A plane ticket back.
Sam dusted some dirt off the tip of her combat boots, for lack of anything better to do. She'd been waiting for the past fifteen minutes on the Fentons' front stoop in a pair of frayed jean cutoffs and a black metal band tee, sleeves rolled up three times over her bare shoulders. The Dead Hate The Living. That show had been great. Full of punk, rebellion, sweat, and eyeliner.
It was balmy out. Eighty degrees, despite the fact that the sun had set. She glanced at her watch. 9:00pm on the dot. A dark shape caught her eye and she turned to look out across the quieted neighborhood. One by one the streetlights popped on, silhouetting a skinny figure who had turned the corner down the street. A boy. Hooded. Alone. He shuffled for a few minutes towards the house before noticing here, paused, as if recognizing her, before he continued down the block. Sam knew instantly by his trademark slouch that it was him.
As he got nearer he flicked the hood off, messy black hair toppling out. He tossed something invisible from palm to palm before chucking it. Probably a stick. Probably Cujo.
"My parents know you're sitting out here by yourself in the dark?" Danny asked her as he crouched and grabbed up whatever it was he was throwing and tossed it back out across the street, this time with more vigor. He made his way past the gate and down the winding sidewalk towards the stoop.
"You should be careful. If the neighbors saw you..." Sam trailed off half-heartedly.
"Wouldn't be the first unexplainable thing they've seen." Danny plopped down heavily next to her on the step. Sam wondered how he wasn't overheating in his hoodie, although just his close proximity was enough to cool her off. Cold-blooded, like an air conditioner. She doubted he would appreciate the comparison. An involuntary shiver wracked through her, but she couldn't be sure that it was because of his chill and not because of his closeness.
Danny combed his bangs out of his eyes, oblivious to the effect he had on her.
"You shouldn't be hanging out around me alone," Danny grumbled.
"What? You gonna rip my heart out? Again?" Sam accused. Danny flinched. Sam instantly felt awful. "Sorry… That's not..."
"No. You're safe," Danny breathed. "For now." He tacked on, steepling his fingers theatrically. Sam snorted.
"Your mom said you were out?" she prompted.
"Took a walk. Needed to think," Danny shrugged. He reached down and scratched what Sam could only assume were Cujo's ears, but because she couldn't see the ghost dog it looked absurd. Like Danny was tickling the air. She smiled.
"You've probably eaten already," she sighed.
"Not really," Danny tossed her a glance, eyes the bluest of blue. "Why?"
Sam kicked her feet out against the bottom step and leaned back on her palms to peer up at him.
He looked more human, more lucid. He even had a little weight back, although he was still too thin. When he had visited her college campus a few weeks ago he had seemed healthy— a glow lent to him from Ryan's stolen energy. At Vlad's his skin looked like it had been shrink-wrapped to his bones. Only someone who had lost a ton of weight in a short amount of time looked like that. He had collapsed on the drive home, body demanding sleep. Sam had laid down next to him in the back of the RV, staring, face inches apart, holding his hand, making sure he was still there. Bits and parts of him had a tendency to float away. Not so much lately. At least he wasn't stuck as a ghost.
He caught her staring and gave her a shy smile. "What?" he muttered.
"I was going to see if you wanted to hit up the Nasty Burger," Sam suggested. "Maybe get a milkshake. Fries. But if you've already ate..."
"Samantha Manson. Are you asking me out on a date?" Danny fake-gasped.
She blushed, then elbowed him straight in the gut. "You know what? Nevermind. I'll leave you to your imaginary dog, you nut." She got up with a huff, intent to slink dramatically off the stoop, but Danny grabbed her hand before she could take two steps.
"Let's go," he chuckled.
"You look better," Sam noted.
Danny observed her over the rim of his strawberry milkshake. He reached across the table and grabbed a fry from her plate, dipping it into the froth, swirling it. Sam couldn't help but wrinkle her nose. Danny always had the weirdest habits. Like Oreos in peanut butter. Pringles in nutella. Fries in milkshakes. Pizza and applesauce. Mixing things, dipping things.
