Chapter 10

Danny falls into the blackness.

It seems to be smothering him, not allowing him to move, or to breathe, or even to merely think. He can't even remember who he is.

Who is he? Where is he from?

Vague images float across his mind, not giving him any idea of who or what or how.

Faces...

A round faced girl, with pretty eyes and bright orange hair. She is smiling and talking, although it seems that all of his memories are on mute and he can't hear what she sounded like. Maybe he couldn't hear? But hearing - what was that?

Another girl. Dark hair, green clip... he thinks. Pale skin. The word goth wells up in his mind, but he can't seem to recall what that is or how it got there or even how it was made in the first place. Spiderwebs and dark corners also come to mind. But it quickly fades from sigh and another floats in.

A darker skinned boy, this time. He wears a red hat in all of his memories, and seems to have more technological items than he could even remember seeing in his life. Meat and talking and laughing and hi-fiving (whatever that is) with this boy wells up in his mind, however it's as if he can only see the parts of the memory that contains the boy. He doesn't appear.

Two people come up. A huge, tall, round man and a short, thin, spindly looking woman. They do everything together, and two emotions flicker in, as fast as lighting, but disappear just as rapidly. Annoyance and love.

He wants to wait with these memories; see where they take him, however this quickly fades back into black...

Suddenly, it's like the whole world is talking in his ears. People's voice mingle with each other and the voices all seem young, apart from one, that seems to be older than the rest.

"I hope Danny's okay," an accented voice says. Paulina, his subconscious tells him, however he doesn't remember anything about this. Paulina. What a strange thing.

"I know," a softer voice agrees.

"Me, too," a similar voice says in yet another agreement.

"His aura is growing stronger... brighter..." a voice that sounds like a Star says. "I can feel it so much now."

There is some talking about hope and betterment and a person and stuff, and then the people leave. Only two remain.

"You have to come back to us, dude," a voice says. His mind registers it as Tucker. Loyal, friend, Tucker, who never left him (apart from that one time, but he's willing to let that slide).

"Yeah... we can't be without you." Warmth enfolds his right hand, it seems, and he suddenly feels like he can move it again. He squeezes the warmth, and the person gasps. "Tuck! Danny... he squeezed my palm!"

This is Sam, it seems. Goth. Spiderwebs.

They talk to him, their voices becoming more and more frantic, until they too, leave, seemingly disappointed for some strange reason.

He fades back to blackness.

This time, there are no memories. He can hear still, though, but not well. There is a strange beeping noise. People come and go. Things go into his newly regained hand. Things come out. It seems to last then suddenly, he finds he can breathe again.

He takes in lungfuls of oxygen, feeling it pump round his body, making the blackness fade and fade. The people that visited - their voices echo around his head, making him have more and more of himself and less and less of the darkness that seems to cover every tiny piece of him.

When he fades to blackness this time, he can hear people laughing and talking, smiles in their voice. Why are they happy?

He sleeps, now.

"Danny, we need you back, son," a gruff voice says. "We are so, so sorry about what we did to you.. but..." there is a lot of sniffing and the person starts to cry.

"We need you back, honey," another voice says, clogged up with emotion.

"You did good, brother, you did good," the final voice says, a lot more quietly than any others he's had, but just as powerful.

His body suddenly becomes his own again.

His mind tells him who he is again.

He is Danny Fenton. Fourteen year old human, who fails his grades and doesn't really do well at school. He is Danny Phantom, half ghost, who seems to be free but is really tied down to things he can't let go. Overall, he is Danny, a boy that isn't human, isn't ghost, but is simply him. He is tied down to tightly to both worlds that he cannot let either of them go for risk of the other collapsing on him. He is Danny, with a dark enemy that seems to constantly be on the edge of falling onto him and changing him, called Dan, and he refuses to let himself turn into him; with his brilliant, brilliant, brilliant friends Tucker and Sam, who made sure he would never have to endure any of it alone; with his parents, who mean well, but shoot at him as Danny Phantom and swear to rip him apart molecule by molecule; and finally, with his amazing powers that he can't master, but can also be a normal boy any time he wants.

For the first time in two weeks, Danny's eyes flicker open.

It isn't long before people are flooding into his hospital room, desperate to see Danny Fenton awake again and looking as good as before he was blasted. There are so many of them, and all of them want hugs, or to talk, or to hold his hand and laugh and cry.

