AN: Well, this has got to be a record. ;)
Previously in Shift: Tucker had some hacker friends find some locked GIW documents and accidentally stumbled upon a video of Danny's brief incarceration at the hands of Operative L. He shows Sam at school, and Jazz walks in on them.
Up now: We go back in time a little to see what happened before school that morning and then fast forward to where we left off in Chapter 23, with Jazz about to blow a gasket.
Chapter 24: The Fear of Change
"I…just—" Phantom huffed, losing his patience and hovering as close as he dared. "Would you stay still? Or look at me, maybe? Just a little bit?"
The spirit screeched at him—which, okay, wasn't unexpected, considering he was getting quite close to her chosen Haunt, but still—and darted skittishly away, well within range of where she was tethered but nowhere close enough for him to make any progress with her.
Phantom watched her warily as she began to pace before her Haunt, nearly on her hands and feet, hair defying gravity and swirling erratically around her as she hunched over herself, crawling and muttering in an eerie language only he could recognize.
He sighed. At least she wasn't spitting and shrieking with hurt and rage anymore. Or going after him with her inhumanly long nails. Progress.
Judging by her behavior, she was a new spirit who didn't know who she was, where she was, or what she was, and her confusion fed into her anxiety, which, in turn, poured into the frigid aura surrounding her. With every pass, the gray-faced elderly man she was Haunting pressed back even harder against his family-owned storefront, his body shaking like a leaf in a tornado.
(Said gentleman was a trooper for sticking this out as long as he had, but Phantom could tell he wasn't going to be able to stay still for much longer, no matter how forcefully the Danny Phantom insisted he stay put; don't move. Phantom could see it in his eyes: he was either going to run for it, which would distress the spirit again, or he was going to pass out and possibly crack his head open right here on the sidewalk, which would distress the spirit again. There was no in between.)
Long story short, Phantom needed to get a move on. Better yet, this spirit needed to move on, but to do that, he needed to calm her down, get her to remember herself enough to say what she needed to to the man she decided to Haunt. Or at the very least, get her to tell him to tell her Haunt exactly what she needed to say, so that she could rest in peace.
"Hey," Phantom said, and he lowered his tone, as well as his hands. When he knew he caught her attention, he made a point of planting his feet and crouching low.
In Ghost, willingly removing yourself from the sky and getting low to the ground was the human equivalent of dropping a weapon and showing your hands—it was a surrender, a gesture of good faith and vulnerability. He was putting himself in her hands, allowing her to dictate what would happen next.
She might have been a new spirit, still half-wild, but she could read his nonthreatening body language just as well as Skulker or Clockwork or any of the other ghosts could. She paused, looking at him through her wild mane of hair, and cocked her head at him.
From his peripheral vision, he saw Jazz running crowd control. The moment he had Sensed the spirit and launched himself from his sister's car, he'd yelled at her to stay back, at least until he could calm the spirit down. True to form, she'd ignored him and gone straight to work.
And thank God for that. He would not have gotten this far if everyone had kept crowding.
From an outside perspective, it probably looked like the old man was having a stroke or heart attack. The spirit would have made everyone in the area feel a hell of a lot worse if other civilians had come to his aid, and there's no telling what she would have done if they took him away from her. They couldn't see her, and because she couldn't communicate with them, they wouldn't know any better. Hell, Phantom doubted they fully understood what was going on even with him and Jazz there. Passersby who hadn't been here the whole time probably thought he looked half-insane, coaxing and murmuring at thin air while a very obviously terrified man was about half a second away from fainting on the spot.
He ignored the sounds of the people behind him gasping and whispering. He took a tentative step forward, only to step back when a bloodcurdling hiss rose from her throat. Moving back, he watched and waited until she settled, eyeing him like a hunting dog would a treed raccoon.
"It is alright," Phantom murmured, in highly accented Ghost. He winced. For all that he could understand the language, speaking it did not come very naturally to him. Ghost Writer had had to coach him for hours, over multiple sessions spanning multiple months, to learn how to say a few key phrases and simple sentences. Not that it did much good. He was still laughed at in the Zone for his odd speech, and because not everything translated well from English to Ghost, speaking in Ghost only set him more apart from the others. He didn't do it often. "I am not here... to steal your Haunt. There is... no." Phantom grimaced. "I... have Mine."
"Then leave," the ghost snarled, her words half-garbled. Phantom tried not to smile, to get too excited. The fact he could actually understand her meant he was on the right track. "Unwelcome. Leave."
"No," Phantom said sternly. "I am to…" Shit, there really was no word for 'help' in Ghost. Floundering a little, he settled with, "I am to benefit you."
There was another shrill shriek of disapproval, but she did not move from her spot. She did not attack. He stood his ground, crouching even lower, bowing his head.
