Author's note: Hold me close because I will never forget you. I won't show you my tears because I will always love you. This pain is forever, but smile for me again.

The End of Danny

.:·:.:·:.

In my dreams, when I somehow manage to stay asleep for a significant amount of time, usually in the very early hours before the sun rises, he is there. He is almost always a young teenager, the way he was before so much changed between us, the way he was before he became inhuman. I am not sure why he appears to me in this form.

He is always happy, always smiling. He has no idea what his future holds, no idea what will happen to him, no idea what I will do to him. I always realize too quickly that he's not real. My mind reminds me with a painful jolt that he is gone. I hold onto him and clutch him close to me, breathe him in. He feels so real in these dreams, but then I wake to find that he has vanished, that I had made him vanish.

He was my most horrific magic act.

...

Now that I was in on Danny's secret, our relationship improved dramatically. He seemed to be lighter, as if a weight that had been pressing on him was lifted. He didn't have to hide anymore.

I didn't tell Jack. I never told him. To this day, he still has no idea that our son is half ghost—

was was was was was was was was was was waswaswaswaswaswaswaswaswaswaswaswas

I certainly tried to tell him a couple times, had every intention of eventually telling him, but the timing was never right. Jack was even more impulsive than I was, certainly not as reasonable. I know, you must think I'm a hypocrite for getting so upset with Vlad for not telling me when I couldn't even tell my own husband. But Jack just didn't seem mature enough to handle such a revelation. The right opportunity never presented itself, and it was so much easier to just keep it from him.

I regret it now. I should've told him. Maybe Jack could've helped me, could've stopped me.

—could've ended me first—?

Danny and I started talking more often. After school, late at night, at a coffee shop, in his room. He was somewhat hesitant at first, but he seemed relieved once he started to trust me, once he saw that I was not angry and not judging him. He told me about his relationships with certain ghosts, which ghostly enemies didn't concern him and which ones truly frightened him, his ventures into the Ghost Zone, his mishaps with some of our ghost-related inventions, his personal theories about ghostly essence, what ghosts really were and what he thought he really was now.

"What do you think you are, Danny?"

"An oddity."

This was a late night in his room. I sat on his bed, he in his desk chair.

"An oddity how?" I asked. "I mean, besides that you're only half ghost."

"Being half-ghost means that I have a life beyond any ghostly obsessions. I still have humanity and can resist what other ghosts cannot. Full ghosts, real ghosts, it's as if they can't help themselves, like they are compelled to do anything and everything to obtain or feed their obsessions." He smiled. "Almost like OCD or something."

I knew all this already as a long-time ghost researcher, but he had been encountering them on a far more personal level than I ever had. "So you don't have a ghostly obsession of your own?" I was teasing him, but his smile disappeared.

"I used to think I didn't," he said quietly. "But…" He looked away.

I leaned in closer. "Danny?"

He looked back at me. I could tell he wanted to tell me something, but he seemed unsure.

"Danny, you can tell me. It's okay."

He averted his gaze again. "I haven't told anyone this. Not Tucker or Jazz or even Sam."

He paused, a long moment of weighty silence. I waited, watched his face as he tried to find the words.

"When I transform," he began, looking down at his hand as if he could see its spectral properties, "I feel…different." He continued to study his hand, turned it and looked at the back of it, perhaps because he didn't want to look at me. "I…think differently." A pause. "It wasn't noticeable at first. I thought I was the same when I transformed." He finally looked at me. "But I'm not actually the same. When I'm Phantom, I'm more ghost than human both physically and mentally."

"What makes you say that?" To say I was curious would be an understatement. This was the sort of information on which my scientific mind thrived.

"When I'm human, I can stop myself from doing things. I can reason, I can calculate, I can talk myself out of something. But when I'm Phantom, I can't always stop myself from doing certain things." He drew in a shaky breath. "I sometimes feel…compelled to do certain things."

Oh, how he had me hooked.

"Like I said, it wasn't noticeable to me at first. I would do things but never really thought about why I was doing them. I thought that I felt a responsibility to protect the town, to protect others. I thought that was why I kept becoming ghost, that that was why I kept fighting even when it hurt so much, even when it nearly killed me."

I had no hypothesis for where this was all headed. I simply waited for him to continue.

"But I've done things that I wouldn't normally do." He was once again not looking at me. "Things that made sense to me when transformed, but when I reflected on them later as just myself, they didn't seem right. They weren't things I actually wanted to do, weren't things that were characteristic of the real me, the human me."

"Things like what?"

"Like…taking things too far with ghosts, using excessive force with them that I couldn't justify later when I wrote about it in my journal." He motioned to his computer. "And not just ghosts, but people, too. There have been times when I stopped people from doing certain things. Sometimes they were horrific crimes that I stopped, but other times, they were just petty offenses." His tone lowered. "Or just people in my life who have wronged me, my bullies…"

This alarmed me. "I thought we took care of your bullies?"

Danny looked at me guiltily. "I just told you that they stopped so that you wouldn't worry anymore."

I could feel an angry feeling stirring inside me, but I quelled it for his sake. "Oh, Danny."

He put up a hand to stop me from saying anything more. "I've hurt them, too. As Phantom. I'm not sure why I did, why I felt like I had to. It wasn't as if it came out of nowhere, though. I mean, it was always in response to something they did while I was transformed, either threatening or insulting or beating on someone. I didn't even really hurt them that much, honestly. Just blasts of ectoplasm." He paused. "But I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to do more than that."

