A Year long Contract Chapter 2, a danny phantom fanfic

This Chapter contains character death and themes of loss. If that is not for you, maybe skip this chapter. For everyone else I hope you enjoy.

I do not own Danny Phantom.

21 year old Maddie stared transfixed at the scene before her. Her knees weak, barely supporting her weight. She felt she could faint at any moment.

10 minutes in and Jack was still performing CPR on Vlad's mangled body. The large man probably had broken most of his friend's ribs with his enormous strength but still he kept trying to save him to no avail.

Vlad Master's face was near charred black from how badly it was burned, eyes wide but seeing nothing, body completely limp with no trace of life.

He was dead the moment the light from the portal hit him.

Slowly, Maddie got down on her and knees beside Jack. Gently, she put her hand on top of his and the man seized his actions. He shook like a leaf in a storm. He looked at her in such a broken way that she'd have never imagined could come from the cheerful man. Fat drops of tears and snot streamed down his face freely as he began to hyperventilate.

"I-I killed him, Maddie." He managed to get out. "It's all my fault. I killed my best friend."

Maddie could feel herself begin to cry as well, but slowly the gears began to turn in her head, memories resurfaced of a night when she was 14 and terrified.

She still had it. The business card. It was in a drawer in her dorm room. She knew what to do.

"Jack…" She said softly. "I know a way we can fix this…"

Maddie was now 41 years old.

It had been 20 years. That's how long they had been workshopping this machine. Other projects? They'd come and go. Ideas that grabbed their imaginations and ran away with them. Inventions they'd created that paid the bills, but had very little passion attached to them, and everything you can think of in between.

The Fenton ghost portal however? That was their baby. It was the big one they'd always come back to. Once they'd get that working, a thousand other possibilities would open up to them. There would be no way they wouldn't finally capture and experiment on a real ghost if they had that up in running in their lab. Creating a doorway to another dimension in and of itself was a feat that would change the scientific world as they knew it.

That's why this failure hurt so bad.

No matter how many attempts they made over the years, they'd always end up right back in the same place. They'd go over the calculations, be sure that this time they had everything right, and once again nothing would come of it. Their eldest child rolling her eyes with her "I knew it" attitude was salt in the wound. Then again she always hated their passion for studying the paranormal. Maybe she was right. It wasn't their love for fringe sciences that made them most of their money anyway. It was their passionless, boring contract work.

Maddie couldn't help but wonder as she swirled around her beer if this was a wake up call. When she was in middle school everyone always assumed she'd be an engineer or a doctor or something else more traditional in the world of science. Maybe she had taken her career as a ghost hunter as far as it could go and it was time to come back to earth.

She glanced at her husband who looked more crestfallen than she did. She wondered what he would think about the idea of leaving the ghost hunting business behind for good to pursue other sciences. The idea of even voicing the question out loud broke her heart. They loved their life just the way it was, but the idea that they couldn't take their careers any further than this hurt.

Maddie looked around the bar they were at. They received some curious looks and distasteful glances from the other patrons who weren't used to having some jumpsuit cladded weirdos hang around their bar. She sneered right back at them. As if she was going to be judged by people already drinking in a dark bar at 3:00 in the afternoon.

Uh oh. She looked back at the bottle in her hand. Weren't they day drinking too? Jack and Maddie very rarely partook in alcohol, At one point in Maddie's life she considered throwing back as many drinks as she pleased in the middle of the day seemed like a good time but that was when she was a different person. Now they didn't even keep it around their house. It just wasn't something that interested them. Today however? After what seemed like their thousandth failure with the portal, it seemed like a good idea. Now it made her feel sad and pathetic

"How much have you had Jack?" She asked her husband as she pushed away her nearly full bottle.

"Huh?" Her voice snapped him out of his deep thought. "Oh, uh…". He took a second to examine his own bottle "Almost half."

Yeah. Alcohol didn't really suit them. She got up and prompted her husband to do the same. She wanted out of there. An hour ago, she just wanted out of the house, but this place was only making her more depressed. They paid their bill and left.