After a few moments of silence, she began to rock and croon to herself, and Phantom, without raising his eyes, took it as an opportunity to inch closer. She didn't notice.
"I am to benefit you," Phantom repeated.
"Unwelcome," the spirit said, shuffling back. The man pressed against the wall groaned and shuddered at her proximity, his breath ghosting in front of him.
Sucks, Phantom thought. "I am to benefit your Haunt," he said aloud.
"I Protect MY Haunt! Me! Not you! ME!" Her form flickered as she screamed, aura brightening in her sudden rage. There were several alarmed reactions from the crowd, and Phantom felt another small surge of satisfaction. Some of the crowd must be able to sense her, at least partially, and that was significant. "LEAVE!"
He pretended to be cowed by her declaration. Better to let her feel in control. "See him," he challenged. "See your Haunt and tell me again you Protect him."
"No," she hissed, shaking her head. "Me. Not you. ME."
"See him!" Phantom insisted. "Tell me! Show me! And I leave!"
The bribe worked like a charm. She snarled at him and whirled around, and for the first time since Danny had shown up, she actually looked at the man behind her, the one she was tethered to, the one who she had Unfinished Business with, and stopped cold.
Hook, line, and sinker. The sharp edge of the spirit's projected anxiety filtered away, a natural breeze blowing through and taking all palpable terror with it.
The old man was gaping, tears of fear and grief running down his face, and as the spirit took him in, Phantom grinned, straightening from his crouch.
It wasn't always easy to watch this part—to bear witness to such naked emotion—but nevertheless, this was always the best part of his job.
He could tell the spirit remembered. She knew the old deli man. She'd loved him, spent her life with him, cooked with him and walked alongside him. Her monstrous appearance began to melt away into something more human, something more solid. Teeth retracted, hair fell to her shoulders, her eyes softening and glow dying as she took him in, her memories returning to her in spurts. "Gab…riel," she whispered hoarsely in English.
Phantom couldn't tell if the old man could really see her. He must have caught enough of a glimpse, or perhaps he could just tell. Sometimes, those more attuned to the supernatural could sense them, even if the spirit Haunting them was never strong enough to show themselves. Obviously, this spirit was one of those whose memories were just powerful enough for her to reach him, in whatever way that was.
The old man looked a bit dazed, as though he had just woken up from a deep sleep, the nightmare he'd been living in a hazy memory. His tears had ebbed, something like wonder replacing the visceral fear he'd felt. "Lena?" he asked, hardly daring to believe it.
The spirit reached forward, toward Gabriel, only to be met by the invisible Veil that separated her from him. She frowned, fingers hesitating, and once she realized she could not touch him, realization crashed, and sorrow painted lines across her face. "Oh," she whispered and drew back. A grim sort of smile played at the corners of her mouth.
Phantom had seen this play out time and time again, and he waited. As expected, she turned to him with pleading, yearning eyes, an unasked question lingering there.
Phantom came forward immediately. "What would you like to tell him?" he asked quietly.
Gabriel gawked, gaze bouncing from Phantom to the general direction of Lena's ghost, and he began to cry in earnest again, her name a prayer falling from his lips.
The spirit made a displeased sound deep in her throat and leaned to whisper in Phantom's ear. When she said her piece, Phantom straightened and addressed the old man.
"Your wife is here now," he said kindly. "But not for long. She wants to tell you something. So she can move on."
"Yes," the man croaked. "Yes, yes, of course."
"'Stop blaming yourself, głupku (1). It was time,'" Phantom repeated carefully, word for word. For the next part, Lena coached him gently, and he followed along, as smoothly as he could. "'Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father's house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going' (2)."
"John 14," Gabriel whispered, crossing himself and interlacing his fingers. He murmured something in Polish that made Lena smile, her eyes tender. She reached for Gabriel again, and though the Veil would not let her truly touch him, her fingers traced the shape of his face.
Lena's ghost was beginning to fade now, her aura dimming by the second. "One more thing, dear," she said to Phantom. Her voice floated on the wind.
Phantom nodded and dutifully said to Gabriel, "There is one more thing."
"Yes," the old man whispered. "Anything."
"Tag," Phantom repeated. "You're it."
It wasn't the weirdest thing Phantom had had to pass on to a loved one, but it definitely ranked in his top ten. He delivered it with a grin, as though he were privy to the inside joke, and Gabriel blinked and barked a disbelieving laugh, unraveling his fingers to wipe at his puffy eyes. "Aye-aye, kochanie (3)."
Lena released a single, peaceful sigh, and just like that…
"She's moved on, sir," Phantom said, turning from the spot where she vanished. "She's gone."
Gabriel exhaled shakily, nodding a few times to himself as he pulled himself together. Phantom gave him the time to say goodbye, averting his eyes to give him some privacy with his thoughts.