Where was he going with this? "Danny, what exactly do you think your ghostly obsession is? Do you think it's protecting others? Stopping injustice?"

"I thought it was that at first," said Danny, "but there have been times when I took off before saving someone. I mean, remember that time when you—" He stopped, his words suddenly stuck in his throat.

But I knew what he was talking about. "When I had you at gunpoint and almost shot you."

He nodded, but he seemed ashamed for even daring to bring it up. "Another ghost was attacking Dad which made you finally let go of me. Remember? He was in trouble." He grimaced. "I was too afraid, too traumatized to stay any longer. I flew away without helping him at all. If it was my ghostly obsession to protect others, I wouldn't have been able to do that. I would've been compelled to stay and help him."

I was very confused now. "I don't understand, then. What do you think is your obsession?"

"I'm not actually sure, but I think it might have something to do with…pain." He shook his head. "I mean, like…I don't know how to explain it, but I think it might be to eliminate pain and suffering. I don't ever want to feel it. Sometimes physical but mostly emotional. Guilt, shame, agony, I want to get rid of them all."

"You want to relieve people's suffering." I offer this simplification.

"No," he said, almost darkly. "Just my own."

"But then why do you always try to protect others?"

"Because I would feel guilty if I didn't. It's my fault these ghosts are here in the first place. I'm the only one who can protect the people of this town. But that said, I have abandoned that mission on occasion for my own sake. If I feel that my own personal pain is only increased by fighting off a ghost or protecting someone, then I won't do it." He looked at me anxiously. "Does that make sense at all to you?"

"I'm not sure," I told him honestly.

He gripped his elbows, bit his lip. "I'm worried because I feel like it's getting worse. I make new enemies all the time, see horrible things all the time, and when I'm transformed, I just want to make it all stop, all of the negative feelings I have."

"Only when you're transformed?"

He shut his eyes. "I can sometimes feel it when I'm human, but I am able to resist it in this form." He opened his eyes again, looked down at his hand. "I can't seem to resist it when I'm transformed. But I worry that since it is becoming more prevalent when I'm human that it will worsen, will consume me no matter what form I'm in."

"What makes you say that?"

"Because it's happened to me before."

Stunned, confused. I only stared at him, not sure what I was supposed to make of this response.

...

I am reeling and heaving and spilling everywhere. My body is rejecting everything. It wants me to suffer.

Or perhaps it is my own conscience that wants me to suffer. The doctor insists that I am fine. The problem is in my head.

The therapist thinks so, too. "Let's talk about some people in your life. Can we talk about your daughter?"

Jasmine. Jazz. Lustrous hair framing defined cheekbones tapering to a delicate chin. Beautiful and petite but so much passion within.

"And your husband?"

Jack. Strong and powerful build even if it has been buried by increasing excess layers of fat. Sharp jaw, eyes always gleaming with childlike curiosity and elation.

She doesn't ask about the final member of my family, the one who no longer exists.

"And Vlad Masters?" Her tone is professional. "He's been visiting you a lot. Tell me about him."

I am cold. I am hard. I am nauseous.

...

"It's happened to me before."

What did he mean? Something about the way he said this made me shiver.

He looked at me solemnly. "Do you still want to know what I am most afraid of?"

I had asked him for this information just a couple weeks earlier, but he had declined to answer. He was now offering it almost eagerly, as if it was a burden that had become too much for him to keep to himself, as if telling someone else would finally relieve some of the pressure it had been imposing on him. If he could just tell someone else, then perhaps it would not frighten him as much anymore, only half as much.

I nodded. Of course I wanted to know what my son was most afraid of.

"I've seen my future. I've seen what I become." His voice was low, so low that I had to lean forward to hear him. He told me a story, a narrative that was so nightmarish for him that he could not even find the strength to type it up in a journal entry. He spun a tale of a horrible monster who destroyed the world, killed thousands, and never felt any remorse or any negative feelings at all.

A monster born out of a strong desire to make all of his pain go away. His obsession.

...

First grade. I was called to Danny's school to pick him up.

"He was pointing this at other boys," the principal explained as she held up some folded paper that resembled a gun.

I was outraged. "You're suspending him for this? Really?"

The principal only inclined her head apologetically, but her face showed no sympathy. "Zero-tolerance policy. I'm sorry."

I was livid. Danny sat in the backseat as I drove. I gripped the steering wheel tightly. My teeth were clenched.

When we got home, I slammed my car door shut and threw his open to help him out. He looked at me with the saddest blue eyes.

"Are you mad at me?" he asked.

I was too taken aback to answer him.

"I don't like when you're mad." He sniffled. "Please don't be mad at me anymore."

("Please don't be mad at me anymore," he begged years later.)

My heart broken, I embraced him, my anger quickly replaced by compassion. "No, sweetheart, no, I'm not mad at you."

"I didn't mean to get in trouble." Danny's eyes were filled with so much genuine sadness and regret.

"I know you didn't, Danny. Don't worry about it. I'll figure it out so you can go back to school, okay?" I led him inside to the kitchen.

"I feel really bad." He sat at the table, barely tall enough to rest his chin on it. "Am I a bad person?"

I could see just how much this was hurting him. My anger rekindled somewhat. How could anyone dare to make my sweet son feel this way?

I set a tall glass of chocolate milk on the table for him and rubbed his back. I tried to assuage his concerns, assured him that he was very good, all good and not bad at all.

But despite my efforts, even at that young age, he seemed unconvinced.