A/N: For DP-Marvel94.
They planned and deliberated and—at least in her case—dithered for weeks, but Jazz's anxiety never really went away. Sam and Tucker had been ready to blast Vlad's door down or just toss the Booo-merang and follow it with the Spectre Speeder, crashing through whatever walls necessary to get to Danny, and despite Daniel's misgivings, they'd still tried it. Unfortunately, Daniel had been right: it hadn't worked. Jazz still wasn't sure whether it was because his own ecto-signature was too similar to Danny's or because Vlad had learned from last time and somehow managed to block it.
Now, on the day they were finally doing something, Jazz thought she might be sick, and they hadn't even started. Not really. At the very least, her part in this hadn't started.
Daniel had kept in contact with Vlad all this time, but that contact had always been initiated by Vlad. Daniel had simply gone along with it. He'd assured her that Vlad hadn't done anything questionable, said it was mostly generic stuff they were supposed to bond over, like going to a Packers game, but it still didn't sit right with Jazz. Danny would've protested this treatment—heck, he'd have flatly refused—but Daniel never had, and Jazz still didn't know if it had been the right choice.
She figured her refusal to warm up to the man was firmly in character. Jack and Maddie might be thrilled that Danny was no longer making faces whenever Vlad's name was mentioned and he thought they wouldn't notice, but she hadn't seen enough of Vlad to change her mind about him, and he ought to know that. Of course, he also knew how much she trusted her brother's word….
They were no closer to find out where Danny was, but Sam had finally convinced her that they wouldn't make any progress if they were largely relying on Vlad letting something slip to Daniel. That was the reason Jazz had scaled Vlad's fence and was now crouched in the bushes outside his mansion with Sam while Tucker checked to make sure the security system was indeed disarmed. Vlad was just out back with Daniel, having invited him over on the pretense of tutoring even though most of their conversations for their bonding time hardly focused on any of the subjects Daniel was still failing. Vlad, apparently, tended to talk a lot about himself—where he'd been, what he'd done, things he'd seen—in what was no doubt a deliberate attempt to make himself seem so much better than Jack.
Still, while Jazz knew Vlad was distracted for now, she wasn't exactly comfortable breaking into his lab.
Sam and Tucker had no such reservations. At a thumbs up from Tucker, Sam tried the front door, and when it didn't open, she pulled her lockpicks from her backpack while Tucker and Jazz kept watch. They were inside a good deal faster than Jazz had expected, scurrying down the halls towards Vlad's lab as quietly as they could. If there were answers to be found anywhere, it was surely there.
"How much time do you think we have?" Jazz asked Sam in a quiet voice once they were in the lab. Tucker had proceeded immediately to the computer, presumably to try to hack Vlad's records.
"Daniel said he'd try to stall if Vlad made any noises about coming inside," Sam reminded her. "It might not be as much time as we need, but he'll buy us as much as he can. Besides, it's Vlad. If he's about to come inside, Daniel can just ask him a question that gives him an excuse to rant about something." Sam pointed to her right and added, "I'll take this side; you take that one. Shout if you can't get into anything that looks promising."
Jazz still wasn't entirely sure what they were looking for, so she headed to a filing cabinet and started going though the papers. She wasn't convinced Vlad would have documentation of what he'd done, but at this point, she'd take receipts from chemical purchases or a copy of a fake birth certificate or anything that might point her in the right direction or give her something solid when it came to getting dirt on Vlad.
"What are you looking for, sugar plum?"
Jazz jumped at her mother's voice and twisted, only to swallow back horror as she spotted Tucker frowning at what was obviously a hologram. As Jazz watched, it glitched, disappearing for a split second longer than an eye blink. Tucker seemed to take this in stride. "Where's the real Danny Fenton?"
"Where he's safe, of course!"
"Which is where, exactly?" Sam growled as she walked over to join Tucker.
Jazz took a steadying breath and abandoned her own search to stand with them. Sam and Tucker weren't remotely surprised by this, so this was just something Danny hadn't told her about…or she hadn't understood when he'd said it, if he had. She certainly couldn't recall Daniel ever saying something, but maybe he hadn't known.
Or maybe he hadn't wanted to upset her and push her to rush into some confrontation with Vlad they weren't prepared for. Not that she'd blame him if that were the case. With Daniel unable to use his powers for any length of time without access to a stabilizing solution, Jazz didn't like their odds in a fight. A quick skirmish with the Box Ghost was a lot different than going up against the person who knew your weaknesses better than you did.
"In stasis," the hologram answered cheerfully.
"What does that mean?" Sam demanded. "That still doesn't tell us where he is!" She rounded on Tucker. "Can't you make it tell us more?"
"I'm trying," he said, already back at the computer console. "Vlad's coding is awful. It's hard to tell what info he's actually blocked off from being accessed and what's just a mess he left."
