Chapter Four

Danny passed the next day in a daze. Nothing reached him, not the heat, not his exhaustion, not the putrid miasma that hung in the summer air. Unlike before, he was grateful to be in the gardens, content to work until his sun-blasted mind sank into a numb trance.

If not for Jazz's careful watch over him, he probably would have suffered a heat stroke; his cold core could only do so much to maintain his temperature when he was in his human form. Every so often, the alternate version of his sister would grab him by his arm, pull him to his feet, lead him into the shade of a nearby tree, and force him to drink some water and cool off.

He didn't speak a word that day. But that night, after everyone had gone to bed, he went ghost and flew away from Amity Park as fast as he could, until he must have put a hundred miles between them.

There, he landed at random in the middle of a forest and screamed. He screamed until his voice became a Ghostly Wail and destroyed the trees in front of him, disintegrating them and gouging a trench into the ground. He screamed until his core was raw, until his ghost half retreated and he was left alone in the dark night, on his knees, fists pressed into the raw earth.

And finally, he cried. They were messy, choking sobs. Tears and snot ran down his face and fell onto the dirt. He didn't care. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

Because he was never going home.

Danny knelt in the dirt for a long time. Once his tears were spent, he sat back on his heels and stared down the length of the trench his Ghostly Wail had cut into the forest. Bright moonlight shone into the new space, stark silver against the black of the woods. He expected to feel guilt at causing so much damage, but he felt nothing, as though his brain was refusing to connect one event to the next. Had he done that? Was that really him?

A hand gripped his shoulder. Danny's eyes trailed listlessly from the dirt-blackened nails wrapped in his shirt, to the desiccated face leaning towards his. It had no lips - the exposed brown and black teeth clicked together in anticipation.

"Shit!" Danny rasped, and he scrambled forward, pulling the zombie down on top of him.

It knocked him onto his chest on the ground and lay wriggling on top of him. Its fingers dug into his back as it drug itself towards his throat. Danny turned intangible just long enough for the zombie to fall through him and to roll a couple feet away. Then his intangibility sputtered and was gone.

The zombie grabbed his leg. It stared at him with dull eyes through a curtain of greasy hair, jaw working up and down. Danny yanked his foot back and kicked its face so hard he heard bones and cartilage snapping. A second later, he was on his feet, panting and staring horrified at the monster in front of him that was already scrabbling towards him as though Danny hadn't just kicked its nose in.

More fingers scraped over his arms. Danny whirled around and came face-to-face with a second zombie. There was a third, a fourth, a fifth shambling out of the trees behind it.

Danny rocked back on his left foot and struck the newcomer in its chest with his right. It stumbled backwards but felt no pain and advanced on him again.

The first gripped one hand around his ankle. It pulled itself toward him over the ground and opened its mouth wide to take a bite out of his calf muscle.

"No!" cried Danny, pulling at his leg, kicking out at the corpse's head until it released its hold on him. The second zombie scratched its fingers over his shirt, and a third snapped its teeth by his left ear.

Feeble energy burst out of his spent core, a flash of an ectoplasmic shield that pushed the zombies away from him and then disintegrated into the night. It was enough. Danny took his chance and ran for the nearest tree, jumped at it, pulled himself up using a low-hanging branch while his sneakers scraped over the bark of the trunk. He had climbed halfway up the tree before he even dared look back at the ground.

Ten feet below, the zombies had crowded around the trunk. Their skeletal hands clawed the air and scratched at the bark. Their teeth clacked. They jostled one another in their hunger, oblivious to the others' existence. Danny watched as several more shuffled out of the forest to join their undead peers in their futile efforts to reach him.

Danny's heart, which was racing faster than it had gotten the chance to in a long time, began to settle now that he knew he was out of danger. He took a deep breath and climbed a few more feet up the tree until he reached the highest branch that would still hold his weight. There he sat, back pressed against the trunk and legs dangling on either side of the limb, and he took a moment.

The first thing he did was to take off his shirt and check himself for blood. Maddie had said that scratches could kill, and too many zombies had their hands on him just now. While his shirt was the worse for wear - which sucked because it was one of the ones he had gotten with Jazz, and now he would have to explain how he had ruined it in the span of two days, without telling anyone he was mauled by zombies in the woods - his skin itself was intact. He shrugged the shirt back on and the last of his fear drained out of him.

