The sky outside, even through the green glow of the ghost shield, burned a deep burgundy.
Every few minutes, the ground shook.
Ghosts had no concept of time, only energy. No doubt they, at this point, considered their warm-up over and the true playtime beginning. But Danny knew the ghost hunters out there had to be reaching the last of their stamina.
The forty or so kids Danny had escaped the warehouse district with gathered in the Fenton's living room. They watched a harried newscaster shuffled through papers and blow hair out of her eyes as she tried to parse the station's limited information into something cohesive.
"This is hour three of the Amity Park Ghost Emergency Broadcast. The fight between the dragon ghost and the shadow ghost has moved northbound towards the residential areas of Samara and Regan street-" She looked somewhere off screen and bit her lip- "No, wait, make that Morgan drive. All residents are advised to evacuate to the nearest refuge point, often your local educational institution. Meanwhile, Undergrowth is still tearing through the city center. The Red Huntress is holding the northbound line at Norman street and circling an estimated... ten block radius. Citizens are advised to stay clear and reminded that the refuge point of Starling Elementary School is behind the front and unavailable to anyone seeking evacuation. Alternatives are running on the bottom of the screen now or are posted by zip code on our website." She flinched and her hand shot to her ear where she pushed her hair forward and fiddled with an earpiece. Danny could hear static coming from it as she pulled it out and tried to hide it under the desk. "Umm, still no news from City Hall. Primary estimates put the destruction at... fifty percent... of the city demolished, with ten percent succumbing to fire damage and other worsening weather conditions…-" A hand appeared on the left of the screen "-Oh, this just in, the radar is detecting a blizzard forming over the city center, be advised."
"Does anyone want water?" Jazz walked in from the kitchen, her quiet tone still loud in the otherwise silent room. A few kids gave affirmatives, and she ducked back inside before reappearing with some bottles.
"It's getting bad out there," Starr murmured.
"No shit," answered a football player with a green dealer's visor, though there wasn't a ton of heat in his voice.
The ground trembled again and the sound of a building going down assaulted their ears with periodic rumbles. They had learned the difference between that sound and the thunder was all in the way it echoed.
"My parents work in the city center." Lester bit his thumb.
"My house is on Reagan street. My sisters are... were home," Starr added, blinking a bit too fast at the broadcast.
"Only Undergrowth and the Sleepwalkers are particularly attacking humans. The Sleepwalkers only put them to sleep and Red Huntress seems to be holding back Undergrowth. I'm sure everyone had plenty of time to evacuate," Jazz said. Danny wondered if anyone else could tell that her voice was far from confident. As the only adult in the room, her efforts were still appreciated.
The others rewarded said efforts with half-hearted smiles and some attempt at cheer. Technically an adult, she was still attempting to act as an authority figure to kids not two years younger than her. It was no surprise that the reassurance was minimal.
The room fell back into silence outside of the announcer's weary voice.
The broadcast went on a break, a banner with information continuing to run across the screen. The lack of a focal point made it harder to filter out the roars and destruction from outside. The sounds of screams, though, had long since died out.
That's when Nathan broke down and said what they all were thinking.
"Do you think Phantom's seeing this?"
Danny, curled up near one of the armrests with his hands around his knees, shivered. He could only imagine where the conversation was going to go from here. So much for any progress they had made. He wondered if he could escape up to his room. He wondered how much longer this would go on… he wondered if it would ever end. It was only a matter of time until somebody stepped in, right?
The military?
The air force?
The Guys in fucking White, even?
Vlad?
Wait. Where was Vlad? As mayor, one would think he would have a vested interest in stopping this.
More than that, a pass by the lab had proved it wasn't the Fenton Portal that had unleashed this chaos, so what exactly-
"Doesn't matter," Dash cut into the muttering that started after Nathan's question. A few dozen heads swiveled in his direction. "It's not his responsibility,"
"I mean, technically not, but still. This is…"
"It's not," Dash reiterated. Danny picked at a piece of lint on his jeans.
Marie, a popular girl in purple with tanned skin and long red-brown hair, bit her lip. "... I… I get where Phantom is coming from, I think. I understand that doing what he did was hurting him. But… doesn't that still leave us here? I don't know… The fact is he's abandoned us to this for himself…" She scrunched her brow, "Sorry, that sounds more selfish than I meant it. I'm not trying to make him sound selfish." Danny turned to look at her, peaking one eye up out of the crook of his arm."I mean… I don't know. Is he in the moral right?"
