Your absence has gone through me

Like thread through a needle.

Everything I do is stitched with its color."

W.S. Merwin


"What was I supposed to do, Tuck?" Sam rifled through the pile of notebooks in her locker and yanked out her history textbook.

The masses of Casper High streamed past them, a jumble of red and white and chatter and sneakers squeaking on tile. Some part of Tucker remembered that tryouts were today; school spirit was buzzing, and the cheerleader hopefuls would be lining up in the gym after lunch. Any other year this would have been a major highlight for Tucker. Now it irritated him, all these stupid kids caught up in their own petty lives. Nobody seemed to remember Danny Fenton. Nobody seemed to care. Not that it was all that different from when he'd been here every day, risking his life for them.

Tucker swung open his own locker and grabbed an extra pencil. "Talk him out of it! That's what you're good at, talking sense into Danny when he's about to do something stupid."

"What's stupid about it?"

Tucker scowled. "Are you kidding me? He's out there, wherever he is, alone—with that messed up arm—ghosts and police and GIW after him with nobody to watch his back. How is that better than home?"

"You mean in that Fenton death trap? Yeah, I'm sure ghost-crazed parents and a wide open portal to all his worst enemies is exactly what Danny needs right now." She slammed her locker shut and spun the lock. "Out there, he'll be free."

Sam had said the same thing about releasing a four hundred pound gorilla. Anger prickled up Tucker's neck; she made it sound so pat, so simple. "Free of danger? Or free of us?"

"Everything," Sam thrust a handful of pens into her bag. "Especially her."

"You know that's bull," Tucker said. He was angry too, but Sam was missing the point. Mrs. Fenton had just been a single piece on one big, twisted chessboard. "Mrs. F. wouldn't... She didn't…she…" he sighed and dragged his beret off his head, twisting the red fabric between his hands. He frowned at it for a moment, then shoved it back onto his head, pulling it back with a jerk. "She loves him too, Sam."

"Don't you dare compare me to her," Sam spat out, whirling to glare at him. The first bell rang, but neither of them budged. "That is not love."

Tucker shrugged; it was useless to argue with Sam once she'd made up her mind. "Think what you want. Maybe he would have been better off with me, or at your place. He didn't have to leave Amity Park."

"Maybe he could have, but he didn't," Sam said. "He wouldn't stay."

Not even for me, was the unspoken thought that hovered between them. Tucker's anger settled down into his chest, heavy and hot, where it felt more like defeat. If Sam couldn't make him change his mind, nobody could. Danny had really just… left them. For good, maybe.

Sam seemed to draw in on herself, collapsing into the dingy black dress she was wearing, the notebook pressed flat against her chest. "He wanted this."

There wasn't anything Tucker could say to that.


There hadn't been one word about Fenton.

Dash slouched past the principal's office, glancing through the glass windows of the outer office. The men in white uniforms were nowhere to be seen, but Teslaff was there, occupying a seat and a half in the waiting area. The former gym teacher sat with head bowed, hair combed into a severe bun, hands in her lap, looking uncomfortable and defeated in a mousy grey business suit that barely contained her broad, muscular shoulders.

They must have called her in. She'd been suspended and eventually fired over the whole thing with Fenton disappearing. An ugly little worm of guilt squirmed its way through Dash's thoughts. He quashed it with a sneer and stalked off, down the halls. Like it was his fault.

Those government guys had shown up first thing in the morning, staking out the teacher's offices like they'd owned the place. They'd even interviewed some of the kids from the summer camp. Not that anyone who knew about him would talk. Dash had made sure of that.

Dash didn't know why Fenton had run off again, and he didn't care. He'd gone to visit. Made up some excuse, forced the guys from the team to sign off on some lame get well card and crowded himself into the room with three other classmates. He had to look Fenton in the eyes and know why Dash wasn't halfway to juvenile hall already.

It wasn't the usual Fenton that had been sitting there in the hospital room, looking even more skinny and pathetic than usual. That Fenton hadn't even had the fight to say a word. He'd just looked at Dash vacantly, then mumbled a completely unsarcastic thanks for the card.