As they were about to make their exit, something very odd happened. The electricity in the bar flickered for a few moments. The lights, the tv, everything shut down, only to be powered back on, 10 seconds later.

As soon as everything was back to normal, the married couple shrugged off the strange occurrence and left. At first they wondered if maybe the place didn't pay their electric bill on time until they turned on the radio on the drive home. A news bulletin claimed that half the town had experienced a temporary power outage all at the same time with seemingly no explanation. Jack and Maddie didn't really care. It didn't have anything to do with them and if the power came back on only moments later, why would it matter? They found it difficult to care about anything at that moment.

That is until they heard it. A blaring sound off in the distance that started to grow as it drew closer. It was the whirl of an ambulance siren. It passed right by them, speeding off along the same path they seemed to be heading down.

It had to be a coincidence that they were driving in the same direction. Surely it would soon head down another street, take a turn away from their neighborhood, They were certain of that. but they never got away from the blaire of the siren. How could it be that it seemed like they were both going to the same place? Why would an ambulance go to Fenton works?

No, even if it was going to their home street, it had to be for another house, right? An elderly neighbor having a heat attack or something like that. But little by little a dreadful feeling began to seep into Jack and Maddie's hearts. A horrible sinking emotion that brought their instincts on full alert and was only compounded by how the ambulance siren still sounded so close as they were about to reach their destination.

Maddie's heart dropped into her stomach when they turned the corner and there it was, parked in their drive way, with EMT's already entering their home.

Jack parked on the street. Distress and confusion marred his face as he exited the car. He closed the door but stood there looking over the scene, as if not sure of what to make of it. He felt frozen in his boots. A part of him deep down was almost afraid to go near the situation.

Maddie on the other hand rushed out of the passenger seat, slammed the door and ran to her house, needing to know exactly what was going on. She bounded up the front steps, but before she could even touch the door, the EMTS were already exiting, carrying a loaded stretcher.

She backed up, out of their way and gasped in horror at the sight of her youngest child's burnt body, shivering in pain, face scrunched up in agony. His gaping mouth twitching as if trying to take in air but too paralyzed to do so.

"DANNY"

She screeched out in utter shock and horror, hands reached out towards her boy only to be held back by an EMT trying to explain to her that there was no time. The kid needed to get to a hospital ASAP.

"THAT'S MY SON! WHAT HAPPENED TO MY SON?!" The distraught mother wailed out in hysterics. She was ushered into the ambulance with them with the confirmation that she was the boy's mother.

At the sound of her sobs and screams, Jack was jolted out of his daze and ran to join his wife and son in the ambulance but the moment the EMT saw him dash forward with the intent to ride along with them, he was stopped. There was no room to take the large man. For a brief instant Jack thought he couldn't accept that. He wanted to push through so that he could stay with his wife and son. He couldn't let his child leave his sight in that condition, but as soon as the thought came, it passed. He needed to be rational about this for Danny's sake. He couldn't hold them up any longer.

"Maddie, I'll meet you at the hospital!" He yelled to her as the vehicle's doors slammed shut and drove away.

Jack was about to run back to the family assault vehicle and chase after them, when he heard the voices of Danny's two best friends. Sam and Tucker stood at the open front door. He hadn't even noticed the teens were there at first until he heard Sam's broken voice crying in anguish. What she said, struck Jack like a hard slap to the face.

"I killed him Tucker! It's all my fault! I killed my best friend."

Jack stared wide eyed at the kids, mouth dry, jaw clenched, mind numb, and hands trembling.

The goth girl held onto her friend like a lifeline, burying her face into the boy's shoulder as they both sobbed, nearly as hysterical as Maddie was. The sentence echoed in the man's head, like his entire mind was cleared out and only those words reverberated off empty walls.

'I killed my best friend.'

'I killed my best friend."