"I feel anchored," he answered, chewing on his soggy fry in contemplation. "Being home is good. Being around you and Tucker."
Sam took a small sip of her lemonade, worrying the straw between her teeth for a moment. Black lipstick smeared across it. She could see the glint of a Fenton-made invention around Danny's right wrist; a small version of the Spectre Deflector.
"...But I can't always be home," Danny continued. "I can't always be around you. Not only is it dangerous, but it's not fair to you. You have your own life to live, untethered from me and my problems."
Sam frowned. "You're a big part of that life." She picked up a fry and waggled it at his face. "I hope that, no matter what our relationship is, you and all your problems will always be a big part of my life."
Danny shot her a weak grin before it melted right off his face as quick and as sad as a snowman in the sun. He glanced once around the diner, taking note of everyone. Sam blinked and looked around. They were alone in a corner booth. It was late enough that, besides a small group of gossiping girls in the back, the restaurant was empty. A scrawny teenage worker dejectedly mopped near the jukebox in the corner, eyes glazed, mouth agape and full of braces, uniform unkempt. She had been mopping the same tile for the past fifteen minutes.
Danny cleared his throat. "I've been thinking… I'm going to tell my parents. About what happened with Ryan." Danny turned his gaze down to the purple and blue formica tabletop. "I have to tell someone. I can't just get away with it."
Sam guessed that was what Danny's long soul-searching walk was all about. She leaned back in her seat, vinyl sticking to her bare thighs. The fry paused halfway to her mouth before she let it fall back down to her plate, appetite lost. She knew, of course, what Danny was admitting to: Attempted murder. Even though accidental, Danny could get locked away. Forever. Although, getting locked away forever was exactly what Danny had set out to do when he went to Vlad's. Everything made sense now that Sam could take a step back and see the whole picture. Danny had committed a crime that went against his nature, and, unable to just walk up to the police and tell them without risk of revealing his secret identity, he had fled to the only person he knew could keep him contained so it would never happen again. But fleeing and locking himself away from everyone was only a temporary solution. An easy solution. One that had never had any chance of working.
"It's all I think about," Danny whispered, voice low. "I can't sleep. I can barely eat. His face— I just—" His eyes darted around the burger joint again and his shoulders slumped as if a seventy-pound weight was lifted just by admitting that out loud. "I look in the mirror and don't even recognize myself anymore."
"Ryan's still alive. You said yourself. You haven't killed him," Sam soothed. "We can fix this."
Danny laughed without hope. Sam was a little afraid of the sound. Danny was right, he had changed. But he was a good person. She refused to believe otherwise. Besides, she had proof. See— she had been doing her own thinking about all of this.
"Look." Sam spun in her chair. She paused and glanced over one shoulder back at Danny who was eyeing her blankly. "See?"
"See what?" Danny asked tiredly.
"Exactly." Sam shot him a pointed look. "There's nothing there. The scratches... They're gone." She ran her fingertips along where the gouges had been. There was nothing but a smooth expanse of unblemished skin. No scabs. No scars. Just a lone freckle. No one healed that quickly. No one except Danny Phantom.
Danny reached a hand out and brushed her perfect shoulder, his touch cool and soothing. She straightened her sleeve back and spun around. An awkward silence blanketed them. Sam grabbed up a few of her fries and chewed on them. They didn't even taste good, but she just kept eating them.
"How?" Danny managed.
Sam shrugged. "You felt bad. You kissed it. Maybe you can do more than just take," she suggested.
"Thats—" Danny frowned and shook his head. He hunched and swirled his straw around in his milkshake, eyes dark in deep thought.
Sam pressed forward.
"What if I just give you my heart?" she asked with a wince. She almost gagged on the words as she said them. God I sound like a Hallmark card.
Danny jumped violently, the straw from his milkshake splattering across the countertop as it fell from his hands, eyes flashing a neon green. He stared at her as if she had just told him she was pregnant. "Don't say that," he warned, voice strained.
"Why not? I don't use it anyway," Sam joked. "It's what you need, right?"
"That's not funny, Sam. If I take your heart there's no getting it back. It's gone. Forever."