He hadn't looked angry. He hadn't looked scared of Dash either, which was annoying. He'd looked…not all there.

What mattered was that for whatever reason he'd kept his mouth shut. This time it was Fenton's own fault; nobody could pin a runaway on Dash. Nobody would try. He'd made sure of that.

Dash cracked his knuckles and a curly-haired nerd—Chrissy, that physics kid—scuttled out of his path. Amazing what the name killer did for your rep, even if it had turned out false. Dash held back an involuntary shudder. He'd wasted so many sleepless nights on Fenton. Remembering that fall—picturing his scrawny body rotting on the rocks—going weak-kneed whenever someone mentioned ghosts and wondering when Fenton would show up to haunt him, or if it would just be the awful secret he'd take to his grave...

All for nothing. Fenton was fine. It wasn't his problem that the nerd couldn't bounce back from a little walk in the woods.

Dash was fine. Unless one of the other guys grew a pair or, even less likely, sprouted a guilty conscience, then Dash was safe. Nobody who mattered knew. Nobody who knew cared enough to tell, or at least they were too scared about their getting their own skins expelled for it to matter. If only the government would stop sniffing around, he'd be off scott free.

They had nothing on him. Why should he worry? All he needed was to blow off some steam.

A slamming locker door caught Dash's attention. He smirked. Perfect: that kind of aggression meant pain he could take advantage of. It was just his good luck that the victim turned out to be Tucker Foley, Fenton's buddy. The skinny teen was standing in a nearly-deserted hallway, watching Manson stomp off toward History.

Dash strolled over and leaned against the neighboring locker. He grinned down at Foley, who was practically oozing bad mood. "What's the matter, geek boy? Your creepy girlfriend dump you? Guess you're not even good enough for the rebound."

Foley stared after the goth for a long moment, then huffed and snatched a notebook from his locker, slamming it shut. "You're an idiot, Dash. And I'm not in the mood."

Dash scowled. Foley was usually too spineless to even think about brushing him off; he must be filling in for Fenton. That was part of the reason Dash couldn't ever leave that stupid nerd alone. Fenton always had to come back with some smart remark, like he didn't care if his body made a permanent dent in the locker room floor, or whether Dash scrubbed the toilets with his face. He never looked beaten. At least, not until that last time.

Foley turned to walk away.

"Hey! I'm talking to you, technofreak!" Dash grabbed Foley by the collar of his yellow shirt and slammed him into the lockers. The kid was so skinny it was like whipping around an empty sack. It felt good. Easy. That's how it was supposed to be.

The geek glared. Boy, was he asking for it.

Dash stepped in close, making sure Foley felt all six feet and two hundred pounds of muscle bearing down on him. "You walk away before I'm done with you, and you can forget about walking at all." He leaned in and lowered his voice to a hiss. "You broken-hearted, freak? Your boyfriend left you, and you can't blame it on getting lost this time. He bailed."

"How about pushed off a cliff," Tucker snapped back. The geek's eyes narrowed behind thick black frames. "You think Principal Ishiyama would like to hear the real version of what happened? I bet Teslaff would. Wonder how much your touchdowns will be worth once they realize you left a classmate for dead?"

Dash felt all the blood drain from his face. Foley knew? Of course he knew. That wimp would always tell these two everything. Even if he didn't have the guts to say anything himself, even if he was gone, the threat was still there.

Looking into Foley's eyes, Dash realized something else. He wasn't like Fenton. For once in his life this geek was fearless. He'd put himself through any kind of trouble for his loser friend, and not even the word killer would stop him.

That kind of attitude had to be squashed. Pronto.

Dash spared a quick glance around. The second bell had rung, and the hall was deserted.

He picked the nerd clear off the floor and slammed him into the lockers again, hard enough that he could feel the cheap metal give a little under the nerd's skinny frame. "You've got nothing, Foley, and you know it. You can't scare me with stories nobody's going to believe."

