Author's note: Ah, this chapter. I vividly remember writing this chapter. It was the first week of April (three and a half months ago, wow). I remember dancing on the precarious edge of syncope toward the end, but rather than stop and catch my breath, I decided to concentrate on the feeling and describe it in writing, channeling it into Maddie. Did it work? You tell me.

The End of Danny

.:·:.:·:.:·:.

The rest of Danny's junior year and all of his senior year passed with little incident. In a new environment where no one knew him, Danny seemed to be able to stay in control of his emotions. I have no doubt that students tried to fellowship him and that girls swooned over him, but he was insistent on distancing himself from everyone in that school. He drove himself to and from the campus but never gave rides to anyone, never brought anyone home with him. He never stayed for after school activities, never went to any games or parties.

"Danny, it's okay to make new friends," I told him.

"I don't need new friends," he said. "I just need to get through high school and finally get out of this town."

Yes, my Danny was going to leave soon. I had tried to get him to attend a community college in town so that he could stay nearby, but Sam had been accepted to a prestigious university a couple hundred miles away, and he simply had to join her. He was not able to get into the same university, but he was accepted to one within the vicinity. Out of state tuition, but Jack and I could afford it. We had enough money for all of our ghostly inventions, after all. We had enough money to send him anywhere he was accepted.

"But if you leave, who will take care of the ghosts here?" I asked him. I shouldn't have said this. I was intentionally playing on his ghostly obsession. So terrible of me. But I just wanted so much for him to stay.

He shut his eyes. His mind was working hard as he tried to reason with his compulsion. "There haven't been as many ghosts lately. Just keep the portal turned off whenever you're not using it." He paused. "I can't be away from Sam. I can't. I must be with her."

That was it, then. Separation from love would be far more painful than the guilt he would feel from failing to protect our town. How I was resenting Sam more and more.

"Vlad will be able to stop any ghosts." Danny grinned at me. "As long as you're in this town, he'll definitely protect it."

He didn't walk at his high school graduation. I tried to get him to go, to don the cap and gown, but he refused. I didn't push the issue because what point would there have been? He had no friends at this new school and would have had no one to celebrate with. I had always thought this would be such a happy and memorable time for him as it is for any normal high school student. As with Jazz, I had been excited to capture the moment on camera, to have graduation photos to display in our home. Oh well, I told myself. He would surely walk at his university commencement. That would be a far more important achievement anyway.

I'll skip ahead just a bit and tell you that no, he did not walk at his university commencement either.

Sam and Tucker both walked in the Casper High graduation ceremony. I'm sure Danny would've been there to support them if he wasn't so ashamed to face his former classmates and teachers and if it wouldn't have been considered trespassing since the school board opted to formally expel him. He couldn't even bring himself to be there invisibly in his ghost form. No, he had to stay away from that world he was once part of.

Danny, Sam, and Tucker celebrated their graduations on their own. They went out for the night and didn't return until very late. I specified no time for Danny to return. He was eighteen and graduated, legally an adult. Perhaps other parents would've been worried, but I trusted Danny.

When the time finally came for Danny to leave home, I was heartbroken but held it together as best as I could for him. I wanted him to stay, but I knew it was time to let him go. He had to go and find himself without the influence of his parents. He had to become his own man.

I wrapped my arms around him. His strong arms were around me as well. He had now surpassed me in height and size, and realizing that he was no longer my little boy was overwhelming. I started crying.

"Mom," said Danny worriedly, "are you okay?"

I nodded and gave him a tearful smile. "I just didn't realize how quickly the day I'd have to look up at you would come."

Danny shrugged, almost apologetically. "Well, I had to grow up someday, didn't I?"

"You did." I hugged him again. "I'm really going to miss you. And I'm so proud of you."

"I'll miss you, too," he said quietly, "and thank you."

I looked at him at arm's length, pushed the bangs from his forehead so I could his handsome face better. "Call me whenever you need something. Anything. Even if it's just an ear." I moved in closer. "And Danny, please…please try to…try not to…" I didn't know how to finish my sentence. I wanted to tell him to not let his ghostly obsession take him over again, to find healthy ways to combat it and deal with his emotional pain. But how to say it delicately?

"Just remember you're not alone," I finally said. "Don't try to go through any difficulties on your own. You have good friends and a loving family who will do anything for you." I ran my hand through his hair. "Especially your mom."

He knew the deeper implication, but he only nodded.

My Danny, Danny, Danny was then gone and miles away.

…

Prison. I am in prison, and he is in the ground. We all have our jobs to do, chores to keep us busy. Currently, my job is laundry. I share this responsibility with Baskova. I quickly fold the various garments and put them in neat, crisp piles.

Baskova is struggling. She is much slower, her fingers not quite as adept as mine.