"What are we, a philosophy club?" visor kid grumbled.
"Maybe this is something you guys should be confronting," Jazz spoke up. Danny would have been lying if he said he didn't feel a bit betrayed. The last thing he wanted was for this conversation to keep going. But she had already gathered everyone's attention. "I heard what you guys are trying to do, for Phantom," she continued to Danny's surprise. Her eyes darted to him and he knew Sam and Tucker must have told her at some point. "And I think if you're going to apologize, you should be honest with him and yourselves. You should figure out where you stand and confront your own feelings about it before trying to give him a maybe-not-thought-out or an ingenuine apology."
Dash grunted and looked away while everyone else shared nervous glances.
"It seems… wrong, to talk about it." Rachel looked down at her lap while her torn feet rested on a red pillow.
"It's not wrong to develop your own stance and opinion provided you earnestly and openly confront facts and opposing viewpoints and don't try to invalidate someone's humanity in contrast to facing their argument," Jazz said. "If no one is going to argue that Phantom doesn't have feelings, or that you should treat him as less than sentient, or force him to fight for you, then it's okay to confront his behavior." She didn't look at Danny as she spoke and Danny's chest ached. What was she doing? What did she think this would do? Could she see this ending in any words that wouldn't tear Danny apart? He could expect his peers to understand they had done wrong, but how could he ever expect them to defend Phantom when the consequences of his actions were an immediate threat?
"...so do we think what Phantom is doing by willfully ignoring this is wrong?" Marie asked after a moment of contemplative silence.
"It's not like we're doing anything about it either," Starr said, eyes still glued to the screen as if it could tell her specific news about her sisters. Yet she was taking the mental energy to defend Danny, er, Phantom, even with valid personal stakes in his decision. Danny stared.
"No, but we can't. Phantom has the power to stop this. I think that's an important difference,"
"Great power, great responsibility," Lester muttered.
"And how did that work out for Spider-Man's life?" Pointed out Nathan.
"Sometimes you have to prioritize yourself, sometimes that's the more important thing," said Mikey. "A dead hero is no good to anyone… well, I mean, yes he is because he was already dead… you know what I mean. My point is, having the power to stop something doesn't mean you have the mental ability."
"Isn't that selfish by definition? Putting yourself ahead of others even if you're in a bad situation?" Lopez got a dirty look from Paulina and Kwan and shrugged.
"Prioritizing yourself is not selfish." Mikey decided. He had always been a meek guy, but there was a steal in his voice that dared anyone to say otherwise, "Just because it's not 'heroic' doesn't make it selfish. 'Heroic' is called that for a reason, it's an outstanding ideal, but it's not always realistic and not being heroic is not the same as being selfish,"
"You're not selfish if you walk out on a bad situation… and if you walking out leaves bad things to happen in your wake… if it leads to people getting hurt, even people you care about, that doesn't make it your fault. It doesn't." Dash wasn't looking at anyone anymore. He was resting an elbow on the other armrest and looking out at the kitchen. His voice was flat, his back was tense, and he didn't relax when Kwan put a hand on his shoulder.
"You're right, it doesn't," Mikey agreed from his spot sitting on the floor. "Everyone has the right to leave. That doesn't make the result their fault." Danny wondered what stars were aligning to get Dash and Mikey, of all people, to agree with each other.
"I guess. Still, maybe that's okay for the rest of us, and maybe it's unfair to hold Phantom to a different standard, but isn't the whole definition of a hero self-sacrifice? Is he not a hero anymore because he made this decision?" The president of the health club asked with a distant tone to his voice, contemplative and not sure of the answer himself.
"He is a hero," said Paulina, tone nowhere near as open for contrary opinions and her tense posture making a valiant attempt not to invite room for them.
"But if he's not willing to do the self-sacrifice, then is he? Or is it more that he was a hero and now he's just… not?"
"Maybe it's not heroic, maybe... he's not a hero anymore... but that doesn't make what he did cowardly or the wrong decision," Mikey reiterated, voice gaining confidence as the sentence progressed.