Honestly, all Danny wants to do, is go back to sleep.

But he holds up for a while, until people flood back out of the room, leaving him and his teacher, Mr. Lancer alone for a while.

"So, Danny," the teacher said, humour obvious in his tone, "you were worried because you thought your secret was going to be revealed."

"Well, yeah," Danny sighed. "I mean, I've kept it for ten months, now; I don't think it would be much fun if it was going to be revealed."

There was silence between the two for a few seconds.

"W-a-a-i-i-t..." Danny said slowly. "You know my secret?"

"About the one with you being Danny Phantom and everything? Yeah. We got that a couple of seconds after Plasmius hit you with the ecto-gun."

Danny thought this over. "Okay, how many people know this?"

Lancer shrugged. "About the whole town?"

Danny did a bit more thinking. "This sucks," he stated bluntly.

Lancer laughed for a bit. "While you're at it, any more secrets you'd like to divulge about your Phantomly side?"

"Yeah," Danny said. "Vlad Masters is Plasmius."

Needless to say, the conversation got a little awkward after that.

Jack and Maddie visited every day, bringing with them friends and family and anyone that wanted to see him. However, life quickly got in the way, and Danny was told to 'stay in bed while we deal with Vlad'. There'd be a dangerous glint in Maddie's eye as she said this, and Danny couldn't help but laugh at her tone.

But now, Danny slumped back in his bed slightly. He had been in the bed for days now, and he was feeling fine, however his parents insisted that he stay in there.

Danny was immensely bored. In fact, he was so bored, that he had already started to flick an IV stand across the room using his ecto-blasts. Yes. Boredom creates desperation in a lot of people.

He had many people come to visit him, including the press, some random people he had seen but never spoken to before, and he had even been spoken to the director of a talk show. Obviously, he had said no, however Jazz had told him later on that his mother had told them 'a definite maybe'. Danny had shrugged it off; ever since he had been hit with the souped up blaster, he had found himself a lot calmer with things.

Nonetheless, the one person he had never, ever expecting to come and visit him was Dash.

On his second week of solitary and utterly boring confinement, Dash Baxter, star quarterback, came to visit Danny. He had been recovering as well, because according to what Sam and Tucker had told him, after seeing Phantom turn into Fenton, Dash had fainted in shock and gained a rather attractive egg on the back of his head.

Anyway, I digress. Let's get on with the tale.

There was a sharp rap at the door and Danny quickly tugged the unused drip back to his bed before shouting "come in!".

The door opened slowly, and Dash, looking as solemn as Danny had ever seen, walked into the room.

"Uh, hey," Danny said awkwardly. Yes; Dash was more than certainly an unexpected visitor.

"Hi, Danny," Dash said quietly. "I'll understand if you don't want to, like, talk to me or whatever, but please, can you hear me out?"

"Sure, Dash," Danny said politely. "Sit down."

Doing as he was bid, Dash collapsed into the hard hospital chair next to Danny's bed. He looked at Danny for a couple of moments, then looked into his lap and started to speak.

"Uh... Danny," he said. "I really don't know how to phrase this any better, but uh... I'm really sorry for what I did to you every day at school..." he paused, and allowed himself a glance up at Danny's expression. It was clear and smooth, not revealing anything.

"Well... I guess I didn't understand that you were going through as much of a hard time as me, if not worse." He laughed bitterly. "Believe me, I didn't do this just for you. Nathan, this little kid I used to pick on... well, he cried in front of me and begged me to stop. He was also being hit by his dad, and I didn't realise..." Dash trailed off awkwardly, still staring into his lap.

"Listen, Dash," Danny said, killing the growing stretch of silence. "What was the matter with your life to make you hit me?"

Dash stared up into Danny's face. "Well, I had so much pressure put on me," Dash admitted unthinkingly. "My parents wanted me to get good grades, get a girlfriend, be the star quarterback, get college applications early, go to a sports academy... You have no idea how hard that is while you're having to also balance what your friends and schoolmates and teachers think of you..."

Danny regarded Dash for a few more seconds, then opened his mouth to speak. "Listen, Dash, I don't think I'll ever be able to forgive you - not properly. Eleven years of being in school and being bullied every day by a guy that thinks he has it hard because he has to do what everyone else in school is doing... well, you wouldn't be able to forgive a dude like that. I know you couldn't."