With a bit of a sniffle, Gabriel finally peeled himself away from the brick wall at his back and surprised Phantom by reaching out to grasp his hands.
"Thank you, son," he said sincerely. "Thank you."
"No need to thank me," Phantom said. "I'm glad I was able to help."
The old man squeezed his hands, oblivious to the chill. "Are you a believer, Phantom?"
Phantom hesitated and then slowly shook his head. His response didn't dissuade Gabriel, who smiled and said, "No matter, lad. I'm a simple man. I believe in love, I believe in family, and I believe in Jesus Christ. I understand these things. What happened today? I don't understand. I doubt I'll ever understand."
"You don't have to," Phantom said simply, because he'd had quite a few conversations with people, religious or otherwise, who tormented themselves by trying to fit their experiences with ghosts into their world view, and he always felt bad for those people. The departed stayed behind for a reason, and it pained him when their messages were heard but not received. It bothered him that some people couldn't let it go and accept the gifts, the warnings, or advice they'd been given.
"I do know a blessing when I see one," Gabriel said, as though reading Danny's mind. His expression became wry. "My Lena always was a bit of a rebel. Of course she'd fight her call to Heaven, just to tell me…" The old man trailed off and released Phantom's hands, a small, nostalgic smile gracing his face. "Whether you believe it or not, you are doing God's work, lad."
Phantom didn't know how to respond to that, so he stammered something that might have been a 'thank you' or 'no problem.' It gave the old man a chuckle, either way, and he said, "Now shoo. Danny Phantom has better things to do than keep company with an old man. Today's a school day, isn't it? And my deli won't run itself with you loitering all day."
"Oh!" Phantom exclaimed, flushing. "Right. Crap. Jazz!"
Jazz turned from the police officer she was talking to and gave him a once-over. Seeing he was ready to go, she whipped back around to shake the woman's hand and rapidly finish up whatever she needed to say. The policewoman took Jazz's place, directing people away from the scene.
Phantom's feet lifted from the ground. "Have a good day, sir!" he said, almost on reflex.
"Bless you, Phantom," the man responded with a brief wave.
Quite a crowd had formed near the deli, and it released a rumbling roar of appreciation when they saw him in the air. Phantom was still flushing when he and Jazz met halfway. "Thanks, Jazz," he said.
"You'd think I'd be used to you flinging yourself from moving cars by now, but it scares the shit out of me every time," Jazz responded. Her gaze slid back to Gabriel, who seemed to notice his on-lookers for the first time and harrumphed in mild embarrassment as he bustled back into his deli.
"Sorry," Phantom said, and he slid an arm around her waist. They took off, and Phantom quickly turned them invisible, ignoring the swell of noise below them.
"It's fine," Jazz said. Once they gained enough height, she pointed silently toward where she'd left her car. "You did good today, Danny."
"Yeah," Danny said, chest swelling with pride. "Couldn't have done it without you. Keeping everyone away? It makes a huge difference, you know."
Jazz smiled, pleased. She managed to get her hand around to ruffle his hair. "Anytime, baby bro."
Danny jolted away, viciously punishing Jazz by allowing them to plummet in a bit of a free fall as he descended to the car. Jazz swallowed a yelp, and when he leveled out to phase them through the roof of the car, she punched him in the shoulder for the stunt.
"Sucks there were so many people," Danny said, rubbing his shoulder as Jazz fished her keys from her bag. "Stuff like this shouldn't be so public."
"Can't control them all," Jazz said logically. "You couldn't help that this spirit decided to manifest in the middle of downtown Amity."
Jazz put her keys in the ignition as Danny transformed, and she winced in sympathy when she saw the developing bruises on his face. "Ouch," she said. "I didn't know she got a hit in."
Danny waved a hand. "My fault. I rushed things. I'm just happy she didn't get me with her claws." Catching sight of the time, he sighed, "Dammit." The warning bell was due to ring in about four minutes, and they were still a solid fifteen minutes away from school. "There goes our good track record. I'd really hoped..."
"Well, it wasn't going to be this peaceful for forever," Jazz said sagely, pulling out from her (very) illegal parking spot and angling back onto the road. "Tomorrow…will change things."
"Yeah," Dany murmured. "One more day of normalcy would have been nice, though."
"You consider this normal?" Jazz asked, jerking a thumb behind her. Danny turned around to see a few vans, decorated with local news station logos, tailing them.
Danny rolled his eyes and settled back into his seat. "Touché."
Jazz continued to survey him from her peripherals, lips pursed. "…It's not going to be like last time, Danny," she added quietly.
"...I know." It could be so much worse, though. Danny fiddled anxiously at his sweatshirt sleeve, and then the Ecto-Supracelet, turning it 'round and 'round his wrist.