"Maybe. Maybe not." Foley wheezed. His hand swung up and clawed uselessly at Dash's fingers that were twisted into his shirt collar. "You can forget about the teachers. It's not them you ought to worry about, Dash. It's me."

"You?" Dash laughed out loud. "You, Fo-lame?"

"You can't hide behind football trophies for this kind of thing, Bax-turd." The geek said slowly and deliberately, drawing out that unbelievable insult. "Danny might not think it's your fault, but he's not here. I am. I'm his best friend. And I totally blame you."

Foley slammed his hands back against the lockers—bracing himself, Dash realized a second too late—and then pain nailed Dash in the gut. He lost his grip and stumbled back, disbelief singing through his brain. The geek had just—kicked him? Before he could fully process that event something hard and metallic smashed into his right eye.

Stars sparked in his vision, but he was already seeing red. Foley must be suicidal. That was good, because Dash felt murderous today.


Valerie had never really liked Tucker. He talked too much, seemed to lead Danny into almost as much trouble as that bleeding heart goth girl, and he let any female that looked twice at him lead him around by the nose. He'd made no secret of his dislike of her when she'd been dating Danny. At the time she'd blamed it on sour grapes, thanks to that old puppy crush Foley had had on her freshman year.

Even so, she currently liked Dash even less.

When she hurried in late for her next class period—ghost snake, two blocks away, taken care of—and saw the broad-shouldered senior pummelling Tucker Foley into the floor, she hauled Dash up by the arm and shoved him against the lockers.

"Cool it, helmet brain!" she snapped, twisting his arm just enough that he was aware she could lock it painfully if he tried to yank it away. "You want to put him in the hospital?"

"You bet I do!" Dash sputtered, his face scarlet with fury. "Look what he did to my face, the little buttwipe!" Valerie realized that not all the red was from the quarterback's temper. An oddly angular bruise had already started to puff around his right eye.

"Foley did that?" Valerie said, disbelief and grudging admiration tingeing her voice. "What the heck did you say to him?"

Dash scowled down at her, furious, but he knew better than to shove her around. Valerie wasn't a black belt for nothing and she wouldn't hesitate to use those abilities on him, two facts he knew quite well. He'd even admired it in a "you tell anyone else you're dead" kind of way. That was back during her A-list year, when they'd pretended to be friends. Ancient history.

"What do you care about this loser nobody anyway?" Dash straightened and brushed off his jacket, frowning at the specks of blood on the white leather sleeve. "You some kinda champion for nerd justice or something now, Valerie?"

Her eyes narrowed. Loser, nobody, nerd. Those were insults he'd fling at her just as easily when he bothered to notice her these days. "Somebody has to, jerkface."

He scoffed. "I didn't know you'd sunk that low."

"Get out of here before Lancer shows up," Val said, letting go of his arm and giving him a shove toward the men's room. "And clean up, you look pathetic."

Tucker was slowly picking himself up from the floor. It made Valerie wince just looking at him. He might have gotten a couple of blows in, but Dash had paid that back tenfold.

"Thanks," he said shortly.

Valerie didn't miss the cool edge to his voice, but she shrugged it off; he'd just lost a fight. Nobody felt grateful after getting worked over like that. "What did he say to you, anyway? You don't usually lose it."

"The usual." Anger glittered in Tucker's green eyes. "Picking on Danny. Can't leave his favorite target alone even when he isn't here."

"Oh." Valerie didn't know what to say. She had heard about Danny's second disappearance, that he'd run away… or been abducted, some people were saying. Maybe ghosts were involved. There had certainly been a pair of silent, white-suited men walking out of the principal's office this morning, official-looking folders tucked under their arms. Valerie was haunted by the idea that some ghost had figured out her connection to Danny and decided to take its revenge; avoiding the hospital had been a bad decision after all.

She gathered up what was left of his glasses and handed them to Tucker. "Next time you want to take on the biggest guy in school, you should do it in a dark alley with a baseball bat."