The second thing he did was to acknowledge this latest brush with death. Jazz, his Jazz, had recommended he do this after every particularly harrowing battle so that the feelings were less likely to take him by surprise later. That had been a problem during his first few months of being Danny Phantom. He would fight the ghosts, win, stuff them back into the Ghost Zone, and then a week later be struck frozen in the middle of lunch by an anxiety attack, when some completely harmless thing in his surroundings would send him back into the feelings of terror he felt when Skulker was a second away from cutting his head off, and the knowledge that Skulker had been a second away from cutting his head off would sock him like a fist in the gut.

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and tried to block out the moans of the dead beneath him.

"Okay, Fenton, you almost died tonight. Was it your own fault? Yep. Did you die? Nope. Was anyone hurt?" He peeked at the zombie whose face he'd smashed in. "Er. Not really? So… we good?"

He nodded. "Yeah, I think we're good."

Danny scrubbed his hands over his face, feeling completely exhausted. His throat was still raw from the Ghostly Wail, his eyes puffy from crying, and his core was so depleted that he could hardly feel it. Until it had a chance to recharge, he was stuck here in this tree.

"Who am I kidding," he whispered and let his head fall back against the trunk. "I'm not okay."

He took another deep breath. He didn't think he was physically capable of crying anymore, but there were fresh tears welling in his eyes.

He hated this. No matter how bad things had gotten in the past, there had always been a solution. Half of the time the solutions had been insane, last-ditch miracles that by all accounts should not have worked but did. He had travelled through time, he had fought the Ghost King, he had met his own clones.

But now he was stranded in the human plane, in the wrong timeline, and he was grounded there by a microscopic virus. There was only one solution to this, and it didn't exist. Not until Maddie Fenton - or someone, anyone - developed a cure would he be able to go home, and that might never happen.

He absolutely hated this. There was nothing he could do. This was an enemy he was completely powerless against. Even if a natural portal were to open up right in front of him, he couldn't fly through it. So all he could do was…

Sit here, and wait for his core to recover. Fly back to Amity Park. Pretend to be a version of himself who was dead. Continue to protect the town he was so proud had survived all of this.

And make sure he survived, too. While he had no idea of the status of his own mortality - Tucker had once called him "Schrodinger's Boy" for a whole week as a joke; "Is he dead? Is he alive?"; oh, and Wes had a field day with that one - he did know one thing after his brush against literal death tonight:

He wasn't ready to die.

"How are you holding up?"

Danny cracked his eyes to see Jazz, sitting in the shade beside him and pretending to people-watch. He snorted. No matter which universe Jazz was in, she was so incredibly obvious. But he appreciated the gesture. He didn't like people staring at him, and the fact that she remembered that so many months after her own brother passed was incredible.

"Better." He had hardly slept in three nights and could have killed for a Nasty Burger, but he was doing better.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

He sucked in a deep breath and let it out, considering. "Not yet… but that doesn't mean not ever."

A small smile tugged at the corner of Jazz's mouth. "Let me know when you're ready, and I'll be there."

"Thanks."

Danny leaned his head back against the tree trunk and joined his almost-sister in people watching. The summer air lay over them like a blanket, and the humming of cicadas droned in the background alongside the ever-present hum of the Fenton Zombie Shield.

The end of their break arrived, an unspoken but palpable decision. Danny stood, reached out a hand to Jazz, who smiled and accepted it, and he hauled her to her feet.

"Hey guys!" called Bekah from across the garden. "Look who's back!"

Danny squinted at Bekah through the bright, green-tinged sunlight and then in the direction she was pointing. He heard the engine a second later and the low crunching scrape of tires on asphalt, both of which stood out to him because it was the first vehicle he'd heard in days.

Down the street, approaching the church, was a red pickup truck. Several people wearing leather jackets and carrying guns sat in the bed, lounging on crates as the truck rolled ahead and waving at the people they passed.

"Oh!" said Jazz. "They're back." Her pleased smile quickly dropped into a frown, and she began mumbling something under her breath. Danny caught two of the words: "... four, five…"

She was counting.

She was counting the number of people who had returned.

Danny glanced back and forth between Jazz and the truck, holding his breath and awaiting her verdict. At last, she sighed, muttered "Okay", and turned an artificially chipper expression on Danny. "Let's go say 'hi'. You can see Sam."

Danny blinked. "Sam?" He'd been so wrapped up in his own problems that he'd forgotten. The Sam of this universe had been out in the wilderness since before he arrived - the same wilderness that nearly killed him last night.

He needed to see that she was alright. He had to see that she was alright.