Jazz noticed. Of course she did. "I know you're worried about Operative L and the Guys in White," she said, doing that annoying thing she did when it felt as though she could read his mind. "But—"
"I know, I know," he said, slouching in his chair. They'd gone over it multiple times after he'd returned from his impromptu sleepover at Tucker's. And it was repeated every time any one of his family members noticed him starting to get even remotely "on edge." "We can't even be sure anything is going to happen," he repeated.
If there was one thing they'd decided yesterday, after speculating and theorizing and planning on and off throughout the day, it was that. It wasn't sufficient for Danny, not in the least, but with the information they had, that was all they could say with any certainty. Since they had decided to go forward with the Portal activation and keep Vlad's information on the down-low, there was only so much they could do, and there was only so much they could control.
They had reviewed the profiles of all the security guys and press members that were going to be there, but in retrospect, their investigation was redundant: a lot of them had already been vetted by city hall and came with the mayor's Seal of Approval. As far as the Fentons could see, they were clean. As were the paranormal scientists coming in from all over the world. His parents had had to interview some of them rather extensively to narrow down the invite list and weed out the crazies. That only left a few other people mandated by the government (of both the national and local variety), as well as several allowed in by personal invite (i.e. the Foleys and the Mansons) and a few others who were somehow on the list because of their well-respected positions in the community.
That last category included Amity's beloved chief of police, some guy named Larry from the Home Owner's Association, and last but not least: superintendent Dr. Robert Lucas.
To Danny's surprise, Vlad had nothing to say about Dr. Lucas. He couldn't find sufficient dirt on the man. In fact, Vlad hadn't been aware of his existence at all, which meant that whenever Plasmius had been doing his sleuthing and eavesdropping, he'd never actually seen the superintendent and Kyle Lucas together. Not once.
Vlad had been pretty damn confident about that. He'd also been pretty confident that everyone on invite list had not been involved in the meetings he'd dropped in on, but that didn't mean there weren't other meetings, with other people, who may or may not have already been even more deeply entrenched in this emerging Guys in White group than the ones Vlad had seen.
So all things considered, Dr. Lucas wasn't excluded from Danny's Top Priority list—not by a long shot—but it did cast some doubt on his involvement, which was another can of worms entirely.
(Because if Dr. Lucas wasn't the metaphorical "mole," then who was?)
Danny could bat at it all he wanted, but the issue was like a tetherball: it would keep swinging back around with more and more velocity with every punch he shot at it.
He just…didn't want anything to go wrong. Hadn't enough gone wrong already?
"I hope nothing happens. I've gotten used to this," Danny admitted, and it was the first time he'd been able to say it aloud. He hadn't wanted to mention it before, mostly because he hadn't wanted to bring his parents down. The Portal was important—to all of them—and it was a modern marvel his parents deserved every bit of praise and recognition for. It wasn't that he didn't want the Portal to come back online (because he did: it would stabilize the Zone and make things easier on his entire family). It was just that he wasn't necessarily ready for it.
And all that it would bring.
"You don't want things to change," Jazz finished for him. "Again."
Danny stopped playing with the frayed edge of his jacket sleeve. He couldn't remember when he ruined it, but the sleeve was clearly the victim of one of his ectoblasts. "Is that selfish of me?"
Jazz risked taking her eyes off the road for a single moment to look him right in the eye, her brow furrowed in concern. "No. Never, Danny. It's natural. Perfectly natural. I like where we are right now, too. Things have been…they've been good. It hasn't been easy, but it's a far cry from where we used to be. It's been what it should have been, from the very beginning, hasn't it?"
"Yeah." Danny leaned his head back and closed his eyes, relieved to hear that he wasn't alone, that Jazz, too, wished they could hold on to this—whatever this was—for a little while longer. "Remove the paparazzi from the equation and give me a secret identity again, and it would have been the best."
"That part hasn't been all bad, though," Jazz said. "People actually listen to you. Respect you. They didn't always."
"They didn't respect or listen to any of us before," Danny corrected. The outcome of today's "attack" would have been very different, had it taken place a year or so ago. "I guess you're right."
"Good times," Jazz said drily.
"But we had our privacy," Danny mused, eyes on the rearview mirror. The van was still tailing them, and its persistence compounded the dread hanging out in his gut. Today really was going to be hell. "And it was exciting, wasn't it? When we weren't about to die?"
Jazz snorted. "Wow. Way to keep endearing me to the good ol' days, Danny. I really appreciate it." Danny opened his mouth, to explain what he meant, maybe even admit why he was thinking about it at all, but Jazz interrupted him. "It was exciting, some days," she admitted. "But the other days? All I remember is stress. I remember being alone. And afraid."
Danny absorbed that for a moment and dared to ask, "And you're not afraid now? Of what might happen?"