Dash just stared. "But... you were Fenton, who didn't have a social status at all..."

Danny laughed. "Of course I had to do all of that. You think my parents didn't want me to grow up and be a good little ghost hunter? You think I didn't have to make sure that people didn't hate me, while fighting ghosts, maintaining a good grade and having to worry if a ghost is going to burst through the wall and beat me up any second of the entire day? And there was the pressure from my sister about me doing well at school, and having to read books, and having to sort out my parent's insane inventions..." Danny trailed off and looked at Dash, this time in the eyes. "But you know what, Dash? Turning into Danny Phantom was the best thing that ever happened to me. And it wasn't because of the powers. Think about that one, Dash, and if you understand, then maybe I could try to be somewhat of a friend to you."

Dash left in silence.

The day that Danny went back to school was odd in many, many different ways. For example, he flew invisibly to school, and instead of somehow landing in a cubical, he instead landed right in the middle of the corridor. People stared and gaped at him, even after he had turned back into Fenton, but he walked away from them quite happily. He had found that things like that didn't effect him so much anymore.

When he got into lesson (English, with Lancer) he found that when, halfway through the lesson, when his ghost sense went off, he stuck his hand up quickly and found that Lancer simply told him to 'kick some ghost butt'.

It was all rather surreal, actually.

In fact, when the ghost turned out to be the Box Ghost and he had been haunting some discarded boxes in the lunch hall, when people poured out of their classes for lunch, they stared as Danny, rather casually, sucked up the ghost into a thermos and flew back down the hall, whistling to himself.

However, there were three things that were right up there at the top on the odd ghost scale. Number one was Dash.

Dash had been avoiding him ever since the hospital incident, however when the football star came over to Danny and publicly asked for his forgiveness, Danny said yes. And, later in life, the two would never be close friends, however it would never be as bad as it had been before.

Number two was the fact he now had a posse of fan-girls wherever he went. Paulina, Phoebe, Star and Anyah had been tailing the half ghost for days since his release from hospital, and had started a Danny Phantom fan-club online, which was apparently tolling up millions of hits per day and was one of the number one hits on Google. Sam had told Danny that the website contained lots of pink love hearts and adoring love letters. Danny swore he would never log onto it.

But the final strange thing was his parents. Danny's parents hadn't taken the news very well; in fact, they had been convinced that their son had been overshadowed by Phantom. However, with a little blackmail from Jazz and some gentle reminding from Sam and Tucker, his parents had quickly come over to the idea, however decided that they would never, ever purposefully create another hybrid. And once Danny told them about what Vlad had done... well, let's say that a new mayor had to be appointed and Vlad was never, ever invited to a family dinner ever again.

Things had changed for Danny Fenton. However, there had been one main reason behind it: a test, checking how ghost-like you were. Oh, how life loves irony.

AND WOOT FOR TOTALLY CLICHÉ ENDINGS LOL.

Now, it's time for the cheesy thank you's, and time for me to hop off and go make myself a cheese toastie.

Anyway, I'd just like to thank my brilliant new beta, Iymea, and my friend Cleo who helped me out in the starting chapters. :D

I can't seem to get anywhere on the Detention Club, however I have thought about a new story, where Danny's, like, two sides collide... :D It's a pretty good idea, if you ask me.

Anyway, if you didn't enjoy it, then sorry you read it.

But to everyone who reviewed, thank you! The list is muy long, lol. xD

Thank you to:

JuneLuxray2, Garnet Sky, geek179, Frostphantom , daniphantom149 , D for Danielle , Codiak , Phantomgirl96 , Iymea , ImNoHeroImTheVillian , KarinKurosakiHitsugaya913 , Macomister , PaRaM0rE-0394 , Sin - NaMe , magic stell , ColorLikeWhoa , Lord Jace , Winged Golden Tiger , nivogirl , Alexandria Paige , Biisaiyowaq , Weird little street rat , Vaneskera, Hellbreaker , LoneMoon , Xeiden , Call me Mad, gothsamphan14 , joy2theworlddannyphantom , Kiomori , ThePurpleSuperCow and anyone else who reviewed anonymously! You're all awesome~~