Summary: Kwan wakes up to a surprise.
Characters: Dash x Danny x Kwan

Afterward 14

Kwan stretched as he walked out of the bedroom. After a long week, he wanted nothing more than to sleep in, but his internal clock obnoxiously kept telling him it was time to wake up. He glanced back into the bedroom, almost jealous as Dash and Danny continued to sleep in their bed. Shaking his head, he walked to the kitchen. He wasn't about to interrupt their sleep just because he was now wide awake.

When he reached the kitchen, he opened the refrigerator, weighing his breakfast options. A wolfish whistle made him jump and spin around, the refrigerator door slamming shut in the process. Sitting on the couch, a woman had her feet up on the coffee table and a magazine resting in her lap. She grinned impishly, and Kwan could only stare mutely back. Who was this woman? How did she get into their apartment? And why did she look remarkably similar to Danny? She could have been his twin, if Danny had a sibling other than Jazz. Kwan was fairly certain Danny didn't have a twin sister.

Kwan turned his head but kept his eyes on the woman. "Danny!"

After some muffled mumbling, Danny appeared in the bedroom doorway. "What is it?" He rubbed tiredly at his eyes, clearly wishing he could return to bed from the exhaustion on his face.

"We have a guest." Kwan nodded toward the woman on the couch.

Danny glanced over, and the woman gave him a little wave. "Elle?" He frowned as he scratched the side of his head. "What are you doing here? I thought we weren't meeting up until this afternoon."

That cleared up one mystery. Danny did, in fact, know this woman who looked too much like him that it was starting to freak Kwan out a bit.

"Yeah, well." The woman, Elle, shrugged and seemed to think it was no big deal that she broke into their apartment. "I got here early, and I wanted to see your new place. It is so much better than that piece of garbage apartment you were living in before. Can that place even be called an apartment? I mean, even I have never lived in a place as terrible as that apartment was."

Danny rolled his eyes as he walked farther into the room. "Yeah, well, at the time it was the best I could afford on my own. All the decent apartments would have required a roommate."

"Um," Kwan raised his hand then dropped it with a flush burning on his cheeks when both of them glanced toward him, "can one you explain what exactly is going on?"

Danny and Elle exchanged a look. "Right. I guess I forgot." He raked a hand through his hair then walked over to where Kwan stood. "You see, back when Vlad was kind of evil-"

"Kind of?" Elle arched an eyebrow, but Danny shushed her.

"He's not like that anymore. He regrets his past actions." Danny ignored Elle's snort. "At one point during our fighting, Vlad had it in his head that he wanted the perfect son. Well, I wasn't going to be that for him, so-" He trailed off, looking away, and Kwan's brow furrowed, already not liking this story. "He decided to use some of my DNA to create the perfect son. Um," his gaze flicked toward Elle, "they were all unstable without a key part from me. They all melted except for Elle."

Kwan's eyes nearly bugged out of their socket as he snapped his gaze to Elle. She was a clone? Of Danny? It explained why they looked so much alike, but it still boggled his mind.

"I managed to hold myself together to stay alive," Elle explained, waving it off like she was talking about something mundane like doing the dishes. "It wasn't until much later that I finally got stabilized thanks to one of Danny's dad's inventions."

"Sometimes my parents' mistakes end up being exactly what I need." Danny shrugged, but Kwan could tell from the look on his face that it was incredibly lucky that Mr. Fenton made exactly what Elle needed to become a stable clone, even if it was by accident.

"I can't tell you how glad I was for that. Living every day in fear that it could be your last because your molecules finally break down enough to dissolve your entire being is absolutely terrifying." Elle stood up, placing her hands on her hips.

Kwan nodded as he tried to digest everything. He couldn't even imagine what Elle must have felt every day, but he was glad they were able to sort things out so she no longer had to live in fear. "Um," he shook his head, "sorry." He turned to Danny, lifting his eyebrow in question. "But why the sudden appearance? Also, why didn't you tell us you had a clone?"

Danny winced. "I swear I wasn't keeping it secret." He rubbed at his face. "I just didn't even think about it. But I would have said something eventually. It hasn't even been a year since I told you that I'm Phantom. You can't really expect me to have told you every little detail about my life as Phantom in such a short period of time."

"Well," Kwan frowned, scratching his head, "it would have been nice to know about her before she just showed up randomly at our place."

"Not entirely random," Elle said then shrugged when Kwan glanced at her.

"I asked her to come." Danny sighed, head bowing like he was waiting for another lecture to come. "After that hunter showed up, I thought it would be a good idea to reach out and see if any other hunters have been spotted in the area. So I called Elle to come. She's pretty well connected, so she could help make the search go a bit faster." He frowned with a troubled look in his eyes. "If hunters are moving in to this area, I want to know. That one I met in the forest? He was ready to kill Bentley! Imagine if a hunter like him found out about Jeremy and his brother being necromancers? The werewolf pack can probably take care of themselves, but there are others who might be completely defenseless if a hunter came after them."

"Hey," Kwan pulled Danny into a hug, "we're not going to let anything happen to them. You don't have to deal with these hunters by yourself." Danny relaxed in his embrace.

"Aw, how cute! I'm sending that to everyone."

Kwan suddenly found himself holding empty air.

"Elle, no!" Danny shouted as he chased after Elle, who held her phone over her head and danced around the room just out of Danny's reach. Kwan bit his tongue to stop himself from laughing at the scene.

Author's Note: It's, uh, been a while. Sorry. I swear I'm still writing. I just got really tired with NaNo this year, and I was trying to play around with some of my own characters and their stories, though that's been an extremely slow process. Hopefully, I'll do better this year. Hope everyone had a great holiday season!