"I'll keep that in mind." Tucker squinted at the mangled eyewear, then shrugged and shoved them in his back pocket, tucked a notebook under his arm, and turned to go.

"Some things are too big for you to handle, Tucker. Dash is one of them."

He shrugged with an odd little smile. "We'll see about that."


History class was fifteen minutes in when something pulled Sam out of her gloomy haze. It was, oddly, the smell of blood.

She looked up in surprise as her next-best-friend dropped heavily into the chair next to her. Tucker's beret was pulled forward, in some half-hearted attempt at hiding, but it did nothing to disguise the puffy, distorted mass of raw meat that was his face. The bruises were already blossoming into violent shades, their purple hues turned violet by his dark skin. His green eyes were just barely visible through the swollen lids. His nose looked crooked, maybe even broken.

"Tuck," she hissed. "Your face—"

"Forget it," he said, pulling out his notebook and flipping it open. Sam winced; he must still be mad.

"Where are your…" She saw the glasses sticking out his back pocket, clearly in pieces, the lenses shattered.

He shrugged. "Mom said she was done buying me new ones after I kept breaking them in ghost attacks. I'll start wearing contacts."

"You can't see the board." She doubted the teacher would even think to ask him about his textbook, which was nowhere to be seen. Judging by the horrified glance Mr. Fenris sent their way, Tucker wouldn't be going home without a visit to the principal's office. Not to mention the nurse.

"Doesn't matter." Tucker hunched over his notebook, which she realized was filled with endless rows of numbers in some complicated formula. Weird. This was History, not Trig. "I can see up close just fine."


Jazz picked at the square of layered pasta, cheese and spinach on her plate. Mom had forgotten the tomato sauce, but Jazz carefully avoided mentioning it.

They were eating lasagna at the kitchen table, Jack, Maddie and Jazz. The Fenton family minus one Fenton. The empty chair across from Jazz seemed to glare at her. The lack of plate and silverware in front of it seemed almost like a betrayal. It was good though, Jazz told herself, that Mom had stopped setting a place there. It meant that she was starting to get back in touch with reality.

Maddie had been...distant ever since Danny left. No, Jazz thought bitterly, that was the wrong word. Absent would be better. She hardly spoke a word. She didn't seem to see anything that was in front of her. Maddie just moved around the house, like a ghost—the old-school, transparent kind that you saw in movies. Having a conversation with her was like shouting down a long, dark tunnel.

Jazz swallowed and almost gagged on the dry food. She snatched up her glass and took a long drink of water.

Dad had been the opposite, focused on the moment, not stopping for anything. He'd plunged headlong into the police investigation, single-handedly had the runaway alert sent out, and contacted news stations, pouring his boundless energy and drive into finding Danny. As the days stretched on she could see his smiles wearing thin, the strain in his eyes and across his broad shoulders.

Nothing had turned up. Of course not; Danny could go invisible. Walk through walls and gates and fences, even fly away from every shred of civilization if he wanted to. Danny was a ghost, in the most literal sense.

None of them talked about it. The half ghost thing, that is. It was the glaring elephant in the room, more accusing than the empty chair at the table. All talk of ghosts was bizarrely, glaringly absent from her dad's conversations. Jazz had brought it up once and even managed to rouse some enthusiasm, but he'd trailed off in the middle of describing how his latest invention stripped ghosts bare to the core...realizing, Jazz knew, that the same thing could suddenly be applied to his son.

Jazz knew the feeling well: the sudden clench of fear, intellectual interest giving way to elaborate plans on how to make sure that weapon never, ever got used. She could only imagine what that would feel like for the inventor. The weapon in question had turned up in pieces in the wastebin two days later. Jazz hadn't brought it up again.

The silence that hung between them was crushing and absolute. Silverware clacked on plates, glasses clinked, and old chairs squeaked every time someone shifted their weight in the painful quiet. Maddie's head bowed over her meal; Jack said nothing. They didn't look at each other, not once. Neither of them looked at her.

