A/N: Ugh. Sorry it's been so long; I fell off a bike, and that sapped my will to do anything but sleep for a couple weeks. This was such a hard chapter to write, and I don't know why... well, mostly it was just the beginning. I hope he doesn't come off too OOC...

Sorry I don't have something better to offer as pennance, but this will have to do. Feel free to murder me in your comments. Honestly, it would just be nice to get some reviews every once in a while. As it is, that's one reason why this one took so long to churn out; I wasn't sure if anyone really cared. I am stubborn enough to finish it, but how fast that'll happen is questionable.

"What do you mean I can't see her?" It was a disturbing development, the nurse meeting him at the door just in time to deny him entrance. Up until them, Danny had taken care to have minimal interaction with the hospital staff and... well, everyone except for Sam. Now, one nurse he only vaguely remembered was calling him by name, and if the timing of the meeting indicated anything, he'd been expected.

Needless to say, he was worried. This sudden and complete deviation from the norm certainly didn't bode well for things in general. He'd become a creature of habit in the previous decades, and change tended to put him on edge. Of course, the fact that aforementioned nameless nurse was refusing outright to let him to his goal wasn't helping.

"I mean that we're all worried about Ms. Manson, and that your authority isn't high enough to make me let you in."

"Forget authority; you obviously don't even know who I am. I can get through no matter what you try to do to stop me." His posture shifted to be somewhat more aggressive, teeth and hands simultaneously clenching together as he did his best to loom. Being a half-ghost lent its advantages in that department. Despite the obvious signs that the gawky nurse wanted to turn tail and run right then, he did an impressive job of standing his ground. In a better moment, Danny would have recognized that as a quality he admired. One that generally made a good hero. He was seeing just a bit of green at the moment, however, and instead opted to push his advantage.

"I'm probably double your age, if not triple. You don't know the first thing about me."

The nurse took a deep breath, eyes closed, as he steeled himself and then stood up a little bit straighter. "I know that Ms. Manson wouldn't be friends with someone who would think so little of hurting a person."

"You hardly know her if you have to call her Ms. Manson," Danny said with a glare, sure that it was a sentiment she'd repeated more than enough herself. A little bit of his aggression died down as he thought of the reason he was there, of how ridiculous he was being... of the fact that the nurse was completely right. In his head, a much-younger Sam was hitting him in the shoulder and telling him to calm down because he was being an idiot. "Besides," he added, relaxing visibly but still looming, "I don't need to hurt you to get through."

Suddenly, there's a hand on his shoulder. He whips around, fairly ready for a real threat. To his surprise and, to some extent, panic, it's Tucker. Looking calm as ever. "Maybe he can't stop you, but I can." His level gaze unnerved Danny more than he'd like to admit, and he opened his mouth before he even knew what he was going to say. He never found out, however, because Tucker cut him off.

"Sam told me. Just... not right now, okay? She's confused. I think you and I need to talk."

Something about the way the shorter, much more elderly boy looked at him told him that it would be a bad idea to argue. With a very terse nod, he allowed himself to be led away from the door that had been his destination.

-T-I-M-E-A-N-D-S-P-A-C-E-G-A-P-

"So," Tucker said around a mouthful of the horrid hospital meat product, his manners obviously not much improved, "You're telling me that after all that enigmatic crap, what finally broke her was you giving her grandma's locket back?"

Danny took a deep breath and followed it up with a long swig out of his soda. When the glass was back on the table and he was bereft of any other means of delaying his answer, he nodded heavily. "Yeah. I guess... Guess I struck a nerve or something? Kinda like what happened with me and my parents' deaths?" He thought he'd moved on enough to talk about it, but he still winced a little as the words came out.

Tucker swallowed, tapping the fork to his chapped lips as he thought the situation through. "I don't know, Danny. She has her moods just like she always has. And you were always the one who knew how to read her, not me. I've just kinda been riding by the seat of my pants since you left. If you don't know why she's upset... well, I guess we're all doomed."

Danny scowled a little bit at his quickly-emptying glass, unwilling to actually scowl at someone who was trying to help him out... for now. He would have inevitably succumbed to the urge by the end of the day. "You seem cheery about all of this."

"Sorry, I'm old. And a guy. I don't have the energy left to hold a grudge, and reunions tend to be happy occasions, regardless of the circumstances." He laughed momentarily at himself, before deciding that meat was more important and stuffing his face once again.

"I thought you said you hadn't found the time to get old?" Danny asked slyly, willing to let seriousness and endless questions go for a moment.

Tucker barked out a laugh, completely uncaring to the fact that he was spewing just a little bit of mystery meat as he did so. "You really think I wasn't lying through my teeth back there? Sam would've killed me, too, if she'd have known exactly what I did."

With that, Danny's entire world shut down. "Wait... you were... what else... how much... what exactly were you lying about?"

Tuck's brow furrowed together for a moment before realization dawned. He swallowed what was in his mouth, the moment of his bliss feeling like an eternity to the impatient halfa, and then he spoke. "Oh, don't worry. I meant it when I said she wasn't over you. I thought that much would've been obvious from your own interactions with her... suppose you always were a bit oblivious, though..."