It took large reserves of his self-control to walk with Jazz to the church and to not run ahead, calling Sam's name and tearing the truck apart in search of her. They came upon the pickup and the seven people who were in the process of unloading it, carrying their cargo into the church where the rest of the supplies were stored or handing sacks to the people who worked there.

"Hey Sam!" called Jazz, raising a hand.

A young woman who was helping two of her team to pull a particularly heavy crate from the truck bed glanced their way, hastily waved, and continued guiding the box to the ground. Then she did a double-take. Offering an "I'll be back in a second" to the others, she stepped away from the crate and hurried to the sidewalk where Jazz and Danny were waiting.

Danny hardly recognized her. It had been so long since he had seen Sam's natural hair color that he'd forgotten what she looked like with it. But it was more than the strawberry blonde hair, which she had pulled into a high ponytail and shaved at the sides above her ears. It was the fact that she was tan, that she had no makeup on whatsoever, and there was not a single bit of black in her outfit besides her aviator sunglasses. Like all the others on the truck, she wore blue jeans, sturdy brown work boots, and a very worn, brown leather jacket.

If he didn't know this was Sam, he wouldn't have known it was Sam.

She didn't stop until she was inches in front of Danny. Expression severe, she grabbed his face, and her leather gloves were hot from the sun. She smelled like sweat and body odor; there was dust and grime streaked across her forehead and cheeks, and her hair was dark with perspiration and grease.

But it was still Sam, so he grinned. "Hi Sam."

"What the hell?" she mumbled, and then she pulled him into a painfully tight hug. "What the literal fuck?" she asked, releasing him just long enough to look at his face before crushing him again, burying her face into the crook of his neck and knotting his shirt in her fingers. "You were dead. They told me you were dead."

Danny gently wrapped his arms around her and laid his cheek on the top of her head. He closed his eyes, too relieved to feel guilty about lying this time. "I'm glad you're okay, Sam."

At last she pulled away. Danny couldn't see her eyes behind her sunglasses, but he could see where tears had trailed through the dirt on her cheeks. She wiped her nose on the back of one hand and asked, "How are you here? What happened?"

Danny opened his mouth to explain, realized he couldn't tell her anything, and looked helplessly over his shoulder at Jazz.

"None of us are entirely sure," Jazz explained smoothly, just as she had dozens of times already. "He found his way back here a few days ago, but he can't remember most of the last couple of years. From what we could piece together, it sounds like something traumatic must have happened that's causing his amnesia."

"Yeah," he confirmed, hanging his head and rubbing the back of his neck.

"This is…" Sam swallowed. "This is unbelievable. I can't even…"

"I know," said Danny.

"You saw the memorial?" Danny nodded. "Then you know about-"

"Tucker? Yeah, I know." Danny took Sam's hand in his and squeezed it gently. "And I'm sorry about your mom and your grandma, Sam. I'm so sorry."

Sam took her hand back and turned her face away, scowling at the sun-parched grass nearby. "It's fine," she said, words acerbic. "I'm fine."

Another familiar face appeared as its owner walked around the hood of the truck. "Hey Sam, where'd you-" He stopped in his tracks. "What the? Is that… Danny Fenton?"

"Uh." Danny waved awkwardly. "Hey, Dash…"

"You're… you… what?"

Jazz, once again, graciously explained the situation, while Danny considered this version of Dash, the guy who had bullied him since he was old enough to have the mental capacity to turn "Fenton" into "Fentwerp". Honestly, he didn't look very different from the Dash in Danny's universe, although he was smaller, built of leaner muscle. And where the Dash Baxter that Danny knew was filled with a pervasive arrogance, the Dash standing before him only looked - tired. Like he had aged a decade in the last two years.

This Dash was an orphan.

Once Dash heard everything Jazz had to say, asking a few clarification questions here and there, he turned to Danny and held out his right hand. "Well, it's uh… good to have you back."

A little stunned, Danny took Dash's hand and shook. "Thanks, Dash."

"I'm gonna help finish unloading," he told Sam, pointing toward the church. "See you later, Fenton."

"Yeah, sure," said Danny. "See you." He waited until the other boy was out of earshot before he commented, "That was weird."

"You're one to talk," said Sam, punching him lightly in the arm. More seriously, she added, "He's done a lot of growing up since all of this started. I think you two might actually get along now."

Danny snorted, shaking his head in disbelief and wonder. "We'll see."

