Our Son, the Halfa
"Danny?"
"Uh, hi, Mom."
Danny Fenton grinned sheepishly as he stuck his head into the room. He wasn't about to step off of the stairs and into the lab until he was absolutely sure nothing was going to blow up or shoot at him. Despite being raised around his parents' wacky and hazardous experiments, he had never stopped being wary of anything with the name "Fenton" in front of it.
"What are you doing down here, sweetie?"
"Well, it's getting kind of late, and Jazz and I were wondering about din-"
"That's it!" Jack's voice boomed, cutting Danny off mid-sentence. The huge, orange-clad man quickly stood, holding up a long page of blueprints. "Maddie, don't you see?"
"What is it?" Maddie asked, also leaping to her feet. She crowded next to her husband to get a better look at the blueprints, her son forgotten.
"…ner. Jeez," Danny muttered. "What other kid is second in their parents' eyes to a ghost portal?"
He glared at the self-proclaimed ghost hunters ("self-proclaimed" because they had never seen, much less hunted, a ghost) and at the device in question. To Danny, it just looked like a hole in the wall – a sleek, metal-sheathed, wire-filled hole, but still, a hole. His parents had spent the last ten years designing and building this contraption. Where they got the money for their shenanigans, Danny could only guess. He always supposed some fruitloop out there must have believed in the Fentons' brand of crazy enough to fund them.
"We didn't plug it in! Hah!" Jack's whole body shook as he laughed; Maddie did not seem quite as amused. Her face pulled into a disapproving frown under her hazmat hood and goggles.
"Jack, dear, are you saying we've spent the past eight hours trying to start the portal, and it wasn't even plugged in?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying, Maddie!" He grinned. "And here I thought it was broken."
His wife sighed. "This is the last time I leave the assembly to you," she growled, but Jack didn't seem to hear, already racing to the industrial-sized plug buried under a mountain of wires in the corner. He quickly found the plug and its port and, holding the two cords up in front of his face, connected them.
Danny cringed and closed his eyes, expecting the worst. He went as far as to cover his head with his arms. However, after several seconds, it became clear that nothing was going to happen. Nothing had blown up, but also, the machine hadn't even started.
All three sets of shoulders in the room drooped – Maddie's and Jack's with disappointment, Danny's with relief.
"Oh well, looks like a bust, now how about some dinner?"
Again, Danny's words were ignored. He groaned and banged his forehead on the wall.
"I just don't get it, Mads," Jack said, voice morose.
Maddie came to her husband's side and reached up a reassuring hand to his shoulder. "Now, are you sure everything else is in place? No more switches? Everything's plugged in?"
"Of course I'm sure! I may be an idiot sometimes, but not so much an idiot that I'd forget to plug in two cords."
"But what else could it be? We've been pouring over the blueprints for hours, double-checking everything."
Danny watched as the two inventors simultaneously fell into their chairs, backs to one another, staring at opposite corners of the room. After a few minutes of them not moving, Danny cleared his throat. Then, he waved. Then, still not receiving a response, he left his comfort zone and walked into the lab.
"I thought we were finally going to see a ghost…"
"Our whole careers were building to this moment. This is what we went to college for!"
Jack heaved his shoulders in a sigh. "Maybe we're just not cut out for this… I mean, it's not like any of our inventions ever worked, anyway. We should just give up ghost-hunting, once and for all."
"I hate to say it, but you may be right."
It was worse than Danny had originally thought. He had never seen his parents look so defeated before. No matter how many times they failed, no matter how many times reality smacked them in the face and screamed, "Ghosts don't exist!" they had always kept blundering confidently forward. Now, for them to be questioning their careers? It was like any other person questioning gravity.
Danny wanted to be happy about this. He didn't know how many years he and his sister had spent trying to convince his parents of the very conclusion they had now come to on their own. But, no matter how much he wanted to be happy, he was finding it strangely impossible. It was just hard to see them looking so sad. No kid was supposed to see this side of his parents.
That is why, against his better judgment, Danny said what he did next.
"Maybe I could take a look?"
As expected, this got their attentions. Fidgeting under their disbelieving stares, he continued. "I know I don't really know anything about ghost-hunting technology, but, well, maybe it would help to have some outside input. You guys are so into this invention that you're probably missing something really obvious. After all, you did forget to plug it in."
