Sam's entire face changed at the mention of Phantom. She stared at me, though I didn't think she was actually looking at me; she was more looking through me, focused on something else entirely. I could guess who she was thinking about. I swallowed the hard lump in my throat. Seeing her love for Phantom so clearly scrawled across her face left me with a heavy heart.

Oh, Sam, what have I done?

All at once, Sam seemed to regain her senses. "Phantom? Isn't he one of the ghosts in Amity?"

"Don't play me for a fool," I begged roughly. "This is hard enough without you being difficult."

"Right, like you've never been difficult with me."

She had a point. "Sam," I began, running my hand through my hair and rubbing the back of my neck. "There's something that you need to know."

"I guarantee there's nothing I want to know from you," Sam replied haughtily.

"Oh I guarantee you don't want to know it either," I growled before forcing myself to get a fucking grip. I needed to have a strong handle on my emotions; this entire ordeal was going to be hard enough as it was. I couldn't keep getting pissed off or weepy at random intervals.

"Fenton," Sam sighed, "this conversation is getting weird, and frankly, I don't want to deal with it. So, if you have anything of importance to say, spit it out. If not, let's get back to tutoring. And if you can't do one or either of those things, I just want to leave."

How the fuck could I just 'spit it out'? This information wasn't just something that could be blurted without care. It required a careful lead up; I didn't want to give Sam a fucking heart attack. The only problem was that I didn't know how to lead up to the impending conversation.

"May I ask you something?"

"You just did," Sam said, "but carry on."

"Why do you call me 'Fenton' and not by my first name?"

"Because it's easier for me," Sam hesitated. "Also, I highly dislike you and I find first names are more intimate."

"Why do you dislike me?" I asked. She clearly wondered where the hell I was going with this, but I couldn't have told her even if she had asked me.

"Because you're an ass hat," Sam exclaimed, as though it were obvious. She wasn't wrong. "You've been cruel to me ever since you first saw me, without any good reason whatsoever. You let your girlfriend abuse me –"

"Ex-girlfriend," I reminded her, though I knew it didn't matter either way.

"Whatever. You let her bully me and others in front of you, which you had in your power to stop, but you never did. You just aren't a nice person and I don't feel like you deserve for me to like you."

She was right; everything she said was right. I was a horrible fucking person and there was no way for me to make up for it. And definitely deserved every bit of her wrath.

"I definitely don't deserve for you to like me – not in the least," I began, feeling a ramble begin to form in my throat and spew from my lips like verbal vomit. "And I will admit that I wronged you and a lot of others. I should have stopped Paullina because I know what her barbs feel like. Don't forget she used to bully me too. I got so caught up in the high life; I forgot to think about how I used to feel in that position and how I should have treated my friends. And you're right, of course. I had no good reason to be mean to you. I had no reason to be snarky, or difficult, or to make your life hell whenever I had the opportunity."

I had justified myself in the beginning. It had made perfect sense for the Fenton side to make Sam hate him. Now, I only hated myself for my stupid ass decision.

"And I want to apologize to you for that," I continued. "Recently, I've had my eyes opened to a lot of things. And at the top of the list is my own repulsive behaviour. I know I can't take back anything I've said or done to you or how I made you feel but I am deeply sorry for it all. I can't apologize enough for it.

"I'm also not naïve enough to think that I can make everything better by apologizing." But I wished that I could; I wished that I could get down on my knees, grovel, and magically she'd realize that, initially, I'd thought that I was doing the right thing. But it didn't work like that and I knew. I fucking knew that she'd probably be out of my life forever by the time the night was out. "I also don't think you'll forgive me, and you shouldn't. Goddammit, Sam, you shouldn't. But I'm hoping that you do, especially after I tell you everything."

I looked down at my linked hands, unable to look at her. I wanted to believe that love conquered all, and that it would be like one of those gushy romance movies that Jazz and Paullina adored. I wanted to believe that she would stay mad for a little while but then she would realize that being together meant more than a giant mistake. But I knew that it was all bullshit. Life didn't work that way – especially, when you hurt somebody the way that I had done. The pain would last forever; the pain of all that would be revealed in the next few minutes.

I had ruined us before there ever was an 'us'.

Sam cleared her throat, dragging me from my thoughts. "What do you mean by everything?"

"You're not going to believe me," I whispered. "And you're going to hate me until I die, and probably after that."

Fuck.

"Promise me something?" I asked roughly.

"I don't owe you any promises," Sam snapped.

I glanced at her. No, she didn't. And it was fucking dumb of me to try for one.

"I know. I just thought I'd try. If you can't promise anything," I took a different approach, "at least let me ask you not to leave until I get my story over with."

I could imagine nothing worse than Sam running out of here with only half of the truth in her mind.

"I can do that," Sam swore. If things were about to get emotional, I didn't know if I could hold her to it – not that Sam wasn't a person of her word.

I stood up and began to pace as I recited my story: the story of how I became a halfa.

(-.-)

"All right," I declared, tossing down my controller. "I can't stand being beaten by you anymore."

Tucker laughed. "I could stand beating you a couple more times."

I rolled my eyes. "Come on," I urged. "Let's go see what Mom and Dad have down in the lab."

I left my bedroom, Tucker scrambling after me. We both loved hanging out in the lab; Tucker liked the technology aspect of Mom and Dad's inventions where I was more interested in the mechanics of it all. But the thing that we both loved the most was shooting the ecto-guns. Mom and Dad had set up targets for us along one side of the lab's walls and Tuck and I were free to shoot whatever weapons we found lying around (provided they didn't have a blue sticker on the side: blue stickers meant the weapon wasn't ready to be tested).

