Just a wee warning, this chapter is really boring, but important. Thx~
…oooOOO-DASH-OOOooo…
Dash couldn't believe what he was seeing, refused to believe what he was seeing.
Danny Phantom sat on his bed, white hair mussed and eyes glowing a dim green. He looked a lot dimmer than usual, his aura luminous as a candle flicker.
It was while Dash's entire world was crumbling that he heard the familiar sound of his door handle turning.
He squinted at it, trying to summon some reason, before remembering that his parents were probably home. And if they saw Phantom…
The teen shuddered at the very thought.
"Paulina!" He whisper-shouted at her, but she remained in a stupor, eyes never leaving the ghost on the bed.
Deciding to take matters into his own hands the quarterback dove across the room, seized the wad of blankets, and threw them over Phantom's—previously Fenton's—head.
Not a second later the door flew open and a well-built figure stepped in, tall enough for their shadow to fall at Dash's feet, "I brought pizza, insomnia buddy. Left the waitress a tip to because—"
Kwan, wearing a backwards baseball cap, an Old Navy sweater, and loose jeans, froze at the sight of a dumbstruck Paulina kneeling on the floor and Dash, standing above her with a sheen of sweat on his brow.
The Hot n'Ready pizza boxes hit the floor as the newcomer turned to go, a red flush blooming on his cheeks, "And I will pretend I saw nothing, erase it all from my eyes, ciao—"
Dash leapt over the discarded pizza boxes and seized his friend by the arm, dragging him back into the room and softly closing the door behind them. "It's not what it looked like."
"And I'm the princess of Prussia," Kwan snorted as he tried to break away again, but the blond tightened his grip, not allowing him to escape.
"Seriously, Kwan, what are you doing here at," Dash broke off, glancing at the digital clock. "Two thirty-five in the morning?"
Kwan blinked between Paulina and Dash again before turning back to his best friend and whisper shouting, "What do you mean 'what am I doing'? It's the third Friday of the month."
Dash's eyes widened in realization and he smacked his forehead with the back of his hand, "Right, I forgot. Sorry man."
The Asian American squatted, rearranging the pizza boxes, then picking them back up without catching sight of the bed and its not-so-subtly concealed occupant.
"Dash has insomnia?" Paulina asked, clearly still dazed.
Dash desperately tried to catch Kwan's gaze; to tell him not to spill the proverbial beans. He'd purposefully kept the sleeping disorder a secret from her, though he had planned on telling her. Someday. Maybe.
But he definitely didn't want her finding out like this.
Kwan remained perfectly oblivious, turning his smiling face towards the Latina, "Yup, he got professionally diagnosed at the end of the summer. Since I have it too, we made a plan to meet up every third Friday night at three."
"You're early," Dash remarked dryly, treating his friend to a dark scowl.
Kwan raised an eyebrow at him, "And you forgot." He popped the pizza lid, straightening its occupants with tender care.
While he was preoccupied Paulina rounded on Dash, lips drawn into a tight frown, "Why didn't you tell me you had insomnia? I could've helped you!"
Dash winced guiltily. He'd meant to tell her, honest, but then… "With everything going on with Val and your mom I didn't want to, you know."
She stepped closer, teal eyes shining with a hurt she usually hid, "But we were still friends, right? Friends tell each other things; friends are supposed to worry about each other.
He nodded slowly, not sure how to articulate the swirling vortex of emotions ravaging his head. It had been like this then, too; him unable to communicate, unable to encompass all that he'd felt.
She didn't deserve someone like him.
So they'd walked their separate ways.
He opened his mouth to answer when Kwan, who he'd honestly forgotten about (did that make him a bad friend?), suddenly spoke up from the middle of the room,
"Not that this conversation isn't riveting, but what is that?" He waved a half-eaten piece of pizza at the unusually humanoid blanket mound.
Dash slapped his forehead for the second time that night. Having forgotten about more than just the presence of his best friend. Which, yes, really did make him sound like a horrible person, he decided quietly.
As his mind tried to scrape together an answer, the blanket shifted and Phantom (Fenton?) poked his head out like a frightened field mouse from its winter burrow, "Hi Kwan." He said with a nervous smile, his fingers teasing the edge of the blanket absently.