"Not as much as I was before," Jazz said. "Nowhere near as much. We're not alone anymore. We have allies now. We have Mom and Dad. Friends."
Danny caught the suggestion in her tone—the smile in her voice—and he tried to ignore it, his face feeling markedly hot. "Sure, Jazz."
Jazz clucked her tongue and said, "Listen, Danny. I'm proud of you." At Danny's raised eyebrow, she explained, "Sam and Tucker."
"What about them?"
"You trust them," she said, as though that explained everything. "I know how hard that was for you, to let them in."
"…they made it easy," Danny mused aloud, his face now tomato red.
Jazz beamed, and before she could make a Big Deal out of it, he scoffed and said, "C'mon, Jazz, I wasn't that hopeless, was I?"
"Yes," Jazz said, with utter conviction. "You were. I don't think you actually realize."
Danny didn't believe that. Jazz liked to embellish things sometimes, and he'd always been her favorite case study: even when he was little, she'd been way too involved and interested in his social life and its development. Besides, she was giving him more credit than he deserved. "I still haven't told them everything," he admitted.
"You don't have to tell them everything. And they don't need to know everything. You're allowed your secrets, and you're allowed to make more, too, with them. What matters now is that you guys eat lunch together. That you've had them over and that you let them train with you and that you got invited over to Tucker's house and passed out while playing video games with him. Hell, you guys started a group chat. That's been the best part of all this, you know. For awhile, I thought you'd forgotten what it was like to—"
"What? Be human?" Danny interrupted.
Jazz gave him a stern look, looking both deeply offended and somehow admonishing at the same time. "To be Danny," Jazz finished. "I was worried you were so caught up in Phantom you were missing out on being you."
"Last time I checked," Danny joked, pretending to be obtuse for the sake of avoiding her point entirely, "I've always been me. Except that one time. With Sydney Poindexter. And the other time, with—"
"Don't be an ass," Jazz said. "You know what I mean. We can tell how much happier you are here. We've missed seeing that. We've missed you."
Danny didn't deign to respond to that because, yeah, his sister and his parents had obviously been talking about him behind his back, which should irritate him but, really, only mortified him further. It didn't matter that she was right—that if Clockwork offered to change things, so that the Shift never happened, that Pariah Dark had never risen and that no one had had to get hurt, he'd say, without hesitation, Go back? Change it? Fuck no.
It's just this was the Big Deal he'd been wanting to avoid. Because after the weekend, he'd realized something: Sam and Tucker's friendship didn't just make his life better; it had diverted him from the lonely path he'd been on and led him somewhere he never imagined he could be.
It was humbling, when he took a moment to step back and see just how much his two friends had changed him. And for the better. He owed them more than they knew. He owed them more than they could ever know.
Literally. He'd never tell them, not in as many words as he and Jazz were using now. It was far more than a little embarrassing, especially considering he wasn't immune to his obsession for protecting His Own. He realized the paranormalists and ghosts already knew about his general obsession—it wasn't that hard to guess—but that didn't mean he wanted anyone feeling uncomfortable with the knowledge that they, specifically, were feeding into it. He'd rather avoid that conversation entirely.
"Mom and Dad are happier. I'm happier," Jazz continued. "I guess the point I'm trying to make is that no matter what happens tomorrow, we're not letting any of this go without a fight. And I doubt Sam and Tucker will let it go either."
Danny leaned his elbow up on the edge of the window and stared out. They were nearly in the school lot. "Perhaps," he said, and because he was a glutton for punishment—or perhaps just greedy to have his fears debunked—he found himself saying, "I still catch myself waiting for them to get so freaked out they decide I'm not worth it."
"Daniel!" Jazz scolded.
"I'm not saying I think that all the time!" Danny defended. "…Anymore. It's just…everyone has a breaking point, don't they?"
"Not when they're starting to love you as much as we do," Jazz said. "Like I said, we're not about to let the Guys in White or any ghosts take any of this away from us. Not again."
Danny knew Jazz couldn't make promises like that. They'd seen too much shit for that, but even so, for the first time since Saturday, he felt, not relaxed, exactly, but not as stressed as he had been before. He'd have to cling to that feeling, keep it close, if he wanted to make it through the next twenty-four hours without giving himself a hemorrhage.
"And Danny?" Jazz added. "We're not about to let them get you again either."
And just like that, Jazz had crossed a line. His improved mood faltered, and he set his jaw. "They don't have the balls to try it again," he said in complete monotone. "You don't have to worry about me. The Portal is the main concern."
Jazz looked mildly hurt, and she opened her mouth to say something but thought better of it, swinging into her parking spot without a single word. Danny took the chance to see if the vans had followed them in. They hadn't. Thank God for that. "We're not too late," he said, changing the subject none-too-subtly.