"Maybe not. I mean, you said yourself I'm not affected. You almost took it at Vlad's and I was fine after. I've been trying to figure out why. I think it's because I've been giving you pieces of myself. I want to share. I think you do too. It's why you've never affected me. Or Tucker. Why you could heal my shoulder."
"That's just skin— I can't believe we're even talking about this," Danny muttered almost to himself. He wiped up the spilled milkshake with a napkin, hand shaking.
Anger coursed through her.
"I know you're trying to protect me, but I have some say in all this," Sam snapped. "The least you could do is not shut me out again."
"I'm not saying you don't have a say," Danny retorted. "But you can't just offer that up like… like it doesn't even matter to you."
"Of course it matters." Plenty of things mattered. The real question was what mattered more. She crossed her arms and looked determinedly out at the parking lot. With an irritated sigh, she decided to let the issue drop. For now. Prickly silence descended upon them. After a minute she grabbed her bag and pulled out an airplane ticket and slammed it down onto the counter, scooting it over to Danny's side of the table, circumventing the sticky spilled milkshake and spoiled napkins.
He eyed it cautiously, before plucking it up.
"We're going to Oakland?" he guessed, spinning the ticket around in his hand to hold it up to the fluorescent lighting.
"You have to go see him. You have to at least try and fix things," Sam grated. "You, Tucker, and I. We leave tomorrow afternoon."
"Are you coming in?"
Sam hesitated at the foot of the steps, her gaze flitting from Danny's expectant face to the ground. She wasn't sure why she had followed Danny all the way to his house after the Nasty Burger. Maybe because she didn't want him to be alone with his own thoughts, not after those thoughts had grown so dark. Maybe cause she liked him— just a little bit— maybe.
"I— ah…" she stammered. She glanced up to see Danny scuffing at bit at the pavement with his shoe, deflated. Danny had taken her hesitation as a sign that she didn't want to be near him anymore. That wasn't it at all.
"You don't have to," Danny continued, "Actually, it might be better if you—"
"No. It's not that." Sam cut him off before he could try and put distance between them. "It's just… Jazz is kinda mad at me."
"Oh," Danny breathed. He pushed the door open a little wider. "She's home. You should talk to her."
Sam grabbed the handrail and followed him the rest of the way up the stairs and into the house. The interior was just like it had always been: Homey, safe, slightly insane in a cluttery thing-infested kind of way. Although, somehow quieter— as if the usual flurry of activity was muted. The only noise was the soft sound of tinkering drifting from the basement below and the tick tick tick of the clock on the mantlepiece. It was crazy to think it had only been a few weeks since Sam had been in her dorm room. Soon enough this summer would end and they would be separated again. She wondered what would happen then. Sam swallowed at the thought as she moved up the staircase after Danny. She glanced in his bedroom as he started to rummage around for some clothes to pack.
A light flickered from underneath the door at the far end of the hall: Jazz's room. Sam paused, hand on Danny's doorknob.
"I'll be back in a second," she told him. Without waiting for a response she moved down the hallway and stood awkwardly outside of Jazz's bedroom door for a few seconds, hand outstretched, fist formed and ready to knock.
She breathed a few times, hesitated, hand hovering just above the sign that declared in a faded 8-year-old finger painting: "Jazz's Office". She knocked. The door flew open and Jazz's face was three inches from hers. She looked unsurprised, as if she had already known Sam had been waiting.
"Sam," she greeted politely, stepping out of the way. "Come in."
Sam took one look around Jazz's room. Perfect gridded rows of books and posters of different famous intellectuals lined her shelves and walls. Stacks of handwritten diaries were piled upon her dresser. Jazz dotted her i's with hearts. Stuffed animals were neatly sitting upon her bed, facing each other, as if engaged in philosophical debates about the meaning of inanimacy. One of them resembled Einstein. Sam found that creepy.
Jazz shut her door behind her quietly and leaned back against it as she watched Sam take in her room.
"It's a little messy—" Jazz admitted, shuffling papers near her computer that were just ever-so-slightly bent. Sam started to wonder about the mental health of her friend, before she realized the irony of worrying about the mental health of a psychologist-in-training.