"Here," I tell her. I show her how to fold step by step, carefully walk and talk her through it. She is still unable to fold as quickly and as skillfully as I can, but she is smiling now. She has more confidence.

I am smiling for some reason, too. She is a decade older than me, but I have missed having someone to teach and to tend to. I am a scientist, yes, but I am also a nurturer. I miss being a mother more than I miss being a scientist. It is nice to have someone who looks up to me, someone I can help.

"That's good, Klara," I say, affectionately using her first name.

"Thank you, Maddie," she says cheerfully with her thick endearing accent.

The others take notice of my fondness toward Baskova.

"What are you getting at?" asks Peterman. "You really expect us to buy this mother hen act?"

"Right," says Chamberlain. Her tone is hostile. "We all know what you did to your kid."

I inhale sharply but say nothing.

"You say you loved him?" taunts Peterman.

Love. I still love him.

"How can you say that after what you did to him?" demands Chamberlain.

"You tortured him, maimed him. All we did was kill our men, but you destroyed yours, and not just any man. Your own son."

"You're a horrible mother."

"Why did you bother having him if you were just going to slaughter him?"

I shut them out, block them out, sprint away to my cell and hide. They have no idea, none at all. They have no idea what more I could've done to him, what more I wanted to do to him.

I didn't want him to leave for college. I wanted him to stay. I wanted him all to myself.

Had I really had my way, he would've been alive and awake for it all. He'd have been bound and gagged and blindfolded, shackled to my observation table. Supine, arms above his head, restraints around his wrists and ankles holding him down at just these points so that I can see the arch in his spine when he screams. Restraints that are ghost-resistant, but it would not matter anyway because I would inject him with my special concoction, a solution that halts any changes to his molecules. No going intangible or invisible. No returning to his coloring that so resembles that of his father. He is a ghost and nothing more.

I'd slip the blindfold on tight over his glowing eyes, affix a gag in his mouth so that his cries can be heard but not articulated. If he were any other ghost, perhaps I'd let him see everything as it happened, let him say everything on his mind and make a record of his utterances. But I am already in so much misery that I cannot allow our eyes to meet, cannot hear what he has to say. I fear that I'll back out, that I won't be able to go through with it. He must be blindfolded so that I can't see the boy I brought into this world in his eyes, gagged so that he can't beg his mother to stop, please, stop, let him go. Besides, it's easier for him to take if he knows he has no choice, no chance of escape, no way to make me reconsider. It is better for his sake that he be kept blind and silenced. I am doing him a favor. He can only lie back and accept what happens to him.

I check his vitals first, record the spectral readings. I will keep track of them throughout and see how they change in response to the various procedures. His vitals suggest extreme panic and fear but not yet pain. Can they possibly get any higher than they are now?

I start out simply. Taps with a hammer to see which parts might be most sensitive. He flinches with each hit, stays quiet with the softer hits and cries out with the harder ones. Will this cause bruises? I'll have to see later, but for now, I keep him clothed.

I give him a small shock, a test. I can see the tightening tension traveling through him, his muscles clenching. The veins in his head pulse noticeably as it tilts back, and his back, oh, yes, how beautifully his spine arcs. I stop the shock and watch him fall back, panting and heaving and moaning.

How much more can he take? Can he take more than the average human? Does this hurt him nearly as much as it would a normal human?

More voltage. His back is even higher off of the table than before, his spine so bent it looks as if about to break. His ankles and wrists are being pulled hard against the constraints, cutting and bruising them. I'll look at them later, see how such injuries manifest on a ghost. His head is back as far it will go, tears soaking through his blindfold and pooling around him on the table.

And his screams from behind and around the stopper in his mouth are marvelous, the destructive strums of his ghostly wail strangled and blocked by the gag. I am tempted to tear it away and hear the raw resonance of his suffering. The acoustics in this room are perfect and will surely create the most haunting echo effect. But I do not, no, because I am afraid of the words he might speak. Even quelled through the gag, his expression of agony is clear. He is definitely feeling this.

The shock ceases, and he collapses back onto the table. His chest is rising and falling rapidly. His body is convulsing and shaking. His tears are still coming fast, and he is whimpering and certainly begging for this to end, but his words fail to reach me through the gag. No, this can't end now. I will end him soon enough, but not now. He will have to wait. He has no choice.

His breaths are shallow and labored. But how much oxygen does a ghost really need? Is it as essential for ghostly cell function as it is for living cell function? Perhaps he doesn't need it at all. Perhaps breathing is just a habit unnecessarily retained from his human existence.

Reaching, clutching, I deprive him of air. His whimpers are immediately silenced with no breath to move his vocal cords. He lasts for a remarkable amount of time—ghosts metabolize oxygen differently, after all—but then he is trying to break away, moving his head side to side. He is becoming more violent in my grasp, but then he is fading, slowing down, surrendering.