"Late enough," Jazz sighed, turning the ignition off. "Let's go."
Once Jazz and Danny collected their things from the backseat, they beelined for the front office, where the receptionist, Ms. Harold, was already expecting them. Her sunny smile dropped as she noticed Danny's face, and she stood from the desk.
"Oh, hon," she said. "Do you need to see the nurse? I'm sure some ice might—"
"I'm fine," Danny interrupted. There really was no need, especially considering the bruises would be gone by the end of the day. "Don't worry about it."
The older woman hesitated for a moment, eyes narrowing as she assessed him closely. "If you're sure, Mr. Fenton," she said slowly.
"I am. Thank you, though."
Ms. Harold still looked uncertain, but she eventually nodded. "I have passes for the two of you," she said, sitting and sliding them across the top of the counter. "Your parents called ahead."
"Oh," Danny said, and it was a little weird. For one, he sure as hell hadn't told his parents they were going to be late, and Jazz probably hadn't either, seeing as they weren't in the habit of doing that yet. The news must have already started circulating, which meant he probably had quite a few texts and calls to return. For another, he'd known the school was going to work with them when the ghosts started coming around more regularly, but this was the first time he'd actually seen those promises made into reality.
So, yeah, weird.
"Thank you," he said, picking up both passes and handing one to Jazz.
"Not a problem, sweetie. Thank you both for what you did last Friday. Now, go on. Have a good day!"
Jazz put a hand on Danny's shoulder and led him out of the front office. "You good, Danny?" she asked in the hallway.
He was still staring at his pass. "Yeah, I think so. I'll see you later, Jazz."
She smiled at him and turned to go, but Danny caught her shoulder before she could and added, "Thanks again. For everything."
Her smile broadened, and she offered her fist. He bumped it. "Anytime, loser."
They turned in opposite directions, and Danny dug his phone out of his pocket to tab through his messages as he walked. He responded to his parents first, ensuring they knew both he and Jazz made it safely to school, before skimming through Sam and Tuck's. To their credit, they both sounded more curious than worried, which was nice, in a way. He responded to them in their group chat and stowed his phone away just in time to find himself face-to-face with his Chemistry room's closed door.
Ah, hell, he had to have a seat all the way on the other side of the room, didn't he?
Despite himself, his heart started to race, his palms beginning to sweat. He coached himself to relax because there was nothing to be anxious about. He'd just stood his ground against a very confused and potentially dangerous spirit. He'd gone face-to-face with some of the nastiest, most powerful ghosts out there and befriended about half of them in the process. He'd beaten Pariah Dark. He could handle the gazes of about twenty-five students. He'd done that before too. Plenty of times.
(Enough times that no one bothered to look up at him when he came in late anymore. Ah, to have that anonymity again).
"Alright, you know what?" Danny murmured. "Whatever."
Bracing himself, he pushed the door open slowly and stepped inside. Mrs. Rickter, who proclaimed on multiple occasions she had the attention span of a squirrel at the best of times, halted mid-sentence and turned to face him. Eyes burned into him, and Danny closed the door behind him, feeling heat rise to his face. There was dead silence for a moment before his chemistry teacher blinked and said, "Well, hello there."
His teacher's greeting broke the spell over the class, most of whom began whispering. A few others, including Mikey, stood from their chairs and called out things like, "Hey, Danny! You're alright!", "We didn't know if you'd make it today!", and "Yikes, dude. You okay?" The boisterousness of the few encouraged the multitude to join in, and Danny, uncertain what to do with himself, flushed even further and exchanged a look with Mrs. Rickter, who keyed into his wide-eyed discomfort almost immediately.
She put her fingers in her mouth and whistled shrilly. The entire class settled, and Mrs. Rickter clapped her hands. "Alright, chickadees. I know we're all very grateful that Danny's here and doing okay after what happened on Friday, but this chemistry isn't going to learn itself, unfortunately. Danny," she added, "could you possibly remind the class what Avogadro's number is?"
He was still standing up front, holding his pass uselessly. "Um. 6.022 x 10^23?" he said.
"Units?"
"…Inverse moles?"
"That's right!" She plucked the pass from his hand and set it on her desk. "So, to reiterate for those of you who weren't paying attention the first time: that's definitely going to be on the test. And as a general reminder, please do not neglect units. Ever. You will lose points and drive yourself insane, so it's better to just get in the habit of putting units on everything. Now, we barely talked about the importance of Avogadro's number on Friday, so today we'll review and then start looking at the practical uses of—"
With everyone's attention back on Mrs. Rickter, Danny slipped hurriedly to his seat, swinging his bag around and pulling out his notebook as he went. As he sat, Mikey gave him a bright smile and passed him the blank worksheet he'd saved for him.
