This was written really quick like because I had the inspiration and I didn't want it to leave so I worked fast. Sorry for missing words or other small errors.

Chapter 20—Danny's POV—Homes & Spirits

Evelyn McCord had an unmarked grave. Many accused of witchcraft were not given proper rights after they were executed. Fortunately, my birth mother never saw death by way of drowning or burning at the stake. No, she died from an epidemic of typhoid, the same strain that almost killed me.

It was not all that difficult to find the ruins of Old Amity. Some small part of my brain found the terrain familiar, despite hundreds of years of differences that had occurred since I was last here. Our hut was still there; old, rotten, broken, but still there. I did not approach it, only stood off to the side and tried to imagine how it had been before; trying to remember the real woman who I knew had loved me with no trickery or implanted memories like Maddie Fenton. Maddie might have been a mother to me at one time, but now that I had faced them again, the people I had known to love me and take care of me as I grew up with no knowledge of the truth, I found myself torn as to who I should be considering my parents.

The Fentons were all that I knew, a human life that was as normal as could be in that house. When I received my powers, that perception did not change much; Maddie and Jack were still my parents. They still slept in the room down the hall, they still drove me around town when I needed a lift, they went to the parent-teacher conferences at school, and they grounded me when I came home late or neglected to do my chores. I might have changed, but the world around me had not, but now it had. Not only had I changed, but the whole of reality had changed for everyone, though they didn't know it. Jack and Maddie Fenton were no longer my parents, but they still felt like to me.

For months I had been living with Clockwork, even getting comfortable enough to call him 'Dad', but did that really make him my dad? Did this new ghost family that I had gained make a proper substitute for the human family and friends I had grown up with? Learned to love and live with?

I felt so conflicted that I stood there for hours, just thinking and staring at that poor little hut that I had been born and raised in. As dark came, the pressure of my conflicted emotions and thoughts felt like they were crushing me. I fell to my knees, feeling too weak to stand up any longer. It was then that I felt tears falling from my eyes and the cold wrap around me. I always liked winter, but this cold was different. I felt it stuff itself into my lungs and start to strangle me.

"STOP THIS!"

After my scream, it was so quiet that not even a pin dropping could be heard. Everything was silent, as if the life was sucked out of it and I was living in a painting. Trees that had been swaying in the wind were now straight and cold. No sounds were around, no creatures to scamper on the ground or fly in the now black sky. So black, with no stars or moon, as if they had been blotted out somehow.

"I'm so tired," I said to the ground as I looked at it between my cold hands. "Why can't anything be normal, why do I always have to fight something? I'm so tired, I just want to give up."

A flash of light made me look up quickly. I saw nothing but darkness in front of me, then I saw it again out of the corner of my eye. I turned and saw a white dove, resting on a branch above my head. I watched that bird as if it was a lifeline, and perhaps it was. It seemed to be the only thing that made sense in this black world I had wrapped myself in. I knew it wasn't a normal dove, just the way it looked at me and how white the feathers were was evidence to that.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, but I didn't turn around to face the owner of that hand. It felt warm, familiar, and I feared that if I looked, it would be gone forever and I would never get this feeling again.

"Child, why do you cry out?"

Her voice was thickly accented, so thick that it was almost a different language. I understood every word though, but I made no answer.

"It's alright to answer, you need not fear this wood."

"It's not the wood I fear," I told her, watching the dove as it flickered off into the darkness. "It's what's beyond it that scares the living hell out of me."

"You do not understand," she said as if it was a simple answer to a very complex problem.

"No, I'm tired of understanding, tired of trying to understand every blasted thing that happens to me!" I yelled out at the darkness. "I'm so tired of moving, and yet, feeling like I haven't gone anywhere. I'm lost. Where's home?"

"Home is where you make it," she said as the other hand came down on my other shoulder to give me a slight squeeze as if it was a hug. "Home is what holds everything you hold dear, where you want to be, what you want to protect with your very life. That is home child."

"I don't have anything like that. I don't know what to think," I said softly, dejectedly.

"Then don't think."

She said it so bluntly that I had to laugh at its simplicity.

"It's not that simple," I told her, but a slight smile was still on my face.

"Things are not always as complicated as they seem," she said, and I could feel her drawing back.

"Wait! Don't go!"

I spun around to try and stop her, my hand flying out to grab her, but my arm met mist. I looked at my hand for a second before looking up and saw a figure in the mist for a split second before it completely dispersed and the world started to turn again.

The stars emerged, the moon started to rise with a freakish orange glow around it, and the sounds emerged. Breath had been added to this cold, still painting to give it life again. Whether it was my doing I don't know, but as the last of the white mist disappeared, I had to stare at it, than back at the hut that had served as a home for me when I was small.

Taking a deep breath, I got my feet to move and I walked over to the hut.

I phased through the wood, not bothering to use the door that wouldn't open for me. I got inside and took in the ruined interior. Nearly all of it was burned away. Villagers must have come to burn down the house after my mother had died. The only thing that seemed to have survived the fire after all of these years, was an old torn blanket. Years of laying there made it stiff and faded, but I picked it up anyway. Out of curiosity, I touched it and felt that it was as stiff as a board, but I also saw the knitting needles still attached to the blanket. It was only half finished. This puzzled me, it would seem odd to lay an unfinished baby blanket on the floor.

My eyes got wide as I realized something. There was one person who I thought would not be in this timeline, but now, I think I was wrong.