At the sight of white hair and brilliant green eyes the pizza box hit the floor. Again.
Kwan leapt back, his hands tremoring as he stared at the ghost boy on Dash's bed, "Why is…what the—" He whipped around towards the blond. "Why is Phantom on your bed, just what exactly is going on here?" He stomped his foot on the hardwood, landing it in the hole from Fenton's (Phantom's?) earlier outburst.
He landed with a thud next to the pizza, holding his ankle with a grimace.
Dash sighed and sat next to his 'insomnia buddy' on the floor, Paulina slipping back into the thrice abandoned office chair.
Phantom wrapped the blanket around his shoulders, looking much smaller than he usually with the heavy comforter enveloping him. "D-do you want me to explain?" He asked Dash softly, eyes downcast.
The blond blanched at the voice, so unlike Phantom's, yet still familiar. Too familiar.
He refused to think of why it might be resonating so deeply in his mind; maybe if he denied what his eyes had already seen then this whole situation would simply fade away.
"Yes," He answered, proceeding to tell Kwan about how he'd gotten off his shift at the Nasty burger, found Paulina on his steps, the window breaking on them, literally bringing Danny back to life, then taking him upstairs.
His teammate sat in silence for a minute, processing the seemingly absurd story his friend had just fed him, "But what was he doing in your living room?" He turned away from Dash to the figure on the bed, "And how could they have done CPR if you're already dead?"
Phantom sat up, looking at them with tired eyes, "Just a sec, I can't hold this any longer."
The same two circles of white light appeared at his chest and split upwards, leaving behind a shirtless, bandaged Danny Fenton.
Kwan choked on his pizza while Dash, though he had known it was coming, stared with wide eyes. Paulina merely sighed in resignation, chin resting on her knees.
Once Kwan had finished with his incessant coughing, eyes bulging out of his head, he shouted," Danny?!"
Phantom-now-Fenton held up a finger to his lips, eyes flickering to the door, "Please just let me explain, quietly."
Dash cracked his knuckles slowly, as he often did when he was nervous, and fixed his gaze on Phantom.
When they were all silent, waiting in breathless anticipation, the injured boy began to speak,
"First year my mom and dad managed to complete their only to scale ghost portal in our basement,"
The listening trio nodded in unison, each of them recalling the press release.
Danny's hands tugged at the blanket seams until his fingers were a pale, bloodless white, "What you may not know is that at first the portal didn't turn on, so I decided to take a look inside." His gaze unfocused as he continued to speak, staring at something only his eyes could see. "I'm just glad Sam and Tucker stayed behind; I can't imagine what might've—" He cleared his throat,
"Anyway, ever the klutz, I tripped over some spare cable and hit the 'on' button. Not sure why my parents put it on the inside of the portal, but what's done is done."
Dash shifted, recalling when Fenton had inexplicably been absent from school for a week. No one thought much of it at the time, assuming the crazy Fenton's had simply gone on a walk to Mars or something.
When he thought back, however, he remembered Tucker's watery eyes and Manson's abnormally short temper. Not to say she wasn't always angry, because she was, but-
How could they have missed something so big?
"So what you're telling us," Kwan interrupted, though not unkindly, "Is that you died in your parent's basement two years ago and have just been…what? Pretending you're human?"
"You're half right," Fenton said dryly, like there was some joke they were missing out on. "The portal did electrocute me to death, but with the huge concentration of newly formed ecto-energy I somehow didn't die fully. I became half human, half ghost; a halfa."
"A halfa," Paulina parroted, her eyes never leaving his face.
The boy nodded, "We're not sure of anything definite, even I don't know why I'm still here. I have some…friends, you could say, that think it was my steady lifetime acclimation to ectoplasm that allowed it to bond so flawlessly with my DNA."
The science part of Dash, the side he was constantly trying to squash, flared up at the thought. Could that be possible? Would it be spliced, or bonded with the human DNA? How did ghosts have DNA? Where they really dead? Or where they some kind of creature that existed on an entirely different molecular pla—
He growled under his breath, trying to supress the incessant questions while a scowl darkened his features.