It seems he is bound by at least one of the same biochemical processes as any living being. I release him, watch him gasp and cough and choke and sob. He is no longer trying to speak. He has given up and given in.

So many spikes in his vitals, so many dips. How fast can I make his pulse race? How low can I make his ectoplasmic pressure drop? How far can I disturb the balance of his electrolytes? Can he freeze? Can he burn? Can he distend? Can he bruise?

He can certainly cry.

I expose him fully, strip him so that his bare skin can be fully examined. He is glowing so brightly I don't even need an operating light, but I keep it trained on him anyway. Green marks are visible in sporadic patterns, broken capillaries, developing contusions. Lacerations and far darker discolorations surround his wrists and his ankles beneath his restraints. He is still now, the only movement the rising and falling of his chest. He is surely wishing each breath could somehow be his last, but he cannot end yet.

I take off my gloves and run my fingers over his spectral skin. It is glacial and prickly, tingling against my biological warmth. Almost like tangling with vapor, but it is vapor that is corporeal, vapor that has a definite shape. I place a warming light over him to see if I can raise his temperature. Is there a limit to the heat a ghost can bear?

He writhes and moans. His temperature climbs, his skin indeed becomes warm to the touch. Inside, he is boiling and scorching, expanding and fully opening to this calefaction. He hyperventilates, his breaths arduous and scraping against his lungs and airway. His pulse quickens, weakens. His movements slow and slow until his hands fall back and his head tilts away from me. Passed out. I run my fingers over him again, up his chest to his neck. Warm but dry. He is not drenched with sweat as any human would be under the intense light I have placed over him, as any human would be after enduring such torture.

I revive him, bring him back to consciousness. The heat is gone, and his temperature is down again. He is quivering and weeping.

"What are you?" I ask him.

He doesn't answer, can't answer. He doesn't know anyway.

I caress his face, still blindfolded and gagged. I tug at the translucent strands of his hair, trace the masculine line of his jaw. He winces and tilts his head away, but I forcibly pull him back to remind him of his powerlessness.

I lower myself to his level, brush his ear with my lips. I speak to him, whisper the taunts that I was never able to say to his other self, the secrets that I've been hiding from him, the lust for him I've been harboring in the corners of my scientific mind.

X-rays can only let me see so much, see so far. I must reach his core, must discover his center.

A puncture, an intravenous line. He feels it and twitches. His panic is rising as indicated not only by his vitals but by the tremors coursing through him. He responds humanly to medications. A dose of suxamethonium chloride, and he is now not moving because he cannot. I remove the gag, but he cannot speak. He is awake and aware, but he is now paralyzed. I intubate him, force a length of tubing down his tracheal passage to be sure that he gets the oxygen his ghostly lungs need just as much as any biological pair of lungs. He must remain alive, after all.

He is mine. I murmur my possession of him in his ear, the final words he hears from me. But he cannot even shudder in response.

The first incision is intoxicating. The first breach of his skin with my lancet is gorgeous and leaves a trail of the most precious peridots. I run the blade along his anterior chest wall and lift the resulting flaps laterally. The monitor beeps in warning indicating extreme spikes in his vitals, reminding me that he is still awake. I dive in deeper, tear through the fibrous tissue and the heads of his pectoral muscles and his subclavius muscles and—

Yes, yes, so many layers concealing his center. I keep the essential parts intact, not ready to lose him just yet. He has remnants from his human existence, components that remained but have been imbued with spectral properties. Cephalic vein, thoracoacromial artery. I have been studying human anatomy intently, wondering what I might find in him when I finally reached this point, finally had him at the end of my scalpel. Giddy and lightheaded, a peculiar pocket of what feels like helium is in the center of my chest and is pulling me up while the rest of me is heavy and rooted right here in this moment, right here with him. I am high on the culmination of my anticipation.

Deeper still, I break him apart. Complex and difficult, but I am patient and precise. Bone cutters and a costotome, I hack and saw through him, into him, assault his caverns and walls until I reach his core. I latch onto it, claim it, own it. He is covering me and all over me while I am occupying him and inside him. The most exhilarating euphoria, my moment of greatest triumph; I am dangerously close to fainting.

I am only mournful that the paralysis induced by the drug administered from his intravenous drip must affect his vocal cords as well. His silence is disappointing.

It's over. I am finished with him. I take off the blindfold at last. He looks so perplexed. Does he not see what I have done for him? I have brought him to the brink of his obsession and thrust him beyond it, forced him to endure the most excruciating agony with no way to stop it. I have cured him. I have fixed him. I have saved him.

This is what you wanted, right?