There and Back Again

13

He was gone when she woke, her body sore and Sam winced as she sat up, places twinging and aching and one place on her shoulder feeling completely numb from the position she'd been sleeping in. She looked around and everything looked almost exactly the way she had seen it last night through the blur of dark and skin and heated gazes. She slid out of the bed and pulled the sheet with her as she headed out of the master bedroom, looking for him. "Danny?" Sam called down the hall, but there was no answer. When she reached the kitchen she saw a carton of orange juice on the counter, still cool to the touch but far from as chill as it should have been.

There was a glass too, still clean, and what looked like the beginnings of breakfast, all left undisturbed. With a frown her eyes lit on the answering machine. She pressed the button and the frown grew as Valerie's voice came blaring out. She waited just long enough to hear Valerie say Danny's name and then stopped the recording before it could play anymore, turning on her heel and stalking back down the hall to retrieve her clothes.

Her panties were in a shapeless wad on his dresser, her skirt hung from one of the closet's doorknobs. Her bra and her shirt were lost causes; the rips in the black cotton and the snapped strap couldn't be used in polite company now. she all but growled in annoyance as she wrenched open his closet door and snatched out one of the many shirts he had hanging there, slipping it on and buttoning it down the front. The sleeves were shoved up, then rolled messily as she hunted her socks from where they were under the foot of the bed, and then her boots, which Sam remembered to be still left where she'd dropped them at the front door when he'd stopped her from leaving.

She wished she had left as she found them and tugged them on. It was so much easier when she was sharp with anger, instead of embarrassed or jealous. She didn't even try to lock the door as she slammed it behind her and headed for her car, and then for the Fenton's. if there was anyplace to find him, that would be it, because no matter what had happened or been said, she'd seen the worry and fear on his face about talking to his parents.

She was in such a hurry that she never saw the small slip of paper fluttering from beneath the edge of the blanket she had shoved off of her when she first woke up. If she had seen it, she would have seen Danny's sloppy scrawl, and maybe even have smiled as she read it.

Ghost at home. Will be back. Don't leave. I love you.

---

If there was one thing Danny was used to, it was being woken up at odd hours to do battle with ghosts. It didn't seem to matter where he was or what timeline he was in, the ghosts just seemed to attack at the worst possible times. This morning was an excellent example of that, seeing as how Danny was roused by the phone ringing and dragged from a warm bed and the soft body of Sam to answer it. He hadn't been completely awake when his mother's frantic voice ordered him home, saying something about ghosts boiling out of the portal in the basement and that they were all too pressed back to hit the DNA lock.

He'd been there for nearly an hour and hadn't managed to get any closer to it than his mother had, though he wasn't offering to use everything in his arsenal that was available to him. That was one part of the plan that he couldn't compromise; Danny knew he would need every edge on Vlad that he could get, and keeping all of his powers and abilities away from Vlad's prying eyes would give him the only edges that he could get.

Jack and Jazz had both tried to help as much as they could, but there was only so much that the two could accomplish with their injuries. Jack was trapped on the stairs, Maddie had been guarding him fiercely. He was much more vulnerable than Jazz was, she at least was mobile. Jazz had taken refuge beneath the stairs, though her refuge certainly wasn't without its own dangers. It seemed that anytime she managed to get a decent shot lined up that some ghost would simply throw something at the staircase and make the things tucked away beneath it rattle and try to fall over on her.

"Mom, twelve o'clock high," Danny called from where he was wrestling with two ghosts, his hands glowing with ectoenergy that seemed to sear their ectoplasm. They bared their teeth in grimacing snarls bit refused to let go of him, even when he flared his power more brightly.

He heard his mother's bo staff make contact with the gray-green ghost that had been headed towards her and Jack both, took a moment to glance down at its painful howl. This ghost didn't seem to have the stamina that the two he was fighting did; it turned tail and headed straight back through the swirling portal and into the Ghost Zone. With a grunt of effort Danny threw one of the ghosts, frowning when it turned itself intangible to slide through the wall of the lab as he grabbed the other by the scruff of its ectoplasm.

