This piece functions on the headcanon that being sucked into/released from the thermos seriously disorients Danny (I mean if your molecules were compressed into a lunchbox you'd come out a little bleary too).

This was very (very) mildly inspired by Cordria's story (one if the saddest fics EVER) "I'm Still Here."


Fifty Years

x - x - x

There were unquantifiable minutes or hours or days. An incalculable weight pressing in on all sides. There were no thoughts, no feelings, nothing but solemn, tangible silence. For a minute or a hundred lifetimes, it was anyone's guess. Until the dark opened up quite suddenly with a flash of light, an exponential rush of energy, a flowing and expanding. Another Big Bang.

And then Danny was on a hard surface, holding his head to keep the world from spinning. As it came into focus, he could make out the spiral patterns in the hardwood under his knees. He heard a voice, bubbling at him through still water, and he looked up to see someone waving their arms around frantically.

Slowly the words made their way into his ears, like sleepy caterpillars.

"Danny!" the man was saying. "Danny, oh my god, Danny Fenton – "

A note of alarm flared up in the back of his mind. Where was he? Who was this? Finally he noticed the thermos is the man's hand, and realized dimly he must have just been released from it. So where was he before…?

Danny rose to his feet, a bit shaky but slowly gaining his wits. He'd never quite gotten the hang of being released from the thermos, the disorientation of having all his molecules compressed and decompressed. He felt like a fish in a bag in the hands of a five year old. He took a step back from the old man, whose hands were quaking.

"Danny," he was still saying. "It's you, it's really you.."

"I'm...mrrh.. 'M sorry," Danny mumbled, his hand still on his head. Was this an apartment? Couch, television, coffee table.. None of it familiar. "What.. who .. 're you?"

The old man paused, wringing his hands together, his withered lips pursed unhappily. For some reason, a mote of dread struck Danny. He wasn't sure that he wanted to know. Where was he before he got sucked up in the thermos?

"Danny, it's me," the man said. Danny blinked at him stupidly. Should he recognize him? He felt so scrambled... maybe he did know him?

But what he said was, "I.. I don't know you." He glanced around again, hands fidgeting at his sides, increasingly uncomfortable as the static cleared from his mind. He was in ghost form. No old man should recognize him on a friendly personal level. Right?

Suddenly the man's face fell. His eyes were downcast, his lips curving into a steep frown. He removed his red hat solemnly from his head, holding it to his chest as if delivering a eulogy. "Danny…I don't know how else to tell you this. It's me. It's Tucker."

There was a long moment of silence, in which Danny felt like both his lungs had collapsed. "Tucker. You're Tucker." His cheek twitched and a short laugh escaped. "Okay, real funny… I don't get the joke."

The man's frown deepened. His eyes glistened as he said, "This is no joke. Danny.. you've been lost for fifty years. We didn't think we'd ever see you again. When I found this thermos, I never thought.."

"Fifty years?"

The man just looked on, clutching his hat, that red hat

"This isn't happening. You're pulling my leg. This isn't…" But the more he looked at the man, the more he saw Tucker in his face, and when he turned around wildly, as if someone might jump out and declare it all a joke, he saw pictures lining the wall – Tucker, Sam, Danny. This could not be real.

"I don't believe you," he said, feeling like he was about to dissolve into putty. "I don't believe you."

"You have to," the man pleaded.

Danny's head was still too fuzzy to comprehend any of this. His brains hadn't even unscrambled from the thermos yet, and now it felt like someone was scrambling them again. "I – I can't – I gotta go," he said, and without another word, ignoring the old mans sudden cry for him to wait, he took off through the wall of the house, speeding away into the city. If his head had been clearer, clear enough to look around and actually pay attention to the city passing him by, then he might have realized a bit sooner.

The room was dark when he came to a stop just outside Sam's window.

He didn't know what the hell he was doing here. Everything was still blurry, in his vision and in his thoughts. He blinked hard a few times, trying to dispel the dizzies. Fifty years...

He paused, one arm already phasing through her bedroom wall. Fifty years. Comprehension was coming slowly, filling into the spaces in his mind like molasses. If it really had been fifty years, then why was he here? She wouldn't be here. He thought of the old man, in the unfamiliar apartment.

She wouldn't be here.

But he had already phased into the room.

It was dark. His eyes wouldn't adjust. He scanned the bedroom, treading softly on the carpet. All the furniture was in the same place as it once had been. He could kind of make out wall posters in the dark, all in the same spots they used to be. If so much time had passed, he wondered how long it had been since anyone had touched the stuff in this room.

Struggling not to hyperventilate, he leaned heavily on her desk, only to realize he had stuck his arm in a huge spiderweb. Sam had always loved spiders but he distinctly remembered her room not being covered in actual spiders. He cursed under his breath, shaking off the web. He lit up his hand and watched as the green glow filled the room, casting shadows across amassed cobwebs in the corners and on the shelves.
Then his breath caught in his throat as he look at her bed.