Jazz couldn't ever remember a time when her parents hadn't acted together. Apart from Christmas, Maddie supported Jack, and Jack backed up Maddie. They were a pair, a couple, the perfect team. Now, the only words Jazz had seen them exchange were about Danny, and those were short, terse, and very carefully focused only on the search. They didn't talk. Not about the past. Not about whatever awful things had happened while Maddie was at the GIW.

Jazz shuddered. She still couldn't wrap her mind around it. It just seemed too...awful. Too cruel to be true.

She cleared her throat. Neither of her parents looked up. "So I've been meaning to talk to you," she began, trying to make her voice sound clear and confident, "about Danny."

Maddie's knife dropped out of her hand and clattered to the floor.

Jazz bit her lip, taken aback at the stone cold reaction. She forced herself to continue. "You know… even though he did keep secrets from you... That's normal, just a part of adolescent behavior. He needed to form his own identity, as a person, and maybe more importantly, as a ghost. And I—I think he did a good job. He could have..."

She remembered the dark, frightening figure that had revealed itself in Danny's room just before the CAT exams; the sheer malice in its lazy red gaze as it described a future in ruin, a future of its own making.

"He could have been a lot of bad things," she finished timidly. "But he chose to help people, because that's who Danny is. He cares about people. Cares about us. I think we need to put a little faith in him. He will come back."

Jack slowly, deliberately, resumed shoveling the pasta into his mouth. Maddie quietly scooted her chair back and picked up the fallen silverware. She walked over to the sink and set in the bottom, turning on the tap. It filled the kitchen with white noise.

Jazz flushed and dug her fork into the lasagna. It took a full five minutes before she realized her mother had frozen at the sink, eyes blank, unmoving, as water overflowed and splashed on the floor.

"Mom!" she squawked, awkwardly pushing herself away from the table and running over to turn off the sink. "What's wrong with you?"

Mom flinched at her daughter's sharp tone. Jazz felt instantly, irrationally guilty.

"Sorry," Maddie said. Then quieter, tighter, wrapping her arms around herself. "Sorry."

Jazz set down the dish towel she had snatched up to mop up the sink water and put her hands on her mom's shoulders. It felt weird to be as tall as her mom—no, with her shoulders drooped like that, Mom was shorter. Jazz felt like she was the adult more than anyone there.

"It's okay, Mom." She swallowed hard against a dryness in her throat that had nothing to do with the pasta. This was it, she realized. An opportunity. Jazz seized on it. "You know what happened with Danny… that wasn't your fault, right?"

Silence. This time it burned. It had been a stupid question to ask, Jazz knew. Of course Mom blamed herself. Who wouldn't? But she couldn't keep thinking like that. Because...because it wasn't. Jazz knew for a fact that her mom was a good person. That she was loving and tender, maybe a little over-enthusiastic and oblivious, but a great mom. She'd never hurt anything she believed to be sentient. She'd never, ever hurt Danny on purpose. It hurt Jazz to see Maddie believe that of herself.

"If it was anybody's fault, it was mine." Jazz said quietly. "I should have told you two earlier. I should have told Dad the minute we knew he was missing."

"You...knew?" Maddie whispered slowly, eyes widening.

"I…" Jazz faltered. Hadn't they realized that? This conversation was supposed to be about Maddie. Not Jazz. Not what she'd failed to do as a sister.

"All this time?"

"Yes, Mom, I did." Jazz tried to sound calm, though a strange fear prickled up her spine.

Maddie stepped forward, eyes burning with intensity. "How? When?"

"I found out a while ago, last year. Remember the thing with the therapist, Spectra? There were ghosts involved, and—and I saw Danny transform."

"And you didn't tell us?" Maddie gripped her wrist. Jazz tried to pull away, but Maddie wouldn't let her, fingers tightening with a desperate strength.

"Danny had enough on his plate," Jazz snapped. "He was doing alright then, a-and it wasn't my secret to tell."

Excuses. Stupid ones. Jazz knew it even as they passed her lips, but she couldn't help it. She'd reassured herself with them so many times, wrapping herself in their substanceless folds like a soft, blinding blanket. Cold water seeped into her socks from the spill on the floor.