"Danny," Maddie said slowly. "Are you saying… you want to help us with our work?"
Though he knew he would regret it: "Basically."
Suddenly, Danny experienced the sensation of being crushed. It took him a few seconds to realize that it was only his dad hugging him.
"Maddie, did you hear that?! Danny wants to help with the ghost portal! I knew this day would come!" He set Danny back on his feet, and, wiping a tear from each eye, said, "I'm so proud of you, son."
Danny had always wanted to hear those words from his dad. And, while he had been expecting them to come in another situation – say, graduating from college or perhaps becoming the first person to walk on Mars – it still made Danny smile.
"Now, this might be dangerous," his mom said. "We don't know what will happen if we do manage to break the barrier between the human world and the ghost realm. You'll need to wear your hazmat suit."
Danny's smile twitched. "Oh, yeah. Great." He thought he had gotten rid of that thing.
Before long, Danny was dressed in a skin-tight jumpsuit, white with black gloves and boots, a black collar, and a black midsection. There had also been an image of a smiling Jack Fenton adorning the chest, but Danny quietly removed and disposed of it.
Maddie and Jack stood back, faces warm as they admired the child whom they were certain was now going to follow in their footsteps.
At this point, the eldest Fenton sibling, Jazz, came into the lab. Seeing that her younger brother had not only failed in his mission to rouse the parental figures for dinner but had been so far lost as to be caught up in their nonsense, she at once spun around and retreated up the stairs. "I guess I'll just order pizza!" she called back irritably.
Jazz is going to kill me for this. Danny could hear the lecture now – what had he been thinking, encouraging them? It would surely set back the 'progress' Jazz had made with them by years.
He sighed, shook his head, and turned to the giant metal hole in the wall.
"Here goes nothing." Literally.
His mom stopped him. "Don't you want to look at the blueprint first?"
Danny mentally slapped himself. "Oh, yeah, right."
Jack and Maddie spread the huge blueprint out on the nearest and cleanest lab table and stepped back to watch what Danny did next. The teen was at once overwhelmed by all of the intricate white lines that spread across the page. The only thing that immediately made sense to him was the small doodle in the corner of a blob-like ghost leaping out of the portal.
He took a deep breath. It took several minutes, but soon the lines began to make some sense. He felt pressed for time, what with his parents staring at him from across the room, so as soon as he was familiar with the basic layout, he turned to the monstrosity.
"Okay." He cracked his neck on either side, popped the joints in his fingers, and set to work.
Danny really had no idea what he was doing, but he followed the technological instincts he had been imbued with, being born into the generation he was, as he checked over all of the wires and plugs, making sure nothing was loose. He unplugged and re-plugged the power source. He made sure all of the colors matched up with their ports. Actually, he did everything he could think of to make sure he remained on the outside of the portal.
As he worked, he couldn't help but think about what would happen if, against all odds, the ghost portal did work. What if ghosts really did exist, and the Fentons became the first people in the world to open a functioning portal to their realm? The idea was a little exciting – not that Danny would ever admit that.
It was with great trepidation that, fifteen minutes later, he was forced to go inside.
The interior of the portal made even less sense than the exterior. It was like giving Abe Lincoln a computer tower and asking him to explain what was wrong with it. But, Danny played his part and made it look like he was trying to fix the portal. At the very least, he could see that he had revived his parents' spirit.
Just wander around in here for a few minutes, Fenton, and your job's done.
Then, he tripped. The cold, hard, metal floor greeted his face with a smack. Vaguely, he heard his mom calling to him, "Danny? Sweetie, are you okay?"
"Fine," he grumbled. "I just tripped." Danny swiveled his head toward his feet and saw that the culprit was a fat monkey wrench. He grabbed it and tossed it out of the portal. "But watch where you leave your tools!"
"Oh. Whoops."
Danny could imagine his dad rubbing the back of his neck and his mother's sharp look. The boy chuckled softly and pulled himself to his feet, grabbing the wall near him for support. He was confused when he felt the wall sink slightly under his hand, but he didn't think too much of it until he was on his feet again and pulled away.
Lights flickered on inside of the machine, and it began to hum as electricity funneled into it. Danny looked at where his hand had been and saw a large red button labeled, "ON".