Jazz found her eyes travelling back to the smiling hologram. "Mom?" she croaked. "I-I mean…. Maddie. You're Maddie, right?"
"That's right, sweetums. What do you need?"
Jazz swallowed. While Sam and Tucker searched for more information about Danny, she could try to help Daniel. "Did you help create all the clones?"
"I've generated or double checked every calculation and measurement!"
"How did you stabilize them?"
The hologram rattled off the answer, and most of it went over Jazz's head despite what she knew, but she had Maddie slow down and repeat it so that she could remember as much as she could. When Maddie realized what Jazz was trying to do, she offered to make a printout of the information, and Jazz was too stunned by the fact that the hologram was actually helpful to them to register the sound of the printer at first. Somehow, Jazz had assumed that if Vlad had made himself a personal assistant hologram, it would be programmed not to be useful to anyone else, even if they could access it.
And, sure, if Vlad had been clever enough to do that, the information Maddie had given her could be deliberately wrong, but judging by the little Jazz knew, it seemed accurate enough.
Which meant her answer of 'in stasis' could be accurate, too, if only they could figure out what it meant.
Sam had since left Tucker at the computer console and gone back to checking for clues, and she'd already opened anything that was large enough for Danny to fit into. Which meant that Danny wasn't here, that Vlad was keeping him elsewhere in case they pulled something exactly like this, or—
An alarm started blaring, and Tucker cursed. "We need to go before we're sealed in," he yelled, running for the door. "I triggered something I can't stop!"
Sam grabbed Jazz's arm as she dashed by, but Jazz shook her off. "I need to get that info for Daniel."
"There's no time," Sam said, slowly slightly, but Jazz was already moving in the opposite direction.
"It's fine," she shouted back as she grabbed the papers and started to sprint for the door that Sam had just cleared.
Except it wasn't fine.
The door slid shut just as Jazz reached it, and she couldn't tug it open. She banged on the door. "Sam! Can you get it open from your side?"
Nothing.
"Sam! Tuck!" They wouldn't have just left her. They might be more Danny's friends than hers, but they were in this together. "Guys!"
Crud.
Jazz sucked in a breath, realizing there was a very good possibility the room was soundproofed. Besides, even if Sam and Tucker realized she wasn't behind them before they got away, there was no guarantee they'd be able to get her out. If Tucker hadn't been able to stop this alarm from going off in the first place, hacking into whatever system had locked the door on her wasn't going to be a quick thing. She had to find a way to get out of here without them.
Jazz swung around to face the hologram again, which was still standing with a placid smile in the middle of the lab. "Let me out!"
"You know I can't do that without the override code, sweetie pie."
What override code? Jazz's instinct was to blurt out everything that came to mind on the off chance that she'd hit on it, but with the alarm blaring in her ears and her panic rising despite trying to fight it down and think clearly, her mind kept blanking, possibilities slipping away before they had a chance to take hold.
"Don't tell Vlad I'm here," Jazz ordered, even though she had no idea if the hologram would obey her when it was her word against Vlad's. Hiding under a lab bench was too open, not when she needed to do more than keep out of sight of the door. Jazz bit her lip. Even if she could cram herself into a cupboard, it was very unlikely that anything would be empty enough to have space for her in the first place, which left her with trying to hide amongst his half-completed or potentially discarded prototypes or—a more obvious choice and worryingly so—a broom cupboard. Or possibly a chemical storeroom for the non-flammables. Either way, her hiding spot would boil down to please don't open the door.
Jazz glanced towards the portal. It was closed, but perhaps the hologram could be persuaded to open it for her—?
No.
There wasn't time.
"Dismissed," Jazz barked, striding for the closet—cupboard—whatever it was—and trying to figure out what she'd say when she inevitably got caught. Should she fold the papers and stuff them into her shoes? Wrap them around her legs and try to hold them in place with her socks? Pad her bra? Wrap her headband around them before tying it back on? If Vlad suspected her of trying to steal anything from him, all he'd have to do was turn her intangible, and—
The hologram disappeared, and Jazz wrenched open the door of the closet, more relieved than she'd admit that the handle turned when she tried it. She shut the door behind her as quietly as she could and pulled out her phone for a light, trying to see more than a foot in front of her from the dim light of the screen and cursing the time it was taking for her eyes to adjust. She'd just have to crawl into the back corner, maybe empty a box or two that hadn't been spirited away by the Box Ghost and half bury herself in them. It would look a lot less suspicious here than in the lab.
Right?
Jazz sat down against the wall, nestling in between one of the boxes and a shelving unit, and promptly knocked something over. It clattered with a loudness that made her thankful for the blaring alarms, but as she reached for it to replace it, it rolled back towards her and a screen blinked on as it was jostled back to wakefulness. The bright red display simply read 2%.
Jazz stared.