This one, too, was thrown, but he was able to aim it at the portal and send it back without too much of a problem. Another quick glance showed his mother engaged in combat with something that looked like a beaver with wings, and Jazz was taking careful shots at an overgrown and glowing mosquito. The rest of the lab seemed relatively empty and he aimed down, blurring himself in an effort to reach the DNA lock. A moment before he was able to slam his gloved hand on it he let go of his ghost half, but the contact between Fenton hand and lock never came as, for the fourth time since he'd started the battle, more ghosts flooded out of the portal to launch themselves at him and drive him into a wall.

Light flared again and Danny sank back into it with a frustrated growl. He'd tried everything he could think of; teleportation, intangibility, invisibility, frontal assaults and deception. Not a one of them got him to where he could trigger the DNA lock, and not for the first time he wondered how much this overrunning of ghosts had to do with Vlad and how little with the fact that the Fenton portal was in the Fenton basement.

More than he wanted to admit, Danny was sure as he reappeared in the basement, flying up through the floor to take out two ghosts who were harassing his mother and father. The two were quickly replaced, and Danny shot a handful of ectoblasts into them before dive-bombing another ghost as it came at Jazz while she was aiming up to help Danny. The portal was being overrun, and Danny was forced to consider using some of the other tricks up his sleeve, no matter that he might reveal more of his arsenal to Vlad in order to save his family, but salvation came in the form of a very angry young woman wrapped into one of his own shirts.

Sam was fair glowing with the fury as she squeezed off a flurry of shots into the fray, each one hitting, if not taking out, another ghost. Those too were replaced, but Sam came tromping down the stairs, much lighter in her boots than anyone had a right to be as Danny's eyes widened in worry as she took a flying leap over his father and slipped past his mother with a quick toss of an extra power pack to her. The click and clatter as his mother dropped the dying pack and slammed the new one with a full charge home was lost in the roar he gave as Sam found her way to the floor, amethyst eyes narrowed and brilliant.

"Dammit, Sam, I asked you to stay there!" The angry accusation was the first thing that crossed his lips, and Danny drove a fist into a through one ghost as it started to fly towards Sam.

An ectoblast from Sam's gun zipped past his head, close enough to singe hair, and Sam gave him a sarcastically pissed smile. "Actually, Danny, you left me to wake up alone." Another shot was fired, this time into the middle of the portal where another ghost was aiming to emerge, and Sam took a small shot at Danny to singe more than his hair as it scraped across his hazmat and skin with a hissing whine. "How dare you!" she yelled at him as she started firing at more ghosts who were slipping past Danny as his eyes shot to her, startled.

"What do you mean?" he asked as he reached out and grabbed a ghost heading past him to the ground. A stomp of his boot and a hard kick sent it back through the portal, and Danny ground his teeth at Sam.

"What I mean," she all but screeched at him as she shot another ghost point blank and pushed a second into one of Jazz's shots, heading straight for Danny to poke one finger into his chest, "is that you have no right to come here and try to use me to replace your wife. If that's all you wanted, I'd've skipped sleeping with you and been fine waking up alone!"

"If I what?" Danny yelped, his concentration completely gone and his breath following it as he was dogpiled by several more ghosts come to join the fray.

Seemingly unconcerned Sam turned and started picking off ghosts where they were trying to corner Jazz—Maddie was holding her own with Jack as backup, even with the shock of what she'd heard. "Come on," Sam ordered as she held a hand out to Jazz and pulled her out of the storage space and dragged her around to the front of the stairs.

"You and Danny?" Jazz managed to get out as Sam gave her a push up towards her mother, refusing to answer the question.

From behind her there was a blaze of green and white light brilliant enough to make the rest of the Fenton's shield their eyes against is. Sam only waited for the light to die down a bit before she turned to find Danny panting and standing in the middle of the suddenly near-empty lab. The handful of ghosts that hadn't been blasted away to god only knew where were floating randomly around trying to regain their senses. They never got the chances as Sam started firing on them, and then scooped up one of Jack's new and improved Fenton Anti-Creep Sticks to slam it into the side of a ghost.

