Maybe Danny shouldn't have run. But what else was he supposed to do? Just stand there and listen? Go to the nurse's office like they suggested and just listen to everyone tell him he's crazy?
He didn't want to think he was crazy. He knew what they were saying wasn't true. But what explanation was there?
He thought they were just angry at first, they had every right to be, but he knew his friends weren't that petty. When Danny had walked up to his two best and only friends in the whole world, fully willing to apologise for the things he'd said the day before, he expected them to still be upset. But he wasn't expecting them to look at him like they'd never seen him before. To say that they had no clue who he was and that he must have gotten the wrong people.
Danny had been mad at first, thinking they were upset enough to pretend they didn't know him. He tried to talk them out of it, saying that it was far too childish for them to do, but when they kept insisting they didn't know him he snapped.
They were allowed to be mad at him, but this was taking it too far. He told them to knock it off, got angry with them. Sam snapped back, saying he shouldn't be taking his issues out on them. Danny, thinking she'd finally dropped the act, wilted and apologised again. He was just mad at his family; he didn't mean it when he said he wished they'd leave him alone.
But Sam wasn't happy with this. She kept insisting they had no idea what he was talking about and behind the anger he could see her confusion. That's when Danny finally started to realise something was wrong.
He'd crumbled, asking if they really didn't know who he was, and the answer he got tore his heart to shreds.
They didn't know him.
They truly didn't know who he was.
His best friends, looking at him like he was some sort of stranger.
Like he hadn't known them for years, shared all of his secrets with, told everything to and did everything with.
They'd forgotten him.
He didn't understand why.
He couldn't.
None of it made any sense. How could they just forget him like that? What had happened between their last conversation and this one that had caused this? Was it because he said he wanted to be alone? Was the universe actually answering his wish in the worst way possible? If that were true, then he wanted to take it back. He didn't mean it when he said it and he certainly regretted it now.
He didn't want to be alone.
They must have noticed his heartbreak because Sam's fury slowly died down. They asked if he was okay, if he'd hit his head or something. They suggested he go to the nurse's office, and that's when Danny bolted.
Unable to handle the sight of his once friends treating him like a fragile stranger, looking at him with no recognition in their eyes. He ran until he couldn't breathe, which admittedly wasn't far, but it got him away from everyone. He was pretty sure Sam's shouting had drawn attention to the others in the hall, and he wondered how much they knew. If they'd forgotten him too or if they recognised him and the people he used to be friends with. He wondered if any of them would believe him if he told them. If any of them would care.
Probably not. There was a reason Sam and Tucker were his only friends. They were the only people in this school who cared about him, and now they were gone.
Danny curled into a tight ball. He was alone in a hallway, leaning against the lockers. He'd sat down in this spot after a few minutes of aimless wandering because it was abandoned. Everyone would have gone to the cafeteria by now for lunch, leaving him about an hour of time alone to panic.
Not that he wanted it. Being alone was the absolute last thing Danny wanted at that moment, but he had little choice.
It hit him just then how lonely he truly was.
His parents had been spending all their time working on some portal to the ghost dimension, the main source of his frustration in his argument with his friends. Danny didn't believe in the paranormal, and his parents spending all their time on something that would never work was anger-inducing for their youngest child. The town already thought them insane, but with word spreading of their obsession to build some magic portal to the ghost world, ridicule for the Fenton family was at an all-time high.
Yesterday had been their first test, and while Danny hoped the failure would knock some sense into their heads, he found himself frustrated beyond belief when it seemingly did what it was supposed to. A bright green swirling mass had formed in the gateway they built, looking exactly like what one would expect a portal to another dimension would look like. It had only been for a few sparse moments, but it was enough to reinvigorate his parents' desire to complete the thing and create a stable portal.
If Danny were any less inclined to being mad at his parents, he may have taken a moment to wonder at the impossible sight he had seen. But he was mad, so he wrote it off as a mirage type thing due to the severe brightness and heat coming off the amount of electricity that powered it. It was a trick of the eye, nothing more.
But his parents had been so happy with it, they locked themselves in the basement to perform more tests, basically becoming ghosts themselves in the Fenton household.
Jazz had likewise made herself scarce. She'd been spending all her time at school or the library or wherever else she went that wasn't home. She had a reputation to maintain as the normal one of the family after all. And she made it clear that being seen with any of them was a nuisance she'd rather avoid. So, Danny had seen very little of sister in recent weeks, leaving him with one less person to rely on.
Honestly, it was as if he was only person in the house at times. There were some days where he could go the entire day without seeing any of them.
So, all he had were his friends. And he must have angered the universe the same time he angered them, because now he didn't have them either.
Danny sobbed as he realised how alone he truly was.
He didn't have any other friends, everyone else in the school already treated him like he didn't exist, or that his existence was an offence to them. He wasn't close with any of his teachers or neighbours or anyone in the town really.
Five people were all he had in this world. And he'd lost every single one of them.
A family that didn't care to acknowledge him and friends who'd lost their memories.
He was alone.
More alone than he had ever been.
"Fenton?"
I wrote this based on an idea I've had for a while, but as I was writing it I got a ton of new ideas and now it has a plot for a multi-chap fic that I desperately want to write. I've continued this idea for Strange, and I've already written it despite not being up to it yet. I was up until 3am last night and it's up to 2.5k words, which isn't much considering I'm nowhere near the part I want to write. Honestly, I'm probably going to rush through the last few days of DannyMay so I can get to work on all the new ideas this has given me. Plus, I want to get as much writing done as I can before I have to go back to work on Monday.