"This isn't messy," Sam deadpanned. "You should see my room." She had dumped all her clothes across her bed the moment she had arrived and hadn't yet found the energy to sort them. She slept with her own underwear. Clean underwear, but still.
"So—" Jazz began.
"I'm sorry," they both said, in unison.
Sam blinked.
"I shouldn't have pressured you into—" Jazz continued, hurriedly.
"No, you were right." Sam interrupted. "We're all on the same team. It wasn't fair for you to be worrying. You should know what's going on. I should have just told you. I should have been honest."
"You were protecting my brother, like always," Jazz said.
"Yeah, but sometimes I can't," Sam mumbled. "It's not... It wasn't healthy for him. Or anyone. Especially myself. I know that now."
Jazz inspected her silently. Sam felt awkward and obvious underneath her gaze. She spun her arms around a few times, not sure what to do with them, or the rest of her limbs. Instead she looked determinedly at one of Jazz's books. Mmm. Yes. The Untethered Soul: A Journey Beyond Yourself. Fascinating.
"You really love him," Jazz stated.
Sam froze and whipped around. "What?" she asked, a little too aggressively, a little too defensively. "I do not." Liar.
Jazz shrugged. "It isn't about blindly protecting someone, or doing whatever they say. It's about doing what's best for them. Especially when they don't know what's best for them."
Sam sank into Jazz's office chair.
Jazz placed all her papers onto her bedside table and sat on the edge of her bed with a sigh. "This whole thing is hard for our parents to accept. It was hard enough for Danny to tell them about the accident, about his powers. They seem to be taking it pretty well, but they don't know what happened with Ryan. Yet."
Sam started.
"It wasn't hard to put together," Jazz continued, seeing her surprised look. "Besides, Danny told me."
"He did?" Sam asked, impressed. "What… what do you think?"
Jazz ran her hand through her hair several times, moving the mass of orange from one shoulder to the other.
"I think that I love my brother no matter what and I want to help him," she said softly. "But, if Ryan dies…" Jazz trailed off. Sam didn't ask her to finish her sentence. She didn't really want to know the rest of it. If Ryan died, a part of Danny died with him. A large, important, vital part. Despite the fact that Danny had told them he had lost his heart in the accident, Sam found it hard to believe. He hadn't lost it. Not truly. Not yet.
"We're going to Oakland tomorrow," Sam mentioned. "To see him."
"Really?" Jazz glanced up, interested.
"Do you think that's a good idea?" Sam asked, suddenly unsure. Jazz, afterall, knew more about her brother's mental state than anyone. Maybe putting Danny and Ryan in the same room wasn't a good idea. But he seemed better, especially in the past few days.
"For him or for you?" Jazz asked.
The question gave her pause. Sam leaned back a bit in the chair.
"How are you doing?" Jazz continued. "What are your plans?"
All the questions were overwhelming. Sam immediately felt herself start to clam up. She was never good at talking about herself, about her feelings. She frowned severely, intent to brush them off, but instead she said: "I'm... sad."
All of her inexhaustible lexicon, reduced to this. Sam flushed.
"I mean—" Sam backtracked. "I guess I'm happy too. Happy that we're all back together, friends. That I know why he broke up with me. But upset that he hid it for so long. Sad about Ryan. I'm just taking this one day at a time."
Jazz smiled. "That's all we can do. For the record, I think it's a great idea for him to visit Ryan."
Sam slumped in relief. She didn't know when Jazz's input had become so valuable. In high school Sam had despised the way she had hovered over-protectively around them, inevitably screwing things up.
Jazz's bedroom door cracked open just a tad and Danny's head poked through.
"You two kiss and make up yet?" he asked nervously.
"Yep," Jazz announced, puckering her lips at him. "Jealous?"
Sam groaned.
tbc...
A/N: Phew... some resolution. More to come. I'm doing Nano this month so the next update might not be for a while. C: Comments, critiques, reviews... all welcome. Thanks again, HappyLeifEricsonDay.