"And she really hates me?" He cut in, needing to know and not willing to listen to the perchance-partly-senile ramblings of his once-upon-a-time best friend.

Tucker's expression sobered instantly, his eyes holding all the knowledge of his years for another rare moment. Danny realized then what had unnerved him earlier about his friend's gaze; even now, he spent too much time laughing. When he was serious, it pulled the wrinkles on his face the wrong way. It made him look too old, and like a man who was not one to be messed with.

"I think you know the answer to that as well as I do." His voice sounded like it was trying to be apologetic, but failing. Like there was just a trace of the grudge he'd claimed earlier that he couldn't hold. Danny could hardly blame him; he'd had to pick up the pieces he was sure he'd left behind. Sam normally would have been the one taking charge, strong enough to carry the world on her shoulders for a while while it healed, but in his mind, she was amongst the things that needed re-piecing.

With a sigh, Danny drained the last of his soda. He was expecting for a moment for the ice to hit him in the face before he remembered he'd asked for it without since he could keep it cold himself. The little detail, for some reason, made him realize above everything else just how long he'd been gone from the human world. Two and a half decades was a long time. Twenty-four years... he wasn't sure how many days; he'd never been good at math. Twenty-four sets of three hundred sixty-five, though... that had to be a few thousand. If three years was about a thousand days... that was what, eight thousand? Too long. Too long to go without eating at a restaurant, or seriously just sitting down with a human. With the species he'd once acclaimed as his own kind.

The two old men sat for a few minutes, one drowning in his thoughts and the other letting him. Tucker steadily made his way through the plate that should have been too much food for a man of his size and age. His stomach was a black hole, however, defying all expectation. Just like always.

"Eight thousand days," Danny finally said aloud, albeit an odd, strangled half-whisper. "I've probably only slept a few hundred out of that... what happened to all that time?"

Tucker, not missing a beat, swallowed what was in his mouth and speared another forkful. "You've been busy. I've been busy. Heck, even Sam's been busy. It's actually been closer to nine thousand, but they weren't nine thousand days of nothing. That much time doesn't just disappear, unless you're... say, an angsty vampire."

And there it was. He knew it. Unable to help himself, Danny was actually scowling at Tucker this time. The fact that he had no other possessions to reasonably scowl at certainly helped. "Don't you dare compare my life to Twilight. I don't care what you have up your sleeve, I can kill you and then haunt your grave."

"That seems like more of a punishment to you than to me." Tucker smirked, glad to see that his best friend wasn't sinking too far into depression. Regardless of Danny's hesitancy to use the term, which he could've guessed even though he didn't actually know of it, he still considered it the right word. After Danny left, he'd been first too bitter, then too busy to even consider finding another, and after that, no good candidates came along. Sure, some were decent, but he just couldn't justify replacing Danny. No friendship, no matter how good, ever felt that natural again. So it was just him and Sam, both the sibling that the other had never had. Sam and Danny were irrevocably his best friends, and there was little either could do about it.

"I don't know. Having some place to haunt might actually do me some good. I've been more ghostly than not as of late." Danny chuckled in return, mostly genuine.

"Really? I hadn't noticed."

Their banter continued for a while, natural as could be expected and probably more so, depending on whose expectations we speak of. There was a strain in the occasional pauses, as even men both waiting for death to claim everything they ever knew couldn't just pick back up after a quarter of a century. It was too much.

With a glance at his watch, Danny's eyes widened. "Wow, I've been here for hours. Surely you've got something to do."

Tucker just shrugged, passing it off as nothing. His plate had long since been emptied, shoved off to the side and forgotten. As a matter of fact, guests were now slowly wandering, limping, and being wheeled in for dinner in a trickle. "Not really. Not so long as I'm here. Most of my business is back in Illinois with the kids. I don't really bother keeping track of much more than the days and the mealtimes. You, however, seem to have an impeccable sense of timing for someone who disappeared off the face of the earth for more than twenty years."

It's a new development. "That's right. You've probably found the time to settle down and make yourself a family since then, haven't you. Kids, even. So, who'd you wind up marrying? Anyone I know?"

"Well..." Tucker began, but was cut off by a shrill scream from the other end of the cafeteria.

"Daniel James Fenton! What in Pariah Dark's name are you doing here?"

The pair spun to see who had recognized him to call out all the way across the rather spacious room, even though one already knew. One very aged, very enraged Jazz stood in the doorway to the cafeteria, expression somewhere between a deer in the headlights and an axe murderer.

The halfa, despite having been in perfect control of his powers for more than half of his life, flickered in and out of visibility.

A/N: Pssst! I'll let you in on a secret. I haven't actually decided who Tucker married yet. Honestly, I don't know if I will. I plan on avoiding it, if at all possible. Unless I get a really good idea. In my head, I've pretty much decided that if it's anyone who's not Jazz, they've already died by this point. Feel free to superimpose... or to attempt to sway me to a specific pairing. Who knows, it just might work. 0.0

Anyways, I'm off to go die now. Next chapter is whenever.