The new anti-ectoplasm shielding worked like a charm and the ghost sparked, slumped, and melted where it stood. It was rather nauseating, even if Sam knew that Danny could never melt like that by virtue of his human DNA being attached to everything that was part ghost, but it was still really gross.

"Danny, the lock," she cried as she saw another ghost, but hopefully no more, rallying on the other side of the portal.

In the almost deserted lab, Sam watched as Danny flickered for a moment and then disappeared into a shadow where he'd stood only moments before. A second later he was reemerging from that Sam shadow a pace in front of the main computer banks, the DNA lock just under his hand as he shifted back to human and pressed his hand down on it, wincing as it drew blood unexpectedly from a sharp edge. But the heavy whir and clamping of the portal's door closing and locking was a welcome change and worth the few drops of blood he'd been clumsy enough to spill.

That done he turned to find Sam poking at a pile of ectoplasm in front of the portal. His anger reared up once again.

"Now what the hell were you doing, Sam?" he demanded.

She glanced back over her shoulder at him, glaring darkly. "You could have woke me up, Danny. I don't like having to wake up to Val on your answering machine and you nowhere to be found."

Danny's anger began to wilt. "I don't know about the answering machine, Sam. I haven't checked that thing in three days. But I left you a note. It was on the bed."

Sam snorted. "That doesn't change what's happening, Danny."

"What, exactly, is that?"

"I'm not going to just be a replacement, Danny," she instructed him, eyes darkly violet as they stared into his bright blue.

Much to her annoyance Danny let out a bark of laughter. "You think that you're a replacement? That I'm looking for you to be my 'new' wife just because I was married to her for eight years?"

Sam never got the chance to answer as the portal's doors slid open suddenly, unexpectedly, and with just as much swiftness as Danny had always hated about them. One moment her mouth was open to sent a sharp retort his way, the next a long green tentacle was slipping through the swirling vortex of the portal and pulling Sam back into it as she screamed his name. Then she was gone, and the lab was left in dead silence as the doors halted in the full open positional.

A breath later Danny was darting after her, his heart hammering in his chest as he realized that he was losing her all over again, this time so much worse because there was no surety that this wasn't real, that this was just somewhen else to make himself stronger, smarter, a better fighter so that he could save the real timeline. The real Sam.

"Oh god," he whispered as he emerged on the other side deep in the greens and purples that made the Ghost Zone. She wasn't there, nowhere in sight, and Danny's heart gave a startled lurch as he realized the he couldn't find her. On instinct he headed forward and right, towards the castle he'd spent so much time at in the last eleven years.

When he got there it was empty. Even the ticking seemed duller and less alive than it should have, and Danny only wasted a few moments looking around before realizing that no matter where he tried, Clockwork wouldn't be there. Whether by accident or design… It was design. He knew it, the Time Master was never away from his castle unless need be, and if he was gone that meant that this was a sticking point in the timeline. That he'd already changed as much as he could, and no matter what happened, no matter the consequences of any action, they were here to stay.

Which meant that if he lost Sam, if he let her die again… Then she'd be gone forever.

He gave an anguished cry, calling her name so that it echoed on the fringes of one of his wails out and across the depths of the Ghost Zone before turning back towards where his family's portal was.

---

"He'll be back," Jazz said as he brother disappeared through the portal, stalling her mother as she moved to close it again. "You can't close it on him. We can hold it if we have to."

Maddie shook her head. "Jazz, we can't hold it if they come back again like they were."

Jazz gave her mother a hollow laugh. "They won't, Mom. They have Sam. They don't need any of us now."

There was a thump as Jack's cast hit one of the steps on the staircase, but he barely winced as he made it down another step, and then another until he was in the lab proper. "You know what they were fighting about, Jazzie-pants?" he asked as he thumped up behind her heavily.