There was a lump beneath the blankets, breathing rhythmically. Cautiously he flew toward it, not wanting to see the person beneath but drawn with a morbid curiosity. It was the same red blanket that had been on her bed fifty years ago, the last time he had seen her.

Slowly, dreadfully, he grabbed the edge of the blanket, pulling it down, revealing the old, old face beneath it, tranquil in her sleep but so old and fragile and his heart palpitated dangerously but then he kept pulling the blanket and.. and... wait.

"Wait," he said out loud, his deep voice strange in the quiet somber room. "Wait a minute." He said it again for good measure. At this point the woman opened her eyes and blinked up at him innocently. "Grandma Ida?"

The woman smacked her lips and sighed. "Oh, poo."

"What the heck?" Danny stepped back, putting his hands on his head as Ida sat up in bed, letting the blanket fall off. "What the heck is going on! What are you doing in Sam's room? This is not fifty years in the... You know, if you're still... It can't be.. What is going on?"

"They said you wouldn't recognize me. It seems I have been swindled."

Danny squeezed at the empty air in from of him in exasperation. "Why the eff would I suddenly not recognize you? I have known you for like TEN YEARS, Ida."

"They said you'd be disoriented," Ida shrugged, as if that explained everything.

"Not that disoriented!" Danny dragged his hand down his face. "Hold up. They? Being Sam and Tucker? Oh my god. I am going to murder them."

Ida crossed her arms, staring down her nose at Danny. "Let the record show that I had absolutely nothing to do with this idea. I was an unwitting accomplice, mostly."
Danny was clutching his heart, disbelief flooding through him. He couldn't believe he almost fell for that. That horrible, low, cruel, heartless..

"Hold your horses there sonny, just relax. Grandma's got a plan, okey doke?"

"Huh? What?" Danny was still struggling to grasp everything that had just happened. He felt awake though, suddenly. Alert. Aware. The shock of seeing Ida had been like a bucket of cold water.

"I have this covered. Play dead."

Okay... Maybe he wasn't totally oriented yet. Did Ida just tell him to play dead?

"SAM!" Ida screamed, with lungs surprisingly powerful for a woman her age. "SAM, COME QUICK! TUCKER! SOMEONE HELP!"

Loud footsteps thumped suddenly in the hallway, and Danny only had time to glance bewilderedly at Ida before he did the only thing that made sense. He transformed back to human, dropped to the floor, and played dead.

He heard the sound of Sam's bedroom door bursting open and ricocheting off the wall.
"What happened, what happened?" It was Tucker's voice. His regular sixteen year old voice. What a little shit.

"I just waited here like you told me and Danny showed up, but when he saw me he just fell over! I think he might have had a heart attack!"

"Oh my god." It was Sam. "Oh my god. Danny!" Even though he knew now it was all a stupid joke he couldn't help but be a tiny bit relieved to hear their voices. Then there were hands on him where he lay collapsed on he floor, turning him over onto his back. He would've taken a much bigger breath when he dropped if he'd known he would be holding his breath this long.

"Grandma, call 911! He still has a heartbeat -"

"Shit, Danny, it was just a joke!"

"Maybe the joke went a little too far, hmmm?" Ida hummed from the bed. Danny nearly snorted.

"So not the time, grandma!"

"Seriously," Tucker added despairingly, "you think we don't realize that now?"

Danny could almost feel sorry for them, but he was very much struggling not to laugh. Served them right, those jerkwads.

And then, the urge to breathe overcame him. The jig was up. They'd probably learned their lesson anyway. He sucked in a huge breath of air, then opened his eyes slowly. Sam's hands were under his head and she was glaring at Ida currently. Tucker had his eyes on his pocket, where he was digging out his phone.

Danny took this golden opportunity to say, "Isnt someone going to give me CPR?"

Sam dropped his head in surprise, allowing it to rap sharply on the floor.

"Ow!"

"Danny, you asshole! You scared us to death!"

"Oh yeah," Danny mocked, sitting up and rubbing his head gingerly, "I'm sooooo sorry. Oh wait, no I'm not."

"Dude," Tucker said. "Not cool."

"Whatever!" Danny countered. Two could play the blame game. "It's your own fault for trying to trick me in the first place. I am trading you guys in."

"Wait, how the heck did you even figure it out?" Sam asked suddenly, narrowing her eyes at him accusingly.

"Uh, wow. I can't believe you think I'm so stupid that I would think your grandma was you in fifty years."

"Danny, one time after we let you out of the thermos you thought your math book was trying to escape from your locker."

Danny seethed. "Okay, that was ONE time."

