodded fervently as if the action could make up for his flimsy words. "He's already back home, Mom."
A lie. Entirely too easy to pick out now.
"No," she said softly. "Danny."
She watched her son swallow. His hand reached up to rub that spot at the back of his head. A black hair fell onto the collar of his white shirt just as she'd seen Phantom's white one fall onto his black jumpsuit. A jumpsuit she knew had been white at some point. Two colors inverse of each other. Black and white. If only the truth could be so easy.
"Yeah, Mom?" He looked up at her. Everything about that look screamed fear. He was terrified of what she had to say. She hated to see such intense fear, but she had to say it.
"I know," she said. "I know Danny Phantom is you."
He didn't try to change the subject or feign ignorance this time. He simply stared back at her, silently pleading with her. No, that wasn't it. He wasn't begging her not to say anything.
He pressed his lips together, enough to wash away their color. The corners of his eyes crinkled as if he were studying her, searching inside her for something. What exactly, she didn't know. Finally, he let go of his lips and exhaled, a question in his eyes.
He was asking her if she really wanted to know. He was giving her a chance to back out, because he knew once she knew the truth there was no going back. Things would never be the same again. And maybe that'd be okay, because they'd be better than they were before, but maybe things wouldn't be okay. They could get worse, a lot worse. Did she really want to know?
Except…she already knew. Didn't she? All she was really asking for was undeniable proof. But once such proof was out in the open neither she nor Danny could ignore it anymore. She could walk away without it right now and Danny would go on lying to her and she could pretend she believed him. They could tiptoe around each other, never telling the whole truth.
The truth. That was what had gotten her into this mess in the first place. She'd wanted to know the truth about Phantom. Did she still want to know?
Yes. Yes, she did.
Because while she'd wanted to learn more about Phantom she also wanted to be closer to her children. She didn't want to lie to them or hide things from them. She wanted to trust them, and she hoped, more than anything, they could find a way to trust her again.
"Please, tell me."
Danny opened his mouth to say something but no sound came out. The silence hung in the air, sewing together the passing seconds. Frowning slightly, he closed it again and shook his head. When he took a step away from her, her visceral reaction was to reach for him, to pull him back towards her. She was afraid he was trying to run away again, like he had the other night. But when he held up a hand, solidifying the space between them and his presence in front of her, she froze. Visibly, he swallowed. She could see the internal preparation and determination in his expression. Then he threw his fists toward the sky.
An eruption of light flooded the night around them and Maddie instinctively closed her eyes. But a little voice inside her head demanded she open them, despite the harsh light, because somehow she knew, even with the irrefutable facts she'd uncovered, if she didn't see this she would never believe it.
As her eyes adjusted, rings of white light formed in her vision. Bright and iridescent as she imagined a halo might be, these rings were larger, wider, and they encircled her son's waist. She held her breath as she watched the rings begin to travel in opposite directions. They swept over Danny's body, changing him. Like wiping a dry erase board clean, the rings erased the familiar white t-shirt and jeans, replacing them with a just as familiar, yet less comforting, black jumpsuit. His black hair turned white and those baby, blue eyes she loved so much became a harsh, radioactive green. The rings disappeared, fading out as if reaching their limit, and she knew.
"Ta-da?" Danny asked, doing a half-hearted twirl in the air while she stared.
She'd suspected, but until that moment, she hadn't believed. Her son was Danny Phantom. The "DP" logo on the front of his jumpsuit pulsed as if in confirmation. But it also wasn't what she'd expected. Her brain struggled to connect her suspicions with the reality in front of her.
She said the first thing that came mind. It wasn't the smartest thing to say and it wasn't something that would propel the unbearably difficult conversation ahead of them forward, but she couldn't stop it. Because the incomprehensible was never meant to be understood.
It just slipped out.
"A ghost?"
Danny's gloved hands flew out in front of him and he waved them frantically in her face. "Oh, gosh. Umm, that's not right. This is not how…" he stuttered, trailing off. More white rings and bright light, and he was on the ground once more with black hair and that white t-shirt he loved so much.
"See? It's still me. Danny," he added, as if she might have forgotten.
She hadn't been ready for the switch that time and had forgotten to keep her eyes open. Her lack of sight didn't help her understanding. She needed more. More information. More time. She wasn't sure if she'd get either. The only way to find out was to ask.
"Can I—" she hesitated, unsure of how to communicate what she wanted, "Can I see your transformation again?"
Danny smiled as if she'd just given him a puppy for Christmas. "Sure," he said before they were once again bathed in white light.
"So," she started slowly, beginning to feel stupid, "you're not a ghost?"
Danny grimaced. "Not exactly, but I do have ghost powers."
"Like?"
The next second, Danny Phantom disappeared from sight. This time she knew she hadn't blinked.
Invisibility had always been the one ghost ability that annoyed her the most. Intangibility she could handle. If a ghost went through a wall at least she knew it would simply end up on the other side. And, as Jack often did without consulting her (much to the chagrin of their rising debt), smashing through the wall usually swept away the intangibility problem. But when a ghost went invisible, she was blind. She hated that. Many ghosts, Phantom included, had managed to escape her by running off while invisible. Even after they'd developed the technology to see a ghost in its invisible state, the incognito ability still irked her.
"You let me see you right now, young man," she barked, falling into her authoritative "mom" voice without a single thought.