"Dad, sit down," Jazz said, not answering the question as she saw the fine sheen of sweat on her father's forehead. She grabbed one of the chairs her parents kept in the lab and wheeled it over to him, wincing as the stitches in her shoulder pulled a little. A hand to the padded wound made her wonder if it was bleeding again, but she thought that it would probably hurt worse, sting at least, if she'd actually done herself any real damage.

Her mother laid a hand on the shoulder that wasn't hurt, and said, "Jazz."

Jazz closed her eyes and lowered her head. "Yes," she answered. "Mostly. I think."

Jack and Maddie both arched eyebrows at her, but didn't ask about the convoluted assurance. Instead they simply asked. "What did he mean, eight years?" Jack asked as Maddie questioned, "When did he and Sam become an item?"

Jazz held her hands up in self defense. "It's complicated. Really, really complicated. And we're going to need help if we're going to make sure Sam and Danny are okay, alright? Mom, you call Val while I message Tuck."

She couldn't understand how, but Jazz managed to forestall her parents with that, just knowing that no matter what was going on, even if Danny brought Sam back safe and sound and in one piece, that they'd still need the help. No matter what had happened between Valerie and Danny, she knew that the woman wouldn't let Sam suffer, or even Danny, if it meant that it compromised her own ethics when it came to host hunting and the safety of the townspeople, and the safety of her team. And Valerie had been working with Sam and Tucker both for too long to ever think of them as less than teammates.

By the time Tucker got there Jazz was trying to explain to Valerie and her parents both about the paradox of Danny and the alternate timeline. Some details she left out, such as the fact that he knew they were all going to die before he went. Better for them to assume that he was the bereaved hero instead of the ruthless student. Jazz thought that her mother might understand, and Valerie too, but there was no way her father would. He was simply to kind hearted to ever think that anyone he knew and loved, especially his son, could ever let anyone be hurt (much less killed) when he could stop it.

But Tucker arrived and pulled out his perpetual PDA, running the connectors from it to the portal with a frown as he started inspecting the circuitry for weak points that would have allowed it to open without being signaled by the DNA lock. Maddie joined him soon after, Jazz's explanations short and almost cursory, and her outright refusal to comment on Danny and Sam and their relationship, if there was one. There was no way Maddie would have known that Jazz simply didn't know, but she didn't hold it against her daughter. She realized that sometimes people just needed things that were theirs, and she had wondered more than once when Danny was younger if he and Sam really were dating, and that they just wouldn't say anything because it was special.

Though the fact that Danny would get married to someone not Sam certainly sent that theory to a messy and painful death.

Maddie and Tucker were both frowning over the circuits and the electricity readouts when a pale and hollow looking Phantom emerged from the portal, his green eyes dark and empty and flaring unsteadily. The only noticed him when he floated towards them and shoved them out of the way with a gentleness that belied his outer emptiness. He considered the hulking machine for a moment, then reached inside of it with an expression that was like a pale version of a frown. When his hand came back out it held a tiny device that was beeping and flashing with a pink light.

"A remote control," Tucker murmured as he reached out for the device, turning it over in his hands before unhooking his PDA from the Fenton's computers and digging out a smaller connection that looked like it would fit the adapter at the end of the remote.

It didn't, but Tucker only gnawed at the wire for a moment before Valerie handed him a knife. With the cord sliced clean Tucker only needed to strip the last few millimeters of it before shoving it into the device's feed. And when he did, Danny could see it written on his face.

"Vlad," he said without hesitation or question. Tucker nodded and Danny bared his teeth, menacing in his ghost form.

"Can we find her?" Maddie asked, with Valerie's worried eyes seconding the question. Tucker nodded and bent to his task.

"And when we find her, I'll find Vlad," Danny added in a voice that allowed no argument. "It's time that he was dealt with." The anger in his voice was palpable, but it was as he expected it. Vlad had finally started it. His life for the last eleven years had finally come full circle.