"Ghost Portal activated in three…," said a loud robotic voice resembling his mom's. "Two…" Before he could comprehend the words or register the shouts of his parents, Danny's world dissolved.
The Fenton Portal flashed brightly, momentarily blinding Maddie. Then an agonizing scream met her ears, one she recognized as belonging to her son – a sound she never thought she would have to hear. Horror curdled her blood.
"Danny!"
Maddie stumbled forward, only barely aware of Jack's arms holding her back. By the time her vision cleared, she could see a swirling green vortex filling the Fenton Portal. Danny's scream spiked and cut off, and suddenly a figure was blasted out of the Portal, straight into Maddie and Jack, throwing all three people back into the opposite wall.
Jack took the brunt of the impact, but Maddie was still winded. Blearily, she looked down at the person lying in her arms. She saw a head of white hair that was faintly smoking, tendrils of green floating up into the air from the head and shoulders. Even through her hazmat suit, she could feel how cold this person was.
Gently, she placed him on the floor in front of her, unnerved by how light he was, so light it was as if he would float away at any moment. She heard Jack groan behind her and felt him stand. He limped around and knelt across from her, on the other side of –
"Danny?" he whispered.
Maddie nodded. The colors of his hazmat suit had been inverted, his hair had turned white, and his whole body seemed to glow with an ethereal light – but it was unmistakably Danny. Maddie removed one of her gloves. She brushed his face with her bare fingers and immediately jerked back. His skin was like ice.
It was then she realized he was not breathing. Panicked, she pressed her fingers against his neck.
"Jack," she choked out a few seconds later. "Jack." Tears began to stream down her face. "He's… he's…"
Maddie looked up to her husband – her normally boisterous, cheerful, booming man. He was staring blankly at their son, his entire body limp. His face had taken on a sickly gray hue.
"We did this?" he said, voice no more than a breath. He looked at his hands. They trembled like dry leaves.
Maddie swallowed, found she could not speak, and simply nodded. Her sweet, sweet boy had wanted nothing more than to help them, to make them smile again and earn their approval, and their invention had… Maddie curled forward until her head rested on her son's cold, quiet chest, and she began to sob.
"What's going on? I heard a scream."
Maddie flinched and looked up to the staircase, where her eldest child was watching them. She saw Jazz's eyes scan the scene, flicking from the glowing Ghost Portal, to her weeping parents, and finally to the unmoving figure lying between them.
"Is that… don't tell me you… What have you done?"
The girl rushed forward. She shoved her mother out of the way and began to check Danny's vitals. Though obviously disturbed by his body temperature, by his dramatically altered appearance, she did not hesitate to begin performing CPR. "What are you waiting for?" she said while pumping her hands on his chest. "Call 911!" She plugged his nose and breathed into his mouth again before moving back to his heart.
Maddie had just begun to push to her feet when she heard a groan. Then – "Ow! Jazz? What the heck are you doing?"
Jazz yelped and scrambled back a foot. "Danny!"
Groaning again, Danny pushed himself up with his hands until he was sitting straight. He cradled the side of his head and looked around at them. His eyes met Maddie's; they were bright, fluorescent green, just like ectoplasm and just like the Portal that was glowing behind them, casting the room in its light.
"What happened?" Danny asked. His voice echoed slightly, like he was talking to them from a cave.
"Danny, you…" Jack trailed off, and he mutely pointed one finger at the Portal.
Danny turned to look where his father was pointing. His jaw dropped. "Is that… you mean… it worked?" A grin spread across his face. "It actually worked! Awesome! Does this mean – is that really – the ghost world?" He looked back at them, seeking confirmation, but frowned when he saw their pale, tear-streaked faces. "What's wrong with all of you? It's like someone died."
Maddie's brain was stacking up all of the observations she had made so far: glowing skin, low body temperature, decreased density, ectoplasmic residue in the irises, echoing voice. She crouched next to her son and pressed her fingers against his neck again. There was still no pulse.
This was not their son. In all likelihood, his body was still lying on the floor of the Fenton Portal, and the Portal had shot his ghost out into the real world.
His ghost.
Meaning, Danny really was dead.
Danny grabbed Maddie's hand and pulled it away. He stared at her with those intense green eyes, a question burning in them. "Why are you checking my pulse?"