Fenton continued, unaware of the jock's plight, "Others think it was my will to live that re-animated me, or the strength of my obsession. Though Sam thinks I don't have an obsession," He smiled softly. "She's always trying to prove it to me."
The ghost boy shrugged, wincing when his bandages shifted.
"This is all well and good," Dash remarked, his frown deepening when his voice came out as a hostile bark. "But you're telling me that, this entire time, you'vebeen the one protecting Amity? Lily livered Fenton's been flying around at night offing ghosts?"
Argh! That wasn't how he was trying to sound; wasn't how he was trying to come across—he silently cursed his inability to speak as his brain short circuited.
The Fenton in question wrinkled his nose at the question, "No, I've been flying around at night apprehending ghosts and putting them back into the zone. There has never been any 'offing'."
Paulina leapt from her chair and began to pace, paying her wrinkled jeans no heed as her socked feet pattered on the floor, "No, this actually explains a lot. The absences, the weirdness, the injuries, the—" Her eyes widened as she spun towards Dash, "—The Phantom Tracker! The times all matched up because he was Phantom, not cause he was hunting him. I mean, how could we have not seen it before? They have the same faces, for goodness sake."
Kwan sighed from his place next to the pizza boxes, as if he alone carried the wisdom of the universe, "'People see what they want to see and what people want to see never has anything to with the truth.'" He ignored the twin looks of confusion being sent his way and muttered, "~Roberto Bolaño."
Dash, already well aware of Kwan's frequent quotations, thought nothing f it, instead continuing with his interrogation, "But why a superhero? Why not a thief, a dictator? You could rule the world with that kind of power, but instead you decide to go around saving grandmas and kissing babies?"
Something flashed in the youngest Fenton's eyes, something akin to guilt or remorse, "I'm not perfect, and I've certainly never kissed a baby, but as they say, 'with great power comes great responsibility'. I couldn't just, not."
Kwan grinned, "~Benjamin Parker."
Fenton plowed on, "I never really planned on becoming a vigilante, it sort of just…happened."
Dash shook his head slowly; only dweeb Fentonail could 'accidentally' become a superhero.
Despite his explanation, Paulina was still staring at the boy like he had two heads, "But how did you end up through Dash's window? And why did we get that phone call?"
The barest trace of a smile that had surfaced on Fenton's face vanished at the Latina's words, "To tell that I have to go back a few weeks."
Paulina sat down beside Dash, sensing, like the rest of them, that this was going to be a long story.
…oooOOO-DANNY-OOOooo…
Danny could still not believe this was happening; that three of the schools most popular and prone to gossip members now knew his secret.
They were staring at him expectantly, faces unreadable, and all but Kwan frowning deeply.
The halfa wasn't sure where to start himself, everything had been happening so fast and his head hurt and his body hurt and his heart…
He simply wanted to curl up next to a perfectly safe Sam and listen to her heartbeat, to know that she was alright. Was that too much to ask?
With a heavy sigh he opened his eyes, which he hadn't even realized he'd closed, and began to speak, "We noticed a few weeks back that Skulker was being particularly vicious, acting out and packing a heck of a punch. Then with that whole news release deal we immediately suspected Vlad—"
"Vlad Masters?" Dash interrupted suddenly, "Suspected him of what?"
Danny blinked out of his revelry, remembering that it wasn't Tuck and Sam he was talking to but the three A-Listers. "Right. Back in college he and my parents had a mishap with a portal. Vlad suffered the consequences."
"You mean he's a 'halfa' too?" Kwan questioned.
Danny's stomach clenched at the reminder that he and Vlad were connected in any way. "When he's not posing as my mom's stalker or coddling footballs, he's terrorizing the town as Plasmius."
Dash and Paulina looked shell-shocked, but Kwan simply appeared disgusted, "You mean I'm acting out Vladimir Masters, the worst mayor in Amity Park history, in the school play?" He shuddered, "No thanks."
Paulina barked an unexpected laugh that echoed throughout Dash's unnecessarily large room, "So that's why you were so reluctant to play Phantom! You were worried about your secret getting exposed." She rubbed a hand wearily over her face. "That also explains why you were so weirdly perfect for the role."