On autopilot Jack ran back to his house, pushing past the two grieving teens and up the stairs to his and Maddie's bedroom. He immediately went to the dresser and pulled apart the drawers. He fished around for one simple thing in particular. It had to be there. They wouldn't have thrown it away, no matter how horrible the experience was back then. No matter how much they hated it. Jack and Maddie both knew, for emergencies just like this one, they needed it. Finally after nearly dismantling the dresser in his desperate search, he held it in his hand.

An old worn out business card with only a few drops of dried blood on it and a single word printed. That word was 'Scratch'.

Jack pocketed the card and rushed back out to the assault vehicle, racing down the street, determined to meet his wife and son at the hospital and hoping beyond hope that 'that thing' wouldn't be necessary.

Maddie sat in the Ambulance, heart racing so loud it drowned out almost all other sounds. Her eyes never left her child. The EMTs worked as quick as lightning to try and save Danny. They shouted at each other to do this and that and busied themselves around the boy to keep him alive. At one point a defibrillator was used, shocking the now unconscious 14 year old. Maddie couldn't make out any of it. It all sounded underwater to her. Her world was spinning as memories flashed before he eyes.

She remembered going into labor all those years ago, giving birth, holding him for the first time, introducing him to his excited big sister, first steps, first words, birthdays, trick or treating, family science experiments. There were so many happy memories and she wanted more than anything for there to be more. There had to be more to come. He was only 14. He was supposed to grow up. She was supposed to watch him turn into an adult. The thought that his life would end here was inconceivable.

She mouthed the same sentence in a broken whisper over and over again until it was all her mind could string together.

"Danny, don't leave."

Until finally one long sound penetrated her haze. A long beep that torn through her whole world. The monitor flatlined and the EMTS halted their attempts to save him. They were too late.

They declared time of death just as the Ambulance reached it's destination.

They exited the vehicle as Jack Fenton was pulling into the parking lot. He rushed to meet them only to be left breathless at the sight of them wheeling out his boy's body and coving it with a sheet.

Jack and Maddie Fenton stood in a morgue besides the metal table that their son's corpse lay on. A doctor pulled back the sheet, giving the parents a sympathetic look.

"I'll give you a few minutes alone."

Jack said nothing as the medic left the room. He only stared down at his son's lifeless form. A hollow feeling took root in the father's gut. He was paralyzed as he stared down unblinking at his son, brain in complete denial. What he was looking at was wrong. This couldn't happen. This couldn't be reality. Danny was only sleeping. Never mind that the teen was so pale and that he wasn't breathing. He's fine. He would be fine. Jack would not take his eyes off of his son until his chest would start rise and fall again in the rhythm that it was supposed to, which would be any second now. It had to.

Maddie on the other hand was completely falling apart. She doubled over in physical and emotional pain. It was as though her heart was stabbed repeatedly before it was ripped from her chest entirely. She clenched her eyes shut, not being able to look at Danny this way. She was sure she was going to throw up. Tears and snot dripped down her face freely in an ugly wail of anguished emotions that she couldn't hold back. The grieving mother sobbed openly and loudly until it felt like she would choke but even still she couldn't stop. Her baby was dead and it felt like the end of the world.

Little by little a thought managed to worm it's way into jack's clouded mind until he finally remembered what it was.

"Maddie…"

He turned to his wife and reached out to hug her. He embraced her tightly, holding her tear drenched face to his chest but nothing could halt her cries. It was only one sentence that could get through to her in her distraught state.

"I brought Scratch's card with me…"

Maddie froze at these words. Slowly she looked up at her husband with wide eyes. Memories came flooding back to her. It all fell into place. She knew there was only one thing they could do.

"Let's summon him…."

I would love some feedback. Looking back at the previous chapter, I feel like it doesn't fit well next to this one. I wrote it to give context and set up, but now I'm wondering if it wasn't the most interesting way to start this fic. Maybe I should have saved it for a flashback for a future installment, or maybe it would have been better to just leave how we got here a mystery. Let me know what you think.