The words left her numb mouth before she could stop them. "You're dead."
Neither Maddie nor Jack had ever seen a ghost. They had seen evidence of the creatures – video recordings of objects moving on their own, records of temperatures inexplicably dropping, even ectoplasmic goo left at the scene of a haunting, smeared green and glowing across floors or walls. They knew that ghosts existed, and that was why they had been working on building a ghost portal for the last twenty years, starting with the prototype they had first built in college, back when Vlad Masters was still on their research team. If they could directly access the ghost realm, they could observe ghosts in their natural habitat or even bring the ghosts into a controlled environment in the human world to be studied. Maddie had been anticipating seeing a ghost since she was young.
She had not expected the first ghost she saw to be one of her own children.
"What? I'm dead? You're kidding." Danny laughed weakly.
"Mom, what are you saying?" Jazz argued. "Danny's obviously not dead if he's sitting here talking to us. He just looks a little different, right?"
"Yeah. I mean, I know the thing electrocuted me or whatever but-" He cut off mid-sentence. "What do you mean I look different?"
Jack grabbed his wife's arm. "Is this his ghost?" he murmured.
Maddie nodded, saying, "I think it is," just as Jazz pushed to her feet so that she towered over them all.
"That's enough!" she yelled, jabbing her finger in their faces. "Your obsession has gone too far! Don't you see Danny needs a doctor? But all you two can do is sit here talking about ghosts! It's because you couldn't stop thinking about ghosts long enough to think about your own family that this happened in the first place! C'mon, Danny, I'll drive you to the hospital." Jazz hooked her hand under her brother's arm and pulled.
Jazz used too much force, not anticipating how little Danny's body now weighed. Her gesture sent him flying into the air above their heads. As soon as Danny realized what was happening, he yelped and flipped onto his belly, trying to catch himself. The result was that he looked as though he were swimming in mid-air.
"What the-? What's going on?" His momentum carried him backward through the air, toward the stairwell. "Help!" Danny's feet reached the wall, but that did not stop him. He drifted straight into it.
Maddie and Jack had both jumped to their feet. Seeing that their youngest was about to float through the wall, they rushed forward and took his outstretched hands, just as his waist disappeared. They pulled him back out and helped him angle his feet to the floor. Danny touched down, and only when he was sure that he was not going to sink into the ground did he let go of his parents' hands.
Danny stared at his parents, and they stared back. He looked to Jazz, whose hands still hung uselessly in the air after trying to lift him from the floor. He raised his own hands to study them, flipping them over, back and forth in front of his eyes. Then he rushed to the mirror that hung over the sink in the back of the room.
Or, he tried to rush there; he put too much force into his footsteps and drifted back up into the air, arms pinwheeling around him. Maddie and Jack flanked him and guided him there with hands on his back and arms.
When Danny finally saw his reflection, his expression grew horrified. He reached out his fingertips to touch the glass, as if to make sure he was really looking at himself.
Guilt welled inside of Maddie as she watched this, and her heart thudded in her chest. The implications were beginning to loom in her thoughts. Ghosts - according to the scientists working with the Guys in White, ghosts were creatures driven by their obsessions that longed for the human world. They were almost always violent, and prolonged exposure to their presence produced ill effects in humans, either physically or psychologically. Even if the ghosts seemed harmless at first, or simply mischievous, their obsessive nature could cause them to change in a split second. In other words, ghosts were dangerous. In fact, one could say they were evil.
This was not her son, Maddie realized. Ghosts were nothing more than odd manifestations of ectoplasmic energy and post-human consciousness. The creature before her was little more than the last thoughts of her son and his personality imprinted onto an ectoplasmic host. He might seem like Danny now, but eventually, his ghostly nature would rise to the surface and overtake everything 'human' about him.
Danny was dead.
Maddie tried to find Jack with her eyes, wondering if he had realized this, too. He was crying quietly, but overall his expression was shadowed. It was hard to tell his thoughts.
"I'm… dead?" Danny whispered. Rather, the ghost whispered. Maddie could not allow herself to become attached to it. That would only make it harder than it would already be when the time came to exterminate it. A knot twisted in her chest and throat. She felt like she was going to be sick.