Danny slid it his way and saw scribbled across the top, Glad you're okay, bro.
Danny looked up and smiled back.
~…~
Jazz Fenton was a force to be reckoned with.
Sam and Tucker could do nothing but back away from the storm cloud she carried with her as she marched across the lab and lifted Tucker's Surface, eyes scanning the incriminating evidence on-screen.
It wasn't often that Sam found herself dreading the consequences of her actions. She was the type of person who, when faced with a decision, carefully weighed every possible outcome before she went through with any decision she made, prepared to accept whatever fell on her plate. Hell, she pulled out her moral compass and consequence balance when she packed her goddamn lunch every morning. Because of her thorough review of the what-ifs and what-could-happens, she owned her mistakes. She knew she earned those, and she would learn from each and every one of them. She could accept punishment, rejection, and ridicule because she had already foreseen it, in at least some capacity, and all of those possible negative outcomes were hers to overcome. No one else's.
When Jazz turned to stare them down, it was clear to Sam this was one decision she went into effectively blind, and she regretted it with every fiber of her being because if she had gotten Jazz—optimistic, perpetually sunny Jazz Fenton—to react like this, she had definitely fucked up. Big time.
It's strange, how the sweetest people could also be the scariest Sam had ever met. Jazz's gaze bounced back and forth between them, expression stone cold and eyes spitting fire. She wanted an answer to her question and damn if she wouldn't wait them out just to get it.
Seeing no reaction or any sort of willingness on Sam or Tucker's part to speak, she averted her attention back to the Surface and began skimming through the files Tucker and his not-criminal-but-totally-criminal online friends had managed to get their diabolical hands on.
And Sam watched as, with every file she scanned through, Jazz's anger melted into something like incredulity, her eyes widening.
"Where did you get this?" Jazz asked in a whisper.
After a second's hesitation, Tucker opened his mouth but was cut off by Jazz, who whipped back to them and snapped, "You know what? I don't think I want to know."
Tucker deflated, and Jazz continued, "What I do want to know is why. Why you willingly watched…"
"We didn't mean to," Tucker rambled. Sam winced because that was at least partially a lie on her part. She'd known Danny would hate them watching this, but she did it anyway. "I just clicked on it, and I didn't...I mean, it was like…looking at roadkill on the side of the road," Tucker continued. "Or like watching a train wreck. It just—"
Jazz barked a laugh, but there was no light or humor to it. She looked about ready to slap him. "Roadkill? Did you just…?" She struggled to find words for a moment before exploding. "This is my brother. Your friend. An actual human being who got belittled and abused and hurt by these assholes; who actually committed himself to self-injury in a crazy attempt to escape from these monsters because the alternative would have been so much worse, because these dickheads would have taken everything away from him because they think he's less than nothing—nothing more than a thing they can sit and toy with—and all you can do is compare what happened to him…to looking at roadkill on the side of the road?"
The pit in Sam's gut yawned, enveloping her in a rotting wave of guilt.
And then the real kicker. "He trusted you," Jazz accused.
"It…It wasn't like…" Tucker attempted.
Jazz wouldn't hear it, her protectiveness rearing its head like a fucking Gyarados from the depths of a black sea. "He would have told you about this if it was something he wanted you to know, but as it happens, I know he didn't."
You went poking your nose where you didn't belong, Sam read between the lines. You betrayed him, she interpreted further.
Feeling miserable and trying to remember she asked for this—she truly did—Sam set her jaw. "Jazz…"
"You don't get it," Jazz said. "He never wanted anyone to know about this. Do you realize what could happen if this leaked?"
"It's not like we ever meant to—"
"Of course you didn't mean to!" Jazz snapped, sarcasm layering her tone. "That doesn't make having any of this information any less dangerous. For Danny or the ghosts. And it doesn't make you any less stupid for looking at this in public! There are eyes and ears everywhere now, in places we never would have expected. I thought you would respect and understand that, especially in light of what we learned about the Guys in White this weekend! Any of this information could be used against Danny, do you understand that?"
Sam's defensive walls slammed into place. She could accept accusations that she stomped all over Danny's trust—because she did stomp all over his trust, and there was no taking that back—but she would not sit here and take accusations that she was being maliciously neglectful of his, and the entire Ghost Zone's, safety.
She'd advocated for ghosts in every way she could, both before and after the Shift. Hell, do no harm was one of the most base morals Sam founded her entire philosophy on. Jazz implying otherwise? A direct strike against her pride.
"Do you think we enjoyed seeing this?" Sam asked, both incredulous and angry. "Do you think we actively go out of our way to see Danny hurt? Last Friday was terrifying, Jazz! We got a taste of what you and your family have had to go through, and it sucked. It sucked seeing Danny get hurt. What sucks even more is knowing this isn't the last time Danny's going to get hurt and that there's nothing we can do to stop it from happening. But don't think for a single second we're going to stop trying to protect him, even if it means seeing things and doing things normal people can't stomach!"