Hardly paying attention to what she was doing, she shoved her phone back into her pocket, folded the papers in her hands into quarters, and stuffed the wad into her right sock, no longer caring about being discrete in case Vlad caught her.
That was a thermos.
A thermos.
The hologram's words came back to her in a rush, and it was too late to worry about things like not getting her hopes up. Running her fingers over the cool metal, Jazz realized that the model was barely different than a Fenton Thermos. She screwed off the lid and held her breath, but she didn't need to see to find the release button.
When the light from the thermos faded, the faint glow of the ghost she'd released remained.
"Danny," Jazz whispered as she crawled over to him. He looked, well, as good as he ever looked, except for the fact that he wasn't hovering in the air ready to fight and was instead slumped on the floor. Not that she could really see details through her tears. "Danny, it's okay, I'm here."
She touched him on the arm and winced when he flinched away. She pulled back as he cracked open his eyes, and a heartbeat later, they were wide. "Jazz? Is that really you?"
She nodded and held out her arms, and she couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief when he pulled himself up and came over to her.
"Danny," she murmured into his hair, because it was so good to be able to say his name and mean him and not Daniel. "It's okay. You're okay. I'm here now."
She felt him tense in her arms before he pulled away. "Where is here?"
Jazz managed a weak smile. "Okay, so we might still be in Vlad's lab since I can't walk through walls like you can, but—" She broke off, realizing that she couldn't hear the alarm anymore.
She hadn't noticed when it had cut off.
Danny must have seen her sudden panic because he climbed to his feet and helped her up, even though it seemed to lack his usual strength. "Come on. I can get us out of here."
Their months of separation were not enough to make her forget that tone of voice, that doubt he tried to bury but couldn't quite manage. Not with her. "Danny—"
Instead of arguing, he pushed her through the back wall. She stumbled onto plush green carpet and immediately did a quick check for signs of Vlad—or any of his lackeys—before fixing her gaze on the wall, waiting for Danny to come through.
It took an unnervingly long time for him to follow her. When he did, he looked worse than before. Daniel might not have all Danny's microexpressions, but the sheer exhaustion and the sickliness were the same. The slight off colour of his skin as both a ghost and a human, the bags under his eyes, the slightly glazed look in his eyes, the way he slumped forward and seemed to think he was standing normally—
"What's going on?" she hissed, but he just shook his head and motioned for her to follow him.
When his solution was to slip out a window instead of simply phasing through another wall, she pursed her lips but followed without comment. There'd be time enough to question him when they got somewhere safe. Sam and Tucker would be waiting for her to contact them, presumably with Daniel. This shouldn't have come back on him—hopefully—but even if it had, they'd all agreed to wait an hour before trying to contact each other if they something went wrong with this little venture of theirs, lest the person being contacted was in hiding as she'd been. She'd questioned the wisdom of it at the time, knowing how risky waiting could have been, but clearly Sam had been right and the alternative wouldn't necessarily have been any better.
Jazz didn't speak again until after she'd helped Danny over Vlad's stone fence and they were headed down the street at what was more a slow walk than a hurried pace. He'd changed back to her brother in case anyone saw them—explaining why she was with Phantom was not something she wanted to do right now—but that didn't make him look any healthier, and— "Seriously, Danny, what's wrong?"
"I'm fine."
Did he honestly expect her to believe that? "You're really not."
He reached for her hand, a move so uncharacteristic for him that she almost missed a step. "Yeah, okay. I'm really not. But I'll be fine. I'm just…not yet. And now's not the time to talk. We need to keep moving before Vlad and his lackeys catch up." He paused. "How did you figure it out?"
"Your—" there really wasn't a better way to say this "—clone wasn't, um, everything Vlad had hoped. Daniel's been helping me ever since I confronted him. He…he just wants to be free, but he's terrified of Vlad finding out that he's not perfect."
"Daniel," Danny repeated, something that wasn't quite shock weighing his voice. Disbelief, maybe? "He goes by Daniel?"
"When it's just us. Maybe with Vlad, too. I don't know. He…." Jazz bit her lip. "He's a good person."
"Yeah," Danny whispered. "I imagine he is. Like Danielle."
Jazz still had a million questions about Danielle, including why Danny had never mentioned her, but all she did was squeeze Danny's hand. "You'll like him, I swear. Now come on. Sam and Tucker will be waiting for us, and we've made it this far. We'll make it through the rest. I promise. I'm here for you, little brother. I always will be."
Danny didn't say anything for a moment, and when his agreement came, it lacked his usual confidence. "Yeah," he said, sounding as if the opposite were true. "I know."
"I mean it."
"I know," he said again, but he couldn't, not when he sounded like that. Of course, when Jazz thought about it, she couldn't really blame him—for months, she hadn't been there for him—but she was here now. She wasn't going anywhere, and neither was he. She'd fight Vlad herself if she had to.
She had her brother back, and she wasn't going to let him go.