"You didn't tell us?" Maddie's voice grew shriller, louder with every repetition. "You knew, and you didn't tell us?!"

Jazz finally yanked herself away from her mother's grip and took a step back. Her toes squelched, wet and cold. "I thought it was for the best—"

"Do you have any idea what happened to him because I didn't know? All that time you could have told us…" Maddie was shaking, though Jazz couldn't tell if it was from agony or from anger. "Do you know what I did, Jazz? What you let me do?"

"Danny didn't want you to know! He—he was scared, you scared him, jumping around with guns blazing and those stupid ghost-obliterating inventions!" Jazz knew she was lashing out, getting defensive, but the part of Jazz that absolutely knew she was guilty because of her silence was screaming from being exposed.

"How were we supposed know? Ghosts are just—they're inhuman! Not... not Danny. How could you not tell us?!"

Something in Jazz snapped. Mom couldn't pile all the blame on her. It wasn't fair. She wouldn't let her. "Are you saying it's my fault? I wasn't the one who he was afraid to look at when he came home! What did you do to my baby brother? Dissect him molecule by molecule?"

"Why did you let me hurt him, Jazz? I hurt him so badly..."

"Yes, you did," Jazz said, and her pain made her cruel.

"Enough!" A bang and a crack made them both flinch. Jazz turned to see Jack standing. Slowly, almost comically, the table finished cracking in half where Jack had struck it and fell in pieces to the floor. Silverware and plates crashed to the ground with the lasagna following close behind. Jack strode over and dropped a heavy hand on both of their shoulders, squeezing so hard it hurt. Jazz tried to pull away, but his fingers were like steel.

"It doesn't matter what—who—" he struggled with the words, jaw working.

Jazz stared wide-eyed. She had never seen her dad so...so angry. He was angry. At both of them. Hot shame crept across her cheeks.

"The important thing is Danny," Jack said at last, his voice quieting to a growl but losing none of its intensity. "I don't care whose fault it is. It doesn't matter what happened. We're the Fentons. All of us. We'll...we'll fix it somehow. We're going to find him. And we're going to make this right."

How? Jazz wanted to say, but one look at her father's thunderous expression and she didn't dare voice the thought. She looked at her mom, who stared at the floor, tears slipping down her face. There was no way to make it right. None at all.


Later that night, Jazz curled up into the back corner of her bed, cuddling Bearburt as tightly as his old stitches would bear, and sobbed. She didn't cry. Hadn't since she was a little girl. She'd always believed that she was too mature, and there were more constructive coping methods.

It felt like her family was broken beyond repair. Jazz, despite all her reading and research and stupid know-it-all confidence, had no idea how to fix it.

When the sobs finally petered out into sniffles, she got up, blew her nose, and set Bearburt aside with a pat. She seated herself at her desk and swept up the missing Phantom clippings and stolen photocopies of Danny's charts, stacking them all neatly. She stowed them carefully in a drawer and pushed it shut. That left a single sheet of paper on her desk, stamped with an official seal, an elegant handwritten signature at the bottom.

Jazz picked up the acceptance letter and studied its contents. "Maybe you had the right idea, little brother," she said aloud, folding the letter to her chest. "Maybe anywhere's better than here."


Those that Break :: tbc...


A/N:

Hi everyone!

This chapter isn't particularly momentous, but I feel as if I should stand up and take a bow. I survived June! Somehow… and so did the Fentons. Somehow. There's even some excitement on the horizon, if Tucker's got anything to say about it. But that would be telling, wouldn't it? ;)

Many thanks to my beta readers, MyAibou and HappyLiefEriksonDay! Also thank you to Anneriawings and LunarMothim for your help with characterization.

To my longtime readers, you're the best. Hands down. It gives me such warm fuzzies to see y'all here. :) To you new ones (especially IvyVine6 and TheGingerAvenger), hello and thanks for the reviews!

Till next time,

- Hj