"I should probably get back to work, too," said Sam, "so I can go take a cold shower and then spend the next three days in my pajamas, in my bed, completely alone, in the dark. Oh! Before I forget…" She shrugged out of the leather jacket, revealing a sweat-soaked turquoise tank top underneath. After digging around in the inside pocket of the jacket, she finally produced a small, lumpy red bag.

"Coffee!" cried Jazz, snatching the bag out of Sam's hands. "You remembered!"

"You don't want to know what I had to do to get this," said Sam, smirking, obviously pleased with Jazz's reaction. "But, you do realize those beans have got to be at least two years old by now, right?"

Jazz had the bag pressed affectionately to her cheek. "I don't care - it's coffee!"

"Weirdo." Sam glanced again at Danny. "I'm… glad to see you're okay, Danny. But I'm going to need some time to process this. Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm not sure that we can just pick things up where we left off. I've - everyone's been through a lot. And I just got back - I'm too tired to handle this the way I want to."

Danny understood completely. "We can talk some more when you emerge from your bat cave."

"Thanks." After hugging him one last time, Sam told the Fentons goodbye and hurried back to the truck. She fell into step with Dash, who was walking up the steps to the church, hunched under the weight of a very large bag of rice. He made some comment, and Sam punched him in the arm and laughed.

"Am I seeing this right?" said Danny. "They almost look like… friends."

"They have more in common than you'd think," replied Jazz, rather cryptically. Hugging her small bag of very old coffee beans to her chest with the same enthusiasm she used to show Bearbert Einstein, Jazz turned and began the short trek back to the gardens.

Danny trailed after her. "Like…?"

"Like, I don't know, dead parents and a need to express their feelings through violence."

"… you're not wrong."

Danny pondered this as they took up their chores. He was beyond happy that the Sam of this universe was alive, even if their meeting had been somewhat lukewarm. He knew he shouldn't, but he couldn't help feeling bitter that she would rather talk to Dash right now than be around him. But there was no way he could begrudge her for finding a friend. He wouldn't have wanted his own Sam to be completely alone if she were to lose both him and Tucker.

Sam and Dash really did have a lot in common. They had both lost all of their friends to this nightmare, as well as beloved family members. Dash would have needed someone to turn to when both of his parents were gone, and Danny knew there had been a social connection between the Manson and the Baxter parents for a long time; they were always schmoozing with one another at community events in Danny's world. It could be that Sam's dad had taken Dash in when he lost his family.

Danny had no clue. But what he did know was that everything about their interaction just now had made him feel like a puzzle piece that didn't quite fit.

Danny Fenton was supposed to be dead, and the world had moved on without him.

He swallowed the lump in his throat and ignored the tightening feeling in his chest. This was Amity Park Z, he told himself. Not everything was going to be hunky dory, so he had better start getting used to it.

"Sure you don't want to talk about it?" asked Jazz as she carried a bucket past him.

Danny practiced some more deep-breathing - a long inhale through his nose, and a longer exhale through his mouth as his cold core pushed some of the oppressive heat out of his body. "Answer's still 'no', Jazz."

"I'm not going to stop asking," she called over her shoulder.

"I know!" he called back. To himself, he mumbled, "And I appreciate that."

But he missed his Jazz, and his Sam, and his Tucker. He wondered what they were doing now that he was gone from their world.

He hoped they were okay. He hoped no ghosts attacked that Val or his parents couldn't handle. He hoped that they didn't get hurt looking for him, which they were sure to be doing. He hoped-

Danny pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes and shook his head sharply. "Stop, Fenton. Enough." You can't control any of that, so it's not worth tearing yourself apart over it.

He might not have fit in this universe, but like it or not, his puzzle piece had been crammed into the picture, and everyone was going to have to get used to it.

Including me.

A/N: Hello! I'm so sorry this took so long. -_-;

But here we are! And the next chapter is, I would say, about 75% of the way done. Just need to add a scene at the beginning, and a few sentences here and there to round off the character development. Hopefully I can have it done before the end of summer.

Thanks for sticking with me. And thanks to: GhostWriterGirl-1, dragondancer123, IDragonElf, InfinitysWraith, 5543mj, AFloatingShoppingList, Dp-Marvel94, MsFrizzle, daddyphannypack, trxshrat, Black Sun Upon An Icy Sky, TwilightWakerofTime, trjz, Pour, Bopdawoo, xXNot a PineappleXx, Scarlette Foxx, RunningDownAMountain, and Guest for your reviews of "Chapter Three"!

And, well… what do you think of Sam? Plausible? Hair color? Friends with Dash?

T.F.C~