Jazz stared at her, gaze piercing. Sam did not blink. After the tense moment passed, Jazz turned back to the files. "Where did you get this?" she asked again.
Sensing an opportunity to actually speak without getting chewed out, Tucker stepped forward. "I was trying to dig up more information about the Guys in White," he explained, and Sam approved of his decision to leave his hacker network out of this. "I wanted to see if there was anything that could help us figure out what their game plan is. I wasn't actively looking for anything in particular. Just something. Some dirt, something the feds kept from us, clues...anything. We were trying to help."
"So all of this just fell into your lap, did it?" Jazz muttered.
"...I plead the fifth."
Jazz did not look happy about that at all. Pursing her lips, she leveled an intense look at Tucker. "Have you gone through all of this?"
"No," Tucker admitted.
Jazz flipped the Surface around. Displayed on the screen was a complicated technical drawing surrounded by tiny notes written in a cramped hand. "Ecto-bomb schematics. A single one of these things could probably destroy an entire territory in the Zone." She hit the arrow key, switching to the next one. "They called this one The Drill-B.Y.T. It looks like they wanted to force open their own Portal." Again, she hit the key. Some sadistic asshole sketched what his bear-trap-like invention would look like with a captured ghost inside of it. And from multiple angles. Phantom was very obviously his favorite model. "I don't think this one needs explanation."
She sped through a few others, each blueprint in various stages of completion and each one more disturbing than the last. "Then there's all their notes on the...experiments they ran," Jazz said, her voice trembling. "There's security footage and recorded 'interviews.' There's...pictures. Of remains." She finally met their gazes. "If anyone with less-than-pure intentions touched these files...and if anything happens to Danny..."
"We're not going to let anything happen to him," Sam said, and she shot Tucker a glance. Tucker's brow furrowed, expression dark, and Sam got all the information she needed from that alone. He would either vouch for his hacker friends or he would ensure nothing came of this.
"It isn't going to be a problem," Tucker vowed as well. "And if some ex-GIW operative decides to remodel old ideas..."
"We have an edge on them," Jazz allowed, tone begrudging. "We can reverse engineer. Come up with contingencies." She paused and closed her eyes for a moment. It looked as though she were trying to re-center herself. "You guys can't do this again," she said. "No solo runs. It's dangerous."
"That's rich," Sam said without thinking. "Coming from someone who used to go running around—"
"We're a team now," Jazz snapped, willfully ignoring Sam's accusation of hypocrisy. "Ignoring the content of these files and what could happen if the wrong eyes saw them, we can all get in big trouble for having them in the first place. I get that you want to help. I do. And I'm not discouraging that. I can also see why you went after information on the GIW." Jazz sighed and added sternly, "But doing whatever you did to get all this stuff—taking that risk wasn't your decision to make. If you're going to be a part of this, you need to understand that."
"We understand," Tucker was quick to say.
"You also understand, then," Jazz said, "that you'll have to tell Danny what you've seen. Because if you don't, I will. I won't keep secrets behind his back."
"That's two-for-two," Sam accused drily, stifling her sudden spike of anxiety. "You did a really great job telling him about Plasmius, didn't you?"
To her credit, Jazz winced this time. "That was a mistake," she whispered. "And we're not going to make it again."
Sam could feel the weight behind Jazz's promise, and for the first time, she could feel the gravity of the secrets the Fenton siblings had had to keep, both from each other and from their parents.
She didn't like it.
Tucker had already buckled under the force of this single secret. He hadn't even lasted a full twelve hours before he'd needed to let her in on what he'd discovered. Sam doubted she'd last long either. She wanted to say she and Tucker would have been able to bear that weight together, like Jazz and Danny had Phantom's secret identity, but she knows that's a hard thing to assume because more than anything, she doesn't want to keep secrets like this. Not from Danny and not from his family.
Jazz was right. Teammates didn't lie to each other. They didn't go behind their backs, and no matter how many gut-wrenching scenarios were running through Sam's mind right now about how Danny would react, she wasn't going to let her fear stand in the way of what was right.
There had been enough lies and secrets in the Fenton family. She wasn't about to contribute. She couldn't.
(Even if it meant losing some of Danny's trust. Even if it meant things might change).
"No," Sam agreed. "No, we're not."
(1) głupku: fool (Polish)
(2) Bible verse John 14:1-4
(3) kochanie: sweetheart/dear/darling (Polish)
AN: I may or may not have butchered the Polish, but it was fun to try. Please let me know if I screwed up. That goes for grammar as well!
As always, thank you for reading!
Oz out.