Tucker leaned between them, adding, "Also let's not forget the time when he took that English in-class essay exam right after Jazz accidentally caught him in the thermos."

Danny turned his venomous glare on Tucker. "Can we forget about that one please?"

"I'll forget it when they take it down out of the trophy case in the teachers lounge."

"Wait, they put it where?"

There was a loud yawn behind them as Tucker snickered loudly into his hand. "This is all amusing, don't get me wrong, but my bones can only handle so much fun in one day... If I'm not needed for any more practical jokes tonight then I think I'll be heading on over to my own room for some shut eye."

"Yeah yeah, sure thing grandma," Sam sighed. "Man, we really thought that was gonna work."

Danny snorted, but moved toward the bed to assist Sam in helping Ida into her wheelchair, which stood on the opposite side. "Dream on," he said. He'd already resolved never to tell them it had totally and completely worked on him at first. "Although you did pretty good... Hiring that old man and giving him your hat was a nice touch."

"Hired," Tucker snickered. "That was my grandpa. He's in town this week."

Danny shrugged. "The pictures on his wall, that was clever. Very thorough."

"That was my idea," Ida piped, before shooing their helping hands and wheeling herself away toward the door.

"I thought you were an unwitting accomplice!" Danny accused, but he could only hear her cackling loudly as she wheeled away down the hall. "The spiderwebs though," Danny complimented, gesturing to the webs covering very surface in the room, "I have to admit you almost had me there."

Sam beamed and bowed deeply. "Thank you, thank you. You know, I was thinking of keeping them, too."

"Yeah but... even with the webs... it was a shoddy prank, at best. Five out of ten."

"Five out of ten!" Tucker exclaimed. "Are you kidding me! Do you know how long it took us to set this up?"

"Oh shut up Tucker. It only took us like two hours to set up."

"Two whole hours!"

"You guys suck at pranking," Danny laughed. "You spent most of that time throwing cobwebs everywhere, didn't you?"

"Excuse you," Sam joked in a faux-serious tone, "you don't throw webs you spin them."

"Oh my bad, spider queen of the damned." He laughed and threw himself down between the two of them on the bed. It was the only place in the room not doused in fake web. "I swear I wouldn't even miss you two dweebs if I had woken up fifty years into the future."

"Shut up, take that back you rude-ass," Tucker whined.

"Wait a minute." Danny sat up, glancing back at Tucker and Sam where they lay, hands behind their heads lazily. "Your entire prank hinged on me going to Sam's house first thing. What if I went somewhere else? I would've realized it wasn't fifty years later almost immediately. I could have gone literally anywhere! Did you even think of that? Man, you guys seriously suck at pranking."

Tucker scratched his nose absently. "Yeah but you did go to Sam's house first thing..."

"But I might have gone somewhere else."

"But you didn't."

"That is not the point here! I could have and then your prank would've been ruined. Case and point. You guys are the worst prankers."

"Seriously bro, you think I don't know you well enough to know that the first place you would go would be Sam's house? We might suck at pranking, but at least we're not predictable."

Danny opened his mouth to retort, but then closed it again, glowering down at them. "I am not predictable," he pouted. "Right Sam?"

She held up her hands in mock surrender. "I am not touching that one with a ten foot pole."

"You are," Tucker insisted, "and I can prove it."

Danny folded his arms, daring Tucker to try him.

"I bet I can get you to leave the room within the next ten seconds."

"You can not," Danny replied airily. Did he really think he was gonna be able to do that? Fat chance.

Tucker sat up, grinning evilly at Danny. "You asked for it." He cast Sam a furtive glance, and then folded his own arms, reflecting Danny. "Explain this. How come when you thought you'd been hurled fifty years into the future, and that everyone you knew was fifty years older, many of the people you knew and loved possibly dead by then, that before you checked on your own family, before you even checked to see if it was true or not (I mean seriously Danny, you could have just picked up a newspaper or opened your cell phone for Christ's sake) you came to find Sam?"

Danny blinked at him.

He glanced over at Sam, who was still laying down and seemed to have become briefly catatonic.

"That is... a very good question, Tucker, and I have a very good response for it..." He could feel his cheeks heating up. He would like to punch Tucker in the face right about now.

"Oh hey, was that your ghost sense?" Tucker said, to Danny's utter relief. There had been no such thing, of course.

"Yeah, yep, I uh.. I'd better go."

"Go ahead, go ahead," Tucker snickered. "We'll catch up."

Danny shot him one last glare before vanishing from sight, grateful because he thought his cheeks were probably red enough to paint roses with. He couldn't see Sam's face because she had hidden it beneath her hands.

Tucker flopped back down on the bed, still laughing to himself. Danny made to escape through the wall, but he before he had gone he heard Tucker say with an air of satisfaction, "So predictable," and a second later heard a sharp slap followed by an indignant "ow" from Tucker.