"Any why when you wore the suit you looked just like him, or I guess looked just like you." Kwan clutched his head, massaging his tempers with a bemused expression. "You probably don't have an allergy either; that was just to stop us from figuring it out."
Danny nodded guiltily. Despite how much his double life lead him to do it, he really did hate lying, "I'm sorry I deceived you guys."
Kwan shook his head, lips morphing into a sombre line. "No, I understand. Revealing this at any other time would've been unwise. If anything, I should be apologizing to you." He caught Danny's eyes with his own and the halfa could see the sincerity lying in their depths. "I was horrible to you first year, and yet you, a ghostly powered teen, turned around and protected me. You could have done anything; made my life hell, but instead you saved the town." He shook his head slowly, disbelief etched into his features.
Danny flushed with embarrassment, his ears and neck a hot red. "Um, no!" He waved his hands furiously. "A-anyone would have done the same! Besides, you already apologized. There's no need to—"
"No," Paulina cut him off softly, her eyes sad. "I too owe you an apology. I treated you like dirt then turned around and idolized you. I thought you were the most incredible ghost vigilante, I wanted to marry you." She stood up, walking over to him and looking him straight in the eyes.
Even though Danny was very, very over his past crush on the Latina her words still made his blush darken.
The original trio had often speculated over how Paulina would react to him being the one she so openly professed her love of, but he was still woefully underprepared.
"I can't do anything else but apologize and hope you know I really am sorry for my actions. I was a complete hypocrite wanting to be like your one half while not recognizing it in your other." She pressed a light kiss to his forehead then pulled back, smiling sadly at him.
Danny knew there was nothing romantic in the gesture, it was purely platonic. Almost sisterly.
Kwan leapt to his feet and wrapped them both in a crushing bear hug, "I'd kiss you too, Danny, but I sense that'd make things awkward."
Danny laughed quietly, a genuine smile plying at his lips for the first time since the lab.
It felt odd to have the two people he'd once considered his greatest enemies around him, but as he searched his mind he found only forgiveness. Not trust, not friendship, and certainly not love, but definitely the potential for something new.
Something…good.
"Alright," He patted Kwan's back awkwardly. "Time to release the person with the bruised ribs. Preferably before he dies. Again."
Kwan let go with a squawk and stepped back, Paulina joining him with a laugh.
Once they'd settled down, Danny looked at both of them with a calculated frown, "All is forgiven. But," He felt his eyes flash dangerously at the thought, his core flaring up in cold anger. "If you don't make all that clear to Tuck and Sam once this is over, I will never forgive you."
They both nodded simultaneously.
"My apology extends to both, just wish I could let them know," Paulina said with a heavy sigh. "I'm guessing they've been helping you since day one?"
Danny, inching back into the downy blanket, nodded.
Kwan voiced a similar sentiment and the two turned to Dash in unison, their eyebrows raised expectantly.
Dash, however, remained silent; audibly cracking his knuckles with practiced precision.
Danny smiled at him; knowing no apology would pass the jock's lips until he'd thought it through.
When Paulina opened her mouth, most likely to reprimand Dash for his attitude, Danny beat her to it, "I don't want an apology if he doesn't feel sorry." His smile never fell, but the room chilled somewhat. "I have no need for empty words."
The smallest trace of guilt flickered in the blonde's eyes before he turned away, staring out the darkened window with a frown.
Once the silence had drawn on long enough to become awkward, Kwan piped up in between bites of pizza, "So, you suspected evil ghost Vlad."
"Right," Danny nodded, holding out his hand for a slice. Kwan obliged him with a warm smile. The youngest Fenton watched the cheese stretch, slowly collecting his thoughts. "Since he's one of the four humans that knows my secret, we immediately suspected him to be the cause of the press release. Some new, twisted scheme to get with my mom or something."
"That's rough," Kwan remarked, reaching back into the pizza box for what had to be his third piece. "My sympathies."
Danny took a bite, trying not to reopen the cuts on his face as he chewed, "We decided to nip it in the bud and confront him immediately by flying down…wow. It was just yesterday, I guess."
It felt like ages ago that it had all happened; his fingers barely brushing her hand.
