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Mouse
Characters: Maddie, Jack, Danny
Summary: Sometimes the most obvious answer is the right one
Based on phantomrose96's tumblr post post/110218241702/headcanon-that-jack-and-maddie-realized-almost

The floor was smooth under Maddie's bare feet, chilling her toes and sending pangs of pain brought on by the cold through her ankles. She had once fallen into a lake during the last weeks of winter, and the water had been so cold that she couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't think. The feeling in her feet was exactly the same, and Maddie knew that if she didn't hurry, the cold would seep through her flannelette pyjamas and sink into her bones.

The smooth tunnel drilled itself into the bedrock that surrounded the lab. Almost perfectly cylindrical beyond its entrance, the diameter was an exact two metres, and the metal tube itself reached six metres into the earth. Maddie knew every inch of the thing - it was her crowning invention, after all.

There was a button on the wall, about halfway in. All she had to do was push it.

A mouse, white with eyes that visibly glowed, was perched on top of the portal's frame. He watched Maddie with that unwavering green gaze, and she watched him right back.

"Who are you?" she asked, shifting from foot to foot in an effort to dispel that numbing pain.

The phantom mouse broke eye contact in favour of cleaning his whiskers, and Maddie eventually realised that he wasn't going to answer her.

She took a step towards the portal.

"Are you really going to do that?" the mouse asked, staring at her again.

"If I don't, then you will, right?"

A tattered white ear flicked in annoyance. "What do you mean?" he said. "I'm your mouse, remember? I've already done it."

Maddie shook her head, walking once again towards the malfunctioning portal.

Her cold feet moved from one metal floor to the other, and Maddie shivered as she stepped inside her invention. She moved with purpose now, taking a deep breath and striding towards the button.

Slamming her palm against it, she turned back to face the mouth of the tunnel. The little white mouse sat on the floor just outside, his green eyes soft.

Maddie blinked, and in his place, there sat Phantom. Except she was now standing in the lab and looking into the portal. And the boy was sitting on the floor. Right next to the button that she'd just pressed.

He blew a strand of hair out of that oh-so-familiar face, and Maddie screamed his name as everything turned green.

...

She woke screaming.

Maddie flailed against the duvet, rolling away from Jack, away from the bed, and falling onto the floor.

Her husband was by her side in seconds, his hands soft and his arms warm as he drew her against his chest.

"We killed him," Maddie sobbed as Jack carded his fingers through her titian hair. "We k-killed him, and he never let us know!"

Jack's answer was soft, his own voice breaking as he answered her. "He'll tell us in his own time."

"B-but, what... w-what it he never tells us?"

"He'll tell us everything," Jack reiterated as Maddie pressed her tears into his nightshirt. "He said so, remember? It's only been a week since we caught him."

Maddie sniffed, huddling in her husband's arms. Her feet were freezing.

"Let's go downstairs," Jack suggested. "You need a hot drink."

The huntress sniffed, dabbing her eyes with the sleeve of her flannelette pyjamas. "Just let me get some slippers on," she said, shakily getting to her feet.

Jack moved towards the door. "I'll go boil the kettle," he offered, and Maddie nodded as he disappeared into the hallway.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, the woman shoved her feet into her fuzzy green slippers. They had been a gift from the kids for Mothers' Day, and were waterproof, fireproof, and undamaged by ectoplasm. Considering the unfortunate fates of various pairs of shoes over the years, Maddie supposed that such alterations were necessary.

Grabbing a tissue from her bedside table, Maddie blew her nose before following Jack's path downstairs to the kitchen.

One week prior, they had finally cornered Phantom. They were going to tear him apart, slowly and meticulously. It was their dream.

And then he'd burst into terrified tears, and screamed that it wasn't a mouse that died to turn on the portal like the Fentons had originally announced. It had been him. A human child.

Phantom was their mouse.

After much crying and begging from both Phantom and his hunters, he had promised to tell them everything; who he was, what he'd been doing in the lab, if he was actually a ghost or not. They just had to give him some space first.

Of course they had let him go. Since then, things had been quiet in Maddie's house.

Phantom would come back. He'd talk to them, given enough time to bring himself to do so.

For the past week, neither parent had been able to sleep for more than a couple of hours a night. They were the smartest in their field; genii, both of them. And the thing about intelligence is that if you've got it in one aspect of your life, you can usually apply it to pretty much any problem that the universe throws at you.

Besides. Phantom? The Ghost Portal? A kid with access to the lab during its construction?

It didn't take a genius to figure it out.