Danny immediately blinked back to visibility. Hanging his head a bit, white strands of hair covering his eyebrows, he muttered, "Sorry, Mom."
She sucked in a breath.
The "mom" was what tripped her. She knew Danny Phantom had come from Danny, but she hadn't even considered that Phantom was pretending to be Danny—that once he died, he changed his shape to take Danny's place so no one would know Danny Fenton was dead.
Her son was dead. All that was left of him floated right in front of her.
"You're dead," she whispered, finally letting her air out.
"No." His voice sounded so sure. She'd never heard such confidence leave her son's lips.
Another flash of light and he was her Danny again. His blue eyes begged her to look at him. He took her hand—his was so cold—and placed it against his chest. She nearly snatched it away, but froze at the sensation beneath her fingertips.
"Feel that?" he said. "It's my heartbeat. My heart still beats, Mom. Last I checked, dead people don't do that."
She pushed her fingers harder into his chest. The thumping of his heart pushed back. He was right. Dead people didn't have a heartbeat.
Then how…?
He must have seen the question in her eyes, because he shrugged his shoulders and started talking. She didn't take her hand off his chest, needing to feel that continuous pounding underneath.
"We don't know exactly what happened," he began, eyes wandering the ground. "Tucker thinks the electricity from the ghost portal managed to alter my DNA, fusing ectoplasm in my cells. Sam thinks I half-died—like she thinks I started to die, enough to create a ghost half, but that something pulled me back. Jazz thinks I'm actually still straddling the line between the living and the dead, which is why I can so easily jump between the two. And I'm not sure what to think—maybe a combination of all three?" He shrugged again. "I don't know. All I know is that when I came out of that ghost portal, I wasn't completely human anymore."
He looked away, staring at the ground like he'd somehow fallen beneath it and it was the one stepping all over him, not the other way around. In his eyes, she could see how he felt like he deserved to be there. How he felt like he was less than the ground.
Why would he think that?
Her curiosity got the best of her. She couldn't keep it locked away. Though she did do her best to tame it.
Danny's words were echoing in her ears.
Not human.
What did that even mean? If Danny wasn't human then what was he?
She reached her other hand up and ran her fingers through his black hair, brushing it out of his eyes. To think a single strand of this hair, caught in a jumpsuit tag had led her here.
A light wind blew against them and strands of his hair tickled the spaces between her fingers. His hair still felt like his hair, his skin—though slightly colder than hers—still felt like his skin. And despite the color changes in his other form, he still looked like the Danny she knew. Aside from the faint glow emanating from his body when he was Phantom, everything about him screamed human.
She nodded once to herself. Of course he wasn't completely human.
"You're right," she said.
His gaze snapped up to hers, eyebrows furrowed, frown lines wrinkling his pasty forehead.
"You're not completely human," she repeated back to him, "because you're human and more." The fingers of the hand still pressed against his beating heart curled in a bit, holding him loosely.
A second chance. Second chances at life were fantasy. Everyone wanted them, but they didn't exist.
Danny had been given that one impossible second chance.
He had died. And yet, he was standing right there in front of her alive. He said he was both: alive and dead. But the inaccuracy of that statement irked her. Life and death weren't the opposites she once thought they were. He'd made her see that. Both life and death touched all, both would always be there, working together, but they weren't the two sides of a coin her son seemed to be.
Life stretched and lasted, while death was momentary, fleeting. She would argue that one didn't spend years dying. Even if the person knew when they would die, they would still spend the time leading up to death living. They were still considered to have life.
If she had to, she would define death as the immeasurable moment when a person crosses that line between the living and the dead. Not when they're on the living side and not when they're on the other, but right when they're over the line between the two. Did such a moment even exist?
And if that incomprehensible moment was death, then what was life?
She could try to define it, but she knew her words would get jumbled or come out wrong. Inevitably, she'd leave out a crucial part of life's definition. She couldn't define it, but she could provide examples. Like herself. She wasn't so arrogant as to think she was all life, but she could be one example of it.
Danny could be another.
Danny could be another, but he could also be an example of what life wasn't. Ghosts weren't life, were they? She'd been taught to think of ghosts as what happens to life after death. Ghosts weren't life. They were after it. The afterlife.
And yet, even if ghosts were a part of what happened when life ceased, that didn't mean they didn't deserve the respect she gave those with life. When people died they mourned them. They buried them in sacred ground. They made it punishable to disturb them. They wrote speeches in their honor and commiserated with others, all the while desperately wishing some miracle would come along and bring back the life they lost.
She stared at her son.
Wasn't he the miracle billions of people before her had and billions of people after her would ask for? Wasn't he exactly what everyone in the world wanted? If she'd known he'd died wouldn't she have begged for such a miracle?
She hadn't asked. She hadn't known to ask. But she'd still been given.
And who was she to turn down a miracle?
The End.
For those few of you who have made it to the end of some of my other stories, you know I like to say thank you. To everyone. I thank my followers: THANK YOU! I thank those who favorited: THANK YOU! And I thank every single one of my reviewers. I take the time to write, but all of you take the time to not only read my writing but to give me your thoughts on it. Your words are invaluable to me and you all deserve to be recognized. So a HUGE thank you to:
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In case you didn't know, this has been my most successful story to date and I am humbled by all the attention it's gotten. So thanks again. You have made this story so much more than it was meant to be and this experience even better than it already was.
Anyway, time to go, I'm tired.
Colette