All his fault all his fault all his fault all his—
"I take it the confrontation didn't go over well?" Paulina asked quietly, unwittingly breaking him out of his thoughts.
"No, it wasn't Vlad. The woman had set us up. She figured out our next move, goaded us into a trap. And I fell right into it." He clenched his hand into a fist, ignoring the way it made his bruised skin flare with pain. "She had some way to mind control the ghosts and used teleportation to grab Sam and Tuck. Then she blew the building up."
Kwan, who had been nodding along with his story, looked visibly startled at this new tidbit. "Really? She just…" He blew out his cheeks, making a soft pow sound "So you don't know who the woman was?"
"Yes and no," Danny sighed. "She's the lady from the ghost reveal, Katherine—"
"Idolon," Dash interrupted, speaking his first words for the past few pages. "She's the one that called. I recognized her voice, though it took me awhile to place it."
Danny nodded at him, silently drawing him back into the discussion. "She was probably trying to negotiate for Tuck and Sam."
Dash pushed up to his feet, fixing Danny with an icy glare, "I still don't understand why you ended up in my living room, or why you're bothering with this story."
Danny felt himself flush embarrassedly, his ears and neck a brilliant red for the second time that night. Staring at his lap and curling the huge blanket around his shoulders, he muttered, "I didn't know where else to go, I guess."
"Oh, oh." It looked like a lightbulb had gone off behind Paulina's eyes. "Your parents don't know you're Phantom, do they?"
Danny winced, his father's threats ringing in his ears, "Let's just say going home in this state wasn't exactly an option.
"But why'd you break my window?" Dash asked harshly, his hands clenching angrily at his sides. "You could've killed me and Paulie."
"Paulina and I," Kwan interjected smoothly, unphased by the scathing look his best friend shot him.
"I don't actually remember going though the window," Danny mused, trying to recall the details. There was the explosion, his ice core going into berserker mode at the sudden heat. The impact shooting him through Vlad's three floor house, which explained why his back hurt so much. Then a brief period of weightlessness before landing on someone's car; now that had hurt.
"I flew from Wisconsin back here." He paused, thinking again. "I think I was actually planning on going to Valerie's." As soon as the words left his mouth, he regretted them.
He may have revealed her secret to her father, but that was to keep her safe. There was no way he was blabbing something so personal as the details of her other persona without her permission, especially to one of Val's previous best friends.
"Valerie?" Paulina asked incredulously, "But she hates Danny Phantom."
"I was delirious, if you recall," He said with a small smile, not exactly lying but not giving his original reasoning either. "But then I lost consciousness and—" He made an arc with his hand and mimicked falling to the ground. "I mean, from above your houses are pretty close."
"So you didn't even mean to come here?" Dash seemed oddly put out by this revelation, which made Danny wrinkle his nose in confusion.
He'd known Dash for the past ten years yet still didn't understand what motivated the guy. One minute he's practically breathing fire and the next he's acting like a kicked puppy.
The halfa had to withhold his sigh as he passed a hand over his face; would they object to him just…falling asleep?
The standard App*le ringtone sounded in the silence, so loud that Danny popped into invisibility with a very unmanly squeak. He was trying to work on controlling those, honest.
Kwan, watching Danny, leapt backward in surprise and tripped Dash, who fell on his butt with a thud.
Paulina rolled her eyes and checked the caller ID of her ringing phone, "It's the lady, should I answer?"
Danny popped back into sight, causing Dash to curse when Kwan startled again, "Only if you feel comfortable doing that."
The Latina arched an eyebrow at the ghost boy and hit the green call button, her voice clear as she answered, "Sup b****?"
"You are one hard number to find," The alleged doctor muttered over the phone, sounding much less put together than she had in her previous call. "I had to hack the Amity Telephone Directo—"
"What do you want?" Paulina demanded, eyeing her nails with feigned interest. "Make it snappy and maybe I'll stay on this time."
"Tell Danny I have his two friends, and if he ever wants to see them again—"
"Yawn, I said make it quick." Paulina sounded relaxed, bored even, but Danny could see the tremor in her hands as she clutched the phone, her grip just a little too tight.
"Hey," Danny whispered softly, "Pass it"
The Latina arched an eyebrow but seemed all to grateful to hand the phone off to him, stepping back as he put his ear to the receiver.