"Why?" the ghost continued. "I just. No. I haven't even started high school yet. This can't be happening."
"What happened, son?" Jack asked, sniffling. Son. Maddie tried to catch his eyes and shake her head at him, but he was focused only on the ghost. He had placed a comforting hand on its shoulder.
The ghost frowned. "I think I pushed a button, after I tripped. On the wall. A big red button. Then everything turned on. And, after that…" Its voice lowered to a whisper. "I felt like I was being ripped apart."
Maddie's eyes widened. A big red button? No, it couldn't be! "You put the 'on' button inside of the Portal?" she said to Jack, tone livid. "What were you thinking?!"
Jack scratched his chin, eyes to the floor. "I thought it was a good idea at the time," he mumbled.
The ghost stared intently at its reflection. It began to shake its head. With no small amount of fear, Maddie realized it was becoming distressed. If their research was correct, it could move into its confused and violent state at any moment.
"No," it said. "This isn't me."
Just as Maddie began to formulate a plan of defense, something unexpected happened. A white ring of light formed at the ghost's waist. Maddie and Jack both jumped back. The ring flashed before splitting in two, and the two rings quickly moved up and down the ghost's body. Whatever they passed over was transformed, and soon the hazmat was replaced with jeans and a t-shirt, the white hair with black, and the green eyes with blue. With a light 'thump', the ghost's feet hit the floor again. Its skin no longer glowed, and its density had obviously increased.
The ghost gasped. It touched its face and then put its hand over its chest. Grinning, crying, it turned to Maddie and Jack and said, "I'm not dead!"
Maddie's jaw dropped. Shaking, she reached out a hand to check the vitals herself. The forehead was abnormally chilly but not icy like before, instead feeling like that of someone who had come in from a cold and blustery day. She felt for a pulse and found one, strong and regular beneath the skin.
"Danny?" she whispered. The ghost – her son? – wrapped its arms around her and buried its face into the crook of her neck. It started to cry openly.
Jack wrapped his huge arms around them both and squeezed hard. He called Jazz over to join them, and she did so after a moment of hesitation and confusion.
Maddie had no idea what had just happened, but it seemed like her family was still in one piece. Perhaps what had happened to Danny was nothing more than a short-term side effect to being exposed to so much ectoplasmic energy at once. After all, when Vlad Masters had been blasted in the face by their proto-portal, his hair had also turned white, and his eyes had glowed with ghostly energy. He had received a serious case of ecto-acne as well that had kept him in the hospital for several months, but he had recovered and was now doing extremely well for himself. Other than never regaining his hair's natural color, there had been no long term effects from the exposure.
She squeezed her son tightly to herself. He was alive.
He was still so cold.
At the back of the room, the Fenton Ghost Portal continued to swirl, green, opaque, and haunting.
A/N: Hello, wonderful readers! I have sorely missed you.
So, I decided I am never going to promise update schedules ever again, because every time I think my life is in order, eight things happen to screw it up. (If anyone reads Blue Chair, think about Shen's relationship with Life. Relatable.) An update schedule is essentially me begging the Great Powers of the Universe to smite me. Last time I did it, I learned I have two unrelated, incurable, and potentially debilitating illnesses, which may in the future cause me to go deaf in one ear, become diabetic, and struggle to have children - and which really put a damper on my spring and summer months. So, lesson learned - NEVER AGAIN.
But I'm at last getting back into writing. I've been hacking away at a Merlin fic (125 pages so far, hot dog!) and drifting back to my Danny Phantom stories. Which prompted me to start this one shot collection, as I pump myself up to reread Treading Water and my uber-detailed top-secret PLOT OUTLINE (because Danny is literally in mer-prison right now, and we gotta get him out somehow).
This collection a mix of plot bunnies or scenes excerpted from longer works, written within about the last 5 years. I love writing stories about Danny's relationship with his parents, so all of the one shots will follow that theme.
This short, "Our Son, the Halfa", is a 2014 rewrite of a short I wrote in 2006 (back when I was, golly, 14 years old). It's obviously a story that's been done before, a lot, but I figured I might as well add my rendition to the pile. It was meant to be a multi-chapter fic, but nothing came of that and probably never will.
Next time, Maddie learns about Danny's ice powers - but only his ice powers.
T.F.C~