"Hmmm. I don't think that's how that works." Kwan turned away from Dash to talk but still darted his eyes to his friend with every other sentence. "I don't think there's such a thing as a hero in the past tense. Like… if someone comes back from service we don't tell them they 'were' a hero, even if they're retired. They are a hero. It's not something that can be taken away... Unless the hero does something really bad, I guess. But I think if you've done even one heroic thing you are a hero, present tense. It doesn't matter if you're not doing it anymore. "
They took a moment to stew over that point.
"He has a point. And if we think anyone is in their rights to walk away, then we can't say he did something worth having the title of hero taken away." Gradual murmurs rose into an air of general consensus.
"And you know, going off the military analogy, we especially wouldn't take that title away if they were invalidated," the paranormal club president spoke up. "And we don't know the details and I don't mean to assume, but in a way, we could almost say Phantom was invalidated for mental health reasons. He didn't lose a limb or anything, but… we took something from him, all the same. Something that keeps him from being able to keep fighting."
This time the silence lasted even longer. There was something unsaid in the raspy tone the girl used to make her point. A new awareness shivered through the group and even those who still weren't sure of the rest conceded to that point.
"So we agree? He's a hero even if he's not actively taking up the title anymore. We're sorry for taking advantage of him when he was acting in that role. He deserved better. And this-" the president of the paranormal club gestured to the muted television- "Isn't his fault,"
"It doesn't change anything about what we have to do," Dash agreed, hand half muffled by his palm where it rested against his face.
Danny didn't know if anyone noticed him leave.
He didn't look back as he got up from the couch and headed up to his room with uneven steps and a head full of cotton. He imagined Jazz at least saw him, but if so she made no move to stop him.
Danny collapsed into a tight ball on his bed, burying his head in his knees and holding his breath as if he could keep the emotions as trapped as the air in his lungs and the water stinging behind his eyes.
What those trapped emotions were… it was hard to say. He felt something fiery tightening over his heart and making it hard to breathe in a way that wasn't as unpleasant as a panic attack. At odds with the warm feeling was his core pulsing to meet it, pushing against the inner walls of that same heart with am an icy yet equivalent feeling of something equally as… Frightening? Pleasant?
Danny picked his head up and let the breath leave him in a single forceful exhale. With it, he felt his cheeks start to dampen and his throat begin to itch. He unwound his hands and looked at them, clenching and unclenching his fists, remembering them clad in glowing ethereal gray.
The house shook under the weight of what Danny could only describe as five simultaneous booms of thunder. The solid three second white out confirmed his analysis. When it was over, he looked out the window at the green-tinted world beyond.
That less human side of him hated so many ghosts taking residence in the place he had made clear was off-limits.
The more human side of him politely told the ghost half to fuck off.
His mind didn't have room for territorialism. There were too many other uncertainties and painful possibilities rattling in his skull.
Hitherto unnoticed tears splashed against his clasped hand. He swiped at his eyes a few times, but the more he thought about the discussion and its conclusion, the more he didn't mind the tears. It felt good to cry, nothing like the panicked tears that had become a staple ever since his responsibility started to stack up. Those had always felt like they were draining away all his emotion and leaving him cold and empty. These… these felt like they were draining away only the negative, leaving behind the warmth that had been drowning under everything darker.
Danny thought of Sam and Tucker, not in the house at the moment but not needed to be for Danny to know they felt close to the same.
He took and held another deep breath, allowing the air to stagnate in his lungs and begin to burn before exhaling for a few seconds.
His breath came out the same familiar cool blue that had long accompanied a more metaphorical isolating chill to his soul: helplessness, fear, loneliness.
In the past three months, he had gotten to the point where he felt nothing at all when his ghost sense coalesced in front of him. It was better than those past feelings by incompatible margins, but still nowhere near what he felt now:
Strength, hope, a class' worth of stringent support.
They cared about Phantom. It wasn't only about their personal safety, it wasn't about fear. To them, Phantom was one of them and they didn't want him to hurt. They didn't expect him to hurt.
They didn't expect anything out of him except for reasonable human emotions.
Danny looked back out the window with a fierce burst of protectiveness at his crumbling city. He exhaled one more time as tears continued to roll down his cheeks and un-submerge a part of himself he'd thought he would never feel again.
A/N: Hmmmm. Well then.
- "OP, you missed your upload date by like a week and i've forgotten everything. Where did Sam and Tucker go?" Please refer to: end of chapter 35.
Please tell me what you thought. I love to hear your thoughts and theories and anything else you want to tell me XD