Dredging up the last bit of strength that was simmering within him, he spoke into the receiver, "Phantom here, heard you were talking 'bout me behind my back."
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the three A-Listers flinch, their eyes widening at his change in tone. He ignored them and instead focused on staying awake.
"Danny!" The woman squealed into the phone, sounding more like a lovestruck teen than a hardened kidnapper. "I missed you."
"I'd say likewise," He shifted the phone to his other ear so that he couldn't see the trio watching him, examining Dash's gleaming trophies. "But my mother taught me that it's rude to lie."
"Witty as ever," She snarked, dropping the flowery tone. "Now, let's get down to business."
Danny sighed heavily, "You mean threats? My favourite part."
She chuckled into the receiver, "Now now, listen close and I might decide not to slit your pretty Goth's throat as she sleeps."
Though he knew she was just trying to get a rise out him he couldn't help but sit up a little straighter at her words, eyes darkening as he hissed out, "Sam is not mine. She is not a thing. And I swear if you hurt a hair on her head—"
"Mmm, there it is," From what it sounded like she was licking her lips, the wet smacking sound making him recoil from the handheld device. "I love how protective you are, how loyal. Are you listening?"
He wrinkled his nose, making a small noise of assent in his throat despite his disgust.
"Good. I want you to hand yourself over to me by this time next week, you'll know where to find me." Her voice twisted smugly, as if she were laughing over a secret whose true face only she was privy to. "If you get cold feet, I kill them both. If you're late, dead. Maybe they'll come back as little ghosts and join my army, who's to say for certain?"
Danny ground his teeth, trying to push away the green haze clouding his eyes. "How do I know they're even still alive?"
There was a pause as she chuckled, the disturbed air sounding like nothing but harsh static in his ear, "Oh silly, you can't."
And then she hung up on him, the sudden silence pressing against him.
He growled low in his throat, palpable frustration coursing through his entire being. As he glared at Paulina's phone, he found himself wanting to destroy it; to fill it with burning, choking ecto-energy until it melted into the grooves of his palm. Erased.
Instead, he steadied himself with a breath and placed it softly on the mattress beside him, giving it a little pat for good measure. He refused to give into the pull of destruction, something that would come so easily with his ghostly form.
He knew what came of it, knew who came of it, and he never wanted to see that reality again.
The three were looking at him in slack-jawed shock, Kwan being the first to break the quiet, "Well, that was horrifying."
"What?" Danny asked, oblivious as always.
Paulina gestured vaguely at the empty air, "I mean, I know you're Phantom, but I don't know you're Phantom. You know?"
Danny squinted at her, "No."
Kwan nodded, "I get you, Paulina." He shifted, "Anywho, what'd she say?"
He sighed, rubbing a tired and bandaged hand over his face, "She wants me to hand myself over next week or they're dead." He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall. "Standard blackmail procedure."
"Right," Kwan drawled. "Standard."
"If that's the case, what do you need us to do?" Paulina leaned forward, fixing him with an impenetrable gaze.
Danny shook his head quickly, dropping the blanket from his shoulders as he made to get up. "No, I couldn't ask you to. This is my mess and you'll only get hurt if you—"
Dash pushed past the other two gently, crossing his arms over his broad chest, "We're not asking," His cold blue eyes practically speared Danny with their intensity. "So, Danny, what's the plan?"
Correct me if I'm wrong, but is that^^ the first time Dash has ever called him by his name? Progress, perhaps?
Big thank you to (WhimsiKitty, the-trash-prince, A Vivid Reader, SofiPhan29, BG224, DracoArtemisLeopin, DaniManson, BAD1027, ELIZABETH, Cyan Quarts, and the RandomPhangirl) for your encouraging reviews :) much appreciated
Hope you're all having a wonderful 2020 so far and enjoyed the chapter, even though it was basically just a catch-me-up for Kwan, Paulina, and Dash.
Also, part of the reason for why this Chapter is so short is because I drew my own Cover! BUT, whenever I orient it, it just goes back to being landscaped? No matter what I do?
As always, constructive criticism and thoughts/theories are welcome :p
~ASL