We burst through the lab doors. Mom and Dad had taken off on a ghost hunt earlier that day so it was just us. Tucker and I combed the lab benches, shooting off some of the older weapons and hitting the targets every time. We were both pretty good shots, especially for just being fourteen. But, it soon got boring. We only had the old weapons to toy around with; my parents had taken the cool weapons with them and Tuck and I knew better than to touch the blue tagged weapons.

I was about to suggest we go upstairs for another round of Doom (or 'Danny-getting-his-ass-kicked' as Tucker so fondly called it) when Tuck approached the ghost portal.

"It's an eyesore," he decided after a minute of staring at it.

"It's a defective eyesore," I told him and then explained how Mom and Dad's biggest project yet had turned out to be a failure. The portal wouldn't turn on.

"Let's fix it!" Tucker decided with a grin.

"Us?"

"Yeah. Come on, we know a lot about the weapons from watching your parents work. And I'm good with tech and you're good with machines. C'mon, Danny. Picture your parents faces when they come home and find out we fixed their portal!"

To hell with their faces; I imagined how they would immediately forget every bad or disobedient thing I had done if I fixed their baby – the portal.

"All right." I agreed, "But Hazmat suits. We don't want any ectoplasm on us."

"Do you take me for an idiot?" Tucker asked, throwing me a suit as he pulled one on himself.

I zipped up the back of my own suit and faced the portal. "You look at the outside; I'll look at the inside," I decided.

I walked inside the tunnel-like structure and studied the metal paneling along the walls. When I got to roughly the middle of it, I noticed a control panel.

"Man!" Tucker exclaimed from the back of the tunnel. "You're not gonna believe it; your parents forgot to plug the thing in!"

"I'm not surprised." I laughed as I took a closer look at the control panel and called out, "Hey, they forgot to hit the 'On' button too."

Tucker poked his head around the back of the ghost portal, glancing at the large green button beside me.

"It can't be that simple," he said immediately. "Your parents are smarter than that."

"It can't be the only thing wrong with it," I agreed.

"But … Let's test it out and see what happens," Tucker suggested.

I shrugged and agreed. "You plug it in," I said.

Tucker disappeared from view and I heard a bit of rummaging as he searched for an empty plug. "All right, it's in!" He shouted. "Hit the on button."

I slammed my hand down on the bright button. There was a moment where I could feel the portal activating and I thought 'we did it!'. And we had; we had fixed the portal. But one thing that neither Tucker nor I had realized was that I was standing inside the portal, and that wasn't going to end well.

There was a humming noise and then it hit me.

(-.-)

"God," I said, reflecting on what I had felt inside of that portal and struggling to put it into words. "I can't even explain that kind of pain to anyone. It was like my insides were now on my outside, like lightning was coursing through my veins. I was going to explode and throw up; I was crying as I felt my blood start to boil inside of my veins. I felt like I was dying. I honestly thought that I was going to die in the portal. But I didn't. Something did happen though; something totally inexplicable. I never told my parents about it – never told another human being. Tucker was there when it happened and Jazz, well, Tucker had to tell Jazz."

But here I was, telling Sam.

"I never thought that what happened would be a problem," I admitted. "It was scary as anything at first but I began to grow. I began to realize that it had led me to something beyond myself; to a destiny more fulfilling than anything I could have done in my regular state. I thought that, beyond my new being, I could continue to live life as I had before. It wouldn't interfere that badly. And it didn't. I mean, I had less of a personal life and next to no time for school, but I wasn't exactly a stellar student before. The point was I could keep the two things separate. It hadn't been hard.

"But then …" My voice cracked and I had to take a breath. I could feel tears working their way to my eyes and I pushed them away. Do not become emotional, I ordered myself. "Then there was you. And for the first time this life couldn't collide with that life, rather than the other way around. And I look back now and think of how much easier it would have been had I been honest with you from the very beginning. I could have avoided this, and what's sure to come. Why I didn't … It made sense at the time. At the time it made so much fucking sense, but looking back now, I can't understand myself. I was just being selfish. I was being a selfish, worthless, human being and I can't believe I was like that.

"I need you to forgive me, Sam. I need that like I need air to breathe; like I need the sun in the sky and the wind on my face. Please, whatever you do, don't shut me out completely. I would deserve it. I would deserve so much worse, but I don't know what could be worse than you walking out of my life for good. I'm begging you here, don't walk away. Not now, not after so much." After my desperate plea, I hung my head and tried to catch my breath.

Never before had I been so raw with another human being. Never before had I detailed what was going inside of me to that extent. And I still hadn't told her the truth; she still didn't know what was going on.

"Fenton, I don't understand," Sam said hoarsely. "What happened to you in the portal? And why would you care so much about me? As far as I was concerned, we hated one another."

I could never hate her.

"Don't hate me," I breathed, struggling to hold down the overwhelming sadness.

I stood up so that she could see the full length of my body so that, when I transformed, she would be able to see everything without a second glance.

"Something unnatural happened in that portal. The ectoplasm mixed with my human DNA. It created me; what I am now. And what I am now is a halfa; half human, half ghost. I have two different appearances but one mind, one personality, one heart. And my ghost half became well-known in Amity, I became a hero."

The entire time I was talking, Sam's face was going through the stages of panic and denial. On some level, deep down, I think she already knew what I was about to reveal. I just didn't think she was ready to face it yet. Hell, I wasn't fucking ready for her to face it yet, but I knew that it was time.

I closed my eyes and triggered my transformation into Phantom. I felt the familiar tug of the glowing rings surround me, morphing my jeans and shirt into a hazmat suit; turning my black hair white; rendering my blue eyes green. Evolution complete, I had nothing to do but open my eyes and wait for Sam's reaction.

She took one look at me and screamed.

Guess what! ;)

I don't own anything recognizable. Thanks to my betas: Forever Sky!

~TLL~